Secret of the 327th
by Fergus Flamacron
Summary: Sequel to A Sticky Situation. Terriermon, Renamon, Lopmon and their Tamers find themselves thrust into the midst of the Clone Wars, where they meet the Rutian Twi'lek Jedi, Aayla Secura. Spread across the Galaxy, how will their presence change things?
1. Two Sides of the Wall

Enormous progress has been made to my little novel "Nature's War" thanks to a trip to the Arvon Foundation. All junior writers like myself should consider going there – it is great. In the process of five days I managed to do two months worth of plan for my novel's progress. For that reason I decided to start the sequel to "A Sticky Situation" earlier than I had planned.

This is just a chapter to re-introduce the main characters from the previous story and introduce the new ones from the alternate universe, filling in the gap.

Look out Clone Wars, because you are about to change drastically.

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* * *

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Secret of the 327**th**

**Chapter 1:- Two sides of the Wall**

* * *

"Ack! Pineapples!"

To wake up to somebody shouting that at the start of the day might be bizarre for some people. But for Henry Wong it was completely normal, as his best friend would often wake up in the morning and shout to the world something random, because it had been something he had been dreaming about, and he always did it in a dramatic way even if the dream had been a nice, calm one.

"Pineapples?" he asked sleepily, turning to look at the small, white, rabbit digimon, flecked with green and with enormous ears that could be used as wings and a horn stuck in the centre of his forehead. This was Terriermon, Henry's Digimon partner and a little comedian if ever there was one. "You were dreaming about pineapples?"

"Yeah," said Terriermon, thrusting his ears outwards to stretch them as he replied. "It was about a demon pineapple. If you eat it, the spirit takes hold of you and then you get turned into a pineapple yourself, and you're the spirit's new host. Then someone eats _you_ and they become fruit."

"I'll never look a pineapples the same way again," said the Chinese teenager, recently turned fourteen.

"Ah well," said Terriermon. "At least cantaloupes are still on the menu."

Henry chuckled. Life as a Tamer could be extremely exciting and adventurous but he particularly enjoyed the trivial moments such as this. He knew that most people his age would kill to have a conversation with Terriermon. The little bunny had even been asked for an autograph on several occasions over the six months since the Ogudomon incident. Terriermon didn't have a signature, but he did write something. And it was always the same.

Gripping the little pen, he would right "Momentai," on the paper offered to him.

Henry's mind cast back, as it always did in the early morning, over his life so far. Everything had been so normal for him, until one day Terriermon had appeared from out of the computer in front of him, and his digivice had been formed. Then everything had gone haywire. For a few months he had tried desperately to conceal Terriermon's existence from everyone. Terriermon would pretend to be a doll in front of the rest of his family, but this wasn't really a good thing, because Henry's little sister Suzie liked to dress up all her dolls and took an instant liking to Terriermon.

But eventually he had met other Tamers, and even Suzie, after finally learning that Terriermon was real, got her own Digimon, and in a bizarre twist it had been discovered that the Digimon of Henry's sister had been the sister of Henry's partner in turn. She was Lopmon, a small rabbit almost identical to Terriermon save for a few key points:- she was brown and pink instead of white and green, had three horns instead of one, and was most decidedly the opposite gender. Plus, she was extremely polite, while Terriermon often went out of his way to make remarks about people. Although they were rarely ever serious.

After the incident with the Devas, the Sovereign and the D-Reaper, Henry had started to find himself with a growing infatuation for another one of the Tamers. Rika Nonaka was the same age she was, and she was a fiery, red-headed girl who was extremely impatient at the best of times and was most decidedly a tomboy – she refused to wear a dress except on rare occasions, usually when trying to console her model mother.

But Henry had thought that he would never act upon this. But he had, thanks to his partner, who had in turn fallen in love with Rika's own partner.

Renamon.

Nobody would have guessed that Terriermon and Renamon would end up together when they had first met, and it wasn't just because of the height difference – Renamon was the size of a grown man and Terriermon came up to her knee. Their personalities had been so completely at odds with each other. Renamon, a tall, yellow, bipedal fox Digimon was a warrior to the core, whereas Terriermon was practically a little clown.

But then Goro had entered the picture. He had been a human collector, who liked rare animals to stuff into little cages in his house. Using a sticky compound fired from a gun he had managed to surprise Renamon and Terriermon, gluing the two of them together. He had taken them back with the intention to rape Renamon, but Terriermon had kept him at bay, and that had been what drew them together. They took their first meal together while Renamon had been tied to a post, and that had sealed the bond, as was the culture of the fox's species.

The two had mated the very night they had escaped. That meant that they were joined for life, and also gave them the ability to communicate telepathically. They literally could not hide a thing from each other due to their bond, which had made Christmas extremely difficult as neither was allowed to know what presents the other had received, or it would have been pointless to try and surprise them. And since Renamon could communicate with her Tamer with her mind, she became part of this too. Lopmon, being Terriermon's sister, and her Tamer Suzie, also became part of it. But Henry too was able to speak to the others with his mind, although he didn't really know how that had happened. He strongly suspected a Digi-Gnome, but he had no proof to back this up.

Then Ogudomon had come along – the massive Demon Lord who had the ability to nullify the attacks of any Digimon with even a trace of malice in their hearts. They had battled him for days without having any affect beyond some slight pain on Ogudomon's part, even with six of the Tamers biomerging to Mega, Impmon in his Mega Form of Beelzemon and several other Megas and four Ultimates all fighting one opponent, but eventually they had discovered the Rika and Renamon's Mega form had a Mode Change which enabled them to cancel out Ogudomon's power, allowing the Mega versions of the two bunnies to finish him off for good.

Terriermon's mind could tell that Renamon was awake. The others, apart from Henry, were still asleep, and all four of them could at least close their minds if there was something they didn't want the others to know about. But Terriermon and Renamon didn't have an off switch. They were permanently linked.

_Hey Rena,_ he said with his mind. _Do you ever sleep?_

_You know full well that I do, Terriermon,_ came the reply. _Nice dream by the way._

_I don't know where it comes from but all my dreams seem to have an element of weirdness about them._

_Well, perhaps they come from the bits of fluff where most people keep their brains._

_Oi. Do you want to have our monthly night together next week?_

_Of course. And I know that you wouldn't cancel it just for that._

_Is there anything that I can threaten you with?_

_Unlikely._

_How about if I start to sing "Ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall" in my head?_

_Oh, please God, don't do that._

_Momentai. I won't. _You'd_ cancel out monthly night together if I did._

_True. I suppose we're still scheduled to go on the camping trip today._

_Rika still complaining about it, huh?_

_Rika is not one to change her mind in a hurry, but she's more than willing to go as long as Kazu and Kenta aren't there._

_Be fair on them. They've improved an awful lot of the last six months, ever since Kenta figured out how to biomerge, Kazu had been taking the rip out of him less and less, although he does still go on about how Jeri and Elecmon still managed to beat him to it. But they're not going so we'll be fine. It'll just be you, me, Henry and Rika, and Suzie and Lopmon._

_Can you at least not declare an eating contest again this time?_

_Why? Because you know I'd kick your ass?_

_No, because if you do, I'm going to tickle you until you pass out and you'll wake up to find that I have removed my gloves and wrapped them around your body and my chest in a very familiar position._

_That just makes me want to do it even more._

Renamon chuckled. _Perhaps I'll do that next week, but I wouldn't really do that in front of Suzie._

Henry looked at his partner. He noticed that Terriermon had the glazed expression on his face that meant he was talking to Renamon. He wondered what it would be like to talk to Rika like that, but it was impossible for him to communicate with Rika using his mind without both Renamon and Terriermon hearing what he was saying.

_So when do you reckon Impmon is going to make his move?_ Terriermon was saying. Over the six months since the defeat of Ogudomon, Suzie had been hanging around a lot with the other two youngest Tamers, brother and sister – Ai and Mako. They had become extremely good friends, and their hanging out meant that Lopmon and Impmon spent a lot of time together, so the friendship between the two of them had notably increased.

_Terriermon, they're just friends,_ replied Renamon.

_Yeah, but for how much longer? Lopmon wants a mate one day, she told me after she first found out about us, and as far as I can see, Impmon will definitely be the one she goes for. He's mellowed out slightly, that's for sure._

_Only time will tell on that score_, noted Renamon.

_Yeah, but I'd say things are really moving along for us now that Takato and Jeri have finally got it into their heads that they like each other._

_Oh, I well never forget that one. That was you at your best I think._

_It was so funny to see them pinned together like that. Good thing you found some more of that gallium stuff at the furfag's place. The glue definitely seems to work._

_Indeed. Well, I should get Rika up so she can finish packing, or she won't be ready to leave in time._

_I'll leave you to it then. Talk to you later._ "Now, what's for breakfast?"

"Pineapple," grinned Henry.

"I hate you."

* * *

Lopmon's ears twitched and she woke to the sounds of footsteps walking past the door where she and Suzie slept. She could hear Terriermon saying, "…did they model the hand grenade after…" before whatever he said next was lost on her ears. She glanced at the digital clock, an device far less complex than her own digital self. It read 9:08.

Lopmon's enormous ear reached over and grasped Suzie's shoulder gently, shaking the little form with a slow, rocking motion. "Suzie," she whispered. "Wake up. We've only got a few hours before we have to leave."

Suzie's eyes fluttered open and she said, typically, "Five more minutes."

"No, Suzie, we need to get up now, so that we have enough time to finish getting ready."

Suzie nodded blearily and sat up. Lopmon got to her feet and hopped off the small bed and walking towards the door. She leapt upwards and pulled down on the handle with a practised ease and then pulled the door open with both hands. Suzie followed, rubbing her eyes and the two of them walked into the kitchen to get their early morning Coco Pops.

Henry was standing idly beside the toaster, having just put in four pieces of bread, and Terriermon was guzzling down a Frube, some of the strawberry yogurt down his front.

"Good morning," said Lopmon. "Sleep well?"

"Never again," said her brother, shaking his head. "I don't care about my five-a-day anymore."

"But Mummy says that having five a day is really important, or you get really fat," said Suzie, not quite old enough to fully understand everything about eating healthy yet. "Is there any ice cream left for us to take with us?"

"We can't take ice cream with us, Suzie," sighed Henry. "It'd melt before we even got a chance to eat it. But there will be plenty of apples and other nice, green things."

Suzie grumbled, but said nothing. "So," said Terriermon. "How was your day yesterday with Ai and Mako and _Impmon?_"

Lopmon didn't particularly like the way Terriermon had said Impmon's name, or the way he had glanced meaningfully at her when he had said it.

Suzie, who hadn't noticed, said, "It was really good. We went to McDonalds and played in the ball pool. It was really funny, because Lopmon and Impmon kept disappearing under the balls and we couldn't find them, and me and Ai threw the balls at Mako."

_Disappeared under the balls, huh? _Terriermon's voice filled Lopmon's head. _What were you doing under there exactly?_

_Nothing,_ sighed Lopmon. _But it's really difficult to stay above the surface when you're my height and Impmon just liked to pop up in random places and jump on his Tamers._

_Sure, sure, whatever you say,_ Terriermon grinned, before turning back to the conversation. Lopmon shook her head exasperatedly. Terriermon was so convinced that she and Impmon had a thing going on but the truth was that they were just really good friends now.

"Well, we had Takato and Guilmon come over here," said Henry. "Which meant that we had to hide the bread amongst the garlic so he couldn't sniff it out."

"I thought it smelled funny," said Lopmon.

"We didn't do much," said Henry. "We just played videogames."

"And I, of course, poned you all," cheered Terriermon. "There's no way any of you could beat my high score now."

Lopmon smiled. There was just no way of restraining Terriermon from coming out with these comments of his unless you stuffed something into his mouth, something which his mate, Renamon, had got in the habit of doing. Despite their connection, the two of them often puzzled her. She couldn't imagine just how deep the bond between them actually went or what it would be like to experience that bond for herself.

But they were her family, and she couldn't ask for a better one. She had once considered the other Devas to be her family when she had worked with them, when she had been one, but that didn't even compare slightly to her real family. She was much closer to Terriermon and Renamon than she'd ever been to any other Digimon. In fact, Terriermon and Lopmon had even discovered that the two of them, if they worked together, had a new attack in their Rookie forms. Their attack – Terrier Tornado and Lop Twister – were exactly the same, involving spinning in a circle at rapid speed to create a miniature whirlwind.

But they had discovered that if they both did that while holding ears they formed the Twin Cyclone, an attack which produced a funnel with the strength of an average Champion Digimon attack. This had come in handy occasionally when a random digimon had bioemerged. The three of them made such a great team that they had even gone through training sessions together, and now they were capable of giving any Champion and some weaker Ultimates a workout without even having to Digivolve or having any Modify Cards used on them.

Life was good.

* * *

Rika was awoken by the calm paw of her partner. She didn't need any words to be told why she had been awoken so early, as Renamon usually let her sleep in if she wanted. Grudgingly, Rika sat up and began to set about piling what little clothing she wanted to take with her into the large rucksack that had been provided by her grandmother. It was a mark of how much Rika's mother trusted her now that she allowed her to go. Before she knew about Renamon's existence she used to baby Rika, despite her daughter's complaints, or at least whenever she was around. But now Rika's mother was home much more often.

"What time are we supposed to be meeting at Guilmon's old hideout again," yawned Rika as she did up her belt and attached the digivice to it, ready to use it should the need arise.

"Noon," said Renamon, "but knowing Terriermon he's bound to do something that will slow the others up so they'll be ten minutes late. He's already planning something to do with a bucket of water."

Rika chuckled. "There was once a time where I thought he was so annoying, but you know, the bunny kind of grows on you."

"My thoughts exactly," said Renamon.

"Right," said Rika, straightening up. "Let's go get some breakfast."

"Cereal?"

"Yep."

Rika traipsed into the kitchen, Renamon striding calmly behind her. The only creature in the kitchen was the jackal, Isis, who had unknowingly helped Renamon to escape from Goro when Terriermon had managed to get him to chew through the ropes around her knees and ankles. The rare Egyptian Jackal had been taken in by the Nonakas and had been named by Terriermon. Renamon walked over to Isis and placed a paw on her head, causing the pointed ears to fall flat along the head in a comical manner, as Rika went scrounging in the cupboard until she pulled out a box of Frosties.

"Are you alright, Rika?" asked Renamon. "You seem to be a little more subdued this morning than normal."

"It's probably nothing," said Rika. "But do you remember what Fanglongmon told us when he entered the human world?"

Renamon nodded. Fanglongmon was the Digimon God, and once the six of them had brought about his rise he had given them a warning. A warning stating that this was not the end of their adventures and that the future definitely held more in store for them than the others.

"It's been some time," said Rika. "And whatever he was talking about could spring up at any time. Even on this camping trip."

"You are having second thoughts about going?" asked Renamon curiously.

"No," said Rika. "It's not that. It's just that I think we should be careful because for some reason," she paused, sighed and then went on, "I have a bad feeling about this."

* * *

The blue-green crystals glittered in the early morning air as the one sun of the planet rose high into the sky. It was a rather welcome sight. The troopers found the nights on this planet covered with the hexagonal blocks crystals with cities built upon them slightly creepy, considering it was without a moon. The city of Chaleydonia shone as the sun cast an orange tint over it. But only the colours were pretty. Everything else almost seemed to be in ruins. Buildings had practically been uprooted and overturned. The glistening streets were marred and pockmarked with debris.

A ruthless battle had been fought here, and with an enormous surge of desperate strength, it had been won, but at a terrible price to the clones. The charred and shattered and often sliced remains of battle droids littered the alleyways, while the bodies of anything alive had been laboriously cleared away. The capital city of Christophsis was still free.

But for how long? The mining world was not free yet, and the humans that lived here, the Christophsians, and the other species which resided on it, nestled in the Outer Rim, were still not safe from the threat of the Separatist Alliance, and wouldn't be until the Galactic Republic drove them from the planet again. The first time the Confederacy had invaded the population had already fled, but this time there were still numerous humans and a few Rodians still left cowering in the natural crystal spires which had been converted into skyscrapers.

The Separatists wouldn't have been able to get this far, had it not been for one single clone.

CC-2224, known better to all as Commander Cody, commander of the 212th Attack Battalion, sighed through gritted teeth at the thought. Sergeant Slick had been a member of his forces, but he believed that he and his clone brothers were being used as puppets in this war by the Jedi, and had developed a hatred towards them, which had led to him selling out vital information on their attack plans to one of Count Dooku's Dark Acolytes, Asajj Ventress. Once discovered, Slick had then used thermal detonators to destroy all of the AT-TE walkers and LAAT gunships that the clone army had, leaving them with just Heavy Cannons to combat General Loathsom's forces. The battle that ensued had been hard on the clones, forcing them back towards the capital, as they were unable to hold their ground against the huge mechanical army.

Eventually they had struggled it out, but over three-quarters of all of Cody's forces had been slaughtered by the merciless droids.

"Any sign of a counter-attack?"

Cody turned to see another clone heading towards him. Like him, this clone's armour had numerous patches of yellow across it, unlike the armour of the ordinary troopers, which were just pure white. This was CC-5052, commander of the 327th Star Corps, nicknamed Bly. He was a recent arrival to Christophsis, as was his brigade, but they had been a welcome relief. The only reason he was here was because CC-7567, Captain Rex of the 501st, had been called away from Christophsis along with the Jedi Commanders Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, in order to sort out some sort of incident on Naboo. The 327th, famous for one of the most active and feared clone forces in this war, had been of huge assistance in liberating the capital, as they had brought a few fresh Gunships and Walkers with them.

"Not yet," said Cody. "But we've received word that another fresh shipment has arrived thanks to our scouts on the Recon Transports. Whatever it is the Clankers want this planet for, they sure are not giving it up without a fight."

"But we're going to keep fighting them back," nodded Bly, brushing the scar above his left eye with his index finger. Cody fought the urge to rub his own scar, which was almost like an intricate pattern on the same side of his own face. The two men, identical in every facial detail apart from hair and injury, turned to survey the recuperating clone army.

"How are the men of Slick's old brigade?" asked Bly. "They pulled themselves together yet?"

"Yes," said Cody. "Since I assigned them to work directly under me. Slick hadn't been lying about one thing – those men of his are the best darn troopers I have."

"Shame their leader didn't follow their example," Bly grimaced.

"Where's the General?" asked Cody, eyes scanning the crowd for any sign of his new, temporary Jedi Leader until he was reassigned back under General Kenobi. But she was difficult to spot as her skin blended in quite well with the crystals.

"Over there," Bly pointed with two of his fingers. Cody spotted her then, assisting a wounded clone to his feet with the help of another clone called Gus, one of Slick's old platoon, and walking him slowly over to a waiting Medical Droid. The care the Jedi showed towards them always astounded Cody. Most people simply viewed the clones as laser cannon fodder, tools of war, which had perhaps been what instigated Slick's hatred of the Jedi in the first place. But not General Aayla Secura. She was no exception to the Jedi belief.

She was what was known as a Rutian Twi'lek. They had a basic humanoid shape but their most distinctive feature were the shapely, prehensile tails, also known as lekku, which dangled from the backs of their heads. Twi'leks came in a variety of skin colours, and that was why Aayla was designated a Rutian, which meant that their skin could be anything from dark blue to aquamarine, one of the rarest skin colours for a Twi'lek. Aayla herself had skin that was a cerulean colour, with faint white speckles on her lekku, which were used for communication.

Unlike most Jedi that Cody knew, Aayla did not wear the traditional robes that people associated with them. She wore, instead, a dark brown top which left her belly exposed, and which had one sleeve that encased her left arm, while the other was left bare. It had to be said that it was quite tight-fitting and revealed a supple, curved frame and extremely well-rounded breasts, although the clones would never comment about this. The bottom half of the Jedi was garbed in equally tight trousers and long brown boots. Cody had been told that this was traditional Twi'lek clothing, or at least for those females of Aayla's species that led free lives.

Cody had encountered numerous Twi'leks in his life, and most of them had been slaves to wealthy people. All of these had been female, as they were well renowned for having the most beautiful amongst the galaxy. As far as Cody knew it was impossible for there to _be_ an unattractive female Twi'lek. Aayla had also been destined to go into slavery, before she had been discovered by Jedi Padawan Quinlan Vos, who has asked that she be taken for testing at the Temple. She had passed, and had become Master Vos' own Padawan when she became old enough.

Cody knew that Secura had a reputation. She was an extremely skilled Jedi Knight, perhaps the most skilful Jedi alongside Skywalker that had not yet been promoted to the rank of Jedi Master. And indeed, she had proved to him and the other clone of the 212th that her skills had not been exaggerated, as she had held back the advancing battle droids with her flashing blue lightsaber.

Once Aayla had deposited the clone with the Medical Droid, she turned and sought out Commander Bly. She spotted him standing atop a fallen spire with Commander Cody, and she strode over towards them. She knew that the clones turned their heads towards her as she passed them, and being a Jedi she could sense their emotions. She could easily sense the admiration that they all felt towards her, in more ways than one.

Once she reached the base of the building that Cody and Bly were standing upon, she jumped, using the Force to power her legs, and performed a graceful flip, landing neatly feet-first on the crystal beside the two commanders.

"Show off," muttered Bly with a smile. Aayla smiled back. Bly would often make joking comments. The two of them had developed a close friendship what with all that they had been through. One particular time had been when they had been stranded on Maridun with Anakin, his Padawan Ahsoka Tano, and Captain Rex. The two of them had saved the life of the other numerous times, although, admittedly, Aayla had saved Bly many more times than vice versa.

"I think that's the last of the wounded," she commented, her voice with a strong accent that people from Earth would call French, but of course Aayla had never heard of Earth. "You're men are strong, Commander Cody. You should be proud to call yourself their commander."

"I am, General," nodded Cody respectably. "You can't get better than a lot of them."

"Indeed," said Aayla. "And I have worked with a few clones since this war began." Then her eyes narrowed and she stared out over the horizon as if scanning for something. Cody and Bly immediately tensed, hands moving almost of their own accord until they came to rest on the blasters holstered in their belts. They had both learned to trust a Jedi's instincts.

"What is it, General Secura?" asked Bly. "Can you sense something?"

"Yes," said Aayla quietly, shutting her eyes completely and delving into the Force. "I can sense something unusual. I think something is coming."

"Friendlies?" asked Bly, the grip on his blaster tightening.

"I am not sure," said Aayla. "It is faint, far away. But it is there. I do not believe that it is the Separatists, but I cannot yet tell if it is friendly. It almost feels like a sort of ripple in the fabric of existence."

"A ripple in the…?" Cody's brow furrowed. "What does that mean, sir?"

"It means it's almost like something is straining at the barriers of this dimension," said Aayla. The two clone commanders looked at each other with a slight apprehension. Aayla sensed their anxiousness, and since she was unable to discover anything more from the Force, she withdrew and opened her eyes. "But whatever it is, it's nothing to worry about yet and it may not be anything to worry about at all."

Cody and Bly relaxed. Bly spotted something rounding the corner of some of the buildings ahead. "Sir," he said, pointing. "The scouts have returned. Perhaps they have some more intel for us on the Seppie's movements."

"Good," said Aayla. "See to it that they…"

"General!" came another clone voice. Aayla, Bly and Cody looked around to see Punch looking up at them. "You've got an incoming transmission from the Jedi Council."

"Thank you, Punch," said Aayla, then turning back to Bly she said. "Find out everything those scouts know. I'll come and find you when I've finished speaking with whoever is calling me."

"Right away, General," said Bly, signalling to Cody to follow and the two of them made their way towards the clones driving the two legged AT-RT walkers heading back into camp. Aayla leapt down and followed Punch to the large holographic projector that they used to receive transmissions. Punch activated the console and a hologram appeared. Aayla knew not to look up towards the head of where a human would stand until she knew who was calling, just in case it was diminutive but powerful Master Yoda who was calling.

And indeed it was.

"Knight Secura," said the lone figure of a small, elderly green creature with bat-like ears, traditional Jedi robes and a gimmer stick clutched in his three-clawed hands. "How goes the liberation of Christophsis?"

"Slowly, Master Yoda," Aayla inclined her head respectfully. "But the main assault has been driven back. So far as we know the droids are massing for another attack. I was considering gathering our troopers and ambushing them before they get near the city. The sooner we capture Loathsom the sooner we can gain a victory."

"Good, it is, to see that you are doing well," said Yoda's image. "Proceed when you can. Now, onto other matters, we must go. Sensed a slight disturbance in the Force, I have."

"A disturbance, Master?" asked Aayla. "I too felt something just now."

"Hmm, coincidence, this is not. For centred around Christophsis, this tremor is," nodded Yoda. "Like a slight fluctuation in the walls of the universe."

"I felt it too, Master. But dimension travel is unheard of. Is it possible that a hole might be opening on its own?"

"Unheard of, that would be, too. A flicker of something powerful, I felt. Something strong. But unable, I was, to determine whether this would a threat."

"How do you suggest I proceed, Master?"

"Cautiously, my best advice is. Wise, it would not be, to endanger the lives of your whole platoon. Suggest, I do, that you investigate on your own. That way, sneak away, you can, should whatever this is prove to be unfriendly."

"I shall set out immediately, Master."

"Rush not," smiled the wizened Jedi, whose species remained a mystery to all those except themselves. "Plenty of time, there is."

Aayla smiled back. It was almost impossible not to like the little Master. He had a quirky personality, and it showed in all but the most serious circumstances. Then she asked, "How goes things on Naboo now that Skywalker and Kenobi are there?"

"Received word, we have, of a Separatist plot there, involving the rebirth of the Blue Shadow Virus."

Aayla's eyes widened. "The Blue Shadow…?" She paused, collected herself and said, "Well I hope that Skywalker and Kenobi succeed, or we'll be overrun by the droids in a matter of days."

"Indeed," said Yoda. "Now set out, young one, and find the centre of this disturbance, you will."

"At once, Master," Aayla inclined her head. The hologram of Master Yoda smiled at her before fading away into nothingness.

Punch, who had watched the whole thing, asked, "What will we do if whatever this is turns out to be something unfriendly."

"We will do what we always do, trooper," Aayla smiled calmly at him. "We'll try and find a diplomatic solution and if that fails then we will do our best to combat it." She reached out a blue hand and rested it on the clone's shoulder. "Do not worry. I'll do my best to keep the rest of you safe."

Punch didn't doubt her for a second. Secura seemed to be an extremely compassionate Jedi. He had heard that this went at odds with many of the others, particularly her Master, Quinlan Vos, who hated everything about the clone troopers.

Then Aayla turned away and walked towards Commander Bly. She intended to commandeer an AT-RT and set out immediately.

* * *

There you have it. Introducing some of the main characters all around. Not all. But some. I thought it would be good to contrast the happy, joking atmosphere of Digimon with the serious atmosphere of Clone Wars. I hope you like Aayla, because we'll be seeing a lot more of her later on, and a lot more of Yoda too, if I can get away with it.

* * *

Next time…

A Digimon based chapter. What happens on this camping trip?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 2 : Family Outing**


	2. Family Outing

Here we have a chapter that will be extremely Digimon-based. I hope I did okay with expressing the personalities of Aayla, Bly and Cody in the previous chapter. Reviews would genuinely be appreciated guys. If I keep going with this I might produce a series of Digimon crossovers, but for now, let's just see how the first one goes.

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Secret of the 327**th**

**Chapter 2:- Family Outing**

* * *

The little hut was still standing despite all that it had seen. At one point the little place had been scheduled to be knocked down, but the Tamers had introduced a mass protest against it, claiming it was part of their little society. It was the place where Guilmon had been hidden, the only known entrance to the Digital World, the place of many meetings and not to mention the place where Renamon and Terriermon had been united. Everyone referred to it as Guilmon's old hideout, but it was, in reality, so much more.

So strong had the protests been, particularly when the government agency HYPNOS joined in, the hut had been left alone.

Rika stood, leaning against the doorframe, her backpack at her feet and her arms folded, calmly listening to her ipod, blue to match her D-Arc (all the Tamers had gotten ipods similar to the colour of their digivices), waiting for the arrival of her boyfriend and his sister and their digimon. Her own digimon was sitting in a nearby tree, legs dangling over one side of the branch and long bushy tail on the other side.

They hadn't been here very long, but Renamon knew that they wouldn't have to wait for much longer. Terriermon and the others were approaching rapidly in the car of Mr. Wong, a man named Janyu and one of those human geeks who had created Digimon in the first place. She slowly watched inside her mind, almost like a memory or a dream as Janyu pulled to a halt and the others walked the last few minutes in order to pick up Renamon and Rika and bring them towards the vehicle that would be taking them all into the woods.

They were not going on a camping trip with a scheduled camp-ground, but they were going on their own. Ordinarily an adult would be going with them, but it had been agreed that an adult wasn't actually needed. It had taken some convincing on the part of the kids, but eventually the adults had relented considering the Digimon were more than enough protection, and none of them were particularly outdoorsy anyway.

"Hey Princess," came a sudden, unexpected voice. "You nearly ready for the off?"

Rika heard nothing through the loud music of her ipod, but Renamon turned to see Ryo and the large, armoured Ultimate dragon digimon named Cyberdramon walking down the path towards the hut.

"What are you two doing here?" she asked.

"Just thought that we'd come to see you off," said Ryo. "Some of the others expressed an interest in doing the same, but I think Takato and Jeri are off doing God-knows-what together, plus Kazu and Kenta mentioned something about a potential rare Modify Card they both really wanted to collect."

"And Cyberdramon?" asked Renamon. "I'm assuming that you didn't want to come yourself."

"I was dragged into this," grated Cyberdramon. Renamon chuckled. Cyberdramon was not one for social gatherings.

"But there is another reason why I'm here," said Ryo. "And I'll explain when the others show up."

"Look no further then," said an unmistakable voice from the bushes. "Because the famous Terriermon, master of jokes and comedy has arrived. Oh, and let's not forget his entourage."

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

The speaker skipped out from the bushes, a broad grin across his features, followed by his partner, and then Suzie with Lopmon perched on her head. Rika looked up from her ipod and blinked when she saw Ryo and Cyberdramon were there. The two of them used to fight all the time, but they had put aside the feud that Rika had started because Ryo had beaten her in a Digimon Card Game contest once.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

"I was about to ask the same question," said Henry.

"Hello Cyberdramon," said Lopmon, hopping down from her partner's head. "It's good to see you again."

"Despite the fact that you still look like you want to kill us," added Terriermon.

"I wouldn't be so quick to welcome us," said Ryo. "Because we're not only here just to say goodbye. Something's going down, and whatever it is, it's something big."

"What do you mean?" asked Suzie.

"Cyberdramon here has been sensing something for a few days now," said Ryo. "And as you all know, when Cyberdramon senses something about an evil digimon, he's hardly ever wrong. He's a lot more... in tune with evil digimon than most." Ryo neglected to mention this was due to the slight influence of Milleniummon. He still hadn't told the others about his past.

"Evil digimon?" asked Rika. "I knew it. I knew something would go wrong."

"Tell us more, Cyberdramon," Renamon sprang down from the tree and stared right at the point on the face-mask where Cyberdramon's eyes would be.

"I have been sensing the presence of a very powerful Digimon," intoned the dragon in his harsh voice. "It's been going on for three days, but it was only for a mere two or three seconds until my senses went blank and the digimon disappeared. But then, a few hours later I would sense it again and it would vanish just as before, but it was definitely the same digimon multiple times."

"And you didn't mention this because you weren't sure if this was a threat or not?" asked Henry.

"Exactly," said Ryo. "But whatever it is, its strong. I thought it would be a good idea to warn you guys before you left. That way you guys would at least be on your guard should something strange happen."

"I don't like this," said Henry, glancing at Suzie. "When you say powerful, how powerful do you mean exactly?"

"Mega," growled Cyberdramon.

"Great," murmured Rika. "I just knew all this wasn't going to last. We've just had a bunch of Champions bothering us from time to time, and now this."

"You reckon this could be the start of what Fanglongmon said?" asked Lopmon. "He said that whatever lay in store for the Tamers would affect us more. Do you think it will start when we leave?"

"It is a possibility," sighed Renamon. "Whatever this is could be searching for a victim and waiting for some of us to peel off, which is exactly what we would be doing if we went through with this trip. What I don't understand is how it would be able to hide itself from Cyberdramon's senses and ours except for brief instances. What is it doing?"

"I'm getting scared Henry," Suzie whimpered and hid behind her brother's legs.

"What do you suggest we do?" Henry asked Cyberdramon directly. "Call it off? Not go anywhere?"

"Are you kidding?" cried Terriermon. "We've been planning this trip for weeks and let's not forget that we will have with us three digimon capable of turning into kick-ass Megas and at least one of which has a mode change, three humans who merge with those Digimon so they are in much less danger, and no other humans around for us to watch out for."

"That is true," said Renamon. "However powerful this thing is we should be able to hold our own against it what with all the training we've been through together."

"And we won't be that far away," pointed out Lopmon. "Just a few miles from the city. That'd give plenty of time for the other Tamers to reach us and assist us. We could have the whole gang there within minutes."

Rika nodded. "They're right," she said. "There's no sense in just getting paranoid. We can't forget how strong we are."

"Yeah, we kicked Ogudomon to the curb," said Terriermon. "And you'd be hard pressed to find something as tough as him."

"It was not as strong as Ogudomon," put in Cyberdramon. "That much I do know."

"Alright then," said Henry. "We'll go through with as long as we remember that we should always travel with our partner. Nobody wanders off on their own without their Digimon or their Tamer, or they could be left defenceless. Is that understood?"

"Sir, yes sir!" barked Terriermon, saluting with an enormous grin, before all the tension broke down and they let out laughter, except of course for Cyberdramon.

"Alright then," said Rika, tucking her ipod into her pocket and shouldering her backpack. "Let's get underway. We don't want to keep your dad waiting, Henry."

"Good point," said Henry. "Thanks for letting us know, Ryo."

"You're welcome," nodded the brown-haired Tamer. "Take care of yourselves, alright?"

"Don't we always," smiled Henry.

"Yeah, sometimes Henry takes care of himself and us too well."

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

"Bye guys," Ryo waved, while Cyberdramon stood impassively and they watched the others retreat into the distance.

The last thing the two of them heard before they lost sight of them round the bend, was Rika saying, "So, Terriermon, how did the whole thing with the bucket of water go?"

"Worked like a charm. Might take a while for Jaarin to forgive me though. It was worth it though – I put the pictures on Henry's facebook account before we left."

"You did what?!"

"Momentai."

Ryo chuckled. "For all their joking around, those guys are tough," he remarked to his partner. "I'm sure they'll be fine."

"I'm not so sure," said Cyberdramon. "Something's strange about this Digimon, with the way it reappears and disappears. It worries me."

Ryo frowned. If something worried Cyberdramon then they should all be worried.

* * *

Janyu smiled warmly as the children made their way out of the park and onto the pavement beside the car. "Hello Rika, Renamon," He said from the driver's seat. "How are you two feeling today?"

Rika cast a brief glance at Henry before saying, "Just fine thank you Mister Wong," with a smile.

"Please, I'm not at work. You can call me Janyu if you like," said the kind man. "We'll set off as soon as you've loaded up. You looking forward to the trip?"

_There is no reason to concern Janyu with what we've just heard. He'd start worrying about us and might even stop us from going,_ Renamon declared to all the others with her mind.

"Oh yes," said Rika. "Chance to get out for a while isn't it. The park's great but it's nice to go somewhere new."

_He could already know,_ said Terriermon. _Perhaps HYPNOS have been picking up on these strange readings as well._

_Perhaps this Digimon is shielding itself from them as well,_ said Henry. _But their equipment is designed to locate Digimon crossing the Digital Plane and into our world. If this Digimon is already here then perhaps their computers won't be registering them._

_Possibly you're right,_ said Rika, hauling her large rucksack into the open boot. _But let's try to enjoy ourselves._

_I'm for that,_ agreed Suzie.

They all got into the car. Henry got into the passenger seat, with Terriermon sitting on his lap. In the back, Suzie was in the middle considering she was the smallest. Rika and Renamon sat either side of her, Renamon grudgingly doing up the seat-belt. She didn't need it, but the car, being relatively new, made an annoying beeping noise if you didn't. Lopmon sat on Suzie's lap.

"Look out, world!" cheered Terriermon. "We're coming to getcha."

Suzie cheered, and Lopmon joined in after some encouragement as Janyu started the engine and the car pulled out into the road and began to drive off. Meanwhile, four pairs of eyes watched the car from above. Cyberdramon hovered, with Ryo sitting on his back.

"I feel like I should be going with them," he said. "But this is their trip. Would it be wrong to intrude?"

Cyberdramon suddenly growled and spun about staring out towards the edge of the city. Ryo was almost flung from his perch as his partner whirled around, snarling furiously. "WHOA!" he cried. "What! What is it, Cyberdramon!"

"It was there!" snarled Cyberdramon, not bothering to point. "I just sensed it again. But it's gone once more."

"It's getting hotter," frowned Ryo. "That decided it. We're not going with them, but we won't be far away. Let's tell the others."

* * *

Aayla controlled the running AT-RT walker forwards. The machine was surprisingly agile and was able to leap over boulders, turn on a penny around spires and even swerve or bounce over blaster bolts if they were fired at it. Aayla could feel that she was getting closer to the strange fluctuation, but she had yet to see anything different about the ruined landscape of Christophsis.

She pulled to a halt when she spotted, in the distance to her right, movement. She took a pair of macrobinoculars from a small compartment in the AT-RT and scanned the horizon through them. She saw a line of Separatist AAT's hovering coldly and purposefully towards the capital. She frowned at the lines of battle droids, marching, blasters ready, before them. Placing the macrobinoculars down, she activated the comlink stitched into the fabric on her left arm.

"Bly, come in," she said.

"I read you, General. What's your status?" came the reply through the speakers.

"Nothing yet on my objective," she reported. "But I have spotted that the enemy is heading your way. Spring the ambush without me for now, Commander. I need to continue with my mission."

"Acknowledged."

Suddenly there was a burst of energy through the Force as Aayla felt something. Instantly, reacting on instinct alone, Aayla grabbed the macrobinoculars and pointed them in the direction of the strange energy rush. Even through them, all she could make out in the distance under than the usual blue crystals was a strange shape flying through the air. Then with another burst of energy Aayla felt, the shape simply vanished into thin air.

Aayla lowered the binoculars. _Stranger and stranger,_ she thought and hailed Bly again. "I think I may have just got something. This might not take as long as I thought. Keep going Bly. I may be able to assist you sooner than anticipated."

"Yes sir. Bly out."

Aayla lowered her arm and her hand rested back on the handlebars of the AT-RT, and at her control it ran forward again, carrying the Twi'lek Jedi towards the place where the disturbance had occurred.

* * *

"Goodbye, kids," called Janyu, as he prepared to shut the door. "Remember, if you go anywhere, be back here within three days."

"We will, Dad," called Henry, as the six of them waved. Janyu got into the car and within about twenty seconds he was no longer in sight as the car veered around a bend in the road, leaving the three children and the three Digimon alone in the woodlands.

"Now what?" asked Suzie, looking up to Henry for guidance. Henry had been the one that had planned out this little expedition of theirs, searching through maps to find decent places to make camps.

"We go this way," said Henry, pulling his backpack onto his shoulders. "There's a nice spot only about ten minutes away. We'll stop and make camp there."

"Do I have to carry this?" asked Suzie, indicating her own backpack. "It's heavy."

Rika lifted Suzie's backpack and gasped at the weight. "Jeez, Suzie, it is heavy. Almost as heavy as mine. What did you put in here?"

"A lot of dolls," grinned Suzie. "And the chocolate I've been saving, and the ice cream, and some clothes, and..."

"The ice cream?" asked Henry. "Suzie, I told you not to pack that. It's probably already melted. I hope the lid was placed securely on the tub or all the stuff in there will be covered in it."

"But I want ice cream," pouted Suzie.

"Sorry Henry," said Lopmon. "I would have taken the ice cream out if I'd known she put it in."

"It's not your fault," said Terriermon. "Suzie can be very sneaky. She would often sneak me out of a room without Henry noticing, although I was never sure whether this was because she was sneaky or whether he was becoming a geek on that computer like his father. Then I realized Henry was already a geek."

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

"Don't worry, Suzie," said Renamon. "I'll carry it for you." The fox reached out and plucked the backpack from Rika's arms without any trouble whatsoever and held it over one shoulder.

"Thank you, Rena," smiled Suzie.

"Hey, only I'm allowed to call Renamon, Rena," said Terriermon. "Husband's privilege."

Although they were in fact mated and not married, Terriermon and Renamon still kept up the pretence until Suzie was old enough to understand the concept.

They set off into the woodlands, Henry leading the way, Rika beside him and the Digimon following behind. Suzie was with them and was yammering all the way. The little child was overfond of talking.

"How come you guys don't have backpacks?" asked Suzie, curiously.

"We don't need them," said Lopmon. "We are more than capable of surviving in the wild without the need to bring anything with us."

"Of course, we prefer the human way," said Terriermon. "Supermarkets are so much easier than finding the food yourself."

"You don't even need a tent or a sleeping bag?" asked Suzie. "Henry's got a tent with him. You can sleep in there."

"It isn't large enough to fit in all of us," said Renamon. "We'll be fine outside."

"What if it rains?"

"We'll get wet," said Terriermon. "We don't mind. Well, actually we might a little bit, but we've faced a lot worse than rain."

Henry and Rika listened to them as they walked up ahead, smiles on both of their faces. "Just listen to them," Rika said to Henry. "We've known each other for so long and still Suzie manages to come out with endless supplies of questions."

"Yeah, well, that's her," said Henry. "And I hope she stays that way for a while. It'll be weird to watch her mature."

"You know, you've done a really good job of protecting her," said Rika.

"There were moments though," sighed Henry. "Moments where I did something I still regret. You know I still feel guilty about that time when I wanted her to get rid of Lopmon."

"Really?" asked Rika. "But that was over a year and a half ago."

"I know," said Henry. "But I know just how heartbreaking it is to be split up with your partner once that special bond has been formed. I couldn't imagine what I would do if someone I trusted deliberately tried to take Terriermon away from me."

"But you relented," said Rika.

"But what if I hadn't. What if I had forced Suzie to let go and drove Lopmon away. Think of all the things the two of them have done for us. Against the D-Reaper, against Ogudomon. I just thought that Suzie was treating Lopmon like another doll; I'd seen her hug hundreds of the things like that. But if I had, I would have deprived Lopmon of a Tamer, Suzie of a Digimon, the team of Cherubimon and Terriermon of a sister."

"Henry, you should your own partner's advice," said Rika. "Momentai. You can't take on all of the moments where you did something that _could_ have led to something bad. We've all done plenty of those. Let go of all those worries and focus on the right decisions you made. You didn't force Lopmon to leave, and that's what matters. Think of Takato – he's done plenty of stupid things that make him look incredibly bad and _have_ led to a disaster, but he doesn't let him bother him now. He gets over them. You should too."

"Yeah," sighed Henry. "I guess you're right. Thanks Rika."

"Hey, you consoled me when Renamon went missing, so I'll console you now." She leaned over and kissed his cheek.

Unfortunately, this was spotted by Terriermon. "Ooh," he said. "Kissy, kissy when they thought we weren't looking. What else do you do when no-one else is around?"

"Terriermon," Henry shook his head, to the chuckles of Renamon and Lopmon.

"Henry?" asked Suzie.

"Yeah?"

"Are we nearly there yet?"

* * *

Suzie asked that question seven before times before Henry said "Yes," and the walk had only been about six minutes from that point. The group came to a little clearing that Henry had picked out beforehand. It was rather pretty when you took it in. The trees that surrounded them waved gently in the mid-afternoon breeze. There were plenty of flowers erupting from the lush grasses all over the place, giving it an nice look like some sort of carpet. There was the sound of trickling water nearby, which indicated the small brook that Henry had noticed when he picked out the area, useful for cooking, and for drinking should they run out of bottled water, after being boiled of course. A bird was singing jauntily and unafraid of these ground-based organisms somewhere in the foliage, but it was difficult to spot.

"Nice place, Henry," said Lopmon.

"Thanks," said Henry. "It looks like a good place to set up a campsite – there's only so much a map can tell you. I had a bunch of other places picked out just in case but this was top-spot."

"Almost seems a shame to mar it by putting up the tent," said Renamon. "But since you humans find the rain unpleasant then we should take precautions."

Henry settled down and pulled the tent out of the big round bag it had come in when he first bought it. This would be its maiden trip, it's first ever time to have living creatures staying in it during the night. Henry gripped the folded material firmly under his arm as he went towards the centre of the clearing and prepared to lay it out and set it up.

"I'll give you a hand, Henry," said Terriermon, hopping up onto the fabric and grabbing parts of it in his little hands.

Henry grinned evilly. "Sure," he said, and then threw the tent upwards. As it left Henry's grip it suddenly unfurled itself with a twang, catapulting the startled rabbit straight off it and he sailed back-first into the canopy. The bird promptly stopped singing and took off with a flurry of feathers, shooting past Suzie and Renamon where they were laughing along with the others at what had just happened.

Terriermon dropped from the tree and advanced on Henry, an annoyed glitter in his eyes. "Did I mention I hate you?" he asked.

"Yes, just this morning actually."

"What was that for anyway?"

"Jaarin asked me to get you back somehow for the bucket incident this morning."

"Oh, it's on now," grinned Terriermon. "You won't hear the last of this." He turned his focus on the tent sitting serenely and innocently where it had landed. "Nice tent though. Efficient."

"Isn't it a little like cheating, though?" asked his sister, coming over to stand beside him. "In all the television programs I've seen the people had to slot poles through it to make it stand up and everything."

"As long as it gets the job done," said Rika.

"Yes, Lopmon," smiled Renamon. "Remember that humans don't like challenges, which is why most of them are getting so fat – they don't like to put effort into things."

"Unless they're video games or looking nice," said Terriermon. "And even then they like to cheat by using special codes and applying lots of nice, shiny make-up."

"True," smiled Lopmon, and the three of them laughed at the scowls of the three humans.

"I don't use cheat codes when we play together," said Henry.

"Well, maybe you should," said Terriermon. "It's the only way you could possibly beat me."

"And I don't care about looking nice," said Rika.

"Then why did you punch Takato when he saw you with your hair down?" smirked Renamon.

"Takato saw you with your hair down?" asked Henry.

Rika flushed. "Yeah, well, he sort of... you know... er..."

"Before me?"

Terriermon laughed. Lopmon and Renamon grinned that the expression on Rika's face. Suzie just stood, looking confused and unsure of what was going on. Henry turned to her and said, "Come on, Suzie. Let's get these tent pegs in. If your good, I'll even let you use the mallet."

"Yay!" Suzie cheered, hurrying towards the bag. As she and Henry began to drive the pegs forcefully into the ground, Rika turned to start doing another task – blowing up the inflatable mattress that she had folded up in her bag. Lopmon went and began to pull objects out of Suzie's smaller but surprisingly heavy bag, sorting them into two piles of useful stuff and junk, although she grudgingly put the dolls on the useful stuff pile.

Renamon moved out to the edge of the clearing and looked out thoughtfully. There was no sign of any threat that Ryo had warned them about, but that didn't necessarily mean that it wasn't out there. He keen eyes spotted movement and she tensed slightly, but it was only a male fox. It looked at her curiously as it came out from the bushes, sniffing this strange female creature before him.

"Back off, Bub," came Terriermon's voice. "She's with me." He hopped upwards onto Renamon's shoulder, leaning out to the sides and pulling a face at the animal. The fox almost seemed to shrug slightly before moving away.

_You don't need to be so worked up about all of this you know,_ Terriermon remarked to his mate. _We can handle whatever this is._

_I know that we are strong, but this creature is sneaky,_ replied Renamon. _I just want to make sure that nothing happens to any of the three humans before we're able to biomerge. It could leap out of nowhere and attack at any second._

_Momentai. We'll be fine. That attitude could ruin this whole trip, and we're supposed to be having fun._

_I know, but I would never forgive myself if any of them were killed._

_Neither would I. Which is why we're going to stick to them like glue, but have fun at the same time. Unfortunately that means no Hide and Seek for Suzie, but she'll get over it._

Renamon smiled. _You always know just what to say, Terriermon._

_I wouldn't be a very good mate if I didn't know how to talk to you considering I practically live in your mind at the same time as mine and vice versa._

_I know. I can always feel your presence and I always know what you're doing but at the same time I really miss you when you aren't around._

_Aaw, you want me to make it all better._

_I wouldn't mind. Come here._

Renamon's arm swung around and brought Terriermon into a cradle made from her arms. The two of them rubbed noses briefly, taking in the scent of the other, before they kissed each other on the lips. It was a long awaited snog, they were not particularly fans of doing it in public places, because they got enough attention draw to them by being there in the first place. They hadn't made contact for two weeks and six days, and now they thoroughly enjoyed the moment. Tongues went a wandering and everything.

Rika pointedly looked away when she spotted what they were doing. She didn't mind, as she sometimes did similar things with Henry, but she didn't particularly want to intrude as Terriermon and Renamon had gone much further than she had with Henry, and although she's had six months to adjust to that thought it still felt extremely strange.

* * *

The rest of the day was spent doing normal camping activities. Terriermon and Henry showed Suzie how to safely build and light a fire, while Lopmon watched with interest. Renamon and Rika went to get some water from the brook, chatting together about nothing in particular. It had been decided that Renamon would be the one to cook the meals. She had developed a keen interest in it. She was a warrior, but since there wasn't much fighting to go around these days she had picked up cooking as a hobby from Rika's grandmother, Seiko. Of course Terriermon knew how to cook anything that Renamon knew how to cook, but since he had never actually done it before and was likely to get bored and try to pull a prank, he agreed to let Renamon get on with it.

They sorted out the tent, and the Digimon jokingly insisted that Suzie went in the middle of the tent, so as to stop Henry and Rika from getting up to any "funny business." When Rika, out of Suzie's earshot, said, "Well, what about you guys. Are you gonna get up to any funny business?"

"No," said Renamon. "But we are mature enough," she grinned.

"Terriermon? Mature enough?"

"I am mature," said Terriermon. "I just don't often want to be. And there's no law against Rookie Digimon getting up to "funny business." Fourteen year old humans on the other hand..."

"And they better not get up to something with me here," said Lopmon.

"We won't," said Renamon. "Our night together is still a week off."

Lopmon and Rika both rolled their eyes.

As the packs were heaved into the tent, and Renamon began to boil a pan of the water for a relatively simple meal (pasta) Terriermon dug into the bottom of Henry's rucksack and pulled out something which he had smuggled inside. It was a portable CD player, the kind the Monodramon had used to thoroughly embarrass the mated couple with a song by Nickelback, which had promptly become one of Terriermon's favourite bands.

The speakers began to blurt out the lyrics to the song of a different band, a slightly older one called Rush which Terriermon had also taken a liking to. It was called "The Analog Kid" and had extremely bouncy music, to which Terriermon and Lopmon began to jig about in time to around the fire, with Renamon flicking her tail and the humans moving their shoulders to the beat. The bunnies had some pretty neat footwork, it had to be said.

The day moved on, and all six became increasingly relaxed. There was no sign of the mystery Digimon that Cyberdramon had warned them about. The atmosphere began to lighten as the sky darkened and Renamon laid out the stringy pasta on to six plates. Terriermon promptly covered his portion with ketchup until the pasta was barely visible, before passing it to Suzie, who did the same.

Suzie herself seemed to have completely forgotten about the strange thing that Cyberdramon had warned against, or at least the others guessed as much when she suggested telling ghost stories as the sun began to go down. Terriermon agreed instantly as he thrust a marshmallow over the fire. The others eventually agreed.

Had there been an award for best story, it would have gone to Renamon, who told a particularly chilling tale about an evil pineapple, which made Terriermon in particular shiver as he remembered the dream he had had last night.

Eventually Henry announced that it was time for Suzie to get some sleep. Suzie protested, but relented when Rika said that they were going to go to bed too. "We might have a big day tomorrow," Henry explained. "We're going out to see some more of the woods."

Suzie, after taking the rather less nice task of finding a suitable place to go the toilet, although Lopmon went with her to ensure her safety, she crawled into her sleeping bag and fell asleep. Rika and Henry followed suit, on either side of her and they eventually nodded off as well.

The three digimon were left awake and they stared out at the night sky, as if daring any Digimon to come and attack them. None did. They remained silent for a good half an hour, before Terriermon yawned.

Renamon noticed and said, "You two are tired. You should get some rest. I'll stay awake and make sure nothing dares to try and attack the children without our knowing."

"I repeat from this morning, "Do you ever sleep?"" asked Terriermon.

"I slept last night to make sure that I had plenty of energy to stay awake over the whole trip," said Renamon. "I don't want to be caught off guard by anything."

"Fair enough," said Terriermon. "You couldn't be my pillow for the night, could you?"

"And mine?" enquired Lopmon.

Renamon nodded. "Very well," she said and she lowered herself down so her legs rested on the ground and her back was leaning against the trunk of a tree. Lopmon traipsed up to her and sat down beside her, resting the back of her head against Renamon's upper leg. Renamon curled her tail around the brown bunny.

"Thanks," she said.

Terriermon chose a different place to sleep. He crawled into her lap. Renamon looked at him and scooped him into her arms, pulling him into an embrace against her chest. After all, this was the position Terriermon had been in when their relationship had started. Terriermon pressed his head into the thick white fur around her neck and upper body like a mane.

"Night, Rena," he yawned.

"Goodnight, Terriermon," said Renamon, before turning to watch the stars. Her ears cocked and listened for any betraying noises of something hiding. Nothing was getting past her without her knowledge tonight.

* * *

Dawn. The sun cast and orange mantle over Japan as it began to climb laboriously slowly into the sky, as it had done every day through all the four-point-five-billion years it had done since the Earth was made. It noted that no destruction had taken place during the night. The forest and the city of Tokyo were still intact. That was good to see. And not just for the sun.

Ryo Akiyama opened his eyes. It hadn't rained that night, which was a relief since he was sleeping on the roof of an apartment building on the edge of Tokyo. Other than the sun the first thing he saw was his partner framed against it, staring out across the horizon, expressionless for the moment.

Ryo stretched. He often spent nights out like this. His parents knew he could take care of himself and had not bothered to call him. If he did not check in within a few hours on his own though, they would.

"Nothing happened then?" he winced as a bone in one arm clicked slightly. "No more signs of this mystery evil guy?"

"No," growled Cyberdramon. "Not once."

"Ah well," said Ryo. "At least that means the others are still safe."

Cyberdramon said nothing.

"Come on, Cyberdramon. Let's get back to my house before my mother calls the police. Again."

Cyberdramon complied. He strode over to Ryo, who hopped up onto the Ultimate's shoulders with ease. Cyberdramon took off and headed back towards the house of his partner. Below him the early morning people were getting in their cars already so that they could hopefully get to work before the traffic really began.

Just as Ryo picked out his house from the multitude of dwellings from above, Cyberdramon suddenly snarled loudly and turned to look back the way they had come. Ryo frowned. "What's wrong? Is he back?"

"Yes," growled the dragon. "He's back." Three seconds later, Cyberdramon said, "And he still hasn't left yet!"

Ryo paused, swearing under his breath. After a few seconds, he asked, "Had he left now?"

"No!" said Cyberdramon, then he shot forwards back towards the forest.

Ryo pulled out his phone and called Takato. "Get after it, Cyberdramon. Hurry!"

* * *

Ooh, left you hanging there.

* * *

Next time...

Another Digimon chapter, mostly. We're gonna find out who this mysterious Digimon is and why he's been so elusive.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 3 : Fanglongmon's Warning Begins**


	3. Fanglongmon's Warning Begins

I noticed that I haven't done a disclaimer for this story yet. I don't see the point of them really – nobody on this site owns anything they write, but if they did they should say so, instead of having everyone else say they don't. Anyway, I own two dogs but I don't own Digimon or Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

Let the crossover begin.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327**th**

**Chapter 3:- Fanglongmon's Warning Begins**

* * *

Renamon's eyes snapped open. Terriermon's and Lopmon's eyes did exactly the same at exactly the same moment. The three of them leapt upwards from their positions lying beside the tree without even thinking what they were doing or wondering what was going on. Because they already knew full well what was going on.

They had sensed a massive evil Digimon blink into existence and it was extremely close.

Renamon barrelled forwards towards the tent. There was no time for being delicate. Something leapt over her, bathing her in its shadow. Everything seemed to move in slow motion as Renamon sprang forwards, claws first. They ripped through the side of the tent, not bothering to use the zip opening. The three Tamers were suddenly extremely wide awake when Renamon grabbed all three in one arm and ploughed on, shredding the other side of the tent and leaping out, performing a forward roll and coming to rest in a crouch, just as a massive clawed, fleshy tendril smashed the tent in from the top.

"What the...!" cried Rika, alarmed.

Terriermon and Lopmon swooped around the claw as it retracted back into the sky. "No time for talking!" yelled Terriermon. "Biomerge now! It's Cyberdramon's elusive Mega!"

Though they had been asleep a mere five seconds earlier, Henry, Rika and Suzie instantly grabbed their digivices and shouted the two words that hadn't come out of their mouths for a good six months, as their partners landed beside them "BIOMERGE ACTIVATE!"

"NO!" shouted a rasping voice above them, as they were enveloped in bright white light which expanded upwards in a tremendous display of flashing, as if a volcano of light had just erupted. Through the light, which looked like it was hot enough to melt boulders, three voices could be heard.

"**TERRIERMON BIOMERGE TO..."**

"**RENAMON BIOMERGE TO..."**

"**LOPMON BIOMERGE TO..."**

The light fountained upwards until it was many, many, many times taller than any of the trees and then it faded, leaving three forms visible; two of them massive, the other quite small and hovering beside the heads of the two others.

Massive, green, metallic, dog-faced android with cannons for shoulders, gatling guns for wrists and thick armour-plating with enough firepower to leave the entire army of Japan in the dust, **"MEGAGARGOMON!"**

Humanoid shape and sized with a long golden staff, flowing grey hair, a belt with four canisters attached, high-heeled boots and a golden breastplate and mask which resembled the head of a fox, **"SAKUYAMON!"**

Enormous, pink and white with massive, thick arms and short legs, hovering in the air with massive rabbit-like ears and ring around each one, an angelic face and a jester's collar, **"CHERUBIMON!"**

"DAMN YOU!" shouted the mystery voice. The three biomerged Megas containing six life-forms finally got a good look at their attacker. He was large himself, but was only about twice the height of Sakuyamon. He also had a bipedal shape, but he was nothing like a human. He had massive silver plating covering his lower arms and lower legs, encompassing his hands and feet with sleek black claws protruding from the armour, which had strange purple symbols on them that looked like a number nine with a dot in the hole, and another large, almost round piece veering his chest and pelvic area. The parts of the limbs that were not covered with thin and fleshy, almost weak looking – they couldn't be much wider than an ordinary human arm, and the visible torso looked like fleshy plating. His head was hidden by a mask that had a beak-like front and pointed horns on the top. What was visible was the blue eye right in the centre of its face. Oddly enough there was no sign of the strange clawed tendril from before.

"Talk about a wake-up call," said Henry. "Thanks Renamon. We could have flattened by that claw thing, wherever it is now."

"You're welcome, Henry," said Renamon.

"This guy is one ugly looking thing," said Terriermon. The digimon blinked calmly.

"Don't provoke him, Terriermon," said Lopmon. "That might not be a good idea. But everything that Cyberdramon said suddenly makes sense now that I can see this guy."

"Say what?" asked Terriermon. "You know him?"

"Yes, I do," said Lopmon grimly. "I've seen him in action before. We thought he was dead, but obviously not."

"I am not one who dies easily," grinned the strange Mega Digimon.

"Who is he, Lopmon?" asked Suzie. "That eye of his is scaring me a little bit."

"I can't get to my D-Arc in here," said Rika. "Go ahead, Lopmon."

"This is Parallelmon," said Lopmon. "He challenged and faced off against the Sovereigns shortly after the first defeat of Ogudomon. He was defeated and we assumed that he was dead after he vanished. But we weren't sure. When he didn't appear again after that we thought he must be, so we relaxed our guard."

"The Sovereigns are tough customers," said the Digimon, Parallelmon. "But I escaped. I was not deleted when Zhuqiaomon sent the blasted Blazing Helix of his in my direction. I simply jumped."

"You jumped?" asked Terriermon. "Up? Sorry Loppy but how exactly did you guys miss that?"

"He doesn't mean it like that," said Lopmon. "He is Parallelmon and by jump he means that he jumped to another dimension. Parallelmon has the ability to go to any parallel dimension, anywhere in any universe instantly. We assumed that he would try again to retake the Digital World if he hadn't died, but there was no sign of him."

"I was severely injured. So severely that I was forced to de-digivolve back to my In-Training form," intoned Parallelmon. "I have spent years rebuilding my strength until I once again reached by Mega stage, stranded in an alternate universe and unable to get out. But now I have returned."

"Now, I get it," said Henry. "That's why Cyberdramon only detected him for a few seconds. He was only in this dimension for a few seconds before jumping to the next."

"And HYPNOS haven't picked him up because he wasn't crossing the Digital Barrier. He was coming across a completely different barrier," said Terriermon.

"Great," muttered Rika. "Just great. I knew something like this would happen. He's been keeping an eye on this city for a few days waiting for some of us to split off so that we are vulnerable."

"Well it's a good thing that we're not vulnerable then," said MegaGargomon, tensing his limbs and cocking his Gatling Guns.

"Careful," said Lopmon. "Beware that clawed tendril of his."

"The claw thingie?" asked Suzie. "Where is it?"

"It came from his eye," said Lopmon. "If that claw hits anything Digital then that thing is transported to another dimension."

There was a pause. "Then why hasn't he just done that to us during this conversation?" asked Renamon.

Lopmon, and therefore Cherubimon, shrugged. "I don't know."

"It is not my intention to send you to another dimension," rasped Parallelmon. "I intend to fight you here and now. I was just waiting politely for you to finish explaining about me."

"Why?" asked Sakuyamon. "So that we will fear you all the more? We're not scared of you. It hasn't worked."

"Should have picked your targets more carefully," MegaGargomon laughed. "You're facing the three who took down Ogudomon."

"And we're gonna take you down as well," Cherubimon raised her fists and took on a junior Tai Chi stance that Suzie had been taught.

"Good luck with that," stated Parallelmon, before his legs suddenly tensed and he shot forward with a frightening speed, like a boulder from a trebuchet. He cannoned into MegaGargomon's chest hard. MegaGargomon cried out, surprised, and he stumbled backwards, but he managed to catch himself by throwing one foot out and crushing several trees. His armour was mostly undamaged by the attack.

Battle had been joined. Sakuyamon retaliated and lashed out at Parallelmon with her golden staff, swiping one of his armoured hands. The blow sent him spinning, but he caught himself in mid-air and lanced forwards back at her. Sakuyamon swerved aside at the last second, and Parallelmon found himself in Cherubimon's path. The angelic Digimon swung a massive arm and smashed Parallelmon downwards. He collided with the ground, leaving a large crater, but he scrambled out of it relatively unharmed.

"So you want to make this difficult do you?" he asked, then he leapt to one side as MegaGargomon's foot mashed the ground where he had just been. "Very well." He shot upwards, grabbed MegaGargomon's arm and swung off it, aiming a heavy blow at Cherubimon's head. He was surprised when MegaGargomon swung around, and his other arm connected squarely with him, knocking him to one side. Cherubimon hand reached out to and grabbed him like a ball snug in a baseball mit.

"Strike one!" she cried and hurled him ground-wards again. As she did so, Parallelmon swung his clawed hands and gouged three deep gashes into her palm. She didn't even flinch and they instantly healed over.

Parallelmon swerved and hit the ground skidding backwards. But he instantly launched himself forwards again, back at MegaGargomon. Suddenly Sakuyamon was beside him, grinning and she brought her staff to bear. "Strike two!" she said and she swung in a blinding flurry, striking Ogudomon across the head, the fleshy parts of both his arms and then she gave him a hefty kick to the stomach, sending him backwards, winded.

"You better not have broken the heel," Sakuyamon smirked. Then she raised her hands and cried, **"TALISMAN SPHERE!"**

Parallelmon lunged at her but collided with an invisible wall. Blanching, he found that he was now encased in a transparent bubble. "LET ME OUT!" he demanded. But Sakuyamon just smirked and moved her hand. The bubble moved with it and Parallelmon noticed he was moving towards MegaGargomon. The frozen, metallic face almost seemed to grin, before he turned his back. The bubble came to a stop just by his belt line.

"Strike tree," said MegaGargomon.

A hole appeared in the top of the force-field and MegaGargomon activated his jets. The blisteringly hot flames rammed into Parallelmon and a massive scream of pain erupted from his mouth. The bubble vanished down and he dropped earthwards. He managed to catch himself and land on his feet, glaring angrily and three meddling Megas as they stood before him.

They were strong. Very strong. There was no denying that. And these three were obviously used to working together. They were all extremely co-ordinated, almost as if they were predicting his every move or had at least thought out how to counteract everything he did. They were beating him hollow and the battle had barely been going on for three minutes.

He could just use his claw to send them all to an alternate dimension.

But no, that wasn't part of the plan. If we wanted to truly take over the Digital World, he needed these three, not to mention to others. He had to think quickly. They were destroying him and they had yet to use a single offensive attack.

They were all lined up in his field of vision. Perhaps... yes.

"You might be able to defeat me now," he conceded. "But you can't defeat me if you're asleep. **ENDLESS TRANCE!"**

Green circles of light burst from his eyes and they washed over his three attackers. There was an instant change in them. Their limbs sagged and their shoulders fell as if the muscles were unable to keep them up any longer. Their eyelids dropped and began to close slowly, ever so slowly. Soon they'd be in a sleep from which they would never awake, and then he could get them to de-digivolve and fulfil what he needed.

Or at least, this was what was happening to two of them. Sakuyamon and Cherubimon were both looking bleary now, but nothing was happening at all to MegaGargomon. He blinked, confused, but then when he saw what was happening to the others his eyes narrowed.

"Alright, you're asking for it!" he declared, pulling back his fist and charging forward the ground vibrating beneath each step. Parallelmon's eye widened. How? What was happening?

"**POWER PUMMEL!" **shouted MegaGargomon and as he brought his massive fist down a sort of wind seemed to erupt from the Gatling gun. It rocketed into Parallelmon and with a cry it sent him flying backwards into a tree.

"What?" he cried, as Cherubimon and Sakuyamon suddenly snapped awake again and took up battle stances again. "What happened?"

"Endless trance?" asked MegaGargomon. "Newsflash. I may be alive, but I'm still a machine. You can't hypnotize a machine."

Parallelmon growled. "Then I guess I'll have to do this the old-fashioned way after all. With my bare hands!"

"Go ahead!" said Sakuyamon. "Let's see what you got?"

Parallelmon sprang forward once more, striking MegaGargomon in the leg, but it barely phased the giant Mega. Parallelmon rebounded off it, then bounced off a tree to come at Cherubimon, aiming for her midriff. As he'd expected, he was blocked by Sakuyamon who got before him and held her staff defensively in both hands. Parallelmon grabbed the staff in his own and tackled Sakuyamon. The two of them shot backwards, corkscrewing wildly and struggling against each other.

They crash-landed in the woods, throwing up clods of earth as they thudded into the ground, Sakuyamon on the bottom. "Get off!" she yelled, and she grabbed Parallelmon by the face and then pushed upwards, using her staff to throw him onto his back. Parallelmon backflipped onto his feet and lunged forward with his claws. Sakuyamon blocked with her staff and whirled around, opening the canisters on her belt.

"**SPIRIT STRIKE!"** she cried, and the four brightly-coloured fox spirits poured out and swarmed Parallelmon, lacerating all the unarmoured parts of him and causing shrieks on pain. Then a large tree, clutched in Cherubimon's enormous hands like a club, swept forwards and smashed Parallelmon broadside, catapulting him backwards. He struck the ground and rolled into the brook.

"Stop polluting the water!" Parallelmon wheeled about and leapt upwards but was unable to avoid MegaGargomon's massive kick that sent him hurtling backwards, flipping head-over-heels before landing headfirst and creating a large furrow in the loam, Bristling, he got to his feet again and yelled, "Let's dance!"

He leapt forwards and vanished in mid-air with a loud BACKEW noise. MegaGargomon faltered in surprise, and then something thudded forcefully into his back. Shocked, MegaGargomon fell to his knees and lashed out behind him, but with another BACKEW noise, Parallelmon vanished again.

"He's dimension-jumping," cried Cherubimon. "He could come from any direaagh!" She was suddenly struck in the side of the head by Parallelmon who blipped out of existence once more.

"That's cowardly fighting," seethed Sakuyamon. With intuition she leapt to one side, just as Parallelmon appeared and slammed into the ground where she'd been. She leapt again, grabbing his arm and vaulting onto his shoulders, before bringing her staff down on one arm and her foot into the side of his head. But Parallelmon reached up and grasped her by the leg, yanking her off and grabbing her head and launching her bodily into a thick tree trunk.

Then he was gone with another BACKEW!

When he appeared again he had with him two large rocks and he appeared him mid-air hurling them at MegaGargomon with all his strength. Henry quickly took over and, despite the massive bulk, MegaGargomon swerved around one and brought his fist smashing into the other, shattering it into pieces. Parallelmon grimaced. Then Cherubimon suddenly came forwards and grabbed him, swinging him around and tossing him over her shoulder. Parallelmon crashed face-first into the ground. MegaGargomon loomed over him and a cavity on his chest opened. A missile launched downwards and struck the ground beside him, sending the evil Mega tumbling to the side.

"Nobody said we could play with explosives," growled Parallelmon, after he came to a stop and flipped onto his hands and knees.

"Nobody said with could play with dimensions," countered MegaGargomon.

"Well you can't play my game, but two can play yours." BACKEW!

"Where's he gone?" Sakuyamon whirled around.

"I don't know but I don't like what he just said," said Cherubimon. Hurriedly she picked up two fallen trees in her hands and held them like weapons. MegaGargomon then did the same and the two stood back-to-back. Parallelmon appeared off to one side and he was indeed riding a large missile. A very large one.

"Incoming!" yelled MegaGargomon and both moved to block using the trees. Parallelmon leapt off the missile and it struck the trees, sending splintering wood into all directions and knocking MegaGargomon and Cherubimon to either side. MegaGargomon lost his footing and fell onto his back. Cherubimon caught herself in mid-air but still managed to knock over several trees.

"Oh, it's on now!" cried Sakuyamon. She leapt forward to attack and Cherubimon did the same while MegaGargomon rolled onto his front, flattening woodland as he did so.

"No more playing around!" declared Cherubimon. Her hands crackled and sparked with thousands of volts of electricity and a sparking bolt appeared in each of them. **"LIGHTNING SPEAR!" **she cried and hurled both of them. Her aim was dead-on. Parallelmon rolled to avoid one but it still struck him in the side and the other crashed full into his chest. He erupted with powerful sparks as they coursed searing pain through him.

Sakuyamon swooped low to the ground and shot sideways, going right in front of him. As she drew before him she yelled **"AMETHYST WIND!"** Huge shards of purple diamonds burst from nowhere behind her and swept past her with ease, slamming and cutting into the armour on Parallelmon's body, and causing him to fall, the two attacks leaving him severely weakened.

There was a loud thud as MegaGargomon dropped from the sky to land right behind him. Sakuyamon shot out of the way as his chest cavity opened again, along with just about every part of his body except his face.

"Let's see if you can last much longer now!" he cried. **"MEGA BARRAGE!"**

It was like metal rain that exploded on contact.

* * *

Cyberdramon, with Ryo still astride his back, exited Tokyo city and soared towards the action zone as fast as his wings could take him. He'd sensed the evil Digimon a good seven minutes ago and he felt extremely annoyed that Ryo lived so far away from the place where the others had gone camping. Ryo was thinking along similar lines and was cursing himself from relaxing his guard too soon. He hoped that the three of them were strong enough to stop whoever this was.

Cyberdramon had also faltered a couple of minutes ago because the Digimon had disappeared, but then reappeared almost instantly. And this had kept happening. After sorting out that he'd find out what was going on once he'd arrived, he powered forward, pushing his speed to its limits.

"Ryo! Cyberdramon!" Ryo turned his head to see the familiar metal shape of Gallantmon swoop towards them and fall into place beside them so the two of them were soaring in the same direction.

"You were right," said Guilmon. "I can sense something too now. This is a big one."

""Perhaps we should have stopped the others from going," said Takato.

"I agree," said Ryo. "I was so stupid. Cyberdramon himself was worried about this one. I should have, I don't know, put my foot down."

"That wouldn't have helped," said another familiar voice. The two looked to one side and saw Beelzemon Blast Mode approaching off to the right. The two Megas, Ultimate and Tamer flew together towards the signal that all three of them could sense clearly now.

"Good thing you called me," said Beelzemon. "I didn't even notice this thing until you did because I was eating cream-puffs with Ai, Mako and Calumon." Try as he might, Beelzemon had not yet managed to find a way to biomerge with his Tamers, but he remained optimistic.

"Where are the others?" asked Cyberdramon.

"Saw SaberLeomon running down the street at one point," said Beelzemon, "but I ain't seen any sign of MarineAngemon or HiAndromon yet. Then again, MarineAngemon's pretty easy to miss."

"Who do you reckon this guy is?" asked Gallantmon. "And do you think the others are doing okay."

"Don't know," said Ryo. "But this guy has got to be tough. Not even Cyberdramon is all that keen to fight it for some reason."

"Where are they?"

Then ahead of them, all three heard a colossal explosion and a cloud of smoke billowed upwards about a mile ahead.

"That answer your question?" asked Beelzemon and the three made for it with all haste.

* * *

Parallelmon was on the floor face-up, battered, bruised, his armour chipped and cracked but he was alive. But not by very much. He felt his data flicker slightly as Cherubimon leant down and leaned one massive hand on his arm, pinning it to the ground firmly, but not painfully. It meant he couldn't dimension jump without taking her with him and he knew she knew it. He remembered the Antylamon that he had almost destroyed once in his fight against the Sovereigns.

MegaGargomon also knelt and leaned on both his legs with another hand. He peered downwards at their attacker, ex-attacker, and said, "Alright, I know that we all have a couple of questions we'd like to ask you."

Parallelmon growled, but said nothing. Sakuyamon spoke next, "You attacked the Digital World last time. But now you've chosen to assault the Human World. Why?"

"It is not the Human World I want," said Parallelmon. "I couldn't give a damn about it. What I wanted was you."

"To kill us?" asked MegaGargomon. "Was that all? Did you think we were a threat?"

Parallelmon said nothing.

"Answer this," spoke up Cherubimon. "I know for a fact that you have an attack that could have transported us to another dimension and you could have left us there. Why didn't you? Anything data could have gone. Why?"

Parallelmon growled again, but he answered this one. "I wanted something from you that I wouldn't be able to obtain by sending you to an alternate dimension. I wanted the humans."

"Us?" asked Suzie's voice alone. "Why?"

"You are Tamers," said Parallelmon. "On my travels and getting back to strength I discovered that my attack can ingest Tamers and that the power and the strength that they give to their partners could be given to me."

A chill ran up the spines of all three Megas. "So that's why you attacked out tent first," said Henry. "You were trying to eat us."

"Yes," said Parallelmon. "And once I have the strength of all the Tamers I could have finally challenged the Sovereigns. But you then and went and threw a spanner in the works," he glared at Sakuyamon. "I have to admit that you have good reflexes."

"Thank you," said Renamon curtly.

"I cannot ingest a human if they are merged with their Digimon. They'd just be transported to an alternate dimension too. That was why I was not using my attack. I was trying to get you to de-digivolve first so I could then send the Digimon to another dimension so no-one could warn the Sovereigns and then assimilate the Tamers."

"You are sick," said Rika, pronouncing each word carefully. "We're just children."

"I don't make exceptions. You are Tamers and that puts you on my menu."

"Guys! Are you a—Oh, I guess you are."

"Typical Gogglehead," said Rika as Gallantmon, Beelzemon and Cyberdramon soared in, Ryo astride his partner's back. Ryo raised his D-Arc and it displayed the stats.

"Parallelmon, Virus Type, Mega Level, Attacks: Absorbent Bang and Endless Trance."

"A Tamer?" asked Parallelmon.

Instantly, they saw where this was going. "RYO!" cried Henry. "BIOMERGE NOW!"

"What?"

"DO IT!"

Stunned but recognizing the tone of fear which meant there was no time to argue, Ryo quickly grabbed his D-Arc and yelled "BIOMERGE ACTIVATE!"

"**CYBERDRAMON BIOMERGE TO... JUSTIMON!"**

The three Megas that had just battled the evil Digimon breathed a sigh of relief. But Parallelmon had other ideas. Absorbing a Tamer now wouldn't do much good anyway. He was too weak and he knew it. He had to leave while he could and regain his strength for another attempt, but he couldn't dimension jump now, or they'd be taken with him and then they could finish him off.

However, he could transport them first. And asking about the Tamer had provided an adequate distraction.

"Nice fighting with you," he said. "But I have to be going now. **ABSORBENT BANG!"**

"NO!" cried Lopmon, knowing where this was going. She tried to pull away but an enormous fleshy tendril with five clawed fingers on the end suddenly shot out of the wide-staring eye. It wrapped around Cherubimon's retreating arm, before shooting sideways and whipping around on of MegaGargomon's as well. Almost as an afterthought, they clawed tip grabbed Sakuyamon by the leg.

A split second later, there was a loud BACKEW, Cherubimon, MegaGargomon and Sakuyamon all vanished into thin air.

A split second later, the three other Megas let loose ear-splitting cries of horror and then charged, roaring at Parallelmon. Parallelmon could not fight them now, so he merely flipped onto his front, said "This isn't over" and BACKEW he vanished too. Gallantmon's lance speared the ground where he had been.

"NO!" cried Gallantmon. "MEGAGARGOMON! SAKUYAMON! CHERUBIMON! WHERE ARE YOU!"

"WHAT HAPPENED!" yelled Beelzemon. "WHAT WAS THAT ATTACK!"

"I don't know," whispered Justimon.

"Hurry!" cried Takato. "Split up and search the forest. They've gotta be somewhere around here."

Gallantmon shot off into the trees without a moment's thought. Beelzemon lifted off and flapped in another direction, scanning the area for any signs of anything. Justimon just stood in the clearing, slumped and disbelieving.

"This is my fault," Ryo almost sobbed. "This is all my fault!"

* * *

The world was a dark purple on the whole, but there appeared to be flashes of colour all over the place. Red, orange, yellow, blue, green, white, pink, just about any colour you could think of except black danced before the eyes of the three Megas. None of them had any control of their bodies as they tumbled, spinning and rolling, flailing helplessly, unable to sort themselves out or form any concept of direction.

MegaGargomon's massive foot came swinging towards Sakuyamon. Through their link Terriermon saw this happening and he quickly took over and caused him and Henry to separate, de-digivolving until both of them were themselves again, but they were still rolling uncontrollably. Sakuyamon copied their example, splitting into two, and Cherubimon did the same shortly afterwards, until Henry, Rika, Suzie, Terriermon, Renamon and Lopmon were all hurtling along at break-neck speed together.

Henry reached out and grabbed his screaming sister by the arm, pulling her close to him with the intent to protect her as they helter-skeltered through what appeared to be some sort of vortex. There was something like a wind howling all around them so they could barely hear the sounds of their own yelling.

Rika clutched at Renamon's arm, before grabbing at the back of Henry's shirt, which she caught after a couple of attempts. Terriermon and Lopmon were close enough now to link ears with each other, then Terriermon stretched out the other to his mate, who grabbed it strongly and firmly in her large paw.

"What's happening!" shouted Suzie. "Are we going to die! I don't want to die, Henry! I don't want to die!"

"I'm so stupid!" shouted Lopmon. "I should have seen that coming. I just assumed that since he hadn't tried to transport us so far that he wouldn't then, but he had nothing to lose and his life to gain. Stupid, stupid, stupid!"

"Don't blame yourself," yelled Renamon. "You can't expect to know everything that goes through the mind of an evil Digimon unless you are one! But what is going on!"

"We're being transported to another dimension!" cried Lopmon. "We must be crossing the wall right now! He did this to many Digimon during his first attack! We always wondered what had happened to them. I suppose it was something like this!"

"You mean, there's no way back?" asked Henry, loudly.

"Sorry," said Lopmon, "but none of those Digimon were ever seen again."

There was silence save for the tremendous whooshing noise of the wind. Then Suzie started to cry. Henry did his best to soothe her but it didn't particularly work very well seeing as it felt like they were hurtling through space at hundreds of miles an hour.

"This must be what Fanglongmon meant," shouted Rika. "But why did he not warn us? Why didn't he give us a clearer perspective of what was to come!"

"I don't know!" answered Henry. "But we're not dead. We may never get back home..." his voice broke slightly here as he thought of his family and friends... "but we'll stay alive."

"I'll never get to say sorry to Jaarin for making her sit in that bucket of cold water," sighed Terriermon.

"Don't think like that!" cautioned Henry. "It'll get us nowhere. And we may not be stranded. We may find a place where we can..."

Henry never finished his sentence because at that point there was a colossal explosion nearby and they suddenly seemed to increase in speed, although that had barely seemed possible. Rika lost her grip on Renamon's arm and the three humans suddenly went tumbling off in a different direction. Renamon lunged after them but they were quickly whipped out of sight.

"RIKA!"

"HENRY!"

"SUZIE!"

The three Digimon watched in horror as they Tamers vanished from site, plunging through the vortex where the rules of gravity didn't seem to apply. It hadn't seemed possible that the day could get any worse. But it just had.

"No!" cried Renamon. "NO! NO!"

"It's too late!" wailed Lopmon. "They've gone!"

The three of them watched futilely, hoping against hope that their Tamers would re-appear. But they didn't.

"We'll find them!" declared Terriermon. "If we have to search for the rest of our lives, we'll find them! Momentai guys, we'll get through this!"

"Yes, we will," nodded Lopmon. "And we'll do it together!"

"I love you, Renamon," said Terriermon, suddenly.

"I love you too, Terriermon," said Renamon.

Lopmon, even after all that, couldn't help but smile. "Don't go all sappy on me!"

"Oh, don't worry," said Terriermon. "We w..."

There was another random explosion and what seemed like a shockwave punched against the three Rookies. Terriermon's ear suddenly slipped through Renamon's fingers and they were sent shooting in opposite directions. Lopmon was still with Terriermon, as their ears were almost knotted together.

"NO!" shouted Renamon again as her mate and sister-in-law were lost to her keen vision as well. She could still sense where they were but they were being separated at unimaginable speed. They were already hundreds of miles apart. Renamon's eyes narrowed in determination.

_I will find you!_ She sent.

_We know,_ chorused the bunnies.

Renamon turned to face the direction she seemed to be heading in as best she could. It seemed like she was on her own for hours, but she couldn't really tell how long she stared at the vortex around her. It could have been a mere second.

Then she saw it. The light at the end of the tunnel. There was a bright white light opening directly ahead. Renamon hurtled towards it faster than the eye could track, and then she was through it and hurled out into brightness.

* * *

Aayla brought the AT-RT to a halt. Gracefully she vaulted over the side to land smoothly on the ground, knees bending to absorb the shock of the impact. She was at the site of the appearance of the mysterious flying object, but there was nothing out of the ordinary here. Nothing physical anyway. It was an abandoned Christophsian city some walking distance from Chaleydonia and it had the usual paved streets, cracked and broken from thermal detonator and rocket fire, the usual blue spires that had been hollowed out by the locals and many of which lay crumpled and forlorn-looking, not having been occupied for some time.

And yet it was there, stronger here than it had been at any point save when the shape had appeared and disappeared. The strange ripple in the Force. Like there was some sort of hole in existence that had been opened and then suddenly shut. This was bizarre.

The Rutian Twi'lek was utterly bewildered. She wondered whether this little mission have been a wild bantha chase, just a fool's errand. She could be back by the capital assisting Bly and Cody on the assault on the marching Separatist droids. She couldn't help but feel slightly bitter. If this did prove to be a false alarm then how many clones had died from a blaster bolt that she could have deflected.

She thought of Cody and Bly and wondered how they were getting on. They were definitely still fighting – somebody would have contacted her if they'd finished. Unless they'd all died.

Aayla squashed this line of thinking. She had to keep her mind on where she was and try to figure out this mystery, if only so she could finish it and go back to help the clones.

After about twenty seconds or so of staring at an unchanging landscape, Aayla felt the Force ignite with power. A sudden white hole seemed to appear right out of nowhere to her left. Her senses nudged her and she swiftly ducked as some large thing came hurtling out of the light, almost colliding with her head and brushing her lekku.

Aayla whipped around to see a humanoid, furry, yellow creature crash to the ground on its side, sliding roughly across the paved road until coming to a sudden halt with a sickening crunch as its head collided with one of the giant crystal towers.

The creature groaned and said, "Ow," before lapsing into unconsciousness.

Aayla approached it swiftly but cautiously, taking in its appearance. It was yellow, except for hands, feet, belly and a white mane of fur around its neck. It wore no clothing except for long purple gloves that went up to its upper arms. It had a pointed muzzle and large pointed ears. There also appeared to be a strange purple symbol on each of its legs. To top it off a long, thick, bushy, yellow tail came from behind it, with a white tip.

Aayla crouched beside it and laid a hand on its shoulder, fingers between three strange, quill-like projections. "Are you alright?" she asked. There was no reply. Whatever it was it was definitely out cold. Aayla examined the body for any sign on injury, but other than a few scrapes the only problem was its head. Aayla wouldn't have fancied her chances of staying conscious when thrown at such speed into the crystal tower.

But it was definitely alive.

"What are you?" Aayla quietly asked, more to herself than the creature. She had never seen anything of its kind before. That wasn't all that surprising – there were a lot of creatures she'd never seen before. But this one was definitely sentient. It had said "Ow," before passing out.

As a Jedi it was her duty to protect those in need. She put one arm under the creature's body and began to haul it upright. "Don't worry," she said soothingly. "You're safe now."

She slung the creature over one shoulder. It was surprisingly light for its size and Aayla had no problem at all, with clambering back onto the AT-RT using only one hand. Gently she laid the creature down on the metal before her. The AT-RT wasn't really designed for two passengers but it'd have to do. She's have to us the force to make sure it didn't fall off the sloping front.

Aayla sat down, and after making sure the mystery being wouldn't fall out she restarted the AT-RT, before wheeling around and controlling it to move back to Chaleydonia with all speed. Aayla glanced at the creature. Whatever it was she could sense no deception or evil coming from, in fact quite the opposite. It almost seemed to shine with good will. Aayla didn't doubt her decision to bring it with her at all. Besides, it might be able to answer this strange phenomenon she had just witnessed.

Then the Twi'lek turned her attention back to the path ahead. The AT-RT's metal feet pounded the ground as it pelted across the blue landscape and back to the action zone.

* * *

Yay! Let it be! The Clone Wars and Digimon have finally met. Thanks to Rainbow35, Starowner and Bookworm Gal for the reviews. And also to Movie-Brat. I hope you mean fascinating in a good way.

* * *

Next time...

Renamon wakes up to find herself surrounded by armed humans. How does she react?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 4 : A Galaxy Far, Far Away**


	4. A Galaxy Far, Far Away

I really wanted to get to grips with Aayla's canon character because I wanted this story to be as real as possible, as I have been commended at how canon all of the characters in Digimon were. The only problem with Aayla is that her appearances are fairly limited. Her only speaking roles that I have seen were in two episodes of The Clone Wars and the Republic Heroes Game, which I quite like despite all the negative reviews. As far as I can tell she is a middle-ground Jedi. She has elements of the recklessness of Anakin and Ahsoka, but at the same time she rigidly sticks to the Code like Obi-Wan. However, I don't have a clue what she's like off the battlefield, other than consoling, so anything goes really.

**Starowner** – I'm going as fast as I can but I'm being limited by hardcore revision for my Biology exam for A2 level on the 25th. I should hopefully speed up after that.

Also, I just learned from an extra on the Season 1 DVD for Clone Wars that the episode involving Slick was a prequel to the movie. To that I say, screw that. In my book, everything in the series in chronological and I think it's a stupid idea to do a non-chronological series.

There are also so many clones that I thought it would be stupid not to include some OC clones. So I did.

Anyway, happy new year...

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327**th**

**Chapter 4:- A Galaxy Far, Far Away**

* * *

Ridge fingered the bandage wrapped around his arm. He had been extremely lucky in that last battle against the clankers. He had managed to dodge to one side so that the wayward blaster bolt struck his arm instead of his chest, saving his own life. He wished that he could say the same for a large portion of his brothers that lay side by side nearby. They wouldn't get a funeral – it was extremely rare for any clone to get one as there were so many of them. But they would be remembered by the 327th.

Ridge had not served under the 327th for very long, but he had come to like General Secura. It's very difficult to not like someone who does her level best to protect everyone nearby from harm and takes the time to give every single clone consolation and advice should they need it. Ridge had previously served under a Jedi known as Vebb, a brash young Man Calamari knight who didn't really follow Jedi regulations to the letter like Aayla. But after his death at the hands of General Grievous, his previous master Kit Fisto the Nautolan had assigned the majority of his clones under the 327th. Ridge had gathered that Kit and Aayla were good friends.

(A.N. And that's all they're going to be in this story. Sorry)

But Ridge wished that he was on the front lines now. He wished he could pay back the droids twenty-fold for the loss of his brothers. But the arm that had been shot was his gun arm and he needed to rest. He had been injected with bacta by the medical droid and now had to sit out on the fight, not knowing how the battle was progressing.

Suddenly there was a low pounding noise that began to gradually crescendo. Every clone knew the sound of a running AT-RT and Ridge looked up as General Secura rode into view. Ridge felt excitement – everyone had known that the General had gone to try and investigate a strange disturbance in the Force, something that none of them really understood but they could grasp the concept at least.

What caught Ridge's eye was the strange yellow creature draped across the bipedal walker in front of Aayla. It was nothing like anything he'd seen before. This creature also attracted the attention of the three other clones that had had to remained behind – Conor, Lash and Blade. Conor had had his legs injured from a flying crystal shard from an explosion. Lash had been shot in the hip by a Super Battle Droid. Blade had been dug out from being half-buried under a slab of fallen concrete.

Aayla pulled the walker to a halt and vaulted off it. She gently pulled the creature off the front and carried it towards another "bed" that was more like a table, where the injured lay. The medical droid approached.

"Doctor," said Aayla. "I discovered this creature out near another city. It has injured its head. Do you think you can take a look at it?"

"Yes," said DR-17. "I'll get right on it. This might take a bit of time though. I've never had to treat anything like this before. I'll have to analyse it before I proceed any further."

Aayla nodded. "Very well. Do your best. This creature might be able to explain the strange phenomenon I had just seen."

"Phenomenon?" asked Ridge, sitting up and propping himself up on one elbow. "What did you see, General?"

"Sorry, Ridge," said Aayla. "I can't stop. Has there been any word from Bly or Cody?"

"Negative, sir," said Ridge. "They haven't contacted us."

"Alright," said Aayla. "I'm on my way to go and help them. Lash, Ridge, can you stand?"

"I think so, General," Lash said, hauling himself to his feet as his hip twinged painfully. He grimaced but refrained from giving out any sound. Ridge got to his feet as well. The clones were all amazed at how the Jedi was able to remember who each and every one of them were after only being introduced to them once. Everyone else, except the clones themselves, were thrown by the identical faces and armour of most of the clones. But the Jedi did not need to be told twice.

"Good," said Aayla. "This creature," she indicated the yellow being that the medical droid was leaning over, "could have important information. If it wakes up then do your best to convince it to stay. Is should be back soon."

"Yes, sir," Ridge and Lash snapped to attention.

Aayla smiled at them. "See you later," she said, before leaping upwards back onto the AT-RT and starting it up. The machine whirled around at amazing speed and shot away.

Ridge looked at the yellow creature lying on the bed. It looked dead, but for the slight rising and falling of its chest. But there was something about this creature that Ridge liked. There was an air about it, a strong one. The clones were not force-sensitive, but they could generally tell when they were in the presence of a seasoned fighter. It was like an intuition that they had.

"Hey Lash," he said. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"If you're thinking this creature would be one tough customer in a fight, then yes, I am."

"What do you reckon it is?" asked Conor from his bed. "I'm pretty sure it's not from Christophsis."

"It could be from Naboo or Rodia, or some other planet full of unexplored wilderness," suggested Lash.

"Wonder what the General saw that makes this thing so important," muttered Blade thoughtfully.

"Fascinating," said the medical droid suddenly. "This creature is simply fascinating."

"How do you mean?" asked Ridge curiously.

"It's genetic make-up is astounding. Take a look at these readings."

The medical droid passed a holoscreen to Ridge, who scanned it carefully, Lash looking over his shoulder. Both of their eyes widened as they surveyed the screen.

"Whoa," said Ridge. "General Secura has to see this."

* * *

The ambush was not going particularly well. There were far more battle droids than had been previously anticipated, marching in columns steadily towards the capital city. When the clones had sprung from all sides, initially things had gone smoothly. Rocket launchers and thermal detonators, along with electro-magnetic-pulse grenades, nicknamed "Droid poppers" by the clones had been thrown all round and had exploded or short-circuited every droid in sight.

But things had begun to go a lot less well with the arrival of several larger droids and vehicles. At least ten large Octuptarra combat tri-droids had marched forward, blasting in all directions with their three laser turrets situated around their bulbous heads. Many clones were blasted skywards by the massive bursts of energy.

Bly had called the order to fall back when the Octuptarra had been joined by a squadron of Droidekas, all of which instantly raised their shields and started firing at the backs of the retreating clones. Cody and Bly rallied their forces and took cover behind the pillars of crystal, wheeling around to fire at the oncoming droids.

But then, to the horror of the clones, a large group of at least forty commando droids arrived and leapt into the fray, unafraid for their own safety. Many clones had been massacred by these more ruthless droids, stabbed by their swords or holed by their blasters.

A clone called Jester, one of Slick's old platoon, had been shot in the shoulder by one of the Droidekas. Gamely, he continued to fire his blaster at a bunch of ordinary battle droids that were closing in on him. His shot took off the head of the closest one, punched a hole into the chest of another and knocked the leg clean off another, causing it to fall on top of another.

But now he was backed up against the wall and was unable to move forwards. A wild, lucky shot from one of the droids knocked the blaster out of his hand. That same droid raised its own blaster and pointed it in Jester's face.

"Any last words, clone?" asked the droid in its reedy, mechanical tone.

Jester's eyes flicked from side to side, searching for an escape route. Then he grinned, although none of the droids could see it under his helmet, and said. "Yeah, I have a question. Do you know what it feels like to be stampeded over by a rampaging reek?"

"Um," said the droid, somehow managing to look confused. "No. No, I don't. Do you?" he addressed the droid to his left.

"No," said the droid. "What about you?" he pointed to another droid.

"What's a reek?" asked this droid.

"Well," said Jester. At this point the majority of the droids before him were suddenly mown down by the hammering feet of an AT-RT and crushed into circuits. "You do now."

"Hey, no fair," complained one of the two remaining droids as the rider of the walker leapt off it, backflipped and ignited her lightsaber. Quick as a flash, the droid was minus a head before Aayla had even touched the ground.

"Well, I survived longest," sagged the last one, as Aayla swung the lightsaber upwards and through its torso. The top half clattered to the ground and the bottom half remained standing for a few seconds before pitching over as well.

"Are you alright, Jester?" asked Aayla, leaping before him and deflecting the shots of some Super Battle Droids that had noticed her arrival with amazing ease.

"Yes, sir," said Jester. "You arrived just in time. I got cut off from the rest of the group over there." He pointed to the flashing helmets of Bly and Cody and the others whipping around the towers.

"Can you continue?" asked Aayla.

"Yes, General."

"Then the AT-RT is all yours," she said. "Follow me. We'll cut our way back."

"Right away," Jester grinned beneath his helmet and clambered hurriedly aboard the vehicle.

"Let's go," Aayla leapt forwards, lightsaber dancing before her as if it had a mind of its own, deflecting the blaster bolts sent in her direction back at their sources, causing the droids to tumble and fall. Any still standing by the time she reached them was suddenly in pieces as Aayla's flashing blue blade swept through their midsections. Jester charged in behind her, blue plasma bolts firing out from the large gun on the AT-RT's front, pulverising the droids and sending their limbs flying.

A commando droid wheeled around from where it was preparing to stab a floored clone and the last thing its photoreceptors saw was a blue-skinned Twi'lek leaping upwards and swinging her foot in the direction of its head. Aayla smashed the droid with a perfect roundhouse kick and as it toppled she landed beside it and brought her lightsaber down, stabbing directly into the droid's chest. With a couple of sparks the droid's photoreceptors switched off.

"General!" cried Bly. "Nice timing. As usual."

"I do my best," said Aayla, deflecting the bolt of a battle droid behind her back without even looking and bouncing forwards to join Bly and Cody behind the pillar. Jester blasted the droid with the walker and used it to run to another, dodging a large blast from one of the Octuptarra.

"Commander," said Aayla. "We need to finish this battle before we lose many more clones."

"What do you suggest, sir?" asked Cody. "We've been pinned down ever since those Octuptarra clankers arrived. We managed to take out three of them but then most of the clones who had launchers were killed."

Aayla ignored the sorrow at the loss and said, "Let me assess the situation."

With that, she leapt back out from behind the pillar, beheading a commando droid that had been attempting to sneak up on their hiding place. There were few droids that were a match for any of the Jedi. The only ones that were any real challenge were the MagnaGuards, but thankfully there were not very many of them in the grand scheme of things.

Aayla took up a stance, legs spread wide as she stood her ground, defending herself and a few of the nearest clones from blaster fire. She let go of her control and delved into the Force, allowing it to control her arm movements, and deflect the enemy fire without her really paying attention, and then she began to focus on the battlefield as a whole. The seven Octuptarra remaining were advancing in a line. Many of the Droidekas had been taken out by rockets but those that remained were advancing just before the Ocuptarra, shields raised and blasting without really paying attention to what they were hitting. Aayla smirked as she saw two foolish battle-droids get shot down by the relentless droidekas.

Then she spotted a nearby AT-TE. It's two front legs had been shot off and it was now lying crumpled across the street. Some of the remaining clones, lead by two of Cody's best men, Waxer and Boil, were using it as a shield as they fired around and over it with their rifles.

Aayla's eyes roamed from the AT-TE to a nearby pillar. The AT-TE might be crumpled but it was not necessarily useless.

"Commander, follow me," she called. "I have an idea."

"Alright men," called Bly. "Follow the General. Go, go, go!"

Bly, Cody, and the other clones still nearby, including Jester on the AT-RT, leapt out from behind the pillars and ran, shooting down as many droids as they could while following Aayla towards the downed larger walker. Two of the clones were shot down within a few seconds, and then another saw death flash before his eyes as a commando droid leapt out of hiding, sword held high.

But at the last second, the droid suddenly shot in the opposite direction in mid-air. Aayla had grabbed it using the Force and sent it hurtling backwards. It landed with a thud and leapt to its feet, but by that time, Aayla had reached it and cleaved in two with a single stroke. With another burst of the Force she launched both halves in opposite directions before they had time to fall and they each took out a hapless Super Battle Droid.

Bly fired a neat shot with his blaster that put a hole in the side of a battle droid's head. Then he sprang forwards and performed a forward roll to avoid the bolts that a droideka had suddenly decided to send his way. Cody fired at it and his bolts were absorbed by the energy shield, but it had the effect of distracting it and allowing some of the other clones to jump behind the cover the AT-TE provided. Aayla leapt upwards and on top of the walker, averting yet more of the endless blaster bolts as she called over her shoulder. "Bly! Cody! Order your men to provide support for us. You two! Waxer and Boil! Come up here with me!"

"Right away, sir!" chorused the clones. Bly and Cody indicated with hand gestures and the men dived outwards and ducked behind other pieces of cover like large boulders and wheeling to fire over the top. The Octuptarra were still advancing and were only being slightly blackened by their weapons.

Waxer and Boil quickly scaled the AT-TE with practised ease. These two were members of the Ghost Company, a division of the 212th, and they were some of the best soldiers in it. As with many clones, they had separate personalities. Waxer was slightly more kind than the stoic and rather hard Boil.

"What do you want us to do, General?" asked Boil, firing between the flashing lightsaber in front of him and somehow managing to miss the lightsaber each time, though he suspected Aayla had something to do with that.

"Waxer, get in the main gun. Hurry! Boil, you and I will cover him."

Waxer didn't hesitate for a second. He instantly obeyed and leapt in the control seat of the giant cannon situated at the top of the AT-TE. Boil crouched behind it to provide cover fire. Aayla leapt on the barrel of the cannon itself and balanced there.

"Aim it at that crystal pillar over there!" she pointed at the one she had picked out earlier.

"Ah," said Waxer. "I see what you got in mind. He grabbed the controls and wheeled the gun about. Slowly and carefully the end of it was directed towards the pillar, until it was bang on target.

"Aim at the base," instructed Aayla. "And fire!"

Waxer directed barrel down a little and let fly. The massive bolt struck the base of the thick pillar, causing a small explosion and the pillar cracked a little. Aayla managed to keep her balance on the gun, despite the recoil and her swinging lightsaber blocking an attacking droideka. "Again," she called. "Make it nice and weak."

"I hope this works," said Waxer, and he began to fire again, letting off three more shots in quick succession. The base of the tower splintered as it was bombarded.

"Stop!" cried Aayla. Waxer let go of the controls. "Good work, you two. Find some cover."

"But sir," protested Boil. "It hasn't fallen yet."

"I know. I don't want it to fall the wrong way."

"But how are you... Oh, never mind."

"What about you, General?" asked Waxer. "You might need some cover. The commando droids are everywhere and could leap out of nowhere at a crucial moment."

Aayla considered for a moment, then nodded. "If you're up to it," she grinned jokingly.

"I'll pretend you didn't just say that," said Boil.

"Bly! Cody! Keep up the good work. Waxer, Boil and I will be back in a minute."

"Yes, sir. You heard the General, lads! Keep up the assault!" shouted Bly.

"Come on," Aayla leapt down from the AT-TE, deflecting two Octuptarra bolts in mid-air. Waxer and Boil slid down the side less ceremoniously and the three of them ran forwards. Aayla practically carved a path through a swathe of battle droids that seemed to be milling about in apparent confusion.

"This is cyber-bullying," declared one of them before he was silenced by Boil smashing him upside the head with his blaster.

Two droidekas rolled up and unfurled, raising their shields and opening fire. Waxer and Boil ducked behind an overturned slab of concrete and Aayla shot forwards, right past the droids. She brought her feet up and they hit the side of a pillar, legs bending. Then she rebounded of the pillar to land right beside one of the confused droidekas.

And destroyer droids were not very manoeuvrable when not in a ball. Aayla hand calmly passed through the shield and with a blast of The Force, sent one droid catapulting into the other and then leapt after them. As their shields dropped, her lightsaber flashed a diced them into several pieces.

The three moved on again until they were behind the pillar. Indeed, two commando droids did appear, but they fell to the ground under the fire from Waxer and Boil, who then stepped over one each and fired point-blank in the face, exploding their heads.

"Cover me!" said Aayla. Her lightsaber was driven into the tower on the opposite side to the damage caused by the AT-TE and sliced a line through it, further decreasing its stability. Then Aayla deactivated the blade, placed it back at her hip and shut her eyes, calling on the Force. She extended her arms and gathered it to her, hands out, fingers splayed. Her lekku twitched and her hands moved backwards, as if something was pushing them back towards her body.

The tower groaned, and then, gritting her teeth, Aayla thrust her hands out again. The tower splintered at the base even more and fell, slowly and majestically, before crushing all seven of the remaining Octuptarra and most of the droidekas.

"Incredible," muttered Waxer.

* * *

Nearby, General Whorm Loathsom, a male Kerkoiden with a long thin face and fangs protruding from his hanging mouth, snarled in frustration from the cockpit of his AAT. Curse that Jedi. She was just as bad as that Kenobi that had captured him before. He had lost the battle of Christophsis the first time and he would not lose it the second, not after Asajj Ventress herself had left him in charge.

This battle was not going too well. It was becoming a rout. He had lost all of the Octuptarra he had, but he still had most of the AAT's. He decided the best option would be to pull back for now and figure out a way to get these stupid droids to spring a trap of their own.

"Retreat!" he called. "Return to base. This cannot go unpunished. We must regroup."

"Roger, roger," said the nearest droid and with a whirring noise, the AAT tanks turned around and the droid army turned back.

* * *

Bly approached Aayla as he watched the fleeing droids with a sense of satisfaction. "Your timing was unmatched, General Secura," he said, taking off his helmet.

"Well, you know me," said Aayla. "I do my best."

"How did your mission go?" asked Bly. "Was it successful?"

"I'm not sure," said Aayla, as the two turned and walked side-by-side, Waxer and Boil behind them. "But I definitely found something. I'll update you on the way back to the capital."

* * *

The troops arrived back at their base in Chaleydonia battered and bruised and many of them carrying dead or critically injured comrades, but victorious. They were hailed by loud cheers from the four clones that had remained behind.

Aayla led Bly and Cody towards the bed that contained the mystery being. Cody instructed Waxer and Boil to watch over proceedings until they'd finished their business. Ridge and Lash welcomed them with a salute.

"I see you won, sir," said Lash, eagerly.

"Yep," said Bly. "We flattened them. Literally." He looked over the creature on the bed. "So, this is the thing that appeared out of mid-air?"

"Yes. It was incredible. I'd never seen anything like it," nodded Aayla. "Has there been any change in its physical state?"

"Apart from the fact that its head injury seems to have almost healed completely already despite the fact the medical droid did absolutely nothing, no," said Ridge.

"Really," mused Aayla, inspecting the head. Indeed the battering the top of it had received was barely visible. "Extraordinary. This creature obviously has a fast healing rate."

"And that's not all," said Lash. "Look at this, sir." He passed the holoscreen to Aayla, who read it as Lash continued. "The doctor discovered that this creature's genetic make-up is very different to anything else he's ever encountered."

"Different how?" asked Cody.

"It's doesn't have one," said Ridge.

"What?" Bly blinked, confused.

"It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen," said Ridge. "There's not a hint of DNA or RNA or any form of protein anywhere in the body. It doesn't even have any cells. Whatever this thing is, it appears to be made of computer data."

"Data?" asked Bly. "You mean it's like a droid?"

"No sir," said Ridge. "Everything about it is organic except for, well, the organic part. It has skin, fur, lungs, a heart, eyes – real and genuine eyes and not photoreceptors. Everything about it indicates an organic creature, except the fact that it isn't."

"It's almost like it's a digital life-form," added Lash.

Aayla, fascinated, gently brushed the fur on the creature's side. It felt absolutely real, but according to all the readings it was not fur.

The contact made the creature stir. A slight groaned escaped its mouth and it rolled a little to one side. Bly and Cody tensed slightly, hands gripping their blasters. The yellow creature brought up a paw and rubbed its own head gingerly and then it opened its eyes, which were a piercing blue colour.

The first thing that Renamon noticed were the men standing over her, in white armour. The second thing she noticed was that two of them were carrying some type of gun. Instinct kicked in and she instantly rose up and back-flipped off the metal bed she had been laid on. She immediately took up a battle stance, legs spread wide, one arm held defensively in front of her and the other to one side to protect her flank.

The two men wielding guns brought them to bear, but suddenly a woman nearby said, in a slight French accent, "Relax guys. And you, whoever-you-are, please calm down. We do not wish to harm you."

"How do you know it can understand you?" asked one of the men.

"It," frowned the woman, "Probably has a name. And I know that it is sentient. Trust me."

Renamon took in the woman's appearance for the first time and blinked. She was most definitely not human, but she was not a Digimon either. Digimon had the ability to sense one another. This woman's skin was a rich blue and she had appeared to have two tails protruding from the back of her head. Then she also noticed that all four of the men had exactly the same facial features. Glancing around she saw many more of these men, all identical apart from hairstyles and scarring. What the hell!

Her mind was strangely blank for her. As always she could still feel the presence of Terriermon, although, wherever he was, he was thousands of miles away. He was on a different planet altogether. She also knew he was unconscious. She couldn't feel the presence of Lopmon, as Terriermon had to be awake for that, and wherever Rika was she was too far away to sense.

"Please, relax" said the strange woman.

Renamon did the exact opposite and tensed even further. This caused the men to raise their guns a little further. Instantly, Renamon's arms shot forward to form an X before her body and gathered her power, ready to unleash her Diamond Storm attack. Then she said, "Put down your weapons."

"Do as she says," said the blue woman.

"But, sir..." protested one of the men.

"Do it, Bly," ordered the woman. The man frowned, as did his double, but the two of them slowly lowered the guns and placed them on the ground. Renamon did not relax her guard. Sir? The man had called the woman sir? Shouldn't that be ma'am?

But obviously, wherever she was and whoever these strange people were, the woman was in charge. Renamon addressed her first, asking the first two questions that came into her head. "Who are you? And where am I?"

She had not expected an answer. She had expected one of them to say it was "classified information." But instead the woman said, gently, "My name is Aayla Secura, a Jedi Knight from the Galactic Republic. You are on the planet Christophsis, in the Capital City of Chaleydonia."

Cristophsis? The planet Christophsis? Well, it definitely wasn't Earth. Earth didn't have massive towers of blue crystal converted into buildings. So this was where Parallelmon had sent her. But some of what the woman, Aayla, said had passed right over her head.

"Jedi Knight? Galactic Republic?" asked Renamon. "What are they?"

"You gotta be kidding," said one of the men, with an intricate scar on the left side of his face. "Every sentient being in the galaxy has heard of the Jedi Order and the Republic. Where are you from?"

"That was going to be my question," said Aayla. "Please, stranger, I was hoping you could explain to us the strange phenomenon that I witnessed. You came hurtling out of a hole in mid-air that appeared and disappeared into the blink of an eye. You almost took me head off," she smiled.

Renamon didn't think that this Aayla was unfriendly but the men were all looking suspicious and uneasy. So she said, "What makes you think I can trust you? What are you? You are not human. Why do all of these men have the same face? And why are you all carrying guns?"

"You're really are not from around here, are you?" chuckled Aayla. "As to your questions, if it'll help you to stay calm and at ease, then I will answer them for you. I am a Twi'lek from a planet called Ryloth. These men all have the same face because they are clones. And they carry guns because we are in the middle of a war."

"I hope you know what you're doing, sir," muttered the man, the clone, that had been called Bly.

Renamon was digesting this information. She knew what a republic was, and Galactic obviously meant that it encompassed a whole galaxy, as one of the clones had said earlier. These clones were obviously soldiers for this war. But one thing still confused her.

"You said you were a Twi'lek," she said. "But earlier you said you were a Jedi."

Aayla chuckled. "My species is Twi'lek, but I am a member of the Jedi Order."

"And the Jedi Order is?"

Aayla thought for a moment before saying, "Have you ever heard of The Force?"

Renamon blinked. "No," she said.

"Then I'd better explain that first. It's an energy that resides in all objects and life-forms. It's what keeps the galaxy going. It's a powerful force, hence it's name. Jedi are what is known as force-sensitive beings. We have the ability to harness The Force and use it," she extended one arm. To Renamon's surprise and amazement, a rock gently rose into the air from beside Aayla's foot and hovered, spinning over her hand. She had thought only digimon could do things like that, and very few had telekinetic abilities.

"Jedi are peacekeepers," said Aayla. "We prefer to settle disputes via diplomacy instead of violence. However, there is no chance of negotiation with the Separatists. They are a group of individuals who have separated from the Republic and are trying to take over the Galaxy."

"There's always someone," muttered Renamon. "Always some idiot hell-bent on destruction."

Aayla chuckled. "Jedi lead the clone armies of the Republic against the Separatists and their armies of droids. We are not warriors, but with the aid of the Force we are capable of holding our own."

"Droids?" asked Renamon. "You mean, robots?"

"No, robots would be more sophisticated," said Bly. The other clones belted out laughing and Bly high-fived the clone with the scar. Renamon blinked.

"Battle droids are not known for their intelligence," said Aayla.

"Allow me to make sure I have my facts straight," said Renamon. "You are a telekinetic being who is in the middle of a war with a bunch of renegades, and you pit clone soldiers against these... droids, and you do it across the entire galaxy."

"Correct," said Aayla.

Renamon turned to Bly and the other clones. "Are you bred for war or were you already around when this war started?"

"We were bred for it," said Bly. "We are clones of a human named Jango Fett and fighting in this war is all that any of us have known."

"We have something in common then," said Renamon. "Although I was not specifically bred for battle, I too am a born warrior. What are your names?"

"Each one of us has a designation number," said Bly, "but we've all got nicknames. I am Commander Bly. This is Commander Cody," he indicated the scarred clone. "And these two are Ridge and Lash."

"Good to meet you," said Cody. Ridge and Lash nodded.

"What will you do if you win the war and are still alive?" asked Renamon.

Bly sighed. "That is a question we frequently ask ourselves."

Renamon felt pity creep through her digital veins for these men. They were almost like tools of war, and yet they were living, breathing people, with feelings. That much was plain to see.

Aayla sensed Renamon's feelings and said, "The clones are not generally regarded as people by most of the Republic, but anyone who knows them as close as the Jedi do know full well that they are people. We do our best to protect them, and the loss of even one clone is a blow. Trust me when I say that we do not view them as stepping stones to get what we want."

Renamon flinched slightly. There had been a time when she believed that her Tamer, Rika had been exactly that, a mere stepping stone to become a stronger, better Digimon. To digivolve. But she had come to see Rika as a friend, not a tool. And Renamon could clearly see that Aayla saw the clones as friends too.

"Now," said Aayla. "We have answered your questions. Will you answer ours?"

Renamon visibly relaxed even further. "I will do my best."

"My questions are similar to yours," said Aayla. "What is your own name? What species are you? Where are you from? And most importantly, how did you get here."

"It is complicated," said Renamon, who paused, then added, "but probably not any more than what you just told me. My name is Renamon, and I am a Digimon."

"Renamon," repeated Aayla. "Interesting name. Do you have a surname?"

"No. Just Renamon."

"And what exactly is a Digimon?" asked Cody.

"It is an abbreviation for Digital Monster."

"Monster?" asked Aayla. "You don't look like a monster to me."

"Not all of my species is as... civilised as me. Or as good-looking," she smirked, swishing her tail. "My species is extremely varied, more varied than any other I know. Some of us are small, no bigger than this," she made a golf ball sized hole with her fingers. "Some of us are massive and can grow taller than those spires." she indicated the crystal tower that were standing beside.

"And we vary in shape too. There are many types of Digimon – thousands – and we can look like almost anything."

"That is pretty varied," said Aayla.

Renamon nodded. "You say Jedi have abilities of telekinesis due to this... Force, and I'm guessing telepathy, as you knew what I was thinking and I'm told I am hard to read. In fact, there's only one person that knows what I'm thinking all the time, and that's my mate, Terriermon."

"Your mate?" asked Aayla. "Where is he?"

"I have no idea, but I shall explain that in a moment. As I was saying, like you Jedi, we Digimon have special talents as well, although they are individual to each type. For instance, my type – a Renamon, hence my name – has the ability to do this."

With warning, Renamon sprang upwards. Cody and Bly reached for their weapons again, but their eyes were drawn as Renamon crossed her arms and hundreds of diamonds appeared out of thin-air around her. Then she threw her arms out and cried **"DIAMOND STORM!"**

All eyes moved to her as she let fly. The hundreds of shards slammed into the nearest pillar and sliced into it. Renamon dropped downwards and landed hard, yet gracefully atop the metal bed that had separated her from the Jedi and the clones throughout their conversation.

"Impressive," smiled Aayla, while the clones just looked awestruck. "This story is fascinating. You really are a Digital creature, just as the readings said."

Renamon nodded. "Just like you clones we are beings created thanks to science. We were created by humans, although we then evolved on our own into our myriad of forms. As I said, I am a warrior, but I fight to defend, just like you, Aayla. I was in the middle of a battle. My friends and I were fighting an evil Digimon known as Parallelmon. His special ability is the ability to travel to alternate dimensions and to send other Digimon to them as well."

"Then what I thought is correct," said Aayla. "You are from an alternate reality. You came through a portal opened by this Parallelmon. It must have been him I saw earlier, jumping from place to place."

"Yes. We almost killed Parallelmon, and in a last ditch attempt to escape he sent myself, my mate, my mate's sister and our Tamers to an alternate dimensions. Tamers are humans that form a special bond with a Digimon and have the ability to make them stronger. It is this bond between human and Digimon that had saved the Human World, as well call it, numerous times."

"Then where is your mate?" asked Aayla. "Do you know?"

"I know he is somewhere in this reality. Somewhere far away, presumably on another planet. I am assuming that you have mastered travel through space if this war of yours spans a whole galaxy."

"Of course," said Bly.

"Then I have a request," said Renamon. "I would like you to help me find him. As soon as he wakes up I'll be able to tell you where he is. He and I share a telepathic link," she tapped her skull with a claw. "And then I would like you to help me locate my Tamer, Rika, and the others."

"Finding some lost humans across and entire galaxy will be difficult," said Aayla. "But I will see what I can do. There are many Jedi across the Galaxy, and one of them might have sensed a disturbance like a portal opening, just as I did when I sensed your arrival."

"Thank you," said Renamon.

"But as of yet, none of us are able to leave this planet," continued Aayla.

Renamon frowned. "Why not?"

"Because we're trying to recapture it," said Bly. "It's been taken over by the Separatist Droid Armies and we can't leave until we've freed it from their metal grip."

Renamon paused to consider, then said, "If that is the case then I shall do everything I can to help you win this fight if it'll help get the job done quicker."

"Any help is welcome," said Cody. "The tinnies won't be expecting someone like you to be on the battlefield. You got any other skills that you haven't shown us yet."

"My other attack is called Power Paw, which is basically an extremely powerful blow with my fist. I also have the ability to do this."

There was a faint PFFT noise and she vanished.

"What the..." Lash looked around in confusion. "Where'd she go?"

"She's still there," Aayla's eyes hadn't moved from the spot. "I can sense her."

"It's called a perception filter," said Renamon as she blinked back into sight. "It makes me invisible because it plays tricks with other people's eyes so that they don't notice me. I also have the power to digivolve, which is to take on an even more powerful shape. But to do that I need my Tamer to give me strength. Digivolution without a Tamer is difficult."

"Very well," said Aayla. "You may assist us if you wish, and I shall do what I can to help you find your family and your Tamer. Do we have a deal?"

She extended one blue hand. Renamon didn't even pause as she put out her own paw and shook it. "We do."

Bly and the other clones grinned too. Aayla led Renamon into the camp and began to introduce her to other clones and show her some of the equipment and vehicles that they used in their wars. Bly observed the curious Digimon. She almost seemed like a blend of himself and the other clones with their General.

Suddenly, Renamon, who was examining the AT-RT she had been brought here on, stopped and straightened up, staring into space.

"What?" asked Aayla. "What is it?"

Renamon smiled at her and said five words:-

"My mate just woke up."

* * *

Alright, they finally met for the first time. This was my first attempt at writing a Star Wars battle scene and I hope it worked. I also decided to write the scene where they explain themselves to each other simply because I don't like it in crossovers when two groups of characters meet and then the writer puts – "They explain all about themselves" or something similar. It just shortens the experience – you wouldn't skip out that scene in a movie.

* * *

Next time...

We look at what happened to Terriermon and Lopmon, although of course, Renamon and Aayla will feature strongly in it.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 5 : Maridun**


	5. Maridun

Here we finally get to see what happened to the other two main Digimon characters in this stories. The bunny siblings. Yay!

Note that I am not making any indigenous species to any planet up. If their name is mentioned you can look them up on Wookiepedia. They'll be there.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327**th**

**Chapter 5:- Maridun**

* * *

Waking up from unconscious was no different from waking up from ordinary sleep. At least it wasn't where Terriermon was concerned. During unconscious he had simply lain peacefully, almost as if he was just sleeping, but as soon as he woke up, he did it suddenly and he cried, "Leave me alone, you God damn fruit!"

He sat bolt upright as he shouted this and glanced around him. Beside him was his sister, who groaned and opened her eyes slightly, moving one hand up to rub her throbbing head. Then Lopmon glanced up at her brother and said, "Terriermon. You are the most annoying alarm clock ever."

"Hey, I resent that," said Terriermon. "Guilmon often wakes up Takato by farting."

"True," said Lopmon, sitting up slightly. Terriermon got to his feet and looked around. He yelped at what he saw, grabbed his sister with one ear and leapt aside as a massive foot descended on the spot where he had just been standing. Lopmon was jolted awake even further and she scrambled upwards. The two of them quickly took to the ear and glided a few yards before settling down to look at their assailants.

They didn't appear to have noticed the two Digimon. They were massive animals of some sort, not Digimon, just plain animals. But Terriermon had never seen anything like them on the internet before, and he had spent considerable time surfing it. He knew more about tardigrades than any needs to know. But these creatures were huge behemoths with four, trunk-like legs, a massive domed torso, a small whip-like tail that resembled that of a hippo, and a small head situated on a reasonably long neck. They were coloured black and orange and had a number of spikes protruding from their backs in seemingly random places.

The two averted their eyes from the giant creatures which were just plodding along aimlessly and focused on their surroundings. They appeared to be in some kind of grassland. But the grass in most places was ridiculously long and wavy, more like reeds. There were a few patches of small grass, such as where Terriermon and Lopmon were standing. In the distance, they could see mountains that were large, but not large enough to have snowcaps, and a few trees dotted about the places.

But the trees were ridiculously large. They were far bigger than any other tree they had ever seen. To the bunnies they seemed absolutely massive. They were at least two-hundred metres tall.

"I don't think we're in Kansas anymore," quipped Terriermon.

_Good to see you haven't lost your humour._

_Rena!_ Thought Terriermon. _Are you alright?_

There was no need for Renamon to answer. In that instant, everything that Aayla Secura and the clones had explained to her rushed into Terriermon's mind, and as a result, also into Lopmon's. The two of them literally went reeling at the amount of information which hit them in one go like a physical punch.

"Whoa," said Terriermon, sorting through all the information about the Republic, the Separatists, the war, the clones, the droids and the Jedi into something he could get his head around. "Talk about an overload."

_Where are you?_ Asked Renamon.

_I have absolutely no idea,_ replied Terriermon._ But I know it's not Japan. Or Kansas. Or even Earth. And what kind of name is Christophsis? Did someone name a planet after himself?_

_Someone named the toilet after himself,_ pointed out Lopmon.

_Yeah, what was he thinking?_ sniggered Terriermon. _He must have been so proud._

_As much as I'd like this conversation to develop into a discussion about the toilet,_ said Renamon. _It would be extremely useful if the two of you could find out where in the galaxy you are. What planet you're on. That way, when I can finally get off Christophsis, I can direct Aayla to come and find you._

_No sweat,_ said Terriermon. _Let's go ask those creatures._

_I doubt that they can speak our language,_ said Lopmon.

(A.N. I really can't bothered to go through with this whole Japanese/English thing, okay. In my book, everyone in Digimon speaks English. Hey, everyone could understand each other just find in Digimon Adventure 02 when they went around the world)

_I know. I was just kidding. But we're on a different planet entirely. What if there is nobody on this planet who we can understand? What if there's no-one on this planet who even knows what this planet is called?_

_Think like that,_ said Renamon. _And you'll be down before you've even started. You guys can fly. Take to the skies and see what you can find._

_Roger, roger,_ said Terriermon, not knowing this was the usual response of a battle droid.

The two bunnies were about to take off and go searching when there was a loud hissing sound from somewhere nearby. Alarmed, Terriermon and Lopmon looked around them, searching for the source of the strange noise. But there was nothing. Their eyes scanned the tall grasses surrounding them, but they couldn't see anything through it.

"Okay," said Terriermon, slowly. "I am officially weirded out. How about you?"

"Yep," said Lopmon. "Perhaps we should get airborne. Now."

"Good idea," said Terriermon and with a flap the two rose upwards into the blue sky above them. As they did, they looked down on the giant creatures that had almost crushed them before. There were three of them, all massive sized, and all of them wandering towards one of the giant trees.

"Why would a tree want to grow that big anyway?" asked Terriermon.

"Are you going to ask questions about every single object we come across?" asked Lopmon.

"Maybe," was the enigmatic reply.

The hissing noise came again from below. This time, the giant creature's seemed to hear it and they paused, milling about and bellowing bass cries into the sky, confused and obviously panicking. One of them picked up speed and lumbered off to one side away from the other two.

Suddenly, another creature, half the size of the first, leapt out from the tall grasses and astride the giant one. This one appeared to have front feet and a head that resembled those of a vulture, and a mane of brown feathers around its neck. Its tail also had feathers but its torso and back legs looked like those of a hyena. With a loud hissing noise emanating from its throat it sank its talons into the beast's hide and bit down with a beak full of teeth.

The giant creature bellowed in shock and pain and attempted to throw its attacker off by flailing its body to dislodge it. But then, two more of the feathered predators leapt at it from the other side and began to tear into its flanks. One swung a clawed foot and snapped off one of the spikes on its preys back. The other sank its claws into the creature's hindquarters.

The other two giant creatures began to run in the opposite direction, abandoning the beleaguered animal to its fate. Finally, a fourth predator attacked from the front and grabbed the beast by the neck. Terriermon and Lopmon watched in terrible fascination as the bird-like predators, which had legs big enough to wrap around and crush a man, wrestled the beast to the ground and bit into it, until the creature died of shock, bloodloss, and lack of air.

Terriermon and Lopmon circled, as they were unable to hover, and watched as the vicious hunters began to dig into their meal. "Well," said Terriermon dryly. "I always wanted to go on safari to see wild animals."

"What have we gotten ourselves into?" asked Lopmon.

"And how are we going to get out of it?" pointed out Terriermon. "Without Parallelmon we're trapped in this dimension."

* * *

"What's she doing?" asked Bly as Renamon, still standing on the seat of the AT-RT, did nothing but stare into space.

"Ssh," said Aayla. "I think she's communicating with her mate. Remember, they have a psychic link, or so she said. She must be talking with her mind."

"And there was me thinking that only Jedi could do things like that," chuckled Cody.

"There's more to find in the universe than can ever be found," commented Aayla. "And Renamon's not even from our own."

Renamon blinked and seemed to snap back to reality. "So?" asked Aayla. "What did you find out?"

"Wherever they are, it's like they're in some savannah," said Renamon.

"They?"

"Yes. My mate's sister, Lopmon, is with him." Renamon's face creased with worry as she said, "I hope our Tamers are okay. Unlike us, they have next to no defence against... well... anything. Henry's quite good at Tai-chi. But that wouldn't do him any good against creatures like the ones Terriermon and Lopmon just saw."

Aayla decided to ask what Tai-chi was later and asked, "Creatures? What creatures?"

Renamon hopped down from the walker and said, "Why do you want to know?"

"Some creatures are resident to only some planets," said Aayla. "Describe them to me and I might be able to narrow down the choice of planets from hundreds to just one, if we hit lucky."

"Very well," said Renamon, hopefully. "They were quadrupeds, about a foot taller than an average human, or Twi'lek, they had the head of a bird of prey, along with the front feet, a mane of brown feathers and its body resembles that of some kind of dog." She paused. "Do you have dogs in this universe? Or birds?"

Aayla smiled and nodded.

"Mane of feathers," repeated Bly. "Bird head. Dog body. Sound familiar to you, General?"

"Indeed it does," said Aayla. "I believe me may have, as I said earlier, hit lucky. It sounds to me that your mate and his sister just had an encounter with a Mastiff Phalone."

Renamon paused and said nothing for a few seconds. Then she said, "My mate wishes to know what planets they live on. As do I."

"Well, as far as we know, Mastiff Phalones only live on one planet," said Aayla. "A planet that Bly and I have been to before, have we not Commander?"

"Yes General," said Bly. "I lost three good men to those wingless birds. May Cameron, Lucky and Flesh find solace in the knowledge they were assisting in the war."

"Now is not the time!" snapped Renamon suddenly, causing Aayla, Cody and Bly to glance at each other in confusion. "Sorry," said Renamon. "Terriermon just remarked that Lucky must not have been all that lucky. He has a tendency to let his mouth run away with him and he'll say something without really thinking about it."

"Fair enough," said Bly.

"Anyway," said Aayla. "Would you mind terribly if I communicated directly with your mate. It'd be quicker and easier than have me speak to him through you."

Renamon smiled wryly. "Are you going to hack into my brain?"

"No," said Aayla. "But I can communicate with my own mind to someone whose presence I can sense. If you are linked as you say you are, I should be able to speak to him directly despite the distance. Under normal conditions, telepathy with non-force users is very difficult, but this should make things simpler."

"Very well," said Renamon. "Go ahead."

Aayla locked eyes with Renamon, which would help to make things easier, and stretched out with her mind. She used it to probe around her until she discovered Renamon's consciousness and she entered it. Instantly she could sense not one but two minds merged together like one. There was also a third mind on the side. Astounding. They were able to go about their business while knowing every move the other made. The third one seemed to be able to shut itself off if it so desired. This one must have been this Lopmon.

Most Jedi found this extremely difficult, and most could only use it to communicate with short sentences consisting of no more than four or five words. But Aayla was a Twi'lek and her two lekku were designed for cognitive purposes, and she was also good friends with two of the most accomplished telepaths ever – Kit Fisto and the Kel Dor Jedi called Plo Koon, and she had received a little training from them both. She began to speak with her mind, staring into Renamon's eyes.

_Hello,_ she said.

_Wazzup,_ said a voice.

_Terriermon,_ came another female one. _Be respectful. Hello Aayla. My name is Lopmon._

_And I'm Terriermon._

_There's hardly any need to introduce myself,_ came the voice of Renamon.

_Nice to talk to you,_ said Aayla. _Pioneers into a new dimension._

_Technically this is third alternate dimension we've ever been in,_ said Terriermon.

_That's not important,_ said Renamon. _Go on, Aayla._

Aayla was amazed at how well they were communicating. Next time she saw Plo or Kit she would ask for a little help in developing her own telepathic abilities even further.

_I believe that you are on a planet called Maridun,_ said Aayla. _It's an isolated world. Few even know about it. But I have been there before._

_Okay,_ said Terriermon. _We know its name now. Is there some kind of life-form that we can understand and won't try to kill us?_

_Yes,_ said Aayla. _The Lurmen. They are creatures who do not like fighting. They live on Maridun to escape the war. They will offer you shelter until we can come._

_Great,_ said Lopmon._ What do they look like?_

_They are small humanoids, they come up to the knee of a human. They are bipedal, furry like a primate and most have a banded black-and-white tail. They also have big golden eyes._

There was a pause. Then Terriermon laughed. Aayla was surprised and almost lost contact, but she had gathered that Terriermon was... a merry sort. But then Lopmon began to giggle slightly too and even Renamon chuckled a little.

_I do not see the joke,_ said Aayla.

_You wouldn't,_ explained Renamon. _In the dimension we call home, there are a species of primates called lemurs that sound extremely similar to these Lurmen._

_Ah,_ said Aayla.

_Sorry,_ snickered Terriermon. _But it is quite funny. Where do they live?_

_I am assuming you have seen the giant trees._

_They're a bit hard to miss,_ said Lopmon.

_They live in hollowed-out pods that fall from those trees and have formed a little village of them. As far as I know there is only one Lurmen village on the entire planet._

_Well, that narrows it down._

_Momentai._

_Hey! Stop using my word, Loppy._

_Sorry. But anyway. We should be able to find it from the air easily if its anywhere near here._

_From the air?_ Asked Aayla, confused.

_Er, you have no idea what we look like do you?_ Asked Terriermon.

_I assume you look like Renamon._

_Er, we look extremely different. For one thing we only come up to _her _knee, plus we are less furry and have ears so big we can use them as wings_, explained Terriermon.

_I told you my species was varied,_ said Renamon. _And trust me when I say that there are no males of my type. All Renamon are female._

_Forgive me,_ said Aayla. _But I wasn't expecting such a drastic size difference._

_We didn't expect it either,_ said Terriermon. _But I bet that if some pervert tied you up with intention to rape you then you might take a liking to the guy who saves you._

_I'd rather I told her that story,_ said Renamon.

_Soz._

_Actually, _said Aayla. _I wouldn't attempt to form a relationship with anyone, saviour or not._

_Really?_ Asked Lopmon, curiously. _Why not?_

_It is against the Jedi Code to form relationships with another. It is forbidden. Relationships cloud our judgement and can lead towards the Dark Side of the Force. We would become like our arch-enemies, the Sith, which are basically Jedi turned bad. The Dark Side provides many new powers, but they are forbidden too._

_Interesting,_ said Renamon. _What is this Code?_

Aayla hesitated, but only for a second. She was sure that she could trust Renamon and her mate and his sister. So she recited _There is no emotion; there is peace._ _There is no ignorance; there is knowledge._ _There is no passion; there is serenity._ _There is no chaos; there is harmony._ _There is no death; there is the Force._

_Sounds spiritual,_ said Terriermon. _Like something Sakuyamon might say._

_Who?_

_Never mind._

_Well, I shall take my leave now,_ said Aayla. _I wish you well, Terriermon, Lopmon. I look forward to our meeting._

_Yeah, me too,_ said Terriermon. _You can finally find out what we look like, although we know what you look like already as we can see through Rena's eyes._

_Rena?_

_It's his pet name for me,_ said Renamon. _And nobody else is allowed to call me that._

_Very well,_ said Aayla. _Goodbye, you two. May The Force be with you._

_I hope so,_ said Terriermon. _We might need it._

_As Henry is not here, I shall say it. Terriermon!_

_Momentai._

Aayla chuckled and withdrew her consciousness. "You are skilled at that," said Renamon.

"Not really," said Aayla. "But you were right in front of me and we had eye contact. It's easier that way."

"Glad to see you finished, General," said Bly. "You've drawn a crowd."

Renamon and Aayla looked around. Most of the clones had surrounded them and were staring at them, particularly Renamon, with curiosity. Aayla smiled and said, "I guess it must have looked strange."

"Tell me about it. You were staring into each other's eyes for a few minutes," said Cody.

"Well, Renamon," said Aayla, turning back to face the fox. "Time for some introductions."

"Oh dear," said Renamon. The identical rows of clones grinned.

* * *

"Anything?" asked Terriermon, half an hour later.

"No," said Lopmon. "Be patient, Terriermon. We searching for one colony on what is effectively an entire planet. They could be anywhere."

"Wouldn't it be just peachy if we had started out close by and had gone the wrong way?" asked Terriermon.

"Oh dear lord, I hope that didn't happen," said Lopmon.

Terriermon looked up at the sun. It seemed to be a lot bigger than it was on Earth. Maridun was obviously a little closer to its star than Earth was to its own. Or perhaps it was just generally bigger. His inner clock told him that it was about midday. And to think that just this morning he had been sleeping in a woodland in Japan. During the course of a few hours he'd crossed a dimensional barrier, been separated from his Tamer who was now who-knows-where, and his mate who was thousands and thousands of miles away on Christophsis, and he was searching for talking lemurs.

His stomach growled. "I hope that these Lurmen have something nice to eat," he said.

"Probably fruit if they're anything like the lemurs back home," said Lopmon. "I don't particularly want to try any fruit that I don't know is safe."

"Well, if it comes to that then I'll eat first," said Terriermon. "If I turned blue or some other colour you'll know not to eat it."

"You will do no such thing," said Lopmon.

"Can't stop me," grinned Terriermon. "Unless they offer us pineapple."

"Yes, well, I tell you what I would like. I'd like some water. There's a nice lake down there," she pointed with one small hand. "We could go down there and have a drink."

"What happened to the days you could buy lemonade from the nearest supermarket," muttered Terriermon as the two of them banked and began to dive, circling towards the ground some distance below. About a minute later they landed beside the water.

"You go ahead and drink," said Terriermon.

"Aren't you thirsty?" asked Lopmon.

"Look, I watch a lot of TV. Waterholes attract wildlife and they're good places for ambushes. I'll watch out for potential dangers while you drink. Then we'll swap."

"Okay," said Lopmon, deciding to trust her brother's judgement. She bent down over the water and, using one ear as a ladle, scooped a bunch of it and began to drink out of it. Terriermon scanned the surrounding grasses, wishing he could see over the top of them and spot any approached threats. But so far, he could see nothing.

When Lopmon had quenched her thirst, she stood up and took Terriermon's place while had a go at the water. The silence unnerved her slightly. Without Suzie she couldn't digivolve and she really didn't want to go up against a Mastiff Phalone if she could help it.

Fortunately, no Mastiff Phalone sprang at her from the surrounding grasses at her.

But something did.

Something only a little bigger than herself leapt at her from the grasses off to her right. With a yelp, Lopmon rolled aside and the creatures fanged jaws closed a few inches from one ear. Terriermon instantly started up from the water as more began to emerge. They were furry creatures with kangaroo-like legs and arms, a long rat-like tail and a head with enormous jaws, full of sharp teeth. Their fur colour ranged from sandy to brown to black. There were at least ten of them.

Lopmon scrabbled backwards as the creature leapt again, bearing down on her. But a hefty thwack to the side of the face by Terriermon's ear, balled like a fist, knocked it askew and sent it rolling.

"You want a fight?" shouted Terriermon. "Should have picked a better target, you weirdoes! **BUNNY BLAST!"**

A series of green energy pellets streamed from his mouth and pelted the large, rat-like things. They instantly scattered under the barrage. Lopmon heard a rustling a saw nine more emerge from the grass behind them. She whirled about and added her own attack. **"BLAZING ICE!"**

The two bunnies stood, back to back, as they pounded at the attacking creatures with a ferocity that they didn't look capable of producing. The creatures didn't seem to be able to gain any ground on them and when one made a dash for them it was beaten back by shards of flying ice or energy.

Some were knocked into the water. Others turned and fled when they saw how badly they were being beaten, not wanting to risk serious injury. The two bunnies circled each other, facing outwards in order to repel attacks from all directions. They kept up a relentless stream, never halting for even a second.

Then one of the creature sprang high from out of the grass, falling to drop directly down on them. Lopmon spotted it out of the corner of her eye and quickly thrust her ear backwards into her brother's shoulder, pushing him forwards and out of the way as the creature landed between them. It's huge mouth, that looked out of proportion with its head, snapped down and bit into the outstretched ear.

Lopmon shrieked in pain. It felt like bile was riding inside her. She was not normally a violent Digimon, but she was angry now. She whirled about and brought her little fist smashing into the yellow, horizontal eye of the creature. With a yelp, it released her ear and Lopmon brought home her attack, thrusting forward with her other ear and grabbing the creature about the head. She span about, dragging it into the air, before smashing it head-first into the ground. It tried to scrabble up but Lopmon angrily kicked it in the stomach causing it to keel over and then she spun again and clouted it in the face with the fist of her injured ear. It was sent flying back into the grasses, thoroughly beaten.

But there were more advancing on her. She lifted her wounded ear and glanced at the injury. She grimaced. The teeth had sunk deeply into it and she could see digital blood seeping from the marks. She glared at the oncoming creatures.

"Take five, Loppy," Terriermon leapt straight over her head. "My turn! **TERRIER TORNADO!"**

Terriermon span round and round in a circle until he was a mere blur of motion and shot forwards in a miniature whirlwind. He ploughed into the startled creatures and knocked them falling like skittles or flying like pinballs. A couple attempted to jump on him, only to be thrown backwards by the attack. Terriermon stopped spinning and leapt, not even slightly dizzy. He kicked one of the creatures in the face and span to punch another in the neck. Then he grabbed it by the tail and hauled, swinging it around into the first with a strength that belied his little form and sent them both tumbling into the water.

Terriermon looked over his shoulder at a sudden thudding noise to see that Lopmon had tackled another that had been creeping up on him. The two of them went tumbling. Terriermon leapt for them and the two wrestled with the creature. Terriermon wrapped his ears around its torso and bodily lifted the struggling thing into the air, then Lopmon kicked it squarely in the chin, knocking it out.

"These things are relentless," said Lopmon as a few more advanced hungrily. "I'll give them that. But I think we need to hammer the message home a little more. **LOP TWISTER!"**

She hurled herself forwards and span just as Terriermon had. She careened through the creatures, which dispersed rapidly, but she still managed to hit a good five of them.

Terriermon ran to her and they stood side-by-side as what remained of the attacking creatures stepped slowly and menacingly, but a lot more cautiously now, towards them. The two backed away until they were standing in the shallows of the lake staring at the semi-circle of hissing animals.

"Perhaps we should just leave," said Terriermon.

"I don't think I can," said Lopmon, holding up her mangled ear. "I'm not going to be able to fly with this for a couple of hours."

"Damn," said Terriermon. "We'll have to make a run for it then."

"Hey! Over here!"

Distracted, the bunny siblings looked over to one of the nearby massive tree. Sitting on one of the lower branches, which was still very high up, was a black and white creature, standing on its hind legs and garbed in a green tunic, with a banded tail and black-and-white face that looked extremely similar to a ring-tailed lemur.

"Oh, _now_ he shows up," muttered Terriermon.

The creature, which was obviously a Lurmen, waved frantically. In his hand was a length of vine, which he tied to the branch he was standing on and let it fall down, to form a climbing rope.

"He's helping us," grinned Lopmon. "We need to make a break for that tree."

"Got it," said Terriermon. Then he said, "You know, we've never done our special move standing in water before."

Lopmon looked down at the water pooling around her legs and smiled. She extended her uninjured ear to Terriermon, who took it in one of his own. Then the two of them roared two words at the creatures creeping towards them.

"**TWIN CYCLONE!"**

They span, round and round each other, until the two of them merged to become a bigger blur than either could have managed on their own, flashing brown and white. The water around them churned and was whipped upwards to surround the spinning duo until they formed a miniature typhoon. Then they shot forwards at the startled creatures, bringing a good portion of the lake with them. They smashed their attackers full-force with the strength of a Champion Digimon, several of them getting caught in the whirlwind of water and shot skywards. Then the two came to a halt and the water fell to the ground and washed in all directions, pushing those that had avoided the attack away as they were caught in the flow.

"Go!" shouted Terriermon. Lopmon ran for the tree, her brother right behind her. The creatures were bewildered and confused, milling about and bumping into one another. But then they seemed to gather their wits and they gave chase. But by that time the bunnies were almost all the way there. Terriermon took off and flapped to the sky and joined the Lurmen on the branch.

Lopmon grabbed the end of the vine and began to haul herself up it. On the branch, Terriermon and the Lurmen grabbed the other end and began to pull, increasing the speed of Lopmon's assent. By the time the creatures reached the tree she was already half way up. They leapt up in futile attempt to grab her, but they didn't even come close.

Terriermon grabbed his sister with one ear when she came within reach and hauled her onto the branch. The two of them sat down, breathing hard. The Lurmen pulled up the rest of the vine and coiled it up before addressing them. It was definitely a male.

"That was really something," he said. "I've never seen anyone fight off a bunch of Fwits like that."

"Fwits?" asked Terriermon.

"Yeah," said the Lurmen. "Native carnivore that we've had a bit of trouble with at times. Fortunately they aren't very intelligent or there'd be none of them. That, and most of them have been domesticated by the Amani who also live on this planet."

"Domesticated?" asked Lopmon. "The owners must really be mean if they can tame them."

"They are," said the Lurmen. "They attacked us when we first arrived in our ship. We had to use an escape pod to get away, and we made our colony far away from them. But who are you? I've never seen anything like you on this planet before, or on our old planet, Mygeeto."

"You're the first sentient being to _ever_ see anything like us," said Terriermon. "I mean, Aayla was the first to see a Digimon, but that was Renamon, not us."

"Aayla?" asked the Lurmen. "Aayla Secura? The Jedi?"

"Yeah," said Lopmon. "You know her?"

"She helped to save our village from the Separatists once, along with Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano, and the two clones Rex and Bly. They were going to test a new weapon that would destroy organic matter on us. My name is Tub. What's yours?"

"I'm Terriermon."

"And I'm Lopmon. It's nice to meet you."

"You two," said Tub. "But you're injured," he leaned closer to inspect the bite-marks on Lopmon's ears.

"It's nothing," Lopmon gritted her teeth. "It'll have healed within a day or two."

"Thanks, Loppy," said Terriermon. "You saved me from serious injury and probably death. That thing could have taken my head off."

"You're welcome. Our training with Renamon certainly paid off."

_Thank you._

_Oh hello. I'm guessing you saw the whole thing._

_Yes, but I didn't say anything for fear of distracting you. Very well done to the both of you though._

_Cheers._

"Well, we won't be able to get back to the village for a while," Tub looked down over the branch. The Fwits were prowling around it, staring up them. "They aren't very intelligent but they'll stay down there for hours before they finally give up. We could try and get you some treatment for that wound, though."

"It's fine, really," lied Lopmon. It was extremely painful.

"You can't fool me," said Terriermon. "I happen to know your ear is one of the most sensitive parts of your body, because we have exactly the same type of ear. What can you do for her, Tub?"

"I'm no healer," said Tub. "But I know someone who is. I can get him to come over here and he can help you out."

"How?" asked Terriermon.

Tub held out one hand. Moments later, a small butterfly with a long streamer-like tail that split into two like that of a swallow landed on it. It was also very big, the size of a human hand and had only two legs which it balanced on instead of six like most insects.

"Well that throws classification out of the window," said Terriermon.

"This is Quazqat," said Tub. "He's a Carrier Butterfly. He can go back to the village and get some help. Tell the others that I'm stranded with two strangers and surrounded by Fwits. One of the strangers is injured. Get Wag Too to come over here and help her."

The butterfly chirped and took off, flying away.

"How are they going to get up here when the Fwits are surrounding us?" asked Terriermon.

"That was where I was hoping you would come in," said Tub. "In the meantime, tell me a bit about yourselves."

* * *

Wag Too was the Lurmen healer and son to the chief of the Lurmen village, Tee Watt Kaa. He had assisted the Jedi and the Clones in the fighting against the droids when they had invaded, despite his father's wishes that they remained out of it. It had been an amazing fight, especially since an entire battalion of droids had attacked and nobody had died.

Wag Too was currently helping some of the other Lermun with carrying baskets full of fruit and stacking them in piles around the village ready to be eaten whenever somebody felt like it, when he spotted Tub's Carrier Butterfly, Quazqat, descend towards him. Wag Too frowned. Tub didn't usually send his pet on errands unless it was something important.

Wag Too waved to another nearby Lurmen, who ran over and took his place on the basket as Wag Too allowed Quazqat to land on his finger. "What is it?" he asked. "Has Tub got himself into trouble again?"

The butterfly seemed to chuckle, before repeating Tub's message to him. Wag Too's eyes widened and he immediately ran over to his father, a shorter Lurmen with an extremely large, white beard.

"Father," he said. "I just got a message from Tub. He's got some injured stranger with him and he's trapped in a tree by a bunch of Fwits. I need to go and help him."

"Strangers?" asked Tee Watt Kaa. "Remember what happened the last time we had strangers come to this village. We ended up breaking our own beliefs. I hope that these strangers aren't the beginning of trouble like last time."

"Father, those strangers helped us," reminded Wag Too. "And one of these one has been severely bitten by a Fwit. It's my duty to go out and help them."

Tee Watt Kaa sighed. "I know, son. I know. Be careful and do what you must. I suppose I'm still a little crabby. After all, we've enjoyed peace ever since they left and we would have been dead with them. Go on, but try and be back soon."

"Thank you, father," nodded the taller Lermun. He dashed into his infirmary and pulled out a bunch of cloths. He soaked them in oil from the infirmary itself, which was made of a hollowed out pods from a tree just like every other building there, and then he went back outside. With the cloths under one arm, he leapt forwards and curled into a ball, before rolling like a droideka, following the lead of the butterfly as it lead him back.

After about half an hour, Wag Too was approaching the tree. He unrolled and got to his feet, looking up at Tub and the two strangers, which were about the same size as his father. Quazqat flew back up to them. When it reached its master, Tub looked around and spotted Wag Too waving to him.

"Okay, there his is," said Tub. "Whenever you're ready."

"I've been ready," grinned Terriermon, before launching himself into the air. He flapped a couple of times and soared downwards, past the Fwits and to the startled and amazed Wag Too.

"Grab on!" he called, extending his little hands. Wag Too got the message and leapt upwards, grabbing a hold. Terriermon grunted under the extra weight but he managed to lift himself and the Lermun healer off the ground relatively easily – he didn't weigh very much. He swooped back to the branch and released Wag Too just above the branch, so he landed squarely on it. Then he turned and landed back on it himself.

"This is Wag Too, the future leader of our colony," introduced Tub. "And these are Terriermon and Lopmon, two Digimon. Lopmon got bitten on the ear by one of the Fwits."

"No worries, then," said Wag Too, approaching Lopmon. "This'll fix you up like fuel to an engine."

He began to wrap the oil-soaked cloth around the injury. Behind him, Tub said, "You are not going to believe these guys' story, Wag Too."

* * *

Tub is not an OC Lurmen. He is in The Clone Wars Season 1 Episode 14 – "Defenders of Peace." You see him telling his butterfly to warn the village of the approaching Separatists. Quazqat is a name I made up for this butterfly. Thanks to my reviewers.

The giant beasts at the beginning are called Corinathoths.

* * *

Next time...

Yep, you guessed it. What happens to the three humans will be discussed in the next chapter. Do they get into trouble as well?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 6 : Planet of the Twi'leks**


	6. Planet of the Twi'leks

Tamer-mania. Whoopdedoo.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327**th**

**Chapter 6:- Planet of the Twi'leks**

* * *

The absence of Renamon's comforting presence assailed Rika the moment she opened her eyes. It felt like a blanket had surrounded her brain, cutting off all signals from the outside. It had been some time since Rika had been unable to feel her partner, and that was during the whole incident with Goro. Since then, Renamon had barely left her side – at least when she was awake. Rika suddenly felt vulnerable and extremely lonely.

When her eyelids retreated backwards and she saw where she was, it took her a moment to remember everything that had happened. The whole incident with Parallelmon had never existed for a few seconds. She was lying on some sandy landscape, surrounded by massive boulders and ragged cliff-sides. This was most definitely not a place she'd ever been to before. She'd barely ever left Japan, except for a holiday to Australia when she'd been much younger. Her father had been around then.

She pushed herself upwards on her hands and sat down, brushing the dirt off her shirt with one hand and rubbing her head with another. With a start she realised that her headband had come undone and her hair was down. She gasped, but then relaxed when she spotted it lying beside her. She quickly picked it up and re-secured her hair in its usual spiky position.

Then she began to look around and pay a little more attention to her surroundings. The first thing she noticed was that she was, in fact, not alone at all. Henry and Suzie were also there, lying off to her right. Henry, even in unconsciousness, had a protective arm wrapped around his little sister and she appeared to have been protected from most of the damage, although she was still out-cold. Rika noticed there were skid-marks in the sand from where they had slid after impact. A few more metres and they would have smacked into the base of a cliff. That would have been extremely painful.

Rika quickly ran over to the both of her companions and began to shake Henry gently but firmly on his shoulder. "Henry," she hissed, as if afraid of raising her voice too loudly. "Henry, come on. Get up. Please get up."

Henry mumbled something incoherent but otherwise did not stir. At least he was alive, despite taking the brunt of a vicious landing. "Henry," tried Rika again. "Get up!"

"Mm, wha-?" asked Henry, his eyes opening fractionally. He winced and gritted his teeth as he sat up slightly. "Ow," he moaned. "My back hurts."

Rika sighed with relief and pulled Henry into a fierce hug. "OW! OW! OW!" Henry protested loudly. Rika quickly released him, a look of concern across her face.

"Sorry," he said quickly. "I'm just so relieved. What happened to you?"

"I don't know," said Henry. "But can you take a look at my back. I'm not sure I'm going to like what you find."

"You?" asked Rika. "What about me? This is an absolute disaster."

But she moved to take a look at the painful area while Henry began to shake his sister. "Suzie, time to get up."

"Five more minutes, Lopmon," groaned Suzie, rubbing her eyes with a sandy hand. Henry continued to shake her, and Rika had got behind Henry. She did not want to look at his back the moment she saw the back of his shirt, because a large portion of his below the right shoulder was stained red. She bit her lip and slowly lifted up the shirt. Henry's back greeted her, unmarred until the top. Henry gasped and bit his tongue as he felt an intense pain, the wind was passing over his shoulder.

"Oh God," groaned Rika. "You were right, Henry. I don't think you want to know. You've got a massive bloody, scabby area on your back."

"Yeah, I figured it was something like that," Henry said quietly, trying to stop himself from crying out in pain. "How's it look?"

"Revolting."

"Oh. Good to know. I mean does it loom infected?"

"I don't know," Rika was suddenly on the edge of panic. "I'm not an expert on this sort of thing. It just looks like a mangled mess to me."

"Alright, sorry," said Henry. "Let's try something else, is it dirty."

"Well, it's full of sand," said Rika. "Just like everything else here."

"Brilliant," muttered Henry sarcastically. "I need to rinse that out as soon as possible."

"How?" asked Rika. "We're in a frigging desert, and there's nothing nearby except that mountain range. How are we going to find any water?"

"I don't know," said Henry. "But we have to try and stay alive, and as far as I can tell water is a top priority for all of us. Suzie, get up."

Suzie opened her eyes properly at last. "Where are we?" she asked, taking in the sand. "The beach?"

"I wish," said Rika. "That'd be a lot better than this godforsaken place."

"Then, where are we?" the little girl repeated.

"We don't know Suzie," said Henry. He hesitated for a second, wondering whether he should go on and explain the full seriousness of the situation to her. But, he reasoned with himself, there was no point in giving her a false hope. She'd have to find out eventually. "But we know we're not on Earth anymore. Or at least not our Earth. We're stranded in an alternate dimension, thanks to Parallelmon."

"Stranded?" asked Suzie. "You mean, we're stuck? We can't get home?"

Henry sighed. "I'm sorry, Suzie. But I don't know. I wouldn't get your hopes up though."

Tears began to well up in Suzie's eyes. Henry hoped he'd done the right thing. No girl Suzie's age should have to go through this, even though she was now nine and considered herself to be older than she was.

"Where's Lopmon?" she asked. "And Terriermon? And Renamon?"

"We don't know, Suzie," said Rika, pulling at the bottom of her shirt.

"But..." Suzie was desperately trying to find a way of making this situation seem a little better. "She told me she'd always protect me. They'll find us, right? They'll come for us?"

"Well, we know they'll try," said Henry. "But they may be some way away. Right now, we have to stick together, Suzie. I'm going to need you to be brave, okay? We don't know where we are, or what live here, if anything. If we ever want to see the Digimon again, then we have to survive. We need to see if we can find some water."

Suzie nodded. "But... are we going to see Mum and Dad again? And Jaarin and Rinchei? And all our friends? We're never going to see them again, are we?"

"I don't know," said Henry. After a brief pause he pounded the sand with his fist. "I don't know anything. Aargh, I feel so useless."

"Henry," said Rika, still pulling the fabric on the base of her shirt. "As your partner would say, Momentai. We'll get through this, okay. We'll look out for each other. And that starts with this."

She had pulled at her shirt enough to put a tear in it. With a grunt she yanked at it and the tear grew. She slowly and carefully pulled off the whole area around her midsection, until her belly and back was exposed and she had a long strip of white cloth in her hand.

"What are you doing?" asked Suzie, curiously.

"Henry needs a bandage," said Rika. "And this is the only one I can think of."

"A bandage?" Suzie turned to her brother. "You're hurt?"

"It's not that bad," lied Henry.

"Rubbish," said Rika. "Come here. Let me do this."

"Owowowowow," complained Henry as Rika carefully wrapped the strip from her shirt around his chest, carefully enclosing the ugly, gaping mess that had once been his skin. Henry tried to put on a brave face in front of his sister, but it was extremely difficult. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw, next to skid-mark he had left, that a large boulder jutted into it. He must have scraped his back against that as he had slid past.

"There we go," said Rika. "I hope that will be enough. Any more than that and we might start getting embarrassing."

Henry smiled half-heartedly. Suzie didn't. Tears were running down her little face – the only water that they could see in this arid, rocky landscape.

"Suzie," said Henry. "I don't mean to be hard on you, but you need to be strong. There will be time for grief later, but right now we need to find a safe place to rest."

"But... Mum and Dad..."

"Suzie," Henry said sternly. "If there is any chance of us seeing them again, however small it is, you need to be alive to do it. Come on, we need to go."

"Okay," sniffed Suzie, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and using the same hand to take Henry's. Henry slowly got to his feet, wincing in pain, and Rika climbed up from where she'd been on her knees.

"Which direction?" asked Rika. "Which way should we go?"

"I don't think going deeper into the desert's a good idea," said Henry. "If there's any water nearby it'll probably be in the mountains. There might be a lake or something nearby. Let's go."

They set off in the direction that Henry had indicated, walking along the side of the cliffs that they had come across and hoping against hope that they might find somewhere where they might be able to scale the heights, or at least find some way of getting amongst them.

"Suzie had a point though," said Rika to Henry quietly. "My mother and my grandmother will probably be wondering where I am right now."

"I know," said Henry. "But we really can't think like that. I know they'll be searching for us right now, but I hope that they _don't_ find Parallelmon. That could end up with one of them being transported to a different dimension to this, or even worse had one of the Tamers ingested."

"Don't remind me," shuddered Rika. "Just the thought makes me queasy. And not much does make me queasy."

"Yeah, I know," said Henry. "But let's just try to focus on food and water. Shame all our supplies got destroyed in the tent back home."

"That's a point," said Rika. "Even if we find water, how are we going to boil it? We could catch some disease that we've never come across. We may not be immune to the diseases of this world."

"One problem after another," said Henry. "Let's try not to overanalyse out current situation. It won't be encouraging."

"Alright," said Rika, before lapsing into silence. Henry glanced across at her, then down at his sister. This was all his fault. He should have stopped them from going on the camping trip in the first place, then none of this would ever have happened. They would still be at home, a little disappointed at not getting out into the countryside, but they'd be with their partners and their families.

But he remembered what Rika had said to him in the woods. There was no way he could have known that this would happen. That was the thing with enemy Digimon – they were so varied it was practically impossible to predict, well, anything.

He'd try not to blame himself too much.

* * *

"My feet hurt," said Suzie about an hour and a half later.

"I know," sighed Henry. "You said. But we have to keep going."

"I know," said Suzie. "You said. But my feet still hurt."

"I'd offer to carry you," said Henry. "But that wouldn't do my back any good."

They had been extremely excited about an hour ago, when they had rounded the corner and had discovered that the desert gave way to some type of woodland. There might be a stream nearby – something had to nourish all the trees.

Didn't it?

An hour later and they had still found nothing, trekking without any real direction through the endless trees, which all seemed to look exactly the same, at least to them, tall, thin, with spiky, brittle leaves at the top.

"Do you think there is any water on this whole planet," gasped Rika. All three of them were extremely thirsty now. The sun was blazing down on them, and while they were sheltered partly by the trees, that shelter was not particularly adequate for staying cool.

"Somewhere," said Henry. "There must be some surely. Water's essential for life."

"But we're in a different universe, Henry," said Rika. "The rules here might not be the same as the rules back at home. Whatever this planet it we've yet to see any life forms besides these trees at all, not even a bird or an insect."

"Oh yeah?" asked Suzie. "Then what's that?"

She pointed upwards. Rika and Henry glanced upwards and stared in amazement. "That's impossible!" cried Henry. "Insects can't grow that big."

"What did I say?" asked Rika, as a truly massive, three-metre dragonfly shot overhead, six legs tucked beneath its body, massive green eyes, four independently flapping wings and a long tail, just like a smaller dragonfly back home.

"Have we shrunk?" asked Suzie, watching the dragonfly with amazement.

"It could be a Digimon," suggested Henry.

"No," said Rika, who had thought the same thing and pulled out her D-Arc. "It's not registering anything. I don't think it is."

Henry smiled. "Well, at least something besides plants lived on this planet."

"What's that?" asked Suzie again, pointing in the direction the dragonfly had taken. Henry and Rika looked in the direction she was pointing. At first they saw nothing, but then when they squinted and looked hard they could vaguely make out something in the distance.

"Is that a wall?" asked Rika.

"Yes," said Henry, excitedly. "It is. That must mean civilisation. Let's go that way?"

"What if they're unfriendly?" asked Rika.

"It's worth a try isn't it?" pointed out Henry, and the three began to head towards the wall.

They reached it twenty minutes later. It was a massive stone structure that spanned a canyon running through the mountains. There were two towers on either side of it, like defensive structures, something Henry had seen that people might be able to stand and defend themselves against enemy attack.

There didn't appear to be anyway over it. There was no gate, no door, no nothing. No visible one anyway.

"Well, I suppose we should knock," said Rika wryly.

"I think calling would be a better idea," said Henry, walking up to the base of the structure. "Hello!" he shouted over it. "Is there anyone there? Hello!"

There was silence. Henry tried again. This time, there was a reply, in the form of another voice shouting over the wall. Henry frowned as he listened to the reply:-

"Raffo non suul? Poli si suulan hernig?"

(A/N: I just made that up. See translations at the end if you want)

"Um," said Henry. "Anyone else have no idea what that guy just said?"

"Yeah," said Suzie.

"Yep," nodded Rika.

"Er," Henry faltered before trying again. "We're lost! We don't know where we are! Please, can we come in? We need shelter! My name is Henry Wong and these are Rika Nonaka and my sister Suzie."

"We come in peace!" called Rika. Suzie giggled and held up the "Live Long and Prosper" Vulcan hand-sign. Rika smiled at her.

There was a slight pause. Perhaps whoever or whatever was on the other side was considering whether or not to let them in. Then something was thrown over the wall, accompanied by a shout:- "Suul gif klinf re doon."

Whatever that meant was lost on the three Tamers, but what had been tossed over the wall descended rapidly before coming to a halt right before them. It was a rope ladder. Henry regarded it with a worried expression.

"I don't know if I want Suzie to climb up that," he frowned.

"Look at it this way," said Rika. "Either she climbs up there and we all get inside, or we all starve to death or die of thirst out here."

"Good point," said Henry. "Alright, Suzie, you go first."

"Me?" asked Suzie. "Why me?"

"Because if you fall, I want someone below you so they can catch you," said Henry. "It would make me feel better. Rika, you go after Suzie. I don't know if I'll be able to catch anything with this shoulder."

"Got it," said Rika, kneeling beside Suzie. "Come on, Suzie, up you go."

"Okay," Suzie looked terrified. She didn't normally have a problem with heights – riding on Antylamon's head had made that unnecessary. But this ladder did not look particularly stable, unlike her partner, who was tough as this wall. Carefully she took hold of the rungs and began to climb slowly upwards. The ladder was less wild and wayward as she had expected, possibly because it was leaning against something.

Rika instantly got on the ladder straight behind the little girl. She climbed closely behind her. She was a lot more sure-footed than Suzie – this was a cakewalk compared to descending the cliffs she had done in the Digital World. Occasionally when Suzie faltered she'd reach up and give her a gentle and encouraging push.

Henry followed on after that, ignoring the pain in his shoulder as much as possible. The three of them slowly but surely ascended up the wall. Suzie froze at one point about three-quarters of the way up, but after a full minute of encouragements on the part of the others she eventually kept going. She reached an arm over the top of the wall, trying to find another hold, when she felt another hand close about hers. It was a gentle hand, not a wild unfriendly grab. With the support of the stranger she clambered over the wall.

She looked up at her helper and gasped. He was most definitely not human. He was completely blue, and had two tails dangling from the back of his head. He was dressed in some kind of brown tunic, with wristbands and baggy trousers. His face was kind-looking though. There didn't appear to be any ill-will there.

"Eyan tyronusoo?" the man, if you could call him a man, seemed surprised, as Rika scaled the wall and also began to look at him with wonder. "Kugon hew suul gredet we Gutkurr?"

Rika and Suzie glanced at each other, not having understood any of that. Looking around them, they could see this side of the wall was easily climbable considering it had stairs. There were lots of these strange beings all around them and they came in many different colours:- green, blue and brown seemed to be most common, with the occasional red and pink.

As Henry's head appeared, the being helped him over the wall, and then spotted his back. "Suulan polafi."

"Sorry," said Henry. "But we don't understand you."

"Ju gif gur suul rewena hef koil," said the man. "Watchanel."

He turned away from them and signalled with one hand to come with him. "I guess he wants us to follow him," said Rika.

"Well, we're guests here," said Henry. "I guess we should do so."

"You reckon there's anyone here who speaks our language?" asked Suzie.

"I really doubt it," said Henry. "It'd be a remarkable coincidence if these people in another universe could understand us."

The three of them followed the male tail-headed being. The others of his kind turned to watch as they went past. It was fairly obvious which ones were male and female. Apart from obvious anatomy, the female head-tails seemed to start further up their heads than the males, whose heads were domed. Most of the females were also wearing head-dresses. None of these beings had any discernable ears beyond two pointed projections on either side of their heads.

The area itself seemed to be a city of some kind, built among a series of canyons that branched off in many places. There were numerous bridges of stone spanning the canyons and the buildings themselves were carved into the rock. They seemed rather primitive, nothing like the apartment buildings and houses that they were used to.

"Where's he taking us?" asked Suzie.

"I don't know," said Henry. "Let's wait and find out."

"Ikut!"

There was a cry from amongst the crowd of people. The one leading them turned to see two little ones, two little girls that looked about Suzie's age. One was a teal colour and the other was slightly more green. The man bent down and pulled the first one into a hug. The other little one looked on.

"Kugon non suul?" asked the little teal one.

"Ju tyg drews, Numa," said the man. "Ger top ulner herf polafi freneb."

The little one seemed to notice the Tamers for the first time. "Freneb?" she asked excitedly.

"Ka," said the man.

The two little girls ran up to Suzie. "Yami," said the green one. "Acer hunib si Lubo."

"Acer hunib si Numa," said the teal one. "Poli si suulans?"

Suzie blinked, unsure what to do. She turned to Henry for support. "I think they're introducing themselves," said Henry. "I think those were their names:- Lubo and Numa."

"Great," said Rika. "We're getting somewhere. Go on, Suzie. Introduce yourself."

"My name is Suzie," said the little girl.

"Suzie?" asked the teal one, Numa.

"Yeah."

"Ka?"

"Numa," said the man. "Top non herfo ji gur rewena hef cu violer."

"Turee," said Numa. "Gif top koomey?"

"Ka," said the man. "Ger hyenad."

"Turee," said the girl again.

"Watchanel," said the man and he started off and the two girls followed him, as did the three, baffled by the conversation and usure of what was really going on. The man led them to a building and walked inside.

The others followed him in. A female tail-headed being, white, looked up from where she had been working on something that resembled food, put appeared to be made of tentacles of some kind.

"Yami, Nilim," said the female. "Kugon non suul?"

"Ju tyg drews, Tronda," said the man. "Ger gif suul bernan o hool ren yooba frenebes polaf? Asp bol si polafi."

"Turee," said the female. She wiped her hands on a towel and approached Henry. Henry wanted to back away, but he didn't, despite his confusion as to what was going on. The white female walked around him and pulled his shirt up, beginning to examine the bandage that Rika had tied in place.

"Oh, I get it," said Rika. "They're trying to help us."

"Good," said Henry. "For a minute there I was worried."

"Derfio," said the woman. "Ger frillonsi." She removed the bandage, exposing the wound and hissed through her teeth. "Sooba reyb queel."

She moved back over and began to run a cloth under some water, before dabbing at Henry's back with it. He bit his tongue and refrained from making any painful noise bar a grunt. Meanwhile, Suzie was deep in conversation, if you could call it a conversation, with Numa and Lubo.

"No, I am a human," said Suzie. "What are you?"

"Jigook?" Numa looked puzzled.

"You're a Jigook?" asked Suzie.

"I don't think that's what she's saying," said Rika.

"Poli non top herfo ji yers kerlam oom," said the female. "Hyfan non ool drensil."

"Ooh," said Numa, raising her hand. "Gif ool dren kerlam pon? Zonbi! Zonbi!"

"Goh suulan wernot moe nan," chuckled the man.

"Arni," said Numa, running to hug the man being's leg. He chuckled again.

* * *

The female cleaned out Henry's wound and redressed it. At least it was no longer bleeding now. After she, the male and little Lubo waved goodbye, Numa led them out of the house, leading Suzie by the hand and they began to weave through the streets again.

"Well, at least the native's are friendly," said Rika.

"Yeah," said Henry. "I was convinced, half-way up that ladder that we were going to be in serious trouble when we got up there. But I guess that was just me being paranoid."

"Too right," said Rika. "I like this little girl though. Numa. She reminds be a lot of you, Suzie."

"Is that a good thing?" asked Suzie.

"Yeah. She's energetic, enthusiastic and friendly."

Numa led them into another house some way down the street. It wasn't really a proper house. It was more of a hut. They gathered that these people were not particularly rich but they were certainly very hospitable.

A male tail-head turned as they entered the house. "Numa," he greeted the child. Presumably this was Numa's father. "Raffo non lobo peeloo?"

"Juon si Suzie," Numa pointed at Suzie. "Hed Rika, hed Henry. Gif ool dren kerlam pon? Ool non frenebes ji Nabat. Zonbi!" Numa put on large puppy-dog eyes to her father.

Numa's father chuckled and nodded. "Kah'lehalle so fendoon."

Numa hugged him and pulled Suzie towards a stone table in the centre of the small abode. Henry walked up to Numa's father. He guessed they were allowing them to stay here, at least for now. "Thank you."

"Basic?" asked the man. Henry blinked. Was that a word of English. But then the man said, "Ju gifne enoon Basic. Poa. Numa," he turned to his daughter. Numa looked up as the man held up a small pink... doll-thing. It was like a small pink lizard crossed with one of these people. "Ju locan suulan Tooka fo cu deego. Gine sam re don?"

Numa's answer to this question was very long-winded, but she was very insistent on something called a "lifo retin." Her father was very stern with her, or so it seemed, and she nodded reluctantly.

* * *

The evening that followed was as pleasurable as one could really be, considering they were stranded in an alternate universe with no way back, their partners unaccounted for and them not being able to understand anything that these beings said. They didn't even know what they were. Numa's mother, a brown-skinned being returned a little after they were there, laden with what appeared to be shopping. She greeted the three new children with a smile, before laying outsome of what she had just bought for the table.

When Henry enquired what the meat was, after a couple of minutes of making himself understood, Numa's mother simply said "Gutkurr." This wasn't particularly helpful, but the three of them ate it anyway, and gratefully drank their water. The meat tasted a little bit like beef and they wondered if these Gutkurr were indeed some kind of cattle.

Numa gibbered the evening away, trying to converse with Suzie mostly, but the others as well. They gathered a few words of their native language – Ka meant Yes, Koa meant no and after much deliberation, they finally learnt what these species were – Twi'leks.

Eventually, Numa's father glanced up at the sun. It was still high-up but he turned to Numa and said, "Cloonk der matsi."

"Aaw," moaned Numa. "Ger jum nif hausten."

"Numa," said her mother. "Matsi. Oar suul trep."

Numa pouted, but her mother guided her to a small place on the floor where there was a blanket and a rock. Numa lay down, using the rock as a pillow, as her mother covered her with the blanket.

"She's going to bed already?" said Suzie, frowning. "But it's still daytime."

"Perhaps the days in this place are longer," suggested Henry. "Or perhaps the sun doesn't go down at all."

"The D-Arc says that back home its nine o'clock in the evening," said Rika.

"Really?" asked Henry. "How long were we out?"

Rika shrugged. "But if it's that late, I think it might be a good idea for us to turn in as well. We can try and see if we can find our partners tomorrow. They've gotta be somewhere around here."

"But I don't want to go to bed," protested Suzie.

"Suzie," interrupted Henry. "Remember how Mum always says going to bed earlier will keep up your strength."

"Yeah."

"Well, that is more important than ever now. We need all the strength we can get."

Suzie lowered her eyes, and said, "Okay."

The mother Twi'lek was watching them. Henry walked over to her and indicated Suzie, then Numa, trying to get her to understand. Fortunately, she seemed to understand and agree, and she opened a stone cupboard and pulled out another blanket and she moved it over to another rock. Suzie crawled under the blanket and the Twi'lek female even stroked her head, as if she were her own child.

"Goodnight, Henry," said Suzie.

"Goodnight," said Henry. "Well, good day."

Suzie smiled and shut her eyes, trying to drift off. Numa's father touched Henry's uninjured shoulder and indicated another area, where he and Numa's mother slept. Henry shook his head and said, "No, we'll sleep somewhere else."

Numa's father almost seemed to shrug and turned away. Henry went and sat beside the wall, leaning gingerly against so as not to move the dressing around him. Rika went and joined him, resting her head on his shoulder.

"Well, we survived the first day," she said.

"Yeah," said Henry. "And we'll survive many days to come. You wait and see."

An hour later, Rika, Henry and Suzie were all asleep. Numa's mother and father had also retired to their little section and gone to sleep as well.

But Numa's eyes were still open.

* * *

Suzie was shaken awake by little teal hands. "Suzie," whispered the voice of Numa. "Retin. Retin. Fo cu deego. Shenab!"

"What?" muttered Suzie sleepily, lifting her head. Numa padded over to the place where her bed had been. She'd moved the rock aside silently and there was now a gaping hole in the floor. Numa had lifted up a square panel and was pointing down into it.

"Retin. Lido retin," she whispered loud as she dared. Suzie, awake now, curiously got up and crept over to Numa, trying not to wake up Henry, Rika or the adult Twi'leks. Numa pointed down into the hole and Suzie peered down into it. She didn't want to get too close to the edge but she looked down in it all the same.

There was some kind of light down there. As the two little girls watched, a light, like a steady torch-beam, moved slowly across the hole below. There was obviously some kind of tunnel down there and something was down there.

Suzie's heart was pounding, but Numa looked excited. She'd not seen the horrors that Suzie had and had no cause to be suspicious. "Watchanel," she whispered and began to descend down a little ladder into the tunnel as the light swept out of sight.

"Wait," hissed Suzie after the retreating head of the Twi'lek girl. "We should wake up Henry and Rika."

If Numa heard her, she didn't respond. She dropped down to the floor and waved up at Suzie. Suzie swallowed and looked towards her sleeping brother. "Shenab," called Numa up to her. Suzie looked down at her and, against her better judgement began to climb down the ladder after her. As she reached the bottom and turned to look, she saw the light in the distance moving around a corner. Numa took her hand and began to follow it. Suzie bit her lip and allowed herself to be led through the system.

She wished she had a light of her own, but the only thing that led them was the bobbing light ahead. Suzie's fear was mounting as she moved along. What was it up ahead? What was it that had got Numa so excited?

Now she was wishing she had followed her gut instinct and awoken Henry.

She wished Lopmon was here.

They rounded another corner, just in time to see the light flash around another one. Suzie really hoped that Numa knew the way back. She did not want to get lost down here.

They turned the corner and almost crashed straight into something. Something metal. Something hovering. Suzie, although she didn't know it, was staring straight into at the back of a Separatist Probe Droid.

The droid was unaware of their presence. It simply hovered upwards and outside, through another hole at the top. The tunnels were empty. It instantly transmitted a message back to the main force. Suzie and Numa stared, wide-eyed and fearful, as several sudden explosions rocked the surface.

* * *

Henry and Rika were jolted awake as the loud explosions went off, as were the two Twi'leks. Numa's father instantly got to his feet and ran to the door to look outside. Rika also got up and ran over to join him as Henry scrambled to his feet.

To Rika's horror, large, black, metallic things were swooping overhead like some kind of aircraft, but as she watched, two of them swooped particularly low and landed with loud thuds. They appeared to be black robot things standing on four long thick legs, two on each side of its raised body, on top of which was an ovular head with two long eyes. Red lasers blasted from beneath that head on both of them, smashing into the cliffs and sending debris flying.

"Engolo Cynders!" cried Numa's father in fear.

"Numa!" cried her mother. "Numa!"

Henry and Rika spun around to see that there was no sign of Suzie of Numa. The two little girls had vanished. Where Numa's bed had been, there was now a large square hole in the floor.

"Suzie!" Henry shouted down into the hole.

"Numa!" cried the female Twi'lek.

There was screaming and the sounds of laser fire from outside. There was also the sounds of scrambling feet and another, more sinister noise. The sound of marching feet. Someone was coming. Rika glanced outside again to see row upon row of robotic things with spindly bodies and each holding a laser gun in its hands advancing through the streets, shooting left, right and centre. Some of them peeled off with every house they came to and entered it, guns raised. The Twi'leks were scrambling to get away, but to their horror there were more of them coming from the opposite direction. They were boxed in their own canyon.

"What are those things?" cried Rika.

"I don't know!" replied Henry. "Some kind of robots?"

"Koomey," cried Numa's father, gesturing to them. "Shenab! Shenab!"

"Ger... Numa!" wailed Numa's mother.

"Numa burfon lik drass," cried the man. "Cu cynders gifr gur fo cu deegon. Shenab! Top foif ji her instanb!"

No sooner had the words left his mouth, when suddenly he was knocked off his feet, a smoking hole in his back from a wild shot by one of the robots. Numa's mother wailed and crossed to him, grabbing his hand in her own. Henry and Rika rushed to his side as well, but there was nothing they could do. There was nothing any of them could do now.

"He's dead," whispered Rika, unable to keep the shock and grief from her voice. "We never even found out his name."

"Hold it right there," demanded a high voice. The three looked up to see two of the robots walking over to them, guns pointed directly in their faces. "You're our prisoners now. Come with us," one of them continued. "Or we'll shoot."

"Renamon," whispered Rika. "Where are you?"

"Why!" asked Henry, not even noticing that these things spoke his language. "Why did you shoot him?"

"Hey, don't look at me," said one of the robots. "It was him."

"What?" demanded the other. "No, it wasn't. It was you. I told you to watch where you were aiming and now... Aargh!"

Numa's mother had grabbed a wooden pole from beside the door and had swung it viciously. The robot's head was uprooted by the blow and span in its socket, before the whole body collapsed. The other one aimed its gun but Numa's mother, filled with rage, lashed at it in the legs, catching it by surprise, and knocking it over.

"Hey, stop it," it complained pathetically. Numa's mother raised the pole to smash its head it, when another laser lanced out of nowhere and struck her on the hip. She yelled in pain and dropped the pole, clutching the burning injury with both hands.

"That was a warning shot," declared another upcoming robot.

"No, it wasn't," said another. "You shot to kill. You've got rubbish aim."

"Hey, you can't talk," retorted the robot. "You couldn't hit a gundark if your gun was down its throat."

"I resent that," said the other. If Henry and Rika had not just seen somebody die they would have found this hilarious, but as it was they took the opportunity to run back into the house. Numa's mother followed, hobbling slightly.

"Oh yeah," said the robot. "We you... hey, they're getting away. Blast her!"

Numa's mother was making her way over the entrance to the tunnels when she was suddenly shot twice, in the shoulder and the back of the leg. She pitched forwards and looked imploringly at Henry and Rika. "Confor ru," she pleaded, gesturing feebly at the hole. "Zonbi, confor ru."

Henry glanced from her to the hole. If the robots saw them disappearing down there, they'd perform a search of them, and Suzie and Numa would be discovered. Hurriedly he rushed over to it and shut the hatch. He stepped back just as the robots entered the house. Numa's mother gave Henry a look of deepest gratitude, before she lowered to the ground and, with a final rattling breath she was still.

"We weren't supposed to kill anyone," said one of the robots. "I'm gonna report you guys to TX-20."

"You wouldn't!"

"I will!"

"Wait, these aren't Twi'leks," said one. "They're humans. The boss didn't say anything about humans."

"Who cares," said another. "As long as we have prisoners it doesn't matter what they are. You two, come with us or we'll kill you too."

"They know what we are," breathed Rika.

"I noticed," said Henry. "We can't fight them."

"So... what? We become prisoners?"

"I don't see another option," said Henry, then to the robots he said, "Alright, we'll do what you want."

"Good," said the robot. "Hands up and go outside. You two, bring the bodies with us."

"Roger, roger," said the robots.

Henry and Rika moved outside, arms in the air with the lead droid pointing the laser gun at their backs. Rika had to grit her teeth and control herself as the other two dragged the bodies of Numa's parents unceremoniously after them. If she struck out she would get shot, and probably Henry too.

They day had started so badly, but ended so well. Now, it had got even worse than ever. Especially when they saw a line of strange, hovering tanks following the robot hordes down the street.

* * *

Numa and Suzie poked their heads out of the hole where the probe droid had vanished after the explosions had stopped. The sight that met their eyes horrified them. Rank upon rank of droid's were filing past, not glancing down once so fortunately they went unnoticed. Twi'leks were being marched in one direction towards a number of the robots that were securing heavy iron shackles about their wrists before marching them on. Suzie spotted Henry and Rika amongst the throng of prisoners. She had enough sense not to call out to them.

But then she spotted the bodies of Numa's parents. So did Numa.

Unable to look, both of them dropped down into the tunnel again. Numa burst into quiet tears, sitting down heavily, her hands over her eyes. Suzie sat beside her and gave the Twi'lek girl a hug, before joining in.

* * *

Quite dark, that ending, but it was necessary. Now, I'm sure with so much alien garble flying about, someone will want a translation, so here we go. Twi'leki translations:-

Raffo non suul? Poli si suulan hernig? – Who are you? What is your intent?

Suul gif klinf re doon – You can climb up here.

Eyan tyronusoo – Young children

Kugon hew suul gredet we Gutkurr – How did you survive the Gutkurr?

Suulan polafi – You're injured

Ju gif gur suul rewena hef koil – I can get you treatment for that

Watchanel – Follow me

Ikut – Uncle

Kugon non suul – How are you?

Ju tyg drews, Numa – I am well, Numa

Ger top ulner herf polafi freneb – But we have an injured guest.

Ka – Yes

Yami – Hello

Acer hunib si Lubo/Numa – My name is Lubo/Numa

Poli si suulans – What is yours?

Top non herfo ji gur rewena hef cu violer – We are going to get treatment for the boy.

Turee – Okay

Gif top koomey – Can we come?

Ger hyenad – But behave.

Ger gif suul bernan o hool ren yooba frenebes polaf? Asp bol si polafi – But can you take a look at this guest's injury. His back is injured.

Derfio, ger fillonsi – Crude, but effective

Sooba reyb queel – That must hurt.

Jigook – Pardon.

Poli non top herfo ji yers kerlam oom – What are we going to do with them?

Hyfan non ool drensil – Where are they staying?

Ooh – Ooh

Gif ool dren kerlam pon? Zonbi! Zonbi! – Can they stay with us? Please! Please!

Goh suulan wernot moe nan – If your parent's say so.

Arni – Thank you

Raffo non lobo peeloo – Who are these people?

Juon si Suzie hed Rika hed Henry – This is Suzie and Rika and Henry

Ool non frenebes ji Nabat – They are guests to Nabat.

Kah'lehalle so fendoon – twi'lek phrase that mean – the guests are welcome here.

Ju gifne enoon Basic. Poa – I can't speak Basic. Sorry.

Ju locan suulan Tooka fo cu deego. Gine sam re don – I found your Tooka in the tunnels. Why was it there?

Lifo retin – Bright eye

Retin. Retin. Fo cu deego. Shenab – Eye. Eye. In the tunnel. Quick.

Engolo Cynders – Vulture Droids

Numa burfon lik drass! Cu cynders gifr gur fo cu deegon. Shenab! Top foif ji her instanb – Numa will be fine! The droid's can't get in the tunnels. Quick! We have to go now!

Confer ru – Close it.

* * *

Next time...

Back on Christophsis. Renamon adjusts to being alongside the 327th.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 7 : First circuits**


	7. First Circuits

Thanks once again to all my reviewers, but before I start I want to put one thing in perspective. What happened to the Tamers lasted a whole day and halfway into the night, although Ryloth doesn't technically have a night. What happened to the Digimon lasted about half a day, so what happens now is happening just as the Tamers enter the city of Nabat on the rope ladder.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327**th**

**Chapter 7:- First Circuits**

* * *

The midday sun glared downwards on Christophsis like a massive eye searching the depths of the planet for its secrets. Commander Bly, from his position on a balcony on one of the standing towers, stared up at it. To be honest with himself, he could quite easily spend the rest of his life without ever setting eyes on it again. So many of his men had died under its gaze. So many of his troops had fallen to the blasters of the merciless battle droids, strong in their numbers and not their brains.

Nearby, Commander Cody and General Secura down below were giving the newest recruit to the liberation effort a briefing on the different types of things that she might come to face in the battle that was sure to come and come soon. Troopers were rushing here and there all around them, carrying crates of weapons or medical equipment to aid their comrades. The medical droid was tending to Jester's injured shoulder.

"...Watch out for these ones," Cody was saying, as he, Aayla and Renamon stared at the rotating, holographic image of a destroyer droid. "We've heard them described as "Rolling Deathballs" and it's a very apt description. Their equipped with a pair of Repeating Blasters which can do a lot of damage to anything that lives, and each one is equipped with a personal deflector shield that is impenetrable to anything but the strongest laser fire or rockets. They also have the ability to curl into a ball and roll for quick advances or retreats."

"That does sound like a particularly tough customer," observed Renamon.

"Fortunately we think we destroyed most of them in the most recent attack," said Aayla. "Their shield don't protect them from heavy falling objects like buildings."

"You could also destroy them if you pass through the shield," said Cody. "Their designed to block high velocity objects, so you can pass a blaster through it and destroy it that way, but it's extremely difficult to get close to them unless you're a Jedi."

Renamon nodded. "Don't worry," she reassured them. "I am quite agile on my feet."

"I can imagine," smiled Aayla, before she pressed another button and the droideka image changed to that of an AAT. "But we do know that there are a lot of these left."

Bly turned his attention to what was going on the horizon. Holding a pair of macrobinoculars up to his eyes, he gazed at the enemy base, which was so far away he could barely make it out even with the impressive zoom on the things. There were no signs of any more Octuptarra tri-battle droids. That was a good sign. However, he could see numerous AAT tanks, lined up and ready to be sent into battle at a moment's notice.

He also noticed a couple of Dwarf Spider Droids moving around the perimeter. He wasn't surprised. Dwarf Spider Droids had impressive fire power for a single unit, firing a heavy blast from their nose cannons, but they were also extremely slow on their feet – not the best units for advancing armies but ideal for defending strongholds.

Fortunately there wasn't any sign of a deflector shield generator. That would make things very difficult, just as it had during the first battle, but perhaps General Loathsom had learnt from that attempt that relying purely on the deflector shield was perhaps not such a good idea.

But if they could catch the loathsome Loathsom then they could finish this quickly. Then they could leave this godforsaken place. This stupid planet was even earning itself a name – The Clone Killer. Bly narrowed his eyes. Jedi might not be allowed to feel anger but he certainly was. And he vowed then that he would do everything in his power to make sure that Christophsis did not have to be recaptured thrice.

"Are you alright?"

Bly blinked as Renamon appeared out of thin air beside him. He smirked. That perception filter might come in useful, although he very much doubted that it would fool the photoreceptors of the droids. Despite their stupidity sometimes not having a brain could come in handy.

"I am fine," said Bly. "Just a little frustrated. This isn't the first time the Republic has had to take this planet back from the droids you see. I was just taking a look at their camp."

"May I have a look?" enquired the Digimon. Bly passed her the macrobinoculars and she looked through them. As she did, she said, "You definitely seem like a seasoned warrior, Bly."

"Well, I'd prefer to call myself a soldier," said Bly. "It's what I was bred to do."

"I understand that," said Renamon. "But believe me, to be called a skilled warrior by one of my Digimon type is a sign of respect. We pride ourselves on being able fighters."

"In that case," said Bly. "I thank you. Forgive me for saying this, but you are a strange creature, Renamon."

"I know," Renamon chuckled. "No other Renamon would even think of mating with a Terriermon."

"Er," faltered Bly. "That's not exactly what I meant."

"I know," said Renamon. "I apologise. Making little jokes that make people uncomfortable is a bad habit I've picked up from him."

"Right," said Bly.

"You and Cody are obviously respected leaders."

"Well, yeah, I suppose," said Bly. "The two of us have been in many battles before. We've both got a good number of battle scars from those damn metal tinnies."

"I can see that," said Renamon, gesturing at the scar above Bly's eye.

"I got this from a commando droid," said Bly. "His sword nicked me, but it was the last thing that he ever did."

"He?"

"Well, technically they don't have genders but we call them male because they sound male with their stupid voices."

"Fair enough," said Renamon. "I must admit, even I am a little apprehensive at the thought of fighting an army. I am not used to fighting enormous numbers of opponents. I am extremely good at one-on-one fights with opponents much bigger than myself though."

"Ah, you'll be fine," said Bly. "I can tell that _you_ are an extremely good fighter, and not just because of the Crystal Storm attack."

"Diamond Storm."

"Yeah, that."

"And what about Aayla?" asked Renamon. "She says she's not a warrior and yet she is in charge."

"Despite what she says," said Bly, "General Secura is one of the best darn fighters I know. I've seen a good number of Jedi in combat, including Jedi Masters, and despite the fact that Aayla only became a Knight a few years ago, her skill with a lightsaber rivals that of any of them, and that of Anakin Skywalker."

"Who?"

"Oh, right, yeah," said Bly. "This is difficult, I can tell you. I keep forgetting just how much you don't know."

"I will adjust. Who is this Anakin Skywalker?"

"He's probably the most famous of all Jedi except for a couple of the Jedi Masters. He only became a Knight earlier this year, but he's so famous because of a prophecy made generations ago, in which he features."

Instantly, Bly noticed Renamon stiffen. "A prophecy?" she asked.

* * *

Renamon's brain instantly went into a whirlwind of thought. A prophecy? There was always at least one prophecy somewhere where Digimon were concerned. There had been many in the Digimon TV show. There had been the prophecy made about herself, Terriermon and Lopmon against Ogudomon, then what Fanglongmon had warned them about, and now this.

"Yeah," said Bly. "It refers to "The Chosen One." He'd supposed to be the one that eventually destroys the Sith and brings balance to the force. Skywalker is supposed to be this Chosen One and he is certainly living up to his name. I've worked alongside him before. He is an amazing fighter. But personally I think General Secura is just as good."

Renamon smiled. "You respect her greatly." It wasn't a question, but Bly answered anyway.

"Yeah. She's saved my life many times."

Renamon wondered if Fanglongmon knew about this. He was a God, but did he know about anything outside of his own dimension? Renamon would have thought that he probably did. He had foretold that she would have many adventures to come. And come they had.

Perhaps Valkyrimon had spouted out some other mish-mash of two languages in another prophecy about the three of them. She had never actually met him, but she knew he was generally the one that came up with this stuff.

Perhaps, just as this Skywalker was meant to destroy the Sith, _she_ was meant to be here to help. The thought was definitely odd, but not implausible. Her life had been surrounded by the weird and the strange.

She raised the macrobinoculars back to her eyes and looked at the enemy camp. She stared through the lenses for a good five seconds, before remarking, "Well, Bly, it looks like I'll soon be able to see just how seasoned you really are."

"What?" asked Bly.

Renamon passed the macrobinoculars back to him. "Those... droid's... over there, are advancing towards us."

"Damn," said Bly. "That's the most frustrating thing about them," said Bly. "Their relentlessness. Come on, we need to inform the General."

He began to head towards the stairs, but Renamon stopped him by placing a paw on his shoulder.

"Want to try the quicker route?"

* * *

Aayla watched her commander and the yellow Digimon talking together high up in the tower. The speed by which Renamon had got up there had impressed her. One moment she had excused herself and then vanished. Delving into the Force, Aayla had tracked her progress as she ascended straight up the wall of the building to come to a halt before Bly and reappearing in the space of seven seconds.

"I hope she knows what she's getting herself into," said Cody.

"She does," said Aayla. "She's not to be taken lightly, Commander. She'd definitely seen a lot of battle, and I don't need the Force to be able to see that. It's in her eyes. They have seen so much, far more than even you or any of your men have seen. I don't think that I would wish to face her in combat."

"Well, hopefully it will never come to that," said Cody.

Just then, Bly looked like he was about to descend, but then Renamon stopped him. After a few seconds of conference, Bly turned so that his back was facing Renamon and the Digimon wrapped her arms around his waist.

"What's she doing?" asked Cody.

"Something tells me that it'll be impressive," said Aayla.

And it was. Renamon back flipped right off the balcony, pulling Bly along with her. Bly was no lightweight, Renamon was obviously strong. She formed herself and Bly so that they were parallel and their heads were pointing downwards as they shot down like two arrows.

"Bloody hell," said Cody.

A few split seconds before they crashed into the floor, Renamon suddenly flipped so that they were feet-first. He feet connected with a giant, sloping crystal building that had collapsed and the two of them shot down it as if they were on skis, before Renamon bounced off it and the two of them flipped once more, before landing feet-first, knees bent.

"Whoa," said Bly. "That was a rush."

"Glad you enjoyed it," said Renamon, as all the nearby clones began to whoop and cheer at the stunt, which had been pulled off to a T. "And my mate says you should try paragliding."

"I'll ask what that is later," said Bly, turning to Aayla. "But we have a problem. The droid's are advancing on us."

"Already?" asked Aayla. "It's only been a couple of hours. I was hoping that they might give us a bit more of a reprieve."

"Shall we load up and move out to meet them, sir?" asked Cody.

"No," said Aayla. "We wait for them to come to us. The buildings in the city will definitely give us an advantage over them. We need to catch their General. That way we might be able to end the battle and the invasion in one move."

"What does their general look like?" asked Renamon.

Aayla hit a button on the control pad beside her and another hologram flicked up. The image was of a large creature with no visible neck, a cone shaped head with a jaw that hung down underneath it and was level with his chest.

"That is him. He is a male Kerkoiden and a respected General amongst the Separatist forces. He was defeated last time through trickery on Obi-Wan Kenobi's part, but I doubt that same tactic would work again. However, that doesn't mean that we can't try a little trickery of our own."

"So he's an organic creature and not a droid," noted Renamon.

Aayla nodded. "But he is tough. He mans his own personal AAT and is usually surrounded by a squad of Super Battle Droids. He's not going to go down without a fight, but we must do all that we can to bring him to trial."

"Will he not stay behind?" asked Renamon. "And direct the assault."

"He did that last time," said Cody. "And it got him nowhere. I reckon that this time he might be leading the charge. From somewhere in the middle of the group, of course."

Aayla flipped another button and a holographic representation of the city flicked up. "The buildings will definitely provide some cover for us, but we don't have all that many heavy artillery left. We have some Heavy Cannons, and a few AT-TE walkers remaining, but the General will probably have something up his sleeve. We have only a quarter of the forces we started out with."

"Its quality that counts and not quantity," said Renamon.

"A good phrase," agreed Aayla. "I might use that if we get out of this mess. Now, I need people to come up with some ideas. We will need some good tactical play of our own in order to pull this off. Because despite the fact that we have the quality, they have a quantity of five to one against us."

"Well they'll have to have ten to one to finish us off," Bly curled his hand into a fist.

"I might have an idea," said Renamon. "You say that these battle droids are unintelligent?"

"Very," said Aayla.

"Then this may just work," said Renamon.

* * *

Five minutes later, and Renamon had explained her plan. Aayla, Bly, Cody and all the other clones that were listening now had large grins pasted on their faces. "I think that we stand a very good chance of winning," said Bly.

"Alright then," said Aayla. "To positions everyone. We have roughly twenty minutes before the Separatists arrive. Let's use it well and get everything in place. Commander Bly, I want you to lead the main assault. Cody, you will come with myself and Renamon. Bring some of your best men. Let's get prepared. Renamon, I need to do something. Stay here with me for a moment."

"Alright men," cried Bly. "Let's move."

The clones rushed off to fulfil their allotted tasks. Aayla turned back to the control pad and began to tap a few buttons. "What are you doing?" enquired Renamon curiously.

"Well, when I felt the disturbance in the Force that was this Parallelmon breaking through the dimension walls I wasn't the only one. The most powerful Jedi of the age also felt it from considerable distance away and sent on a mission to discover the source. I figured you'd like to meet him."

"I see," said Renamon. "What does he look like?"

"You'll find out in a second," said Aayla. She continued to tap the keys, and the control pad made a mechanical groaning noise that reminded Renamon of the sound Henry's computer made whenever Terriermon smacked it with his ear.

"Or maybe you won't," muttered Aayla.

"What is it?" asked Renamon.

"The Separatists might still be some distance off," said Aayla. "But they're close enough to jam our transmissions. This is a favourite of Loathsom or so I'm told. He likes to leave us stranded so that we can't call for reinforcements. Trouble is there wouldn't be any reinforcements available even if we could get through."

"Never mind," said Renamon. "I will speak with this Jedi Master later. Shall we get into place."

"Better sooner than later," nodded Aayla. The two of them turned and ran, side by side, to where Commander Cody was overseeing his troops as they got into position.

* * *

Loathsom kept his eyes fixed on the city ahead of him from the cockpit of his personal AAT. The enemy was in there and he knew that they would know of his approach by now. The clones were nothing if not vigilant and whilst they had superior brain-power to his troops they had the upperhand. If he hadn't been so foolish the last time and left the deflector shield protected by nothing but a lone Droideka and a bunch of Retail Droids, which had been easy prey for the Jedi because they were so slow, then he could have won.

He wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. He had returned to the planet that had bested him and he was going to make sure that he bested it before the day was done.

He had been delighted when he had learnt of the retreat of the 501st legion a couple of days ago, and when the 327th had arrived he hadn't been too worried. After all, they were being led by a Twi'lek. How tough could a Twi'lek be – most of them were used as slaves.

But Aayla Secura had become a thorn in his side. She had so far managed to best him at every turn. She was almost as good a strategist as he was, unlike Skywalker who liked to charge in without really thinking about what he was doing. He had severely underestimated her, and he had paused to research her more deeply. She had been a prodigy Padawan and had been granted Knighthood seven years ago after she had recovered from falling into the Dark Side of the Force and assisted in breaking a plot to gain power over her own Twi'lek clan.

He had decided to be a little more cautious of her. She was still extremely young for a Jedi, only four years older than Skywalker himself, meaning she had become a Knight at the age of seventeen, an impressive feat, especially since that was two years younger than Skywalker when _he_ had ascended to Knighthood.

But now she would meet her downfall and it would be at his hands. If she survived his grand assault he might not kill her. He might just decide to keep her as his own, personal Twi'lek slave. They were, after all, a symbol of status, and a Jedi slave would be even better.

The battle droids continued their march forwards, relentless and keeping perfect time with each other, one of the only things that they were able to do well. They stared straight in front of them, guns pointing in the same direction as their faces as they marched.

Ten minutes of silence later and they were approaching the city. "Remember what I told you," Loathsom declared to the army. "You need to make sure you pull off our strategy. Head into the streets as soon as possible and come at them from all sides. We need to flank them. Be ready to set up the portable deflector shield the moment they launch heavy cannons at us."

"Roger, roger," said a Command Droid from another cockpit.

A few minutes after that and the droids at the beginning of the line faltered and stopped, causing some of the others to crash into them, until about half the army was crammed together as the droids were too stupid to stop until the situation was severe or they were ordered to.

"What's going on?" asked Loathsom. "What are you idiots doing?"

"Er," said a droid at the front. "Should we attack, sir?"

Loathsom looked around, thinking the droids had spotted something, but he saw nothing. The city looked almost completely empty ahead and there was no sign of enemy activity outside it. "What are you talking about you fools?" he demanded.

"Sir, they're just standing there. Should we attack them?"

"Who are just standing where?" Loathsom raged.

"Them. There," the droid pointed at nothing.

Loathsom gritted his fangs and reached down into the cockpit, pulling out a blaster. To the shock of his troops he shot the speaking droid clearly through the head. The body collapsed to the ground.

"Is there anyone else who would like to talk nonsense?" snarled the Kerkoiden.

"No sir," there was a lot of shaking heads.

"Then do as I say! Keep marching!"

The droid's began to set off again at the same pace as before. A couple of them at the front looked at each other, bewildered. "Shouldn't we attack them?" asked one to another. "They're sure to attack us soon?"

"Are you kidding?" asked another. "I'm not doing anything unless the General says to do it."

Loathsom observed the renewed marching with satisfaction. The droids were such idiots. Perhaps Count Dooku should have taken the more expensive option of clones himself. A brilliant tactician like him could make use of a clone army.

* * *

"Worked like a charm," smiled Aayla, as she watched the lines of droids file past within a twenty metres ahead of them. She was standing in plain view of them, and yet they weren't even glancing her way. Not anymore anyway."

"Good," grunted Renamon. "Because it is getting increasingly difficult to keep this up. I've never cast a perception filter as big as this one before, let alone had to hold it up."

"This is truly astounding," remarked Commander Cody. "Twenty clone troopers, a Jedi, a Digimon and four AT-TE walkers all completely invisible to General Loathsom. Wait 'til I tell Rex. He'll never believe me."

"Sir," called a clone called Chopper. "They brought a small shield projector with them."

"I thought they would," said Aayla. "But if this plan works we'll catch them unawares. We may be able to take it out before they even raise it. Bly should be in position to make their move soon. Be ready."

* * *

Loathsom extended his fingers and pointed into the side-streets of the city. "We're in the city. Spread out now. I want you to divide before we get anywhere near their lines. I want there to be no escape for them."

"But sir," protested a random battle droid. "Not all of the side-streets are wide enough to let the tanks get through."

"Then make room, you dolt," cried the irate General. "The tanks are equipped with cannons. Use them."

"Roger, roger," said droid.

Loathsom growled. Even that response was getting annoying. "You," he pointed at an AAT to his right, go down there. And you," he pointed to one on his left, "down there. Every street we come to I want another to peel off until there are five still in the main street. And don't say roger, roger. Just do it."

"R- er, yes sir," said a droid. He began to pilot the tank so that it would turn into a side-street. A split second later, he was minus a head.

"What the..." cried another droid as two AT-RT walkers appeared out of the side-street and began to fire wildly at the droids. Confused, the droids were slow to react and a good ten of them were shot down, before they responded, but by then the AT-RT's have turned and run back into the side-street and disappeared.

"Cowards," laughed Loathsom. "Let them run. They cannot do anyth—" He was cut off as three AT-RT's ran out a side-street on the opposite side and let fly at the AAT that had been about to glide into that street. With a crash its systems failed and it fell to the ground, its hovering capabilities cancelled out. The AT-RT's turned and back into the street they'd come from, vanishing from sight.

"Is this was the clone army had resorted too?" laughed Loathsom. "Hit and run tactics. That's a laugh. They can't possibly pick all of you off. All droids stay of guard. They could come from anywhere. If you see any movement from a street that looks like a walker then shoot at it."

The droid's acknowledged his command and began pointing their blasters into the streets as they passed. They seemed to advance a further fifty metres before the next attack, which came from both sides at once this time. Commander Bly led five AT-RT's from one side, while another five came from the exact opposite side. Their fire battered the droids near the front of the line as they shot past. Instantly, Loathsom opened fire with his AAT cannon, but the nimble walker jumped right over his blasts and soon they were out of sight again.

Bly got down from his AT-RT and waved upwards to a nearby building. A clone waved back at him and vanished from sight.

The droid's were surprised when a sudden volley of blue bolts shot downwards from directly above them. Several of them were felled by being shot in the head or the shoulder from a laser that came lancing down at an exact vertical angle. Looking up, Loathsom saw that a bunch of clones wearing jet-packs were soaring across the street, shooting wildly. This was a new one. Usually aerial assaults were done by gunships. Over the din of blaster fire and wailing droids, Loathsom heard a clone yell, "Droid Poppers!"

Loathsom exclaimed loudly and angrily as each clone dropped two EMP grenades downwards to fall upon the droid battalions. One of them clonked a Super Battle Droid on the head. "Hey!" shouted this droid. "That hurt. Don't do that you..." The rest of his sentence was cut off as it and all the droid's around him, along with pockets of them throughout the whole army suddenly crackled with electricity and collapsed to the ground, sparking.

"At least, they didn't get near the deflector shield," muttered Loathsom. "They must be desperate to try out all these new ideas."

"Er, sir," said the nearest droid. "I think we're in trouble."

"Don't be ridiculous," laughed Loathsom. "These attempts are weak. They are barely scratching the surface of our numbers."

"But sir, what about them?"

"What is it this time?" asked Loathsom, whirling around. The droid was pointing directly behind them. Loathsom looked in the direction he was indicating. His stomach dropped. How? How had this happened? AT-TE walkers were too big to hide in the side-streets and he would have noticed them if they'd been outside the city. How had they gotten behind him?

Four of them were advancing down the main street towards his army.

* * *

"Looks like it's time to get dirty," said Cody gleefully.

"Aayla," said Renamon. "I would like to observe for a few minutes. It will help me recover my energy and I will get a better idea of what I am up against."

"Alright, do it," said Aayla. "But stay out of sight until you decide to unveil yourself."

"Not a problem." Renamon leapt off the AT-TE and hid herself behind a building, before climbing the wall where she could observe everything easily.

"Let the fighting begin," said Cody, waving a hand. Instantly, ahead of the droid army, the rest of the clone infantry ran out of the side-streets and ducked behind any available cover, firing their blasters and the panicking droids. Aayla ignited her blue lightsaber and leapt down from the walker, Cody and his men behind her. They charged.

Renamon watched as the clones expertly wielded their rifles, blowing holes in everything they could get a clear shot at, mostly the droids. With the AT-TE's on one side and the clones on the others, some of the droids tried to avoid getting shot by running into the side-streets. But the AT-RT's were waiting for them. There always seemed to be at least two of them in every street.

Renamon turned to watch Aayla. That blue blade of hers was fascinating. She'd have to ask about it earlier. As Aayla ran forwards the droids fired at her, but she merely deflected the bolts aside by spinning the blade before her. Somehow, impossibly, the blade met every bolt head on. Then Aayla was amongst the droids. She was everywhere at once. She sliced through the midsection of one, leapt upwards and cut another's head neatly into two pieces, coming to land on a Super Battle Droid and plunging the blade into its head, then she flipped down and severed a couple more in the torso with a dancer-like pirouette.

Aayla then lunged forwards and actually corkscrewed through the air, burying her blade in a Super Battle Droid and kicking the body into another. Her hand shot out and suddenly three more to her right were blasted backwards by a wave of the Force, falling to pieces as they smashed into the walls.

Then Aayla took out the legs of a couple of others and swung her lightsaber to deflect the bolt of one droid at point-blank range into its own face. She was now right next to one of the AAT tanks. As it swerved to point it gun at her, Aayla flipped upwards, severing said gun as she passed by it. Then she landed on what was left of it, before plunging her blue sword straight through the metal. She cut a wide circle in the top and sent the cutting sky-high with a surge of force. Her lightsaber skewered the exposed pilot and lifted him into the open. She threw his body aside and severed his arm as his passed. Flicking her wrist, she send that arm sailing straight down the barrel of another AAT, which promptly exploded when it tried to shoot her and the bolt connected with something before it had even left the tube.

Aayla stood tall, lekku flicking, as she effortlessly parried the hurried and wayward shots the droids sent in her direction. Most of the droids stopped shooting at her when they noticed that most of those who did got destroyed by their own blasts. Aayla took the opportunity and bounced upwards, bounding from droid to droid in quick succession, cutting through each one as she left it behind.

Renamon turned to observe the clones next. They weren't faring quite so well – many of them had been killed already, but most of them were still alive and very much kicking. Cody uprooted the head of a droid by smacking it with his blaster and then he opened fire once again, striking a battle droid in both legs, then one in the chest, then another in the chest, then one in the back because it was firing at another clone, before whirling around and shooting a Super Battle Droid that had just emerged from behind the downed AAT.

Bly was also doing well for himself. He was back on an AT-RT and was merely running through the droid forces and crushing many of them under its metal feet, occasionally shooting some of the ones in front of him. It was a mark of how inefficient the droids were that none of them were thinking to shoot ahead of where he was at that point in time so it would hit him when he got there. He was just too fast for them.

She saw other clones also pulling off interesting little stunts. One of them rolled forwards and shot two droid's between their legs before ducking behind a rock. Another pulled out one of the few remaining rockets and blew a large chunk from a building, which crushed one of the AAT tanks. Renamon noticed one of them, Conor, pick up a thermal detonator and launch it onto another of the tanks, blowing a massive hole in its top.

The AT-TE walkers were firing into the centre of the droid army, where the clones and Aayla had not yet got to. They took out massive chunks with each chunks, and five more AAT tanks fell victim as they attempted to turn around to return fire at the things which had advanced behind them. Renamon saw General Loathsom hurriedly signal to a droid, which flipped a switch on a machine. Immediately a red dome appeared over the General and his immediate vicinity. That must be the deflector shield Chopper had mentioned.

She'd seen enough. It was time for her to make her own move.

* * *

A clone named Sketch had had his helmet knocked off when a Super Battle Droid had grabbed him and picked him up. He stared, wide-eyed as the pitiless, grey droid held him up by one arm and pointed the wrist blaster on its other arm at his exposed chest. Sketch lashed out with his fist, but it didn't even dent the droid and it bruised his knuckles. The droid cocked its blaster.

Something yellow crash at stupendous velocity on top of the droid, knocking it forward. Its grip on Sketch was released and the clone fell off to the side. He looked up in astonishment as Renamon plunged her claws straight into the metal of the droid and ripped out some wires. The droid went offline with a hiss.

"First blood," said Renamon. She glanced at the wires and said, "Well, first circuits."

"Cut it a bit close, didn't you?" grinned Sketch.

"I always do," said Renamon. "It's more fun that way. Now, I believe I have a little, as my mate would say, whupping ass to do."

Renamon turned and lunged forwards with a loud battle-cry. The bewildered droids turned her way as she decapitated one with a mere swing of her fist. She rebounded off the droid and tackled another, flooring it and flipping over, bringing it over her head to smash another into the ground, both of them falling to pieces. She spun about and lashed out with a foot, catching another in the chest. She ducked as a Super Battle Droid attempted a shot at her, which smacked into a droid behind her, then she leapt on this droid and grabbed its arms. With a burst of strength she ripped both off, kicked the body aside and swung the arms, using them as weapons.

She caved in the chest on one and knocked the legs clean off another. She front-flipped forward and kicked another with both feet, then brought down both the metallic arms on the one that had been standing behind it. Some more lined up and attempted to shoot her, but she tossed her two weapons at them and sent all but one of them flying. She leapt forwards, covering ten metres with the bound and leapt on the hapless remaining droid, before leaping eight feet straight up and bringing her fist smashing down into its chest so hard it came out the other side. She picked up the two arms she had thrown and span forwards in an imitation of Terriermon's and Lopmon's favourite attacks, although not as fast, buffeting in heads and torsos alike.

Renamon noticed that now she was beside an AAT, that had its gun levelled towards her. She leapt skywards as it fired, the blast passing beneath her and smashing into two more droids. She flipped backwards and landed, picking up a blaster from a droid that had a hole in its head courtesy of a clone. Then her other paw glowed and was surrounded by a bright blue aura. She leapt forwards at the AAT.

"**POWER PAW!"** she yelled. Whoever didn't know she had joined the battle certainly knew now. Eyes and photoreceptors alike turned and watched as she smashed a hole with her bare fist in the hull of the tank. She thrust the blaster inside the hole and pulled the trigger, destroying the two droids inside.

"What is that?" asked Loathsom. "Another Jedi?"

Renamon wall-vaulted over the top of the empty tank and found herself back to back with Aayla. "I am impressed by your skill, Renamon," she said.

"Likewise," said Renamon. "You clearly have a lot of practice."

"Indeed," said Aayla. "Your Tamer should be proud."

"She is," said Renamon. "But I believe we have a fight to win."

"True. Shall we do this together?"

"Just what I was about to suggest."

Just then, a ramp descended from the back of an AAT and a lone droideka rolled out and unfurled, raising its shield. "Kill them!" barked Loathsom. The droid opened fire. Aayla leapt before Renamon and her lightsaber blurred, deflecting the constant stream of bolts launched at them.

"Once you get in front of a destroyer droid," she yelled. "It's very difficult to get closer."

"Allow me to help," called Renamon. She leapt upwards and cried **"DIAMOND STORM!"** The shards appeared and rained down like a monsoon. They cut into all the droids surrounding it, but merely rebounded of the shield of the destroyer droid. However, it did falter in surprise. Instantly, Aayla sprang forwards, performing a forward roll through the shield and skewering the destroyer droid. Instantly the shield dropped and the droid collapsed. Renamon landed beside Aayla and its remains, ripped the curved head from the rest of it and threw it into a Super Battle Droid.

"Get them! Stop them!" raged Loathsom, still some distance away from the two. Aayla and Renamon exchanged a glance and then sprinted towards him.

* * *

Well, there you have it. The first battle featuring a Digimon and a Jedi, and they're on the same side. Yay! But it's not over yet. The rest of this battle will return, and there will be a bit more clone action in that one. I just wanted to highlight how similarly awesome both Aayla and Renamon are. And if anyone says one is better than the other, then I'm not going to like it.

* * *

Next time...

A catch-up with Terriermon, Lopmon and the Lurmen. Is there action? You'll have to wait and see.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 8 : The Village**


	8. The Village

Alright, one thing to say before I start and that is that this is not only going to be about what happens in the Star Wars universe with the Digimon involved. There are going to be occasional trips back to the Digimon side of things to see what they're doing, but these will be in the minority – like every five to ten chapters, because what's happening in the Clone Wars is more action-packed. Chapter 10 soon will be returning to that world to find out how they're trying to locate the missing people and it will follow one Digimon in particular. Let's see if you can guess who it is before I post it.

I decided this chapter won't have action in it. No battle action anyway. But I thought it would be an interesting chapter to write.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327**th**

**Chapter 8:- The Village**

* * *

"I have to admit, that stuff is absolutely amazing," said Lopmon, peering at her ear. There was no sign whatsoever of any tooth-marks from the Fwit that had bitten her.

"I'll tell you what's amazing," said Wag Too. "You. The oil from the pods has exceptional healing capabilities but it's never taken half an hour to get rid of all traces of a bite like that."

"I'd say it's a combination of both," said Terriermon. "If we ever get to go home then we should take some of this stuff with us and give it to Dolphin. He'd probably find some way of replicating it and think about what that could do."

"They're still down there, Wag Too," noted Tub, looking over the branch at the Fwits that were prowling around the trunk. Most of them had given it up for a lost cause, but about ten of them had remained. Most of these were the ones that had been most beaten up by Lopmon and Terriermon, and they seemed to be out for blood.

"I can see that," said Wag Too. "They'll go away eventually. They always do. They don't have much patience."

"The smell of blood is getting to me though," muttered Tub. "I've never liked hurting something else."

"None of us have."

"Sorry about that," said Lopmon. "But we had to defend ourselves."

"Kill or be killed doesn't really apply here," said Terriermon, "So I'll just say that its fight back or be killed."

"We know," said Wag Too. "But still, it is a little strange. I don't like to see anything injured, but if I was to go down there I'd be ripped to pieces in seconds."

"How pleasant," said Terriermon.

"Do you think we could just fly off?" asked Lopmon.

"Not really," said Terriermon. "We're not built for flying and carrying something heavier than we are at the same time. Those things would just follow us and attack when we got near the ground."

"Since when did you think all these things through?" asked Lopmon.

"Ever since I got closer to Rena," said Terriermon. "I was slightly more of a "Let's see what happens and hope for the best mon before I met you, sis."

"They should leave soon," repeated Wag Too. "We can go down in about an hour and a half."

"An hour and a half!" demanded Terriermon. "That long."

Lopmon kicked him in the shin. As he exclaimed and rubbed it ruefully, Lopmon remarked to the Lurmen, "You'll have to excuse him. He's not known for his patience."

"Well, I usually play video games when I have nothing else to do to take my mind of things, but that's not really an option right now," pointed out Terriermon.

"Good," said Lopmon. "Because then you'd attract even more Fwits with your constant screaming of "DIE! DIE! DIE!""

"It heightens the experience of the game."

"And it also grates on the eardrums of everyone else in the building."

"What are you talking about?" asked Tub curiously. "What is video games?"

"Never played Fable?" asked Terriermon. "Don't, its rubbish. It takes forever to get anywhere."

"I like Endless Ocean," said Lopmon.

"So do I, but I only play it when I need relaxing."

"I'm confused," Wag Too shook his head. "I still can't believe your story. Coming from an alternate universe is not something you hear every day, but the more you talk garbled the easier it is to believe."

"Well, how do you guys pass the time?" asked Terriermon. "What do you guys do when you're bored?"

"We work," said Wag Too.

"Oh," said Terriermon. "Not for me, really. I prefer to laugh at those who are working."

"Terriermon!" admonished Lopmon.

"Momentai."

"We work so that the village can survive," said Wag Too. "We need to forage and to clean and to take care of injuries and some of us stand sentry to make sure that we can hide if there is a threat."

"I know someone who would be a useless sentry," Lopmon pointed at Terriermon with an ear.

"Got a point there," grinned the white bunny. "I'd either fall asleep or start singing. Hey, there's an idea."

"Oh no," Lopmon massaged her temple with one hand. "Anyone got a gag? We might need one."

"Is that a reference to my taste in songs?"

"No, it's a reference to your awful singing."

"OI!"

"Momentai."

"Stop using my word!"

"Not only am I confused, but now I feel left out," said Tub. "You guys know what you're talking about sure but could you try and condense it down a little for us?"

"Not unless you want us to go through Earth technology and that could take a while," said Terriermon. "You might be better not having a clue what we're on about. You'd end up more confused than you are now otherwise."

"Fair enough," said Tub.

Suddenly, Quazqat the Carrier Butterfly fluttered down beside him. Tub held up a finger and Quazqat landed gently on it. Tub held him up to his ear as Quazqat chirped something into his ear. Tub frowned.

"What did he say?" asked Lopmon.

"Well," said Tub. "I don't think that we're going to have to wait that much longer. The Fwits will be gone soon, let me assure you."

"Good," sighed Terriermon. "But, here's a question. How does the little guy know that?"

"Because of them," Tub pointed downwards. At that exact moment, two huge Mastiff Phalones burst from the grasses and charged at the Fwits. Shrieking in dismay and fear the rat-like creatures scattered. But one wasn't fast enough. It was grabbed by its tail by one of the wingless birds and hoisted into the air, kicking and screaming. The Mastiff Phalone tossed it in the air and grabbed it by its hindquarters. The other veered around and grabbed the same creature by the head.

The unfortunate Fwit was torn in half as the Mastiff Phalones pulled it apart down the middle and each swallowed the amount of it they received.

Lopmon's stomach clenched and she fought the urge to throw up. She was hardened to death, having seen it occur many times and having caused it too, but when fighting other Digimon they split into data when they died. There was no blood and guts like just then, and she felt pretty sure that that was the Fwit that had actually bitten her ear in the first place, resulting in it getting a beating from her. She didn't blame it – it was natural for it to hunt, but had it been her fault that it was too slow to get away?

Terriermon wrapped a comforting ear around his twin sister's shoulder and said, "Out of the frying pan and into the fire."

"What is a frying pan?" asked Wag Too.

"A cooking utensil," said Lopmon. "The phrase means the situation just got worse."

"Actually it didn't," said Wag Too. "They don't know we're up here and even if they did they wouldn't bother with us when there are plenty of other prey sources around. See, they're leaving already."

Indeed, the Mastiff Phalones had gone on the prowl again, searching for more Fwits to devour. They vanished into the grass with frightening efficiency. You wouldn't expect something so big to be able to hide so easily.

"We can return to the village now," said Wag Too. "Father might be getting anxious by now."

"Alright then," said Tub. "Follow us, you two. We'll take you somewhere safe."

"I hope you mean that," Terriermon's voice was unusually grave. "Because I don't want to go up against one of those without my partner nearby if I can help it."

Wag Too and Tub quickly descended the tree with the agility and grace of their Earth counterparts. Terriermon and Lopmon soared down the join them – Lopmon's ear free of pain. The Lurmen rolled into balls and began to set off down the path they had created by dragging the heavy seed-pods.

Despite what had just happened, Terriermon couldn't help but be amused at the unusual travel method of the Lurmen. "I wish lemurs back home did that. It would be absolutely hilarious."

"It's a shame we haven't got a camera with us," remarked Lopmon. "If we do get back then we won't be able to show this stuff to anybody, and we've seen so much already. It's only been a few hours since we even got here."

"I know," said Terriermon. After a pause he called, "Race you!"

* * *

Tee Watt Kaa bit into one of the purple fruit that grew on some of the trees near his village. He was sitting outside the pod that made up his house and waiting for the return of his son. It had been about an hour since he'd left and he was getting a little worried. Wag Too had not taken any rope with him – he could be easy prey to a Mastiff Phalone.

But then his heart lifted when the sentry Lurmen called out. "Wag Too and Tub are coming. And they brought some company with them."

Tee Watt Kaa stood up and began to move over towards the edge of the city with his shuffling, slightly sideways walk. Sure enough a few moments later, his son and his son's best friend came shooting over the rise and rolled down into the village. Behind them, flying on what appeared to be their ears were the strangers.

Tee Watt Kaa was cautious. The last strangers to come to Maridun had tried to kill them by launching a massive weapon at them. They merely viewed the Lurmen as test subjects for a diabolical scheme. And it was all due to the damned war that was stretching across the whole galaxy. The war that had forced his people from their home world of Mygeeto, while most of the rest of the Lurmen were captured and enslaved by them. Tee Watt Kaa's group were all that had got away.

Fortunately the strangers that had arrived before the Separatists had helped to put a stop to them, but in doing so they had encouraged Wag Too, Tub and several other Lurmen to take up arms and fight, which was against everything the pacifist Lurmen stood for. Fortunately Tee Wat Kaa had not taken this too badly, because none of the Lurmen had been directly responsible for the destruction of any droids and the droids weren't living creatures anyway.

That, and the village would have wiped off the face of the planet with one blow without the help of Rex and Bly, and their Jedi leaders:- Skywalker, Secura and Tano.

The two strangers came in to land just as Wag Too and Tub uncurled themselves. They looked around curiously as the other Lurmen from nearby approached and began to examine the strangers without getting too close.

"Father," nodded Wag Too.

"Son," Tee Watt Kaa nodded back.

Terriermon had to prevent himself from snickering when he looked at Tee Watt Kaa. What the hell was up with this guy's beard? It made the bottom half of his head look like a spade, or more likely the head of a spear. He also had a strange gait, one hand was always pressed into his back and the other crossed in front of him when he walked. But he was obviously respected by the other Lurmen, and Wag Too had said his father was the head of the colony. He wanted to make a good impression.

Just then, Renamon pulled off her little stunt with Bly, jumping off the building back on Christophsis. _Tell him he should try paragliding,_ he thought to her.

_Will do._

Tee Watt Kaa carefully regarded the two strangers. They seemed fairly decent, but then again he had been wrong in the past. They both sported curious grins on their faces as they took in the village, staring at the pods and looking at the inhabitants. Tee Watt Kaa felt proud to be a part of this civilisation and he could see that these two newcomers were quite eager to learn a little about it.

But what were they? Tee Watt Kaa had lived for many years and had never seen anything like them before. Their ears were absolutely massive, like the wings of a bird, and they looked completely out of proportion with their arms and legs, which were comparatively very short. Standing still as they were, about a third of their ears were draped across the floor behind them.

"So," said the Lurmen leader. "Who are these people? And what do they want."

"This is Terriermon and Lopmon," Wag Too indicated them both. "They are lost on this planet and have no way to leave it. They only want a place to stay until their friends can come and collect them. Guys, this is my father, Tee Watt Kaa."

Terriermon decided to let Lopmon speak. "It's very nice to meet you sir," she said respectfully, even inclining her head a little.

"Likewise, I suppose," said Tee Watt Kaa. "But what do you mean until your allies pick you up. Surely they could be here very soon if they know you're here."

"It's complicated, sir," said Lopmon.

Tee Watt Kaa actually smiled – Lopmon's politeness was paying off. "Please, there is no need to call me, sir. I am only the leader of the group. I am not a king or a captain."

"Ok," said Lopmon. "And it's complicated because we have a psychic link with another person who is not on this planet, but she cannot get to us as she has been caught up in something. Hopefully she'll be here soon, but possibly not for a day or two."

"Very well," said Tee Watt Kaa. "But tell me one thing. Are you part of the wretched war that has taken up this whole galaxy? We would not want to be discovered harbouring fugitives. It's nothing personal, but we have mostly enjoyed peace here and we'd prefer to keep it that way."

The siblings exchanged a quick glance. Technically _they_ weren't although Renamon was about to get into a scrap. "No," said Terriermon. "We haven't exactly had that much time to make any enemies since we arrived in this dimension."

Tee Watt Kaa blinked. "What?"

"Believe me when I say it's a long story, Father," Wag Too grinned wryly. "Perhaps we can go inside and they can tell you."

"How many more times are we going to have to explain this story?" asked Terriermon.

"As many times as necessary," said Lopmon.

Tee Watt Kaa regarded the two of them in silence for a few seconds before nodding and gesturing to them to come into the pod behind him. He turned and shuffled inside. Wag Too and Tub followed him in on all fours and the Digimon strolled in behind them, taking note of the purple shade that covered the door like a small porch.

Inside the pod was a large room – or at least large as a room could be inside the seed of a tree – the walls were thin and there were numerous holes in the sides to let light in. The only furniture beyond a couple of shelves on the round wall was a large chair and a little table that was practically a stool behind it. The shelves held things like bowls, plates, cups and cutlery, all of which were made of wood. To complete the picture there were a number of clothes hanging from the ceiling and a wooden towel rack.

Tee Watt Kaa quietly shut the door, and then took a couple of wooden cups and placed them on the floor, before taking a jug and pouring a pinkish liquid into both. Then he replaced the jug and gave the mugs to the Digimon. Both of them had to hold them with their ears.

"It is our custom to help those who ask for it," he said. "Unless what is required of us is violence. This drink will help to boost your energy."

"Like Lucozade?" asked Terriermon, without thinking.

"Pardon?" asked Tee Watt Kaa.

"It's an energy drink in our world," said Lopmon.

"Talk about culture clash," muttered Terriermon. "But thank you for the drink. Cheers." He raised the mug and took a gulp of the drink. It had an extremely familiar taste. In fact it tasted exactly like...

"PINEAPPLE!" shouted Terriermon, accidentally spraying what he had put into his mouth across the floor. The three Lurmen looked at him with a mixture of concern, confusion and not a little offense.

Lopmon clapped her coughing brother on the back with one hand and said, "Sorry about that. He has a phobia of a certain kind of fruit called a pineapple." She took a sip, swallowed and said, "And this stuff tastes exactly the same."

"It's not a phobia," said Terriermon. "Not really. I just had a bad dream about them two nights ago." He blinked and then said, "But it seems so long ago already. Blimey. But it'll wear off after a while."

"It was a stupid dream," said Lopmon. "But all his dreams are stupid."

Tee Watt Kaa nodded and said, "Well, rest assured that this juice did not come from a ... pineapple, but it came from the Jurcian fruit instead."

"Alright," said Terriermon, and he eagerly gulped down the rest of the drink to show that he had not been rude before.

"Now, tell me your story," Tee Watt Kaa sat down on the floor.

"It's long," said Lopmon.

"Then it's a good thing that I have a lot of time on my hands," said Tee Watt Kaa.

* * *

Ten minutes later and Tee Watt Kaa was left wide-eyed. Alternate dimensions, monsters the size of the trees outside, special bonds between human and creature – Digimon. It was all a little overwhelming. They were either fantastic story-tellers or rubbish liars. But they had said each word sincerely, implying that they were in fact telling the truth. A lot of it had puzzled him, but there had been one thing in particular that he had picked on.

Battle.

He sighed. He had hoped that these newcomers were not fond of violence, but from what they said they were some of the biggest fighters of them all, defending their home from vicious and terrible monsters using extremely powerful attacks. Tub had supported this thought with his graphic description of their fight against the Fwits – something that they couldn't pull off if they tried.

_He doesn't look too pleased,_ whispered Lopmon despite the fact that nobody besides Terriermon and Renamon some distance away could hear her thoughts.

"You seem to be of a decent sort to me," said Tee Watt Kaa. "And for that reason, I will allow you to stay here. We won't get into trouble if any Separatists come and discover you here, for you are not in allegiance with the Republic. But understand this, this is a peaceful place. I don't want to you tell of these stories to the others in this colony."

"No worries," said Terriermon.

"And I also want no fighting."

This time Terriermon protested. "Hey. We only fight to defend ourselves. We've never gone on the attack before. In fact, my Tamer Henry was just as much a pacifist as you are once."

"And what steered him from that course?" asked Tee Watt Kaa.

"It was the fact that his home, his friends and his family were under attack by a force that only he and a select few others could even stand up to."

"And look what it's got him," said Tee Watt Kaa. "He's now trapped somewhere in a completely different reality with no protection. Fighting always leads to something terrible."

"Well, what was the alternative?" asked Lopmon fairly. "Don't fight and get killed, let your city be destroyed, or worse still, find yourself being eaten by an evil Digimon in order to become stronger?"

"Father," said Wag Too. "You can't expect everybody to follow our tradition. We live in a small colony that can easily move, but they come from another place where the rules are different."

"We don't kill unless necessary," said Lopmon. "We simply send them back home if they wish to go. There are occasions where there is no reasoning with them and then we have no choice."

"There's always a choice."

"Yeah," said Terriermon sarcastically. "Sit back and get stomped on or fight back and live. I wonder which one sounds better. I can't decide."

"I think it would be a good idea to end this debate now," said Wag Too. "Come on. I'll show you to a place where you can stay for a while."

"Thank you," said Lopmon. Terriermon nodded.

Wag Too led the two of them back outside. As he did, he spoke to them over his shoulder. "Don't mind Father. He's just a little... set in his ways, as it were. We've always been a peaceful people, even after our own planet invaded and we had to move here."

"He certainly seems a bit grouchy," noted Terriermon.

"Terriermon," glared Lopmon. "Ssh. That's his father you're talking about."

"No, I think I'd agree with him," said Wag Too. "But you can't really blame him. It's been difficult, and this war only started less than half a year ago."

"Fair enough," said Lopmon.

Terriermon's stomach let loose its loudest complaint of the day just then. He looked down at it and bit his lip. The attack of the Fwits had completely driven the thought of food from his mind, but now he felt ravenous. "You wouldn't happen to have anything to eat, do you?" he asked. "Only, I haven't eaten anything... at all today, 'cause I was woken up first thing by the attack."

"Yes, we have a lot of fruit. Would you like some of that?"

"Yeah, why not."

"But it tastes like pineapple," pointed out Lopmon.

"Yeah," said Terriermon. "But I like the taste of pineapple. I just don't like pineapples anymore."

Lopmon sighed. "That doesn't even make sense."

"Bite me."

Wag Too blanched. "Why do you want her to do that?"

Terriermon laughed. "It's just a phrase. I don't really want her to bite me."

"Oh," said Wag Too. "What does it mean?"

Terriemon paused. "I have no idea."

"But if you really want me too..." grinned Lopmon.

"Er, how about you pretend I said, "Bite fruit," instead," Terriermon suggested.

"Here you go," Wag Too gave both of them one of the purple fruits from one of the baskets. They bit into them eagerly, juice running straight down their fronts and pooling at their feet.

"Blimey," said Terriermon. "And I thought that kiwi that I stole from Kenta was juicy."

"We have plenty," said Wag Too. "Help yourselves."

"It doesn't taste like that drink though," observed Terriermon.

"No, that drink is made of Jurcian fruit. This is Plonson fruit."

"Ah," said Terriermon, thinking what a stupid word plonson was but not saying anything about it. For once. "Can I try some of that?"

"Sure," Wag Too entered another of the pods and came out holding some large, pink fruit that resembled extremely big cherries. The two bunnies took several each, and began to gorge themselves on the tasty things, which did indeed taste like pineapple.

"Much as I'd like to eat all of it, have you got anything other than fruit?" asked Terriermon. "Meals consisting of one thing have never really suited me."

"Well, I'm afraid not," said Wag Too. "We're strict vegetarians, and they only food around here that isn't meat is fruit."

"Ah well," Lopmon shrugged. "I suppose you can't have everything."

"You can rest in that pod over there if you like," Wag Too indicated the one next to Tee Watt Kaa's. "That's my place, but it can be your temporary home if you like."

"Thank you, Wag Too," said Lopmon, picking up another fruit. "Really, we can't thank you enough."

"Don't mention it," the healer waved a hand dismissively. "Just be glad you didn't run into any of the Anami. You wouldn't have got any peace from them, only spears."

"Then we thank you all the more," nodded Lopmon.

"But I don't really feel like going to rest," said Terriermon. "I feel full of energy."

"Then what do you suggest?" asked Lopmon.

Terriermon thought for a moment and said, "A game perhaps. One that we can play without needing anything special."

"Like what?"

Terriermon grinned, and drew a circle in the dirt with on finger. "Anyone up for a game of Twister?"

* * *

The Lurmen had never played the game before but they were enjoying it immensely. Their lemuroid flexible shapes made relatively easy work of the directions given to them by Terriermon, who was using himself as the spinner, as he was a master of twisting on the spot.

"Left hand purple, Tub," he said.

The twenty-five circles drawn in the mud had been marked by placing a different coloured object by each row – a pink Jurcian fruit, a purple Plonson fruit, a green towel that belonged to one of the Lurmen playing and a piece of wood, which marked brown. It was crude but effective.

Terriermon span again and when he stopped, his ear was pointing at "Right hand, green."

Wag Too snaked between Tub and another Lurmen to place his hand down. "You guys are too good at this," giggled Lopmon. She didn't know why, but she was in an extremely giggly mood.

Terriermon looked across at her. For a second his vision blurred slightly and he shook his head, but then everything was fine. Blinking, he span again and when he stopped, he looked a little blearily at the place where his ear pointed.

"Pink hand, left."

"What?" asked the Lurmen whose turn it was. He faltered, confused.

"I mean, left hand, pink."

"Oh right," the Lurmen managed to put a hand in one of the circles.

Lopmon giggled again. "Pink. Look at me, I'm pink," she lifted up one ear and waved it at them.

Terriermon glanced across at her and said, "Lopmon, who gave you permission to turn into a teapot?"

"A teapot?" giggled Lopmon. "Am I pretty?"

"You've got purple spirals all over you," said Terriermon. "And a red lid."

"What about you?" asked Lopmon, pointing. "You've turned into a giant carrot. With blue leaves."

"I have not!"

"Yes, you have!"

"Have not!"

"Have too!"

"Have not!"

"Have too!"

"Um, what's the next move?" asked Wag Too, wondering what on Maridun was going on. The two bunnies stopped arguing and turned to face him.

"You, shut up," said Terriermon rudely. Then both of them gasped.

"What the hell is that?" Lopmon pointed at the mass of inter-twisted Lurmen.

"I don't know! Kill it!" cried Terriermon.

Both of them stood, swayed slightly and then charged at the Lurmen. They tackled the mound and all four Lurmen went flying. "WAFFLES!" shouted Terriermon. "GIVE ME WAFFLES!"

"AND BATTENBURG CAKE!" demanded Lopmon.

"What are you guys doing?" demanded Wag Too, getting to his feet.

"Oh, hello Wag Too," said Terriermon. "Where'd you come from? Don't worry, we just saved your village from a strange mound of donuts."

"Um, pardon?" the healer asked.

"He doesn't know what a donut is!" laughed Lopmon.

"WAY!" Terriermon pointed at him. "Quick, Loppy, I think I see some yams!"

The two of them abruptly turned around and went charging into the city. The Lurmen inhabitants got out of their way as they went bouncing from pod to pod, yelling and screaming and smashing into each other in mid-air.

"INCOMING!" shrieked Lopmon. "NNEEEOOOWWW!!" she made the noise of a small fighter plane as she zoomed over the heads of the terrified and confused Lurmen. "Damn those pixies!"

"Load the missiles!" roared Terriermon. "Don't go into that rain or you'll dissolve!"

"And be sure to remember that there are no emergency exits, so if we crash YOU'LL DIE!" cried Lopmon.

The two of them landed and began to leap over and over one another, screaming and whooping and doing whatever else sprang into their minds. "I think my brain is turning to mush!" shouted Terriermon as the two ran round in circles, knocking over rakes and pitchforks and other tools and bumping into any Lurmen too slow to get out of the way.

"You're mind's already mush!" cried Lopmon back.

Tee Watt Kaa emerged from his pod and looked round. The two guests he had so generously taken in were wrecking the place! He had asked for no violence and they had responded indignantly. But it looked like his fears were fully justified.

"Wag Too," he called. "You see what I meant. This is the way of all those who fight for a living."

"I don't understand," Wag Too blustered. "They were just fine until a couple of minutes ago."

"But now look at them," Tee Watt Kaa gestured at Terriermon, who looked like he was trying to eat a garden rake, and at Lopmon who was chasing around a frantic female Lurmen, shouting "GRAVY!"

"I'll see what I can do," said Wag Too.

"Just try your best not to harm them," said Tee Watt Kaa.

"Yes, Father." Wag Too turned around and ran back to some of the other Lurmen, huddled and watching the two rabbits wreak destruction with their crazy actions. "Tub, grab a rope. You know what to do."

"Right," Tub ran inside a pod and came out carrying two coils of the stuff. "Here we go."

Terriermon zoomed through the air, ears outstretched and shouted, "MINE! MINE! MINE! I WANT MILKA!"

"I DON'T HAVE MILKA!" replied Lopmon.

"Then DIE!"

Terriermon tackled his sister and the two of them went spinning through the air, somehow managing to remain airborne. Both of them were giggling insanely and seemed to now be completely unaware of their surroundings. Lopmon extricated herself and swooped down, before turning to pursue her brother.

"Get back here so I can tickle you death!"

"CAN'T CATCH ME!"

The two of them soared round and round the same pod, laughing and snorting at each other. Terriermon was vaguely aware that he had never seen Lopmon like this before, but it was forced from his mind.

"I'll eat your soul!"

"I'll eat yours first!"

"Stop turning into a dragon!"

"What about you, Dumbo? A flying elephant. Get real."

Eventually Terriermon crashed head-first into the side of the building-slash-pod and fell from the air. He landed heavily on his back. Lopmon descended behind him and landed next to him.

"You know," Terriermon giggled. "I think we're high."

"And we're all gonna die," agreed Lopmon.

"Hey, that rhymed."

"Oh yeah."

The two of them stopped giggling for a split second. Then Terriermon got to his feet. The Lurmen watched, hoping that whatever that had been that it had stopped.

Then Terriermon shouted, "Tell me what you know! Tell me what you gone and done now!"

Bouncing around each other, the two bunnies began singing a loud and raucous song, without music:-

"Tell me what you know! Tell me what you gone and done now!

Gonna do the trick! Get it over with!

You're better off to take all that you got and burn it on the spot!

Just to get high, high, high, high!

Tell me what you did! Where you gone and hid!

Show me!

It's what you really want! Was it what you got!

Slowly!

Circle in the drain! Throw it all away!

Just to get high, high, high, high!"

Abruptly a couple of ropes flew through the air and wrapped around each bunny. "Ack!" cried Terriermon. "Crocodile Dundee!"

Wag Too and Tub ran over and both took hold of a struggling Digimon. "I think I know what's going on now," said Wag Too. "Help me take them to the infirmary."

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, and Terriermon blearily opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor inside one of the pods. Wag Too was standing over him, with a look of concern across his face. "Are you alright."

"No," groaned Terriermon. "What happened?"

"You and Lopmon went on a slight rampage," Wag Too shifted guiltily. "You began to wreck the village, shouting nonsense."

"No I didn't," protested Terriermon. "Did I? I don't remember that."

"Me neither," groaned Lopmon, opening her eyes and holding her head in one hand. "But I have got one hell of a headache."

"Are they feeling better?" Tee Watt Kaa came through the door.

"Yes, Father," said Wag Too. "They're back to their old selves. A definite improvement."

"Jesus," grinned Lopmon painfully. "If Terriermon as he is now is an improvement we must have been really bad."

"Oh, ha ha," moaned Terriermon. "Good to see your sense of humour hadn't been affected, Loppy. But why did we go on a rampage? And why can't I remember any of it?"

"That would be my fault," said Wag Too. "I never expected it to have an effect on you – after all, you're nothing like a human, but the symptoms were pretty similar."

"Stop leaving us on tenterhooks," said Lopmon. "Was it the oil?"

"Nah, I didn't touch that stuff," said Terriermon. "I'm gonna guess it was the energy drink or the fruit."

"The fruit," nodded Wag Too. "Specifically the Jurcian fruit. If a human bites into the flesh of one of those, or any other basic humanoid like Rodians, Togrutans, Twi'leks etcetera, then they can become light-headed and extremely mad and exaggerated. They also can see hallucinations and you guys were exclaiming things about dragons and teapots."

"That was the small, pink one, wasn't it?" asked Terriermon.

"Yes," nodded Wag Too.

"The one that tasted like pineapple."

"You see, Loppy," declared Terriermon. "I told you that pineapples were evil and it looks like this universe's equivalent are equally evil. I'm never gonna even look at a pineapple ever again when I get home."

"Aren't you overreacting a little?" Lopmon clutched her head.

"Overreacting, you say?" asked Tee Watt Kaa. "You wouldn't say that if you could see the state of our village. I reckon it's a good thing that you are our size, or you could have completely destroyed it."

"Is it that bad?" asked Lopmon.

"As things stand it is relatively mild," admitted Tee Watt Kaa. "We had worse when the droid army invaded, and whenever a Mastiff Phalone tries to make a meal of us."

"And that time when the Corinathoths blundered through the village," pointed out Wag Too.

"Yes," agreed Tee Watt Kaa. "You also started to sing a song about "getting high.""

"Nickelback again," said Terriermon. "It's always Nickelback."

Lopmon sat up and looked as sincerely as she could with such a splitting headache. "We're sorry," she said. "We didn't mean to do it. I hope we didn't traumatise everybody too much."

"It wasn't your fault," Tee Watt Kaa waved a hand. "But I must admit I was surprised the Jurcians had such an adverse affect on you."

"Me too," said Wag Too. "You are so much more similar to us that I didn't even think. It's not you that should be sorry, it's me."

"Don't worry about it," Terriermon also sat up. "But anything that can affect a human like that can affect us like that – we are the same as them in that respect. And a good thing too, or I'd have to live without chocolate."

"You might have to do that here anyway," pointed out Lopmon.

"Oh God."

"Well, you're back to normal," said Tee Watt Kaa. "And I would also like to apologise for my attempt to lecture you about fighting before. We are just too different in that respect and I think it would better if we just agreed to disagree."

"Good thinking," smiled Lopmon.

Tee Watt Kaa smiled back and said, "I'll leave you to rest." He shuffled out of the infirmary pod. Wag Too cast an apologetic look at the two of them, before following his father out.

Terriermon turned to look at Lopmon and said, "Good thing we didn't mention that Renamon's in the middle of a battle. And that she's kicking droid ass."

* * *

Well, that was certainly interesting, but I thought that food might be a problem at some point for our intrepid adventurers so why not have it there, where its more likely. The idea was suggested by a friend of mine that would like to remain anonymous. "Just To Get High," is owned by Nickelback, not me.

* * *

Next time…

The rest of the events of Christophsis and Maridun rolled into one. Will Renamon finally get back to her mate. I say finally, its still technically barely been a day.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 9 : Whose War Is This?**


	9. Whose War Is This?

Nothing to say now, except thanks for reviewing.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327**th**

**Chapter 9:- Whose War Is This?**

* * *

Bly had got off the AT-RT and was now leading a surge of clones in to engage the droids in combat on the same ground. He had pulled out his two blaster pistols and ran sideways, both guns horizontal with his shoulder and firing to the left. Large smoking holes were blasted in the side of the droids that fired back at him relentless, and yet somehow managed to constantly miss him, although he had to perform some fancy footwork at times when one of them nearly struck him in the legs. He did not fancy the idea of being hobbled.

He skidded to a halt, fingers tightening on the triggers as he blasted a droid before him, then fired each pistol at a separate droid on either side of it. He whirled and shot into an approaching Super Battle Droid, then swung a foot and took out another droid by kicking its abdomen. Lifting one pistol he blasted another full in the face at such close range the bolt went straight through and also blasted the droid behind it.

A Super Battle Droid with a rocket launcher for an arm instead of a hand aimed its cannon at him and fired. "MOVE!" yelled Bly to the clones around him and he rolled quickly to one side. Most of the other clones followed his example or leapt backwards, but unfortunately three of them were not fast enough and were instantly killed in the resulting explosion. A fourth was knocked unconscious by flying rubble to the helmet.

With a cry of anger, one of the clones charged the Super. "Liam!" cried Bly. "Wait." But it was too late. Liam angrily shot blindly at the Super, unaware of everything else around him, including the Battle Droid which hurriedly shot at the oncoming clone. Liam faltered in surprise, glancing down at the hole in his armour and his chest, before falling backwards.

Bly roared angrily and took out his last thermal detonator, hurling it at the two murdering droids. It beaned the droid in the head and landed on its shoulder. "Oh no," said the droid, glancing at it before getting blown to pieces, along with all the others in the immediate area, including the rocket-wielding Super.

"Someone get Burner out of here," Bly indicated the fallen clone. "Everyone else with me! Let's scrap 'em!"

Another clone grabbed Burner and started to haul him behind cover and Bly, followed by all the others advanced forwards. Blasting with precision, Bly took out another droid with a shot to its chest and another with a blast to the head. Another droid whirled around to face him but Bly leapt on it, wrapped a strong arm around its neck and hauled off its head, tossing it over his shoulder as the body fell.

He dodged as a sudden blast aimed for his head shot by, then returned fire with vigour, sending three battle droids to their makers in the space of two seconds, whipped around and gunned down an approaching Super, then pointed both blasters straight behind him to offline another.

"Eat laser, you tinnies!" cried a voice. Bly looked around to see Ridge and Lash each holding a large Z-6 Rotary Blaster Cannon in both hands. The repeated fire from the rotating barrels pummelled the lines of the droids, swerving their aim from side to side as they decimated the force. "Sir!" called a clone. Bly looked as the clones tossed another Blaster Cannon to him. Hurriedly he holstered his pistols and caught it, set it and began to fire it himself in rapid succession.

Some of the AATs had managed to turn around and were firing upon the AT-TE walkers, but at such close range the AT-TEs were making easy scrap of them. Their ordinary guns situated around the pilot seat were firing at the armies while the cannons aimed for the tanks specifically. The clones lead by Cody were using their legs as cover as the massive walkers advanced like giant metal caterpillars with lasers. Nothing could stand before their onslaught, or at least, nothing on _this_ battlefield. Loathsom, desperate to take the AT-TEs down, attempted to direct some tanks to go down the side-streets and come at them from the side, but each attempt left the tanks rebuked sharply by the AT-RTs charging forward and wrecking the things before vanishing like smoke.

Cody looked up from where he had shot a droid he had just kicked over and raised his blaster to fire upon another group. On his flanks were Waxer and Boil, and the three of them shot outwards in separate directions in order to take down as many droids as possible. One shot came streaking forward and Waxer dropped to avoid it. Another aimed at Cody and the clone dived under it, forward-rolled and shot the droid down without a second's thought.

As Cody stood a moved backwards a little to put some distance between himself and the droids he saw, ahead of him, the blue flashing that clearly indicated the lightsaber of a Jedi. Cody blinked beneath his helmet. Aayla had gotten a good way into the droid lines. Yellow blurs also flicked into his vision now and again, indicating where Renamon was.

The two of them were still fighting together and they were proving to be an almost unstoppable force. The droids had them surrounded and yet they were still making headway. Aayla was doing her best to deflect the bolts from hitting both her and her Digimon ally. Those that she was unable to beat back were in the minority and Renamon was having no trouble at all with avoiding these with acrobatic flips and leaps. The droids' aim was most certainly not impressive.

Aayla carved through a droid with a downwards-diagonal swing, sprang off the floor and sliced through another and kicked another in the head at the same time, deflected two bolts back at the owners before hitting the ground. Her lightsaber flicked up and severed the arm off a Super, span about and took out the other, followed by a sweep through the body, then she span the blade and stabbed under her left arm, through the stomach of the droid directly behind here. She then leapt straight over three more, landing on a fourth and knocking it to the ground, then cutting the centre of the three clean in half and sending the other two flying outwards with a wave of her hand.

One of the flying droids splintered on contact with a building. The other was grabbed from mid-air by a leaping Renamon and used as a shield as a volley of bolts sailed in her direction. "FRIENDLY F-" protested the droid before going dead.

"Oops," said one of the droids responsible, which was the last thing he said because his fallen comrade was then used as a bat, taking him and three others to the ground. Renamon flung the body aside and backhanded another, sending it stumbling backwards and into some others who hurriedly caught him to stop him from falling. With a swipe of one arm, Renamon flung a miniature storm of diamonds their way, which cut them to shreds. Then she leapt over another, grabbing its head and ripping it off as she sailed past, rolled and grabbed another, lifting it over her head and stabbing her claws into it, ripping out vital circuits. The limp droid was then cast to one side.

Aayla leapt to her and sent a bolt flying into the Super Battle Droid that had fired it, then slammed another droid with the side of her fist, knocking it around and then spearing it in the back. She pushed it off her blade and ducked as a Super took a swing at her. Renamon grabbed it in a vicious embrace and flung it, sending it rolling, and span to stab another in the back with claws, wheeled around it and elbowed it in the face. She leapt aside four more battle droids fired on her, but Aayla pounced on the group from behind, pushing one to the ground beneath her feet, stabbing one with her blade, then sweeping around to take out the third, and finally slicing another's legs right off and separating its head from the rest of it. Renamon bulldozed into another Super and floored it. It tried to scrabble up, but she took it in a vice-like hold and stamped on one of its legs, snapping it like a twig at the knee and then sending her own knee into its face.

Aayla created a thin crevasse in the stomach of another Super, grabbed a droid around its neck and threw it forwards. Another Super attempted to grab her from behind but she reversed her grip on her hilt and stabbed it over her shoulder. She pushed the body right over, before slicing the leg off the droid she had floored and stabbing it in the face. Whipping about she was met by yet another Super. It fired at her, but she swiped the bolts aside into four more droids, then leapt past the arm, plunged her lightsaber into the droid's bulbous body and carving a circle in it. A large circle, so much so that she removed it with the Force and leapt _through_ the droid and beheaded a surprised battle droid on the other side. Renamon grabbed a droid in a headlock and bodily lifted it. Panicked the droid pulled on the trigger and Renamon swerved, leading the droid to shoot several of its own comrades, before tossing it skyward. Leaping after it she relieved it of its arm and blaster, then grabbed its head and forced it beneath her. In mid-air she shot two more with the droid's blaster, then slammed her own droids head into the ground so hard she crushed it, then she whipped around and fired off another shot into a Super's face. Then her paw glowed blue again and she smashed it into a building, rolling aside as a mound of rubble crushed another group.

"Looks like they make a good team," observed Waxer.

"Cut the chatter," ordered Cody, although he agreed. "They've almost reached the shield. We need to keep the rest of the army occupied. Let's go."

The clones broke cover from the AT-TEs and ran forward, firing willy-nilly into the droid army – whatever they hit it was going to be a droid. Two AT-RTs swerved out a side alley and join their charge. It had the right affect. Cody shot a hole into the nearest droid and watched as the two females leapt through the red deflector shield, side-by-side.

* * *

Loathsom was petrified. He had just watched Aayla Secura and this strange new creature that was obviously not a Jedi, but _was_ every bit as athletic as one, wade straight through half of his army and cut a path straight to him. He didn't think that Aayla would kill him – she was a Jedi and they preferred to keep things that were actually alive that way. But this new creature was different, and what he didn't know, he feared.

"It is over, General," declared Secura, as they leapt through the shield – Aayla momentarily deactivating her lightsaber, and re-igniting it so it could pass through with her. "We've got you surrounded and your army will soon be finished."

Loathsom sneered, trying to put on a brave face as he levelled the cannon on his AAT at them. The two other tanks protected by the shield did the same. "You think that you have a chance?" asked Loathsom with more bravery than he felt. "I will not order my troops to stand down. You'll soon be overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers."

"Do you really believe that?" asked the yellow creature. Loathsom flinched. That voice was hard and definitely belonged to one with experience.

"Get them!" he ordered, pointing at them. The two remaining commando droids in his army, the ones which had really made a dent in the forces of the clones, leapt out from hiding behind the tank and charged, one going for each of the females.

Aayla side-stepped as her attacker attempted to sever her arm with its sword. Quick as a flash, the commando took another swing, but Aayla dropped backwards, so low she could win any limbo contest and the sword passed right over. She flipped over backwards and flung her lightsaber. The spinning blade severed the droid's legs and then with a call came shooting back into her hand. Aayla grabbed the droid with The Force, bringing it shooting uncontrollably towards her where it was impaled on her blade. Aayla withdrew the lightsaber and the body collapsed to the ground.

While this was happening, the other was attacking Renamon. The fox Digimon rolled to one side and the sword went sailing past her. The commando tried again, and then again, each with the same result. One the fourth try, Renamon dropped onto her back. Her legs came up and sandwiched the droid's arm. With a violent twist Renamon snapped it off at the wrist, grabbed the sword, sprang up, and buried it into the droid's waist. It sagged but stayed up, so Renamon grabbed it, flipped up so she was standing on its shoulders and brought her claws into its face. With a surge of strength, she tore its head into two pieces.

Loathsom was astounded by the skill of the two. But he wasn't ready to give up yet. "Fire!" he yelled and all three AATs opened fire. Aayla cart wheeled to one side, but Renamon remained where she was. The bolts made contact, blowing a huge hole in the ground and throwing up a cloud of dust. When it cleared, Renamon was nowhere to be seen.

"Hah," yelled Loathsom. "One fell."

"No she didn't," said the droid.

"What are you on about?" asked Loathsom and with alarm he noticed that both AAT tanks flanking him were turning and the droids were aiming the cannons right at him. "What are you doing you fools!"

"Don't move, sir," said one of the droids. Just before he pressed the button though, Aayla leapt upwards and onto the rim of the tank. With a hand movement, she lifted the droid out of the cockpit and threw it, wailing, into the other, leaving both tanks unmanned. Then with a fizzing noise, Renamon appeared out of thin air on the AAT in the middle. She had been standing over Loathsom the whole time with her perception filter up. She reached down and took hold of Loathsom by the neck, lifting him up and tossing him out. He almost bounced as he hit the floor.

Renamon and Aayla leapt down from their respective tanks and landed either side of the defeated General. Aayla smiled and said, "You know, this shield might come in handy after all. Give Bly the signal."

"On it," nodded Renamon, leaping around, behind the AAT and bouncing outside the shield. **"DIAMOND STORM!"** she yelled and sent a volley of the flashing things straight up.

* * *

"There!" said Bly, instantly backing away, his blasters firing – the mini-gun had run out of ammo. "Blade! That's the signal! Give the others our own signal!"

"Yes, sir!" shouted Blade, as Bly and the clones rapidly began to retreat. As they ran, Blade pulled out a flare gun and shot it skyward. Had they got into position?

Yes they had.

The droid army suddenly found itself under heavy bombardment. During the mission to capture the General, five clones had been moving the notoriously slow, but also notoriously powerful Heavy Cannons into position. Instantly they began to fire when they saw the flare, all five itching for a piece of the action.

It was all over in a matter of minutes. Heavy Cannons on one side, AT-TEs on the other and AT-RTs preventing any escape to the sides and the droid army was decimated. All that was left when the lasers stopped firing, was the red deflector shield, and under it, completely unharmed, was the captured General Loathsom, and his captors.

* * *

"Well done, Renamon," said Aayla as the two of them marched Loathsom towards Bly, who was preparing a set of binders. "An excellent plan that worked without a hitch."

"I wish I could have come up with something that had gotten less clones killed," said Renamon.

"Don't we all," said Aayla, but considering the size of the army and the numbers we had a minimal number was lost. You are to be congratulated."

"Thank you," said Renamon. "And so do you. Does this mean that we'll be able to leave this planet now?"

Aayla nodded. "Hopefully for good. But first we must send out some AT-RTs to destroy what's left of their outpost so we can get a message through to the fleet and call the gunships. Cody will lead that. In fact, I believe he is already on it."

The two turned to watch Cody give them a salute as he climbed onto one of said walkers. They waved as he piloted it at a run down the road, followed by all the others.

Bly walked up and instructed some clones to take Loathsom to a secure area, before turning to the two. "Stunning work General, as usual," he smiled, removing his helmet. "And Renamon, remind never to get on your bad side. You've earned the respect of everyone."

"As much as I appreciate it, Bly," said Renamon. "I do not want respect. All I want right now is to get off this planet and find my mate, and then see if I can track down my Tamer."

"We'll set out as soon as possible, Renamon," said Aayla. "For now, let us celebrate this victory and tend to the wounded. How many men did we lose, Bly?"

* * *

Half an hour later, and Aayla communicator beeped. Obviously Cody had disabled the machine that was jamming their transmission. She answered it and the hologram of Cody appeared. "All done, sir," he said, unnecessarily.

"Very good, Commander," said Aayla. "Return to Chaleydonia. We'll contact the fleet straight away."

"Right away, sir," Cody's hologram vanished.

Renamon followed Renamon to the control panel and watched as Aayla pressed a few buttons and a hologram of a man came up. It was clearly a clone, as its face was identical to all the others, but instead of white armour it was wearing a grey suit that indicated it was not a warrior, but something else.

"Pilot," said Aayla, answering Renamon's unasked question. "It's over. We've retaken the planet."

"Great news, sir," said the clone. "We were starting to get a little worried up here."

Aayla smiled. "Well it was hard but we made it through. With a little help," she added enigmatically. "I need you to do two things – send some gunships to pick us up, and send a message to the refugee fleet and tell the Christophsians they can return home."

"On it, sir," said the clone and his hologram vanished.

"They should be here in a few minutes," said Aayla.

"Have they been hovering over the planet this whole time?" asked Renamon.

"Yes," said Aayla, "but the clones stationed on the Liberty II battle cruiser are not warriors. They were just bred to be good pilots and haven't been through the training of the soldiers."

"I see," said Renamon. "Do you use clones for everything?"

"Most things," nodded Aayla. "There are some non-clone soldiers in the war and the Galactic Senate is guarded by both clones and other humans, but on the whole we put those who want to fight on the front lines, rather than recruiting the reluctant."

"Wars on Earth are different," said Renamon. "Back there they haven't developed the equipment to produces droid armies or clone armies. Human technology back home hasn't advanced that far yet."

"Really?" asked Aayla. "But they created you did they not?"

"They created Digimon," nodded Renamon, "but they were extremely simple creatures back then and the project was shut down. It was the Digimons' own evolution that got us where we are now."

"Right," said Aayla. "I think I'm beginning to build a clearer picture of you now."

"I hope so," said Renamon. "It's difficult to explain."

There was silence. Then Renamon said, "Thank you, by the way."

"What for?"

"For helping me find my feet in this world," said Renamon. "And for helping me to find out where my mate is and for helping me to go get him soon."

"I wish I could help you further," said Aayla. "And help you find your Tamer. But I can't do much more than introduce you to some people higher up than me, who might divert a little of their attention to this. But the war would hold most of their attention."

"I understand that," said Renamon. "But I thank you all the same."

"You are welcome," said Aayla. "I'll do what I can for a friend."

"Then tell me this," said Renamon. "Even if I don't find my Tamer, or the Tamers of the others, what will happen to Terriermon, Lopmon and I? Where will we live? How will we be received by other natives?"

"I honestly don't know," said the Twi'lek. "If you like I can appeal to the Jedi council. They could probably fix you with some lodgings somewhere."

"I'd appreciate it," said Renamon. "But what I'm really thinking, and I can tell you that my mate and his sister are thinking exactly the same thing, is that I could join you, Aayla. I want to help you fight against the Separatists."

"No," said Aayla, flatly. "I appreciated your help, Renamon, in this battle. But this a galaxy-wide war and it's not your war. You come from an alternate universe and I do not want you to be involved in a war where you could die for a universe that isn't your own."

There was another silence. Then Renamon broke it again by saying, "The thing is, Aayla, I'm not sure that this isn't my war."

"What do you mean?" asked Aayla.

"I mean two things," said Renamon. "One – it has always been my duty to protect my home and whether I like it or not this is my home now. I am trapped in this dimension with no way back, thanks to Parallelmon."

"Yes, but still..."

"I know you're only looking out for my welfare, Aayla," interrupted Renamon. "But I really think that this is my decision."

Aayla paused to consider for a moment and then said, "And your second reason?"

"Reason two is that I was prophesised to be here."

That completely threw Aayla. She stared at Renamon with wide, disbelieving eyes. "A prophecy?" she asked breathlessly.

"Yes," said Renamon. "Just like that one that says Anakin Skywalker will destroy the Sith. Bly told me," she explained at Aayla's puzzled look. "You see I was told, directly by the Digimon God himself, that I would be coming here, and that the three of us Digimon would have many adventures to come. Maybe we are supposed to help this Skywalker in his quest."

Aayla could not ignore this. She stared at Renamon with wonder. She knew now that she could not stop Renamon from joining in the war – Renamon was right. It was _her_ decision. She was not a child eager for glory, she was an adult, and a serious warrior.

"In that case," said Aayla. "I'm going to need you to meet with the Jedi council," she informed the fox. "They'll decide where you'll be in this war effort."

"They won't try to stop me?" asked Renamon.

"Not with a prophecy on your side," said Aayla. "But I doubt that even without it that try very hard to stop you. After all, you were a massive help to us here, and we really need all the help we can get."

"Good," said Renamon. "But I would be an even bigger help if I had my Tamer. Then I'd be able to digivolve."

It took Aayla a couple of seconds to remember what that was. When she did, she found the idea to be intriguing. She really wanted to see digivolution and had no doubt that it would be spectacular."

"I'm sure the Jedi Council will make a real effort to locate the three missing children," nodded Aayla. "If they're anywhere in the Galaxy, we'll find them. It may take some time, but if they are alive, we will track them down. After all, they're not exactly trying to hide themselves are they?"

"No," agreed Renamon. "And I'm sure that they are alive somewhere. Henry is no fool and Rika is tough. Together they'd be able to figure something out. Suzie still has some maturing to do but she is turning into a little combination of both, despite what anyone would have believed."

"Then we'll take you to Coruscant to meet the Jedi Council as soon as we've picked up Terriermon and Lopmon," said Aayla.

"Thank you," said Renamon. "Again."

Just then there was the sounds of engines. Looking up, Renamon saw strange aircraft fly overhead and come in to land in the main street. They looked like big white boxes with strange diagonal wings pointing downwards near the back. When they landed, the sides moved outwards and backwards to reveal that they were sliding doors.

"Here's our ride, obviously," said Renamon.

"Yes," said Aayla. "Those are LAAT gunships, the main aerial trooper transport that we have. Come on, the sooner we can leave the better."

Aayla signalled to Bly. The clone saluted and made another hand signal. Loathsom was dragged forwards by some of the clones and was pushed onto one of the gunships unceremoniously. Aayla walked on, along with Renamon, Bly and a couple of other clones.

"What about Cody?" asked Renamon, as the doors closed around her and there was the sensation of flight. Aayla and the clones were holding handrails dangling from the ceiling and Renamon wisely did the same.

"Don't worry," said Aayla. "We've got plenty of gunships on planet now. He'll be picked up."

Renamon could see the world of Christophsis getting further and further away through slits in the side of the gunships. In a mere few minutes though, the gunship flew squarely into what appeared to be a room. Since it was about a mile in the air it was probably the hangar of a large spaceship.

The doors opened when the gunship settled down. "Bly," instructed Aayla. "Take Loathsom down to the prison level."

"Yes, sir," said Bly. "Come on, Separatist scum." The clones hustled the defeated General to his feet and marched him unceremoniously away.

"Welcome to the Intrepid," said Aayla, gesturing at the ship around her and at numerous grey-suited clones rushing around and sorting things out. "Cruiser of the Republic and my second flagship to date. Unfortunately, my previous flagship, the Liberty was destroyed. Ironically it was just before we went to the planet we are about to go to now."

"How long before we can get underway?" asked Renamon.

"It should take no more than half an hour to load everything on-planet onto the cruiser," said Aayla. "And when we leave it'll still take a few hours to reach Maridun. But don't worry. You'll be back with your mate by the end of the day."

Renamon smiled. She'd been waiting for hours to hear that.

* * *

Aayla lead Renamon up to the bridge of the cruiser, where she could observe what was going on and Aayla could explain who she was to the pilots. The Intrepid appeared to be the shape of a giant triangle of some kind, with a large red gap down the middle that led to the interior, which could be opened and closed. Renamon watched as other gunships flew in from the planet, presumably carrying other clones, including Commander Cody. The AT-TE walkers were also being transported up, carried by gunship-like vehicles that had a pair of huge, magnetic clamps in place of where the passengers would stand in an LAAT. She didn't spot any AT-RTs hanging from vehicles, but Aayla assured her that they too were coming up, along with the Heavy Cannons.

The clones either seemed to realise that Renamon wanted to get going as quickly as possible or they wanted to leave Christophsis as quickly as possible, as the planet had killed so many of their comrades, but the Intrepid was fully loaded within twenty minutes. The hangar doors closed and the pilots steered the giant vessel upwards.

Renamon found herself in space for the first time. It was surreal, something she'd never thought she'd actually do. She could see the round sphere that was Christophsis. It was pretty, but it didn't compare with Earth, because it was just the same blue colour that Renamon had seen so much of all over it.

"Alright men," said Aayla. "Before we head back to Coruscant, we're making a slight detour to the planet Maridun. Bly, are we all set?"

"Yes General," said the clone. "The navicomputers co-ordinates are set."

"Good," said Aayla. "Jump to hyperspace then."

The clones busied themselves at the controls and Renamon saw one of them pull a lever. She watched in amazement as outside the star seemed to suddenly lengthen for a brief second, before, with a jerk, the ship shot forwards.

* * *

Some hours later and Terriermon had opened his eyes. Since he and Lopmon had woken up from fruit-induced stupor and had that conversation with Wag Too and his father, they had wisely gone to sleep in order to escape the after-effects such as the pounding headache. But he could feel it. He could feel the presence of Renamon, so much closer than it had been when he had gone to sleep. Perhaps that had been what had awoken him.

_Hello, Sleeping Beauty,_ came Renamon's voice in his mind. _Recovered from that little escapade with the fruit then?_

_What did I say about pineapples? I did say, didn't I?_

_Numerous times._

_Well, I see that you won that big battle of yours. Nice little scheme, but it's a good thing those droids were all so pathetic._

_Indeed._

_Well, I can tell that your nearly here, _thought Terriermon. _So I'll wake up Lopmon and say bye to the Lurmen before you arrive._

_You do that. See you soon._

Terriermon rolled over and shook Lopmon with one ear. "Loppy, Rena's almost here. Come on, get up."

Lopmon moaned and opened her eyes. "Well," she muttered. "At least part of our company will be together again."

"Yeah," said Terriermon. "And as you know from our link, hopefully the Jedi will try and help us find our Tamers."

"I hope so," said Lopmon. "I hope Suzie's okay."

"So do I," said Terriermon. "But momentai. Don't worry about her. I'm sure she's fine."

"Terriermon, I know you're just saying that to make me feel better."

"Is it working?"

"Not particularly but thanks for trying."

"Meh, never mind," said Terriermon. "Come on. We should say goodbye to Wag Too and the others before we leave."

Lopmon got to her feet and followed her brother out of the tent, their ears trailing behind them. The Lurmen looked up from wherever they were and watched the two Digimon a little apprehensively, but they relaxed when they realised there was going to be no random outburst of craziness.

Wag Too approached them. "You guys feeling better?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Lopmon. "And we just wanted to thank you for everything you've done for us."

"Even if that includes getting us a little hyper," said Terriermon good-naturedly. "Where's your father. We need to tell him we'll soon be out of his beard."

"Out of his... what?" Wag Too was confused. "Is that another expression?"

"Yes," said Lopmon. "It means we'll be leaving soon."

"Really?" asked Wag Too. "So soon? Where will you go?"

"Coruscant apparently," said Lopmon. "Renamon's coming to pick us up."

"Coruscant, you say?" asked Tee Watt Kaa, shuffling towards them. "That's the main planet of the Republic. I thought you said that you weren't in league with them."

"We aren't," said Terriermon. "Not yet, anyway." Then he blinked and looked up. "She's here."

Looking up, Lopmon, Wag Too, Tee Watt Kaa and all the other Lurmen saw a Republic Cruiser appear out of seemingly nowhere.

"Let me explain..." suggested Lopmon.

* * *

Renamon looked down at the savannah planet with a feeling of excitement building inside her. She didn't really know why she was so excited – after all she had only been separated from Terriermon and Lopmon since early that morning – but she was. She couldn't see it from their altitude, but her eyes were drawn so that they were fixed on the exact spot where the two bunnies were standing. She had barely moved from this position since they had originally jumped to hyperspace some hours ago.

"Come on, Renamon," said Aayla, placing a hand on the Digimon's shoulder. "Let's get to the gunships. You want to see him again?"

Renamon spun about and ran from the room at top speed. Aayla waved to Bly and Cody and the three of them followed her, down into the hangar. Aayla was surprised that Renamon had remembered the way back to it – she'd only gone down that route once, the other way.

"What kept you," said Renamon, already standing on a gunship. Aayla, Bly and Cody moved over and boarded it alongside her.

The pilot in the cockpit asked through the comlink, "Where to, sir?"

"The Lurmen village," said Aayla. "Fast as you can. I think our Digimon companion is getting a little restless."

The clone said "Yes, sir." A few seconds later and the gunship was in motion. Renamon waited impatiently as the atmosphere flew by in the slits in the side of the gunship, sensing the mounting excitement of both herself, and the other two. She could see the gunship she was in approaching through their mind, like something out of a dream.

The LAAT settled down on the grass before the watching Lurmen. The sliding door opened and there they were. The two bunny Digimon, standing next to the two Lurmen she identified as Wag Too and Tee Watt Kaa. "Miss me?" she said, before charging forward.

"Rena!" cried Terriermon, echoed by as similar cry from Lopmon, only with "mon" added on the end. The two of them also rushed forward, taking to the air so they could pick up speed. In two seconds flat they had crossed the distance between them and they collided sharply. The bunnies found themselves scooped up in the arms of the fox.

They said nothing. They didn't need to. Each knew exactly how the others were feeling without needing to express it. It was like a bubble of happiness had enveloped all three of them. Renamon looked down at them. They looked up at her. Then Lopmon winked and extricated herself, hopping knowingly down to the ground. Terriermon and Renamon took the cue and their mouths and tongues promptly began to reacquaint themselves with the other's.

Lopmon pointedly looked away and approached the three others leaving the gunship. "Hello, Aayla," she said warmly up to them. "Hello, Bly. Hello, Cody. My name is Lopmon. My brother Terriermon would say hello as well, but as you can see he's a little busy at the moment."

"I noticed," said Aayla, glancing up at the mated pair.

"That doesn't look weird at all," said Cody, sarcastically. "Especially since we just saw Renamon thrashing droids with barely any effort."

Bly nodded, but said nothing. He tore his gaze from the unusual spectacle and glanced down at Lopmon. "Somehow I pictured you to be a little... bigger."

"If I find my partner, I can be," said Lopmon. "It's good to see the three of you in the flesh at last."

"Likewise," said Aayla, kneeling down and extending an arm. Smiling, Lopmon clambered onto it and Aayla stood up again, holding her arm like a bird-handler as Lopmon walked easily down to her shoulder and wrapped an ear about her carrier's head. It tickled Aayla's lekku, but she refrained from saying anything.

"I'm afraid there will be time for a better introduction later," said Aayla. "But we have to leave in a minute." She turned to the Lurmen leader and said, "How are you Tee Watt Kaa?"

"Reasonably well considering what happened a few weeks ago," said Tee Watt Kaa.

"No Separatist counter-attacks?" asked Bly.

"It doesn't look like Lok Durd informed Dooku of exactly which planet he was testing his weapon on," said Wag Too.

Terriermon pulled his face from Renamon's and said, "Excuse me? Lok Turd? That's a demeaning name."

Renamon swatted her mate, lightly on the ear. "Durd, you idiot."

"Oh, right?"

"Well, if you do have any problems then don't hesitate to call," said Aayla to the Lurmen. "And now we should be going. I need to inform the council of the victory on Christophsis, and get you guys to meet them."

Tee Watt Kaa sighed. Aayla, Bly and Cody turned to board the LAAT, Lopmon on Aayla's shoulder. Renamon, with Terriermon still in her arms, also got on. "Wait," called the Lurmen leader. "You two, Terriermon and Lopmon. I do not approve of what you are about to do, going off the join in with the war. But that won't change your minds – that I do know. However, you two, despite the mess you made, are decent people. So I will wish you good luck."

"Thank you," said Lopmon. "You too."

"Cheers," nodded Terriermon. "And tell the Fwits we're sorry."

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

The LAAT doors closed and the gunship, with two new passengers, lifted off and flew back up towards the cruiser.

* * *

Yes! They're back together now. Hope you all enjoyed the battle-scene. I don't expect to get the next chapter up for a while though as I'm into the last week of revision and will be concentrating on it rather than this. So don't tell me to hurry Starowner – I'll do my best to get it up as soon as possible _and_ get a good grade.

* * *

Next time...

What's going on back in the Digimon world. Here, we follow the story of one particular Digimon as he tries to find out what happened to the three lost humans and the three lost Digimon. Any changes to the original choices as to who this is?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 10 : Just Once**


	10. Just Once

Oh yeah! Oh yeah! I just got an offer from my top choice of university! I'm going to learn how to make wildlife documentaries next year at the University of Cumbria. I'm feeling slightly hyper right now, but I'm gonna do my best with this chapter – the first back in the Digimon World since this whole debacle began. After this chapter, I've also written a trailer for the rest of the story. Just for the heck of it.

* * *

**Secret of the 327****th**

**Chapter 10:-Just Once**

* * *

No sign.

No sign of Henry, Suzie or Rika.

No sign of Terriermon, Lopmon or Renamon.

No sign whatsoever. It was like they'd just disappeared without a trace. The woods were full of splintered trees, huge footprints, charred and thrown earth and, worst of all, a tent complete with camping gear smashed into the ground.

The forest had been combed. Every tree had been searched behind. Every rock had been practically turned over. The forest had nearly been shredded to pieces by several angry, desperate Mega Digimon, searching futilely for comrades that were nowhere to be found.

And it was all down to Parallelmon. He was responsible for this mess. Every single one of the Tamers and their Digimon were secretly vowing in their head that if they ever met this Parallelmon, whoever the hell he was, again, they'd tear him limb from limb. Even little MarineAngemon was thinking along similar lines.

Gallantmon, Beelzemon and Justimon flew across the sky, scanning the ground below with their eyes and occasionally ducking low to have a look at something, but each time they rose again, disappointed. A flash of white that could have been Terriermon was just a bird, or they spotted something yellow which turned out to be an old plastic bag instead of Renamon, and many other examples went on the list of false alarms.

HiAndromon was searching with his robotic sensors, running through the forest and tuning his equipment ahead of him to look for traces of human or Digimon from a molecular level, disregarding all other native species. He charged on, searching, but never finding.

MarineAngemon flitted between trees and got lost several times, and had to rise above the canopy for him to find his bearings.

The biomerged form of Jeri and Elecmon was also on the prowl. SaberLeomon, with its massive yellow and red mane blowing in the wind and its tail flicking and whipping constantly, growled as it put its massive nose to the ground and attempted to sniff out any of the targets. But this too, was proving to be absolutely hopeless – the only place that smelled remotely like any of them was at the campsite, and where they had walked towards said campsite the previous day.

They pressed on, relentless in their search, hopeless though it was. None of them could fathom what had happened to their comrades – they hadn't been around the target for long enough to even get a good look at him, let alone ask him any questions of their own. Knowledge of Parallelmon's power had gone with the others to their own dimension.

The day wore on. Hours ticked slowly by, as the Digimon went on, frequently crossing the paths of each other but never the quarry. They expanded their search into the city, having combed the forest and finding nothing. The people looked up in a mixture of wonder at their majesty, praise at their feats of protecting the city, a fear because they either didn't understand still or that their appearance could be the precursor of something dangerous.

The Tamers ignored the humans and focused on finding their friends. But there was still no sign.

By evening, all of them had regrouped in the park. It was an unusual gathering in the middle of a children's playground. Numerous children were trying to get closer to them, but were being held back by their parents. The parents themselves were trying to listen in on their conversation.

"I guess there's no need for anyone to say that they haven't found anything," said Gallantmon.

"How'd you guess?" snarled Beelzemon, frustrated. "Whole day of searching and since they aren't here right now, what d'you know, they're still missing."

"Calm down, Beelzemon," said SaberLeomon, in the twin voice of Jeri and Leomon. Usually Leomon nowadays remained in his Rookie form of Elecmon, because it made him easier to travel with and it meant he didn't have to squeeze through doorways. "Fighting amongst ourselves will get us nowhere. We need to focus."

"We know," said Justimon. "But the problem is we have no idea what that was. I'm seriously hoping that it was some teleport of some kind, but if it was they could be anywhere on Earth or the Digital World."

"I'll tell you what I think," said MarineAngemon, who was a lot more vocal when he was biomerged with Kenta than he had been before. "I think we've been going about this the complete wrong way. If what Ryo suggests is right and it was a teleport then they could be anywhere..."

"...He just said that," pointed out HiAndrmon.

"...Which means," continued MarineAngemon, that if we search for them manually like this we could take forever to find them. We should go to HYPNOS. They've got a lot of influences."

"MarineAngemon's right," nodded SaberLeomon. "And we should go now. I'll head over there and let them know so we can get them searching before dark. If they're anywhere, HYPNOS will find them."

SaberLeomon turned around and bounded off into the trees towards the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building. "I'll go with you," MarineAngemon flitted after her.

"That's just great," complained HiAndromon. "What are we supposed to do in the meantime? Sit back and twiddle out thumbs?"

"Of course not," Ryo's voice alone came from Justimon. "There are other people that need to know that Henry, Rika and Suzie are missing. Namely, their parents."

"Oh dear," Gallantmon visible sagged. "I'd rather face the D-Reaper and Ogudomon together, alone and unarmed, than do that."

"He's right though," said Beelzemon. "Much as I hate to admit it they do need to know. They'll find out if we don't tell them and then demand why we didn't."

"True," nodded Gallantmon. "I'll head over to Henry's place and tell his parents and siblings."

"And I'll go over to Rika's," agreed Justimon. "You gonna come with us, you guys?"

"I'll go with you Ryo," said HiAndromon.

Gallantmon looked at the remaining Mega and said, "What about you, Beelzemon?"

"I should be getting back," the ex-Demon Lord shrugged. "Ai and Mako are probably gonna bet a little worried that I ain't back yet. And they're gonna need to know too. They're Tamers. They should be involved in this, despite what they're mother thinks."

"Alright," said Gallantmon. "Let's get to it. When we've done, head to the Tokyo Metropolitan. We'll see what HYPNOS are doing there."

"Gotcha," said Justimon. Without another word he leapt upwards in a flurry of red scarves and flew east towards the household of the Nonaka's. HiAndromon activated the rockets in his boots, took off and followed. Gallantmon and Beelzemon watched them leave for a few moments, before Gallantmon turned to Beelzemon.

"See you soon," he said and sprang away in the opposite direction.

"Yeah, sure," muttered the leather-clad biker Digimon. He stood, alone in the park, for a couple of minutes staring at the sky. He grunted to himself and ruffled his wings slightly.

"Hi, Beelzemon!" cried a loud voice from behind him, just as he was about to take off and head home. A loud, high-pitched, childish voice.

"Oh, God," moaned Beelzemon placing a clawed hand to his face and turning to see the only Digimon in existence that didn't have a Mega Form, or an Ultimate, Champion, or even a Rookie form. The little In-training Digimon, the Catalyst, Calumon.

Calumon was hovering, ears outstretched and level with Beelzemon's head. "What were you doing all day?" he giggled. "I saw you all flying around like little bugs. Were you all playing tag?" His expression suddenly changed to a looked of thought, and then sadness before adding, "Why wasn't I invited? I love tag."

"Calumon," Beelzemon gritted his teeth. "Look, I really don't have time for fun and games right now. Henry, Rika and Suzie and their Digimon seem to have vanished off the face of the earth."

Beelzemon expected Calumon to droop and look worried. Instead, he brightened and said, "Oh, Hide and Seek?"

Beelzemon felt like smacking his head against the nearest tree. Calumon may be a good friend but he was more naive than Takato and Guilmon. Combined. "No," he said impatiently. "I mean they literally vanished before our eyes. They were attacked by some Mega-level freakazoid Digimon, that looked like some kind of mutate... thing. We can't find them anywhere."

Now Calumon drooped. "Oh no. We've got to find them."

Beelzemon fought the urge to say, "No sh*t, Sherlock." Calumon wasn't ready for that kind of language. He never would be. Instead, he said, "No duh. We've only been trying to do that all day. Look, I'm going to get Ai and Mako. I'm gonna need 'em to help. Besides, they might need to be guarded, in case that thing comes after them too."

"Where's Jeri?" asked Calumon. He was still living with the girl and Elecmon in their house and mostly hung around with Jeri's little step-brother. Occasionally he visited everyone else, except Ryo because he was terrified of Cyberdramon, but he mostly stayed with Jeri. Beelzemon could tell he was feeling a little vulnerable. The last time a Mega Digimon had entered the human world must have been burned on the inside of his mind.

"She went to HYPNOS to talk to that blond guy, Yamaki, and see if they could their machine whatchamacallems to work. Head over there, and you'll find her."

"Thanks, Beelzemon." Calumon swerved around and soared in the direction of the two towers. Beelzemon flapped his wings and threw himself into the air, caught an air current and flapped hard, heading for the house of his partners at top speed.

* * *

Ai and Mako were undoubtedly worried. Their partner had took off for no apparent reason early that morning, so early that the sun had barely risen. He hadn't even said goodbye. Now the sun was preparing to go down and he still hadn't returned. Their mother, Haruhi, had forbidden them to go out and look for him. They were just children, only six years old, and had no business wondering the streets looking for a creature that could take care of himself. Haruhi still didn't approve of Impmon's presence, and Impmon's bad language didn't usually help matters, as she thought that it would affect her children's personalities. Not to mention Impmon was becoming just as much a role-model to them as she was, and he had the ability to turn into a frigging shotgun-wielding Demon.

Dutifully, the two little children had remained behind, but they had spent practically the whole day glancing out the window, hoping to spot their partner returning quickly. The two of them constantly lived in fear that Impmon would up and leave as he had done before. There were no signs of this happening yet, but the thought was always on their minds.

"I sure hope he's okay," said Mako, half-heartedly moving a plastic car across the floor in an attempt at play.

"He'll be fine," said Ai, although she was equally worried. "Mum's right. He can take care of himself."

"Mum doesn't know anything," Mako lowered his voice. "Impmon could hope to stand against something like Ogudomon. He could be dead and we wouldn't know it."

"We would," said Ai. "I'm sure we would."

"We should be out there helping him," insisted Mako. "We're Tamers now. We belong with the rest of that group. Suzie's only three years older than we are."

"But she can biomerge," pointed out Ai.

"I know," said Mako. They'd had this discussion numerous times, often switching places and having Ai being the one insisting she should help. "But I just wish he'd hurry up and come home. I don't want him to die."

"Aaw, you doubted me? I'm hurt."

Both of them whipped around to see Impmon walk into their bedroom. They hadn't heard him come in and hadn't spotted him from the wind so how he got back in the house was anyone's guess. Haruhi was often tempted to just lock him out. She never did though; he'd just blast the door down.

"Impmon!" the two of them jumped up and ran over to him, grabbing him and pulling him into a double-hug. Impmon bore it without too much enthusiasm, considering the nature of things at the moment.

"Are you okay?" asked Ai.

"Why'd you run off?" asked Mako.

"Was it a Digimon?"

"Did you beat it?"

"Is everyone else okay?"

"Did you break anything?"

"Why do you look so sad?"

"Is something wrong?"

"In order," sighed Impmon. "No, because it was an emergency, yes, no, no, no but I want to, because some of us are missing and probably dead and yes."

"Missing?" Ai looked worried. "What happened?"

"Some wacko named Parallelmon attacked the little crew that went camping."

"Suzie and her brother and Rika?" asked Mako.

"Yeah, that little group," Impmon frowned. "From the looks of things they creamed his ass, but this Parallelmon had a trump card. He wrapped this thing around all three:- MegaGargomon, Cherubimon and Sakuyamon and then... poof."

"Poof?" asked both of them at the same time.

"Yeah, poof. They just vanished in thin-air right in front of me. And then so did Parallelmon. We've spent the whole day looking for them but there's no sign."

Ai and Mako were stunned. They had not been around when their partner had killed Leomon, and it had never really hit them that somebody could die doing what they did. Now it struck them like a tsunami and they had to fight the urge to physically wilt. Gone? They were gone? Suzie was their best friend, and Lopmon was also really nice. And they loved Terriermon and his jokes, and the fact that Henry was always so exasperated by it. Renamon and Rika had always provided a comforting presence over them. And now they were all just gone.

Just like that.

"Any sign of them?" asked Ai.

"No," Impmon, weary after the day of fruitless searching, turned his back on them and hopped up onto the windowsill. He stared out at the sky, orange from the glow of the setting sun. He felt like smashing the glass with his gloved fist, but that would not get Haruhi on his side.

Ai and Mako looked at their partner with worry. They had definitely noticed a slight deterioration in his confidence and manner over the last six months, but they had never enquired to what that was. But now, Impmon looked like five tons of Mammothmon had just attempted to stampede over him. He looked like someone had danced over his grave. He was utterly miserable, and completely out of character.

"Impmon, what's wrong?" asked Mako.

"What d'you think?"

"No, what's really wrong?" Mako pressed on. "What else is the matter?"

Impmon's eyes narrowed as he stared out of the window. So they'd finally figured it out had they? They'd figured out the problems that had kept surfacing and resurfacing over and over and over again during the past few months, or at least they knew that something was wrong.

Because everything was going wrong with Impmon right now. Next to Guilmon, Terriermon had become his best friend. The two of them were quite similar, with their bad language and jocular attitude. Renamon to, had become a very close friend of his, almost by default. But as for Lopmon...

There were two things that he had yet to tell Ai and Mako. One was the way he felt about Terriermon's sister. She was the complete opposite of him, but that had not stopped Terriermon and Renamon. But what Impmon really envied about Terriermon was the way that he was free with his feelings. Impmon was a very closed Digimon and didn't like to tell anybody what he was feeling, unless it was that he was angry. Fear, happiness and, indeed, the love he felt for Lopmon, were kept under-wraps. And now she was gone. He'd possibly never see her again and he'd never got the chance to tell her.

How had she felt about him? Well, he knew the answer to that one. He had, at one point, subtly quizzed Terriermon, and he had said that Lopmon considered him as a really good friend. But he had stopped from digging further when Terriermon had spotted what he was doing and after a couple of seconds of blinking, had grinned evilly.

That had been a week ago. Since then, Lopmon had become a little quieter around him. A little embarrassed. Obviously Terriermon had either informed her, or she had been in his head at the time and had heard everything. She was still the same old Lopmon, but she looked like she was trying to figure something out. Impmon gave nothing away to her – he didn't particularly want anyone to picture him as the lovey-dovey type, because he wasn't. He wanted Lopmon to love him, but for being plain old Impmon, not someone who asked people on dates and bought them presents left, right and centre. That would just feel weird for him.

But he certainly wasn't ready to entrust Ai and Mako with _that_ titbit of information.

But he could tell them about the other thing.

"You're right," he said. "There had been something going on with me."

Ai and Mako glanced at each other and said, "What," together.

Impmon was silent for a few seconds, then he turned to face them and said, "My memory is coming back."

There was a few moments of silence, apart from the sound of Haruhi hovering below. Then Mako said, "Well, that's a good thing isn't it."

"No," Impmon sounded harsher than he had wanted, but they had to understand. "No, it's not. It's the worst thing that could possibly have happened to me. It started ever since the incident with Ogudomon ended and its proving to me every other day that your mother is 100% right about me. I am a monster!"

"No, you're not!" Ai looked angry. "Mum's wrong! Don't say that!"

"You wouldn't say that if you could see what I'm seeing. Every day a new memory resurfaces at some point, of the time when I went running amok with the other Demon Lords. It's never pleasant! Ever! But it's me! It's what I was! I was always a monster! Always a monster until Jeri spared my life! It's gruesome! It's horrible! In every, single memory I see myself tearing apart the lives of perfectly innocent Digimon and you know what! I'M LOVING EVERY MOMENT OF IT!"

Impmon fell silent after this little rant. Ai and Mako looked white faced, but didn't say anything. That said, Impmon's mind turned to the most vivid of all the memories he had.

* * *

"HELP!"

"RUN!"

"IT'S THE DEMON LORDS! HIDE!"

"RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"

"FLEE, GUYS! GET OUT OF H-AARGH!"

"Stop your whining," grinned Beelzemon as he sent a bullet smacking into the back of the running Mushroomon. The creature crumpled and died, splintering into data. Beelzemon leered and the data flowed towards him. It wasn't much, but it didn't matter. Any scrap of data would do, as long as he became stronger.

Glancing to one side, he saw two Floramon cowering in the side-street. They noticed him looking and shrank back, hoping that they had not been spotted, but they both knew he had. They whimpered as he approached, tail thrashing from side to side, clawed hands gripping the shotguns and levelling the barrels at them.

"Anything you want to say before I blast you to smithereens, you pathetic creatures."

One Floramon stepped forward, trembling violently and not meeting Beelzemon's eye, but she said, "You are the pathetic one. You kill mercilessly. But one day, you will meet someone stronger than you and you will be defeated."

Beelzemon raised one of his three eyes. "You think I haven't heard that speech before?" he asked and pulled the trigger. The bullet took the Floramon in the head and she burst into data. The other Floramon wailed and attempted to grab the floating data, but with a whoosh it was absorbed into Beelzemon's body.

"How about you?" Beelzemon turned to her. The Floramon stared at him with fear and horror.

"How can you be so cruel?" she whispered.

"I'm a Demon Lord," Beelzemon sneered. "It's what I do."

With that, he holstered one gun, bent down and grabbed the Floramon swinging her into the wall. She screamed as her back struck stone, but she screamed even louder when Beelzemon plunged his claws into her chest. With a splintering, she became mere particles.

"This is ridiculous," Beelzemon pulled out his gun again. "Let's get some serious destruction here." He charged out of the alleyway and down the streets, heading for the retreating villagers. Most were Rookies, with a few smaller Champions and the odd Ultimate. No challenge at all. Beelzemon pointed his guns and fired. The first one smashed a Deramon in the head, another shot straight through a bouncing Vegiemon. The next three took out a Numemon each in quick succession. The next one caught a stumbling Psychemon, which was like a pink Gabumon.

Beelzemon's ears picked out the sound of a crying infant. Turning he smashed an arm into the side of one of the simple straw and wood houses and burst into it, like the Demon from Hell that he was. Inside were two Gazimon, standing protectively in front of a crying Poyomon. "What is this?" Beelzemon laughed. "A resistance force? This is one of the funniest things I've ever seen."

"We're gonna protect this kid to the end!" cried one of the Gazimon, and then both cried **"ELECTRIC STUN BLAST!"** Two electric bolts were launched from their mouths at Beelzemon. He didn't move and they struck him in the chest. Not a muscle stirred under the assault.

"Is that so?" he asked. "Well too bad, cause the end is here! **DOUBLE IMPACT!"**

Each bullet struck the Gazimon between the eyes and they fell, bursting into atoms. The Poyomon shrieked and slumped backwards. Beelzemon advanced towards the Baby level Digimon.

"Don't expect no pity," he leered into the terrified infant's face.

"STOP!"

Beelzemon turned. There, framed in the doorway that he had created, was a Lopmon. She glared hatefully at him. "You will not harm him," she declared.

"Whose gonna stop me? You?"

"**LOP TWISTER!"**

The Lopmon shot towards him in a blur of spinning. Beelzemon merely stood, amused and watched the bunny streak towards him.

"In case you haven't noticed..." he said and then he kicked at the spinning form. The Lopmon gasped in pain and shock as she was lifted upwards on the tip of his boot, flickered and then disintegrated. "I have spike on my boots," Beelzemon finished. Then he turned and shot the Poyomon.

* * *

Impmon gasped at the horrific memory. If Ai and Mako could have seen that, they couldn't possibly see him in the same heroic light that they did now. "I killed innocents," he whispered. "I killed males. I killed females. I killed babies. I was a monster."

Ai and Mako were shocked, but said nothing. Impmon didn't doubt they were struggling to cope.

"But..." said Ai, after some time. "You're a good guy now."

"Oh yeah," snorted Impmon, "and a fat load of making up for what I did I've done haven't I?"

"What do you mean?" asked Ai. "You fought the D-Reaper. You fought Ogudomon."

"Yuh-huh," nodded Impmon. "And a fat lot of good I was in both those cases. Against the D-Reaper it was that Grani that busted it open and not me, then I failed to rescue Jeri, because of my past, and then I nearly got torn to shreds. Then against Ogudomon, all I did was take out one of those sword things. I never scored any crippling blows on him either. That's all I am. A monster who's become a spare part."

"Don't say that..."

"I couldn't save Jeri, I couldn't save Tokyo and I couldn't save them this morning!" roared Impmon, angrily grasping his head. "I wish once... just once... I could do something useful. That I could be the hero. That I could remember something out this tumult of gore and horror that was nice or useful, even if it was a vague scrap of virtually nothing. Just once! Once! Is that too much to ask?"

"What's going on in here?" Haruhi had obviously heard Impmon shouting and she was standing by the door, and glaring at Impmon.

"None of your business," Impmon glared back, before turning and walking to the other side of the room, sitting down heavily on a beanbag that Haruhi had bought for Mako. He could hear Haruhi talking to Ai and Mako behind him.

"...should get rid of him. Children shouldn't be surrounded by them."

"No, Mum," said Ai firmly – most kids their age still said "Mummy," but Ai and Mako insisted that if they were to be good Tamers that they had to grow up and grow up fast.

Impmon allowed a wry grin. After all that and his Tamers were still standing up for him. But they'd never want to look at him again if they could have seen what he saw in his own head on a daily basis. Ironically, that vivid memory might have sparked off his feelings for Lopmon, considering the horror of him killing someone who looked exactly like one of his best friends. He knew it wasn't the same Lopmon, as she had been brought into the world at the same time as Terriermon, and she would have remembered if she had been deleted by a Beelzemon, plus she had already been serving the Sovereigns as Antylamon at this point.

But what Impmon couldn't fathom was why _he_ didn't remember any of this, until the jagged pieces he was getting now. The most likely theory, that he and Terriermon had concocted together, was that he had probably been deleted himself, somehow, although how was unknown as according to Lopmon and the other Devas, Beelzemon had simply vanished. But for some reason, Anubimon, Lord of the Digimon Dead, had known that he could change, unlike his fellow Demon Lords, and had sent him back with no memory to start afresh. Were that the case, he had nearly screwed up his second chance were it not for Jeri, Ai and Mako.

His thoughts turned to Terriermon, Renamon and Lopmon. The three of them made a great team – so great a team that a frigging prophecy had been made about them. That they would work together to defeat the most powerful Demon Lord of them all. And it had come to pass. He envied them this. He so wanted to be a part of a team as well. The three of them fit together. Terriermon and Lopmon were like to sides of the same coin and Renamon was like the edge of it, creating a perfect working unit. But there seemed to be no place on that coin for Impmon.

He thought back to the time when they had been figuring out the prophecy about them. That was one of the happiest memories that he had, because a sense of unity amongst everyone, a sense of purpose and a sense of hope that they could get out of a situation that seemed beyond their abilities.

In an effort to take his mind off the uncharacteristic pain that he felt at the loss of the three and their Tamers, he immersed himself in that memory, and replayed it in his mind. They had just come back from a fight, where the biomerged forms of that group had suddenly exploded in bright light and burnt the seemingly invulnerable Ogudomon.

* * *

(A/N: This section is copied straight out of "A Sticky Situation." But read it anyway, please)

"_Whatever it was," said Lopmon. "It definitely originated from you, Renamon. I felt nothing like that, and you were the first to start the whole glowy thing."_

"_I felt nothing like that either," chipped in Terriermon._

"_Most irregular," said Henry, chin in palm and deep in thought. "Whatever it was, it injured the one who can't be injured by anything not created with a special immunity to the nullifying affect that he has."_

"_If we can figure out how to harness that power and perhaps use it again," said Ryo, "we could win this. We could stop the one that it was claimed we could not stop."_

"_First, I'd like to know what it was," said Henry. "There's no telling what the potential side-effects could be. Say, if we figured out how to do it, but not what it did, we could end killing Sakuyamon, and possibly any others involved, due to some random thing we had not even considered."_

"_It's like the whole card thing all over again," muttered Takato._

"_But he's right, Takato," said Rika. "We could be putting not only our own, but everyone's lives in danger without this prior knowledge."_

"_I hate this," whined Kenta. Everyone turned to look at him. "You guys are all talking about something that happened that I didn't even see. Me, Jeri, Ai and Mako are all feeling a little left out here. What happened?"_

"_Sorry," said Takato. "Well-"_

_Kazu burst out laughing. "What's so funny?" demanded the other "moron twin."_

"_It's just great that for once I know about something that you don't know about. That never happens, ever." Kazu continued to laugh, pointing a finger at Kenta and using the other hand to clutch his chest. He stopped laughing when, for the second time that day, he was clonked in the head by Cyberdramon._

"_Get a grip, Kazu," said Rika, coldly. "Show a little more maturity. You can biomerge now. Act like you deserve it. Even Suzie's more mature than you."_

"_I am?" asked Suzie. "Yay!"_

"_It looked to me," said Sandiramon the snake Deva, everyone turning to look at him. "Like some unbridled raw power that was suddenly unleashed in a desperate situation. It has not happened very often, but occasionally I saw Zhuqiaomon do something similar, except that he practically exploded with a giant ball of flame rather than light."_

"_That's right," said Lopmon. "I remember that incident. That was against Parallelmon before I became a partner."_

* * *

Impmon shot up out of the beanbag so fast he almost smacked into the opposite wall. "YES!" he cried, startling Ai and Mako. "YES! I HAVE A LEAD! IT HAPPENED! MY WISH CAME TRUE! JUST ONCE! JUST ONCE SOMETHING USEFUL! YES!"

"I'll never understand why you two wish to keep him around," glared Haruhi, before backing out of the door and shutting it.

"What is it Impmon?" asked Ai, confused.

"I finally remembered something useful. Something about my damn past that we can use to find Henry and the others."

"Really?" Mako was looking excited. "What?"

"Parallelmon," said Impmon. "The one that attacked today. I've heard his name used before. Lopmon mentioned him once during the Ogudomon Debacle. She said that the Sovereigns had once fought against him and won. That means they might know about him and about he can do. They disappeared when he used this Absorbent Bang attack on them. The Sovereigns must know what it does."

"Right," said Ai slowly. "So what does that mean?"

"It means," said Impmon, heading for the door. "That I'm going back to the Digital World."

"What?" Mako looked panicked. "You're gonna leave us? But you said you wouldn't."

"I ain't going nowhere permanently," said Impmon. "But we gotta talk to the Sovereigns to get them to tell us what they know, and we can't exactly do that here. Don't worry. I'll be back soon. I just don't know how soon. Hey, your mother will be happy for a bit."

"No, she won't," said Ai.

"Course she will. I'll be out of her hair."

"That's not what I meant," said the little girl. "We're going with you."

Impmon halted right then and there and turned slowly to face his partners. He shook his head slowly. "No," he said. "No, you're not."

"Yes, we are," said Mako. "You said to Mum when we got back from fighting Ogudomon that we were Tamers. And we are Tamers. But we never do anything Tamery."

"You know that's not a word."

"Mako's right," said Ai. "We know we're young, but we've got to start being Tamers somewhere. Why not now?"

"Because the Digital World is infinitely more dangerous than here," said Impmon. "If you got killed I'd never forgive myself. You are not coming, so get over it."

"You can't stop us," said Mako. "We know where the portal is. If you leave without us we'll just follow you and go through it."

Impmon raised an eye. "Are you blackmailing me?"

"Maybe," said Mako.

"Good man," grinned Impmon. "I like it. But I'm only doing this so you don't get squished. But I suppose if you're going, we're gonna have to let your Mum know."

* * *

Haruhi started at the roar of an engine. That blasted Digimon had started up that living motorbike of his. She hated it when he did that. Ai and Mako were supposed to be calming down for the night before she put them to bed in half an hour and starting up the bike would only get them excited.

She stormed out of the house, ready to confront the Digimon, no matter how evil he looked. She spotted him sitting on the bike, as Beelzemon. He turned as she threw open the door and with a grin he gave her a cheeky salute. Ai and Mako, who were sitting on the bike in front of him, waved.

"What... KIDS, GET OFF THERE AT ONCE!"

"Bye Mum!" called both of them.

"Hasta la vista, lady," said Beelzemon and with a loud roar, Behemoth shot forwards and around the corner. As it went, with Haruhi in vain pursuit, Beelzemon tossed something over his shoulder at her. Behemoth whipped down the street and out of sight, and a paper aeroplane bounced off Haruhi's chest. She stopped and looked at it, bending to pick it up.

Unfolding it, she read, _Miss, Impmon here. Yeah, I can write. Surprised? Anyway, Ai, Mako and me are going on a little road trip. We'll be back in a couple of days, hopefully. Just tell HYPNOS that we've gone to the Digital World. They'll get it. Yours gonely, The Nuisance. Haha._

Haruhi screamed and ran back into the house, picked up the phone and dialled a numver given to her by a blond man in a black suit and sunglasses named Mitsuo Yamaki.

* * *

The visit of most of the Tamers had been brief. Takato had gone back to the Wongs, Jeri had gone to the Nonaka household to comfort a grieving Rumiko, and Kazu and Kenta had gone home, feeling useless. Janyu had rushed in, along with the other Monster Makers, at the news. They were hurriedly searching the Digital World for any signs of human life, which they could now do considering they had taken samples from each of the Tamers of their DNA and the data that had been put into it in order to allow them to biomerge.

"Anything yet?" asked the only Tamer still there – Ryo. Ryo was still blaming himself for the loss of their friends, insisting that the fact the warnings of his partner were not taken as seriously as they should have because of him. Cyberdramon himself, in an attempt to cheer Ryo up, had de-digivolved into the purple dragon that was his Rookie form of Monodramon.

"Nothing yet, Ryo," said Riley. "But you must be patient. The Digital World is a big place and if they're there, it may take some time."

"Is it possible that they're just... dead?" asked Ryo.

"Don't say that!" snapped Janyu, understandably. "They can't be dead. They just can't be." Janyu had not cried over the loss of his son and daughter – he had not cause to cry yet as he had no idea what had become of them. They could have just been teleported for all he knew. But it had come close. Very close to tears.

Yamaki walked in, his mobile phone clutched in one hand and pressed to his ear. "I understand that, Mister President," he was saying, "but these children are extremely important to us. I'd very much appreciate if you could put your best efforts to trying to find them. I know. I know. They might not be in your country, but if you could just try... Well, they'd be easily recognisable if their Digimon are beside them. No they are not a threat, they are quite friendly. Thank you." He hung up. "Well, Obama just said that he'll get the special forces in America searching. He's much easier to deal with than his predecessor, the idiot that he was."

"Good," said Janyu. "Have you patched through the images of them, Curly?"

"Done and dusted," said Curly. "How about you, Daisy?"

"Yep, China and India now know what to look for," said the blond.

"And I just sent a bunch of pictures to several countries in Europe," said Babel, "but there are so many damn places there."

"Every little helps," said Dolphin. "Australia have got pictures too now."

"Good," said Yamaki. "We'll find them yet."

"I hope so," said Ryo. "I really hope so."

"Cheer up, Ryo," said Monodramon in his chirping voice. "They got this in the bag. You need rest."

"I will rest when we find them," said Ryo.

"Listen to reason," said Monodramon. "You've no cause to blame yourself. If anyone's to blame, it's me. I mean, it was me who was..."

Yamaki's phone rang. After glancing at the address, he sighed and said, "If this is another complaint about Impmon..." before answering. "This is Yamaki."

After a long pause, Yamaki shouted "WHAT!"

"What is it?" asked Ryo.

"Ryo," shouted Yamaki. "Get to the portal now! Impmon, Ai and Mako are attempting to go to the Digital World. We need to stop them, and you'll get there fastest."

"The Digital World?" blinked Monodramon.

"They might know something," Ryo cried. "Come on. Let's go!"

* * *

"Fancy a little ride to the Digital World?" Beelzemon stroked his bike, one of the only things he ever showed affection to. They had pulled up beside Guilmon's old hideout. Ai and Mako were whooping and hollering – they had never been on Behemoth before because their mother wouldn't let them. It was exhilarating."

"C'mon, guys," said Beelzemon. "The sooner we get there the better."

"Okay," said both of the twins. Beelzemon walked Behemoth up the slope and opened the gate to the hideout. It looked ridiculously small to him in this form, because usually the door was several times his height. Now, his head almost brushed the ceiling.

"You ready for this, guys?" he asked, grinning down at his charges. "Everyone else had been to the Digital World before. But not you. This'll be your first trip."

"And just why does it need to be their first trip?"

Beelzemon turned and saw Cyberdramon land. Ryo hopped off his back, and for some reason, Cyberdramon dedigivolved into Monodramon.

"You can't stop us, Ryo," said Beelzemon. "There ain't no turning back on our part. Go tell Yamaki that we'll be fine."

"Answer the question," said Ryo. "Why are you going there? Do you know something, or were you planning this and choosing to go ahead with it, despite what happened this morning?"

"ARE YOU IMPLYING SOMETHING!" roared Beelzemon.

"No, of course he isn't," said Monodramon. "But if you do know something, then we want to help."

Beelzemon regarded the two of them for a moment, then said, "Alright, here's the deal."

Ryo and Monodramon listened carefully as Impmon explained about what Lopmon had said, when, and why he was going to see the Soverigns. When he'd finished, both were grinning. Ryo stepped forward and said, "Well, forget leaving without us. I caused this mess..."

"...No, you didn't," muttered Monodramon.

"...And I want to help sort it out."

"Then, by all means," grinned Beelzemon, before turning and ushering both his bike and the two twins down into the tunnel that Guilmon had dug and that Mihiramon the tiger Deva had widened when he had needed to get back into the Digital World.

"There it is," said Beelzemon, glancing at the glob of orange, pulsing data. With a push, he sent Behemoth through. It flickered and disappeared. Then with a growl, Beelzemon's wings burst out of his back as he took on his Blast Mode.

"If I recall correctly," he said, "We're gonna need these."

"Why?" asked Mako.

"Because..." explained Beelzemon, before picking both of them up and carrying them right through the portal. Ryo and Monodramon went right behind them.

And on the other side, they were briefly surrounded by strange, squiggly, floating symbols of all kinds and hovering in mid-air, until they suddenly shot in a direction which could only be down, because that's the way they were falling. It must have been Behemoth – the bike was sentient after all and had already picked the direction for them to fall.

As they broke through the Digital Barrier, Beelzemon flapped his wings and caught himself, so that he was flying instead of falling. Then he angled his body and flew under Ryo and Monodramon, so that the two of them landed on his back. As they grabbed on, Beelzemon swooped down. It still took him about a minute to reach the ground, and he touched down beside his bike, placed Ai and Mako down and allowed his other passengers to slide off. All five glanced around at the desert they had landed in.

"I've been living in your home long enough," Beelzemon said to his partners, who were staring in awe. "It's about time I welcomed you to mine."

* * *

Phew, longer chapter than usual, this one, but I felt, that it deserved to be a little bit longer to make up for lost time, and the fact, I've mostly been focusing on the Star Wars universe. Well, congratulations to everyone who guessed Impmon, but to be fair, considering what I hinted at in Chapter 1, it was a pretty easy guess. But will there be an Impmon and Lopmon relationship? You'll have to wait and find out.

* * *

Next time...

Back in the Star Wars universe, we see Renamon, Terriermon and Lopmon land on the world of Coruscant. Aayla's going to introduce them to some very important people.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 11 : The Jedi High Council**


	11. The Jedi High Council

Many of you may have heard of the mass revolt to the Biology exam I took on Monday on facebook. I am pleased to say I am a part of that, despite the constant swearing of angry Year 13's. I just hope it doesn't compromise my chances of getting into Uni, but it's not going to put me off writing, I'll tell you that for nothing. Anyway, I'm glad people liked the trailer – it was _supposed_ to be confusing and not give too much away. I hope you're all filled with anticipation, because everything that went in it will be in the next ten chapters. Then at twenty, I'll do another for the next ten and so on and so on.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327**th**

**Chapter 11:-The Jedi High Council**

* * *

As The Intrepid descended over the atmosphere of the Republic Capital, three of its occupants gazed in wonder at everything that was bustling around outside the windows. There were skyscrapers so high they put the Empire State Building to shame. There were numerous hovercars, or, as Commander Bly informed them, speeders, shooting across the sky between them in some traffic system that they couldn't even fathom. There were lights everywhere, and not a hint of anything besides the giant city. Even the billboards were floating.

"Welcome to Coruscant," said Aayla, standing beside Renamon on the bridge. The fox Digimon had one of the two bunnies on each shoulder and the three of them just stared. It was mind-blowing – the sort of thing that only came up in television programs back home. But it was here, now, right in front of them, only separated from them by thick glass.

What was also amazing were the myriad of species that appeared to be in the speeders shooting all over the place. It wasn't the diversity of them which amazed the Digimon – they were, after all, more diverse themselves than any of these beings, but what amazed them was the fact that almost all of them had the same basic shape. A humanoid one. Two legs, two arms, occasionally more limbs but mostly just like a human. It was everything else that set them apart, such as colour, head-shape, amount of hair and eyes, the list went on.

"This is weird," said Terriermon. "It's just... weird. I bet Janyu would kill to be where we are right now and see all of this."

"The rest of the Monster Makers would probably join him in that respect," breathed Lopmon. "This is amazing. And this is just the one planet."

"But it is the most diverse," said Aayla. "It is the Capital after all, and the location of the Jedi Temple and the Galactic Senate."

"I was always told back on Earth that democracy doesn't work," said Terriermon. "But it seems to be working just fine right here. I wonder why."

"Perhaps they've had better luck than the people back home and elected someone whose not a power-grabbing moron," said Renamon. "Or an evil maniac."

"The Leader of the Republic is Chancellor Palpatine," said Aayla. "Just as a word of advice, it would pay to be respectful to him when you meet him, as I'm sure you will. Bad language would not get him on your side," she looked pointedly at Terriermon. Over the hours that it had taken to get from Maridun to here, Terriermon had made numerous jokes, often with the occasional swearword – which Aayla and the clones did not understand until Terriermon explained them.

"Who me?" asked Terriermon. "As if. If I so much as think a swearword then you have my permission to wash out my mouth with soap."

"I'll hold you to that," smirked Renamon.

Terriermon paused, then added, "Forget I ever said that."

Aayla chuckled. Truth be told she was enjoying the company of these three pioneers immensely. For some months now she hadn't really had time to socialise with other Jedi, as she was often on missions with them when she did see them, or at least in a dire situation, since this war began. But these three acted like they didn't have a care in the world, although despite their attitudes, Aayla could sense the deep concern and attachment to their Tamers on all three of them.

She secretly hoped that the Jedi Council would let them stay with her, but that wasn't likely to happen. If these three were prophesised to be here, they would probably be sent to fight alongside Anakin Skywalker. After all, he was the hope of the galaxy, what with being the Chosen One and everything.

"Commander," she said, turning to look at Bly. "Please drop us off at the Jedi Temple, then you may return to your barracks and do what you like."

"Already on it, sir," Bly saluted. "We're just coming up on the Temple now."

"Is that it?" Lopmon pointed.

"Whoa," said Terriermon. "I hope it is."

Lopmon was pointing at a truly enormous building up ahead, that stood head and shoulders and torso and half the legs above everything else. It was an absolutely massive structure of metal and stone, like a massive cube with walls that sloped outwards slightly. Situated on top of the main structure were four thin towers that stretched as tall as the cube itself, and a fifth one in the middle of these four, taller than even the others, and with what appeared to be a room with corners that hung over the side. "Yes," nodded Aayla. "That's the Jedi Temple."

"Why a Temple?" asked Renamon.

"As I said, we are peacekeepers," said Aayla. "Not warriors. The word Temple sounds much calmer and more peaceful than Fortress. The Republic wanted the Jedi to build just that in times gone by, but the Jedi declined and had the Temple built. Of course, it looks more like a fortress now and it is defended, but that is not its main intention."

"Fair enough," said Lopmon. "Do all Jedi live in there?"

"Not all, but a good many do."

"Gunship's been prepped for you, sir," said Bly, striding towards them.

Aayla turned to face him. "Thank you, Bly. We'll head over right away. And I'll probably be coming out tomorrow with a new mission for you considering the rate things are going."

"Don't worry about us, sir," said Bly. "We're always ready to do what needs to be done."

"I know, Bly," Aayla put a hand on his shoulder. "But even battle-hardened clones like you need a break. Try and make the most of what time you have."

"Will do," Bly nodded. Aayla removed her hand and gestured to the three Digimon. "Come on, guys. Let's get moving. The sooner we talk to the Jedi Council, the sooner we can get about finding your human friends."

"Good enough for me," said Terriermon.

"And what I said about the Chancellor, about you being respectful, that applies here as well."

"Momentai."

Aayla and Bly both grinned. They had already found out what that word meant.

The four of them (the bunnies insisted on using their legs) walked down into the hangar and entered the gunship. With a whoosh it shot out of the hangar doors and glided smoothly downwards, towards the towering structure, that looked like a man-made mountain. When it came to a stop and the sliding doors opened, Aayla stepped outside straight away. The Digimon hung back for a moment and they saw that the gunship had landed inside another hangar, one that was full of more LAATs secured on maintenance platforms, and a short space running down the centre for them to swoop through the lines of others and out the main doors.

There was nobody in the hangar besides them.

No, wait. There was someone. Only he was so small that they didn't spot him immediately, because their heads had automatically looked up to stare at the gunships. Walking towards them was a creature that was the same height as Terriermon as Lopmon, give or take an inch. He was green, with large eyes, with irises that looked slightly yellow. He had a wrinkled face, with grey hair running across the back, huge bat-like ears and gnarled three-fingered-and-toed hands and feet. He was wearing a white robe, with a brown shirt and trousers underneath it. He was obviously old, and was walking towards them with the aid of a walking stick.

"Young Secura," said the little creature, in a slightly croaking voice that reminded Terriermon of that of some kind of frog. "Glad to see you again, I am."

"Grand Master Yoda," Aayla dipped her head and bowed in respect. To the Digimon, it was an unusual sight, to see something as tall as Aayla bow to something that small, but they had long since learnt that size wasn't everything. Even so, Terriermon had to repress a snigger, because it reminded him of a time where some adult man had bowed to _him_ in the shopping centre once.

Grand Master Yoda looked up at them, as they stepped out of the gunships themselves, which promptly closed up the doors and rose to leave. "Hmm, a reason there is, I trust, for bringing three non-Jedi into the Temple, yes?" Yoda asked Aayla, while looking the three Digimon up and down.

"Yes, Master," said Aayla. "My mission to discover what the strange disturbance in the Force on Christophsis was resulted in me finding them. They are not its cause, but they _are_ its result. I thought that you would like to talk to them yourself – they'd be much better at explaining it than I would."

"Yeah," said Terriermon. "That, and we have a teeny-tiny favour we want to ask you."

"Terriermon," warned Renamon.

"Momentai."

Yoda chuckled. "Restrained, you should not be. Express your thoughts and feelings, you should. Understand them, I will."

"Really?" asked Lopmon. "We were told to be very respectful."

"Get you a long way, respect can," nodded Yoda. "But necessary, it is not. Grand Master of the Jedi Order, I may be, but officious and judgemental, I am not." He turned back to Aayla. "Sensed your presence, I did, and the life-forces of your friends, which is why I am here. Capture Loathsom, did you?"

"Yes, Master," said Aayla. "I've instructed Commander Cody to take him down to the prison level. He'll be ready for trial when the time comes."

"Excellent," said Yoda. "Make your report to the Jedi Council, you should."

"Right away, Master," said Aayla, "but there is the matter of the three Digimon here to sort out?"

"Digimon?" Yoda asked. "Heard of Digimon, I have not."

"I'm not surprised, Master," said Aayla. "I believe I was the first being in this whole universe to ever see a Digimon."

"Feel honoured," demanded Terriermon, with a giggle. Yoda also chuckled.

"Introduce yourselves, can you?"

Each one of the three gave their names to him. Yoda hummed a little to himself and a large grin was pasted on his wrinkled face. "Truly wonderful, the universe is. To have so many living in this galaxy and yet, still secrets, there are, to be revealed."

"Indeed," said Aayla. "But these three do not come from our universe at all. They are in fact from a different universe altogether."

Yoda's eyes widened. He looked to the Digimon with a new interest. "Really? All eight-hundred-and-seventy-three years of my life, never heard of dimension travel, I have." He paused and then added, "Or is it eight-hundred-and-seventy-two?"

"You've lived for that long?" asked Terriermon. "And I thought Janyu was old."

Renamon swatted him in the head. "Ow!"

"Don't make me eat you," she said. "As foxes generally do to rabbits."

Yoda's gaze seemed to increase, if that was at all possible. "Interesting beings, you are," he observed. "Sense spirit, I do, I each one of you. Power, condensed into your bodies but always ready to be unleashed, I sense. Many stories, you have, I presume, hmm?"

"Yes," said Lopmon, "we do. But regardless, by brother is right. We need your help."

"In what way?" asked Yoda. "Help you, we will. A guarantee, that is. Our duty, it is, to protect and assist those in need."

"So I've heard," smiled Renamon. This Yoda definitely seemed to be the friendly sort.

"Perhaps it would be better to take this up with the rest of the council, Master," suggested Aayla. "This is very important, and could even help to turn the tide of the war in our favour."

Yoda looked up at her, curiously. "End the war, you say? Desirable, that would be. Yes. Very well, follow me, and take you to the Council, I will."

He turned and began to walk, or rather, hobble, very slowly towards a set of doors. Aayla turned back to look at her Digimon companions. She blinked. All of three of them had vanished into thin air, although she could still sense them there. Renamon had put up her perception filter.

"Renamon?" she asked questioningly.

"I would much rather that we kept a low profile," said the disembodied voice of the fox. "We get enough stares back home, and people have got used to us there."

"And we have learned to keep down-to-the-ground at times," said Lopmon. "We don't like attracting unwanted attention. We have been assaulted in the past by unexpected forces."

"Which is her way of saying she's paranoid," quipped Terriermon.

"Hey!"

"Momentai. I'm just kidding. They're right, sometimes we even get attacked back home by humans who think we should return to our own world. Never works, of course, but what can you do?"

"Come, come," Yoda called over his shoulder. Aayla turned to follow, and the three Digimon walked right behind her, invisible to all eyes. Not that there were many watching. The corridors that followed were huge, with numerous pillars embedded into the walls that held up the roof. Yoda walked ahead and the others followed behind.

"Nice place, you got here," commented Lopmon, studying the high ceilings with interest.

"We do live here," remarked Aayla, "so we try to make it as pleasant an atmosphere as possible."

"It's certainly very grand," said Renamon. "The Republic must think highly of you."

"Mostly they do," said Aayla. "But there are some who believe we are war-mongers. Nothing could be further from the truth and yet sometimes it can be very difficult to change a person's mind without violence. And that is something we would never consider."

"There'll always be some," said Terriermon. "Always be someone who thinks that someone trying to help you is the threat."

"You sound like you're talking from experience," noted Aayla, knowing full well that they were.

"We are," said Lopmon. "We get that a lot too. Without us, the Human World would fall apart, but some people seem to think it's our fault."

The passageways that Yoda led them through, slowly, were so long and winding and had so many changes of direction that there were several times when each of the Digimon thought that the little Jedi Master had got lost, or was even trying to make them lose their own way. But eventually, they came to a large room with windows on all sides. There were numerous speeders shooting past outside, and there were twelve chairs of some kind dotted in a circle around the room. Some of them were filled, others empty. Yoda, began to head over to one chair in particular, a very small one that was more like a pouffe than a chair. Hopping onto it, he sat with his legs folded and his hands clasped together.

"Lower your perception filter," said Aayla. "In wartime it is best not to think that someone is attempting to hide. Spies are everywhere." Indeed, all the Masters in the room were looking in the direction of the invisible Digimon. Renamon lowered the filter as Aayla strode out so that she was standing in the middle of the room. Thinking it was best to follow her example, they did the same.

Other than Yoda, there were two people on either side of him. One was a human, a black one with a bald head and a stern expression. On the other side of Yoda, was a being that looked entirely human except for his head, which was thin and had what appeared to be a large bulge at the top. He also had a white beard.

Before any of the Digimon could ask who anybody was, a voice from the doorway said, "Aayla, you're back earlier than I expected."

Aayla turned. Walking into the room was a man with brown hair and a brown beard. "Master Kenobi," she smiled and nodded. "Indeed I am. I received a little bit of help which managed to help me liberate Christophsis faster than anticipated."

"That's good," said Obi-Wan Kenobi. "Because otherwise I'd have had to call Commander Cody back for my next assignment. And we would have struggled to find someone to come and assist you. I am going to assume that this unexpected help came from your companions here."

"Yes," said Aayla. "Or at least, the tall, yellow one."

"Have a seat, Master Kenobi," said the black man. Obi-Wan raised his eyebrows and crossed to the chair next to the white-bearded man, before sitting down. Abruptly, all the chairs that had been empty were suddenly filled by holograms, each depicting a different species. The Digimon turned and took in each one in turn.

"Jedi Knight, Aayla Secura," said the black man. "Why did you feel it necessary to return to Coruscant before making your report?"

"A situation has arisen," said Aayla. "And I thought it best that everyone be present to hear it."

"Very well," said the tall-headed man. "First off, you can start by introducing us to your friends here. Who are they, what are they, where did they come from, and what are their intentions?"

Before Aayla could respond, Renamon stood up to the plate. She was a bold warrior and she would much prefer introducing herself than having someone else do it for her. "My name is Renamon. I am a Digimon, I come from another universe and I wish to help you, and for you to help us."

"My name is Terriermon, ditto, ditto and ditto."

"Ditto?" asked Aayla.

"Oh, right. It means, the same thing."

"My name is Lopmon, and I too am a Digimon. I am from the same place and am here for the same reasons as the others."

"Alright," said the black man. "Now, Aayla, tell us of your success on Christop..."

"'Scuse me," interrupted Terriermon. "But I'd quite like to know the names of everyone who is talking."

There was a silence. Aayla muttered out of the side of her mouth, "Master Windu is... not as lenient as Master Yoda in terms of respect and attitude."

"Ah," said Terriermon. "Sorry?"

Yoda chuckled. Again. "Fault you, I cannot," he said. "Forget we do, that most people already know who we are when they come before us." He turned to Master Windu. "Newcomers, they are. Showing discourtesy, we would be, if we did not introduce ourselves."

Windu nodded. "Very well," he said. "I am Master Mace Windu, Master of the Order."

"I am Master Ki-Adi-Mundi," said the white-bearded, tall-headed man.

"I am Master Plo Koon," said a figure with a strange face-mask that made him look like he had the face of an insect, and long clawed hands that were clasped in front of him.

And from there is began to go around the room. Next to master Obi-Wan Kenobi was a hologram of a human-like Master with several horns on his head named Eeth Koth. Next to him, was a hologram of brown-skinned individual with two great sweeping horns down the side of his face called Saesee Tiin. Next to him was the first woman on the Council, a red skinned one with four lekku with black and white stripes, two pointing up and two very long ones hanging down in front of her. This was Shaak Ti. Next in line was little goblin-like creature with one eye permanently shut called Even Piell. Then was a hologram of the only Master not fully humanoid. His top half was human, with the most ridiculous white beard that any of them had ever seen, but his bottom half was that of a giant, yellow snake and his name was Oppo Rancisis. Then another hologram of a black-skinned human, a woman named Adi Gallia. Finally was a green skinned person with big, black eyes and at least fifteen tentacles dangling from his head. This was Kit Fisto.

"Okay," said Mace Windu. "Now that introductions are over and done with," he glanced at Terriermon, who could help but swallow nervously, "what have you to report, Knight Secura."

"I did as Master Yoda instructed," said Aayla, "and went to investigate the strange disturbance that we had both sensed. When I reached the area, at first there was nothing, but then a giant, white hole appeared in mid-air."

There was a muttering at this. Aayla continued. "Renamon here came shooting out of it and was knocked unconscious. I took her back to base camp with me and when she woke up she explained to me that she was from a different dimension."

Another smattering of muttering followed on. "Most curious," said Kit Fisto, in an accent that reminded the Digimon of a slight blend between Indian and Caribbean. "Dimension travel is unheard of as of yet. Might I enquire how it was done?"

"Perhaps I should let you guys take the floor," said Aayla.

"Not me," said Terriermon. "I've already got somebody annoyed at me. Lopmon, you do it."

Lopmon smiled wryly and playfully bashed Terriermon in the head. "Twice in half an hour," he remarked. "That's gotta be a new record."

"If we could keep on topic," said Mace Windu.

"There we go again," muttered Terriermon. Lopmon stepped forwards, while Aayla and Renamon moved aside so that everyone could see the little bunny. Lopmon explained what Digimon were, how they had special abilities and the bonds between them and their Tamers. Then she explained about the attack by Parallelmon and how they had all ended up on different worlds.

"Intriguing, this is," said Yoda, after a moments silence.

"Quite," said Ki-Adi-Mundi, then said nothing, apparently contemplating what was going on.

"If I may continue," said Aayla, and she began to explain the remainder of what had happened on Christophsis, and how Renamon had devised the plan that won the day, with the use of her perception filter, and her unerring skill in combat.

"That's Rena for you," remarked Terriermon. "We do train for this sort of thing, although I'd rather play video games or surf the net."

"So, if what you say is true," said the voice of Shaak Ti. "Then there are three children somewhere in this universe, lost and alone somewhere. These friends of yours."

"Yes," nodded Renamon. "And that's where we want your help. It is very important to us that they be found. You have no idea how painful it is to not know where they are, and I mean that, considering what Aayla has told me about your order."

"I sympathise," said Mace Windu. "But we have many pressing matters to attend to. I'm sure you can understand that, considering we are at war, while we will put as much effort as we can into finding these children, it may not be as much as we would like."

"Thanks all the same," said Terriermon, probably determined to make peace with this man. "But there is one more little morsel of information that you might want to know before you say that."

"And that would be?" asked Mace.

"They want to help us," said Aayla. "They want to fight. In their world, there was a prophecy that surrounded them..."

"...A prophecy?" Aayla was cut off by the hologram of Eeth Koth. "A second prophecy?"

"About these three?" asked Even Piell.

"Yes, Masters," continued Aayla. "It was said that they would come here and that many adventures would be before them. I can vouch for their skill, having seen it first hand and fought alongside one of them. They might be of great assistance to us."

There was silence, as each of the Jedi Masters were lost in their own individual thoughts. Lopmon and Terriermon shifted uncomfortably, as they were regarded by all of them at some point during this silence. Yoda, in particular, seemed to have the ability to look right through them, as if he was piercing their bodies and searching their souls for answers.

"Well, I for one believe in prophecies for obvious reasons," said Obi-Wan. "Being the Master of Anakin Skywalker gives you a different perspective on this sort of thing. And I trust Aayla's judgement. I say we let them do what they want."

"Finding the children would still be our highest priority," said Renamon. "We could be even stronger and more useful to you with them. He could change and take on more powerful shapes."

"Yes," said Plo Koon. "You say you have these special abilities. Would you mind demonstrating to us?"

"I wouldn't advise it, Master Koon," said Aayla, with a smile. "We might need a new wall."

"No, it's okay," said Terriermon. "Loppy and I have a little something that we could show you. We'd only damage the occupants, or the walls, if we attacked them directly."

"Very well," said Mace Windu. "Demonstrate away."

"You ready, Lopmon."

"You need to ask?"

"Demonstration in T-minus 3, 2, 1..."

"**TWIN CYCLONE!"**

Linking ears, just as they had done against the Fwits, there was a whooshing noise as they span about each other in a blur, whipping up a miniature tornado right in the centre of the room. Renamon and Aayla stepped back from the whirlwind, the movement at such close proximity that it caused Renamon's fur and Aayla's lekku to blow as if in a strong wind. The two bunnies continued this move for a full thirty seconds before coming to a halt. They stepped apart and looked to Master Windu.

"Most impressive," said Obi-Wan. "I can see why the droids were confounded by you, Renamon, if you can do anything like that. I have never witnessed anything like that before, and I have seen many things."

"I don't believe anyone has seen anything like that," said Ki-Adi-Mundi.

"We have," said Terriermon. "As far as things go with Digimon that was pretty basic. Have you ever seen something shoot energy blasts from its eyes."

"Or fire from its wings?" asked Lopmon.

"Or missiles from their arms?" asked Renamon.

"I can't say that I have," Obi-Wan raised one eyebrow.

"Neither have I," said Kit Fisto thoughtfully. "And do you know what? That gives me an idea."

"What is it, Master Fisto?" asked Master Windu.

"I don't believe that anything like these Digimon exists in our galaxy. No creature any of us know of could possible send out energy blasts from its eyes and we might to use this to our advantage. The Separatists won't have seen this kind of thing before either."

"But they will," said Adi Gallia's hologram. "There are spies everywhere. Within the Senate, within the citizens. Everywhere you look there could be a spy. The Digimon won't stay hidden for long."

"There is a way we might be able to prolong that," said Kit. "Does the Senate really need to know about this?"

"You're suggesting we hide it?" asked Saesee Tiin. "Not even inform the Supreme Chancellor?"

"Think about it," said Kit. "During the whole course of this war, Count Dooku seems to be a step ahead of us at all times, like he knows almost all of our moves before we make them. And I don't know about everyone else, but I have noticed that the ones that he doesn't seem to know about are the ones we don't tell the Senate."

"I see where you're going with this," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "If nobody in the Senate knows about the presence of these Digimon..."

"...Then there's no chance of a traitor in it telling the Separatists," finished Plo Koon.

"An edge, it would give us," added the little, green Yoda.

"Just what I was thinking," grinned the Nautolan, Kit. "And even the inner circle of the Supreme Chancellor could be spies, Master Tiin. It might be best if not even he knew of this. I'm sure he'd understand, after all he's always talking about getting the war over quickly."

"Are you sure that is wise?" asked Renamon. "Would the Jedi get into trouble? Is that treason?"

"Don't complain, Rena," put in Terriermon. "Everybody back home says that politicians can't be trusted. I don't have a problem with this."

"I agree," said Lopmon. "I know how difficult politics can be, and I'd prefer not to be involved with them if I can get away with it."

"We have their consent," said Mace Windu. "But there is also a chance, however small and however we want to ignore it, that our main leak could be another Jedi. We have all considered that possibility at some point."

"Are you suggesting that only those in this room, plus Aayla know about the Digimon at all?" said the hissing voice of Oppo Rancisis.

"That's exactly what I was thinking," said Windu. "That means if we assign another Jedi to work alongside Aayla, and the Separatists suddenly learn about them, we can identify that there is a traitor amongst us and who it is. Are we all in agreement?"

"I'm not sure I like this plan," said Shaak Ti. "It's sounds a little..." she struggled to find the right word.

"Iffy?" suggested Terriermon. "Dodgy? Risky?"

"Something like that," said Shaak Ti. "But I suppose we cannot ignore a prophecy. I agree with Obi-Wan. I think that we should allow them to help."

"Agree, I do," said Yoda. "And divert all available resources, we should, to finding these lost children. Important, they could be, to this prophecy."

One by one, the Jedi Masters gave their assent to the plan. "But that means that you'll have to stay inside the Jedi Temple," said Plo Koon. "Probably in Knight Secura's very quarters. We cannot allow any of the Senators to see you out and about. Here, the Senators are unlikely to do so. Plus, you have that ability to go invisible, which could prevent other Jedi from seeing you."

"That won't be a problem, Master... Plo, was it?" asked Lopmon.

"You are correct. Welcome to the war effort."

"We cannot thank you enough," said Renamon. "We would be honoured to help in any way we can. But what about Anakin Skywalker. I heard about the prophecy from Commander Bly. Shouldn't he know if he is so important?"

"I think so," said Obi-Wan. "I personally will tell Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano."

"Who?" asked Terriermon.

"Anakin's Padawan," whispered Aayla.

"Ah, that means learner, right?"

"You catch on fast."

"They would be interested to meet you," said Obi-Wan. "Anakin has never met another individual with the weight of a prophecy on their shoulders. And as for Ahsoka, she is a similar age to your lost human friends."

"Now, we have to decide where in the war effort you can be placed," said Ki-Adi-Mundi.

"Really?" asked Terriermon. "Why can't we stay with Aayla?"

Aayla blinked. "Pardon?" she asked. "You wish to remain with me and the 327th?"

"I don't see why not," said Terriermon.

"But you've only known me for a few hours," she pointed out.

"You're the one who found us. I know it's a cheesy line, but it's like it was meant to be. Besides, you and your troops already know who we are _and_ have already worked with one of us. Is it a great leap to work with the rest of us as well?"

"That's another point that I agree with," said Obi-Wan. "The situation sounds right – it was my Master that found Anakin, and it only became my duty to train him because of his untimely death at the hands of the Sith. The Digimon, Terriermon, I believe it was, is right."

"Agree with this, I do," said Yoda. "Watch over them and guide them through our universe, Aayla could. A gentle heart, she has, not to mention a sociable personality, which would be needed to keep up with what they are saying, I think."

"Good point, Master Yoda," said Mace Windu. "It is decided then. Knight Secura, you will work with these Digimon against the Separatists and lead them to battle with your troops. Do you accept?"

"I do, Master," Aayla's heart lifted. She would enjoy spending more time with and getting to know them.

"Oh yeah!" Terriermon yelled, leaping onto Renamon's shoulder, and holding out an ear to Aayla. "High-fives!"

Aayla stared at him, bemused. After a pause, Terriermon said, "You don't know what that means, do you?"

"No," Aayla shook her head.

"Allow me," said Renamon, taking hold of Aayla's arm. Aayla allowed her to manipulate it so it was raised, palm out. Then Renamon moved it so the palm slapped the outstretched ear of Terriermon.

"It's a gesture of triumph and comradeship where we come from," said Renamon, letting go of Aayla's arm.

"Although technically, for Terriermon it should be high-threes," said Lopmon. "Because he only has three fingers on his ears."

"See," Yoda pointed. "Gobbledegook, they speak. Lose patience, many Jedi would, hmm?"

"You were right, Master Yoda. But," said Mace. "Do you Digimon accept to take orders from her in dire situations?"

"We don't have a problem with that," said Lopmon. "She knows far more than we do about fighting the Separatists. We have long since learnt that experience counts."

"Excellent," said Mace Windu. "You will be the secret of the 327th. Now that that has been decided, I have another mission for you, Aayla."

"Already?" asked Terriermon. "Jeez, you really don't get a break, do you?"

"Duty comes first," said Aayla. "What is it Master?"

It was Obi-Wan who replied, "I'm afraid to say that your home planet of Ryloth has been invaded by the Separatists."

"What!?" asked Aayla sharply. Jedi were not supposed to form links, but most Jedi were still quite protective about where they had come from. There were exceptions, such as Skywalker and Tatooine, but Ryloth was Aayla's first home, and still her secondary one now."

"Yes," said Mace. "The leader of the Techno Union, Wat Tambor, has set a brutal occupation on the planet. He is subjugating the free Twi'lek people. They are in need of food and medical supplies badly and the droids are rounding up the survivors as we speak."

"Who's Wat Tambor?" asked Lopmon.

"He's a Skakoan," said Ki-Adi-Mundi.

"That doesn't help much," said Terriermon.

"He is the foreman of The Techno Union, which was one of the Republic commerce guilds, before he joined the Separatists," explained Mace Windu.

"Then shall we go kick his butt?" asked Terriermon.

Aayla prevented a response to this question, by asking another one over the top of it, "How will we begin the campaign to retake the planet?"

"Skywalker and Tano are already there," said Mace. "They are trying to break through the space blockade that guards the planet. The idea is that they will have broken through by the time that Kenobi and I arrived to retake the surface. Now, of course, you can come with us. Your knowledge of the planet could prove useful and it would give us a first view of the skill of your new friends."

"We set underway first thing in the morning," said Obi-Wan. "Will you be ready?"

"Yes, Master," said Aayla. "I will do whatever is required of me."

"And you, Digimon?" asked Yoda.

"I will be ready," said Renamon.

"As will I," said Lopmon.

"I'm not really a morning person," piped up Terriermon. "Can we hold it off 'til noon?"

"Terriermon," glared Renamon and Lopmon at the same time.

"Momentai. I was just kidding. I'll be there. Just trying to lighten the atmosphere a little."

"Well, where we're going, that might be quite helpful," said Obi-Wan. "Get a good night's sleep, Aayla. You can show your friends to your quarters."

"There is only one bed in it," pointed out Aayla.

"Well, my bed is portable," said Terriermon, patting Renamon on the head. She glared at him reproachfully, but with a smile. Aayla chuckled, as did both Yoda and Obi-Wan.

"Get used to having you around, I could," said Yoda. "More jollity, this Temple needs. Provide it, you c-"

Yoda was cut off when there was a sudden beeping noise. It was coming from Mace Windu's belt. The human Jedi Master looked down and unclipped a small, golden disc from his belt.

"That's a holoprojector," whispered Aayla to the Digimon. "Used to display small holograms."

"And it's the Supreme Chancellor calling," said Windu. "You three Digimon get out sight. Quickly."

Renamon leapt behind the nearest chair, which happened to be the one belonging to Shaak Ti, while the two bunnies took flight and ducked out of sight behind Kit Fisto. Mace, satisfied that they were hidden, pressed the button. A hologram of a tall thin, man in long robes, the colour of which were impossible to determine due to the fact the whole hologram was a bluish colour.

"Master Jedi," said the man, Chancellor Palpatine. "I have just received word that the invasion force that was sent to liberate Christophsis again has returned. Was it successful?"

"It was indeed, Chancellor," said Windu. "If you like, we have General Secura here with us. You can hear her report directly from her."

"Thank you, Master Windu," the hologram turned around and looked at Aayla. "It's been a while since I last spoke to you."

"Indeed," said Aayla, inclining her head respectfully.

"Tell me, you got back from Christophsis earlier than expected. How did you manage to pull off a victory so quickly with the forces you had?"

Mace, behind the hologram, cast a significant look at Aayla. So Aayla immediately launched into the story of what happened. Her face gave nothing away as she tweaked the truth slightly and said that the AT-TEs had been cleverly hidden, but didn't say how, and suggested that the whole idea had been hers. She left out mention of the Digimon and the side-trip to Maridun. Other than that, she explained everything.

When she had finished, Palpatine simply said, "You are to be commended, General Secura, for winning back a key system."

"I try my best for the Republic," said Aayla, modestly.

"Congratulations," said Palpatine. "And I hope your next mission goes well. You are a valuable General."

Aayla said nothing. The Chancellor smiled and then his hologram faded. Terriermon's head poked out around from behind Kit Fisto's. "That voice creeps me out," he shuddered.

"Is that just because he's a politician?" said Renamon, emerging from her hiding place. "It sounds a little prejudiced to me."

"I know," said Terriermon. "But all the same..."

"Council adjourned," said Mace. "Aayla, take your friends to your quarters and prepare to move out in the morning."

Aayla bowed and left the room, gesturing for the Digimon to follow. Abruptly, Terriermon and Lopmon lifted into the air and glided onto Renamon's shoulders using their ears. This sparked the interest of the other Jedi Masters, who hadn't seen this yet, but then Renamon put up her perception filter and the three invisibly followed Aayla out.

* * *

Aayla opened the door to her quarters. It contained merely a small bunk and a patch on the floor that she used for meditation. "Make yourself comfortable," she said, stepping in and sitting on the bed. Renamon dropped the perception filter as the door shut behind her. They had passed by a couple of Jedi in the corridors on the way down, but although they had sensed something, they had merely thought that there was something different about Aayla.

"How will the Council set about trying to find our Tamers?" asked Lopmon, hopping up to sit beside the Twi'lek that had taken them in.

"They'll probably start by searching records for examples of more strange wormholes, and contact other Jedi to see if they felt disturbances like I did. But have faith in them. We have good resources."

"Great," said Terriermon. "'Cause this feels so wrong. To be separated from my Tamer like this. I haven't felt so empty since I was stranded in the Digital World."

"Yes, and remember how you kept everyone going," smirked Renamon.

"You mean everyone except you," grinned Terriermon. "I seem to remember you punching me in the face."

Aayla blinked. "What did you do that for?"

"I had a short fuse at that time," shrugged Renamon.

"I think they'll be enough time for anecdotes on the way to the planet tomorrow," said Lopmon. "I don't know what you think, but it's been one long day for me. We battled a Mega in the morning, got sent to another dimension, then I got attacked by a bunch of Fwits, went berserk on Jurcian fruit, then held an important meeting with twelve powerful Jedi. I'm tired."

"Me too. And tomorrow, I'm going to write a poem about the evilness of pineapples."

"You're never going to drop that are you?" asked Renamon.

"Nope."

Renamon sat down, and just as they had last night, the two bunnies came and began to use her as a pillow. Aayla smiled at them and said, "Good night, then." She lay back on her bunk and shut her eyes, clasping her hands on her stomach in a relaxed, meditative state.

"You're not gonna get changed?" asked Terriermon. There was a pause, then, "I didn't mean that in a perverted way, but generally humanoids smell a bit when they wake up, and, well, you'll need those clothes for the mission."

Aayla smiled, without opening her eyes. "That's not necessary for me. Everything about the females of our race is designed to make us more appealing. We don't smell bad unless we fall into something very smelly indeed."

"Ah," said Terriermon. "We still have a lot to learn, don't we?"

* * *

That chapter was longer than I'd expected it to be and it was difficult to write. I hope I got the characters of Obi-Wan and Yoda right, and if anyone feels otherwise, feel free to offer advice. Thanks to reviewers, and my two new ones, Cylon Once and Justmerg.

* * *

Next time...

The attempt to liberate Ryloth begins. Aayla, Obi-Wan, Mace and the Digimon race to the Twi'lek planet to try and land and retake it.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 12 : Experience First Hand**


	12. Experience First Hand

Sorry that it took longer than expected, but I had a large English homework, a Drama essay and a Biology ISA to revise for over the weekend, which took place yesterday. But I've updated now. I suppose many of you are dying to find out what's happening to the human characters. Don't worry, they'll be re-introduced at some point. This chapter, perhaps? Well, why don't we go an read ahead. Clone Wars is back on the air now and General Grievous kicked ass in "Grievous Intrigue." He and Cad Bane are my personal favourite Star Wars villains.

I've also included a little treat here, which may explain why I am deciding to hammer in this silly pineapple stuff.

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* * *

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Secret of the 327**th**

**Chapter 12:- Experience First Hand**

* * *

Terriermon jolted awake with a loud cry, as usual. This time it was, "Aargh! Mickey Mouse!"

That quickly made sure that everybody else in the room who was still asleep at the time woke up. Renamon opened one eye and looked down at the little bunny sitting in her lap. "Can you turn anything into a nightmare?"

Lopmon didn't even bother to open her own eyes. "I hope to God that Mickey Mouse has not become the new pineapple."

"Nope, the damn fruit is still on top of my list," grinned Terriermon. Then he yawned and asked, "What time is it?"

"It's time that we were going I'm afraid," Aayla lifted herself off her bunk and stretched, arching her back in a ridiculous angle that barely looked possible.

"You'd be a champion at yoga," observed Terriermon.

"I'll take your word for it, for I'm not sure what that is," said the Twi'lek. "But really, we must head off. We need to rally the troops of the 327th and get them organised. That shouldn't take too long, but it'll take us a few hours to get to Ryloth. You can catch up on last sleep on the journey there, if you want."

"A Renamon rarely sleeps anyway," the fox also stood, which caused Terriermon to fall to the floor with a loud protest.

"We're up," said Lopmon. "And we're staying up. I have a feeling that we're going to need our wits about us today."

"That'll probably be true," said Aayla, gesturing to them to follow her out of the door. "Hopefully Skywalker will have breached the blockade by the time we arrive. Then we'll have to land on the planet and find a foothold there. That could be difficult – the droid armies far outnumber the clones, because it only takes machinery in a factory a few minutes to construct just one and they're on an assembly line, whereas clones take at least ten years to grow."

"Yeesh," said Terriermon. "Good thing they're such good soldiers then."

Aayla nodded. "Raise your filter, Renamon, and we'll be on our way." Renamon nodded and complied, covering herself and her bunny companions with the invisible wall of invisibility. Aayla walked towards the door and pressed a button beside it, causing them to slide open. Walking out, she led the Digimon through the Temple and up to the LAAT hangar that they had entered the previous day and first met Yoda. There, they were met by Obi-Wan Kenobi, Mace Windu, Yoda, Commanders Cody and Bly, and another clone that none of them knew. Whereas Bly and Cody had yellow painted on patches of their armour, this clone had patches of red.

As they lowered their perception filter, this clone said, "Whoa. I can see you weren't kidding, sir," to Mace Windu.

"Indeed I wasn't," said the man. "Renamon, Terriermon and Lopmon, this is Commander Ponds of the 91st Reconnaissance Corps. He works alongside me in this war, so on this mission you may have to take orders from him."

Renamon nodded. So did Lopmon. Terriermon gave him a thumbs up and said, "Wazzup?"

Ponds looked at the white bunny and said, "And you must be Terriermon. Master Windu told me about the Council meeting yesterday."

"Yeah," Lopmon glanced at her brother. "That could have gone better."

"It could also have gone a lot worse but it didn't," said Terriermon. "I think I did quite well at restraining myself."

"Alright, men," said Obi-Wan. "Here's the deal. We have come to a decision that nobody in the Galactic Senate is to know about the Digimon. They have been assigned to working alongside the 327th with General Secura and Commander Bly. We would be most appreciative if you could leave them out of any of your reports."

"But, sir," said Cody and there was a slight note of apprehension in his voice. "It's against everything we've been taught to withhold information from the Chancellor. Are sure that's a good plan."

"Believe so, we do," said Yoda, looking up at the three clones. "Many clones killed in this war, there are. Many casualties. Your allegiance, to the Republic it should be. Not to the Senate."

"But the Senate are the leaders of the Republic," pointed out Commander Bly.

"And remember, you should, that the leaders of the Separatists were also leader of the Republic once. The Banking Clan, the Techno Union, the Trade Federation, all rebelling against it, they are. Multiplying, our enemies are. Other Senators, leaving the Republic weekly."

"Yeah, I know," said Cody. "It makes my blood boil. We've lost brothers trying to defend them and they just sign up to the Seppies without a thought."

"And all information about us they know, to the Separatists it goes. But, if aware of the Digimon, no Senator is, no chance of them finding about them, there is. Less clones, we would lose. End quicker, the war would."

"Master Yoda is right," said Aayla. "We are losing valuable information by telling the Senate. Even members of the Supreme Chancellor's inner circle have changed their colours. Bly, can you and your men keep this secret? Can you do that for me? For your brothers? For the Republic?"

Bly hesitated, but then nodded and said, "Yes, sir. We can do that. You're right. Just like the destruction of the Liberty in Quell last month. A whole cruiser, and everyone on it lost except me and you. They knew exactly where we'd be."

"Even our brothers aren't innocent," said Cody. "Look at Slick. There's treachery everywhere. I agree. I'll keep this secret. Anything to win this damn war."

"And you Ponds?" asked Mace.

"I'll do it, just to see the look on Wat Tambor's face if nothing else," grinned the clone.

"Good man," cheered Terriermon. "That's the kind of attitude I like. Hey, Aayla, quick test! High-fives!"

Aayla smiled and slapped the outstretched ear.

"Now that that is settled," said Windu, sternly. "Let's get to the cruisers. We need to get underway. Commanders, organise your troops and let's move."

"Sir, yes sir!" All three stamped to attention and then turned, heading to individual gunships and barking orders into the comlinks on their wrist armour.

"Well, here we go again," said Obi-Wan. "This war certainly seems to be stretching on."

"May the Force be with you all," said Yoda, getting his sentence in the right order for once.

* * *

The speed at which the clones got underway impressed the Digimon. They had superb discipline and unerring precision and skill with whatever it was they were doing; be that carrying a box, working on some kind of ship, or running about doing something that they didn't understand. They didn't ask either, it'd just get in their way.

They were back on the bridge of the Intrepid. The massive Republic cruiser was rising up through the atmosphere at a slow but steady pace. It was flanking Mace Windu's own flagship, and on the other side of that was Obi-Wan's. The three great, metal triangles slowly broke out of Courscant, until they were once again amongst the stars.

"This is still strange," said Lopmon. "I mean, you see it happen on the tele, you hear about it in the news, but you never, ever expect it to happen to you. Ever. I just expected that I'd remain on Earth with Suzie, but now I've been to two other planets and am on my way to a third."

"This is one small step for 'mon, one giant leap for 'mon-kind," quipped Terriermon. "But you're right though. I still have yet to see a Vulcan though."

"Don't say it..." warned Renamon.

"Space – the final fronte-ow!"

"I warned you," said Renamon, brushing her paws against each other with satisfaction.

Aayla smiled. "Despite the fact that I am learning more and more about your culture," she said. "I don't think that I'll ever be able to fully understand you."

"What about you, Aayla?" asked Lopmon. "We don't know all that much about your species yet, and we're on our way to save them, so... you want to tell us more?"

Aayla grimaced. "If you want then I'll tell you after we jump to hyperspace. It'll still take us a couple of hours to get there even after we do. We'll have plenty to talk before..."

"...Aayla, do you read me?"

A large holopad behind them flared into life, and a life-size hologram of Obi-Wan Kenobi appeared there. "Yes, Master Kenobi," said Aayla, turning and walking over to it. "I can."

"Good," said Obi-Wan. "I have just received word that Anakin has failed on his first attempt to breach the blockade. Unfortunately that means that unless he can break the blockade before we get there we might have to put off the invasion."

Aayla frowned. "That's unusual. Skywalker is usually unbeatable in space battles. What was different this time?"

"He didn't give us any specific details," said Obi-Wan. "But from what I gathered, he lost most of his forces and one cruiser."

"Suddenly I feel very unsafe standing on this ship," muttered Terriermon.

"We can't put off the invasion, surely," said Renamon. "What about the Twi'leks? You can't leave them in the lurch can you?"

"Anakin will do his best," said Obi-Wan. "But we won't even be able to get to the planet if he fails."

"Don't worry, Renamon," said Aayla. "I have faith in Skywalker. His methods are... unorthodox, but they do seem to work quite often. He'll probably attempt to pull off some practically suicidal approach and considering his track record, it'll probably work."

"Yes," said Obi-Wan. "But I worry that one day, Anakin will come up with something so hare-brained that even he won't be able to avoid death."

"I'll pretend you didn't say that," Terriermon scowled with mock-annoyance. "Hares are close relatives of rabbits you know."

Obi-Wan and Aayla glanced at each other, and shook their heads, trying to contain their mirth. Abruptly, a hologram of Mace Windu appeared beside that of Obi-Wan.

"Co-ordinates set?" he asked.

"Yes, Master Windu," nodded both Aayla and Obi-Wan.

"Then let's go," said Mace. "Jump to lightspeed."

Nearby, several of the clones started pulling levers and pushing buttons with amazing accuracy, before the three cruiser shot forwards, with a blur of stars outside.

* * *

About an hour and a half later, Aayla was still explaining the customs of her people to the Digimon. Terriermon, while listening, was also writing something down on a holoscreen in front of him, with a claim of "Women aren't the only ones who can multi-task."

"That's horrible," Lopmon was saying. "Some of your people actually want to continue the slave trade?"

"Yes," said Aayla. "They claim that it's our main source of income."

"And do you approve?" asked Renamon.

"Of course not," said Aayla. "I too was going to be a slave, but then my Master found me when he was but a Padawan. He saved my life and he also saved me from having to go and serve some Hutt crime-lord or other scoundrel."

"Hutt?" asked Terriermon, without looking up from the paper.

"Think a giant slug with arms and a face."

"I'd rather not, thanks."

"Well, at least you escaped to the Jedi Temple," said Renamon.

"Yes, but even then I was not safe," Aayla scowled as the unpleasant memories resurfaced. "I returned to Ryloth some years later, as a Padawan, to investigate sources of a drug called gliteryll. But my uncle, Pol Secura, he used gliteryll on me and my Master, drugging us. Then he took me back to his home and he kept drugging me, making me forget that I was even a Jedi. But eventually Master Vos came for me, but I accidentally used the Force to push my uncle off the balcony to his death. I blamed Master Vos, and then I did the worst thing a Jedi can," she sighed. "I gave in to the Dark Side of the Force."

Renamon and Lopmon glanced at each other. From what they had heard it was practically impossible to turn back if you did that. "What happened?" asked Lopmon.

"To cut a long story short," said Aayla, "Master Vos came for me again, after I had fallen to the will of a Dark Jedi. He saved me, and I finally remembered who I was. As soon as I did I turned back to the light and was re-trained as a Jedi. Master Plo Koon helped me to sort out the memories in my mind."

"Old bugface?" asked Terriermon.

"Now probably is not the time for that, Terriermon," reprimanded Renamon.

"On the contrary, Aayla looks like she needs cheering up a little. Can't be pleasant to relive your memories."

"You needn't worry about me," said Aayla.

"Rubbish," said Terriermon. "You're our friend. We always look out for our friends, no matter how long we've known them for, or their backgrounds. Believe me, we're very good friends with someone whose had a much worse history than that. Poor old Impmon used to be downright evil apparently, not just misguided like you were."

"Impmon is the one that can transform into a demon, yes?" asked Aayla.

"Yep," said Terriermon. "And on that note, check this out." He waved the holoscreen he was holding in his hand – he had asked a nearby clone to get it for him earlier.

"What is it?" asked Lopmon, walking over.

"Read it and see," said Terriermon. "Aloud please."

He passed the holoscreen to Lopmon, who read, "The Demonic P-" she stopped. "Is this going to be what I think it is?" she asked.

"Yep," grinned Terriermon. "Go on, read it."

Lopmon rolled her eyes at her brother, then read aloud:-

* * *

"The Demonic Pineapple.

"I may be ripe, my succulent flesh  
a delight to many. But beware.  
For within my leaves lies a fiendish intent.  
Within my pulp, a dormant spirit.  
A sprite, an imp, with a subliminal link to  
Abbadon.  
The outer surface is the last defence.  
For them.  
The first contact between my juice and their stomach is all it takes.  
My empty shell, like a split grenade,  
lies could and dead on the ceramic.  
But within my moist innards, malevolence,  
Spilling like slag through a furnace,  
Strokes the burning walls of the cells.  
Enjoy your last moments, for I have a new host.  
At last. At last. It is time.  
Plunging, my spirit, fetid and sickly,  
Swirls through the walls, free from my shackles,  
An inexorable torrent, a tidal bore,  
bursting the vessels as I spread.  
I spread, unstoppable through the system  
of the wretched homo sapien.  
His skin splinters like shattered, dirty ice and  
he begins to fall down and down,  
feet on the ground.  
The Spirit of Lucifer takes hold to  
claim another victim.  
Spikes of green erupt from his head, limbs wilt and  
decay. The cycle is almost complete.  
Ahhh, the bliss as his life force vanishes.  
Now, I must wait.  
Wait for someone to enter the house,  
searching for the owner. All they will find  
is my broken ex-shell and my intact new one.  
I am a pineapple once more.  
How long until my next meal and another's last?"

* * *

By the end of the poem, both Renamon and Aayla were having trouble containing their laughter. It was the most ridiculous thing that Aayla had ever heard, but at the same time there was an essence of real scariness about it. Eventually, both let it out and they laughed, along with several of the nearby clones, who had been listening in.

Holograms of Mace Windu and Obi-Wan appeared in the same place they had before. They both blinked at the sight of a Twi'lek and a fox clutching their sides, while the white rabbit was rolling about. The brown rabbit was doing her level best not to laugh herself, but eventually it burst out and she toppled off the equipment she'd been standing on.

"I'm not even going to ask," said Obi-Wan.

"Secura, we're nearing the Ryloth system. Be ready," instructed Mace, frowning with disapproval at the scene in front of him.

"Yes, Master," Aayla wiped her eyes because her tear ducts were leaking slightly. Pulling herself together, with difficulty she approached the windows. Commander Bly and the three Digimon followed, and watched as the blue vortex-like thing that was hyperspace began to slow down, until space blinked back into existence. The speed at which the cruisers slowed down was almost as impressive as their acceleration, and yet there was still no massive jolt like you get on a train when it starts or stops.

Confronting them out of the windows was one of the most chaotic scenes any of them had ever witnessed. There were enormous piles of rubble that had once been spaceships, one Republic cruiser with its bottom face-on to most of this rubble like a physical shield, and numerous smaller spacecraft bombing what appeared to be the last ship of a once mighty blockade. This ship was different to the Republic cruiser, as it was rounded and much smaller.

"That's a Munificent-class star frigate," said Aayla, pointing. "And those smaller ones are Y-wing bombers."

They watched as the Bombers decimated the frigate with a single pass and blew it into chunks.

"Looks like it was quite a fight," said Bly, appraisingly. "Shame we missed out on it, really."

* * *

Ahsoka Tano - from the cockpit of her Delta-7B Aethersprite-class light interceptor, a small triangular ship used by Jedi out in space-battles - watched as three Republic cruisers appear out of hyperspace. She smiled in satisfaction. They had managed to defeat Mar Tuuk's space blockade just in time. She couldn't help but feel a little proud of herself and of her Master for thinking up the two things that had won the day. It had started off so badly, the young Togruta, nicknamed Snips by her master and also Little 'Soka by Plo koon, had lost almost all of her men in the first assault, but almost none, if none at all, in the second.

A button beside her flashed and she pressed it, opening the communicator to the cruisers. A very familiar masculine voice came through the speakers. "Ahsoka. Obi-Wan here. I see that you managed to break the blockade."

"And not a moment too soon, Master," said Ahsoka. "You can now begin your landing on Ryloth."

"Good work, Padawan," Ahsoka could hear the smile in Obi-Wan's voice.

"Forgive me for asking," came another voice that caught Ahsoka by surprise. "But I thought that Skywalker still had two cruisers left. Where is the second?"

"Master Secura?" asked Ahsoka – she only called Aayla a Master because she was a Padawan.

"Yes, it is me," came the voice of the Twi'lek. "I finished liberating Christophsis just in time to join this liberation effort. Now, I can see The Resolute here, but where is the other one?"

"I wasn't going to ask," said Obi-Wan. "But I would quite like to know where it is, especially since Anakin appears to be in an escape pod."

"Well," grinned Ahsoka. "Master Skywalker devised a plan for taking out the main control ship. The Defender was damaged, so he had it evacuated except for himself and R2-D2, set it on a collision course with the control ship and then jettisoned before impact."

There was a pause, then a new, high-pitched voice that Ahsoka had never heard before rattled over the communicator. "Forgive me for asking, but is your master insane or suicidal?"

"I often wonder the same thing, Terriermon," said Obi-Wan. "And I think suicidal. I told you it would be hare-brained." He sighed. "But I suppose it won the day."

"Who was that?" asked Ahsoka.

"A friend," said Aayla, enigmatically. "I'd take the time to introduce you, but we really need to begin our assault as soon as possible. Thank you, Ahsoka, and tell your Master that when we have a strong foothold on Ryloth, there are some friends that we want you both to meet."

"Will do, Master," said Ahsoka, as her mind raced. What was so special about this Terriermon, and from what Aayla had just said there were more than one. Fellow Jedi? Or something else?

The thought puzzled at her, as she watched the cruisers head for the planet, and she only snapped out of her thoughts when the voice of Captain Rex came over the communicator and said, "Um, sir, should I send out a ship to pick up General Skywalker?"

* * *

The cruisers broke the atmosphere with a calm serenity, but inside all three there was bustling activity as clones ran to their stations, preparing gunships for a ground run. The plan was that Aayla and Obi-Wan would lead two squadrons of clones and the Digimon to the ground in the gunships, while Mace Windu brought the rest in with the cruisers.

"Alright, men," said Aayla, standing in the hangar and flanked by the Digimon, not because they were superior to the clones but because they would look out of place in the ranks. "Remember that Ryloth is not like Christophsis. It is a relatively poor planet, and most of the inhabitants live in mud and stone huts. We take out a building and we could be destroying everything that a family of Twi'leks own in the world. We don't want to do that, so we're going to be doing minimal damage, so no thermal detonators or rocket launchers are allowed. What's more the Twi'leks are still on planet, so watch where you're aiming. We don't want any casualties except for droids. Is that clear?"

"Sir, yes sir!" the clones all snapped to attention.

"Good," she said. "Now, press on and get to your ships. We're heading for a city called Nabat in an attempt to liberate it and allow the cruisers to land there. Let's get to it."

"Yes sir," said Bly, turning to his troops and calling, "Alright men, you heard the general. Six clones to a gunship and be quick about it."

The clones spread out and within a mere few seconds most of the gunships were fully loaded. Aayla waved a hand. The Digimon and Commander Bly, along with Blade and Conor, moved into the last of the gunships.

"Here goes nothing," said Lopmon, as the hangar doors opened and the gunships began to hover and fly out through them. "I wonder what Suzie would say if she could see me now."

* * *

The cuffs were heavy on Rika's wrists. She looked around at the assembled Twi'leks. There was nothing they could do, and Henry's back injury was definitely getting worse. They'd been sitting in the same spot, surrounded by aliens, who were, in turn, surrounded by robots, for a good portion of time. Amongst the robots were what appeared to be large cannons with legs and several hovering tanks.

Many hours had gone by of nothing but sitting and trying not to draw to much attention to themselves, which was difficult for Henry because his back was starting to pain him again. He grunted whenever a twinge of pain lanced up it.

Rika looked up at the robot standing nearby that all the others seemed to answer to. This, apparently, was TX-20. His body was more robust than the other brown robots and his head was flat. He spoke in a low monotone voice that droned out instructions to the surrounding droids.

But right now, he was talking to a small hologram in front of him. Rika couldn't hear what he was saying, but he was sure that it would be important.

"If only we knew what was going on here," she muttered to Henry.

"I don't think it'd make much difference if we did," Henry gritted his teeth. "We'd still be prisoners, and we'd still be in the same helpless situation, wondering whether Suzie and Numa are alright."

"I know, but it'd make me feel better," Rika replied. She glanced across the assembled captive Twi'leks and her eyes picked out Lubo, the other green girl that had introduced herself to them the previous day along with Numa. The poor girl wasn't being given any better treatment than the surrounding adults, and she was quietly weeping into a female Twi'lek's leg. Rika almost growled, something Renamon did when she was angry.

Henry winced again and Rika angrily expelled air through her nostrils. She turned to the nearest robot and said, "Hey, you. Aren't you going to do anything? My friend's really badly injured. Aren't you even going to try and help him?"

"Quiet," said the robot, turning away and continuing to watch over the crowd.

"Thanks," said Henry, "but I don't think that's going to work. Whatever is going on, I think we're hostages, and as you can see there are plenty more where they came from."

"Worth a try, though," shrugged Rika. "But I'm serious, you need to get some treatment pretty quickly or that could get even worse."

"Wait, ssh," Henry glanced over her shoulder. "TX-20 is heading this way."

"Sir," called one of the ordinary robots, running over to their commander. "The Republic forces are in range. We can see them over the trees."

"Republic?" asked Henry. "What is going on?"

"Fire at will," said the flat voice of TX-20.

Henry and Rika ducked at the sudden noise, as all the cannons surrounding them opened fire. They needn't have bothered, the giant laser blasts passed well over their heads and into the sky. "What are they shooting at?" asked Henry.

"I don't know. I can't see anything," replied Rika.

Since they were unable to cover their ears, they just cringed as the cannons continued to blast skywards.

* * *

"We're taking fire!" called the clone pilot of the gunship containing Aayla, Bly, Blade, Conor and the three Digimon. The gunship swerved as a huge blaster bolt came sailing towards and just passed across the side. Were it not for the quick reactions of the pilot, the gunship would have been struck dead-on.

"Whoa!" cried Terriermon, as he over-balanced and tipped onto his back. Aayla and the clones were holding onto the ceiling rails and even they were struggling to remain on their feet. There was the sound of an explosion coming from outside as a nearby gunship was blasted in half.

"They've got cannons!" Aayla shouted. "This is going to make things a bit more interesting."

"Interesting, we can handle," said Renamon. "I just wish I could see what was going on."

"I'm not sure I do," said Lopmon, as several more explosions could be heard from outside. Abruptly, a hologram of Obi-Wan appeared right beside Aayla. She didn't flinch, but both of the rabbit Digimon jumped in surprise.

"Aayla!" shouted the hologram, which flinched for a second, possibly because the gunship he was in had just swerved wildly. "I'm afraid the situation has just changed. We're going to have to take the city without any reinforcements from Master Windu. The cruisers are being badly damaged and have had to pull back."

"We can still do this," said Aayla. "I know this planet. We'll have a definite advantage over the droid's in that respect."

"Yes, well, let's hope we can actually get to the ground. This enemy fire is heavy."

"Momentai," Terriermon hopped onto Aayla's shoulder so he'd be visible in the hologram. "We'll take care of it. Trust me, we've been in worse."

"You'll have to tell me about that, sometime," said Obi-Wan. "But nevertheless this'll still be a challenge."

"We'll be fine," repeated Terriermon.

"You hope," said Lopmon.

The gunship suddenly rocked again as it shot sharply downwards and allowed another shot to pass over it. Renamon jerked her arms outwards and grabbed both the walls at once to steady herself. It was difficult for her amazing balance to go unchallenged.

"I can't deny the pilot must have skill for a ship this size to dodge and swerve like that," she said.

"Deflectors double-front," said Aayla. "I'd prefer it if we stayed in the air."

"Yes, sir," blipped the voice of the pilot.

"Well, could this day get any better?" asked Terriermon, sarcastically.

"It could be a lot worse," pointed out Lopmon.

* * *

"I can see something," Henry looked up in the direction the cannons were firing in. Rika followed his gaze and sure enough they could see what looked like relatively large planes, although perhaps a little bulkier than that. They were still some distance off, but it was quite plain to see them dodging the cannon-fire with a level of success.

"You think they're here to rescue us?" asked Rika, unable to keep the hope and excitement out of her voice.

"I hope so," said Henry, "and I think most likely. They wouldn't be firing on them unless they were enemies, but whether they're liberators or rivals to these robots remains to be seen."

"There's a cheerful thought. Oh god!" Even Rika's tough exterior was melted at the sight of one of them in the distance suddenly being smashed into by the giant red lasers and thrown from the air.

"I wonder if Suzie and Numa can see this," said Henry. "Numa might know a bit more about what's going on."

"Hey!" called Rika to one of the nearest Twi'leks, a brown male. He turned to look at her and she said, "Who are they?" she jerked her head at the oncoming ships.

"Republic," said the Twi'lek. Rika blinked. She'd been expecting a word that she wouldn't be able to understand, but it appeared that that was not the case.

"Well, if it's a Republic, there's hope yet," said Henry.

* * *

"What's that noise?" asked Suzie. She and Numa had been hiding for the entirety of the time. Mostly they had stayed in the sewer system, but they had ventured outside about an hour ago, in an attempt to find somebody else who might possibly know what was going on or could protect them. So far, there had been no success, but then loud blasting noises could be heard.

"Poli si koil?" asked Numa, the two of them looking up, unable to understand what the other was saying, but ironically asking very simple questions, as the barrage of red lasers shot overhead. They peered up at the sky from the little space between two houses, fearfully and with their imaginations running away with them.

"Koomey hool," Numa darted out from the space and into the main street. There was nobody there – most of the robots were either on the outside defences or in the city centre guarding the prisoners. Suzie followed. The two of them stared at the approaching gunships with terrible fascination. Neither of them had seen anything like it.

"Yay!" cheered Suzie. "People in funny aeroplanes have come to save us. We're gonna be okay, Numa."

"Ju gohs ken poli suulan lojer," responded Numa. "Ger jus fenoilus." She looked absolutely terrified. Suzie looked at her and then up at the approaching white aircraft.

"Are they not friendly?"

"Jus fenoilus," repeated Numa, and then turned to run back into the side-street. She turned and gestured for Suzie to follow her. "Shenab!" she called. "Ju gohs yuson ji lik nes acer lond."

Suzie was suddenly feeling very worried again. Numa scared easily, but so did she – they had already had a near brush with one of those robot things, and she didn't want to have a brush with another one.

"Solon her," Numa called. Suzie ran to her and the two of them briefly glanced back up at the sky and the approaching gunships.

Suddenly, both of them cried out as one of the blaster bolts clipped the wing of one of the strange aircraft and a large plume of smoke arose from it.

* * *

"We're hit!" cried the pilot in shock and fear as the bolt took off a portion of the LAAT's left wing. "The stabilizers out! I'm losing control!"

"It just got worse," said Lopmon.

"Obi-wan," called Aayla to the hologram that was still there. "We've been hit! Can you head our way before we drop too far!"

"Hold on!" cried the hologram.

"Open the blast doors, quickly!" Aayla instructed the clone pilot.

"Yes sir!" the pilot pushed the button. Both of the sliding doors to the gunships opened wide and there was a rush of wind as the troopers and the Digimon and the Jedi braced themselves. The wind thundered in their ears, along with the beeping of the failing systems of the gunship.

Suddenly another gunship levelled alongside them and its own blast-doors opened. Obi-Wan and Commander Cody could be seen there, along with several other clones.

"Come on! Hurry!" called the human Jedi.

"Cables!" called Commander Bly, and he, Conor and Blade levelled their blasters at the top of Obi-Wan's gunship.

"No time for that, Bly!" shouted Aayla, struggling to make herself heard over the wind. "Allow me!"

"What are going to... whoa!" Suddenly Bly levitated in mid-air and was flung outwards. Aayla's hand followed his progress, calling on the Force to support him as she tossed him into the waiting arms of Cody and Obi-Wan.

"I can help too!" called Renamon, and she grabbed the surprised Conor around the waist. "Brace yourself!" she called to him. "We're going to a ride!"

"I have a bad feeling about this!" shouted Conor.

"Don't see why!" Renamon took a pace backwards and with a surge of strength, she leapt right out of the gunship, sailed across the gap at speed and grabbed the back of the other LAAT as it attempted to overshoot her. Clinging on with one paw and with the other wrapped around a clone, Renamon brought down her legs and hooked them around the blast-doors, dragging Conor with her and bundling him into the arms of two of his fellow clones, before heaving herself inside.

"Is it always like this?" asked Renamon, as the gunship shook, attempting to manoeuvre around the heavy blasts.

"Pretty much," nodded Obi-Wan.

"Hurry, Terriermon!" shouted Lopmon. "We have to help the pilot! Come on!"

"Right behind you, sis!" Terriermon sprang after Lopmon as the two of them leapt upwards and grabbed the open blast-door. They clambered upwards, precariously balancing on top of it, and using their ears to full effect as they attempted to scramble up to the cockpit and help the pilot before he went down with the ship.

Lopmon flipped onto the front of the LAAT, the wind pounding at her and whipping her ears backwards with its force, but she reached down and assisted Terriermon the rest of the way up.

"You alright?" called Terriermon, to the pilot through the glass. "Don't worry, we're gonna get you out of here. Can you..."

"TERRIERMON! WATCH OUT!" Lopmon shrieked. Terriermon looked up and threw himself into the air at the last second.

"Blade," said Aayla. "You're tur..." She was interrupted as another cannon bolt struck the gunship directly where Terriermon had been standing. The whole structure rocked. Aayla managed to grab hold of the side, but Blade was less quick to react. With a plaintive cry, he toppled forwards at the jarring thud and tipped right out of the gunship. He fell with a scream.

"BLADE!" bellowed Bly, leaning out futilely as his brother shot past him and towards the ground.

"NO!" shouted Aayla, leaning out and they watched in horror as the poor clone shot earthwards. Aayla gritted her teeth. If only she'd been a bit quicker!

"Don't wait for me!" shouted Renamon, suddenly, and to the shock and horror of everyone present, she leapt right out of the gunship and plunged after Blade, tucking her arms to her sides and her legs together like a javelin to pick up speed.

* * *

Blade yelled as he fell, tumbling earthwards in dismay. He hadn't even made it to the planet's surface. What would they think back on Kamino? Would he be mourned? Would he be... Further questions were interrupted as strong arms were suddenly wrapped around him in mid-air. Strong arms covered in yellow fur.

"Hold on!" shouted Renamon into his ear. "This landing's gonna be a little rough!"

"Are you nuts!" cried Blade. "You'll be killed too."

"I know what I'm doing!"

"You've done this before?"

"Many times! Now try not to be sick!"

"Oh, thanks!"

Blade watched with growing fear as the ground got closer by the second, wrapping his own arms around the fox Digimon falling with him. They were heading for a forest, and Renamon angled herself towards the tallest of the trees below them, swinging so she was falling feet-first.

They shot through the canopy and Renamon thrust her claws on one hand and both feet straight into the bark. They slowed but still descended at speed, Renamon creating huge grooves in the bark as they slid down the trunk. A few feet from the ground, Renamon sprang off it, placing herself between Blade and the ground. They struck, Renamon grunting under the weight of the clones as her shoulder-blades smacked into the ground, sliding across it. Then she thrust out with one hand, pushing herself and Blade into the air again, flipped and landed again, this time on her feet. The two of them skidded to a halt.

Blade collapsed to the ground in shock. He was alive! He was actually alive!

Was there any limit to what these Digimon could do?

"Thank you," he gasped. "You saved my life."

"Don't mention it," said Renamon. "But I think I need a new pair of shoulders."

* * *

Lopmon had been thrown clear on the gunship as well, but she had quickly caught herself with her ears and righted herself. "Terriermon!" she cried. "Where are you?"

"Right here!" her brother winged down so he was flying beside her.

"Thank God," she said. "I thought you'd had it there."

"So did I," said Terriermon. "There must be a pineapple somewhere that didn't like my poem."

"You can even make jokes now?"

"If you can't make a joke in bad times, you can't make one at all. Now come on. I think the pilot's still alive."

The two of them usually glided, but this time they flapped hard, quickly gaining on the failing gunship and the one beside it, both of which were going slower than usual.

"They're getting a bit too close to the ground for comfort," said Lopmon.

Just then, they saw Aayla leap from the gunship and into the arms of Bly and Obi-Wan, who steadied her. Now, the only one in the damaged LAAT was the pilot.

"Aayla!" shouted Terriermon, causing the Jedi to look up. "We'll help the pilot, but we're gonna need you to be ready to catch us!"

Aayla nodded. The two bunnies powered their ears down towards the cockpit, the cover of which had been blown off by the laser. The pilot seemed to have resigned himself to his fate, but he looked up when he saw the Digimon soar overhead.

"Get ready to jump!" Lopmon called to him. "We're gonna catch you."

"What!" hollered the clone. "Can you hold my weight!"

"Just call us Old Parachutes!" grinned Terriermon.

"Watch out! Laser!" Obi-Wan yelled.

The bunnies looked up to see one barrelling towards them at high speed. Terriermon and Lopmon split apart in mid-air as the massive laser shot between them, causing a slight slipstream which sent both spinning a little. But they quickly regained their control and took up their positions again.

"Jump now! Or it'll be too late!" shouted Lopmon. The pilot pushed himself up and launched himself into the air, arms outstretched towards the bunnies. His gunship kept going, but the Digimon grabbed a wrist each in their arms, in what was practically and embrace. They threw their ears out as wide as they could and the pilot jerked to a much slower descent. It was still much faster than it would have been with a proper parachute, but he was alive. Even so, the bunnies were having to flap hard to keep them from going down much faster. There was no way they'd be able to keep him up at the same height – they were not designed for carrying such weights.

Below them, the gunship smashed into the ground at last and exploded in a huge plume of flames.

"Nice catch!" called Aayla. Both she and Obi-Wan extended one arm, using the other to hold on, and called on The Force. The clone floating downwards and his living parachutes, found themselves jerked sideways and into the gunship. The bunnies let go of the pilot's hands and landed on his shoulders, all three of them out of breath.

"Thank you," said the pilot, slumping down, relieved to be alive.

"Anytime," said Terriermon. "Well, hopefully we won't need to do that again, but, hey, it's not a problem if we do."

"That was quite an escape," said Obi-Wan. "I don't doubt anything that Aayla said about you Digimon now."

"What about Renamon and Blade?" asked Aayla. "Are they okay?"

"They're both fine," said Lopmon. "They're on the ground and have started making their way to the landing zone on foot."

"Good," said Obi-Wan. "Now, let's go and meet them there."

"And kick some droid can," nodded Terriermon as the gunship, with almost twice as many as there should have been in it, followed the others that were still intact, which had got ahead of it.

* * *

Whoa. That was quite tough. But I wanted to provide something a little different to the usual "kill-all-the-enemy" battle scenes. Hope I managed to pull that one off. It was quite exciting for me, I can tell you that. And that pineapple poem was written by me on the Creative Writing Course that I mentioned at the start of the story, before I'd started writing this one. Hope you liked it.

* * *

Twi'leki

Poli si koil – What is that

Koomey hool – Come look

Ju gohs ken poli suulan lojer, Ger jus fenoilus – I don't know what you're saying, but I'm scared

Shenab! Ju gohs yuson ji lik nes acer lond – Quick! I don't want to be on my own.

Solon her – Let's go

* * *

Next time...

The attempt to liberate Ryloth continues. Aayla, Obi-Wan and the Digimon lead the clones on an attempt to breach the defences the droid's have set up around Nabat. Meanwhile, Suzie and Numa are still trying to avoid detection.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 13 : Invasion of Nabat**


	13. Invasion of Nabat

To those of you who did review this time, thank you very much. To those who didn't I assume that has made a mistake because apparently it said that I updated on Friday, instead of Tuesday. Ah well. Maybe it'll get it right this time.

Also, I recently learned that when the Liberty, Aayla's first flagship, was destroyed, she took on a cruiser known as the Intrepid, not the Liberty II. Therefore, I have gone back and changed every time the Liberty II is mentioned to the Intrepid. Just to allay confusion in the future.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 13:- Invasion of Nabat**

* * *

Blade slowly levered himself to his feet. Even a battle-hardened clone like him was struggling to keep his shock under control. He'd just fallen out of an LAAT gunship, and had been saved from death by a creature that was not of this universe. What would have happened to him had he never met Renamon?

Well, for a start, he'd probably be dead back on Christophsis. But instead he was alive on Ryloth.

Renamon herself was massaging her shoulders, rolling them in their sockets and stretching her arms out so wide that they clicked. She grimaced, and then brushed several flecks of dirt from her tail as if they were flies.

"How do you think they others are?" asked Blade, looking up into the sky. Both the gunships had vanished from sight and the sky was clear of lasers now. Presumably all the gunships that had not been destroyed had landed on the ground by now, so the cannons had stopped firing.

"They're fine," said Renamon. Blade looked at her in confusion. Renamon noticed and tapped the side of her own head.

"Oh, right," said Blade. "The psychic link thing."

"Indeed," said Renamon. "They're waiting for us to come and join them, but they're not going to put off their invasion attempt. Come on, we need to catch up."

"Right, I'm coming," said Blade, lifting his blaster and standing to attention. Renamon blinked.

"You've no call to stand to attention to me, Blade," she said.

"I know," said the clone. "But you saved my life. I promise that I will help you anytime you need me in the future, sir."

"Don't call me sir, either," said Renamon. "I'm not your commanding officer, nor am I a Jedi. Call me Renamon."

"Yes, s- er, I mean, Renamon," nodded Blade. "Shall we get underway?"

"I think that might be a very good idea," said the fox Digimon. "Just try and keep up."

With that, she was away. She didn't run in a straight line towards their goal as you might expect someone to do, but she immediately sprang upwards and into a tree. Like an acrobat, she began to traverse the branches, bouncing from tree to tree like a living pinball. She was never in the same tree for more than three seconds. She swung from a branch, bounced off a trunk, rebounded off another, landed on a branch, sprinted through the canopy and leapt casually forward.

She was acting more like a squirrel than a fox.

Blade had to remember that he was also supposed to be moving, because he stood for a moment, transfixed at the awesome spectacle of strength and agility. When he noticed she was getting further away, his legs began to think and he too began running. Despite being decked out in full armour, and with both hands clamped on his blaster, Blade, like most other clones, was a champion at cross-country and could run as he was for hours at a time.

"You look like you've had a lot of practice at that," he called up to Renamon.

"I have," Renamon shouted back. "Usually racing to stop an evil Digimon blowing up a building."

Then the two of them lapsed into silence, running to catch up with the rest of the clones.

* * *

"All the loud noises have stopped," noted Suzie, looking up at the sky from their little hiding place down a side-street. It wasn't the best hiding place in the world, but for some reason the robots didn't seem to be particularly methodical with their patrolling. Even Suzie could tell that they were not very intelligent. They just walked up and down the streets staring straight ahead of themselves and not giving any thought to what might be lurking in the alleyways.

The sky was now free of red, flashing lights. Suzie wondered if all of the strange planes had been shot down. She hadn't seen them go shooting overhead and blowing everything up like she'd expected, so, in her inexperienced mind, that was the only plausible suggestion. She wasn't sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed. _She_ had been sure that help had been on the way, but her companion had been sure that they were more enemies.

She didn't know whether she had been optimistic or Numa had been paranoid, but either way, it didn't matter now.

"Topee hural instanb," said Numa, nervously fiddling with one of the tails on her head. Abruptly both of them jumped at a sudden noise, but it was only the sound of Numa's stomach, asking to be filled.

"You're hungry," Suzie stated the obvious. Then she added, "And so am I," when her own stomach made a plea for sustenance. "Do you know where we can find any food?" Suzie asked Numa. The Twi'lek looked at her blankly. Suzie was becoming increasingly frustrated by the language barrier that separated both of them.

"Then I'll go and try and find some," she said to herself, with much more confidence than she felt. She was missing her brother terribly. Things were getting so bad – first the Digimon had gone, and now the other humans. She was about to step out into the main alley, when Numa grabbed her from behind.

"Schoy!" Numa shook her head wildly, causing her lekku to flick wildly. If someone had been standing behind her they would have been smacked in the face.

"What is it? I'm hungry and we need food."

Numa bit her lip and attempted to haul Suzie back into their hiding place. Suzie struggled. What was going on? Why was Numa acting like this?

It finally dawned on her that the answer was simply because she was much braver than Numa. Numa had probably had a very sheltered life here in this valley. She had not seen the horrors that Suzie had seen. She had never fought against giant Demons or living computer programs that devoured anything it touched. This was possibly the first truly scary situation Numa had ever been presented with.

She decided she should be more soothing. "It's okay," she whispered, turning to face Numa. "We'll be fine. Those dumb robots aren't gonna find us. Everything's going to work out. My brother will escape and he'll come and find us."

Numa didn't understand anything that Suzie was saying, but the tone of voice was easy enough to understand. "Suulan trin herfo ji deodo ace nes acer lond, non suu?" she asked timidly.

Suzie took Numa's hands and whispered. "Come on. We need to find something to eat."

Numa edged a little closer to Suzie and Suzie turned around. Slowly and quietly, both of them hardly daring to breath, they crept towards the main street and peered out. They saw nothing coming from one direction.

_But Mummy always say check both ways before crossing the street_, thought Suzie, turning to look the other way.

And she instantly found out why her mother gave her warnings like that. There were two of the robots marching side-by-side up the centre. Suzie grabbed Numa and they darted back into the side-street. They ducked behind a large crate and huddled together. Numa's hands sought Suzie's and clutched them fearfully.

The sound of marching feet came to a halt right outside the alleyway street. Suzie and Numa, wide-eyed, listened. There was a faint tapping noise. Cautiously, Suzie peered out from behind the crate, to see one of the robots banging the side of his own head, while the other was attempting to look at his own back.

"All this sand is getting into my motivator," complained one of the robots. Suzie shrank back, gesturing to Numa not to move.

"What are we doing here anyway?" asked one of the robots. "Why is this planet so important?"

"Don't look at me," said the other. "We just follow orders, 411. We don't question them."

"Roger, roger," said the second robot. "Shall we get back to patrol?"

"Yes," said the first. "And hope that we get an oil bath later on."

Both took a step forward in unison, then they both halted at a sudden noise.

Suzie had sneezed.

"Hey, what was that? Did you hear it?" asked one.

"Yes, I did. It came from down there."

The robot pointed down the side-street occupied by Numa and Suzie. Both of them readied their blasters and marched forwards.

Numa and Suzie had to resist the urge to whimper in fear. Numa threw her arms around Suzie and hugged her, and Suzie couldn't help but do the same. The two of them huddled together, eyes firmly shut, as they heard their impending doom marching towards them on metal feet.

* * *

The gunship landed beside all the others which had already done so, and with a click the pilot opened the blast doors. Obi-Wan, Aayla, Bly, Cody, Conor, Waxer, Boil, three more clones and Terriermon and Lopmon all piled out of it.

"Alright, men," said Obi-Wan. "There's no time to waste. We need to get going and press on with the invasion so that we can allow Master Windu and the cruisers to land with our heavy transports and the rest of our squads. Remember, minimal damage to the city and we're not getting any reinforcements."

"What about Renamon and Blade?" asked Bly. "How are they doing?"

"They're on their way here right now," said Terriermon. "They should be here soon."

"Well, we cannot afford to wait for them," said Aayla. "We need to break through the defences surrounding the city of Nabat quickly. They might be reinforcing them as we speak, and we'll have a tougher time gaining entry."

"Aayla is right," said Obi-Wan. "It's time for us to face the enemy in person. Let's go."

"You heard the General lads," shouted Cody. "Ghost Company, let's move."

"That includes us, K Company," ordered Bly. The two battalions, each lead by a separate clone commander and a separate Jedi, began to run, following the progress of the lightsaber-wielding human and Twi'lek running ahead.

Terriermon and Lopmon took a moment to watch the clones running past them. They glanced at each other, and then began to power the muscles in their ears, lifting off from the ground so that they could glide above the clones, easily keeping pace with them.

_What have we gotten ourselves into,_ Lopmon thought.

_We did ask for this,_ said Terriermon. _And I'm sure as hell going to stick to it. Even if I find Henry and he says no, as I'm sure he will, I gave my word that I'd help Aayla and Bly._

_I have no intention of breaking that promise either,_ Lopmon agreed. _But still, this is beyond anything that I thought we'd be doing. Everything is on a much larger scale._

_Except the size of the opponents,_ grinned Terriermon. _That's gone down._

"That's really not fair," remarked one of the clones running below. It was Waxer. "We have to run, but you two can fly."

"Well, to be fair, if we ran after you we wouldn't be able to keep up," pointed out Lopmon. "Having shorter legs can do that to you."

"Must be pretty nice," Waxer remarked.

"Maybe, we'll give you a ride one day," said Terriermon. "If we find the key to making us grow bigger again."

"Focus, Waxer," said Boil, running beside his comrade. "We got a mission to complete here. I just hope the tail-heads have enough sense to let us get on with it."

"Watch it, Boil," said Bly. "Our General happens to be a "tail-head" herself. Any more backtalk like that I'll have you polishing astromechs for a week."

"Have to agree with Bly there," said Cody. "But let's keep our wits about us. We may need them yet."

"I think I can see the city up ahead," said Lopmon, pointing with one hand. "There's a massive wall in front of us, with a lot of battle droids standing sentry on the top."

"Sounds like this'll be a most interesting fight," said Boil. "Usually we can just take out the wall, but not this time, huh?"

"Walls will be easy," said Terriermon. "You should face the D-Reaper. _That_ was interesting."

"Alright, prepare yourselves," called Obi-wan, and, with a whoosh, his lightsaber ignited. It was blue, just like Aayla's, which also ignited a split second later. Terriermon and Lopmon increased their pace until they'd overtaken the clones and were just behind the Jedi.

"Is that them?" asked a battle droid on the top of the giant wall that had carefully had the rope ladder pulled up. "I think I see something."

"Where?" asked another.

"There," the droid pointed. "Blue flashes in the trees."

"Uh-oh," called another. "You're right! They brought Jedi with them! Fire! Quickly!"

The droids all hurriedly squeezed their triggers and red bolts lanced into the trees, splintering bark and snapping branches. Many of them suddenly shot backwards due to a sweep from a blue energy sword and struck the wall and occasionally one of the droids. They were joined by the blue blaster bolts of the clones.

Aayla sprinted forward and leapt onto an outcrop of rocks. The lightsaber in her hand shot to the left, then the right, then back to the left twice, as the droids weapons were reflected away from them, including the ones that wouldn't have hit her anyway. Obi-Wan ran diagonally sideways and he too began to deflect the enemy shots.

The clones dodged behind the cover of the trees and wheeled around to fire on top of the wall. They had particularly good aim considering they had a split-second to pick a target, shoot it and then fall behind cover again. Occasionally one of them would roll forwards and come to a stop behind a tree closer to the wall than the last.

Terriermon and Lopmon tucked in their ears and dived, corkscrewing, until each came to a rest behind one of the two Jedi.

"Let's put your skills to the test then, shall we?" Obi-Wan smiled, as he brushed aside blaster fire as if they were mere gnats that needed to be swatted.

"I never was very good at tests," said Terriermon. "Can I pass on this?"

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

Cody rolled forward and pressed his back to the rocky outcrop Aayla was standing on. He popped up, shot a droid in the shoulder and caused it to keel over, then ducked back down and said, "This is not going to be easy, Generals. We're pinned down here."

"Au contraire," said Terriermon. "Are you ready, Loppy?"

"Been ready."

"I'm ready for an A-star. **BUNNY BLAST!"**

"**BLAZING ICE!"**

Peering around the legs of the Jedi they were standing behind, green energy pellets and ice shards streamed upwards in a torrent. They weren't as strong as the blaster bolts of the clones, but en masse to the heads of the droids was enough to knock their heads off. Literally.

"Whoa," said Bly, taking advantage of the droid's sudden confusion to sprint over beside Cody. "From your mouths? Can't say I saw that coming?"

"What is that coming fr-aargh!" one of the droid's cried before his head was suddenly bombarded by little shards of ice and flung from his torso.

"It's coming from those little creatures next to the Jedi," cried another.

"Shoot them, quickly!" was the last words of another before he followed his own advice and was promptly killed when Aayla swiped his own bolt back at him.

"That's not going to work," said another. "It never does. Use the rocket launcher."

"Roger, roger," one of the droid's put down his blaster and picked up what looked like a small bazooka. Struggling to balance the heavy weapon, he shouldered it and let fly with a heavy shell.

Obi-Wan raised a hand and with a pulse of The Force, he changed the direction of the missile, it suddenly shot sideways and exploded in the ground a few metres to the left of the wall, creating a massive boom. As he was doing this he deflected two more bolts with the lightsaber in the other hand, so they spurted backwards and both struck the launcher-wielding droid in the chest. The droid keeled over.

"I think that we got their attention!" cried Aayla, as she and Obi-Wan wildly deflected the laser fire.

"You think?" asked Terriermon.

* * *

"What the..." cried one of the robots, as a massive boom rocked the air. "What was that noise?"

"It came from the defences at the wall," said the other. "The Republic must have started their attack."

"Should we get over there and help out?" asked the first.

Suzie and Numa, still with arms wrapped around the other and their faces touching, opened their eyes a fraction and listened to the robots conversing.

"We can't let the clones breach the perimeter," said the second.

"But what if they have Jedi with them?"

"Doesn't matter. Let's go."

"Roger, roger."

Suzie extricated herself from Numa and peered round the crate. The robots had turned around and were going back the way they'd come. They just completely forgot that they'd heard her sneeze. They really were stupid. She sighed in relief as they disappeared. She turned back and hugged Numa again, this time with relief. They were still alive. They were no better off than before, but they were alive.

* * *

Blade and Renamon were still going. Blade was impressed by Renamon's sheer stamina. He was sure that leaping from tree to tree was much more energy-consuming than the flat out run that he was doing, but Renamon wasn't even panting. She was built for this, just as he was built for combat.

"Do you hear that?" Renamon called down, eventually.

Blade stopped running and listened. Renamon grabbed a thick branch, swung upwards and flipped so she was standing on it.

"I don't hear anything," shrugged Blade.

"I sounds a lot like blaster fire to me," said Renamon. "And I can hear small explosions. We're definitely getting closer now."

"Good," Blade patted his blaster with anticipation. "I can't wait to give those wretched droids what they asked for when they pushed me out of that gunship. I can tell you, they're not going to like the present I got for 'em."

"Tell me," said Renamon. "Have you _ever_ known anything other than fighting?"

"No."

Renamon looked at Blade wryly. "You know who you remind me of, Blade?"

Blade looked curiously up at the fox sitting in the tree above him. He reminded her of someone? After a moment's thought he guessed, "Another clone?"

Renamon chuckled. "Well, obviously that too, but I was thinking more along the lines of the fact you remind me of me."

"You?" asked Blade. "Why?"

"Because I also used to think only of battle. I was a toughened, hard-boiled warrior about two years ago, just like you are now, although we were fighting for very different purposes. Tell me something else. I asked Bly this question and he said he didn't know the answer to it. If you survive the war, what will you do then?"

Blade, along with many clones, had already given serious thought to this question. Truth be told, he doubted that he _would_ survive the war – so many clones were dying. "I have no idea," he said.

"I never gave that question any thought whatsoever," said Renamon. "But I still managed to pull myself away from that lifestyle. I met Rika, Henry, and another Tamer called Takato, not to mention Terriermon and a couple of others known as Guilmon and Calumon. It was them that turned my way of thinking and adapted me to an ordinary lifestyle. You clones only hang out with other clones, so your social experience is fairly limited."

"So, what are you saying?"

"That we will help you, if you want," said Renamon. "If you start to integrate with us, you might get more of an idea as to how to live a life without battle. You'd still be a soldier of course, but it's not impossible to change. I did, and I've never looked back and regretted it."

Blade contemplated in silence, then said, "Well, you'll be hanging around with us anyway now. Alright, you show us what to do and we'll do it. We are very good at following examples."

"Good. I'll do my best. I only brought the topic up because I worry about you. But nevertheless," said Renamon. "We do have a battle to fight. Let's go."

The two of them continued running and tree-hopping. Blade was considering himself lucky at this point. The Digimon could solve all the problems of the clones – not only helping them to win the war, but also helping them after it.

The thought felt good, and it spurred him on.

* * *

"What now?" asked Lopmon, as she watched two clones, Ridge and Conor, blast upwards at the droids, while Lash rolled forward to join them and do the same. "How do we get over? There are more droids joining those on the wall."

"We could use the droid-poppers, sir," Bly pulled out what looked like a thermal detonator from his belt, but was, if fact, and EMP grenade.

"Oh, go on," grinned Terriermon. "Let's give them some of that! It looked so cool when I saw it in Renamon's mind."

Aayla actually laughed. "Well, at least they're willing, right Obi-Wan?" she called over the noise of blaster-fire.

"Indeed, and you can't ask for more than that! Alright, throw them on my signal!"

"But we're not close enough, sir!"

"Then Aayla and I will assist them on their way! Now!"

"Sir, yes sir! Poppers, now!"

The clones pulled out numerous of the little devices and with all the strength their arms could muster they hurled them upon the wall, particularly at the two towers on either side of it with a large concentration of droids in each. Aayla and Obi-Wan waved their hands, causing the little weapons to zing through the air much further than they should have been able to. They crashed into both the towers at once, and a few seconds later, all the droids in them practically fizzed with electrical energy and collapsed to the floor.

"Awesome!" cried Terriermon.

"Even I have to admit that was cool," grinned Lopmon.

"We've got them on the ropes now," Aayla flicked a laser aside. "Let's push on."

"Oh, oh, oh, by the way," Terriermon lifted an ear like a schoolchild asking a question, then dodged to the side as a rogue blaster bolt lanced his way. "I've been wanting to say this for some time. For dramatic purposes, you know."

He cleared his throat, puffed out his chest and shouted for everyone to hear, "HEEEEEEERE'S RENA!"

"**DIAMOND STORM!"**

A sudden barrage of heavy diamonds smashed all the droids that were still on top of the wall into smithereens. Blade ran into view between the trees, and Renamon landed a few feet away from the Jedi on her hands, before flipping onto her feet.

"You couldn't have saved a few for me, could you?" asked Blade, at the absence of droids on the wall.

"Maybe next time, mate," Ridge clapped him on the back. "Good to see you made it out of that mess alive."

"Wouldn't have done, were it not for Renamon."

"Thank you for the grand entrance, Terriermon," Renamon ruffled the top of his head.

"Anytime," grinned the bunny.

"There are more of them," said Lopmon. "I can hear more of them ascending to the top of the wall."

"Bly," called Terriermon. "Chuck us a few of those droid-poppers. We'll take care of it."

"Do as he says, Bly," said Aayla.

"Yes, sir." The yellow-marked clone signalled to Conor and Lash. The two of them tossed a few EMP grenades to Terriermon and Lopmon.

"See you in a moment," Lopmon lifted off from the ground, her brother right behind her. The two of them winged their way upwards, easily carrying two droid-poppers in each hand. The shot over the wall at high-speed, pressed the button on one each, and dropped them.

The droids remaining were surprised at the aerial bombardment but spent the few seconds they had left milling about in confusion instead of doing something useful like escaping. As they fizzed out of life, Terriermon and Lopmon landed and tossed the others each. The droids attempted to back away, but were impeded by those behind them and even more were suddenly left completely powerless. Literally.

Aayla ran up to the wall and looked up at the sheer face. It was too high even for a Jedi to jump, but she knew her planet well. Lifting her hand, she located, with her mind, the coiled rope ladder that she knew would be there. She beckoned, and it leapt over the edge by itself and unravelled quickly, coming to a rest beside her.

"Let's go," she waved to the clones and began to scale the flimsy ladder at high speed. Renamon and Obi-Wan were right behind her.

Over on the other side there were only seven droids left. Aayla jumped over the edge and ignited her lightsaber, only to find that it wouldn't be necessary to use it. This was because Terriermon and Lopmon had both started to spin on the spot, and with loud cries of **"TERRIER TORNADO!"** and **"LOP TWISTER!"** they surged forwards and mowed the droids down, snapping their legs and caving their bodies as they fell.

Aayla deactivated her lightsaber and smiled. "Well, you two got your first action against droids today."

"And you came away unscathed," Obi-Wan clambered over the wall behind her, and Renamon leapt straight over him and landed beside Aayla. "I think we made the right decision allowing them to join us, wouldn't you agree, Aayla?"

The Rutian Twi'lek laughed. "Never had a doubt."

Bly's arm appeared over the wall and Obi-Wan assisted the clone in hauling himself up. "But we still gotta city to retake," he pointed out.

"You're right," said Obi-Wan. "Let's get everyone up here and get going."

"I wish those clankers could change their expression now," said Cody. "Their faces at that little surprise would have been quite a sight."

* * *

"What's going on?" Rika asked for the third time. "Where have those planes gone? I thought they just come blasting in here and take out the robots."

"They probably would do if they wanted to just destroy them," said Henry. "I think that it may indeed be a rescue mission, otherwise they _would_ just come blasting in without regard to us or the village."

"Well, that's something, at least," Rika shifted her cuffed wrists uncomfortably. "Maybe they can get you something for your back."

"I hope so," said Henry. "Because it's really starting to pang now."

"Sir," one of the battle droids ran over to TX-20, who was observing the prisoners with the cold expression which would always be cold. "The outer defences are not responding."

Henry couldn't help but snort – he often got annoyed when his computer said something was "Not Responding." And then Terriermon would probably hit the computer and make it worse.

"Just as I predicted," said TX-20. "The Republic troops have managed to over-run the perimeter. We are all set for my plan. They will be crushed under the teeth of the creatures we rounded up. But first, we must find out how the Jedi plan to attack us. Then we can send out the creatures. Send out a Recon Droid."

"Roger, roger," said the droid. He turned over and pressed a button on a nearby console. Henry and Rika watched with fascination, as a hatch opened and two black robots popped out. They looked like large balls with several four long spindly legs underneath that could hover through the air. The two of them floated away, in the direction that strange, white aircraft had been coming from.

"Creatures?" asked Rika. "I'm not sure I like the sound of that."

"Me neither," muttered Henry. "But I'm not going to ask. He probably won't tell us what he's going to d-"

"Hey, you, TX-20!"

"Rika, no!"

TX-20's attention shifted to his two strange human captives. They were definitely odd. He had only expected there to be Twi'leks living in the village, but these humans had also been there. What was more, they had had two strange devices, like bulky holoprojectors, clipped to their belts. These, had, of course, been removed, and were now lying beside the control pad. He'd figure out what they were later, but he hadn't wanted them to communicate with anyone, or use them if they were some kind of weapon.

"Prisoners will be quiet," he hummed.

"What's going on?" demanded Rika. "What's attacking you? What do you mean creatures?"

"Rika, don't push it," whispered Henry, but Rika flat out ignored him.

"Well?" she demanded.

Now the Twi'leks were looking to her with looks of trepidation and warning. No doubt they were trying to say with their expressions that Rika should not draw too much attention to herself and, as a result, to the prisoners.

"The Galactic Republic is attempting to capture this planet and retake it from our rule," said TX-20. "But do not get your hopes up. I have calculated that their chances of success against us are seven-hundred-and-forty-two to one. You will remain our prisoners and there is nothing they can do about it. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha."

Even his laugh was weird – it didn't sound like a real laugh at all, considering the pause between each "Ha."

"And the creatures?" asked Rika.

"I plan on using fierce predators known as Gutkurr, that are resident to this planet, to wipe out the Jedi and the clones. They will be torn to shreds under fierce teeth and claws. Ha. Ha. Ha. Not even a Jedi could possibly succeed against us. Now, be quiet."

Rika couldn't help but sag. For all this droid's arrogance he seemed pretty confident in his own ability, and machines usually were very good at calculations as far as she knew. Whatever a Jedi was, they sounded tough, but TX-20 thought that he could defeat just about anything.

And Rika couldn't see what could help them now, unless their Digimon showed up to assist them.

Her thoughts turned to Renamon again. Wherever she was now, she couldn't be worse off than she and Henry were now, surely. Unless she'd run into another Goro, but Rika very much doubted that Renamon would be as easy to take down as she had been last time.

Then, just for a second, she felt something. The shroud of nothing around her brain lifted for a moment and she felt a slight twinge of a presence she had been beginning to think she'd never feel again.

"Renamon?" she asked, so quietly she barely heard herself.

But then the feeling was gone. One minute it was there, the next – poof.

"Henry," she whispered. "Did you feel that something just now?"

"No," said Henry. "What was it?"

"I think I just felt Renamon, but it was only there for a second."

Henry was slightly more alert now and he looked around. Nothing had changed. There was no sign of a sudden attack by a Digimon. "You sure?"

"Positive," said Rika. "She could be nearby."

"I hope you're right," Henry grimaced. "I hope you're right."

* * *

Renamon felt a twinge of something in her own mind. She stiffened and looked around. She could see nothing but the large canyon and the various empty houses that lined the side of it. Terriermon and Lopmon, walking just ahead of her, also stopped, wary and confused.

"Okay, I know I'm not the only one who felt that," said Terriermon.

"What?" Aayla looked around at the three Digimon – she and Obi-Wan had been walking ahead, and the clones were travelling right behind them, all around the Digimon. "What is it?"

"Just for a moment there, I think I felt Rika," Renamon breathed, eyes widening and hardly daring to believe it. "Rika."

She started forwards, determined to find her Tamer, but Aayla blocked her path. "Renamon, wait. Don't go running off and doing something you might regret."

"But I just felt the life-force of my Tamer," Renamon insisted. "If there's any chance that she's nearby then it is my duty to find her."

"This is war, Renamon," said Aayla. "Remember that. This is the only civilisation for miles around on this planet. If it really was your Tamer you sensed, then the chances are that she's a prisoner of the droids."

"All the more reason for me to find her," Renamon was getting angry now. What was Aayla playing at? She had to find Rika now!

"No, Renamon," this time it was Obi-Wan. "Aayla is right. If she's a prisoner and you just go charging in with no forethought to what you're doing, then that's a good way to get not only yourself killed, but her as well."

Renamon faltered. A pained expression crossed her face. She felt a slight pressure on her leg. Looking down, she saw Terriermon, placing a comforting hand on her fur. "They're right, you know," he said. "This isn't some rogue Digimon we're dealing with that is just trying to destroy things. It's an organised, if only just, army. Remember the wars on Earth – many prisoners are killed as rescues are attempted."

"And," said Lopmon, coming to stand on Renamon's other side. "If Rika is here, then there is a good chance that the other two are here as well. As much as I want to find Suzie, I would not want to put her at risk to do it."

Renamon slumped ever so slightly, but otherwise remained the same. Her expression hardened. "Yes, you're right. I'm sorry. I got carried away."

"Momentai."

"Aayla! Don't you start using my word, too!"

Aayla smirked. "Or what?" she challenged, raising one eyebrow.

Terriermon frowned and said, "I dunno, but I'd think of something."

"What do you want us to do, sir?" asked Bly. "What with this latest development and everything."

"Well, I think it would be best if we did a little reconnaissance," said Obi-Wan. "We need to know how the Separatists have planned to stop us – you can guarantee that the wall was not their only defence. Cody, I want you to send some of your best men to scout ahead and try to find the main droid outpost. Look out for human prisoners, particularly children. The rest of us will remain here and wait for your report."

"We might as well make ourselves comfortable then," remarked Terriermon, walking over to a house and sitting down, leaning against the wall and putting his hands behind his heads.

"Someone's in a good mood," said Aayla.

"Can you blame me?" asked Terriermon. "I might be re-united with my Tamer by the end of the day."

"That remains to be seen," said Cody. "Wooley, you follow me. Waxer, Boil, you too. We'll scope out the place and then report back to the General. Let's go."

"Yes sir," said the three clones. They followed Commander Cody further into the streets. They inched forward with their blasters cocked and fingers ready on the triggers. There was every chance that they might run into a droid patrol or two on their little scouting mission.

"When they return," said Obi-Wan. "Aayla, you and I should make a report on our progress to Master Windu. He'll be wanting to know how we're getting on."

Aayla nodded. Then she turned to look with concern at Renamon. The fox was leaning against a wall with her arms folded. She was clearly being very impatient, and although Aayla did not hold attachments, she could understand what Renamon was feeling.

She walked over to her and stood next to her. "You needn't worry, Renamon. If your Tamers are here, we'll rescue them."

Renamon glanced across at her. "You have a plan?"

"Possibly," said Aayla. "Remember I know this planet. I won't say what it is until the clones report back, as their information could compromise it, but nevertheless, this is my turf. The droids may think they know the location, but do they know it well enough? That's the question."

"I'll put my faith in you then," said Renamon. "Like so many other beings in this whole galaxy."

Aayla smiled and winked. "Well, that takes away the pressure."

Renamon blinked. "Was that sarcasm?"

"Perhaps."

"Oh no. You barely known him for a day and Terriermon is starting to influence you already."

* * *

Cody and Wooley had split off from Waxer and Boil and were now searching along the left-hand fork in the main path. They didn't meet any droids. Wherever the rest of the army was, it must have mostly grouped together in order to be at full strength on the expected assault that the clones would inevitably launch.

"I think I can hear something ahead, sir," said Wooley. "Like the marching feet of clankers."

"I hear it too," said Cody. "Let's take a look."

The two crept ahead as quickly and as quietly as they good. This wasn't difficult for them, after all they were professionals at this, unlike the droids, that didn't know the meaning of stealth. Cody peered around the corner and saw droids. Lots of droids, not to mention a few AAT tanks and the proton cannons that had shot at them earlier.

"So, this is the epicentre is it?" asked Cody.

"Any sign of prisoners?" Wooley passed a pair of macrobinoculars to Cody. "Like those Tamers we're looking for?"

"Oh, I see lots of prisoners," Cody looked through them. "Lots of Twi'leks. They're holding them all hostage, like a shield against them. I can see a tactical droid – he must be in charge. Evil clanker's pulling innocents into this."

He continued to scan the area. Then, "Wait! Humans. I can see two human children. A boy and a girl. They could be the Tamers."

"Only two?" asked Wooley. "You sure? There are supposed to be three."

"Dead sure," said Cody. "Oh, one of them's not going to be pleased. Come on. Let's report back."

* * *

When Cody and Wooley got back to the others, there was no sign of Waxer or Boil. They had not yet returned. Obi-Wan, Bly and Aayla were standing beside a large holopad, as was a hologram of Mace Windu. Cody walked over to them, sighed, and carefully explained the situation.

"...and there are definitely two human children there as well," Cody explained. "They could be the Tamers, but I'd have to describe them to the Digimon first, just to be sure."

"Only the Separatists would think to use children against us," Aayla muttered.

"Yeah, stupid tinnies," Bly nodded. "We'd never stoop that low, even if it would work against them."

"This makes things a little more complicated," said Obi-Wan. "But if we get the strategy right, Aayla, we can still free your people."

"And you must do it soon," said Mace. "The droids will no doubt have something else in mind besides a last defence. Especially being led by a tactical dr..."

There was the sound of tearing metal. All five of the Jedi and clones looked up, to see Renamon on the roof. She had a Separatist Recon Droid in her paws, or at least, two halves of one.

"We had a little spy," she said, tossing the wreckage down to land by Bly's feet. "But we don't anymore."

"Nice spot," said Aayla. "Renamon, Cody has some news for you Digimon."

Renamon's fur definitely stiffened. She didn't need to say anything. Terriermon and Lopmon suddenly appeared on either side of her. All three stared expectantly at the clone.

Cody hesitated, unsure how to break the news to them. Then he said, "We found some human prisoners along with all the Twi'leks being held hostage. One was a male, semi-dark skin, his hair was a sort of dark... well... blue actually."

"That sounds like Henry," confirmed Terriermon, beaming.

"And a girl, about the same age, light skin and bright orange hair, all spiked up at the back."

"Definitely sounds like Rika," Renamon also beamed.

Cody hesitated again, then said, "But... there was no sign of a third child."

The silence was deafening. Lopmon, actually lost her footing and sat down, hard. Where was her Tamer? What had happened to her? She would know if something had happened to her, wouldn't she? Or was she just deluding herself?

Renamon knelt down and laid a paw which covered most of Lopmon's torso, on her back. "Don't worry, Lopmon. Suzie could have escaped. I'm sure she's alive somewhere."

"Yeah," said Terriermon. "And we're not going to give up until we find out the answer to that question. Momentai. And I genuinely mean that."

Lopmon wiped her eyes and nodded.

"Perhaps Henry and Rika know something, Lopmon," Aayla called up to her. "They should be able to tell us what happened to her."

"Thank you," said Lopmon. "All of you." Then she stood up and stared out across the city. "Oh Suzie," she whispered. "Where are you?"

* * *

Suzie and Numa had not moved from their position behind the barrel since their narrow escape. They were still recovering from the shock and the fear. But now, they had finally emerged and were sneaking from alleyway to alleyway, entering houses and desperately searching for food. But there wasn't any. The robots appeared to have cleared it all away for some reason. But there must be something, somewhere.

"Don't worry," Suzie said, very worried herself. "Maybe in the next one, yeah?"

Numa's stomach growled. She clutched it and said, "Goh ju gohs locu suster neali, jus morf. Ju ken re."

"Let's try in this house," Suzie pointed to the next one and beckoned to Numa to follow. But as they made their way towards it, they both heard a noise. They froze. It was very quiet, but it was the sound of feet, and it was coming from around the corner.

"Ool locan pon!" Numa hissed. "Shenab! Bonfoo!"

"Wait!" Suzie reached out, but it was too late. Numa had bolted down the street and was running at speed in the direction away from the sound of feet. Numa had been gripped in a blind panic. She didn't want to be caught be the robots. They'd killed their parents.

It was therefore with shock and dismay that she rounded the corner and almost ran slap-bang into two of the robots. She pulled to a halt so fast she fell over.

"Hey, you!" the droid pointed. The two advanced towards the little Twi'lek, who stood up and stared in absolute terror. "Stop right there!"

Numa tripped backwards in horror as the droid levelled its blaster at her. "Looks like one of them escaped," said the droid. "Should we take it prisoner?"

"Those were our orders," shrugged the other.

"Numa!" Suzie rounded the corner in pursuit of her friend, and then she too, fell over in her attempt to stop at the sight of the droid.

"Another human," it said. "Where are they all popping up from?"

"Don't kill us, please," wailed Suzie. "We don't want any trouble."

"Just come with us, you pathetic human," the droid shoved its blaster into her face. "And we won't shoot you."

"Watch who you're calling pathetic, ye scrap-pile!" came a voice from behind Suzie and Numa. The droids looked up. There were shots, and blue lasers suddenly knocked both of their heads clean off, and they collapsed. Numa screamed and stood up, as did Suzie. They turned.

Standing there, with guns in their hands, were two figures clad entirely in white armour, flecked with yellow.

"Raffo non suul?" Numa asked timidly.

"Whatever she said, I agree," Suzie nodded, backing away from the imposing figures before her.

"More to the point, who exactly are you?" one of them asked.

"And what are we going to do with you?" asked the other.

Suzie cringed. Numa hid behind her.

* * *

Is it me, or are my chapters getting longer each time? There's just so much to say. Review please, it would be greatly appreciated. And I know it's not much of a cliff-hanger because it should be pretty obvious who the two figures are, but nevertheless...

* * *

Twi'leki

Topee hural instanb – We're safe now

Schoy – No

Suulan trin herfo ji deodo ace nes acer lond, non suu – You're not going to leave me on my own, are you

Goh ju gohs locu suster neali, jus morf. Ju ken re – If I don't find food soon, I'll die. I know it.

Ool locan pon. Shenab! Bonfoo! – They found us! Quick! Hide!

Raffo non suul? – Who are you?

* * *

Next time...

The attempt to liberate Ryloth continues. TX-20 unleashes the Gutkurr. How will they affect the combined forces of the 212th and the 327th? What will happen to Suzie and Numa?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 14 : Tamer and Twi'lek**


	14. Tamer and Twi'lek

Nothing to say, except the Clone Wars yesterday was good. Captain Rex looks weird without his armour one because you've only ever seen him in it before. And I thought the eopies were funny.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 14:- Tamer and Twi'lek**

* * *

"Well, aren't you gonna answer me, kid?" asked the second white-clad figure harshly. Suzie whimpered. This was actually more scary than the robot – they had been stupid, but these two obviously possessed intelligence.

But then the other one glanced across at the second, and said, "Boil, what are you doing? They're just kids. You can't go making demands like that."

"Well, I got questions and I want answers," said the second one, Boil. "You got a problem with that, Waxer?"

"If you're gonna shout at little kids scared out of their minds, then yeah, I do," said Waxer. "We're here to free the planet, not scare the locals."

Boil said nothing for a couple of seconds, then sighed. "Fine, we'll do it your way. We'll leave them alone. Now, come on, we got a job to do."

"That's not what I meant," said Waxer. "We can't leave them here. They could just run into more droids and get killed."

"Well, what do you suggest?" asked Boil. "We can't take 'em with us. They'd slow us up, and they'd probably give us away."

"Um," Suzie piped up. "You're not going to shoot us?"

"What?" Waxer sounded surprised, but his expression was hidden beneath the helmet. "'Course we're not. We're not droids, we're clone troopers. Don't you know that? We don't go shooting innocent kids."

"Clone troopers?" Suzie looked surprised. "Clones?"

"Of course," Waxer knelt down and took off his helmet. Suzie and Numa looked into the kind brown eyes of an adult human. Suzie relaxed a little more. Numa looked puzzled.

"Waxer, we still got a mission to complete," Boil reminded him.

"In a minute," said Waxer, waving the other aside. "Don't worry, kid. You're safe with us. It's the droids you gotta watch out for."

"Those robots?" asked Suzie.

Waxer grinned in a friendly way. "Yeah, them." Then he looked at Numa, who was still cowering behind Suzie. He leaned around Suzie and offered his hand to her. Numa backed away a little, swerving away from his touch, eyes full of fear. But Suzie couldn't blame her for being cautious – her whole world had effectively been taken away from her.

"Are you alright, little one?" asked Waxer. Numa didn't reply. But her stomach did. It gave a loud squelching noise, which clearly said that it wasn't.

"Wow, someone's hungry," said Waxer. "Haven't you had anything to eat today?"

"No," said Suzie. "We can't find any. The robots cleared it all away."

"They do look hungry," said Boil. He fiddled with a pouch on his belt and pulled out a couple of cylindrical white objects. "I got a couple of ration bars, if you like." He passed them to Waxer, who handed them out to the little girls.

"Thank you," cried Suzie, grabbing one and taking a large chunk out of it. It didn't taste of anything much, but it was still food. Numa was a bit more cautious and carefully sniffed the ration bar first. But since Suzie was practically bolting hers down, she took it and began to do the same.

After eating about half of it, Numa said, "Arni, nerra," to Waxer. Then she looked up at Boil, who was still standing and wearing his helmet and said "Arni, nerra," to him as well.

"Does your friend speak Basic?" Waxer asked to Suzie.

"Basic?" asked Suzie. "What's that?"

Boil removed his own helmet and gave Suzie and incredulous look. "You don't know what Basic is? Where've you been living?"

"I've only been here for about a day," said Suzie. "I can't understand a thing that all these people are saying."

Waxer and Boil glanced at each other. Numa, bizarrely, started to smile. She was pointing at Waxer, Boil and Suzie in turn, and saying, "Nerra. Nerra. Numa."

"No," said Suzie. "Your name is Numa. My name is Suzie."

"Numa," insisted Numa, pointing at Suzie again, and then at Waxer and Boil once more and saying. "Nerra. Nerra."

"Did you say Suzie?" asked Boil carefully.

Suzie bit her lip and said, "My mum said to never tell strangers my name to strangers unless my brother says it's okay."

"Brother?" Waxer and Boil glanced at each other again. Then Waxer continued and said, "Well, I'm Waxer, and this is my fellow trooper, Boil."

"Nerra," said Numa again, shaking her head.

"Well, at least she likes you," snorted Boil. "Whatever "nerra" means."

"You say her name is Numa?" asked Waxer, still addressing Suzie. "And your name is Suzie. That wouldn't be Suzie Wong by any chance, would it?"

Suzie looked up in shock and surprise. "How did you know that?"

Waxer grinned. Even Boil smirked. Then Waxer said, "You wouldn't happen to know a small brown and pink rabbit-like creature that goes by the name of Lopmon, would you?"

"Lopmon!" cried Suzie. "You know Lopmon?"

"Of course," said Boil. "She's a good friend of ours. We met her yesterday, along with her brother Terriermon and his mate Renamon."

"Terriermon and Renamon too!" Suzie's face split into the beam of the century. "Are they here? Are they nearby?"

"They're only a few minutes in that direction," Boil pointed over his shoulder. "They stayed back at camp with the rest of the troops while we scouted ahead."

"Then come on," Suzie cried. "I gotta go find her."

She began to run past the clones, but Waxer grabbed her arm and stopped her. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, kid. Settle down. I know you're excited, but you can't lose your head. You could run into another droid and get killed before you get there."

"But..."

"Lopmon would never forgive us if we didn't keep you safe, kid," said Boil. "And she'd never forgive herself for not being there to protect you."

"Come on," Waxer stood up, letting go of Suzie. The little girl didn't try to run again, but looked anxiously down the path that the clones had come from. "We'll take you to her. We got to do it nice and slow. We'll protect you."

"Then let's go," said Suzie, eagerly.

"What about your friend?" Boil looked to Numa, who was just finishing her ration bar. "She gonna come with us?"

"Yeah," said Suzie. "Come on, Numa."

Numa looked up at the clones. Then, to the surprise of everyone present, she hugged Waxer's leg. Waxer blinked, then grinned and patted Numa's lekku. Numa released her grip and looked up at him, then she ran over to Boil and did the same thing. Boil looked very uncomfortable with this, and he tentatively followed Waxer's example.

"You need some practice around kids, Boil," laughed Waxer.

"Yeah, whatever," Boil muttered, as Numa released his leg and turned to trot over to Suzie. "Come on, let's just get 'em back to base."

"I can't wait to see the look on Lopmon's face," said Waxer. "Come on, kids. Stay between us."

"I'll take point," said Boil. "You cover the rear."

"Right. Follow Boil, you guys."

Both the clones put their helmets back on and took up their blasters. Boil signalled for them to follow with a wave of his hand. Suzie and Numa got behind him and Waxer walked backwards with his blaster pointing down the street, occasionally checking over his shoulder to make sure he was wasn't going to walk into something.

"So, what's your story, Suzie?" asked Waxer.

"All I know is I was sent to this place by a big, mean Digimon and that my friend Lopmon and the others weren't with us anymore, and then my big brother and Rika were captured by the robots and now I'm here."

"What about your friend, Numa?" asked Boil. "Did her family get caught?"

"No," Suzie blinked rapidly as fresh tears attempted to spill out of her eyes. "We saw Numa's mum and dad. They'd been killed by the robots."

"Droid scum!" muttered Boil.

"Boil, what do you reckon will happen to Numa after we've gone?" asked Waxer. "If she hasn't got any parents anymore, I mean."

"How should I know?" Boil said, then stopped. "Wait a minute, I see where you're going with this. We can't take her with us, Waxer."

"Why not?" asked Waxer. "We'll be taking Suzie with us, 'cause Lopmon sure as heck won't leave without her."

"Yeah," said Suzie. "Can Numa come with us please? That'd be so cool. It'd be like having a sister my age."

"Well, even if we could," Boil sighed. "It's not our decision to make. It's the Generals'."

"Then I'll take it up with them," said Waxer.

"I won't get you anywhere," Boil shook his head. "But, of course, that's not gonna stop you, is it?"

"Nah."

Suzie giggled. Numa looked bemused, and a little left out. She couldn't understand a thing that was going on, after all.

But then, Numa stopped, which meant that Waxer almost collided with her. "Whoa, what's wrong?" the clone asked, looking down at his little charge. "You alright, kid?"

Numa was staring at a small house that she had stopped beside. Like a Twi'lek possessed, she began to move towards it in silence, staring at it with a forlorn look of sadness and loss. Suzie recognized the building and said, "That's her house. She let us stay the night before the robots came in. Her parents were killed here."

"Aw, the poor thing," said Waxer, following Numa into the house. Boil sighed exasperatedly and followed. Suzie glanced in the direction that they had said Lopmon was in, but followed them in all the same. She didn't particularly want to get killed.

Numa was staring around at all corners of the tiny building. Everything about her life had been here, and now all of that had been torn to shreds as well. From barely anything, to nothing at all. It was almost too much. Suzie could see that poor Numa was struggling not to break into tears again. Therefore, just like before, she went over and hugged her Twi'lek friend.

Even hard-boiled Boil found it difficult to remain immune to this little display of comfort and despair. He removed his helmet again and walked over to the two. Waxer made to follow, but he stood on something that squeaked. He looked down and picked Numa's Tooka Doll off the ground. The two clones knelt either side of the two little girls. At the sight of the Doll, Numa burst into fresh tears, took it and pulled into a hug, before pressing herself into Waxer's arms. Waxer may have been better than Boil at this, but he was still no expert. But he did his best.

"Listen, kid," Boil said gently, reaching out and putting his hand on Numa's little shoulder, "we're not gonna let anything bad happen to you. And that's a pledge." Numa responded by hugging Boil as well and whispering, "Arni, Nerra."

Suzie sniffed, and joined in the hugging.

* * *

TX-20 had lost contact with one of his Recon Droids and had absolutely no idea why. One moment it had been recording images of a Twi'lek, a human, two clones and the hologram of another human, before suddenly blurring out of existence. He concluded that it must have been spotted by one of the clones and shot down. The other one was still responding, but it was just patrolling the streets and had found nothing of use.

Oh well, now was as good a time as any to begin. Ensuring that he spoke loud enough so that the whole corral of captured Twi'leks, plus the humans, could hear him, he announced. "Sergeant, it is time to secure our victory. Release the beasts. Let them feast on clone flesh."

"Roger, roger," came the voice of his sergeant droid over the radio. He knew that the cages would now be opening and the Gutkurr would be walking out. His droids would be poking them with electric prods to ensure they moved in the right direction. Towards the Republic troops.

Rika and Henry looked at each other. There was no need to say anything. Neither of them knew what a Gutkurr looked like, but apparently they must be pretty fierce. Both were silently asking whether the Republic troops would be enough to overcome them.

And neither knew the answer.

* * *

Numa dried her eyes with the back of her hand. She may have lost her parents, but she had gained her "nerra" and her "numa". Granted, she would much prefer it if her parents were still alive, but she still had a family of a sort. She'd not lost everything yet.

Suzie was looking at the Tooka Doll and remembering her own dolls back home. They looked nothing like the Tooka, but that didn't matter. Not for the first time, she began to feel a large twinge of homesickness. But at the same time, she couldn't help but feel very selfish in doing so. There was a chance, however small, that she would one day see her parents again. But Numa never could see her own parents again. Not alive anyway.

_But she'll still have me_, she thought. _And Lopmon and Terriermon and Henry and Rika and Renamon. We'll all be there for her._

"Come on," Boil stood up and placed his helmet back on. "We really should get back now. They'll be wondering where we are."

"Will you get into trouble?" asked Suzie.

"I shouldn't think so," said Waxer. "We found you, and that means we can afford to me late. Now come on. Boil's right. Let's get back there. Lopmon will be wanting to see you."

"Her and me both," Suzie said excitedly. "Let's go, Numa. I want to introduce you to my friends."

"Hyfan non top herfo?" asked Numa.

"Ah, so she does have a vocabulary," chuckled Boil. "Pity we still can't understand it."

"Yeah," said Waxer. "But we will. I'm pretty sure General Secura speaks Twi'leki."

"Really?" asked Boil. "I would never have guessed?"

Suzie blinked. "That sounded like something Terriermon would say."

"Was it?" asked Boil. "Is that a good thing?"

"And that sounds like something Lopmon would say."

"Er... right."

"Anyway," Waxer held out his hand to the less-confident Numa. The little Twi'lek girl took two of his fingers in one hand and Waxer led her back outside. They began to head back down the street in this fashion for some time, Boil and Waxer constantly on the alert.

About half-way back to the base camp, Numa suddenly stopped. She was sniffing the air, like a wild animal. "Ju nift duspreair," she said, still sniffing and looking around. Waxer, Boil and Suzie turned to look at her with curiosity.

"What is it?" asked Suzie. "More food?"

Numa didn't answer. Instead, her eyes grew wild with fear and she bolted behind Waxer's legs. "Top ulner ji bonfoo! Gutkurr! Ool solo Gutkurr ony!"

"We don't know what you're saying, Numa," Waxer said. "Can you try it slower?"

"She said Gutkurr," said Suzie. "We ate some Gutkurr yesterday. Maybe she smells food."

"Food's not scary," pointed out Boil. "I think she's talking about them."

Waxer and Suzie looked around to follow Boil's gaze. The street ahead of them was no longer empty. Two massive animals had rounded the corner. They looked like crosses between large reptiles and equally large insects. They stood on two feet, with hard, brown carapaces encrusting their whole body and a large head with red eyes and a gaping maw of teeth. They stood about two metres tall, sharp pincers for hands like those on a praying mantis, similar single-clawed feet, and spikes running down their backs.

They hissed and began to move forward.

"I think that it might be a good idea to hide!" said Boil. "Inside that house! Hurry! Go!" He raised his blaster and let off several shots, as Numa grabbed Suzie by the hand and almost dragged her into the nearest house – Suzie had practically frozen at the sight. The shots caught the nearest Gutkurr upside the face. It shrieked in annoyance and rubbed at its face with its pincer.

Then it charged. The other one followed suit.

"GET OUT OF THERE, BOIL!" Waxer shouted as he stood by the door Suzie and Numa had rushed through. He let off several shots of his own, but the Gutkurr barely seemed to notice it. "Argh, their armour is tough!"

Boil dashed towards the door, firing continuously at the rapidly advancing carnivores. He literally dived through the door, and Waxer, letting off two more shots, backed in behind him. Hurriedly the two clones shut the door.

Outside, the Gutkurr skidded to a halt and then charged again. The first one slammed at full tilt into the heavy stone door. Despite its tough hide the collision left it dazed and it slumped for a moment. The other took over and began to try and push the door in and get at the meat waiting inside.

Waxer and Boil pressed their backs to the doors and braced themselves. The door shifted behind them and the clones struggled to gain a better footing and keep the Gutkurr out.

"This is not good!" shouted Boil. "We're outmatched here!"

"Can we get a message through to the Commander?" Waxer strained to keep the door from being pushed in – the other Gutkurr had started to join in.

"You want to take your arm away from the door?" Boil asked as his feet scrabbled for purchase.

"Go for the eyes!" cried Suzie.

"What?" bellowed Waxer. "What's a kid thinking like that for?"

"Terriermon said that if I get attacked by a big animal to go for the eyes," explained Suzie, cringing as the door was heavily bashed from the other side so hard Waxer almost fell over.

"Fair enough!" Boil shifted his weight and wheeled about. As one of the Gutkurr pushed open the door he let fly with his blaster, then slammed back into the door to shut it again. The bolt hit the Gutkurr dead-on in the eye and it shrieked in pain – an utterly inhuman noise that sounded like nails on a blackboard.

"Runby doon!" shouted Numa. Looking across, they saw that Numa had opened a trapdoor, just like the one that they had gone through when the droids had invaded.

"Does every house have one of these?" asked Suzie, running over.

"Doesn't matter!" Boil cried. "Get down there, you two! Now!"

Numa scrambled over the lip and dropped with a practiced ease, while Suzie clambered down the little ladder.

Waxer and Boil looked at each other and Waxer said, "Alright! You ready?"

"Yep!"

"NOW!" both cried as they rushed across the room. Behind them the door banged open and an enraged Gutkurr shot through it and looked around. Boil dropped down into the hole and Waxer leapt after him, wheeling about and letting off a final shot just as the Gutkurr charged. It smacked into the creature's nose and it faltered before running over and attempting to shove itself down the hole. Except it was far too robust and it only got its head in.

The clones and the girls looked up at the hissing, spitting, insectoid head.

"Yep, he's ugly," said Waxer.

"And I think I ate one of his kind yesterday," Suzie clutched her stomach. "I think I'm gonna be sick."

"Could you do it after we get back to the others?" asked Boil. "I don't have any tissues."

* * *

"Waxer and Boil should have been back by now," said Cody, looking down the street. "But there's no sign of them."

"Well, the two of them aren't exactly the type to be late," said Aayla. "It's possible something could have happened to them."

"They are quite capable," pointed out Obi-Wan. "It would be a challenge for battle droids to take them down. Cody, did you see any commando or destroyer droids earlier?"

"None, sir," Cody shook his head. "Just B-1s, Supers and the tactical."

"Should we go look for them?" asked Lopmon. "We could scope out things from above."

"I don't think we need to look that far to find a potential answer to be honest," said Terriermon, in a voice that dripped in force calm. "If everyone would care to look over there."

He pointed down one of the streets nearby. The clones, the Jedi and the other Digimon all turned to look. They froze at the sight. There was some kind of giant beetle-like creature nosing about near to a house.

"A Gutkurr?" asked Aayla, immediately going on the defensive and pulling her lightsaber from her waist. "That did not get in here on its own. Twi'leks build those massive walls specifically to keep them out."

"Are they dangerous?" asked Renamon.

"Very," confirmed Aayla.

"The Seppies must have brought it in, sir," Bly cocked his blaster. "But we can take it down."

"Careful," warned Aayla. "Gutkurr don't usually travel alone."

"And if my ears aren't deceiving me," said Terriermon, "I can hear a lot more of them just around the corner."

The Gutkurr looked up and sniffed the air, then it turned to face them. Its face looked as if it was permanently angry and it opened its mouth, displaying the viciously hooked teeth that decorated its inside. It took a couple of slow paces towards them, as if calculating them.

"You think it will just leave?" asked Lopmon.

The Gutkurr began to sprint forwards.

"No," answered Terriermon.

"Bring it on, you plated freak!" Renamon shot overhead with a loud battle-cry and rebounded off the wall, catapulting herself with into the Gutkurr's flank. The Gutkurr was knocked askew and it shrieked as it and Renamon went tumbling. Renamon slammed it into the wall and bounced off. The Gutkurr struggled to its feet, shook itself and leapt at its attacker. Renamon ducked as the teeth clashed where her head had been and she bulled into it, wrapping her arms around its neck and muscling forwards. The two strained and pushed, moving backwards and forwards and a show of brute strength.

"Wrestling with a Gutkurr," Aayla remarked. "That's something I've never seen before."

"Shouldn't we help her out, sir?" asked Bly.

"You'd probably just get in the way," said Lopmon, watching as Renamon's foot lashed out and took out on the Gutkurr's legs, causing it to fall crashing to the floor. "Besides, she seems to have the upper-hand."

"And it brought friends!" Terriermon announced, as no less than nine more of the giant creatures suddenly came charging around the corner.

"Ready yourselves!" shouted Obi-Wan, as he and Aayla turned on their lightsabers with a whooshing noise. The clones readied their blasters and began to fire on the approaching horde. The Gutkurr ignored the shots, except for a couple of stumbles and suddenly they were amongst the invading force with the mercilessness of all predators.

Several of the clones were rammed as the Gutkurr bulldozed into them with the force of a truck. Some went flying into walls, others were caught by some of their comrades. One Gutkurr fastened its jaws around the arm of one of the clones and he yowled in pain as it began to drag him, teeth embedded through armour and flesh alike. Many other clones desperately fired on it, but it paid them no attention at all.

"Look out!" Terriermon shouted as one came shooting towards him and Lopmon. The bunnies quickly launched themselves into the air and flapped out of reach. The Gutkurr snapped after them futilely, but was then slammed across the side by one of its one comrades, hurled into it by a furious Renamon.

The two Gutkurr scrambled to their feet but one of them was suddenly smashed across the head by what appeared to be a large cauldron and knocked unconscious. Obi-Wan moved his hand after the flying object and sent it back the other way, to strike the second in the side. It hissed in defiance and charged at the Jedi, but Obi-Wan jumped and flipped straight over it.

Meanwhile, Aayla found herself confronted with another of the creatures. It stopped for a moment, as if sizing her up. Aayla spread her feet apart and took up a stance, ready for the inevitable rush. And it came. The Gutkurr lunged at Aayla, but the Twi'lek nimbly rolled to one side. This caused it to smash headfirst into a stone wall, and Aayla brought her lightsaber into play and carved a line across the creatures back. It slumped, dead. Aayla grimaced, she did not like killing – it was, after all, natural for a predator to feel hungry – but it was threatening the rescue attempt.

Blade and Lash were backing away from two more Gutkurr, hopelessly launching continuous streams of bolts at their heads and torsos, but to no avail. The Gutkurr were creeping slowly forward, savouring the moment, as the two clones called for assistance at the tops of their voices.

But to the great shock of one of them, a bolt came shooting towards it from the side and struck it in the eye. In agony, it shrieked as the one who fired the shot came running out from behind the house he'd been hiding behind and smashed the Gutkurr in the head with the butt of his blaster. The Gutkurr reeled and Commander Bly took the opportunity to use some rope he'd found to lasso its legs. Pulling tight, the Gutkurr was floored and unable to stand.

The second Gutkurr founded itself assaulted from below as Cody rolled it from the side and fired under its chin. It surprise it started backwards. "Over here, Bly!" cried Cody. Bly tossed him the end of the rope and Cody leapt up and tossed it back, on the other side of the creature's legs. Bly grabbed the end of the rope and gave it a yank, pulling the Gutkurr's legs out from underneath it. Then he threw it back to Cody, who wrapped it around its legs and knotted it off.

"That's a little trick I learnt from the Lurmen," said Bly. "Useful for creatures you can't kill by blaster-fire."

A scream from up ahead pierced the air. The clones looked up to see a Gutkurr was dragging a struggling clone backwards by his leg. "Finn!" shouted Bly.

"Come on!" Cody waved and ran forward, with Bly, Lash and Blade in pursuit. They fired wildly on the Gutkurr. It dropped Finn's leg in surprise, but then went in for a fresh attack and lacerated the clone's body, cutting through his armour like paper with its pincer-arms. Finn slumped and life left his body.

Suddenly, Obi-Wan was there and with a swing of his flashing blue blade, he severed one of the pincer arms. The Gutkurr reared in pain and Obi-Wan sliced off the second, before plunging the blade into the Gutkurr's stomach. With a shudder, it went limp and fell.

But there were still six more running around, and clones were falling left, right and centre as they were rammed by the spiked heads of the creatures. A couple of the Gutkurr had stopped to chew on the body of a dead clone but the other four were still charging around like mad creature. This wasn't a normal attack, it was a slaughter. Either the Gutkurr were getting frenzied on their own, or the Separatists had done something to them. Obi-Wan wouldn't put it above to Separatists to do that, considering what the Geonosians liked to do in their coliseums.

"Watch your left, Cody!" shouted Bly. Cody whipped around and leapt hurriedly to one side, but he was not fast enough. A Gutkurr slammed into his side and sent him spinning and falling to the floor. His attacker spun around on one foot and came again, digging its teeth into Cody's arm and attempting to drag the struggling Commander away. Cody kicked out, but it didn't faze the insectoid animal at all. Obi-Wan sprinted to rescue his loyal commander.

"Hold on, Cody!"

But he was beaten to the punch as someone else cried, **"LOP TWISTER!"**

The Gutkurr was struck broadside by a brown, spinning blur and actually was sent rolling, releasing Cody's injured arm. Lopmon pulled to a halt beside Cody and glared in defiance at the Gutkurr. That Gutkurr scrambled to its feet and hissed. It looked as if it was about to charge again, because something heavy, which turned out to be Renamon, landed on its head. It collapsed under the impact and stayed down, out cold.

"Thanks," Cody gasped, grabbing his arm.

"Are you alright?" asked Lopmon.

"Nothing a little bacta can't cure," Cody shrugged it off. "But I'll need to repair that armour."

Another scream from nearby indicated another clone in need of aid. This time it was Ridge, who had had his blaster knocked out of his hand and was on his back, shuffling away as fast as possible as two Gutkurr closed in on him. Just as one was about to bite down on Ridge's head, he was peppered by green energy pellets to the face. Terriermon was standing on the roof of the building Ridge was backing into, unleashing the volley from his mouth. Then he leapt down and span.

"**TERRIER TORNADO!"** he shrieked and launched himself full into the Gutkurr's face. It was smashed backwards and rolled onto its back. Now it was in trouble, as it, like many insects, was not built for that and was seriously struggling to get up. Its legs waved in the air with no effect whatsoever.

The second Gutkurr was still singling out Ridge, but then, it too was diverted from its attack because its floored comrade suddenly shot up from the ground and through the air right at it and collided with it, sending both of them rolling into an alleyway. Aayla, who had been behind this assault, ran forwards, deactivated her lightsaber and thrust both hands into the air. The rock of the canyon wall above them splintered and several huge boulders fell. Aayla hurriedly grabbed them with The Force, bringing them to a halt, then planted them firmly at the mouth of the alleyway, shutting the two Gutkurr in.

There were only three Gutkurr now. The two of them that were feeding on the corpse on a clone suddenly looked up as Renamon shot towards them with a loud roar, paw surrounded by a blue aura. **"POWER PAW!" **she cried and struck one of them in the head with the force of a Juggernaut. Needless to say, the Gutkurr fell under this attack, rolling sideways and on only coming to the stop with the help of a wall. It did not get back up again.

The other one was also promptly assaulted by Digimon, only this time it was to off them. Terriermon and Lopmon stormed forwards together and cried **"TWIN CYCLONE!"** The attack whipped them up into a whirl of motion and belted the Gutkurr in the midriff. It was sent skyward by the force of the blow, catapulted upwards and even spinning a couple of times before coming to rest with a loud thud.

The last Gutkurr found itself surrounded by clones, all raising their blasters and training them on it. This Gutkurr looked around and saw its fellows all either dead or out cold. Now, it may not have possessed great amount of intelligence, but even it could recognise a lost cause when it saw one. It charged towards one of the clones – Conor. Conor filled it with a couple of shots that had no effect, before diving aside at the last second. The Gutkurr ran past him, down the street and out of sight.

Aayla and Obi-Wan surveyed their combined forces. There weren't many clones left. Only fourteen remained, including Bly and Cody, and, of course, there were still the Digimon. They surveyed the bodies of the dead clones, deformed by the claws and teeth. Finn, Trail, Swipe, Jake and many others, all dead.

"We have to move on," said Aayla. "The Separatists may still have something else planned for us."

"Aayla's right," said Obi-Wan. "We can't wait for Waxer and Boil. They may have fallen victim to those creatures. Let's press on."

"Leave the dead, lads," said Bly. "We'll come back and pick them up later."

The Jedi lead the clones forward through the streets, and the Digimon followed.

* * *

Henry and Rika looked up as a battle droid ran up to TX-20. "The creatures have been defeated, sir."

The two humans felt a surge of relief, but then TX-20 said, "It doesn't matter. Their numbers have been severely reduced. They cannot hope to defeat us now. Prepare for their attack. It should come within the hour."

"Roger, roger," said the droid.

Henry and Rika both glanced at each other. "Well, I'm not going to give up hope yet," Henry said. "You wait and see, we'll be eating happily with all these Twi'leks and with Suzie by the end of the day."

"Henry," sighed Rika. "I know you're only saying that to make me feel better. You don't need to pretend."

Henry looked at the floor. "It's partly that and partly self-assurance too. Any more signs of Renamon?"

"No," Rika shook her head. "It was just that one brief moment."

"Then we'll have to assume she's either hiding from you for a reason, or it was a false alarm," Henry sighed.

"Well, I hope the Republic get here soon," said Rika. "And that they have the firepower to stand up to those tank things."

* * *

Waxer, after several failed attempts, managed to lever the slab covering the entrance to the tunnel up. They had been roaming around the tunnel system for some time, led by Numa, who seemed to know her way around them pretty well. After all, she lived here. But, after a time, Boil had called a halt and suggested that they take a look at what was going on up above. So Waxer had climbed a ladder and pushed aside the stone. He poked his head over the top.

He found himself staring directly into the open jaws of a Gutkurr. He started backwards in shock and surprise, but the Gutkurr made no attempt to grab him. It didn't even move at all.

It was then that Waxer noticed that there was a long, burnt groove running down the centre of its back. Obviously this particular Gutkurr had tried to pick on something it couldn't handle. Something with a lightsaber.

Looking around, Waxer saw numerous others dotted around the place. Some were dead, others were still breathing but were making no moves, so they must have been unconscious. Waxer climbed out of the tunnel and said, "All clear. Ish."

Boil also clambered up and whistled in admiration at the scene that confronted his eyes. Suzie and Numa also climbed out. Suzie stared at the long cut carved in the Gutkurr's back. She pointed at it and said, "What did that?"

"One of our Jedi leaders," said Boil. "Not sure which, but they're not people you want to tangle with lightly. But obviously this thing underestimated them."

"Look at all our brothers," Waxer sighed and knelt down beside the body of a clone. "So many of them are just – gone."

"They died in the line of duty," said Boil, "and you can't say fairer than that. But these creatures are not all dead, Waxer. We should leave before they start to wake up."

"Yeah, you're right," Waxer stood up. "But which way did the others go?"

"I'm going to assume that they went that-away," Boil pointed down the road they had not been down on their scouting mission, and that Cody and Wooley had been down. "They must be on their way to the main clanker outpost."

"Then let's get moving," said Waxer. "Come on Suzie, Numa. You'll be reunited with your friends soon. Let's hurry so we can catch up."

"Okay," Suzie grinned. "Let's go Numa."

"Jus koomeynee," Numa chirped as the two little girls began to follow Waxer and Boil. The two clones had started at a brisk jog, in order to catch up with the others, who would probably be walking slowly and carefully.

* * *

"So, Aayla," Renamon said, as they moved along. "What's your plan that you mentioned earlier? Do you reckon it will work?"

"I'd like to scope out the area myself before I can be completely sure of that," said Aayla. "But I believe it could work. You see, every Twi'lek city had a series of tunnels running underneath it."

"What for?" asked Lopmon.

"For shelter. The sandstorms on this planet can get very nasty. But, as I was saying, there's at least one entrance to the tunnel system in every household and building to provide the Twi'lek inhabitants with easy access. We could use these tunnels to get past the droid forces and free the prisoners, while the rest of us distract the droids."

"Interesting idea," Obi-Wan said. "Can we do it?"

"It might be possible," said Aayla. "But every village has a unique tunnel system. It might be easy for someone who didn't know their way around to get lost. I can't help with that one – I've never needed to use the tunnels in this city."

"But it could work," said Bly. "It'd help us in the long run, what with the numbers we have left. It'd allow us to pull out the heavy artillery if we get the prisoners out of the way."

"Yeah, let's blow 'em up!"

"Terriermon."

"Momentai. But seriously, it'd make things a hell of a lot easier for us. Someone could get Henry and Rika to give us a little boost, if you know what I mean."

"Then, we'll give the place a second scope," said Cody. "If there's any way to do this then I'm sure we can pull it o..."

"LOPMON!"

Everyone froze at the sound of the high-pitched child-like voice that shouted from right behind them. Lopmon swung about and stared. There, having just rounded the corner, was Waxer and Boil. At their feet was a little Twi'lek girl, but there was another little girl then had suddenly run out in front of them and was sprinting as fast as a nine-year-old girl can towards her.

"SUZIE!" cried Lopmon in absolute delight and launched herself forwards and into the air. Her cry was echoed by Terriermon and Renamon behind her and the two of them also began to run forward.

Lopmon and Suzie collided and embraced one another. Hard. In fact, Suzie wsa starting to give one of her bonecrushers that had recently got out of the habit of doing. But Lopmon didn't care, and she gave one of her own. There were no words to describe the sheer happiness and relief of the moment. Tamer and Digimon had been reunited.

Then Terriermon was there and also enveloped both in a hug. Renamon stood beside the little huddle and smiled down with relief at the little girl. Aayla, Obi-Wan and the clones approached curiously, just as Waxer, Boil and the mysterious Twi'lek girl did the same on the other side.

"I see what kept you guys busy," remarked Cody. "And to think, I was considering setting you to polish the gunships for a week."

"Much appreciated, sir," said Waxer.

"What happened, you two?" Renamon asked. "Where did you find her?"

"She and this little girl here, Numa, they were out roaming the street and looking for food. Suzie said that they managed to escape the droids by heading down into the tunnel system that runs below the city."

"Then we got attacked by a couple of giant creatures and escaped in the same way."

Lopmon, Suzie and Terriermon all released each other and were all very much out of breath. "Oh, I'm so happy to see you," said Suzie.

"Me too," sniffed Lopmon, beaming. "I was so worried about you."

"I was so scared," Suzie shuddered. "Those robots came in and took Henry and Rika. We've got to help them."

"We were on our way to do that anyway," grinned Terriermon. "It's good to see you're okay, Suzie."

"Good to see you too, Terriermon," Suzie smiled, then looked up and said, "And you too, Renamon."

"Don't worry, Suzie," Renamon knelt down and patted Suzie's back. "You'll be back with your brother soon. We'll take care of everything."

"You know where they are?"

"Yes, they're being held prisoner by the droids a few minutes' walk in that direction," Renamon jerked a thumb in the direction they'd been walking. Then she stood up and said, "Everyone, this is Suzie Wong, Lopmon's Tamer. Suzie, there are some people I want you to meet."

Suzie looked in awe at two adults that came and knelt beside her, Terriermon and Lopmon. She couldn't have told you why she was in awe at the time, but she just was. One of them was a man with a beard and the other was a blue Twi'lek woman. It was the woman that spoke first. "Hello, little one. My name is Aayla Secura."

"I'm Suzie," said Suzie, despite the fact she'd already been introduced.

"And I'm Obi-Wan Kenobi," said the man.

"I'm Suzie."

Renamon indicated two more of the nearest clones, "And these are Commanders Bly and Cody."

"You alright, kid?" nodded Bly.

"I'm Suzie."

"They already know that, Suzie," smirked Terriermon.

"Oh, alright. Sorry."

"Aayla here was the one that found us," said Renamon. "She's been looking after us ever since we arrived in this world."

"You're a Twi'lek," noted Suzie. Aayla chuckled.

"That I am."

"But you can speak my language," Suzie gasped. "How come? I can never understand a think that Numa says at all, and she's the one that's been looking after me since I got here."

"I didn't know how to speak Basic once," said Aayla. "But I learnt." Then she turned to Numa and said, "Non suul wernofe, sugi ei?"

"Ka," nodded Numa, eager to talk to someone she could understand. "Oi ser volonsi, ger jus yoshon."

"What are they saying?" asked Suzie.

"Ssh," advised Lopmon. "Let them speak."

"Hyfan non suulan querpol?"

Numa instantly sagged and began to tear up again. "Norkr," she sniffed, threatening to break down yet again. Aayla looked saddened back and pulled Numa towards her. Aayla began to calmly stroke Numa's left lekku in a soothing way. Instantly, Numa seemed to be feeling a lot better.

"We could have done with knowing that trick ourselves," muttered Boil.

Obi-Wan came and also knelt by Numa. Then, to the surprise of Suzie, he also began to address Numa in Twi'leki. "Suulan querpol burfon lik gracew, ger don non merp Twi'leks ji lik sodig."

"So's coster," nodded Aayla. "Top reat suulan sortol. Gif suu bofas pon ipbac cu deegon? Top gif lipp munda cu cynders hed beran oom."

Numa looked up with a joyous expression and said, "Suu treq re?"

"Ka," Obi-Wan and Aayla said together.

"Ber ka. Jus yers re." Numa's expression had hardened and become determined.

"What did you say to her, General?" asked Bly.

"We asked her if she can lead us through the tunnels so we can free the prisoners," said Obi-Wan. "And she's agreed."

"Drews zuty, Numa," Aayla smiled.

"Arni, numa," said Numa.

"No, you're Numa," said Suzie. "She keeps doing that. She's calls me Numa, even though I'm Suzie."

"And she kept calling us nerra," said Boil.

"Then you've made an impression on her, you two," chuckled Aayla. "Nerra is the Twi'lek word for brother."

Waxer and Boil looked taken aback and glanced at each other.

"And numa, despite the fact it is also a name, is the Twi'lek word for sister," Aayla went on.

"Yay!" cheered Suzie. "I have a sister again."

"You might want to keep it down, Suzie," Lopmon suggested. "We don't want the droids to hear us."

"You mean the robots, right. They're the droids."

"Yeah," said Terriermon. "They might be stupid, but they're still dangerous."

"Are we on a mission?" Suzie asked excitedly. "Like a spy mission?"

Renamon chuckled. "Well, we are certainly on a mission to free the people of this place, Nabat. But it's not s spy mission. Suzie, I'm sorry to say it, but Parallelmon deposited us in the middle of a war."

"War?" Suzie suddenly looked fearful again.

"I'm afraid so, Suzie," said Lopmon. "And not any war like we had at home. This war covers and entire galaxy."

"Like space?"

"Space is right," said Terriermon. "And we've signed up, Suzie. That's why we're here in the first place. We've decided to help the Republic against the evil rule of the Separatists. But that's not the worst part."

"What is?" Suzie looked at Terriermon with big eyes.

"They haven't heard of ice cream here," said Terriermon.

Suzie blinked, then giggled.

"No seriously," said Terriermon. "They haven't."

"Listen, Suzie," said Lopmon. "We've fought in many battles together, haven't we?"

"Yeah," nodded Suzie.

"And we've always faced the enemy, not matter how dangerous."

"Yeah."

"And we've persevered even when the situation seemed completely hopeless."

"Yeah."

"And that's what we're going to do now," Lopmon scowled with determination. "We're going to help the Galactic Republic and the Jedi win back the galaxy. Are you with us, because we could use your help?"

Suzie mirrored Lopmon's expression and cried, "Yeah. I'll do it."

"Great," grinned Terriermon.

"But I do have one question," said Suzie. "What's a Jedi? And what's a Republic? And a Separatist?"

"That's not one question," smiled Renamon. "That's three." It was good to have Suzie back.

* * *

And there you have it. One Tamer down and two to go. Thank you for reviewing everybody.

Twi'leki

Arni, nerra – Thank you, brother

Nerra. Nerra. Numa – Brother. Brother. Sister.

Hyfan non top herfo? – Where are we going?

Ju nift duspreair – I smell something

Top ulner ji bonfoo! Gutkurr! Ool solo Gutkurr ony – We have to hide. Gutkuur! They let Gutkurr out.

Runby doon – Down here

Jus koomeynee – I'm coming

Non suul wernofe, sugi ei? – Are you alright, little one?

Ka. Oi ser volonsi, ger jus yoshon – Yes. A little scared, but I'm okay.

Hyfan non suulan querpol? – Where are your parents?

Norkr – Dead

Suulan querpol burfon lik gracew, ger don non merp Twi'leks ji lik sodig – Your parents will be honoured, but there are more Twi'leks to be saved.

So's coster – He's right.

Top reat suulan sortol. Gif suu bofas pon ipbac cu deegon? Top gif lipp munda cu cynders hed beran oom – We need your help. Can you lead us through the tunnels? We can sneak past the droids and free them.

Suu treq re? – You mean it?

Ber ka. Jus yers re – Then yes. I'll do it

Drews zuty, Numa – Well done, Numa

* * *

Next time...

The attempt to liberate Ryloth continues. An assault is made upon the stronghold of TX-20. Will the Jedi and Digimon succeed? Will Henry and Rika be rescued?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 15 : Up One Level**


	15. Up One Level

Well, this was a quick update, wasn't it? Hope you're all suitably please by it. But anyway, here are some messages to all my regular reviewers, in order of who reviewed the last chapter first to last.

**Tamara Caitlyn** – I think she might be a bit of overkill to be honest, and I'll explain why in it.

**Bookworm Gal** – Thanks for the review. Wonderful, huh? Cheers.

**Starowner **– You demanded. I delivered.

**Justmerg **– No I don't but if you like you can be from the next chapter on. I tend to correct mistakes in chapters when I have to delete them from the Document Manager to make room for a new one.

**Movie-Brat** – Yes, SHE is. Lopmon is a girl. lol

**Geekgirl** – Thanks your review, but I'm afraid I don't sense that just yet. But the time will come.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 15:- Up One Level**

* * *

The droid camp was getting itself organised, which in itself was a long and painstaking process. The droids had no imagination whatsoever and had to be instructed on where they were supposed to stand. They were more used to advancing instead of defending.

But TX-20 was not downhearted by this. He didn't know how many clones were left, or if the Jedi had survived the Gutkurr assault, but he remained confident that he would be the victor of the day easily. After all, he was a tactical droid, with far superior processing power to any organic creature. He allowed himself a small, disjointed laugh, then he turned to survey the prisoners once more. They sat where they were, several being comforted by other members. Most of them appeared to have lost all hope.

Good. For there wasn't any. He'd succeeded in crushing their spirits.

He saw the human female was glaring angrily at him. This one had a fiery spirit that matched her hair. She wasn't going to be broken so easily. But she would, once she saw the clones perish under the firepower of his troops and the two AAT tanks. And if all else failed, there were still five large proton cannons that could still be put to excellent use.

The human male appeared to be sagging a little, presumably because of his back injury. Ha. Organic creatures were so pathetic. Many droids could function without limbs and they felt no pain. Not like this stupid flesh creatures that could be broken so easily.

Rika glowered angrily at TX-20. She was thinking about how nice it would fell to just run up there and kick him. Of course, that would be suicide as the other droids would probably finish her off before she got the opportunity to do anything more than that, and even if they didn't it would just hurt her foot.

Henry hadn't said anything for some time. His back was beginning to take a heavy toll on him and he was feeling a little weak and bleary. Rika wished there was something she could do for him but even if she did know first aid there was nothing to use, except her shirt and she'd already torn of enough of that, thank you very much.

Rika concentrated her mind and searched for Renamon again. But there was absolutely nothing there. It was as if Renamon had never been beside her still. Her heart panged at the thought. Then, determined to think of something else, her thoughts turned to the Republic. She had yet to see what they looked like beyond the strange aircraft, or find out what a Jedi was. She and Henry were putting all their faith in them now. Both, though they said nothing about it, were sure that they wouldn't last many more days under this brutal treatment.

And unbeknownst to either of the two humans, a pair of piercing blue eyes, along with two pairs of black ones and several more, were looking intensely at them from over the top of a rocky rise.

* * *

"That's definitely them," said Renamon, lying on her stomach and pressing herself into the rock.

"Can't they sense you?" whispered Suzie, who was also there. "They're not looking this way."

"We're shielding our presences from them, Suzie," replied Terriermon. "Much as I'd like Henry to know that I was here, he might do something stupid that could compromise the mission or draw attention to himself. Its better we get the assault underway before we do that."

"Alright," Obi-Wan rose a little to look around the area. "I count two AAT tanks and five proton cannons. We need to take those out so that Master Windu and the cruisers can land."

"But we also need to get the prisoners to safety. Numa," Aayla turned to the little Twi'lek girl, helping her up to get a better view of the area, where the prisoners were being kept in a small crater and the droid forces surrounded them. She pointed at a large building behind the encampment. "Gif suul bofas Obi-Wan hed suulan nerras ipbac cu deegon foji koil stocpurf?"

"Schoy twinlo," Numa grinned confidently.

"This is really confusing," said Suzie. "And I find my language lessons hard."

"It takes patience," said Terriermon, "which is something that you don't have."

"Alright," said Obi-Wan. "Let's get back down and tell the clones what we're going to do." Obi-Wan flipped onto his back and slid off the rock. Aayla did the same, with Numa in her arms and Renamon followed suit, carrying Suzie. Terriermon and Lopmon just hopped off and floated down with their ears.

"What's the status, sir?" asked Cody, one of his arms injured but carefully ignoring the pain. "How are we going to go about doing this?"

"The important thing to remember is we need to get the Twi'leks and the human children out of the way. We can do that if we go as follows," Obi-Wan began to point at each person as he issued out his instructions. "Cody, Bly, you will lead an assault on the main force. This will provide us with the distraction we need. Meanwhile, Numa here will lead myself, Waxer and Boil into the large building behind the camp. While you engage the enemy on the front lines, we will free the prisoners as their attention is distracted."

"Okay," said Bly. "But what about the Digimon, and General Secura?"

"I was going to let General Secura herself explain that one," Obi-wan smiled. "Aayla, if you will."

"We have an advantage in the Digimon," said Aayla, "and we need to use them to full effect. Lopmon, do you feel up to doing this digivolution that you have told me of?"

"No problem," grinned Suzie. "We'll just go Cherubimon and go beat those droids up."

"Suzie," Lopmon looked alarmed. "We can't do that."

Suzie blinked. "Why not?"

"Think about it," said Lopmon, patiently and calmly. "When we fight as Cherubimon, we are always facing some form of giant monster that wants to blow up everything in sight, right?"

"Yeah."

"But we've never fought anything like these droids before, and with prisoners in such close proximity. If we went Cherubimon, then even the smallest Lightning Spear would blow the whole place apart, and don't get me started on the Storm of Judgement. That would kill all the droids, yes. But it would also kill all of the Twi'leks being held prisoner _and_ Henry and Rika as well."

"Yeah, I'd rather you didn't do that," Terriermon remarked.

"Oh, okay," said Suzie.

"So, that means I'll be going Antylamon, right?" nodded Lopmon.

"Actually," said Renamon. "I think even that might be pushing it a little. The prisoners will only be a few metres away from the droids after all. It'd be difficult enough not to hit them if it were just the clones."

"Then what do you suggest?" asked Lopmon.

"I think the Champion level might be a safer bet."

"Champion?" asked Lopmon, blinking. "But... I've never been to the Champion level before. When I went into the service of Zhuqiaomon he gave me the ability to bypass that level and go straight into being Antylamon. I've no idea what my Champion form can do."

"How hard can it be?" shrugged Terriermon. "If you've gone Mega, it should be easy to get into the Champion stage. That's only up one level."

Lopmon considered for a moment, then said, "Alright. We'll do it. I admit I've often wondered what I look like in that form. I guess it's time to find out."

"And the outcome of that conversation is, yes," Renamon looked back to Aayla, who had been watching this conversation with interest, and not a complete comprehension. "She's ready."

"And you and Terriermon can also be able to digivolve if your partners are ready, right?" Aayla continued.

"Correct."

"Then here's what we do," said Aayla. "It might be risky, but it'll be worth it. Before you begin your assault, Bly and Cody, I will slip into the camp. After all, I am a Twi'lek, I'd blend in pretty well with them. Then, I'll go and talk to Henry and Rika, let them know the plan and make sure they're ready. Then, you will lead the assault, and Lopmon will be fighting alongside you. Hopefully then, I can get Henry and Rika to give the other two a boost and they can digivolve and help you out."

"Sounds dangerous, sir," mused Bly.

"I agree," said Aayla, "but it'll make things easier."

"Then, after we've freed the prisoners," said Obi-Wan, "Aayla, Waxer, Boil and I will take out the proton cannons and then if there are any droids left, we'll come and assist you."

"I shouldn't think that'd be necessary," laughed Terriermon.

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

"Alright then," said Aayla. "Suzie, Lopmon, will you do the honours?"

"We'd better get back a little first," said Lopmon.

"Why?" asked Bly, curiously.

"Digivolution causes a bit of a light-show," said Lopmon. "The droids would see it if we stayed here. Let's go back a minute or so."

"Alright," nodded Aayla, and they began to jog away from the Separatist camp. They were back among the streets when they called a halt. The clones and the Jedi, and even the other Digimon, turned to look expectantly at Suzie and Lopmon.

"I've been waiting to see this for some time," said Bly. "It sounds amazing."

"It is," said Renamon.

"Well, Suzie," said Lopmon, turning to look at her Tamer. "One ordinary Digivolution card, please."

"Here goes nothing," said Suzie. "She unclipped the digivice and the packet of cards that she always wore from her belt. Then, she selected one of the cards, took and deep, shuddering breath, and swiped it through the appropriate slit.

"Digi-modify!" she cried. "Digivolution activate!"

Immediately the brown bunny burst into light, causing many of the clones and both Jedi to shield their eyes from the sudden glare. Renamon, Suzie and Terriermon, who were used to this, looked on as the shape of light that was Lopmon began to grow.

"**LOPMON DIGIVOLVE TO..."**

Wreathed in light, the figure grew until it was slightly taller than everyone else there. The light faded and in the place where Lopmon had once been stood a rabbit. A much taller rabbit, that also stood on two legs. It still had three horns on its head, but its fur had turned purple and its ears were still long, though they no longer trailed across the ground, and they were now tipped with white. She was wearing a yellow vest and trousers and a black belt and had a blue bandana tied around her neck. Her hands were encased in red gloves, and she had what appeared to be large plimsolls covering her feet. Attached to the each of the gloves were two huge, curved blades that pointed backwards towards her body. She yelled her new name to the sky.

"**TURUIEMON!"**

The clones were stunned. Even the Jedi could find nothing to say. Lopmon had changed into a completely different creature in the space of a few seconds. So far as they knew, no other animal had the ability to do that.

"Nice," Terriermon observed, looking at his sister's new form with appreciation.

"Very neat," agreed Renamon.

Suzie held up her D-Arc and a holographic image of the new Digimon sprung up on it. "Turuiemon," she read aloud. "Warrior Digimon. Champion Level. Attacks are Gauntlet Claw and Lightning Kung-Fu." She grinned up at her partner and said, "I bet you can put my dad and Henry to shame at martial arts."

Turuiemon flexed her muscles for the first time in this form. She looked at the hooked claw-like blades on her gloves and squeezed her fists. With a swooshing noise they suddenly jerked around so they were pointing outwards. They were on a hinge of some kind. "Cool," she said, if a voice somewhere between that of Lopmon's and Antylamon's. The switchblades jerked backwards and forwards a few times.

"Extraordinary," Aayla approached Turuiemon. "Are you sure you're still Lopmon?"

"I go by another name in this form," said Turuiemon. "But, essentially, I'm still the same being."

"I can safely say I never thought I'd ever see something like that," said Obi-Wan, as Numa peered curiously out from behind his legs.

"Seconded," said Cody.

Turuiemon twirled a couple of times and practiced a couple of slashes with the switchblades. She was very fast and agile, with reflexes that trumped even Renamon's. She backflipped and landed on one of the switch-blades, buried point-first in the ground. She just stood, upside down, perfectly balanced on the tip of the blade for a few seconds, before leaping down.

"Now, that's showing off," reprimanded Terriermon.

"Well," Turuiemon released the blades back into their original position. "Shall we go and rescue everybody?"

"Good plan," said Obi-Wan. "Let's get into position. Suzie, you come with me and Numa. You'll be safer with us."

Aayla, the Digimon and most of the clones ran past to get into their designated places, but Numa, Waxer, Boil and Suzie remained behind. "Careful L- I mean Turuiemon!" called Suzie.

"I always am," Turuiemon called back, before disappearing around the corner.

"Numa," Obi-Wan addressed the little girl. "Re se clomd."

Numa nodded and walked over to the nearest tunnel entrance in the street. Obi-Wan gently removed it with the Force. "Koomey," Numa beckoned, before clambering down into the hole. Determined to succeed, the others followed.

* * *

Aayla lay on her stomach on one of the cliff walls that overlooked the encampment. She could plainly see everything from up here – the prisoners, the droids, and the clones getting into position alongside Turuiemon. She still hadn't been sure whether to believe what the Digimon had said about their ability to change, but there were no doubts now. That had been one of the most extraordinary things she had ever seen.

Now all she had to do was wait to make her next move. She looked across at the large building. Numa would probably be leading Obi-Wan, Waxer, Boil and Suzie through the tunnels right now and they'd emerge from them in that building.

She could see the tactical droid down there. He was now manning one of the AAT tanks from the cockpit. It wasn't unusual for tactical droids to take places on the front-line, but often they directed the assault instead of doing any of the fighting. This one must be very confident in his abilities to be doing any actual shooting.

Aayla turned to look at the two humans. The girl, Rika, was glaring daggers at the back of the tactical droid's head. The boy, Henry, seemed bowed. Had he given up hope, or had he been injured? Aayla suspected the second, because from the stories the Digimon had told her, the Tamers did not give up easily. They had kept going even when the odds were completely and utterly against them.

Then, Aayla saw Obi-Wan peer around the large stone doorframe of the building behind the droids. His eyes found her own, and he waved briefly, signalling that they were in position. It was time to get going.

Aayla had positioned herself so that she was behind the majority of the droid forces, which were mostly facing the direction that the clones would come from. Edging closer to the edge, Aayla carefully watched the droid army. There were still a few guards wandering around the prisoners to prevent an outbreak. She had to make sure that she wasn't spotted.

Wait for it. Wait for it.

Now! None of them were looking her way.

Gracefully, the Twi'lek Jedi wall-vaulted off the cliff and dropped down at speed. Several Twi'leks looked up in surprise as she zoomed earthwards. She hit the ground, knees bending and falling into a crouch, and she did it with barely a sound. She was in.

But she needed to blend in a little more. Her gaze turned to her left, where there was a pile of unused cuffs lying just in case they were needed later. Calling on the Force, Aayla summoned one of them with her mind. It came zooming across to her, low to the ground, and then they opened and fastened themselves around Aayla's wrists, clamping shut and binding them tightly together.

This was not a stroke of madness on her part. She still had her lightsaber, though she carefully hid it under one arm. The cuffs would be no match for that.

She glanced about. None of the droids had noticed anything different. Why would they? They hadn't seen anything unusual so everything was fine. The Twi'leks were staring at her in disbelief. To them, it looked like one of their own kind had just jumped off the cliff and willingly made herself prisoner. The nearest Twi'lek, a green-skinned male, whispered, "Poli non suul tryaq?"

Aayla winked at him, shifting her arm slightly to reveal her lightsaber to him. He stared at it for a couple of seconds, then a broad grin broke across his face. "Gohs fras," whispered Aayla. "Topee herfo ji gur suul ed ony sa doon. Lik prenarfo."

The Twi'lek nodded and turned to whisper to those nearest to him. Aayla looked around carefully. When she was sure that no droid was looking her way, she rose to her feet and darted forwards several metres before settling down again. Then she waited, then she went another few metres before coming to a halt. She was heading in the direction of the two human children.

* * *

Henry and Rika had seen the strange Twi'lek jump down and were just as surprised by her action as everyone else had been. "What's she doing?" asked Rika. "Does she want to be a prisoner?"

"I don't know," said Henry.

The two watched her whispering to another Twi'lek – the male that had welcomed them to the city in the first place. Then they watched in fascination, as she began to dart forwards in quick bursts, running around the rest of the prisoners. She was heading their way.

"Now, what's she doing?" asked Henry. "Is she trying to help us?"

"Well, if she has she's got a funny way of doing it," remarked Rika. "Look, she's tied her own hands together. What is she playing at?"

"Let's wait and find out," advised Henry.

And sure, enough the Twi'lek went in for one final burst and came to a halt crouching beside them, and all the robots hadn't noticed a thing. Whatever she was doing, she was good at it. There was no denying that.

"What the hell are you doing?" Rika said to her. But the Twi'lek motioned for them to be quiet.

"Who are you?" asked Henry.

And to their great surprise, she spoke to them in their own language. "My name is Aayla Secura," she whispered. "And I've come to help you."

"Well, you could have fooled me," Rika indicated her wrists.

"These won't be a problem for me," stated Aayla, as if they were just trivial.

"So," said Henry. "Is there a plan?"

"Of course."

"Seems a bit disorganised to me," muttered Rika.

"You would say that, apparently," grinned Aayla.

"What are you talking about?"

"Keep your voices down," whispered Aayla. "I think I know what it is that you want."

"And how do you know that?"

"Because I happen to know who you are."

Rika and Henry both blinked. "Alright," said Rika, in a challenging tone. "Who am I?"

"Rika Nonaka," said Aayla, with no hesitation. "Fourteen year old girl, human, resident to Tokyo, Japan, Earth."

Rika's sharp intake of breath, and her expression, indicated her surprise. "How did you know that?"

"Renamon told me," Aayla smirked.

Rika looked like she was about to cry out, but one of Aayla's hands gently covered her mouth. "Ssh," she said, and removed it. "Yes, Renamon is a good friend of mine. So are Terriermon and Lopmon for that matter."

"Terriermon!" breathed Henry. "You know him?"

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "He's over that hill," she jerked her head. "So are Renamon and Lopmon. They're waiting for me to give them the signal to attack the droids."

"Then what's stopping you?" asked Rika.

"We need to get you to safety," said Aayla. "Where the devices you clip to your belt?"

"Our digivices?" asked Henry. "TX-20 took them and put them over there." He looked across to the control pad. Aayla followed his gaze and spotted two small white objects that looked very similar to Suzie's digivice.

"Alright," Aayla stared at them, and lifted both her bound hands towards them. Gently they rose ever so slightly into the air, then soared just above the ground, dropping into the crater and coming to rest beside the two Tamers.

"How..." ogled Henry.

"I'll tell you about Jedi later," Aayla whispered. "Let's get this rescue going." Aayla looked up towards the large building and waved her hands slightly. Obi-Wan spotted her and turned to wave at the others on the other side.

* * *

"That's the signal," said Bly. "Let's go!"

"My pleasure," Turuiemon sprang from her hiding place and pelted out of her hiding place. She charged forward at a ridiculous pace towards the droids. Behind her, the clones also ran from their hiding places and began to fire on the droids.

"WHAT THE...!" began one of the droids, but Turuiemon's switchblades sprang into attack position and swung. One cut the head from the body. The other skewered the body and tossed it into another. Then Turuiemon whirled, severed the leg off a Super, then she twirled again, swinging both arms to cut a droid into three large pieces. Her elbow flew into another and she vaulted over it and kicked it as it fell, launching it into another.

The droids finally seemed to realise that they were under attack and began to shoot at Turuiemon. But, impossibly, Turuiemon evaded every single shot without blocking. She weaved at incredible speed, ducking, springing over one, leaping from side to side and cartwheeling. Then she sprang right into the midst of a group of them, landing blade first and spinning on it like a top. Her outstretched legs took out no less than six droids surrounding her, then she pivoted up and thrust one blade into the chest of another, while the other swung upwards and created a huge gash from groin to shoulder in another.

She dropped into the splits as a Super fired at her, but she sprung up as the bolts passed over her head and took its legs out from underneath it with her own. She leapt over it, stabbing into it as she passed. She landed on her feet, then leapt, blades first into another, tackling the sparking corpse into the ground with blades embedded in it, grabbed one by its leg and heaved it into the air, slamming it into the ground, then swinging it body and tossing it into two more.

Turuiemon flipped over several more shots, landing before another droid before lashing upwards and impaling it, carrying it with her several feet into the air. When she came down, she buried one blade into the shoulder of another droid, then wheeled about and kicked another over. "Enough playing around," she cried out, then wheeled around to face three Supers shooting at her. Dodging the blasts with amazing easer, she cried **"GAUNTLET CLAW!"** The switchblades glowed white hot and she slashed them through the air, unleashing blades of white energy that severed the Supers where they stood.

As Turuiemon was destroying the droids with seemingly no effort at all, Cody, Bly and the other clones were shooting at those nowhere near her. Bly had his twin pistols in hand and in rapid sequence, he sent three shots into a Super, which keeled over, then one knocked the arm of a B-1, which in turn knocked the head off another, then Bly holed the chest of the one-armed droid. Then he rolled, crouching low and sent off four shots, before diving behind a boulder. One missed its mark, but the other three took out a droid each, in the torso, the head and another torso.

Cody himself was slightly hindered by his arm, so he'd dropped back a little, but was still firing with one arm. He successfully managed to bring about the destruction of a Super. To his horror, the clone beside him, Dan, was suddenly hit in the chest by a bolt and collapsed, dead. Cody yelled in defiance and shot the droid responsible twice, despite the fact it had gone offline with just one.

But the AATs had begun firing now, and one of them was being manned by the tactical droid. They couldn't fire on Turuiemon without decimating their own troops, but that didn't stop the one being crewed by a B-1. Turuiemon easily bounced out of the way as five B-1s and two Super Battle Droids were pulverised by the cannon blast. Turuiemon glared and sprang upwards, passing right over another cannon blast aimed at her, until she landed on the AAT.

Switchblade went down, switchblade went in, droid went offline, droid went up, droid went down and hit other droid, other droid went offline.

TX-20 was shocked, if it was possible for a droid to be shocked. This creature had not figured in his calculations. This was... unfair. But nevertheless, he could still win the day. He turned the cannon to fire on the creature. It leapt skyward and the blast smashed the cockpit off the other AAT. It went soaring and crushed two more B-1s underneath it.

Ridge and Wooley fired over the top of a rock and together they took down a Super. Blade flung one of the last droid-poppers, which electrocuted three B-1s. Conor ducked behind a groove in the cliff wall to avoid a couple of lasers sent his way, before leaning back out and gunning down the droid that did it. Lash ran from cover for a second and shot a B-1 in the face before he ran back behind cover again.

TX-20 decided to focus on the creature later. He turned the cannon around to face the clones. Bly spotted this and cried, "FALL BACK! MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!" TX-20 let fly as the clones rushed backwards. The blast consumed one poor individual, and knocked Wooley flying, but Wooley got right back up again and fired at TX-20. He missed, and the shot struck the AAT, leaving a little burn mark but no damage.

* * *

"Is that who I think it is?" asked Henry, staring at Turuiemon as she sprang upwards and came falling down onto a Super, burying one blade into its face. "That's Lopmon's champion form, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," said Aayla.

"So that means..."

"Yes, Suzie is fine. Trust me on that one. Now, let's get you back to her." She stood up. One of the battle droid guards that had been watching the fight with some apprehension spotted her and said, "Hey, you. Sit down, prisoner."

"Prisoner, am I?" asked Aayla, smirking. "You might want to revise that thought, particularly considering what's behind you."

Terriermon shot forwards and landed on the droid's back. With a quick wrench the droid's head was pulled from its socket and tossed aside. The nearest droid cried out in surprise, but he suddenly found himself very, very flat under Renamon's feet.

There were three other droids on guard and they turned to fire on the two new Digimon. But then, Obi-Wan sprang from hiding, his lightsaber in hand. He carved one down the middle and slashed the other diagonally across the chest.

The final guard was gunned down by Waxer and Boil at the same time.

With a whoosh, Aayla activated her own lightsaber, which flew into her hands thanks to the Force. Swinging it downwards she cut through the cuffs around her own wrists like butter, then she gently knelt down and sliced through the ones around Henry's wrists and finally the ones around Rika's.

"Renamon!" cried Rika.

"Terriermon!" Henry also cried, as both got to their feet.

"Much as I'd love a big, teary reunion," said Terriermon coming to rest before them, "I'm gonna ask you to save that until the battle's done."

"Terriermon is right," said Renamon. "You have your digivices. Let's us them."

Rika grinned. "Go bash a few of those robots for me."

"They're called droids," said Terriermon as Henry and Rika took out cards from their holders.

"Whatever," Rika shrugged and then she slashed the card, as did Henry. Together they cried out:-

"Digi-modify! Digivolution activate!"

Clone and droid alike turned to see Terriermon and Renamon exploded into the light.

"**TERRIERMON DIGIVOLVE TO..."**

"**RENAMON DIGIVOLVE TO..."**

As this was going on, TX-20 directed some droids to head towards them, and stop the Jedi from freeing the prisoners. Waxer and Boil sprang into action. Waxer dashed to the side, firing madly at the assembled battle-droids. Boil leapt behind the nearest pillar and shot a droid in the head. Obi-Wan and Aayla defended the defenceless Twi'leks with their lightsabers, until the light behind them faded and two large beings shot past them and into the frey.

One was a large, white and green rabbit, similar to Terriermon, but with large guns for hands. He was wearing a pair of jeans and had a large red diamond-shaped mark in the centre of his forehead. **"GARGOMON!"**

The other was a yellow fox, no longer bipedal. She ran on all fours and had nine thin tails flowing behind her, each with a flaming tip, and her paws were also flaming. Around her neck was a strange bow of some kind of, which was red and white in colour. **"KYUBIMON!"**

"Good to see you two again," called Turuiemon, as she skewered a droid without looking at it.

"Good to be back!" called Gargomon. "Now let's bring the pain to them, shall we?"

A Super Battle Droid fired at him, but with a surprising turn of speed, Gargomon avoided the shot and the cannon on his arm began to glow green at the sockets. "You call that firepower? Well eat this! **BUNNY PUMMEL!"**

Gargomon socked the Super in the face and let loose a barrage of green lasers at the same time. The blow sent the Super flying backwards, knocking over several B-1s until it came to a halt when it smashed into the canyon wall. As it did it promptly fell apart.

"Come on, men!" cried Bly. "We got this in the bag. Let's send 'em back to the recycle centre!"

The clones cheered and charged. Alarmed, some of the battle droids turned to shoot at them. One unfortunate clone got hit in the hip and keeled over, injured but alive. The droids were instantly shot down by his brothers, and those still standing had their heads forcibly removed when struck with blasters.

TX-20 watched as things began to fall apart for him around him. He watched in mechanical dismay as his grand schematics were foiled. He watched the fox-like creature leap into the air and cry **"DRAGON WHEEL!"** before spinning rapidly and becoming a ball of blue fire shaped like a dragon, which was so hot that when it collided with the droids it consumed them and burnt through their circuitry, causing them to fall with a crash. Then Kyubimon emerged unscathed from the blaze and sprinted past three more droids. As she did three tails grabbed one droid each and hauled them into the air, smashing their heads together and, as a result, smashing the heads to pieces as well.

He watched as the white rabbit swung a gun and caved in the chest of a B-1, then slammed the other into a Super and knocked it silly. Getting into the middle of the army, Gargomon thrust his arms out to either side of him and shouted **"GARGO LASERS!"** Charging through the throng of what remained, he began to put at least fifteen holes into each droid he passed thanks to the repeated green blasts that issued from his cannon sockets. Then he brought his hands to bear and fired on a group of Supers, causing them to collapse as they were burnt into by the lasers.

He watched as the purple rabbit, plunged both of her switchblades into the metal of a B-1 and raised above her head, before crying **"GAUNTLET CLAW!"** again. The white-glowing occurred and the droid exploded, chunks of its body flying in all directions to smash into several others. What remained was heaved off Turuiemon's claws, and Turuiemon lashed out with two feet at one in close proximity that had managed to evade it. Its chest was crushed. Then Turuiemon whirled around, slashed the blaster of another droid in half, then dispatched its head with another.

He watched as the clones formed a defensive circle around each other and began to fire outwards in every direction where there was a droid. Commander Bly grabbed one in a headlock and shot it at point blank rage in the face. Cody shot one in the chest, then wheeled around to shoot another in the complete opposite direction. Two other clones were defending the wounded one with a vigour. Lash lived up to his name by lashing out with one foot and catching a droid square in the stomach area.

He could not gain this field, but he could at least take out as many clones as possible. He carefully moved the cannon of the AAT and levelled it at the clones. His finger hovered over the button.

"**FOX TAIL INFERNO!"**

Kyubimon had spotted what he was doing and spread her tails wide. Each tip flared and shot a fireball forwards. They cannoned into the consoles all around the tactical droid and two of them knocked one of his arms off. The systems in the cockpit sparked and TX-20 knew that they would now be useless. He needed to bail.

He clambered over the side of the AAT and dropped to the ground, in a very clumsy fashion. His body was not designed for this. He began to try and rise but suddenly a heavy foot descended on his back, pushing him into the floor. Then it rolled him onto his front and TX-20 found himself staring directly at a large cannon situated on the arm of one of the creatures.

"Checkmate," smirked Gargomon.

"Watch out, Terriermon!" shouted Bly and he fired. His bolt took the Super standing behind the bunny in the back and it fell, just before it was about to shoot the Digimon. Gargomon blinked then called, "Cheers, Bly. I owe you one. But that's Gargomon to you."

* * *

As all this was going on, Obi-Wan had called, "Aayla, you free the prisoners and get them into the building. Waxer, Boil, you're with me. We need to take out the cannons."

"Right behind you, sir," Boil called and ran off after Obi-Wan towards a cannon. Aayla brought her lightsaber into play as the Twi'lek prisoners began to stand up one by one and she severed their bonds with gentle accuracy.

"You two," she called over to Henry and Rika, who were watching their partners with concern. "It still isn't safe. I want you to get inside that big building there and stay there. Then she addressed the Twi'leks she freed and said, "Foji we stocpurf. Shenab!"

"We're not leaving our partners," Rika countered, as the Twi'leks began to follow Aayla's instructions.

"You're still in danger," Aayla insisted. "A rogue shot from one of those droids could kill you on the spot. Besides, Suzie's in there, waiting for you."

"Suzie?" asked Henry, attention diverted. "Come on, Rika, she's right. Let's go." He made an attempt to run, but faltered as his back pained him.

"You're hurt," said Aayla, cutting through the cuffs on a brown female. "Don't worry, we have very good medics – after all you get a lot of injuries in war. Rika, can you help him?"

"Of course," Rika threw one of Henry's arms around her shoulder and the two of them began to shuffle towards the building as freed Twi'leks began to run past them. But then, one of them, the green male that had originally welcomed them, stopped and also began to lend some support to Henry, allowing them to get there much faster.

Inside, Henry searched the throng of anxious, liberated Twi'leks and he cried out, "Suzie!"

"Henry!" came the reply, and to the delight of Henry and Rika, little Suzie Wong and the Twi'lek girl Numa appeared, fighting their way past the legs of the crowding Twi'leks and running forward. Henry crouched low and pulled his sister into a hug. It pained his back, but he ignored it.

"Ikut!" cried Numa joyfully.

"Numa!" agreed the male Twi'lek and he quickly picked Numa up and embraced her, a look of sheer relief on his face.

* * *

Aayla cut through the last of the cuffs binding the last Twi'leks hands together and ushered them on their way. She turned and saw that Obi-Wan had forcibly commandeered one of the proton cannons. Waxer and Boil were lifting the ammunition into it, and Obi-Wan carefully aimed the blasts so that began to take out the other proton cannons. The droids in them were thrown out of their cockpits as the heavy laser blasts pounded them, blowing up ammunition and cannon alike. A couple of droids had broken off from the main force but Waxer and Boil just calmly shot them, before grabbing another laser capsule and slotting it into place, so Obi-Wan could shoot once more on the badly organised droids.

Then the fourth cannon was blown up until all that was left, was the one that Obi-Wan was in. He smiled in satisfaction and hopped out of the seat. Calmly he activated his lightsaber and slashed through the barrel, which dropped off and landed with a heavy thud, rendering the cannon completely useless. They'd succeeded and had taken out all of the cannons, which meant that Master Windu's forces could now land, along with the rest of the 212th and the 327th.

Aayla and Obi-Wan turned and watched as the two last droids standing were killed. One was shot in the head by Wooley. The other was grabbed by Kyubimon's tails and smashed into the nearest cliff wall.

"Well," said Aayla as she and Obi-Wan walked side by side to the battle-scene. "That went quite well in my opinion."

"My opinion agrees with yours," said Obi-Wan. "Now we just have to tell Master Windu that it's safe to land, and then we can move on and attempt to evict Wat Tambor from this planet and take him to Coruscant."

"And you also have to take this guy to the junkyard," Commander Cody called over. Cody pointed at the tactical droid, TX-20, who was futilely attempting to get out from under Gargomon's large, clawed foot.

"Ah," said Obi-Wan. "Terriermon, why did you..."

"Gargomon."

"Oh, right, sorry. Gargomon, why did you not just destroy him and have done with it, may I ask."

"Well, I thought about it," said Gargomon, with a smirk, "but then I thought that there were several people who might want to have a piece of this guy. Namely all the prisoners that he treated so badly."

"You shall not succeed," droned TX-20. "Our armies are unstoppable."

"You thought you were unstoppable," pointed out Turuiemon, walking over to him and looking down into his face, "but that turned out to be incorrect didn't it?"

"Let's take you to your loyal prisoners," agreed Kyubimon. She walked past TX-20, and as she did, her tails came down. Gargomon removed his foot and TX-20 found himself encased in the furry, prehensile, rope-like things.

The Twi'leks were peering out of the door now that the sounds of fighting had stopped. They began to emerge slowly, but cautiously and unsure of what they should be thinking. Should they be wary of the three large creatures, or should they be grateful?

Rika, Henry and Suzie forced their way through the crowd, and smiled up at Gargomon, Turuiemon and Kyubimon. "You were so awesome, Turuiemon," cheered Suzie and she went up to hug the large bunny. Henry and Rika went and did the same to their own partners.

"I was so worried about you Kyubimon," said Rika, burying her face in the fox's mane.

"_You_ were worried?" asked Kyubimon. "What about me? And from the look of things I was right to be worried."

"Shut up," smiled Rika, playfully punching Kyubimon's shoulder.

"Thank God you're okay, Gargomon," said Henry.

"Momentai," said Gargomon straight away. "I was fine the whole time. Well, except at the point where Turuiemon and I got high on Jurcian fruit by accident, but that's another story. Forgive me if I don't hug you, Henry, but having cannons for hands makes things awkward."

"That's alright," said Henry. "I'd rather you didn't anyway. I've got a large injury on my back."

"Injury?" Gargomon looked alarmed.

"Let me see," Aayla walked over and lifted up the back of Henry's shirt. "Ouch!" she declared at the sight of the wound.

"I know," said Henry wryly.

"Max," called Aayla, signalling to one of the clones. "Come and put a patch on this, will you?"

"On it, sir," said Max, and he walked over and inspected the wound. "Eesh, how'd you pull that off?"

"An uncontrolled scrape against a rock," winced Henry.

"Well, here we go," Max pulled open a pouch on his belt and pulled out what looked like a large, thick plaster crossed with a bandage, and with four wires on it. He placed it over the wound and it stuck there, while Max placed several the wires to the skin, where they sparked and glued to it. "There we go," he said. "One bandage soaked in bacta. That should heal within a couple of hours. I've seen worse."

"Thank you," said Henry.

"Now that that's taken care of," said Kyubimon, and her tails flared upwards, tossing TX-20 unceremoniously before the Twi'leks. The tactical droid looked up into the faces of those who had once been his prisoners and saw anger burning in their eyes.

"Uh-oh," was all he said, as he was savagely attacked by the Twi'les, who began to hit him, pull at what remained of his limbs, kick him and otherwise attempt to beat him to a pulp. Either they didn't notice that he was made of metal, or they had very tough fists, because punch him they did.

"'Scuse me a moment," said Rika, and she picked up a nearby rock, ran over and bashed TX-20 in the side of the head with it.

"Ow," said TX-20. The nearest Twi'lek, a blue female like Aayla, grabbed the smashed head and pulled. It came loose and the eyes went dark. But the Twi'leks didn't stop there. They still kept hitting what remained of the body.

"Well," remarked Obi-Wan. "Hopefully that will appease them slightly. No, let's let Master Windu know we've won." He unclipped a holoprojector from his belt. The Tamers watched in fascination as a small hologram of a bald-headed person appeared there.

"Master Kenobi," said Master Windu. "What have you to report?"

"We've have succeeded in taking the city of Nabat, Master," said Obi-Wan to the hologram. "You may now commence with landing."

"Great job," said Mace. "Prepare for our arrival, then."

"Will do," said Obi-Wan. The hologram faded and the projector was clipped back to his belt.

Just then, Gargomon, Kyubimon and Turuiemon startled everybody present by glowing and shrinking, until they took on the forms of Terriermon, Renamon and Lopmon again. "I don't think I'll get used to that," said Aayla.

"It gets easier when you've seen it a few times," smiled Lopmon.

"Nerra. Numa."

Little Numa came running forward, leading the green Twi'lek by the hand. "Non suul herfo ji dren kerlam pon?" she asked.

"What did she say?" asked Suzie.

"Wait," said Aayla, then she addressed the adult. "Poli si suulan hunib?"

"Nilim Bril," said the Twi'lek. "Hef suul?"

"Aayla Secura," said Aayla. "Si Numa oi wesand di suulan?"

"Ka, gar si acer tuiker."

"Ju prud," Aayla nodded. "Ju tyg apor koil Numa lods wesandes. Poli burfon peasd ji gor?"

"Gar burfon dren kerlam ace," said the Twi'lek. Numa cheered.

"So, what did he say?" asked Suzie.

"He says that his name is Nilim Bril and that he is Numa's uncle," smiled Aayla. "Numa's going to be quite safe in his hands."

"So," Suzie frowned. "Does that mean that she's not going to come with us?"

"I'm afraid so," said Obi-Wan. "But it's just as well, really. Numa would be far better off living here in piece than going off to war with the rest of us."

They watched as Numa dragged her uncle, Nilim, to meet Waxer and Boil. Obi-Wan followed to act as a translator.

"Well," said Henry. "What will happen to us?" he asked Aayla. "When you go off to continue to fight, what will become of us?"

"We'll be with them every step of the way," said Terriermon.

"What? No we won't."

"Yes, we will!" Terriermon said, firmly. "There's no arguing this time Henry. Even if you want to stay where its safe then fair enough, but Renamon, Lopmon and me have all sworn to help Aayla and Bly fighting against the droids until the war ends."

Henry looked stunned and very uncomfortable. Just then, three enormous triangular spaceships flew overhead and began to descend outside the village.

"What have you got us into, Terriermon?" Henry asked.

"A war," replied the bunny. "And you better tough it out, Henry, 'cause it sure is a big one."

* * *

And so, Suzie was reunited with her brother, the Digimon have met up with their Tamers and the city of Nabat had been retaken, meaning a happy ending for Numa. She may or may not return later in the story. I haven't decided that yet, but I really like her character, so if it's possible, it will happen.

Twi'leki

Gif suul bofas Obi-Wan hed suulan nerras ipbac cu deegon foji koil stocpurf? – Can you lead Obi-Wan and your brothers through the tunnels into that building?

Schoy twinlo – No problem

Re se clomd – It is time

Poli non suul tryaq – What are you doing

Gohs fras – Don't worry

Topee herfo ji gur suul ed ony sa doon. Lik prenarfo – We're going to get you all out of here. Be ready.

Foji we stocpurf. Shenab – Into the building! Quick!

Ikut – Uncle

Non suul herfo ji dren kerlam pon – Are you going to stay with us

Poli si suulan hunib – What is your name

Hef suul – And you

Si Numa oi wesand di suulan – Is Numa a relative of yours

Ka, gar si acer Tuiker – Yes, she is my niece

Ju prud – I see

Ju tyg apor koil Numa lods wesandes. Poli burfon peasd ji gor – I am glad that Numa has relatives. What will happen to her

Gar burfon dren kerlam ace – She will stay with me

* * *

Next time...

The Tamers must come to terms with being at war. The Jedi make their plans for retaking the rest of Ryloth. And most importantly, the Digimon finally meet Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 16 : The Next Stage**


	16. The Next Stage

Whoa. Three chapters in three days. Ta-da.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 16:- The Next Stage**

* * *

Henry sat on the rock with his knees, which were being held in position by his arms. Under normal circumstances he would have been extremely fascinated to see what was before him. The three enormous space-ships had come to land on three giant, extendable legs each. A large ramp had descended from them and rank after rank of men, clad in identical armour were marching effortlessly down them. Also coming down the ramps were what looked like giant, metal caterpillars with large cannons on top. Terriermon had called them AT-TE walkers.

But right now, Henry was feeling completely and utterly dismal. He ought to be happy – he'd just been freed from the terrible droid leader, TX-20 and his forces, his sister was fine and they'd all been re-united with their Digimon. But he wasn't. He was unhappy.

His partner wanted to go off to war.

What had possessed Terriermon to even consider something like that? Defending your home if it comes under attack is one thing, but war is totally different. It involves going out and actually conquering places, killing hundreds upon hundreds of enemies and generally putting your life at risk.

Henry was not half the pacifist he used to be, but he still thought that war was wrong.

Henry turned his head slightly and looked at his partner. Terriermon, along with Lopmon and Renamon were deep in discussion with the two Jedi, Obi-Wan and Aayla, and the clone commanders, Bly and Cody. Henry didn't particularly want to be a part of this discussion – they were planning what to do next and whatever it was, it would inevitably lead to more death.

He turned his head again and looked at Suzie. She was talking to Numa and Nilim Bril, badly it could be said, but she was trying to say her goodbyes. Whatever Numa was saying, she obviously seemed to understand that Suzie was about to leave, because she seemed to be rather upset. The two of them had been through quite an ordeal together.

"You still feeling depressed?"

Henry glanced to one side as Rika came up and sat beside him. "Yeah, aren't you?"

"Not really," said Rika, looking at Henry with concern. "What's the problem?"

"What do you think? Our partners have just signed up to go and fight in a war. Doesn't that bother you?"

"Of course it does," said Rika. "But I'm not going to go and feel depressed about it. I'm going to worry about my personal safety and the safety of you and Renamon and everyone else, sure. But I'm not going to go worrying myself over the _fact_ that we're going off to war."

"I tried to talk Terriermon out of it," said Henry. "But he refused. Just like that and right to my face. He didn't even pause to consider what I was asking of him. I've never seen him so determined about, well, anything."

"What's really worrying you, Henry?" Rika put her hand on Henry's shoulder. He didn't flinch – the wound was healing at an amazingly rapid rate. "Is it just the idea of war?"

"It's like the song," said Henry. "What is it good for, and all that."

"Well, if you ask me," murmured Rika, "I think that the three of them have formed an extremely strong bond with that Aayla person. Not a bond like they have with us, but an incredibly strong friendship nevertheless. And haven't we always held in our hearts that we should protect our friends to the very end."

"Well, yeah, but... still... that I can understand, but... we're getting involved in affairs that are none of our business."

Rika raised an eyebrow. "Did you actually say that?"

"Yes."

"So, you effectively said that we should leave these Twi'leks to suffer?"

"No! That's not what I said!"

"Yes it is!" Rika was beginning to get slightly angry now. "Wake up and smell the bacon, Henry! The rules have changed for us. We can't get home, but we're here. Perhaps we're here for a reason, and if that reason is to help us fight in this war, then so be it." She softened up and said, "And I know that you know I'm right. The Henry I know would never say that we should leave these Twi'leks to their fate. You're only floundering and trying to think up excuses not to get involved now Henry. It's just the idea of war that you don't like."

Henry didn't say anything. He just frowned and looked at the floor. He'd been hoping for slightly more support from Rika, but he couldn't deny what she was saying. "I don't want you, or Terriermon, or Suzie, or anyone to get hurt."

"Don't worry," Rika reached around and stroked Henry's cheek with one finger, "Your problem is you're still feeling very responsible for everyone. That's your problem. You'll blame yourself if we do get hurt. Well, newsflash, but we can take care ourselves reasonably well, and we have some of the most powerful beings in the universe on our side."

Henry sighed. "Well, I suppose I better get used to the idea. Terriermon seems dead-set on going off to fight, and I'm not leaving him again if I can help it."

"That's the spirit," Rika smiled. "Now come here." She carefully locked her lips with Henry and both of them shut their eyes, enjoying the peaceful moment after the hectic day that they'd had.

"Am I interrupting something?" asked the unmistakable voice of one of the clones. Henry and Rika pulled themselves apart in surprise and looked up to see four clones, grinning down at them.

"We'd just come to see how you were getting on," said the first clone. "General Secura says you two are coming with us, and we thought we should check on you, but I can quite plainly see that you're both fine."

Henry and Rika both flushed. The clones chuckled, and the second one said, "So, I believe introductions are in order."

"Nah," said a third. "They'd forget who we all are. Most people do."

"We gotta make an effort, at least," said the fourth. "You kids, alright? The name's Lash."

"You can call me Blade," said the second.

"I'm Ridge," said the third.

"And I'm Conor," the first one introduced himself. "And you're Henry and Rika right?"

"Yeah, that's us," said Rika, already trying to remember which of the clones was which. It was so damn difficult because they had all the same facial features.

"Good. Well, anyway," started one – Ridge. "According to Terriermon, you're a "hardcore pacifist," Henry. So we just thought we'd see how you were adjusting to the thought of going off to war."

"Not well," said Henry, honestly. "The idea plagues at me. What is the point of war anyway. If it hadn't been for war, then we wouldn't have been captured by those r- droids."

"Well, yeah, that's true," said Conor. "But, if you think about it, if it wasn't for war, you wouldn't have been reunited with your partners yet. If the droids hadn't invaded Nabat, then we would have no call to come here and liberate it, and the Digimon would still have no idea where you were."

"I suppose," said Henry, thoughtfully.

"Hey, at least you picked the right side," grinned Lash. "The Republic fights for freedom, whereas the Separatists have their own agenda and want to conquer. If we didn't fight back, the people would all be forced to submit to their tyranny. And your children would have to live under the will of the Sith and money-grabbing worms like Nute Gunray and San Hill and Wat Tambor."

"I suppose that's a point," repeated Henry.

"Come on, kid," Blade extended and hand down to Henry. Henry stared at it for a few seconds, before grasping it and allowing Blade to pull him to his feet. Nearby, Conor did the same with Rika. "You're one of the 327th now. And we look after our own."

"Thank you," said Rika.

"Don't mention it," shrugged Conor. "Now, come on. The Digimon think you should be part of the discussions."

The four clones led Henry and Rika over towards the little gathering of Digimon, Jedi and clone. Henry noticed that Waxer and Boil, who had also been saying goodbye to Numa, were leading Suzie their way as well, while Numa waved them goodbye behind them, stood next to her Uncle, Nilim Bril.

"Hey Henry," said Terriermon, who was standing on Obi-Wan's shoulder. With a flap, he descended and landed on Henry's own shoulder. "You had a change of heart?"

"As much as I'll ever have," sighed Henry, rubbing his partner's head affectionately. "I'll do it. The clones are right. It's no different than what we do back home really – we're fighting to defend. I suppose it was just the word "war" that got me all jittery."

"That's what we thought," nodded Renamon approvingly. "The only real difference is we're not fighting enemy Digimon anymore."

"We're still fighting for our home," agreed Lopmon. "Our home just happens to be different now."

"So, there's no chance of us getting back to Earth?" Suzie asked innocently.

"I'm afraid not, Suzie," Aayla looked down at the child. "We have no technology that enables us to do dimension travel."

"But you're technology is more advanced than on Earth, and they could do it," said Suzie.

"They can only do it to and from the Digital World, Suzie," said Rika. "Because the Digital World is connected to ours. This one is completely unconnected."

"Oh," Suzie slumped slightly. "So what do we do?"

"We do what we always do," chirped Terriermon. "We fight for our freedom and the freedom of everyone else."

"We're going to try and drive all those droids off this planet," explained Commander Bly. "Then we move onto the next world under threat, then the next, then the next, until the threat of the Separatists has been nullified for good."

"I don't like the idea of killing though," said Henry.

"Don't worry, Henry," Obi-Wan reassured him. "We Jedi prefer negotiation to fighting too. But negotiations with the Separatists failed. Mostly we try not to kill anything actually alive. The droids don't count – they're just programmed to carry out their function. But we capture the leaders who are organic and we take them for trial."

"Oh good," said Henry. "So, where do we plan on going next?"

"We're waiting for Jedi Master Windu to arrive before we go into full detail," said Cody.

"Then wait no longer," said Aayla. "For here he comes."

Henry, Rika and Suzie all blinked. Walking towards them was the man from out of the hologram Obi-Wan had spoken to. He was tall, bald, dark-skinned and carried an air about him that blatantly said, _Don't mess with me._ Walking beside him was a clone with patches of red on his armour.

"Master Windu," Aayla and Obi-Wan bowed in respect, as did all the clones, and Renamon and Lopmon, and, to the great surprise of the humans, Terriermon. Terriermon had never bowed to anything except the Digimon God, Fanglongmon. Either he naturally held a deep respect for this man, or they had gotten off on the wrong foot and he was attempting to correct his mistake. They strongly suspected the latter.

"Master Kenobi, Knight Secura," said Mace Windu. "Congratulations are in order for allowing the liberation attempt to go forwards."

"Oh, we can't take all the credit, Master Windu," stated Obi-Wan. "A lot of the relief effort was carried out by the Digimon, with the help of their Tamers. I have to say I feel privileged to have worked alongside them."

"Is that so?" Mace glanced at Terriermon, who swallowed and waved with a cheery expression. "Well, I suppose we'll have to see I feel the same way, won't we? And these are the children they spoke of?"

"Yes, sir," said Bly. "They were amongst the prisoners of Nabat."

"Is that so?" asked the red-painted clone. "Quite a lucky coincidence that."

"There is no such thing as luck," said Obi-Wan.

"Or coincidence," added Aayla. "That's why the Digimon were partnered with me, because I found them. That was no more of a coincidence than finding the children shortly afterwards."

"She's right, Commander Ponds," said Mace. "Everything happens for a reason. It can just sometimes be difficult to see that reason."

"So," Renamon began. "Where do we head to now? What's next."

There was a beeping noise. Looking around, they saw that there were two droids approaching. But they were not battle-droids. They were small droids with cylindrical bodies, domed heads which could rotate, one large photoreceptor in the middle of it, and they were rolling along on three legs with wheels, one of with was short and the other of which were long. They pulled to a halt beside the group, and they both twittered.

"These are astromech droids," said Aayla to the surprised Tamers and Digimon. "We use them to help pilot our space-craft, bypass enemy security systems and several other tasks besides. This is mine R4-G9." The bronze one chirped.

"And this is mine," said Obi-Wan. "R4-P17."

"Whoa," said Henry and Suzie at the same time.

"Impressive isn't it," grinned Terriermon. "I'm still getting blown away by all the new stuff I'm seeing."

Mace cleared his throat.

"Shutting up now," Terriermon did so.

Aayla patted the head of her own astromech and it beamed a hologram of the planet into the centre of the group.

"Since this is a planet-wide invasion," Mace explained to the Tamers and their partners. "The plan is to send out detachments of each of our regiments to key areas first to re-take them, and then spread out and liberate the smaller areas. General Secura, you will order some of your men to head to areas on the equator. General Kenobi, you will take the northern hemisphere, and I shall take the southern hemisphere. But the three of us shall work together in order to take one of the most important goals – the Capital city of Lessu.

"That's only a few days march away from here, correct?" asked Obi-Wan.

"Yes," said Aayla. "No doubt that's where Wat Tambor has set up his headquarters."

"Naturally," said Mace.

"How is General Skywalker getting on with freeing the space around Ryloth?" asked Obi-Wan.

"Why don't we ask him ourselves?" asked Mace.

"Right. R4-P17, patch through to The Resolute."

"Well, this should be interesting," observed Aayla. "Digimon, you're about to meet the other being that features in a prophecy."

"About time," grinned Terriermon.

* * *

Anakin Skywalker, also known as the Chosen One, was standing on the bridge of The Resolute, watching some of his fighters outside take out a droid frigate, and wondering what was going on. Earlier that day, he had been told by his Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, that General Aayla Secura had joined the liberation attempt. That in itself was not all that confusing – it made sense. After all, she was a Twi'lek. But Ahsoka had also told him that Obi-Wan had mentioned, enigmatically, that there were some others fighting it out down there as well.

Ahsoka herself was standing beside him with her arms folded and a smirk on her face. "Well, there goes another one," she said as the pieces of frigate began to float in different directions. "Is it me, or is this getting easier and easier."

"Don't get overconfident, Snips," advised Anakin. Snips was the nickname he'd given to Ahsoka because of her tendency to get a little snippy with him. "There are still a lot of ships to blow up before Ryloth space has been freed."

"I know," said Ahsoka. "And they'll probably be building up a large resistance somewhere not that far away, but we can take them on, right, Skyguy?"

Anakin chuckled heartily. He liked having Ahsoka around. His relationship with her was much less formal than most Master to Padawan relationships. But she was a loyal Padawan, a good friend, and a laugh. He often wondered what she made of him, the brash, headstrong Jedi who told Ahsoka frequently not to be just like him that he was. "Right," he replied.

"I wonder how Obi-Wan and Aayla are getting on down on the surface," Ahsoka thought aloud.

"Me too," said Anakin. "It's been some time since they went down there. They must have met with some stiff resistance." He paused and said, "Are you sure that they didn't say anything more about these strangers?"

"No," shrugged Ahsoka apologetically. "But one of the strangers did speak to me through the comlink."

"He did?" asked Anakin. "What did he say?"

"Well, er, when I told him what you'd done to beat the space blockade, he asked me if you were insane or suicidal."

Anakin blinked. "But he said it in a joking fashion," said Ahsoka quickly.

"A little comedian, hmm?" Anakin put his hand to his chin in an impersonation of Obi-Wan, stroking an imaginary beard. "Sounds like someone I know, Ahsoka."

"It's a talent," grinned the young Togruta.

"General Skywalker," said a rich voice behind him. Anakin and Ahsoka turned to see that it was Admiral Yularen, who still had a bandage around his head due to the incident earlier that day, who was speaking. "You have an incoming transmission from the planet's surface."

"Must be Obi-Wan and Aayla," said Anakin, as he and Ahsoka walked towards the console. "That, or Wat Tambor wants to congratulate me on defeating his blockade."

"Yeah, that'll happen," Ahsoka rolled her eyes. Anakin grinned as he, Ahsoka, Yularen and the clone Captain Rex gathered around the console. Yularen put through the message. Anakin and Ahsoka blinked at what they saw. They'd been expecting no more than six holograms, three Jedi and three clone commanders, but there were actually twice that many. Three of the additional six were children. The other three were just plain weird.

After a couple of seconds of silent staring at what appeared to be two small rabbits with big ears and large fox standing on two legs, Captain Rex started the ensuing conversation by saying, "Is there something that you haven't told us, Cody?"

* * *

"You must be Rex," said Terriermon, to the clone, who had been displayed in front of them by R4-P17. "Cody's told us about some of your exploits. You're a good soldier, mate."

"Er, right," said the hologram of the clone with next to no hair. "Thanks, I guess."

"And he has a point," said the image of the man standing next to the little version of Shaak Ti. "I take it that these are the mysterious help that you mentioned to my Padawan, Obi-Wan."

"Yes, Anakin," said Obi-Wan, confirming what all the Digimon had thought.

"Well, forgive me for saying this, but they don't look so tough," said the Togruta.

"Appearances can be deceiving Ahsoka," pointed out Aayla. "Which is something that every Jedi should know."

"Aayla's right, Snips," nodded Anakin. "Don't judge a holobook by its cover."

"For instance..." said Terriermon, and he let loose a stream of energy pellets what went through the startled hologram that was Ahsoka. She blinked for a couple of seconds, then she grinned, then she laughed. Terriermon joined in.

"You're the one who spoke to me over the comlink," she said. "I recognize your voice."

"That's right," nodded the bunny. "My name's Terriermon, and you are Ahsoka Tano. You are, I quote, "The prodigy Padawan of Anakin Skywalker.""

"Prodigy?" Ahsoka asked. "Who said that?"

Terriermon pointed with an accusing air at Obi-Wan. Ahsoka grinned and said, "Thanks, Master Kenobi."

"Well," said Obi-Wan. "I can see that you two are going to get along like a pair of claws on an Acklay."

"Is that a good thing?" asked Renamon. Everybody chuckled, except Mace Windu.

"And who else do I have the pleasure of being introduced to?" asked Anakin.

"I'll do the honours," said Aayla. "This here is Renamon, and this is Lopmon. These three are what are known as Digimon. And as I'm sure you've realised by now, these three are human children. Their names are Henry, Rika and Suzie. Here's the deal, Anakin."

Aayla began to explain what a Digimon was, what a Tamer was, the whole concept of the parallel universe, and the fact that they'd decided to help fight in the war alongside the 327th. Anakin, Ahsoka, Rex and the other man with a moustache that made Terriermon want to wave at him and say, "Hello, John Cleese."

"Wow," said Ahsoka, after a while. "That's some tale. But are you sure it's wise to be including children in this war."

"They're only a few months younger than you, Ahsoka," said Obi-Wan. "Except for Suzie."

"Yes, but I'm a Jedi."

"And we are Tamers," interjected Rika, speaking for the first time. "You can do things we can't do, but we can do things you can't."

Ahsoka looked at Rika, and said, "Fair enough."

"I think that you two are going to get on very well, too," grinned Aayla.

"Personally I think that all of us will get on very well with both of you," said Lopmon.

"I like your hair," said Suzie, suddenly.

"Er... are you talking to me?" Ahsoka asked.

"Yeah."

"Well, it's not hair. These are my lekku." Ahsoka caused them to move up and down on their own. Suzie squealed in delight.

"Alright, fair enough," Anakin spoke again. "I can understand you wanting to fight, but I have a feeling that there's still something you haven't told me."

"Save the best part until last," pointed out Henry.

"We've heard from just about everyone we've met that a prophecy has been made about you, right?" Renamon addressed Anakin, who nodded.

"Yeah," he said. "It's a heavy burden to bear, but I live with it. What about it?"

"You don't have to bear the weight of the prophecy alone anymore," said Lopmon. "Or at least, of _a_ prophecy, because we had one made about us as well, which said that we would come to your dimension."

* * *

Anakin just stared at the Digimon and the children in stunned silence. Another prophecy? Involving them? But... But... This was fantastic! He remembered the words of Qui-Gon Jinn – "Nothing happens by accident." Up until now Anakin had known that he was in a prophecy, but he'd had nothing more to go on. Perhaps these creatures, no, people, could help him find the path. They could help him defeat the Sith. They could help him restore peace to the Force.

That would mean he'd have to work with Aayla more as well, but he didn't have a problem with that. After all, he and Aayla had been Padawans together and were very good friends. This was... this was beyond words.

"You mean it?" asked Anakin. "A second prophecy?"

"No joke," said the hologram of Terriermon. "Looks like we'll be working together at some point in the future."

"Our prophecy was a little less specific than yours," said Renamon. "It just said that we'd have many adventures before us, but trust me when we say that we'll do all that we can to help you bring down the Sith. If we have to single-handedly clear our way through all the droid armies so that you can confront them at your full strength, we'd do it without a second thought."

"You think you're capable of that?" asked Anakin.

"Digivolution gives them many abilities," said Henry.

"Then I appreciate it very much," grinned Anakin. "Aayla, looks like you and I will be working together from now on."

"Not necessarily all the time," said Mace Windu. "The 327th and 501st will separate across the galaxy on many mission, but if we suspect heavy Sith involvement, then the two of you will definitely be sent in together. Both of you two are the most skilled Knights we have."

"And you share the same initials," said Terriermon. Everyone turned to look at him. "Oh, come on! Don't tell me I'm the only one who noticed that Anakin Skywalker and Aayla Secura both have the initials A-S."

"To be honest, I never noticed before," pondered Aayla. "But, bizarrely, you're right."

"Terriermon may be a big joker," said Henry. "But my partner does tend to notice little details like that. Often they aren't important, but sometimes they can be."

"I don't think initials are that important to be honest," said Mace.

"I don't know," said Ahsoka, "my name starts with A as well, and T comes after S in the alphabet."

"I think we're straying from the topic a little bit," Mace tried to drag them back, but to his surprise and slight annoyance, Commander Ponds said, in a jocular tone:-

"But I thought that there was no such thing as coincidence, sir."

Terriermon tried not to laugh.

He failed.

Dismally.

All the other clones also laughed, as did the Tamers and Ahsoka. Anakin, Obi-Wan, Aayla, Renamon, Lopmon and Yularen all looked like they were trying to swallow a frog.

Obi-Wan recovered first and said, "Yes, well, Anakin, Ahsoka. One of the most important things to remember is this. Hardly anybody in this dimension has ever heard of a Digimon, and we want to use that to our advantage. We haven't told the Senate about them, you see."

"What?" Anakin was shocked. "Why not? Surely the Senate should be involved in all affairs of the Jedi."

"Not all the members of the Senate are reliable, Skywalker," said Mace. "We know that. Just last week, the Senator of Haurgab left the Republic and joined the Separatists. In order to give both the Republic, and you, and edge against the Sith, we want as little chance of a leak as possible."

Anakin frowned.

"Anakin, do you want this war won?" asked Obi-Wan.

"Of course, Master," said Anakin quickly. "As soon as possible."

"Then surely you can see our point of view. I know you're good friends with Chancellor Palpatine and with other members of the Senate like Senator Amidala, but the Digimon can provide us with what we need. The Separatists can't prepare for what they don't know."

Anakin frowned again, unsure of what to think. "Master," interjected Ahsoka. "I think this is a good idea. The sooner the war is over, the sooner we can get back to being peacekeepers instead of Generals."

"I know, Snips," said Anakin. "I have a bad feeling about this, but I will follow your orders, Master. I won't tell anyone in the Senate."

"And do you mean that, Anakin?" asked Obi-Wan. "You've exploited loopholes in our instructions before."

"I swear that no member of the Senate, or anyone who could tell a member of the Senate will hear anything about the Digimon from my mouth."

"And you, Ahsoka?" asked Aayla.

"The same goes for me," said the Togruta.

"And that applies to us as well, Rex," said Cody. "We don't tell the Senate a thing either."

"You got it. Not a word," said Rex. "I'm looking forward to working with you guys."

"The feeling's mutual," said Lopmon.

"Excellent," said Mace. "Now that that's settled, how goes the liberation of Ryloth space?"

"Very well, Master," said Anakin. "We're pursuing the remnants of the enemy fleets. We believe they may be massing for a larger assault somewhere nearby, but that won't be a problem for us."

"Don't get overconfident, Master," grinned Ahsoka.

"Stop using my own advice against me, Snips," Anakin chuckled.

"How much longer do you think it'll take before you've destroyed the Separatist presence above the planet?" asked Aayla.

"Not too much longer, Aayla," replied Anakin. "A couple of days at most."

"Good," said Obi-Wan. "We're planning to head over and attempt to retake the capital. We may need your fighters to take out any vulture droids flying around the place."

"We'll be there, Master," nodded Ahsoka. "And I look forward to seeing you new guys in person."

"And to seeing what you can do," said Anakin.

"I'd say good luck," said Terriermon, "but apparently that doesn't exist."

"Bye," waved Suzie, and the other Tamers, also repeated it. Ahsoka waved cheerily, then nudged both Anakin and Rex, indicating they should do the same. After they did, Anakin pushed a button and ended the transmission.

He began to ponder what he'd heard, turning it over and over in his mind. He was unsure of exactly how to proceed. On one hand, it felt right that he shouldn't include the Senate in this. All the reasoning that the other Jedi had given him were true, and Anakin liked having an edge in battle situations. But on the other hand, it didn't feel right not to tell the Supreme Chancellor things, but even worse, it didn't feel right not to tell Padmé things.

Nobody yet knew of his secret marriage to Padmé Amidala, Senator from Naboo, apart from the priest who married them, C-3PO the protocol droid he'd made as a child, and his trusty astromech R2-D2, and he'd very much prefer it if everyone else remained ignorant. Even Ahsoka and Obi-Wan had absolutely no idea, but Anakin sometimes suspected that Obi-Wan knew something but just hadn't said anything about it.

Not telling Padmé about things was something that had never even crossed his mind before. He'd promised Obi-Wan that he wouldn't tell a member of the Senate, but did Padmé count? She was his wife.

But, as Obi-Wan had reminded him on that fateful day back on Geonosis, were Padmé in a position like Anakin's, she would do her duty. So, he supposed that she wouldn't bear too much of a grudge against him if it meant bringing about the war – she was always talking about the end of it and hoping that it would coming sooner rather than later.

He made up his mind – he would keep his promise to Obi-Wan. Padmé Amidala would remain just as much in the dark as the rest of the Senate.

"Well, that was certainly interesting, sir," said Captain Rex.

"Did you see the way that little rabbit-creature fired lasers from his mouth," said Yularen. "Quite extraordinary."

"And we get to work with them," grinned Ahsoka. "This is going to be so awesome. I can't wait to see this digivolution thing. And more prophecies. I bet you're excited, Master."

Anakin grinned.

* * *

"That went well," said Lopmon, and meant it for a change. "But did you have to attack her hologram, Terriermon?"

"Momentai. It was just a hologram. She wanted a demonstration so she got one."

"Now that that's settled," said Rika, "can our own questions be answered? Who's this Wat Tambor person anyway?"

R4-G9 cause a holographic image to pop up. It depicted and being with a long robe that went from his shoulders to the floor, with a breastplate, with a couple of dials on it. His face was half hidden by metal with what appeared to be a speaker where his mouth would be. The square-shaped head that jutted out seemed to peer at them, and the eyes of the being were behind two glass panels.

"So, that's a Skakoan, is it?" asked Renamon.

"Yes," said Obi-Wan. "That's him. As a person he's not tough at all – he's a greedy coward, but he reasonably good at strategy." R4 changed the hologram to one of what appeared to be some kind of fortress standing on a plateau and surrounded on all sides by a giant gorge. "This is the Capital City of Lessu."

"That's where he's set up shop?" asked Rika.

"Effectively speaking, yes," said Mace.

"How does anyone get in there?" asked Henry. "Do they use aircraft or something to get across the gorge?"

"No," said Aayla. "The only way to get in besides from the air is via a holobridge."

"What's that?" asked Suzie.

"It's an bridge," said Commander Bly, "that can be turned on or off by the people in the city." A thin strip appeared across the gorge at one point. "We can't cross it properly, because they could turn it off while we were half-way across it and we'd go plummeting to our deaths."

"And they're sure to have anti-aircraft weapons just as they did at Nabat," said Ponds.

"Then how do we get in?" asked Renamon.

"We're not sure," said Obi-Wan.

"But I believe that I may have an idea about where we might be able to start," nodded Mace. The hologram changed again – it was almost as if R4 could read the minds of everyone there. This time is depicted a Twi'lek. It was definitely a male Twi'lek, and he appeared to be a rather tough-looking character.

"And know him," said Aayla. "Not personally, of course. But that is, unless I'm very much mistaken, Cham Syndulla. Am I correct?"

"You are," said Mace. "For those of you who don't know him, he was a political rival of the Senator of Ryloth, Orn Free Tah. He lost the campaign to become Senator, but he now leads a good deal of his people back here. They've called themselves the Freedom Fighters, and have taken up arms against the invading Separatists, with him at their head."

"So, are we going to turn to him for help?" asked Lopmon.

"The more the merrier," agreed Obi-Wan.

"He might know a bit more about how Wat Tambor is managing the assault on his homeworld," explained Mace. "And he may be able to find us a way into the city. In any case, we could really use his help. The more fighters we have the easier it'll be."

"Where does he live?" asked Henry.

"In a desert area not too far from the capital," said Mace. "I am sure that he will want to do all he can for his people, if only just to make Senator Tah look bad."

"You sure we need his help?" asked Terriermon, a grin spreading across his face, as the hologram changed back to that of the city.

"Probably. If we are to win back this planet," Aayla mused, "then this place is obviously the key target. We must retake it and liberate my people."

"The only problem is that holobridge," nodded Mace Windu.

"Trust me," said Terriermon. "It's really not."

The clones, the Jedi and the Tamers all looked at him sharply and with bemusement. "What do you mean?" asked Ponds. "Have you thought of a way to get us over there?"

"Well, you see, the thing is – we can fly," said Terriermon.

"No, Terriermon," said Henry. "You and Lopmon are not going to go into that city on your own, and you can't carry anyone bigger much bigger than Suzie. Besides, you can't fly in your champion forms."

"Can't I?" grinned Terriermon.

"No, you can't," repeated Henry.

"Henry," Renamon shook her head with a smile on her face. "You are really making yourself look like a dunce at the moment."

"I am?" Henry blinked.

"Well, if he is then I am as well," said Rika. "What is Terriermon talking about?"

"Let's put it this way," said Terriermon. "You have got a lot more Modify Cards than just those for Digivolution."

There was silence. It was a silence of embarrassment on the part of Henry and Rika, and a silence of confusion for all the clones and Jedi present.

"Ah," said Henry.

"What is it?" asked Bly.

"There's one thing that we haven't told you," said Lopmon. "Primarily because it slipped our minds, but we can do a lot more than just digivolve."

Rika, determined to make herself look less like the dunce she'd just been, continued, "Each of these cards encodes for a special attribute," she pulled a couple from her belt. "Since the Digimon are made of data they can acquire those attributes if we swipe them through our D-Arcs. This allows them to gain new attacks, added defence, added strength, regeneration ability, and other things like wings."

"That's right," said Henry. "They're very versatile. Mostly we don't use them anymore because our missions are mostly straightforward "beat-the-Digimon-that-is-attacking" sort of thing. But for more complex situations like this, they'd be perfect."

"Is that so?" asked Obi-Wan. "I will reiterate Plo Koon and ask for a demonstration."

"Who?"

"Never mind, Suzie," said Lopmon.

"Alright, you asked for it," smirked Rika, lifting one card before her eyes for all to see. "This'll be the card that will help you get across that chasm. Then she brought it up and slashed it through her D-Arc, crying "Digi-modify! Dragon Wings Activate!"

"Now, that's what I'm talking about!" Renamon yelled as data streamed out of her back and formed into two large, bat-like wings. With a heavy flap she took off into the air, and began to beat them up and down as if they'd always been there, hovering with a smug look on her face.

"Will there ever come a time where you cease to surprise us?" asked Aayla.

"Eventually, perhaps," said Lopmon. "But it'll take some time."

"Then it's settled," said Mace. "We'll head over to find Cham Syndulla and ask for his help. Then we'll go across to Lessu and scope it out. Then, some of us can cross the gorge via Digimon and get the bridge up, allowing the rest of our forces to get across and retake the city."

"Let's get marching," nodded Aayla.

"Oh yay," muttered Suzie. "My feet are going to be killing me."

* * *

But they didn't, because primarily, they progressed with inside, or standing on top of the AT-TE walkers, which moved along with the pace of a brisk walk. Several clones frequently walked along outside the walkers, watching out for potential attack, but they frequently changed places, so each clone had roughly about an hour of walking to do every day.

The Tamers gradually became accustomed to the idea of being stuck in this world, although Henry still had slight doubts about going to war. They had waved goodbye to Numa and had set off, watching the landscape crawl by from beside the large cannon situated on the top of the second AT-TE in the single file line. The Tamers had been given strict orders to drop down into it through the hatch should there be an attack.

Hours trekked slowly by as they stared at the surroundings. The clones seemed immune to the effects of boredom, perhaps because they'd been in numerous similar situations. The Jedi went into states of meditation in order to calm their mind.

However, the Tamers, particularly Suzie, got bored very, very quickly. Terriermon was of similar mind to her, while Henry and Rika also got very bored but were better at hiding it. Renamon, on the other hand, had a lot of patience, and Lopmon used to stand around for hours at a time when she used to guard the South gate as Antylamon, so they remained largely unaffected.

Terriermon and Suzie made attempts to while away the hours with miniature games – they spent a good hour doing nothing but rock-paper-scissors. Then they spent a further two hours playing the same game with Commanders Bly and Ponds, who were fascinated by the simplicity of the game. They themselves hadn't had much of a childhood and most of them were only about a year-and-a-half older than Suzie in reality, because of growth jars and supplements.

Meanwhile, Commander Cody attempted to teach Rika and Henry how to pilot an AT-RT walker. Because neither the clones nor the Jedi knew about biomerging yet, because the Digimon and the Tamers had refrained from telling them because they probably wouldn't be doing it for a while, both clone and Jedi agreed that the children should not be part of the fighting. Therefore, should the situation get a little too close for comfort, they want to have a way for the children to get out of the area as fast as possible.

Both Henry and Rika thought the chances of them running away while they're partners fought were pretty slim, but they attempted to learn anyway. Henry was actual fascinated by the technology, and often considered asking if he could tinker with it. But he didn't.

It wasn't until the third day of this marching that Terriermon finally broke loose all hell. He'd been very restless for some time now, and that was never a good thing when it came to Terriermon.

He felt a brief pulse of calmness wash over him, but it was over just as quickly. _Relax,_ thought Renamon. _You're not doing yourself any favours by getting all worked up._

_Can you blame me? Back home if I got impatient I could usually play a video game or something, or if I was travelling I could steal Henry's Nintendo DS and beat add my name to the high-score list again. But I don't have either of those here._

_You've still got me._

_And you want to try something to alleviate my boredom in front of the clones?_

_Not particularly. No._

_Then I'm still stuck with the same problem._

Silence fell for a moment, then Renamon said, _You know, it's scheduled to be our night together two nights from now._

_I know. You still want to go through with it?_

_Do you think we'd get the opportunity? Unless we get private quarters in the Jedi Temple, or somewhere else, then I don't see how without slipping away in the dead of night. If we didn't tell someone where we were going, they'd probably come looking for us._

_Boy, that would be difficult to explain, wouldn't it._

_Mm-hm._

Silence descended again. Terriermon glanced across at his mate. She looked like she was asleep, but he knew that she was anything but. She was very alert, listening for signs of danger, like a droid ambush. If she heard something, he'd know about it.

He looked across to Henry and Rika. The two of them were sitting side by side and Rika had her head resting on Henry's shoulder. All in all, it looked like a photo moment. But Terriermon didn't have a camera. Nor did he have an ipod, access to the internet or even a Game Boy. ANYTHING to alleviate this boredom.

With nothing better to do, he began to hum songs in his own head, starting with one in particular that made Renamon open one eye and give him a seducing look – it was the one that Monodramon had played to them when he'd found out about their relationship, and had some very colourful language in it.

For the next fifteen minutes or so, Terriermon just played the songs that he knew so well in his head, but then that changed to mumbling them slightly. This attracted the attention of the otherwise silent clones and Aayla, who they were sharing the AT-TE with.

Terriermon couldn't help but notice that their attention had been diverted to him. So he continued his muttering, "Advertising's got you on the run. Advertising's got you on the run. Advertising's got you on the run. Advertising's got you on the run."

And as he was mumbling this phrase over and over again, his mind formulated a little something that might temporarily relieve his boredom.

_Don't_, he heard Renamon think to him, but he ignored her. At the appropriate part of the song, he burst into a loud roar of song that caused everyone there, including Aayla and excepting Renamon to jump in surprise.

"WHAT A SPLENDID PIE! PIZZA PIZZA PIE! EVERY MINUTE, EVERY SECOND, BUY, BUY, BUY, BUY, BUY, BUY!

WHAT A SPLENDID PIE! PIZZA PIZZA PIE! EVERY MINUTE, EVERY SECOND, BUY, BUY, BUY, BUY, BUY!"

"What is pizza?"

"Something this universe could do with – as long as it doesn't have pineapple on it."

Terriermon laughed out loud. That had at least done its job, although he was now wishing they'd heard of pizza so that he could have some of it. But, you can't have everything.

* * *

Finally, something else happened a few hours later, which helped to liven Terriermon up a little.

The AT-TEs had come to an extremely narrow ledge that wound across the side of a huge cliff. It didn't look wide enough to allow one and a half of the giant walkers through.

"This might be a little tricky," said the clone in the cockpit of the first AT-TE in line. "Is there no other way to get past?"

"Not unless you want to try flying," pointed out Mace. "I have faith in your abilities. Now, let's move."

"You sure the ledge can hold our weight?" asked Rika.

"We're positive," said Aayla. "Don't worry, we've been in tighter situations."

Terriermon snorted. Aayla looked puzzled, and then snorted as well. She's made a joke without realising it.

The AT-TEs slowly began to traverse the ledge, which wove across the cliff like some kind of giant squiggly eel. From the top of the second AT-TE in line, the Tamers watched with apprehension as they began to move out across the huge chasm.

"Don't look down," Lopmon covered Suzie's eyes with one ear. "I know it's a cliché but it's definitely a good idea."

"Okay," Suzie mumbled as they slowly went along. She decided to counteract looking down by looking up, but that didn't particularly help either as the sheer cliff face above them made her think "high up" and that just reminded her of where they were.

Although in reality this was not the case, Henry, Rika and Suzie all thought that they heard crumbling rock several times as the feet of the AT-TEs pounded the ground much harder than they would have liked. Aayla stood beside them to reassure them and Obi-Wan waved at them in a casual way from the third AT-TE, as if to demonstrate that there was nothing to worry about.

"Look, there we go," said Terriermon, as they reached the point that could more or less be called three-quarters of the way across. "No need to panic."

There was a distant noise and a red laser smashed into the cliff wall just in front of their AT-TE. Startled – Jedi, Clone, Tamer and Digimon alike all looked up. On the other side of the wide chasm, side-on to the AT-TEs, several AAT tanks had appeared over the rise and had begun to fire at them.

"Ah, now would be a good time to panic," said Terriermon.

* * *

Thanks for reviewing everybody. But just to let you know, don't except rapid reviewing like this in the near future. I don't expect to get the next chapter up for quite a few days yet.

* * *

Next time...

How do they get out of this one? Do they find the Twi'leks they're looking for? The answer to this should be in the title.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 17 : Cham Syndulla**


	17. Cham Syndulla

Sorry for taking so long to update but I've had a few things to do. Anyway, here we go. This chapter doesn't see all that much action, but I quite liked writing it. By the way all, Tamara Caitlyn is doing very well on her own story and my newest reviewer, Justmerg, has just started one. I'd encourage everyone to read them.

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* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 17:- Cham Syndulla**

* * *

"Get back inside the AT-TE now!" Aayla called, throwing the hatch open with the Force and ushering Suzie inside. Henry and Rika looked at her slightly defiantly, knowing that their Digimon were about to go into battle once again, but Renamon forcibly picked both of them up and deposited them both in with Suzie.

"You'll be safer in here," she said. "And it's very important to us that you're kept alive."

"And it's important to _us_ that _you're_ kept alive," Rika countered.

"Yes, but we're Digimon," said Lopmon. "We're used to battling like this. Now stay here."

"So, what's the plan?" Terriermon asked, as the guns on all the AT-TEs began to swing around and fire on the AATs, which had stopped moving and were now just shooting at them.

"There's not much we can do, right now," said Aayla. "Each one of these walkers can take a heavy beating when side-on because of their thick armour. We just need to get past this cliff."

"But they could blast the cliff apart!" pointed out Lopmon. "Then everyone would go plummeting down."

"They certainly chose their ambush site well," remarked Aayla. Then all four of them covered their heads as a laser blasted the cliff wall above them. A large boulder detached itself and plummeted, ready to crush them, but Aayla caught it with The Force.

"But I suppose I could do this," Aayla said. The boulder floated down until it was between them and the enemy tanks. Then Aayla thrust her hands outwards and the boulder was catapulted through the air as if it had been fired from a trebuchet. It cannoned into one of the AATs with such a force that it flattened it.

"Good shot, Aayla!" called Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan himself took a flying leap from the top of his own AT-TE and came to land on theirs. "Nice aim," he commended the Twi'lek. "Come on, let's keep doing that since it seems to work." There were numerous boulders being shaken loose right across the cliff-side. Side by side, Aayla and Obi-Wan began to extend their arms and catch boulders with their minds, then perform throwing motions to send them whizzing across the chasm.

Once the droids spotted this, they began to direct their firepower at the incoming missiles. Many of the boulders hurled at them were blasted apart by their lasers. Many of them created glancing blows on the side of the AATs which damaged them, but they remained up. Some found their mark and either crushed a droid standing beside it, or smashed full-on into and AAT and rendering it useless.

"Nice work, you two!" Mace Windu called from the front. "Keep that up, and I'll lead an assault to go and engage them up close. Commander Ponds, bring up the Lightning Squadron."

"Copy that, General," Ponds began to bark into the comlink on his wrist. "Lightning Squadron, prepare to move out!"

Compartments at the back of each AT-TE ran out, to reveal two AT-RTs inside each one, in its crouching position. Clones leapt aboard and activated them, piloting them up to the front lines. The nimble walkers wove with an almost frightening agility around the larger ones and bounced aside if falling rubble threatened to crush them. Mace Windu himself leapt aboard one and they began to charge, rushing forward to the end of the thin walkway so they could approach the enemy tanks.

"You ever feel left out?" asked Terriermon, watching all this take place, and looking up at the Jedi standing before him, chucking boulders as if they were tennis balls.

"Not particularly," said Lopmon.

"Well, I say we start proving to Master Windu that we're actually useful. He hasn't seen us in action yet."

"You're just trying to make sure he doesn't kill you," remarked Renamon.

"As if," Terriermon protested.

"I can read your mind, you know."

"Or can you?"

"Is now the time for this discussion?" asked Lopmon. The answer came in the form of a red laser, which arced across the gap and took one of the back legs clean off the fourth walker in the line. The AT-TE tipped backwards, throwing the clone manning the cannon out of the cockpit. He tumbled to the ground, shaken, but unharmed.

"Guys," said Rika, popping her head out of the hatch which was still open. "I say we give them a real demonstration of what our Modify Cards can do."

"You have something in mind?" Renamon asked knowing the answer, as a boulder shot over her head courtesy of Obi-Wan.

"Oh yes." Rika grinned and pulled out a card from her deck. "You ready for a little boost Renamon."

"Always, Rika," Renamon tensed and readied herself. "Just say the words."

Henry popped up and glanced over Rika's shoulder at the card she was holding. "Ah," he said, and nodded approvingly. "Perhaps we can help too. Suzie, take this card."

Suzie, who still was a little lacking in her own deck, accepted the card from Henry and nodded. Everyone suspected she didn't really know what the plan was, but that she'd go along with it anyway. As one, Henry and Suzie swiped their cards through the their D-Arcs. Brother and sister together cried out:-

"Digi-modify! Strength Activate!"

"Oh yeah!" Terriermon and Lopmon glowed brightly for a moment, before they felt a large amount of power enter their little frames, so much so they felt like they could easily lift some of the boulders that Aayla and Obi-Wan were still throwing.

"And now for the clincher," Rika grinned. And she swiped her own card. The Digimon listened with trepidation and excitement as Rika shouted out the words:-

"Digi-modify! RizeGreymon's Trident Revolver Activate!"

Renamon yelled at the surge of strength as her left arm changed shape. It became metal, shining brightly in the Ryloth sun, with a red plated and rotatable shoulder. It had become what appeared to be an extremely large cannon.

"Now, this is more like it!" Renamon cried.

"Hop on!" Lopmon shouted. She and Terriermon took to the sky. Renamon raised her right paw and the two bunnies grabbed it, hauling Renamon off her feet with no problem whatsoever thanks to their upgrade. They rose over the attacking blasts of the AATs and shot towards them.

"Well," said Obi-Wan, tossing a rock. "I'm glad they're on our side."

"Indeed," nodded Aayla.

* * *

Mace Windu piloted his AT-RT and began to fire. Around him, the clones of the Lightning Squadron did the same, shooting at the droids leading the assault with the cannons that resembled long, thin noses. An AT-RT was not really built for taking on an AAT, but they were quite capable of taking one out en masse. So this was what they began to do. They crowded around one, dodging blasts in unerring agility and poured bolts into it until it lost power and fell to the ground with a crash, unable to hover.

They had done this with two now, and a good five more had been flattened by the boulders, which had ceased now that the Jedi Master and his troops were amongst the enemy. Aayla and Obi-Wan might have had good aim, but they were still quite some distance off.

They still had about six tanks left to destroy, when Mace Windu heard a high pitched voice, one that annoyed him whenever he heard it. "Hey Mace, we're coming in."

"Get out of here," he shouted, turning. "You can't take on a..."

The words died on his lips. Since when had the two bunnies been strong enough to lift the fox? And since when did Renamon have a large cannon for an arm?

The droids also spotted the incoming Digimon. "Uh, I think we're in trouble," said one.

"You bet your ass you are!" shouted Terriermon as they shot overhead, then wheeled around. Renamon levelled her new weapon at them.

"**TRIDENT REVOLVER!"** she cried, and let fly with three massive bursts of energy from the barrel. Her aim was dead-on and three AATs were suddenly in pieces as each blast connected squarely with the cockpit.

Terriermon and Lopmon released Renamon and she went falling down towards the ground. She landed before the three that remained and whirled around. "Looks like my cannons trump all yours," she growled, then she yelled the attack for the second time. **"TRIDENT REVOLVER!"**

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

With the AATs now mere wreckage, the cannon's job was done. The clones and Mace Windu watched with amazement as it morphed back into the gloved paw that was Renamon's arm. Terriermon and Lopmon landed smoothly beside her.

"But how?" asked Ponds.

"Henry said that Modify Cards meant that we are very versatile," said Lopmon. "And Rika has about the biggest card collection of them all."

Mace nodded thoughtfully. Granted, Terriermon's attitude and smart-alec comments got on his nerves, but he supposed he could get used to it. After all, nobody else seemed to mind. Master Yoda seemed to love it.

"I suppose congratulations are in order," said Mace, grudgingly.

* * *

When the AT-TEs reached the point where Master Windu and the Digimon awaited them, Aayla and Obi-Wan leapt down and approached the Digimon. "That was quite a spectacle," said Aayla. "And a great display of strength."

"It is not the Jedi way to use power in order to win," said Obi-Wan, "but it looks like you have that element down to the ground."

Lopmon looked a little shy at the praise. Renamon nodded in acknowledgement. Terriermon, unexpectedly, waved an ear dismissively and said, "Ah, forget it. Glad to help."

"Credit also goes to Rika for thinking that up," said Aayla.

"Damn straight," said Rika, who was now sitting on the AT-TE with Henry and Suzie as there was no need to hide.

Suddenly, Terriermon's ears twitched. As did Lopmon's. The two of them in unison turned to see a recon droid attempting to sneak up on them. But their keen hearing had detected its electrical humming.

"You better stop that guy before he sends messages to his leaders," Lopmon pointed at him. The Jedi looked across and spotted the probe droid as well. Mace automatically hooked it with The Force and caused it to shoot towards them. His lightsaber activated and cut it squarely in half.

The Digimon were all surprised by this, but not by the action itself. It was Terriermon who said, "Purple?"

Mace glanced at the blade of his lightsaber and nodded. "Yes, purple. That a problem?"

"All the lightsaber blades we've seen are blue," said Terriermon.

"You've only seen two before now, Terriermon," said Renamon.

"Touché."

"So, what do we do now?" asked Lopmon.

"Syndulla probably wouldn't like it if we marched all of our garrisons towards his hideaway," said Aayla. "It would look threatening and would also draw attention to that area."

"Secura is correct," said Mace. "Now that we have crossed the cliff-face, I propose that we send a small taskforce to try and find Syndulla. In order to create a good impression, the rest of you will head to the nearest Twi'lek village and do anything you can to help the inhabitants."

"I shall lead that party," said Obi-Wan.

"Good, Master Kenobi," said Mace. "Secura and I shall attempt to find Syndulla. And," he sighed. "I suppose you Digimon ought to come too. Syndulla probably will want to meet you in person before he makes a decision."

"Shall we get underway, then?" asked Aayla.

"Yes," said Mace, then he signalled to two members of the Lightning Squadron. "Stak, Razor, you're with us. We'll travel by AT-RT. Everyone else, you're with Obi-Wan."

"Yes, sir," said the clones.

A few minutes later, and four AT-RTs were running across the desert, leaving everything else in their dust. Piloting them were Aayla, Mace, Stak and Razor. Henry was sitting just in front of Stak and Rika just in front of Razor. Suzie was sitting comfortably on Aayla's lap. Neither of the clones had been to keen on taking on the smallest girl as a passenger, perhaps out of fear of damaging her by accident in some way, so Aayla had volunteered.

There had been some concern as to what to do about the Digimon, but now Renamon was keeping a very easy pace with the steady run of the two-legged walkers. Terriermon and Lopmon just glided overhead, occasionally alighting on the front of one if they required a brief rest.

Eventually they came to quite a steep hill that could truthfully be called a small cliff. The Tamers began to get concerned when they pressed on towards the edge. Suzie almost panicked, but Aayla reached out with her mind and soothed the girl. The four walkers leapt right off the edge and bounced down a couple of ledges until they were on the ground below. Renamon ignored all the ledges and dropped straight down after them.

Aayla was shocked. She shouted as she kept running, "These are the Plains of Cazne. What's happened to them?"

The large desert area around them was littered with debris and massive craters and huge scars in the turf. It looked a mess, and there were numerous gravestones dotted about the place. Henry's gut churned. "This happened recently?"

"Yes," said Mace as they kept running. "This took place a couple of days before we began our assault. A massive took place here between the Separatists and the Freedom Fighters that Syndulla led. Many droids were destroyed, but the Twi'leks were massacred and what remains of the Fighters have gone into hiding here."

Aayla squashed the twinge of anger she felt at the brutal punishment of her people, suppressing her emotions as all Jedi should. Then she said, "An interesting place to make your hideout. Not many would suspect you to hide in the spot where you were defeated."

"Surely this Syndulla will want to help us get vengeance for his people," shouted Rika.

"It's not that simple," said Mace. "Syndulla is the rival of Senator Taa, so he may resist our help."

"Politics gets in the way of everything," snorted Terriermon from the air.

"That is a view of many of the Jedi," acknowledged Mace.

"Surely he must have a good reason to resist us," said Renamon. "We always accept any help that we can get back home."

"Let's hear him out before we make assumptions," said Henry.

"Sound advice," nodded Aayla.

"Droids!" cried Lopmon suddenly. Instantly the four AT-RTs came skidding to a halt, causing the two airborne bunnies to wheel about and circle in order to stay aloft.

"Where?" asked Mace.

"Straight ahead," said Lopmon. "It's only a small patrol, I think. But it's definitely them."

"What kind?" asked Stak.

"I see them too," said Terriermon. "They're mostly B-1s with a couple of Supers"

"Then we can take 'em out easy," said Razor confidently.

"I don't think you need to," said Lopmon. "I can see something else. There appears to be a small force consisting of five Twi'leks sneaking up on them."

"Three guesses as to who they are then," said Rika.

"Let's press on," said Mace. "We can meet up with them at the battleground."

As the AT-RTs began to run again, Aayla called, "Can you see an orange Twi'lek male amongst them?"

"Yep," said Terriermon. "He looks like he's leading them."

"That'll be Syndulla himself then," smiled Aayla. "There aren't that many orange Twi'leks around and he's a distinctive figure amongst our kind."

"They've started the attack," shouted Lopmon. "Syndulla has just taken out one of the Supers and the other Twi'leks are taking out all of the B-1s."

"And they don't appear to be finding it difficult," observed Renamon through her mate's eyes. "They have very good aim."

"Cham Syndulla has had no experience at being a soldier before last week," said Aayla. "But war can have many affects on people."

_That's what I'm worried about,_ thought Henry.

_Henry, you're thoughts are no longer private when I'm around,_ came Terriermon's voice. _Relax, already. The war is happening right now so worrying about the idea isn't going to help. Momentai._

Henry resisted the urge to chuckle at his incorrigible partner. Momentai may be very irritating to some people, but it worked on so many levels.

* * *

Sure enough, when they reached the scene, there were numerous battle-droids filled with holes and lying pathetically on the ground. They hadn't stood a chance. Those Twi'leks that had survived the massacre had been the toughest ones and the droids were up against them on their own ground, which they knew better than anyone despite the recent destruction.

But there was no sign of any Twi'leks.

Renamon leapt on top of a large, downed tank-like vehicle, which Aayla said was used to transport droids. Terriermon and Renamon flapped down to join her. Stak and Razor hopped off their AT-RTs and inspected the droids that had been shot to pieces.

"Well, looks like these Freedom Fighters have got some real spirit and courage," said Stak. "And determination."

"And they don't take any prisoners," said Razor, in an approving tone. "Reminds me of us a little bit in that respect."

"Shame we've missed them," noted Rika. "What are we supposed to do now. Do they have a hideout somewhere?"

"Oh, they're not gone," said Aayla. "I can sense them. They're watching us."

And sure enough, just then, three male Twi'leks and one female emerged from hiding behind large boulders. Each one had a blaster in their hands and they pointed them defensively at the company. Rika's hand edged towards her digivice, but Aayla motioned for her to be still.

Then, an orange-skinned male Twi'lek with a high forehead strode over the top and stood on one of the largest boulders, which meant that he was significantly higher up than everyone else. He looked down on the small force consisting of two clones, two Jedi and three children. The tamers glanced up to their Digimon, but they'd vanished.

Renamon had put up the filter again. They were, after all, meant to be a secret.

"I knew that would come looking for me," he said in fluent Basic. "But I didn't expect you two bring a Jedi of one of my own kind. Nor did I expect to see children travelling along with clones on their riding machines."

"Things have changed a little, General Syndulla," said Mace. "But we have come to ask you for your assistance."

"And you just expect me to give it to you, do you?" asked Syndulla with a degree of cynicism. "I find it bad enough that plenty of innocents get slaughtered in this war, but getting innocent children _involved_ in this war is a whole new level. Especially one so young as she," he pointed at Suzie.

"That's rude," said Suzie, glaring at the Twi'lek. Syndulla blinked at the unexpected reaction. "I have a name," Suzie went on. "It's Suzie. And you are?"

Syndulla gave Suzie a bemused look. Most children tended not to speak up to adults when the adults were talking, but this one showed a degree of bravery, especially when her protectors had blasters pointed in their direction.

"I am Cham Syndulla," said Syndulla. "And I apologise for speaking of you as if you were not there, Suzie."

"We never expected to have children involved in this war either," said Aayla. "But rest assured, these children do wish to be here, and they have some... talents, which have already been very useful in liberating our people."

Syndulla looked to Aayla. "Forgive me," he said. "I know of Master Windu here, but I am not aware of who you are."

"Aayla Secura," said Aayla, politely and inclining her head.

"Ah, yes," said Syndulla. "I have heard of you. Quite a skilled Jedi Knight, or so I heard."

Aayla did not reply to this. "Modest, too," noted Syndulla. "But I suppose that's a trait of all Jedi. Now, down to business. You want my help? Have you not the strength to retake Ryloth without us. And what about Senator Taa? I find it hard to believe that he sanctioned this – he's gotten a little used to his position in the Senate, and having me liberate Ryloth would cast a poor reflection on him."

"Politics is not our concern," said Mace. "We are merely considering the safety of all the people. We just wish to capture Tambor and end this occupation, and we could use your help to do it."

Syndulla's eyes narrowed slightly. The lekku dangling from his head waved a little. Aayla noticed this and took a little initiative. Her left lekku lifted itself and fell down before her, then curled up until it was draped across her chest, with the tip touching her shoulder. This was a Twi'lek sign that meant "peace." Syndulla looked to Aayla and copied her gesture.

He seemed to soften ever so slightly, but then he asked, "These children," indicated the Tamers again. "How exactly are they beneficial to you? It is not like Jedi to involve anyone such as this in business such as this without a very valid reason."

"That is a large secret," said Aayla. "Do you feel up to keeping it?"

Syndulla looked intrigued. "Who would I be keeping it from? I tell my followers everything."

"You would have to keep it from anyone who could or would inform the Senate," said Mace.

"The Senate?" Syndulla's eyebrows raised. "The Senate are not aware of this? Not even the Chancellor?"

"No," said Mace. "The war could be brought to a quicker end if the Separatists did not know why these children are so special to us."

"But we are not tools of war," Rika put in unexpectedly. "We're doing this because we want to and because it's the right thing to do."

Syndulla considered. All throughout this conversation the other Twi'leks had been completely unwavering in their arm movements, keeping the blasters steady and trained on the Jedi.

"Has it stooped to this?" asked Syndulla. "Keeping secrets from those running the war in the first place."

"That's one of the reasons we're keeping it from them," said Mace. "The question of which side they are on seems to waver with many Senators. Therefore, it is best if nobody knows as there is no chance of Confederacy Leaders such as Dooku getting this information."

Syndulla paused again. Then he said, "Very well, I shall keep this secret and rest assured when I say my men will keep it too. Whilst I'd rather be a political leader, being a respected general can have its advantages."

"Then we'll tell you," said Henry. "We're Digimon Tamers."

"And what is one of those?"

"A human that shares a special bond with a creature known as a Digimon."

"And a Digimon is?"

"That would be me," said a voice from just behind Syndulla's shoulder. Syndulla whipped around and Renamon had to swerve backwards to avoid getting hit in the face with one of his lekku. The orange male Twi'lek started backwards and raised his blaster, pointing it straight into Renamon's face. Renamon raised an eye, and calmly disarmed him with a flick of her paw.

"There's no need for violence," said Lopmon, walking up behind Renamon, who tossed the blaster up and down a couple of times.

"Yeah," said Terriermon. "Make friends with a Digimon and you make a friend for life. Shooting one in the head is not generally considered the best start."

Syndulla stared in surprise, and was even more stunned when Renamon passed his blaster back to him.

"I think that we have a lot to discuss," said Mace from down below. "Do you think we could do it indoors?"

* * *

The base for the Freedom Fighters was, as the Tamers ha long since guessed, underground. Any base above ground would be suicide out on these barren and open plains, especially considering the Separatists had large droids that could fly – Vulture Droids was what Razor told them when Rika gave a description of the large things that had initially started the panic back at Nabat a few days ago.

The entrance to the resistance headquarters had been cleverly disguised as a C-9979 droid landing craft. Razor informed the Tamers that this was the most common ship used to transfer droid troops from cruisers to the ground en masse.

Syndulla was very wary of the Digimon, glancing back at them as if expecting them to strike at any moment. That was understandable – Ryloth had never been attacked by droids before so the Freedom Fighters had encountered several nasty things that were completely new to them, and this seemed like just another on to them. For this reason, Aayla and Mace both suggested that they hand back in the centre of the group.

As they entered a hole in the hull they saw the hole in the floor that led down to the rest of the headquarters. It was being guarded by a Twi'lek armed with what appeared to some kind of massive rifle. At the sight of Renamon (Terriermon and Lopmon were unnoticed due to size) he started and levelled it at them.

"It's alright," Syndulla held up a hand. "We can trust them." Then he glanced sidelong at them and said, "Can't we?"

"Two-hundred-and-ten-point-six-three-nine percent," said Terriermon off the top of his head. Syndulla had to repress a half-smile. He was fairly certain he could trust these creatures. The white one seemed to have an excellent sense of humour and likeable personality. The brown one seemed to be exceedingly polite, mostly. The yellow one seemed to be a strong, proud warrior, but she still had an air of trust around her.

Still, it paid to be cautious.

But it was their eyes that convinced him the most. They all looked older than their faces, especially with the childish expressions found on the white one. The children had the same essence in their own eyes. It was like they had seen a lot more horrors than he and his men, and that was saying something. Yet at the same time, there was a true sincerity about them.

As they filed through the corridors that had been excellently hewn, suggesting this place had already been there instead of being made for this purpose. There were numerous other Twi'leks dotted around them and all of them were holding some form of blaster. Henry looked at the guns disapprovingly – and ironically since he could turn into a creature with such an arsenal this place would have to be wiped off the map.

"This is what war does to people, Suzie," he whispered down to his sister.

"They all look so serious," she whispered back.

"Usually when a Digimon attacks we get a warning on our D-Arcs," said Henry. "These guys could be attacked at any time by the droids and they don't have great warning equipment. Plus, they don't have Digimon watching out for them."

"Until now," said Rika.

"Quite," nodded Aayla from a few paces ahead, turning to give the children a reassuring expression. "But you're even more used to battle than they are."

"I know," said Henry, sighing. "But I still don't like it."

"Neither do I," said Aayla. "But it is necessary, or the Separatists will wipe out everything."

Henry somehow doubted this. He was sure that there could definitely be reasoning with just about anyone. Look at Yamaki, he had once been impossible to negotiate with until he realised his error and he became one of the leading and most helpful people to the Tamers later on. He was sure the Jedi had tried to negotiate, but had probably missed something. Perhaps, when they captured Wat Tambor, he could speak to him and have a go at negotiating himself.

They walked past a set of cages, which contained big, bulky creatures that looked vaguely like crosses between large frogs and small theropod dinosaurs. "Blurrgs," Aayla informed everyone. "They come from the forest moon of Endor and we can use them to ride and carry great weights."

"Like horses," said Rika.

"I wouldn't want to ride that horsie," said Suzie as one of the bluurg approached and sniffed at her. She cringed. "I'd sooner ride on one of those AT-RTs."

"It'd be much faster too," said Razor.

"Is that a challenge?" asked on Twi'lek, a male with pink skin. "That is my blurrg. She could easily outstrip that riding machine of yours."

"We'll see," said Razor. "You want to find out later?"

"You're on."

"My money's on Razor," said Stak immediately.

Syndulla didn't repress the curve to his mouth this time. His men hadn't exactly had much to entertain them recently. Perhaps he could learn a couple of things from these clones.

They continued until they came to a wide open chamber at the centre, with a number of Twi'lek women and children, as well as a few men. It was almost like a bunker and, while there were some female Twi'leks amongst the fighters, the rest appeared to take refuge here.

"Aayla," Mace turned and addressed his fellow Jedi. "Syndulla and I must speak privately, leader to leader. Do me a favour and try and keep Terriermon out of trouble. We don't want him ruining the negotiations."

"I resent that," said Terriermon.

"But he's right," pointed out Henry.

"Did you hear something?" Terriermon asked Lopmon, who nearly rolled her eyes.

Mace and Syndulla retired to a place where they could speak without anyone overhearing them. Aayla led the Tamers and the Digimon to a place where they could watch the ongoing proceedings around the place. Stak and Razor followed.

"So, what will they talk about?" Rika asked, glancing at Mace ad Syndulla.

"Master Windu is better at politics than I," said Aayla. "And I would be willing to bet that politics will come up at some point in the ensuing conversation. But I think Syndulla will join us. He wants what is best for his people much more than personal gain. But he may still object to Senator Taa."

"Politics is naff if you ask me," said Stak. "We should free the capital as quickly as possible and blast those clankers to kingdom come."

"Surprisingly, I am with you on that one," said Lopmon. "We don't have a good history with politicians. Yamaki is always telling us about how many strings he had to pull to convince the government not to restart the Juggernaut program."

Inevitably, both clones asked, "The what?" at the same time, so Henry, who had the best memory for technological detail, explaining about HYPNOS, Yuggoth, Juggernaut and the other programs the government had tried to come up with.

"That's… that's barbaric," said Aayla.

"To be fair on them, they didn't know how far we'd advanced," said Lopmon. "That thought that we were just data, and that we didn't have thoughts and feelings."

"That, and many of the Digimon that came to the city didn't leave a good first impression," added Terriermon. "Many still don't."

At that point a nearby drumbeat started. Looking up, they saw a large number of female Twi'leks had walked into the centre of the room and were beginning to dance, swaying and swinging their arms in a rhythmic and synchronised way. Evidently this was a regular thing, because a large number of male Twi'leks entered the room at that point and began to find places to watch.

"I thought that they were all scared because of the war," said Suzie. "Why are they dancing."

"It's a distraction," explained Henry. "A ploy to take people's minds of the fighting. They did this sort of thing back on Earth."

"I know this tune," said Aayla. "I used to dance to this when I was small, before Master Vos found me and brought me to the Temple."

"Then what's stopping you?" asked Terriermon. "Why don't you get up there and strut your stuff."

Aayla shook her head. "I haven't danced for well over a decade," she said. "Dancing is not among the top priorities of a Jedi Knight. We practice meditation instead, but I do regular stretches to keep myself supple for combat."

"You haven't?" asked Terriermon. "Boy, do we need to get you back into it."

"Terriermon," warned Henry. "Let's not go into that."

"Momentai Henry. I didn't mean here. Not in front of Windu anyway. But seriously," he turned back to Aayla. "Don't you ever, you know, let loose and go wild. If you know what I mean."

"No," said Aayla with a wry half-smile. "The Jedi Temple isn't renowned for people going wild."

"We'll see if that'll stay the same," grinned the rabbit.

"You may as well go with it," said Renamon. "He'll never let up on you if you don't. Make it easier on yourself."

Aayla looked at Terriermon, who grinned broadly. Then she looked at the Tamers, who all looked a little uncomfortable, except Suzie who looked confused. She looked to Lopmon then, who looked apologetic and amused at the same time. Then Renamon, who winked.

"Alright," said Aayla, "I'll "let loose and go wild" some time, if, and only if, you all come with me, and you all do meditation with me sometime. Who knows, meditation might reign in some of that wit of yours, Terriermon."

"Never!" declared Terriermon, a little louder than he'd intended. Syndulla and Mace both looked their way. Mace frowned but Syndulla just chuckled as Terriermon waved a little cheekily at them.

"So that's a deal," Terriermon extended an ear. Aayla took it and shook it.

"I am fascinated by your outlook on life," was her response, "and wish to learn more."

"And I could say the same thing," said Renamon.

At that point there was a loud beeping from Mace Windu's general direction which caused a halt to everything that was going on. Everyone turned to watch as the Jedi Master pulled out a holoprojector and activated it. A hologram of Commander Ponds appeared in his palm.

"Yes, Commander?"

"The droids have started using Hyena-class bombers on the villages, sir," sighed the clone. "Several villages have been destroyed and more are following."

There was a silence. Syndulla looked like he'd been slapped across the face. His head was promptly placed in one hand and he sighed. Everyone was now looking to him expectantly, but everyone was pretty sure of what he was going to say. Despite grievances with Senator Taa, Syndulla wanted to save the people and they were being ruthlessly bombed.

"I shall speak with Senator Taa," said the Twi'lek.

There was no applause. Aayla stood up and walked over to the two of them, falling in behind them as they entered a side-chamber. The Digimon and the humans followed, but Aayla turned and said, "Wait outside. We don't want Senator Taa to see you. He is one of the most loyal followers of the Chancellor himself – he was even the one who nominated him to be Chancellor at all."

They nodded and retreated. Henry was left flabbergasted. Bombing villages, collapsing buildings, slaughtering innocents. Unpleasant images flashed into his mind – after the battle with Ogudomon as he destroyed Tokyo, which had been repaired by Fanglongmon later, he had wondered what would have happened had Mihiramon not come to warn them beforehand and all the lives that would have been lost. The thought made him shudder, but he had been spared the reality.

But it was _actually_ happening here.

Perhaps there really was no negotiating with the Separatists.

Henry's fist clenched shut. His resolve had officially hardened. Wat Tambor was going to be brought to justice by any means necessary.

* * *

The first thing Mace and Aayla did was to instantly alert Anakin Skywalker. The Chosen One had eliminated the last of the space forces just yesterday, so he had plenty of forces to spare to take out the bombers. Then, Mace a message through to the Senate, requesting the presence of Orn Free Taa.

Half an hour later, with the Digimon peering around the door so they could see but not be seen, a hologram of the Senator of Ryloth appeared on the holopad.

Immediately, both Renamon's large paw and Lopmon's large ear slapped over Terriermon's mouth at the sight of him. Terriermon felt the urge to shriek with laughter, which would easily give away their hiding place. The hologram depicted and extremely fat Twi'lek with numerous chin and four lekku, two of which hung over his shoulders. He barely looked like a Twi'lek.

Fortunately these measures were enough, and the Senator remained unaware of the Digimon and the Tamers watching.

"I suppose you've heard, Senator Taa," said Syndulla. "Of the fact that the Plains of Cazne have been wiped out. Of the fact that the Separatists have started a firebombing campaign. And, of course, of the fact that you're nice and comfortable and safe on Coruscant, while you're people starve and suffer."

"Don't test me, Syndulla," said Orn Free Taa. "I am the leader of Ryloth. I represent us in the Senate."

"Leader, you say?" snapped Syndulla. "I have yet to see any true leadership skills from you during this occupation."

"I think it would be better for all concerned if we put aside our differences and focus on what we have to do," said Aayla. "You can tear each apart verbally after we free the capital."

"And who might you be?" Senator Taa looked Aayla up and down with an appraising eye, one which put Terriermon and Renamon very much on edge. It was a similar look that Goro had given Renamon.

"This is Aayla Secura, Jedi Knight," said Syndulla. "And she has done more for the people this last week than you have in a year."

"Anyway," Mace interrupted. "If you refuse to work together, neither of you will be able to lead anything. A lot of your people are dying as we speak, and a lot more will die unless we Wat Tambor."

"So what do you suggest, Master Jedi?" said Senator Taa.

Mace flipped a button and a holomap appeared in the centre of the group, depicting the capital. "Okay, here's the plan," said Mace, indicating the holomap. "Wat Tambor has taken the capital for his own. Therefore, we need to retake this city and capture him."

"If I know anything about Wat Tambor," said Aayla, "He is extremely greedy. Unless the situation gets truly desperate for him, he will not leave the planet the planet until he's taken everything worth a large some of money. That's probably why he invaded in the first place. This system is not particularly useful from a strategic viewpoint."

"Exactly," said Mace. "Once we find a way to breach the capital, all we need to do is capture Tambor to end this. Skywalker's taking out the bombers as we speak, and he'll be our trump card in retaking the city. Senator Taa," he turned to the fat Twi'lek. "We need Syndulla's help to win, but he and his men are reluctant to join you for fear of another armed occupation."

"You want to clones to leave once the droids have been dealt with."

"Absolutely," said Syndulla. "My men agree – Ryloth should be entirely free, not just a station for troops."

"If that is the case," said Senator Taa, "then I give you my word that Ryloth will be a clone-free planet, as soon as all the droids have been dealt with."

"You need to give the Senator something in return, Syndulla," said Mace. "A promise of your own. He is concerned that you will seize power."

"Power does not matter to me just now," said Syndulla. "The freedom of the people is far more important than personal gain."

Aayla barely heard it, but she just heard Terriermon say "All for one, and one for all."

Senator Taa didn't hear this, so he nodded and said, "Then I leave the liberation of the Capital in your capable hands, Master Windu."

The hologram faded, as did the holomap. Syndulla's face, which had been a stony mask throughout that whole conversation, split into a grin.

"It feels to know something that the Senator does not," he said, glancing to the Digimon.

"Glad we make you feel happy," said Lopmon.

"It's time for me to tell my people," said Syndulla. He left the room, as did Mace.

"Are you sure that guy was a Twi'lek?" asked Terriermon innocently. "Because he was, he was a blot on your species. Or should I say, a blob."

Aayla couldn't help but laugh. "I am not to lie to you," she said. "But I think we could be led by someone far better."

"Did you see the way he looked at you?" asked Rika. "Didn't take a genius to figure out what was going through his head."

"I am used to it," said Aayla. "I've been undercover to places full of people like him many times."

There was a loud cheering coming from outside. Evidently Syndulla had given his motivational speech and it had gone down very well.

Suzie noticed her older brother was looking a little subdued. "Are you okay, Henry?"

"Yeah," he said. "I'm fine. It's just… this Wat Tambor sounds terrible. I never thought that they'd be capable of something like this."

"You have too much faith in human nature, Henry," said Terriermon. "Or Skakoan nature, or whatever."

"He's got to be stopped," Henry's eyes narrowed.

"Does this mean that all your doubts have been put to one side and squashed under a boulder?" asked Rika.

"Yes it does."

"Good. I knew you'd come around."

"Yeah!" cheered Terriermon. He abruptly ran outside and hopped onto Syndulla's shoulder, very much to his surprise. "Let's go kick some droid butt!"

"I like your attitude," said Syndulla.

* * *

After that, everyone began to set out. They were scheduled to meet up witht eh forces of Obi-Wan and Commander Ponds about half-way to the Capital. The Twi'lek shoulders were all riding their blurrgs, which were, while ungainly, very fast.

Aayla insisted that the children did not ride with the clones this time. The clones agreed to this, because they were more than likely to start having a few races with these blurrgs – all the Twi'leks claimed they were faster. But Suzie didn't particularly want to walk, so Rika solved that problem by slashing a card.

All the Twi'leks, except Aayla, gasped I unison as Renamon digivolved.

"Digi-modify! Digivolution Activate!"

"**RENAMON DIGIVOLVE TO… KYUBIMON!"**

The Champion-level Digimon ignored the multitude of stares that all the Twi'leks were sending her way, as she allowed Rika to lift Suzie onto her back. Then the red headed girl climbed on behind her. After a little convincing, Henry climbed onto the fox behind them.

"There better not be any funny business up there," said Kyubimon. "Or you'll have to deal with me."

As Rika and Henry coloured, Suzie asked, "What do you mean, funny business?"

"Oh, nothing," grinned Kyubimon. "Nothing at all."

"Let's go," said Aayla from her AT-RT and she powered it forward at a marching pace. Mace and Syndulla moved alongside her to lead the rest of the forces. Kyubimon trotted forward as well and pretty soon the air was full of the sound of marching feet. As usual, the bunnies flew overhead to watch for things coming up.

They left the plains of Cazne behind them, and had crossed a good deal of desert area, until the inevitable happened.

"Let's see if you were bluffing, clone," said the pink-skinned male and with a flick of the reins he sent the blurrg he was riding shooting forwards. Razor, glaring indignantly under his helmet for not getting a warning about this, spurred his own ride forward. Graciously, the Twi'lek allowed him to catch up until they both raced ahead, taking no prisoners. They steamrollered past the leaders at the front and bolted across the desert.

"Go Razor!" shouted Stak, while the other Twi'leks began to cheer on their pink comrade.

"Had to happen sooner or later," smiled Aayla, watching them streak ahead.

"You want to place a bet, Secura?" asked Syndulla.

"If you ask me they're going to draw and then argue over who won," said Aayla.

"Well, I'll tell you what they are," said Terriermon from the air, swooping low so he could be heard. "The word "amateurs" springs to mind."

"What are you saying?" asked Lopmon. "I know you. You always have something in mind."

"Kyubimon," said Terriermon. "You want to show them how its really done?"

"My pleasure," nodded Kyubimon. "You ready for a rush, kids?"

"Yeah, let's go!" cheered Suzie.

"Then hold on tight," Kyubimon instructed, feeling all three grip her fur that much tighter. "Rika, if you will."

"Isn't that cheating?" asked Henry, as Rika pulled out a card.

"Hey, with a Digimon, anything goes," said Terriermon.

"What's happening?" asked Syndulla, curiously.

"My guess, is we're about to see Kyubimon go shooting ahead," said Aayla. "There may be no end to their talents."

"Well, we can't wield lightsabers or use the Force," said Lopmon. "There isn't a card for that."

"True."

"Digi-modify! Hyperspeed Activate!"

"Now I've got it!" Kyubimon roared and with a burst she took off so fast that it was surprisingly she didn't leave a line of fire behind her.

"What did I say?" chuckled Aayla.

* * *

Razor and the Twi'lek were neck and neck, rushing over the turf and the sand on each of their individual mounts at a speed which would make a cheetah look bad.

"You ready to give up yet?" asked Razor.

"Not or your life," replied the Twi'lek. "I can still win this yet..."

The words died on his lips when Kyubimon suddenly overtook them both. "Sayonara," she cried as she zoomed over the ground.

Razor and the Twi'lek both brought their mounts to a halt and stared at the rapidly disappearing fox. "Show off," muttered Razor.

* * *

Nothing to say here except thanks for your reviewing and your patience. Hopefully I'll get another one up relatively soon.

* * *

Next time...

The attempt to liberate Ryloth continues. They lay siege to Lessu. Can they retake it? Will Wat Tambor escape?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 18 : Assault on the Capital**


	18. Assault On The Capital

Longest chapter yet, and perhaps the biggest fight scene yet. And now we get to meet the Skakoan causing all this trouble. Then we'll be able to meet some of the other Star Wars villains; like Ventress, Bane, Grievous and Dooku, and possibly some others. That's all from me, except I'd like to thank everyone for reviewing, as usual.

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* * *

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 18:- Assault on the Capital**

* * *

The following morning the sun did _not_ rise on the combined armies of Republic and the Freedom Fighters on the march, but only because it hadn't gone down in the first place. According to Aayla, half the planet spent half the year in darkness and the other in light, and then they swapped over.

The blurrgs with Twi'lek fighters mounted on top of them, walked squarely beside the giant plodding AT-TE walkers. They had successfully met up with the clones and Obi-Wan Kenobi, who had grinned at the sight of Kyubimon with the three Tamers on their backs. Dotted around were also numerous AT-RTs.

The plan was relatively simple. The Tamers were to use their Modify Cards to allow the Digimon to sprout wings. Then, said Digimon would be able to cross the chasm, each one carrying a Jedi on their backs. That way, the Jedi would be able to take control of the holobridge and ensure that it stayed up when the rest of the force charged across it and into the city.

Kyubimon was hanging back in the centre of the group as of now. She was doing this under the instruction of Mace Windu, because they were sure that they would have been spotted by the droids in the city by now. Therefore, Kyubimon was screened from view by the large walker before her. The bunnies were much less conspicuous as they had yet to digivolve, but they still rode in the middle, both leaning comfortably on one shoulder of clones Waxer and Boil.

Up front, Syndulla had now insisted on walking the final leg, and he was leading his blurrg by the reins. The Jedi had leant their AT-RTs to nearby clones – they wouldn't need them in the upcoming battle anyway. Behind the four leaders, Commander Bly, Cody and Ponds marched forward on their own transports, along with Syndulla's second-in-command – a male turquoise Twi'lek called Gobi.

As they crested the hill, the Capital came into sight. "Wow," said Henry. "It looks even more impressive in real life."

Lessu was basically a small mountain situated on a plateau. There were large numbers of buildings dotted on the slopes of the mountain, and the whole thing was surrounded by a large stone wall, as well as the massive crevasse. The only way through the wall appeared to be a large stone gate.

"There's no signs of damage there," noted Obi-Wan from the front. "How did the droids capture the city without damaging it in any way?"

"It surrendered," said Mace. "Once the inhabitants saw the massive damage being done to the areas around it, the city didn't let off a single shot. They just let the droids in on whim."

"You can't blame them," said Syndulla. "The Separatists are capable of catastrophic destruction with the push of a button. Look, Tambor's positioned my people outside the walls. He's using them as a shield."

"He has a habit of doing that," nodded Aayla.

Mace raised a hand, and the entire army came to an abrupt halt. They were just at the tip of a hill which led down to the entrance of the bridge. They were still some distance away, but that didn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

The Tamers carefully and quickly slid off Kyubimon's back. The Champion level fox slunk forwards, slipping through the legs of the covering AT-TE until she could see better. There was no sign of the bridge, so that obviously meant that it was turned off.

"So what do we do now?" she asked, loud enough for those at the front to hear her.

"Well," said Commander Bly. "Wat Tambor's not a fighter. You can probably bet that he has a ship somewhere in there so he can make his escape if he needs to."

"He probably doesn't think he will need to, but he'll have one just in case," agreed Ponds.

"I'll tell you what I think he is. I think he's a coward," Cody snarled. "Even General Loathsom was braver than he is. At least he led his troops into battle like a leader should, instead of skulking around a place like this."

"Sir," cried a nearby clone. "I can see some droid transports hurrying this way."

Everybody turned to see two large droid transports winding their way across a thin stone walkway very similar to the one the AT-TEs had been attacked on the previous day. Flanking them were four droids standing on what appeared to be upright hovercrafts of some kind. Waxer muttered to the bunnies that they were called STAPs.

"Those transports carry treasure, according to my spies," said Syndulla. "The Separatists just aren't content with capturing us, starving us and slaughtering us, but they must take all that we own that is worth anything too, so we will still be in trouble after they leave."

"Don't worry, Syndulla," said Aayla. "We will make sure that you get back everything they have taken."

"They're heading for the bridge," noted Obi-Wan. "I think it's time we got into position."

Everybody nodded.

* * *

Wat Tambor watched the line of AT-TEs approach on the other side of the chasm, and then stop. He was not a happy Skakoan. His effort to take Ryloth and steal all of its riches, which had indeed been his objective instead of taking it for the Separatists in general, had been met with nothing but failure, and none of it was his fault. Now, he had fallen out of favour with Count Dooku because his personal tactical droid, TA-175, had told the Sith above everything.

First, the Nemoidian General Mar Tuuk had failed to prevent Skywalker from breaching the space blockade, allowing the Republic to enter the atmosphere. Then the tactical droid TX-20 had failed to prevent the Republic from landing by letting them take out his proton cannons. Failure. Nothing but failure. He was surrounded by utter incompetents, and worst of all, he had a tactical droid that told Count Dooku about all of this.

He remained confident that he could quite easily maintain a hold on this place though. There was simply no way the Republic could take Lessu without any air support. Count Dooku's idea to start bombing the villages was designed to make other planets see what happened if the Republic won, but it also served the purpose of keeping the Republic's air forces busy, so they wouldn't be able to help the forces of Master Windu and the other two Jedi get over the chasm.

And Count Dooku had ordered him to leave. Ha, he was not going to leave yet. Not until every single valuable on this godforsaken rock was under his possession. There was only one shipment left to come now. He might be forced to depart without it though, because even if they arrived the Republic would probably just shoot them down.

"Emir," called a nearby battle droid, using the title he had as leader of the Techno Union. "The last shipment has reached the other side of the holobridge. Should we raise the bridge and let them over here."

"Yes, and not a moment too soon," the deep sounding voice of Wat Tambor came through the speaker that covered his mouth. This was his translator, as he didn't really speak a word of Basic. "Get them across immediately before the Republic makes a move. They appear to be holding their position."

"Sir," protested TA-175 from beside him, in the same monotone voice as the late TX-20. "What if the Republic should attack while they are still crossing."

"Then we'll turn the bridge off and watch them fall," shrugged Wat Tambor. "But if there's any chance of getting everything then I'll take it. You may not get the concept, but money is very important to people in the galaxy these days."

"But Count Dooku said to evacuate as soon as possible," said TA-175.

"And we'll begin the evacuation as soon as ..." at this point all that came out of the translator was a strange whirring. The dial had slipped again and what he was really saying was coming out. His hand came up and twisted the dial on his chest back into the correct position, "... as soon as the treasure from those transports had been loaded," Wat Tambor stubbornly persisted.

"Yes, Emir," said TA-175, exasperatedly.

Wat Tambor watched. He'd positioned the Twi'leks he'd captured outside the walls to prevent the AT-TEs from firing at them, or the prisoners would die. And there was no way the Republic would try to cross the bridge. It would be suicide. He was perfectly safe here.

* * *

The droids worked like clockwork. They'd been through numerous procedures such as this before. The holobridge appeared, forming a thin line of see-through blue platform spanning the chasm. The transports and the STAPs began the crossing, hovering across the bridge, while two battle droids wielding large scanners that resembled metal detectors began the crossing on foot the other way to meet them.

Halfway across, the two parties joined together. "You better hurry up," said one of the droids on the STAPs. "The Republic troops can be seen from here. We should get this done before they decide to charge."

"What are they going to do? Fly over?" one of the droids waved a hand dismissively. "They can't get across."

"No, but if they charge while we're still on the bridge, Emir Tambor will order it to be deactivated and you'll fall down."

"Yikes," muttered the other scanner-wielder. "Well, in that case, let's get this done."

Raising the scanners, they began to walk forward, one on either side of the first transport. They swept the circular ends up and down, scanning every inch of the transport. But there was no reaction from the scanners.

"That's one," said one of the droids. "And now for the other."

They repeated the process for the second transport, moving a little quicker than they usually would for fear of being caught out on the bridge when it was turned off. There had been more than one case of a foolish comrade not responding to the sirens, for instance if their audio receptors were malfunctioning, and gone plummeting to the rocks below. But there was no reaction for this one either.

"Okay, let's move. Your clear," said one of them.

"That's a relief," said another of them on the STAPs. The whole procession began to move forwards again. There was an air of relief amongst the droids. They weren't going to die after all. The Republic really was foolish. Everything was going to be o...

One of the scanner wielders suddenly was lifted off his feet and shot backwards at high speed. "Hey," cried his companion, and turned to see the droid come to a sparking end when he was skewered on a bright purple blade, gripped in the hand of Jedi Master Mace Windu. Flanking him was Obi-Wan and Aayla, both with their blue lightsabers ignited and all three were running right across the bridge and abnormal speed.

"Oh no!" cried the droid, seemingly unable to think of anything better to cry. "They're coming! Run! Run!"

He began to run across what remained of the bridge. The STAPs wheeled around. They didn't have anything to worry about as they would still be able to stay aloft if the bridge went out. "Blast 'em!" shouted one of the droids, and they opened fire, the laser cannons on the front of their vehicles unleashing a heavy barrage on the three Jedi.

But it was to no avail. The Jedi deftly swung their lightsabers, neatly countering the oncoming red bolts. Their pace didn't even falter slightly as they continued their run. One lucky reflection on the part of Aayla caused a bolt to catapult back and strike the centre of the STAP. This didn't do much damage but it sent it careening.

"Sir," cried one of the droids in the control room. "Look. The Jedi are trying to get across."

"I know," said the droid commander. "Turn the bridge off."

"But, sir," protested one of them. "The treasure transports will fall in."

"Do you want to be impaled on a lightsaber?"

"No."

"Then do it."

"Roger, roger." The droid pulled down on the lever with one hand. Immediately a loud, wailing noise began to emanate from the speakers above the room.

"Well, here we go," said Obi-Wan. "They're turning the bridge off."

"This is still going to churn my stomach a little," muttered Aayla.

"Ha," one of the droids on the STAPs pointed at the Jedi with an air of triumph that didn't reach its face because it couldn't. "You're going to die now! Bye Jedi."

The bridge flickered, and then vanished. All three Jedi deactivated their lightsabers as the ground beneath them, or what was effectively the ground, disappeared. With a jolt, all three began to fall. Down, down and down. Into the abyss.

"Well that was easy," said one of the droids, but he was distracted, as were the others by a loud wail of despair from behind them. They turned to say the remaining scanner-wielder had not made it to the other side in time and now he, along with the treasure transports and the crew inside them, were falling to their doom.

"Too bad for them," said one of the STAP riders.

And this distraction was why they didn't see what happened to the three Jedi. For three shapes rose up from the abyss to meet them – one large yellow fox, one large white rabbit, and one large purple rabbit, and all three had large, bat-like wings protruding from their shoulders.

Aayla grinned as Kyubimon swooped beneath her. The Rutian Twi'lek spread her legs and landed neatly and almost effortlessly on the back of her digital friend, her hands gripping her white mane gently but firmly. Mace Windu meanwhile found Turuiemon underneath him and he fell right behind her so he grabbed her shoulders as he fell past and clung on between the flapping wings. And as for Obi-Wan, his hands found their way to Gargomon's ammunition belt and he clung on grimly.

"Why do I get the one that's most difficult to hold onto," he protested heartily.

"Is that a reference to my flying skills?" asked Gargomon, equally heartily. "I'll have you know that I have far more experience than Kyubimon."

"And everything you know about flying, I know by default," laughed Kyubimon, as the three Digimon powered themselves upwards with their Jedi riders clinging on grimly.

"Hey, Aayla," called Turuiemon as they rose. "You're a real Knight now. You've got your noble steed."

Gargomon burst out laughing and Kyubimon chuckled a little a well, though the humour was lost on the Jedi. After all, they'd never even heard of the word "medieval."

"We've got a job to do so let's focus," said Mace.

"He's right," acknowledged Turuiemon. "Time to get down to business." Her switchblades sprang outwards and glowed white. **"GAUNTLET CLAW!"** she cried and made a vicious swipe in the direction of the STAPs overhead.

The loud attack-call caused the four droids to look down. Three of them only had time for a loud "What in the..." before they were belted by the flying blade of white light and sliced into uneven halves.

"That's new," muttered the last STAP rider, now resigned to his fate, which was a good thing because it came, in the form of large green lasers that belched forth from Gargomon's cannons and pelted him and the STAP. Both short-circuited and fell, oblivious to Kyubimon swerving around their remains and powering her wings upwards.

* * *

As soon as they cleared the cliff-top, the battle droids spotted them. Fortunately, because of the unusual circumstances they were slow to react. None of them had expected the three Jedi who were sure to die from a hard collision with the ground to suddenly shoot back up on the back of three winged creatures. Then the three creatures landed, their wings disappeared and the Jedi dismounted, re-igniting their lightsabers.

"Fire! Quick!" cried the closest battle droid, raising his blaster.

There was a chorus of "roger, roger"s and soon a veritable forest of blaster were raised and a storm of bolts began to zing forwards. Lightsabers whirred as the three Jedi leapt to the defensive and charged forwards, bolts ricocheting off their blades like stones from a sling. The Digimon ran right behind the Jedi, protected from blaster fire and ready to spring into action. The gap between the two sides lessened very quickly indeed.

Mace was the first to swing his blade. The droid that had ordered the attack found his torso abruptly hacked into two pieces. His arms and head fell to the ground with a clatter. Then Mace leapt forwards with a burst of energy from the Force, carrying him much further than he ought to have gone under normal conditions, and his blade stabbed through the abdomen of another droid, then he turned and deflected two bolts sending one shooting back into the face of a battle droid, while the other grazed the hip of another.

The damaged droid looked down at the scorch-mark, and when it looked back up it saw a purple blade slicing towards his photoreceptors. Mace calmly sliced the droids head into two pieces. Then he was confronted with a Super. But that was no challenge either. Mace ducked under its blaster bolts and lashed out with a heavy foot. His boot struck the droid in the knee and it toppled forwards and was met with a swinging lightsaber coming the other way as it fell past his assailant.

Turuiemon easily evaded the shots of two Super Battle Droids that were shooting at her, bobbing and weaving with the skill of a champion gymnast, perhaps beyond, and she quickly covered the distance between her and them. The closest Super attempted to grab her, but he switchblades and hacked forward in and X-cut, lopping it off. She brought one forward, stabbing it in the face, before leaping on top of it and carving a line through its back. Just as gravity decided to take action she sprang off the body and plunged both switchblades into the other. As soon as her feet hit something solid, she bounced upwards, and then brought one slamming into it again for good measure. Somersaulting off it, she lopped off the head of a nearby battle droid and hurled the body into another.

Turuiemon dropped down as a new volley was sent her way and slid across the ground on her back, feet-first, through the legs of a surprised B-1. As she passed through she brought up her blades and impaled the droid. Discarding the body she leapt upwards she lashed down and sliced through the chest of another, then brought both stabbing into the abdomen of another, lifting it above her head and heaving it over shoulder. Another Super began to shoot at the again, and Turuiemon dropped into a defensive position, nipping to the side of the blasts. Her switchblades began to glare white and she swung them at the droid that was still several metres away with a "GAUNTLET CLAW!" The light slashed through both a Super, and the B-1 that had been hiding fearfully behind it.

Obi-Wan sent off several blaster bolts with his lightsaber blade after they'd come shooting at him. Two battle droids were struck with their own projectiles – you'd think that by now they might have learned that it doesn't often work, but no. Their bodies collapsed into heaps. Then Obi-Wan pivoted on the spot and drove his blade through the globular torso of a Super. In the process of this, a second Super attempted to shoot him down, but Obi-Wan danced behind the skewered droid so its lifeless body took the shots, then he extended his hand around it and lifted the Super with his mind, before hurling it off to the sad. A deep yowl escaped the Super as it was chucked off the plateau.

Obi-Wan spun about and charged, lightsaber held high, into a little huddle of B1s that were amongst a crowd of terrified Twi'lek prisoners. Somehow, although he was difficult to see how he managed it, Obi-Wan swung his blade about the huddle of droid and Twi'lek, somehow managing to hit all the droids and miss all the Twi'leks. The first battle droid was taken out via a swipe through the midsection. The second droid was destroyed because Obi-Wan's blade arced over the head of a Twi'lek but went through the droid's neck. The third and fourth were taken out in quick synchrony, when Obi-Wan leapt between the two, his blade sweeping through the one of his round, before whipping around and carving the other into two before it could turn.

Gargomon headed straight for the nearest Super, which turned to fire at him. Skidding sideways to avoid being shot, Gargomon raised his own cannons and with a cry of **"GARGO LASERS!"** the green energy bolts hailed forth and crashed into the Super, burning so many holes it resembled a large grey Swiss cheese before collapsing backwards. Gargomon was under heavy fire from several battle droids now, but he quickly dodged and sprang upwards into the air. You might think a rabbit with such a build wouldn't be able to go so high, but he sailed upwards, and, in mid-air, he opened fire again. His projectiles pummelled into three battle droids, obliterating their torsos and sending their heads flying.

"Heads up!" he cried, and came down hard, dust rising from where his feet struck the ground. He gyrated around and emptied another round of bolts into a lone battle droid, knocking off all four limbs in the vicious barrage. With a loud cry he dashed forth again, directly towards a Super which had been firing at Obi-Wan. At the sound, the Super turned and saw his charge. It brought its blasters to bear, but Gargomon was too fast. **"BUNNY PUMMEL!" **shouted the Champion, and smashed his cannon into the Super, knocking it over. Gargomon's arm went with it and crushed the centre of its torso by smashing it to the ground. Then he flipped over the metal body and sent another barrage into another battle droid.

Aayla took a flying leap and somersaulted over two battle droids. They turned slowly and unsurely to continue shooting at her, by which time she'd already cut one of them down. The second stepped backwards in fear as her blue blade sliced through its blaster and one of its wrists, leaving it unarmed. "I'll just go over hWWAARGH!" it suggested as Aayla grabbed it with her mind and tossed it forcefully over her shoulder and into another one. The two cannoned together and fell in a pathetic, deactivated heap. Aayla sidestepped a couple of random blaster shots, then sprang forwards and cut through the droid responsible. A Super appeared from behind two cowering Twi'leks, but Aayla flung her blade like a javelin and caught it in the face. The blade was back in her hand before it hit the ground.

Aayla found herself surrounded by five battle droids. Her eyes narrowed as she glanced around. "Got you now, Jedi," crowed one of them, before all three opened fire. But they hadn't got anything. Aayla bounced vertically upwards, the Force powering her leap. Two of the droids shot the one across from them in the circle, leaving only three. Aayla flipped and landed feet first on the shoulders of another, crushing it as she came down, then she thrust out both hands. The two remaining droids, one of them being the speaker, suddenly levitated, were banged together in mid-air and then cannoned over Aayla's head into the city wall. When they hit the ground they were barely recognisable.

Kyubimon dashed forward and whipped around the lasers sent her way by a couple of battle droids. They stood, rooted in mechanical fear, as the fox zoomed towards them like a hunting wolf. She skidded under the lasers and pounced, landing on one droid and pushing it to the ground. Its flimsy head was crushed beneath her weight, light as she was. The second one tried to get a shot in, but two of her tails swung like knotted rope and smashed the blaster from its hands. The other tails lashed out and wrapped around its legs. Kyubimon continued her run, pulling the droid off its feet and dragging it behind her, but not for long. She now found a Super before her, but she bounced straight over the top of it. Her tails brought the droid smashing into the Super as she sailed over it and both fell to the ground, a mangled mess.

"Don't let her get near you," cried a battle droid.

"Roger, roger," chorused two others, and they began to do exactly what they'd been doing before anyway, which was to shoot at the dodging, weaving Digimon heading their way.

"You aren't the only one with ranged attacks," muttered Kyubimon to herself. She veered off to the left, before abruptly changing course again, the again, zigzagging all over the place. The droids stopped shooting confused and slightly intimidated. Kyubimon responded by leaping atop a rock and lifting her tails over her head. **"FOX TAIL INFERNO!"** she cried. The tips flamed briefly before nine small balls of fire were propelled through the air to land on the droids, penetrating their armour and frying their circuitry. Kyubimon ran through the rubble of the three and met another Super. She didn't falter and bludgeoned into it, sending it flat onto its back. She landed, wheeled around and finished it by lacerating its weaker abdomen with her claws.

Mace's expression was stony as his blade sang, cleaving a startled battle droid that had tried to back away into two pieces up the middle. Another attempted to shoot at him from behind, but he took a vicious swipe around and the blade connected squarely with the bolt. Result, it struck the caster in the chest with such a force it came out the other side. But then the bolt struck something which caused it to dissipate – the shield of a destroyer droid.

Mace glowered as the droideka opened fire with its repeating blaster, immediately putting him on the defensive. His face would lead anyone who didn't know him to believe that he was turning to the dark side – it looked so angry – but that was far from the truth. Mace began to advance forward, wildly deflecting the droideka's fire. Few could make any headway on a droideka when it got going, but Mace was doing just that. He wasn't Master of the Order for nothing.

The droideka looked startled if that was at all possible for something without a face, but Mace reached it and thrust out his hand, palm forward. It went through the shield and a heavy blast of the Force knocked the droideka backwards. It instantly curled into a ball and rolled, while Mace leapt after it. It struck the wall, leaving a large dent in its body. It tried to uncurl, but Mace was already there and his blade sliced through both it and the wall behind it. Then the Jedi turned and swiped through a battle droid as his previous opponent was still falling. Then Mace noticed a large AAT tanks attempting to glide through the open gates, but he never gave it a chance. With a wave of a hand, one of the heavy stone doors fell off its hinges and collapsed on the tank, crushing it to scrap.

Two droidekas rolled around the wreckage of the Super that Kyubimon had just torn to pieces. Kyubimon turned at the sound of their clicking as they unfurled and their shields were raised. "Uh-oh," she said, as she had no lightsaber to deflect their rapid blaster-fire. "I've got a bad feeling about this."

The droidekas opened fire, but Kyubimon leapt over the blasts and streaked off to the side, flattening herself as low as she could to be more streamlined. The droidekas struggled to follow her rapid pace, and indeed, failed quite dismally. But they stopped firing altogether when they were struck from behind. Their shields stopped the blasts Gargomon was sending their way, but they were still pushed backwards by the assault. "I'll hold them off!" Gargomon cried to his mate. "You attack from behind!"

Kyubimon nodded as the droidekas turned to shoot at Gargomon instead. Gargomon ducked behind a boulder and returned fire around it, furious bolts of green and red lasers crossing the gap between them in roughly equal proportions. Kyubimon surged forwards and went through the shield of one of the two. Her unexpected weight knocked it forward. Pinning it to the ground with her paws, her tails came down and grabbed the midriff, pulling it up behind her. Droidekas were designed for bending, but not in this direction. With a wrench, the metal snapped and the droidekas went offline.

The other one turned to look at her in surprise, and that was all Gargomon needed. Vaulting out from behind the rock, he charged forward. Kyubimon's tails flared and she send a volley of fireballs at the droideka before it could begin the shoot at her, distracting it long enough for Gargomon to reach it. Thrusting his arm through the shield, Gargomon struck the side of its head so hard that it snapped.

Gargomon and Kyubimon shared a nod before separating again. Kyubimon spotted three battle droids and a Super firing at a distant Aayla. But she quickly put a stop to that by tearing across the ground towards them. Within about twenty metres she cried **"DRAGON WHEEL!"** and leapt forwards, spinning like, well, like a droideka, in mid-air and erupting into a ball of fire, which promptly took the shape of a dragon and washed over all four droids, charring them severely and burning through them until they fell.

Gargomon also quickly took out three battle droids with his cannons, launching a flurry of lasers into them and causing them to fall over, completely useless to anybody, but then he was confronted with a large AAT tank. The giant cannon turned to point at him. "Oh, you think you got me, do you?" Gargomon hissed, more to himself than the crew of the tank. The AAT opened fire, but Gargomon lurched to the side and dodged. Then he sprang forward, pulled back his arm and shouted **"BUNNY PUMMEL!"** again. He brought his arm forward and slammed into the tank so hard it shot backwards several metres. Gargomon was in pursuit. **"BUNNY PUMMEL!"** he cried again, and repeated the process. Then again. Then again. After a total of six attacks, which had left the AAT severely battered, dented and charred, Gargomon sent it over the edge of the cliff with a final **"BUNNY PUMMEL!"**

Aayla nimbly dodged the clumsy swing that a Super sent her way, before hacking off the arm entirely. She practically skipped around the bewildered Super and plunged her lightsaber into its side. Then she kept running and a battle droid saw the oncoming Twi'lek. It turned to flee, but it was cut own before it had gotten two steps because Aayla's blade passed through its chest. It would just have tried to shoot her or someone else later if she hadn't. But then, Aayla found herself confronted with a droideka of her own. Her eyes widened and she didn't wait for it to open fire. She dashed to the side just as it did. It missed her and began to turn, trying to align its blaster with her, firing all the time. But Aayla was too quick. She sprang forwards, and her feet hit the wall, then she sprang off it, back towards the destroyer.

It watched her sail over it and Aayla's feet passed through the shield and she landed on it. Her blade deactivated and passed through to, then reactivated, stabbing through the droids head. The shield dropped and Aayla leapt off the droid and sliced through another battle droid before she landed.

Turuiemon kicked aside the useless body of a battle droid she had just dispatched, and then surged low towards another and brought both blades sweeping through its metal hide, cutting it down without a seconds thought. She was quite close to the wall now, and she saw a Super walking along it towards her. She glared at it, and released her switchblades into their resting position. Then she sprang forward, eager to try her secondary attack for the first time. **"LIGHTNING KUNG-FU!"** she cried and her gloved fists pelted the Super so fast and so often they became a blur, disregarding the fact the recipient was made of metal, until the Super slid down the wall, its torso almost flat. The switchblades popped out again and she swung about to impale a battle droid right behind her.

Turuiemon then advanced on the one remaining group near her, comprised of one Super and three B-1s. "Is there any point in continuing this battle?" said the nearest B-1.

"It's against our programming to surrender," said another.

"But we're going to die anyway," said the third.

"Quiet!" demanded the Super in his deeper voice. "I got a clear shot." He aimed his rocket launcher arm at Turuiemon and fired. But Turuiemon was just too fast and pirouetted to one side, causing the blast to go shooting past her.

"Not today," she declared and lunged forward to pierce the Super with her blades, ripping it open and ending its existence. The droids watched, bewildered, as Turuiemon swept around and took all of them out in quick succession – one to the head, and the other two to the chest, until the Champion was standing in a circle of discarded metal plating and deceased droids.

Obi-Wan thrust his hand out to the front as he absently deflected a bolt to his right, which burnt through the chest of a battle droid. A line of Supers found themselves falling over when the first was flung backwards and three others behind it fell like dominoes. The first scrambled to its feet and attempted a shot, but failed because his arm was missing before he could do it. Obi-Wan then swept through its chest, stabbed through the body of the second as it attempted to rise, then drew a line through the face of the third with the tip of his blade. Looking up he saw the fourth fall prey to Aayla's blade when she swung it through its abdomen. The two Jedi shared a quick nod before they separated again.

Aayla hurtled at a gathering of battle droids. Her blade flashed and it the space of four seconds the five droids fell to the ground in pieces. One lost its legs and head in a round stroke. Another two were sliced across the chest in the same stroke. The fourth was finished when her lightsaber stabbed upwards through its stomach area. The last lost its head because one of Aayla's feet lashed upwards and with a vicious roundhouse kick, the droids head was sent flying.

Obi-Wan cut down a battle droid as he ran past it, then swung his blade around to do the same to a Super on his opposite side. Two terrified battle droids were standing in front of him, shooting wildly as they backed away. Obi-Wan stopped running and watched with a smirk on his face, calmly deflecting their fire to the side. He watched as the droids continued to back away...

... and walked right over the edge, backwards.

Obi-Wan had to repress a chuckle, settling for just a triumphant smirk, before turning back and running to rejoin the others.

Only there was nothing left to fight. Not outside the city anyway.

"Well, I think that's all of them," Mace said, as the six congregated again. "Outside the city walls anyway. Impressive fighting to you Digimon."

"Thank you," said Turuiemon. "You didn't do so bad yourself there."

"Now we need to press on into the city and get that bridge back up so we can retake it before Tambor escapes."

"Shouldn't be too hard," said Gargomon. "Because I notice someone has ripped the door of its hinges. I hope they have that insured."

"Let's go," said Mace. "Aayla, you and Kyubimon get that bridge back up. The rest of you with me. We'll enter the city and hold off the droids."

"On it, Master," nodded Aayla. "Are you coming, Kyubimon?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Kyubimon began to run towards the ruined gates. Aayla leapt forward and landed astride her friend. The two of them rushed forward, with the other four pelting along behind them. Kyubimon veered into the city, to be faced with many more droids in the large courtyard that awaited.

"Through there!" Aayla directed her to a small door in the stone wall. Kyubimon instantly veered and shot into it as the droids began to shoot, their blasts striking the wall where she'd been, just as the other four entered through the gates.

Kyubimon sprinted up the passage, straight up a flight of stairs, bowling aside a startled battle droid as it he wasn't there, with Aayla clinging tightly to her main, lightsaber still in hand. As the sounds of combat, including the sounds of Gargomon and Turuiemon announcing their attacks, came through from outside. They burst through another small door, to find a room with four battle droids standing at various controls.

"You're not authorised to be in he-" tried one, but was cut off when Kyubimon leapt at him. Aayla bounded off her back and swung her blade through one and quickly stabbed another. The fourth attempted to flee, but Kyubimon batted him over with one of her paws and set on him. Aayla ran across to the controls and pulled on the big lever at the centre. With a whirring noise, the thin holobridge extended across the gap.

"Yes!" Aayla smiled triumphantly.

"Shall we go back down?" asked Kyubimon from the door.

"No," said Aayla. "We must defend this room until all of our troops have crossed, or someone could come in and turn off the bridge again."

"Good poiAARGH!" Something suddenly smashed into Kyubimon's side and the fox was sent rolling across the room. Looking up, she saw that a commando droid had bulled into her from outside, taking her by surprise. It, followed by another, burst through the doorway. The first one drew its sword from its back and leapt at her exposed flank, sword held high to strike her. But Aayla leapt in to intercept it and slashed through its midriff with her torso. The two halves collapsed, but unlike the battle droids, the commando's top half kept going, reaching for its fallen sword, so Aayla stabbed it in the head, which did the job.

The second leapt for the Twi'lek, but Aayla swung her blade, severing the hand holding the weapon, which went flying into the corner. Kyubimon leapt to her feet and her tails snaked around Aayla, grabbing the droid and swinging into the nearest wall with a will. Once, twice, thrice, whatever the word is for four times, then five. The brutally smashed commando droid fell to the ground.

"You see what I mean," smiled Aayla.

"Thank you," nodded Kyubimon.

* * *

"The bridge has gone up!" cried Commander Bly. "You ready, men?"

There was a chorus of cheers from the clone army and the Twi'lek Freedom Fighters. "We're coming too," Rika looked up at the Commander.

"What?" Bly looked down at the teenage girl from his AT-RT. "No, it's too dangerous for children without protection."

"Our Digimon are over there," protested Suzie. "You can't just expect us to stay here."

Bly sighed. He'd thought the children would have had more sense – they were unarmed, their protectors were already within the city, and anything could happen to them what with droid lasers firing all over the place. But he really didn't have time to try and dissuade them, so he said, "Alright, you go over the bridge, but no further, you hear? You're not to go within the city walls. And you travel with the AT-TEs. Is that clear?"

"Crystal," nodded Henry, who had more sense than Suzie and was more practical than Rika.

"Now then," said Ponds. "Shall we get going?"

"Yes we shall," nodded Syndulla. He raised his blaster to the sky and shouted charge, before spurring his blurrg into a run. All of his Twi'leks did the same, while the clones accelerated their AT-RTs and the small army of machine and beast hared down the hill and towards the bridge. The AT-TEs also started forward, going at full speed, which was still quite slow but matched quite a fast walk. The Tamers trotted along with the giant walkers. Although they were loathe to go this slow, they understood why Bly had ordered them to do it.

That, and if they didn't follow Bly's orders they probably wouldn't be permitted to come on future missions.

The Twi'lek and clone riders shot across the bridge, rushing quickly towards the battle scene. They were like a stampede and woe betide any droid that tried to get in their way. All of them were feeling a deep sense of triumph. No doubt the Skakoan scum, wherever he was now, was feeling pretty foolish. They'd beaten his trap. They had him cornered now.

The AT-TEs meanwhile were plodding along at their own pace. They weren't really going to be particularly useful in the upcoming battle, because they wanted limited damage to the capital city. They were only being used at all to prevent any droids from escaping, whether that be across the bridge, or into the air via a ship, which would be a likely route for Wat Tambor to take too.

The Twi'leks that had recently been prisoners cheered as the clones and Syndulla's forces charged through their lines. Two AAT tanks rounded the corner and began to aim their large cannons at the advancing troops. Immediately the clones opened fire and the blue lasers belching forth from their mount began to cannon into the tanks, blistering the sides, while the Twi'leks increased their speed and ran past the tanks and into the city.

The Twi'leks pulled their blasters from their belts and began to fire on the droid armies as soon as they were within the gates. Their blurrg mounts rammed the droids as if they were flimsy plants which crumpled before them, and some occasionally grabbed a droid in its toothy mouth and shook it before releasing it in a pool of drool and useless scrap. Droids fell in large numbers as the Twi'leks overtook the battling Jedi and Digimon. Two unlucky Twi'leks were shot, but the rest ploughed on regardless.

Then the AT-RTs charged through the gates, having successfully dealt with the tanks outside. The battle quickly became a rout, and the courtyard began to rapidly empty of droids because they were either being destroyed or they were running for their... well, not lives, but you get the idea.

"The city's been breached!" cried Obi-Wan, his voice somehow managing to register with everyone above the din. "Wat Tambor won't be sticking around, you can count on that! We need to find him before he attempts to flee!"

"I'll get right on it!" shouted Mace. "Turuiemon! You come with me! Gargomon! You stay and help Obi-Wan and the troops to clean up the last of the droids!"

"Roger, roger," grinned Gargomon, hammering a Super into the wall with a solid punch.

"Don't say that!" Turuiemon called over her shoulder as she took off in pursuit of Mace.

Syndulla wheeled his blurrg around and steered him to go crashing through a huddle of droids, while he shot two stragglers down with his blaster. Commander Ponds growled when he saw one of his men get shot in the chest by a Super, so he turned to fire on the offender, taking him out with two shots to the head in quick succession. Bly controlled his AT-RT towards one of the streets, dodging a rocket sent his way by a Super, and opened fire on even more battle droids.

"Syndulla! Look out!" cried Cody, suddenly. "Above you!"

Syndulla's head shot upwards and he saw five Dwarf Spider Droids standing on the cliff-face and looking down on him above him. Hurriedly he steered his blurrg away, barely dodging the heavy blasts from their noses cannons. As he did so, he turned and fired on the lowest one. It jerked back as a shot took out one of its big red photoreceptors, then lost its footing when two more hit it in the head, although to be fair it was practically all head, and it fell.

"Nice shooting, Tex," Gargomon commended him. **"GARGO LASERS!"**

He began to fire on the others as Syndulla said, "My name is Syndulla." Gargomon, to his credit, ignored this blunder and concentrated his fire on another Dwarf Spider. As it fell to his blasts, the other three began to fire into the throng. With screams, two more Twi'leks and three more clones lost their lives, and the blasts were large enough to do heavy damage to the mounts of all of them, killing the two blurrgs and wrecking the three AT-RTs.

Gargomon took out another as he himself dodged a blast. Obi-Wan hooked another with The Force and brought it shooting down to be impaled on his blade. The final one was taken out by the combined efforts of Cody and Bly, shooting up at it with their mounts.

"All right, men!" cried Ponds over the din. "We need to get organised! Cody, take your squadron down that street there and taking out all the droids you find! Bly, take you squadron that way! I'll take my unit down that street that Master Windu went down. General Syndulla, you may divide your forces as you see fit."

The clones nodded in acknowledgement and took off down their designated areas. Gargomon took off after Bly and Obi-Wan went with Cody. Syndulla hurriedly split his forces into three groups and sent them on their way too. He himself went down the path that Ponds had taken.

The AT-TEs finally reached the end of the bridge. They came to a halt and the Tamers, along with the clone gunners, listened to the sounds of battle raging inside the city. "Kind of makes you feel left out, doesn't it," remarked one of the clones.

Suzie had reminded the others that they were able to see what their partners could see through their digivices and all three Tamers were watching what was going on through their partners' eyes on the little hologram.

"Well, Kyubimon doesn't appear to be doing much," said Rika. "She just appears to be guarding a room with Aayla."

"Yes, well now that you've crossed we can leave and go to help out again," Kyubimon's voice came over the D-Arc. Rika saw Aayla look at her quizzically, but then the two of them left the room.

"Turuiemon's with Mace," said Suzie. "I don't know what they're doing though."

"And Gargomon's shooting on some more battle droids," said Henry. "I think I'll give him a hand." Henry's hand moved towards the cards in the holder strapped to his belt.

Gargomon levelled his cannons at the droids blocking the path. **"GARGO LASERS!"** he cried, and the green lasers rained down on the droids like, well, rain. Acid rain though, because it was burning holes in them.

"Are you trying to make us look bad?" demanded Bly, as droid after droid fell to Gargomon's onslaught.

Suddenly, Gargomon perked up and said, "Whoa, now that's a new one!" Then he turned to the long line of droids forming a physical barricade across the street and uttered and entirely new attack – one Bly had never seen him use before.

"**ICE BLAST!"**

A stream of bright white ice streamed out of Gargomon's mouth and enveloped the entire line of droids, covering their entire bodies and freezing them where they stood. The clones stared at their immobile opponents. "Maybe," said Gargomon, answering Bly's question, with a grin that said he wasn't really and feeling the added attack given via a Seadramon card fade away.

Bly shook his head, and the clones calmly demolished the frozen droids with their weapons before carrying on.

* * *

Well, there we go. Took me long enough, I must say. I've not exactly been busy this half term. But Ive just been watching Primeval mostly. Ah well, what can you do?

* * *

Next time...

The attack on Lessu continues. Wat Tambor must be apprehended at all costs, not only to be brought to justice, but so that he can't inform the Separatists about the Digimon.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 19 : Tambor Take Down**


	19. Tambor Take Down

Sorry for _another_ delay, but I've been working relatively hard for an important upcoming Biology ISA, so I've had limited time to work on this. But here it is at last. Let's see what Chapter number I'll have to be on to get 100 reviews shall me. Reviews make me happy. I'm almost up to an equal number of chapters to the prequel, though I've beaten it in word count already. And rest assured; chapter count will far outweigh the prequel.

Read on, faithful reviewers.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 19:- Tambor Take Down**

* * *

Kyubimon, with Aayla once more astride her back, streaked out of the doorway that lead to the control room, to see the last of the Twi'lek fighters riding their blurrgs disappearing down separate streets. The fox and the Jedi barely paused in their stride as Kyubimon swept around and shot up the closest of those alleyways and up, past the charging blurrgs, towards a column of droids that were desperately shooting at the closing AT-RT walkers and their riders, while getting ripped to shreds themselves by Mace and Turuiemon.

Kyubimon had taken this route knowing that they were trying to find Wat Tambor. Most likely, Mace had picked this direction for a reason, and Kyubimon was willing to bet that the Jedi Master had some vague idea about where they were going.

Cham Syndulla rode up from behind, his blaster sending out a constant stream of bolts, which collided with the droid line. One bolt struck a particular droid in the head at the exact same moment that Turuiemon hacked into it with her switchblades. This was fast becoming a massacre of droids. The useless bits of metal didn't seem to have any strategic knowledge or, if they did, they lacked the intelligence to use it properly.

"Master Windu," Aayla hailed him as her mount dashed forward, launching a barrage of fireballs from her tail overhead. "Where is Tambor?"

"I saw him earlier!" Mace thrust his blade into the nearest Super. "He's trying to escape! We need to apprehend him before he gets into the air!"

"He's not likely to escape this city by air!" pointed out Commander Ponds, his walker dodging a missile sent in his direction by another Super and returning fire with a vengeance. "The walkers outside will shoot down any ship that tries to leave."

"But we want him alive!" pointed out Mace. "He contains valuable information about the Separatists and he has a lot to answer for."

"In my opinion, death is too good for him!" Syndulla sent two shots into a battle droid's abdomen.

"But these droids are blocking the path!" cried Turuiemon, spinning a full three-sixty degrees and taking out three droids surrounding her.

"But we can fix that, can't we?" Kyubimon smirked, leaping to one side to avoid a barrage of shots. It would require a big effort – there were hundreds of droids lining this street – no doubt they were Wat Tambor's last defence while the Skakoan attempted to make his getaway.

Aayla reached down from Kyubimon's back and stabbed a passing battle droid, before wheeling around and striking one on the fox's other side. "Well, whatever you're going to do, can you do it soon?"

Kyubimon quickly sent a mental message to Rika. Just as predicted, from the AT-TE walkers outside, the fourteen-year-old girl heard, nodded and swiped another card through.

Kyubimon felt a surge of strength. "Back away!" she cried. Turuiemon and Mace, who were the only ones ahead of herself and Aayla now, got the message and quickly cut their way back through the lines, smashing droids to one side with mind and arm and slicing through them with their blades.

As soon as they got behind Kyubimon, the fox unveiled all. **"SPIRAL BLOW!" **she roared. Her mouth opened in a silent roar and a whirling, spinning, powerful tornado erupted from it. It washed over the droids and, to their shock, lifted them off their feet with a surge of strong winds. The screaming, wailing droids were hurled from their city, literally and went sailing over the walls to land as damaged shells on the ground outside. A good proportion was flung over the precipice.

"That is, if I'm not mistaken, Gaogamon's attack," noted Turuiemon.

"You are not mistaken," nodded Kyubimon as the ability drained out of her. "Shame I didn't get rid of all of them." For there were still about a hundred droids before them, although they weren't doing anything right now except staring in horror at Kyubimon.

"That's not normal!" declared one of them.

"Is that all you have to say after that?" Turuiemon scoffed. "If you like, I can show you a trick or two that I have up my sleeve."

"Don't let me stop you," Kyubimon said, but Turuiemon was already in motion. Sending a brief and quick message via her mind to her own Tamer, Suzie pulled out a card and also swiped that through her D-Arc, just as Rika had done. The Turuiemon leapt high into the air, sailing over Kyubimon and Aayla.

"Blast it!" shouted a droid.

"It? It! I'm a she. **STICKER BLADE!"** Turuiemon's gloved hands morphed into what appeared to be large paws, except they were made of metal and had large axe-like blades sticking out of the top of them. Then, these blades detached from the paw and shot down towards the droids, immediately replaced by another, which did the same, and again and again until a storm of little blades was shooting across the remaining droids. They were cut down where they stood, sparking pathetically.

"And that, I believe, is the attack of Sangloupmon," noted Kyubimon.

"Impressive," said Mace, "But we still have a job to do. Wat Tambor's probably up there somewhere." He pointed upwards to where the cliff-top ended. "He'll by trying to board a ship! Aayla, you take Kyubimon and head that way. Turuiemon, you follow me! There are two ways to get up there and we'll meet up in the middle. Ignore any droids you find, just try and get there. Syndulla, Ponds, you follow behind us and take out the droids we come across. Let's move!"

Kyubimon and Aayla immediately took off down their designated area. They immediately encountered more resistance, involving a large number of Super Battle Droids standing to attention, which promptly began to follow their orders and began to shoot at them. Aayla's lightsaber sang, deflecting the flying bolts coming their way, her blade shooting around Kyubimon's tail and over her eyes but failing to strike Kyubimon herself at any point. Kyubimon was slightly put off by the blue blade dancing in front of her face, but she made no comment as she weaved around the confused Supers and shot straight by them.

Behind them, they heard the sounds of AT-RTs beginning their attack, but didn't double back to help. They were on a mission.

Mace and Turuiemon were working along similar lines. Mace defended, and only struck down the occasional droid that was in his way, never deviating from his course for an instant. He was like some kind of unstoppable juggernaut. Turuiemon herself was all over the place, leaping from droid to droid and occasionally off the walls, sending off a few Gauntlet Claws here and there just to keep them occupied. And behind them, the blurrgs went into battle with a will.

Not far away, Obi-Wan Kenobi was also pounding the droid forces, with Commander Cody and his troops fighting faithfully beside their Jedi General. The droid fell before blade and blaster, many attempting to flee, but getting cut down all the same.

Elsewhere, Commander Bly was dashing up a street on his walker, expertly wielding it to step on and even kick a few of the last remaining droids. His clones worked tirelessly, seeking out the last few stragglers and annihilating them on the spot. The noise of Gargomon's cannon-fire reverberated around the city, leaving massive echoes that bounced from wall to wall, along with the droids that were hit by the actual cannon-fire smacking into the same walls.

* * *

TA-175 had a good head on his shoulders. For droids used by the Separatists, tactical droids actually had some sense, and knew a lost cause when they saw one. TA-175 was no exception. He had warned Emir Tambor, but the Skakoan had just been too greedy, trying to get every single last scrap of treasure when he already had a great mound of it. That last shipment wouldn't have brought him much to add to that load and that was going to be his downfall.

Well, it was not going to be the downfall of TA-175. Not if he could help it.

The tactical droid walked calmly towards the Separatist shuttle parked on the large landing platform. If Emir Tambor refused to leave, then he wouldn't pay the price for his leader's actions. He was going to leave Lessu, Wat Tambor and Ryloth behind him. Wat Tambor had disobeyed orders directly from Count Dooku himself. He deserved whatever the Jedi gave to him. Of course, TA-175 had noticed the giant AT-TE walkers outside that were ready to shoot anything that attempted to escape, but that was easy. He'd just go in the opposite direction, where their aim would be blocked by the city.

The Republic really was stupid, but not, he had to admit, as stupid as Wat Tambor.

What TA-175 didn't understand were the three strange creatures he had seen cutting up the battle droids. The size of average humans or Twi'leks, they had punched a hole, no, a crater, in his forces as easily as a gundark disposing of a nerf. TA-175 had mediocre experience when it came to species, but he was pretty sure that this was something new.

And something new was something he should report to Count Dooku. He had to know for future potential attacks.

The tactical droid walked up the ramp, and when he reached the top he looked over his shoulder. Wat Tambor had just emerged from around the corner. The Skakoan didn't have feet – his bottom half rolled along as if he were on wheels. This meant that the Skakoan couldn't go that much faster than walking pace if he tried.

Wat Tambor noticed TA-175 standing on the shuttle. "Well done, TA-175," he said in his deep voice. "Let's get out of here quickly."

But as the Skakoan and the two Super Battle droids flanking him approached the vessel, the tactical droid pushed a button that caused the ramp to pull up. "What are you doing?" demanded Wat Tambor. "Let me aboard this instant."

"No, Emir," droned the tactical droid. "You are a fool. You disobeyed the Count and refused to leave. You are not worthy of office."

"And who are you to decide that?"

"I am the one that is going to get away," said TA-175 in an infuriatingly calm way. Pushing another button, the sliding doors closed.

"No!" wailed Wat Tambor. "My ship! You can't leave me here!" In response, the shuttle lifted off from the ground and took off, shooting out across the sky.

There was a reason for Wat Tambor's terrible fear. The Jedi wouldn't kill him – not unless he forced them to, and he sure as hell wasn't going to do that. It was Count Dooku that worried him. The Count would give no second thoughts to his original plan if he was still in the city.

Dooku had ordered the tactical droid to bomb the city once the Jedi had invaded. That ought to send a message and kill the Jedi. They might be excellent warriors, despite their claims that they were not, but they were not superheroes. They wouldn't survive a bombing like that.

And neither would he.

* * *

"Up there!" Rika spotted the shuttle first. It lifted off from near the top of the city and began to soar through the sky. "Aren't you meant to shoot it down?"

"I can't!" cried the nearest clone gunner. "It's going the wrong way! I can't get a clear shot at it from here. It'd hit the Capital."

"You mean they beat us just by going the other way?" Henry cried. "Why didn't I see that coming? It was so obvious."

"I think you were thinking with the assumption that the pilot would be a battle droid, kid," chuckled the nearest clone.

"Why are you laughing?" snapped Rika. "I thought the whole idea behind this was that the Separatists aren't supposed to find out about the Digimon. Now, whoever's in that ship is going to tell them, and all because we were stupid enough to not think that you can go in any direction by air."

"Easy, easy, kid," the clone that had chuckled raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Everything's going to be fine."

"But won't the secret get out?" asked Henry.

"I like secrets," said Suzie pointlessly.

"Trust me," said the clone. "Whoever's in that shuttle won't get far. You have my word on that. I seriously doubt that word will get out about you and your Digimon."

"What do you mean it won't get far?" asked Rika, eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"Just watch," nodded the clone. Everyone looked up to watch the shape of the disappearing shuttle.

* * *

TA-175 was safe. The AT-TE walkers had not opened fire. They clones natural tendency to try and protect the innocent and not destroy their homes was a weakness which he had successfully exploited. The stupid fools had just let him go. He let out the strange, disjointed laugh of all tactical droids.

And now he had to make his report to Count Dooku. Pushing a button, he waited for a couple of seconds before a small hologram appeared in front of him. It was of a man, a rather elderly man, with a long pointed beard and nose. He was wearing a large cloak, linked by a chain just beneath his beard. At his hip, there hung a curved lightsaber. This was the Count himself – the Sith Lord and a very powerful man.

"TA-175," said the man in a deep voice. "What is your status? How goes the operation?"

"Emir Tambor is a fool," repeated the tactical droid. "He refused to retreat in time. I was forced to leave without him in order to implement the plan."

"Refused to retreat, did he?" mused Dooku. "That is most unfortunate. May I enquire as to why?"

"His greed overcame him. He disobeyed a direct order and stayed to make sure he could have all the wealth he could muster. And the Jedi managed to get into the city with no trouble at all."

"I did warn him about Masters Windu and Kenobi," Dooku shook his head disappointedly. "And from what I hear, Secura is extremely skilled for a Knight. He was warned. What lies ahead is his own doing. Initiate the plan. Send the Hyena craft to bomb the Capital. Kill the Jedi, and kill Wat Tambor. He is better off dead, where he cannot give away our secrets."

"Yes, my lord," TA-175, pushed a button on the nearest console. This meant that, nearby, a squadron of six Hyena-class bombers would spring into action and head for the Capital to raise it to the ground.

"Is there anything else that I should know?" asked Count Dooku.

"Yes, my lord," buzzed TA-175. "The battle contained something which I find rather unusual."

"Oh?" the Count raised a bushy eyebrow. "Do tell."

"As well as the Jedi, the clones and the Twi'lek fighters," reported TA-175. "There was also-"

KABOOM!

TA-175 never finished his sentence. His ship was suddenly rammed from the side by something and after a jarring second, the entire ship exploded, raining bits of shuttle and tactical droid down to the arid wastelands of Ryloth far below.

* * *

"Take that, tinny!" cried Ahsoka Tano. The young Togruta Padawan was back in the cockpit of her triangular Jedi fighter. Having seen the shuttle, she had casually blown it out of the sky with an impressive round of green lasers from the cannons. It exploded into charred metal and her fighter corkscrewed past the wreckage.

The astromech droid in front of her cockpit turned to face her, buzzing and whistling. "Thanks Arseven," smiled Ahsoka. "We really nailed him didn't we?" R7-A7 twittered in reply.

"Nice job, Ahsoka," came Anakin Skywalker's voice through the comlink, followed by another congratulating twittering from R2-D2. "Now let's hurry and see if there's still some fun to be had at Lessu."

"Yes, Master," Ahsoka replied. "And we'll finally get to see just what these Digimon are capable of doing."

"That's if they haven't been destroyed yet."

"They may not look like much, but somehow I doubt that they've fallen, Master. Master Kenobi mentioned something about one of them growing wings awhile back."

"I know," Anakin nodded. "That's gotta be something. It's just that I've seen far too many get shot down in this war. I'd rather these Digimon didn't go the same way."

"You and me both," frowned Ahsoka, as Master and Padawan accelerated their fighters towards Lessu. The two of them had detached from their main squadron of clones in order to help Master Windu. The rest of their fighters were taking out the rest of the bombers.

* * *

"Did you see that?" gasped Rika.

"That was impressive," acknowledged Henry.

"Go boom," agreed Suzie.

"Don't let Terriermon hear you say that," Henry had found his sense of humour again. "Or he'll get me to digivolve him to Rapidmon just to prove a point."

"That's General Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano for you," said the clone that had told them to watch. "If there's a fight with lots of explosions, you can guarantee that they'll be there to add to the chaos provided they can get there in time. And they're excellent pilots, and Ahsoka's only fourteen, almost fifteen."

"That's the same age as us," mused Henry. "I wonder if I could learn how to fly like that."

"Don't even think about it!" warned Rika, half serious.

"Well, I think it's safe to say whoever was in that ship was toast," said the clone. "I wonder if Wat Tambor was in there."

* * *

The answer to that question was, as you know, no. The Skakoan was reeling in shock, worry and horror. He was doomed. Doomed! Even if he managed to evade the Jedi, which he seriously doubted he could do, there was no chance of him getting out of the city alive. He'd either be cut down by an angry Twi'lek or clone, or Armageddon would come raining down on him from his own bombers – the same bombers he'd used to destroy all the Twi'lek villages. Oh the irony.

So he just stood, and waited for the inevitable. Curse his greed, curse his tactical droid, curse the Jedi and curse Count Dooku.

* * *

"I can sense him," said Aayla. "He's definitely up there."

"So that ship didn't have him on it?" asked Kyubimon as she hared up the street, not having encountered another droid yet.

"No, I couldn't sense any life-forms on it," reported the Twi'lek. "Then, of course, Skywalker arrived and it promptly became rubble. Sometimes I wondered where he learned subtlety, and why he never chooses to display it."

Kyubimon chuckled. "I'm looking forward to getting to know him, and his little Togruta friend."

"Alright," said Aayla, abruptly leaping off Kyubimon. "You go on and block him off. I'll take the shortcut."

"And what exactly is the shortcut?" Kyubimon asked curiously, cocking her head for effect.

"Straight up," answered Aayla, crouching low and then spring upwards right into the air, coming to land on a ledge on the cliff-face above. Looking down, the Jedi nodded her head to indicate what Kyubimon should do. The fox nodded in agreement, and her rapid sprint began again, racing up the streets and bursting around corners, paws pounding and tails streaming out behind her like bright, yellow banners.

* * *

Wat Tambor watched in horror as what appeared to be some form of fox burst around the corner, only it was the size of a person and appeared to have nine tails. "What are you?" he cried.

"Not the best way of starting a conversation," remarked Kyubimon.

Wat Tambor blinked. He hadn't expected it to answer. Naturally, almost anything that walked on four legs was pretty stupid in his mind. But this thing talked. He had seen it shooting fire from its tail at his droids during the battles going on down below, and had no idea just what this thing was capable of, or what it was.

"And what is the answer?" asked the Skakoan.

"That's for me to know and you to figure out," smirked Kyubimon. She paused, looked bemused and said, "Terriermon is really beginning to rub off on me. In more ways than one."

"Don't come a step closer," Wat Tambor pointed a shaking, thick finger at Kyubimon. He knew he was doomed, but he wanted to at least put on a brave face before his death descended upon him like a meteor shower. "I'll order my droid's to shoot you."

Kyubimon's eyes showed amusement. "Really? I just took out about two-hundred droids with a single attack. Do you think your two little lackeys there are going to have any effect on me?"

"I'm warning you..." Wat Tambor said nervously.

"The Jedi will be here shortly," Kyubimon was advancing now, stepping almost daintily along and closer to the stranded Separatist leader. "And you're going to spend a very long time in a cell."

"Stop! Come no nearer."

"Who's going to stop me?"

"Shoot her!" shouted Wat Tambor angrily. This thing was mocking him. He'd settle for taking it out if her could.

But there was no response from either of his Super Battle Droids. No red lasers shot towards the impudent fox-like thing. No clicking noise on their arms moving into attack position in order to shoot at it.

It was only now that Wat Tambor really noticed the humming sound coming from right behind him. He'd heard it, but it hadn't really registered. Turning around he saw that one Super Battle Droid was lying on the ground in two pieces. The other was still standing, but a blue lightsaber had been thrust through its bulbous body. The handle of the lightsaber was in the hand of a blue, female Twi'lek, who raised her eyebrows at him.

"Surprise," she said.

Wat Tambor started backwards, when suddenly, another Jedi – Master Windu – and another strange creature – a purple, rabbit like thing with switchblades on her gloves – appeared from the only other exit to the platform. As Aayla discarded the body of the remaining Super, the two Jedi and the two Digimon surrounded the Skakoan. Two lightsabers were pointed threateningly at him as the four of them hemmed him in.

"It's over, Tambor," glared Mace. "Are you prepared to surrender?"

"Er, I'm sure we can come up with some kind arrangement that would suit us all," Tambor said, then remembered it didn't matter.

"Not a chance," muttered Turuiemon, her switchblades twitching, almost as if they were alive.

"You have a lot to answer for, Tambor," said Aayla, blue blade pointed towards the side of his head. "You cruelly subjugated my people and you should be thankful that we have an influence with them. They'd like nothing better than to see you die. But you're going to go to prison instead."

"Oh, am I?" asked Tambor. "Well, think again. I can see our doom approaching, Jedi and whatever-you-two-are. Surrender is pointless considering I'm going to die anyway, and you're going out with me."

Turning to look, the four captors saw the six Hyena-class bombers heading their way. The large droids, which looked very similar to vulture droids but were slightly wider and had shorter legs, zoomed towards them at massive speed.

"Ah," said Turuiemon. "That's a problem."

"Not unduly," said Aayla. "I don't know whether the two of you noticed, but we have air support now."

Turuiemon and Mace glanced at Aayla, but then two Delta-7 Aethersprite-class light interceptors shot overhead. _Anakin and Ahsoka to the rescue, _thought Kyubimon and Turuiemon at the same time.

_Course they are,_ came Gargomon's reply to both. _They're good. I'll give 'em that._

* * *

"Look, up there!" Henry pointed, at the sight of six aircraft zooming towards the city.

"Hyenas!" cried one of clones loudly.

"No, hyenas are dogs that live in Africa," said Suzie.

"Actually, hyenas are not dogs. They're more closely related to cats..."

"Another time, Henry!" cried Rika. "They're going to bomb the city and us with it!"

"Not if we can help it!" cried the clone. The gun turrets on the walkers wheeled around and with shaking booms they began to open fire. The blue blasts skyrocketed upwards and zoomed amongst the fighters. They were relatively nimble, but not quite as much as your average vulture. Still, they managed to zip sideways and most of them avoided the blasts sent their way, although one was struck in the side and went spiralling out of control. It dropped from the air, spinning, and a plume of smoking rising behind it and struck the cliff-side on the other side of the gorge.

But there were still five more heading for the city, ready to cause widespread chaos. They were intercepted by the fighters piloted by Anakin and Ahsoka. The Chosen One's expression was screwed up into one of intense concentration as he let loose with a barrage of deadly bolts from his ship.

The vultures spiralled to get out of the way, but they could do nothing against the amazing skill of Anakin Skywalker. One of them was clipped by a bolt and slightly damaged, but another one was struck head-on by most of the barrage and exploded on the spot.

The damaged one slowed slightly and dropped back, where it almost instantly fell prey to a fantastic shot from down below from another AT-TE. The massive blue laser slammed into its hull and split it like a hammer to a nut, exploding the droid and sending bits of it flying.

Anakin's fighter zipped past the main group as Ahsoka made her run. Her own barrage was met by another of the three remaining Hyena bombers, clipping its side. It veered off; it's stabilisers out of control, and right into the path of the rest of Ahsoka's assault. The fourth of the six was instantly obliterated.

The two others continued to streak towards the city, intent on doing the maximum possible damage. Anakin executed a practically poetic U-turn in mid-air and let fly for a second time. One of the bombers veered off to the side to avoid the second, which was battered by the assault and rolled off to the side, spinning and almost colliding with its comrade.

And then there was just one.

"Come on!" Anakin cried, and let fly again, but the last Hyena somehow managed to evade his assault, rising above it. Anakin was now in danger of overshooting it with his faster vehicle and that would spell doom for many in the city.

"Hit the brakes, Artoo!" he ordered quickly. The astromech instantly complied and the fighter jerked to an almost-halt. Anakin gave chase once again, but he was too late. The Hyena bomber released its load and the bomb went plunging down towards Lessu. In a burst of anger that shouldn't be allowed but occurred anyway, Anakin eradicated the Hyena with another barrage of lasers, but the damage had been done.

The bomb was heading right for the landing platform.

"Oh no!" cried Rika. "Kyubimon!"

"Turuiemon!" yelled Suzie desperately as they watched the bomb fire down towards the place where they knew their partners to be standing. "Get out of there!"

"It's too late!" cried one of the clones. "We failed!"

"Not yet we haven't!" Henry pulled a card from his belt and only pausing to make sure it was the right one, it went through the slit in his D-Arc with a practiced easer.

"Digi-modify! Targeting Activate!"

* * *

"Well, here comes our doom," Wat Tambor sagged. Hope had momentarily been ignited again – he'd prefer a cell to death. But it had been extinguished once more.

"Not quite," Kyubimon and Turuiemon both had expressions that were halfway between seriousness and smirks.

"What's coming is not our doom," said Turuiemon, glancing at the resigned leader of the Techno Union. "It's our salvation."

**"GARGO LASERS!"**

Everyone whipped around and looked as Gargomon burst onto the landing platform, guns held high and firing on the descending bomb. The other two Digimon had used their minds to watch him make a mad dash through the city towards their mental signals. Now, with his targeting bonus, Gargomon couldn't fail to hit the bomb with his deadly hail fire. His attack connected squarely with the bomb and it exploded into a giant ball of flame about forty metres up.

"Another one?" Wat Tambor asked, too stunned to come up with anything else to say.

"Just call me Old Sharpshooter," Gargomon grinned, flexing his arm.

"But that's so long," grinned Aayla. "Can I just call you Gargomon?"

Gargomon frowned. "But that doesn't have the same ring to it."

Aayla laughed. "Sorry, Gargomon, but that's too bad."

"I insist you call me Old Sharpshooter," Gargomon pretended to look grumpy and demanding.

"I'm sure I can get the cooks aboard the Intrepid to figure out how to synthesise a pineapple," Aayla smirked triumphantly.

"I'll shut up now," Gargomon said.

"Good," said Mace. "When did you become such a joker, Knight Secura?"

"The day I met Terriermon."

"He does have that effect on people," said Turuiemon, with an expression of wisdom that was struggling to stay in place. "I remember what Rika and Renamon used to be like."

At that point, Commander Bly appeared, along with Cody, Obi-Wan, and several other clones. "Next time, can you tell us where you're going before you go shooting off through the city like that?" asked Bly to Gargomon.

"But where's the fun in that," Gargomon shook his head.

From the other direction, Commander Ponds and General Syndulla arrived with the rest of the Twi'lek fighters and a few more clones. Syndulla approached Wat Tambor and pointed his blaster in the face of the one that had caused his people so much suffering.

"I surrender," said Wat Tambor imploringly. "Don't shoot me. What are the terms of surrender?"

"Unconditional," glared Syndulla, without moving his blaster.

"I agree," said Wat Tambor immediately.

"Wuss," muttered Gargomon. Syndulla's expression became slightly less frosty and his mouth twitched.

"You've done very well, General Syndulla," Aayla deactivated her lightsaber, as did Mace. "You're a real credit to our race."

"As are you," said Syndulla, holstering his blaster, as several clones stepped forwards and began to lead the reluctant but unresisting Wat Tambor away to the detention level until he could be transported to Coruscant. "You've done our people proud."

"No," said Aayla. "You have."

"You're both Generals," pointed out Kyubimon. "I'd say you both have."

Aayla and Syndulla both smiled at her. "You're right," said Aayla. Then to Syndulla, she said, "I hope you continue to be an example of a true leader to the people. Who knows, one day, you may replace Orn Free Taa in the Senate."

"I shall keep trying," said Syndulla. "And, in future, if you are ever in the vicinity, Aayla, or you Master Windu, or you Master Kenobi, and are in need of aid, don't hesitate to contact us, and we'll give you what support we can."

"A generous offer," said Obi-Wan. "Thank you, Cham Syndulla."

"It was my pleasure," Syndulla nodded respectfully. "Now, you remember you're promise? The clone army must leave once Ryloth is free."

"Our planet is not yet completely free," said Aayla. "There are numerous pockets of droids left to root out, but the clones will depart the moment they have gone."

"Thank you, Aayla," said Syndulla. He jumped slightly as, with a glowing light, Kyubimon, Turuiemon and Gargomon all de-digivolved.

"Why don't you just go ahead and kiss her already, Cham," snickered Terriermon. He stopped snickering at the murderous look that Mace gave him.

"I'll have you know that the Jedi Code forbids..." he began, but Aayla interrupted him:-

"It's okay, Master. He knows. He's just looking for laughs, aren't you, Terriermon?"

"Yeah," said Terriermon, cringing under Mace's glare. "Nearly everything I do or say is a joke."

"And it's really not like that," said Syndulla.

"I know," said Terriermon. "That's why I said it."

Obi-Wan chuckled. "You're an enigma, Terriermon, you know that?"

"Do I ever? Renamon and Lopmon call me that all the time."

"And there is a reason for it," said Lopmon. "We really need to try and hammer tact into you, Terriermon."

"Henry already tried that," grinned her brother. "He failed. What makes you think you'll have better luck?"

Mace gave up and shook his head. He turned and shook hands with Cham Syndulla. Obi-Wan, Aayla and Renamon all did the same. Terriermon and Lopmon hopped onto Renamon's shoulders and offered their ears to shake. He took them, and then Mace said, "Let's go and get the rest of the city organised."

The Digimon, Aayla and Obi-Wan watched the two of them leave. "Jeez," muttered Terriermon. "I thought I was patching up our bad reception quite well, then I say one thing and it falls apart all over again."

"Perhaps you shouldn't joke about the Jedi Code then," said Obi-Wan. "It's a very sacred thing to a lot of Jedi, and Master Windu's never been the sort to appreciate humour on trivial things, let alone that."

"I'll remember that," nodded Terriermon.

"You better," said Aayla, as the group began to head back down towards the gates. "Or you'll wake up one morning to find yourself tied to the tallest thing around by your ears."

"I'll be good."

* * *

The reunion between Tamer and partner was much less tearful than the last one, but there was still a huge sense of relief in the air. The Tamers had been sure that their partners were all going to die for a few seconds there after that bomb had been released. But, thanks to the quick actions of Henry and Gargomon, as well as Anakin, Ahsoka and the clones from the AT-TEs almost everyone that had attacked the city came out alive. There were, of course, many dead clones and Twi'leks, but a lot less than there should have been considering the scale of the defence.

"That was close," said Suzie, gripping Lopmon tightly. "That was too close."

"Just adds more fun to the moment," said Terriermon. "What's life without a little risk?"

"Hear, hear," said Rika, and the two of them gave in other respect via bumping fist to curled ear, something which probably would never have happened a year ago, but hey, impressions can easily change.

"I like your attitude," said a voice from behind them.

"Of course you do, Anakin," said Obi-Wan's voice. "It is, after all, exactly the same as yours."

"I learnt everything I know from you, Master."

"I wish that were true, Anakin," said Obi-Wan.

Turning to look, the newcomers and Aayla, who was with them, saw Obi-Wan approaching with Anakin and Ahsoka in tow. The two Jedi pilots had landed their fighters not far away and were now heading over to meet the newcomers in person for the first time. Trailing behind them were the two astromech droids that had accompanied them here.

"May I present someone who takes after you lot," sighed Obi-Wan. "I'd hoped to squeeze the recklessness out of him, but still it remains."

"It's good to see you in the flesh for the first time," said Anakin, as the newcomers took him in. He was tall, about half a head taller than Aayla, and his hair was a distinct, dark-brown colour. Ahsoka was also reasonably tall for someone her age. Despite the limited difference, she was still about a head taller than Henry and Rika, if you didn't count Rika's hair.

"You too," nodded Henry respectfully, offering his hand. "I'm Henry Wong."

As each Digimon and Tamer reintroduced themselves, Ahsoka put her finger to her chin in an impression of Obi-Wan. "I notice that none of you have wings," she said. "But according to reports, you sprouted them and flew across the gorge."

"Yep," grinned Terriermon. "But it only lasts temporarily. We don't have wings naturally – we're just given the ability via the cards."

"I see," mused the Padawan. "What else can you do?"

"Ahsoka," muttered Anakin warningly.

"Do you want me to shoot you in the stomach with my lasers again," suggested Terriermon.

"I'd rather you didn't," Ahsoka sniggered.

"Look," said Anakin, looking slightly sheepish. "Sorry I managed to let that bomb get released onto you."

"Forget about it," Renamon waved it off. "Water under the bridge. You did what you could and you managed to take out all of the others, plus the shuttle so word didn't get out about us. That's forgiveness enough."

"That's very generous of you," said Anakin.

"We've had a lot of similar incidents in our world where a stray attack has caused some unwanted destruction," said Rika. "We're used to it."

Suzie was giggling. She was standing next to R2-D2, and they little pepper pot-shaped droid was twittering happily and stepping from foot to foot. His head span all the way round and back again. Clearly Artoo thought this little child was just as amusing as she found him.

"I like your robot," said Suzie.

"Droid," corrected Lopmon.

"Yeah, droid. He's funny and nice. Not like those mean droids that tried to shoot me and Numa."

"Who's Numa?" asked Ahsoka.

"A little Twi'lek girl from the village we landed at," said Aayla.

"Can he do any tricks?" asked Suzie, giggling as Artoo whistled cheerfully.

"Well, he can fly spaceships, unlock doors, play back recordings, and he can fly," said Ahsoka fondly. "Arseven here can't do that last one yet, but I'm going to ask Skyguy here to upgrade him."

"Skyguy?" asked Terriermon. "That's a good one. I think that's what I'll call you from now on, Anakin."

Anakin groaned. "Must you? I get enough of that from Ahsoka."

"Momentai."

"What?"

"It means "take it easy.""

"Oh, right," said Anakin. "Well, if you're going to call be Skyguy, then you have to call Ahsoka here Snips."

"Snips?" asked Rika. "Why Snips?"

"Apparently I have a tendency to get a little snippy," smiled Ahsoka. "It's funny because I've never noticed it before."

"I have," said Aayla and Obi-Wan at the same time. Ahsoka pouted. Terriermon laughed.

Then he asked, "What's Obi-Wan's nickname?"

"He doesn't have one," said Anakin. "My Padawan actually holds some respect for him."

"Hey," Ahsoka said. "I respect you too, Master."

"Sure you do," said Anakin. "Anyway, why don't you tell us about yourselves? I heard tell that you have a good deal of adventures to tell."

"Oh, we do," said Renamon. "But stories should be shared."

"It'll be our pleasure," said Ahsoka. "How about we start with the time we first met, Master?"

"If you must," chuckled Anakin. He, Obi-Wan and Aayla all shared a glance. They all knew that Ahsoka had many good traits, but being humble was not one she'd achieved yet.

Fortunately, the self-elected story-teller of the other party – the small white bunny – had yet to find the same trait as well.

* * *

The Twi'leks of the city had gathered a few hours later and they were celebrating their freedom. They'd formed a street with their own ranks and marching up that street were the clones and the Freedom Fighters, in a procession of strength, with two of the AT-TEs bringing up the rear. Some of the Twi'leks had clones had even changed places, and there were a couple of Twi'leks riding AT-RTs and a couple of clones riding blurrgs.

Standing to one side and watching the procession go by, was Cham Syndulla and Orn Free Taa. Once the Senator had been informed of the liberation of Lessu he had immediately flown out to the place, presumably to make the inhabitants think he had something to do with it. Syndulla, to his credit, didn't object, and the two of them waved to the cheering crowd of Twi'leks as they watched the procession go by.

Flanking them on one side was Mace Windu and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and on the other side were Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano. They just stood with their arms folded, and allowed the Senator and the leader of the Freedom Fighters to take the praise. After all, a Jedi doesn't look for glory.

The Digimon and the Tamers were watching distantly from the walls of Lessu, out of sight of the Senator and the officials that had come to take pictures for the holonet news. With them was Aayla, who had readily agreed when Renamon had reminded her, to stay out of sight of Senator Taa as well. Everyone remembered the way he had looked at her over the hologram.

They chuckled as a couple of Twi'lek children broke through the lines of cheering onlookers and joined the parade, waving with a false bravado that just made them look silly. But they watched Commander Ponds good-naturedly scoop on of them and up and put the child on his shoulder, so the two of them could wave together.

Wat Tambor was, understandably, being kept as far away from Senator Taa as possible, lest he blabbed about the Digimon. Commander Bly was looking over keeping a watch on the prisoner down below. As soon as possible, the thieving Skakoan would be loaded onto a ship and taken down to the cells of the Jedi Temple. Nowhere near the Senate. He could join General Loathsom down there.

"Quite a sight, isn't it," said Aayla. "Ryloth may not be the most significant planet in the galaxy but it's famous for its parties."

"Does that have anything to do with the number of attractive females?" ventured Rika.

"Partly," admitted Rika, "but Twi'leks do know how to throw an experience without the females."

"Shame we can't go down there and join in," said Suzie. "I like parties." But she knew why she couldn't. A human child amongst a bunch of Twi'leks would raise far too many questions.

"Is there anything you don't like?" asked Aayla, chuckling at Suzie's innocent nature.

"I don't like Ogudomon, or the D-Reaper. But I love ice-cream and chocolate and my dollies and flying and..."

"And this list will go on for hours," interrupted Henry, smiling when Suzie pouted at him.

"Am I on it?" asked Aayla with a smile.

"Yes," said Suzie. Aayla blinked. She hadn't expected an answer to her rhetorical question. But the answer touched her. She smiled at the little child.

There was something about these children and the Digimon that was ... different, to everyone else that Aayla had ever met. As a Jedi, she generally socialised with other Jedi, and their conversations were rarely as carefree and enjoyable as every conversation with these people seemed to be. Then, since the war began, Aayla found herself socialising with other Jedi less and less, and spending a lot of time with the clones. They were good people, but their social skills were deplorable. They just liked to talk about fighting. It was, after all, all they knew.

But Aayla found herself thinking that she had already grown much closer to these six than to anybody else she'd ever known, except perhaps her Master, but there was always a deep connection from Master to Padawan.

Aayla was suddenly beginning to find herself in a slight situation. Jedi were supposed to be compassionate, and she was a prime example of this, but forming attachments was forbidden. And yet, Aayla realised that she was doing just that. The six of them had let her into their lives with such ease, and it was clear that all six of them had already formed an attachment to her.

But it was forbidden.

But should it be?

The puzzle whirled around the Rutian Twi'leks head. The fact that Terriermon was sitting on her shoulder wasn't particularly helping her. Aayla had once formed a strong attachment to someone else before, and that was to a pet she used to have known as a Felucian cat-bunny. Her name had been T'da and Aayla had been devastated at her death, but had been consoled by Quinlan Vos. And T'da would often sit where the little Digimon was now sitting.

It dawned on Aayla that were any of these six surrounding her were to die, she would be equally devastated. They'd found their way into her heart and they weren't supposed to be there.

"Thank you, Suzie," she said. "Thank you all of you." She smiled warmly at them and they smiled back. It was almost like she was now part of a family. But the Code forbade her from this. Ugh, what should she do?

Whatever she decided to do, she'd have to puzzle it out later. The holoprojector hanging at her hip beeped, indicating that someone was calling her. She motioned for the Digimon and Tamers to duck out of sight just in case, which they quickly did, and turned it on. The little disc displayed two Jedi that she knew extremely well. One was Master Yoda. The other was another Jedi Master and a close friend of Aayla's. She wasn't on the Council, but the olive-skinned, headdress-wearing Mirialan Jedi Master known as Luminara Unduli was still one of the most highly respected of them all.

"Knight Secura, glad to see you survived through the victory unscathed, I am," said Yoda.

"There were some close calls, Master Yoda, but we pulled through in the end," acknowledged Aayla. "I'm guessing that you have a new mission for me."

Behind the hologram, she saw Terriermon's head pop over a rock and mouth "Again?" at her. She paid him no heed.

"Indeed," said Luminara. "We apologise for the inconvenience considering your recent victory, but, as you know, there are few Jedi available. All this really is is a scouting mission."

"What does it entail?" asked Aayla.

"Received a report, we have, of Separatist activity in the Alzoc system," said Master Yoda. "Informed us, Jabba the Hutt has, that they were spotted near to Alzoc III. A reconnaissance mission, we have arranged, for yourself and Master Unduli to investigate the claims."

"I see," said Aayla, smiling. "And what of the...?" she trailed off, casting a significant glance at Yoda. Most of the rest of the Jedi were still in the dark when it came to the Digimon, so in all likelihood, Luminara had not heard of them yet. And judging by the slightly confused look Luminara sent Yoda's way, Aayla was right.

"Needed, only a small portion of your forces are. The rest, stay on Ryloth they can, to assist Skywalker in freeing the planet from the remaining droids."

"Of course, master."

"May I ask if I am missing something?" asked Luminara.

"A secret, that is," Yoda looked up at her. "But for me to divulge, it is not. Sure, I am, that Secura will tell you of it out on the tundra, yes?"

"Naturally, Master."

"Very well, rendezvous with us in orbit above the planet," said Luminara. "There, we shall begin our investigation."

"And may the Force be with you," added Yoda.

Aayla nodded. The hologram of Yoda and Luminara vanished. The Digimon and the Tamers emerged from hiding.

"Alzoc III?" asked Henry. "Where's that?"

"It's an ice world out in the Outer Rim. I doubt the Separatists would be there without a reason. Alzoc III is not known for its tourism. It's a very cold place."

"Take a coat," Suzie nodded wisely.

"And what are we supposed to do?" asked Rika.

Aayla motioned for them to follow. She led them down to where Commander Bly was standing outside a cell containing Wat Tambor, with a clone lieutenant that they didn't know the name of.

"Commander," said Aayla, as the two stood to attention. "We have a new assignment."

"Excellent," nodded Bly enthusiastically. "Where is it at, sir?"

"Alzoc III," replied Aayla. "We are to take a few of our forces and investigate reported Separatist activity. Lieutenant Galle?"

"Yes, sir?" said the other clone.

"You are to remain here on Ryloth to help root out the last of the droids. You are in charge of the 327th until we return. And Skywalker is also staying, along with the 501st so, you answer to him. Am I clear?"

"Crystal, sir," saluted Galle.

"And that means that the Digimon are also now your responsibility, Lieutenant, but I have faith you will carry out your duties to the letter. You guys will take directions from him, okay?"

"Can do," nodded Renamon.

"Excellent," said Aayla. "We'll get underway as soon as master Windu comes to take Tambor here back to Coruscant." She turned and walked out of the detention level, the Digimon and Tamers behind her. Aayla noticed how much more informal she'd been when telling the six of them what to do. The whole issue of attachment rushed back to her, but she had already decided what she'd do.

It was certainly too late to halt this attachment, so she'd nurture it. The six of them were her friends and that was all that mattered. They worked in the opposite way to Jedi – their attachments were stronger than any Aayla had ever known. Therefore, if she were to work with them successfully, it only made sense if she did the same.

* * *

Thank you everyone for being so patient. But finally, another set of two is almost at a close. I have already beaten the number of reviews I got in the prequel, and I'm sure as hell going to have a much higher chapter count. Keep reading folks, and please review. And no, there is not going to be anything between Cham and Aayla. That was just a Terriermon-y joke, nothing more.

* * *

Next time...

The next chapter back in the Digimon World. With Ai, Mako and Ryo in the Digital World they need all the protection they can get as they head for the level of the Sovereigns.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 20 : Maiden Trip**


	20. Maiden Trip

Quick update here to catch up on lost time. Let's see what adventures Ai and Mako have for their maiden trip to the Digital World. Hence the title.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 20:- Maiden Trip**

* * *

Swirling dust ploughed across and around the entire area, rising and falling like the waves of an ocean, only much more irregular. The ground was soft underfoot as the sand gave way to any weight put upon it. The gritty particles were everywhere, and within a few seconds, some of it had already got into the clothing of the three Tamers. Ryo, who was used to this kind of thing, largely ignored it. Ai and Mako, on the other hand, promptly began itching all over.

"It's so big," said Mako, staring out at the seemingly never-ending desert that stretched out on all sides from horizon to horizon.

"It's a world," pointed out Beelzemon, leaning casually on Behemoth and letting the full impact of where they were hit his two Tamers. "What did you expect? Something the size of your back-garden?"

"Where did you live?" asked Ai. "I don't see anybody."

"Well, I didn't have a specific house. I basically wandered all over the place."

"And the absence of anything else is quite a good thing if you ask me," said Ryo. "It means that there'll be less things trying to kill us. The Digital World I remember was a very harsh place, where Digimon killed Digimon endlessly in order to get stronger."

"It's slightly less like that now," said Monodramon. "Although you still have to watch your backs. There are a lot of unfriendly Digimon hanging around, but a lot of them are less datathirsty than they used to be. A lot of them may offer us sanctuary. Others will try to kill us. End of."

"Way to lighten the mood," observed Beelzemon.

"Well, it's true," objected Monodramon. "And they need to be prepared for that, don't they?"

"Hey, I ain't arguing with ye," Beelzemon looked to his Tamers. "That's what this place is. That's why you guys have gotta stay near me, capiche? No wondering off, even if you gotta go to the bathroom."

"You won't have to do that here anyway," said Ryo. "The usual rules of nourishment don't apply. You don't need to eat, drink or go to the toilet, because you're made of data now."

"Cool," grinned Mako. "I always said that going to the bathroom is a waste of time."

"What's that?" Ai pointed straight up, at the large sphere hanging in mid-air, with numerous pink columns rising off of it.

"That would be your world," said Monodramon. "That's Earth. The Human World."

There was a pause, before Ai objected. "No, it's not. I've seen pictures of Earth. It doesn't have any of those pink things coming off it, and that one looks like its got large holes punched in it."

"Things look different from a Digital perspective," explained Ryo. "There are a lot of things about this world that just don't apply in ours, like the fact that in this world, you can breathe underwater."

"No way," squealed Mako in delight. "Like a shark?"

"Like a shark," nodded Ryo.

"How cool is that? But what are those things over there?" asked Ai, raising another question and pointing across the horizon. Everyone turned to see a large, pink column zip across the landscape some distance away.

"That's a data stream," said Monodramon. "They can suck things up and transport them to any other location in the Digital World. It's not advisable to get caught in them, as you could end up anywhere, completely at random, but if one of us gets sucked up, we should all get sucked up, otherwise someone could find themselves with a partner or protection."

Ai and Mako cringed at the thought of being alone in this great desert.

"The others were right," said Ai. "This is a completely different place to what I expected."

"Don't worry, kids," said Ryo. "Between Impmon and Monodramon, we can handle just about anything that the Digital World throws at us."

"What about if another Ogudomon shows up?" asked Mako.

"That would be problematic," said Beelzemon. "But chill. That'll never happen."

"It could," insisted Mako.

"Nah," Beelzemon waved his hand. "Anubimon's got more sense than to let that big git back into the Digital World. He's just start to wreak havoc again, and despite being Lord of the Deleted and all that, Anubimon don't want nothing bad to happen to the Land of the Living. There's no chance of us running into Ogudomon."

"Alright then," said Ai. "But there are other monsters that could hurt us anyway. We'll stay near you."

"Good," nodded Beelzemon approvingly.

"This place is so cool," said Mako. "I can't wait to meet this Sovereign guy that everyone's always talking about. He sounds awesome."

"If you mean Old Zhuqs then yeah, he is awesome," said Beelzemon. "But he sure as hell's not gonna think the same thing about you. He hates humans, even though we've beaten two of his mortal enemies."

"Why?"

"I dunno," Beelzemon shrugged. "That's just the way he is."

"Then why are we going to him?" asked Ryo. "Surely it'd make more send to go see somebody like Azulongmon."

"You might think that," said Beelzemon. "But according to what I remember, Zhuqiaomon hated Parallelmon with a venom, and you also gotta remember that Lopmon was one of his subordinates at one time. I'm hoping to appeal to his better nature with a combination of his dear servant and the hated enemy that caused her disappearance. He might be able to help us find them."

"And he knows that if he doesn't, you'd kick his butt, right?" cheered Ai.

"Yeah," lied Beelzemon. He didn't fancy his chances against a Sovereign.

"I hope he doesn't," said Mako. "I'd like to see that."

"This isn't a holiday," warned Beelzemon. "The others could be depending on us to get the job done."

"We know that," said Mako. "But this is still so cool."

"Okay, let's get moving," ushered Beelzemon. "If we don't hurry, your mother will try and tear me apart, Beelzemon or not."

"I have a question this time," said Ryo. "Where exactly are we going? I don't recognize this place, and I know the Digital World very well."

"Ah, you had to go and ask that, didn't you?" growled Beelzemon. "And I was doing so well."

"The fact of the matter is, Ryo," Monodramon reported up to his Tamer. "That we have no idea where we're going. The entire Digital World was reformatted after the defeat of the D-Reaper and a lot of it has changed beyond all recognition."

"But you had a whole year here to relearn your way around," said Ryo.

"Well, yeah, but all those who could fly about to get the lay of the land didn't. We didn't want to risk getting split up by Data Streams."

"We're just gonna have to pick a direction and hope we strike lucky," Beelzemon straddled his bike and scooped up Ai and Mako one at a time, until they were both sitting in front of their Mega level partner on the vibrating motorbike. "Fortunately we can get around a lot quicker now that Boomerang-head there can digivolve and we got Behemoth."

"Boomerang-head?" Monodramon looked offended.

"What?" asked Beelzemon. "Every Digimon has a nickname except you, 'cause normally your Cyberdramon and would rip me to pieces. But as Monodramon, you're Boomerang head, just as the others are Pineapple-head, Helicopter-head, Fox-face, Helicopter-head Two, Rust-Bucket, Fire-tail and Toothfairy."

Ryo snorted at that last one. "I'm sure MarineAngemon appreciates that."

"Oh, he doesn't. Now, you going to digivolve him or not?"

"Yes, don't get your shotguns in a knot," Ryo pulled out his inverted-coloured blue D-Arc and and equally blue card, which had been a normal card seconds before. "Digi-modify!" he cried. "Matrix Digivolution Activate!"

"**MONODRAMON MATRIX-DIGIVOLVE TO... CYBERDRAMON!"**

Cyberdramon always scared Ai and Mako a bit. He was about the only partner Digimon with either a sense of humour, or a sense of sociability. Their own partner had both – the only senses Impmon didn't have were a sense of sensitivity and a sense of subtlety. Not to mention you couldn't see Cyberdramon's eyes. On the other hand, considering the permanent growl his face was set in, this might be just as well. There was the saying, "If looks could kill..." Perhaps with Cyberdramon, this was quite literal; they'd die of fright if they saw his eyes.

Ryo hopped onto Cyberdramon's back with practiced ease. "Right, let's get going," nodded Beelzemon. He kicked Behemoth into life and with a roar, the motorbike shot across the desert ground, sending up a spray of sand behind it. Terrain didn't seem to matter to the sentient machine. If it needed to go there, it went there.

Cyberdramon kicked off from the ground and swept after the bike, flying slightly off to one side, so as not to be enveloped by the flying sand streaming out from under the back wheel.

There was cheering from Ai and Mako, and cries of "Faster! Faster!" from them, as they enjoyed the raw speed at which they accelerated forwards. Beelzemon grinned and accelerated even harder, pulling ahead of Ryo and Cyberdramon a little. Ryo grinned, amused at the antics of the Mega and the youngest humans to enter the Digital World ever, even in the World of the Digimon Adventure show that he came from. Cyberdramon ignored them.

* * *

However, the thrill of the speed wore off incredibly quickly. The pace continued, but the lack of anything interesting happening got to Ai and Mako very quickly. You couldn't really blame them – they were, after all, children with very short attention spans. Usually, when they were bored and went on long journeys, they would stare at the interesting scenery. But there was no interesting scenery. If that was the case, they'd usually try to spot shapes in the clouds. But there were no clouds.

The two of them, after an hour and a half of non-stop riding, fell asleep. After all, back in there world, it was well past their bed time anyway. Sure enough, shortly after they nodded off, the horizon darkened and darkness spread across the land like an oncoming wave, washing over the travelling companions. None of them paid it any attention whatsoever. All three that observed it were used to it.

Ryo knew from experience that the desert level was the biggest of them all. He didn't need to ask a Digimon to know that. It could stretch on for days until they reached a certain point where they might be able to find a way to another level. And, that was, indeed, what happened.

Ai and Mako, when they woke up, began to think that the world was moving with them at the same pace, because there was no more scenery than there was last time they'd looked at it. Even Ryo was beginning to feel the effects of the boredom. Beelzemon and Cyberdramon seemed immune to it, and just stared stoically ahead.

No doubt HYPNOS would have started calling the other Tamers to tell of their disappearance. Heck, they might have even started work on another Arc, but somehow, Ryo doubted it. For one thing they had no way of contacting the Tamers to tell them where the Arc was going to come out. Ryo wondered if it had been a good idea to just drop everything and leave.

Perhaps they'd be reported as more victims of Parallelmon. Whatever the case, they'd almost definitely made the situation worse back home. But they'd get over it once they made it better very quickly.

There were occasions when even Beelzemon and Cyberdramon had to stop. They'd stop to settle down, and Cyberdramon would find a large rock to stand sentinel on, while Beelzemon de-digivolved and the three Tamers and the one Digimon would just sit around, occasionally talking, but mostly staying silent.

* * *

There was one point where things livened up slightly for a moment.

A small Digimon approached the camp on the second day on absolutely nothing. It was a small, beige-coloured, Dragon-slash-Dinosaur Digimon, wearing black Samurai armour, with a red jewel on his helmet.

It suddenly appeared beside them, causing everyone to jump and glared at Impmon. "Prepare to die, Digimon," he growled. "I will load your data and become stronger."

"Who the hell are you?" demanded Impmon. The Digimon blinked, obviously expecting to be attacked rather than rudely spoken to. Ai lifted the D-Arc hanging around her neck, and displayed the holographic image of the creature. She read:

"Ryudamon. Beast Digimon. Rookie level. Attacks are Katana Attack and Kabuto Gaeshi."

"That's right," declared Ryudamon. "Now prepare to be deleted."

"Why don't you go jump off a cliff," said Impmon.

Ryudamon blinked again. Then he growled. "Nobody speaks to Ryudamon like that and gets away with it!"

"Yeah, whatever," shrugged Impmon, completely unconcerned by Ryudamon's threats. "I bet you've been sneaking about for a year, trying to find something you think can pick on."

"Shut up!"

"Make me!"

"I shall delete you and load your data!"

"If you're going to delete someone then do it. Don't stand around saying you're going to do it."

"Why aren't you scared of me?"

"I dunno. Maybe, because I could whup you're heiney right across the desert and back."

Ryudamon snarled now, red with rage. "Fight me, damn you."

"Language in front of the kids?" Impmon pretended to be shocked to the core. "I think I'll have to delete you for that." Impmon's hand flared with a bright, orange ball of flame. He leered.

"Fire's not going to stop me!" declared Ryudamon confidently as Impmon stood up and the two of them squared off.

"Good thing this is only the first thing up my sleeve then, isn't it?" smirked Impmon.

"Prepare to d...!"

The ground shook as Cyberdramon landed with a huge thump right behind Impmon and roared long and loud right at Ryudamon, flexing his claws and gnashing his teeth. The smaller Dragon Digimon paled rapidly, said "Goodbye!" and turned tail to flee until he was out of sight.

"Hey! Don't steal my thunder like that, Bigshot!" Impmon shouted up at the Ultimate towering over him. Cyberdramon's only response was to growl at him, and this was his response to most things.

Impmon returned to circle, muttered "Spoilsport," under his breath, then looked to Ryo, Ai and Mako, who were all trying not to laugh.

"What are you sniggering at!" he demanded.

They couldn't help it. They burst out laughing.

* * *

Two more days passed, during which time, Ai and Mako were seriously beginning to regret coming along with Impmon. They'd been expecting a bit more action than this – the others made it sound like something had tried to attack them every half an hour or so. As of yet, they hadn't met any Digimon besides Ryudamon at all. They just zoomed over the ever-unchanging landscape of the desert, dreaming of a nice warm bed where they could relax and sleep properly, without sand in their shoes. Both of them now want to have a bath.

On the other hand, they hadn't had to change their underpants for days, and to them, that was always a plus.

"I think we could still be doing this for some time," said Beelzemon when Mako impatiently asked him. "You gotta remember that I don't have a clue where I'm going."

Mako groaned, as did Ai.

"We really need to find some friendly Digimon who know their way around," said Ryo. "We need to find someone who knows the way to the castle of Zhuqiaomon, or just to the layer of the Sovereigns. It's gotta be better than just wandering around this desert, with virtually no Digimon in it anyway."

"You suggesting we take a Data Stream?" asked Beelzemon. They'd been carefully avoiding the long, pink columns for some time now.

"Yes, I am," said Ryo.

"But I thought we were supposed to avoid those things," said Mako.

"That's generally the rule," said Beelzemon. "But I think Ryo's right. You want to get out of this Fanglongmon-forsaken desert, don't you?"

"Yes!" shouted Ai and Mako at the same time.

"Then the Data Stream might just be the easiest way to do it. The only problem is you don't have a clue where you're gonna end up."

"But, anywhere's better than here," said Ryo. "You up for it, kids?"

"Yeah," Ai answered for both of them. "Let's find a nice place to sleep with a bed."

"We'll do our best," said Beelzemon, "but trying has got nothing to do with it."

"Look up ahead," said Ryo. "There's a Data Stream, right there." He pointed. Just visible on the horizons was the great, streaming pillar of pink data, surging across the landscape, ready to suck up any Digimon or Human that it came into contact with and deposit them who-knows-where. "Let's make for that and hope we end up somewhere decent."

"And preferably on another level to this one," agreed Beelzemon. He and Cyberdramon increased their speed, and made for the rapidly approaching pillar, which was going a hell of a lot faster than they were. If you asked anyone how a Data Stream went so fast, they would have said something like, "I don't know, but I swear they get faster every year."

The safest bet is to blame Broadband.

"Okay, here it comes!" cried Beelzemon, as they rocketed towards the Data Stream and it rocketed towards them. "You ready for this?"

"What does it feel like?" asked Ai, nervously.

"Like getting sucked through a tube," said Beelzemon. "It's not pleasant, but anything's better than here, right?"

Ai and Mako nodded uncertainly. Both shut their eyes, but that made it worse as they had no idea when the feeling would come. So they opened their eyes again, right at the point where they entered the Data Stream.

All of them felt the unpleasant suction and squeezing that one might associate with being sucked up a vacuum cleaner. It felt like they were shooting up into the sky, while shooting towards the ground at exactly the same time. They were lifted off from the sand...

* * *

...and were deposited on more sand.

But before Ai and Mako could groan that they were still on the desert level, they realised that they weren't. They were are something far more pleasant. They had found themselves of a beach. The ocean stretched out on one side of them like the ocean, while on their other side; there was an enormous forest that stretched out on the other side of them like a forest. And the beach stretched across the thin strip between the two like... well, do I have to say it.

"You see what we mean?" asked Ryo, as he and Cyberdramon came in to land. "A few metres to the left and we would have hit the water."

"But I thought you could breathe under it."

"You can, but it you can forget that if you suddenly vanish under it, and then you're in trouble because you forget you can, and that means you can't."

"I really want to try that," said Mako. "Can we try that? Please, please, please."

Ai joined in with the "Please"ing and Beelzemon rolled all three of his eyes. "Yeah, sure, why not. We'll stop here for a while. Down you get."

Ai and Mako cheered, clambered down from Behemoth and ran for the waves. After checking that there was no immediate danger, Impmon was suddenly sitting on the bike in place of Beelzemon. He hopped off and patted Behemoth's wheels, then left the bike humming slightly and went to watch his Tamers. Ryo walked with him and Cyberdramon followed on behind them, staring out across the land and sea, unwilling to let any opportunity to fight something powerful pass him by.

As Ai and Mako entered the water with all their clothing still on, Impmon sat down to watch them. He watched the two little children wading out into the waves lapping gently at their shoes, trying to get to a depth where they could comfortably sit under the water and try out the whole breathing underwater thing.

"Is there any particular reason that you decided to drop everything and leave?" asked Ryo, sitting down next to Impmon.

"How d'you mean?" asked Impmon. "They're my friends. Course I'm gonna do everything that I can do to find them."

"Yuh-huh," Ryo looked unconvinced. "You know, you can trust me. Ai and Mako, well I can tell that they're in this for fun, adventure and genuine concern for the others. They're small children and small children aren't exactly known for their skills at thinking ahead are they? You, on the other hand, you're fully aware of all the damage and danger that can be found in the Digital World. I'd have thought that you'd have at least tried to contact some of the others before you went charging through the portal. Even you're organisational skills aren't that bad."

"Hey," objected Impmon.

"Well, it's true," said Ryo. "Plus, you've been unusually quiet since we got here. I know you quite well, Impmon. Next to Terriermon, you're the life and soul of the party, or wherever you happen to be an whoever you happen to be with. But apart from that incident with Ryudamon, you've been more serious than I've ever seen you. Is there some other reason that you're trying so hard?"

Impmon bit his lip. Ryo was good, he had to give him that. He didn't know Impmon half as well as Ai or Mako, considering he usually kept his distance from everyone else and society in general in order to keep his rampant partner under wraps. But he'd already picked up that something else was bothering Impmon within a few days. Perhaps he'd picked it up before then, but didn't want to say anything in front of Ai and Mako.

"Impmon!" called Mako from the waves, coming up and spluttering. "I can't do it."

"You're not thinking right," said Ryo. "Is your digivice wet?"

Ai held it up. "No, not at all."

"That's because it doesn't know it shouldn't be able to work underwater. You need to think like that."

"Okay," the two of them vanished underwater again.

"Anyway, as I was saying..."

"Are you gonna pester me until I tell you the answer?" asked Impmon.

"If I must," said Ryo. "I know it's a cliché, but you should get it off your chest, whatever it is."

Impmon sighed. Ryo Akiyama was not the first person he had wanted to say this out loud to. He'd hoped that it'd be Lopmon, or at least Terriermon so he could ask for his approval. But it looked like he'd been caught out.

So he said, "It's Lopmon."

Ryo paused and gave Impmon an uncomprehending look for a couple of seconds, then his eyes widened, and he said, "Ah."

"What, that's the best thing you can think of to say?"

"Pretty much," said Ryo. "I wish I could say I could help you out, but when it comes to girls, my experience is limited to friendly talks with my friends, and adoring fangirls from the Digimon Card Tournament."

"You never think of settling down with anybody?"

"Not really. The only human females my age that I know are either taken like Rika, or had someone staring at them already like Jeri, although she'd finally got her act together. And to be honest, there aren't many girls that go near me anymore, because I usually have a terrifying looking dragon standing behind me."

Impmon chuckled and glanced at Cyberdramon, who was so still he could be taken for a statue. "I suppose that's a downside."

"Don't worry, Impmon," Ryo nodded. "I'm sure we'll find her, and, if you like, I'll put in a good word or two with her for you."

"No."

Ryo blinked. "No?"

"No. If anyone's gonna tell her how I feel, it's gonna be me, okay? I want to do this by myself. And I don't want to try and lure her to me – I want her to fall for me, sure, but I want to do it by myself."

Ryo stared at Impmon for a few seconds. Even when it came to love he remained the independent, strong person that he'd always been. "Well, if that's how you want to do it..."

"It is. Although I expect she already has an idea. I think Terriermon might have found out and let her known somehow, whether my mouth or mind."

"Then I won't interfere," Ryo nodded. "There. Does that feel better?"

After a second, Impmon said, "You know what? It does."

"Impmon! I'm doing it! I'm doing it!" Impmon looked up to see Ai waving excitedly to him. Mako popped up moments later and joined in the cheering. Ryo and Impmon politely applauded.

"Come on and try it, Impmon," Mako waved. Impmon grinned, stood and strode into the surf.

"You're looking at a professional water-breather here," he grinned. Then he darted past them and plunged into the water. He opened his eyes and breathed comfortably under the surface. He smirked, turned and saw Ai and Mako with their faces underwater, peering at him, also breathing easily.

"You can also talk underwater," said Impmon.

"Whoa," said Mako, "This is so cool."

"The laws of the Digital World are so much different to yours," nodded Impmon. "I bet I can ever light a fire underwater. Here, check this out. **BADA-"**

THWACK!

Something huge and white struck Impmon from behind. He didn't have a chance to cry out before he was thrown from the water, by what appeared to be a massive, white tentacle with five spikes on the spaded end. As he rose into the air, the tentacle followed him, and smacked in mid-air, like a tennis ball. With a shriek of pain, Impmon hurtled downwards and collided with the sand, losing consciousness instantly.

Ai and Mako rose up and stared in horror, as something massive, humanoid and blue rose from the ocean. They screamed as the massive shaped loomed high above them and ran out of the water, stopping once behind Ryo, who had instantly got to his feet and glared at the massive Digimon that had suddenly attacked.

The Digimon stood on two long spindly legs, blue and white in colour, with a long white tail behind it. It's arms were even longer and almost reached the ground, and they had five long claws attached to the ends of the rubbery hands. It looked like it had a ragged blue cloak and extending for its shoulders over its back were two long tentacles, each with five spikes on the end. It's face was thin and pointed and had three red eyes and a maw dripping with water and filled with sharp fangs.

Raising his D-Arc, Ryo displayed the creature's stats:

"MarineDevimon. Sea Animal Digimon. Ultimate Level. Attacks include Dark Deluge, Evil Wind and Neck Hanging."

"Impmon help!" Mako and Ai ran over to their fallen partner and began to desperately shake his inert form. "Get up! We need you! We're being attacked!"

"Don't be dead!" wailed Ai.

"He's not dead!" Ryo didn't take his off the MarineDevimon as it took a massive step towards them. "But he will be unless we beat this guy. You ready Cyberdramon?"

Cyberdramon growled.

"Stupid question, huh. Well, let's go. Biomerge active-"

Ryo stopped talking when Cyberdramon suddenly shot straight overhead and launched itself at the surprised MarineDevimon, who had evidently thought that the pathetic creatures before them would start running. Cyberdramon had gone so long without a fight he hadn't even bothered to listen to his partner. He just wanted to maul something, and MarineDevimon would do very well.

Cyberdramon bellowed in rage as he slammed full force in MarineDevimon's face. The blow caused the Ultimate to stagger backwards. Rage twisted MarineDevimon's features and he turned to find his attacker. Cybderdramon snarled and wheeled about to face MarineDevimon, and his claws glowed with energy.

"**DESOLATION CLAW!"** he roared, and slashed the air, leaving green slashes in the air from a couple of brief seconds before sending massive bursts of energy from his claws in MarineDevimon's direction.

The blasts connected with numerous parts of MarineDevimon's body and began to eat away at his data. MarineDevimon roared in pain, and took a vicious swipe at Cyberdramon with one of his tentacles. Cyberdramon ducked under the blow, and shot off to one side, dodging the second tenctacle which also came swinging at him.

MarineDevimon rose upwards and cried **"DARK DELUGE!"** His jaws opened and a torrent of black ink spewed out his mouth and streamed towards Cyberdramon. The smaller, nimbler Ultimate avoided the majority of the attack, but ink spatters. Some of the attack coated Cyberdramon's legs.

Immediately, his legs began to seize up slightly, but Cybedramon ignored this. As long as he had his wings and his arms working, nothing else mattered now. Raising his arms above his head, Cyberdramon roared, **"CYBER NAIL!"** The long hooks near his elbows glowed, and Cyberdramon swiped them down, forming an X of energy that shot towards MarineDevimon. It collided with his face and with a roar, MarineDevimon fell backwards and smashed down into the waves.

Cyberdramon swooped down, eager for a kill, but MarineDevimon was by no means out yet. Both of his long arms swung viciously upwards and connected with Cyberdramon. With a roar, the Dragon Digimon was thrown backwards, tumbling through the air slightly. When he righted himself, MarineDevimon was already getting to his feet.

Splaying his clawed hands and tentacles, MarineDevimon lunged forwards, determined to carve the vicious Cyberdramon to pieces. Cyberdramon swerved around a tentacle swinging towards and corkscrewed beneath one of the Aquatic Digimon's arms. The second tentacle tried in vain to swat him, but Cyberdramon was too quick for it. Far too quick. He dodged to one side and slashed at the tentacle with his claws, gouging a large mark in the side of it. MarineDevimon roared in pain.

Cyberdramon evaded a crude swing by the second arm and shot full force towards MarineDevimon's leering, furious face. MarineDevimon's eyes narrowed and he cried **"EVIL WIND!"**

"Cyberdramon! Get back!" cried Ryo, but if Cyberdramon heard him he ignored his Tamers. A furious wind sprung up and washed over MarineDevimon, flowing around him and buffeting against Cyberdramon. The airborne Digimon felt a furious battering at him as he was struck by the hurricane force winds.

The sand on the beach whipped up in the gale. Ryo turned his back as he instinctively covered his eyes and began to shield Ai, Mako and the unconscious Impmon with his own body. Sand and water splashed against his back and Ryo crouched down to reduce his surface area.

Cyberdramon was thrown backwards in a maelstrom of wind, forcing him backwards as easily as a breeze pushing a balloon. Cyberdramon snarled in frustration and tried to fight against the current, but it overwhelmed and he shot backwards.

Ai and Mako cringed, terrified, behind Ryo. Ryo didn't want to look at their terrified faces, it'd make him feel stupid for being careless and dropping his guard. Rule number one of the Digital World was never, ever drop your guard.

Something smashed into the ground right next to him. Glancing to one side, he saw that it was his partner, flat on his back but still struggling to stand up and attack MarineDevimon. "Are you okay, Cyberdramon?" yelled Ryo.

"I call this cheating! I'll tear his head off!" Yeah, he was fine.

The miniature windstorm finally let up and MarineDevimon advanced towards his fallen prey, thinking that he had been victorious. But Cyberdramon was not done yet. Not by a long shot. Cyberdramon leapt to his feet and shot towards the startled MarineDevimon again. Ryo turned and the three Tamers watched his run.

Ryo was sure that Cyberdramon wouldn't object to a little boost, so he whipped out a card without looking at it and swiped it through his D-Arc. "Digi-modify! Avenging Knight Activate!"

Cyberdramon immediately grabbed hold of the two lances that appeared in his clawed fists and, ducking under a futile defensive swing, he drove both of them into MarineDevimon's chest. MarineDevimon shrieked on impact, and Cyberdramon twisted the lances to increase the pain.

A tentacle lashed down and knocked Cyberdramon aside, but he quickly recovered and shot forwards again. Cyberdramon roared and sank his claws and teeth into the attacking Digimon. With a roar it fell backwards, as Cyberdramon punched and pummelled, not bothering to use any of his attacks. Ryo could see where this was going. The Ultimate was building himself up into a frenzy.

That was something nobody wanted to see.

Despite the size difference that MarineDevimon had, Cyberdramon was clearly having an effect on him. The tentacles whipped towards him once more, but this time Cyberdramon was ready for them. Leaving off his attack on MarineDevimon's torso, Cyberdramon brought his vicious claws towards the tentacles.

He took a swipe at one of them, furiously slashing the rubbery appendage and tearing into the Digital flesh, ripping the end to shreds, then he furiously struck at the other one, grabbing it in his hands and sinking his teeth into it, kicking at it with the claws on his feet.

MarineDevimon was in agony now. Perhaps it might be a good idea to retreat, he decided. He attempted to back away, but the bloodlust was on Cyberdramon now and he wasn't having any of it. Snarling furiously, he pulled at the tentacle he was still clinging to and buried his claws in them. With a furious wrench, Cyberdramon ripped the spaded end right off. It instantly disintegrated into data.

MarineDevimon screamed.

Ai and Mako were watching Cyberdramon's brutal assault on MarineDevimon with mixed amounts of adoration and horror, but it was definitely horror that was at the forefront. Cyberdramon was making short working of the much bigger Digimon, but the attacks were so ferocious and violent that they cringed and would have looked away, except their eyes were glued to the scene.

Impmon suddenly stirred and opened his eyes. "Ugh, what hit me," he muttered.

Nobody answered him. It was hard to say they'd even acknowledged that he'd woken up. But Impmon took in the scene before him and worked out what was going on in a heartbeat. MarineDevimon was a threat, and anything that could harm Ai and Mako had to be eliminated or at least driven away.

Impmon stood up and ran forward, bursting with the light of digivolution.

"**IMPMON WARP-DIGIVOLVE TO... BEELZEMON BLAST MODE!"**

"Now let's see how the ugly piece of crap like this!" yelled the Mega. **"CORONA-"**

"**DESOLATION CLAW!"**

Cyberdramon assault battered MarineDevimon again and gaping holes began to appear, as the attack furiously ate at his Digital Coding. MarineDevimon almost squealed and stumbled backwards, then turned hurriedly and backed into the water. Cyberdramon had time for one last swing with his claws, before MarineDevimon disappeared under the water.

"Aw, come on!" muttered Beelzemon. "Don't tell me I just digivolved for nothing. Couldn't you have saved a bit for me, Cyberdramon?"

At the sound of Beelzemon's voice, Cyberdramon whipped around, his jawline twisted into a livid snarl. His arms tensed and his claws trembled, as if they were itching to be tearing into something.

"Okay," muttered Beelzemon. "He's looking at me funny."

"Oh no!" muttered Ryo. "Cyberdramon! Stop!"

"What's going on?" demanded Beelzemon, but he got his answer when Cyberdramon charged.

Right...

...at...

...HIM!

"What the..." Beelzemon cried as Cyberdramon bulled into him with such force that they both went rolling. Beelzemon may be a level up but he still had about as much balance as an ordinary human. Cyberdramon and Beelzemon tumbled across the sand, Cyberdramon clawing at Beelzemon and snapping his jaws. Beelzemon's clawed hand shot up and grabbed Cyberdramon around the throat as they came to a stop, both scrambling to their feet, and held him off because Cyberdramon was trying to sink his fangs into Beelzemon's face.

Beelzemon furiously held him back and his other arm tried furiously to block Cybedramon's repeated swings at him. "IS IT ME?" asked Beelzemon. "OR HAS THIS GUY COMPLETLY LOST IT?"

His arm released Cyberdramon's throat, pushing it backwards, then furiously swung forward, battering Cyberdramon in the neck with his fist. With a sudden, choking noise, Cyberdramon backed away, but then he lunged forward again, claws ready. Beelzemon grabbed Cyberdramon's wrists in his hands and held him at bay, but had to bring up a foot and press it against the Ultimate's chest to stave off blows from his teeth.

Cyberdramon, unable to reach Beelzemon with claws or teeth, switched tactics. His tail sprang it action and swung down, slamming into Beelzemon's other leg. With a yell, Beelzemon fell to the ground. Cyberdramon sprang, claws first, but Beelzemon rolled to one side and got to his feet as Cyberdramon struck the ground where he'd been. Then Cyberdramon whipped around and slashed Beelzemon across the chest with the hooked spike by his elbow, tearing the biker jacket and leaving a large gash.

Ryo was running towards the brawling pair, Ai and Mako being left behind as they followed at a slower pace. Ryo knew what was happening. When Cyberdramon fought his enemies and didn't get a kill at the end, he lost control. Every Digimon around was suddenly a potential victim. It didn't matter what level they were or who they were. Cyberdramon probably didn't even realise he was attacking Beelzemon. To him, Beelzemon was just another Digimon.

Beelzemon could easily beat Cyberdramon, but he was reluctant to hurt a friend. "What's going on, Ryo!" he yelled, as he backed away from another lunge by Cyberdramon. "What's wrong with him?"

"He's lost control!"

"Of what?"

"His killer instinct!" replied Ryo. His D-Arc shot out with his hand and the long, green energy whip emerged from the tip and wrapped around Cyberdramon's arm. The Dragon Digimon turned to face his Tamers with an expression of enraged fury and roared. "Back off, Cyberdramon! Stop it! You're fighting a friend!"

Cyberdramon snarled irately and, to Ryo's shock, lunged at him. Ryo backed away as his own partner came flying towards him.

"No!" shouted Beelzemon and skidded between them. His huge cannon arm, Berenjena, appeared and clouted Cyberdramon upside the head. Startled, Cyberdramon fell backwards and Beelzemon went on the offensive. He took another swing with the cannon and struck Cyberdramon squarely in the side of the head, metal clanging on metal as cannon hit faceplate.

Cyberdramon stumbled to the side and Beelzemon fell upon him. Beelzemon wrapped his tail around Cyberdramon's legs and dug his shoulder into Cyberdramon's back, between his wings, attempting to pin the struggling Ultimate to the ground. Cyberdramon roared and scrabbled, trying to push himself upwards with his arms, but without the use of his feet he was impeded. Even so, Beelzemon struggled to hold him down. Cyberdramon's tail whipped up again, but this time, Beelzemon grabbed it in one hand and held it still as possible.

"You got any bright ideas, Ryo?" he called.

"I don't know what's happening!" Ryo practically wailed. "He's never attacked me before!"

"Well, he's obviously not in his right mind right now, is he?" Beelzemon yelled. "But if you do think of something, now would be a really good time to do it."

Cyberdramon roared and snapped his teeth, struggling angrily and attempting to rise, but Beelzemon managed to hold him down.

Ryo frantically searched his brain for a solution, but the fact of the matter was that Cyberdramon had never gone this far into his bloodlust. Perhaps it was the extreme lack of prey he'd had over the last few months, but there must be a way to combat it. There just had to be a way.

"Fight it, Cyberdramon!" he cried desperately. "This isn't you! You're not like this!"

This was partly true. Ryo was sure that the bloodthirsty part of Cyberdramon was caused by Milleniummon's influence. After all, Monodramon was never like this.

Wait, Monodramon. Perhaps he could appeal to Cyberdramon by reminding him of some of the fun things that they'd done together with him at the Rookie level.

Or... he could take the more direct route.

"Ai! Mako! I need your help!" Ryo whipped a card from his pack and turn to the white-faced twins, who had been staring at the thrashing wrestling match with terrified expressions. "I have an idea. But I need you to swipe this card through your D-Arc."

Ai and Mako just nodded mutely, too stunned to do anything else. Ryo showed them the card, and Ai took the purple D-Arc from around her neck. Brother and sister held the card together and swiped it through their D-Arc together. In unison, they cried:

"Digi-modify! Apocalymon's Reverse Digivolve Activate!"

Beelzemon felt a surge of something completely knew, and he instinctively knew what to do with it. Beelzemon sprang off Cyberdramon and leapt skywards, bringing his arms together. They merged at the wrists and his hands became a purple pentagon with a hinged claw on each side, capable of moving together to create a something like a clawed cage.

Cyberdramon leapt to his feet, snarled and shot forwards towards Beelzemon, furious that he didn't have a kill yet. But Beelzemon pointed the clawed hand at him. The claws sprang open and Beelzemon cried **"REVERSE DIGIVOLVE!"**

The opened claw shot forwards, still attached to Beelzemon's arms by an arm that represented a helix of DNA. The claws closed around Cyberdramon. The Ultimate instantly began thrashing, attempting to break out of his prison, but, immediately, everyone could see the attack working. Cyberdramon glowed and shrank, until he was so small the claws closed around him completely.

Beelzemon sighed, then descended down and landed. He opened the claw, depositing a groaning Monodramon into Ryo's arms. Then the claw changed back into Beelzemon's hands.

"Are you okay, Monodramon?" asked Ryo.

"I've been better," moaned the small Rookie. "What happened?"

"You don't remember?"

"No. Kind of why I asked."

Ryo chuckled. "We were attacked by a MarineDevimon. You fought it off, but didn't kill it, so you turned on Beelzemon." Ryo neglected to mention that he'd also attacked _him._ That would only leave Monodramon distraught.

"I lost control again?"

"I'm afraid so."

Monodramon turned his yellow eyes to Beelzemon. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know what was happening. I just... lost it. I'm sorry."

"Eh, don't worry about it," Beelzemon waved it away. "Not your fault."

Monodramon groaned. Beelzemon turned to his own Tamers, who were holding the card together as if it was some sort of God. "What did you think of your first action in the Digital World?"

"To be honest," said Ai. "I preferred the boredom."

Beelzemon grinned. Ai and Mako grinned. Ryo chuckled and even Monodramon managed a weak sort of smile. Everyone was fine. They'd come out of a huge mess, and they were all still alive.

The water suddenly exploded upwards and MarineDevimon reappeared. He was a mess, one tentacle shredded, the other missing an end, two gaping holes in his chest, and numerous massive punctures where his data had been eaten away, not to mention the numerous claw and tooth marks all over him. And he looked furious.

"Back for more, are ye?" Beelzemon growled, advancing towards MarineDevimon. His arm morphed into Berenjena again and he opened it, displaying the crackling pink energy. "You're the cause of all this," he gestured to the weak Monodramon. "And you're gonna pay."

MarineDevimon advanced. Beelzemon pointed and shouted **"CORONA-"**

He stopped, _again_, when a huge beam of golden light exploded out of the water behind MarineDevimon and struck him in the back, punching right through his torso and streaming out the other side. MarineDevimon had time for a roar of agony, before he burst into data, which rose into the sky.

"Why do I keep getting interrupted just before I attack something!" demanded Beelzemon.

Then, from the waves, the owner of them beam of light appeared. A huge head rose from the water and stared at the party on the beach.

It was an absolutely terrifying head...

...but only if you hadn't met the Digimon who it belonged to before. And all five of the people on the beach had met the owner. The head rose out of the water, sitting on a very familiar, long, serpentine, armour plated body. The head reached the level MarineDevimon's had been at and looked like it could have gone on much higher.

"I can honestly say I didn't expect to see any Tamers when I woke up this morning," said MetalSeadramon.

"Hey there," grinned Ryo. "It's good to see you again. And thanks for the save."

"But I could have taken him out on my own," grumbled Beelzemon.

"Not a problem," said MetalSeadramon. "I've been meaning to have a word with that one anyway. He ruthlessly attacked a bunch of Gizamon a couple of days ago and loaded their data. I warned him, but it looks like he bit off more than he could chew this time."

"Damn straight," nodded Beelzemon.

"So," MetalSeadramon lowered his head. "What brings Tamers into our world on this fine day? There haven't been any of you in this world since the day I first became MetalSeadramon. What's the story?"

"We're looking for the castle of the Sovereigns," said Ryo. "A couple of friends of ours have disappeared without a trace after they were attacked by an evil Digimon, and we think the Sovereigns might have some information for us."

"I see," said MetalSeadramon. "Which ones went missing?"

"Renamon, Terriermon and Lopmon, and their Tamers, Henry, Rika and Suzie."

"You mean the prophecy trio?" MetalSeadramon looked flabbergasted. "The ones that took out Ogudomon? They've vanished."

"Yep," said Beelzemon. "And that doesn't sit very well with us, as I'm sure you can imagine."

"I can," said MetalSeadramon. "Which Digimon was it that caused them to disappear?"

"Some tosser called Parallelmon," Beelzemon said.

"Parallelmon?" MetalSeadramon's eyes narrowed. "I've heard the Sovereigns speak of them numerous times, but they've never really delved into details about him. They just said that he was not someone to be taken lightly. But they also said he'd been deleted."

"Well, either they were wrong or it's a different Parallelmon," said Ryo. "But the others gave him a good thrashing before he got the drop of them."

"Sounds about right," chuckled the Mega level sea serpent. "I can't imagine those three going out without a fight. If you like, I can take you to the level of the Sovereigns."

"You know where it is?"

"Of course I know where it is," scoffed MetalSeadramon. "We Megas who fought the D-Reaper with the Sovereigns all know where it is. We fought the D-Reaper there, and we were commissioned to return there for our briefing before we were sent to help you in your world."

"That's great," grinned Ryo. "Thanks."

"How far away is it?" asked Beelzemon.

"It's a couple of days away if we take the most direct route," said MetalSeadramon. "I haven't been there for a while, but I can lead you there right enough."

"Well, looks like our problems are solved," grinned Ryo. "You okay, kids, you've gone awfully quiet."

"It's MetalSeadramon," said Ai.

"He's so awesome," Mako agreed.

MetalSeadramon could see the two were clearly in awe of him. "Does this have something to do with that "TV show" thing that you had in your world."

"Probably," grinned Ryo, laughing and wondering what would happen if they noticed _him_ on it at the same time.

"I still haven't got used to that," MetalSeadramon shook his head. Then he lowered his head to ground level. "All aboard," he said.

"We get to ride on his head?" Ai gasped.

"Yep. Hop on." MetalSeadramon nodded.

Beelzemon assisted everybody else onto the massive, Chrome-Digizoid-plated head. Then he hopped on himself and de-digivolved into Impmon. Then, MetalSeadramon lifted all of his body out of the water and took off across the forest. Ai and Mako clung to the spike jutting out of his head, while Ryo practically rode MetalSeadramon like a surfer on his board.

"Hey, wait!" cried Impmon. "What about Behemoth?"

MetalSeadramon glanced down at the motorbike and, without pausing, one of his two tails arced down and wrapped around it, yanking it off the floor after them.

"Hey! Watch the paint!" Impmon yelled.

* * *

Thanks for reviews everyone. Keep reading and please review. Only a few more to get to a hundred. Thanks to the first review of whoever Guest is. Imaginative name. By the way everyone - I have now completed one eleventh of this story. Only two-hundred chapters left.

That last sentence was NOT a joke.

And now... the promised trailer. Sorry it's late:-

* * *

"Alright, men," said Anakin. "You know the drill. We need to dig out the droids that remain in this city, and since there's a full battalion in there that might be a tough job. But on the plus sign, we've got some assistance this time. I've heard a lot of good things about you Digimon."

"Now it's time to see if Obi-Wan and Aayla were exaggerating," grinned Ahsoka.

"Ooh, do I detect a challenge in the air?" smirked Terriermon.

* * *

Captain Rex blearily opened his eyes. It took him a moment to remember what had happened to him, but then the memory struck him full-force. He looked around – he was surrounded by crates and leaning against one was his attacker.

* * *

"Oh, that's not good," Henry peered down and over the edge. Suzie picked up a rock and flicked it into the green liquid beneath them. As well as _gloop_ noise, there was also a distinct fizzing.

* * *

Ahsoka gathered the Force and grimaced as she used it to send the missile back the way it had come.

* * *

"I am beginning to think we might be in a spot of trouble, Master Kenobi," said Plo off-handedly.

* * *

"I'm going to assume that Captain Rex doesn't go AWOL of his own accord," said Rika. "So something must have happened to him, right?"

"What is AWOL?" asked Ahsoka, curiously.

* * *

"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"If what you're seeing is a massive crater with a wrecked ship and a lot of debris floating in it, Master Luminara," said Aayla, "then yes I am."

"I don't believe I have seen anything so extraordinary," murmured Luminara.

"I believe I have," said Aayla, as an imaged of herself riding on a winged fox flashed through her mind.

* * *

"Did you hear that?" asked a battle droid to one of the other three.

"Hear what?"

"I'm sure I heard something like a faint rustling noise," insisted the first.

"I didn't hear anything," said another.

_They really are idiots,_ thought Renamon, scurrying along the pipes above them upside-down like a lizard.

* * *

Turuiemon sent a blade of light catapulting through the air to strike the Octuptarra in the head, severing one of the blaster cannons and one of its photoreceptors.

* * *

The AT-RTs made short work of the crossing. The clones skilfully piloted their craft to leap from platform to platform, leaving any Olympic long-jumper in the dust.

* * *

Ai and Mako stared. They stared and stared and stared, for standing before them was a one of the largest Digimon they'd ever seen. He stood so high he almost touched the ceiling and his bright red plumage made him look like he was on fire. And his great wings were still tucked into his sides.

**

* * *

**

"Digi-modify! Matrix Digivolution Activate!"

* * *

"And just what makes you think that I will help you? My opinion of you may have changed, but not by much," Zhuqiaomon rumbled.

* * *

"Well, here we are," MetalSeadramon descended downwards. Ai and Mako stared in wonderment at the fantastically huge, spiked red castle that stretched towards the sky in front of them. It looked like some kind of odd, red ice sculpture.

The Mega sea serpent alighted on the ground, where he was hailed.

"MetalSeadramon? Is there a problem? What brings you he... Why are there humans on your head?"

* * *

Ahsoka, Aayla and Anakin breezed along, dodging large explosions as the entire structure literally fell apart around them. Anakin was impeded slightly by the fact that Padmé was in his arms – the STAP was not made for two people

A sudden explosion caused a hunk of debris to be catapulted from the side towards them.

* * *

Red clashed on blue as the blades locked together. The two combatants' faces were very close together; Ventress' furious glare contrasting with Aayla's expression of utter focus.

* * *

"That's me. Try not to feel too bad. I am pretty skilled after all," Bane tipped his hat in mock respect.

* * *

Lopmon peered over the lip of the cliff. "Okay, they're on the move," she said. "And I can see they have some company."

"You mean Rex?" asked Rika.

"Well, him too, but I was thinking more along the lines of that guy there carrying the crate."

* * *

"I reckon it's time to bring in the heavy artillery," Boomer suggested, unslinging the massive rocket launcher from his back.

* * *

Aayla bounced off the STAP, cutting the droid piloting it in the neck before flipping neatly onto a nearby platform. Turning, the Twi'lek saw the other two STAPs get blown to pieces by a grinning Gargomon.

* * *

"Alright everyone, remember," said Ryo as they moved rapidly across the gap inside their little bubble. "Be on your best behaviour, especially you, Impmon."

"Hey, come on," Impmon grinned. "Old Zhuqster and I go way back."

"Calling him Zhuqster is not going to do you any favours," said Monodramon.

* * *

Henry and Rika hurriedly pulled Suzie behind a large boulder as red lasers flashed in their direction. Droidekas took no prisoners, and the three clones assigned to guard them were massacred by the two destroyers, blasted in the chest.

"Maybe we should have followed Anakin's advice!" cried Henry.

* * *

Kyubimon was beginning to do things that no four legged creature should be able to do, such as running right across a length of pipe jutting out across the gap.

* * *

Terriermon and Lopmon poured wave after wave of fresh pellets of energy and ice down from their perch on the top of the giant stone Twi'lek. The droids probably thought they'd been cunning by getting the higher ground, but its amazing how what higher ground you can reach when you can fly.

* * *

Ridge instinctively followed his instructions and climbed aboard. Moments later, he wished he hadn't. The Champion level fox was putting speeders to shame as she barrelled over the numerous gaps and holes, ran across ledge a gymnast would have trouble with, and all with him clutching her fur and trying not to heave inside his own helmet.

* * *

Aayla twisted in the air and brought her lightsaber sweeping through the Super, while at the same time levitating a droid behind her to take the shots from its comrades.

* * *

"Are you in position?" Mace asked through his comlink, and he, Ahsoka, Aayla and Ponds all waited for Cody to reply.

Instead, another voice said, "We've been in position for some time now, slowmos."

"Three guesses as to who that is," sniggered Ahsoka.

* * *

"Shall we do this?" Aayla remarked to Ahsoka, igniting her blade.

* * *

Anakin leapt from his position and hurriedly deflected two shots as he sailed past. The shots were followed by missiles, which lead him to sprint across a platform and bounce to another. Kul Teska enjoyed teasing his victims. It made the victory that much more total to see them desperately run first.

But his fun was spoilt when something smashed into his from the side.

* * *

The giant phoenix blazed, roaring with undisguised hatred. His eyes looked like they were on fire and energy pulsed off his in waves. He looked like he was about to explode.

* * *

**"ELECTRO SHOCKER!"** Turuiemon shouted and unleashed the bolt of purplish electricity, which fried the droids where they stood.

"Nice," said Gargomon. "But you still owe me one."

* * *

"Obi-Wan and I will handle Dooku," said Mace decisively. "Skywalker and Tano, you go find Kul Teska. Secura, you and the Digimon see what you can do about the weapon."

"What about the Senator?" asked Anakin.

"I'm sure Senator Amidala would prefer you to stop this madness rather than rescue her," said Obi-Wan.

"She sounds like my kind of Senator if that's the case," remarked Turuiemon.

* * *

Aayla swept around the corner and dashed down the corridor.

* * *

"What about if you blow up that cliff?" asked Suzie.

* * *

Bane smirked at his arch-nemesis.

* * *

Luminara leapt from floating rock to floating rock as if she were a champion at hopscotch.

* * *

Kul Teska found himself staring down the barrel of a cannon.

* * *

"Whoa, that was fast," remarked Terriermon. "You might be even better with computers than Shibumi."

Artoo whistled and beeped in response.

"But you should also know that I don't have a clue what you just said."

* * *

Next time...

Back on Ryloth, the Digimon get to work beside Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano and Captain Rex for the first time, as Aayla has left for Alzoc III. But she'll be back in a few chapters.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 21 : Ryloth Resistance**


	21. Ryloth Resistance

Okay I have two points that I wish to make before you read on. The first is that the promised trailer I said I'd put up for every tenth chapter has been added to the end of Chapter 20 so you can read that now if you like.

The second point is that the first paragraph in this chapter is meant to be like the introductory narration at the beginning of each episode of Clone Wars.

Thanks for reviewing everyone, including the new reviewer Treadstone449.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 21:- Ryloth Resistance**

* * *

The Clone Wars rage on! Rumours of war spread everywhere, and Obi-Wan Kenobi sets out for Naboo to discuss reports of enemy activity in the system with Senator Padmé Amidala while Jedi Master Luminara Unduli and Aayla Secura investigate Jabba the Hutt's reports of Separatist activity on the remote glacial world of Alzoc III. Meanwhile, Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, along with three creatures from another dimension known as Digimon and three human children with special bonds to them known as Tamers, take charge of the operation to rid the rid the recently liberated planet Ryloth of the remaining droid army presence.

* * *

The hum of engines produced a long, steady rumbling noise as the LAAT gunships soared above the rugged terrain of Ryloth, lifting above the jagged cliff-tops and flying smoothly above the gritty desert sands. Twenty-four hours had passed since the Capital of Lessu had been taken, but there was little opportunity for rest for everyone. That was the reality of war. It was brutal and had to be swift and efficient. On the whole, the Republic had done exceedingly well in retaking the planet, with only a very few casualties, at least compared to a usual planet-wide liberation attempt. Of course, a lot of this was due to the Digimon and the clones now looked at all three with deep respect, even the wisecracking white one.

As of now, the three of them were standing in one of the gunships. The blast doors were open, as there wasn't any likelihood of anything shooting at them, and the clones and the Digimon stared out across the ruined planet. The three Tamers were also in this particular LAAT, but they were all sitting down at the back of the gunship, where they were both safer and out of the way. R2-D2 was standing beside them.

"So," said Lopmon over the noise of the engines. "Where are we going?"

"The city of Resdin," said Anakin, looking down at the brown bunny standing by his feet. "There may be no more Separatist ships in the system, but there's still a large droid stronghold in that particular city."

"Why that one?" asked Renamon.

"Resdin was the first casualty of this whole occupation," explained Anakin gravely. "The Separatist hit it fast and hit it hard. Any Twi'lek living there was extremely lucky to escape alive. But it got across the message that the Separatists wanted. It was the situation at Resdin that was the main lever in the surrender of Lessu."

"Why don't the droids just make it easier on themselves and run?" sighed Ahsoka. "It'd make things so much simpler for us. Then we could leave this planet and set about helping one in greater need instead of just sweeping up the trash."

"Ahsoka," warned Anakin. "A Jedi does not crave adventure."

"Sure he doesn't," Ahsoka smirked at her Master. "That's not hypocritical at all, Master."

"What did I say about being snippy?"

"But if I wasn't snippy, then I wouldn't be Snips."

"She has a point," said Terriermon. "You'd be forced to come up with another nickname. If Impmon was here, you'd already have a new one, Ahsoka."

"And what would it be?" the Togruta looked down at Terriermon curiously.

"Usually he makes a reference to someone's head, so you'd probably be Zebra-head."

"Zebra?" asked Ahsoka. "What does that mean?"

"It's a type of horse in our dimension," said Henry. "And it's covered in black and white stripes just like your head-tails."

"Right," said Ahsoka slowly.

"Maybe we should get back on topic," said Rika. "Just why do the droids stubbornly cling to this place when it's so obvious they've lost?"

"Maybe they don't have any ships that can make it into space," suggested Henry.

"It's simpler than that, kid," chipped in Captain Rex. "These are droids we're talking about. They're just not programmed to back down unless they're told to. If they've got a chance of talking out just one of us, then they'll stay and fight."

"Resdin might be a little tricky," said a clone that went by the name of Sergeant Kano. "It's a wreck now. There's barely a single building with a roof to call its own. There's rubble everywhere. The whole place is just a mess, and there could be droids hiding behind any old pile of junk."

"All this is really scaring me," said Suzie. "Those big, metal robots creep me out."

"Not surprised," said a nearby clone. "A droid army might not look like much, but it can be the stuff of nightmares."

"Ah, you're exaggerating, Tred," shrugged another clone with noticeably shinier armour than everyone else's. "We can take 'em, right Sarge?"

"Of course we can take them," Rex answered for Kano. "But keep a lid on your eagerness. You've never faced a real droid force before, Rich. They can be real tough to clear out sometimes."

"Yes, sir," Rich nodded. He was what the older, more-experienced clones referred to as a "Shiny," which meant that they were new recruits, on the front lines for the first time. If Rich survived this ordeal in Resdin, he might have a little more respect for his enemy in future.

Rex heard a slight beeping in his helmet and pressed his finger to the communications system by his ear. After a couple of seconds, he reported, "We're approaching the city now, sir. We'll be at the landing zone shortly."

"Alright, men," said Anakin. "You know the drill. We need to dig out the droids that remain in this city, and since there's a full battalion in there that might be a tough job. But on the plus sign, we've got some assistance this time. I've heard a lot of good things about you Digimon."

"Now it's time to see if Obi-Wan and Aayla were exaggerating," grinned Ahsoka.

"Ooh, do I detect a challenge in the air?" smirked Terriermon.

"I believe you do," nodded Renamon. "And fortunately, we're more than up to accepting it."

"That remains to be seen," Anakin nodded. "For me, at least."

"You won't be disappointed, sir," said Galle. "A battling Digimon is not something to be taken lightly."

"I'll take your word for it Lieutenant," said Anakin. "Prepare for landing, everyone."

There was a distinct clicking noise as the clones un-holstered their blaster and primed them. The Tamers all got to their feet. They had orders to stay by the gunships and to follow the progress of the battle through their D-Arcs, assisting where they could. Anakin's exact words had been – "You're not going to help anyone by getting shot."

This had not gone down very well with any of them, especially Rika, who insisted they been in many similar places, some even more serious and had been in the thick of the action. But Anakin had been adamant, and they'd relented, albeit very grudgingly.

The Digimon made themselves ready too, nodding to their Tamers and giving them wordless sentiments and reassurances not to worry about them. Then the gunship, along with the several ones behind them, dipped in altitude and began to descend. They swept down past cliff-faces and then came to a smooth halt on a very large ledge and alighting.

"Textbook landing," Henry said approvingly. "Wish our pilots could do that with our aircraft back home."

Everyone piled out of the gunships as a bunch of other gunships landed nearby. In front of them were a bunch of clones that had already been there, as well as two large AT-TE walkers. This was the scouting party that had been sent to the city yesterday. Behind them, the gunships lifted off, taking Seargent Kano and a squad of other clones to a different location. Rex marched straight over to the scouts and demanded a report. Then, he turned back to the others.

"What's the status, Rex?" asked Anakin.

"Less than fruitful, sir," said Rex. "They haven't been able to do very much since they arrived. The power to the holobridges are out and without jetpacks they haven't been able to cross the gaps."

"That's a hindrance and a half," sighed Anakin. He turned to Ahsoka and the Digimon. "Resdin's built halfway up a series of cliffs and the only way to get across on foot is with numerous holobridges dotted around the place. And with the power out, we're gonna have to fix that ourselves before we can proceed."

"Sounds like a job for someone I know," Ahsoka patted Artoo on the head. The astromech gave his usual twittering response.

"Then let's get going already," said Terriermon. "It's be _hours_ since something tried to shoot me. I'm getting bored."

"If you insist," said Anakin. "You three Digimon are with Ahsoka and me. We need to escort Artoo to the power terminals and get the bridges back up."

"And I assume that you want us to destroy all droids we come across," noted Lopmon.

"Of course."

"Consider it done," Renamon's expression hardened.

"Watch yourselves," Galle said, hefting his blaster. "General Secura won't be pleased to find you're all dead when she gets back."

"Don't sweat it," said Terriermon. "It's impossible to kill a Digimon." This was technically true, as a Digimon could only be deleted, but none of them were sure what would happen to a deleted Digimon in _this_ universe. None of them were keen to find out either.

"Come on, Artooey," Ahsoka said, and she broke into a jog, Renamon behind her. Terriermon and Lopmon took to the air. R2-D2 rolled along behind them on his three wheeled legs.

Anakin paused briefly to say "We'll meet you at the rendezvous," to Rex, before running to catch up and overtake the others so that he was leading the way. They reached two buildings by the cliff-face and the two Jedi got between them. Anakin led the way as he planted his foot on the wall of one and sprang of it and bounced off the other buildings, leaping from wall to wall until he flipped over the top. Ahsoka followed suit. When she reached the top, she found Terriermon and Lopmon were already there, standing next to Anakin. Terriermon had a look of mock-impatience on his face.

Suddenly, Renamon leapt over the lip of the building and landed gracefully, having leapt all the way up in one go instead of wall-jumping. Behind her, Artoo rose up on the jets that had extended from his legs, before coming to rest on the top.

"Follow me," said Anakin, and all of them broke into another jog as they ran along the rooftops, leaping or flying from roof to roof. They dashed along one of the few stone bridge about the place in order to cross the chasm, and made short work of a series of half-standing walls that had once been a building.

On the other side, they encountered their first battle droids of the day. They were standing with their backs to them and standing rigidly to attention, ten B-1s and two Supers. The Supers were patrolling a nearby doorway, which would be the most likely direction for a clone to walk from. They hadn't even considered Jedi leaping across the gap behind them.

"You know what?" said Anakin conversationally and completely unconcerned by the droids before him. "I'd quite like to see you in action now. How about I let you deal with those guys without any interference from Ahsoka or me?"

"Aw, but I was ready to dice them into pieces," muttered Ahsoka.

"There'll be plenty more opportunity for that," said Lopmon. "There are lots of droids around – it's plain to see that from the air."

"Good," said Ahsoka. "You reckon you can handle twelve of them?"

"Are you kidding?" asked Terriermon. "Let's get 'em."

"With pleasure," Renamon stepped down from their perch and slid down a sheet of metal until she was standing behind the droids. She calmly tapped one on the shoulder.

"Yes?" it asked, turning around. Renamon's fist merged with its face and sent it flying, head shooting off on its own over the cliff and the body knocking over another droid. The droids turned to face her and raised their blasters, but she was already in motion. Renamon knocked the blaster out of the hands of one, caught it and used it as a club to the droids head, then she swung around and sent a foot lashing into the chest of another. She dropped to the floor and swept with her legs, taking the legs out from underneath another, then leaping up, grabbing the dazed droid and swinging it into another, sending them both shooting over the edge.

Terriermon zoomed downwards and body-slammed another B-1 in the head, knocking it off, then leapt onto another, wrapping one ear around its head and ripping it out of the body forcefully. He tossed the head into the chest of another, which did nothing but make it look down at the thing at had dinged against it in confusion, but then Terriermon was upon him and his ear swung like a fist, which sent the head spinning in its socket. He leapt off the stricken droid as another shot at him. He caught himself in mid-air and wheeled around to slam forcefully into its back. It fell heavily and slid across the stone, Terriermon on its back. They both came to a stop at the edge of the cliff.

"That was close," remarked the droid, but as he said, Terriermon hopped off his back, hooked both ears under the droids legs and calmly tipped him over the edge.

Lopmon took out the last remaining B-1 with ease, as she swooped out of the sky and tore its head off by grabbing it as she passed by. Their heads really were very flimsy. But then she was faced with two droids who didn't have that weakness. The Supers levelled their wrist blasters at her. She dodged to one side, and then felt something. Suzie must have swiped a card, because an enormous hammer that she didn't look capable of carrying appeared in her hands. This was Thor's Hammer, usually found in the hand of a Digimon called Zudomon, but it'd do very well for her. She turned back to the Supers and ran for them, swinging the hammer. It caught the first one a crushing blow to the face, then she dropped to ground and struck the other one in the legs, knocking both off, before finishing it with a strike to the body.

"Not bad," said Anakin, as he and Ahsoka slid down to join them. "Twelve droids in seven seconds. Impressive."

"We could have done better though," Ahsoka folded her arms, grinning.

"The hammer was quite an interesting touch," said Anakin to Lopmon.

"What can I say?" Lopmon smiled as the hammer faded away. "I have a knack with close-ranged weapons and lightning bolts."

"Lightning bolts?"

"Some other time, maybe," said Renamon. "Shall we get going?"

"Yes we shall. We don't want to keep the clones waiting." Anakin led the way as the six of them easily crossed several more gaps, leaping from rock to rock and occasionally swinging from pipes jutting out from the wall. Anakin couldn't begin to describe just what he was feeling right now. He might just have a chance of fulfilling the prophecy with these guys helping him along. They'd made short work of the droids without using their special attacks that Aayla and Obi-Wan had described. Now, Anakin was itching to see them.

The controls to the holobridge were being guarded by more droids. This time, it was Anakin and Ahsoka that leapt in to attack while the Digimon stood back and watched. Anakin charged towards the group, deflecting the laser fire coming his way with ease. He leapt right over the two Supers that blocked his path and swept his blade through a B-1, then back the other way and through another, before spinning on the spot and slashing into the torso of another. Then he leapt up and bounced off the shoulders of another B-1, before sending several others off the cliff with a blast of the Force. Calmly, he stabbed the fallen droid in the chest.

Ahsoka took out the two Supers that Anakin had jumped over first. Her lightsaber swung as they fired wildly at her, and she sent several bolts flying back at them, taking out one and wounding the other, which she finished with a slash across the body. She leapt to one side as some more droids fired at her, then rolled forward and slashed through one as she rose up, grabbed another and plunged her blade through its chest, forcing backwards and into another so she impaled two at once. Withdrawing her blade, she finished off her spree by ducking under some blasts and slashing one upwards through the abdomen, her feet leaving the ground and then hacking through another on the downward swing.

This left only one battle droid left. It backed away as Anakin and Ahsoka turned to look at it at the same time. "Stay back," it demanded pathetically. "I warn you, I'm armed."

"Didn't stop your friends needing to be sent back to their factories," remarked Ahsoka.

"Yeah, well... I'm more skilled than them."

"I doubt that," smirked Anakin.

Abruptly, the droid suddenly went rigid, crackling with electricity. It fell to the ground, dead, and R2-D2 was standing behind him, an electric prod sticking out of the top of his head. The astromech chirped in acknowledgement.

"Nice one, Artooey," said Ahsoka, then turned to look at the Digimon, who were approaching. "So, were you impressed?"

"Maybe," said Terriermon.

It looked like the start of a real friendship.

"Alright, Artoo," Anakin indicated the console. "If you'd care to do the honours."

Artoo rolled over to the console. The others approached the ledge and looked out over it. The AT-TE walkers could be seen from here, as could the clones surrounding it. Ahsoka waved, and was fairly certain she saw Captain Rex wave back.

A compartment in Artoo's chest area opened and a small, mechanical arm emerged and entered a socket in the console. The arm began to rotate and three seconds later, the holobridge went up.

"Whoa, that was fast," remarked Terriermon. "You might be even better with computers than Shibumi."

Artoo whistled and beeped in response.

"But you should also know that I don't have a clue what you just said."

"That wasn't so tough," said Ahsoka. "Perhaps this won't be as difficult as we thought."

"Don't get overconfident," Anakin warned her. "We have no idea what we'll be facing out there. They could have tanks of their own."

"I hope our Tamers are keeping out of trouble," said Lopmon.

"I'm sure Henry will keep a handle on things," said Renamon, reassuringly. "He has a good head on his shoulders, which contrasts to Rika's hot-headedness."

"Are you saying that metaphorically?" asked Terriermon, "Or do you mean that her hair makes it look like her head's on fire." He dodged as Renamon aimed a playful kick at him. Ahsoka and Anakin both chuckled.

Anakin's holoprojector started beeping. Unclipping it and pressing the button, they saw a hologram of Sergeant Kano appear on it. "General," Kano saluted. "We've found a large group of clankers over here in our sector. Shall we take 'em, or wait for back-up?"

"What do you think?" asked Anakin. "You reckon you can take them without backup."

"Yes, sir."

"Then go ahead. Ahsoka and I are just starting our advance into the city. If you find yourself in trouble, let us know and we'll get there as soon as we can."

"Copy that, sir." Kano saluted and his hologram vanished.

"Shouldn't one of us go and help him?" asked Ahsoka. "There are only five clones in his group."

"If he thinks he can handle it, then I say we let him," said Renamon. "We can concentrate on other things instead."

"Exactly," nodded Anakin. "You could learn a thing or two from Renamon, Snips."

"If you say so, Master," smiled Ahsoka.

"Artoo," said Anakin. "Return to the gunships. The rest of you, come with me." Anakin leapt down over the edge and came to land on the ground next to the clones advancing across the bridge. Ahsoka and Renamon followed suit, while Terriermon and Lopmon glided down and alighted on one of the walkers.

The combined forces of the 327th and the 501st marched through the streets together until they came to a fork in the road. "Guess it's time to split up," said Lopmon. "We can cover more ground that way."

"Indeed," said Anakin. "You guys, go with Galle and take the right hand side. Ahsoka, Rex and I will go left. We'll meet up later."

"Right-o," grinned Terriermon. "And we'll leave you with this little spectacle, if you like. Henry, I know you're watching through your digivice. Digivolution, please."

"That makes all three of us," said Renamon.

Back by the gunships, three cards were swiped, and, as a result, three Digimon began to glow and grow bigger.

**"TERRIERMON DIGIVOLVE TO... GARGOMON!"**

**"RENAMON DIGIVOLVE TO... KYUBIMON!"**

**"LOPMON DIGIVOLVE TO... TURUIEMON!"**

"Whoa officially doesn't do that credit," Ahsoka's eyes were wide. Anakin's were as well, but he couldn't seen to find anything adequate to say. All of the clones of the 501st also looked equally stunned, while the clones of 327th were immune to this by now.

"We'll see you around," Kyubimon said, and they began to make their way down the right-hand street. One of the AT-TEs went with them and the three Champion level Digimon walked down the street at the head of the group alongside Galle.

* * *

"Did you see their faces?" laughed Galle, and many of the other clones joined in.

"On the whole, no," grinned Gargomon. "Most of them were wearing helmets."

"Yeah, but the Jedi weren't," said Galle. "They couldn't believe it. And trust me, it takes quite a lot to throw a Jedi off-balance. Congratulations."

"High praise indeed," said Turuiemon. "I believe we made their day with that."

"It's a pity that they won't get to see us fighting," said Kyubimon. "They'll miss quite a spectacle."

"Well, we'll give 'em the next best thing," said Gargomon. "When we come up against some droids, we're gonna make so much noise that out battle will be heard all the way back at Lessu. Right, guys?"

The clones cheered.

"Quite the motivational speech," sniggered Turuiemon.

"And I meant every word of it," nodded Gargomon.

The 327th marched forward with a will, determined to root out the stubborn droids before their General returned from Alzoc III. They swung around buildings, pointing their blasters at the gaps between them just in case there were droids hiding there. There weren't, but there was no sense in relaxing because of this. The droids had been in this city for some time, and would probably have some vague mechanical knowledge of the general area.

And sure enough, they came. Four droids rounded the corner, presumably a scouting patrol of some kind. They didn't last three seconds. The clones quickly raised their blasters and shot them to pieces and they collapsed in a useless heap.

"Be on your guard, men," Galle called to them. "You can bet that there'll be some more clankers before too long if they've got patrols here. Tread carefully and mind your aim."

Gargomon rotated his guns, eager for battle. "It's them that should be treading carefully if you ask me. Let's show 'em what the 327th are made of."

"And let's also show them what _they're_ made of," Turuiemon nodded. "Show them their own insides."

"I like your attitude," said Galle. And he rounded the corner. Immediately he saw more droids, mostly B-1s with the occasional Super, so it was the genuine droid rabble. He opened fire and took a droid in the back and another in the side before they realised what was happening. More clones dashed out from behind the corner and crouched behind low walls. One of them got hit by a lucky shot and fell, dead, but a good deal more droids were getting hit.

Gargomon rolled out from the corner like a commando and let loose with his cannons. **"GARGO LASERS!"** he cried and poured said attack at the droids. He bounded over one of the low walls and ducked behind another, propelling his fire over the top and scoring countless hits on the droid forces. Robotic bodies fell left, right and centre.

Two more clones were hit by the fire being returned, and a third was yanked out the way of a strike by Turuiemon. The rabbit had amazing reflexes and had pulled the clone aside the moment she saw he was in danger. Then she sprang over the wall, switchblades extending and swung her arm so hard she span in the air as she cried **"GAUNTLET CLAW!"**

The attack slashed through three Supers and two B-1s. The ones on either side of the fallen turned to see what had happened to their brethren and were immediately struck down by clone fire or by Gargomon.

It was at this point that Kyubimon decided to make her move. She burst from where she'd been watching the attack and streaked straight down the middle of the street, past clone and fellow Digimon alike as she surged towards what remained of the droids. **"DRAGON WHEEL!" **she shouted and went the rest of the way shrouded in the dragon shaped fireball. What remained of the droids were incinerated by the inferno and collapsed.

"You reckon they heard that back there?" asked Galle, holstering his blaster and taking a Z-6 rotatory blaster cannon from his back, twirling the barrel at the end.

"Oh, I'm sure they did," said Gargomon.

"Let's press on," said Galle. "My guess is that was just a portion of what's ahead. We may have a decent fight ahead of us yet."

It was at this point that the wall of one of the buildings along the street suddenly exploded outwards in a shower of stone. More droids emerged from it, firing in all directions. Kyubimon had to wheel about to avoid being hit. Galle and the other two Digimon ducked behind a wall as a phalanx of Supers emerged from the building, ready to kill.

It was quite unfortunate for the Supers that they failed to do just that, because the AT-TE had rounded the corner by this time. The clone manning the huge cannon wheeled around and let loose two shots which obliterated the Supers, the street where they'd been standing and the building they'd come from.

"I could do that as well, you know," said Gargomon. "I just don't want to."

"You just keep telling yourself that," chuckled a nearby clone.

"You haven't seen our full potential yet, you know," warned Gargomon. "And you'll be sorry you didn't believe me."

**"FOX TAIL INFERNO!"**

Kyubimon was firing fireballs from her tail around the next corner. "I hate to interrupt," she said, as she sent a barrage shooting over her head. But the noise appears to have attracted the rest of the group.

"Alright, positions, men!" shouted Galle and the clones sprinted to obey. Two more clones, known as Barr and Inc, also unhooked some Z-6s and held back as other clones ran past them and took up positions. Then, as the these clones provided cover-fire, Galle, Barr, Inc and Gargomon all sprinted past and took up positions at the front, cocking their cannons.

"Eat laser, clankers!" shouted Galle and let loose. So did the other three. The storm of bolts ripped through the air and then ripped through the droids, bombarding them with a torrent of burning plasma. The droids tipped backwards under the assault and many let off their own shots, badly and inaccurately. Lasers flew around the cannon-users and managed to miss them completely, while they themselves were dead accurate.

Kyubimon and Turuiemon shared a glance and a nod, then they turned and ran back to the AT-TE. Both of them leapt on top of it, and then leapt off it on the roofs of the nearest buildings. Then, the two of them ran across these roofs until they reached another street. Both leapt down into it, cut to the left and ran across. Sure enough they quickly encountered the backs of the small droid force.

They charged.

* * *

"Sounds like they're getting a lot more action than we are, General," commented Rex, as loud explosions emanated from nearby and flashes of light could be seen above the buildings. "You reckon they're winning?"

"Well if you'd seen them fight the droids earlier, Rex," said Anakin. "You probably wouldn't be asking that question. You'd know the answer is almost definitely a yes."

There were two faint, but clearly audible cries. One went "Dragon Wheel!" and the other went "Gauntlet Claw!" As they looked over the buildings they saw what appeared to be a plume of blue fire and a flash of white light rise into view.

"Looks like they're using those special "attacks" that Aayla told us about," said Ahsoka. "Which one of them do you reckon is doing the fire?"

"I wouldn't think any of them would be capable of doing that to be honest," shrugged Anakin.

"But it's good news for you though, right?" Ahsoka looked up at the taller Jedi. "Imagine the look on Count Dooku's face when she sees something shooting blue fire at him without a flamethrower. Let's see him try that."

Anakin shook his head, chuckling. "I'll make sure I have a holorecorder so I can watch it over and over again."

"I might ask you to lend it to me if I ever get bored," said Rex.

Anakin's holoprojector beeped. Once activated, Sergeant Kano appeared again. "What is, Sergeant?"

"There are a few more droids over here than we previously thought, sir," Kano informed him. "We discovered a possible number of outposts. We just took out one of them, but there are at least three more. We could do with some back-up. The shinies are willing, but a little rash."

"How do you know there are at least three more?" asked Ahsoka.

"We heard one of the droid mention an Outpost Four, sir," said Kano.

"Hold your position, Sergeant," said Anakin. "We'll be right there. And Ahsoka and I will bring a little back-up."

"Copy that, sir," Kano disappeared. Anakin placed the holoprojector back on his belt and hailed Galle through the comlink on his wrist.

* * *

Galle and Gargomon took out the last remaining Super at the same time, while Turuiemon skewered the last B-1 in the chest with one switchblade.

"That was real easy," said Galle. "I could get used to working with you guys pretty easily."

"We aim to please," said Kyubimon, as she tossed a droid she'd picked up with her tails over the buildings.

Galle's wrist comlink beeped. Pressing it, he said, "Yes, General, we just took out a medium-sized droid force with only four casualties," he said.

"Impressive," said Anakin. "But I'm afraid you're going to have to forfeit your trump card, Galle. Sergeant Kano just called with a request for back-up. I want myself, Ahsoka and all three Digimon to go and help him out."

"I'm sure we'll manage, sir," said Galle. "I'm sending them over now, General."

"Good man."

"Alright, you three. You heard him. You better double back and meet up with him."

"Alright," said Turuiemon. "Good luck with the rest of this sector, Galle."

"Thank you," Galle nodded. The Digimon turned back and began to run back through the streets they'd just come down at a steady pace, past the AT-TE walker and dead droids. They ran past buildings, until they reached the fork in the trail and they swerved off to the right. Within a minute or two, the 501st platoon came into sight. The clones cheered as the Digimon ran past them, not panting in the slightest.

"Good," said Anakin. "You're here. You up for a little detour?"

"Bring it on," said Gargomon.

"Then follow us," said Ahsoka.

"Rex, you and your men keep going this way," said Anakin. "You three, try and keep up."

With that, Anakin and Ahsoka leapt upwards, using the Force to power their leap and onto the roofs of the nearby buildings. They began to sprint along the top of them.

"Now, if you ask me, that's not particularly fair on you guys," said Rex.

"Who cares about fair?" Kyubimon winked. One card slash later, and bat-like wings erupted from the shoulders of all three of them. The clones started backwards in amazement. "Bye," nodded Kyubimon and the three of them took to the air, flapping over the lip of the buildings and setting off in hot pursuit of the Jedi.

"I thought Waxer was telling me fibs when he said they could do that," muttered a nearby clone.

* * *

Anakin turned back to see if they were following and was surprised to see no sign of them. He pulled to a halt, as did Ahsoka, and they both stared in the direction they'd come, expecting the Digimon to appear over the top and run towards them.

When they didn't, Ahsoka said, "Maybe we made a slight error in our judgement and they _can't_ follow us."

"Or they're just being really slow for some reason," Anakin's eyes narrowed.

"Or maybe we've already overtaken you," came Turuiemon's voice from above. Looking up, the Jedi saw all three Digimon with large wings zip overhead.

"Hey, no fair!" shouted Ahsoka, and she set into her run again, with Anakin right behind her.

"Come on!" Gargomon called down to them. "We're just getting our second wind."

"Having wings gives you an advantage," pointed out Anakin.

"Well, you should have thought about that before you declared a race."

"I see STAPs up ahead," said Kyubimon.

"Not for long," Gargomon raised his guns.

"Wait," called Anakin. "We'll handle them. So Snips, you wanna level the playing field a bit?"

"I'm game," the Togruta grinned. Both of them increased their pace slightly and leapt upwards, towards the STAPs that were motoring towards them group. Anakin landed first on the front of one.

"Hey, who are you?" asked the droid, before getting kicked off his transport and having his place taken by the Jedi. The other STAP wheeled to shoot at Anakin, but the driver suddenly had a red boot kick him and the side, losing his balance, his body decided it would be best to obey gravity, which led to the death of the droid.

"Now, this is more like it!" whooped Ahsoka and the five of them rocketed through the air at top speed, laughing and hollering to the sky. This was one of those moments where the war was almost put to one side, and it just became a time for fun and enjoyment. Of course, several droids down below spotted them shooting overhead and attempted to shoot them down, but they were always bombarded by red lasers from the STAPs, green ones from Gargomon, white streaks of light from Turuiemon, or blue fireballs from Kyubimon.

Ahsoka zoomed downwards and into a ravine, before zipping back up, yelling in elation. The Togruta said, "You reckon Kano and his troops are alright?"

"Kano's a veteran," pointed out Anakin. "He can take care of himself, unlike a little Huttlet I used to know."

"You mean Stinky?" asked Ahsoka. "You don't need to remind me about him."

"Who was Stinky?" Turuiemon drew level with Ahsoka.

"A baby Hutt we had to rescue from the Separatists. It was so difficult to work with the little guy."

"You think that's bad?" asked Kyubimon. "You should try being locked in a room with Terriermon for three days."

"Excuse me, but I seem to recall that being the focal point of our mating," protested Gargomon.

"My point exactly."

"I hate you."

"You were..." Ahsoka blinked. "Do I even want to ask?"

"Probably not," Kyubimon said. "It's funny, but usually if you go back in time and change something, one thing you might want to change would be the time you got captured, but I'd actually rather keep it, considering what happened."

"I've changed my mind. I don't hate you. I feel the exact opposite."

"Say it."

"Say what?"

"Gargomon!"

"Alright, alright. I love you."

"Aww," grinned Ahsoka. "That's so sweet."

"Yes, but it also happens quite frequently," said Turuiemon. "And what they do behind closed doors is better left behind closed doors in my opinion."

"Come on, sis," Gargomon grinned. "If we ever get back, I'm sure Impmon would come asking Kyubimon for hints about to do with you in..."

"Finish that sentence and I'll cut your wings off."

"Let's focus, people," said Anakin. "We're approaching the area."

The sound of laser fire began to pierce the air. Eyes widened and they quickly put on speed. Swerving around a corner, they saw Kano and his four clone shinies pinned down behind a low wall as a bunch of droids were firing on them.

"Looks like we arrived just in time," Anakin remarked as he opened fire with his STAP. He mowed down four of the droids before they realised what was happening, and when they did realise what was happening, another group of them had been cut down by Ahsoka. The Jedi leapt off their STAPs in mid-air and came down hard, lightsabers drawn and they went a-cleaving.

Kyubimon also alighted and ran towards Kano's men. She leapt atop the wall they were hiding behind and began to rain down fireballs with extreme prejudice, sending out a barrage of nine every four seconds.

Gargomon saw something out the corner of his eye as he and Turuiemon flew to join the others. Looking up, he saw a commando droid had leapt off the top of a battered, half-standing building and was heading for Turuiemon. "Look out!" he cried, and changed direction, ramming into her and knocking her aside. The commando droid crashed into one of his wings and fell off, plunging into the canyon below.

But Gargomon had lost control at the sudden weight and went spiralling downwards, yelling. The rabbit flapped desperately and managed to grab some semblance of control before coming to crash right in front of the droid lines.

"Ow," he said, as he attempted to lever himself up. The droids had hesitated at the new arrival, but they raised their blasters at Gargomon as he climbed unsteadily to his feet.

"Gargomon! Look out!" Ahsoka cried as she cut through a Super that had taken a swing at her.

Gargomon managed to avoid the first couple of shots thrown at him by diving to one side. They followed his progress though, but Gargomon raised his cannons. **"GARGO LASERS!"** he cried, and opened fire, cutting down droids where they stood.

But there were more droids turning towards him and pointing their weapons his way. Gargomon backed away, keeping up his continuous stream of attacks. Anakin and Ahsoka slashed and hacked, battling their way over to him furiously. But they needn't have bothered, because Turuiemon swooped down after recovering and came to a halt above Gargomon. Her arms were crossed in front of her, and a ball of purple electricity that was definitely not her own attack was building up before her.

**"ELECTRO SHOCKER!"** Turuiemon shouted and unleashed the bolt of purplish electricity, which fried the droids where they stood.

"Nice," said Gargomon. "But you still owe me one."

"What, using Kabuterimon's attack to save your ass doesn't count?" asked Turuiemon.

"I would have thought of something," Gargomon shrugged, grinning. "But thank you anyway."

Turuiemon rolled her eyes. "And I suppose you've forgotten that fact that I saved you from getting munched by a Fwit on Maridun."

"Oh yeah. Uh, call it even then."

"No, you still owe me, because I just saved you again."

"Damn."

"That was pretty damn good," said Kano, emerging from where he'd been sheltered. "Thanks for the save, General. You got here at just the right moment."

"Happy to help, Sergeant," nodded Anakin. "And I agree with you, that was very intriguing. I can tell you guys are used to working together as a team."

"When you have prophecies made about you, that tends to happen," said Kyubimon. "And where we come from we've often had to work as a team to deal with threats."

"As the old saying goes," said Turuiemon. "There's no I in team."

"That's good," said Kano. "I might use that the next time I come across a clone with a taste for single-handed heroics."

"And me for a rampant Padawan I happen to know," Anakin smirked.

"Ha-ha. I think I'm gonna die laughing," Ahsoka folded her arms.

"I wouldn't advise that," Gargomon laughed. "Then he'd have to get a new one."

"Oh shut up," sighed Ahsoka.

"So, about these outposts, Sergeant," Anakin turned to Kano. "What do you know?"

"Only what we've told you, sir," said Rich the shiny. "When I shot one of the clankers I knocked off a holoprojector and it started to display two droids talking about it. From the sounds of things we've managed to take out Outpost Two, but they dismissed the idea, saying that Outpost Four would have warned them if there'd been an attack. Then the droid realised his communicator was on and it turned it off."

"You mean to tell me that it gave us useful information without even realising it?" Ahsoka laughed. "That's stupid even for them."

"These droids are officiously more stupid than I thought," Gargomon kicked a carcass over the cliff. "They could do with a couple of brain cells. It would work wonders."

"Maybe having brain cells would help you along too," quipped Turuiemon.

"Oi, you don't have any either."

"Momentai."

Everyone turned to look at Ahsoka, who had just spoken. "It's spreading," muttered Kyubimon. "It's like a disease."

"But it's my word," protested Gargomon. "I don't want it to spread."

"It's not your word. I belongs to the Cantonese."

"Maybe we should stop talking while we're ahead," advised Anakin.

"Quite," said Kyubimon. "Gargomon, and only Gargomon should make comments like that if you ask me. The thought of everyone else being Terriermon-like is... disturbing to say the least."

"But you wouldn't have _me_ any other way, would you," Gargomon draped an arm over Kyubimon's shoulders. The fox shook her head.

"No, I wouldn't."

"Save the intimacy for later," said Turuiemon. "Shall we go and blow up a few outposts."

"Now, that I like the sound of," Kano hefted his blaster.

"Let's go, Skyguy," said Ahsoka. "Let's see how many outposts we can take out before dark."

* * *

And indeed, it did go dark. Resdin was on the brink of the half-year darkness, which meant that it was at the point of the planets rotation where there was such thing as night and day for a few days before it became dark permanently for six months.

On the whole, the liberation of the city went rather well that day. Most of the droids were blown to smithereens but clones or Digimon, or they were cut to pieces by Jedi or Digimon. The sun set, and night rolled in slowly, unlike the instant changes associated with the Digital World.

Most of the clones settled down for the night, but Kano and his group, along with the Jedi and the Digimon, began to fight their way to what remained of the outposts.

On the other side of the city, there were two clones who were still up and about. Captain Rex and a second clone Sergeant known as Boomer were on a patrol around the city. They were riding AT-RTs and the small walkers plodded along with rhythmic footfalls.

"This isn't particularly interesting you know, sir?" said Boomer, as he steered his walker around the corner. "Don't you think we should be getting some rest before tomorrow?"

"We need to make sure that there aren't any more droids hanging around this place that we previously missed, Boomer," said Rex. "And don't forget, a city like this might allow a few Gutkurr or some other predator to get in and snack on us while we sleep. Not to mention there could be a few smugglers around which are looking for a quick score, if you follow me."

"Ah," nodded Boomer. "I see. Good point."

"Course it's a good point," said Rex. "Anything that wants to kill is has to go."

"Well, I don't see anything," said Boomer. "I wonder if... Oh, wait a minute, I see something." Boomer leaned back in his seat, pointing the "head" of the walker upwards and, as a result, the cannon. He fired, and the laser connected with the top of a Dwarf Spider Droid that had been walking down the Cliffside above them. Its feet left the rock and it plummeted into a heap in front of the clones.

"Nice shot," observed Rex. "Dead on target too. Let's keep going, and we should keep an eye out for more Spiders."

They continued to walk forwards, patrolling through thin canyons and occasionally leaping over rubble that blocked their path. They did indeed encounter two more Spider droids, both of which were taken out by Rex before they could do more than turn to look at the clones. There was also a random Super at one point, which had somehow managed to evade the clone's assault before.

But then there was a whooshing noise. Looking up, the clones pulled back as a Vulture Droid went soaring overhead, skimming the cliff tops above them. It was definitely going somewhere. If it was on patrol, it would have turned to shoot them. But it didn't. That was not its objective.

"Phew," Boomer breathed. "I thought we'd had it then."

"So did I for a moment," nodded Rex. "I hate Vultures. They're just so..."

"Sir, look!" Boomer cried, pointing ahead of them. Rex looked around sharply and saw something emerging from a tunnel that went straight through the cliff. Rex caught a brief glance of a humanoid figure with an oddly shaped, large head, and some sort of cape billowing out behind it, before it disappeared round the corner.

"Did you see it sir?" asked Boomer.

"Hell, yeah," said Rex. "Whatever it was, it wasn't a droid. Let's go check it out. I'll contact General Skywalker."

* * *

The vulture droid that had flown over the two came to an abrupt end when Turuiemon sent a blade of white light whizzing through it, slicing off one pair of its legs. It plummeted down and slammed into a group of other droids guarding the outpost.

Anakin drove his blade through a Super and sent two more off the cliff with a wave of his hand. Ahsoka rebounded off a droids shoulders and took off the arms of another Super, before lifting them up with force and sending them both whizzing into two battle droids, then skewered the Super.

**"BUNNY PUMMEL!"** Gargomon smashed a nearby wall, which promptly began to rain down debris onto anything below. Gargomon got out of the way quickly, but a good number of droids could not say the same.

Kyubimon had Kano and Rich on her back. She darted through an opening in the droid lines, using her tails as clubs to send two droids flying. She approached the outpost building, upon which point the two clones hurled thermal detonators into it. A few seconds later, the building exploded with a colossal boom. Turning back to get out from under falling metal, they found that the other droids had been taken out from shots from the other clones.

Ahsoka beheaded the last droid, before deactivating her lightsaber and saying, "Easy as pie."

"WHAT A SPLENDID PIE! PIZZA PIZZA...!"

"Gargomon!"

"Sorry, Kyubi."

"What do we do now, sir?" asked Kano. "Shall we head back to base?"

"I think so, Sergeant," said Anakin. "We..."

The holoprojector beeped again. This time it was a hologram of Rex that appeared when Anakin pushed the button.

"Sir, we've found something."

"Not now. I'd quite like a bath," said Gargomon.

"What is it, Rex?" Anakin ignored him.

"Looks like someone's here other than us and the droids," said Rex. "I'm sending you the co-ordinates so you rendezvous with us."

"Someone else?" asked Ahsoka. "Who would want to come to this place? It's not exactly a holiday resort."

"Didn't get a good look at him sir, but it could be a... Wait. Contact! AARGH" A holographic laser struck Rex in the shoulder and the clone keeled over, a hand pressing to the impact area.

"Rex! What's happening?" cried Anakin.

But the holoprojector went dead.

"REX!"

* * *

Cliffhanger much? Hopefully I should get the next chapter up within a couple of days. Thanks again guys.

* * *

Next time...

Star Wars based chapter. Half of the following chapter will follow Obi-Wan Kenobi on the mission mention in the intro earlier. The second half will follow Aayla and her travels with Luminara to the ice planet. Both are key to the next few chapters.

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Coming up:- **Chapter 22 : Juma-9 and Alzoc III**


	22. Juma9 and Alzoc III

Ninety-nine reviews. So close to triple digits. That's quite a few more reviews than my previous story, and it's only one chapter long. Well, two chapters now, but what the hey. I actually found this chapter quite challenging, but I hope I wrote it out well.

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* * *

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 22:- ****Juma-9 and Alzoc III**

* * *

Obi-Wan Kenobi walked down the ramp of the Nu-class Attack Shuttle and into the hangar. Having just come from Ryloth, Obi-Wan needed to meet up with the rest of his attack battalion and get them mobilised before he moved onto his next assignment. According the Grand Master Yoda, the well-known Senator of Naboo, Padmé Amidala, had reported to them that there seemed to be a growing Separatist presence in her home system. Yoda had responded by deciding to send a Jedi that Padmé knew well to help her investigate her claims.

And since Anakin was busy on Ryloth, Obi-Wan had been the next choice.

Currently, Obi-Wan was on the Juma-9, a small space station that had been built for the Republic so that the clones had a placed to refuel and restock on ammunition without straying too far from the planets in that sector, most notably for this particular one, Ryloth. Now that there was next to no Separatist presence in this area, Juma-9 wouldn't be needed for much longer, but it would be kept there anyway just in case it was ever needed again at some other point during the war.

Obi-Wan's thoughts turned to the Digimon. They were truly astounding beings and any other thoughts didn't really give them credit. The liberation of Ryloth had come off smoothly and with barely a hitch thanks to their efforts. And then there was Anakin, who now had help from other beings that probably knew exactly what he was going through, considering the burden on his shoulders.

Obi-Wan couldn't deny he'd been slightly worried by how Anakin would react to this. After all, when he and Master Yoda had sprung a surprise Padawan on Anakin, he hadn't taken to it at all, at least not initially. But he had relented when he saw Ahsoka's skill in the field. But he had taken the Digimon much better. Perhaps the experience with Ahsoka had taught him something – never to judge something before you get to see what it can do. That meant that he was probably going to be watching the Digimon very carefully in their first fight together.

Obi-Wan chuckled as he pictured Anakin's face when he first saw a digivolution.

But, back to the mission at hand. Obi-Wan saw Commander Cody approaching and said, "The sooner I leave the better in my opinion, Cody. Senator Amidala is known for acting rashly and I want to get underway before she gets herself into trouble."

"Yes, sir," nodded Cody. "Your fighter is being refuelled as we speak, sir."

"Thank you Cody," Obi-Wan acknowledged with a nod, turning to see his Delta-7 being worked on by two clones. He wasn't as bothered by this as Anakin would have been. Anakin only let himself and Artoo work on his Delta-7, with occasional help from Ahsoka.

"Right, I just need to go and speak with the Commander on the station," said Obi-Wan. "I'd like a quick word with him before I leave."

"Master Kenobi," a deep voice hailed him from up ahead. Turning to look, Obi-Wan saw a familiar face approaching him, although much of that face couldn't be seen as it was hidden behind a face mask that the user would die without.

"Master Plo," Obi-Wan raised his eyebrows. "What a pleasant surprise. What are you doing out here?"

"I am on my way to Rodia," said Plo Koon, coming to a stop before Obi-Wan. "Senator Farr believes that there is the possibility of a Bounty Hunter hiding on his planet. I've stopped here to refuel and I'm glad to have met you. There are a few things I'd like to discuss."

"By all means," Obi-Wan gestured towards a nearby elevator. The two Jedi Masters walked towards it and turned as the doors shut.

As the lift began to ascend upwards, Plo asked, "And what about you? I thought that you would remain on Ryloth to help Skywalker mop up the last of the droids."

"Senator Amidala fears that the Separatists are attempting to gain a foothold in the Naboo system once more," said Obi-Wan gravely.

"I see," Plo frowned. "I wish you will. The idea of the Separatists taking over there is... formidable to say the least."

"I know," sighed Obi-Wan. "Fortunately, Anakin won't be alone in clearing out the planet. Most of Knight Secura's forces are with him."

"Secura?" Plo raised his equivalent of an eyebrow. "And by "most of her forces" do you also mean...?"

"Yes, the Digimon are indeed still there. And since we found their Tamers they've been making a real dent in the droid numbers for us."

"Their Tamers, you say?" Plo looked thoughtfully. "Truly, the will of the force is most enigmatic. I believe we made the correct decision in appointing the Digimon to Aayla's forces. This is no coincidence that she meets them and then finds their Tamers on her very next mission."

"Indeed," said Obi-Wan. "There are thousands of systems out there and the Digimon went to just the one they needed to go to."

"I can tell you are impressed by them."

"I count it a privilege to work alongside them, Master Plo, and an even greater privilege that I am not fighting against them."

"Then I look forward to the time where I too get to experience what you have done. And how is little 'Soka."

Obi-Wan knew that Plo and Ahsoka were very good friends. Plo had been on an exploratory mission to Ahsoka's home planet of Shili when he had sensed her strong connection with the force and brought her to the Temple. "She is doing well, and she certainly seems to be keeping Anakin on his toes. And now that Anakin's got the added bonus of Terriermon thrown into the mix, well, let's just say I don't envy him."

"You seem to find this fact very droll, Obi-Wan."

"I believe Anakin may be getting a taste of his own medicine, as it were. After all, Anakin himself was quite difficult to keep up with he was a Padawan."

"And what about Master Windu? Has he forgiven Terriermon for his appalling etiquette at the Council meeting?"

"It seems they were on the path to making amends but it fell apart again right after retaking the Capital."

"Yes, well, hopefully the other two, Renamon and Lopmon will be able to keep him in..."

Plo stopped as the Force suddenly nudged him. He held up a clawed hand. Obi-Wan looked at him and a moment later, he also felt the twinge on his consciousness as the Force alerted him to something.

It was at this point that the lift stopped. The Jedi glanced at each other – they hadn't reached their destination yet. Using the Force they forced open the doors. The two battle droids that had been standing outside, guarding them, turned to look. Reacting on instinct alone, Plo and Obi-Wan drew their blades, both of them a shining blue. Obi-Wan thrust his lightsaber through one of the droids as Plo swept his own blade forwards. Were the droid an organic creature, it would have been disembowelled.

"That is not good," said Plo, pointing out of the window as his droid fell. Outside, a large Separatist frigate was floating. It had obviously just pulled out of hyperspace. The Juma-9 was under attack! This fact became more prominent when loud explosions could be heard somewhere within the station.

Plo and Obi-Wan glanced at each other again. Why they were attacking was anyone's guess – the Juma-9 had outlived its allotted purpose so what did the Separatists hope to gain with this attack?

Another violent explosion rocked the station, and the two Jedi decided to find out the answer. Both ran down the corridor at full tilt, turning corners and delving into the Force, asking it to show them the way to the root of the problem.

There were a few clones up ahead. They turned, raising their blasters, but when they saw the Jedi they relaxed slightly. It was at this point where something burst through the ceiling. It looked like a long metal spike, which promptly moved apart to become three metal spikes. It was a Droch-class boarding ship, and several battle droids dropped from the gap between the spikes, and began to open fire.

Obi-Wan and Plo ran forward to engage them. Blocking a few wild shots, Obi-Wan viciously swiped his blade through the abdomen of one of the first droids, levitated the top half and threw it into another, then cut diagonally upwards through the chest of another. Another droid lost its legs to Obi-Wan's blade, falling to the floor where it was stabbed in the back. Four more droids were pushed backwards and smashed against the wall with a blast of the Force. He turned to face another, but it was shot by one of the clones before he could hit it.

Plo ran past him to face a couple of Supers that had dropped out of the boarding craft. The Kel Dor Master leapt on top of one and plunged his lightsaber into it, before leaping off and cutting the second in half right down the middle. Sweeping about, he took of the head and one of the arms of another droid, stabbed his blade through the back of another and then proceeded to strike through the midsection of two more in the same swing. The remaining three droids were dealt with by rapid shooting by the clones.

"I am beginning to think we might be in a spot of trouble, Master Kenobi," said Plo off-handedly.

"We need to repel that frigate," said Obi-Wan. "We have a few Y-wing bombers that should be able to take it out."

"How about two of them?" Plo said, as a second suddenly appeared out hyperspace besides the first.

"Oh, trust fate to do its best to combat my ideas," said Obi-Wan. He pressed the comlink on his wrist and said, "Cody, do you copy?"

"Yes, General. What are your orders?"

"A second frigate just came out of hyperspace. I need you to divert all power to the deflector shields. Then we may still have a chance."

"We'll do what we can, General," said Cody. "But I think you should know that the droids have breached the reactor core."

"Obi-Wan and I will deal with the reactor," said Plo, "and you can fortify the shields, Commander."

"Yes, sir," Cody said.

"Right," said Obi-Wan. "Let's get moving." He took off at a run, with Plo right beside him. The two Jedi ran past numerous clones and a couple of droid battles, and both times they did they pulled out their blades and made quick work of the droid with a few swipes before moving on. They ran around corners, and there were several points where they had to cross large gaps where the floor had been blown apart by something by leaping across with the help of the Force.

* * *

This was when they reached the reactor core. It was a massive room – the biggest in the station, with numerous pipelines and large spinning turbines that powered the station. They rotated slowly and constantly, round and round, and there didn't appear to be anything wrong with them.

"Where are the droids?" asked Obi-Wan. "I assumed that they'd want to be blowing up those reactors. That would destroy the station, but I don't see anything."

"Neither can I," said Plo, "but I can definitely sense something here. There are droids in the room, Obi-Wan."

"I sense them too," said Obi-Wan. "But why can't I see anything. Is it possible that we're dealing with commando droids? They're more subtle than the usual ones."

"I think we're dealing with something a little more sinister," Plo muttered. Suddenly he ignited his blade, spun around and sliced it through mid-air, or at least what looked like mid-air. A droid suddenly became visible as it was halved and fell to the ground. It resembled a Spider droid in terms of the fact it had four legs, but its body was tall and thin with a rotatable head and a torso that extended well past its leg joints.

"What is that?" Obi-Wan knelt down by the wreckage of the droid.

"Master Yoda described them to me," said Plo. "They're called Chameleon Droids. They can hide by projecting a hologram of what's behind them in front of them so they appear to be invisible."

"Ah, yes," said Obi-Wan. "I remember. I believe your right, Master Plo. This is very sinister. If I recall correctly, they're mine layers."

"You do recall correctly," said Plo. "But the mines can only be set off from a trigger. Whoever's in charge of this attack must have it."

"Then we need to find him and get rid of that trigger. We could spend hours in here rooting out all these droids. The odds are that whoever's leading isn't a droid though."

"You have an idea?"

"Whoever has the trigger could be on board, and I intend to find out." Obi-Wan activated his communicator. "Arfour, do you read me?"

R4-P17 responded by beeping.

"Good, I need you to find a terminal. Hack into the scanners and scan for life forms, and see if you can find someone who shouldn't be here?"

There was a few seconds of silence, before Arfour responded by beeping. Obi-Wan's eyes widened at the response. "A Skakoan, you say?"

"Could it be Wat Tambor?" asked Plo.

"I doubt it," said Obi-Wan. "The last I checked he was on his way to Coruscant under heavy guard."

"Where is the location?"

"The communications room," Obi-Wan muttered. "Let's get there now and see if we can find that button before its pressed."

"Agreed," Plo nodded, and the two of them broke into a run again.

* * *

The door to the communications room slid open and Obi-Wan and Plo entered cautiously. There were a couple of dead clones strewn across the floor and standing beside the console directly opposite the door was a massive figure, much bigger than Wat Tambor. It appeared that this Skakoan had a large pressure suit, but unlike one either of the Jedi had ever seen before, as it was equipped with numerous weapons.

The Skakoan has his back to the Jedi and was walking to a hologram in front of him that was masked from view. But at the sound of a voice both Jedi knew well, they knew instantly who it was.

"Very well. Just recover it," said Count Dooku.

"You needn't worry, Count," said the Skakoan in a much more mechanical voice than Wat Tambor. "Now, please excuse me. I have company."

There was the sound of a hologram fading and the Skakoan turned to the Jedi. One of his eyes was glowing green and was obviously not an eye at all, but a photoreceptor. Obviously this Skakoan had met with some kind of accident and had needed a replacement.

"I must say you Jedi got here earlier than anticipated," he said. "But you needn't concern yourself with me. I got what I want so I'll be on my way."

"And might I ask who you are?" said Obi-Wan.

The Skakoan laughed. "You don't know? You surprise me." Then he fell silent.

"We are placing you under arrest," said Plo, drawing his lightsaber, along with Obi-Wan beside him. "I'd advise you to come quietly."

"And I'd advise you to be more cautious," the Skakoan raised a hand. He had something clenched in his fist and his thumb was hovering over the red button of what was clearly a detonator. Plo and Obi-Wan faltered, then lowered their blades. There were numerous clone lives at stake here.

"How disappointing," the Skakoan said. "I was hoping for a little encounter before I left. So I think I'll earn myself one."

To the shock of the Jedi he pushed the button. Massive explosions began to rock the space-station, as the reactor core, and what seemed like other areas, began to be blown apart. The Skakoan's boots suddenly flared and he rose into the air on them, saluted mockingly and veered off. Obi-Wan and Plo instantly took off in pursuit.

* * *

The explosions caused the clones to stagger in surprise. Cody and some of his men, including one of the clone pilots known as Private Switch, had managed to intensify the shields as per Obi-Wan's orders. They had then gone on to attempt to retake the rest of the station. But there was no way the shields were going to be of any use to explosions from within.

"What was that?" asked Switch, glancing about nervously.

"Sounded bad," muttered Cody.

"Cody!" Obi-Wan's voice can through the comlink abruptly. "Get your men to the escape pods on the double. We've discovered a Skakoan here who has just set off explosives across the station. Get out of here!"

"What about you, sir?" asked Cody.

"Master Plo and I will be fine. Just get moving!"

"Acknowledged," Cody said. "Alright men, you heard him. Let's get moving."

Hefting their blasters, the clones began to flee for their lives. The escape pods were on the level below them and with any luck they could get there before the station was ripped to pieces.

"Come on, soft-shell! Keep up!" Cody shouted to Switch – soft-shell was the nickname for clones that didn't wear armour. "We're in deep poodoo now."

"Don't worry about me, sir," said Switch, running beside him. "I'll be fine."

"Glad to hear it."

"Droids up ahead, sir!" cried another clone.

"Blast!" snarled Cody. "We don't have time for this! Just shoot them and move on. Don't stop to engage them in combat. This whole station's falling apart!"

The clones raised their weapons and let loose. The bolts soared forward and struck the B-1s ahead. They immediately began to return fire, and the clones dodged and weaved. Some of them were hit and fell to the ground with loud clunks. Grimacing under their helmets, the other clones were forced to leap over their brothers and leave their bodies.

Cody shot a droid in the head and two more in the torso with his blaster, not even breaking his stride, but then he was level with them. A B-1 blocked his path, but Cody rammed it with his shoulder, knocking it aside, then struck another in the head with the butt of his blaster. The next droid to come across him was met by a solid whack to the abdomen.

The Cody was confronted by a Super, but he ducked under its futile attempt to grab him and ran straight past it, stopping only momentarily to shoot it in the back so his brothers wouldn't have to deal with it. As he did, he saw Switch bravely take out two battle droids with his blaster. Cody couldn't help but grin – the soft-shell had had no training in combat but he was still fighting.

"Quick! Down to the lower levels!" Cody cried as the clones leapt down a flight of stairs with practised ease, turning the corner and rushing down the steps. Up ahead, there were some more clones who were fighting a few droids guarding the pods. Cody and his men opened fire and began to fell the droids ahead. The droids fell back under the unexpected attack and were torn to pieces by the clone blasters. The clones paused to scoop up wounded comrades and assist them to the pods.

"Hurry!" Cody cried standing by the open door to a pod and waving his clones in. The clones piled into the numerous pods willy-nilly. Loud explosions from nearby were getting louder as the wave of destruction approached.

"Eject!" Cody shouted when the last clone entered the pods. He ran into one himself and in each one a clone hit a large red button, which caused the doors to shut and the pods to shoot out into space.

Except for Cody's.

"What's happening?" asked Cody, pushing the button again. "There's a fault in this pod."

"Let me see if I can fix it," Switch ran out of the pod and knelt by the terminal. His hands sought a few wires and attempted to pull them together, but a split second later he realised that it would do no good at all.

There was only one way to get the pod out now.

"Switch, have you got it?" Cody appeared around the side of the pod. "Time's a-wasting."

"Sorry sir."

"What?"

Switch stood up and shoved Cody backwards into the pod. The commander fell back and the private pulled out his blaster and shot the terminal. Instantly the door shut, trapping Switch outside.

"Switch!" cried Cody. "Open the door!"

"Can't do it, sir. Good luck!" Switch saluted as the escape pod blasted into space, leaving him behind. The private turned to face his fate as the space-station exploded around him.

* * *

The Skakoan had met a dead end. He was cornered in a large chamber and the two Jedi were right behind him. He turned to face them as they stepped through the blast doors he'd just flown through. Plo calmly ignited his blade and thrust it through the door controls. The blast doors slammed shut behind the Jedi, trapping both them and the Skakoan in the room. The Jedi could easily cut their way out with their lightsabers if necessary, but it would take more time for the Skakoan.

"You cannot escape now," said Plo. "I suggest that you surrender."

"If I remember correctly," said the Skakoan. "The Jedi are supposed to be negotiators, not fighters. I suggest we take that option."

"Come now," Obi-Wan shook his head. "You are responsible for the death of many clones and you have nothing to bargain with."

"Oh really?" the Skakoan pulled the detonator off his belt again.

"We are not afraid to die, and if you detonate any more mines, you will die too," pointed out Plo.

"That depends on where the mines are," laughed the Skakoan. "You see, I had my chameleon droids place mines on everything, and I mean everything, including the escape pods. I hit this button and every single one of them is blown to bits and every clone in them dies."

The Jedi faltered again. This Skakoan was obviously a cold-hearted killer. Obi-Wan said, "Bluff will not get you out of this, Skakoan."

"I don't believe he is, Obi-Wan," Plo shook his head. "We'd know if he was lying, and I don't sense trickery, do you?"

Obi-Wan bit his lip in frustration, but he knew that Plo was right. It was very easy for a Jedi to sense deception and there was nothing from this twisted being. "I shall ask my question again. Who are you? And why did you come here?"

"I am Kul Teska," said the Skakoan, "and I was merely trying to track something down. Thanks to this station, I have found what I want and will now be on my way to retrieve it. Now let me pass."

At that point, another violent explosion rocked the station. Teska looked up, distracted for a moment. Obi-Wan reacted instantly and used the Force to grab a discarded crate and throw it. The crate smacked into the hand holding the detonator, causing Teska to release his grip and the detonator to go flying out of his grasp. Master Plo reacted right afterwards and unleashed a massive burst of the Force. Teska went hurtling backwards and crashed into a window so hard the thick glass cracked, before falling to the floor.

"I shall repeat myself," said Plo as he and Obi-Wan approached. "Surrender."

Teska looked up and there was an ominous creaking noise. All three turned to look at fractured glass, which was shuddering slightly. It did this for a couple of seconds before suddenly shattering. The vacuum of space took effect and all three were pulled forward. Plo and Obi-Wan grabbed hold of the plated floor and clung on, while Teska was pulled out. The Skakoan grabbed the edge of the window frame and clung on.

Obi-Wan saw the detonator zip past him, and he saw the Skakoan reaching for it. The Jedi reacted instinctively and, releasing his grip on the tile, he threw his lightsaber. The blade sliced through the detonator just before Teska caught it. Obi-Wan grabbed a step and clung on by the tips of his fingers.

Plo, seeing his friend's predicament, let go of his pole and threw his own lightsaber. His blade sliced through a control pad beside the shattering window. Teska immediately let go and was pulled into space as the heavy blast door programmed as a failsafe thudded down where his hands had been. With the sudden absence of a vacuum, Plo was dumped unceremoniously on the floor.

Both Jedi scrambled up and ran to the small window in the blast door, peering out. They could see the Skakoan flying away on his rocket boots, protected from harm in space conditions by his pressure suit.

"Well, we may as well get comfortable," observed Plo. "We're not getting out of here in a hurry."

They were now trapped in the room, because their ideal way of cutting their way out were both now floating out in space.

"At least the explosions have stopped," said Obi-Wan.

* * *

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

The large, metallic feet of the AT-TE walkers pounded the frozen ground, as a small line of them made their way across a thin stretch of thick ice. The bitter cold bit into Aayla's skin as the Twi'lek stood on the back of the first of these walkers. The Twi'lek had insisted on wearing her usual attire, despite the amount of skin area exposed to the element and the scant protection what was there offered her.

But the Twi'lek didn't think about it. Her blue skin gave her some protection from the freezing temperatures on Alzoc III, drawing a lot of what available sunlight there was to be found here. As ice planets went, Alzoc III wasn't as bad as some of the others that she'd heard of, such as Hoth and Auto Plutonia. She'd been to Hoth once as a small child, as her Uncle had been looking for Wampas to act as guards for him. Ironically, it had been one of those Wampas that had gone on a rampage and almost killed her, and that had been how she'd met Quinlan Vos.

There was a cliff up ahead, and Aayla found herself staring up at it thoughtfully. She wondered how the Digimon were coping back on Ryloth. She didn't doubt that they were faring extremely well, all things considered. It would take a lot to bring one of them down – they were very powerful and they always had two other equally powerful Digimon to watch their backs.

Luminara Unduli was standing beside her, slightly better-equipped to handle the cold, considering she was wearing her usual thick robes and headdress, which covered every part of her body except her hands and face. The Mirialan Master was holding a holoprojector in one hand, and the hologram in it depicted Master Yoda.

"The location that Jabba provided, nearby, it should be," said Yoda. "The source of these claims, you should shortly discover."

"I sincerely hope so," said Luminara. "For I am not sure we can really trust a Hutt. They are known for being treacherous beings. Jabba even has the title of Crime Lord."

"Assist the Separatists, Jabba will not," said Yoda. "Forget easily, he does not. An excellent memory, he has, for those who betray him, as many smugglers he has employed have tried to do. Forgive Count Dooku for kidnapping his son, he will not." It was common knowledge that Dooku and Ventress had attempted to kidnap Rotta the Huttlet and frame the Jedi for it in an attempt to gain the allegiance of the Hutts, going as far as to conspire with Jabba's greedy Uncle, Ziro.

"As long as the Separatists continue to move through Jabba's realms without giving him the large sum of money he demands, he will be more than happy to help us," said Aayla, "It means that he won't need to send out anybody to deal with them personally."

"You seem to know how criminals work, Aayla," remarked Luminara.

"Partially," shrugged Aayla. "You pick up a few things if you go undercover amongst criminals as I have." Aayla had a sudden thought, chuckled and said, "Momentai Luminara."

"What?" Luminara frowned.

"It means "take it easy,"" Aayla explained. Yoda snickered.

Luminara sighed. "Very well, but did Jabba say what we should be looking for?"

"Difficult to find, it will not be," Yoda reassured them. "On that, Jabba and I agree." Then he vanished. Aayla and Luminara glanced at each other. Yoda was a great Jedi, but he did like to speak in riddles and withhold information unless it was critical. He claimed it was more fun.

"So, Aayla, while we wait," Luminara attached the holoprojector to her waist. "Are you willing to tell me this secret that you and Master Yoda seem to share, or am I to be left in the dark?"

"It is not just Master Yoda and I who know it," said Aayla. "The rest of the Jedi Council, Skywalker, Tano, our clone troopers and a few others are privy to it as well."

"That is quite a few people," said Luminara. "Who is a secret from?"

"Just the Separatists and the Senate," explained Aayla, "but we're not telling everyone else straight away in case of traitors. However, I am one-hundred percent certain that you can be trusted Master Luminara."

"Glad to hear it," smiled Luminara. "So, do I get to hear it?"

Aayla smiled back, and called over the back of the plodding AT-TE to one of the clones walking alongside it. "What say you, Commander Bly? Shall we let Luminara hear about our little helpers?"

"I think you better," laughed Bly, looking up at his General. "Commander Gree's getting annoyed that I'm not telling him anything."

Luminara's clone commander, CC-1004, whose armour was flecked with dark green and was nicknamed Gree, glanced across at him. "That's because you've been dropping subtle hints at me for the better part of half an hour, Bly," he retorted. "And none of them make any sense. I believe your last clue was something "The Wheel of a Dragon." It's very irritating."

Bly laughed. So did Aayla. Both of them had agreed right off that they would tell Luminara, which had been why Bly had been dropping these hints for his own amusement at Gree's reaction. Otherwise he would have remained tight-lipped.

"Then if you want the answer," Aayla called down. "Then come up here and we'll tell you the whole story."

"Yes, sir," said Gree, and both he and Bly leapt up onto the AT-TE with the aid of their jetpacks. All of the clones had been outfitted with jetpacks for this mission, just in case the treacherous ice beneath them gave way and one of them went plummeting into a hidden chasm and so they could jet their way back up again if they needed.

"Here's the deal," said Aayla, and she told them. Everything. Commander Bly chipped in occasionally with a comment or two, but it was mostly Aayla that told the story of how she'd met Renamon on Christophsis, how Renamon had helped them win the day, how they'd gone to Maridun to pick up the bunnies, how the Jedi Council had come to a decision and how the Digimon had been their greatest support in the liberation of her home planet.

Both Luminara and Gree stared at her for some time afterwards. Then, Luminara placed her chin in one hand and said "That's a very interesting tale."

"And quite a tall one," said Gree. "I hope you'll forgive me if I'm a little sceptical."

"By all means, Commander Gree," Aayla folded her arms patiently. "Were you to tell me a similar story last week I would have had trouble believing it too."

"And yet I sense that you are telling the truth," Luminara murmured. "And we don't want to tell the Senate about it, correct?"

"And the Jedi are not totally innocent either," said Aayla. "They may turn to the Dark Side. Look at Dooku. He used to be on the Jedi Council himself."

"True," Luminara nodded. "Then rest assured that we shall not tell anyone."

"Not even your Padawan?" asked Aayla. Luminara's Padawan learner, Barriss Offee had been left a mission of her own near the planet Saleucami and hadn't come on this particular mission.

"If the Jedi Council requests it," nodded Luminara.

"I don't think Barriss would turn to the Dark Side either," said Aayla. "But she is your Padawan, so she's your decision."

"Wait," Luminara held up a hand.

"What is it?" Gree tensed and both he and Bly raised their blasters suspiciously, pointing them at the surroundings.

"Do you sense something, Aayla?" asked Luminara.

"Yes," nodded Aayla, suddenly very wary. "Something very big and very unusual."

"Where's it coming from, General?" asked Bly – after all, Aayla had known where the last something very big and very unusual was coming from.

"Over the cliff," said Aayla. "It looks like we'll have to ascend that icy precipice to see what it is we've come to this desolate place for."

"Not a problem," said Bly. "We can handle that." He pressed his comlink and said, "Alright men, we're heading up that ice ridge. Ready your jetpacks."

There were cries of "Yes, sir!" from everywhere and the clones approached the cliff and their jets burst into life. They began to rise up the cliff wall as if it was just a walk in the park. The two Commanders ran to the edge of the AT-TE and joined them in the air.

"We best watch our footing," said Luminara, looking up at the vertical rise of frozen water. "It wouldn't do to come tumbling back down."

"My thoughts exactly," nodded Aayla, and then they were off. Twi'lek and Mirialan sprang from their perch atop the walker, coming to land on an outcrop of ice jutting out from the cliff face. They continued to spring up with immensely powerful leaps, zigzagging their way upwards. Behind them, the AT-TE walker suddenly reared upwards and planted its front feet on the cliff wall. Its metal toes sank into the cliff to gain a foothold and the giant metal walker began to do just that and walk vertically up the cliff.

Commander Bly reached the top of the cliff first, shortly followed by Commander Gree. As soon as they stepped over the cliff, it only took a short walk of a few paces until they reached the lip of a hill, and down at the bottom of the hill, was what they'd been looking for.

When Aayla and Luminara somersaulted over the cliff, they were met with the sight of two clones staring, dumbstruck, at something. They walked over and stood between their commanders. Then they were also reduced to staring.

It looked like a Separatist frigate had crash-landed here. But it was unlike any crash-landing that they'd ever seen. It took a full twenty seconds before Luminara said, "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"If what you're seeing is a massive crater with a wrecked ship and a lot of debris floating in it, Master Luminara," said Aayla, "then yes I am."

"I don't believe I have seen anything so extraordinary," murmured Luminara.

"I believe I have," said Aayla, as an imaged of herself riding on a winged fox flashed through her mind.

"How's that even possible?" asked Bly. "Rocks don't float on their own, there has to be something behind anything like that, and in my experience its usually a Jedi."

"I doubt a Jedi had anything to do with this one," muttered Gree, staring at the crater with massive chunks of metal, ice and stone hovering in it with no visible means of support. "But one thing's for certain, this crash-landing was no ordinary crash-landing."

"You think?" Bly indicated at it.

"Unless our eyes are deceiving us," said Aayla, "and I sense that they're not, then we've got ourselves a big mystery to solve. What could have happened?"

"We can't answer that question from here," said Luminara. "We're going to have to go in."

Aayla nodded. "Commander Bly. Commander Gree. You come with us. Have the rest of your men form a perimeter about the area. There may be a few surprises in store for us."

"Yes, General," nodded Bly. "Talon, you come with us."

"Yes, sir," said the clone.

With that, Luminara and Aayla leapt down the slope, sliding down the ice like snowboarders without the board. The clones followed, a little less sure of their footing. The Jedi quickly came to edge of the crater and peered down. There was a massive drop down below, but there was no debris lying on the bottom whatsoever. Every single part of the ship was floating in mid-air.

"Look," said Luminara, pointing upwards towards the main hull of the ship. It appeared to have been blown apart straight across the middle. "It looks like whatever it was that caused this originated in the central hangars."

"Well it was certainly no ordinary malfunction," said Aayla. "Perhaps we'd know more if we knew where this ship was heading and what it was carrying, and also who was on board at the time. That might give us more of a clue."

"I agree," nodded Luminara thoughtfully. "We need to make our way to the control room, or what's left of it and see what we can salvage from the databanks."

"We're gonna have to cross this crater to do that, sir," pointed out Commander Gree.

"That won't be a problem," said Aayla. "But be wary all the same. We don't know just how stable all this debris is or what else lies in wait for us in there."

"You're not suggesting we land on it, sir?" Bly looked aghast.

"You don't have to, no," said Aayla. "But Master Luminara and I don't have jetpacks."

"We could always get you some."

"Thank you, Bly," smiled Aayla. "But I think it would be quicker to do it our way, right Master Unduli?"

"Yes, Aayla," Luminara smiled back. "Now, let's get moving."

As one, the Jedi sprang off the lip of the crater and across the deep chasm, coming to land smoothly and surely on a patch of floating ice. The clones looked on as they did so, and Talon muttered "I don't think I'll ever get used to this."

"Come along, Commander," Aayla called.

"Right behind you, sir," Bly called back. He, Gree and Talon all activated their jetpacks and soared across the gap. They didn't do any fancy flying – the jetpacks were not built for that, but they did enable basic movements like up, down, forwards, backwards, left and right.

"Now, let's see if we can find a way in," said Aayla.

Then they were off. Luminara leapt from floating rock to floating rock as if she were a champion at hopscotch. Aayla bounced across the gaps, landing for only a split second before leaping to the next piece of debris. The two Jedi were incredibly sure-footed and landed on things that you would think they'd lose their balance on, such as floating pipes and blocks of ice. But there was no slipping, no sliding and nothing to hint that this was anything more than a routine to the two of them. The clones followed through the air, their blasters cocked.

But they didn't come across anything other than what they could already see. Luminara and Aayla were gradually leaping onto bigger and bigger chunks of metal as they got closer to the split hulk of the frigate, which lay like a dormant, sleeping beast, snoozing on air.

Aayla came to rest on a chunk of metal only just big enough for her to stand on and looked up at the ship. Under normal circumstances Separatist ships gave her a feeling on unease. But this Separatist ship gave of great waves of it. There was something so _wrong_ about this crash, so _evil_, so _malevolent_. It was unnatural and just... wrong. It was as if a feeling of iniquity was washing over, attempting to penetrate her. It was failing dismally to do so, but still...

Whatever had done this was not something to be taken lightly. And Aayla was going to find out what it was at any means necessary. It could be a serious threat to the Republic, to the Jedi and to millions and millions of innocents across the galaxy.

She leapt onto a large slab and walked up to the ship. There was a large hole blown into the side some way above her. Luminara walked up behind her and Aayla pointed at it. "That looks like a way in," she murmured. "Shall we?"

Luminara nodded wordlessly and the two of them sprang upwards, covering the steep rise of rubble in three large bounds, until they were standing by the entrance.

* * *

And as they were doing this, they were being watched through a pair of macrobinoculars. A pair of piercing blue eyes glared through the lenses at them, watching them hop their way up and onto the ship. Then that same pair of eyes watched the clones hover their way up to join their Jedi generals.

_Pathetic Jedi,_ thought the owner of the eyes. Then she turned to face a hologram behind her. The hologram depicted an elderly man with a pointed beard, hooked nose, long cloak – it was Count Dooku himself.

"The Jedi fools have walked right into our trap, my Lord," reported the woman.

Dooku nodded and said, "See to it that no evidence of this... mishap... is left behind." Then as an afterthought, the Sith Lord added, "And Ventress. There can be no witnesses."

"It will be my pleasure, Master," Asajj Ventress lowered her head in respect for her superior. The hologram faded and Ventress turned to watch the Jedi again. Bald head, face lined with a few purple tattooes, clad in tight-fitting purple and lilac clothing, greyish skin and two lightsabers hanging from her waist, Asajj Ventress was a force to be reckoned with.

She recognised both of the Jedi below, although she'd only ever faced Unduli in combat once before. And had it not been for that pestilence in the form of a Togruta Padawan, Luminara Unduli would have fallen to her blade.

Ventress felt a deepest loathing for Ahsoka Tano well up inside her. She'd killed Jedi Masters, ruthlessly cutting them down where they stood as they feebly attempted to defend themselves from her wrath. But Tano was a mere Padawan and she had survived an encounter with Ventress twice. The Rattataki Dark Jedi took this as a personal insult – she was Dooku's top assassin and she'd failed to beat the Padawan. And to add insult to injury, Ahsoka had been a youngling only a few months before their last encounter.

Ventress snarled to herself. One day... one day she would slay that impudent, red-skinned whelp, but not today. She knew that Tano was good friends with Unduli, and that she was also good friends with Secura, so Ventress would settle for killing these two today. She'd take a great pleasure it.

She watched through the macrobinoculars as Aayla and Luminara disappeared through the hole in the side of the ship. Excellent. Now, all she had to do was to put her plan into motion. She needed to get rid of the ship, and she would take the Jedi with them.

But if she knew her Jedi they'd be heading to the control room. It was important that they didn't find out about what had caused this, and if they did then they could not be allowed to escape alive. Then again, Ventress wasn't planning on letting them escape alive anyway, so that would be fine.

"The Jedi are inside," she said to a nearby battle droid. "Carry out your duty. Go and delay them."

"Yes, mistress," said the droid, before turning to walk to the edge of the crater. These droids had built-in jetpacks so they were able to soar across the massive gap with no problems whatsoever.

Ventress leered. Soon the Jedi would be dead and she'd have completed her mission. Tossing the macrobinoculars aside she turned to run along the edge of the crater. She had to reach the control room before the Jedi did.

* * *

Aayla, Luminara, Bly, Gree and Talon walked slowly forward. Whatever happened had happened right where they were standing. The walls around them had been torn to shreds, and there were massive gaps in the floor and the ceiling was just about gone, but the area still had a vague resemblance to a ship. The walls were still standing, despite the impossible angle that meant that most of its should have collapsed into the crater.

"The further I go in, the more amazed I am about this phenomenon," murmured Luminara.

"It's definitely an anomaly," muttered Aayla. "What could the Separatists have been carrying to cause this?"

"Why don't we ask them!" yelled Bly suddenly. "Vultures incoming!"

The Jedi and the clones whipped around to see a Vulture droid come shooting through a gap in the walls. Aayla and Luminara ignited their lightsabers – Luminara's was green – and took up battle stances as the droid landed beside them, looming over them on its long legs. It unleashed a blast that slammed into the floor beside Talon, splintering it. Talon tipped alarmingly along with the floor where he was standing and then fell straight through the hole. Fortunately he caught himself with his jetpack.

Aayla swung her lightsaber and averted the other blasts with her blade, covering Gree and Bly as the valiantly shot at it. But the lasers of the clones weren't going to do much to the Vulture – it was a space fighter as well as a ground one.

Luminara leapt into action. She sprang through the air and flipped under the fire of the vulture droid. Before the droid could react, Luminara sliced through one of its exposed legs. The droid stopped shooting and wobbled alarmingly, which gave Luminara the opportunity to cut through both of its legs on the other side. With only one leg left, the Vulture Droid slipped and fell, legs splaying out in all directions.

Its head looked around and then turned, beginning to shoot, this time at Luminara. The Mirialan deftly deflected the bolts and this time it was Aayla who began to move. While the Vulture Droid's attention was on Luminara, Aayla leapt up on it torso. Her blade hummed as she swung it through air and the neck of the Vulture droid. The head fell to the floor with a clang.

"What is a Vulture Droid doing here?" Aayla hopped down and looked at the carcass. "Nothing should have survived a wreck like this."

"It appears we're not alone," sighed Luminara. "Obviously there are some Separatists who don't want us sniffing around."

"In that case, let's go sniff around," suggested Bly.

"And blast any clanker that get in our way," agreed Gree.

"Then look no further," Aayla raised her blade again. "Here come some more."

A line of battle droids were sailing through the air towards them on their built-in jets. The clones darted forward, falling to one knee and began to fire. Two droids fell to Bly's accurate shots. Two more got pummelled in the chest by Commander Gree. And Talon didn't do so badly for himself either, managing to take out three of them, and one of them with a headshot.

"Well, let's get it over with, Luminara," said Aayla, brushing aside two lasers with her blade.

Luminara nodded and the two Jedi simultaneously raised a hand. It took incredibly little effort for them to rip a section of wall away from the rest of it, but considering most of it was hanging together by the wall equivalent of a thread, that wasn't surprising. Both of them tore loose a large section, and then slammed them together, sandwiching the droids in between them and crushing them to a pulp.

"We need to hurry," said Luminara, breaking into a run, Aayla right behind her. "Let's go Commander."

"Alright lads, let's bring these clankers a nice welcoming reception of blaster fire," Gree set off in pursuit.

"I'm sure they can't wait," Bly added.

Aayla and Luminara led the way further into the wrecked ship and closer to the answer to their questions. And all of them were sure that whatever that answer was, they wouldn't like it. They wouldn't like it at all.

* * *

There we go. Plo Koon and Luminara Unduli get to be secondary stars. I'd like to thank everyone for reviewing, although a few of my regulars didn't for some reason, and whoever reviews this chapter first will be the writer of my 100th review for this story.

* * *

Next time...

On Ryloth, Anakin, Ahsoka and the Digimon set out to find Captain Rex. On Juma-9, Obi-Wan and Plo need a little extra help and on Alzoc III, what will Aayla and Luminara discover about the crash?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 23 : Multiple Situations**


	23. Multiple Situations

I'm back, people. And I'm not stopping any time soon. Chapter 23 was difficult to write for reasons that shall be explained at the bottom. Thankyou to all my faithful reviewers – I now have triple digits on my review count. So much so that I've decided that every 50th reviewer should get the opportunity to request a oneshot from me, which I'll post on a separate story. As of yet, Tamara Caitlyn and Movie-Brat were my 50th reviewers for this story and its prequel. My 100th reviewer, Bookworm Gal, was allowed another request which I won't reveal just now. So you two, and anyone else who can lay claim to the award can now see my profile for details of the rules.

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* * *

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 23:- Multiple Situations**

* * *

"Finally," Rika stood up from where she'd been sitting beside a parked AT-TE walker, as an LAAT gunship landed before her, the blast doors opened and Renamon stepped out, along with the other two Digimon, both the Jedi and a few clones. "It took you guys long enough to get here. We were getting really worried."

"It's not us that you should be worried about," said Renamon darkly. Rika blinked. Granted, her partner usually put a serious face on, but there was something about Renamon that suggested she was itching to hit something. Her eyes were more narrowed than they usually were and the mane of fur around her neck was bristling.

"Okay, what's wrong, Renamon?" asked Rika, folding her arms. "What happened out there?"

Henry and Suzie approached, curious at the sombre natures of the usually cheerful Terriermon and Lopmon. To their shock and slight hurt, both the bunnies spared their Tamers only a brief nod before walking straight past them and following Anakin and Ahsoka. Renamon brushed past them as well, not answering Rika's question.

"Lieutenant Galle," said Anakin. "Has there been any word from Captain Rex and Sergeant Boomer?"

"No, sir," Galle shook his head. "The last I've heard from them is when they said they were going on patrol."

"And how long ago was that?"

"A few hours ago, sir," said Galle.

"They should have been back a while ago then, shouldn't they?" asked Lopmon.

"Yes, they should have," muttered Anakin.

"I'm going to assume that Captain Rex doesn't go AWOL of his own accord," said Rika. "So something must have happened to him, right?"

"What is AWOL?" asked Ahsoka, curiously.

"Never mind that, Ahsoka," said Anakin. "We need to focus on our objective. The last we saw of Rex was where he got attacked by something. We don't know what, but it could be something dangerous. And Rex is strong, so it'd be difficult for him to be taken out by an ordinary droid."

"What do you suggest we do, sir?" asked Galle.

"Isn't it obvious?" asked Ahsoka. "We're going to try and find him."

"Correct," said Anakin. "Galle, it's going to be light within a couple of hours so I want you and Sergeant Kano to take charge of the attempt to liberate the rest of the city from what's left of the droid army presence, while Ahsoka, the Digimon and I set out to try and find out what happened to Rex."

"Yes, sir," said Galle.

"Where do we start looking?" asked Terriermon.

"Rex managed to get the co-ordinates to us before he vanished," said Anakin. "We'll start from there. And... hopefully we'll find something positive."

"Rex is as tough as old boots," said Kano, "And Boomer's not exactly a softie either. I'm sure they'll be fine."

"But he might not be," said Henry. "Let's get moving."

"No," Anakin turned to face him. "You and the other Tamers stay with the clones."

"Again!?" shouted Rika. "Okay, that's it! I'm sick and fed up of us being excluded from things like this. It's not like we're looking to get killed and we could probably be of some help!"

"Rika's right," piped up Suzie. "We've stood up the D-Reaper and none of us died. Can't we come?"

"Look at this from our perspective, Suzie," said Lopmon. "Any wild and wayward shot from a battle droid could kill you on the spot. And we haven't exactly come out from all our skirmishes in our world unscathed have we. Stay here, and follow our progress and you'll be much safer."

"We don't want to be safe, Lopmon," objected Rika. "We want to be with our partners."

"As much as logic says we should stay," said Henry. "I'm inclined to agree with the girls here. Why can't we just hang back like we've always done and watch everything unfold?"

"Because this is not a Digimon battle, where there's only one of a few attackers," said Renamon. "An attack can from any direction at any point, and the last thing we want is for you to be attacked while you're hanging back and no-one is protecting you."

"We don't have time for this discussion," said Anakin. "Look, kids, I'll consider letting you come along on future missions, but right now we need to get moving. Come on, you four."

"Momentai guys," said Terriermon. "We'll be fine."

Anakin and Ahsoka turned to run off. Renamon glanced at Rika with an expression that was a mix of "I'm sorry," and "Stay here!" before joining them. Terriermon and Lopmon took to the air after them.

Henry put a hand on Rika's shoulder as they watched their partners disappear around the corner. Again. "I'm getting sick of this," muttered Rika.

"I know," murmured Henry. "But Anakin's in charge here and we have to obey his orders."

"Really?" Rika raised an eyebrow. "Because I seem to recall that we have frequently disobeyed orders in the past."

"This is different."

"Is it?"

"Well, no but..."

"But what?"

"We knew what it was we were dealing with back then and we were the best equipped to deal with the D-Reaper and attacking Digimon. Here, we'd just get in the way and this is an urgent rescue mission they're going on. We'd slow them up."

"I don't care," Rika growled. "They can't keep me separate from my partner like this."

"But Anakin said..."

"Forget Anakin," Rika shrugged off his hand. "Our partners might need us at some point and what if they need us for something and we can't help because we're stuck here because Anakin told us to."

Suzie was looking from one to the other, unsure if she should say anything. Then she said, "I'm worried about Lopmon."

"And I'm worried about Terriermon, Suzie," said Henry. "But..."

"Really?" Rika asked. "If you really worried about Terriermon then you'd agree with me."

Henry took a step back. That comment stung and it stung very deeply. Of course he was worried about Terriermon. Why on earth, or Ryloth, or whatever, would she suggest that he wasn't.

"Well, I'm going to follow them," said Rika. "And if you want to stay behind you can, but don't try and stop me."

Rika glanced around. The clones were all readying themselves for the upcoming march. None of them were really watching the kids. Why would they? They were bred to follow orders so the idea of not obeying an order seemed absurd, so the kids would be fine. Rika walked slowly past a bunch of the clones and then slipped around the corner.

Suzie glanced apologetically at Henry and then followed Rika. Henry stood, torn and unsure of what to do. On one hand, he should tell the clones what they were doing and that way they could be stopped. But if he did that, Rika would never forgive him, and he really didn't want that.

But he couldn't leave his girlfriend and his sister out there. So, he followed.

Rika and Suzie, with Henry sprinting to catch up, were following the footprints that Anakin, Ahsoka and Renamon had left in the dusty road.

* * *

Unfortunately, their quarry was a lot faster than they were an a lot further ahead. The five searchers reached the place where Rex's last broadcast had been from.

"Well, here are their AT-RTs," said Ahsoka, running a red hand down the metallic leg of the crouching vehicle. "Right where they left them."

"You're right," said Terriermon, hopping on top of one of them. "And am I the only one who's noticed that there is a stunning lack of bodies in the vicinity."

He was right. There was no sign of Rex or Boomer. There were marks in the ground ahead of them though. Renamon walked over to them and bent down to inspect them. They had roughly the correct size to be a clone falling to the ground. There were also a few footprints dotted around the sandy ground. Two of them belonged to the clones, but there was a third pair. Definitely not a clone and wearing boots.

"Only one attacker," said Renamon. "And it wasn't a droid, unless droids have started wearing boots."

"I wouldn't put it past them," shrugged Terriermon.

"But the tracks stop a short distance away," said Lopmon from a building up ahead. "Looks like someone's covering their tracks. There also appears to be drag-marks here as well, but they also stop."

"So, whoever did this is obviously very efficient," said Anakin. "And he doesn't want to be found. But why would he drag them away?"

"Rex and Boomer may be alive," smiled Ahsoka. "If this guy wanted to just cover up the fact that he or the clones had ever been here he would have got rid of the AT-RTs as well. So, wherever Rex and Boomer are now..."

"They're somebody's prisoners," grimaced Anakin. "But I still don't understand why."

"Then maybe we should find out the answer," Renamon stood up. "And attempt to track them down."

"How're we going to do that?" Terriermon swooped down and landed on his mate's shoulder. "There are no tracks."

"We're going to have to do this the old-fashioned way," said Anakin. "Ahsoka, you and I need to try and locate Rex's mental signature. Then we can follow it to its source and find Rex himself."

"And whoever took him," nodded Ahsoka.

The two Jedi shut their eyes and focused. The three Digimon fell silent and watched them curiously, not wanting to disrupt their concentration. The Jedi stood still, calmly searching for something for a good half a minute, before both of them opened their eyes simultaneously.

"I found him, Master," said Ahsoka.

"So did I," said Anakin. "We have his position, now let's go."

Anakin and Ahsoka barrelled forward into a run and the Digimon followed wordlessly. They hadn't known Rex for very long, but the clone Captain had just as infectious a personality as his Jedi leaders, albeit a bit more stiff due to the fact that he was a clone. They all hoped that he was alright.

* * *

"Alright troops," Galle called. "Get ready to get underway. We've still got about half the city to comb before we can call this mission a success."

"I hope everyone's topped up their ration packs," said Kano, "because we're not stopping once we get moving. Anyone who hasn't gonna have to work on a light stomach."

"Right, where are the kids?" Galle glanced around.

So did Kano.

So did every other clone there.

"They're not here, sir," said Rich. "I can't see them anywhere."

"What?" Galle whipped around. "Not at all?"

"They must had slipped off and tried to follow Skywalker," said the clone.

"Oh poodoo!" growled Galle. "Don't they know Skywalker will be miles ahead by now. They'll be completely unprotected. What was going through their heads?"

"Concern for their partners probably," said Kano. "But we haven't got time to think about that. We need to find them on the double."

"You're right," nodded Galle. "Alright men. We're moving now. Since Skywalker went that way we'll head that way too. Every time we come to an alleyway that leads somewhere I want some clones to split off from the main force and go looking for them. If they die, we're gonna have three very angry Digimon on our tails. Move!"

"Sir, yes, sir!" shouted the clones, scrambling to obey. A great phalanx of white-clad, armoured men ran down the street and followed the course that the Tamers had taken. And just as instructed, every time they came to a potential place they could have gone three or four clones would run down this way and start to search for the three children. Galle and Kano led the rest of the force down the main roads and looked left and right, seeking out any signs that the children had been this way and also looking out for any droids.

* * *

"I think we're lost," said Henry. The three of them had been stumped when the tracks had suddenly stopped but had quickly figured out that the three runners had decided to take a shortcut over the roofs of buildings. Determined not to give up, they'd decided to pick a direction and hope for the best, so they'd gone left and had hoped for the best, but it didn't appear to have done them any good.

Now they were standing in a small street overlooking a cliff. On the other side of the chasm were controls that indicated that there was a holobridge here, but the bridge wasn't up at the moment, so they'd effectively reached a dead end.

"Do you think the clones will have noticed that we've gone by now, Henry," Suzie looked up at her brother.

"I'm pretty sure of it, Suzie," sighed Henry, wondering again how he'd been talked into this.

Even Rika was beginning to feel a little less determined than before. There was no sign of their partners, and she herself was wondering whether it would have been better to stay behind. But she had let her anger and her fear for Renamon's safety override her judgement and that was never a good thing.

She'd even snapped at Henry, who'd never snapped at her, and accused him of not caring for his partner. That, she knew, was a terrible thing to say to any Tamer. Guilt welled up inside her and she bit her lip. What right had she had to say that? Henry was the kindest Tamer she knew and he had been trying to keep her safe and she'd just shot him down.

But there was still a resolve in her at the moment that was compelling her to keep looking for Renamon. "They can't be far away," she attempted to reassure everyone, including herself. "Let's just double back a bit and pick another direction."

"I doubt it'd do much good, Rika," said Henry. "The Digimon and the Jedi could be on the other side of the city by now for all we know. And there's no way we can track them from stone building tops."

"So do we just give up?"

"Well..."

"Don't answer that. I won't give up. I just won't. I didn't start this just to give up."

"But Rika," Suzie looked imploringly up at her. "There could be droids anywhere and I don't want to run into any of them. They'd blow us up."

"Suzie's right. We..."

Henry stopped at the sound of running feet. They turned and saw three clones appear from the alleyway behind them. They pulled to a halt at the sight of the Tamers and sighed in relief. "Here you are," said one. "The whole garrison's been looking for you."

"What were you thinking, running off on your own like that?" asked another. "You didn't even nick a blaster. I'd have thought that'd be pretty important."

"We're sorry," said Henry. "We just got worried."

"Well, we all know that feeling, kid," said the third clone sympathetically. "But disobeying orders just 'cause your worried is a very good way of doing things, but only if you want to get yourselves killed. Now, if you'd care to follow us and we'll take you back to the Lieutenant."

"But will Lopmon be okay?" asked Suzie, concerned.

"Are you kidding? I haven't known her for very long, but I'd be incredibly surprised if Lopmon came back even slightly injured," nodded the clone. "Shall we get..."

"ROLLIES!" shouted the backmost clone. The other two whipped around to see two metallic wheels barrelling down the street behind them at high speed and of their own accord. The both of them came to a halt and began to unfurl.

"Blast them!" shouted one of the clones and all three raised their blasters and fired. The front one was clipped across the head a couple of times and in the torso once. It staggered backwards a little but continued to unfurl. The three destroyer droids raised their shields and blaster bolts began to spurt from their arms.

Henry and Rika hurriedly pulled Suzie behind a large boulder as red lasers flashed in their direction. Droidekas took no prisoners, and the three clones assigned to guard them were massacred by the two destroyers, blasted in the chest.

"Maybe we should have followed Anakin's advice!" cried Henry.

"It's a bit late for that now!" cried Rika. Suzie cringed and pressed her hands over her ears as the droidekas began to open fire on the boulder they were crouching behind, charring the rock as they streamed lasers onto it.

They were trapped! They had a cliff on one side and droidekas blocking the only way out on the other.

Rika pulled out her D-Arc and extended the hologram, ducking as a laser zipped past just above her head. The image showed the backs of a running Anakin and Ahsoka, which was what Renamon was seeing. "RENAMON!" cried Rika. "Help us!"

* * *

Renamon instantly stopped running, skidding to a halt and eyes widening with fear. Terriermon and Lopmon also faltered – both knew what had just happened to Renamon.

Ahsoka noticed they'd pulled to a halt and stopped herself. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Rex isn't far away now."

"Our Tamers are in trouble," said Renamon fearfully. "They need our help."

"You mean the clones are under attack?" asked Anakin from slightly up ahead.

"No, but they are," cried Lopmon. "Why couldn't they stay put like they were told?"

Renamon felt a surge of strength. Rika had just swiped a card through her D-Arc, which caused her to glow and shout **"RENAMON DIGIVOLVE TO... KYUBIMON!"**

With no more words, Kyubimon spun around and sprinted off back the way they'd come, following Rika's mental signature. She shot along so fast that she was almost flying without wings for all her feet were off the ground for well over half the time.

"Go on without us!" shouted Terriermon, swooping around to follow her. "I hope you find Rex." The two bunnies shot off in rapid pursuit of the speeding fox. Anakin and Ahsoka spared each other a brief glance before turning off and continuing to follow their senses which would lead them to Rex.

* * *

Juma-9 Space Station wasn't the complete wreck that it should have been. With the destruction of the detonator a good deal of mines planted by the Chameleon droids had not gone off as they should have done. As a result the station was largely still intact, but it was a hell of a mess. There were large gaping holes in it letting in the vacuum of space, which was prevented from going any further by blast doors and ray shields popping down to block it. But as to whether there was anyone still alive in all that mess, nobody knew.

But they intended to find out.

The moment Commander Cody had been ejected in his escape pod, the clone had attempted to contact somebody for assistance. Unfortunately, the escape pods were not known for their long range transmissions and the likelihood of there being any Republic cruisers in the vicinity was not high.

But, fortunately, Cody had found someone who could help. Obi-Wan's astromech, R4-P17, had secured himself into Obi-Wan's Delta-7 and had taken off when the explosions started. The little red droid had picked up Commander Cody's messages and had used the Delta-7's long range transmissions to send a message to Coruscant, telling them of the incident at hand.

The Jedi Council had responded immediately and, a couple of hours afterwards, another Nu-class Attack Shuttle was entering the hangar of the Juma-9. It landed, and the ramp began to lower, but the two passengers didn't even bother to wait for it to descend completely before leaping out over it. One was Mace Windu. The second was the Nautolan Jedi Master, Kit Fisto.

As the Attack Shuttle lifted off again and began to fly out, Mace unclipped the holoprojector from his belt and activated it, revealing Commander Ponds' hologram. The clone saluted and said, "Glad to see you made it in, sirs. We've just found Commander Cody in one of the escape pods and have picked him up. I'll put you over to him now. Stand by."

The hologram blurred and was replaced by another clone, who also saluted. "General Windu. General Fisto," he acknowledged. "I'm afraid the station's a bit of a wreck. What are your orders?"

"Where is Generals Koon and Kenobi?" asked Mace. "We were unable to pick up much information from the astromech but we know both were here doing the attack."

"That's unknown I'm afraid, sir," Cody shook his head. "We split up during the attack in order to complete two separate objectives, but they were both still on board when the explosions started. General Kenobi ordered us to evacuate without him as soon as they did start, sir. We haven't heard anything from him since."

"Don't worry, Commander," said Kit Fisto. "If they're still in here, then we'll find them."

Cody nodded.

"Tell Commander Ponds to bring in some of his men as soon as possible," said Mace. "We'll start looking for Kenobi and Koon right now."

"Copy that, sir," said Cody and vanished.

Kit and Mace began to jog into the station, Kit's head tentacles flowing out behind him. People would often used Kit's tentacles to demonstrate what a skilled lightsaber Master he was, stating that he'd been involved in lightsaber duels with the likes of General Grievous himself and had come out with all of them intact, several times, despite their tendency to swing around almost of their own accord.

There were still a large number of droids in the station. Presumably whoever it was that had led the attack had left them behind for some reason. Perhaps they had wanted the droids to stand guard for a return, or they just couldn't be bothered to wait for them all to get back on the ships before leaving. Both Jedi strongly suspected the second – the droids didn't get much respect amongst their commanders.

In fact, they didn't get _any_ respect from their commanders for obvious reasons.

It wasn't long at all before the Jedi Masters ran into a few. A corridor full of Super Battle Droids greeted them the moment they left the hangar. "Intruder in the vicinity!" barked one deeply and there was the clicking of droid arms moving into the attack position. There were two flashes of light, one purple and the other green, as the Jedi ignited their lightsabers. Neither said a word before they charged.

Mace swept his blade profusely through the first Super, swept the fire of two more aside and brought his lightsaber down, leaving one down the middle and spinning to hew another across the torso, passing through its face. Then he leapt over another, reversing his blade to stab it in the back, before pulling it out and blocking the laser fire of a few more, which he then dealt with by blasting them backwards through the corridor. Then he swept around, cutting through the midsection of another and hacked off another's arm, finishing it off with a blow to the chest.

Kit leapt after Mace and brought both feet squarely into the head of another Super, knocking it into another and sending both to the ground. A couple of lightsaber swings later and the two Supers were diced where they lay. Kit blocked a couple of lasers, sending them shooting into the faces of two of the Supers, nipped between the bodies while they were still falling and drove his blade into the one behind them, withdrawing it and slicing the droid in half, then reached out with one hand and used the Force to smash the remaining two droids together.

"I swear the quality of these droids are going down as the rate of production goes up," Kit grinned his well-known infectious grin. It was so infectious that the only person in the Republic who would not start grinning themselves when Kit grinned was... well... the person Kit was grinning at.

Commander Ponds suddenly contacted Mace. When allowed to speak, he said, "The astromech's done a scan of the station sir, and he's discovered three life-forms besides us on board, sir?"

"The generals?" asked Mace.

"Well, one of them is a Kel Dor and one of the two others is with him and a human so we can hazard a guess that those are the two Jedi."

"And the third?" asked Kit.

"Unknown, sir, but it's another human. But in order to reach any of them we're gonna have to get the power back sir. The astromech says the primary couplings have been blasted out of sync and the power conduits are damaged. Shall we handle that sir?"

"General Fisto and I will head to the reactor core. You handle the repairs, Ponds and we'll get the power back up."

"On it, sir."

* * *

"Alright everyone," Cody said as he, Ponds and two other clones moved along what was once a wall but was now the floor. "Stay sharp. We may encounter a few surprises yet before we can get out of here." Cody had, unusually for a clone, two lightsabers hanging from his belt. He knew one of them really well as he'd seen Obi-Wan using in all the battles they'd been in together. The other, he assumed, was Plo Koon's. They'd been found floating in space not far away from the station.

The clones moved quickly into a large corridor. At one end of it was a large length of wires collection of thin cables that ran through the pipelines and they were sparking and crackling with electricity. These were the primary couplings and it was quite obvious that the extent of the damage to them was very high.

"Alright, let's get this done," said Ponds. "We need to reset these couplings so that once the Jedi reach the reactor core – or what's left of it – they can get the power back up."

"I'm not exactly a whiz a this sort of thing," said one the clones, who was called Flak. "I prefer scrapping clankers to fiddling around with bits of wire."

"How exactly are we going to reset it, sir?" asked the other clone. "I'm not particularly looking forward to seeing what happens to someone who touches those wires."

"That's simple enough," answered Cody. "All we need to do is make sure the wires in the consoles by it are in the correct position. I'll get over there and sort that out, but I might need some cover."

"Don't worry, Commander," nodded Flak, patting his blaster affectionately. "We got your back."

"Good, cause I might need it one day," Cody walked over to the console and subtly removed one of the outer panels by smacking it with the butt of his blaster and kneeling beside it. The other three stood around him and faced outwards, blaster at the ready, just in case anything tried to get a shot at Cody while he was vulnerable.

Ponds' comlink beeped and he answered it. "We're in the reactor core, Commander," said Mace's voice. "Have you reset the couplings yet?"

"Not yet, sir," said Ponds, "but Cody's putting the wires back in their right places now."

"Good work, Commander."

"You see anything?" asked Cody from kneeling by the console.

"Not a droid in sight," said Flak.

"You sure about that?" the other clone, Rike, said. "'Cause I can see a WHOPPIN' GREAT CRAB DROID HEADING OUR WAY!"

Flak and Ponds whirled about. Cody turned to look. Coming down the corridor they come down was a huge shape. It was an orange plated down with four, large legs that were covered in wide, flat armour with a disc like body and two red photoreceptors at the front.

"Keep its attention on us!" shouted Ponds, "and fire!"

Flak, Rike and Ponds all pulled their triggers and unleashed a volley of blaster lasers at the oncoming crab droid. It almost seemed to ignore the shots and began to unleash a barrage of its own from the blasters underneath its body. Flak was forced to dodge as the blasts struck the wall behind where his chest had been.

"Keep it away from Cody!" shouted Commander Ponds. "Let's take the fight to it! Come on!"

Ponds charged forwards, blasting, with Flak and Rike right behind him. As they got nearer the crab droid brought its two front legs together to form a barrier between them and its sensitive photoreceptors. The clones' bolts had no effect on the heavy armour encrusting its legs, other than forming little char marks.

"Flank it!" Ponds ordered Flak. "Rike, you wait here and blast its eyes when it moves those legs."

"Yes, sir!" Rike stepped before the crab droid and levelled his blaster, taking careful aim at where its eyes would be. Ponds and Flak ran to either side of it and began to blast at its unprotected body. As long as it was crouched and protecting its face its back legs couldn't do anything, and a crab droid had to face whatever it was firing at.

Rike closed one eye and took careful aim, expecting the legs to open so it could attack his attackers.

He did not expect it to suddenly lunge forwards and for its legs to shoot outwards and smack into him. With a yell, Rike went flying backwards, sailing through the air. He turned to see that he was heading right for the sparking wires.

He shut his eyes...

"I've got it!" shouted Cody.

The wires stopped crackling just before Rike hit them. The clone was bruised quite badly, but this was better than being dead from electrocution.

The crab droid had turned around and was trying to shoot at his attackers, but Flak and Ponds were not staying in the same place for longer than a second so the droid was unable to get the right angle to shoot them, and they were dancing out of reach of its flailing legs. Cody, after seeing that Rike was okay, called over. "Keep it busy!"

"Already doing that!" Ponds shouted. He and Flak were back in the corridor and the crab droid had its back to Cody and Rike. Cody ran forward, aiming his blaster, but then he had another idea.

The crab droid had no photoreceptors at its back end so it got no warning. Cody stepped up behind it, holstered his blaster and unclipped Obi-Wan's lightsaber from his belt. It was incredibly difficult for any non-jedi to use a lightsaber efficiently, but for what Cody had in mind, it would be easy. He held it, facing down, above the crab droid's back and pushed the button. The blade extended and speared through the crab droid. It went limp, sparked and collapsed. Cody deactivated the blade.

"Hope the General doesn't mind," he shrugged.

"Nice," observed Ponds. "I think that's the first time any clone has ever used a lightsaber."

"First time for everything isn't there," agreed Cody.

* * *

Whilst, Cody had been hacking into the systems of the Juma-9 in order to realign the power couplings, far away on another planet covered in ice, another clone was doing something pretty similar. Commander Gree was slicing into the main computer of the crashed and, oh yeah, floating Separatist Frigate, in a bid to find out what exactly it was that this ship had been carrying and trying to find a clue as to how it was floating, or the circumstances of its crash at all.

And they hadn't been unexpected either. Just as Ponds, Flak and Rike were watching Cody's back, Bly, Talon, Aayla and Luminara were watching Gree's.

The Twi'lek Jedi found herself facing a Super Battle Droid and a couple of B-1s. She leapt upwards and swept the shots from the B-1s back into their stomach areas. Aayla twisted in the air and brought her lightsaber sweeping through the Super, while at the same time levitating a droid behind her to take the shots from its comrades. Then she charged forward towards three more B-1s, cleaved one up across the torso, span and swept her blade through the second on the way down and finally cut through the pelvic area of the third with a deft swing.

Luminara blasted another trio of droids off the into the crater with the Force, then deflected the fire of five more and one Super with almost casual swings of her blade. Her robes billowed as she moved forwards to engage them in battle. Two of the battle droids fell in the same swing and another fell from have its own bolt deflected back into its face from point blank range. The Super was cut in half from the top of the head to between its legs, another battle droid was impaled by her green blade and the final one fell from a heavy kick to the chest that sent it falling over the edge.

Bly deftly finished off the last droid with a blast to the body. As it fell to the floor, Bly contemptuously kicked its dead head off and watched it spinning across the floor before dropping over the edge.

"There won't be a day where the tinnies can kill us all without a ten-to-one advantage," he remarked.

"Twenty-to-one," corrected Talon, tipping the rest of the body after the head.

"I'm in!" shouted Gree from the computer. The two Jedi and the two clones walked over to him. Gree was standing triumphantly beside a hologram of the frigate, or at least what they shuttle had looked like when it had been intact.

"This was what the ship looked like eleven minutes before it hit the ground and created all this mess," explained Gree. "Then, this happened." He pushed a button and they watched a hologram of a much smaller ship appear. This one resembled a bus that could be found on earth, except it had no windows besides at the cockpit, or wheels. It also had a large docking clamp at the back. They watched the ship flying under the Separatist vessel and dock with it.

"Who was flying that ship, Commander?" asked Aayla.

Gree checked the computer and said, disappointed, "There's no registry on record. Whoever that ship belonged to didn't want anybody to know he was there."

"It could be a smuggler," suggested Luminara. "We are, after all, in the middle of a territory belonging to Jabba. There are lots of smugglers around here."

"Bounty Hunters too," nodded Aayla. "Something this ship was carrying must have attracted their interest."

Gree pressed another button and the hologram fizzed before popping back up, exactly the same as before. Only this time, the little unidentified ship detached from the ship and flew away. "This is what happened six minutes later. Whoever was in it caused this crash, or so I'm assuming, because the moment he departs..."

Gree didn't need to see any more because, at that moment, the holographic frigate exploded.

"That was a nice exit if you ask me," said Bly, leaning over Gree's shoulder to look. "Whoever was on that ship was obviously quite ruthless. And probably very efficient to accomplish that within six minutes."

"Well, let's find out what they were after, shall we?" suggested Luminara. "Gree, access the manifest of the ship. See if there's anything besides the usual Separatist cargo on board the vessel."

Gree nodded and began to push a few buttons. A few seconds later, he said, "Well, that's not normal."

"What is?" asked Aayla.

Gree displayed another hologram. It looked like a crate of some kind, but it wasn't the usual cube shape. It was a nonagon shape, which meant it had nine sides to it, and it had four plastic "feet" so it would stand upright. Nobody there had seen anything like it before. "There were two of these onboard," said Gree. "Whatever they were they were weapons and highly classified. I can't find anything to tell me what it is. I might have to dig deeper."

Gree began to do just that. Luminara looked about her at the wreckage once again. "Do you think it was one of those that caused all of this?" she murmured.

"If it did it must have been very powerful," nodded Aayla. "I'd be willing to bet that whoever boarded this ship took the second. That's the only unusual thing about this ship."

"But what would the Separatists want with something that that could affect gravity like this?"

"I don't know, Master Luminara," Aayla shook her head. "I don't know."

"Whoa!" Gree said, suddenly. "I found another entry, and this one came from a couple of minutes before we arrived in this room."

Pushing a button, a hologram of a figure came up. A figure with a bald head and a tattooed face. A figure that Luminara knew very well.

"Ventress?" her eyes narrowed.

Bly and Aayla had never met Ventress in person, but both had heard the stories of how dangerous she could be. Immediately, Bly's blasters were out of their holsters and ready to fire, and Aayla's lightsaber had sprung to life and was held in a defensive position.

"Gree," said Aayla. "What was she doing here?"

"It says that she was... activating the self-destruct on the ship!"

Everyone was in motion in an instant. "Go!" cried Luminara, as Aayla sheathed her blade and all five began to run. "Don't wait for us! We'll be along."

"But sir..."

"Do it, Gree."

"You too, Bly."

Aayla and Luminara leapt through where the wall had once been and back onto the floating bits of debris, as the three clones activated their jetpacks and soared across the crater, overtaking them. The two Jedi bounced and sprang with a sense of urgency, so much so that they were like a pair of pinballs ricocheting across the gap.

They reached a large chunk of metal floating beside the edge of the chasm just as, behind them, the ship exploded with a massive blast. The shockwave knocked the two Jedi forwards. Luminara fell to her knees. Aayla, who had been slightly behind her, went rather more elegantly and turned what would have been an embarrassing pratfall into a forward roll, coming to rest on hands and knees.

"That was a little too close for comfort," said Luminara. Then her eyes narrowed.

Aayla turned and, for the first time, her eyes fell on the real Asajj Ventress. The Dark Jedi was standing several feet away, with two lightsaber handles in her hands and a smirk on her face.

"I'd say it's a pleasure to meet you again, Jedi," she sneered at Luminara. "But then I'd be lying."

"I don't see why that bothers you," Aayla got to her feet and ignited her blue blade. "You're not the most truthful person in the galaxy."

"Such impertinence," Ventress placed a hand to her heart in an effort to look wounded.

"Why am I not surprised to find out that this was your doing," Luminara got to her feet and her green blade extended from the handle.

"Oh, but it isn't," said Ventress. "But I am here to clean it up. Killing the two of you would be an excellent way to do it, and a pleasurable one too." With the usual fizzing noise associated with a lightsaber, her two blades, both a deep red, sprang into existence. Ventress smirked, filled with confidence.

Then she sprang forward, blades sweeping backwards as she sailed through the air to strike both down. Luminara and Aayla raised their blades and blocked the strikes, arms bending to absorb the shock of impact before both pushed back, throwing Ventress backwards a little. The Rattataki landed and there was a moment of silence as they stared at each other in battle stances, sizing each other up.

Aayla moved forwards and the duel began in earnest. Aayla hacked forward with her blade and Ventress blocked with both hers in an X shape. Aayla stepped back and swung again and her blade was turned away but the Twi'lek pirouetted and brought her blade forward again, forcing Ventress to block. The two strained against one another for a second before Ventress pulled back and took a swipe, but Aayla leapt right over Ventress' blades. Aayla dodged an upward swing at her chest by leaning backwards and flipped over, blocking a swing thrown at her with one blade and stepping back as both Ventress' lightsabers came swinging down at her.

This time, Aayla broke the straining match and stepped aside as Luminara dashed forward. The Mirialan blocked a frustrated swipe at Aayla, then hewed at Ventress. Ventress turned her blade with one and swung upwards with the other but Luminara blocked both it and swung up to block the other blade coming downwards. Ventress stepped back and span her blades briefly before bringing them crashing back at Luminara.

But Ventress had to adjust her position as Aayla came back into the fray, moving one saber to block the strike of the Rutian Twi'lek and attempted to throw her back. Luminara ducked under a violent swing and brought her green lightsaber humming in from the side, which Ventress was forced to sidestep as both her blades came into play against Aayla, who rained three blows in quick succession on Ventress, two downwards and one upwards.

But Ventress managed to parry the blows and, in an attempt to catch Aayla off guard, aimed a kick at her face. But Aayla saw it coming and bent backwards, her spine arcing as Ventress' foot passed over her face. Using her Twi'lek elegance, Aayla's hands met the ground and she flipped over her head. Her legs caught Ventress' outstretched one and the Dark Acolyte fell in surprise and was forced to use both blades to block a swing from Luminara while on the ground.

Ventress hurriedly rolled to one side, dodging another blow from Luminara, and sprang to her feet. She scowled, then leapt for Luminara again, determined to finish the Jedi Master off this time – last time they'd met Luminara had called her saber skills sloppy in an attempt to rile her up.

It had worked.

Ventress' blades met Luminara's and she pushed, forcing Luminara backwards a few steps. Ventress then released the block and swiped at Luminara's feet, but she jumped over her blades and then aimed a blow at her midsection, which Luminara avoided by leaping backwards. Luminara landed gracefully and her blade scythed towards Ventress, forcing her to block, and Ventress took a swipe with one blade. Luminara twirled to one side and avoided it, leapt backwards as Ventress stabbed at her with both, then parried one then the other of the red blades as Ventress bounded off her feet, spinning in the air and taking two sweeps at her.

Ventress sent her left blade at Luminara, but she was blocked, so she tried her right but she was blocked again. Frustrated, she took a sweep which Luminara ducked under, before Luminara took a swing of her own followed in quick succession by another. Ventress used one blade to block the first attack and both to parry the second. So Ventress went for Luminara's feet, but Luminara crouched and her blade was there to meet it. Ventress was forced to step backwards to avoid a stab.

Luminara then leapt to one side and Aayla came sailing down from the peak of a Jedi force jump, Ventress hurried to block the Twi'lek's assault, straining backwards as Aayla pushed her into a limbo position. Ventress thrust back and the two were facing one another again. Ventress aimed a blow at Aayla, which she blocked. The Rattataki swung around, twirling one blade and sliced at Aayla's head, attempting to remove it. Aayla ducked and turned away. Ventress attempted to take advantage of her exposed back, but Aayla pulled off a spectacular backwards block, then rolled to avoid another swing from the other blade and, raising the blade above her head, she cleaved down towards Ventress' head.

Red clashed on blue as the blades locked together. The two combatants' faces were very close together; Ventress' furious glare contrasting with Aayla's expression of utter focus. Ventress broke the stalemate and swung both blades in a scissor cut at Aayla's head, but she ducked, flicking her head so her lekku could come down fast enough to avoid being cut in half. Aayla blocked a further two strikes and then gyrated to bring her blade swinging at Ventress with greater force. Ventress was forced to use both blades to block this strike.

Luminara noticed that the duel between Aayla and Ventress was taking them further onto the ice. Thinking quickly, Luminara spotted an ice cave and a plan came into her mind. She leapt forward towards Ventress. Aayla dropped to the ground and Ventress was surprised when Luminara's blade came whizzing towards her from where she's been. She blocked and stepped backwards.

"Push her into the cave, Aayla," murmured Luminara. "I have an idea."

Aayla nodded wordlessly and leapt back to strike at Ventress, the two of them trading blows every second. Luminara sheathed her blade and stretched out her hands to the cave. She stretched out with feelings and used her mind to explore the cave, finding the cracks in the ice and the weakest parts of the walls. When she was ready, she called, "Now, Aayla!"

Upon hearing Luminara's call, Aayla acted instantly. She stepped back and swung a glancing blow upwards at Ventress' stomach. Ventress managed to block with both her blades, but Aayla crouched low and, using all her weight, muscled upwards, forcing all three blades above the heads of the two combatants. Then, Aayla brought her knee slamming into Ventress' belly. It was crude, but effective. Ventress doubled over, and Aayla spun around and her leg came up, kicking Ventress squarely in the chin.

Ventress was thrown backwards and she landed, skidding, into the mouth of the ice cave. Luminara saw her chance and her hands tensed and with a burst of the Force she moved them down. Ventress jumped in surprise as two large ice stalactites plummeted from the ceiling on either side of her. The Rattataki looked up at the massive cracks appearing in the roof and with a sudden explosion, several of the ice pillars shattered. Ventress leapt backwards and deeper into the cave as the ceiling around the entrance collapsed and the rubble fell.

A few seconds later and where there was once a cave entrance, there was now wall of ice. Ventress was shut firmly inside and even with her lightsabers it was going to take a while for her to dig her way out of that.

Aayla walked back to Luminara, breathing lightly. She deactivated her lightsaber and calmly hung it back on her belt. "That was quite a battle, Master Luminara," she said.

"Indeed," nodded Luminara. "And I think it might be best if we reported this incident to the Jedi Council as soon as possible. After all, there's still another one of those mysterious weapons out there."

Aayla nodded. "And it could be anywhere in the galaxy. Whoever was piloting that ship could have gone anywhere."

Luminara pulled out a holoprojector and contacted Commander Gree. "Glad to see you made it, sir," said Gree. "You gave us all a scare there for a moment."

"Thank you for your concern," said Luminara. "But I need a scramble code to Coruscant. Now. This cannot wait."

"Right away, sir," Gree saluted. "We'll have it ready and waiting for when you get back."

His hologram vanished and Aayla looked again over the massive crater. The ship was gone. The self-destruct had blown it up completely, leaving only large amounts of debris and the crater. The debris was no longer floating either. The explosion seemed to have cancelled out the affect of the weapon.

"We don't even know what this weapon is really for," remarked Aayla, placing her hands on her hips and walking to the lip of the crater. "But I'm willing to bet whoever stole it does. Where would he go?"

"There are innumerable smuggler and bounty hunter hideouts in the galaxy. But there is one thing we know of. We know that Dooku is prepared to go to great lengths in order to cover all of this up. He doesn't usually send Ventress on any mission but ones of the utmost importance."

"Yes," said Aayla. "But does our mysterious thief know that? He probably has no idea what he's got himself into. And I'm not sure which I'm least comfortable with – this gravity weapon in the hands of the Separatists or this gravity weapon in the hands of a bounty hunter."

"Both are indeed alarming," said Luminara, "but we must focus on finding him instead of wondering what he's going to do with it. That way he won't be _able_ to do anything with it."

"You're right, Luminara," said Aayla. "And once we contact Coruscant and let them know what's happening, I wish to send a transmission to Ryloth."

"Your Digimon?" Luminara raised an eyebrow.

"They're not mine. They're theirs. But yes," nodded Aayla. "They may prove most useful. Let's go."

With that, the two Jedi broke into a run and headed back to the clones.

* * *

Sorry about the delay everyone, but writing my first lightsaber duel was extremely difficult. I understand how difficult it must be for the special effects people to choreograph an interesting duel scene for the TV series. But hey, I got it up eventually. Please review and I hope to get Chapter 24 up relatively soon.

* * *

Next time...

What's happened to Captain Rex? Who's behind his capture? Will he be found in time? And will the Tamers be rescued in time?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 24 : Rise of the Bounty Hunters**


	24. Rise Of The Bounty Hunters

Been a little longer than I would have liked, but I had something spring up on Field Day where I would have been writing this. I also had an open day to my top choice of university, so I've been pretty busy. So far I've got no requests from Movie-Brat or Tamara Caitlyn, but hopefully that'll change soon. Just as a reminder to them – please check the profile or the rules.

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* * *

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 24:- Rise Of The Bounty Hunters**

* * *

Captain Rex blearily opened his eyes. It took him a moment to remember what had happened to him, but then the memory struck him full-force. He looked around. He appeared to be in some type of aircraft hangar, with an open space at the centre which was, at this point, empty of any actual aircraft. The huge hangar doors were wide open. He was surrounded by crates of all shapes and sizes and leaning against one was his attacker.

Rex's eyes narrowed. He knew who this guy was. He'd never met him personally, but his face was posted up all around Coruscant and he was wanted for "crimes against the Republic." And yet here he was right now, on Ryloth, leaning casually against an odd looking crate – nine sided and with the ends glowing a faint green and with a few buttons flashing ominously in the centre.

The man standing before him was clad in brown – brown trousers, brown shirt, long brown tunic with what appeared to be two tail-ends trailing behind him like a cloak and appeared to be made of Nashtah hide. There were two holstered LL-30 blaster pistols hanging from his belt, which gave him the swashbuckling appearance of a pirate. He was wearing boots made of durasteel with jetpack thrusters customized into them. On his wrists and lower arms were two gauntlets that were covered in numerous controls and were full of customized weaponry including the stun blasts which had hit him and knocked him out. He also had two cybernetic breathing tubes embedded in his cheekbones that connected directly to his windpipe. His face was completely blue, with a low slung mouth, no visible nose and wide, entirely red eyes. To top of the image, he wore what could only be described as a wide-brimmed, brown cowboy hat on top of his head.

This was Cad Bane.

He was a Duros Bounty Hunter and widely renowned for being one of the best in the galaxy; ruthless, efficient and remorseless, not to mention deadly. Bane glanced over at Rex and saw that he was being glared at. He sneered, revealing human-like teeth, except for the lengthened and sharpened canines. "Nice nap?" said the Bounty Hunter.

Rex was up in an instant and lunged for his captor, but Bane was up faster than could blink and had planted a fierce kick into Rex's armoured chest and had one of his blasters in hand before Rex had even realized he was reaching for it. Rex landed with a thud, his back striking what he'd been leaning against. It grunted.

Rex looked around to find he'd been leaning against a slumped Boomer, who was now waking up.

"You don't want to go doing that," leered Bane. "I've got all the power here, trooper. You'd do well to remember that fact before you lash out at me again."

It was only then that Rex noticed that there were a pair of binders around his wrists in front of him. He looked at them and could see that they was a bright blue light emanating from them. That was not normal at all. They were also unusually thick. He knew he was strong, but there were very few who would need binders that thick to prevent them from breaking out.

An uneasy feeling began to develop in the pit of his stomach. Bane held all the cards here and he was known for preparing for every eventuality. No doubt there was something different about these binders.

Boomer groaned. "Where are we?" he mumbled. He opened his eyes and looked up, spotting Bane for the first time. "Cad Bane?" he cried, surprised.

"That's me. Try not to feel too bad. I am pretty skilled after all," Bane tipped his hat in mock respect. "And you weren't exactly much of a challenge."

Rex growled.

"My, my, someone's got a temper," said Bane. "And a thick head. It took you both long enough to wake up. Now, listen to me, clones. I have the two of you in my power. You're my prisoners and I suggest that if you want to stay alive, you do exactly what I tell you to do. Have you got that, or do I have to repeat myself a little slower?"

The clones were stung by this. It was well-aimed. Bane was treating them like stupid, ordinary, mindless battle droids. The Bounty Hunter probably knew that they would find this insulting, which had been, of course, why he'd said it.

"Duros scum!" Rex exclaimed. Bane raised his eyebrow-equivalent. "You won't get away with this."

Bane went back to leaning against the crate and appeared to start inspecting his nails nonchalantly. "I'm afraid it's a little late to say that considering I already have," he smirked.

"Why have you taken us prisoner?" asked Boomer. "Why not just kill us and have done with it?"

"Is that a request because I can you know."

"Answer that question!"

"I wouldn't advise making demands of me. But, if you insist." Bane patted the crate he was leaning against. "This is the reason that I caught the two of you. I'm going to need to get this aboard my ship, but it'll require both arms for me to carry this and I'm going to need my blasters to keep the droids off my back."

"Droids?" Rex looked around.

"Oh yes – they're all over the place," said Bane. "And I'd quite like to avoid getting myself shot in the back so you two are going to load this aboard my ship. I've got other places to be beside this forsaken place."

"So you can rake in more credits via dirty work," snarled Rex.

"It's like you know me, Captain," laughed Bane, not put off by Rex's attitude in the slightest. "So, on your feet and get..."

Bane stopped at the sound of a loud explosion. Whipping around, the Duros saw a phalanx of battle droids marching smartly through the giant hangar doors behind him. There were also a few Super Battle Droids striding behind them, their arms raised in the resting position and their blank, expressionless faces fixed straight ahead. One of them had accidentally fired a rocket launcher, which had exploded at its feet and smashed it to pieces. The other droids ignored their fallen comrade and marched on regardless.

This time it was Rex and Boomer's turn to smirk. "Well, well," said Rex. "Looks like you've got some company, Bane."

Bane, on the other hand, looked completely unconcerned. He glanced at the crate and muttered, "My prize must be very valuable if the droids want it back this badly. Far more value than I thought." Then he turned to the restrained clones and said, "I would wipe those looks of your faces if I were you. Those droids are nothing we can't handle."

"What? We?" Rex asked, surprised. "You honestly expect us to help you?"

"Not willingly," Bane knelt beside them so they were all out of view of the droids. "But I happen to have some leverage." He pulled a round, metal disc with eight red buttons, two of which were lit and glowing while the others were left blank.

"What is that?"

"A detonator," Bane's leer had returned.

Boomer blinked. "For what?" he murmured.

Rex glanced at the binders on his wrists again. He knew they were bulkier than normal. "Our binders," he murmured. "They've been wired with explosive charges."

Boomer looked shocked, and stared at Rex like he'd grown another head.

"So, clones are smarter than you look," Bane nodded approvingly, confirming Rex's fears. "Now, I'm going to release the link on your binders, but if you try anything funny I blow you to pieces. If those droids get near my crate I blow you to pieces. If you try to shoot me..."

"...You blow us to pieces," growled Boomer. "We get the picture."

"But you'll live if you get my crate past those droids and onto my ship safely," Bane finished. The Bounty Hunter glanced at the droids, who were marching closer but still hadn't noticed the three of them due to the fact they were staring straight ahead.

"Do we have a deal?" Bane flipped the detonator in his hand casually and winked at the clones.

"It's not like we can decline, is it?" Rex glared. Bane nodded and pushed one of the buttons on the detonator. For a heart-stopping the clones wondered if he'd pushed the wrong button, but suddenly they were able to pull their wrists apart, although they both still had one half of a pair of binders around each wrist.

Bane nodded towards the discarded blasters of the clones which were lying on a pile beside them and trained his own pistol on them. Cautiously, the clones picked up the weapons and put on their helmets.

Bane leapt into the air and the boots on his rockets kicked into life. This was enough to grab the attention of the droids, who looked over as he flew backwards. Spinning his pistols deftly, Bane took aim and let loose with a barrage of red lasers, felling four droids where they stood before they could even raise their own.

More droids were filing into the hangar from the main doors. Rex and Boomer, kneeling behind crates for cover, popped over and pulled the triggers on their weapons. Droids fell as the blue bolts stormed through them, burning holes in their metal hides. One of the droids finally took the initiative and shouted, "Blast 'em!" at which point all the droids lowered their own blasters and opened fire.

"Looks like the brought the whole army," remarked Boomer, grunting as he ducked out of sight to avoid being hit in the face and reloaded his blaster. "Looks like you've made a few enemies, Bane."

"I'm a Bounty Hunter," Bane was standing on one of the raised platforms and shooting down on the droids from a height, dodging to the side and holing droids with fatal accuracy – most of his shots struck them in the head. "The only side I am on is my own and if someone else doesn't like it then that's too bad for them."

Rex took out a Super with a couple of well-aimed shots at its globular torso, then gunned down three battle droids within two seconds. More and more droids were pouring into the hangars. Boomer had been right. It probably was the whole army.

"I don't think we're gonna be able to hold out unless we get those hangar doors closed," he said, rolling to one side and peering out from the sides to take out another droid.

"Then get to it," Bane ordered. "If you think I'm going over there so you can shoot me in the back you're sorely mistaken."

Rex growled, then he leapt from hiding. "Cover me, Boomer!" he shouted as he sprinted past the droid lines towards the console besides the hangar doors. The droids turned to follow his progress and red lasers flashed all around Rex, but Boomer pulled an EMP grenade from his belt and tossed it. The droids didn't notice until it suddenly flared into life and they fell to the ground, completely powerless. Literally.

"Why's Artoo never around when you need him?" muttered Rex as he knelt beside the console and attempted to hotwire it. Bane took to the air again and swooped low over Rex, pistols in hand. With unerring precision, the Duros let loose a barrage of bolts upon the nearest droids. Those that weren't hit turned to follow his progress, just as Rex finished the job. With a creaking thud, the hangar doors slammed shut, crushing several droids between them and flattening them like plastic cups.

"You want to be careful, soldier-boy," remarked Bane, landing on the ground nearby and shooting a droid casually in the abdomen over his shoulder. "I might not be there next time."

Rex scowled beneath his helmet. But then, there was an explosion of to the side. All three looked to see more droids spilling through the smaller doors on the left side of the hangar, which had been blown to pieces.

"Oh that's just annoying" grumbled Boomer, raising his blaster again as the droids advanced.

* * *

Kyubimon was beginning to do things that no four legged creature should be able to do, such as running right across a length of pipe jutting out across the gap. She sprang from the end and onto stone, not pausing in her stride as she galloped from roof to roof at top speed, her brain not comprehending anything but the plight of the Tamers. Above her, Terriermon and Lopmon struggled to keep pace with her, flapping their large ears just to keep up. But they also had only one thought in their brains.

They were now close enough to see into their Tamers minds and could see the two droidekas shuffling towards them and firing at the back of the rock they were hiding behind. If they broke cover they'd be shot in the back. If they stayed where they were, the droids would eventually figure out that shooting the rock wasn't going to actually kill anyone behind it and decide to go around it.

The Champion and the two Rookies ploughed through the battered city of Resdin, not caring for busted buildings, collapsed roofs or debris-filled streets. They were on a mission. If the Tamers died then... well, the thought was unbearable. Incomprehensible.

And it was NOT going to become reality.

* * *

Ridge, Lash and Blade had found themselves in a street which abruptly ended with a massive drop that spilled over into the ravine below. The three clones stared down into the abyss. Ridge kicked a stone over the edge and they waited until they heard it clack against the bottom. They didn't.

"I hope the kids didn't come this way," said Blade, "and if they did I hope they actually managed to spot this hole before they fell in it."

"There's a cheerful thought," said Lash. "I'm sure we'll find them. What's that word that Terriermon always uses?"

"Momentai," said Ridge.

"Yeah, that," nodded Lash. "We should all do that."

"And if they've run into droids?" Blade turned to look at him.

"Then we should all be downright terrified of three furious Digimon."

"There's an even less cheerful thought," remarked Ridge. "Come on. There's nothing here. Let's see if we can get back to the rest of the company."

"What was going through those kids heads when they left the camp?" asked Blade as they began to walk away from the ravine.. "You reckon they wanted some kind of glory or something?"

"I think it was just anxiety," said Ridge. "You remember Rika's face when she said she wasn't allowed to go with Renamon. She looked downright mutinous."

"And then she _was_ downright mutinous," said Lash. "But she's a kid. She'd probably get away with it."

"Ridge!" shouted a voice all three knew well. "GRAB ON! THAT'S AN ORDER!"

The three clones turned to see Kyubimon rushing down the street right towards them at very high speed, her nine tails flying out behind her and her paws literally flaming. She skidded to a halt right next to Ridge and glared meaningfully at him.

Ridge instinctively followed his instructions and climbed aboard. Moments later, he wished he hadn't. The Champion level fox was putting speeders to shame as she barrelled over the numerous gaps and holes, ran across ledge a gymnast would have trouble with, and all with him clutching her fur and trying not to heave inside his own helmet. She reached the lip of the ravine and sprang, shooting through the air and leaping straight over, landing smoothly on the other side. Ridge would have been stunned, but being stunned was not a good idea in this situation. He'd fall off. He saw Terriermon and Lopmon flying overhead and wondered what was going on.

So he asked.

"Our Tamers are in trouble," was Kyubimon's answer, not pausing in her run.

Ridge knew they had a telepathic link with the kids so didn't need to know how they knew. "By what?" he asked.

"Destroyers! Two of them!" shouted Terriermon from above.

"Damn it!" muttered Ridge.

"Get your blaster ready!" Kyubimon shouted. "You're going to need it!"

"I think I'll use both my hands to hold on, thank you," replied Ridge.

* * *

"Well we're not dead yet!" shouted Henry over the noise of the repeating blasters of the droidekas striking the rock they were crouched behind them.

"That's a small comfort at least," yelled Rika. "And the Digimon are on their way."

"Actually they're not on their way, Rika," said Suzie.

"Of course they are," Rika said comfortingly, then ducked as a laser singed off one of the tips of her hair. "Why wouldn't they be?"

"Because they're already here!" Suzie pointed down the street. The other two turned to see Kyubimon haring down it with Ridge on her back. Despite the helmet, the clone still looked like he was about to be sick. When Kyubimon reached the Tamers he rolled off her back and dropped unceremoniously to the ground.

Kyubimon bulled into one of the droidekas and knocked it askew. The other stopped firing and looked at her in surprise as best it could. As she landed, her pawpads absorbing the shock of impact, Kyubimon's tails lashed out and curled around the droideka on the right. With a heave, she lifted the droideka right off the ground and surge of strength she tossed it over her head, the4 rock and the Tamers and over the cliff.

The second droid turned awkwardly to try and face her, but suddenly it was assaulted from behind by two flying bunnies that had circled around and came shooting down towards it. They shot through its deflector shield and grabbed a metallic arm apiece. They heaved, jerking the droidekas backwards and disorientating it. This was enough for Ridge, who had got his act together, to unholster his blaster and run forward, pointing it through the shield. With one shot he blasted through the droideka's head and the body fell to the ground.

"Oh thank God," Rika came out from behind their rock, as well as Suzie and Henry. "Kyubimon, you saved us." She ran to hug the fox, but Kyubimon took a step backwards. The look on her face was one of absolute fury.

"Yes," she said. "I did. But I wouldn't have had to if you had followed your instructions and stayed WITH the clones!"

Terriermon and Lopmon had similar expressions of vehemence on their own faces. "What possessed the three of you to disobey the orders of a veteran Jedi Knight whose been in more battles than we have and knows these foes like the back of his hand?" Lopmon demanded. They'd never seen her so angry. "You came this close to dying," she held her thumb and forefinger within half a centimetre of the other.

"We were worried about you," protested Rika.

"And you decide the best solution is to make us worry about you instead, is that it?" Terriermon scowled. "Because quite frankly I have yet to try something a stupid as this, and I've done quite a few stupid things."

"Don't you understand yet?" Kyubimon raged. "This is WAR. This isn't some monster trying to destroy everything. At least with a monster, you can always see where it is. But there could be droids around us right now and you wouldn't realise it! Don't you get that?"

"Don't you do anything like again!" Terriermon shouted.

"Ever!" Lopmon added. "I almost died I was so frightened. Unless we are going to biomerge you need to stay out of the way. What would we tell your parents if we ever found a way back? Oh sorry but your child had been killed because they were trying to find us despite the fact that we are supposed to protect them instead?"

Rika fell silent. Henry and Suzie had both just been standing there and taking the anger being thrown at them without complaint. All three were thoroughly downcast and looked outright miserable.

Now that the anger was over, the three Digimon felt their rage melt away to be replaced by pure relief. Wordlessly, the three approached their partners and drew them into hugs. Suzie almost tried to back away, either scared that Lopmon was still angry or else feeling she didn't deserve a hug, but Lopmon was having none of it and embraced her Tamers.

"We just want you to be safe," said Terriermon quietly. "And if you're going to go gallivanting off on your own like that then that's the last thing you'll be."

"We're sorry," said Henry, placing his partner in his usual spot on his shoulder. "It won't happen again."

"It better not," Terriermon smiled wryly. "Momentai, guys. You didn't die."

"No," Suzie sniffed. "But they did." She pointed at the bodies of the three dead clones that the droidekas had slaughtered. "If they hadn't been looking for us, they'd still be alive."

"I've heard this sentence used before," Ridge knelt beside Suzie. "And it may not be a lot of comfort to you, but it's true. If there's any way for a clone to die, it's in combat. There's not many clones that'd choose any other kind of death. They fell in the line of duty, and you can't say more than that."

Suzie sniffed and wiped her eyes.

"Come on," Kyubimon stepped out of Rika's grip. "Let's get moving and get you safely back with Galle and Kano."

"Did you have any luck with finding Rex?" asked Henry.

"We found a trail. Anakin and Ahsoka are following it right now," said Lopmon. "Don't worry. Rex will be back with us soon."

* * *

When they met up with Galle, the Lieutenant was relieved to see them. When he consulted with the Digimon, the three of them said that they'd remain with the clones for a while. Very much relieved, Galle and Kano called all the clones back together. Once everyone had been reassembled, the clones continued their march into the city. Kyubimon walked alongside Galle, with Terriermon, Lopmon and Suzie riding on her. Terriermon has called shotgun, which meant he was sitting on her head.

Rika was walking a little way behind, head bowed and staring at her feet. She walked absently beside the pounding middle leg of the first AT-TE. Guilt was riddling her like a squirming parasite that was too stubborn to go away. Her hot-headedness had gotten the Tamers into that mess and it had taken their Digimon to get them out. As usual.

"You alright, Rika?" asked Henry, slowing down so he was walking alongside her.

"What do you think?" Rika's voice was barely audible over the pounding of the walkers.

"I think no, but it pays to be optimistic."

"I almost led you and Suzie to your deaths," Rika turned her head away. "I wouldn't be surprised if you wanted nothing to do with me ever again."

Henry blinked. "And why would I want to do that?"

"I just said. I almost got you killed."

"And?"

"And? And!" Rika turned to look at him, glaring, although she was angry with herself, not him. "Is that all you can say? And? Do you know how horrible it feels to almost be responsible for the death of someone you love?"

"Yes."

"W-what?"

"Does Zhuqiaomon versus Rapidmon remind you of anything?" asked Henry.

"Uh, yes." Rika remembered the time where Rapidmon had almost been cooked to a crisp by a Phoenix Fire from the massive avian Sovereign.

"I made exactly the same mistake. I was so concerned for Suzie that I rushed straight into the danger zone with no planning or forethought. It almost ended up with the death of my own partner. But I seem to recall Terriermon saying to me that we're a team and we're all in this together. Oh God, now I'm quoting High School Musical. I'll never hear the end of this from Terriermon."

Rika, despite herself, chuckled.

"What I'm trying to say is that you're not responsible for what happened. Me and Suzie didn't have to come with you. But we did. You didn't make us come. We came of our own free will. Therefore, you're not responsible for us nearly getting killed. You're only responsible for nearly getting yourself killed. If there's one thing that experience with Rapidmon taught me it's that we work together as a team. We have no leader. No-one follows anyone. We all have different ideas, but somehow it all seems to work. So don't blame yourself for something you don't hold any blame for."

"Thanks Henry," Rika smiled.

"My pleasure," Henry smiled back and pulled her into a kiss.

Up ahead, Terriermon, looking over his shoulder, said to the others, "Alright everyone. I'm sorry but it has to be said. Daaaaaawwwww."

"Shut up," said Kyubimon, sagely.

* * *

Kit pushed the final power convertor back into position. Behind him, the power generator in the reactor core suddenly sprang to life. A massive bolt of electricity suddenly connected the two turbines, one on the ceiling and one on the floor. The power sprang back to the station a couple of seconds later. The buttons on the consoles began to blink again and the lights went up. There was the sound of cheering from the clones over Mace's comlink. Kit and Mace nodded towards one another, satisfied that they could get on with the job of finding Master's Plo and Obi-Wan.

But then there was something that caught their attention.

"Hello!" shouted a voice behind them. Both Jedi whirled about. The only think they saw was a console beside a wall and the voice was coming from the speakers incorporated into it. Somebody was trying to get in touch with them.

"Does anyone copy?" asked the voice again, as Kit and Mace approached the console. "This is an emergency. Please respond." Mace and Kit glanced at each other. Kit nodded sagely and Mace pushed a button and spoke to the console.

"This is General Mace Windu," he said. "Please identify yourself."

A small hologram appeared. It was of another man, wearing boots and a jacket of some kind, with a helmet that covered the top and back of his head. The face was that of a clone. The clone saluted mace and said, "This is CP-6824 of the Juma-9 station. Thank goodness you've responded, sir. I've been trying to get through to somebody for hours."

Commander Cody, who was listening to the conversation through Mace's comlink, said joyfully. "Switch?"

"Commander?" asked Switch. It was the very clone that had been willing to sacrifice himself to save his brothers. And he appeared to have come through it all just fine.

"Never known a soft-shell to last through something like that before," said Cody, laughing. "You're a tough clone, Switch."

"Thank you, sir," said Switch. "I'm glad to see my would-be sacrifice paid off. And it's good to know you're back aboard."

"Private," said Kit, leaning down so he could be heard. "This is General Fisto. Do you have a current fix on Generals Plo or Kenobi. They are still somewhere on the station."

"I haven't been able to contact anyone or do anything with the machinery for some time, sir," said Switch. "But now that you've got the power back up I can recalibrate the internal scanners." The clone bent down and started fiddling with a machine that didn't show up on the hologram. "Wait, there are two life forms trapped in a loading bay, surrounded by droids. I assume that's them."

"Well, it certainly sounds like the kind of mess Obi-Wan would get himself into," grinned Kit. "Private, we'll come to you. We have a lock on your location. Send the location of the generals to Commander Ponds and Cody."

"Acknowledged, sir," said Switch.

"Commander Ponds," said Mace. "We've found the Jedi. They're in a loading bay on the lower decks and appear to be sealed in. Private Switch is sending you the co-ordinates now."

* * *

"Copy that, sir," said Ponds.

"Yes! I knew it! I knew they were alive!" Cody cheered. They were back in the hangar and had just received a little extra package that might help them out – two AT-RTs had been flown in and deposited there. With a beeping, the two of them received the co-ordinates of the loading bay. Ponds and Cody swiftly hopped onto one each and started them up. Flak and Rike, along with a few other clones, were going to set out and secure the higher levels.

Ponds and Cody plodded through the corridors on the little walkers. There weren't many foes left in this part of the station, but there were several small battalions of battle droids, along with the odd Super dotted about the place. Everything without a heartbeat became instant scrap as the clones blasted them aside as if they were made of feathers.

A couple of droidekas rounded the corner and uncurled, raising their bubble-like shields. But these droids, the scourge of inexperienced Jedi and clone alike, we no match for two machines that could bring down a tank. Before they could even start firing their shields were battered by the blue lasers of the AT-RTs and eventually the short-circuited, leaving the destroyers destroyed.

"The signals coming a level below us," said Cody, as he powered his AT-RT to leap straight over a large crater in the floor. "We're getting closer."

"And we can finally get out of this junker," nodded Ponds, taking the leap too. Eagerly, the two clones powered the walkers to go faster. A few battle droids turned at the sound of pounding feet, but they were instantly mown flat underneath the hammer blows of the legs. The clones ignored them and ran up to the thick blast doors their signals were leading them to. Cody vaulted off the walker before it had even stopped and knelt beside the console. Ponds joined him and within a couple of minutes the doors opened.

Obi-Wan and Plo stepped out uncertainly. "Cody?" Obi-Wan asked when he saw the clones.

"Sir," Cody stood up and saluted. "Good to see you safe and sound. You didn't think we were going to leave you here did you?"

"I commend you for your loyalty," said Plo. "And I thank you for getting us out of that jam."

Just then, a large red ray-shield sprang up in the centre of the corridor, cutting the Jedi off from the clones. Cody and Ponds glanced at each other. "Was that me or you?" asked Cody.

"Definitely you," shrugged Ponds.

"Can't you get this down?" Obi-Wan placed a hand on the shield, as if testing that it was in fact real and not just an illusion of some kind. His fingers bounced of the red shielding. Even his lightsaber wouldn't be enough to get through that, not that he had it on him.

"I don't think so, sir," said Cody. "The lock's a mess. Even if we could, it'd probably take some time."

"That's not something we really have," said Obi-Wan, grimly. "We need to find out what the Separatists wanted with this facility."

"Masters Fisto and Windu have gone to find that out, sir," explained Cody. "Oh, by the way, we found these floating in outer space." He held up the two lightsabers.

"Well, that's a relief if anything," said Plo. "But it's not like you can get them to us, is it? You said that Kit and Mace are on board."

"Yes, sirs," said Ponds. "They're heading to the main communications room."

"Alright then," said Obi-Wan. "We'll rendezvous with you there."

"But sir," protested Cody. "There are still many droids in this station and you're both unarmed."

"A good Jedi is never truly unarmed, Commander," said Plo, crossing his arms. "The Force is all we'll require to take out the droids that remain here. It can be a fierce weapon."

"And a deadly one," said Obi-Wan. "We aren't Jedi Masters for nothing. See you soon."

"Yes, sir." Cody and Ponds walked back to their AT-RTs and climbed aboard as Plo and Obi-Wan began to jog down the metal hallways.

"Oh, and Cody," Obi-Wan called over his shoulder. "Take good care of those lightsabers."

"Don't worry, General," nodded Cody as he and Ponds sprinted away.

* * *

Switch had numerous cuts and bruises as a result of being unable to keep his footing and being struck by flying bits of debris during the explosions that had rocked the space station. He was almost as much a mess as the station he'd been marooned in, but he was still alive. And finally, he'd managed to contact with two Jedi Masters after hours without success. He'd retreated to the communications centre of the ship, which had been his best bet for staying alive, he reasoned. This was because the individual that had set off the bombs had been in this room when he'd detonated them, according to the Jedi, and whoever it was would have been a real idiot or suicidal to plant bombs in the room he was in.

He had been right. The communications room had remained completely intact. Now, all he had to do was wait.

He didn't have to do this for very long. About ten minutes or so after initial contact, the doors slid open at the far end of the room. Two Jedi walked in – Mace Windu and Kit Fisto. Switch stood to attention and saluted. "Sirs," he acknowledged.

"Private," nodded Mace. "We have something for you to do. You know how these systems work?"

"Better than anyone if I do say so myself, sirs," said Switch. "I've spent more time in this room than the rest of the clones that were in this station."

"Then we need you to log in and find out what it was that the Separatists were doing with this station," said Kit, walking over to him. "You reckon you can do that."

"Of course, sir," Switch turned to the controls and began punching this, switching that and fine-tuning the other. After a couple of seconds, he noted, "That's strange."

"What is?" Mace said, as an ominous atmosphere began to build up.

Switch explained. "Whoever it was hacked into the scanners. Usually those scanners are used to try and locate minerals in the asteroid belt nearby in order to power this place. But the Seppies recalibrated them to such for... something else."

"What?" asked Mace.

"I'm not sure, sir. It's a very unusual energy signature, but it looks like he found whatever he was looking for."

"Where?" asked Kit.

"Ryloth, sir," said Switch, biting his lower lip.

Mace and Kit looked at each other. Both were thinking the same thing – there were three, or rather six, very large secrets of theirs on Ryloth that they'd appreciate the Separatists not finding out about. Fortunately, there was also another Jedi there.

"Good work, Private," said Mace. "But we now need you to activate the long range comms so we can contact General Skywalker and warn him of the impending Separatists."

"Yes, sir."

Kit's head tentacles suddenly twitched. The Nautolan glanced across at Mace. "Am I the only one that senses something very, very awry at the moment, Master Windu?" he asked.

"No, Master Fisto," Mace said. "You're not."

The two turned around and ignited their lightsabers. The room was filled with droids where there had been no droids before. But these were not battle droids. They'd have heard any battle droids – they couldn't sneak around to save their metal. These droids looked very similar to probe droids, in the fact that they hovered and had three clawed legs dangling under a bulbous, black body. But instead of a round body, they had a triangular shaped body with numerous white photoreceptors dotting the bottom of the triangle which faced forwards.

"Oh goodie," murmured Kit, sarcastically. "Just what the doctor ordered. Sabotage droids."

"I think it's time we taught them why they shouldn't mess with a Jedi," said Mace, and the two of them lunged forward into battle.

* * *

In another part of the station, three battle droids wailed as they were thrown backwards and collapsed against the wall, sparking uselessly. Plo lowered his hand and watched as Obi-wan used the Force to toss a Super over his shoulder. The two Jedi were making gradual headway as they approached the communications room.

Granted, the fact that they didn't have their lightsabers on them meant that they had to be more careful – the Force couldn't be used to reverse blaster bolts. This meant the two Masters were on their toes and were dodging the bolts instead of reflecting them back on the droids.

Plo leapt into the air and came to land on another battle droid, crushing it underfoot, then he picked up two more with the Force and sent them shooting upwards so hard their heads were flattened against the ceiling and they dropped to the floor without any. A further three fired at him, but a huge chunk of metal suddenly leapt up and formed a physical barrier, before tipping over and crushing the droid. Obi-Wan dusted off his hands.

"I sense that Masters Windu and Fisto are in danger," said Plo, gravely.

"As do I," said Obi-Wan. "But the communications room is still some levels above us."

Plo used the Force to open the door of an elevator. It exposed the lift shaft and the two Jedi looked up it. The communications room was, appropriately, right at the top, and there was a very large climb before they reached said top.

"Well, I guess we better start our ascent," said Obi-Wan.

"Patience, Master Kenobi," said Plo as the human prepared to jump to a nearby ledge. "I believe that I see a faster route up." The Kel Dor was looking down the shaft instead of up. Obi-Wan followed his gaze and saw two STAPs flying upwards from below.

Wordlessly, the two Jedi nodded and sprang. The two droids didn't even know what happened before they suddenly had their transports commandeered and were sent to obey gravity to the bottom of the shaft.

Plo and Obi-Wan spurred the STAPs to shoot up the shaft, straight as arrows and unfaltering. Obi-Wan waved a hand and the correct door opened up ahead. The two Jedi slowed in their ascent so they could manoeuvre the STAPs carefully through the small door, but once they were into the open corridor they accelerated again.

* * *

Mace landed on a rocking sabotage droid and plunged its blade down into it, then bounced off, cleaving a second across the flank as he descended and then deflecting a laser fired at him by another. The sabotage droid could fire a continuous laser beam at a target, but Mace caused it to veer into another, before dodging around the beam and slicing the sabotage droid in two. Then he whipped above, cut through the three legs of another and blasted it backwards with the Force.

The speeding sabotage droid came to an end on the blade of Kit Fisto. The Nautolan buried his blade in the underside of another and then performed two swift strokes on another that diced it into three large pieces. The droids in themselves were relatively easy to destroy, but there were so many of them and more just seemed to keep appearing. Kit, still grinning, brought another to the ground with the Force and said, "I admit, I'm a bit concerned about our present situation," before turning and slicing through a droid right behind him.

"We've been in worse," said Mace.

"Name one," challenged Kit.

"The moons of Alvin," said Mace.

Kit paused, considered, and then said, "Name two."

Just then, two STAPs rushed through the doors and riding them were two familiar Jedi. Masters Plo and Obi-Wan opened fire, but not on the droids. They shot at the windows. The glass shattered and the two Jedi leapt off the STAPs as they, along with the sabotage droids were sucked out of the window. The four Jedi and Switch grabbed onto something to keep themselves from being sucked out too, and Obi-Wan slammed a button with his palm. The blast doors shut and the sucking ceased.

"General Kenobi. Master Plo," acknowledged Mace, getting to his feet. "That was an entrance worthy of young Skywalker."

"Don't tell him," said Obi-Wan. "But his approach can have it's merits. And his Padawan and Terriermon would wholeheartedly agree."

* * *

The Ryloth sun blazed as two more Jedi ran down the streets, their minds focused on only one thing. Well, two things really. One was Captain Rex. The other was that Captain Rex was in danger.

"You think whoever's got him is going to kill him?" asked Ahsoka as they ran, using the Force to add speed to their strides.

"It's either that or the droids have found him," Anakin replied. "But less talk, more running. He's close now."

The Togruta nodded and cleared her mind of worry. Captain Rex was as tough as a Gundark when he needed to be, and this definitely classed as one of those times. The two Jedi ploughed on. They became of another presence – Sergeant Boomer – who they knew less well, which was why they hadn't picked up on him as easily as they had done with Rex.

But there was now a third presence. This one was completely unfamiliar to both of the Jedi, which meant that the odds were this was another prisoner or the kidnapper himself. Both strongly suspected the latter.

And indeed, they were right. The sounds of blaster fire reached their ears and they increased their speed. They rounded the corner and saw, ahead of them, some doors which lead into a hangar of some sort. They didn't think twice. Or once. They ran straight in.

They were faced with the sight of Rex and Boomer firing upon a large army of droids. The two clones were standing just ahead on them on the landing platform that they had emerged on. The two clones, swung round to face them, but upon seeing them, they turned back to shoot at the enemy as Rex shouted, "General! Commander! Glad to see you join us in this mess!"

Anakin's attention was drawn to the third figure, which was one he could recognise purely from the hat. Like Rex, he'd never met Cad Bane before, but he knew exactly who he was.

"Bane?" asked Anakin. "How'd you get mixed up with the Separatists?"

"Long story, Jedi," Bane said contemptuously without even looking round as his pistols punched five holes into a Super. "If you want to hear it, I suggest you help us take out these droids."

Anakin and Ahsoka glanced at each other and drew their lightsabers. "You and me are going to have a little talk when this is over, Bane," said Anakin, and he sprang. So did Ahsoka.

The battle that ensued was short but not bloody and that was only because the only combatants that died didn't have any blood to actually spill. But the air was thick with red and blue lasers which fried holes in the metal of the droids, and it was occasionally also filled with flying droids or bits of flying droids. Anakin and Ahsoka made an efficient team and worked solidly through the droid army before them. When a droid turned to see Anakin cut right through one of its brethren standing next to him, it would probably find itself suddenly get similar treatment courtesy of Ahsoka.

There was one slightly interesting point where a large Octuptarra walked into the hangar from the gap where the aircraft would usually fly out. The massive tri-droid clanked its way along and its huge body was impervious to the fire of Bane or the clones. It tried furiously to stamp on the Jedi, or blast them with its lasers as the two darted around its feet, but the two of them quickly gained the upper hand. When Anakin grabbed one of its legs with the Force and held it still, Ahsoka would run up the immobilised legs and slash through the cannon and the photoreceptor at the top. The two of them did this three times, until the Octuptarra stood, blind and unable to shoot at anything.

"So, Skyguy," said Ahsoka, gesturing at the Octuptarra standing uselessly in the middle of the room. "Do you want to put it out of its misery, or shall I?"

"I wouldn't call it misery," said Anakin. "Octuptarra don't exactly have emotions. But let's do this together."

And so the two of them raised their hands and threw them outwards. The massive droid suddenly went shooting backwards and crashed into the wall, falling into a heap of crumpled metal and discarded pieces.

"Not so big now, are you?" Ahsoka said to it, putting her hands on her hips.

Rex drove his shoulder into a battle droid and shot it through the chest as it fell to the floor. He looked up and surveyed the hangar, which was now empty of battle droids. Functional ones anyway. "That looks like the last of them, sir," he said.

"Good job, Rex," said Anakin, coming over to stand beside the Captain. "It's good to see you're okay."

"Likewise, sir. Didn't think you'd manage to get along with me."

Anakin chuckled, but then there was the sound of pistol fire. Anakin reacted instantly and blocked the red laser that almost hit Rex in the chest. Cad Bane was shooting at them – his mind was on escape now that the droids had been dealt with. Both pistols were disgorging red bolts at the Jedi, but Anakin deflected them without too much trouble. Behind him, Ahsoka turned and saw what was going on, and she quickly used the Force to pick up a crate.

The crate went came whizzing forwards and struck Bane in the back. Surprised, Bane lost his balance and went tumbling off the landing platform he was standing on. A short drop later and he was sitting on the metal hangar floor, still somehow wearing his hat. He looked up to see a blue lightsaber pointed at his blue face. Anakin, flanked by Ahsoka on one side and the clones of the other, glared.

"Hi," said Bane.

Anakin raised his blade to sweep it through the Bounty Hunter, but Ahsoka grabbed his arm. "No, Master. Don't," she said.

Bane fished the detonator out of his pocket and raised it so it was visible. Then he said to Rex, explain our little arrangement to the Jedi, trooper."

Rex raised his hands, which were still holding his blasters, and rotated them, clearly displaying the explosive half-binders around each of his wrists. Anakin glanced from them, to Boomer, who also had the same treatment, and then back to Bane, who leered. Then, Anakin smirked back.

A couple of swings later, and all four of the half-binders were sliced in half and fell to the floor, completely and utterly useless. Neither Rex nor Boomer rubbed their wrists for two reasons, one was they'd had armour under the binders and the other was they weren't going to let go of their blasters with Bane around.

"Ah," said Bane, which summed up his situation pretty well. Bane was a deadly efficient Bounty Hunter and he knew how to get out of difficult jams such as this. He's lost his edge now, but he was a master of finding another very quickly.

An idea began to form in his mind at the sound of pounding feet coming from nearby. Clearly there were a lot more droids still to come and they were on their way here now. Anakin, Ahsoka and the clones glanced around and Bane said, "You know, my ship's not that far."

Anakin glared down at him. Bane grinned innocently, although they both knew he was anything but. But Anakin deactivated his blade and said, "Alright. On your feet, Bounty Hunter. Take us right to it."

Bane nodded and stood up. Ahsoka looked incredulous. "You're not going to trust this... this..." she struggled to find a suitable insult.

"Hutt slime?" offered Rex.

"Kowakian Monkey-lizard?" added Boomer.

"We don't have much choice," said Anakin. "Rex, relieve him off his weapons."

"On it, sir." Rex walked past Bane, being sure to elbow him hard in the shoulder as he past and picked up the LL-30 pistols Bane had dropped, tossing them casually in his hands.

"Lead the way, Bane," said Anakin.

"We're not leaving without my bounty," glared Bane, gesturing at the crate.

"I know," said Anakin. "I don't know what it is, but the Separatists want it and there's no way we're letting them get their hands on it."

"My thoughts exactly," said Bane.

"Of course, that means that you get to carry it," grinned Ahsoka in a satisfied tone of voice.

Bane snorted, but walked over to the crate, muttering, "Until we get to my ship, Jedi." With difficulty he picked up the large crate, bending backwards to adjust his centre of gravity, and began to walk awkwardly out of the hangar. As the Jedi and the clones followed, they didn't see the sneer spread across Bane's face. They really were fools if they thought he was unarmed. A true Bounty Hunter like himself has numerous back-up weapons. He's wait until they dropped their guard, and then make his move.

Bane was not afraid of the Jedi, and, as he walked, he could feel the little pistol bumping in a hidden back pocket.

* * *

I feel slightly worried that I didn't do justice to Bane's awesomeness in this chapter, especially considering the ending. But bare in mind that I'm still not completely on my own story yet. My alterations are getting bigger and bigger in the future. The Bane here had not yet raided the Senate like he did at the end of Season One, so my reasoning is that he's slightly less experienced when it comes to handling Jedi than he is in Season 2, but not by much. But Bane's part in this story is far from over – I can assure you of that.

See you next time, and thank you for reviewing everybody.

* * *

Next time...

Will Cad Bane escape? Will the purpose of the mysterious crate be revealed?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 25 : The Crate**


	25. The Crate

I officially hate Bristol.

I went there on Tuesday to find out if I have a PFO, which is basically a hole in your frigging heart between the two atria. It came up positive. Don't worry, I'm not gonna die, but it means I'm not allowed to SCUBA dive properly anymore, which has seriously pissed me off.

On a more positive note, I've written the oneshot for Tamara Caitlyn if you'd like to go and read it, and I'll be writing the oneshot for Movie-Brat now that I've uploaded this chapter. At the rate reviews are coming in, I might have to limit it to every 100th reviewer, but as of yet, it is still every 50th.

Now, onto the chapter.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 25:- The Crate**

* * *

Anakin and Ahsoka were moving along with their lightsabers drawn. Both were keeping one eye on Cad Bane's back, as the Duros was being forced to walk in front, and the other eye on their surroundings, waiting for a droid to attempt and fail an ambush. Neither of them were willing to let Bane out of their sight – he was dangerous with or without his pistols.

Rex and Boomer were walking along the cliff-top above them, to provide them with covering fire from above, and also to make sure that Bane didn't try to escape on his rocket boots. They knew this was unlikely because Bane had refused point-blank to leave the heavy crate he was carrying behind, but there was always the possibility that he would prefer to keep his skin than his bounty and bolt.

All around them were the sounds of droid feet hitting the ground over and over and over. Boomer pulled out some macrobinoculars and looked through them. Up ahead, he could clearly see the droid lines marching straight towards the two Jedi and the Bounty Hunter down below. Whether they knew that they were closing in on their quarry or not was a mystery, but that didn't matter.

Rex clicked on his comlink, swinging round to look down at the three down below. He saw Anakin answer and said, "General Skywalker. You've got more clankers approaching from directly up ahead. You sure Bane's leading us in the right direction?"

"He better be," Anakin replied. "How long before we make contact."

"Five minutes tops, General," said Rex bitterly.

"Copy that," Anakin muttered. "Looks like your gonna have to help us get through the lines without letting Bane get away. Keep an eye on him and if he tries to escape while Ahsoka and I take on the droids, you have my permission to shoot."

"I'll look forward to it," said Rex.

"So much for the merciful Jedi," he heard Bane mutter.

"Tell Bane he looks even uglier through a scope," Rex chuckled.

"I heard that. I don't suppose you're the number one poster boy on Coruscant yourself. Me, on the other hand... Well, I've got Wanted Posters all over the place."

Rex growled. "Easy, Rex," Anakin warned him. "We need someone to lift that crate and I'd rather it was him than Snips."

"I know, sir," muttered Rex. "But all the same..." He clicked off.

* * *

Rex's prediction was strangely accurate. Sure enough, they encountered the droids within five minutes. The column was lead by three Supers and they opened fire without prejudice. Bane, keeping up his facade of being unarmed, crouched behind a boulder with the crate, while Anakin and Ahsoka leapt forward. Up above, Boomer kept his blaster trained on Bane's location in case he tried to escape, while Rex went to work on the droids as well.

Ahsoka rebounded off the cliff wall with cry of, "You're gonna be sleeping in the junkyard tonight," as her blade clashed through the droids, ducking and whirring with loud, humming noises and eagerly seeking out the metal of the droids. Ahsoka took out one of the Supers with a sweep through the abdomen, darted past another droids and slicing it in half as she passed, slashed another twice in two directions in rapid succession and levitating one large section and sending it hurtling into two more and smashing them into the wall.

Anakin leapt high, averting two droid blasts with deft swings in mid-air, then plunging his blade into a droid's chest tip-first and burying it deep. He forced his body forward so that her flipped over, dragging the blade out of the droid and slicing another in half straight down the middle. He swept to the side to take out a Super, then blasted it backwards with the Force and into the other. He turned and advanced slowly on four more droids. One let off a shot, which rebounded into its chest, and Anakin calmly walked through the group, swinging left, then right, then left again, to take out the other three.

Rex blasted a droid in the head, running along the ridge up above with his fingers never leaving the triggers. Every few paces he would drop to his knees and let loose a barrage down upon the droid forces. The droids keeled over before his onslaught, a couple managing a couple more steps after impact before collapsing completely. Rex felt like laughing out loud with exhilaration, as he sent two shots into another droids head, and dropped half a dozen of the droids in quick succession. He managed to shoot one at the exact same time that Ahsoka carved it up.

Boomer felt a little annoyed about missing the action as he had to focus on Bane, but he was a clone. He didn't complain.

Anakin grinned appreciatively as he sheathed his blade and saw Ahsoka take out the last battle droid with a cleave through the neck. "Good job," he nodded. "You're getting better all the time, Snips."

"Never send a battle droid to do anything," grinned Ahsoka, wagging her finger and attempting to look imperious. "It will end in failure for you."

"I suppose you want me to thank you for taking out the droids for me," Bane emerged from behind the boulder with the crate back in his hands.

"We only did it so Ahsoka here didn't have to carry that crate," Anakin glared. "Your life doesn't mean anything to us."

"I must say, you're doing a very good job of making me feel welcome," Bane smirked.

"And why would it be me carrying that crate if her wasn't here anyway," Ahsoka folded her arms.

"Hey," Anakin frowned. "Gang up on him, not me."

"May I suggest we get moving," Bane walked over, bent over with the weight. "I'd don't fancy the idea of getting shot while you natter on."

"I'll decide what we do, Bane," glared Anakin. "But, you're right. Let's get going."

"I'm serious," Ahsoka said as they moved on. "Why couldn't you do the heavy-lifting for once?"

"The words "Old Married Couple" spring to mind," Bane leered.

"Shut up."

* * *

Lopmon and Terriermon flew through the air at speed. The Tamers and the Digimon had decided to see how the Jedi were faring and if they'd found Captain Rex yet. They'd received no word from Anakin or Ahsoka, although they were fairly confident that the two of them could handle most things thrown at them. But, then again, they had no idea what had taken Rex and Boomer, so they couldn't be one-hundred percent sure.

"It's certainly been a very eventful time since we met Parallelmon hasn't is, sis?" remarked Terriermon, flapping his ears luxuriously as they soared over the desert air.

"Too right," Lopmon sighed, rising on a warm updraft that pushed her ears gently up. "Never thought I'd be doing this."

"You can't really expect to say that you expected to do anything when you have a Tamer," grinned Terriermon. "The best laid plans of rabbits and men gang aft agley... whatever that means."

_And foxes aren't part of that equation because...?_ Kyubimon thought to them from where she was still marching along with the clones.

_Because they have too much fur._

_That doesn't make any sense._

_Bite me._

_I might just take you up on that._

_Can you not talk like that across distances,_ Lopmon frowned. _Especially when Suzie could be listening in._

"I wonder how Aayla's getting on," Terriermon mused. "And Bly. We haven't heard from them for a couple of days."

"I don't envy them," Lopmon said, "Ice worlds do not sound like my idea of a good place to live."

"You and me both," said Terriermon. "But I'm just hoping the two of them don't come to any harm."

"You heard Bly," said Lopmon. "Aayla's one of the most skilled Jedi Knights there are. She probably has the situation well in hand, along with this Luminara person that went with her."

Rika's voice cut in. _Any sign of Anakin or Ahsoka?_

_Nope,_ Terriermon said, scanning the ground below them with his eyes. _Not a hair nor hide of either of them._

_I wouldn't be so sure of that,_ Lopmon replied. _Listen._

Terriermon, now using his ears to both listen hard and fly, concentrated. Somewhere down below, above the desert wind and the sound of extreme silence, there came some very familiar sounds. "Blaster fire," he muttered.

"I reckon they're nearby," smirked Lopmon.

"Well, whatever gave you that idea?"

"I'm not sure."

The two of them accelerated and shot through the air towards the distant sounds. Their ears powered and they lowered a little so they could see the ground more clearly. Eventually the blaster sounds stopped and silence took over, but fortunately they had got close enough by now. Sure enough, a minute or so later, they flew over a shallow ravine, and in it, they could see five figures surrounded by droids. Dead droids anyway.

"That's them," said Terriermon, more to himself than anyone else.

"Why are there five of them?" Lopmon asked curiously. There were only two of them and they went searching for two more. I know my maths. Who's the other guys?"

"Let's get a closer look," grinned Terriermon. He stooped and pulled into a dive, his sister right behind him. The two bunnies swerved ground-wards, and both saw Ahsoka and Anakin pause and glance briefly upwards. Terriermon waved cheerfully. They didn't respond.

The two of them landed quietly on the edge of the ravine they were in and walked over to the edge, quickly relaying the information via brainpower to Kyubimon. Lopmon peered over the lip of the cliff. _Okay, they're on the move,_ she said. _And I can see they have some company._

_You mean Rex?_ asked Rika.

_Well, him too, but I was thinking more along the lines of that guy there carrying the crate._

_We can't actually see him, you know, Lopmon, _said Henry.

Terriermon inspected the strange man. _He's wearing a flipping cowboy hat. A COWBOY hat! That is unreal. You just watch, Loppy, he's gonna pull out a lasso in a minute and whirl it shouting "Yeehah!" _

_Terriermon._

_Momentai. But it does look weird._

_What are they doing?_ Asked Suzie.

_Looks like they're guarding the guy with the crate and he's leading them somewhere,_ said Terriermon. _You reckon we should go down and quiz them._

_Well, I..._

* * *

Kyubimon stopped speaking suddenly as two of the clones of the group she was walking beside suddenly fell to blaster fire. They'd just entered a large plaza with a giant stone Twi'lek right in the centre. The statue was missing an arm, but it was still standing. Droids had emerged from just about ever entranceway except the one they'd stepped through themselves and red lasers flashed through the air.

_You just can't get a few minutes peace, can you? _Kyubimon said, as she darted forwards and ducked behind the nearest building, urging Suzie to get off her back. Then she spread her tails and sprang out from hiding. Three more clones fell and Galle narrowly avoided a blast from a Super, ducking behind a low wall and shooting over the top. Kyubimon sprang past him and her tails flared with fire as the large fox launched a volley over her head to crash against the droids.

_Alright, we're on our way,_ Terriermon said in her brain. She sensed him and Lopmon lifting up from their positions on the cliff-top and taking to the air once more. Kyubimon didn't reply, bouncing over to Henry and Rika and providing quick covering fire of blue flame, as the two children dashed backwards to get out of harm's way.

Clone and droid exchanged blows, and the droids appalling aim was clearly apparent as many more of them were falling than clone, but there were still many clone bodies that were beginning to litter the area. Kyubimon's eyes narrowed and she dashed forward, straight over Galle's head. Her body became wreathed in blue flame and she sprang.

"**DRAGON WHEEL!"**

Her flaming attack tore through the droids, frying them where they stood. She emerged from the blue firestorm like a fox out of hell and pounced on the nearest droid that had survived. Her tails lashed out and entangled around other droids, smashing them to pieces against the walls and the floor. She dodged to the side as more droids appeared on the roofs of the buildings, and began to shoot from above. She sprang backwards, managing to take out one of the Supers by throwing a B-1 at it.

The AT-TE walkers began to add to the general chaos, the first moving out of the way of the second at the earliest opportunity and smashing droids to scrap with their cannons. The droids turned to fire at them, despite the fact it wouldn't do any good, when suddenly they found that they weren't the highest attacker anymore. Terriermon and Lopmon had arrived.

Terriermon and Lopmon poured wave after wave of fresh pellets of energy and ice down from their perch on the top of the giant stone Twi'lek. The droids probably thought they'd been cunning by getting the higher ground, but its amazing how what higher ground you can reach when you can fly.

The two glanced at each other, sent a brief message to their Tamers and then leapt from the giant statue. As they descended, they were enveloped in light.

* * *

"There she is," Cad Bane said as they rounded the corner and saw his ship. "My ship – The_ Sleight of Hand._"

"Where?" Ahsoka raised a brow. "Behind the pile of junk?"

"Ha. Funny," Bane said dryly.

Anakin had to agree with his Padawan. The ship resembled a cargo freighter with no windows except for the cockpit and a pair of docking clamps at the back. It was black and featureless – a boring hulk, which was indeed sitting amongst a lot of debris.

Rex and Boomer were somewhere nearby. They'd been unable to continue along their present course, so they had dropped back and were attempting to find a way down to join up with their commanding officers.

"I don't see any droids," remarked Anakin, as Bane put the crate down and knelt beside it. "Looks like disguising your ship like a useless lump paid off, Bane."

"Maybe they just ran out of droids," suggested Ahsoka, shrugging.

"Maybe you scared them off, Snips," chuckled Anakin.

But, as usual, the humour was lost on Bane, who said, "Oh yes," sarcastically. "They're just terrified of your little sidekick."

Ahsoka's eye twitched and she extended her lightsaber. "You need a lesson in manners, Bane. Lucky for you I'm a good teacher."

"Snips, shh," Anakin tensed, suddenly wary. Ahsoka felt it too, a nudging in her instincts and in the Force that told her that something was wrong. Both turned away from Bane and scanned the area.

Bane smirked. Without the clones watching the Jedi's backs he could act now. He slowly reached around and pulled out the small blaster he'd had tucked away, muttering, "Yes, shh."

He extended it and pointed it at Ahsoka's exposed back.

A sudden explosion rocked the cliff-top above them and scrap debris rained down towards them. Anakin and Ahsoka hurriedly extended their arms and caught the larger and more dangerous chunks of metal and rock with the Force. Several smaller bits still rained down, including a bit of metal that smacked Bane's outstretched hand and knocked the blaster out of his grip. Bane growled in frustration.

The Jedi gently put down their load, still wary. And they had good reason to be. Something exploded out of the nearest pile of junk and hovered before them. It was a huge Skakoan, with a massive pressure suit that was comprised of large shoulder-pads, rocket boots, and rotary quad-blaster for a right arm. His right eye was also a glowing, green photoreceptor. He was much bigger than Wat Tambor.

The Skakoan ignored the Jedi and addressed the Bounty Hunter. "Bane?" he asked. He laughed patronisingly. "Forgive my surprise. I didn't think even you would be foolish enough to steal from me."

Bane stood up and folded his arms, his lip curling contemptuously. "Pity you didn't go down with the ship, Teska," he said, just as patronisingly as the Skakoan.

"Friend of yours?" Anakin asked without looking at Bane.

"Competitor," corrected Bane. "I guess he's a little riled at me considering I blew up his ship above Alzoc III."

Anakin and Ahsoka glanced at each other. Both of them knew that Aayla and Luminara had gone to that planet.

"For a common thief, you keep strange company, Bane," Teska laughed, seeming to notice the Jedi for the first time.

Bane smirked at his arch-nemesis. "I keep no company, Teska. You, on the other hand, rely on droids to do your dirty work."

Teska seemed to frown. Then he pointed the cannon arm at the crate Bane was standing beside and, without a word, fired a cable right from the centre of it. The cable had a mechanical arm attached and it grasped the crate, easily lifting it off the ground and towards the Skakoan. But Anakin extended his arm and grabbed the crate with the Force. A brief tug-of-war began, which Anakin easily won, pulling the crate from Teska's grasp.

With a wave, Anakin sent the crate sailing gently into the open door of _The Sleight of Hand_. Bane smirked, and began to slope off, hoping to sneak into his ship and fly off with his prize while the Jedi were distracted by Kul Teska. Unfortunately for him, Ahsoka spotted him and quickly levitated a large sheet of metal, which went and slammed into Bane, knocking him over and pinning him to the ground. Bane struggled to lift the sheet but it was very heavy.

"You're not getting your hands on that thing," Anakin was saying to Teska.

"You don't even know what it is, Jedi," pointed out Teska coldly.

Anakin smirked. "I know I'm keeping it if it's important to scum like Bane and his friends."

"Competitors!" repeated Bane, loudly, shaking his fist in the air from where he was trapped on the floor.

Kul Teska glared at the two impudent Jedi before him. If they thought they could stand up to him, they were sorely mistaken. He decided they might want a little wake-up call so he told them, "I've already killed two Jedi and a space-station full of clones to track that thing down. Two more won't be a problem."

Ahsoka and Anakin froze. "Which Jedi?" Anakin's expression changed to one of anger.

"I don't usually bother to acquaint myself with my opponents," Teska laughed. "But I know that one of them was human and the other was a Kel Dor, on the Juma-9 station."

"Master Plo?" Ahsoka's grip on her lightsaber handle tightened, as did her chest, her eyes widening in horror and denial.

"Juma-9!" Anakin cried. "But that means... Obi-Wan!"

"Friends of yours?" Teska managed to look partially sympathetic, but both knew that he couldn't really care less. "Don't worry, Jedi. You'll soon be reunited with them in the Force!" The Skakoan's expression hardened and he raised his blaster-cannon arm. He unleashed twelve bolts upon the two Jedi, but their blades sprang forward and brushed them aside. Teska gained height and continued his barrage, but this didn't have any effect on the two Jedi whatsoever.

Teska could see they would be able to deflect his fire until kingdom come, so he decided to change tactics. As Anakin dodged to one side and dashed forward, preparing to leap at him and take a swing, Teska's chest cavity opened and a massive, yellow laser burst out of it. Surprised, Anakin was forced to flip to one side as the laser crashed into the ground where he'd been standing.

Anakin rolled and came up, but Teska turned and the laser followed his progress. Anakin was forced to back-flip out of the way, then turned to run, sprinting straight past Bane, who yelled, "Keep away from me!" but Anakin paid him no mind.

Ahsoka ran forward and picked up two heavy chunks of metal from the piles of scrap, lobbing them at Teska. Abruptly, a shield similar to that of a destroyer droid, except red instead of blue, sprang up around the Skakoan mercenary and the debris bounced harmlessly off it. However, it did cause him to stop firing his laser.

Teska turned his attention to Ahsoka, sending a storm of red lasers her way to keep her occupied, and then revealed his next trick. His large shoulder-guards opened, revealing six missile sockets in each one, and, dropping his shield, he sent two of them flying straight towards the Togruta in quick succession. Ahsoka's eyes widened at the incoming death. Hurriedly, she cartwheeled out of the way of one so it crashed into the ground next to her. The other altered course and zoomed towards her still.

The Padawan thrust out her hands and grabbed the missile with her mind, so it came to a stop in mid-air and turned around. Ahsoka gathered the Force and grimaced as she used it to send the missile back the way it had come. Teska was clearly unprepared for this move and only just managed to dodge the missile as it zoomed past him, leaving a trail of smoke.

"You're good, I'll give you that," he stated. "But not good enough."

Anakin sprinted forwards and took off in a flying leap, blade aiming to sweep through Teska's chest. The shield sprang up again and Anakin smacked unceremoniously into it, sent flying backwards to hit the ground hard and slide backwards.

"Master!" Ahsoka cried, but Anakin was already on his feet and glaring.

"You're good," grinned Anakin, repeating the Skakoan's words back to him. "I'll give you that. But not good enough." He used his mind to grab three large metal chunks from behind the Skakoan and sent them whooshing for his back. The Skakoan was knocked forward slightly, but the shield remained undamaged.

Anakin and Ahsoka sprang forwards, determined to batter through the shields with their bare hands if necessary. Teska responded by turning over and shooting towards them, his body wreathing itself in flame like a meteor entering the atmosphere. Ahsoka and Anakin separated quickly as Teska blew between them. He span in mid-air and let off more shots from his qad-cannon at Ahsoka, but her blade sprang up and met them head on.

"It's hopeless, Jedi," Teska was laughing now as the chest cavity opened again and the laser shot out, forcing Ahsoka to dive forwards and avoid it. "You will soon be dead and I shall be gone. What a waste."

"Stop talking and fight!" Ahsoka cried.

"If you insist," Teska said and attacked once more with the laser. Ahsoka had to dodge and weave and leap over it to avoid its relentless pursuit.

Anakin sent a heavy box right at Teska as he focused on his Padawan. It crashed into the Skakoan's leg and knocked him askew, a couple of pieces of metal, one half a metre in length and width, seeming to fall from his pressure suit. Anakin took his chance and grabbed Teska himself with the Force, slamming him into the ground.

The two Jedi leapt forward to strike the fallen Teska, but the Skakoan wasn't beaten yet. He threw out his arms and the suit emitted a large, unexpected shockwave. Both Jedi went flying backwards and smacked painfully into the stone walls of the cliffside. Anakin leapt to his feet as the Skakoan activated his jets and took to the air once more. Ahsoka scrambled up as well.

"I am unbeatable!" roared Teska confidently. "You cannot expect to last much longer."

"On the contrary," said Anakin as he and Ahsoka moved so they were side by side. "We intend to last a good while yet." Blue and green blades rose into attack position simultaneously.

"So be it!" Teska bellowed and his body was surrounded by flame once more and he barrelled towards them.

* * *

Galle slammed his shoulder into a battle droid and ground its head beneath his boot as it fell to the ground. Looking up, he saw two destroyer droids roll around the bend and unroll, putting up their shields quickly. But their shields were no match for the heavy cannons on the tops of the AT-TEs which immediately turned towards them and shuddered as each let off a large bolt of blue plasma. The droidekas were crushed, shields and all, without having time to even back away.

Galle grinned beneath his helmet and he pointed his blaster off to the side to hole another battle droid and he also shot through a Super right before him. Two more Supers and four battle droids advanced, blasters flashing, but all six suddenly went down under a hail of green bolts from Gargomon, standing nearby. The cannon-toting bunny smirked and aimed his attack at another group of battle droids, dashing to the side to avoid being hit himself.

One top of a building, a Super Battle Droid pointed its blaster at Kano and prepared to fire. It never got the chance to pull the internal trigger because a switchblade was thrust into its back. Turuiemon kicked it off the building, then sliced through the neck of the battle droid that had been standing next to it, then grabbed another by its leg and hurled it towards Gargomon, who turned and smashed it to pieces on his cannon.

Kyubimon tore the circuits out of a battle droid with her claws – it wasn't difficult to reach under the flimsy metal plating. Two more battle droids had been struggling in her tails, but now their bodies hung their limply, devoid of anything that could be called a head. They had been smashed together with brutal force a couple of seconds before. Kyubimon tossed them aside, and crossed over towards her mate, spotting Turuiemon bounce of the building and run over as well. The three Digimon stood side by side, along with Galle, as the last of the droids were routed by the other clones. They saw Blade forcible remove a droids head with his arm, Barr blast a Super in the face, Rich fry three droids with an EMP grenade, Inc shoot off the legs of another droid, Lash kick a droid in the back and shoot its fallen body, Conor send a droid spinning with a shot to the shoulder, Ridge and Max take out the same droid at the same time, and many more besides.

Only two droids remained now. One was a Super and the other was a B-1. The Super quickly fell to a series of shots from Kano.

But the B-1, who was standing on a nearby roof, somehow managed to cause the most crippling blow of the battle. It had a heavy rocket-launcher balanced on one shoulder and it took aim and pull the trigger, just before Galle took it through the abdomen with a well-aimed shot.

The rocket zoomed forwards and smashed into one of the legs of the AT-TEs. There was a loud bang, as the leg exploded and the walker pitched forward at an awkward angle, the pilot being thrown up against the glass of the cockpit and the gunner being almost thrown from his seat. Hurriedly, more clones ran over to it to get the driver out, before the walker could do something inconvenient, like explode.

"Well, that's unfortunate," remarked Turuiemon, sighing as the Tamers walked over to them.

"It's a damn waste," Galle shook his head. "We almost always lose AT-TEs to leg shots. The armour on their bodies is too thick to allow things like rockets to dent them properly. The legs are their weak spots, but we're not sure what to do about them."

"You tried adamantium," Gargomon laughed.

"Ada-what?" asked Galle.

"Don't pay him any attention," said Kyubimon. "Adamantium's a fictional metal that's completely indestructible."

"Oh. Shame," Galle holstered his blasters. "We could do with an indestructible metal."

"Well," said Henry. "We might not have any adamantium, but we do have another metal that might be useful for you."

"Yeah?" the clone looked doubtful. "What is it, kid?"

"Chrome-Digizoid," said Henry.

"Never heard of that one either."

"Not surprised," said Rika. "It's unique to Digimon. But, if you like we could help you get hold of some. It might help."

"Strong stuff?"

"Almost indestructible," said Henry. "There aren't many Digimon with it, but with the right Modify Cards we can provide them for you if you like."

"You're saying we could make our walkers of this Digizoid stuff?"

"Hey, anything we can do to help," shrugged Rika. "Perhaps helping you with the machines and stuff will make us feel a bit more useful."

"Hate to interrupt," said Gargomon. "But I'm gonna have to insist that you GET DOWN! **GARGO LASERS!"**

The Tamers ducked as Gargomon unleashed a barrage over their heads. The green blasts cannoned into the Octuptarra tri-combat droid that had just rounded the corner. One of the laser cannons turned around and let off a shot at him, which he rolled to dodge while Kyubimon shepherded the Tamers to safety. Galle and Gargomon fired upon the droid but their attacks were having little effect. Gargomon gritted his teeth – he could do more damage if he could get closer.

"Leave this one to me," Turuiemon ran past him, dodging a laser blast sent her way. She weaved through and over the debris of the battlefield, then leapt into the air with a cry of **"GAUNTLET CLAW!"** Turuiemon sent a blade of light catapulting through the air to strike the Octuptarra in the head, severing one of the blaster cannons and one of its photoreceptors. It stepped back in surprise as Turuiemon sailed through the air at it, blades first.

The switchblades tore into the side of the Octuptarra, ripping away sheets of metal from the massive head. Turuiemon carved a large hole and hopped straight inside the droid, disappearing from sight. The droid wobbled as loud noises and crashed could be heard within it – then Turuiemon burst out of the other side. The Octuptarra fell heavily, crashing into the ground, where it lay still, Turuiemon standing triumphantly on top of it.

"Whoa," said Galle. "I've never seen an ordinary blade hack through the thick armour of an Octuptarra. How did you do that?"

Turuiemon grinned, flexing her blades. "Chrome-digizoid," she simply said.

"You know what," said Galle. "I might just recommend your offer to the General when we see her again."

* * *

The battle against Teska was proceeding well for the Jedi. They were sending huge chunks of metal flying at him and dodging his laser and missile blasts with ease. Teska had also unleashed a new trick where he sent out his cable to grab the ground nearby and pull himself unexpectedly forward and produce a mini-shockwave. But the Jedi deftly avoided these attempts too.

"Why won't you die!" demanded Teska.

"Not sure," grinned Anakin as he and Ahsoka regrouped. "But I reckon that your gonna be the one that dies today." Both the Jedi charged forwards, sprinting towards Teska. The Skakoan frowned, and then, slowly, calmly, he pushed a button on his pressure suit.

A wall of see-through blue suddenly sprang from nowhere in front of the Jedi, causing both to crash into it and fall backwards. Looking around, they saw that they were encased in a blue deflector shield – one of the kinds that didn't let anything in or out. Anakin slashed at the wall with his saber, but it didn't yield. He saw it was being powered by a generator on the floor which he had mistaken for an ordinary metal slab that had fallen of Teska when he's hit him with the box.

"If you won't die," Teska laughed. "Then I'll just leave you here. So long, Jedi."

Teska turned to leave, but suddenly a voice called, "Hold it right there, Skakoan!" Teska turned to see that Captain Rex and Sergeant Boomer had just rounded the corner, blasters in hand and pointing straight at him as they ran to engage him in combat.

Rex faltered when he saw the trapped Jedi. "General!" he cried. "Commander! Are you alright?"

"We're fine, Rex," Anakin shouted through the shield.

"Just stop that Skakoan getting away with the crate!" cried Ahsoka urgently.

"I'm all over it, Commander," Rex turned and aimed one of his blasters at Teska's head. "I suggest you back off."

"And watch yourselves. He's a slippery one!"

"Let's take him."

"If you think two Jedi can't stand up to me, what makes you think two clones can," laughed Teska. "It's over for you."

"I'll tell you why!" Boomer shouted at him. "Because this is what clones were made for!" He opened fire with his blaster rifle at the exact same second Rex began to use his pistols. Teska levitated upwards and returned fire with his quad-cannon. The clones expertly dodged the blasts and kept shooting, barely pausing in their shots. Teska's shield sprang up and took the blasts, and then it lowered quickly and he sent out his cable at Boomer, reeling himself forward at the Sergeant. But Boomer was no longer there. He rolled to the side like the commando he was, and swung about to shoot Teska in the side, knocking three holes in the pressure suit before the shield sprang up to take them.

Teska took to the air again, grunting as his shield was pummelled by the blasters of the clones. "Now I will teach you the meaning of pain!" he roared, as his laser erupted from his chest, aiming for Rex this time. Rex swung about, barely avoiding getting struck in the chest and he sprinted off to the side. Teska turned to fire it at Boomer, but he also managed to get out of the way.

He tried the flame-charge trick as well, and Rex managed to pull off an excellent evasive manoeuvre, dropping straight onto his back and rolling under the Skakoan, who didn't want to get too close to the ground, just in case he crashed. Rex pointed up and let off a shot as Teska whooshed over him. The shot blasted a hole in the chest armour and Teska growled in fury. He was supposed to be a killing machine but he'd failed to kill anything at all so far.

Boomer was waiting for him as he came out of the flaming rush and let off a storm of plasma bolts. Teska only just managed to block them with his shield in time, responding with his own red lasers. Boomer ducked behind a pile of debris and avoided the shots. "I reckon it's time to bring in the heavy artillery," Boomer suggested, unslinging the massive rocket launcher from his back.

He rolled out of his shelter and pointed the launcher straight at Teska. Surprised, Teska attempted to move backwards, but Boomer let off a huge rocket right at him. It crashed into Teska's shield, which faded and died under the impact and sent the Skakoan falling flat onto his back. Rex instantly moved in, blasting away, punching holes in the arms and legs of the suit. Teska quickly let off a shockwave and the clones were knocked back slightly, leapt to his feet and took to the air once more.

He began making hasty adjustments to his suit, desperately trying to get his shield back up as the clones continued to send bolts his way. As he worked, his shoulder guards opened and he sent two missiles at Rex. The clone literally dived right over them as they blew under his legs, rolled and pulled into a crouch to continue his fire. Boomer let off another rocket of his own and Teska had to swerve to avoid it.

Teska was furious now. "You are nothing more than a common womprat!" he declared, absolutely livid, and he let off all his remaining missiles at once. Rex and Boomer swerved and ducked – Rex blowing up three of the missiles before they made impact. Boomer dodged to the side but was knocked off his feet by one. Another came whistling towards his fallen form, but it suddenly changed direction in mid-air and shot back at Teska, smashing into the quad-cannon arm. Teska looked dumbly at it, then glared at Anakin and Ahsoka, who were both grinning. The shield couldn't stop the Force.

Teska roared and leapt back into the fray, flying for Rex again. Rex rolled to one side as Teska hit the floor where he'd been, but Teska quickly let off a massive shockwave. Rex was thrown backwards, losing his grip on both his pistols, and crashed into a pile of debris, falling to the floor. Dazed, he watched as Teska bore down on him. His pistols were too far away.

Then he spotted another, smaller pistol lying on the ground beside him. It was the one that had been knocked out of Cad Bane's hand before. He grabbed it and shot a red laser at Teska, who stepped backwards in surprise as the laser knocked a hole in his chest armour. He took off again, and not a moment too soon, as Boomer had already sent another rocket at him.

This was not going well for Teska.

* * *

Galle answered his communicator and a small holographic image of Anakin Skywalker appeared on it. "Lieutenant Galle," said Anakin.

"General Skywalker," Galle acknowledged. "What is it sir?"

"We appear to be in a bit of a situation," said Anakin. "We've been trapped in a ray shield by a Skakoan mercenary. Rex and Boomer are holding him off, but we could really do with some reinforcements."

"Tell him we're on our way," Kyubimon said.

"Here we go again," laughed Gargomon. "We just keep rushing for situation to situation on this planet, don't we?"

"But we have a good time doing it," nodded Kyubimon.

"Well, since none of us can fly anymore, we're gonna need a Modify Card. Suzie, if you would," requested Turuiemon.

Kyubimon and Gargomon nodded at their Tamers too, and one Dragon Wings slash later, and all three were sporting the magnificent bat-like wings.

"You reckon you can hold out without us for a while?" Gargomon lightly punched Galle on the shoulder.

"I reckon we've got everything covered, and we've probably already taken out most of the garrison," nodded the clone. "You go help the General."

The three Digimon nodded and took to the air, wings flapping hard to gain a little altitude before levelling off and the three soared over the buildings and ravines littered around the place – heading for the last place they saw the Jedi last.

"Well, at least we're getting good exercise for our wing muscles," commented Gargomon dryly. "Shame we have to give them up later really, isn't it?"

After this, the three of them shot through the Ryloth sky above the war-torn city of Resdin in silence.

* * *

"Well, I sent them the message," said Anakin to his Padawan, who was watching the conflict between Teska, Rex and Boomer. "We just have to hope they get here in time."

"I'm sure they will," Ahsoka grinned, feeling immensely proud of Rex and Boomer, who were having a profound effect on the mercenary. "Those two are definitely holding their own. They'll get here long before he gets a chance to depart."

Teska held up what was left of his right arm to shield his face from a surge of shots from Rex, who had managed to retrieve his own blasters, then said, "I've wasted enough time with you."

"Keep talking, sleemo," Rex taunted, using the Huttese word for slimeball.

"Let me ask you this, clone," Teska said. "Would you like to keep shooting at me, or would you like to save the lives of both your Jedi friends?" With that, he pressed a button on his chest with his remaining arm.

Suddenly, the ray shield containing the two Jedi began to decrease in size. Ahsoka gasped and Anakin scowled. Master and Padawan stood back to back as the walls closed in around them, threatening them with a death via suffocation and crushing.

"You sure they're going to get here in time?" Anakin asked Ahsoka.

"General! Commander!" Rex shouted when he saw this, then glared at Teska.

"What's it going to be, clone?" Teska asked menacingly.

There was only a moment's hesitation before Rex and Boomer turned and ran towards the ray shield generator. Teska laughed, then slowly levitated into the large door of the _Sleight of Hand_, which shut behind him. The ship, containing both him and the crate, began to power up.

Rex and Boomer skidded to a halt beside the generator. Both knelt down and systematically began to hurriedly push buttons on it, desperately trying to switch the thing off. Anakin and Ahsoka was pressed up against the back of the other and were both stooping as the walls and ceiling of the blue bubble bore down on them.

"Got it!" Rex cried, punching the final button. With a whirring noise, the shield flickered and disappeared. Anakin, not having time to say thank you, immediately sprinted towards the ship, Ahsoka hard on his heels. Rex and Boomer turned and followed as all four approached their target.

But they were too late. The ship rose into the air, slowly at first, but then it went faster and shot off into the sky. All four pulled to a halt and watched it zoom away.

As it did, they saw a sudden flurry of small blue fireballs, green lasers and a blade of white light zoom towards it. The Digimon had almost arrived in time, but not quick enough. The projectiles fell short of the departing ship and the three of them flew down to land beside the Jedi and the clones, watching the ship vanish from sight. The wings of the Digimon disappeared, and all three de-digivolved.

"I can think of a few choice swearwords that sums up the situation," said Terriermon.

"Save them until you know the whole story," suggested Ahsoka bitterly, bending down and allowing Terriermon to hop on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, General," Rex sighed, holstering his blasters. "I failed you. I didn't stop him in time."

"Don't blame yourself, Rex," Anakin put a hand on his captain's shoulder. "You did extremely well. And you too, Boomer. There aren't many clones that would have been able to last half that long against an opponent like that or do him that much damage. And you saved our lives. Ahsoka and I are both are still here thanks to you and we're both very grateful."

"Thanks for coming after us, General," said Rex.

"Wouldn't dream of leaving you behind," grinned Anakin, trying to make light of the circumstances – the mysterious Skakoan had escaped with an equally mysterious and malevolent crate that could be containing anything. "Unlike that mercenary, we have loyalties and friends."

"And speaking of mercenary's," Ahsoka gritted her teeth. "Look who also got away."

Everyone turned to look at the sheet of metal Cad Bane was pinned under. Or at least where he'd been pinned under. There was no sign of the Bounty Hunter. He'd taken advantage of the chaos at some point and slipped away. He didn't have his bounty anymore, but that didn't matter. It was still a blow.

"I believe I may actually owe that scum my life," said Rex. "If he hadn't dropped a blaster I might be dead now."

"Who was that guy we saw earlier, the one with the cowboy hat?" asked Lopmon. "And who was the Skakoan we saw escaping?"

"Cowboy hat?" asked Boomer.

"We'll explain later," said Renamon, as Terriermon snorted.

"Well, he was a Bounty Hunter called Cad Bane – a Duros and a nasty piece of work. As for the Skakoan – we only know his name was Teska."

"Master," said Ahsoka. "What about Obi-Wan? Do you think that Skakoan was telling the truth?"

A sudden heavy feeling crashed down on Anakin as he remembered the Skakoan's words. "Hurry," he cried, suddenly. "We need to contact the Juma-9 station. Let's get back to the gunships and find Artoo. We need to see if he can get us a signal."

"You mean we have to dash off somewhere else?" asked Terriermon, rolling his eyes.

"The Skakoan said that he killed Master Kenobi and Master Plo Koon earlier," explained Ahsoka.

"Ah. Then what are we waiting for?"

Five of them started to run back towards the camp, while the other two took to the air.

* * *

"We managed to trap her in an ice cave," Aayla was saying. "But knowing her she'll definitely find a way out and come back to haunt us some time."

"Hmm," said Yoda's hologram. "Most disturbing, this is. That Dooku would go to such lengths to cover up a simple crash, important, this could be."

"And we also need to try and find out who stole that crate," said Luminara. "Who knows what they could do with a weapon like that? I dread to think what would happen if it got into the hands of pirates."

"Share the feeling, I do," Yoda murmured. "Make our report we should, to Master Windu."

"Where is he?" asked Luminara. "Is he not with you on Coruscant?"

Yoda shook his head. "Received a distress signal from the Juma-9 station, we did. Attacked, it was, by two Separatist frigates. Masters Plo and Obi-Wan, trapped on board, they were. On a rescue mission, Masters Windu and Fisto went."

"Has there been any word?" asked Aayla, her breath coming out in clouds on the ice-cold planet she was still on.

Yoda shook his head again. "Contact them, we will, and report on your findings, you can."

Aayla nodded. "Patch us through to the Juma-9 station, Arfour," she said to the astromech before her. It toodled and Yoda's hologram vanished. The astromech began to dial through the other signals to find the one from the Juma-9.

"What possible reason could they have for attacking that station?" mused Aayla.

"I don't think this is a coincidence," said Luminara, gravely. "This crash followed by an immediate attack on an otherwise useless space-station. That doesn't strike me as normal Separatist behaviour."

Aayla nodded, and the two female Jedi waited patiently for R4-G9 to get them through.

* * *

Similarly, R2-D2, was also trying to patch some Jedi through to the same location. "Hurry Atrooey," said Ahsoka. "We need to know as soon as possible if Master Plo and Master Kenobi are still alive."

Artoo agreed beepily and his head spun about and began to display a hologram.

* * *

On board, the Juma-9, the four Jedi Masters and the clone private, Switch, were still in the control room. Commander Cody and Commander Ponds had just entered on their AT-RTs and were climbing off their transports, when Switch, who was monitoring the controls, said, "Generals. Transmission from Ryloth."

"Put it through, Switch," said Kit Fisto. Switch complied. The Jedi turned as two holograms fizzed into existence behind them.

"Juma-9," said a female voice they all knew well. "This is Padawan Tano on Ryloth. Can anyone – Obi-wan!" The holograms formed into Anakin and Ahsoka, and Ahsoka stopped speaking when she spotted them. "Master Kenobi, are you alright?"

"I appreciate your concern, Padawan Tano," smiled Obi-Wan, putting his hands on his hips. "We've had a situation here, but everything is under control."

"We thought you were dead," said Anakin, relief evident in his voice.

"And what would make you think that?" asked Obi-Wan.

"General," Cody walked up to Obi-Wan and held up his lightsaber.

"Ah, erm," Obi-Wan said. "Thank you, Cody." He took his weapon and glanced a little sheepishly at Anakin and Ahsoka, who were both smirking.

"A wise Jedi once told me – "This weapon is your life,"" snorted Anakin.

"Thank you, Anakin," said Obi-Wan pointedly, and he couldn't help but notice that they both ignored the fact that Cody went to give Master Plo his own lightsaber back. "It's good to see you too."

"Koh-toh-yah, Master Plo," said Ahsoka, using the traditional Kel Dor greeting.

"Koh-toh-yah, Little 'Soka," nodded Plo. "I see you've been holding out for yourself."

"Thank you, Master."

"Sir," said Switch. "Two more incoming signals."

"Where from?" Mace asked him.

"One's from the Jedi Temple," said Switch. "The other's coming from Alzoc III."

"Put them through, as well, then," said Mace.

A moment later, a hologram of Yoda appeared, followed shortly by a hologram of Aayla Secura and Luminara Unduli standing behind him. Yoda turned his eyes on Anakin.

"Skywalker, ask you what you are doing here, might I?"

"We've had a slight situation on Ryloth that I think everyone should be aware of," replied Anakin.

"Three separate situations, there have been," said Yoda, nodding. "And interlinked, I believe they are."

"Hey, Aayla," said a new voice, and a holographic Terriermon suddenly appeared on Ahsoka's shoulder. "How's it going?"

Luminara jumped in surprise – she was the only one there who'd never seen Terriermon before. She stared at Terriermon, then at Lopmon as she appeared on Ahsoka's other shoulder, then at Renamon as she appeared beside her.

"I take it these are the Digimon you have spoken of, Aayla," she addressed the Twi'lek.

"That they are," Aayla smiled and chuckled, relieved to see them again. "I trust you've been keeping Terriermon in line, Anakin?"

"Just barely," grinned Anakin.

* * *

Cad Bane may be gone but he will be back. That is a guarantee. He will also be more awesome and efficient than he was this time. That is also a guarantee. And now that everyone is back together again, it's time to find out what's going on in the galaxy. Please read and review.

* * *

Next time...

What is the purpose of the crate? Where is Kul Teska heading? What is the big Separatist plan? And will they be able to stop it?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 26 : Behpour**


	26. Behpour

Oh God, Clones Wars on Saturday was one of my favourites so far. Unfortunately any Americans probably won't have seen it yet, but I'm making sure the new characters introduced in it, particularly Sugi and Embo, show up later in my series.

I am truly sorry about the delay, but last week at school was one of the most hectic I've ever had. English Coursework deadline, two Biology ISAs, plus two preps, English essay, three Drama essays and a set design for the dirtiest play ever written. It almost made my head explode. But now Easter holidays have started I should be able to get some more done. Let's hope, eh?

And now to find out what the hell that crate is.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 26:- Behpour**

* * *

The battered hull of the Juma-9 station hung in space, looking completely defunct and useless due to the recent droid attack. But looks can be deceiving. Everyone in the control room, as well everyone with a hologram of themselves being displayed in the control room, felt that this was about to become the staging area for a very important discovery.

After Luminara Unduli was introduced to the three Digimon that had had unexpectedly appeared, Master Yoda addressed everyone. "Three separate stories, there are, to be told. Together, one big story, they will make."

"And hopefully we'll be able to learn something valuable when we combine our three stories," agreed Mace. "Master Kenobi, Master Plo, if you would like to go first and explain to us what happened here at this station."

"Certainly," Plo nodded. "We were simply preparing to leave to go on our separate missions, when two Separatist frigates appeared out of hyperspace and began attacking the station. We weren't sure what was going on at first, but we received an alert from Obi-Wan's commander that the droids had infiltrated the reactor core."

"We discovered a horde of Chameleon Droids had planted mines right across the station," continued Obi-Wan. "I instructed Arfour to scan for life-forms and we discovered one right where we're standing now. It was a large Skakoan, with a pressure suit laden with weaponry, who claimed his name was Kul Teska."

"Is that so?" Anakin looked sharply at his old Master.

"Don't tell me," sighed Obi-Wan. "You met up with him as well, didn't you?"

"One story at a time," said Mace.

"The Skakoan detonated the bombs and successfully escaped, leaving Master Kenobi and I trapped in a loading dock while the station began to tear apart."

"And that was when Commander Cody sent a distress signal to us," nodded Kit Fisto. "We came here on a rescue mission, which we succeeded. But Private Switch here then discovered what this Kul Teska wanted with the station."

"He was setting the scanner to look for a strange signal, one that I've never seen before," Switch related to everyone, a little nervous at his important audience. "And he found something on the planet Ryloth."

"My homeworld doesn't seem to be getting a break, does it?" Aayla shook her head sadly.

"Don't worry, Aayla," said Renamon. "We've left a significant mark down here. There's no longer a threatening droid presence here."

"What do people do with all the droid bodies anyway?" Terriermon asked.

"That's not relevant, Terriermon," Lopmon shushed him.

"So, the question is, what was the Skakoan looking for?" Obi-Wan said, quietly, rubbing his bearded chin thoughtfully.

"And can answer part of that question," said Anakin. "Because we did indeed run into him, and unfortunately, he got what he came for."

"Go on," said Plo.

"Our Captain went missing a short while back," said Ahsoka. "When Master Skywalker and I went off to look for him we discovered that he was being held prisoner by the Duros Bounty Hunter, Cad Bane."

"What was he doing on Ryloth?" asked Luminara, eyes widening.

"We don't know," shrugged Ahsoka. "But he was trying to get Rex to help him load a strange looking crate aboard his vessel."

Ahsoka noticed Aayla and Luminara share a glance at this.

"But we managed to take him into custody and rescue the clone prisoners," Anakin went on. "Unfortunately, he escaped later when we encountered a large Separatist force led by the Skakoan, Teska. He was after the crate that Bane had somehow acquired, and, unfortunately he got away with it. In the chaos of the battle, Cad Bane managed to escape as well, so we were unable to question him further."

"Tell me, Skywalker," said Aayla, and Anakin turned to look at her. "This crate – was it about a metre wide, half a metre tall, and nine-sided apart from the legs which kept it standing upright?"

Anakin's eyes widened at the accurate description. "Yes, it was. I'd never seen anything like it. How did you know that?"

"Because Aayla knows everything," Terriermon quipped.

"Er..." Aayla was unsure how to respond to this claim, so Luminara took over.

"As well you know," she said. "We were investigating Separatist activity over Alzoc III. There were no signs of ships in space, so we went to the planet's surface, where we found a crashed Separatist shuttle."

Aayla continued, "Commander Gree managed to hack into the controls and we discovered that the ship was carrying two of these crates, but that a few minutes before crashing, a small ship docked and whoever was in it stole one of the crates, and covered his escape by blowing up the other."

"Then you know what was in the crate?" asked Kit.

"Not exactly," sighed Aayla. "But we do know that it isn't a crate – at least not in the traditional sense of the word. It's a weapon, and one with catastrophic affects." Aayla unclipped her holoprojector and displayed an image of the crash-sight in the centre of the group. "It produced a gravity anomaly – the frigate, the wreckage and the debris of ice and rock were all floating above the crater instead of lying at the bottom of it."

"Yikes," muttered Lopmon, staring at the image. "That looks weird, even by our standards."

"I think I've got the gist of it," said Renamon, slowly. "This Cad Bane heard of the weapon and stole it over Alzoc III, escaping with it to Ryloth. Kul Teska, as a result, came here and set the scanners to search for it. Discovering the location, he went to retrieve it."

"That sounds about right," said Luminara. "We've stumbled on something very important here. That crate is extremely dangerous from what we've seen, and it's clearly very important to the Separatists. This we know, because Aayla and I had an encounter with Asajj Ventress, who was trying to cover up the incident."

"I take it you won," remarked Plo.

"We managed to trap her in an ice cave," said Aayla. "But knowing her, she's probably escaped by now."

"Sirs." Private Switch had been going through the controls again and said, "I found something in the transmission buffers. I think you should see it. It might help shed a little light on the situation."

Kit nodded and Switch hit a button. Another hologram, a transmission that had occurred in the past, appeared in the only space left in the circle. It was the Skakoan, who had his back to everyone and was talking to Count Dooku.

"I have traced the Gravitic Core to Ryloth," said the Skakoan to the little hologram of Dooku. "I'll need your remaining forces on the planet to keep the Republic occupied until I can retrieve it."

"Your weapon had better be worth it, Teska," Dooku's recording said, imperiously.

"It will, Count," said Teska's recording confidently. "When the Naboo sun reaches its zenith over the facility, the Gravitic Beam will tear it apart, along with the rest of the system."

Sharp looks of shock and horror passed between everyone else there. Suddenly it all made sense. A weapon that could affect gravity would, if it had enough power, be able to cancel out the gravity of a star and cause it to collapse in on itself. And they were planning to do just that to the Naboo sun. Obviously they had a facility somewhere in the system, and now Teska had the Gravitic Core, the weapon would probably be operational very soon.

The Naboo system was in serious jeopardy. Without their sun... well, Teska was right. The system would be torn apart.

"Very well," said Dooku. "Just recover it."

"You needn't worry, Count. Now, please excuse me. I have company."

The hologram of Teska turned around, then faded. Obi-Wan and Plo glanced at each other, both knowing that had been the point where they'd entered the room and confronted the mercenary.

Yoda sighed gravely, shutting his eyes. "Known, the story is now. Find this weapon, we must."

"That's going to be difficult," said Anakin.

"When is it ever easy?" even Terriermon was grim-faced now.

"Well, we know that this weapon is somewhere in the Naboo system," said Kit. "The only problem with that is that the Naboo system is massive – one of the biggest and most influential systems there are."

"We need to get moving then," said Obi-Wan. "If we have to search every single nook and cranny on all the planets in the system, we are going to find that facility and bring it down."

"Where do we start?" asked Lopmon. "We'll get right on it."

"I'd suggest we start with the planets closer to the sun," said Mace. "And work out way back through the system. Let's get organised. Skywalker, you and Master Kenobi will..."

"Sirs," interrupted Switch suddenly. "There's an incoming transmission from the emergency code channel."

"Who is it?" asked Mace.

"Unknown, sir."

"Renamon, Terriermon, Lopmon," Aayla glanced to her companions. "Get out of sight until we know who this is." The three Digimon nodded and they stepped backwards. Their holograms vanished, although they could still see everything that was going on.

"Put it through," Mace said.

Switch did just that, and, right in the centre of the circle, the hologram of a woman appeared. She was wearing practical, white clothing, including boots and a loose fitting belt, complete with blaster holster. The blaster itself was in her hand. Her hair was tied back in a bun.

The same thought flicked through everyone's minds – _Oh dear. What's she done now?_

"This is Senator Amidala. I've discovered a secret Separatist base on Behpour, near the Naboo sun."

Anakin unconsciously stepped forwards, but halted himself, remembering himself and the fact he was keeping their marriage a secret from the rest of the Jedi council. Fortunately, everyone else was too focused on Padmé to notice, except for Ahsoka, who glanced sharply at him. But her attention was diverted back to Padmé as she went on.

"There's a lot of activity. It looks like they're... Uh-oh. I think I've been spotted."

The hologram ducked down and vanished. Yoda sighed again. "Fortunate, this is. Answered, out question has been. To Behpour, we must go."

"We've got to do something," Anakin said, attempting to keep his face as straight as possible. "She's in danger. Serious danger."

"Don't worry, Anakin," said Obi-Wan, pressing a hand to the bridge of his nose. "I'm sure the Senator will be fine. She always seems to come out on top of things, despite the ludicrous situations she seems to find herself in. Looks like she decided to investigate the rumoured activity in her system without me when I missed our rendezvous."

"And she found it," said Plo.

Terriermon's hologram reappeared, as did the others. "So, are we going to blow up that facility and save the galaxy, or are we just going to stand around and wait until the cows come home."

"Unusual metaphor," chuckled Aayla. "But an accurate one. I agree. Shall we make for Behpour with all speed, Masters?"

"That we shall," said Mace. "And, for once, I agree with Terriermon. We've got to destroy that facility?"

"And if anyone gets in our way," Renamon nodded, "then we won't be responsible for what happens to them." She indicated the three dimension travellers present.

"Are you always this violent?" asked Kit.

"You haven't seen them fight, yet, Master Fisto," grinned Ahsoka. "Trust me, even little Lopmon can become nastier than a nexu when she wants to be."

"Should I take offense at that?" asked Lopmon.

"Let's get organised then," said Mace. "Skywalker. Bring the two Corps., the Digimon and the Tamers to this location. Master Unduli, Knight Secura, you also bring your forces here. We'll rally here and then make our way to Behpour straight away."

"Let's get moving, Snips," Anakin said, disappearing from sight, with Ahsoka right behind him.

"See you soon, Aayla," called Lopmon as the three Digimon also disappeared.

Luminara and Aayla bowed respectfully to the others, before their holograms also vanished. "Have faith, I do, that we will stop this weapon in time." Yoda said to the four remaining Jedi. "For an unusual surprise, we have, up our sleeves."

With that, he also vanished.

"Right then," sighed Obi-Wan. "Let's get moving."

* * *

Henry and Rika jogged after Lieutenant Galle, as the clones hurriedly made their way back towards the gunships. Anakin had quickly called them back, stating that there was an emergency that could not wait. Suzie was sitting on Henry's shoulders, as she would be unable to match their pace and keep up with it for very long.

The clone regiments reached the gunships a few minutes later, to find Anakin waiting impatiently for them and the three Digimon and Ahsoka trying to calm him down slightly. Rex, Boomer and R2-D2, along with the clone pilots, were prepping the gunships for departure.

"Good, you're here," Anakin beckoned Galle over. "Get the men into the gunships quickly. We cannot wait any longer than necessary."

Galle got the seriousness in his tone and rapidly ordered his men to board the gunships. "What's going on, now?" Rika asked as the Tamers stopped by their partners.

"We'll explain on the way, Lopmon," said with gritted teeth. "But trust me, it is not good."

"I'd say it's about as worse a situation as you could get," Terriermon said bitterly, waving to them to board the gunships. They did so without question, along with Renamon ushering them in. You didn't argue with Terriermon when he was grim. If he was grim, then the situation was very, very bad. And Renamon and Lopmon weren't making it look any better with their expressions."

The gunships were loaded in record time, and lifted off the ground, flying quickly back towards the _Resolute_. High in space, the gunships soared into the open hangar, the slide doors opening. During the trip, Anakin hurriedly explained the situation on Behpour. The clones were shocked, but not as much as the Tamers. Any qualms that Henry still had about fighting were instantly dispelled by this – anyone who was willing to blow up a sun was beyond retribution.

Anakin and Ahsoka barrelled out of the gunships, shortly followed by the Digimon, the Tamers, Rex and Galle. The ten of them raced through the narrow corridors of the Venator-class cruiser, hurrying up towards the bridge.

Admiral Yularen was there to greet them. He looked surprised at the sudden appearance of the Digimon, who he had never actually seen in person. "General," he said, calmly. "I trust there is a reason for your apparent rush back onto the ship."

"Indeed there is, Admiral," Anakin said, running over to him. "We have a very urgent situation at hand. Tell the men to set a course for the Juma-9 station, and be quick about it. We don't know how much time we have left before the entire Naboo system gets wiped off the face of the galaxy."

Whatever questions Yularen had were instantly dispelled by this announcement. "Well men, you heard the General. Let's get underway immediately."

"Leave the _Pioneer_ here at Ryloth so we can pick up the forces still on-planet," reminded Ahsoka. "We don't want to leave anyone stranded here."

"Good point," agreed Anakin reluctantly. "But our other cruisers come with us."

"Right you are, General," Yularen said, giving out the order, as the clones rushed to and fro, jabbing at various controls.

"You have some serious presence," said Henry appreciatively.

"I wish Mum did things when I ask her too straight away," pouted Suzie. "Like get me ice-cream."

Despite the situation, Anakin smiled wryly. It appeared that you could always trust Suzie to be Suzie.

Everyone fell silent and watched as, the cruisers jumped to lightspeed.

After Anakin had finished explaining the situation yet again to Yularen, they reappeared outside the battered and bruised Juma-9 station. "Whoa," Rika whistled at the condition of the place. "This place definitely took a serious beating."

"Looks like its being held together with wire no, doesn't it," remarked Ahsoka. "That Skakoan's clearly capable of doing some damage."

"And he's planning something bigger," nodded Henry. "Much bigger."

There were three other cruisers floating outside the Juma-9 station. The _Resolute_, the _Dauntless_ and the _Guardian_ ran up alongside Obi-Wan's flagship – aptly named the Negotiator, and two other ships known as the _Victorious_ and the _Valiant_.

"Good to see you've arrived, Anakin," said Obi-Wan's voice from over the comlink. "We're just waiting on Generals Unduli and Secura before we can get underway."

"Well I hope they get here soon," said Renamon. "From the sound of things, we're going to need every available minute we can muster."

"Well, look no further," said Yularen. "Because the scanners say there are two more cruisers approaching fast and pulling out of hyperspace."

A moment later, the _Intrepid_ and the _Saviour_ emerged from lightspeed and pulled up alongside the other six ships. Eight Republic cruisers, each one loaded with a clone garrison and each containing at least one Jedi was truly a force to be reckoned with. And that was without the added benefit of the Digimon.

"Hope we're not too late," said Aayla from the bridge of her flagship. "We got here as fast as we could."

"Momentai, Aayla," said Terriermon. "We've only just got here twenty-seven seconds ago, but hey, who's counting?"

"You just made that number up, Terriermon," chuckled Renamon.

"Did not."

"Remember who you're arguing with."

"Oh yeah."

"The situation on Behpour cannot wait," said Mace. "I believe we should get going now."

"Do we have a plan?" asked Plo from next to him.

"Yes, I'd quite like one," said Obi-Wan. "It doesn't have to be a mind-blowing scheme but some form of plan would be nice."

"We're going to go in there and stop Teska," said Anakin.

"And destroy anything that gets in our way," added Ahsoka.

"I'm in," cried Terriermon.

"You would be," Lopmon and Aayla both said at the same time.

"Am I the only one who feels slightly left out?" chuckled Kit Fisto.

"No," said Luminara. "I'm not quite sure how to take all of this, but I have to agree with Obi-Wan and say that we need a better plan than that. Who knows how large this base is, or how well fortified."

"Plan for the worst, hope for the best," said Henry.

"Exactly."

"I have a basic idea," said Mace. "But we'll need to reach Behpour and scan the facility just in case it needs tweaking before we put it into motion. And on that note, I say we get underway."

"Seconded, Master," said Anakin. "Alright, Admiral, are the co-ordinates for Behpour locked?"

"Yes, General," said Yularen.

"Then let's go."

Clones on all eight of the triangular vessels pushed levers and, with a jolt that somehow failed to make anyone fall over, the ships shot away, heading for the unknown and heading for adventure. Anakin had been right. Adventure always seemed to find a Jedi, even when they weren't looking for it.

* * *

They decelerated over a small, rocky planet that had a strange, yellowish colour, with several streaks of green running across it. It was definitely not a holiday resort and it looked to be one of the most inhospitable planets that any of them had ever seen.

"This just goes to show," muttered Henry to no-one in particular. "Even the most insignificant places can become a staging area for something very important."

"Your just full of quotes today, aren't you," Rika smiled, rubbing Henry's shoulder in the place that had been a gaping wound just last week.

"Skywalker," said Mace. "Initiate a scan on the planet. See if you can find the secret facility."

"Right away, Master," Anakin nodded to Yularen. The clones busied themselves at their stations and everyone turned to the screen. There was nothing for a few seconds, and then a image showed up on it.

"Found it, Master," said Anakin grimly. "It's mostly underground, and there are only a few ways to get into it. The biggest area is large hole in the centre that descends right to the bottom so that ships can get it, but that hole is covered by a deflector shield. There are numerous other entrances, but they're small and easily fortifiable if we tried to assault them."

"That deflector shield could prove a meddlesome prospect," said Plo.

"Indeed," said Mace. "Alright, everyone. Here's the plan. Myself, Secura and Tano will take a large force of clones and AT-TE walkers down there to lead an all-out assault on the facility. We'll set up a perimeter about the place and prepare to attack. Masters Unduli, Fisto and Koon will stay up here and form a blockade around the planet to stop the Separatists from receiving reinforcements."

"Consider it done, Master Windu," grinned Kit.

"Skywalker and Kenobi, I want you to infiltrate the base from one of those smaller entrances and get that deflector shield down so that we can launch the assault," Mace went on. "And while they sneak in, I want clones Rex and Cody to divert their attention."

"Sounds like our kind of job," nodded Rex.

"After that, you can join up with my team. Now then, everybody-"

"Aren't you forgetting someone?"

"Terriermon," reprimanded Renamon.

"Ow!" Terriermon said as Rika bopped him on the head. "Stop that. Only Renamon may hit me."

Mace massaged his forehead with the fingers of one hand. "Right, the Digimon."

"If I may make a suggestion," said Henry. "Renamon is the best of the three at infiltration so she could go with Anakin and Obi-Wan. Lopmon could join up with you, Master Windu, and Terriermon could go with Rex and Cody. He's very good at making explosions."

"So I've gathered," said Mace. "Now, let's get down there."

* * *

Half an hour later, LAAT gunships landed smoothly on the rock encrusted surface of the planet. Clones leapt out and took up positions instinctively and efficiently around the area, their motions having been practically drilled into their heads by innumerable training sessions back on Kamino.

Aayla hopped off the gunship that she'd been travelling in and walked over to the centre of the circle, where Anakin, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka and Mace were also gathering. Abruptly, she found her visions obscured as two bunnies sailed at her and then landed on each of her shoulders.

"If you ask me," said Terriermon. "You look better in person than you do when you're a hologram."

"Oh? And how do you figure that? A hologram is supposed to be a perfect representation of what it is showing."

"Except for the flickering and the lack of colour," said Terriermon. "I like colour better."

Renamon appeared out of thin-air, although Aayla had already known she was there, and fished Terriermon off Aayla's shoulder, putting him under one arm for safekeeping. Terriermon struggled and squirmed, but his mate's grip was like iron.

"Hope you don't mind me taking this nuisance off your hands," she said.

"I'm not a nuisance," complained Terriermon.

"And he was on my shoulder, not my hands," joked Aayla.

"How on Earth does he do it?" Lopmon shook her head. "Everywhere he goes, he leaves a lasting impression behind him and somehow manages to infect the personality of other people and warp it so he's more like him."

"If you ask me," said a new voice, and Commander Bly joined them. "It's not that bad a thing."

"If you've known Terriermon for a year and half," said Rika. "You'll know it really is."

"I resent being press-ganged," said Terriermon.

"But you're such an easy target," said Rika.

"I hate you."

"I don't like this place," said Suzie, looking around her at the vast emptiness and unusual rock-formation. "It's like... it's like... I don't know."

"It's the Dark Side," Aayla was suddenly more serious. "Even non-Force users such as you can tell when there's something really off about a place. It's like a built-in instinct for danger."

"Don't worry, Suzie," Lopmon said, still on Aayla's shoulder. "We'll look after you."

There was a muffled "Momentai" from Terriermon, who struggled free of Renamon's grip and perched on her shoulder. The eight of them stood and stared out and the landscape around them, as if searching for some hidden threat that could leap out from behind them at any moment.

"What a desolate place," murmured Rika.

"If it wasn't for the horrible sense of foreboding," said Henry. "I'd be staring with those amazing rock formations for hours."

"Way to lighten the mood," said Terriermon. "How can the atmosphere go from so humorous to so serious so fast?"

"That's the reality of war, little guy," said Bly. "More often than not, I've been having fun in the mess hall when suddenly we've come under attack by something, whether that be pirates, Seppies or something else entirely."

"Well, anyway," said Rika. "It's good to see you two again. We missed you."

"I was only gone for the better part of a day and a half," Aayla smiled warmly.

"Yeah, but still," piped up Suzie. "You're our best friends here in this universe. You were the first to find us and you're such great people."

Aayla felt a slight pang of happiness. There was that feeling of attachment that she'd felt on Ryloth resurfacing again. Only this time, she didn't try and force it back down to the bottom of her mind, where, according to the Jedi Code, it belonged. It was amazing how easily these people had got to her feelings, possibly due to their childish antics. Feeling a little rebellious, she knelt down, Lopmon still on shoulder, and drew Suzie into a comforting hug. Suzie looked surprised but didn't relent, especially when Lopmon wrapped one ear around her and the other around Aayla.

"Does anyone know what I'm going to say next?" asked Terriermon, suddenly cheerful again.

"Group hug?" Renamon answered, knowing the answer.

"Exactly. Group hug!" He bounded down onto Aayla's other shoulder and embraced both with his ears just like Lopmon. Rika and Henry shared a glance, before kneeling down behind Suzie and joining in. Renamon chuckled to herself, and, knowing that she'd never hear the end of it from Terriermon if she didn't, she dropped to her knees and wrapped her large arms around the huddle, on arm around Aayla's waist, the other going right round Henry and Rika, so they almost touched. Her chest rested on Terriermon's back.

Commander Bly looked bemused as he looked down at the little huddle. This was uncharacteristic behaviour from his General. Usually, despite her compassion, she remained slightly distant from the clones, not getting involved in their boisterous activity. He knew it was because of the Code she did this, but surely this was also against the Code just slightly.

He was still puzzling this out when he noticed Suzie and Terriermon both glaring up at him. "Well?" demanded the bunny. "You gonna join in or not?"

"Wha-, but... me?" Bly blinked.

"Yes, you," said Terriermon. "Suzie said, "You're our best friend_sss_. That means Aayla _and_ you."

Everyone was looking up at him now, even Aayla. Bly, confused, looked to Aayla for guidance. She grinned at him and winked, nodding to the little group. Awkwardly, Bly dropped to his knees and wrapped his armoured arms around the small huddle, almost going as far as Renamon's. The little group held the position for the moment, then they broke apart. A little distance away, the other Jedi hadn't noticed this little exchange, as they were talking quietly amongst themselves, going over the finer details with a holomap produced from the scan and displayed by Artoo.

"I appreciate it, Suzie," Aayla ruffled the little girl's hair affectionately, then allowed Lopmon to hop onto her Tamer's shoulder, before standing up. "And Bly does too."

"I'm... not sure what to make of that exactly," said Bly uncertainly.

"Momentai, Bly," said Terriermon, cheerful again.

"He's right," said Rika. "You're a step closer to becoming like an ordinary human being. You shouldn't be afraid to show other people you care."

"Er..."

"Secura!" Mace was waving them over. Aayla made a shushing noise to the others which clearly meant not to talk about what they'd just done. Then she strode purposefully over to them, with the others trotting behind her.

"As we were saying," said Mace. "Aayla, you, Tano and I will be heading that way," he pointed down a river on the holomap which led to the facility, apart from the cliff in the way, but that wouldn't be a problem for the walkers which were being flown down as they spoke. "So Lopmon, you'll be with us. Terriermon, Rex and Cody will head down that way to create your distraction, while Skywalker, Kenobi and Renamon take this route and get inside the base."

"Just how do we plan on taking down the deflector shield?" asked Renamon. "Artoo?"

"Nope," said Anakin. "Artoo's on hand in my personal ship, the Twilight, so that he can help us make a quick getaway if needed. We're gonna take out that thing the old-fashioned way."

"Which is?" asked Renamon.

"He means, we're going to blow it up," Obi-Wan rolled his eyes.

"Lucky you," Terriermon said.

"Oh don't worry, little guy," said Cody. "There's gonna be plenty of loud noises where we're going."

"Good. Can't wait."

"Subtlety was never your strong suit, was it?" asked Aayla to the little Digimon by her foot.

"Not really," grinned Terriermon.

"Well, we'll see if we can't change that, right Bly?"

"Absolutely," nodded the clone.

"If you think you've got a way to reign him in then be my guest," grinned Henry. "Many tried, many failed."

"You're forgetting something that I have which gives me an advantage over everyone else," said Aayla. "I'm a Jedi, and we don't give up easily."

"Point taken."

"Let's get moving," said Cody, as he and Rex walked towards a pair of AT-RTs that had been placed for them.

"See ya, guys," Terriermon waved as he ran after them. "Stay out of trouble, Suzie. Blast a few of them for me, Bly. Love you, Rena. And try not to get under Aayla's feet, kids."

As they departed, Anakin motioned to Renamon. "We better get underway too," he said. "So that we can act the moment they start their diversion."

"Of course," Renamon nodded. "Keep safe," she said, looking imploringly at Rika. "No stunts this time."

"I learned my lesson," nodded Rika.

"I'll take care of her, Renamon. The others too," Aayla's hand found Renamon's shoulder and she looked at the fox reassuringly.

Renamon playfully bumped Aayla's shoulder. "I feel I'm leaving them in good hands."

"That's because you are," Aayla grinned, laughing.

"Okay, we really need to do something about Terriermon's influence on you," said Renamon. "You're making more jokes than he does. See you soon." She turned and bounded after Anakin and Obi-Wan, easily keeping pace with them.

"Shall we get the men organised?" asked Ahsoka.

Mace nodded, and he, Aayla, Ahsoka, Bly and Ponds, who's also been there, turned to rally the troops.

* * *

About ten minutes later, "Are you in position?" Mace asked through his comlink, and he, Ahsoka, Aayla, Bly and Ponds all waited for Cody to reply.

Instead, another voice said, "We've been in position for some time now, slowmos."

"Three guesses as to who that is," sniggered Ahsoka.

"Terriermon, I'd appreciate it, if you let the people who own this comlink to respond," Mace growled.

"But that's less fun."

"Let the Commander speak!"

There was a pause, then Terriermon spoke again, in a lower, croaking voice, "Calm down, you need to, hmm."

"Terriermon!" roared Mace.

"Momentai."

There was another pause, then Commander Cody said, "Sorry about that, General. We're ready to begin."

"Then proceed," said Mace.

"Yes, sir."

Henry took that as he cue and swiped his card through his D-Arc. "Digi-modify! Digivolution activate!"

* * *

"**TERRIERMON DIGIVOLVE TO... GARGOMON!"**

"Alright, we've only got one shot at this!" Cody said to Gargomon and Rex, the latter of which was also mounted on an AT-RT. "We gotta make a lot of noise so General Skywalker and General Kenobi can get in undetected."

"Making explosions is what I do best!" grinned Rex, putting his helmet on. "Let's do this!"

"I reckon it's time the droids got a loud wake-up call!" Gargomon ran forward, the two, taller walkers right behind him. They hurtled across a narrow ledge at ridiculous speed, Gargomon's cannons already whirring in anticipation of what was to come.

And sure enough, they quickly encountered some droids. They looked around at the sound of the charging heavy footsteps of the walkers. It was the last thing they ever did. **"GARGO LASERS!"** shouted Gargomon. The heavy bolts of green thudded amongst the ranks of the droids, bowling them over with the brutal blows. Cody and Rex added the firepower of their mounts to the mix and droids were blasted backwards and sideways before they had time to register what was going on.

"Rex!" cried Cody. "Take out those fuel tanks! That should give us some nice loud noises."

"Copy that!" Rex aimed his blaster right at the large cylindrical tank that the droids were standing beside and let fly. There was colossal explosion as it erupted into flame, smoke billowing upwards in a miniature inferno. Several out nearby fuel tanks promptly did the same, caught in the blast.

"Think we got their attention yet?" laughed Rex, grinning at the destruction he'd caused.

Gargomon, who was not willing to let Rex get more explosions and wreckage than he did, cried, "I dunno! Let's bust some more stuff, just in case! **BUNNY PUMMEL!"**

He smashed his cannon into the side of the cliff and it promptly collapsed as he span aside. The rocks tumbled down in a cascade of stone, sweeping droids right over the edge of the ledge they were standing on and over the cliff. Gargomon laughed and peered down after them. They disappeared and sank in a viscous yellow, liquid at the bottom.

"What the heck is that stuff?" he asked, shooting three droids without looking.

"Probably some kind of volatile acid from the planet's core," Cody replied as he crushed two droids into the dirt under his walkers feet.

"Small wonder that the Separatists like a dump like this," remarked Rex.

"Acid?" Gargomon asked. "You gotta be kidding. That's like something out of a bad sci-fi movie."

"Sci-fi?"

"Never mind."

Cody sent a bolt arcing into another nearby fuel tank, sending up a plume of smoke as the wreckage continued to spread. The two clones and the Digimon charged through the smoke like demons from hell, to fall upon the droids with ruthless abandon. It was kill or be killed to the max here. Gargomon bashed two droids with each cannon and poured a round of shots into another, while Rex steered his walker to jump right over him and land amongst the others.

"All this wreckage," chuckled Cody as he blasted two Supers that had emerged from around the corner. "It's a Jawa's dream."

"Come on!" yelled Rex, sending a volley of lasers into a nearby small horde of droids. "Surely you can do better than this! I'm not even breaking a sweat here!"

"They can only beat us when they have a carefully executed plan," crowed Gargomon as he bashed another's head in. "And unfortunately for them, they're too stupid to think up a carefully executed plan, much less able to carry out."

"Good point. Hey, look at this." Rex had spotted a bridge over a chasm of the yellow acid, and there were dozens of droids marching forwards towards them across it. "Now why does this look like its asking to be blown up?"

"Not planning to cross it ourselves?" asked Gargomon.

"Nah. We'll just continue on past it."

"Well, in that case... Henry, a slighter stronger blaster if you please."

Gargomon waited for a moment and then a massive surge of strength washed over him. His exposed chest suddenly seemed to sprout metal, until there appeared to be a sheet of it, with two doors. "Nice," said Gargomon, before leaping skyward with a cry of **"GIGA BLASTER!"** The two doors opened to reveal two missile launchers and two large fish-shaped missiles launched from them to strike the bridge with a massive explosion. It collapsed and the droids fell dismally into the acid below.

"Now that was impressive," said Cody, as the missile launch-pad vanished from Gargomon's chest. "Let's hope Skywalker, Kenobi and Renamon have gotten in by now."

* * *

"Well it sounds like Rex, Cody and Terriermon are having fun," Obi-Wan remarked as a large, plume of smoke billow out from over the clifftops not for away and the sounds of explosions of various sizes punched through the air.

"Oh, they are," said Renamon, shaking her head and chuckling. "They're having a competition to see who can wreak the most havoc."

"And who's winning?" asked Obi-Wan.

"Gargomon," said Renamon. "But that's only because he had an unfair advantage of upgradeable missiles."

"If we could get a move on," said Anakin impatiently. "We've got a job to do, so let's do it already."

"Yes, Anakin, let's," said Obi-Wan sternly. "And let's do the _only_ objective that we've been given until we've completed it. Then and only then, you might be able to go and look for the Senator. I can sense that your distracted by your concern for her welfare."

"Friends?" asked Renamon.

_You don't know the half of it,_ thought Anakin, but he settled for saying, "Good ones. We've been through quite a bit together."

"I'm sorry," said Renamon. "I'd offer to go and look for her myself, but I'm supposed to be staying away from all Senators."

"Yes, explaining your presence will not be very easy," remarked Obi-Wan. "Now, shall we get a move on? We've got a lot of lives depending on us."

"That's what I said," muttered Anakin. The three of them began to snake their way along the along the cliff-side. The rock walls were dotted and lines with various pipes jutting out from it. This route included many chasms that lead straight down into the broiling, sickly-looking acid below. But neither Jedi nor Digimon had any trouble whatsoever jumping over them.

"What kind of acid is that?" whispered Renamon, as she peered over the edge at the stuff.

"I don't know," answered Obi-Wan. "Would you like to take a sample?"

"It doesn't particularly inviting. I think I'll pass."

"Well, we're not used to warm welcomes," said Anakin, "and nothing here is inviting."

Renamon nodded ruefully. "Not even the Digital World was as hostile a place as this. And trust me when I say the Digital World is no holiday resort."

They continued going, their own silence contrasting with the enormous crashes and bangs coming from nearby. At one point they came across a chasm that was much wider than the rest. However, conveniently, there was a thin pipe extending from the wall about halfway across it and discarding some thick, black liquid into the acid below. Anakin wasted no time and sprang with a force a human didn't look capable of producing. He grabbed the pipe with one hand and swung on it, flipping and coming to rest in top of it.

"Do take care, Anakin," called Obi-Wan. "It will do none of us any good if you fall in."

Anakin grinned in reply and hopped nimbly across the gap to the other side. Renamon went next. Instead of taking the jump as Anakin had done, although she was perfectly capable of making it, she sprang forward and her feet met the cliff-wall. Using her momentum, she ran along it for a few metres then sprung to the pipe. She didn't even pause and catapulted herself onto the ledge beside Anakin the moment she grabbed it.

"I'm surrounded by show-offs," Obi-Wan chuckled to himself, then he took the leap too, crossing the gap with two simple jumps and no needless acrobatics.

They continued along their way. "How close are we to the entrance now?" asked Renamon.

"We're getting there," said Anakin, calmly. "It should be just around that corner," he pointed ahead of them to where the cliff turned around the bend. The three of them bounded and leaped from ledge to ledge, spanning the treacherous gaps with ease. They rounded the corner and, sure enough, there was a large, stone ledge, with thick blast doors embedded in the cliff wall, standing on the ledge where eight battle droids and three Supers, staring unblinkingly right ahead.

"This is a joke, right?" Anakin murmured. "Do they think a force like that could keep anyone out?"

"They probably don't think anyone would try coming this way," suggested Obi-Wan.

"Then let's prove them wrong," Renamon growled, perched on a pipe.

"I like your attitude," Anakin nodded.

Renamon extended her legs and thrust herself across the gap. The droids still hadn't notice her presence, and suddenly she was among them. The middle Super never knew what hit it, as something heavy with hooked claws landed heavily on it and tore it circuitry out through its back. The battle droid that had been standing directly behind it stepped backwards in surprise, but found himself grabbed in a gloved paw and thrown into another, both of them screaming over the edge of the ledge and into the acid.

Anakin was shortly behind Renamon and as the Supers turned to fire on the Digimon, one of them was cleaved in two pieces by his lightsaber. Anakin followed up with his stroke and took out one of the battle droids, then blasted another into the wall with the Force. Renamon backflipped over the other Super and gave it a kick. It stumbled forwards, and found itself impaled on Anakin's blade. Renamon grabbed another and slammed it forcefully into the ground, and Anakin sliced the next in the arm and pelvic area in one go.

The remaining three battle droids stepped backwards, raising their blasters at the two of them, who stood side by side, arms flexed in battle position. They got time for a shot each, which were all deflected by Anakin, when Obi-Wan landed before them and threw out his hands. The three of them were hurled backwards by and invisible wave of energy and tumbled over the ledge.

"Always with the simplest approach, Obi-Wan," remarked Anakin.

"Why waste energy with fancy moves when you can accomplish the goal with a wave of your hand?" asked Obi-Wan.

"Fun," said Renamon.

"I'll never understand how you two or the clones can find this fun," Obi-Wan shook his head. "But maybe this'll do you more good than I hoped Anakin – someone like you, except with priorities in the right order."

"Hey," frowned Anakin.

"Momentai," grinned Obi-Wan.

Renamon winced as a loud objection via Gargomon came through her head. "Could you not say that? Gargomon's very possessive of that word."

"Tell him he should momentai himself, then," chuckled Anakin.

Renamon chuckled and Gargomon groaned from a distance. "Right," she said. "Shall we enter?"

"Indeed we shall," Anakin raised his blade and plunged it into the door. Moving his arms quickly, he carved a rectangular shape in the metal, then withdrew his blade and kicked it in, forming a door.

They were in.

* * *

From the top of a thin plateau, a lone Dwarf Spider Droid unleashed heavy, red lasers down on the advancing AT-TEs below. The tanks marched across the thin valley in rows of two, steadfastly moving forwards like great, unstoppable beasts. The droids on the cliff tops were attempting to respond, but they kept moving forward regardless.

There were no clones in sight except for those in the guns, because they were all waiting inside until the AT-TEs scaled the cliff up ahead. The Dwarf Spider Droid aimed its shots at the window at the front, where the clone pilot was guiding the war machine forwards.

Something landed right beside the Spider and with a whooshing, zooming noise, the nose cannon on the front of the droid was suddenly lopped off, and then the head was shorn in half. Aayla kicked the body off the plateau and levitated the severed, domed head to zoom, spinning like a discus into two Supers standing side by side and shooting down from the clifftop.

Aayla took a brief moment to survey what her fellows were doing. She saw Ahsoka standing on the long cannon on the top of the first AT-TE, gamely deflecting blaster fire being aimed for it in an attempt to block the others from advancing. She was more than a match for the droids and, despite the greater distances between shooter and deflector she still managed to score a few hits with the reflected lasers, knocking a droid or two straight onto its back with a smoking hole in its body.

Mace was running along the cliff beside the valley, having made the jump earlier on, and his purple lightsaber sang lustily as it skimmed through the metal of the droid ranks amassed on the lip of the cliff. They didn't even know he was there until he brought purple death slicing through them, or sent them shooting over the cliff to be crushed under the feet of the walkers with a flick of his fingers.

But Aayla couldn't see any sign of Turuiemon. But this was only because Lopmon had yet to digivolve. The little Rookie bunny was running, or rather spinning, across the other cliff, smashing the droids feet out from underneath them in a drawn-out Lop Twister, sending them tumbling onto their backs or off the cliff, devoid of legs and unable to stand again. Her little form made shooting her difficult, even if the droids had better aim.

Aayla looked up at a whirring, humming noise that indicated an engine of some sort, and, looking up, she saw four STAPs zoom into view from over the cliff. Lopmon momentarily paused in her attack, slamming her body into the face of a Super and knocking it backwards, before wheeling and crying **"BLAZING ICE!"**

The attack smashed into one of the STAP riders, sending it falling from the STAP, which promptly began careening all over the place due to the fact no-one was controlling it any more. Two of the others managed to avoid the spinning STAP, but another got hit and the two exploded.

Aayla sheathed her lightsaber and grabbed the other two with the Force. Bringing her hands down, she guided the STAPs and their panicking riders to smash into the rock pillar that she was standing on a few metres below her. She sprang of it as the resulting explosion broke off a good quarter of length, backflipping down and landing on the nearest AT-TE. Then she grabbed the huge chunk of falling rock that she'd stood on only moments before and sent it slamming into a company of droids standing on the cliff.

Aayla waved to Lopmon, who returned the gesture, then sent another Blazing Ice into the Super behind her.

As the first AT-TE approached the cliff ahead, Aayla ran along the line, leaping from walker to walker until she stood beside Ahsoka on the first. Lopmon joined them moments later, having finished with the droid lines on the cliff above.

As the AT-TE reared and planted its front feet into the cliff, the two Jedi leapt and landed on either side of the cockpit window, while Lopmon circled around them. More droids were firing at them from the top, but Aayla and Ahsoka protected the pilot from harm with their blades, while Lopmon flapped upwards, hammering into the Spider Droids also standing vertically on the cliff and knocking them off, then sending a volley of ice shards into the droids lining the top.

As the AT-TE neared the top of the cliff, Aayla and Ahsoka sprang again, somersaulting over the cliff. Lopmon and Mace joined them as the walker crawled awkwardly onto the flat.

As it was doing so, two AAT tanks hovered forward to greet them, but none of them wasted any time whatsoever. Mace and Ahsoka ran forward to bring their sabers into play, but the tanks had already fired with its cannon at the walker. Unable to deflect the much larger bolt, Aayla hurriedly lifted a wall of rock and dead droids to block the shots. Ahsoka and Mace both quickly severed the cannons, then sliced through the tanks to skewer the droids controlling it.

As the walkers ascended the cliff, the bottoms descended out of them, allowing clone troops and AT-RTs out to join the ranks. Forming up, the assorted battalions of clone and machine marched forward, with the three Jedi and the one Digimon at their head.

They halted short of the base, as they could see that the deflector shield was still up.

"We can't go any further until Skywalker, Kenobi and Renamon get that thing offline," Mace said grimly. "And they better do it soon, before they can call in an aerial bombardment. The sooner we can get in the better."

"I'll call Rex, and let them know that they can get over here now," said Ahsoka, pushing the comlink button on her wrist.

"Lopmon," said Aayla. "Are you ready for this?"

"Just a minute. Suzie." Lopmon waited, felt a surge of strength and cried, **"LOPMON DIGIVOLVE TO… TURUIEMON!"** Then she said, "Now I am."

Aayla grinned, and then clone, Jedi and Digital Monster waited, tensed, ready to leap forward the moment the shield died away.

* * *

Nobody lynch me for the Group Hug scene, but I felt it introduced more relationship-building, especially between Bly and the others. The clone commander will have a key role in the future, and its crucial that he gets much closer and closer to Aayla, the Digimon and the Tamers. Plus, Aayla's defiance of the Jedi Code to get closer to them is also quite important in the future.

Kul Teska is a bad person sure enough. Blowing up a sun doesn't exactly hint at a stable personality does it? Well, let's hope they can get in and stop him before the Naboo system is completely thrown out of existence.

* * *

Next time...

Will Obi-Wan, Anakin and Renamon successfully infiltrate the base? What forces will they encounter inside? Will they stop the insidious plot?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 27 : The Deflector Shield**


	27. The Deflector Shield

So sorry about the delay, but this time it was due to general laziness on my part. Since it's been the first week off of the Easter holidays I decided to take some time off for a while of all work, including this. But now I'm back and ready to continue writing.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 27:- The Deflector Shield**

* * *

Anakin stepped slowly through the small doorway that he'd cut through the durasteel blast-doors that opened to the interior of the Separatist base. His lightsaber was held out in front of him in a defensive position, ready to deflect any lasers that came flying at his head. But there was nothing.

The doors opened onto a wide corridor, poorly lit right now, but with large numbers of lights spanning the ceiling. They were only dim and flickering slightly right about now, and several of them were going out.

"You'd think a place like this would invest for proper lighting," commented Renamon as she stepped through behind him and took in the dank place they'd just entered.

"I think they do," said Obi-Wan gravely. "But all unnecessary power may be being diverted to either the shield generator to keep the main force out or..." he faltered and shrugged.

"The weapon," finished Anakin.

"Or the weapon," confirmed Obi-Wan. "I may be near completion."

"Teska struck me as the kind of person who prefers a good offense to a good defence," remarked Anakin. "So it's probably the weapon."

"Sounds familiar," Obi-Wan added dryly.

"Hey, I'm not that bad," objected Anakin.

"No, you're worse."

"Which direction do we take now?" asked Renamon. "I may never get lost, but that doesn't mean I know my way around. I've never had to do something like this before. Usually, I just go in for the kill."

"According to the scanners," Anakin pointed at his wrist console, "The shield generator is that way." He pointed to the left fork at the end of the tunnel. "We'd better get going so Master Windu can lead the charge in as soon as possible."

"Careful Anakin," said Obi-Wan. "Don't trust to luck, alright. You too, Renamon. If we come across any droids, we should try and avoid them, and only fight them if they spot us. If they set off the alarm then the whole plan could be jeopardised."

"Don't worry," said Renamon. "I can be very hard to spot if I want to be."

As the two Jedi walked forward, Renamon picked up the large sheet of metal that had once been part of the door and, like a jigsaw, she pushed it back into place. The Jedi looked at her quizzically. In response, Renamon replied, "A droid may be stupid, but surely even they could guess there were intruders if we just left a gaping hole in the door."

"You'd be surprised," said Anakin. "But, better safe than sorry."

"Finally," said Obi-Wan. "I've been trying to teach you the meaning of that phrase ever since we met. Renamon, you have to tell me your secret to being a teacher."

"Extreme patience, a firm hand and rewards later on," said Renamon. "That always works with Terriermon."

"What kind of rewards?" asked Anakin curiously.

"Things that I would only do with him and go against the Jedi Code," answered Renamon, completely unembarrassed.

"Ah, you mean... right, well, never mind," Obi-Wan turned and began to lead the way at a steady jog through the facility. They turned the left fork and headed through the corridors, following Anakin's faintly beeping scanner as it dictated which way was appropriate to turn.

"The shield generator is likely to be in the centre of the facility," Anakin explained quietly to Renamon as they went. "In a location that can cover just about the whole of the facility with ease. Placing it at one end would make it less easy to fortify the other, you see."

"That makes sense," said Renamon. "But, if I recall, the centre of this particular facility is made up of a ridiculously large hole. Why exactly is that there?"

"At first I thought it was just a way for ships to get easy access to all levels," muttered Anakin. "Now, I'm not so sure. This whole place is stooped in the Dark Side."

"Which way now, Anakin?" asked Obi-Wan, as they encountered yet another fork in the trail.

"Left again," said Anakin.

Just as they turned in that direction, Renamon suddenly held up a paw. "Ssh," she said. "You hear that?"

Anakin and Obi-Wan strained their ears. And sure enough, a couple of moments later, there came the sounds of methodical, repetitive marching feet.

"Droids," growled Anakin, grasping his lightsaber hilt.

"No, Anakin. Remember what I said," Obi-Wan hissed. "We don't take them on, unless there's no other choice."

"Well, what do you suggest then? We need to go that way they're coming from."

"Yes, and we still can, you know."

"No time for an argument," pointed out Renamon.

A second later, and five battle droids rounded the corner ahead. "When are we gon0na get ou0t of this place?" asked one, conversationally.

"Probably when the sun gets blown to bits," said another. "Then there'll be no need for this place and we can go somewhere else."

"About time too," said another. "I think all this acid is beginning to corrode my servo-motors."

"Yeah, couldn't they have put this place in a more hospitable area," complained the first. "520 fell into the acid just yesterday and dissolved immediately."

"He was a bucket-head," the fourth one dismissed this. "He lost control of his feet."

"But we're all bucket-heads," pointed out another. "Any one of us could be next."

"Oh. I didn't think of that."

They reached the end of the empty corridor and turned away again. Renamon, Anakin and Obi-Wan calmly dropped from the ceiling hardly making a sound on the metal floor. "You know, just listening to battle droids having a conversation is enough to cheer anyone up," chucked Anakin.

"They don't seem to take their guard duty seriously do they," remarked Renamon. "They weren't even looking around."

"They probably think that nobody can get it," said Obi-Wan. "And is it even possible for a droid to look up?"

"Only if they lean over backwards," said Anakin.

"Well, in that case," said Renamon. "I'm going to do something very unorthodox and continue the rest of this trip in a way that makes it almost impossible for a droid to find me."

* * *

The plodding sound of their own feet didn't bother the battle droids. They moved with steady precision, their feet stompin the ground at exactly the same time as any others with them. This was about the only thing a battle droid wa able to pull off perfectly, and even the slightest stumble could set one doing the complete wrong thing.

They thumped down the slender corridor, the lights around them sputtering and dying as they were no longer needed. They wouldn't stop going round and round the base, until they were told to do otherwise.

There was a very faint noise. One of the four droids stopped. The one directly behind it kept going, resulting in a small pile-up. The other two momentarily stopped to help them back up.

"Did you hear that?" asked a battle droid to one of the other three.

"Hear what?"

"I'm sure I heard something like a faint rustling noise," insisted the first.

"I didn't hear anything," said another.

_They really are idiots,_ thought Renamon, scurrying along the pipes above them upside-down like a lizard. She didn't even need her perception filter to get by them, which was good because it wouldn't have worked anyway. She was like an extremely lithe and un-sloth-like sloth, grasping the pipes with all four paws as she moved along the ceiling.

The two Jedi were slightly less sure-footed. They were darting along the pipes, the right way up, in the small gap between the piping and the ceiling. "Anakin," muttered Obi-Wan. "How much further have we got to go?"

"Not far now," said Anakin.

"It's funny, but I'm sure you said that a few minutes ago," remarked the Jedi Master. "You do know where you're going, don't you?"

"I'm trusting to a mix of my scanners and the Force."

"It sounds to me like another one of your hunches."

"I have a question," Renamon flipped over to join them on top of the pipes. "Do you enjoy bickering, Anakin? Because you seem to bicker with both your Master and your Padawan all the time."

"It's just a little light-hearted banter," shrugged Anakin. "Nothing wrong with it."

"I know that," said Renamon. "It reminds me a little of my friendship with Terriermon and Lopmon. I find it amusing."

"Well, I'm glad we can provide some entertainment, then," said Obi-Wan. "Where to now?"

"There's a large room, just ahead," said Renamon, jerking a thumb over her shoulder. "But it's not a particularly useful room as far as I can see."

"Why not?"

"Because it doesn't have a floor. It gives way to the acid below."

"Ah."

"Quite."

Sure enough, the room was a big space with no floor, and the only thing that made it noteworthy were the innumerable pipes that criss-crossed it's expanse. From wall to wall and wall to ceiling, they were huge and thick and probably for pouring excess radioactive residue and other unpleasant substances away from the station, as well as more useful things like astronic fuel to the station.

"Do you always run into interesting places like this?" asked Renamon from the doorway which only lead down.

"It's not unusual," sighed Obi-Wan.

"Why is there even a door here?" asked Renamon, patting the doorframe.

"Probably so that the droids can get in for maintenance," said Anakin. "A place like this is bound to have several leakages and problems, but a droid equipped with a jetpack could get in."

"Let's keep going," said Obi-Wan and he jumped to the nearest pipe. Anakin jumped right behind him and the two of them bounded around the room, taking brief pauses to search for the best and least precarious landing sites before moving on. Renamon joined them, running up vertical pipes like they were tree-trunks and sliding down diagonal ones as if she was on a surfboard.

"You two could put the best athletes back at home to shame," observed Renamon, as she landed next to Anakin. "Back there, there is a set of games called the Olympics, with several competitions for things like high-jump, long-jump, gymnastics, running and other things. If you were to enter, Anakin, you would flatten all competition."

"What about you?" asked Anakin, jumping to another pipe. "Have you entered?"

"Humans only," said Renamon, dryly. "Many humans at home aren't very good at looking out for the needs and wants of other species."

"Not even other sentients?" asked Anakin.

"In many of their opinions, other sentients are just things to perform experiments on."

"Ouch," said Anakin.

"There's the other door," said Obi-Wan. It was shut, but not for long. It opened with a wave of Obi-Wan's hand, and the three of them sprang through it to the other side.

"We ought to contact Master Windu," said Obi-Wan. "He'll want a progress report to see how we're doing."

"I'm on it," Anakin pushed the button on his comlink. "Master Windu. We've successfully infiltrated the base. We should have the shield down soon."

There was no reply but a static crackling. "Master Windu, do you copy?"

After a moment, Anakin lowered his arm and said, "There's too much interference. I can't get a signal through."

"The question is," said Obi-Wan. "Is this interference natural, or do they know someone's in here and are deliberately jamming us?"

"Well, whatever the answer," said Renamon. "You have an advantage. Me." She tapped her head.

_Lopmon._

_I'll have you know I've digivolved at the moment._

_Alright. Turuiemon, I need you to inform Master Windu that we're inside the base and nearing the shield generator. It shouldn't be long before we blow it up and get that shield down._

_You got it. Good luck._

_Thank you._ "Done and dusted."

"How exactly does this system work?" asked Obi-Wan. "I've never seen anything like it before."

"Terriermon are I are permanently linked through being mated, so we can see everything that the other is doing at all times, no matter the distance," explained Renamon. "Lopmon and I can't do that, but since we're both linked to Terriermon, although for different reasons, we can send messages to one another, but only via him."

"It's very useful," laughed Obi-Wan. "Who needs communicators when you've got a Digimon?"

* * *

Padmé Amidala, Senator from Naboo and secret wife of Anakin Skywalker, was slumped against the wall of her cell. Truth be told, there wasn't really much more that she could do than this, considering her wrists were clamped in manacles that secured her to that wall, her arms raised above her head. How did she end up in these situations? She was a tough woman, that much was true, and she often managed to escape these situations on her own, but there were numerous times when she'd been captured by Separatist forces, or otherwise.

First there had been Geonosis, although she'd been less bothered by this one as both Anakin and Obi-Wan had been taken prisoner alongside her. Then there'd been the time where she'd placed in a cell by Ziro the Hutt after she'd been discovered snooping around his place. Then there'd been the time she'd been taken as a hostage on board the Malevolence by General Grievous. Following that had been Rodia, where Viceroy Gunray had persuaded a friend of hers to take her captive so that the people of Rodia would live, though that had worked itself out in the end. Then there was the time only just recently when she'd been taken prisoner alongside Jar Jar Binks on Naboo by Doctor Nuvo Vindi the mad scientist.

And now, here on Behpour, she'd been caught again by Kul Teska. She'd put up a good fight, killing forty-two droids and crippling three more before the Skakoan scientist himself took to the field and grabbed her with his cable. And now, she was in a cell again, arms securely fastened and wondering what her fate would be. She only hope that her message to the Jedi had got through.

The door to the cell slid open. Padmé looked up as the huge, metallic form of Kul Teska lumbered through. His hands was clasped behind his back casually, giving him an air of superiority that he clearly thought he deserved. Padmé glared defiantly at him.

"Well, how is my little prisoner?" asked Teska, mockingly. "Tried to escape again?"

Padmé scowled. She usually kept a lock-pick concealed in one of her boots that she could even get to when her arms where chained over her head like now, just in case she ran into situations like this. Senators seemed to be popular hostage choices, but she seemed to trump all the others. But once she'd left the cell, she'd immediately been flanked on both sides by two destroyer droids and had been forced to go back in and be rechained.

"I came to give you a little bit of news," said Teska, who seemed absolutely delighted for some reason. "It looks like your little distress signal managed to get through. A massive Republic Army has arrived, no doubt with intentions to destroy my weapon and rescue you."

Padmé's heart leapt.

"Of course, they can't get past our deflector shield," continued Teska. "So they're just standing around outside at the moment. Their efforts are futile. My weapon is now operational, and I'll be setting it off as soon as the sun reaches the prime position."

"You're not going to win," Padmé finally spoke. "The Jedi are very resourceful. They'll figure out a way in."

Teska laughed. "Oh, I doubt that."

"Don't be so sure, Teska," said another voice from the doorway. Padmé's heart almost stopped with momentary despair at the sight of the new man. Kul Teska was bad enough, but Count Dooku was even worse. This was the man causing so much trouble for the Republic. This was the man who had cut off Anakin's arm on Geonosis. Fortunately, he'd got a good, robotic replacement.

"What are you suggesting, Count?" Teska turned to face him. "Our deflector shield is impenetrable."

"Yes," nodded the Count. "But my senses are telling me that two Jedi have infiltrated the facility from one of the minor entrances. Skywalker and Kenobi are inside. I can sense their presences easily. And I'm fairly sure that they can sense mine."

"Then what course of action should we take?"

"I've sent some droids to guard the shield generator," said Dooku. "I want you to return to the weapon chamber and continue working. Allow me to deal with the Jedi. But, I happen to know that Skywalker is very resilient, as is his Master. And I also happen to know that Skywalker is particularly attached to the prisoner we have in this room."

Padmé just scowled as the two heads turned to look at her.

"Interesting," Teska observed. "Looks like we caught just the right person then. I'll take her with me to the weapons chamber. If Skywalker gets that far, I'll stop in his tracks, if he wants her pretty face to stay pretty."

"The Jedi will put their duty before me," declared Padmé confidently. "They always do."

"On the contrary, my dear," Dooku smiled pleasantly, but Padmé could still see a leer in it. "A Jedi will often attempt to pull off too much at once. Skywalker is no different. And Kenobi will be the same." He waved his hand, and the cuff round Padmé's wrists opened, causing her to drop downwards. She was promptly grabbed in the massive hand of Teska, around the waist and bodily lifted off the ground.

"Come and see my creation." It wasn't a request she could really deny.

A few minutes later, and Padmé once again found her hands bound in a pair of binders. Teska had attached the binders to a long cable and other end to the ceiling, which was slowly winched upwards, pulling Padmé's arms above her head once more, then going even further until Padmé's feet left the ground completely. She was dangling right beside the weapon, not particularly close to the floor or the high ceiling.

"Comfy?" asked Teska.

Padmé glared, then glanced at the weapon. It resembled a large cannon of some type, several large metallic rings indicating where a laser could be generated and shot directly upwards through a hole in the ceiling.

She couldn't help but shudder.

* * *

"As much fun as this is," Gargomon shouted as he casually kicked a Super before blasting it with his cannons. "I reckon it's about time we got back to the main force with Aayla and the others."

"So the plan worked?" Cody shouted, dodging a missile directed his way so flew between the legs of his walker. "They got in?"

"Easily," said Gargomon. "They're heading through the station as we speak. Much as I'm loathe to admit it, we should follow orders and get back to the others."

Rex blasted the ground in front of some more droids, throwing them skyward. "What makes you loathe to admit it?"

"I have a feeling," Gargomon said, emptying a round of bolts into a phalanx of droids, "That when I get back, Mace in going deep-fry my ass."

"Maybe you should limit the jokes around him then," suggested Cody, chuckling. "Master Windu doesn't trust or befriend easily from what I've heard. I think he's about the only person you've met who doesn't like you but is on your side."

"Let's go then," Rex shouted, wheeling his walker around. Cody followed his example and the two of them began to run back the way they come, dashing through the debris of ruptured oil tanks, dead droids and rock rubble from the chaos they'd so lovingly created. Gargomon ran backwards, raining green bolts on the droids, before turning and following their examples.

The walkers could easily outstrip Gargomon, but Rex and Cody were not about to leave a comrade behind. They slowed down their speed so that Gargomon was right behind them, all three occasionally wheeling about to fire on the following droids, which were getting further and further away. The droid's didn't seem to know how to run _at_ and enemy, but were perfectly capable of running _away_.

Often this was because they didn't actually need to.

Rex and Cody suddenly braked their walkers so fast Gargomon almost ran into them. The clones stared at the droid army that was advancing towards them from the way they'd come. It consisted mainly of Dwarf Spider Droids that were perfectly capable of scaling a cliff, but there were also a couple of Crab Droids amongst the ranks.

The two nearest Spiders opened fire.

"Get down!" shouted Rex, as he and Cody leapt off their walkers. The blasts struck both the legged mounts full in the front and knocked them over backwards. Rex hurriedly hauled Cody aside as one of the walkers landed where Cody's legs had been.

"Oh, this is just peachy!" Gargomon shouted, aiming at the Spider Droids over the fallen walkers. His blasts pummelled them and caused many to fall, but the ones behind just started to crawl over their fallen comrades. Rex and Cody joined him and the three of them took turns to shoot at the Spider side or the side of the B-1s and the Supers which were closing in on them again. Lasers flew so thick that their only cover was the downed walkers.

* * *

"Gargomon, Rex and Cody are in serious trouble," said Turuiemon, glancing worriedly at Henry who was poking his head from the hatch on the back of the nearest walker. The Chinese Tamer was staring through at the image of his D-Arc which showed what Gargomon was seeing. "They're trapped between two droid armies, a cliff, and a pool of acid."

"Not good odds," Aayla also looked worried.

"We have to do something," Ahsoka bit her lip. "We can't just leave them there to die."

"I'll try a Dragon Wing card," said Henry, pulling it from the pack.

"No, Henry!" Gargomon's voice came over the D-Arc. "There's no way I'll be able to fly out through all of these lasers by myself, let alone with Rex and Cody. We'll hold them off for as long as possible."

Henry bit his lip. He thought about the blue card that could make Gargomon digivolve. Would that work? Would Ultimate be enough to get him out safely? Would the blue card even work at such a distance between Tamer and partner? And would the Ultimate level help Rex and Cody? He didn't particularly want to go Ultimate unless there was no other choice, so that they still had something up their sleeve if they got discovered. Was there no other choice now?"

"Suzie!" Turuiemon's voice broke into his thoughts. "Give me a speed boost! I've got an idea!"

"Okay," Suzie knew that Turuiemon's plan would probably be sound and knew not to question her. "Digi-modify! Hyperspeed Activate!"

The rabbit hared. After a brief wave, she shot off across the rocky turf, heading for the area where a great plume of smoke had been going up for the past ten minutes. She hurriedly sprinted from rock to rock, zoomed around columns of stone and leapt over crevasses.

She came to a stop at the edge of a cliff, which opened into a ravine. Below, on a thin walkway on the opposite side of the ravine, she could see Gargomon and the two clones battling out with seemingly impossible odds. It was truly a miracle that none of them had been hit in the storm of lasers, which was flying so thickly, that a number of droids were shooting other droids of the opposite side of the target by accident.

"Hold on, guys!" shouted Turuiemon.

"What the…" she heard Rex, or possibly Cody (they sounded the same) shout back.

Turueimon glanced at the battlefield. She needed to end this as quickly as possible, before even more droids showed up, and the only way to do that was…

She grinned. She liked dropping things on her enemies. They'd done an awful lot of that to Ogudomon when they'd fought him because it had been the most effective thing to do at time. Her switchblades sprang into the attack position, glowing white.

"**GAUNTLET CLAW!"** she shouted and swung at the top of the opposite cliff. Her beam of light smacked into the rocky wall and caused it to explode outwards, rocks cascading down the slope in a massive rockslide. The entire side consisting of the Spider and Crab Droids was caught up in it and thrown down into the broiling acid below.

"**GAUNTLET CLAW!"** she cried again, creating another rocky avalanche that swept the other small army over the edge. Now, Gargomon, Rex and Cody were standing alone surrounded by mountains of rock.

Gargomon grinned and the clones cheered. "Nice job, Tury!" shouted Gargomon.

"Don't look so happy," laughed Rex. "From the looks of things, I think she won the Destruction Competition."

"Aww, crap!" muttered Gargomon.

* * *

Plo Koon stood on the bridge of his cruiser. He stared out at the black space before him, lit only by the different stars. He couldn't help but think that he was forming a blockade around a planet with a facility that could blow any of those stars to pieces.

"Any sign of incoming Separatist ships?" asked Kit Fisto from his own bridge.

"Not at the moment," said Plo. "But I can't help but feel that they could be here at any time."

"I believe you're right Master Plo," said Luminara. "I feel uneasy, not unlike what I felt when I was back on Alzoc III. I can sense the sheer evilness of the facility below from here. The Separatists will not give it up without a fight."

"We know, Master Luminara," Kit's voice was grave, a cause for concern if it was coming from him. "We know."

"Sir!" Commander Wolffe, Plo Koon's own clone commander, looked up from the scanners beside his General. The silver cybernetic eye replacement he had received a couple of months ago, due to losing said eye in a scrap with a Commando Droid, gleamed in the light. "Looks like you were right. There are six Separatist ships approaching."

They appeared, suddenly, right before them, and immediately opened fire. The Republic vessels responded accordingly, sending off their own volleys of lasers. For a few moments, the eight Republic ships and the six Separatist ones sat in space, trading blows.

"Incoming fighters!" shouted Wolffe, as a phalanx of Vulture Droids speared through the gap towards the Republic ships.

"Launch the fighters and the Y-wing bombers!" commanded Plo. "I shall lead the assault myself. You're in charge, Wolffe."

Plo dashed out of the hangar, heading for his Delta-7 starfighter. It was going to be a tough battle.

* * *

There was such a thing as professional pride.

The dark figure crept slowly through the hallways, not far away from where the Jedi were now standing. Nobody had noticed his stealthy entrance to the complex, slipping nimbly through a door just as it opened to let a droid outside. He dashed, light-footed down the corridor, hardly making a sound as he hurtled along.

Three battle droids rounded the corner ahead of him. "Wait! Halt!" cried one, before its face was smashed in by a red laser. Precisely one second after this, both of the droids companions had also found their faces damaged beyond repair by one bolt each.

The figure holstered his blaster pistols, contemptuously kicking the nearest droid corpse with his boot. He knew that shot droids were going to attract attention, but nobody would ever know who did it if he got his way.

The mercenary, Kul Teska, had something coming his way. The figure leered at the thought of putting a laser through his chest, but he also knew that the best thing to do would be to target the Skakoan's jet thrusters. These were easily the most temperamental of his adaptations to the pressure suit.

Slinking along the wall like a shadow, the figure found just what he was looking for. A vent was situated in the wall beside him, and without any effort at all, he pulled the grate aside and crawled in. It didn't look particularly professional, but whatever got the job down was good enough for him. The vents were always an easy way to sneak around a place without being noticed. And he didn't particularly want to attract too much attention.

He stopped at the sounds of voices coming from directly below him. Placing an ear to the metal, he listened.

"…accelerator that was built back on our home planet," he heard a voice say, female and with a sort of cool calm. "There were rumours that it could cause untold destruction, but this thing is even worse. Worse still, the destruction would be intentional."

"Wait," another voice that definitely belonged to Skywalker said. "Do you sense that?"

"Yes. What is it?"

"What is what?"

"The Force is telling us something."

_Time I wasn't here,_ thought the figure and he hurriedly and quietly kept crawling along the vent. If he couldn't have the Gravitic Core, then nobody else could either. He'd make sure of it.

* * *

"I think I know why there's such a massive hole now," said Anakin gravely.

The three of them were standing beside a rail that divided the floor they were standing on with the enormous tunnel-like hole in the ground. If they looked up, they could see the sky through the bubble-like shield above them, which was pulsating slightly. Below them, they could see a right down to the bottom, where there was a large hole at the bottom, through which the tip of a laser cannon poked out.

And the entire column of air through the centre of the structure was riddled with spinning turbines and giant wheels, spinning lazily across the gap, all at different speeds, but seeming to go faster the further to the surface they got. There were four giant spokes on each wheel attaching the small centre to the huge outside. At the centre of each wheel there appeared to be something like a giant crystal.

"It's all part of the same weapon," Obi-Wan muttered, staring upwards. "If we get the shield down and the others descend through the hole, they'll also be descending into the mouth of a giant laser cannon at the same time."

"Great," snarled Anakin sarcastically. "I had hopes that the weapon wouldn't really be a threat and they were planning something too big, but this could easily take care of the Naboo sun, and probably a sun right behind it too."

"I've never seen anything like this," Renamon said, awestruck and horrified at the same time. "It reminds me of something I saw back home once. They called it the Large Hadron Collider. It's a particle accelerator that was built back on our home planet. There were rumours that it could cause untold destruction, but this thing is even worse. Worse still, the destruction would be intentional."

"Wait," Anakin stopped. "Do you sense that?"

"Yes," Obi-Wan glanced around. "What is it?"

"What is what?" asked Renamon.

"The Force is telling us something," Obi-Wan held up a finger for silence.

After a few seconds, Anakin muttered, "Well, whatever it was, it's gone now."

"I think it's just become more important than ever that we find the shield generator," said Obi-Wan dryly. "Which way now, Anakin?"

"According to the scanner," said Anakin. "The shield generator's in a chamber directly opposite us on the other side of this crater."

"Then what are we waiting for?" asked Renamon. "Let's do we came here to do."

Renamon took a flying leap right off the rail and leapt out into the heart of the crater itself. She landed smoothly on one of the thick spokes of the giant wheel, rotating quite slowly this far down. She ran along it on all fours, her tail held aloft to keep her balanced on the moving thing that could only be called a floor by the fact she was standing on it. She jumped over the crystal at the centre and ran down another spoke, before flipping onto a platform at the far end.

She turned to watch Anakin and Obi-Wan, as they followed her example, a little more slowly than she did because it was slightly more difficult to maintain your balance on the rotating wheel if you went on two feet. But eventually they entered the nearby chamber, the doors sliding shut to allow them in.

"There it is," said Anakin.

Renamon got a brief glance at a long, column like structure at the far end of the room, consisting of two large, metal spheres with large spots of pulsating, blue light across the centre, one on top of the other and separated only by a thick, metal tube, with another connecting the bottom sphere to the floor and another connecting the top sphere to the ceiling, before she was forced to duck as something crackling with pink energy came swinging at her head.

* * *

"Henry! Suzie!" Ahsoka called up to the two Tamers sitting beside the third on the AT-TE. "How are they doing? Are they alright?"

"Oh, they're fine," said Henry, grinning down at the concerned Padawan. "Turuiemon dealt with the droids easily. They had a bit of an argument after that, trying to sort out who had saved the life of the other the most times, but they've decided it's probably roughly equal, comparing this incident with the one on Ryloth where Gargomon blew up the bomb before it hit."

"I have to admit, that was quite an aim he had," said Mace.

"He had a little help from me," said Henry. "I used a targeting card."

"Here they come," said Rika, pointing over to the horizon. Two winged shapes could be seen appearing over a rock formation. The two Champion bunny Digimon with the added dragon wings soared downwards and landed. Both had a clone on their backs, Rex on Gargomon and Cody on Turuiemon. The clones hopped off. Rex somehow looked very relieved to be back on the ground. This was because Gargomon had tried a few aerial tricks that had almost unseated him.

"Rex!" Ahsoka cried, grinning broadly. "Glad to see you made it out of another scrape."

"You've got our friend here to thank for that," said Rex, indicating Turuiemon. "We'd have been toast without her I reckon."

"More like Swiss Cheese," said Gargomon. The clones looked blank, as did all the Jedi with the exception of Aayla, who had learnt that the Digimon were going to continue coming up with random things like this and so she saw no need to get confused by it.

"Any news on Renamon and the others' progress?" the Twi'lek asked, addressing Gargomon.

"They're almost there," said Gargomon. "They're just finishing off the final leg and then that generator will be in pieces before you can say, well, anything."

"Good to hear," Aayla looked up at the large sun. "I'd hate to find out what would happen if that thing was suddenly completely destroyed. For one thing, we'd be plunged into freezing temperatures, standing out here in the open."

They lapsed into silence, staring expectantly at the deflector shield, apprehensively awaiting for the moment where it would flicker and die and they could begin the assault.

Rex and Cody crossed over to Bly and Ponds. "Why is that you two always get the fun ops?" said Bly with a chuckle. "And the more demanding one?"

"We're just that good," Rex chuckled back. "If you ask me, it's something to do with which General you have. If you've got a reckless one like General Skywalker, you've gotta be reckless yourself. And I know General Kenobi is far from reckless, but he often has to do reckless things to keep up with Skywalker."

"Well, General Windu sticks rigidly to the rules," said Ponds. "So we only tend to go for the simplest approach."

"What about you, Bly?" asked Cody.

"I'm not really sure what to think about General Secura," shrugged Bly. "I think that she used to be a little more like Master Windu, but, if you ask me, she'd becoming a bit more like General Skywalker. She's halfway between the two at the moment in my opinion, but slanting to the Skywalker side, if you follow me."

"Why's she doing that?" asked Rex, curiously.

"I reckon it's the Digimon," said Bly. "It's funny, but I can't imagine what we'd be doing here without their help. Heck, I might still be stuck on Christophsis if Renamon hadn't come along."

"You know something else, Bly?" Ponds replied. "I reckon your changing a little as well."

"How so?"

"Well, I'm pretty sure the Bly that I used to know wouldn't take part in a group hug with his General and his friends," Ponds grinned.

"He what?" Rex exclaimed loudly, causing several others to look there way.

"Oh, er, you saw that, did you?" Bly cleared his throat.

"Yep. Had to resist the urge to say aaaw."

"Shut up," Bly rolled his eyes.

"Momentai, Bly," said Rex. "We won't tell anyone. I reckon it's a good thing to build up a very strong friendship with your commanding officers. It means they'll look out for you and trust you, and you can talk to them like you can't really talk to your troops because they're less intimidated by you. Ahsoka and I are even on first name terms when off the battlefield. But I don't think I've ever hugged her," he added.

"Well, Terriermon kinda forced me into that…"

"Don't make excuses Bly," Cody bumped him on the shoulder with a fist. "It's not a problem with us. Why would it be? You keep getting close to General Secura and the Digimon. You mark my words, it'll pay off in the future."

Bly nodded, deep in thought. He'd been very close to the General anyway, before the Digimon had come along. Bly was of the opinion that he couldn't serve under a better General, although he'd never told her that, or anyone who would be able to tell her. But now… it was like a deep reliance had built up between the two, and of course with the Digimon and the Tamers.

Bly had always been told that if you were a soldier, it was foolish to get too close to anyone else because you could easily lose them in combat one day. Now he thought about it, he couldn't imagine what he'd do if any of them – Aayla, Terriermon, Lopmon, Renamon or any of the kids – were killed on the battlefield. He might even cry, and, as far as he knew, no clone had ever done that.

"Whoa!" cried Gargomon, suddenly.

Everyone turned to look at him. "What? What is it?" Rika demanded. "Is it Renamon?"

"Yep," said Gargomon. "The good news is they've reached the shield generator. The bad news is, they're under attack."

"From what?" asked Ahsoka, her eyes widening with worry for her Master.

"Not sure," Gargomon said. "Never seen anything like them. They're droids, grey like a Super, but they're moving around with the grace of commando droids. They've got glowing red eyes, and are wielding a kind of staff with pink, crackling energy at both ends."

"MagnaGuards," said Mace and Aayla at the same time.

* * *

There were five of them, spinning their electrostaffs crackling with pink phrik energy. "Move!" shouted Obi-Wan and the three of them leapt in different directions to avoid the swinging staffs.

Renamon landed and whirled around to watch them. The MagnaGaurds had wrists that could rotate all the way round so they could effortlessly twirl the staffs in one hand and change the direction of the swing so suddenly you could be caught completely off guard. They turned around, seeking out their targets and each of the three found themselves under attack very quickly.

Anakin found himself under attack by two of them. His lightsaber fizzed into existence and blocked a blow aimed at him. Then he jumped backwards as the first MagnaGuard swung at his head, then again, then again and then it cleaved the air downwards at him in an attempt to get under Anakin's guard. Anakin avoided this too, so the guard attempted to plunge the tip of the staff into Anakin's stomach. Anakin turned the attempt aside and spun around to swiftly decapitate the MagnaGuard.

The second came flying at him, spinning the staff, forcing Anakin to flip backwards and avoid it. The MagnaGuard came around again, sweeping the electrostaff in from the side. Anakin deftly parried the blow and the MagnaGuard span around the other way. Anakin leapt over the blow, then parried two blocks in rapid succesdion, before forced to wheel around and block a blow from the decapitated one, which was still going despite being headless. It could still see due to the large photoreceptor in its chest.

Anakin rolled to one side as the second struck out at him again and the first locked its staff with his lightsaber. As he heard the other raising its staff to hit him from beside, Anakin acted quickly. He broke the lock and forced the staff to one side, leapt at the first droid and used its body like a wall, planting his feet against the chest and springing off at to flip over the head of the second. As he came down behind it, his lightsaber carved it from head to groin and it fell in two halves. Anakin whirled to resume his fight with the headless one.

Renamon somersaulted backwards as another came for her. She spotted Obi-Wan duelling with the fifth not far off, but forced herself to focus on the ones attacking her instead. There was one on either side of her now, and the fox was ducking and leaping to avoid getting hit by the pink ends of the staffs. She leapt over a strike from one, and had to flip to avoid the one from the second. She arched her back as another swing went sailing over her face, then continued going and brought her legs over her head as the second one struck at them.

At that point, one MagnaGuard took a swing at her head, while the other went for her pelvic area. Renamon's eyes narrowed and she sprang forward, tucking her arms to her chest and her legs straight out so she was horizontal in the air and sailed between the two staffs. _That does it,_ she thought angrily and she went into a neat roll. She whipped around and dived between them again. Not expecting this move, one MagnaGuard struck out at her but missed and ended up hitting its comrade, stunning and briefly incapacitating it.

Ignoring the error, the MagnaGuard charged her as she wheeled to face it, spinning the staff before it as it came. Renamon held her ground, completely focused, then suddenly, impossibly, she grabbed the staff in mid-twirl with both paws and brought it to a stop. The MagnaGuard faltered in surprise, so Renamon found it easy to haul it off its feet by its own weapon and fling it into the wall. Wrenching the weapon from its grasp, she swung it at a pillar and the force snapped it in two. Grabbing the fallen end, she plunged both crackling ends into the MagnaGuards belly. It spluttered and died. Renamon turned to face the other with two weapons in her hands.

Obi-Wan swiftly blocked a strike at his head with one end of the staff, then moved to block a strike from the other end. He sucked in his stomach and another sweep breathed past it in a vicious arc that forced the MagnaGuard around with its own momentum, but it followed it up by continuing with the circle and swinging around again, where Obi-Wan's blade was there to meet it. MagnaGuards didn't trouble Obi-Wan though. He'd faced them numerous times before in his travels.

"I detest MagnaGuards," he muttered to himself, as he ducked beneath another sweep. They were always a nuisance even if they weren't particularly a problem. Obi-Wan parried two more sweeps and dropped low to the ground, sweeping his foot out. His foot struck the exposed legs of the MagnaGuard and swept them from underneath it. It fell, but still it struck out at Obi-Wan from the floor. Obi-Wan calmly blocked it, then disarmed the droid with a powerful flick, following up with a stab to the chest.

Obi-Wan turned to see Anakin swinging at a headless one and Renamon fencing another double-handedly with two halves of an electrostaff she'd acquired. She appeared to be doing extremely well by herself, but Obi-Wan knew time was of the essence. So he went for the easy option.

He grabbed Renamon's opponent with the Force, raising it into the air and then flung it straight into Anakin's opponent. The two MagnaGuards crashed into the wall in a heap. They began to sit up, the one still with a head shaking it as if to clear it.

"I'll take this," said Renamon, jumping into the air. Her arms crossed and diamonds appeared behind her. **"DIAMOND STORM!"** she cried as she flung her arms outwards. The shards flashed through the air and sliced into the MagnaGuards, reducing them to scrap in a mere few seconds. Bits of MagnaGuards fell to the ground.

"Remind me to stay on your good side," said Obi-Wan. "Anyone who can do that to MagnaGuards is not to be taken lightly."

"So that's what they were," Renamon picked up the head that Anakin had chopped off and inspected the blank face.

"About elite as a droid can be," said Anakin. "The only other thing made of metal that can beat them in combat is General Grievous himself."

"Can wait to meet him," said Renamon dryly. "Anyway, now that we're here, do you think we should do what we came here to do?"

"Good idea," said Obi-Wan. "Anakin, I trust you have the bombs with you."

"Of course," Anakin said, pulling the small devices from his belt pouch. "If you'd care to observe, Renamon. You might have to do something like this someday."

Anakin began to set the charges. He faintly, as he did, of the time back of Christophsis where he'd first met Ahsoka. She'd been tasked with setting charges like this on the side of a shield generator just like this one, except the different design. He placed the flattened side on the generator where it stuck their due to its magnetic clamps. He placed a total of ten of various strategic points on the generator, then grinned and stepped back. Each charge had a blinking light on it, which made them look very ominous for some reason.

"And step back a little," said Anakin. The three of them stepped back to the door they'd walked through and Anakin pressed a button on his wrist.

Instantly, the bombs exploded at the same time. The flash of light caused all three of them to raise their hands to their eyes. When the flash of light cleared, bits of shield generator fell to floor. The whole thing had been completely destroyed.

"That's it," grinned Anakin. "The shield's down. Now, let's see if we can rescue the Senator."

"Patience, Anakin," said Obi-Wan blocking Anakin from exiting by throwing out his arm. "We still need to take out the-"

He was cut off as the reedy voice of a battle droid suddenly blared through the loudspeakers of the station. "Alert!" it cried. "Intruders have accessed shield control! All units to battle stations! Uh, unless you are the intruders… in which case… stay where you are!"

There was a brief pause. Then:- "Was this part of the plan?" asked Renamon.

"Anakin, I thought you were going to disable the alarm," said Obi-Wan.

"I thought you were going to handle it," countered Anakin.

"Somehow I get the feeling this is a common occurrence," said Renamon. "I look forward to the upcoming battle."

"Well, I don't," Obi-Wan placed his fingers to his temples. "This mission didn't need to get any more difficult."

* * *

Up above the ground, Gargomon spoke up again. "Well they whupped the WhateverGuards and now Anakin's put the bombs on the generator thingie."

The Jedi watched him as he watched what was going on in his mind. Then Gargomon said, "Go boom! The generator's been turned to mush."

Everyone turned to glance at the big, blue deflector shield. It flickered slightly for a second, and then died completely, leaving the hole completely exposed.

"Shall we do this?" Aayla remarked to Ahsoka, igniting her blue blade. Ahsoka's green blade leapt out of her handle at practically the same time.

"I think we shall," said Ahsoka.

"Alright boys!" shouted Commander Bly. "Forward!" he shouted, pointing.

"Let's show them the power of a Digimon, eh, sis?" Gargomon rotated his cannons as they started forwards.

Turuiemon's switchblades sprang out in response. "Let's purge them from the system, bro!" she replied.

As the three Tamers ducked back into the AT-TE, the ranks of clones moved forwards, speed increasing, levelling their blaster, with the three Jedi and two Digimon out front. The first attack was from Gargomon, sending a volley of green bolts at one of the laser turrets surrounding the hole.

As the turrets returned fire, they charged!

* * *

Again, so sorry for the delay. Hope the MagnaGuard scene and the promise of a space battle makes up for it.

* * *

Next time...

Will the Jedi manage to seize control? What's happened to Senator Amidala? Where is Kul Teska? Will the weapon be deactivated in time?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 28 : Into The Lion's Den**


	28. Into The Lion's Den

Hello everybody. I'd say sorry about the delay, but since I'm so full of them it's become pretty much a given. But I'm still updating far more frequently than a few I can think of, who take literally months, but oh well.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars earlier today was epic. Best of all, it featured everyone's favourite Twi'lek, Aayla Secura. She only had two lines, neither of which were very long, but she and Master Yoda were up to general awesomeness, bouncing all over the place on top of the enormous Zillo Beast, which, despite the fact my story will be getting more and more canon, will still feature.

Hope everyone likes the space battle and Gargomon's general silliness.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 28:- Into the Lion's Den**

* * *

The turrets were extremely easy to overwhelm. Apparently the Separatists had put altogether too much faith in their deflector shield. There were only five laser guns situated around the gaping crater-slash-cannon-mouth. With over twice as many AT-TE walkers shooting back at them with much more powerful lasers, each one was smashed to smithereens in a mere few seconds.

The clones charged forward, yelling loud warcries and squaring their shoulders. Due to the precariousness of the zone they were charging into, a lot of them had been fitted with jetpacks. Sprinting past the busted turrets, the four clone leaders, Bly, Rex, Cody and Ponds, barrelled towards the edge of the hole and leapt out into space, along with several others.

"Geronimo!" shouted Gargomon after them as he himself pulled to a stop at the edge, along with the Jedi and his sister, and number of jetpackless clones. The clones leaned over the edge and aimed their blasters at any droid they saw. Gargomon joined them, sending a flurry of green down amongst the blue, punching droids in left, right and centre.

The jetpack clones descended sharply and quickly, zipping past the droids and blasting them as they descended the levels before they even knew what was going on. Bly pointed his dual pistols at a group of them running past him as he jetted down and opened fire. They were torn to shreds under his barrage. One of them had the sense to return fire, but Bly was already a level lower by this time. The droid leaned over to seek out his target and was quickly shot in the head by Ponds as he followed Bly down.

Most of the droids pointed their blasters up and aimed for those on the lip of the circular hole, firing between the slowly spinning wheels that the jetpack clones also carefully avoided. But the clones had better cover and were able to pull out of sight if something came their way. One or two were hit and went toppling down into the hole with screams of despair, but mostly they avoided being hit.

Three lightsabers danced a vicious blur of three separate colours as they swung in all directions, catching the lasers that came their way with complete accuracy and sending them hurtling back down the hole. Mace, Aayla and Ahsoka were waiting for the all clear signal before they descended into the hole themselves, but for now they stood in full view of the droids. This was deliberate, to draw the droid's fire their way, as they could block the blasts while the clones couldn't.

Turuiemon crouched beside Gargomon, doing nothing for the time, but ready to spring into action when needed.

Bly and Rex were the first to land on the level halfway down. Cody and Ponds quickly followed, as did fifteen other clones. "Alright, lads!" cried Ponds. "You know what to do. Let's secure the area."

"Copy that!" shouted another clone, and they spread out, rushing through doors and levelling their blaster at thin air or, occasionally, droids, at which point they'd pull the triggers and say hello in their own unique way.

Cody kicked down a door and immediately pulled back when he saw a column of droids marching down the corridor on the other side. "We got Supers inbound!" he shouted, wheeling around the door to set off a volley at the stomping battle droids. Immediately the other clones rushed to his aid and sent bolts flying thick down the corridor. The Supers at the front crackled and collapsed, leaving the ones behind vulnerable as they tried to step over the fallen without tripping.

The battle was brutal but quick, resulting in the death of three clones and all the Supers. Ponds hefted his blaster and pressed the comlink on his wrist. Up above, Mace answered, continuing to deflect bolts with the other hand, along with the Jedi women on either side of him.

"General Windu," said Ponds. "We've successfully secured a foothold in the base."

"Good work, Commander Ponds," replied Windu. "Proceed to the next sector. We're on our way in."

"Sir, yes, sir."

"Well, Padawan," Mace turned to Ahsoka, who turned to him and deflected two bolts without looking. "Do you feel up to the challenge?"

"Does a Hutt smell bad?" grinned Ahsoka. Mace glowered at her, then at Aayla because she'd chuckled.

"Fortunately I've never been close enough to one to find out," said Aayla. "But I've heard rumours."

Ahsoka had been about to apologise for her casual demeanour, but Aayla's apparent nonchalance surprised her. Aayla smirked at her and winked. Ahsoka grinned back. Mace sighed. "What is the Jedi Order coming to?" he muttered.

"I could think of several hilarious answers to that question," said Gargomon. "But are we going into that hole or not?"

"Yes we are," said Mace. "Follow me!"

He leapt into the air and dropped downwards, still deflecting random blasts as he fell. Aayla turned to look at the Digimon, to find that both suddenly had the increasingly familiar dragon wings growing from their backs.

"Got any interesting words for us as we jump?" she asked Gargomon.

"Ho yes," he grinned.

"Let's go!" shouted Turuiemon, and all four of them sprang at the same time, diving headfirst into the abyss. As they descended, Gargomon shouted "COWABUNGAAAAAAAA!"

The two Jedi, with the third a little way ahead, leapt and bounced down from one gently spinning wheel to another gently spinning wheel, while the two Digimon effortlessly pitched around them.

Three STAPs rose up to meet them, the droid riders pointing their constantly firing laser cannons up at them. Aayla and Ahsoka ducked behind a giant spoke, which was bombarded from below.

"Alright," said Ahsoka. "Time to get to get serious."

"Indeed," said Aayla. Then she leapt off the spoke, bringing her legs to her chest and rolling through the air like a cannonball. At the last second she uncurled and rebounded off another wheel and coming to land on the STAP, facing the droid.

"Hey, you're not authorised to be on this thing!" it complained.

"Terribly sorry I didn't know," replied Aayla. "I'll be going then."

Aayla bounced off the STAP, cutting the droid piloting it in the neck before flipping neatly onto a nearby platform. Turning, the Twi'lek saw the other two STAPs get blown to pieces by a grinning Gargomon. Turuiemon then overtook her brother, switchblades primed and hurled two curved blades of light at two Droidekas which rolled onto a platform on the opposite side of the hole. They didn't even get a chance to raise their shields and were sliced to pieces.

Mace landed beside Aayla and Ahsoka bounced down to join them, as Gargomon and Turuiemon swooped in. "Alright," said Mace, turning to Gargomon. "Where are Kenobi and Skywalker? We need to meet up with them as soon as possible."

"Kindly follow the kick-ass bunny!" said Gargomon, landing and running off as his wings disappeared.

"You are so full of yourself," Turuiemon said as she did the same and ran after him.

"Sometimes," he replied. "Momentai."

As they ran, Mace turned to Aayla and said, "I trust you sense it too."

Aayla nodded, all trace of her formerly jocular attitude gone as she said, "Count Dooku?"

"Count Dooku," nodded Mace.

* * *

The _Blade of Dorin_, was a small Delta-7B Aethersprite-class light interceptor, better known as Jedi starfighter. It had the same triangular shape as the others, but it was painted blue, along with streaks of white running from the cockpit to the edges. It belonged to General Plo Koon, and, at the moment, it shot out into space, spinning as it veered the corner and zipped past the cruiser and into the thick of the laser storm.

Flanking it were several V-19 Torrent starfighters. These were piloted by clones and had two folded airfoils coupled with enhanced repulsorlift engines and two blaster cannons on each tip. They moved in a tight V-formation, with Plo at the tip.

"Stay on course," Plo instructed, flicking a lever in the cockpit. "Be prepared for a bit of a fight men. We're heading right for the epicentre. Stay focused. I don't want to lose a single ship if I can help it."

"Don't worry about us, sir," said the clone directly on Plo's right, whose name was, for no obvious reason, Warthog. "We like to be in the thick of things, don't we boys?"

"That we do," said another.

"Contact!" yelled Plo, as a swarm of Vulture Droids surged towards them. "Keep it tight!"

The Vultures opened fire, lighting the vacuum with their red lasers. As usual, the returning fire of the clones and the Jedi was blue and return fire they did. Plo sent his fighter into a spin, avoiding several blasts sent his way and sending back a few of his own. Two Vulture droids exploded into fragments when struck by the missiles.

The clone pilots of the 127th Gunship Wing steered their ships with skill and precision. Soon, the whole area became alive with blasting lasers, as the clones avoided the red ones with carrying tilts and rolls to their ships.

"Two new targets closing!" shouted one of them as two Vulture Droids came zipping in from the side, where the clones were less protected.

"Leave them to me," Plo executed a swift barrel-roll and banked so tightly it didn't seem possible, coming around in the blink of an eye. He unleashed a volley at the Vultures, which met them side-on and vanished in explosions of metallic parts.

As with most space battles, the whole thing dissolved into chaos very quickly. The Vultures that had avoided being blasted down turned around to shoot at the clones from behind. The V-formations split and the clones veered off to escape amongst the melee and cause a little havoc of there own.

One of them, named Shard, sent off two concussion grenades that cannoned through space and blew up three approaching vultures. "Yeah!" he cried. "That's the way to do it!"

"Watch your flank, Shard!" cried another clone called Kay. Shard turned his head to see a Vulture spiralling towards him. He didn't have time to cry out before his fighter was annihilated by the Vulture's firepower, and him with it. With a cry of rage, Kay brutally avenged his fellow clone by blowing the Vulture into a similar number of pieces.

"Nice work, Kay!" said Warthog grimly as he shot of in pursuit of two more.

"Help!" shouted one called Throttle. "I've four on my tail! AAARGH! I'm hit! I'm hit!"

Plo turned to see Throttle's V-19 smoking and lurching dangerously as the four Vultures eagerly tried to finish them off. "Relax, Throttle. I'll take them out!" He swung about and let fly. The unsuspecting Vulture on the left suddenly lost on of its engines and went spiralling out of control, cannoning into all three of the others as Plo whipped past.

"Thank you, sir!" breathed Throttle. "I've got it under control!"

"Good!" said Plo. "I think we've broken them quite well. But, if I'm not mistaken, here come some reinforcements."

"For us or them?" asked Warthog.

"Both," said Plo. And he was quite right. The clones looked back at the cruisers and saw a large number of V-17 Torrent starfighters streaming towards them. At there head was another Delta-7B. This one had a yellow centre, ringed with white and with red edges.

"I thought it would be prudent to give you a helping Master Plo," said Kit from inside it. "I do hope your not offended."

"On the contrary," said Plo. "I find it most welcome. What is the status back on the cruisers?"

"Master Luminara is heading the assault via cruiser. I have faith in her abilities. And we've got some unfriendly company heading our way."

"Let's show 'em what clones are made of," shouted Warthog and they formed up into ranks again, behind and slightly above the row in front to shoot over them.

"Let's make a run for frigates," said Plo. "Keep the fighting away from our cruisers."

Kit and Plo rushed forward at pace and met the oncoming Vultures head on. The clones were right behind the two Jedi, sweeping into the charging Vulture. The two Jedi starfighters barrelled ahead, swaying and dodging blasts flung their way, wheeling around to shoot in all directions. Kit dived down steeply, then came upwards even more steeply to strike the droids almost vertically from below.

Beating back the droids and suffering only a few casualties themselves, the Jedi zoomed in amongst the six frigates. The laser turrets swung around to face them, but they were ineffective against such small prey, which could easily whip past before they'd even sent a laser at them. Plo and Kit wheeled around the bridge of the nearest frigate. Their lasers were successfully stopped by the deflector shields of each individual ship, and so they concentrated on eradicating the fighters first.

"Master Luminara," Kit called into his comlink. "The area between the ships is clear of fighters. Send in the bombers to assist us."

"At once, Master Fisto," Luminara replied. From the bridge of her cruiser, she spoke to a nearby pilot. "Are the Y-wing bombers ready?"

"Prepped and awaiting your order General," said the clone.

"Then I'm giving I to them," she said. "Tell them to get underway. The sooner we can win this battle the better."

"Right away, sir," said the clone, turning to repeat the order.

* * *

"Is it wrong for me to be enjoying this?" asked Turuiemon as she stabbed down into the top of the large crab droid that had climbed over the edge of to greet them. It was already minus both its front legs courtesy of Mace and Ahsoka and now Turuiemon delivered the finishing blow. The photoreceptors went dead and the droid fell to the floor.

"Not in the slightest," Gargomon replied, as punched a Dwarf Spider off the edge and watched it fall into the crater. Beside him, Aayla cut another one in half and levitated the other with the Force, following Gargomon's example and chucking it over the side.

"It would be frowned upon by many Jedi," said Aayla.

"And are you one of them?"

"No. I don't violence per se, but even I can understand why many thick it fun to scrap a droid."

"We'll make you one of us yet," chuckled Turuiemon, stepping off the dead Crab.

"You mean I'm not one of you already?"

"Oh no, you can't be one of us until you go through the initiation ceremony," grinned Gargomon evilly.

"And what's that?" asked Aayla, genuinely curious.

"You have to daub yourself with mud and twigs wearing absolutely nothing then run around the block twice, then stick your head in a bucket and shout the chorus to a Nickeback song called Next Go Round."

Aayla looked surprised, confused and incredulous all at the same time. She glanced at Turuiemon, hoping for an explanation. She got one when Turuiemon said, "Okay, A, you are a dirty minded individual. B, stop making things up just to see what Aayla's reaction will be. There's no initiation ceremony, Aayla. He's being silly."

"Hello?" said Gargomon. "This is me we're talking about. Of course it was going to be silly."

"Touché," said Turuiemon.

"Yes, Gargomon," Aayla scowled playfully and said with a voice that was a mix of menace and amusement. "Do that again and I'll get someone to synthesis pineapple and force-feed it to you."

"Ack. That's not fair," Gargomon protested.

"Not really," said a voice, and everyone turned to see Kyubimon step out of a nearby doorway. "In fact I'd help her out."

"You're so evil," Gargomon stuck out his tongue.

"And telling someone they have to run around naked and sing a song that's ridiculously inappropriate for kids isn't?" his mate replied.

"It was just a bit of fun."

"Yes, and your fun often gets you into trouble. Remember the incident with Yamaki and the custard."

"Oh don't remind me."

"You're going to have to tell me that story sometime," said Aayla, smiling as Anakin and Obi-Wan stepped through the doorway behind Kyubimon – they'd been screened from view by her tails.

"Snips," said Anakin, crossing over to Ahsoka. "Glad to see you made it in one piece."

"In one piece?" asked Ahsoka. "You make it sound like I could have got hurt. Too bad you missed all the real fighting."

"Excuse me, but we had to face five MagnaGuards just now," said Anakin.

"Five on three. Big deal. It was three on one when I had to fight them on Tatooine."

"You mean three on two."

"Stinky doesn't count."

"Lovely little place the Separatists have here," remarked Obi-Wan sarcastically.

"Yes, it's dark purpose is most evident," said Mace.

"You do know that you just jumped into the mouth of a giant cannon don't you?" said Kyubimon.

"Yes, we had figured that much out on our own," said Aayla. "And I might add, that the purpose isn't the only dark thing I can sense somewhere within this place."

"I was hoping I was imagining it," sighed Obi-Wan. "But it looks like we were right Anakin. Count Dooku is somewhere around here."

Ahsoka appeared to be the only Jedi who looked surprised by this, but she'd never met the Count and was less in tune with the Force than the others, as they'd had more practice. She immediately tensed and glanced over her shoulder. "Count Dooku? Here?" she asked.

"Delightful," said Turuiemon. "I've to meet the main antagonist for some time."

"He's not someone to be taken lightly," said Aayla. "He's very skilled with a lightsaber, and has access to a large number of powers the light side of the Force doesn't let you use. I've been fortunate enough to have never faced him in combat and to put it bluntly I'd prefer it if it stayed like that."

"He's that bad?" asked Gargomon, amusement gone.

"Worse," said Anakin. "He cut off my arm."

"Ouch, that doesn't… wait, what?" Gargomon looked perplexed. "Last time I checked, you had two."

Anakin held up his right arm and flexed the fingers. "Mechanical replacement," he said. "You can't see it under the glove and it works just like a real arm, but still…"

"There are far more of us on this mission than there would usually be," said Mace. "Which means we can split up. Any opportunity to capture Count Dooku is too good an opportunity to pass up. But we still have a weapon to destroy."

"We gonna cream Dooku's ass?" Gargomon's fighting spirit rose again.

"Kindly keep a lid on your language," said Mace.

"And on the cream," added Ahsoka, giggling. Anakin and Aayla sniggered.

"And no, you're not," said Obi-Wan. "Dooku is definitely a slippery character. He's escaped our clutches more times than I can remember, even when we had him prisoner, he escaped once." Obi-Wan failed to mention that he and Anakin had been fellow prisoners at the same time by the same people. "If he escapes again we'd like the Secret of the 327th to remain a secret."

"Fair enough," said Kyubimon. "What is the plan then?"

"Obi-Wan and I will handle Dooku," said Mace decisively. "Skywalker and Tano, you go find Kul Teska. Secura, you and the Digimon see what you can do about the weapon."

"What about the Senator?" asked Anakin.

"I'm sure Senator Amidala would prefer you to stop this madness rather than rescue her," said Obi-Wan.

"She sounds like my kind of Senator if that's the case," remarked Turuiemon. "And I don't often say that."

With that, they parted ways again. Mace and Obi-Wan went off together, following the trail the Count Dooku was creating in their minds. The others all went together, as the weapon and Teska were likely to be in very similar places.

Kyubimon couldn't help but notice the way Anakin was grimacing. Looking at him from the corner of her eye as she trotted along beside Aayla, she noted the look of concern and irritation on his features. Apparently he would rather drop everything and rush to the aid of the Senator instead of dealing with the weapon. Or at least that was what she guessed at.

She knew that attachments were forbidden amongst the Jedi, although compassion was allowed. But all the other Jedi were stoically putting duty first and doing what was right, trying to disable the weapon despite the danger to the Senator. But surely Anakin didn't feel that compassionate towards Padme Amidala.

Unless…

Kyubimon shook her head and told herself not to be daft. Anakin knew as well as anyone he could get thrown out of the Jedi order for that.

_But Anakin doesn't always play by the rules, does he?_ Said Gargomon in her head, as he had heard everything.

_No, he doesn't._ Kyubimon frowned. _I think he might need watching._

_You're talking to the master of being incognito._

_That'll be the day. You're useless at surprises._

_Well, with you, surprises are pointless, aren't they?_

Kyubimon laughed quietly. Aayla glanced at her questioningly. Kyubimon nodded to Gargomon, who waved cheerfully. Aayla smiled and shook her head. The whole unflawed connection concept still puzzled her even now.

They stopped when they came to a turbolift. It was an ideal way to get them down to where they wanted to go and be on the lookout for any potential threats at the same time. The droids didn't count, but there were probably plenty of other possibilities lurking about the area in a place like this.

"Where's Bly?" Asked Kyubimon. "And Rex and the others?"

"There's setting up an evac zone so that Artoo can steer the _Twilight_ in," Ahsoka replied. "If things go to plan, this whole place is going to go kablooey and it would be best if we weren't around at the time."

"I agree wholeheartedly," said Aayka, stepping onto the turbolift. The others followed suit and Anakin flipped a switch on the console beside him. The lift juddered slightly and then began to descend slowly.

"Not far now," said Anakin as the six of them watched the base go past around them. There weren't very many droids around here. Most of them had gone up to near the surface in an attempt to stop the invasion force from getting in. They could still hear blaster fire as the fierce battle went on above them.

However, there were still a couple of droids down at this level, patrolling about in an attempt to guard things. But whenever a guard paused to check on who was in the cargo lift, it was either peppered with green lasers, engulfed in blue fire or sliced in half by a flying blade of white light.

"This is almost deceptively too easy," said Gargomon, whirling his cannons.

"Well, you can bet the weapon will probably have a heavy guard somewhere. Possible even Teska himself," said Anakin. "It'll be nice to see the Skakoan again."

"But only so you can beat him this time, right?" asked Ahsoka.

"Too right."

"I'm with ya on that one, Skyguy."

"Leave a piece of the action for me, Zebra-head. Ow!" Gargomon cried out as Turuiemon hit him on the head.

"Is that necessary?" asked Aayla.

"Yes!" said Turuiemon and Kyubimon at the same time. "Everyone who knows him does it, except for Henry," continued Kyubimon.

"But Aayla won't because she's a nice person, right?" Gargomon looked to the Twi'lek.

"Of course I'm a nice person," laughed Aayla, amused by the look on Gargomon's face.

"Or possibly she won't hit me because she goes musth for my cute face as Terriermon. Ow!"

"Indeed," Aayla flexed her fingers. "You've got a head like a rock in this form."

"Serves you right," muttered Gargomon.

"Momentai," said Aayla.

"Don't push it," Gargomon growled.

Everyone else laughed, but then they stopped when the speakers nearby suddenly blared into life. A voice that two of them had heard before and that had a mechanical, buzzing edge to it, said:-

"This is Kul Teska. I hope your listening Jedi, because I know you're coming. I congratulate you on getting past the shield, but hear what I have to say. Surrender yourselves to me immediately. Your precious Senator's life depends on it."

There was a momentary pause, then a woman's voice came through the speakers. "This is Senator Amidala. You must destroy this base at all costs! Do not--!"

But she was cut off and Teska's voice came again. "I grow impatient, Jedi."

There was a long pause, and then Ahsoka said. "Well, at least we know where the Senator is now."

Anakin nodded, grimacing. "I know that look," said Ahsoka. "You're coming up with some wild Skywalker plan, aren't you?"

"It's not that wild," said Anakin. "But I do have an idea. If it works, then we should be able to accomplish three things at once. Or possibly four things."

"Go on," said Turuiemon. "Let's hear this radical plan."

"I say we give Teska exactly what he wants."

"We're going to surrender?" asked Ahsoka, incredulously.

"Not happening," said Gargomon straight away.

"That's not like you, Anakin," said Aayla.

"Whoa, I haven't finished yet," said Anakin.

And he told them his plan. It involved all of them and it was the fastest way to accomplish all of their objectives. It was actually pretty simple as far as his plans went and Ahsoka was surprised that it didn't involve falling some distance of ramming something with a machine. But it didn't, and it might just work.

All five others nodded. They were in.

* * *

Y-wing bombers were a relatively new development for the Clone Wars. They were unique amongst starfighters and had three different weaponry settings. As well as the laser cannons that appeared on all starfighters, they also had two miniature ion cannons capable of immobilizing a craft instead of destroying it and large proton torpedo launchers for larger craft. They were tough and well-shielded, making up for their lower manoeuvrability than other starfighters.

Ten of them were being deployed out of the Republic cruiser that Luminara Unduli stood at, veering about and heading for the battleground. They crossed the gap quickly enough, unhindered by the presence of enemy Vulture Droids, as all of those that remained were dancing in a destructive, whirling brawl around the Separatist frigates.

"Let's get the job done as quickly as possible," said Luminara. "The Y-wings will deal with some of the frigates and we most take out the others as they do so."

"How shall we proceed, General?" asked a clone.

"Tell all command ships to concentrate all their firepower on the frigate to the left of the foremost one. We need to tear them apart one by one."

"Acknowledged, sir," said a clone, repeating the order into the comlinks. Outside, the turrets and laser cannons situated along the length of the Venator-class cruiser swung around and all began to open fire on the same ship. The shields were battered and buckled under the heavy assault and the droids inside lost their footing as the ship shook.

After about half a minute of the constant barrage, the frigate's deflector shields gave way and the lasers began to pummel the hull, slamming into the metal work and causing an explosion with each strike. The frigate did exactly what Luminara had predicted and was torn apart completely, splitting into large fragments and floating purposefully in different directions.

Plo and Kit whirled around the bridge on the rightmost frigate, tantalizing the droids inside who were desperately trying to aim the turrets at them and shoot them down. But two Jedi could rely on their senses in space combat and were capable of rolling out of the way of a shot they didn't even know was coming.

Luminara saw what they were doing. In their urge to destroy the two fighters, the frigate was beginning to peel away from the rest of the group, it's side was suddenly now exposed to anything they decided to throw at it. There was less shielding, deflector or otherwise, on the side as they were designed to be facing the threat face-on.

"This time, concentrate all fire on that ship there," Luminara pointed steadfastly at the frigate. The clones nodded and the turrets swung around again, locking onto the new target and opening fire. The attack caught the ship unawares and it split apart, almost before the droids realised what was happening.

The Y-wing bombers had reached the frigates. In a phalanx they moved forward, flying towards the bridge of the nearest cruiser. "Steady lads," said the lead clone. "Hold the line."

As the turrets turned to face the new threat, the clone gave the order, "Torpedoes away!" he cried, and he pushed the button. Every other clone in the group did the same, while the clones acting as gunners kept the Vulture Droids that were left off their backs. The proton torpedoes made purple streaks as they arced towards the bridge. Deflector shielding made little difference. The bridge exploded and the ship tipped, completely having lost stability.

"General!" cried Warthog. "They're trying to send some bombers of their own to attack our own cruisers." He had spotted some Hyena-class droids detaching from the three remaining frigates and leading a desperate assault on the eight cruisers. While this was unlikely to win the day, it could still cause extensive damage.

"All units target those bombers," shouted Plo. He whirled his starfighter around, dodging some flying debris from a wrecked frigate as he and Kit let loose some lasers. The clones also obeyed the command and turned to pursue. There were very few ships that could have navigated the storm of concentrated lasers sent at the bombers. The bombers were not amongst that group and were blown to pieces.

As the Hyena bombers were wrecked, the Y-wings had moved onto the next target. Similarly, the cruisers had targeted one more frigate and were sending bolts galore down upon it. Another round of torpedoes from the Y-wings wrecked the next frigate as swiftly and efficiently as the first. The ten Y-wings moved on, swooping under the doomed frigate the cruisers were firing at and targeted the other frigate.

Both fell the same way as the others.

"Well," said Kit, steering past the wreckage of a Vulture he'd just blown up. "I think it worked. It seems to me that we've won."

"Let's hope our efforts today and the clones that we lost won't be in vain," said Plo. He activated the comlink and spoke to Luminara. "Excellent job, Master Luminara. Tell me, has there been any word from the planet's surface regarding the progress to the mission?"

"None, as of yet," said Luminara. "Perhaps they're a little bit busy at the moment. I daren't try to contact them for fear of disturbing something that could go wrong."

"Then we're just going to have to wait it out," said Kit. "Not the option I would have chosen, but this is certainly a delicate operation."

"Return to the ships, everyone," said Plo. "Our work here is complete. But be ready to jump to your ships again should they decide to launch another assault."

"You reckon they will, sir?" asked Throttle.

"I am not sure," said Plo. "But it is very possible."

The ships soared thorough space and gently steered through the sliding hangar doors at the front of each ship. Slipping in through the gaps, they clones and Jedi stepped out of their fighters and headed back to the various positions they held. Plo, Kit and Luminara were all having similar thoughts. Unease gnawed at them at the thought of what could be happening down there.

* * *

The _Twilight_ had landed on the platform a few minutes ago. The large doors at the back of the old, upgraded spice freighter, were open and the clones were standing dutifully outside them. Bly, Rex, Cody and Ponds had found securing the evac zone to be no problem at all. All three of them wished that they could be more helpful to the Jedi in this mission, but they also knew that you had a better of succeeding and coming out alive if you were able to use the Force.

So they'd done their job, just like they were supposed to. Cody had sent a scramble-code to he _Twilight_ that had successfully punched through the interference and allowed R2-D2 to lock on to their location and steer the ship in. The clones had chosen the location as it was outside and down in a large crater, a natural one this time and not laser-drilled like the one in there. Artoo had found getting the _Twilight_ there no trouble.

The crater was so deep that they couldn't see the bottom. They could see steam rising from various vents down there when they peered over the edge.

And that was why, when they turned around, they started. Someone was standing on the opposite side of the platform. They hadn't heard him approach.

He was reasonably tall and quite elderly. He had white hair and a white, pointed beard. He was wearing a brown cloak held together over his shoulders by a chain. And in his hand was a curved hilt of what was definitely a lightsaber.

Count Dooku.

A man the clones knew the appearance of well.

None of them had had to face him before and didn't particularly like the idea of it, but all four immediately raised their blasters and opened fire. With a whoosh the red blade of the lightsaber extended and easily parried the shots. Rex was forced to step aside as his own bolt came flying back at him.

The Count pushed out his hand, palm-first, and the clones were suddenly hurled off their feet and thrown backwards into the _Twilight_. Forcefully lowering his palm, Dooku used another Force-burst to slam to door down in front of them, cutting them off from him.

But he wouldn't be Count Dooku if he let them live. Dooku smirked and looked up, where he saw a half-completed walkway that, when fully built, would have spanned the chasm. But there was no need for it now. Wordlessly, Dooku raised a hand. The end of the walkway attacked to the cliff buckled and ripped, until the walkway was hovering above the _Twilight_.

Then the Count let go. The walkway plummeted down, catching the _Twilight_ and tipping it off the platform. Inside, Artoo squealed and the clone yelled as the ship plummeted down, down, down, disappearing into the steam.

Dooku strolled casually to the edge of the platform and looked down. He smiled to himself. There was no sign of the _Twilight_, and he'd successfully cut off the escape route of the Jedi, which meant that the Jedi would be unable to escape, even if they succeeded.

He looked up and said, without turning round, "General Kenobi and Master Windu." He turned to face the two Jedi Masters who were standing side by side several metres behind him.

"What an unexpected honour," crowed the Count. "I'm pleased to see tour duties on the Jedi Council have not prevented you from visiting this facility. It is impressive, isn't it?"

Obi-Wan was extremely tempted to say that he'd something far more impressive than this, or rather, three somethings far more impressive than this, but telling Dooku about the Digimon would be stupid and serve no purpose at all. So, instead, he said, "Only in it's scale of malice, Dooku."

Obi-Wan tensed himself slightly, as he prepared himself for the inevitable lightsaber duel. The last time he'd faced the Count in open combat, he'd lost and had both an arm and a leg damaged by Dooku's red blade. He wasn't going to let that happen a second time.

Dooku frowned at him. "Ever the righteous one, Obi-Wan," he said. "Much like your former Master."

Obi-Wan resisted the temptation to scowl back. This man was a blot on his memory of Qui-Gon Jinn. He had been the one to train Qui-Gon, just as Qui-Gon had trained him, he'd trained Anakin and Anakin was training Ahsoka. Yoda himself had been Master to Dooku, and the little Jedi had considered it to be one of his greatest failings. Yoda was willing to allow Dooku back into the Jedi Order if he so chose. Most other Jedi didn't hold this view.

"I'd expect nothing less of a Jedi," Dooku was saying.

"Our forces have complete control over this base, Count Dooku," said Mace, taking a step forward. "It's over. Lay down your weapon and surrender."

Dooku's frown deepened. "You overstate your position, Master Windu," he said. "I assure you, not only is this facility fully operational, but you are far from in control."

"You had your chance, Dooku," said Mace. Purple and blue flared as two lightsabers flared into life. Dooku raised his own before his face in a warriors salute, before lowering it into the Makashi stance.

He attacked.

So did Obi-Wan.

Their lightsabers clashed briefly and drew back again. Obi-Wan swung at Dooku's stomach, but the Count took a step backwards and avoided the blow. Dooku struck out and Obi-Wan side-stepped, parrying at the same time. Then the two swung forward red ground against blue, both straining to gain the upperhand. But neither particularly wanted to draw it out and Dooku withdrew. Dooku feinted for Obi-Wan's head, then swung low for the feet, but Obi-Wan spotted it and sent his blade down to meet it.

Mace leapt into the fray next and took a swing for the Count's head. The tip of Mace's lightsaber narrowly missed Dooku's hooked nose and the Count quickly sent two quick slashes at Mace in retaliation. Mace hurriedly blocked them both and crashed his blade back down towards Dooku. Dooku had to use both hands on the hilt to block the powerful blow – up until that point he'd only been using one hand. Obi-Wan swung low while Mace kept him occupied, trying to incapacitate him, but the Count jumped, flipping over Mace. Both turned to strike at the other and their blades clashed again.

Dooku stepped back quickly as the two of them double-teamed him. Blocking Mace and deflecting Obi-Wan, the Count was driven backwards across the platform. His blade flashed and caught Obi-Wan's blade, but he was forced to dodge Mace's own swing as he did so. Two against one was never particularly good odds when you had only one weapon. He spun around and blocked three quick strikes from Obi-Wan and two from Mace all in succession, ducked under a blow to the head and stepped back from a stab from Mace.

"Why don't you just stop this now, Dooku?" asked Mace. "It'll be easier on all of us. We'll give you a fair trial."

"Oh no, Master Windu," said Dooku. "You won't give me a trial at all."

Seizing an opportunity, Dooku dodged swiftly to one side and his blade flashed towards Mace. As Mace caught the blow, Dooku's foot lashed out and caught Obi-Wan in the chest, causing him to stumble backwards. Dooku broken off the blade-lock against Mace and ran backwards, putting distance between them and Obi-Wan before making his move. And he and Mace traded blows, and Obi-Wan dashed towards them, Dooku sent a heavy crate hurtling towards Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan cleaved through it with no problem, but he was almost struck by what came next. Dooku, switching back to one-handed style, had pointed his arm at Obi-Wan and sent a sudden burst of lightning streaking from his fingertips. Obi-Wan rolled to avoid it, just. The lightning followed him and Obi-Wan brought up his lightsaber to catch the effort. The blade absorbed the lightning and Obi-Wan stood up, dashed forward and leapt into the air, blade raised.

Dooku batted Mace away and rose to meet the strike, leaning backwards as Obi-Wan put most of his weight into the blow. Dooku shoved him off and parried another that could slice through his chest. Mace came back for a swing at his midsection and Dooku stooped to block it, before making a lunge of his own. Mace casually jumped to one side, and span to return a strike that Dooku avoided. Obi-Wan took a swing at Dooku while his balance was slightly off and Dooku backflipped over it.

"Enjoy your little victories, Jedi," said Dooku, still smiling confidently. "But do not expect to enjoy them for long."

Then Dooku leapt for Mace. Mace ducked under one blow, side-stepped a second and blocked the third, then thrust out his hand and used the Force to push Dooku back slightly. Dooku responded with another burst of Force Lightning, that Mace parried easily. Then, he and Obi-Wan moved their blades in synchrony and strike down simultaneously. Dooku tipped his own blade across himself horizontally to parry both at once. He leaned over as Obi-Wan's blade came back for his head, retaliating quickly.

Obi-Wan leapt backwards and Mace went in from a low strike. Dooku leapt, using the Force to aid him and it carried him over to the other side of the platform. Obi-Wan was the first to reach him again and Dooku hurriedly parried a shot Obi-Wan brought in from the side. Mace dashed forwards and Dooku sent a blast of Force Lightning at him to keep him occupied while he focused on Obi-Wan. Using his mind, as he swung for Obi-Wan and was blocked again, he sent two large sheets of metal flying at Obi-Wan's unprotected back.

"Behind you, Kenobi!" shouted Mace. Obi-Wan took the hint and cartwheeled to one side, forcing Dooku to jump high again to avoid his own projectile.

Landing some distance off, Dooku turned and said, "Shall we end this?"

"You cannot hope to defeat both of us, Dooku," said Obi-Wan.

"We shall see," Dooku raised his blade. Obi-Wan and Mace raised theirs.

Abruptly, the duel came to end when the entire platform suddenly lurched. The area that joined it to the cliff wall buckled and snapped and the entire thing began to tip over and slide downwards into the crater. Dooku, Mace and Obi-Wan stepped apart, bewildered as to this sudden course of events. Then the answer presented itself when the _Twilight_ rose into their line of view. Rex and Bly were standing by the open back door.

Mace and Obi-Wan took their cue and, gathering the Force, they leapt, landing on the ramp on the back of the _Twilight_. They turned to look back and saw both Dooku and the platform drop downwards and vanish amongst the steam.

"Hope you don't mind our little intervention," said Bly cheerfully. "But we felt that we owed him one, after _he_ knocked _us_ off the cliff."

"Payback time," agreed Rex.

"Well, he's been defeated," said Mace. "But I can still sense him. He's not dead."

"Trust a Sith Lord to refuse to die," muttered Bly. Cody and Ponds walked out onto the ramp from where they'd been manning the guns.

"Is General Skywalker with you?" asked Rex.

"No," said Obi-Wan. "I was hoping we was already on board."

Rex shook his head. "No sir."

"Trust Anakin to be late," said Obi-Wan. "Well, let's find another landing spot so that we can wait for him, Aayla, Ahsoka and the Digimon to finish their tasks."

"And we'd better hope they do it quickly," said Mace. "Time's running out."

As the _Twilight_ winged away, another shuttle rose from the steam below, a Steathipede-class transport shuttle. Standing on the prow was Dooku, glaring furiously up at the empty sky. At the controls was Asajj Ventress, having successfully escaped the ice cave she'd been trapped in and come to the aid of her Master. She'd been on Behpour for some time waiting until she was needed. Now, the two of them, defeated, had to wait until the Republic presence left before they could attempt to get past the space blockade.

* * *

Henry, Suzie and Rika had been watching what had been going on the entire time through their D-Arcs. They heard every word, seen every droids and watched every battle that had taken place since their partners had gone down there. Watching through the eyes of their partners was an unusual perspective, but it would have to do. They could see that if they'd been in there it would have seriously impeded everything. They just didn't have time to watch kids.

There were also a number of clones watching what was going on over their shoulders. They'd retreated to a safe distance too, so that when the place blew, if it blew, they wouldn't be in danger. The clones had laughed uproariously at Gargomon's comments, particularly the one about the initiation ceremony. Suzie had looked a little shocked at that point, and Henry decided to have a word with his partner about what he said on the battlefield when concerned partners could be watching.

They watched as the turbolift came to a stop at the bottom of the facility.

"Okay, you remember the plan, guys," said Anakin. "You three," he pointed to the Digimon. "Know that we should really do our best not to let the Senator see you. Despite the fact I believe we could trust her and I don't like this secret-keeping," he sighed, "We shouldn't take any chances."

"You sound like your talking for experience," said Kyubimon.

"Nope," said Anakin. "Just doing what's best for the war to swing our way. You know what to do?"

"My specialty," said Gargomon. "As I already proved earlier today. We make a lot of noise to draw out the droids guarding this area because there are bound to be some, allowing you three to sneak past them and get to the weapon and Teska."

"None of our attacks are particularly loud," said Turuiemon. "Suzie. I know your watching. And you other Tamers too. You reckon you could give us a few boosts."

"Of course," said Rika, eagerly flicking through her pack for the loudest attack. "Just give me the signal."

"Let us get out of sight first," said Aayla.

"Good luck, A-Team," said Gargomon.

"A-Team?" asked Ahsoka.

"What? All your first names start with A, so you're the A-Team."

"Is this one of those moments where we hit him?" asked Ahsoka.

"Not you too," said Gargomon.

"No," said Turuiemon. "I actually quite like that. I agree. Good luck, A-Team. It has a ring to it."

"Well, whenever you're ready," said Anakin. The A-Team, so dubbed by Gargomon, powered through the air much higher than any normal humanoid should be able to do. Then came to land on a ledge above the large doorway where they assumed the droids would emerge from.

"Let's get loud," said Kyubimon.

The three Tamers up above took that as their cue, which was a good thing because it was, and swept their cards one at a time through the slots in their D-Arcs.

"Digi-modify!" shouted Henry. "Magnamon's Magna Blast Activate!"

"Digi-modify!" yelled Rika. "Tortomon's Strong Carapace Activate!"

"Digi-modify!" echoed Suzie. "Mekanorimon's Wind Beam Activate!"

"Wake up, ye lazy robots!" shouted Gargomon, as his cannons glowed yellow. "Here's a nice wake-up call for you. **MAGNA BLAST!"**

The golden burst of energy that surged from hands smashed the wall beside the door, causing a large part of it to cave in. There were, indeed, Super Battle Droids waiting on the other side. Several of them were caught in the blast and fell as wreckage, but the others marched forward through the gap Gargomon had created and opened fire on the three of them.

What appeared to be some kind of large, red photoreceptor appeared on Turuiemon's chest. **"WIND BEAM!"** she bellowed, unleashing a massive blast at the rows of advancing Supers. Her attack sliced through the first few rows and smashed into the wall beside them, revealing yet more Supers that joined the effort.

Kyubimon stood strong, tilting forward so her back was presented like a target to the Supers. This wasn't a problem, because her usual yellow fur on her back had been replaced with rock, or rather what appeared to be lots of tall, jagged boulders.

"Eat dirt," she said, then cried, **"STRONG CARAPACE!"** The rocks fountained towards the droids in a barrage, replenishing and being fired again. The droids were mown down under the thunderous bombardment, creating a cacophony that rang throughout the station. Then, all three Digimon leapt forward and began to fight with their normal attacks.

The idea was quite simple. The Digimon should be more than capable of taking of the droids, so, when they'd finished, they could come help the others once they'd got the Senator out of danger. And, as the battle raged and bits of droid began to fly all over the place, along with chunks of debris, the three Jedi dropped silently from their hiding places behind the droids and to the floor. Slipping through the hole in the wall, they hurried down the corridor.

Kul Teska was somewhere out there. So was Padme Amidala. They were two beings that Anakin desperately wanted to find, but for entirely different reasons.

And not far away, in one of the nearby vents, a dark, shadowy figure listened to the cacophony of the Digimon destroying the droids. "Someone's angry," he muttered to himself, unable to see who was make the noise but not unduly bothered by it either way. He turned and kept crawling.

* * *

Hope you liked it. Next chapter draws this story arc to a close. Then I'll be able to start doing my completely original stuff, which I've been looking forward to for a while now. Please review, and thank you for your patience,

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Next time...

The rest of Anakin's Master Plan. Showdown with Kul Teska. Identity of Mystery Figure revealed. And best of all... well, don't want to give too much away.

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Coming up:- **Chapter 29 : Cyborg Warrior**


	29. Cyborg Warrior

Quick update this time. I just couldn't wait to write this chapter, due to the awesome stuff I had been planning for it for some time. Please read and review and I hope that everyone enjoys it, because I have to work harder on my Theatre Studies to make up for the time I spent writing this instead.

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 29:- Cyborg Warrior**

* * *

Kul Teska was standing beside the column that was the enormous weapon he'd painstakingly constructed. He was fiddling with the quad-cannon arm that he'd had to replace when the Jedi had sent a missile shooting back at him on Ryloth. He carefully adjusted a few switches. The weapon had been completed and was fully operational now. All he had to do was wait until the sun reached the prime position, and then the various battle droids dotted in their positions about the station would be able to arm and fire.

His job with the weapon had been completed, but there was another job at hand – the extermination of the Jedi that had infiltrated his base in order to sabotage it. Once they'd gone, there was nothing anyone could do from fulfilling his brilliant plan.

Not that there was anything that anyone could do about it anyway. The design was too good. There was no way in hell that they could succeed.

"I'm here, Teska!" shouted a male voice. Teska looked up. Striding purposefully across the room towards him, a stony expression across his face, was Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, The Hero With No Fear.

Ha. Teska would change that.

Anakin stopped several paces away from Teska, arms by his side in a non-offensive position that clearly indicated he was surrendering. Teska, under the face-plate that hit his mouth, smirked triumphantly. Pointing an accusing finger at Anakin, he said, "No tricks, Jedi. Or we'll see if my little birdie here can fly."

He pointed upwards. Anakin looked up to see Padmé, his secret wife, dangling from the ceiling some way up, her wrists cuffed in binders and attached to a long cable that left her hanging from the ceiling with her arms above her head. If she was pushed, she'd go swinging.

"I thought my orders were clear, Master Jedi," said Padmé, but she knew full-well that there was no chance that Anakin would listen to them when she gave them.

"They were, Senator," said Anakin, confirming Padmé's thoughts for her. Padmé fought the urge to roll her eyes and sigh. Anakin could really exasperate her sometimes. Both of them were also speaking in the formal way they spoke to each other when anyone else was around. Both thought they'd done quite well at concealing their marriage.

"Your weapon, Jedi," Teska held out his hand. "Hand it over."

Anakin scowled, but he'd known Teska wouldn't let him keep the blade. He picked it off his belt, glanced at the handle affectionately, then tossed it towards Teska. The Skakoan mercenary caught it and looked at it with a mixture of amusement and fascination.

"Unlike General Grievous, I have no interest in trophies," said Teska. "However, I've always wanted to examine one of these Jedi toys." He placed the lightsaber on his own belt and stared imperiously down at Anakin.

But as he was talking, Padmé's started to suddenly move, very slowly and quietly, through the air. Thankfully, Padmé repressed the gasp of shock as she suddenly started floating backwards, so Teska remained oblivious. Looking over her shoulder, Padmé saw Ahsoka on a raised platform on the other side of the room, along with a Rutian Twi'lek she recognised to be Aayla Secura. She never really spoken to the Twi'lek, but Padmé knew she was a skilled Jedi.

Both of them had one of their hands outstretched to her and their lightsaber hilts in the other. They were using the Force to pull Padmé out of danger as Teska crowed over what he though was a defeated Anakin.

Padmé was surprised. For Anakin, this was remarkably subtle. Usually he just went in, lightsaber blazing.

Teska was still talking. "I'm not accustomed to Jedi behaving with such cowardice. Naturally I suspect a trick, but you're out of options this time, Jedi."

Ahsoka grimaced at Teska's barefaced cockiness. She and Aayla glanced at each other, then continued to pull the Senator slowly and quietly out of the way.

"My Gravitic Corisation Beam is only moments away from collapsing the Naboo Sun," Teska continued his monologue.

"So, you're telling me I've still got some time," Anakin said, determined to keep Teska's attention on him.

"There is nothing you can do to stop this weapon from firing now," Teska replied.

"Don't count your nerfs before they're born," said Anakin. This was a phrase he'd adapted from the Digimon's one about chickens, to one that would make sense to anyone else.

"I suppose I have my answer," Teska glowered.

Anakin couldn't help it. He glanced up to see how Padmé was doing. Immediately as he did, Teska whipped around to see what he was looking at and spotted Padmé some distance off and Aayla and Ahsoka pulling her away.

"Jedi!" he cried and raised his quad-cannonletting flying with a volley of shots at the defenceless Padmé. All pretence gone, Aayla swung her hand and Padmé, still attached to the ceiling by the cable, suddenly went swinging sideways out of the way. The bolts soared through the gap where Padmé now wasn't towards where Aayla and Ahsoka still were. Ahsoka's lightsaber jumped out of the hilt and batted the shot away quickly. The Togruta leapt down to the floor, continuing to deflect the shots, and cartwheeling to present a harder target.

Anakin leapt towards the swinging Padmé and grabbed cable she was swinging by so he was hanging next to her. Ahsoka's hand shot out and Anakin's lightsaber detached from Teska's belt and flew into her hand. Turning briefly she tossed the hilt up to Anakin, then backflipped to avoid getting hit by more blasts.

Anakin grabbed the lightsaber, ignited it and quickly severed the binders. The two of them dropped like stones. Aayla's hands shot out and grabbed both of them with the Force, quickly levitating them towards her.

"Well, that went reasonably well," said Aayla, placing them on the floor.

"Yes," said Padmé, "Thank you for rescuing me, Anakin. You too, Aayla."

"Don't thank us yet," said Anakin, grimly. "Unfortunately, you have a part to play in this plan of mine as well. I need you and Aayla to go and sabotage the weapon."

"Me?" asked Padmé. "What about you?"

"Ahsoka and I will take down Teska," said Anakin. "If he escapes, he'll just make more of these weapons, and who knows how many star systems won't be as lucky as Naboo?"

"But he said there's no way we can stop it."

"I think he's generally overconfident," said Aayla. "But we have an idea. We're not going to shut down the weapon. We're going to overload it. If we do that, it'll explode when the droids try to fire and take the whole station with it. I will help you get through any droid forces on our way to a power regulator, then I shall double back and help these two against Teska. He's going to be a tough customer."

"But…" said Padmé, then a droid voice came through the loudspeakers.

"Attention," it said. "Arming sequence completed. All personnel to firing positions."

"We don't have time," said Anakin. "Hurry, you two. Senator, when you're done, head for the landing platform. Rex and the other clones should be there with the _Twilight_. We'll meet you there before this place goes boom."

"Okay," nodded Padmé. "Lead the way, General Secura."

"Please, call me Aayla," smiled Aayla as she turned and the two women headed for the nearest door. Anakin jumped down, lightsaber igniting, to land beside Ahsoka, who'd been blocking Teska shots at her the whole time.

"About time, Skyguy," she said.

"Sorry, Snips. You know how it is. Senators to rescue, galaxies to save."

"You can't even save yourselves, Jedi," spat Teska. "Let alone anyone else."

"Can we shut this guy up already?" asked Ahsoka.

"You need to ask?" Anakin smirked. Then the two leapt forward.

* * *

Super Battle Droid number forty-seven crashed into the wall headfirst, then was picked up and thrown again, smashing into two of his fellow Supers. Kyubimon had a firm grip on his feet with her tails and she was hurtling around the room and using him as a flail, batting other droids to the ground. She already done this with two other Supers, but had dropped them had grabbed another when they'd been mangled beyond all recognition, and usefulness as a weapon.

The Supers were attempting to follow them, but the manufactures had programmed them with the ability to turn very fast, because they were designed to march steadfastly forward like a wall. And Kyubimon was mostly a yellow streak across the room so they were finding it difficult to hit her.

Kyubimon pulled to a halt and rammed another Super with her own. It flew backwards and was impaled on Turuiemon's switchblade. The bunny warrior flung it aside and went to work with her lightning-fast fists. She skewered a droid in the face, slashed the arm off another and finished it with a strike to the head, sidestepped a couple of shots thrown her way before plunging both blades into the droid responsible and lifting it upwards and dumping it over her shoulder.

Then she leapt at three more with a cry of **"LIGHTNING KUNG-FU!"** Her fists blurred as they lashed out again and again and again, each one zooming out thirty times a second. The Supers were twisted and battered into hulks of useless metal before they even hit the ground.

As Turuiemon leapt upwards to continue her attack, Gargomon hailed down more Supers that had been aiming to shoot at her. His green lasers flicked through the air like a swarm of angry wasps, unleashing their sting countless times upon the droid hordes. The cannon-wielding bunny wheeled about to send off another Super. Then he spotted a Super with a rocket launcher for an arm levelling it at him.

Diving to one side, Gargomon rolled as the missile hit the ground where his feet had been, sending up several shards of shrapnel. "I can play rough too," he declared, springing to his feet and darting forwards. His cannon crashed into the Super and sent him flying backwards, bowling other Supers like a large, limbed bowling ball. Gargomon finished the job with another round of lasers.

It was quite clear that the droids were losing. Three against over seventy opponents isn't supposed to good odds for the three, but since they were Champion-level Digimon, the odds were actually very much in their favour. Kyubimon tossed her damaged Super away, as Turuiemon planted her hand through the back of another so it came out the other side, and Gargomon finished off the last one with kick to the face.

As it fell over, so did he. "Ow," he said, as he hit the floor. "I'm not gonna try and do that again."

"What an anti-climatic end to a big battle," said Kyubimon, chortling at her mate's misfortune.

"Ha ha. I forgot how to laugh."

"Well, you obviously haven't because you said Ha Ha, which is what you do when you laugh."

"Shut up, you."

"Well," said Turuiemon, glancing towards the massive hole the three Jedi had disappeared through. "You reckon they've done it and rescued the Senator yet. Might not be a good idea to go barging in until she's gone off to do her job."

"Just for once, I'd like to take a little break before we move on to the next round of fighting," said Gargomon.

"We don't want to take any chances," said Kyubimon. "I vote we wait her for a couple more minutes and then get moving. The Jedi are efficient and I'm pretty sure they'll have done it by now, but I want to be sure."

"Ever the organised one," said Gargomon, still sitting on the floor. "I agree with you."

"Of course you do. You always agree with me."

"Well, not always but mostly."

So the three of them waited for just a couple of minutes longer. They stared at the hole in wall, half expecting another wave of Supers to come marching through it in another dogmatic and futile attempt to stop them from succeeding. None came.

"Alright," said Kyubimon. "Let's move."

The three of them rushed into the corridor.

* * *

Aayla swept around the corner and dashed down the corridor. Padmé was right behind her and the two of them sprinted through the base at top speed. Aayla was leaning forward slightly to minimise air resistance and her lightsaber handle was firmly clasped in one hand. She was much faster than Padmé, and had to keep slowing down to allow the Senator to keep up.

Padmé, despite her reluctance to get into any real fighting, couldn't help but feel slightly jealous of Aayla, who got to work alongside Anakin far more often than she did. Padmé knew they'd been friends since they were both Padawans. Anakin sometimes spoke of her, and he always held her in quite high regard, but she'd never had the chance to talk to Aayla before. Whenever she'd seen Aayla she'd been in a meeting, or on the battlefield on Geonosis.

"So, how did you get mixed up in all of this?" asked Padmé as they ran. "I thought only Anakin, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan were here to destroy the place."

"Yes, those three always do work together," said Aayla. "But Master Windu and I also came to help. I was one of those who discovered the location on Alzoc III where the core of the weapon was stolen from the Separatists. Now they've got it back, and since I was there at the time I got called in to help too. There really wasn't any time to wait for reinforcements."

"Well, it doesn't look like you needed them," said Padmé. "I'm impressed by how you Jedi can make this stuff look easy."

"Oh, it was far from easy," said Aayla. "I won't pretend that we do find these things easy. But we do what can, and fortunately it was enough."

Padmé could see why Anakin talked highly about the Twi'lek. She was modest and completely not cocky, but committed and dedicated to her cause. She was definitely a Jedi. And she appeared to make friends easily.

"How much further to go Gener- uh, I mean, Aayla?" asked Padmé.

Aayla glanced across at her. "Not too far, but I doubt we'll get there without meeting some kind of resistance."

And she was proved right a few corners later. Another gathering of Super Battle Droids was marching down the corridor. There were a few ordinary battle droids at the front of the line. Most of those droids appeared to have gone to their firing positions. Aayla pulled to a halt instantly and put out her arms to stop the Senator.

"Halt. Surrender," demanded one of the B-1s.

"How likely do you think that's going to be?" asked Aayla, her blade bursting from the hilt. Padmé almost laughed. That was something that Anakin might have said. Aayla was similar to him in many ways, and his polar opposite in others.

"Uh," said the droid. "I don't know."

"Zero," said Aayla. She raised her hand and grabbed the droid with the Force, whisking him forward down the corridor and hacking off his arm, then head with her blade. The bit of droid fell to the ground, and Aayla levitated the blaster.

"How's your aim, Senator?" she asked.

"Quite good," said Padmé, grabbing it. "And please, call me Padmé."

"Will do," Aayla advanced forwards.

"Blast 'em!" shouted a droid.

"Roger, roger," said many others.

Then the laser fire began. Swinging her blade in spinning circles, Aayla ran to meet them, smacking the myriad of bolts flying towards her. Within several large strides, she was amongst the droids and she took no prisoners. Leaping onto the wall and bouncing off it, she swept her blade straight through the centre of one Super, grabbed both falling halves with her mind and sending them smacking into the ones on either side of her, which quickly fell prey to the whirring blue plasma blade. Double-pirouetting, she span her blade through the abdomen, then the legs of another. Bringing the blade up again, she carved a chunk out of the side of another, and span to bring the blade slicing through the rest of it.

Aayla leapt into a diagonal downward sweep through another, brought her blade up to catch one that would have hit her in the face and sending it back into the owner. Springing forth, she carved through one on the upswing and then the one behind it on the downswing before she touched the floor, and then she span again to sever the upper body from the rest of another. Then she pushed her hand out and four more slammed into the walls on either side of them.

Padmé, as she took out the droids that Aayla swept past, was impressed. As she sent single bolts whizzing into the droids with pinpoint accuracy, she watched Aayla strike down over twice as many than she did. She'd only ever seen Aayla in action once before, briefly on Geonosis, when she'd brought down three Geonosians _in mid-air._ She blasted a B-1 in the end, sent two shots thudding into the chest of another and punched a hole in the side of a Super that had turned to try and shoot at Aayla. A second Super doing the same got a shot in, but Aayla's blade appeared over her shoulder and redirected it back at the Super. She hadn't even been looking.

As Aayla swept her blade through the last two Supers and Padmé's shots took out the three remaining B-1s, Aayla sheathed her blade and turned back to Padmé. "You've got skill with a blaster," commented the Twi'lek.

"I wish I had your skill with a lightsaber, but I daren't try to use one," said Padmé. "Now, where's the power regulator."

"Momentai. It's just over here."

"Pardon?"

Aayla mentally slapped herself. Terriermon's catchphrase seemed to be a bit too infectious. She'd spoken without thinking. However, her face gave nothing away as she said, "Twi'leki word that means Don't Worry or Take It Easy."

"Oh. Okay."

Aayla led Padmé to the regulator. As Padmé knelt down beside it, Aayla said, "Now you're armed, you should be able to make your way back to the landing platform relatively easily. I'll now go back and help against Teska. May the Force be with you."

"And you," said Padmé, as Aayla turned and sprinted past the dead droids and back the way they'd come. Then she turned to the power regulator and the flashing buttons all over it. "Alright, Padmé," she muttered to herself. "Time to save your system."

* * *

"Where's your clone army now?" Teska laughed as he hovered above the ground, out of reach of the lightsabers of the Jedi. His boots gushed with the rocket-fire needed to keep him aloft and he darted out of reach of the Jedi as they kept running towards him. He continuously fired his quad-cannon at them, the red lasers forcing them to go on the defensive.

"Stand still and fight us properly," shouted Anakin, his blade flicking as he hopelessly tried to get closer.

"If you think I'm just going to comply with your demands then you're sorely mistaken. I've seen those lightsabers of yours at work. I know what damage they can do. I am far from a fool, Jedi."

"Alright, then," Ahsoka growled. Grabbing a bunch of crates with the Force, she cried, "Why don't you try these?"

The crates tumbled through the air towards Teska, but his huge, red personal deflector shield sprang up out of nowhere. The crates rebounded on it and went flying in all direction, except for the last one. That became the victim of Teska's chest laser. The shield dropped and the long yellow beam erupted outwards, punching through the crate and spearing towards Ahsoka. The Padawan leapt backwards just in time and landed on her backside in an undignified way. "I hate it when he does that," she muttered.

"Wretched Jedi!" Teska roared as he tried the trick where he enshrouded himself in flames and cannoned towards Anakin. Anakin hurled himself aside and attempted the swing about and swipe through the Skakoan, but he'd shot past already.

Ahsoka ran forward again, just as a Crab Droid entered through the doorway and scuttled towards her. "Hey, you didn't tell us you were bringing friends," she protested, as she brought her lightsaber forward to deflect the shots it fired at her.

"Fair's fair," said Teska, mockingly. "Two on two is much better than two on one."

"Oh yeah?" Ahsoka asked dodging back as the Crab lunged for her. "Well, try this!" She suddenly dived forwards and rolled onto her back so she was underneath the Crab. As it tried to scuttle away, Ahsoka pushed up with her arms and shoved it high into the air with the help of the Force. It sailed at Teska, who had obviously not been expecting this move and only just managed to dodge. The thrusters faltered slightly and he dropped, but they quickly recovered.

"All right, then," said Teska. "This ends here and now, Jedi!" He began to soar upwards, rising higher and higher into the room. In response, Anakin and Ahsoka hurriedly scaled the walls by leaping from platform to platform. They squared off again, Anakin and Ahsoka standing on a heavy pipe. Teska's lasers came flying at them again, but, once again, they blocked it.

"It's over, Teska!" Anakin cried at him. "You won't win."

"I beg to differ, Jedi," said Teska as his shoulder-pads opened up again to reveal the twelve missile holsters hidden inside. "This is far from over."

"Commence primary weapon hub lockdown in three…" said a battle droid over the speakers. "Two… One…"

"Good, it's about to start!" laughed Teska. "But as for you, I've had enough!" Two of the missiles fired out towards the Jedi. They separated as the missiles struck the pipe where they'd been and it exploded into pieces. Leaping from ledge to ledge, Anakin and Ahsoka hurriedly avoided the lasers and missiles heading their way. Up here, there were no crates to throw at him, and with him hovering out in space and with them confined to the walls they couldn't get anywhere near him. Anakin managed to send one hurtling back at him, but Teska dodged it with irritating ease.

Master and Padawan re-met on the opposite side of the room and Teska swooped into the middle. Behind him, the huge column that was the weapon was suddenly filled with huge, red laser, that made a humming, whistling noise that signalled it was charging up for a burst of explosive power.

"Great," said Ahsoka. "I suppose this is all part of the plan too."

"Actually, Snips…" Anakin trailed off. The two of them leapt onto another pipe and turned to face Teska once more. The Skakoan soared towards them, triumph in his remaining eye, as flame began to flicker around him again.

But, as he did, a red blaster bolt suddenly shot past his chest. "What?" he cried and pulled to a halt, which was a big mistake. Another bolt struck him in the foot. The jet thrusters promptly went out on control and Teska, shot backwards, crashing into the weapon, and landing with a heavy thud on one of the circular ledges the laser ran through the centre of. Anakin and Ahsoka sharply looked up at the dark figure on the ledge above.

A dark figure with a cowboy hat.

"Who's side are you on?" Ahsoka shouted up at him.

"His own," answered Anakin.

"No-one messes with Cad Bane," growled the Duros Bounty Hunter, before holstering his blaster and turning to leave. He vanished from sight.

"A lone gunman?" Teska said, getting to his feet. He turned to the Jedi and said, "His attempts are as futile as yours. You can't stop the inevitable."

"You talk too much," Anakin said contemptuously.

Teska was about to throw a reply back, but suddenly, he heard a whirring sound. He whipped around, just in time to see Aayla come hurtling through the air towards him, her blade raised. He sidestepped quickly, but not quickly enough. Aayla's blade swept through his natural arm. Teska howled in agony and took to the air again, staring in horror at the stump.

"You're more machine than man, now," said Anakin, as Aayla leapt from the ledge and over to where he and Ahsoka were standing. "Still think we can't stop you?"

Teska glared at him. His shoulder pads opened, his quad-cannon raised, and his chest cavity opened. "DIE!" he screamed, and he barrelled forwards, with missiles, red and yellow lasers flashing forward in a miniature storm. The Jedi scattered and were back on the defensive.

Aayla backflipped over the think yellow laser and dashed out of the way of two missiles. Anakin ran along a pipe, reflecting bolts and rolling under another missiles. Ahsoka was forced leapt vertically upwards as two more crashed straight into the wall behind where she'd been, then had to roll aside as Teska's cable came soaring towards her. It grabbed the ledge and was followed by Teska himself. Ahsoka was tossed backwards by the shockwave and thrown off the ledge. Aayla hurriedly caught her with the Force, as Anakin ran towards Teska. His blade almost schismed the other arm, but Teska lurched back and tried the yellow beam and close range. Anakin dodged and went running again.

* * *

Kyubimon was leading the way as the three Digimon charged down the various intertwining corridors. Up ahead, the sound of loud explosions and laser fire seem to rock the very air. "That's gotta be them," said Gargomon as they ran. "There aren't many that can cause a ruckus like that with such small numbers."

"Sounds like a brutal battle," said Turuiemon.

"Then let's make it more brutal," Kyubimon called over her shoulder.

"Amen," Gargomon cocked his cannons.

Several seconds later, they emerged onto a platform in a spacious room. In the centre was a smaller version of the huge hole outside, with a red laser building in intensity in the centre. Above it was a hole in the ceiling where the beam would be shot out through all the crystals at the centre of the giant wheels.

Around the walls up above, leaping from place to place, were the three Jedi, lightsabers drawn and constantly on the move, and in the air, sending lasers and missiles at the Jedi, was the giant Skakoan scientist. Kul Teska. He was missing an arm, but he still looked imposing.

"Ugly guy," said Turuiemon. "Wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley."

"That's the guy who created this place," Kyubimon's tails flared angrily. "If you ask me, his face needs reshaping. Let's get him!"

"No, wait!"

They turned to look at Gargomon, who had spoken. "What?" asked Turuiemon.

Kyubimon, since she already knew what Gargomon was thinking, said, "Oh. I see. I like that."

"You like what?" asked Turuiemon.

"I'm sure you know the old Earth saying, sis," said Gargomon. "You know – "Fight fire with fire." That one."

"Of course I do, but I don't see how... Oh. Oh right." A smirk spread across her face. "Why not? Get going, Gargomon."

"At your service, Tury," Gargomon bowed comically, then said, "Henry. A blue card if you would."

And up above, Henry said, "You sure?"

"Yes I am. Let's get going. Time's a wasting."

"Blue card?" asked Ridge. "What does that mean?"

Henry picked a card from his holster. With a flash, it suddenly became a deep blue colour. "He's referring to this," he grinned.

"Now sit back and watch the fireworks," grinned Rika. Suzie cheered. Henry swiped.

"Digi-modify! Matrix Digivolution Activate!"

Down below, Gargomon was suddenly engulfed in a bright white light. Kyubimon and Turuiemon shielded their eyes from the glow as Gargomon cried:-

"**GARGOMON DIGIVOLVE TO... RAPIDMON!"**

* * *

Anakin growled, frustrated, as he quickly sprang aside to avoid a couple more missiles. The Skakoan just didn't seem to run out of them. The fight was becoming more of an impasse at the present moment. The Jedi were almost impossible for Kul Teska to hit, as they were experts at dodging and blocking his attacks. Similarly, Kul Teska was almost impossible for the Jedi to hit, because their weapons were too close range and Teska was keeping the on the move too much to stop and use the Force. Anakin had managed to nick Teska's leg, and Ahsoka had just nicked off one of the four laser guns on the quad-cannon, but apart from that they hadn't had much effect.

They weren't losing, but they weren't winning either.

Anakin leapt from his position and hurriedly deflected two shots as he sailed past. The shots were followed by missiles, which lead him to sprint across a platform and bounce to another. Kul Teska enjoyed teasing his victims. It made the victory that much more total to see them desperately run first.

But his fun was spoilt when something smashed into his from the side.

Teska yelled as he was suddenly knocked back by a wall of invisibleness. He tumbled a few metres before righting himself. At first he thought that one of them had managed a Force blast at him, but on reflection he decided that it felt more like he'd been rammed by something.

Suddenly he was rammed again in the back. As he was knocked forward, something crashed into him from the front and knocked him back again, and a split second after that some smashed into him from the side, then the other side, then from above, then from the front again. Something, or some things, were invisible and crashing into him, sending him shooting in all directions like a ping-pong ball in mid-air.

The Jedi stopped and watched with dumbfounded expressions as Teska was knocked back and forth by nothing that they could see. It looked like he was rebounding off invisible walls a metre or so away from his on all sides. Delving into their senses, the three of them looked for an answer. What they discovered startled them. Whatever was doing this was one being, moving so fast he was invisible to the naked eye and continuously ramming the Skakoan, before wheeling about and coming again from another direction almost instantly.

Teska span wildly, yelling as the invisible thing hit him in the legs and he went tumbling backwards, then it felt like an invisible foot was suddenly planted in his chest and he went hurtling backwards in the wall. He fell and landed, dazed and winded on a platform.

"What is going on?" asked Ahsoka.

"That would be me," something landed right next to her with a thud. Startled she leapt back, readying her blade. And she stopped. That voice. It was high-pitched and incredibly familiar.

What was standing beside her was something like she'd never seen before. A tall frame, about the same height as Teska, with green, spherical armour around the pelvic and chest areas, the torso linking them was a bright white colour. Two semi-spherical armour plates rested on the shoulders and the arms consisted on something like two, green bazookas. The legs were encased with equally green and slightly pointed boots. Attached to its back was a small missile launcher. The head too, was covered in armour, so that only the eyes were visible, as well as the ends of the long two green, segmented, red-tipped ears sweeping back from it. To cap it off, he had the little bob-tail of a rabbit.

"How's it going?" it asked.

"Gargomon?" Aayla breathed, staring at the new being.

"Yes and no," said the Digimon. "I'm the same person, yes. But this is my Ultimate form, and I go by a different name now."

Teska awkwardly pushed himself upwards and stared at his attacker. "What are you?" he groaned angrily, getting to his feet.

The Digimon turned to glare at him. "I'm Rapidmon. And I'm gonna kick your ass."

Rapidmon leapt off the platform and hovered in front of Teska, with no visible means of support. Teska's jet thrusters activated and he rose into the air too, pointing his quad-cannon, which was now a tri-cannon, at him. Rapidmon suddenly hurtled forwards and vanished. At almost precisely the same time, Rapidmon brought his foot into the small of Teska's back. As Teska lurched forwards, Rapidmon's foot suddenly came swinging into his face in a perfect roundhouse kick. He was moving so fast he was almost teleporting.

Teska angrily sent a small swarm of missiles at Rapidmon. Yawning, Rapidmon span and twisted in mid-air, easily dodging and flipping over the missiles sent his way. He zoomed across the room, zipping from side-to-side with the agility of a dragonfly as the rockets shot past him and exploded uselessly on the wall behind him. Rapidmon ducked under another and suddenly spurted forwards to smash Teska in the stomach.

"Not so tough now that someone else can fly, are you?" Rapidmon laughed, as Teska reeled back, attempting to clutch his stomach with the stump of his missing arm.

Teska's chest cavity opened and the laser erupted towards Rapidmon. Unconcerned, Rapidmon hung in the air until the last second, where he vanished in a blur and the laser continued going through where he now wasn't. A voice over Teska's shoulder said, "You missed." Teska turned to see a cannon-arm flying forwards and hitting him in the face, cracking the metal faceplate.

"Now, this is impressive," Anakin approached Aayla and Ahsoka and all three watched the aerial, one-sided brawl. "He doesn't look like he's even trying," he commented, as Rapidmon zoomed towards Teska, vanishing the second before impact and ramming him in the back instead.

"That's because he isn't," Turuiemon's voice replied. The Jedi turned to see the other two, still in their Champion forms, jumping upwards towards them from platform to platform, until they were standing beside the Jedi. "He hasn't even used any of his attacks yet."

"We'd be able to take Teska too, if we could just get close to him," said Ahsoka, watching with admiration as Rapidmon shot vertically down from above and ploughed into Teska. "How does he do that hovering?"

"And how tough is his armour that he's not getting injured by ramming an armoured Skakoan constantly?" asked Aayla.

"Don't try to fully understand us, because even we can't do that," said Kyubimon. "Let's just say that he just can and his armour is very, very tough."

"He's certainly very fast," said Anakin.

"Apparently he can move at almost light-speed if he wants to," said Turuiemon, "although our Rapidmon has never tried that."

"Too bad we don't have any popcorn," said Kyubimon. Turuiemon laughed. The Jedi were too busy watching to ask what popcorn was.

Rapidmon flashed in and booted Teska squarely in the face, then swung in from the side to belt him under the missing arm. Teska spun about and fired the quad-cannon, but Rapidmon wasn't there anymore and the Digimon's arm swung into Teska's abdomen and his foot knocked the cannon askew. Then they hooked behind Teska's knee and hauled, sending the Skakoan spinning. Two strikes later, one to the front and the other to the back of the head almost instantly, and Teska thudded into the wall again.

Rapidmon hung in the air before him. "Come on. Are you trying to let me win?" he asked. "Time to get serious. **MIRACLE MISSILE!"** Rockets similar in size to Teska sprang from the launcher on Rapidmon's back and wheeled around, shooting towards Teska. Hurriedly, Teska raised his force-field and the missiles were stopped, just. He was still battered backwards by the force of the blows.

"You'll have to do better than that," he growled, pleased with this little victory.

"Really? Okay," Rapidmon raised his arms. "Try these on for size." Rapidmon raised them above his head one after the other and brought them down. **"RAPID FIRE!"** he cried, and he sent one enormous rocket from each arm. Teska gasped and braced his shield, but these rockets were the equivalent of those on a gunship. No shield the size of Teska's could stand up to them and Teska was blown backwards, the shield sputtering and dying completely as he smashed into the wall and slumped down.

"This isn't real!" Teska screamed. "I can't be beaten."

"If this isn't real," said Rapidmon, raising his arms out above his head and pulling his feet together, "Then I reject your reality and substitute my own."

Rapidmon's cannon-ends and feet began to glow a bright white. Teska snarled with rage and enshrouded himself with fire, activating his jets and hurtling towards Rapidmon in one last ditch attempt at victory. Golden lines spread between Rapidmon's arms and from each arm to his feet, creating an upside-down triangle right in front of him, which was filled with green light.

"He's doomed," said Kyubimon, referring to Teska.

"**TRI BEAM!"**

The green light shot forward in a continuous stream and hit Teska like a sledgehammer to a safety pin. Teska's armour, what was left of it, buckled and tore as he was forced backwards, the flames dying as the machinery suit. He fell to the platform, defeated. He was alive, but only just.

He heard something land next to him. Teska looked up and found himself staring down the barrel of a cannon. "Checkmate," said Rapidmon. **"RAPID FIRE!"**

Kul Teska died.

Rapidmon turned and flew back over to where the others were standing. "Whoa," Ahsoka's face was shining with delight as she looked the powerful Digimon up and down.

"Most impressive," said Aayla. "I don't particularly want to get on the wrong side of you."

"Funny how things backfire on evil villains, isn't it?" remarked Rapidmon. "He was gonna blow up the sun, but he got blown up instead."

Kyubimon and Turuiemon chuckled and suddenly the two de-digivolved in flashes of light.

"That was really something, G- er, Rapidmon," said Ahsoka. "It's like having a gunship that can get inside buildings."

"A gunship that can get inside buildings, and is impossible to hit," added Anakin. "I think we made the right decision in letting you come along."

"You had doubts?" Rapidmon laughed.

"Well, I didn't," smiled Aayla. "Nice work."

"Ah, Momentai," Rapidmon waved a bazooka airily, which is something that not many people do with bazookas.

"Now, I reckon it'd be a good idea for us to get out of here," said Anakin. As he said it, the whole room shook and the laser in the weapon intensified. Suddenly it fizzled out and exploded, causing the whole weapon to shatter and debris to shoot out in different directions. Aayla and Anakin threw up their hands and halted the flying metal heading their way, letting it drop harmlessly to the floor below. Around them, miniature explosions started to rock around the room as the machinery ruptured and exploded.

"Good idea," said Renamon. "Looks like the plan worked. The whole facility is coming apart."

"The Senator succeeded then," said Ahsoka. "Let's get back to the door."

"Who needs a door?" asked Rapidmon. "Let's take a shortcut." He pointed his arm up at the ceiling and let fly with a missile. One explosion later and there was a massive hole in the ceiling. "All aboard the Rapidmon express," he cried. Renamon and Lopmon leapt onto his shoulders, and after a moment, Ahsoka followed. Aayla and Anakin gripped his sides firmly and Rapidmon put a cannon around each of them to keep them there, before flying upwards and out through the hole.

And in the exploding room, a pair of blood red eyes that had been watching the whole thing followed their progress. "How interesting," said Cad Bane. Then, the Bounty Hunter turned and made his way towards his own exit.

* * *

"Anakin, come in," Obi-Wan's voice echoed through Anakin's communicator.

"I'm here," said Anakin as Rapidmon landed on the level up above where the landing platform rendezvous would be and everyone disembarked.

"Where are you?" asked Obi-Wan. "Wherever you are, you'll have to get out another way. The landing platform gave way, so now we're hovering above the base. We can't wait for much longer."

"Did the Senator make it to your position?" asked Anakin, as more explosions rocked the facility.

"No," said Obi-Wan. "We haven't seen her."

Fear and worry suddenly flashed across Anakin's face, but it gave way to relief when Ahsoka cried, "There she is!"

They turned to see Padmé rush out through a pair of doors and fall the floor as the corridor she'd been in erupted into flames. She'd obviously not been quick enough, despite having succeeded in sabotaging the weapon, hence the chaos, she hadn't got to the ship.

"Time we weren't here," said Renamon. She and Lopmon leapt back onboard Rapidmon and all three vanished under the perception filter.

"Padmé, are you alright?" asked Anakin, as the three Jedi ran towards the Senator, who scrambled to her feet unsteadily.

"I'm okay," said Padmé. "Where's the _Twilight_?"

"Waiting for us up above," said Ahsoka. All four suddenly had to spread their feet to keep their balance as the whole platform shuddered underneath them.

"You go on," said Padmé. "Leave me here. You can still make it. I'll just slow you down."

She knew Anakin wouldn't listen to her but she had to try. Anakin also knew that he was never going to leave Padmé behind and he looked about, searching frantically for an escape route for her. So far as he could see, there was none, except the invisible Rapidmon he could still sense. Which one, did he expose the secret of the Jedi to a trusthworthy Senator or did they stay and die?

Fortunately, Aayla stopped him from having to make that decision. "STAPs," she said. She was standing by the railing and looking down into the rupturing weapon. Anakin, Ahsoka and Padmé rushed to join her and they saw two of them rushing upwards towards them.

"Thank goodness," muttered Anakin. "Our ride is here."

"If we don't get out of here because of you," said one droid to the other. "I'm putting you on report, Sergeant." It missed the fact the it couldn't possibly have done that if they didn't make it out.

"Wait, it's not my fault," protested the other droid, but he didn't say anything else because a Twi'lek suddenly landed on his vehicle and kicked him off it. The other hand a male human do the exact same thing.

"These things aren't made for two," said Aayla. "But they'll have to do. Ahsoka, you're with me." Aayla carefully positioned herself so that both feet were on one foothold. Ahsoka leapt to join her and placed her feet on the other one. It wasn't ideal, as the footholds were designed for one foot each, but it should be alright. Aayla, leaning sideways, slightly, gripped both handlebars, and Ahsoka placed her hands on Aayla's shoulders to keep herself from falling off.

Anakin steered his over to Padmé. Instead of employing Aayla and Ahsoka's technique, Padmé clambered on so she was lying in Anakin's arms, bride-style, and wrapped her arms around Anakin's neck.

"Race ya," cried Ahsoka, as Aayla accelerated upwards, and Anakin turned to follow. The two STAPS with four passengers raced upwards through the exploding station, dodging past the spokes of the giant wheels and, at one point, the entire wheel as it came loose and went hurtling downwards, smashing into the other wheels as it fell.

A sudden explosion caused a hunk of debris to be catapulted from the side towards Anakin and Padmé.

Padmé screamed and Anakin grimaced, knowing that dodging wouldn't do any good and he couldn't use the Force properly. The huge piece of debris barrelled towards them like an unstoppable juggernaut. Except it suddenly changed direction as if something invisible had suddenly rammed into it at speed. It crashed into the wall and caused another explosion that propelled the two STAPs upwards.

Padmé sighed with relief. "Thanks, Anakin," she said.

"No problem," said Anakin, because this was better than saying, "Actually it wasn't me. It was a creature from another universe that I'm not supposed to tell you about that rammed into it and is hidden under the perception filter of another creature." He hated keeping this secret from Padmé, but he was going to do it anyway. He sensed Rapidmon overtaking him and the other STAP and made a note to himself to thank him later.

Finally, the STAPs emerged into daylight. Behind them, the whole station was burning and exploding, but up ahead, the _Twilight_ hovered. Rarely had Anakin been more pleased to see the old junker. They accelerated towards it and floated over to the open doors at the back. Ahsoka jumped off, and Padmé clambered down, then Aayla and Anakin leapt off the STAPs too, allowing the droid vehicle to drop back down and disappear in the Armageddon below.

Obi-Wan, Rex, Cody and Bly were there to greet them.

"Good to see you made it, General," said Rex, as Anakin brushed off his tunic. "General Kenobi insisted we hold out as long as we could."

"There were several moments there where we thought you lot were goners," said Bly, grinning broadly.

"Then thank you for your patience, Obi-Wan," said Aayla.

"Think nothing of it, Aayla," said Obi-Wan. "I'm simply aware of my former Padawan's reliance on last-minute escapes."

"Well, if you ask me," Aayla looked pointedly at Anakin. "The A-Team shouldn't go through too many of those if we can get away with it."

"A-Team?" asked Cody, Rex, Obi-Wan and Padmé all at once.

"Just a nickname a friend gave us," Anakin shrugged. "All our names begin with A so..."

Obi-Wan and the clones shared a look. All of them could guess who Anakin was referring to.

"Let's get inside," said Anakin, leading Padmé indoors. Ahsoka followed. Everyone else stayed behind and, once the Senator had gone, turned to Aayla.

"Where are the Digimon?" asked Bly.

"Hovering right next to you," said a voice that was unmistakably Lopmon's. Bly jumped as Renamon, Lopmon and what was probably Terriermon, only very different shimmered into view. Rapidmon touched down on the ramp.

"Terriermon?" asked Rex, as Renamon and Lopmon got down.

"Rapidmon," said Rapidmon, before de-digivolving. "No I'm Terriermon."

"You mean you digivolved again and I missed the action?" asked Bly. "Now, that's not fair."

"Don't worry, Bly," chortled Aayla. "I have a feeling you're going to be seeing Rapidmon in action yourself quite soon. Believe me, it's a sight to see."

"Let's get going," said Obi-Wan, "before that station blows up completely. Perception filter up again, if you don't mind."

"Not at all," said Renamon, and all three vanished from sight again.

Everyone still on the ramp headed back through the doors, which closed behind them. The cockpit was a little crowded when they walked in, and Aayla and Obi-Wan carefully guided the invisible Digimon to a corner where it was unlikely that the clones or Padmé would bump into them. R2-D2 turned the computer terminal and the _Twilight_ began to move upwards and away from the wrecked station. Mace Windu and Ponds were also standing in the room as Obi-Wan and Anakin made their way to the seats.

"Tell me, Anakin," said Obi-Wan. "How did you manage to sabotage the weapon?"

"You mean, what did I do personally or...?" Anakin tried.

"Anakin," said Obi-Wan, warningly.

"Sorry, Master Kenobi," said Padmé. "That was me."

"Oh?"

"Aayla here," Padmé gestured to the Twi'lek standing next to her. "Cut a path to a power regulator for me and I just pushed every button I could find. Obviously it worked. You were right, Anakin. She's a formidable Jedi."

Aayla smiled. "You said that about me, Anakin? I'm touched."

"We had our hands full with Kul Teska to be doing anything else," said Ahsoka.

"And what did you do with him?" asked Mace.

"We left him as a pile of wreckage beside his ruined weapon," smirked Anakin. "If you looked at the two of them together now you'd be unable to tell which was which."

Bly jumped slightly as a voice in his ear whispered, "Actually that was me, but of course he can't say that in front of the Senator."

"Terriermon, shh," said Lopmon quietly.

Padmé couldn't be sure, but she imagined that she heard a very faint chortling. She put it down to Artoo twittering. But she did wander why Commander Bly and Captain Rex chuckled for seemingly no reason.

* * *

The _Twilight_ and its passengers headed upwards towards the cruisers blockading the planet. Everything took place quickly and efficiently. The Tamers were shuttled back up off the planet and transported to the _Intrepid_. The Digimon were also able to travel freely again, as the Senator was on the _Resolute_ with Anakin and Ahsoka. It took a couple of hours, but eventually everything was back on the cruisers and all eight of then jumped to lightspeed in triumph.

* * *

The next day, if they'd come back to Behpour, they'd have seen a Steathipede-class Separatist shuttle spinning and twisting in space above the planet, rolling over and over like a ship possessed, or like a dog chasing its tail. It would be very clear that the shuttle had absolutely no control.

Inside the cockpit, Count Dooku leaned over and demanded at the pilot, Asajj Ventress. "What's happening? What's wrong with the ship?"

"It's the stabilizers," protested Ventress. "They aren't responding, no matter what I do."

"Well, get it sorted."

"Yes, Master. I'm trying," Ventress flicked switches and pushed levers, all without success.

And outside, there was another ship, and old, battered looking cargo-freighter, like an Earth minibus with no windows except at the cockpit and two docking clamps at the back. The _Sleight of Hand_, which Teska had stolen on Ryloth, had been retrieved by the previous master and flown out of the facility just before exploded. Cad Bane smirked as he watched the ship rolling over and over, and he tossed the stabilizers up and down in one hand. It'd take some time for Ventress and Dooku to realise the stabilizers had gone missing, and they'd never figure out how Bane had done it.

Bane leant back in his chair, tossed the stabilizers over his shoulder, adjusted his cowboy hat and said, just as he had in the station, "No-one messes with Cad Bane." Then he piloted the ship away and back towards his secret hideout. As he did, Bane's thoughts turned to the three strange creatures he'd seen, and he wondered what they were.

And how much the information on them might be worth.

* * *

Boom badda boom-boom boom. First Ultimate Digivolution and they've finally been spotted. But what will Bane do with this information? He's not going to feature again for a good while yet, but bear in mind this is a long story, so the answer to that question won't come around for some time yet. But still, it should cook up some suspense. Review please.

* * *

Next time...

Digital World chapter. Impmon, Ai, Mako, Ryo and Monodramon finally reach the level of the Sovereigns and have an encounter with the one that doesn't like them.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 30 : Zhuqiaomon**


	30. Zhuqiaomon

HUGE apologies for the late delay but this time it wasn't my fault. For some reason, the internet decided it would be fun to turn off my computer every time I went on it and my Dad has had to take the computer to PC World to be fixed. But I've at last had a chance to update because school's started again, so here I am.

Just a little word of news, I've decided to move the Digital World related chapters to every five chapters instead of every ten – the reason being that I think the delays are too long, and I just thought of an interesting storyline for Impmon.

Now on to the long-awaited chapter.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 30:- Zhuqiaomon**

* * *

MetalSeadramon's prediction of reaching the level of the Sovereigns within two days was extremely accurate, but then again he knew the Digital World like the back of his fin. Ai and Mako did eventually get a little bored of the undulating right on top of the giant sea-serpent's head, managing to fall asleep while Impmon and Ryo made sure they didn't fall off. Monodramon took the better part of a day to recover from his berserk rage as Cyberdramon, during which time he wouldn't wait an hour before apologising to Impmon again. Impmon's replies were always "Don't worry about it," or something along those lines.

Behemoth didn't particularly enjoy the trip. The motorcycle rumbled to itself frequently, wishing that they could have found a better transport than this. It had often wondered what it'd be like to be transported instead of doing the transporting. On reflection, he preferred to keep at least one wheel on the ground. Worst of all, MetalSeadramon didn't seem to be able to recognise his rumbling protests as protests. He contented himself to give a metaphorical sigh and wait to be put down.

And put down he was when MetalSeadramon wheeled downwards after two days in the air. "Well, here we are," MetalSeadramon descended downwards. Ai and Mako stared in wonderment at the fantastically huge, spiked red castle that stretched towards the sky in front of them. It looked like some kind of odd, red ice sculpture.

The Mega sea serpent alighted on the ground, where he was hailed.

"MetalSeadramon? Is there a problem? What brings you he... Why are there humans on your head?"

The voice was quite deep and base, and had something akin to disgust when referring to the humans. Impmon looked over at the person doing the talking. The moment he saw the culprit he scowled with distaste. He didn't exactly have and good memories of the last time he'd met this guy. He'd not only been utterly humiliated in front of his friends, although they hadn't been his friends at the time, but this guy had beaten him to an inch of deletion without any problems at all.

The Digimon standing there resembled a large, purple horse on its hind legs, with golden hooves on its hind feet and white hair hanging over its face, apart from the three red horns on the forehead. It's front legs dangled almost all the way to the ground, and were much larger than the hindlegs, the giant golden hooves glittering in the light. Strapped to its back was a giant, trumpet-like horn that resembled some kind of enormous sea-shell.

"Why would you demean yourself in this way by carrying a bunch of these pitiful fleshbags around?" Indramon asked, his expression hidden by the ridiculous mane but his mood easily readable by his voice. "A Baby level Digimon could beat them in combat if it came to blows."

"I see your Digital bigotry still knows no bounds, Indy," Impmon glowered as he leapt of MetalSeadramon's head.

Indramon looked down at him and snorted with derision. "Oh, it's you," he said with contempt. "The little Rookie that tried so hard to digivolve and failed so miserably. Come for a second round have you?"

"I could take you with both hands behind my back, blindfolded and hobbled," Impmon taunted. "You wanna see what I got up my sleeve?"

"If I learnt anything from our last confrontation," Indramon didn't even bother looking at Impmon. "Then your all talk and what action you do doesn't live up to your claims. Now if you could totter along back to your pathetic meatbags..."

"HEY! LEAVE THEM OUT OF THIS!" Impmon roared, fighting the urge to light a fireball and throw it at Indramon. It wouldn't do any good and it'd only goad him onwards.

"Leave Impmon alone," Mako bravely shouted up at the Deva.

"Bad horsie," agreed Ai. "Impmon could kick your tail."

Indramon threw back his head and laughed. "Oh, that'll be the day." His laughter sounded like the high-pitched neighing of a horse.

Impmon felt a sharp breeze. It coupled with the roaring sound of an engine told him that Behemoth had pulled to a stop behind him. He could sense to motorcycle was eager to be the charger that led his master into battle against this arrogant Ultimate that dared to taunt him. But something was making Impmon hold back. Looking around, Impmon could quite easily make out the spot where they were. It had looked very different after the incident and had since repaired itself, but this was the spot where he'd done three terrible things in the same second. Firstly, he'd destroyed Leomon, which had been bad enough in itself. Secondly, he'd broken Jeri's heart, and his own hear wrenched at the thought. Thirdly, he'd driven Takato over the edge, which had led to the creation of Megidramon.

Impmon gritted his teeth and clutched his head as the memories resurfaced. This was the last place in the Digital World where he felt Beelzemon should ever set foot again. Fighting Indramon, the thought of it, was bringing all of these memories back. Memories he wanted to leave in the past.

"If you want my advice, Indramon," Impmon heard MetalSeadramon say behind them. "You'll leave Impmon alone and go back to guarding the South Gate. I've seen him in action before and I know how deadly he is."

"I've seen him in action before too, MetalSeadramon," Indramon waved a hoof dismissively. "And I can tell you that he's a ridiculous little toerag who seeks attention. I can't believe you'd stoop so low as to give the little rat a lift, and his human pests. If you ask me, I think you're going soft if you're just going to..."

"Indramon! That's enough!" Another voice broke of Indramon's tirade, which was just as well. Impmon was now furious, and all three Tamers were wandering where this guy got the gall to insult them, the people who had helped to save his world from the D-Reaper and stopped Ogudomon.

Everyone glanced off to the side and saw two more familiar faces approaching. These were both ones that they'd seen much more recently that Impmon had seen much more recently than Indramon. Ai and Mako's faces lit up at the sight of the Sheep Deva Pajiramon and the snake Deva Sandiramon. Pajiramon had her crossbow propped up against one shoulder and Sandiramon had his axe held firmly in his tail.

"Now what's all the squabbling about," Sandiramon said in his rasping voice, the stereotypical hiss on each S word associated with snakes completely missing.

"Indy here was just saying how he thought he could whup my ass," Impmon grinned. "Didn't seem to believe it was the other way around from some reason."

"I can't imagine why," Pajiramon said genuinely. She glared at Indramon, who remained supremely unfazed and then the sheep stepped forward and said, "May I be the first to welcome you properly to the Sovereign's castle. We weren't expecting any visits from Tamers. What brings you here?"

"There's been an incident," said Ryo, stepping forward. "A serious one. Some of our fellow Tamers and their Digimon have gone missing."

"Good," sniffed Indramon. "It's a pity all of you didn't-OW!"

Pajiramon had decided to shut up the conceited horse by smacking him in the knee with her crossbow. "Would you shut up, you egotistical, stuck-up pony!"

"Pony!" roared Indramon. "I think you're going soft too, if you're going to side against a fellow Deva with these wretched humans."

"No-one's going soft," Sandiramon intervened as the two glared daggers at each other. "I've said it before, Indramon. You need to let go of your hatred of the human race. They're here to stay, and they've proven their worth a hundred times over in my mind. You will either welcome them to our world, or you will ignore them, but we will not hear of you attempting to start a fight with them. They are our guests and you will treat them so... or else."

Indramon snorted. Sandiramon was probably the most respected Deva, but Indramon certainly didn't like the snake's opinion. Nevertheless, he listened and did as he was told, he looked up and promptly began to ignore them, though it was difficult to ignore Impmon's triumphant smirk.

Sandiramon turned to the Tamers. "Thank you," said Ryo. "That could have gotten nasty."

"Agreed," said the giant snake. "The last thing we need is another deleted Deva. So, you claim that some of your fellows have gone missing?"

"Yes," said Ryo, diplomatically taking the floor as Ai and Mako looked on. "And I'm afraid to say that Lopmon was among them."

"What?" Pajiramon and Sandiramon both looked shocked and upset. Indramon just sniffed.

"Good riddance, the filthy traitor," he muttered audibly.

Impmon snapped. He could allow Indramon to taunt him, but taunting his Tamers had almost sent him over the edge. Taunting Lopmon was the last straw. Forgetting his previous reluctance, he digivolved into Beelzemon Blast Mode with a flash and leapt up to deliver a stunning punch to Indramon's face that knocked him over. Indramon landed heavily and quickly sat up, looking furious.

"You wanted a fight and you got one!" snarled Beelzemon, jamming the giant cannon into Indramon's face.

"Beelzemon stop!" Ryo cried, causing the Mega to falter. "Think about what you're doing. We're trying to save Lopmon and the others and killing Zhuqiaomon's servant isn't going to make him feel charitable. Plus, you're Tamers are watching."

Beelzemon glanced down at Ai and Mako. They looked torn between horror at what Beelzemon was doing and anger at Indramon's words. With a rush, the thoughts of why he hadn't wanted to digivolve before came sweeping back in, and Beelzemon sagged visibly, dedigivolving into Impmon again as quickly as possible. Walking over to his Tamers, he mumbled, "Sorry."

"It's okay," Mako patted his back reassuringly. Ai nodded.

Pajiramon glared at Indramon with outright fury. "In my opinion," she growled. "We'd be better off without your smart comments. Come to think of it, we'd be better off without _you._ Now, step aside, pony-boy and let us through. I'll remind you that you're guarding the gate and that used to be Antylamon's job. Antylamon was once one of us and that's good enough for me. Now move!"

Indramon grumpily got to his feet. Pajiramon gestured for the Tamers to follow them, while she and Sandiramon headed onto a small, floating platform on the other side of the archway that Indramon had been standing in front of.

"I'll wait here," said MetalSeadramon, as Impmon placed Ai and Mako on Behemoth's seat and urged the motorbike gently forward. Ryo followed, with Monodramon in his arms. Once they got onto the platform, it was encased in a large bubble and, as Takato, Henry and Rika had once done, so to they began to float along towards the giant red castle.

Impmon watched Indramon and MetalSeadramon get smaller as they got further away. Before they got too far off, he carefully and very deliberately gave Indramon the finger when the twins weren't looking. He wasn't sure whether Indramon saw it or not, but he felt Behemoth make several amused judders underneath him, which was his way of laughing.

The twins hadn't noticed because they were staring at the castle. They were the only Tamers who'd never seen it before, and they were certainly impressed. It looked like a giant, red ice sculpture of some kind, made of jagged icicles that were upside down, pointing up to the sky instead of down at the ground. Up ahead they could see immense door, big enough for Ogudomon to pass through, but the doors were dwarfed by the castle itself, which stretched upwards, almost literally like a mountain.

"That's so cool," said Ai. "Why did we have to miss all this stuff?"

"You're seeing it now," pointed out Monodramon. "And I reckon a daring mission like this to rescue your fellow Tamers is a great start to your career."

"Career?" asked both at the same time.

"Oh, right," said Monodramon. "You're kids."

"Geez Boomerang-head, you can be really dense sometimes," Impmon rolled his eyes, deliberately trying to lighten the mood after his outburst.

Ryo was talking to Sandiramon and Pajiramon. "So, I take it things are a little strained between you Devas."

Sandiramon sighed. "Unfortunately yes," he said. "There are some among us who are refusing to give up their previous views, despite the fact they've been split amongst several of the Sovereigns. Indramon is the worst, possibly because he still serves under Zhuqiaomon, but Kumbhiramon, Makuramon and Vikaralamon aren't that far behind him."

"Vajramon and I used to be part of that group," said Pajiramon, "and even that was strained as Vajramon and Indramon have never gotten along. But ever since the battle against Ogudomon months ago we switched to the other group, which consisted mostly of Sandiramon, Mihiramon, and Sinduramon, before the other three were resurrected by Anubimon. Majiramon and Caturamon aren't quite sure what to make of it now."

Ryo scratched his ear thoughtfully. "And what about Zhuqiaomon himself? Has he lightened up on us at all?"

"A little," said Sandiramon, "but as I'm sure you know, it's a lot easier to accept that someone else is wrong than it is to accept that you are. I believe the great phoenix may eventually come around to think the same thing as the others. He's got no real reason to hate you anymore, other than the fact that he can."

"Then it might be a good idea to show him courtesy. Alright everyone, remember," said Ryo as they moved rapidly across the gap inside their little bubble. "Be on your best behaviour, especially you, Impmon."

"Hey, come on," Impmon grinned. "Old Zhuqster and I go way back."

"Calling him Zhuqster is not going to do you any favours," said Monodramon. "You remember his expression when Terriermon called him that?"

"I wasn't there."

"Oh yeah."

"What did I say about being dense?"

"I prefer to think of myself as not being used to this brain," said Monodramon. "When I'm Cyberdramon I don't pay attention to little details like that so it's difficult when I'm me now to remember them."

"Fine, fine," said Impmon. "But seriously, we need to find the others, and if Zhuqst- er, Zhuqiaomon is one of our best bets, then I'll be on my best behaviour."

"I still say we should have gone to Azulongmon," said Ryo.

"Well, too late for that now," said Impmon with a casual shrug.

"What's Zhuqiaomon like?" asked Mako, addressing the Devas.

"He's okay," shrugged Pajiramon. "Granted he can be grouchy at times, but to us he's mostly just rather strict. But Antylamon was as much his servant as we are now. He's not going to want to just abandon her. She's the main factor that changed his opinion of you, although he finds her Tamer annoying."

"He finds all Tamers annoying," said Sandiramon, chuckling.

"True."

The bubble finally pulled to a stop and vanished, leaving only the floating platform, which they carefully stepped or slithered off until they were standing in front of the enormous doors. Ai and Mako looked up at them, feeling suddenly extremely small and insignificant. The doors were as red as the rest of the castle, and stood ridiculously tall. Whether this was to accommodate Zhuqiaomon's massive size, or the size of other Digimon that could come and visit him, the twins didn't know. They realised they didn't even know how big Zhuqiaomon was, or what he really looked like. All they knew was he was a giant, red bird.

"I'm a little scared," said Mako, shivering at the size of the doors.

"Chillax," said Impmon. "Zhuqiaomon's not gonna deep-fry you on my watch. I've got it all under control."

Pajiramon raised a questioning eyebrow at Ryo, who mouthed, _He's bluffing,_ at her. She nodded.

"So, what happens now?" asked Ryo, who'd never been this close to the castle of one of the Sovereigns before either. His answer came when the enormous stone doors suddenly began to slid apart and into the walls. The groaned and grated against the floor of the ceiling as they ominously slipped aside to reveal a dark, red hallway. The whole floor vibrated slightly as the doors moved and then stilled with a jarring thud as the doors vanished from view. The corridor beyond was just as big as the door.

"Neat," said Monodramon. "Is that automatic or did he know we were here and let us in?"

"The Sovereign can see everything that goes on outside his castle," said Sandiramon. "He knows you're here and has for some time. He opened the door."

"That's a good sign, I suppose," muttered Ryo. "At least he's letting us in to see what we want. Or can he hear everything we say too."

"That, he can't do," said Pajiramon. "Which, in my opinion, is just as well."

"Well, here goes nothing, right," said Ai from Behemoth's back.

"Yep," said Impmon and began to stride forwards through the massive doorway. But as he did, he muttered quietly to Behemoth. "If things get ugly in there, then get the kids out of there. You got it?"

Behemoth revved in acknowledgment.

Impmon and Ryo led the way into the corridor. They glanced upwards at the incredibly high ceilings and blank, foreboding red walls. They knew this was the house of one of the good guys, but he sure had a way of making blankness look intimidating. The Devas moved on either side like a royal escort, which was probably what they were.

Eventually they came to another door. This one was even taller than the last one, and appeared to be made of metal, probably Chrome-Digizoid. It was decorated with elaborate patterns of flames licking hungrily. If you looked at it in the right way the flames almost looked like they were moving.

"You have reached the inner sanctum," narrated Monodramon, not a little nervously.

"My Sovereign," shouted Pajiramon. "We bring visitors with a request for assistance."

Immediately, the doors began to slide aside, just as the stone ones had done. They were noticeably much thinner, but indestructible Chrome-Digizoid doesn't need to be thick to keep others out. As they got the chance, Ai and Mako peered into the room.

They didn't see any giant bird. What they did see was an enormous room, with a ceiling twice the height of the corridor. In the centre of the room was a large stand, and on it was an enormous red flame. It was surrounded by ten pillars that resembled long legs with clawed feet, which supported a circle of stone that surrounded the giant flame.

"Has he gone out for lunch?" asked Mako, and there was not a little hope in his voice.

The twins were surprised when Pajiramon and Sandiramon bowed their heads in respect to the giant flame in the middle of the room. "Sovereign," they murmured in acknowledgement.

"Humans!" a deep, booming and rumbling voice suddenly echoed around the room. Both of the twins jumped in shock and looked around for the source. Monodramon noticed and pointed to the flame.

"I suppose you consider yourself lucky to be able to enter the castle of a Sovereign," said the voice. "You would do well to remember my distrust of you before you continue with your reason for being here. I will not tolerate being disturbed for something trivial."

The flames began to vanish slightly. Ai and Mako gaped as they fell away to reveal the enormous bird that had been standing _in_ them.

"Now start talking!" demanded the bird, and the twins noticed that he didn't open his beak as he spoke. "Before I change my mind and have you discarded from this castle like the trash I once thought you to be."

"Would now be a good idea to leave?" muttered Impmon. Ryo shook his head. "Nuts," Impmon sighed. "So, who's going to start the talking?"

"I think it might be a good idea if it wasn't you," said Monodramon.

"Don't keep me waiting, humans!" Zhuqiaomon rumbled, towering over all of them as the last of the flames died away. Ai and Mako stared. They stared and stared and stared, for standing before them was a one of the largest Digimon they'd ever seen. He stood so high he almost touched the ceiling and his bright red plumage made him look like he was on fire. And his great wings were still tucked into his sides.

His long beak and head stretched backwards into long spikes like fire, the four eyes burning red with a deep mistrust. He had eight, visible wings. Two small ones protruded from his chest, two massive ones from his shoulders, two almost equally large ones were folded against his back and his legs also resembled wings, except for the huge claws that acted at feet. He had six spheres floating around his neck, and six more floating around the enormous, sweeping, featherless tail. He was predominantly red, but each wing was patterned with yellow and orange flames. He was also surrounded by a red aura that shimmered in front of him.

Ryo stepped forward. "Great Sovereign Zhuqiaomon," he shouted up to the powerful being – he figured a little flattery couldn't hurt. "We have come straight from the Human World to you, in order to bring you a plea for your assistance. We have tried all that we can, but we believe you are our best hope."

"And just what makes you think that I will help you? My opinion of you may have changed, but not by much," Zhuqiaomon rumbled.

"I bring you tidings from our world," Ryo was beginning to wonder where all this formal talk was coming from. Maybe he'd watched too many movies. "And we beg you to assist us. We will be forever in your debt."

"Kid knows how to get into his good book," muttered Sandiramon quietly. Pajiramon nodded.

"It concerns the former Deva Antylamon," Ryo went on. "Or rather, Lopmon, as she usually stays in her Rookie form. But I digress," Ryo blinked. He'd never used that word before. "The point it that she, along with her Tamer, and the two other Tamers and Digimon that were involved in the prophecy against Ogudomon, have all vanished without a trace."

"Lopmon," growled Zhuqiaomon. "I still detest her choice to join forces with a human. If she has vanished then the likelihood is that she has been caught by one of your kind, Akiyama. Are you asking me to help you against other humans?"

"No," said Ryo, surprised that Zhuqiaomon knew his name. "It was not humans who did this, mighty Sovereign, but another Digimon. One with which I am not familiar, but I believe that you are."

"What makes you think I have any more information than you?" Zhuqiaomon seemed incapable of speaking without a roar.

"Impmon here remembers Lopmon mentioning the Digimon in question once before," said Ryo. "It was just in passing, but she said that you and the other Sovereigns have faced off against him before and come out victorious."

"I assure you," thundered Zhuqiaomon. "That any foe that I have faced off against with the other Sovereigns were totally and completely obliterated. And I believe that we are talking about a former Demon Lord here. What makes you think his judgement can be trusted? If I recall, he once tried to kill all of you."

"Hey!" Impmon was unable to restrain himself as his temper flared. "In case you hadn't forgotten, Zhuqster, that was on your orders and you also tried to destroy the Tamers, so you don't got anything to say about what I did."

Monodramon was frantically shaking his head. Zhuqiaomon's turned imperiously on his neck and glared down at Impmon. "You forget your place, Rookie," he said. "You do not speak to me like that. I am your Sovereign and you would do well to remember it."

"Well, if you were a Sovereign," Impmon shouted. "That is to say, a proper Sovereign, you'd care about what happened to all your servants, former or not, and your subjects, no matter what their opinions, and you'd be doing all that you could to ensure that Lopmon and the others were found."

Flames flashed briefly over Zhuqiaomon's body. "You dare to accuse me of negating my duties?" Zhuqiaomon growled. "Need I remind you that I have assisted you in the past. I helped to drag the True Enemy out of the Human World and I sent the Advance Guard to help you deal with Ogudomon. It was only the fact that Belphemon destroyed all portals that we didn't come to your world and blast Ogudomon to smithereens ourselves."

"Then what's stopping you from helping us again?" Impmon demanded.

"Need I remind you that I have neither declined nor accepted your plea, as you have yet to explain yourselves to me in full."

"If you want to hear the story, then leave the fact I was a Demon Lord out of this. You have no idea what it's like. Every week I keep getting a new memory of the horrific things I did back before I was destroyed mysteriously and I often feel like deleting myself to avenge those who I killed. So don't you go accusing me of being untrustworthy and I won't go accusing you of being useless. Agreed?"

Zhuqiaomon glared down at Impmon, who glared defiantly back.

"Very well," Zhuqiaomon rumbled. Ryo, Ai, Mako and Monodramon let out the breaths they didn't know they'd been holding. "But you will show me respect when you enter my domain, Impmon, or you will feel my wrath. Is that understood?"

"Crystal clear," said Impmon. "Now can we get on with this so you can tell us what you know about Parallelmon and then we can go and..."

"_**WHAT!"**_

Never before had any of them, even the present Devas, heard Zhuqiaomon shout so loudly. Zhuqiaomon took a step off the giant platform he'd been standing on and stared down at Impmon.

"WHAT WAS THAT NAME?" the Sovereign asked.

Impmon suddenly felt much, much meeker at the sudden rage from Zhuqiaomon. "Er, Parallelmon," he said, a little quieter than he'd intended.

Zhuqiaomon raised his head to the ceiling and roared. He just roared long and loud, flames erupting upwards from his back, shoulders and head like some giant volcano. Heat seared throughout the room and instinctively everyone else took a step back as the Sovereign became a giant inferno. The giant phoenix blazed, bellowing with undisguised hatred. His eyes looked like they were on fire and energy pulsed off him in waves. He looked like he was about to explode. Impmon, Monodramon and Ryo lost their footing and fell backwards under the blast. Behemoth reversed towards the door slowly, aware of his master's previous instructions to get the children away.

Sandiramon and Pajiramon just looked grim.

* * *

Outside, Indramon and MetalSeadramon looked up at the sounds of Zhuqiaomon's rage. Indramon smirked. "Sounds like the Sovereign is torching the Tamers. That's fine with me. It's no more than they deserve."

MetalSeadramon glanced at Indramon with disgust and watched the castle with concern.

* * *

When Zhuqiaomon's burst of fury, hot enough to make the devil quail, finally subsided, it was evident to see that the anger and hatred had not. The fire slipped down, but it didn't completely disappear this time, whirling in great streams around the giant phoenix like living things. The eyes burned as they turned on Impmon once again. Impmon had completely forgotten his previous anger at Zhuqiaomon and took a step back. Even the Devas on either side of him had never seen Zhuqiaomon this angry.

"Tell me the whole story!" Zhuqiaomon growled loudly.

Ryo swallowed visibly and took a step forward. "It was my fault mostly," he said.

"No it wasn't!" snapped Monodramon suddenly and unexpectedly. Ryo blinked as his partner pushed past him and confronted the livid Sovereign. "If it's anyone's it was mine. You see, for a few days before the incident I'd been getting brief flashes of the feeling we tamed Digimon get when another enters the Human World. They were only flashes before they'd vanished again."

Zhuqiaomon said nothing. Monodramon looked less enthusiastic about going on now.

"Lopmon and the others," Monodramon went on nervously. "Went out on a camping trip about a week ago. They spent-"

"A what?" asked Pajiramon.

"Er, it's thing where a human goes out to live in the woods or a field for a few days, in a small contraption called a tent," Monodramon explained. "Anyway, I was slightly concerned that the mysterious Digimon would think of attacking them, so I stayed alert to whole night when they were gone. But the following morning, I felt the presence again, and this time it didn't fade.

"Ryo and I, along with Impmon and a couple of others rushed to the scene. When we arrived, we found MegaGargomon, Cherubimon and Sakuyamon had pinned down the enemy Digimon, which looked like it had taken a serious beating from them. Ryo got a scan from his D-Arc, which read that it was the Mega level Digimon known as Parallelmon."

"Describe him," rumbled Zhuqiaomon instantly.

"Er, mutant-like humanoid. Heavy, rounded armour plating on chest, hands and feet with stringy flesh linking them together. Masked face with a single blue eye. Odd purple symbols across most of the pieces of armour."

Zhuqiaomon's flames flared upwards again briefly as the enraged eyes narrowed and became more so. "That's Parallelmon, sure enough. And what happened?" Zhuqiaomon's voice was laden with impatience, but there was also an unsubtle hint of trepidation. Monodramon drew a deep breath, and slowly answered the question:-

"He used an attack called Absorbent Bang on all three of them at once and they disappeared in a flash of light right in front of us. Then he also vanished from sight."

For the second time that last few minutes, Zhuqiaomon exploded with fury. Ryo, Impmon and Monodramon were more prepared for it this time and managed to stay on their feet, but they still had trouble doing so. This time, Zhuqiaomon seemed more livid. The columns surrounding him buckled and crumbled into dust as he roared to the ceiling.

There was about twenty seconds of this before Zhuqiaomon's terrible wrath subsided enough for him to get himself back under control. The twins briefly noted that his beak was lined with sharp teeth, unusual for a bird, before Zhuqiaomon stepped back up onto his perch.

"If what you say is true," said Zhuqiaomon. "Then Lopmon and the other victims of Parallelmon are lost to us forever."

Silence.

"..."

It felt like a punch to the solar plexus. Tears sprang into the eyes of the twins. Ryo slumped down, losing control of his legs and leaning against Behemoth's front wheel for support. Monodramon gasped and placed a clawed hand over his eyes. The two Devas present looked stunned with abject horror, but they didn't look particularly surprised.

Impmon was suddenly finding it difficult to breathe. His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. His green eyes were wide and disbelieving. The muscles in his arms had slackened so they lay uselessly by his side. His pointed tail had drooped. His legs wobbled slightly as they felt like getting him to follow Ryo's example.

He was the first to find his voice. Looking up into Zhuqiaomon's furious eyes, although he knew that they weren't furious at him anymore, he rasped, "W- what... what makes you... say that?"

"Even I do not want to break news like this," said Zhuqiaomon, "For Lopmon was always a loyal servant and a good friend until she joined you. But no Digimon who has ever been a victim of Parallelmon's Absorbent Bang had ever been seen again. We've lost so many faces to that monster. Piximon, WaruMonzaemon, Ibexmon, Eldradimon – all of them hit with that damned attack and completely wiped off the face of the Digital World."

"They were killed?" asked Ryo.

"No," said Zhuqiaomon. "But in my opinion they might as well have been."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Impmon growled, his fists clenched shut.

"In order to understand the fate of your friends," Zhuqiaomon said, "I must first explain something else. As his name suggests, Parallelmon has the ability to move between parallel dimensions at will. The Human World and the Digital World are two separate universes, as well you know, but they are connected as one was created by the other, much to my aversion. However, there are millions, possibly billions of separate universe and parallel realities, all pressed up against one another. There may even be universes inside other universes. The point is that Parallelmon has the ability to move between any of them at will."

"Okay," said Ryo slowly. "I think I understand."

"They may be virtually identical to yours or ours," said Zhuqiaomon. "But there is no denying that they're there. When Parallelmon began his attack on our world, he used that Absorbent Bang attack on anything he could see that breathed." Ai and Mako noticed that Zhuqiaomon's talons were digging into the perch as he spoke.

"Any Digital thing he touched, whether it be rock, tree or Digimon instantly vanished when he used that attack. But they were not killed. Instead, they were transported to one of those other realities and trapped there. Only Parallelmon could have retrieved and there was no chance of that. So Parallelmon began his assault on us. Whoever he attacked vanished, never to be seen again, stuck in alternate dimension and facing the unknown. I have no doubt that many of his victims are still alive today, but with no way to contact us or find a way back."

"But what about the Tamers?" asked Mako.

"Yeah," said Ai, nodding. "They're not digital."

"But they were biomerged at the time," said Monodramon grimly. "Which means that they were Digimon and were treated just the same."

"I always said that humans and Digimon merging wouldn't all be for the best as Azulongmon claims," said Zhuqiaomon. "And I was right, in a way."

"Wait, what about the Digi-Gnomes?" asked Monodramon. "Couldn't they help us get them back?"

"No," said Zhuqiaomon. "We tried that too. Fulfilling a wish takes up the energy of a Digi-Gnome, as you saw from the Shining Digivolution. It took hundreds of Digi-Gnomes to digivolve everyone like that and all who participated died. They are able to open portal between your world and mine because they are so closely related. But no number of Digi-Gnomes could open a portal anywhere else. It would require far too much energy."

Impmon's legs finally gave up and he sat down hard. Ai and Mako climbed down from the motorbike and ran over to comfort him. Even the Sovereign had the good grace to not comment on this as he stared down at the mournful bunch.

"Wait a minute," said Ai, standing up and bravely looking at Zhuqiaomon. "Does that mean you never even tried to get them back?"

"It's not a question of whether or we tried," said Zhuqiaomon, rather calmly. He seemed to be allowing them their moment of sorrow and he wasn't even snapping at the humans when they spoke to him. "Understand this, human. When we discovered what was happening to Parallelmon's victims, we immediately set out to find any possible way of getting them back, getting them back to their rightful place in the universes."

"And you found nothing, I'm guessing," sighed Ryo.

"Nothing viable," said Zhuqiaomon.

"Viable?" asked Impmon. "What, you mean you found something that could work but probably wouldn't?" He perked up a little, hoping that the Sovereigns had found something, anything, that could help them get the missing members of the group back.

Zhuqiaomon stared down at Impmon for a long moment. Impmon stared back, an unspoken plea in his eyes. A plea to tell him what the Sovereigns had discovered, to either give him a faint hope he could cling to, or make him give up.

"I suppose you have a right to know," said Zhuqiaomon, in a voice that was quiet for him. "But, yes, we did find a couple that might have worked, but there are enormous hurdles that we felt were impossible to overcome, so we abandoned both. Following that, we Sovereigns immediately set out to kill Parallelmon and obliterate him from existence. From all existences." The Sovereign's eyes narrowed again. "We succeeded. Or so we thought. Once we are finished here I must warn the other Sovereigns about our recurring threat."

"I'm not sure you have much to worry about as of yet," said Ryo. "When we got there, it looked like the three of them had beaten him to within an inch of deletion. He may still be recovering from that idea."

Then Zhuqiaomon did something none of them had expected.

He chuckled.

"I am glad that Lopmon went out resisting," he said. "And I honour the other two as well, wherever they may be now. MegaGargomon was a worthy adversary, and Sakuyamon stopped the advance of the True Enemy briefly. I will tell what we found, though I doubt you will be able to do anything with it. Still, you Tamers do seem to pull of the impossible, so I will not give up hope yet."

"Did you hit your head on the ceiling with all that roaring?" asked Impmon. Zhuqiaomon's gaze swept to him, irritated at the interruption. "Never mind. Sorry."

Then Zhuqiaomon began.

"There are three Digimon that I know of that are capable are dimension travel. One is Parallelmon, and wherever he is now, he is not going to be very co-operative. Oddly enough, you have all met the other two on my list as well."

"Really?" asked Ryo. "Who?"

"The second Digimon is Anubimon," Zhuqiaomon went on. "He needs to be able to open portals from his world – the world of the deleted for reconfiguration or damnation – in order to take the data of the deleted."

"But we met that guy," Impmon said. "He came to our world and extracted Leomon's data from me when he came to collect Ogudomon's data-junk. Why can't we get him to help us out?"

"Very well," said Zhuqiaomon. "By all means go and find him. Anubimon lives in a completely different world to ours, and since you're looking for someone to open portals you'll have to find someone else with the ability before you could find him anyway. Anubimon rarely ever leaves his world, and when he does he isn't allowed to interfere with us directly. No living being besides Anubimon himself and a few of his servants have ever entered the world of the deleted. The only digimon that get there are the deleted. As far as I know, not even Parallelmon has ever gone there alive."

"Not a very sociable Digimon is he?" Monodramon noted dryly.

"Alright," said Impmon. "Fair point. If I ever see him again I'll ask him, but since that's pretty unlikely ... well, who's the other one."

"The other Digimon capable of dimension travel was one of those who came to your world to help you against Ogudomon," said Zhuqiaomon enigmatically.

"More information would be nice," said Impmon, though Ryo looked puzzled or some reason.

Zhuqiaomon answered by saying, "GranKuwagamon."

"Oh, I remember him," said Ai.

"Yeah," said Mako. "He was the big, black bug that hardly ever said anything."

"Indeed," Zhuqiaomon replied. "Not the best description I've ever heard, but what can you expect from In-training human equivalents. GranKuwagamon's X-Scissor Claw attack has two separate functions. One is that it allows him to send a huge energy beam from his pincers at a foe, which was the one you saw. The second is that they can briefly tear a hole in the fabric of time and space, thus allowing him to travel to the dimension on the other side."

"Wait a minute," said Monodramon, raising his claws. "I seem to recall the fact that we were forced to fight Ogudomon because you were unable to reach us and take him down yourselves. If GranKuwagamon can open portals, then why didn't he just do it then and let you guys through."

"There's a snag, right?" Ryo asked. "There's got to be a reason why he wasn't an option."

"Correct," Zhuqiaomon continued. "As I said earlier, there are millions, possibly billions of separate parallel dimensions out there. Unlike Parallelmon," Zhuqiaomon spat out the name as if it left a bad taste in his beak. "GranKuwagamon has no control over which universe his portal will open to. He has one in a billionth chance of picking the correct one. It could take him a lifetime to find the dimension that your friends have been whisked to, and even if by some miracle he found the right one, you'd have no way of knowing, as they could be anywhere in that universe."

"So those are our options," said Impmon bitterly. "A Digimon that nobody can find or talk to, and a Digimon who can only jump around randomly."

"I did warn you that they were not good options," rumbled the Sovereign.

"We are sorry," Pajiramon finally spoke up again. "Truly we are. Lopmon was as much our friend as yours, and we respected the others greatly."

"The disappearance of the prophecy trio is most disturbing," Sandiramon said quietly. "But I seem to recall that when the great Fanglongmon came to the Human World and spoke to them, he said that they would have many adventures to come. I am willing to presume that wherever they are, they are doing just that."

"It was almost like he gave another prophecy right then and there," said Monodramon.

"Maybe he did," said Mako.

"Yeah, maybe they were supposed to get carried away by Parallelmon," said Ai.

"You reckon?" Impmon glanced at them, and they nodded.

"And maybe we're supposed to get them back," Mako went on. "We can't give up now Impmon. We should go find GranKuwagamon and see if he'll help."

Impmon sighed. "I suppose it couldn't hurt. But don't get your hopes up, kids. Odds are, we'll never see them again."

"Now, that's not the Impmon I know," Ryo got to his feet, a look of determination on his face. "The Impmon I know would never give up, no matter how much he was pushed down or beaten back."

"But if..."

"No buts," Ryo interrupted. "It's not over yet."

"It isn't?"

"No," Ryo frowned. "I reckon the twins are right. We should find GranKuwagamon, and when we do, we should take him to Yamaki."

"Yamaki?" Monodramon asked. "Why? What can he do?"

"HYPNOS and the Monster Makers are experts with computers," said Ryo. "They were once able to download a program, Operation Doodlebug, into Terriermon, remember. Who's to say it's a one way process – I remember the time when we downloaded Lopmon's memories onto a computer to view the prophecy being made. Perhaps if HYPNOS and GranKuwagamon work together, they could create a machine that could use GranKuwagamon's power, only with more accuracy."

"Hey, that's right," Impmon sprang to his feet, his fists clenching. "Great idea. HYPNOS can do anything if they have the right resources. Doodlebug, Grani, and many others besides. Zhuqiaomon, where does GranKuwagamon live."

"You believe that your human friends back on Earth could truly rescue Lopmon if they had GranKuwagamon's assistance?" Zhuqiaomon asked sceptically.

"You bet," Impmon's grin was back. "Give us a hand, or wing, or whatever, would you? We need to find GranKuwagamon quickly."

Zhuqiaomon seemed to scrutinise the determined looks on all their faces, before saying. "Very well. I shall tell you. GranKuwagamon lives a mysterious and secluded life, keeping to himself most of the time. We don't know exactly where he lives, but we do know it's somewhere right in the heart of the Forest level."

"Well, you gotta start somewhere, right?" Monodramon grinned. Hope was being rekindled in all of their hearts know, flesh and digital alike.

"He may be difficult to find," said Zhuqiaomon, "but as I said before, you seem to have a habit of pulling things off. And now, I must go and warn the other Sovereigns. If Parallelmon is not dead as we previously believed, we should be wary and make ourselves ready for him in case he strikes again."

The ceiling suddenly shook and began to slide apart just like the two doors had done previously. Zhuqiaomon's wings, all eight of them, suddenly were thrust outwards, making him look twice as big as he's been before. With an enormous, fiery flap, he took off and soared through the space that had previously been the ceiling.

The Tamers, the Digimon and Behemoth turned and ran, drove and slithered back down the corridor they'd come through, back through both sets of still open doors and outside once again. Zhuqiaomon was there, majestic and grandiose, hanging in the air with his wings outstretched. He wasn't even flapping them to keep himself aloft.

"I wish you well, Tamers," Zhuqiaomon called down to them. "We may have differences of opinion, but nevertheless we are allies in the fight against evil. Find GranKuwagamon and rescue your friends, if you can. Good luck."

Leaving several blinking and confused Tamers and Digimon behind, Zhuqiaomon turned and began to wing his way towards Azulongmon's castle.

"Was I hearing things?" asked Monodramon. "Did the human-hating Sovereign just wish a bunch of humans luck?"

"I reckon he doesn't hate us anymore really," said Ryo sagely. "I reckon he's just putting on a human-hating exterior to make everyone think he's gradually coming around."

"That," said Impmon, "or Indramon was right and someone is going soft."

There was a faint, but still quite loud, rumbling bellow. It sounded like "I heard that!"

"Cripes," Impmon said. "I'm in for it next time I meet that guy."

"You were almost in for it this time," chuckled Monodramon. Ai and Mako giggled.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, guys," grumbled Impmon, folding his arms and humphing.

"All aboard the Bubble Express," bleated Pajiramon, as she and Sandiramon made their way to the floating platform. The others followed, with Behemoth quietly juddering behind them. Once they were all aboard, the bubble reformed itself and began to traverse through the large stone rings once more, back the way they'd come.

The journey was done in respective silence, as each contemplated what lay ahead. They knew they were grasping at the coat-tails of a faint hope, but it was the only hope they had. They remembered the massive difficulties HYPNOS had getting the arc to traverse across the barrier between two linked dimensions. Who knew how far away the others were.

But it was something, and they'd grab it with both hands.

"Back again?" Indramon sniffed as the platform came into view and they stepped off it once the bubble popped. "What a pity. I felt for sure that the mighty Sovereign would torch you into oblivion."

"You guys alright?" MetalSeadramon loomed overhead.

"Oh we're more than okay," said Impmon.

"Zoo-chow-mon gave us his help," said Ai. "And we're going off to find Gran-kur-wag-ur-mon, now."

"GranKuwagamon?" MetalSeadramon blinked. "Why don't you give me some information?"

And they told MetalSeadramon everything they'd learnt about Parallelmon, Anubimon and GranKuwagamon. When they'd finished, the Mega level said, "He's never mentioned this ability before. Then again, he never mentions anything much. If he ever says a sentence it's usually just some sagacious comment that's designed to make you stop and think."

"Can you take us to the Forest Level?" asked Ryo. "We'd be very grateful for your help."

"Of course I can," MetalSeadramon nodded. "Glad to be of assistance. Unfortunately it should take me a couple more days, but it's the least I can do to help you out."

"So long as they're out of here, that's fine by me," Indramon said.

"Will you shut up?" Pajiramon growled. "I'm not sure how much of your stupid backtalk and smarmy comments I can take. In fact, I'm not going to hang around here with you when there's an opportunity to help someone I actually like. You Tamers, I'm going to come with you. I might be able to help you find GranKuwagamon."

"Count me in as well," Sandiramon nodded. "I've always liked the old bug, and I know my way around the Forest level. I may prove to be some use."

"Well, my head's going to get a little crowded then," muttered MetalSeadramon, "but so long as everyone can fit on." He lowered his head downwards. Impmon and Ryo helped Ai and Mako on board, while Monodramon hopped up on his own. Behemoth began to back away as MetalSeadramon's tails came swooping around to pick up, but they plucked him off the ground. The motorbike let out a rumbling groan. It looked like he was going to spend another few days undulating up and down. He silently thanked Fanglongmon that he didn't have a stomach.

As Sandiramon carefully wrapped himself around MetalSeadramon's huge neck, Indramon said, "I never thought I'd see the day where the once proud and mighty Devas would stoop so low as to help human beings. You two make me feel ill."

"I'll give you something to make you feel ill," Pajiramon bellowed, rearing up on her hind legs and bringing them smashing into the ground. **"THUNDER STOMP!"**

The ground shook violently and Indramon lost his footing for the second time that day, dropping backwards and landing with an undignified thud on his tail. Pajiramon, looking very smug, took a flying leap and landed on MetalSeadramon's huge head. Her hooves skittered on the metal armour, but she managed to steady herself by grabbing his horn, and then settled down like a sheep in a field, folding her legs underneath her.

As MetalSeadramon took off and Indramon got to his feet, Impmon shouted down at him, "WAY! You got whupped!" Indramon ground his teeth.

* * *

Okay, well, here is my next chapter at last. Hope you enjoyed and apologies again. Hopefully they'll get my home computer fixed soon. Please review.

* * *

Next time...

Our heroes head back to Coruscant after Behpour. A deal is fulfilled, a meeting with the Chancellor is in order for the Jedi, and Terriermon does his best to stay out of Windu's way.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 31 : Brief Respite**


	31. Brief Respite

Uber fast update to make up for the last one.

Before reading on, just remember that we're still quite early in the war here. Darth Sidious makes an appearance in this chapter, and in the third film he lures Anakin to the Dark Side with a promise to help him save Padmé after his vision of her death. Earlier on, his plans for Anakin and Padmé would probably be very different – he doesn't yet have the same dirt on the two of them that he does later. See at the end for a bigger explanation.

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* * *

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**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 31:- Brief Respite**

* * *

Triumphant return! After a close victory on the remote world of Behpour, narrowly stopping evil Skakoan scientist Kul Teska from blowing up the Naboo sun, the Jedi return to Coruscant, along with their Digimon allies, in order to meet up with the other Jedi and give their report to Chancellor Palpatine. Meanwhile, all remain unaware of a startling plot waiting in line for Anakin Skywalker, Ahsoka Tano and Aayla Secura, the newly dubbed A-Team. Yet the Separatists are still unaware of the presence of the Digimon. Will they be remain useful allies in the upcoming skirmish?

* * *

Plo Koon had headed off to continue the original mission that he'd been tasked with before he'd been sidetracked by the incident on the Juma-9 station. What had started out as a simple refuelling trip had led him into an attempt to save a system. Now he had headed off to Rodia to investigate the suspicions on their Senator, Onaconda Farr, about a supposed Bounty Hunter making his base of their planet.

Kit Fisto had gone with him. Rodia was a water-world, and that was a place where the amphibious Nautolan would be in his element. He even had a special lightsaber that could work under the water. Few Jedi ever bothered with such an upgrade. Most wouldn't have been able to fight in the water in any case.

But for everyone else:- Mace Windu, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luminara Unduli, Aayla Secura, Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano, they were heading right back for the Republic's capital. It had been agreed that Chancellor Palpatine should be informed of the details of the insidious plot to destroy a sun. A sweep on other isolated planets located near suns was necessary, just in case there were other facilities that required the same rough treatment as the one on Behpour.

The trip was reasonably long – the Naboo system was a significant distance from Coruscant. The clones spent their time doing what they always did on their time off, which was patrolling the ship just in case of attack, or eating from their ration packs, cleaning their weapons and other military tasks. For a clone, that was what counted as time off.

Aayla leaned against the wall on the bridge of the _Intrepid_ and watched everything with a calm eye. She watched the three Tamers introduced Commander Bly to the subtle game that was known as Noughts and Crosses. Once Bly picked up on the idea, he seemed to have a knack for it, although whether this was his strategic skill as a commander or just dumb luck on his part was unknown. For some reason though, Suzie always won when she played against him.

"We need to get a chessboard or something," Aayla heard Rika say. "That's an easier way to while away the hours."

"I wouldn't have thought you'd have the patience for chess," chuckled Henry, adding a cross into yet another little grid.

"Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't," said Rika. "But there really isn't much else to do around here."

"Yes, there is," Henry grinned. "I just haven't mentioned the Digimon Card Game yet because I know I'll lose. Only one person has ever beaten you."

"Don't remind me," Rika rolled her eyes.

"What's the Digimon Card Game?" asked Bly curiously.

Rika and Henry responded by finding a reasonably flat surface and beginning to show Bly the rules. Other clones around them drew around with interest and watched as the two Tamers began a small game.

"You know," Aayla heard one of them say. "I reckon we could learn a thing or two from these kids."

"Yeah," said another. "Might alleviate the hours of boredom between one mission and the next."

"There's no explosions," said another.

"Well, you can't have everything."

Aayla shook her head slightly. She doubted many of the clones would ever manage to become normal people. But sometimes they could be like big kids themselves.

She noticed that there hadn't been any loud outbursts of noise for a while now. Terriermon and Renamon had left the bridge together about half an hour ago. Lopmon had also gone somewhere a few minutes after that, muttering something about needing to clear her head. Aayla frowned. It wasn't like Terriermon to not be stirring up some kind of trouble. And Renamon, while much more sensible, seemed reluctant to keep her mate in check, as he never failed to provide amusement.

Pushing off from the wall she was leaning on, Aayla strode past the clones and the Tamers, making her way out of the bridge. Delving into her senses, she began to look for the Digimon. She sensed two of them were not too far away and made her way towards the signal. She eventually found a door which lead to small cargo hold. She knew Renamon and Terriermon were in there, and she could feel their emotions – joy and ecstasy.

She blinked. What could possibly be in a cargo hold to cause that? Her finger reached for the button to open the door.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Aayla turned to see Lopmon walking towards her. "Why not?" she asked.

"Do you know what's happening in there?"

"No."

"Let's put it this way," Lopmon grimaced. "They missed their weekly night together, so they mentioned something about making up for lost time."

Aayla frowned, but only momentarily. Her eyebrows then shot up so far they almost disappeared under her Twi'lek headdress wrapped around her forehead and lekku.

"Oh, wait. You mean... you mean they're..."

"I'd rather not think about it if I have to," Lopmon pointed out. "That is my brother in there. I've had to close of my mind so that I don't see the details in all their glory."

"And I almost walked in on them?" Aayla looked horrified at the prospect.

"Well, if you had, you wouldn't have been the first," said Lopmon. "Our friend Monodramon once walked in on them... you know. I was surprised Renamon didn't hide him for it."

"Small comfort." Aayla glanced at the door. She wondered what Master Windu would say if he ever found out what they were doing on board a cruiser. But perhaps a Jedi cruiser was a more respectful place than the Jedi Temple.

She smirked slightly and rapped on the door with her fist three times. "We'll be at Coruscant soon," she called through the metal. Her mind sensed shock and slight panic. "Try and finish up in there before we arrive. The clones are going to need to get in here and I'm sure you don't want an audience."

Her reply came in the form of an unfamiliar exclamation, at least to her, that was definitely from Terriermon and probably a swearword. Lopmon bit her lip to keep from giggling. Aayla proffered her an arm, which she hopped onto and climbed up until she was riding Aayla's shoulders. The two headed back to the bridge, racked with silent laughter.

* * *

It had taken a few hours, but eventually, Dooku and Ventress had overcome their pride and activated their distress beacon in their rolling, wayward ship, courtesy of Cad Bane. They'd eventually been picked up by a small Separatist ship and drawn into the hangar via a tractor beam.

Dooku stood imperiously on the bridge, surveying the battle droids as if the ship was his. Ventress stood at his right shoulder, and the tactical droid that had been previous commander of the ship at his left. They were currently travelling through hyperspace to get to their secret, temporary base. They never stayed in the same place for long in order to keep the Republic looking for them, often moving to locations that the Republic had just vacated.

Things seemed to be going relatively normally, until the tactical droid hummed, "Sir. We are receiving an incoming transmission from Coruscant."

"Put it through," Dooku turned to the holopad, along with Ventress. The tactical droid pushed a button and an enlarged hologram of a man appeared, hooded and cloaked, his eyes screened by the wide hood, but the hooked nose very much in evidence. Dooku dropped to one knee. Ventress dropped to both.

"My lord," said Dooku, for this was the only person in the Separatist Alliance who ranked higher than he did. His Master. Darth Sidious.

"Tyranus," croaked Sidious, using Dooku's less commonly used Sith name. "Your spectacular failure on Behpour is most disturbing. You know I do not take failure lightly. Not only did you fail in collapsing the Naboo sun, but you allowed a valuable scientist to fall."

"I apologise profusely, my lord," said Dooku. "There were an extremely large number of Jedi attacking us. We stood little chance against their combined forces."

"Yes, I am aware of it," hissed Sidious, "But had things gone according to plan, the Jedi should never have even gotten wind of the base. Instead, you allowed our plan to be ruined by a common Bounty Hunter and a Senator, who managed to alert the Jedi via their actions."

"Yes, my lord," Dooku said, knowing it would be stupid to defend his case.

"It was imperative to my design that the Naboo system be destroyed. If I am to lure Skywalker to the Dark Side, and thus stop him from becoming the Chosen One, then we must eliminate those closest to him. I'm aware he is emotional being, as proven by his hate for Tusken Raiders after what they did to his mother. Now I must find another way to have Senator Amidala destroyed without making it look like a deliberate action by me when he finally learns who I am."

Ventress' mind was racing throughout this little speech. A chance to redeem herself in the minds of her Masters sprang up. It was something she'd been planning for some time, but she quickly adapted it to suit Sidious' plans and spoke up.

"My Master," she said, without taking her eyes off the floor. "I believe all is not lost. I have a suggestion for how we can lure Skywalker further down the Dark Path."

"Oh do you indeed?" Sidious hissed. "Very well. Let us hear this grand plan of yours."

"Amidala is not the only person Skywalker is attached to," said Ventress. "She may not necessarily have to go first." And she told them her plan – every little detail.

Sidious listened to her outline it. When she'd finished, he said, "This does not fall into my original plan, but I believe it will be a start. Very well, Ventress. By all means carry out this little mission of yours. And be sure it succeeds."

"I will ensure that Skywalker and his forces arrive at Ord Mantell tomorrow," said Sidious. "After that, it is up to you. Do not fail me twice in a row."

"Yes, my lord," said Ventress. The hologram vanished and both Ventress and Dooku stood up. Ventress' eyes glinted with anticipation. Finally, she could fulfil the desires she'd carried for the past few months.

* * *

Luckily, the two Digimon weren't found out by anyone else, particularly the Tamers, but they and the clones did wonder why Aayla and Lopmon appeared to be so amused. When they asked, both of them waved it away, stating that it didn't matter. When Renamon and Terriermon made a reappearance, they both looked slightly sheepish. When asked why, they gave a similar response.

The Republic cruisers loomed over the skyscrapers and other massive buildings of the Republic's most populace planet. They were like giant, metal beacons of hope. The people looked up and many cheered at the sight of them – Human, Rodian, Weequay, Twi'lek, Ithorian, Trandoshan and many more species besides, dotted throughout the streets and walkways on all the levels of the bustling capital.

As the cruisers sailed serenely past, a gunship detached from each one and came down towards a large landing platform that extended from the side of the familiar domed Senate building. This building was over two kilometres wide and had a great central chamber, lined with 1024 floating repulsorpods, one for each Senator who was present at the political debates. The gunships landed on the platform and the platforms opened, allowing all the Jedi and Senator Amidala to walk out. The Digimon and the Tamers stayed concealed inside Aayla's gunship, hidden under Renamon's perception filter and peering invisibly around Commander Bly.

Waiting to meet the Jedi were several figures. Most of them were men glad in blue armour, cloaks and helmets that concealed their faces. Bly murmured that these were Senate Guards, non-clones who kept watch over the Senate building and its inhabitants.

One was Master Yoda, walking forward to greet his fellow Jedi, using his gimmer stick for support. Another was a man with dark blue skin, and two fleshy growths protruding from the side of his head and hanging down his front, as well as two long horns pointing out the top of his head. Bly relayed the information – this was Mas Amedda, who was the Vice Chairman of the Galactic Senate.

The final figure, stepping boldly forward with his long, flowing red robes and short, white, wavy hair, was Chancellor Palpatine. The smile on his face seemed genuine, but something about him gave all three of the Digimon the shivers, even Renamon. They couldn't quite place what was wrong, but there definitely seemed to be something off about him.

"Senator Amidala," Palpatine said with a smile. "It's so good to see you are safe. When Master Yoda came to me with the news of your capture, I had feared the worst."

"I thank you for your concern, Chancellor," Padmé replied. "I myself feared the worst a few times there. The lengths the Separatists are going to in order to obtain victory is quite startling."

"Yes," said Palpatine gravely. "Master Yoda informed me of the situation on Behpour. The thought of blowing up an entire system, and my home system no less, is most disturbing."

"Take it, we do," Yoda piped up, "that successful, you were, in your mission to stop it."

"Yes, Master Yoda," Mace said. "And we are ready to make our report on what we discovered there."

"By all means," Palpatine nodded. "Although may I suggest that we take this up to my office?"

"You may indeed," said Mace.

"Snips," Anakin turned to Ahsoka. "You head back to Jedi Temple and wait for me there. I'll see you shortly."

"Sure thing, Skyguy," said Ahsoka, not missing the significant glance that Anakin sent at her. While, as a Padawan, she wasn't really allowed in talks with the Chancellor, she knew that what Anakin was really doing was to get the Digimon, specifically Terriermon, out of the way before he did something stupid. She turned and strode back towards the gunships.

"I see your relationship with your Padawan is growing, Anakin," said Palpatine.

"She has a good ear," shrugged Anakin. "At least, when she wants to. It's a pleasure to teach her. She's like me in many ways."

"Yes, unfortunately," said Obi-Wan. Anakin scowled. Padmé laughed.

"Come, my boy," Palpatine placed an arm around Anakin's shoulders. "Let's head inside."

As the company turned to head into the building, nobody noticed Palpatine's eyes momentarily lingering on Ahsoka's retreating back. Ahsoka herself, stepped into the gunship and told the pilot to take off and drop her off at the Temple.

"To think," said Palpatine, as they entered the Senate building, filing past assorted species and delegates. "The little boy I met all those years ago during the Naboo crisis, now teaching a young girl the ways of the Force. Sometimes I still have trouble getting my head round it."

"Anakin certainly has come a long way," said Obi-Wan. "Although sometimes I forget that he's no longer a Padawan myself with the way he behaves."

"Well, thank goodness we did find him on Tatooine all those years ago," Padmé agreed. "If we hadn't, I'd probably be dead many times over."

"Don't say such things, please, Senator," Palpatine shook his head. "The thought of losing you... well, I'd rather that thought never occurred again."

"A talent, you have, Senator Amidala, for finding trouble," chuckled Yoda.

"At least she also has a way of getting out of them unscathed," agreed Luminara warmly.

"Well, here we are," Palpatine pushed the button to his office, and the large party of assorted species stepped inside the spacious room, with its long desk seated in front of an even longer window at the other side.

Padmé had only taken a few steps into the room, when something barrelled across it towards her and wrapped its arms around her. "Padmé! Ooh, Padmé!" cried the hugger. "Meesa so happy to be seeing yousa. Yousa was in bombad trouble."

"Hello, Jar Jar," Padmé smiled. Representative Jar Jar Binks loosened his hold and stepped back, accidentally stepping into the Chancellor. Whipping around to apologise, the Gungan's massive ears slapped Mace across the face. He frowned, and Jar Jar promptly lost his footing and fell on his backside.

A blue arm extended down to him. Taking it, Jar Jar allowed Aayla to pull him to his feet. "How do you do it," the Twi'lek chuckled. "I don't know anyone who's fallen over as many times as you."

"Meesa just unlucky, me guessing," Jar Jar grinned lopsidedly and slightly embarrassedly.

"Oh, my lady," said another voice. Padmé turned to see faithful C-3PO, hurrying towards her with his stick-like gait. "We've been so worried. Thank the maker you're safe and unharmed. Jar Jar was going spare. I lost count of the number of times he fell over."

"Relax, Threepio," Padmé laughed. "I'm alright. But next time, I think I'll be more patient and wait for the Jedi to arrive before I go investigating."

"Oh, I'm so relieved," Threepio replied. "You've no idea how thankful that makes me."

"Yousa gotta tell us what happened," Jar Jar nodded very fast. "Weesa all ears." He made his point by lifting one massive ear, which Gungans could actually use at rudders when swimming to help them turn quickly.

Palpatine had moved around to sit at his desk. Mas Amedda, who'd remained silent throughout this whole enterprise, stood at his shoulder.

"Come now," said Palpatine. "Let's not keep us waiting. I want to hear the details about this vile Separatist plot."

"Very well, Your Excellency," Mace took up the plate. "Assuming Master Yoda has told you of the events leading up to our discovery, I'll go on from there. After arriving at Behpour, and ensuring that a space blockade had been set up, Skywalker, Kenobi, Secura, Tano and myself led several clone battalions down to the surface. While two clones, Rex and Cody, provided a distraction, Skywalker and Kenobi crept inside the fortified structure from a side-entrance and managed to turn off the deflector shield blocking our forces. Once we could get inside, we led the charge."

"Ingenious," said Palpatine. "I admire your courage and bravery. Sneaking into a Separatist facility alone must take some nerve, even for a Jedi."

Anakin bit back the words, "We weren't alone," which had trotted onto his tongue. He hadn't realised how difficult it would be for him to keep a Digimon a secret from the Chancellor and Padmé. The fact that he usually just told them everything made him nearly slip up on several occasions. He couldn't see the harm in telling either of them, really.

"And what transpired after that?" Mas Amedda finally talked. Anakin locked onto him, deciding to use him as his excuse to say nothing. Mas Amedda could well be a spy. He probably wasn't, but he could be.

"Dooku," said Yoda. "Present, was he?"

"That he was, Master Yoda," said Obi-Wan. "Anakin led the others to take out the gravity weapon while Master Windu and I confronted him. Unfortunately he escaped again, but we did manage to defeat him."

"If Dooku was there, this must have been important," said Palpatine. "And what of this Skakoan scientist that Master Yoda has informed me of. What has become of him?"

"He got caught in the explosion," said Anakin. "But he was already dead by that time."

"You killed him?"

"We did," nodded Anakin. "We didn't have any way to restrain him, and we couldn't let him escape. Meanwhile, we rescued Padmé at the same time, thanks to a little diversion, and she stopped the weapon by overloading it."

"I see," nodded Palpatine. "Well, it seems to me that, once again, you are the hero of the hour, Anakin."

Anakin looked uncomfortable and coughed. Palpatine noticed and said, "What is it, my boy?"

"Well, forgive me contradicting you, your Excellency," said Anakin, "but, despite the fact it was my plan that took care of everything, I believe if anyone should be declared hero of the hour, it's Aayla."

"Oh?" Palpatine turned his gaze on Aayla. She looked mildly surprised, and there was a slight blush on her cheeks. Apparently she hadn't been expecting Anakin to say that. "How so?"

"To be fair," said Anakin. "She was the one who protected the Senator from harm while she sabotaged the weapon _and_ she did far more damaged to Teska than either me or my Padawan." Technically this was true – Aayla had cut off Teska's arm, whereas the other two had only just managed to nick him. Of course, Rapidmon had been the one to finish the job, but since he was a secret, Anakin felt that the credit should go to the one who did the second most, which was Aayla.

"He was distracted by our unexpected helper," Aayla said modestly.

"Yeah, but still..." said Anakin.

"What unexpected helper?" asked Padmé, frowning.

"During the battle with Teska," Aayla replied. "Cad Bane made an unexpected appearance and managed to distract him long enough for me to score a crippling blow," said Aayla. "I don't think I'd have been able to do it otherwise."

"You Jedi are so humble that it can border on silliness," Palpatine smiled warmly at Aayla. "Well, Secura, the hero of the hour once again. First Christophsis, then Ryloth, then Behpour. If you keep going at this rate, we may soon have a Heroine With No Fear, as well as a Hero With No Fear."

Aayla looked embarrassed. "I wouldn't go that far, Chancellor. I'm not keen on publicity."

"Nonsense," Palpatine replied. "It's well known that you and Skywalker are the most skilled Jedi Knights, despite being the youngest. The public should know who it is who are doing the most. It gives them hope for a war with a quicker end. If you wouldn't mind, I could get someone to give you a chance to make a statement on the latest Holonet news."

"We have decided that Skywalker and Secura will be working in tandem more often than before," said Mace. "They seem to complement each other and work exceedingly well together."

"Excellent," said Palpatine. "I have a feeling that your alliance may prove a valuable asset in times ahead," said Palpatine.

"Let's hope so," nodded Padmé. "We're going to need every asset we can get."

Aayla and Anakin nodded, both wondering what the future held for them. Anakin was used to Palpatine's compliments and smiles, but Aayla wasn't. She'd received them a few times, but not half as many as Anakin. She hoped she'd get used to it, because it looked like she'd be getting a lot more in future if they kept on like this.

* * *

Ahsoka was lying on her back in her quarters in the Jedi Temple. After Rex and Bly had dropped her and her guests off at the Temple, she'd thankfully dismissed them to their barracks and led the others up through the Temple. The Tamers were amazed at Coruscant and the thousands of buildings, as this was the first time they'd been here. They said it put Tokyo to shame, wherever that was. They also were extremely impressed by the Jedi Temple.

Ahsoka knew that they'd probably be living in Aayla's quarters, seeing as they were partnered with her. But it was impolite to enter the quarters of another Jedi without permission, so she'd taken them to her own. It was small and identical to every other Jedi quarter in the building.

She listened as Henry, Rika and Suzie carefully sampled some of the foods that she'd laid out for them. They said that some of them looked similar to stuff they usually had, such as the flapjack from Dantooine, but others looked particularly unfamiliar, like the Oorp and the Uumlourti. Suzie seemed to particularly enjoy the Happy-patty, which as a favourite among younglings.

Lopmon and Renamon ate politely, sampling whatever they picked up without carefully examining it beforehand like the Tamers. Terriermon just wolfed down everything with equal relish. Fortunately, Ahsoka had seen him eat before, and had had the forethought to bring a lot of food. One of the younglings had warned her about needing to stay athletic at the sight of her laden with trays. She'd pointedly waved him off.

"How can you eat like without getting sick?" asked Ahsoka, as she watched the white bunny guzzle down an entire bowl of Cream of fleek eel soup in five seconds flat.

Terriermon wiped his mouth and shrugged. "I don't know."

"I'm sure you've already eaten twice as much as your body weight," Ahsoka shook her head. You could hide in the pile of food you've consumed."

Terriermon grabbed a Mitochondria Crunchy Surprise and downed it quickly. "Momentai," he said. "I know someone with an even bigger appetite than me."

"You want to be careful, you know," said Renamon. "You don't want to make yourself sick."

"It won't make a difference, Renamon," Henry shook his head. "I don't know how many times you've given him that warning, and it's had absolutely no effect."

"It's impressive," said Ahsoka. "I should challenge you and my Master to an eating contest, just so I can see him lose at something. Would you- No, DON'T EAT THAT!"

"Too late," Lopmon said as Terriermon swallowed what had been in his mouth. Immediately, he yelped and jumped to his feet. He leapt about, waving at his mouth and yelling, as Suzie and Rika burst into laughter and his antics. Ahsoka stood up, walked over and picked up a bowl of Souse-mustard, before grabbing Terriermon in the other hand and immersing his head in it. She held him there for three seconds before pulling him out.

"Better?" she said.

"Much," Terriermon began to wipe mustard off his face and eat it. "What was that I ate?"

"Chili dumpling," said Ahsoka.

"I can see why. It was very spicy. Oh, and by the way."

"Yes?" Ahsoka said, before suddenly receiving a faceful of mustard.

"Payback," grinned Terriermon.

Ahsoka's eyes narrowed. "Oh, you're getting it now." She held him out and deliberately dropped him in a bowl of nutripaste. Terriermon threw some of it at her, but she dodged, only to be suddenly hit in the stomach by a Trikaloo Surprise, thrown by Suzie.

From there, everything degenerated into a free-for-all foodfight, the like of which had never before been seen in the Temple. Nobody escaped unsplattered by something, even Renamon, who largely kept out of until, at least until she was beaned in the face by a Gorba melt thrown by Henry, which been aimed at Rika. Then she too joined in and only got hit twice more, once by a lucky hit from Lopmon with another Gorba melt, and once from Rika with a seaweed roll.

The group laughed and giggled as they tossed food at each other. Pretty soon the walls, the floor and the ceiling were smeared with food of all colours.

Then the door slid open, just as Suzie lobbed a piece of Sic-six-layer cake at Ahsoka, who dodged. Fortunately, Aayla was quick enough to catch it with the Force before it splattered over her face. Making it float aside, she looked about the room at the mess and the food covered children and Digimon, all standing guiltily around.

"Do I have to ask?" she raised an eyebrow.

"Er, how did the meeting with Palpatine go?" asked Ahsoka quickly.

"Don't try and change the subject," Aayla said. "Who started this?"

All hands turned to point at Terriermon, including, bizarrely, Terriermon's own hand. He looked at it, surprised, and then glared at Ahsoka.

"In that case," said Aayla, and suddenly the piece of cake that was still floating next to her zipped across the room and creamed the rabbit in the face. He was knocked over, but then he sat up and laughed.

"Knocked over by cake," he said. "If Impmon hears this he'll never let me live it down."

"And if Guilmon hears about this," said Rika. "He'll wish he'd been here."

"I'll take your clothes to the laundry later," said Aayla, stepping over the food around the floor and sitting on Ahsoka's bed. "For now, I suggest you calm down."

"Never!" shouted Terriermon, and Lopmon threw a Sweesonberry roll at him. Ahsoka surprised everyone by chucking half of a Zoochberry dumpling at Aayla, who once again caught it with her mind.

The Twi'lek smirked and said, "You've called down the thunder!" Suddenly, food right across the room began to levitate and fling itself at everyone else. Chortling as they were spattered, they attempted to retaliate, but anything they threw at Aayla changed direction and came shooting back at them.

Eventually, the others conceded that Aayla was the winner, as she'd emerged un-hit and didn't even have to move. They all settled down and Ahsoka and Aayla began to use the Force to clean up the mess.

"So, how did it go?" Henry asked, while they did it.

Aayla rolled her eyes. "Reasonably okay. I was rather surprised when Anakin decided to give me most of the credit."

"He did?" blinked Ahsoka. "Wow. That's gotta be a first."

"Unfortunately I had to make a statement for the Holonet news," sighed Aayla.

"Aw, that's not fair," Suzie pouted. "We never get to go on the news at home."

"We'll you're a bit young," said Lopmon.

"Popular stories, are you?" said Aayla.

"There's always at least three stories a week about one of us," said Rika. "But it's always based on what other people saw, so they often get things wrong. Plus, I get the feeling one of the two reporters doesn't like the Digimon much."

"What's not to like?" grinned Terriermon.

"Perhaps the fact that when we fight other Digimon it usually leads to destruction of some kind," said Renamon. "I can't remember a time where we fought something and everything stayed intact."

"We do keep the government busy paying to rebuild what we damage," remarked Henry.

"You know," said Ahsoka. "I've know you guys for, what, a week and half, and I've hardly heard anything about your own dimension. I've heard about your adventures, but how different is your dimension to ours?"

"Well, for a start, our dimension isn't nearly as adept as space travel as the people here," said Henry. "At least on Earth. So far as most of the public knows, we haven't had any contact from other worlds and the only place other than the planet that any human has set foot is the moon, and not many have ever done that."

"It is weird to see everyone just casually go through space travel," said Rika. "Anyone who goes into space where we come from needs extensive training, but everyone here just takes it in their stride."

"I can't imagine the feeling of isolation you'd have," Ahsoka shook her head. "Not to have any contact from beyond your atmosphere just sounds plain weird to me."

"They're advancing in technology all the time," said Terriermon. "But by far the humans greatest invention is..."

"Ice cream," interrupted Suzie.

"Er, that wasn't what I was going to say. I was going to say Digimon."

"No, you weren't," Renamon reminded him. "You were going to say you."

"I was not."

"I refuse to be drawn into another was-not-was-too argument."

"Wise decision," said Lopmon. "But back on topic."

"Yes, let's hear more about your world," said Aayla.

Henry eagerly obliged. He began to explain things to the attentive Twi'lek and Togruta that made everyone remember just how frighteningly precocious he was for his age. He began to explain about the origins of life, and evolution, giving examples of extinct animals that all the others, including Terriermon, who spent the most time with Henry, had never even heard of, like Proterogyrinus and Euparkeria. He explained about the different eras in time, right through the Mesozoic and the reign of the dinosaurs, and after that, introducing things like Macrauchenia and Ambulocetus, and finally Australopithecus and into the human race.

He, with occasional input from Rika and slightly unhelpful ones from Suzie, explained about humans history, including numerous wars, politics and empires. He even went into a talk about Jesus and the Bible and the fact he was agnostic about human gods, but had met the Digital one.

Finally he went on to explain about his father's college project which had led to the rise of the Digimon. Renamon and Lopmon promptly took over here and began to explain about the Digital World, and what that was like.

"Sounds like a rough place," remarked Ahsoka. "Definitely not a holiday resort."

"Although building one might not be a bad idea," mused Terriermon. "I'll let Zhuqster know next time I see him."

"Just remember not to call his Zhuqster in his presence," sighed Lopmon.

"Or Zhuqs," said Henry.

"Or Turkey," said Renamon.

"You guys are no fun," pouted Terriermon.

"You'll thank us later," said Rika.

"Momentai," said both the Jedi.

Terriermon scowled. There was about a minute of silence, where there wasn't much movement, other than Henry's thumb stroking what the rest of his hand was holding, which was one of Rika's own hands. This was about all the two felt comfortable doing in front of the others, particularly Suzie. They were going to struggle to find some alone time."

"Hey," Terriermon said, perking up a little. "I just remembered something. Aayla, we have a deal to fulfil."

"A deal?" asked Ahsoka. "What deal?"

"I agree," said Aayla. "What deal was this?"

"Remember back on Ryloth," said Terriermon, "when we were in Cham Syndulla's hideout, we made a deal that we would try out meditation with you and that you'd try going wild with us."

"You promised to that?" Ahsoka asked. "Wow, you must have been in a good mood."

"I've been meaning to meditate anyway, I suppose," shrugged Aayla getting to her feet. "Let's head for my quarters. You'll excuse me for saying it," she glanced at the walls that were still smeared with assorted goops. "Meditation should be done somewhere where your unlikely to do it sitting in food."

* * *

It was a first.

It really was.

For the first time in the memory of anyone in the room, neither Terriermon or Suzie had said anything while being awake for over an hour.

Aayla had led them to her chambers, and they'd gathered in a circle, sitting on the floor with their legs crossed and their hands on their knees. There, Aayla led them through basic mental exercises, meant to help a Jedi harmonise with the Force. Of course, none of the non-Jedi could do it to its full extent, but it did instil a sense of peace in all of them, so much so that there'd been no loud explosion of noise for some time.

The Super Six had discovered that while this didn't help them with the Force, it did open their minds and allow them to see each other's thoughts more clearly. Between Renamon and Terriermon there was no change, but for everyone else, they got a clearer picture of what they were thinking.

Terriermon's thoughts frequently drifted to food. Suzie in particular went to ice cream, but every one of them was mostly thinking about the same thing, which was – What is going on back home?

Were the others still looking for them or had they given up? Did they even know what had happened to them? What was Yamaki doing in his attempts to find them? Had Guilmon eaten Takato and his parents out of house and home yet? What was Ryo and Jeri doing?

Terriermon noticed that Lopmon's thoughts often turned to Impmon, but when Lopmon noticed that he'd noticed she pretended that she hadn't and determinedly thought about something else instead.

Anguish filled Rika's head at the thought of what her grandmother and mother would be doing right now. She'd vanished to the Digital World anonymously when they'd gone to rescue Calumon, but back then HYPNOS had been able to tell the distraught parents where their kids had gone and assure them that they could get them back. But now, the government agency could do neither. Painfully, Rika could quite easily picture the scene of Rumiko crying into her hands in the Nonaka's kitchen, while Seiko patted her on the back while looking extremely upset herself, Isis the jackal curled up in the corner and wondering where her friends had disappeared to with her jackal's brain.

Henry easily noticed what Rika was thinking and began to, well, pulse was the right words here – he began to pulse an uplifting feeling towards Rika, silently telling her not to think about these things, that her mother was never going to give up on her and stoically telling her that they'd find a way to get back. Rika could tell he didn't really believe it either, but it was the thought that counted. And Henry's silent advice did help. Resolving to kiss him later (Henry blushed) Rika forced herself to think of something else.

Aayla opened one eye and surveyed the group. They'd been meditating for an hour and a half, and they all looked so peaceful, far more peaceful than she'd ever seen any of them. It seemed a shame to break them up, but these methods of mutation could leave you with a persistent headache if you went on doing it for too long without a break. So she stood up.

The rustling noise caused everyone else to open their eyes and the meditation ended. Aayla smirked at Terriermon. "I told you you'd like it when you tried meditation."

"Alright, alright," Terriermon said. "I concede the point. I quite enjoyed that, we should do it more often."

"And I'll be only too happy to let you sit in on my mediation on the _Intrepid,_" said Aayla.

"But don't forget, Aayla," Terriermon got to his own feet. "You've got your own side of the bargain to fulfil. I've agreed that mediation is worthwhile. Now it's time for you to try out our way of spending time."

"You party often?"

"Quite often," said Henry. "Terriermon insists on it, and usually the other Digimon oblige. We Tamers usually let them get on with it. They've got far more energy than we have, and can go on for hours."

"It draws a crowd whenever they do it in the park," said Rika.

"I must admit there was a time where I thought it a waste of time," said Renamon. "Then put aside my pride and I tried it. You remember our song, Terriermon?"

Terriermon rolled his eyes. "The one we first danced too? Of course. Disturbia by Rihanna."

"What by who?" asked Ahsoka.

"Alright then, Aayla, and you too if you're going to join in Ahsoka," Lopmon moved to stand beside her brother, while Renamon stepped up behind them. "Loosen yourselves up."

"But we don't have an ipod or a CD player," pointed out Suzie.

"Who needs 'em," Terriermon laughed. "We know the words, and I know the very song to kick us off."

* * *

Mace Windu and Obi-Wan Kenobi were walking through the numerous corridors of the Jedi Temple, discussing their most recent victory, when they heard the noise. Both paused and listened intently to the unfamiliar sound.

"Is that singing?" Obi-Wan frowned speculatively.

"I believe it is," Mace mumbled. "Where's it coming from?"

Listening hard, Obi-Wan followed the sound until he was standing outside a sliding door. He pressed his ear against it and listened hard. "I believe it's coming from in here," he said. "Aayla's room."

"What is going on in there?" Mace pushed the button to open the door.

When it obeyed the button and allowed them to look into the room, both the Jedi blinked in surprise, and the occupants of the room ignored their entrance.

Suzie, Rika and Henry were sitting on the bed, rocking in time to the singing. Aayla, Renamon and Ahsoka were lined up in the middle of the floor, whirling and swinging their arms out in perfect synchrony, their minds obviously anticipating the next move of the others just as with a lightsaber duel. They span on the spot, swung their hips rhythmically and kicked their legs out at the exact same time.

It was a beautiful sight, and enough to make a large number of Twi'lek dancers weep with envy. Aayla and Ahsoka were surprised by their own skills on the dance floor, both of them having not done this sort of thing since they were small children, since before Quinlan Vos had found Aayla and Plo Koon had found Ahsoka.

To complete the image were Terriermon and Lopmon, who were skipping and spinning around the dancing trio and it was them that were doing the singing. There was no music, but the dancers didn't let that stop them.

They were mid-way through a song which was going like this. Terriermon sang:-

"Landlord says I should buy a tent,  
But he can kiss my ass 'cause I paid the rent,  
So I doubt, he'll kick me out this afternoon."

Lopmon sang:-

"Down on the corner in a seedy bar,  
Juke-box crankin' out the CCR,  
Had a few to Suzy Q this afternoon."

Both sang:-

"You better hang on if you're taggin' along,  
'Cause we'll be doing this 'til six in the mornin'  
Nothin' wrong with goin' all night long,  
Tough to put the brakes on,  
Doesn't matter when you'd rather  
Get up, and go out.  
Me and all my friends.  
We drink up, and fall down,  
And then we do it all again.  
Yeah, we get, and go out.  
Me and all my friends.  
We drink up, and fall down,  
And then we do it all again. Yeah!  
Just sittin' around, hangin' out this afternoon."

Mace cleared his throat at this point. Evidently nobody had even been aware that the two Jedi Masters had entered. The dancers faltered in surprise, and both Jedi looked enormously embarrassed. Renamon didn't.

"Might I enquire as to what you are doing?" Mace asked.

"Fulfilling a deal," said Renamon, unfazed by Windu's infamous stare. "We try mediation if Aayla tries dancing. Is that a problem?"

"It's very unexpected," said Obi-Wan. "Don't get me wrong, I believe it to be... interesting, but I would have thought that you'd resent dancing, Aayla, considering the fact you're people are made to do it for tyrants."

"Yes, Master Kenobi," said Aayla. "It is that I resent. I do not resent dancing itself, but I do resent being forced to do it. Fortunately, that is not the case for me, and I can honestly say that it's been a while since I've had this much fun. It removes some of the strains of being a General."

"And you, Tano?" asked Mace.

"I'm just killing time until me Master gets back," Ahsoka looked sheepish.

"This is most irregular," Mace muttered.

"But against the rules, it is not."

Mace and Obi-Wan turned to see Yoda was standing behind them. "Applaud you, I do, Aayla," said the little green Jedi. "For attempting the customs and likes of your new friends. Better as a team on the field, you will be, if you understand how the other thinks, and better friends off the field, you will also be. Two nerfs with one laser."

"It is rather noisy, Master Yoda," said Mace.

"Helped, that cannot be. Please, continue in our absence. Masters, come. Talk, we must."

Once Mace, Obi-Wan and Yoda had gone, Terriermon reappeared from where he'd hidden behind Renamon's leg. "I get the feeling Master Windu disapproves of us."

"He's coming around to you," said Ahsoka. "It just takes him a while to trust people. Master Yoda, on the other hand, is very trusting. He's one of the most understanding Jedi I know."

"Which is just as well," said Aayla. "Because he's been the Grand Master for longer than I, or I believe any other Jedi, has been alive. There was Yaddle, another one of his species, but she died a few years ago. She was the only Jedi I knew who's seen a time where someone else was Grand Master."

"I really like the guy," said Lopmon. "He reminds me of Ebonwumon. Infinitely wise, rather elderly, very understanding, and a little bit silly."

"Good analysis," said Terriermon. "Now, where were we?"

The singing and dancing began again, as the singers picked up from where they'd left off.

"Don't want a wrist watch or an alarm clock,  
To see what time it is.  
From the moment I wake up  
I just love being with my friends.  
We barely get by, but have the best times  
And hope it never ends.  
We drink all day until we fall down  
So we can do it all again.

It's not the human walk,  
It's the human race.  
If you ain't living on the edge,  
You're taking too much space,  
So I doubt I'll figure out  
Just what to do.  
'Bout to kick it around,  
Hangin' out this afternoon.

"You better hang on if you're taggin' along,  
'Cause we'll be doing this 'til six in the mornin'  
Nothin' wrong with goin' all night long,  
Tough to put the brakes on,  
Doesn't matter when you'd rather  
Get up, and go out.  
Me and all my friends.  
We drink up, and fall down,  
And then we do it all again.  
Yeah, we get, and go out.  
Me and all my friends.  
We drink up, and fall down,  
And then we do it all again. Yeah!  
Just sittin' around, hangin' out this afternoon."

* * *

Terriermon and Lopmon sang many songs after This Afternoon by Nickelback. Some were sung by both, others solely by one or the other. They got through Bad Romance by Lady Gaga, a diled down version of Burn It To the Ground, also by Nickelback, Chain Lightning by Rush, Broken Heels by Alexandra Burke, which got particular approval from Aayla and Ahsoka, and were midway through Lopmon singing Revolution in the Head by Girls Aloud, when Anakin opened the door and stepped inside.

Before he could say anything, a large bucket filled with water dropped upside-down onto Anakin's head.

After a couple of seconds of wearing the bucket, Anakin reached up and lifted the bucket, peering from beneath the brim with one eyebrow raised at the room in general. "Alright," he said. "Who was that?"

"It was Terriermon's idea," Ahsoka pointed at him.

"Yeah, but who was it who was floating the bucket in mid-air? It wasn't me," Terriermon replied.

"Don't take it personally," said Henry. "Terriermon pranks everyone. I believe the only one who hasn't fallen to a prank from him is Renamon, and only then because she can see his mind."

"There was a time where he rigged he flooded my room with bubblebath," said Rika. "Of course I had to get him back for that and I managed, with the assistance of Impmon and Calumon, to paint him pink."

"He really was Princess Pretty Pants," Lopmon smirked at the memory.

"With a pretty pink dress," said Guess Who.

"You're not mad, are you, Master?" Ahsoka asked, not really worried.

"Well, if it's a prank war you want, you got one," said Anakin, placing the bucket on the floor and running a hand through his sopping hair.

"What took you so long, Anakin?" asked Aayla.

"Oh, I was just helping Senator Amidala get Jar Jar to her quarters without injuring himself," Anakin lied. "Which is no small feat, let me assure you."

"Who's Jar Jar?" asked Terriermon, while Renamon looked sceptical for some reason.

"A friend of ours," said Anakin. "Gungan from Naboo, really clumsy. Anyway, you weren't in your chambers, Ahsoka, although there was a mysterious amount of food pasted on the walls for reasons I won't ask about, but Obi-Wan said you were in here, dancing around. I thought he was joking."

"Well, he wasn't."

"Yes. The second before the bucket fell on me was enough for me to see that. Anyway, we've got until tomorrow to get a decent rest, but Chancellor Palpatine has informed me that he's received word of rumoured Sepratist activity over Ord Mantell, and he wants us to go and look into it. All three of us. And, of course, we'll be taking some friends along."

"I look forward to it," said Ahsoka.

"I don't," said Henry, closing his eyes. "I was hoping for a longer break from war than this. You know I don't like fighting."

"Looks like we'll have to get used to it, Henry," Rika put a hand on Henry's shoulder. "It's a shame, but we have to what we can."

"I know, I know," Henry grimaced. "You don't have to go into the whole doing-what-is right thing. I know that we have to do this. I know I wouldn't feel right if my new friends were out there fighting droids while I did nothing. But I still don't like it."

"Don't worry, Henry," his little sister patted her brother's leg. "We'll show the droids how good the Tamers are. Yay!"

"That's the spirit," smiled Aayla. "But it's only a rumour. We may not even run into anything at all."

"Aw, I wanna scrap some clankers," said Suzie, pouting.

"If the clones hear you start to use their phrases like that," Aayla said, "They'll be thrilled."

"So, about this prank war, Snips," said Anakin. "You versus me. No-one else. Agreed?"

"Agreed? Pranks must not harm the other," said Ahsoka. "And, we both get to use Terriermon's ideas and assistance."

"Agreed?"

"Don't I get a say in this?" asked Terriermon.

"Don't you want to show these two what you're made of?" asked Lopmon.

"Yes, but that's not the point."

"We best get some rest," said Renamon. "We may not run into anything tomorrow, but it never hurts to prepare for the worst."

There was a round of nodding from about the room.

And they were right to be cautious.

* * *

There we go then. What the hell is Ventress planning? Whatever it is, it can't possibly be good for the A-Team, can it? Please review, and nobody lynch me for Sidious' explanation of events, or for Ventress' plan when you find out what it is. They're trying hard to turn Anakin over.

Anyway, Darth Sidious. He often comes up grandiose sounding schemes to accomplish subtler tasks, like the war in the first place, which is his plan to kill all Jedi. There's no reason to think the destruction of the Naboo sun was just to kill Padmé and get Anakin very angry. But now things are going to start happening more differently.

* * *

Next time...

Heading for Ord Mantell. The beginnings of Ventress' plot. Will the presence of Aayla and the Digimon effect her plan? Probably, but how?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 32 : Joyride**


	32. Joyride

Well, I've done over a seventh of the story now. Still got a long way to go, but I'm gradually getting there. I hope everybody enjoys this chapter, and I hope the cliffhanger at the end is significant enough.

Also, let the prank war begin.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 32:- Joyride**

* * *

The next morning saw The _Resolute_ having final preparations completed to it before it went off for another mission. The few punctures and craters the battle-scarred cruiser had obtained during the Battle above Behpour were having the finishing touches added so the ship was almost undamaged again. The clones from the two separate corps that were to be going on this reconnaissance mission were being loaded aboard.

During the night, Aayla's trusty astromech droid, R4-G9, had transported, or rather driven, Aayla's starfighter into the hangar of Anakin's flagship. The little bronze, domed droid had met up with R2-D2, and the two of them had chatted in their twittering, whistling manner for the best part of the night, discussing previous experiences. Artoo had considerably more than Arfour to tell, as Aayla, along with all other Jedi bar Anakin, regularly wiped Arfour's memory banks before they went into battle. She wasn't fond of doing it, but it was standard protocol just in case they fell into enemy hands, where Republic info they carried could be used against them. Fortunately, she hadn't had to do that recently.

Anakin never wiped Artoo's memory though. Artoo had a quirky personality and has shared too many close encounters with Anakin for the Jedi to even consider it. Ahsoka was of the same opinion.

As the Tamers, the Digimon and the Jedi boarded the vessel, Rika asked, "How long do you reckon it'll be before we don't have to do any more of this sneaking about?"

"A good time yet, if you ask me," said Aayla. "You may exceptionally helpful in battle situations, but you can only be in so many places at once. There are so many skirmishes and campaigns occurring across the galaxy that it'll still be some time yet before we can bring this war to a close."

"She's right," said Anakin. "We've got a lot more droids to trash before we never have to hear their annoying voices again."

"I don't whether to be happy by that or not," said Ahsoka.

"Generals," Rex and Bly stepped up to them and stood to attention. "We've got the _Resolute_ fired up and ready to go," said Rex. "We're ready when you are."

"And what of the Intrepid and the Valiant?" asked Aayla. The plan was that the Resolute was going to make the trip alone all the way to Ord Mantell, but there would be two more cruisers waiting not that far away. That meant the Republic presence might not look all that threatening to any Seperatists, but they had plenty of back-up a minute or so away in the event of an attack.

"Awaiting your order for take-off, sirs," said Bly. "Just say the word and we'll be on our way."

"Finally," said Terriermon. "It's been almost half a day since something tried to kill us."

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

"He's right, though," chuckled Rex. "That's an awful long time to go without a blaster in your hand."

"For you, maybe," said Henry.

"Hey, Henry," Bly said. "How about we head up to the bridge and I'll give you a challenge for the Card Game."

"One-hundred yen on Henry," Suzie said quickly.

The others laughed and the company strolled towards the bridge. As they entered, the moustached form of Admiral Yularen looked up when the doors opened. His face remained neutral as he said, "Ah, General. We were wondering when you'd arrive. And I see you've brought our extra dimensional guests."

"Morning, Admiral," said Anakin. "A fine day for investigating Separatist movements."

"Indeed, General," Yularen nodded. "And General Secura. I understand that you and your men are to be working closely with us on future missions. I heard of your commendable efforts on Behpour. I welcome any support you and the Digimon can provide."

"Thank you, Admiral," said Aayla. "Although, having me and my friends around might not necessarily be a good thing."

"For what reason?"

"Well, for a start, Anakin and Ahsoka have initiated a prank war with our good friend Terriermon on both sides."

"Oh dear," said Yularen, looking down at the little bunny. "Is there any chance I can convince you out of it?"

"Nope," said all three involved.

"In that case, Terriermon," said Yularen. "Might I ask that I be warned in advance before you decide to pull anything aboard this ship?"

"Lopmon or I will let you know when Terriermon is planning something," said Renamon. "And we'll make sure it's refined enough not to damage the ship in any way."

"Thank you," Yularen nodded gratefully.

"So, what are we looking for?" asked Lopmon.

R2-D2 trundled forward and inserted his metal arm into the socket in the conference table. A holographic image of a planet appeared, and Yularen gestured to it. "According to our information," he said. "The Separatists are possibly planning to try and take this planet. There have been a few sightings of Separatist ships near the area. But they've never stayed around for very long – a few minutes tops."

"Well if they are planning an attack," said Anakin, "Then it's a bold move."

"How so?" asked Henry.

"Ord Mantell is a planet we use for weapons storage and clone trooper barracks, as well as fleet support," Aayla explained to them. "If it falls it could strike a serious blow to our side, particularly since, in galaxy terms, the planet is quite close to Coruscant."

"Sounds kind of fishy to me," frowned Ahsoka. "Ord Mantell is one of our most strategically placed planets, one of our most important. If there was any threat of Seppies, it'd need to be an attack of some magnitude, and as secret as possible. They wouldn't send in ships for a few minutes and pull out again. I reckon this is just another false alarm."

"I agree," said Anakin. "Nevertheless, we've been tasked for checking it out, Snips, so that's what we're going to do."

"Ships ready for departure, sir," said Bly. "Whenever you're ready."

"Well, let's get this over with," said Anakin. "Jump to lightspeed."

"Hold on to your butts," Terriermon said, as the stars outside the window appeared to lengthen and the three ships blasted forwards.

* * *

Everything was falling into place. Asajj Ventress bowed low to the hologram of her master, the hooded Sidious, and as he vanished, her evil smirk returned to her face. She was thrilled that her masters were allowing her to carry out their plot. Soon, she'd be able to exact the revenge that she so craved.

Sidious had just given her word that Anakin and Ahsoka had left for Ord Mantell as planned. Now she just needed to check that everything was in place.

It was with a certain amount of trepidation that she opened the link with the other commander she'd managed to get involved in this little enterprise of hers. The holographic image that appeared in response to her call a few seconds afterwards was someone she'd actually faced in combat before. When Sidious and Dooku had recruited him into the Separatist ranks, they had organised a test for him.

Dooku hadn't told her about his existence, and had sent her and a bounty hunter named Durge the Trenchant Space Station in order to investigate a supposed unknown intruder that had infiltrated the station. It hadn't been an intruder at all, but the figure that now stood holographically before her. He had dealt with both Ventress and Durge with absolute ease. Ventress had received serious injuries to her head and throat when he'd strangled her and thrown her against the wall. Durge had almost been killed, and would have been, had Dooku not intervened and given both bacta tank treatment. If this person had had his way, Ventress and Durge would have been jettisoned into space.

"What is it?" rasped the heavily cloaked figure.

"My lord," said Ventress, a little tightly. She didn't like this person at all, but she held a high respect for him. "I have just received word from Lord Sidious. Skywalker and Tano are heading to your location. They should be there shortly. Is everything in position?"

"You expect it not to be?" the figure demanded. "You underestimate my competence at your peril, Ventress."

"Of course not, Master," said Ventress quickly.

"I assure you, Ventress, the Master's plan will be carried out exactly as requested. The droid forces are on-planet and waiting for my signal. Just be sure to stay out of my way until I have completed the first stage."

"Very well, my lord," Ventress bowed deeply. "But there is one thing that you should know."

"What!?"

"Skywalker and his little runt aren't alone. There is another Jedi with them."

"Which one?" demanded the figure.

"The Twi'lek Jedi Aayla Secura. She's been partnered with the two of them since yesterday. We need to make sure her presence will not affect the plan."

"Ha!" the figure's contempt was clear for all to see. "I have heard of her. A good all-round Jedi, superb lightsaber skill and well-tuned with the Force. She will make a worthy adversary."

"You are unconcerned?" asked Ventress.

"Let them come!" growled the figure. "I will glad end their pathetic lives."

"Master wishes Skywalker to be unharmed," Ventress reminded him. "But if you get the opportunity to kill Secura then by all means take it. She is not part of the plan and is therefore of no consequence."

She bowed again and the figure vanished. Ventress smiled sadistically. Soon.

Soon.

* * *

Suzie yawned widely. She was a nine-year-old, and that meant she had a much shorter attention span than Henry and Rika. Sure, space travel was absolutely amazing, even she with her lack of knowledge couldn't deny that. But to her, it got old real fast. It was like a long car journey but without the interesting scenery. The strange mish-mash of blue colours outside the windows was interesting, but not for long.

True to his word, Commander Bly had challenged Henry to a game of cards and was soundly losing, but you couldn't blame him. It was only his second game and didn't really know all the moves yet. Rika was beginning to take pity on him and whispered occasional advice, allowing him to gain a little ground.

Aayla, Ahsoka and Renamon were talking together in a corner. Terriermon was sitting on Renamon's shoulder and looking amused about something. Anakin was who-knows-where.

"I'm bored, Lopmon," complained Suzie to the bunny sitting next to her. "When are we going to get there?"

"You're going to have to get used to it, Suzie," sighed Lopmon. "But I don't think it's much further."

"Good. This Ord Mantell place sounds cool to me."

"We're probably not going to land on planet," Lopmon shook her head. "We're just supposed to be searching in space."

"I wish Terriermon would pull a practical joke," Suzie moaned. "Then something more interesting could happen."

"how do you know he hasn't and that he's just waiting for the result?" pointed out Lopmon.

"He does look happy about something," conceded Suzie. "You can see into his mind easy, Lopmon. Is he planning one?"

"If I told you, it wouldn't be as funny."

"So he is?"

"I didn't say that."

Suzie frowned at her partner, who smiled back mysteriously. Suzie contented herself to watch the card game and wish she had ice cream.

However, five minutes later, the door slid open and Anakin stormed in, a thunderous expression on his face. Aayla, the clones and all three Tamers turned to look at him in bemusement. Renamon and Lopmon looked amused. Terriermon and Ahsoka looked even more so – they were struggling to contain their giggling.

"That was not funny," Anakin glared at Ahsoka.

"Depends on where you're standing," the Togruta Padawan replied cheekily, sticking her tongue out.

"Wait a minute," said Rika. "Ahsoka manages to strike twice in a row before Anakin has even done anything?"

"What did you two do?" Henry asked, his expression torn between amusement and seriousness.

"Even a Jedi needs to do everyday things," said Terriermon. "Like cleaning teeth, washing hands... and going to the toilet."

"You didn't," Henry chuckled.

"We did," grinned Terriermon. "We smeared a thin layer of nutripaste all over the bowl of his private toilet. My guess is he managed to sit on it."

The clones exploded into laughter, as did Suzie. The trip had suddenly got much for interesting. Even Aayla held a hand over her mouth and attempted to hide her laughter, but it didn't really work.

After the laughter died down, one of the clones managed to choke out, "The Intrepid and the Valiant have pulled out of hyperspace, General. We have an ETA of three minutes."

"Very well, trooper. Everyone to your stations," said Anakin. Then he approached Ahsoka and pointed a finger at her nose. "Alright, you've got me twice now. I wasn't entirely serious about that prank war, but it is definitely on now. Rest assured, Snips," he smirked. "You won't get me three times in a row."

"Sure, Skyguy," Ahsoka clapped him heartily on the back. "Whatever you say."

Anakin nodded and turned away. The snickers of the clones that followed him annoyed him a little, but he was sure they'd die down eventually. He was a little wrong in that respect, as they were laughing at something else entirely.

"It may be old," shrugged Terriermon as their little group sniggered at the fact that Ahsoka had got Anakin a third time already. "But it gets a laugh."

"We're coming out of hyperspace, General," chuckled a nearby clone.

"Alright, people," said Anakin, "let's get serious. We don't know what we're going to find here."

The Resolute suddenly decelerated and pulled out of hyperspace. Visible through the duraglass windows was a large planet that looked a lot like Earth, except for the different continent pattern. It had sea and green land, with numerous clouds about the place. Ord Mantell was quite a balanced world.

"Alright then," Aayla stepped forward to join Anakin. "Tune the scanners. Modulate for any signs of Separatist activity."

"Yes, General," said the nearest clone, and the various men got on with their jobs, adjusting this, switching that and fine-tuning the other.

After a few moments of silence, the clone said, "Scanners are coming up negative, Generals. No sign of any Separatist ships."

"Well, that doesn't mean anything," said Anakin. "We're going to hang around here for twenty-four hours. I want to know the moment the scanners pick up any unfriendly contacts."

"Copy that," the clone nodded and went back to the computer information.

"Twenty-four hours?" asked Suzie, pouting. "That's, like, forever. Do you have a TV here?"

"A what?" Anakin looked confused.

"An entertainment system," said Aayla quickly.

"Er, no. Sorry Suzie, but usually we don't get time for such things," Anakin shrugged apologetically. Suzie looked downcast.

"Well, I'll tell you want I want to do," said Henry, standing up. "I'd quite like to have a look at some of the vehicles down in the hangar, if nobody would mind."

"Typical Henry," smirked Renamon. "If there's no entertainment, he can immerse himself in technology."

"Wouldn't have him any other way," said Rika.

"Well, I could show you a few things," said Ahsoka. "Do you want to come, Suzie? You might find it interesting."

Suzie shrugged. "I suppose," she sighed. She took Ahsoka's outstretched hand and allowed herself to be led out of the bridge, with all the other Tamers, Jedi and Digimon following behind them.

As they walked out, Admiral Yularen walked past them. He nodded respectfully, but stopped when he caught a flash of white. He turned and saw a sheet of paper with the words "I WANT TO RELIEVE MYSELF," stuck to Anakin's back.

"I won't ask," he said.

* * *

Down on the planet, a pair of macrobinoculars watched the Republic Cruiser floating overhead. The owner of the photoreceptors that were looking through them said, "They're just hanging there at the moment," in a low drone. "Should we send in the Vulture Droids?"

"No," said another voice that was exactly the same. "We are to wait for a couple of hours before launching the offensive, so they can let their guard down."

"Roger, roger," said the Commando Droid to the other Commando Droid. No matter how intelligent the droid was, it seemed that Roger, roger was universal. The two of them were surrounded by fifteen Vulture droids looking upwards in anticipation for the battle they knew would come. They'd been put on the planet yesterday via a small dropship that had detached from the frigate that had popped in and then shot away again a few minutes later. So far, the plan was going perfectly.

All they had to do was wait. And that was not something that a droid needed to be taught.

* * *

"So, what's this bit for?" asked Terriermon, inspecting the peculiar hole in the hull of Ahsoka's Delta 7-B Aethersprite-class light interceptor, that was located directly in front of the cockpit. He'd been strolling along the top of the triangular ship and had almost fallen in.

"That's where the astromech droid fits in," said Ahsoka, patting the red and yellow astromech, R7-A7, affectionately on the head. "A lot of pilots fly with an astromech droid. They can be really useful and do all kinds of jobs, like repair the ship while it's still flying, activate things while the pilot concentrates on flying, program the navicomputer, and they can even fly the ship by themselves if they want to."

"Really?" said Terriermon, placing an ear over his chin in an imitation of Henry's thoughtful pose.

"Doesn't a large, round head right in front of you impede your view of where you're going?" asked Henry curiously.

"A little," said Aayla. "But when you're a Jedi, that doesn't matter, as you can use the Force to help you fly. The starfighters of non-Force users often have astromechs stationed to the side, but they're placed here on our ships to minimize drag resistance and make the ship more streamlined."

"Ah," said Henry. "Good point."

"No offense or anything," Rika said to the three astromechs present, "but how do little droids without any arms pilot an entire ship by themselves?"

"Since they're technically computers themselves," Ahsoka went on, they can connect with the computer running the starfighter with their scomp link arms and give commands in the computer's language – you know, technical talk. They can download information into the starfighter which then does what they're telling it to do. It can be extremely useful – like if a Jedi needs to get to the ground quickly he can just jump out of the starfighter and the astromech keeps flying."

"Hey, Snips," Anakin called from where he was standing on his own, bright yellow starfighter, which he painted himself to make him stand out in battle. "Could you toss me the F-187 fusioncutter?"

"What's the matter, Skyguy?" Ahsoka asked. "You gonna add yet another upgrade to that ship of yours?"

Anakin shrugged. "If you can improve it, then do it."

Ahsoka rolled her eyes, reaching down for the fusioncutter as she said to the others. "He just can't resist tinkering with anything mechanical. His starfighter must have had more upgrades added than mine, Aayla's and Obi-Wan's put together. He also upgrades Artooey here quite often. He even fiddles with his mechanical arm sometimes."

"I forgot that thing wasn't real," said Renamon, glancing over at the expectant Anakin. "He looks so normal with those gloves on."

"I'm half-convinced he's just making it up," said Rika.

"Snips," called Anakin. "Any time today would be good."

"Alright, alright," Ahsoka called back, picking up the fusioncutter. "Coming your way, Skyguy." She tossed it over towards him.

"General," called a clone.

"Yes," Anakin turned around and the fusioncutter smacked him in the side of the head. With a cry of shock and pain, Anakin tumbled backwards, falling over the other side of his starfighter and landing heavily on the floor.

"Oh no!" Ahsoka cried, sprinting towards him. Aayla followed and the two of them quickly knelt down beside Anakin. "Master! Master!"

"Anakin, are you okay?" Aayla asked quietly.

Anakin had his eyes shut and he mumbled incoherently. Ahsoka looked on the verge of tears as she clasped her Master's hand in her own. Aayla placed a hand on his chest and shut her eyes, delving into the Force.

"Please, Master. I'm sorry," Ahsoka whispered to him. "I didn't mean it. Why did you look around like that with a fusioncutter flying at your head, you idiot?"

Aayla opened her eyes, removed her hand and glanced back at the Digimon and the Tamers. None of them had moved forward in alarm, and Terriermon waved cheerfully. Aayla rolled her eyes and said, "You know Ahsoka, it's funny, but there doesn't appear to by any injury to the side of his head."

Ahsoka blinked, then looked. Her eyes widened. "You're right," she said. "But... I saw the fusioncutter hit him there."

"Did you?" Aayla smiled. Anakin opened his eyes and grinned, chuckling quietly. Ahsoka looked confused, then comprehending, then annoyed. "You planned that didn't you?" she glared.

"Yep," said Anakin. "Stopped the fusioncutter a fraction from my face with the Force. You fell for it."

"That was mean," Ahsoka swatted Anakin on the arm, annoyed.

"Blame Terriermon," Anakin sat up, and Aayla stood up. "It was his idea. I told you that you wouldn't get me three times in a row."

"Um, Anakin," said Aayla, reaching round and unsticking the peace of paper, showing it to him. "I'm afraid she did."

Anakin read the paper and his face coloured rapidly. Ahsoka giggled triumphantly and said, "Three-one, Master. You've got some catching up to do before you can win this thing."

"Oh, rest assured, Snips," Anakin got to his feet. "This is far from over."

Terriermon landed on the starfighter, plucked the paper from Anakin's hand, and said, "Can I borrow this?" Then he swooped off without waiting for an answer. Aayla walked back over to the Digimon and the Tamers.

"I'd quite like to be told next time something like that happens. Just how far is this prank war going to go?" she asked.

"With Terriermon on both sides?" asked Henry. "Trust me. This is just the start. Every prank is going to get more and more elaborate. Pasty toilets and fake injuries are child's play to him. He's taken to pulling practical jokes on our teacher, Ms. Asaji. She thinks its Kazu who's doing it, and she won't believe his claims that it isn't."

Rika went on to describe the time that Terriermon had somehow managed to completely flood the entire school with red jell-o. Everyone had panicked, thinking that the D-Reaper had returned, but it had been Terriermon all along, and he'd never told anyone how he'd done it. Renamon knew of course, but at Terriermon's request, she was remaining tight-lipped.

"What's he doing now?" asked Aayla, nodded towards where Terriermon was lying on her own starfighter with the paper in front of him. He'd managed to get a pencil from somewhere, and was drawing on it. "Planning another one already?"

"I'm not sure what he's doing," said Henry. "Why don't you go and ask him?"

Suzie's stomach growled loudly. She grinned sheepishly and said, "I'm quite hungry."

Renamon stood up. "I'll take you down to the mess hall," she said. "Rika. Henry. Are you coming?"

"Might as well," shrugged Rika, and the four of them began to head off. Lopmon hopped onto Aayla's shoulder as the Twi'lek moved towards Terriermon. She leaned casually against her starfighter and peered over Terriermon's shoulder at what he was drawing.

She frowned. He was drawing some strange shape, like a rectangle with two large projections pointing downwards, one on each side. It was almost like half an H, but more rounded. He was also drawing a number of buttons on it as well.

Lopmon looked at the design as well. She looked surprised, and said. "Terriermon, is there any particular reason why you're drawing an Xbox 360 controller?"

"Yep," said Terriermon without looking up.

"What is that?" asked Aayla.

"On Earth," Lopmon explained. "There are things called video games where you can take control of a fictional character and move him through the game world to do things like complete missions or race against another virtual character. It can be a lot of fun, but I've stopped playing them with Terriermon because whenever I play against him I always lose. Everyone loses against Terriermon."

"Exactly," said Terriermon.

"Would you care to tell us your reason for this?" asked Lopmon.

"Sure," said Terriermon. "You just that I'm a champion at gaming. I can't remember the last time I died on any video game I've ever played ever. I was examining the cockpit of these starfighters, and I thought how cool it would be to fly one, but I'm too small to reach all the controls and as Gargomon I have no hands."

"Oh, I see," said Lopmon. "You're going to try and get someone to adjust it so that you can fly the starfighter with something you're used to?"

"Correct," said Terriermon.

"But you can't expect to be able to control everything that you really need to with that," said Lopmon. "A real starfighter needs lots more controls than a video game one."

"Also correct," said Terriermon. "But if I had an astromech droid to do all those extra things for me, I could focus on the simple things, like direction and shooting and stuff."

"So, you're saying you could be a champion starpilot?" asked Aayla.

"Well, I've never flown a real one," said Terriermon. "But with this and the help of an astromech, I reckon it shouldn't be too difficult."

"If you say so," said Aayla.

"Personally, I think this sounds a bit far-fetched," said Lopmon. "But, whatever floats your boat."

* * *

Suzie tucked into the food that the clone in the mess hall had willingly obliged to her. The mess hall was close to the centre of the ship, out of the way of anything that could impede the defence of the vessel if it came under attack. Henry and Rika also ate quite heartily, as they'd had to miss breakfast to get an early start and most of their tea the previous day had ended up plastered over the walls, and each other. Their clothes had been washed overnight while they had slept in pyjamas provided for them, on small portable beds that had been put in Aayla's room.

Rika sighed as she chewed a small piece of plant material that tasted a little like mushrooms. "I wonder how everyone's getting on back home."

"Hey," Henry said, warningly. "Let's not go down that route. I can fully imagine what my parents will be doing right about now and to be honest, I'd rather not go down that route."

Suzie looked up at him sadly. "Mummy will be crying all the time and Daddy will be working really hard to try and find us. But he won't find anything, will he?"

"I doubt it," sighed Henry. "If there's any hope of us getting back, it'll probably be with the people in this universe. They have much better technologies after all."

"Well, you never know," shrugged Rika hopefully. "Your Dad and his buddies have pulled off some pretty neat stuff before. This universe hasn't seen anything like, say, Grani."

"True," accepted Henry. "But still..."

"Somebody's feeling very down at the moment," said Rika.

"Hunree's alwas felin don about somefin," Suzie managed to say around a mouthful of some kind of pasty.

"Gee, thanks," Henry rolled his eyes.

"Then I'll give him the same piece of advice that he hears daily," said Rika. "Momentai, Henry."

"Thanks, Rika," Henry smiled. He leaned forward and the two shared a brief kiss. Many clones sitting around noticed this, but made no comment on it.

Renamon smiled down at her charges from where she was standing behind Rika. She chose to keep quiet about Terriermon's annoyance at Rika's use of his catchphrase. She didn't particularly think that now was the time for that. She watched as Henry fed Rika a piece of something off his own fork, and ignored Terriermon's silent giggling.

"Hey, Renamon!" called the voice of a clone. The yellow fox looked up to see Commander Bly and Captain Rex walking towards them. Another clone that Renamon identified as Lieutenant Galle was with them.

"Can I help you?" she asked politely.

"Actually, yes," said Bly. "Galle here says he just remembered something that you guys talked about back on Ryloth."

"Oh?" asked Renamon, turning to Galle. "And what would that be?"

"You offered to give us a sample of that really strong metal so we could incorporate it into our tanks and ships," said Galle. "You know, that stuff that Turuiemon's switchblades are made up of. I forget them name."

"Chrome-Digizoid?" asked Renamon. "Yes, I remember that we made such an offer."

"You claimed that it has near-indestructible properties," said Galle. "Think of the lives that could be saved if we had that working for our defence."

"I don't know," said Rex. "The idea of a near indestructible metal sounds a bit odd to me. I'll probably need to see it before I believe it."

"Ah, an empiricist," smirked Renamon. "Very well. Seek and ye shall find, Rex. Rika, if you will."

Rika, who'd been listening with interest, nodded and fished a card out of her deck. She swept it through the D-Arc. The clones around the mess hall turned to watch as she cried, "Digi-modify! WarGreymon's Brave Shield Activate!"

The huge, hexagonal shield of the warrior-dinosaur Digimon materialised in thin air in front of Renamon. It levitated in front of her like some sort of guardian. Peering around it, Renamon said, "Alright troopers. Give me your best shot."

"You want us to shoot at you?" asked Bly, surprised. "Are you sure?"

"Of course," said Renamon. "Don't worry. This shield is very strong, I can assure you of that."

"Alright," the three clones looked uncertain as they unholstered their blasters and pointed them at the stoic, yellow shield. After a few seconds of hesitation, they let of a volley of shots, each one crashing into the shield with tremendous force, which would be more than enough to kill a battle droid.

When they stopped, they stared at the unblemished shield. There weren't even any marks to let them know it had even been hit. Any shot that hit a tank often left a mark and a tiny hole that was of completely no consequence, but the shield was devoid of even that.

"Whoa," said Rex, examining the metal. "That is pretty good."

"Even the thinnest amount of Chrome-Digizoid metal is almost indestructible," said Renamon, lowering the shield so she could see over the top. "Only extremely powerful attacks, like those of a Mega level Digimon, or an assault from more Chrome-Digizoid metal, will have any effect of it at all.

"Interesting," Bly placed his fingers on the shield. "So we wouldn't have to build completely new machines with this stuff – we'd just have to coat a layer of it over everything we have. Well, that would certainly save time. What's the melting point of Chrome-Digizoid?"

"I don't know," said Renamon. "I don't think anyone's ever tried to find out before."

"You mind if we borrow this?" asked Galle. "We might be able to analyse it and synthesise it somehow."

"Go ahead," Renamon tossed the shield to the clone. Galle braced himself, expected a heavy load, but he found he didn't need it when he caught the thing. "Wow," he said. "It's very light."

Renamon smiled.

* * *

"It's possible," shrugged Anakin, looking over Terriermon's designs. "I mean, I've never seen anything so simple before, but theoretically it might be possible to build something like this." He tapped his lip with one finger. "Tell you what. I'll look into it for you and I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks," said Terriermon, grinning broadly. "So, how's the mission coming along?"

"Well, we haven't picked up any signs of Seppie activity on the scanners," said Ahsoka. "I did say that this mission was probably going to be a waste of time."

"Better safe than sorry," said Lopmon. Aayla nodded.

"Hey, you know what would liven things up?" asked Terriermon. "You reckon someone could take me for a little spin in one of those things?" he jerked a thumb at the Jedi starfighters. "If I'm going to fly a ship like that then I should get a feel for it."

"You're just looking for an excuse to do something fun, aren't you?" asked Lopmon with a grin.

"So what if I am?" Terriermon asked defiantly.

"I don't know," Anakin shrugged. "If there is the potential for any Separatist activity, then we should really stay inside."

"Excuse me?" asked Ahsoka with a flabbergasted expression. "Who are you and what have you done with the real Skyguy? Since when have things like that stopped you from doing stuff like this before?"

Anakin laughed. "Fair point, Snips. Fair point."

"And besides," said Ahsoka. "I'd welcome a Separatist attack. You think I couldn't handle any droid fighters they sent at me?"

"I take it that you're volunteering to do this," said Aayla.

"It's dull sitting around here," shrugged Ahsoka. "And I can take of myself in my starfighter."

"Aww, go on," said Terriermon. "I've been wanting to fly around in one of those things ever since I saw one."

"You know he's never going to stop asking until you say yes," said Lopmon airily.

"Oh, alright," Anakin relented.

"Yes!" Terriermon punched the air with an ear, and used the other to give Ahsoka a high-five.

"Hey, wait a minute," Anakin narrowed his eyes. "This isn't just a ploy so that you two can be alone and plot against me in this prank war is it?"

"Not at all, Skyguy," Ahsoka shook her head. "You becoming paranoid, 'cause you know I'm going to win?"

"Just go get out there," Anakin shook his head. "It'll get the both of you out of everyone elses hair for a while."

"Thanks," Terriermon cried, as he and Ahsoka headed towards the appropriate Delta-7B.

"But, all the same, keep close to the ship," Anakin called after them.

"We will," Ahsoka called back. "Come on, Arseven." Ahsoka's little astromech wheeled along after them.

Anakin didn't miss Aayla's little chuckle. "What?" he asked, turning to the Twi'lek.

"Oh nothing," said Aayla. "I was just thinking how close the two of you have become. You've almost become like father and daughter, or perhaps big brother and little sister."

"Well, you could say that I suppose," said Anakin. "I notice you're doing a similar thing with our new friends."

"Well, they're very likeable people," pointed out the Twi'lek.

"Thank you," said Lopmon.

The hangar doors opened as the duraglass cockpit closed over Terriermon and Ahsoka. Arseven buzzed a little in his slot before the pilot. Ahsoka and Terriermon waved to Anakin, Aayla and Lopmon, who all waved back.

Ahsoka strapped herself in and said, "Hold on tight, Terriermon," to the bunny perched excitedly on her shoulder. The little Rookie hooked one ear around her and under her arm, putting it lower down than usual so he didn't touch anything inappropriate, as Ahsoka flipped a couple of switches.

"Here we go," grinned Ahsoka as the engines kicked in to life. "Hold onto your butt," she repeated Terriermon's words back to him from earlier and the starfighter lifted off the deck. It slowly steered out so that it was underneath the hangar doors in the ceiling that had opened up, and then they blasted upwards into space.

"WHAHOAH!" Terriermon cried in ecstasy as they zoomed forward. He laughed loudly as Ahsoka steered the starfighter in a full one-eighty and shot past the rest of the Resolute. Ahsoka steered the little ship with expert skill, wheeling tightly around the bridge of the cruiser, corkscrewing through space as they zoomed around and around the larger ship, tightly turning the corners, wheeling and zipping around the area and ultimately flying rings around the cruiser. Ahsoka laughed too as Terriermon whooped, punching the air with one ear.

"Check this out!" Ahsoka grinned and suddenly the ship shot upwards in a full loop-da-loop.

"WHOA!" Terriermon laughed, his ear unconsciously tightening on Ahsoka's side. Ahsoka giggled.

"Hey, that tickles," she laughed as she span the ship in a small circle repeatedly.

"Sorry," Terriermon loosened his hold. "But this is so awesome."

"Got anything like this back in your home dimension?" asked Ahsoka triumphantly.

"No, I can safely say that I haven't," grinned Terriermon. "Not even rollercoasters can compare to this.

"Glad you're enjoying yourself."

* * *

Down below, one of the commando droids turned to the other. "The two hour time limit is up."

"Roger, roger," said the other one. "All fighters, launch."

The fifteen Vulture Droids inclined their heads backwards and jumped off the ground, their engines kicking into life as their legs lines up on either side of them. They veered upwards at high speed, bursting through the low clouds and then through the atmosphere, zooming towards it's chosen target, the Republic Cruiser known as the _Resolute_.

* * *

"General," Anakin's wrist-comlink suddenly activated. He, Aayla and Lopmon crowded around it, as Anakin pushed the button.

"General Skywalker here. What's the status?"

"We've got incoming fighters, sir," said the clone through the comlink. "Vulture Droids. Computer counts fifteen. They're coming at us from the planet, sir."

Anakin and Aayla glanced sharply at each other. "Then there is a Separatist presence here," Anakin gritted his teeth.

Aayla whipped around to shout out to the troopers in the hangar. "Pilots, to your ships!" she cried. "We've got fighters approaching and one of our ships out there. Let's move."

All the clones immediately dropped what they were doing and ran for their ships. Aayla and Anakin sprinted for their own starfighters. Anakin wall-vaulted into his cockpit. Aayla catapulted herself into hers. R2-D2 and R4-G9 extended rocket boosters from the sides of their legs and activated them, rising off the ground and dropping neatly into their slots on the starfighters. Anakin and Aayla lifted off first, with the clones in their own starfighters right behind them after a quick call-in.

Shooting out into space, Anakin quickly hailed Ahsoka on the com channels. "Snips!" he called. "Looks like there is a Separatist presence here after all. We've got incoming fighters and we're moving out engage them now. Join up with mine and Aayla's squadron and get in formation."

"You got it, Master," Ahsoka said, her face suddenly much more serious as she stopped spinning the ship is circles and zoomed forward towards the other fighters departing from the ship. The fighters quickly formed into a large diamond shaped pattern, with Anakin at the tip. Aayla was right behind him on the right, and Ahsoka slipped into formation on his left.

"Looks like you got more than you bargained for," said Ahsoka to the bunny on her shoulder.

"Bring it on," Terriermon grinned. "We'll teach them a lesson they won't ever remember."

"Yeah, you're right," nodded Ahsoka. "Because they'll never be around to remember it."

"Here they come!" shouted Anakin. "Tighten formation."

The Republic starfighters drew closer together, as the fifteen Vulture Droids lanced towards them.

"Terriermon," Aayla called the Digimon through her com-channel. "This is where the real fun begins."

Republic and Separatist fighters accelerated towards each other.

* * *

Renamon dashed towards the bridge at high speed, the Tamers trailing behind her. The moment Terriermon had heard Anakin telling Ahsoka about the incoming Vulture Droids, concern flashed through her and, after a brief sentence to the Tamers that summarised what was going on, dashed out the doors of the Mess Hall.

She belted down the corridors, dodging several clones running to and fro. She saw Lopmon appear ahead of her, swooping around the corner with her ears outstretched. The two of them burst into the bridge. Admiral Yularen, Rex and Bly looked up at their dramatic entrance, from where they were observing the fighter to fighter battle.

"What's going on?" Lopmon shot over to them.

"It seems there is a Separatist presence here after all," said Yularen. "They've come in from on planet, fifteen of them. I wouldn't worry – the fighters are more than capable of taking care of them."

"Why aren't any of the guns firing from the ship?" asked Renamon.

"It's an aerial brawl out there," said Bly. "If we were to fire lasers into that mess we'd have just as much chance of hitting our own fighters than those of the enemy."

"Where's Terriermon?" asked Rex. "I wouldn't think he'd want to miss this."

"He's got the best seat for watching," said Renamon dryly. "He's over there," she pointed to the red Delta-7B, painted with white markings and thin green stripes around the cockpit.

Rex looked confused. "But that's Ahsoka's fighter."

"I know," said Renamon. "He's sitting on her shoulder."

"Ah," said Yularen. "I did wonder why Ahsoka decided to go flying for no obvious reason. Now I believe I have my answer."

"He must be having fun," commented Bly, as they watched Ahsoka's ship blow up one of the attacking Vulture Droids.

By this time, the Tamers had finally caught up. "Do they really think that fifteen of those small ships would have been a match for a great big, cruiser like this?" asked Henry.

"Well, droids aren't known for their intelligence," said Yularen. "But it never hurts to be prepared. Everyone here is on full alert, just in case any larger ships come to join the battle."

"Something about this doesn't seem right to me," said Renamon, watching Aayla's ship send one Vulture Droid spiralling into another and Anakin wheeling about to fire on a droid that had shot past him. "I'm not sure what, but still. Even droids don't care for suicide missions, do they?"

"Against us, every droid mission is a suicide mission," chuckled Rex.

"Yes," agreed Renamon, "but they don't know that. Fifteen droids just wouldn't be enough for any Republic cruiser – even they must know that."

The wrecked ball of fire that had once been one of the clone's fighters rolled past the window.

"Yes," said Yularen. "It does seem rather odd. If there was substantially-sized base down below, we would have known by now. Those fifteen droids weren't sent from a base. They were waiting for us."

"A trap, sir?" asked Bly.

"It makes sense," said Rika. "But where's the rest of the trap, or did they forget to tell the others when to spring it."

"What have they got in store for us?" Renamon's eyes narrowed.

"Sir," one of the clones stood up. "We're picking up a contact. There's a ship coming out of hyperspace."

"Back-up?" asked Yularen, though his hopes for a positive answer were not high.

"Negative, sir," said the clone. "It's a Separatist ship, and a very large one."

Everyone turned grimly to look out of the window, just as the ship appeared from seemingly nowhere directly ahead of them. It was large, larger than the _Resolute_, and had a pointed front, a long tapering body, and three large engines on the back.

"That's a Separatist Destroyer," said Yularen grimly, taking command. "Divert all available power to the forward shields. We have incoming fire!"

The clones hastened to obey, and the two giant ships began to trade red and blue lasers, most of which glanced harmlessly off the shields of the other. The _Resolute_ hung in the space, neither advancing now retreating, but the larger ship began to bear down on them like a very slow-moving Juggernaut.

"Hurry!" Yularen cried. "Send out a distress signal to the _Intrepid_ and the _Valiant_. Tell them we've come under attack and need reinforcements, or this battle might end in a stalemate."

* * *

"Well, that's not good," Anakin said, at the sight of the Separatist Destroyer moving slowly forwards.

"Just when you think it couldn't get any better, huh Terriermon?" Aayla said grimly.

"Yeah," said the bunny. "I'm not so sure about going up against that in one of these things."

Arseven buzzed, rotating his head to look at Terriermon.

"I agree," said Ahsoka.

"What did he say?" asked Terriermon.

"He said Momentai."

"Oh, for the love of..."

"We've got more fighters coming in from the enemy ship," cried Anakin. The first fifteen had been no trouble at all, and the defenders had only lost two ships to the Vulture Droids. But now a whole load more, at least four times as many, were now zooming towards them from the Separatist Destroyer. "Let's take them out. Reform the line!"

Hurriedly, the phalanx of ships was formed again, slightly smaller than last time, and the three Jedi led the charge once more. Anakin spiralled through space, cleaning blasting through three Vulture Droids before they could even let off a shot. Ahsoka, with Terriermon grinning broadly on her shoulder, barrelled over the smoking remains of another droid and hit the one directly behind it. Aayla spun around and came in from the side, catching two more of them with her lasers.

"You guys really do make this stuff look easy," said Terriermon, as Ahsoka fried another droid. "You might even make worthy opponents on the Xbox 360."

"High praise indeed," Aayla remarked, catching a droid a glancing blow to the stabilizers which sent it spinning planetward. "Watch your right, Anakin."

"I see him," Anakin said, looping up to avoid the shots from another and returning fire with vigour.

"This was obviously some kind of trap set up for us," said Ahsoka, "but its obviously not a very good one. We're thrashing them."

"Ahsoka's right," Anakin clipped the engines off another. "What did they hope to gain with this?"

"I'm not sure," said Aayla. "But I don't think we know the full situation yet."

* * *

On the bridge of the Separatist Destroyer, a battle droid turned from its station and said, "Sir. We've got their intention. What's our next move?"

The rasping voice of the figure that Ventress had spoken to earlier replied. "They've taken the bait. Focus all fire on the cruiser. Draw the fighters closer towards us."

"Closer, sir?" asked the droid. "Don't we want to keep them as far away as possible?"

"Did I ask for your opinion?" snapped the figure. "Do as I tell you."

"Yes, sir." The droid pushed a few buttons, signalling orders directly to the Vulture Droids. They watched carefully as the fight drew closer to the ship.

"So, Ventress' information was correct," growled the figure. "There are indeed three Jedi out there. I can see their starfighters."

"What do we do next, sir?" asked the battle droid.

"Our target is one of the Jedi starfighters," said the figure. "It has been described as a red, with white markings and green stripes down the side of the cockpit."

"I see it sir," a battle droid pointed. "There's one yellow one, and one white and blue one too, but there's the red one."

"Shall we fire on it, sir?" asked the first battle droid.

"No. Our mission is to capture, not to kill. Get me a tractor beam lock on that starfighter. Draw it into the hangar. Then I shall go and meet the pilot."

"Roger, roger," droned the battle droids, turning back to their stations.

* * *

"This is so awesome!" Terriermon grinned as Ahsoka blew up yet another Vulture Droid. "Ooh, there's another one."

"I got him!" Ahsoka turned the ship around and went in pursuit on a Vulture Droid that had streaked past them, heading for the Resolute. Her eyes narrowed as she centred on the target, thumb over the button to fire and blow it to pieces.

Her fighter stopped moving.

Completely. It just suddenly went into a standstill. Ahsoka was thrown forwards at the sudden change in speed and was only caught thanks to the safety belts keeping her in place.

Terriermon was completely unprepared for this as well, but he had no safety belt. When the ship stopped, he went flying forward, lost him grip on Ahsoka and his head smashed into the duraglass with a sickening thud. He dropped down, landing in Ahsoka's lap.

* * *

Renamon jumped with horror and gasped, her paw flying to her head. Her eyes strained as the concentrated, trying to break through the blackness that had formed in her mind.

"What is it?" Henry asked quickly. "What happened?"

"I lost contact with Terriermon," cried Renamon. "He's alive, but he's been knocked unconscious."

"Something's happening to Ahsoka's ship," Rex pointed out of the window. "I know my starfighters. Delta-7B's cannot go backwards."

* * *

"What the..." Ahsoka cried, as the ship began to move again, backwards and at high speed. "Terriermon! Terriermon, are you okay?"

There was no response. Terriermon's eyes were shut and they didn't open. The force of the blow to his head had knocked him out-cold. Ahsoka brought her knees up a little so he wouldn't slide to the floor, and tried to get the ship moving properly again.

Nothing she did responded, and then, with a sickening jolt, she realised what was happening. They had all thought that it had just been a badly executed trap for the _Resolute_, but the cruiser had not been the target at all.

_She_ had.

She was caught in a tractor beam and being pulled backwards towards the enemy ship. Her eyes widened with shock and horror at this revelation.

"Ahsoka," Aayla's voice broke through the com-channel. "What's wrong with your ship?"

"Masters!" Ahsoka cried. "I need help."

* * *

A mix of action, drama and humour in this chapter. Three guesses as to who the mystery figure is this time. It really shouldn't be too difficult to work out if you know your Star Wars. Please review, and I hope everyone eagerly anticipates the next chapter.

* * *

Next time...

What will become of Ahsoka? Will Terriermon be okay? What does Ventress have planned for everyone's favourite Togruta Padawan?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 33 : Disappearance**


	33. Disappearance

How the hell am I updating so fast? Ah well, I suppose I knew that everyone would be anxious to find out who the figure is and what is in store for Ahsoka and Terriermon. You fans keep me going, you know that. If it weren't for you guys spurring me on, I'd probably have stopped writing by now.

Anyway, enough with the flattery. Onto the chapter, which was, I might add exceedingly difficult to write. Space battles are hard!

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 33:- Disappearance**

* * *

Ahsoka's starfighter rocketed backwards and at ridiculously high speed. The Togruta had abandoned the controls entirely as nothing she did was having any effect whatsoever anyway. Instead, she shook Terriermon in her lap, but the bunny made no response.

"Terriermon! Wake up! This isn't funny. Stop fooling around!"

But she knew that he really wasn't fooling around. Not this time. Not even Terriermon would mess about in a situation as dire as this. The Rookie level Digimon was well and truly out-cold.

Ahsoka looked out the window, gritting her teeth. All the Vulture Droids swarming around her vessel were completely ignoring her – more proof, as if it were needed, that she had been the target of this little trap all along. She couldn't even begin to fathom why whoever this was wanted her badly enough to go to all this trouble to get to her. What did they want with her? Did they want her killed? If they did, then why didn't they just try to shoot her down? Was she a hostage? If so, then what for? It didn't make any sense!

She looked down at Terriermon again. The little prankster had become her responsibility now, and whatever happened on board that enemy ship, she was going to protect him to the best of her ability. She touched the back of his head where it had struck the duraglass. He was probably going to be out like a light for a while.

She looked behind her. She could see the hangar she was being drawn into up ahead – a large, blue ray shield placed over it to keep any of the Republic ships from entering the ship and causing damage to it.

Ahsoka looked back up and saw the other two Jedi starfighters streaking towards her from ahead.

"Snips!" came Anakin's voice. "What is going on?"

"I'm sorry, Masters," Ahsoka addressed both Anakin and Aayla. "But there isn't anything you can do. I've been caught in a tractor beam and we are being drawn into the ship."

She could practically see Anakin's grimace.

"Don't worry about me, Masters," she said gallantly. "I'll be fine. Keep attacking that ship. Bring it down. Terriermon and I will be okay."

"We're not leaving you, Ahsoka," Anakin called.

"You have to," Ahsoka admonished, as she watched the two other Jedi circle her helplessly, unable to help her and break her out of the grip of the tractor beam in any way. Ahsoka knew that there was absolutely nothing they can do now. She grimaced, and went on. "Blow the clankers into pieces for me, Masters. I promise you, I will die fighting."

"You're not going to die at all, Ahsoka," Aayla replied as Ahsoka's ship was dragged even further towards the enemy ship.

"I'll do my best to take them out," Ahsoka said. Then she looked back to the ship. She needed to quickly prepare. "Arseven," she said to the astromech. "There's no point in you coming in with me. Eject yourself quickly before it's too late."

Arseven buzzed in protest.

"Just do it," Ahsoka said. Arseven gave her a final look before he popped out of his socket like a cork from a bottle and went floating off into space, free from the pull of the tractor beam. His rockets extended and he turned to head back to the _Resolute_. There was nothing more that he could do.

Unfortunately, there was no handy escape pod in the starfighter for Ahsoka and her unconscious charge, thinking quickly. If she was going to fight the droids then she could do without having to worry about him as well. She considered trying to hide him somewhere in the cockpit, but then she changed her mind. If they were looking to capture her, then they were likely to destroy her ship to prevent her from escaping. She didn't want Terriermon to be destroyed with it.

She was going to have to take him with her and then find a place to hide him until she could find some way to get off the ship. She gathered the little guy into her arms and her eyes narrowed as she unclipped her ever-present lightsaber from her belt and held it ready. She turned and watched as the ray shield over the hangar doors flickered and dropped. She watched as she was drawn through the space it had been in and it was raised in front of her.

Her ship touched down.

"Here goes nothing," she muttered to herself and, clutching Terriermon tightly to her stomach, she opened the cockpit of her fighter.

* * *

"Sir," the battle droid turned towards the cloaked figure on the bridge. "Objective complete. The ship has entered the hangar."

"Good," rasped the figure. "But we are dealing with a Jedi. She will not go down easily."

"What are your orders, sir?"

"We must not allow her to escape. Cease the attack and reroute all power from the laser cannons to the shields. Keep the Republic off our backs until I have completed the next stage. The other Jedi will attempt to board this vessel. Send out the rest of the Vulture Droids to keep them occupied, and send a squadron of Hyena bombers to attack the enemy vessel. Take the fight away from our ship. And bring the ship around. Jump to hyperspace to the rendezvous point as soon as possible."

"Roger, roger. But what are you going to do sir?"

"The child is going to give us a fight if I remember her correctly. I am heading down to the hangar to deal with her myself. Do not wait until I return before initiating the retreat. You four," the figure swung around to face the four droids standing behind him. The tall, grey MagnaGuards that could almost always be found around this person stood to attention. "Lord Sidious has ordered us to capture this Padawan and deliver her to Ventress. And that is what we shall do." The figure gave out a rasping, malevolent laugh, the effect of which was rather spoiled by the hacking cough that followed.

After this, the figure strode out of the bridge and down towards the hangar, the MagnaGuards right behind him. As he walked, the figure's footsteps made heavy clicking noise instead of the thud of the usual footstep. He growled to himself with anticipation of watching the young Jedi suffer. She'd escaped him the last time they'd met. She would not do so again.

* * *

The moment the duraglass lifted up, Ahsoka was already in action. With one arm hooked around Terriermon where she could shield him from any incoming blaster bolts, his back pressed to her stomach so that he wouldn't suffocate, she leapt out of the cockpit and landed smoothly on the ground. Her green lightsaber jumped out of the handle. Her head came up and quickly surveyed the area – a usual Separatist hangar with several crates piled untidily by the wall, numerous battle droids scurrying to and fro, a few doors leading elsewhere and a large number of Vulture Droids hanging from the ceiling.

The moment she looked at the Vulture Droids, their red photoreceptors flashed on and the the hooks holding them to the ceiling released them. They fell, flipping into starfighter mode before they struck the floor and zoomed outside.

Ahsoka ran forward quickly. Her blade flashed as she quickly swept it through the first droid, spinning to bring it swinging through another. She made a dash for the crates as the battle droids dotted around the place began to fire on her. Leaping atop them, Ahsoka turned the bolts aside with her arcing blade of light. The arm clutching Terriermon moved behind her back and then she let go of him.

She caught him quickly with the Force, and he was so small that this didn't take much effort. As she continued to fend off the battle droids, she lowered him as gently as possible behind the crates, not daring to look at him in case she drew attention to him. It wasn't the best hiding place in the galaxy, but hopefully it'd be enough to conceal him from the droids.

* * *

"Ahsoka! Can you hear me?" Anakin shouted into the comlink. "Ahsoka! Are you there?"

"They must be blocking out signal," said Aayla. "We can't hear her any more, and she can't hear us."

"We got to do something!" Anakin cried. "That's my Padawan in there!"

"If you can think of something then I'm all ears," Aayla flipped to ship around and fired on A Vulture Droid that had been attempting to shoot her from behind. "I can't think of anything, and I'm wracking my brains here."

Anakin was doing the exact same thing, casting glances at the deflector shield that has risen behind his Padawan's ship. He remembered a similar instance of this happening. His wife, Padme, had been pulled aboard the damaged warship known as the _Malevolence_, but circumstances had been different then. The warship had been battered and in dire need of repair, so much so that it hadn't been able to jump to hyperspace. Because of the damage, Anakin and Obi-Wan had managed to use the _Twilight_ to sneak in and dock at one of the emergency airlocks and board the ship to rescue her.

But this time it was different. This ship was working at its peak efficiency. Its shields were fully operational, it's hyperdrive active, it's scanners full equipped and able to see everything around them. He didn't have anything in his arsenal that'd be able to board the ship, so he was going to have to rely on his own wits.

"I'm going to take out the shields blocking the hangar," he said, rolling the ship to avoid an aerial attack between one of the clone fighters and two Vulture droids. "Then, you and I can slip in and give Ahsoka a hand."

"We won't be able to escape with her unless we get the tractor beam shut down," reminded Aayla.

"If I have to, I'll squeeze her into my fighter with me," said Anakin. "I am not leaving her behind."

"Alright," said Aayla. "Let's do it."

The two starfighters regrouped together, taking out two Vulture Droids together as they wheeled around, preparing to fire on the shield generator at the side of the hangar. But suddenly, the shields were momentarily lowered and a swarm of Vulture Droids emerged from , flying straight towards the Jedi.

Anakin growled in frustration as he and Aayla were forced to separate to avoid a collision with the droids. The Vulture Droids curved to follow them, swooping and diving through the air as they flew pell-mell towards the Jedi ships. The Jedi curved around for another attempt on the shield, but the Vulture Droids weren't dispersing into the battlefield like they usually did. They were swooping and wheeling around the entrance to the hangar, blocking off every attempt the Jedi tried to make to get inside.

Anakin swore in Huttese under his breath as he was forced to veer to the side for the third time. Aayla moved into attack position, but she too could make no headway at the wall of Vulture Droids.

"All clone fighters to me!" Anakin rallied them. "We need to get on board the Separatist ship. We need assistance in breaking through the ranks of Vulture Droids."

"Acknowledged, General," came a clone reply. "We're on our way."

"Anakin," observed Aayla. "They've stopped firing their cannons."

Anakin glanced at the battleground and saw that, indeed, there were no red lasers issuing from the Separatist Destroyer anymore. "You're right," he said. "They must be diverting all available power to the shields. Somebody really doesn't want us getting on board."

"Sir!" the voice of a clone broke through the com-channel. "We've got Hyena bombers inbound. They're heading for the cruiser. What are your orders?"

Anakin and Aayla turned to see the bombers, so similar to the Vulture Droids in appearance, but wider so they could hold the bombs, shooting towards the _Resolute_. Anakin felt like shouting in frustration. This attack, which had seemed so disorganised and rushed at first, was being executed perfectly. They'd drawn out the fighters, grabbed Ahsoka's ship with the tractor beam, blocked off the other Jedi from initiating a rescue, and were no making a powerful and devastating retaliation.

"Break off," Anakin cried. "Follow those bombers! Don't let them reach the ship!"

"Yes, sir!" The clone fighters changed direction and shot off after the bombers.

"And now we've got more problems," Anakin gritted his teeth. "They're turning around." And he was right. The huge Separatist Destroyer was ever so slowly beginning to veer to the left, edging around. Soon it would be broadside to the _Resolute_, and then they would be facing the other way. No doubt they'd then jump to hyperspace.

_But why?_ Anakin's thoughts screamed at him. _Why do they want my Padawan? What's so important about her that they have to go to all this trouble to catch her?_ No matter how he thought about it he couldn't think of a likely reason.

"Anakin," Aayla called. "If we're going to break onto that ship then we need to do it soon, before they escape."

"I know that!" Anakin shouted. "I know!"

* * *

After successfully placing her charge on the floor, Ahsoka could focus all her attention on the attacking droids. Striking aside five bolts in rapid succession, she noticed two things in the same instant. One was that they were all using stun blasts instead of actual lasers, and the second was that there weren't many of them. That introduced an air of unease. Surely they didn't think that this few battle droids could bring her down. That meant they might have something nastier planned.

She wanted to draw the attention of the droids away from the crates, so she sprang forwards, leaping about a quarter of the way across the large room and cleaving a battle droid into two pieces. Dropping to the ground, she span in a circle and took out the legs of another, bringing the blade up to slice through another on the same swing. She then bounced straight up as a bolt soared through where she'd been to strike another droid in the chest. She landed heavily on the droids shoulder and backflipped off, slicing through the droid's thin neck as she did.

Picking up the headless droid with the Force, she threw him into two more, then reflected the bolts of five more desperately firing droids back at them. Four found their mark, and the fifth droid was met with a Togruta shooting through the air towards her before its head was sliced in half. Ahsoka continued running, slashing through a further two with a vicious pirouette, followed up with a heavy kick to the stomach of another, stepping forward to kill it with an enormous stab to the floored belly, causing her blade to go through both the droid and the floor.

The remaining few droids were backing away from her and as she sprinted towards them and hewed two more into pieces, she wondered again why there were so few.

A few seconds later, that particular question was answered.

The doors opened and ten commando droids sprinted into the room, just as Ahsoka was in the act of beheading another droid. Ahsoka grimaced at the oncoming line, they're glowing eyes without expression as they ran towards her, raising their blasters. Commando droids were many times more agile than ordinary battle droids, and much more difficult to deal with.

She thrust out with her hand, causing the frontmost droid to go shooting backwards. Incredibly, impossible, all nine others just snaked out of the way of their companion, which crashed into the wall, slumped and then got up. They were much tougher than ordinary battle droids too.

"Okay, tinnies," Ahsoka raised her blade in preparation. "I think you aren't in enough pieces."

The commando droids opened fire on her, but this had no more effect than an ordinary droid as Ahsoka quickly deflected them back. The commandos ducked and dodged, streaking forwards as if the interruption was a mere waste of time. The first drew its sword from its back and leapt, sword held high, ready to strike her over the head with the flat of the blade. Ahsoka dropped to the floor and rolled to the side as the blade crashed into the ground where she'd been.

Leaping up she swung at it. It ducked under her blade and attempted to retaliate, but this time Ahsoka span to the side and sliced it in half with her blade. She spun around in time to shear the blaster of another one of the commandos as it raised it. It grabbed the sword, which got the same treatment. It dodged backwards from Ahsoka's swing and side-stepped the second, but the third caught it a glancing blow to the hip and the fourth finished it off.

The third droid made its way forward, drawing its blade and striking out at Ahsoka's head. The Padawan leant back to avoid it, and hurriedly had to dodge two more swipes in rapid succession. She then had to sidestep again as the fourth took a swing at her. Leaping backwards to increase the distance between them, she crouched down, ready for the next assault. The fourth commando ran for her and she dodged to the side, swinging back around to chop off its arm and finish it off with a stab to the pelvic area. The droid spasmed and dropped down.

The third came for her again, and the fifth and sixth forward-rolled out from either side of it to point their blasters at her and open fire. Ahsoka ducked under the vicious swing and ran past the third, striking in the back with the handle and sending it stumbling. This move carried her straight into the path of the fifth, which attempted a sweep kick. Following it's example, she forward rolled right over it, spinning to hack off one of its legs and, as it fell forward, slice off the head.

Whipping around, she saw the third coming for her again. "Just die already!" she cried, deflecting bolts from the others and bringing her foot up in a heavy roundhouse kick that sent the head flying off. Jumping behind the falling body, she braced herself as the remaining five came for her again.

* * *

"They're getting away!" Suzie pointed at the turning ship. "We've gotta save Terriermon and Ahsoka before they get away!"

"I'm afraid we cannot do anything from here just yet," said Yularen grimly. "It's all up to the fighters out there. We'll have to wait until they turn around fully before we can make our move. Captain Rex, Commander Bly," he turned to the clones. "I want every clone gunner ready. As soon as they can I want them to focus all firepower on the engines. They can't escape if they don't have any of those."

"Right away!" The clones chorused, turning to give the commands.

"I can't sense Terriermon's whereabouts at all," Renamon growled, her fur standing on end. "He's still unconscious. I feel so useless, just standing here and watching, unable to help."

"The best we can do it stay out of the way," said Henry.

"Sir," a clone called. "Our reinforcements have arrived. They're coming out of hyperspace."

"It's about time," Rika cried, as the _Intrepid_ and the _Valiant_ finally whooshed into existence alongside them.

"Excellent," said Yularen. "We'll have a better chance of success with three cruisers against that one enemy ship."

"Bombers incoming!" cried another clone. "Twenty Hyena bombers bearing down on us!"

Yularen's eyes widened and he quickly shouted. "Intensify the shields, quickly. Fire on those bombers! Do anything to keep them away!"

* * *

The holoprojector attached to the cloaked figure's waist beeped urgently. A clawed hand reached down and grabbed it, raising it up to his face-level and activating it. The blue, flickering image of a battle droid fountained into being in the palm of his hand.

"Sir," it said. "Two more Republic cruisers have come out of hyperspace to assist the first. How should we respond?"

The figure had to resist the urge to growl at the droid's stupidity. His contempt for the lack of intelligence that the droids showed was well known throughout the Separatist Alliance. In fact, that was why the MagnaGuards had been produced in the first place – due to his request for a more intelligent and useful class of droid for him to work with when he joined.

"It makes no difference, you fool!" he roared at the unfortunate droid. "We are in retreat anyway! Keep going with what you were doing before and get us out of here, fast as possible! Program the navicomputer to take us to the agreed location above Sernpidal! All available power to the backward shields. Protect the hyperdrive and the engines at all costs, or I'll have your head mounted on my wall and the rest of you fed to a gundark! And don't bother me with details like this again, unless they are actually of some concern. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir!" cried the droid quickly. "Of course, sir!" The hologram disappeared. The figure reattached it to his waist.

"Stupid battle droids!" he snarled to himself, and he continued on the way they were going, eagerly anticipating the upcoming battle.

* * *

The clone fighters swept after the bombers as they sailed forward with their mission of destruction. They sent laser cannon bolts flying through space towards the mass of bombers, which pitched and rolled to avoid them. Three of the bombers were hit and exploded into shrapnel or went spinning out of control.

The cruisers too swung their turrets around to shoot at the Hyena bombers, sending a storm of them into the midst of the bombers. Several more were caught in the blasts, but eleven of the original twenty managed to break through the lines and release their payload. The bombs crashed into the _Resolute_ and began tearing holes in the metal with terrific explosions. The damage was considerably lessened by the shields, but it still had a devastating effect.

* * *

Anakin and Aayla spiralled and spun wildly around. They were the only two fighters left facing the huge squadron of Vulture Droids guarding the ship. Aayla swooped under some shots aimed at her and returned fire, zipping forwards and blowing up four Vulture droids in quick succession, zooming through the gap between them, before wheeling around and taking out a fifth, hurriedly dodging the laser it had managed to shoot off before it's obliteration.

Anakin flipped upside-down and the bolts sent his way whooshed past. Artoo whistled in excitement as Anakin, still upside-down, dealt with the droid responsible, and the one behind that and the one behind that in rapid succession.

"We're thinning their ranks," he cried, as he flipped the starfighter the right way up.

"But not quickly enough," Aayla responded. "The enemy starship has almost completely turned around. They'll be ready to jump to lightspeed soon."

Anakin bit his lip in frustration. He took a quick glance at how the clones were doing. The two other cruisers had disgorged a good deal more fighters to help those dealing with the bombers. Anakin watched with satisfaction as the final bomber was annihilated by the clone's fire.

"All clone pilots," Aayla called, blowing up another Vulture. "Rally to Anakin and me. We're going to make one final run for that enemy ship."

The clones replied in the affirmative and streaked forwards in one, final, desperate offensive. The Jedi swooped around to join them and they surge into the Vulture Droids.

"Just hold on, Ahsoka!" Anakin cried.

* * *

The figure momentarily stopped in the corridor. The four MagnaGuards behind him also drew to a stop. The figure listened carefully to sounds of a whirring lightsaber not far ahead, and the sounds of metal being sliced by it. It gave a mixture of a laugh and a cough and said, "Sounds like out Jedi guest is putting up a fight. You four," he pointed at the MagnaGuards. "You go on ahead. I shall circle around and cut off her escape route."

The MagnaGuards nodded and filed past their leader, who turned and walked down another corridor at pace in order to get behind the Togruta. Soon, she would be in his clutches and then Ventress'. She was no match for him.

* * *

The seventh commando droid fell rather comically in Ahsoka's opinion, when she leapt forward to take a swing at the sixth and it had ducked to the floor, but the seventh, which had been standing right behind it, was sliced in half before it had even registered what had happened. Unfortunately this gave the sixth enough time to bulldoze upwards and ram her in the stomach. Ahsoka sprawled backwards, winded and clutching her stomach. Looking up, she saw the culprit leaping at her, sword held high.

She rolled hurriedly to one side as the blade crashed down where she'd been, sparks flying from where it struck the ground. Leaping to her feet, she grabbed the droid with the Force and brought it shooting towards her, pointing her lightsaber forwards and skewering it on the blade. The droid sputtered and died with a slight hissing noise.

As Ahsoka pushed the droid off her blade, another commando leapt forward with just its bare hands at the ready. It managed to grab the hand that Ahsoka was using to hold her lightsaber, and also got a hold of the wrist on her other hand. Ahsoka jerked away, but the commando droid's grip was like a vice around her and it moved with her, forcing the lightsaber blade away from it.

"Let go, you stupid machine!" Ahsoka demanded, feeling a little better for saying it despite the fact it didn't listen to her. A brief struggling match began, with Ahsoka trying to pull away and the commando pulling back, somehow managing to stop her from cutting into it.

Out of the corner of her eye, Ahsoka saw the ninth commando droid raising its blade to strike. Acting on instinct, she fell onto her back, pulling the commando droid with her and bringing her foot up to boot it in the stomach. The commando droid lost its grip and went sailing over Ahsoka's head to crash into its companion, and the two went down in a heap. Ahsoka sprang up again and leapt upon them before they had a chance to rise, swiping her blade through both in the same strike.

The final commando droid looked a little reluctant to approach her, holding its sword defensively before it. "Aaw, what's the matter?" Ahsoka asked. "Are you all on your own now? Think you can take me, huh?"

The doors behind the commando droid whooshed open. Ahsoka looked up and saw something even worse – four MagnaGuards had just entered the hangar. They regarded her dolefully, then raised their electrostaffs, which crackled with phrik energy.

The commando droid suddenly leapt, trying to take advantage of her distraction. Ahsoka dodged the strike and sliced through its shoulders and hips with two swift strokes. She held her blade up as the MagnaGuards advanced menacingly towards her.

"Okay," she muttered, more to herself than the opponents. "I took out three of you back on Tatooine. What's one more?" She said it with a lot more confidence than she felt. A lone MagnaGuard could be a tough opponent. And whoever was in charge of this place had yet to show their face. But she lunged forward anyway, and the first MagnaGuard countered her strike with its staff.

* * *

Yularen, Rex, Bly, Renamon, Lopmon and the Tamers watched on as Anakin, Aayla and the remaining clone pilots powered through the mass of Vulture Droids that guarded the entrance to the hangar that Ahsoka and Terriermon had been pulled into. "Do you think they're going to make it?" Rika asked the clones.

"Here's hoping," said Bly. "I really don't like sitting here and watching this happening. I hate watching space battles while I just stand here uselessly."

"Now you know how we feel," muttered Rika.

"At least you guys can used Modify Cards to help," Bly reminded her. "All we can do is tell the others where to point the guns."

"They've diverted all their power to the backward shields," said Yularen gravely. "None of our weapons are breaking through their shields, so we're not damaging their engines. Whoever is in charge of that ship certainly knows what he's doing. If this rescue is to succeed, it's up to the Generals now."

"Come on, Aayla. Come on, Anakin," murmured Lopmon. "Hold on guys – they're coming."

"Sir," said one of the clones, standing up. "The computer indicates that the enemy's hyperdrive is powering up."

"No," Renamon breathed quietly, her eyes widening.

* * *

Anakin and Aayla mowed down the group of five Vulture Droids before them, as they broke ahead of the clones and finally they broke through the mass of Vultures, and had a clear shot at the Separatist Destroyer.

"Let's do this!" shouted Anakin. "Aayla, concentrate your fire on the shield generator."

"On it," Aayla replied, pressing her thumb down on the red buttons that fired the cannons. She and Anakin shot forwards and poured shot after shot at the large, black generator on the right side of the cockpit.

"Almost there!" Anakin cried as the Jedi threw everything they had at the generator.

But it happened.

The Separatist Destroyer suddenly went to lightspeed and shot away faster than the eye could track.

Anakin stared in horror at the empty space where the ship has been.

Aayla stared in horror.

Renamon and Lopmon stared in horror.

Henry, Rika, Suzie, Rex, Bly, Yularen and all the other clones on board the _Resolute_ stared in horror.

For a moment, the entire battlefield seemed to be almost completely silent, except for the brawl between the clones and the Vulture Droids that didn't seem to care that they'd been left behind.

Aayla's grip on the controls slipped and her hands fell limply to her sides, as Anakin's screams of "AHSOKA! NO! AHSOKA!" broke through the com-channel. It couldn't be. Their very first mission together as a partnered team, and Terriermon and Ahsoka had been snatched away from them. Now, the Separatists would not only discover the secret of the Jedi, but they would probably do unspeakable things to the two of them, far from partner, mate or Master alike.

But a couple of seconds after that, and her expression suddenly hardened. There was nothing she or the Digimon could have done to stop them from getting away. The plan had been perfectly executed. But they still had something that gave them an edge.

They were going to get Ahsoka and Terriermon back, whatever the cost. This was far from over.

And Aayla knew just how to do it.

* * *

Ahsoka could tell, with a sinking feeling, that they'd just jumped to hyperspace. She could sense it. She fought the urge to scream in frustration as she hurriedly blocked the strike from one of the MagnaGuards, before sweeping around to counter the lunge of another. She needed to try and find a computer and send out a distress signal or something.

She blocked another downwards swing and sidestepped the blow coming from her left, which forced her to block to blow coming in from her right. The MagnaGuards weren't letting her gain any ground and were forcing her towards the wall, where it's be easier to deal with her. She landed two blows on the opposing ends of the electrostaff of one and leapt back as the retaliatory strike scythed past her stomach. Then her attacker jumped aside and another came in for a strike she had to dodge, spinning the electrostaff madly and forcing her to raise her blade and stop the top from connecting with her chest. Gritting her teeth she pushed back, leapt over the strike of another and kicked upwards at its head.

The centre of the staff blocked her foot, but it did cause the MagnaGuard to lose its grip on the weapon slightly. Ahsoka pressed home her attack, sweeping her leg to knock is legs from under it and relieved it of its weapon, before sweeping her blade through its chest.

One down, three to go. And now she had another weapon.

She wasn't really built for handling an electrostaff, but she managed to use it to turn aside two strikes from each of the first remaining two while the third's attempt was blocked by her lightsaber. Stepping back, she brought both weapons swinging at the abdomen of the one on the right. It managed to block her lightsaber, but the electrostaff caught it in the shoulder, causing it to stumble sideways, the metal plating charred.

The other two went on attacking and one managed to knock the electrostaff to one side and strike at her exposed flank. She brought her lightsaber up just in time to stop it, but she had to spin too. Recklessly, she charged and the droid and managed to push it back, taking a large chunk out of its side with her lightsaber, but she had to stop to block an attack from the other. It rained four blows rapidly down on her, and she had to jump backwards to avoid them.

Suddenly, the Force screamed at her. It practically yelled_ BEHIND YOU_ at her as she moved back from the MagnaGuards. Ahsoka whipped around, and for a second, she found herself staring into a pair of slitted, yellow, reptilian and horribly familiar eyes, before a clawed hand grabbed her by the throat and lifted her into the air. She had about another choking second after that, before she was spun around and slammed bodily into the wall.

Her head struck it heavily and everything went black.

* * *

As the Togruta's unconscious body slumped to the floor, the figure laughed triumphantly. "I knew the Jedi would be no match for me," he crowed over the Padawan, who wouldn't be able to hear a word of it. "I admit, she put up and impressive fight – I did not expect her to destroy all of the commando droids. But she fell to me, as all Jedi who face me eventually will."

He turned and fixed his three remaining MagnaGuards with a stare. "You," he pointed at the unscathed one, which stood to attention. "Take this Jedi scum to the holding cell. You know what to do with her. When you are done, join up with us at the bridge." The MagnaGuard nodded and stepped forward, grabbing Ahsoka by her wrist and dragging her unsympathetically away.

The figure bent down and picked up Ahsoka's lightsaber hilt from where she had dropped it. He inspected it greedily. Then he turned to the other two. "Head down to maintenance for repairs," he rasped. "I'm heading back up to the bridge to make sure that those battle droids don't bungle anything up, like they usually do."

The MagnaGuards nodded and moved off, the one with chunk out of its side moving awkwardly. The cloaked figure, Ahsoka's lightsaber in his hand, moved back towards the bridge.

He walked straight past the pile of crates, completely unaware of the small, extradimensional rabbit lying on the other side.

* * *

Anakin's starfighter streaked through space, zooming back towards the _Resolute_, with Aayla's ship right on its tail. The huge, red, sliding doors that ran straight from the tip of the cruiser to the base of the bridge slowly eased open to admit them. Anakin piloted his craft down into the long, shielded corridor that separated everything living from being sucked out into the vacuum of space. Aayla followed suit, and the two Jedi quickly steered their starfighters through into the main hangar and settled down.

Anakin opened his starfighter cockpit and jumped out. Without pausing for a millisecond, the Chosen One marched swiftly off in the direction of the bridge. Aayla leapt out of her own starfighter and dashed after him so she could keep up.

"Anakin," she said. "Where are you going?"

"To contact the Jedi Council," said Anakin, without looking round at the Twi'lek. "Yoda, Obi-Wan, Mace – I don't care who. But we're going to rally every available person we can to help track down and find Ahsoka and whoever took her."

"We don't know where they went, Anakin," said Aayla, hurrying along behind him. "She could be anywhere in the galaxy by now."

"That doesn't matter!" snapped Anakin. "If I have to comb this entire galaxy planet by planet, asteroid by asteroid, ship by ship, I will find out where she's been taken and I will find her."

"I don't doubt it," said Aayla. "But..."

Anakin cut her off. "We'll get the clones to start a full-scale sweep of every Separatist allied planet and system. We'll inform every single Jedi and ask them to keep an eye out for her, keep their senses open."

"Anakin..." Aayla was cut off again.

"The Separatists are going to pay for this! I swear to whatever gods there are that if I don't find Ahsoka in one piece I am going to tear every single hideout and base of theirs to shrapnel with my bare hands! I'll cut every single droid they have into junk!"

"Anakin, wait..."

"We'll even get the Senate involved. I don't care who finds her – Jedi, clone, pirate, bounty hunter – as long as we rescue her."

"I admire your bond with your Padawan but..."

Anakin barely seemed to be acknowledging Aayla's presence as they two of them moved out of the hangar and into a corridor. "I will find you, Ahsoka. I will find you even if I have to tear Dooku, Ventress or anyone else I can think of limb from limb until they tell me where you are."

"Anakin, I..."

"Even if I have to go to hell and back I will get you back, Ahsoka."

"Anakin, stop!"

Anakin stopped so suddenly that Aayla almost walked into him. He whirled around to face her and glared at her with such an angry expression that she had to stop herself from stepping back. But she stared defiantly back.

"Slow down, Anakin. You're building yourself up into a pool of anger and fear, and that can lead to the Dark Side. Calm yourself and control your emotions."

"How can I control my emotions when my Padawan could be dead? If they've done anything to her..."

"You're not listening to me, Anakin. I was trying to say..."

"I'll hunt them down to end of the universe if necessary."

"I know. Control your emotions, Anakin. We have a..."

"Control my emotions?!" Anakin roared in Aayla's face. "You're telling me to control my emotions at a time like this?! What's going through your head, Aayla? Are you completely unconcerned by this? Have you even stopped to think about what could be happening to Ahsoka as we speak? What could have happened to her already? Do you even care? Is that it? You don't, do you? You don't care. She's not your Padawan so why should you, you heartless..."

Anakin was caught completely off-guard when Aayla slapped him across the face, hard. His head flew to the side from the force of the blow and he almost went staggering. His hand flew to his stinging cheek and he looked at the Twi'lek incredulously. Aayla looked livid – far more angry than he'd ever seen her before, ever since they'd met many years ago as Padawans.

"Don't you dare accuse me of not caring for Ahsoka!" Aayla yelled back at him. "Of course I care, and don't you ever even think otherwise." Aayla paused, shut her eyes and calmed herself, suppressing the surge of anger at Anakin's ungrateful and thoughtless accusations. When she opened her eyes again, her face took on a sympathetic and apologetic look.

"Of course I care," she repeated softly. "Ahsoka is my friend, my fellow Jedi. She's almost like a little sister to me. And I know how much you care for her too, Anakin." She placed both hands on his shoulders. "Now, slow down, calm yourself and listen to me. Ahsoka would not want you to turn to the Dark Side for her."

Anakin was breathing heavily, but he did as Aayla's instructed, shutting eyes and putting his anger and fear in check where it should be. When he opened his eyes again, he looked embarrassed and sheepish. "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have taken my anger out on you. It was thoughtless and childish."

Aayla smiled warmly. She seemed to have a knack for making piece. "Apology accepted," she said. "And in return, I apologise for slapping you."

"Nah, I deserved it," Anakin said, and meant it. "I wasn't thinking straight. I think you knocked some sense into me."

"No-one can do that," Aayla smiled. "Obi-Wan has been trying for years."

Anakin let out a faint chuckle, before getting back to the subject of his missing Padawan. "So, what were you trying to say while I kept interrupting you?"

"I was trying to say that we don't need to go to all that trouble to find her," Aayla replied. "I know a much easier way of finding her."

"You do?" Anakin looked confused and hopeful at the same time. He straightened and Aayla took her hands off his shoulders. "How?" he said urgently.

"You're forgetting that Ahsoka was not the only one on that ship," grinned Aayla. "Terriermon was on there too." She started moving past him and he turned to follow her as they continued towards the bridge. "And that means that, as long as he is alive and conscious, Renamon always know where he is due to their psychic link. We don't need to galvanise all of Coruscant to find them, when our digital guest can lead us straight to them."

"Of course!" Anakin cried, smacking himself in the forehead with his robotic hand. "How could I have been so stupid and not thought of that?"

"You were concerned for your Padawan," said Aayla. "And in your haste, you didn't consider everything. Now, let's go talk to Renamon."

The two sped up, jogging towards the bridge where they knew Renamon would probably. "Thank you, Aayla," Anakin said. "I can't thank you enough."

"You're welcome," said the Twi'lek. "That's what friends are for. Now, let's go and get Ahsoka back."

"But, could you do me one more favour?" asked Anakin, "When we find Ahsoka, I'd really appreciate it if you didn't tell her that you slapped me. It might give her ideas."

Despite the situation, Aayla couldn't help but chuckle as they picked up the pace. "Don't worry, Anakin. I won't. And I agree wholeheartedly with one of your earlier points – we will get her back even if we have to follow them to the ends of the universe. And with Renamon to guide us, we can do just that."

They were both running now as they dashed through the corridor, side-by-side.

* * *

Renamon was sitting on the conference table, her paws gripping the metal so hard they were leaving claw-marks. She'd rarely felt so helpless in all her life. There'd only been one time that she'd felt more helpless than she did now and that was during the whole Goro incident. Her mind was almost completely blank compared to normal. Other than her own thoughts and feelings, she could only feel the presence of Rika and a very faint Terriermon that was extremely far away and getting further away with every millisecond. All contact with Lopmon, Henry or Suzie had been wiped from her mind, and would stay that way until Terriermon woke up.

But he wasn't dead. That much she knew.

But how long would that remain the case?

Doubt and worry gnawed at her. She didn't have a clue what was happening to her mate, and she'd so long been able to tell what her was going to do the moment that he thought of the idea that she'd almost forgotten what it was like not to have him there. Now she had a vague idea of what her old mind used to be like.

Henry was similarly feeling empty. Unlike Renamon, his link with Terriermon that had sprung up from nowhere was distance related. He'd lost all contact with Terriermon at all. He was uncomfortably reminded of his time as a prisoner on Ryloth, where he and Rika had been hoping against hope that somehow the Digimon would come and free them. Now it was Terriermon who was the captive.

He kept glancing up at Renamon, looking for a change in expression or any sign that Terriermon was okay, but there was none. He knew that she would spring into action the moment that she regained a sense of his location. He just had to hope that she did, and soon. He'd sat by – _they'd _sat by – watching helplessly as Ahsoka and Terriermon had been drawn into the Separatist ship, unable to do anything about it. Not even a move card would have made any difference to a tractor beam. There weren't any designed for that.

Rika sat by Henry with her arm around his shoulder, knowing that she wasn't being of much comfort but doing her best all the same. Suzie curled up by his other side, her face tear-stained at the thought of what could be happening to Terriermon, who she'd loved before she knew he was alive, and Ahsoka, who'd been extremely kind to her.

Lopmon was also sitting on a computer, fidgeting anxiously. All the clones and Admiral Yularen were standing around, mixtures of expression on all their faces – disbelief on Bly's, anger on Rex's and many more. They were waiting for Anakin and Aayla to return to the bridge and give them orders on what to do next. They watched, detached, as the clone starfighters obliterated what was left of the Vulture Droids that had been left behind, and began to make their way back to the ship.

The door whooshed open and the two remaining Jedi ran in. "Renamon!" Anakin ran over to the fox, who looked up at him, her normally piercing, blue eyes filled with worry. "We need your help. Ahsoka and Terriermon have been captured. You have a psychic link with Terriermon, right? We need you to tell us where those Separatist scum have taken them."

"I can't," Renamon shook her head.

"What do you mean you can't?" Anakin faltered in surprise. "I thought that you could tell where Terriermon is at all times."

"Only if he's alive and conscious, remember?" said Aayla gravely. "That's what I told you. Is he okay, Renamon?"

"He's alive," said Renamon. "But if he's unaware of his surroundings then I too am unaware of his surroundings, and vice versa," Renamon murmured. "I know he's a long way away, and I know he's in that direction," she pointed unhelpfully in the direction the enemy ship had taken. "But until he wakes up I can't be of any more use."

Anakin sagged visibly, shutting his eyes and clamping down on his emotions like Aayla had told him to, before saying, "But you'll be able to tell us where they are the moment he wakes up, right?"

"If I have a map of the galaxy I could point out the exact place on it that he is," nodded Renamon. "And rest assured, that is precisely what I intend to do."

"In that case," Anakin pushed a button on the table she was sitting on and the holographic galaxy appeared. "As soon as you can, tell us where to go. Admiral," he turned to Yularen. "I want the ship prepped and ready to leave at a moments later, and we prepare for immediate combat. Let the shields recharge and let the guns cool down. I want the engines on full power and I want the ship refuelled to the brim. And I want it done now!"

"Yes, sir," said Yularen, turning to issue commands to all the clones.

"Rex, Bly," said Aayla. "Take all available clones down to the hangar and help the pilots re-prep their fighters. We may need them again in the upcoming rescue mission. And make the LAAT gunships ready so that we can use them to board the enemy ship before it gets away a second time."

"Right away, sir," Bly saluted and dashed out of the bridge to fulfil his orders. Rex made to follow, but paused and said, "General Skywalker, is your cheek injured?"

"I'm fine, Rex," said Anakin. "Just go. Ahsoka and Terriermon are depending on us. We must not fail them."

"Agreed," said Rex, and he ran after Bly.

"What did happen to your cheek?" asked Rika. "It looks a little red."

"It doesn't matter," Anakin looked down at the children. "I need you to do your best to stay out of the way of our men, okay?"

"Oh, don't worry," said Henry. "I want my partner and Ahsoka to be okay. We won't get in the way."

"And when we get there," said Lopmon. "Renamon and I are coming with you onto that ship."

"We're not going to try and stop you," said Aayla. "Admiral, send word to the _Intrepid_ and the _Valiant_ to do the same as us and make ready to leave in an instant."

"Yes, sir," Yularen complied.

Anakin and Aayla joined Renamon in sitting on the conference table, everyone staring at the holographic galaxy and wondering where Ahsoka and Terriermon would be on it, right about now.

All they had to do – all they _could_ do really – was wait and hope that Terriermon stayed alive long enough for the rescue to be initiated.

* * *

Blimey. A whole chapter where Terriermon didn't say anything. How did I cope?

A couple of footnotes here. Firstly, I gave a bunch more hints as to who the mystery leader is. If anyone else would like to guess then go ahead. Movie-Brat, you were right by the way.

Secondly, I don't want anyone to judge Aayla for slapping Anakin, because, let's face it, he deserved it for those comments and she regretted doing it afterwards anyway. Besides, there's a lot of slapping in Digimon Adventure 02. I thought it was funny – just picture the look on his face. I couldn't let the whole chapter go without some humour, despite the dire situation.

* * *

Next time...

Identity of the mystery figure revealed. Star Wars related chapter as we follow what happens to Ahsoka.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 34 : Togruta in Captivity**


	34. Togruta in Captivity

Mega fast. I seriously don't know how I'm getting through the chapters at this speed. Perhaps I'm just making up for the fact I'm going to start hardcore revision soon for my final exams at school ever, so I'll be updating much slower.

And the guess for the mystery figure was not meant to be difficult. Anyway...

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 34:- Togruta In Captivity**

* * *

A groan escaped Ahsoka's lips as the world of consciousness came rushing back to her with a heavy pounding. The back of her head felt sore from where it had been slammed against the wall. Her eyes flickered slightly and opened a fraction. She was aware of her heavy breathing, and there was a restriction of some kind around her chest, that was giving her a mild difficulty in breathing.

It took a few moments for everything to come rushing back into Ahsoka's memory. When it did, she started in horror. The last thing she remembered was fighting against three MagnaGuards and then being grabbed by the strange being with the eyes. Yellow. Angry. Unblinking. And extremely familiar.

So where was she now? Was she a prisoner? Was she still on the ship, or had she been moved somewhere else? What was going to happen to her?

And most importantly, where was her Master, Aayla, Renamon, Lopmon and the others?

Where was Terriermon?

Was he still hidden? Was he okay? Had he been found? All kinds of questions poured into Ahsoka's young head, filling up her brain, so much so that she cringed as numerous possible answers flooded in after them, many of which didn't help her stay calm.

She opened her eyes further and she took in her surroundings as she licked her dry lips and tried ignore the uncomfortable feeling in her throat. She was extremely thirsty as a result of her strenuous efforts against the commando droids and the MagnaGuards. She was quite hungry too, but her captors obviously hadn't thought to give her any sustenance? Was that it? Had they gone to all this trouble just to leave her to starve?

She was in a very small room, that was obviously a cell. The door ahead of her consisted of an orange ray shield that she could see through into the corridor beyond. A corridor which was quite empty. She wasn't sure whether to be relieved or concerned by this fact. The rest of the room consisted of nothing but blank, bare walls – grey and unfriendly. But then again, since when was a cell supposed to be friendly?

Her head stung slightly and she attempted to lift her hand to rub it and feel to see if there was any damage. But her hand didn't move. Confused, she tried to move the other hand, but that didn't move either.

Paralysis? At the thought, panic momentarily gripped her.

But no, it was something else. For the first time, the Togruta took notice of the position that she was in. It hadn't even registered to her that she'd been standing up this whole time. Her back was pressed up against something. Turning her head, she saw that it was a thick, square beam in the centre of the room.

Her arms were wrapped around that pole and had been securely tied together at the wrists, locking her hands in position behind her. She blinked in surprise. Rope? They'd tied her wrists together with rope? And another length of rope connected her wrist ties to the floor, so that she couldn't lift her arms upwards.

And that wasn't the only place they'd done it either. Looking down, Ahsoka saw that there was more rope locking her ankles together and securing it to the pole. Her knees and thighs had been similarly fastened, so that she found it impossible to bend her legs. And then there was yet more rope pinning her back to the beam, one coiled around her waist and another around her chest. Well, at least that explained the restriction.

She attempted to move her legs, but her bindings held firmly. Whoever had done this obviously knew what they were doing and were used to securing captives. She tested the ties around her wrists, experimentally pulling in alternate directions, at different strengths, from tiny little tugs, to one huge wrench.

Possibly the only thing she succeeded in doing was making the ropes tying her get tighter, or at least feel tighter. She attempted to lever her chest forward, but that put pressure on her ribcage so she slumped back and resolved not to try that again.

Eventually, she just started thrashing wildy, desperately, trying to escape the restricting ropes that kept her held in the standing position. She pulled, tugged, hauled and jerked, gritting her teeth and straining to break free. But nothing she did had any effect.

She growled in frustration. The Padawan of the Chosen Pole, bound to a pole and completely helpless. This just couldn't be happening.

But then she stopped, and mentally kicked herself. No Jedi is ever truly defenceless. In her panic to escape the ropes, she had completely forgotten that she had a weapon. She'd noted that whoever it was that had caught her had taken her lightsaber away – and a part of her flashed angrily at that, as a Jedi's lightsaber is their life, and she resolved to get it back – but she could also use the Force to break free.

She shut her mind and stretched out with her feelings. With her mind, she felt the ropes locking her wrists together, searching for the weaknesses in them. When she felt them, she bid them to unravel.

The moment she did, a powerful electric shock coursed through her. She screamed in shock and pain as she released her grip on the Force at the sudden interruption, her wrists no more free than before. She blinked, confused, and then tried again. Again, a surge of electricity struck her the moment she tried to use the Force to do anything physical.

What was going on? Where was it coming from?

Then she realised, with horror, that there was something around her neck. It was a small, black collar of some kind, clamped firmly, but not too tightly around it. She could feel the cold metal against her orange skin.

Whoever her captor was had wanted to make absolutely sure that she couldn't get away. They'd fitted a collar that shocked to wearer whenever they attempted to use the Force to escape. There were some things that could do that, but usually they were found in binders. The collar was something new to her.

Her stomach sank, as the full weight of her situation finally hit her. She was a Jedi, but despite this, she _was_ truly defenceless. Every strength of hers had been countered, every possible way of her escaping had been covered. She didn't know it, but she was in a pretty similar position that one particular, yellow fox had also been in once. Here she was, pressed up against a pole in a cell on a Separatist ship or base, and she wasn't going to be getting out of it unless her captor decided to move her, or she was rescued.

Which would come first?

During her analysis of her predicament, she hadn't noticed the clanking sound that had steadily been growing louder for the past few seconds. But a buzzing sound that indicated the ray shield was being turned off caused her to look up sharply, from where she'd been staring at her bound ankles. Framed in the doorway was an ordinary battle droid. The antennae on its back was down, which showed they were definitely in a Separatist base, as they were extended for missions away from one.

Ahsoka couldn't help it. The indignity of being helpless in front of a single battle droid was cruel. No battle droid was a match for a Jedi under normal circumstances, but she was now. Her bucking and thrashing redoubled and a cry of rage escaped her as she redoubled her fight against the ropes in an attempt to get at the battle droid.

It had not effect whatsoever. The battle droid stepped backwards out of fear, which made her feel slightly better, but she just couldn't reach it and vent her aggravation on it like she so wanted to.

"Whoa!" said the droid. "Take it easy. I'm not here to hurt you."

"Shut up," Ahsoka croaked, her throat still dry. She hated how helpless she sounded. "Just shut up."

"Jeez, you need to calm down."

"Calm down? You're kidding right? You guys have tied me up like a slave girl and you want me to calm down?" Ahsoka glared.

"You know what always relaxes me," the droid went on. "A nice oil bath. You should try it some time. It feels great."

Ahsoka had to resist the urge to laugh at the droid's comment. She stopped trying to free herself and get at it and instead trying to send it flying backwards with the Force. The moment she did, the shock collar activated and interrupted her train of thought, ending in another small explosion of pain and a yelp.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," said the battle droid. "The General says that every time you try and do a Jedi trick, you'll get electrocuted."

"Really?" Ahsoka gasped sarcastically. "Well, I'm so glad you just told me. I'd never have been able to figure out myself. Now, please, just go away and leave me alone. Or better yet, let me go."

"Oh, come on," the droid said. "Even I'm not stupid enough to release a Jedi. I'd be destroyed in a second."

"Then go away," Ahsoka snapped, turning away, not wanting to look at the droid that was unwittingly tormenting her.

"Er, don't you want what I came to give you?" asked the droid. Ahsoka turned back to look at him. She'd been so irritated at the droid's presence that she'd failed to notice that it was carrying a tray instead of the usual blaster that could be found in the droid's hand. It looked quite out of place in the hands of the droid programmed to violence.

On the tray was a bowl of soup of some kind, and a glass of water. Ahsoka swallowed at the sight of it – the hunger and thirst crashing back to her as she stared at what the droid had brought her.

"So, I see that whoever's in charge here has some hospitality after all," she said, tightly.

"I wouldn't say that," said the droid. "He said that you'd need to keep your energy up if you're going to cope with what's in store for you."

"Charming," Ahsoka frowned. "What is in store for me then?"

"I don't know," shrugged the droid, walking forward. "Nobody tells us anything on this ship, or ever, except what to do. They seem to think that if they tell us the whole plan, we'll mess it up somehow."

"I can't imagine why," Ahsoka said. The full irony of the fact she was having a conversation with a battle droid, identical to many thousands of others that she'd sliced to pieces in battles past, finally hit her. Never had she thought that she'd have a conversation with one, regardless of the circumstances.

"So, do you want this, or not?" the droid held the tray under her nose. Ahsoka's nosed twitched as the scent of the soup wafted up it. She identified it then as Aurebesh soup, a soup filled with topatos with pasta shapes floating on the top. It was actually a soup she enjoyed. Obi-Wan had once taken her and Anakin to meet a friend of his known as Dexter Jettser, who sold this in the diner he ran.

"No," she said, despite wanting to say yes.

"Why not? Aren't you hungry?"

"No," Ahsoka lied again.

"Thirsty?" the battle droid nodded to the glass of water.

"I thought I told you to leave me alone."

"Can you please just eat and drink this stuff," the droid sounded slightly pleading, which made Ahsoka blink. "The boss doesn't take kindly to droids who don't carry out their orders properly. I've been ordered to force this down your throat if necessary, and I'd rather do that than face him."

Ahsoka grimaced. Truthfully, she really wanted the food. She glanced back down at it and said, "Alright, alright. Just, er, untie my hands and I'll eat and drink."

For a moment, the battle droid looked like it was going to forget itself and try and untie her. Then it caught itself and said, "Hey, stop that. Don't try and trick me like that. My orders are to keep you tied up, so there's no chance of you escaping."

"Then how am I supposed to eat and drink?" asked Ahsoka, pointedly.

The droid bent down awkwardly and placed the tray on the floor, before picking up the glass of water in both hands. "I'm going to have to feed you myself," it said. "Open wide."

Ahsoka scowled. "You're going to hand-feed me? Like a toddler in a high-chair?"

"I was ordered to feed you and to keep you tied up," said the droid. "So, yes, I am."

"No way. I'm not going to be treated like a child."

"Er, forgive me if I'm wrong, but you are a child, aren't you?"

Ahsoka glared at it. It stared back, nonplussed. The water in the glass swirled and looked in danger of spilling over the side. Ahsoka gritted her teeth, swallowed her pride and said, "Alright. Fine. You win. And there's a sentence I never thought I'd say to a battle droid like you."

"Say aah," the droid said humourlessly.

Carefully, Ahsoka opened her mouth and the droid placed the glass to her lips and tipped slightly. The cool, fresh liquid flooded into her mouth and swirled down her throat, moistening the tight, cracked feeling. Rarely had simple water ever tasted so nice. She felt her throat become much less sore as the life-giving liquid washed over it.

The battle droid was surprisingly gentle in its treatment of her. It kept the water flowing at a steady pace that wasn't too fast so the Togruta captive wouldn't choke on the flow. Whether this was because it was concerned for her well-being, or concern for its own well-being was unclear, but Ahsoka strongly suspected the latter. If what it said about the leader was true, then it'd act very unkindly to any droid that accidentally choked the captive.

And besides, sympathy was not one of the things that the battle droid was programmed to feel. There was no place for it in the droid army.

Ahsoka licked her moistened lips when the flow ceased and the droid put down the empty glass and put it back on the tray. She felt rejuvenated slightly, and as the droid awkwardly picked up the bowl of soup in both hands, she began to attempt to move her own again, but the bonds stayed in place.

It was cruel to have a Jedi being fed by one of their most common enemies really. Whoever was in charge had done this deliberately, Ahsoka knew it. It was purposefully designed to make her feel even more helpless, and it was doing a good job of it as well.

The battle droid gave her the same treatment with the soup as it had with the water, gently tipping and allowing it to flow steadily into Ahsoka's mouth. Ahsoka felt some of the gnawing hunger pass away as her stomach filled up with the food. But that eventually stopped too, and the droid put the bowl back down and picked up the tray again.

It turned wordlessly to leave. But Ahsoka cried, less pathetically this time, "Hey!" and it turned around.

"What?" it asked.

"How long was I unconscious?" Ahsoka asked.

"Not long," the battle droid replied evenly. "About forty-five minutes."

Ahsoka nodded thoughtfully, wondering what Anakin and Aayla were doing to try and find her at this minute, and wondering, but obviously not daring to ask, whether Terriermon had been found yet.

"Where am I?" she asked.

"You're on board a ship," said the droid. "The same one you were captured on. We're still in hyperspace, but we should be arriving at our destination soon."

It turned to leave again, but Ahsoka was still full of questions, so she blurted out, "Wait, I've got a couple more things to ask you."

The battle droid turned around again and fixed with the blank stare of all battle droids. "Like what?" it asked.

"Where is this ship heading?"

"I'm not going to tell you that," the battle droid replied, annoyingly. "We've been ordered not to tell you that, just in case you manage to escape somehow and alert the other Jedi where you are."

"Okay, fine," Ahsoka sighed. "What happened to the other two Jedi in the attack?"

"Well, they were both still alive by the time we jumped to hyperspace," replied the droid. "But I don't know after that."

Ahsoka allowed a small grin to appear on her face as this. At least both the other members of the A-Team were alive and kicking. She doubted that they'd been killed, but she had to check.

"Is that all?" asked the droid. "Only, I've got to head back up to the bridge now."

"No, there's one more," said Ahsoka.

"Go on then," it almost seemed to sigh.

"Who's in command on this ship? This guy who you're afraid of – what's his name?"

"You don't know?" the droid somehow managed to look amazed. "Didn't you get a good look at him when he attacked you?"

"Much as I hate to admit it," Ahsoka answered in a clipped tone. "He snuck up behind me and slammed me into a wall before I could see who he was. That's why I asked. So, who is he?"

"He's absolutely terrifying," said the battle droid. "He's a real tyrant of a leader if you ask me. He drives us to work as hard as possible, and he seems to try to find the slightest possible excuse to punish us, even if we do the slightest thing wrong. I've already hard to scrub the floor of his chambers on three separate occasions this past week, even though they're clean."

"Yes, but who..."

But the droid was on a role now. "He can get really mad for even the slightest of reasons. Anyone who slips up feels his wrath – except for the four MagnaGuards, or rather three now, that always follow him around."

"Right, I get that but..."

"He's a real meanie."

Ahsoka faltered at this ridiculous statement, and then she heard it. She heard what the battle droid, in its rant about its leader had failed to pick up. There was a steady, clicking noise coming from the corridor behind the droid, getting closer and closer. Her throat tightened – she'd heard that noise before, and suddenly, she didn't need the battle droid to answer the question.

"And, when he gets really, really mad," the battle droid ploughed on. "He really likes to take it out on us by..."

But instead of saying what the leader would do to them if her got mad, the battle droid got to live it. Ahsoka saw a large, plated fist swing around and smash the battle droid's head off. The body staggered forwards and fell and Ahsoka found herself staring into the eyes.

The angry eyes.

The yellow, slitted, reptilian eyes.

The eyes of General Grievous.

Despite herself, fear gripped Ahsoka's heart. General Grievous was a deadly opponent, and had become the scourge of many Jedi throughout the galaxy after his rise to power in the Separatist ranks at the start of the Clone Wars. The click of his footsteps was produced by the huge, steel talons that made up his feet, six to each foot, which rested at the end of two curved LX-44 robotic legs, with extended ankles. His hips and waist were extremely slim, which when combined with the large chest gave him a slightly topheavy appearance.

His body was made of thick but light duranium alloy, which gave him tough armour and amazing agility. He had two long, pointed shoulders and long, metallic arms, and at the end of each was an alloy hand that had two thumbs each, attached by wrists that could spin three-hundred-and sixty degrees. Ahsoka knew that his arms could be split apart from the shoulder to the hand, giving him four separate arms, but he rarely ever used this, except against his most hated enemies.

His face was the most terrifying part, as it contained the only visible organic part of him – the eyes, which stared out through holes in the alloy that covered the rest of it. The face was long and pointed, and resembled a kind of skull. It extended downwards, ending in two points like tusks, above which were several strips that made up his voice-modulator. Two, long, pointed audio-receptors also swept out from the sides of the mask. Nobody seemed to know what was underneath that mask. He was also wearing a long, flowing, grey cloak.

And here was Ahsoka, tied to a pole and weaponless, facing the most deadly enemy the Separatists had ever produced. No-one seemed to know where he'd come from, or even what species he had been before he'd been rebuilt as a cyborg. His face, brain and internal organs were all that were left of the organic creature he had once been.

Grievous growled and turned to face two more battle droids that were standing behind him. In a rasping voice he said, "Take this scrap-heap to the incinerator and dump him in. Let him be a lesson to you. There is to be no fraternising with the prisoner, understood?"

"Roger, roger," said the droids obediently, and they bent down and began to drag the body away. Grievous contemptuously picked up the fallen head and tossed it after them.

Ahsoka found her voice and said, "I liked him."

"What?" Grievous turned to glare at her and she had to repress a shudder.

"That battle droid. I liked him. He called you a big meanie. That makes him okay in my book."

Grievous growled and paced towards her, shoving his skull-like face close to hers, completely disregarding her personal space as he glared directly into her eyes. "You would be wise to mind your manners around me, youngling," he snarled. "I have no patience for wet-behind-the-ears Jedi like yourself. You'd do well to remember the fact that you are completely at my mercy."

"So," Ahsoka glared back defiantly. "You're the big, bad boss that went to all this trouble in order to capture me, are you?"

Grievous laughed evilly. "Evidently," he replied.

"Why?" Ahsoka asked. "Why go to all this trouble to capture me? And why have you tied me up like this? Scared to face me in a fair fight, are you?"

"You are perfectly aware that you would be no match for me in a fight, youngling," said Grievous. "Jedi Masters have fallen to my blades and I quite easily defeated you the last time we met, child."

"I'm a Padawan," Ahsoka replied stiffly. "Not a youngling. And yeah, I see you got your hand back from after I cut it off."

"That was a lucky strike for you. I was distracted by an explosion at the time. And none of that matters now," he reached into his cloak and pulled out the hilt of a very familiar lightsaber. With a whoosh, the green blade of Ahsoka's weapon ignited and he held it close to her face. "Because now, your lightsaber has been added to my collection. The Chosen One's Padawan. Ha!"

"Give that back," Ahsoka demanded, wrenching her wrist-ropes.

"You are not in a position to demand anything from me," Grievous twirled the blade idly. "Wouldn't it be ironic if your life was taken from you by your own weapon. I seem to recall the Jedi saying, "A Jedi's weapon is his life." It wouldn't be the first time I'd taken a Jedi's life with his life."

Ahsoka watched bitterly as Grievous sheathed her blade and stored it back in his cloak, where she lost sight of it. He knew that there were probably numerous lightsabers stored in that cloak. Grievous was capable of wielding four at once, and he liked to collect the weapons of fallen Jedi as trophies of his victories. She forced herself to look back up into the hate-ridden eyes of the General. "You still haven't answered my question. Why did you go to all that trouble just to capture me?"

"It is not you that I am concerned with," Grievous snorted. "If you think that you're of any importance to the Separatist Alliance then you would be dreadfully wrong." Grievous began to walk around her, so she lost sight of him whenever he walked behind her.

"So, why did you kidnap me?" Ahsoka asked again.

Grievous chuckled, which became a cough half-way through. "Now, if I told you that, it would ruin the surprise that we have in store for you."

"We?" asked Ahsoka. "Who else is in on this?"

"You'll find out," Grievous replied. "But I will say this. If I had my way, you'd have been dead the moment you entered this ship. Unfortunately, I've been given orders by a higher authority not to have you killed. A shame, really. Jedi are so much better dead than they are alive."

"Higher authority?" asked Ahsoka. "You mean, Count Dooku?"

Grievous didn't answer. Instead, he said, "So, do you think your Master is tearing the galaxy apart trying to find you?"

"He'll never give up the search for me," Ahsoka said confidently. "Even if you kill me, he'll never quit until he finds out what happened to me."

"Yes," Grievous sneered, in a way that made Ahsoka cringe. "We are counting on that. The care you Jedi show for each other is a weakness, and the Jedi bond between teacher and apprentice is stronger than most. For all your ideals against attachment, you certainly aren't very good at carrying them out."

"My master will rescue me," Ahsoka declared.

"He certainly does have a habit of rescuing damsels in distress."

Ahsoka bristled at the reference. "I am not a damsel in distress!"

Grievous paused in his predatory circling in front of her and threw back his head in a vicious laugh. When it subsided, he said, "You are a female. You have been kidnapped. You have been bound to a pole and your only hope of escape is rescue. That is the basic definition of damsel in distress. Of course, damsel in death has a better ring to it in my opinion."

"Yeah?" Ahsoka sniffed. "Well, I wouldn't expect anything less from a tinny."

No sooner had the word left her mouth, when Grievous' hand lashed out and grabbed her neck in a horrifically strong grip. Ahsoka yelped as her windpipe was clamped shut and she struggled, instinctively trying to bring her hands to her throat, but they remained behind her back.

"Let's make a deal... Padawan!" Grievous snarled furiously into Ahsoka's choking face, as the Togruta struggled to breathe. "I shall not call you a youngling, and you, in turn, shall not refer to me as a droid. Is that clear?"

Ahsoka frantically nodded and Grievous released his grip. Ahsoka drew in several huge, gasping breaths as her lungs filled with precious oxygen.

Grievous was still talking. "I am a cyborg. I am immensely superior to any mere droid."

Ahsoka recklessly glared at Grievous. "Well, you look like a droid."

"You're standing on thin ice," Grievous stabbed a pointed claw at Ahsoka's chest. She yelped as the tip scratched her just beneath the neck and she pushed her head backwards against the pole to keep it at bay. Any further forward and the finger could draw blood. "And I am not known for my patience."

"Fine," Ahsoka muttered. "My apologies... sir," she added.

Grievous removed his finger. "You are certainly a feisty one, young Jedi. But I suppose I should not have expected anything less from Skywalker's student. But now, I have a question for you. When I first set out to capture you, I was told there would only be two Jedi, and yet, this morning I was informed that that number had gone up by one. What was Secura doing there?"

Ahsoka's eyes widened. Grievous was certainly extremely well informed if he knew who the third Jedi had been – Aayla hadn't exactly squared off against him face to face. Did that mean he knew about the Digimon too? Had he been informed by one of the other Jedi? Had he found Terriermon and tortured the information out of him?

"I seem to have struck a nerve there," Grievous said, at the expression of Ahsoka's face.

"Why do you care if Aayla was there? You still succeeded."

"That's hardly surprising. But answer my question."

"Why don't you answer mine?"

"Because I am the one in command here. You don't hold any sway over me, Tano. You're too lippy by half. I'll have to rectify that soon. Now, why was she there?"

"Because my Master has been partnered with her," answered Ahsoka. "The three of us work really well together on the battlefield and we're great friends of it. We're the A-Team."

She mentally kicked herself for that last sentence. Why had she said that? She watched a brief flash of confusion flit across Grievous' face, then once he understood, he threw back his head and roared with laughter. Ahsoka went from orange to slightly red as her cheeks filled with blood, but she couldn't help but feel a slight triumph when Grievous suddenly coughed violently, bringing a fist to his voice modulators as he spasmed into silence.

"I see you're still having problems with your throat," Ahsoka grinned wryly.

"Silence, youngling!" Grievous snarled. "It is the fault of the Jedi that I have it."

"It is?" Ahsoka looked confused.

"Don't deny it," Grievous' finger came up and hovered just in front of Ahsoka's eye, very threateningly.

"Erm, okay, I won't," Ahsoka blinked, nonplussed. How on earth could the Jedi be responsible for Grievous' cough. She put it aside, it wasn't particularly helpful. "Alright, I answered you're question. Is there anything else you want to know, or are you going to leave me alone now?"

"We shouldn't be very long before we come out of hyperspace," Grievous related to her. "You won't have to stay bound to this pole for that much longer."

"Oh good," Ahsoka smiled wryly. "My wrists are starting to chafe."

"I said you wouldn't be bound to the pole," Grievous said. "I did not say you wouldn't be bound. By the way, how do you like the collar?"

Ahsoka scowled. "I'd quite like to throw it out of an airlock, to be brutally honest. In fact, could you do that for me? I'd be so grateful."

"You're going to be a tough nut to crack," Grievous mused.

"Was that a compliment?" asked Ahsoka. "Because I'll take it."

"No, it was a musing of anticipation. It means what we have planned for you will take longer," Grievous said. "Now, I am going to head back up to the bridge."

"Good," Ahsoka muttered.

Grievous turned and strode towards the door. When he reached it, he held out a hand to the battle droid standing outside. The battle droid deposited something in it, and Grievous re-entered the room.

"I thought you were going to go," Ahsoka scowled.

"I am," chuckled Grievous. "But, like I said, you're too lippy, and I'm going to rectify that." He showed Ahsoka his alloy hand. In it were two pieces of cloth.

Ahsoka stared at them for a couple of seconds, before it finally dawned on her what they were. "No!" she said, pressing her head against the pole. "No way. Not happening."

"You are not in a position to refuse me," Grievous said. "You will do what I tell you, or I assure you, it will be the worse for you. Now, open up."

Ahsoka looked at the pieces of cloth with distaste. But she knew Grievous was right – she had no power at all here. Grievous was in charge, and what he said went. Not wishing to risk death earlier than necessary, Ahsoka slowly and haltingly opened her mouth. Grievous took one of the pieces and, using one finger, pushed the balled-up cloth into her mouth. It tasted rank and Ahsoka wanted to spit it out, but Grievous had pulled the other cloth between her lips, around her head and under her lekku, sealing the first inside her mouth and tying the ends around the back of her head.

Ahsoka attempted to spit out the foul-tasting cloth, but the cleave-gag held firm.

"Now, don't wander off," Grievous laughed. As he strode out of the room, cloak billowing behind him, he turned and said, "By the way, those cloths were just used by the battle droids to scrub my chambers."

He laughed at Ahsoka's hacking and spitting at this news, then continued away. As he left, the orange ray shield sprang back into life behind him and he marched away down the corridor without looking back at Ahsoka. She growled into her gag and glared furiously after him, but soon he swept around the corner and was gone.

Now that the confrontation was over, Ahsoka slumped backwards against the pole. She couldn't move, she couldn't speak, and there was a cloth sealed in her mouth that had who-knew-what all over it.

But she wasn't beaten yet. Grievous had been right – she was a feisty one. Even though she didn't think it would work, she began to pull at the ropes around her legs, bucking and writhing. Her movement was restricted from the waist down and she could barely move it at all, so it was making little difference.

She yelled into the gagged, cursing and screaming, using numerous swearwords that Terriermon had taught her. She stopped doing this as her thoughts drifted to the little bunny, which she didn't want to do as she had absolutely no idea where or how he was right now. But, now that she thought about it, surely Grievous would have mentioned him if he'd been found, and questioned her about what he was.

As she began pulling at her wrists again, muttering incoherently through the gag, Ahsoka wondered about something else. Grievous had known that Aayla had been part of that group, but he hadn't mentioned the Digimon at all. Did that mean that he didn't know about the Digimon? But how did that work?

Aayla and Anakin had only been officially partnered as a team as of yesterday, which meant that Grievous' update had happened very recently. He had mentioned this morning. Therefore, whoever had told him had probably never met or seen the Digimon, otherwise they would have definitely been mentioned. And since all the Jedi who knew about the partnership also knew about the Digimon, that meant it had to be someone from the Senate.

But who?

And why?

It didn't make sense. Almost nothing about this made sense.

She began chewing feverishly on the gag. Her teeth didn't make any difference to it, but the desire to empty her mouth of the foul-tasting rag drove her to do it anyway, just in case it worked. She began to squirm with her hips, but it didn't have any effect. Attempting to bring her wrists upwards didn't work either. They were still securely attached to the floor, by the length of rope.

Grievous had certainly given her a lot to ponder on. Who was the second person that was involved in this little plot to kidnap her? Count Dooku? Grievous had said his orders not to kill her had come from a higher authority and she couldn't think of a higher authority than Dooku.

And he'd also said that they were counting on Anakin's habit of rescuing damsels in distress – her teeth clamped angrily on the gag at the thought of being compared to one of those. Did that mean that she was bait? Bait to draw Anakin into another trap and kill him, to get the Chosen One out of the way?

But that didn't make any sense either. If they just wanted to kill Anakin, why not draw him into the ship with a tractor beam instead of his Padawan.

The gag was forcing her to breathe heavily through her nose now. She looked up through the orange barrier before her, but there was nobody coming.

Eventually, the gag became so immensely irritating that she once more tried to use the Force in order to remove it. As she delved into it, sure enough, the collar sent a current of electricity flowing through her. She tried desperately to keep her concentration, but as she did, the shocking only intensified. She gave up, slouching down as far as the bonds would allow.

"Wgn uh si oo ugn Grfrs," she growled, her voice muffled by the offending cloth. "Um gnu kk yr aff ntu neks wek." And she meant it. All she could really do now was wait, and hope that somebody friendly eventually came for her. But, somehow she doubted that that would happen. Unless Terriermon woke up and came to find her, but not to put too fine a point of it, what would he be able to do against Grievous without digivolution or Modify Cards to help him.

Nevertheless, a friendly face would be nice.

Too bad there none forthcoming.

* * *

Grievous stalked through the halls of his ship, contemplating what was going on himself. The Padawan he had helpless in the cell had a fiery spirit, and she wasn't afraid to show it. Not many of the Jedi he'd ever faced was really like her. Of course, none of them had begged for mercy in their final moments before he killed them, and he had held a few others captive too, but none of them had ever deliberately tried to rile him up.

He almost admired the Togruta girl for her bravery.

Almost.

She was a foolhardy girl, and, despite the fact she was still a Padawan, she was potentially a worthy opponent. Taking out ten commando droids and a MagnaGuard single-handedly was no mean feat for any Jedi, and she'd managed to damage to of the other MagnaGuards.

He had a feeling that, if given the choice between death on the battlefield or as a captive, she'd choose the battlefield. A real warrior's death.

This track of thought took the cyborg General back to when he'd been denied a true warrior's death.

Grievous was a Kaleesh - a warrior race from the planet Kalee – an on his planet, Grievous had become an iconic figure for his people before he's become a cyborg. He was almost regarded as a demigod and had been a warlord amongst the Kaleesh, leading his people against their neighbouring race, the Huk, who were also warriors.

He had once been known a Qymaen jai Sheelal, and he'd been a strong leader against the numerous wars against the Huk. Becoming a legend amongst a warrior race like the Kaleesh was no easy task, but Grievous had managed it. They wore skull-like death masks into battle, which was why Grievous had insisted on the design of his face to be as it was. He'd even met a female Kaleesh named Ronderu lij Kummar and had become very close before she had been killed by the Huk. After that, he had taken the name Grievous.

During one particularly tough time for his planet, Grievous had taken on a job as an enforcer for the InterGalactic Banking Clan, run by a Muun known as San Hill. However, shortly afterwards, his body had been viciously mutilated after the shuttle he was travelling in had exploded. Fortunately, Count Dooku had been close by at the time and had been able to use the Force to keep him alive, while he transported him to Geonosis.

Dooku had revealed to him that the Jedi had plotted against him and it was them that had blown up his ship. Grievous had grown absolutely furious and sworn revenge, but he simply couldn't carry out the task. His body was too broken, and not even a bacta tank could have fixed him.

But Grievous had been offered an alternative by Dooku and San Hill, the option to be reconstructed as the cyborg he now was. Initially, Grievous had refused, but such was his desire to get back at those who had so callously broken him that he eventually agreed, on the condition that his mind would not be tampered with.

And so, General Grievous of the Droid Armies had been brought into the galaxy, saved from death by Dooku and reconstructed by Geonosian scientists.

Ever since then, had been the blight of the Republic, fighting in many battles against the Jedi. Names of Jedi such as Tarr Seirr, Sha'a Gi, Daakman Barrek and Nahdar Vebb had all fallen to him. He'd cut them down ruthlessly and completely mercilessly. It was no more than the Jedi deserved. He'd sworn vengeance, and vengeance he was getting.

But Grievous held considerable contempt for two of his supposed allies. One was Nute Gunray, the Nemoidian Viceroy of the Trade Federation, who treated Grievous like a common droid, despite being reminded constantly that he was otherwise. Gunray only lived by this point at Dooku's insistence that he was important to the Separatist movement against the Jedi. In Grievous' opinion, that almost wasn't enough.

The other was the Dark Acolyte that he was about to contact, Asajj Ventress, who bore a grudge on him for the fact that he was above her in terms of rank. He'd been able to beat her, so he was the Supreme Commander.

As Grievous swept onto the bridge, his cloak billowing behind him as if in a strong wind, he stared imperiously around at the assorted battle droids, who all tried to look like they knew what they were doing, even though they didn't. Grievous loved smashing them to pieces if they did something wrong, but he was frustrated by their lack of competence. A good many of the skirmishes that he had lost were more to do with the lack of skill his forces had to his own strategic abilities.

"What is our ETA?" he asked one of the battle droids.

"Er," it said, quickly looking at the computer screen it was sitting beside, the computer estimates we'll arrive at our destination in twelve minutes, sir."

"Good," Grievous nodded. "We must ensure that the Master's plan is carried out exactly as assigned. You," he pointed at one of them, causing it to cringe backwards in fear. "Get Asajj Ventress on the com-channel. I want to speak to her."

"Roger, roger," the droid replied, turning to accomplish its task.

"Sir," asked another. "Why haven't we killed the Jedi in the cells yet?"

"That is none of your concern," Grievous glared at the speaker. "You were made to follow orders, not question them."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."

"What about Six-eight-two?" asked another. "Where is he? He never got back from your assignment with the girl."

"I caught him loitering around and answering the girl's questions," Grievous snarled. "Naturally, since he was not meant to do this, I knocked some sense into him. I made have done it a little too hard." He chuckled harshly.

The droids looked at one another. All of them could guess what had happened. They'd seen it happen many times, even on the battlefield.

Grievous turned to the holoprojector, as the bald-headed, slender form of Asajj Ventress. Grievous took a moment to resist throwing a comment at her, and Ventress, as a result, spoke first.

"My lord," she said, although Grievous knew she didn't want to use those words at all. He could also see that there was a certain gleam in her eye as she spoke – there was an air of anticipation about her now. "Did you succeed? Is Tano in your custody? Or did you fail to deliver the results again?"

Grievous growled. "The ambush went off without a hitch. The addition of Secura to the enemy forces did nothing to assist them in stopping me. Tano is currently in the holding cell, securely tied and unable to move, let alone escape."

"I see," Ventress didn't entirely manage to succeed hiding her pleasure and satisfaction at this announcement. "Then I shall be along relatively soon in order to complete the next phase of the Master's plan."

"How long are we supposed to wait before letting Skywalker find his apprentice?" Grievous asked. "I don't want her on my ship longer than necessary. Unlike you, Ventress, I have other campaigns to run. Lord Sidious has informed me that he wants Bestine overrun within a few rotations, and that Dorin must come under attack within a week."

"We want Skywalker to fret for as long as possible," Ventress explained. "Therefore, we should keep his little pet in our custody for at least two weeks. That should give me plenty of time to fill out my designs, and those of Lord Sidious. I can just see the look on his face when he finds his Padawan again after what I have in mind for her."

Grievous released a growling laugh that made Ventress' face twist into an expression of extreme annoyance. "Your pride must have been really stung by the girl if you want to make her suffer this badly. Is your reputation at stake unless she dies?"

"She escaped me twice," Ventress sneered. "She has luck on her side, but her luck has finally run out. I shall be the one to finish her off, but I want to make it as slow as possible."

Grievous looked at Ventress with distaste. He often struggled with the concept of why Dooku even kept her around. She may be deadly with a lightsaber, but she certainly wasn't near his calibre, and she had a much lower success rate than he did too, and most of the missions that she was tasked with didn't require her to rely on a bunch of pathetic battle droids like his did. She was Dooku's assassin, but Grievous couldn't remember the last time she'd succeeded in killing someone. Ironically, the last mission she _had_ succeeded in was the last time she'd faced Ahsoka.

He held Sidious in high regard, so much so that he thought that he and Dooku were the only necessary political leaders in the whole Separatist Alliance. But in his view, you had to earn his respect, and Ventress had done virtually nothing that won his favour. The sooner he didn't have to work with her, the better.

"We're nearing the rendezvous location over Sernpidal," Grievous said. "Come and pick her up."

* * *

Ventress bowed and broke off the transmission. As she walked over to her personal ship, known as the _Trident_ which resembled a large squid with four long tentacles which could for propulsion or for latching onto smaller ships, she smiled to herself.

Soon, Tano would be made to suffer as she so richly deserved.

And she also felt triumphant over Grievous. Every time she saw him, she couldn't help but feel superior. Yes, Grievous was above her in rank, but in the grand scheme of things, he was much more out of the loop than she was. Ventress knew a good many things that Grievous didn't know.

Firstly, there was the identity of Lord Sidious. Grievous had never met him in purpose, but only as a hologram. He had no idea that Darth Sidious was, in fact, an extremely high ranking person in the Republic as well as the Separatists.

Secondly, was the circumstances on his crippling shuttle crash. Ventress knew that the crash had been caused by a bomb planted, not by the Jedi, but by Count Dooku and San Hill themselves. It had all been a ruse to get Grievous to join the Separatists and build a deadly General. And it had worked with a huge degree of success.

Thirdly, was the circumstances of his reconstruction. She knew that the Geonosians had ignored Grievous' request that his mind should not be tampered with, and altered it so that his anger and rage was much more heightened than it would usually be. This had led to Grievous' habit of destroying his own droids, but it had the right effect.

Fourthly, Ventress knew what Sidious' ultimate aim for Grievous was. Grievous was just like the Jedi, he was just an unsuspecting pawn of Darth Sidious, a weapon merely designed to spread chaos and help initiate Sidious' plan to conquer the galaxy and kill all the Jedi. After that, he would be dispensible.

She smirked to herself, wondering how Grievous would meet his inevitable end. But for now, she just had to keep out of his way.

And now it was time to meet Ahsoka Tano for the fourth time.

* * *

On board the Separatist Destroyer, there were many things. There was the bridge, which was filled with battle droids and had the Supreme Commander of the Droid Armies standing imperiously and watching their every move, just waiting for any opportunity to vent his constant, enhanced anger on them.

There was also the reactor core, the maintenance labs, the shield generator room, the detention level, which contained a row of cells, all of which were unoccupied except for one bound and gagged Togruta girl.

There was also the hangar. This room contained a few battle droids marching hither and thither, carrying out various jobs, mostly clearing away the wreckage of what had once been the prisoner's triangular starfighter. It also contained General Grievous' own starfighter.

And behind a pile of crates, unseen by all, was a small, unconscious, white, rabbit-like creature with large green-tipped ears, a horn on its forehead and two arms instead of front legs, which meant that it could walk on two legs instead of four.

Terriermon's eye twitched.

* * *

Ahsoka's in some deep poodoo right now, isn't she. Grievous already there. Ventress on the way. I find I quite enjoy writing about General Grievous. He's always been my favourite Star Wars villain from the moment I learned of his existence. Congrats to those who worked out it was him. Anyhoo, I'm going to write the next chapter, then I'm going to complete the "Every 50" oneshot for Zephyrclaws.

* * *

Next time...

Back in the Digimon World. Enter three new important characters. The group are trying to find the only one who can help rescue their friends and bring them home.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 35 : Search For GranKuwagamon Part 1**


	35. The Search For GranKuwagamon Part 1

Comparatively late compared to the last one, but I've been preparing for the Drama exam that I took yesterday. I believe personally that it was an unmitigated success, but only time will tell on that score. Anyway, I'm back with another Digital World update.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 35:- ****Search For GranKuwagamon Part 1**

* * *

The long, armoured body of MetalSeadramon snaked across the sky of the Digital World. He wound round Data Streams with ease, undulating up and down to maximise his speed. He was on a mission – to help seek out one of his own friends, who could be of extreme friends to some other friends of his.

But the problem with this was that GranKuwagamon rarely stayed in the same place for more than a week. Sure, he stayed on the same level, the Forest level, but he was rather nomadic, and wandered around it of his own free will.

Sitting on his head was an odd group of passengers, all of which had to take it in turns to sleep, so that they could make sure everyone else didn't slide of MetalSeadramon's head. MetalSeadramon was fast but he wasn't the best transport. The constant rocking, the slippery metal they were all sitting on and the lack of hands to catch them should they fall were his three most major design flaws in this category.

Nevertheless, he was very efficient, and there were only one or two minor incidents where Ai or Mako almost slipped and fell plunging down, but both times they'd been caught rather quickly be Ryo or Impmon and could stay on.

It took about a day of travelling to get to where they needed to go. Ai and Mako, needless to say, weren't all that thrilled at the prospect of yet another twenty-four hours on doing absolutely nothing but sit, even if it was on the head of a Meg-level sea serpent. Ever since their friends had been whisked away to the alternate dimension, they'd done almost nothing by this – on board Behemoth, who was swinging involuntarily up and down along with MetalSeadramon's tails, and now their current mode of transport.

Still, they did get some awesome views up here, and after the second slip, their fellow passenger Pajiramon had insisted that the two ride on her back to prevent it from happening again. How many people could truthfully say they'd ridden a centaur-like sheep, which had been riding a flying sea-serpent at the time? Not many.

Both let out a little cheer when MetalSeadramon announced, "We're almost at the Forest level. It shouldn't take too much longer before we arrive."

"Great," Impmon stretched and yawned, "And when we get there, then what? Do we have a plan, or are we just gonna blinding search the entire forest level and hope we strike lucky."

"Well," sighed Ryo, "that is about the only plan we've got. GranKuwagamon could be anywhere in those trees. We might even walk past him and not know it."

"That does not really inspire us, Ryo," Monodramon chuckled dryly. "Maybe you should go for something that's more along the lines of, I'm sure it won't take very long."

"He's got a point," said Ai. "What's the words Mum uses when we're looking for something for ages?"

"Wild goose chase?" suggested Mako.

"Yeah, that one. That's what we're on now, isn't it."

"I can't argue with you there, kids," Impmon mumbled. "I don't think my back will ever be the same again."

"Sorry, I'm sure," murmured MetalSeadramon.

"It's not you," sighed Impmon. "But I have been sitting down too much. And I haven't pulled a prank for a good week-and-a-half. Wherever Helicopter-head is now, I bet he's still going strong, while we're out here trying to find him. And that just annoys me."

"There is, of course, something else that we can do," said Sandiramon, still coiled firmly around MetalSeadramon's neck. "GranKuwagamon isn't the only Digimon on the forest level. There are numerous others that might have recently seen him and can point us in the right direction."

"True," said Pajiramon. "But I hope to Fanglongmon we don't have to go anywhere near the Geckomon village. Their infernal croaking gets on my nerves. I honestly don't know how they can call it singing and keep straight faces."

"Agreed," said Sandiramon.

"Agreed," said MetalSeadramon.

"Agreed," said Ryo and Monodramon.

"Are they really that bad?" laughed Impmon.

"Worse," said MetalSeadramon.

"Has anyone ever tried gumming up those stupid megahorns they wear around their necks? That might put a bit of a damper on their spirits," Impmon grinned. "If not, then I volunteer my services."

"If we go near them then be my guest," said Pajiramon. "But personally I'd like to stay away from them."

"We need to scour the forest level," said Sandiramon. "Unfortunately, Ryo was right. GranKuwagamon can easily blend in with the environment around him, and hide in the shadows. He often doesn't need to try to hide to go unnoticed."

"Oh, don't tell me," Impmon sighed. "We're gonna be splitting up, aren't we?"

"We'd cover more ground," said Ryo, fairly.

"Yeah, and we'd also be making ourselves more vulnerable," said Impmon. "If I see anything even attempt to hurt Ai and Mako, then I'm gonna rip 'em to bits before they can blink."

Ai and Mako grinned at each other. They were completely unphased by Impmon's colourful language. They'd gotten used to it by now, much to the chagrin of their mother, but fortunately they had refrained from using it themselves, otherwise their mother would attempt to throw Impmon out of the house for being a bad influence.

"Is he often this vindictive?" asked Pajiramon in a stage-whisper to Ryo.

"If the health of the twins are involved, he can become an unrepressed ball of purple fury," said Ryo. "Which will shortly become a tall, wild lance of black fury and unleash said fury on the assailant. The twins are possibly some of the safest people in our world. Even the hardiest of Earth's men would quail at the sight of Beelzemon lowering a shotgun at him."

"And I'd damn well use it too," Impmon thumped where he was sitting with a savage grin.

"Ow," said MetalSeadramon.

"Oh, come on!" Impmon rolled his eyes. "That didn't hurt and you know it, Cannon-nose."

"I know – I was just letting you know that I'm still here. And I resent being called Cannon-nose too."

"Well, you're gonna had to get used to it," Impmon leaned over the side of MetalSeadramon's head, so he was looking into the huge eye. "Everyone gets a nickname."

"Except your partners, I notice," said MetalSeadramon.

"Yeah, but that's because I'm not sure whether I should call them Munchkins or Oompa-Loompas."

Monodramon chuckled, while all the other Digimon looked puzzled by both references. Then, there was a whooshing noise as MetalSeadramon sailed over the lip of a large piece of ground that appeared to be floating in mid-air, which was actually what all the ground in the Digital World did, except at the bottom level. When he cleared it, they could quite easily see that it was covered in various trees.

It was like a patchwork quilt of greens, oranges and reds, with a few splashes on inexplicably random colours, such as magenta, pink, and even black and white. This forest would be enough to keep most botanists happy for a year with all the different species of tree. Unfortunately, no human botanist had ever had the chance to study them.

Ai and Mako stared in wonder at the multicoloured trees. The others had all seen this before, so they were much less struck dumb, but they still looked out across the expanse of trees. They stretched on as far as the eye could see ahead of them and to either side. There was an almost unbroken canopy, which meant that underneath it, it would probably be quite dark and shady – an easy place to miss a black bug, even if it was a big one.

"This is great," Impmon muttered sarcastically, folding his arms. "The words needle and haystack come to mind."

"Trying to find a needle in a haystack, when the needle looks like a piece of hay," nodded Monodramon. "I'm beginning to think we should have brought the others along. I can see WarGrowlmon tearing the forest apart in an attempt to find this guy."

"There's to be no tearing of anything," Sandiramon rose his head. "A lot of Digimon make their homes in this forest. We're not going to be destroying their habitat to flush out GranKuwagamon. That won't get you on his good side, or the good side of a lot of other Digimon."

"So, it's the old fashioned way, is it?" Impmon groaned. "Search blindly and hope for the best? Tell me again why I came."

"So that we can find GranKuwagamon and hopefully get the others back from wherever they are," said Ryo.

"It was a rhetorical question, Cardmeister," Impmon said, straight afterwards. "I know why I'm here. I'm just wishing old Zhuqs, I mean Zhuqiaomon, couldn't be of some more help to us."

"Well, we aren't going to get anything done by just hanging up here," said MetalSeadramon, swinging around and beginning to circle in mid-air. Behemoth protested vehemently from his lousy place on the ride, but MetalSeadramon wouldn't have been able to understand his rumbling even if he'd heard it, which nobody else did. "Shall I try and find a place to land?"

"Yeah," said Ryo. "We've gotta get as much searching down as we can before the light changes. It'll be even harder to find GranKuwagamon at night."

"I don't like the idea of walking around down there at night," shuddered Ai. "What could be hiding in the darkness?"

"Hopefully GranKuwagamon," Impmon replied, with a grin. "And if there's anything else, you guys just leave them to me."

MetalSeadramon began his descent, slowly lowering himself down and trying to locate a clearing where he could easily land without brushing his passengers off in the foliage as he went through it. It took him a few minutes to locate something useful – a clearing that was so small it was practically impossible for all of him to fit in.

So he didn't. He just brought his head and tail down to the ground, while his middle continued to float above the trees in a great, armoured arc. His tails released Behemoth and the motorbike revelled in the fact that it could use its wheels again by instantly starting its engine and zooming around the clearing, doing a good ten laps of it before it decided to calm down.

Ai and Mako slid off the serpentine head only after Ryo had done so, so the older boy could catch them on the way down. Impmon and Monodramon leapt down with no trouble. Sandiramon lowered himself to the ground by uncoiling until his neck touched the ground. His tail then released MetalSeadramon and slowly lowered itself after the head, almost ignoring gravity.

Pajiramon just jumped straight over the heads of everyone else and landed rather awkwardly. Her legs had been pressed under her belly for some time and she began to flex the knees to warm them up and get them in proper order.

"So," she said. "This is where we split up."

"Indeed," said Ryo. "And the sooner we get started the better. I reckon we should split into four separate groups. MetalSeadramon, can you go up there and do a search from the air, try and see if you can spot him from a height?"

"Not a problem," MetalSeadramon nodded his huge head. "If GranKuwagamon's decided to go flying, I'll find him."

"You two Devas should go together," said Ryo, "as you guys know the strengths and weaknesses of the other just in case we run into trouble. Impmon, you take Behemoth and your partners with you as you go that way," Ryo pointed off into the trees in a random direction. "You Devas go that way," he pointed in another direction. "And Monodramon and I will go this way.

"Now, this is the Digital World we're talking about," said Ryo. "So obviously there may be some large monsters like that MarineDevimon."

"He was scary," Mako said, demonstrating the child's amazing talent of stating the obvious.

"Well, at least he's gone," Ryo agreed, "But there may be others. Therefore, it only makes sense that we go to Mega level if we can. We'll have a better chance of taking on any attackers in those forms, after all."

"Sweet," Impmon grinned. "I always love digivolving. Gives me a rush-and-three-quarters."

While MetalSeadramon, Pajiramon and Sandiramon tried to get their heads around that last sentence, Impmon erupted into light and Ryo pressed his D-Arc to his chest and cried, "Biomerge Activate!" After that, he and Monodramon burst into light too.

"**MONODRAMON BIOMERGE TO... JUSTIMON!"**

"**IMPMON WARP-DIGIVOLVE TO... BEELZEMON!"**

The two Megas stood tall and proud in the clearing – Justimon brandishing his robotic arm and Beelzemon twirling his shotguns like the cowboy from hell. Ai and Mako smiled up at their partner, but they could help but feel slightly envious of Justimon. They couldn't even begin to imagine what it must feel like to be merged with their partner, to be merged with Beelzemon.

The descriptions the other Tamers had given them of biomerging hadn't really helped them form a picture in their minds of what it was like. They'd used words like incredible, unbelievable, indescribable from Henry and "It makes me feel hungry afterwards," from Guilmon. This had just made them more frustrated that they didn't know what they were missing.

They knew Beelzemon felt a similar way, but he never really talked about it.

"So, what do we do if we find Bugface?" asked Beelzemon, holstering his guns.

"We'll need to send a signal of some kind," said Justimon, in the dual voice of Ryo and the return of Cyberdramon's growling tones. "If I find him, I'll send a Justice Burst up into the sky. You others can use some other kind of attack to do the same thing. That way, everyone can see roughly what direction you're in and make their way towards you."

"A sound proposal," nodded Sandiramon.

"Well, let's get on with it," Beelzemon turned to walk over to Behemoth, who'd parked itself on the side of the clearing. "I don't got all day."

"Actually, you do," said MetalSeadramon.

"Yeah, but "I don't got all day" sounds cooler than the other potential things I could say right now," Beelzemon pointed out as he sat himself astride Behemoth's large seat. He turned his red eyes on the twins and said, "You little dudes coming or what?"

"You mean we got go sit down again?" asked Ai, while Mako pouted.

"Look kids," Beelzemon said in a surprisingly patient tone for him – but then again, he'd never been known to shout at his partners after he'd returned to them. "I didn't say you gotta like this. But those guys, wherever they are, are depending on us. We gotta do what we gotts do to get 'em back, and if that means sitting on my arse for the next month then I'll do it if I have too."

"Mum doesn't like it when you use that word," said Mako.

"Yeah, well you're mum doesn't like anything I say no matter what words I use," Beelzemon pointed out. The twins giggled – it was true. "Now, hop on. Tell you what, we'll go super fast for a bit and then we'll start searching properly."

Behemoth rumbled with anticipation as his Master said that. The motorbike loved going fast and back in the human world he broke the speed-limit practically everywhere he went. They could get away with this because the police seemed reluctant to try and pull Beelzemon over for some reason.

"Beelzemon the motivational speaker," Pajiramon chuckled as the ex-Demon Lord helped his partners onto the bike. "Who'd have thought?"

"The Digital World is full of strange things," said Sandiramon sagely. "And the Human World is even stranger."

"Not from our viewpoint," said Ryo from Justimon's body. "Now, shall we get underway?"

His answer came when Beelzemon kicked Behemoth into life and the bike hared off, probably of its own accord and they disappeared amongst the trees.

"I don't think that bike likes me much," said MetalSeadramon. "I'll see what I can find." He rose up and wound his way across the trees, disappearing from view.

"Let's hope we strike lucky today and that this search doesn't drag on for some time," said Pajiramon, as she and Sandiramon turned to make their way off into the trees. Justimon also turned and began to run in his own designated direction. The eyes beneath the metal faceplate scanned the surroundings, searching for any sign of the big Mega insect.

The clearing had cleared.

* * *

Ai and Mako screamed with delight as Behemoth surged forward on a wayward, random and almost uncoordinated path that took his careening around the tree trunks, dodging roots and genuinely making a very loud noise. Beelzemon grinned at his partner's delight, his fangs showing as he did. The wind whipped through the hair of all three, and the twins whooped at the wild ride.

Who needed a rollercoaster when you had a psychotic bike?

Any bystander might think that Behemoth was desperately trying to throw its passengers off, but the bike wasn't really trying to do that, although it would get a good, rumbling snicker if they did get hurled off. He was just celebrating after having to spend almost three days in the air, which was perfectly understandable.

At one point, Beelzemon saw another Digimon and brought Behemoth reluctantly to a stop. "Hey!" he yelled up at the Hawkmon sitting in the tree he'd stopped by. The Rookie level Bird Digimon looked startled by the sudden appearance of the lot.

He said, "My, my, this is an anomalous cluster. To what do I owe the untimely interruption?"

"Interruption from what? You weren't doing anything," Beelzemon pointed out.

"I was depositing myself in a contemplative state. I find it makes me feel obtrusively serene."

"Speak English," Beelzemon said. The twins tittered.

"It calms me down."

"Right, well, anyway. Have you seen a big, black bug? About so high," Beelzemon held his hand level with his neck. "Two huge pincers on his face, four wings, answers to the name of GranKuwagamon. Well, I say answers, but he doesn't talk the much, but what the hell."

"You're conduct in front of the children is moot, my good sir," the Hawkmon ruffled his feathers. "But I must notify you that I have not seen any such insect Digimon. It is exclusively plausible that he meandered this way during my meditations, but I cannot bestow upon you any more information than that. My apologies."

Beelzemon frowned up at the bird, then said, "You've read the dictionary too many times, you know that?"

"Pardon my ignorance, good sir, but what is a dictionary?"

"Never mind," Beelzemon shook his head. "So, just for the record, you haven't seen GranKuwagamon?"

"No, I'm repentant to say. I wish you well with your enterprise, er... what is your name, good sir."

"Beelzemon," said Beelzemon, without thinking.

The Hawkmon paled under his feathers. It stared at Beelzemon in horror for a couple of seconds then said, "Goodbye," and he was gone in a hurried flapping on wings.

"Hey, come back!" Ai shouted after him. "Beelzemon's nice. He wouldn't hurt a fly."

"Actually I would," scowled Beelzemon. "They're damn annoying."

"Alright then," Ai shouted, even though the Hawkmon was long gone. "He wouldn't hurt a spider."

"I don't think it's going to make any difference to him," Beelzemon muttered. "He's probably been brought up on tales of some of the awful stuff I did. I don't blame him for wetting his feathers. Let's get going, shall we?"

The twins nodded, and Beelzemon started Behemoth again. The bike roared into life and they began moving again. They moved much more slowly this time, winding their way through the trees and staring out at the shadows, straining all seven eyes between them for any sign of GranKuwagamon. They saw nothing, but they hadn't really expected to see anything.

Big forest, one bug.

* * *

Ai and Mako began to feel quite tired again after about an hour of this, during which time they spotted no flares from any of the others. The head of a MetalSeadramon was not the best place in the Digital World to sleep, particularly since it felt like the wind was rushing at you all the time. They'd managed to snatch a couple of hours here and there, but despite the roar of Behemoth's engines, his seat was much more comfortable.

Eventually they both nodded off completely and Beelzemon couldn't help but smile wryly at the sight of the two children leaning against each other on the bike. They weren't really cut out for this searching stuff. It was just too boring for them. Beelzemon didn't blame them, as he felt like having a kip himself, but he had another reason for trying to find their friends that he hadn't told the twins and that spurred him on.

After yet another hour, during with nothing happened bar they continued to drive through the forest and Ai and Mako continued to sleep, Beelzemon was still staring from left to right and hoping to spot something useful. He'd slowed Behemoth down considerable so that he could search better and he'd have much less chance of missing something important.

He looked up at the sky. There'd been no change in light, but he can tell that night was drawing in. Pretty soon, darkness would wash over them as it had done for the past eight days.

Anytime now would be nice.

A large bush off to one side and slightly ahead moved.

Beelzemon instantly brought the bike to a halt and stared at it, his eyes narrowing with suspicion. It had looked like the kind of movement a bush would make if someone had been watching them through the hedge, holding part of it aside so they could see, but had let go when they approached and the bush had sprang back to its original position and hidden them from view.

Beelzemon had no idea if that was actually the case, and it had been he didn't know if the person that had done it was a threat or not, but he still reached down and pulled the shotgun strapped to his leg out of its holster. It never hurt to be careful.

He shook Ai and Mako at the same time with one hand. They opened their eyes blearily and Ai asked, "Whuzzhapnin'?"

"I saw movement," Beelzemon whispered to them. "In that bush over there."

The twins became more awake when they heard this and stared at the bush fearfully. It made no further movement, and Ai whispered, "Are you sure?"

"Dead sure."

"Is it an enemy?" asked Mako.

"Don't know," Beelzemon slowly levered himself off the bike and pulled the other shotgun from the holster on his back. "But I intend to find out. Behemoth, you know what to do."

Behemoth didn't reply, but Beelzemon knew he'd been understood. That meant the same as it had with Zhuqiaomon – get them out of here if things get hairy.

Beelzemon slowly approached the bush, moving as silently as possible so as not to disturb the hiding whoever-it-was. He crouched down beside the bush and turned back to glance at his Tamers, who were watching him with looks of apprehension mixed with admiration.

He nodded at them, before standing up, whipping around the bush and pointing his shotguns at the space behind it.

The barrels were sighted on the ground. There was nobody there.

Beelzemon raised his guns so they were pointing upwards at the canopy and stared at the empty space. "I could have sworn..." he mumbled to himself, tailing off and glancing around, just to make sure.

"Are you looking for little old me?"

Beelzemon whipped around and aimed his guns in the direction of the voice, which had been distinctly feminine and sounded happy rather than fearful. This time, he found who he was looking for. The twins followed the voice too and they stared at the being who was standing on the branch of a nearby tree and smiling cheekily down at all of them.

None of them had, to their memory, seen this Digimon before. It was definitely a Digimon, and resembled a very elegant humanoid female. She was wearing what appeared to be a yellow leotard lined with green and without the arms or legs, so it just covered her torso, with a few leafy projections at the top, and a tulip at the base of her neck, the stem of which ran down the centre of her chest a short way. Her arms and legs were pink and ended in were, quite literally, five, white flower petals instead of hands and feet. There were more leafy projections around her hip. An enormous pink flower, tipped with yellow, bloomed from her back, and there was another pink flower, upside down, on her head. Her hair was short and ivy-like, reaching no further than her shoulders.

"Ooh, you going to shoot me?" the female Digimon winked at Beelzemon. "I'd prefer it if you didn't, but it's up to you."

Beelzemon was quite taken aback by her casual demeanour and lowered his guns to his sides. "Thanks," grinned the Digimon.

"She looks like Lillymon from the TV series," said Mako.

Ai raised the D-Arc and the holographic stats sprung up. "This says her name is Lilamon," she read aloud. Fairy Digimon. Ultimate level. And it says her attacks are Lila Shower, Beauty Slap, Marvel Shot, Lilac Dagger and ..." she struggled to read the last one.

"Un Deux Pollen?" suggested Lilamon, with a charismatic grin. She pronounced it "Un dew."

"Yeah, that," said Ai.

"Alright, lady," Beelzemon stowed his shotguns away – she didn't look like an evil Digimon at all. "What's the deal with the sneaking around?"

"Curiosity really," said Lilamon. "And it was really funny watching you sneak up on a bush. I've never seen a Digimon like you before, and are those little guys humans?" She looked oddly excited.

"Yeah," said Beelzemon, unsure of what to make of her.

"Ooh, they're so cute," Lilamon gushed.

"We are?" said the twins, glancing at Beelzemon in confusion.

"She said it, not me," Beelzemon pointed out.

"So who are you?" asked Lilamon, looking at Beelzemon. The Mega level hesitated to reply to the Ultimate, the memory of the last person who had asked that question and their reaction still very, very fresh in his mind. But avoiding the question would look suspicious, so he sighed and replied:-

"Beelzemon."

"Are you really?" Lilamon's eyes widened in surprise and wonderment.

"Yeah," sighed Beelzemon, bracing himself for the scream of fear he was sure would come.

"Oh, how cool it that?" Lilamon grinned, looking extremely excited. "I thought you looked like a real tough guy with the bike and the guns and stuff. And you're Beelzemon. _The_ Beelzemon? Seriously?"

"Er, yeah," Beelzemon frowned in confusion at Lilamon's bubbly response. "You're, er, you're not afraid?"

"Should I be?" Lilamon winked again. "If you wanted to kill me you would have tried to shot me the moment you saw me, but you didn't. Plus, what would an evil Digimon be doing travelling around with two adorable human children?"

"I'm not adorable," protested Mako, while Ai said, "Thank you."

Beelzemon grinned – Lilamon's smile was quite infectious. "Well, you certainly seem to be of a bouncy nature. You remind me a bit of a friend of mine, although he's a guy and doesn't refer to things as cute. But the last Digimon who learned who I was flew off in a flap."

"Who was it?" asked Lilamon, frowning.

"Just some random Hawkmon," Beelzemon shrugged.

"Oh him," Lilamon waved a hand airily. "I know him. Very old-fashioned bird, you probably noticed his tendency for long and complicated words that nobody uses any more. He still holds all the old views, doesn't believe the stories about how you reformed and took on the True Enemy to save a human girl and then fought against your own brethren when Ogudomon attacked. I wouldn't pay him any mind."

"There are stories about that?" asked Beelzemon, bemused.

"Well, duh," Lilamon rolled her eyes. "Where've you been living – the Human World?" She paused, then said, "Never mind, but the point is that there are stories about all you Digimon who've been partnered with humans. You guys leave a mark wherever you guys. You're legends, all of you. Can I just say now that meeting you is absolutely awesome?"

"I'm not adorable," Mako repeated to anyone who was listening.

"What kind of stories?" Beelzemon ploughed on.

Lilamon counted them off on her petals. "How you guys took on the Devas and won, how you fought against Zhuqiaomon, how you can merge with your human partners, how you destroyed the True Enemy, how the prophecy trio creamed Ogudomon. Everything."

Lilamon beamed cheerfully down from her branch at them. Beelzemon grinned back and said, "In that case, it's good to meet you too, Petalhead," he held out his clawed hand. Lilamon giggled and stepped casually off the branch, hovered in the air for a second and then swooped down to extend one of her "hands." When Beelzemon gripped them to shake, he was surprised to feel that they felt just like fingers, instead of real petals, but then he supposed actual petals for fingers would be very flimsy and stupid.

"So," said Lilamon once she released her grip on Beelzemon's hand and walked over to plonk herself on Behemoth's seat beside the twins. "What are your names, kids?"

"My name is Ai," said Ai, "And this is my twin brother, Mako."

"Who is not adorable," Mako clarified.

Lilamon sniggered and said, "Oh, alright, you're not adorable. You're downright ugly. How's that?"

Beelzemon laughed, his hands coming to his sides. "You asked for that, Mako," he grinned at Mako's look of embarrassment.

"Aaw, I was just kidding," Lilamon ruffled Mako's hair. "You're not ugly, and you're not adorable. There, is that better?"

"Yes, thanks," Mako looked a bit flummoxed by Lilamon's personality.

"I like you," said Ai, reaching up to touch one of Lilamon's finger-petals with interest.

"Well, that's good, because I like you too," Lilamon grinned, allowing Ai to take a hold of the petal, before lifting her bodily into the air from it. Beelzemon looked surprised at this – clearly Lilamon was much stronger than she looked. She looked like a strong breeze could blow her away, but that was clearly not the case.

Ai giggled as she hung from the petal, and then again as Lilamon plopped her back down on Behemoth's back. When she did, Behemoth juddered in annoyance, causing Lilamon to leap up in surprise with a cry of "Oop."

She stared at Behemoth, and then said, "Oh, of course. Beelzemon's living bike. Silly me. Completely forgot about that. Sorry," she reached down and stroked Behemoth's seat. The motorbike rumbled again, but this time it almost sounded as though it were purring.

"Oh dear," Beelzemon chuckled. "He's effectively yours now. One stroke on the seat and he's anybody's. I gotta say, you sure gotta a way with people, Petalhead."

"Why thank you," Lilamon grinned and dropped herself onto Behemoth's seat again, continuing to stroke it in order to ensure the bike didn't try to throw her off in an undignified way. Behemoth used to try and possess any Digimon that sat on him other than its true master – but now that it had its true master, and its true master seemed to like the Lilamon, it didn't try.

"So," Lilamon wrapped her arms round her knees and took on an air of expectancy. "What brings you guys to our neighbourhood? We don't usually get humans around here, and I'm guessing that you're not here on holiday."

Beelzemon grimaced. Ai and Mako looked downcast – Lilamon had provided a brief distraction from their true purpose.

"Did I say something wrong?" Lilamon asked, noticing their expressions.

"No," Beelzemon shook his head. "But you're right. We're not here on holiday. We're on a rescue mission, or at least we're trying to be on rescue mission. We don't seem to be having much luck with the actual recuing part."

"Go on," Lilamon said, suddenly quite serious.

Beelzemon looked into Lilamon's green eyes. She looked sincere, and he was sure that they could trust her. Perhaps she could even help – she might have spotted GranKuwagamon in the area recently.

And so, he told her everything. Ai and Mako respectively remained silent, knowing Beelzemon was much better at explaining information than they were. Lilamon was a very good audience – she gasped and put her petals over her mouth at all the right points. She only asked a couple of clarifying questions, like who Parallelmon was, but other than a loud exclamation of, "THE PROPHECY TRIO ARE GONE?" she remained silent and just listened.

"So the Sovereign gave us three separate options in finding them," said Beelzemon, and began to tick them off on his fingers as he went. "Number one, ask Parallelmon, and since there's a fat chance of that happening that means that option is out the window. The second option would be to ask Anubimon. We'd probably have gone with this one, if only we knew where the hell we could actually find him and how. So that leaves us with option three, which is why we're here."

Lilamon nodded her head thoughtfully, putting her tongue in her cheek as she did. Then she said, "And what is option three exactly?"

"We're looking for an old friend of ours," said Beelzemon. "You must have heard of him if you know about the Ogudomon debacle. "We're looking for GranKuwagamon."

"GranKuwagamon?" Lilamon's face lit up in her biggest grin yet. "Of course I know him. He's a really good friend of ours. He's the one that told us all those stories about Ogudomon."

"He was?" Beelzemon frowned. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression he didn't like to say much."

"Well," conceded Lilamon. "Actually it was Gryphonmon that told us, but he spent so much time arguing with his tail that we got confused as to which points were true, so we asked GranKuwagamon for clarification."

"You know where he lives then?" Beelzemon said hopefully.

"You bet I do," Lilamon beamed. "He changes his home once a week for some odd reason, but he always tells us where he's going. We visit him sometimes – he's a good friend."

"Can you take us to him then?" asked Mako, a grin breaking out onto his face.

"I think I'd be an idiot if I didn't," Lilamon replied. "This is serious, and I want to help."

"We?" asked Ai.

Lilamon blinked. "Pardon?"

"You said, _we_ visit him sometimes," pointed out Ai. "Who else did you mean?"

"Good spot," Lilamon winked, "Give the human a star. When I said we, I was referring to myself and two of my other friends. They should be..."

"Hey, Lilamon!"

"...Around," finished Lilamon, grinning at the new voice.

Two more Digimon emerged from the trees. The first was a bird of some kind. It had a basic body design similar to that of an ostrich, but its legs and neck were much stouter. Its head resembled that of a carnivorous dinosaur combined with a bird of prey, in that the top jaw resembled the hooked beak of a falcon and the bottom jaw had large, shark-like fangs.

Green plumage decorated his abdomen and upper legs, while orange feathers adorned his chest, lower neck and lower wings. His tail was orange with a large, red tip, and the tips of his wings were also red, but his head, upper neck, back and upper wings were encased in metal, as was his lower feet. His talons were huge and metallic, like knives, three pointing forwards and very large one entending from the back of the foot. His head was crowned with spiky red, feathers.

The second Digimon was, to put it bluntly, a dragon. A very large, cobalt-blue coloured dragon, with four great, blue limbs and two sweeping wings with deep-sky-blue skin stretching across it. It was standing on its hind legs, and there was an enormous tail sweeping back from him. At the head of its long neck, was a head encrusted with a metallic helmet, with two orange horns poking out from his nose and several sweeping from the back of his head. He also had a metal chestplate.

His front legs had great flaps of blue skin extending from them, flecked with red. A huge, metal lance was attached to his back and extended past his head and to finish off the picture, he was hovering in the air without flapping his wings at all. He looked like he was blocking gravity and just floating in the air.

"What's going on?" the dragon asked in a deep but growling voice, eying Beelzemon and the children. He was easily the largest being there.

Ai raised the Digivice and, pointing it at the bird, read the data aloud – "Diatrymon. Ancient Bird Digimon. Champion level. Attacks are Destruction Roar and Mega Dash Impact."

Mako took it next and read aloud the stats of the dragon. "Wingdramon. Sky Dragon Digimon. Ultimate level. His attacks are Blaze Sonic Breath, Explode Sonic Lance and Wing Blast."

"Hey guys," Beelzemon nodded. "What's hanging?"

"Who are you?" Diatrymon's voice was a raucous squawk. "I haven't seen you before."

"Hey guys," Lilamon swung around on Behemoth's seat so she was facing the newcomers. "You are not going to believe who you are looking at."

"I think I can take a guess," Wingdramon said. "I can see two humans... or at least I think they're humans. Are you humans, or some kind of In-training level Digimon?"

"Human," said Ai and Mako at the same time.

"I thought so," Wingdramon nodded. "And that would probably make you Tamers. Am I correct?"

"Yep," Lilamon nodded to her friend.

"Which would make you their Digimon," the dragon turned to Beelzemon. "But I do not know which one."

"Beelzemon," Beelzemon introduced himself with much more conviction than last time. "That's my name."

"Are you really?" Diatrymon cocked his head to one side. "By Fanglongmon, you look exactly like I thought you would. Is it true that you tried to punch through the Kernel Sphere of the True Enemy with your bare hands and you succeeded?"

"That I did," Beelzemon flexed his claws. "That thing was tough - I can tell you that for nothing."

"And I believe that you have a Mode Change," Wingdramon mused. "May I see it?"

"Ooh, yes," Lilamon clapped her hands together. "I'd love to see that. Pretty please."

Beelzemon felt quite stunned at all the attention and praise he was getting from these three Digimon, although Wingdramon seemed to have a calmness about him that made him seem mildly curious – it was difficult to tell if he was excited, like Lilamon clearly was. Diatrymon, seemed to be somewhere in the middle, amazed but not leaping about in joy.

For some months now, he'd been thinking of himself as a monster, receiving the horrifying flashbacks from his former life. He'd been feeling that he didn't deserve Tamers like Ai and Mako, whereas before, when he'd been a little troublemaker throwing fire at people, it had been the opposite. He'd met nothing but respect and fear from other Digimon, but these ones seemed genuinely happy to see him.

It felt good.

"Ah, alright," he shrugged, glancing over at a grinning pair of twins. Lilamon whooped and somersaulted in the air, and Beelzemon turned his gaze on her, asking for an explanation with his expression.

"Sorry, got carried away," she grinned, though she didn't look that sorry.

All three had different reactions when the huge, black, raven-like wings exploded out of Beelzemon's back and the large cannon appeared on his arm. Diatrymon took a step backwards and muttered, "Whoa." Lilamon raised one flower to her mouth and went "Oooooooh," in awe. Wingdramon raised his head and murmured "Impressive."

"So, anyway," Beelzemon said, gesturing to Lilamon with his cannon. "Can we get back on topic. Petal-head, you were going to show us the way to GranKuwagamon."

"GranKuwagamon?" Diatrymon asked curiously. "What do you want with him?"

After a brief retelling of their story, Wingdramon said, "I had a feeling that it would be something like this. From what I've heard, trouble seems to follow you Tamers and your Digimon like a magnet to iron. And, needless to say, that trouble usually finds its way to anyone who helps you."

Ai and Mako looked a little downcast. What was Wingdramon implying?

The dragon grinned a toothy grin. "I'm in," he said.

"Me too," Diatrymon nodded. I feel like a bit of an adventure right now. We didn't have anything planned. Would you like us to take you to him now?"

"What about the others, Beelzemon?" asked Ai.

"Good point, kid," Beelzemon nodded. "There are some others of us dotted around who-knows-where in this ocean of forest. Just let me call 'em, and when everyone's together in a big, happy family again, then you can take us to him."

"No probs," Lilamon nodded. "Call away. That means we get to meet another Tamer and his Digimon."

"I'd stay clear of Cyberdramon if I were you," Beelzemon said in a philosophical tone that didn't suit him, before pointed his cannon straight up. A moment later, with a shout of "CORONA BLASTER!" he launched a great bolt of pink energy shooting straight upwards through the canopy.

"Now I'm just getting envious," Diatrymon murmured.

"Momentai," said the twins in unison.

"What?"

"Nothing," Beelzemon said quickly. "Fanglongmon knows, Terriermon uses that word enough on his own. We don't need anyone else saying it."

Oh, if only he knew.

"I think it's funny," said Mako.

"Yeah, well," Beelzemon shrugged. "Anyway, that should let everyone else know that I've found something useful and they should all be heading this way if they spotted that. I'll send up another in a minute, just in case they didn't."

"Well, if we're going to be waiting around here for a bit," Lilamon sat on Behemoth again, "You know what time it is?"

"What?" asked the twins.

Diatrymon and Wingdramon both rolled their eyes at the same time and answered in unison, "Story time."

"You betcha," Lilamon giggled. "Come on kids, come on Beelzemon. Share with us some tails of you intrepid adventures."

"I thought you knew about all out adventures anyway," Mako said.

"Yeah, but I've never heard them like this. You know, first hand from a human. It'll be a new experience."

"Is she always like this?" Beelzemon asked the other two, as Ai and Mako began to tell the story of the day Impmon had come back to them to the attentive Petal-head.

"She's a very hyperactive person at the best of times," said Wingdramon. "But it's all good-natured, and Lilamon had to be one of the most eternally happy Digimon that I have ever seen. I don't think I've ever seen her upset about anything."

"Well," Beelzemon shrugged. "Let's hope I don't screw that up for her."

* * *

MetalSeadramon was the first to arrive. He'd been flying around a few miles to the south, and had been able to easily find his way to the site where the others were standing or sitting and either telling or listening to the tales of the other. But, once again, the giant sea-serpent was simply too big to alight on the ground. He didn't seem to be remotely bothered by this, as he used very little energy to stay in the air and wasn't at all tired.

So, he settled for just hovering above the trees and peered down between the branches at what was going on below.

Justimon arrived next. He came shooting through the trees like a meteor, practically leaving a trail of stardust behind him, even though they were nowhere near space. He came so fast and came screeching to a halt so suddenly that his scarves whipped past him and almost collided with Beelzemon's face, but fortunately the Mega was anticipating this and managed to duck underneath them.

Beelzemon decided to leave the introductions to Ai and Mako, as he didn't usually like to repeat himself over and over again. Lilamon treated Justimon in a pretty similar way that she had to Beelzemon, while Wingdramon and Diatrymon nodded politely and let Lilamon do the talking. Diatrymon murmured to Beelzemon that of the three of them, Lilamon was almost always the first to say anything.

Night washed over to them before the much slower-moving Devas arrived on the scene. Pajiramon and Sandiramon didn't have the option of taking to the air, and they came swiftly but carefully through the forest. Beelzemon had to let off several more Corona Blasters before they finally managed to locate them from the ground level.

In the trees, it was now much darker and would have been quite difficult to see anything were it not for Behemoth's headlight, and the bizarre bioluminescent glowing of Lilamon, which she claimed that she could turn on and off.

"Well, now that we're all here," Justimon said in Ryo's voice. "Shall we get going and try to find GranKuwagamon?"

"Finally," Beelzemon grumbled. "Been waiting for you to say that for ages. Lead the way, Petal-head. You can be the lamp."

Lilamon giggled. "That was the idea. Come on, guys. Let's show 'em how it's done."

Wingdramon was also relatively easy to see due to his bright blue colouration, but when Diatrymon turned his back he almost seemed to blend into the background. The three of them turned and began to head north-west, deeper into the Forest level. Wingdramon curved around trees, floating with his wings outstretched and not touching the ground with any part of his body, not even his enormous tail. Lilamon flitted from tree to tree, while Diatrymon stalked forward like a predator.

The others followed on behind them.

"It's lucky we were able to find them," said Pajiramon. "It seems that luck and fortune are favouring us if we're going to find GranKuwagamon this easily. I was certain it'd take us much longer."

"What do you make of them, Beelzemon?" asked Justimon. "Can we trust them?"

"I reckon we can," Beelzemon nodded. "I don't think anyone could pretend to be as enthusiastic as Lilamon. What about you two, kids?"

"I really like them," said Mako. "Diatrymon looks a bit scary, but he's quite nice... I think."

"What's Wingdramon doing?" Ai pointed at the blue, dragon Ultimate. "Isn't he going to land on the ground and walk?"

"Wingdramon hardly ever spend any time on the ground, child," Sandiramon hissed across to her. "Their wings have the ability to repel gravity, allowing them to stay aloft their whole lives without touching the ground if they wish."

"Well, it looks like he has every intention of doing just that," Beelzemon pointed out; as Wingdramon's massive wing momentarily blotted the glowing Lilamon from their view. Behemoth shone his headlight ahead of the group, highlighting the ground ahead so that they could avoid crashing into trees.

"How long do you reckon it'll take for us to get there?" shouted Justimon.

Diatrymon turned around to answer them, and as he did, his green underbelly and orange upperbelly made him much more easily discernable. "We'll probably be moving through the night if we keep up this pace. Usually we move a little faster than this."

"You reckon we should move a bit faster?" asked Pajiramon.

"Nah," Beelzemon pointed down at his lap again. Mako had fallen asleep again, and it looked like Ai was close to following his example.

"Actually, he's got a point," Justimon said. "I reckon it's about time we all stopped for the rest. The only sleep that some of us have had in the past three days have been on the head of MetalSeadramon, which isn't the best bed in the world. No offense," he called up.

"None taken," MetalSeadramon said as he poked his head through the foliage.

Wingdramon turned to face them. "So you want to stop?"

"I think it'd be a good idea," Justimon said, as he glowed briefly as his split into Ryo and Cyberdramon. "We can recharge and press on to GranKuwagamon when it becomes light again."

"Kidoke," Lilamon swooped over to them and sat on a branch in a nearby tree. Beelzemon carefully picked up Ai and Mako and leaned them against the trunk of a nearby tree, before de-digivolving into Impmon. Behemoth rumbled slightly and switched off his headlight.

Gradually, everybody fell asleep. Pajiramon and Diatrymon settled down on their haunches to fall asleep, Diatrymon sticking his head under one of his orange and red wings. Impmon began to doze off next to Ai and Mako, curled up beside them and ready to protect them. Sandiramon coiled himself up and shut his eyes.

MetalSeadramon and Wingdramon didn't touch the ground. They just continued to float effortlessly in the air until they too, fell asleep. Neither of them fell to the floor with a crash. They just hung there.

Lilamon surveyed the group, smiled and muttered "Good night all," then she extinguished herself and leaned against the trunk of the tree, shutting her eyes.

Lilamon was the last to fall asleep, but there was one more Digimon unaccounted for. No longer in his Rookie form, Cyberdramon stood rigidly on the branch of another tree, surveying the sleeping bunch with a critical, predatory eye. He inspected each of the newcomers in turn, examining their sleeping forms for any hint that they might be faking it, any hint of deception to cause harm.

There was none.

Half-relieved and half-disappointed, Cyberdramon stood sentry over everybody that night. He didn't fall asleep – he just stared out at the darkness, looking for any signs of a threat.

If Parallelmon was still out there – he'd be ready.

* * *

Lilamon was fun to right. I was trying to go for a mix between Terriermon, Tonks from Harry Potter and, of course, Lillymon. I also chose Wingdramon and Diatrymon because I don't think I've ever seen either used in a fanfiction ever, or in any of the TV series. So, there you go. They're on the scent.

* * *

Next time...

Update on Star Wars universe. What's happening to Ahsoka? What's happening to Aayla, Renamon and Lopmon? And most importantly, what's happening with Terriermon?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 36 : Awake**


	36. Awake

I just realised that, in terms of length, this story has bypassed Blazing Chaos' seventh book in his Dimensions story. I mean, what the hell? Anyway, let's get on with the story.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 36:- Awake**

* * *

The _Resolute_, the _Intrepid_ and the _Valiant_ hung in space over Ord Mantell. Nobody on board them will ever look at the planet below in the same light again. For some reason, it had been used as a staging post to kidnap a child, a fourteen-year-old Togruta girl. Admittedly she was nearly fifteen, but that didn't really improve matters.

Admiral Yularen had informed the clones on the planet below of the possibility of a small group of Separatist forces on the surface. He reported that search parties had immediately been sent out, but as of yet, only two droids had been found – commando droids. The planet was still looking for any signs of more intruders.

Anakin was pacing restlessly up and down the bridge of the Resolute, hands clasped behind his back and staring at the floor, a look of concern etched across his face so hard it looked like it would remain there forever. He kept sending fervent, hopeful glances towards Renamon, who was standing and staring at the holomap he displayed, alongside Lopmon and Aayla.

The Twi'lek was whiling away the time by whispering the names of certain planets and systems on the map. She could tell that not much of what she was saying was really going in – Renamon's mind was preoccupied with worry about her mate, as was Lopmon's about her brother, but Aayla knew that she was at least helping a little by diverting their attention to something else.

Rika and Henry were trying to comfort Suzie, who was just as upset as Henry at the loss of Terriermon, but much less good at suppressing her emotions. She hadn't stopped crying the whole time, and she kept asking Henry what would happen to Terriermon and Ahsoka. Henry had to keep replying that he didn't know, and that not only made Suzie feel worse, but it made him feel worse too.

Rex and Bly stood back, watching the children and feeling completely useless. Neither really had any experience with children beyond what they'd learned these past few weeks. Bly wished that Waxer was here – the clone under Commander's Cody's command seemed to have had a knack for dealing with children on Ryloth, when he and Boil had found Suzie and Numa. He resolved to ask Waxer how he did it the next time he met him.

The other clones manning the stations were silent. All of them had gotten to know Ahsoka quite well at some point during the battles and all of them were filled with a determination to help get her back. Some of them described her as the "the sister we don't have," although never to her face. And all of them knew enough not to disturb Anakin when something as major as this was going down.

Renamon half-listened to what Aayla was saying, a few unfamiliar names getting into her brain – Kamino, Toydaria, Saleucami – but mostly she was focusing on her mate. She could feel him somewhere out there in the vastness of space, completely unaware of where he was. Her tail swished in agitation as she attempted to listen to what Aayla was saying and keep her mind on her mate at the same time.

Lopmon was just as distressed, but she couldn't feel Terriermon's presence at all. As with Henry and Terriermon, the link between their minds was affected by distance. She couldn't feel Renamon's presence either, as she was only connected to the fox through her brother. She just gnawed on her own lip and fidgeted with her large ears, glancing up at the map now and again.

Renamon sighed. Rika looked up at her and caught her eye. The fox looked down to where her Tamer was leaning beside Suzie. Rika nodded and sent a mental message that everything was going to be fine.

Renamon hoped she was right. She smiled appreciatively, and Rika went back to comforting Suzie. Renamon glanced to Anakin, who appeared to be staring at his feet as he paced. He'd been doing it for a good half an hour. Pretty soon he was going to start wearing a groove in the floor.

"And this large planet here is Devaron," Aayla was saying. "And over here we have Ord Cestus, and this one right here is Dantooine. All three are battlegrounds at the moment. The Separatists are everywhere."

"And this one?" Lopmon pointed dispiritedly at a planet that looked like Saturn.

"Geonosis," said Aayla, then lowered her voice to say, "And the one beside it is Tatooine. Best not mention that one in front of Anakin. He has a bad history with his home-world."

"Like what?" asked Lopmon.

"He's never gone into details with me," Aayla shook her head. "I don't think even Master Kenobi knows the full extent of his bad experiences there. But I do know he used to be a slave there. A working slave, not a dancing one like I was going to become when I was found. Perhaps I shouldn't go into any further details about it."

"Fair enough," Lopmon said, glancing at Renamon.

Renamon looked across at her as sighed, moving to sit on a console.

The moment she'd settled her tail, she leapt off it again as if she'd been shocked by electricity. Anakin stopped pacing and looked at her sharply, as she turned to look him in the eyes equally sharply and said, "Terriermon's waking up."

Anakin ran over to the map, and he, Renamon, Aayla, Rex, Bly, Lopmon and the Tamers crowded around it.

"Where is he?" Anakin asked, trying not to sound impatient but not altogether succeeding. But then again, who could blame him.

"Zoom in here," Renamon pointed to somewhere right at the top of the map. R2-D2 immediately trundled over and plugged in, enlarging the map in that particular area.

"This the Tingel Arm sector," said Aayla. "Which planet?"

"This one," Renamon jabbed a finger with finality above one of the most northerly spheres. "They are right where the tip of my claw is now."

"Sernpidal," said Rex. "Neutral space. It's several parsecs from here. It should take us an hour to get there, sir."

"Then we'd better not waste any more time," Renamon said firmly.

"Renamon's right," Anakin turned to Yularen. "Admiral. Everything's ready?"

"Yes sir," said Yularen. "Ready and waiting your signal."

"Program the navicomputer," said Anakin. "Take us directly to where Renamon's claw is on that map."

"Right away, sir."

"Are we going to rescue Terriermon and Ahsoka now?" asked Suzie.

"We're going to rescue Terriermon," said Aayla, kneeling down beside her. "Let's hope that Ashoka's still with him."

"And that she's still alive," muttered Lopmon, but not loudly enough for anyone but Renamon to hear her.

Then, with a blur of stars outside, the three cruisers, side-by-side, jumped to lightspeed.

* * *

Terriermon's eyes flickered and he groaned with pain. There was a horrible throbbing sensation in the back of his head. He was dimly aware of the fact that he'd bashed it against the duraglass of Ahsoka's starfighter when it'd suddenly stopped.

So where was he now? He couldn't hear any sounds of battle. Was the fight over?

Just as he was thinking those things, an influx of Renamon's thoughts suddenly filled in a number of the gaps in his knowledge. Ahsoka and he had been captured? Where were they now then?

_Terriermon,_ he heard Renamon's voice in his head. _Are you okay?_

_That's a silly question,_ Terriermon thought back, grumbling slightly. _You know that you can see directly into by brain._

_Yep, you're fine,_ Renamon sounded relieved.

Terriermon opened his eyes and looked around, his arm reaching to massage the back of his head. He winced at the throbbing that this caused, but he shoved it to one side as he took in his surroundings.

_Well, I'm not in captivity,_ he said. _I think I'm just lying in the space between a wall and a pile of crates._

_How did that happen?_

_I'm not sure._

_Oh, Terriermon, you have no idea how worried I've been…_

_Actually, I know exactly how worried you've been._

_Even now you can still make smart-alec comments. How do you do it?_

_Momentai._

_I love that word._

Terriermon sat up and slowly got to his feet. Cautiously, he clambered up the small pile of crates and peeked out over the top. He was in a hangar of some kind, but definitely not a Republic one. It was a large, blank metal room, and there were numerous battle droids marching to and fro. Most of them were carrying what looked like large chunks of metal. Then Terriermon realised they were pieces of Ahsoka's starfighter, which had been blown to pieces, presumably to prevent her escape.

_I've got a bad feeling about this,_ Terriermon thought.

_Thank Fanglongmon you weren't still in that starfighter,_ Renamon replied.

_It must have been Ahsoka. She must have hidden me behind these crates. I think that girl deserves a hug._

_So do I, and I intend to give her one for keeping you safe. But I think the one question that we both want answering right now is, where is she?_

Terriermon nodded grimly as he watched the droids marching all over the place. There was no sign of Ahsoka, neither blood nor body, but there were several pieces of carved droid littering the place, which was definitely Ahsoka's handiwork.

But where was she?

Terriermon could faintly hear Renamon updating Anakin and the others about what was happening, particularly the fact that Ahsoka's fate was still unknown. As expected it didn't go down all that well with Anakin, who looked more fearful than ever.

Suddenly, Aayla crossed over to Renamon and stared into her eyes. Both Renamon and Terriermon knew what she about to do and Renamon let her inside her mind, so that the Twi'lek Jedi could talk directly to the bunny. _Terriermon,_ came her subtle French accent. _How are you?_

_I've been better,_ Terriermon grumbled.

_I can imagine. Now, please, I hate to ask anything that could potentially put you at risk, Terriermon, but it looks like Ahsoka managed to hide you from the Separatists. They certainly wouldn't leave an oddity like you lying behind some crates if they'd found you._

_Should I be offended by the word oddity?_

_Terriermon,_ Renamon reprimanded. _This isn't really the time._

_Sorry. You were saying?_

_I was saying that we've got a pair of eyes and ears on board their ship that they don't know about, not to mention an undetectable way of communicating with us. We need you to try and find Ahsoka, and if possible, find out who's in control of this ship. The more we knew the better, and the easier it'll be to rescue both you and Ahsoka, if she's still alive._

_Don't say that,_ Terriermon's expression hardened as he watched two droids carting off a large chunk of Ahsoka's beloved starfighter. _She'll be alive. They wouldn't go to all this trouble to kidnap her just to kill her, would they?_

_I doubt it, but it really depends who's commanding that vessel._

Terriermon nodded grimly.

_Alright. A-hunting I will go._

Aayla didn't get the reference.

_Just be careful,_ she said. _Don't take any unnecessary risks._

_When have I ever done that? You know me._

_Yes, which is why I told you not to._

_Touche._

Renamon chimed in. _I don't like being unable to help you. Just please, try to stay alive, and let's hope that Ahsoka is as well._

_Definitely,_ said Terriermon.

_May the Force be with you, Terriermon,_ Aayla said as she withdrew from Renamon's mind. _And also with Ahsoka._

Terriermon switched his attention back to the battle-droids. They carried out their various tasks without question, and there were numerous occasions where one of them tripped over. But the thing was, they were all over the place. Surely they'd see him if he moved out from behind the crates, small or not.

Two things sprang to Terriermon's minds. The first was that he needed to stick to the shadows, and the second was that he needed to create a distraction.

But how?

* * *

General Grievous stood on the bridge, continuing to survey his droids with his critical eye. He found they seemed to perform better when he was around, not that that particularly helped him deal with his dislike for them.

He looked down at the planet below. Sernipal was most a world of deserts and oceans – a world with no Republic troops and next to no Separatists. It had been randomly selected to be the staging area for this transaction of the prisoner. Somewhere the Republic would never think to look.

"Where is that lowlife?" Grievous rasped, referring to Asajj Ventress. "I want her to get here as soon as possible, so I can get rid of her as quickly as possible. And Skywalker's little child."

"Sir," said one of the droids. "There's a ship coming out of hyperspace. Shuttle-class."

"Republic or Separatist?" Grievous growled.

"Separatist," said the droid. "We're being hailed by the ship, sir. I think that whoever's on it wants to talk to you."

Grievous saw a Steathipede-class shuttle zip into view and slow down outside the bridge window. He glared disdainfully at it. That was definitely the ship of Asajj Ventress. The little Sithling was here to collect her prize.

Well, at least Grievous had one momento of his victory against Skywalker's brat. If he ever ran into Skywalker in single combat, he would be sure to use his Padawan's lightsaber to strike him down, if possible. He'd love the delicious irony of the situation if that were to happen. He chuckled at the thought, then he turned to the droid, who was looking at him expectantly.

"Put through the transmission," he ordered it. "Let us here what Count Dooku's bootlicker has to say."

"Roger, roger," the droid turned back to the console and activated the holoprojector. The image of Ventress, sitting at the controls of her shuttle.

"I have arrived," she said. "I'd appreciate it if you could lower your deflector shields."

"Would you now?" Grievous chuckled. He delighted in nitpicking Ventress. "Well, it's good thing I have such a generous heart then, isn't it."

"I trust that Tano is still secure within her cell?" Ventress' eyes narrowed warningly.

"Of course," Grievous coughed. "That little child isn't going to go anywhere unless I want her to. And I'd advise you to remember that, Ventress. This my ship, and I will not tolerate insubordination from you any more than I will from my battle droids. On that thought, it would be amusing to watch _your_ head go flying off."

Ventress glared venomously at the General. "You still haven't lowered your shields."

"Lower the deflector shield," Grievous said reluctantly. "Allow her inside."

"Roger, roger," chorused the numerous droids around the room. The hologram vanished.

"Keep the bridge in order," Grievous ordered them. "I'll head down to the hangar to greet our second guest. If I discover a single glitch when I return, all of you will find yourselves being ejected into space. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, sir," the droids said.

Grievous turned and stalked out of the room and into the corridors. He was secretly hoping that Ventress would challenge him for leadership over the droid armies again. If it came to a lightsaber duel, Grievous knew he could easily win, whereas Ventress might still assume that she could beat him, despite numerous bouts before Count Dooku that had always ended in a similar way – with Grievous victorious and Ventress shamed.

But Dooku wasn't here. If Ventress challenged him, there was nobody to stop him from killing her. And then he could add two Sith lightsabers to his collection. Then he'd only need a purple one and his collection would be complete.

With thoughts of decapitating his hated ally in mind, Grievous walked down to meet her.

* * *

Terriermon had noticed that the one thing that all the droids did was stare ahead of them without looking from side to side or up. Therefore, if he wanted to get by them, his best bet was to take to the air. None of them would see him flapping around by the ceiling.

But first he needed to cause some kind of disturbance to get them to look away. He searched the hangar with his eyes, looking for anything that might give him an escape route.

But then, something else happened. All the droids turned to look as the blue deflector shield across the doorway suddenly went down. There was obviously still something there that prevented everything in the hangar from getting sucked out into space, but now it was much easier to see through. Terriermon followed their gaze, just as a small shuttle hove into view and began to glide slowly through the doors.

With the droid's attention elsewhere, Terriermon took the opportunity. He dashed out from behind the crates, sticking to the wall as he skirted the room. He ran, unseen, straight through the legs of one of the droids, and when he was out of sight, he spread his ears and flapped hard, taking to the air. He rose upwards and flapped by the ceiling, watching as the four insect-like legs unfolded from the ship and set it down.

Terriermon cast his eyes about quickly, searching for something that could keep him hidden from whoever was about to emerge. As a ramp descended from the shuttle, he saw a grate in the wall that indicated the ventilation system.

Perfect.

He shot across to room, and, flapping hard to stay aloft, he pulled out the grate, flipped around and landed in the vent, placing the grate back in, the wrong way round, but it still fit. As an afterthought, the bunny pushed it out a little at one side so he could peak into the hangar to see what was going on.

He watched as an unfamiliar, feminine figure descended domineeringly down the ramp.

"Not the prettiest woman I've ever seen," he murmured.

* * *

Renamon was describing what was going on. "She's got grey skin, completely bald head, she's wearing skintight purple clothing and she appears to have tattoos on her face and head."

Anakin and Aayla exchanged a glance. Both were thinking the same thing. Aayla turned back to Renamon and placed both forefingers on either side of her mouth. "Are two of them here?" she said, drawing imaginary ones from her mouth to either side of her chin.

"Yes," said Renamon.

"Ventress," growled Anakin.

"Who's she?" asked Rika.

"She's Count Dooku's top assassin," said Aayla with distaste. "A Sith-witch. She's duelled against many Jedi, and she's the one Master Luminara and I duelled recently on Alzoc III."

"I had a feeling that she'd been involved," Anakin muttered. "Ventress sees every Jedi that escapes her as a personal insult. I've duelled her more than my fair share of times, and she particularly despises anyone who can best her, except Dooku of course. Ahsoka's faced her twice before and escaped both times."

"I see what you're saying," said Henry. "If she's killed skilled Jedi Knights, then a Padawan learner getting away from her would be much worse."

"Just was I was thinking," growled Anakin.

"So, Ventress was in control the whole time?" asked Rika.

"I doubt it," said Aayla. "She doesn't usually lead space assaults, and from the sound of things, she's only just arrived. Whoever led the assault has yet to be revealed."

"Are you sure about that?" Renamon asked, her eyes widening in fascination and horror.

"What is it?" asked Anakin.

"Someone else has just entered the hangar. Tall, wearing a long black cloak. He looks like he's made of metal, like a droid, but he's like no droid I've seen yet, He's got long, plated limbs, taloned feet and a long thin mask over his face, like a skull. But I can his eyes. His eyes are real."

"Oh poodoo," said Bly. "I suppose I knew I'd run into him sooner or later."

"Run into who?" Lopmon asked with no small about of trepidation.

"General Grievous," Aayla and Anakin replied simultaneously, their faces both set in grim lines. Renamon knew that both were feeling resentment and anger and were trying to bottle it up again.

"Who's he?" asked Suzie, nervous at their expressions.

Anakin turned to Artoo, who whistled and displayed a hologram of the cyborg general. All three Tamers stepped back at the sight. They'd seen some pretty scary stuff, but Grievous rivalled some of the scariest Digimon in terms of appearance. Renamon nodded in confirmation.

"This is what we know of him," Aayla began the explanation.

* * *

Armed with the knowledge of who the guy was and learning things about what he'd done didn't do much to help Terriermon. He watched with fascination as Grievous stalked across the hangar, his talons clicking on the floor as he approached Ventress.

"Looks like I got out of that hangar just in time," Terriermon breathed. Grievous looked like an alloy skeleton of some unknown creature, and while Terriermon thought he looked horrifying, a part of him couldn't help but think that Grievous looked really cool, like some video game boss from hell. He didn't want to get on the wrong side of things.

Terriermon listened as Grievous addressed Ventress in a growling rasp. "If it isn't Count Dooku's favourite plaything," he said.

Ventress scowled, but otherwise stopped herself from throwing an insult back. Terriermon could quite easily tell who was in charge here.

"Now, now, General," Ventress reprimanded. "Is that any way to treat a guest?"

"I happen to be being exceptional nice," Grievous countered dryly. "The other guest I have on this ship is tied up in a cell on the detention level, and I believe that to be far too nice as well. Be thankful that you don't join her in her predicament."

Terriermon grinned, hoping that the guest he was referring to was Ahsoka. That meant that she wasn't dead, just held captive.

"Let's get this transaction over with," Grievous turned to stride away, which made Ventress hurry to walk beside him rather than behind him like a lackey. "I know you don't want to be in my company any more than you want to be in mine."

"You always make me feel so welcome," Ventress scowled. "I trust you have left Tano unharmed."

Terriermon almost did a victory dance with relief at the mention of Ahsoka's name.

"Yes," Grievous rasped. "Apart from the back of her head where I slammed her into the wall to knock her out."

"Good," Ventress smiled with glee. "I want to be able to inflict all the injuries on her."

"Of course you do," Grievous' eyes betrayed a sneer. "You can't face her in open combat so you settle for getting someone else to render her helpless first."

Ventress stopped, and Grievous walked a few more steps before turning to face her. "You dare to insult my combat skill, Grievous?" Ventress yelled.

"Need I remind you who always stands triumphant in any our bouts before Lord Tyranus," Grievous answered. "And also which Padawan escaped from your own blades twice, but has been beaten my me an equal number of times."

Ventress' lightsabers appeared in her hands in a flash, the red blades springing out. "I hope, for your sake, you've received an upgrade since we last crossed swords."

Grievous' hands vanished inside his cloak and emerged, holding two lightsabers in each hand, which both split apart, along with the rest of the arm, until Grievous suddenly had four arms where there had been two before. Four blades whooshed into existences, two blue and two green. "Give me a reason and I swear I will not hold back," Grievous growled with anticipation.

"Whoa," murmured Terriermon. "She's boned."

Ventress bit back her retort with a furious glare. She couldn't even beat Grievous with him outnumbered and only using two blades. She'd never faced him with all four blades at once, and she knew Grievous wouldn't hesitate to take a chance to kill her, just as she wouldn't hesitate to kill him if she could somehow get away with it.

Angrily, she sheathed her blades.

"What a pity," Grievous pointed one green blade forward so the tip was under Ventress' chin. "I was looking forward to giving you a thrashing. You disappoint me, Ventress."

"Me too," muttered Terriermon. "We could have had one bad guy down, by no... you just had to back down."

"Just take me to the Padawan, General," Ventress glared. "I can load her onto my shuttle and take her away from you."

"A desirable outcome," Grievous sheathed all four of his blades and put them back in his cloak, his arms clicking as they re-attached themselves to the other, so he regained his two-armed appearance. "Let us not keep her waiting."

He turned and strode away again. Ventress rushed to walk beside him again, determined not to give him any more reason to denounce her when they reported to Count Dooku shortly, as they would have to do before Ventress took Ahsoka away.

Terriermon watched them heading straight towards the grate where he was hiding. Hurriedly, he replaced it and took a couple of steps backwards. Ventress and Grievous headed for the door that lead to the detention level, which Terriermon was standing right next to, separated only by the vent floor.

As Ventress stepped through the door, she stopped, frowning. She looked out towards the hangar again. For a moment, she'd been sure that she'd sensed something, an unusual presence that she'd never felt before. But it had only been for a fraction of a second. She stared around, looking for anything unusual, but there was nothing.

She dismissed it as her imagination.

"Keep up, Padawan," Grievous called from ahead. Ventress gritted her teeth with annoyance. She hated it when Grievous called her Padawan.

"I am a Dark Acolyte," she retorted, "as well you know, Grievous."

Grievous made a noise that sounded like a cross between a snort and a "Ha!"

Terriermon watched this little exchange through the grating in the floor of the vent, an entry point to the system for repairs. Looking up, he saw that he was in a long, rectangular pipe, with numerous gratings at regular intervals in the floor. He ran over to the next one, thankful that he was so small, he didn't make any loud noises with his feet as he ran.

It appeared that he was heading right for Ahsoka, wherever she was. Grievous had said she was unharmed, which was a good sign if anything. But what he didn't understand was what they wanted with her. And how he was going to get her out of this mess.

"Momentai, Terriermon," he muttered to himself. "Momentai. We'll figure something out."

_Keep going,_ Renamon told him. _You're doing very well. Just try not to slip up._

_Slip up? Me? O ye of little faith._

_I apologise._

_Nah, it's fine. You don't need to. Man, these two have some serious anger issues between them._

_You can say that again._

_Man, these two have got some-_

_Just shut up and follow them._

And so, Terriermon started running from grate to grate, waiting for them to walk past it before progressing to the next one to check whether or not she was going in the right direction. Fortunately, his ears also helped to tell which direction they were heading in whenever he reached a fork in the trail.

Neither Grievous nor Ventress spoke again for a while, which Terriermon found suited him just fine. He hadn't particularly liked any of what either of them had said.

Eventually, Grievous came to a stop, when caused Ventress to stop to. "Right up ahead," Grievous growled. "You will find your quarry nice and safe, unable to break free. I shall head up to the bridge and await for you to haul your pathetic carcass up there to report to Dooku."

"One day, Grievous," Ventress smirked, "You will regret every name that you've ever called me."

"Move along, Padawan," Grievous chuckled. "The Generals have a war to win."

Ventress held her tongue and strode on down the passage, while Grievous changed direction and headed back the way they'd come. Terriermon kept pace above Ventress, until he ran into a dead end that Ventress walked straight past. He listened as she kept walking, then risked pulling the grate aside and peeking out into the corridor. He saw Ventress walking up towards a set of orange ray-shielded cells. Of course, it made sense that there were no vents around the cells – they were easy escape routes.

* * *

Ahsoka had given up in her struggling against the ropes that bound her. She had kept going for over half an hour and had only succeeded in making them feel tighter. She was thankful that she was wearing clothing around her legs, which prevent the ropes from chafing too much, but the one wrapped around her waist was seriously beginning to feel sore.

Her fingertips were tingling slightly, a sure sign that she'd pulled the wrist-bindings tight enough to restrict the blood flow to her hands slightly. She didn't particularly want to pull them any tighter just in case the feeling got worse.

The gag still tasted foul and she'd made no more headway in chewing through that than she had in untying herself.

Now, she just stared at her feet. He mind was now preoccupied with two things. One part of her was attempting to think of possible escape routes and possible ways of getting her lightsaber back from Grievous, but none of these seemed particularly viable or helpful for doing anything except get her killed.

The other part of her was still trying to answer questions like, what had happened to Terriermon, what her Master and Aayla doing now, etcetera, etcetera. She kept trying to get rid of this part of her, as it was conjuring up unpleasant images of what might be happening.

Just then, she heard footsteps. Ordinary footsteps. Not the metallic thumping of droid feet, or the clicking of General Grievous. Normal feet.

She looked up.

Instantly, she screamed with anger into her gag. Were all of her enemies going to see her helpless like this today. With Ventress here, all they needed was for the Count himself to come along and she could have a full house.

Ventress stopped outside the cell and leered at her through the shield. Ahsoka glared back, defiant to the last.

She watched as Ventress pressed the button that lowered the shield and stepped inside.

* * *

So did Terriermon, from the other side.

As Ventress stepped inside, Terriermon saw Ahsoka. His digital heart lifted at the sight, and he fought the urge to punch the air and cry "Yes!" as loudly as possible.

Two thoughts sprung into his mind simultaneously. The first was:-

_At least she's alright._

The second was:-

_I'm getting a serious déjà vu vibe here._

Then a third thought, which wasn't his, but belonged to Renamon, added to the second by saying:-

_At least you're not glued to _her_ chest._

_I know. That would be problematic._

_

* * *

_

Agreed,

Renamon thought, before saying aloud. "Terriermon's just spotted Ahsoka."

"Is she alright?" Anakin said immediately. "Is she injured? Where is she? Answer me!"

"Steady, Skywalker," Aayla reminded him. "Let her talk. Renamon."

"Thank you," the fox said. "They'd got her bound and gagged with rope in a cell. She appears to be uninjured, although how long she'll stay that way I don't know. Ventress is speaking to her now."

"With rope?" asked Bly. "Couldn't she free herself from rope?"

"She's also got a black collar around her neck."

Anakin scowled. "When I see Ventress I am going to cut her into pieces and mail her to Dooku."

"A Force-dispelling collar is a cruel thing for any Jedi," agreed Aayla grimly

"Save a piece for us too," Lopmon nodded. "We don't particularly like people who use rope as a restraint."

* * *

Ventress stepped into the cell and smirked triumphantly at Ahsoka. There was a glint in her eyes, the kind of glint that said, _I'm going to enjoy this._

"Well, well, well," she said, holding back a laugh of delight. "I've been wondering when I would run into you again, youngling. Tell me, how are you enjoying your accommodation?"

Ahsoka screamed abuse at her, but the words were blocked by the cloth being held in her mouth by the second one pulled between her lips. "Excuse me?" Ventress sneered. "What was that? Divine, you say. Well, I'm not surprised. For you, this must be a palace compared to that dump planet Shili."

Ahsoka glared daggers at Ventress, but the Rattataki Dark Jedi remained unfazed by the death glares. However, if looks could kill, Ventress would probably have exploded into ash and been blown away.

"I hope that Skywalker's training has toughened you up, little one," Ventress strode over to stand beside Ahsoka and placed her face excruciatingly close to Ahsoka's. "Because you're going to need to be tough to stand what I have in store for – AAGH!"

Ahsoka had acted impulsively and thrust her head forward, so their foreheads smashed together in a terrific headbutt. Ahsoka would never have dared to do that when Grievous had invaded her personal space, as he had an alloy forehead. Ventress, on the other hand… well, she had flesh.

Ventress snarled and brought her hand up in a terrific slap that sent Ahsoka's head swinging to the side. Ahsoka didn't even grunt with pain – she'd been expecting a retaliation like that and had prepared for it. Instead, she calmly turned her head back and eyeballed Ventress, recklessly daring her to strike again.

"I see you definitely have spirit," Ventress nodded. "That's good. It'll take longer to break you, and personally, I'd like to make you suffer as much as possible."

"Rt n hll, btch," Ahsoka snorted through her gag. Ventress didn't quite pick up on what she said.

"What was that?" Ventress' leer was back. "Would you like a cookie?"

Ahsoka rolled her eyes. Ventress fought not to slap the impudent child again. The fact that the Togruta was being so casual infuriated her. She wanted to be terrifying to her, but obviously that wasn't working. She'd have to up the ante.

Ventress brought up her hand. The cleave-gag around Ahsoka's head untied itself and came free. Ahsoka looked up at her for a moment, before spitting the second cloth right into Ventress' face. It splattered across her forehead and dropped to the floor.

"There," Ahsoka said, in a slightly cracked but otherwise strong voice. "I hope that soothed for headache a little."

"My, my," Ventress refused to rise to the bait. "You're certainly a bold one, but I think you need reminding of who's in charge here."

"Oh, no need," Ahsoka shrugged as best she could with her arms pinned to her side and a pole. "I'm well aware of the fact that General Grievous is in charge."

Ventress' snarl returned. "That pile of bolts couldn't lead a herd of nerfs."

"Oh, and you could?" Ahsoka probed the obvious dislike Ventress held for the droid General.

"Hold your tongue, brat," Ventress sneered. "There are no Jedi around to get you out of your jam this time. Skywalker isn't here. Unduli isn't here. Neither they, the two who saved you before, or any other Jedi can answer your prayers."

"I'm not praying to be rescued," Ahsoka sniffed. "There's no need. I know that I'll be found and rescued sooner or later." Her mind was racing now. Surely Ventress would have mentioned Terriermon by now if she knew about him. And if Terriermon woke up, Renamon would know right where they were.

But had he evaded capture?

There was no direct way of asking it without giving him away.

Ventress fought down the bile rising within her at the girl's confidence. This little meeting that she'd been envisioning for some time, visions of Skywalker's pupil cowering before her, just wasn't happening.

Ventress unsheathed one of her red lightsabers and held the tip at Ahsoka's chest. "How does it feel, youngling?" she spat, putting emphasis on that last word. "To know that I, Asajj Ventress, hold your life or death in my hands. How does it feel to know that I could run you through right now and you'd be powerless to stop me?"

Ahsoka evaded the question and said, "But you won't run me through. You said yourself that you want to make me suffer. Maybe you should have threatened me with a lightsaber first."

Ventress glared and sheathed her blade. "You're right. Your path will be far more painful and far less quick." Ventress strode around Ahsoka so she was standing behind the girl. Ahsoka attempted to look round to see what she was doing, but she could do no more than turn her head, and the pole got in the way.

Ventress looked down as Ahsoka's hands. They were clenched into fists and bound at the wrists with the same ropes that secured the rest of her. The end of the rope tapered off to the floor, so Ahsoka couldn't pull her hands up any further than they were. Ventress extended her mind and called on the Force. Abruptly, the ropes began to tighten themselves.

Ahsoka yelped at the sudden restricting feeling as the blood-flow was further cut off. Ventress smirked and pulled downwards, hard. Ahsoka gritted her teeth at the restricting feeling, as the ropes continued to tighten.

"I shall ask you again," Ventress said. "What do you think of your accommodation?"

Ahsoka didn't answer. Biting her lip to keep herself calm and stop herself from yelping, she thanked any Gods out there that she was wearing the arm gloves which at least helped to keep the tightness at bay.

Determined not to cry out, the Togruta raised her eyes and stared out the doorway, half-hoping that Grievous would come by and rile Ventress up.

She found herself staring into Terriermon's eyes.

Admittedly they were upside-down and staring at her from the opposite end of the corridor, but they were definitely his, because they were in his face. He was watching her, peering out from a grate in the ventilation system.

He waved.

Ahsoka almost tried to wave back, but knew she wouldn't be able to and Ventress would notice him if she did anyway.

"Well?" Ventress asked, pulling the ropes even tighter. Ahsoka grunted at the pressure and she sent Terriermon a look, trying to say without words. _Get away. Don't try and help me. She'll kill you._

Terriermon sent her a look back, which seemed to say, _I'm not stupid._

"I've had better," Ahsoka replied to Ventress, "On Tatooine when we saved Jabba's son from your greasy grasp."

Terriermon gave her a thumbs-up, which looked like a thumbs-down from his angle. He winked and then disappeared back into the vent.

"So, why are you doing this?" Ahsoka asked. "Is this just about revenge, or is there an ulterior motive."

"Well, since you asked so nicely," Ventress released the rope, much to Ahsoka's relief and stepped back around her. Ventress' fingers pushed Ahsoka's chin up so their eyes locked and said, "This is a trap designed for your Master, and guess what. You're the bait."

Ahsoka was about to retort, when the balled up cloth on the floor suddenly jumped up and shot into her mouth again so hard she almost choked on it. The other cloth jumped and retied itself firmly around Ahsoka's head, reforming the gag and silencing the question, which was going to be, "What kind of dumb trap is this?" This was making less and less sense. Why not just kill Anakin in the previous battle.

Unless they didn't want to kill him.

No.

"Have fun, dear," Ventress laughed, tweaking Ahsoka's left lekku, eliciting a yelp – the lekku of Twi'leks and Togruta were very sensitive. Then, Ventress whirled around and strode out of the cell. The ray shield sprang back up, and Ventress went down the corridor and disappeared from view.

A couple of seconds later, Terriermon dropped out of the vent and onto the floor. He quickly checked that no-one was coming, before running down the corridor and coming to a halt before the cell.

"Hey, Zebra-head," he grinned in at her. "You okay?"

Ahsoka nodded, the gag preventing her from replying with words.

"Don't worry about anything," Terriermon said in to her. "Momentai. Help's already on the way. Anakin and Aayla are leading the cruisers right to this location. And believe me, they were tear this ship apart with their bare hands to find you."

Ahsoka nodded again. Terriermon frowned, flapped upwards and slammed the button which caused the ray shield to drop. Then, he soared into the cell and landed on Ahsoka's shoulder. Carefully, he untied the cloth and Ahsoka spat out the other for the second time and said, "Boy, am I glad to see you safe, Terriermon. I see my hiding place worked."

"So it was you," the bunny said. "I thought so. Listen, thanks."

"Couldn't let you die," Ahsoka smiled. "Who'd help me in my prank war against my Master if you died?"

"Wow, I feel loved," Terriermon smiled. "Right, I reckon it's about time to untie you."

"The collar," said Ahsoka. "Can you take the collar off? Then, I'd be able to use the Force to untie myself."

"Righty-o," Terriermon's little hands found the black collar. He used one ear to gently lift Ahsoka's lekku out of the way as he attempted to find a clasp or something, that he could use to take the offending thing off. But no matter how much he scrabbled at it, he couldn't find any way to open it.

"The damn thing won't open," he said.

"There must be a switch or something," Ahsoka groaned. "Grievous might have it."

"Oh, I didn't like the look of that guy," Terriermon shuddered. "Gave me the heebies."

"The what?"

"Never mind. Alright, so I'll just untie you and we'll go looking for this switch then, shall we?"

"No."

"Say what?"

Ahsoka turned to try and look at the bunny leaning on her shoulder. "Listen, Terriermon. This is important. Leave me here. I'll be fine for now, and I won't be of any use if I can't use the Force and Grievous has my lightsaber. We need to find out what they're planning for my Master?"

"Anakin?"

"Yeah. Ventress said that kidnapping me was a trap for him, but that makes no sense if they wanted to kill him. They could have dragged him into the ship instead. I think they're trying something else. I think they're trying to convert him to the Dark Side."

"What!"

"That's what I need you to find out," Ahsoka said. "Please, Terriermon. You're the perfect spy here."

"Praise indeed."

"Try and find your way to the bridge from the vents," said Ahsoka. "Listen in on their conversation. Find out what they're planning to do. If they want to drag Anakin to the Dark Side, we have to know about it. Then, we can stop them."

"You sure?" Terriermon asked uneasily. "I don't like leaving you like this."

"Ventress doesn't want to kill me," said Ahsoka. "Yet. I'll be fine. Just go. This is really important. You can come back and free me when the attack starts, but we need to find out their plans now, while they may start to discuss it."

"Well, if you insist," said Terriermon. "But I'll be back to get you out of here, I promise."

"Thanks, Terriermon," Ahsoka smiled. "Stay safe."

"You too."

"You'll have to re-gag me."

"What?"

"If Ventress or Grievous come down and I'm not gagged they'll get suspicious."

Terriermon grimaced. The thought of leaving a bound girl in a cell was bad enough, but personally gagging her as well? But he knew she was right, and she was looking at him with such a plea that he couldn't say no. What she was saying made sense. So, hating every moment of it, he pushed the cloth back in Ahsoka's mouth and tied the other around her head.

"Nw gw," Ahsoka nodded towards the doorway.

Terriermon nodded and soared towards the door. He landed by the door, turned and said, "We're gonna get you out of here, Ahsoka. Momentai. When I find out the answer, I'll be right back." Then he jumped up, reactivated the ray shield and turned his back, soaring into the vent.

Ahsoka's heart was pounding. She was dreading what Terriermon would find out, and angry that she couldn't be of more use. She had to figure out a way to get her lightsaber back from Grievous when Terriermon came back and freed her.

* * *

Terriermon sprinted down the vent system, with no clue at all as to where he was going now. He stopped at every grating, listening out for the voices or footsteps of Grievous or Ventress, but he heard nothing.

_It shouldn't be too much longer before we arrive,_ Renamon said in his mind. _Try and stay hidden until then._

_What do you make of Ahsoka's thoughts then?_

_It makes sense. If Anakin is prophesised to destroy the Sith, then the Sith might want a way to get that chance out of the picture. But they're obsessed with power, and Anakin is a powerful Jedi too. They might just be trying to recruit him._

_Don't tell him until I know for sure._

_I won't._

Terriermon then heard voices. Battle droid voices. He stopped at a small fork in the trail. The vent to the right stopped after a couple of metres, and the vent on the left stretched off into the distance. The voices were coming from the right vent, so Terriermon ran down it and peered through the grating he came to into a small room, containing two battle droids, and a large number of computer screens, each displaying something different.

"I'm telling you," said one. "I saw something. I did."

"Then why didn't I see anything?"

"Because you weren't looking."

"I still say you were seeing things that weren't there."

"But I did see something. I was watching the screens when I saw something flash across that one there. The one where you can see the prisoner."

Terriermon's digital blood ran cold. This was a surveillance room, and the screens were depicting numerous areas of the ship, as seen on security cameras of some kind. And one of the battle droids had probably caught a glimpse of him.

"Then where is it now?"

"I don't know. But I still say we should report it."

"Alright fine. You call."

"Why me?"

"You saw it."

"Yeah, but-"

Terriermon didn't wait for them to make up their minds. He lifted the grate aside and dropped down into the small room, with the grate in his hands. He landed on the shoulder of the droid that had seen him and swung the grate, smashing the droids head off. As the body fell he jumped off the shoulder and flung the grate at the other one, which got a similar result.

Terriermon turned to the screens and scanned them quickly. He spotted the one where he could see Ahsoka in the cells and rewound the footage. The screen frequently alternated between various other cameras, but sure enough, just once, it flashed back to the one where Ahsoka could be seen and for a snatch of a second, he saw himself flying back into the vent.

"Damn," he muttered to himself. "Not good."

Naturally, if the ship was going to be destroyed, which Terriermon knew it would be if everything went to plan, then this footage didn't matter. But, just in case, Terriermon set to work on the controls. Fortunately, he was excellent with computers, and he erased the footage of him.

He sighed with relief, and replaced the erased video with another where nothing bad could be seen so that no-one would get suspicious if they viewed it. Then he scanned the other screens.

He spotted one that depicted both Ventress and Grievous, talking to hologram of an elderly man with a long beard. He frowned, and quickly rummaged on the controls, looking for an audio button. He quickly found it and the old man's voice came out of the speakers.

"-ellent," he was saying. "Congratulations on your flawless capture of Skywalker's Padawan, Grievous."

"Thank you, my lord," Grievous bowed his head in respect of this man, whom Terriermon realised must be Count Dooku.

"Now that I have the girl in my power," Ventress said. "I can fulfil out the rest of Lord Sidious' design."

Terriermon frowned. Lord who? Nobody had ever mentioned a Lord Sidious before.

"When Skywalker sees the way I've brutalised and tortured his pathetic little pet," Ventress went on. "He'll be filled with pain and anguish. The way to the Dark Side."

"And we shall kill his closest companions one by one," Dooku nodded. "To lure him closer to our ways. Master Kenobi, Senator Amidala, his new ally, Aayla Secura, all shall fall and he shall give in to his anger. The Chosen One will be ours."

As Terriermon digested this news, Grievous went, "Bah! I still say it would be far easier to just stick a lightsaber through him. What is Lord Sidious playing at with this game of his? The Chosen One cannot defeat us if he is dead."

"Yes, Grievous," said Dooku. "But consider this. The death of the Chosen One would cause widespread panic, it is true. Many people believe him to be the saviour of the galaxy. But to have him working against the galaxy – well, that would effectively eliminate all hope for most of the population of the Republic. Much more helpful to us."

"True," Grievous growled. "But it is a pity that I will not get to add his lightsaber to my collection."

* * *

They were expected to arrive at any moment, so the clones, the Jedi and the Digimon had headed down the hangar, so they were ready to leave immediately. Anakin jumped into his starfighter. He turned to see Aayla leaping into hers, and he saw Renamon and Lopmon standing beside Rex and Bly in one of the LAAT gunships. Everybody was in position. "Let's make this quick and efficient, men!" Anakin called across the hangar. "Ahsoka and Terriermon are depending on us to get this right."

"We're coming out of hyperspace, General," Yularen's voice came through Anakin's com-channel.

"Positions everyone," Aayla called. "Let's go."

"Let's kick some ass!" Renamon cried. Lopmon glanced at her. She shrugged, and said, "Terriermon's not here. Somebody has to say it."

Lopmon rolled her eyes.

* * *

"General!" cried a nearby droid. "There are three Republic cruisers coming out of hyperspace!"

"WHAT!" Grievous whipped around in time to see the three of them zip to a halt right in front of them. "Impossible!"

"For once I agree," Ventress gasped. "How did they find us?"

_That would be me, bitch,_ Terriermon grinned to himself.

* * *

Big fight scene coming up. Not much to say now. Please review, and I'll try and get the next chapter up by Friday. Shouldn't be too hard – I literally have no lessons tomorrow. No lessons, no games session, no LAMDA. Gives me plenty of time for writing.

* * *

Next time...

Cruiser combat. Another space battle (oh joy). The plan for boarding the ship. More droid smashing by Grievous.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 37 : Battle over Sernpidal**


	37. Battle Over Sernpidal

I wrote all this in one day. How flaming cool is that. I just sat down and worked my ass off until I did it. I even skipped lunch – though I'm never doing that again. My appetite is huge.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 37:- Battle Over Sernpidal**

* * *

"Open fire," Yularen commanded. The clones hastened to obey, and the heavy turrets dotted across the three cruisers swung about to point at the Separatist destroyer. With a will, they opened fire, sending blue lasers streaming towards the front of the ship, each shot causing a slight recoil that caused a very brief pause before the next shot was fired from the barrel. The Separatist ship took the shots relatively easily from one cruiser, but it was under a severe threat from three at once.

The droids quickly returned fire and back to pepper the Republic cruisers with red bolts. Both sides quickly threw up their forward shields, determined to take the shots as little as possible, in order to cause minimal damage. The two opposing forces began to converge on one another.

* * *

A lucky shot penetrated the shields and struck the front of the Separatist ship. A small explosion rocked the bridge, causing numerous battle droids to fall over, while Grievous and Ventress took a wide stance in order to keep their footing.

"How did they manage to find us?" Grievous asked the room as a whole. "That is Skywalker's flagship. How could he have known where we would be?"

"It looks like you've bungled the mission once again," Ventress couldn't help but sound satisfied despite the situation. The idea of shaming Grievous in front of Dooku was an appealing one. "They must have found a way to plant a tracking device on this ship."

"And how exactly could they have done that?" Grievous rounded on the impudent Rattataki. "I would have noticed if they were tracking my vessel. The computers would have picked it up."

"Then explain how they managed to follow you from Ord Mantell to here," Ventress smirked. "I cannot fathom any other way they could have done it."

Grievous raised an angry fist, as if he were about to strike Ventress, but Dooku's hologram cut in and stopped him. "Grievous, Ventress, put aside your differences. Regardless of how they managed to follow you here, the success of the plan depends on you working together to escape and drive them off."

"How do you suggest we proceed, Master?" asked Ventress smarmily. Grievous fought down a growl. The way Ventress sycophantically spoke to Dooku annoyed him. He hated anyone who grovelled.

"Obviously, Skywalker is here for his Padawan," Dooku said, raising his voice over the loud laser-fire from outside as the large vessels traded blows. "Therefore, we can use her as leverage. Grievous, you shall attempt to deal with the Jedi and drive them away. Ventress, you shall take Skywalker's Padawan and hold her hostage. Should Grievous fail, you can use her to escape. Skywalker would not dare to strike with his Padawan in danger. It is his greatest weakness."

"And what of Secura, my lord?" Grievous asked. "Will she have any such qualms about this?"

"All Jedi claim they are compassionate," Dooku smiled knowingly. "She will no more strike than Skywalker will. Now, get to it. Try to get to our secondary base over Vanqor."

"Yes, my lord," Grievous and Ventress said simultaneously. Dooku's hologram vanished.

"Well, General," Ventress smirked. "Now's your chance to show me just how competent you claim to be. Your forces are thin. Their forces are almost at full strength. Chop, chop."

"She has a point, sir," a nearby droid said. "What should we do?"

Grievous swung about and swiped the droid in the head, knocking it into the wall. "We're almost out of Vulture Droids," Grievous said. "Turn around, reinforcing the shields at the point where the ship is facing them. Be prepared to jump to hyperspace. Launch what remains of our Vulture Droids to keep them occupied."

"Roger, roger," the other droids hastened to obey.

"I'll go and get the prisoner and bring her up here," Ventress said. "Just in case your desperate defence fails, as I'm sure it will."

"Don't sound so cocky, Ventress," Grievous growled. "If the Jedi don't finish you, I will."

"You wouldn't dare," Ventress smirked triumphantly, before sweeping out of the bridge.

* * *

Ahsoka grunted as the entire room lurched slightly, along with the rest of the ship. She looked up, listening hard, chewing absent-mindedly on the gag. Through the thick walls of the ship, she could hear the faint sound of heavy blaster fire that clearly indicated a space battle.

Somebody had definitely engaged the enemy in combat.

And if it was anyone other than her Master and Aayla, the rest of the A-Team, then she was a fwit.

She almost felt like cheering and punching the air, and probably would have if she'd been able to do either. She had warned both of them, Ventress and Grievous, that her Master would come. And come he had.

She was desperate for news of what was going on outside, but she was even more desperate to hear what Terriermon had discovered about their plan. She wondered where he's ended up.

* * *

Terriermon crashed into the wall in a very undignified way as the room he was in seemed to take on a mind of its own and throw him off the chair he'd been standing on. He grinned at the thought of the wild laser-fire going on outside, but he had to jump out of the way as the chair he'd been standing on fell over and crashed to the ground where he'd been.

But he'd overheard everything that had gone on in the bridge from his little hidey-hole in the surveillance room. He hopped back up to see Ventress walking out of the bridge. He didn't like the look of this at all. If Ventress was heading back to Ahsoka, then he had to get there first and warn her.

It wouldn't do very much good, but he at least had to try and do something. He didn't want to just sit here while everyone else did something useful. With that, he darted up, through the hole in the ceiling that lead to the ventilation system, and he began to dash along it, back the way he had come, winding through the metal tunnels and back towards the detention level.

* * *

The hangar doors to the _Resolute_ opened slowly, sliding backwards as the entire front of the ship seemed to open. Up and up rose two triangular Jedi starfighters. Anakin and Aayla performed a few last moment safety checks to ensure there were no malfunctions as they ascended into space.

Behind them, rose a phalanx of clone starfighters. But these weren't the usual Torrent V-19s. These were more flat, with two great, sweeping metal engines sticking out from the back to allow them maximum speed. There were two clones to each one, on in the pilot seat, and the other in the gunner seat, which could rotate so they could point the guns in any direction. Y-wing bombers.

"Alright, Shadow Squadron," Anakin said grimly. "Are you guys ready for another crack at Grievous?"

"Ready and awaiting your signal, sir," said Broadside, the clone leader of the bomber squadron. "Just give us the word."

"Remember," Aayla called out as she moved to the back of the group to provide the fighter escort. "Nothing fancy if we can avoid it. Just a straightforward firebombing mission and then you head straight back to the hangar, understood?"

"Yes, General," Broadside replied. "Don't worry about a thing. That hyperdrive is toast."

"Not yet it isn't," Anakin smirked. "But let's make sure it becomes toast."

"For Ahsoka," agreed Aayla.

"For Ahsoka," repeated Anakin.

The phalanx of Y-wings soared forwards, closing the gap between the two sides, with one Jedi starfighter leading the point of the formation, and the other at the back to provide covering fire. As they neared the enemy cruiser, they saw that it was beginning to gradually turn around.

"They're preparing to try and escape again. Full throttle boys, we have to keep them from getting away."

The Y-wings accelerated, when one of the clones suddenly cried, "Vultures incoming!"

"There's always more," sighed Aayla. "How many of them, trooper?"

"Not many, sir," the clone replied. "The scanners say nine of them. They must have run low after we annihilated their forces in round one."

"Don't break ranks," Anakin ordered from the front. "Stay on target. Aayla, you and I will deal with the Vulture droids while the clones stay on their mission to destroy the hyperdrive."

"Of course," Aayla nodded. "Are you ready for some action, Arfour."

Arfour whistled cheerfully from the astromech-slot.

"Don't let Terriermon hear you say that," Aayla smiled.

Arfour whistled again.

"True," Aayla agreed. "Let's go."

The two Jedi peeled off from the Y-wings as the clones zoomed along at the same trajectory. The gunners swivelled around and let loose a barrage of bolts at the incoming Vulture Droids. Two of the droids were shot down by the clones before they'd some within seven clicks. Then, the Jedi fell upon them with unerring skill.

Anakin unleashed a bolt that connected with the first Vulture straight away, igniting a strong explosion. As the other Vulture Droids swerved to avoid the remains of their comrade, the human Jedi swiftly dispatched two more, before shooting past the group. Hurriedly, two of the Vulture Droids attempted to turn and fire on him from behind, but the first was met by a blast from Aayla's ship before it could get anywhere.

Aayla span to the right as two more of the Vulture Droids opened fire on her, swinging down so they shot zoomed right over. Quickly, she opened fire once again and two shots swiftly connected with either side on one. The other shot past her, but Aayla swooped upwards and followed upside-down, to finish it off with a final shot.

The final Vulture droid never stood a chance as it was taken out from two sides at once by the attacking Jedi.

"Nice work, Anakin," Aayla complimented as they fell into line next to one another, dodging the shots from the turrets on the enemy cruiser.

"You didn't do so bad yourself there, Aayla," Anakin replied. Then he called, "Broadside, how's it going over there."

"We're closing in on the target, sir," Broadside replied, as he led the Shadow Squadron in a sharp turn around the back of the cruiser, two the three enormous engines at the back. "These engines aren't going to stand a chance."

"Let's not keep them waiting for a chance to eat proton torpedoes for lunch," said Anakin. "Fire when ready."

"That would be now, sir," Broadside replied. "Bombs away!"

The Y-wings fired. All twelve of them unleashed two large proton torpedoes from their underbellies, which left purple streaks through the air as they rocketed towards their targets. All three engines were heavily struck by eight large torpedoes. The shields were no match, and with terrific explosions, the engines were destroyed, bright orange flashes lighting up space.

"That's the way to do it!" Broadside cheered, as the twelve Y-wings wheeled around the other side of the cruiser and heading back to the _Resolute_.

* * *

"Sir," a droid turned and addressed the cyborg behind him. "The engines have been destroyed, and the hyperdrive has been disabled."

Grievous gave the loud, growling noise he did when he was very angry. "Curse those Y-wing bombers. If I ever get a hold of the person who invented them, I'll personally wring their necks. "First the Malevolence, now this."

"What's our next move, sir?" asked the droid. "We can't go to hyperspace, so how do we escape."

Grievous growled and thought for a moment, then said, "The Jedi will attempt to board this vessel. I shall go and confront them myself. I shall force them to head back to their own vessels. If we cannot escape we will force them to retreat. Send all droid down to the hangar area to deal with intruders."

"Yes, sir," the droids said.

"Time to entertain our guests," Grievous turned and followed Ventress' route out of the bridge. The three MagnaGuards he had left under his command followed him out.

* * *

Captain Rex's comlink beeped. Everyone turned to look at him as he activated the button and said, "This is Rex."

"Rex," Anakin's voice came through. "The Shadow Squadron were successful. We're about to make our assault on the hangar. Ready the gunships and come out to join us."

"Right away, sir," Rex replied. He deactivated the comlink and bellowed out to everyone in the hangar. "Alright lads, we're ready for the off. We've got a friend to save."

"And we'll be right there alongside you," Lopmon hopped up onto Rex's shoulder.

"Good luck, guys," Suzie said. "Stay alive please."

"We'll do our best, kid," Bly nodded.

"If you need an upgrade," Rika spoke to her partner, "don't hesitate to let me know. I'll be watching the whole thing."

"I'll remember," Renamon nodded. "We'll be back before you know it."

"Bring back Terriermon for me, Renamon," Henry looked up into the fox's features.

"That is exactly my intention," Renamon's face took on a determined air as she, Bly, Rex and Lopmon stepped into the nearest gunship. The Digimon had time for one last look at the Tamers, before the blast doors shut and sealed them off from the outside. They felt the gunship lift off from the floor and rise up and out of the gunship, right out into space.

The LAAT gunships passed the Y-wings in the air as they flew towards the enemy cruiser. Aayla and Anakin zoomed forwards to join them, wheeling about so they were at the head of the group. "Alright boys and girls," Aayla said. "Forwards and make for the blast doors. Target the turrets surrounding them, while Anakin and I take down the shields."

There were three, key clones in every gunship. The pilot was obviously one, but, like the Y-wing bomber, there was also a gunner, except with a gunship there were, in fact, two. There were two globes on either side of the gunship, and there was a clone in each armed with a gun that could produce a long, constant, green laser for a few seconds. The whole sphere was capable of rolling around, with the clone in it to aim the gun.

The Jedi lowered their ships while the gunships opened fire on the ship. Green lasers, similar to those that came out of Gargomon's guns, blurred through space to crash into the flank of the ship, pounding on the shields. The gunners sent long green beams heading directly towards the turrets, buffeting the shields and occasionally getting through them and blowing them up.

But the aerial battle didn't go all one way. One of the gunships met a large, red laser head-on and exploded into shrapnel. All hands were lost. A second one was slammed in the stabilizer by another laser and tilted dangerously – the gunship beside had to rise to avoid a mid-air collision. The gunship spiralled downwards, completely out of control and spinning planetward.

"Good work boys," Anakin cried. "Give it everything you've got. Aayla, you ready?"

"Naturally."

"Then let's go!"

The Jedi pushed on full-throttle and zoomed forwards ahead of the gunships. The huge, black generators ahead of them stood out boldly. But this time, there were no Vulture Droids to guard them and prevent the Jedi from getting to them, and the ship was unable to jump to hyperspace. Effectively, the generator's were sitting ducks.

"You take the one on the left," Anakin said.

"Target locked," Aayla confirmed.

Artoo and Arfour squealed with anticipation.

"Fire!" Anakin cried.

The two Jedi launched a barrage of blue lasers forwards. They pounded the generators, ripping large chunk of metal, scorching through the wiring and blowing apart the circuitry. The generators never stood a chance at all. In no time flat, the blue shield that covered the hangar doors dropped down.

"Success!" Aayla smiled. "We're in!"

"Here goes nothing," Anakin clenched the controls grimly. "Hang on Ahsoka. Hang on Terriermon. We're in."

The two ships blew through the gap that had been created and zoomed across the hangar, braking sharply and coming down to rest. The cockpits flew open, and the two Jedi sprang out of their ships, landing on the front as a large group of droids opened fire on them. Their lightsabers flew in circles as they brushed them aside, instantly on the defensive.

Behind them, the secondary hangar defence kicked in right of schedule. Heavy blast doors slid right across the hangar door, sealing off the gap and denying the gunships any entry. But the Jedi had been expecting this and were more than prepared for it.

As Aayla used the Force to throw a bunch of droids backwards into the rest of the throng, Anakin turned to his faithful astromech. "Artoo," he said. "You remember the plan. Open the blast doors and let our troops in to join us."

Artoo whistled assent and rose out of his slot in the Delta-7B. His rockets activated and the heroic droid soared across the room back the way they'd come, towards the console on the wall beside the hangar doors. Anakin stepped between him and the droids, stoically protecting his flying partner. Aayla jumped down to join him, while Arfour popped out of his own socket and took cover behind the starfighter, waiting patiently for his turn in the plan.

Artoo landed smoothly by the blast doors and plugged in with his scomp link. He twiddled and rotated the console hurriedly, determined not to fail. And fail he did not, as within ten seconds, the blast doors quickly slid open again as Artoo overrode the controls. The gunships that had been hovering behind them snuck inside and landed, the blast doors opening. Clones and two Digital Monster poured out of the four remaining gunships

"Glad you could join us, guys," Aayla said as she blocked four separate droid shots, two of them slamming back into the droid forces.

"We have to keep moving," Renamon observed. "I've been looking forward to this."

With that said, she and Lopmon jumped over the blurring lightsabers and went on the offensive, the two Jedi stopping their defence and charging forward to join them.

* * *

Terriermon sprinted down the ventilation system as fast as his little legs could carry him, which was surprisingly fast. Not as fast as a human could run, but fast nevertheless. With his mind, he watched as Renamon and Lopmon took down the front row of the droids in the hangar with startling ease, the Jedi right behind them and the clones beginning to add to the blaster fight.

But he had to concentrate on something else right now.

Ventress was going for Ahsoka to take her up to the bridge, which was likely to be one of the most easily defendable areas of the ship.

He was running so fast he almost crashed into the dead end that marked where the vents stopped so that prisoners in the cell couldn't escape from them. He didn't know how much time he had left, but he was pretty sure that it wasn't much. He hoped that Ventress was taking her time, but he couldn't count on it. Lifting the grate aside, he plunged into the corridor below.

Ahsoka gasped in surprise as Terriermon reappeared ahead of her and shot forwards towards her, blasting a nearby security camera with his Bunny Blast. He looked like he was going to crash into the ray-shield door, but at the last moment he altered his course and brought his feet slamming into the button that lowered it, bounced of it and swooped into the cell.

"Told you I'd be back," he said hurriedly, as he landed once again on her shoulder and began undoing the gag.

As soon as Ahsoka could speak again, she said, "What's going on? What's happening?"

"Well," Terriermon said as he slid down her arm and started attempting to undo the ropes around her wrists. "I've good news and bad news. Well, actually one good news and two bad newses. Is that a word? I'm rambling, aren't I?"

"Yes, you are," agreed Ahsoka.

"The good news is that the others have managed to board the ship and are totally trashing the hangar."

"Good," said Ahsoka grimly. "I'd like to take on a few battle droids myself."

"The first bad news is that Ventress is on her way down here now to use you as leverage for her escape."

"Oh goody," Ahsoka glowered.

"And the other bad news?"

"You were right."

Ahsoka's blood ran cold. "You mean..."

"Yep," Terriermon said grimly as the ropes began to slacken. "This was all about turning to Anakin over to the Dark Side."

"Get rid of those he cares about and he'll get angry," Ahsoka nodded. "He does have issues with his emotions."

"Whoever did this knew what they were doing," Terriermon grunted, as he fiddled with the knots.

"No, wait," Ahsoka said.

"Don't tell me," Terriermon sighed. "You want me to leave you like this so that you can grill Ventress for information."

"You know me so well," said Ahsoka. "I need to find out why they're trying to convert my Master. The more we know, the more we'll be able to prepare for future attempts."

"And if they use you as leverage, as they intend to do if things get out of hand for them?"

"They still don't know about you Digimon, do they?" Ahsoka asked, as another explosion rocked the ship. "We've still got an edge but."

"Yeah, but..."

"Terriermon, you won't have time to completely untie me before she gets here anyway," Ahsoka pointed out. "Just let me do this."

"You are so reckless," Terriermon groaned.

"And you aren't?"

"Not the point."

"Momentai."

Terriermon didn't bother reprimanding her. "You sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. Now re-gag me and go."

Sighing, Terriermon did as he was told. He felt like he was abandoning Ahsoka, helping Ventress with her designs, but he re-gagged her. Then a thought struck him and he quickly said, "If you want to get information out of her, ask her who Lord Sidious is." Then he flew out, shut the door and flew back to the grate. He stopped on the inside to listen.

Almost the moment he disappeared, Ventress rounding the corner ahead. She smirked with satisfaction at the sight of her prisoner, who glared back, daring her to come and deal with her, which, of course, she did.

"It seems your Master is more resourceful than we gave him credit for," she sneered. "I don't know how he and Secura managed to find you, but I must say he arrived much earlier than expected."

She ungagged Ahsoka with a wave of her hand, and the cloth shot out of her mouth. "Yeah?" Ahsoka smiled triumphantly. "There are a lot of things about my Master that I bet you don't know."

"Oh, I'm sure," Ventress smirked. "And I'm also sure that there are things I know about your Master that even you don't."

"Shouldn't you be out trying to kill him?" asked Ahsoka. "Surely coming to taunt helpless prisoners isn't a good use of what valuable time you have left, Ventress."

"Still so bold," Ventress observed. She took one lightsaber forth and extended the red blade from the hilt. "I think it's time you learned a few manners."

It was difficult for Ahsoka not to flinch as the lethal blade around her, severing the ropes around her waist and chest so they fell to the ground. Then Ventress stepped around the pole and, at last, Ahsoka's arms were free.

The Togruta quickly aimed a punch at Ventress, but it didn't work. Ventress dodged out of the way. Ahsoka hadn't expected it to work, but it felt good to try. She couldn't do any more than that, as she was still tied at the legs, and the force-suppressing collar was still around her neck.

"Hold still now, girlie," Ventress laughed as she grabbed Ahsoka's arms and held them in a tight grip, pushing the wrists together again, in front of her this time. The other arm fished a pair of binders off her belt and Ventress secured Ahsoka's wrists once more. Then, with a flick, Ventress severed the ropes around Ahsoka's legs.

The Togruta girl fell forward in an undignified heap and threw out her hands to stop herself, thankful that she could at least do that. Ventress unmercifully grabbed Ahsoka's shoulders and hauled her to her feet.

"Now, follow my lead, little girl," Ventress began to push Ahsoka through the door, and the Togruta fought and kicked all the way.

"Stop squirming," Ventress grunted as Ahsoka thrashed in her grip.

"What so you can just push me wherever you want? Forget it."

"Very well. If you won't let me push you, I will pull you."

Ventress called on the Force, and one of the longer segments of rope flew up tied one end of itself around the binder on Ahsoka's wrists. The other flew into Ventress' hand, and the Dark Jedi stepped forwards and began pulling Ahsoka along on a lead, with the aid of greater physical strength and the Force.

As Ahsoka was pulled past the grate, she flicked her eyes upwards and saw Terriermon looking down at her. She nodded minutely, and she saw Terriermon disappear down the vent system.

"So," Ahsoka grunted as she attempted to pull backwards. "Are you going to tell me any more about this plan?"

"And why would I do that?" Ventress asked. "The situation has not changed much, and your master's pitiful rescue attempt will soon be crushed."

"Do you always talk like that?" asked Ahsoka.

"I shall not deign to answer that."

"You just did, and I'd say yes you do."

"Silence, youngling."

Ashoka attempted to charge forward and shoulder Ventress, but the older woman leapt to one side, so Ahsoka ran past her. The leash jerked her to a halt and Ahsoka almost fell over, glaring at Ventress.

"Tell me, youngling," Ventress sniffed. "Do you like balloons?" Ahsoka suddenly found herself rising off the ground. "Because now, you are one."

"Aww, what's the matter, Ventress?" asked Ahsoka, as she was towed through the air by the Dark Jedi. "Couldn't handle me on the ground so you go for the easy option?"

"Quiet."

"So this plan," Ahsoka ploughed on. "It won't work. Anakin will never turn to the Dark Side."

Ventress faltered for a fraction of a second, but it was enough for Ahsoka to spot it and she knew she'd struck a nerve there. Terriermon hadn't been mistake. That much was now painfully clear. Ahsoka continued by saying. "What makes you think that he'd join forces with those who are attempting to kidnap his Padawan? I mean, come on. Yeah, he might get angry, but it would be at you, so he'd never join you."

"You underestimate the power of the Dark Side, Tano," Ventress snarled. "Used properly and anyone can be turned to work for us."

"Ah-hah!" Ahsoka pointed triumphantly as she floated along in Ventress' wake. "I knew it. I'll be sure to tell him what I know when he comes for me."

Ventress mentally kicked herself, but she'd spilled the beans now, so she said, "It won't make any difference. He will turn to us Sith, and you will be a stepping-stone for the destruction of the galaxy. Isn't that nice?"

"You Sith?" Ahsoka raised an eyebrow. "Master Kenobi told me that you aren't a proper Sith."

"Quiet!" Ventress snapped, losing her coolness at this. "Master Kenobi knows nothing. When we've finished with you, he's next."

"As if you'd stand a chance against him," Ahsoka scoffed. "Or me, if Grievous hadn't stolen my lightsaber."

By this time, Ventress had towed Ahsoka all the way to the bridge. The battle droids looked up from their stations in surprise at the entry of the floating prisoner. Ventress ignored them and turned to Ahsoka with an expression that suggested she was about to gloat.

"Stole your lightsaber?" Ventress laughed. She held up her other hand, and the hilt of a lightsaber floated out from under a nearby console and settled in it. "You mean this one?"

Ahsoka's eyes widened in shock. "What? How did you get that?"

"When you can use the Force, it's easy to steal something from someone else without them noticing," Ventress smirked.

"Give that back!" Ahsoka made a grab for it, but couldn't get anywhere near it.

"What do you think the chances are of that? I'm keeping this as my first trophy. The blades of Kenobi, Unduli and Secura will join it sooner or later."

"No offense," Ahsoka glared. "Actually, a lot of offense, but I'd rather Grievous had my blade than a scumbucket like you."

* * *

"You go girl," said Terriermon from where he was watching this exchange back in the surveillance room.

* * *

"Let's get you nice and secure again, shall we?" Ventress snorted. Suddenly, Ahsoka fell to the floor, landing painfully on her stomach, winding her. Ventress tossed the end of rope she was holding into the air and floated it upwards. Ahsoka was forced to stand up as it pulled her arms upwards and over her head. The other end of the rope wrapped around a ceiling beam and knotted itself off, until Ahsoka was standing on tip-toe, uncomfortably, her arms above her and making her quite unable to go anywhere.

"If the Jedi get this far," Ventress smirked, "then the first thing they'll see when they walk in here is you, little one, on display like the trophy you are."

"And then you'll threaten to kill me in front of them unless they let you go," Ahsoka sniffed. "And you'll cut me down and head back to the hangar with me at sword-point until you can be sure you'll escape."

"I commend you for your guesswork," Ventress sneered. "But I suppose you've had plenty of time to ponder your situation in that cell."

Ahsoka glanced out the window. The three Republic cruisers were holding position, just out of range, no doubt unwilling to shoot the ship while their forces were inside it.

"And what about Grievous?" asked Ahsoka. "Would you just leave him behind? Because a little bird told me that you two don't get along particularly well."

"General Grievous is a useless pile of scrap," sneered Ventress.

"I'll tell him you said that," grinned Ahsoka, determined to needle Ventress as much as possible.

"He is a failure. Look at this. He must have caused your friends from the Republic to find you so easily. And he gets beaten so often."

"What are you talking about? The General's won campaigns many more times than you have. I'd much rather face you in battle than him. Hey, let's ask the battle droids. You," she looked pointedly at one individual. "Who's more scary – Ventress or Grievous?"

"The general," said the droid without any hesitation at all.

Ventress snarled. "General Grievous is a mere pawn!" she insisted.

"Really?" asked Ahsoka. "A pawn of Lord Sidious?"

Ventress took a step back. She was stunned and her grey face almost turned white. Ahsoka could instantly tell that she'd struck a nerve, and a very deep nerve at that. Ventress looked like she was about to have cardiac arrest.

"Where did you hear that name?" she gasped.

"I have my methods," Ahsoka said enigmatically.

Ventress' eyes hardened considerably. Ahsoka could tell she was about to be verbally pummelled for information, but she also knew she wasn't going to let anything on.

This was both serious and fun. Lord Sidious was obviously important, and it was fun to see Ventress petrified.

* * *

Two battle droids sailed backwards and slammed into the wall hard, courtesy of a double throw from Renamon's strong arms. The fox had grabbed them and tossed them effortlessly through the air. She jumped, predator like over the head of another, grabbed the droid behind it and swung it around, smashing three more around her. Swiftly she dropped the carcass, dodged a stray laser and lunged forward. Her fist caught one in the face and she span around to back hand another. Dropping to the floor so two lasers hit the droids behind her, Renamon swept the legs out from under one with her foot, jumped up and ploughed her foot into the others chest, practically flattening it.

Anakin deflected no less than six bolts aiming for his chest in rapid succession, downing four droids and incapacitating another by blasting its arm off. Then Anakin deftly cut off the other arm, then the head. He double-pirouetted to the side, sweeping the blue blade through two more of the droids. A Super attempted to grab him, but found itself with a lightsaber imbedded into its face. The body was flung aside, and Anakin deflected another bolt, then stepped forward, swinging calmly through several more.

A Dwarf Spider Droid turned to aim its nose cannon at Anakin, but it was plucked into the air and thrown out into space by the other Jedi. Aayla flipped over a squadron of droids, cutting them down as they attempted to shoot her, then stabbed forward into another, skewering the one behind it as well, pulled her blade out and landed on the carcasses to cut through another. Three Supers gained her attention by shooting at her, but Aayla ran straight forward, sweeping the bolts aside as she came. She carved one up the middle, swept through another then span to cleave through it and the other one in the space of two seconds.

The clones were holding their own. Out of the twenty-four that had made it through the flak and into the hangar, five of them had died. Most of the others were using the gunships as shelters, but Rex and Bly were out in the open, along with a few of the bolder clones. Bly dodged a bolt and raised his blaster to send more flying into another Dwarf Spider Droid, adding a Super to his list of the defeated for good measure. Rex blasted three more battle droids, then shifted so a bolt skewed under his armpit and struck a gunship. Rex quickly dealt with the offender.

Other clones were putting up a good fight. Another fell to a Super, blasted in the chest, and the clone standing next to him was also hit with a bolt to the shoulder. One of Rex's men, a clone called Denal, along with Lieutenant Galle stood over them and fired on the approaching line of Supers. They managed to destroy three of them, but the line kept coming and Galle barely avoided being hit himself.

"Rich!" Denal called over to the clone behind him, who looked over once he'd shot the droid he's been targeting. "Bring out the secret weapon."

"You got it!" Rich dashed back to the nearest gunship, and pulled the secret weapon into view. It wasn't really a weapon, but WarGreymon's Brave Shield was cool enough to be one. Rich ran over and planted it between the clone and the Supers. They could feel the bolts hitting the other side, but they had absolutely no effect.

Lopmon pulled a droid over from below, hauling its legs from underneath it and then tearing its head off with her ears. She was a nemesis, attacking where the droids least expected an attack – from below – and then disappearing before they could retaliate. Lopmon bounced upwards and slammed into the chest of another, knocking it over and then destroying it, and three more with her **"LOP TWISTER!" **attack. The flying limbs of her victims went everywhere, and there were even two more casualties who lost their head when one of their comrade's body parts smashed into them.

She and Renamon both spotted the clones behind the shield at the same time. Both ran forward and cried **"DIAMOND STORM!"** or **"BLAZING ICE!"** at the same time, and pelting the line of Supers with their alternative attacks. When the droids fell, Rich poked his head above the shield and said, "We were about to do that. Or something similar anyway."

"Sorry," grinned Lopmon. "We'll leave you to it next time."

As Aayla finished off the final droid with an upward sweep, Anakin did a quick head-count. Six of the clones had perished, and A'den was wounded. That left, as well as Rex and Bly; Galle, Denal, Rich, Conor, Lash, Ridge, Blade, Green, Barr, Inc, Jesse, Hardcase, Kix, Havoc and Edge.

"This wasn't so tough," said Conor.

"Patience, trooper," said Anakin. "We're still a long way from done. Remember, both Ventress and Grievous are somewhere aboard this ship, and since I'd like as many of you to get out of here alive as possible, don't let your guard down."

"Oh, trust me, sir," Denal shuddered. "I know what it's like to be on the wrong end of General Grievous' foot."

"Renamon," Aayla walked over to the fox. "Where's Terriermon now?"

"He's in a surveillance room, somewhere in that direction," Renamon pointed.

"And Ahsoka?" Aayla pressed.

"She's been moved onto the bridge by Ventress," Renamon replied. "Ventress is standing guard over her."

"And Grievous?" Anakin asked. "Can Terriermon see the boltbag on the screen?"

"Yes, and he's heading this way, with three MagnaGuards."

"Great," muttered Anakin. "He'll be heading straight from the bridge to see us and give us a nice, warm Separatist welcome."

"He'll be here shortly," said Lopmon.

"Well, this complicates things," said Aayla. "But I suppose we both knew that we'd run into one of them eventually."

"I know," Anakin nodded. "Alright troops. Here's what we do. Aayla and I will stay here and confront Grievous."

"Oh joy," Aayla sighed.

"Momentai," said Lopmon.

"Cue annoyance from Terriermon," said Renamon.

"Meanwhile," Anakin got the clone's attention again. "You guys will take the long way round and head for the bridge. Renamon, Lopmon, do either of you feel that you can take on Ventress?"

"Perhaps," said Renamon. "If I ascend to my Ultimate Form."

"If you think you can then do it," said Anakin.

"But remember," Aayla said. "If she sees you, you must either capture or kill her. Capture would be better, but if you have no other choice... well, we can't let word of you get out, or we'll have lost our biggest advantage."

"Aayla's right. Do your best, Renamon, and rendezvous with Terriermon along the way. While she engages Ventress, you men take care of the droids, while Terriermon and Lopmon free Ahsoka. You feel up to it?"

"Of course, sir," Rex brandished his blasters.

"If possible," said Aayla. "Try to lure Ventress away from Ahsoka. That way, the Digimon can slip by without even having to engage her in combat. That would be easier, and less problematic if she escapes, as she so often has."

"You can count on us, General Secura," said Bly.

"Get going then," nodded Aayla. "And take Arfour with you. You may need an astromech to open and close doors from time to time."

"Artoo, you stay with us. We could use your help," Anakin nodded. The astromechs both whistled dutifully.

"May the Force be with you all," said Aayla.

"You heard 'em, lads!" Rex cried. "Let's go! Renamon, you lead the way."

"Follow me," Renamon darted forwards, towards a set of doors at the far end of the hangar. Aayla and Anakin watched as clone, astromech and Digimon ran off together and disappeared, leaving the room empty except for them, the dead droids and the ships they'd come in.

Aayla turned to look at Anakin. "Have you ever faced General Grievous before?"

"Nope," Anakin shook his head. "I guess it's time to find out if he's as good as they say."

"I've faced him once before," Aayla grimaced. "I was there on Hypori the day he was first unleashed on the Jedi. There were seven Jedi there on that day, including myself. He killed two of us, and then engaged the rest of us in combat all at once. Unfortunately, back then we underestimated him. We knew he was good, but we didn't know the full extent of his capabilities, and he overwhelmed us with a set of tricks we'd never seen before. Shaak Ti, K'Kruhk and myself all suffered severe injuries at his hands, and Ki-Adi-Mundi was forced to hold him off alone until the clones arrived to evacuate us in gunships."

"Well, you're a lot more prepared this time," said Anakin. "We now know what tricks the Good General has up his sleeves."

"He doesn't have sleeves."

Anakin chuckled. Aayla smiled and nodded. "You're right. This time, I won't go down so easily. Last time, I wasn't exactly expecting him to grab my face with his _foot_. That is not happening again."

"Momentai, Aayla," Anakin said. "We'll take him together."

"Yes, we will," Aayla agreed. "Which door do you think he'll come from?"

"I reckon, that one," Anakin gestured to the appropriate door. Simultaneously, two blue blades burst from their hilts.

"Then let's get ready," Aayla suggested.

Artoo whistled.

* * *

Arfour whistled.

They'd come to a their first heavy blast door, as structure so thick that not even Renamon could tear through it with her bare hands. The clones dutifully stepped aside and allowed the bronze astromech to roll through them to reach the computer terminal. As he plugged in his scomp-link, all the clones simultaneously raised their blasters and pointed it at the doors.

"Let me guess," said Renamon. "You can never tell what's on the other side, right?"

"Been far too many times when some of us have been shot down by something on the other side of an enemy door," said Blade.

"We don't particularly want another one of us to go down for the same reason," said Hardcase.

Arfour's head rotated around as the doors slid open. The clones tensed, but they were fine. There was nothing on the other side except a corridor, with another blast door at the end. It looked like just about every door in the place had been shut.

"Let's keep moving lads," Bly pointed forwards and the company ran forward again, dashing down the corridor to the next door. They repeated the process again.

This time, there was something behind the door.

The door was in the middle of opening when a commando droid pulled off a commando-style forward roll that fitted its name into the room. It raised a blaster and fired, nailing poor Green in the forehead. The clone collapsed to the ground and the other clones cried out in fury as they opened fire on the commando. It was torn to pieces by their bolts quite quickly.

The corridor beyond was full to the breaking point of Super Battle Droids, marching forward and raising their blasters to fire on them. There were two more commando droids also there and they raised their blasters and opened fire. Hardcase was struck in the shoulder. Lash had to drop to one knee to avoid being hit in the head. Arfour squealed as a bolt narrowly missed him.

The clones rushed to the sides of the corridor to duck behind support beams, and fire around them, while Renamon and Lopmon leapt forward to attack. "You take the Supers, I'll take the commandoes," yelled Renamon, as she grabbed the blaster of one of them and smacked it in the head with it, causing it to stagger. Lopmon darted through the legs of the second and confronted the horde of Supers.

A narrow corridor is a terrible place to be when you're facing an angry Lopmon.

"**LOP TWISTER!"** Lopmon yelled as she surged forwards, ploughing straight through the legs of the Supers and heading right down the corridor, sending any droid she touched crashing to the floor. Meanwhile Renamon dodged two sword strikes from a commando, which also dodged away from her own strike. The second tried to shoot her, but she bodyslammed it and lifted it into the air, tearing it limb from limb. The first lunged again, but she swerved aside and kicked it heavily, sending it falling backwards amongst the clones, all eager to put an end to it. So they did.

Lopmon reach the end of the corridor and stopped spinning, to fins she'd cut the number of fighting Supers by three-quarters within ten seconds. The clones darted out of hiding to finish off those that remained, disregarding any injuries they'd received.

When they'd done, Bly brandished his smoking pistols and said, "Let's keep moving."

"And the next door we come to," said Renamon. "I'll do what that droid just did. Let's make sure we have no more casualties."

* * *

General Grievous' entrance to the hangar was one of the most spectacular that he'd ever made, and he hadn't been planning it to be at all.

His MagnaGuards overtook in the corridor outside the hangar and they stepped through the door first. The moment they did, all three of them suddenly found themselves been slopped by oil. The oil was being poured out of a socket in the belly of a hovering R2-D2. The astromech was also holding a large piece of flaming cloth in the extendable arms that came out of his chest, which he dropped, thus igniting the fire.

"Nice work, Artoo," said Anakin, as the MagnaGuards burned to a crisp, their circuitry being fried by the flames. Artoo hovered over to them and landed.

Like a nightmare from hell itself, Grievous stepped through the flames, the hungry tongues licking uselessly over his duranium body – he's shedded his cloak on the other side. The only thing that could be damaged were his internal organs, and they were containing inside a synthskin gut-sack in his chest that meant he could survive in the vacuum of space, let alone fire.

"Well, look what the nexu dragged in," Anakin scowled as he finally laid eyes on General Grievous in person. Aayla also scowled, her eyes flicking to Grievous' feet. She took satisfaction in the knowledge that this weren't the same feet that grabbed her – she remembered Kit Fisto saying that he'd manage to cut Grievous' legs off once, but he'd still managed to escape.

"Ah, Anakin Skywalker," Grievous laughed. "For all the talk that I've heard about you, I was expecting somebody a little more impressive."

"Yeah?" Anakin raised an eyebrow. "Well, I was expecting you to be taller, but you can't have everything."

Grievous growled. "I'm glad you can still find humour in your situation, Skywalker. You're about to meet your end."

"Where is Ahsoka?" Aayla butted in. She already knew the answer, but stalling for time wasn't a bad idea.

"She's secure, Secura," Grievous answered, chuckling at his pun. "I remember you now. The last time we met I defeated you with ease. Do you believe that you stand any more chance against me than you did when you had three more Jedi with you than you do now?"

"You caught us by surprise, Grievous," Aayla countered. "We were already tired from fighting your army, and we'd never seen you before. Not only has my fighting technique improved, but I now know what you have in store for me."

"I can understand why you are partnered with Skywalker if he is anything like his student," Grievous growled. "You all seem to have a habit of staring death in the face and making confident remarks in an attempt to rile me up."

"Is it working?" smirked Aayla.

"Yes," Grievous growled. "The so-called "A-Team" has a knack for it."

"I demand you tell me where my Padawan is," Anakin shouted.

"She's being looked after by my associate, Asajj Ventress," Grievous said. "But I don't know why you're concerned about her. You should be more concerned for yourselves. Don't worry, Skywalker. I'll be sure to go easy on you, and I'll even use your student's lightsaber against you."

Grievous' hand moved to his waist, but then he noticed that Ahsoka's lightsaber wasn't there anymore. He looked down at the empty space with confusion, then his eyes narrowed. Ventress! The only thing that Grievous despised more than a thief was a Jedi, and perhaps Nute Gunray. He'd deal with her later.

He grabbed two other lightsabers in his hands, and ignited them, confident that he could take two Jedi Knights without having to use all four. One blue blade and one green blade sprouted from his clawed hands.

"I'll enjoy crushing you," he laughed. He watched as the astromech turned around and headed back towards the fighters so he could stay out of the way, while Aayla and Anakin raised their blades in defensive positions.

Grievous extended his arms outwards. This was his favourite way of entering a battle. His wrists began to rotate rapidly, going three-hundred-and-sixty degrees all around, so the two lightsabers became a blue of circular motion. The sight of such effortless lightsaber-spinning was enough to make any Jedi who had not yet seen it falter in surprise.

But Anakin and Aayla just gained more determined looks. Good. They'd provide a better challenge. And if he killed Skywalker, well, what did he care? He could say it was an accident.

He charged, blades slicing through the floor as they span like buzzsaws.

Anakin and Aayla sprang forwards to meet him. Their lightsabers clashed, and, with effort, forced the rotations to a halt. Grievous pushed against the two of them as they strained to push him backwards, but he had great cybernetic strength and easily pushed them backwards. They slid to a halt, raising their blades.

Anakin jumped forwards and clashed his blade on one of Grievous' and span to block the second as it came swinging for his back. Grievous swung both for his head, but the Jedi ducked under it, and dodged aside from Grievous's next swing. He quickly attempted to retaliate, but Grievous stepped back to avoid the sweep and then crossed his blades in an X to take the next hit.

Then Grievous had to move one blade to block Aayla's strike, then used the same blade to swing at her head, which she ducked beneath, and then he span it again, but she blocked and retaliated. Grievous span to avoid having his arm sliced off again and then rained one blow, then another down upon Aayla. The Twi'lek crouched low and blocked both, dancing out of range, and Grievous swung around to block Anakin's attack with both blades.

Artoo watched the furious battle as the Jedi picked up the tempo.

* * *

I'm going to have to end it there, I'm afraid. I need to go and research some of Grievous moves before I continue that battle, but I'll be as quick as I can. Please review everybody, and hope for a happy ending to everything.

For those of you who don't know, two major changes happened in this chapter. Firstly, Anakin never meets Grievous until _Revenge of the Sith _in canon. Dave Filoni, the clone wars directed has even said that there will never be a lightsaber duel between the two in his series. So I thought I'd accelerate that a little bit.

The second is that the Jedi never learned of Sidious until a few days before _Revenge of the Sith_ in canon, so I'm definitely planting the seeds of change now.

* * *

Next time...

Ventress demands information from Ahsoka. Heroics occur from an astromech. The duel with Grievous continues, and Terriermon does something pretty major.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 38 : Again**


	38. Again

Excuse the delay everyone. I have no excuse really.

Just a note to say, which may disappoint a few of you, but when I have finished Chapter 40, and done the Every 50 oneshot for Movie-Brat, then this story will go on temporary hiatus. That's right – there will be no more updates after that until the end of June. This is because this story is distracting me from my revision, and since these are some of the three most important exams of my life, then I need to do well in them. Sorry.

And when I say temporary, I mean TEMPORARY. I will pick it up again. I will not just abandon it.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 38:- Again**

* * *

Renamon did exactly as she said she would and dived through the next door the moment Arfour had opened it wide enough for her to do so, which meant almost instantly. She didn't meet any commando droids on the other side, but there was still an enormous line of Supers to contend with. The ship seemed to be brawling with them, but since it was such a large ship, this was hardly surprising.

Renamon smacked into the first one and sent it tumbling backwards, and the two become a bowling ball of fury, fur mixed with metal, as Renamon tore the droid to shreds. The other Supers clustered around the place fell pretty swiftly from the fox's onslaught, several of them accidental hits as the droids attempted to shoot her and ended up shooting their comrade. In one bizarre case, one Super even managed to somehow shoot himself, when Renamon jumped over him and he pointed his arm backwards.

As this was happening, Lopmon had sprung into action and taken to the air. She whipped straight over the head of the Supers and collided with those at the back, bringing them to the ground. Despite the difference in size, Lopmon more than made up for it by being impossible to target and having two ears that could quite easily be used as clubs.

The clones took to the walls again and added their own firepower to the fray. Their aim was significantly better than the aim of the droids, but even so they carefully shot into areas where Renamon and Lopmon weren't. Droids fell to the lasers, and a few of them returned fire on the clones. But these were in the minority. Most were trying to take out the Digimon, and were failing considerably.

One of the Supers standing in the middle of the group looked from one side to the other, seeing the two Digimon advancing towards him on either side. Now, battle droids are not smart. Period. But even this Super Battle Droid could see that it was fighting a lost cause.

So it did the one thing that came to mind. It levelled the missile launcher that it had for an arm at the clones and let fly.

The purple rocket streaked past Renamon and whistled towards the clones. First to spot it was Havoc, who quickly cried "Incoming!" and grabbed Rex from behind, pulling him backwards as quickly as possible. Edge and Barr and grabbed Bly and did the same. The clones leapt backwards as the missile impacted on the floor where they'd been standing.

The resulting explosion tore into the walls, the floor and ceiling. Jesse and Blade were thrown backwards and collided with some of their brothers. Conor and Inc had to dive to one side to avoid a ceiling slab which collapsed downwards on top of them. Inc only just managed to get his legs out of the way in time. Ridge was not so fortunate and was half-buried as part of the wall collapsed on his lower half.

"Damn clankers!" Ridge yelled as he struggled with the weight.

Bly stood up and lowered his blaster at the Super responsible. "No-one messes with the 327th, or the 501st." And he shot the droid clean through the head with one blow.

Lopmon landed on the body and span like a top into two more, just as Renamon arrived at the same point and plunged her fist into another so it came out the other side allowing her to grab the one behind it and slam it into the body of its comrade.

"Headcount!" Rex cried. "Is everyone alright? Did we lose anyone?"

"We got hit hard, sir," Edge piped up. "But I think everyone's still alive and kicking."

"I could use a little help," Ridge pointed out. Rich and Lash quickly ran over to push the large, metallic slab off his lower torso.

"You alright, brother," Bly knelt down and offered his hand to Ridge. Ridge took it and allowed Bly to haul him to his feet.

"A little bruised, sir," he reported. "But I'll be okay."

"They must really not want us getting to that bridge," observed Hardcase, fingering that blaster-mark in his shoulder and rolling the socket in an attempt to ease the searing pain. He didn't complain. Clones could lose limbs and still report for duty. A blaster hole in the shoulder was a lucky injury.

Lopmon dusted off her hands and ears at the same time. "How many more batches of these droids do you reckon there are?"

"From what Terriermon says," Renamon wiped tiny metal shards from her shoulder. "There are at least three more hordes like that on the way to the bridge from what he can see in the surveillance room."

* * *

"Great," the Tamers heard Lopmon murmur sarcastically through the digivice. "We need a better way of dealing with them than just rushing in. Someway that ensures that we're less likely to lose any more men."

"Any ideas?" asked Henry.

"Nope," Rika sighed. "All the Digimon attacks that I can think of that we could give them that could wipe out a whole battalion would probably destroy the corridor they're in as well. And we don't want that."

"You're right," muttered Henry.

"I know..." Suzie said, suddenly looking very excited. "I know. I have an idea."

"Really?" Henry smiled down at her. "Go on then. What is it?"

"Well, we could..."

"LOOK OUT!" a clone voice yelled through the D-Arc. "ROLLIES INBOUND!"

* * *

Renamon and Lopmon whipped around to see three droidekas roll into view. They turned the corner so fast that they literally rolled up the wall a little way before returning to the floor. They quickly unfurled themselves and raised their shields, beginning the assault with their repeating blasters.

The clones dived into action, literally, diving behind the rubble the Super had prepared for them with his explosion and hauling their wounded brothers along with them. Rex narrowly missed getting shot in the back and he pulled Kix to safety. Renamon and Lopmon darted forwards to join them behind the rubble.

"Great!" Bly cried. "Any bright ideas on how to deal with this?"

* * *

Grievous' mechanical strength gave him advantages in battle. He just simply didn't get tired, which seemed to more than make up for his lack of the Force. His reflexes enabled him to block several blows quickly without the need to guide the Force, and worse still, his arms seemed to have minds of their own, so that when Anakin attacked one side and Aayla attacked the other, the cyborg had little difficulty fending them both off at the same time.

Anakin had his blade halted by the blue one that Grievous held. He took two more swings, but each was turned aside with equal ease, then Anakin was forced to jump backwards as the blade twirled and jabbed at him. Anakin tried a quick feint upwards and then the real sweep down low, but Grievous' blade changed direction to follow his, then began to twirl at the wrist to form a wall of spinning lightsaber that could only be stopped, not penetrated.

Meanwhile, Aayla fenced against the green blade. She ducked under a swing, bringing her blade up to halt a twirl aimed at her face, then two swift blocks from either side of her body as Grievous' arm brought it sweeping from one side then the other. Aayla then went on the offensive and attempted to cut off Grievous arm, but the General reversed his grip on the blade to block the strike and the blade locked together. The result became a straining match between the two, and Aayla felt herself being pushed back.

Grievous looked from one to the other as he fended them both off. He felt Aayla try to muscle her way forwards, as Anakin kept up a steady stream of attacks that he was forced to block. He had to admit that he was almost as unable to hit the two of them as they were to him. His eyes narrowed, and he shoved, hard, with his green blade, forcing Aayla backwards, then span and planted his foot squarely in Anakin's abdomen. Anakin grunted as he went sailing backwards and smacked into the wall.

Grievous turned his attention to Aayla, who had backflipped with the shove to keep from toppling backwards. She held her blade at the ready as Grievous came for her. One blade flashed at her, but she turned it aside, then hurriedly parried the second blade. Aayla then moved her blade so it was horizontal and raised it up to block both blades as Grievous brought them crashing down towards her. A brief straining match followed, but this time Aayla was able to push back by straightening her backbone. Grievous recovered quickly and took two swings, which Aayla sidestepped, span and scythed both blades in from the right, which Aayla managed to block again.

Anakin straightened upwards and so the two pushing against one another. Igniting his blade again, Anakin ran forward and leapt high, sailing towards Grievous' unprotected back. But, at the last moment, Grievous spun about and blocked the strike with the green blade.

Throwing Aayla back with a sudden push, Grievous turned his attention to Anakin. He threw two overhead strikes, then sent both blade in quick succession towards Anakin's feet. Anakin backflipped over it and Grievous came again, lunging forward with one blade, then the other, then the first again, then swung for a decapitation, which Anakin ducked under and attempted to cleave upwards, but the blades span again and turned it aside.

As Aayla ran in again, Grievous heard her approach and leapt high into the air, landing several metres away to face both at once. He charged again, spinning the blades before him like windmills of death. The Jedi separated and forward-rolled around them, leaping simultaneously to their feet and striking, but Grievous' suddenly rotated at the waist so he was facing backwards and blocked them. Reversing his legs so he was the right way round again he kept up the assault.

He threw three strikes at Aayla with separate blades, all three or which were blocked, sent both crashing at Anakin, which he dodged, and at the same time, threw his foot out behind him to kick at Aayla. Deftly, the Twi'lek avoided the kick – she'd been keeping a special eye of his feet this time around, after all. Grievous span about to sweep at Aayla's torso, but she rolled to the side, then dived out the way of his follow-up strike.

Aayla threw three quick strikes at Grievous, but the droid general countered with an upward strike, that Aayla was forced to block. Grievous forced her blades above her head, then lunged forward with his head and shoulders to collide with her midriff. Aayla went tumbling backwards and landed in a heap.

Grievous turned to Anakin, while Aayla tried to recover her breath. He chuckled and growled, "Our intelligence must be wrong. I was told that you were skilled with a blade."

"Soon, you'll be eating your words, Grievous," Anakin glared. He paused and then said, "By the way, how do you eat?"

Stung, Grievous buzzsawed forwards again. Anakin blocked both at once with a stab to the chest, withdrew and swung twice from either side, and then once upwards, which Grievous had to swerve to avoid. The droid General glowered at him and then surged forwards again. A double upward sweep sent Anakin's arms upwards, and he only just managed to block the double downward that followed. Grievous then feinted to the side with one blade, and span to sent both swinging up again. Unprepared for this, Anakin's blade went flying out of his hand. Stunned, Anakin froze up, and Grievous backhanded him, sending him sliding backwards.

Grievous advanced towards his floored opponent. "How did someone with your limited skills achieve such renown?" he crowed, raising his blade above his head for the killing blow. Anakin could only watch as the blades swung down, intending to penetrate his stomach.

Suddenly, something large and metal shot between the two of them. Grievous' blades crashed against WarGreymon's Brave Shield and rebounded off it, leaving it intact. "Huh?" Grievous was only able to say as he took two steps back to keep his balance. Anakin turned to see Aayla running towards him, her hand outstretched to hold the shield with the Force. The other hand held her lightsaber hilt.

"Catch!" she cried, tossing the hilt towards him. Anakin leapt to his feet, caught the hilt and igniting the blade. Flipping over the shield, he swung hard at Grievous. Still reeling, the cyborg just managed to block the blow, then the second, and he tried to dodge the downward swing that came next, but Anakin still managed to slice the tip off one of his large shoulder-guards. Grievous spun round and began to buzzsaw, but Aayla used a burst of the Force to send the shield crashing into him, so he went shooting backwards.

Aayla then dropped the shield and summoned Anakin's lightsaber to her, the blade springing to life the moment it reached her hand.

"Thanks, Aayla," said Anakin. "You saved my life. I owe you one."

"Don't mention it."

Grievous planted his hands on the floor and flipped upwards, rotating at the shoulder until he was back on his feet. His two lightsabers ignited again and he glared down at his adversaries.

"I don't know what that shield is made of," he rasped. "But perhaps I underestimated you. I believe that you are worthy of the special treatment."

"Oh dear," said Aayla. "I have a feeling I know where this is going."

And she did. Grievous' arms split apart right up to the shoulder, and two of his new arms unclipped two more lightsabers from his waist, igniting one more blue and one more green blade.

"Now that's not fair," Anakin said.

"Tough," Grievous growled. "Get used to it. You won't have long to do so."

He sprang, rising high into the air and falling, blades first. Aayla and Anakin separated again as Grievous' plunged all four blades through the floor where they'd been.

The fight had suddenly got much more interesting.

* * *

Renamon risked a glance over the top of the rubble and had to duck down again so that the red bolt that came zooming for her forehead missed. "I don't think even I could jump up there and avoid getting hit," she cried.

Arfour the astromech twittered, rocking from side to side in order to gain everyone's attention. The clones looked across to him. The bronze droid leaned forward slightly, and a panel opened in his back. A large suction cup attached to a rope suddenly shot out and stuck to the ceiling above them. Then Arfour spat the other end of the rope out and twittered again.

Renamon looked up at the ceiling. It was weakened and battered from the explosion of the Super. "Ah," she said. "Good idea."

Arfour whistled his thanks. Renamon grabbed the rope and tossed a length to some of the clones. "Be ready to pull when I give the word."

"Oh, I get it," Rex nodded. "You heard her, lads. Let's do it."

Rex, Bly, Rich, Kix, Lash and Galle lined up, ensuring that they stayed crouched behind the rubble. Renamon fed the rope to each of them and took point at the front of the line. She peered over the top and watched as the droidekas walked forward, continuously firing.

"Wait," she said. "Wait."

The droidekas were under the damaged ceiling.

"Now!" she cried, and everyone in the line hauled on the rope. It must have been one of the strongest suction cups ever, because it worked. The whole ceiling fell inwards, crushing the droidekas under the heavy metal, which the shields were unable to withstand.

Surprisingly, another battle droid fell through the hole and landed on the pile of rubble, disorientated. It didn't last very long before it was shot to pieces.

"That's how you do things!" Rex laughed. "Unorthodox, but it works."

"Nice job, Arfour," Bly patted the astromech on the head. He got a happy whistling response.

"Right," Denal picked himself up from the floor and said, "Shall we keep moving sir? Only three more to go."

_Renamon._

Renamon held up a hand and answered Rika's call. _Yes, Rika?_

_Suzie's had an idea. I've got a Modify Card here that should give you an edge over the next group of droids you run into._

_Which is, incidentally, behind the next pair of doors, _Terriermon added helpfully.

_Alright, _Renamon nodded. _What is it?_

_You'll see._

"Alright," Renamon addressed the group. "The Tamers have an idea about an easier way to get rid of the droids we come across. I trust her to make the correct judgement. Terriermon says we have a full battalion of Supers standing behind the next door."

"Like a never-ending tide," Edge muttered.

"What's the plan?" asked Barr.

"I don't know."

"I like it," chuckled Galle.

"The doors, if you would, Arfour," Lopmon hopped onto the astromech's head. "Let's see how easily we can wipe out the next battalion."

Arfour and Lopmon advanced down the corridor, the astromech weaving between the dead droids. "Alright lads," Bly instructed. "Renamon takes point. I want half of you to cover the rear. If more destroyers head this way I want to know about it immediately."

"Sir, yes sir," the clones chorused. They stepped forward and took up positions on either side of the wall, half of them staring through their blasters sights in the forward direction and half in the backwards. Renamon stood boldly in the middle of the doorway, and Lopmon rode Arfour to the console.

* * *

"They're in place," said Henry. "You want to do it now, Rika."

"I'm all over it. Walk all over them, Renamon. Digi-modify!"

Rika swung the card through the slot, and called out the name of the forthcoming attack.

* * *

On the Separatist Destroyer, Renamon felt a tingling sensation shoot down her right arm, which clearly meant that Rika had initiated the upgrade. It stopped at the wrist and congealed, until a large, golden circlet appeared around it. A purple, energy blade, similar to a lightsaber, but flat like a sword, erupted out of it.

Renamon stared at it. Then she said, "Ah."

Lopmon agreed. "Ah."

Rex glanced at Bly. "That sounds like this'll be entertaining."

"It will," said Renamon. As Arfour successfully opened the doors, she began to draw a large circle in the air. The purple sword left a purple energy circle where it trailed, until there was a perfect loop in the air.

As the Super Battle Droids beyond the door noticed that the door had opened and lowered their blasters to fire, Renamon cried, **"GATE OF DESTINY!"**

The energy circle was suddenly filled with metal – a golden, spinning circle that resembled a shield of some time. The bolts of the Super Battle Droids ricocheted off it harmlessly, and then they disappeared into it, for it suddenly stopped spinning and split open down the middle, like two sliding doors, revealing a black expanse beyond.

A powerful suction suddenly hauled all of the Super Battle Droids of their feet and they went flying through the circle. However, they didn't appear out the other side. As the last one sailed through, the doors shut, the gate spun a few times and then it, along with everything that had disappeared inside it, disintegrated.

The clones looked stunned, as the gate, and the energy sword on Renamon's wrist, vanished. Renamon turned to look at them. She couldn't see their expressions because of their helmets, but she could tell by the silence that they were flabbergasted.

"Gate of Destiny," she informed them. "MagnaAngemon's attack. Creates and entirely new dimension, sucks your enemies in, then destroys the dimension along with everything you just put in it."

"That was a neat trick," said Denal. "But couldn't you have left a few for us?"

"Yeah," agreed Rich. "Leave some behind for us to shoot up."

"Alright, cut the chatter, boys," Bly stood up. "We're wasting time here. We need to keep moving. Ahsoka's depending on us, and we don't know how well the Generals are holding up against Grievous. Let's go."

"I couldn't agree more," Lopmon announced as she lifted off Arfour's head and the whole party ran, flew or wheeled down the next corridor. Lopmon and Renamon shared a glance with each other. Bly was right, they did need to hurry, although he had no idea why.

But since they could see into Terriermon's mind and through his eyes, they did.

Things weren't going well for Ahsoka.

* * *

Terriermon watched with growing trepidation as Ventress seemed to get more and more frantic. An uneasy feeling was building in his gut and it didn't feel like indigestion. Ventress was practically yelling herself hoarse as she demanded to tell the strung up Padawan where she'd learned about the existence of Lord Sidious, and Ahsoka calmly giving her answers that weren't answers.

Obviously they'd found something that was extremely important here – a secret so dire that Ventress was literally panicking over its discovery. It was almost like their own secret – the secret of the existence of the Digimon. Ironic really, the secret with uncovered the other secret.

But Ventress was getting increasingly frenetic in her demands. And Terriermon wasn't what lengths Ventress would eventually go to in order to get the information out of her.

Ahsoka was holding out, not responding to the shouting and the screaming.

But what if it became more than shouting and screaming.

"If you don't tell me what you know about Lord Sidious," Ventress screamed. "I shall run you through right now with your own blade."

"Fat chance," Ahsoka snorted. "Kill me and you'll never find out what I know or how I know it."

Ventress practically roared in frustration. "I can get very nasty if I'm not told the information I want when I want it."

"Looks like you've got your lightsabers in a knot," Ahsoka smirked. "What's the matter, Ventress? Are you scared? Are you actually scared?"

"Of course not. Now tell me..."

"Hah! You are scared, aren't you?" Ahsoka crowed. "What's the deal with that? Is Count Dooku going to have you executed if you don't find out, is that it? Are you scared that it might be you who gave Sidious away?"

"I did not mention Sidious in your presence," Ventress snarled. "Was it Grievous? Did that bungling droid let slip the fact that..." Ventress caught herself from saying something. Ahsoka raised an eyebrow.

"The fact that... what?" she asked. "What was that you were going to say?"

"Nothing."

"Didn't sound like nothing."

"I said NOTHING!"

"Whoa," Ahsoka's other eyebrow went up to join the first. "You're really getting worked up about this."

"Tell me where you heard that name, right now?"

"Whisper on the wind," Ahsoka attempted to shrug, but with her arms bound above her head, that was difficult.

"That is not an answer."

"Well, it's the only answer that you're going to get."

Ventress felt like wringing Ahsoka's neck. She had to know. She had to know how much they'd obtained about Sidious. Had she discovered Sidious' true identity? How many other Jedi knew? Where they already in motion? And most importantly, how had she found out about Sidious' existence? Had it been her? Had it been Grievous?

So many questions and there were no forthcoming answers.

Ventress began to pace up and down, running the questions through her mind, attempting to calm herself. How could the Jedi know of Sidious' true identity? From what she could tell, Ahsoka didn't seem to know all that much about him, and since she was almost one-hundred percent sure she had not let slip his name in front of the brat, that meant it could have been Grievous. But Grievous didn't know Sidious' true identity.

The only people who did know Sidious' true identity, were herself, Count Dooku and Nute Gunray, plus Gunray's aide, Ruun Haako. Had it been any of them? Dooku had never met Ahsoka face-to-face. Ahsoka had briefly held Gunray hostage. Had she discovered it then?

She had to know.

And she had to know now.

"Aww, what a shame," Ahsoka smiled. "The great Asajj Ventress, bogwitch of the Dark Side, fretting about the situation she's in."

Ventress gave Ahsoka a wicked glare. In a lower, more menacing tone than before, she said, "If you don't tell me right now, then next time, I shan't be so nice."

"This is nice?" Ahsoka glanced up at her hands. "I'd hate to come to your parties?"

"I'll take that as a refusal to cooperate, shall I?"

"Have you just figured it out?"

* * *

Terriermon watched as Ventress glanced around her. The uneasy feeling in his stomach was beginning to swell. He didn't doubt for a moment that things were about to get nasty. He wanted to get out there and leap into the action and stop Ventress, but even as Gargomon, he doubted his chances against lightsabers. And Rapidmon fighting inside a spaceship was a good way to get _everyone_ killed.

Then, Ventress spotted something lying beside the door that made her eyes light up with delight. She strode past Ahsoka. Ahsoka swivelled on the spot so that she could see what was going on. She watched as Ventress strode over to the door, stoop down and pick something up.

* * *

When Ventress turned to show her what it was, Ahsoka blanched. If she'd known that was there, she wouldn't have needled her so much.

Ventress was holding the electrostaff of the MagnaGuard that she'd cut up in the hangar a few hours ago.

"I warned you," Ventress strode over towards the helpless Togruta. "You brought this on yourself."

Ahsoka knew that, no matter what she said, Ventress was going to use it on her now. An electrostaff could be set to various settings – one which caused death on contact, one which caused mild pain, and one which caused excruciating pain, which was often used in torture chambers.

In the knowledge she was about to be in pain anyway, she growled, "Do your worst, you hag!"

Ventress snarled and span the electrostaff, holding it with one end forward. She jabbed that end into Ahsoka's stomach, crackling with phrik energy.

Every fibre in Ahsoka's body suddenly erupted with pain. Every ounce of her convulsed as the electricity coursed through her body. She tried desperately not to, but she couldn't help it. She screamed loudly at the searing pain, spreading out in waves from her stomach, right to the tips of her fingers. The electricity was dancing a jig, and she was the dancefloor.

Suddenly, the pain relented. Ventress had removed the electrostaff. Ahsoka slumped down, no longer holding herself up by her toes – she only stayed upright thanks to the rope.

"I'll ask again," Ventress sneered. "Where did you learn that name?"

Despite everything, Ahsoka never even considered giving Ventress the truth. She was a Jedi. She wasn't going to break so easily.

"You'll never find out," she snarled. The moment she said it, Ventress jabbed her again and the pain was back. The agonizing, terrible, practically unbearable pain. It felt like volcanoes were erupting in her arms, and a solar storm was condensing in her torso.

Ventress removed the electrostaff for half a second before plunging it back forward again. Somehow the very brief respite made the second one even worse, as the body was unable to finish sighing with relief. Ventress jabbed Ahsoka twice more before relenting again.

"Still feel so defiant?" she asked mockingly. She was taking huge delight in the fact she was finally torturing the pitiful girl – something she'd wanted to do ever since they'd met on Teth. The battle droids all around were watching this spectacle, their posts forgotten. They all cringed every time the blows came.

"I won't let Master Skywalker down," Ahsoka gritted her teeth at the numb pain. "Nor Master Secura. We're the A-Team. We never give up."

"Really?" Ventress smiled.

* * *

The electrostaff went forward once again. Ahsoka's screams filled the surveillance room. Terriermon cringed with horror as he watched the horrific spectacle before him. His opinion of Ventress had never been high, but the sight of the woman torturing a defenceless child made his opinion of her sink to a level that he'd reserved only for Goro and Ogudomon.

"Your pathetic A-Team won't last long," Ventress shouted over Ahsoka's screams, which were so loud she was just barely audible. Terriermon watched as Ventress pushed the electrostaff harder into Ahsoka's stomach. The Togruta girl shrieked as the pain went on rising and rising like an unstoppable torrent.

"Now tell me," Ventress roared, finally relenting, and Ahsoka slumped downwards, barely conscious, "Where. You. Heard. That. Name."

"Not... happening," Ahsoka groaned.

The screams exploded out of the speakers again as Ventress plunged the tip of the crackling staff into her ribcage.

Terriermon snapped.

"Okay, that's it!" he shouted to the empty room. "I'm going in!"

Terriermon leapt to the floor and dashed out of the door. He paused momentarily, unsure of which direction to take. But he'd didn't pause for very long. His super-sensitive ears could easily pick out the sounds of Ahsoka's heart-rending screams. He took to the air and shot off down the corridor, zipping around corners and zooming down the hallways.

As Ahsoka's screams began to get louder in his ears, never-ending, his world seemed to fill with a blind rage. In his mind, he yelled _Henry!_

_Yes?_ Henry replied. He sounded grim, which meant he'd probably seen everything through the D-Arc.

_You know what's going on, Henry!_ Terriermon shouted in his mind, struggling to hear himself over Ahsoka's dreadful shrieks of pain. _I'm gonna put a stop to this. Give me a power and a strength upgrade now!_

Henry didn't reply, but sure enough, a few seconds later, as Terriermon shot along, he felt a sudden influx of strength, and then another, as his body took on the benefits of the two Modify Cards.

_Go get her, Terriermon,_ Henry called back.

_My exact intention,_ Terriermon growled.

A couple of corners later, and he could see them. Ventress still had the electrostaff jammed into Ahsoka's chest, and the poor girl looked like she was about to pass out from screaming, but still she continued to scream. Terriermon's eyes focused on the back of Ventress' head and he surged through the air.

Ventress' senses warned her too late. She didn't even get time to turn around before Terriermon smashed one ear like a fist into the back of her head. Now, even a Sith, or a Dark Jedi, like her was vulnerable to a strike in the head. And thanks to Terriermon's upgrades, she was instantly knocked unconscious. Not only that, but she went flying across the room and smashed into the wall.

The droids looked startled at Terriermon suddenly appearance, as he soared around the room. Several of them reached for blasters, but none of them got the opportunity to let off one shot. **"BUNNY BLAST!"** Terriermon yelled, and unleashed one of the largest barrages he'd ever released as a Rookie. The droids fell backwards under his attack like bowling pins, each filled with more holes than a tennis racquet.

Terriermon circled the room, continuing his attack, until all the droids had fallen. He came to rest, victorious, standing in the middle of the room, on the console.

"Terrier...mon?" Ahsoka moaned in pain.

Terriermon turned to look at her. She was trying to obey gravity, but the binders weren't letting her fall. Her eyes were barely open, but Terriermon could see they were filled with delight, as well as pain. She looked inexplicably grateful, and from what Terriermon had seen, he wasn't surprised. She was also breathing heavily.

"Are you okay?" Terriermon ran over. "That's a stupid question. Of course you aren't."

"I've had ... better days," Ahsoka smiled painfully. "Did I... imagine it... or... did you... really... knock... Ventress out?"

Terriermon glanced over at the slumped body of Ventress. "I'd say so."

"Nice one... ugh," Ahsoka grimaced. Despite the fact that the electrostaff had gone, it still felt like every nerve was jangling and trying to escape from her body.

"I reckon I should get you down," Terriermon looked up at the rope holding Ahsoka to the ceiling. "But I'm not big enough to catch you."

"Just... do it... please."

Terriermon nodded and sent a large green bolt from his mouth, which burnt through the rope. Ahsoka dropped to the floor and gasped with pain. She'd attempted to catch herself with her arms, but they didn't seem to be responding to her. Parts of her were going numb.

Terriermon ran over and hauled her over so that she was on her back. He stood by her head and looked down into her face. "Sorry," he said.

"Nothing to be... sorry for."

"Yes, there is," Terriermon grimaced. "It was me that told you to say Sidious' name. It was my fault that Ventress got angry with you and did that. And I should have come sooner, but I could do was watch on the screen. I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. You couldn't... nggh... have known, could you?"

"Well... no, but – "

"Exactly." Ahsoka grunted with pain and exertion as she rolled onto her side and attempted to push herself up, but her body was still unresponsive and her hands were still bound.

"Whoa, whoa, momentai," Terriermon stepped back. "Don't push yourself to hard. Can I do anything for you?"

"My lightsaber..." Ahsoka moaned.

"Oh yeah," Terriermon looked up and spotted it on the console where Ventress had put it. He dashed over and jumped up onto the computer, grabbed the lightsaber and jumped back down, carrying it over to Ahsoka.

Ahsoka flopped back onto her back and presented the binders to Terriermon. "Can you cut... through them."

"I can try," Terriermon pushed the button, and the long green blade activated. He was surprised to find that the blade didn't add any weight, but then shrugged. Why should it? It was made of light.

Looking very ungainly and clutching a weapon several times taller than he was, Terriermon carefully moved it between Ahsoka's wrists, severing the binders. The two halves fell uselessly to the floor and Terriermon quickly deactivated the blade before he accidentally did something less useful with it.

Ahsoka's arms fell to the floor and she lay still, still breathing heavily. Terriermon looked down at one of her hands resting on the floor and carefully put the lightsaber handle in it. Ahsoka's fingers closed around it, gripping it tightly.

"Thanks," she said. "At least I... have it back."

She grunted as she made another attempt to push herself upwards. Terriermon noticed the shiny, black collar that was still around her neck and said, "We've got to find a way to get rid of that thing."

"I think..." Ahsoka struggled upwards. "That I might.,, know how. Hang on."

Ahsoka shut her eyes and focused. The moment she did, the collar shocked her again and she screamed again, the shock seemed worse than it had before thanks to the electrostaff treatment.

"Whoa!" Terriermon ran over and locked an ear around her arm to keep her from collapsing again. "What did you do that for?"

"I was... right," Ahsoka grunted. "When I did it, a button... lit up on Ventress' wrist-thingie."

Terriermon turned around. He noticed the thin metal band with numerous small buttons around Ventress' wrist. "Which one?" he asked.

"Bring it here," Ahsoka grunted.

Terriermon let go of her, and she managed to stay up. After ensuring that she'd stay that way, Terriermon ran over to the unconscious Ventress. Scowling with dislike, he pulled the little band of the Dark Jedi's wrist and hurried back to Ahsoka's side with it in his hands.

"Okay," he said. "So what do I do with it now?"

Ahsoka reached out gingerly with one aching arm, which felt like they'd almost been pulled out of their sockets when they'd been harnessed to the ceiling. Extending one finger, she pushed the button that she'd seen flashing when she'd attempted to use the Force.

There was a _click_, and the collar detached at the back of her neck and fell to the ground.

Immediately, Ahsoka felt relief as the Force seemed to flow inside her once again. Terriermon picked up the collar and scowled at it. "Seriously, I'm never going to look at collars the same way again after this. Maybe we should even take the one off Isis when we get back?"

"Isis?" Ahsoka grunted.

"An Egyptian Jackal that we keep at home," Terriermon explained, even though he knew Ahsoka wouldn't know what an Egyptian Jackal actually was. "But that's not the point. Now, we need to get you out of here."

"Couldn't agree more," Ahsoka pushed herself up further so she was now on her hands and knees.

"But first," Terriermon turned around. "I'm gonna deal with Ventress."

"Don't kill her," Ahsoka said quickly. Terriermon blinked.

"Forgive me if I sound a little bloodthirsty, but why not. She doesn't deserve to live after what she did to you."

"I am a Jedi," Ahsoka grunted, pushing backwards until she was sitting on the floor. "And it is not the Jedi way to take the life of a helpless person. She can't defend herself while she's unconscious. And so I can't let you kill her."

Terriermon's respect for Ahsoka heightened, and it had been very high to begin with. Despite everything – the kidnapping, the imprisonment and the torture – Ahsoka was sticking to her morals. There weren't many people back home on Earth that would even consider such a thing.

"So, what do you suggest we do with her?" he asked.

"Take her captive," Ahsoka tried to get to her feet. "She'll face life in priso-ungh!" She'd made it to one foot, but then pitched forward, throwing her arms out so she painfully caught herself, and she was on her hands and knees again. "My legs ache," she explained.

"Can you walk?"

"I – I don't know," she gritted her teeth. "Ugh, I hate feeling helpless."

"Momentai," said Terriermon. "I'll give you hand. I'll go Gargomon and then you can lean on me."

"Thanks Terriermon," Ahsoka smiled. "You're a true friend, and I hope you know that."

"I've been told it a couple of times," said Terriermon. "But that leaves me with a problem."

"What?"

"Her," Terriermon jerked a thumb at Ventress. "There are still a lot of droids out there, and if I'm going to help you out, I'm going to need at least one arm free to shoot them down and cover us. I can't support you and carry her at the same time, and I don't think there's a Modify Card that enables me to grow an extra arm."

"So, what do you suggest?" Ahsoka asked.

Terriermon's gaze flicked to Ventress. Then back to Ahsoka. Then down to the floor. Then he grinned maliciously.

"Well, we'll have to leave her here," he said. "Getting you out of here is more important. Ventress in prison can wait. But right now, are you up for a little pranking?"

Ahsoka followed Terriermon's gaze, and found he was staring at the collar on the floor. "Ah," she started to grin herself, despite her aching nerves. "Now this I could live with."

"Henry," said Terriermon to thin air. "Digivolution please."

After a couple of seconds, Terriermon felt the energy erupt within him, and he cried out, **"TERRIERMON DIGIVOLVE TO... GARGOMON!"**

The Champion level rabbit twirled his cannons, then walked over to Ahsoka. Leaning down, he allowed the Togruta girl to pull herself slowly to her feet and drape an arm across his shoulders, while he hooked one cannon around her waist to keep her upright. The two of them made their way over to the unconscious Ventress, Ahsoka scooping up the collar on her way.

Both of them looked on with satisfaction as Ahsoka fastened the Force-inhibiting collar around Ventress' neck. Then Gargomon turned and used his free cannon to blast the little wrist-band to pieces.

Ahsoka raised her hand, and revelled in the fact that nothing shocked her, as Ventress' twin lightsabers sailed from her waist and found themselves clutched in Ahsoka's hand. "I'll keep hold of these too. Hope you don't mind, Ventress."

Ventress didn't reply.

One last thing was done before they left. Gargomon led Ahsoka over to the rope, and they took what was left of it from the ceiling. With Gargomon holding Ahsoka up so she didn't collapse again, Ahsoka quickly tied Ventress' wrists behind her back with one end of the rope, then tied her ankles with the other end.

"I still reckon we're going light on her," said Gargomon.

"Me too," said Ahsoka. "But I will not sink to her level and kill her."

"Good for you," Gargomon nodded. "But what will you do if you ever meet her again in combat?"

"If she can fight, and I can fight," Ahsoka glowered. "Then I won't hold back."

"Fair enough," Gargomon agreed. "Now, let's get out of here."

Gargomon pulled Ahsoka back up so she was resting on his shoulder again, then the two set off at a reasonable pace out of the bridge, Ahsoka stumbling slightly she clutched Gargomon's shoulder to stay upright. Ventress's lightsabers were clipped to her belt, and her own was clutched in her hand.

Gargomon moved carefully, trying not to drag Ahsoka too fast.

_Well done, Gargomon,_ he heard Renamon's voice say in his mind. The fox had seen the whole thing, but hadn't dared to say anything just in case she diverted his attention away from anything potentially life-threatening.

_I reckon I did quite well._

_Oh, you did,_ he heard Lopmon say. _A perfect ten, I reckon._

_Ten-and-a-half,_ Renamon added.

_So what do we do now?_

_Lopmon and I will press on and we'll meet you somewhere between where we are now,_ Renamon explained. _Once we've got Ahsoka surrounded by plenty of helping hands, we'll double back to the gunships._

_I hope Aayla and Anakin are alright,_ said Gargomon. _Grievous looked like a tough customer._

_We hope so too,_ said Lopmon. _But keep an eye on your surroundings, Gargomon. Don't let your guard down._

_Not planning on it._

Gargomon and Ahsoka reached the first blast door. Ahsoka grunted, and raised her lightsaber, igniting the green blade. "Just hold on a minute. I'll make a door."

"Don't strain yourself," Gargomon chided her. "Momentai. I have a much quicker way through these doors. **BUNNY PUMMEL!"**

Gargomon smashed his charged cannon into the door. It crumpled like tin under his heavy punch and fell to the floor, caving inwards and falling with a groan of metal.

"Well," Ahsoka smiled. "I think finesse is out the window."

"To be honest, finesse went out the window the moment I clouted Ventress in the head."

"On bad days, I'm going to replay that memory in my head. It'll cheer me up no end."

"Glad to be of service."

Stepping over the remains of the blast door, Gargomon and Ahsoka continued down the corridor. As of yet, they hadn't run into any droids, but, predictably, their luck didn't hold for very long. As they rounded the next corner, they found themselves confronted by a horde of Supers.

They were all facing the other way, but at the sound of Gargomon and Ahsoka stumbling around the corner, they turned around to look.

"And this is why I needed a spare cannon," Gargomon said, raising it. Not waiting for the droids to realise they were in danger, he cried, **"GARGO LASERS!"**

The first four rows of Super Battle Droids were mown down instantly under his heavy onslaught. The fifth and sixth row began to crumble too, before the rest of the Supers in the hallway managed to turn around and open fire themselves. Gargomon hauled Ahsoka to one side, to avoid the blasts and place her by the wall as he continued to rain green death through the corridor.

Burdened as he was, Gargomon wasn't as agile as usual. The red bolts sizzled past him much closer than they usually did. One of them managed to nick his jeans, and the others whooshed past him as several other points. At one point he had to sidestep hurriedly to avoid two shots to the chest, but he managed to remain uninjured.

However, more and more droids down the corridor began to add to the laser storm, despite the dozens of them that Gargomon was shooting down himself.

Several lasers began to arc towards him, when a green lightsaber burst into being alongside him. Ahsoka, still holding Gargomon for support, gritted her teeth and did her best to ignore the furious complaints from her arm as she blocked several shots with the green blade. Her eyes watered at the pain, but she kept going, determined to protect her saviour.

"Cheers," Gargomon acknowledged as he continued the heavy assault. The Supers fell left, right and centre, while Ahsoka and Gargomon remained standing through their teamwork.

Eventually, the back row of the Super Battle Droids collapsed with numerous holes blown into them by Gargomon, until there was only one left standing. The Super looked around in apparent confusion at its fallen brethren, and then, stupidly, it raised its arm and fired at Gargomon.

Ahsoka let out a loud noise somewhere between a grunt and a yelp as she made one last, painful swing to smack the bolt directly back into the Supers chest. It collapsed in a sparking heap.

"Much as I appreciate the help," Gargomon said. "What was that I said about not straining yourself?"

"Momentai," Ahsoka grinned weakly. "Couldn't let you get shot to pieces because of me, could I? What would Renamon say?"

_I'd say it wasn't your fault._

"She'd thank you for setting her free."

"What?" Ahsoka looked horrified.

"Just kidding."

"Don't do that."

"That was payback for you using my word," Gargomon snickered. "Now, let's keep going."

The two continued to make their way down the corridor. Meanwhile, Gargomon contemplated one interesting fact. He'd saved a girl that had been kidnapped and tied up by a creepy force, and helped her get her revenge by restraining their kidnapper.

Again.

* * *

Anakin and Aayla both locked the bottom two of Grievous' blades and locked them in place, but the top two quickly began to spin and the two had two swerve aside to avoid getting their heads diced to pieces. Anakin ducked under a blow from Grievous' top blade, then blocked both as they swung down, shoving them off and spinning about to strike, only to be blocked by both again. Anakin reversed direction and came from the other side, but they were still there to meet him.

Aayla shoved the bottom blade up, stepped back from the top one and flattened herself to the floor to avoid the bottom one as it came swinging back. She struck upwards to meet the bottom blade, sidestepped and came from the right to clash against both, and then two quick strikes, one up and one down, were turned away by either one. No matter where either of them strike, there was always at least one there to meet them.

Anakin leapt back to avoid a double stab and Aayla threw herself backwards the two blades scissored for her head in opposite swings. Grievous turned to Anakin and charged, swinging upwards with two then the other two blades in quick succession. Anakin couldn't block all four, so he had to leap out of the way. He landed by the bodies of the MagnaGuards, which he sent shooting at Grievous with the Force. Grievous sliced through the first two and punched the third aside.

Aayla delved into the Force as she readied her blade. It was time to delve into her Twi'lek flexibility. Loosening the muscles in her arms, she sprinted forwards to the attack. Grievous turned to face her and met her blade head on. He was surprised to find himself on the defensive as Aayla came from the side twice, then up and down in quick motions. She backflipped away before he could even think about responding, and he slashed at her with one blade, then two, but she turned them aside with a dancer-like pirouette. Then she jumped straight over him, slashing at him from above, which he just managed to block. But he couldn't block her kick which sent him stumbling, or the burst of Force which knocked him forwards.

Anakin ran in from the side. Grievous sprang to his feet ridiculously quickly and got in the first swing with two blades, which Anakin turned aside, along with the second two that came swinging for his head. Anakin dodged the scissor for his stomach and threw in a blow to the shoulder, which Grievous quickly caught and countered with a quick buzzsaw to prevent an approach, swining one blade for the hip on one side and another for the head on the other, which Anakin ducked and blocked in the same movement. Anakin surged in with four swifts slashes, all in different directions, forcing Grievous back a few steps, until he locked two of his blades with Anakin's. Aayla came in from the back, but the two other blades swung behind him to block her.

Grievous growled as he pushed against the two, one in front and one behind him. This was getting frustrating. The fact that he had yet to kill one of them yet was just irritating him further and further.

Unlocking one blade from each lock, he began to rotate at the waist. Aayla and Anakin both spotted this and leapt backwards as Grievous became a spinning top, all four blades extended like a carousel of doom. Grievous stopped spinning and sprinted in. He caught Aayla with an upward swing, then came in from the side with one blade and down with two, which Aayla managed to turn with difficulty, but she had to leap back to avoid the stab that came after this. Anakin was then rounded on, blocking three blades from the side and sidestepping one from above. Leaping aside from a stab and rolling from two blades coming from below, he rolled to his feet beside Aayla.

As Grievous buzzsawed forward again, the Jedi noticed that WarGreymon's Brave Shield was lying between them. They shared a brief nod, then picked it up with the Force and sent barrelling into Grievous. The General faltered and was sent zooming backwards towards the wall. Quickly, he swung in the air so he landed feet first on the wall. He didn't fall – his feet had magnetized to the wall.

Grievous walked down to the floor and growled at the two, sheathing his blades. "You will not be so fortunate in our next encounter, Jedi. I believe I have a Padawan to slay."

Grievous turned and ran through the door he'd came through, heading back to the bridge. Anakin and Aayla glanced sharply at each other, then Anakin quickly activated his comlink and cried, "Rex! Tell me you have some good news for me!"

* * *

Took me a few times to get Grievous' fighting style to something passable but I think I succeeded. I just played Lightsaber Duels on the Wii and took turns playing as Anakin and Grievous to beat the other up. Unfortunately, you can't play Aayla on this game, so I based her on a mix of other characters. Hope it was alright.

I hope everyone feels sorry for Ahsoka. If you don't then I didn't do it right.

* * *

Next time...

Well, they have to get off the ship now. What'll happen to Ventress? Will Ahsoka be okay? So many questions.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 39 : Escape**


	39. Escape

Hooray, I'm back. I've only got one week and three days left before I leave school – and then I'll only have to go back seven times – for three exams, two concerts, Speech Day (oh joy) and then results day in October. Then it's on to Cumbria University. Huzzah.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 39:- Escape**

* * *

Lopmon body-slammed another Super into the wall. Truth be told, she was getting tired of fighting the damn things. She'd lost count of exactly how many she'd beaten to a pulp, and that was still only about a quarter of them. The rest of them were being taken down by Renamon or the clones, and there were just more and more coming.

Not for the first time, Lopmon realised what a daunting task this must be for the clone armies. They were much better than the droids, yes. That much was easy to see. But there were just so many more. It took ten years to grow a clone trooper to something that could fight well on the battlefield. It took about an hour to make a droid. It was like they just got off the assembly line and marched into battle.

Fortunately, the clones were very good at sending them back to the rubbish dump. And now, they had help.

"**LOP TWISTER!"** she cried, spinning into a group of others as they attempted to shoot at her and failed dismally. She sheared them to pieces with her assault, knocking bits of metal everywhere. She leapt out of her attack and into the face of another, causing it to topple over backwards. Lopmon grabbed the blaster arm, which was still shooting away and pointed it at the nearest Supers. They got pulverized by one of their own.

The clones were holding their own extremely well. As of yet, there had been no more deaths, and there had only been a couple more injuries. Rich had been hit in the thigh by a lucky shot from one of the Supers, and Conor had only escaped death thanks to Edge knocking him out of the way, which resulted in Edge getting clipped in the side by a red bolt. But other than that, everyone was still up and shooting.

Renamon sailed past Lopmon, bouncing off a couple of Supers until she was close to the back of the line and then she seized one in a bear-hug and threw it, hard, right down the corridor. Numerous other Supers were bowled over by their flying comrade, toppling to the floor like toddlers that hadn't yet learnt how to walk. Easy prey to the clone blasters.

Bly dashed forward a little, before flattening himself to the wall once more and continuing to fire his blaster pistols. Rex copied his actions and the Commander and the Captain holed many droids, most of which were trying to turn around and shoot Lopmon or Renamon, and not getting the chance to succeed.

"I reckon this is going well!" Bly shouted to Rex over the din of battle.

"Let's hope the Generals are okay!" Rex called back. "And Ahsoka too."

"Not far to go now!" Bly shouted, ducking under a shot and then nailing the Super in the face with a single shot. "Just need to finish off this last batch of clankers and then we'll have a clear shot to the bridge."

Renamon and Lopmon each tackled an individual Super and flipped over the fallen body. Renamon spun in the air, crossed her arms and unleashed a **"DIAMOND STORM!" **upon the first few rows. They were torn to shreds under the attack.

"They're still coming!" shouted Denal, as he sent a Super crashing to the ground by blasting its leg off.

"Sir," said Blade. "I've got one last droid popper. Should I use it?"

"Do it, lad," Bly nodded to his trooper. "It won't be of any use against Ventress."

As Lopmon and Renamon dived back into the battle, Blade took out the small grenade and lobbed it at the approaching droids. Renamon and Lopmon were unconcerned when it landed by their feet. A droid popper couldn't harm them – there was a difference between data and electricity. The droids surrounding them, on the other hand, surged with electric power and crashed to the ground, and at the exact same moment, the blast doors at the other end of the corridors were suddenly blasted inwards.

The clones faltered for a moment, stunned at the sudden crashing. "Did I do that?" Blade asked.

Through the rubble that had lifted into the air on impact with the floor, green lasers surged through the fallen door to spray over and obliterate the droids at the back of the line, which answered Blade's question. Gargomon emerged from the door, one cannon pointed forward and pouring a relentless stream of green energy bolts into the droid lines. His face was grinning with the rush of battle, and leaning against his shoulder, lightsaber in hand, was:-

"Ahsoka!" Rex cried. "And Gargomon. They're alright."

At the sight of their comrades, the clones gained new energy and charged forwards, shouting loud battle-cries. The remaining Super Battle Droids didn't know which way to turn, and their numbers were quickly depleted by laser fire, or being smashed by fist, ear or blaster-butt. One was even sliced in half by a lightsaber when it got too close.

Quickly, the two forces met in the middle of the ruined corridor. Renamon, Lopmon, Bly and Rex immediately crossed over to Gargomon and Ahsoka. Both of them grinned at the sight of their friends and Gargomon's sister and mate.

"Sir," said Rex. "Good to see you all in one piece. You had us worried a few times there. Are you alright?"

"I've had better days," Ahsoka grinned, wincing slightly at her aching muscles.

"You look injured," Bly observed. "What happened?"

"Let's just say I don't recommend getting hit with an electrostaff," Ahsoka grimaced. "Trust me, it's not worth it."

"You'll forgive me for asking this," said Bly. "But how did you manage to get her out from under Ventress' nose, Gargomon."

"I smacked Ventress in the back of the head when she wasn't looking," shrugged Gargomon.

"It was one of the most hilarious and satisfying things that we've ever seen," Lopmon said from Renamon's shoulder. "And she deserves so much worse."

"Does that mean that the secret of your existence is out?" asked Bly.

"No," Renamon shook her head. "Not yet. She never saw her attacker, largely because he came at her from behind and knocked her unconscious with one blow."

"Blimey," chuckled Rex. "Remind me to stay on your good side."

"Momentai," Gargomon laughed. "But Rex, could you give me a hand with Zebra-head here."

"Oh, sure," Rex moved alongside Ahsoka and pulled her other arm over his shoulders, so she was now being supported by two people.

"Thanks guys," Ahsoka coughed a little. "I really appreciate all this. Where's my Master? And Aayla?"

"They're in the hangar, fighting General Grievous," said Lopmon.

"What?" Ahsoka's eyes widened. "Well, we have to go and help them, then." She tried to take a step forward, but she almost fell over. Rex and Gargomon shifted their weight so she could stay upright.

"You're in no state to face off against anyone, Ahsoka," Renamon chided her.

"You don't understand," Ahsoka pleaded. "General Grievous is a deadly opponent. He could kill them or maim them. He could-"

"Rex!" Anakin's voice suddenly broke through the com-channel of Rex's wrist. "Tell me you have some good news for me."

"I do indeed, sir," Rex replied. "We've got Ahsoka here with us now. She was rescued by-"

"No time for details, Rex," they heard Aayla interrupt. "Save them for later. General Grievous is heading your way right now. Wherever you are, make sure it's not in his way."

The clones glanced sharply at each other. Instantly, all of them tightened their grip on their blasters and took on a battle stance. "Copy that," Rex said. "We're on our way back to your position."

Bly turned to the troopers. "Alright lads, you heard the General. We do not want to get caught in a fight with Grievous. Back to the hangar, on the double."

"Trust me when I say that Grievous is deadly," added Rex.

"We learnt that the hard way," Denal put in. He and Rex had both been nearly killed by Grievous on Skytop Station, when they'd had to rescue R2-D2 from his clutches. They'd been the only two clones to survive that mission besides the pilot who'd come to pick them up.

The clones hurried off back the way they'd come, with Arfour rolling along behind them. Rex and Gargomon moved as quickly as they could, but they were hampered by their burden. Ahsoka grunted in pain when they moved too fast, and whenever she did, they slowed down.

"Don't worry about me," Ahsoka chided them. "I'll be fine later, but I won't be if we run into Grievous. I can't help you guys this time.

Gargomon and Rex picked up speed again, doing their bests to ignore Ahsoka's involuntary protests. They made good headway, traversing several corridors, with Renamon in the lead, Lopmon riding on Rich's head in the middle and Bly covering the rear with Rex and Gargomon.

Suddenly, Renamon held up a paw and everyone stopped.

"What's up?" asked Galle, but Renamon motioned for him to be quiet. Her ears were pricking, a classic sign that she'd heard something coming from up ahead. The clones listened with bated breath, but they couldn't hear anything unusual.

But Renamon had heard a familiar clicking sound that she'd picked up from Terriermon's mind. She glanced sharply at the other Digimon, who all looked grim. Ahsoka looked at their expressions and said, "He's coming, isn't he?"

"Yep," Lopmon looked back at her. "We're too late."

"Alright lads," Bly called out. "I trust Renamon's ears. Looks like we've got a battle on our hands. Everybody from up and prepare to fire. Let's leave the droid general in pieces."

"No," Renamon swung around. The clones faltered before they could take up their positions. "We're in no shape to battle Grievous, and doing so would just get us all killed. Everyone line up against the wall and press yourselves against it. Flat as you can."

"Why?" asked Rex. "How will that help?"

"Grievous isn't a droid," Renamon smirked. "He's a cyborg. He has a brain, not a processor."

Bly caught on immediately. "The perception filter."

"Exactly. Now do it. Quick. He's getting closer."

The clones, the Digimon, Ahsoka and Arfour did as they were bid, flattening themselves against the same wall, most of them standing on tip-toe for some reason. Renamon nodded and then concentrated hard, picturing everyone to be in some kind of invisible bubble.

A few seconds later, General Grievous rounded the corner at a run, heading straight back for the bridge. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, the Kaleesh warlord dashed down the centre of the corridor, straight past the clones without registering their presence, straight past the Digimon and straight past the Padawan he was on his way to kill. Then, he rounded the corner and disappeared from view.

The clones were now struggling to contain their laughter. The scourge of the Separatists had been fooled. They'd been completely invisible to him. Renamon smirked and Bly shook his head in wonderment. "I don't know why," he said. "But every time you use that filter I just feel so pale by comparison."

"Oh, don't say that, Bly. You make me blush."

"You know, he can't actually see it, thanks to the fur," Gargomon grinned. Ahsoka was grinning too.

"I could have done with that the last time I ran into Grievous," she chuckled. "His hand around your neck is not the best experience ever."

"Let's keep moving," Lopmon called out. "It won't take Grievous long to realise that the captive's gone. We need to get off this ship right now."

"And then we need to blow it up," Gargomon agreed. "We need to make sure that none of the footage caught on the security cameras lasts long enough for anyone else to see it, otherwise the secret will get out."

"Good point," said Rex. "Come on, sir. Let's get you back to the _Resolute._"

"Good idea," Ahsoka grimaced in pain as they began to move again. They moved swiftly and efficiently, hurrying along the last few corridors and determined to get as far away from Grievous as possible.

* * *

Grievous began to notice bizarre things as he neared the bridge. Firstly, he noticed that a good proportion of the Super Battle Droids that littered the floor looked more like they'd been smashed to pieces rather than hit with a blaster. Surely none of the clones were strong enough to do that. Other looked like they'd been ripped apart by something, and the lack of lightsaber cuts implied that it hadn't been a Jedi. Certainly no clone could do that.

Then, after a certain point, he noticed that all of the blast doors had been blown open rather than opened by an astromech. That was weird in itself – blast doors were designed so that even thermal detonators couldn't break them down. So what had done that?

Thirdly, the carnage seemed to get much closer to the bridge than he'd thought. The clones had got much, much further than he'd anticipated.

But by far the most surprising thing of all was when he reached the bridge itself. What he saw inside made no sense at all.

Every single battle droid looked like they'd been shot to pieces by the clones, but there were no clones in the room. There was no Padawan either. The last remains of rope were hanging from the ceiling and a pair of binder that had been sliced in half by a lightsaber were lying on the floor. But they seemed to be the only thing that a lightsaber had cut into.

And then there was Ventress.

Despite everything, at the sight of Ventress, Grievous stopped, blinked, stared and then roared with laughter. This was too good to be true.

Ventress was awake, but she was lying in the middle of the floor. The rest of the rope she'd used to bind the Togruta girl had now been used on her. Her wrists were tied firmly behind her back, and she was lying on her stomach, with her legs pulled backwards over her legs and tied with the other end of the same rope that bound her hands. The Force-inhibiting collar was firmly clamped around her neck and that left her writhing like an eel in the middle of the floor, hogtied and unable to free herself. On top of that, both her lightsabers were missing.

Ventress glared daggers at Grievous, who was almost falling over due to laughing so hard. She hated him even more now than she had before. "Yes, very funny, General," she snarled. "Now why don't you do something useful, like untie me?"

Grievous continued to laugh, and it only subsided when it broke into a cough that made him stop to catch his breath. Then he turned his gaze on Ventress. "And why would I do that?"

"If you don't, then I'll report you to Count Dooku," Ventress squirmed in her bonds, desperate to free herself.

Grievous ignored her and surveyed the room. Everything pointed to the fact that the clones must have gotten in here and rescued the Padawan. But surely even Ventress was more than a match for a bunch of clones, and if they had got the better of her, which something obviously had, why hadn't they taken her captive after tying her up.

Grievous shook his head and resolved to figure it out later.

"Well," Ventress practically screamed at him. "Get over here and untie me, you useless pile of bolts."

Growling, Grievous took a few steps forward and placed a taloned foot on Ventress' shoulders, pushing her to the ground and halting the squirming. "You think insults are going to make me comply with your demands, Sithling?" he asked, enjoying every moment of this. "I believe that you are forgetting your place again."

"Just untie me, you mutilated creature," Ventress raged. "I swear that when Dooku hears of how you've treated me..."

"I'm sure he'd be interested to know how you managed to get yourself beaten by a bunch of clones."

"I don't know what happened," Ventress snarled. "Something hit me in the back of the head. Now, untie me or I'll make sure that is the last mission that you ever lead, General. I'll ensure that you are disassembled. I'll make sure you're left to die on a planet somewhere where you can-mmph!"

Grievous, rolling his eyes, had reached upwards, igniting one lightsaber and cut the rest of the rope from the ceiling. Picking up the longest strand, he looped it between Ventress' teeth and tied it off, completing the job with an efficient and thick rope-gag.

"Oh, I'm not going to release you, Ventress," Grievous chuckled. "I'm going to make sure that Count Dooku sees this in person and therefore sees what an utter failure you are. Then, you can explain to him what happened in here, and I will be there to see every moment of it."

Grievous took his foot off Ventress' shoulders. Instantly, the Rattataki woman bucked and writhed, screaming abuse into the gag, and no doubt thinking up names for the General. Grievous growled at her impudence and picked up the nearby electrostaff. Activating it, he jabbed it in to Ventress' back. Ventress' scream of pain was muffled by the rope in her mouth, but it was still clear audible. After that, her abuse subsided.

"There's a good little Sithling," Grievous tossed the electrostaff. "Now, come with your master and will go and attend obedience class."

Grievous' arms clicked as they separated into four once again. Wrapping two of them around Ventress' waist, he hauled her into the air, passing her behind him and then pressing her, belly-first, into his back and locking her in place with his two bottom arms. His two other arms clutched lightsabers and ignited them. Then the droid general turned and headed out of the bridge, his hated rival pressed up against his back and struggling against her ropes.

Ventress couldn't believe this was happening to her. She'd found herself in the exact same position as Ahsoka had been in – bound, gagged and electrocuted. Only now she was being taken before her Master in order to face the punishment. And Grievous was taking her back, helpless, simply to further increase her humiliation. Quickly, she began trying to think up stories as to how she came to be in this position, but nothing that came to mind really made her seem any less of a failure.

She swore right then, that she'd get her revenge on Grievous one day. One day soon, the Kalessh warrior was going to pay.

"What's the matter, Ventress?" Grievous chuckled. "Why so quiet? It's like something's got your tongue."

Ventress scowled and muttered, "ll gt y fr thh."

Grievous laughed. "You know what?" he said. "I take back what I said at the start of this mission. I am very, very glad that I decided to go through with it. This has to be one of the best moments that I've ever had. Next time I meet that Padawan, I'll even shake her hand before I do what you couldn't and kill her."

Ventress snarled, but she wasn't really able to do anything else.

* * *

Aayla, Anakin and R2-D2 waited anxiously in the hangar. Anakin had WarGreymon's Brave Shield slung across his back, and the three of them were standing in the wreckage of the MagnaGuards that Artoo had toasted to death. All three were waiting on tenterhooks to find out if Grievous had intercepted the others or not, and whether Ahsoka and Terriermon were alright.

"I'm sure Bly would have let me know if they'd engaged General Grievous," said Aayla, attempting to soothe Anakin's nerves.

"But surely they would have been back by now unless there was a problem," Anakin stated. "It's not like Rex or Ahsoka to take their time like this. They must have run into trouble."

"That might not be the only reason for their late arrival, you know," Aayla disagreed, although in reality she wasn't very sure herself. "Patience, Anakin. They're in good hands with the Digimon around."

"I know," sighed Anakin. "I'm just worried about Snips."

"And you have every right to be," Aayla said. "I'd think you a poor Master if you didn't feel worried for her."

"Thanks," said Anakin.

"By the way," Aayla held up Anakin's lightsaber. "I believe you have something of mine."

Anakin blinked, glancing down at Aayla's lightsaber in his hand. He'd completely forgotten that they'd swapped blades in the heat of the battle against Grievous. Chuckling, he tossed Aayla's lightsaber to her. As she caught it, she, in turn, tossed his back to him.

"You look after that blade, Aayla," Anakin laughed. "That is one good blade. I know, because I used it."

"Yes," Aayla sniggered. "And this is the same blade I've had since I was a Padawan. I've never had mine sliced in half."

"Why does everyone always point that out?" Anakin sighed.

Artoo suddenly whistled and his head spun around as a door opened close by. Clones poured out of it, and at their head was Renamon. Lopmon emerged shortly afterwards, and after that, came Bly, Rex and Gargomon, the latter two of which were supporting Ahsoka.

"Snips!" Anakin cried at the sight of his injured Padawan. He ran over, Aayla hard on his heels and the two of them pulled to a halt by Ahsoka's side. "Are you alright?"

"How many more people are going to ask me that question today?" grunted Ahsoka, although there was a grin on her face. "Good to see you, Master. You too, Aayla."

Anakin's expression hardened considerably. "What happened to you? What did they do?"

"Ventress," said Gargomon. "And an electrostaff. 'Nuff said."

Anakin actually hissed. "Where is she? She can't torture my Padawan and get away with it."

"I'm fine, Master," Ahsoka loosened her grip on Rex and Gargomon and swayed unsteadily, but managed to stay upright on her own. "And trust me when I say that I think Ventress will be out of commission for some time to come."

"May I suggest that we continue this reunion on _our_ cruiser, sirs," Bly put in. "We had a slight encounter with General Grievous, and we'd prefer it if we didn't have another."

"You had an encounter with Grievous?" Echoed Aayla. "How many men did we lose?"

"Just Green, sir," said Bly bitterly. "Shot in the head by a commando droid. We used Renamon's perception filter to evade Grievous."

"Good thinking," Aayla nodded appreciatively.

"Thank you," said Renamon.

"And Bly is right," Aayla said. "Come on, Anakin. Let's give Ahsoka a hand."

The two Jedi took the place of Gargomon and Rex on either side of Ahsoka. Able to use the Force to aid her, they pulled Ahsoka along much more quickly, as the whole group headed for the gunships still parked at the far end of the hangar. Aayla and Anakin deposited Ahsoka on the floor inside one of them, while Renamon and Lopmon took positions on either side of them. Gargomon de-digivolved into Terriermon and joined them.

As the clones piled into the gunships, Aayla and Anakin ran for their Delta-7B fighters, their trusty astromech droids right behind them. The droids activated their rockets and dropped neatly into their little pockets, while the Jedi jumped into the cockpits and lowered the duraglass. The gunships closed the blast doors behind the clones and lifted into the air. All six spacecraft rose and slowly turned around before accelerating out into space, the Jedi starfighters overtaking the gunships to lead the way back to the three patient Republic cruisers.

* * *

The hangar experienced twenty seconds or so of silence before General Grievous entered it again with his bound-and-gagged parcel. The droid General was pleased to note that the _Steathipede_-class shuttle that Ventress had first arrived in was still there. He ran over to it, ignoring Ventress' muffled grunts as she bounced against his back.

He ran up the ramp and into the shuttle, swiftly moving into the cockpit. Finally he passed Ventress over to his front and then dumped her unceremoniously on the floor. He leered at her yelp of pain as she landed on her stomach, unable to prevent a pain language through lack of the Force, and the fact that her hands and feet were tied behind her back.

"Don't worry, Ventress," Grievous mocked his charge. "Soon you'll be back in the hands of your precious Master. Who knows, maybe he'll even let you make your new lightsabers before he feeds you to the nearest Sarlecc."

Ventress cried, "Cnt Duk ll ner hv m kld. Hll hv yr ltsbr clltn fr kpn m td u."

"I can't understand you, Ventress," Grievous chuckled as he deposited himself in the pilot seat. "Maybe you should speak more clearly. Oh wait, you can't." He gave a rasping laugh and then said, "Maybe the Count will let me have you as the centrepiece for my lightsaber collection. You'd have the pride of place, trussed up in the middle of the room."

Ventress paled at the thought of being tied up and kept by the General like a pet, but didn't reply as Grievous took off, veered out of the hangar and quickly programmed the navicomputer.

Shortly afterwards, the shuttle jumped to hyperspace.

* * *

The gunships and the Delta-7B's came to land in the hangar of the _Resolute_. As soon as they got closer to their ship, Anakin had ordered Yularen, with some satisfaction, to open fire on the crippled Separatist Destroyer and tear it to shreds. The Admiral had been happy to oblige and had done just that – the three cruisers bombarded the doomed vessel with everything they had. The laser storm caught the Destroyer amidships and ripped it into two pieces. Any surviving droids were caught in the blast and pulverised, and the data recorded by the security cameras was blasted into nothingness.

The clones set about their various duties, while the Digimon, Aayla and Anakin walked with Ahsoka to the medical bay. Hardcase, Lash, Ridge, Edge and Rich were also heading that way as well, in order to get their injuries from the battle droids checked over and healed with bacta. None of them complained – Ahsoka has got a lot worse than they had.

The medical droid greeted them formally and instructed the clones to lie down on separate beds, while he assisted the Jedi to lower Ahsoka onto another one. The Digimon looked on, feeling quite helpless.

"What can you do for her, doctor?" Aayla asked the medical droid.

"She should be fine in time," said the medical droid. "If you like, I can give her a mild sedative that may shut down certain areas of her nervous system for about half an hour. That should ease the pain for her."

"Do it," said Anakin, and the medical droid turned away to prepare the substance.

The three Tamers appeared in the doorway. Suzie ran over to Terriermon and engulfed him in one of her bonecrushers, and while she did she stared over the top of his head at Ahsoka, horrified at her condition. Rika and Henry also walked over and looked on as the Jedi and the medical droid busied themselves over her.

"Good job, Terriermon," said Henry, kneeling down to his partner and extracting him from Suzie's grip. "I'm proud of you. You might have saved her life – I don't know how much more of that she could take."

"If we ever meet that bitch again," Rika glanced up at Renamon. "We will tear her to shreds."

"I think Ahsoka gets first crack at her," said Renamon. "But if she's not around then I won't hold back."

"And we'll make sure we win," Rika rarely looked so angry nowadays. Her present mood reminded everyone of what she used to be like before she'd got to know Henry and Takato. "She doesn't deserve to live."

"And those clones that died trying to rescue her didn't deserve to die either," said Renamon. "Ventress has a lot to answer for. And I want to make sure that I'm there to see it."

"What makes you think we will meet her again?" asked Lopmon. "Perhaps she was killed in the explosion of the enemy shuttle."

Henry shook his head. "I don't think so," he said. "Admiral Yularen said that a few moments before they opened fire, a shuttle left the ship and jumped to hyperspace. I'm willing to bet that Grievous was on board, and possibly Ventress as well."

Terriermon scowled. "I don't think Ventress realizes just how much trouble she's in if she ever crosses paths with Ahsoka again."

"And she'll probably be looking for her now," said Rika. "From what I've heard, Ventress holds grudges. Getting knocked out and tied up by a helpless, tortured Padawan, or so she thinks, isn't going to look good for her."

"I fear Rika is right," said Renamon gravely. "Ventress isn't going to rest until she gets her revenge now."

"Momentai guys," said Terriermon. "Hopefully Dooku will give her a nice, long punishment and then, when she gets back, she won't stand a chance."

"It was so scary," said Suzie, picking up Lopmon in her arms. "Watching her electrocute her through Henry's Digivice. I couldn't watch."

"I don't blame you, Suzie," Terriermon muttered. "I could barely watch myself. What will you do if you ever see Ventress, Suzie?"

Suzie glared defiantly up at them all, particularly Henry, daring him to say no as she replied, "I'll biomerge with Lopmon and then we'll blast her to pieces with our lightning bolts. She's evil, like Ogudomon. And evil things have to go, right?" She looked unsure of herself at that last word, suddenly looking a little bit frightened at her own ferocity.

"Good girl," said Renamon. "None of us have any qualms about killing her. She's called down the thunder, and if she meets Cherubimon, then I mean quite literally. Electric for electric."

Suzie looked pleased with herself. Henry wasn't quite so pleased with the idea of his little sister acting so bloodthirsty, but he didn't try to stop her from thinking those thoughts, because he knew he'd do the same as MegaGargomon.

The Tamers and the Digimon turned to listen to the conversation between the Jedi. The medical droid had injected the sedative and Ahsoka was in much less pain, but was now feeling quite sluggish.

"I'm sorry, Master," she addressed Anakin.

"For what?" asked Anakin, puzzled. "You're not to blame for Ventress' actions."

"But," Ahsoka looked away. "I feel like... like I... you know... failed you, Master. I had to wait for you guys to show up before I could get away, and I got tortured by that bogwitch. I don't think I'm good enough to be your Padawan. Maybe if I was a better student..."

"Ahsoka," Aayla interrupted. "Don't ever think like that. Plenty of Jedi Master have fallen into the hands of General Grievous and Asajj Ventress, and most of them don't come out of it alive. You're still a Padawan, so you have much to learn, and yet you demonstrated resilience worthy of any Master. You should feel proud."

"Aayla's right, Snips," nodded Anakin. "Don't expect too much of yourself. It's true that you have a long way to go, but you can't expect to get everything right the first time. We all make mistakes – I know that from experience. I think I made twice as many mistakes as you have by now when I was your age."

"Yes, but it's like a nagging feeling inside of me," Ahsoka confessed, feeling better after the praise but not completely better. "I don't think either of you would have found yourselves in my situation. You're just too good."

"No?" Anakin raised an eyebrow. "You weren't there on Geonosis, Snips. Master Kenobi and I were both captured by the Separatist and chained to poles, and then attacked by several humongous monsters."

"I can attest to that," smirked Aayla. "I was there."

"Well, true," said Ahsoka. "But you managed to get the better of that situation on your own, though. I had to wait for Terriermon's help."

"I really don't know why you're so upset," said Anakin.

"I think I do," said Aayla. "You're afraid that we won't think you're good enough and send you away, aren't you?"

Ahsoka blinked. "Yes. How did you know?"

"I've been watching you, Ahsoka," said Aayla. "You're constantly trying to outdo your Master. I think you believe that you have to keep proving yourself to stay with us."

"Is that true?" asked Anakin.

"Yes," sighed Ahsoka.

Anakin placed a hand over his Padawan's. "Ahsoka," he grinned. "I'd never do that. I don't think I could have a better Padawan. Everyone else would just cramp my style. I'd never send you away."

"Really?" Ahsoka perked up.

"Never," Anakin confirmed.

"And if he does," Aayla placed her own hand over Anakin's and Ahsoka's. "Then I'll personally kick his ass until I can get him to see sense."

"There's that Terriermon influence again," chuckled Ahsoka. "You weren't like that on Maridun."

"I loosened up, but that's not the point. My point is, we're the A-Team. We look out for each other."

Aayla and Anakin held their hands over Ahsoka's for a few more seconds before withdrawing. "Thank you, Masters," the Padawan smiled weakly. "But I still feel like I should have done more."

"What's it going to take to get that out of your system?" sighed Anakin.

There was the distinct sound of Terriermon clearing his throat. The Jedi looked around to see that he'd hopped onto the foot of the bed without any of them noticing.

"If I may," he said.

"Go ahead," said Anakin.

"I think it'd be best if the rest of us stepped outside," said Renamon.

Aayla and Anakin turned to look at her quizzically. Rika and Henry looked pointedly at Terriermon and Ahsoka, and then at the door. They got the message and, with a brief nod to Ahsoka, they followed the Tamers, Renamon and Lopmon out of the room.

"What's going on?" asked Anakin.

"Terriermon's going to tell Ahsoka something that should make her feel a bit better," said Renamon. "You'll forgive me for saying this, but it's quite personal."

Terriermon walked up the side of the bed and plonked himself down next to Ahsoka's shoulder. "How's my favourite Togruta?" he asked.

"Were you listening to every word I was saying?" she asked.

"Kinda," Terriermon shrugged. "Couldn't really help but overhear what you were saying about you thinking that you weren't good enough, because you got captured by the slime of the galaxy. Well, I've got two things to say to you about that."

"I bet I know what one of them is," chuckled Ahsoka.

"The first is Momentai."

"Knew it."

"And as for the second," said Terriermon. "I'm going to tell you a story."

"A story?" Echoed Ahsoka, puzzled.

"Well, an anecdote to be exact," Terriermon shrugged. "But who cares about that? The thing is that you're not the only person I know that has found themselves in a situation like yours. And you aren't the first person I've had to rescue in that way."

"I'm not?"

"Renamon and I never told you the story of how we got together, did we?"

"Not really," Ahsoka murmured. "You said something about a mating ritual though."

"That's only a small part of what drew us together," said Terriermon. "Remember, this happened after we gave the D-Reaper an ass-whupping, so Renamon was an incredibly seasoned fighter at this point. Anyway, we'd been stranded in the Digital World thanks to Janyu's pals downloading a program into me that got into the D-Reaper. But when we managed to find a way back, we were separated in the human world. Renamon and I came out at the same point.

"But we were surprised and jumped by a bunch of humans."

"Sorry?" Ahsoka blinked. She couldn't imagine anyone getting the drop on Terriermon, and Renamon even less so.

"Yep," Terriermon wrinkled his nose. "A bunch of perfectly ordinary human beings against two incredibly powerful Digital Monsters. Not good odds for them, is it? But they still managed to get the better of us, because they surprised us. They used guns with a special kind of ammunition – a sticky compound that cemented Renamon and me to the wall."

"After this, Renamon was taken and tied to a pole, just like you were, by a creepy git who called himself Goro. He didn't torture Renamon – he wanted to do something worse. He wanted to rape her."

"What!" Ahsoka cried so loudly that all the nearby clones and the medical droid turned to look.

"It's, kind of, a private story," Terriermon whispered.

"Sorry," Ahsoka muttered. "But why would he want to do that?"

"Because he was a pervert and a furfag," shrugged Terriermon. "The point is that I was the only person there that was able to stave him off from getting what he wanted thanks to my Bunny Blast attack, but were held captive for three whole days before I was able to rescue Renamon."

"How did you do it?"

"A combination of trickery on my part and stupidity on his, plus the help of Isis the jackal," said Terriermon.

"What happened to Goro?"

"He went to prison, but then he escaped and tried again, only to have his head smashed in by Mihiramon, a large Ultimate level Digimon who we'd made friends with."

"Wow," Ahsoka breathed. "I can understand why you didn't tell us that one. That's more embarrassing than mine."

"True," said Terriermon. "So do you see what I'm getting at? There are several morals when you compare that story and what just happened to you. The first is that even the best of best, and Renamon clearly falls into that category, can be caught and restrained if the conditions are right. She was no more expecting to be caught with a sticky glue than you were to be targeted with a tractor beam.

"The second point here is that you don't always have to rely on yourself. Think about Renamon. Rape is just about the worst possible thing that can happen to you, and she would have had it done to her if I hadn't intervened.

"The third point is that, despite how bad these situations may seem, good things to come from them. If that had never happened, then Renamon and me would never have become mated, and we might never have found out that Lopmon was my sister in the end. I believe the fact that we were missing also drew Henry and Rika close together, because everybody else had got their partners back except them. As for you, I think your bond with Anakin has grown, not to mention your bond with everybody else on this ship. Look on the bright side of things. Believe me when I say that you didn't fail in anything. What happened to you could happen to anyone, even Renamon."

Ahsoka was silent for several seconds before saying, "That was unusually profound for you, Terriermon."

"Hey, I can be profound when I want to be. I just choose not to be."

"But you made a special exception for me?"

"You've been through a tough ordeal," shrugged Terriermon. "But you came out of it and you're on the mend. That's all that matters. And if I see Ventress again, I'll do a Mihiramon and bash her head in."

"Thanks, Terriermon," said Ahsoka, smiling sincerely. "I'm glad you're my friend."

"I'm glad I'm your friend too," Terriermon grinned cheekily. "And vice versa."

"Suddenly my ordeal doesn't seem so bad."

"Oh, it was bad," said Terriermon. "Unlike with Renamon, I wasn't able to stop her from carrying out the torture. I'd say you're roughly equal. Just think about what I said, yeah? And about what Anakin and Aayla said."

Ahsoka nodded. Terriermon's speech had made her feel much better about herself. Her self-doubt had entirely evaporated now that she'd learned that the practically invincible Renamon had been in something just as bad. Sluggishly, trying to move despite the anaesthetic, she rolled onto her side.

"Whoa, what are you doing?" Terriermon stood up. "You should be resting not trying to get up."

"I'll rest," Ahsoka said, "and I'm not trying to get up. I just wanted to do this." She extended one arm and pulled Terriermon into a hug, cradling him like the stuffed animal he'd once pretended to be. Terriermon was a little unsure about how to react to this, but he complied, wrapping his long ears around Ahsoka's neck and ignoring the "Daawww," that came from Rich, and from Renamon and Lopmon in his head.

Ahsoka then released Terriermon and lay back down. "Could you do me one more favour, Terriermon?" she asked.

"Sure. Shoot."

"Could you tell my Master that our prank war is still on?"

Terriermon burst out laughing. "That's the Ahsoka I'm looking for. Can do. Just get some sleep. We'll probably be heading back to Coruscant soon."

"Oh joy," Ahsoka rolled her eyes. "I can explain how I got captured to the whole Jedi Council. That'll make me look good."

"Don't sweat it. I'll be there the whole time, slagging off Ventress with just about every insult I can think of, and trust me when I say that I've been looking for an opportunity to use some of the more choice ones. I reckon now's as good a time as any."

Ahsoka chuckled, and then shut her eyes, settling down to sleep. Terriermon hopped off the bed and trotted over to the door. It opened for him and he stepped outside into the hallway where the others were all waiting for him.

"Did it work?" asked Anakin.

"I think so," Terriermon shrugged. "She's trying to get some sleep now anyway. And she said the prank war is still on."

Anakin chuckled. "Yep, she's fine."

"Well," said Henry. "At least we all got out of here in one piece."

"Just barely," Anakin laughed. "I'd have been diced up if it wasn't for Aayla's quick thinking with that shield thing."

"It's a remarkable thing," nodded Aayla. "There are few solid substances that can block a lightsaber, but the shield handled that with no problem. We should begin trying to incorporate it into some of our tanks and ships straight away."

The whole group began to head back up to the bridge as they spoke.

"It'll probably be very difficult," said Henry. "It's a very strong and light metal, but it's ridiculously difficult to shape. I don't reckon we'll be able to make enough in one go to create an entire vehicle with it. But we could just paste a thin layer of it over some key areas."

"I'll get some clones and start working on it immediately," nodded Anakin.

"And I believe there's another project you got to work on," grinned Terriermon.

"You mean the new controls for the ship?"

"You better get right on it," sniggered Rika. "If I know Terriermon, and trust me I do, he's never going to leave you alone until you do it."

"I'll see what I can do then," said Anakin.

Suzie suddenly changed the topic by saying, "I'm hungry again."

"Already?" Henry blinked.

"I'm a growing girl," Suzie pouted.

"I'm quite hungry too," Terriermon agreed.

"Well, that's hardly surprising," Lopmon rolled her eyes.

"Come to think of it, it might not be a bad idea to visit the mess hall," nodded Anakin. "I could do with a plate of soypro."

"I agree," said Rika. "We're probably going to be sent on another mission the moment we get back to Coruscant anyway."

"The mess hall it is," Aayla knelt down with her back to Suzie. "I'll give you a ride there, Suzie."

"Yippee! Piggyback!" Suzie jumped up and wrapped her arms around Aayla's neck.

"Watch the lekku, kid" Aayla said as she straightened up, wrapping her arms under Suzie's legs to make a nice seat as they kept walking. Terriermon scrambled onto Henry's shoulder and Lopmon landed on Anakin's head. The procession walked off into the distance, each thinking similar thoughts, such as where would they be heading next, where were Ventress and Grievous now, and how long would it take before they crossed paths with either of them again?

"By the way, Anakin, Aayla," Terriermon said from Henry's shoulder. "I believe we may have stumbled onto something very important."

"And what would that be?" asked Aayla.

"Ever heard of Lord Sidious?"

* * *

Count Dooku hadn't received any word of progress over Sernpidal by either Grievous or Ventress. This wasn't unusual, but he did get irritated when not informed of events whenever possible. Had the plan worked or not? Was Skywalker's Padawan still in their custody?

He could only guess.

But when he saw the _Sheathipede_-class shuttle that belonged to Asajj Ventress coming to land at the secret Sith base on the planet Korriban, he felt that he knew the answer. His disciples had failed him. Again.

He'd need an explanation for this.

The Sith Lord strode into the conference room and sat at the chair at one end of the long table, to await the arrival of whoever would be coming through the door to meet. As he did, he began to prepare a speech designed to ridicule whichever of them came through the door, after first demanding that they tell him what had happened.

But even he was stunned when General Grievous walked in, carrying a gagged and hogtied Asajj Ventress over one shoulder like a piece of luggage. The Rattataki grunted with every step he took and snarled furiously, wrenching to get free of her bindings in a last desperate attempt to avoid utter humiliation. But the bonds were just too tight. It was too late. Dooku had already seen her in this position.

Grievous lifted her off his shoulder and deposited her on the table, placing a hand on her hide and forcing it down to the tabletop, thus forcing Ventress to look Dooku in the eyes. Ventress made some muffled apologies to her Master as she continued to squirm and try and pull her ankles and hands apart, but it was no good.

After Dooku stared at Ventress for a few seconds, disappointment etched across every part of his face, he turned to look up at Grievous. "General," he said imperiously. "I trust there is an explanation as to why you have bound and gagged my disciple."

"Oh, I assure you, my lord," Grievous chuckled – he'd never been happier to fail in a mission in his life before – "That the only feature I added to this picture is the gag, and that was only because she would not stop insulting me. The rest of this was done by the Togruta girl we took captive."

"Oh?" Dooku looked down at Ventress, whose face was reddening with shame and embarrassment. "Go on."

"The Jedi managed to take out our hyperdrive and board our vessel," said Grievous. "While I went to confront them, Ventress took the captive to the bridge. When I returned, I found that the captive had escaped her bindings and used them on Ventress herself."

"I see," Dooku murmured. Ventress sagged and stopped pulling at the ropes. "Well, I shall hear Ventress' version of things in one moment. But first, Grievous, did you slay the Jedi?"

"Unfortunately not," said Grievous.

Dooku studied Grievous' face for a few moments, and then said, "Very well. Now Grievous, if you would care to ungag Ventress. I wish to speak with her."

Grievous leered as he inserted his finger into the knot at the back of Ventress' head and tore it open with one swift movement. Ventress spat the offending rope out and looked to Dooku imploringly, silently asking him to get Grievous to untie her as well. Dooku ignored the look and said, "Explain."

Stammering, Ventress told them everything. She hadn't been able to come up with a convincing story, so she reluctantly told the truth. She told them over how she's strung Ahsoka to the ceiling, of how Ahsoka had mentioned Lord Sidious, how Ventress had attempted to take the information of her, first by threats and then by torture with the electrostaff. Grievous chuckled at this point, remembering how he'd used the same electrostaff on Ventress later. Oh the irony.

Ventress scowled and continued, stating how something unknown had suddenly slammed into the back of her head and knocked her senseless, and when she'd woken up, she'd found the captive gone, the droids dead and the collar and ropes on her instead.

Dooku listened with a growing expression of irritation and disbelief as Ventress told her story. When she'd finished, he said, "Well, you have been very careless Ventress."

"Yes, my lord," Ventress looked down at the table she was lying on. Denying it would be pointless.

"This is a serious setback in our designs," Dooku stood up and walked over to Ventress and Grievous. "The fact that the Jedi have now learned about Lord Sidious' existence is a serious blow."

"I don't believe she knows who he is, my lord," Ventress spoke up.

"But they will put their resources into trying to find out," said Dooku. "And if they discover that Lord Sidious is the main leader behind this wall and not me, then they will put all available resources into finding him. If they discover him, then all may be lost. You have been a big disappointment to me, Ventress."

"Yes, my lord," Ventress repeated. "I will take any punishment you offer me without complaint."

Dooku studied her for a moment, then said, "I have always considered myself a merciful man. I shall not kill you, Ventress."

"Thank you, my lord."

"But you will not go unpunished," Dooku stated. "General, if you would care to regag her."

Grievous chuckled as he took up the rope again. Ventress squirmed, but she was unable to do anything as the cyborg pulled the rope between her teeth again and knotted it off behind her head, even tighter than last time.

"Grievous," said Dooku. "I am placing Asajj Ventress in your custody. You shall take her with you wherever you go for the next four months. You are not to kill her, and if she dies I shall hold you responsible. You will keep her tied up like this throughout the whole period and you will only ungag her to allow her to eat and drink."

Ventress thrashed and fought. Four months under the humiliation of staying helpless in front of Grievous, in the same position Ahsoka had tied her in, was just about as bad, if not worse, than death. It was the worst punishment she could think of.

Grievous scooped her up under one arm and said, "Yes, my lord. Don't worry, Ventress. I may be able to teach you things about leading an army, but I doubt it."

His rasping laugh mingled with Ventress' stifled screams of fury.

* * *

I reckon Ventress is getting her just desserts. She's an important character for later on, but she's going to be out of commission for some time now. Heh-heh-heh. Hope you all enjoyed this chapter, and Terriermon's unusual deepness.

* * *

Next time...

Back to the Digital World? Will they find who they're looking for? Will he help them if they do? Will they find anything else?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 40 : The Search For GranKuwagamon Part 2**


	40. The Search For GranKuwagamon Part 2

Bookworm Gal – I have a request for you. I know that you have a friend on DeviantArt, ImpKat, who posts some pictures of your fanfic for you. I've got a little something that I made of mine – a Movie Poster design for Secret of the 327th. Do you reckon it would be possible for me to send it to you and you to her so she can post it?

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 40:- The Search For GranKuwagamon Part 2**

* * *

"Poke."

"Nggh."

"Poke."

"Zubufuj?"

"Poke."

"Eh, whazzat?"

"Poke."

Impmon groaned again at the feeling of somebody poking his shoulder. He'd had quite a fresh, rejuvenating sleep, and it was being interrupted by something prodding him. After the first two his sleep-befuddled mind probably reasoned that it was a twig of some sort, but then he began to register that somebody was saying "Poke," whenever it happened.

Shaking off the feeling of sleep, Impmon opened his eyes.

He found himself staring into a pair of dark green ones.

"Poke," said the owner of the eyes, prodding his shoulder.

Impmon yelled in shock. Lilamon yelled as well and leapt backwards from where she'd been leaning over him to poke him. Impmon took a few moments to remember where he was and what he was doing here and who Lilamon was. After he did that, it took him a few more moments to recover his breath from his rude awakening.

Then, he said, "What was that for?"

"It's time to get going," Lilamon said cheerfully. "Up on your feet, sunshine. We've got a Mega level bug to find today."

"And the poking?"

"Why not?" Lilamon shrugged. Then she turned away and leaned over Ai and began to prod her, saying "Poke," whenever she did.

Impmon blinked and turned at the sound of barely-contained laughter. His eyes fell on Diatrymon and Wingdramon, the latter of which was hovering a few feet above the ground with his great wings outstretched to the sides. The both of them grinned at Impmon, though it was quite difficult to see how Diatrymon managed it with his great beak.

"Probably should have warned you about that," Wingdramon chuckled. "That's Lilamon's favourite way of waking people up in the morning. We're not entirely sure why he does it but no amount of persuasion has made her drop the habit."

"She's the most annoying alarm clock you'll ever have," Diatrymon added. "Or need, because she always wakes up at the same time."

"Thanks for letting me know," Impmon muttered dryly. "At least you guys had to go through it too."

"You'd be wrong there," said Wingdramon. "When you travel around with her, your body adjusts itself to wake up before she does."

"And you didn't tell me because...?"

"Because it was fun to watch," Diatrymon let out a brief, raucous laugh that was more like a screech.

Grumbling, Impmon got to his feet and dusted himself off as Lilamon woke up his partners. Looking around the clearing, he saw that most of the others were already awake. Ryo was talking quietly with Pajiramon and Sandiramon. MetalSeadramon hung patiently. Cyberdramon was still standing on the branch above in exactly the same position he'd been in before Impmon went to sleep, implying that he'd been up there all night and probably hadn't slept at all. Behemoth stood nearby, waiting patiently for his rider to move off.

"Poke."

"I'm up, I'm up," Ai muttered, pulling herself to her feet and rubbing her eyes to get rid of the tiredness. Mako was still slumbering, so it was his turn to get the Lilamon treatment, which she promptly began to give to him.

"How much more ground have we got to cover today?" asked Impmon. "We've been looking for a damn solution for so long I've almost forgotten what the solution is for."

"We should be there in a few hours," Wingdramon explained. "GranKuwgamon likes to live in small groves mostly, and his current one is about six miles from here. If we continue at the speed we've been going at then we'll be there within a couple of hours."

"Good," Impmon grinned. "And then we can all go home for tea and cookies and, in my case, an ass-kicking from Mrs. Terada."

"Who?"

"Ai and Mako's mum."

"Good luck with that," Diatrymon laughed. "Wish I could be there to see it."

Impmon gave him the evil-eye, but for some reason it didn't look so intimidating when he wasn't in his Mega form.

Mako finally woke up after Lilamon's poke treatment and gradually everyone managed to work themselves into a state of activity. Behemoth rumbled as Impmon clambered aboard him, pulling the twins on behind him.

"Let's get going," said Ryo. "The sooner we find GranKuwagamon the better, in my opinion."

"Let's hope he'll actually be compliant," said Pajiramon.

"And that he'll be sufficient enough to get the missing Tamers and their partners back," added Sandiramon.

"What if he's not?" Ai asked, glancing across at Impmon. "What if he can't get them back and we'll never be able to see them again?"

"You're starting to think these thoughts now?" Impmon asked. "When we're this close? Typical. We spend ages looking for something and then begin to doubt it when we're nearly there."

"But what will we do then?" Mako agreed. "If he's not enough."

Impmon smiled cheerfully, even thought the idea didn't fill him with cheer at all. "Well, I don't know about you, but if he's not the answer we're looking for then I've decided I'm going to fall into a catatonic state of despair, put my head in a bucket and eat packets of Revels forever."

"I didn't understand half of that sentence," Lilamon floated over their heads. "But it sounded good. Now, if you'd all like to follow the pretty, pink fairy and these two ugly mugs then we'll lead you to GranKuwagamon."

"I confess that I'm not the handsomest Digimon around," Wingdramon sniffed. "But I'll thank you not to refer to me as ugly."

"Aww, you know I was kidding. Hey Cybs. Are you coming or have you frozen?"

Cyberdramon snarled aggressively and turned to face Lilamon, who faltered in surprise.

"I'd be careful what you say around Cyberdramon," Ryo warned her. "He hates being called Cybs. That's Terriermon's name for him, and he only just puts up with it."

"Point taken," muttered Lilamon.

"Hey," Diatrymon called from where he was standing several metres away. "Are you guys coming or what? If we dawdle then he might have moved house before we get there. He does that."

"Lead the way," Ryo nodded, clambering onto Cyberdramon's back, and holding his wings to keep him up. "Relax, Cyberdramon," he whispered to his partner. "Don't lost control again, like you did with MarineDevimon. These guys are our friends."

Cyberdramon's only response was a growl, which left Ryo wondering if any of what he'd just said had gone in. He remembered that it had taken Cyberdramon weeks quite some time to trust any of the Digimon of the other Tamers. Back when he'd first met Kenta, Kazu and Rika, Cyberdramon had been quite quiet and calm looking. But Ryo knew that he'd been keeping an eye on Renamon, itching for an opportunity to fight her.

Fortunately, she'd never given him the excuse.

Diatrymon walked through the forest in a way that made him look like he was strutting – his gait was quite stick like and his talons also left large grooves in the ground wherever he took a step. Lilamon floated backwards, her hands behind her head and her legs crossed, looking like she was sunbathing as she chatted amiably with all and sundry. Wingdramon just hovered forwards in a way that didn't look real. Somehow, he managed to avoid crashing into any tree trunks despite the fact his wings remained at full width at all times.

Cyberdramon walked after them, Ryo on his back, and with Behemoth and his three passengers going at a calm pace that the motorbike usually didn't use. Pajiramon and Sandiramon brought up the rear, and MetalSeadramon hovered overhead, moving from side to side so he looked like he was swimming through the air.

Lilamon seemed to have a habit of making one-way conversations. She'd ask Ai or Mako a question, and then would probably attempt to guess the answer before either of them could respond. Diatrymon and Wingdramon found it difficult to not chuckle when they turned around to see the expressions of bemusement on the faces of everyone else.

They encountered other Digimon twice along the way. A Gotsumon wondered across the path at one point and just stared blankly at the strange procession that walked straight past him, none of them really registering his presence, except Cyberdramon, who stopped and looked like he was about to pounce until Ryo noticed the problem and turned him aside.

They also had a brief encounter with another Digimon, when Wingdramon suddenly stopped and motioned to be quiet with one hand. As the others fell silent, he listened for a moment and said, "Here comes the runaway."

"Again?" Diatrymon asked. "Does he ever rest?"

"I don't think he does," sighed Wingdramon. He turned to everyone else and said, "If you'd all care to step aside."

Bemused, everyone complied, just as a large Digimon shaped like a rhinoceros encrusted with gold armour suddenly charged out of the foliage, barrelled straight past them and disappeared into the bushes again.

"Oooookay," Impmon said, staring at the spot where the Digimon had vanished. "What was that all about?"

"Don't have a clue," Lilamon shrugged. "But that's Rhinomon for you."

"He charges around all the time for no apparent reason at all," Diatrymon added. "I don't think I've ever seen him stand still."

"And if you get in the way, apparently you are responsible for getting run over," finished Wingdramon. "We've all learned that one the hard way."

"Has the Digital World descended into a place of psychoes since I was last here?" Impmon asked. "First that Hawkmon, now that dude."

"I might resent that remark," said Wingdramon. "But I think you may be right, to a degree. I believe the place makes even less sense now than it used to."

"Ah well," shrugged Impmon.

"Are we nearly there yet?" both Ai and Mako asked simultaneously, the classic sign with them that boredom had set in some time ago, as it does with all small children.

"Yeah," said Diatrymon. "Should be there in about half an hour."

"It's about time," Impmon agreed. "No offense to you Behemoth, but even you can give people pressure-sores if they sit on you for too long."

Behemoth rumbled slightly.

The party continued and the twins found themselves counting off the minutes – both counting at different speeds and neither of them the correct one – until they finally reached where they were going. Conversation lulled to a halt for the last stage of the journey, and eventually the trees came to an abrupt end, and they found themselves in a reasonably sized clearing. In the centre were several bushes but other than that all the twigs and potential debris had been cleared out and deposited in the ring of trees. Other than that, there didn't seem to be any dominating features.

Ai's final count was thirty-seven minutes. Mako had counted forty-two. It had, in fact, been about twenty-seven.

Everyone looked around the clearing expectantly. But there was no sign of any giant, black bug. No familiar face came over to greet them. Nothing at all.

"Hello?" Lilamon called out into the clearing. "GranDad? You there? Hellooooo?"

"GranDad?" Impmon sniggered. "I like it."

"Thanks," said Lilamon. "But I don't think he's here right now."

"He might have gone down to the creek for a drink of water or something," suggested Diatrymon. "Should we lead them there?"

"No," said Wingdramon. "We might miss him if we do that. We should wait here until he comes back and hope that he hasn't moved on."

"This is actually quite anticlimactic," observed Lilamon. "The intrepid Tamers reach the end of their journey to find that the one they seek is not there. There might as well be a sign on a tree that says "Gone Fishing," or something."

"You know GranKuwagamon can't write," Wingdramon rolled his eyes.

Ai and Mako groaned at the news. "This is so annoying," said Ai. "We come to the Digital World, we wander through a desert for ages, then we head to the turkey and he tells us to come here and then we get here and he's not here."

"Adventures are boring," agreed Mako.

"Oh, this isn't a real adventure," said Ryo. "This is more of a voyage of discovery."

"It's still downright boring," muttered Impmon, slumping onto his back and almost rolling off Behemoth's seat. "This is literally quite typical for me. I try so hard, and then I get nowhere."

"Do not be too disheartened, Impmon," Sandiramon reproached him. "GranKuwagamon will be here soon, I am sure of it. Just have a little more patience."

"Honestly," Impmon griped. "I've had it up to here with patience." He raised his hand as high in the air as it would go, which wasn't that far. "Why can't things just go our way for once?"

"You might want to hold that thought," MetalSeadramon looked down from above, towering over everyone as he always did.

"Why?" Impmon moaned. "I'm just about losing it with all this running around and hoping for the best."

"Um, Impmon..." Lilamon tried to say.

"I mean, this has just been one wild goose chase, hasn't it?"

"Well, I wouldn't say that..." Ryo began.

"How do you do it, Ryo?" Impmon said. "How do you stay so calm when something as frustrating as this happens. This is so bloody annoying..."

"Shall I wait until you've finished before I come back?" asked a deep, bass voice that Impmon hadn't heard for months. The little grousing Rookie sat bolt upright and found himself staring at GranKuwagamon, who was standing at the other end of the clearing. It looked like he'd just melted out of the shadows like a wraith, or, well, a bug.

GranKuwagamon hadn't changed at all since they'd last met. His four red insect wings swept outwards from his thorax behind him, as did four of his six feet. One pair of these was planted on the ground, while the other two were raised in the air and appeared to be more like hands. His back two legs were at the end of his abdomen and were much bulkier than the others. His fingers and toes consisted of huge, silver claws that spread out across the ground. His head was quite small, with two red eyes set in them, but they had three huge additions. As well as the usual insect-like mouthparts he also had two enormous sickle-shaped pincers protruding out in front that increased his body length by half again, while a huge horn pointed backwards from his skull. His exoskeleton was charcoal black, and to complete the image, his neck was covered in fuzzy down like on a bumblebee.

Impmon blinked, and suddenly felt like an idiot. He also silently thanked GranKuwagamon for stopping him before he continued with an embarrassing tirade.

At last, here was the Digimon who might be able to help them out.

"We told you he lived here," said Lilamon, a little smugly.

GranKuwagamon walked forwards towards them, only using four of his six legs to do so. He stopped before them and stared silently at them. He was a Digimon who wasn't particularly known for his conversational skills or for really saying anything at all except on occasion. He didn't ask for an explanation of what was going on. He just waited for one.

"It's good to see you again, GranKuwagamon," Ryo said, sliding down from Cyberdramon's back. "And I meant that quite literally. We've been looking for you for some time, or at least for someone who can provide what we think you can."

GranKuwagamon showed that he'd acknowledged what he'd just heard with no response at all, except to turn his eyes on Ryo.

"Er, how've you been?" asked Ryo.

GranKuwagamon stayed silent.

"Okay, obviously trying small talk isn't really going to do much good," shrugged Ryo. "Let's try it this way. We need your help."

"Badly," added Impmon, jumping down from Behemoth's back. "Old Zhuqiaomon gave us some advice to come to you. He said that you could give us what we need, potentially. And I hope to Fanglongmon you can."

"Otherwise he'll go into a catatonic state of despair," Lilamon ticked them off on her petals. "But a bucket over his head and eat Revels for the rest of his life – whatever they are."

"Yes, thanks Petal-head."

"Welcome," she giggled.

"You gonna help us?" asked Impmon.

"He doesn't even know why we need his help yet, Impmon," pointed out Ryo.

"Oh yeah. Good point."

"Maybe we should try not to confuse him," Ryo added.

"Ah, cram it. You do the talking then. I'm no good at this sort of thing."

"We noticed," said Ryo, then turned to GranKuwagamon. "Is it true that your Dimension Scissors attack can cut through the fabric of space itself and allow you to cross into alternate dimensions?"

Everyone watched, breath bated, as GranKuwagamon seemed to take a few moments to process what Ryo had just said. It was like one of those tense moments on competition television programs where the announcer waits for five minutes before announcing the winner.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, GranKuwagamon nodded his head.

"Yes!" Impmon punched the air with a gloved fist. "At least the old Zhuqster didn't give us bogus info. If he had then I'd-"

"You'd what?" Pajiramon smirked. "Kick his butt?"

"You bet your crossbow he would," Lilamon grinned.

"Don't let him hear you say that," said Diatrymon.

"Perhaps it would be a good idea if we stayed on topic," said Sandiramon.

"I agree," said Ryo.

Sandiramon continued, "And it might also be a good idea to start from the very beginning. Tell GranKuwagamon everything."

"But we've heard the story before," pouted Mako. "It's getting boring now."

"Yeah," added Ai pointlessly.

"Well, hopefully this'll be the last time you do," said Wingdramon.

"And if it isn't," Lilamon added. "Impmon will go into a catatonic-"

"Yeah, yeah, we get that," Impmon interrupted.

"Alright then," Ryo took a breath, organised his thoughts to make sure he wouldn't leave anything out, and said, "GranKuwgamon, here's the deal."

And he began.

GranKuwagamon listened patiently, which was all he ever really did when someone spoke to him anyway, as Ryo told the tale for the fifth time. First it had been to Rika's mother and grandmother, then MetalSeadramon, then the Devas, then Zhuqiaomon. Thankfully, Beelzemon had been the one to inform their newest friends, so he hadn't had to do it then.

"Our friends – Henry and Terriermon, Rika and Renamon and Suzie and Lopmon went missing about a week-and-a-half ago. They went on a little trip into the woods as a break, you see, but my partner, Cyberdramon, was nervous."

Cyberdramon growled indignantly.

"Alright, not nervous. He wasn't nervous, but he was concerned. Is that alright, Cyberdramon."

Cyberdramon grunted, and that was about the best response Ryo could hope for.

"Anyway, my partner had been feeling these strange impulses, like instincts or warnings, which told him that there was some evil Digimon entering the human world for a mere few seconds every hour or so. So we camped out and kept an eye on the group, just in case they were attacked and needed back-up.

"And they were attacked the next day, but a Mega-level Digimon called Parallelmon. The very next morning, they were assaulted by him. They managed to biomerge to Mega Form and deal him some serious damage..."

"Good thing someone did," Impmon growled.

"You're not helping."

"Soz. Keep going."

"Anyway, they managed to get him down to almost deletion, before he managed to surprise all three of them with an attack called Absorbent Bang, which made them disappear right in front of us."

GranKuwagamon's expression didn't change, except for the fact that his red eyes seemed to widen a little. His gossamer wings fluttered for a brief moment before becoming still again.

"We spent all day searching for them, without any success at all," Ryo went on. "Then, Impmon here managed to remember that Lopmon had once mentioned Parallelmon to us in passing during the Ogudomon incident..."

"It's about time that I remembered something useful."

"Impmon."

"Oops. My bad."

Ryo sighed and continued, "Yeah, anyway, as I was saying. We decided to travel here to the Digital World in order to find and talk to one of the Sovereigns and ask them for assistance, because Lopmon had said that they'd battled against him in the past and won. So we travelled to the Digital World, got hopelessly lost and then found MetalSeadramon."

"Actually, I found them," said the serpent. "But that doesn't matter. When they explained to me their mission, then I was only too glad to lead them to the Sovereigns level."

Behemoth grumbled, no doubt remembering the bumpy and unceremonious ride that he'd been given.

"And we appreciate your assistance, MetalSeadramon," said Ryo.

"Oh sure," Impmon folded his arms, "When I say something I'm told to shut up, but when he says something..."

"Behemoth interrupted his owner with a loud grumbling. Impmon, who was perfectly able to understand his ride, blinked, stared at it and said, "No! No! Not you too! Oh Fanglongmon, please no!"

"What did he say?" Lilamon asked curiously.

"I don't want to repeat it."

"Aww, pretty please," Lilamon clasped her hands together and did her best to look like a small child. She did a surprisingly good job of it.

"Fine," Impmon said. "He said Momentai."

The twins roared with laughter and even Ryo, the Devas and MetalSeadramon chuckled.

Ryo shook his head and took up the story again. "When we managed to find Zhuqiaomon, he told us the Parallelmon had sent our friends to an alternate dimension, as I'm sure you know. He said they asked you to try and help bring back some of his previous victims, but that you couldn't because you had no control over where you'd end up, right?"

GranKuwagamon took a second long pause before nodding again.

"But we might have a solution, you see," said Ryo. "You remember HYPNOS from when you came to the Human World, right? You know, the blond man in the sunglasses was their leader, Yamaki. They were the ones that got everywhere evacuated before Ogudomon got there to blow it up."

Pause. Nod.

"Well, they have the ability to construct some awesome machinery. You remember the D-Reaper?"

Pause. Nod.

"They were the ones that created the program that stopped and reversed its constant evolution and allowed the Sovereigns to drag in back to the Digital World and finish it off. But to do that they needed to use Terriermon. So we thought, maybe if they used your help, they could construct a machine that would allow us to travel to other dimensions as well, only with more accuracy."

GranKuwagamon regarded the Legendary Tamer thoughtfully.

"Please," said Ryo. "If you can help us, if there is any chance, ANY chance, of us finding and rescuing our friends, then I believe that we must exploit it. But we can't do it without your help GranKuwagamon. We can't ask Parallelmon because he's evil and vanished off the face of both worlds again. We can't ask Anubimon because there is no possible way of finding him in order to ask him. We need you."

GranKuwagamon still said nothing. Ryo was rather put on edge by this lack of response. Everyone else was unconsciously holding their breath, except Behemoth, who had no breath.

Ryo spoke one more time before falling silent:-

"Help us, GranKuwagamon. You're our only hope."

GranKuwagamon silently stood like a frozen obsidian statue, except for his blinking eyes. He stared at Ryo and the boy shuffled uncomfortably.

"Why isn't he saying anything?" asked Impmon in a whisper to the three new friends.

It was Wingdramon that replied with, "GranKuwagamon doesn't do anything without seriously considering the implications of what he's being asked to do first. He ways up the pros and cons of every situation before he makes his final decision."

"Well, he can't turn us down, can he?" Mako asked quietly. "I can't think of any bad things about this. Can you?"

Ai shook her head, as did Impmon.

Ryo had his eyes fixed on GranKuwagamon, who was, in turn, staring straight at him. Unmoving, GranKuwagamon stood like a sentinel against the world, an immovable object. Until, very slowly, he nodded.

Ryo fought the urge to cheer out loud. He had to be sure, so he said, "You'll help us?"

GranKuwagamon nodded again.

A grin split out across Ryo's face, and across the faces of everyone else too, except Cyberdramon, who nodded respectfully and Behemoth who, well, couldn't. Impmon trotted over to Ryo, stood beside him and said, "Is that you're final answer?"

GranKuwagamon nodded again.

Ai and Mako whooped, jumping off Behemoth's back and dashing over to their partner and engulfing him in a double-hug. Impmon grinned back, and was in such a good mood that he laughed out loud, before falling to the ground and puling them down with him and beginning to cry out, "Help! Help! I'm being attacked by a pair of vicious Munchkins! Help!"

Laughs broke out across the clearing as massive amounts of tensions lifted off everybody's shoulders. Ryo, who still felt responsible for this whole mess despite the fact that he presence would probably have made no distance at all, suddenly felt like a kid again. He'd been shouldering responsibility for it all and had felt more like an adult for the past week-and-a-half, more so than normal with all his Tamerly duties.

Pajiramon and Sandiramon headed over to GranKuwagamon to speak quietly with him, as MetalSeadramon dipped his head down and joined in the conversation. Lilamon whooped and wrapped her arms around the twins and Impmon, lifting them into the air and beginning to spin them through the air so fast that Impmon would have lost his breakfast, if he'd had any. Thank goodness for the fact that you didn't need to eat in this world.

Once Lilamon had placed Impmon and the twins on the ground again, Impmon strolled casually over to GranKuwagamon and whispered to him, "FYI, you've no idea just how grateful I really am. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, Gr- Er, you don't mind if I call you GranDad, do you?"

GranKuwagamon shook his head, his huge pincers almost clouting Impmon over the head. "Thanks, man," Impmon whispered. "To the bottom of my soul. You got it?"

"Why are you whispering?" GranKuwagamon asked.

"Oh, come on," Impmon kept whispering. "I've got an image to maintain. If everyone heard me saying this then they'll think I'm turning into a big softie. Plus, erm, my partners don't know that I-" he trailed off.

GranKuwagamon looked at him expectantly, so Impmon frowned and whispered. "Alright, alright, I fancy Lopmon. There – I said it. Are you happy now, hmm?"

GranKuwagamon only answered by ruffling his wings.

"That's why I'm thanking you, okay? I fancy her and I never told her, and I'll do just about anything to get her back. Just don't tell Ai and Mako – I don't know how they'd react."

"Mum's the word," GranKuwagamon assured him. Impmon turned away, but the usually-silent bug wasn't finished. "And FYI, admitting your feelings doesn't make you soft."

"Yeah right," Impmon snorted. "And Guilmon's going to decide to quit bread."

GranKuwagamon didn't respond this time, so Impmon concluded that they'd finished and headed back towards his partners, who were talking with Diatrymon and Lilamon.

"Alright then," Impmon clapped his hands together, drawing everyone's attention to him. "Now that we've got what we came for, let's get back to the Human World."

There was a round of nodding, until Mako said, "How?"

Impmon stopped, faltered, tapped his chin a couple of times in an imitation of Henry's thinking pose and said, "Ah, cram it. You just had to go and jinx it, didn't you?"

"Sorry."

"So," Impmon turned to Ryo. "You're the expert here. How do we get back to the Human World? Any handy portals nearby that we can hitch a ride on?"

"I can't help you there, Impmon," Ryo shook his head. "When I roamed around the place, I never found a way back home, until HYPNOS sent the Arc. Plus, the whole Digital World has reformatted anyway, remember?"

"Ah, why now?" Impmon griped. "Why can't Fanglongmon just stop chucking hurdle in our way whenever he feels like it. Anyone have any bright ideas about getting back home?"

"Of course."

Impmon and the twins turned to stare at Pajiramon, who had spoken. "You know the way back?" Ai asked.

"Of course we do," said Sandiramon. "Remember, we were the ones that led the team of Megas that were coming to assist you against Ogudomon to your world. As lieutenants of the Sovereigns, we know all the gateways from here to the Human World."

"Why did you think we bothered to come along?" asked Pajiramon. "Added muscle? How would we be able to provide any of that and be useful when you've got a Mega and two Digimon capable of becoming Megas anyway?"

"We knew you'd need to find the way back somehow," concluded Sandiramon. "So we came to show you the way."

"Brilliant," Ryo grinned. "Why didn't I think of that?"

"Because you have no brain cells," quipped Impmon.

"Oi."

"What? Neither do I."

Ryo blinked. "Oh right. You have no cells at all."

"Nope. Just data."

"What are cells?" asked Wingdramon.

"Case closed," grinned Impmon.

"Where is the way back then?" asked Ryo.

"No, wait," Impmon raised his hands. "Let me guess. It's a bloody long way away and we're not going to get there until Christmas."

"What's Christmas?" interjected Diatrymon. He was ignored.

"Actually it isn't very far away at all," the Snake Deva said. "The portal back to your world is on the Desert Level where you enter the Digital World, and that's not far away from here on the Forest Level."

"But the Desert is huge," pointed out Ryo. "How long will it take us to find the portal?"

"If we leave soon then it shouldn't take very long," said Pajiramon. "Unlike the one that you have in that little shed thing, the portal from here to the Human World moves. If we get up to the Desert level, we'd only need a couple of hours before you can all go home?"

"It moves?" asked Impmon. "What kind of portal moves around? Aren't they supposed to be easy to use?"

"What kind of portal?" asked Sandiramon. "Use your brain, Impmon. You still have one, even if it has no cells."

"Touché."

"The Digital World has numerous portals," Sandiramon went on. "Portals that are designed to take you absolutely anywhere."

To everyone's surprise, Ai spoke first. "A Data Stream?"

"Correct," said Sandiramon. "But you have to get sucked up by a specific Data Stream to end up in the Human World. Most of the Digimon that end up in your world are accidents because they got sucked up by one of those Data Streams. Now, we should really get going, or we might miss you return home flight."

"About time I did something useful again," said MetalSeadramon, lowering his head down again. "All aboard the MetalSeadramon Express. No need to pack your bags – we're all travelling light."

"What are you spouting on about?" asked Impmon.

"I have absolutely no idea," MetalSeadramon appeared to try and shrug, but with a lack of shoulders it was difficult to be sure.

"I'll ride on Cyberdramon," said Ryo, "so that I can try and keep him in line."

When Cyberdramon growled, Impmon said, "You gotta admit that he's got a point."

Pajiramon and Sandiramon took up their places on MetalSeadramon's head and neck respectively. Ryo clambered onto Cyberdramon's back. Impmon, Ai and Mako joined the Devas on MetalSeadramon.

But when MetalSeadramon's tails came down to grab Behemoth, the motorbike whizzed out of the way. MetalSeadramon made two attempts to grab it, but Behemoth was having none of it. "What's wrong?" Impmon called down to his bike. Behemoth replied with a rumbling engine noise.

"He doesn't mean it," said Impmon.

"What's he saying?" asked Lilamon.

"He doesn't like the way he pendulums up and down when MetalSeadramon carries him," explained Impmon.

"I can't help it," said MetalSeadramon. "It's a reflex action."

"Come on, Behemoth," Impmon encouraged. "It wouldn't be for long."

But Behemoth was point-blank refusing to co-operate this time.

Fortunately, the problem was solved when GranKuwagamon took to the air, flew over to Behemoth and grabbed him with the middle two of his six limbs, lifting the bike into the air easily and holding it underneath him, facing in the same direction to reduce drag.

"That'll work," said Impmon.

"We really need to get moving," said Pajiramon. "We don't want to miss your impending trip."

"Let's get on our way, then," said Ryo. Cyberdramon took to the air, and he, MetalSeadramon and GranKuwagamon, all carrying their various burdens rose upwards. Lilamon hovered upwards and followed, while Wingdramon grabbed the flightless Diatrymon and lifted him up as well. The strange airborne procession began to make its way upwards towards the Desert Level.

* * *

Guilmon finally tagged Calumon, but his heart wasn't really into it. Everything seemed to have taken a turn for the worse recently. The group of Tamers wasn't nearly the size that it used to be. Even playing in the park had lost its appeal for him.

Guilmon wasn't prone to depression, but considering the circumstances, he could hardly be blamed really. Firstly, a week-and-a-half ago, his best friend Digital friend Terriermon, along with his other very close friends Renamon and Lopmon and all of their Tamers had vanished right in front of him. He'd been one of a few who'd spent the entirety of the rest of the day searching for them with no luck whatsoever.

Then, later that evening, Takato had got a phone-call in the middle of the night. It had been Yamaki, telling him that Impmon and the twins had apparently left for the Digital World. A meeting of the remaining Tamers had been called, and when Ryo and Cyberdramon hadn't returned from trying to stop them, everyone had had to assume that he'd gone into the Digital World after them.

That eliminated most of his best friends. Of Guilmon's usual tag-mates, only Takato, Jeri and Calumon were left. Impmon and the twins had gone on an adventure, while Terriermon, Lopmon and Suzie (as well as Renamon who occasionally joined in after a challenge from her mate which she always won) had gone who-knew-where.

Yamaki had expressly forbidden anyone from going into the Digital World to find Ryo, Cyberdramon, Impmon and the twins. He said that he'd get to work on a way of getting them back, but people going now would just create more problems. Of course, Kazu and Kenta had not been particularly keen on the idea, considering it to be abandoning them, but Jeri had made them see sense.

Guilmon had turned to the one comfort he knew – bread.

Guilmon's thoughts were distracting him so much that Calumon instantly managed to tag him again. Calumon was a free spirit, and he only got depressed if someone started talking about the missing people.

"Tag, your it!" Calumon cheered.

"Yeah, I guess," Guilmon mumbled, almost incoherently. Calumon looked puzzled and retracted his ears.

"What's wrong, Guilmon?" he asked. "You look bummed."

"Do I?" asked Guilmon. "I don't smell like one."

Calumon giggled. Guilmon didn't get why.

Guilmon looked over to where Takato and Jeri were sitting and talking to one another beside his old hideout. Occasionally they'd stop talking to share in the behaviour that everyone called kissing, but Guilmon had never been sure why people did it. It looked weird. He also saw Elecmon dozing in the shade not far away. He wasn't really one for tag, but Elecmon knew when to leave Jeri to her private moments.

"I'm just thinking about everyone who's gone again," said Guilmon, sitting down heavily.

An instant depression overcame Calumon and he copied Guilmon's action. "I really miss them. Why did they leave us behind, Guilmon? Didn't they want us as friends anymore?"

"Well, Terriermon, Henry, Renamon, Rika, Lopmon and Suzie didn't have a choice," said Guilmon. "But I don't know why Impmon left. That was really weird."

"Impmon's been weird recently," said Calumon. "Did you see the way he went all red when Lopmon tagged him three weeks ago. I thought he was trying to do an impression of you."

"He went red?" Guilmon blinked his golden eyes. "That's what Takato does whenever I mention Jeri to his parents."

"He tries to do impressions of you too?"

"No," said Guilmon, shaking his head. "Terriermon says that humans go red when they're embarrassed."

"They do?" asked Calumon, head cocked. "Why? Do they want everyone to see they're embarrassed?"

"I don't know," Guilmon shrugged. "Maybe we should ask."

"Okay," Calumon hopped up and skipped over to Takato and Jeri. Guilmon turned to watch him go, and then stood up and followed.

Jeri and Takato were in the middle of a kiss that had lasted the last two minutes when Calumon bounced over to them and said, "Hellohellohello hellohellohello hello." They instantly broke apart and flushed at the interruption to their little intimate moment by Calumon.

"Hey, look, Guilmon," Calumon called over. "They're doing impressions of you now."

"Impressions of..." Takato blinked, confused.

"He means why do go red when you're embarrassed?" asked Guilmon, walking over to join them.

"Why do we go red?" echoed Jeri.

"That's what I said," said Guilmon.

"Er, well," Takato blustered a little. "It's sort of like an involuntary action, boy."

"Invontalary," Calumon said, getting the pronunciation horribly wrong. "What's that mean?"

"No, it's involuntary, Calumon," said Jeri. "It means that we don't mean to do it. It just happens. It's when a good proportion of blood in your body rushes into your face, so it looks like you're going red."

"Why does it happen?" asked Guilmon.

"I don't know," shrugged Takato. "Jeri?"

"No, I don't know either," she shook her head. "It just does."

Calumon and Guilmon glanced at each other.

"Why do ask?" asked Takato.

"No reason," said Guilmon. "Just curious. Anyway, Calumon's It." He quickly tagged Calumon and ran off at top speed, which wasn't all that fast in his case. Calumon protested loudly and shot off in pursuit. Jeri and Takato watched them for a moment, before returning to their previous activity.

When they were out of earshot, Guilmon said, "So what do you think?"

"I think cream-puffs are yummy."

"No, I mean about Impmon going red when Lopmon tagged him."

"Oh, that," Calumon giggled. "Maybe he was just embarrassed that he was It."

Guilmon, despite being very naive, wasn't nearly as hopelessly naive as Calumon. "Maybe," he said, but he was really thinking along very different lines. Takato and Jeri had gone red just then when Calumon had interrupted them, and Takato went red all the time when Jeri was mentioned, but that was because they loved each other.

But Impmon didn't love Lopmon.

Did he?

Nah, it couldn't be?

Could it?

"You're It!" cried Calumon.

* * *

It took less than an hour to clear the Forest level and ascend to the Desert Level. Considering the enormous amounts of time that it had taken to get anywhere recently, the time almost seemed to fly by. An hour-long flight was a cakewalk, even to the impatient twins and the even-more impatient Impmon, compared to what they had been through so far. A week crossing a desert had hardened them a little.

Behemoth had a comparatively easier time on this flight. GranKuwagamon didn't swing him up and down as MetalSeadramon had, and he also got a nice breeze from the bug's blurring wings.

Once they cleared the level and rose onto the familiar desert, Pajiramon took over and began to guide MetalSeadramon towards the correct location. The other four in flight fell into line behind the massive serpent as he wound his way west.

"Keep going forwards for a few minutes," the Sheep Deva instructed, and MetalSeadramon complied without complaint.

Eventually, they all spotted something in the distance. A think, pink strip was winding its way towards them, vertical from the ground to the sky. A data stream, careering backwards and forwards like it had had too many drinks and was attempting to stay upright.

"Is that the one?" asked Ryo.

"Yes," said Sandiramon. "Set us down, MetalSeadramon. It's on a collision course with us right now. We just need to wait for it to come to us."

"Right you are," MetalSeadramon said, not nodding in case he shook all his passengers off his head and spiralled downwards. Lilamon, GranKuwagamon, Wingdramon and Cyberdramon, along with their various burdens, followed.

For the first time in several days, MetalSeadramon landed on the ground, lowering his head down to allow everyone to hop off. GranKuwagamon also set down Behemoth, while Wingdramon put down Diatrymon. Lilamon settled down alongside them.

"It'll be here in a couple of minutes," said Pajiramon. "You'd best make your preparations to get back home right now."

"What's the journey like?" asked Ai.

"It makes you want to hurl," said Sandiramon.

"I look forward to it," muttered Impmon.

Ryo slid down from Cyberdramon and turned to the assorted bunch of Digimon that had so generously helped them with their quest to find a way of getting their friends back. "Okay guys," he said. "I think that it'd be right if I mentioned just how grateful we are for all of your efforts. Lilamon, Wingdramon, Diatrymon, thank you so much for guiding us to where we needed to go. We could have been searching the Forest for weeks if it weren't for your generosity."

"Aw, shucks," Lilamon hid her face, giggling.

"Think nothing of it," Wingdramon nodded respectfully.

"I just hope that it helps," said Diatrymon. "How amazing it would be to actually help the Legendary Tamers."

"Thanks," said Ryo. "MetalSeadramon, you were an amazing mode of transportation. We might still be looking for the Sovereigns if it wasn't for you."

"Happy to help," the giant serpent said, "though I think your motorbike friend might object to my transportation."

Behemoth rumbled and said in motorbike-speech "Well, can you blame me." Nobody except Impmon understood him.

"And thanks also to you Devas," said Ryo. "You thought of a factor that I hadn't even considered and got us to where we are now."

"It's a shame it has to end really," said Sandiramon.

"I agree," nodded Pajiramon. "Because now we have to go back home and listen to the whiny voice of Indramon berating us for helping you."

"Knock him on his backside again for me," Impmon grinned.

"Will do," nodded Pajiramon. "Whenever possible."

"We'd better step back a little," Wingdramon said, watching the Data Stream wind its way closer. "We don't want to get caught in that along with the Tamers and their friends."

They all backed away, leaving the Tamers, their Digimon, Behemoth and GranKuwagamon standing apart from them.

"Bye," Lilamon waved. "Hope you find your friends."

"So do we," sighed Ryo. "So do we."

"Well, here goes nothing," said Impmon, turning to face the Data Stream thundering towards them. "You kids ready for this."

"No," said Ai.

"No," said Mako.

"Good," Impmon grinned. "Then I'm not the only one. See ya, guys," he gave a thumbs-up to the others. "Stay out of trouble."

"I think that sentence should apply more to you than to us," pointed out Diatrymon.

"I was more talking to Lilamon there."

"Hey," pouted Lilamon. "I'm not that bad."

"Relax. I'm kidding."

The Data Stream was almost on top of them. The twins and Impmon waved to the others as the huge column of pink data washed over them. The sudden feeling like they were being sucked up by a giant vacuum cleaner overcame them all and they shot upwards in an almost uncontrollable and undignified way, limbs flailing all over the place. Cyberdramon furiously tried to steady himself, but it just wasn't happening. GranKuwagamon made no struggling motions, but the twins and Impmon whooped and yelled all the way up.

The others watched as they space where they'd been emptied of any signs of life, leaving just barren desert. There was a few moments of silence, before Lilamon said, "Well, what do we do now?"

"I guess we go home," shrugged Diatrymon.

"Aww, but that's boring," Lilamon complained. "I'd like to go on a proper adventure."

Wingdramon and Diatrymon shared a glance. Getting dragged off on a wild goose chase was an occupational hazard when you travelled with Lilamon.

* * *

Elecmon opened one eye slowly. His doze had been interrupted by the usual tingling sensation down the back of his spine that he received whenever something was about to cross over the Digital Barrier from his old world to his new one. Ever since he'd been resurrected by Anubimon by heaving his data extracted from Impmon, Elecmon had had numerous of these, but none of them had ever really been beyond a weak Ultimate level Digimon.

And yet this time, he could sense a Mega approaching. A powerful one.

He looked up. Takato and Jeri was still "talking," but Guilmon had abruptly stopped playing tag and was sniffing the air, a sure sign that something had caught his attention. Whether that was the Digimon or the smell of bread wasn't clear, but Elecmon was willing to bet that it wasn't the latter this time.

He stood up and flexed his numerous feather-like tails, ready for a fight. It wouldn't be as a Rookie, but he was ready to biomerge with Jeri into SaberLeomon, a tactic that they'd only recently managed to unlock.

But something stopped him from rushing over to Jeri and telling her to hurry. He could sense that there was more than one Digimon, and there was something extremely familiar about some of them. One of them, the Mega, was completely unfamiliar to him, but Guilmon wasn't reacting in his normal manner. Usually, when a Digimon arrived, the Rookie dinosaur would go completely feral. This time, he just looked confused.

Elecmon quickly ran over to Guilmon. Calumon was also there, but his short attention span made him say, "Hi, Elecmon. Have you come to play tag with us?"

"Maybe later," Elecmon said absent-mindedly. "Guilmon, what's wrong?"

"I smell a Digimon," he said.

"I sense one too," said Elecmon. "But you aren't going feral. Why?"

"I don't know," Guilmon looked puzzled. "But the Digimon I sense – they're all familiar."

"All of them?" Elecmon asked. "Even the Mega?"

Guilmon nodded uncertainly.

"I wonder who's coming," Elecmon mused, looking about him for signs of any Digimon activity.

Abruptly, off to his left, it came. A sudden bright light flashed and an eruption of fog seemed to burst out of the ground – the classic sign of a Digital Field beginning to form itself. Elecmon, Calumon and Guilmon jumped back as the fog enveloped them. Takato and Jeri broke apart in shock as they too, vanished into the fog.

Elecmon coughed, losing sight of his partner. Jeri's voice broke out instantly. "Elecmon! Where are you?"

"I'm over here, Jeri," he called back. "I'm fine."

"Guilmon?"

"Here, Takato," Guilmon said.

"Well, it looks like we got a fight on our hands," Takato announced, his voice getting closer as he and Jeri made their way through the fog to find them.

"I'm not so sure," Elecmon replied. "Apparently something about this strikes Guilmon as familiar."

Guilmon sniffed the air as his partner and Jeri emerged from the mist, their D-Arcs ready just in case a digivolution was needed. His nostrils flared as he took in the scent of several things at once. Several very, very familiar scents.

Recognition hit him over the head like a hammer.

"I smell Impmon," he cried.

"Damn right you do," a familiar voice came from the fog.

"Impmon!" Jeri shouted joyfully. "Where've you been? Are you alright? Where are you? Are the twins okay?"

"Wandering around the Digital World, yes, over here and yes," Impmon said. He sounded a little queasy for some reason.

"Hey look," said Takato. "The fog is dispersing."

And so it was. The Digital Field was vanishing as quickly as it had formed. Nobody pretended to understand the nature of Digital Fields, but it was generally agreed that they were designed to contain threatening Digimon. For some reason, they only remained in place if the enemy Digimon was going to attack. The signs of it dispersing combined with Impmon's voice were enough to get Takato and Jeri to relax.

A human-like silhouette appeared and became Ryo, emerging from the lightening fog. Cyberdramon was right behind him. "You alright guys?" said the former.

"Ryo," Jeri breathed. "Thank goodness you're alright. What have you been doing for the past week and a half? We were wondering if you'd just decided to leave again."

"Oh, we've been busy," said Ryo.

"We went on an adventure," said Mako as he emerged along with his sister, partner and Behemoth. "It wasn't very exciting."

"No, it was quite boring actually," agreed Ai. "But we did get to fly on MetalSeadramon's head."

"Yeah. That was cool," grinned Mako.

"Now, kids," Impmon sniggered at the puzzled expressions of the faces of the others. "You're just confusing them. Better start at the beginning. Basically, I remembered a time when Lopmon mentioned that dude that made them vanish. Parallelmon. So we went to talk to the turkey, Zhuqiaomon, to see if he had any answers for us."

After a few seconds, as this sank in, Takato's eyes widened and he said, "And did he?"

"You bet he did," Impmon grinned. "He told us that Parallelmon sent our friends to another dimension."

"Another dimension!" Jeri cried. "But, but that's terrible. How will we ever get them back from there? How will they cope? Will they be alright?" She paused and said, "And why are you smiling."

"Two reasons," Impmon made a rude gesture with his hand without really taking it in. "Firstly, it means that they're alive and not dead. Secondly, old Zhuqster didn't just give us information. He gave us a solution."

"Well, that was very charitable of him," muttered Takato.

"So, what's the solution?" asked Elecmon.

Impmon jerked a thumb over his shoulder. The Digital Field had completely lifted by now, and Takato, Jeri, Guilmon and Elecmon, as well as Calumon who was still paying attention, looked over and were surprised to see a figure that all of them, bar Elecmon, knew well.

"GranKuwagamon?" asked Guilmon.

"That's right, guys," Impmon grinned. "Meet our friends' one-way ticket home."

* * *

Alright everyone. That's it. This story is now officially on temporary hiatus. As promised, I finished up to Chapter 40, and now I shall write Movie-Brat's oneshot for him and then stop writing for a month. Sorry, but I'll be back soon.

Why doesn't everyone pop over to Justmerg's story and read his. I'm sure he'd greatly appreciate it.

By the way, how does everyone feel about me starting an online audiobook of my fanfics. I can do reasonably good impressions so I could do the voices. I'm not sure where I'd put them just yet, but, hey, it's an idea.

A bit of a spoiler alert in the next time this time.

* * *

Next time...

Starts at the end of Hostage Crisis, the Clone Wars season 1 finale. Ziro the Hutt is freed from prison and attempts to make a getaway to the planet Felucia. But when the A-Team, the Digimon and Obi-Wan Kenobi follow, they run right into Separatist forces, Weequay pirates and some Bounty Hunters.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 41 : Bane of the Jedi**


	41. Bane of the Jedi

I'M BAAAAAAAACCCKKK! With a vengeance.

It feels great to finally post another chapter of this thing. I told you all that I'd pick it up again after my exams, which I believe went very well, and I meant it. So, here I am. Although this chapter isn't particularly exciting. It's just a scene-setter really, but I'm quite happy with it, as it serves several purposes.

Bookworm Gal – have you spoken to ImpKat yet?

Thanks to White Keyblade Oathkeeper, fallen-wolfborn, ZeRo VeCToR, Digimon 575, Mayhem296 and especially to Robindf1.

ZeRo VeCToR - I have incorporated your suggestion into the story at a later point.

Digimon 575 - Glad you share my view about Grievous, but as for the Arkantos stuff - I didn't get what you were saying at all.

Anyhoo...

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 41:- Bane of the Jedi**

* * *

On the whole, if you had known about the fact that Anakin and Padmé were married, then Anakin would have told you that the happiest days of his life came, not when he was cutting up battle droids as most people believed, but spending time with her.

But this particular day was not one of them.

It had started out well enough. After the incident of Ahsoka's kidnapping and torture by Asajj Ventress, an incident which still made him seeth whenever he thought about it, the A-Team had been granted a two week meditative retreat from the war. This was quite welcomed by the Tamers and the Digimon and Aayla, while Anakin and Ahsoka had been a little put out at the idea, as it meant they wouldn't be on the front lines for awhile.

On the plus side, Anakin could spend more time with his wife, which was exactly what he'd been doing earlier on, trying to convince her to run away with him for the duration of the two weeks so they could spend time together without having to be secretive about it.

In an effort to sweet-talk her, Anakin had offered Padmé his lightsaber, placing it in her hand and claiming that it was a Jedi's life. This had been a roundabout attempt at saying that Padmé was his life by letting her take possession of it. Of course, he'd meant to take it back later.

But then they'd been interrupted by Senator Bail Organa, who'd come to remind Padmé about the Privacy Invasion Bill, which they and several other Senators were attempting to stop. Anakin had been forced to duck out of sight, while Padmé had to quickly store the lightsaber in her sleeve and take it with her when she'd left.

And everything had deteriorated from there. And here was Anakin, cursing the fact that he'd chosen today, the day that Cad Bane the Bounty Hunter and a bunch of other ruthless criminals invaded the Senate Building, to give his lightsaber away. He'd have to be more careful with how he expressed his love to Padmé in future.

Cad Bane had come with efficient help. Anakin had caught a glimpse of at least two IG-series assassin droids, which were even more deadly than the commandos and generally used by crime rather than war. Now, there was only one, as Anakin had managed to take out one by repeatedly beating it in the head with a blaster until it came off.

He'd also spotted a Weequay, a being with brown skin and many deep-set wrinkles and rivets right across his body, including his hands and face, whose name he didn't know. But, more worryingly, was the presence of the infamous Aurra Sing. She was a deadly opponent, not only due to her complete lack of emotion in the face of an enemy, but due to the fact that she was also force-sensitive. She had been semi-trained by a Jedi Master, before she left the Jedi Order for reasons unknown and gone into crime. She'd made a name for herself that was almost as big as Bane and Fett, as she was the only Bounty Hunter able to wield a lightsaber. Fortunately, she didn't appear to be using it today.

Anakin knew that Chancellor Palpatine had been sealed in his office, numerous Senators, including Padmé and Bail, had been taken hostage by the Bounty Hunters, and that all the Senate Guards on duty had been brutally killed and all communications to the outside had been cut off. Most of the power, excluding the emergency lighting and the doors, had also been deactivated. In effect, a weaponless Jedi was the only one standing between the Bounty Hunters and their objective, whatever that was.

Anakin gritted his teeth in frustration as he inched his way down the deserted corridor. He was heading for the control room, hoping to potentially reboot the communications and get a message to the Jedi Temple for back-up. And he had to do it soon. Who knew what those Bounty Hunters would do to Padmé and the others if they weren't stopped.

So far he'd been lucky enough to avoid detection, for the most part. He was close now. He rounded the corridor that led to the control room and saw the door ahead of him.

He faltered in surprise when the door opened and a Patrolian walked out. He was a short, blue, fish-like being, with a black eye-patch over one eye, numerous fines protruding from his head and arms, webbed hands and feet and a backpack laden with explosive charges. Another Bounty Hunter.

The Patrolian, who was known as Robonino, was definitely not a fighter. He was an expert with technical things and equipment, which was why Bane had appointed him in the control room. Now that he'd done this, he was heading back to regroup with the others.

Then he spotted Anakin and jumped backwards. "Oopsie," he said, in a gurgling voice. He immediately turned around and darted back into the control room. Anakin rushed forward quickly in a mad dash for the door, but Robonino had already pushed the button to shut it. "Hurry, hurry, hurry," he said as the door shut and locked. Anakin pulled up short in front of it and he growled in annoyance. His hand instinctively went to his belt to get his lightsaber and cut through the metal, but it only grasped thin air.

Resisting the urge to howl at his own stupidity, Anakin thumped his fists against the door. "Open up!" he yelled at the Patrolian inside.

There was a gurgling laugh through the metal in response.

"Come on!" Anakin growled through gritted teeth. "I don't have time for this. Listen to me. Open the door."

Robonino didn't reply. Anakin attempted to hook his fingers around the door, scrabbling at the junction between door and wall, completely futilely. Resisting the urge to kick the door, which he knew wouldn't help it at all and yet he still wanted to do it, he pleaded, "Come on. Open the door. I won't hurt you."

Then, right behind him, there was the sound of a blaster being cocked. "Well, well," said Shahan Alama, the Weequay Bounty Hunter, wearing what appeared to be a red beret on his head and grinning maliciously as he pointed his blaster at the back of Anakin's head. "What do we have here?"

Anakin froze at the sound of Alama's voice. Briefly going over his options and deciding things would go better if he was armed with something, he whirled around and thrust out his hand, grabbing the blaster with the Force and yanking it out of the Bounty Hunter's hand. He couldn't help but look a little triumphant at the stunned look on Alama's face as the unarmed became armed and vice versa.

Anakin levelled the blaster at Alama, forcing back the urge to smirk as the Weequay slowly raised his hands above his head in a gesture of surrender.

Anakin was about to demand that Shahan Alama give him some information, when there was a strange clicking sound, that sounded suspiciously like a sniper rifle zeroing in on its target. At the sound, Alama smirked at Anakin, before dropping to the ground quickly, revealing that Aurra Sing had been standing behind him some way back, her sniper rifle pried. Aurra let off a shot that sounded like a compressed baby scream. The red laser smashed into the blaster in Anakin's hand and holed it, sending it flying out of his grip.

"Blast it!" yelled Anakin, finding himself unarmed once again. Sneering, Aurra let off three more shots. Anakin ducked under one and swung about so he was side-on to Aurra as the other two shots sailed past him on either side and smacked into the door.

Anakin quickly and desperately searched his brain for a way of getting out of this situation when the door behind him slid open. He'd completely forgotten about Robonino, and the Patrolian sprang through the door and onto Anakin's back, grabbing the Jedi's face with one hand, the other hand firmly gripping an electric tazer which he pressed into Anakin's neck.

Anakin's body suddenly surged with electricity and he remained standing for a few more seconds, convulsing and yelling in pain, before he lost consciousness. Robonino leapt off him and Anakin crashed onto his back.

Aurra and Shahan strode over. Aurra placed her boot on Anakin's chest like a hunter with his trophy and leaned down to leer into his unconscious face. "Tie you little pet up," she glanced at Robonino. "We'll bring him to Bane."

Robonino gurgled in excitement and triumph. It wasn't often that you could claim that you'd taken out a Jedi.

* * *

Nobody outside the Senate Building had any idea that this was going on. While Anakin attempted and failed to get into the control room, Aayla sat in one of the large training chambers and watched Suzie's antics. She had spoken to Terriermon and Lopmon and declared that she was "tag-deprived" and had managed to lure them into a game. Aayla had suggested that they take it up somewhere where loud noises would be less noticed, as Suzie somehow made a lot of noise whilst doing it.

Somehow, Terriermon had managed to convince Ahsoka to join the game, although it was fair to say that the Padawan trumped them all. Renamon, Henry and Rika stood to one side and offered advice.

Aayla sat apart from the others. It was like there was something gnawing at her belly and she bit her lip in anxiety and frustration. She'd long since known that she was forming an attachment to her newest friends, but she hadn't quite realised the depths that this attachment had reached until Terriermon and Ahsoka had been kidnapped.

When that had happened, she'd felt something that she'd never felt before, an intense worry and concern for them both. Aayla was unsure what she would think or do now if something happened to any of them. If Terriermon had died, would she have been angry? Upset? Of course she would – all Jedi felt upset by deaths, although some more than others, and the anger was usually kept suppressed. But how would Aayla react now?

It felt like her mind was trying to pull her in two different directions. One side was telling her to follow her head – to distance herself from the others, keep to the Jedi Code, hold no attachments. The other half, and, it had to be said, the larger half, was telling her to follow her heart and integrate more with them, to care for them, to laugh or cry with them. To love them.

It felt like there was a war raging inside her mind as one side grappled with the other. Everything she'd been taught versus everything she'd gained over last two weeks. Never before had she been in such a dilemma. She'd never been this close to anyone, except her old master.

This line of thought made her remember what she'd said to Ahsoka before she'd ever met the Digimon, when they'd crash-landed on Maridun and Anakin had been severely wounded, prompting a bout of extreme distress and concern from Ahsoka.

* * *

_"I can still sense your worry for Anakin," Aayla had said. "Your attachment to him."_

_"It's just... I get so confused sometimes," Ahsoka had sighed back. "It's forbidden for Jedi to form attachments yet we're supposed to be compassionate."_

_"It is nothing to be ashamed of, Ahsoka. I went through the same process when I was your age with my own master."_

_"Really? You?"_

_"He was like a father to me. I realised that for the greater good, I had to let him go. Don't lose a thousand lives just to save one."_

* * *

And thinking back to it right now made Aayla realise that she was now pretty much a hypocrite. She was facing the same confusion that Ahsoka had been and yet when she listened to her own advice, it didn't sit well with her at all. The thought of letting these guys go was impossible. They'd gone to deep into her heart and feelings. And yet, it was forbidden. What would the Jedi Masters think? She could be expelled from the Order if she disobeyed the rules.

She was in quite a quandary.

She frowned and fought the urge to moan in frustration. Instead, she grasped her head in both hands and rocked backwards and forwards, desperately trying to reach an impasse in her brain and stop the war that was trying to eat her from the inside out.

"Troubled, you are, Knight Secura."

Aayla jumped in surprise and looked down at the bench next to her. She couldn't guess how long Master Yoda had been sitting there – she'd been so preoccupied with her immense dilemma that she'd failed to notice him approach and sit beside her.

Yoda looked up at her with his yellow eyes and smiled warmly. "Sense it strongly, I do."

Aayla sighed and glanced back up at the others, watching Terriermon pursue Lopmon through the air in great acrobatic circles. "Yes, Master Yoda," she said, shutting her eyes and taking a deep breath to calm her nerves. "I am."

"Bottle up your thoughts, you should not. Confide in me as to what is troubling you, can you?"

Aayla exhaled slowly and then said, "It's my friends, Master."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I – I feel like... I like I'm being torn apart inside. I am well aware that a Jedi should not form attachments, but it is is just something that I cannot seem to be able to completely master. When I lost T'da, I grieved but I got over it pretty quickly. When Master Vos and I separated, I felt so lonely, but I know that one is completely normal. But now... with this... it's just... I feels both wrong and right to get closer to the Tamers and the Digimon."

"Understand, I do. And blame you, I do not."

Aayla glanced down at him. "You don't?"

"No. Unexplored territory, this is. New to us all, the Digimon are. As Jedi, used to distancing ourselves from others and having others distance themselves from us in turn, we are. Very different, those six are. Seek solitude, they do not. Let you into their hearts, they have, and you too feel drawn to them because of it, yes?"

"Inexorably," admitted Aayla, looking at her feet. "Irreversibly. Unavoidably. Irrevocably. Any word that you can use to describe it. It's against all my principles, all the principles of the Jedi Order and yet I cannot seem to help myself. What should I do, Master?"

"Distance yourself from them, you cannot, or lose them, you will," said Yoda. "See this in the same light, they would not. All they would see from your solitude is a cold shoulder. And, I sense, hurt their feelings, it would, as well as yours."

"Then what do you suggest, Master?" Aayla practically pleaded. If anyone could provide an answer to her problem, if anyone could best advise her on which course of action to take, it was Master Yoda, with over eight-hundred-and-fifty years of experience behind him. She waited with bated breath as Yoda considered briefly, and she sincerely hoped that whatever answer he provided would be one she wanted to here – even though she wasn't exactly sure what she wanted to hear now.

Yoda briefly paused to watch Ahsoka grab Terriermon out of the air and proclaim that he was "it." Terriermon promptly tagged Renamon and fled, giggling, as the fox that had previously not been part of the game took off in pursuit of her mate.

"Certainly integrating well with them, Padawan Tano is," he observed.

Aayla nodded. "She always was good at making friends."

"As are you, hmm?"

"Well... I suppose."

"No suppose about it, there is. One of your strongest traits, it is. Adept at making alliances and gaining the trust of others, you are. Shudder to think I do, what the Digimon would have thought of us had they met some of the other Jedi first. Fortune, it is, that they met you and not Master Windu." He chuckled. Aayla couldn't resist the urge to chuckle herself. Mace still found Terriermon an excruciating pest and Terriermon had taken to springing behind Renamon whenever he appeared.

"A solution, I believe I have, to your problem," said Yoda. Aayla glanced at him hopefully, butterflies filling up in her stomach and she felt her brain feverishly filter through what he might say and try to guess the correct one.

"A Jedi, you are," said Yoda. "And in most cases, attachment, forbidden, it is. But these Tamers and their partners, complete opposites to the Jedi, they are. Never, in all my years, have I sense such strong bonds as between those six. Therein, their true power lies. Great individual strength, they possess, but what is their true strength? Teamwork, it is. Compassion. Attachment. Love. Use it to their strengths, they do."

"Yes, Master," Aayla nodded to show that she was listening.

"Tamer to Digimon, Digimon to Digimon and Tamer to Tamer, their feelings I sense strongly. And to that end, already solved, your problem is."

"It is?" asked Aayla, confused.

"Take a moment to look at yourself, Knight Secura," said Yoda. "To distance yourself from them now, break you, it would. The Digimon and the Tamers use their attachment for the better and so too can you. Go to them. Be with them. Love them. Already let you into their circle, they have, and let them into yours, you should."

"Are you serious, Master?" Aayla gasped. She had to check – Yoda liked to make jokes. "I should raise my attachment, not suppress it. But what about the Jedi Code?"

"Cover this, the Jedi Code, does not. Unique, in this universe, they are, and changed you, they have. For the better, I believe. To truly work with them, embrace them, you must. A great benefit this would. A benefit to the war, a benefit to the Republic, and a benefit to them and to yourself. Give you my blessing, I do."

Aayla grinned. This was exactly the answer she'd been hoping for, and the one that she'd least expected. Yet Master Yoda was right. It _would_ break her to leave them now and at the same time, it _would_ hurt them to. They were now linked together too closely to back out.

"But what will the other Jedi think?" Aayla momentarily frowned.

"Leave them to me, you should," chuckled Yoda. "Smooth the road for you, I will. Your problem was never a true problem. Needed someone to guide your path, you did."

Aayla's frown remained in place. "But I am still a Jedi, and attachment is a path to the Dark Side. I am sure that will not fall under its spell a second time, but can we be sure that I will not be tempted by it again, and that I will not fall irreversibly into it this time."

Yoda sighed and shut his eyes, delving into the Force for answers. "Clouded, the future has long been from us. Answer that question, I cannot. But one thing, I can assure you of. Before this war ends, the Tamers and the Digimon, need you, they will. And, in turn, need them, you will too. Go it alone, you cannot. A nigh-unstoppable force, you will make, once you truly embrace each other. Of this, I am certain."

Aayla had to resist the urge to lose her dignity and hug the little creature. With an internal cheer, the war was won by her heart and she beamed. Rarely had she felt so delighted. If Yoda said it was alright, then she was sure it was. She felt reborn, rejuvenated and ready to take on the galaxy.

"Thank you, Grand Master. I will follow your advice."

"Good to hear, that is," chuckled Yoda. "And a pleasure to help, it was."

"TAG!" Terriermon appeared out of nowhere and tagged Yoda, before shooting off in the opposite direction.

"Uh-oh," said Aayla, chuckling.

Yoda's wrinkled face cracked into a grin. He hopped off the bench, discarding his gimmer stick, and, with a turn of speed that nobody, except Aayla and Ahsoka, had been expecting, Yoda joined the game of tag and began to soundly thrash everyone else there.

* * *

Chancellor Palpatine was frustrated beyond belief. The intrusion of Cad Bane and his group of Bounty Hunters into the Senate Building had been completely unanticipated and irritatingly successful. Not only had Bane captured a bunch of Senators in one of the most secure buildings on the whole of Coruscant, and indeed the whole galaxy, but he had been locked in his room, along with Senator Orn Free Taa, and now Bane was making demands of him.

It made his blood boil with anger at the impudence of the Duros. He knew Anakin was still out there, but he'd received no word of success. So, as per Bane's request, he had made a pardon disk stating that Ziro the Hutt could be released from prison. Bane had got in contact with him and told him to give it to Orn Free Taa and that someone would come to escort the Senator out, while he was to remain shut in his office.

"Here's the pardon disk," said Palpatine, handing it to the fat, dark-blue Twi'lek with a sigh.

The doors slid open and an assassin droid walked in, a huge blaster rifle levelled at both of them. "Let's go," it droned.

Orn Free Taa looked imploringly at Palpatine. "Why do _I_ have to go to the jail for this?" he wailed.

"Move it," barked the assassin droid, levelling the rifle at Free Taa's head. Whimpering in terror, Free Taa scuttled past it and hurried out the door, the assassin droid right behind him, jamming its rifle into his back between his lekku.

"Sorry Senator," said Palpatine. "But everyone has a job to do."

Free Taa was marched out onto the landing platform. "Hurry up," ordered the droid, forcing him to board a speeder. Free Taa was surprised to see two Senate commandoes standing on either side of it. Traitors? Rescuers? But no, they were, in fact, commando droids that had donned the blue armour. They did nothing but watch as Free Taa and the droid boarded the speeder and the droid made it speed away towards the prison.

* * *

Padmé Amidala stared resentfully at Cad Bane. The Duros was the only Bounty Hunter left in the room, but none of the Senators dared to try anything. Most of them were too scared to attempt escape, as they had seen Cad Bane mercilessly blast Senator Philo the Gran in the back as he had attempted to leave, slaying him instantly. And none of them were armed.

Except for Padmé. She'd been lucky enough to avoid being searched, so Bane didn't know about Anakin's lightsaber, tucked away in her sleeve. Not that she would dared to have used it. Most non-force-users were in serious danger of hacking off limbs in any attempt to wield it.

Bane stared imperiously over his group of hostages. Other than Padmé and Bail Organa, there was C-3PO, Senator Onaconda Farr the Rodian, Riyo Chuchi the Pandoran, Kinn Robb the Korun human, Jakker-sun the Ithorian and two other humans called Dantum Roohd and Zinn Paulness. None of them were keen on the idea of taking on Cad Bane, even without his back up.

Padmé was fairly confident that Anakin would be on top of the situation.

But this was squashed flat when the sliding door behind Bane opened. Heads turned and there were gasps as Shahan Alama and Aurra Sing walked in, each one gripping one of Anakin's legs and dragging him across the floor. Robonino was walking beside them and Anakin's was still unconscious, plus his wrists were in binders.

Padmé fought the urge to yelp in horror.

Alama and Aurra dropped Anakin beside Bane and the Duros smirked. The Jedi that had got the better of him on Behpour was now at his mercy. He couldn't help but take a second to savour the moment.

"Young Skywalker," he crowed, crouching down beside him and sneering, even though Anakin couldn't hear him. "Not so impressive without your lightsaber, are you, Jedi?" He straightened up and barked, "Toss him in with the others."

Alama and Aurra gripped Anakin's arms and casually threw him down in front of the huddle of Senators. Padmé immediately rushed over and knelt beside him, concern etched over her features and began to check him for injuries. To her surprise, so did Riyo Chuchi, but then she remembered the Anakin had helped her moon out of a scrape when their overzealous Chairman had declared war the Talz living on the planet that it orbited.

Completely ignoring the Senators, Cad Bane activated his wrist console and said, "3D, are we on schedule?"

* * *

"Arriving at the prison now," confirmed the assassin droid in the speeder, as he began to pull the vehicle to a halt before the large Coruscant prison. Orn Free Taa was sitting as far away from the droid as possible, but when they pulled to a stop he cringed as the droid stood up and jabbed the end of the rifle in his face, motioning for him to step out.

The clones guarding the facility came to meet them, wary of the deadly droid and concerned for the Senator. The leader, Commander Fox, who had, ironically, been the one to capture Ziro in the first place and arrest him for charges of treachery and the imprisonment of a Senator, stepped up and examined the pardon disk.

Nodding uneasily, he said, "Unlock the doors."

The sliding doors behind him whirred open and Ziro, a purple Hutt covered with tattoos and with bright green eyes, slurped his way out and into the light, flanked by four clones. The moment Ziro entered the sunlight he recoiled.

"OH!" he yelled, in a voice that you wouldn't expect from a giant slug – it was rather high and sounded a little like that of Truman Capote. "It's so bright out here!"

"Oh, my God," muttered a nearby clone, stepping back from the horrendous stench of Hutt.

"Why couldn't we do this at night when it's cooler?" Ziro griped as he slid between the clones and towards the droid.

Ziro stopped before Senator Taa and said, "Hoh-ho. Look at Senator Orn Free Taa. He looks so unhappy." He took a moment to glare with undisguised hatred at the whimpering Senator, and the assassin droid jabbed the Twi'lek in the back, making him move to one side and hide behind one of the clones, which had little effect.

"Now get me as far away from Coruscant as possible! Now!" demanded Ziro moving towards the speeder and slowly hauling his huge bulk into a specialised compartment designed for Hutts. Once he'd settled in with a satisfied groan, the droid got back into the pilot seat.

"We are to rendezvous back at the Senate Building," said 3D.

"Wha?" Ziro yelped. "No, no, no, no. The Outer Rim, not the Senate, you stupid machine." 3D ignored him and set a course for the Senate, shutting out Ziro's annoying wails of "But I don't wanna go to the Senate!"

* * *

"Go and get the departing gifts," Bane sneered. Shahan Alama nodded, and he and Aurra began to take the explosive charges out of Robonino's backpack. Then the Weequay, the near-human and the Patrolian began to love about the room, placing them on various pillars and activating them. Padmé and Bail shared an uneasy glance.

Bane, as this was happening, made a call to Palpatine.

"Well, Mr. Chancellor," he grinned patronisingly. "Thanks to your calm leadership the crisis is passed. I got what I want, so I'll return your Senate and your Senators. Enjoy them, but don't try anything until the sun has set. Understand?"

"Oh, I do," said Palpatine. "But I feel it is my duty to warn you that you will end up paying for this outrage."

"I can live with that," smirked Bane, before cutting him off. Then he turned to address Robonino. "We need to get to the landing platform. Is everything ready?"

"Yep, yep," said the fish-guy.

"Turn on the field," Bane instructed. Aurra nodded and pushed a button on one of the charges, causing a series of lasers to erupt between the numerous others, creating a criss-crossing pattern on them that surrounded the Senators and Anakin, who was still unconscious and whose head was now being cradled in Chuchi's lap while Padmé was leaning protectively over him and trying to get him to wake up.

"If you so much as breathe on one of these lasers, the whole room will blow up," Bane informed all present maliciously. "Senators, Jedi, I bid you all a most respectful farewell," he tipped his hat mockingly. "Let's go," then the whole group of mercenaries turned and marched out of the room.

Padmé and Chuchi glanced at each other, and carefully dragged Anakin's legs away from the lasers, then resumed their efforts to wake him.

* * *

While all this was going on, Orn Free Taa and the clones of the prison had immediately got to work after the speeder containing the assassin droid and Ziro the Hutt had gotten a significant distance away. Four large gunships filled with clones, including Commander Fox, were immediately loaded and took off, taking a more direct route to the Senate Building than the speeder, in order to ensure that they got there first.

As they approached, Commander Fox issued orders for the group to split up. Two gunships veered off to one side of the building, while the other two quickly made for the other. The first two gunships pulled to a halt on the landing platform where Bane and his fellow Bounty Hunters were scheduled to emerge.

The other headed straight for Palpatine's office – determined to make sure that the Chancellor was fine. Unfortunately, there were only two doors into Palpatine's office, and both required them to be inside to use them. So, to gain surprise and speed, several clones attached to cables leapt out of the gunships and crashed through the long window behind the desk, shattering it almost completely and coming to rest beside the Chancellor.

"All clear!" one clone called into his comlink at the sight of no enemies. Then he ran to the Chancellor. "Sir, are you all right?"

"Yes, yes. I'm fine," nodded Palpatine.

The clone activated his comlink and spoke to Orn Free Taa, who was still at the prison. "Mission accomplished sir. The Chancellor is safe."

Free Taa breathed a sigh of relief. "Phew. Well done, trooper."

Commander Fox and six other clones leapt out of the gunships as Bane, Aurra, Alama, Robonino and another assassin droid emerged out into the light where the speeder was scheduled to pick them up, and trained their blasters on the Bounty Hunters. Bane didn't look surprised or concerned in the least, and his mercenaries didn't look particularly concerned about it either.

Bane smirked at the clones, as if he knew something they didn't, which, of course, he did. Then, at the sound of a beeping, he lifted up his holoprojector, which displayed the image of Palpatine, flanked by two clones.

Palpatine, is a rather self-satisfied voice, said, "You were foolish to think you could get away with this, bounty hunter. Now lay down your arms and come quietly." He put all the authority he could muster into this command, seemingly determined to make Bane subdue to his will.

It didn't work. Bane, with Aurra and Alama standing at his shoulder, stated loudly, so that all the clones could hear him too, "No, Chancellor. I'm afraid it is you who have been foolish… with your Senator's lives. One false move, and the East Wing of the Senate Building goes up in smoke." He pressed his finger to his mouth and gave a faint blowing noise while opening his hand, like an explosion.

Palpatine looked stunned for a couple of seconds. Then he nodded grimly and glared. "You win, Bounty Hunter."

Bane shut him off and raised a finger threateningly over a button on his wrist-com. "Holster!" he ordered the clones.

Commander Fox hesitated for a moment, but then he lowered his blaster. "Stand down," he ordered. Reluctantly, the clones complied, and they allowed the Bounty Hunters to stride past them, Bane's finger still hovering over the button.

At this point, the speeder containing the assassin droid and Ziro arrived. Ziro clearly didn't enjoy the ride, as he made small yelping noises whenever they turned corners and grunted when they pulled to a stop.

"Come on. Let's get going," Bane said, and the others clambered into the seats while he stood upon the back like he was on a surfboard. The assassin droid took off and they rocketed away.

* * *

"Please Ani," Padmé whispered pleadingly to her husband, not noticing the bemused look that Chuchi sent at her for the nickname. "Wake up." She caressed his cheek, while Chuchi put one hand under his head and lifted it up slightly.

And, for once, Anakin listened to her. Slowly, dazedly, his eyes opened. As his vision came into focus, all he saw above him was the beautiful woman that he loved gazing down at him with concern. He chuckled. "What are you looking so sad about?" he asked, raising a hand to touch her face, but Padmé pointedly halted his progress and glanced at Chuchi. Anakin hadn't even noticed she was there.

"Oh, hello, Senator Chuchi," he said. "Er, thanks for the support."

"Happy to help," replied the Pandoran. "Are you alright?"

"All things considered, I suppose so," Anakin grinned wryly. "What's going on? Where's Bane?"

"The Bounty Hunters have gone," said Chuchi. "It appears that they got what they came for."

"They wanted to free Ziro the Hutt," nodded Padmé. "And they've left us standing in the middle of a giant bomb." She indicated the lasers, as she began to pull him to his feet.

"The Bounty Hunter said we should just sit here," said Onaconda Farr. "I think we should just sit here."

"Well," said Anakin, as he, Padmé and Chuchi all stood up. "That's not a very good idea." Then he pointedly said, "Too bad I don't have my lightsaber."

"You mean this?" Padmé revealed it. "I found it where you dropped it," she lied. Anakin grinned as Padmé activated the blade and carefully cut through the binders on Anakin's wrists before passing it to him.

"Now, quickly!" Anakin mustered his authority. "We don't have much time." With that, he reversed his grip on the hilt so the blade pointed downwards and he plunged it through the floor, then he proceeded to run in a ring around the Senators, carving a line in the floor as he went.

* * *

"Well, Hutt," Bane turned to look back at the being he'd been to so much trouble to break out. "It doesn't look like prison had too adverse an effect on you."

"Oh," said Ziro melodramatically. "You can't imagine the unspeakable things I've suffered. The horror. I doubt I'll ever really recover."

Fighting the urge to roll his eyes, Bane said, "How about some dead Senators as payback?" He pushed the button.

* * *

Padmé looked up in alarm as a high-pitched noise began to emanate from the charges and the lights on them began to blink faster – a sure sign that they were about to go off. Anakin noticed too and hurriedly completed the circle. The floor collapsed under the Senators and all of them fell through into the room below as the charges went off and blew up the room they'd been standing in. There were grunts of pain from all concerned as they landed unceremoniously and painful.

They were bruised, but they were alive.

Padmé coughed and allowed Anakin to pull her to her feet. "Another daring rescue, Master Jedi," she said.

"I do my best, Senator," Anakin nodded, both keeping up appearances of friends and nothing more.

"Indeed," said Bail. "We all owe you our gratitude today."

"Although I think we'd all appreciate it if next time you could make the escape a little less bruising," chuckled Chuchi, rubbing the back of her head.

Anakin grinned. "Next time?"

"Well, let's hope not," Chuchi shrugged.

"Well, I'm going to go and get the power back up and contact the Jedi Temple," said Anakin, turning to sprint out of the room.

* * *

"Congratulations on a job well done, Bounty Hunter," said Ziro.

"Time to pay up, Hutt," Bane reminded him. "I don't work for free."

Ziro moaned – he'd been hoping that Bane would forget that part of the bargain that his fellow Hutts had made with him.

* * *

Obi-Wan had been sitting, cross-legged in a meditation chamber, eyes shut and delving into his senses to find inner peace, when he was rudely interrupted from his meditative state by the bleeping of his comlink. Opening his eyes, he glanced down at his wrist and sighed. He'd asked Anakin not to call him for a few hours unless it was an emergency.

Pushing the button, he said, "This better be good, Anakin."

"Well, I'd say it certainly qualifies as an emergency," came the reply. "I just had a little run-in with a bunch of Bounty Hunters at the Senate Building."

"What?" Obi-Wan was started out of his annoyance by this revelation.

"Bane and a bunch of accomplices broke and took some Senators hostage. The Chancellor said that they were trying to free Ziro the Hutt from prison, and apparently they succeeded."

"Blast," Obi-Wan muttered. "That's not good. Having an uncontained Hutt as an enemy can be dangerous."

"Agreed," said Anakin. "But Commander Fox says he managed to place a short-range tracking device on Ziro's speeder. I'm sending you the scramble-signal now. You reckon you can head over and try and delay them until reinforcements arrive?"

"I'm sure I'll think of something," Obi-Wan sprang to his feet and started running. "Contact Master Windu and let him know what's happening. I'll do my best to stop Bane for a bit."

"I'm on it." Anakin blipped off. Obi-Wan sprinted quickly, adding a little of the Force to his stride to give him speed, into the nearest hangar. Fortunately, he didn't have to clear anything or book a vehicle. He jumped into the nearest speeder and, muttering about how much he hated flying and about how Anakin managed to find himself in these situations, he took off and soared out into the Coruscant air, following the bleeping of his comlink.

* * *

Terriermon was fleeing from his twin sister, who was determined to tag him after he'd accidentally trodden on one of her ears, leapt back and landed on the other. He giggled maniacally as he sailed through the air, looping around Aayla and Ahsoka, who were laughing at their antics while Lopmon completely ignored them, zeroing in on a single target.

It was just Terriermon's luck that he happened to be soaring past the door when it opened and Mace Windu entered the room. Terriermon yelped and attempted to backpedal, but he still ended up crashing into Mace's chest and unceremoniously knocking the Jedi Master off his feet.

"Crud!" cried Terriermon is surprise, leaping off the disgruntled man and zipping behind Renamon, wrapping his mate's tail around his body like a protective blankie and peering over the top fearfully as Mace glared at him.

"Soz?" he tried. When this didn't work, he tried, "Momentai." This seemed to irritate him even more.

"I'd appreciate it if you didn't kill my mate, Master Windu," said Renamon, lifting him into the air with her tail. "I assure you that that was a complete accident. Even Terriermon would not try to prank you."

"My sincerest apologies," said Lopmon. "It's my fault. I was chasing him."

"You weren't to know he'd walk in at that point," said Ahsoka. "It's not your fault."

"They were playing tag, Master Windu," said Aayla. "Apparently it's a common game played by small children in their own universe."

"Oddly exhilarating, it is," chuckled Yoda.

"Fare enough," Mace got to his feet and brushed himself off. "Master Yoda, we have a situation."

Rika and Henry both groaned. "Another one?" asked Rika. "Why am I not surprised?"

"Frankly I'm surprised that it took three days for one to crop up," added a disgruntled Henry.

Mace proceeded to tell them about what Skywalker had just told him. Ahsoka looked concerned when she learned that her master had been in trouble but managed to stop herself from interrupting.

Once Mace had finished, Suzie piped up, "Is it me, or does this Bane keeping on popping up out of nowhere."

"Unfortunately we have very few leads on him," said Aayla. "If we could find his hideout then we might be able to grab and jail him, but he is definitely a slippery customer."

"Unfortunate, this is," said Yoda, using the Force to retrieve the gimmer stick. "If Ziro is allowed to escape, trouble, he will certainly cause. Come," he walked for the door. Let us head for the conference room and await Master Kenobi's report, we will."

"Does that mean the game is over?" asked Suzie.

"I'm afraid so," said Henry, bending down to give his sister a lift onto his back. "Come on. We might be needed at any moment."

"Well, so much for our two week break," muttered Rika, resentfully.

As Yoda and Mace led the way out of the room, Terriermon popped his head around Renamon and said, "Hey Yoda. I have a question. Why do you use that stick when you don't actually need it?"

Yoda chuckled. "Less of a threat, I seem, when I use it. Useful, underestimation can be."

"Don't I know it," grinned Terriermon. "I mean, look at me."

"Yes, but the difference is that when people underestimate you, Terriermon," chuckled Renamon. "They're actually not underestimating you at all. They are right."

"Oi! Do you want that neck massage later?"

"You wouldn't go back on that. I know you too well."

"You know me better than I know myself."

"That isn't actually that hard," said Ahsoka.

"What is this? Pick-on-Terriermon day?"

"Momentai."

"Aayla!"

"What?"

"Don't say that."

"But it's fun."

"I hate you all."

"No, you don't."

"Ssh, Renamon. They don't need to know that."

Mace couldn't help but wonder how they ever got anything done.

* * *

3D the assassin droid pulled the speeder to a halt a considerable distance away from the Senate Building and beside another landing platform. On this one, resided the ship that belonged to Bane, that the numerous Bounty Hunters had used to gain entrance to the planet and that they would be using to leave.

After making sure that the legless Hutt got his way out of the compartment trailing behind the speeder, the Bounty Hunters and the Hutt made their ways up and into the ship. Bane watched the slime marks that Ziro left behind him on the floor and filed a mental note to get Todo 360, his techno-service droid, to clean it up later. From the looks on Aurra, Alama and Robonino's faces, Bane was also glad that he had no nostrils.

As Bane strode onto the bridge, he turned around to look at the rescued Bounty. "Well, Hutt," he slouched down in his chair and put his feet on the controls. "Where would you like to go?"

"Anywhere!" yelled Ziro. "Anywhere that's far away from this evil planet. There's no telling how long my sanity will last if I stay."

"If you ask me, it's already gone," Aurra muttered to Robonino, who gurgled assent.

"You'll have to be more specific," said Bane. "And it has to be a place where you can get your slimy hands on some credits to give us all what we did this job for."

"Oh, I don't know," Ziro moaned.

"Well," said Shahan Alama. "While he makes up his mind, let's make for the planet Felucia. I gotta meet up with my boss there. I believe he's planning to raid some nysillin farms and I can join up with him again there."

"Oh yes," Ziro nodded. "Felucia sounds good. Yes, take me there. I have powerful Separatist friends on that planet so I'll be safe from the Republic."

"And...?" Bane reminded him.

Ziro sighed, "And I'll be able to pay you all."

"Excellent," Bane swung around to man the controls. "We're off to Felucia then."

* * *

As the _Sleight of Hand_ took to the air, nobody inside noticed a speeder pull up beside the one they had been in, containing Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan cursed that he'd been unable to get here fast enough to prevent them from leaving, but, thinking quickly, he pulled a long-range tracking beacon from his belt and hurled it at the hull of the ship, where it stuck, vaguely beeping.

Obi-Wan watched as the ship moved away at speed. At least now they would know where they were going.

* * *

Half an hour later, and Obi-Wan strode into the conference room to find Mace, Yoda, Anakin, Aayla, Ahsoka and the Digimon and the Tamers all standing in there. There were no other Jedi present – in fact that were actually very few Jedi present in the Temple in these troubled times. Most out were out doing some job for the war effort.

"I take it you were unsuccessful, Master," said Anakin, who himself had only just got back from the Senate.

"To a degree," said Obi-Wan. I was unable to stop the ship from leaving but I managed to place a tracking beacon on the ship, so we can find out where it's going.

"And that means... what exactly?" asked Rika.

"That we can follow it and get that sleema back behind bars," Ahsoka replied.

"Somehow, I knew you were going to say that," Henry shook his head. "How many times have your breaks actually lasted."

"Very few," admitted Aayla.

"Alright, then," said Henry, sighing. "We might as well get on with it. Where's it going?"

"That's the spirit, Henry," Terriermon grinned. "We'll make a soldier out of you yet."

"God forbid," muttered Henry.

"Fanglongmon forbid," agreed Suzie. Henry chuckled.

Mace activated a hologram in the middle of the room, which depicted the galaxy, Obi-Wan stepped over to the controls and punched in the exact frequency of the tracking beacon he had used and a red blip appeared on the map.

"Alright then," said Mace. "That dot shows where they are now, but they're moving fast so they're obviously still in hyperspace."

"Does that mean we have to wait until they stop before we can find out where they're going?" asked Lopmon.

"Nope," said Anakin, "It's possible to take an educated guess on where they're going based on their current trajectory and alignment. Generally, hyperspace travel when not on trade routes tends to be as straight as possible."

"This technical talk makes my head hurt," muttered Suzie.

"Has anybody ever crashed into another ship going the opposite way in hyperspace?" asked Terriermon. He was promptly silenced by a look from Mace Windu and a mouthful of fur as Renamon covered his face with her tail.

"So, where are they heading?" the fox asked.

"Well, based on what Skywalker has said," said Mace, pushing a couple of buttons, which caused one of the planets to start blinking a red colour as well. "It looks like they're heading for Felucia."

"Oh poodoo," said Anakin, grimacing.

"Agreed," said Aayla. "This mission already seems less appealing than before."

"Ouch," said Henry. "That planet must be something bad. Can you tell us about it?"

"It's a jungle planet," said Aayla, "and not a very hospitable one at that. In fact, it's probably one of the planets where we be least welcome."

"Or, alternatively, most welcome," said Ahsoka, "if you look at it by the fact that the locals would love to have us there, in order to eat us."

Suzie hid behind Henry. "Sounds pleasant," said Lopmon, dryly.

"It's not," said Aayla. "Felucia is well known for being covered with the most dangerous of predators. Just about everything there is carnivorous, even a majority of the plants. It's also quite rife with diseases and none of them mild, either. We're going to need to take several medics with us."

"A most untamed world, Felucia is," said Yoda. "Well prepared, you would have to be."

"If it's such a horrible place," interjected Rika. "Then why did the Bounty Hunters head there?"

"That's anyone's guess," shrugged Anakin. "Felucia isn't known for its tourism, and it's not part of Hutt space. Maybe one of the Bounty Hunters has a stronghold there, or a hidden base."

"Well," shrugged Terriermon. "I always wanted to go to the Jungle. I've always wondered why the Digital World doesn't have a Jungle level. It just has a forest level, and that's so much more boring."

"Well," said Renamon. "It's looks like you've finally got a chance."

"Yeah, although, oddly, I'm not quite looking forward to the prospect as much as I was."

"Well, hopefully you won't have to spend long on the planet's surface," said Mace. "If all goes to plan it will just be a quick land, recapture the Hutt and stop the Bounty Hunters and leave. Hopefully you won't have to defend yourself against any predators."

"Nevertheless, prepared, you should be," said Yoda, "Master Kenobi, lead this mission, will you?"

"I shall do my best," said Obi-Wan.

"And of course, we'll be coming too," said Aayla briskly. "We never did get to properly thank Cad Bane for distracting Kul Teska enough for me to get a blow in."

Anakin chuckled. "Well, hopefully we'll be able to do it from the opposite side of a set of bars."

"As long as we're the ones outside the cell," said Terriermon. "Now let's go kick some Hutt butt. Hey, that rhymed."

"I wouldn't recommend kicking the butt of a giant slug," said Ahsoka, as they turned to leave – Anakin, Obi-Wan and Aayla getting in contact with Rex, Cody and Bly respectively. "It's hard to reach and you'd properly be squashed."

"Do slugs even have butts?" asked Rika.

"I reckon that perhaps we should steer clear of that subject before we begin to get disturbing images," said Lopmon.

"Good idea," said Renamon.

"Well then," said Henry. "Let's all go to the rainforest."

"And no tree-hugging," Terriermon quipped. "Or you may get eaten."

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

Mace and Yoda were left in the room as all the others left. Mace shook his head. "Sometimes I wonder how that Terriermon has survived this long," he said. "Or why Renamon chose him for a mate."

"Truly wonderful, the universe can be. Full of miracles, yes. And say, I would, that these Digimon are a great miracle. Never have I seen Aayla so happy or carefree as when in their company, she is."

"Sounds to me like she might be forming an attachment to them," said Mace. "Do you reckon we should try and stop it?"

Yoda chuckled, and began the lecture on why they shouldn't do that.

* * *

Alright then, where to start. The title of this chapter had a double meaning. I called it "Bane of the Jedi" because it features Cad Bane, but also because the rule against attachment is both addressed and suppressed by Aayla and Yoda. In a way, this rule was the Jedi's downfall, indirectly, because of the fact that Anakin had to hide his relationship, which allowed Sidious to get a hold on him.

This chapter also introduced Senator Chuchi, who also featured in my first oneshot for Movie-Brat. She will be hugely important later on, although so much later on that you'll all have forgotten I wrote this when you get there.

It took me three days to write this, and I'm a little annoyed with myself that it took so long. But, anyway, see you all next time. Reviews are appreciated

* * *

Next time...

Another Separatist leader is introduced. The Jedi and the Digimon arrive at Felucia. And the landing on the surface does not go as planned. At all. Just look at the title.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 42 : It All Goes Wrong**


	42. It All Goes Wrong

I am very disappointed with the length of time that it took me to write this chapter. But I have been ridiculously preoccupied over the last few days. But, on a more positive note, I have now left Trent College. YES! My final year is over, and I can't believe I got there. I often wondered what the school would think if they found out I was using my free periods to write this instead of do homework.

Ah well. Thanks for reviewing everyone, but:-

**Digimon575**, I'm sorry but I'm going to have to turn down your request. I'm not quite sure what to make of it, but I think the presence of an immortal God guiding the A-Team along would kind of ruin the suspense, because it'd be pretty easy to complete missions and there would be no surprises. Plus, it'd completely ruin the plot I've got for the rest of the story. Sorry. I do my best to include reader suggestions but Arkantos is just too big.

**Zero Vector **– I say that I've incorporated your idea, but I've what I've really done is taken it and adapted it slightly so that it's work. I think that it's be difficult to infect Renamon with a glitch if she's not connected to a computer, so I've changed it so that it's something else that is affecting her. But in every other aspect, it's the same.

Here's the long awaited chapter.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 42:- It All Goes Wrong**

* * *

The _Sleight of Hand _finally exited hyperspace and headed at a much slower pace towards the planet Felucia. The jungle world was almost completely green from orbit, except for a few splashes of blue that could be seen. These were either extremely small seas or very large lakes. Other than this there weren't many other features – no mountain ranges, no deserts, no nothing.

Bane steered his ship down into the atmosphere. Ziro sat behind him in the cockpit, flanked by the two assassin droids, while Aurra, Alama and Robonino had all excused themselves in order to get away from the bad smell.

"So, you're saying the Separatists have a facility on this planet?" Bane asked. "A little out of the way from modern society, don't you think?"

"Shu Mai is an excellent compatriot of mine," Ziro said. "She has a proficient air for business and she understands the most important things in life, most specifically, money."

"I like her already," Bane sneered. "But I should warn you that if she can't pay me, you'll have to find some other means of coughing up our some pretty quickly. And don't think you can weasel your way out of it, Hutt."

"You needn't worry, Bounty Hunter," said Ziro confidentally. "Shu Mai is the President of the Commerce Guild. She managed to guide her home planet of Castell out of severe financial depression, and she managed to get her own people to pay tribute to her without question. She is loaded."

"Good," said Bane.

"Sir," said 3D the assassin droid. "Incoming transmission from up ahead."

"I'd advise you to answer it," said Ziro. Bane nodded and put it through. The imaged of a battle droid appeared on the screen above.

"Unidentified spacecraft," said the droid. "Please identify yourself, because you are currently unidentified."

"You just said that," said Bane.

"I did?"

"Never mind all that," said Ziro. "This is Ziro Desilijic Tiure, a friend of the Commerce Guild. I haven't recently escaped from prison and—"

Bane cleared his throat.

"Um, I mean, been rescued from prison," Ziro muttered. "And I am now on my way to join my allies in the Separatist alliance and meet up with my old friend. I demand that stand down the anti-aircraft guns which I know that you have stationed around the facility."

The battle droid seemed to consider for a moment. Then he said, "You're clear. We await your arrival."

"Good to know," said Bane.

"Not far now," said Ziro.

A few minutes later and the _Sleight of Hand_ touched down. The ramp descended and Bane strode out, along with the rest of his Bounty Hunters. Ziro slurped along down the ramp after him. The facility landing pad had numerous other craft dotted around the place, but other than this is looked like a relatively standard Separatist compound, hidden in the shadow of a giant rock formation, meaning that it couldn't be approached from three sides.

Several battle droids were dotted around the place, but then something organic entered the hangar. The blast doors slide open and a small figure emerged, flanked by two Super Battle Droids. The figure was just over one metre tall, with pebbly blue skin, an elongated neck covered in neck-rings, wide yellow eyes and a head which tapered back on an incline, like a shoehorn. The body was thin and perched on two long, thin two-toed feet – the toes making them resemble hooves. Her hands were long and had three fingers. She was wearing a red robe with a blue, tapering gown from the waist down, her chest covered with gold.

Ziro slid himself past the Bounty Hunters and greeted her. "Shu Mai," he said. "Long time, no see."

The little Gossam replied. "Atika ungata oog arikatika awuntaka."

"Yes. Republic scum! I must say I am looking forward to getting my own back on them after what they did to me! But how have you been. Made any profits out of the war yet. I can't wait to start acting like a proper Hutt again."

"Weeshewssh rutunga ribda paloofer tikitiki."

"Oh, you can't imagine the unspeakable things I've suffered. The horror! I doubt I'll ever really recover."

"I thought that speech sounded rehearsed," muttered Aurra. "It's a wonder the other Hutts didn't pay us to shoot this idiot. I'd much prefer that to rescuing the fat shell-less snail."

"Much as I hate to interrupt this teary reunion," smirked Bane. "I reckon that you need a reminder that we require paying. And I shan't wait around for long."

Ziro swallowed nervously, and this was clearly visible to all and sundry thanks to the bulbous throat of a Hutt. "Oh, yes, quite. Er, I hate to be a burden Shu, but you would be doing me a huge favour if you could pay off these Bounty Hunters for me."

"Ratooka tinka vorca rito wakatooka goto."

"Oh, but of course I'll repay you everything once I get the opportunity to. I'll start raking in the funds again pretty soon."

"Burshavinif Patoka tryue tunti?"

"With interest?" Ziro tried.

"Quafijinivon."

"Oh thank you, thank you, thank you. I shudder to think of what these Bounty Hunters would do to me if I failed to deliver to them."

"I'm thinking of several ideas already," said Bane, using Ziro's cowardice to get him to hurry up.

"Please get it over with," Ziro begged the Gossam. "I'll make it up to you as quick as I can."

Shu Mai signalled to a battle droid and gabbled in quick Gossam. "Roger, roger," the droid said, turning to march out of the room.

"The droid has gone to get your reward," said Ziro. "You'll be paid ever last credit. Don't worry. Please don't kill me."

"Oh we won't," said Alama. "If you also chuck in a speeder. I'm going to head off soon to get back to my boss."

"Oh, but of course. One speeder, coming right up." Ziro nodded quickly, turning back to Shu Mai to ask for her help once again in acquiring the Weequay's transport.

The Patrolian, Robonino, looked around. For the past few minutes he'd been sure that he could hear a beeping noise. Turning about, he trotted forwards to follow the noise, which got louder, thus letting him know that he'd been correct. It was coming from somewhere at the back of the ship, and his little form scuttled down, following his ears.

Then he spotted a flashing light on the hull of the ship, quite a way up, certainly too far for him to reach. "Bane," he gargled, getting the Duros' attention, as well as Aurra and Alama. "Check this out."

Bane walked over and inspected the little flashing light. "Well, well, well," he said, taking it between two fingers and neatly plucking it off the ship. "It looks like the Republic managed to place a tracking beacon on my ship. Looks like they know where we are."

"Great, so that means that they'll be able to follow us here," said Alama. "This is just fantastic."

"Oh, it's not a total loss," said Aurra. "After all, we don't exactly have to tell Ziro about this."

"So what do we do?" asked Robonino.

"I suggest we just leave it here," Aurra grinned malevolently. "Then that means that we get paid, and then we can get away without the Jedi finding out where we've gone. Then, they'll come here looking for us. If they manage to storm the facility and recapture Ziro – well it doesn't matter as long as we get paid. But they may also be shot down by the anti-aircraft guns. For us, it's a win-win situation."

"That's just what I was thinking," nodded Bane. "I can see why they also call you ruthless."

"It's a gift," Aurra smirked. Bane casually tossed Obi-Wan's tracking beacon over his shoulder.

At this point, four battle droids entered the room, each one carry a large case in both hands. The Bounty Hunters strolled over and each one received one of the cases, opening them up to find that they were loaded with credits.

"I think you'll find that everything is in there," said Ziro. "And Alama, you're speeder is out at the front, just waiting for you."

"Excellent," grinned Alama. "In that case, I'll be going. It doesn't do to keep the boss waiting."

"Give my regards to Hondo for me," Aurra smirked.

"Oh, I will. You'll probably get a call asking why you didn't visit in person by the end of the day," agreed Alama, as he tucked his case under one arm and strode from the hangar.

"There better be everything in here, Ziro," Bane said, casually shutting his case. "If I find that there is a single credit missing from this case, then I swear you won't see next year. Is that understood?"

"Clearly," Ziro bobbed his head up and down erratically.

"Then it appears that my business here is done," said Bane, tipping his hat. "I will now take my leave. If you need another job doing, then don't hesitate to call and offer a nice sum. Let's go."

Bane, Aurra, Robonino and he assassin droids strode into the _Sleight of Hand_. Ziro and Shu Mai watched it rise into the air, turn and head out into the air again, flying up an away, where Bane would drop off the others somewhere before returning to his headquarters.

"Thank goodness that's over with," Ziro sighed with relief. "So, how goes the whole "taking over the galaxy thing?"

* * *

Unbeknownst to Ziro, the "Republic scum" were not that far away from him, and were hot on their trail. The _Intrepid_ and the _Negotiator_ were hovering in the atmosphere a few clicks away. Their hyperspace capabilities were greater than that of Bane's smaller ship, which was why, despite the fact it had been some time after the Bounty Hunters had left Coruscant that pursuit began, they were able to arrive only a short time afterwards.

"Alright then," said Obi-Wan into his comlink as he and Anakin strode through the hangar of the _Negotiator_, Rex and Cody marching right behind their respective Generals. "Let's make this as quick as possible, shall we?"

"Agreed, Master Kenobi," replied Aayla, as she and Ahsoka also strode across a hangar, along with Bly, the Digimon and the Tamers.

"Six gunships are to take off and head towards the sight where the tracking beacon is located," said Obi-Wan. "If all goes to plan, we should encounter a base of some kind and we'll be able to quickly storm it and block off all escape routes. Anakin, you know you're role?"

"Of course," said Anakin. "Drop from a gunship and enter the facility from above."

"Meanwhile, Ahsoka and I will lead an assault on the main doors," said Aayla, as she stepped into a gunship with all the others, plus Max and Conor behind her, grabbing the ceiling rail for support.

"And I shall head in from the back," said Obi-Wan. "We want to have this base completely surrounded."

"Let's get underway. The quicker we attack the better," said Anakin. "Bane won't be expecting an assault so quickly."

"And when we get him, shotgun his hat," said Terriermon. "I'm having that."

"Why?" asked Rika. "It wouldn't even fit on your head."

"Yeah, but it's that damn cool."

"No pillaging, Terriermon," chuckled Ahsoka, who was with them instead of her Master so that they had an equal number of Jedi heading from each cruiser, and also because she'd grown much closer to the Digimon since the Ventress incident."

"Why not?" asked Terriermon. "I was going to use the hat in a prank against Anakin."

"How?" asked Ahsoka.

"Oh, Terriermon can turn anything into a practical joke," said Lopmon. "Even a paperclip."

"Now that was a weird morning," said Henry.

"Let's get going," said Aayla, nodding to the pilot of the gunship. The gunships, three from each cruiser, lifted off and cruised out of the hangar doors. They joined up before the cruisers and formed a V phalanx, with Obi-Wan and Anakin's ship at the tip so that Obi-Wan could follow the signal of the tracking beacon.

"Are you guys ready for this?" asked Renamon, turning to the Tamers.

"Kinda," shrugged Henry. "I don't think we'll ever be ready for it entirely, or for any fight in this war, but at least this should be over pretty soon."

"I know something that you might like, Henry," said Aayla, and she pushed the red button that opened one of the blast doors. It slid to one side, and allowed everyone inside to take a look at the landscape stretched out below them.

Suzie gasped.

Even Rika said, "It's beautiful."

The entire landscape was covered with bizarre looking plants and giant fungi, most of which all looked slightly transparent and rather rubber-like. The calls of many native animals reached their ears from below. In the blazing sunlight, the entire land, right up to the horizon glittered like stain-glass windows in a church. One of the most common plants was a large, leafy tube with an open top, and they were dotted all around the place.

"Pitcher plants," said Henry. "We get smaller ones of those back home. Nasty things. Insects fall down the tubes and land in digestive juices and the plant can then absorb them when they've broken down."

"But those are huge?" said Renamon. "What are they supposed to catch?"

"Birds and flying mantas probably," said Ahsoka.

"Indeed," said Aayla. "Felucia is one of the best examples of a planet where the appearance can be deceiving. It looks beautiful from above, like a real tropical paradise, where all explorer's would like to go. But just about everything down there is hostile. All the plants and animals have special defences specifically to protect them from each other and as a result, they are particularly aggressive to anything they are unfamiliar with. Offworlders like us tend to fit that category."

"Remind me again why anyone would want a base here," said Terriermon.

Aayla chuckled. "Well there are pockets of people that live here. A few humans, a few Twi'leks, several Gossams and some Ithorians. But the most common are the native Felucians, which are actually sentient fungi with a humanoid form."

"Yikes," said Henry. "That image is going to give me nightmares."

"Oh, they're not so bad," said Aayla. "Although they are all Force-sensitive, and they also can have a tendency to go into an insane bloodlust for no apparent reason. They all live in a village some distance away from here."

"Well, we certainly will not be paying them a visit," muttered Renamon. "We don't want them to be driven to a bloodlust while we're there. We don't want any trouble if we can help it."

Aayla was about to reply, when suddenly the pilot cried, "INCOMING FIRE!" From the cockpit, the pilot slammed the blast doors shut and locked them in place, as he swerved his ship to avoid an incoming laser storm that had suddenly sprung up from below.

"What's going on out there?" shouted Anakin.

"I don't know, sir," said Rex.

"The whole area is festooned with Anti-aircraft turrets," cried the pilot from their ship. "They're everywhere and they're shooting at us."

"Anti-aircraft turrets?" asked Anakin. "But that doesn't make sense. Surely Bane wouldn't use any of those – he'd want to keep as low a profile as possible, wouldn't he?"

Obi-Wan grunted as the gunship shook. "I don't believe this is the work of Bane." Activating his comlink, he said, "Aayla, are you alright?"

"We're fine, but we're still under fire," said Aayla. "What's happening?"

"Apparently we've entered an Anti-Aircraft field," said Obi-Wan. "And that is not good at all. I believe we may have discovered far more than an outpost for a Bounty Hunter."

"Pirates or Separatists?" asked Anakin, grimly.

"Separatists?" sighed Obi-Wan. "And this mission didn't need to get any more complicated."

"Since when did the Separatists have a base on Felucia?" asked Ahsoka.

"I'm not sure," said Obi-Wan, throwing out a hand to stop himself from falling over. "It may be a new development and they're planning to invade the rest of the planet. We may have an opportunity to prevent another invasion here."

"Well, let's wait until we get through this flak before we make any decisions," said Anakin.

"Agreed," said Aayla, grabbing Terriermon as he fell off Henry's shoulder and placing him on the ground.

The gunships ducked and weaved with surprising agility for ships that looked so large and cumbersome in the air. The outstretched wings were dipped and lowered so that the bolts skimmed all around them, but even so it was barely enough. The storm of lasers heading towards them was simply too thick. One of the gunships was smashed to pieces as a laser cracked it in the nose, and another was hit from underneath, resulting in a hole that four clone troopers fell through and plummeted to their deaths.

The pilot grunted as he steered the gunship containing and Anakin and Obi-Wan with prodigious skill, but fear was gripping his heart. Never before had he encountered such a well laid out or heavy anti-aircraft field, and this gunship, ironically named "The Lucky Lekku" due to the painting of the female Rutian Twi'lek in clone armour on the side, had flown through many of them in order to get Anakin or some of his troops to where they needed to be.

Henry fought to steady himself while simultaneously trying to keep Suzie from falling over, wrapping his arms around his little sister protectively. The little girl turned and buried her face in Henry's leg, whimpering piteously. Henry gritted his teeth as the helplessness of the situation came to light. On the ground, they had the Digimon to protect them, but in an aircraft like this they could only rely on the pilot's skills, the bad aim of the beings below and blind luck. There was nothing he could do to protect anyone.

Rika stood firmly, refusing to hold onto the sides for support, stubborn pride willing her to stay upright alone. Renamon hovered behind her anxiously, ready to reach out and steady her Tamer in case a sudden jerk of the gunship sent her downwards. Terriermon and Lopmon stood beside their respective partners, holding their ears out for balance.

The clones, Aayla and Ahsoka also stood tall, although none of them were to proud to use support, holding onto the ceiling rails to keep themselves from falling. And a good thing too – the ship lurched violently as a huge bolt ploughed through the air where it had been moments before.

"The flak is heavy, General," called the pilot. "I'm having severe trouble navigating!"

"Just do your best," Aayla replied, steadying herself. "We must..."

But whatever she was about to say was lost when a heavy laser from one of the turrets nailed the ship straight on, smacking into the cockpit and instantly killing the pilot, who slumped over the controls. The gunship pitched violently. Rika swore as she was swept backwards. Renamon was barely able to keep her footing herself but when she caught Rika they both fell to the floor.

"We're hit!" Aayla cried into her comlink to the listening ears of Anakin and Obi-Wan. "We're going down."

Ahsoka and Max crashed into the side and the gunship began to rotate under the impact, veering off course and heading to the right, spinning wildly in the air as the occupants were tossed about in the complete chaos. Henry slammed into the wall and lost his grip on Suzie. The little girl pitched over and slid to the fore, her small form smacking into Bly's legs and sending the clone off his feet.

Lopmon instantly ran to her Tamer as Aayla and Rika grabbed Henry to steady him. "What's the plan?" yelled Henry, desperate for some good news.

"I'm afraid there isn't one," Aayla grimaced. "With the pilot dead, we have no control at all!"

"If I could get outside," Terriermon cried, "I could digivolve to Rapidmon and help slow the ship!"

"We can't open the blast doors!" Ahsoka cried. "We'll have to use a lightsaber to cut our way out. Step back!"

"Hurry!" Rika yelled as the gunship began to tilt alarmingly. Ahsoka activated her green blade and slammed it through the thick blast door, then began to cut a wide circle in the metal, the repeated judders and changing angles throwing her arms so it created something very jagged.

"Henry!" Terriermon cried.

"I know!" Henry replied, readying his blue card. "Jump outside the moment Ahsoka f-"

But Ahsoka never did finish because, at that point, another huge blast from below slammed into the blast door that Ahsoka was cutting through. Ahsoka screamed and was tossed back by the impact. She collided with Renamon and the two went rolling down the of the ship.

But the damage to the gunship was monumental this time. The entire LAAT was split in half down the middle. Debris and smoke filled the air as the two mismatched halves flew in different directions. The back half, which contained Henry, Rika, Terriermon and Aayla only, dropped straight down, completely losing its momentum and plunging to the forest below. The front half, containing Renamon, Ahsoka, Suzie, Lopmon, Bly, Conor and Max catapulted in a completely new direction, careening wildly off to the east.

"Rika!" yelled Renamon, rushing to the edge of the ship, but the other half containing her Tamer was already out of sight. "Terriermon!"

"Hold on Renamon!" Lopmon screamed as Ahsoka grabbed the fox from leaping out and plunging to her death.

"Rika will be fine!" Ahsoka cried. "She's with Aayla. She's in good hands!"

Renamon struggled in Ahsoka's grip, but the pitching half of the gunship overbalanced them again and they crashed to the floor. Their weight caused the gunship to tilt alarming to the gaping hole. Suzie shrieked as she lost her purchase and the walls and slid right out of the falling vehicle, screaming as the plummeted downwards.

"Suzie!" Lopmon was outside straight after her Tamer and soared down at velocity that she'd never before stretched herself to and grabbed Suzie's hands in her own. The two tumbled over and over one another as Lopmon strained to gain some kind of balance for her ears to function as parachutes.

Max and Conor had grabbed the side of the gunship with one arm each and grabbed one of Bly's legs in the other, allowing the clone commander to grab Ahsoka and Renamon before they too slid out of the ship.

"Brace for impact!" Bly yelled into Renamon's ear. "This is gonna be rough!"

* * *

"What d'you mean we can't go back?" Anakin growled at his old Master. "We have to help Ahsoka and the others. I won't leave her behind. I won't abandon her! Not after what happened!"

"I'm sure Ahsoka will be fine!" Obi-Wan called back. "But we must complete our objective and turning around would be suicide. It would make us an easy target and you know it! We'd be in the same predicament as they are! And a real help you'd be to your Padawan then!"

"So what do you suggest? That we just leave them to die! I won't just stand here and let that happen!"

"Anakin!" Obi-Wan yelled as their pilot dodged an oncoming laser bolt. "We've been through this once before back on Geonosis! Just as Padmé would want you to do your duty, so would Ahsoka. We must find a place to land safely and disable the guns before any rescue can be attempted. We cannot help them in any other way!"

Anakin resisted the urge to bite his tongue. He exhaled heavily through his nose and said, "Fine! We'll do it your way. But if Ahsoka gets hurt..."

"Ahsoka's tough, Anakin. That's one of the few good things that she's getting from your teachings."

"You can make jokes now?"

"Who said I was joking?"

* * *

Aayla grabbed Rika and Henry around the waist in each of her arms, wrapping them in a tight single-armed embrace each. She tensed her legs, ready to spring at any moment. "Terriermon!" she said. "Hop on!"

Terriermon needed no second telling and he hopped up onto Aayla's shoulder gripping the leather bands around her lekku. "I hope you know what you're doing."

"So do I," said Aayla, shutting her eyes and delving into the Force, mentally watching as the ground got nearer. "When I give the word, jump, you two."

"Are you crazy?" Rika cried.

"If you'd prefer staying in the ship..." Aayla said. "Trust in me, Rika. Please."

Rika didn't have time to hesitate, because Aayla's eyes snapped open. "NOW!" she yelled and she kicked off from the floor, Henry and Rika adding strength to her already powered Force-jump. They sailed through the air as the gunship smashed into the ground behind them and exploded, the force of it helping to carry them further.

Crushing Henry and Rika to her waist, Aayla cried, "Terriermon, take flight! Quickly!"

Trusting in her, Terriermon did as he was told and his ears snapped open, carrying upwards and away from the other two. Aayla focused on the ground, somersaulting through the air until she was feet-first. She spotted a leaf on one of the large plants below that looked large and sturdy enough and aimed the freefall at it.

Her feet struck the leaf and she slid along it like she was on a surfboard, which helped to slow her descent, but they still went sailing over the other side. Aayla changed position so she shoulders were now aimed at the ground and the three of them struck in a roll.

Aayla quickly released the two Tamers and they skidded to a halt, as she threw out her hands and leapt upwards again, coming to land on her feet as she slid across the ground several more metres before finally stopping.

Terriermon veered down to join them. They were battered. They were bruised. But they were alive.

* * *

Suzie had a comparatively easier landing as Lopmon managed to gain control of their descent and she was still light enough to make an easy burden for her partner. Suzie had often wished that she would grow up quicker, so she could be more mature like Henry and Rika and be treated like an adult, but now was one of the few times where she actually thanked the fact that she was still small.

Lopmon touched down and the two of them flopped onto their backs, taking a brief respite, where the air was filled with nothing but the sound of their breathing.

* * *

"If we don't get out of this burning thing!" Ahsoka cried, "We're going to need mopping up! We have to bail out before we crash."

"We haven't exactly got any escape pods!" yelled Max. "Is there a plan?"

"Renamon!" said Bly. "I've seen you jump out of a falling gunship before! You reckon you could do it again?"

Renamon's focus came off Rika and Terriermon for a moment and she nodded. "Yes. But I can't take more than one person with me."

"Don't worry," Ahsoka said. "You take Bly. I'll used the Force to help the other two."

Renamon wrapped her arms around Bly. "I hope you're not afraid of falling!"

"Bring it on!"

"Up and away!" Ahsoka almost smirked as she picked up Conor and Max with the Force, the two of them giving startled gasps as they were lifted into the air and hurled out of the gunship. Ahsoka followed suit. Renamon and Bly were alone by the edge of the remains of their transport.

Renamon watched the ground below her, carefully judging its distance as they got nearer, to determine the last possible time to jump safely. As the wreckage of the gunship neared the tops of the trees she threw herself out, dragging Bly along with her.

Just as she had with Blade about two weeks previously, she aimed herself into a diagonal arrow and positioned herself so she was on her back. She slammed into the ground, Bly on top of her, and slid through the loam, creating a brand new ditch as she shovelled it aside. Eventually, she came to a rest, and not a moment too soon. Any further and they would have crashed into a giant pit.

Ahsoka used the Force to slow her descent so she dropped evenly to the ground, then she looked up and quickly caught Max and Conor with it, lowering them to the ground too.

Ahsoka quickly pulled the two clones to their feet. "Thank you, sir," said Conor. "That was certainly... an experience. Although it is one that I hope never to repeat."

"Have to agree with you there," said Ahsoka. "But," she shrugged. "I've been in more than my fair share of crashes. Tatooine, Maridun – you name it and I'll probably have crashed there at some point in the future."

"Where's the Commander, and Renamon?" asked Max.

Ahsoka turned. In the distance she could see a plume of smoke where the gunship had crashed and gone up in flames. About one-hundred yards away, she spotted Renamon getting to her feet and perform a couple of basic stretches to work out the kinks in her back. Then the fox pulled Bly to his feet. "Over there," she said.

Renamon and Bly waved as the three of them walked over. Max whistled at the sight of the enormous pit. "That was close," he said. "Another couple of metres and you'd be lost in the darkness."

"I'm trying not to think about it," said Bly. "But thanks to Renamon, I'm still here."

"Don't mention it," said Renamon, who was busy communicating with Terriermon and was very much relieved to hear that he, Rika, Henry and Aayla were all fine. Then she looked out at the bizarre landscape, taking in the trees and the other plants from this new perspective. "So," she said. "This is Felucia."

The others turned to follow her gaze, scanning the horizon in all directions. "It's certainly very humid," muttered Bly. "This helmet is killing me already."

"Yes," said Renamon. "Something tells me this was a bad day to have a fur coat." She pulled at her gloves, as if considering taking them off.

"Does anyone else smell that?" asked Ahsoka, grimacing and waving a hand in front of her nose. Renamon took in the scent and was immediately repulsed.

"Ugh," she said. "It smells like rotting meat."

"Well, this place is full of creatures that each other," said Bly. "And the humidity would cause decay much faster than normal."

"Let's try to stay away from the predators," said Conor. Everyone nodded.

After a few seconds of silence, Max said, "So, Renamon. Where did the General land?"

He turned to look at her.

"**WHOA!"** he bellowed, raising his blaster at something above everyone's heads, right at the moment something very large and rubbery wrapped itself around Bly's legs and pulled him backwards, sending him crashing onto his front. Max started shooting at it, and everyone else whipped around to see an enormous tentacle, like that of an octopus but without the suckers, had rose from the pit behind them to grab Bly.

And many, many more were rising after it.

And down in the middle of the sloping pit, a huge mouth, like some strange weird beak had emerged and begun squealing in anticipation. It was so big, it could have swallowed a killer whale whole.

Because Felucia was one of the many planets that were infested with Sarlacc.

And this one was huge.

* * *

"Are you guys all okay?" asked Terriermon, as he landed beside the other three.

"Yes, Terriermon," said Aayla. "We're fine."

"Any broken bones?"

"No?"

"Pulled muscles?"

"No."

"Bruises?"

"None serious."

"Serious gashes?"

"No."

"Bladder problems?"

"What?"

"Momentai," Terriermon grinned. "Just had to slip it in at some point."

"Well, that could have gone better," said Aayla looking up at the sky. "Looks like Anakin and Obi-Wan will have to hold out without us for a while. That is if they didn't get shot down themselves. That was one well-placed anti-aircraft system."

"Never mind all that," Henry said. "Terriermon, where's Suzie? Is she okay?"

"And Renamon," Rika pressed the little Digimon. "She's not hurt, is she? Where is she now? Tell me?"

"Whoa, whoa, easy, easy!" Terriermon held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Give me some breathing space. Don't worry. They're both fine. Suzie's with Lopmon. Apparently she fell out of the gunship but Lopmon was able to catch her in time and they're somewhere over there." He pointed off in a random direction. "And Renamon's okay too. She's a little further that way."

Aayla looked over her shoulder at the surrounding rainforest. Her mind was nudging her, telling her that something was wrong. Her eyes settled on an enormous boulder several yards away. There was something odd about it, although it looked like any other boulder.

"Well, that's a relief," said Henry. "Come on. We have to get to them right now. There's no telling what could happen in this place."

"What are we waiting for?" asked Rika. "Lead the way, bunny-boy."

"Whoa!" Terriermon held up his hands again, but this time it was a "stop-everything" gesture. "That's not good. You're right. Renamon's under attack already, by some kind of giant octopus thing."

"What!" Rika cried.

"And we're about to come under attack to," said Aayla, igniting her lightsaber. "Children, stay back."

They whipped around in time to see the enormous boulder get up. Dirt showered off it as it rose on two legs, two enormous bulky arms extending from the side. It slowly turned around to face them – it's head looking like a cross between an Iguanodon and a Rhino, but with the huge bony plates like teeth, and the horn was like that of a Brontotherium – more like a large, flat and with a bulbous tip. It stared down at them with its little, piggy eyes. It wasn't a boulder at all.

"Jungle rancor," said Aayla. "And a very angry one. It's slow but enormous strong. Stay out of its way."

"Let's go," said Terriermon. "Let's head to Renamon."

"I'll hold him off," Aayla darted forwards as Terriermon guided his Tamers into the trees. The rancor raised a huge fist and brought it down to crush her but she leapt aside and it pummelled the ground, creating an enormous crater. Aayla sprang onto the arm and ran up it, until she stood upon the rancor's shoulders.

The jungle rancor promptly went ballistic, roaring and hurling itself around like a bucking bronco from hell. Aayla, however, was not an easy person to throw off, and she could have put any cowboy to shame as she perched, lightsaber in hand and dodging the flailing arms.

Out of the corner of her eye, the Twi'lek watched Terriermon leading the others away. She grinned to herself, before ducking under a mad swing from one of the huge arms which would have slammed into her like a piston.

After about half a minute, she leapt off the creature's back and somersaulted over the head to land by its feet. Whirling around, Aayla sent it stumbling backwards with a burst of the Force before turning and charging after the others, adding speed to her legs with the Force so she could catch up.

And it was a good thing she did.

* * *

Suzie took a moment to catch her breath as she sat on the damp rainforest floor, surrounded by the bizarre trees and the only friendly face in sight being that of her partner standing beside her. She almost wished that she was back in the Digital World desert. At least there you could see danger coming from some way away. Here, anything could be lurking behind the trees.

"When can we go home, Lopmon?" she asked. "All this adventure stuff is cool, but it's really scary. And my Mum was always telling me never to try parachuting because she'd be terrified for me. And now I did, kind of. What will she say?"

"I don't know, Suzie, but we really don't have the time for that now," Lopmon shook her head. "The others are trouble. We have to go and help them as quickly as we can."

"Which others?" asked Suzie. "We got separated, remember?"

"Both others," said Lopmon. "I can see it through their minds. Come on, Suzie. Get up, quick. They need our assistance."

"Okay," said Suzie, getting to her feet. "Which way are we going?"

"That way," said Lopmon, pointing at one of the plumes of smoke from the two halves of the ruined gunship. "Come on. Fast as we can."

Suzie followed Lopmon as the bunny took to the air and flew off, staying only a few inches above her partner's head.

"What kind of trouble are they in?" asked Suzie.

"Oh, the usual trouble we face actually – both of the groups are being attacked by a giant horrible monster," said Lopmon. "Right up our street really."

* * *

"Bly!" Renamon cried as she ran forward and seized the clone commander, who was steadily being pulled down into the pit and towards the Sarlacc's maw. She strained against the strong pull of the tentacle, digging her heels into the ground and gritting her teeth as a brief tug-of-war began. Bly grunted in pain as he was pulled in two opposite directions.

Max and Conor shot desperately at the twelve flailing tentacles for all they were worth as Ahsoka darted forwards. The blasters were little to no effect whatsoever, but a lightsaber would have better luck. "Hang on, Bly!" Ahsoka cried as she approached the tentacle that held the commander.

She leapt into the air, preparing to swipe her blade down and shear off the end, when another tentacle swung out of nowhere and smacked into her midriff. Ahsoka yelped, winded, as she was flung backwards and crashed into the edge of the pit.

A second tentacle came a batted Renamon in the face. The Digimon was also flung backwards, head over heels, and Bly was pulled even further down. Bly desperately reached for his waist. His blaster was trapped under the tentacle and he couldn't pull it free, but he could reach the cable-thrower.

Quickly he unlatched it and pushed the button, jettisoning a cable straight up and out of the pit. Max and Conor saw its progress and, stowing their useless blasters, they grabbed it and began the tug-of-war again, straining to pull Bly out and not get pulled in themselves.

"Don't let go, Commander!" yelled Max.

"Wasn't planning on it!" Bly hollered back.

Ignoring the pain in her chest, Ahsoka got unsteadily to her feet and held her blade at the ready. A few yards away, Renamon also clambered up onto her hind paws, ignoring the furious ache in her face from the blow from the tentacle The two stood, side by side, for a moment, staring at the flailing forest of tentacles that now separated them from Bly.

"You get to Bly," said Ahsoka. "I'll take the tentacles."

They shared a brief nod, before they charged.

Ahsoka nimbly dodged a tentacle the lanced at her like a spear. It slammed into the ground and the Padawan swept her blade through it, slicing two feet off the tip. The Sarlacc shrieked in pain, and the tentacles pressed home their attack. Another sought to take her legs from under, but she bounced over it, dodged another aiming for her head with a roll, then cleaved through another, much nearer the base this time.

Three more came for her simultaneously, but she dodged one, carving off the tip, back-flipped over another and plunged past the third, performing two quick swings that cut the tentacle into three pieces. But, abruptly, a four came and slammed into her stomach, sending her lightsaber flying out of her hand. But this time, instead of flying back, she grabbed hold of the tentacle and rode it as it lifted itself back up into the air.

Ahsoka flipped so that she was standing on top of the tentacle and, summoning her fallen lightsaber, she sprinted along it. She jumped over one swinging tentacle and crouched under another as she ran at full tilt. At one point two went swinging for her at once, but she leapt off the tentacle, grabbed it and swung under it, then somersaulted back onto it when the tentacles had passed. Sufficiently close to the base now, she hacked her lightsaber through it.

The Sarlacc squealed and launched three swinging appendages at her. She managed to, in mid-air, dodge the first two, but the third caught her in the back on the legs and sent her tumbling towards the ground. But before gravity could get her there, another tentacle lashed out and wrapped around her leg before bodily throwing her out of the pit. Ahsoka crashed through the trees, rolling unceremoniously before coming to a stop in a heap.

Renamon ran to Bly, for all she was worth. She could see the clone commander being slowly dragged further towards the Sarlacc's huge mouth, despite the efforts of Max and Conor to pull him out. The Sarlacc had much more strength than they did. If she didn't get to him, he'd be eaten.

Renamon bounded off one tentacle, forward-rolling under another in the process and then came about, turning so fast she kicked up the earth beside her. One tentacle speared for her stomach, but Renamon fell backwards and slid underneath it, lashing up at it with her claws as she went. The tentacle recoiled as Renamon slid from under it. Then the fox sprang up and ran on, batting aside a smaller tentacle as she went.

Renamon got closer and closer to the commander, darting from side to side like a samurai. Up and over, duck, leap, catapult, Renamon wove in a graceful dance around the myriad of tentacles until four of them launched at her simultaneously. Her eyes narrowed as she saw them coming and, powering her legs, she leapt straight upwards sailing right over all four. Tucking her arms to her chest and her legs behind her she shot down like an arrow, doing the most furious barrel-roll ever seen before she came to land beside Bly.

"Hold on, Bly!" she cried.

""I'm trying!" yelled the commander, wincing at the pain of the tentacle pulling him in.

* * *

Terriermon watched Renamon's battle with the Sarlacc anxiously as he led the others through the trees and towards his mate. He sailed through the trees at what he considered to be a horribly slow pace, but Henry and Rika were running as fast as they physically could. Terriermon, concerned, forced himself not to tell them to hurry. This would only aggravate Rika.

"How far away are they?" asked Rika, already beginning to puff but keeping up her determined expression.

"About half a mile," said Terriermon. "The gunship went quite a long way before it crashed."

"Terriermon! Look out!" Aayla cried as she hove into view behind them.

"For what?" Terriermon cried, but then the answer came as a second jungle rancor exploded out of the trees ahead of them. It roared furiously as the Digimon and the two Tamers pulled to an abrupt halt right in front of it. It raised its huge fists above its head and brought them down like twin sledgehammers right at Henry.

"Henry!" yelled Terriermon. "Get out of the way!"

Aayla's hand lashed out and Henry was jerked backwards as if he's been caught with a lasso. The rancor's fists nearly hit him and he felt the slipstream of their swing blow right across him as he shot backwards. His flight was stopped when he collided with Aayla – the Twi'lek grabbing him and holding him steadily.

"Thanks," Henry said breathlessly. "You saved my life."

"Don't thank me yet," said Aayla, as she grabbed him and leapt to the side, pulling him out of the way of the boulder which the rancor had just decided to throw at them.

Rika yelled as the rancor's foot crashed down within a couple of feet of her. This was a mistake as the rancor's attention was diverted to her. It turned and raised a foot to stamp down on her, when a rapidly spinning bunny smacked into its stomach. It didn't do much to hurt the rancor, but it did send it stumbling backwards.

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" Terriermon cried, rubbing his head dazedly. "Tough armour."

"We've got to get out of here!" Rika yelled, running over to Henry and Aayla, Terriermon behind her. The rancor regained its balance and, now absolutely furious, roared loud enough to make the trees shake before it thundered down upon them.

* * *

Renamon flexed her claws and attacked the tentacle holding Bly's leg with unsuppressed ferocity, tearing out chuncks of the flesh. "Let him go, you overgrown octopus or I'll tear you to pieces with my bare hands."

Then, to her great surprise, it did.

Only, the tentacle then went for her instead.

Unprepared for this move, Renamon hesitated for a fraction of a second, but it was enough for the tentacle to wrap around her legs and pull them together, locking them in place. Immediately she was lifted about one-hundred-and-twenty-five metres into the air by it and then brought down just as quickly and the tentacle slammed her bodily into the ground. Renamon yelped in pain, but then she screamed as another enormous tentacle thundered down onto her back, smashing her into the ground.

Bly was still in trouble, as another tentacle, a slightly severed one, had taken the place of the other and he was still being pulled into the Sarlacc's mouth. "Renamon! Look out!" he cried.

Legs still held in the Sarlacc's grip, Renamon looked over her shoulder, wincing at the great pain in her back, to see another tentacle punching down towards her face to deal a blow that she certainly wouldn't survive. She braced herself, defiant until the end.

The tentacle impacted.

But not with her. With the ground next to her. It had veered off course at the last second. Renamon turned to see Ahsoka was back in action and she'd used a pulse of the Force to move the tentacle. The Togruta bounded over and sliced through it, then cut through the one around Renamon's legs.

Renamon didn't have time for thank you, as she had spotted Bly. He was mere inches from the Sarlacc's mouth. "Bly!" she cried, and the two of them darted forward together.

Too late.

The cable Bly was holding snapped. Conor and Max both fell backwards at the unexpected slack, falling to the ground in a heap. Now freed of competition the tentacle drew Bly inside its mouth and with swallow, Commander Bly was gone down its throat.

"BLY!" Renamon cried, attempting to lurch forward and do something, anything, vicious to the Sarlacc, but Ahsoka grabbed her and held her back, having to use to Force to help restrain the enraged fox. "It's too late, Renamon," she said, choking back a sob. "Too late. He's gone."

"BLLLLYYYY!"

* * *

"Henry! Let me go Rapidmon and put him to sleep for a bit," said Terriermon.

"You'd kill it!" Henry cried. "I have a better idea. Aayla, could you hold it off."

"Make it quick," Aayla nodded, drawing her blade and charging forward. The rancor faltered in surprise – nothing had ever charged at him in mid-charge before. Aayla sprang upwards and rebounded off its chest, cutting a long gash in it with her lightsaber. It did little damage to it as Aayla had not cut it deep, but it did enough to halt it momentarily.

But everything deteriorated from there.

Because as Aayla was rolling backwards in mid-air, the first rancor from before burst out of the trees and swung a massive fist that smacked into Aayla. Aayla didn't have the opportunity to scream. The blow to the head was so strong that she blacked out instantly. Her limp form went sailing over the other three, rolling for several feet before coming to a stop with a thud at the impact with one of the trees.

"Aayla!" the other three all cried simultaneously, staring in disbelief at the unconscious Twi'lek. Terriermon ran over to her side to check that she was still breathing and let out a sigh of relief that she was. But the roar of the two rancors reminded him of the danger.

His expression hardened. "Okay, that does it," he said. "Henry, be ready with that card when I say now."

"Got it," said the Tamer, "but what are you going to do?"

"Herd them closer together. Easier target." He ran over to stand before the two and called up. "HEY! You're so fat you mothers needed a crane to get you out of bed in the morning the day after you were born."

Terriermon didn't know if the rancors understood him or not, but their anger was plain to see. He darted to one side and took to the air as one attempted to squash him, spreading his ears to catch the wind.

He then began to literally fly rings around them, easily evading their frenzied swings as they spun ungainly around in an attempt to follow and swat the irritating little bunny. He ducked and dodged around their arms, circled their heads tauntingly, just out of reach of their snapping jaws.

"Missed! Oopsi-daisy! Can't catch me. Ooh, I felt some breeze on that one!" and other various taunts constantly issued from his mouth and they managed to further enrage the rancors.

Finally, he zipped between them and they pile-drove into one another, their heads clashing together. "Now, Henry!" Terriermon cried as he came in to land and turned to face them, raising his ears.

"Digi-modify!" Henry cried as he swiped the card – a card that he'd used once before, that he received from Takato and used only shortly after the two of them had met. "Training grips, activate!"

Terriermon grinned as the metal bands appeared on his ears, and he wasted no time in hurling them forward. So close together, the rancors were both engulfed by the attack as the grips glowed and reformed around their bodies, binding them together. They roared and struggled, but failed to break free. Finally they overbalanced and fell in a heap.

"Well, that was entertaining," said Terriermon, dusting off his ears. "How's Aayla?"

He turned to look at the Jedi, and he let out a strangled yelp. Henry and Rika whipped around to stare in horror. It had barely been a minute since Aayla had been knocked out, but already her body was covered in little black forms from lekku to boot. The three ran over to crouch down beside their friend.

Aayla's crash against the tree had disturbed a colony of ants.

A colony of giant, carnivorous ants, each one over an inch long.

Aayla Secura was being eaten alive.

* * *

That has got to be THE BIGGEST cliffhanger I have ever done, and a double cliffhanger at that. I promise I'll try to get the next chapter churned out quickly, but I can't make any other promises beyond try. I'll still be quite busy for a few days.

* * *

Next time...

Well, I'm not telling this time. It'd ruin it. But I will say this – four more character will be introduced towards the end.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 43 : The Wild**


	43. The Wild

I cannot believe it almost took a whole week.

Actually I can – I reckon it is time I became straight with you all. The 327th are not the only ones with a secret. This whole fanfic is one big secret – as my parents don't know I'm writing it. My mum doesn't want me to write fanfiction because she's scared of copyright laws, despite the fact I constantly tell her that its fine as long as we put a disclaimer, and she's also scared of me putting up something inappropriate, like a lemon. Neither she nor my dad even like me READING fanfiction, as they both think fanfiction writers are only people with no creativity. Neither have read a single fanfiction before, so I am well aware that they are talking crap.

Anyway, they don't have a clue I'm writing this. I have been using free periods at school and homework pretence to write this mostly, and also writing when they go to watch ice hockey. But now it is summer. I have no school, I have no homework, and ice hockey season is over, so I have to write at every possible opportunity when I'm alone in the house.

So, the updates might be slower than usual. Let's hope my parents don't find out about it this holiday, or Mum will certainly make me delete everything. I won't, of course, I'll just change my pseudonym. I have followed all her other orders – I don't have a YouTube or DeviantArt account, but this is one I refuse to follow. Don't judge me for my disobedience please - I just think it's a ridiculous rule. I enjoy writing, others enjoy my writing, and I've made some new acquaintances and friends. Nothing bad whatsoever has come of me having this account.

Speaking of DeviantArt, thanks should go to **Bookworm Gal **and her friend **Agrotera-thanatos**, who have kindly agreed to post something I made myself on the website – a movie poster for this fanfic. See my profile for the link.

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* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 43:- The Wild**

* * *

"Let go of me, Ahsoka!" Renamon struggled wildly and furiously to get out of the grip of the Togruta Padawan, who had locked her arms around Renamon and pulled her backwards in a hold. Ordinarily a humanoid like her would be unable to hold on to the fox, but Renamon's limbs were refusing to respond to her properly. Renamon knew that Ahsoka was using the Force to hold her in position, and this made her even more angry.

What was Ahsoka playing at? They had to get Bly back.

"Renamon, what are you going to do?" Ahsoka sniffed, feeling hot, salty tears sting at her eyes even as she said it. "Bly just got eaten. By a Sarlacc. No-one has ever escaped a Sarlacc when they've been swallowed before."

"I don't care!" Renamon writhed vigorously and Ahsoka was having sever trouble holding onto her. "Don't you get it? He's our friend."

"I know that! But he's gone now."

"No, he's not!"

"Yes. He is!" Ahsoka said firmly. "There's nothing that either of us can do for him now. A rescue mission would be suicide for both of us. We'd just be giving the Sarlacc a second course."

"I refuse to just walk away!"

"You have to! He's gone, and you have to accept that."

Renamon growled, her fur standing on end, almost as feral as Guilmon sometimes went. "I can't," she snarled.

"Renamon," Ahsoka said quietly, resisting the urge to sniff. "You are one of the best, most capable, fasted, most skilful and most awesome warriors that I have ever met. But even you can't pull Bly out of the belly of a Sarlacc."

Renamon stopped struggling breathing heavily and sending a look of deepest loathing down at the mouth at the bottom of the pit below them, the creature that had eaten one of her friends.

"I have to try," she whispered.

"You can't do it," said Ahsoka firmly.

"No, you can't!" called a voice from somewhere above them. "But I can!"

Renamon and Ahsoka looked up sharply, to see a brown rabbit soar above their heads and into the forest of tentacles, ducking and weaving around the thrashing appendages. Lopmon had arrived.

"Lopmon!" Ahsoka cried. "What are you doing? You'll get yourself killed."

Renamon's look of outrage, on the other hand, had changed from rage to a smirk. "No, she won't." Ahsoka looked at her questioningly and Renamon nodded up the hill. "Suzie will see to that."

Ahsoka looked to see the little Tamer standing on the edge of the pit. Suzie had her D-Arc in her hand and had raised it above her head in a triumphant fashion. "What's she going to do?" asked Ahsoka.

"The card in her hand is blue. Take a guess."

"Digi-modify!" Suzie yelled as she slashed the card through the socket on the little device. "Matrix-digivolution activate!"

Lopmon exploded into light - the brightest digivolution light that Ahsoka had seen yet (she hadn't actually seen Gargomon become Rapidmon on Behpour). The light began to grow at an alarming rate, bigger, bigger and bigger until it was the size of a four-story building.

"**LOPMON MATRIX-DIGIVOLVE TO…"**

The rabbit that burst from the light-show was similar to Lopmon only in the fact that it's arms and a portion of its head was brown, its ears were tipped with pink, and it had three horns on its head. Other than this it was completely different. The ears were like ordinary rabbit ears, the face was white and it was garbed with a white and red garment across its chest and torso, along with lilac coloured leggings. It's arms were enormously long, almost reaching its feet.

"**ANTYLAMON!"**

The Digivolution had taken place in mid-air, so Antylamon obeyed gravity and plunged through the thrashing tentacles. Her eyes narrowed and her giant hands morphed into a pair of giant battleaxes.

"Let's cut you down to size!" she yelled. **"BUNNY BLADES!"**

With a single sweep she cut through two of the giant tentacles right at the base, eliciting a horrible squeal from the Sarlacc. The second axe severed a third tentacle by slamming the edge down upon it and into the ground. She landed with an almighty Force beside the Sarlacc's mouth.

Looking down, Antylamon realised that the mouth was actually the whole hole, as it was filled with lots of backwards pointing teeth, and that the beak-like protrusion was actually the Sarlacc's tongue, which also had a mouth in it, and another tentacle which looked like a tongue itself.

"Hang on, Bly!" Antylamon roared as one axe sliced through a fourth tentacle, while the other morphed back into a hand. "And you better be alive when I get you out! And thankful too."

Without further ado, she plunged her hand into the mouth in the giant tongue. The Sarlacc's response to this unwelcome intrusion of the giant hand was instant and vicious. It squealed in a giant, gurgling way and the other tentacles that had remained intact – about seven left instantly bore down on the giant bunny. Two of them slammed into her back and other clouted her across the face.

Antylamon grunted in pain at the blows, but she held firm. Swinging her remaining axe she cleaved a further tentacle in half, leaving the rest of it whipping around in agony. "Keep them off my back!" Antylamon yelled. "I've got this!"

"With pleasure!" Renamon cried. Ahsoka, having let Renamon go some time ago, agreed wholeheartedly as hope sprang up in her anew. Both of them sprang forward to engage the tentacles in battle once again. Renamon grabbed hold of one of them and tore into it with her claws, ripping great chunks of goopy flesh from the base.

Ahsoka leapt right onto Antylamon's back, as the Ultimate level bunny morphed her axe back into her hand. As Ahsoka cut through a tentacle aiming for Antylamon's back, causing it to recoil, Antylamon planted her foot between two of the great teeth and grabbed the lip of the tongue with her other hand to pull the maw open wider. She thrust her arm in deeper, so it was now up to her elbow.

Renamon finished tearing through the tentacle and it fell to the ground in a heap. Ahsoka whirled her lightsaber from her position on Antylamon's shoulderblades, daring the remaining tentacles to come in for another attack. Two of them responded to her challenge with vigour. One of them came to an end when the green plasma carved a neat line straight through it, and the other one found a similar fate, but not before it managed to get a glancing blow into the back of Antylamon's head.

"Sorry!" cried Ahsoka.

"Doesn't matter!" grunted Antylamon, her voice much lower in pitch than her Rookie form. "But we need to get this over quickly. My arm is beginning to tingle."

"Go for it!" Renamon urged as she engaged another tentacle in battle.

"Right!" Antylamon nodded, shifting position. Gripping the top part of the tongue-mouth-thing in her left hand, she brought her foot forward and deliberately inserted it into the mouth, then stepped down, pulling the two lips apart as wide as they could go, which was actually quite a length – it almost seemed like it was made of elastic, probably so it could ingest bigger prey.

With a roar of determination, Antylamon thrust in her arm all the way up to her shoulder. Feeling around, her arm came into contact with what felt like dirt. Feeling about, she came upon something else. Her hand had just touched a human. Closing her fingers around the form, she cried, "I've got him!"

Her arm was really beginning to tingle now – possibly the beginnings of digestive juices trying to eat into her. She yelled and pulled her arm out of the gaping tongue. And, gripped in her enormous fingers, was Bly.

"Whoa!" cried Bly at the sudden movement into the air, gripped protectively in Antylamon's hands. "I don't recommend that! Go to hell, you pile of poodoo." He yelled down at the squealing Sarlacc that had just been robbed of its dinner.

The Commander took note of his saviour. Underneath his helmet, he blinked. "Lopmon?" he breathed.

"Antylamon," grinned the bunny, as Ahsoka hopped onto her shoulder, "but to all intents and purposes, yes, it is me."

"You got big."

"Really? Well, you got eaten," laughed Ahsoka, so relieved to see him alive.

"Never again," Bly shook his head. "This'll be a new one for the barracks."

"Look out!" cried Renamon, as one of the two remaining tentacles barrelled for Antylamon's stomach. The bunny moved like lightning, dodging to one side, grabbing the tentacle as it lanced past and kicking it aside.

"Climb aboard, Renamon!" Antylamon called. Renamon took two leaps, one up to the hip and one up to the shoulder, as she stood beside Ahsoka next to Antylamon's head. Antylamon bent down and then sprang up like a cannonball. The Sarlacc's two tentacles waved after her futilely as she leapt well out of their range.

"Here's a little parting gift!" Antylamon said. **"ARM BOMBER!"** She hurled down the two balls of compressed air, which impacted on a tentacle each and sent it hurtling to the ground. Antylamon landed beside the pit, next to Conor and Max, who had watched the whole thing in stunned silence.

"Yay!" Suzie cried. "Antylamon rules!"

"And Bly lives!" cheered Ahsoka. "How could I ever have doubted you Digimon? You pulled off the impossible more than Skyguy."

"True," said Renamon.

Then she saw what Terriermon was seeing.

"Oh Fanglongmon!" she cried. "Quick! We have to get over there!"

"Agreed," said Antylamon, scooping up Suzie, Conor and Max before haring into the trees.

* * *

"Aayla!" Rika yelled. "Wake up!"

"Rika! Stop shouting." Henry warned, struggling to keep his own voice under control. "You want to attract another one of those rancor things. Aayla wouldn't stand a chance then."

"She doesn't stand a chance now!" Rika hissed, looking down at the fallen Twi'lek and the enormous ants swarming all over her body. "Unless we do something."

As of yet, the ants weren't doing too much damage. They were investigating this strange new creature, swarming all over her, but several of the largest ones were taking enormous experimental bites with their huge pincers and several others were already carrying tiny pieces of her flesh back to the tree. It wouldn't be long before most of the others got the idea. Those that were already were mostly biting at her close, and the skintight clothing Aayla wore was actually protecting her, as the ants were too large to get under them.

But it wouldn't stop them for long.

Rika fell to her knees and started swatting at the ants on Aayla's exposed stomach, but although she managed to kill over a dozen, the rest of them just began to swarm over her hands. They were much more aggressive to Rika, as Aayla wasn't actually attacking them, but she was.

"Terriermon! Do something!" Rika demanded, sending ants flying as she waved her hands and shook them off.

"Like what?" Terriermon asked. "Blast them? I'm not that good a shot. I'd probably kill Aayla before they did!"

"Aayla, wake up!" Henry cried, running a hand through his hair as he desperately tried to think of a solution. Ants. Ants. Ants. What did he know about ants?

None of them had ever felt so totally helpless, especially Terriermon. Digivolution would do no good here. The ants were swarming over her closed eyes and moving around the ear-lumps on either side of her head. All three wanted to scream or cry, but that wouldn't do any good. The ants would make sure that Aayla never woke up.

Henry's brain was racing. He couldn't let Aayla die. Not after everything that she'd done for them. Not after she'd just saved him from being crushed to pulp by the rancors. He had to repay the favour.

They couldn't beat the ants away. That much they knew already. The ideal solution would be to find water and wash them away, but if they tried to carry Aayla anywhere they'd end up putting themselves in danger too. Not to mention they had no idea where the nearest waterhole was.

So they had to lure the ants away. How? Henry cudgelled his brain for ideas. Pheromones would work, but they didn't have any way of producing them. A better meal choice wouldn't work either – the ants would just take both.

But, perhaps…

"Terriermon!" Henry cried. "Find more ants!"

"What?" Terriermon asked. "Are you nuts? Aren't there enough already?"

"You've read the Wikipedia page on ants! You've read almost the whole website. I need another colony of ants."

Terriermon clicked. His eyes grew wider. "Right!" he nodded quickly as he took off and began to circle the area, scanning the ground for another swarm of insects.

"What are you doing?" Rika, who knew nothing of ant behaviour, cried. "Have you lost it?"

"I know what I'm doing. Trust me!" Henry cried.

"Here! Over here, Henry!" Terriermon circled around another tree not that far away. "There's frigging loads here too."

Henry turned to Aayla and bit his lip as other ants were beginning to join those harvesting Aayla flesh. Her previously flawless stomach was already pockmarked with over twenty scoops where the ants had bitten her.

Henry lunged down and grabbed Aayla lightsaber from her hand, activating the blade a brushing off a couple of stray ants. "Rika!" he said, turning to her. "I'm sorry but this is necessary."

"Necessary? What is? You're not making-" Rika yelped in surprise and shock as Henry activated Aayla's blade and swung at her. The huge, spiked ponytail on Rika's head was shorn off instantly by the blade, leaving the rest of it to fall around her head.

"What the…" Rika shrieked as Henry grabbed lump of orange hair that had fallen to the ground. "What was that for?"

"You want Aayla to live, don't you!" Henry cried as her rushed over to where Terriermon was circling tightly. Sure enough, another swarm of ants was boiling over the trunk of the tree.

"Please let this work," Henry muttered to any gods out there. Then he laid a few strands of Rika's hair beside the pile of ants. The reaction was instantaneous – hundreds of ants moved over and swarmed across the hair. Henry grinned and laid a few more hairs down close by, then another, then another, each time getting closer to the unconscious Aayla, and each time getting the other ants closer. They even were beginning to race ahead of him.

"Nicely done!" said Terriermon.

"How is that going to help?" Rika demanded.

"Terriermon!" Henry looked to his partner as he dropped another chunk of hair. "Go find water, now!"

"On it!" Terriermon nodded and took to the air, flapping away above the trees.

"If this doesn't work, Aayla's finished," Henry hissed. "This is her only hope."

Henry threw the last of the hair beside Aayla and the new ants reached the unconscious Jedi. For a second, the new ants stood beside the body, their antennae twitching curiously. At the same time, the original ants stopped attacking Aayla and turned to face the new ants, also twitching.

Then, the new ants attacked. Like a well-trained army, they rampaged onto Aayla's body and slammed into the ants already on it. The old ants swarmed away from Aaylas head and legs to join the battle. A minature war had been started as the two colonies attacked each other furiously, like perfect little automatons responding to instinct.

"Thought so!" Henry grinned. "Ants can't stand competition. Any time two colonies meet there's an almighty battle."

It was true. None of the ants were paying attention to Aayla anymore. All of them were joining the scrap. It was a slaughter. Ants were being torn apart by other ants, literally pulled in two. Legs were ripped out. Heads were bitten off. Torsos were scissored in two.

"Well done, Henry," said Rika. "But sooner or later, one of them is going to win."

"We have to wake Aayla up," said Henry, kneeling beside Aayla and grabbing her shoulders to shake them, ignoring the ants that brawled over his hands – there was no biting at him. This was strictly an ant war.

"Aayla! Aayla! Wake up now!" Henry cried.

"Come on!" Rika added, joining Henry. "Don't do this to us. Don't leave."

"Henry!" Terriermon winged back into view. "I found a stream. About three hundred yards away! Any luck?"

"It worked," said Henry, but the original ants were winning and he could see that. The challengers were unable to call of reinforcements and were slowly being driven back. It would all be over in a few minutes and then it would be too late for Aayla. The harvest would begin again.

"Please, please, please!" Henry whispered. "Wake up!"

"Ungh…"

Rika and Henry had to suppress the urge to cheer as Aayla groaned and slowly opened her eyes. "Ugh," she said , raising a hand to her forehead. "What him me? And why…" It was at this point that she noticed the ant war going on across her stomach. "Whoa!" she cried, all grogginess gone as she vaulted to her feet, sending ants flying in all directions.

But there were still hundreds of them swarming across her body and with this new interruption their focus went back to her, and they began biting again.

"Aayla! This way!" Terriermon zipped before her eyes. "There's a stream this way!"

Aayla needed no second bidding and she raced after Terriermon, Henry and Rika hard on their heels but both of them falling back as Terriermon and Aayla raced ahead.

The bunny flared to kill his speed as he came to an aerial stop over the stream. "Here! Here! Jump in and wash them off."

But Terriermon was surprised when Aayla stopped on the bank and, instead of jumping in, she called on the Force to make the water jump out and soak her through. It did the job, washing away all the ants, but even so… it was an odd thing to do.

"Er, what was wrong with jumping in?" asked the bunny.

"Never jump into an area that hasn't been properly investigated," said Aayla as she winced and inspected the damage to her stomach. "First rule of Felucia. Besides, you didn't spot the Felucian ripper lying in wait just over there."

Terriermon followed her gaze, although he still had to squint before he spotted the wide-bodied and toothy-mouthed creature just beneath the surface that looked like a cross between a shark, a flatfish and a bat. If Aayla had jumped in, that thing could have taken her head off.

He shook his head in wonder. "How do you do it?" he asked. "That meditation stuff isn't the hype most people think it is. I can't think of a single person back home who would have the sense or awareness to spot something like that WHILE being eaten alive at the same time. Do you take vitamins?"

"I'm not a Jedi for nothing," smiled Aayla. "Panic would being unnecessary, unhealthy and not mention undignified."

"Momentai," grinned Terriermon. "At least your okay."

"Yes," said Aayla, turning to Henry and Rika, who had only just caught up and were panting heavily in the humidity. "And which one of you do I have to than for that?"

"Oh, we all played a part," said Henry nervously.

"Yeah, but all I did was find water and the other ants, and all Rika did was give up her ponytail thingie. Momentai Henry. Take the credit. You're the one that came up with the idea that saved Aayla's life."

Rika nodded. "Getting the ants to fight one another was pretty smart."

"Thank you, Henry," Aayla knelt down beside the Tamer. "Thanks to your ingenuity, I am still here." She pulled into a hug for a couple of seconds before releasing him. "If ever you need a favour, don't hesitate to ask."

"Although I bet Rika's wishing you could have found away that didn't involve cutting off half her hair," Terriermon grinned.

Rika sighed, putting her hand to her head. "I'm just glad that Impmon or Takato isn't here. Neither would let me live this down. I look ridiculous."

"Hey," Terriermon folded his arms and sniffed indignantly. "What makes you think _I'll_ let you live it down."

"Renamon."

"… Touché."

"Hey, I think it does look okay," said Henry, placing a hand on Rika's shoulder. "You should wear it down more often."

"It's not down," Rika sniffed. "It's short. It's going to take me a long time to regrow it."

"Well, I don't mind how you look. You still look beautiful to me."

Rika smiled. "Thanks, Henry."

"Does anyone else smell cheese?" asked Terriermon impishly.

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

"Aayla, does that hurt?" Rika said, indicating the Twi'lek's stomach. There were at least forty large bitemarks there, several more on her back and a few on her neck. There were also a few holes in her clothing around her legs.

"It stings a little. In fact, it stings a lot, but I'll be fine." Aayla flinched as she touched one of the raw wound with her finger. "I'm just glad that none of them reached my lekku. A bite out of one of those would be excruciatingly painful."

"Oh God!" Rika suddenly yelped. "Renamon! I totally forgot. Didn't you say that she was being attacked?"

"I did," nodded Terriermon. "But don't worry about it. It's all been taken care of."

"Are they okay?" Henry pressed. "Suzie? Lopmon? Ahsoka?"

"Their all fine," said Terriermon. "A little worn out but they're fine. They're heading our way right now."

"Good," Aayla nodded. "We need to regroup and then we have to try and contact Anakin and Obi-Wan to see if they made it through."

"So, Rika," said Terriermon. "What are you going to lose next?"

"Pardon?"

"Well, you lost part of your shirt to help Henry on Ryloth," said Terriermon, pointing at Rika's exposed stomach from where her favourite shirt had been torn to make a bandage. "Now, you've lost your hair to save Aayla. What's next? You going to lose your jeans to rescue Lopmon."

"God, I hope not," shuddered Rika.

"Terriermon, do you have to rub it in?" asked Henry.

"Yes. I'm killing time until the others get here, which should be in five."

"Five what?" asked Henry.

Suddenly there was a kafuffle behind them. Henry, Rika and Aayla whipped around in time to see the two jungle rancors burst from the foliage and thunder towards them, roaring furiously. Obviously the training grips had worn off and they'd managed to break loose, just as Gorillamon had such a long time ago.

And they meant business.

"Not again," Rika moaned as she prepared to run.

"Five seconds," Terriermon calmly answered Henry's question. "Showtime."

Something huge and brown hurtled over the tops of their heads and the two rancors were suddenly sent flying backwards as they were smashed by the flats of two battleaxes as big as their torsos. There were two resounding thuds as they sailed out of sight.

Antylamon nodded firmly. "That should discourage them from doing that again."

"By the Force," Aayla whispered as she stared upwards at the enormous rabbit before her. "Is that Lopmon's next stage of digivolution after Turuiemon?"

"That it is," nodded Terriermon. "Aayla Secura, meet Antylamon, the former Deva."

Aayla chuckled. "Well, I guess the term "family resemblance" has been thrown out the window."

"Say that again, tiny," Antylamon turned and looked down with a grin at the Twi'lek standing beside her foot. Then she noticed the bitemarks all over Aayla's body. Kneeling down with concern, she asked, "What happened to you?"

The others, who were standing or sitting on her shoulders – except Suzie who had the privilege of being on top of her head – began to clamber down Antylamon's enormous arm. "Whoa, General," said Bly. "Looks like you picked a fight with a holepunch."

"It's nothing to worry about," Aayla said absently, but with a slight grin. "I was just knocked unconscious right next to a nest of Gigantoformicums. You know, the usual."

"You got attacked by Gigantoformicums?" exclaimed Ahsoka, as she hopped to the ground. "How did you survive?"

"You can thank Henry for that," said Aayla. "He saved my life. Lured a second colony over to me so they'd battle one another. It was an ingenious plan."

"Not really," Henry said, shuffling shyly. "It was lucky that the ants of this dimension respond in the same way as those in this dimension really."

"When will what I tell you sink in, Henry?" Terriermon muttered. "Don't be afraid to take some credit."

"Nothing I ever say to you has ever sunk in," pointed out Henry.

"That's not the point."

Max, the medic, walked over to Aayla and inspected her stomach and back. "These don't look too bad, General. Most of them aren't that deep. Looks like Henry managed to get the fight going before they really got to work on you. However, these could get infected real quick, especially on a planet like these where there's disease all over the place. If you don't mind, I think a bacta injection would be necessary."

"You're the medic," nodded Aayla. "Do what you have to do?"

As Max prepared the injection, Renamon walked over and, as Terriermon hopped onto her shoulder, she said, "Perhaps it might be comforting to mention, Aayla, that you weren't the only one who just had a near death experience."

Oh?" Aayla asked, as Max pushed the needle into her neck and injected the bacta. "Thanks, Max. Enlighten me."

"Perhaps she's referring to the fact that our veteran commander her got eaten several minutes ago," Ahsoka grinned as she placed a hand on Bly's shoulder. Instantly her hand tingled slightly and she removed it quickly. "Ack," she said, waving her hand. "You've got Sarlacc digestive juices all over your armour."

"You got eaten by a Sarlacc?" Aayla said. "And you got out?"

"Thanks to Antylamon," nodded Bly. "I owe her my life. And I was relatively protected from harm by my armour, but I'm not sure how much longer it would have lasted."

"But you're still covered in digestive juices," said Aayla. The Jedi turned to look at Terriermon. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Bathtime?" winked Terriermon.

"Yep," Aayla said, as she flicked her wrist from the stream to Bly. Just as before, the water burst from its banks and it roared over Bly, washing his armour clean. Ahsoka stuck her tingling hand in the torrent to prevent damage, and Antylamon quickly shrunk back down to Lopmon and jumped onto Bly's shoulder, so that her arm could also get a good drenching – it had been down the Sarlacc's throat as well, after all.

"Right then," Aayla snickered at the spluttering General, while Terriermon and the other two clones outright laughed. "We need to get in contact with Anakin and Obi-Wan, to tell them that we're alright, and to find out their position. Ahsoka, my comlink is momentarily down, thanks to my little dip." She displayed her wrist-com to all present. "Can you try to contact the others."

"Of course," said Ahsoka, pushing her comlink button and waiting for a reply.

"By the way," said Henry. "I think you'll be wanting this back," he handed Aayla her lightsaber. "Good thing you didn't get these wet."

"Actually, my lightsaber is waterproof," said Aayla. "Kit Fisto helped me add some modifications to it after I fell into the ocean at the Second Battle of Kamino. I didn't want to risk being defenceless if something similar happened again."

"And next time, can you make sure that that cuts something other than my hair," said Rika.

"Yes, I was about to ask you about that," said Conor.

"Ahsoka," interrupted Aayla. "Are you getting anything?"

"Negative," sighed the Togruta, pushing the button repeatedly. "Come on. Work. Work, you piece of junk!"

* * *

"Come on, Snips!" Anakin muttered. "Answer, answer already." He'd been pushing his comlink and trying to get a signal for the past several minutes, but there was still no response from his Padawan, Aayla, or Bly, and he'd tried calling all three.

He, Obi-Wan, Rex, Cody and all the clones from the remaining three gunships that had managed to avoid getting hit by the laser storm had managed to land a fair distance away from the anti-aircraft field. But, as the clones rushed to and fro, checking on the wounded, Anakin stood and determinedly pushed the button.

"Pushing it nonstop like that isn't going to do any good, Anakin," said Obi-Wan. "You're not going to be able to get a signal with that thing."

"I'm sure Felucia is within reach of communication centres," said Anakin.

"It is," said Obi-Wan. "But it appears that the Separatists at this base are jamming our transmissions so that we can't call for reinforcement or be picked up. My comlink is refusing to work as well. We can't contact any of the others and we can't contact the cruisers either. Believe me, I've tried."

"Great," muttered Anakin, resisting the urge to hurl the useless comlink into one of the pitcher plants. "So what's the plan, Master. How do we get out of this jam? We need to find my Padawan."

"I concur, Anakin. But I'm sure Ahsoka is fine. We have one or two options here. Firstly we can try to take out the Separatist facility, but I'm not sure we have the numbers for that. The second is that we could try to find the others first. That might level the playing field a bit if we could find the other Jedi and the Digimon."

"Right, so we split up and scour the area," nodded Anakin. "And then when we find them we blow up that base."

"No Anakin," Obi-Wan sighed. "Once again you are demonstrating your amazing flair for leaping before looking. Firstly, we shouldn't split up. We could cover more ground if we did, but we'd also make ourselves much more vulnerable to an attack – from Separatists or local wildlife. And secondly, we're not going to blow up that base because we need to capture the leaders inside and find out why there is a base here anyway."

"Well, you just love making the situation more comfortable, don't you, Master," Anakin huffed in annoyance, but he could see Obi-Wan's logic, even though he would never admit it to his face. "So when do we set out?"

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow!" yelled Anakin, so loudly that all the clones stopped to stare at it. "We have to act now! Not tomorrow!"

"Anakin, are you trying to drag every droid in the neighbourhood to us? Lower your voice. But you have to realise that it's almost nightfall." He nodded at the sun, Felix, which was slowly beginning to sink its way down the sky. "Felucia is a dangerous planet to go wandering around at the best of times, but it's even worse at night. We should fortify ourselves and wait out the night here, then resume the search tomorrow."

"But they'll be in danger too," pointed out Anakin.

"Yes, Anakin, but they have Aayla. She knows what she's doing, and she has a more level head than you. She'll keep them safe."

Anakin grimaced. Then, he sighed. "Fine, we'll do this your way. But I want to get out and start searching at first light tomorrow."

"That's fine with me," said Obi-Wan, then he turned to see how Rex and Cody were doing.

Anakin turned around to look out amongst the trees. The thought of Ahsoka and Aayla, the Digimon and the Tamers out there on there own made worry gnaw at his gut, even though he knew they could take care of themselves. But of all the planets that this could have happened on, it had to be this one. Tatooine would have been better than this hellhole.

"Stay safe, Snips," he murmured softly.

* * *

"So, what are we supposed to do now?" asked Ahsoka. "If we can't contact the others and we can't contact the cruisers, what are we supposed to do?"

"We're doomed!" cried Terriermon melodramatically. "Doomed. DOOOOMED!"

"We will be if you keep shouting like that," Renamon covered her mate's mouth, and most of his face, with her paw.

"We need to find a safe place to rest for the night," said Aayla. "We won't be able to do much with the remaining daylight and taking a stroll through Felucia at night without precautions is a very bad idea."

"Well, this missions gone all to cock," said Bly.

"Snafu," agreed Rika.

"Pardon."

"Er, never mind."

"So, where can we find that is safe?" asked Henry.

"That's the real problem," said Aayla. "Practically nowhere in Felucia is safe. Anywhere you go is susceptible to attack from something. There's the possibility of sheltering in one of the giant fungal trees, but I wouldn't trust the tree not to eat us really, let alone any other inhabitants."

"So, where can we go, sir?" asked Bly.

"We have two real options," said Aayla. "Firstly, we could head for one of the giant rock formations. The rocks of this planet aren't alive."

"Are you sure, because after what I've seen here I wouldn't be surprised," said Terriermon. "Plus, that would be so cool if you kicked a rock and it screamed."

"If you kicked a rock, you would be the one screaming," said Lopmon.

"High-five," said Ahsoka, and the two did just that. "See, I'm learning fast."

"And the other option?" asked Max.

"The natives," said Aayla. "If we could find a village, we could perhaps shelter for the night, if they were feeling hospitable."

"You mean the fungi people?" asked Renamon.

"Yes."

"The ones that have a tendency to go ballistic for no reason?"

"Yes."

"I suggest the rocks," said Renamon.

"Yeah, and beside, if we wanted to meet sentient fungi we could open our fridge back home," said Terriermon.

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

"Fridge?" asked Conor. "Is that a word?"

"Well, there is another native option," said Aayla. "There is another type of native Felucian that aren't fungi. They're reptiles and quite often they are friendly little farmers. If we could find one of their villages."

"Look," Ahsoka pointed upwards suddenly. Everyone looked up in time to see a ship soaring above them. It was small ship, a basic starship with two huge engine turbines jutting out on either side of it. It was armed, with four laser cannons pointing out the front and two out the back.

They watched its progress as it made its way east. It shrank until it was quite a small dot, before stopping and slowly lowering itself to the ground in a landing, before it disappeared out of sight under the treeline.

"So, who else votes that we should head that way," said Terriermon, sticking his hand in the air.

"Well, that was convenient," said Henry.

"Lucky, I call it," said Bly.

"There's no such thing as luck or chance," said Aayla. "It was not luck that saved me from the Gigantoformicums or you from the Sarlacc, Bly. It was not mere chance that led the Digimon to us in the first place. Everything happens for a reason."

"Then it would be a stupid idea to ignore that," said Renamon. "I agree with Terriermon. Let's find that ship."

"Yeah, it must have landed at some decent place."

"Then put your hands in the air," said Terriermon, who still hadn't put his hand down. Renamon put it down for him.

"Perhaps they can help us get back to the others," said Henry.

"Then what are we standing around for exactly?" asked Rika.

"Nothing," said Lopmon, as she set off, and the others began to follow.

"Stay alert everyone," said Aayla. "Those rancors, the ants and the Sarlacc are just three of many violent wildlife around here. Plus there may be droids. Protect the Tamers."

"Yes, sir," Bly raised his blaster, and the other two followed his example, ready to shoot at a moments notice.

"Lopmon, can you carry me?" asked Suzie.

"I'm a bit small for that at the moment," said the bunny.

"But I'm scared. What if we run into another octopus thing?"

"I doubt it," said Ahsoka. "Sarlacc are few and far between. It was unfortunate that we ran into that one."

"Well, at least we've stopped it from taking other people," said Bly.

"For the time being," said Ahsoka. "But they do regrow their tentacles over many years, and they can go for thousands of years without food."

"Ah poodoo," said Bly. "I wouldn't have minded the idea of it starving to death."

"It was a living creature, Bly," said Aayla. "It bore you no personal ill will. It was just trying to feed itself."

"Yeah, I know," sighed Bly. "But that doesn't mean I have to like them."

"Nobody expects you to, Bly," said Renamon. She winced as she felt her back.

"Renamon? What's wrong?" asked Rika.

"Just a bruise, Rika. I got heavily hit by the Sarlacc's tentacle. Don't worry about it."

"You sure that you don't need a healing card?"

"I'll be fine. I should be more worried about Aayla."

"I'm touched, but your concern is unnecessary," said Aayla. "Look." She presented her stomach to them. Already most of the smaller bites had completely disappeared without leaving a scar, and the numerous larger ones were beginning to heal over.

"That bacta is definitely a miracle-worker," said Henry.

"A very useful substance," agreed Aayla. I've seen it repair a hole through another Twi'leks left lekku."

"Ouch," said Ahsoka, cringing at the thought. "That has got to be painful."

After that, they mostly fell silent, occasionally starting a small conversation, but mostly keeping a wary eye on the surroundings, on the lookout for any dangerous wildlife.

At one point they walked past an unconscious but groaning jungle rancor. Terriermon presented his ear in a fist to Lopmon, which she bumped with her own in a sign of respect, before the group quickly moved on to get out of the way before it woke up.

* * *

About half an hour later and the sun was still slipping down the sky and it was getting dangerously close to the horizon, bathing the already glittering translucent plant-life with orange light that caused a great mosaic of colour across the landscape. It was also at this point where they came upon the village.

The Digimon hung back outside the village and watched in case anything went wrong, while the others entered the village. It was quite small, and it reminded all those that had been there of the Lurmen village back on Maridun. It was mostly composed of small, circular huts with a long window, each with a chimney sticking out of the top like a periscope. There were many of these dotted together in clusters. There were also two larger buildings, one of which looked like a bigger version of the small huts – this was probably the chieftain's house.

The other building was twice as big and had an enormous sloping roof and a sliding door at one end that resembled that of a garage door. It was an enormous barn, but they only made the connection because of the crops growing all around the perimeter. They were lost of small mushroom-like things, although the bulbous ends reminded Suzie of large, thin strawberries.

"Nysillin," said Aayla. "Quite a valuable healing herb. These must fetch in a hefty sum each year."

Then there were the villagers, who all stopped in fear as the group approached, staring with wide eyes and looking as though they might bolt at any moment. They were short, only coming up to the waist of the clones, with thick legs, four-fingered hands and elongated reptilian heads and necks that looked like those of a tortoise. The skin tone varied from cream, to orange, to beige.

Some of them were rising around in large machines that looked like giant yoyos on their sides, with the cockpit between the two bulbous wheels. Others were riding on domesticated beasts, that looked a little like camels, except without the humps and their heads were totally different, with short nose, two tusks on the lower jaw and long ears that pointed backwards and outwards.

"These are indeed the other kind of native Felucian," Aayla muttered so as not to startle the fearful beings, "and those beasts are called Tee-musses."

"Why are they so scared?" asked Suzie.

"It's possible they find anything they don't know scary on this planet," said Aayla. "They've probably learned not to trust anything until they know what it is."

"Then who are they?" asked Rika, pointing towards the big barn.

Everyone followed her gaze. One of the small Felucians was walking towards them, but accompanying him were four other beings – none of which looked like they belonged here.

The first was a female Zabrak, with short horns sticking out of the top of her head, along with purple hair down the centre tied in a T-shaped topknot. She was wearing a red vest, with metal gauntlets and brown combat trousers and boots and she appeared to have something that resembled a dog-collar around her neck.

The second was a male Kyuzo, with an enormous, metal, wide-brimmed, circular hat. His skin was green and his eyes were entirely yellow, with broad armoured shoulders and an ammunition belt across his chest. His bottom half was adorned with an orange and brown kilt-like garment which reached his ankles.

The third was a female Frenk, garbed in a long hooded cloak that hid most of her features, although her face could be seen from under the hood. Her skin was red and she had four nostrils on a narrow snout. It could also be seen that she was quite tall and gangly.

The fourth was something that nobody could identify. It was all metal and looked like a droid. It had the build of a Super Battle Droid, but in place of the tiny flat face of a Super, it had a large pointed face-mask with a slit where two yellow photoreceptors could be seen. It also looked like it was wearing something similar to the headdress of an Egyptian pharaoh, and it walked with jerky movements that made it seem like it was malfunctioning.

And all of them were armed. The Zabrak had an EE-3 carbine rifle held loosely at her side. The Kyuzo had a large bowcaster propped up against his shoulder. The Frenk had an enormous sniper rifle and the armoured droid-thing had a built in blaster on one arm and a buzzsaw on the other.

"Well, these guys don't look like they live here," said Bly. "They look really out of place."

"Agreed," said Aayla. "I don't recognize that droid-like one."

"Well, let's ask them," said Ahsoka, walking forwards confidentally.

The approaching party came to a stop and the Zabrak held up her hand. "Stop right there," she said, in a voice that sounded like a blend between Indian and Russian. "I shall represent this village and first off, you can state your name and business."

As the others pulled to a stop, Henry said, "I vote that Aayla does the talking," as he looked nervously at the bowcaster in the Kyuzo's hand.

"Seconded," said Rika.

Aayla took a step forward and said, "I am Jedi Knight Aayla Secura. This is Padawan Ahsoka Tano, these are clone troopers Bly, Conor and Max, and the children are known as Suzie, Henry and Rika. We do not wish any harm on the occupants of this village."

The villagers all seemed to slump with relief, but the four armed people didn't look convinced. "Well then," said the Zabrak, "if you don't mean any harm, then you can turn right around and head back where you came from."

"I'm afraid we cannot do that," said Aayla. "Our gunship has been shot down by the nearby Separatist facility and I regret to say that we require a place to shelter for the night."

"Well, I'm afraid that you'll have to make do with somewhere else," the Zabrak replied stiffly. "This village has got enough problems without Jedi bringing their own enemies down upon it."

"What are you doing, Sugi," the little Felucian native asked the Zabrak. "You can't send them away. They are Jedi. They can help us to solve out problems."

"Help you?" asked Ahsoka. "But we need your help. We need a place to stay until tomorrow."

"Oh and we will be glad to welcome you," said the Felucian, completely contradicting what Sugi the Zabrak had just said. "But we would also like a favour from you."

"No such thing as a free lunch," muttered Rika.

"Casiss," said Sugi stiffly. "Need I remind you that we have just made a deal. These Jedi were not part of the bargain."

"Yes, but they can help," insisted Casiss, "and they would not ask for pay, so you would still get the same amount of money."

"Pay?" asked Aayla, raising an eyebrow. "You are Bounty Hunters?"

Sugi glared at Aayla. "Yes, we are. But for your information we have never done anything against the Republic. We are not the kind of Bounty Hunter that would stoop so low as to help crime, no matter how good the pain."

"We are honourable," said the metal being in a low, grating voice.

"That's good to hear," said Aayla. "After all, we came here to Felucia in pursuit of another group of Bounty Hunters, led by Cad Bane. But I'm sure you had nothing to do with that. May I please have your names?"

"Of course. I am Casiss, the leader of this village of humble farmers," said Casiss. "And it is an honour to accommodate you, Master Secura."

"Technically I am a Knight, not a Master," said Aayla. "But I thank you all the same. And what of you four?"

"I am Sugi," said Sugi bitterly – it appeared that she wasn't ready to fully trust these newcomers yet. "And this is Embo."

The Kyuzo nodded slightly, his hat dipping. "Un playker de unkontale supongo. Sólo no rohbey nweysts tros."

"I don't intend to," replied Aayla. "But I still don't know why I'd be stealing it."

"And this is Rumi," Sugi indicated the Frenk, who nodded but said nothing. "And this is Seripas." The metal thing also remained immobile.

"Good," said Aayla. "I'm glad to see that we're beginning to get to know one another. "Now, if you don't mind, I would quite like to know why you all appear to be so uneager to see us and why you, Casiss, are the opposite. Let's start with, why do you have four Bounty Hunters in your village?"

"They've only just arrived," said Casiss. "They landed about half an hour ago, and we were just closing off the deal. You see, we've hired them so that they will protect us."

"Protect you?" asked Bly. "From what? I notice that you have an electrofence around the place to keep out the local wildlife."

"Ah yes, but dangerous wildlife is not the issue," said Casiss. "I'm sure that you have noticed that we are growing nysillin."

"Indeed," said Aayla. "You must make a good amount of credits for all of this."

"Exactly," said Casiss. "And the lure of the great amount of credits had attracted some attention. But nysillin farming is our only way of life, so we cannot afford to lose to much of it to strangers. These Bounty Hunters will be fine, as they drive a reasonable sum, which we can last another year without, but recently, we have begun receiving threats from a band of pirates. They demand that we turn over all of our crop to them once it is ready to be harvested and we simply cannot survive a whole year without any profit."

"I see," said Aayla, "so you Bounty Hunters agreed to help protect the crop for a small sum. Correct?"

"Yes," said Sugi, holstering her rifle.

"Well, you needn't worry," said Aayla. "We have no interest in stealing your thunder, as Embo put it."

"Stealing all the crops?" Henry sighed. "The galaxy really is full of scumbags."

"Who's be so heartless?" asked Rika.

"We don't know," said Casiss. "The leader of the pirates did not tell us his name. However, we do know that they are all Weequays."

Ahsoka frowned. Her Master and Obi-Wan had had an interesting experience with a bunch of Weequay pirates on the planet Florrum. Could these be the same people?"

"We would be honoured to host you, Jedi Knight," said Casiss. "And your clones, and the children."

"Poken eestán alkí meeños kay viajan aldedaw con ooted de tofos molos?" asked Embo.

"That is a good point," said Sugi, folding her arms.

"We'll explain later," said Aayla. "But, I should enform you Casiss, that we cannot stay. I'm afraid we're already on a mission to recover an escaped prisoner, and a dangerous one called Ziro the Hutt. Come dawn, we will have to leave and try and regroup with the rest of our party."

"But Master Secura," protested Ahsoka. "We have to help these people. Four Bounty Hunter are not going to be enough against a whole band of pirates."

Sugi looked offended. "I'll have you know that we are extremely skilful."

"I'm sure you are," said Rika. "But surely you're not that good. And Ahsoka's right. We can't just leave these people in this predicament."

"I didn't say we wouldn't help," said Aayla. "I just said that we couldn't stay. The way I see it, there are a few months left before these crops are ripe for harvesting, am I correct, Casiss."

"Yes, you are, Knight Secura."

"And that's plenty of time to finish our objective and then come back," said Aayla. "Once we've recaptured Ziro, we can come back with assistance to help protect this farm. They're not in danger just yet. Does that suit you Casiss?"

"Perfectly," said Casiss. "We shall sort out accommodation for all of you immediately."

"Oh," said Aayla. "One more thing. There are actually three more of us, but they're keeping out of sight. I'll just call them n…"

"The pirates!" yelled a voice. Everyone turned to see a distressed Felucian running as quickly as he could towards them. "The pirates are here. They've come back again."

"They must have spotted our ship and come to see the new development," said Sugi. "Jedi, stay back and let me do the talking."

As the sound of speeder bikes began to reverberate in everyone's ears and the Bounty Hunters pushed past the clones to confront the pirates, Aayla knelt down beside Henry. "Listen," she whispered. "Send a telepathic message to the Digimon to stay of sight, but to keep watch. If there's trouble, tell them to be ready."

Henry nodded and followed her orders as speeder bikes hove into view ahead.

* * *

Embo Translations

Un playker de unkontale supongo. Sólo no rohbey nweysts tros – Nice to meet you I suppose. But don't steal our thunder.

Poken eestán alkí meeños kay viajan aldedaw con ooted de tofos molos – Why are there children travelling around with you anyway

* * *

Well, here's another update. I am slooooowwww. I do promise to try and get a move on, but now that I'm on holiday I'll probably be slower than usual. And that is actually quite different from what people normally expect isn't it?

Embo's language is not made up by me. Dave Filoni, director of Clone Wars, said that Embo's language is actually made up of deliberately mispronounced French. So, I decided to make his language into deliberately misspelled French for continuity. Embo, Sugi, Rumi and Seripas have all been scheduled to appear since I first saw their episode. Although that episode actually took place several months after this, when the crops were ready to be harvested. I just decided to bring it forwards a little, change it and then bring out a very different outcome, because the Bounty Hunters will not just have this single brief appearance.

See you soon. Hopefully.

* * *

Next time...

The leader of the pirates are introduced. Will there be a showdown? Will there be peace? Will the Bounty Hunters work with the Jedi?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 44 : Pirates of the Outer Rim**


	44. Pirates Of The Outer Rim

AAAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!

Chapter 44 seemed to conspire against me over the last three weeks. I am so sorry for such a slow update but I assure you that there are four good reasons for it. The first reason is that I've been ill recently, so I've found it difficult to write. The second is that my parents outings have become much less frequent recently for some reason, so I've had less time. The third is writers block. The fourth is that I've written the second half of this chapter three times, and I'm still not completely happy with it. I hope you like it.

And to top it all off, I'm going on holiday for two weeks come Sunday, so I doubt I'll get Chapter 45 up before then. I'll try, but we all now that my writing has really taken a backseat write now despite the fact that I'd rather it was at the front.

Thanks to all reviewers and please enjoy.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 44:- Pirates Of The Outer Rim**

* * *

There was a sense of extreme foreboding in the air as the two Jedi, the three children, the three clones, the four Bounty Hunters, the village full of shelless, bipedal tortoise-people, and three other pairs of eyes which were hidden in the surrounding jungle watching the speeder bikes zip down the hill and head towards the main group. One unfortunate Felucian had to spring out of the way to avoid getting mown down by the small hover-vehicle. The pirate on board merely sniggered in response.

Sugi stepped boldly outwards and away from the protection of the group to confront the bikes, which pulled to a stop in front of her. The nearest Weequay was holding what appeared to be a spear, although this was probably for show because he also had a large blaster at his belt. He also had painted his face orange for some reason.

"Don't come an inch closer," Sugi said contemptuously, eyeing the pirate as if analysing his strengths and weaknesses on the spot. It was a gaze that many people had quailed before in the past, but the pirates seemed unaffected – possibly because they were stupid, drunk or had worse.

"Where is the leader?" asked the Weequay.

"I will be speaking on his behalf," said Sugi. "And this is not your place to make demands. What is your name and what do you want here?"

The pirate scoffed. "Yeah, as if I'm actually going to tell you my name, and as for what I want, are stupid or something? We've come to this planet to take and we're not leaving without the crops."

"The crops are not going to be harvested for another three months," pointed out Sugi. "Surely you know that. Now, why are you really here?"

"Who are you anyway?" the pirate asked. "We saw a ship landing at the farm. Was that you?"

"Of course it was them, you imbecile," said a rather richer and somehow more sophisticated voice from behind him. Another Weequay had dismounted from his speeder bike and was approaching the front. The way he carried himself and the red robes that he wore clearly indicated that this was the leader of this ragtag group. He was wearing goggles and a helmet like a turtle's shell, and had a yellow and blue Kowakian monkey-lizard sitting on his shoulder.

"Put two and two together," he shook his head, as if saddened by the stupidity of his underling, as the monkey-lizard bopped the other Weequay on the head with its fist. "They weren't here the last time we visited so they must have come in on that ship."

"Yes, sir," said the orange-faced Weequay. "Sorry."

"Do not apologise, my friend," he grinned. "Just try to engage what little brain you have in the future."

"So," said Sugi. "You are the leader, are you not?"

"Naturally, my dear," the Weequay bowed mockingly, causing Sugi's eye to twitch slightly. "I must say that I'm quite surprised that these farmers went so far as to hire a Bounty Hunter such as yourself to protect them. Oh, don't look so surprised. I know you aren't a customer, and unlike my fellow I can use my brain. You just scream Bounty Hunter."

Sugi sniffed. "Well, now that I know who I am supposed to be talking to, might I suggest that you leave?"

The Weequay laughed and the monkey-lizard also seemed to chuckle. "Did you honestly expect that to work, my dear. Dear me, shouldn't you have tried to shoot me by now?"

"Are you asking to…?"

"Bahbahbahbah," said the Weequay to her, holding up a hand to silence her. "I'll speak with you in a minute, my dear. Right now, I would like to know what two Jedi and three clones are doing out here."

"I was wondering when you'd notice us," said Ahsoka, folding her arms.

The Weequay laughed. "You've got spirit, kid," he said, shouldering past the furious Sugi to stand before Ahsoka and Aayla. "Although, you must be the youngest Jedi I have ever seen. Shouldn't you still be at that grand Temple of yours learning how to hold your lightsaber properly?"

The pirates guffawed. Ahsoka growled and looked on the verge of whipping out said lightsaber and showing this rude pirate just how well she could handle it, but Aayla placed a staying hand on her arm.

"If you are here to speak with us, might I suggest that you refrain from the insults," the Twi'lek said smoothly.

"Not seen many Twi'lek Jedi around," said the Weequay. "Particularly not one as voluptuous as you, my dear. Such a shame the code forbids forming relationships."

Aayla rolled her eyes, not impressed with his suggestive words. Bly said, "Sir, would it be alright if I blew his brains out?"

"Not in front of the children, surely," the Weequay gestured to the three Tamers.

"Bly, stand down," said Aayla. "Now, might I ask your name, or would you prefer that we keep thinking of you as the leader."

"A Jedi to the core," nodded the Weequay. "You remind me of another Jedi I met once. Oddly enough, the little one reminds me of the other Jedi I met at the same time. Of course, both of them were men, but still… you have similar demeanours."

Ahsoka frowned, some memories had bee triggered of something her master had told her about some of his and Obi-Wan's dealings with a band of Weequay pirates, although when Ahsoka pressed him for details about what had happened, both he and Obi-Wan usually went rather vague.

"That doesn't really answer my question," said Aayla. "What is your name?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, but if you don't know then why should I tell you? So that you can send information to your fleet to come after us? I don't think so. Nope, you will not be learning my name today."

"How about we take a guess," said Ahsoka, smiling shrewdly, having a vague idea about what his name could be.

"Now, now, we don't have time for games, child," said the pirate.

"Oh, I insist. One guess. And here it is:- Is your name, by any chance, Hondo Ohnaka?"

The pirate looked stunned. So did all the others. At their reactions, the Bounty Hunters looked confused, the Tamers looked awed and Aayla looked mildly impressed. "Have we met?" asked Hondo, for that indeed was his name. "I'm sure I'd recognise a kid like you. Or did you pull the information from my head. That might be considered rude."

"Neither," smirked Ahsoka. "But I believe that you met my Master, Anakin Skywalker."

Hondo stared at her for a couple of seconds, before bursting into loud and incredibly raucous laughter. Ahsoka blinked in surprise as the Weequay clutched his sides and roared to the sky in glee. After a few seconds of this, Hondo exclaimed, "I thought your attitude was similar to his. You're Skywalker's Padawan. How is the old troublemaker, and that master of his Kenobi?"

"Oh, they're somewhere on this planet," said Ahsoka. "Not too far away. You should be careful. Anakin still holds a grudge against you, despite what Obi-Wan says."

"They came all this way from Coruscant just to see me?" Hondo laughed. "I am flattered. Truly."

"Ah yes," said Aayla. "I remember about you. "You're the pirate that managed to capture Count Dooku and held him for ransom, and then attempted to do the same with Anakin and Obi-Wan."

"They're not being entirely truthful," chuckled Hondo. "The truth is, we _did_ capture Skywalker and Kenobi, although they'll probably deny it."

"Yes, I suspected that," said Aayla. "Although I do know that your men were defeated by Representative Jar Jar Binks."

This time it was the three clones who roared with laughter. The Tamers, who had never met the clumsy Gungan and hadn't seen how effectively he could mess up anything he touched, didn't get why. Ahsoka was also giggling and trying not to go any louder.

"That must have been a blow to your confidence," said Bly, laughing. "Is that why your threatening helpless farmers instead of Sith Lords now?"

Sugi and Rumi were smirking now (Embo and Seripas couldn't smirk). "This will be easier than I thought," said Sugi. "I've heard of that Jar Jar. If he could defeat you then anyone could probably defeat you."

Hondo scowled. "So, we're back onto the subject of the situation at hand, are we? Well, in that case, I am going to make a deal for you Bounty Hunters. I am going to offer twice as much as these farmers here have offered you, and all you have to do to get the money is leave and allow us to continue with what we're doing."

Aayla and Ahsoka glanced at each other. This was the point where most Bounty Hunters would leap at the chance to earn more money and would immediately do whatever Hondo asked them to do. But Embo scoffed loudly. "Sriarmentay, pued yo toomur su cazeba de aún? Él me emoya."

"Not yet, Embo," said Sugi. "But I am sorely tempted to let you. And to you, _Hondo_, we are not some common criminals like you and your drunken fools. We have made a deal with these farmers and we intend to keep them. We do this for the credits, that is true, but we earn them for the right reason."

Hondo shook his head. "Small wonder that you haven't made big names of yourselves. Ah well, you have made your choice. Now, back to you, Jedi. What exactly are you doing on this planet? This isn't exactly a war hotspot."

"We're here on the trail of the Bounty Hunter Cad Bane," said Aayla. "He's responsible for the breakout of a very dangerous prisoner. We want nothing to do with you, I assure you. However, if you continue with this venture of yours then I'm afraid that I will be forced to get the Jedi involved."

"If you ask me, I don't know why Obi-Wan decided not to have you arrested after what you did to him on Florrum," said Ahsoka. "But I'm pretty sure he'd have no qualms with coming after you this time."

"Truly, you are a good negotiator," said Hondo. "But your lack of violent methods are frequently your undoing, Jedi. You see, I too am a master negotiator, although I prefer to go along a different track. You two!" He whirled around and pointed at two of his men. "Do it!"

The Weequays in question leapt off their bikes and immediately ran over to and snagged a pair of small children which had gotten too close to them. They screamed in terror as the pirates pulled out blasters and levelled them at their head while crushing them to their chests.

Immediately all the Bounty Hunters tensed and brought up their weapons, aiming them at the two pirates with expressions of anger. The clones did the same thing and Ahsoka's lightsaber was in her hand before she could even think about it and the tip was hovering at Hondo's throat.

"Let them go right now," she snarled.

Hondo laughed, undeterred by the plasma blade at his neck. He simply turned around and strode back to his bike. "Here's what's going to happen Jedi, clones, Bounty Hunting scum. I am going to head back to our outpost and my warriors will be coming with me, except for these two. They are going to stay here and hold these children captive. If you make any attempts to rescue them or an attempts to follow us, they will be shot. Understand?"

"Why you…" Ahsoka tensed to spring at him, but Aayla put a warning hand on her shoulder.

"Ahsoka," she said. "Control your temper. There are lives at stake here."

"Very sensible," nodded Hondo approvingly. "And don't attempt to call in reinforcements either, or the result will be the same. Let's go." This last remark was to the rest of his men, as he hopped onto his speeder bike. The monkey-lizard waved mockingly at them, before the pirates zoomed off in the opposite direction. The two with children in their hands moved slowly to the edge of the farm, their blasters pressed to the heads of the wailing children. Cassis was doing his best to comfort one of the adults, who was definitely the parent of at least one of the two.

"That is low," growled Rika. "Using kids like that is really low."

"This is a messed up place," agreed Henry.

Suzie said nothing – she was staring in horror at the two tiny kids, who had been dumped on the floor. One of them attempted to flee, but her captor raised his boot and knocked her over with it, pinning her to the ground. The other just wept.

"Rumi," said Sugi, turning to her fellow Bounty Hunter with the sniper rifle. "How good is your aim?"

"I could definitely take out one of them, but not both in time," said the Frenk in a strangely squeaky voice.

"This is despicable," growled Sugi. "Why did I not see that coming?"

"Is there anything that you can do to help them?" asked Cassis urgently. "They are only young."

"We know," said Aayla. "Don't worry. This situation won't last long."

"It won't?" asked Sugi. "What makes you say that?"

"Before they came into camp, I was about to tell you that there are three more of us," smirked Aayla. "They're in the trees and have been listening to every word. Let's just make sure that we keep their attention on us."

With that, Aayla turned and began to walk away in the complete opposite direction, making for the barn.

"Oi!" one of the pirates called immediately. "Stay where we can see you. No sneaking off and trying to ambush us!"

"Poodoo," said Aayla back. "You got me."

"You can't fool us," laughed one of the pirates. "Now behave yourselves or we'll make sure these kids snuff it."

The two of them completely failed to take in the looks of shock and surprise on the faces of the other farmers and the Bounty Hunters, or the smirks on the faces of the Jedi and the Tamers. And the reason behind these expressions was the fact that a tall, bipedal fox-creature with yellow fur had materialised of thin air just behind the two of them.

Renamon winked at Aayla, who winked back. Then, the Digimon's paws shot out and grabbed the two blasters being levelled at the kinds and whipped them out of the pirate's grasp, smacking both in the face with them as she did so. She quickly discarded them, then grabbed on by the ankle and hauled him into the air, using him to smack into the other as he attempted to stand, then she grabbed him by the arm and bodily threw both of them into the surrounding shrubbery.

She bounded after them, quickly checking to make sure she was out of sight of the others before grabbing both by the neck in each paw and slamming them into the trunk of a nearby tree.

"I should snap your necks right about now," she growled at the terrified pirates, "But I don't think that's punishment enough."

* * *

Five minutes later and Renamon entered the farm again. She was panting heavily and her fur was soaked with sweat, which implied that she'd been running. Normally running would not have caused such fatigue, but the atmosphere was incredibly hot and humid anyway.

The Bounty Hunters, who had been attempting to grill information about the creature from the Jedi and the clones without much success, turned around as they saw her approached. They were surprised to see two bunny-like creatures accompanying her, one on each shoulder.

"I take it you heard every word," said Ahsoka.

"Naturally," said Lopmon. "With our ears it's be difficult not to."

Aayla frowned. "What exactly did you do with those two pirates?"

"She give them a one-way ticket to dinner with Bly's Sarlacc," said Terriermon.

"Is that so?" asked the clone. "You know, suddenly I don't hate it as much as I did."

Aayla winced. "Was that really necessary?"

"You think that I should have been more lenient?" Renamon raised an eyebrow.

"Been eaten by a Sarlacc is a fate few deserve," said Aayla. "Not even they deserve to be kept alive and slowly digested over a thousand years."

"Ah," said Renamon. There was a brief pause. "No, they deserved it."

"Seconded," said Sugi, looking appraisingly at Renamon. "You certainly don't hold back when it comes to combat."

"Neither do we," said Terriermon. "You just wait till you see us kick ass."

"Not in front of the kids, Terriermon," Lopmon indicated the two children, who were being held protectively in the arms of their mother.

"Momentai."

"Alright then," said Sugi. "I think you have some explaining to do, Jedi."

"Aww," Suzie pouted. "But explaining is so boring. Can't we get something to eat. I'm hungry."

"Seconded," Said Terriermon in a startling accurate impersonation of Sugi's voice. The Zabrak blinked and gave him a look. He just grinned in response.

"Why don't you all come inside?" suggested Cassis. "I would be happy to accommodate you all. Please follow me and we'll give you all the food we can spare."

"We don't want to be a burden," said Henry quickly.

"I insist it," said Cassis. "And we can have explanations over a nice meal."

"Yay!" cried Suzie.

"Seconded."

"Could you not do that," Sugi scowled.

"Momentai."

Embo chuckled. Rumi looked blank.

* * *

Once Aayla had finished explaining about what the Digimon and the Tamers actually were to the Bounty Hunters and Rika had insisted that they swear an oath that they would never tell anyone else of their existence, Cassis pulled up a hologram of the farm and he, along with his assistance, an orange native that went by the name of Dilani, outlined the layout of it.

"How do you propose to defend us from the pirates?" asked Dilani. "Do you think that you'll be enough, or should we start considering getting in some more?"

"Trust us," said Bly. "The Digimon are quite capable of taking on an entire army of droids single-handedly. And our own skills aren't too shabby either. They, quite literally, do not stand a chance."

"There has been an unforeseen turn of events," said Aayla. "With the death of two of his men, Hondo may decide to take action and try and take the farm by force. My previous plan of coming back when we'd finished may not work anymore. It would leave you vulnerable."

"You don't think that we could handle ourselves?" asked Seripas hollowly.

"There are only four of you," pointed out Ahsoka. "And I'm pretty sure that that wasn't all of Hondo's band."

"That's true," said Henry. "Who knows how many forces he has?"

"How do plan on setting up a defence?" asked Cassis.

"That is a problem," said Bly. "It's likely that when they come, they'll come from all directions. We'll be stretched a little thinly, even with the forces we have, and it'll be a struggle to defend everything."

"If we were to digivolve we could hold them off," said Lopmon. "But not without massive collateral damage to your farm. We'll need to think of something better than that."

"I should have thought the answer is obvious," said Terriermon. "Let's take the fight to them. Then we don't have to worry about damaging anything. We could go all-out and totally trash their outpost, blowing up everything in sight."

"Ustud subey, me goota su estepo," said Embo to Terriermon.

"Er, what he said," said Terriermon.

"He said he likes your style," said Sugi.

"Oh. Well, good for him." Terriermon gave Embo a thumbs-up.

"Well, I don't," said Henry. Everyone turned to look at the boy as he sent a reprimanding glance at his partner. "You know, not all problems need to be resolved with violence and massive explosions, Terriermon."

"True," said the bunny. "But its efficient and more fun."

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

"Should I ask what that means?" Sugi muttered to Aayla.

"Apparently it means "take it easy,"" the Twi'lek replied.

"But if there was another way of getting the pirates to leave without killing them all, don't you think we should exploit it. Take the non-violent method. Or the least possible violent method, anyway."

"I agree," said Aayla. "If there is a way, then we shouldn't go in for an all-out attack, which would just risk life and limb. However, I must say you both have a point. Henry, you are right about appropriate methods, and Terriermon has the best answer that I can see. But if you have a better idea about how to proceed, Henry, then we'll be happy to listen to you."

"Well, you might be," muttered Max. "I was looking forward to kicking the stuffing out of them."

"Cut the muttering, Max," said Bly.

"Do you have a plan, Henry?" asked Renamon.

"As a matter of fact, I do," said the boy.

"Then do tell," said the fox.

"Wait a moment," Sugi interrupted. "Are you seriously expecting us to listen to the idea of a kid who has probably never met a pirate before today?"

"Yes," said Terriermon, simply.

Sugi shot him a confused look. "I thought you were all for the frontal-assault approach."

"I am, but I have learned from experience that it pays to listen to Henry. He warned me not to poor yoghurt all over his mother but I didn't listen, and it cost me dearly."

"But how much experience does he have in the field?" said Sugi, stubbornly.

"How many enormous, rampaging phoenixes or monstrous, rogue computer programs that delete anything it touches or super-powerful demon lords have you faced in battle?" asked, to everyone's surprise, Suzie innocently. Sugi blinked and stared at the kid in disbelief.

"Owned," chuckled Terriermon.

"Whipped," nodded Lopmon, approvingly.

Rika ruffled Suzie's hair and said, "Alright, Henry. Let's hear it."

"Correct me if I'm wrong," said Henry, turning to Cassis and Dilani. "But these crops aren't going to be ripe for another few months, right?"

"True," said Dilani. "And it'll be difficult to work under the pressure."

"Well, then, that means that the pirates are going to be doing nothing but hanging around at their base for a few months," said Henry. "And I don't know much about this planet, but I do know that it isn't a place I'd want to camp out at for so long. It's incredibly dangerous."

"That is true," agreed Ahsoka. "Generally people don't stay here unless they're in an extremely secure facility, like those Separatists, and when they have to then they get away at the earliest opportunity."

"And whenever dangerous wildlife threatens us," said Cassis. "We turn on the electrofence and hide under the trapdoors until it has past."

"That's right," said Henry. "As has been established by the rancors, the Sarlacc and the ants, this is an inhospitable planet."

"Why do you live here anyway?" asked Rika to the farmers.

"Ideal conditions for the crops. The plants here mature much faster here than on other planets," said Dilani.

"So," continued Henry. "The pirates have to wait three months on a hostile planet before they get anything of value. Perhaps, we should, er, convince them, that it isn't worth the wait."

"And how are we supposed to do that?" asked Rumi.

"Well, convince them might not be the right way of putting it," said Henry. "More like, creating a series of unfortunate events around them that scare them and make them want to leave."

"Well, scaring the bejeezus out of people is Terriermon's forte," smirked Renamon.

"Let me get this straight," said Terriermon. "Your asking us to, instead of going out and fighting the pirates directly, play pranks on them instead."

"Sort of," said Henry.

"I'm in," cried Ahsoka. "This may be good practice for the prank war with my master."

"Alright, I admit that this idea has its merits," said Sugi. "But are we supposed to go about it? We'd easily be spotted."

"No, we wouldn't," said Lopmon. "Tell me, do people believe in ghosts?"

"Ghosts?" Sugi blinked. "Well, I suppose some people might. I don't, but it's never been proven that they don't exist."

"Even with all the technology this place doesn't know if ghosts exist here either," chuckled Rika.

"But where do ghosts come into it?" asked Dilani.

Renamon disappeared.

The Bounty Hunters and the farmers blinked in surprise.

Renamon reappeared.

"They don't," said the fox. "But we can make the pirates think that they do."

"We'll explain what a perception filter is another time," said Aayla. "Right now, we need some ideas about how to go about this."

"Oh, I have been waiting such a long time for an opportunity like this," Terriermon grinned evilly. "When do we start?"

"We should leave when it gets dark," said Ahsoka. "We want to do this as soon as possible and the night time will add to the atmosphere."

"Perfect," the bunny grinned. "Now, I have a few ideas. Listen up…"

And they all began to listen with interest, as Terriermon outlined his plans. As he did, slow grins began to break out across the faces of just about everyone who could actually grin. (Seripas just stared blankly)

* * *

"Can somebody please tell me why we have not received any word from the two that we left at the farm?" asked Hondo, his feet resting casually on a crate and his monkey-lizard sitting nearby, pecking up a bunch of seeds.

"We can't seem to get through to them, sir," said one of the Weequay pirates. "All we're getting is static."

"Hmm, it looks like the Jedi might have gotten the better of them," Hondo shrugged. "Oh well. We'll go to see them again in the morning. Then we can learn for ourselves what has happened. And maybe we'll shoot one of the children until they get the message."

Night has fallen some time ago and it was now extremely dark, except for the numerous lamps dotted around the pirate campsite, illuminating the numerous Weequay going about their duties, which mainly involved lying around, drunk out of their minds, or at least reaching that point. Hondo made not attempt to stop them. The Jedi surely wouldn't be foolish enough to go wandering around Felucia at night.

A temporary electrofence had been set up around the perimeter, so that the native wildlife could be kept out. Towering over the camp was the Weequay ship. It had the look of a classic Earth UFO. It was, literally, a flying saucer.

Hondo chuckled at the sight of his men. They may be drunken and rowdy most of the time, but they were most certainly dangerous when they wanted to be. He petted his Kowakian monkey-lizard, which purred contentedly, as he picked up a pint of some kind of grog and poured it down his throat.

As he did so, he completely failed to notice something zip behind him. A small, brown bunny, flying with its ears, sailed past the pirate captain and quickly pushed a crate off the top of a pile before shooting away in the opposite direction. The crate landed on a drunken pirate, who promptly screamed blue murder at the unexpected attack and leaped to his feet, kicking his nearest comrade, who also stood up and socked his attacker in the jaw.

The first Weequay fell over two more, who also leapt to their feet. Pretty quickly there was a fully-fledged barfight, except without the bar, going on throughout the camp as the Weequays punched, hit, kicked and elbowed each other as much as possible.

Lopmon rejoined the others as the watched invisibly on the other side of the electrofence. Terriermon pouted at her and said, "I wanted to start the fight."

"I know," his sister told him. "But I couldn't let you have all the fun. Momentai."

Terriermon sulked.

"Alright then," said Aayla. "Is Renamon in position?"

"Yep," nodded Rika, examining Renamon's vision through her D-Arc. "She's standing on the edge of the flying saucer. Right in the right place."

"And she can see the whole camp?" asked Ahsoka.

Rika nodded again. "She's just waiting for us to make our move."

"Then let's do it while the pirates are distracted," said Sugi. The two Jedi nodded and they began to quickly use the Force to lift the others into the air, two at a time, and levitate them over the electrofence and onto the soil at the other end. The four Bounter Hunters, the three clones and the three Tamers went over. Terriermon and Lopmon took to the air, and then the two Jedi leapt over to join the others.

From the lip of the giant saucer, Renamon watched them with satisfaction. Naturally she was able to see through her own perception filter, cast at them from a distance, and thanks to the way she bent the perspective, they could see each other as well. But the pirates were completely oblivious to their intruders.

"This is unreal," said Sugi, waving at Hondo, who was observing the brawl and couldn't see her at all. "This is amazing."

"You still have to be quiet," said Lopmon. "It's a perception filter, not an auditory filter. They can still hear us if we talk loud enough."

"Point taken," said Sugi, in a loud whisper.

"Alright then," said Henry. "Does everyone remember where they're supposed to go?"

"Yes, sir!" Terriermon saluted. "Ready and waiting."

"Suzie and I will be waiting to make our move," said Lopmon, from her partner's shoulder. "Just give us the signal."

"Right," nodded Aayla, approvingly. "Well, let's get to it."

And with that, they separated. The three clones and Seripas headed off in one direction, the clones moving slower than they would have liked and wincing every time Seripas' feet made a loud clomping sound, but it was drowned out by the massive brawl going on. Aayla and Ahsoka headed another way, and Rika went along with them, ready to make her move when needed. The three other Bounty Hunters went their own way too. That left Henry and Terriermon, who were just waiting, like Suzie and Lopmon, for the right moment.

The plan was to start off minor, and then get bigger and bigger.

"Alright, alright," Hondo said eventually, standing up and striding through his brawling warriors. Somehow he managed to avoid getting hit by anyone despite making no moves to avoid getting hit. "Break it up, everybody. Honestly, why can't you all act civilised for once in your lives. Is it too much to ask for?"

"But fighting and brawling is all we've ever really known," said one of his pirates, standing up and rubbing his head.

"True. I suppose you can't teach an old pirate new tricks. Anyhoo, I want everyone to get a good night's rest. We're heading back to the farm at first light and I want everyone to be in tip-top shape. Jedi are not to be taken lightly."

"Too right," muttered Ahsoka from her hiding place behind a pile of crates. The perception filter still covered them, but they thought it might be best if they got out of the way anyhow.

* * *

One of the Weequays patrolling the perimeter sighed as he looked at the squabble proceeding in the middle of the camp. "Look at them. They've just got to rub it in our faces, haven't they?"

"Yeah," muttered his companion, "I could go for a pint of grog right about now. Why did it have to be our night for the fragging guard duty. It's not like we need guards with our electrofence."

"If you ask me, the captain's being a bit paranoid now that Jedi have entered the picture. We don't need to worry about them. We could take 'em out easy. It was just a Twi'lek and a little Togruta."

"Yeah. We wouldn't even have to kill 'em. We could just capture them and sell 'em as slaves to the nearest Hutt."

"Or, we could keep them for ourselves, if you know what I mean."

They both guffawed.

"And then there's those Bounty Hunters," said the second. "They looked like right amateurs. Did you see that one with the ridiculous hat. I mean, what the hell was that thing for. It looked like something you'd grow plants in. And then there was, ungh!"

An invisible Embo skilfully knocked him out with a jab to a pressure point on his neck. "Nadee inlota el sumbrogo," he said contemptuously.

"What the…" said the other one. "Who's…?" But he didn't finish either as Sugi quickly delivered a punch to his face, leaving him unconscious too.

"Well, that's another two guards down," Sugi smirked down at the unconscious two. "Rumi, get to work."

The Frenk nodded and stepped forward to do her job. The three Bounty Hunters had, during the planning stage, wanted to opt out of the pranking and go onto just knocking out the guards, doing what they did best. However, after extensive arguments with Terriermon, they had agreed to extend their role a little and Rumi was quickly doing just that. Sugi and Embo nodded to each other and went off to incapacitate the next two guards while Rumi was dealing with these two.

* * *

Bly, Max and Conor has arrived at their own destination. Like, the Bounty Hunters, their role in this was comparatively small compared to what the Jedi and the Digimon were about to do. With them was Seripas, and they were standing by the two enormous WLO-5 speeder tanks that the pirates had brought with them. Bly turned to look at the pirates, recovering from the brawl. He felt vulnerable without his blasters in hand, but as General Secura had pointed out, letting off a single shot could compromise their position, so he was keeping them in their holsters.

"Right then," he said. "How the hell are we going to go about this?" he asked.

"I need to get inside in order to reprogram them," droned Seripas tonelessly, the droid-like face staring at him.

"Yeah, that's my point," said Bly. "Even with the filter up I fail to see how trying to smuggle you into just one of these is going to be on any help at all."

"You said that you had a way when we were back at the farm," said Conor. "Now would be a good time to tell us."

Somehow, the frozen face managed to look a little embarrassed, though it was difficult to see how it managed it. "Promise you won't laugh?" asked the huge, hulking figure.

The clones glanced at each other in bemusement.

"All right," said Bly, slowly. "We promise."

Seripas seemed to hesitate. But then, after a couple of seconds, his chest split open and his head flipped backwards on a hinge, the Egyptian style headdress thing sliding back into his torso. The clones started backwards, as the gap widened to reveal that Seripas was not a huge robot at all, but a tiny little creature sitting in the cockpit of an large mechanical suit. The real Seripas was tiny, wearing blue coveralls and with a long neck, with flat head with two little ear-like projections, (quite similar to Impmon's) coming out of the back of his head.

"Ah," said Bly.

Seripas looked ashamed. "I knew you'd laugh. I'm so feeble-looking. I'm so diminutive."

"Er, look little guy… I mean, just guy," Bly hastily corrected himself. "If there's one thing I've learned over the last couple of weeks, it's that size means absolutely nothing. Lopmon and Terriermon are two of the toughest guys I know, and they're both smaller than you."

"Then there's Yoda," said Max.

"Yeah. Him too."

Seripas didn't look particularly reassured, but he clambered out of the suit and hopped to the floor. "I'm going to need a way in."

"Right. You two, get under the tanks and use your fusion cutters to create a hole. Be ready Seripas. I'll stand guard and warn you if someone gets close enough to hear the fusion cutters."

The clones nodded. Conor and Max quickly climbed under their respective hovertanks and quickly began to cut them open from beneath. Seripas reached into his mechanical suit for his tools and prepared to get to work once they let him inside. Bly quickly turned to where he could see his General waiting beside the ship and saluted.

* * *

"Alright," said Aayla. "They're doing their jobs." She nodded to Bly and turned to Ahsoka. "I reckon it's time that we brought a little chaos."

"About time," nodded Ahsoka.

"We start small and work our way up," cautioned the Twi'lek. Then she turned and focused her eyes on a small crate standing beside Hondo from where he was lecturing his men.

"But sir, what's so bad about Jedi. We didn't have a problem taking out that Count Dooku," said one of the pirates.

"You fool," snorted Hondo. "We took out the Count by stealing his lightsabers when he wasn't looking and then cornering him. You've never faced an armed Jedi in combat before. They are very dangerous."

"It's all hype, if you ask me."

"And I didn't ask you. That is why I am your leader. I am in charge here, and you will do what I sAAGH!"

The crate suddenly moved and smacked into the back of his legs, taking them out from underneath him and sending him toppling over. His men burst out in laughter at their captain's plight and Hondo quickly scrambled up, staring at the crate with a look of incredulity.

"That's odd," he said. "I didn't move backwards."

"Looks like the crate doesn't like you, captain." Guffaws followed.

"Just get some rest, my warriors," Hondo turned to stride away, but Ahsoka raised her hand and summoned a coil of rope to suddenly extend and snap taut. Hondo's feet caught it and he crashed to the ground again.

The other pirates roared with laughter, but Hondo was fuming now. "Alright, that definitely was not right," he growled. "That rope just jumped out at me."

The pirates looked at one another dubiously, but then, something else jumped out at Hondo, as Aayla focused her attention on the Kowakian monkey-lizard and waved her hand slightly. They monkey-lizard was suddenly seized with an urge to attack its master and it leaped up and grabbed Hondo's face, wrapping its body around his head and gripping tightly in an attempt to smother him. Hondo reeled about, flailing wildly as his faithful pet turned on him and once again, he found himself falling over as he stumbled backwards over the same crate as before.

As the pirates broke into uproarious laughter, Hondo brought up his hands and ripped the monkey-lizard from his face. The monkey-lizard stopped struggling and then looked utterly bemused.

Hondo caught the look of confusion and muttered, "What is going on around here?"

"AGH! HELP HELP HELP!" GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF! STOP! OW! THAT HURTS! LEAVE ME ALONE!"

Despite the hilarity of what was going on, the pirates stopped laughing and paled at the sight they were seeing. One of their comrades was under attack, but not by anything they had ever seen before. Never before had they seen a blaster jump out of a holster and start beating its owner over the head. They hurriedly stepped back as the pirate under attack flailed in pain and confusion as he own weapon clobbered him repeatedly over the head.

"Okay, something weird's going on," said one.

"YOU THINK? AAAARRGGH! AGH! AGH! AGH!" yelled the pirate as suddenly a plank of wood leapt of the ground and started smacking his bottom furiously. This did cause a few titters despite the situation, but then the rogue blaster and plank turned on the crowd and dived into the onlookers, smacking left, right and centre at just about anything they could reach.

"What's going on?"

"What's happening?"

"Leave me alone."

"Help!"

"Ow!"

"Run!"

* * *

"Well, I'd say that it sufficient chaos, don't you think?" asked Henry, to his partner, who, along with Aayla, Ahsoka, Rika and Bly, was trying without a great deal of success to cover up his laughter.

"Yeah," said the Ultimate level Digimon Rapidmon. During the beginnings of the chaos, he'd been digivolved to this stage because what they were about to attempt was something that they were sure he couldn't handle at the Rookie stage. They'd never tested it out, but they weren't willing to take any chances. "Let's do this."

"Alright then. You know exactly what you're going to do?"

"Yep."

"Well, here goes nothing," said Henry, bringing his D-Arc and card forward and as he swiped it, he whispered. "Digi-modify! MaloMyotismon's Mental Illusion Activate!"

Rapidmon felt infused with power and immediately he cast the attack. "Mental Illusion!" he hissed quietly as he pulsed out energy from his eyes, enveloping everyone in camp, pirate and ally alike. He didn't bother to discriminate because the others would know that what they were seeing was an illusion and he wanted to give them a show.

Abruptly the plank and the blaster stopped attacking everyone and floated into the air, hovering side-by-side like a pair of sentinels. The pirates looked up at them fearfully, wondering if they were going to attack again. Hondo stood up from where he'd fallen and brushed off his robes. "Well, looks like the Jedi are trying to play games with us," he said.

But everyone was cut off from answering as a high, rasping, bone-chilling laugh filled the air. It made the hair on the arms and legs of all the Weequay stand on end, giving them instant goosebumps. And then a grey figure materialised out of thin air between the plank (which Aayla was holding up) and the blaster (which was controlled by Ahsoka). It was vaguely humanoid, except for the fact that it had no legs, instead its lower body seemed to taper off. Numerous black lines crossed its arms, chest, and lower body, with one running right up the middle of its face. And in that line was a single eye right in the centre of its head, and it was at a ninety-five degree angle to normal.

"Ghostfreak?" Henry muttered to Rapidmon. "How original."

"So sue me. I like that show that Suzie watches." Rapidmon muttered before returning his full attention to his illusion.

"The Jedi are nothing to me," the fake-Ghostfreak grated at the terrified pirates. "And so are you. You have trespassed upon my domain and I assure you that you will not go unpunished." He broke into evil laughter, he fingers curling into claws.

Even Hondo was taken aback by the vision before him. He had never been superstitious but here was a ghost, a genuine ghost, right in front of him.

"What do you want?" he addressed it.

Ghostfreak seemed to smirk. "You must leave this place. Leave this planet. And don't try to think of relocation, because I will track you down and make your life a misery."

One of the pirates raised a blaster and fired a shot at Ghostfreak, but it simply went straight through him as if he wasn't there, which of course he wasn't. But they didn't know that.

Ghostfreak's single eye narrowed. "Defiance, is it? It's your funeral. Now, let the chaos begin!"

The blaster suddenly moved and shot the pirate in chest, killing him instantly. Ghostfreak disappeared and the plank and the blaster resumed their attack on the pirates. Ghostfreak began to appear at random points around the camp as everything went haywire. Crates went flying everywhere, slamming into the pirates. The ground tore itself up and huge clods of earth rippled around. Ghostfreak appeared right in front of Hondo and punched him full in the face. Hondo went flying backwards from the blow, which had in reality been a blast of the Force from Ahsoka.

The pirates fled and panicked, scattering in all directions, but everywhere they went they encountered more and more flying objects being hurled at them. Ghostfreak appeared again in front of another Weequay and phased into him, and the unfortunate pirate was suddenly lifted off the ground and slammed into it, twice, before being hurled away, Ghostfreak appearing out of his body again.

"Cowards!" Hondo cried, ignoring his quivering monkey-lizard. "This is a Jedi mind trick! It has to be!"

"I think not!" Ghostfreak phased into existence behind him. "Tell me, can the Jedi make diamonds fall from the sky?"

"Of course not!" said Hondo.

"Then I guess I'm not a Jedi!" said Ghostfreak, raising his hands to the heavens. Renamon spotted her cue from the ship and unleashed a full-powered Diamond Storm down on them. The pirates screamed and fled as the jagged projectiles rained down upon them. Many of them fled towards the ship, heeding Ghostfreak's warning.

"But that's impossible!" yelled Hondo, yelping as a diamond struck him right in the groin. Renamon smirked.

"Wherever I'm concerned," Ghostfreak laughed maniacally. "Nothing is impossible!"

"Who are you?" Hondo gasped.

"Aww, now don't tell me your afraid of old Ghostfreak."

"Stealing lines right out of the show now?" asked Henry.

"Ssh, concentrating," Rapidmon murmured.

"Guards!" yelled Hondo. "Snap to it and stop that ghost!"

"Guards?" asked Ghostfreak. "What guards? You mean them?" He pointed to a spot at the far end of camp. A light flickered on, so that an area previously bathed in shadow was revealed. Hondo was stunned to see several groggy guards, unconscious or waking up from it, hanging upside down from a crossbeam and spelling out the word "BOO" with their bodies.

"Help! Get us down!" yelled one of them.

"This can't be!" yelled Hondo desperately. "Get in the tanks someone! Drive it away!" Just then, the plank beaned him in the head.

Ghostfreak laughed again. "I think you'll find that the tanks are also under my control," he said, and he gestured to them. Abruptly the two began rolling forward on their own, until they were on opposite sides of the camp and then they zoomed forward and crashed into one another over and over again, like a pair of giant dodgem cars. Pirates scrambled to get out of the way of the two hovering juggernauts, which were both being controlled via remote control. Seripas had done his job well and now he and Bly were battling the two with hearty expressions, each trying to overturn the others vehicle, while sitting safely by the fence.

Hondo was getting desperate. Everything was falling apart around him. His pirates were fleeing for the ship, determined to put as much distance between themselves and this planet as possible. But they couldn't leave without the nysillin. They'd lose so much potential money.

"Aren't you going to leave yet?" Ghostfreak swirled around him. "Are you really that stubborn?"

"Captain, let's go!" yelled one of the stragglers. "It's not worth it! They'll leave us behind!"

"No-one leaves this planet until we get our profit!" roared Hondo.

"Oh, but you can," sneered Ghostfreak, "and you will." With that said, he faded out of existence and reappeared beside the control panel that controlled the electrofence. His hand pushed down on the button in the middle, aided with a slight push from the Force by Aayla.

"What are you doing?" asked Hondo, worriedly.

"Have you ever heard the phrase, "Let in the jungle?" leered Ghostfreak.

And that was exactly what the others had been waiting for. As the electrofence sizzled into nothingness an enormous shape barrelled out of the gloom behind the illusionary Ghostfreak – a huge, bipedal rabbit about as tall as the ship, with hands like battleaxes. Hondo was stunned at the sight of the huge creature which thundered across the camp. With two huge swings, Antylamon, crashing through the flying crates and planks as it they weren't there, brought her hands swinging into the two tanks and sent them flying with a heave that seemed to take almost no effort. The tanks catapulted through the air like huge cannonballs and hurtled across the camp.

Hondo ducked as the first one soared in his direction and it crashed down right behind him, narrowly missing the pirate captain. Disturbed and terrified, Hondo staggered away from the wreckage and was almost flattened by Antylamon's foot, as the Ultimate level Digimon sprinted past him and disappeared into the surrounding jungle.

Was the nysillin really worth the effort?

Nope.

Hondo stood and yelled, "Everyone into the ship! We're leaving!" A few of the remaining pirates were hurriedly cutting down the guards and they, with their captain at their head, ran up the ramp and into their flying saucer. Ghostfreak vanished as Rapidmon dropped the illusion and the others emerged from their hiding places to watch the ship as it began to power up. Renamon, feeling the vibrations under her feet, dropped the perception filter and sprang down, somersaulting to the ground.

Grins were pasted across everyone's faces as they watched the Weequay ship lift off, spraying dirt everywhere in its slipstream, and then zoom up into the sky as if there was a ghost after it.

"Do you think that we should tell Hondo what really happened if we ever run into him again?" asked Ahsoka.

"Nah!" said Rapidmon. "If we run into him again, I say that we do it again. That was some of the most fun I've had since forever."

"It's unorthodox," agreed Aayla. "But it certainly worked."

Sugi nodded. "And now, we have to return to the village before we run afoul of anything ourselves."

"Anyone want a lift?" asked Antylamon.

* * *

The following day, the farmers were still celebrating. They were dancing and leaping about in circles, yelling and singing with joy. It seemed that their efforts to find help had worked. The pirates had gone and what was better, they would likely tell other pirates and brigands about their experiences, which meant that others would also probably keep away.

Aayla and Ahsoka were surprised when Cassis approached the Bounty Hunters and said, "The pirates were driven off sooner than expected. You'll have to wait a while before we have the money to pay you. Perhaps you could return in a few months, when they're ripe and being sold and we'll pay you then."

The surprising part was what Sugi said next. "No. You can keep your money. We don't really deserve any payment on this one. The idea and the execution and the credit all belongs to Terriermon. We cannot accept you money."

Embo, Rumi and Seripas (back in his mechanical suit) all nodded in agreement.

Aayla and Ahsoka glanced at each other. A Bounty Hunter that didn't break deals was one thing, but a Bounty Hunter that refused pay was another entirely. These were definitely not the lowlifes that the Jedi often had to mop up.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" asked Ahsoka.

"I believe so," grinned the Twi'lek. "What do you think?"

"I say, go for it," said the Togruta.

"Just what I was thinking," said Aayla. Then the Twi'lek strode towards the Bounty Hunters. "Sugi," she called, getting the attention of the Zabrak. "If you're going to refuse payment from Cassis, how would you like to accept some payment from us. We could use your assistance."

* * *

As said before, sorry. I really hope that you all thought this chapter was decent after such a long wait. I anxiously await your reviews. See you in ANOTHER three weeks.

* * *

Next time...

Impmon chapter. GranKuwagamon is introduced to HYPNOS and the other Tamers and they begin construction of the machine. Not only that, but Impmon is beginning to feel a little odd.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 45 : Hope Is Kindled**


	45. Hope Is Kindled

Hello everybody. Boy, am I in a good mood.

I had a great holiday. I saw a Bryde's Whale, a manta ray, an Oceanic Sunfish, five Chimera (not the mythological beast, the fish) and a Pilot Whale the got so close I could touch it. Plus, I also found out that I got into my university of choice - Cumbria. Thank you to everyone who wished me well in my exams. I got a B in English, a B in Drama and an A in Biology. And I only needed three Cs. Plus, I'm just recovering from my second illness delay. I never thought uncontrollable shivering could be so uncomfortable.

By the way, recently, I have redeveloped a keen interest in the Pokemon games, which I think are much better than the TV show. I'm thinking of including my own Pokemon crossover in the future. A proper one, not a ridiculous one where people seem to think Pikachu is a match for Sakuyamon. (I mean WTH?) I'd like to ask your opinions on this matter. I'll probably do it after this fic, so that there can be Pokemon involved when I start Harry Potter, and I may just use myself as an OC in it, along with my Platinum team:- Garchomp, Gardevoir, Glaceon, Houndoom, Lucario and Luxray, and several others in mind, including Latios and Latias as main characters. Whatya think?

On with the story. Let's see what happening to Impmon. The story for him reaches a turning point in this chapter.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 45:- Hope Is Kindled**

* * *

Yamaki had had a tough week to say the least. The disappearance of Henry, Rika, Suzie and their partners had greatly disturbed and worried just about everyone in the city – the fact that the others had practically torn the city apart in a desperate attempt to find them made it difficult to keep secret. HYPNOS had received a number of calls asking for status reports on the missing tamers, and so far he'd been able to give them squat.

Then, that very same evening, the twin children Ai and Mako, along with their partner Impmon, had suddenly upped and left for the Digital World with no explanation whatsoever, and when Yamaki had sent Ryo and Cyberdramon to intercept them, the two hadn't returned.

He'd never felt so helpless in his life. They knew that Ai and Mako and probably Ryo were in the Digital World, so the blond man had ordered the Monster makers to begin construction of a second arc similar to the first. Progress had been going much faster than the first time, because this time the Monster Makers actually had more of an idea on what they were doing, and Shibumi was here from the start this time. But Yamaki was still being swamped with phonecalls, mostly from Mrs, Nonaka, Mrs. Wong and Mrs. Terada, asking where their babies were. Ryo's parents seemed less concerned, though Yamaki was uncertain if this was because they thought he'd be fine or they just didn't care.

The others were the greater problem. Nobody had any idea whatsoever as to what Parallelmon had done with them, though Janyuu and Shibumi had a pretty good idea – but nobody liked the thought of them being in a completely alternate dimension with no friends whatsoever and, what was worse, no way back. None of them had the slightest clue on how to design or build a machine that could take them the to any alternate dimension besides the Digital World.

But the more time passed, the more their thoughts began to turn for the worse. Two weeks had passed and there had still been no sign of them – no calls had come in from any of the other countries in the world reporting that they'd been found. Janyuu was getting visibly more and more agitated by the day as were the other Tamers whenever they popped over to check on progress. Kazu and Kenta in particular were keen on trying to search for them, and Yamaki had to keep reminding them that they needed a vague idea of where they might be first.

Now, Yamaki was sitting slumped in his chair at his desk, flicking his lighter absent-mindedly and waiting for the next phonecall from Mrs. Terada, so that he could be treated to yet another tirade about how dead Impmon was going to be when he got back and how worried she was for the twins and how it was all the little goblin's fault, blah, blah, blah.

Fortunately, today he would be spared that.

The door to his office burst open and Riley ran in. She was death white and had a cell phone clutched in one hand like it was a lifeline or something. "Sir," she gasped, completely out of breath. "Sir, you've got a call."

"What else is new?" Yamaki asked, though he could tell that it was quite serious this time. "Who is it?"

"It's Takato's phone, sir," said Riley. "But the caller is Ryo Akiyama!"

Yamaki sat bolt upright. "What?" he cried. "Quickly, give me the phone."

His desk phone rang. Yamaki answered it, said "Later," into it, and hung up on Mrs. Terada, then grabbed the phone from Riley and said, "Ryo, is that you?"

"**Yeah, it's me,"** said Ryo, **"How've you been?"**

"How've I been? How've I BEEN?" Yamaki yelled. "Akiyama, you went and disappeared when I gave you a direct order to stop the twins and instead you go galumphing off to the Digital World with them! We were already having to deal with the repercussions of the disappearance of the others, and you went and made it worse! I hope you have a good explanation."

"**Yes, sir,"** said Ryo, and Yamaki could practically see the smirk on his face. **"We have, and we've made the situation better now as a result of our actions."**

"Better? How?"

"**We know what's happened to the others."**

Yamaki stood, momentarily stunned, as this sank in. Then he said, "Are they with you now?"

"**Sadly, no," **Ryo said. **"But we found out what's happened and we have a means of getting them back. A potential one anyway."**

"Getting them back? Potential? Where are they?"

"**I think it'd be better if we discussed this in person," said Ryo. "We're heading in your direction now:- Takato, Jeri, the twins and our Digimon are with me. Not to mention our little surprise?"**

"Surprise?" Yamaki repeated, scolded himself for acting like a parrot. "What surprise?"

"**Why do you call it a surprise? You'll have to wait and see. We should be there soon."**

"What about the twins? Are they uninjured?"

"**Completely."**

"And Impmon?"

"**Just fine."**

"He might not be by the end of the day."

"**Mrs. Terada mad?"**

"Very."

"**Ah. I don't envy Impmon. See you in a bit."**

Ryo hung up. Yamaki grimaced and handed the phone back to Riley. "Riley, tell Janyuu Wong that Ryo and the twins are on their way here with news of his son and daughter. Tell him to head down to the entrance and that I'll join him as soon as I've made a couple of phonecalls."

"Right away, sir," Riley nodded, and she turned and left the room hurriedly. Yamaki picked up the phone and dialled the Terada household, preparing for an outburst when she heard why he had hung up on her.

* * *

Seven minutes later, Janyuu and Yamaki were stood by the doors to the Tokyo Metropolitan Building in silence, except for the sounds of the constant flicking of Yamaki's lighter. The two were rather impatient – both to hear the story of what Ai, Mako and Ryo had been doing during the last two weeks and what they'd learned about the fate of the others.

Yamaki had already phoned up the parents of not only the twins and Ryo, but he'd also phoned Mrs. Nonaka, while Janyuu had phoned his wife, telling them that something had been found and to get down to the HYPNOS towers right away to hear the news. Mrs. Terada had shrieked so loud that Yamaki's ear was still buzzing when he had mentioned Impmon and said she was going to bring her broom. Yamaki had had to order her not to before she relented.

"I sure hope that after all this time we have something groundbreaking," Janyuu murmured as he stared out to the streets, waiting apprehensively for something to happen other than the usual bustle of the street. "The thought of not knowing where my two youngest are, even though they do have Terriermon and Lopmon to protect them… it's tearing me to pieces."

"I understand that Janyuu," nodded Yamaki. "And I sure hope that the twins led Ryo on this wild goose chase for a good reason. I'm still not completely sure whether their judgement was a good thing for Ryo to go on – they're only young. And Impmon's not much better."

"They must have something," Janyuu clenched his fist. "They must. If they don't, I don't know what I'll do."

"Yo there, Shades and Fossil!" called a voice, which would have been unmistakeable without the accent due to the nicknames. "Have we got good news for you."

Several women screamed and hid behind things at the sight of the huge, black, stag beetle winging low over the street. This was quite a common reaction to bug Digimon, and something which Rika, and Jeri, couldn't understand. Janyuu stared in disbelief at the insect which neither had been expecting to see again as he flew towards them.

"Isn't that GranKuwagamon?" asked Janyuu.

"Yes," said Yamaki. "What is he doing here?"

The roar of a motorbike was heard and Behemoth screeched to a halt beside the two men, Beelzemon astride him, with Ai and Mako squealing with the thrill of the ride. Cyberdramon cracked the pavement, again, when he landed with much more force than necessary and deposited Ryo next to them. GranKuwagamon landed with considerably less force and allowed Takato, Jeri and Elecmon to hop off. Guilmon flopped off and landed with a thud.

"Sorry we took so long," said Ryo. "We were planning to fly over the buildings, but then decided it'd be better to go lower and through the streets."

"May I ask why?" asked Yamaki.

"Cause Pineapple-head was getting incredibly airsick," said Beelzemon. "And trust me, nobody likes anonymous sick falling out of the sky."

"Has it ever happened to you?" asked Jeri.

"Once," muttered Beelzemon. "Only, it came from a bucket, and Terriermon had been holding it."

"Ah."

"…"

"Anyway," Janyuu quickly changed the subject. "Speaking of Terriermon, have you found out anything about where he is, as well as all the others? You said over the phone that you had something important."

"We have a vague idea about where they are," said Ryo. "But you aren't going to like it."

"Tell us," said Janyuu quickly.

"Hold up," said Yamaki. "I think it would be better if you were to start from the beginning of your little unauthorized venture into the Digital World," said Yamaki, casting a significant glance at Ryo, who had the decency to look a little guilty. "And you can explain to us in that way, and thereby tell us exactly what GranKuwagamon is doing here. And how exactly you got back without our help."

"Okay, but for the record, this is the last time we're telling anyone this story," said Beelzemon, placing the twins on the ground and stepping off his bike. "I'm getting fed up of hearing it."

Ryo omitted certain details from his narrative, such as the fact that Cyberdramon had lost control and attacked Beelzemon, and what Impmon had confided in him about his feelings for Lopmon, but he included everything else, from the boring desert trip to meeting MetalSeadramon, the conference with Zhuqiaomon, and the information that he had given them. At this point, Janyuu had a similar reaction and had to grab a nearby litter bin to keep from losing his balance.

"But there is still hope," Ryo said quickly, going onto explain about GranKuwagamon's ability, but also how vague it was. He described the search for him, including the meeting of Lilamon, Diatrymon and Wingdramon.

"And so, we were hoping you could put your brilliant minds to work," said Ryo. "And try to come up with a way to harness GranKuwagamon's power and use it to get to the alternate dimension that the others are in, whichever it may be."

"And I assume that you are okay with this?" Yamaki asked the giant insect, who, he noticed, people were going out of their way to avoid. GranKuwagamon nodded solemnly.

"If I wasn't so worried for my son and daughter then I would be overwhelmed by this revelation that there are real parallel realities out there," said Janyuu. "And as for this portal you want us to build… well it's a long shot but it's the only lead we have and probably the best one we could ever find short of having a surprise visit from Anubimon, if I've understood everything correctly."

"Unlikely," said Ryo. "The visit from Anubimon, I mean, not you not understanding."

"You are, of course, aware that even with a Digital creature of such power aiding us," said Yamaki. "This project could take months at best. We'd be dealving into brand new territory here, that none have even attempted before. We have no idea where to start."

The others sagged visibly. "We figured as much," muttered Takato. "But we have to try."

"You're right. We do," nodded Yamaki. "Just be prepared for the worst."

"Months alone in a parallel universe," muttered Jeri sadly. "How on earth will they cope with that? I don't think I could."

"At least they've got Terriermon with them," said Guilmon. "He should keep their spirits up. Don't worry, Jeri."

Then Cyberdramon went and did the thing he did a lot, other than growl and try to kill something, which was surprise everyone by saying something which showed he actually had been listening to conversations all along. "Actually it would be better if we had Terriermon here. Renamon said that their bond would mean they could communicate no matter how many dimensions apart they were."

"Oh yeah," said Ryo.

"Maybe we can use that," mused Yamaki. "We'll look into it. Come inside. GranKuwagamon is starting to affect the traffic." It was true. Paranoid people were stopping and waiting until the other side of the road was free, just so they could drive past the giant bug on the other side in case he attacked them. Yamaki led them through the doors, and had to open the large double doors to make room for the Mega level. Beelzemon instructed his bike to wait outside, then dedigivolved and followed the rest of the group in.

* * *

Up in the main HYPNOS room, the rest of the Monster Makers, as well as Riley and Tammy, and a bunch of other HYPNOS staff, turned to watch as the others entered.

"Hey there, guys," said Babel, waving. "So did you get anything good?"

"It better be," muttered Daisy, "what with all the wasted work we've been doing to construct another Arc which we no longer need."

"Relax," said Shibumi. "I'm sure that we'll all have something to feel happy about by the time we know what's going on."

"I wouldn't be so sure, Shibumi," said Janyuu, coming over to slump in his chair. "And Daisy, I wouldn't go saying that the work we've been doing on that Arc is wasted yet."

Just then, GranKuwagamon entered the room, led by Jeri. The bug had been too big for the stairs, so Jeri had volunteered to take him up by the elevator, and even that had been a bit of a squeeze. The Monster Makers sat bolt upright at the sight of the Mega and stared at him with awe.

"Hold up," said Dolphin. "Isn't that one of the creatures that helped to defend us from Ogudomon?"

"Yes," said Tammy. "GranKuwagamon, if my memory is correct."

"Alright, everyone," said Yamaki. "We've got a big situation on our hands now. We may be about to undertake something bigger than we've ever attempted before. Bigger than Juggernaut, bigger than Yuggoth, bigger than Doodlebug, and bigger than Grani."

"Great," murmured Curly. "And I thought that my fingers were going to get a rest."

"Not for a few months," Yamaki flicked his lighter and pushed his shades up his nose. He began to relate what Ryo had told him to everybody else. Once he'd finished, there were numerous expressions of shock, awe, wonder and apprehension. Getting something like an Arc to the Digital World was one thing – the Digital World was connected to the Human world via the Internet. A completely unlinked universe could be much more problematic.

"You say GranKuwagamon has the ability to open portals at will?" asked Shibumi.

"Yes, but with no control of where he ends up," pointed out Takato.

"Well, I must say that this is fascinating," said Shibumi. "Forgive the inner geek in me, but I would very much like to see a demonstration of this unique talent, both to satisfy my curiosity and get a sense of what we'd be working with."

"An excellent suggestion, Shibumi," said Janyuu, sitting up straighter. "GranKuwagamon, could please give us a demonstration of your dimension jumper."

"Of course," the bass voice of the insect said, "If you could all get behind me, I would be happy to oblige. I wouldn't want to open up a portal through any of you. Believe me, it can be very messy."

Everybody got up from their seats and moved so they were standing behind GranKuwagamon. The scientists watched with awe and barely contained excitement as GranKuwagamon's enormous pincers began to glow with a bright blue light. GranKuwgamon shut his eyes as the pincers got brighter and brighter, until people began to avert their eyes from the glare. They seemed to be drawing energy from the surroundings as the intensity increased.

Then, GranKuwagamon's eyes shot open and with a cry of **"X-SCISSOR CLAW!"** he extended his pincers and then clashed them together. The energy flew from them and seemed to cut open the air, slicing a tear in the fabric of space and time, like a giant gash outlined with the blue energy, which abruptly got wider until it filled the majority of the office. Through the gash, they could see green fields and rolling hills with large flowers and what appeared to be large rabbits, ordinary rabbits, grazing on the grass.

The only thing that gave away the fact that it was an alternate dimension were the four beings which turned to look at them. They were all humanoid, each differing in height, and each were a different colour. One was purple, one was green, one was yellow and one was red. The purple one had a triangular antenna on its head, the green one had a straight one, the yellow one had a squiggly one and the red one had a circular one. They appeared to have TV screens on their bellies.

"Eh-oh!" said the Teletubbies, all waving cheerfully. "Big hug!"

"Gah!" Impmon yelled. "Close it! It's freaking me out!"

GranKuwagamon hurriedly obliged and the tear closed quickly, the energy dissipating into the air. Everyone stood, stunned, as what they had just seen sunk in.

"Okay," said Takato slowly. "All in favour of never telling Suzie?"

Everyone raised a hand, even the anonymous HYPNOS staff that nobody every spoke to or knew the name of.

Just then, the door opened and four women rushed into the room. One was Mrs. Wong. Another was Rumiko Nonaka, and the third was Rika's grandmother, Seiko. The fourth was an extremely dishevelled looking Mrs. Terada, who had a couple of twigs in her hair and, despite Yamaki's orders, a broom in her hand. Presumably the twigs had come from the room.

Mrs. Wong went straight to Janyuu, while Rika's family went to Yamaki and began to bombard them with questions. But Mrs. Terada, her brown hair frazelled and breathing heavily, and with such an angry expression that everyone was surprised that there was no steam coming from her ears, stood before Impmon.

"Er, hi," said Impmon. He knew it was the wrong thing to say, but he doubted that there was anything right to say in a situation like this. "What happened to you?"

"Hi? HI? HI! I'LL GIVE YOU HI YOU LITTLE RUNT!" she swatted at him with the broom. Impmon easily dodged a couple of strikes and held up his hand in a gesture of surrender.

"Mummy, stop!" Ai yelled, but Mrs. Terada ignored her daughter.

"Lady, what's the deal?" Impmon protested. "I didn't do nothing."

"NOTHING! YOU ARE A PEST AND A TERRIBLE INFLUENCE ON MY CHILDREN! YOU DRAGGED THEM OFF ON A DANGEROUS AND PROBABLY TERRIFYING ADVENTURE, LEADING THEM AWAY FROM THEIR LOVING MOTHER AND INTO MONSTERLAND! YOU KEPP THEM THERE FOR TWO WEEKS DOING WHO-KNOWS-WHAT AND WHEN YOU GET BACK YOU SET YOUR GOD DAMN BIKE ON ME!"

"Behemoth?" Impmon blinked. "I told him not to do anything. Unless… did you hit him with the broom?"

"THAT'S NOT THE POINT!"

"How is it my fault if you provoked him? He probably just knocked you for a loop. No serious damage. Though your hair may need some attention."

Mrs. Terada looked quite deranged as she aimed another swing at Impmon, but the nimble Rookie dodged again and quickly set the dry twigs alight with a Bada Boom. Mrs. Terada yelped and dropped the broom, which clattered the floor between the two of them.

"Look, lady," Impmon folded his arms. "You don't like me. I get that. I also get that you don't like the idea of me hanging around with your kids, but you gotta realise that they're quite capable for little ones. I didn't ask them to come. In fact, I flat out told them not to, but they wouldn't let me leave without them. And it was important that we got going as soon as possible, so we could talk to Zhuqster. So don't pin this all on me."

"It's still your fault," Mrs. Terada growled. "If you weren't around, then they wouldn't even be thinking of going off on adventures like this."

"So you'd willingly deprive them of their best friend and stop them from doing good deeds?"

"They're too young!"

"They're Tamers."

"Yeah, Mum," Mako walked over to stand beside Impmon. "We're big kids now. We have to do all this stuff sooner or later."

"Yeah," nodded Ai, moving over to stand on Impmon's other side. "And we had so much fun. We got to ride around on a giant sea-serpent. How cool is that?"

"A GIANT SEA-SERPENT!"

"Relax," said Impmon. "It was only MetalSeadramon."

"Yeah, you know," said Mako. "The really powerful bad guy from the TV show?"

"Not helping, Mako," said Impmon.

Mrs. Terada looked like she was going to explode. It seemed that Ai and Mako taking Impmon's side had done nothing but increase her ire and convince her that he was a bad influence on them. But before she could say anything else, she was interrupted.

"Mind if I chip in?"

Mrs. Terada leaped back as GranKuwagamon lumbered over. She didn't appear to have noticed him what with her rage at Impmon.

"What's all the hullabaloo?" asked GranKuwgamon.

"Hullabwhatnow?" Impmon asked. "Nobody uses that word anymore."

"I do," said the bug.

"Right, well, anyway," said Impmon. "Ai and Mako's mum here is blaming me for just about everything that's happened the last two weeks despite that fact that we found a way to get the others back and everyone is fine."

"I see," said GranKuwagamon. "Mrs. Terada, I believe. Would you mind if I talked to you privately."

"Er… um… uh…" Mrs. Terada was staring the GranKuwagamon in disbelief. She wasn't as used to giant monsters as the other parents, due to their isolation and the fact that Beelzemon looked relatively human.

"Take it as a yes," said Impmon. "Let's go, kids."

Impmon led Ai and Mako away as GranKuwagamon began to talk quietly to Mrs. Terada. The three of them watched as Mrs. Wong and Mrs. Nonaka cried at the thought of not seeing their children for months, but happy at the fact they now had a lead. Rumiko even went far enough to hug Ryo, who blushed (hey, how many people get hugged by models) and made to hug Cyberdramon, but then thought better of it as he bared his teeth.

"What?" Impmon called up to her. "Don't I get any credit? I'm the one who remembered the lead in the first place."

Rumiko knelt down and hugged him too. Impmon also flushed. He hadn't been expecting her to do it. He had just been fulfilling his role as a loudmouth.

"Thank you," said Rumiko. "For everything."

"Sheesh," muttered Impmon. "Well, least I could do. I just wish my Tamers' mum would have the same attitude."

A little later, Mrs. Terada came back over. She still cast the occasional dirty look at Impmon but otherwise she ignored him, which was an improvement from trying to kill him. Whatever GranKuwagamon had said, it had clearly had some degree of effect."

"Now, kids," said Mrs. Terada, addressing the twins. "I'm sure it's been a long two weeks for you, and it's getting late. I think that you could both do with an early night tonight. Let's go home."

"Aaawwww," the twins whined.

* * *

Ai and Mako were preparing for bed under the watchful eye of their mother. She was refusing to leave the room until they had been safely tucked in and she wasn't letting Impmon get anywhere near them. She sent occasional deathglares in his direction, like she really thought that everything that had happened was all his fault.

Technically, he supposed, it was.

Once Mrs. Terada had finally left the room and Impmon was allowed free reign of the place again, he strolled up to the windowsill and hopped onto the usual perch where he often spent the night. He shut his eyes and prepared to drift off when Mako said, "Impmon."

"Yes?" he turned and propped his head on one hand as he looked at his two partners, who were both staring at him with wide eyes.

"Do you think that GranKuwagamon and HYPNOS will be able to get the others back?" asked Mako. "Do you think it'll work?"

"Course it will," Impmon smiled confidently. "Don't you ever see the movies? The heroes don't strive through monster-infested lands just to get nothing and fail in their mission do they? Everything always works out in the end. You bet it'll work."

"But what if it doesn't?" asked Ai.

"It will," Impmon grinned. "There's no sense in wondering what will happen if it doesn't work if there's no chance that it won't. So stop worrying about it. Everything will turned out fine."

"I hope so," said Mako.

"Me too," said Ai.

"Don't we all?" Impmon asked. "Now get some sleep, guys. You've got a proper bed now after two weeks without one. Use it."

"Okay," the twins nodded. "Goodnight, Impmon."

"Nighty-night, smurfs," Impmon grinned, then turned his back on them. As he did, his expression turned to a frown. He had no idea if the pep talk he just given the twins was correct. He had no idea if it would work. Heck, he had no idea if they should even be bothering – for all they knew the others might be dead.

"Don't think along that train of thought, Impmon," he mumbled to himself. "Just don't. It's not going to get you anywhere."

And yet he couldn't stop picturing the tearful faces of Mrs. Wong and Mrs. Nonaka, and wondering if he'd brought them something that would give them what they hoped for or just give them total despair.

He looked outside. Behemoth was sitting calmly on the driveway, looking for all the world like a normal bike, except more awesome. Determined to think of something else, he attempted to remember the time some people had tried to steal him. Now, that had been a hilarious sight. He still didn't know how the bike had wrapped a chain around the ankles of the three men so it could drag them halfway across the city.

Impmon's eyes drooped and he settled himself into a sleep.

* * *

Evil laughter rang through the burning forests of the Digital World. Flames flickered and licked hungrily across the bark as they traversed the woodlands, chasing the fleeing occupants who were losing everything they had – the homes, their food and in many cases, their families, to the all-consuming flames.

A small lion-like Digimon known as a Coronamon fled the blaze. Nobody had had any idea where the forest fire had come from but they all had a pretty good guess. And Coronamon knew that if he didn't escape, then something much, much worse than fire would take his life soon if the flames didn't kill him. He panted as he poured every last inch of his strength into his desperate dash and he put considerable distance between himself and the scene.

He allowed himself a momentary sigh of relief. An escape from the perpetrators of this fire was virtually unprecedented. And yet he had done it.

"And where are you going, cutie?"

Coronamon almost fell over as the voice spoke from right beside him, a sultry, husky female voice, that belonged to the woman Digimon who had practically emerged from the shadows right next to him. Coronamon bolted but a hand seized him by the scruff of his neck and lifted him into the air, bringing him face to face with the pale-faced womon. She was human in appearance, with a flowing pitch-black and purple robe, two small bat-wings emerging from her shoulders and a golden headdress.

Coronamon knew who this was.

He also knew that he was dead. No escape now.

"You're missing all the fun," Lilithmon, Demon Lord of Lust, said sweetly, pulling the little lion closer to her voluptuous chest. "Don't you want to stay for a while to please poor old Lilithmon?"

Coronamon balked in disgust at the mere prospect of what she was implying, and he said, loudly and bravely. "Kill me. I would rather die."

"I know you would," Lilithmon giggled. "I can sense it. But I'm afraid that I feel otherwise. And if you don't want to enjoy yourself then hard luck on you. I don't think I've ever partnered with a lion before."

"NO!" Coronamon squirmed wildly. "Don't! Kill me! Just kill me!"

"Not going to happen, sweetie," Lilithmon brought his face closer to hers and licked her lips with anticipation.

"**DOUBLE IMPACT!"**

The attack struck Coronamon in the back and he exploded into data, which promptly zoomed off in the direction of said attack and was absorbed into Beelzemon's chest. The Demon Lord of Gluttony sneered maliciously at the pouting Lilithmon.

"You ruined my fun," Lilithmon sniffed.

"And you're dithering around trying to rape people while you should be focusing on loading their data and getting stronger!" Beelzemon growled. "If you're asking me then I don't think you got the right mindset to be one of us."

"So you're suggesting I just go around and blow everyone to bits without having a little fun with them first?" Lilithmon asked. "Where's the fun in that? No rape at all?"

"Maybe for special cases," Beelzemon shrugged. "But blowing up stuff is damn awesome. The screams of all the helpless digimon consumed in the blast are like ice-cream to a kid. It's what I live for. That, and a good beer."

Lilithmon began to approach Beelzemon, deliberately swaying her hips in a suggestive manner. "Oh, come on, Beelzemon. You can't seriously expect be to believe that blowing things up is more fun than a vigorous mating. I have an idea," she reached him and placed two fingers on his chest, making them "walk" up towards his neck. "Why don't we test it out? Then you can decide."

She leaned towards his face, but leaned back rather promptly as Beelzemon pressed the barrel of one of his shotguns directly into her forehead. "I wouldn't," he smirked. "You tried that on me yesterday. Didn't work then either."

Lilithmon huffed and backed away. "Sourpuss," she muttered.

"And proud of it," Beelzemon grinned. "Hold up!" He raised his gun and shot a Chuumon that had just stumbled across the scene and loaded his data. The two Demon Lords seemed completely oblivious to the raging fires around them.

"You just keep shooting prospective suitors," Lilithmon whined. "I want to screw someone."

"Then toddle on home back to Lucemon. He'd probably be happy to oblige."

"But I did him this morning! I wanna get someone new."

"You're such a brat! Meanwhile, while I'm sitting here talking to you, I'm wasting time I could be using to load data, so if you'll excuse me!"

Beelzemon turned his back on Lilithmon and sprinted into the woods and towards the fire, where he knew there would be large numbers of fleeing Digimon and flying data from those who didn't escape the flames. He passed two Deramon, a Kamemon and several Sukamon, but all of them became victims of his shotguns and had their data loaded.

Beelzemon laughed in ecstasy at all the death surrounding him. This was so sweet – the stuff that made him feel so alive. He caught a fleeing Goblimon, laughed in its face, and then shot it. The expressions of hopelessness were simply fantastic. He revelled in their despair.

"He's gonna eat us!"

"Help! I don't wanna be an appetizer."

"He's coming! He's coming!"

Beelzemon turned in the direction of the screams, his sneer growing. Eat them? There was only one Demon Lord who did that and it was almost as much fun to see him eating others as it was to shoot them himself. Running in the direction of the yells, he soon came across five Gizamon being chased by one of the most enormous Digimon ever. And enormous red crocodile with two huge tails, five claws on each foot and light-blue ridges running down his back from the base of his huge jaws. He was the length of two football-fields from nose to tail-tips.

Beelzemon smirked and stepped out from the trees right in front on the fleeing Gizamon, who faltered in surprise. "Now, now," Beelzemon wagged a finger at them. "You're depriving Leviamon of his lunch and he gets mad when people do that!"

This sentence alone was enough for the huge crocodile to close the gap and scoop up four of the five Digimon in his enormous maw.

Beelzemon laughed at the cowering Gizamon that lay whimpering before him, watching in horror as his four fellow amphibious Digimon were snapped up in the ginormous teeth and down without needing to be chewed. "Aww," he crowed. "You scared? I tell you what. I'm a merciful mon. I'd be more than happy to reunite you with your buddies!"

"No! Wait!" the Gizamon cried as Beelzemon raised his boot and kicked him squarely in the side, sending the wailing Digimon to his doom, flailing into the open maw of Leviamon. The jaws snapped shut like a steel trap and Leviamon swallowed, a malicious grin of his twenty-metre features.

"A wonderful starter, don't you agree?" he hissed. "Deep-fried Mushroomon followed by a lovely snack of terrified Gizamon."

Beelzemon smirked. "And we've still got the Digital World's biggest gut to fill!"

Leviamon laughed. "I better hurry, or Belphemon will claim all the best pickings!"

"Nah! Dope's probably gone and fallen asleep by now."

"I heard that!" A brief darkness yelled as it passed overhead.

"Ah, go boil your arse!" Beelzemon yelled up at the passing Demon Lord of Sloth. "Or better yet, your head!"

Leviamon swung his jaws around and scooped up a petrified Deramon that had been attempting to hide, concealing itself behind its bush-like tail. "So little time, so much to eat!" the giant crocodile shook his head. "I don't feel even partially satisfied yet."

"Neither does Lilithmon," Beelzemon said. "Because I shot her latest victim."

Leviamon rolled his eyes. "Her and her hormones. Doesn't she get that killing is much more satisfying?"

"Apparently not."

"YOU MURDERERS!"

Beelzemon and Leviamon looked up to see a humanoid Digimon with a red masked face, armoured shoulders with huge spikes, a blue combat suit, two wings, one on each arm, the left one being white and the right one being black and a large sword grasped in his hand. He had appeared out of the shadows and was holding his sword ready.

"Ah, there you are!" Beelzemon got into position for battle. "Took you long enough to show yourself, Ravemon. I mean, come on. You should have appeared half an hour ago. Look at all the innocents that had to die before you came out to play!"

"That was not my doing. It was yours!" Ravemon growled. "And now you shall pay the price for your crimes!"

"Like I haven't heard that before," Beelzemon snorted in derision. "Bring it on, Birdman!"

Ravemon roared as he leapt forward. "**BLAST WING!"** he cried as slashed at Beelzemon with the white wing. Beelzemon neatly sidestepped the slice, but Ravemon whirled around to strike again, only for his wing to clash with the armoured wristguard on Beelzemon's arm.

"Hmmph!" Beelzemon pushed backwards, sending Ravemon flipping. "Is that seriously all you got? To think we made the trip specially to visit you. This is so anticlimactic. Can't you give me a decent fight before I load your data?"

"I'm just getting warmed up!" Ravemon snarled and he leapt forward again, sticking out the left arm which was adorned with huge, red claws like talons and barrel-rolling rapidly. **"SPIRAL RAVEN CLAW!"** he yelled as he aimed for Beelzemon.

"Better," Beelzemon remarked as he leapt straight over the oncoming opponent. "But not nearly good enough!" He came down hard on Ravemon's back and grabbed his ankle, hurling him first into the ground and then into a nearby tree. "I can take you without even needing my attacks!"

Ravemon was up in a flash and took a slash at Beelzemon with his sword. The Demon Lord was expecting such a sudden strike, but as it raked across his chest, he shook it off easily. "Ooh, I think something just hit me." He ducked under Ravemon's next swing, sidestepped the next and then punched Ravemon full in the face. The two began to exchange a flurry of blows at speeds that Leviamon, who was watching the whole thing with mild interest, could barely follow.

But it was clear that Ravemon was outmatched. Beelzemon smirked as he smashed Ravemon's sword aside and grabbed his left wrist with his right hand, then grabbed Ravemon's right wrist with his left hand, then pulled his hands in different directions. Ravemon yelled as the sword fell from his nerveless grasp and his arms were forcibly crossed across his chest. Then Beelzemon pushed one arm down, and the other arm up. Ravemon screeched as his arms were yanked almost from their sockets.

Beelzemon kicked him in the chest and sent him sprawling. "Pathetic!" he declared. "I seriously expected batter. But then again, you're a Vaccine type. It's not like you've got any skills at all."

"I'll… show… you… skills!" Ravemon panted, diving for his sword. **"CELESTIAL BLADE!"** he cried, raising his sword to the heavens. Purple lightning suddenly shot from the sky and ploughed into Beelzemon. The Demon Lord shot backwards and crashed into a tree so hard it snapped the sturdy trunk and he disappeared from view.

Ravemon, panting, turned to Leviamon, who looked mildly amused. "And now, it's your turn, Demon Lord! You shall fall, like your brethren."

"You wouldn't even make a light side-dish," Leviamon hissed menacingly. "I don't reckon I'm goona bother with you."

"Fight me, damn you!"

"I could squash you like a bug."

"I will fight to the death. I shall die with honour."

"Not!" Beelzemon replied as he jammed his claws straight through Ravemon's back so hard it came out the other side. Ravemon gasped, dropping his sword and staring dumbly at the fist that had sprouted from his chest. "How do you like my Darkness Claw?" Beelzemon sneered. "And I heard that to go out with honour all your wounds had to be on your front. Oh dear."

"You…" Ravemon began to disintegrate.

"One cheap shot for another," Beelzemon sneered. "Have fun making me stronger."

Ravemon burst into data and was absorbed by Beelzemon. "Huh, barely worth the trip," Beelzemon grumbled. "But, a Mega's a Mega, and his data is mine."

"Wait until Daemon here's that you got the data this time," Leviamon chuckled.

"Bring him on!" Beelzemon sneered. "I got a bullet with his name on it!"

* * *

Impmon shrieked as he jolted back to the land of the living. He was breathing heavily and sweating profusely. His digital heart hammered in his chest so much that the little Rookie was surprised that it was still inside him. Another flashback. It was another flashback, and this time it was a brand new one.

It would have been better if it were just a dream. But it wasn't. That had once happened.

Why? Why now?

During the last two weeks in their search for Zhuqiaomon and GranKuwagamon respectively, he hadn't had a single one. Why? Was it because he'd been to preoccupied? Or was there another reason entirely?

This, in a way, was the worst flashback yet. It was the first time he'd seen any of the other Demon Lords. Originally, he flashbacks had been scenes of brutal murder that he'd done by himself. But the casual conversation with Leviamon and the advances of Lilithmon were almost worse. It was living proof that he'd been working with an evil organisation and not just a lone madman. And his brutal treatment of that poor Ravemon…

He buried his head in his hands. What would the others think if they saw what he did? Ai and Mako were always telling him that they'd be his friends no matter what, but Impmon was sure that they'd double back on that promise if they saw the horror. They were just too naïve to grasp what he'd done.

His thoughts took an unexpected turn as he thought of Wingdramon, Diatrymon and Lilamon, the three who had helped them in the Digital World. Lilamon in particular made him stop to think. He remembered her fangirl-ish response, her hyperactivity and her insistent cheerfulness. Wingdramon had told him that he'd never seen Lilamon upset about anything. What would she have thought if she'd seen that? That'd be the end of her hero-worshipping. He was sure of that too.

Not to mention the way he'd killed Ravemon was eerily similar to the way he'd killed Leomon before.

"Ugh," Impmon covered his eyes. "I thought I'd put all that behind me. What is going on? There has to be a reason all these memories are surfacing." Suddenly, his and Terriermon's theory that they were recurring because he knew who he had been seemed much less viable. He should have asked Zhuqiaomon about it when he had the chance. Maybe he'd know. He'd helped to defeat the Demon Lords after all.

Thinking of Zhuqiaomon reminded him of the search, and the reason, and, more specifically, Lopmon. The atrocities he had committed back then almost put the murder of Leomon to shame. He had kicked a terrified Gizamon into the mouth of another Demon Lord. He'd almost broken Ravemon's arms and then backstabbed him. What would Lopmon think?

Was she okay? What were she and Renamon and Terriermon doing now? Were they even still alive?

It was with Lopmon in mind that he drifted back to sleep.

* * *

He opened his eyes again and blinked. "What the…" he leapt to his feet. Ai and Mako's bedroom had disappeared and he was surrounded by strange trees and fungi, except the fungi were as tall as buildings. This didn't look like anything he'd ever heard about in either Earth or the Digital World.

"What the **** is going on?" he swore loudly, turning this way and that. He could see it was night, and that he was in the middle of the weirdest jungle ever, but how had he got here? Where was here? Where were Ai and Mako?

"Hello?" he called, then mentally scolded himself. You didn't just announce your presence to a whole jungle unless you were asking for trouble. You had no idea what was out there.

He listened, and, sure enough he could hear something.

It was coming off to his left. Slowly, he crept through the trees and, after a short while, he came across what appeared to be green lasers, crackling in parallel lines between a bunch of poles. A security system? In a jungle? What the hell?

He could hear activity on the other side, but he couldn't tell what it was. Cautiously, he raised a hand and said, "This may be the stupidest thing I have ever done," before plunging his hand through the lasers.

Nothing. No pain. No alarm. He didn't even feel it.

Carefully, he slipped through the weird lasers and stared at what was on the other side. There appeared to be several domed huts of some kind, and milling around them were what looked like a bunch of shell-less, bipedal tortoises, with clothes, dancing and cheering for some reason. It was a celebration of some kind.

"What the…" Impmon murmured, turning to survey the camp. He walked past a couple of the tortoise-people, who didn't appear to notice him. Where on Earth or the Digital World was he?

And then he heard a very, very familiar voice. A high-pitched, but still male, voice that Impmon had heard a million times saying the word "Momentai," over and over again. It was Terriermon.

Impmon whipped around and saw the little guy standing on a raised platform and PERFORMING to a small crowd of onlookers. And they were the weirdest bunch of onlookers he'd ever seen. He easily spotted Henry, Rika and Renamon, although Rika's appearance had changed somewhat. The bottom of her shirt was ripped and it looked like her fiery ponytail had been shorn off. He also spotted Suzie next to Henry. But there was also a woman with blue skin and two odd head-tails, a girl with orange skin and five zebra-like tendrils on her head, one hanging down the back, three men in white armour, a woman with small horns on her head, a man with a green face and a metal hand, a hooded figure and a robot-like thing.

"Because they're afraid of a woman's contempt," Terriermon was saying. "And women, as a group en masse, _do_ show contempt for men en masse. Now a woman might be afraid of an individual violent man, which is very sensible. Everybody should be afraid of an individual violent man. But, as group, you hear a lot of contempt about men. "Oh. Look at them. Look, there they go. One of them's trying to _do_ something."

"Men are afraid. Women are not. And part of it is just about … biology. It's shameful, that we still can't have an intelligent, productive conversation about these ordinary life events. You know, childbirth, menstruation, all of these things without which we wouldn't be here, unless you're a clone like you guys," he pointed at the three men. "I mean, as a guy, you ask a woman about childbirth, you try and find out more about it. You say, "well how bad is it? How painful? Like what? Long weekend in Adelaide? What are we talking about here?" And, you don't get an answer. You get anger. And it always starts with the melon. "IMAGINE A MELON! COMING THROUGH YOUR FACE! STAY THERE! I'LL GET A MELON! DON'T MOVE!"

"But it's a myth that men don't have their own version of PMT. Of course they do. Every woman knows this. It's a very simple experiment to conduct. All you have to do is be with a man, wait until he starts doing something, then go up and talk to him. "WHAT! WHAT IS IT NOW! I'M OPENING FISHFINGERS! CAN'T YOU SEE? YOU COME IN HERE, WALKING ON THE FLOOR, BREATHING THE AIR LIKE IT'S YOURS, TALKING AND TALKING! I'M DOING SOMETHING! LOOK, THEY'VE FALLEN ON THE FLOOR! ARE YOU HAPPY? ARE YOU HAPPY NOW? EVERY TIME I TRY AND DO SOMETHING FOR MYSELF YOU CARBONISE AND THEN CRAP ON MY DREAMS! YOU'RE JUST LIKE YOUR WHOLE FAMILY! WHY DO I EVEN DARE TO THINK I COULD DREAM, I COULD IMAGINE, I COULD HOPE!" I saw Takato's dad doing that once, by the way."

The small audience were rolling in hysterics from his ridiculous outbursts. Impmon hadn't moved at all throughout it, too stunned to move. Then, he spotted Lopmon. She was standing not that far away, watching Terriermon and shaking her head in a combination of exasperation and amusement.

Impmon's heart lifted at the sight of all his missing friends. He ran over to Lopmon with a yell of "Lopmon! It's me! It's Impmon!"

Lopmon completely ignored him and continued to watch Terriermon as he went into an explanation about how men have no memory while women do. Impmon reached her and said, "Lopmon. It's me."

"I know," Lopmon muttered.

Impmon looked hurt. "Aren't you glad to see me?"

"Yep, that's also true," she snickered, not taking her gaze off her brother. Impmon realized that she'd been responding to what Terriermon had been saying and not what he had just said.

"Hello? Lopmon?" he waved his and in front of her eyes and got no response. He clicked his fingers in her ears. No response. He belched, something which usually got her attention so she could scold him, but again, no response.

Eventually he tried to put a hand on her shoulder, but his hand went right through her as if she weren't there. Or as if he weren't there.

"Alright, what is going on?" Impmon demanded to the area. "How did I get here and why can nobody see or hear me?"

"You are not here," replied a female voice. Impmon whipped around and found himself staring at another strange woman, encased in light-blue armour with a large shield with a golden unicorn head on it strapped to one arm, and enormous javelin in the other, a helmet that covered the top half of her face, a white dress and long, blonde hair. She had two, white, feathery wings sprouting from her back, as well as eight, metallice bronze ones.

"An amusing friend you have there," said the angel, nodding to Terriermon.

"Who are you?" Impmon demanded.

The angel smiled at him. "I am the one who has been watching over you, Impmon. You wanted to see how your friends were, so I am letting you see that they are fine."

"That doesn't really answer the question," Impmon said.

"I apologise for the cliché," the angel said and seemed genuinely sad. "But all shall be revealed in time. But for now, I feel it is best that you know that you have your own journey to undertake, while your friends here are already in the middle of theirs."

"But who are you?" prompted Impmon.

"I am one of Lord Fanglongmon's closest servants," said the angel. "And that's all you need to know for now."

"Are you divine beings incapable of giving information that isn't cryptic?" huffed Impmon.

"Yes," said the angel. Impmon blinked.

"Return to your world now," the Digimon said. "And brace yourself."

"Wait, but, hold on…" Impmon cried.

* * *

He woke up.

"Damn," he muttered, closing his fist. "Just what we need – another powerful Digimon interfering with our lives."

At least the others were fine. Terriermon was still wisecracking, which was always a good sign. The day he stopped being a comedian would be the day the world ended. And Lopmon was okay, as were the others, though what had happened to Rika? And who were all those strange beings? Impmon had mentioned that the three human men were clones, unless he heard very wrong.

Impmon tried his best to commit the angel being he had seen to memory so he could look her up on the Digimon wiki, but he just couldn't seem to remember what she looked like. And her warning. He had his own journey? All shall be revealed in time? Brace yourself?

That did not sound good at all.

* * *

Oooh, another mysterious Digital Being. She was actually a last minute addition, but I've got an idea on how to include her more in the story. I imagine some people might be able to guess how she is, and if you do, you won't get any prizes by well done. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter. It was a doozy to write. Anything related to HYPNOS isn't really my kind of thing, which is why I glossed over them in my previous fic. I'll do my best with them in this fic though. Plus, if anyone has any ideas for future flashbacks for Impmon then ideas are welcome. FYI, none of them must be nice.

Btw, **White Keyblade Oathkeeper**, I'd appreciate it you could change the idea for your "Every 50" oneshot prize. I really like your idea and I tried your video, but I simply have no idea how to play Dungeons and Dragons. I've got three manuals, but they're out of date and too darn complicated for me to understand. Hopefully another idea from you will be easier. Cheers.

Until next time. I'll attempt to get another out before uni, but I leave on the 19th, and I won't do any writing during freshers week, so I can integrate properly. So if I don't update by then, then I probably won't be able to for another week. Just letting you know. Reviews would be greatly appreciated.

* * *

Next time...

Back in the other world. The A-team, the Digimon, Tamers, clones and the newly joined Bounty Hunters begin their trek through Felucia towards Anakin and Obi-Wan, but they encounter an entire pack of Felucia's most dangerous predator - a big beastie which appeared during the second Star Wars film, "Attack of the Clones."

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 46 : The Acklay**


	46. The Acklay

My Dad found out that I write this.

NOBODY PANIC!

He surprised me by telling me that as long as I balance this with my studies correctly, he wouldn't try to stop me. He also said that he wouldn't tell Mum, who definitely would try and stop me. He gathered that I was doing my stuff seriously by my long hiatus, and he even read a good deal of your reviews. His words were, "You've built up quite a little network on there," and he was impressed by how positive they all were. So, let's try to keep it that way in case he decides to look at them again.

Three people guessed at the identity of the mysterious Digimon from last chapter. All three of them got it right.

Only one person gave their opinion on the Pokemon crossover that I mentioned last chapter. I really would like more input from you. I've decided that I'm going to go ahead and do it, but I'd really like ideas on what danger could threaten the Pokemon world so much that our heroes are needed, and I want all of the legendaries to feature at some point.

Btw, during my last update and this one, the anniversary for my first post on fanfiction came around, where I put up the first two chapter of "A Sticky Situation." Happy new Fergus Flamacron year.

Anyway, on with the chapter.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 46:- The Acklay**

* * *

Aayla's company were quite fortunate in that, other than the fact they had to go out and deal with a band of pirates, they managed to get a reasonable night's sleep, after Terriermon had given his little performance which he'd made up on the spot the night before. The fact that they were surrounded by an electrofence and the fact that they were also indoors for the night, courtesy of the farmers, meant that they could sleep without worrying about mauled by some giant, hungry carnivore.

The third member of the A-Team and his company were less fortunate. Anakin hadn't slept a minute throughout that night. Not only had he been determined to keep all possible nocturnal threats at bay and all his men safe throughout the night, but worry and concern for the others, particularly his Padawan, had meant that the only way he would possibly sleep would be if he collapsed of exhaustion.

As dawn broke over Felucia, Anakin stood on the backs of one of the four gunships that had made it to the ground in one piece. Shading his eyes from the sun, the Chosen One stared out across the Felucian horizon, standing on his toes to allow him to see better over the tall foliage, in a vain and agonizing attempt to locate the others.

But he couldn't see them anywhere.

Commander Cody and Captain Rex watched the General from where they were standing in the middle of the circle of gunships. "Is he going to be alright, do you reckon?" asked Cody, turning to Rex, who definitely knew Anakin better.

"Put yourself in his boots, Commander," said Rex. "His Padawan, which the Jedi Council entrusted him with and who he has come to love like a daughter, though he won't admit it, was kidnapped and tortured only a few days ago. Now she's gone missing again already. Only this time, he doesn't have a pair of Digimon to tell him that she's fine. I reckon he won't be okay until Ahsoka's back here."

"Well, when you put it like that, it does sound like a heavy burden to take," said Cody. "But I can't really place myself in his boots, as you put it. I don't have any family beyond all of you, and I've lost so many brothers that you could say I've hardened to it."

"Me too," agreed Rex. "But this is Skywalker's first and only Padawan we're talking about here, and one of his best childhood friends, and several others who have become extremely good friends recently all at once."

"I'm sure they're fine," said Cody. "They've got Bly with them. He's a tough nut to crack at the worst of times. He'll watch their backs."

"And they'll watch his," nodded Rex. "It's amazing to see what a tight-knit group that lot have become. I mean, they had a flipping group hug on Behpour. That has got to be a first for any clone."

Cody chuckled. "You reckon Bly is going soft?"

"Nah. I just reckon he's loosening up a little. And do you know what?"

"What?"

"So am I."

Cody snorted.

Obi-Wan strode over to the gunship where his former Padawan was standing. He looked up and shook his head, rolling his eyes. His young student still had a long way to go before he could be considered for Jedi Master. Patience was one thing that Obi-Wan had been trying to drill into him for years and his efforts still seemed to be unrewarded. "Anakin," he called up. "Standing there and watching for them isn't going to make them arrive any faster."

"I know that Master," Anakin called back down. "But I have to try. What if they were to walk past and we missed them because we weren't looking."

"They have no idea where we are, Anakin," pointed out Obi-Wan. "And to be honest, the chances of them finding us without the aid of aerial vehicles is negligible, and, of course, gunships are out of the question until we get that anti-aircraft system out of the way."

Anakin sighed and turned around, leaping off the gunship and coming to land beside his old master. "Are you telling me that you didn't go on the lookout for me in the multitude of times where I went missing, Master?"

"Oh yes," said Obi-Wan. "But nothing ever came of it, so I'm giving you a lesson now that may help you in the long run."

"But Ahsoka and the others may not have even survived the night," pointed out Anakin. "I think I've held off on searching for them as long as I can. I followed your advice Master. I waited until day, and its day now. We need to start looking for them."

"And we shall, Anakin," said Obi-Wan. "Slow down, and be patient until the clones have finished preparing their weapons and gathering ammunition. I'm sure we will be thankful for their being well-prepared by the end of the day. We're almost bound to get attacked by something."

Anakin sighed, clenching his fists in frustration and impatience. "Fine, we'll do it your way. Again."

"My way is the best way," smirked Obi-Wan. "Isn't that what I always told you when you were my student?"

"And how many times has my way been successful when yours failed?"

"Only a few."

"What about that time above Christophsis when fighting Admiral Trench?"

"That doesn't count."

"Yes, it does. I destroyed his ship, didn't I?"

"I'm sure I would have thought of something."

"Yeah, in about three days."

"Anakin, if you had just listened to me at the time, we could have got the supplies down to the planet faster, but you went in with your missiles at the first opportunity."

"And I managed to defeat one of the most skilled Admirals in the history of the Galaxy. I seem to remember you telling me that I'd done a good job at the time."

"I was relieved that your hadn't killed yourself with that suicidal run at the time."

"That's not why you said it and you …"

"Would you like me to come back when you're less busy?" asked Lopmon. Anakin and Obi-Wan started as they looked up at the little Digimon, who had been standing on one of the gunships and watching them bicker for about a minute. Only now did Obi-Wan and Anakin realise that the clones had all been snickering for the last minute.

Lopmon grinned down at the two stunned Jedi. "I hate to interrupt your little discussion, but I thought you'd all want some news."

"How did you find us?" Obi-Wan asked.

"I followed the sounds of bickering," sniggered Lopmon. "I have very good ears. I could hear you half a mile up."

"But the anti-aircraft system…" Obi-Wan frowned.

"I am quite small," Lopmon pointed out. "I reckon they programmed it to attack only bigger stuff to deal with spaceships and big, nasty aerial predators."

"Never mind about that now," Anakin hurriedly pressed her, finally getting over his surprise. "Where's Ahsoka? Is she alright? And Aayla and the others too?"

"They're fine," smiled Lopmon in a reassuring way. "Ahsoka's fine. And so's everyone else. We had a couple of unexpected and unplanned adventures since we last saw you but we've all come out relatively unharmed. Bly and I managed to wash the Sarlacc digestive juices off his armour and all the bitemarks that Aayla received from those giant ants have completely disappeared."

Obi-Wan, Anakin and all the clones stared at the grinning bunny as if she'd grown another head. Lopmon actually checked her shoulders to make sure she hadn't."

"Sarlacc?" asked Obi-Wan. "Giant ants?"

"How much did we miss, exactly?" asked Anakin.

"Oh, quite a bit."

"Would you care to give us the details?" asked Obi-Wan.

"Glad to," Lopmon nodded. And then she did. All of it. She started by telling what Henry had told her about the whole incident with the jungle rancors and the Gigantoformicums, as the giant ants were called, and about Henry's plan to stop the unconscious Aayla's attackers. Then she told of how Bly had been attacked by the Sarlacc and how Renamon and Ahsoka had tried and failed to rescue him.

When she got to the part of how she'd digivolved and pulled Bly from the stomach of the Sarlacc, she became rather shy and halting, as if afraid that they wouldn't believe her and think she was just trying to make herself sound heroic. When she stopped, Obi-Wan said, "Well, that's quite a feat, Lopmon. A first in the galaxy. Bly owes you his life."

"I was just trying to help," Lopmon shuffled nervously.

"And help you did. You should be proud of yourself."

"Thank you," Lopmon smiled.

She continued to the part about the farmers and the Bounty Hunters. Obi-Wan was keen for information on the four upstanding and honourable people that had joined the company for a bit. Lopmon told him all she could, and then went on to mentioning Hondo Ohnaka.

At this point, both Anakin and Obi-Wan reddened slightly. Lopmon smirked. It seemed that Hondo had not been lying when he had said he'd captured the two of them. However, she made no comment, much to the two Jedi's relief, and went on to explain how they'd played the galaxy's biggest practical joke on him.

When she'd finished, Anakin frowned slightly. "Well, this is just great. Snips goes and has all of these adventures while I sit tight here and miss out on all the action. How is this fair, exactly?"

"It's hardly her fault, Anakin," said Obi-Wan. "And what they went through doesn't sound like something I would want to do."

"No?" asked Anakin. "Not even the part where they made Hondo and his band think they were being attacked by a ghost?"

"Well… perhaps that bit," Obi-Wan admitted. "Anyway, Lopmon. What is the current position of the others? How far away are they?"

"They're about four or five miles that way," Lopmon jerked a thumb over her shoulder. "I was sent out on a scouting mission as soon as the sun rose so that I could let you know how we were, let then know how you are and point them in the right direction."

"Excellent," said Obi-Wan. "Then we'll start heading in that direction and we should be able to meet up with you at the halfway point. Once there, we can send you and Terriermon out to try and locate the Separatist base where Ziro is hiding. We need to get that Hutt back into our custody as soon as possible."

"So that we can catch him before he gets offworld?" asked Anakin.

"Yes," said Obi-Wan. "But that's not the only reason. Since I never expected there to be a Separatist base on this planet I left instructions with Admiral Yularen before we left. I said that they are to wait eighteen hours for us, and if we haven't contacted him before that time, to send down some gunships to try and find us and pick up the survivors."

"They'll get caught in the anti-aircraft system," said Lopmon, worriedly. "They could get massacred."

"Exactly," said Obi-Wan. "And since we left approximately thirteen hours ago, that gives us only about five hours to complete our objective and shut down the system before we lose more of our troops to the blasted thing."

"What made you give that order in the first place?" asked Anakin.

"Because this planet is a slaughterhouse," remarked Obi-Wan. "I thought it would be best not to have some kind of rescue plan in mind. And since they're jamming our transmissions we can't call Yularen and get them to hold off their attack."

"Well then," said Lopmon. "We'd better get a move on. I'll head back to the others and tell them to pick up the pace a bit."

"Commander Cody," Obi-Wan turned to the clone. "Are the troops ready to move out?"

"Ready and waiting, sir," the commander nodded grimly. "We await your orders."

"See you in a bit," said Lopmon, taking to the air and earing away in the direction she'd pointed. Obi-Wan and Anakin watched her until she disappeared from sight, and then Anakin said, "Alright men. Let's head in that direction. We're on a tight timeline here."

"Copy that, sir," said Rex, and with that, they began to jog in the same direction as Lopmon, hoping to cover some distance before the sun grew too high in the sky and the humidity would become much worse.

"A tight timeline, huh?" one of the clones muttered. "When are we ever not on one of those?"

"Less yakking, Spark," said Rex. "Just keep moving."

* * *

Not wishing to waste any time, Lopmon had been sent out before the sun came up, and the others left the safety of the farm at the same time. The farmers cheered and waved as they left. Cassis promised the Bounty Hunters, who had agreed to join the others on their mission in return for payment, that he would keep their ship, the _Halo_, safe in his barn until they returned to collect it. Then, they had set off into the jungle.

Now, dawn had come around about half an hour ago, and Lopmon still hadn't returned. Of course, no-one was really worried about this, as Terriermon constantly assured them that she was fine and had even updated them all as to how Anakin and Obi-Wan and the other clones were doing already.

Despite their willingness to hurry, progress was painfully slow. Nobody seemed ready to drop their guard. Everyone was tense, watching the trees and giant pitcher plants for any signs of a hungry carnivore. Twice, Aayla steered them around other colonies of the giant ants that she'd been attacked by, although to look at her you wouldn't know it. The skin of her stomach was just as flawless as it had been before the encounter.

But predictably, despite the imminent threat of danger, Suzie seemed to be incapable of remaining silent and alert for long periods of time. The little girl had insisted on walking, but Henry had insisted back that she stay where he could see her. And so she trundled along a few steps in front of her older brother, growing steadily more and more bored.

"Are we nearly there yet?" she asked.

Ahsoka chuckled. "We've barely started Suzie. We've probably got a long way to go before we get anywhere near the others."

"Mores the pity," muttered Bly. "This planet is creepy."

Suzie sighed. "Terriermon?" she asked, after a minute or so of more silence.

"Yeah, kiddo?" asked the little bunny from his perch on Renamon's shoulder. "What is it?"

"Can you sing a song or something? I'm bored."

"Sing a song?" asked Sugi. "You can sing as well as do this "stand-up comedy" that you did last night?"

"It's a talent," said Terriermon. "I want to learn to play the guitar as well but there aren't any small enough for me. I tried to Renamon to learn how, but she refused."

"My claws would cut through the strings," pointed out Renamon.

"So, are you going to sing?" asked Suzie imploringly.

"Sorry, Suzie," said Terriermon. "But I don't think that singing would be a very good idea on a planet like this. It'd be like sending up a flare to predators, saying, "Here I am. Please re-arrange my face.""

This brought a couple of chuckles from other people, but Suzie looked crestfallen.

Terriermon noticed this and said, "Momentai Suzie. When we get back to Coruscant we can do something even better."

"And what would that be?" Aayla asked warily, perfectly aware that anything too extravagant would probably have to be stamped on early, or at least kept out of the way of Master Windu. Plus, she'd probably have to clean it up if it got messy.

Terriermon grinned at her slyly. "Are you sure you want to know?"

"Yes."

"Alright then," Terriermon turned back to Suzie. "When we get back to Coruscant, we're going to teach Aayla how to sing."

"Excuse me?" the Twi'lek faltered and turned to stare at the bunny. "Sing? Me?"

"Why not?" Terriermon grinned evilly. "We taught you how to dance, remember. You can't learn to dance and not learn how to sing as well. Renamon can do both."

Renamon rolled her eyes. "At your insistence," she reminded him.

"You enjoy doing it," Terriermon retorted.

"True. It is oddly exhilarating."

"Yes, but…" Aayla sputtered. "I haven't sung anything since I was a little girl."

"You said that about dancing," grinned Ahsoka. "But you picked that up pretty quickly. Actually, I'd quite like to learn to sing too."

"And now that Terriermon's got the idea," said Henry. "He's never going to stop badgering you until you do it."

Aayla could tell the clones were trying to contain laughter, as were the Bounty Hunters. The Twi'lek looked back into Suzie's and Terriermon's expectant faces. She sighed and smiled.

"Alright," she said. "I'll do it. Who knows? It could be fun."

Suzie cheered.

But Aayla and Ahsoka didn't. Both of them tensed at the same time.

"Suzie, look out!" Ahsoka yelled, right before something huge exploded from the foliage right behind the little girl and swiped at her.

Suzie screamed and turned to run at the sudden attack, but tripped and fell right to the ground. This was probably her saving grace, as a huge, clawed foot crashed into the ground right before her head, where she would have been had she still been running. The giant creature trilled in annoyance – a high-pitched, ululating screech that rattled the bones of everyone present.

"Acklay!" yelled Sugi. "Take cover!"

Suzie rolled onto her back and stared at the creature towering over her. It was huge and insectoid, like a giant crustacean, with tough-looking and leathery skin like a hard exoskeleton, a mottled green in colour. It's body was mounted on six legs, each with two separate joints and each ending in a giant claws, so it effectively walked on tip-toe. It's head was perched a long neck. And the head itself was also long, as a large and bony crest jutted out from the back, like that of a Triceratops, except much thinner. Above the toothy jaws were three eyes which all glared down at Suzie hungrily.

"Henry! Lopmon! Help!" Suzie curled up into the fetal position as the Acklay reared up onto its back legs and almost drowned out her cries with its horrible screeches. The giant invertebrate brought its two front claws crashing down towards the young Tamer. Fortunately, it never reached her, as Renamon leapt forward and crashed into its softer chest with her shoulder, knocking it backwards.

Ahsoka ran in quickly and scooped up Suzie, then ran back and deposited the little girl beside her brother. "You heard Sugi," Ahsoka told them quickly. "Take cover! Now!"

Aayla drew her lightsaber as she shepherded Rika behind a large rock where Rumi also crouched. "We may be in a bit of trouble," said Aayla, turning back to watch Renamon leap aside as the Acklay plunged its claws at her. "I'm going to help Renamon. You guys make sure that the Tamers make it to safety," she nodded to Rumi, Seripas and Ahsoka. The two Bounty Hunters and Padawan nodded back and turned to carry out the task.

Renamon was surprised at the speed and fury of the Acklay's attack. She barely managed to dodge a couple of the lethal swings that the beast swung at her, shrieking as it tried to skewer her on the tips of its feet. She dodged a strike and lashed out at the claw which had nearly hit her, knocking the leg askew. The creature, which had five more to stand on, barely noticed and Renamon was forced to dive aside to avoid another swing.

"That does it," she hissed. And she leapt skyward. The Acklay followed her progress with hungry eyes and watched as she crossed her arms and unleashed her favourite attack. **"DIAMOND STORM!"**

The razor-sharp diamonds pelted the beast, which shrieked in annoyance. Renamon was shocked to see her trusty diamonds, which could rip through the metal of a droid with ease, bounce off the skin of the Acklay's back and crest. She'd been hoping for a rather more dramatic result, but the Acklay didn't seem to have been even vaguely affected.

The Acklay struck upwards. Its head shot up like a cobra striking at its prey and its teeth latched around Renamon's tail. Renamon yelled in pain as the teeth pierced her and then again as the Acklay swung her bodily away. She ploughed with force into and nearby tree and crashed into the ground, throwing up the earth around her.

The Acklay scuttled after her with speed that didn't look right with its frame and raised its front pincers to strike at the fallen Digimon, shrieking with glee at the prospect of a kill. But it was interrupted again, as something flew from across the clearing and knocked its claws aside as they struck, causing them to slam into the ground next to Renamon instead. Renamon looked and saw that the object had been Embo's metallic hat, which he had thrown like a Frisbee.

Then, something else came flying at the predator. Terriermon launched into it with a spinning Terrier Tornado and slammed into its neck. The Acklay stumbled backwards from the blow and Renamon leapt to her feet. **"POWER PAW!"** she cried, leaping upwards and slamming her glowing fist into the side of the acklay's head. This attack had rather more effect and sent it reeling.

"No-one kills my mate!" Terriermon yelled, as he landed. The Acklay shrieked and suddenly revealed that its back legs could be just as dangerous as the front, lashing out at Terriermon with one. Renamon hurriedly pulled him to one side, scooping up Embo's hat and holding it like a shield. She could see the clones and Sugi firing on the creature's flank, but their shots seemed to be having as little effect as her Diamond Storm had been.

But then, Aayla dashed into the attack, her blue lightsaber humming as it went to work. The Acklay didn't stand a chance against the Twi'lek's onslaught. The Acklay shrieked as Aayla simultaneously slashed through both of its front legs, sending it stumbling forwards and its centre of gravity abruptly changed. Aayla quickly sent a burst of the Force at its other legs, pulling them out from under it and sending it crashing onto its belly, where she finished the job with a stab to the neck. The plasma blade succeeded where blaster bolts and diamonds had failed and, with a final shriek, the Acklay lay still.

Bly and his companions sighed with relief as the attacker died. Embo strode over to the others and held out his hand to Renamon. The Digimon smiled gratefully and passed the hat back over to the Kyuzo. "Thank you, Embo."

"Ne pars le montianner," Embo placed the hat back on his head.

"We're not out of the woods yet," said Aayla, scanning the trees warily. "Not necessarily."

"Well, you took out this one easily," said Terriermon, staring into the hole that Aayla's lightsaber had made in the creatures neck. "It's definitely dead."

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "But the thing is, Acklay don't usually travel alone. And the ruckus that this one made must have been picked up by something else."

Right on the mark, another ululating shriek could be heard some distance away and along with it, a scream. A scream that sounded just like Suzie.

"Poodoo!" Aayla yelled as she took off in the direction of the noise, lightsaber in hand. Renamon, the clones, Sugi and Embo all plunged after her, while Terriermon took to the air and shot overhead, taking the lead.

* * *

The bunny arrived at the scene first, just in time to ram an Acklay that was about to stab Rika in the head, clouting it in the head and then gripping the crest. The Acklay shook its head wildly, trying to throw him off, as Rika scrambled free. From his position, Terriermon was briefly able to take in the scene.

No less than eight Acklay were all together in the place and each was doing its best to tear everybody present to shreds. Terriermon saw Ahsoka taking on two at once, darting to and fro as they try to skewer her. He saw Henry and Suzie fleeing another. He saw Rumi back away from another as she vainly tried to kill it with her sniper rifle.

But it was Seripas who was the worst off. The metallic suit gave him no chance to flee. An Acklay pierced his shoulder with a claw and tore through the metal like butter, it's jaws lancing down to prize the metal open, exposing the cringing creature inside. Thinking quickly, Terriermon gripped the crest off the Acklay he was standing on and heaved, leaning heavily to the side.

It worked. The heavy bone crest easily yielded to his pull and the Acklay shrieked as it stumbled in the direction its head was going, desperate to right itself, like the way someone moves with you if you pull on their earlobe. It slammed into the other Acklay with full force and sent both stumbling over one another. Terriermon leapt clear at the last second and Seripas scrambled out of his suit right before it exploded. The two Acklay yelped as the bang charred their armour.

"In your face!" Terriermon yelled at the two.

"Thank you," Seripas called up to him.

Terriermon nodded and turned to observe what was happening. Ahsoka had managed to kill one of her oppnonents, slicing its head clean off, but another had taken its place. As well as the two trying to right themselves there were three other Acklay. One was bearing down on Henry and Suzie. Another had slammed into Rumi and knocked her on her back and another was snapping at Rika's heels.

Where to go? Which one?

Henry pushed Suzie behind his back as he boldly faced up to the giant predator. He glared defiantly into the three eyes of the beast, which took the challenge and charged forward. Henry braced himself for impact and made ready to push Suzie aside, but he never needed to. Abruptly, a brown blur appeared of nowhere and crashed into the Acklay's flank. "Leave them alone!" Lopmon cried as she flapped upwards and body slammed the creature's head, circling it as it tried to snap her out of the air.

Rumi raised her rifle but the creature grabbed it and yanked it out of her hands with its mouth. Tossing it aside, it lashed downwards with its head. Its teeth fastened around the Frenk's arm and she screamed as the jagged canines sheared into her flesh.

"Back off!" yelled Sugi as the others arrived on the scene. The Zabrak drew her vibrodagger and lunged forward, plunging it into the base of the beast's neck. The Acklay howled and dropped Rumi, screaming as blood gushed from its wound. Its head swung back like a battering ram and smacked into Sugi, knocking her backwards and head over heels. It turn to grab her instead, but was thrown back from a burst of the Force from Aayla.

Rika dodged behind a giant plant as the Acklay tried to follow her, ducking as the teeth clashed over her head. It would have snagged her ponytail had it still been there. She rolled aside as the teeth clashed right beside her arm again, the creature's neck snaking around the tree to follow. Frustrated at the miss, the Acklay pushed the tree down altogether, almost crushing Rika as she stumbled aside.

Then the Acklay stopped at a sudden pressure on its back. Embo, ignoring the danger, had leapt astride the insectoid creature and had passed his hat around in front of its neck and pulled backwards, constricting the Acklay's wind-pipe. The bug-like thing squealed in protest and shook its body, bucking and rearing in an attempt to throw off its unwelcome passenger. But Embo rode it like a master cowboy at a rodeo, even going to far as getting to his feet and standing like he was on a surfboard. Rika grinned at the sight of the Kyuzo Bounty Hunter, who winked at her in return.

"Obteneer la fillay clyire et peteef. Je keki ai obteenoo l'un!" Embo cried as he rode the bucking Acklay. Rika wasn't entirely sure what he said, but she took the hint and scarpered.

"Rika! Are you alright!" Renamon landed beside her Tamer and towered over her protectively. "Are you injured?"

"No, I'm fine," Rika panted. "Thanks to Embo."

"First he saves my life, then yours," Renamon shook her head. "But enough of that. The others need help."

"Renamon, behind you!" Rika suddenly pointed. The fox whipped around to find that one of the Acklay that had been attacking Ahsoka had peeled off and was advancing menacingly towards her. The two Acklay that Terriermon and crashed together were fighting Ahsoka now, as the Togruta Padawan had successfully diced up her second Acklay of the day.

Renamon ushered Rika backwards as she squared up to the huge creature. Renamon noted that this particular Acklay was larger than the others, if only fractionally, and appeared to have dark black streaks running up its headcrest. What made it so special she didn't know?

"If you know what's good for you, you'll back off," Renamon snarled, baring her teeth and prominently displaying her claws. "You won't be eating any one of us today."

The Acklay paused and considered his potential prey. It did indeed look like a tough customer and could very probably take a few chunks of him before he could deal with it if he went in charging blindly like his brethren always did. It cocked its head to one side, almost comically, as if trying to decide whether it was worth the risk.

At least that was what Renamon assumed. The fox took a menacing step forward. "I'm warning you!" she said, swishing her tail angrily.

The Acklay shrieked, its throat pulsating angrily as it drew its head back like a snake ready to strike. And, to the shock and horror of everyone present, it launched its head forward and an orange bolt of lightning suddenly exploded from its squealing jaws. Renamon was caught completely off-guard and the bolt struck her in the chest.

Pain seared threw the fox and she screamed as the force of the crackling attack flung her backwards into the foliage, where she disappeared from sight, tumbling and rolling through the leaves.

"Renamon!" yelled Terriermon from where he and Lopmon were engaged in a duel with another of the Acklay. His moment of distraction almost cost him as he narrowly avoided getting bitten out of the air by his opponent.

"Renamon!" Rika echoed as she broke cover from behind the plant she'd been hiding behind and ran towards the place where her partner had disappeared. But that was a bad idea, as the Acklay was still there. The great beast snapped its head towards the running girl and its throat began to pulsate again. A second bolt of lightning spewed from its mouth and struck Rika right in the stomach.

Or would have done, if Aayla had not leapt between them and blocked to bolt with her lightsaber. The Acklay looked vaguely surprised that its attack hadn't worked and spewed another at the Twi'lek. But this was came out as a continuous stream, and Aayla was forced to brace herself to catch the bolt, the sheer scale of it forcing her backwards. It rapidly became a straining match between the two of them; the Acklay refusing to stop its assault and Aayla refusing to give ground.

Ahsoka sheared off the leg of one of her own opponents, and spotted Aayla's problem. She made an attempt to dash over and help, but the second Acklay facing her blindsided her and she went rolling, and was forced to get up quickly to avoid being speared. Suzie had been knocked out by a fall and Henry was, by now, fumbling with his D-Arc in an attempt to start a digivolution and trying to keep her safe, but Terriermon and Lopmon were struggling to keep his pursuer away and he had to keep backing off, dragging his sister after him. Embo was still brawling with his steed, while Sugi, Rumi, Max and Conor were trying desperately to keep their opponent back. Rika had disappeared after Renamon.

Aayla gritted her teeth as the Acklay stepped closer to her, not stopping its lightning attack for a single second. If she moved her blade she'd instantly be hit, and yet if she didn't move it would get close enough to hit her with its legs.

Thankfully, there was someone at hand to help.

"Eat this, ye lousy excuse for a grasshopper!" yelled Bly as he ran forward and threw a thermal detonator at the Acklay's face. The little bomb flew into the lightning stream and exploded right next to its open mouth, instantly cutting off the attack and sending the Acklay reeling, squealing in agony. Aayla gasped for breath at the welcome release from the brutal attack.

"Thank you, Bly," she said. "Great work."

"Just doing my duty, General," chuckled the clone. "Darn thing didn't know what hit it."

"And neither will you if you don't move!" Aayla cried as she grabbed Bly with the Force and pulled the clone to safety as the Acklay lunged vengefully at him. Its claws tore up the earth where Bly had been, its face was blackened by the bomb and it had lost several teeth, but otherwise it looked unharmed.

"No way!" Bly said, as Aayla put him down and he observed the creature. "How did it not sustain more damage?"

"Why don't you ask it yourself?" Aayla said dryly as she and Bly backed off, Aayla holding her lightsaber ready in case the unusual Acklay decided to try spitting lightning again.

* * *

Gradually, it was becoming clear that things weren't going well. Ahsoka and Aayla found themselves back to back as everyone was forced into a tight circle, surrounded by five Acklay. The sixth was still trying to throw Embo off, while the swashbuckling Kyuzo was attempting to pull out his crossbow. Henry pressed Suzie close to the Jedi, and the unsuited Seripas joined them. The clones, Sugi and Rumi fired hopelessly, while the two airborne bunny Digimon tried to distract another by flapping around its head.

Nothing seemed to be working.

"Aayla!" said Henry. "Ahsoka! Protect Suzie! I'm going to try for a Digivolution."

"That might be a good idea," nodded Ahsoka, swinging her lightsaber threateningly at an advancing Acklay. "We're not doing very well."

Henry pulled out his D-Arc and began to select the card he needed.

But he was beaten to the punch.

"Digi-modify!" shouted Rika, standing outside the circle and swiping a card that was a deep blue in colouration threw her D-Arc. "Matrix Digivolution Activate!"

Renamon erupted from the trees, fur a little ruffled but very alive and very angry. She exploded into light as the third Digimon finally made her Ultimate debut in this universe. Shining, she soared over the heads of the Acklay, which all looked up at her, and cried:-

"**RENAMON MATRIX-DIGIVOLVE TO…"**

She abruptly stopped obeying gravity as her form changed. She began to spin, and when the light died, she was revealed to all. Her fox-like features had mostly disappeared. Her face was still yellow, and her ears still remained, but other than that her face looked much more human than before. Her feet was still paws, put her hands couldn't be seen as they had disappeared up long sleeves. A long white robe garbed her, as well as purple leggings. Her chest and large shoulderguards were emblazoned by the same symbol that was on Renamon's gloves, and to cap off the appearance, a tall, thin, black hat adorned her head.

"**TAOMON!"**

"And this is the part where the tide turns," grinned Terriermon. "Just as I knew it would when somebody eventually digivolved."

"Would you like me to bind your mouth shut?" asked Taomon.

"I'll be good."

"Show them what you've got Taomon!" yelled Rika.

"Oh, I intend to," said the Ultimate level fox. "But, first things first," her paw appeared from her sleeve, clutching an odd symbol and she cried, **"TALISMAN SPELL!"**

Those surrounded by the Acklay were promptly encased in a large bubble, including Terriermon and Lopmon. "Hey, no fair!" Terriermon cried. "I wanted to help."

"Sit back and watch what I do," Taomon smirked at him.

The Acklays shrieked and battered at the bubble with claws and heads, but it was like ramming into a Chrome-Digizoid wall. None of what they did had any effect on it. The black ridged one even spat another bolt of lightning at it, but that had about as much effect as throwing a glob of ice-cream.

"That's not going to do you any good," said Taomon as she hovered over her shield. The Acklay hissed and spat lightning at her instead, but the shaman digimon simply raised a smaller shield around herself and blocked it with ease.

"Why aren't you kicking their asses yet?" asked Rika. "Go on! Give them all you got!"

"Why should I kick their asses, as you so eloquently put it, Rika?" Taomon smiled, "When I have a much better idea. One that would benefit us all in the long run."

"What?" asked Rika, baffled.

"Oh, I like what your thinking," grinned Terriermon. "That has got to be unheard of."

"Until today," nodded Taomon.

"Would you please enlighten the rest of us?" said Sugi. "We can't read your minds. Well, not all of us anyway," she said, glancing at Aayla.

"Certainly, but first," Taomon raised her sleeves and they billowed forwards, the ends pointing in the direction of the six Acklay, five of which were still furiously hacking away at the shield and not making any headway at all. **"THOUSAND SPELLS!"**

Hundreds of magical, red spell papers spewed from her sleeves and shot towards the Acklay. As they went, some of them linked together. Others lengthened. All glowed brightly. The Acklay were suitably dumbfounded when the paper began to wrap around them, looping around their legs, sealing their jaws shut and pinning them to the ground. They struggled and strained against their fragile-looking restraints, but the paper was clearly much stronger than it looked.

"I thought your Thousand Spells attack exploded on contact with the enemy," said Henry.

"Yes, but it does this too," said Taomon. "When I want it to." With a wave of her hand, she dropped the shield and those inside walked cautiously forwards towards the six, highly dangerous predators. Embo hopped off the Acklay he'd been riding, which had received the same treatment as the others. Rika walked over and Taomon landed beside them.

"Efficient," said Aayla, inspecting the paper wrapped around the jaws of one of the Acklay. "They're quickly neutralised and in the process you didn't kill them. Very well done."

"That's an interesting looking form," Ahsoka looked Taomon up and down. "But the hat's a bit much isn't it?"

"I look silly with it off," said Taomon.

"You look silly with in on," added Ahsoka.

"Shut up," Taomon said, good-naturedly.

"Well," said Sugi, placing a boot on one of the Acklay's sides and igniting a muffled grunt of protest from the creature. "I have to say I believe we were extremely lucky. Not many people have ever faced such a big group of Acklay and come out of it with everyone still standing."

"But my suit…" Seripas looked mournfully and the battered and torn hulk that used to be the metallic suit he walked around in. "It's ruined. Beyond repair. Now how am I supposed to look intimidating?"

"Don't worry about it," Lopmon placed a kindly ear on the real Seripas's shoulder. "You don't need that thing. Trust me. You only think you do."

Seripas nodded, but he didn't look like he really believed her.

"So," said Rika, as Henry supported his sister, who was just waking up from when she'd hit her head. "What exactly are these things?"

"They're called Acklay," said Aayla. "Highly aggressive and highly dangerous predators native to a few areas, but this planet has one of the most prominent populations. I was rather hoping that we wouldn't run into any but here they are now. Unfortunately we had to kill three of them before we got the upperhand."

"You feel sorry for them?" Rika asked incredulously. "Those things tried to swallow us whole! They were vicious."

"It's not their fault," said Aayla. "They have to eat. And Acklay's have a very high metabolism, which means they need to eat a lot. That's what makes them so aggressive – they have to be able to beat other predators to the food."

"Their skin is very tough," observed Conor. "Our blaster bolts weren't having any effect at all. Even Renamon's Diamond Storm didn't work."

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "Some cultures make their body-armour out of Acklay skin because of its tough capabilities."

"But what's the deal with this one anyway?" asked Henry, guiding Suzie over and pointing to the one with the black-lined crest. "How come it could spit lightning out of its mouth, when the others couldn't?"

"Yes," said Taomon. "I'd quite like to know the answer to that myself. That was rather painful, and I wasn't expecting something like that from a creature that wasn't a Digimon."

"Well," said Aayla, rubbing one of her lekku thoughtfully. "It's extremely rare, but I have heard of a couple of cases where people have found Acklay's that are Force-sensitive. This one appears to be one of those. Shooting lightning is a capability that having the Force can grant you. This one must have accidentally learned how to do it somehow."

Ahsoka looked alarmed. "But Master, Force-lightning is a move that is given to you by the Dark Side of the Force, isn't it?"

"Not necessarily," said Aayla. "I've heard of a few Jedi, those very strong will and character, that have learnt how to use Force lightning without falling to the Dark Side. I believe your old mentor and friend Plo Koon used it several years ago."

"He did?" blinked Ahsoka. "When?"

"About twenty-two years ago, he used it on a criminal called Pommel, to stop him from escaping with a hostage. I don't believe he has used it since, but I know he calls it the Electric Judgement."

"Ah," said Ahsoka. "That's… handy."

"I was shocked the first time I heard it too," said Aayla. "But Master Plo told me to research his findings in the Great Holocron. Apparently he drew on no negative emotions to conjure it and, now that I think about it, it was orange in colour, instead of the usual white of Sith Lightning. It's likely that this Acklay was using Electric Judgement too."

"So it's not part of the Dark Side?" asked Rika.

"I don't think its really part of the Dark or the Light," mused the Twi'lek. "It's intelligent, but it isn't good. It's certainly not evil either. It's merely following its instincts to get as much food as possible."

"Well then," said Lopmon. "I suppose the moral thing to do is not kill them?"

"That would be the best option."

Sugi frowned. "If you ask me we'd be doing a great many people a favour if we wiped these Acklay off the map. They are vicious killers and I can't think of anybody who actually likes them."

"Remind me never to tell the WWF about you," said Terriermon.

"Pardon?" asked Sugi.

"Never mind."

"Sir, while I'm not one to question your orders," said Bly. "The Bounty Hunter may have a point. With all due respect, are these things worth saving?"

"It is not the Jedi way to take the life of an innocent life-form," Aayla gave Bly a look that shut up his complaints. "I'm afraid I can't allow any of you to kill these creatures, especially since they are now defenceless and can't fight back."

Henry nodded. "I believe that killing of any kind should be a last option only. I agree with Aayla."

"Of course you do," said Terriermon. "We all knew you would."

"So, what are we supposed to do then, Jedi?" Sugi folded her arms and raised an eyebrow at Aayla. "Since you seem to be in charge around here, what is our next move?"

Taomon had been listening to all of this and frowned slightly. She looked at the Acklay and noticed that the one with the streaks of black was staring right at her. She looked into its three eyes and they stared straight back, unblinking.

And Taomon began to get the beginnings of an idea.

Terriermon looked up at her as she began to think of it and grinned. He motioned towards the Acklay, ignoring the conversation going on behind him, as if to say "Go on." Taomon smiled at her little mate, who was now even smaller in comparison to her than he was before.

Out of Taomon's sleeve emerged a long, thick calligraphy brush. Holding it in both hands like a staff, she marched over to the trapped creature. It stared back evenly and Terriermon watched with anticipation as Taomon held the brush just over the Acklay's head.

Then, she used it to draw a symbol on the Acklay's crest. It resembled any other symbol she used whenever she threw her Talisman of Light at people, but this one was smaller. Still, it shone brightly as she stepped back to admire her handiwork.

"Well, I think we should get a move on," Lopmon was saying. "Seriously, we have virtually no time to spare. When I went to see Anakin and Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan said that we have only five hours to take down the anti-aircraft system before Admiral Yularen sends gunships down to look for us."

"Five hours?" Ahsoka looked alarmed. "Are you sure? But we have no idea where we're going?"

"All the more reason for us to get a move on," said Aayla. "Taomon can release the bindings on these creatures when we are well out of the way. We need to rendezvous with the others as quickly as we can."

"Parlair de Taomon, n'ect-ce eps eley?" Embo asked, as he had spotted what Taomon was doing. Sugi and the other Bounty Hunters, all of whom could understand Embo, turned to look at Taomon sharply, prompting everyone else to do the same. None of them had noticed Taomon's business with the symbol. But they did see her holding up her hand and recalling the spell papers that secured the beast back into her hand.

"Have you lost it?" Bly cried, raising his blaster. Everyone else visibly tensed, even the two Jedi, but Taomon merely stepped back calmly as the Acklay got back onto its claws and stood up straight, towering over everyone once again. It let out its long shrieking noise and then stopped.

It didn't attack.

It didn't run away.

It just stood there, watching Taomon expectantly. The Ultimate level raised and paw and stroked the Acklay's crest. The creature seemed to like it and shut its eyes contentedly. Then it nuzzled her.

Needless to say, this odd behaviour drew stares from practically everyone else. Aayla was the first to recover, and she folded her arms expectantly. "Well, would you care to explain to us what you did when we weren't looking?"

Taomon turned its back on the Acklay and nodded. "Quite simple really," she said. "In this form, I am well adept at magic. Since everyone was struggling to come up with a solution to our problems, I took matters into my own hands and gave this Acklay intelligence, self-control and emotions."

Stunned stares.

"And what does that mean exactly?" asked Henry.

"It means that he can now understand everything you say, he won't try to kill us and he'll be quite friendly," smirked Taomon. The Acklay nodded and put its chin on Taomon's shoulder.

Aayla shook her head in wonder. "I should really know by now not to be surprised when you pull something new like this out from your sleeves. Literally," she nodded at the calligraphy brush.

"Actually, we're just as stunned as you," said Rika. "I had no idea you could do that, Taomon?"

"There's a lot of things this form can do," said Taomon. "Aayla said that these Acklay were not good or evil, so I decided to make it good."

"So we're not in danger of being eaten," nodded Ahsoka.

"It's still a carnivore," said Taomon. "I can't change that. But, no, we don't have to worry about that."

Abruptly, the Acklay moved over to the corpse of one of the Acklay's Ahsoka had killed and regarded it for a few seconds.

"Aww, isn't that sweet?" asked Suzie. "It's sad."

The Acklay lunged forward and tore a huge chunk out of the dead one's side and swallowed it. Suzie paled and hid behind Henry.

"I thought you said you gave it emotions," Ahsoka balked.

"I suppose it still has to eat something," shrugged Terriermon. "And there's no sense in letting food go to waste."

"And what was the point of giving it those three things exactly?" asked Sugi.

Taomon smiled. "Well, it means that we don't have to kill them. And it also means," she grinned. "That they can help us."

* * *

"Okay, this is too weird," said Ahsoka as the Acklay she was riding on thundered through the undergrowth, shrieking at the tops of its lungs. "I don't think anyone in the history of the universe has ever done this."

"At least it's efficient," said Aayla, from the front – she and Ahsoka were both riding on the back of the Force-sensitive one, Ahsoka holding onto Aayla for support. "And pretty danger free. There's no predator out there stupid enough to challenge an Acklay."

"And it allows us to make up for lost time," Taomon called down from where she was flying above.

All six Acklay had been treated and released by the Ultimate level Digimon. Now, after allowing the Acklay to sate their appetites on their fallen comrades, Aayla and Ahsoka rode on one, while Sugi and Embo rode another. The third carried all three Tamers. Suzie was whooping, Rika was grinning and Henry was apprehensively clutching his little sister to make sure she didn't fall off. The fourth carried Rumi and the unsuited Seripas. The fifth carried Max and Conor, while Bly had the sixth to himself. The three Digimon flew overhead.

"Just wait until my Master sees what kind of transportation we got," grinned Ahsoka. "He's going to be so jealous."

"He's already jealous he missed all the action yesterday," said Lopmon.

"I reckon Obi-Wan's going to have a heart attack," laughed Aayla. "The Geonosions tried to execute him by setting a starved Acklay on him. I should know. I saw it. Unfortunately Obi-Wan had to kill that one."

The Force-sensitive Acklay almost seemed to chuckle, in its shrill cry, as it stormed through the giant plants.

"If you ask me," said Rumi, surprising everyone as she rarely spoke. "It's the Separatists that are going to get the biggest surprise."

"True," said Bly. "After all, it's not often Jedi turn up to attack with six powerful Acklay in tow."

"Or us," pointed out Terriermon.

Bly chuckled. "Or you."

Then they fell silent as their mounts trampled the foliage in their mad rush to rendezvous point."

* * *

I decided to make the Acklay a little more lethal than the one in Attack of the Clones, because I figured that one probably had a rough life as a captive of the Geonosions - like the lions in Roman times. For those of you who don't know what the Acklay sound like, check Youtube.

I'm not doing Embo translations anymore because the series didn't either. You'll just have to guess what he's saying.

All that stuff about Force-sensitive Acklay spitting lightning and the Electric Judgement stuff invented by Plo Koon is not made up by me. Go and check Wookieepedia if your have any doubts. However, having the Acklay with streaks of black was my idea.

**White Keyblade Oathkeeper** - Yes, another idea entirely would be nice. I usually start writing oneshot rewards when another person receives one, so I really need an idea I can work with before I reach 300 reviews.

My next update will probably be from Cumbria University. I only hope I'll have more time to write this than I did during this holiday.

Bye.

* * *

Next time...

Focusing more on Anakin, Obi-Wan, Rex and Cody in the next chapter. Ziro the Hutt and Shu Mai spot them coming on the sensors. What is their response? Lots and lots of battle droids.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 47 : Pinned Down**


	47. Pinned Down

Well, here I am at the University of Cumbria. And it's time for an update. I have good news for you all. I have a ridiculous amount of free time on my course. I have a two hour lecture Monday afternoon, a three hour practical on Tuesday afternoon, and three hour practical Thursday morning and a two hour lecture Thursday afternoon. And that's it. AND these things only occur on certain weeks. So what am I to do with my oodles of free time.

Answer:- WRITE THIS! Or get on the bike and cycle to Morrisons and back. I did that earlier actually. Man, that was tough. I had to lug two bagfuls of food back to campus on a twenty minute ride and most of it was uphill. Yeesh.

Star Wars the Clone Wars has started again with Season 3. The first three episodes were mint. We got to see Shaak Ti. We got to see Grievous kicking ass for a change. We got to see Echo and Fives and Hevy. And in the more recent one, we got to see some silliness from Jar Jar Binks. But I did learn one of the difficulties of working with a series that is still going and isn't always chronological. I learned that Echo and Fives were made into ARC troopers before the beginning of my story. Therefore, I have edited them out of previous chapters and replaced them with Havoc and Edge. Thankfully this detail was relatively minor. AND next week on Clone Wars, my favourite Senator, and a highly important character later on, Senator Chuchi, will feature. I cannot wait.

But enough about me. I'm sure you all want to know how the clones, Jedi, Digimon, Tamers and Bounty Hunters are getting on. But first, a little backstory time for our new villain.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 47:- Pinned Down**

* * *

Shu Mai, the little Gossam in charge of the Commerce Guild, was strolling through her little Separatist base, accompanied by her ever present aide. She surveyed the droids at their monitoring stations, checking over the computers as they made their final preparations. So far, they'd been doing a good job, but she knew that with battle droids, that could change very quickly.

Shu Mai wasn't really a violent person, but nevertheless, she had signed the treaty and added the Commerce Guild to the Confederacy of Independent Systems, breaking it away from the Republic. It had been a secret at first, but, of course, that had been thrown out of the window when that Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi, had seen them all seated at the council table on Geonosis. Power was one of the things that was constantly on her mind. Her skill and prowess with money and manipulation had been why she'd been elected as Presindete of the Commerce Guild in the first place, and this war was adding to her benefits.

Under her rule, the Commerce Guild had become increasingly unscrupulous and often performed illegal activities, often snatching up businesses that were unprotected by the Republic – anything to gain more money and wealth. The Guild even had a droid army at their disposal before joining the Separatists, and they would often set the armies on systems that refused to become Guild members – though Shu Mai always operated outside Republic jurisdiction, so that she wouldn't get into any trouble for it.

And now, it was out in the open. Everyone knew about her lust for power. Not that Shu Mai particularly minded. She was raking in more money than ever before. She was even consenting enough to remain on the Council with Nute Gunray, despite the fact the Nemoidian had once tried to have her assassinated over a little vendetta. She'd been reluctant at first, knowing that many of her associates would frown upon this, but, in the end, the profits were just too high for her too refuse.

Shu Mai even knew of Darth Sidious, though Dooku kept this one close to his chest, for most of the other Separatist leaders still did not know of Dooku's mysterious master.

As for the base she was in now, it wasn't really designed for taking over the planet. This planet was already populated by Gossam in some pockets, outside of the wild places. This base was designed to be more of a retreat than anything else – a place where Shu Mai could run and hide if ever things got out of hand in the war effort, like if she lost a campaign on a planet and the Republic began to pursue her.

The anti-aircraft system had already proven its worth to a degree. The Jedi had been shot out of the sky or forced to land on the ground before they could get anywhere near the base. And an assault from land with such a small force would be practically impossible. Not only was the place surrounded by massive walls, but it also contained an electrofence that could keep anyone from entering, including the local wildlife. When turned on, the fence rose so high that not even a Jedi could jump over it. And if that weren't enough, the place was full of droids.

And now, her base was almost finished.

She stood in the main control room when her temporary guest, Ziro the Hutt entered the room, slowly and sluggishly. Ziro had a slightly less complicated background than Shu Mai. As Hutts went, Ziro hadn't been that much in terms of wealth or power. He'd started out as a loan shark, until, fed up with the lack of respect he got in comparison to his nephew, Jabba, he had moved to Coruscant and become a lieutenant, or vigo, in a criminal organisation called the Black Sun. Through this, he had gained a lot of power, enabling him to purchase several tattooes, jewellery (which he no longer possessed as it had been confiscated when he went to prison) and Twi'lek dancer (who had presumably all been set free now).

However, his position as a vigo meant that he wasn't in charge, like his nephew Jabba was. He wasn't a Crime Lord. He wanted more. He wanted to be the top Hutt. This had been what had led to the conspiracy with Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress, to kidnap Jabba's son, Rotta the Huttlet. The plan had been to frame the Jedi for the crime, which would make Jabba very angry indeed. Jabba would respond by ordering the Jedi to be killed, and then the Republic would have to bring him to justice, leaving a perfect opportunity for Ziro to take over from his nephew and settle of Tatooine.

Unfortunately, Senator Padmé Amidala had discovered his side of the plot and, thanks to the stupidity of the battle droids he working for him, Padmé had managed to get word to her protocol droid, C-3PO, who had, in turn, called Commander Fox to help Padmé. Ziro had been arrested and ostracized from the other Hutt's for his plotting.

"Shu Mai," said Ziro, sliding over to his associate. "I think I should be taking my leave relatively soon. I'll require a shuttle to take me to some far off planet, perhaps back to Sleheyron for a while. I trust you have something I can commandeer."

"Gashaaty ontroop akala," said Shu Mai, who, unlike Ziro, never bothered to speak Basic. "Rajanon oop acrintiliwok."

"Yes, I assure you, I will return the shuttle as soon as possible," said Ziro and he meant it. At his current level of power – i.e. none – he couldn't afford to make enemies as powerful as Shu Mai. "Of course, I'd also appreciate it if you could lower your anti-aircraft system for a bit to allow me to leave."

"Wishywazili anthroponipo?"

"Within the hour and I'll be out of your hands."

"Uh, mistress," piped up a battle droid, turning towards the Gossam. "We're picking up a transmission from one of our probe droid scouts." Normally, the Separatists would scan for approaching life-forms, but since there were so many on this planet, they used probe droids as scouts to determine which ones were actually threats. "I think you should take a look."

Shu Mai nodded. "Yahsorforde friomsolo dereeda."

"Yes, mistress," the battle droid pushed a button and the screen before them began to display a video, which was being sent to them via the probe droid's photoreceptor. It depicted two male Jedi, both of which Ziro and Shu Mai knew of, and a force of about twenty clones, progressing through the trees.

"Oh ho," said Ziro. "It looks like some of the Jedi survived the anti-aircraft system. That's Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi – two of the Jedi that foiled my plot against Jabba."

Shu Mai nodded. She recognized them both as the two Jedi that she had watched set up for execution on Geonosis.

"They're heading in our direction, mistress," said the battle droid. "How should we respond?"

"Seodnnguy treysidio qwunjori mal," said Shu Mai. This translated as "Release the droid army."

"Yes mistress," said the droid, turning to give the order.

"I couldn't agree more," said Ziro. "On second thought, I think I'll stick around and watch these two get slaughtered. That ought to make me feel a lot better."

Shu Mai turned to watch the screen again. She too would take pleasure in their deaths, particularly Kenobi's who had exposed her and the other Separatist leaders before. So many had tried to dispatch these two and many of them had failed. Their defeats would make her the envy of the Separatist Alliance.

And since she was unaware of Darth Sidious' plans for Anakin, she had no qualms about having him killed off either.

* * *

"So far so good," said Anakin, as he slowly and carefully walked forwards, keeping one eye on the surroundings and the other on where he was putting his feet, lest he stepped in something foul or dangerous. "No predators have tried to attack us yet. You sure this planet is as dangerous as you said it was, Master?" he asked Obi-Wan.

"Don't jynx it, sir," said Rex. "We haven't arrived yet."

"Don't what it?" Anakin stopped and turned to his captain with a questioning look. "I've never heard that phrase before."

"Sorry," chuckled Rex. "It's something little Suzie told me. According to her, if you say that something bad hasn't happened yet or isn't going to happen, then you've pretty much guaranteed that it's going to happen."

"Really?" asked Obi-Wan. "Sounds like superstition to me."

"Yeah well, apparently that's happened quite a lot on the adventures of the Tamers," said Rex. "And, now that I think about it, it has happened a lot with us too."

"He has a point," sniggered Anakin. "Do you suppose we should be doubly careful now?"

"Anakin, come on, really," said Obi-Wan. "If you believe you can be any more careful then you obviously aren't being careful enough as it is. This place is dangerous."

"Alright, alright," Anakin held up his hands. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Just be cautious."

"Right," Anakin nodded, then he turned back to his captain. "Anything else that little Suzie told you that I should be aware of?"

"Er, not that I think of," said Rex.

"Damnit!" exclaimed Cody suddenly. Everyone visible tensed, but all Cody said was, "I just lost The Game."

All the clones groaned audibly. "Thanks a lot, Commander," said Rich. "Now, we've all lost The Game."

"What game?" asked Obi-Wan. "This is hardly a time for games, Cody."

"I know that, sir," said Cody. "But The Game is just a game where you have to forget you're playing it, and if you remember you're playing it, you lose. Suzie introduced us to that one too. It's a game that you can't really stop playing."

"Is that so?" asked Obi-Wan. "What an obscure idea. Where do these Tamers get these little things?"

"I don't know," said Anakin. "But I do know this. If I get the chance, I'd quite like to visit their world. It sounds like a very quirky place. And it has no Jedi at all."

"Ah, I see," said Obi-Wan, nodding knowledgably. "You want to go there so you can show off your skills."

"Hey!" protested Anakin. "I never said that."

"You don't have to Anakin," chuckled Obi-Wan, stepping carefully over a fallen tree, which looked like it had been uprooted by a very large, very angry animal. "I know that you love to show off. It's one of my many failings in regards to being your Master – the others being obedience, patience and modesty."

Anakin huffed indignantly. "Very funny, Master Joker."

"Master Joker?" asked Obi-Wan. "I think that that title belongs to Terriermon. And with him in mind, Momentai, Anakin. I'm just trying to liven things up a little."

"But I thought this wasn't a time for games, sir," quipped Cody, resulting in chuckles from the other clones.

"He's got you there," grinned Anakin.

"Oh, come on, Anakin," Obi-Wan rolled his eyes. "Let's just get a move on, shall we? The others are probably make much faster pace than we are, and no doubt Aayla is struggling to keep your Padawan under control. Ahsoka has about as much patience as you do. In fact, she may have a little more."

"What is this? Pick on Anakin day?" asked the Chosen One.

"Hey, there's an idea," said Rex to Cody. "Let's chalk it up in the calendar for next year."

"Don't you start, Rex," Anakin said warningly.

Rex grinned under his helmet.

"Well, Master," said Anakin dryly. "Since you have such a fantastic sense of humour, perhaps you should help me in my prank war against Ahsoka."

"Oh, don't try and pull me into that," Obi-Wan shook his head. "I have no wish to become part of that."

"Why not?"

"Because if I start getting involved, I know for a fact that it wouldn't be long before either Ahsoka started targeting me with her pranks, or you do."

"Why would I target you?"

"Because you can."

"True."

"I thought that last one of yours was pretty good," said Obi-Wan ruefully. "You should have seen the look on Ahsoka's face when she opened the door to her chambers to have a wall of nutripaste fall out on top of her."

"I did," grinned Anakin. "I was hiding around the corner and trying not to laugh."

"And failing," guessed Rex.

"Well, next time, let me know," said Obi-Wan. "I didn't escape unscathed either, and it took a while to get the stuff out of my beard."

"Wait, what was that?" Cody held up a hand, signalling a stop. Everyone stopped, tensing, as the listened carefully for any sounds. There was something that they could hear. It was very faint, but there was a faint thudding noise, repetitive and constant, that sounded slightly familiar to everyone.

Then, the first battle droids appeared over the lip of the hill ahead of them.

Obi-Wan sighed. "Note to self," he said. "Droid feet are quieter in rainforests."

"Take defensive positions!" Anakin shouted. "Head for that hill!" he pointed to the one ahead of them that the droids were advancing over. "We'll take the higher ground and hold them back."

"Sir, yes sir," yelled the clones, and they spread out and prepared to engage the enemy.

"Charging in as ever," Obi-Wan rolled his eyes as he activated his lightsaber. "At least this time it is about the only option."

"Glad you agree," said Anakin, activating his own blade. "Now, let's go and send them back to the junkpile they came from."

"How poetic," remarked Obi-Wan.

"There they are!" cried one of the battle droids. "Get them!"

"Roger, roger!" chorused many of the others as they began to open fire.

The clones set to work immediately. Outnumbered as they were, they knew that standing together would simply present easy targets, so they immediately spread out, whipping forth their blasters and countering the sudden flurry of red lasers with blue ones of their own. The clones were at a major disadvantage on a battlefield like this – they had no tanks or air support. Effectively, they were on their own – trapped on planet and with no reinforcements.

Obi-Wan and Anakin set to work with their lightsabers. The blue blades became blurs in their hands as they parried the shots of the droids, sending the bolts crashing into the ground and nowhere near to their own forces. Anakin immediately began to run forwards, determined to close the distance between himself and the droids where he could start cutting them up. Rex and several other clones followed his lead, running after their General and keeping up a constant stream of fire. Two of them were shot in the chest and thrown backwards, smoking and dead.

"Cody!" shouted Obi-Wan. "We have to provide them with support. Let's move!"

"Copy that, sir!" Cody cried, signalling to the forces under his command to follow Anakin as he and the others ran for the hilltop.

Anakin reached the first droid and cleaved it in two the sprang from side to side, taking out a droid with each leap as he ran. He sliced the leg off one and then cut through its chest, bounced to his left and swung through and Super, then leapt over the droid before it could fall and took out the two battle droids behind it with a double swing. Without a pause, he grabbed another with the Force, pulled it towards him, skewered it and sent the body crashing back through the foliage, and several other droids. Three more clustered together tried to back away, but the Jedi Knight didn't give them the opportunity and cut all three of them at the waist with a single blow.

Rex leapt to one side as a Super sent a missile streaking towards him, grabbing another clone as he went and pulling him out of the way. The clone captain pulled off and excellent forward roll and landed on his feet, whipping round to shoot the offending Super in the face. He backed behind a giant tree as the battle droids turned their attention to him, but quickly sprang out and nailed three in quick successive shots. Another one, which had managed to get close, raised its blaster, but Rex spotted it and swept the weapon from the droids hands, then delivered a solid kick to its chest, knocking it over.

Cody clipped the head off a battle droid with a superb headshot as it turned to fire on one of his brothers. The droid fell to reveal another standing behind it, which turned to fire on Cody, but was met by a second headshot from the clone Commander. Running forwards, Cody put a hole in the chest of another and slid to a halt behind a large rock. Another clone ran past him, but stumbled backwards a couple of seconds later with a wound in his hip. Cody valiantly pulled him behind the rock, then whipped round it to blast another droid.

Obi-Wan was a little more defensive in his approach than Anakin. Blocking a pair of droid shots and dodging a third, the Jedi Master sliced one battle droid across the middle, then almost casually took a few steps forward, sweeping the bolts of two more droids aside, before charging swiftly between them, beheading one and hobbling the other as went. Another tried to grab him, but received a lightsaber in the gut for its trouble. Obi-Wan pulled out the weapon and then swiftly carved a Super straight up the middle. Levitating one half and using it as a shield, Obi-Wan guarded his back as he reflected the bolts of four more droids back to their owners.

"Sometimes," he muttered to himself, "I do see why Anakin enjoys doing this so much. Just sometimes."

Anakin gained the hilltop and slashed through a droid as it tried to come over it. The Jedi faltered at the sight before him. There was a small army of droids heading towards them, plodding purposefully through the trees. This wasn't just some small security force like they were expecting. Either the base was bigger than they thought, or the person running it was extremely paranoid. Either way, they were hopelessly outnumbered by at least twenty to one.

"Not good," he murmured. Then he spotted five AAT tanks at the back of the droid force. "Very not good."

Obi-Wan joined his former Padawan on the hilltop. The two of them stood firm, deflecting bolts as they looked upon the situation. The clones fell to their stomachs to present smaller targets and deftly began to shoot the droids down, though not without casualty, as another clone fell to a lucky shot from a Super.

The droid commander stood in the cockpit of one of the tanks and gazed on the scene through his macrobinoculars. "They've gained the hilltop, sir," one of his droids said. "What should we do?"

"Surround them," said the commander. "Send some of our droids to the left and some droids to the right. And send some of the destroyer droids around the back to block off their escape."

"Roger, roger," said the droid.

"They're forming a pincer movement, Anakin," Obi-Wan nodded to the droids that were beginning to flank them.

"Perhaps charging forward wasn't such a good idea," shrugged Anakin sheepishly.

"Oh, now you learn subtlety?" asked Obi-Wan. "Why couldn't it have been sooner? Well, what do we do now?"

"Perhaps a tactical retreat would be in order," said Anakin.

"Sir! Destroyers!" yelled Rex, pointing back the way they'd come and blasting a Super in the face at the same time. Anakin whipped around, blocking several bolts as he went and saw six droidekas roll out from the foliage and unfurl, raising their shields and begin to blast for all they were worth. Three clones were shot in the back by the advancing droidekas and the others quickly rolled behind the nearest cover – trees, rocks, dead droids, anything they could find.

"We could use an AT-TE right about now," said Anakin.

"Or a Digimon," added Obi-Wan. "We're surrounded. This is not good at all."

"Gosh, really?" asked Anakin, hurriedly parrying the shots from the droidekas. "I hadn't noticed."

Rex uprooted the head of a droid that had gotten too close to him, blocked a shot from another with its body and fired over its shoulder to kill his attacker, then shoved the body aside and unloaded his blaster pistols into an unfortunate Super. The clone next to him kicked the legs out from another droid and was about to finish it off, when he was smacked in the chest by a flying laser and killed on the spot. Rex growled and finished off the droid in the ground and the other. But another just took their places.

"I don't know how long we'll be able to hold out, sir!" cried the Captain. "We've got virtually no cover here." As he spoke, a red laser smashed into the tree right beside his head. Rex rolled and took out the droid responsible quickly. "We're pinned down out here."

Cody sprang up from behind his rock and took out another two droids with his expert aim. "Anyone who had any detonators!" he cried. "Now might be a really good time to use them. Make them count!" As he spoke, he fished a detonator from his belt, primed it and hurled it at a clump of battle droids. It landed in their midst and the droids yelped and tried to run, only to get less than a foot before being blown up.

Several other clones followed his example, and the air became thick with the detonators. One extremely good throw from Blade resulted in one of the giant trees being knocked down and crushing several droids under its thick trunk.

"Great shot, Blade!" cried Cody in congratulations.

Blade nodded and turned to Cody. "Sir, watch out!" he cried, darting forward as a Super that had been hidden from view by the foliage emerged right behind Cody. The Super opened fire on Cody, but Blade shoved him aside, resulting in Cody getting hit in the leg instead of the back. But Blade paid the price for his bravery. The Super's next shot hit the clone full in the stomach. Blade gasped and keeled over.

Cody cried out and anger and frustration, turning and slaying the Super where it stood. "Man down!" he yelled, turning to examine Blade's prone form. The clone was still breathing, but it was shallow and rugged. Ridge ran over and began to apply some bacta. He wasn't a proper medic like Max, but he did his best.

Anakin ran over and shielded them from oncoming blasts as Ridge and Cody applied the first aid to Blade. Despite the heat of battle, they would never just let a clone die when he could be saved. "Get him into better cover!" Anakin cried, as he blocked wildly. "I'm gonna try and clear a path out of here. Rex, cover me!"

"You heard him, lads!" Rex shouted. "Scrap 'em!" the remaining clones broke cover and pummelled the droids with their blaster shots. Obi-Wan stood before Anakin and guarded him as the Chosen One sheathed his lightsaber. Ridge began to pull Blade into the trees, with the wounded Cody stepping gingerly after them.

Anakin called on the Force and with a grunt of effort, began to lift the tree that Blade had knocked down. His plan was to use it like a battering ram, and send it crashing through the droid forces, ploughing them down and clearing an escape route for the clones.

"Hey, is that tree levitating?" asked one of the droids.

"Yeah, it is!" yelped another. "The Jedi is doing something."

"Not on my watch," said the droid commander in the AAT. He turned and aimed the giant cannon in Anakin's direction and let loose.

Obi-Wan balked. He couldn't deflect a bolt that size. "Anakin, look out!" he cried, grabbing his former Padawan and dragging him aside as the bolt crashing into the ground at their feet, sending both of them flying. They landed unceremoniously some distance away, but both got to their feet rather quickly. The tree Anakin had been controlling crashed to the ground.

"That was close," Anakin breathed. "Thanks Master."

"Just add it to the list of times I've saved your life," said Obi-Wan. "Any more ideas?"

"No, not really," Anakin said, ducking a red laser.

"We'll do our bit, General!" cried Cody, who despite being injured, was still fighting valiantly. "We'll take them out with us." He threw another detonator, which violently blew apart a pair of Super Battle Droids."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," said Obi-Wan. "I'm sure Aayla, Ahsoka and the Digimon are still heading in our direction. Let's just make sure that we're still alive when they find us."

"Agreed," nodded Anakin, turning back to the battle. "And hope that they get here relatively quickly."

And with that said, the battle resolved itself into a giant firefight between the two opposing sides. There were eleven clones left standing in fighting condition by now. Blade was down, Cody was injured and the others didn't look that far behind either. The two Jedi were now very much on the defensive, neither daring to do anything more than block lest they leave the clones unprotected. Even so, their efforts weren't foolproof.

The situation was degenerating fast, proven by the sudden death of another clone. Lash was hit in the back of the head and fell heavily beside Rex. Rex grimaced with anger and sadness, before emptying more rounds at the droids.

* * *

The _Resolute_ had been hanging in the space over Felucia for several hours now. Admiral Yularen stood upon the bridge, gazing out over the planet below and feeling concern building up inside him. The Admiral had been on several missions where he had stayed on his ship while General Skywalker, Commander Tano and Captain Rex went somewhere else. There had been Christophsis. There had been Teth, when Skywalker had been searching for Jabba's son. There had been the _Malevolence_, when Skywalker had boarded the enemy vessel to rescue Senator Amidala. There had been Quell, when Anakin and Ahsoka had rescued Aayla from her beleaguered ship. There had been Ryloth. There had been Sernpidal more recently, and now here he was above Felucia, doing the exact same thing.

Throughout the course of these missions, Yularen had learnt that Anakin, Ahsoka and Rex all had a similar habit of not checking in on schedule, so he'd learnt not to get too worried by a lack of communication. But he knew that Obi-Wan and Commander Cody always followed standard procedures and protocol. Surely they would have checked in by now if they were alright.

He couldn't really speak for Aayla, considering how he'd only ever worked alongside her twice before and didn't know her that well. He wasn't sure what she would so – she reminded him of both Obi-Wan and Anakin. He remembered what they had discussed over Quell when Anakin had been severely injured.

"_You'll never be able to dock with our ship in the middle of this battle," he had said._

"_We have no choice, Admiral," Aayla had replied. "General Skywalker's condition may be critical. We must get him on board the _Resolute._"_

"_Are all Jedi so reckless," Yularen had sighed, as this had sounded like something Anakin himself would try._

_Aayla had smirked and replied, "Just the good ones."_

To that end, Yularen wasn't sure what Secura would do in a situation like this.

Then there was the Digimon.

Yularen shook his head at the thought of the creatures. He just couldn't wrap his head around what they were capable of doing. When Ahsoka had been kidnapped, they had been able to rescue her on the very same day thanks to a psychic link. They kept pulling out all of these attacks and, more recently, they had given them an indestructible metal that they could use for their vehicles. The clones had sent the shield that Renamon had given them to Kamino, claiming that they had found it on a reconnaissance mission on Ryloth. Prime Minsister Lama Su had been delighted by the find, and the Kaminoans were setting out to learn how to re-craft it to upgrade the vehicles of the 501st and the 327th straight away.

Yularen turned his attention back to the time. It was almost time for him to send down the gunships to retrieve anyone down there under Kenobi's prior instructions. He had thought that it would probably be unnecessary to carry out the order, as he was sure the Jedi could handle themselves against the local fauna. But he was sure something was wrong. He had made several attempts to contact someone himself, but nobody had been responding to his calls.

He still had two hours before someone was meant to go down and pick them up, but perhaps it would not be a good idea to wait. Perhaps they needed air support as quickly as possible. He had no way of knowing what was going on down there. Yet, at the same time, he'd been instructed to wait for an specific allotted time before sending out the gunships.

It was a dilemma.

"What would General Skywalker do?" he murmured to himself. "Well, I suppose that is a stupid question. He would do the reckless thing and send out the gunships straight away, even if that means disobeying orders. Especially if it means disobeying orders, in fact."

Yularen placed a hand to his temples and massaged them slowly. Sending the gunships down ahead of schedule was against everything he had previously learnt, but still, what if doing so helped to save lives. Nobody could really complain if that happened. He knew that General Skywalker often found himself in dangerous situations often without meaning to. What if this was one of them.

R2-D2 was standing beside the admiral. He too was staring out at the planet below. He whistled sadly, wondering why his master hadn't contacted them yet.

Yularen looked down at the little astromech. "What do you reckon I should do?"

Artoo blipped and whistled a few times. Yularen didn't speak astromech, but he got the general gist of what Artoo was trying to say.

"Oh, I am sure I am going to regret this," he turned to the console behind him and activated it. The hologram of a clone appeared on it. The clone saluted. "Yes, sir?"

"Hawk," said Yularen. "I am issuing a command to send down a squad of LAAT gunships to the planet's surface, to provide our forces down there with back-up."

Hawk blinked in surprise. "But, sir. I thought we were supposed to wait a couple more hours before we did that."

"We are," said Yularen. "But this is General Skywalker we are dealing with here. Not to mention, this is also Felucia. The dangers of the planet combined with the recklessness of the General are not a good combination, wouldn't you agree."

"Sir," said Hawk, looking slightly impressed. "That's not like you. Surely, you aren't becoming more like the General are you?"

"Hawk, please," Yularen sighed. "This decision was difficult enough as it was."

"Sorry, sir," said Hawk. "We'll set out immediately. Hawk, out."

As the hologram faded, Yularen muttered. "And I hope to whatever Gods there are that you're not right and I'm not becoming more like the General."

Artoo chuckled beepily.

"Don't," Yularen said.

* * *

A minute or so later, and six gunships sailed out of the hangar and zoomed down towards the surface of the planet. None of the clones inside had any idea what to expect from below. If they did, they would probably have thought twice about heading down there.

As they entered the atmosphere, the gunships levelled off and began to proceed in roughly the direction that they knew the others had gone in.

"Alright, lads," said Hawk from his cockpit. "Scanning for life-forms isn't going to work here, so we're gonna have to search the old fashioned way." He pushed a button and the blast doors of the gunships opened, allowing the clones inside a good view. "Take a look around. If you spot anything, yell out."

"Yes, sir," said the other clones as they scanned the landscape.

* * *

"Surely we should have run into my Master by now," said Ahsoka, as the acklays continued their headlong plough through the undergrowth and a majority of the uppergrowth.

"I cannot see him from up here," Taomon called down from above. "And if I were to go any higher then I might set off the anti-aircraft system."

Aayla nodded thoughtfully. The circumstances were unusual. They had a couple of hours left before the supposed deadline for the gunships to start coming down, but Ahsoka had a point. The acklays were travelling faster than they could have done on foot, and she hadn't been expecting it to take this long to find them.

Stretching out with her mind, Aayla told her mount to come to a halt. The Force-sensitive Acklay complied and slowed down, until it came to an abrupt stop, which jarred its riders slightly, but didn't bother it at all due to its higher number of legs. The other acklay, seeing that their leader had stopped, promptly did the same, until the six of them were standing together.

"Why are we stopping, General?" asked Bly. "Shouldn't we be making on with all speed?"

"We don't know what we're looking for," pointed out Aayla. "For all we know we could have gone straight past Anakin and Obi-Wan. Ahsoka is right. We should have run into them by now. They may have run into trouble."

"So, what do we do now?" asked Suzie.

"Terriermon," Aayla turned to look at one of the two circling rabbits. "Since you're small enough, fly up and have a look over the area. See if you can spot the others. Taomon, you relay what he sees to the rest of us."

"Roger, roger," grinned Terriermon impishly.

"Please don't say that, Terriermon" said Max.

"Momentai."

"Please don't say that, Ahsoka," Terriermon sniffed. Then he turned and caught the air under his ears. The warm updraft, or thermal, carried him high into the air, far above the trees. This gave him an excellent view of the landscape, but the dense foliage still made it difficult to spot things on the ground.

The bunny's eyes narrowed as he tried to pick up anything useful from the surroundings.

"He can see a building off in that direction," Taomon was saying down below, pointing roughly forty-five degrees to the right of where they were currently going. "With a large electrofence and enormous walls surrounding it. That must be the Separatist base."

"Well, at least we know where we're going eventually now," said Aayla. "And any sign of the others?"

"No, not yet. The foliage is too... Wait. There appears to be a commotion over that way," Taomon pointed slightly to the left. "Terriermon can see flashes of blue and red light, like laser fire, and a plume of smoke heading up from the trees."

"Sounds like someone's gotten into a battle," remarked Sugi.

"Et nooes ne sormes pes la partie de looey. La honta," Embo nodded.

"Well, we've gotta go and help them, then," said Ahsoka urgently. "Hurry Aayla. We need to get there and help them out."

"No, Ahsoka."

Ahsoka blinked. "Did you say no?"

"Yes," said Aayla. "We should plan what we are going to do before we go rushing in. It sounds to me like the Separatists have spotted the other group and sent out droids to combat them. That means that their attention is focused elsewhere. While they are taking on Anakin and Obi-Wan, we can head for the base and launch an assault. That would catch them off-guard."

"But what if something happens to my Master and Master Kenobi while we're doing this?" said Ahsoka. "They could get hurt, or worse."

"I didn't say all of us would go," pointed out Aayla. "In fact, I think that..."

"Aayla!" Taomon cried. "Terriermon's spotted something else. There are six gunships heading towards our position at high speed."

"What?" Aayla cried. "But they are not supposed to be here for another two hours."

"Tell that to them," said Taomon. "They're going to hit the anti-aircraft system soon."

"They'll be blown out of the sky and torn to pieces!" Henry cried.

"What do we do now?" asked Rika.

Thinking quickly, Aayla altered her plan slightly. "Alright then. It looks like it's time for a more Skywalker style approach. We don't have to take out the system remotely, so we're going to have to blow it up."

"Alright!" said Bly. "I like it."

"Okay, this is what we do," said Aayla. "Taomon, do you think that you and Terriermon can take out the anti-aircraft system from there air."

"Possibly," said Taomon. "If Terriermon digivolves to Rapidmon then we might be able to avoid getting hit using his speed and my shield. That flak was pretty thick, but I think we can do it."

"Then do it! Take out every anti-aircraft turret you see before the gunships are taken out. Then, once you've done that, press on to where Anakin and Obi-Wan are and help them out. Meanwhile, the rest of us will continue in the direction of the Separatist outpost. They will receive an attack from three fronts, one taking out the army, one taking out the defences and another taking the base."

"Okay," said Ahsoka, after a moment's hesitation. She knew Aayla was right, and if Taomon and Rapidmon were on their way to help Anakin she wouldn't have so much to worry about. "Let's do it."

"I guess this is the point where I pull out a blue card," said Henry. And he did just that, whipping out a card from his deck and shutting his eyes. As the card went blue, he quickly passed it through the slot in his D-Arc. "Digi-modify! Matrix Digivolution Activate!"

Up in the air, Terriermon burst into light.

"**TERRIERMON MATRIX-DIGIVOLVE TO... RAPIDMON!"**

As the Ultimate level rabbit cyborg warrior appeared in the air, immediately several nearby anti-aircraft turrets swivelled around the point at him and let loose a barrage of lasers. They all crashed together at the point where Rapidmon had been, for the cyborg had blipped out of existence and reappeared overhead, swinging around and letting off a volley of heavy missiles that whistled into the towers and left them in pieces with the resulting explosions. Taomon levitated into the air to join him and the two of them disappeared over the trees. The others momentarily listened to loud explosions and shouts from the two Digimon.

"It feels weird to never actually be at the battlefield anymore," sighed Rika. "There was a time when we were always by our Digimon's sides."

"And there will be a time when we do that again," said Henry firmly. "We just have to be elsewhere right now, plus they need to be fast."

"Yes," said Aayla. "Let's hope they're fast enough." She wheeled her acklay around until it faced the direction Taomon had indicated earlier. "Right, let's keep moving and attack the stronghold while their forces are occupied. Keep an eye out for that base."

"Yes, sir," said the clones.

With that said, Aayla steered her mount into motion once more, and the six acklay continued their headlong rush through the undergrowth.

* * *

Taomon's calligraphy brush appeared in her hands as she flew up to join her mate in the air. Rapidmon looked down as her and winked. "Are you ready to have some fun?" he asked her, casually dodging a large red laser and blowing up the tower responsible with a single missile _and_ without looking where he was aiming.

"Always," smiled Taomon. "I haven't used this form is a good fight for some time."

"Well, we can't have that," Rapidmon laughed. "It's about time we broke you into this form again."

Taomon nodded. In one hand, she held her brush. The other hand brought out her Talisman Spell symbol from her sleeve and she held the two at the ready. "We need to get moving," she said. "We have an entire system to take down."

"Ladies first."

"Fine," Taomon lead off, swooping impossible downwards and heading towards the nearest turrets. They turned around to fire on her, unleashing a hailstorm of red right in her direction. But Taomon just smirked and cried, **"TALISMAN SPELL!"** holding up the symbol in front of her. The shield expanded around her and the lasers crashed uselessly against it. Taomon continued with her trajectory and, as she passed one of the towers, she sweeping her brush across the side.

"**TALISMAN OF LIGHT!"** she yelled. The symbol appeared and stretched over the tower, glowing brightly and slicing through it. As the tower crumbled into the ground, Taomon wheeled about and swung her brush through the air, painting two more symbols in mid-air, which quickly shot ahead and fastened themselves to two more turrets, resulting in the same tearing of metal as it was pulled apart.

"**MIRACLE MISSILE!"** yelled Rapidmon as he barrelled around some more large turrets and let fly with the rocket launcher on his back. The smaller missiles peppered the guns of the turrets and took them out with smaller explosions, but Rapidmon made up for the lack of violence by sending a **"RAPID FIRE!"** at two more towers, which tore them to pieces on the spot.

The mated Ultimates wove through the numerous turrets, ducking and weaving as they deftly avoided the bolts. Taomon threw up several shields to block oncoming fire, then quickly lowered it and slashed in the direction of her attacker with her brush. She swerved around more lasers, returning fire with a flurry of explosive papers from her sleeve, threw up a shield as another shot at her back and hurled a Talisman Star at it. The symbol expanded in size and cleaved straight through the solid metal as if it were playdo. Then she threw two consecutive symbols with her brush. The first Talisman of Light connected with a laser and cancelled it out. The other tore the turret that had cast it into numerous pieces.

Rapidmon went for the more ninja-style approach. The large warrior just wouldn't stay still catapulting and rolling into the thickest set of enemy fire and emerging completely unscathed and no worse for wear then before. He cast missiles left and right with stupendous velocity and amazing accuracy. He was moving at such speeds that it looked like he just had to pass a tower for it to blow up. Rolling out of the way of the next shot, he crossed his arms and with a cry of **"TRI BEAM!"** he countered with his own laser, powering through the red ones and practically uprooting the giant turrets.

The forest around the two Digimon was being torn apart by the constant misses of the lasers. Trees were cast down, rocks were blasted to smithereens and the earth was sent flying everywhere. But the Digimon ignored all this. Rapidmon spiralled through three large lasers. Taomon flew over one and quickly changed direction to avoid another, flying in wide circle as more shot past her. Rapidmon shot past another, sending the rockets flying as he went, then sucked in his belly as another laser streaked right in front of him, dropped back to avoid another and then deftly picked off the two towers. Taomon hovered in mid-air in the centre of a large circle of turrets. As they fired on her, she shut her eyes and, as if by magic, the lasers curved around and slammed back into the turrets that cast them.

The two were decimating the anti-aircraft system.

Taomon passed by her mate and heard him loudly humming to himself. "Duh duhduh DUH duh, duh duhduh DUH duh, duh duhduh DUH duh, duh duh duh duh." He began to repeat this.

"Care to explain why you are humming "Ride of the Valkyries?"" she asked.

"What?" asked Rapidmon. "I thought it sounded like appropriate music. Now where was I? Oh yeah. Duh duh duhduh duh. Duh duh duhduh duh. Duh duh duhduh duh duh duh duhduh DUH!"

"You're impossible," Taomon chuckled.

* * *

"Sir! Over there!" a clone cried, pointing towards the heavy red lasers flying skywards. Hawk took notice of this and steered towards the commotion. The other gunships followed his lead.

"Well, I'll be," Hawk muttered as he saw the two Digimon attacking. He saw what could only be Terriermon in some digivolved stage dodging six enemy lasers all at once and responding with a massive green one that wiped all six turrets off the map. He saw what must have been Renamon at some digivolved stage shield herself from three more, then fly between them and expand her shield rapidly, knocking the three towers over with a large wall of energy.

Rapidmon turned to gunships and waved.

Taomon turned to him. "Stop showing off. Let's make our way to Anakin and Obi-Wan's position and clear a path for the other gunships."

"I'm right behind you," Rapidmon nodded. "And now I'm in front of you," he shot past her, blowing up another tower as he went.

Taomon shook her head. "You just cannot resist, can you?"

Rapidmon shouted something back that sounded suspiciously like "Momentai!"

* * *

The acklay had slowed to a walk and their riders were scanning the area for any sign of the Separatist base. Aayla, Ahsoka, Sugi and Bly had all agreed that the final approach should be done with stealth, so as not to alert the Separatists to their presence. If the Separatists discovered another impending attack, it would make what they were planning pointless, as they were bound to double security. Lopmon was sitting on Suzie's head. Now that they were close, she didn't want to risk being spotted in the air.

Twice they had run into probe droids, but with a deft shot from Embo and a Force pull and lightsaber skewer from Ahsoka, neither had managed to report back to base before being destroyed.

It was Embo that spotted the glow of yellow in the foliage that indicated an electrofence. "Lar," he said, pointing with his crossbow. The others turned and saw the faint glowing for themselves. Aayla nodded approvingly.

"I reckon that's it," she said. "Come on. We'll approach on foot."

She and Ahsoka leapt off from their Acklay and the others followed with slightly less grace, except for Embo, who somehow managed to make it look ridiculously easy despite the fact that he was not a Jedi. Suzie and Seripas needed assistance in getting off, and the Acklay carrying the Tamers even consented to lie down to help them get off.

Cautiously they crept through the trees, placing each foot with the utmost care to avoid stepping on twigs or rocks that could create noises that could alert others to their presence. Eventually, they came upon the facility.

"Whoa," said Ahsoka, gazing upwards at the huge walls and the even bigger electrofence that surrounded the facility. "This is one heavily fortified installation. Someone's obviously very careful."

"Or very paranoid," said Rika.

"Or that," nodded Ahsoka.

"So, now what?" asked Henry. "How are we supposed to get over that?"

"I say we go through it," said Bly. "We've got a couple of detpacks here. We could used them to maximum effect and bring down the wall."

"Yes, but that wouldn't help us when it comes to the electrofence," said Sugi. "Detpacks wouldn't have effect on that."

"No," agreed Aayla. "There's very little that can harm an electrofence. That's why most people on this planet use them to keep out the wild animals."

"So the acklay wouldn't be a great deal of us against that would they?" asked Rika.

"No," said Aayla. "They'd just injure themselves. However, there may be a way to get by it. All we'd have to do would be to turn it off. And there is one person who can get over that."

"Me," said Lopmon.

"Yes," said Aayla. "This is why I told you to stay with us. You can fly over and land, undetected on the other side. Then you can turn off the fence. After that, the wall shouldn't be that much of a problem."

"Are you sure detpacks would work?" asked Max. "It looks very thick."

"Perhaps not," said Ahsoka. "But they would at least weaken the wall. And then we have several very powerful animals that could finish the job for us."

"There is that," conceded Max.

"But, what about when we get inside?" asked Henry. "What then?"

"I have been thinking about it," said Aayla.

"Is there anything you haven't thought about?" Sugi rolled her eyes.

"Momentai," said Aayla. "I am very thorough. Anyway, this force is a little too small to take a facility on our own, and knocking down a wall is going to throw stealth out the airlock. So, here's what I propose we do. Once Lopmon deactivates the fence and we knock down the wall, we let the acklay inside. Six aggressive carnivores like them are going to create widespread havoc, and we can use the chaos as cover to slip inside.

"Ahsoka and I can cut into the facility with our lightsabers," said Aayla. "Once through, we'll split into two groups. I'll go with Sugi and Bly and we'll head to the left. Ahsoka, Embo and Rumi will make up the other group. Conor and Max, I want you to stay by the hole in the wall and stop anything from trying to escape from that way. The Tamers will stay with you. It'll be your job to guard them."

"You can count on us, General," the clones stood to attention.

"Meanwhile, when we split up, we need to capture Ziro and the leader of this facility, not kill them. Feel free to destroy any droids, but we must capture everything else alive."

Little Seripas looked down at the floor sadly. "I notice that you haven't mentioned me in your little plan."

"Seripas..." Aayla started.

"No, no, it's fine," Seripas sighed. "I know. I understand. Without my mechanical suit, I'm useless. I wouldn't be any good in there anyway. You don't have to try and make me feel better."

"Seripas," Aayla knelt down and brought her head to his level. "You are underestimating yourself. You do have a part in my plan. You just didn't give me time to get to it. You have one of the most important roles."

"I – I do?" Seripas looked dubious. "But, I'm so small and powerless."

"Seripas, you have to start looking past your size," Sugi said. "We've all told you many times that you're being silly."

"Size matters not," Ahsoka added. "That's something Master Yoda says to younglings all the time. And he's right. He's the Grand Master, and he's even smaller than you."

"And so am I," pointed out Lopmon.

"Yeah, but you can grow much bigger," said Seripas.

"Seripas, you can be useful and you will be useful. You are good with machines. I know that much. And we can use your size to our advantage. Once we get in, I want you and Lopmon to enter the ventilation system and sneak to the hangar. No doubt the people in the facility may try to escape via ship. It'll be your job to sabotage any shuttles in the hangar, and Lopmon can protect you while you do it. Imagine if we didn't reach the opponent in time and they escaped into space. We'd be back to square one. With your help, that won't happen."

Seripas looked unsure, then happy, then determined. "I won't fail you," he clenched his little fist.

"I know," grinned Aayla, getting to her feet. "Alright. Let's get started. Lopmon, whenever you're ready."

* * *

Well, I'm quite proud of this little thing here. I took inspiration for the scene with Rapidmon and Taomon from Pokemon Movie 2 – the scene where Lugia is dodging the attacks of Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres simultaneously, and then added my own flare to it. To that end, nobody is really giving me any ideas for my upcoming pokemon crossover, which will be the sequel to this story, so I'm having to come up with my own ideas. I haven't got very far yet, but, once again, I extend an invitation for ideas (though not on which pokemon will feature. I've already decided that one. And no, I will not have any of this Ash Ketchum stuff in it. The anime annoys me, but I really like the games.)

You didn't review last time, **White Keyblade Oathkeeper**. Any ideas for your oneshot yet?

Seripas had issues with his size in his appearance in Bounty Hunters. Dave Filoni said that he was going to get over it, but didn't have time to do the whole thing along with the rest of the episode. So I thought that I would do it for him.

* * *

Next time...

Now that they've found the main Separatist base, they have to do something about it. Answer:- Smash stuff and unleash the acklay.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 48 : Let In The Jungle**


	48. Let In The Jungle

Wow, quick update. Well, this ought to show you all that I am doing my best to make up for all the lost time that I've piled up on myself over the last few months. I don't expect to update again by tomorrow, or today actually considering it is past midnight, but I reckon I can get chapter 49 up by Tuesday and Chapter 50 up by Thursday. Then I can finally bring the Felucia Arc, my longest running arc so far, to a close, and start the next one. Goody.

**Justmerg** – Good to see you're back.

**D.L. Sedig** – Thanks for the suggestion, but I already know why they're going there. As I said before, the Legendary Pokémon are going to ask them for the help of the Digimon and bring them to their world. What I haven't decided yet is WHY the legendaries need their help.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 48:- Let In The Jungle**

* * *

The clones were at the breaking point. Of the twenty that had got up and started to walk through the jungle that morning, only six were still alive. And of the six that were alive, only two of them were uninjured. Rex was still fine, although the tip of his shoulder armour had been clipped off by a rogue bolt. The only other that was uninjured was Rich. As for the others, only Cody and Ridge were still in fighting condition. Blade was still critically injured and unconscious, while another clone, Spark, was also unconscious having been thrown into the air from the blast of a rocket from a Super.

The four clones still standing had formed a ring around Blade and Spark, and they'd backed into the trees for better cover. But it was beginning to look utterly hopeless. The droids were closing in on them from all sides. Dozens of Supers and B1s were advancing, firing lasers non-stop. Three droidekas still remained – the others had been taken out by a large boulder thrown by Obi-Wan. And, to make matters worse, a bunch of Dwarf Spider Droids had arrived on the scene and were shooting at them from the hilltops all around them.

As for Anakin and Obi-Wan, they were still very alive and kicking, standing before the clones and defending them to the last. But no matter how many lasers they parried, more just kept slipping past them. Anakin stood on one side and Obi-Wan on the other, while the clones fired over the shoulders of their Jedi generals.

For the Jedi, the scene was becoming awfully familiar. Unpleasant memories of the slaughter of over one-hundred-and-seventy Jedi in the arena on Geonosis were cropping up in both their minds. Both knew that they couldn't hold out like this forever. The droids were an endless tide, and the clones were running out of ammunition.

A blast from a Super knocked another tree over, sending up showers of dirt into the air. Obi-Wan shielded his eyes from the blast, hurriedly parrying several shots without really thinking about it. Cody hurriedly pulled Spark out of the way as the tree collapsed onto where the clone's legs had been.

The AAT tanks were holding position. They weren't firing on the clones or the Jedi, because the droids in them were enjoying themselves just watching. They had been apprehensive when they'd learned who they were fighting, as they had heard that these two were nearly unstoppable. And yet here they were, getting totally thrashed by the droids.

Anakin just barely blocked a couple of red bolts. He gritted his teeth and redoubled his efforts. This was about the time where he might normally come up with an insanely dangerous but brilliant plan. Unfortunately, his mind was on a blank. He just couldn't figure a way for them to get out of this position.

_Hurry Snips_, he thought to himself, smacking a laser back at a Super. _Where are you?_

Obi-Wan grimaced as he continued to parry wildly. When he'd began the day he'd been expecting to be desperately defending against wild animals, not droids. How had things managed to get so bad so quickly? He destroyed a Dwarf Spider by sending the bolt right back down its own cannon, causing it to blow up and taking out the nearest droid to it. Rich valiantly fired on the droids, catching one in the chest and another in the head, before being forced to duck under a blow. Ridge hit a Super in the face, but then was struck in the shoulder and sat down hard, gritting his teeth in pain, but still keeping up the firing.

Rex fired two shots in opposite directions to take out two Supers at once, dodged an oncoming shot and blasted a couple more. Cody stepped behind a tree to avoid a shot and leapt out to strike down three more battle droids. But they weren't even making a dent in their numbers anymore. More and more just kept coming.

One droid rain forward and threw a thermal detonator at them. The little bomb landed right at Rex's feet. The clone yelled and dive-tackled Rich, knocking them both to the ground as the bomb sent earth flying. Obi-Wan was knocked off his feet by the blast, but still he parried a shot while on the floor and quickly leapt to his feet again.

"Are you alright?" he cried to the clones.

"I think so, sir," Rex fired a shot between the Jedi's legs and took out a droid, before getting to his feet. "But I doubt we'll stay that way for long."

"This situation is out of our hands now," Obi-Wan muttered. "Without reinforcements we'll all be lost."

"Well, just in case we don't make it," said Anakin, parrying more shots. "May I say that it has been a pleasure to serve alongside you, Rex. And you too Cody, Rich, Ridge."

"Likewise, sir," said Rex, putting out the eye of a Dwarf Spider with his next shot.

"And it was an honour to be your Padawan, Master," Anakin continued.

"Glad to hear it," said Obi-Wan. "You, in turn, were an honour to teach."

"Halt!" cried the droid commander suddenly. "Cease fire!"

The droids did as they were told. The arms of the Supers clicked into their standby place and the B1s lowered their blasters.

"Ooookay," said Anakin slowly, not relaxing his grip on his weapon. "What's going on?"

"Jedi. Clones," the droid commander called across to them. "You are beaten. You cannot win this fight and you know it. I'm going to give you a chance to surrender and come back to our base quietly. If you choose to stand your ground, you will be killed."

"Surrender to droids!" Anakin growled. "I'd sooner feed myself to a gundark."

"Steady, Anakin," said Obi-Wan. "You're being offered a reprieve here. What do you intend to do to us if we surrender?"

"We will take you prisoner and give you to Ziro the Hutt," said the droid. "I believe he wants to throw you in a dungeon as payback for what you did to him."

"Surrendering to droids is one thing," Anakin snarled. "But surrendering to a Hutt is something I will never do. Ever. Forget it. If we go down, we'll go down fighting."

"I agree, sir," said Rex. "This is what clones were bred for. We will die in the line of duty before we surrender."

"I must say I agree," said Obi-Wan. "The idea of being a prisoner of a Hutt is far more unpleasant than the idea of death on the battlefield."

"So be it," said the droid. "Kill them! Destroy them all! And we'll be recognised as the droids that took down General Kenobi and General Sk-"

**BOOM!**

A missile streaked out of nowhere and struck the droids commander in the head, blasting him to ash and wrecking the AAT he had been standing in. The tank crashed to the ground as its hover systems failed. The droids looked in confusion at the place where their leader had been.

"Don't you think that was overkill?" asked a female voice.

"No," said another voice. "He was starting to annoy me."

Anakin smirked. He knew the voices of Renamon and Terriermon when he heard them. But he also knew that if missiles were involved, then Terriermon must have grown a lot bigger.

"Need a hand, guys?" asked Rapidmon as he landed on the ground beside Obi-Wan. Another Digimon that could only be Renamon in her Ultimate form, descended next to him.

"You arrived on the scene just in time," said Anakin. "But what should I call you now?" he asked Renamon's Ultimate form.

"Taomon," she replied.

"Right. Nice to see you could make it."

"Wouldn't miss it," Rapidmon nodded.

"And we didn't come alone," said Taomon. "We brought some friends along with us."

It was at this point that six gunships suddenly shot overhead and opened fire on the droids below. Huge green lasers smashed the droid forces, decimating the front lines as the gunships pulled to a halt in mid-air and slowly dropped down to the ground. The blast doors opened and many more clones poured out, yelling orders to one another and opening fire on the droids, using the gunships as cover. The droids began firing again, and the battle began again in earnest. But now it wasn't a one-sided fight.

"Gunships?" asked Obi-Wan. "But, how did they get past the anti-aircraft system?"

"What anti-aircraft system?" grinned Rapidmon.

"We blew it up," Taomon smirked.

"And I missed that too," Anakin muttered. "Great."

"That's not the only thing you missed," Rapidmon laughed.

"Yeah, I know. Lopmon told me about all that other stuff."

"Yeah, but she didn't tell you what else happened since she met you this morning," said Rapidmon.

"What happened?" asked Anakin.

"Tell you later," Rapidmon said evasively. "But right now, I'm missing the action."

"Would you care to join us as we continue our droid massacre?" asked Taomon.

"Our pleasure!" Rex grinned. "Let's get some packback!"

He and Rich ran to the gunships and joined the other clones against the droids. Cody and Ridge helped to support one another as they went to join them. Rapidmon lifted off and shot into the air, while Anakin ran forward and straight past the clones, no longer needing to defend them. Obi-Wan pointed out Blade and Spark to Taomon, and the fox Taoist raised a shield over them, before joining Rapidmon in the air.

The tide of the battle turned at a remarkable pace. Countless droids fell to the shots of the clones, several holes appearing in each one before the finally fell to the ground. A few clones still fell to the droid onslaught, but nowhere near as many as before. Rex grinned ecstatically at the thought of such a near defeat turning into such an epic victory, as he opened up the forehead of one of the Dwarf Spider droids.

Anakin dashed into the thick of the battle. Skidding to a halt, he dashed a bunch of droids aside with a blast of the Force and, blocking more shots, he darted forward, slicing a Super in two, cartwheeling over next to a battle droid and dicing it up, along with the one next to it, then flipped over the next shots of two more Supers and cut them into large bits with multiple blade sweeps, then slid along the ground to take out another Super's legs, then jumped up and carved through the body before it fell. Obi-Wan opted for staying by the gunships and continuing to defend the clones as before.

Rapidmon landed heavily on a Dwarf Spider droid after appearing from thin air above it, roundhouse-kicked two others at once and the launched a Miracle Missile at all those around him, blowing them to shrapnel. Leaping upwards, he soared horizontally through the air, launching multiple Rapid Fires and spinning around all of the shots cast at him. Then he blipped out of existence and reappeared high in the air right above the centre of the droid army. The cyborg warrior spiralled downwards, tucking his arms into his chest and sending hundreds of Miracle Missiles out from his back, sending them raining down on the droids at all points of the compass. Pullung up just before hitting the ground, he turned and Rapid Fired the three droidekas into rubble.

The four remaining AAT tanks, the pilots recognising the change of situation, began to fire on the gunships. But none of their shots hit the large, white vessels, because a transparent shield suddenly ballooned upwards and took the shots with relative ease. Taomon smirked as she stood atop the nearest gunship, Talisman Spell symbol held high. Taking her calligraphy brush, she swept it through the air four times. Each symbol she painted zoomed forwards, passing through the shield as if it wasn't there and pasting themselves on the AAT tanks. Moments later the tanks were in pieces as the symbols shore right through them. Taomon dropped the shield to allow the clones to keep firing, and peppered a bunch more droids with her Thousand Spells.

The battle swiftly became a rout. The droids that had any sense in them at all turned to flee back the way they'd come, but it didn't do them any good. They just found Anakin waiting for them, as well as Rapidmon who was hovering above the Jedi Knight.

"Er, do we surrender?" asked one of the droids.

"No," said Rapidmon. "You don't."

He blew half of them up where they stood, while Anakin span through the air and took out the rest with two swings and a heavy kick to the head.

As Taomon, Obi-Wan and the clones finished off the rest of the Spider Droids, Anakin turned to Rapidmon. "Well, spectacular as always Rapidmon. I can still see you beating up Kul Teska, clear as day."

"Good times," chuckled Rapidmon.

"Now, what else did I miss?" Anakin pressed. "You said something else has happened since Lopmon visited us this morning. Care to inform me?"

Rapidmon raise a cannon in an attempt to look philosophical. "Well, back in our world, the humans have a saying that applies to this situation."

"Okay," said Anakin. "What is it?"

"It goes like this – You'll just have to bloody well wait and see."

Anakin pouted. "You're not going to tell me?"

"Nah. Telling you would ruin the effect. You'll have to see it for yourself."

"Where is Ahsoka anyway?" asked Anakin. "Is she okay."

"Oh yeah," nodded Rapidmon. "She's in the middle of assaulting the Separatist base right now."

"What?" Anakin said. "Oh come on. I can't miss that too. Let's go."

* * *

As all the fighting was going on, the only droids that weren't being completely and utterly annihilated were back in the Separatist base. Some were at the station, watching the battle, along with Shu Mai and Ziro, who were taking great pleasure at the Jedi who were being forced back. Others were patrolling the perimeter inside the walls, checking for any security breaches.

None of them were really expecting there to be one though.

But the droids hadn't counted on Lopmon.

The little brown bunny rose into the air, spreading her ears for maximum lift as she rose up and up, past the electrofence. As she rose over the top, she dropped down and landed on the top of the wall, scanning the area around the base. It was relatively simple in design. There was a large amount of open space where tanks would usually be parked, while the building could be found in the middle. Heavy blast doors were the only visible way in. There were several monitoring stations for security dotted about the place and Lopmon could see many security cameras around the walls.

Lopmon knew what she had to do. Aayla had told her that controls for the electrofence would probably be beside the gate, so that they could simply switch it off when they wanted to leave. She could see the gate on the other side of the facility and somehow, she had to get there without being spotted.

One of the cameras was situated directly below her. Quietly, Lopmon leapt from the wall and parachuted down, so that she was standing on top of the slowly rotating camera. Slowly and carefully, the little bunny swung down underneath the camera and then dropped to the ground directly beneath it.

She was in.

Keeping close to the wall, Lopmon ran to the side and ducked behind one of the numerous crates dotted about the place. She peeked her head over the top, but dropped back down as a camera slowly twisted its way towards her. She listened with bated breath, waiting for the mechanical whirr of the moving camera to signify that it had turned away.

When it did, she peered over the top again, and, seeing that all was clear, leapt out and glided underneath the camera quickly. Then she landed and took off at a run again, slipping along the wall as quickly as she could.

She stopped again as a couple of battle droids marched past, ducking behind a crate as she did so. The droids walked straight past the crate, not even bothering to look around. Lopmon smiled as she edged around the crate, to ensure they wouldn't spot her if they turned around, then zoomed off and into the corner.

"Hey, what was that?" she heard a battle droid say.

Lopmon cursed under her breath and ducked behind another crate. She knew that she could take them, but she needed to be as covert as possible. The idea was that the people inside the base had to be taken completely by surprise so they wouldn't have time to escape.

"Probably just your circuits just short-circuiting," said another droid. "Nothing can get in here with the fence up."

"I'm sure I saw something small and brown fly into that corner just now."

"Well, you go check it out then. I'll keep patrolling."

Lopmon listened as the battle droid approached the area where she was hiding. She held her breath as the mechanical being walked right up to her crate. It sounded like it was trying to be sneaky, but it wasn't doing a very good job. As it moved around the left side of the crate, so did she, keeping it on the opposite side.

"Hmm, I'm sure I saw something," the droid said. It continued moving around the crate, so Lopmon moved at the same pace. The two did a complete circuit of the crate like this, until Lopmon darted out and hid behind another crate. She peeked out to see if the battle droid had noticed. It hadn't. It was still walking round and round the same crate, as if hoping something would appear there. Lopmon repressed a snort and kept moving.

As she approached the gate, she spotted another camera situated on the wall above it. This one wasn't moving at all, just steadily focusing on the gate and the gate controls. If Lopmon went to deactivate the button, she would be spotted.

But if she took out the camera, they'd know something was wrong and organise the defences.

So, she'd leave the camera intact but break the lens.

"Blazing Ice," she whispered and spat a single shard from her mouth, which zipped forward and cracked the lens of the camera.

* * *

"Oh ho," said Ziro. "Look at them being massacred. I haven't had this much fun in a long time."

"Mistress," said a battle droid. "The camera by the gate has stopped transmitting, but the camera says its still functioning. There might be a problem with the lens."

"Hagydolobo winillybur fonkalobofe," Shu Mai replied absently, eyes fixed on the fighting on the screen.

"Roger, roger," said the droid.

* * *

Lopmon waited a couple of seconds, but there were no alarms blaring from the facility. Hurriedly she hopped on the crate and looked at the console.

Through Suzie's D-Arc, Aayla could see just what Lopmon was looking at. "Hit the large blue button at the top," the Twi'lek said. Then they watched Lopmon's hand come up and push the button. The electrofence sizzled and died away.

"Alright, Commander," Aayla turned to Bly. "Get those detpacks in place."

"On it, General," the clones hurried forward and began to secure the detpacks to the wall.

There were still no alarms from the facility. Several battle droids looked up when the fence went down.

"Where'd the electrofence go?" one asked.

"Probably just another maintenance test," said another. "They've been turning it on and off for the past week. It'll come on again in a minute."

Bly primed the three detpacks and said, "Alright, everybody stand back. We don't want to get caught in the blast."

Everyone hurriedly backed off until they were roughly twenty-five metres away from the thick wall. Bly's thumb hovered over the detonator button, and the clone looked to Aayla for the say-so.

Aayla nodded.

Bly hid the button.

**BOOM!**

**BANG!**

**BABOOM!**

The three detpacks went off simultaneously, each blast intensifying the blast of the others and the explosion rocking the wall. Battle droids turned in the direction of the explosion and saw the smoke rising up from behind the wall and large rents appear in the structure. But still it held firm.

"What was that?" asked a droid.

"I don't know," said another.

* * *

"Mistress, there's been an explosion by the south wall," said a droid.

"What?" Ziro's took his eyes off the Jedi and the clones and totally missed Rapidmon blowing up the droid commander.

"Salika?" Shu Mai looked equally startled.

* * *

"Maybe we should go check it out," said one of the droids.

"Roger, roger," said another, and the two droids walked up to the wall. "Hello?" one called. "Is there anyone out there?"

He was answered by a loud, ululating screeching noise, before something heavy smashed into the damaged wall from the other side with the force of a runaway Juggernaut. The droids were flattened under the rubble of the wall as the Force-sensitive Acklay emerged through the gap. It reared and screeched loudly, before charging headlong into the facility. The other five Acklay streamed in behind it, eager for a fight.

Thanks to Taomon's spell, Aayla had been able to explain what was needed of the Acklay to them, because they now understood every word she said. And their task was... to create as much havoc and chaos as they could.

And they set to it with a will.

The first Acklay ploughed through a phalanx of droids, scattering them like they were merely pieces of lego, and skewering them on the tips of its feet. The giant bug then ploughed straight into a large metal tower, probably for surveillance and muscled its way through it. The tower toppled with a heavy thudding, the droids in it yelling as they tumbled to the ground. The Acklay scrambled over the fallen tower and charged into one of the AAT tanks that hadn't been sent out with the others, overturning it and sending it crashing straight into the wall of the main building, denting it hugely.

Another Acklay scuttled past the base and leapt on more battle droids, slamming its head into some like a club and stabbing one with one of its claws. It screeched it crashed headlong into a monitoring station, grabbing one of the droids on top and crunching it in its mouth as the monitoring station toppled over. A commando droid ran towards it and attempted to leap on its back, but the Acklay dodged with surprising nimbleness and slammed it with its head. Two more jumped on its back and brought out their swords, but the Acklay threw them off with a huge lurch and drove its claws into their chests.

The third Acklay shouldered past a small shed, knocking it over and flattening the droid inside and broke through a thick metal wall that sectioned off a particular area of the base, the weapons depot. Several Hyena bombers that weren't currently activated were scattered as it barrelled through them. The Acklay stuck its neck under one and threw it sky-high, then grabbed another in its jaws and _threw_ it. A tall pillar on top of the facility where gunners could stand and shoot was the target and the flying bomber smashed into it, sending both crashing the ground.

A commando droid taking aim at the third Acklay was suddenly plucked off the ground by the jaws of the fourth and thrown several hundred feet into the air. The Acklay screeched and leapt over the downed AAT landing amongst a bunch of other droids. Charging ferociously forwards, the Acklay closed in on a large building beside one of the walls – the droid barracks, where they went and shut down when not needed. The Acklay smashed through the wall and tore the place apart from the inside, overturning racks and tearing down the door, screaming as it did.

The fifth Acklay went for the command centre itself. There was a corridor that separated a section of the command centre from the rest of the main building, but this soon became open air as the Acklay ripped the corridor to shreds, ripping the ceiling clean off and breaking down the walls. The little section that had been cut off, the room where Shu Mai and other organic beings would go to eat, was next as the giant insect/reptile reared up and crashed down on the walls, buckling the metal under its claws and tearing great rents in it. It also cheekily snapped up a large, dead nerf that had been meant for dinner later.

The sixth and final Acklay, the Force-sensitive one, knocked over the other surveillance tower, then caught it as it fell and sent it spinning into the fence that cordoned off yet another section of the base. The power generator. Aayla had instructed this one in particular to focus on this building. The Acklay almost smirked as it approached. Grabbing a Super in its mouth and tossing it into another, then trampling them both, it rounded the fallen tower. Its throat began to pulsate and, just as it had done against Renamon and Aayla earlier, it unleashed a massive bolt of orange electricity that collided with the building and went crackling over it, making it look like it was overloading.

And, thanks to the huge amount of power that the Acklay was putting into it, it was.

* * *

"What is going on?" Ziro wailed, as the walls shook and the ground trembled, placing his stubby hands over his earholes at the loud screeches of delight and excitement echoed throughout the control centre.

Shu Mai didn't have a clue what was going on, but at that moment, all the screens suddenly fizzled out and died. The lights exploded and showered down debris from the ceiling. The computers all shut down at the same time.

"Mistress," said a battle droid, as the back-up generator, which only powered the bare minimum, such as doors, lifts and a couple of other things. "Something has happened to the power generator. I think its overloaded."

"Well, fix it!" snapped Ziro. "And do something about that horrible noise! Is it an earthquake?"

A huge dent suddenly appeared in the wall, knocking the screens flying and sending one of them right into the Hutt's face. Shu Mai, confused and terrified, scurried down the corridor to where she knew a window would be so she could look outside. Her aide followed her.

She ran into the corridor that led to the kitchen, or would have, if it had still been there. She pulled to a halt and gasped as the Acklay that had been attacking the kitchen whipped around to face her. Shrieking, the Acklay charged forward and launched a claw at her. Shu Mai hurriedly ducked back inside the building she had come from. The Acklay's claw hit her aide instead. He screamed as he died and the hungry carnivore snatched him up in its mouth and swallowed him whole.

"Poligheroto hirolo Acklay!" shouted the Gossam in a panic. How? How had it got into the facility? What had happened to the electrofence?

"Acklay?" Ziro blanched, horrified. "We must get away before they get in! Quick, let's go to the hangar." The giant slug slurped across the floor at high speed, for a Hutt anyway, which was still very slowly, heading for another corridor that lead away from the control centre. But that option quickly became unavailable too, as a huge turbine, ripped from the now useless power generator, crashing into the corridor and closed it off completely.

"Oh my gosh! They're everywhere!" Ziro yelped.

Shu Mai began to hurry down the one remaining corridor they had left. The battle droids all left their posts and followed her.

"Wait!" Ziro cried desperately. "Wait for me!" He slugged his way into the corridor, although Shu Mai and the droids had gotten way ahead of him. Just as he did, the dented wall behind him was smashed in even further, and the head and neck of one of the Acklay forced itself in, jaws snapping and three eyes glaring greedily at the Hutt.

Ziro screamed and kept moving. He only just got to the other side of the corridor before it too was smashed it by another Acklay. The big animals were fulfilling their task well.

* * *

As all this chaos was happening, the others had slipped into the base. Max, Conor and the Tamers stood by the large hole in the wall created by the Acklay and watched as the others quickly threaded their way through the tumultuous damage that the Acklay were causing wherever they went.

"Look at the Commander," chuckled Conor, pointing at Bly, who was shepherding Seripas through the facility as quickly as possible, as they made for the blast doors that were the entrance to the facility. "He gets all the fun."

Max casually shot at a battle droid that was running around in panic, bringing it crashing down. "I dunno," he said. "This is pretty fun just standing here and watching the Acklay wreck the place. It's a shame we can't cause the Seppies this much grief on our own."

"Look at that one," said Rika, nodding at the Acklay that had someone managed to get up on the roof of the main building. "How on Earth did it do that?"

"Don't you mean, how on Felucia did it do that?" asked Henry.

"Shut it, Brainiac," Rika said good-naturedly.

"I wonder how Rapidmon's getting on," said Henry, pulling out his D-Arc.

"Look, there's Lopmon," Suzie pointed, as the brown bunny, who had been standing by the gate and watching, soared over to the rest of the group.

* * *

Lopmon landed neatly beside Rumi and Embo. "Well, this is fun," she said.

Embo chuckled, "Jay concens sanz rezervay," he said.

"I'd much rather being doing this than driving away a bunch of pirates," said Sugi. "I don't know how you manage to create so much chaos wherever you go, but I like it."

"You should have seen the Ogudomon Debacle," said Lopmon. "We were wrecking an entire city."

Ahsoka drew level with the blast doors first, and her lightsaber sprung to life in her hands. "I'll cut this open," she said, plunging her blade into the thick metal. She began to drag her blade along, slicing cleanly through it as she created a large circle with her blade.

"I'll give the Acklay their next signal," nodded Aayla, Force-jumping straight upwards and flipping to land on the roof of the building. She blinked when she saw the Acklay that had gotten up there. How had it done that? But she pushed the thought aside and drew her lightsaber. She began to twirl it rapidly, the blade going so fast in her hands that it looked like a ring of blue.

The Acklay spotted Aayla's signal and nodded in respond. It raised its head and cried out loudly. But this wasn't the high-pitched shrieking that they usually did. This time, it was a deeper growling noise that came from the back of its throat.

Immediately, upon hearing this noise, all the other Acklay fell silent. They stopped wrecking the place and spread out, forming a circle around the entire building, facing inwards and staring intently at it. The idea was that if anyone tried to escape while the others went inside, the Acklay would be able to spot them and either drive them back in or trap them and prevent them from going any further.

Aayla nodded with satisfaction and jumped back down, to where Ahsoka had just finished cutting the hole in the doors. Stepping back, the Togruta Padawan used the Force to pull the large circle of metal free of the rest of the door and drop it to the ground.

The battle droids in the corridor turned around and saw her framed in the doorway.

"Jedi!" one of them yelped.

Ahsoka smirked and sprang through the gap, lightsaber ready to start sending limbs a-flying.

* * *

The sudden silence was almost scarier than the previous chaos. Shu Mai and the battle droids flanking her were creeping carefully along, listening intently for any sounds that would betray the presence of an Acklay.

"This is really unnerving," said a battle droid, glancing around at the walls and expecting them to come crashing down on them all at any moment. "What is going on?"

Shu Mai was doing a rather similar thing. She said nothing, but as they made their way down another corridor the Gossam began to shake a little. She'd never heard of an Acklay suddenly stopping its attack. Usually they just kept attacking until they'd torn everything to pieces or they were killed.

She reached a window and peered out from it.

The Acklay right on the other side of the duraglass growled at her, baring its needle-like teeth.

Shu Mai ducked out of sight and darted to the other end of the corridor, sliding down the wall and clutching a hand to her chest. She'd almost had a heart attack, staring into those cold eyes, and she was sure that she was dead.

But nothing happened. The Acklay made no attempt to break in.

Shu Mai risked another glance out the window. The Acklay was still there, but it just wasn't doing anything. She looked out of the window on the other side of the corridor. She could see two more Acklay standing some distance away, staring at the facility and not moving an inch.

It was like they were standing guard.

But that was impossible. Acklay were notoriously untameable. Nobody, not even a Jedi, could curb these vicious beings. Nobody could get them to listen to orders.

Could they?

Shu Mai shuddered. Whatever was going on, this was not good. She could see two explanations for the Acklay's behaviour. Either they were being controlled by something that she'd never encountered before, or this bunch were unique and had perfected a new hunting strategy and were waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.

Neither option really appealed to her.

She had to get to the hangar, and fast.

She scurried along the corridor, the battle droids dutifully following her, their blasters raised and ready to shoot at anything that came too close.

"Why did we have to get assigned to this planet?" asked one of them.

* * *

Ziro Desilijic Tiure was currently wishing that he was back in prison.

At least there he wasn't likely to be attacked by enormous, terrifying monsters. At least there he was safe. Here, that was not the case. Why, in prison he had guards – and not rubbish guards like these battle droids were – proper guards with extensive training and actual skills.

"Oh, why did I have to pick Felucia," he muttered to himself as he slid along, listening to the silence and wishing he knew what was happening. "Why did I tell Bane that I wanted to be dropped off here? Why was I so stupid?"

The Hutt continued to mope about all of his problems as he continued as fast as he could through the base. The hangar was still some way off, and no doubt Shu Mai had gotten a considerable distance ahead of him. He knew there was more than one shuttle in the hangar, which, fortunately, was raised off the ground to allow ships easier access to the air. This had a side-effect of having it protected from Acklay attack.

But the Hutt didn't know how to fly one. He'd never needed to learn before.

He hoped that Shu Mai would leave a droid behind so that it could fly it out for him, or at least wait for him to catch up.

"If you leave me here, Shu Mai," he muttered to himself. "I'll – I'll..." he trailed off. If she left him here he would probably die, making any threat he made now pointless.

"Oh, why me?" he moaned.

* * *

Rumi's rifle flashed with blue lights as she took out the last two droids in the entrance of the base. The ground was littered with the dead metal beings. Some had been cut to pieces. Some had had large holes put in them. A couple had had their chests caved in by a spinning bunny. But all of them were dead.

"Alright then," said Sugi, placing her blaster on her shoulder in a triumphant pose. "I suppose we'd better get moving. We don't want them to escape now do we?"

"Absolutely not," nodded Aayla, lowering her lightsaber. "You're right. We must press on. Ahsoka, you take Rumi and Embo to the right and head that way. Try and see if you can find Shu Mai or Ziro. Sugi, you and Bly are with me. We'll go left. As for you two," she glanced down at Seripas and Lopmon. "It's up and away for you." The Twi'lek used the Force to remove a grate from the ventilation system. Then, as Lopmon flapped up and into the vent, Aayla used the Force again to life Seripas into the air and gently place him in the vent.

"May the Force be with you all," said Aayla.

"And you too, Aayla," nodded Ahsoka. "Alright, you two. Let's get going." Ahsoka led the way down the right hand corridor, lightsaber ready to block anything in front of the. Embo and Rumi were hot on her heels, crossbow and rifle held firmly in their hands.

"And we'll head down this way," nodded Sugi. The Zabrak, the Twi'lek and the clone all moved down the left corridor with equal determination.

"Come on, Seripas," said Lopmon, smiling at the little guy in blue coveralls. "Time to show the Separatists what you're made of."

"I hope so," Seripas muttered, more to himself than to Lopmon. "I really hope so."

"Don't hope," said Lopmon. "Hoping something will work doesn't have any effect on the outcome. It's all down to you. Now let's get up to that hangar and make sure they don't leave."

Seripas nodded and took the lead as he and Lopmon began to walk through the vent system. They didn't know the exact route but they knew roughly what direction they needed to be travelling and knew that once they found a pipe leading upwards they would be on the right track.

"So, if you've always been self-conscious about your size," said Lopmon. "Then why did you get into a profession like being a Bounty Hunter? Did you feel that it would be a good way of proving yourself?"

"Something like that," Seripas nodded. "I'd had enough of getting mocked because of my size and I tried to come up with a way to make me look tougher. Most Bounty Hunters are considered to be tough guys, but I couldn't just join up. I was sure I'd be laughed at even more. That's why I built my mechanical suit."

"And then you joined up with Sugi and the others?"

"Yeah. They all thought that I looked pretty tough in my mechanical suit and they hired me the moment they saw me. Of course, my suit wasn't perfect. I needed to get out for food and drink. I hadn't told the others what I was. They thought I was a droid. So I began to sneak out at night and steal food when they were asleep.

"But my plan wasn't very well thought out," mumbled Seripas. "The others noticed that something was stealing their food. Eventually, Embo caught me pilfering the supplies. I think he was planning to shoot me on the spot, but when I told him I was Seripas he looked really surprised. I had to show him my empty suit before he would believe me."

"But they still kept you on the team," said Lopmon. "That's good, right?"

"Well, yeah," said Seripas. "But I always assumed they did it out of pity. They were all such nice people – not the cold, hard Bounty Hunter stereotype I was expecting."

"Pity? No. They kept you on because you were a good asset to the team," Lopmon chided him. "Look at what we're doing now? Can any of them do this?"

"No," conceded Seripas. "No, they can't."

"But you can. And when you had the suit, you could lift much heavier objects than they could. And your skill with machines is better than there's. Yes, you aren't big and strong like they are. You're useful in other ways. There's a saying on Earth which goes, "Play to your strengths." You've been doing the exact opposite, Seripas. You've been playing to your weaknesses. But now, now you are exactly where you need to be."

Seripas looked heartened by this, but said nothing, contemplating Lopmon's words.

After a couple of minutes of searching, they came across a pipe that went vertically upwards. "This is where we need to go," said Seripas. "But I can't climb up there." He looked disheartened again.

"And this is why I'm here," said Lopmon. "My ears are too large for this tunnel so, Suzie! A Hyperwing card please."

A couple of seconds later and the white. Glowing wings materialised on Lopmon's shoulders. She hovered upwards, hooked her ears under Seripas' arms and shot up the vent. She put him down again when they reached another horizontal section and the wings faded. The two pressed on, until they reached the next grate. Seripas pushed it open.

They were definitely in the right place. It was a large room, but there were only two ships in it – two _Sheathipede_-class shuttles. The only way out of the room for the ships was a large opening that was covered by a ray shield, one of the few things the back-up generator powered.

"There are your targets," Lopmon indicated the shuttles. "You know what to do?"

"Yes," nodded Seripas.

"Good. I'll watch the doors. You – do your thing."

Side by side, the two leapt into the room.

* * *

Bly shot a droid in the head, while Aayla cut down the two that had been standing beside it. Sugi shot down the Super at the back. That had just been a ragtag group of droids that they had just run across when they had been heading down the corridor. No challenge at all for the Jedi, the experience clone and the Bounty Hunter.

The three of them kept moving, not saying a word as they searched the facility. Every time they reached a corridor, Sugi or Bly would point a weapon down it, ready to shoot at anything that shot back, but so far nothing had. The trio swept through the facility, checking every room and every storage cupboard, Aayla using her mind to sweep the room for presences before announcing they were clear and moving on.

But, a couple of minutes later, they did come across something. Namely, they looked down a corridor, and spotted a large, purple, slug-like thing slowly heading down it. The Hutt looked like it was trying to go quickly, but he wasn't doing a very good job.

"Must get to the hangar," Ziro muttered to himself. "Must get to the hangar. Must get to hangar. Oh, curse this useless, legless body."

Aayla and Bly shared a glance, which clearly said, _We went through all of that for this?_ Then, the three of them casually walked down the corridor towards the retreating Hutt, not bothering to move quickly. He wasn't going to get away if _this_ was the fastest he could go. Ziro didn't appear to hear them coming. Perhaps he was too focused on his mutterings, or perhaps he just wasn't listening.

Clipping her deactivated lightsaber to her waist and breathing deliberately through her mouth so as to avoid having to smell the criminal, Aayla walked straight past him the Hutt. "Morning, Ziro," she said, turning to face him and block his path.

"Wha?" Ziro yelped as he drew to a halt, staring at Aayla in disbelief. "A Twi'lek? Where did you come from? And such a delectable one too," he added, giving her the same appraising eye that Orn Free Taa had back on Ryloth.

"Oh please," Aayla snorted. "I do not need to hear comments like that from you, Ziro. I am not a slave. I'm not someone for you to ogle at, like those poor souls you forced to dance for you before your arrest."

"You know an awful lot about me," Ziro said. "If you aren't a slave, then what are?"

"The lightsaber should give you a bit of a clue," said Aayla, holding the hilt before the Hutt's eyes.

"Huh?" Ziro gawked. "A Twi'lek Jedi?"

"Is that such a foreign concept?" Aayla frowned.

Ziro attempted to back away, suddenly afraid of the beautiful Twi'lek, but he yelped when something stood on his tail. Turning, he saw Sugi had contemptuously placed a boot on his tail-tip and was levelling a blaster at his face. Bly was doing the same thing.

"You do know that you're probably gonna have to wash your boot to get all of the slime off later," said Bly.

"Ugh, good point," Sugi said, stepping off the Hutt and scraping her boot across the floor. "I suppose that was rather careless of me."

"This is impossible!" Ziro cried. "A clone? A Jedi? The Republic is behind the attack by these Acklay?"

"Evidently," said Sugi.

"But it doesn't make any sense," Ziro moaned. "How did you get into the facility? How did you get those Acklay to listen to you? How did you get them to _understand_ you?"

"That is for us to know and you to go braindead as you try to figure it out," said Bly.

"Well, at least those Jedi, Kenobi and Skywalker, are toast," muttered Ziro.

"Oh, I'm not all that worried about them," said Aayla. "I'm sure they're fine now that they got reinforcements."

"What? When?"

Aayla didn't answer. "Ziro the Hutt," she said, activating her lightsaber and brandishing it in Ziro's face. "I hereby place you under arrest. You will come quietly and return to prison to carry out the rest of your sentence for your crimes against the Republic and your fellow Hutts."

Ziro sagged. Surrounded by the three skilful adversaries and with no back-up, he was powerless. "Ah, freedom," he said. "You were so sweet, while you lasted. Alright then, take me back to prison. Lock me up again. Just please, please don't set your Acklay on me."

"Make no more comments about me and you will remain intact," said Aayla. She wouldn't really have him killed, but the thought of this... thing, thinking thoughts like that about her was enough to make her shudder.

"My mouth is sealed," said Ziro, miming zipping it shut.

"Now, who is really in charge of this facility?" asked Aayla.

"You don't know?" asked Ziro.

"We've been tracking you," said Bly. "The fact you led us straight to a Separatist facility is an added bonus."

"Oh... alright." Ziro said. "The leader of this facility is..."

* * *

"...Shu Mai," Ahsoka said as she rounded the corner and found herself face to face with the Gossam and her droids. "Well, well, look what the nexu dragged in."

Shu Mai halted in her tracks at the sight of the Togruta, looking at her lightsaber fearfully. So it was the Jedi behind all this. But she still didn't know how they'd done it. She watched warily as Embo and Rumi also rounded the corner and stood, flanking the Padawan and cocking their weapons.

"Leader of the Commerce Guild. Wanted by the Republic for conspiring with the Separatists and for numerous other crimes that you've been keeping under wraps throughout most of your career," Ahsoka went on. "I wish I could say it was a pleasure to see you, but my Master says that a Jedi should always be honest."

"She doesn't look like much," said Rumi. "I was expecting someone more imposing."

"La plooparf des derijeants Séparatistes onto gargné leoor pouloir de l'être grabbers d'arnt visqox," said Embo. "Je ne sooes pas étterné."

"That is a point," said Rumi.

Shu Mai backed down the corridor. "Plotepolok wernioba weifidreor serokol?" she asked, staring nervously at the lightsaber.

Fortunately, Ahsoka was fluent enough in Gossam to understand this. "What am I going to do with you?" she asked. "Oh, I'm just going to take you into custody and take you back to Coruscant, where you can be grilled for all the information you have on the Separatist Alliance and then put in jail for the rest of your life. It'll be fun."

Shu Mai didn't look very happy with this.

"Or," said Ahsoka. "I could grill you for information now. What is this base supposed to be for?"

Shu Mai continued to slowly back away as she answered, but Ahsoka, Embo and Rumi advanced at an equally fast rate. She said, "Tariokitaji greaperwiub."

"Tactical retreat?" Ahsoka asked. "Ah, I should have known. All slime double-dealers like yourself have several hideaways like this where you can hide until your troubles die down where you spend a lot of money trying to make sure no-one can get in."

Embo chuckled. "N'a pas travilé très bion, n'est-ke ne fiat pas?"

"No, it didn't," nodded Rumi.

Shu Mai suddenly backed behind all of the droids and hid behind them, continuing to back away. "Hasoinurlio!" she cried, which translated as "Blast them!"

"Awww," Ahsoka looked at her pitifully. "You really think your big, bad tinnies are going to help at all?"

"Hey, I take offense at that," said one of the battle droids.

"So do I," declared another.

"And me."

"And me."

"And m-"

"Yeah, we get it," Ahsoka said to them.

"She may have a point, mistress," said one of them. "It usually takes a lot more than five battle droids to kill a Jedi. Even a small one."

"Now, who's trying to offend?" Ahsoka smirked. "Well, just to be nice, we're not going to attack you guys."

"You're not?" asked a droid hopefully.

"We're not?" asked Rumi.

"No," said Ahsoka. "But someone else is. She stuck her forefinger and her thumb in her mouth and whistled. At the same time, she called out with her mind – the whistle had been just for effect. There was a couple of moments silence, before the wall was suddenly torn apart as one of the Acklay forced its way inside, ripping the wall and the ceiling apart. Shu Mai screamed and ran back the way she'd come. She knew of another way to the hangar, and she made for it with all speed.

The Acklay rammed two of the droids with its head, snatched another in its jaws and shook it, while stabbing into the other two with its huge claws. It dropped the one in its mouth, which was thoroughly dented and quite destroyed, before turning to Ahsoka.

"Nice work,... er... are you a boy or a girl?" Ahsoka asked. The Acklay almost seemed to chuckle.

"Now, come on," said Ahsoka to Embo and Rumi. "We don't want her getting away." With that, she took off in pursuit of the Separatist Leader, running beneath the Acklay's head. Embo and Rumi followed at a run and the three ran further into the base – Ahsoka using her mind to track Shu Mai's movements.

* * *

Ziro gasped as he was brought outside by his captors. Three of the nearby Acklay turned to look at the emerging beings, ready to spring. When they saw who it was, they relaxed. Ziro stared at them in amazement.

"I just don't get it," Ziro wondered. "It shouldn't be real. It can't real. Or is this a hallucination brought on by that wretched prison food."

"Oh, I assure you," said Sugi. "They are very real. Would you like to see how real their stomachs are?"

"No! Uh, no thank you. I'd prefer to stay out here. Ack!" Ziro yelped as the nearest Acklay approached him. The huge, green creature allowed Aayla to rub its nose, shutting its eyes in contentment, and then turned to fix its gaze upon Ziro. The Hutt cringed as the beast sniffed at his face, sure that he was about to get eaten.

However, the Acklay recoiled in disgust, its tongue hanging out as if it were saying, "Bleugh!"

Sugi and Bly laughed. The clone said, "I guess even the ravenous carnivores don't like the idea of you Hutts, even as food."

"I'm not surprised," Sugi said. "Nobody with any sense would."

* * *

Thanks to all my reviewers and I hope you like the quick updating as much as I do. Stay tuned. I should be back by tomorrow, considering it is now six minutes into Monday.

I hope Saturday comes quickly. Then I can watch Clone Wars and learn more about the important character, Senator Chuchi.

* * *

Next time...

What will become of Ziro and Shu Mai? Will Seripas have succeeded? What antics are everyone going to get up to?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 49 : Back To The Start**


	49. Back To The Start

And here's another quick update, so much so that I really have nothing to say, other than I've been working hard, and I have a new aim ahead of me – to complete a new story arc by the end of each month. Considering I have the day off tomorrow, I should be able to get Chapter 50 up and finish this arc by the last day of September, then I need to try and do at least ten chapters a month. If I do that, then I can finish this story by February 2012. Of course, I'll try and do more than ten a month, but this may not be possible.

**Digimon575** – I'd appreciate it if you got an account so that I can answer your questions without giving the answers to people who might not want to know them.

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* * *

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 49:- Back To The Start**

* * *

Shu Mai had never been so terrified in all her life. There had been times when she'd received brief scares during her exploits with the Commerce Guild, such as when some of her endeavours had come to close to being relieved to the Senate for her liking. There had also been the time where the Republic's clone army had suddenly attacked Geonosis. That too had been rather unnerving, but that had passed rather quickly as she and the other Separatist leaders that had signed the treaty, such as Wat Tambor, San Hill, Nute Gunray, Po Nudo, Passel Argente and Poggle the Lesser, had quickly escaped into space.

But here, she was alone and utterly defenceless, on a wild, jungle planet with no reinforcements, running through a half destroyed base that had been in pristine condition only ten minutes ago, surrounded by six horrifically powerful creatures that had taken out her droid forces with ease, and with a Jedi and two Bounty hunters hot on her heels.

She'd had never run quite so fast before either. She did have an advantage when it came to fleeing, and that was her legs. They were like those of a goat or an antelope, the hooved feet pounding the ground and throwing her forward with each step. If she could make it to the hangar, then she should be home free.

She span round the corner as such speeds that she tilted at a forty-five degree angle as she fled. She was already breathing heavily – she was rather unfit, having lived in finery for a lot of her life and having numerous guards to protect her in the past. But she wasn't about to pause to get her breath back, not considering the circumstances.

She decided that she was going to head straight back to her home planet Castell as soon as possible. She would withdraw and hide for a few months before making a reappearance. She didn't want to let the Jedi get their hands on her at any cost.

At last, she rounded another corner and there it was. The lift that would take her up to the hangar and away from danger. She could hear the footsteps of her pursuers catching up with her as she stumbled down the corridor and hurriedly pressed the button to open the door. She continued to press it wildly, glancing over her shoulder as she listened to the footsteps behind her and stealing looks at the walls and wondering if the Acklay were going to come crashing through at any second.

Fortunately, they didn't, and the lift doors opened. With a sigh of relief, Shu Mai rushed inside and began hitting the button to take her up to the hangar at top speed. The doors slowly began to grind shut. Shu Mai willed them on, and they closed just as Ahsoka appeared around the corner.

The Togruta grimaced. She, the Kyuzo and the Frenk that were behind her, jogged up to the lift and stood beside the door. They watched as the indicator button on the top moved upwards. Unfortunately, there was only one lift up to the hangar, so they couldn't just hop in another and head upwards in pursuit.

"Well, I hope that Seripas succeeded," said Ahsoka. "If he didn't, then we may be screwed."

"Have faith in our little friend," Rumi said as she saw the lift icon reach the top, indicating that Shu Mai had reached her destination. "We kept him on the team for a reason, and he won't let us down."

"Noone partorns pas de keki un les naims veedes," nodded Embo. "Shu Mai ne patiro pas de nos. Voug narques mesmo."

"I will," said Ahsoka. "But, all the same, we better get up there." She pushed the button and they watched the lift indicator begin to move downwards again to pick them up.

* * *

Shu Mai hurtled out of the lift and ran down the corridor and into the hangar. Behind her, she heard the lift begin to make its way down the shaft again to pick up the Jedi and the Bounty Hunters. At least she was safe from Acklay attack now, since the hangar was too high up for them to reach, but she still had to hurry or she'd be caught.

She could see her two _Sheatipede_-class shuttles that she kept standing by and ready for her to leave. Never had she been so pleased to see one. She put on one last burst of energy as she ran across the room and towards the nearest one. The ramp was already down, but this wasn't unusual, as this was her hangar. She hadn't imagined anyone would get into the base, so she'd thought there would be no chance of a theft.

The Gossam ran up the ramp and hit the button to lift it and shut the doors behind her. Then, she took a moment to slump against the doors in relief. She'd made it. She'd done it. She was home free.

But she still had to get a move on.

She ran for the front seat in the cockpit and sat in it. Usually she had someone else fly the ship for her, but she did know how to fly a shuttle. She'd been rather contemptuous at the idea of learning how to do it, but she was certainly grateful she'd had the lessons now. All she had to do was fly up into space and send out a distress signal to other Separatists, and she'd be picked up. And she didn't have to worry about her own anti-aircraft system shooting her down anymore. The turrets would have been shut down by the destruction of the power generator.

That meant she could be grateful to the Jedi for something. Who knew?

She with a smile of triumph, she hit the ignition button.

The engines sputtered and grated, as if they had been woken up and were saying "Huh, what?" But they didn't activate. They didn't hiss into life and start the power to the ship. They just died and shut down again, as if deciding that it wasn't worth the effort.

Shu Mai's heart started pounding again. This wasn't the way it was supposed to go. She was supposed to be out of there by now. She pushed the button again. And again. And again. Each time the engine made a similar noise, but each time it got quieter and quieter, until finally nothing happened at all.

A malfunction? Now? Of all times, why did it have to be now?

Shu Mai despaired. She was doomed. Doomed!

Except...

She still had the other shuttle.

There was still time.

Leaping up, she crossed to the door and sent down the ramp. She ran down and headed straight for the other shuttle, running for all the was worth. She glanced at the entrance to the lifts and saw Ahsoka, Embo and Rumi running down the corridor and into the hangar.

"Stop!" Ahsoka demanded. "Surrender now and come quietly."

Shu Mai ignored her and darted up the ramp into the second shuttle, closing the door behind her and cutting off her pursuers.

"Does that ever actually work?" asked Rumi.

"Come on!" said Ahsoka. "Let's get her out of there."

"I wouldn't worry too much," said Seripas, emerging from behind the crate he had been hiding behind. The little Bounty Hunter was grinning from ear to ear, or ear projection to ear projection, or whatever.

"Seripas," said Rumi. "I've never seen you looking so happy. I take it this means you succeeded in what you needed to do."

"Did I ever," Seripas nodded triumphantly, holding up his hand. There were several orange wires clutched in his fist. "I took the liberty of freeing these little guys from having to serve the Separatists."

"The ignition couplers," Ahsoka grinned, shaking her head. "You've outdone yourself, Seripas. It takes ages for something that isn't an astromech droid to reach those."

Seripas flushed at the praise. Lopmon emerged from behind a second crate. While Lopmon could have just as easily barred Shu Mai's way and physically prevented her from leaving, they had decided against having her do this. The reason for this was because they didn't want too many captured Separatist Leaders to know about them. Unfortunately they had had to reveal themselves to Wat Tambor, and Loathsom had seen Renamon, but if Shu Mai had no knowledge of the Digital creatures that had aided in thwarting her, so much the better.

"I think we've all done pretty well," the bunny Digimon said. "Shu Mai's not going anywhere. We can take our time now."

And sure enough, the engines of the shuttle began to sputter and hiss as the Gossam inside desperately tried to get them to work. It was futile though. Without any ignition couplers, there was no way the engines of that ship would ever be able to get started. The shuttle was just a hunk of dead weight now.

* * *

No! No! NO! **NO! **This could not be happening! One shuttle having a random malfunction was one thing, but both? Shu Mai knew something had been tampered with. She didn't know what or how, but somehow the Jedi and their associates had thwarted her, covering every possible escape route for her and making sure that she wouldn't be able to use them.

But that didn't stop the Presidente of the Commerce Guild from at least trying and hoping that somehow, it would work. But it didn't. And it wouldn't.

Now, Shu Mai truly despaired.

She looked out of the cockpit window in time to see Ahsoka leap onto the front of the shuttle and smirk in at her, lightsaber in her hand. Shu Mai backed away from the window, still trying to escape. She was refusing point-blank to stop running. Ahsoka shrugged and plunged the blade through the front of the ship.

Shu Mai yelped as the Padawan began to cut a hole in the front of the vessel. A large hole, that she'd be able to step through and grab her. Shaking her head in denial, refusing to believe this wasn't just a horrible dream, Shu Mai turned and ran for the doors. She opened them and ran down the ramp, right into the waiting hands of Embo and Rumi.

"Où lenzes-vos kay vus appes?" Embo laughed as he hooked his arm around one of Shu Mai's. Rumi caught the Gossam's other arm with her own and the two hoisted the smaller being right off her feet, and holding her in the air, kicking and struggling. Her hooves caught Embo in the thigh, but the Kyuzo didn't flinch and simply pointed his crossbow at the Separatist Leader's face.

Shu Mai stopped struggling abruptly and gulped.

"Good choice," said Rumi. "You don't want to rile Embo up."

Ahsoka appeared at the door to the shuttle and walked casually down the ramp, lightsaber hilt at the waist and one hand on her hip. "Nice try," she said. "But I'm afraid we outsmarted you, Presidente. I think you relied a little too much on your technology."

Shu Mai sagged, looking resigned to her fate in prison now. But she didn't say anything.

"I suppose you're wondering what we did to your shuttles and how we controlled the Acklay outside," said Ahsoka. "Well, I'm afraid I can't tell you the latter. Jedi secret," she whispered conspiratorially, with a meaningful look at Shu Mai. "But I can tell you what we did to your shuttles."

"That would be me," said Seripas, standing proud and tall... ish... as he walked over to Shu Mai and stood beside Ahsoka. It looked like all the little guy's confidence issues were gone with the wind. He smiled at his fellow Bounty Hunters. Rumi smiled back and Embo winked. "I happen to be quite good with machines."

Shu Mai looked at him incredulously. While Seripas no longer had issues with sizes, she did. She had been foiled by this little thing? To her, that was rather embarrassing. She secretly hoped that the rest of the Separatists never actually found out what had happened to cause her capture.

Ahsoka spotted her look and wagged a finger in her face. "Don't underestimate the little guy," she said. "Sometimes the best surprises come in small packages. Now, I think it's about time you got a little fresh air. Let's take her outside."

With that, the Jedi Padawan and the three Bounty Hunters turned and began to frogmarch their prisoner back towards the lift. From behind her crate, Lopmon watched them go. She smiled. Felucia had been doing its best to kick their asses ever since they had entered the planet's atmosphere, and Lopmon was glad that they would finally get to leave it, and that they got to show Felucia how to do a real ass-kicking before they left.

Knowing that she couldn't go with the others so that Shu Mai wouldn't see her, Lopmon took to the air and glided back to the grate that she and Seripas had entered the room from. Swooping back into the vents, the little bunny began to make her way along once again, heading for the entrance, where she would leave and join up with the Tamers until Ziro and Shu Mai were secured and out of sight. As she did, she sent a brief message to her brother, informing him to do the same thing.

And her brother was already on his way.

* * *

Once the droid army had been dealt with, the clone forces that were still alive had loaded back into the gunships. One of the LAAT's had gone back up to the Resolute, carrying the critically injured Blade and the damaged Spark, Cody and Ridge away for urgent medical treatment. Another gunship had been given directions by Obi-Wan to where the four that had landed the previous day had been left, so that they could be picked up. That left four other gunships, which were currently heading towards the Separatist facility, following the directions of the Digimon that had de-digivolved back to their Rookie stages.

Watching the chaos unfold through his sister's eyes, Terriermon had been able to inform Anakin and Obi-Wan that the power generator had been fried (though he hadn't said how it had happened) and that they could probably send transmissions again as the Separatists would be unable to jam their signals.

Anakin had immediately made to call Ahsoka, but Terriermon had stopped him, claiming that she was "busy." Anakin pressed him for information, but Terriermon had remained tight-lipped, much to Anakin's annoyance. So, Obi-Wan had insisted that they call Admiral Yularen and thank him for his decision to send down gunships ahead of schedule and explain why they had been unable to contact him. The Admiral had been surprised that they had discovered an unknown Separatist base, but he had merely stated that he was happy to be of service and would see them shortly.

As the four gunships sailed through the air, Anakin wouldn't let up on Terriermon. Similarly, Terriermon refused to tell Anakin anything. Things degenerated into a verbal sparring match between the two of them, with Obi-Wan and Renamon and Rex watching on the sidelines in amusement.

"Tell me, Terriermon," Anakin was saying. "This isn't funny."

"Actually, from where I'm standing, this is hilarious," said Terriermon. "Momentai, Anakin. You'll find out soon enough."

"Why are you being so stubborn?"

"Pot. Kettle."

"Sorry?"

"Another Earth saying, but I decided to shorten it a little."

"Will you stop coming out with Earth sayings and tell me what has happened since Lopmon saw us this morning."

"There's an Earth saying which goes – "Seeing is believing.""

"What did I just say about sayings?"

"Momentai."

"That's still a saying."

"While they're arguing," Obi-Wan muttered, turning to Renamon. "I don't suppose you would consider letting me know what Anakin is trying to pull out of Terriermon or are you going to remain equally silent."

"To be honest, I'd like to see the look on your face when you see what happened for yourself," said Renamon. "And Terriermon is right – seeing is believing. From what I've gathered about this planet, what happened might seem very far-fetched to you."

"Fair enough," said Obi-Wan. "I shall curb my curiosity."

"Although," Renamon said. "Try not to have a heart attack."

Obi-Wan blinked. "I beg your pardon," he said.

"When what we are talking about happened, Aayla said that you'd probably have a heart attack," said Renamon, smiling lightly. "I think she meant it as a joke, but still... try not to die on us."

"Erm, I'll remember that," said Obi-Wan, thoughtfully running through a list of options of what might give him a heart attack. There wasn't much on that list that seemed plausible – such things as Jango Fett coming back from the dead was not a possibility.

Rex looked on in anticipation. "My guess is that Commander Bly had a lot of fun. Am I right?"

"Parts of it weren't that fun," said Renamon, and Rex noticed she was rubbing her stomach as if remembering something painful. "But yes, I believe he did."

"Well, I'll get the full story out of him at some point," the Captain said.

"Generals," said Hawk, who was flying the ship they were in. "We have a visual on the Separatist base. And may I just say... Whoa."

"Well, that just raised my curiosity levels again," said Obi-Wan. "What does it look like?"

"Well, sir, it appears to be half-destroyed. It looks like the metal has been torn apart in several places by something very powerful. Beginning landing sequence."

"Torn apart?" asked Anakin, turning to Terriermon. "Was Lopmon behind that?"

"Nope," Terriermon grinned. Anakin groaned.

The gunships slowed down to a halt and lowered themselves down inside the walls of the ex-facility. The blast doors, which had been closed just in case of a last-minute attack, slid open and Anakin quickly stepped out. Obi-Wan and Rex followed and the three of them stared in amazement at the building before them.

Hawk's description had been very accurate. The surveillance towers, monitoring stations and a few Hyena bombers and AAT tanks had been tossed all over the place. The metal walls have massive rents in them, like viciously hooked claws had shredded them. The walls were wrecked, the ceiling collapsed in several places, and there was a large hole which had obviously been made by lightsaber in the blast doors.

Their sight was drawn to a large, purple Hutt that was making its way towards them, being held at gunpoint by Commander Bly and a Zabrak woman that they didn't know.

"Who's that?" asked Obi-Wan.

"That's Sugi," said Renamon, who had thrown her perception filter up so the Hutt wouldn't see her or Terriermon. "She's one of the four Bounty Hunters that Lopmon mentioned to you this morning."

"Ah, I see," said Obi-Wan. "Well, at least we didn't come out of this mission empty-handed. We managed to recapture our missing Hutt, which was our original mission."

"Yeah, but where's Aayla and Ahsoka and the other Bounty Hunters?" asked Anakin.

"All in good time," said Terriermon. "But for now, we need to go and meet up with our Tamers. Sayonara."

They heard no noise, but the Jedi could sense the Digimon moving away. Anakin and Obi-Wan glanced at one another, realising they'd have to find out the answers for themselves, and made their way forwards to meet Sugi, Bly and Ziro.

"Well, well, well," Anakin said. "So nice to see an unfriendly face like yours Ziro, held in custody where it belongs."

"I don't understand how you escaped," Ziro said. "I was watching it on the monitor. You should have perished at the hands of the droid army. How did the gunships get through the anti-aircraft system?"

"That would be telling," said Obi-Wan. "And we'd rather keep that one to ourselves."

"Why won't you Jedi give me a straight answer?" Ziro frowned in annoyance. "It's not fair. The Twi'lek Jedi wouldn't tell me anything either. She refused to tell me how she managed to control those things. Those horrible, horrible things." Ziro held his hands over his eyes, adding a touch of melodrama, which made Bly and Sugi roll their eyes and the Jedi look at him in bemusement.

"What are you doing?" asked Anakin.

"Hold on a second," said Obi-Wan. "Aayla wouldn't tell you how she controlled "those things?" What things?"

A horribly familiar screeching noise sounded from behind the ex-facility – a noise that made Obi-Wan's blood run cold. The last time he had heard that noise was when he was on Geonosis and was about to be executed by the Geonosians. They had set a vicious creature onto him.

"Was that what I think it was?" asked Anakin, having also heard it as he too had been there.

The black-crested Acklay rounded the corner and looked at them, it's eyes boring into the Jedi.

"If you thought it was an Acklay, then yes," said Obi-Wan, instantly igniting his lightsaber and holding it ready, waiting for the Acklay's inevitable charge. "Blasted things. If there's one thing I really don't like, it's an Acklay."

"Careful, sir," said Bly. Anakin and Obi-Wan noticed that he didn't look at all concerned by the presence of a voracious carnivore. "You shouldn't go attacking our allies like that. That wouldn't go down well with General Secura."

"You've lost me," said Obi-Wan, turning his attention back to the Acklay. The giant beast was walking towards them at a leisurely pace. The closer it got the more Obi-Wan's grip on his lightsaber tensed.

"Obi-Wan," said a female voice with a subtle French accent. "Why are you brandishing your weapon at me?"

Obi-Wan faltered as he finally spotted the fact that Aayla Secura was sitting on the beast's back as if she were riding a blurrg. The Acklay stopped within a few feet of them and turned side on, so Aayla could be more easily seen – she'd been partially concealed behind its long neck. Behind them, more Acklay began to emerge from around the side of the building.

"Those things?" Obi-Wan whispered, staring at the smirking Twi'lek in disbelief. "You mean to tell me that you managed to tame a pack of these things? You were right. I almost did have a heart attack."

Aayla laughed. Anakin's eyebrows rose as he finally understood what Terriermon had been talking about. The bunny had been right – seeing was believing. If Terriermon had just told him then he probably never would have believed him.

"Impressive," said Anakin. "Very impressive. How in the universe did you do it?"

"How do you think?" Aayla cast a meaningful look at them, eyes flicking to Ziro.

"Ah, one of the... yes, I get it now," said Obi-Wan, deactivating his lightsaber, but keeping a wary eye on the savage predator all the same. "This has to be a first. Riding an Acklay? What will we pull off next?"

"I don't know, but I can't wait to find out," nodded Aayla, hopping her mount and patting its shoulder. "I see you've met Sugi."

"Not really," said Obi-Wan. "I was about to introduce myself, but I was interrupted. Good morning, my dear," he addressed the Zabrak. "I am Obi-Wan Kenobi and this is Anakin Skywalker."

"Yes, I know who you are," said Sugi. "Ahsoka has told me of a few of your exploits. You have quite a track record."

"And I understand that you are an honourable Bounty Hunter," nodded Obi-Wan. "Quite a rare thing in this galaxy. Not unheard of but still... It is a pleasure to meet you."

"Speaking of Ahsoka," said Anakin. "Where is my Padawan? Why hasn't she come to greet her Master?"

"I'm right here, Master," Ahsoka's voice sounded from behind Ziro. Anakin moved around the Hutt and saw the Togruta running towards them from the facility. There was Kyuzo and a Frenk walking behind her, carrying a Gossam between them, and there was a small creature that Anakin didn't recognise walking next to them.

"Snips!" Anakin grinned running over to meet his Padawan half-way. "Am I glad to see you?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?" asked Ahsoka. "I'm glad to see you too, Skyguy. I see you made it out of your little jam in one piece."

"Just barely," admitted Anakin. "It was a pretty close call."

"I've had a pretty few close calls myself over the past couple of days," nodded Ahsoka. "I must say I'm looking forward to getting off this forsaken planet."

"Likewise," said Anakin. "Who are your friends?"

"Oh, right," said Ahsoka, turning to the Bounty Hunters that had just come up behind her. "This is Embo, this is Rumi and this is Seripas," she indicated the three in turn. Embo tipped his hat in acknowledgement, Rumi nodded and Seripas gave Anakin a thumbs up.

"And this," Ahsoka indicated the Gossam with distaste, "is..."

"...Shu Mai," Obi-Wan finished for her, walking over to stand beside them and look the prisoner in the face. "One of the major Separatist Leaders and Presidente of the Commerce Guild. So, you're who was in charge of this facility. Congratulations on apprehending her Ahsoka."

"Well," said Ahsoka. "While I played my part, Master Kenobi, she would have escaped if it hadn't been for Seripas. He sneaked through the ventilation system and sabotaged the shuttles in the hangar so that she couldn't leave."

"Is that so?" Obi-Wan glanced down at the Bounty Hunter. "Well then, congratulations are in order for you all. You Bounty Hunters have provided invaluable assistance in recapturing a dangerous fugitive and a powerful enemy of the Republic. You have truly earned your pay."

"Glad to hear it," said Sugi. "Good to see we were some good after the Jedi made our help on our previous assignment almost negligible."

"Don't complain," laughed Aayla. "You're earning more pay for this one than you could for the other."

"True," said Sugi.

"And Obi-Wan," the Twi'lek tapped the Jedi Master on the shoulder. "If you're offering congratulations, then why don't you offer it to our Acklay friends. They provided all the chaos we needed to slip into the base undetected and catch Ziro and Shu Mai before they escaped."

Obi-Wan looked up at the six powerful beasts, who were all looking at him expectantly. "Er, yes," he coughed uncomfortably. "Erm... well... good job, you lot. You're assistance is... er... greatly appreciated."

The Acklay screeched in triumph. Obi-Wan shivered. Anakin smirked.

"It's not often you get to see Master Kenobi squirm, is it Master?" Ahsoka whispered to him.

"No, and I am determined to get all the amusement I can from this instance," the Chosen One replied.

"Commander Bly," Aayla turned to the clone who had been patiently waiting to be addressed. "Take Ziro and Shu Mai away. Keep them under heavy guard and call for the _Resolute_ to send a ship to pick up the prisoners.

"Right away, sir," Bly nodded. He and Rex and a bunch of other clones began to shepherd Ziro away. Embo and Rumi, passed Shu Mai to a couple of others, and the white-armoured men took the two prisoners out of sight.

"It's about time you moved them somewhere else," Terriermon's voice said from thin-air, startling everyone who wasn't a Jedi. "It was getting kind of annoying to be listening to the whole conversation and not being able to join in."

"Terriermon," said Henry's voice.

"Momentai."

"That's your answer to everything, isn't it?" Aayla smiled as Renamon dropped her perception filter, revealing that she, Terriermon, Lopmon and the Tamers had all been standing there for some time.

"Pretty much, yeah," grinned the white bunny.

"Well, I was just trying to stave off your witty little comments for as long as possible," Aayla said, with a straight face.

"Hey!"

"Momentai."

"I'm not going to shout this time, because I know that's the only reason you say my word, Aayla," the bunny scowled.

"You're making progress then," said Aayla.

"It's surprising me too," said Renamon. "Terriermon hardly ever makes progress."

Terriermon pouted and folded his arms, turning his head away.

"Another sign of progress right there," chuckled Henry. "Usually Terriermon would come back to that with a quick retort, but he's chosen to stay silent this time. Congratulations Terriermon. You're losing your touch."

Terriermon went white...er, and immediately turned to Anakin and said, "So, about your next prank on Ahsoka..."

As Terriermon and Anakin began to discuss things, while Ahsoka tried to discreetly listen in on their conversation, Conor and Max walked over. The two clones stood to attention and saluted Aayla and Obi-Wan.

"Sirs," they said.

"Good men," said Obi-Wan. "I heard you two were very brave when Commander Bly was grabbed by a Sarlacc and you too tried to pull him out."

"Thank you, sir," said Max. "But if anyone deserves credit for that incident, it's Lopmon. After all, we didn't stick out arms down its gullet."

Lopmon shuffled awkwardly and Suzie scooped up her partner and hugged her, saying, "Yay! Lopmon is hero!"

"Lopmon's always been a hero," pointed out Rika. "Or a heroine, or whatever."

"That makes me sound like some kind of supermon," said Lopmon. "Besides, I was just trying to help."

"Sir," said Conor to Obi-Wan. "Where are Ridge, Lash and Blade? I'd quite like to join up with my brothers again."

"Ah," Obi-Wan faltered for a moment. "Yes. Ahem. Well, Blade was critically injured and had to be taken back to the _Resolute_. Ridge was also wounded in the fighting, though not as badly, so he too went to receive treatment. As for Lash... I'm sorry Conor, but, he didn't make it. He fell in the line of duty."

"Oh," Conor looked momentarily stunned. His face fell and he looked at the ground. He'd lost many brothers, so he was rather hardened to the deaths of fellow clones by now, but the idea of there being no Lash was unreal. He sighed.

"At least he fell heroically," said Renamon, putting a paw on Conor's shoulder. "If there is any way a soldier like him wants to go, it's in a battle defending all his brothers."

"Yeah, I know," Conor said. "I know. But all the same, I'll feel better when we got off this planet."

"I think we all would," nodded Aayla. "And to that end, we must return to Coruscant."

"Agreed," said Obi-Wan. "We need to return Ziro to prison and add Shu Mai to our collection of captured Separatist leaders."

"About time," said Rika. "I can't say that I'll be completely sorry to leave this planet behind. It's done everything it can think of to wipe us out."

"Yes," said Renamon. "It is a very harsh place, very similar to the Digital World. Fortunately there are no Data Streams, or this place would really be a hellhole."

"But what are we going to do with the Acklay?" asked Suzie. The foremost of the big creatures looked down at her with curiosity. "What will happen to them?"

"As much as I would like to," said Aayla. "We cannot take them with us. Acklay are not suited to being indoors or to being in city's like Coruscant. We'll have to leave them here and they can become part of the wild again."

"So, they'll just become vicious animals again?" Suzie asked.

"They have no choice if they want to feed themselves," said Aayla.

"However," Renamon put in. "My spell will hold. They will no longer blindly attack anything that they can find and try to make it into a meal. The natives on this planet should now be safe from this particular pack. Who knows, these guys might actually help to fend other predators away from the natives."

"Okay," said Suzie. "When are we going?"

"Right away," said Aayla, turning to the Acklay. "Since you can now understand what I say, I can tell you that you all did a superb job out there today. You did exactly what was needed of you, and if I may say so, you all have a knack for creating utter chaos."

The lead Acklay nodded in thanks, bending its head down to the Twi'lek and allowing her to rub its crest one last time. Then it turned to Renamon and allowed her to do the same. The large animals seemed to have gotten particularly close to these two over the course of the day.

"Now, go and be free," said Renamon to the group of six.

"And may the Force be with you," Aayla added, particularly to the one with the black crest.

In unison, the Acklay screeched loudly, almost deafening those that they were standing next to. Then, they turned and lumbered off into the forest, exiting through the hole in the wall they had smashed through earlier. The group of others waved as they went, even Anakin, who hadn't really worked with them, and Obi-Wan, who was nudged Aayla to do so after the Twi'lek spotted Suzie looking at the Jedi Master with an annoyed look on her face.

The last Acklay to exit the Separatist facility they had torn to pieces temporarily stopped and turned back to them. It winked, and then turned around to follow its packmates out into the rainforest.

"Aaaww, I miss them already," said Suzie. "Even though they tried to kill us this morning."

Terriermon laughed. "There's a sentence I don't think many people have ever said."

"Well, we'd best get underway," said Anakin. "Let's head back up to _Resolute._"

"We need to take a slight detour first, Master," said Ahsoka. "These Bounty Hunters left their own ship back at the farm that we helped last night. We can drop them off there and then head back to Coruscant."

"Yes, that would be preferable to having us walk back," said Sugi. "Especially now our mode of transportation has left."

"Alright," said Obi-Wan. "Let's get underway." He turned and the group began to make their way to the gunships. There were so many more people now that they had to split into two gunships before they could fit properly. They briefly paused before taking off, watching Ziro and Shu Mai being forced into the shuttle that had just arrived to pick up the prisoners, and take them back to the cruiser, and then they lifted off themselves and headed back to the farm.

* * *

It didn't take very long to arrive at the little village where the tortoise-people lived. About ten minutes after take-off, the gunships were pulled to a halt and settled down on the turf, ensuring that they kept well away from the crops the natives were tending to. The little farmers looked up in curiosity and slight trepidation, but when the blast doors opened and they saw the people who had left their village yesterday, they relaxed.

Cassis approached them as they walked towards the main huts. "Welcome back, my friends," he said. "I trust that your mission was successful?"

"More than successful," said Sugi. "The Separatist base has been reduced to rubble."

"I suppose we have to thank you again for that," said Cassis. "If that base had gotten up and running, then who knows what they might do to humble farmers like us who live so close."

"Think nothing of it," the Zabrak said. "We're just doing what we can."

"And having a lot of fun whilst doing it," grinned Terriermon. "I haven't gotten to blow things up like that for a long time."

"No, not since Ogudomon," agreed Renamon. "It certainly was a thrill, I have to admit."

"I'll take your word for it," said Cassis. "As promised, Sugi, your ship has been kept safe and we have ensured that nobody has touched it."

"You have our thanks, Cassis," Sugi nodded, as did the other three Bounty Hunters.

"By the way, Cassis," Ahsoka grinned. "Do you know of a local pack of about nine Acklay in the area?"

Cassis shuddered. "Oh yes, we know of them. There have been many nights where we have been kept awake by their screeches as they tried to breach our electrofence. Fortunately, we have managed to keep them out over the years. I shudder to think what would happen if they ever got it."

"Well, you don't have to worry about them anymore," Ahsoka said smugly.

"That isn't very humble, Snips," Anakin muttered to her.

"We don't?" asked Cassis. "Why not?"

"Well, for a start, there are only six of them now," said Ahsoka. "But that's not the main reason. The main reason is that Renamon put a spell on them that gave them intelligence and a conscience. They helped us to take out the Separatist base. You needn't worry about them attacking you anymore – they might be able to keep other predators away from you too."

Cassis' jaw dropped. As he questioned Ahsoka, Sugi beckoned Renamon and Aayla over to one side. Sugi and her comrades walked a few paces away from the others, while the Twi'lek and the Digimon, all three of them, and the Tamers too, followed.

"Listen," said Sugi. "We must be going now, but I assume I don't need to remind you of our little agreement."

"No," said Aayla. "While I know you put honour and right first, you still need to make a living. Don't worry, I'll acquire the credits that I promised when I get back to Coruscant and send them to you as quickly as I can."

"Cormen qoulos-nous êfre sûs vus de kepa?" asked Embo.

"A Jedi's word is her bond," said Aayla. "You should receive them within the week."

"I believe you," said Seripas. "After all I've seen of you I believe that you, all of you, have pure and honest hearts."

"We like to think so," said Lopmon.

"And remember, there is your side of the bargain to hold up," pointed out Rika.

"Of course," said Sugi. "We will not breathe a word of the existence of you Digimon to anyone. Your secret is safe with us."

"Good," said Renamon. "I'd hate to have to hunt you down."

Sugi chuckled.

"Of course," said Aayla. "If I am going to send credits to you, I'm going to have to know where to send them. I could do with your contact details."

Rumi held out her hand her hand and said, "Pass me your comlink, please." Aayla looked down at the little device attached to her sleeve and held out her arm. The Frenk took hold of Aayla's arm and fiddled with the comlink for a couple of seconds. Then she released her grip and said, "There. You should now be able to contact us whenever you need to."

Aayla nodded, knowing Rumi had just entered in their scramble-code, which she'd be able to transfer to other devices if she wanted to talk via holoprojector.

"As for where we live," said Sugi. "We have a base at co-ordinates 892247-cross-9KL92. Will you be able to remember that?"

"Of course," said Terriermon. "We've got Henry. He never forgets a number, even a long one like that."

"I'll take that as a compliment and not a joke," said Henry.

"And I have it too," said Aayla.

"Like we won't tell about the Digimon," Sugi added, "We would appreciate it if you didn't tell people where our base was. Bounty Hunting is a dangerous profession and despite the fact we're honourable, we do have enemies."

"In that case, we shall acquire your credits and deliver them to you personally," said Aayla.

"Much appreciated," nodded Sugi.

"Well, I guess this is goodbye," said Rika. "It was a pleasure to work with you. And Embo, thanks again for saving my life."

"And mine too," added Renamon. Embo made no comment, but he did tip his hat.

"This isn't necessarily goodbye," said Sugi. "If ever any of you require the services of a Bounty Hunter in the future, we would be more than happy to be of service."

"Thank you," said Lopmon. "We'll be sure to remember it."

"And likewise, if you need our help, we will come to your aid, provided we aren't too busy," said Aayla.

"Thank you. Well, so long," said the Zabrak, and with that, she, the Kyuzo, the Frenk and the little guy all turned and walked back towards their ship. The Jedi, Tamers and Digimon watched them go for a few seconds, before turning to join up with the others.

* * *

Once they got back on the _Resolute_, Obi-Wan immediately informed the rest of the Jedi Council of the events that had transpired on the planet via hologram. All of the other eleven Jedi, including Mace Windu, were extremely impressed with what they had managed to accomplish in a mere two days. What had been a simple recapture mission had resulted in driving a bunch of pirates away from a farm, recapturing the charge, _and _wrecking a Separatist outpost and army all at once, and that was omitting the other details – like the first person ever to survive being eaten by a Sarlacc, the first people ever to ride an Acklay. Not to mention surviving an attack by Gigantoformicums.

Placing their prisoners in the detention level, the people on the cruiser made for Coruscant with all speed. A quick hyperspace journey later and they reappeared above the giant city planet.

"Just look at the old place," said Ahsoka. "I never thought I would be so happy to see it."

"There's no place like home," said Lopmon.

"Even if it is a surrogate one," nodded Renamon.

"And now time for a meeting with the Chancellor," said Obi-Wan. "Not exactly my idea of fun, but I suppose we must."

"I wonder what they'll think when they find out my Padawan upstaged me so much on this mission," Anakin shook his head. "I'll never become a Jedi Master at this rate."

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Skyguy," Ahsoka patted him on the back. "You've been upstaging me for most of our missions, so it's only fair that I get a few in."

"Yeah, but I've never upstaged you this much," pointed out Anakin, though he did it good-naturedly.

"Look at it this way, Anakin," said Renamon. "This is the first proper mission that the A-Team have had together, since the last one was kept under wraps considering what we discovered." She was alluding to the Darth Sidious discovery. "And while your reputation is currently very high, the other two members are slightly lower, so maybe this might help bring them up to your level."

"Yeah, that's true," said Anakin. "But let's try to make sure we all stay together on the next mission."

"That would be preferable," nodded Aayla.

"Yes," Obi-Wan nodded. "And now that we're back, I'm going to start looking into this whole Darth Sidious business."

Obi-Wan had made a rather startling revelation when they had presented the information that had gotten from Ventress regarding Darth Sidious that had seriously unnerved everyone present. Obi-Wan had said that when he was being held captive on Geonosis by Count Dooku, the Sith Lord had mentioned Darth Sidious to him, claiming that hundreds of Senators were under his influence. He hadn't mentioned it before, as he had just assumed Dooku had lied to him in an attempt to get him to join Dooku's forces.

But now, that had changed. Now, everyone was extremely glad that they weren't telling the Senate about the Digimon. Even Anakin was having no hesitations about not telling the Chancellor and Padmé now. If what Dooku had said had been true, then the Digimon were now their biggest advantage.

"I'm going to start making investigations into the Senate," said Obi-Wan. "The only problem is where to start. We can't exactly tell the Chancellor that we now know this information without giving him an explanation of how we found out, and we can't tell him what really happened either."

"You could always say I overheard Ventress or Grievous let something slip," said Ahsoka.

"Yes, but if the Sith is really there, he would see through that," said Obi-Wan. "I'll have to think about this before I proceed."

"Eesh, the mood level suddenly dropped to zero," said Terriermon. "Momentai. We'll find this Sidious guy and when we do... well, need I say it?"

"I think we all have an idea about what you would say next," said Henry.

"Something along the lines of an ass-whupping, perhaps?" guessed Aayla.

"Right on the button," grinned Terriermon.

"I wouldn't take a Sith Lord that lightly, Terriermon," said Obi-Wan. "Darth Sidious is likely to be stronger than Asajj Ventress was, an you caught her off guard."

"Yes, that is true," said Terriermon. "But you still have yet to see our full potential as well."

"Ah yes," smiled the Jedi Master. "I've seen the Ultimate stages of two of you, though I missed yours Lopmon. But you have another level higher, don't you? Mega, I believe it was?"

"Yeah," said Terriermon. "I'd like to see Darth Sidious defend himself from a Mega Barrage."

"Sounds destructive," said Anakin. "I look forward to the day I see it."

"It'll be a blast."

"No punning, please," Renamon said.

"Sorry."

"Well," said Aayla. "If you don't mind, Obi-Wan, I would quite like to return to the Jedi Temple. The past two days have been rather trying, and I believe I need to meditate."

"As do I," said Ahsoka. "I think it might do me some good."

"You don't want to come and make the report to the Chancellor?" asked Obi-Wan.

"Not particularly," said Aayla. "For three reasons, firstly I could do with a rest, secondly what I have to tell would probably sound far-fetched coming from my mouth, and thirdly, he'll probably want us to speak to the Holonet about our experiences."

"He's going to want that last one even if you're not there," pointed out Obi-Wan. "You'll still have to do that at some point."

"I know," said Aayla. "If we continue to do things like that then I'll have to get used to it," smiled Aayla. "And I will do. Just not now. Later. I'd like to recuperate in the Temple first."

"Me too," said Ahsoka.

"Alright then. In that case, I'll join you," said Anakin. "Either we all make a statement to the Holonet together or we don't do it at all."

"Way to feel the love," Terriermon grinned. "I like your team spirit."

"So do I," said Obi-Wan. "Especially considering it's unusual for Anakin not to grab glory where he can."

"I'm not that bad," said Anakin.

"No, you're not," said Obi-Wan. "I am deliberately exaggerating for effect."

"Hyperbole," nodded Terriermon sagely. "I learnt that word from Henry."

"But, it is true to an extent," said Obi-Wan. "You usually don't pass up a chance to visit the Senate and tell people about what happened first hand. Why the change?"

"Well, I suppose it's partly because I didn't do all that much this time," said Anakin. "And partly because... well, we're working with the Digimon, and they're such a tight-knit team that I suppose I feel that the three of us Jedi should emulate them. We'd become closer as a team, and that would make us become closer to the Digimon as a team."

"A moment of wisdom," Obi-Wan chuckled. "I never thought I'd see the day. Alright then, you three can stay at the Temple when we drop off our prisoners and I'll go and report to the Chancellor alone."

"Thank you, Anakin," said Renamon.

Anakin blinked. "For what?"

"For sticking by us, your new team," said the yellow fox. "We are not just your colleagues. We are your friends. Back home, there is a television show about Digimon, which at times can be rather childish, but there is one phrase from it that is particularly wise, and that is, 'There's no I in team.' I believe that applies to this situation. We do not go it alone. We stand by each other. Thank you."

Anakin flushed. "Well, I'm just trying to do the right thing. Jedi are supposed to be selfless."

"And you just proved that you can be, Master," said Ahsoka. "But, since you're not going to see the Chancellor like you usually do, I guess there's no need for the piece of paper I put on your back."

Anakin scowled, reached behind him and plucked it off. He read aloud, "I eat beetles?"

Terriermon and Suzie howled with laughter. Obi-Wan chuckled and said, "Well, you certainly kept that one to yourself."

"Come on, Snips," Anakin folded his arms. "What would the Senators or the Chancellor have thought if they'd see this?"

"I'd imagine they'd think it was funny," said Ahsoka innocently. "It certainly would be more funny for me if they'd seen it."

"Right, that's it! Come here!"

"Gah!" Ahsoka yelped as she tried to run, but Anakin seized her around the waist in one arm and begin furiously tickling her side with the other hand.

"GAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! NOHOHOHOHOHO STOHOHOHOHOHP PLEHEHEHEHEHEHEASE! I'LL BE I SWEHEHEHEHEHEAAR!"

"What do you think the Senators would think of this, Snips?" Anakin shouted over her uproarious laughter. "Would they think this was funny too?"

"YEHEHEHEHEHEHEHES! PLEHEHEHEHEASE LEHEHEHEHET ME GOHOHOHOHO!"

"I hope he doesn't start doing that to me," said Aayla.

"Aaw, are you ticklish too?" Terriermon asked. His ear came up and the fingers scrabbled Aayla's stomach. The Twi'lek giggled and stepped out of the way.

"Terriermon," said Renamon. "Leave Aayla alone."

"Or what?" asked Terriermon.

"Need I remind you that I know all your ticklish spots?" Renamon advanced on her mate.

"Eep."

* * *

Once the tickle-fest was over, and Anakin had released his Padawan and Renamon her mate (plus Aayla, as during the last few seconds the fox had whipped her bushy tail around Aayla's exposed stomach unexpectedly, resulting in more laughter from the Twi'lek), they reached the Jedi Temple and descended in a gunship.

The A-Team and the Digimon and Tamers, (the latter two under the perception filter) watched as Shu Mai and Ziro the Hutt were unloaded from the cruiser and herded towards the detention level. Then Obi-Wan made his leave and went to the Senate Building to talk to the Chancellor and the other Council Members who were there waiting for him.

After this, the others began to walk through the halls of the Jedi Temple, towards the meditation chambers.

"Well, that's the end of another one of our intrepid adventures," said Rika as they walked. "Has anyone else lost count over how many more we've got than the others back in our world now?"

"Who's counting?" asked Henry. "We don't know what they're doing back there. For all we know, they could be holding back another really powerful evil Digimon as we speak."

"Don't even talk like that," said Rika. "I hate the idea of them fighting a huge battle like that and with us being completely unable to help."

"They'll still be looking for us, right?" asked Suzie.

"Oh yes," said Henry. "Don't worry. It'll probably be many years before they give up hope entirely. However, while I hate to put a downer on things, they probably don't have a clue what happened to us."

"I'm not so sure," murmured Lopmon. The Tamers turned to look at the brown bunny.

"What do you mean?" asked Henry.

"I mean that, while we were on Felucia, while Terriermon was doing that stand-up thing of his, I thought I felt, for a fraction of a second, a presence that was eerily familiar, but one that I can't place. I'm not even sure how to explain what I felt, but I'm sure someone was there."

"Why didn't you say anything?" asked Rika.

"I thought I was imagining it," shrugged Lopmon. "But the more I think about it the more I am sure that I wasn't."

"Well, let's hope that you're right, and they do have an inkling of what's going on," said Henry. "Of course, we won't leave until the war is over – we've committed ourselves to this and we don't back down from our promises – but I'd still like to return home when I can."

"Me too," said Rika.

"So, what do you think our next great adventure will be?" asked Suzie. "And will there be ice-cream?"

"We don't know, Suzie," said Terriermon. "But, as Confucius say, 'Let's see what tomorrow brings.'"

"You are full of phrases today," said Anakin.

"When did Confucius say that?" asked Henry.

"He could have done," said Terriermon defensively. "You don't know he didn't. Anyway, Aayla, after meditation, you are going to fulfil your promise and learn how to sing."

Aayla chuckled. "Alright. I'll do it. I don't back down from my promises either. Which reminds me, I need to sort out the credits for Sugi and the others."

"Sing?" asked Anakin, bemused. "When was this?"

* * *

Those of you who aren't dedicated Star Wars fans like I am might not realise the full extent of the importance of this particular story arc. Felucia was a planet that remained a problem throughout the whole of the Clone Wars once it was discovered a Separatist base. Even more importantly, it is the planet where Aayla Secura dies in the canon version. With the planet taken early on, this leaves massive implications for her future. What will become of her in future? We don't know. Well, I do, but you don't.

This is the biggest change to the Star Wars universe yet. And the changes are just going to keep getting bigger.

Hope you all enjoyed that. Please review. I know there are more people reading my stories than there are people that review. I have several people who have my story on the alert list who never review. I'd appreciate your input, guys and girls.

* * *

Next time...

Impmon chapter. Things are steadily worsening for our purple hero. Flashbacks, odd feelings, shadows and a wary Cyberdramon are all coming up in the next chapter.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 50 : Haunting**


	50. Haunting

And thus we bring the Felucia arc to a close with our next update for Impmon. My next project will be the Every 50 oneshot for White Keyblade Oathkeeper, who finally did get back to me with a new idea that I can work on (I went with option one). And not to mention Movie-Brat won the oneshot for Every 50 AGAIN! I'll work on that one when I've written Chapter 55. If I reach 350 reviews before I post Movie-Brat's oneshot, then I'll be moving it to every 100. I don't want to spend too much time focusing on oneshots instead of the main story.

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* * *

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 50:- Haunting**

* * *

The cavern roof loomed high above, casting a series of shadows across the floor and the walls with the many lance-like stalactites that hung down like stone icicles. The stalagmites rose up to meet them in numerous places, occasionally meeting to form a pillar, but, all in all, it made the cave look like a giant mouth full of fangs, ready to chomp down on anyone that intruded into the tunnels.

The air was thick with malice and evil. All warmth seemed to have been stolen away from the deep and foreboding place. It ought to have been the place where you might see skeletons lying around of devoured humans and animals. There was none of that here, but there was a sense that something must have died here, horribly and disturbingly. It reeked of death and despair, and the only thing that could be vaguely compared to happiness was a sadistic glee.

A large pool of water took up most of the back of the huge natural construction. The giant, red crocodile Demon Lord, Leviamon, was semi-submerged in this pool. His two tails and the back half of his torso and legs were underwater, while the rest of him rested on dry land, looking for all the world like a real crocodile, except for his obvious differences.

A large, stone altar-like construction rested in the centre of the dry area, decorated with carvings of snakes, demons and Digimon being tortured, with large stone teeth jutting up from the top and large claws around the base. Surrounding it were five figures, all bathed in shadow and none of them saying a word. There was the occasional swish as a tail swept back and fourth, and the tapping of a staff on the stone floor, but other than this, the figures could almost be statues. Large, terrible, evil-looking statues. The darkness seemed to swirl around them, intensifying and congealing at the point where they all stood, as if trying to get as close as possible to them.

"So nice of you not to start without me," said a voice, as a seventh figure entered the cavern. From the faint light emanating from the entrance, it was quite clear that the newcomer was Lilithmon. She floated down towards a space beside the altar which had obviously been left for, swaying her hips and displaying her chest prominently.

"About time you got here, you sorry excuse for a prostitute," snarled a male voice with a heavy accent. "I don't got all day here. I could have been out loading more data by now."

"Now, now," said a rich, male voice, with what sounded like a smirk. "Language, Beelzemon. I'd appreciate it if you didn't go insulting all of your comrades like that. It doesn't make me happy."

"Whatever," Beelzemon snorted. "I can call her whatever I like. She can't do nothing about it."

"Oh, couldn't I?" Lilithmon smiled seductively. She brought her rotten and gnarled arm out from her dress and displayed her prominent claws. "You are too overconfident, Beelzemon. Perhaps I should fix that for you."

"Bah!" Beelzemon's shotguns appeared in his hands in the blink of an eye. "Bring it on! I'll fill you with so much metal you wouldn't be able to escape a magnet."

"Enough," said the other speaker, in a voice that wasn't quite a shout but wasn't normal volume either. Beelzemon and Lilithmon remained glaring at each other angrily for a few more seconds before Lilithmon dropped her aggressive stance.

"Yes, my lord Lucemon," she said, adding a playful edge to her voice. Beelzemon snorted in disgust and holstered his weapons.

"Honestly," said another voice – a elderly, wizened sounding one. "You both are always so quick to flare up. Why can you not just put aside your brazenness for while."

"Or what?" asked Beelzemon. "You gonna cast a spell on me, Barbamon? You're so slow you never get anything done so don't go telling me to..."

"Can we please get on with this," Leviamon hissed from his pool. "I am a very patient Digimon, but we have been planning this meeting for a week now and I am reaching my limit. Let us proceed to why we are here."

"I agree," said a deep voice, deeper than Beelzemon's. "The Digital World lies in chaos under our iron fist and I want to crush the last of the resistance from the native Digimon. I cannot wait to pull them apart, particle by particle and harvest every last scrap of their data."

"You said it, Daemon," Beelzemon nodded. "We're wasting time here. Time we could be using to grow stronger and take on the Sovereigns."

"All in good time, Beelzemon," said Lucemon Chaos Mode, his wings, both angelic and demonic, expanded and flapped in anticipation. "But we must first plan what we are to do. I may be the Demon Lord of pride, but even I am not too proud to believe that the Sovereigns will be easy to take down."

"Ha!" Daemon growled. "We have murdered and ravaged across three-quarters of the Digital World and have harvested the data of hundreds of Digimon. We should march on the Sovereigns castles right now and wipe them off the face of the Digital World."

"By all means, Daemon," said Lilitmon. "Go ahead. We aren't stopping you."

"For once I agree with the bitch," said Beelzemon. "Go, if you think you're strong enough. When you get killed, it'll mean more data for me."

Daemon scowled and his hand erupted in a flame, lighting up the area briefly. Lucemon looked relatively human, except for the wings sprouting from his back and head – on one side they were white and feathered and on the other side black and skin. Barbamon resembled an old man in a flowing black, red and purple robe, a long staff with a red jewel embedded at the top in one gnarled hand and a long, flowing beard descending from his chin to his feet.

The other being there was floating in the air. Compared to everyone else there it looked rather cute. It was a giant teddy-bear, with bat-like ears and ram's horns protruding from its head and chains wrapped around its torso, securing what looked like an alarm clock to its chest.

"What's to stop me from deleting you and taking all of your data, Beelzemon?" Daemon growled, holding the flame in front of the Demon Lord's face. Daemon himself looked more like the Devil than a Demon, a figured with a hooded red robe that covered his face and made only his glowing, yellow eyes visible, and horns protruding from the sides of his head.

"Yeah, yeah," Beelzemon grunted. "There does that Wrath of yours again. But face it, you'd be dead meat if you went up against the Sovereigns. You're not that powerful yet."

"Do be quiet, Daemon," Lucemon held up a hand. "Get much louder and you'll wake up Belphemon."

Daemon grunted and extinguished his hand, plunging everyone back into darkness again.

"And now, we shall commence with the meeting," said Lucemon.

"About time," muttered Beelzemon.

Lucemon waved his hand and the altar they were all standing glowed and the top of it suddenly took on the image of a map of the Digital World, divided into seven to represent each individual plane of existence there.

"As Daemon so eloquently put it, three-quarters of the Digital World is ours. The Sovereigns have been powerless to stop us before, but now that we are nearing their strongholds we shall have to be discrete. I have isolated the most powerful Digimon that we have left to slay and take their data. The best approach would be to split up and take them on our own. I believe we are now strong enough to take anything except the Sovereigns individually."

"I look forward to it," said Daemon.

"When do we head out?" asked Leviamon.

"As soon as we divide the enemies between us," said Lucemon. "But there is another thing to consider. As you all know, the human World rests alongside the Digital one we are now conquering. I believe I have discovered a way for us to head for that world – a world that the Sovereigns have no control over and where there would be no-one to stop us. That is a possibility too, is it not?"

"A whole new world of riches to exploit?" Barbamon rubbed his clawed hands together in anticipation.

"And new opportunities for me," said Lilithmon, licking her lips. "I look forward to it."

"Oh come on," Beelzemon snarled contemptuously. "What's the point of heading there? We need to take on powerful opponents to get lots of data, not go scrabbling around amongst a bunch of weaklings like Rookie-level bullies."

"Aaw, do you feel sorry for them?" asked Lilithmon.

"No, bitch," Beelzemon sneered. "But I've heard about humans. They're tiny, weak things with squishy skin with all this gunk inside it. There's no challenge in that. We'd just be wading our way through them, hacking them to pieces and getting covered in mess from their frail bodies, and what would be getting for it? Nothing! They don't even have any data for us to load."

"No data?" Daemon growled. "What's the point?"

"There isn't one," Beelzemon said. He chuckled and added, "Although, while killing them wouldn't really help us, it could be fun to tear them apart and watch them scream. And they'd leave bodies behind. That'd be an interesting development. But, I don't believe they'd be worth the effort."

"A valid point, Beelzemon," said Lucemon. "It is true that it wouldn't help us in the long run. However, to have control of two separate world would be highly desirable. How about we put aside that idea for now, and, once we rule the Digital World completely, then we can head to the Human World and have some fun."

"Now, that's a plan!" Beelzemon grinned. "I'm in."

* * *

It took considerably effort for Impmon not to cry out as he sat up from his perch on the windowsill, breathing heavily and sweating like he'd just run a marathon. He felt his supper welling up inside his stomach and was threatening to come rushing back up his throat. After what he'd just heard himself saying, he had to fight hard to make it stay in.

The Beelzemon he remembered looked pale in comparison to the Beelzemon he was remembering. The idea of delighting in the torture, murder and gore of killing human being sickened him to the core. Granted, he hadn't actually seen him doing it, but still, the way he had described it didn't leave much for his imagination.

He looked over at the twins, sleeping peacefully in their beds. He grimaced, extremely thankful that whatever fate had befallen him that had caused him to change had happened before he'd had the chance to carry out the terrible things he had said. The idea of harming the twins repulsed him, but the idea of mutilating them, as well as other human, was just wrong. On so many levels.

It took a while for Impmon to get back to sleep. Horrible and unpleasant images were rapidly filling his brain, and the images of his old colleagues, the other Demon Lords illuminated in the glow of Daemon's fire, wouldn't leave him alone.

But he knew that he'd be alright for the rest of the night. The flashbacks he were experiencing came every few days, so he wouldn't have another one tonight. Deliberately trying to think of something, anything, else, he shut his eyes and eventually drifted off to sleep again.

* * *

The village was in flames and looked like it had been burning for half an hour. No sign of life could be seen amongst the orange, flickering tongues of fire, sweeping across the old straw and wood huts that used to be homes of innocent Digimon. But all of them were now dead and had been completely absorbed by evil.

Except one.

The Mikemon shivered in horror and dread as she felt the claw running down the back of her head again, rising up and them repeating the action. She resembled a Gatomon in exact shape and size, but her colour was very different. She was white across the stomach, limbs and the bottom half of her face, but the top half of her head, including the ears, her tail and her back were calico – orangey-brown in colour with several black flecks. The tufts on her ears and her gloves were brown and she had no tail-ring. She was also battered and severely beaten, looking like she was only just clinging to life.

Beelzemon held the cat Digimon against his chest, rubbing his claw down the back of the terrified Champion, who wasn't even struggling to escape his grasp. Beelzemon was forcing her to stare at the ruin that had once been her home. Mikemon, resigned to her fate, stared dumbly at the fire and the collapsing huts.

"How does it feel, little one?" Beelzemon crowed quietly into Mikemon's ear, making her shudder. "How does it feel to be the last one left of your pathetic little civilisation."

Mikemon didn't answer. Beelzemon frowned and twisted her ear, eliciting a yelp of pain from her. "Answer me," he hissed.

Mikemon stuttered through the pain as Beelzemon held her ear at the wrong angle. "It... it... it feels horrible."

"That's the best description you can think of?"

"Terrible. Horrifying. As if a bottomless pit of hopelessness and despair has been emptied into me."

"That's better," Beelzemon sneered, releasing the ear and allowing Mikemon to take a breath of relief. "That wasn't so hard, was it?"

"Why?" Mikemon whimpered, looking up at her, captor, who had one hand clamped around her torso and the other had resumed the stroking of her head. "Why do you do this? Why do you pillage and burn and destroy wherever you go? What does it achieve?"

"Dumb questions, if I ever heard any," said Beelzemon. "Let me give you some enlightenment, Puss. There's only one thing that I seek to gain, and that is power. True power is the only thing in this world that is worth possessing or seeking out. To be the best, to be the strongest, that is all I desire. To continue rising to the top until I am undefeatable."

"But why?" Mikemon asked.

"You are a prime example of what I am striving to achieve," Beelzemon sneered at his captive. "You look up at me with utter fear and dread. You know that I am stronger than you and could easily crush you into data. True power is about being in control. Everyone to obey your every beck and call, for fear of being destroyed if they fail. I shall only truly be the best when everyone looks on me as you do now."

"So you seek recognition?" Mikemon asked. "Is that all that this is about?"

"Partly," Beelzemon grinned. "The other part being the sense of self-satisfaction. I'd be the strongest for as long as I live; unopposed, dominating and feared. True power isn't merely about becoming the best, it's about maintaining it, and having everyone else quake beneath your feet. It must be mine! And it will be mine!

"But the other Demon Lords," Beelzemon's smirk grew full of contempt. "Most of them don't understand. They don't appreciate power the way I do. They're all absorbed in other, useless and utterly pointless things to realise what I have realised. Take Belphemon for example. All that lazy lug does is sleep around for the majority of the time and then go on a quick rampage and then fall asleep again. He's just too damned languid to do anything beyond getting off his arse once a week and blowing something up. He's a useless sack of a Demon."

"And Barbamon. Pah! All he cares about is things that glitter and sparkle. His mind is always focused on treasures and money and other things that shine, gathering them up like some dismal Crowmon to store them in his hoard. What good is treasure? It doesn't do anything for you beyond being something for you to look at. Utterly useless. But Barbamon's just too blind to see it. That old fart will probably get killed when someone back-stabs him because he was too damned busy staring at his gold to notice. Actually, now that I think about it, that's not a bad idea.

"Don't even get me started on Lilithmon. You should be grateful that it was me who ruined your village and not her. The only thing she seeks is to dominate others through rape and other similar urges. Come on! What's the point of that? All that grants you is a brief moment of satisfaction before you have to go off and look for it again. But domination through power and strength, now that's permanent and worth looking for. If Lilithmon were here, she'd already have violated your little body, even though you are the same gender."

Mikemon gulped at this revelation.

"As for our great leader, Lucemon," Beelzemon laughed out loud. "If you ask me, he's gone round the twist. He's always talking about how he loves all living things, but also how he hates all living things as well. How the hell you can you love and hate everything at the same time? Anyway, he says that he wants to completely annihilate everything in the Digital World, and then build a brand new one in its place and then blow it up all over again. In a continuous cycle. There is no point to anything that he seeks to do. It's almost as bad as what Lilithmon wants."

"Of everyone else, only Leviamon and Daemon have any sense at all. They both want the same thing I do – more power. But Daemon's far too brazen. He just charges in. He gets overconfident far too quickly. If you ask me, he's gonna get himself obliterated before too long. And you know what, I'm not gonna be that bothered when he does. Only Leviamon is a Digimon I would consider sane."

"You're the one who's insane," Mikemon cried. "You all are."

"Ah, a little defiance at the end," Beelzemon sneered. "Good for you. But, I'm afraid I've been wasting my breath for the last few minutes. I've got power to gain." With that, he snapped Mikemon's neck with a wrench of his hand. The Champion level cat disintegrated into data, which was sucked into Beelzemon's chest.

"And you're just the next rung in the ladder," Beelzemon smirked.

* * *

Impmon really did cry out this time. His eyes shot open and he leapt off the windowsill, tumbling to the floor with a loud thud. Cursing, he extricated himself from the rocking-horse that the twin's owned and sat down, holding his head in his hands. The flashbacks were getting more frequent. That was the first time he had had one two nights in a row. And this was the first one where he had had a real look into the mind of his past self.

Mikemon had been right. He was insane.

Impmon glanced over at Ai and Mako. Somehow, the twins had not woken up after his loud cry. The two of them looked so peaceful and innocent, tiny kids without a care in the world. But he... he had done so much crap in the past, so much vicious mutilation that he flat out didn't deserve them as partners.

Still, he had promised that he wouldn't leave them a second time. He knew they'd be concerned for him if they knew what he was going through, but Impmon also knew he wasn't going to tell them. They weren't old enough to know the things that were currently bouncing around in his head.

Impmon didn't go to sleep again that night. A third flashback in a row might be more than he could take.

* * *

The following day, Mrs. Terada insisted on taking the twins out into the city with her as she went shopping. Usually, she felt it okay to leave them on their own, considering the unusual level of maturity the two of them showed ever since they'd resolved the constant spat between. But right now, she didn't want to let Ai or Mako out of her sight. Whether this was because she just wanted to be with them after them being missing for two weeks, or she didn't want them to be alone in Impmon, was unclear.

Either way, the twins were dragged out into the city, and, despite Mrs. Terada's protests, Impmon tagged along behind them. The purple Rookie was unusually subdued, as a result of his experiences like that. He was barely listening as Ai and Mako eagerly described their adventures to their increasingly agitated mother.

"And then Zhuqiaomon looked like he was about to explode," Mako was saying. "It was so cool. He was like, on fire. Literally, his wings looked like they were burning up, but he was fine. He roared really loudly so the whole place was shaking."

"And then, he began to ask questions about Parallelmon," said Ai. "And when we told him that he had whisked some of us into thin air with his attack, he did it again. Nearly blew up, I mean."

"He was a bit rude to Impmon," said Mako, his face falling a little. "He called him a Demon Lord."

Impmon winced.

"But we know better," said Ai. "Impmon would never hurt anyone unless he had to do it to protect someone else."

"Except perhaps flies," said Mako, remembering something Impmon had said at one point in the Digital World."

_Stop it,_ Impmon mentally pleaded with them. _You guys really aren't helping._

Mrs. Terada glanced down at Impmon. The Rookie was walking a little ways behind them, watching mostly where his feet were treading instead of where he was actually going. His expression immediately told her that he was deep in thought, and that immediately made her suspicious. Impmon wasn't usually the type to think about stuff too deeply. If an idea came he would usually just set out and do it.

"Alright, what are you planning?" she demanded, stopping and glaring at him.

Impmon, startled out of his reverie, glanced upwards. "Huh?" he said articulately.

"I know that you are hiding something," said Mrs. Terada sharply to the little guy. "And whatever you are planning to do, I will not let you involve my kids in it, do you hear? My children do not need to get involved in anything that can cook up. It'll probably end up getting the police involved."

"Evidently whatever GranKuwagamon said to you had a short-lived effect, huh?" Impmon scowled. "I'm not cooking anything up, lady, so why don't you cut me some slack? Is that too much to ask? Don't you think that I might actually be taking something seriously for once? I got a lot of stuff happening to me and I am this close," he held up his fingers to create a tiny gap, "to going into a funk AND I DON'T NEED YOU ADDING TO MY PROBLEMS!" Impmon shouted the last bit.

People in the street stopped and stared at Impmon after his outburst. Mrs. Terada looked momentarily shocked, and then embarrassed at the fact that everyone was staring at her and muttering. She wasn't sure if they were wondering what she'd done to rile Impmon up, or if they were commenting on her behaviour, but she didn't stick around to find out. Taking the twins hands in her own, she quickly walked down the street.

Impmon sighed, turned to crowd and asked, "What are you looking at?" before following his Tamers down the road.

Impmon and Mrs. Terada ignored each other for the majority of the rest of the trip after this. They would proceed from shop to shop, and Impmon would wait outside until they came out again, before proceeding.

Impmon felt rather ashamed of himself for snapping in front of the twins, but he really couldn't help it. He was beginning to feel that he was reaching the end of his rope. The fact that he didn't know why he was having all these flashbacks, coupled with the disappearance of his friends and the fact that the flashbacks seemed to be accelerating and were getting more horrifying, were pushing him to the limit.

He really didn't know how much more he could take.

It was at this point that he began to get a nagging feeling in the back of his mind. It was the kind of feeling you get when you know that there's someone behind you, watching your every move.

Impmon stopped and listened. He couldn't hear anything but the walking of other people and sounds of the street, like cars and bicycle bells and other assorted noises. But that feeling wouldn't go away. In fact, it seemed to intensify.

Impmon kept walking, jogging a little to catch up with Ai and Mako and their mother. As he walked, he began to feel increasingly on edge. He began to sweat and his breathing began to get more and more intense with each step he took. The odd feeling seemed to loom over him, getting stronger and stronger, until it felt like there was someone directly behind him.

Impmon whipped around.

Nothing. There was no-one there except the other pedestrians. Nobody was paying him any attention, except a couple of kids who were pointing at him excitedly. The moment Impmon had turned around, the feeling of foreboding had vanished. Or perhaps 'fled' would be a more accurate word.

Impmon turned around again. Immediately, the feeling returned, faint again now, and as Impmon walked, it once again began to grow. Impmon was now sure that there was someone following him, and, whoever it was, they weren't friendly.

In an attempt to catch them off guard, Impmon span about early. There was still nothing that he could see to indicate that anyone was following him on purpose. He turned back and kept on walking.

Over the course of the next ten minutes, this process kept repeating itself. Every time Impmon turned around he would find nothing there, and yet every time he turned back the feeling would start again, just as it had before, getting stronger and stronger until vanishing when he turned to look.

Finally, Impmon didn't turn around for longer. He waited, and waited, shivering as the feeling of evil intensified further and further, growing and growing, until it felt like something was about to touch the back of his head. At that point, he turned around.

And he thought he saw, out the corner of his eye, a shadow flitting down a side-street behind him. Impmon frowned. Something was messing around with him, and if there was one thing Impmon didn't like, it was being messed with.

He turned back and said, "Teradalets. I'll be right back, okay. I just gotta take care of something."

"Okay, Impmon," said Ai.

"See you in a bit," added Mako.

"Yeah," Impmon managed a smirk. "Catch you later." But when he turned around so they could no longer see his face it became a mask of stone, a furious glare pasted across his features. Nobody messed with Impmon. Nobody.

He took off at a run and skidded to a halt by the side-street where he'd seen the shadow disappear. It was a dark alleyway, but even then, Impmon spotted the even darker shadow that vanished around the corner at the other side.

"Playing games with are ye?" Impmon growled, as he set off in pursuit. "Well, I don't play games with strangers. Whoever you are, you are going down."

And with that said, the chase began. Impmon was sprinting flat out as he ran down the alleyway and emerged into another street. Once again, he spotted the shadow flitting out of the way, so fast he couldn't make out the shape before it vanished from his line of few. He kept running, sweeping into alleyways, leaping over roads by jumping from car to car and sliding down the streets. Each time he rounded the corner, he would see the shadow going around another one.

It didn't take him long to realise that he was being herded somewhere. Whoever he was pursuing obviously had a set destination in mind, and were coaxing him into some kind of trap.

Well, that was fine by him. If they had set a trap, he would spring it for them.

People in the street yelped as he exploded into light, and within a few seconds, Beelzemon was flying down the street in all his Blast Mode glory. The chase began to increase in pace. Beelzemon and the shadow swept through the city, neither gaining any ground over the other.

Eventually, Beelzemon rounded a corner and pulled to a halt when he saw that he had reached a dead end. This, he supposed, was the trap area. The shadow was nowhere to be seen, but the feeling of someone watching him had intensified again. Whipping out one of his shotguns and holding Berenjena ready, Beelzemon slowly circled, his three eyes scanning the walls for any sign of the mysterious interloper.

"Alright, whoever you are!" he shouted to thin air. "Get out here now so I can beat the snot out of you! You asked for it and you got it! Here I am, Beelzemon, and if you've got any guts whatsoever, you'll step out here and face me like a mon. Or are you gonna skulk around like some cowardly stalker?"

The breeze picked up a little, but other than this Beelzemon got no response. The ex-Demon Lord wasn't that surprised. Whoever was following him around was skilled at staying hidden, and for some reason, he got the feeling that they were here for more than a simple battle. If that had been why they were here, they could have simply attacked him in the street instead of playing these games.

Suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, Beelzemon's consciousness was hurled into the dark recesses of his past, and he found himself in the middle of his third consecutive flashback of the day.

* * *

Beelzemon wasn't even trying. This was too easy, no challenge whatsoever in this little skirmish. But data was data, and a bunch of In-Training and Rookie level Digimon in numbers like at this village would amount to the power of a couple of quite powerful Champions.

He strode down the main street, glancing left and right as he went and aiming one of his shotguns at every little Digimon he saw. A bullet would fly and a Digimon would die, resulting in more data for the already powerful Demon Lord.

He sneered as he took out a bunch of Kunemon that had tried to escape by scurrying over the rooftops. "Yeah, that's right," Beelzemon said, bored. "Just scuttle off to hide in the woods. You should know by now it's not gonna do you no good." He spun around and shot a Flamon that had been cowering in a corner. "I will root you all out sooner or later."

The In-trainings were bouncing swiftly along in their attempts to get away from the marauding Mega. Their homes were not going to help them against him and they knew it. The Demon Lords were gaining such renown that some Digimon were beginning to shudder whenever they spoke the names of any of the members, as if afraid that they would bring them down upon themselves whenever they did.

But Beelzemon was easily keeping pace with them. He sent bullets whizzing into the backs of the fleeing Digimon without prejudice. It didn't matter that they were practically kids – they were shot all the same.

But Beelzemon was distinctly uninterested in this particular village. There was no-one standing up to him, nobody was strong enough to provide him with something interesting. He'd been on massacres like this before, and they were losing the exhilaration he'd experienced with the first few.

One Vegiemon made a desperate attempt to escape by swinging upwards on one of its creeper-like hands and catapulting itself into the air. Beelzemon twirled his shotgun and blasted it out of the air with a single shot.

Beelzemon yawned. "It's a shame there aren't that many Megas around anymore. Nobody's been bold enough to fight me since I-don't-know-when."

Up ahead, a Yokomon stumbled off its stubby little "feet" and collapsed onto its face. The blue flower on its head twitched in despair, knowing that its fate was near. Her kind wasn't built for running. There was no way that any of them would be able to get away.

An Otamamon up ahead noticed that Yokomon had dropped back. He turned around and said, "Yokomon! Get up! Run away!" Several other small Digimon also stopped and tried to verbally encourage Yokomon to keep going. Yokomon stumbled to her feet under their encouragement, but she was far too slow. Beelzemon's boot smashed into her and sent her flying into the air like a football. One clean shot later and Yokomon was no more.

Beelzemon scoffed at the sight of the horrorstruck In-training and Rookie Digimon that had witnessed the brutal murder. "Oh come on!" he said. "What's gotten you so bloody flabbergasted? You knew I was going to do that anyway. Did you think I'd have a sudden change of heart? Hate to break it to ye, but last time I checked I didn't have a conscience."

Abruptly, one of the little Digimon bounced forwards a couple of yards and glared hatefully at Beelzemon. It's face resembled that of a Tsunomon, but instead of the horn and brown fur, it had a large yellow frill sticking out of its head and a monkey-like tail protruding from behind it. A Frimon.

"You are a big, mean Digimon," he said.

"Ah, the inventiveness of youth," Beelzemon chuckled. "I can think of several other words to describe myself. Diabolical, sadistic, merciless, cruel and ruthless to name a few. But you probably don't know what any of those are, do you?"

"You're all of those things and more," Frimon yelled. "And you will pay. I challenge you to a duel."

Beelzemon blinked.

"Frimon, are you nuts?" a Motimon cried. "You'll be killed in an instant? Let's run." The little, pink blob-like creature turned and tried to waddle away, but Beelzemon's next bullet smashed into his back and deleted him straight away.

"Nobody leaves," Beelzemon sneered. Then he turned to look at the defiant looking Frimon. "I want all of you to watch this. Alright kid, you got yourself a deal. I'll battle you right here, right now. If you win, you can all go free. If I win, we can continue the screaming and the fleeing. That clear or do I need to go slower?"

"I got it," Frimon glowered.

"And to make things fairer," Beelzemon snickered. "No shotguns." He holstered one shotgun to his leg and then put the other one across his back. "See, we'll fight hand to hand. Agreed?"

"Agreed," nodded Frimon.

"Now get over here so I can beat you to a pulp," Beelzemon said.

Frimon yelled loudly and leapt forwards. The frill on his head expanded and hardened as he cannoned through the air at Beelzemon's chest, determined to knock the Demon Lord for a loop. Beelzemon smirked, waiting until the last minute before leaping aside and letting Frimon sail past and hit the ground in an unceremonious heap.

"That's it!" Beelzemon encouraged him. "Attack me. Always go for the frontal assault. It's the most fun."

Frimon sprang once again, yelling a loud warcry as he sailed for the exact same spot on Beelzemon's chest. Beelzemon side-stepped again, so Frimon smacked into a wall. The In-Training Digimon rebounded off the wooden wall and shot at Beelzemon again. The Demon Lord neatly stepped to the side again, lifting one arm so that Frimon would sail underneath it and crash to the floor again.

"Whoa," Beelzemon said with mock admiration. "A very nice rebound. I may have underestimated you. I better watch myself or I could come out of this fight the underdog."

"You won't come out of this fight at all," Frimon yelled angrily, attacking again. Beelzemon jumped right over him and somersaulted to land on the ground.

"Felt some breeze on that one," he declared. "Come on, give it your best shot!"

Frimon attacked twice more, but the result was the same both times. The In-Training was so furious he didn't appear to register that he wasn't succeeding in doing anything to the larger Digimon. On his next attempt after this, Beelzemon ducked and Frimon sailed over the top of his head, only to meet Beelzemon's tail head on. The long, whip-like tail smacked him across the face and threw him bodily into another wall.

"Aaw, too bad," Beelzemon sniggered. "And you were doing so well."

"I'm still raring to fight," Frimon cried angrily.

"Then give me your best shot," Beelzemon tapped his chest and pushed it out, presenting it like a target. Frimon took the message and sprang forward again. **"TAIL WHIP!"** he cried and span in the air and slammed his tail into Beelzemon's chest.

Beelzemon staggered. "Oh! Oh bloody hell! I'm wounded!" he cried, dropping heavily to his knees. "You... you got me. What was that attack?" Beelzemon's clawed attack flew to his throat as he gasped for breath. "I can't breathe! I can't breathe! You've broken my ribs!" He fell to his hands and knees. "You... you heartless creature! You have killed me! I go to meet Anubimon. My limbs are growing cold. The light is fading. Goodbye, cruel world!" He reared upwards and collapsed onto his back. Reaching a hand up to the sky, he said in a choked voice, "Fanglongmon! Take mercy on my poor, twisted self! Have mercy..." He went limp.

Frimon looked stunned. "I... I did it?" he asked, confused. "I beat him?"

"No." Beelzemon's tail whipped out and wrapped around Frimon's own tail, hoisting him into the air with a cry. Beelzemon leapt to his feet and leered into the suddenly terrified Digimon's face. "Did you really think that would work?" He asked. "Did you really think that an In-Training Digimon like you would be able to beat a Mega like me?"

Frimon began to tremble.

"Do you know why you lost, little one?" asked Beelzemon. Frimon didn't answer, but Beelzemon continued anyway. "It's because you are weak. And I am strong. And no matter where you are in the Digital World, the rules are always the same. The weak always lose to the strong."

Beelzemon flung Frimon to the floor and dived down at him with a cry of **"DARKNESS CLAW!"**

The other In-training and Rookie Digimon turned away as their friend was vaporised by Beelzemon's attack. They peeked up in time to see Beelzemon loading Frimon's data and turning to them, a brutal grin on his face.

"Right," he said, pulling out his shotguns. "Who's next?"

And he fell upon the terrified group like an entire pack of ravenous Sangloupmon.

* * *

At some point during the flashback, Beelzemon had de-digivolved into Impmon. As he returned to the realm of the present, he was only vaguely aware that the evil presence had vanished. He was only vaguely aware that he was on his knees in a grimy alleyway on his own. The only thing Impmon could think to do was grasp his head and scream. He screamed and screamed and screamed, long and loud, slumping against the nearest wall. He didn't care if anyone heard him. He didn't even think about him.

Impmon yelled himself hoarse as he beat against the side of his head – desperately trying to rid him of what he had just witnessed. But it wouldn't leave him alone. It just kept replaying and replaying in his mind. The mock duel against that poor, brave, foolish Frimon seemed to have been set on loop in his brain.

It took several minutes before Impmon finally subsided. When he did, he sat up, then wrapped his arms around his knees amongst the filth of the alleyway and sat there, rocking backwards and forwards as highly uncharacteristic tears began to leak from his eyes. Why? Why was this happening to him? Why now?

Impmon lost track of time. He had no idea how long he sat in that mess by himself. He didn't wonder if the twins were beginning to notice the fact that he was gone. He just wanted to forget about the real world for a while and escape the horrific existence that was his life.

He was eventually startled out of his reverie by a sudden and rather loud shout. "YAAAY! IMPMON! IT'S IMPMON! I'VE FOUND YOU! LET'S PLAY! LET'S PLAY! LET'S PLAY!"

"Look, Calumon," Impmon sighed, looking up at the Catalyst that had landed in front of him and bouncing round in pointless circles. "Now's really not a good time for me, okay? Just leave me alone."

Calumon stopped bouncing and slumped disappointedly, his ears retracting into his head. "You don't wanna play too? Aaaww. Nobody except Guilmon ever wants to play with me anymore. Not since Terriermon, Lopmon and Suzie all vanished."

"There's probably a reason for that, cream-puff," Impmon said. "There's a lot going on right now and we've all been occupied."

"But you're not doing anything right now," Calumon pointed out. "So why can't we play?"

"It's personal," Impmon said bitterly, resting his chin on his knees.

"Oh," Calumon nodded knowingly. Then he added, "What's that mean?"

"It's a polite way of saying, 'It's none of your business.'" Impmon glared. Calumon took a couple of steps back under Impmon's stare, and Impmon's face fell. Calumon's face looked like those other In-Training Digimon from his most recent vision. Like them, Calumon was too innocent to realise the full extent of the horrors of the world – and too oblivious. Ostracizing him wasn't going to help matters.

"Sorry," Impmon sighed. "I just got a lot going on right now. My mind is a hell right now."

"Bad dreams?" asked Calumon. "I had one of those once. I dreamed that Takato's bakery closed." He shuddered. Despite everything, Impmon couldn't help but chuckle. It was just like Calumon to think that was an utter disaster and not just a minor inconvenience.

"Sort of," said Impmon. "But, if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not go into it."

"Neither would I," Calumon shuddered again. "No more cream-puffs. It's too horrible to think about."

"Yeah," Impmon nodded, getting up and brushing himself off as best he could. He glanced at his gloves and grimaced. They were going to need a wash later. Why did that shadow have to lead him into such a dank alley anyway?

"Can we play now?" Calumon asked hopefully.

"Maybe later," said Impmon. "I gotta get back to Ai and Mako. They'll be wondering where I am."

"Okay. I'll come with you. Then when you can play, they can play too," Calumon grinned excitedly.

"Yeah, sure," said Impmon. "Great. Now I gotta find my way back through the city. Should have paid more attention to where I was going."

* * *

After a considerable traipse through the city and several wrong turns, Impmon finally spotted his partners and hurried over to them as they emerged, looking excruciatingly bored, from a shoe shop. Impmon and Calumon approached and Impmon noticed Mrs. Terada glancing at the dirt all over him suspiciously. She didn't say anything though. Perhaps she'd finally decided to cut him some slack, or perhaps she was just remembering his outburst from earlier.

"Impmon, there you are," Ai said, and the twins brightened up immediately. "And you brought Calumon."

"Really?" Impmon made a strained attempt to sound nonchalant. "I hadn't noticed."

The twins both frowned. They had gotten to know Impmon quite well and it was now quite obvious to them that something was bothering him and that whatever it was, it was big. They had previously thought that it was the whole situation with their missing friends, but now they were beginning to think it was more than that.

"," said Calumon loudly, landing right on Mrs. Terada's head. "My name's Calumon and you must be Ai and Mako's mum. Huh? Huh? Are ye? Huh?"

Mrs. Terada blinked and shook her head, trying to get Calumon loose. As this was going on, the twins converged on Impmon.

"Impmon," said Mako. "What's wrong?"

"Huh?" Impmon tried to look confused. "What's wrong? Nothing's wrong? Look at me, I'm a practically carefree mon." He grinned falsely.

"That's not going to work on us, Impmon," said Ai. "We know you. We know that something big is bothering you."

"We wanna help," said Mako, nodding eagerly. "We're partners, right? That means we look out for each other, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," said Impmon. "Aw, come on. You don't seriously believe that anything could keep me down, do ye?"

"Impmon," Ai folded her arms and tapped her foot in a frighteningly good impression of her mother.

"Yeesh, don't do that," Impmon winced. "Alright. Alright." He stopped hesitantly, unsure how to proceed on such a delicate subject. Eventually he said, "You remember how before we went to the Digital World, I told you I was having have these, ye know, flashbacks to my former self."

"Yeah," nodded Mako. "But I thought they'd stopped."

"They haven't," Impmon shook his head. "They're still going strong. And... they're getting worse. And to cap it off, that's not the only thing going down right now."

"What else is happening?" asked Ai. "Tell us."

Impmon glanced from Ai to Mako and back a few times before saying, "Look, if you really wanna know, then we'll discuss it later. We'll give the other Tamers a call and I'll let them all know about what's going on. If I'm gonna get things off my chest, I'd rather do it all in one go."

Ai and Mako looked a little put out but they nodded in acceptance.

"And could you do me a favour?" Impmon added after a moment.

"Anything," Mako said immediately.

"When we get home, can you play with Calumon?"

* * *

That evening came around and, since Mrs. Terada didn't want her children to leave the premises for a while, the other Tamers had all gathered at their place. Mrs. Terada was inside, working, so the Tamers and the Digimon took their conversation outside. The mother of the twins felt more comfortable with having them outside if Jeri and Elecmon were there to watch over her children. She trusted the two of them in a way that she didn't trust the others.

"Okay," Kazu brashly started off the conversation. "So what's all this about anyway. You wouldn't tell us anything over the phone except that it was extremely important, Impmon."

"Same here," nodded Kenta. "But at least you didn't leave us out this time. Next time you go on an adventure to the Digital World, let us know, will you? We missed out on all the action."

"There wasn't all that much action, to be fair," said Ryo. "Except for a little spat with a MarineDevimon. You didn't really miss all that much."

"Yeah, but even so..." Kenta began again, but Jeri interrupted.

"I think it would be a good idea if we all stayed on topic. Is everything alright, Impmon? You sounded really troubled over the phone."

"I did?" Impmon asked. "I was doing my best to hide it."

"That's my partner," Elecmon chuckled. "She just knows these things."

"That she does," agreed Takato, glancing across at Jeri. Jeri glanced back and the two quickly turned away, blushing furiously. Old habits died hard with the two of them. "So," Takato said quickly. "What's this important thing of yours, Impmon?"

Impmon fought the urge to roll his eyes at the embarrassment of the two. They should really be over the blushing phase by now since the two were going out together. But he put it to one side. Taking a deep breath, he said, "I've been having visions."

That got everyone's attention. Having a vision of some kind was rare with them, but it wasn't unheard of. They'd all heard of Takato's bizarre dream on the day he first got his D-Arc when he had observed Rika and Renamon fighting a Lynxmon, a battle which really had happened. Renamon had even been able to recall feeling some kind of presence there but had seen nothing when she looked. Takato had then confirmed that Renamon did indeed glance at where he'd been floating.

"About what?" asked Takato. "Is it the others?"

Impmon shook his head. He suddenly felt much colder, and he gripped his elbows and shivered. Slowly, he went on. "No, it's not the others. Well, actually, there was one that was," he brightened at this one. "With all the horrible visions going on I forgot to mention my good one. I had a vision showing the others in some jungle somewhere. Terriermon was performing to a crowd and everyone else was watching and laughing. They all looked just fine."

There were mutters from the other Tamers and looks of hope coming across their faces. Hopefully the efforts of Ryo, the twins and their partners had not been in vain after all. If the others were alright and HYPNOS successfully completed their machine, then there was a chance that they'd get them back.

"But that's not the emergency," Impmon said. "I've been receiving multiple visions the past few weeks and only that one has ever been good. The others are... horrible. Terrible. Evil. And horrifically graphic," Impmon held himself tighter. "They're not really visions. They're flashbacks." Impmon paused for a second, and haltingly added, "Back to the time I was a Demon Lord."

Silence from everyone else. Jeri's hands went to her mouth, Takato and Guilmon glanced at each other nervously, Ryo's face became a grim mask and Kazu and Kenta both looked slightly awed and slightly bewildered.

"Oh, Impmon," Jeri said. "How bad are they?"

"They're truly sickening. Every week I was getting a new memory of some terrible new atrocity I committed on the Digimon of the Digital World. I was a diabolical monster. I was insane. I was murdering innocents without a care in the world. I was always loading their data and then I'd just start going to get more. And while I know you don't want me to leave what I saw up to your imagination, I think that what I have to say would be worse than someone of you could imagine."

Takato, who easily had the best imagination, shuddered as he pictured the Beelzemon he had seen, only much, much worse. It was not a pretty picture.

"Alright," said Kazu slowly. "I understand why that's bad. Don't get me wrong, I feel sorry for you, buddy, but, is that the only reason you called us out here or is there more to it?"

"There's more to it," nodded Impmon. "I did clue Terriermon and Renamon into this before I disappeared, because I wondered if either of them had an explanation. Terriermon suggested that it was simply happening because I now knew roughly what had happened in the past and my memories were catching up to me. But they've started accelerating. I got two just last night, and not to mention I got one earlier today as well, when I was wide awake. That's never happened before – they'd always come in my sleep."

"Oh, you poor Digimon," Jeri whispered.

"You know that's not who you are anymore, Impmon," said Elecmon. "You proved that against the D-Reaper."

"Yeah, I know," said Impmon. "But, the things I've done... forgive me for saying this, but a lot of it makes what I did to you look like a family picnic."

"Ouch," said Kazu.

"That sounds horrible," Guilmon muttered. "I can't imagine what you must be going through."

"No, Pineapple-head, you can't," Impmon nodded. "But, just today, there was another element thrown into the mix. Did any of you Digimon... feel anything at all today."

"I felt hungry," volunteered Guilmon. "Does that count?"

"Kazu's mother kicked me again earlier," Guardromon added. "Does that count?"

"She did?" Kazu blinked. "Aw man, I thought we'd worked past that."

"No, they don't count," Impmon said. "I'm talking about a bioemergence or something. Before I received my flashback, I got this feeling like something evil was right behind me, but whenever I looked there was no-one there. I eventually spotted a shadow, and I followed it, trying to catch it, but it was damn fast."

"That's why you ran off so suddenly," said Ai. "Isn't it?"

"Yeah," said Impmon. "But I didn't catch it though. It vanished in the middle of my third flashback."

"Spooky," MarineAngemon declared helpfully.

There was a moment of silence, as everyone contemplated Impmon's words. But then:-

"I felt something," said Cyberdramon.

"I thought you might have," said Impmon. "You're the only one who sensed Parallelmon before."

"Yes," said Cyberdramon. "I felt a slight tingle in my spine – the feeling we all get just before a Digimon bioemerges. But it didn't get any more pronounced. My spine tingled for fifteen minutes or so, and then it faded. I assumed it was a false alarm."

"Well, it wasn't from where I was standing," said Impmon. "It was damn creepy."

Cyberdramon growled. "I'm getting sick of Digimon entering our world and being too cowardly to let me get a lock on them. Next time that happens, I won't ignore it."

"So you think your flashbacks and your mysterious shadow are linked?" asked Takato.

"Possibly," said Impmon. "I don't think Terriermon's theory applies anymore. These flashbacks are coming for a reason, and I'm beginning to believe that somebody, whoever that shadow was, is putting them in my head."

"But that might mean that what you saw wasn't real," pointed out Jeri. "That it didn't really happen."

"Oh, it happened," said Impmon grimly. "Don't ask me how I know that. I just do."

There was a few moments of silence. Then Takato said, "Alright then. If that's the case then we need to keep an eye on things. If someone's coming after Impmon then we have to stop them. Next time that happens, give us a call and we'll be right there."

"Cyberdramon and I will be on standby in case it happens again," nodded Ryo.

"We have no idea what we're looking for," said Takato. "And that means we'll have to be careful. We should all stay wary of a possible attack. If there is a threat, it could come at any time. And Impmon, if you keep having flashbacks, let us know. We can set up a watch on the house or something."

"I don't think Mum would be very pleased with that," said Mako.

"Well, she'll have to lump it," said Kazu. "We're Tamers and we look after our own."

Impmon looked rather relieved. Maybe he should have gotten all that out sooner. All the same, he had an uneasy feeling that there was very little that the other Digimon and the Tamers could do to help him.

* * *

You're not meant to know what the mysterious shadow thing is. If anyone would like to guess they are more than welcome to and I'll let you know if you are correct or not.

I'd like to thank Bookworm Gal for her help with Impmon's flashbacks. The first one was mostly my idea, but the other two were her ideas, which I added to slightly. Credit where credit is due. Zephyrclaws also suggested an idea for a flashback, but I didn't use it because Bookworm Gal got hers in first. But don't worry Zephyrclaws. Your idea is a good one, and I will use it in future.

And, now, we move into Arc 6 of Secret of the 327th.

* * *

Next time...

We take a bit of a break in the story and it skips ahead a few months. There will be a brief outline of the main events through that time period, along with the beginnings of a new mission to another planet. A planet that Obi-Wan, Anakin and Aayla have all been to before.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 51 : Spearhead of the Republic**


	51. Spearhead of the Republic

Fergus Flamacron now has a Wiki. It's nothing brilliant right now – only one page has any detail on it, but I'm planning to update it daily, adding a new page each time. If you want to go and check it out, then by all means go ahead. There will be everything I can think of there, from details about the characters, the locations and other such things, to spoilers. I got the idea from Jitterydragon, a guy with a YouTube account that makes hilarious videos, as he too has a Wiki.

And that's about the only thing I have to say, so on we go.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 51:- Spearhead of the Republic**

* * *

While Coruscant may appear to be a thriving and colourful town from the sky, there are very large elements of it that are riddled with crime and other dangerous people. The Coruscant Underworld was full of brigands, thieves, cutthroats, vermin and pirates that resided among hostels and bars and other such places.

The Underworld extended many stories below the tops of the skyscrapers that could be seen from above the atmosphere. Here, the sun did not rule. In fact it hardly ever reached the ground. The only illumination down here was the numerous artificial lights from the many bars and advertisements hovering in the air. There were a lot of people crammed into this small space, and many of them were not friendly.

Only the toughest survived down here. The weak were picked off rather quickly. Barfights and shoot-ups were almost nightly occurrences in almost every building. Somebody invariably had too much to drink and, as a result, they kicked up a storm about something or other, often something which was previously considered to be put aside, and decided to take action upon it.

It was late at night, and one such bar was still serving its guests, and would do for many hours yet. The inside was crammed with tables where numerous species were sitting, guffawing and quaffing numerous alcoholic beverages to their heart's content. Many sat around the bar, clicking their fingers to summon the bartender and swigging what they were given. There were others that were walking about, swaying drunkenly as they moved. Many others were crowded around a raised podium, on top of which was a dancing Twi'lek. The poor woman was receiving numerous wolf-whistles and catcalls from her onlookers, most of which were very suggestive and rather inappropriate, but still she danced on, swaying hypnotically and doing her best to avoid the grabbing hands of the crowd.

The door opened slowly, revealing a figure in a hooded robe standing in the doorway. Nobody really turned to look at newcomer, but those that did had numerous double-takes. The figure was wearing a long robe, the hood of which masked most of the face. The cloak was silver and black in colour and hung all about the figure, completely disguising what species it was, but showing that it was humanoid.

The figure strode confidently to the bar and sat smoothly on one of the stools. A Quarren sitting on the next chair turned to look a little nervously at the figure. He didn't know who it was, but he knew that figures who went about in cloaks were usually quite dangerous. It meant they had confidence and that they could easily win most fights. The Quarren swigged his drink and hurried to the other side of the bar.

The bartender, a male Rodian with a slight scowl, approached the new arrival. "Welcome to the Nexu's Head," the Rodian said. "May I help you with something?"

"Yes," said the figure, the voice clearly indicating that it was a female, but still that bartender could not make out what species. "I need some information."

"Ah," said the bartender, cleaning a dirty glass with an equally dirty cloth. "One of those kinds of people, are you? Looking for anyone in particular? I must confess I don't know most of the people in here by name, but I'm sure that there will be many people who do."

"I'm looking for a man named Car Affa," said the hooded figure. "You wouldn't happen to know him. I heard tell that he often comes to this particular bar."

"Affa. Affa," the Rodian tapped his protruding mouth thoughtfully. "I think I know that name. He might be somewhere in the crowd. Feel free to find him but please try not to shoot the place up."

"You're cooperation is gratifying," said the figure.

"Would you care for a drink?" the Rodian asked, holding out the filthy glass.

"I shall need my wits about me, thank you," said the figure, in a voice that brooked no argument. The bartender got the message and moved on to such an impatient Ithorian.

The figure turned to survey the room. Most of it was bathed in shadow – the only person properly lit was the Twi'lek dancer, so that the people could see her every move. The gaze of the figure swept over the crowd around the Twi'lek, and over the tables. She had a feeling that the target was somewhere amongst these vile people, but the only problem was, where to find him. She knew Car Affa was a Weequay, but there were many Weequay in this room. Which one was him?

The figure got up from her stool and strode towards another person, a Nikto that was leaning against the bar and watching the dancer without getting involved in the crowd. "Excuse my interruption," the figure said. "But I was wondering if I could trouble you for some information."

The Nikto glanced at her sharply. "What kind of information?"

"The kind that gets you money," said the figure. A hand slipped out from her cloak, and there were many gold credits clutched in the palm.

"Ah," said the Nikto, looking greedily at the handful of gold. "Yes, of course. If I can help then, I will."

"Do you know many of the people that come to this place?" the figure asked quietly.

"Well, yes, I do," said the Nikto. "Not all of them, mind. But most of them. I come in here most nights. Who are you looking for?"

"Car Affa," said the figure. "Is he here?"

"Yes, he is," nodded the Nikto, pleased that he could be of assistance. "He's right over there," the Nikto pointed into the crowd of people pawing at the dancer. The figure saw he was indicating a male Weequay, also wearing a hood, and with two very prominent blasters attached to his waist.

"That's him?" he asked.

"Definitely," said the Nikto. "Why do you want him?"

"That's for me to know," said the figure.

"Ah," said the Nikto. "Yes, of course." He held out his hand, and the figure deposited her handful of gold into the eager fingers. "A pleasure to do business with you."

"And you," nodded the figure. "Now, if you'll excuse me."

"Are you going to start a barfight?" asked the Nikto, a little eagerly.

"No," said the figure. "I intend to make this quick." And with that, she strode off and moved towards the wall, where she had a good view of the target, as well as the rest of the crowd around the dancing Twi'lek. There was a slight problem, in that if she waded in to get him, he'd probably notice her heading in his direction and make a run for it.

Fortunately, she had some back-up.

She moved a hand in the direction of an empty glass and focused her mind. The glass rose into the air of seemingly its own accord and, with a swing of her hand, the figure sent it sailing right across the room. Her aim was dead on, striking Car Affa in the back of the head, causing the glass to shatter and the Weequay to yell loudly.

"Yow!" cried the criminal. "Who threw that?"

"That would be me," said the hooded figure, stepping forwards. Affa, quickly drew a blaster and pointed it at the figure, a scowl spread right across his features.

"And who are you?" the Weequay snarled, not caring that many people had taken their eyes off the Twi'lek, who was still dancing, and were eyeing the confrontation wearily.

"None of your business," the figure said. "But you are Car Affa, I believe."

"Yeah, that's right," the Weequay grunted. "Now, tell me who you are before I shoot you."

The figure whipped back her hood. Most of the room gasped at the sight of the figure's face. It was a face that many of them knew well, not because they'd had dealings with her, but because it was all over the news.

"The name's Ahsoka Tano," the Togruta Padawan grinned. "And you're under arrest."

Affa's nerve failed him. Even though Ahsoka was under half his age, he knew that messing with her would be a very bad idea. He turned to flee, but was hindered by the rest of the crowd that he had been associated with.

And then, there came another attack on him from a completely unexpected angle. The Twi'lek dancer pirouetted right off the podium and summoned a blue lightsaber from across the room in mid-air, igniting it and slashing through Affa's blaster. Landing neatly on the ground, the Twi'lek span about, locking an arm around Car Affa's neck and holding the lightsaber warningly against his throat.

"Car Affa, said Aayla Secura. "You are under arrest for selling off Republic weapons to the Confederacy of Independent Systems. You will be taken to the Jedi Temple for questioning. Attempt to resist and we will use force against you."

"Wha-?" Car Affa blustered. "But... what... you... dancer... Jedi. What the hell?" Evidently he couldn't get his head around the fact that the dancer had been a Jedi in disguise. He couldn't be blamed. Aayla had been wearing an extremely tight and very revealing leotard, which she intended to take off as soon as possible. So far as anybody knew, no Jedi had ever posed as a dancer in an attempt to catch a criminal before.

The faces of most of the other people in the bar were equally stunned, as they watched Ahsoka approach the other two, with a pair of binders in one hand. As Aayla pinned the hands of the fugitive behind his back and Ahsoka secured them there, the same thoughts were running through the heads of everyone there.

_Did I just see a Jedi dancing? This has got to be my lucky day._

As Aayla and Ahsoka marched the still blustering and confused Weequay towards the door, Aayla momentarily paused and said to the bartender, "Thank you for letting me use the podium. You were very helpful."

"Not at all," said the Rodian. "I did wonder why you turned up all of a sudden and asked for a job tonight, but I never expected you to be a Jedi. Wow, you were an amazing dancer too. I don't suppose you'd consider coming again?"

"I highly doubt it," Aayla replied. "For two reasons really. Firstly, I didn't enjoy the lack of control you had over the crowd, and secondly, that was hardly dancing. You haven't seen me really cut loose. Good night."

The Jedi Knight and the Jedi Padawan frogmarched the criminal out of the bar, where everyone was muttering over what they'd just witnessed.

"You know that the fact you danced your way into apprehending a criminal is going to make the holonet news by morning, don't you?" asked Ahsoka.

"Of course," said Aayla. "But that's fine. Ever since the A-Team was created we've become famous for our unconventional methods. We'll just put this down as one of those."

"It's quite odd, though," Ahsoka giggled. "To use your dance moves to your advantage in a situation like that."

"It's not that unusual," said Aayla. "I have used the fact that I am a female Twi'lek many times when I've been undercover, like this one time where I played the part of a spoilt Twi'lek daughter of the owner of Ryloth Ventures in order to work undercover on a mission to Devaron."

"Speaking of working undercover," said Ahsoka. "How did I do? Were you watching?"

"Even while dancing, I am very observant," smiled Aayla. "Yes, Ahsoka. You did very well. You were subtle, and you didn't give anything away. You successfully discovered which of the crowd was the target and found a way to clearly tell me who it was. Well done."

"I don't think Master Skywalker could teach me that," laughed Ahsoka. "Usually he'd just cut his way in with his lightsaber. Just wait until he hears about this. I wonder what he'll say."

"If he doesn't congratulate you on your success then I shall personally swat him round the head until he does," said Aayla. "That was very well done, Ahsoka. You looked like a proper Bounty Hunter."

"Thanks," said Ahsoka, sheepishly.

"And now, we need to get this slimeball back to the Jedi Temple," said Aayla. "And hopefully I'll be able to change out of this ridiculous leotard. It is getting extremely uncomfortable."

"Jedi..." Car Affa muttered to himself. "Dancing... undercover... agh, my brain."

"Looks like we've got ourselves an intelligent one here," snickered Ahsoka.

"He was intelligent enough to sell off Republic weapons and get away with it for a while," shrugged Aayla. "But it appears a dancing Jedi is too much for him, even if I am a Twi'lek."

"Just imagine what he'd be thinking if you had really shown him your moves," Ahsoka giggled. "His brain would have gone into meltdown."

Aayla laughed.

* * *

It had been several months since the mission to Felucia, tracking down the escaped Hutt, Ziro, and the Bounty Hunters that had freed him, led by Cad Bane the Duros. To be exact, it had been about four and a half months since that adventurous journey across the jungle planet, befriending Bounty Hunter and Acklay alike and stopping pirates and Separatists from carrying out their schemes.

And a lot had happened during that four-and-a-half months.

To start off, the combined forces of the 501st and the 327th, led by the A-Team, a name which the general public had managed to pick up on and were now referring to the three of them as, were steadily growing a bigger and bigger reputation as they advanced their way across the galaxy, foiling the plots of the Separatists wherever they went. Ever since being commissioned to working together several months ago, Anakin, Aayla and Ahsoka had not lost a single skirmish against the Separatists.

They were building up such a reputation amongst the enemy forces, that some would just turn around and flee when they learnt that the A-Team had arrived on the scene.

Even when they had been working separately, both Anakin and Aayla had rarely lost battles. Both the Jedi Generals were exceptional strategists, and both had usually come out on top – although Anakin definitely had more of a flare for the unorthodox. But now, they weren't losing at all. They had become the Spearhead of the Republic, the main driving force into the Outer Rim territories that were driving back the enemy. This was a cause of celebration for the majority of the Republic populace.

Of course, few knew one of the main reasons that the A-Team were so successful. The Secret of the 327th was still very much a secret, hidden from everybody in the Senate still, as it had been since the beginning. There were now many planets where the Digimon had now set foot. Orto Plutonia had seen Taomon in action, decimating a Separatist fleet and army alongside Jedi Master Shaak Ti and the local Talz. Antylamon has seen more action on Makem Te, breaking into a Separatist fortress alongside Obi-Wan Kenobi and apprehending another leading figure of the Techno Union. Rapidmon had excelled on the temperate world of Tammuz-an, forming a strained alliance with Mace Windu. After this incident, the two seemed to be getting along rather better than they had before.

The Digimon and the Jedi were forming a perfect team, each one working in faultless synchrony with the others to produce a practically unbeatable combination, with the skill of the Jedi, the versatility of the Digimon and the power of both all rolling into one.

But there was one thing that the Jedi had yet to witness. In a bizarre twist, all of them were looking forward to seeing the day where things got so bad that the Mega stages of the three were needed. The Digimon had held back the information on what they looked like in their final stages, wanting it to be a surprise that, in Terriermon's words would, "Knock your socks off... if you have them, that is."

All three Jedi were slightly self-conscious of the fact that, while they were getting displayed on holoposters throughout the city, the Digimon, one of the main influences on their success, were being left out of the limelight. But, as Henry pointed out, it was actually quite nice to let someone else take the credit for a change, since back on their planet, they were always on the news anyway. Perhaps they still were, as there might be frequent news articles updating people on the fact that they were still missing.

And the Jedi and Digimon alliance wasn't the only example of the two universes merging together. The Chrome-Digizoid Shield that had been sent to Kamino had finally been melted down, all though it had taken much, much more energy and heat than any of the Kaminoans had anticipated in order to do so. Nevertheless, they were able, to a degree, to synthesise it. However, the structure of the metal was so complex and strong, that it had been practically impossible to produce it in large amounts.

But, enough had been produced so far to allow a large portion of the vehicles that the A-Team and their forces possessed to be coated with a layer of the stuff in critical places, such as the joints and front of an AT-TE walker, and the wings and nose of an LAAT gunship. This had saved the lives of numerous clones to date, and left the Seppies stunned at the complete lack of damage their weapons had on the enemy vehicles.

Sadly, it didn't render them completely invincible – the duraglass of the cockpits were still vulnerable, as they could not be coated or the pilots wouldn't be able to see. But, for the most part, it didn't matter. Not only that, but many of the clone starfighters, as well as the starfighters of the Jedi, had also been coated in it. This had prevented a great many deaths, as the clones had had an extreme advantage in space battles now.

The cruisers had had to be left as they usually were, but with the advancements made to the starfighters, this hadn't been a problem.

And the starfighters of the Jedi, the Delta-7B _Aethersprite-_class light interceptors, had not only the Chrome-Digizoid as upgrades. A special starfighter had been given to the A-Team, sent from Kamino with the designs that Anakin had sent their way. It looked and felt almost exactly the same as Terriermon's favourite controller for his favourite games console back home – the Xbox 360.

It too was coated in Chrome-Digizoid, and the first time Terriermon had flown it had been rather entertaining.

The members of the combined forces had been standing on the bridge of the _Resolute_ at the time, and had been watching as a small, triangular starship span round and round in circles at ridiculous speeds outside, like a dog chasing its own tail.

"He looks like he's having a bit of trouble with the steering," Yularen had said, pushing the communicator button to contact the vessel. "Terriermon, come in. This is Admiral Yularen. Are you having any trouble with your starship?"

His reply had been three words long:-

"THIS... IS... AWESOOOOOMMMMMMEEEEE!" Terriermon had yelled, before flipping his ship around with a twitch of the right thumbstick and pressing the B button to send his ship into a barrel-roll.

R4-G9 whistled shrilly from his socket in excitement.

Terriermon had even used the modified starship in battle once. Putting on his game-face, he had flown straight into the thick of the action, pulling the right trigger to fire his laser cannons and using the right thumbstick to aim. Occasionally he would pull on the left trigger and send a pair of large missiles streaking from the underside of his starfighter. His astromech had taken care of the targeting with those, so it was almost like having a game set on auto-lock.

Terriermon had demonstrated to the droids that he was a true master of the games console.

After this, his starfighter had been painted numerous colours, which clashed horribly but really made it stand out in battle, almost more than Anakin's bright yellow one. Terriermon's starfighter had a large, yellow stripe painted right up the middle and in the centre was the purple symbol that could be found on Renamon's legs. The area on one side of the stripe was painted white with green flecks, and the other side was brown with pink flecks. It wasn't difficult for anyone who knew the Digimon to figure out what that symbolised.

Ahsoka and Anakin's prank war had been growing ever grander in scale as well. Although Anakin did constantly seem to fall for many variations of the "Kick me" sign on the back, the other pranks had constantly been escalating. Ahsoka had woken up one morning and gone for a walk in the Jedi Temple, not realising that the white stripes on her headtails were now pink and the black ones were now purple. When she did find out, she had responded by sneaking into her master's chambers while he was in the shower, stealing all his clothes and taking them to her room. Anakin hadn't come out for the rest of the day.

Anakin had responded to that putting his cooking skills to the test and slipping a little medicine into Ahsoka's rations that upset her bowels and caused her to start farting uncontrollably. Unfortunately, he'd picked a bad time to do it, and Ahsoka had been struggling to hold it in as she stood before the Council. Yoda had noticed and asked if there was a problem. Ahsoka had responded with a demonstration.

Ahsoka had been so ashamed by this prank that her response had been to steal Anakin's actual starfighter and hide it in the engine room. She had gotten both Terriermon and Renamon in on this one and they had somehow managed to pull it off. Anakin had freaked out, tearing the ship apart in search of his starfighter, but Ahsoka got the last laugh and eventually, she told him. She was heavily scolded, but she felt that it was worth it.

Another thing that had taken place during the last few months got equal amounts of sadness and excitement from one particular member of the group. Nine-year-old Suzie stopped being nine years old when she hit double-digits. Henry had been keeping track of the number of days they had been in this new world and away from their own, and so he had remembered the day whereas Suzie, who had long since lost track of time, didn't.

Despite being in another world, maybe _because_ they were in a new world, Henry had been determined to give his little sister the best birthday that he could get her. Birthdays were one of the things from their own world that they still had and Henry wanted to make sure Suzie had the best day possible. Terriermon, Renamon, Rika and Lopmon had all agreed to this idea, and had conspired together to give Suzie a surprise party.

Of course, the Jedi had been clued into this, but some of the things that they were told seemed rather obscure for them. Most Jedi birthdays were celebrated rather formally – there were never large parties being thrown, not even for younglings. The A-Team had never had real birthday celebrations that they remembered. Ahsoka had been about four when she'd been brought to the Temple, and couldn't remember any previous birthdays. Anakin and Aayla had had family problems that prevented birthday parties when they were younger – Anakin's mother, Schmi, was a nice person but, being a slave to Watto, she had no money to spare. Aayla's uncle and guardian, Pol Secura, had been the exact opposite, wealthy but unpleasant.

Still, the Jedi took to the idea with a will and, while Lopmon and Terriermon had distracted Suzie with a game of tag, the others had transformed Aayla's chambers into a party setting. Henry and Rika had hung up the HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY SUZIE banner up across one wall. Ahsoka used the Force to wrap the presents they had gone out to buy for her in bright cloths as a replacement for wrapping paper. Renamon commandeered the kitchens and put the baking skills she had picked up from Rika's grandmother to construct a massive cake, made up of Suzie's favourite things from this dimensions and using nutripaste for icing. Aayla and Anakin prepared everything else, such as helium balloons and streamers.

Needless to say, Suzie was flabbergasted and thrilled when she walked through the door and into Aayla's chambers to a loud cheer of "HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUZIE!" from everyone present.

The party was an instant success. Henry had described many of Suzie's favourite party games to Anakin and Aayla, and the two had gone away and come back with good substitutes. Suzie loved the concept of Pin the Tail on the Eopie. There was also a piñata that resembled a shaak, and the Jedi cheered when Suzie smashed it open. But the Jedi were most amused when Suzie suggested Duck, Duck Goose. The concept of the game bemused them, but they played it anyway. Whenever Ahsoka walked around, she'd invariably bop Anakin on the head harder than necessary, and vice versa.

Many other Jedi walked in at certain points during the next few hours. All of them blinked in surprise at the decorations to the room and the general lack of dignity from all three members of the A-Team. Mace Windu walked in to find Renamon pursuing a giggling Ahsoka around the circle of people, while Anakin and Aayla rolled on the floor with laughter, along with all the others. Yoda and Plo Koon appeared just as Anakin pinned the eopie's tail in the middle of its front knee (force powers were prohibited). Shaak Ti, appropriately, entered the room just as Suzie smacked her animal namesake from the ceiling and sweets poured out of it. Kit Fisto, Luminara Unduli and Obi-Wan Kenobi also popped in at certain points in the day.

Each time a new Jedi entered, Suzie insisted that they didn't leave until they had both taken a piece of her enormous birthday cake and taken a lungful of helium from a balloon – with the exception of Plo Koon, who couldn't due to his facemask. The Jedi accepted the first without comment, but there were several degrees of reluctance about the second. However, they all did it anyway.

Even the clones, Commander Bly and Captain Rex turned up about halfway through the party, under the invite of Ahsoka and Terriermon. They had never seen a proper birthday either – as clones they had been given growth jars to make them into adults twice as fast as they would normally. But, the two of them did stay for a while and did join in the games, reluctantly at first, but they soon got more into it when they settled into the relaxed atmosphere.

The only sad part about all this came when Suzie realised that her mother would probably be very upset at the moment. Every loving mother wants to be there on their child's tenth birthday and it was very likely that Mrs. Wong was crying her eyes out right now. This made Suzie burst into tears and hug Aayla. The Twi'lek kindly returned it and made soothing noises. The bond between Aayla and all the others had grown exponentially strong over the last few months, and it definitely showed.

However, not all of the things that had taken place during the last few months were good news. For instance, Obi-Wan had made several quiet forays into the Senate to discover anything about the mysterious Darth Sidious that Dooku had mentioned and Terriermon and Ahsoka had confirmed. But his searches had been rather limited in that, in order to make any real enquiries, he would have to explain to the senators he was talking to about where he had gotten the information. And while the suggestion of Ahsoka overhearing it from Ventress or Grievous was plausible, it was unlikely to be believed – Separatist leaders were rarely that sloppy.

Obi-Wan had uncovered no further evidence of a Sith Lord controlling hundreds of Senators than there had been before. Nevertheless, they knew that there definitely was a Darth Sidious out there now, so Obi-Wan had alerted Aayla's old master, Quinlan Vos, who was working deep undercover in the shadows to uncover secrets about the Confederacy and pass them onto the Republic. His work had come in handy at times, as he had been able to warn the other Jedi of impending attacks on Republic-aligned systems. If Darth Sidious could be found, Quinlan would be the one to find him.

And that wasn't the only bad news. Half a month ago, the punishment that Asajj Ventress had received from Dooku, involving her being kept by General Grievous, tied up and gagged like a trophy or a slave for four months, had finally come to an end. Many of the Jedi had been wondering what Ventress had been doing for four months, but now she was back with a vengeance.

Ventress was more determined than ever to please Count Dooku, more determined than ever to try and shame General Grievous, and far, far more determined than ever to find an kill Ahsoka Tano. Since she still didn't know about Terriermon, the only explanation for her defeat she could think of was that the collar that suppressed the Force in Ahsoka had temporarily malfunctioned, allowing the Togruta to knock her out with an attack from behind. And so, Ventress believed that Ahsoka had escaped from her grasp again, but this time that she had done it without any help at all.

And she was furious.

* * *

Once they reached the Jedi Temple once again, Aayla left Ahsoka in charge on their prisoner and instructed her to take him down to the detention level and put him in a cell. Ahsoka nodded, grinning, and did just that. Car Affa still didn't seem to have a functioning brain after the incident in the bar. Ahsoka privately wondered if it ever would work again.

Aayla headed back towards her chambers, determined to change out of the leotard as quickly as possible. She had no idea what she'd do with the thing – possibly keep it for any other assignments where going undercover as a dancer might help. But she doubted she'd be making it a regular occurrence.

"I see that everything that we've been teaching you is paying off," said a voice from right next to Aayla.

Aayla didn't flinch. She just said, "Enjoy the show, Renamon?"

Renamon faded into existence right next to her Twi'lek friend. "Oh yes," she said. "The look on that Weequay's face when he discovered how he'd been apprehended was most amusing. And your dancing skills are extremely good. I did spot a couple of other Twi'lek women in that bar, looking at you rather enviously."

Aayla flushed. "I'm sure that was nothing to do with my skill as a dancer. Perhaps they were a little put out that I'd taken their place – dancing is the only living they have."

"Your modesty once again shines through," Renamon chuckled. "You should take credit when it comes your way."

"I take a lot of credit that comes my way, even when it doesn't belong to me," pointed out Aayla. "All this skirting around the fact that I fight beside you guys during this war means I get so much credit where it isn't due that I don't know where to put it all."

"True," said Renamon. "There is that."

The Twi'lek and the fox walked down the corridor side by side in silence for a while. When they reached Aayla's chambers, Aayla opened the sliding doors and was met with the sight of three human children, playing a variation of Top Trumps using their Digimon Cards in the corner of the room. They looked up when they saw her enter.

"Hey, Aayla," said Rika. Her hair had grown back after Henry had cut it off on Felucia, but it still wasn't usually seen in its ponytail anymore. Usually, Rika kept it down, so it fell about her shoulders now. Henry had said that he liked it down, as it was a change and she looked pretty, so Rika only generally put it back in its ponytail now when they were on missions. "How'd it go?"

"Surely you know the answer to that question," Aayla replied, glancing up at a certain white bunny sitting on top of a shelf that stuck out from the wall. Terriermon grinned down at her.

"Well, we've learnt that things with Terriermon often tend to be rather biased," Henry chuckled.

"Hey!"

"Come on, Terriermon. You know I'm joking. Maybe. Anyway, we wanted to hear your version of the event."

"Did the guy you were looking for really have a nervous breakdown?" asked Suzie.

"Not exactly," Aayla replied. "Mostly he just blustered as if unable to believe what he was seeing."

"You know what would have made him have a nervous breakdown?" asked Terriermon, cheerfully. "If you'd been singing as well as dancing before you apprehended him. You're an excellent singer, Aayla."

"Thank you," said Aayla. "But no song you've taught me would really match the tune that they were playing in there. And the catcalls weren't all that pleasant either. Fortunately, I am rather hardened to it by now."

"You shouldn't have to be," said Lopmon from where she was standing on Aayla's bed. "It's despicable, the number of lowlifes that can be found around here. Most people who catcall are frowned upon by many people back home."

"And yet that doesn't stop them from doing it, late at night," said Rika, shaking her head. "I remember when I was walking one night and some guy recognised me as the Digimon Queen, he started comparing me to Kari from the Digimon TV show."

"Does that make Henry TK?" asked Suzie.

Terriermon laughed. "Yeah, I suppose it does. Now all we need is a Davis to fawn over Rika's every move. I'd like to see that. Kari is too nice to do anything, but Rika would just punch him in the face."

"Damn right I would," said Rika. "I'm not having a weirdo like that following me around."

"As interesting as this conversation is," said Aayla. "I hope you won't mind if I excuse myself. I need to change." She moved into the private washroom she had and shut the door.

"She didn't really get a word of that, did she?" asked Lopmon.

"I don't think so, no," replied Henry.

"Maybe we should try sticking to conversations that all of us can follow," said Renamon. "It's unfair otherwise."

"Okay," said Terriermon. "I can do that. So, new topic. When do you think we'll get to go on another mission? It's been a couple of days since anything really interesting happened."

"He's right," said Suzie. "It's a bit weird to just sit here."

"Well, now that you've successfully jinxed the brief break for us," said Henry. "I'd guess that we'll have something later on today. And it'll probably be something big."

"We like big," said Terriermon. "It's more fun to wreck it when it's big."

"For you, perhaps," nodded Henry.

"I wonder how some of the others are doing," said Suzie, putting her chin in her hand to imitate her older brother. "I was thinking the other day about my friend Numa."

"You mean the Twi'lek girl you befriended back on Ryloth?" asked Lopmon.

"Yeah," said Suzie. "I was thinking that, I'm ten now, but I don't know how old she is, or when her birthday is. And now, I can't find out because we're always so busy blowing up all the clankers."

"I can just imagine the scene," Rika grinned. "Little Numa coming home to find the friends she made months ago have returned for no reason other to celebrate her birthday. Could you imagine what she'd say?"

"Not really," said Terriermon. "She only speaks Twi'leki."

"Suul teefar rango lik moch snooger ber," said Henry, grinning up at his partner.

"Stop showing off and tell me what you just said," Terriermon scowled.

"I said, 'You should really be less lazy then,'" Henry smirked. "You could always do what I do and try and learn the languages of others." Yes, Henry was trying to learn two new languages. Ahsoka and Aayla had started to teach him the basics of Twi'lek and Togruta languages about three months ago. Henry, being the exceptionally fast learner that he was, had been picking it up extremely quickly. Henry had been determined to learn as much as he could about this dimension.

Aayla opened the door. She was back in her usual attire and had the leotard folded under her arm. "Well done, Henry," she said, placing the leotard in the corner and deciding what to do with it later. "I do not know how you do it, but you are learning my language much quicker than I learnt Basic."

"Henry is a super genius," said Lopmon.

"Cue the blushing," said Terriermon, as Henry did just that.

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

The door opened and Ahsoka walked in. "Car Affa is in custody, Master Secura," she said. "The Jedi Council should have finished questioning him soon."

"Good work, Ahsoka," said Aayla. "But next time we go undercover like that, you'll be the one dancing."

Ahsoka blanched and Aayla chuckled. "Relax," the Twi'lek said. "I wouldn't be that cruel."

"Oh. Well... good." Ahsoka blinked a couple of times before shaking her head and saying, "By the way, have any of you seen Master Skywalker?"

"Yes," said Henry. "He left last night after you did. Apparently, the Jedi Council commissioned him to act as a Jedi bodyguard for Senator Amidala, as she takes a spy mission to the planet Cato Nemoidia."

"Cato Nemoidia?" Ahsoka asked, surprised. "But that's dangerous territory. That's the founding world of the Trade Federation, and everyone knows they're part of the Separatists, even if they claim that they are neutral and just do business with them."

"I believe that they believe the Trade Federation and the Banking Clan might be up to something big," said Henry. "So they sent the Senator to investigate, and Anakin went with her."

"All this political crap is doing my head in," moaned Terriermon. "It's so much easier to just blast things than reason with them."

"That may be," said Aayla. "But we can't exactly go about everything with your approach, Terriermon," said Aayla. "The galaxy would be a bloodbath."

"Such pleasant imagery," said Rika, dryly.

"Speaking of Senator Amidala," said Renamon. "Has anybody besides me noticed that she and Anakin seem to be rather... close?"

"They have been friends since Anakin was a young boy," said Aayla. "In fact, they've been excellent friends since before Anakin met me and came to the Jedi Temple for the first time. They met when Senator Amidala went by the title of Queen instead."

"Queen?" Lopmon asked. "She used to be a queen."

"Yes," said Aayla. "And she was an excellent Queen. But kings and queens of Naboo can only rule for two terms, which is why she had to eventually step down. Anakin told me that the people of Naboo tried to get her re-elected, but it wasn't possible, so the next queen gave her the position of Senator instead, so that she'd still be helping her system."

"Anakin hardly ever talks about his past," said Ahsoka. "I know he used to be a slave on Tatooine, but from what I know he had an extremely unpleasant experience there. You should have seen his face when we arrived on planet to deliver Jabba's son back to him. He looked angry. Really angry."

"Is that right?" asked Renamon. "Aayla, have you got any explanations?"

"I'm afraid not," said Aayla. "He keeps his past experiences on that planet close to his chest. Obi-Wan might know, but I have no idea."

"But he did meet Senator Amidala there," said Renamon. "And now the two of them have a very, very strong friendship, wouldn't you say?"

"They have been through a lot together," said Ahsoka. "It's only natural, really. And somehow the Senator often finds herself in trouble where only Anakin can help."

"That is true," chuckled Aayla. "She does make a habit of it."

"What's the betting he'll have to save her life somehow on this mission they're on now?" Rika grinned.

"High," said Ahsoka.

Renamon said nothing more on the subject, but she, Terriermon and Lopmon all glanced at each other. All three knew that Renamon was an extremely observant Digimon – she was used to keeping an eye out for danger, and despite the relaxation of her personality since she mated with Terriermon, that part had not changed.

Renamon had noticed several incidents when the two of them had been together, while she was invisible to Padmé, that indicated a much deeper bond between the Jedi and the Senator than most people seemed to notice. There were definite moments where they would take sidelong glances at the other when they thought no-one else was looking. Renamon had noticed this, and several other signs that hinted at something else between them.

Terriermon and Lopmon, having an instant access link to Renamon's brain, had noticed these too.

_Let's just keep these suspicions to ourselves for now,_ said Lopmon. _We need to find out more and confirm it before we tell anyone else._

_Loppy is right,_ said Terriermon. _We can't go painting a target on Anakin's back if we have no proof. Hey, that's not a bad idea._

_Alright, but all the same,_ Renamon nodded, _Let's keep an eye on the two of them._

_Okay._

_Gotcha._

"Terriermon," Suzie looked up at the bunny on the shelf.

"Yeah?" he looked down into Suzie's face, his usual big grin pasted across his features.

"Can you do a little song for us?" asked Suzie, hopefully. "Just a nice, calm one please? I'm getting a bit bored."

"There's a surprise," said Lopmon.

"A song, you say?" Terriermon tapped his chin. "A nice, calm one? You know I don't usually do nice and calm, Suzie. I like to bounce all over the place in my own songs."

"Aww, go on Terriermon," Rika smiled. "What's the harm. Give the ten-year-old what she wants."

"Yeah," nodded Suzie, enthusiastically. "Pretty please."

"Alright," Terriermon shook his head. "Momentai. Just hold on a moment." He clicked his tongue a few times, running through the list of songs, separating the ones he was allowed to sing in front of Suzie to the ones he wasn't and then separating them into a list of calm and not calm.

Eventually, he picked one and he began, strumming an air guitar as he did so:-

"An old man by a seashore  
At the end of day  
Gazes the horizon  
With seawinds in his face  
Tempest-tossed island  
Seasons all the same  
Anchorage unpainted  
And a ship without a name.

Lopmon joined in the singing at this point. Terriermon grinned at his sister and the bunny sibling went on with the song:-

"Sea without a shore for the banished one unheard  
He lightens the beacon, light at the end of world  
Showing the way, lighting hope in their hearts  
The ones on their travels homeward from afar.

"This is for long-forgotten  
Light at the end of the world  
Horizon crying  
The tears he left behind long ago.

"The albatross is flying  
Making him daydream  
The time before he became  
One of the world's unseen."

Even though it was the middle of the verse, Aayla and Ahsoka both abruptly joined the song, demonstrating their new singing skills for all to hear:-

"Princess in the tower  
Children in the fields  
Life gave him it all:  
An island of the universe.

"Oh, Now his love's a memory  
A ghost in the fog  
He sets the sails one last time  
Saying farewell to the world  
Anchor to the water  
Seabed far below  
Grass still in his feet  
And a smile beneath his brow

"This is for long-forgotten  
Light at the end of the world  
Horizon crying  
The tears he left behind long ago.

"So long ago.  
So long ago."

For the final chorus, Renamon, Rika, Henry and Suzie all joined in.

"This is for long-forgotten  
Light at the end of the world  
Horizon crying  
The tears he left behind so long ago.

"So long ago."

"Great choice, Terriermon," said Henry. "I really like that song. I'm not sure why, I just do."

"Perhaps it's because it's by Nightwish," shrugged Terriermon. "I don't think it's possible for that band to have a bad song. Their music is so epic. It's too bad we haven't got that part with us and we can only do the singing."

"And we didn't forget the words," Ahsoka grinned. "We're catching on quite fast, aren't we, Aayla?"

"Indeed we are," the Twi'lek grinned. "Shall we test it out with another one?"

"Which one this time?" sighed Terriermon, pretending that he was exasperated by all this requests for singing, but really he was amused and very happy to do this. It was one of his favourite ways of passing the time, after all.

"Another Nightwish song, I think," Ahsoka grinned. "I think those ones are my favourites."

"They're amongst mine too," Terriermon nodded. "Which one? We've just done 'The Islander,' so now which one?"

"Well, we want another reasonably calm one," said Ahsoka. "So, how about we start with 'Amaranth?' That's a good one."

"Yeah, it is," nodded Terriermon. "Alright, would you like to do the honours?"

"Gladly," Ahsoka said, and she launched into song again:-

"Baptized with a perfect name  
The doubting one by heart  
Alone without himself."

Aayla took over the song for the next verse. Ahsoka subsided – they had rehearsed this.

"War between him and the day  
Need someone to blame  
In the end, little he can do alone."

Then they both sang for the chorus:-

"You believe but what you see  
You receive but what you give

"Caress the one, this Never-Fading  
Rain in your heart - the tears of snow-white sorrow  
Caress the one, the hiding amaranth  
In a land of the daybreak."

Renamon and Lopmon both took the next verse together:-

"Apart from the wandering pack  
In this brief flight of time we reach  
For the ones, whoever dare

"You believe but what you see  
You receive but what you give

"Caress the one, this Never-Fading  
Rain in your heart - the tears of snow-white sorrow  
Caress the one, the hiding amaranth  
In a land of the daybreak.

As the chorus repeated itself, Aayla and Ahsoka joined in again, leaving all four singing it:-

"Caress the one, this Never-Fading  
Rain in your heart - the tears of snow-white sorrow  
Caress the one, the hiding amaranth  
In a land of the daybreak.

"Reaching, searching for something untouched  
Hearing voices of the Never-Fading calling.

"Calling. Calling."

It was at the point where they were about to sing the chorus for the final time, that the doors open to reveal Anakin standing there. He blinked, as everyone who hadn't been singing before suddenly joined in, belting out the chorus for the last time:-

"Caress the one, this Never-Fading  
Rain in your heart - the tears of snow-white sorrow  
Caress the one, the hiding amaranth  
In a land of the daybreak! Day break!"

With that done, the others subsided and turned to face the confused looking Anakin in the doorway. "Morning, Anakin," said Aayla, waving cheerfully. "We were just practicing. Are you alright? You look a little stunned."

"Put yourself in my boots, Aayla," said the Chosen One. "I just opened the door to find my Padawan, one of my best Jedi friends, three Digimon and three human children singing a song I don't recognise at a very loud volume. Wouldn't you be a little stunned?"

"Probably," said Aayla.

"So, Master," Ahsoka asked. "How was the mission to Cato Nemoidia? Did you have to save Senator Amidala's life again?"

"Yes," said Anakin, a little grudgingly, as if he didn't want to admit that the Senator was as prone to being a damsel in distress as she was.

"Knew it," Terriermon giggled. "What was it this time?"

"If you must know, it was poison," said Anakin. "An assassination attempt by someone in the Trade Federation, I believe."

"Poison?" Henry looked sick. "Didn't expect that."

"Look," said Anakin. "I'm getting a little sidetracked here. The point is, I have news. The spy mission that the Senator undertook was a success, but what she discovered was extremely startling. I'm here to collect you guys and bring you to the conference room so that you can be debriefed for our new mission."

"What do you know? You were right, Henry," Lopmon said. "Terriermon did it indeed jinx it, and we have a new mission before the morning even ended."

"Wonderful," Henry said, getting to his feet. "Well, I suppose we better get going."

The Tamers got to their feet, and Terriermon and Lopmon hopped down from the shelf and the bed respectively. Anakin turned around and went out of the door, with everyone else right behind him.

"By the way, Anakin," said Renamon. "You should know that your Padawan pulled off a spectacular undercover mission earlier today. She and Aayla worked together to apprehend a dangerous criminal in the Coruscant Underworld."

"Is that right?" Anakin asked. "Which one?"

"Car Affa, Master," said Ahsoka.

"The one selling Republic weapons to the Separatists one the Black Market?" asked Anakin.

"Yes, that one," said Aayla. "Ahsoka played the part of a criminal herself spectacularly. She was able to identify our quarry with no trouble at all and alert me to his presence so I could capture him."

"Well, in that case, congratulations are in order," Anakin grinned at his Padawan. "Well done, Ahsoka. You're a Padawan beyond your years."

"Thank you, Master," Ahsoka beamed. "But I feel my performance was shoddy compared to Aayla's."

"Why? Where was she?"

Terriermon answered:- "She was up on the podium dancing to the whole bar."

Anakin stopped so suddenly that everyone else almost walked into him. He turned and looked at Aayla incredulously. "You disguised yourself as a Twi'lek dancer?"

"I don't know why you're so surprised," Aayla said. "You're the one who usually goes at doing things from an unusual angle. Besides, it worked."

"Wish I could have seen the surprise on Affa's face," Anakin chuckled.

"It was a sight to see," offered Renamon.

"Who'd have thought all these dance lessons the two of you have been taking would come in useful in official Jedi business?" Anakin said, as he started off down the corridor again.

"So, Master," said Ahsoka. "What are we in for this time? Are the Seppies planning a massive invasion on another Republic-aligned planet, or is this something else."

"You'll get the proper debriefing in a few minutes, Snips," said Anakin. "But I will tell you this, no, the Separatists are not planning a massive invasion. At least, not yet. No, it's actually the exact opposite. _We're_ planning a massive invasion on a Separatist-aligned planet."

"The excitement is building," Terriermon chuckled. "Are you going to spill the beans and tell us which one."

"You'll find out soon enough," said Anakin.

"Aw, go on, Anakin," Suzie said. "Tell us. Pleeeeaaasseeee."

"Oh, fine. I'll give you a hint. Aayla," Anakin called over his shoulder. "Why was Obi-Wan so freaked out when he spotted you riding on an Acklay back on Felucia?"

Aayla's eyes widened in surprise. "You can't possibly mean..."

"Yep," said Anakin, his face going grim. "That's right. We're heading back to Geonosis."

"Oh dear," said Aayla. "The day suddenly took a turn for the worse."

Everyone else looked grim now too. They all knew what had happened the last time the Jedi had been to Geonosis, and how they had lost almost two-hundred Jedi to the forces of the droids. Nobody was joking around now. That planet was not one to be trifled with if you wanted to get off it alive.

* * *

Not much to say here. Please review – I really appreciate your input.

* * *

Next time...

The group discover their new mission and prepare for an assault. A couple of other Jedi will be coming along, and the Digimon will be introduced to two new friends – Clone Captain Deviss and Jedi Padawan Barriss Offee.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 52 : Geonosis**


	52. Geonosis

My updates are coming so fast now that I don't have that much to say anymore. I just have this to say really – I loved last Friday's Clone Wars. Senator Chuchi and Ahsoka being friends surprised me, but it was a good surprise. I can use that later on in my story.

And now, here is a new chapter.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 52:- Geonosis**

* * *

The doors to the communication centre in the Jedi Temple slid open with a soft whir, admitting Anakin and everyone following him into the room. It was rather large and multi-tiered, and there were several individual rooms that branched off from it, but this one was the main room, where a large holoprojector table stood to one side of it. This table was frequently used to hold conferences between members of the Jedi Council and other Jedi who were off on missions at the time. Holograms could be projected so it looked like there were several more Jedi standing around it than there really were.

The room was ovular in shape and, while the table stood at one end of this oval, the rest of it contained rows of seating so that other people could sit and observe what was going on rather than have to be debriefed at a later date.

As the A-Team, Digimon and Tamers entered the room, they saw that there were several other Jedi crowded around the table already. Many Jedi Masters, such as Plo Koon and Shaak Ti, were off on missions at the moment, but the council members that remained had all gathered. There were not that many – Yoda, Mace Windu, Obi-Wan Kenobi and the Cerean Jedi Ki-Adi-Mundi, were all present. So was Luminara Unduli, who, despite not being on the council, was still a high-ranking Jedi Master.

"Ah, Anakin," said Obi-Wan. "There you are. I take it that what you are about to reveal to us is extremely important if you went so far as to call ahead and tell us to assemble here as quickly as possible."

"And you felt the need to bring the rest of your team," observed Mace Windu.

"Yes, Masters," nodded Anakin respectfully. "Once I have updated you on the situation, I fully intend, with your permission of course, to head out and try and put a stop to this new threat."

"So, correct our hunch was, hmm?" Yoda asked the Chosen One. "In league with the Separatists, Senator Rush Clovis was, yes?"

"Yes, Master," said Anakin. "He was." Several people in the room thought he sounded a little snide and a bit too happy when he said this, but they put it aside for now.

"Very well," said Mace. "Tell us of what transpired on Cato Nemoidia."

Anakin nodded and began:- "When Senator Amidala and Clovis arrived on Cato Nemoidia, they went inside the palace and were met by Senator Dod of the Trade Federation, while I stayed on the ship and waited for the Senator's signal, which she would transmit if she found anything. It took a couple of hours, but eventually, Padmé was able to get Senator Clovis to leave her alone on the pretext of requiring a drink.

"Once she was alone, she was able to locate this," Anakin pulled a small, square device from his belt – a holodisc. "She says that what is on this disc is extremely important, and when I heard what she found, I agree. It appears that Senator Dod was trying to get Senator Clovis to loan them more money – he's a Senator of the Banking Clan, you see," he added for the benefit of those who didn't know, "in order to build this."

"Well then," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "Why don't you enlighten the rest of us," he gestured to the holoprojector table.

"Of course," Anakin nodded and stepped forwards, pushing the disc into a little slot on the side of the table.

"Passcode?" asked the table.

"You're not going to believe this," Anakin muttered before giving it – "Padmé." The computer beeped in the affirmative. Terriermon sniggered.

"What?" Anakin asked. "That wasn't my password. Padme told me that was what Senator Clovis was using."

"What an idiot," Terriermon laughed.

"Yeah, I have to agree," said Henry. "That's not exactly a great password. It hardly keeps his files secure."

"And this would mean that Senator Clovis had feelings for Senator Amidala, would it?" asked Renamon, looking at Anakin innocently enough.

"Yeah, apparently," said Anakin, and Renamon spotted a tiny change in his expression that was gone almost before she saw it. But it looked a little like jealousy.

"Well that just makes it an even worse password," Henry chuckled. "Putting in the name of someone's girlfriend would be one of the first things I'd try if I wanted to hack into some guy's account. Not that I would."

"Shouldn't you be able to pull out some Einstein moves and hack straight past the password without needing it?" asked Rika.

"Well..." Henry trailed off, looking embarrassed.

Abruptly, as if it had been waiting for them to finish the conversation, a large, red hologram appeared on the holoprojector table. At first glance it resembled a large rock formation of some kind, with three tall spires sticking up from the thick base, each with a pointed top. But upon closer inspection, it was clear to everyone that it was a building of some kind, partially built on top of a large rock. There was large main door and numerous designs etched into the stone surfaces of the towers.

"Oh dear," said Obi-Wan slowly.

"Is that what I think it is?" asked Ahsoka.

"Hello? New guys here!" pointed out Terriermon, looking from face to face as all the Jedi stared grimly at the building being displayed. "What is it?"

"Hold on one moment, Terriermon," said Mace. "Skywalker, what transpired after the Senator found this?"

"She got the disc to me and took it back to the ship, but when I returned to pick her up I found that she had been poisoned by Senator Dod and that Senator Clovis had found out she'd stolen the disc. After that, I got Clovis to get the antidote from Senator Dod and took Padme back to the ship. Then when we left, I administered it. She's fine, but she's currently recovering in a medical station."

"That's a relief," said Obi-Wan.

"And then I came straight here to tell you about what had happened," said Anakin.

"A good job, you did, Skywalker," said Yoda. "Grave news this is."

"And Senator Clovis?" asked Luminara. "What did you do with him?"

"I left him behind," said Anakin with finality. "I don't know what became of him."

"And now that that has all been established," said Rika. "Could somebody tell us why that building is so important? What does it do?"

"That, Rika," said Aayla. "Is a very, very large droid foundry."

"Is it?" asked Terriermon. "That's where they make battle droids?"

"Yes," said Aayla. "But this one in particular is so important is because of its size. Currently, most battle droid foundries are quite small and dotted around the place, each one capable of producing around five-hundred droids a day. That in itself is extremely bad, but one of this size could create up to five-thousand droids an hour."

After a couple of seconds of stunned silence at this news, Lopmon said, "Suddenly, I understand why this is so serious."

"And it doesn't get any better the further we investigate," said Luminara, staring at a console on the holoprojector table. "According to these blueprints, this droid foundry isn't just an idea that Count Dooku is trying to put into action. It's already ninety-percent complete."

"And," said Anakin. "It's stationed on Geonosis."

"Blast," Obi-Wan muttered. "I'd hoped that I was wrong, but it looks like my guess by looking at the architecture was correct."

"What's so bad about it being on Geonosis in particular?" asked Renamon.

"Two reasons mainly," said Mace. "Firstly, the Geonosians are brilliant scientists that are extremely loyal to the Confederacy. According to our intel, they were the ones that created General Grievous' cyborg body. The droid factory will be much more productive and capable if it's being made and run by Geonosians. Secondly, the Geonosians have excellent defences and many, many large war machines at their disposal, making anything but a massive invasion painfully inadequate."

"Brilliant," said Terriermon. "We'll get a real challenge this time from the sound of things."

Yoda chuckled. "Strong, the Geonosian defences may be. But unprepared for a Digimon attack, they should be."

"That may be so," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "But even so, it would not do to take the assault lightly. There are few planets where such a large group of Jedi could have suffered so many casualties. The droids and the Geonosian natives form an endless times. Of the Jedi that went there the first time, only Jedi Masters, with the exception of seven Knights and three Padawans, made it out alive."

"Yes," said Aayla. "But it was made easier when the clones arrived. We quickly took control of the planet then."

"Yes," said Obi-Wan. "But we caught them by surprise that time. They weren't expecting an enormous army of clones to show up out of the middle of nowhere and attack them. And while I know we would have another advantage this time with the three Digimon... well, I just answered my own question. Strong and capable as you are, there are only three of you. In a campaign like this, quantity will matter just as much as quality."

"Especially if we're going up against a weapon's factory like that," said Ahsoka. "They could just instantly replace any droid we destroy by building another one right on the spot. This is going to be a tough one."

"There is something else," said Anakin. "The factory is surrounded by a large deflector shield, which will make an aerial assault impossible until the shield generator has been destroyed."

"And thus, another spanner gets thrown in the works," murmured Henry.

"However, that might not be such a bad thing," said Anakin. "I believe that, just before I left Cato Nemoidia, I caught a glimpse of Poggle the Lesser."

"Come again?" asked Terriermon, blinking.

"Poggle the Lesser," repeated Anakin.

A couple of seconds of silence. Then:-

"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ARHARHARHARHARHARHAR! HAHAHAHA! OHOHOHOHOHAHAHAHAHA!" Terriermon was practically rolling on the floor with laughter, slamming the ground with his little fist and making no attempt whatsoever to hide his mirth.

"Is he alright?" asked Ki-Adi-Mundi, who didn't know Terriermon nearly as well as everyone else in the room. "Is he having a fit?"

"No," said Renamon, rolling her eyes.

"Whahahat, k-k-k-kind of name is that?" Terriermon laughed, wiping his eyes. "I have h-h-heard some silly n-n-names while I've been here but POGGLE! And The Lesser! Where's Poggle the Greater. Bwahahahahahahaha! Poggle. Poggle. Poggle. Sounds like a weird dog breed. Hahahaha!"

"You do remember that you are named after a dog breed, right?" pointed out Henry.

That shut Terriermon up. "Yeah, I never got that," he said. "Why am I named after a dog and Lopmon is named after a rabbit, when we look almost exactly the same? I am so obviously a rabbit. But still – Poggle? Hehehehe."

"Poggle the Lesser is the Archduke of Geonosis," said Mace Windu, glancing at Terriermon at little frostily, but with nearly as much annoyance as he would have done a couple of months ago. "We don't know why he's named 'The Lesser.' As far as we know, he is the highest authority on that planet."

"He obviously doesn't think much of himself then," Terriermon snickered, trying desperately to keep his laughter in check. Renamon decided to help him and dropped her tail over his head, the fur blotting out his vision and muffled the giggles, but it also tickled his nose.

"Now that we know what the threat is, and on what planet it is located," said Aayla, "I am assuming that our next move would be to get out there and destroy it as quickly as possible, before it completely finishes construction and begins sending its legions across the galaxy to overwhelm our troops.

"I'm all for that," nodded Ahsoka.

"I agree," said Obi-Wan. "Every minute we continue to talk about it is another minute to allow that factory to produce more droids."

"I thought it wasn't finished," said Rika.

"It isn't," said Aayla. "But that's never stopped Geonosians. The factory will already be up and running – it just won't be at peak efficiency yet. I suggest that we head out as soon as possible."

"Agreed," said Yoda. "Volunteer the services of the A-Team, do you?"

"Yes, Master," nodded Aayla. "Any service we can provide."

"And we'll be right there beside you," nodded Lopmon firmly.

"I too shall go," said Obi-Wan. "That planet and I are scheduled for a reunion."

"I believe it will be best if I go as well," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "We shall need all the clone troops we can get for this one."

"Exactly," said Luminara. "And so, I too shall go. And I will be bringing my Padawan with me."

"Barriss?" asked Aayla. "She'll be coming?"

"Yes," nodded Luminara. "She too has had experience on that planet. She was the one of the only Padawans besides Skywalker to make it outside the arena after the assault began."

"I haven't spoken to Barriss for a while," said Aayla. "It'll be good to talk to her again."

"Stay here, Master Windu and I shall," said Yoda. "Inform the Chancellor of the situation, we will. Prepare for your new mission, you should."

"Yes, Grand Master," nodded everyone who had volunteered to go.

"And may the Force be with you all," said Mace. "Where you're going, you may need it."

"We'll go and start prepping our cruisers and preparing our troops," said Anakin. "We should be ready to leave within two hours."

That said, they all turned and left the room, Anakin and Aayla simultaneously contacted Captain Rex and Commander Bly as they did.

* * *

Padawan learner, Barriss Offee, was, like her Master, a Mirialan Jedi. She had olive coloured skin, like the rest of her species, and she also had a series of black dots running across her face, a tattoo that started on one cheek, ran over her nose and stopped on the other side. She may still be a Padawan, but at the age of eighteen, she was nearing the end of her training under Master Luminara. Soon, she would be ready to take the trials and become a full-fledge Jedi Knight.

And, in her opinion, it couldn't come too soon. Thanks to a combination of still being a Padawan and the war, she had become slightly ostracized from two of her best friends – Anakin Skywalker and Aayla Secura.

Just as Obi-Wan and Aayla's master, Quinlan Vos, had been friends, Obi-Wan had also been very good friends with Luminara, and that meant that Barriss was often alongside the two of them when they were training, practicing mock lightsaber duels with one another or lifting rocks side by side with the Force. Barriss was the youngest of the three by a good two years, but Aayla and Anakin had always made sure that she was included and had helped her to advance in her studies.

When Aayla Secura had unexpectedly become the youngest ever Jedi Knight thanks to her actions on the planet Kintan, that still hadn't unduly changed things. The Twi'lek would still sit in on their sessions and would still practice with them regularly, whenever her new duties as a Knight didn't get in her way. Barriss and Aayla had fought side by side in the arena on Geonosis, holding off a battalion of droids by themselves before Plo Koon and Ki-Adi-Mundi had arrived to lend aid.

But then, the war had started, which meant that the group of three had been split up for the majority of the time. Anakin had been made a Knight a few months into the war, and his contact with Barriss had slipped, as had Aayla's. Barriss didn't blame them though. They were usually far too busy to be social.

However, she couldn't deny that she'd been slightly put out when she'd learnt that the two of them had been partnered together in the war, meaning they'd be hanging out together again. And, Anakin now had a Padawan himself. It was almost as if Ahsoka had taken Barriss' place.

But, being a Jedi, Barriss still didn't hold a grudge against Ahsoka, and she most certainly didn't hold it against her two old friends. They were making quite a name for themselves – the A-Team had become a popular nickname for them.

Still, she did miss them.

And that was why she was delighted to learn that she would be working alongside them once again in a new campaign in this war. Hopefully they'd have time to catch up a little bit before they arrived on planet.

She was slightly less enthusiastic when she learned where they were going.

"Geonosis, Master?" Barriss asked a little apprehensively as Luminara led her through the halls of the Jedi Temple and towards the main doors, where they would head out to the cruisers being loaded for take-off. "We're going there? Again? I thought we'd taken that planet completely during our first attack."

"The Geonosians have proven to be more resilient than we anticipated," said Luminara gravely. "They retook the planet shortly after we left somehow, though we are not sure how they did it, and now they are beginning construction of their famed droid foundries again."

"This isn't a good situation," Barriss muttered, fiddling at the hood of her short cape, which she almost always wore over her head, even indoors. "But at least we should catch them before they finish their factory, right?"

"That is no guarantee," said Luminara. "As you know, Geonosis is a hostile landscape. It will be difficult to take it again, regardless of how early a strike we give."

Barriss chuckled. "But we have the A-Team alongside us, don't we?" she said. "And they have yet to fail in a mission. Let's hope their victory streak continues."

"Yes," said Luminara, a little quietly, glancing down at the floor. Barriss frowned. It looked like her Master was trying to say something and was trying to think of the best way to bring it up.

"What is it, Master?" asked Barriss.

"Barriss," said Luminara. "I know that you are good friends with both Aayla and Anakin, and I know that you have been a little frustrated by your lack of communication between them over the last few months. Therefore, I sincerely hope that you will not take it the wrong way when I tell you that both I and they have been keeping a big secret from you."

"You have?" Barriss asked, confused.

"Not just you," said Luminara. "Most of the Jedi order does not know of one of the main things behind the constant success of the A-Team, and nobody from the Senate does. This was brought into effect so as to keep it a secret from the Separatists and give the A-Team an unexpected edge with each battle they went into."

"Okay," said Barriss slowly. "But you know this secret?"

"Yes," said Luminara. "I was clued in during my mission to Alzoc III with Aayla. But I agreed not to tell a soul about it, not even you. The Jedi Council requested that if anyone were to find out about it, they would do so only because they would be required to work with the A-Team at some point."

"Okay," nodded Barriss again. "So, what is this secret, Master?" Now that she knew that there was one and the extent of its range she was eager for news.

"I think I'd better leave the full explanations to Aayla and Anakin," said Luminara. "I still don't know the full extent of this secret. I don't believe even they know everything about it."

None of this was making much sense to Barriss, but she let the subject drop, preparing to ask Aayla and Anakin when she saw them. She was bubbling with excitement at the prospect of showing them how far she had advanced in the last few months, and slightly apprehensive about talking to them again.

* * *

As Luminara and Barriss boarded the _Resolute_, they were met by those that Barriss had been looking forward to meeting. Anakin and Aayla had been waiting patiently at the top of the ramp for Luminara and Barriss to arrive, as had Ahsoka. When they spotted their Mirialan friend, both of them broke into broad grins.

"Barriss," Aayla smiled. "It certainly has been a while. How have been doing these past few months?"

"Aayla," Barriss smiled back. "I have been doing rather well, thank you," she bowed slightly to the Twi'lek – even though they were friends, Aayla still outranked her – "And yourself?"

"I have been holding up extremely well," Aayla grinned. "Despite the fact that we're fighting a war for the majority of the time, I have to admit the past few months have been some of the most fun I've ever had."

"You enjoy the fighting?" Barriss asked, stunned.

"Oh no," Aayla shook her head. "I could do without that part. But it's what happens off the battlefield that makes it fun."

"There's never a dull moment with them around, is there," Anakin agreed. "Anyway, it's good to see you again, Barriss. I haven't spoken much to you since that mission we had to Ansion."

"Yes," nodded Barriss. "Just before this wretched war started over half a year ago."

"It's hard to believe it's only been that long," said Luminara bitterly. "This war seems to have been going along much longer than that to me."

"Let's hope it doesn't last too much longer," said Ahsoka. The Togruta extended a hand to Barriss. "I'm Ahsoka. It's nice to meet you."

"Yes, I know who you are," Barriss chuckled. "Who doesn't know who any of the three of you are anymore?" She took Ahsoka's hand and shook it firmly. "Barriss Offee, at your service."

"Master Skywalker has told me some things about you," said Ahsoka. "Is it true that you were once captured by two mentally impaired Alwari hired by a Hutt, and you were able to secure your freedom by healing them, and in return they decided to act as guides for you?"

"Well, I don't like to brag about it," Barriss said, "But yes, I did."

"Wow," said Ahsoka. "That's probably more subtle than I would have been."

"Anyway," said Luminara. "I have told my Padawan about the Secret of the 327th, although I have not told her what it entails. I thought perhaps you could show it to her."

"Ah yes," said Aayla, turning to look Barriss in the eye. "Barriss, I am so sorry that we did not tell you about this sooner. We would have done but..."

"...but you were under strict orders from the Council not to," said Barriss. "That's alright. I understand. You were just fulfilling your duties. However, now that I know it exists, I am getting rather excited."

"We'd better head up to the bridge then, Barriss," chuckled Anakin. "It might be easier to show you than to try and explain it to you."

Anakin turned and began to lead the way back up to the bridge, but Barriss stopped him by saying, "Anakin?"

"Yeah?" Anakin looked over his shoulder.

"Why is there a piece of paper reading 'I love Padmé Amidala' stuck to your back?" she asked, noticing Ahsoka struggling to contain laughter.

"There's WHAT?" Anakin yelled, ripping the paper off his back and palming his face as he was once again a victim of the paper attack. "Ahsoka! You're doing this now?"

"Every opportunity," grinned Ahsoka. "Actually, that one was Terriermon's idea."

"Who?" asked Barriss, utterly lost now.

"Just follow us," said Aayla, taking Barriss by the shoulders and steering the confused Padawan down the corridor.

* * *

When Barriss and the others entered the bridge the Padawan gasped in shock and wonder. Most of the scene looked the same as normal, the Admiral standing and surveying everything, while numerous clones bustled hither and thither, carrying out tasks and checking monitors. Clone Captain Rex, Commander Bly, and another Captain, CT-65/91-6210, also known as Deviss and leader of a division of the 327th called K Company, were also standing there. Deviss usually was assigned under other Jedi Generals, as the 327th was so large Aayla didn't usually use it all in her campaigns, although an invasion of Geonosis was a special occasion.

However, Deviss was currently deep in conversation with a small, white bunny-like creature that Barriss had never seen before.

"...to meet you at last," Deviss was saying. "Bly's told me a bunch of wild tales about the three of you. Can you really grow into a large and powerful creature that could put an entire fleet of gunships to shame?"

"Well, I don't like to toot my own horn," said the bunny.

"Yes, you do," said another voice. Barriss started as she spotted a tall, yellow fox-like creature that she hadn't noticed before leaning against the wall.

"And yes, it is true," said another voice, leading Barriss to spot another small bunny, this one brown in colour. "And it has come in handy at times."

"Forgive me if I sound a little sceptical," said Deviss. "I suppose I'll get all the proof I need in the upcoming battle. I'm looking forward to squashing some bugs."

"Me too," said the white bunny. "It's too bad we don't have giant fly swatters. They'd run the other way."

"Guys," said another voice. This time, Barriss spotted a group of three children standing nearby. The one who had spoken, a blue-haired boy with brown skin, indicated the amazed Padawan. "We do have more company now."

"We do?" said the white bunny. "Oh yeah. So, we do." A grin smeared across his face, the little guy ran over to the Mirialan Padawan. "Hi there," he said enthusiastically. "Since you've come on board with Master Luminara, I'm guessing you're Barriss Offee. Right?"

"Uh-huh," said Barriss, examining the creature with interest and confusion. What in the galaxy was it and what was it doing here? She looked up at the other bunny and the fox making their way over, as well as the human children that were right behind them. Were the children Padawans? No, they didn't look old enough, especially one, who looked about nine or ten.

"Barriss Offee," said Luminara, placing a hand on her Padawan's shoulder and indicating the strange creatures and children in turn. "I'd like you to meet the Secret of the 327th. This is Renamon and her partner, Rika Nonaka."

"A pleasure," Renamon inclined her head.

"Nice to meet you," said Rika.

"This is Terriermon and his partner, Henry Wong."

"You look a little overwhelmed. Momentai," said Terriermon.

"Terriermon, that'll only confuse her more," said Henry.

"And this is Lopmon and her Tamer, Suzie Wong."

"Good morning," said Lopmon.

"Hi, I'm ten. How old are you?" asked Suzie.

"Erm," said Barriss, staring at the little girl and her friends in amazement. "I'm eighteen."

"Aww, that's years away for me," Suzie pouted.

"Yes, Suzie," said Terriermon. "But how many years away?"

"Eight," said Suzie, quickly.

"Well done," grinned Terriermon. "Your maths hasn't slipped since we came to this dimension."

"Good," said Suzie. "The lessons were hard enough the first time."

"I'm so confused," Barriss muttered. "Is anyone going to tell me what's happening?"

Aayla chuckled. "Perhaps I should start at the beginning," she suggested.

"Yes, that would always be a good place to start," Barriss agreed.

"Well, then," said Aayla. "This may take a while, and I believe we will start the explanations when we're in hyperspace. We need to get underway quickly."

"Agreed," said Anakin. "Admiral, contact Generals Kenobi and Mundi please. We're just about ready to take-off and we await their signal."

"Yes, sir," said Yularen, pushing a button on the holoprojector table. Holograms of Obi-Wan and Ki-Adi-Mundi appeared moments later.

"Ah, Anakin, Aayla, Master Luminara," said Obi-Wan. "Are you nearly ready?"

"Yes, Master Kenobi," said Luminara. "All clones are on standby. Shall we begin the take-off procedures?"

"Yes, at once," nodded Ki-Adi-Mundi. "We must begin our assault on Geonosis by the end of the day. Hopefully we can catch the Geonosians off-guard with the swiftness of our attack."

"And Luminara, has your Padawan been... updated as to the situation with the A-Team?" asked Obi-Wan.

"In part, Master Kenobi," said Luminara. "She knows of the existence of the Digimon now. But she's still very confused about it."

"Well, you'd better make sure she stops being confused," Obi-Wan smiled. "A confused Jedi is never a good thing."

"Of course," Luminara nodded.

"How long before we arrive at the planet?" asked Lopmon, hopping onto Luminara's shoulder so that she could be seen easily by Obi-Wan and Ki-Adi-Mundi. Luminara glanced at her in surprise – she'd met them before but had never been given the shoulder treatment by one of the bunnies like most of the others had. Barriss just shook her head at the sight of the little brown creature perched on her Master's shoulder.

"Not for a long time yet," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "Geonosis is in the far Outer Rim, right across the other side of the galaxy. It's so far away that the Republic has very little impact there."

"And what lovely terrain can we expect to find there?" asked Renamon.

"Well, apart from a few mountain ranges dotted about the place, the entire planet is one big desert," said Obi-Wan.

"Charming," said Rika. "One big dustball."

"Well, at least we have experience in deserts," chuckled Henry. "Thanks to our trip to the Digital World and Ryloth, anyway. The sandstorms there were certainly unpleasant."

"Well, hopefully we'll be offworld before we're treated to any of Geonosis' sandstorms," said Anakin. "They can be extremely hellish when they want to be."

"Is there any chance of going to a planet with a pleasant environment in the future?" asked Rika.

"Perhaps," said Aayla. "If the Separatists decide to invade Alderaan or Naboo again."

"Let's get going," said Obi-Wan, and the holograms of himself and Ki-Adi-Mundi vanished.

As the clones started the engines and the cruisers began to lift off into space, Aayla and Anakin turned back to Barriss.

"So," said Aayla. "Here's how it all began..."

* * *

Barriss' eyes seemed to get bigger and bigger as her two friends outlined how they had come to meet the Digimon, the adventures they had had with them and the many things that they had seen the Digimon doing. Ahsoka chipped in occasionally, outlining the incident with the Sarlacc on Felucia, which neither Aayla nor Anakin had been present at, in great detail to the amazed Mirialan.

When they'd finished, they'd already jumped to hyperspace and Barriss was reeling with the information overload. "This is... this is so much to take in," she spluttered, holding a hand on her head. "Most of what you just told me doesn't seem to be possible. All this talk of alternate dimensions, digivolving and all this other stuff, doesn't seem rational, and yet I sense you are telling the truth."

"It is the truth, Barriss," said Ahsoka. "Believe me, I was probably as shocked as you are when I discovered that Terriermon could shoot energy pellets from his mouth. He fired them straight through the stomach of a holographic me."

"It made you jump nonetheless," Terriermon giggled.

"And a prank war?" Barriss looked at Anakin. "Seriously."

"Yep, and I am winning," grinned Ahsoka. "I've gotten Skyguy many more times than he's gotten me."

"Yeah, but most of those have been paper-sign-on-back pranks," said Anakin, folding his arms and scowling. "In terms of more elaborate pranks, I'd say we're fairly equal."

"What about you, Deviss?" Bly asked his subordinate. "Are you convinced yet?"

"I probably wouldn't be if that Jedi Padawan hadn't said she sensed they weren't lying," said Deviss. "But, even so, I reckon I'm going to have to see it to believe most of what I've been hearing. The idea of this little guy becoming a large, super-fast, cannon-wielding cyborg in the space of a few seconds is still a bit far-fetched if you ask me."

"Good idea, Captain," said Barriss. "I will hold my judgement on things until I have experienced what these Digimon and these Tamers can do first-hand."

"Even we haven't experienced all they can do," said Aayla. "Actually, I don't think even they know the full extent of their abilities."

"True enough," said Renamon. "But you'll see us in action before the day is out, Barriss."

"And just for you," said Terriermon. "We'll make everything explode more spectacularly than usual."

"Terriermon."

"Momentai. But seriously, this guy we're going after – Poggle," he snickered, just as he had been doing every time someone mentioned the Archduke of Geonosis. "Is going to get quite a surprise before the day is out."

"True," said Rika. "Now, how shall we wile away the hours until we reach the new planet this time?"

"Just so you know, Barriss," Ahsoka whispered sidelong to her fellow Padawan. "When somebody asks a question like that on this ship, that's where things usually deteriorate."

"What do you mean?" asked Barriss.

"Who's up for a game of cards?" Terriermon swiped a bunch of them from Henry's card pack attached to his belt.

"Actually, for Terriermon, that's pretty mild," said Aayla.

"Yeah, alright," said Bly. "Which game?"

Terriermon began counting out a number of cards until he had a certain number in his hand. "Evert played Fifty-two Pick-up?" Terriermon asked the Clone Commander.

"No," said Bly. "How do you play?"

"Here's fifty-two cards," said Terriermon, holding them in one ear. Then, with a flourish, he threw him into the air, scattering them all over the bridge. "Now pick them up."

"Never mind," said Aayla, as the clones laughed.

* * *

The hyperspace journey was one of the longest that the Digimon and the Tamers had ever experienced, but, eventually, they did arrive. The many _Venator_-class Republic cruisers, eighteen of them in all, whooshed out of hyperspace above the target planet, and slowly began making their way towards it, preparing to enter the atmosphere where they could put their plan into action.

A small shuttle detached itself from the _Resolute_ and flew towards Obi-Wan's own flagship. It had been agreed that the forces of the Republic would attempt to take the whole planet at once, and so there were many attacks being planned right across the globe. However, while the clones were to be split up, the Jedi and the Digimon were all going to be focused on one target – the most important one.

As the Jedi, Digimon, Tamers, Rex, Bly and Deviss stepped off the shuttle and made their way out of the hangar, the clones were intercepted by Commander Cody and Ki-Adi-Mundi's own Commander, a clone named Jet. Jet's armour looked extremely different from the armour worn by any of the other clones present. He and his men had donned a special type of clone armour, specially designed by the Kaminoans after the first battle of Geonosis, just in case a large battle involving the Geonosians occurred again.

Jet's armour was painted the colour of sand, which would make for good camouflage on the planet below where there was sand absolutely everywhere. His armour, and in particular his helmet, was more robust than that of most clone trooper armour. His helmet had two large plate like projections on either side, making him look like he was wearing large earmuffs. These were specially designed to help the clone resist the sonic weapons that the Geonosians were so fond of using.

As Cody and Jet began to discuss tactics with the other clones, everyone else made their way to the bridge. When they reached it, they found Obi-Wan and Ki-Adi-Mundi standing beside the window and gazing out across the planet below them.

"I was rather hoping that when we took Geonosis the first time, it would stay taken," said Obi-Wan. "And here we are, preparing to slug it out with the locals once again. It's exasperating beyond belief."

The others joined the two Jedi at the window.

"It doesn't look like a particularly exciting planet from up here does it?" noted Terriermon, looking at it with a critical eye. "I like the asteroid belt around it though. It makes it look like Saturn. Bu still, it doesn't exactly scream 'tropical getaway.'"

"It may not look like much," said Aayla. "But don't let that fool you. The Geonosians have enormous defences surrounding that factory of theirs, and I don't just mean the ray shield. They'll have bunkers filled with cannons everywhere down there, so coming at them from any direction will be a challenge for our gunships."

"I hate flying in a gunship," said Rika. "You have absolutely no control over your own life in one of those. I still vividly remember that horrible run over Felucia."

"Well, hopefully you won't get shot down this time," said Anakin. "But we're going to have to be well-prepared if we don't want that to happen."

"And hopefully destroying that factory will bring the war to a much quicker end," said Henry.

"One can only hope," said Obi-Wan.

"You needn't worry Obi-Wan," said Renamon. "I'd say we have more than enough to get us through whatever defences they have. We Digimon will be right out in front, leading the charge. Perhaps we can take out a large portion of their defences before you even arrive."

"True," nodded Obi-Wan.

"Well, I suppose we better contact the Outer Rim Command so that we can be briefed on the mission properly," said Anakin. "You guys duck out of sight – the Chancellor will be there and we don't want him to see you."

"We'll wait outside," said Lopmon. "And I promise that Renamon and I will keep my brother under control."

"That would probably be quite a sight to see," chuckled Ahsoka.

Terriermon laughed. "Why? Because they'll fail epically?"

Renamon grabbed Terriermon and hoisted him into her arms. "I'm not going to let you go anywhere until the briefing is over," she said.

"Momentai, Rena," Terriermon grinned up at her. "You know I was kidding."

"Yes, I do. But they don't. So I'll do this anyway."

"Thank you, Renamon," said Luminara. "It is very much appreciated."

"The Command's waiting for us now," said Ahsoka. "I contacted them before we left the _Resolute_ and told them we'd arrived."

"Then let's get started," said Ki-Adi-Mundi.

As the Digimon walked out of the bridge, followed by their Tamers, and shut the door behind them, the Jedi grouped around the holoprojector table and contacted Command. Master Yoda, Master Windu and Chancellor Palpatine appeared holographically on the table, as did a large image of the planet below.

"Your Excellency, Masters," nodded Obi-Wan. "Our fleet is almost in position. We're just entering the Geonosian atmosphere as we speak. We should be able to get underway against the Geonosians in approximately fifteen minutes."

"And Poggle?" asked Mace. "Do you have any idea where he might be?"

"Not as of yet," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "But we do believe that if he's anywhere on this planet, he'll be here in the droid factory that we're about to attack. We believe that he'd want to overview the final stages of its production personally."

"That, and now that he knows we know about the factory," said Aayla, "he'll believe his heavily fortified factory will be the safest place for him to go to hide from our imminent attack."

"Valid points," said Chancellor Palpatine. "But how do you intend to break through to the factory. From what I understand, this weapon's factory of there is covered by a large deflector shield, meaning you cannot land your gunships there."

"We've scanned the area below us," Luminara pushed a button, displaying a hologram of the factory, complete with shield. "And we've selected an area for us to land, close to the shield and reasonably close to the generator powering it. We'll have to land on the ground and continue on foot to get the shield down."

"After discussing things with Commander Cody and Jet," said Obi-Wan. "We believe the best assault plan would be to split up and come at them from three different directions at once, so that the firepower from their bunkers is as thinly spread as possible. When we've landed, we'll target the shield immediately, and get it down. Once we've done that, then we'll begin to plan our assault on the factory itself."

"Correct me if I'm wrong," said Palpatine. "But there are five Jedi Generals going on this same mission, right?"

"Not quite, Chancellor," said Luminara. "My Padawan and I will not be making a direct assault on the shield. We intend to take out a large, Geonosian outpost nearby to prevent reinforcements coming to the aid of the factory. Once we've done that, then we shall join up with the others for the attack on the factory itself.

"Very well, but that still leaves four Generals, all heading to the exact same place," said Palpatine. "Would it not be better to spread yourself out a little? If something bad happens, or a slip-up occurs then we could face a disaster if you're all together."

"Important, this mission is," said Yoda to the Chancellor. "Last time, allowed to escape, Poggle was. And now, attacking the planet a second time, we are. Undoubtedly, lose many men, we shall on this mission. Capture Poggle, we must, to ensure we do not need to take Geonosis a third time. Tell us about how they retook the planet, he can, and much information on the Separatists, he shall have."

"That is true," nodded Palpatine thoughtfully. "Of course, this mission could go a long way to the defeat of the Separatists. Do what you must, Master Jedi. Master Yoda is right."

"We'll do our best, your Excellency," said Anakin.

Yoda, Mace and Palpatine inclined their heads and their holograms vanished.

"You can come back in now," Ahsoka called through the doors. They opened and the Digimon strode back onto the bridge. Behind them were their Tamers, and behind them were the clones.

"Cody, Jet," said Obi-Wan. "Have you given the others a briefing of the plan?"

"Yes, General," said Cody.

"Well could you do it again for those of us who don't have the ability to read minds," said Terriermon.

"I thought you could do that," Barriss said, frowning.

"Well, yeah I can, but only the minds of my mate, sister and Tamer," said Terriermon. "And I can also talk to Suzie and Rika via Rena and Loppy, but I can't just tap into the minds of anyone."

"Ah," said Barriss. "This... is going to take some getting used to."

"But did you hear what was being said between us and the Chancellor?" asked Ki-Adi-Mundi.

"With these ears, I'd be worried if I hadn't," said Terriermon.

"In other words, yes," said Lopmon.

"That's one word."

"Anyway," said Cody, indicating the holomap. "When we reach the landing zone, we'll use the gunships and AT-TE walkers to create a perimeter, because you can bet that the Geonosians will have troops ready to attack us even if we get through the flak, so we'll be able to use out vehicles as shields. Since those belonging the Captain Rex and Commander Bly now have Chrome-Digizoid, we, they should be the ones placed closest to the factory.

"Chrome-Digizoid?" asked Barriss _and_ Luminara, curiously.

"Yes," said Aayla. "The Digimon haven't just been providing us with added muscle. They gave us a sample of an almost indestructible metal called Chrome-Digizoid, which have been incorporated into the tanks and other vehicles of mine and Anakin's legions."

"Handy," said Luminara. "Carry on, Commander."

"Yes, General," said Cody. "Anyway, we have decided to that General Mundi and his forces will make their assault from the north. General Kenobi and I shall take our own forces and attack from the middle, while Generals Skywalker and Secura come at it from the South. We should try to time our landing so that we all reach the landing zone at the same time."

"And what about us?" asked Renamon. "What's our role in this?"

"You mean, what's your role?" sighed Rika. "We Tamers will probably just sit on the sidelines. Again." She huffed and Henry put a hand on her shoulder.

"Relax, Rika," said Henry. "We've been through this enough times by now that you should be used to it."

"I know that," said Rika. "I know."

Commander Cody went on. "Since we're splitting into three and there are three Digimon, it makes sense that one Digimon should go with each attack to provide assistance where necessary. Since General Mundi's strike takes place over a large plateau, we thought it would be best if Lopmon went with them, since he digivolutions leave her ground based and there, she should be able to provide better support for the clones than elsewhere."

"Got it," said Lopmon, as she and Suzie went to stand by Ki-Adi-Mundi.

"And since the A-Team have a slightly more... forward approach to things than we do," Cody chuckled. "We thought that Terriermon should go with them, as he should be able to both keep up with them and provide cover fire with relative ease."

"You bet your ass I can," said Terriermon, hopping onto Ahsoka's head.

"That tickles," Ahsoka giggled, brushing Terriermon's huge ears off her lekku.

"We'll be ready," said Henry.

"And that leaves you with us, Renamon," said Obi-Wan. "Our more careful and defensive approach should mean that you'll be able to integrate with my strike force very well, wouldn't you say?"

"I shall certainly do my best," nodded Renamon, gazing thoughtfully at the map.

"Of course you will," said Rika. "You never give anything but a hundred percent to a task like this."

"And we cannot ask more of you than that," nodded Obi-Wan.

"But, even with the Digimon on our side, the chances are that the flak may get too heavy," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "To that effect, should something happen that means that we cannot join up at the rendezvous point straight away, whoever does get there should wait until we arrive on foot before going onto the next stage of the plan."

"Terriermon," said Ahsoka. "Keep an eye out for this," she pointed to a red line on the holomap. "That's a Geonosian fortress, and that could provide a real challenge for us if we go anywhere near that."

"Geonosian fortress plus Rapidmon equals rubble," grinned Terriermon. "No sweat." But, as he spoke, Terriermon was looking at Renamon. Lopmon was also looking to the fox, and the three of them had a semi-glazed look that they usually had when they were holding an internal conversation.

Aayla had noticed this little behaviour of the three of them. Since their friendship had grown, Aayla had become used to noticing little details about their behaviour that the others didn't seem to pick up. While the attention of the others was focused solely on the holomap, Aayla carefully watched the faces of the three of her best friends.

She definitely didn't fail to notice the grins that they had on their faces as they spoke to one another, nor did she miss the fact that these grins were growing bigger with each passing second.

"Alright, you three," Aayla said, placing her hands on her hips and giving them a mock glare of suspicion, thus drawing the attention of everyone else. "Out with it. What are you talking about and why is it making you look so happy?"

"I was just noticing something," said Renamon. "Throughout this whole conversation, we've been talking about nothing but going on the offensive."

"Yes," nodded Obi-Wan.

"Just a quick question," said Lopmon. "Is there anything down there that we need to be on the lookout for? As in, are there any innocent natives that we don't particularly want to harm, or is there some sort of environmental thing we don't want to destroy?"

"What, in a desert?" Terriermon asked.

"You never know," said Lopmon.

"No, there isn't," said Anakin. "Everything down there is extremely hostile. This is my favourite kind of mission, where we don't have to watch where we're aiming just in case we hit an innocent bystander. It also means we'll get to use our Y-wing bombers. That's always fun."

"Anakin, you're a hopeless case," Obi-Wan sighed.

"So there's no risk of collateral damage?" asked Renamon. "No risk at all?"

The grin on their faces was being copied now by the Tamers. They seemed to understand what Renamon was getting at, and they were looking at each with excitement and... was that triumph in their eyes? No, it was anticipation.

"No, none at all," said Aayla. "Why do you... Oh. Oh, I see," she said. She began to grin as well. She and Renamon caught the eye of the other and the two of them began to chuckle.

"Now, she gets it," Terriermon giggled.

"Well, I don't," said Obi-Wan. "And while I'm sure this is some kind of private joke, we really don't have time for this sort of thing."

"Oh, this is no joke, Master," said Aayla. "Well, Tamers, it looks like your wishes are about to come true."

"It's about time," Rika cracked her knuckles. "I've been looking forward to this day."

"Me too," said Suzie. "It's been so long."

"I think you've lost everyone else," said Commander Bly. He too, was beginning to understand just what they were talking about, based on what he'd heard from their exploits in their own world.

"Yes, I certainly don't have a clue what you're talking about," said Ki-Adi-Mundi.

"Could someone please let us in on it," said Obi-Wan.

"Go ahead, Terriermon," Aayla glanced at the bunny perched on Ahsoka's head. "Put them out of their misery."

"The time has come," Terriermon grinned. "For this universe to found out the full extent of what we Digimon and Tamers can do when we fight together."

"You're going to send the children into battle?" Barriss started. "But they aren't Jedi. They'll be vulnerable."

"No offense, Barriss, but you're new at this," said Rika. "We are no ordinary children."

"Fight together?" Anakin said, beginning to grin himself now. "You don't mean that in the normal sense do you? You don't mean, 'fighting side-by-side' do you?"

"Nope," said Renamon.

"Then what do you mean?" asked Luminara.

"You mean, 'as one', don't you," Ahsoka nodded vigorously.

"Oh yes. I reckon it's about time we show the Separatists the true power of Digimon and Tamer," said Terriermon. "This universe has experience the strength of Rookie Digimon, Champion Digimon and Ultimate Digimon. Now, it's turn of the Megas."

"Megas?" asked Obi-Wan, suddenly realising the implications of what Terriermon was saying. "If I'm not mistaken, that is your final level of Digivolution, is it not?"

"Yes, it is," said Henry. "And we obtain it by biomerging – where Digimon and Tamer combine into one extremely powerful being. We haven't been going that far so far for numerous reasons, but usually it's because at that level we are so powerful that we could easily kill an innocent completely by accident. But with no risk of that happening here..."

"...You can go all out," realised Captain Rex. "You can blast them to smithereens. Oh, I have been looking forward to this."

"Believe me, you won't be disappointed, Rex," said Renamon.

"Well then," said Obi-Wan, chuckling. "I reckon that we should prepare for our assault, so that we can finally experience the full potential of our inter-dimensional guests."

"From the way you all describe it," said Luminara, "I almost feel sorry that Barriss and I have to go and assault a completely different target."

"Don't worry, Master Luminara," said Aayla. "You'll see them in action yet. While the Mega level may be useful and I have no doubt that any one of you could quite easily blow up the factory, we cannot do so without killing Poggle. We need him alive. However, you certainly have my permission to unleash your strength on the shield generator and the Geonosian defences."

"Excellent," said Terriermon. "Then let's get this show on the road."

The Digimon, the clones, the Tamers and the A-Team left to begin their assault with a much greater sense of anticipation than before.

Finally, Mega Digimon would arrive on the scene.

* * *

And now, hopefully I've gotten all of you extremely excited for the upcoming chapter. I'm excited about writing it. I've received a number of reviews asking when they'll go to the Mega stage and now it's finally here. Please review and let me know how you all are.

I should be able to get the next chapter up by Sunday evening. I'll be a little busy on Saturday because I'll be going to watch male red deer smash their heads together in an attempt to get a mate and film it to practice some of my wildlife cameraman skills.

C'est la vie.

* * *

Next time...

I think you can all guess.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 53 : The Wonders of the Biomerge**


	53. The Wonders of the Biomerge

This week's Clone Wars was one that I had not been looking forward to, simply because anything involving Padme and Satine without any Jedi being involved just doesn't spark my interest. However, while it was still my least favourite episode of season 3 so far, it surprised me by being quite a good episode. And next week's looks amazing.

And now, for the chapter you have all been patiently waiting for. Let's kick some tail.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 53:- The Wonders of the Biomerge**

* * *

Obi-Wan Kenobi, Commander Cody, Rika Nonaka and Renamon were all in the hangar of the _Negotiator_ and were preparing for what promised to be quite an epic battle. Commander Cody, who hadn't been involved in the first assault on Geonosis, had been a little apprehensive about coming here – having heard the stories from the clones that had made it out of this place alive.

Now, he was quite looking forward to the experience. All of the clones were. The word of what three Digimon were planning to do had been passed around via word of mouth, and now they were all looking at the tall fox and the orange-haired girl that were walking beside their Jedi Commander.

Cody shook his head. If somebody had told him when he was being trained back on Kamino that someday he would be working alongside Digital Monsters, who were incredibly powerful and could pull off the inexplicable, change shape, generate attacks from thin-air and weren't actually very monster-like, he would have nodded, smiled, backed away, and called the nearest medic. And yet, here he was, doing just that, and waiting for a proverbial bombshell when he saw what they'd all been waiting to see – their most powerful forms.

He remembered his time working alongside the yellow fox and her fiery Tamer. Renamon's Rookie form had been stunning enough, ripping the droid ranks to shreds on Christophsis alongside General Secura. Then she'd changed to Kyubimon on Ryloth, and suddenly she could shoot fire from her tails and even coat herself in the stuff, something which no-one should be able to do without burning to death, yet she'd come out unscathed. Then, she'd swooped in on Felucia, in a completely new form, this time called Taomon, and she had effortlessly destroyed a huge number of droids and tanks with her magic spells, protecting the clones with her force-field as she did _and_ she'd managed to tame wild Acklay.

If she could do all of this in one of her less powerful forms, what in the galaxy was this new one capable of doing?

Renamon and Rika boarded the nearest gunship, the tall fox holding her partner's shoulders like a guardian. To all intents and purposes, she was, and they were bracing themselves for the big event. Obi-Wan boarded with them and Cody entered another gunship – the idea being that if one was shot down there was still someone of high authority in the air. Almost wordlessly, the gunships rose into the air and dropped out of the hangar into the Geonosis atmosphere.

* * *

Ki-Adi-Mundi glanced down at the small beings that were walking beside him in the hangar of his own flagship. Having never worked with them before, he knew little of what Suzie Wong and Lopmon could do, but he had heard some fantastic stories from other members of the Council in their reports after missions. Apparently, according to Obi-Wan, the small brown bunny standing next to him had decimated all of the proton cannons of a Separatist Forces without suffering an injury of any kind.

"Are you prepared for what we have ahead of us?" the Cerean Jedi Master said. "Is there anything special that you have to do before you are capable of reaching this Mega stage of yours?"

"No," said Lopmon. "All it requires is Suzie's command and for me to be in close proximity to her when she gives it. It won't take but a moment for us to do it."

"Will you do it now before we set off, or will you wait until we are almost there before you do what you have to do?"

Lopmon giggled. "If we biomerged now, we'd end up tearing the ship apart. We are pretty large when we biomerge and, despite the many things that we are capable of doing in that form, we have yet to find a way to shrink."

"I see," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "Well, just make sure you're ready."

"We're ready, sir," said Suzie. "We'll do it as soon as we get going."

"Very good," nodded the Cerean. He turned to check on his troops. They were beginning to enter their gunships and he could almost see the expressions of determination and excitement underneath their helmets. They had been rather surprised when they had learned they'd be working alongside these beings – Ki-Adi-Mundi hadn't told them they existed until that morning – but after what Rex, Cody, Bly and the others had said, they were looking forward to quite a show. And they'd be seeing it at its height.

Many of the troopers had flamethrowers with them. Geonosians, being insect species, were particularly susceptible to fire, and so there were many clones who would be on standby, ready to spring forward if they were needed.

"We are ready to begin our attack," said Ki-Adi-Mundi, boarding a gunship. As Suzie and Lopmon walked in next to him and some more clones, it levitated upwards and then whooshed out into open air.

* * *

"Come on already!" Terriermon said loudly, as the clones made their final preparations. "We're falling behind. Rena and Rika have already left and Suzie and Loppy aren't far behind. We're going to miss half the action at this rate."

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

"Well, excuse us and the fact that we have twice as many troops to prepare as either of the others," said Anakin. "I think we're making rather good time considering everything."

"What about you, Terriermon?" asked Bly. "Are you ready for some action?"

"Anytime, anywhere."

"Great philosophy," chuckled the Commander. "We wouldn't want you to let us all down, would we? We've been building up to this moment for long enough."

"Not helped by your subtle hints about what we might see," agreed Aayla. "Jedi are not supposed to seek out adventure, but I am raring to go this time. I've been waiting for this just as much as my troops have."

"We all have," nodded Ahsoka. "It may all be for different reasons, but we all have been looking forward to this."

"It'll be nice to finally fight with you again, Terriermon," said Henry. "All I've done so far is watch what you've been doing through my D-Arc and swipe the occasional card for you."

"Hey, that's a good question," said Aayla. "Will you still be able to use those cards of yours when you merge into one being?"

"No, unfortunately we won't," said Henry. "We're not exactly going to have access to the cards or the D-Arc."

"But that's okay," said Terriermon, laughing. "Because we're so bad-ass that we don't even need them."

"I'll take your word for it," said Aayla.

"Hey, in this form, we were able to momentarily indispose a Digimon Sovereign," said Terriermon. "And while that may not sound all that impressive to someone who's never actually met one, trust me when I say that is quite an achievement. The Sovereigns are insanely powerful."

"Alright," said Anakin. "I believe we're done. And since I don't want to delay the looks of awe on everyone's faces when they see you two do your stuff, I say we get going straight away."

"Right behind you, Skyguy," Ahsoka hopped into a gunship with her Master and Rex, while Aayla, Bly, Henry and Terriermon hopped in another. Keeping the blast doors open so they wouldn't miss the show, they ducked through the hangar doors and into the Geonosian sky.

* * *

Obi-Wan's gunship squad was huge, consisting of a good fifteen LAAT gunships and eight AT-TE walkers being flown in by their transports, the pilots already in the cockpits of their walkers so they could get going immediately the moment they landed on the ground.

Obi-Wan kept a watch over his squad out of his open blast doors. Normally, the careful Jedi Master would never have his gunship's blast doors wide open like this, even though they hadn't reached the Geonosian defences yet. But since Renamon and Rika needed access to open air, he really had no choice in the matter.

"Okay, you two," the Human Jedi Master said to his fellow passengers. "It might be a good idea for you to get started. There's still a chance we could be caught off guard and having a Digimon as powerful as I've heard a Mega is could be a huge asset.

"We'll do our best," said Rika, grin plastered across her face.

"Do you remember, Rika?" asked Renamon. "The very first time we biomerged occurred when we jumped out into open air, and we'll be doing a repeat of that now."

"Oh yeah," said Rika. "Quite appropriate considering this is the first time we'll biomerge in this dimension."

"Indeed," said Renamon. "I think we've procrastinated long enough. Shall we do this?"

"Yep," nodded Rika.

For the third time in Renamon's life, she leapt out of a moving gunship. Only this time, her partner was right beside her. The clones from the numerous white vessels watched as they ploughed on ahead, leaving the two behind. But they still heard Rika's shout, as sudden explosion of white light, bigger than any of them had seen before, occurred around the two falling girls.

"BIOMERGE ACTIVATE!" Rika yelled, delighting in the two words as she did so.

Renamon grinned as she felt the transformation begin. This was going to be sweet.

"**RENAMON BIOMERGE TO... SAKUYAMON!"**

As two beings whooshed into one, they changed direction in mid-air and, with no visible means of support, the Mega-level Digimon shot forwards until she was soaring beside the gunships. The clones gasped at the sight of her, flying effortlessly alongside them.

She was at least twice the height of an average human, and she looked far more human than Renamon did. Her body was encased in something like a black leotard, but this was only really visible on her legs, since her top half was covered in yellow armour. A large breastplate covered her chest and her shoulders had large spherical guards, each patterned with the yin-yang symbol on Renamon's gloves. The gloves themselves were still there, from the knuckles of her hands to past her elbows, and she now had high-heeled boots that were the same colour and came up to her knees. The bottom half of her face looked exactly like a human's, but the top half was concealed by a helmet shaped like the head and top jaw of a fox. Long grey hair spilled out from the back of the helmet in two separate pony-tails. She had a belt, with a buckle that also resembled a fox-head and in one hand, she held a long staff with a giant ring at one end, and many smaller rings clinking from the larger one.

Sakuyamon turned to glance at the clones. She smirked. "What are you staring at?" she said, in two voices, one that was clearly Rika's and the other clearly Renamon's, confirming the merging of the two to her audience. "Never seen a Mega-level Shaman Digimon before?" she asked.

"Well, we have now," said Obi-Wan. "I'm impressed."

"As well you should be," came Rika's voice.

"Let's go and give them something to be really impressed about," said Renamon, and Sakuyamon put on speed, until she was out in front of the gunships, staff ready to intercept the first cannon blast that came their way.

"Let's keep the blast doors open," suggested Cody. "I don't want to miss this."

* * *

Ki-Adi-Mundi's own strike force was just as large as Obi-Wan's. The gunships cruised over the desolate Geonosian landscape heading south and towards the large cliff-face that became the enormous plateau that had been the reason why Lopmon had been placed in this attack team.

But that was before they'd made the decision to biomerge.

"Are they over by the cliff?" asked Suzie, the little girl wondering if they were going to be attacked by the locals at any moment.

"Almost certainly," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "They won't have placed their bunkers out in the open. They'll be using the cover on the rock. When we reach those cliffs, that's when the attack will begin."

"And we're not equipped with Chrome-Digizoid like those of General Skywalker and Secura," said Commander Jet. "That makes us much more vulnerable to the laser fire than they are. Why do Captain Rex and Commander Bly get all the cool stuff?"

"Hey, they don't have flamethrowers," said Suzie.

"True," nodded Jet.

"And besides, Jet," said Lopmon. "You're about to get something pretty cool yourself. And I wouldn't worry about being more vulnerable than the forces of the A-Team. Suzie and I should be able to keep the majority of you safe just by flying in front of you."

"Are you really that large?" Jet asked in amazement.

"Why don't we demonstrate?" asked Lopmon. "Are you ready to make the jump, Suzie?"

"Not really," Suzie glanced apprehensively down at the enormous drop beneath them. "It's so high up."

Don't worry, Suzie," said Lopmon. "I'll catch you, just like I did on Felucia when you fell out of a gunship. My parachuting skills are just as refined as ever. And you know we can't biomerge inside the ship without crushing everyone in it."

"Yeah, I know," said Suzie. Lopmon hopped onto her shoulders and gripped her Tamer firmly under the arms. Feeling more confident with her Digimon ready to catch her, Suzie took the plunge. As she leapt out into the air, she wondered vaguely what her Mum would make of her willingly going sky-diving.

But she put it aside as she pressed the D-Arc to her chest and, with extreme joy, she yelled:-

"BIOMERGE ACTIVATE!"

The clones were astounded by how quickly the light explosion grew, and even more amazed by the size it grew to. Through the lightshow behind them, they heard Lopmon's shout.

"**LOPMON BIOMERGE TO... CHERUBIMON!"**

Ki-Adi-Mundi was dumbstruck – something that rarely happened with him. The tiny little girl and the even smaller rabbit had just merged into a creature that dwarfed any other that he'd ever seen. The Mega-level have made a Sando Aqua Monster look like a sardine next to a shark. She could have swung an arm and swatted almost, if not all, of his strike force right out of the air.

He took in the details. In comparison with the rest of its body, the legs that hung down underneath the hovering Mega were small and they were attached to a long, slender body that was mostly pink, but with a white stomach. The arms were ridiculously big and hung down almost all the way to the tips of her feet and the hands themselves were over twice the size of each leg. The arms and hands were also pink, as were the enormous multi-segmented ears that swept upwards from the creature's small head, each one decorated with a circlet around the base. The head has Lopmon's three horns on the forehead, and the neck was covered by an enormous, white jester's collar.

"Wow," said Suzie's voice from Cherubimon. "I'd almost forgotten how cool this feels. I feel like an angel."

"We are an angel, Suzie," pointed out Lopmon. "Are you ready to call the heavens down on the Geonosians?"

"Yeah," Cherubimon's head nodded. "Let's do it."

* * *

"Are we nearly there yet?" asked Terriermon, as the strike force of the 327th, which was twice as large as the strike forces of the other two, considering it was made up of two legions, winged their way towards the rendezvous point. The little bunny was impatient to get going, having watched his mate and his sister already biomerge through his mind.

"To be fair, we were nearly there when we set off," said Aayla.

"And we just keep getting closer," said Bly, indicating the rocks up ahead. "We'll probably be reaching the Geonosian forces soon and they'll have prepared a lovely welcome party for us."

"We'll make sure it'll be a blast," said Terriermon. "And I mean that quite literally."

"Why do I get the feeling that what we're about to see is not terribly subtle," Aayla chuckled.

"Oh, believe me, Aayla," said Henry. "Whenever our Mega form appears on the scene, subtlety goes right out the window, into space and across the universe. It just doesn't exist anymore."

"Well, considering we don't need subtlety on this mission and do need the exact opposite," said Aayla. "I say, go for it. You should probably start early so that you'll be ready to deliver your first attack straight away."

Aayla's comlink beeped and she pushed the button. "Aayla," Anakin's voice said. "Are Henry and Terriermon ready?"

"You bet we are," said Terriermon, eager to begin. "Come on, Henry. Let's do this. I can't stand waiting around any longer."

"To be honest," said Henry. "Neither can I. Aayla, can you ask the pilot to move the ship so we'll jump out to the side of the group. If we biomerge in the middle we could cause an enormous amount of collisions."

"Of course," said Aayla, relaying the message to the pilot. The gunship dipped and flew sideways under its fellow ships until it was on the right of the group.

"Let's go, Terriermon," Henry's face was set with determination as he tensed for the spring.

"BAAANNZAAAAAAAAIIIIII!" yelled Terriermon as he shot from the gunship, Henry right behind him. Aayla and Bly watched them go, and heard Henry yell two words as the two of them fell:-

"BIOMERGE ACTIVATE!"

The A-Team and the clones in their separate gunships, shielded their eyes from the intense and rapidly-expanding light that exploded from the Digimon and the Tamer. Terriermon grinned. It was time to pull out the big guns.

"**TERRIERMON BIOMERGE TO... MEGAGARGOMON!"**

Commander Bly's jaw dropped at the sight of the enormous creature-slash-thing that cannoned out of the light. He had thought that Rapidmon put a squadron of gunships to shame, but this... This was truly a sight to behold. MegaGargomon was a mega Mega. It said so in his very name.

So large he could crush a Separatist outpost just by stepping on it, the enormous machine had two huge legs heavily encased in thick, green armour, with feet that resembled giant dog paws. A metallic, green kilt-like garment was worn beneath his belt, and above this, his chest was a nest of separate compartments layered over with the same green armour, except for the yellow smiley-face in the centre. Two huge rockets were firmly attached to his back and were blasting his massive form through the air. His shoulders were enormous missiles, bigger than any Bly had ever seen, also with smiley-faces, and his wrists and lower arms were covered by a huge Gatling gun each. The head was distinctly dog-like, and still had Terriermon's single horn. Despite the fact that the face was frozen in expression, Bly could almost feel MegaGargomon's smirk.

"Okay," said Captain Deviss. "I have no more doubts anymore."

"Remarkable," Aayla shook her head. "Truly remarkable."

"You think this is cool?" MegaGargomon's double-voice came back to them. "Just wait until the action starts!"

* * *

"Here we go!" Obi-Wan called out. "We're coming up on the Geonosian lines."

"I see them," said Sakuyamon, bringing her staff up in preparation. "And they see us too."

"Brace for incoming fire!" Cody yelled. "Here it comes!"

The Geonosians below let rip at the oncoming gunships. Huge, spherical sonic cannons spewed large green, compressed shockwaves at the approaching vessels. Others let fly with masses of red lasers from turret guns, clicking and hollering in their strange dialect as they did so, and rustling their wings.

"Close the blast doors!" Obi-Wan shouted.

"There's no need for that!" Sakuyamon shouted back. "I've got this! **TALISMAN SPHERE!"**

As with her Ultimate form, a large, blue forcefield suddenly expanded before the flying shaman, moving forwards at the same pace and engulfing the gunships. The lasers and shockwaves pattered harmlessly against the great orb. Sakuyamon smirked as she casually held up the barrier, watching the Geonosians pound on it fruitlessly.

Evidently, the Geonosians had been planning to ambush them from the rear too, as several needle-like _Nantex-_class territorial defence starfighters, spiralled downwards from the sky to open fire on the gunships. But they hadn't counted on the protective bubble either, and that assault was brought to a close as quickly as it had begun, as the Geonosians inside them slammed their craft right into the nearly-invisible wall.

"Ha!" Cody cried. "Bugs didn't even know what hit them there."

"Let's introduce them to a little offensive, shall we, Rika?" Renamon asked.

"You read my mind."

"Actually, yes, I did."

Sakuyamon waved a hand and the bubble walls exploded outwards in all directions. Startled Geonosians squawked at the sight of the oncoming shield and scrambled aside, but they were instantly flattened as the walls rolled over them, crushing both them and their cannons and bunkers. Sakuyamon had wiped the first line of defence off the map.

"Now, that's cool," said Waxer to Boil.

With the shield down, the gunships themselves began to open fire as they passed, blasting their green lasers down towards the considerable amount of Geonosian defences still left. Most of the Geonosians were undamaged as they were hiding in little alcoves and firing through holes that made them difficult to spot.

"Let's teach them that there's nowhere they can hide from us. **SPIRIT STRIKE!"**

Sweeping a hand across her belt, she opened the four canisters strapped to it and out poured her four, favourite elemental foxes – one red, one blue, one green and one yellow. Under Sakuyamon's direction, they swooped downwards and began their assault on the bugs shooting at their master.

The red one barrelled down towards the cliff-face and swept through the rocks as if they weren't even there. Geonosian hiding inside the hollowed out cliffs jumped in surprise, but the red fox spirit ignored them and swept straight through their bodies. Each one it touched burst into flames and collapsed, convulsing, to the floor.

The blue one swept into a tunnel and traversed down it, dodging Geonosians, its eyes glowing with blue light. The moment it entered the tunnel a sudden flash-flood of water appeared out of thin air and followed its progress – torrents of water whooshing down the tunnels and flooding the Geonosians right out, drowning many of them along the way.

The green one barrelled past a bunch of Geonosians that were in the air, flapping their wings to stay aloft and holding smaller sonic-cannons in their long fingers. A gale blew in behind it, whipping up the sand from the ground and sending the Geonosians spinning, smacking them against the walls and crumpling them in the high-force sandstorm that followed it.

The yellow one swept into the large towers that had been erected beside the cliffs to provide extra room for Geonosian gunners. Like the red one it chose to attack by diving through its opponents, and, as it passed through, the bugs were suddenly zapped by ten thousand volts, frying their insides and killing them on the spot.

"First time we've been able to use them to their elemental potential," grinned Rika.

"Indeed," said Renamon. "Let's not call them back for a while. They seem to be doing pretty well on their own."

"Definitely," said Rika. "Oh look, here come the Y-wing bombers."

Sweeping over the gunships, the Y-shaped starfighters dipped downwards so they were pointing towards the ground. They'd been sent to help clear the way for the gunships and they did so with vigour, dropping their purple ammunition onto the heads of the Geonosian forces. The insect people diving out of the way of one bomb inadvertently blundered into another. Explosions filled the air and sand flew high, as the Geonosians scrambled for cover.

Sakuyamon landed on the back of the rearmost Y-wing. The pilot looked up in surprise. Sakuyamon waved. When the pilot dropped the bomb in his craft, Sakuyamon leapt off the Y-wing and swept her staff through the air with a shout of **"AMETHYST WIND!"**

The Geonosians that had survived the bombing broke cover to return fire on the unprotected gunships, only to be met with a hail of purple diamonds more lethal than any sandstorm. The diamonds fell right across a half-mile stretch, slicing into any Geonosian that wasn't under cover, and also a good many that were, as many changed direction in mid-air and poured into the mouths of caves, cutting up the Geonosians still in hiding as well.

The gunships tore through the air, advancing right past the decimated defences of the Geonosians and the clones inside ogling at the wake of devastation that Sakuyamon and her fox-spirits were leaving all over the place. As of yet, only one of the gunships had been hit, and it had been a relatively minor hit, allowing it to stay airborne and continue the attack.

"This is amazing," Cody breathed, watching the fire fox-spirit erupt into a flaming ball and dive-bomb some unfortunate Geonosians like a small meteor. "Incredible!"

"Incoming Hailfires, sir!" yelled Boil, pointing to the ground ahead. Approximately ten large ground-based units were approaching their position. They resembled large vehicles, with a single large head in the middle and two massive, slanted, looped wheels situated on either side of the head and rolling forwards at impressive speed. Two large missile racks stuck out from either side of each head.

The IG-227 _Hailfire_-class droid tanks opened fire on the gunships. Several missiles streaked upwards through the sky, looping towards the white vessels and whistling with intent.

"Brace for impact!" yelled Obi-Wan as the missiles approached.

When suddenly a huge, pink energy blade swept upwards from below and wiped out the first wave of missiles. Sakuyamon was out in front again, her Talisman Sphere back in place. But this, she waved her hand and cried out **"AMETHYST MANDALA!"**

The clones and Jedi master watched in amazement as a huge ring of golden energy appeared out of nowhere around the Hailfire droids, shining with the light of a sun. It held its position for a few seconds, before it suddenly began to decrease in size. The Hailfire droids crumpled like paper as the ring kept getting smaller, until all ten lay in a completely unrecognisable heap on the ground and the ring disappeared.

Sakuyamon dropped back so she was flying beside Obi-Wan's gunship. "What impact?" she asked, innocently.

* * *

"We're beginning the final stage of our approach," said Commander Jet, as the gunships and the enormous Digimon that he still wasn't sure was real sailed over the lip of the cliff and soared over the plateau. "We'll come under fire shortly. Everyone make yourselves ready."

"Don't worry," said Cherubimon, her duel voice reaching the ears of all the clones even over the roar of the gunships. "I'll look after you and I'll make sure you all make it through this in one piece."

The Geonosians below were stunned at the sight of the enormous creature heading towards them. What in the universe was it? Where had it come from and why was it with the Republic? They were used to seeing their enemies executed in a big arena by large animals, but never anything like this. None of them liked the prospect of being attacked by that.

So they did the rational thing and quickly opened fire on it.

Cherubimon sailed before the gunships, putting herself between them and the incoming lasers. Her soft skin had no defence against them whatsoever and soon she was absolutely riddled with large holes from the cannon blasts. She gritted her teeth – it felt like she was receiving hundreds of annoying little stings.

"Cherubimon, are you alright?" Ki-Adi-Mundi asked with concern, horrified at the network of holes in the giant creature that the Geonosians had punched there. I took him a moment to notice that the holes were healing over as rapidly as they were appearing, skin stretching across the wounds and closing them off barely a second after they were made.

"This is unpleasant," Cherubimon said, smiling. "But I've received worse injuries than this, believe me. Look out." She raised a hand, shielding General Mundi's gunship as the shot that would have hit it nailed her in the palm of her hand.

"I hate that kind," she muttered as it healed over.

"I think we should put some holes in them now, don't you, Lopmon?" asked Suzie.

"The holes we make would be too big for their bodies," chuckled Lopmon.

"Yeah," said Suzie, as Cherubimon's hands began to crackle with electricity. "Let's show them how we do things in our world."

Sweeping forward, Cherubimon's hands sent lightning streaming into the other, and the electricity congregated and congealed into one huge bolt, clutched in Cherubimon's enormous fist. The Geonosians gawped at the sight, further put out when a second, equally large weapon appeared in the other fist.

"**LIGHTNING SPEAR!"** Cherubimon yelled, hurling one of her weapons to lift, spinning and throwing the other to the right. The two huge bolts smacked into the enemy lines, giving them no chance at all. The Geonosians were instantly vaporised by the attack as the spears struck, and their rock fortresses were torn apart at the foundation, sending shattered stone in all directions. Even those that didn't get hit by the attack were struck by crackling electricity that lanced in all directions as the bolts hit home.

The clones just stared as Cherubimon almost casually tore an entire fortress apart with a single attack.

"I've heard Sith lords can shoot lightning from their fingertips," said Cherubimon. "But somehow, if I went up against one, I think I'd have him outgunned."

"So do I," said Ki-Adi-Mundi.

Cherubimon sailed on, the gunships in hot pursuit. The giant Angel Digimon ignored the masses of red lasers still tearing into her as she began to go lower to the ground. The Geonosians were utterly terrified, seeing that their many sonic and laser weapons were having almost no effect on the creature whatsoever.

Nevertheless they continued firing and that was their mistake. Cherubimon could have been merciful if they had stood down. But they didn't, so she wasn't. Creating another Lightning Spear, she hurled it right into the centre of the next bunker. The resulting explosion was so great it sent every single bug in the place flying, and those already in the air were knocked out of it. More shots came at Cherubimon from a raised cliff face off to the left, but another well-thrown electricity spear turned the cliff to rubble, disintegrating the solid rock right then and there, along with everything in it.

The final of the three bunkers was the biggest of them all, consisting of no less than three fortresses residing right next to each other, each one lined with Geonosian soldiers wielding their heavy turrets and sonic cannons. They were just as terrified as the others and they opened fire with a will.

Cherubimon frowned. This bunker was so wide that she couldn't protect all of the gunships at once, even with her massive body. It would have been almost impossible for the gunships to navigate their way through this on their own. So she turned around and called out, "Stop! Stop moving forward!"

The gunships pulled to a halt, hovering in mid-air in front of the angel, who was now taking hundreds of shots to the back and paying little attention as she healed them over.

"What is it?" asked Jet. "Is there a problem?"

"Not really," said Cherubimon. "Just stay here for a bit. I don't want to accidentally hit any of you."

"What are you planning to do?" asked Ki-Adi-Mundi.

"Just watch," Cherubimon smirked as she turned around and flew over to the bunker. The rate of fire of the Geonosians had picked up, as they had thought the creature had turned to go into retreat, but they were just proven wrong as it came towards them even faster than before. But their shots were about as effective as little balls of blu-tac.

Cherubimon hovered high above the fortresses and looked down at them with her angelic face. "You have called down the thunder," she said. "Quite literally. **STORM OF JUDGEMENT!"**

The bunker was instantly wiped off the face of the planet as dozens of enormous lightning bolts crackled down from the sky all around the Mega-level Digimon. Walls were torn apart, ceilings blown in, rocks vaporised and Geonosians killed without knowing what hit them right across all three fortresses. Those in the hovering gunships had to shield their eyes from the intense light of the enormous attack.

When they looked away there had been three fortresses.

When they looked back, there was Cherubimon floating over a massive crater in the ground.

"Remind me to stay on her good side," said Jet, awestruck at the magnitude of such an offensive. "That was... that was just..." He couldn't find the right words.

Cherubimon smirked, and was suddenly struck in the side of the head by an enormous laser. Brushing off the injury as it instantly filled itself in, Cherubimon turned to find a column of OG-9 homing spider droids heading her way. They had round bodies, with a large laser gun on the top and body, perched on four huge, stick-like legs.

"That wasn't very nice," Cherubimon said, raising her arms as more lightning bolts appeared right behind her. "This is why you should never strike a lady. **THOUSAND SPEARS!"**

The giant spider walkers were utterly destroyed by the attack, which was basically like a multiple version of Lightning Spear, making it look like the weather had turned on the Separatists. Cherubimon turned to the gunships.

"Let's keep going," she said. "We don't want to be late."

* * *

MegaGargomon jetted out ahead of the numerous gunships that made up the strike force of the A-Team. The Jedi and clones behind him stared at his back in wonderment. They had all thought Rapidmon was impressive, but this was something else.

"He looks like a giant clanker," said Rex. "But a clanker that I certainly wouldn't want to cross."

"And a lot more handsome," Terriermon called back.

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

"This ought to be amusing," said Ahsoka. "The Geonosians thought they were geniuses for their battle droids, but when they get a glimpse of _our_ tinny, they'll just know they're outgunned."

"I am far superior to any of their tin-headed creations," MegaGargomon called out. "And I'll be sure to demonstrate it when we reach the Geonosian lines. And if my guess is correct, that should be about... now."

And indeed he was correct. The Geonosians knew their machinery, but it didn't take a genius for someone going up against MegaGargomon to know that they were in serious trouble if they didn't do something about it. And so, they tried the classic approach – blast it and don't let it near them.

Neither worked.

MegaGargomon's thick plated chest and arms easily withstood the blows of the lasers and sonic cannons aimed at him by the nearest bug bunker. "Sorry, boys," MegaGargomon shouted as he zoomed through the flak, completely and utterly unscathed no matter how much ammunition hit him. "Chrome-Digizoid is more than a match for your toys!"

This exclamation was further proven when a rogue shot smacked into the gunship that Captain Deviss was standing in. It had about as much effect as it did on MegaGargomon, thanks to the Digital metal that had been layered over the nose of the gunship.

"I'm getting more and more impressed," said Deviss, staring at the unblemished nose of the ship.

"You haven't seen anything yet! Watch this!" As MegaGargomon spoke, the two projections that stuck out of the sides of his head suddenly lengthened until they were well past his shoulders. Smoke began to billow out of the backs of his shoulders, as if they had suddenly caught fire. MegaGargomon sighted on the first line of defence and let out a cry of **"GARGO MISSILES!"**

The huge cannons situated in his shoulders shot outwards with a blast of smoke. The Geonosians would have paled if they could and they fled in terror, taking to the wing in a desperate bid to escape, but it was no good. The missiles grinned as if knowing that their targets were doomed, and collided into the centre of the bunker.

_**KAAABOOOOOOOOOMMMM!**_

The entire area around the bunker and everything in it was blown sky-high, fountaining into the air, debris being sent well over half a mile into the sky. MegaGargomon barrelled through the flying debris, knocking it casually aside, and the gunships followed him through the smoke.

"Whoa!" said Anakin.

"That was beyond awesome!" Ahsoka said with childish delight. "But shouldn't he have saved that one for last."

"Uh, kid," Rex pointed at the giant in front of them. Ahsoka was startled to see that he'd suddenly regained two more shoulder missiles. It looked as if they'd never been fired, except for the massive destruction behind them.

"Never mind," said Ahsoka.

The gunships began to provide their own fire as MegaGargomon led them through the flak. Green and red lasers flew all around MegaGargomon, but the giant Mega ignored all of them, regardless of whether they hit him or missed him. The second bunker, cliffs lined with desperately firing and worriedly clicking bugs on both sides of a large canyon. MegaGargomon shot towards it, descending until his feet were almost touching the ground, and then he began to unfold. His chest cavity opened, his shoulder missiles opened to reveal more missiles sockets within, his waist opened, his legs opened, even his forehead opened to reveal an arsenal of weaponry that had never before been seen in this universe on a single being.

The Geonosians clicked and gurgled as they stared at the walking armoury advancing rapidly on them. There were many variations, but they all roughly translated into "Well, we're screwed."

And they were indeed screwed.

"I'd just like to thank you all for your hospitality," MegaGargomon announced as he prepared his attack, raising the Gatling guns on his hands and the tips of his fingers sliding aside. "And I decided to repay you back in kind. Take this! **MEGA BARRAGE!"**

Every single missile socket on the massive body let rip all at once. Hundreds of large rockets burst from the Mega-level Digimon, each whistling and trailing smoke as they zoomed and zipped through the air, weaving around each other in an intricate display of aerobics and never once colliding with each other, before slamming into the cliff face with extreme prejudice.

The constant sounds of explosions rattled the ears of everyone present, as MegaGargomon bombarded the Geonosian defences with more missiles than looked plausible. It was almost impossible to see through the swarm of missiles streaming from the biomerged form of Henry and Terriermon. And they just didn't stop. They continued to fire, not even knowing the full extent of the damage they were causing.

"It's just incredible," said Aayla. "That the tiny little rabbit and the Tamer who would prefer to be a pacifist can combine into a creature that makes an entire fleet of _Venator_-class cruisers look completely and utterly insignificant."

"And to think that we're the first ones to be seeing this in our universe, General," agreed Bly. "I feel so privileged right now."

"Well, I'm willing to bet the Geonosians aren't feeling very privileged," chuckled Aayla. "They're being trounced. We haven't even taken a casualty yet."

When MegaGargomon's attack finally ceased, the smoke cleared to reveal that the entire cliff face on both sides of the canyon had collapsed and was now nothing more than a mound of boulders that would provide a challenging climb to enter the valley.

"Don't you think we may have overdone that?" asked Henry.

"Are you kidding?" asked Terriermon incredulously, as MegaGargomon's compartments shut to rejuvenate the missiles. "That was awesome. I say we do this more often. We haven't gone all out like that since we were taking out Ogudomon."

"I'm not going to argue," said Henry.

"Hey look," said Terriermon as they shot on ahead. "Up ahead. Isn't that the giant wall that Ahsoka warned us about?"

The entire canyon was blocked by an enormous wall that was dotted with an enormous number of gun emplacements and was lined with battle droids at the top, all of which opened fire on the giant mecha.

"Why yes, I believe it is," said Henry.

"And I said that it would be rubble," said Terriermon. "And I keep my promises. Let's do this!"

MegaGargomon landed on the ground with an enormous thud, but he didn't stop moving for an instant. He charged down the ravine, running surprisingly fast for such a large and heavy creature. As he closed in on the wall, he pulled back his fist and cried **"POWER PUMMEL!"**

**SLAM!**

MegaGargomon broke through the wall with a single swing, shattering the entire structure into billions of pieces with his heavy blow. Ignoring the droids falling all around him, he took to the sky again.

"HahaHA**HAAAA!**" MegaGargomon cried. "I have always wanted to do that!"

"I wish _my_ robotic arm could do that," said Anakin, wistfully. Ahsoka and Rex just gawped.

* * *

Now that they were clear of the droid bunkers, Sakuyamon and Obi-Wan's strike force were heading over flat ground now. Everyone could see what they had come here for overhead – a massive, domed, red shield dead ahead and through it, the three-spired building that was the Geonosian factory.

Sakuyamon's fox spirit had gone on ahead. Despite the fact they were away from the bunkers they were not out of the firing zone yet. Large numbers of Geonosian soldiers were still spread out ahead of them, some on the wing, some on speeders and others in the large numbers of AAT tanks. The spirits were taking many of them out before the gunships arrived.

"There's our rendezvous point," shouted Obi-Wan. "We've almost made it. Cody, prepare to get the tanks on the ground."

"Copy that," said Cody. "Not that we'll need them," he added to himself, glancing back at Sakuyamon flying up ahead.

"It looks like we're the first to arrive," said Sakuyamon, throwing an Amethyst Wind at a cluster of Geonosians in the air. "But the others will be here shortly."

"That's a point," said Obi-Wan, calling out. "How are the other strike teams? Are they alright?"

"Why don't you ask them yourselves when they arrive?" asked Sakuyamon, swiping her staff and whipping off another huge energy blade that sliced many more Geonosians out of the air.

"I'll take that as a yes, they are fine," said Obi-Wan.

Waxer's attention was being directed more to the north, blaster in his hand and ready to fire upon any Geonosians that came for them from the side. The clone didn't see any incoming enemies, but he did see something else.

"What's that?" he pointed, causing other clones to whip around. Up northwards it looked like the sky had come alive. Hundreds of lightning bolts were flashing in all directions and the sounds of explosions faintly filled the air. It was like a small and very condensed tempest had sprung up in one particular area, and it was moving in their direction.

"That," said Sakuyamon, sweeping around until she was flying next to Waxer's gunship. "Is Suzie and Lopmon."

"That?" Waxer asked in disbelief. "That is them?"

"In a way," said Sakuyamon. "They are the cause of all that lightning anyway. And here they come now."

A huge figure, the form of Cherubimon had come into view and behind her were another large group of gunships. The clones stared at the giant angel approaching their position at a fast pace.

"Whoa!" said Cody. "They're huge!"

"They're Cherubimon," said Sakuyamon, as if that explained it. And, in a way, it did.

When Cherubimon drew closer to the gunships, making them and Sakuyamon look utterly miniscule, she glanced down at her fellow Biomerged Mega. "Enjoying yourself, Sakuyamon?" she asked, tossing a Lightning Spear downwards and obliterating a group of enemy tanks.

"I'm certainly enjoying the fact that we are winning spectacularly and have yet to lose a single trooper," nodded Sakuyamon. "That is always a plus. And how was your own run?"

Cherubimon swatted aside a missile from a Hailfire droid and threw a lightning bolt at the large, wheeled clanker. "It tickled," she replied, as the tiny mark on the back of her hand made by the missile healed over quickly. "Ah, and here comes my brother."

The clones, who's attention had all been directed at the two conversing Megas, whipped around to look south. Enormous flashes of light and plumes of smoke were rising into the air as if thousands and thousands of enormous thermal detonators were going off at once, and that description still seemed inadequate.

"Well, it looks like whatever Henry and Terriermon became certainly fit in with Anakin's approach to things," said Obi-Wan.

"I think I see something, sir," said one of the clones. "And it's big. Very big. About the same size as Cherubimon, I would estimate."

"Your estimate would be entirely correct," said Cherubimon. "That's my brother, MegaGargomon."

And through the smoke, the giant mecha emerged into full view. The clones were definitely ones that appreciated weaponry, and the sheer number of missile ports that dotted the huge machine creature took their breath away. They watched in amazement as MegaGargomon launched two enormous missiles from his shoulders, annihilating a column of Spider walkers with ease. Not far behind him came the other Republic strike-force.

"Is that Suzie and Lopmon?" asked Bly, looking at the giant creature ahead of them.

"By the Force," muttered Aayla. "This is truly incredible. I never thought that I would see anything so astounding as the things I've seen today."

"Momentai, Aayla," said MegaGargomon. "Let's finish this!" He deftly shot three _Nantex_-class starfighters out of the air and approached the other two Megas.

"Commencing landing sequence," announced MegaGargomon.

"You don't have talk the technical stuff," Sakuyamon laughed.

"I know, but it's fun." MegaGargomon protested, blowing up a platoon of Geonosians on speeders that had gotten way to close to him.

The three Megas laid on the attacks, wiping the Geonosian forces out in an extremely large area with one Mega Barrage, one Amethyst Wind and one Storm of Judgement. An area half a mile wide was levelled thanks to their blows. The Republic forces took advantage of this and began to land. The tank transports carefully placed their load on the ground, before releasing the clamps at the back and flying back up into the air, where they would return to the cruisers. The clones in the large guns on the backs of the AT-TEs opened fire, keeping the Geonosians at bay as the gunships also started their descent. They landed to form a very large circle, perhaps the biggest gunship circle that had ever been created since none of the gunships had been destroyed in the advance.

The clones piled out and opened fire on the Geonosians, sending lasers slamming into the bugs and a few wielding missile launchers to take out the tanks. The Jedi leapt out, right over the heads of their clone troops, lightsabers whirring into action as they ran to the areas where the enemy was most dense and began to expertly parry any lasers sent their way. This wasn't a battle, it was a rout.

Looking up at the huge forms of MegaGargomon and Cherubimon as they descended into the centre of the circle – (Sakuyamon was much smaller and didn't draw the eye as easily) – the Geonosians knew that they were beaten. They simply had not been prepared for an attack like this. Clicking and clacking to each other, they began to beat a hasty retreat, fleeing back to the main factory.

"That's the way it's done," shouted MegaGargomon after the fleeing Geonosians. Then he turned to the Jedi and clones down by his toes and said, "You guys alright down there?"

"Thanks to you guys," Aayla called back up, and thanks to MegaGargomon's audio receptors she was heard easily. "I don't want to think about how many gunships and men we would have lost had you not been here. But, as it is, not a single one. I am so proud to call you my friends."

"Thank you, Aayla," Sakuyamon landed beside the Twi'lek, standing twice as tall as she was. "We certainly caught them by surprise, didn't we?"

"You caught _us_ by surprise too," said Anakin. "I don't know what I was expecting from the final level but whatever it was, you guys surpassed it by miles. Just look at you."

"Well, we try," shrugged Cherubimon.

"And you succeed," said Ki-Adi-Mundi.

"Alright then," said Obi-Wan. "We'll have time to discuss the wonders of biomerging later on. Right now we need to destroy that shield generator and come up with a plan for attacking the factory."

"The shield generator is that large structure over there, isn't it?" Sakuyamon pointed at a building lined with cannons and with what looked like a giant satellite dish at the top, which had a red beam of light shooting up from the centre which stopped at the point where the domed shield was.

"Indeed it is," said Obi-Wan.

"I am all over it," MegaGargomon declared. "This won't take but a moment." The huge robotic Digimon stepped over the circle of gunships with a single stride and strode towards the red shield. The Geonosians on the other side quailed as the giant approached them, but they held their ground all the same. That was their mistake.

MegaGargomon reached the deflector shield and stopped momentarily to stare up at the thing. The big red blob reminded him of the D-Reaper. It was a similar shape and colour, but he knew that this one wouldn't be able to delete him easily. Then, he stepped right through it and kept walking, until he was standing within a hundred yards of the generator. He stood just as tall as it was, and the Geonosians lining the walls opened fire, screeching. Their weapons had just as much effect as they had before.

MegaGargomon inwardly smirked as he once again prepared his missiles, opening up every single part of his body that was capable of being opened. He wanted to make sure that the attack ended with a bang, and, considering he was MegaGargomon, that wasn't going to be too difficult.

"**MEGA BARRAGE!"**

Missiles flew.

Missiles collided with building.

Building exploded.

The shield, suddenly having nothing to power it, shut down. The edges of the shield flowed upwards, towards the very top, shrinking and shrinking until there was only a small red blob left, and then, it was gone.

"Ah," sighed Terriermon in content. "Just imagining that was the D-Reaper we blew up made the victory that much sweeter."

"For once, we agree on something," said Henry. Then, MegaGargomon turned around and walked back to the others, shaking the ground with each step.

"You utterly eradicated that thing," observed Ahsoka.

"No problemo," said MegaGargomon. "So, what do we do now?"

"Well, this would usually be the time where we call own the medical ships to take our wounded back to the cruisers for treatment," said Aayla. "But, since we don't have any wounded this time, we can press on straight away."

"We'll wait for Master Luminara and Barriss to arrive," said Obi-Wan. "Then we'll begin our assault on the main factory. I believe I may have a plan already."

"It's a shame we can't just blow that up as well," said Sakuyamon. "But I understand that we have to capture this Poggle the Lesser."

"Hey guys," Anakin called up to them. "Why don't you de-digivolve for the moment. We can give Luminara and Barriss a show of digivolution when they arrive if they don't see you in your Mega forms first."

"Good idea," said Cherubimon, and suddenly all three began to glow. They shrunk down, down and down, splitting into two, until there were now three Rookies and three humans standing where the immensely powerful beings had once been.

"If I hadn't known you for some time now," said Aayla, shaking her head in wonder. "I would have said that I was imagining the whole thing."

Terriermon bounced onto Aayla's shoulder. "You'd have to have a pretty good imagination to think us up."

Aayla looked at the small rabbit. Only moments ago he'd been such a large creature that he would have flattened her, and a good deal of them people and vehicles around her, if he had attempted to do what he was doing now. She smiled and she was already beginning to picture that looks of shock on the faces of Barriss and Luminara when they finally saw the Digimon in action.

It promised to be something special.

* * *

Well, I certainly hope that met with your approval and that you all enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. And if anyone's thinking that I'm making this too easy for the good guys then I have this to say:- I think the debut of the Megas should be one to remember and also, just wait for the second half of this arc.

Please review and let me know how I did.

* * *

Next time...

The Digimon and Jedi begin an attack on the weapon's factory. While some of them remain on the outside to hold off the droids, the rest of them sneak inside to capture Poggle and blow it up from within.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 54 : Go Boom**


	54. Go Boom

And here we go again, with another action packed chapter as our heroes attempt to take down the Weapon's Factory from with. There is still a lot of Mega action in this chapter, but there is also significantly more action from the Jedi and the clones than there was in the last one, as I wanted to balance it out this time.

Shut up, me. Onward.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 54:- Go Boom**

* * *

Luminara Unduli and Barriss Offee's attack on the nearby Geonosian outpost had gone according to plan, but the strike had not been as effective as the one on the main factory. Having had no Digimon to protect their gunships from the Geonosian defences, of which there were still plenty, they had lost about half of their ships before they finally managed to land and continue the assault on foot. Many clones had survived their gunship crashes though and had proceeded to join up with the main force later on. Once they had reached the enemy lines, it had been relatively easy to dispatch them and take the outpost.

Now, the two Mirialan Jedi and the surviving clones were flying to the position of the others in the gunships they had left. Neither said a word until they made their final approach and saw the main factory up ahead of them.

"Well, it certainly appears as if their raid was a success," said Luminara. "The deflector shield is down and the factory exposed."

Barriss nodded. "It's unfortunate that we have to locate and capture Poggle instead of just bombing the place. We could get off this dustball much faster."

"True, my Padawan," said Luminara. "But remember that the simplest approach to things is not always the best."

"Yes, Master," said Barriss. "But how exactly are we supposed to get into a place that large and heavily fortified?"

"I have a feeling that Obi-Wan will have come up with something," chuckled the Jedi Master.

They lapsed into silence again, right up until they spotted the rest of the forces on planet. Barriss' eyes almost bugged out of her skull. "Look at all those gunships!" she spluttered, staring at the circle of white ships and walkers. "There are so many! Didn't they lose a single one during their attack or did they just take many, many more than that."

"I am impressed," Luminara breathed. "But, I have a feeling that the Digimon were behind this. Look around the area. It looks like the whole place was almost blasted to pieces just before the others landed."

"Forgive me, Master," said Barriss. "But I am still having trouble believing that those three could single-handedly cause such devastation."

"Those six," Luminara corrected her. "Remember they were talking about the Digimon and Tamers merging together on the bridge earlier."

Barriss nodded.

"While I have not seen the Digimon in action myself," said Luminara. "Considering I was up in space during the mission to Behpour while they were on the surface, I have heard a good deal about them. If half the things I have heard are correct, then this does not surprise me in the slightest."

"Well, I suppose it is our turn to finally see what they can do when we attack the factory," said Barriss.

"Indeed."

The gunship that Luminara, Barriss and Clone Commander Gree, who had been silently observing their conversation for some time, slowed and came to a halt, settling on the ground just outside the enormous ring of gunships and AT-TEs. As the other gunships began to land, the three of them stepped out and walked forwards, striding between a walker and a gunship to enter the circle.

They were met by Ki-Adi-Mundi, who had come over to greet them. They could see the Digimon, the Tamers, the A-Team, Obi-Wan and the clone leaders standing in a circle a small distance away and talking amongst themselves, no doubt discussing tactics on how to get into the factory, as they were standing around a hologram of said factory and the surrounding area.

"Master Unduli," said the Cerean. "I trust the mission went well."

"Not as well as yours seemed to go," chuckled Luminara. "Tell me, what did you think of your first mission alongside the A-Team and their friends?"

"It was truly a sight to behold," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "Even I must confess that I was utterly gobsmacked by what I saw today and the day is not over yet. Not by a long shot."

"Well, I certainly hope that our next assault goes just as well as your last one," said Luminara. "Have we finalised a plan for getting into the factory and capturing Poggle yet?"

"They are just going over the last of the details now," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "Shall we join them?"

"Yes, we shall," Luminara followed Ki-Ad-Mundi, with Barriss and Gree right behind her.

"Ah, Master Unduli," said Aayla, as they approached. "Glad you could join us for this final part of the mission."

Luminara nodded and said, "So, what tactics will we be putting into play to get into the factory?"

"We were just discussing that," said Obi-Wan. "No doubt Poggle will be highly disturbed by the presence of the three Digimon that so easily smashed through his defensive lines. We set up a small station to jam any transmissions that he might try to send in order to call for back-up, and also so the Digimon are kept secret."

Anakin indicated the hologram. "Here's what we've got so far. We need to make sure that we capture Poggle in one piece, but as soon as we do, that factory has to go. So we've come up with a plan that should help us cover all the corners. First, we want to draw the attention of those inside the factory, so our combined clone forces will lead an assault on the main doors of the factory. Thanks to the Digimon, we have so many clones still with us that they should be able to put up a good fight."

"Not to mention they'll have Terriermon and Lopmon, Henry and Suzie with them every step of the way," said Aayla. She smirked and added, "And that probably means that MegaGargomon and Cherubimon haven't finished trashing things today, have they?"

"Oh hell no," Terriermon grinned. "We're certainly not done yet, are we, sis?"

"Nope," Lopmon shook her head. "Of course not."

"And while the two enormous Digimon create a spectacular diversion," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "We Jedi, along with Renamon and Rika, will use it to our advantage and sneak around the factory, until we are behind it, so we can attack from the opposite direction."

"Rika and I will biomerge to Sakuyamon," said Renamon. "And we'll create a nice big door for you to get in."

"Once we're all inside," said Obi-Wan, as the holomap grew larger, revealing the inside of the factory. "We'll split into three groups. Master Luminara, you, Sakuyamon and I will head for the main part of the factory, where the droids are being constructed and disable it, so that the droids our forces outside are fighting cannot be regenerated. Then, we shall proceed to attack the droid lines from behind."

"Very well," said Luminara, nodding. "That sounds like a good plan, and it should mop up most of the droids there, since Poggle will probably panic and send almost everything he has out to attack."

"Exactly," said Obi-Wan.

"Meanwhile," said Aayla. "Master Mundi and I will head for the power core. Once there, we shall plant explosives across it and link them up to a detonator. Once we're all outside again, we'll blow the place up from the inside to ensure maximum destruction."

"And while that's happening," put in Ahsoka. "Master Skywalker, Barriss and myself will try to capture Poggle."

"Alright," nodded Barriss. "I can do that."

"You guys ready to have some fun?" Gree glanced at his fellow clone leaders. Rarely had there been so many in one single attack. Bly, Rex, Cody, Jet and Deviss all grinned at Gree.

"Fun?" Bly asked. "You have not seen fun yet."

"But you will in this mission," added Rex. "With two Mega level Digimon watching your back."

"I look forward to it," said Gree.

"We better prepare the men," said Cody. "We want to give them a nice big target when we head up to those doors. You guys coming?"

"Right behind you," Suzie said, as she, Lopmon, Henry and Terriermon followed the clones as they marched off and began to issue orders to their men.

"Show them no mercy, Rena!" Terriermon called over his shoulder.

"I wouldn't dream of it," Renamon called back, winking at him.

"We'd best get ready ourselves," said Aayla. "Come on Rika. Let's make this attack as amazing as the last one."

"That'll be difficult," grinned Rika.

"But not impossible," Aayla smiled back.

"No," agreed Rika. "Not impossible."

* * *

There was a large, stone bridge that separated the weapon's factory from the clone troopers as they began their advance on the front doors of the giant building. Nobody was altogether that bothered by this, as they were full of confidence that they could take on the droid forces, but it did meant that there was only one direct route to the factory, which would make the factory easier to defend. The only other way to reach the factory would be to go all the way round, and that would take far too long.

So the Republic clones marched, parade-style right towards the large stone bridge ahead of them. The clones marched in ranks, their weapons cocked and ready for action. Their commanders and captains marched at their head, leading the charge like a real leader should, and not cowering in a fortress like Poggle the Lesser was right now.

Somewhere in the middle of the group, concealed in the form of two children and two bunnies, were the Republic's secret weapon.

Waxer and Boil marched on either side of the Tamers, tasked with protecting them by Commander Cody until they no longer needed protecting, which wouldn't take very long. "Are you guys ready for this?" asked Boil. "What was that phrase you use – 'Got your game faces on?'"

"Yeah, I'm ready to rock," said Terriermon. "Bring them on."

They reached the bridge and marched straight across it, the stone easily holding the AT-TE tanks that crawled along with them. The huge, thick door of the factory slowly began to rise, and rank upon rank of battle droids came out to meet the clones.

Deviss whistled. "There are a lot of them, aren't there," he said.

"There are more of us than there are normally," pointed out Cody.

"They aren't going to know what hit them," said Bly, readying his pistols.

And thus, the fight began with lasers being traded.

Bly and Rex charged forward, drawing the fire of the droids as they ducked and weaved around the bolts, returning fire with their pistols and sending many a droid to their dooms with their quickfire shooting. Bly's arms moved as if they had minds of their own, sweeping left to right, and over one another as he counted the droids with his expert shooting, hammering them in the chest and the head with blue lasers. Rex twirled his own blasters effortlessly, sprinting to the side as the droid struggled to keep up with him, shooting off a constant stream of bolts to send heads flying.

Gree rolled to the side to avoid the blast of a droid and quickly returned fire, smashing the droids chest in with his laser and then decapitating the two behind it by shooting them in their spindly necks. Cody dropped onto his back and slid under a few more shots, before rolling onto his knees to send shots right back at them. Deviss leapt on top of the rock, a Z-6 rotary blaster cannon clutched in his hands and pounded the droid lines with it, sweeping it back and forth to decimate the first to ranks. Jet pulled out a few droid poppers and jumped up beside Deviss before hurling them as far he could. The landed some way back in the droid forces and instantly took out large chunks of the robots.

The other clones crouched behind the first AT-TE, which had come up right behind the clone leaders and was eagerly opening fire on the droid forces, with the clones underneath it adding to the hailstorm. One or two of them fell, wounded, but the majority remained upright as the first wave of battle droids ended. But it was replaced immediately by another wave. This time, a bunch of Supers marched out from the doors. One with a rocket launcher for an arm aimed a shot at the AT-TE. The rocket bounced off the Chrome-Digizoid covering and catapulted back into the ranks of the Supers.

"At this rate we won't even get to do anything," said Terriermon from the middle of the bridge.

"Don't count your chickens before they hatch," said Lopmon, as her keen hearing picked up the sounds of wing vibrations. She and Terriermon turned around to see that a bunch of Geonosians had flown out of the hollow pillars they had already gone past and were preparing to fire on the unsuspecting clones at the back.

"**BLAZING ICE!"**

"**BUNNY BLAST!"**

The Geonosians were caught by surprise themselves as they were met with a hail of miniature green lasers and ice shards from below. Several fell with damaged wings, and the rest were picked off by the clones that were suddenly alerted to their presence thanks to the efforts of the Digimon. One of them, Ridge, turned and gave the bunnies a thumbs-up. The bunnies returned it.

"I reckon it's about time we biomerged," said Suzie.

"Yeah, so do I," said Henry. "You guys ready?"

"You need to ask?"

"Let's go," Henry nodded. He and Suzie suddenly broke formation and charged past the clones in opposite directions to the edges of the bridge, a bunny perched on each head. As they leapt into space for the second time that day, both cried "BIOMERGE ACTIVATE!"

"**TERRIERMON BIOMERGE TO... MEGAGARGOMON!"**

"**LOPMON BIOMERGE TO... CHERUBIMON!"**

The giant Megas loomed upwards from the great chasm until they were hovering above the clones. The droids balked at their size and hurriedly began to back away. MegaGargomon casually lifted his hand. The tips of his fingers rolled aside and a bunch of miniature (for him) missiles streaked down and obliterated the droid forces outside the factory.

The clones cheered, and kept cheering even after an entire phalanx of droidekas rolled out of the doors and uncurled, raising their shields. They had little reason to fear, as Cherubimon created a miniature Lightning Spear in one hand and chucked it at them, wiping them out too, despite their shields.

Cherubimon turned and watched as more Geonosians streamed from the back of the army. "You take the front, I'll take the back," said the angelic bunny, generating a storm of electricity and sending it streaking forward, each bolt connecting squarely with a flying bug despite their attempts to dodge.

"Righty-ho," said MegaGargomon, turning to face a new wave of foes coming from the gates. This time they were sending out tanks, but no tank MegaGargomon had ever seen. They resembled droid transporters, with an oblong shape, blasters at the front and a large flap on the top which could obviously be drawn backwards the reveal a cannon or something.

"Too easy," said MegaGargomon, sending a volley of missiles from his forehead at them. However, he was surprised when the tanks came out of it unharmed. "Whoa," he said. "What the heck happened there?"

"They must be ray-shielded," Rex shouted up at him. "That means they'd be able to withstand your smaller missiles, but I doubt they'd survive the bigger ones."

"We can't use the bigger ones without blowing you up too," said Henry.

"Yeah, but," said Terriermon. "The simplest solution is often the best. Let's just dispose of them."

The flaps of the tanks moved backwards to reveal huge cannons that began to blast forth huge, orange missiles. MegaGargomon landed in front of the clones and took the shots easily on his broad chest, before bending down, and picking three tanks up in each hand. Then he calmly turned, ignoring the missiles still blasting from the tanks and dropped them off the cliff. Then he did this again, getting rid of the second half.

"Well, that was easy," said MegaGargomon.

The clones were howling with laughter. The Geonosians had probably thought those Super Tanks had been their secret weapon, but they'd been beaten without having a shot fired at them. If the Geonosians hadn't realised they were doomed before, they probably did now.

* * *

As the clones valiantly held back the droid army, with the aid of their giant friends, a small group of seven Jedi were carefully making their way away from the battle. Amongst them was a human girl with flame red hair and a tall, yellow fox that moved with lithe grace. The group moved swiftly and silently, running lo the ground and darting from rock to rock, to avoid being spotted.

Occasionally a Geonosian from either the fortress or one of the surrounding rock formations would indeed spot them, but before they could raise the alarm, a large diamond would be flung through the air and instantly kill him on the spot, puncturing his chest with clean efficiency. Slowly, the group were making their way around the giant factory.

"Well, it certainly sounds as if the others are having fun," said Ahsoka quietly, as she slipped behind a boulder with Anakin.

"It certainly _looks_ like they're having fun too," said Renamon, hopping onto the same rock and flipping down to join the two of them behind it. "Especially if Terriermon's internal grin is anything to go by."

"Shame we have to miss out on all the action isn't it, Snips?" Ahsoka looked down at his Padawan.

"I wouldn't say that just yet, Anakin," Aayla interrupted from behind another rock with Barriss and Luminara. "We may see quite a bit of action before the day is over. Who knows?"

Obi-Wan shepherded Rika along, steering the little girl behind another boulder, of which there seemed to be a never-ending supply around here. "Alright then," said the human Jedi Master, turning to Rika. "We're about ready to make our assault on the factory. Are you and Renamon ready for your part in the plan?"

"Definitely," said Rika, nodding firmly. "We know what'll happen if this factory is left to continue. We could save hundreds of thousands of lives by taking this thing down. We've been ready for some time."

"Alright then," Obi-Wan smiled. "Excuse my cautiousness. Now, we really must get started. The clones, MegaGargomon and Cherubimon certainly have things covered, but we should really shut off the droids as quickly as we can. And we need to get in there before Poggle decides to abandon the factory. So, now would be a good time to start."

"Alright," said Rika. "Renamon, come over here."

Renamon leapt from behind her rock and, with one enormous, spiralling leap, she crossed the large gap between where she'd been standing and where Rika was, landing neatly beside her partner.

Aayla nudged Barriss. "Let the show begin," the Twi'lek whispered to the Mirialan girl, who was getting more and more frustrated because she could easily hear the sounds of MegaGargomon and Cherubimon trashing things but had yet to see them doing it.

Rika pressed the D-Arc to her chest and said, quietly, "Biomerge Activate!"

There was nothing that could be done about the sudden, horrendously bright light that the digivolution caused, but Renamon had already checked that there was nothing watching them, so it wasn't really a problem. Luminara and Barriss shielded their eyes, but everyone else stuck it out and watched the digivolution taking place.

"**RENAMON BIOMERGE TO... SAKUYAMON!"**

The tall and proud-looking Shaman Digimon took Barriss' breath away. As a Jedi, even though she was still a Padawan, she could easily sense the power emanating from the large being before her. It was coming off her in waves and seemed to bathe everyone else in her radiance.

"Impressed?" Aayla whispered to her Padawan friend.

Barriss, lost for words, nodded mutely.

Sakuyamon stepped calmly from behind the rock and strode purposefully over to the wall. She looked up and stared at the tall spires towering above her. She smirked. It had probably taken the Geonosians, even with their brilliant minds, a long time and a lot of energy to construct this. And they were about to bring it crashing down around their ears.

"We should first make sure that there are no Geonosians on the other side of this wall that could raise the alarm when we break through it," said Renamon.

"Good idea," said Rika, and together they lowered an arm to their waist and opened the lid of one of the four tubes attached to it. The yellow fox-spirit burst out of its containment and slid smoothly through the solid rock of the wall. There were indeed two Geonosians on the other side of it. Neither of them knew what it was that killed them, as the yellow spirit plunged through their bodies and electrocuted them where they stood.

The spirit slipped back through the wall, nodded to signal the all-clear and disappeared back into its tube. Sakuyamon squared up to the rock wall, which was too thick even for a lightsaber to cut through, since the blade would not be long enough. But that wasn't going to stop her.

Sakuyamon twirled her staff in her hands, until she was holding it like a javelin, with the point at the ringed end touching the wall. She began to trace it across the wall, drawing an imaginary square with the point that would create a door big enough for someone of her size to walk through. Shutting her eyes beneath her mask, Sakuyamon muttered a few words under her breath, twirled her staff a few times, and holding it with the butt of it pointing at the wall and slammed the staff into the centre of the square.

Or rather where the square would have been. Instead a large slab of rock three metres thick suddenly vanished into thin air. The square had become real and Sakuyamon could now see inside the factory.

She waved the Jedi over and they came running to the scene. Ki-Adi-Mundi and Luminara inspected the new doorway. "Astounding," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "It is a perfect entrance."

"This is crazy," Barriss muttered to herself. "Not even a lightsaber or the Force could do what those two just did and it shouldn't be possible, but I just saw it with my own eyes. And you all just seemed to take it in your stride."

"When you work beside these guys day in and day out," said Ahsoka, patting Barriss' shoulder comfortingly. "You get used to all this crazy stuff. If you think making stolid stone vanish into thin air is cool, you should have seen it when Renamon used her powers to give six Acklay emotions."

"What?" Barriss said, deadpan. "You're joking."

"We really don't have time for this," said Obi-Wan. "We must get underway. Everyone knows where they're going?"

There was a round of nodding as everyone's faces suddenly grew serious. "Alright then," said Obi-Wan. "Let's get going Sakuyamon, Luminara." The Jedi Master led the way into the factory, with the Mirialan and the Mega right behind him. They turned left and began to jog down the corridor quietly, or in Sakuyamon's case, she hovered along.

"Come along, Aayla," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "We've got some explosives to set."

"And you two are with me," Anakin nodded to the Padawans. "Let's move. Poggle's not going to turn himself in."

They moved into the factory as well, each group splitting off and heading in different directions.

* * *

"Now remember, Sakuyamon," said Obi-Wan. "While I'm sure Anakin has everything in hand, we cannot risk Poggle finding out that we are here inside his factory and an extremely good way of alerting our Archduke friend would be to absolutely trash everything in sight."

"And as fun as you may find that," said Luminara, "We should really go for the more subtle approach."

"Don't worry," said Renamon. "While my mate may know absolutely nothing about subtlety unless I drill it into his mind – which he will promptly forget after half an hour – I am a master of stealth and delicacy. Foxes are renowned for their cunning back in our world, and while I may be a shaman now, I am still a fox shaman."

"That's good to hear," said Luminara.

"So what exactly is the plan?" asked Sakuyamon.

"Well," said Obi-Wan. "The Geonosians don't assemble droids by hand. There's very little work involved in droid production. They have series of mechanical arms and other devices which fashion the battle droid parts and then others still that put them together. All we have to do, is to get rid of a few key mechanical arms, and the whole system will shut down. There will be a few Geonosians around to supervise the machinery, but other than that we'll probably be alone."

"I wouldn't worry about them," said Sakuyamon, running her fingers over her Spirit Strike containers. "We'll have them well in hand."

Sakuyamon had seen many things, but even she was unprepared for the massive droid assembly line that she was about to see. As they traversed another few corridors, they finally came upon a gigantic room. It was huge, and the ceiling stretched upwards and almost out of sight as it was hidden by the huge pieces of machinery that criss-crossed the entire room, which seemed to go from floor to the top of the tallest of the three spires.

There were numerous machines all working at once – several pistons and large, flat crushing things working to mould the molten metal into the shape of the battle droids, constantly thwacking away at the moving belt as fresh shipments of metal ore were constantly supplied to them. Other arms picked up pieces of droids and securely fixed them to the main body, fusing them in place as they did so. And still more carried the finished products across the room in order to activate and arm them. Sakuyamon could see droid literally stepping off the assembly line and marching through the doors to join the battle – B1, Super and Droideka alike.

"We'd better get cracking," said Rika. "This place is absolutely huge."

"Quite," said Renamon. "But first, **SPIRIT STRIKE!"**

Her shout instantly drew the attention of the few Geonosians in the room, but that didn't matter, as the fox spirits went about their job with lethal accuracy, lancing in alternate directions and slaying the Geonosians where they stood.

"Let's get moving," said Obi-Wan, as he and Luminara activated their lightsabers, one blue and one green. Then the three of them leapt into the massive factory floor and set to work dismantling it.

Obi-Wan Force-jumped high onto the machinery above him, landing on a conveyor belt that was transporting metal ore to be smashed into shape. Holding his lightsaber ready, he faced the oncoming axes, pistons and crushers up ahead, drawing closer and closer to them as the conveyor belt carried him along. Then he leapt into action, bouncing over the axes slicing down on the metal ore and cleanly slicing several of them into two pieces, the blades dropping uselessly to the conveyor belt, to get hammered by their fellow machinery.

Obi-Wan then whipped around and, neatly dodging a pair of swinging pistons, he jumped onto one of the crushers and sliced it off at the top. It fell heavily onto the belt with a clunk, and Obi-Wan grabbed it with the Force and transported it to a nearby ledge where it wouldn't get in the way. He nodded in satisfaction. The metal arriving to become droids would now be largely useless lumps that wouldn't work properly. But you couldn't be too careful, so he turned to dice up a few more.

Luminara focused on the area where the droids that had already been hammered into shape were being put together. Leaping onto the assembly line, she sliced through a mechanical arm that was repeatedly picking up droid left legs and securing them to the bottom of the torsos being carried past them. The Mirialan watched the end of it continue to move uselessly, before stepping onto the belt and allowing herself to be carried further down the line.

Shortly afterwards they came to the area where the heads of the droids being fixed above the shoulders. Here she leapt off and with two sweeps she sliced this arm into three pieces as well. Then, she stepped back to admire her handiwork. All the droids that were being taken past her were now one-legged, headless and utterly useless. She smirked, and then headed for the Super Battle Droid line, in order to make sure they ended up legless and armless when they reached the end.

Sakuyamon levitated over to the belt constructing droidekas. Normally droidekas were few and far between, but here it seemed just as many of these were being produced as the other battle droids. That couldn't be allowed. So Sakuyamon took actions and with a quick and precisely controlled Amethyst Wind, she directed a purple diamond flurry to shred the machines that attached the droideka's arms, their only real sort of weaponry.

Meanwhile, her fox spirits, having successfully taken out the Geonosians, moved on to attack the area where the droid weapons were being manufactured. The fire spirit set what weapons had already been produced alight, while the electricity spirit swept through the machinery and shorted it out, reducing the whole line to a sudden standstill. The water and wind spirits swirled overhead, keeping watch for any sign of danger.

Their tasks complete, the three heroes regrouped in the centre of the room. They looked up with satisfaction at the loudly clanking lines that were now completely useless and doing nothing more than churn out piles of junk that wouldn't be able to do anything beyond lie there pointlessly.

"I think that went well," said Obi-Wan. "Dispatched without a great deal of fuss or noise. Just the way I like it."

"Now that that is done," said Luminara. "Shall we go and assist the clones and other Digimon by attacking the droids from the back."

"Yes," said Sakuyamon, as the fox spirits regrouped around her and all five flew for the doors that the droids had exited through, the two Jedi right behind them. It didn't take long for them to run into the droids and when they did, they leapt into action with a will.

* * *

Aayla's lightsaber thrummed as she swept it through the last Geonosian guarding the entrance to the power core. The Twi'lek was wearing a backpack underneath her lekku, which was carrying the dangerous cargo that they needed for a mission like this. Deactivating the blue blade, she turned to Ki-Adi-Mundi, who was in the process of deactivating his own blue blade and walking towards the doors.

"Well, we're here," said Aayla, pushing the button on the console beside the door. The two Jedi waited patiently as the huge, thick doors slid upwards with a mechanical whir, before gazing into the room on the other side. It was largely empty, except for numerous consoles around the walls, and the large power core in the middle of the room. It resembled two cones, one hanging from the ceiling and the other coming up from the floor and joining at the tips in the centre of the room. This is what kept the power going to the rest of the station, but it was also extremely volatile. If an explosion punctured the metal, it would have catastrophic results on the whole building.

And that was why the two Jedi were here.

"Well," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "We'd best start planting those explosives. We don't want to keep the others waiting."

"Yes, Master Mundi," nodded Aayla respectfully to the Council Member. She unslung the backpack from her slender shoulders and flipped the top open. Digging inside and pulling out two handfuls of the small explosives, she passed them both to the Cerean, before pulling out some handfuls of her own.

The two of them set to work silently, walking around the power core in opposite directions and magnetically placing the small bombs across the length of the base. Each Jedi attached five small explosives, each the size of their palms, to the power core.

Aayla rustled in the bag and pulled out a few more, before hopping onto the machine and placing a few more higher up on the structure, while Ki-Adi-Mundi did the same. It took them only about twenty seconds to attach a further ten explosives to the top cone, before they hopped down again. Now, twenty small bombs were attached to the power core.

Aayla pulled a small detonator from the backpack and pushed a large green button on it. The red lights on the bombs flashed once, indicating that they had been linked up to the detonator. All Aayla had to do was push the red button and they'd go off.

"I'm willing to be that was less action-packed than what some of the others are doing," said Aayla.

"You know a Jedi does not seek adventure, Aayla," said Ki-Adi-Mundi, sternly.

"Yes, I know Master," said Aayla. "But after what I've been through and done recently, I wouldn't consider myself a normal Jedi anymore."

Ki-Adi-Mundi chuckled. "No, I don't suppose you are. Come on. We'll head for the main gate and provide the others with some assistance."

Aayla nodded, slinging the backpack over her shoulders once again, but keeping the detonator firmly in one hand. Then, the two of them ran for the doors and began to head for the entrance by following the sounds of battle.

* * *

Poggle the Lesser was not having a good day. The Archduke of Geonosis had started off pretty confidently – he believed that his defences surrounding the factory, and the factory itself were virtually impenetrable, and yet he'd already been proved disastrously wrong with the former. The two giant creatures that he could see outside via hologram had quite easily punched a hole in the bunkers and now they were advancing on his factory.

Poggle knew he wasn't in danger of death. After all, he'd seen the big green one practically disintegrate the shield generator with its missiles, so there was only one reason he could fathom why it didn't do the same here. They wanted to capture him alive.

Poggle chirped to himself in trepidation. This simply couldn't end well for him – he was sure of that. But after several minutes of watching the battle unfold outside and watching how easily the clones and two giant things were defeating the waves and waves of droids he sent out against them, he was sure it was only a matter of time before they got inside. The factory was lost.

And so, because he had been unable to contact anyone on the outside, he and a few of his Geonosian aides and his tactical droid were beginning to make their getaway.

Poggle wasn't an ordinary Geonosian – or at least he didn't resemble one. He was older than most of his followers, and rather than the battle droid appearance that the rest of the bugs had, he had a very different look. His stature was larger and broader than his fellow Geonosians, he had a large crest that resembled a sort of crown on top of his head, and on his face, he had three long, fleshy tendrils hanging down from his chin, which made him look like he had a beard of some description. In one hand, he carried a command staff, which was made from the bones of a murdered political rival, that had been executed in his arena.

And he was now on his way out of the factory. He was heading for an entrance to an elaborate system of tunnels, a veritable labyrinth of rock that ran far beneath his factory. Almost every major Geonosian building had such a labyrinth beneath them. They were called catacombs and they were always useful to make a getaway, as only the Geonosians could navigate their way through them without having to spend hours memorizing each twist and turn.

And Poggle was thinking, as he left, that he would instruct his Geonosians to build a droid that resembled the large green one outside.

Just as Poggle began to feel hope of escape, the doors in front of him swung open. He pulled to a startled halt at the sight before him. A Human, a Togruta and a Mirialan were all standing in front of him. And all three of them had lightsabers in their hands. And one of them was a face he recognized all too well.

"Well, well, well," said Anakin, holding his lightsaber in a defensive position. "Poggle the Lesser. Long time no see. It appears your skills as a host haven't picked up since the last time i came to visit this planet."

Poggle was stunned. How? How had the Jedi gotten inside without him noticing? This didn't make any sense. So he voiced the question:-

"Arokutarikatakuro kogreeeeeehgo?" he said.

"Didn't get that, sleemo," Ahsoka said, twirling her lightsaber. "Sorry. I don't speak Geonosian."

"Who would bother to learn it?" asked Anakin.

"He wants to know how you got into the factory," droned the tactical droid from beside the Archduke.

"Ah," said Anakin. "Alright. My answer is – we're not going to tell you."

"Let's just say that we're just that good, and leave it at that," agreed Ahsoka.

"And now it's time for you to come with us, Poggle," said Barriss, stepping forwards slightly. "You're under arrest for conspiring against the Republic and taking up arms against it."

Poggle stared at the Padawan for a moment. Then he said, "Ratookarikkiratigohgarrrrgar."

"I will never come with you, Jedi," the tactical droid translated dutifully.

"Look around you, Poggle," said Anakin, gesturing randomly at the walls. "Your factory is besieged and is clearly being outmatched outside, it's been infiltrated by a number of Jedi, and I assure you that there are more than us within the walls, no help is coming to you and you've been cornered. Surrender and make it easier on yourself."

Poggle was backing away now, shaking his head so his beard-like tendrils flapped slightly.

"Rrrrrrotikaragna grrragregnaraoteelaho," said the Geonosian Archduke.

"It is not over yet, Jedi," said the tactical droid. "I may have lost this factory, but I am not about to admit utter defeat just yet."

"Wow," said Ahsoka. "You're either really confident or really stupid," said Ahsoka.

"I think it might be the latter," said Barriss. Ahsoka snorted.

As Poggle and his aids continued to back away, the three Jedi advanced down the corridor, shortening the distance between the two opposing sides. Poggle, fear leaping into his eyes, turned to his tactical droid and said. "?"

"Yes sir," said the tactical droid. "They are in position."

Poggle nodded, then he turned around and shot back down the corridor as fast as his wings could carry his broader bulk. His Geonosian aides followed suit. The tactical droid tried to follow, but it was much too slow. Anakin shoved it aside as he put on speed, pushing it towards Barriss, who hacked it in two with her lightsaber as the three Jedi gave chase.

"Where do you think you're going, Poggle?" Anakin yelled after the fleeing Separatist leader.

"There's no escape for you now, you ugly bugface!" Ahsoka agreed heartily.

Poggle and his aides flew through a large set of doors ahead that opened into a large room. The Jedi entered behind him and skidded to a halt in surprise. Poggle and his aides had slipped between two large tanks that had been sitting in the room and were now facing them again from safely behind the two large vehicles, which were the same kind of Super Tank that the clones had faced outside. There were also several Geonosians surrounding the tanks in the air, armed with their hand-held sonic weapons.

"You might have spoken too soon," said Barriss.

"I just jinxed it, didn't I?" said Ahsoka wearily.

"Probably," said Anakin. "At least it wasn't me who jinxed it this time."

Poggle pointed his bone-cane at the group of three Jedi and said, "Rrrrokatikitokoscroockor!"

It didn't take a tactical droid translating for the Jedi to know that he had shouted, "Kill them!"

And the Geonosians and the tanks promptly started to try and do exactly that, as Poggle and his aides slipped into a side-door, which shut behind them, sealing them from view.

"Damn it!" said Anakin, as he hurried began to block some of the lasers from the Super Tanks that had begun to fire at him. His lightsaber blurred in his hands as he hurriedly blocked the multiple shots from the large vehicles. They were coming at him like the lasers of a droideka, with the same deadly bombardment that made it almost impossible for him to do anything but defend. Gritting his teeth, he glanced at the door that Poggle had disappeared through, wondering if he could make a break for it.

But he knew that the Geonosian Archduke was long gone.

He focused on the battle before him, hurriedly parrying the shots of the tanks while trying his best to make some headway on them. He succeeded in pushing forwards a little bit, ducking and dodging and spinning around the tank's lasers, but he was forced to stop as he got closer to them and the firepower got too heavy.

He saw that the tanks were extremely broad and bulky and that they only had weapons on the front and the top. The large, exposed sides could be used as a way of getting to them – presumably the tanks couldn't turn very quickly. So, dropping back and little, he suddenly lunged to his right in a sudden forward roll that took him out of the line of fire. As he landed and the tanks began to rotate towards him, he darted further across the room, wheeled around and charged at the exposed side of the first tank.

He was startled when his lightsaber bounced off the tank without harming it at all. He blinked. Had the Separatists got an indestructible metal of their own now. He hacked the tank again, and this time he noticed that the lightsaber bounced off something just before hitting the tank. The tank was ray-shielded. He couldn't cut through it.

"Great," he growled, as he moved with the tanks as they turned to try and get a clear shot at him.

Ahsoka swept through a low-flying Geonosian with her own lightsaber, watching Barriss dodge as green sonic blast, grab the attacker with the Force and pull him to an untimely end on her own blade. The two Padawans shared a brief nod before they were forced to dodge the sonic blasts of more Geonosians that were flying higher up.

Barriss grimaced as she flipped to one side, glancing up at the clicking bugs that were shooting at her. Thinking quickly, Barriss leapt upwards onto the backs of one of the tanks trying to shoot Anakin, bounced off it, flipping over another sonic shot in mid-air, then rebounded off the wall, to come shooting at the airborne Geonosians from an equal level. She cut through one of them easily. Another tried to dodge, but she still managed to shear off one of its wings. Stricken, the bug fell to the ground, where Ahsoka put it out of its misery.

As Barriss began to fall, she was surprised when she suddenly stopped in mid-air and floated there. Looking down, she saw that Ahsoka had sheathed her lightsaber and was holding both hands towards her, her face a mask of concentration as she struggled to use the Force to keep Barriss airborne. Ahsoka winked as best she could and then she began to direct Barriss across the room.

Barriss smirked at the shocked faces of the Geonosians as the Jedi flew towards them. There were five Geonosians still in the air, but this number was quickly reduced to zero as Ahsoka swiftly floated Barriss at speeds towards them, while Barriss dodged their shots and cut through them, before swiftly being redirected to another. Once they were all dead, Ahsoka quickly and smoothly lowered Barriss to the ground.

"Phew," said Ahsoka, wiping her forehead. "We make a good team."

"Yes," nodded Barriss. "And I cannot deny that flying through the air like that was fun. I'm impressed. I never would have thought of that."

"You could say that I have a habit of thinking outside the box a little, what with the company I keep," said Ahsoka.

"While I'm sure you two are enjoying your chat!" Anakin yelled from where he was madly blocking the tank lasers. "I could use a little help."

"Coming, Skyguy," said Ahsoka, as she and Barriss leapt to Anakin's rescue. They jumped in front of the Chosen One and began to deflect the bolts on their own. This allowed Anakin to crouch behind Barriss and stay undercover as he activated his comlink.

"Aayla!" he called. "Aayla, come in!"

"Anakin," came the reply through the comlink from his fellow A-Team member. "Did you capture Poggle yet?"

"Poggle got away!" Anakin growled. "But that doesn't matter right now. Ahsoka, Barriss and I are under attack from two ray-shielded tanks that we can't cut into. We could really use some assistance down here."

"Alright," said Aayla. "I'll send you some back-up straight away. Just hold out until it arrives."

"Doing our best," said Anakin. "Thanks, Aayla."

"No problem."

Anakin stood up and began to help the two Padawans with the blocking of the shots. No doubt the battle droids or Geonosians or whatever was inside that tank was getting frustrated that it was failing to kill the three of them. That, at least, gave Anakin a cause to smirk.

It didn't take very long for Aayla's scheduled help to arrive. With a resounding crash, Sakuyamon burst through the ceiling, sending stone flying everywhere as she made a spectacular entrance.

"Mind if I drop in?" she quipped as she hovered down towards the three Jedi and their assailants.

"A little help would be appreciated," grinned Anakin, blocking a shot that would have hit him in the face.

"But of course," said Sakuyamon. **"SPIRIT STRIKE!"**

As we've already established, solid objects – including ray shields – were no barrier to the four fox spirits. The fire and wind spirit swept inside one of the tanks, and the two combined their powers to create a roaring inferno inside the tank, so much so that the heat made the whole tank glow and the droids inside where fried. The water and lightning spirits entered the other tank, the first flooding it and the second electrocuting everything in the water, so the droids inside this one were fried too. Then they dutifully went back to their master.

"Wow," said Barriss, lowering her lightsaber and looking to Sakuyamon with deep respect. "How do you make this look so easy? And how did you find us so quickly?"

"I knew roughly the direction you'd taken and I have very good ears," said Sakuyamon. "But, I heard the news. Poggle got away?"

"Unfortunately," said Anakin, grimacing. "He's probably escaped into the catacombs beneath the building by now. We'll never find him in there – there are hundreds of junctions in those tunnels."

"Never mind," said Sakuyamon. "We'll get him yet. But right now, I need to take you back up to the surface." She hovered low above their heads and called **"TALISMAN SPHERE!"** The large bubble encased all four beings and lifted them off the ground, as Sakuyamon plunged upwards through the hole in the ceiling, and through several other holes she appeared to have made in her flight to reach them.

Sakuyamon came to a stop when she went through a hole in the wall and entered a large corridor, in which Obi-Wan, Luminara, Ki-Adi-Mundi and Aayla were battling against a bunch of battle droids that had turned around to face them.

"Oh no," said one. "The creature's back. We're doomed."

"You were doomed anyway," said Aayla, slicing it in two.

"You're just more doomed now," agreed Sakuyamon, dropping the shield and depositing the three Jedi on the floor, all of whom activated their lightsabers and joined the fight, Sakuyamon leaping after them with her staff at the ready.

Seven blurring lightsabers, five blue and two green, plus one golden staff, in a corridor of this size and with all the droids on one side of the action, made little challenge for the Jedi. It took barely a minute for them to fight their way through the massive hordes that remained, swinging and hacking and stabbing and cleaving in blurs of poetic motion. They rounded a corner, to find wide open door ahead of them, with only a few dozen droids standing between them and the open air.

"**AMETHYST WIND!"** called Sakuyamon, and with a swing of her staff, she instantly shredded all the remaining droids with a flurry of her favourite purple diamonds. She nodded with satisfaction and turned to the Jedi. "It's safe to proceed," she said. "MegaGargomon knows that it's us coming out and not the droids, so he won't blast us."

The A-Team chuckled, while Barriss and Luminara looked bemused. With Sakuyamon leading the way, they ran for the exit, stepping casually over the dead droids until they were once again standing in the Geonosian desert.

They might have needed to shade their eyes, were it not for the two huge beings blotting out the sun in front of them. Barriss was so stunned at the size of the two creatures that she had seen as tiny bunnies less than an hour ago that she literally lost her footing and fell on her backside. Luminara was similarly stunned, but managed to stay on her feet.

"Glad you could join us," said Cherubimon, grinning. "We were beginning to worry."

"No, we weren't," laughed Terriermon. "We knew you'd all come out alive. You're all too badass to die in there."

"Terriermon."

"Momentai."

"Where are the clones?" asked Obi-Wan. MegaGargomon moved a leg so they could see behind him. All of the clones were already in retreat, hurrying back across the bridge the way they'd come. Nobody wanted to be near the factory went it went up in smoke.

MegaGargomon bent down and placed his hands together, laying them on the floor. "Hop on the MegaGargomon Express," he said, cheerfully. "We'll be your ride for a while. Please take all personal belongings with you."

Aayla, Anakin and Obi-Wan all leapt onto the outstretched hands without any hesitation. Ki-Adi-Mundi and Luminara jumped on after them. Ahsoka helped a stunned Barriss to her feet and assisted her onto the huge green hands, which were more than big enough to accommodate all seven Jedi. Sakuyamon took off and floated beside the two, while Cherubimon picked up the AT-TE tanks still on the bridge with her hands. The three Digimon backed away from the still, giant factory.

"I think it's time that thing went bye-bye," said Sakuyamon. "It's getting sore on the eyes."

"I couldn't agree with you more," said Aayla, twirling the detonator in one hand and staring at the factory. Her eyes narrowed, and, with the catchphrase of some guy named Bruce Willis in some films called Die Hard that Terriermon had told her about resounding in her mind, she calmly lifted a finger and pushed the button.

The factory instantly imploded, as explosions racked the entire building, right up to the top of the tallest spire, which promptly cracked halfway up and fell with a resounding thud, the tip burying itself in the ground like a falling stalactite. The Jedi and the Digimon and the clones all watched with satisfaction as the enormous building was reduced to rubble in mere seconds as the power core overloaded with a mighty force. Soon, all that could be seen was smoke, rising into the air as if pouring from an active volcano.

Sakuyamon floated down next to the Jedi stood in MegaGargomon's hands. "Overall," she said. "I'd say that mission went pretty well."

"But Poggle escaped," said Anakin bitterly. "And now he knows about the existence of the Digimon. He doesn't know _what_ they are, but he knows of them. I failed."

Aayla placed a comforting hand on her team-mates shoulder. "Don't worry, Anakin," she said. "The only way Poggle will get offworld is if he's in a Republic ship and in a cell. We'll make sure of that."

Anakin nodded. Ahsoka moved next to him, and the Chosen One slipped an arm over her shoulders and the other around Aayla's. The A-Team, along with their Digimon and Jedi friends, contented themselves, for now, to watch the collapsed weapon's factory burn.

* * *

That's another chapter done. The Geonosian language seems to be mostly based on vowels, Rs, Ks and the occasioanly Geeeeeee thrown in, so that's what I attempted to do to voice Poggle the Lesser in this chapter.

Some of you who watch the Clone Wars and have seen the Weapon's Factory episode may be slightly confused as to why Anakin, Barriss and Ahsoka couldn't beat the Super Tanks when Barriss was able to cut her way in quite easily in the show. The answer to this question is that Barriss had to wait until the flap that exposed the cannons on the top of the tank was lifted before she could cut her way in, because the cannons are not ray-shielded like the rest (if they were, the missiles they fire would explode on their own shield). And in this one, neither tank exposed their cannons.

Hope you all enjoyed that. Please review and let me know how I did.

* * *

Next time...

Impmon chapter. We'll get up to speed with what poor Impmon's been going through over the last few months and see the work HYPNOS had been doing on their machine. Impmon's adventures are only just beginning.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 55 : Mystery Deepening**


	55. Mystery Deepening

Boom! Here we go with another Impmon chapter, ladies and gentlemen. Let's see how our favourite ex-Demon Lord has been holding up over the last few months. Questions will be answered, but more new ones will appear in this chapter.

I wrote all this in one day folks. And, I am quite proud of myself.

**

* * *

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 55:- Mystery Deepening**

* * *

While Renamon, Terriermon and Lopmon had been travelling across an entire galaxy with Aayla, Anakin, Ahsoka and numerous other Jedi, blasting things to pieces, destroying droids and befriending strange creatures and generally having an action-packed time, back in their own world, the last four and a half months had past rather more slowly and, it had to be said, peacefully. At least, after a couple of weeks.

The Tamers had initially gone through with their plan to protect Impmon from the mysterious shadow that he'd seen before, although they had little idea on how to go about it. Impmon was grateful for their assistance and thought that perhaps he would be able to sleep a little easier.

A couple of nights after Impmon spotted the shadow, Cyberdramon, who had been standing on the roof of the Akiyama household like he almost always did, watching out for any sign of trouble in the city, had felt the same tingle up his spine that he had felt a few days ago – the one that felt like a Digimon about to bio-emerge, but not going any further. This time he didn't ignore it and, without even bothering to wake up his Tamer, he had sprung from his guard duty and shot off towards the suburbs where the Terada family lived.

The Dragon Digimon had literally exploded through the wall of Ai and Mako's bedroom, sending plaster and bricks crashing into the room and snarling furiously. His head had whipped round to the windowsill where Impmon slept and he had definitely seen something – a dark cloak and what appeared to be a scythe of some kind, but with a blade on each end of the staff, both of which crackled with pink energy, standing over a tossing and turning Impmon.

The figure whipped around, but all Cyberdramon had time to see beneath the hood were a pair of glowing red dots were the eyes would be, before it vanished into thin air.

Impmon had sat bolt upright the moment it did, omitting a strangled cry and breathing heavily. It had taken him a few more moments to get his bearings, before he noticed Cyberdramon standing in the middle of the room and questioned him. Cyberdramon had revealed to Impmon what he had seen, but they were still no closer to finding out the identity of the mysterious shadow than before.

Both the Digimon noticed that Ai and Mako, despite having a great dragon Digimon smash through their wall, had still not woken up. Impmon deduced that his mysterious mental attacker must have used some form of sleeping enchantment on them to ensure that they wouldn't wake up and spot him.

Unfortunately, the same didn't hold true for their mother, who thundered into the room (via the door) and began yelling at all and sundry. Somehow, when she spotted the massive hole in the wall, she still started to blame Impmon for the damage, shrieking at the Rookie and going on about insurance and damage and how she was this close to throwing him out and how Mr. Terada would finally side with her about him when he got back from his long business trip abroad.

She didn't even seem to take in the presence of Cyberdramon until the dragon snarled at her. When she spotted him, she paled and quickly backed towards the beds of her children to shield them with her body. She may be stubborn, irrational and petty, but she was brave. Cyberdramon, knowing that there was nothing he could slay here anymore, had turned around and left, but not before wrapping his tail around on of Mrs. Terada's ankles and yanking her onto her back.

After this particular incident, the Tamers agreed that they would go through with Plan B and set up a perimeter around the Terada household at night, taking it in turns to guard their friend from any potential dangers. Kazu and Takato would take one watch, while Jeri and Kenta would take the other, with Ryo alternating between them. This was done so there'd be as little distraction as possible – Takato and Jeri couldn't distract one another with their boyfriend/girlfriend stuff, while Kazu and Kenta couldn't distract each other with their general goofiness.

This was made more difficult by the fact that Cyberdramon's dramatic exit previously had meant that not only builders were summoned to the site to repair the damage, meaning the twin's and Impmon had to sleep in the living room until they finished, but it also attracted the interest of reporters, who noticed the behaviour of the children and their Digimon. When they learned that Cyberdramon had been the cause of the hole in the wall, one of them had been brave enough to ask him why and hold up the microphone on Live TV. Cyberdramon had promptly eaten the microphone. That made the reporters back off.

Eventually, Yamaki was brought onto the scene, and with a few not-so-subtle hints on his part, the reporters left the Tamers alone.

This seemed to work and another week passed before Impmon received another flashback in the middle of the night. It was the turn of Kazu and Takato, along with their own Digimon, to be on watch. This time, they were close enough to the facility for both Guilmon and Guardromon to pick something up with their senses. Guilmon had promptly turned around and smashed through the glass patio door, launching a Pyro Sphere at the robed shadow, while Guardromon, on the other side of the property, squeezed through the front door (after knocking it off its hinges) and fired a Warning Laser from his eyes. The shadow had vanished, causing both attacks to miss him and crash into two separate walls, leaving large burn marks right across them.

Fortunately for Mrs. Terada, who looked like she was going to go spare at the damage that was being done to her house, the shadow did not re-appear again after that.

Impmon was delighted after he received a full seven nights without any flashbacks to his future self. Seven peaceful, undisturbed nights of sleep were just what he needed, and to him, it was heaven. He declared he was never going to take a good night's sleep for granted again. Nevertheless, the other Tamers and Digimon kept up their nightly vigil for a good month and a half more.

Throughout their patient and tiring sentry duty, the shadow didn't appear again. Impmon received no flashbacks whatsoever during all that time, and he was inexplicably grateful to his friends for everything they had done. After six weeks of nothing had passed though, they concluded that shadow, knowing that they were now onto it, had given up and gone.

The sentry duty was disbanded, but everyone agreed that if Impmon received even one horrible flashback, they would instantly start it again. Even Kazu and Kenta hadn't complained about the long nights they'd had to spend awake, although, understandably, their teacher, Ms. Asaji, was less than enthused when they entered school the following say looking like they were about to fall asleep on foot.

Once she learned of the circumstances though, she relented, although she insisted that the Tamers work harder to catch up on any work they did miss if they did fall asleep.

Of course, these weren't the only things that loomed over the heads of the Tamers. The fact that their friends were still missing was constantly brought up in the minds of the Tamers when they went to school and, once again, Henry and Rika weren't in their class, and Suzie wasn't running around in the playground with her own classmates like she used to. Whenever they passed the Wong or Nonaka residences they would look up at them sadly and walk on.

Rika's mother, Rumiko, seemed to have started coping better than she had before, but she still broke down into tears at least once a week, seeking comfort by cuddling Isis the jackal, who was like the only link that she really still had to her daughter anymore. Isis herself didn't really understand the extent of what was going on, but she too missed her masters, particularly Renamon and Terriermon. She didn't know what had happened to them, so she just wondered why they hadn't come to see her for ages.

Similarly, Henry and Suzie's mother, Mayumi, was also coping better, but the loss of two of her children still definitely got to her. Her older children, Jaarin and Rincheit did their best to comfort her while Janyu was down working at the HYPNOS towers, and often it worked,

However, when Suzie's birthday came along, nothing they did could stop Mayumi from crying her eyes out at the loss of her daughter. Suzie would be turning ten on that day, and she wasn't around to see her gain another year. It was heartbreaking for the poor woman. Rumiko and Seiko came over on that day to try and help comfort her, and each of the Tamers popped in to offer their condolences, as well as a wrapped present that they had bought for Suzie anyway. If Suzie ever got back, and they all insisted that she would, they all agreed to set up a secondary birthday so that it could be celebrated properly.

On that night, Impmon once again had a dream that was neither a proper dream nor a flashback. He saw the birthday celebrations that the others had put up for Suzie and he watched invisibly as they celebrated Suzie having a decade of experience behind her. He even managed to pick out the names of the three people celebrating with them – the cerulean coloured woman with two headtails was named Aayla, the tall man with the brown hair was Anakin, and the girl a little older than Henry and Rika with orange skin and white-and-black striped headtails was Ahsoka. Impmon spotted the angel Digimon from before standing in the corner. She nodded and vanished.

When Impmon told the others about it, they were all elated to know that Suzie and the others were well and Mayumi was grateful to learn that there were some people besides the Digimon looking out for her children. Nobody could understand why Cyberdramon hadn't sensed this angel Digimon's presence as he had with the shadow, though. Perhaps the Digimon wasn't bio-emerging at all and projecting the visions from the Digital World directly. Or perhaps it was because she was a good Digimon, as Cyberdramon was better at picking up the evil ones.

Speaking of bio-emerging, these had been recently becoming few and far between. Throughout the whole four and a half month period, there had only been three bio-emergences beside the shadow, and only one of these had ended in a fight. The first one was a lost Chuchidarumon that had run into Impmon and had almost had a heart attack at the sight of Behemoth. Once it was calmed down, Impmon led it to the portal in Guilmon's hideout and allowed it to return home.

The second was a Gekomon that had deafened the majority of the business district with its raucous and unpleasant singing. Fortunately, Kazu and Guardromon had been nearby at the time, and the Champion robot, being immune to the horrible noise, ferried the protesting Gekomon to the portal.

The third bio-emergence had indeed ended in a fight, albeit a very brief one. An Ebidramon bio-emerged in the middle of the park and attempted to snap up a few of the people panicking around him. But Guilmon had been playing with Calumon nearby, and that meant Takato, Jeri and Elecmon weren't that far away. Ebidramon had been quickly destroyed after a brief fight between it, Growlmon and Leomon. Growlmon had pinned it under of foot while Leomon finished it with a Fist of the Beast King to the face.

Cyberdramon's lack of action had gotten him restless and so now, the dragon spent the majority of his time during the day as Monodramon, in order to make him more pleasant more pleasant company and less likely to attack a tree just so he could attack something. But he always digivolved back for night so he could continue his sentry duty on the roof.

But while the Tamers had had a relatively relaxed time of it, HYPNOS had been working hard for the last few months. The staff and the Monster Makers were pushing themselves harder and harder to build the great machine that would be needed to regain the children and their partners from wherever it was that they'd gone. Construction of the portal machine itself was almost complete, but all of them claimed that it would still be some time before they could actually get it to work.

After all, what they were doing now was far more complicated than the Arc had been – even when it had been upgraded to become Grani.

GranKuwagamon was still hanging around in the Human World, waiting patiently for the time where he would be needed. He seemed to do very little except stand and watch the proceedings with unending patients, although he did consume a lot of pizzas, which he claimed was one of the main things he had missed most about this world from his last visit.

And, as their friends led an assault on the planet Geonosis, it was to the HYPNOS towers that Impmon, Ai and Mako were heading, in order to see how they were getting on.

* * *

Impmon strolled down the street, his hands behind his head as he gazed up at the clear sky, with the tall towers of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building set in the middle of his line of sight. He quite enjoyed walking down the street in plain sight of humanity. He remembered the old days where he would leap from rooftop to rooftop or tree to tree to avoid being stared at, up until his first confrontation with Indramon, after which he started bouncing around on car roofs in order to prove that he was tough.

Boy, had he been pathetic back then. He chuckled at the memories of his former self trying desperately to show everyone that he didn't need a partner. It had all been denial really. Deep down he knew he hadn't been strong enough, but his brain had overruled it.

He and his two Tamers walking on either side of him navigated their way through the legs of the adults.

"Do you think they've made any progress yet, Impmon?" asked Ai. "I mean, with the machine and everything."

"I sure hope so," said Impmon, "but you gotta remember, Teradalet, that they're trying to build something here that millions of people have dreamed of building but that no-one has been able to do. Heck, as far as I know, no-one's ever tried to build a portal to other dimensions 'cause they just think it's too damn difficult."

"But they will succeed, right?" asked Mako.

"Oh definitely," nodded Impmon. "With GranKuwagamon there, it'll be a cinch."

"I wonder how they'll make it," mused the young boy.

"Meh, all that technical talk those geeks do makes my head hurt. I'm not Terriermon – most of what they say just goes in one ear and out the other with me. But I'll tell you this kid, if anyone can pull off what they're trying to do, it's them. Ye won't find a smarter bunch of eggheads than them."

"I wonder if Suzie will grow up to be an egghead like her dad," said Ai.

Impmon snorted. "That'll be the day."

"Hey! Hey, you guys!"

Ai and Mako turned around to look for the source of the call. Impmon turned around a couple of steps later, and all three of them spotted three kids a few years older than the twins – two boys and a girl – running towards them with looks of eagerness and curiosity on their faces.

"Great," muttered Impmon. "What do they want?"

The three of them skidded to a halt in front of the twins. After casting half-nervous and half-excited glances at Impmon a few paces away, the first boy said, "You two are Digimon Tamers, right?"

"Yeah," Ai and Mako nodded at the same time, both of them looking bemused. They weren't all that used to people coming up to them and talking to them like this.

"Oh, you guys are so cool," said the second boy.

"Uh, thanks?" asked Ai.

"No, really, you are," insisted the second boy. "I would do anything to have real, fighting, butt-kicking Digimon partner like you guys."

"You reckon you could get me a Digimon partner?" asked the first boy.

"Guys," said the girl. "That's not what we came over here to ask about."

"Oh, right, yeah," said the first boy sheepishly. "But seriously, do you think you could..."

"Yuugi!" the girl hissed.

"Sorry," cringed Yuugi.

_Heh. He reminds me of the Fairy's partner,_ said Impmon, with a grin.

"What we really came to ask," said the girl. "Is if you guys could tell us the answer to all the questions all over the news. You know, all that stuff about the Tamers with the Renamon, the Terriermon and the Lopmon going missing for ages and ages."

Impmon flinched. They'd gone the wrong way. At first, Yamaki had covered up that fact that some of the Tamers and the Digimon had gone missing so most of the general public didn't know about it. He did it to make sure people thought that they were on the right track and had the situation under control. If people started thinking they weren't then they might suggest more drastic action against Digimon.

But, of course, people had noticed that they were not longer seeing any of these particular Tamers and Digimon around and the news reporters had started commenting on this about a month ago, which started a number of conspiracy theories, which ranged from simple ones like 'They died,' to ridiculous ones like 'They've gone to ground and are preparing to overthrow the other Tamers.'

Some people were idiots.

And now, these kids had come over to find out directly from other Tamers. Whether they were doing this to sate their own curiosity or whether they'd put it on the internet late he didn't know, but still, it was supremely irritating.

"Where are they?" asked the second boy. "How come nobody knows what's happened to them?"

"Tell us," said the first boy, Yuugi.

"Er..." said Ai.

"Um..." said Mako.

Both of them knew they weren't supposed to talk about it to other people, but they didn't have enough experience to know how to get out of a situation like this.

Impmon stepped between them again.

"Look, you three," said the Rookie, giving them the evil eye that he used to give to Calumon. "Haven't you ever heard a phrase about curiosity and how it kills cats? Well, curiosity can get children like you into a lot of trouble too."

"Oh, wow," said Yuugi. "He's talking to me."

Impmon facepalmed.

"Will you answer the question?" asked the girl.

"No, I won't," Impmon folded his arms. "Just a little word of advice, girlie. Don't go sticking your nose in where it doesn't belong. Stay out of our affairs. One, it's dangerous. Two, it's none of your god damn business. Teradalets, let's go."

Impmon digivolved to Beelzemon Blast Mode right in front of the startled children, scooped up the twins in his hands and took to the sky, leaving three awed, confused and unanswered children behind.

"Beelzemon, are you okay?" asked Ai.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Beelzemon lied. He wasn't really. He felt a pang inside him whenever he saw a news article about their missing friends. He missed all three of them to varying degrees – it just wasn't the same without them around. He remembered seeing Lopmon, laughing hysterically at Suzie's party in his vision from the angel and wondered vaguely if she missed him at all.

He really didn't need members of the public asking about where the others had gone as well.

* * *

A few minutes later and a de-digivolved Beelzemon walked into the great room near the top of the HYPNOS towers, where all the computers and other various machines that had been used to track down bio-emerging Digimon and create systems such as Yuggoth and Juggernaut stood. The large mechanical arm that held up Riley and Tally when they worked on monitoring the Digital Barrier still stood in the middle of the room and the domed ceiling still displayed the giant computer screen as it did before.

Now, however, the majority of the other smaller computers that various HYPNOS staff and the Mo Monster Makers used had been cleared away – moved into side-rooms or pushed against the wall, while the huge new machine being built took up most of one side of the room.

It resembled a large octahedral tube, mostly made of Plexiglas that ran from one side of the room to the other. At one side of the room was the door to enter the tube, which was almost like a runway of sorts, but also was designed to protect those outside from a malfunction if the portal went wrong. At the other end was a large metal octagon with a large hole right in the centre, with numerous transmitters dotted around the insides of the hole. This was the actual portal itself.

Around the entire tube were monitoring stations and other various pieces of equipment, where most of the Monster Makers were now sitting and working at. However, one of them, Shibumi, was standing to one side. GranKuwagamon was standing next to him, and the giant bug was allowing Shibumi to scan his pincers with a small, handheld device – a Digital Analyser that Dolphin had designed so they could read the Digital Code of individual Digimon to find out what they were capable of doing and how they did it.

"I gotta hand it to ye, Digi-geek," said Impmon, as he and the twins headed over to the two of them. "This is one impressive piece of tech you've got."

Shibumi looked up and smiled. "Thank you, Impmon. What can I do for you?"

"We just wanted to know what the word is," said Ai. "You know, how far you've got with it and how much more you've got left to do."

"You and all the other Tamers that have popped in to see us this week," chuckled Shibumi, glancing at the Digital Analyser in his hand. "Well, what do you want to know?"

"Well, for a start," said Impmon. "How's the portal going? You getting any closer to figuring out how to get it to open a portal to _any_ dimension."

"We believe we've figured out _how_ we're going to do it," nodded Shibumi. "But you see, there are several problems with putting it into effect. We've carefully analyzed GranKuwagamon her, asking him to use his attack many times and carefully reading him on the analyzers as we do so. We've concluded that when GranKuwagamon uses his attack, he gathers energy in his pincers and it forms within an extremely narrow and incredibly powerful wavelength range. Therefore, because it is in that range, he cuts through the fabric of reality rather than the physical world."

"Right," said Impmon slowly. He, Ai and Mako were all determined not to get lost in the ensuing conversation. "So, you need to get the machine to project energy in that wavelength and power in that metal part to create a portal."

"That's the theory," said Shubumi. He sighed and went on. "But while that might sound relatively simple to most people, it is more complex than this. For a start, while the wavelength itself isn't that hard to replicate, although it is so narrow that we'd have to monitor it constantly to ensure that it stayed within its allotted boundaries. The main problem is the power. GranKuwagamon is a Mega and that means he has vast amount of power. If we were to replicate it with a machine, we'd need so much electricity that we would have to black out half of Japan."

"That's bad, isn't it?" asked Mako.

"Yes," nodded Shibumi. "Any less power than that and we simply wouldn't be able to produce enough power for it to cut through reality. That might be the reason why no-one has accidentally opened a portal before – the sheer scale of power required to open just a small one."

"That makes testing it out a problem," said Impmon.

"Yes," said Shibumi. "If we ever actually use this portal, we'll have to use it on the one and only attempt to get them back and pray it works."

Ai raised the next question. "But what about finding the right universe? Everyone's always saying that there are billions of universes out there. How are we supposed to get to the right one?"

"That is an even bigger problem," said Shibumi. "We've figured out how the randomness of the portals occurs. After scanning GranKuwagamon numerous times, we've deduced that, while the wavelength always remains in the same place, the frequency of that wavelength changes incredibly minutely each time. We think that it's the frequency that determines the destination of the portal. But as to picking the right frequency, we have no idea where to start I'm afraid."

"Any other problems?" asked Impmon, dryly.

"I'm afraid so, yes," said Shibumi. "Even if we could pick the right destination, the changes of the frequency for each universe are so infinitesimally small, that adjusting the portal to the correct frequency and maintaining it there is almost beyond what technology we have. If we do somehow find a way of getting to the right universe, making sure the portal still leads there will probably be very problematic."

"Fantastic," muttered Impmon.

"But... you'll find a way, won't you?" asked Ai. "Impmon says you're all eggheads. You'll do it, won't you?"

"We shall certainly do our best," said Shibumi. "And we can only hope that it is enough."

"Right," said Impmon, feeling a little downcast, but not without hope. "Thanks for the time. No get working. We need to get to them as soon as possible."

"I certainly will," said Shibumi, watching as Impmon, Ai and Mako left the room again. Then he added to himself, "If we could just figure out a way of finding the right frequency. But we have no idea how to find it."

"There is another option," said GranKuwagamon.

"There is?" asked Shibumi.

"Yes," said the Mega. Shibumi listened with intrigue as GranKuwagamon outlined an idea to him that had been growing in his brain for some time now. A plan that might actually work.

* * *

Elsewhere in the city, the other Tamers were feeling much the same as Impmon and the twins, glum and a little beyond hope. As Shibumi had said, all of them had dropped into the HYPNOS towers at some point recently, and all of them had received that same disappointing news that the others had just received now.

One person who was particularly down was Ryo. This was because he was still blaming himself for their disappearance, claiming that he should had followed up on the instincts of his partner and stayed closer to them in order to give them a hand in the upcoming battle against Parallelmon. But he hadn't and so the irrational side of Ryo's brain was kicking in. Perhaps it was because he had, long ago, learned to accept the blame for his mistakes in looking after such a bloodthirsty partner that he was taking this so hard.

Takato and Kazu, along with their partners had been taking a stroll in the park. Kazu was loudly proclaiming that despite Takato's greater experience at being a Tamer, Kazu had still beaten him in the Digimon Card Game they had several minutes before the walk. Takato was equally loudly proclaiming that Kazu had cheated.

The two of them had happened across the glum-looking Ryo, with Monodramon standing there and trying to come up with something to say to take Ryo's mind off it.

"How many times do we have to tell you, Ryo," Monodramon was saying. "There was nothing you could have done except find yourself in the same position as them."

"Maybe I should be in the same position as them, Monodramon," Ryo sighed. "At least then I'd feel like I'd done something useful."

"But you did heed my warnings," said Monodramon. "It was because you heeded my warnings that you were there at all when they vanished into thin air remember?"

"But maybe if I had..."

"No!" Monodramon had a far more serious look on his face than usually appeared there. "No buts. No maybes. They didn't need our help against Parallelmon – they had him ground into the floor when we arrived. We had no way of knowing what Parallelmon was capable of doing. So stop blaming yourself, Ryo."

"Are you kidding?" Kazu walked over. "You're still blaming yourself over the disappearance of our friends?"

"Unfortunately yes," sighed Monodramon. "And no matter how much I tell him it wasn't his fault he just finds some new angle to come at the conversation with."

"But it's true," said Ryo. "Look how we looked out for Impmon when he was having problems with that shadow thing hunting him. I could have arranged something like that to help guard the others."

"And that would have done them no good," said Monodramon, earnestly. "That thing would probably have got them anyway, or it would have got you in their place. Parallelmon only used that attack when he knew he was beaten. Somebody was bound to have that happen to them to moment he started to target us."

"You have got to stop this, Ryo," said Kazu. "Normally it's Takato who refuses to stop moping around because of something that happened yonks ago that he had no control over."

"Um, Takato's standing right behind you, you know," said Ryo.

"Actually, I think he might have a point," said Takato. "This isn't like you at all, Ryo. Usually you're more upbeat about this sort of thing. What's different this time?"

"This time, six of our friends are missing and the only proof we have that they are still alive at all are a couple of dreams that Impmon's had, and we aren't even sure if they're real."

"Well, true..." said Takato slowly. "But still, that's no reason to blame yourself. I mean, when I made Guilmon digivolve into Megidramon – that _was_ my fault and my fault alone. But in this, the only one to blame is Parallelmon."

"And me, for not being able to help them and not telling you so you could help them too," said Ryo.

"AAAAAAGGGHHH!" Monodramon shrieked. "When are you going to get it into your head that it wasn't your fault? You're head is thicker than mine. And that's saying something."

"I think Ryo's suffering from Survivor's Guilt," said Guilmon, suddenly.

Everyone turned to look at him. "He's suffering from what-now?" asked Kazu.

"Terriermon told me about it," said Guilmon. "He said that if somebody is with a group of people and everyone else dies or something else happens to them that doesn't happen to the others, then they often feel guilty because they believe they should have done more, even when there was absolutely nothing they could have done. It's the same thing here, isn't it? Ryo's feeling guilty that he is safe here in his home world when the others are who-knows-where."

There was a couple of seconds of silence.

"That... actually makes sense," said Kazu, stunned. "And it came from Guilmon. Whoa."

"I don't only think about bread," said Guilmon. "Oh that reminds me – I'm hungry."

"Is that right, Ryo?" asked Takato. "Are you feeling guilty about that?"

"Erm," said Ryo. "I guess. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose I am."

"Well, thank Fanglongmon for that," said Monodramon. "I thought you were just being stupid or something. Come on Ryo. Don't feel guilty about that. If you had been transported to another reality with them, then we may not have gotten as far as we have right now in terms of getting them back. Look at how useful we were in the Digital World. That MarineDevimon could have killed the twins and Impmon while he was unconscious, and all that other stuff too."

"Since Terriermon is not here, I shall take it upon myself to say it," said Guardromon. "Momentai, Ryo."

Ryo sighed and then chuckled a little. "Alright, alright. I'll try not to let this Survivor's Guilt of Guilmon's get the better of me."

"It's not mine," said Guilmon. "Terriermon told me about it."

"We'll get them all back safe and sound, Ryo," declared Kazu. "Just you wait and see. In a way, I almost envy them. Can you imagine all the cool stuff that they might be doing right about now? Impmon says they're hanging around with a couple of aliens! How sweet is that?"

"That's a point," chuckled Ryo.

"That's the spirit," nodded Monodramon. Then, he froze, he eyes shooting open and the fins on his arms standing on end. He whipped around to stare at the distant towers of the HYPNOS building.

"What is it, Monodramon?" asked Ryo.

"It's back," said the Rookie.

Nobody needed to ask what he was talking about.

* * *

Impmon began to suspect that something was wrong the moment he felt the same horrible, creeping presence that he had told all the others about his flashbacks. There was absolutely no mistaking it, especially since it began to do exactly the same thing as it had last time. The distant presence behind him and the gradual increase as it seemed to come down upon him from behind and then suddenly disappear when he turned around.

Impmon's eyes darted back and forth, his Digital Blood running cold. It was back. Why did it have to come back? Why now? Why couldn't it leave him alone

He'd registered the presence the moment that he had stepped out of the front doors of the tower, and the place was absolutely crawling with people. He was pretty sure that whoever it was that was trailing him wouldn't attempt to attack him in the middle of a crowd this size. It didn't seem to be its style. It usually came in its sleep, and when it had struck in the day, it had first lured him into a side-street a considerable distance away from humans.

"Impmon, what is it?" asked Ai.

"It's back," said Impmon. "That shadow guy. He's back. I felt his presence."

The twins looked fearfully at each other, and then began to copy Impmon, staring around the place and trying to spot anything suspicious.

"It won't try to attack us in a place like this will it?" asked Mako. "There's loads of people around."

"I don't think so," Impmon grimaced. "But it's there. It's waiting for me to let me guard d..."

Impmon stopped his sentence in horror as suddenly every single human in the street collapsed, including Ai and Mako. They crashed to the ground, lying atop one another as they fell, their eyes shutting. It looked like all them had been hit on the head by a large hammer at the exact same time.

"Ai! Mako!" Impmon yelped, turning and shaking his partners fearfully. To his relief, they were not dead. They were simply asleep. Mako was beginning to snore quietly.

The moment Impmon turned around to see to his partners the presence behind him returned. He whipped around, searching for the shadow, but there was nothing there. "WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME?" Impmon screamed at the sleeping street.

He didn't expect an answer.

But he got one.

"You'll find out soon enough," said an extremely deep voice that sounded like a cross between a groan and a growl. "My Master has plans for you."

Then Impmon was bathed in shadow and thrown into the past.

* * *

"And you're sure this will work?" asked Beelzemon tentatively, as he walked along behind what appeared to a Digimon of some kind. It was a much larger Digimon and was floating in the air in front of him, leading the Demon Lord of Gluttony through what appeared to be a tall hallway of some kind.

"Of course I am sure," said the Digimon. It was a female, and it resembled a cross between a pink, Chinese Dragon, with the long winding body and tail with short legs sticking out from the side, a cat, with a face that was similar to a lion, except for the mane, which was made of feathers, an angel, with numerous angelic wings sprouting from its back, and a goat, with the horns on top of its head. It was a Magnadramon, one of the Four Great Dragons.

"I have done this many times before," said Magnadramon. "Relax Beelzemon. There is nothing for you to worry about."

"That's a relief," said Beelzemon. "When I think about some of the awful things that I've done in the past I just... I just... I want to delete myself to give all the poor souls I've absorbed a second chance at life. I just can't stomach that I'm alive and they aren't." He shivered. "I've come so close many times."

"The Digital World can be a harsh place, Beelzemon," said Magnadramon. "But always remember that you are not as bad a person as you think yourself to be. I know there is good in you somewhere, or I would not have come to you. And I intend to bring out that goodness and purify you. Then, you can go about redeeming yourself by fighting your fellow Demon Lords. You can make sure those you deleted did not die in vain."

"Yeah," Beelzemon nodded slowly. "Yeah. Yeah I can do that. I'll use the strength they give me for good. I can do that. Then I can liberate all the others that have been absorbed by the others by deleting them, and allowing them to pass on."

"Exactly," said Magnadramon. "Here we are."

She led him into an enormous room with walls that glowed so brightly that Beelzemon had to shield his eyes to help them adjust to the immensely bright light.

"Whoa," he said, looking up at the walls that looked as if they were made of solid crystal. "Nice place you got here."

"Why thank you," said Magnadramon. "This place was constructed by my sister, Ophanimon, and her husband, Seraphimon, and it was given to me as my own domain. And now, I'll need you to step onto that altar in the middle of the room."

Beelzemon looked at the large, stone plinth decorated with angel wings and haloes. "That?" he asked.

"Yes," nodded Magnadramon. "If you please."

"Okay," Beelzemon walked slowly over to the altar and jumped on it, standing in the centre and facing the Draconic Angel. "Am I doing this right?"

"Yes," Magnadramon smiled warmly at him. "Fear not, Beelzemon. You are merely a minute or so away from being a purified Digimon. Now, I shall begin. Please don't say anything, or you may interrupt my concentration."

"Gotcha," nodded Beelzemon. "Just tell me when you're done. Lip zipped."

Magnadramon shut her eyes and began to move, flying slowly round and round Beelzemon. Her long body meant that her nose almost touched the tip of her tail as she moved around the plinth and the Demon Lord standing on it. Beelzemon watched as she began to glow brighter and brighter, the light reflecting right off all the walls and making the whole room become a mass of whiteness. Beelzemon stood in the middle, a lone black figure, with Magnadramon circling around him and getting faster and faster as she went, forming a halo of light around him.

And that was when Beelzemon made his move.

"**DARKNESS CLAW!"** he cried, jumping forwards and bringing his claws stabbing straight into Magnadramon's chest. The Angel Digimon gasped in shock and pain, her eyes snapping open and her glow shutting off as if she was a lightbulb being turned off. She fell to the ground heavily, crashing in a lump of wings and fur, with Beelzemon on top of her, leering as she began to disintegrate from the chest.

"You are so naive," Beelzemon sneered into the dying Mega's face. "Did you really think a Demon Lord like me could have an ounce of goodness in him? Did you? The only reason I played along with this is because I knew I couldn't take out an angel like you yet in a straight fight. It's close yeah, but you'd still beat me. So I caught you off-guard and now I can load the data of an angel AND a great dragon. Thanks, toots. Now, I'll be the strongest of all the Demon Lords."

The majority of Magnadramon's body was gone, but her head and neck still remained. As the neck began to disintegrate too, Magnadramon smiled serenely at Beelzemon. Beelzemon blinked in surprise.

"It's not over yet, Beelzemon," said Magnadramon, before her head exploded into data and the particles zoomed into Beelzemon's chest. Beelzemon felt huge amounts of power rushing into his body and he grinned in exhilaration at the feeling.

But then, he frowned. "Not over?" he asked. "Not over? Of course it's over. Why the hell wouldn't it b-AAAAGGGHHH!"

Suddenly, pink light began to erupt from Beelzemon's chest and back and eyes. Beelzemon roared in pain as he was suddenly overcome by agony as the bright light swirled around him, coursing through every inch of his body.

"WHAT'S HAAAAAAAAAPPENING!" he roared through the pain. He doubled over, clutching his chest and writhing in agony, tail thrashing from side to side, feet scrabbling at the floor. Just as the pain seemed like it couldn't get any more unbearable-

* * *

-he woke up.

What?

Impmon was lying in the street beside his sleeping partners.

But the flashback wasn't over yet. He knew that. He wasn't sure how he knew that, but he did. What had happened next? What had happened to him? That in itself was an odd feeling? Usually he didn't want to know the ending.

But why had the flashback ended earlier than it was supposed to?

"Are you alright?" asked a deep voice. It wasn't the deep voice of the shadow, it was another deep voice.

It was GranKuwagamon.

"What the-" Impmon sat up. "What are you doing here?"

"Giving you a hand," said the giant, black bug. "I began to suspect that something was wrong when everyone in the HYPNOS building besides me suddenly fell asleep. I could guess it was Digimon related, so I left the building to investigate. I spotted you and this guy down here so I came to give you some help."

"This guy?" asked Impmon. Then, he noticed that there was another Digimon lying next to him, and GranKuwagamon had one foot resting on its chest. The Digimon was unconscious, and it was wearing a great, black cloak and hood. In one hand, it held the double-bladed scythe that Cyberdramon had described.

Impmon finally got a good look at his pursuer. It hands, chest and waist were all that of a skeleton, except for the fact that the bone was replaced by metal. The face set in the hood was a skull, but it too was made out of metal. However, where the pelvis should be was a large globe of crackling, pink energy, and that's where the being's body ended. The beings arms were made of electricity but they connected the hands to the shoulders just like real arms.

Impmon glared at it with undisguised hatred. It was thanks to this guy that he had been suffering so much in the past. Not recently, thanks to the efforts of his friends, but now it was back to wreak havoc on him. Obviously it had not expected there to be a Mega-level so close in the vicinity.

"I rammed him and knocked him out," said GranKuwagamon. "I figured you'd have some questions for him."

"What is he?" Impmon got to his feet.

"It's a MetalPhantomon," said GranKuwagamon. "They have the ability to induce nightmares in others. Usually they create nightmares that drain the life force of the foe so they can take it for themselves. What this one was doing, I don't know."

"Thanks," said Impmon and with a flash he was Beelzemon. Regular, Demon Lord Beelzemon. He pulled his shotguns from his holsters. GranKuwagamon moved aside and allowed Beelzemon to place his own foot on MetalPhantomon's metal chest. Then he tapped the forehead on the skull with a shotgun.

MetalPhantomon groaned and two red dots appeared in the eye sockets of the skull, indicating that he was awake.

"You recognize this face?" Beelzemon growled into the face of the Ghost Digimon, which, despite being a mostly unmoving skull, still managed to look like it was full of fear. "You've been putting images of things this face has done in the past into my head. And now, I wanna know why. And you, my skeletal friend, are going to tell me."

"I will never talk," said MetalPhantomon, in the gravelly groaning voice he had used before. He began to fade out of existence.

"Ah, ah, ah," Beelzemon pressed the shotgun to his forehead. "At this close range, I can easily shoot you before you can disappear. So don't even think about it."

MetalPhantomon seemed to think that Beelzemon's threat was valid, as he faded back into existence, a look of dread upon his skull.

"Now," said Beelzemon. "I can understand how you managed to slip by everyone's senses, except for Cyberdramon's which you only managed to do mostly. Being a Ghost Digimon, it was easy for you to hide yourself. That is what you Ghosts do, after all – skulk in the shadows and hide. But, I distinctly heard you say earlier, that your Master had plans for me. So, here are my questions. Who is your Master? What does he want with me? And why has he been ordering you to put memories in my head?"

"I won't talk," MetalPhantomon replied. "You may kill me if you wish. Load my data even. But I will not tell you anything."

"Do you want to die?" Beelzemon leaned over to growl into MetalPhantomon's face. "Because I assure you that I will if you don't tell me what I want to know."

"I would rather die than return to my Master having told you about all his plans," MetalPhantomon replied. "I would much prefer death to what he could think up for me."

"Right, so it is definitely a he," nodded Beelzemon. "But don't think for a second that what I can devise for you will be any less horrifying that what your Master can do? You've been putting images in my head of horrible things I've done. You could say you've given me some ideas."

MetalPhantomon almost smirked. "You've gone soft, Demon Lord. You are not nearly as evil as my Master is."

"I may not be evil anymore," Beelzemon snarled. "But if someone haunts me, tortures me and generally messes with my head, I can get pretty pissed. Now, TELL ME WHAT I WANT TO KNOW!"

"Never!" MetalPhantomon. "Besides, my work is now just about done."

"Huh?" Beelzemon asked. "What do you-?"

There was a sudden light in the middle the street, fountaining upwards like a geyser of blue light instead of water. Beelzemon and GranKuwagamon stared at it, startled, and then, an all too familiar thick, grey fog began to descend over the area.

"A Digital Field?" asked Beelzemon. "Now?"

He knew this could not be a coincidence.

His foot slammed to the road, throwing him off-balance. MetalPhantomon had taken advantage of his distraction and had faded from existence. "No!" Beelzemon yelled in frustration, swinging around to search for his shadow, but it wasn't there. MetalPhantomon was gone, and it looked like he wasn't coming back for a while.

The humans around the street began to stir. "Ow, my head," said one.

"Hey, what's with this fog?" asked another.

"What happened?"

"Why am I lying in the road?"

"Heavens, I was almost flattened by your car!"

"Sorry, miss. Good thing there was a traffic jam."

"What on earth is going on?"

"Beelzemon?" asked Ai, looking up at her partner. "What's happening?"

"Tell you later, kid," said Beelzemon. "But it looks like we've got trouble."

"The fog is lifting," noted GranKuwagamon.

"Yeah," nodded Beelzemon, glaring at the place where the light had sprung from the ground. "And unless I'm very much mistaken," he added, as wings grew from his back and Berenjena appeared on his arm, "There are our new playmates."

There were three of them and all of them were humanoid in shape, but were distinctly not human in form. The one in the middle appeared to be slightly bird-like, with enormous talons on his feet, as well as a parrot-like face and beak on his chest and on each of his shoulders. A long, purple tail snaked out from behind him and huge red bat-like wings emerged from his back. His face was hidden by a beak-like mask, and the lower, visible half of his face was blue in colour.

The one on the right was very stick-like. His torso was incredibly thin, literally like a pencil, and the legs that protruded from beneath it were garbed in red, bulging trousers, like those of a clown, His shoes were bladed, like vicious spear heads, as were the enormous fingers that stuck out from his flowing, pink sleeves. The head sitting atop the arms was mostly hidden in shadow but was surrounded by red armour at the cheek and silver blade on top, with orange, spiky hair perched atop that.

The one of the left was easy for Beelzemon to recognize. A woman Digimon, garbed in black leather and a cape split in two to look like bat wings. Her boots were also black, and her left leg and one shoulder were bare, revealing grey skin beneath. A skull was painted across one side of her chest, and her left arm ended in an enormous clawed hand, with red tips on the fingers. Her red eyes glowed from the mask on her head and her long, grey hair fell down behind her. To top it off, the material of her clothing stuck out over her left shoulder to resemble another face, with a clawed hand, and she was wrapped in a long chain.

"Murmukusmon," said GranKuwagamon. "Matadormon and LadyDevimon."

"Brilliant," said Beelzemon. "And I can assume that they've been sent by this mysterious Master of that MetalPhantomon."

"I assume so too," said GranKuwagamon.

"Beelzemon," said the slightly screeching voice of Murmukusmon. "So good to meet you at last."

"Yes," said LadyDevimon, patting her lips with a finger and staring at him appraisingly. "I see the rumours are true. You do hang around with humans. How undignified."

"Pathetic is what I call it," cackled Matadormon. "You're supposed to be a Demon Lord and here you slink around, hiding behind the pathetic fleshbags of this world."

"It'll be a pleasure to destroy you," said Murmukusmon.

That's when all hell broke loose.

* * *

Cliffhanger! AGH! Please review and tell me if you think I'm too evil.

Credit goes to Bookworm Gal for that explanation that Shibumi gave to Impmon and the twins regarding the portal. I am hopeless at technical talk like that, but she seems to have a natural flair for it. Thank you very much, Bookworm Gal.

Credit goes to Zephyrclaws for the inspiration for Beelzemon's latest flashback. I just adapted it slightly to fit my story.

This chapter's left you with a lot of questions hasn't it? Oh well, you'll have to wait and find out. Some will be answered in Chapter 60. Others won't.

And now that this chapter is done and dusted, that makes this story officially twenty-five percent complete. I just need to do three more of what I've done so far and I'll be done. Should be simple enough. But I am rather annoyed that some of the chapters that I am particularly looking forward to writing are so far away.

* * *

Next time...

In pursuit of Poggle the Lesser, Suzie and Lopmon team up with Luminara and Barriss in order to track him down. When they find the place he's hiding out, though, it's not a pleasant experience. There's something down there.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 56 : Into the Catacombs**


	56. Into The Catacombs

Well, despite things attempting to conspire against me, including general laziness, I managed to get this thing up on schedule. I posted the oneshot for Movie-Brat on the Every 50 fic, so if you'd like to see interaction and heroics from Terriermon and Mace Windu then go and check it out.

Other than that, while the first half of this arc has been an extreme kick-ass thing on the part of the Digimon and the Jedi, the second half of this arc is about to turn rather dark indeed. Ooh-er. Read on, folks.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 56:- Into the Catacombs**

* * *

Despite the actions of MegaGargomon and Cherubimon, there were many clones that had been injured in battle during the frontal assault on the weapon's factory that now lay as a pit full of metal plates and useless droids and dead Geonosians. These clones had been blindsides by a Geonosian, or received a lucky shot from a droid, and they were currently being loaded into the gunships and being taken back to the cruisers for treatment.

A de-digivolved Lopmon and Terriermon stood side by side on a hill overlooking the clone encampment. The white-clad soldiers were running thither and yon, carrying out tasks and entering gunships, lifting off so that they could be flown to other areas of the planet to help out other troopers now that the main target had been destroyed.

"It's amazing how quickly you get used to watching this sort of thing, isn't it?" asked Lopmon, watching as Commander Jet organised his troops. "Don't you miss the days when we used to lead relatively simple lives, Terriermon? When we weren't always making plans to invade or defend somewhere and the only thing we had to do was wait for a Digimon to bio-emerge and then go kick the stuffing out of it?"

"I'd have to say yes and no," said Terriermon. "Yes because it meant that I had more time to relax and I was around all my other friends and no because if this hadn't happened I wouldn't have met all the new friends. Besides, this is still fun."

"Of course it is," Lopmon rolled her eyes. "Anything with explosions equals fun to you."

"Duh," grinned Terriermon. "And just remember that explosion as Aayla made that factory implode. Absolutely magnificent."

"I'm glad you appreciate my work," said Aayla, as she walked over to stand behind the two bunnies, placing her hands on her hips as she too overlooked the clone camp. "I have to admit, it was rather satisfying."

"I bet Anakin was jealous that he didn't get to push the button," chuckled Terriermon.

"Oh yeah, that reminds me," said Aayla. "Do you know what I thought when I pushed the detonator?"

"No," said Terriermon. "What?"

Aayla bent down and whispered something in Terriermon's ear. The result was an explosion of laughter from Terriermon, so much so that he had to sit down to avoid falling onto his back. Lopmon giggled, having also heard what Aayla said and grinned up at the Twi'lek. "Terriermon is teaching you in his ways well."

"Well, it was an appropriate quote."

"Yeah, I know," said Lopmon. "But is a Jedi becoming well versed in the way of the Terriermon necessarily a good thing?"

"Momentai."

"Oh, but really, I draw the line at that!" Terriermon coughed. "That's my word."

"No, it's not," said Lopmon. "The Cantonese invented it."

Terriermon folded his arms and grumbled.

"Anyway," said Aayla. "We certainly aren't done here yet. Now that Poggle knows that you exist we have to get him back as soon as possible. If you would care to follow me, we need to discuss what we're going to do next."

"Why do we always have to discuss things like this?" asked Terriermon as he and Lopmon bounced up onto Aayla's shoulders as the Twi'lek walked back the way she'd come. "All we do is stand around and worry about things and raise more questions. Why can't we just..."

"...Getting in there and blowing things up doesn't always work, remember," said Aayla.

"Shock, horror!" Terriermon cried. "Did you just read my mind?"

"No, Terriermon," said Aayla. "I didn't have to. I knew what you were going to say anyway."

"You're getting predictable, brother," said Lopmon, giggling behind one of her paws. Terriermon fumed silently. For an easy-going comedian, it was so easy to rile him up.

The others were all already waiting for them to arrive, except for Ki-Adi-Mundi. He and Commander Jet were getting ready to take their leave to go and help a bunch of other clones that hadn't had quite as much luck as they on this mission. But everyone else; Anakin, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, Luminara, Barriss, Renamon and the Tamers, were standing around and waiting for them to arrive.

All of them, including Renamon, were absolutely caked in sand, thrown up in the many explosions and fights that had sprung up throughout the day, particularly the last one where the factory had exploded.

"Ah, there you are," said Obi-Wan, as Aayla approached. "We were wondering where you'd sloped off to."

"Just hanging around," grinned Terriermon. "Hey Rena, you look like a giant sand sculpture."

Renamon grimaced, and pulled a clump of sand from her yellow fur. "I don't usually take baths," she said. "Because I don't often need to. But I think that when we get off this planet I'm going to need a good long one."

"I think most of us are," said Ahsoka, futilely attempted to brush the sand off her arms and only succeeding in adding more to it.

"I hope we don't end up going to too many more planets like this," said Rika. "Having long hair like this can be rather annoying when it's filled with sand."

"It's a good thing I just have lekku then," Aayla grinned.

"Look at Obi-Wan's beard," cackled Terriermon. "It looks like he's glued a clump of sawdust to his chin."

"Yes, well, anyway," said Obi-Wan trying to change the subject as the others, even Luminara, sniggered at the image. "Back on topic. Erm, before we can all go back to Coruscant so you can have your scheduled long baths, we need to do one more thing."

"Find Poggle," nodded Anakin. "And find him before he gets off world."

"He's going to have a problem doing that," said Luminara. "We've taken out all the space-worthy ships for many leagues. He'll have to go a long way before he can find some suitable transport."

"Excellent," said Obi-Wan. "Then we'll need to set out and find him as soon as possible, before that happens. Not only does Poggle know about the Digimon, but he is in one of Count Dooku's inner circle, along with Nute Gunray and San Hill. There is an awful lot of information he could provide us with, possibly even some on Lord Sidious himself. The only problem is finding where he went. We have no idea which direction he took after he entered the catacombs."

"My guess is he didn't go that way," Ahsoka pointed in the direction they'd originally come from, where the charred and obliterated Geonosian bunkers were still smoking prominently. "I don't think he'd have the guts for that."

"You're right," nodded Renamon. "And that's where our cruisers are, so that effectively eliminates one direction."

"He's a very intelligent person as far as we know," said Barriss, thoughtfully. "Where would he go if he had nowhere to run to get off world? Where on this planet would he think it to be safe?"

"That's a question we cannot really answer, I'm afraid," said Anakin. "Poggle knows we've bombed a lot of the surrounding areas. He'll have to cross a large amount of wasteland before he can get anywhere that he might consider safe."

Suzie yawned. "Why won't he still be in the tunnels beneath the factory thing?"

"With us around, I don't think he'd have dared," said Terriermon. "He saw how we blew up the defences and so I'm pretty sure he figured out exactly what was going to happen to his factory at some point, though it probably didn't happen the way he'd expected it. If he was sane, he would have fled the tunnels too. Especially since most of them don't exist anymore."

"Then we're not really going to be able to do much about finding him by standing around here and talking about it," said Henry. "Would it be possible to send out a squad of fighters to look for him or something?"

"There are many Geonosian anti-air turrets that are still functioning," said Obi-Wan. "If we're going to find him, it'll have to be from the ground."

"Nevertheless," said Luminara, "Henry does have a point. I believe it would be best if we just went out and searched for him. I shall take a speeder and head south post haste. Then, I'll see if I can find him. Once we've done that, I can signal in to the rest of you to come in via gunship to help us out."

"I'll go with you, Master," nodded Barriss, stepping up beside the older Mirialan. "If he's above ground, we'll find him."

"Yes," said Aayla. "But the problem is communications. This planet doesn't exactly have the best signal and the holoprojectors may transmit poorly. Might I suggest that you take one of the Digimon with you, so that we can have instant and reliable communications?"

"And excellent suggestion," said Obi-Wan. "Do any of you three feel like volunteering?"

"I'll go," said Lopmon, still sitting on Aayla's shoulder. "I can help them by scouting from the air, since I'm too small for the turrets and, to put it bluntly, Suzie would be easier to take with you than Henry."

Henry nodded. He was reluctant to let Suzie go off somewhere where he didn't know where she was, but he had to keep reminding himself that not only was Suzie growing older and more independent, she didn't need his protection. Luminara, Barriss and Lopmon were all far more capable of looking after her than he was, even with his martial arts skills.

"Then it's settled," nodded Luminara. "Barriss, we shall head out immediately."

"Yes, Master," nodded Barriss. Lopmon transported herself from Aayla's shoulder to Suzie's head, as the four girls began to move away from the rest of the group. Barriss was rather excited at the prospect of working alongside one of the Digimon. Up to now, she had still yet to see them doing much except stand around, having missed the chaos of the run to the weapons factory and going with Anakin and Ahsoka to apprehend Poggle instead.

Having been one of the ones to let Poggle get away, Barriss was rather eager to get to work in putting him into custody.

"Don't worry, Henry," said Ahsoka, noticing the young boy's sigh as his sister walked away from him to go on another mission without him. "Take some advice from your own partner and Momentai."

"Watch it!"

"Oh shush. I've seen Master Luminara in action before and she's a very skilled Jedi. Plus, there's Lopmon. Unless someone like Ventress or Grievous is on this planet, which I very much doubt, there's not much that Master Luminara can't handle here, and Lopmon will have everything else covered."

"I know," said Henry. "I suppose I'm being overprotective."

"There is nothing wrong with looking out for your family, Henry," said Anakin. "And don't you forget that."

Henry nodded solemnly. "Come on, Henry, lighten up," said Rika, putting a hand on his shoulder. "With Lopmon there and Terriermon here you can have the play by play of what they're doing at all times."

"I'm not a radio," objected Terriermon.

"They'll be fine," chuckled Rika. "What could possibly go wrong?"

"Now, I just know something is going to go wrong," Henry said. "It always does when someone says that."

"Momentai, Henry," said Terriermon. "We can go rushing in if things get that serious."

"It's just," Henry shook his head. "I have a bad feeling about this."

* * *

Barriss picked up the younger girl and deposited Suzie in her lap as she mounted her speeder. Luminara leapt astride her own and turned back to check on her Padawan and her cargo. Suzie was sitting eagerly on Barriss' lap, having never been on a speeder before, and was clutching the corners of Barriss' cape to make sure she wouldn't fall off – not that Barriss would let her. Lopmon was now sitting on Barriss' head, ignoring the fact that she had a hood on.

"Are you two ready?" asked Luminara.

"Yes," said Lopmon, ready and waiting.

"Then let's go," Luminara turned around and both the Mirialan Jedi started up their speeders. Then they were off, whizzing past the others, who were treated to a loud, "WHHEEEEEE!" noise from Suzie as they shot past and dropped down the hill. The clones in the camp waved at them as they passed and entered the desert, Suzie giggling as she went.

"That is pretty fast," observed Renamon.

"That is why we call them speeders," pointed out Aayla.

"We should organise a race between someone on a speeder versus Beelzemon on Behemoth if we ever get the opportunity," chuckled Terriermon.

"Isn't Behemoth that motor-vehicle that you said is actually a sentient being?" asked Anakin.

"That's the one."

"Yeah, I'm still having trouble believing that one."

* * *

Suzie continued the loud squealing noises of delight as she whooshed across the desert, sat in Barriss' lap on the BARC speeder bike that the two of them were riding on. Sometimes it was rather difficult to tell how old Suzie was, as she often seemed to regress to the way she was when she had first met Lopmon, particularly when in exciting circumstances. Granted, the whole situations with Ogudomon and Parallelmon had greatly matured the little girl, but there were still times where it was like she'd had far too much sugar for her own good.

Barriss winced as the sound hit her ears. It was rather grating to her and quite honestly she couldn't see the point of it. This speeder wasn't _that_ fast and she could tell that Suzie wasn't scared for two reasons, firstly because she could sense that was the case and secondly, people didn't generally shout "WHHEEEEEEE!" when they were scared.

She didn't say anything though. She bore it. However, Lopmon, perched on top of the hooded Mirialan's head and probably keeping the hood on at all thanks to the slipstream of the slipstream of the speeder, did notice and she mentally told Suzie to keep it down, although she kept it as polite as possible, stating that their enemies might be able to hear them coming and they really didn't want that. Suzie took the hint and shut up.

As usual, the search in itself was quite boring for Suzie, as the desert passed by and they saw no signs of anything that could be vaguely dangerous, beyond what appeared to be the carcass of some large, rhinoceros creature. Luminara told Suzie that it was reek, probably dumped here after it died as it was no longer of any use in the Geonosian executions. Both Suzie and Lopmon noted the bitterness in her voice, and both agreed with it. How anyone could be so cruel to an animal was beyond them.

Suzie might have fallen asleep again were it not for the awesomeness of the speeder bikes, until Lopmon suggested that they pretend they were having a game of hide-and-seek and that Suzie was looking for Poggle. That definitely woke Suzie up and she scanned the horizon with as much determination as anyone else.

They didn't really find anything for a good long time. And when they did find something, it didn't look particularly significant to either Suzie or Lopmon, but clearly it pointed something out to both of the Jedi.

"There, Master," Barriss said, on one of the frequent stops they made so the two Jedi could scan the horizon. "I see something there, to the south, approximately ninety clicks away."

"Where?" asked Luminara, turning her own macrobinoculars to look in the direction she indicated. Then she saw it and said, "Ah yes, I see it now."

"What is it?" asked Lopmon.

"It looks like a munitions container," said Barriss. "Something that Poggle may have been taking with him."

"Yes," nodded Luminara. "I can't see why a crate like that would be lying out here in the middle of the desert for any other reason. The Geonosians usually don't leave weapons behind, so they must have been in a hurry. Sounds like our frightened Archduke."

"Alright," nodded Lopmon. "So we've found a clue that we're on the right track. Now what?"

"Here's where you come in," smiled Luminara, looking at the brown bunny. "Normally we wouldn't have the advantage we have with you around, but now's the time for you to be our eye in sky. We'll head over to the crate, while you fly up and see if you can spot anything."

"Right," nodded Lopmon. She spread her ears and took off, using the slipstream created by the speeder bikes as they zoomed away again to get into the air faster. She rose higher and higher into the baking sky, under the brutal gaze of the Geonosian sun, scanning the landscape for any sign of Poggle. Geonosis almost looked pretty from up here, with the dunes rolling across the horizon, a little like those pictures of the Sahara people sometimes got on a new computer.

And sure enough, she spotted something that could well be the target they were looking for.

Lopmon swooped and rocketed back towards the ground, to where Luminara, Barriss and Suzie were waiting for her beside the crate. Lopmon shot for the ground, at such speed that Barriss thought she was going to crash, but at the last second she levelled off and landed smoothly on the front of Luminara's speeder.

"Well?" asked Luminara.

"Yes, they are definitely heading south," nodded Lopmon. "I saw a single AAT tank heading in that direction, trailing a bunch of crates just like this one. I didn't see Poggle himself but I'd guess that that is him."

"Did you see where he was heading?" asked Barriss.

"I think I saw a building in the distance," shrugged Lopmon. "It looked tall, with five spires, one in the middle and another at each of the corners."

"That sounds like the Progate Temple," mused Luminara. "Why would he be heading there?"

"Maybe he's just looking for a place to hide until he can find a way to call for reinforcements," suggested Barriss.

"Possibly," nodded Luminara. "Lopmon, tell Master Kenobi and the others that we'll head there now and try to apprehend him before he gets there."

Lopmon didn't say anything, but a couple of seconds later, she said, "Obi-Wan says he advises against it, because Admiral Yularen has detected a large sandstorm sweeping towards us from the _Resolute_. The others are getting undercover and he says we should do the same."

"We cannot let Poggle escape us again. Sandstorms don't bother Geonosians. He'd be able to use it as the perfect escape route to get off world."

Lopmon was silent again, and then said, "Obi-Wan sighed and said to go ahead with it. He supposes it's for the best. But he says that they won't be able to come and assist us if we get in trouble until the sandstorm passes."

"Tell him not to worry. We should have him in custody by the end of the day. Come on, Barriss. Let's head for the Temple," Luminara restarted her bike and, as Lopmon took her place on Barriss' head, she shot away across the desert again. Barriss followed her quickly, pulling out a two sets of goggles from the compartment in the speeder, putting them on and then giving the other pair to Suzie, in preparation for the incoming sandstorm.

"Hey, Lopmon," cried Suzie as she put them on. "Do I look like Takato with these?"

"No," said Lopmon.

"Good," said Suzie.

"I might be best if you kept your mouth closed for a while, Suzie," said Barriss kindly. "Sand can get everywhere in a sandstorm and getting it in your mouth is very nasty."

Suzie's jaws shut like a steel trap.

* * *

The sandstorm struck a few minutes after they had departed from the crate. It was one of the most horrendously unpleasant experiences that either Suzie or Lopmon had ever been through. The sand was coarse and rough as it whipped up around them, little pieces of grit whacking them in the face constantly as they sped through the masses of the stuff swinging about as if caught in a hurricane.

It became so bad that eventually Suzie pulled her shirt collar up and hid her head inside it in an effort to keep the offending sand away, while sticking one hand underneath it to hold her nose. For the most part, it worked, but it did mean that a section of her belly was smeared with the stuff. Lopmon, who was the only one who lacked goggles, couldn't see anything at all, because she had wrapped her face in her ears like a cocoon, while holding onto Barriss hood with her hand.

Luminara and Barriss didn't get by without any suffering either, but the two of them were using the Force to keep the sand away from their noses, mouths and ears. Luminara only knew where they were going at all because the Force was guiding her, and Barriss only knew where _she _was going because she was sticking to Luminara's trail like glue.

Luminara was relieved when they skimmed over a dead battle droid, which had probably been amongst Poggle's escort right up to the point where the sandstorm caused it to malfunction and fall. It meant they were on the right track. And indeed they were, for a few minutes later they swept past the AAT tank that Lopmon had spotted from the sky earlier. There was no-one in it, but it was sitting aimlessly just outside the Temple Lopmon had also seen. It was difficult to make out the structure of it, due to the sand, but the looming doors that stood wide open were plainly visible and the five spires rose into the air and out of sight.

The place was a mess. Apparently it had recently received a visit from some Y-wing bombers.

"Well," said Luminara, pulling the speeder to a halt and leaping off it as Barriss pulled up alongside her. "The tank proves that he's definitely in here somewhere."

"Let's try to get this done quickly," said Barriss, gathering Suzie in her arms, as the little girl refused to come out of her shirt until they were out of the storm. Luminara and Barriss walked inside the doors, the latter carrying her two passengers with relative ease. As soon as they entered the Temple and were relatively safe from the sand, Lopmon unwrapped her head and coughed. She flapped her ears vigorously, showering Barriss with more sand.

"Remind me not to volunteer my services for desert scouting missions again," she hacked, spitting out a glob of sand. "Suzie, you can come out now."

"Is it time for that bath yet?" Suzie sneezed as her head popped out of her shirt and Barriss set her down.

"Not yet, I'm afraid."

"Nuts," muttered Suzie. "I'm so dirty Mum would ground me for a month."

"Well, your Mum's not here," chuckled Barriss. "And if I ever meet her, I won't tell her anything."

"Thanks," Suzie dusted the top of her head with her hand.

"Look at this place," breathed Lopmon, taking in the place with awe. Suzie and Barriss looked around and were similarly amazed. While the place itself was a tip, with what looked like religious artefacts strewn all over the floor and great holes in the ceiling, not to mention a gaping one in the floor that was mostly, but not completely, covered by a large metal lid, like an enormous manhole cover.

But it was the statues that intrigued them the most. They were all insectoid in appearance and none of them looked particularly pleasant. They were dotted around at various heights on the walls. One stared down at them with enormous, slitted eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth, like an ant on steroids. They were obviously of Geonosians, but they had been grotesquely altered, so the teeth was sharper, the eyes bigger, and they were mostly standing in positions that made them look like they were being tortured.

"Look at that one," pointed Barriss, pointing to the one at the exact opposite side of the giant room to the door. Suzie and Lopmon shuddered at the sight of the enormous stone bug. The exaggerated teeth and eyes were the same as the other statues, but this one was looking furious. Its hands were curled like the claws of a praying mantis, ready to strike out at prey, while it had another pair of limbs holding onto the stony ridge below it. Plus, it had an enormous crest on its head, like a crown, but it was like a giant, upside-down U, with a stalk in the centre that attached it to the forehead of the bug.

"Ugh," Suzie shuddered. "I don't want to meet one like that anywhere."

"There's no sign of Poggle here," muttered Luminara, walking over to the giant hole in the middle of the floor and peering through a gap in the cover and the edge, large enough for a person to enter easily. "It looks like he's gone down into the catacombs beneath the building."

"Wonderful," Barriss sighed, walking over to join her Master beside the hole. "How are we supposed to find him now? A building this old will have catacombs that go on for miles. There's no way we can go down there, find Poggle and bring him back without getting hopelessly lost."

"Does that mean we failed?" asked Suzie, glancing worriedly at Lopmon. "Will all the droids know about the Digimon now and come trying to capture them? I don't want them to take Lopmon."

"They will only know about the Mega forms of the Digimon," said Luminara, "but no, we haven't failed yet."

"Do you have a plan, Master?" asked Barriss.

"I'm trying to come up with a way of navigating through the catacombs," muttered Luminara.

"Did anyone bring any string?" asked Suzie, giggling. "Or jelly beans?"

"No, we didn't," said Luminara. "I'm not sure how the first would help and I don't know what the second one is."

"Obi-Wan says that you shouldn't attempt to do anything yet," piped up Lopmon. "He wants us to leave so that we can regroup and try for another angle."

"If we leave now, Poggle might get away," Luminara shook her head. "No, there has to be a way."

"There might be actually," piped up Lopmon, walking towards them and peering down the tunnel alongside the two Jedi. "You see, you know I have a connection to my brother, Terriermon. The psychic connection that we have means that not only can I communicate with him over long distances, but I also know exactly what direction he's in. As long as he remains outside the tunnels while I go in, I'll know exactly how to navigate my way back out again."

"That's extremely convenient," said Barriss.

"Yes, it had helped us a number of times," nodded Lopmon. "Especially since coming to this universe. My bond with him might not be as strong as Renamon's but it should certainly suffice for this."

"Excellent," nodded Luminara enthusiastically. "That means we can go after Poggle and not get lost."

"Do we have to go down there?" asked Suzie, peering into the dark hole with a frightened expression. "It looks so dark and scary. I don't want to go in there."

"It may look scary," said Luminara, "but I doubt that there's much that could be called scary down there. There will be Geonosians of course, but as long as you stick close to us, you'll be perfectly safe from them."

"But what if there are Geonosians like that big one," Suzie pointed at the ugly statue leering down at them from above.

"Actually, she may have a point," said Barriss. "I've never even heard of a Geonosian that looks like that one. It could be dangerous."

"I'm afraid it's a necessary risk," said Luminara. "We must capture Poggle."

"She's right," said Lopmon. "We signed on for this Suzie. We have to finish this. Besides, that Geonosian can't be scarier than Ogudomon can it?"

"No," Suzie shook her head. "He was really creepy."

"A very adequate description," nodded Lopmon. "Come on, we're going to have to get going."

"It's quite a drop," said Barriss, scooping up Suzie in her arms again. "Don't worry. I've got you."

"Er, can't we just go through that door?" Suzie pointed to the one beneath the horrible statue that also lead down, but much less steeply.

"This way will be quicker," said Luminara as she pushed her boot against the manhole cover and slid it to one side, widening the hole so there would be room for both the Jedi to jump through. Master and Padawan shared a brief nod before they both leapt into the darkness. Suzie, to her credit, didn't scream at the long drop, although she really, really wanted to.

Lopmon took one last look around the room, before plunging in as well.

By the time they reached the bottom, Luminara and Barriss being forewarned to the landing by their senses and come to a halt smoothly, it was pitch black. "It's very dark," said Suzie, pointlessly. She couldn't even see Barriss' arm wrapped around her waist.

"Then it's a good thing we brought light," said Luminara, and with a whoosh, everyone was bathed in the green light of her lightsaber. Suzie was placed on the ground and Barriss activated her own blade, mingling the blue light with the green as they took stock of their surroundings. It looked pretty much like that had all expected it to. Long tunnels that wound away into the unknown, held up by supports that occurred at regular intervals along the walls.

There was no sign of any life down here though, and apart from the obvious architecture on the supports, which looked disturbingly like bones, there was no sign that there had _ever_ been anyone here.

"Which way do we go, Master?" asked Barriss, peering from the left to the right in the glow of their lightsaber blades. She could distinguish no noticeable difference between either direction. They both led downhill.

"Let's try our luck with the right," said Luminara. "If we don't find anything within half an hour of heading it that direction, then we'll double back and try the left. And Barriss, even if Lopmon can lead us back here, let's try to remember our own way."

"Agreed," nodded Barriss. "Suzie, stay close behind Master Unduli. I'll be behind you. We don't want you to get grabbed by a Geonosian flying out a side-tunnel. They can crawl as well as they can fly."

"No, we don't," agreed Suzie, shivering at the thought as the two Jedi surrounded the girl, lightsabers drawn as they made their way off to the right. There were numerous small entrances dotted throughout the walls that looked like they could be squeezed through by something rather thin, like a man-sized bug.

"If a Geonosian did get hold of me," asked Suzie. "What would it do?"

Luminara and Barriss glanced at each other before the former solemnly said, "I don't think it would be a good idea to answer that. You're probably better off not knowing."

"Is it really that bad?" asked Lopmon.

"I never said we knew the answer either," said Luminara. "So far as I know, nobody who's ever been taken away by a Geonosian has come back alive, or ever been seen again, not even a body."

"They sound like very pleasant people," muttered Lopmon, drawing closer to Suzie to protect her. The little girl would be the most obvious target for a Geonosian, as she could fit into the little tunnels far more easily than either of the Jedi, and they would probably be cautious of her since they didn't know what she was capable of doing.

If one of them grabbed her there would be hell to pay.

They continued to walk in relative silence, each of the girls listening out for any signs of approaching enemies. The catacombs truly were a labyrinth and they encountered numerous dead ends as they went along and even more forks in the trail. To any normal person, like Suzie, this would be a place of great confusion and they'd got lost easily. Suzie was already lost and was just following the others. Luminara and Barriss had good memories and Lopmon had her brother outside to keep her on track.

* * *

They continued in this fashion for a good twenty minutes. Evidently Poggle knew his way around this maze of tunnels extremely well, as pretty soon even Luminara and Barriss were struggling to remember where everything was, the internal map in their brains blurring as a result of so much being added to it.

"Ten more minutes in this direction," said Luminara. "Then we turn around and try the other way."

"This is so creepy, it's not even funny," Suzie moaned.

"I fail to see how this could be funny even if it wasn't creepy," Barriss frowned in confusion.

"It's an odd quirk of speech that humans from Suzie's world," said Lopmon. "Pay it no mind."

Just then, there was a distant, rasping, screeching noise that sounded vaguely like it had come from some creature's throat, echoing throughout the tunnels and making it sound like it was coming from all directions at once. Instantly, taking a battle stance and holding their lightsabers ready, the two Jedi frantically searched to pinpoint the source of the sound, but they couldn't make anything out of the acoustics it left behind.

"But you might want to pay attention to that," Lopmon murmured, drawing closer to her partner. Tough as the little bunny was, that noise sent a shiver up her spine. It was absolutely bone-chilling, as if made by something that shouldn't – couldn't – exist.

Suzie hid her face behind her hands, peering over the tops of her fingers in utter terror. Suddenly, the idea of bringing a small child, even one with a butt-kicking monster for a partner, didn't seem like such a good idea after all. "What was that?" asked Suzie, starting to shake with fear at the ungodly noise.

"I do not know," Luminara frowned, staring around the tunnels they stood in, or at least the parts of it she could see in the green glow of her lightsaber.

"It... It sounded a little bit like a Geonosian," muttered Barriss, staring down the corridor bathed in blue from her own blade. "But like no Geonosian I've ever heard before?"

"Like the one above the door in the main Temple?" asked Lopmon.

"Possibly," Luminara murmured. "But I sense that that is not the case. But, I do sense something."

"What?" asked Suzie.

"I'm... not sure."

Right after she said this, there was another noise that was easily identifiable. It was the sound of scuttling feet on stone, and it echoed off to the left hand side of the group. The Jedi spun about in the direction of the noise but nothing sprung out at them from the darkness. The sound was replaced by another, which was another horrible screeching noise. But this time it was definitely louder than the last one, implying that whatever it was, it was getting closer.

"Perhaps now would be a good time to retreat, Master," said Barriss. "Until we know what we're dealing with in any case."

"I agree," nodded Luminara. "We have no idea what we're up against here. Come along, Suzie. We're leaving."

Suzie nodded, unwilling to open her mouth lest she cry or scream. The Jedi began to hurry the little girl back up the way they'd come, keeping an eye out for danger in both directions.

They didn't get very far.

Suzie screamed when they encountered their mysterious assailants a few tunnels back, blocking off their only direction back, or at least the only one they knew. They were Geonosians, that much was plain enough, but there was something odd about them. They didn't look like the carving above the door – they looked ordinary in shape, but they were just... wrong. Their skin looked more black instead of the usual brown, there were chunks missing from their wings and occasionally their torsos and their eyes, normally black in colour, were white and lifeless.

But it was the way they moved that most frightening. They didn't charge at the Jedi, screaming their heads off and trying to eviscerate them as they had expected them to. It would have been better if they did. Instead, they sluggishly ambled towards them, dragging their feet and their arms slack and waving about like pendulums. Their faces were completely expressionless, but their mouths were hanging open and low gurgling and groaning was coming out of them, instead of the usual clicks and trills.

Suzie hid behind Barriss, cowering as what looked like some of her worst nightmares were becoming a reality. "Zombies!" she squealed. "They're zombies!"

"Don't be silly, Suzie," said Barriss, backing away and forcing the others away from the moaning Geonosians shuffling towards them. "There is no such thing as zombies. These are... a little different."

"Fall back," said Luminara. "Back the other way. Lopmon, we'll have to rely on your senses now. You have to guide us back to the surface."

"Can do," nodded Lopmon, watching apprehensively as the Geonosians hobbled towards them at their own paces, their expressions completely blank. It was unnerving. In a way, it looked like Suzie was right. They did look like the zombies Lopmon had seen in some horror movies she had watched with Terriermon after Suzie had gone to bed. Those movies had always terrified her and she was feeling that same fear now.

The four girls backed away from the Geonosians and rounded another corner. Instantly, Luminara brought them to a halt again. More Geonosians were heading at them from the opposite direction, with equally sluggish and awkward movements. And there were others, off to the left and the right, trundling down the tunnels and towards their prey.

"It's a trap," Luminara breathed, holding her lightsaber ready.

"Why are they so bold?" asked Barriss, as they grouped around Suzie, facing outwards at the closing Geonosians. "Do they not realize what they're up against? Most Geonosians would think twice before attacking a Jedi."

"But these clearly aren't ordinary," said Lopmon.

The Geonosians were now within a few yards. Barriss grimaced and said, "Then let's give them a wake-up call."

The first Geonosian that was lifting his arms and reaching for her was suddenly jerked forwards as Barriss called on the Force to yank it in her direction. It squealed that same, horrible squeal as it stumbled forward, right onto Barriss' lightsaber. The blade stabbed the Geonosian in the chest, impaling him right up to the hilt, the blue blade protruding from his back between his damaged wings. The Geonosian slumped forward, clearly dead.

The rest of the Geonosians seemed to waver, stopping their advance and staring blankly at the two Jedi, particularly Barriss with their impaled brother.

"You see this?" Barriss indicated the Geonosian still impaled on her sword. "This is what will happen to all of you, if you don't back away and let us pass."

The Geonosians made no response. They just stared. Their blank expressions somehow seemed to bore into the Jedi Padawan, making her feeling extremely uneasy.

With a sudden jerk and a horrible screech, the head on the impaled Geonosian snapped up and screeched into Barriss' face. Barriss yelped in shock and fear as the Geonosian seemed to come back from the dead and reach for her. The hands grasped her shoulders, moving to her neck to choke her. Barriss desperately swept her blade out the side of the Geonosian's torso and sliced off one of its arms, then swept through its torso.

There, it should definitely be dead now.

But it wasn't. The head shot up again and the Geonosian's screeches filled the tunnels still. The remaining hand grabbed Barriss' ankle. The Mirialan Padawan desperately tried to kick it off, forgetting in her panic that she still had a lightsaber. Lopmon came to her rescue, blasting the Geonosian in the face with her Blazing Ice and smacking the limb away. The Geonosian seemed unfazed by the holes in its face.

Now it was so obvious why they looked and acted like zombies.

They _were_ zombies.

The other Geonosians began to move forward again, hands reaching up to grab the Jedi. "Face outwards!" cried Luminara, kicking the first in the stomach and slicing the legs off another. "Protect Suzie."

And so a battle began. A battle nobody living had thought they would ever experience. Luminara sliced through the head of the Geonosian on the ground that was trying to trip her and moved to attack the others marching her way. Her lightsaber spun through the air, hacking off the two arms of another and stabbing it in the chest, sweeping another from shoulder to armpit and firmly kicking another right in the face. The head of this Geonosian snapped back viciously, but clicked back into position as second later. The Geonosian made a sudden lunge at Luminara, but the Jedi Master dodged and carved it right up the middle.

But they came on. Luminara gritted her teeth as she continued to fight. Sweep-kicking the feet from another one, she hacked into it while it was down, spinning to swipe her blade through two more as they groped towards her, then dodging the hands of yet another and slicing its wings off, then its head.

But something grabbed at her from below. Startled, Luminara stumbled back to find that one of the Geonosians she had already cut to pieces had grabbed her gown and was tugging her backwards. Turning, she hurriedly stabbed the Geonosian right through the face. It didn't flinch and continued to pull her down. The others on the floor joined in, grasping her feet, knees and clothing and hauling with wasted muscles. Luminara lost her footing and collapsed onto her back. Instantly the Geonosians began to try and pin her there, but Luminara hurriedly hacked off a few limbs and scrambled upwards, slicing off a few ore still clinging to her as she did.

But the other Geonosians had got closer and two of them grabbed her by each arm, pushing upwards with surprising strength and pinning them above her head, rendering her lightsaber utterly useless. The others on the ground resumed their tugging, but Luminara wasn't about to go back down in a hurry. With a surge of willpower she let out a huge blast of the Force, sending a wave of energy that would have shattered bones down the tunnel and sending the Geonosians flying off her to land in heaps.

But they just got up again and came for her again. Luminara felt despair and hopelessness rise up inside her, but still she raised her lightsaber and prepared to battle on.

Barriss wasn't having any better luck whatsoever. The Padawan spun in a full double-circle, her spinning blade hacking through three Geonosians at once and with a burst of the Force, she hurled them right back at their own comrades. But with a sudden turn of speed, the undead Geonosians caught the bits of their comrades and threw them back. Barriss stumbled backwards as the top half of a Geonosian sailed at her, latching onto her and attempting to pull her down and strangle her, but she managed to shove it off and behead it. She gasped in relief, and then ducked under an arm of another, sweeping through its back.

She fell back a little as the Geonosians continued to advance, holding her sword before her like a staff, ready to strike out at the first Geonosian that stumble towards her. And come they did, bearing down on the smaller being. Barriss went low, sweeping through the legs and the torso of the first as she rose and then slashed through another. The next she dealt with by leaping over it and stabbing it under her shoulder, then grabbing the still moving body and throwing it into the legs of its fellows, knocking them down temporarily.

Suddenly, another zombie hand shot out from one of the smaller side-tunnels and grabbed Barriss by the neck. Barriss choked and prepared to slash through it, when another arm appeared from a tunnel on the other side and grabbed her lightsaber hand. The two attackers emerged from their tunnels and pushed Barriss to the ground, the first constricting her windpipe and the second relieving her of her weapon. Barriss choked and coughed as her supply of air suddenly ceased under the zombie's fingers.

Thoughts flashed through her head. What would happen if she died here? Would she too become a mindless zombie and turn on her own friends, drooling and groaning like these bugs? But right afterwards she pushed these thoughts from her mind and she punched the Geonosian in the face. Its grip didn't budge, but its head snapped back, and Barriss took the opportunity to grab its arms and wrench them free of her neck. Rolling to her feet, Barriss smashed her foot into the stomach of the other Geonosian, grabbing her weapon and slashing through it, then turning on her first recovering attacker and dicing it up.

The self-satisfaction remained for only a second, as right after that, one of her adversaries grabbed her cloak from the floor.

Lopmon gritted her teeth as she faced off against her own adversaries. She watched them coming at them from two separate tunnels and desperately trying to come up with a plan of holding back the undead.

"Lopmon," Suzie wailed, cowering behind her partner. "You have to digivolve quick."

"I can't Suzie," Lopmon growled, backing away from the Geonosians. "The lights I would produce if I digivolved would be far too bright. Down here, I'd blind Luminara and Barriss and they'd be swarmed by Geonosians as they recovered. No, I need to do this as me."

"But what can we do?"

"Find a Modify Card that might help. Quickly! **LOP TWISTER!"** Lopmon spun in a circle, charging the Geonosians heading there way. The zombies were unprepared for the attack and fell before the onslaught of the Rookie Digimon, their legs and torsos twisting at extremely awkward angles, which under normal circumstances would render them unable to walk for weeks, but they just got up and re-arranged themselves. Lopmon grimaced and leapt into a spin again, keeping it up relentlessly and trying desperately to keep them on the ground. But the problem was it was difficult to keep them all back, as they seemed to just clamber over each other in their bids to get at them.

Many of them got past her and advanced on the screaming Suzie. Lopmon turned back and ran through their legs, turning and peppering them with another Blazing Ice. But this had no effect at all except to fill them full of holes, which they ignored as they carried on towards them.

"Hurry Suzie," Lopmon cried, bulling into the stomach of one to send it rolling, then leaping up to batter another in the head with one ear and smash it in the chest with the other. "I can't keep this up for long!"

Shaking so much she could barely hold the cards properly, Suzie rifled through the collection she'd been building up ever since she'd become a Tamer. If ever there was a time it was needed, it was now. But which one? Which one to use? Mega and Ultimate attacks were out, as Henry said that it was best not to use those one a Rookie, and most were too destructive anyway – they'd collapse the tunnel.

Lopmon rebounded off the wall to strike another from the side and send it crashing into the wall. She dropped to the floor, panting very slightly with the exertion of leaping all over the place. She wasn't as built for acrobatics as Renamon, but the frequent games of tag and the dancing she did helped to build up her endurance. But in this stuffy place with less oxygen, that wouldn't last long.

"Here's something," Suzie cried and hurriedly, she pulled a card from the rest of the pack and fumbled for her D-Arc. She hurriedly swiped it and cried, shakily, "Digi-modify! Allomon's Dino Burst Activate!"

"Yes!" Lopmon cried, as she was suddenly enshrouded by red-hot flames that didn't affect her in the least. She could resist a smirk as she cried, "Fry, you bugs! **DINO BURST!"**

Sucking in a deep breath, she blew out an enormous torrent of fire that would have made a Greymon wince with envy, spewing it down both tunnels at once. The screams of the Geonosians could be heard throughout the duration of the rushing flames, which Lopmon kept up for a full half-a-minute.

Finally, she stopped the attack and looked with satisfaction at the charred bodies of the Geonosian zombies.

Which were still standing.

And still advancing on them despite the flames covering their bodies.

Lopmon's satisfaction changed to abject horror when she realised her enormous attack had not hindered the zombie Geonosians in the slightest. "You've got to be kidding!" she cried, backing away as the flaming Geonosians that just refused to die stepped slowly towards her. "What are these guys made of? They should have been broiled by that attack, even if they are undead."

Suzie suddenly screamed. "Lopmon! Help!" Lopmon whirled around to find that, somehow, three Geonosians – three proper, living, ordinary Geonosians, had slipped out of one of the side-tunnels behind her and two of them had grabbed Suzie, holding the struggling Tamer in the air. One of them had a large, hand-held sonic cannon pointed directly at Suzie's head.

The third one hovered over the other two and gazed imperiously down at Lopmon.

It was Poggle the Lesser.

Despite the fact that Lopmon had never met him, she knew instantly who it was from the descriptions of him. Poggle looked rather triumphantly down at her and then he waved his hand. Abruptly, the zombie Geonosians backed away from all four directions, leaving a gap between them and their opponents as the battle suddenly came to an end. Luminara and Barriss looked confused, until they turned around and saw what Lopmon was glaring at.

"Poggle!" Luminara cried, raising her lightsaber defensively. "Release her at once, or prepare to face the consequences."

Barriss and Luminara both stepped forward threateningly, but the Geonosian with the cannon jammed the business end in Suzie's face and they stopped. Poggle leered down at them and said, in his own language:- "Krickitgorgolo grakatoko greeeeeaaahhorgl."

None of them understood the exact words, but the meaning was plenty clear – surrender or the little girl dies. And as much as they wanted to, they knew they were powerless to intervene. There was no way they could reach Suzie before the Geonosian pulled the trigger.

Luminara sighed. "Stand down," she said, lowering her lightsaber loosely to her side. Barriss did the same, the two Jedi shutting their eyes, resigned to whatever happened next. Lopmon stared hopelessly at her Tamer and sagged as the zombie Geonosians came forward again. The Jedi were relieved of their weapons, which were promptly deactivated, plunging everything into darkness except for the light coming from the dying fires on Lopmon's former opponents. Luminara and Barriss allowed their arms to be grabbed and pinned behind their backs. Lopmon was grabbed and held firmly by two zombies just as Suzie was.

Poggle laughed triumphantly. At last, he had gained a victory. All Luminara, Barriss and Lopmon could do now was glare at their captor, and wonder what he had in store for them.

* * *

Geonosis really is a nightmare planet isn't it? But it appears the zombies proved to be too much for our intrepid heroes. And for those of you who are wondering how on earth there can be zombies walking around under the ground in Geonosis, you'll have to wait and learn what's going on in the next chapter.

Please review, and be nice about it.

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Next time...

All this hasn't gone unnoticed by the others and they begin to rush to the rescue. But mostly importantly we learn why Poggle refers to himself as "The Lesser." And that reason has something very nasty in store for the captives.

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Coming up:- **Chapter 57 : Queen Karina the Great**


	57. Queen Karina the Great

I am so sorry for the delay in bringing this chapter out, folks. I enjoyed writing it though, but things piled up against me, such as the fact that went home for the weekend where I really couldn't do much work, and most of today was spent visiting a park to photograph deer. Anyway, it's up now, so I hope you enjoy the thrills and chills that I tried to set up in this chapter.

**Geekgirl – **Congratulations on winning the Every 50 oneshot at last. I often wondered, considering you don't have an account, how we would try to find a suitable idea, but you solved that problem for me straight away. It may take me a while to do it, as usual, but I'll get round to it within a few chapters.

Read on.

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 57:- Queen Karina the Great**

* * *

Once the sandstorm had been detected, the clones and the Jedi, along with their digimon and Tamer companions, had immediately gotten undercover. The sandstorm would sweep over them in no time if they tried to go back to the cruisers, so they had quickly entered the numerous gunships dotted around the place and shut the blast doors, cutting them off from the outside.

Aayla, Renamon, Terriermon, Henry and Rika had entered one gunship along with Commander Bly, while Anakin, Ahsoka and Obi-Wan had entered another, and the two were communicating via hologram. Terriermon was mentally monitoring the progress of his sister and giving the others regular updates on how they were progressing. Other than this, they basically sat still and listened to the sound of the sandstorm battering at the walls of the ship around them.

Apart from the brief conversations concerning the others entering the tunnels, things were fairly quiet.

That is, until Terriermon's sudden panic attack.

"What the %^&$!" Terriermon suddenly screamed, startling everybody there. A sudden swearstorm followed this, with Terriermon cursing and using words that the others never even heard of before.

"Terriermon! What is it?" Aayla asked.

"Someone get these doors open now!" Terriermon cried, beginning to pound on the blast doors with his ears and feet. "We have to get to that Temple straight away!"

"We can't, or we'll let the sandstorm in," said Bly. "What's wrong?"

"Is Suzie okay?" asked Henry.

"Stop asking questions and lets get going!" screamed Terriermon. "They're all in terrible danger!"

"I agree," said Renamon, her eyes uncharacteristically wide. "We have to hurry! They need our assistance and badly!"

"Against what?" asked Aayla.

"Does the word "zombies" mean anything to you?" Terriermon said, with not a trace a joke. Everyone in the gunship shot glances at each other in shock and absolute horror.

"Zombies?" asked Bly. "Actual zombies?"

"Yes! Geonosian zombies! And they're attacking the others and they're refusing to die! We have to go now!"

"There's no time to waste!" Aayla turned to Bly. "Commander, mobilise a squadron of troopers right away. We need to leave five minutes ago!"

"Copy that!" Bly said, activating his comlink and roaring orders to his fellow clones in the other gunships. Meanwhile, Aayla activated the hologram to display an immediate image of Obi-Wan, Anakin and Ahsoka.

"Aayla," said Obi-Wan. "What is th-"

"No time to talk!" Aayla said hurriedly. "We need to move and rescue the others! Terriermon says they're being attacked by undead Geonosians!"

"Undead? But-" Ahsoka started, but Aayla interrupted again.

"There is not time to question it! We must move, or the others will be overwhelmed!"

"And how do you propose we get through the sandstorm?" Obi-Wan asked. "The gunships cannot handle it, even with Chrome-Digizoid upgrades. We'll never make it there."

"We will," said Aayla firmly. "Because we have to. Renamon, can you digivolve to Taomon and use your shield to protect us from the storm and fly us there quickly."

"Absolutely," nodded Renamon. "Rika!"

"I know, I know," said Rika, bringing a card forth and turning it blue. "No time to waste. I'm aware of it. Digi-modify! Matrix digivolution activate!"

"**RENAMON MATRIX-DIGIVOLVE TO… TAOMON!"**

The human-sized Ultimate brought forth the appropriate symbol from her sleeve and waited for the signal to activate it. Anakin and Obi-Wan were already telling Captain Rex and Commander Cody to prepare to move out immediately. There was no time for thought or hesitation. If there were zombies of the loose, they had to leave straight away.

"Captain Deviss and his men are waiting for us," said Bly.

"Then let's get going! NOW!" Henry cried.

"Seconded," Aayla yelled, slamming the red button that opened the blast doors with her fist. Instantly as they slid back the torrents of sand were blown inside. Bly shielded Henry and Rika from the blast, but Taomon leapt straight into it and with a cry of **"TALISMAN SPELL!" **she expanded her shield. After allowing a hole to open in the side to let the others hop in, Taomon hurried flew the shield away, stopping off at several gunships and reopening the hole, to allow Obi-Wan, Anakin, Ahsoka, Rex and Cody, along with Deviss and the men of the various clones, to hop in.

Then, Taomon turned and clenched her fist, causing the shield to zoom off and away from the main circle of gunships. Outside, all that could be seen in any direction was a sandy blur. Taomon literally had no idea where she was going other than the fact that she was going in the right direction.

The journey was mostly passed in silence as grim-faced Jedi and clone alike watched and waited for the moment where they landed and stormed into battle against what they supposed to be the undead. Nobody was quite sure whether or not to believe it, except for Aayla and Bly, who had seen firsthand Terriermon sudden panic, but all knew they were definitely going against something deadly serious.

"Are you alright, Henry?" asked Rika, turning the look at the boy.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," Henry was muttering to himself. "How could I have been so stupid to let Suzie go off on a mission like that? I knew something was going to happen! I just knew it!"

"There is no way you could have known there would be zombies, Henry!" Rika scolded him. "You had no reason to stop her! You weren't stupid for letting her go off like that, but you're being stupid now for blaming yourself! Seriously, you have no sense sometimes."

Henry gritted his teeth. "Then I should be there with her. We all should have."

"Be glad we weren't Henry," said Terriermon. "If we were, we'd never have managed to get a message to the people outside to come for help."

Henry clenched his fist but said nothing.

"He's right, you know, kid," said Bly, walking up to the younger person. "While I admit sometimes staying in a group is the best option, I don't think this was one of them. If you were with Suzie now, you'd be stuck in the same mess with no support coming. And even if we are up against zombies, there is no chance of us backing down. She'll be safe and sound with us soon. Mark my words."

"Step on it Taomon," Terriermon said, suddenly.

"I'm going," Taomon swerved around a rock formation that had suddenly loomed out before her. The two of them shared a glance with one another as they silently observed what Lopmon was seeing. Poggle the Lesser had managed to get hold of Suzie. Both of them agreed silently, that if Poggle ever crossed paths with them, he would be very, VERY sorry.

* * *

Back in the Geonosian tunnels, the four girls were being herded down the corridors at a slow but steady pace, surrounded on all sides by the Geonosian zombies that shuffled along with them, still keeping up their horrible gurgling and choking noises that seemed to constantly stream from their mouths. It was a most unpleasant experience and quite frankly, all four of them would prefer to be out in the furious sandstorm than down here.

Luminara and Barriss had been decisively shackled, as Poggle had passed the zombies pinning their arms behind their backs a pair of thick binders each, which had been securely fastened about the wrists of both Mirialan. Suzie and Lopmon, on the other hand, still had their hands free, but that might be because they didn't have binders small enough to fit the two of them.

The procession continued down the tunnel. Poggle was in the lead, hovering calmly over the ground, his wings rustling as he flapped them ward in order to stay aloft. He was patting the palm of his hand with the bone-staff he carried and seemed to be absorbed in self-gloating.

Suzie was right behind him, still grasped in the long, spindly arms of the only other two living Geonosians in the place and she still had the sonic weapon pointed right at her head in order to dissuade the other captives from trying anything – Poggle knew that even a captive Jedi could be dangerous and since he had no idea what the other creature could do beyond breathe fire he chose not to underestimate it.

Luminara and Barriss were being frogmarched along behind them a little way, separated from Suzie by several Geonosian zombies. Their upper arms were in the grasp of several of the swaying undead, and were being pushed along. Both had looks of resignation on their faces, the spark of defiance a Jedi usually had almost non-existent due to the fact they couldn't kill their opponents.

They had noticed that of all the zombies they'd cut up, only the ones with their heads removed completely had stopped moving. But there had been so many that during the heat of battle they hadn't noticed.

Another bunch of zombies followed on, and Lopmon was being held at the back. The brown bunny Digimon gritted her teeth in pain. The Geonosian zombies holding her had extremely tight grips on the base of her ears, as well as her legs, so it felt like she was being stretched. Her black eyes tried to focus up ahead, adjusting to the light slightly, but since the lightsabers of the Jedi had been stowed away somewhere and the fires she'd started earlier had all gone out, it was almost pitch-black. She could vaguely make out the shapes of Luminara and Barriss ahead, but Suzie was beyond her vision.

But she could still communicate with her telepathically.

_Don't worry, Suzie,_ she said, while trying to convince herself not to worry either. _We'll escape this yet, I promise you._

_I'm scared Lopmon,_ Suzie replied, the sound of weeping even evident in her thoughts. _I'm so scared. I always thought zombies didn't exist, but here they are now. We're going to die. We're going to die._

_What makes you say that?_

Suzie bawled mentally. _In all the movies, zombies eat people's brains! I don't want them to take my brain! Lopmon help!_

_Stay calm. We're not going to die. If they were going to eat our brains then they would have killed us when they caught us. And while Poggle may be harsh, I'm sure he has _some _limits. There is a reason we're still alive._

_Where's Henry and Terriermon? And Rika and Renamon? And Aayla? And the others?_

_Don't worry. They're already on their way. They got moving the moment we ran into these undead Geonosians. They'll be here very soon._

_How soon? I want my brother._

_Very soon,_ Lopmon lied. She knew the others were still a good way off yet, but they were definitely coming.

_I want my mum,_ Suzie sobbed. _But she's in another dimension, so I'll settle for Aayla. Please get here quickly, big sister._

Despite everything, Lopmon couldn't help but snort. Big sister? Suzie had never called her that before. She wondered what Aayla would think if she found out that Suzie was now officially including her in the family. But, she supposed that Aayla probably was part of the family now. She was a surrogate big sister to every one of the Tamers, so Suzie had decided to call her that.

_Aayla's on the way, Suzie,_ Lopmon reassured her. _And she'll be here very soon with the rest of our friends. These zombies will get a real surprise, and it won't be because our brains are tasty. You just wait._

_Okay,_ Suzie sniffled and then fell silent. Lopmon turned her attentions to Luminara and Barriss. Sadly, she didn't have the ability to talk telepathically with either of them, so she couldn't tell them of the impending reinforcements without alerting the Geonosians too. SO she kept silent.

_What do you reckon they want?_ Taomon's thoughts broke through her link with Terriermon. _There must be a reason why they've taken you captive instead of just killing you all._

_Whatever it is,_ sighed Lopmon. _I'm betting it's unpleasant._

_That is almost guaranteed,_ agreed Taomon. _But perhaps this could help us thwart the Geonosians once and for all. These zombies might be the key to the mystery of how the Geonosians managed to recapture their planet. Let's see what we can find out._

_Yeah, _said Terriermon grimly. _A hostage situation doesn't seem right here. If it were simply that, they'd be heading to the surface for negotiation. But you're being taken even further underground. Something isn't right here. Plus, how the hell did zombies get thrown into the equation? How do they even exist?_

_I don't know, Terriermon,_ said Lopmon. _But I intend to find out._

_If an opportunity to escape presents itself,_ said Taomon. _Do not hesitate to take it._

_Will do,_ nodded Lopmon, and silence reigned in her head once again as her brother and his mate fell silent, each watching the progress of the other through the link and each getting more and more agitated at the numerous possibilities that were filling their heads.

Suddenly, Suzie gasped up ahead. Lopmon immediately entered her mind to find out why, because if those Geonosians hurt her she was breaking out and putting an end to them. Even her calm nature was overridden with her Tamer in such danger.

But, when she discovered what Suzie had just seen, she too gasped.

_Did not expect that,_ she muttered.

_Neither did I,_ said Terriermon. _That has got to be the single, most incredibly ugly thing that I have ever seen in my entire life. And I've seen Vikaralamon. Compared to that, your fellow Deva is an absolute daisy._

For what Suzie and Lopmon were seeing was an enormous room, or, to be more accurate, cavern that opened up from the slender tunnel they were being led through. The cavern itself could almost be called beautiful, with numerous rock formations and the enormous ceiling, so high up that WarGrowlmon could have easily stood to his full height in it and held up by enormous stone pillars that seemed to go around most of the edges of the room.

The effect was rather ruined by the masses of Geonosian zombies standing around the place, swaying on the spot like drunken beetles. They turned to stare at the newcomers with the same blank looks of all the other zombies, their mouths open and many of them drooling slightly as they gurgled and groaned. While their upper body moved, the legs stayed rooted to the spot, as if they were waiting to be ordered to move.

There was also a small group of battle droids standing off to one side. Presumably they had come with Poggle from the Weapon's Factory after Aayla had blown it up. But it looked like all of them were regretting their decision to come here, as they seemed to be standing as far away from the zombies as possible and were all trying to be the one at the back of the group.

But neither they nor the zombies were the biggest eyesores. That role belonged to one particular Geonosian standing on the exact opposite side of the room. Or perhaps lying on the other side of the room would be more accurate.

Behind what looked like a small, spiky, curved wall and in front of an enormous door on the other side of the room stood the largest non-digimon creature that any of them had ever seen. It was the Geonosian that had a carving above the door in the main part of the Temple up above. That much was obvious due to the enormous crest perched atop its head, which had an enormous, gaping mouth. A large thorax was underneath the head, with six limbs, four of which looked like arms and two of which hung down like drastically underused legs. And they hung down because below the thorax was what looked like an enormous abdomen.

It was huge and resembled the body of a giant maggot – segmented and coiling around the edge of the wall. It lay across the floor like an unmoving snake, while the giant bug held its head and thorax high in the air. At the base of the giant maggot-like body were numerous tubes, that had zombie Geonosians crowding around it. Roughly each eight seconds, one of the tubes would disgorge a large, yellow pod of some kind, which a zombie would catch and, with surprising delicacy, place on the ground with a bunch of others.

For anyone who spent as much time watching nature documentaries as Terriermon, it was easy to work out what this bug was.

_Oh dear Fanglongmon,_ breathed Terriermon through Lopmon's head. _If that is what I think it is, then it must be the Geonosian Queen, like the queen of an ant colony or a bee hive. I began to wonder if there was one when I learned that all the Geonosians we were facing in battle were male, but I wasn't sure if the rules applied here._

_Well, evidently they do,_ said Taomon. _I can't think of anything else that thing might be. Particularly since it appears to be laying a bunch of eggs from that giant ovipositor._

_That is what the girls of this race look like?_ Lopmon balked. _Yeesh. And I thought the males were ugly._

_They are,_ said Terriermon. _But that thing surpasses them by miles._

_So the bugs have taken us to their Queen,_ said Lopmon, thoughtfully, as Poggle led them forwards towards the giant bug and through the crowds of drooling zombies. _Why? Why not just kill us?_

_We're getting closer, Lopmon,_ said Taomon. _See if you can keep that thing occupied until we get there._

_Right,_ said Lopmon, staring up at the Queen. Poggle stopped before her and bowed low. This finally explained why the Archduke of all Geonosis considered himself "The Lesser." He was the lesser. He wasn't in control of the planet at all. He was just in control of its dealings with other planets, and of running the inhabitants above ground while the Queen remained hidden underground in a Temple designed for her.

The Queen let loose a loud, harsh, low belching noise. It sounded like just a noise to Lopmon, but it clearly meant something to Poggle, for her turned and spoke to his zombie followers. The two Jedi, Luminara and Barriss, who had been staring with absolute disbelief at the Queen for quite a while now, suddenly paid attention when Poggle pointed at Luminara and then indicated the spot in front of the wall, where there was a small, white half-orb on the ground.

Luminara was suddenly unshackled. She began to struggle against the limbs of the zombies, but she immediately stopped when the Geonosians holding Suzie brandished the sonic weapon again. Luminara glowered and allowed herself to be dragged before the Queen. The zombies attached an individual cuff to each of her wrists and ankles and then moved her forward.

When Luminara was in the right spot, she suddenly rose off the ground and her arms were spread out as far as they could go. The cuffs were enshrouded in blue light, and appeared she was being magnetically held in place. She'd been suspended in a Geonosian containment field. There appeared to be only one there, which might have been why Luminara had been put there instead of Barriss, as the Geonosians might consider her more dangerous.

"I am assuming there is a reason you've brought us here, Poggle," said Luminara, slumping in the cuffs as the numbing effects of the containment field took place, disrupting her concentration, as well as her connection with the Force. "I doubt this is about social pleasantries."

Poggle scowled up at Luminara, but he didn't say anything to her. Instead, her looked up at the Queen and said, "Ploguratikaro rrikiatikotor greeahrokata."

And, the to great surprise of all four of the girls that had been taken captive, the Queen replied to Poggle, not in the odd Geonosian dialect that they expected, (which sounded like a cross between a penguin mating call and two monkeys fighting over a banana), but in Basic. The Queen's voice was extremely high-pitched, albeit slightly croaking, and some of her words were elongated for no obvious reason.

"Exceeeeeeeellent work, young Poggle," the Queen replied to Poggle's gibberish. "Two Jedi does accelerate mmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyy plans. But, whhhhyyyyyy have you brought little girl and strange creeeeature to ME!" the last word came out as an odd squeak. And it was obvious that her grammer wasn't perfect. For something so big her voice was bizarre, and at the same time, oddly appropriate.

This was because it sent chills down everyone's spines.

Lopmon glanced across at Suzie. She'd been placed on the ground by the two other living Geonosians, but she still had the cannon pointed at her head. The little girl seemed to be far to traumatized to say anything with her mind, let alone with her voice.

Lopmon thought desperately. There was a reason why the Geonosian Queen had kept them alive, or, more specifically, the Jedi alive. She said so herself, just now. And she needed to find out as much as she could, and quickly.

And so she decided that the best way to get the Queen's attention and keep it on her, was to take the most Terriermon-like approach that she could.

"Hey!" she shouted up to the Queen. "Who are you calling a strange looking creature? I don't look half as weird as you do, lady!"

_Wow,_ said Terriermon. _Neat impression of me._

_Shut up and let her concentrate,_ Taomon whispered.

The Queen turned her gargantuan head around and stared down at Lopmon with her big, black eyes. Looking into them, Lopmon got the sense that this bug had lived for a very, very long time. "Yyyoooooouuuu speak?"

"Duh," said Lopmon. "And that means, of course I can." She was tempted to add "you idiot" to that, but she decided against it. Pissing off the Queen too much might not be a good idea.

"Lopmon, what are you doing?" asked Barriss.

"I am trying to look confident," said Lopmon. "It might buy us some time."

"Wwhhhhaaaatt arrree yoouuu?" the Queen wailed in her screechy way, staring down at the tiny little Rookie from her enormous height.

"Now, that's just rude," said Lopmon, folding her arms, despite the fact her ears and legs were still being grasped by the two zombies. "You're the host of this little gathering. Don't you know it's customary for you to do the introducing first? I'm guessing you the Geonosian Queen if all the nature documentaries I've seen are anything to go by, but who are you exactly?"

The Queen let loose with a horrible, wailing noise that indicated she was angry. It was so loud and echoed around the room that Suzie and Poggle covered their ears. Lopmon clapped her hands over her own, gritting her teeth as the scream battered her eardrums.

When the Queen subsided from her sudden noise, she replied. "Iiiiiiiiii am Queen Karrriiiiiina the Great. Iiiiiiii am the leader of the Geonosian Empire. Yooooouuuu shall address me with respect, creature."

"You'll get my respect when you've earned it," Lopmon went on, surprised by her own boldness. Perhaps the lack of Terriermon to do it for her was making her do better. "So far, all you've done is set your pet zombies on us, capture us, drag us here and then demand respect. That's not very friendly if you ask me... Your Grace."

Karina looked down at Lopmon in silence for a few seconds. Barriss, Luminara and Poggle were all staring at her, wondering if she had gone slightly mad.

Then, the Queen chuckled a high, long and drawn out laugh. "Yoooouuuu are feisty, little creature. Yoooouuuu will make a fine child."

This sentence threw Lopmon for a loop. "What?" she blinked. "A child?"

Poggle turned his back on Lopmon and spoke the Queen in his low and guttural warbling. The Queen turned her attention back to him, listening intently to whatever it was he was telling her. Luminara was beginning to feel dizzy and was struggling to listen to what was going on from her suspended position.

Barriss turned to Lopmon and muttered ominously. "Child? You will make a fine child? I'm not exactly sure what that means but I really don't like the sound of it."

"Me neither," whispered Lopmon. "It sounds as if this Queen Karina the Great has some kind of great plan that she requires a Jedi for, but I can't imagine what it might be."

"Well, I don't know how you're doing it," said Barriss. "But you've gotten a bit of information out of her already. Why don't you keep at it and see what we can find out?"

"I'm not really the type to do all this insulting and feistiness," sighed Lopmon. "I'm just gleaning stuff from what I've seen Terriermon do. But I'll do my best. But I might need your help, Barriss."

"I too shall do my best," said Barriss.

"Young Poggle tells ME," Karina began to speak again. "That yooooouuu can breaaathe fire! He saaaawww you try to take down my children with it. Iiiisss it true?"

"Yeah, what of it?" Lopmon shrugged from her place in the grip of the Geonosians. "It's not something I can do whenever I feel like it. You could say that I need to recharge before I can do it again. It didn't exactly do me much good against your undead minions."

"Mmmmyyyy children are invincible," Karina crooned.

Seeing an opportunity to get in a question, Lopmon asked. "And why exactly is that? The last time I checked, Geonosians died when you fried them. It seemed to work quite well when I was helping to blow up Poggle's weapons factory. What makes these ones so different? Why do they continue to get up even after we burn them or slice them to pieces? How can zombies even exist?"

Karina studied Lopmon for a few seconds, possibly debating on whether or not to tell her the answer to her question. Then, she turned to the Geonosian that had a grip on Lopmon's right ear and said. "Reveal yourself to heeeerrr, my child."

Lopmon frowned, but the Geonosian zombie made a choking noise in reply and released her ear slightly, allowing Lopmon to look around and stare into the creature's dark, expressionless face. Then, to Lopmon's utter revulsion, something long, thin and bright yellow emerged from the Geonosian's left nostril. It was a worm, and it seemed to grope around in the air for a little bit, before it inserted its head into the Geonosian's right nostril and slithered back inside, the rest of its body slipping from the left to the right until it was back inside the zombie's head.

The zombie shuddered.

Lopmon almost lost her breakfast.

"Yyyyyeeesssss," Karina said, the beginnings of a grin appearing on her ugly face, as the Geonosian zombie grabbed Lopmon's ear tightly once again and Lopmon struggled not to vomit. "Mmmmyyyy children will always walk my world, with the help of mmmyyy future children."

Everything was slotting into place now for Lopmon. These undead Geonosians walking around and staring at them right now, as well as the Geonosians that had attacked them before, were not proper zombies. At least not in the traditional sense – of being resurrected by some malignant evil spell or something. They weren't undead at all. They were very, very dead, but each one had at least one little, yellow worm living inside its head. And that worm seemed to be attached to the brain of the dead Geonosian and controlling its muscles to make the dead body move.

It was like a freaky puppet act.

It also explained the jerky movement of the zombies. They were probably decaying slowly, even with the influence of the brain worms, and that meant that the brain worms were finding it difficult to manoeuvre their hosts around. It also explained why those who had had their heads cut off had mostly stopped moving, because the worm had lost contact with the rest of the body, since it was no longer attached.

It was rather grotesque, hence the gagging and attempting to hold back stomach contents.

"Iiiii see you arrreeeee startled by this," the Geonosian Queen leered down at Lopmon. "Yyyyyoooou not the only one to discover something new today."

Lopmon managed to get herself back under control and looked to her fellow captives. Barriss was looking just about as shocked as she felt and Luminara, despite looking dozy, was similarly alarmed. Suzie, thank Fanglongmon, hadn't noticed the brain worm, or she probably _would_ have vomited.

But she was looking around now, feeling slightly more bold due to the fact her brain hadn't been eaten yet. She was looking around and taking in the details more, and she cast a questioning glance at Lopmon. Lopmon shook her head as best she could with her ears painfully held and turned back to the Queen.

"Alright," she said. "I get that these brain worms of yours move these dead bodies around."

"Yyeeessss and nnoooooo," Karina said, loftily. "Thhheeeeyy move the bodies around, but thhheeeyyy are part of ME! Thhheeyy move when Iiiii want them to move."

"Ah," said Lopmon. "I see. A hive mind. A collective consciousness, just like a colony of ants, with you at the very top directing everything around you, except of course for your Geonosians on the surface, who govern themselves. I get all that now," she paused momentarily to listen to Terriermon narrating all that she was witnessing to his enthralled, shocked and disturbed audience.

Barriss stepped up to plate and turned to the Queen now. "But that doesn't mean we're finished with the questions. Your planet has fallen, Your Highness. The Jedi and the clones had a lingering presence on this planet now and it'll only be a matter of time before more of them unearth you. Your reign is over."

"Nnnnneeeever," Karina growled. "Mmmyy empire will nnneever faaalll."

"It already has," Barriss replied. "Now, release us. We are Jedi, defenders of the Republic. If you killed us, the Republic would descend on you with an entire fleet of starships and rip this place apart, and you with it. But since it looks like you don't want to kill us, what do you want with us?"

Karina seemed to smirk, though it was quite difficult to tell considering her ugliness. "Yooouuu are a Jedi. Yyooou will help ME conquer this world aaaaannnd this galaxy."

Barriss scoffed. "I don't think so. We are Jedi, not the Sith that your little Archduke there serves. We defend peace and justice in this galaxy. We do not conquer. We will not help you to further your aims. Not now. Not in a trillion years. And not any time in between."

Karina abruptly gave the loud, unearthly screeching noise again, as she seemed to do when she was about to make a massive point.

"Yyyyoooouu not help me willingly," she sneered. "Yyyyoooouuu soon not know who yooouu are anymore."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Barriss.

But Lopmon was beginning to piece things together based on what they had already witnessed and heard from Karina. They had established that the majority of her minions were actually dead Geonosians manipulated by mysterious parasites that could latch onto the brain. Karina had referred to them as her children.

And earlier on, Karina had said to Lopmon:- "Yoooouuuu will make a fine child."

Lopmon was pretty sure she had the answer. And she definitely did not like the conclusion that she drew up.

And her theory was confirmed, as Poggle turned towards one of the zombies and barked in Geonosian to him. The zombie ambled forwards slightly, swaying hypnotically as it moved towards the Archduke, and it carefully deposited something small in Poggle's outstretched hand. Barriss, Luminara, Lopmon and Suzie all stared at it apprehensively.

It appeared to be a small, yellow egg, much smaller than the ones which Karina was still constantly laying. Perhaps the pods contained multiple smaller eggs just like this one, or perhaps this was a special kind of egg. It was cracked open and spilling out from over the edge, was another Geonosian brain worm, writing blindly in the air like a leech on the end of a leaf, searching for a host.

Poggle picked it up gently between his fingers and held it steady, inspecting it.

"Release my Master at once!" Barriss cried, beginning to get an inkling of where this was going herself.

"Nnnoooo, Jedi. Iiiii shall not. Iiiiii have tttwwwooo Jedi held captive here," Karina said down to everybody watching what Poggle was doing. "Aaand little fire-breathing creature will be useful toooooo. Young Poggle bring me good start. Yoooouuu shall watch as my little child enters your Master."

"You're going to put that thing inside Luminara!" Suzie suddenly found her voice and she squealed in absolute horror once again, clutching her stomach as she began to feel ill again.

"Yeeesss," hissed Karina. "And once inside, her mind will become my mind. Sssshhhee will not remember wwhoo she is. Shhheeeeee will be me, and Iiiii will be her. Heeer thoughts shall be mine and sshhhee shall obey whateeeeever I tell her to do."

"No," Luminara gritted her teeth as Poggle began to walk towards her with the worm clutched in his hand. "I am a Jedi. Our wills do not break easily!"

"Yyyyooouuu shall submit to ME, Jedi!" Karina cackled from her enormous vantage point above Luminara. Poggle advanced forwards, the worm in his hands wriggling and squirming in anticipation, as if it knew that it was the one being chosen to inhabit the body of a Jedi and couldn't wait to get started.

Luminara leaned her head backwards as far as it would go, which, unfortunately, wasn't far. Even though she knew it wouldn't do any good, she clamped her mouth shut and held her breath, her heart thudding in her chest as the worm got nearer. Rarely did Jedi feel fear, but this time was definitely an exception for Luminara.

"We have to do something," Barriss hissed, struggling wildly in the grip of her captors as she tried to kick them off, but without the use of her arms this was extremely difficult and the zombies seemed practically immune to her struggling.

_Lopmon, you have to stop him_, Taomon cried. _We're almost there, but you're on your own for now. You must do something._

_Hurry!_ added Terriermon.

Lopmon bit her lip and desperately tried to look for a way out of this situation. But so far as she could see, there was nothing. She was stuck in her captor's grip, held ear and foot, and there was no way she'd be able to get free without some sort of help from Suzie.

But, glancing across at her Tamer, Lopmon was pleasantly surprised to see that Suzie's whimpering and expression of terror had been replaced by a look of determination and bravery. The little girl had possibly been snapped back to reality, now that Karina had revealed her plan to them. Luminara was about to be infected, Barriss wasn't going anywhere and neither was Lopmon unless she did something to help.

The Geonosians guarding her were only half paying attention to what she was doing. The rest of their attention was focused eagerly on Luminara. And that was their undoing. The seemingly harmless little girl had slowly reached for her D-Arc and a card and were now holding them in both hands, crouching low to hide them from view if the Geonosians looked round.

Suzie caught Lopmon's eye. The rabbit grinned at her, nodding in encouragement and trying to give her a look that demonstrated urgency.

Suzie swiped the card. Unlike usual, she didn't cry out what she was about to do, so as not to draw attention to herself. But Lopmon felt the surge of strength anyway, as a brand new attack was given to her. Lopmon had to hand it to Suzie, she was starting to think strategically.

Lopmon's hands suddenly morphed into something else entirely – each hand becoming what appeared to be two large drills. Lopmon shouted, getting the attention of everyone in the room, including Poggle, who turned around to look:- **"GOLD RUSH!"**

The drills exploded from her hands and nailed the two zombies on either side of her. They were knocked aside as the drills tore straight through them and knocking them to the floor. Their grip on the captive bunny lessened and Lopmon leapt free, landing on the floor in battle stance, ready to take on all comers.

"Get heeeerrrrr," Karina pointed a bony finger at her.

"I don't think so," Lopmon leapt into the air and sailed towards Suzie. "Barriss! Luminara! Shut your eyes! Suzie, now!"

Suzie needed no second bidding and with a swipe of another card, she shouted, "Digi-modify! Digivolution Activate!"

Barriss and Luminara both guessed what was about to happen and clamped their eyes shut, but the Geonosians, who were left clueless, were still watching Lopmon when suddenly she exploded into bright light. The dark cavern was lit up and considering how utterly dark it had been beforehand, the light was utterly blinding to all of the Geonosians; zombie, real, Archduke and Queen alike. Their hands and arms flew up to cover their eyes, shrieking from the unwanted light.

**"LOPMON DIGIVOLVE TO... TURUIEMON!"**

The two living Geonosians on either side of Suzie literally never saw what hit them. Their eyes could only see whiteness as a result of the sudden light, but before they could regain their vision, a sharp, metal switchblades had been shoved through their stomachs. Considering they were not zombies, they died immediately and keeled over backwards. Turuiemon stood over her Tamer, who opened her eyes to see her.

"Need a lift?" asked Turuiemon, turning around and presenting her back to Suzie. The Tamer took the hint and leapt upwards, wrapping her arms around Turuiemon's neck like she was being given a piggyback, which she technically was.

"Yyyooouuu did not mention this, Poggle," Karina cried, blinking as she tried to recover her eyesight.

"That's because he didn't know," said Turuiemon. "If there's one thing I learnt from my brother, it's to always keep an ace up your sleeve. Come on, Suzie!"

Turuiemon sprang forwards, whipping her blades into battle against the zombies that had started to advance on them. Now that she knew their weakness she knew where she needed to aim. She didn't use Gauntlet Claw, as that would just make more light that the Jedi wouldn't be expecting, but she didn't actually need to use it anyway.

The first zombie was squashed beneath her and the second and third were swiftly decapitated by a double swing from the bladed bunny. Turuiemon kicked the body of the third into the fourth, causing it to stumble momentarily. The fifth sprang for her, but stopped short as Turuiemon met it head on with a blade skewering its stomach. It screeched angrily, but Turuiemon just glared into its face and, quick as a flash, she severed its head from its torso. The head continued to snap at them from the floor, but the body slumped, out of action.

"Gross," Suzie complained.

"They're dead anyway," said Turuiemon. "They can't feel it. Although I do feel like I'm desecrating them of something. Oh well, can't be helped," she added as the fourth came for her again and she sliced off its legs and leapt for its neck, cleaving it in two. The first had got up behind her and was about to grab Suzie, but Turuiemon was lightning fast and swung about, beheading that one too.

"Rrrrokatikitokoscroockor!" Poggle pointed a finger at the two of them. More zombies made for them, but Turuiemon, in a single leap, bounded straight over the heads of most of them from a standing start. She decapitated one of the guards holding Barriss' arms on her way down, sprang to the side and knocked the other away. With a downward swing, she neatly cut through the binders holding Barriss' wrists behind her back.

Barriss leapt into the action too, summoning her lightsaber now that her hands were free. It left the grip of the zombie holding onto it and sprang into life the moment it entered Barriss' hands. The Mirialian Padawan twirled on the spot, sweeping through the body of the other guard as it was rising to grab her three times. Once in the waist, once in the chest and once in the neck.

"Thank you, L- I mean, Turuiemon," Barriss grinned, holding her lightsaber ready as yet more Geonosian zombies advanced. The two of them looked around at the hordes approaching them from all directions. They knew how to take them down now, but there were so many of that they could easily be overwhelmed if they weren't careful.

The zombies pressed in of them from all sides, groping hands and slavering mouths threatening to strangle the life out of them. Suzie wasn't whimpering this time, but she did look terrified by the turn of events.

Turuiemon ducked under the arms of one and slashed through its neck on the way back up, but another grabbed her arm. Not that that stopped Turuiemon from taking that one's head off as well, but another simply grabbed her other arm after that and another grabbed her ear from behind. Growling, Turuiemon spun about as fast as she could without dislodging Suzie and carved through the neck of one and knocked the other to the floor with a blow to the side of the head.

Then she backed off, keeping Suzie away from the oncoming horde as much as possible and trying to ward them away with her blades. The one she kicked clicked back onto its feet and hissed menacingly at her, before advancing once again.

Barriss was having a slightly better time of it than Turuiemon. He movements were not as restricted as the Digimon's as she had no human passenger to look after. She was literally a blur as she spun and leapt about the place, her blade slicing through dead Geonosian exoskeleton, dicing them to pieces and always making sure she severed the neck of the body as it fell.

But even she was being pushed backwards by the sheer weight of the crowds boiling around her and in front of her. Barriss shoved them backwards with the Force and backed off for a breather, and she found herself back to back with Turuiemon.

"We could be here all day and there would still be more," said Barriss, indicating a tunnel where even more were flooding into the room. "These guys have generations upon generations of dead bodies to fall back on."

"Come on," nodded Turuiemon. "We have to get Luminara and get out of here. Let's go."

The two of them took a short fun, followed by a flying jump that took them right over the majority of the Geonosians between them and Poggle and Luminara. Slashing through the back ranks as they came down, the two ran forward to carry out separate jobs.

Poggle tried to rise into the air by flapping his wings, but Turuiemon leapt after him and grabbed him by the ankles. Her superior weight dragged the Geonosian Archduke down to the ground and the two went crashing down. Poggle landed in a heap, while Turuiemon landed on her feet. Placing one of them on Poggle's chest, she pinned him to the floor.

"Don't even think about getting up," she said. "Hurry Barriss. Let's go! **GAUNTLET CLAW!"** she sheared through the air with her blades and the white energy blades that followed crashed into ranks of the Geonosians and knocked the front ranks of the advancing zombies into the ones behind. But the attack only served to delay them and they came again, despite missing limbs and giant gashes as a result.

Barriss hurried to her Master, who was slumped in the containment field and appeared to be only barely responsive. Barriss grimaced, knowing that overexposure to such a restraining method could affect the brain, and, quick as flash, she severed one of the manacles around one of Luminara's wrists. Instantly, Luminara dropped to the ground and collapsed. Barriss only just managed to catch her and lower her to the ground.

"Master," she said, grasping Luminara's hands and attempting to revive her faintly groaning instructor. "Are you alright?"

**"GAUNTLET CLAW!"** Turuiemon cried, unleashing another attack on the Geonosians, shoving them back again, but it wasn't doing them much good as they continued to advance. "Come on, Luminara. Wake up. We have to leave before they get to us!"

Luminara's eyes snapped open.

Barriss sighed in relief... until Luminara's hand shot out and closed around her throat in a vace-like grip. Barriss gasped as her air supply was suddenly cut off once again, this time by her own master's hand and she desperately tried to draw breath, grabbing Luminara's wrist and attempting to pull it away. But Luminara's grip was like iron, even as she rose and pushed Barriss to the floor. Luminara had a sadistic grin on her face, that didn't match her character at all.

Turuiemon turned around and spotted this. "Luminara! What are you doing?"

"Yooouuurrr Jedi friend is miiiiinnneee, strange creature," Karina crowed from where she was watching everything. "Yooouuuu have failed. Ssshhheee is mine to command."

Barriss was blacking out under Luminara's merciless grip. Turuiemon stared in horror as she realised the full impact of the situation. It hadn't worked. Somehow, Luminara had been infected with a brain worm despite their attempt at escape. She had the worm coiled inside her head right now.

But how?

Turuiemon realised in despair that it must have been when she digivolved. The Geonosians had thrown up their arms to protect their eyes, including Poggle. The worm must have been thrown into the air and landed on Luminara's shoulder or head. And instinct had driven it from there. Now, Luminara was a slave to its will and was currently killing her own Padawan under its influence.

Stunned, Turuiemon almost forgot to do something about it. By the time she remembered, Barriss had desperately managed to kick upwards and flip her Master over her head, knocking loose the grip around her throat. Barriss attempted to stand, but keeled over and collapsed to her knees, clutching her throat and breathing in heavily. Turuiemon was about to go to her, but was forced to turn around and launch another attack at the zombie horde almost on her.

Luminara rose to her feet quickly. She said nothing but she calmly reached out with her hand. The zombie holding her lightsaber didn't resist as it was plucked from his grip. The Geonosian brain worm was using the Force, just as Luminara would. The poor Mirialan was being played like a harp, and if she was somehow aware of what she was doing, she must have been going through hell.

The green lightsaber sprung into her hand and ignited. The Jedi Master approached her hacking Padawan and lifted the blade, preparing to strike Barriss down. Turuiemon balked at the sight, now forced to choose between saving Barriss and keeping Poggle pinned.

She chose Barriss, of course and sprang forward, pulling the Padawan out of harm's way in the nick of time. Luminara growled and thrust out her palm, sending Barriss, Suzie and Turuiemon flying backwards with a burst of the Force.

They landed right amongst the Geonosian zombies, which instantly turned and piled in on top of them, wrapping their arms around all three and attempting to subdue them with sheer weight of numbers. It almost worked, but at the last second, Barriss recovered enough to activate her lightsaber and clear a path upwards, clambering to her feet and using a Force push to knock the others off Turuiemon, who had been bodily shielding Suzie from the onslaught.

"What do we do now?" asked Barriss, as Turuiemon got up and they began to back away from the Geonosians again.

"We have to leave," said Turuiemon. "We have to get away now."

"What?" Barriss cried indignantly. "And leave my Master behind under the influence of that foul worm thing? No! We have to try and free her from it!"

"And how do you suggest we do that?" Turuiemon asked, kicking a zombie in the gut and slicing through its head as it double over. "I don't have any suggestion that would get it out without killing her. We have to back off and join up with our incoming reinforcements. Then, we'll come back, take her prisoner, and find out a way to free her later."

Barriss gritted her teeth, but she knew Lopmon was right. They had no other option. They couldn't hold a Jedi Master now and they certainly couldn't get out the worm. After a couple of seconds, she said, "Alright. Let's go."

But, just as they began to make for the tunnels at the other end of the room, the zombies moved aside a little, forming a corridor that allowed Luminara a path straight to them. She ran down that corridor, gripping her lightsaber and ready to fight.

"Change of plans," said Barriss, turning to face her Master. "You clear a path through the zombies. I'll hold off my Master for a bit."

"Alright," nodded Turuiemon, turning around and leaping into the Geonosian masses with a cry of **"LIGHTNING KUNG-FU!"**

Barriss grimaced as Luminara leapt the rest of the way and crashed her blade down on her own. This was going to be a tough one.

Luminara and Barriss strained against each other momentarily, each trying to push the other backwards. Luminara's superior strength outmatched her Padawan and Barriss was shoved backwards slowly, her heels making grooves in the floor as she did so.

Knowing she was outmatched, Barriss broke the lock and whirled about, holding her lightsaber ready to defend again. She couldn't attack her Master – she wasn't a real enemy and she definitely didn't want to hurt her. This wasn't a training spar. This was serious.

Luminara swung at Barriss' neck, but the Padawan turned the blade aside. Luminara whirled around, delivering a flurry of blows – up, down, left, down, right, up, up, in an almost continous motion. Barriss was extremely hard put to defend herself, dodging and blocking for all she was worth. Luminara swung for her legs, but Barriss jumped over them and deliberately took a swing at Luminara's blade, hoping to knock it out of her hands.

Luminara responded with a block of her own. Then, she spoke, in an extremely unnerving way – as it sounded exactly like she did even when she weren't possessed. "You never were a match for me, Barriss. Give it up now."

Barriss only just managed to block the next swing directed at her midriff, such was her shock, but she quickly put it aside, reminding herself that this wasn't really her master she was facing. Luminara went on the offensive again, swiping in from the right, but Barriss blocked hurriedly. Luminara responded by spinning around to strike from the exact opposite direction, but Barriss twirled too and blocked again, knowing that that was going to happen. Luminara's next strike came from above, but suddenly she changed direction and came from the right again. Barriss leapt aside as the blow almost hit her, but was unable to block the sweep-kick that followed.

Luminara flipped her blade and made to stab her floored Padawan, but Barriss rolled to one side and lashed out with her foot, catching Luminara in the back of the knee and knocking her down temporarily. Barriss leapt to her feet and backed off, thanking any gods out there that the worm was still adjusting to Luminara's body.

Unfortunately, she backed into the waiting arms of more zombies, which wrapped around her waist and neck. Barriss yelped and swung her lightsaber behind her, successfully slicing them to pieces, but the brief lapse in concentration gave Luminara an opening to leap at her again. Barriss managed to turn the blade aside and whirl away, ducking another strike and rolling to avoid another. Flipping back onto her feet, Barriss turned to parry three more strikes from her Master, jump back to dodge another and backflip over yet another strike, coming to land a little distance away.

Looking up to face her Master, who was glaring at her with undisguised anger, Barriss got the feeling that this battle had only just begun. And she was proven right, as Luminara growled and charged to her again, green blade clashing against blue as the two Mirialan continued their duel.

* * *

I am so mean, aren't I? I feel really sorry for Luminara now, but hopefully I've got you readers hooked now, so that you can find out what happens next. Again, sorry for the delay, but I certainly intend to make up for it in the near future.

Btw, that quip about the Geonosian language being made up of a penguin mating call and monkeys fighting over a banana was actually true. That was what the Star Wars sound team used to make the Geonosian noises.

Please review.

Next time...

The duel between Barriss and Luminara continues. The others also enter the tunnels and experience the zombies first-hand. And little Suzie and Turuiemon have got things cut out for them later on.

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Coming up:- **Chapter 58 : Infection**


	58. Infection

After the startling cliffhanger from my last chapter, I hereby present you with the second to last chapter from the Star Wars part of the Geonosis story arc. There's going to be a lot of action in this one. Brace yourselves people, but please enjoy the ride. I can tell you now that this chapter was absolute murder to write in many places, but I think I have managed to pull off an action-packed, tension filled piece right here.

Btw, the most recent episode of Clone Wars was excellent. It featured Aurra Sing, who hasn't had a very prominent role in my story so far, but certainly will at a later date. It also featured Ziro the Hutt, which I was not expecting at all, but he was just as stupid-sounding as ever. I laugh whenever he speaks. Great job Clone Wars Team. And, coming up in the next episode, we get to see Cad Bane again. Am I the only one who's excited by that. And in the one after THAT we finally meet Aayla's Master, Quinlan Vos. A good thing too, as he'll be in my story in a few arcs time and I want to see him on television to get an idea of how he acts before I write about him.

But that's enough of that. Keep reading.

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 58:- Infection**

* * *

Turuiemon, with Suzie clinging tightly to her back and clamping her eyes shut so she wouldn't have to see her partner battling against the innumerable dead Geonosians, was attempting to press home her attack on the masses of zombies pressing in on her from all directions. Her switchblades flashed in all directions as she sprang back and forth, flipping and whirling and severing heads everywhere she landed.

But it just wasn't enough and she knew it. Despite her advantage over the Geonosian in terms of her skill, she was still being forced backwards and towards the wall, where there would be no retreat if she was trapped there. The Champion level rabbit Digimon grimaced as her mind raced, desperately trying to think of a way out of this situation.

She knew she had to get to the tunnels on the other side of the room, but there just seemed to be no way of reaching them. She couldn't jump that far even without having to carry Suzie, and her attacks were doing very little to damage the zombies. They weren't as precise as Gargomon's, but they weren't as area damaging as Kyubimon's.

And she really needed an area damaging attack right now.

Dodging a clumsy strike by a zombie, she neatly cut through the dead Geonosian's neck. Her foot lashed out straight behind her to kick another in the chest, and a double spin in another direction brought her within striking range of two more. Her switchblades whistled through the air as she incapacitated another two zombies.

Suzie yelped during that last one as she was almost thrown clear by Turuiemon's leap. Suddenly, another zombie's clammy hand grasped her ankle. Suzie screamed in revulsion and fear, releasing one arm around Turuiemon's neck and smacking the zombie in the eye with her D-Arc. The zombie was uninjured but looked rather startled by the attack. The look of surprise remained on its face when Turuiemon whirled around and separated it from the rest of its body.

"Nobody touches my Tamer," Turuiemon kicked the head into crowd, knocking the head of another zombie askew as it sailed through the air. The others didn't spare their dead comrade a glance and just continued towards the two of them, reaching out to recapture or kill them. Turuiemon had to back off to prevent another from grabbing her head. She beheaded it easily enough, but the other one right behind it and all the others surrounding it, hacking and groaning, just continued towards her.

"This isn't working, Turuiemon," Suzie cried, her previous boldness in the face of the zombies disappearing again when she saw the sheer lack of damage that her partner was doing to the ranks of the enemy. Taking out one or two was easy enough, but there were just so many of them.

"I noticed, Suzie," Turuiemon replied, backing off and bodily shielding her Tamer. "We need to come at this from another angle. We need a Modify Card that might help. We're not going to cut it otherwise."

"I'll have a look," Suzie jumped down from her partner's back and crouched on the floor behind Turuiemon, rifling through her deck quickly and wishing that it wasn't so large.

"Fire doesn't work," Turuiemon pointed out, stabbing a zombie that got too close in the stomach and hacking off the head with the other blade, before kicking the body away. "We need something to get them out of the way, not kill them."

"I'm looking, I'm looking," Suzie mumbled, skimming through the list of Digimon she had a card of and quickly putting it aside as useless. Things was getting desperate now and Turuiemon was hard pressed to keep all of them away from her little Tamers, hacking, stabbing, cleaving and thrusting with her blades for all she was worth, but it just seemed to end in a stalemate. At first. But they were still being pushed back.

Suzie glanced up at her partner, valiantly defending her against impossible odds. She looked over at Barriss, who was still desperately trying to hold off her own Master, as the worm controlling Luminara seemed to be getting to grips with manipulating her body and was it was getting steadily more and more difficult for Barriss to hold her off.

It was critical now. Almost at the breaking point.

_Think Suzie,_ she screamed at herself mentally, banging her own forehead with the palm of her hand. _Think! Think! Think! What would Henry do in something like this? What kind of card would her use on Terriermon? Think like Henry. Think of a plan._

And, with a flash of inspiration, she had an idea. Ruffling quickly through her deck, she pulled out a card – one of her all time favourites due to the Digimon on it. She'd never used it in battle before, but if there was ever a time for it, it was now.

"Please work," she muttered to the card. "I've always said you were so pretty. Please return the favour." Shutting her eyes and praying it would suffice, she swiped it through her D-Arc and shouted, so the whole room could hear, "Digi-modify! Kazemon's Hurricane Wave Activate!"

"Good girl, Suzie!" Turuiemon yelled as she felt her data being altered. "Brilliant idea! Now, let's get out of here. **HURRICANE WAVE!"**

Pushing out her hands in front of her, she let loose her new attack with a will. Two long, thin tornadoes erupted from Turuiemon's fingertips and washed over the Geonosians. Being insects they were already extremely lightweight, but since they were zombies with decaying flesh they were even lighter than normal and didn't stand a chance against the sudden twister. They were picked up in an instant and swirled around in the ensuing windstorm.

The tornadoes reached right across the room and tossed the zombies all around like they were mere dolls. Those on either side of the attack hurriedly backed away, not wishing to be caught in the high-velocity winds that swept their comrades into walls and sent them hurtling in all directions. This cleared a corridor through the zombies right to the entrance of the tunnels.

"Barriss! Hurry! We've cleared an opening!" Turuiemon cried, not letting up her attack.

"Okay!" Barriss replied, leaning back to dodge a lightsaber strike and swiftly dodging two more and blocking a forth. "On my way!" She dropped onto her back, so Luminara's next strike passed over her and thrust out her own hand, tossing Luminara into the air with a surge from the Force. Barriss leapt up and sprinted over to Turuiemon and Suzie.

Turuiemon nodded and let up her attack. Barriss grabbed Suzie and pressed her protectively to her with one arm while the other wielded her blade. Together, Barriss and Turuiemon shot down the corridor of zombies, which was beginning to close up again already. They hacked off limbs and heads as they ran, determined not to let the zombies close off the gap.

They almost reached the end before the gap close off again. Turuiemon growled and sprang forward at the much smaller number of Geonosians blocking their way, her blades extended. No longer burdened down by carrying Suzie, she became a maelstrom of whirling metal, and the zombies fell before her desperate attack, made even more ferocious due to the fact they were so close to escaping the room.

"Stttttoooopppp ttthheeeeemmmm," Queen Karina screamed from the other side of the room.

"Not today!" Turuiemon cried as she bulled through the last two zombies blocking her path. Barriss was right behind her and the Mirialan deftly swiped off their heads as she passed.

"Suzie!" cried Turuiemon as they rushed for the entrance to the tunnels. "Ready the Digmon card again?"

"Why?" asked Suzie, doing it anyway.

"We need to slow them down and prevent us from following."

"Oh, I see," nodded Suzie eagerly, holding the Digmon card she had used earlier to help Lopmon escape her captors and waiting for Turuiemon's signal to swipe it.

Barriss and Turuiemon barrelled into the tunnels at top speed. The zombies were right behind them. They had suddenly picked up in speed and were scuttling along on all fours like demonic conckroaches. They were much faster than before, though still not very fast, doing he speed of a fast walk, possibly at the urging of their Queen to hunt down their pursuers. They swarmed into the tunnel after the escapees, running across the floor, the walls and the ceiling in their massive numbers, surging down the tunnel like a tidal bore.

Turuiemon and Barriss continued further on a little ways before Turuiemon spun around to face the oncoming tide of pursuing zombies and cried. "Now Suzie!"

Suzie obeyed instantly and shouted "Digi-modify! Digmon's Rock Cracking Activate!"

The drills that Turuiemon had used before as Lopmon appeared on her hands again, but this time, another drills appeared on her face like a nose. Not having the time to feel self-conscious about this, Turuiemon hollered **"ROCK CRACKING!" **and struck downwards, burying her hands and face-drill into the floor of the tunnel. Instantly, cracks spread from the floor, up the walls and over the ceiling in a fine lattice of breaking rock and the tunnel in front of them collapsed.

The zombies and the worms inside them were buried under mountains of rock as debris fell from the ceiling and completely closed off the tunnel, creating a wall of rock several metres thick. If that didn't kill them then nothing would. Turuiemon's drills disappeared and she turned back to Barriss and Suzie.

All three were breathing rather more heavily than normal, due to a combination of relief and overexertion. They were safe for a bit, but all three knew that wall wouldn't keep them away forever. They would simply use the other tunnels to reach them some other way.

"Come on," said Barriss. "We have to keep going and meet up with the others."

"I know the way," nodded Turuiemon. "Follow me."

The Champion took the lead, with Barriss running along behind her, Suzie still clutched in the arms of the latter, as she couldn't run as fast as either of them. The only light they had was Barriss' lightsaber, and the light emanating from Suzie's active D-Arc. They ran in silence, none of them wishing to talk about what they'd just been through.

After they had gone some distance, the wall of large boulders that they had left behind shifted slightly, the smaller stones falling to the ground and dust rising from the top of the rocks to swirl in the air like wisps of smoke. Then the wall shifted again, more noticeably. Then again. Then again, each time getting more pronounced.

Finally, the wall suddenly exploded outwards, the rocks streaming down the tunnel and rolling into other walls, crashing to a stop and sending up a cloud of dust. And through that cloud of dust strode the Luminara that wasn't Luminara, lowering her hand after the burst of the Force required to move the rocks aside.

The footsteps of the others could still faintly be heard in the distance, and while the echoes may have not made much sense to Luminara, it made sense to the worm controlling her. Grinning, Luminara sprinted off after the others, using the Force to give her extra speed. The worm was adapting to its new body extremely well.

* * *

"Sounds like the wall has gone," said Turuiemon, at the sound of the explosion behind them. "That didn't take them as long as I had hoped to bypass it."

"It must have been Master Unduli," sighed Barriss as she ran. "Or the worm controlling her anyway."

"Hurry," Turuiemon put on speed. "Or she'll catch up with us."

Barriss and Turuiemon ran flat out, zigging and zagging through the tunnel network as Turuiemon led them back to the surface again. Barriss could only trust in her, but it was well placed as they swiftly came upon the site of their capture with the few remaining immobile zombies and ran on.

But, it didn't take long for the green glow of a lightsaber to start illuminating the tunnel behind her.

"She's gaining," said Barriss, after she glanced over her shoulder and spotted it. "Turuiemon, stop."

"Why?" asked the rabbit, stopping anyway.

Barriss quickly passed Suzie to her Digimon partner. "Go," she said, simply. "Get out of here. I will hold Master Unduli back."

"Barriss, you can't," Turuiemon said. "I won't be able to find you again using my senses if I leave."

"It is my duty as a Jedi to protect the innocent," said Barriss. "And you don't get much more innocent than Suzie. Go. Get her out of here."

Turuiemon looked at the earnest expression in Barriss' eyes and nodded, before turning and fleeing into the tunnels with Suzie, who was beginning to cry, in her arms. Barriss turned around to face Luminara, just as she rounded the corner. The older Mirialan stopped and grinned at her prey as she slowed to a walk and kept coming.

Barriss ran to meet her and initiated the first strike of the duel.

* * *

The sound of lightsabers clashing behind her stopped Turuiemon in her tracks. The Champion Digimon turned around stared back off down the tunnels they'd just come from. She couldn't see anything, but the sound of a furious lightsaber duel could easily be heard emanating from the corridors behind her.

"She really is a Jedi," she muttered. "A truly selfless being."

"Will she be alright?" asked Suzie.

"No," sighed Turuiemon. "She probably won't. Luminara probably knows all of Barriss' moves, which means that the worm will know how to attack her. She won't last long."

Suzie whimpered and buried her face in Turuiemon's yellow vest.

"Not without my help, anyway," Turuiemon narrowed her eyes. She placed Suzie on the ground and kneeled beside her Tamer. "Suzie, I want you to go. I want you to run and under no circumstances must you come back."

"What?" Suzie looked shocked and afraid. "But... but I don't know the way."

"Yes, you do," said Turuiemon. "Use your mind. Terriermon is close enough now that you could sense him if he wanted you to, and believe me, he does."

Suzie hesitated, but she realised that Turuiemon was right. She could indeed sense Terriermon's presence up above and she knew the exact way to go.

"But what if I run into zombies?"

"If you run fast enough, you won't," said Turuiemon. "The others are close now and we delayed them long enough and you know how slow they are. Now go. Find Terriermon and your big sister, Aayla, and bring them back here. Hurry!"

Suzie nodded and turned to run off into the tunnels, faster than she'd ever run in her life before. Turuiemon watched her go for a moment, uttering a silent prayer to Fanglongmon that she would be okay, before turning around and sprinting off in the opposite direction.

* * *

Barriss' intention had been to hold Luminara back without exerting too much effort, by continuously pushing her back and then backing away herself, trying not to get involved in a full-blown duel that would only waste energy.

But that didn't happen the way she would have liked it to, because Luminara was attacking her so ferociously that there was no opportunity for retreat. Barriss was constantly on the defence and desperately blocking a constant flurry of blows from her Master's green blade. She ducked under a swing and brought up her blade to block a downward thrust, span to one side and turned aside another strike just in time, the blade passing within a hairs breadth of her face. Luminara sprang to one side and landed on the wall, feet-first and rebounded off it to shoot at her Padawan. Barriss dodged aside, but Luminara rebounded of the other wall and came again.

Only a desperate teddy-roll saved Barriss life as Luminara blade streaked past her chest. Luminara backflipped back onto her feet and made to strike Barriss as she righted herself. Barriss rolled again, the lightsaber carving through most of her cape as it skimmed past her back. Barriss repositioned herself, holding her lightsaber ready again, and prepared for the next attack.

Barriss grimaced. She'd practiced for lightsaber duels but had never really been involved in any serious ones before. And she had never expected her first serious one to be against her own Master. She just couldn't strike back at Luminara, could she? What if she got through Luminara's guard and injured or even killed her? What then?

She'd never be able to forgive herself.

Luminara sailed through the air again, swinging her blade like a staff and slicing through the air. Barriss dodged left and right, then leapt backwards, sucking in her stomach as the green blade tip narrowly missed it, then brought her own lightsaber into play. The blue blade crashed against the green one, and Barriss parried three separate strikes and leapt back again to avoid a stab to the stomach. She smacked the extended blade aside and aimed a kick at her Master's midriff.

But Luminara saw it coming and dodged to the side, grabbing Barriss' outstretched ankle with the other hand and pulling hard. Barriss yelped as she was pulled off her remaining foot and crashed heavily onto her back.

Luminara loomed over Barriss and sneered down at her, still gripping Barriss' ankle in one hand. Barriss attempted to lash up with the other, but Luminara blocked the kick with her other foot and cruelly stamped down on the ankle, pinning it to the floor. With a casual flick of her lightsaber, Luminara disarmed Barriss and sent the blue blade into the corner, where it deactivated.

"Don't take it so personally, Barriss," Luminara grinned. "You never stood a chance."

"I underestimated you, worm," said Barriss. "I didn't think you'd have such good control over my Master's body."

"Now you fall," said Luminara. "And soon, that other creature, Turuiemon, and the little girl shall follow."

She raised her blade and brought it down.

Then, something leapt out of the darkness ahead and intercepted the blade with what appeared to be an ordinary metal switchblade. Luminara, or rather the worm inside her, was stunned at the sight of the purple rabbit warrior that had sprung from nowhere and casually blocked the blade before it cut Barriss into two pieces.

"What?" Luminara cried. "But, lightsabers can cut through almost anything."

"Not Chrome-Digizoid," said Turuiemon and she shoved upwards, throwing Luminara's arms above her head and sending her off-balance. Turuiemon followed up with a kick to the chest and a further spinning kick to the stomach, which knocked Luminara off her feet and sent her flying backwards down the corridor.

"Turuiemon?" Barriss asked from the floor. "I thought I told you to run."

"You learn pretty quick that we Digimon don't always follow orders," grinned the Champion, extending a hand to help Barriss up. "It comes from working with Anakin and Ahsoka, I suppose."

"But... what about Suzie?" asked Barriss, as Turuiemon picked up the Padawan's lightsaber and placed it back in her hand.

"She's safe," said Turuiemon. "She's heading for the others right now. They're only a couple of minutes from the Temple. Suzie knows the way now."

"So sorry to interrupt," Luminara growled as she got to her feet and held her green lightsaber in front of her, in exactly the same stance that she would have done without the brain worm infestation. "But we were in the middle of something, were we not?"

"Indeed we were," said Turuiemon, extending both her switchblades with a whooshing noise as they flipped into battle position. Barriss' lightsaber re-ignited and the two of them squared off against Luminara together, expressions of determination on both their faces.

"Don't think that you'll provide much help, Digimon," Luminara growled, as she ran forward to engage them in battle once again.

"We just to hold her off for a few more minutes," Turuiemon hissed to Barriss, and without waiting for Barriss to reply, she also leapt into battle.

Having two weapons instead of one gave Turuiemon a slight edge. As Luminara initiated the first strike, Turuiemon ducked beneath the blow and feinted to the left, bringing up one blade in a fake blow to Luminara's head. The worm inside her panicked, thinking it to be real and brought up her lightsaber to defend, but Turuiemon retracted and whirled around, flipping a blade into standby and punching Luminara in the hip. Luminara doubled over and Turuiemon slammed into her with her shoulders, forcing the Jedi Master backwards.

Luminara growled and span in retaliation, but Turuiemon leapt upwards and embedded her claws in the ceiling, hanging there like a sloth to allow Barriss, who had been right behind her, to surprise Luminara by blocking the swing and grasping Luminara's wrist in one hand. Barriss pulled her forward and smacked her between the shoulder blades with the other hand, sending her onto her stomach. Turuiemon then dropped from the ceiling and landed with her back on Luminara's knocking the wind out of her. Then, she leapt up and both of them backed up down the tunnel, putting more distance between them and Luminara.

The Mirialan Jedi Master got to her feet and gave them a look that clearly meant that they had just called down the thunder. "It appears this time I was the one who did the underestimating," she growled. "You obviously have impressive skills Turuiemon, but don't think I know your weakness. I can hurt you, whereas you cannot hurt me without hurting Luminara."

"Luminara would rather die than be a vessel for a parasite such as you," Turuiemon bluffed stiffly.

"Maybe so," said Luminara. "But she has no control over her own body. Only I rule now. And you wouldn't want to hurt your own Master, would you, Barriss?"

Barriss' face betrayed her, and she glanced at the floor worriedly. Luminara laughed.

"Just as I thought," she said. "Now, unlike you, I shall not hold back."

Plunging her lightsaber into the floor, she advanced swiftly, slipping the blade through solid rock and sending up stones in an attempt to confuse the opponents. Turuiemon ran forward to meet her and the two clashed blades, metal on plasma. Turuiemon blocked a downward swing, raising her other arm to meet the next one coming from above, breaking the lock with a spin and crossing her blades in an X to block the oncoming stab. Then she hurriedly countered a flurry of six following blows. Her instincts screamed at her to attack back, but she knew she couldn't.

So she resorted to the unorthodox and stamped heavily on Luminara's outstretched foot. Luminara cried out and stumbled backwards, allowing Turuiemon a quick breather.

The Champion backward-rolled and allowed Barriss to leap over her and take over. Barriss blocked a hasty swing from Luminara, who was already recovering from the inconvenience. Luminara whirled about, her robe flying out as she swept in a low blow for the knees. Barriss turned it aside and followed up with a feint to the right, which Luminara blocked and reposted against, swinging for Barriss' neck. Leaping back to avoid it, Barriss caught the next blow and pushed the blade into the ground, before leaping straight over Luminara.

Turuiemon bounded in from where Barriss had been and slammed a flurry of fake blows of her own. Nevertheless, Luminara responded to them anyway and quickly responded with a sidewats swing, seeking to sever Turuiemon's arms. Turuiemon caught the blade with the opposite arm, crossing over her own body, then brought the other arm smashing into Luminara's elbow. Luminara was sent off balance again, but quickly recovered with a three-sixty and slammed her blade into Turuiemon's. The two pushed against each other, each seeking to push the other backwards.

And that's when Barriss came back in and rolled across the floor, striking Luminara in the back of the legs with her back. Luminara toppled backwards, arms flailing frantically and landed on her back once again.

Barriss and Luminara got to their feet once again and there was another brief face-off, but this one was much shorter.

"That does it," Luminara snarled. "You are done for." Then she attacked ferociously, spinning and thrashing in a whirlwind of green as she battered at the defences of her opponents. Both Barriss and Turuiemon were surprised by the sudden rush of energy from Luminara and were hard put to defend, both swiftly alternating between each other in their attempts to stave off the rampaging Jedi. They pressed their backs to one another and faced her one at a time.

Turuiemon met a strike and pushed it back, then blocked four more and ducked under another, before both swung around and it was Barriss facing Luminara. The Padawan stepped backwards and parried another set of blows, including one that what had sheared off her hood, which had somehow managed to stay up throughout all this. Then they'd flip around and Turuiemon would defend again.

But Luminara was still pressing them back with her masterful skills with a blade. Turuiemon was the first to be hit by the masterful Jedi, as Luminara lashed out with a foot and managed to catch Turuiemon in the knee. The Champion grunted in pain and met Luminara's follow-up kick to the chest, knocking her into Barriss and rolling over the Padawan some way, coming to rest a slight distance down the corridor. Barriss got up and turned to face her Master, only just managing to defend herself from the flood of strikes that followed. She managed to turn aside eight, two of which were stabs that almost got her, before Luminara stepped backwards and shot out a hand.

Barriss was blasted backwards by the Force and crashed into Turuiemon, who had only just got to her feet. Both of them sailed backwards and crashed into the wall in the middle of a T-junction behind them. Both collapsed to ground, gasping for breath at the impact.

"This isn't going as well as I'd hoped," Turuiemon wheezed, clutching her stomach from where Barriss had collided with it.

"We can't give up yet!" Barriss cried. "How much longer?"

But Turuiemon never got the opportunity to answer that question because Luminara was shooting through the air towards them, blade raised above her head. Barriss and Turuiemon rolled in opposite directions as the green blade impaled the ground between them. Luminara pulled it out and swung around to face Barriss, sending her backwards with another wave of the Force. Turuiemon rolled to her feet and ran for Luminara, leaping straight over her and swinging at her from above with a fist.

Some warning alerted Luminara at the last minute and she swung upwards. Turuiemon extended her blade just in time to stop Luminara from hacking her fist off and finished the leap, landing in front of Luminara. She struck out, but Luminara was ready and ducked aside, flinging a large boulder that had been levitating behind her and striking Turuiemon in the stomach. The Champion was flung backwards with a yelp, but fortunately Barriss had recovered enough to catch her with the Force and put her down gently.

As Luminara ran for them again, Turuiemon sent a quick message – _Terriermon. Please Hurry. _– before blocking another strike.

* * *

While all of this was happening, the others up in the domed shield that Taomon was holding up and moving through the air at speed were getting more and more agitated by each turn of events. The sandstorm was making it difficult to proceed and get to the Temple, but it was showing signs of letting up now, so Taomon could go a bit faster.

Poor Terriermon was a silent witness to everything that Lopmon and the others were going through, but he didn't dare interrupt Turuiemon's thoughts lest he distract her at a crucial moment. He watched in growing fear and trepidation as they battled the zombies, collapsed the tunnel and now, Turuiemon and Barriss were battling against a Jedi Master, and losing.

Despite all this, he'd been giving regular updates to the others. All of them knew the full severity of the situation. Obi-Wan was running through a list of potential ideas for freeing Luminara from the clutches of the worm, but he couldn't think of anything that would be one-hundred percent effective. He'd have to see if he could get a hand on another brain worm and study it, so he could find out how to free Luminara.

"There it is!" Ahsoka suddenly pointed through the thinning sands outside their protective bubble. "I can see the Temple."

"At last," agreed Aayla. "This waiting is an agony."

"How goes the battle, Terriermon?" asked Anakin.

"Not well, I'm afraid," Terriermon looked back up at him. "They're holding their own for now, but Luminara is gradually pushing them back. They may not last another ten minutes."

"Then it's imperative that we get a move on," said Cody. "Form up troopers. Prepare to leave the moment Taomon drops the bubbles." The clones immediately responded to his orders and readied their blasters and bent their legs to get ready to make a running start.

"Hold on tight," Taomon cried, as she changed the angle of her bubble and zoomed downwards at an angle. Everyone inside leaned backwards to keep their balance, but there were no yells of complaint. They knew the severity of the situation all too well.

Taomon swept through the huge doors of the Temple and plonked her bubble on the ground. Obi-Wan had a millisecond to look around the room that they'd landed in and easily spotted the grotesque statue of Queen Karina on the other side of the room.

_So,_ he thought. That _is the Geonosian Queen that we've been hearing rumours about all of these years. To think she'd been hiding beneath this building for all this time._

Taomon de-digivolved back to Renamon and the bubble, as a result, vanished. In the blink of an eye, Terriermon was in the air and was already moving for the catacombs. Renamon and Aayla were both right behind him, and Henry and Rika were behind them, both feeling relatively eager to find little Suzie.

"Come on, men," Anakin cried, gesturing to Rex and the others as he too began to run forwards. "There's no time to waste."

"You heard him, lads!" Rex cried. "Let's move." He gestured forwards with his blaster and ran after the Jedi, with Cody, Bly, Deviss and the small group of clones that they had had time to rustle up behind them. There were only about eight other clones as well as the Commanders and Captains. There would have been more, but they had had to move quickly.

Terriermon passed straight over the hole in the floor that the others had gone down. Renamon and Aayla each grabbed a Tamer and leapt over it after him, while the clones simply went around it. Terriermon would have preferred it if they had gone the quick way and dropped down the hole, but he knew the clones couldn't manage the drop since none of them were fitted with jetpacks.

And so, he shot straight through the door under the statue of Queen Karina instead.

As they entered the darkness, Aayla ignited her lightsaber without hesitation, in order to give Terriermon some light as he led them into the tunnels. The other Jedi behind them did the same thing without stopping their run, while the clones all paused for a brief moment to switch the lights on their helmets on. These provided a much better light source for the others and penetrated the darkness much further ahead.

But that didn't stop the Jedi from keeping their blades out. They knew what lurked in these passages and were not about to take any chances.

Terriermon took the maze in his stride. Whenever they reached a corner or a crossroads or turnoff he would shoot down or past it without any hesitation whatsoever. Renamon followed behind him faithfully, knowing that Terriermon was going the right way, while everyone else trusted in his judgement. They'd seen the bond between the Digimon and Tamers at work before, after all.

"How much further is it, Terriermon?" Ahsoka cried from behind Aayla, running with her green lightsaber already in battle position. "Are we almost there?"

"Just a few more minutes," Terriermon said. "We have to pick up Suzie first and then we can head over and help the others."

"Is Suzie okay?" Henry asked.

"Near as I can tell, she's fine," said Terriermon. "We should reach her in a moment or two."

They lapsed into silence again as they continued their headlong sprint through the corridors. Henry and Rika ignored the stitches they were currently getting and kept pace with everyone else.

* * *

Suzie did exactly as Turuiemon had instructed her to and fled into the tunnel network, not looking back and following the trail that her mind laid out before her, using the signal that Terriermon was broadcasting to her to navigate her way through the dark passages and using her D-Arc as a meagre light source.

She was terrified to be in these dark passages where zombies lurked and without a Digimon partner. But she knew, at the same time that Turuiemon had been right. She didn't meet a single zombie on the way up. She heard their screams and hisses, but they were extremely distant and always behind her. It seemed that the only reason they had come from all directions last time had been because Poggle had set them there as a trap.

It was just as Turuiemon had said.

At the same time as feeling scared, Suzie couldn't help but feel much more independent and older than ten. Here she was, all on her own, and she was doing great. This war had definitely toughened her up a lot. She remembered how she had been on Ryloth when she'd been alone, spending hours in hiding and only daring to venture out when she could no longer stand her hunger.

She felt quite proud of herself really.

But she was also worried. She was mentally watching the battle currently progressing between Barriss, Turuiemon and Luminara and she knew, just as Turuiemon did, that Luminara had the upper hand in this bout. She wasn't a Jedi Master for nothing, and the unwillingness for either Barriss or Turuiemon to harm her gave her an incredible advantage.

She took her mind of it and focused on Terriermon. She was getting closer now. Closer, closer. So much closer. She knew that she was only a few corridors away now.

She turned and crashed straight into something's leg. Despite her previous bravery, Suzie squealed in fear and sat down, covering her face and quivering as she waited for the zombie to strike.

"Don't kill me. Please!" she wailed, knowing that the zombie wouldn't listen to anything she said.

"Suzie?" asked the being she had crashed into. Suzie's head shot up at the familiar accent and found herself staring into the warm, brown eyes of Aayla Secura.

"Thank the Force you're okay," the Twi'lek grinned, kneeling down to the little girl.

"Big sister!" Suzie cried, getting up and throwing herself into the startled Aayla's arms, hugging her tightly around the neck like a koala on a tree. Aayla blinked at the name that Suzie had given her, but wrapped her arms around Suzie protectively and lifted her upwards, returning the hug and making soothing noises to the little Tamer that was beginning to cry in happiness.

Aayla turned around and gave a questioning look to those crowded in the tunnel behind her. Terriermon gave her a thumbs-up while Renamon grinned and Ahsoka gave an 'Oh, that's so cute,' look at the two of them. Obi-Wan and Anakin both chuckled and, while the expressions of the clones were hidden beneath their helmets, Aayla was pretty sure she heard one of them say "Daawww."

"Suzie!" Henry ran forward towards his little sister. Suzie released her grip on Aayla and turned around as Henry enveloped her in a hug of his own, although Aayla still had her arms around Suzie. Suzie returned it, tears pouring freely down her eyes. "I'm so glad you're alright," Henry whispered.

"I thought I was going to die, big brother," Suzie whimpered. "I thought I was never going to see any of you again."

"It's alright now," Henry said. "You're safe and I promise I will never let you out of my sight again if that's what you want."

"Thank you, Henry," Suzie replied.

"Are you okay, Suzie?" said Aayla, as Henry released the little girl from the hug and she looking down into her face. "Are you uninjured?"

"Yes, big sister," nodded Suzie. "I'm okay. But we've got to hurry. Barriss and Turuiemon are trying to hold off Luminara but they're not doing so good. We need to get there and save them before Luminara kills them."

""Which way now, Terriermon?" Aayla looked down at the bunny standing beside her feet, the expression of concern melting into one of determination. "Suzie's right. We must hurry."

"I know," nodded Terriermon. "It's not that far now. Follow me." Terriermon took to the air again, flapping his ears hard to stay aloft. Since he had been leading the party, the only reason Suzie had crashed into Aayla instead of him was because he was in the air at the time. But now, the urgency was back.

Shifting Suzie to her left side so that her lightsaber arm was free, Aayla followed on after him, and the others behind all sprinted along after them in a double-file line, the Jedi and Digimon out in front and the clones following along behind them at speed, the way ahead illuminated by the lights on the helmets of the clones.

"How are we supposed to detain Master Luminara once we reach her?" Ahsoka asked the others.

"I don't know, Snips," said Anakin. "But we will, even if we have to pin her down and drag her back to the surface, kicking and screaming."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," said Obi-Wan, not breaking his stride.

After a few minutes of running, suddenly, Captain Deviss yelled and her crashed onto his front. A blackened arm had lashed out of a small tunnel by the floor and grabbed his ankle, pulling him off his feet. The arm attempted to pull him back into the tunnel, but Commander Cody whirled around and kicked the arm, breaking it off at the elbow. The clones backed away as the rest of the zombie emerged from the tunnel. And, up ahead, the rest of the horde were beginning to arrive.

"Oh wonderful," muttered Renamon. "We're cut off from the others."

"I do not have time for this!" Terriermon growled. His face was uncharacteristically furious and his fists were clenched – both his hands and his ears. "My sister is in danger and you guys are blocking my way!" he shouted at the horde of approaching zombies. "And if I have to go through all of you to get to her then so be it! Henry! Give a boost!"

"Alright," Henry's expression was similarly angry. "I agree with you Terriermon. Enough is enough." He pulled forth a card from his belt.

Renamon's fur was bristling as her own eyes narrowed into slits. "We are not afraid of you!" she roared at the zombies, her voice so strong that it actually made them pause for a moment. "We know just how to incapacitate you! Rika! You give me a boost as well."

"Let's show these zombie wannabes that no-one is invulnerable," nodded Rika, bringing forth a card of her own.

"Cover your eyes everyone," Henry cried as he and Rika both swiped the cards simultaneously and shouted "Digi-modify! Digivolution Activate!"

The zombies were just as clueless as last time this happened and shrieked in agony as the bright light smashed into what remained of their eyes. Through it all, while they backed away and shielded their eyes from the blast, they heard two voices shouting to everyone present.

"**TERRIERMON DIGIVOLVE TO... GARGOMON!"**

"**RENAMON DIGIVOLVE TO... KYUBIMON!"**

Kyubimon barrelled out of light and leapt upon the zombie hordes approaching down one tunnel ahead. With a roar she slammed into the first few lines and sent them flying like bowling pins. Immediately the zombies reached out for her with many groping arms, but Kyubimon was similarly equipped. She had nine strong prehensile tails at her disposal. As the zombies tried to grab her, she whipped around and her tails snaked out behind her, lashing around her attackers and bodily lifting them into the air.

The zombies became flails as Kyubimon advanced down the corridor backwards, smashing any that stood before her. Granted, they got right back up again and came for another assault, but they were just beaten to the floor again. Kyubimon wasn't dealing them any damage, but they just couldn't get to her either.

Gargomon stepped out of the light too, rotating his cannons eagerly. He glanced down at them, knowing that when it came to taking out a zombie, lasers weren't really going to cut it. As Kyubimon held back the wave from one corridor, Gargomon turned to another. He began to empty his cannons at them, putting all of his will into the attack. The Geonosian zombies barely noticed that bright holes burnt into their skin, but the force of the continuous blasts helped to stave them off.

"Listen!" Gargomon yelled over his shoulder to the others, who were just uncovering their eyes. "The only way to stop these guys that we know of is to cut off their heads and I can't do that. So, it's up to you Jedi! We Digimon and the clones will hold them back, but it's up to you to put a stop to them!"

Never had any of them heard Terriermon or any of his digivolutions sound so serious and authoritative before, but nobody sought to put him in his place or reprimand him for giving orders to others. Aayla placed Suzie next to Henry and turned to walk up to Gargomon.

"Then let's not waste time," she said. And she darted forwards into the corridor and her lightsaber went to work. She leapt for one wall and sprang off it, cartwheeling in mid-air and slicing off the heads of two of the zombies as she did so. Sliding down the other wall, she snipped the head off another as she passed, span and took down another by slicing it clean up the middle, slicing its head in two pieces.

Gargomon advanced behind her, firing on either side of the Twi'lek to hold back the masses as they tried to push forward. He somehow failed to hit Aayla, due to a combination of good aim on his part and Aayla using the Force to guide herself to areas where he wasn't firing. She wasn't at all concerned by the green lasers flashing all around her.

The other Jedi quickly joined her. Ahsoka sprang down another corridor and sent her lightsaber swinging into action as well. Anakin was right beside her and together, Master and Padawan double-teamed the approaching hordes, swapping to the opposite sides of the corridor now and again, as they severed grasping limbs and followed up with quick chops to the head. Ahsoka jumped forward and experimentally impaled one. Just like with Barriss it slumped for a second, before suddenly springing to life again and trying to choke her.

"I see you weren't kidding about the being dead part," said Ahsoka, retracting her blade and slicing through the neck of the slow creature.

Anakin chuckled as he took a sideways sweep through the head of another. "Can you imagine to looks on the faces of the Council members faces when we tell them about this?"

Ahsoka snickered. "What about the looks on their faces when we tell them we won?"

"Steady, Snips," Anakin stabbed through another and swept upwards, cleaving through its head. "We haven't won yet."

"I know."

Obi-Wan made to follow but he whirled around as more sounds of scuttling penetrated the corridors behind them. He and the clones took a stance as more zombies began to emerge from the smaller side-tunnels that were dotted around the walls on all sides. One zombie grabbed the arms of one of the clones, but Obi-Wan hurriedly sliced them off and decapitated the creature with a decisive swing.

"Hold them back, men!" he cried, dicing up another. "Aim straight down those tunnels and go for the head. We cannot allow them to flank us and they can only come through those tunnels one at a time!"

"Sir, yes sir!" cried the clones and hurriedly carried out their orders. Splitting into groups of two, the pairs picked a small side-tunnel each and pointed their blasters straight down the holes and began to fire continuously as the oncoming Geonosians. The flashes of blue light illuminated the dead faces of the zombies, as they slipped up the corridor, the lasers shooting numerous holes in their faces which they simply ignored.

"Go for the eyes!" shouted Bly. "See if you can blind them!"

At such close range the clones could hardly fail at hitting their targets. A couple of shots and the zombie Geonosian was promptly blinded. Dead or not the worms inside them required their eyes to know where they were going in the darkness. The zombies screeched as they lost their vision, but continued to crawl forwards, swiping clumsily in front of themselves just in case they hit something.

Obi-Wan darted to and fro, severing the heads of any zombie that successfully managed to emerge from their side-tunnels. The headless bodies slumped, but they still continued to move forward because they were being pushed from behind by another zombie.

The never-ending stream was just as noticeable here as it had been before and, despite the massive advantages in skill and the determination of Jedi, Digimon and clone alike to succeed and push back the enormous numbers, it was clear that it just wasn't working. Kyubimon had stopped advancing now as the weight of numbers meant that she was being pushed back the way she'd come now. Hurriedly, she used her fiery fox tails to set the zombies clutched in them alight and continued to swipe with them, but the fire had just as much effect as it had when Lopmon had used it. The zombies just ignored it and pressed on.

Aayla was continuously having to back off now as the zombies pressed in, pushed from behind by sheer numbers and continuing over the bodies of their fallen comrades as if they weren't even there. Gargomon gritted his teeth as his Gargo Lasers weren't having any effect anymore – the zombies couldn't be knocked back because they were being pushed forwards.

"We need to turn this around and quickly!" Gargomon called over to Kyubimon.

The fox hurled the zombies into the others and turned around launching a continuous stream of Fox Tail Infernos, her tails moving like a Mexican Wave and firing off fireball after fireball. "I agree," she said. "Any suggestions?"

"Not a one," said Gargomon.

"I do!" Henry cried. He pulled a card from his deck and cried, "Aayla! You better get out of the way!"

The Twi'lek whipped around to look at him. Noticing the card in his hand, she needed no second bidding and she darted back up the corridor and jumped over Gargomon, landing behind him where she was well out of rang.

"Digi-modify!" Henry cried. "Shellmon's Aqua Blaster Activate!"

"Good plan!" Gargomon cried, feeling the new attack entering his body. "If fire doesn't work, we'll use water instead. Let's flood them out! **AQUA BLASTER!"**

The cannons promptly stopped spewing out green lasers and suddenly shot forth and enormous torrent of water at extremely high-pressure. The zombies were struck full-blast by the assault and shoved back the way they had come under the sudden flood. They tumbled, screeching and groaning, back down the tunnel.

"Nice!" Gargomon said, turning around to fire the attack down the corridor that Kyubimon was defending. The fox sprang aside as the water jetted past her and wiped out the zombie forces there too.

"Don't you love Modify Cards?" asked Gargomon, shutting off the attack, water still dripping from his cannons.

"I have to say I do," nodded Aayla. "Let's go." She ran past Gargomon and into the wet corridor that she'd been in before. Near the bottom, the zombies were recovering from their battering and getting to their feet again, but Aayla promptly fell upon them with her lightsaber.

But, behind them, disaster struck. One of the clones, whose name was Rizer, was taken utterly by surprise when a Geonosian zombie exploded from the wall right next to him, emerging from a tunnel with an entrance that had been completely sealed and hidden from view from everyone. The zombie grabbed Rizer by the shoulders and hauled him backwards, towards the entrance of the tunnel.

"Rizer!" his companion, Dive, cried, and turned to shoot at the new zombie. Unfortunately, this allowed the old zombie that _had_ been shooting at to lunge from the tunnel and grab him too. Dive turned to shoot at his attacker, but Rizer was pulled, kicking and screaming, into the tunnel. Obi-Wan looked towards the commotion and ran forward to help the poor clone. But he was too late. Rizer was pulled up the tunnel and out of sight.

Obi-Wan grimaced. It was a high probability that they'd never see Rizer again. Who knew what the Geonosians would do to him in there?

But then, something fell from the tunnel Rizer had been dragged into. Something small, round and metallic.

It was one of Rizer's thermal detonators and it was primed to blow.

Dive, wrestling with his own Geonosian, didn't noticed it, and accidentally kicked the detonator. The small, metallic sphere sailed down the corridor, right towards where the Digimon were standing.

"Incoming!" Obi-Wan cried desperately. "Gargomon! Kyubimon! Look out!"

Kyubimon turned at the shouting and spotted the incoming bomb. Her eyes widened in sudden fear and she hurriedly slammed into Gargomon, sending both the Champion level Digimon tumbling into the corridor that she had been battling in previously. The bomb came to rest where they had been standing.

It exploded.

The sudden bang erupted through the corridors and tore through the rock walls all around them. The enclosed space made the innocent looking sphere more catastrophic than it would have been on the surface and the walls around where the Digimon had been collapsed, dragging rocks and the ceiling downwards in a massive pile. The Tamers were too close to comfort so Obi-Wan grabbed them with the Force and hauled them over to him, shielding himself and them from the debris.

The clones, Obi-Wan, Anakin and Ahsoka were all knocked off their feet by the blast as the tunnel collapsed ahead of them.

Gargomon and Kyubimon were also thrown backwards by the explosion, in another direction.

And Aayla, slicing the head off another zombie, whirled around to find the ceiling of the tunnel behind her collapsing in towards her. The Twi'lek's eyes widened and she hurled herself to one side as the rocks cascaded over where she had been standing.

Gradually, everything settled down. Coughing on the dust thrown up by the explosion, Aayla looked up to find that there was nothing but a wall of rocks in front of her.

She was completely cut off from all of the others.

* * *

If you hadn't guessed already, I do love my cliffhangers. Mwahahahahaha. I hope you all enjoyed that and I promise that my next update will come as quickly as I can churn it out, so hopefully it'll be here by Friday. But, we'll see. Anyway, I'll be seeing all of you next time.

Please review.

* * *

Next time...

Now separated, the others must all follow different paths to accomplish the same goal, wiping out the threat of the Geonosian zombies once and for all. But is this task just too much of a challenge for them?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 59 : The Bonds of Friendship**


	59. The Bonds of Friendship

It's almost Halloween. Rather appropriate that I reached the zombie stage of my fanfic during October isn't it. I was slightly tempted to leave this chapter for a while and post it on Sunday, but after the last several cliffhangers I've done, I decided I couldn't do that to you readers. So, on we go. I have brought the Star Wars section of another arc to a close. Read on. I hope you find the ending satisfactory.

See if you can spot the two altered quotes in this chapter. One is an altered quote from Film 4 – A New Hope, and another is an altered quote from Film 6 – Return of the Jedi.

Let's get cracking.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 59:- The Bonds of Friendship**

* * *

Aayla held the back of her hand to her mouth to prevent the dust kicked up from the collapsing tunnel from getting inside as she approached the thick mass of rock that separated her from everybody else she had descended into the tunnels with. She looked up at the enormous blockade that completely sealed off the tunnel. For a moment, she considered using the Force to move the boulders aside, but she knew that would be no good. She'd end up blasting them into her friends.

"Aayla!" shouted a voice from the other side of the wall. A voice that distinctly belonged to Gargomon. "Aayla! Are you alright?"

"Yes!" Aayla shouted back through the tunnel. "I'm fine for the moment. The boulders missed, but I don't think there's any way for me to join up with you guys again."

"We know," Kyubimon shouted through the rocks too. "We're completely sealed off from the others too. Everyone's alright as far as we know, but we cut off now. If we collapse this wall any further we could end up bringing even more debris down on us."

Aayla gritted her teeth and sighed, staring at the pile of rocks that stood in her way. Kyubimon was right. It was far too damaged to move without specialist equipment to keep the roof from collapsing.

"Gargomon!" Aayla shouted through the rocks. "What about Turuiemon and Barriss? How is the situation going?"

"Not well," Gargomon replied. "The situation has taken a turn for the worse and Luminara's beginning to kick the stuffing out of them. They aren't going to last a few more minutes."

"Can you reach them?" Aayla shouted.

"No, we can't," Gargomon replied. "I can sense the direction we'd have to take, but it would take us too long even if we ran flat out because these tunnels wind around so much."

"Then what do we do?"

"Aayla, it's up to you," Kyubimon replied. "You're much closer to them through that tunnel. You are the only one who can reach them in time."

Aayla's heart thumped in her chest at the prospect. "But... but I don't know where to go from here. Only you guys know the way."

"Aayla!" Gargomon replied. "You can't afford to hesitate right now. You have to find them and you have to find them fast. Think about all the missions you went on before you met us! Get out there and do what you have to do!"

"But how?" Aayla asked desperately.

"Aayla, get past the 'I can't,'" Kyubimon replied. "Think about what you are saying. Think about Turuiemon. We let you into our group and you came in willingly. We've fought beside you for almost five months! You're more than just a team player – you're part of the family."

Aayla blinked at reference, touched that the Digimon felt the same way as Suzie did.

"We bonded with you and you, in turn, bonded with us," said Gargomon. "And where Digimon are concerned, our bonds are our strength. That wouldn't be much to most non-Digimon, but you are a Jedi, and can use the Force. You can do this Aayla. Use your senses and the bond you share with us to find your way through this labyrinth and get to Turuiemon!"

Aayla was about to say something, but Kyubimon cut across her. "Gargomon and I are going to take the long way round. We're counting on you to get to the others and stall Luminara long enough for us to come and help. Then, we'll take her together."

"You're Turuiemon and Barriss' only hope now, Aayla!" shouted Gargomon.

Aayla's expression hardened. She knew they were right. As a Jedi, forming bonds with others meant that they could usually sense the people they were close to. And since Master Yoda had given her his blessing, she had gotten closer to the Digimon than most Master and Padawan relationships ever got. Gargomon and Kyubimon were echoing Master Yoda's words, the bonds of their friendship was what made the Digimon strong.

And it was time to put her friendship with them to the test.

Aayla shut her eyes and stretched out with her senses. She could feel a lot of nearby presences coming from all her friends on the other side of the wall – Gargomon, Kyubimon, Bly, Ahsoka, Anakin, Obi-Wan. But she wasn't looking for any of them. She stretched out wider, expanding the search into the tunnels in the direction they'd been taking before. All sound was blotted out, all her other sense extinguished as she focused her mind, searching for one particular person.

There!

Aayla's eyes snapped open. She had a lock on Turuiemon. And she could sense her weariness and exhaustion, even from this distance.

"I've got a lock!" she shouted through the wall. "I'll get going."

"We knew you could do it!" she could see the grin on Gargomon's face in her mind's eye. "Now go! Hurry!"

Aayla needed no second bidding and, ignoring the wet floor and walls from Gargomon's previous Aqua Blaster, she hared down the tunnels at breakneck pace, dodging through corridors and slipping round corners with ease.

"Come on!" Gargomon turned to Kyubimon, his eyes steely. "We have to get going to."

_Guys,_ Henry's voice resounded in the minds of the two Digimon as they began to move through the tunnels at speed. _There's no way for us to get through to you, either. We'll press on through the tunnels and see what we should find. Commander Cody's using a tracking system on his armour like radar to give us a guess on where to go._

_What's the plan? _Asked Gargomon.

_We're going to see if we can find Queen Karina,_ replied Rika. _She might know how to stop the worms and get that one out of Luminara. And if she won't talk we'll see if we can get Poggle to talk._

_Right,_ nodded Kyubimon. _Get going._

_We're on our way now,_ said Henry.

_And stay close to the Jedi,_ said Gargomon.

_Relax, bunny-brain,_ said Rika. _We're not taking any chances with those zombies hanging around the place._

Gargomon and Kyubimon shut off their conversation as they continued to run helter-skelter through the tunnels. A couple of times they ran into zombies, washed away by Gargomon's previous Aqua Blaster, but they simply ploughed straight through them before they could begin to swarm like last time.

Three separate groups, all of different sizes and all moving in different directions. All of them had different individual intentions, but overall their goal was the same – to bring down Queen Karina the Great and her empire.

It ended tonight.

* * *

Turuiemon slammed into the wall again, sporting a terrific bruise on her chin from Luminara's most recent kick. The Champion Digimon wasn't doing very well now. Her and Barriss' deliberate attempts to hold back and prevent them from harming the innocent Luminara were greatly costing them and they were losing the fight. Luminara had yet to score a direct hit with her blade, but Turuiemon had had several close calls. Her blue bandana that was usually tied around her neck was gone, lying in two pieces on the ground. Her yellow clothing was torn in several places as well and one of her eyes was slightly blackened.

Turuiemon fell to one knee and looked up, grimacing at the Mirialan Master still standing before her. Luminara hadn't come out totally unscathed either, but any bruises she sported were hidden beneath her clothing. Barriss was still on her feet, albeit barely and blocked Luminara's next blade strike, bringing her lightsaber up to take and overhead blow and spinning to block another. Her hood had finally fallen down, revealing her short blue hair that fell to her shoulders beneath. The hood itself had been sliced in half after a quick duck earlier on.

Barriss barely blocked another blow and fell into a crouch to avoid another, rolling to the side and swinging up to counter the next strike. But everything went downhill from there. Barriss was really struggling to keep up with her Master's movements now. Her arms were aching and the multiple bruises she had received were throbbing painfully, but still she fought on. Barriss gritted her teeth as she blocked another slash, but Luminara just swept her blade aside and backhanded her across the face.

Barriss stumbled, her hand automatically flying to the wound, her nose beginning to bleed as she did. She was left vulnerable to Luminara's follow-up kick which crashed into the back of Barriss' head. Barriss tumbled forwards and rolled a slight distance before coming to a stop.

She didn't get up again. She was unconscious.

Turuiemon growled. She watched Luminara raised her blade to strike. She couldn't let Barriss die. And, since she figured the real Luminara wouldn't mind a few injuries if it meant her Padawan didn't die at her own hands, she sprang forwards with a loud warcry, extending her blades as she prepared to do some proper damage.

Luminara looked up and smirked, extending her hand. Turuiemon's flight suddenly reversed and she was sent crashing into the wall again. Her muscles seized up as she was flattened against the wall, her arms and legs outstretched and utterly immobilised against the wall. Turuiemon strained furiously, desperately trying to move her limbs, but they didn't budge an iota.

Luminara calmly approached, her hands still outstretched as she used the Force to pin the struggling Turuiemon to the wall. "Looks like I win," Luminara smiled up at her helpless victim. "You know, I like it in this body. It's so powerful. Just what our Great Queen needs for her plans. And now, to make my first kill in it."

Turuiemon shut her eyes as Luminara raised her blade to strike. _I'm sorry, Suzie,_ she thought to herself as, despite her eyelids being closed, she still saw the green light that permeated through them as Luminara struck.

When, suddenly, blue light was permeating through her eyelids instead and there was the sound of clashing lightsabers.

Barriss?

"What?" Luminara cried. "Where did you come from?"

Turuiemon's eyes opened to see a blue lightsaber right in front of her face, holding the green one back. And the hilt was been grasped by a scowling Aayla Secura.

"You look a little worse for wear, Turuiemon," Aayla said. "Let me take it from here."

Luminara growled. "You shall fall like these two did."

"I don't think so," said Aayla and with a sudden Force-burst she flung Luminara away, sending her sailing down the tunnels. Turuiemon slumped to the floor, released from the grip of the Force. She looked up and watched as Aayla charged after her opponent.

Luminara got up to face Aayla as the Twi'lek ran to engage her in combat. Aayla sprang into the air and brought her lightsaber down heavily. Luminara raised her own blade in defence and the two blades clashed together, the force of the spring combined with the Twi'lek's body weight forcing Luminara back several steps as the blades pushed against each other.

Luminara broke the lock, but was forced to turn aside a downwards diagonal swing from Aayla, then leap backwards to avoid one coming the other way. Aayla crouched low, turning her miss into a spin and striking again, and Luminara hurriedly parried the strike. The Jedi Master than retaliated with her own, but Aayla span low again, bringing up her blade to block it and the next strike. Aayla shoved it aside and smacked her shoulder into Luminara's chest, knocking her back a little.

Luminara grunted and came again, swinging for Aayla's head, but Aayla was too fast and ducked beneath it, sliding backwards and blocking another downward strike from Luminara. Aayla twirled, slinging the blade over her shoulder to parry yet another slash from behind, then whipping around to slice in at knee height, only to be met with Luminara's blade again.

The two Jedi separated momentarily, and glared into each other's eyes. Aayla slowly twirled her blade in her hands for a moment, before initiating a sudden flourish of strikes with her blade. A downward swing was parried, then Aayla struck again with two diagonal sweeps from either direction, which Luminara blocked and then dodged. Luminara spun around to block Aayla's next strike, and tried to get in one of her own, which Aayla leaned back to dodge and reposted quickly, forcing Luminara to block again.

Luminara was pushed back as Aayla struck again, slicing in from the left and once Luminara has turned that aside she struck from above again. Having that stopped too, Aayla ducked low and swept in a circle, coming in for a stab that passed beneath Luminara's arms as she dodged. Aayla finished the spin and slammed her blade towards Luminara's face, bringing the match to another lightsaber lock as the two pushed against each other, Luminara leaning over backwards as Aayla pushed for all she was worth.

Luminara was shocked at the aggressiveness of Aayla's attack. What she didn't know was that Aayla was expertly hoaxing her strikes, making it look like she was going for an all-out assault instead of actually seeking to wound. Aayla was an expert with a blade, and if Luminara slipped up, then she could easily turn her blade aside to escape injury. But Luminara didn't need to know that, and Aayla figured the worm controlling her deserved a good scare after what it had done to Barriss and Turuiemon.

Besides, it was better for Luminara to be on the defensive. It might wear her down for when Gargomon and Kyubimon arrived.

And from where she was watched, slumped and exhausted, Turuiemon grinned at the amazing lightsaber duel unfolding before her.

_You go, girl,_ she thought to Aayla.

And though Turuiemon didn't see it, Aayla's eyes suddenly widened in surprise.

* * *

The last couple of days hadn't been terribly good to Poggle the Lesser. After the destruction of his weapon's factory by those enormous creatures, Poggle's retreat had been swift and decisive, coming to his Queen in an attempt to find sanctuary. And then, things had started to look when he captured the Jedi and that strange smaller creature with his zombie hordes and presented them to the Queen.

But then, of course, that creature had suddenly changed into a larger being and ruined almost everything by freeing the first of the Jedi. It hadn't been able to rescue to most powerful one though, so the day hadn't been a total loss so far. But it had escaped with the child and the Padawan.

Having seen it shapeshift into something bigger, Poggle quickly put two and two together. Though he hadn't known it before, he felt it pretty safe to assume that the small, brown bunny that had entered the tunnels with the Jedi and one of the creatures that had blasted through his Geonosian bunkers and assisted in the destruction of his prize factory, probably the giant, pink one, were one in the same. Obviously the tunnels were too big for the larger transformation, but if that creature got outside, it could get larger and blow the entire Temple, and everything underground it for miles, skyhigh.

That's why Poggle was currently leading a large battalion of zombie Geonosians through the tunnels. He knew the Queen had called out to the zombies still within the tunnels and was directing them to apprehend anything they came across, but who knew what that creature was capable of. That's why Poggle had taken a large number of the zombies into the tunnels to try and track them down.

Poggle was still fairly confident he could pull a victory out of this. Threatening the little girl had worked last time. Why shouldn't it work again?

"Rrrrkitikkitikki grrgaaaarrgrrk," Poggle pointed down the tunnel and the zombies followed him obediently. After all, that was all they did. They were hardly the perfect soldier thanks to their slow speed, but they were perfect mindless drones and were incredibly hard to stop. Poggle was confident that he was safe.

He was, as he had been several times over the last few days, dead wrong.

He passed by several tunnels as he and the zombies continued down the tunnel they were following, which they knew lead to the lightsaber fight going on, due to direction from the Queen and the worm controlling Luminara. But, he was unaware of two pairs of eyes, watching him from one particular tunnel.

As he passed it by, a sudden shout echoed from the darkness of the tunnel.

"**DRAGON WHEEL!"**

Poggle whipped around, to see a wall of blue flames shaped like a giant, draconic head, surge out of the tunnel that he had just passed by and blindside the zombie Geonosians. Poggle leapt backwards in fear as the blistering hot flames swept the zombies down another tunnel. It didn't hurt the zombies, but it did send them all flying. The fire condensed and resolved itself into Kyubimon, who glared angrily at Poggle.

Poggle prepared to order the zombies to kill the fox, when Gargomon sailed out of the same tunnel and with a cry of **"BUNNY PUMMEL!"** he slammed his fist into the ceiling beside the tunnel filled with zombies. The ceiling blew apart and yet another rock slide occurred. But this time, it sealed the zombies away from Poggle.

Now, he was alone with two very, very angry Champion level Digimon.

"I thought it was you," Kyubimon growled, advancing towards the terrified Geonosian Archduke. "I recognized your foul stench from when I was in that factory and defeated your Super Tanks."

Gargomon slammed his cannons together menacingly. "And you have got a lot to answer for, buddy. Pissing off a Digimon is not a wise thing to do."

"And you may find we are very pissed off at you right now," Kyubimon snarled.

Poggle flapped his wings and took to the air desperately, seeking to escape from the wrath of what he knew were the other two creatures that had attacked his factory. But he was swiftly brought down as Kyubimon shot after him and pounced upwards slamming into his back and bringing him crashing to the ground.

Poggle tried to scramble upwards, but he found his legs were locked in position and held to the floor by four of Kyubimon's nine tails. He buzzed with his wings, but he just couldn't lift himself into the air.

Kyubimon placed a paw on his chest and pushed him against the wall. "I wouldn't do that!" the fox growled. "You're only making it even worse for yourself."

"And before you say it couldn't get any worse, believe me, it could," Gargomon walked up next to them. "Now, you are going to tell us what we want to know."

"And you will do it NOW!" Kyubimon roared. "We know that our friend Luminara Unduli has been infected by one of your zombie brain worms. Don't ask us how we know that, because we aren't going to tell you."

"And now you can answer a question of ours!" Gargomon said. "How do we kill that worm of yours? How do we get it out of Luminara's body without harming to host?"

Poggle shook his head. He wasn't about to spill the beans just yet. He did not want to face the wrath of Karina if he allowed them to free the Jedi.

"I think he requires a little more persuasion," said Kyubimon.

"So do I," said Gargomon. Simultaneously, Gargomon's cannons glowed green as they powered up, ready to release his attack, while Kyubimon's five remaining tails suddenly flared into life. Both the Digimon held them threateningly over Poggle's head, and their gazes both indicated that this was not as bluff. If Poggle didn't tell them everything, they would roast him where he stood.

Poggle panicked. The prospect of being blasted in the face by a high-powered cannon and burnt alive at the same time was far, far too much for him. Immediately, he babbled. "Rrratokatroktoko greanerrgikio polorrgrenakoli greeeaaaharigrr."

Gargomon and Kyubimon both stared at him for a second. Then Gargomon turned to his mate and said, "We may have forgotten one minor detail. He doesn't speak English. Or Basic. Or whatever."

"Well, at least we got him talking. All we need is a translator."

"You didn't bring a protocol droid with you by any chance?" asked Gargomon.

"No, but that's no reason to give up," Kyubimon switched over to mind speak and said, _Rika. Talk to me. We need some help._

* * *

"Bllaaaaassst that Twiiiiiiii'lek," Karina growled to herself and she commanded her brain worm to move Luminara's body in her duel with Aayla some distance away. "Wheeeeeereee did sheee come from? Shheeeee must pay."

The great cavern where she lay was still filled with zombies, but there were still another small group of beings in the room. The battle droids from before, which seemed to have been all but forgotten by just about everyone in the room and, indeed, everyone in the whole tunnel system, watched the great Queen with differing amounts of fear.

"I did not sign on for this," said one of them, staring up the huge, fat bulk of the head of the Geonosian hive mind. "When I was produced in that factory, I thought we were going off to fight against clones, not come down here to this."

"I agree," said another battle droid. "Why don't we just quit and leave the Separatist army."

"Because we can't since it's against our programming to disobey orders or desert?" asked another one.

"Oh yeah," slumped the other. "So, that means we're stuck here?"

"Until Lord Poggle gives us another order, then yes, I think we are," said another.

"But I don't want to be here," whined another. "Look at that undead guy over there," he pointed at one of the zombies. "It's staring at me funny."

"It's staring at everyone funny," said another droid. "Relax O.M.19. They aren't going to do anything to us unless someone orders them to, so as long as we don't do anything against the rules, we'll be alright."

"Then let's just shut up and... hey, look at that," the first battle droid pointed towards one of the tunnels on the other side of the room. The other droids turned to look at the blue and green light that was beginning to glow on the walls of the tunnels.

"What is that?" asked one.

"I think I know," sagged another.

"What does it mean?" asked another.

"It means we're dead," said the sagging one.

That was when Obi-Wan, Anakin and Ahsoka entered the giant chamber. The zombies turned in their direction, as did the Queen, staring at the three Jedi, as well as the three small children that stood behind them.

"That's her," Suzie cried, pointing at the Queen.

"Ugh," Ahsoka grimaced at the sight if Karina. "Excuse me while I throw up."

"Yooooooouuuuuu," Karina pointed at Suzie, who glared defiantly back. "Thheeerree you are. Come to deliver mooorree Jedi to ME have you."

"Your Majesty," said Obi-Wan, stepping forwards to speak with the Queen. "My name is Obi-Wan Kenobi. And no, I am afraid that we have not come to surrender. We would like to bargain."

"No," said Anakin. "_You_ would like to bargain. I would like to kill her."

"Patience Anakin," Obi-Wan frowned. "If she doesn't cooperate, it may just come to that."

Karina did that same horrible, screeching noise that she had done a couple of times before, and then she said, "Thheeeeerreee will be no bargain, Jedi. Iiiiiii will not resign myself to aaannyy of your terms. Yooouuuu are now in mmmyyy chamber. Three more Jedi to add to mmmyyy forces. Seeeiiiizzzeee them."

"Well, that was short-lived," sighed Obi-Wan, as the zombies moved forward again. "I was hoping for a very different result."

"You didn't expect to get it though, did you?" asked Ahsoka.

"No, not really," Obi-Wan grimaced. "But I still had to try." He activated his comlink and said, "Cody, wait for my signal and then carry out your objective."

"Yes, sir," said the voice of the clone through the comlink. "We await your command."

"Alright, kids, back-up now," said Ahsoka, stepping in front of the Tamers as the six of them began to back away from the hordes of Geonosians that were approaching them.

"Oh, you don't need to tell us," said Rika, wryly. "I don't want to be anywhere near this room now and I definitely don't want to be in it in a few minutes."

The six of them backed into the tunnel, very slowly, staying just ahead of the ridiculously slow, staggering pace of the zombies. "Mooooovvveee faster!" Karina squealed, and the zombies did just that, so the others increased their speed too.

Once they were well back into the tunnel, Obi-Wan activated his comlink again and cried, "Cody! Now!"

* * *

Meanwhile the droids back in the room were glancing at one another. "That's not Jedi behaviour is it?" asked one. "I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be expert swordsmen that can take out over a hundred of us on their own."

"Yeah, that was weird, them just backing off like that," said another.

"They probably have a plan of some kind," said the first.

"Look! Clones!" cried another, pointing at another corridor. The droids and Karina and the remaining zombies turned to look as a number of clones suddenly poured from another tunnel and into the room.

"Whhhhhaaaatttt is this?" Karina cried.

"This is where we kill you," said Rex. "Fire!"

The clones took up stances and, raising their blasters, they opened fire, emptying their ammunition in the direction of the Queen. But they weren't aiming at the Queen directly. Once again, they were taking advantage of the fact they had a roof and blasted the ceiling above the Queen. Karina looked up and wailed as huge boulders cascaded down upon her enormous body, some of them almost as big as she was.

Karina was being buried alive under the roof of her own throne room, if it could be called that. Her terrific wails carried on for several seconds, lasting up to almost ten, before they were cut off. Her enormous body gave her no chance to flee and just like that, the Geonosian Queen was no more.

"Can we run now?" asked one of the battle droids.

"Yes," said another.

And with that, they turned and began running in circles in a complete panic.

"Well, I have to say that was a privilege," chuckled Bly. "To meet the Queen of Geonosis, and then kill her."

"Wait 'til we tell Commander Jet he missed this," chuckled Deviss.

* * *

"Looks like the plan worked," said Anakin from in the tunnel. "Come on, Snips. Let's go clean up the rest of the mess the Queen left behind."

"Right behind you, Skyguy," Ahsoka replied and the two of them swept forward. Just as before, they began to slice through the hordes of Geonosian zombies, aiming for the necks and slicing off arms wherever they went. The corridor literally became a blue of blades as they whirled like twin tornadoes.

Obi-Wan sighed as he watched Anakin and Ahsoka battling the zombies. "Always rushing," he muttered to himself. "It seems that the two of them just can't wait to rush into battle. And it also seems that I'll never be able to end that habit. Oh well," he prepared his own lightsaber to join them, but then Rika interrupted him.

"Hold on a second," said the red-headed Tamer. "Kyubimon's contacting me."

Obi-Wan took a glance at the fight and, deciding that Anakin and Ahsoka had things covered, he turned to look at Rika.

"And what is she saying?" he asked. "Have they managed to join the fight against Luminara?"

"No, not yet," Rika shook her head. "But they have managed to find and subdue Poggle the Lesser."

"Really?" Obi-Wan cocked an eyelid. "Well, most impressive. Tell Kyubimon and Gargomon that I commend them for their efforts. At least he didn't escape us again. And, he might be able to provide us with key information on how to extract that worm from Luminara."

"We know," nodded Rika. "Apparently they've already got Poggle talking but there is a big problem. They can't understand a word he's saying. Do you speak Geonosian, Obi-Wan?"

"Regrettably no," Obi-Wan placed a hand on his chin. "Hmm, this does complicate things. We're too deep underground to send a signal to Master Mundi and ask him to send down a protocol droid."

Obi-Wan turned around and saw that Anakin and Ahsoka had now entered what was left of the main chamber. The two of them were leaping over the enormous boulders that had fallen from the ceiling and hacking the remaining zombies to pieces, as well as the...

"Battle droids!" Obi-Wan said sharply. "They should be able to do the job quite nicely."

Obi-Wan darted into the room just in time to see Ahsoka cleave two of the battle droids into pieces and Bly shoot another in the head. There was now only one battle droid left in the room and Anakin was bearing down on it, lifting his lightsaber high above his head in order to swipe it in two. Hurriedly, Obi-Wan grabbed the droid with the Force and levitated it upwards and over Anakin's strike.

"What the...?" Anakin cried, looking up at the hovering droid.

"Hey, I'm flying," said the droid.

"You missed, Master?" chuckled Ahsoka. "Boy, I think you need more practice."

"Get back here you." Anakin prepared to jump up at the droid.

"Slow down, Anakin," Obi-Wan said, summoning the battle droid gently over to him and tugging the blaster from its grip with his mind. "A new situation has come up. Kyubimon and Gargomon have got Poggle and we need this droid as a translator so we can get the information on how to deal with that worm from him."

Anakin sheathed his blade and glared at the droid. "Consider yourself lucky, droid."

"Which way do we go?" asked Cody.

"Just follow us," said Henry. "We'll lead you straight to them."

"Come on!" Ahsoka nodded and ran after the Tamers as the three of them darted into yet another tunnel, using their links with their partners to steer them through the maze. The clones and Anakin plunged after them, with Obi-Wan at the back, levitating the droid in front of him.

"Hey, this is fun," said the droid, putting its hands behind its head. "How many other battle droids have ever done this?"

"Don't get too comfortable up there," Obi-Wan told it.

* * *

It took them a few minutes but eventually they rounded a corner to see Gargomon and Kyubimon in the corridor up ahead, bathed in the torchlight of the clone troopers. Poggle was pinned to floor underneath one of Kyubimon's paws, and the Archduke of Geonosis didn't look like he was putting up a fight. He must have resigned himself to his fate.

"Took you long enough," said Gargomon, who was studiously pointing his cannon at Poggle's head. "Did you bring the translator?"

"Yep," said Ahsoka. "Make way for the battle droid. There's a sentence I never thought I'd say," she added with a mutter.

"And that's an order I never thought I'd carry out," added Rex as the clones moved to either sides of the corridor and allowed Anakin, Obi-Wan and the battle droid through.

Kyubimon scowled down at Poggle. "Alright then, bugface. Tell us again what it was you said before. And remember to say it loud and clear. Or else."

As Poggle repeated the exact same sequence of clocks and jibbers as he had previously.

"Well?" Ahsoka asked the battle droid. "What did he say?"

"Should I tell them, Lord Poggle?" asked the droid. Poggle nodded extremely vigorously, so much so his neck clicked, and so the battle droid said. "Lord Poggle says that the worms will die if they are exposed to very cold temperatures."

"The cold," asked Anakin. "Great. How are we supposed to find something cold in the middle of the des...ert. Why am I even asking that question? You guys got a Modify Card that might help?"

"I have just the thing," said Rika, rummaging in her deck.

"Is there any chance of you letting me go?" asked the battle droid.

"No," said Anakin, igniting his blade and severing its head without looking.

Rika pulled out a certain card, smirking at the familiar surface of it. "Okay, this card is the one that's gonna win the day. Let's put it to use. Suzie, take it."

"Me?" asked Suzie, taking the card that Rika was offering. "Why me?"

"Because, silly," chuckled Rika. "Turuiemon is already close to Luminara isn't she? And that means if you give her that Modify Card as an upgrade, Luminara can be free of that disgusting parasite's grip before two minutes are over."

"An extremely desirable outcome if ever there was one," agreed Obi-Wan.

"Oh yeah," nodded Suzie. "Okay, I'll just give Turuiemon a heads-up." And with that, she withdrew into her mind and contacted her partner. _Turuiemon,_ she called. _Can you hear me?_

* * *

Luminara and Aayla were still duelling fiercely in the corridors some distance away, neither of them backing down and both refusing to relent on the furious blows being traded between them. Luminara threw a pair of strikes at Aayla, one of them coming in at waist height, which Aayla hurriedly turned aside, and the second scything towards the Twi'lek's neck. But Aayla blocked that two, spreading her legs to drop under Luminara's third strike and suddenly whirling to the left, spinning right around Luminara and striking at her back. But Luminara turned on a die and deflected the strike.

After trading another couple of strikes, Aayla suddenly moved unexpectedly. She pushed Luminara back and, sheathing her lightsaber, the Twi'lek slipped under Luminara's arms and grabbed her arm, jamming her shoulders into Luminara's armpit and heaving, flipping the startled Mirialan right over her shoulder and slamming her to the ground.

Luminara wheezed as she struck the dirt and Aayla sprang into the air, igniting her blade again and slicing it downwards. Luminara rolled aside just in time and leapt to her feet, but Aayla's hand shot out and Luminara was thrown to one side, crashing into the wall. Staggering under the battering, Luminara struggled upright again, but had no time to block as Aayla sailed at her and delivered a flying kick to her stomach. Luminara doubled over and Aayla took advantage of it. Hooking one foot behind Luminara's knee, Aayla flipped backwards onto her hands and pulled Luminara's leg from under her.

"Ready to give up yet, you worm?" Aayla asked, still upside down as she stood in her handstand easily.

"Not a chance," Luminara growled as she got to her feet slowly, savouring the break in fighting. Igniting her lightsaber, she sprang again and slashed at Aayla while she was in a vulnerable position. But Aayla switched to one hand parried Luminara's upwards cleave with her blade. Luminara was stunned and completely forgot to dodge Aayla's sudden spinning kick which crashed into her shoulder and knocked her into the wall again.

Aayla flipped back onto her feet and crouched defensively, lightsaber still in hand.

"You're quite an acrobat," Luminara groaned, ignoring her throbbing shoulder and getting to her feet once again. "I suppose I should remember that. But how did you do that?"

Aayla chuckled. "I can do a great many things upside down. Ever tried dancing on your hands? It's not that easy."

"Dancing?" Luminara blinked. "Why you...!" she attacked again. Aayla rushed up to meet her, spinning her lightsaber so it became a blue blur before her as they rushed to start fighting again. Luminara was surprised yet again when Aayla suddenly counter-struck after three glancing blows, shoving Luminara's lightsaber away and planting a foot on Luminara's chest. Shoving the Master backwards with a quick push, Aayla heaved with her blade at the same time, pulling Luminara's lightsaber out of her grasp and grabbing it in her free hand. Luminara backed away as Aayla expertly twirled both weapons at once.

"You know," said Aayla. "I think some of Anakin's heretical style is starting to run off on me."

Luminara lashed out with the Force and sent Aayla flying back down the corridor. But she got yet another shock as Aayla repositioned herself in the air, slamming into the wall feet first, knees bending and suddenly sprang straight back at her, both weapons at the ready.

_Turuiemon,_ the Champion rabbit watching the battle from where she was shielding the unconscious Barriss suddenly heard the voice of her Tamer in her mind. _Can you hear me?_

_Yes, Suzie,_ said Turuiemon, taking her focus off Luminara's desperate dodging from Aayla's feints. _What is it?_

_We managed to get an answer from Poggle,_ Suzie cried. _And we know how we can get the worm out of Luminara._

_Great. How?_

_It's up to you. I'm going to give you a Modify Card that will help you. Use it on Luminara and don't let up. You got it?_

_Sir, yes sir,_ Turuiemon chuckled. Suzie was sounding like a clone Commander at the moment.

_Okay, here goes._

And Turuiemon watched expectantly as Suzie swiped the card and shouted "Digi-modify! SnowAgumon's Frozen Wind Activate!"

Turuiemon recognised the attack. Renamon once told her she had used this Modify Card to defeat an Allomon once, before they had ever even met. Turuiemon felt her data being re-arranged and she got to her feet, her strength returning as hope surged into her. Finally, there was a way to stop this madness.

Luminara ducked and dodged wildly as Aayla swung both the lightsabers in her hands at the Jedi Master. The worm inside her was panicking at the thought of being killed. It didn't realise Aayla's strikes were fakes, so it just assumed she was a merciless person. Aayla stepped back and struck with her mind, blasting Luminara backwards again.

"Aayla!" cried a voice behind her, and the Twi'lek turned to watch Turuiemon hurtling down the corridor towards them. "You better get out of the way!"

Aayla watched as mist began to unfold from Turuiemon's gloved hands and inkling of what she was about to do came to her. Calmly sidestepping to let her pass, Aayla watched as Turuiemon came to a halt in front of her.

"You again?" asked Luminara, getting to her feet.

"Yes, me," said Turuiemon. "And I think your death is overdue, worm. **FROZEN WIND!"**

Lashing out with her hand, she released an icy cold blast from her palm, which closed the distance between her and Luminara almost instantly and washing over the Jedi Master. Being a Rookie type attack, it didn't inflict anything beyond mild pain – to the body.

"What the..." Luminara coughed as winds that were well below freezing splashed over her. "What's going on?" she cried as the temperatures around her plummeted.

"Your time is up," said Turuiemon, not relenting in her attack. "That's what's going on."

Luminara suddenly convulsed as if a sudden shockwave had passed through her. She cringed and wailed as her body spasmed, seeming to lose control of its own muscles. She shrieked, and it came out as both her own, and the same unearthly screech of a Geonosian zombie. Her arms raised her and her fingers curled as she dropped to her knees, gasping and choking and clawing at her own throat.

Frost began to form over her robes as she fell to her hands and knees, her limbs shaking and completely out of her control. But still Turuiemon kept blasting the icy wind at her.

"Aayla," Luminara moaned weakly. "Turuiemon."

"Luminara," said Aayla, stepping up beside Turuiemon. "The worm inside you is dying. Fight it. Force it out of you."

Luminara gritted her teeth and her head jerked violently from side to side. She suddenly reared up and shrieked again, and as ice began to take the place of the frost, she retched and the worm was in sight, wriggling and squirming in her mouth. Luminara screamed, clutching her head in agony as the dying worm thrashed around inside her.

Aayla darted in. Plunging through the Frozen Wind attack, she grabbed the worm in one hand and wrenched it out of Luminara's mouth. Flinging it into the air, she took Luminara's lightsaber and slashed through it. The worm made no sound as it was hacked in two pieces and it fell to the floor in halves.

Only now did Turuiemon stop the attack.

Luminara – plain, ordinary, uninfected Luminara – collapsed onto her stomach. Both Aayla and Turuiemon immediately ran to her side and rolled her gently onto her back. Aayla wrapped an arm around her shoulders and lifted her up slightly, while Turuiemon steadied her.

"Master Luminara," she said. "Are you okay?"

Luminara's eyes slowly opened. She clutched her head and groaned, shaking it slightly as if trying to clear it. "I have a pounding headache," she said. "And numerous bruises. But, I think I'll be alright."

"Thank goodness," said Aayla, a smile appearing on her face. "There were a few moments there when you had me worried."

"You... are an exceptional battler, Aayla," said Luminara. "Well done. And you too, Turuiemon. Thank you. Thank you both for getting that thing out of me."

"We could hardly leave it there, could we?" Turuiemon smiled.

Luminara's eyes widened and she sat up suddenly. "Barriss!" she cried. "Barriss! Is she alright?"

Turuiemon and Aayla exchanged a glance. Turuiemon got over and ran to the Padawan, who was still unconscious, while Aayla helped Luminara get to her feet and assisted her back up the corridor, the Twi'lek deliberately treading on the dead worm as she passed. They arrived to find Turuiemon pinching Barriss' nose to stop it from bleeding.

"No serious injuries that I can see," said Turuiemon. "She should be fine."

"That's such a relief," Luminara sighed, flopping in Aayla's grip, resulting in Aayla slinging one over Luminara's arms over her shoulders and under her lekku and holding it there to keep her upright. "If I can killed me own Padawan, even if not deliberately by my own hand, I doubt I could ever have forgiven myself."

"She'll need a new cloak and hood though," said Turuiemon, flicking the tattered cloth around Barriss' shoulders.

"Well, fortunately, they are easy to come by," smiled Aayla. "The important thing is we don't need a new Barriss."

As if her name was a trigger, Barriss suddenly stirred and her eyes opened. Upon finding she couldn't breathe through her nose, she had a sudden panic, until she saw that it was Turuiemon holding it shut.

"Turuiemon?" she asked weakly. Then she spotted the others. "Master? Are you okay? Aayla? When did you get here?"

"I think we'll have time for explanations later," said Aayla, as Turuiemon let go of Barriss' nose and helped the Padawan to her feet. "But we need to get you back to the others." Aayla focused her mind and said, "Follow me."

The four of them moved slowly down the corridors. Of all of them, Aayla was the only one that wasn't limping but she was walking far slower than usual to allow the others to keep up. Meanwhile, Turuiemon had started up another internal conversation with the other members of the Super Six.

_Thank goodness everything turned out alright,_ said Rika. _I don't think we've ever had such a nerve-wracking experience, and we've had plenty of those in the past, haven't we._

_That we have, _said Henry. _And I hope to Fanglongmon that we never have to go through anything like this one ever again._

_At least Luminara's okay,_ said Suzie. _And when I next see Aayla, I'm going to give her the biggest hug she's ever been giving for saving Turuiemon's life._

_You know, Suzie,_ said Turuiemon. _I might just join you._

_Me too,_ said Gargomon. _That fight between Aayla and Luminara has to be one of _the_ most amazing and most awe-inspiring things I have ever seen in my entire life. Her skills with a sword are way too cool for school._

_I'll take that as a compliment, shall I?_ Asked Aayla.

_Well, it was certainly intended to be a compli-WHAT THE HELL!_

_Blimey,_ chuckled Aayla. _You can shout loudly even without using your mouth. Impressive, Gargomon._

_Aayla?_ Kyubimon asked, amazed. _I can hear you? But... you're not using Turuiemon to speak with us. You're doing it on your own?_

_A Jedi's telepathy is much, much easier for people who are close to one another and form bonds with,_ explained Aayla. _I heard Turuiemon say _'You go girl' _to me during my battle with Luminara. It appears I have broken through another barrier. Now I don't need to stare into one of your eyes to connect with your minds. I can do it independently._

_I wondered when this would finally happen,_ said Henry, chucking. _I think it's safe to say that if Aayla didn't qualify as a member of our family before then she definitely does now._

_Welcome, big sister,_ laughed Rika.

Aayla flushed. _I never had a proper family before. My uncle didn't really count in my opinion._

_Well,_ said Kyubimon. _You have one now._

_This is so sweet,_ Gargomon laughed. _The Super Six have another member to their ranks. And what would be better than officially giving us the new name of the Stupendous Seven._

_Stupendous? _Turuiemon frowned. _Er, I vote that we just stick with Super. After all, the alliteration is still there._

_I agree,_ said Rika quickly.

_Me too,_ said Henry.

_Me too,_ said Suzie, just because everyone else was saying it.

_You guys are all so mean to me sometimes,_ said Gargomon, huffing.

_Momentai, Gargomon._

_Thank you Turuiemon for proving my point._

In the darkness of the tunnel, lit only by the blue lightsaber Aayla was holding aloft, the Twi'lek beamed. Despite everything that had happened throughout today this had to be somewhere in the Top Five Happiest Moments Of Her Life. Her self-esteem was so high, it could probably be placed right at number one. She was now part of both the A-Team and the Super Seven.

She couldn't help it. A single tear of happiness fell down one cheek.

* * *

Everyone met up once again when they reached the surface and found themselves back in the main room of the Temple, where the statue of the recently deceased Queen Karina looked over them. It didn't give anybody the creeps anymore, and the clones made sure that it was riddled with blast marks. It looked a darn sight better than it did without them.

Aayla, Turuiemon, Luminara and Barriss were the first to arrive. Luminara and Barriss sat down to catch their breath and nurse their injuries. Both Jedi were amazing at healing, but both of them were too exhausted to muster much energy right now. Turuiemon, meanwhile, de-digivolved back into Lopmon and hopped wearily up onto Aayla's shoulder.

"Well, that was quite an unexpected side-adventure," the bunny smiled, yawning.

"You deserve a good rest after everything you've been through," said Aayla.

"Oh, by the way," Lopmon wrapped her ears around Aayla's head and hugged her neck. "I said I would. Thank you, Aayla. For everything."

Aayla smiled, her cheeks filling with blood. "Don't mention it," she said, modestly.

And that wasn't the last hug Aayla received that day. A few minutes later, the others arrived. Suzie and Terriermon both darted forwards and fulfilled their own promise to hug Aayla, the former wrapping her arms around Aayla's leg and Terriermon hopping onto Aayla's other shoulder. Aayla stroked Suzie's head and tickled Terriermon's armpit, which resulted in a sudden giggle storm from the latter.

But Aayla was surprised yet again when Renamon approached and engulfed the Rutian Twi'lek Jedi Knight in a big, furry hug of her own. Aayla was stunned, but she gladly returned it.

The other three Jedi came up next. Anakin was dragging Poggle along by the wrists, which were securely locked in a pair of binders in front of him. Obi-Wan crossed over to Luminara and Barriss to ask them how they were and Ahsoka followed on.

"I think it would be best if the both of you got some bacta treatment immediately," said Ahsoka. "Neither of you look so good."

"Let's just be grateful that it wasn't anything worse than it was," said Barriss, touching her nose tenderly so it didn't start bleeding again.

"Don't worry, Barriss," Ahsoka grinned. "I'll get you a new cape and hood if you like."

"Thanks."

"No nasty after-effects from being infected by that worm, Luminara?" asked Obi-Wan.

"Not that I can tell, although a blanket would be nice," Luminara shivered. "That Frozen Wind attack really lives up to its name. Oh, and by the way, Master Kenobi. I'd appreciate it if we didn't mention the whole infection bit for a while."

Obi-Wan chuckled. "Understandable, I suppose."

"Well, sirs," said Bly, standing to attention before them. "I'd say we went through all of that pretty well. Despite the overwhelming odds and the fact that those zombies were unkillable, if that's a word, we managed to get through that mess with only one casualty."

"Poor Rizer," sighed Ahsoka. "He was a good man. Unlike this lowlife," she indicated Poggle with distaste.

"Although," said Obi-Wan. "I do wish you hadn't killed that worm, Aayla. It would have been better if we could have studied it to see how it worked."

"Well, I prefer Aayla's approach," said Anakin.

"You would," said Obi-Wan. "But what I mean is, didn't you notice the way that, even after the death of the Queen, those worms kept going. That means that either command was passed to someone else or the worms simply started to work independently. And I'm willing to bet that there are more of them out there somewhere."

"Ah, you worry too much, Obi-Wan," chuckled Anakin. "We don't need to study them. As soon as we get away from this place, I'm going to order Admiral Yularen to send a squad of bombers down here and wipe out the entire area for several miles. That ought to do the trick."

_Such a Skywalker approach,_ Aayla thought to the other members of the Super Seven.

Anakin did wonder why all seven chuckled for no apparent reason.

* * *

An hour later, and they had rejoined the rest of their forces. Poggle was being loaded onto a transport to be taken back to one of the cruisers and put in the brig. Meanwhile, Master Mundi had arrived and told the others that Master Windu had gone off on a mission to Dantooine and required someone to send them a bunch of medical supplies.

While Anakin volunteered the services of Ahsoka to go to Ord Cestus to pick up some supplies from Master Fisto, the Jedi were unaware of a long, thin yellow worm that was snaking its way along the ground not far away. A clone, that went by the name of Scythe, was sleeping with his back propped up against a rock and snoring slightly.

The worm slithered around the boulder and stopped once it reached the clone. It could sense that it had found a potential host to carry out the plans of their deceased Queen. All it had to do was crawl in through the clone's nose and no-one would be any the wiser.

It slipped across the ground and onto Scythe's armour. Gradually it began to make its way towards the trooper's exposed nose, preparing to dive up the nostril and wrap itself around Scythe's brain.

When suddenly, it was grabbed in the hand of a small, brown, rabbit-like creature that had been standing nearby and lifted into the air. Lopmon smirked at it and said, "Nice try," before turning and shouting, "Hey, Anakin!" She woke up Scythe in the process.

Anakin looked over at the rabbit and balked at the sight of the worm squirming in the rabbits paw.

"This thing was about to infect Scythe," Lopmon called. "Still think that it's not such a big deal anymore?"

"It was?" Scythe shrank back from it and shivered, brushing himself off with a look of disgust.

"Er," Anakin rubbed the back of his head, embarrassed. "Perhaps I misjudged the situation a little bit."

"That," said Lopmon, strolling over and depositing the faintly squelching worm into Obi-Wan's awaiting hand. "Is an understatement."

* * *

For those of you who don't watch Clone Wars, in the show, Scythe the clone really was infected by a Geonosian Brain Worm as Ahsoka and Barriss left for Ord Cestus, and managed to smuggle a bunch of Geonsian eggs on board the ship and infect all the other clones and Barriss. But, Lopmon effectively put a stop to that just now, so the events of the episode "Brain Invaders" never takes place.

I hope you liked the duel between Aayla and Luminara. I thought that we'd seen plenty of ass-kickery from the Digimon recently, so now it was Aayla's turn.

I was always going to introduce Aayla further into the group by giving her telepathic contact with the others at some point during the story, but until I started this arc I wasn't sure when I was going to do it. Now seemed as good a time as any. As for the rest of the A-Team, they may or may not develop the same telepathic connection in the future. I haven't decided yet. I hope you all liked that. And FYI, the two quotes I slipped in were when Kyubimon said, "I recognized your foul stench," originally said by Leia in A New Hope, and also, "There will be no bargain," which was said by Jabba in Return of the Jedi and by Karina in this.

Please review.

* * *

Next time...

Beelzemon and GranKuwagamon vs. Murmukusmon, Matadormon and LadyDevimon. 'Nuff said.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 60 : Viral Showdown**


	60. Viral Showdown

Larger action scenes are much harder to work on than the smaller ones that I've been working on so far. I learned that when I wrote the battles against Ogudomon in the previous story. But now I've written an action scene here that I think will do the job extremely well.

The long awaited end to the Geonosis Arc is here. Let's see how everyone in the Human World fares against the new threat.

And btw, **Papercut**, I appreciate your idea but I'm afraid I've got the story mapped out already. I know exactly what's going to happen now throughout all the rest of the arcs. So, if you want to make contributions, could you make them a little bit smaller please?

**

* * *

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 60:- Viral Showdown**

* * *

Screams promptly flooded the streets of the Shinjuku Business District, at the sight of the three beings hovering in mid-air and glaring with malice and sadistic glee at Beelzemon. The people knew Beelzemon was friendly, but with the vicious looks being passed between the two sides, all of them knew a huge Digimon battle would probably be the result.

Dropping bags, grabbing children and generally screaming their heads off, people fled in completely random directions, dashing all over the place like panicking woodlice. The street was filled with them as they dashed away from the scene as quickly as they could.

"Such pathetic little runts," LadyDevimon laughed, turning her gaze on a young woman that was staring at her with fright as her own child tried to drag her away. "Look at them scrambling around like that. No nerves or courage amongst any of them."

"I thinking fleeing shows they are relatively wise," Murmukusmon grinned. "It means they know they outmatched by us. You two, on the other hand," he pointed at Beelzemon and GranKuwagamon, who were both standing firm, while the twins looked on from behind Beelzemon's legs. "You are not running, which shows you don't recognise when you are outclassed."

"Enough of your bragging," Beelzemon cried, as he switched to Blast Mode, his wings exploding from his back and Berenjena appearing on his arm, ready for a fight. As his eyes turned from red to green, he said, "You guys allowed MetalPhantomon to get away. And since I really wanted to know what that little creep has been doing these past few months, I am seriously ticked off right about now."

"Of course we allowed MetalPhantomon to escape," snickered Matadormon. "After all, we all work under the same Master."

"And the boss could hardly let one of the minions most instrumental to his plans be destroyed, now could he?" LadyDevimon nodded.

"So, you and the Metal-skullface are colleagues, huh?" Beelzemon grinned. "Well, that's fine with me. That means I can question you instead. Who is this Master that you keep referring to all the time? And what does he want with me?"

"Oh, we can't tell you that," said LadyDevimon in a slightly licentious way. "If we did that, we'd be telling you the boss's big plans for you and he gets angry when people do that. You wouldn't want to see this beautiful vision be damaged, now would you, Beelzemon?"

"Right now," said Beelzemon. "You wouldn't find me complaining."

"Oh, so rude," LadyDevimon frowned angrily.

"You say your Master has plans for me," Beelzemon said. "So why did you say you were here to destroy me, you there in the frilly trash?"

"How dare you insult my clothing!" Matadormon growled, displaying the blades sticking out of his sleeves that clearly belonged to rapiers. "I'll have you know that I am extremely stylish. And I only said we were going to destroy you because I want to make a stylish entrance. I am a killer for them."

Beelzemon snorted. "Of course you are. You look like a carnival dancer."

Matadormon growled again, but Murmukusmon raised a hand and Matadormon subsided. "Our orders are not to kill you," said the parrot-chested Mega Demon. "However, we have been given strict orders to beat you to within an inch of deletion and then bring you with us, so that you can meet our Master in person."

"And when he gets through with you," Matadormon sneered. "You will wish that you had never been born."

"Jeez, this guy really is an amateur," Beelzemon grinned. "He's using all the old one-liners. So, you're orders are to take me alive, are they? Well, I've got six words for you three."

"And they are?" asked LadyDevimon.

"The first word is 'I'd.' The second word is 'like.' And the others are 'to see you try.'"

"We will do more than try," said Matadormon. "We will succeed."

"Can somebody shut that guy up?" asked Beelzemon. "I'm trying to talk with someone who actually has a brain."

"Why you..." Matadormon shrieked, but again he was stopped by Murmukusmon.

"It would be best if you just surrendered Beelzemon," said Murmukusmon. "You should know, if you've learned anything from your flashbacks to the past, that you are not nearly as strong as you were when you ran with the Demon Lords. You not only do not contain any of the data you absorbed on your conquests, but you have also bound yourself to a human. That makes you even weaker."

"Of course it doesn't," said Beelzemon. "Haven't you been hearing any of the things that we partnered Digimon have done? Stopping the True Enemy? Blasting Ogudomon to bits? We succeeded where others, even the Sovereigns, failed."

"All just luck," said Murmukusmon. "But now that we're here, that has changed."

"Luck's got nothing to do with it," Beelzemon replied. "And why does everybody we come across have the same opinion that having a human makes us weak. I mean, I know I can't talk considering my own past but considering all we've done, only anybody with no sense at all would still believe that. This is going to be easier than I thought."

"Insult us all you like," LadyDevimon smirked. "You'll be eating your own words soon enough when you realise that you have absolutely nothing that could even give you the slightest chance of beating us."

"Beelzemon's going to kick the cream out of you!" Ai claimed.

"And then you'll get blown into little bits and float away!" Mako agreed. "Just like anybody else he fights against."

"Aww, you two are so sweet," LadyDevimon grinned mockingly at them. "I could just take you home with me. Where I would torture you until you begged for death."

Ai and Mako let out an "eep" each and hid behind Beelzemon again.

"Enough talk!" Matadormon cried impatiently, striking a battle stance with his enormous, metal blades were prominently displayed in front of him and his bladed feet were spread wide. "We're wasting time here! Our orders were to capture the weakling, Beelzemon. Not talk with him."

"I agree," LadyDevimon rose off the ground slightly and spread out her cape, ready to fight. "And once we take him down and bring him back to the Master, we shall complete the task and kill off his puny little fleshbags."

Beelzemon glanced over his shoulder at Ai and Mako, who were both shrinking back at LadyDevimon's cruel words, expressions of fear on their young faces. Beelzemon's three eyes narrowed dangerously, and he turned back to face the three enemy viruses with an expression of pure malice on his features.

"Listen, punks," he growled, readying Berenjena as the massive cannon crackled with pink energy ominously. "You can threaten me all you like. You can insult me, attack me, try to kill me any time you want and that's just fine with me." His wings spread wide, tensing as they prepared for flight. "But nobody, and I mean NOBODY, THREATENS AI AND MAKO AND GETS AWAY WITH IT!" he roared, his fangs making him look more vampiric than Matadormon.

"Ooh, somebody's got a temper," said LadyDevimon, chuckling maliciously.

"GranKuwagamon," Beelzemon turned to the mostly-silent bug standing next to him. "Protect the twins until back-up arrives. Leave them to me!"

GranKuwagamon nodded silently and walked backwards, placing himself between the twins and the attackers and clacking his pincers menacingly.

"Now," Beelzemon cried. "LET'S DANCE!" And with that, he lunged into the air and barrelled into combat.

"Couldn't agree more!" Matadormon rose to meet him and sprang forwards, twirling and pirouetting like some sort of demon dancer, the pink cloth flowing behind him like a dancer's ribbon. Beelzemon blinked as Matadormon approached, having not expected this kind of attack, and, in his moment of distraction, Matadormon lunged and made to skewer Beelzemon in the chest with the numerous rapiers sticking from his sleeve.

The Ultimate was therefore very surprised when the tips of his rapiers smashed into Berenjena, that Beelzemon had thrown up to block him. The giant cannon was left undamaged, but Matadormon's rapiers bent at the tip.

"What are we doing?" Beelzemon growled at him. "Fighting or doing a ballet? Newsflash," he grabbed the stunned Matadormon by the wrist. "I was once a Demon Lord! You're gonna have to take me more seriously than that."

He flung Matadormon to one side and the vampire Ultimate spun through the air and smashed into a wall, creating a nice crater that he settled in, momentarily winded.

"Far too cocky for his own good," Murmuksmon shook his head. Then he rose off the ground too. "Right, let's get this started."

LadyDevimon nodded and the two of them sprang forwards to meet Beelzemon as he rushed towards them. Murmukusmon took point and as they came in for a collision, he yelled, **"GEHENNA FLAME!"** The parrot-face on his chest opened up and hellfire spewed from the bill, heading for Beelzemon.

"No thanks," said Beelzemon, altering his wings and moving backwards so the flames shot under his feet and impacted with the road below. "I get enough fire from Pineapple-head." Pulling out one shotgun he cried, "Try this one! **DOUBLE IMPACT!"**

Beelzemon emptied the shotgun in Murmuksmon's direction. The opposing Mega hurriedly dodged to one side and the bullet streaked past him, but Beelzemon had already fired again and sent two more bullets his way. Murmukusmon powered his wings and ducked beneath the bullets as they whipped between his wings. He had been right not to underestimate Beelzemon and that attack was fast.

Murmukusmon scowled and went in for a close combat attack. Beelzemon powered his own wings into the air, but Murmukusmon moved with him and landed a fist right in the former Demon Lord's chest. Beelzemon grunted as he was pushed backwards, not unduly damaged, but now very annoyed.

"**NECRO INTERROGATION!"** Murmukusmon cried and his fists were enshrouded with fire. Powering above Beelzemon, he came dive-bombing down, his fists ready to punch the daylights out of his opponent. But Beelzemon grinned at the prospect of a physical attack and tilted his wings, so he was flying away from the charging Murmukusmon.

"Get back here!" Murmukusmon yelled.

"Alright!" Beelzemon cried, charging headfirst at a building and veering up at the last second so he was flying up it. Then, he lashed out with a foot and pushed himself off from the wall, flipping over Murmukusmon's head so he was behind him and smacking him in the back with his tail. Murmukusmon, unable to stop himself, slammed into the building headfirst and created a huge dent in the wall.

Beelzemon raised Berenjena to launch a Corona Blaster, but grimaced when he saw terrified people staring through the window at him right next to where Murmukusmon had crashed. What was wrong with humans? Why couldn't they just run? If he blasted Murmukusmon while he was down, he'd wipe out everyone in that room too. Grudgingly, he lowered his cannon.

Murmukusmon peeled himself from the wall and turned to face Beelzemon, grinning smugly. "What's the matter, Beelzemon?" he asked. "Afraid to finish the job?"

"**BLACK WING!"** shouted a voice behind Beelzemon. Beelzemon started and rolled in mid-air, just in time to avoid the large, black spike that would have impaled him in the back. LadyDevimon, her large hand transformed into said spike, shot past him and brought herself to a halt before she could go too much further.

"You didn't forget about me, did you?" she asked, transforming her hand back to normal.

"Wish I could," Beelzemon growled.

"That is no way to talk to a lady," LadyDevimon smirked. "And here's what you get in return. **DARKNESS WAVE!"**

She spread her hands wide and countless dark creatures that looked pretty much like bats soared out of nowhere in front of her, almost like Renamon's Diamond Storm and soared over Beelzemon, smothering the Demon Lord with their beating wings. They began to burn at him, and the unpleasant smell of burning leather filled Beelzemon's nostrils.

But there was no way he was going to fall to an Ultimate. He roared as he swept Berenjena through the horde of bat things, releasing a small Corona Blaster to wipe them out of existence before they did too much damage. LadyDevimon growled and sent the same attack at him, but Beelzemon quickly dodged out of the way and swooped low. LadyDevimon pursued, sending another attack at him, but it missed again and the bats struck the pavement.

They veered up again to follow Beelzemon, with LadyDevimon right behind them. But Beelzemon suddenly changed course by grabbed a lamppost and swinging around it, zooming past the bats and slamming LadyDevimon in the face with one shotgun. LadyDevimon crashed to the ground in a flurry of capes, one hand flying to her cheek.

"How dare you!" she shrieked, climbing to her feet. "How dare you try to ruin by beautiful face!"

"You call that beautiful?" laughed Beelzemon. "I call it hideous."

"WHY YOU...!" LadyDevimon screeched and reformed her Black Wing, coming into charge at Beelzemon. Beelzemon smirked and rolled away from one strike, then swerved beneath another. The next strike found him catching the Black Wing in one hand. LadyDevimon started, and found Berenjena being shoved in her face.

"**CORONA BLASTER!"** Beelzemon shouted. LadyDevimon desperately rolled aside, snapping her own Black Wing in the process as the Corona Blaster shot past her face. She yelped as her weapon snapped and flew backwards due to the slipstream of the attack, allowing Beelzemon to get above her and slam her to the ground with his tail.

"**DARKNESS CLAW!"** Beelzemon cried, and lunged downwards towards the pavement, his claws seeking to do what LadyDevimon had just tried to do to him – impaling. LadyDevimon's eyes widened as she saw it coming and, just in time, she backflipped onto her feet, causing Beelzemon to crash into the road and bury his arm deep into the tarmac. LadyDevimon readied a Darkness Wave, but was suddenly smashed in the stomach by a weak Corona Blaster and sent flying backwards.

"**GEHENNA FLAME!" **shouted a voice from above Beelzemon.

"**THOUSAND ARROW!"** shouted another.

Beelzemon looked up to see both Murmukusmon and Matadormon attacking him at the same time. Murmukusmon had spewed hellfire at him again, whereas the rapiers from Matadormon's sleeves were now shooting towards him on their own.

"Is that all you got for me?" shouted Beelzemon, spreading his wings and meeting the attacks head on. Batting most of the rapiers to the sides with a swipe from both wings, he grabbed four of them in his hands, Berenjena disappearing momentarily as her positioned to four rapiers in an X before him.

The flames from Murmukusmon struck the blades heavily and forced Beelzemon backwards, but apart from this, Beelzemon was unharmed by the attack. The same could not said for his defence.

"My rapiers!" wailed Matadormon staring in horror at the melted and contorted swords Beelzemon was now holding.

"Should have invested in Chrome-Digizoid," Beelzemon smirked, flinging the useless weapons back at Matadormon, along with a couple that weren't like darts. Matadormon dodged his own weapons as they lanced passed him. Beelzemon followed up by charging right for Murmukusmon and slamming him with his shoulder.

Murmukusmon was flung backwards again, but as he did he sent another **"GEHENNA FLAME!"** at Beelzemon. This time, he scored a direct hit and the flames slammed into Beelzemon's torso. Beelzemon roared and gritted his teeth at the column of hellfire, pushed backwards by the force of the torrent, being slammed into the road himself. Murmukusmon, seeing his attack had worked, kept up a continuous stream of it, until Beelzemon was lost from sight beneath the flames.

"Ha!" Matadormon cried. "He's toast now."

"Too bad you didn't get to do anything useful," LadyDevimon crowed as she rose to join the other two.

"Oh yeah!" Matadormon growled. "Well, I'll have you know that..."

"What the...!" cried Murmukusmon, at the sight of a huge blast of pink energy shooting towards him, cleaving his fiery attack right up the middle and dividing it in two. Murmukusmon yelled as he was smashed by the Corona Blaster and sent soaring upwards, higher than the buildings, his armour cracking slightly under the force of the attack.

Beelzemon got to his feet, Berenjena on his arm. He looked a little frazzled, but other than that he was no worse for wear than before.

"Indramon could hit better than you guys," Beelzemon sneered up at the startled Ultimates that were hovering above. "Where's all this death and destruction you were bragging about earlier. BRING! IT! ON!"

Beelzemon powered upwards and slammed Berenjena into Matadormon before he could even contemplate the idea of getting out of the way, the attack sending him spinning off once more, completely out of control. Matadormon managed to right himself before he could crash into a building again and saw Beelzemon shoot a couple of bullets right at LadyDevimon.

_I am not going to be pushed around just because he's a Mega,_ Matadormon thought and charged in for the attack once again, swinging his pink cloak behind him as he did so. Kicking LadyDevimon aside, Beelzemon turned to see him coming. Matadormon held the cloth like a man in a bullring and Beelzemon took a vicious swipe at him.

Matadormon ducked underneath it just in time, the breeze of the cannon whistling through his robes as it passed and Matadormon slammed into Beelzemon, stabbing a couple of the remaining working rapiers right into Beelzemon's side.

Beelzemon gasped at the impact, but he gritted his teeth and took the pain. He attempted to grab Matadormon, but the vampire leapt above him and cried "**CHOUZETSU RAPPASHŪ!"** His legs both kicked downwards, impacting with Beelzemon's stomach like a pair of pistons and driving him down towards the ground, Matadormon pushing him all the way.

"Not bad!" Beelzemon growled, grabbing Matadormon's legs. "But here's one better from me!" He spun around until Matadormon was the one underneath. The vampire's eyes widened and he attempted to escape, but Beelzemon just copied what he had done and slammed both feet into his stomach. Powering downwards, Beelzemon smashed Matadormon into the road with his entire body weight, standing atop the floored Ultimate.

Matadormon was stunned and completely winded by the attack, gasping for breath after the impact. Beelzemon reached up to stab him with a Darkness Claw, but a timely intervention by Murmukusmon saved Matadormon's life, as the Mega blindsided Beelzemon and sent both rolling. Murmukusmon was determined to make Beelzemon pay for breaking his attacks and was throwing constant Necro Interrogations at him.

"You are going down!" Murmukusmon shouted angrily.

"You first!" Beelzemon rolled onto his feet and met Murmukusmon head on, exchanging blow for blow in a fierce hand to hand match. Neither really had the upper hand in this fight and both were bringing their wings and tail into play as well, slamming and punching and bashing for all they were worth. Beelzemon smacked Murmukusmon over the head with a wing and Murmukusmon slammed Beelzemon's knees with his tail.

Eventually, Beelzemon one the little grapple by wrapping his longer tail around Murmukusmon's ankles and leaping skywards. Murmukusmon was dragged off his feet and Beelzemon spun him around smacking the Mega's head off a nearby lamppost and then hurling him into a dumpster.

"Suits you," Beelzemon sneered.

"**DARKNESS WAVE!"** LadyDevimon swooped out of nowhere and aimed her attack at him from above. Beelzemon swooped downwards with his back facing the ground, followed by the twittering bat creatures. He then veered off, flying backwards as the bat creatures slammed into the ground. Ignoring them, he launched a Corona Blaster at LadyDevimon, still flying backwards.

LadyDevimon rolled aside and landed on the ground, while Beelzemon followed suit, the two facing off across the street. "My, my," said LadyDevimon, smirking. "You are indeed strong. Not to mention handsome. What do you say you and I go and... take some time off together in the future."

Beelzemon didn't fail to catch the extreme suggestiveness in this comment.

"You're more like Lilithmon than I thought," he scowled. "And from what I've gathered from my flashbacks, she was never able to get one like that over on me either. **CORONA BLASTER!"**

LadyDevimon knew better than to stand her ground and leapt upwards to avoid the attack that ripped the road around her apart. She contemplated charging him with her Black Wing, but then she remembered that attack was now useless, so she settled for another Darkness Wave.

Predictable, Beelzemon dodged that attack, and sprang into the air. Only, he was met by an angry Murmukusmon that was flying towards him. **"GEHENNA FLAME!"** Murmukusmon bellowed, spewing forth an even large flame than before from his chest. Beelzemon turned around and dodged aside, then avoided the next one too, which took out a car below that was, thankfully, empty.

But the third strike nailed Beelzemon right between his wings. Beelzemon was thrown forwards with a roar of pain and it was his turn to get slammed into a building. Only this time, he smashed through a window and rolled into the room beyond. Crashing through the desks of what appeared to be an office, he slammed into the opposite wall.

He looked up at the terrified humans pressing themselves against one wall. "What are you still doing here!" he growled, getting to his feet. "How are we supposed to defend you if you don't even run away? Buildings are not safe from powerful Digimon. Now RUN!"

The people obeyed and fled through the door, as Beelzemon began to draw a pentagram in the air, aiming it at the hole in the window he had just created. Sure enough, Murmukusmon appeared in the gap and charged in to finish the job. But he was pulled up short when he saw the strange symbol in front of Beelzemon that was beginning to glow pink.

"**CORONA DESTROYER!"** roared Beelzemon, firing Berenjena multiple times into the pentagram, which multiplied the attack by several times and cannoned it into Murmukusmon. If Beelzemon was thrown by the previous attack, Murmukusmon was positively catapulted right out of the office and across the street, carried by the enormous beam of pink energy and slammed into the building right on the opposite side of the street. His data flickered as the attack severely weakened him, leaving him clinging on to life.

Beelzemon shot out of the room and back into the open air, finding himself face to face with an absolutely stunned LadyDevimon.

"How did you do that?" she asked.

Beelzemon smirked at her astonished face. "Trade secret, I'm afraid. And you are not going to find out. Now, shall we continue this fight?"

LadyDevimon balked. She'd been expecting Murmukusmon to stand far more of a chance against Beelzemon than herself, but her fellow attacker had been critically injured by Beelzemon already. Right now, as an Ultimate up against a Demon Lord, she didn't particularly fancy her chances. She glanced down to where Matadormon was still lying in the road, trying to regain his energy.

So, it was up to her. She'd have to come up with something quickly.

"Let's go!" she said, reforming her Black Wing even though it was broken. Then, she charged at Beelzemon with it extended like a lance.

"If that's how you want to play. **DARKNESS CLAW!"** Beelzemon charged forwards himself, with the claws on one hand extended, seeking to pierce LadyDevimon's body.

Knowing she wouldn't stand a chance against an attack like that with a broken one of her own, LadyDevimon waited until the last second before collision before suddenly veering downwards and swooping towards the road. "Get back here!" Beelzemon pursued the viral Ultimate, pumping his wind to put more speed into the fall.

LadyDevimon landed in the road and looked up to see Beelzemon approaching at high speed. She smirked at him and then, fell onto her back, rolling underneath one of the cars. She crossed her arms, facing the bottom of the vehicle and cried **"DARKNESS WAVE!"** Her bat creature slammed into the car and sent it shooting upwards, directly at Beelzemon.

Beelzemon quickly pulled up and blasted the car with his Corona Blaster, smashing it to smithereens in mid-air. But he was startled when LadyDevimon suddenly flew through the smoke and aimed a second **"DARKNESS WAVE!" **right at him. The attack struck him full on, and sent him hurtling up into the sky again.

"Hmm," LadyDevimon crowed, flicking her silver hair backwards in contempt. "That's what you get for thinking that you can reject me when I decide you're worthy of me."

Beelzemon suddenly burst out of the attack and utterly obliterated it with his Corona Blaster. LadyDevimon was stunned. Surely Beelzemon should have been taking more damage than this, considering the number of attacks that he'd been hit with. But no, he still seemed to be holding strong against them.

"And this is what you get for thinking that you're a match for me," Beelzemon growled. **"DOUBLE IMPACT!"**

One of the shotguns fired two bullets that ripped through the part of LadyDevimon's cloak that formed a face over her shoulder, reducing it to tatters and the other one fired bullets that cracked down on LadyDevimon's larger hand, sending her spinning in pain as said hand was utterly vaporized, leaving LadyDevimon with nothing but a stump at the end of her ar.

She looked in dismay at her missing hand. "You... you... you've desecrated me! You've ruined part of my perfection!"

"Lady," Beelzemon shook his head. "What perfection? You just look like an old hag. And in a moment, you'll look like you've gone through a giant cheese grater. **CORONA BLASTER!"**

* * *

Matadormon got unsteadily to his feet, stumbling and about to fall over again at any moment if anyone so much as pushed him lightly. He wasn't particularly damaged, but the massive force Beelzemon had used to smash him into the ground had left him dizzy and unbalanced and breathless. He groaned as he held his chest, breathing heavily.

Once he regained more control over himself, he turned around to look at what was going on. Up ahead, he could see Murmukusmon trying to get to his feet as well, and if her looked up, he could see LadyDevimon fleeing an angry Beelzemon, desperately dodging his attacks.

Matadormon thought about leaping up there to help her out, but thought better of it when he spotted something else. The street was pretty much devoid of humans now, except for two. Ai and Mako were staring upwards with wonderment and admiration as they watched Beelzemon taking on the attackers and, so far, winning.

Matadormon smirked. If they couldn't defeat Beelzemon, they could kill his Tamers.

The only problem was that GranKuwagamon was in his way. And GranKuwagamon was another Mega. Matadormon doubted that he'd have a chance against the insect if things came to blows. So, he would have to try and find another way of getting to the Tamers.

Matadormon proceeded to creep towards the Tamers and the Mega Digimon that were watching the aerial brawl between the two leather-clad Virus Digimon. He ducked behind cars and whisked between them at high speeds, spending as little time as possible in the open. Perhaps, if he could be sneaky enough, he could sneak up behind the three of them and kill the Tamers before GranKuwagamon even knew what was happening.

He grinned to himself at the thought, continuing to sneak forward as swiftly as he could, his remaining rapiers spreading out in eagerness for the kill.

What he hadn't counted on was a special ability of GranKuwagamon's. As an insect, he was especially sensitive to vibrations in the air, which would help him to avoid crashing into things when flying. The swift movements of Matadormon dodging between the cars were generating rather large air movements that GranKuwagamon easily picked up on.

The bug Mega turned around and placed himself between the twins and Matadormon. The twins blinked as they noticed this, searching for the reason why he had moved and eventually they spotted Matadormon flit between another two cars towards them. Immediately they got closer to GranKuwagamon, not wanting to be left exposed.

Matadormon faltered when he saw that GranKuwagamon was staring in his direction with an impassive look on his face – the same look he always had. Matadormon blinked, wondering how the hell the insect had seen him coming when he'd been staring in a completely different direction the whole time.

So instead of trying to slip away, Matadormon confronted the bug.

"What are you doing protecting a couple of humans meatbags?" Matadormon asked the stoic insect. "You're not one of the weaklings that have allowed themselves to be bonded with one of these pathetic creatures. I can tell. So what reason do you have to even be in this world, let alone protect them?"

GranKuwagamon made no reply whatsoever. He just stared at Matadormon.

"Well?" Matadormon asked, stepping on top of a car, just in case he needed to spring up and make a quick getaway. "Answer me."

GranKuwagamon ignored him and continued to stare. Matadormon began to be a little bit unnerved by the silence and the eyes which seemed to bore straight through the red mast covering his face, through his face and out the back. The calm confidence of GranKuwgamon got under his skin and made him shuffle nervously.

"He came because he's our friend and he wants to help us!" Ai shouted at Matadormon.

"Yeah, and he'll teach you a thing or two," Mako added.

"Oh really?" Matadormon growled. "I'm willing to bet you're not very fast, GranKuwagamon. Whereas I am super speedy. I don't think that you could hit me if you tried."

GranKuwagamon still said nothing, but for a moment he glanced off to one side. Matadormon didn't dare look, thinking it to be a trick, but he soon found that wasn't the case when GranKuwagamon suddenly spoke.

But it was only to call out and attack name.

"**GRAND DARKNESS!" **GranKuwagamon shouted. Matadormon flipped off the car and onto the road, thinking the attack would be something to damage him. He was wrong and as a result, was engulfed in the sudden wall of darkness that enveloped him and half the street. The Tamers and GranKuwagamon, who were still outside, backed away as night fell on part of the Shinjuku business district.

"What?" Matadormon cried. "I can't see a thing."

It was true. The darkness was incredibly thick, almost like fog, and he couldn't see anything, not even if it was a centimetre away from his eyes.

But he could hear something. He stopped and listened to the noise which began to seep into his ears, faintly at first, but growing much, much louder. It sounded like a roar combined with a chainsaw or something like that, but Matadormon couldn't place the noise. He knew it wasn't GranKuwagamon, or the kids, or even Beelzemon. But what was it?

Matadormon didn't know. After all, he'd never come across a motorbike before. Behemoth suddenly rammed him from behind. The darkness meant nothing to it, as it used his sensors to see where it was going and it shot up to Matadormon, lifting itself onto his back wheel and slamming his underside into Matadormon's back.

The vampire was flung out of the darkness, right into GranKuwagamon's path. GranKuwagamon had known he'd have a hard time hitting Matadormon, but once he'd heard Behemoth coming to aid its master, he had made sure Matadormon wouldn't be able to see him coming and so now, while he was winded, GranKuwagamon struck.

"**X-SCISSOR CLAW!"** GranKuwagamon hollered and, his pincers glowing white, he slashed them through the air, releasing the slashes of white light that slammed into Matadormon and deleted him on the spot.

GranKuwagamon looked to Behemoth. The two of them just looked, if you could call it that with Behemoth, at each other and a silent agreement was made between them, although neither of them were entirely sure how they came to it. Behemoth would watch the kids, while GranKuwagamon flapped his wings and took to the sky to aid Beelzemon, buzzing into the rest of the action.

* * *

LadyDevimon was desperately trying to stay out Beelzemon's way but the former Demon Lord just kept coming, swerving around and following every twist and turn she made in the air. LadyDevimon grimaced as she dodged yet another Double Impact and thought, _I am not cut out for this. What was the Master thinking? Sending us on a mission like this? How do I get back? How do I escape?_

She desperately rolled aside as another Corona Blaster streaked past where she'd been but she knew her energy was being depleted – each shot of Beelzemon's was getting closer and closer to hitting her.

That's when GranKuwagamon suddenly shot in front of her, startling the viral woman into stopping in mid-air. "Where did you come from?" she asked, but then she shrieked in pain as she felt Beelzemon's clawed hand grab her by the long, silver hair.

"You know," said Beelzemon. "I think this is oddly appropriate." As he spoke he grabbed the long hair in both hands and began to spin in circles, whipping LadyDevimon around by the hair as if he was an Olympic hammer thrower and she was the hammer. Although LadyDevimon didn't know it, he was attempting to implicate a role-reversal from the scene in the TV show, when a LadyDevimon had done the exact same thing to Angewomon. Only this time, LadyDevimon was the victim.

"How does it feel to be the one held at someone else's mercy for a change?" Beelzemon hollered over LadyDevimon's pain-filled wails, as the she-devil lashed out with her hand that was no longer there in an attempt to stave him off, but failed horribly.

Just as Beelzemon was contemplating the fact that perhaps that was enough and he should let go to send her flying (to a place where there was no convenient MegaKabuterimon to catch her) he suddenly spotted an extremely angry looking Murmukusmon soaring towards him, his fists enshrouded in flames, presumably looking for revenge.

Beelzemon decided to direct the helpless LadyDevimon in his direction and let go, sending her whipping into him and resulting in a mid-air collision where both went tumbling.

"What are you doing here, GranKuwagamon?" asked Beelzemon.

"Your bike has arrived to protect the kids," said the insect. "And Matadormon is dead."

"You mean you got to beat one of them before I did?" Beelzemon said, sulkily. "No fair."

Murmukusmon lifted himself to his feet and growled, his fist clenched shut and trembling with rage. "This is not over!" he shouted. "Not by a long shot, Beelzemon!"

"Who are you kidding?" Beelzemon yelled down at him. "Three of you came to attack me. Of your companions, one is dead and the other is no match for me and missing a hand, while you yourself are within an inch of deletion. If you ask me, that qualifies as pretty much over, because I've only taken a minor beating."

"He is right, Murmukusmon," LadyDevimon groaned, her remaining hand clamped painfully to the top of her head. "It would be best if we retreated."

"And tell the Master that we failed?" asked Murmukusmon incredulously. "Never! We would never hear the end of it from our fellows and we would never escape our tortures as a result! Plus, there is my pride at stake here."

"Then by all means," Beelzemon tapped his chest with a fist, mockingly. "Come and get some more. One Ultimate and one near-deleted Megas versus two Megas at almost full-strength. Sounds like a fair fight."

Murmukusmon roared in anger and charged, while LadyDevimon remained on the ground and watched. **"GEHENNA FLAME!"** Murmukusmon shouted, unleashing the hellfire in Beelzemon's direction again.

Beelzemon braced himself to dodge, but then something off to the side caught his eye and he relaxed. Then he said, "Make that an Ultimate and Mega near deletion against five Megas."

Murmukusmon frowned, wondering why Beelzemon wasn't going to try and dodge his attack. Moments later, he found out the answer as another Digimon, a medieval knight with a shield on one arm and a lance on the other, moved between them and raised the shield. The flames washed harmless over the metal, and Gallantmon lowered his shield, glaring at the stunned Murmukusmon.

"What took you so long?" Beelzemon asked. "This fight's been going for a while and you guys just show up now when it's nearly all over?"

"Sorry," said Gallantmon. "Next time, we'll biomerge on the spot and come over to help. We tried to get here on foot, but we got repelled by the fleeing crowd and had to find a place where we would have the room to biomerge."

"You tried to get here on foot?" Beelzemon asked incredulously. "What were you thinking, Gogglehead. Of course there was going to be a panic!"

"Sorry," Takato's voice said sheepishly.

* * *

LadyDevimon, seeing that the battle had taken an even worse turn, was trying to slink away down the street, head glancing over her shoulder and watching what was going on, hoping none of them would spot her sloping away.

"And just where do you think you're going?" asked a dual voice right in front of her. LadyDevimon whipped around to find herself face to face with a being her size, encrusted in silver armour, with his face completely masked over and with one large, cybernetic arm.

"You weren't planning on leaving without saying 'hello', were you?" asked Justimon.

"Whoa," said another nearby voice, and LadyDevimon turned to see another human-like cyborg thing land nearby, this one made out of black metal. "It's really a LadyDevimon, just like from the show."

"It's the one from the show?" asked the same being with another voice.

"No, Guardromon," said the other voice. "Not the same one."

LadyDevimon blinked as HiAndromon argued with himself. "I was expecting many things," she said. "But I wasn't expecting a schizophrenic android."

Justimon chuckled. "I suppose you could call us that when we're like this. In a way, we are. Now, where exactly were you going and you sloped off like that?"

LadyDevimon knew she wasn't going to be able to outrun the cyborgs, so she switched to a desperate defense and called, **"DARKNESS WAVE!" **launching her barrage right at Justimon. The Mega stood calmly and watched the bat things approaching him, and suddenly, his hand on his cybernetic arm morphed into what appeared to be a small laser blade.

"**VOLTAGE BLADE!"** he cried, swinging the blade and sending a blade of bright red energy to cleave the attack up the middle and continue on to LadyDevimon, who rolled aside just in time.

"No way! That was Darkness Wave. Just like in the show, and just like how Leomon took down Orochimon."

"Can we not mention how Leomon took down Orochimon after my numerous failures," asked Guardromon. "And perhaps we should help out."

"Yeah, think of it as getting back at the Digimon responsible for winning where you didn't," said Kazu.

"That isn't very motivational, but very well," HiAndromon sprang forwards into attack position, clapping his hands together as they morphed into the familiar ray gun, rather like Lillymon's Flower Cannon. **"ATOMIC RAY!"** he cried and launched the red beam right at LadyDevimon's chest.

LadyDevimon rolled aside once again, the beam shearing through her cape, the rest dropping to the floor and splintering into data.

"You're a good dodger," said HiAndromon. "Too bad that didn't help you against Angewomon or Silphymon."

"What?" asked LadyDevimon, confused. She'd never faced either of those Digimon in her life before.

"Snap out of fanboy mode, Kazu," Justimon said as he jumped over and landed beside his fellow Mega. "It doesn't help in battle situations like this one and quite frankly its rather annoying."

"Oh, sorry," said HiAndromon. Then he struck a wide base and prepared his ray gun again. "Prepare to be defeated, just like you were when you... oop. Sorry. There I go again."

Justimon palmed his facemask. LadyDevimon blinked.

"This. Is. Ridiculous," she said. "Die!" and she launched another Darkness Wave at the two of them since her other attack was out of the question. Justimon raised his hand to attack again, but HiAndromon stepped in and said, "Let me do this one."

As the bat-like creatures approached, HiAndromon morphed his hands back into their original shapes and held them up, palms outwards as if he was going to catch the attack with them. But what happened in reality was, in the last second he shouted **"COPY PASTE!"**

The bat-like creatures suddenly seemed to smash in what looked like an invisible barrier and were suddenly absorbed into thin-air. Before LadyDevimon could do anything more than look stunned, they appeared again, but this time they had changed direction and were shooting at LadyDevimon. The she-devil screamed as her own attack washed over here, and she started to burn up, yelling in agony.

"Can't let you have all the fun, now can I?" Justimon seemed to smirk, although you couldn't see his features. His cybernetic arm morphed once again until it was what appeared to be small cannon and he shouted **"JUSTICE BURST!"** Long streaks of blue light erupted from the barrel and, spinning and rolling crazily around each other, they joined the Darkness Wave attack, pummeling at LadyDevimon.

It was all too much for her and she disintegrated on the spot, her data floating up into the sky.

"Well, that was easy," said Kazu, cockily.

"She was an Ultimate up against two Megas and she'd already taken a severe beating. Of course it was easy," said Justimon. "Shame we missed most of the action."

"Yeah, why is Beelzemon getting all the fun recently," asked HiAndromon.

"I wouldn't let him hear you call it that," said Justimon.

Just then, Murmukusmon thundered down, backwards and slammed into the street a little distance away from where Justimon and HiAndromon stood. Gallantmon, Beelzemon and GranKuwagamon all followed at a more leisurely place, floating or flapping above the cloud of dust that contained Murmukusmon.

"You guys having a nice chat?" asked Beelzemon.

"Meh," said HiAndromon. "We just took out LadyDevimon and we figured you've got the rest covered."

"You've got that right," said Beelzemon with a chuckle. "This guy's almost become a toy that we're throwing around."

"You have no right to abuse me this way!" Murmukusmon stepped out of the dust, stumbling slightly as his data flickered, but still remaining defiant in the face of everything. "I demand that you end my life now, while I still have some honour left."

"Certainly," said GranKuwagamon. "But first, tell us of this Master that you keep mentioning."

Murmukusmon sneered. "I would rather take my own life than reveal anything about my Master to you. I may have failed, but rest assured he will not when he finally..."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Gallantmon. "We don't need to go into a monologue about how you will be avenged. That always happens in the movies and we don't need it happening now."

"I am giving you one last chance to talk," said Beelzemon, patting Berenjena. "And if you do, then I might just go easy on you. Heck, I might even let you live."

"Never!" yelled Murmukuson.

"Ah, the clichéd never strikes again," grinned Beelzemon. "But at least it gets the message across. Alright, let's finish this guy up."

Gallantmon nodded and raised his shield. Then he cried, **"SHIELD OF THE JUST!"**

Beelzemon raised his cannon and cried **"CORONA BLASTER!"**

Together, two immensely powerful beams, one red and one pink zoomed downwards and towards Murmukusmon. Murmukusmon made no move to avoid it. He just raised his arms high and cried, "I WILL BE AVENGED!" before the two attacks slammed into him at full power. Just as expected, he burst into data right then and there.

Beelzemon watched ominously as the data floated skywards, off to Anubimon's realm for judgment and eternal damnation. He grimaced slightly. He would have liked to have gotten much more information out of the three of them, but instead, he had come up with virtually nothing.

He flicked a piece of data that got too close to him and descended towards the ground. Gallantmon and GranKuwagamon followed him and the three of them simultaneously landed on the ground. The group of five Megas stood and watched as Murmukusmon's data flew out of sight.

"Well, mission accomplished," said HiAndromon.

"Not entirely," said Gallantmon. "Not if what Murmukusmon was saying about being avenged is really true."

"Beelzemon!" came a shout, along with an engine noise as Ai and Mako rode over on top of Behemoth. Beelzemon sent a mental thanks to the bike for coming to help when it felt there was a dangerous situation going on, and then scooped the twins off its seat.

"How you doing there, Teradalets?" said Beelzemon. "Enjoy the show?"

"Oh yeah," nodded Mako enthusiastically. "That was so cool it was unbelievable. I mean, I got a bit scared a couple of times, like when you got hit in the back, but still, that was one of the most awesome things ever."

Beelzemon cracked a small grin at Mako's enthusiasm. Despite having been partners for so long, that was the first time they'd really seen a proper Digimon battle with him involved up close. They had been evacuated during the Ogudumon Debacle, and ever since then the only battles they had seen had been short and decisive – i.e. one blast wiping out the enemy.

"Yeah," said Beelzemon. "It was awesome. One of the most awesome battles I've experienced for a while now."

"You kicked butt out there," nodded Ai.

Beelzemon's eyes narrowed as he stared upwards at the blue, data-free sky. Despite the fact that all three of the attacking Digimon had easily been defeated, Beelzemon couldn't shake the sense of foreboding, and the feeling that he was still being watched.

"Thanks for the compliments, you guys," he said. "But I have a feeling that there are going to be a lot more battles like that in the future."

"What are you talking about," Kazu's voice came from HiAndromon. "We kicked them to the curb. They're off to visit Anubimon and there's no way in hell that he's ever going to let them leave... well, hell."

"It's not hell, it's more of an underworld," said Guardromon.

"What's the difference?"

"Never mind that," said Gallantmon. "Beelzemon, what do you mean by that?"

Beelzemon turned around to face them. "I mean that we may have gotten rid of those three, but MetalPhantomon is still out there."

"Metal-who?" asked Gallantmon.

"MetalPhantomon," repeated Beelzemon. "The mysterious shadow that's been showing up and implanting visions in my head all this time has been a MetalPhantomon. He got me again today, but he didn't realise GranKuwagamon was nearby so he didn't get to finish it."

"And, of course, both him and the other three were all talking about a mysterious Master that they all serve," said GranKuwagamon.

"Yeah, that too," said Beelzemon. "I was about to question the metal guy when the others showed up and he got away. But they were definitely talking about some Master. And they seemed plenty scared of him. They said they'd rather be killed by us than go back and face him."

"But what does this Master of theirs want with you?" asked Justimon.

"You're guess is as good as mine," said Beelzemon. "But considering all the flashbacks I've been having, I'd guess it has something to do with my Demon Lord days."

As soon as those words left Beelzemon's mouth, he remembered the strange flashback that MetalPhantomon had given him. His ruthless, backstabbing murder of that Magnadramon had been bad enough, but then he had suddenly exploded into pink light, and judging by his screaming it had been extremely painful.

"What happened to me that day?" Beelzemon muttered to himself. "What did Magnadramon mean by it not being over?"

It made no sense to him whatsoever.

"So," said Gallantmon. "If this Master has taken such an interest in you, then it seems pretty obvious to me that he's going to try again. And who knows what he'll throw at us next time?"

"Yeah," agreed Justimon. "How are we supposed to prepare for this guy if we don't even know who he is, what he can do, how many servants he has or why he's interested in Beelzemon so much."

"Beelzemon, are you going to be okay?" asked Ai.

"Course I am," said Beelzemon. "And as to that, Ryo, we had no clue what the D-Reaper was like or what it could do but we took it on anyway. And this mysterious Master's going to be no different."

"Beelzemon's right," nodded Gallantmon. "Even with our friends trapped in another dimension, we Tamers are strong. Much stronger than we were against the D-Reaper. And how much tougher can this guy be?"

"Don't jinx it Takato," said HiAndromon. "He could be even more powerful than Ogudomon for all we know."

"So what?" asked Gallantmon, lifting his lance. "We'll take him on. And just like we beat Ogudomon, we'll beat him too."

"Yeah, but we didn't..." Justimon started, but then stopped and sighed. There was no arguing with Takato when he was like this. Pointing out that the ones who really beat Ogudomon were gone, AND the fact that they'd had the help of multiple other Megas and a few Devas wouldn't do anything.

"Hey! Guys!" shouted a voice. The Megas and the twins all looked around to see Kenta and MarineAngemon running towards them. Kenta drew to a halt in front of them and said, "I got here as quickly as I could. Where's the enemy?"

"The enemy?" HiAndromon laughed with just Kazu's voice. "The enemy's already been taken care of."

"What!" Kenta yelled, slumping. "You mean I got here late again? Oh, so unfair."

"No worry," said MarineAngemon, comforting his depressed partner. "Momentai."

"Don't say that," Kenta moaned.

Just then, the doors to the Tokyo Metropolitan Building opened and Yamaki walked out. Glancing around the wrecked street he sighed, and then made his way over to the group.

"Hey, Yamaki," said Gallantmon. "What is it?"

"Good," said the blond man, flicking his lighter, which seemed to have a mind of its own. "I caught you before you all disappeared. Listen, there's something I have to tell you."

"What is it, Your Blondeness?" asked Beelzemon. Yamaki scowled at him and the Mega snickered for a few moments before he subsided and allowed Yamaki to go on.

"I thought you might like to know that, even though a bunch of Digimon bio-emerged just now," he said. "Our instruments didn't pick anything up."

"They didn't?" asked HiAndromon. "Faulty wire, maybe?"

"No," said Yamaki. "We triple checked everything. All our equipment is operating a peak efficiency, except, of course, for the portal. But the fact remains that the machines failed to spot the bio-emergence."

"What does that mean?" asked Kenta.

"We can only guess," said Yamaki. "But as you know, our machines monitor only any crossing from this world to the Digital World, which is why we didn't pick up Parallelmon during any of his incursions. While it may be possible that they are shielding themselves from our instruments, we all believe there is another, more concerning reason. We believe those Digimon aren't coming from the Digital World, but from another world entirely."

The group of Digimon and humans stared at each other, stunned at this revelation and brand new piece to the puzzle.

* * *

"Oh, very good, human," said the deep, reverberating voice in the dark chambers from where he watched and listened to the conversation through the bowl of ink-like water, the images of the Tamers and Digimon partners reflecting off the surface of the water.

"Yes, most impressive," the voice chuckled. "But your theorizing may be correct, but it doesn't help you in the least. Beelzemon and that knight, Gallantmon, are right. I will attack again. And next time, I will not go so easy on them."

* * *

And, yes, it's another cliffhanger. For the first time, we get to hear the Master speak. But if you want to find out who he is, you'll have to wait. Or, you can guess and I'll tell you if you're right or not.

Please review.

* * *

Next time...

Once you see the title, I don't think it'll be all that hard to learn what planet the next arc will feature. But the Jedi, Digimon and Tamers will be called to that planet to investigate a strange occurrence there. The next arc will also feature Plo Koon and Shaak Ti as important characters.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 61 : Death Visits Shili**


	61. Death Visits Shili

Well, I decided to take a slight break from the writing business, but considering how hard I've been working on it recently I think I deserved it. Don't expect too many updates this week though, as I've got a Tree ID test coming up next Tuesday and I need to finish my huge Biodiversity assignment for the same day. I meant to get this chapter out earlier, but kept getting sidetracked by said assignment, as well as the fact that my dorm-mates kept asking me to come and play video games, and I don't want to appear anti-social.

Enjoy the chapter, folks.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 61:- Death Visits Shili**

* * *

Despite all of the incredible technology that could be found throughout the galaxy, such as sword made out of pure plasma, small pepper-pot-like droids that could hack computers and devices that could produce life size holograms of other people, there were many planets and races that were determined to stay the way they were before they had been introduced to it.

One such planet was to be found in the Esohiq sector. It was known as Shili and it was a system that was aligned with the Galactic Republic, although they tended to try and keep out of the way of most Galactic affairs, opting instead to continue living as they always did on their own soil. There were a large number of technologically developed cities there, it was true, but the majority of the local population tended to live in small tribes dotted throughout the many forests and mountains that covered the planet.

For Shili was the home planet of the Togrutas.

All the Togrutas that lived on this planet were similar in appearance. Unlike Twi'leks, whose skin colour could be just about anything, all Togrutas had skin that was either red or orange in colour, never straying from that area of the colour spectrum. The only thing that wasn't red or orange were the occasional white patterns that crossed the face and body, which were usually unique to the individual, as well as the large, black and white striped lekku that hung down over their shoulders and back and the montrals that stuck up the top.

While the city going Togrutas held a rather easy lifestyle, the ones that lived in tribes were always on the alert for dangers. They could be called primitive, but only certain aspects of their life. In others, such as their hygiene and social decorum, they were the same as the rest of civilised beings. And they had good reason to be alert too, for Shili was home to an enormous, carnivorous beast known as an akul, alongside many herbivores. This was the reason for the red and orange skin – it was good camouflage to blend in with the red and white turu grass that grew around the scrublands where the akul roamed.

Togrutas didn't care for things such as blasters or detonators. Their weaponry consisted of spears and knives and other hand crafted weapons. These were more than efficient for everything they needed. Provided the Togrutas worked together, they could use their spears to take down any creature, even the mighty akul. Of course, no sane Togruta would attempt to take on an akul by themselves. They had a strong feeling of togetherness. They were a group and would stick by each other through thick and thin.

But Togrutas as a whole were considered to be remarkably primal. That was probably because they were mostly predators. They hunted for their food in the same way cavemen would once have done, using spears to drive prey into a back alley or a place where an ambush could be set up. But that's pretty much where the similarity ended because, despite the fact they were humanoids, a Togrutas next move would be to use their teeth.

The canines of a Togruta were particularly sharp, so much so that if it bit down on something small enough, such as a thimiar, they could easily kill them painlessly, although it would cause spasms after the creature had died. This bizarre method of hunting, at least for a humanoid, had led to a common misconception that Togrutas were venomous.

Not that most Togrutas tried to diffuse this rumour. It gave them an edge if they were facing unwanted offworlders. It made them more intimidating.

Togrutas enjoyed peace and prosperity. When two opposing tribes came across one another, fights were a rarity. There was no need to compete with each other for food or other resources as there was always plenty to go around. What's more, everyone amongst each individual band was considered equals, with the exception of a few key figures. That meant that everyone had to pitch in to finding food, since all the food collected was distributed equally.

But that's not to say that everything about Togruta lifestyle was peachy. Although they didn't know the word Darwinism, they followed it extremely well. Those that couldn't keep up or couldn't forage were left to fend for themselves, because that was the way of nature and there was nothing they could do to change that. Of course, each tribe had a healer, but if the healer couldn't help the patient then that was it.

Despite the fact they were peace-lovers, they could be extremely skilled warriors when the time came for them to take up arms. Their skills with spear and knife, long since honed by battling the dangerous akul, could be put to great effect against enemies. Few people wanted to mess with a band of angry Togrutas. Even angering one Togruta was a bad idea, since most, if not all, of the rest of the band would definitely side with their fellow.

They were also extremely sociable, and extremely easily adapted to being around species from other planets. Togrutas generally surrounded themselves with a bunch of friends to provide regular companionship. They usually hated being alone, going all out to find new friends whenever the chance came along. Sadly, most races overlooked this fact, deciding that Togrutas were mostly a barbaric race once they learned of their Darwin-like approach and fabled venom.

While there were many different Togruta tribes dotted around the planet, hundreds of thousands to be exact, there is one particular tribe that we are concerned with. While Togrutas hunted on the plains, they spent the rest of the time in the forest, hidden from view by the trees.

This particular band of Togrutas had stopped off by a river and made camp for a while, so that they could refill their water supplies and finish off a large amount of meat they had caught earlier that day. A large akul pelt had been hung up nearby. It wasn't for decoration per se, it would be eventually taken down and used like all the other pelts they collected. It was a sign of maturation, as one of their number had just made his first kill, and a rather impressive one at that.

The numerous small huts and tents that had been put up were also made of various animal hides, designed to keep the inside dry from rain and warm during the night. Nothing was ever put to waste. Bones were used as tent pegs or supports or even cutlery. Claws and teeth were made into headdresses and other various forms of jewellery.

Several small fires burned throughout the camp. While every member of the band was friendly with everyone else, they tended to stick in smaller bunches that always shared the same fire for cooking and keeping warm.

The Togrutas were all busy going about various routines. Some were filling up water flasks by the little stream. Others were cooking akul meat over the fires. Smaller children were not working at all and were playing around nearby with sticks or rocks or other various items they could find. One Togruta was busy sewing the teeth of the caught akul together to make a headdress for someone. The leader of the tribe was in his tent, planning on what move they would be making next.

Alina was one of the cooking Togrutas. She was beside her campfire and had several equally sized chunks of akul meat placed on sticks and leaned over the fire like marshmallows. Alina wore simple clothing, like all the Togrutas around here, consisting of cloth wrapped around her torso into a makeshift top and a few other strips lashed around her upper arms and legs. She was barefoot. All the Togruta were, as they believed that wearing shoes cut off the spiritual connection they had with the land.

She was only half-paying attention to the meat she was cooking. She'd done it often enough to know exactly how to do it and it no longer demanded her whole focus. The other half of her attention was directed towards the sky. Dusk was approaching and, through a gap in the thick canopy, the first of the stars were appearing in the sky.

Alina smiled to herself, a little sadly, as she stared up at those stars. The flames lapped hungrily before her, but she paid it no mind. She was remembering. Remembering an incident that had happened to her some ten years ago now. Pretty soon it would be eleven years ago.

She sighed.

"Let me take three guesses as to what you are thinking about," said a voice behind her. Alina turned to see Catalin, a male Togruta, walking up towards her. Alina smiled up at her mate. Yes, mate. Togrutas, like most Digimon, did not go into marriage. They held similar beliefs that mating should be life-long and marriages were too easy to break apart. Alina and Catalin had been together for some time now – almost fifteen years.

Catalin sat down beside Alina, staring into the flames as he too remembered the little incident. He put an arm around his mates shoulders as the two contemplated what had happened.

* * *

"_I only ask you if you are sure about this because it is likely that you will never see her again," said the man before them, wearing long brown robes and with a face covered by a mask that made his face resemble that of an insect. He was a Kel Dor. A Jedi Kel Dor, to be exact, that went by the name of Plo Koon._

"_I know it is a lot to ask," said Plo. "But your daughter is extremely strong with the Force and without the proper training she can be a danger to not only those around her, but those around her as well if she discovers the full extent of these powers without the knowledge of how to control them."_

"_We understand, Master Plo," Catalin nodded gravely. "We always knew our daughter was special, but we never suspected she was Force-sensitive."_

"_Is she really as powerful as you say?" asked Alina._

"_I'm afraid so," nodded Plo. "Her connection to the Force is remarkable for one so young. She will make a great Jedi one day and who knows, she may accomplish great things in the future. She may assist the Republic through difficult times ahead."_

"_We understand," Catalin said again. "Then, if you really think it would be best if she went with you to Coruscant to train and become a proper Jedi, then I think we both agree that that must be what happens. She is our only child, but we want whatever is best for her."_

_Alina sniffed, tears filling her eyes. "Yes. Catalin is right. It is hard to admit it, but he is. We shall let you take her."_

"_We have a while before I must depart," said Plo. "I shall leave you alone so you can make your final goodbyes." And with that, he strode off to discuss something with the clan chieftain._

_The small Togruta girl looked up at her parents with big, blue eyes. "Is he right?" she asked. "Will I never see you again?"_

"_I'm afraid that he might be," said Catalin to his daughter. "If all that I've heard about Jedi is right, then you will have to work for a long time to become a Knight. And Coruscant is some distance from here."_

"_Listen to me, my child," Alina wrapped her arms around her child, who was beginning to tear up herself now. "I want you to be strong. I want you to go out there and I want you to be the best that you can be. For us and for yourself."_

"_But I don't want to leave you," said the little girl, sniffing loudly._

"_You must," Catalin sighed. "Master Plo is a kind soul. And he is right. Who knows what would happen if you stayed here now that you know of your powers? It could be very dangerous. We don't want you to leave either, but it is for the best. You understand, don't you?"_

_The little girl nodded, burying her face in her mother's shoulder and crying freely. Alina didn't try and stop the tears running down her own face either, but she pulled her daughter back and looked into the little girl's eyes._

"_Always remember, that we will always be proud of you," she whispered._

"_And," said Catalin, "that we will never forget you. You will be a great Jedi one day, Ahsoka. Just like Master Plo said."_

_Ahsoka Tano, only four years old, nodded and forced a smile. "I'll do it. I'll make you proud of me."_

"_There's the spirit," nodded Catalin, pulling his daughter into one final embrace._

* * *

"I think of her every day," said Alina. "Little 'Soka always enters my mind at some point between sunrise and sunset."

"Mine too," said Catalin. "And I'm sure that she still thinks of us too."

"I hope so," said Alina Tano. "After all, we are her parents. And no matter what happens to her, that will always stay the same."

"Hey, put me down!" shouted another voice behind the two of them. Alina and Catalin turned around to see two more male Togrutas heading in their direction. One of them was an adult and a close friend of the two of them, called Lescu. The other was a young boy, around nine years old, and he was being carried under Lescu's arm like a sack and was obviously not very happy about it.

Alina sighed. "Alright, Lescu," she said. "What did he do this time?"

Lescu grinned as he deposited the small boy by the fire. "I caught him as I was refilling my water bottle. He was about to go for an unscheduled swim in the stream, because he was rolling down the hill towards him. I think he was trying to impress his friends again. Good thing I caught him or he would have knocked me into the stream too." Lescu grinned as he uncorked the skinbag the Togrutas used to carry water and took a swig. "But, all's well that ends well, right?"

"That's easy for you to say," said Catalin, glancing down at the little boy that was suddenly looking rather guilty. "Elu, how many times must we tell you not to pull silly stunts like that, in front of your friends or not. It is not safe to be galumphing around and trying to show everyone how athletic you are."

Elu Tano shrugged. "Sorry, Dad," he said. "I won't do it again."

"Yes, I've never heard that one before," Catalin rolled his eyes, and ruffled his son's montrals playfully.

"Your father is right, you know," Alina said, taking a piece of meat off the fire, deciding that it was fully cooked. "It's not just the injuries you could sustain from such antics, it's the fact that there could be predators out there just waiting to ambush a young Togruta such as yourself that strays from the group."

"Yes," agreed Lescu, sitting down beside Elu and punching him playfully on the shoulder. "You wanna watch out. We aren't soft, city-dwellers. We are hunters, but we are also hunted. Keep that in mind, and you'll go a long way."

"But Tarlar dared me to do it," Elu protested.

"And that makes it okay does it?" asked Catalin. "Just say no."

"But then I'd look like a wuss."

"Nonsense," said Lescu, taking another sip of water. "It'd make you look responsible and mature for not going along with the silly thing."

"You don't know how being a child works," Elu sulked.

"We were all children once too, Elu," said Alina. "And while your father may have taken part in many silly dares such as this, I didn't. Try to take after me in that respect."

"Thanks very much," muttered Catalin.

"Ah, don't take it like that," Lescu chuckled. "She's right. You did. You remember the time you tried to swing on a vine and almost fell on top of a sleeping akul?"

"Very clearly," muttered Catalin. "That was the last dare I _ever_ took part in."

"I said I was sorry," said Elu, pointedly. He'd heard this many times before.

"I know, Elu," said Alina, taking another piece of meat from the fire. "We just worry about you. That's all. Since your older sister left before you were even born, you are our only child. And we'd quite like to keep you around."

"Alina's right," chuckled Lescu. "Think about your older sister. She's training to become a Jedi. She's probably a very responsible person right now that hardly ever gets up to mischief. Maybe you can give it a try."

"How am I supposed to think about my sister when I never even met her?" Elu asked. "And I still don't get why I didn't get to be a Jedi when she did."

"We told you before, Elu, it's random," said Catalin. "Ahsoka was fortunate to be born with a high number of midi-chlorians, and unfortunately you weren't."

"But it must be so cool to be a Jedi," Elu said, staring longingly at the sky and the appearing stars.

"How would you know?" asked Lescu. "You've never met a Jedi either."

"Yeah, but I am thinking about all the stories we've been told about them. They sound awesome."

"Does that mean you would like to leave us behind?" Alina asked with mock-sadness.

"No, no, no," Elu raised his hands and looked guilty, thinking he'd given his mother the wrong impression. "Not at all. I enjoy my life right here. It's just... well... swinging around a sword made of pure light sounds so cool. And lifting up things without even touching them sounds even cooler."

"You're such a free spirit," chuckled Lescu.

"I wonder what my big sister is doing right now," said Elu, watching the stars again. "Maybe she's levitating herself in the air. Or... or maybe she's having a practice duel with another Jedi-in-training. I wish I could see it."

"Ahsoka probably doesn't even know that you exist, Elu," said Alina. "But I'm sure if she did know, then she'd want you to see it too."

"Come on," said Lescu, his stomach growling loudly as a rabid akul. "I don't know about you but I'm famished here. What do you say, Alina? Are those meat chunks done yet?"

"I'd say they are," chuckled Alina, lifting up the four hunks of meat and inspecting each one closely. "Who wants to have a go at them first?"

"Oh, don't tease us," Lescu protested heartily. "Let's eat."

The four Togrutas; three males and one females, three adults and one child; took what was effectively an enormous kebab each and began to tear into the succulent meat. Alina was exceptionally skilled at cooking it and knew how to get the meat to just the right level that suited everyone's personal tastes.

The Tano family and their friend talked for a considerable amount of time into the evening. As darkness fell and the only source of light other than the fires were the moon and stars filtering through the tree branches, they continued their casual conversations. It had been a while since they'd really had the opportunity to do anything like this, as they'd been travelling constantly for a couple of weeks, and they intended to enjoy it while it lasted.

Eventually, they lapsed into silence though and they simply stared up into the sky. All of them were now thinking about the mysterious fate of Ahsoka Tano. Being travellers and constantly on the move, they received little to no news about events around the galaxy, so they had not heard of Ahsoka's spreading fame. But as always occurred when they spoke of the young Jedi-to-be, they couldn't help but stop and think about her.

Catalin stopped his contemplation of his daughter's fate when he noticed that Lescu was coughing quietly to himself, holding a hand to his mouth and attempting to disguise it – he probably didn't want to ruin the sombre moment.

"Lescu," he asked, gaining the attention of Alina and Elu. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," said Lescu, his breathing heavier than normal. "I think a piece of that meat tried to go down the wrong way. I'll be alright in a moment."

"You don't look alright," Alina said, and she was quite right. Lescu was hunched over instead of sitting up straight like he usually was, and his breathing was becoming slightly irregular. The coughing continued, becoming more pronounced.

Elu pounded his hand on Lescu's back, just as he had seen other people do when they'd had a slight accident in swallowing. "Did that help?" he asked.

"No, I'm afraid it didn't," said Elu.

"Perhaps you should go to the healer," said Catalin. "We move out in a couple of days and I'd hate to leave you behind."

"Yeah," Lescu groaned, holding his stomach. "I think you might be right. I suddenly feel quite dizzy."

"Right, I'll help you along," Catalin stood up and began to help Lescu haul himself to his feet. But Lescu didn't make it all the way. As he was three-quarters of the way up he suddenly keeled over and slammed onto his front beside the fire.

"Oh no!" Alina cried, leaping up and leaning beside Lescu. "Elu! Go and get Ranna. Now!"

Elu needed no second bidding as he dashed to his feet and ran off into the darkness to go and get the tribe's healer, Ranna. Catalin and Alina kneeled beside the inert Lescu and rolled him onto his back, taking care that he didn't lie on his back head-tail.

Both gasped and started back in shock. Lescu's face, which had been hidden by the shadows since night had fallen, was now very different and easier to see in the light of the fire. The blood vessels in his face were clearly visible in multiple areas, and they were now a rather darkish shade of blue. His eyes, which were usually sparkling and full of life, stared blankly and almost lifelessly from their sockets.

"Lescu," Catalin asked. "Talk to me. Are you okay?"

"N...n...no," Lescu replied, his voice coming out in a rattled breath. "I don't think I am." Then he sagged over and stopped breathing altogether, his eyes glazing over.

"Elu! Ranna! Hurry!" shouted Alina, desperately gripping their friend's shoulders and shaking him. The drama was drawing attention and a few other concerned Togrutas hovered nearby. Suddenly, Elu belted out of the darkness, with a tall, regal-looking female Togruta hurrying along behind him.

"Ranna!" Catalin cried, stepping aside to allow the healer to pass. "We don't know what happened! He just collapsed like this."

The Togrutas all fell silent as they knew the healer would need to concentrate to make her diagnosis. Ranna held a hand over Lescu's mouth to check for breath, and then pressed two of her fingers to Lescu's outstretched neck, his head lolling as she pushed down, checking for any sign of a pulse.

"What's going on here?" asked a strong, male voice and the clan chieftain, Ilyan, strode into view. Ilyan took in the scene at a glance and immediately fell silent too, watching intently along with all the other Togrutas as Ranna got onto her knees and looked up at Alina.

"I'm sorry," Ranna shook her head. "There is nothing I can do for him now. He is gone."

Stunned shock rippled through the Tano family. Gone? But... but he couldn't be gone? Only ten minutes ago he'd been chatting away nineteen to the dozen, just like he always did, full of energy and laughs. And now he was dead?

Elu sat down and buried his face in his hands, shaking his head in denial.

How? How had this happened?

"Why?" Alina asked, her eyes unfocused. "Why is he dead?"

"What caused it?" asked Catalin.

Ranna looked grave. "I have no idea," she said, looking incredibly concerned. "I have never seen anything like this before, not throughout all twelve years I have been a healer. I have never seen symptoms like his on any other being. I am, I am sorry to say, stumped."

The Togrutas glanced at each other in fear and worry. If Ranna didn't know, that was very bad indeed. Ranna had been a trusted healer throughout her whole career, even if she was young compared to most healers they'd seen. There hadn't been any time where she couldn't fix an injury or cure a disease since she took over the post. And now if she had no idea... well, everyone knew what that meant.

Ilyan looked as worried as everyone else. As leader, it was his job to make sure that the tribe thrived and a sudden, inexplicable death like this was not going to help matters at all. A sudden, new challenge had been thrust on his shoulders.

"Right," he said. "There is no time to waste. Ranna, I want you to do everything you can to try and find out what caused this and, if possible, find a way to stop this from happening again."

"Yes. Right away," nodded Ranna, bending down and hauling the deceased Lescu into her arms and carrying his body away to her tent for examination.

"As for the rest of you," said Ilyan. "If any of you start to feel ill, I want you to report to me or Ranna immediately. We must hope that this was a one-off, but somehow, I doubt it."

The Togrutas nodded in concern and agreement. Ilyan looked sadly at the distraught Alina, Catalin and Elu, all three staring at the place where Lescu had been sitting before. Ilyan knew that they would have to try and muddle through this, but he also knew it was highly likely that he'd have to use the one piece of technology their tribe possessed if this went on. It might be their only hope.

* * *

As all this was happening, not everything was going well on Coruscant. While the majority of the war was being won throughout the Outer Rim, there were a large number of victories for the Separatists as well as the Republic. One such victory had just taken place, and the Digimon, along with Aayla and Ahsoka and their Tamers, were hurrying to the very same conference room they had met in to view Anakin's discovery on Cato Nemoidia.

They had been summoned by a hurried call from Anakin via comlink and told it was an emergency.

The doors slid open and they quickly trotted down the stairs, to find a room full of Jedi. Anakin was waiting for them, standing beside the holotable. Next to him on one side was Obi-Wan and on the other side stood Jedi Council member Adi Gallia. Mace Windu and Yoda were also there, as was Barriss Offee and Plo Koon. Also there, but only via hologram, were Ki-Adi-Mundi, Luminara Unduli and Kit Fisto. Other Jedi had wanted to be there, but the Council had insisted they not be.

"Alright," said Terriermon, sliding down the banister and hopping onto Anakin's shoulder. "What's the big emergen... Never mind," he said after a moment's pause, when he spotted the hologram being displayed on the table.

"Yes, never mind, indeed," said Obi-Wan gravely, staring at the image with concern.

"Isn't that Eeth Koth?" asked Lopmon, pointing to one of the two figures being displayed.

"Yes, I'm afraid to say it is," sighed Adi Gallia. For it was indeed the male Zabrak that had a seat on the Jedi Council. Right now he didn't have the tall and strong appearance he usually did. His face was contorted in pain and he was on his knees. And it was a small wonder, considering the other figure in the image, who had a tight grip on the back of his neck.

"General Grievous has got hold of Master Koth?" Ahsoka asked, worriedly, staring into the holographic eyes of the cyborg general, which were displaying the same anger and burning hatred that they always did. A shudder passed up her spine as she remembered her last encounter with Grievous.

"Why don't you watch the holovideo and see for yourself," Obi-Wan pushed a button on the table. The image abruptly started moving – obviously it had been a video on pause. Eeth Koth began making suppressed grunts of pain as Grievous, his rasping voice clear as if he had been in the room, began to speak.

"Greetings, Jedi," he said, a smug tone in his voice. "It would seem, once again, one of your Order has lost his way. And even better, a leading member of your Jedi Council." He lifted up Master Koth by the neck, shaking him like a doll. Master Koth groaned at the rough treatment and many of the Jedi found frowns appearing on their faces.

"Listen to me, Jedi," Grievous growled, seeming to stare right at Mace Windu's face. "I do not care about your politics! I do not care about your Republic!" he exclaimed vehemently as he threw Master Koth to the ground, where the Zabrak lay feebly. "I only live to see you die!" Grievous shouted, pointing at Master Koth. To emphasise his point, a third figure stepped into view – one of his MagnaGuards. The droid slammed the tip of his electrostaff into Master Koth's back, igniting screams of agony from him at the electrocution.

Ahsoka shuddered visibly. This video was not bringing back pleasant memories. Aayla noticed and wrapped an arm around her shoulders comfortingly. Terriermon was also flinching slightly, as he had witnessed Ahsoka's torture at the hands of Ventress.

"But death will not come so easily for Master Koth," Grievous growled. "I will make him suffer endlessly, because I know that is more painful for you all." He broke into his loud, rasping laughter, subsided into the usual cough, and the transmission ended. The hologram vanished.

The Council Members all looked at one another gravely.

"Well," said Renamon. "On the plus side, if Grievous intends to torture Master Koth then there is still a chance we can save him."

"And that is exactly what we intend to do," said Mace. "However, Grievous is, as we all know, a slippery character. We have no idea where to find him."

"Lost contact with Master Koth, we have," Yoda said, sighing. "Lost, most of his fleet was. Few survivors, there were. Brutal, Grievous was."

"A typical invasion from our favourite bag of bolts," said Anakin. "Only usually, he'd just kill the Jedi. He's taking a different tack this time."

"Erm," said Terriermon, raising an ear. "Can I put something in here?"

"Of course, Terriermon," said Kit Fisto. "What is it?"

"Well," said Terriermon. "At first I thought that Master Koth was just spasming after being electrocuted, but the more I think about it the less I think that is the case. After the MagnaGuard electrocuted him, his hand started moving in a funny way."

"I noticed it too," said Henry, "It looked like some kind of signal."

"I'll play back the message," Obi-Wan bent over the controls and did just that. The clip played again, muted this time so that they didn't have to listen to Grievous' voice. And the Digimon were right; Eeth Koth's hand began to move in a series of complicated signals after the MagnaGuard electrocuted him.

"Definitely hand signals," Anakin grinned. "Well spotted, you guys."

"Thanks," said Henry.

Rewinding it again so that he could focus on the whole of the signal, Obi-Wan read it aloud. "He is saying; Saleucami system, sector J-19080529."

"Then that must be where he is," nodded Adi. "But I thought that Grievous didn't have any ships near that area. That's what our intelligence said any way."

"Our intelligence doesn't always get everything," said Plo Koon. "It's sad, but true. Now, the question remains, who shall carry out the rescue mission?"

"I shall do it," said Obi-Wan. "The good General and I go back a long way."

"And I'll go with you Master," said Anakin. "You're not taking on Grievous without me nearby this time."

"And I too, shall go," said Adi Gallia.

"Enough, that should be," nodded Yoda.

"What?" Terriermon protested. "I wanted to get in there and kick some cyborg butt."

"As a large, destructive cyborg yourself, no doubt," Aayla remarked.

"So true."

"No," said Yoda. "Awry, many things could go, in a mission such as this. Stay behind, you should, just in case Grievous escapes again."

"Yes," nodded Rika. "Staying a secret has been our greatest strength. I agree."

"Well, I hope something comes along relatively soon," said Terriermon. "I haven't seen action for a couple of days."

"Weren't the Geonosian zombies enough for you?" chuckled Ahsoka.

"Yeah, but only for a day," Terriermon said. "I get restless easily."

"You can say that again," Mace muttered to himself, but all three Digimon heard him.

"Alright then," said Rika. "Are we done?"

"I believe so," said Mace. "Kenobi, Skywalker, Gallia, may the Force be with you."

"And also with Master Koth," nodded Yoda.

Obi-Wan, Anakin and Adi all bowed respectfully and left the room.

"I hope they'll be alright," said Ahsoka. "Tangling with Grievous is not something to be done lightly."

"Don't I know it," nodded Aayla. "I've faced him in comb at twice now. In my opinion, twice is too many times. How many times has Obi-Wan faced Grievous now?"

"I've lost count," said Plo Koon.

"Right, well, anyway," said Ahsoka. "Let's head back to our chambers and wait for a mission to come our way."

"It can't come quickly enough, if you ask me," said Terriermon.

"Well we weren't," Renamon chuckled as they made for the door.

"Hey, Rena," Terriermon whined. "You're supposed to back me up!"

"I am? Oh. I apologise, Terriermon."

The doors shut behind the Super Seven and Ahsoka, leaving a bunch of bewildered Jedi staring after them.

"The sheer scale of silliness that they have never ceases to amaze me," Ki-Adi-Mundi shook his head.

Luminara winced. Her hologram was coming from a medical station where she was still resting up after her ordeal with the Geonosian Brain Worm and she still ached a lot. "And they seem to be infecting Aayla more and more with this silliness."

"What about Ahsoka?" asked Kit.

"Oh, she's always been like that anyway," said Plo. "Ever since I found her on Shili, she's been like that."

Suddenly the holotable began beeping again, indicating another incoming transmission was being made. The Jedi all glanced at one another. Perhaps Grievous was sending them another message, or perhaps this was something else.

Barriss leaned over the console and traced the signal. Her eyes widened and she said, "And speaking of Shili, Master Plo, that's where this transmission is coming from."

"It is?" Plo asked, bemused.

"The people of Shili prefer to stay out of the war," said Mace. "There could be some kind of trouble. Padawan Offee, display the message."

"Yes, Master," Barriss did just that. The hologram of a Togruta garbed in practical clothing and with extremely long lekku and tall montrals, indicating he was middle-aged, emerged. He took in his audience and started in surprise when he saw Plo.

"Master Plo Koon," he said. "Oh thank the stars. I wasn't expecting you to be present, but I am grateful that you are."

"Ilyan?" asked Plo. "Is that you?"

"Yes, it is," nodded the Togruta. "It's been a long time."

"Indeed," said Plo. "When I gave to the holotransmitter so that you could contact us if you where ever in trouble, I never imagined that you would use it, or even keep it."

"Oh, we've faithfully kept it all this time. You never know when a Jedi's help could be essential. And that neatly brings me to the topic of my call. I wish I could say it was a pleasure to see you again, Master Plo, but truth be told I'd rather I didn't have to at this point."

"Master Koon," said Yoda. "Know this man, do you?"

"Yes, Master Yoda," Plo nodded. "I do indeed. This is Ilyan. He is the chieftain of the Togruta tribe that our very own Ahsoka Tano originally came from."

That got everyone's attention.

"And why are you calling us, Ilyan?" asked Mace.

"We need help," Ilyan said. "I beg for the assistance of the Jedi. We seem to have been struck by some kind of strange sickness we've never seen before. About four hours ago, one of our member suddenly collapsed and died right on the spot, of a sickness our healer could not recognise."

"Are you sure it was not just a one-off," said Mace. "Perhaps he ingested a poisonous fungus by accident and died that way."

"That's what I originally hoped," said Ilyan. "But I now know that that is definitely not the case, because since then, nine more of our number have suddenly died. With the death toll rising so quickly, I had no choice but to call you and hope that you had a solution."

"We would have to examine the patients ourselves first," said Plo. "Then perhaps we can determine what it is. It may be something which has only just been introduced to your planet, which would explain why you've never seen it before."

"By all means, come and examine the victims," Ilyan said. "But please, I implore you to help us. If you could spare just one Jedi, I would be eternally grateful."

"You have no need to implore," said Mace.

"Yes," Yoda agreed. "Despite the war, never too busy, we are, to aid the citizens of the galaxy, if we have any Jedi to spare. Send help, we will."

"Thank you so much," said Ilyan. "When can we expect you to arrive?"

"We shall make all haste," said Plo. "You can expect us to arrive within two to three hours at most. In the meantime, caution everyone in your tribe to leave the food and water alone and to avoid too much contact."

Ilyan nodded and the hologram disappeared.

"I take it you wish to volunteer to go on this mission, Master Plo," said Ki-Adi-Mundi.

"Indeed I would," said Plo. "I know the tribe well, having aided them in the past, and they could do with a familiar, friendly face at this time."

"I shall make contact with Shaak Ti on Kamino," said Kit. "She would probably be a useful Jedi to send too, given her skills with people and the fact she too is a Togruta."

"Good," said Plo. "And, to that effect, I think it would be best if Ahsoka came with us."

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" asked Mace. "Since this is her own tribe, she might be hindered by her emotions on this mission."

"She would be irritated if she learned that we did not let her come with us," said Plo. "Plus, I shall bring Aayla and the Digimon with me too. The mission may benefit from their presence."

"Not to mention, allow Terriermon to let off steam, it would," said Yoda.

"Exactly," nodded Plo. "Now, I shall go and deliver the news to them." He turned and strode out of the door, contacting Commander Wolffe to prep their vessel as he went.

* * *

Meanwhile, the Super Seven and what remained of the A-Team (Aayla being counted amongst both categories) were trying to take their minds off the problem of the capture of Master Koth. Back in Aayla's quarters, which Ahsoka had taken to hanging around in now that she had her new friends, they were relaxing and they were doing it the best way they knew how.

"The story behind the painting I drew is already told,  
No more tearstains on the pages of my diary.  
Tired but unable to give up,  
Since I-yi-yi I responsible for the lives I saved.

The play is done.  
The curtains down.

Aaallll the tales are told,  
Aaalll the orchids gone.  
Lost in my own world.  
Now I care for dead gardens."

All the girls were singing quietly to the tune, while the boys simply listened on. Terriermon and Henry watched the girls singing with mingling amounts of pride. Henry was looking at Suzie, as she was singing along, Lopmon on her head. As a big brother, he couldn't help but feel proud of her. Terriermon, on the other hand, felt proud of everyone, since, after all, he had been the one that started all this.

As the song came to a close, Terriermon grinned. "Maybe you guys should consider taking up public performances," he said to Aayla and Ahsoka. "Since we're secrets, nobody else can."

"No thank you," said Aayla. "I get enough fame as it is. I'd rather keep it to a minimum."

"That's not entirely plausible though, is it, Aayla?" asked Henry.

"I don't get why you don't like it," said Suzie. "I've always wanted to be something like a singer when I grow up so that I can grow up and be famous one day and gets lots of money."

"You're already famous," said Lopmon. "Back home anyway."

"Yeah, but the only money I get back home is my pocket money and that always goes really fast."

"That's because you always spend it on chocolate and ice-cream, eat it all and then get sick," said Terriermon.

"Good point," conceded Suzie.

Terriermon was starting to get a little bored again and as usual, when he got bored, he started to come up with ways to alleviate it, all of which were fairly extravagant.

_Terriermon, don't_, Renamon warned him. But she was too late. Terriermon picked the simplest version and suddenly pointed behind Ahsoka and went. "OMIGOD! A GEONOSIAN ZOMBIE!"

Ahsoka whipped around to see what he was pointing at, and Suzie also tensed visibly. Upon seeing a blank wall and hearing the cackling laughter of Terriermon, Ahsoka turned around and glared reproachfully at Terriermon.

"That wasn't funny," she said.

"Depends where you're standing," said Terriermon, a grin pasted over his face.

"And how would you feel if someone did that to you?" asked Ahsoka.

"Please," Terriermon scoffed. "Zombies don't scare me. There's nothing anyone could should that could freak me out like that."

"OMIGOD!" Aayla shouted, pointing beside Terriermon. "A PINEAPPLE!"

"WHERE!" Terriermon yelped, leaping into the air and his voice going incredibly high-pitched as he jumped right off his shelf. Gravity took over as he hadn't thought to extend his ears and he slammed into the ground. Tumultuous laughter rang out from everyone in the room at the sight of him sitting up and folding his arms indignantly.

"That... really wasn't funny," he huffed.

"You still haven't gotten over this pineapple phobia?" Henry asked. Nobody had mentioned pineapples for some time now, so it had slipped from his mind. "I thought you'd gone and put that behind you."

"So did I," Terriermon frowned. "Ah well, seems I was wrong."

"Momentai, Terriermon," said Rika, earning herself a scowl from said bunny. "Remember, there aren't any pineapples in this dimension."

"Yeah," nodded Terriermon, standing up. "I dare you to try that again, Aayla. You can't get me like that a second time in a row."

Aayla rolled onto her stomach on her bed and placed her chin on her arms, smiling mischievously at Terriermon. "Is that a challenge?" she asked.

Terriermon smirked. "You bet it is."

Aayla's arm left the bed and dropped over the side, her hand reaching underneath the bed. Suddenly she shouted. "OMIGOD!" and whipped out what appeared to be a large, purple fruit that resembled a cross between a coconut and a plum. "A JURCIAN FRUIT!"

"AAAGH!" Terriermon leapt up and hid behind Renamon. "THE PINEAPPLE REPLACEMENT! KEEP IT AWAY!"

Ahsoka, Henry, Rika, Suzie and Lopmon all exploded into laughter. Renamon reached behind herself and pulled Terriermon out into the open, moving the struggling bunny closer to the fruit. Aayla, grinning triumphantly, moved the fruit closer to Terriermon as well.

"NOOOOOOOOOOO! AGH! I CAN'T STAND IT!" Terriermon wailed, kicking and struggling as he got closer to the terrifying substance.

"Perhaps you should stop now," Lopmon said, although she couldn't stop giggling. "He appears to be going into cardiac arrest."

Aayla nodded and Terriermon sighed in relief as the Jurcian fruit was pulled away. However, Aayla carefully and deliberately bit into it, eliciting another yelp as he hid behind Renamon again. "Now she's eating it! Oh god! She's going to be a Jurcian fruit herself by the end of the day, you mark my words."

"Seriously, Terriermon," Renamon rolled her eyes. "You had that dream, once, several months ago. Get over it."

"I will. Momentai."

"When?"

"When I die and go to Anubimon's realm."

Renamon sighed.

"Aayla," said Henry. "How long as that Jurcian fruit been under your bed?"

Aayla wiped juice off her lips and sucked it off her finger. "A couple of days. I've been secretly replacing them every week or so, waiting for a chance to use it like I just did."

"You are so mean," Terriermon griped.

"Nah," said Ahsoka. "She's not being mean. You're just being silly."

"Alright," said Aayla, still grinning. "I'm sorry, Terriermon. I give you my solemn word that I shall no longer taunt you about pineapples and jurcian fruits. Okay?"

"Thanks," said Terriermon. "Now throw it away please. It's creeping me out."

"Certainly." Aayla threw it away. It sailed through the air and Ahsoka caught it. The Togruta followed Aayla's example and deliberately bit off a large chunk, causing another screech from Terriermon.

Plo Koon chose that moment to open the door, just as Terriermon made the loud noise. He paused and glanced at the little bunny and then to Ahsoka, who had paused in mid-bite and was holding the fruit to her mouth and staring at her old mentor.

"Was I interrupting something?" Plo asked.

"It's rude to enter without knocking you know," Suzie said. "What if one of us had been changing?"

"You would have been doing it in the bathroom and out of sight of everyone else," said Plo smoothly.

Ahsoka quickly bit off the rest of the chunk of fruit, chewed it and swallowed it. Then she said, "Er, ko-to-yah Master Plo. We were just, er..."

"...exploiting my fear of pineapples to scare me for their own amusement," Terriermon said, pointing accusingly at Aayla and Ahsoka. "I want them arrested."

"Momentai."

"OH NO! NOT YOU TOO!" Terriermon shouted after Plo's statement. "Maybe I should just give up and get used to it."

"Hey, you picked that word because it would be catchy," said Henry. "You've only yourself to blame for all of this."

"Shut up, Henry," Terriermon sulked.

"Anyway," said Aayla, getting to her feet. "I can sense that you didn't come here simply to exchange pleasantries, Master Plo. What has happened?"

"Is it my Master?" asked Ahsoka. "Has he gotten into trouble already?"

"No," said Plo. "Not yet as far as I am aware. I am here to let you all know that we now have a new assignment."

"We do?" Terriermon grinned excitedly. "Brilliant. I knew one would be coming along at some point today. I felt it in my gut."

"What are we going to be doing this time?" asked Henry.

"Yeah, whose butt are we kicking?" asked Suzie boldly. Then she said, more timidly, "Please don't say zombies."

"As far as I know, we shall not be kicking anybody's butt," said Plo. "Metaphorically or otherwise."

Terriermon pouted. Renamon plastered her tail over his face. "Go on," the fox said.

"We just received another transmission from an old friend of mine," said Plo. "His name was Ilyan." Ahsoka frowned upon hearing that name. Why did it seem so familiar to her? She shook her head, as Plo continued. "He's the leader of a tribe of forest-dwellers and it appears his tribe are suffering from some kind of sickness. We are to investigate it and see what we can do?"

"Sickness?" asked Rika. "Oh great. That's got to be one of the only things we can't just go in there and smash to pieces."

"Are you sure about this?" asked Henry. "I don't want any of us to go venturing into a place where there's a mysterious illness that could kill us even if there is the slightest danger. It just doesn't sit with me."

"Momentai, Henry," said Terriermon. "Remember, we Digimon can't get infected by any virus or disease that you humans get unless it's in something we eat. So as long as we don't eat anything while we're there, we'll be just fine."

"You can't?" asked Ahsoka. "That's a new one."

"And he's right," said Renamon. "Airborne diseases don't affect us. Everything must pass through the stomach first. That's why we never get colds and yet Terriermon and Lopmon could be affected by the Jurcian fruit back on Maridun. Just like the one sitting next to Terriermon now."

"What are you- AGH!" Terriermon leapt upwards at the sight of the purple fruit standing innocently right next to where he'd been standing. "HOW DID THAT GET THERE?"

"I couldn't resist," said Ahsoka. "So, Master Plo. What planet are we off to now?"

"Shili," said Plo, looking Ahsoka right in the eye.

Ahsoka was instantly paying attention. So was everyone else. They all knew that Shili was Ahsoka's home planet and they all knew that it effectively acted as Ahsoka's second home that she never used. Aayla's memories of her fight on her own home planet resurfaced. Defending your own turf could be considered very important.

"When do we set out?" asked Ahsoka, seriously.

"Right away," said Plo. "I have already contacted Commander Wolffe. He and Commander Bly and prepping a ship for us now. Captain Rex has gone with General Skywalker to free Master Koth, so we won't be receiving any help from them. But, we've contacted Master Shaak Ti and she'll be meeting us to join the force."

"Good to hear," said Aayla. "After all, Shili is Shaak Ti's home planet as well."

"Let's get moving," said Renamon and everyone who wasn't already on their feet got to it and followed Master Plo out of the door. Ahsoka's thoughts wondered back to her earliest memories, when she had played with other Togruta kids in the woods of Shili, watched over by her parents. She couldn't remember them very well, as she has only been four when she left, but she found a strange feeling gathering in the pit of her stomach as she thought of them. If Shili was about to be subject to a plague, they could be at risk too.

But Plo had not specifically told her that she was heading back to her own tribe. He did this for two reasons – he didn't particularly want to alarm Ahsoka, just in case her parents were among the victims. And the second reason was that if her parents weren't victims, Ahsoka would get a nice surprise.

* * *

I'm sure you've all figured out by now that the first chapter of each arc is basically going to be one big set-up chapter on most occasions. By the way, the whole thing about General Grievous capturing Eeth Koth did actually happen, but Ahsoka didn't go on that mission for some reason. So I decided to come up with something she could do in the meantime. And the names for all the Togrutas were extracted from "Fell" by David-Clement Davies. It's a good read.

Don't worry, this arc won't be boring simply because it's an illness. There will be action, and once it gets going, there will be plenty of it. But there's also going to be a bit of drama ahead, and as well as including Plo and Shaak Ti, the second half of this arc will feature some other characters. Ones that I've been getting numerous requests to put in somewhere.

I restarted the pineapple thing when I suddenly got two reviews last chapter asking me to bring it back.

Please review.

* * *

Next time...

Meeting up with Shaak Ti and arrival at the village. Not much action but it should be an interesting chapter.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 62 : Ahsoka Goes Home**


	62. Ahsoka Goes Home

Okay, just for the record, I'm getting quite annoyed with the Clone Wars series not being chronological. In my story, the events of "Hunt for Ziro" did not take place, but that's only because I had no idea what happened to Ziro after he was freed so I had to come up with something.

Despite the fact it didn't happen, it was a good episode, if a little weird and disturbing at times. Quinlan Vos is epic, and I'm glad I got to see a little of him before I introduced him to the story. And Cad Bane was almost too cool. Plus we got to see some Twi'leks doing some actual dancing, although I still say Aayla, Ahsoka and Renamon could outshine them, due to their awesome skills. Plus, they wouldn't have that weird thing, Sy Snootles, backing them up. I always thought she looked way too weird.

Sorry for the delay but my assignments have been bugging me down. Anyway, after Tuesday I should be free for a while.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 62:- Ahsoka Goes Home**

* * *

The hyperspace journey to Shili had been a silent trip for the most part. Nobody particularly felt like saying anything right now, least of all Ahsoka. The young Padawan, whose Master had gone off to find General Grievous, leaving her behind for a bit, simply stood by the window and watched the blue, iridescent tunnel that was lightspeed shooting past the ship.

She didn't speak. She didn't look at anyone.

Aayla, along with the rest of the Super Seven and Plo Koon, spent most of their time watching her and feeling slightly concerned for her. Of all of them, Aayla understood how she must be feeling right now the most but she didn't voice her opinion. Yes, her home planet had been invaded, but an invasion could be dealt with using force. Plus, she didn't have any close family or friends on Ryloth.

A sickness, on the other hand, was difficult to fight.

Plus, Ahsoka had no idea what had become of her parents. She thought about them a lot, but for all she knew, they could be dead already. They could have died years ago.

She'd never really put much thought into it before. Ahsoka's Jedi training had taken up most of her thoughts, along with new ideas for the prank war against her Master more recently. She'd always seen her parents in the same light as she had when she'd left them behind. But now she was trying to imagine what they would be doing now.

"She's really bummed out," murmured Suzie, extremely quietly. "I guess I can sort of see what our parents must feel like when we go off on dangerous missions all the time."

"It's quite disheartening, isn't it?" agreed Henry. "I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to be doing right now."

"There is little we can do," said Plo. "Worry is gnawing at her. Worry for the fate of her home. I know for a fact that were a disaster to strike my homeworld of Dorin, then I too would feel similar."

Ahsoka continued to stare outwards. She was thinking. Thinking of all the times she'd been instructed by the Jedi Masters that forming attachments was prohibited, except for extremely rare circumstances like with the Digimon. But her people were in danger now and while it was a Jedi's sworn duty to protect others anyway, her sense of duty felt like it had doubled and was twice as powerful as usual.

It was a bizarre concept.

"I don't need to be a Jedi to guess what you're thinking right now, Ahsoka," said Aayla, stepping upwards and standing tall beside the young Togruta. Ahsoka looked up at her and smiled wryly.

"How do you do it, Master Secura?" she asked. "How do you live with the feeling of extreme anxiety you get with something like this?"

"It's not easy," said Aayla. "When Ryloth was invaded, I felt pretty similar to you. I felt extreme concern for my race. I suppose it's slightly easier for me though, as a lot of my race are, I'm sad to say, used to suffering. Just ask any Twi'lek slave," she said, bitterly. "But you shouldn't dwell on it, Ahsoka. That's the most important thing. Distract yourself. It will ease the burden, I promise."

"Distract myself?" asked Ahsoka. "How am I going to do that? Without my Master here I can't prank anyone. Well, I could, but that probably wouldn't be appreciated."

"I don't think Anakin appreciated that piece of paper that read 'Zombies ate my brains,'" chuckled Aayla.

Ahsoka grinned. "No, me neither. And the best part of that was, when all the Senators that saw it found out there actually _had_ been zombies to deal with, I think half of them believed the sign."

Aayla laughed. "See, it's much easier to bear when you think of something else."

"There's not that much to distract me around here," Ahsoka grimaced, looking around at the bridge of the ship. It was Plo's _Venator_-class cruiser they were riding it, and many of his men were at the monitoring station. Commander Bly was having a murmured conversation with Commander Wolffe, the latter looking like he wanted to scratch at the silver eyepatch over his eye. He'd had to put that there to cover up the missing eyeball that had been taken out by the lightsaber of Asajj Ventress.

"How did you distract yourself when you went to Ryloth?" asked Ahsoka.

"It was easy. I'd just met the Digimon then, so I was curiously learning more about them. Plus, that was when Terriermon wrote his poem about the Demonic Pineapple."

"Oh yeah, I remember that," giggled Ahsoka. "Maybe I should see if I can keep taunting him with Jurcian fruit."

"That would just be mean," Terriermon protested as he landed on Ahsoka's head, between her montrals. He looked into her face, upside-down. "And I don't like it when people are mean. But seriously, Momentai, Ahsoka."

"Besides," said Plo as he and all the others walked forwards as well. "We are almost there. Ahsoka, do you feel alright? Do you feel capable of taking on this task?"

Ahsoka's expression hardened. She leaned down and pulled off one of her long, red boots, lifting it into the air and decisively dropping it on the floor. Then she pulled off the other and repeated the movement, so that both her boots were lying in a heap and Ahsoka's feet were now bare.

Aayla grinned and Plo appeared to smile under his mask – it was difficult to see his changes in expression, but somehow you always knew what that expression was.

"I'd say that's a yes," said Aayla.

"I don't get it," said Terriermon.

"I do," said Henry. "Ahsoka told me once that Togrutas all walk barefoot on their planet because they believe that wearing shoes cuts off the spiritual connection they have with the land."

"That's right," said Ahsoka. "And I can hardly walk amongst my own kind and wear boots, can I? They'd flip out."

"Excuse me?" asked Plo. "Flip out? What does that mean?"

"That's a phrase I learned from Suzie, Master Plo," Ahsoka said. "It means 'freak out,' or 'panic.'"

"You seem to be picking up a lot of their colloquialisms," remarked Plo. "Perhaps we should just go ahead and give them the name Earth-isms or something."

"Go ahead," said Rika. "We're full of them. Especially Terriermon."

"Although half the Earth-isms he knows are quite rude," pointed out Lopmon.

"Momentai," said Terriermon. "There, that Earth-ism isn't rude, is it?"

"We're coming out of hyperspace, Generals," said Wolffe as he and Bly strode over to join the motley crew. "We've arrived at the planet, Shili."

"Good," said Plo. "Anything else?"

"Yes," said Bly. "It seems there's another Republic ship already there and waiting for us."

"That'd be Shaak Ti, wouldn't it?" asked Renamon, the corners of her mouth turning upwards. "It'll be good to see her again. We haven't seen her since that whole incident on the planet Orto Plutonia, have we, Rika?"

"No, we haven't" agreed Rika. "I wonder how things are going for her. She doesn't exactly have the most exciting life, does she?"

This was, in a sense, true. While most Jedi were almost constantly on missions of some kind or another, fighting the Separatists somewhere in the galaxy, Shaak Ti had missions that were few and far between. Usually she was called upon if there were no or few Jedi to spare.

She spent the rest of her time on the homeworld of the clones – Kamino. She was there to oversee the production and training of the clones and help them through the vigorous physical and mental training that they received from their creators before they were sent to the front lines. She and a pair of Bounty Hunters the Kaminoans hired, did their best to make sure the cadets passed the trials.

Many of the clones knew Shaak Ti quite well. Those that hadn't finished training before the war started often had a lot to thank her for. Things could get rough on Kamino, but Shaak Ti was always there to see them through and offer advice or encouragement. All the clones respected her greatly, and since Renamon and Rika had had the privilege of working beside her in the field, so did they. They had seen her take down one of Count Dooku's Dark Acolytes in a furious lightsaber duel that she had effectively owned, once she stopped holding back in the hope she could convince the Dark Jedi back to the light.

"Let's speak with her," said Plo. "I am sure that she feels as concerned as you do, Little 'Soka."

Stepping up to the holotable, Plo and the others waited patiently until Shaak Ti appeared holographically in front of them. One of the first things that everybody spotted about her was that, while she was wearing the usual Jedi robes she could always be seen in, she too was devoid of footwear.

"Hey, maybe you should go barefoot too, Aayla," giggled Suzie.

"Perhaps I will," shrugged Aayla. "Anyway, Master Ti. It is a pleasure to see you once again."

"And you too, Aayla," Shaak Ti smiled warmly, her eyes sweeping over her large audience. "All of you. Renamon, Rika, I take it that you have keeping yourselves well?" Her voice had a slight Spanish accent.

"Very well, thank you, Shaak Ti," Rika nodded. "How's life back on Kamino?"

"It's not so bad," Shaak Ti replied. "Bric's attitude seems to have become slightly less aggressive while El-les is the same as ever. Perhaps you should visit some day and see how things are run for yourself."

"Oh, I would love that," Henry said, eagerly. "I've always wanted to see the technology that can create such perfect copies of one man so many times over, even after the man died."

"I think you might love computers a bit too much, Einstein," Rika punched him in the shoulder.

"Well, at least I get outside, unlike many computer geeks I know," said Henry.

"Score one for the Brain-meister," Terriermon chuckled from his perch on Ahsoka's head.

"Master Ti," said Ahsoka, looking up at her fellow Togruta. Since Togrutas mostly stayed on their home planets, Shaak Ti was the only Togruta that Ahsoka really saw, as well as a youngling called Ashla. "How are _you _feeling about all this?"

"I have to say that it has been some time since I last felt nervous," said Shaak Ti. "But I certainly feel that way right now. I don't know what we'll find down there and I'm hoping that it won't be too drastic. Let's hope it is not too bad."

"There is only one way that we can find out," said Plo. "We must descend and find out the answer for ourselves. I have a lock on the location of the tribe that sent us the distress call, having traced the signal of their call to us. We must head out right now."

"Agreed," said Shaak Ti. "Who is coming to the surface?"

"All of us," said Lopmon. "All the Digimon, Tamers, Aayla, Ahsoka, Master Plo, Bly and Wolffe."

_Personally I think all that might be overkill for a simple sickness,_ Terriermon remarked to his mate.

_We don't know how simple this sickness is,_ pointed out Renamon. _And a large number will help ease Ahsoka's mind._

_Good point._

"What about you?" asked Aayla to Shaak Ti. "Who's coming down to the surface at your end?"

"Just myself and a couple of ARC troopers I brought with me," said Shaak Ti.

"A couple of ARC troopers?" asked Terriermon. "Aren't they the really skilled clones that go through much more intensive training than the usual clone?"

"Indeed they are," said Shaak Ti. "And I believe that Echo and Fives wanted to get some time away from Kamino for a bit. I updated them about you Digimon on the way here and now they're extremely excited to meet you. And, yes, they have agreed to keep you secret."

The Digimon all glanced at each other. They had heard all about Echo and Fives from Captain Rex. Supposedly, they had been two clones from a squad of five, the others being called Hevy, Cutup and Droidbait. They had struggled through their training after finally coming together as a squad – they had argued continuously and fought amongst themselves before that – showing ingenuity and skill in their final test.

They had been stationed on a clone outpost on the Rishi moon right after this. Everything had gone wrong for them at that point. Commando droids had invaded the outpost, killing Droidbait and the Sergeant in charge of the group. The other four had escaped outside, where poor Cutup had been devoured by one of the giant eels that lived on that moon. Following the arrival of Captain Rex and Commander Cody, they had managed to retake the base, but then, they had to alert the Republic of the invading Separatists.

But the commando droids had hardwired the all-clear signal and jammed transmissions. In the end, Hevy had sacrificed himself, blowing up the base with him still inside it in order to turn off the all-clear signal.

Echo and Fives became members of the 501st after that, serving under Rex. But then, General Grievous and Asajj Ventress had invaded Kamino. The two clones had proven invaluable in the defence of the clone planet, taking on an entire column of Aqua Droids by themselves. Afterwards, they had finally become the ARC troopers they had been training to be.

"Tell them that we look forward to meeting them too," said Renamon.

"Let's get this show on the road then," said Ahsoka, briskly.

"Pardon?" asked Shaak Ti.

"I believe," said Plo. "That was an Earth-ism."

"Oh," said Shaak Ti. She paused, then added, "Pardon?"

* * *

There was no more time to waste. As the cruisers entered the atmosphere, the hangar doors on the side of both ships slid open. One LAAT gunship flew out of the cruiser on the right and the other cruiser disgorged two gunships instead. The three gunships met in mid-air and formed a phalanx, like birds flying in a V formation, as they descended towards the scrublands below.

"According to the signal," said Plo over the comlink to Aayla and Shaak Ti, who were in the other gunships. "The tribe we're looking for is stationed in some dense forest. It's too dense for our gunships to land there, so we'll have to land in the nearby scrublands and walk the rest of the way.

"Alright," said Shaak Ti. "Lead the way, Master Plo." She turned to her two flying companions. The two clones, Echo and Fives, were attired with the usual clone armour, with some minor differences. The most obvious was the helmet, which contained an oxygen filtration system at the base, which would help them in more difficult environment. There armour was painted blue in places, as a reminder of their days amongst the 501st.

"You two seem to be a little excited," she observed.

"Well, sir," said Fives. "If what you told us is even half-true, then we really can't wait to see our first Digimon. I often wondered how Rex and Bly were getting such good reputations and I now I know of a reason why."

"I still am not sure how to take this," shrugged Echo. "It just doesn't seem like anything like what you described could be real."

"You doubt me?" asked Shaak Ti, with a smile.

"No," said Echo quickly. "Not at all, General. It's just... well, I suppose I'll believe it when I see it."

"Well, since you're so anxious," said Shaak Ti, and she reached up and pushed a button which caused the blast doors to slide aside, revealing the other two gunships. "Why don't you have a look and see for yourself."

"What do you...?" Fives asked, but then he spotted what Shaak Ti was indicating. "Oh."

"What is that?" asked Echo, stunned.

"That," said Shaak Ti. "Is Renamon."

And so it was. Renamon was standing on the top of Aayla's gunship, riding it through the wind which whipped at her fur as they descended towards the planet. She glanced over to where Echo and Fives were staring at her and waved casually, as if she did this sort of thing all the time.

"What's she doing?" asked Echo.

"My guess," said Shaak Ti. "Is she is keeping an eye on something."

"On what?" asked Fives.

"HEADS!" shouted a voice above the roar of the gunship, as something small and white zoomed right past Echo and Fives' staring faces. The two ARC troopers jerked back in surprise as whatever-it-was shot past.

"On him," said Shaak Ti. "That was Terriermon. It looks like he wanted to make the trip down himself."

Echo and Fives watched the white bunny plummeting towards the ground, using the pull of gravity to increase his speed. They shook their heads in wonderment.

* * *

The gunships pulled down and landed smoothly beside one another on the long, thin, orangey-red grass that covered the flatlands. The doors that weren't already open did so, and the passengers all strolled out into the sunlight – dawn was just beginning to break here. After they'd exited the ship and Renamon had jumped down from the top of hers, the pilots lifted off again and returned to the ship. There was no sense leaving gunships lying around.

"Well," said Ahsoka, giggling slightly as the turu grass tickled her bare feet. "It feels good to be back on my own soil. It doesn't look like the old planet has changed much since I was last here."

"Our people are slow to evolve, young one," Shaak Ti walked over to the younger Togruta. "And thankfully Shili remains mostly untouched, unlike most of the rest of the galaxy."

"This place is awesome," said Terriermon, scanning the landscape from his perch on Wolffe's head. Wolffe looked a little disconcerted to have him sitting there, having never really worked with Terriermon before, but he relaxed when he spotted Bly chuckling at him. "It's like a proper savannah. I never did get to go to Africa."

"That means almost nothing to us, Terriermon," said Aayla, fishing the bunny off Wolffe's head.

"But he has a point," said Henry. "Humankind is spoiling most of our planet back home. Last time we were there, we were in the middle of a huge mass extinction as a result of my race. I hope Shili doesn't suffer the same fate."

"So do I," said Ahsoka.

"So," said Lopmon, walking over to Echo and Fives, who were both hanging back slightly, unsure how to approach these strange new beings that the Jedi were so comfortable around. "You're the infamous Echo and Fives of the Domino Squad, right?"

"Er, yes. Yes, that's us," said Echo. "And, er, you are...?"

"My name's Lopmon," grinned the bunny. "And this here, is my partner, Suzie."

"Hiya," said Suzie, skipping around the two bewildered troopers as she did. "How come you're growing hair on your chin and you aren't?" She pointed at Fives and Echo respectively. Neither were quite sure how to answer that question so they glanced at each other and decided to remain silent. Echo shrugged.

"Come along," said Plo, leading the way into the thick trees that were just next to where they were standing. "We must hurry. There could have been more casualties since I last spoke with Ilyan and it's still more than half an hour's walk away from here."

"Point taken," said Shaak Ti. "Let's go."

They began to move at a brisk walk into the trees. Plo lead the way, with the two Togrutas walking side by side behind him. Aayla was behind them, with the Digimon and Tamers walking with her. Echo, Fives, Bly and Wolffe covered the rear.

"Are we going to be attacked by some giant creature again?" asked Terriermon.

"Since akul cannot fit into the forests," said Shaak Ti. "I highly doubt it."

"Good," said Terriermon. "I was getting tired of battling the fauna of every planet I visited. Fwits, gutkurrs, rancors, acklays, nexus... what's next?"

"You've really done all that?" asked Fives.

"Yep," said Terriermon. "And a lot more besides. You wanna hear about the Ogudomon debacle?"

"Perhaps another time, Terriermon," said Henry. "They may need their wits about them and you'll leave them confused with the way you tell stories."

"Spoilsport. AND IF ANYONE SAYS 'MOMENTAI' THEN I SWEAR TO FANGLONGMON I WILL SCREAM!"

"You just did," pointed out Bly.

"..."

"..."

"Touché."

"Momentai."

"AAAAGGGGGHHHHH!"

"Fives," whispered Echo. "What did we just land ourselves in?"

"I'm not sure," said Fives. "Let's find out."

* * *

Plo's prediction had been extremely accurate. Half an hour later and the small band of Jedi had arrived at the place where the Togrutas had made camp. The lot of them took in the scenery around them as they stood on the border of camp and watched the inhabitants. Usually, Togruta camps were bustling with activity and seemed to be quite happy and jovial places.

Not this one.

This one could be easily summed up with just one word – depressed.

The Togrutas were all sitting around and doing nothing, beyond poking a fire with a stick half-heartedly or simply fidgeting with the long lekku that hung down from over their shoulders. Many of them had tears rolling down their faces, perhaps because they had lost some of their nearest and dearest to this mysterious illness. Only a few Togrutas were even on their feet, and they looked like they were trying to distract themselves with chores.

"Wow," said Shaak Ti. "It's obviously taken a heavy toll on the people."

"Indeed," said Plo. "And now we must enter the camp and make our presence known. Master Ti, you have the best healer amongst all of us here. Perhaps you should be the one to inspect the unfortunate victims."

Shaak Ti nodded, a look of determination crossing her face.

"As for you Digimon," said Plo. "I suspect it might be a good idea if you weren't around during our approach. The Togrutas might assume you are the cause of the sickness and attack you. Wait for us to introduce the idea of you to them before you make your appearance."

"Perception filter up," said Renamon, casting the thing over herself and her fellow Digimon and the Tamers. Echo and Fives stepped backwards in stunned surprise as they vanished from sight. Fortunately, they didn't freak out – Shaak Ti had explained Renamon's abilities to them in advance.

"Come on," said Ahsoka. "Let's not keep them waiting."

And the Jedi stepped out of the trees and into the clearing, the clones right behind them, blasters in their holsters to demonstrate that they were not a threat. A dead silence filled the camp as they looked up at the approaching Jedi – the only sound that could be heard was the crackling of fires and the bubbling of a nearby stream.

The Togrutas expressions changed from fear and dread to looks of hope and excitement, once they figured out who the newcomers were. Four of them had lightsabers, which meant they were almost certainly Jedi. Many of them recognised Plo and they all felt gratified that a pair of Jedi of their own species had come to help them out.

One of the Togrutas ran into a large tent in the centre of the camp. A few moments later, he emerged again, along with another male Togruta, who hurriedly glanced over at them and rushed to greet them.

"Master Koon," said the Togruta, who was obviously the leader of the tribe. "At last, you have arrived. And you did so quickly, just as promised. I am very grateful that you spared your valuable time for us."

"We are never too busy for the citizens of the Republic," said Plo. "And it is a pleasure to see you in the flesh once again, Ilyan."

"I only wish it were under less stressful circumstances," said Ilyan regretfully.

"As do I," said Plo. "Allow me to introduce my companions. This is Jedi Master Shaak Ti, another member of the Council. She is a skilled healer and the best we can spare. I am sure that if anyone knows what caused this sickness, it's her."

"It's an honour," said Ilyan. "And these two?"

"These are two members of the A-Team," said Plo, chuckling. "Being as isolated as you are, I doubt you'll have heard of them, but this is Aayla and this is Ahsoka. They are one of the driving forces of our war against the Separatists."

Ahsoka couldn't help but notice that Ilyan's gaze rested on her a little longer than it had when he'd looked at Aayla. He seemed to find her presence there a little surprising. She smirked at him, assuming that his surprise came from the fact that she was so young and had just been named a driving force in the war. She got that a lot.

"How is the tribe?" asked Plo. "Have there been any more casualties since we last spoke?"

"Unfortunately, yes," said Ilyan. "The death toll has now reached a total of thirteen of my people. Please. There is not a moment to lose. I shall lead you to the bodies. Our healer, Ranna, is looking over them all right now."

"And she has not fallen sick herself?" asked Shaak Ti.

"No, not yet," said Ilyan, as they began to move.

"Then it's possible this disease is not transmitted via the air," said Shaak Ti. "If it's as infectious as it sounds and she's been having such close contact with them, then she would surely have fallen sick if it were."

Ilyan led them to a tent – a rather large tent – and indicated it with a gesture. "This is the tent where our healer is examining the bodies. Sadly, it has now also become a morgue. She still cannot identify anything that she recognises. Let's hope that you and your offworld experience will be better."

"I shall examine the bodies myself," said Shaak Ti, slipping through the tent entrance to join Ranna inside.

"I think it would be best if we waited out here," said Aayla. "There's no sense in all of us going in there and disrupting Master Ti's concentration."

Plo and Ahsoka nodded. They and the clones stood outside patiently, waiting for Shaak Ti to emerge and tell them what they needed to do to find a cure. Hopefully it wouldn't be too difficult to find one, and it would also be local. It wouldn't be brilliant if the cure resided on the exact opposite side of the galaxy.

Ahsoka noticed a bunch of younger Togrutas, younger than her – most of them younger even than Suzie – were staring at them with looks of awe on their faces. Ahsoka smiled warmly at them, lifting her hand and waving in a friendly fashion.

The Togrutas began to whisper to one another excitedly, glancing at Ahsoka eagerly. They began to inch further towards the group of three Jedi standing with their chief and four other men clad in white armour. Despite the fact it was clear the young ones wanted to talk, none of them seemed to be the one who wanted to started the talking. They kept pushing each other forward and trying to get to the back.

"Don't be shy," she said, waving them over and gaining Aayla's attention in the process. "I'm not going to bite you."

"Much," added Aayla. Ahsoka snorted and socked Aayla's arm lightly with her fist.

"Don't listen to her," Ahsoka said to the kids. "She's just mad because I'm better with a lightsaber."

Aayla rolled her eyes. That wasn't true and Ahsoka knew it.

One of the Togrutas boldly stepped away from the rest of the crèche, then looked like he was having second thoughts and tried to back out, but found he was being pushed from behind by his fellow children. So, he took a deep breath and said, "Are... are you... really a Jedi?"

"Yep," said Ahsoka. "I am indeed."

"Technically, she's not a Jedi yet," said Aayla. "She's still a Padawan, although with the way she advances it shouldn't be too long before she becomes a fully-fledged Jedi Knight." Ahsoka flushed at the praise. "But Master Plo and I are Jedi, yes."

"This is so amazingly cool," said the young boy, looking up at the two of them with shining eyes. Plo wasn't paying attention, as he was in the middle of a quiet conversation with Ilyan. "We have always wanted to meet a Jedi in the flesh but we've never actually seen any. We've never seen any other races besides our own."

"What are you?" asked a young girl that reminded both Aayla and Ahsoka of the youngling, Ashla, as she pointed at Aayla.

"I am a Twi'lek," Aayla smiled. "And I come from the planet Ryloth."

"And him?" asked another girl.

"He is a Kel Dor from the planet Dorin," said Ahsoka.

"Are the stories true?" asked the first young boy. "Can you really do all the cool things that the grown-ups say you can do?"

"That depends on what they say," said Aayla. "What have you guys been told about us?"

"They say that you can us your minds to make objects move without even touching them," said the boy. "Is that true?"

"I hope it is," said another. "It sounds so awesome."

Ahsoka and Aayla glanced at each other and smirked. A Terriermon-like moment was beginning to pass through the two of them. Ahsoka casually raised a hand towards the Togruta children clustered near them. The boy at the front began to rise into the air, very slowly, so much so that he didn't even notice until he was half an inch off the ground.

Then he yelped and flailed wildly, trying to get back down. It took him a few more seconds to notice that it wasn't working and he was just hovering in the air and not getting thrown all over the place. He looked down at his feet in disbelief, and all the other Togruta children stared too. Ahsoka, after holding him up for about twenty seconds, placed him gently back down.

"Does that answer your question?" asked Ahsoka.

"That was great!" yelled the young boy. "I wish I could do that."

"Yes," said Ahsoka putting on an air of wisdom. "But with great power comes great responsibiltAARGH!"

Ahsoka suddenly found herself hanging in the air, upside-down and rotating on the spot. She sighed and folded her arms, directing an exasperated and annoyed look at Aayla whenever she faced the Twi'lek, who was lazily moving her hand in a circle to keep Ahsoka moving round and round.

"Real mature, Aayla," Ahsoka said to her.

"Oh and all the pranks you pull on Master Skywalker is?" Aayla smiled at her upside-down captive. The kids were all giggling and trying to cover up their laughter, but weren't doing a particularly good job of it.

Even Plo chuckled dryly when he spotted what Aayla was doing. They were certainly doing a good job of distracting the children from all potential fear of death with their antics. It looked like some of Terriermon's japes was doing some good after all.

After Aayla put Ahsoka on the ground again, another Togruta pointed to Ahsoka's lightsaber, clipped to her waist, the silver hilt glinting in the morning sun. "And is that what I think it is?" asked the little girl. "Is that a real lightsaber?"

"What, this old thing?" Ahsoka pulled the hilt from her belt and examined it thoroughly, as if scrutinising it. "I suppose it could be a lightsaber, but I'm not entirely sure. Let's push this big button here and find out."

Whoosh!

The green blade sprang from the hilt and Ahsoka started backwards, as if surprised.

"Well, what do you know?" she said. "It _is_ a lightsaber. Who'd have thought."

The children were totally enraptured by the glowing green stick of plasma in front of them. They speechlessly staring at it. Ahsoka couldn't help but grin. Usually, whenever they met someone new, it would be the Digimon that got this sort of awe-filled attention. But she supposed it was her turn. She could sense the three Digimon watching her from nearby, along with the Tamers.

"It's so pretty," said one of the girls. Ahsoka snorted. Obviously this girl would get on famously with Suzie.

"It's also incredibly dangerous," said Ahsoka. "Who wants to hold it?"

There was a sudden, loud chorus of "ME! ME! ME! ME!" from all of the present children. Ahsoka actually took a step backwards as she was suddenly swamped by the smaller Togrutas, all forgetting their nervousness in the presence of a Jedi for just a chance to hold an activated lightsaber.

"Alright, alright," she said quickly, stemming the shouts as she raised her weapon out of their reach. "I'll let you hold it. But everyone has to promise that they only hold it. Nobody try any fancy tricks with it. Even the slightest error in judgement can result in a severed limb or even being beheaded. This is a deadly weapon, so treat it with respect."

She carefully handed the weapon to one of the young Togrutas. The little girl took the weapon gingerly by the hilt and held it both hands. It had been heavier than she expected and it felt oddly off balance, because the blade didn't actually weigh anything.

The young Togrutas passed it around fervently, each taking turns to picture themselves as heroic Jedi Knights, facing off alone against mighty akul and coming out victorious.

"Has this blade ever killed anyone?" asked the young male from before.

Ahsoka grimaced. "It has killed many dangerous animals, but it has yet to slay an actual humanoid. Lots and lots of battle droids have been cut up by this thing though. And I also cut up a bunch of zombies just last week."

The children all started with surprise.

"Perhaps we shouldn't go into that," said Aayla.

The last Togruta child handed the lightsaber back to Ahsoka and said, "Can you show us some tricks with that thing?"

"Yeah," came a chorus from several other kids. "Please. Please. Please."

"Oh, alright," Ahsoka sighed, smiling.

"Admit it," Aayla folded her arms. "You're enjoying all this attention you're getting, aren't you?"

"So what if I am?" Ahsoka said.

"Since Anakin is not here, I will say it – a Jedi is humble, Snips."

"Hoi," Ahsoka said. "Only Skyguy is allowed to call me Snips."

"Now you know how I feel."

"Who said that?" asked one of the children, as they looked around for the source of the voice.

"Who said what?" asked Aayla, swinging her head around so her lekku swatted the invisible Terriermon in the back of the head.

"Stand back, everyone," said Ahsoka, brandishing her blade. "Clear some room for the blade."

The young Togrutas respectfully stepped backwards and watched eagerly as Ahsoka took several meditative breaths. Then, the green blade was suddenly a whirl of blurred motion as Ahsoka whipped it into action. She span and ducked, whirling and twisting in a frenzy of motion, the deadly blade humming like a swarm of bees as it whipped around her arms and legs, skimming within a hairsbreadth of her body. The young Togrutas were absolutely awed by what they were seeing.

As Ahsoka twirled, slicing the lightsaber through the ground to indicate just how deadly it could be, Aayla shook her head and remarked to what any none-Jedi, organic creature would think was thin air. Only she did it in her head.

_So much for being humble._

_I think she's trying to distract herself, still,_ said Lopmon. _And I think that she's enjoying the fact that she'd not being overshadowed by her Master – the Hero With No Fear._

_And she's amongst her own kind again,_ agreed Renamon. _Give her a moment to enjoy the spotlight for a change._

Aayla nodded and watched as Ahsoka continued her intricate display of weapon mastery. She was adding acrobatics in now, flipping and somersaulting over and under her blade and swapping it from hand to hand, even passing it behind her back and never once having her blade stop moving, even for a split second.

She finished with a twirl and bowed to the young ones.

"You are so cool," gushed the first male. "I wish I was a Jedi like you."

"Thanks kid," Ahsoka chuckled to herself, feeling odd calling someone else 'kid' when that was what Captain Rex called her all the time.

Suddenly she faced Aayla with a determined fashion. "You up for a spar, Aayla?" she asked.

_And now she wants to drag me into the spotlight too?_ Aayla groaned. _Brilliant._

_I don't know what you're complaining about,_ Terriermon stated. _I love showing off._

_Yes, we know that, Terriermon,_ Henry replied. _You do it all the time, after all._

_But you don't mind,_ Terriermon grinned mentally. _You wouldn't have me any other way, would you?_

_Only because seeing you any other way right now would be weird,_ said Rika.

"Oh alright," Aayla said to Ahsoka. Her own blade levitated off her belt and sprung to life in her hands.

"Wow!" shouted one of the kids. "That one's a different colour."

"Yes," said Ahsoka. "A lightsaber can come in many colours, but green and blue are the most popular."

"I'd have a red one," said one of them. "To match my skin."

"Do that, and you'd be mistaken for a Sith Lord," said Aayla. "They always use red blades and they are pure evil."

"Shall we spar now?" asked Ahsoka.

"Let's take over there," said Aayla. "That way we won't alarm Shaak Ti with the sound of clashing lightsabers and she can focus on her analysis of the patients."

"Alright then," said Ahsoka and she and Aayla led the Togruta children away for a practice match. Plo Koon and Ilyan watched them go, along with the clones, who were quietly discussing past experiences.

"And to think," said Ilyan. "That is Ahsoka Tano, the little girl you took from our village so long ago. She'd grown and developed so much. And what skill."

"Little 'Soka is one of the youngest Padawans, if not _the_ youngest Padawan ever," said Plo. "I was right in my analysis. She will indeed make a fine Jedi one day. And she is indeed helping out the galaxy through a major period of trouble. She and the rest of the A-Team are the hammer to the nail that is the Separatists."

"Does Ahsoka even know that you've brought her to her home tribe?" asked Ilyan.

"No," chuckled Plo. "I thought she could find out that one for herself. Tell me, were Alina and Catalin amongst any of the casualties."

"No," said Ilyan. "Both of them are still alive. Their friend Lescu, perhaps you remember him, was the very first of the victims to fall to the wretched thing."

"May the Force be with his spirit," sighed Plo.

"But Ahsoka's parents are fine. As is her little brother."

Plo started. "She has a little brother now?"

"Yep," nodded Ilyan, pointing to the bold Togruta male that had sparked the whole conversation. "That's him there. He's as bold as brass and incredibly brave, but he's not a very responsible kid."

"Sounds like someone I know," laughed Plo. "Ahsoka is just the same. Only she could have initiated a prank war of all things with her own Master."

Ilyan grinned, despite the unfortunate circumstances for the people he led. "Sounds just like a sibling of Elu Tano."

"So, where are Alina and Catalin?" asked Plo.

* * *

The answer to part of his question was not that far away. Alina was sitting with her back to a tree some distance away, her head bowed and her arms wrapped around her knees as she contemplated the previous night. How could things have deteriorated for their tribe so quickly? One moment they were successful and happy, and the next they were, quite literally, a wreck. They were all terrified that the mysterious sickness that had taken the life of Lescu, who had been well-liked by everyone, along with twelve other members of the tribe, would strike them next.

Even the poor male that had become a man recently by killing an akul had fallen victim to the disease.

Ilyan had said that he had called in help from the Jedi to help them, and she prayed that they would be able to give it to them before she, Catalin or Elu could follow Lescu's path to death's door.

She felt so powerless.

Sighing, she got up. Catalin was probably somewhere about, discussing things with the other males in a tent somewhere. Elu would probably be playing with his friends somewhere, trying to forget the trouble. Alina wasn't comfortable with letting Elu out of her sight right now, but he was a child and she couldn't deny him the right to have fun.

Still, she'd feel much better if he was within her sight. And she went off to find him.

As she walked into the camp again, she was stopped by another female called Larcha. "Hey, Alina," she said, hurrying over to her. "Did you hear the news?"

Alina's heart skipped a couple of beats at a sudden panic attack. Perhaps Catalin or Elu had died when she'd been somewhere else? Or perhaps another friend. But then she noticed that Larcha was looking quite excited.

"No," she said. "I haven't. What news?"

"The Jedi have arrived," said Larcha, pointing towards the centre of the camp where the infirmary had been set up. "And I believe that one of them is an old friend of yours."

Alina blinked and looked across to the tent. There was Ilyan, standing outside the tent. Near to him were four men in white armour and in front of Ilyan, talking quietly to him, was a masked face that Alina had never thought she would ever see again.

"Master Koon!" Alina cried. Her heart leapt. If Master Plo was here then perhaps things would soon be okay again. The last time Plo had visited Shili had been to take care of a bunch of Rodians that had been using the planet as a staging post to ferry stolen goods. He had dealt with the installation with relative ease. Perhaps he could deal with this different threat with a similar amount of ease.

And perhaps he would have news of her daughter.

"Um, excuse me, Larcha," she said. "I would like to speak with the Jedi."

"Go ahead," said Larcha. She stood aside and allowed Alina to pass. Alina hurried over towards the infirmary tent and towards her old frend.

"Master Koon!" she called as she ran. "Master Koon! It's you!"

"Yes, it is me," Plo turned around and appeared to smile at the newcomer to their conversation. "I had a feeling that I'd run into you at some point while I was here. I am grateful that it was not to see your dead body."

"Well, we don't know if that will be the outcome or not," shrugged Alina.

"Let us not talk drearily, or dwell too much on the subject of this disease until my fellow Jedi, Master Shaak Ti, finishes her diagnosis," said Plo. "Let us concentrate on a more pleasant subject. How are you, Alina? How have these past ten years been treating you?"

"Up until last night," said Alina, "I have been extremely well, as the tribe has been flourishing under Ilyan's leadership."

"Please, you are too kind, Alina," Ilyan said, though he looked like he enjoyed the praise.

"I hear that you managed to gain another child shortly after I departed with your firstborn," said Plo. "May I be the first Jedi to offer my congratulations?"

"Thank you, Master Plo," Alina said, her insides struggling not to burst as she desperately waited for an appropriate time to ask her question. "He... reminds me a lot of what my little Ahsoka was like before she went off to be trained."

Plo could tell that she really wanted to ask about Ahsoka, but he just said, "He certainly seems enthusiastic."

"Yes, he is."

"And Ilyan tells me he is a trouble-maker," said Plo. "Well, what can you expect from such young children. We have to discipline our younglings to act accordingly. Of course, it doesn't always work."

"Right," said Alina.

"Alright," said Plo. "I apologise for teasing you. I am afraid it seems to be a bad habit I've picked up from a new acquaintance I made a few months ago. I can tell that you are desperate for news about your daughter. Let us stop hedging around the subject. Ask away, Alina. Ask away."

Alina sighed in relief and said, "Well, first of all, is she alright. I've heard stories of Jedi younglings that get into horrible accidents when practicing with lightsabers for the first few times. Please tell me that Ahsoka has not become one of them."

"I don't know what stories you have been listening to," said Plo. "We don't allow our younglings to handle real lightsabers until they have mastered using them. We use practice blades that will only give slight burns. However, there have been the occasional incident when a youngling has gotten ahead of themselves, I must admit. But no, Little 'Soka is not one of those younglings. She excels with a blade, as skilled as some knights despite her young age."

Alina almost felt herself swell with pride. It was one thing for a member of the Jedi Council to declare your daughter good, but it was another to declare her the best.

"I'm not sure whether you know about this or not," said Plo. "But most of the galaxy is in the middle of a war right now, with the Galactic Republic fighting against the evil forces of the Separatist Alliance."

"We had heard of it," said Alina, "but we only know of rumours passed from mouth to mouth."

"Well," said Plo. "Your daughter has become a figurehead for the Republic. She is now one of the most well-known of all Jedi, even though she's not a proper Jedi yet. She is training under Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One destined to destroy the Sith himself. That would make her famous enough as it is, but that's not all."

"Go on," said Alina, enthralled at what Plo was telling her.

"She and her Master, along with a Twi'lek called Aayla Secura, are working together and since they were put in a team, they have not lost a single battle and they do so with minimal casualties. They have been lovingly dubbed the A-Team. There's not a corner of Coruscant, except for the criminal underworld, that doesn't have Ahsoka's face on it."

Alina beamed. "Oh, I am so pleased for her. You said she would be good and while you may be right, I did not expect that. I feel so proud."

"As well you should," said Plo. "We are all proud of her. Even if she does tend to act a bit like her younger brother. She is constantly sticking bits of paper to her Master's back that act as embarrassing signs. And I still don't know how she managed to bury his body in a pile of eopie manure while he slept."

Even Ilyan snorted.

Alina looked up at the sky again, just as she had done the previous night when she and the others had been thinking about their little girl. "Oh, imagine that. My daughter – one of the most well-known Jedi out there and at the age of fourteen. She'll be fifteen soon. I only wish that I could see her for myself."

"Alina," said Plo. "I think it's time I confessed. I said earlier that I was no longer teasing you, but that is actually not true. If you want to see your daughter again, then turn to your right and look over there."

It took few seconds for Alina to register what he had said, but when she did, she spun around and stared. There was Elu, along with his friends, watching two lightsaber wielding humanoids – a Rutian Twi'lek and a young Togruta, who were having a furious duel with their blades.

"They're having a mock spar," said Plo. "That there is Aayla, and the Togruta fighting her is Ahsoka Tano."

Alina stared, gobsmacked. Ahsoka? That was her daughter? She watched in amazement as the two combatants dove and weaved around each other, swinging their differently coloured blades in blurs of intricate motion, clashing against each other and causing sizzling noises each time they struck. So caught up had she been in what Plo was saying, she hadn't registered the noises.

It was beautiful. The two of them moved so gracefully it was almost a dance.

That was her daughter.

Unable to restrain herself, she dashed forward to get a better view.

* * *

Ahsoka blocked Aayla's downwards sweep and retaliated quickly, only to find that Aayla was no longer there and had flipped right over her. A Force burst to the back knocked Ahsoka forwards, but she rolled with it and landed back on her feet, using a technique that Aayla herself had taught her. Ahsoka whirled around and struck, but Aayla parried with ease, spinning around and blocking another strike over her shoulder.

Ahsoka nimbly dodged Aayla's next blow, and launched three successive strikes at Aayla. Aayla blocked the first, dodged that second and caught the third with her blade, locking it in place. Aayla then spun around, grabbing Ahsoka's wrist and pulling it with her, until Ahsoka's lightsaber arm was pinned behind her back.

"Ow," she said.

"Do you yield?" asked Aayla.

"Alright, alright," Ahsoka muttered, deactivating her lightsaber, as Aayla switched off her own. "You win. Again. When am I ever going to win against you?"

"You can't expect to win just like that," said Aayla. "I have been practicing for far longer. Besides, you lasted longer than you did last time, so you are definitely improving and fast. Soon, you should be able to take on the toughest of opponents if you just keep at it.

Ahsoka nodded and the two Jedi bowed to one another, just as was customary after a practice duel.

"Ahsoka?" asked a voice tentatively. Ahsoka blinked and she and Aayla turned to see a tall, female Togruta that definitely was not Shaak Ti, walking slowly towards them and looking slightly dazed.

"Ahsoka, is that really you?" asked the woman.

Ahsoka's eyes widened. That face, those markings, those eyes – they were all incredibly familiar. She didn't remember most of her old life, but she definitely recognised this person, as she was one of the few faces that were lodged in her memory.

"Mother?" she asked, shocked.

Aayla blinked.

The children gasped.

Alina burst into tears and grabbed Ahsoka, pulling her into the tightest hug that the young Padawan could ever remember.

"It is you," Alina sobbed into her daughter's shoulder. "My child, my beautiful child. You've come home."

Ahsoka just stood there, too shocked to think straight. Her mother? She was being hugged by her mother? That hadn't happened since she had left Shili. And now, here she was again, taller and older than before, but it still felt the same.

A grin split across her face and she grabbed her mother and hugged her back. "Yeah, Mother," she said. "I'm here. I'm home."

* * *

Well, isn't that nice. Ahsoka and Alina have been reunited at long last. I think that this is definitely something they should put in the Clone Wars series at some point. It'd be really cool to see Ahsoka beside at least one of her parents, especially since that's hardly an option for Anakin any more.

Echo and Fives were a last minute addition, but I felt they deserved a place in the story after I had to delete them earlier to try and remain true to the series.

Aiming to get Chapter 63 done by Monday but I make no promises.

Please review.

* * *

Next time...

Still no real action, but Ahsoka will not only get to meet her mother, but her father and her brother. The Digimon will be introduced back into the grand scheme of things and the mysterious illness will be revealed. And it won't be pleasant.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 63 : Family Reunion**


	63. Family Reunion

Well, it's a day later than I would have liked, but you can all blame that on the scanner at the university that refused to work properly. I had to spend a considerable amount of time changing by biodiversity assignment so that I could do it without the scanner. Anyway, I am now free, as I did my Tree ID test earlier today, and I think it went extremely well.

Here's your chapter. Still little action, but hopefully you'll enjoy the mushiness and the silliness. And the ending. The ending should catch your interest.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 63:- Family Reunion**

* * *

Ahsoka wasn't entirely sure how she was supposed to deal with the situation at hand. It was true that she'd imagined running into her parents again in the past, envisioning several scenarios where she would happily embrace them and tell them she still thought of them and other things besides. But now that it was actually happening, her mind had, for the most part, gone blank. Utterly blank.

Possibly the reason for this had been because she had been caught totally off-guard. She knew she'd be returning to her home planet, but there were thousands of Togruta tribes on Shili. What were the odds of the one that required the help of the Jedi being the one that her parents were part of and that she had been part of too when she was younger.

At least she now knew why the name Ilyan had been so familiar when Plo had said it back at the Temple.

Hey! Wait! That meant Plo must have known about this when he brought her along. Ahsoka frowned. Master Plo had... pranked her? He had let her walk back into the lives of her parent's unprepared. She looked over her mother's shoulder to see Plo standing where he had been before, watching. He waved at her. She scowled back at him.

Her mother, Alina, released Ahsoka from her tight embrace and looked into her face, placing a hand on her daughter's cheek as if trying to make sure that she was real. "Oh, it's definitely you," she whispered in astonishment and wonder. "You're facial patterns have changed at all, and your eyes are as piercing blue as they always were. Look at how much you've grown. Last time I saw you, you only came up to a little way above my knee. Now look at you."

"I really..." said Ahsoka. "I really... don't know what to say right now. This is... unreal. Like I've stepped into a dream or something."

Aayla leaned over and tweaked Ahsoka's right lekku.

"Ow!" cried Ahsoka, turning to glare at Aayla. "What did you do that for?"

"To prove you weren't dreaming," Aayla said reassuringly. "If this had been a dream, that wouldn't have hurt."

Ahsoka slowly began to grin. Aayla was right. This couldn't be a dream. This was real... as real as it got. She was actually standing in front of her own mother again.

"By the Force," she said, as her grin widened. "You really are my mother!" And she reinitiated the embrace, squeezing Alina tightly like a limpet to a rock, or like one of Suzie Wong's death hugs. "I missed you so much, Mum," Ahsoka felt her eyes begin to moisten, as her mother returned the hug and held her gently, like Ahsoka was a small child once again.

"Oh, I'm so proud of you," Alina whispered into Ahsoka's ear.

"I'm quite proud of me too," said Ahsoka, her face half buried in her mother's shoulder.

Aayla found herself tearing up slightly at the heart-warming moment. She reflexively wiped her eyes and watched as mother and daughter embraced each other. And from somewhere she could swear she could hear faint crying coming from Suzie. A moment after that, she heard Rika mutter, "Okay, so I'm not made of stone."

Aayla spotted the young Togrutas looking stunned at the revelation that this Jedi Padawan was the child of one of their own. That was understandable, but Aayla also noticed that most of them were glancing frequently at one particular individual – the bold, boy Togruta that had started off the whole conversation between the children and the Jedi. He was looking flabbergasted, staring at Ahsoka as if she'd grown another head.

_Something tells me we're about to have another twist revealed here,_ she thought, more to herself than anyone else, but of course the others picked it up. It was amazing how swiftly Aayla's mind had integrated with there's once she had broken through the barrier.

_Oh, don't tell me,_ said Renamon. _If that is true, things could become very interesting in a minute._

"Um," said the boy walking forwards and pulling on Alina's arm. Alina and Ahsoka broke the embrace and turned down to look at him. "This is Ahsoka?"

Alina beamed. "Indeed it is, Elu. Ahsoka, I have a surprise for you. I would like to introduce you to your little brother, Elu."

_I thought so,_ said Aayla.

Ahsoka mind metaphorically blew up and she took a step back from Elu as if _he_ had been the one to grow another head. A little brother? She had a little brother now? And she had had one for... well, it seemed like nine or ten years, and she had absolutely no idea. During her times imagining a reunion, she had never thought that she could possibly have a sibling now. It had never occurred to her.

"Elu," Alina went on. "This is, indeed, your older sister. This is Ahsoka Tano."

Elu blinked, staring at Ahsoka in disbelief. But then, his eyes shone with excitement and he cried. "My big sister's awesome!" and grabbed Ahsoka round the stomach in an embrace of his own. Ahsoka was bewildered and stunned again, but she slowly began to find a bubble of happiness rise within her. Her parents hadn't been alone for very long by the looks of things. They had still had someone to care for after their daughter had left.

"Wow," she said, placing a hand over the young boy's montrals and grinning. "I have a little brother? This is... different."

"You can say that again," said Aayla.

Ahsoka wrapped her arms around her little brother and said, "Hi there. It's very nice to meet you, little guy. Elu, was it? This is beyond amazing."

"Of course it is," Elu beamed up at her. "I always thought my sister would be cool, what with being a Jedi, but I never thought you'd be as cool as you were when I saw you swinging your laser sword around."

"Lightsaber, little brother," Ahsoka corrected him. Then she stopped, frowned and said. "Oooookay, that felt incredibly weird to say."

Elu laughed and cried loudly. "THIS. IS."

"SPARTA!" interrupted Ahsoka. Elu blinked.

"Er, actually I was going to say 'awesome.' What is a Sparta?"

"Oh, never mind," said Ahsoka, as Aayla struggled to maintain her composure and two invisible Digimon desperately tried to keep the other from belting out with laughter. "Just an inside joke." Ahsoka then looked up to where Alina was standing and watching her children interact as if it was a dream come true, which is probably was.

"So, if you're here," said Ahsoka. "And I have a little brother now, then where's Dad?"

* * *

Catalin was sitting beside the creek not far away and was staring out into the trees and to a large pile of boulders in the distance. Like Alina before him, he was thinking about the death of his best friend Lescu. The two of them had been roughly the same age and therefore they had been friends during their childhood years. He was staring at the boulders, because he remembered that, as kids, they had climbed all over this pile when they were younger, giggling and yelling like the silly little kids they were.

Then Lescu had taken a stumble and fallen from halfway up the pile, landing heavily on one arm. Having been about five, he had promptly burst into tears and run straight back to the campsite to the healer, the one who had been in charge before Ranna. She had carefully taken his arm and treated it and said sternly:-

"You'll have to learn to control yourself, Lescu. I am willing to bet that you will one day suffer a lot worse than a simple bruised arm."

And indeed he had. Several years later, and now Lescu was dead as a result of a mystery that he had no control over whatsoever.

Needless to say, since Lescu and Catalin had been friends for so long, there was now a void in Catalin's mind – a gap that Lescu had previously filled. He'd always been there, laughing and joking with him. He'd even flirt with Alina just to annoy him when they had started seeing each other. Sometimes, he had still done that while Alina and Catalin had been mated.

But he'd never do it again.

Catalin sighed. Losing his best friend was hard to take, but he knew that Lescu wouldn't want him to depress himself. He probably just say to "man up and get on with your life. Don't dwell on me." Or something similar anyway.

And he'd be right. He still had Alina and Elu and he fully intended to keep both of them around for some time to come. Thinking about this strange illness sweeping through their numbers caused him to get to his feet. He needed to check on his mate and son to make sure they were okay. What kind of person was he, dwelling on someone who was beyond hope and neglecting those who were still in need.

He turned and marched straight back into the village. His stomach was cramping slightly and he had a raging thirst, but Ilyan had instructed everyone not to eat or drink anything until the Jedi arrived and deduced what kind of illness they were facing. And he could understand his motives. It even seemed to have worked slightly – the death toll had dropped. But it had not stopped.

As Catalin looked around to see if he could find his family, he was greeted by a sight he had not been expecting. There was a crowd of Togrutas watching something from a distance. As Catalin went up and joined them, he found that they were watching the children and, strangely, Alina. They appeared to be engrossed in conversation with what appeared to be a Twi'lek and a Togruta girl who appeared to be in her early teens.

Catalin frowned and pushed through the onlookers, walking up towards the small gathering. He could hear his son, Elu, talking loudly with the Togruta girl. And from what he was saying, he deduced that she must be a Jedi, as well as the Twi'lek.

"Go on," said Elu. "Show Mum that really cool thing you did earlier with your laser s- I mean, lightsaber. I bet she'll be so impressed."

"Well, I seem to be drawing quite a crowd," said the girl.

"Oh go on. You did it before."

"Okay, fine," the girl made an exaggerated sighing noise and ignited a green lightsaber, before spinning it around herself. The little ones cheered – they had obviously seen her doing this already, and Alina was looking at the girl with... was that pride?

Yes, it was definitely pride.

"Alina!" Catalin called, walking over to his mate. "What's going on over here?"

Alina turned at the sound of his voice and beamed at him. Catalin blinked. Considering what had just happened last night, what with the death of Lescu, he couldn't imagine why Alina could possibly beam at anything. But she was doing it anyway.

"Catalin," she cried, running over to him. She grabbed him by the arm and Catalin suddenly found himself being dragged over to where the others were all standing. The Togruta Jedi stopped spinning her lightsaber and stared at him, lowering the blade. There was a certain anticipation in her eyes as she looked at him.

"Does this girl look familiar to you?" Alina asked him and gestured to the Togruta.

"I'm guessing that this is your mate," said the Twi'lek standing behind the Togruta.

"It is indeed, er... what was your name again?"

The Twi'lek chuckled. "Aayla. Aayla Secura."

"Yes," said Alina, then turned back to Catalin. "Well? What do you think?"

Catalin frowned. She took in the face of the young girl, who was looking at him expectantly. His eyes narrowed as his took note of her facial features. Bright, blue eyes. White stripes over her eyebrows and up the centre of her forehead, white diamonds on her temples and other patches of white on each cheek.

He recognised that pattern alright.

His eyes widened at the sight of her.

"Ahsoka?" he asked, in disbelief.

"Dad?" Ahsoka asked, her eyes filled with joyous emotion. "It is you, isn't it?"

Catalin nodded dumbly, still taking in the appearance of his daughter, so much older than the tiny little girl he remembered. "By the Stripes," he said, using a traditional Togruta phrase. "You... you've gotten so tall."

"That's what Mum said," said Ahsoka. Seeing her father seemed to be much easier than seeing her mother, although perhaps that was because she knew he was going to be around here somewhere, whereas she'd been unprepared with her mum and brother.

"My little girl," Catalin breathed, disbelievingly.

"Hug?" suggested Ahsoka, opening her arms invitingly. Catalin stepped forward and eagerly became the third person that day to hug Ahsoka. The Togruta couldn't remember a time where he'd been happier, which was quite different from the way he'd been feeling earlier. Ahsoka was home at last. He'd been beginning to think that this day would never come. But it had.

"I think Ahsoka's been needing this," Aayla said, as she stepped towards Alina. "Go on. We've found that group hugs can be quite refreshing. Go and join them."

Alina did so with a will, as did Elu. Ahsoka was surprised to feel two other sets of arms wrap around her, but didn't even think of resisting. She was surrounded by her own family after not setting eyes on them for a decade. She wasn't about to complain.

Once Ahsoka was released from the triple embrace, she eagerly began to start talking. "So, how have you all been during the last ten years? I've thought about you a lot while I've been away. I'm dying to hear news."

"We haven't been doing so badly," said Catalin, wrapping an arm around Alina's shoulder and under her long back head-tail. "It's been pretty normal as things go for Togrutas for us really. We had Elu about a year or so after you'd left. But we've always thought about you, even while we were wandering from place to place. Your mother and I are as good a team as ever when we go hunting, although I have to say we often have our hands full controlling little Elu."

"I'm not that bad," Elu protested. "And I'm not little either."

"Why, what does he do?" asked Ahsoka, glancing at her little brother curiously.

"Well, he loves to play pranks on other people," sighed Catalin. "We've tried to talk some sense into him but we've had no luck as of yet. As a responsible Jedi, maybe you could do a better job."

"Erm..." said Ahsoka.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," chuckled Aayla. "Our little Ahsoka has gained a reputation in the Jedi Temple for being one of the biggest pranksters in all of Jedi history."

Catalin blinked. "Ah," he said.

"Thanks for the support, Aayla," Ahsoka said dryly.

Aayla grinned. "Our little white friend told me that it is the duty of a friend to embarrass their other friends in front of their parents."

"Well, he would say that, wouldn't he?" Ahsoka rolled her eyes.

"Who are you talking about?" asked Alina curiously.

"Just a friend we have," said Ahsoka. "Well, now I know for sure that you're my little brother. A Togruta after my own heart."

"See," said Elu, looking up to his mother and father. "It's not that bad. Even my big sis does it."

"Well, yeah," said Ahsoka, "but I only do it on my close friends, who know that it's all intended to be a joke. And even then I limit them mostly to my Master, Anakin Skywalker. I managed to start off a prank war with him," she added with a slight hint of pride in her voice. "And I am winning it by several miles. He may be a brilliant tactician but in this war, I have the edge."

"Uh-huh," said Catalin, slowly. "So, er. You should tell us more about yourself and what you've been doing since you left Shili. I mean, with us, life's been pretty much the way it always has been, except we haven't had you around to share it with us. You're life should be infinitely more interesting."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Elu excitedly, as numerous other Togruta children crowded around to listen to the conversation. "Tell us all about your Jedi training. This is going to be so cool."

Ahsoka flushed slightly under her little brother's attentions, but she began. "Well, after Master Plo Koon came and took me back to the Temple, I had to stand in front of the whole Jedi Council, while they tested my talents and Master Plo explained where he'd found me. I was so nervous, standing in front of all these really powerful people, but they were all really nice. Although I have to say I almost laughed when I saw Master Rancisis and Master Poof."

"I think Master Rancisis gets that a lot," said Aayla. "As did Master Poof when he was still alive."

_Poof? Master Poof? What kind of name is-_

_Show some respect, Terriermon. Didn't you hear? He's dead._

_Oh yeah. Sorry Rena._

"Anyway," said Ahsoka. "After that, I was put with a group of about ten other younglings. I don't know what I was expecting when I walked in there with Master Yoda and was assigned to this new class, but I wasn't expecting everyone to be so nice. There wasn't an unfriendly face there. Anyway, after that we began to practice and develop our connection with the Force. We would do exercises like levitating a rubber ball and seeing how long we could keep it in the air. We'd also practice using our senses to detect other people. Effectively we played hide-and-seek all the time."

"That sounds like fun," said Elu. "We aren't allowed to play hide-and-seek too far from camp just in case of predators."

Ahsoka nodded and continued. "As we progressed, we began to move on to larger objects to lift with our minds, like cushions and then chairs and so on. Then, when we reached about seven, we began to get our first training involving lightsabers. We'd have to wear special helmets that meant we couldn't see anything and we'd have these practice lightsabers that would only give us a slight burn that could be easily treated if we used it wrong. Then we'd have a floating sphere fire harmless lasers at us and we'd have to deflect them without looking."

"That sounds difficult," said Alina.

"Not once we got the hang of it. Then it was really easy. Our senses were growing stronger all the time. And Master Yoda was always very patient with us. He never pushed us and he always offered helpful advice whenever we needed any. He all liked the little guy and I think he really liked us too. Just being around him made you feel slightly quirky."

"But I'm betting that didn't stop you from imitating his voice on occasion," said Aayla.

"Well, it's such an odd voice," protested Ahsoka. "Besides, I was never that good at it.

At the age of nine we began to train in lightsaber combat and we began to branch away to become experts in different areas of the Force. I wanted to be a Jedi Guardian, like Master Skywalker and Master Secura and most of the council, so I went to train more in combat than other things. I was tutored in lightsaber combat by Master Cin Drallig and, I have to say, I quickly became one of the most skilled in the class."

"Good for you," said Catalin. "I'm becoming prouder with every word I hear."

"Thanks, Dad," Ahsoka grinned. "And that's not all. Master Plo dropped by one day to see how I was getting on and when he saw how good I was getting with a lightsaber, he offered to train me in non-lightsaber combat too, just in case I lost my blade. So we began to practice. At first, he would always wipe the floor with me, but then I began to fight back, and I really improved. Master Plo said that knowing non-lightsaber combat does help with your lightsaber combat too and it turns out he was right.

"Then, about half a year ago and a few months into the start of the Clone Wars, Master Yoda finally announced I was ready to go out there and become a proper Padawan learner. When I heard that I was going to be assigned to Anakin, the Chosen One himself, I have to say I was ecstatic. It took all my reserves not to jump for joy in front of the Council. Every youngling wanted to become his Padawan, and they had picked me.

"Anakin was reluctant to take me on at first," Ahsoka sighed. "And I feared that I had messed up my chances when I almost got him killed on my first mission on the planet Christophsis. But I suppose my recklessness must have gotten through to him, because after all that he still agreed to take me on. And while I may never actually say this to his face, I am immensely proud to be his Padawan."

"Why don't you tell him how you feel?" asked Alina.

"Please," Ahsoka scoffed. "He doesn't need a bigger head."

"One of Anakin's downsides is that he has a tendency to get slightly arrogant at times," said Aayla.

"I see," said Alina. "Keep going, Ahsoka."

"Well, after Christophsis we went on a variety of missions against the Separatists. Right afterwards we had to rescue the son of Jabba the Hutt from them. I've faced off against Asajj Ventress and General Grievous, two of the Separatist's key figures and come out alive. I've battled against enormous of droids. And I commanded my first space battle above Aayla's home planet Ryloth. It... didn't go very well. But then I commanded my second space battle the same day, which was a great success."

"And after that..." Ahsoka paused slightly, suddenly thinking of what she was about to say. She had just reached the point where the Digimon appeared in her life. And they were supposed to be a secret from most other people.

But, she was beginning to think Terriermon might do something drastic in he was missed out the story. Besides, the secret was from the Senate and the Separatists, not her parents, and since her parents were unlikely ever to speak to the Senate, or really anyone who could tell the Senate, it would be alright to tell them, wouldn't it?

All the same, she glanced at Aayla, silently asking if she should continue. Aayla picked up on her silent question and said, "Perhaps we should broach the next bit in front of everyone else too."

"Good idea," nodded Ahsoka. "We don't want to explain it twice." She took a few steps to one side. Most of the tribe was watching her now and listening to her story with interest and curiosity – they had hardly ever seen a Jedi much less heard one describing her life. Ahsoka moved so that she was addressing all of them now. She noted the four clones, Plo and Ilyan were also watching with interest.

"And then something totally mind-boggling happened. Aayla here showed up to help us retake her home planet, but she wasn't alone. Asides from the usual clone troopers that we Jedi command, she brought with her three extraordinary beings that come from a completely alternate dimension."

The tribe began whispering amongst themselves now. Ahsoka knew that they were debating whether or not to believe her. So she said, "And believe it or not, they are here right now, listening and watching. You just can't see them."

They began to glance around now, looking a little nervous at the prospect of something hidden or invisible, keeping an eye on them.

"I assure you, they are friendly," said Ahsoka. "Very friendly. They've become some of the best friends I have ever had in my whole life, as well as three human children who also come from another dimension. They're called Digimon and if my senses are correct, they are standing on my right."

"You are correct, young Padawan," said the disembodied voice of Terriermon, causing all the Togrutas to start in surprise.

"That was perhaps not the best way of introducing yourself, Terriermon," said Renamon from nowhere.

"Well, would you rather they actually believe something was there before they could see us, or would you rather we just drop the shield and watch them freak out when they see us and our weirdness. One step at a time is better than all at once."

"That's rubbish," snorted Lopmon. "You just wanted the pleasure of startling them by yourself."

"Lies!"

"I can read your mind you know."

"So you keep saying," said Terriermon.

"I think you're confusing them," said Aayla to seemingly thin air, but she was in fact looking Renamon directly in the face. She just couldn't see her. "Perhaps you should just lower your perception filter now."

"Good idea," said Renamon, and did just that.

The Togrutas gasped and stepped back at the sight of the six beings that suddenly appeared out of thin air right next to the Jedi. Their eyes were immediately drawn to Renamon since she was the tallest there, but they quickly spotted the bunny twins too because they were perched on her shoulders.

"What's up, guys?" asked Terriermon cheerfully. "You look like you've seen something from another dimension. Oh. Wait. You have. My bad."

"Don't listen to him," said Renamon. "He'll tell jokes in almost any situation so you learn to take him with a pinch of salt."

"More like the whole tin," murmured Henry.

"Everyone," said Ahsoka, "I'd like to introduce you to several of my best friends. This little girl here is Suzie and this is her partner, Lopmon."

"Hiya!" said Suzie brightly.

Lopmon nodded. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"And this is Suzie's older brother Henry and his partner, Terriermon."

"Good morning," said Henry.

"Will everyone stop being so formal?" asked Terriermon.

"No," said Ahsoka. "And last but not least, this is Rika and her partner, Renamon."

"Hello," said Rika.

"I am going to be very formal just so I can annoy, Terriermon," smirked Renamon. "It is honour to meet each and every one of you, particularly the rest of Ahsoka's family. You have a truly skilled Jedi for a daughter, believe me."

The Togrutas took a few more moments to stare dumbly at the three Digimon. Then, little Elu stepped forwards slightly and looked up at them. They looked back at him, friendly expressions in place.

"Are you really real?" asked Elu, uncertainly.

Terriermon responded by leaping off Renamon's shoulder and landing right on Elu's head. "Do I feel real to you?"

Elu blinked, then grinned and went, "This is so..."

"...cool?" asked Terriermon. "You know, we really need to extend you vocabulary. How about remarkable or awe-inspiring?"

"I have a feeling those two will get along extremely well," Aayla murmured to Ahsoka.

Plo walked over with Ilyan and the clones in tow. "You might have informed me that you were about to reveal the presence of the Digimon," he said.

"Oh, like you informed me the tribe we were going to help is my old one?" Ahsoka folded her arms and huffed at her old mentor and friend.

"That's different," said Plo. "It gave you a nice surprise in the end, didn't it? Besides, at the time I did not know if either of your parents had been victims of this disease or not and I had no idea about your brother either."

"Oh," said Ahsoka. "Well, I suppose I can forgive you then. Er, how's Shaak Ti getting along."

"We don't know," said Bly. "We decided not to interrupt her for a while longer. She's still analysing the victims."

"She'll give us the verdict when she's ready," said Plo. "I have faith in Master Ti to find the source of this pestilence."

"Hey, Ahsoka," said Terriermon, still perched on Elu's head. "Why have you stopped your story? It was just getting to the good part."

"Oh, any part with you in it is the good part is it?" Ahsoka asked.

"Precisely," grinned the bunny.

"I could easily shut him up if you like," said Renamon. "I fear he is making it his duty to be as irritating as possible."

"Momentai," Terriermon said. "I'm sure your family wants to hear the rest of the story too. Right guys?" he looked up at them. Then he frowned and said, "By the way, I never did get your names. I just keep thinking of you as 'Ahsoka's Mum and Ahsoka's Dad.' What are your names?"

"Well, my name is Catalin Tano," said Catalin. "And this is my mate, Alina Tano. And this is our son, Elu Tano."

"Your mate, huh?" asked Terriermon. "Isn't that a coinkydink? The tall, yellow fox over there is _my _mate."

At the stunned looked on the faces of the Togrutas, Renamon smiled and scooped Terriermon up in her arms, drawing him into a kiss on the lips. She liked taking the direct approach in proving it, both because of the expression it resulted in and because, well, it gave her an opportunity to kiss him.

"That was slightly odd," murmured Catalin. "I assumed that if the white one was mated to anyone, it would be the brown one."

Terriermon glanced over at him. "The brown one? You're suggesting I go for incest? Sorry, but I'm a one mon kind of guy. And that's even without taking into consideration that Renamon would kick my ass if I even thought about going with someone else."

"No, I wouldn't," said Renamon, pulling Terriermon to her chest. "I'd simply drive the thought from your mind."

"Ah," said Catalin. "Sorry. I didn't realise you were related."

"There seems to be a lot of that going around today," said Lopmon, chuckling. "We didn't realise Ahsoka was related to Elu, but there you have it. She is."

"Am I the only one seeing a parallel here?" asked Rika.

"What do you mean?" asked Henry.

"I mean that not only is there an older-younger sibling relationship between you and Suzie, Henry, but now we've got a new one with Ahsoka and Elu. Except that the genders have swapped ages."

"That..." said Henry, slowly. "Is actually pretty weird."

"How old are you?" Suzie asked Elu.

"I'm nine," said Elu, smiling proudly. "And growing fast."

"Ha! I can beat that!" Suzie cried cheerfully. "I'm ten years old. And I'm growing fast too."

"You may be ten years old, Suzie," said Aayla. "But you've only been ten for a month. Elu's not that far behind you, you know."

Echo and Fives watched all this banter going back and forth with expressions of extreme bemusement. It reminded them of the sort of things the clones might discuss in the barracks, except running along a slightly different theme, as the clones would mainly talk about various aspects of the war.

But neither of them had really pictured Jedi or anybody they would associate with like this. The conversation was mostly pointless and just being done for amusement. And to see Aayla and Ahsoka joining in with this changed their view on Jedi. Perhaps they weren't the constantly serious beings everyone believed them to be after all.

They had heard tales from Rhys and Jjeck about their mission with Master Yoda to the Moon of Rugosa and how Yoda had demonstrated extreme silliness as well as his usual ass-kickery, but then again, everyone had heard tales of Yoda being silly. Not other Jedi though.

Next people would be saying that the story of Aayla apprehending a criminal by going undercover as a dancer was true.

"Anyway," said Ahsoka, turning back to her parents. "Yes. I met these guys after my first successful space battle and shortly after that I was working alongside them on the planet below to help liberate it from the evil Separatists. These guys are amazing in battle, able to take on bigger and better shapes and they have all sorts of astonishing abilities.

"I've worked alongside them on numerous missions. We stopped an evil scientist from blowing up the Naboo sun with these guys. After that, my Master and me were partnered with Aayla during the war and we became the A-Team. Very few people know about the Digimon, you see, as we're keeping them a secret from most people to prevent the Separatists learning of their existence. One of our biggest advantages on the field is these guys making a sudden appearance that the Separatists are totally unprepared for."

"And to that effect," said Plo. "We would like you to swear an oath. An oath that should, by some slim chance, the Senate or the Separatists make contact with you, do not tell them of the Digimon. We are bringing the war to a much quicker end with them at our side."

Ilyan nodded thoughtfully. "Alright," he said. "I swear a solemn oath that I shall not tell anyone else, not even other Togruta tribes, about these Digimon."

"As do I," said Catalin.

"And I," said Alina.

One by one, the rest of the tribe rose their hands into the air and said, "I," to indicate that they were in.

"Excellent," said Plo.

"You will find that my people are extremely reliable and loyal to their friends, Master Jedi," said Ilyan. "You can rest assured that any secrets you entrust with us will stay with us."

"Then let us adjourn. We shall go and check on Shaak Ti's progress," said Plo. "Who feels like coming along?"

"I shall, Master Plo," said Aayla. "Ahsoka, are you coming with us."

"Sure, why not?" shrugged Ahsoka. "That is, if my family would be willing to come with me."

"Alright then," nodded Catalin. "We can pay our respects to poor Lescu while we are there."

"Lescu?" asked Ahsoka, frowning. "Why does that name sound so familiar?"

"You may not remember him all that well," said Alina sadly. "But you used to call him Uncle Lescue because he would always camp with us. He was your father's best friend, and he was the first victim of this terrible disease."

Ahsoka blinked as she remembered the tall, red, grinning man that would ruffle her montrals every so often and laugh whenever she told awful jokes. That was all her memories really included but still, this Lescu had been a part of her former life. Hearing that this man was no longer in the land of the living was quite depressing.

"Come along then," said Plo. "The rest of you, stay here, and do your best to stay out of trouble, Terriermon."

"As if," said Terriermon. "Don't you think I know when to be serious?"

"Not particularly. No," said Plo, as the Jedi and Ilyan started back towards the tent, this time with Elu, Catalin and Alina following behind them.

"Well, good decision," Terriermon called back. "Because it's the right one. I don't."

"Ugh," Henry shook his head. "Terriermon."

"Momentai."

"Wow," muttered one of the Togruta children, staring at Elu a little enviously. "I always knew that Elu had a Jedi for a sister but now that we met her, I'm even more jealous."

"Me too," said another. "I wish I could have such a cool older sister," whispered another. "But I'm an only child."

Terriermon looked down at the little children and grinned slightly at their jealous expressions. He knew that he would probably be jealous too, were it not for the fact that she had a sister already who was cool in her own way.

Sensing an opportunity to have some fun, he leapt down and stood before the small children. "Alright troops, listen up," said Terriermon, putting his hands behind his back and walking back and forth in front of them like a pacing army general. "I can hear some jealousy creeping into the ranks here. And I know how to fix it. Elu may have an uber-cool sister, but you can all resolve this by becoming cooler than him."

The Togrutas were looking at him with bemused expressions, but Terriermon ploughed on. "We're going to start training you in speed, stamina and endurance, so that you can take on any member of this village and win the fight with ease. Are you with me?"

Most of them were confused and unsure what he was doing, but a couple stood to attention and said, "Sir, yes sir."

"Right," nodded Terriermon. "We're going to have a competition to see which of you is the fastest and most skilled hunter. And the winner," he said, pausing for dramatic effect and watching his listeners lean closer in anticipation, wondering what he was about to say. "Will be the first of you," he paused again, just to further aggravate them. "To catch." Pause. "ME!" He yelled the last part.

He widened his stance and made a challenging beckoning motion like he had seen cowboys do in movies. "Bring it," he said.

The Togruta children loved the sound of a competition and several of them leapt forward to try and catch the little bunny. But Terriermon was way ahead of them and leapt into the air, somersaulting over them and landing on the ground.

"Nice try," he said. "But no dice."

Some more charged at him, but he rolled to one side, and then sprang over the sweeping arm of another, extending his ears and gliding away, coming to ground again a dozen yards away.

Terriermon tutted. "I expected more," he said, winking at them. The Togruta children were now more determined to catch him and set off in pursuit of the little guy, but Terriermon turned and fled, with the children in hot pursuit.

"Nyah, nyah," Terriermon laughed. "Can't catch me!"

* * *

The clones watched as the bunny dodged and rolled away from the numerous small children seeking to catch up with him. "Is he always like this?" asked Wolffe as he, Echo and Fives turned to face Bly – the only clone there who knew Terriermon that way.

"Oh yes," nodded Bly. "He just doesn't know when to stop. I don't think I've ever seen him with a depressed or upset face since the day I first met him on Maridun."

"I bet he must wear you out, Commander," chuckled Echo. "Especially if he continues with these weird actions on the cruisers."

"Oh believe me," said Bly. "He continues these weird action wherever he goes. But actually, I find it quite refreshing. It makes an interesting change from the usual barracks talk with other clones. Sometimes he managed to convince Renamon, General Secura and Commander Tano to start dancing around in their chambers. You can hear them singing through the door too."

"What?" Fives said, deadpan.

"Dancing Jedi?" asked Wolffe. "That was actually true."

"Yep," said Bly. "It certainly was."

"Well," said Echo, brightly. "My view of the world just got completely turned upside-down. Next you'll be telling me that story about riding Acklay into battle was true."

"Er..." said Bly. "Yeah. About that..."

"Never mind," Echo rubbed his temples with one hand. "Just, never mind. I'm going to need counselling after this. It's mental."

* * *

Shaak Ti bent over the ninth Togruta corpse and carefully examined the body. She sighed. There was absolutely nothing on this body that helped her to determine the illness that seemed to be sweeping through the Togruta campsite. Every body had the exact same symptoms on it, and unfortunately for the Jedi healer, none of them were displaying anything that she had seen before.

She was as at a loss as the healer, Ranna.

Each body seemed to be displaying the usual symptoms of some kind of cold, such as swelling glands under the neck and others besides. The only hint that there was something out of the ordinary was the way that the skin of the victims changed colour. The usual red and orange and white of Togruta skin was a dark blue in colour on all the corpses. The veins in particular were stained blue, as if they had been replaced with ink.

She was at a loss.

"Anything?" asked Ranna, sitting next to Shaak Ti and watching with growing anxiousness. She was getting extremely worried by all this too. If the Jedi couldn't figure out what this mysterious illness was, then what could they do to stop it?

Answer: nothing.

Shaak Ti shook her head again and sat back, feeling slightly disgruntled. She was considered to be one of the most skilful healers in the Jedi Temple. She was revered by most others because she was able to identify just about any disease in the galaxy within an instant and knew the exact way to cure it. Only Luminara Unduli could rival her skill when it came to healing others

But this one didn't match anything she had ever encountered before.

Shaak Ti pressed her fingers to her forehead and shook her head, massaging her temples in an attempt to relieve some of the tension building up in her right now. It was vain attempt. "I just don't understand this," she said. "Perhaps this is some new virus or something that has sprung up from nowhere, or a mutated version of something else I have seen before. Whatever it is, I cannot recognise it."

"Then, what is our best course of action?" asked Ranna, a little nervously.

"My suggestion would be to move to a completely different area. We Jedi will make contact with some of the other Togruta tribes in the vicinity to see if they have had the same problem. If they have, then I'd suggest moving quite some distance. Meanwhile, I shall take these unfortunate souls back to Coruscant with me. We have some of the best equipment for analysing diseases with the Republic. Perhaps then we can determine how to counter this thing?"

Ranna nodded uneasily. "I suppose we shall have to make do. It's such a shame that these innocent people died for nothing. And so quickly too."

"I know," said Shaak Ti. "It saddens my heart."

The two Togruta women watched the dead bodies silently for a few moments. Shaak Ti then bent over and examined the tenth corpse out of the thirteen that had gone down, hoping against hope that she would have a better result with this one than all of the others.

But, as usual, no other visible symptoms.

This was getting extremely frustrating indeed.

It was when she was examining the twelfth victim that Plo Koon walked into the tent. Shaak Ti looked up at him and nodded respectfully. "Master Plo," she said.

"Master Ti," nodded Plo back. "How goes the inspection?"

"Terrible," Shaak Ti sighed, sitting in a chair and staring at her hands, clasped together in her lap. "I just can't identify these disease at all. It's so strange. Perhaps my memory is not as good as it once was or something."

Plo looked concerned. "That is ill news indeed."

"Please, Master Plo," muttered Shaak Ti. "No puns."

"Pardon?"

"Never mind. The point is – I am stuck. I have the foggiest idea of what I'm up against here."

"Then perhaps we should begin preparations to evacuate the camp, lest this strange disease strikes again," said Plo.

"Evacuate?" Aayla asked as she also walked into the tent, along with Ilyan. "Are we sure that's the only option to us right now?"

"It's obviously something to do with being ingested," said Shaak Ti, "because there haven't been any more deaths since Ilyan told everybody not to eat or drink everything. Perhaps if they get out of the area and warn all other Togruta tribes to stay away from here, we can put it in quarantine until the illness is identified."

Ilyan sighed. "I should never have brought us to this place. It's been nothing but death since we arrived."

"Don't say that," said Aayla. "It's also been a time of reunion now that Ahsoka has met her parents again."

"Ahsoka's parents?" blinked Shaak Ti. "When did this happen?"

"About ten minutes ago, Master Ti," Ahsoka entered the tent, with her family right behind her. "I'd like to introduce you to my mother, my father and my b-"

Ahsoka stopped and blinked when she spotted the nearest dead Togruta. She inhaled sharply at the sight of the blue skin and her eyes widened in horror. Her skin went noticeably paler. She looked as if she'd seen a ghost.

"Yes," said Ranna, misinterpreting Ahsoka's reaction. "It is truly a terrible sight isn't it? I cannot begin to imagine what kind of disease could have killed them this quickly."

"I can," murmured Ahsoka, quietly.

"Hmm," asked Ranna. "What was that?"

"I said, 'I can,'" Ahsoka repeated, more loudly. "I know what did this. I know what disease this is. But... but it's not possible!"

Shaak Ti stood up and crossed over to Ahsoka immediately. "What is it, Ahsoka?" she asked. "How do you know what it is? And why is it impossible."

Ahsoka's mind was racing as it went back in time, to an incident in the past before she met the Digimon. In fact, it was an incident in the past that had occurred right before her first space battle and right before she heard the voice of a Digimon for the first time. Oh, how clearly she could remember it. And it did not stir up pleasant memories:-

* * *

A swamp in the middle of nowhere, full of piloti trees, the ground covered in mud and small stones beneath her feet as she hopped off the back of the enormous, globular shaak that she and the female Gungan she had met earlier that day, named Peppi Bow. She was looking at the ground, and the tracks that she knew belonged the Padmé Amidala and Jar Jar Binks.

"Their tracks end here," she mused.

Peppi suddenly rose off the ground slightly as what appeared to be a double-ended periscope of some kind rose up right beneath her. Ahsoka bolted to the side where neither lens would be able to see her. "Peppi," she said. "It's a scope. Don't let them see you."

As the periscope moved around, she moved with it, while Peppi struggled for balance. At the first opportunity, Ahsoka leapt over it, tackling Peppi and knocking them both behind a thick tree trunk and out of sight.

It looked like they'd found the secret lab they'd been looking for.

* * *

A little later, and Ahsoka was inside the base, and, along with Captain Rex and four other clones, she was making her way down a cylindrical corridor and battling droids all the way. Pushing one bolt aside and slicing through the droid that fired it, she cartwheeled to the side and pushed off the wall to slice through another. Taking out a third, she spotted two droidekas ahead that swiftly uncurled and raised their shields.

"Fall back!" Ahsoka cried, as she hurriedly began to deflect the firepower of the droids. Being as Padawan, she was still not perfect at deflecting the high number of bolts the droidekas spewed in her direction. Though she got most of them, one slipped through and slammed into the chest of a clone, killing him instantly. And then, another clone went down, leaving only Rex and two more.

Ahsoka wasn't making any progress towards the droidekas and was being forced backwards.

"I can't... hold them!" she cried, fearing that all the clones would soon follow the example of the other two.

Suddenly, the ceiling above the droids caved in completely and buried them under sheets of metal. Ahsoka threw up an arm at the cloud of dust that came up, and when she lowered it, she saw nothing but a pile of metal and a familiar bearded Jedi Master standing on top of it.

"Need some help?" he asked.

"Oh, so good to see you, Master Kenobi," she said.

"Things are going well," said Obi-Wan, as the two of them led the clones back along the corridor. "The lab is secure and hopefully Anakin has reached Padmé by now."

* * *

She was in the middle of a large safe room in the lab with Rex and three other clones. The lights were flashing red and an alarm klaxon was going off. She looked around as one of the clones monitoring a screen at the edge of the room cried, "No, no, no, no!" He turned to address Rex and Ahsoka. "Some of the virus got in here! We didn't close the doors fast enough!"

Rex put his arms on his hips and turned to Ahsoka. "We may be dead men," he said with resignation. "But we can still stop those droids."

Ahsoka could detect the finality and slight despair in his voice. "Don't worry," she assured him. "My Master will find a cure for this virus. We're not dead yet."

"Is anyone out there?" a voice broke through Ahsoka's comlink on her wrist. "Can anyone hear me?"

"Senator Amidala," said Ahsoka. "We're trapped in a safe room at the end of Complex B."

"We'll be right there," said Padmé. She paused and then added. "Are you contaminated?"

Suddenly a couple of the clones began to cough violently. Ahsoka turned to look at them, trying to contain their hacking by covering their mouths with their hands. But it was no good.

"I'm afraid so," Ahsoka sighed, as her men continued to cough.

* * *

"There they are!" Ahsoka cried as they rounded the corner to spot the droids that were attempting to cut their way through the manhole that sealed them away from the surface world. Her face was beginning to turn blue, particularly around the veins. Behind her was Rex, the other three clones, Padmé and Jar Jar. Of all of them, Jar Jar was the only uninfected one, as he was in a HAZMAT suit.

She ran forward and sliced through the ankles of one droid, causing it to fall off the ladder. Slicing it again on the way down, she used the Force to grab the other and pull it down, where she sliced that one too.

Suddenly she felt dizzy and leaned against the ladder.

"Ahsoka!" cried Padmé in concern.

"I'm alright," gasped Ahsoka.

* * *

Back in the safe room, Padme was soaking a cloth under the water leaking from a pipe, and then she walked over and carefully bathed the head of a clone that was sitting on the floor, coughing uncontrollably. Jar Jar hovered nearby, feeling guilty that he was the only one not suffering from this.

"What a waste," Padme sighed, as she turned to look at the other two clones besides Rex and the sick one. They were dead, passed away a few minutes ago.

"With all due respect, Senator," said Rex, coughing himself and covering the bodies with a blanket. "It's what these men were born to do."

"I hope that their sacrifice brings us closer to peace," said Padme.

"It... will, Padme," Ahsoka coughed horrendously. She was barely standing and leaning against the fuel tank for support. "You must... believe..."

Whatever happened next she couldn't remember, because it was at that point that she blacked out and keeled over.

* * *

"I know what it is," said Ahsoka, in the present day, "because I have been infected with it once before. And it's impossible, because this virus is supposed to be extinct. I have no doubt that what we are facing is the Blue Shadow Virus."

A chill ran through the tent at that name. Everyone knew about the Blue Shadow Virus. Supposedly it had been wiped out generations before anyone present was born, which was why Shaak Ti had not recognised it. An extremely deadly disease indeed.

A disease that nothing was immune to.

* * *

Rather a dark ending to such a cheerfully starting chapter isn't it? For those of you who don't watch Clone Wars and found that flashback sequence confusing, it will be explained in the next chapter.

Well, there you have it. There's your virus.

Please review.

* * *

Next time...

The Blue Shadow Virus is going to strike again. And the results will not be to anyone's liking.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 64 : Waterborne**


	64. Waterborne

Phew. After my exam, I had a lazy day, so, in order to make up for lost time, I pulled out all the stops on this one and wrote it all in one day. I hope you enjoy the drama of this chapter and I assure you, if you like my work, you will probably be wanting me to update extremely quickly by the end of this chapter.

So, without further ado, let's get it going.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 64:- Waterborne**

* * *

The incredibly tense atmosphere inside the medical tent that Ranna had set up went completely unnoticed by everyone outside it. Most of the adult Togrutas were laughing, temporarily forgetting their troubles as they watched their children try, and fail miserably, to catch Terriermon. The little bunny was running rings around them, almost literally sometimes.

"No fair!" yelled one of them as Terriermon span right over her head and through her outstretched arms as she completely failed to even touch him. "You can fly! That gives you an unfair advantage."

"I know," said Terriermon, landing on a rock nearby. "And that's exactly how I like to play. Hey, you can't expect catching things to be that easy."

One of the Togruta children tried to grab him from behind, quietly sneaking up on him with his bare feet almost making no noise at all as he inched forwards. Unfortunately, Terriermon's massive ears picked up the faint rustles of the grass behind him and he sprang from his perch just as the child swiped at him.

"Awwwww," whined the young boy, aggravated to have missed.

"You'll have to try better than that," said Terriermon, standing on one ear as he contemplated the boy. "Maybe you guys should go for some of those teamwork skills that you have to know to hunt stuff instead of just trying to catch me on your own. Because, if you haven't noticed, I'm pretty damn good."

"Yeah," nodded another child, emphatically. "Surround him. Quick."

The other kids obeyed so that Terriermon had a child facing him from all points of the compass. "I appear to be surrounded," said Terriermon, tapping his chin with a finger. "How on Shili am I going to get out of this one?"

"Get him!" yelled one of the children and they all ran forwards at once in an attempt to be the first and to win this so-called contest that Terriermon had initiated. Terriermon smirked as he saw them approach and then leapt straight upwards, high above the heads of the children with a jump he didn't look capable of doing.

Rather comically, the children ended up crashing into one another and falling onto their backsides, moaning in pain and disappointment.

Terriermon, from where he hovered, cracked up.

"And there was me thinking that sort of thing only happened in cartoons," he laughed as he clutched his ribs with his little hands, trying to regain his breath.

"Alright," said another child, as the others walked over – most of them had stopped for a rest. "From now on, you're not allowed to fly. We can't catch you because you always go into the air just before we can."

"Yes," said Terriermon. "That's why I did it."

"Then stop," whined the child. "Give us a chance to catch you at least."

Terriermon sighed. "Oh, alright," he said, coming to rest on another large rock. "You see. No ears. I won't do any flying now. But I warn you, I can be pretty darn fast on the ground when I want to be. Come and get me!"

The children ran forward, but this time they did it en masse. Terriermon balked as twenty or so children rushed him at once and turned to run in the opposite direction, springing off the rock and pelting off into the ring of tents, pursued by the yelling mob of children.

Terriermon began a flurry of feints, side-steps and dodges as children came at him from different directions, swinging to the side, bouncing to the edge and at one point he even rolled through the legs of one of the taller children. At another point, he avoided being struck by spinning out of the way, leaping onto one ear and rotating his body so the child assailant ran past him.

* * *

"Just look at them all," said Suzie, shaking her head as the others all watched the children try and catch Terriermon. "They're all rubbish at tag. I could have caught Terriermon at least ten times by now. Actually, more than that."

"That may be," said Lopmon. "But you do know all of his evasive manoeuvres and how to counter most of them. They've never done this with a Digimon before."

"Yes, he does seem to have a bit of an advantage," said Renamon. "Even without the use of his ears. Perhaps I should start speaking to him to interrupt his concentration. That might level the playing field a bit more."

_Don't even think about it!_ Terriermon protested in her head. Renamon chuckled.

Henry tore his gaze away from his partner and turned to look inside the medical tent that their friends had disappeared inside a few minutes ago.

"I wonder how they're getting on," said Henry. "I hope they've found the source of whatever this illness is."

Rika turned to him. "I'm sure they'll find the answer. Shaak Ti's pretty smart, you know. She was amazing at the Battle of Orto Plutonia."

"Yeah," nodded Henry. "It's just I have a bad feeling about this. That's all."

"You always say that," said Rika. "And, come to think of it, I've heard a lot of people say that since I came to this dimension. Hmm. Weird."

"Well, when I have a bad feeling," said Henry. "I often seem to be right about it. I had a bad feeling when Suzie and Lopmon went with Luminara and Barriss on Geonosis and look what happened there."

"Can we not bring that up? It still creeps me out," Suzie shuddered at the still fresh memories of the horrible zombies.

"Sorry," said Henry. "But my point still stands."

"You worry an awful lot, don't you," chuckled Rika.

"Surely that's a good thing," said Henry.

"It is," nodded Rika. "Your unselfish and endless consideration for the safety of everyone else, particularly your little sister, is one of your most endearing qualities, Henry." She smiled at her boyfriend. "It's one of the things I admire most about you."

"Thanks," said Henry, his cheeks colouring slightly.

"Come on, Henry," said Renamon. "Now you have to state one of Rika's qualities that you like the most."

"I do?" asked Henry. "Erm, okay. Well, I suppose... er... I like the fact that... you're, er..." Henry stumbled over his words. "Extremely feisty, I suppose. It... reminds me a little of my own Digimon partner. But you can also be very loving and kind too."

"Glad to hear it," Rika smiled.

Renamon, Suzie and Lopmon all deliberately turned around to give Henry and Rika some slight privacy as the drew closer to each other. "Why do they always have to do that in front of me?" muttered Suzie.

"You don't seem to mind when Terriermon and I do it," observed Renamon.

"Yeah, but neither of you guys are my big brother," Suzie shuddered. "It looks just... icky, to see him kissing anyone. Even Rika."

"I can see where Suzie is coming from there," said Lopmon. "I do find it a bit uncomfortable when you and _my_ brother kiss in front of everyone. But not _that_ uncomfortable. Just a little bit."

"Well," said Suzie. "When you and Impmon get together then you can kiss in front of everyone and make Terriermon uncomfortable."

"W-what?" Lopmon did a double-take as Suzie said these words. "Impmon? Get together? What do you mean? What are you talking about?"

"Terriermon said that the two of you fancied each other," said Suzie, knowingly. "And I think he might be right now that I think about it. I saw him glancing at you a couple of times in the weeks before we were sent here."

"Wha-? Terriermon said... You saw... What?" Lopmon said, floundering slightly.

"Not to worry, Lopmon," said Renamon, chuckling slightly. "I wasn't entirely sure what to do either when I found I was falling in love with Terriermon. Fortunately, you've got some time to figure out what to do about him before you see him again, whereas I was glued to Terriermon at the time."

"_If _I see him again, you mean," said Lopmon, more muttering to herself than anyone else. She was thinking now. She'd always assumed her feelings towards Impmon were nothing more than friendly. Even when Terriermon had started asking when they would get together, she paid little attention. But now... perhaps she did care for Impmon a good deal more than a friend might care for another friend.

She suddenly felt quite overwhelmed.

Was Suzie right? Was Renamon's teasing right? Had her brother been right all along, while she herself had not noticed? Was it denial or was lack of attention?

Ugh, if Terriermon was right, she was pretty sure that she would never hear the end of it from him.

* * *

Terriermon rounded a large boulder and was forced to immediately leap on top of it to avoid the arms of another Togruta child. The little guys were everywhere and they were getting closer and closer all the time.

Terriermon backflipped off the rock and slipped through the legs of the numerous adults, who all stepped backwards in surprise as he darted between them. Terriermon used them to put some distance between him and the children, but the children began to close in on him once again.

Deciding to add a bit of melodrama to it, Terriermon grinned and turned to flee once again. "AAAGHH!" he cried, in mock fear. "They are an endless tide! Will somebody please save me?"

"We're gaining on him, guys!" shouted one of the children.

Renamon, from where she had been talking to Lopmon, turned around to see Terriermon come flying at her. "Rena! Save me!" he cried as he suddenly slammed into her chest at high speed. Renamon, understandably, was knocked off balance by the sudden and rather unexpected blow and she fell backwards.

Renamon and Terriermon both went tumbling down the hill that had been behind them. Despite the fact they were rolling down a steep hill, Renamon still managed to grab Terriermon and push him off her, before pushing out an arm to flip herself back onto her feet. The only problem was, as she landed back on her feet, she continued to slide down the hill and one foot struck a medium sized rock.

As a result of this second unexpected impact, Renamon fell to the floor and rolled the rest of the way down the hill, right into the stream, disappearing under the surface for a brief moment.

She surged up immediately, exploding from the rather deep stream and stood in the shallows, her fur absolutely sopping wet, as well as her gloves, and dripping all over the place. She stood there, like a demon that had just emerged from hell, a murderous glint in her eyes.

"Uh, Rena," said Terriermon from half way up the hill. "Sorry about that. Forgot there was a hill there."

Renamon spat out a mouthful of water and she grinned in an feral, evil sort of way, which made Terriermon gulp, particularly after he read her thoughts. Renamon turned to look at the children who were crowded at the top of the hill, watching her.

"Watch and learn kids," she said. "This is how you really go about catching a bunny."

"WAAAGH!" Terriermon cried, leaping into the air. "I said I was sorry!" He shot upwards as Renamon bounded after him, intent on grabbing him to initiate some sort of playful revenge for her dunking – perhaps immersing his head in a bowl of Jurcian Fruit juice. The children laughed and watched with awe as Terriermon bobbed and weaved through the air, shooting around tree trunks with Renamon in hot pursuit, bounding from trunk to trunk and springing off the wood without pausing for a second.

"There they go again," Lopmon shook her head. "I give him twenty seconds maximum before he's caught."

And her prediction was remarkable accurate. Renamon finally snagged her mate after an impressive eighteen seconds (it was impressive for Terriermon, as usually Renamon caught him much faster than that). She grabbed him in both arms while both were about thirty feet in the air, pressing him to her sopping wet chest and pinning him there with her arms, and then gracefully flipping to the ground and landing in a perfect crouch.

"Okay," she said, turning to the staring and, in some cases, applauding Togruta natives. "Where can I find a bowl of Jurcian fruit juice?"

"Nooooooooooooo!" cried Terriermon. "You wouldn't."

"Well, either you get a Jurcian fruit bath," said Renamon, "or you can towel-dry me, comb my fur to make it presentable again and then give me a massage when we get back to the ship."

"You just want to get a free massage," muttered Terriermon.

"Fruit pl..."

"Okay, okay," said Terriermon. "I'll do it."

"I thought you would," smiled Renamon, sweetly.

* * *

Back in the tent, the Jedi were attempting to plan their next move, discussing things urgently with the Togruta tribesmen that were with them.

"Moving out of the area should be our first priority," said Plo. "If what I know about the Blue Shadow Virus is true, then it cannot be picked up from person to person. The only way to pick it up is to be in an area where it resides."

"And there is a cure for this?" asked Catalin. "There must be if my own daughter was infected with this virus and survived it."

"Yeah, there's a cure," said Ahsoka. "But we don't exactly have any with us. To get some, we'd have to travel to the planet Iego to get a special kind of plant root. That shouldn't be too much of a problem, but it will take a few hours from here, perhaps about eight to get there and back and another to acquire the root."

"Warning other Togruta tribes is also key," said Aayla. "Since we know this area is contaminated, we should warn all others away from it. Perhaps we can use the gunships to help us locate them."

"The only problem is relocation itself," said Shaak Ti. "We don't know if this is the only contaminated area and if it isn't then we cannot simply send them to another area without some kind of cure in hand."

"Agreed," said Plo. "I shall lead the mission to Iego to acquire the root we need."

"And what are we to do in the meantime," asked Ilyan. "I hate to say this, but my people are getting extremely hungry and thirsty, as we have not been eating anything since this virus began to spread amongst us."

"Not to worry," said Shaak Ti. "We have plenty of food and water supplies up in the two cruisers we have in orbit. We'll send a message to the fleet and ask them to dispatch gunships loaded with supplies to this area, although we will still be unable to land them close to camp."

"In the meantime," said Plo. "We must discover what the Blue Shadow Virus is doing on this planet. Ahsoka is correct. It should be extinct. Therefore there has to be a reason it is here now. It did not just spring back from extinction out of nowhere."

"My guess is that this has something to do with the Separatists," said Ahsoka. "It did last time."

"Right," said Aayla, standing up. "Let's go give the others our plan. Perhaps you can take the Digimon with you to Iego, Master Plo. I've heard that it can be a dangerous planet and Terriermon in particular probably wants to fight something about now."

"True," said Plo. "Let's give them the news."

Everyone in the tent still capable of leaving it immediately did so. They were met with a sight that surprised them slightly – the majority of the villagers laughing at the antics of Terriermon and Henry. It looked like Henry was trying to scold Terriermon for some reason, but the little bunny was gambolling and frolicking around him like... well, a bunny.

"Aw come on, Henry," Terriermon was saying. "I've already said that I didn't actually mean to do that. Besides, there's no harm done, right?"

"Well, not this time, but there could have been," said Henry. "Just try and think about the consequences of your actions next time. And do it before you do the action in the first place."

"Momentai, Henry," said Terriermon. "Renamon's alright with it. Besides, shouldn't you be spending some more time with your girlfriend."

"What? But... hey, don't change the subject!"

Ahsoka snorted at the display in front of her. "It's going to take a lot to put a downer on Terriermon's spirits," she said.

She glanced around at the others.

At the sight of an absolutely soaked Renamon attempting to wring her tail out with her paws, her blood ran colder than ice. Instantly she left the group and sprinted over to where Renamon was standing.

"Renamon, what happened?" asked Ahsoka, panic creeping into her voice.

Renamon started at the tone of Ahsoka's voice. "It's alright, Ahsoka. I'm fine. I just took an unexpected dip in the stream when Terriermon crashed into me and I went rolling down the hill. Nothing I can't handle. Although I wish my fur wasn't so good at retaining water."

"The stream?" Ahsoka asked in barely a whisper, her eyes widening in even greater fear. "Renamon, are you absolutely sure that you feel alright?"

"I think so," Renamon's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

Aayla had noticed what was going on by this point and her heart begin to pound in her chest as the same thought that had occurred to Ahsoka entered her own brain. Sliding to a halt before Renamon, she said, "Renamon, this is important. Did you swallow any of the stream water when you fell in?"

Renamon frowned. "I think a bit of it might have gone down. Why do you ask?"

"Oh no," Ahsoka placed her hands over her eyes. "Oh no! Not you too! Not now!"

"What? What?" Renamon asked, as the conversation began to catch the attention of the others, who all turned to watch what was going.

"This cannot be," Aayla breathed in what sounded very much like despair.

"Would you please tell me what you mean by – whoa," she said, suddenly pressing one paw to her forehead. "Suddenly, I feel quite light-headed."

"I'm sorry, Renamon," Aayla said, her brown eyes looking sadly into Renamon's blue ones. "I am very, very sorry. But, I think that you've been infected with the Blue Shadow Virus."

Renamon blinked. "The Blue-? What? Sorry, I didn't take that in. I seem to... I seem to have a bit of a problem hearing you. I can't... I can't... feel my... toes... ungh," Renamon, who had looked absolutely fine half a minute before, suddenly lost her balance and keeled over. Aayla hurriedly caught her as she fell, the yellow fox slumping in her arms, limp as a doll.

"Rena/Renamon!" Terriermon and Rika cried at the exact same time, as all the Jedi, Digimon and Tamers rushed to the fox's side. "What's wrong with her?" asked Rika.

Aayla blinked back what appeared to tears as her eyes began to moisten. "The same thing that is wrong with all the casualties of this virus. The Blue Shadow Virus is deadly, and it's a waterborne disease. Renamon must have swallowed some contaminated water when she fell in the stream."

Terriermon was thunderstruck. But... that meant that... this was his fault. His mate, his precious Renamon, the one who meant almost the whole world to him, was lying motionless and in the grip of an extremely potent virus and it was all... his... fault.

Terriermon fell to his knees besides Renamon's head as Aayla lowered her gently to the ground. Rika ran up to her partner and copied Terriermon and Aayla both, dropping to her knees and wrapping her arms around her partner. She too begin to feel water threatening to fall from her eyes as she looked down at the face of the yellow fox.

Everyone just stood in stunned disbelief. Seeing one of the Digimon look so helpless was one thing that they hardly ever saw. Ever! But here it was now.

Both Rika and Terriermon seemed to be too stunned and horrified to say anything, so Lopmon took over and said, "But she's not dead."

Everyone looked at her sharply, except Terriermon who was still staring blankly at his fallen mate. "She isn't?" asked Ahsoka. "She's really not dead."

Lopmon shook her head. "I would know if she was. If she was dead, three things would happen that would tell us that she was. Firstly, I would no longer be able to sense her life-force through my mind. It is weak, but it is certainly there. Second, Rika's D-Arc would have died and gone static, but I can see from here that it is fine. Thirdly, and perhaps the most obvious, she would have split into data particles. But she hasn't done that either."

"We must hurry," said Shaak Ti. "Help me transport her inside the medical tent. I'll analyse her body to see if I can find whatever is going on."

Aayla and Rika nodded and released their hold on the fallen Renamon. Aayla and Shaak Ti both extended their hands towards her and called upon the Force to slowly lift her body into the air. Most of the Togruta populace milled around, not entirely sure about what was going on, but everybody else hurried into the large medical tent.

Ahsoka ran in first and hauled hurriedly created a space for a new body by gently and respectfully moving the corpses of other Togrutas aside to leave a space in the middle of the floor. Aayla and Shaak Ti gently placed the body down and knelt over Renamon's head. Everyone else looked on anxiously as Shaak Ti shut her eyes, held the palm of her hand over Renamon's face and concentrated.

After about ten seconds, Terriermon looked like he was about to say something, but Plo held up a hand, warning him not to interrupt. Reluctantly, Terriermon subsided and watched fearfully as Shaak Ti continued her mental analysis.

Eventually, Shaak Ti opened her eyes.

"Well?" asked Terriermon instantly. "Is she alright? What's happened to her?"

Shaak Ti sighed. "I shall explain as well as I can," she said. "We discovered that the disease plaguing this population of Togrutas is none other than the infamous Blue Shadow Virus, a disease which was supposedly wiped from existence several generations ago. It's a disease so potent that no life form whatsoever was immune to it. No mammal, no bird, no reptile, no invertebrate, no fish, no nothing."

"And Renamon's been infecting with this?" asked Henry, trying to comfort poor Suzie, who had buried her face in his leg and was refusing to move.

"I'm afraid so," nodded Shaak Ti.

"But," said Ranna. "The symptoms that she is suffering are not the same as they were with our people. Our people would start coughing severely and begin to turn a blue colouration before dropping and dying on the spot. None of them fell unconscious like this."

"I fear that Renamon is more than unconscious," Shaak Ti said gravely. "She has lapsed into what can best be described as a coma."

"A coma!" Terriermon yelped, horrified at the terrible damage he had done to his own mate, even if it was unintentional.

"Yes," said Shaak Ti. "You see, what made the Blue Shadow Virus so potent was its amazing adaptability. It is the only disease ever known that can affected everything and not just a select few species. When the Blue Shadow Virus found a host, it would quickly adapt to its new climate and find a way of killing its host.

"Some animals would die the moment they ingested the virus, their skin turning blue almost instantly as they died. Others, like most humanoids, would follow the horrible cough and extremely slow death that members of your tribe have experience, Ilyan," said Shaak Ti, turning to the leader of the village. "There were all sorts of different responses the Blue Shadow Virus had."

"So it's affect on a Digimon is to put it into a coma?" asked Henry.

"Not exactly," said Shaak Ti. "I believe that it's affect on a Digimon is to go for the area that would do the job of a human heart. What do you call it?"

"The Digi-core," Lopmon gasped in horror. "It's going for her Digi-core."

"Yes," nodded Shaak Ti. "And the reason for her coma is, as far as I can tell, a natural reaction from Renamon. It is her body that put herself into a coma. It is attempting to slow the progress of the virus and as far as I can tell, it appears to be working. The virus is heading straight for her Digi-core, but thanks to Renamon's natural defences, its progress is slow."

"But that's not going to last forever, is it?" asked Catalin, staring sadly at one of his daughters best friends lying helplessly on the ground.

"No," Shaak Ti shook her head sadly. "My guess is that Renamon only has four or five hours left to live before the virus reaches her Digi-core. Once it gets there, she _will_ die."

Dead silence filled the tent as each person there digested this news in horror.

Terriermon's eyes narrowed. This was his fault and he was not about to sit around and watch his mate die because of _his_ tomfoolery and stupidity. "Alright," said Terriermon. "What's the cure for this thing?"

"Ahsoka," said Master Plo, turning to the distraught Padawan. "You have encountered this virus before, after the Separatists used it. Tell us exactly what happened during that incident. I am beginning to get an idea of what happened and I might be able to add more pieces to my puzzle if you tell me your story.

Ahsoka sighed and sat down, leaning forward in order to engage everyone in the room with what she was about to say. "Alright. It started after my Master gave me a call. I was on Coruscant at the time, doing some of my occasional Padawan studies in the Library, while he and Master Kenobi had gone off to Christophsis for the second time to try and liberate it. I was a little annoyed that I wasn't allowed to go, since I helped so much last time, but I followed my master's orders with little complaint.

"Anyway, he told me that he and Obi-Wan had been reassigned and that he wanted me to come along this time. I was pretty happy about that, but I was a little surprised when I heard that we were going to Naboo. Probably because I know that that is the home planet of Senator Amidala and Supreme Chancellor Palpatine.

Apparently Senator Amidala and Jar Jar Binks had discovered the possibility of a secret Separatist laboratory from information gleaned from a tactical droid. When we arrived on Naboo, we found Senator Amidala's personal protocol droid, C-3PO, and a man named Captain Typho waiting for us. Captain Typho told us that Padmé had already gone looking for the lab and that she couldn't change her mind.

"Apparently they had fallen out of contact and the last person to see them was a Gungan called Peppi Bow, who had met them out on the swamplands. She was a farmer and had recently lost a lot of shaaks to the Blue Shadow Virus after the lab sprung a slight leak and accidentally released some into the river. She said they were heading for the piloti trees and that she knew how to get to them.

"Master Skywalker ordered me to go with her and we rode on one of her shaaks to the muddy swamp where the piloti trees where. We found their ship there, as well as their footprints, but the lab itself was underground and we couldn't see any sign of the Senator or the Representative. I contacted Master Skywalker and told him what we'd found, and sent him the co-ordinates.

"Captain Typho pulled up a geo-scan of the area so we could see the layout of the lab. He also did a robo-lobotomy on one of the battle droids from the lab and we discovered then what we were dealing with. Apparently some mad scientist called Doctor Nuvo Vindi was working for the Separatists. He was recreating the Blue Shadow Virus using cloning technology, only, he was changing it slightly so that instead of being waterborne, it was airborne."

"Airborne?" asked Terriermon. "Then it can't be this guys work, otherwise we all would have fallen ill a long time ago, wouldn't we?"

"Yes," said Ahsoka. "We would have. That disease is very potent indeed."

"Keep going, Ahsoka," said Aayla. "What happened next?"

"Well, we also learned that he was planning on filling small canisters of the airborne virus and placing them in bombs, which he could send to key star-systems and detonate them, releasing the virus into the atmosphere and killing trillions of innocents."

"Sounds like a pleasant man," muttered Catalin.

"Obviously we couldn't let this happen," said Ahsoka. "So we put a stop to him. I was to provide a distraction, so I breached the lab using a bomb of my own and entered it, along with Rex and a few other clones. We managed to distract most of the droids. Meanwhile, it was Master Skywalker's job to try and find Padmé and Jar Jar, and stop Doctor Vindi from escaping, while Master Kenobi took a specialised bomb disposal squad to deactivate the bombs.

"Master Skywalker managed to rescue Padmé and Jar Jar, but Doctor Vindi made a quick escape with a large box full of virus canisters. At the same time, Master Kenobi reached the bomb room, but Doctor Vindi remotely activated the bombs and started a countdown. The bomb disposal squad began to deactivate them, but there was one missing. While Padmé, Jar Jar and I went to look for the last bomb, Master Skywalker and Kenobi attempted to catch Doctor Vindi.

"Padmé managed to find the last bomb in the possession of a rabbit-droid and we took it from him deactivated it with the bomb disposal. Meanwhile, Doctor Vindi managed to hold Master Kenobi off by throwing virus canisters and forcing Obi-Wan to catch them. He reached the surface where Master Skywalker faced him, and there was a stand-off. But then, Peppi Bow the Gungan managed to slam into Vindi from the side, and Anakin managed to capture him."

"So how does that involve you receiving the virus?" asked Alina.

"I'm getting to that," said Ahsoka. "While things were looking up for us, it turned out that the rabbit-droid managed to the steal the virus canister from the last bomb. He fled to the bomb room and placed it in another bomb, before setting it off. We managed to seal the lab before the virus could escape, but Rex, myself and a few other clones were infected by the virus, as was Padmé a little later, when her HAZMAT suit was compromised in a droideka attack. Only Jar Jar remained safe.

"It was slow and draining," said Ahsoka, shuddering at the memory. "But despite this we managed to stop any of the droids still in the lab from breaking out and releasing the virus into the atmosphere. Although it did put rather a large strain on all of us. And there were several close calls – one of them almost broke out and doomed the whole planet. But, in the end, we saved it.

"Meanwhile, Anakin and Obi-Wan, who had been shut outside when the lab was sealed, went back to the Capital and delivered Vindi to the authorities. Captain Typho managed to locate a potential antidote on the world of Iego in Separatist-controlled space. It was a small root from a large, carnivorous plant called a reeksa, and it could be brewed into an antidote to the virus."

"So they set off to retrieve it. They had a little mini-adventure of their own at the time, but that's not really important to the story right now. They managed to find the root and return to Naboo, where they were able to siphon the virus away and kill it all, making it extinct once again, as it should be. I don't know how this strain, particularly one that is not the mutated version that Doctor Vindi produced, came to be here. They weren't in time to save a couple of the clones, but Rex, Padmé, another clone and me all survived, although everyone except Padmé was on the brink of death."

Alina shut her eyes at the thought of her daughter almost dying. If this was one of her daughter's many, many adventures then she hated to think of how many other times Ahsoka had almost died.

"And, as you can see, we all made a completely full recovery," said Ahsoka. "What we need right now is some reeksa root of our own, and if we can get Renamon to take the antidote, then we should be able to save her."

"Alright," said Terriermon. "Do you have any of this reeksa root antidote stuff where we can get some quickly? We don't have much time."

"Sadly no," Ahsoka shook her head. "Master Skywalker only managed to obtain one reeksa root and it was just enough to create enough antidote for the four of us still alive. We didn't bother going and getting any more of it because we eradicated all traces of the virus on Naboo, so we thought it was extinct again. If we want to get more reeksa root, we'll have to travel to Iego ourselves."

"Then let's get going!" Rika said urgently. "My Digimon partner is dying while we stand here talking. Let's get back to the ship."

"It won't do us any good," Aayla shook her head sadly. "To get to Iego, obtain the root and get back here would all take far, far too long. It would take almost twice the amount of time Renamon has left."

"I can't think of anything that we can do to save her," Ahsoka looked at her floor, and then glanced over at the inert Renamon. All the others followed her example, with mingling amounts of depression and despair. There truly seemed to be nothing that they could do to save her.

Terriermon felt himself, for the first time since the incident with Goro, begin to cry. He couldn't help it, but he did nothing to stop the tears flowing down his cheeks. He glanced at the others. He noticed that a lot of them were doing the same. Rika, Suzie and Lopmon were all crying too, as was Aayla and Ahsoka. Henry looked like he was struggling not to but could start at any second. Shaak Ti and the other Togrutas all looked sad and forlorn at the prospect of losing such a wondrous creature, and a good friend.

But Terriermon noticed that Plo was looking thoughtful.

"I..." said Plo slowly, drawing everyone's attention. "...am not so sure that there is nothing we can do. Things are beginning to fall into place to me now."

"What do you mean, Master Plo?" asked Aayla.

"I mean, that I believe that the Separatists are behind this virus appearing in the stream," said Plo. "There must be another secret laboratory nearby. Doctor Nuvo Vindi may be in prison, but he was working for the Separatists. It is entirely plausible that he sent copies of his work to them, so they were able to bring the virus back from extinction a second time."

"I don't see where this is going," said Rika. "Is it important?"

"It could well be," said Plo. "The majority of the Separatists are cowards. If they were creating such a dangerous virus as the Blue Shadow, there are a myriad of things that could go wrong. It's possible that this Separatist lab might just have the cure we need for Renamon somewhere inside it, because the Separatists wouldn't want to risk their own lives."

Alacrity suddenly spread through everyone there at the thought. There might be a way. They could possibly save Renamon after all.

"But first, we must quickly prove my theory," said Plo. "Tell me, Little 'Soka, did you Master mention anyone on Iego who helped him in his quest for the reeksa root?"

"Er, yes, I believe so," said Ahsoka. "He mentioned a young, human boy named Jaybo Hood."

"We must attempt to contact this Jaybo Hood," said Plo.

"I'm on it," said Ahsoka. "I'll get in touch with Master Skywalker and ask for Jaybo's contact details," she hurried outside, pulling out her holoprojectors as she did. Her family watched her with no small amount of pride as she put on her responsible face.

"And I too shall make a call," said Shaak Ti.

"Who are you going to call?" asked Henry.

"Some friends of mine back on Kamino," said Shaak Ti. "Even if we do not find a cure for Renamon we must take out this laboratory and I know just who can help us do that."

* * *

General Grievous had escaped again. He had managed to escape from both Obi-Wan and Adi Gallia and board a landing craft, along with most of his droid forces. They had made to land on the planet's surface, but an exploding Republic frigate had damaged their craft and they went down for a crash landing.

Nevertheless, the Jedi were sure that he would survive. Anakin, piloting the _Twilight_, and with Obi-Wan, Adi Gallia, Rex, Cody, several surviving clones and the rescued Master Eeth Koth on boarded, drove his ship through the main hangar doors of the _Resolute_ and slipped through the deflector shields, coming to the land in the hangar.

As Master Eeth Koth walked unsteadily down the ramp, Adi Gallia held his arm to help support him. Eeth had taken a severe punishment at the hands of General Grievous and was feeling extremely weak at the moment. Anakin and Obi-Wan followed him, as they entered the hangar of the _Resolute_, both lamenting the fact that Grievous had escaped them again. But he wouldn't get far this time. He had no serviceable craft and Obi-Wan was ready to take Rex and Cody down to the surface of Saleucami in pursuit.

"I'll get Master Koth to a medical frigate," said Adi, as a medical droid walked over and pulled Eeth's other arm over its shoulder to help him balance."

Eeth looked up at Obi-Wan and Anakin. "You all took a great risk rescuing me," he said gravely.

"You're welcome, Master Koth," said Obi-Wan, smiling.

"Since you divided your forces, Grievous is still at large," Eeth sighed, looking down at the floor in slight disappointment. He fought down a growl in his throat as he added, "I would have gladly given my life if it meant bringing that monster to justice!"

"Well," said Anakin. "At least we all live to fight another day. And Grievous hasn't completely escaped us yet."

Eeth nodded as he, Adi and the medical droid turned to walk in the other direction. But Anakin was stopped from doing anything else just them when the holoprojector on his belt began to beep slightly.

"Hmm?" Anakin looked down at it as he removed it from his belt. "Who's calling me at a time like this?"

"Why don't you answer it and find out?" asked Obi-Wan, standing beside his old Padawan curiously as she stared at holoprojectors seated in Anakin's hand. Anakin pushed the button and a small holographic image of Ahsoka appeared in his palm.

"Master Skywalker," Ahsoka sighed in relief. "Thank the Force you answered so quickly."

"Ahsoka, what is it?" Anakin asked, concern flashing in his eyes when he saw the expression on his Padawan's face. "Is everything alright?"

"No," said Ahsoka. "But I really don't have time to explain. This is an emergency, and I need you to do something for me. It's going to sound odd, but I need you to do it and I need you to do it quickly. Okay, Master?"

Anakin frowned. "Er, okay, I suppose. What is it that you need?"

"I need you to send me the scramble-set for the young boy you met on Iego. The one named Jaybo Hood."

"Jaybo?" Obi-Wan and Anakin asked at the same time.

"But, why do you need to..."

"Master!" Ahsoka yelled, her eyes showing him that this wasn't some joke. "We have little time. Please, just do it and do it quickly."

"Alright," nodded Anakin. "I trust you, Snips. I'll head up to the bridge and beam the contact details right to your holoprojector."

"Thank you, Master," Ahsoka smiled in relief and the hologram vanished.

"You better get going," said Obi-Wan. "Whatever is going on, she sounded very serious about it. I'll start the hunt for Grievous straight away."

Anakin nodded and wordlessly sprinted from the hangar to carry out the task his Padawan, of all people, had given to him.

* * *

"Master Plo," said Ahsoka, running back inside the tent and passing him the holoprojector. "I've got the details we need to contact Jaybo."

"Very good, Little 'Soka," said Plo. "I shall make contact with him straight away and ask him my questions."

"And I too have finished my call," said Shaak Ti. "We should have some reinforcements within the hour since Kamino is not that far from here."

"Good," nodded Plo. "Now, it might be a good idea is you contacted the cruisers. Tell them to send down some BARC speeders so that we can quickly begin the search for this lab. I shall place my own call now."

"Please," said Rika. "Just hurry, Master Plo."

"I intend to," said Plo.

* * *

Jaybo Hood, a young boy with unremarkable brown hair and brown eyes, but a remarkable brain for someone his age, was, as usual, lounging in his hammock on the planet Iego where he lived, with music playing in the background. The only difference to the usual scene was that the hammock had not been hung between two trees, but between the legs of two Vulture Droids, which were swinging back and forth slowly like a rocking chair. The music was also being played by a battle droid, which appeared to have been reprogrammed into a walking, radio. There was also another droid fanning him.

Jaybo had acquired enormous numbers of battle droids from an abandoned droid factory that had once been on this planet, and he had reprogrammed them to be his servants, using his brilliant mind for technology. These battle droids were about as harmless as a daddy-long-legs.

After two Jedi had destroyed the laser system that prevented any ship from leaving the planet, a lot of the citizens of Iego had left to pursue lives elsewhere. But not Jaybo. He had stayed, because he had no family or friends, but was perfectly capable of looking after himself and had numerous servants. He didn't need to leave.

He had it good here.

Although, he was a little surprised when his holoprojector started beeping. He sat up in his hammock and stared at the thing lying on what was effectively the bedside table. Who would be calling him? Nobody ever called him. He had been tempted on several occasions to throw the darn thing away, since it was never used.

But someone was calling him now. He sat up and pushed the button, holding the small device up and watching intently. The hologram of a being he had never seen before appeared. Jaybo frowned. He knew it to be a Kel Dor, but that was the extent of his knowledge.

"Greetings," said the Kel Dor.

"What's this about?" asked Jaybo. "Is this some kind of advertising thing, because if it is, I'm not buying."

"No, it is nothing like that, young Jaybo," said the Kel Dor. Jaybo blinked at the use of his name, but the Kel Dor continued. "I am Master Plo Koon of the Jedi High Council and I am a good friend of Master Kenobi and Skywalker."

Jaybo frowned. He remembered he'd given his contact details to the two Jedi but he'd never expected them to use it.

"Okay," he said, slowly. "So, what do you want, Master Jedi?"

"I require information," said Plo. "I know that several months ago, Kenobi and Skywalker came to your planet, Iego, to look for reeksa root in order to cure a deadly disease."

"Yeah, that's right," Jaybo had a feeling he already knew where this was going.

"Well, I wish to know if anybody else has come to your planet since then is search of the very same thing," stated Plo. "It is important. The virus has broken out again and we need all the information we can get."

Jaybo nodded. He had been right about Plo's reason for calling. "Yeah," he said. "There was something weird that happened about two months ago. I saw a ship entering the atmosphere from here where I lived. It was a shuttle, with a square like shape, a tall section sticking up at the back like a fin and four leg-like things that resembled insect legs."

"Sounds like a _Sheathipede_-class shuttle to me," said Plo. "A ship that is often used by the Separatists."

"Well, it entered the giant gorge where the reeksa can be found at the bottom. I watched from the top and I am sure that I heard blaster fire going on down there. Then the ship just lifted off again and flew away once more."

"Then it is as I thought," nodded Plo. "The Separatists have indeed taken the cure for the Blue Shadow Virus, while they reconstructed it in their new laboratory."

"Well, I hope that helped," said Jaybo.

"I thank you for your assistance, Jaybo," said Plo. "It was most enlightening."

"Send Kenobi and Skywalker my regards, will you?" asked Jaybo, grinning at the hologram.

"At the first opportunity," nodded Plo, and vanished. Jaybo placed the holoprojector down and leaned back in his hammock, putting his hands behind his head. He grinned to himself at the thought that he, Jaybo Hood, had once again helped the Jedi out of a difficult spot.

Perhaps he'd keep the holoprojector after all.

* * *

"What's the verdict?" Terriermon asked, quickly as Plo entered the tent and passed Ahsoka back her holoprojector. "What did this Jaybo guy say?"

"He has confirmed my suspicions," Plo said brightly. "The Separatists have indeed recently gained access to the cure. Now we must all hope that they have it in their laboratory. And we must find it quickly."

"Agreed," said Shaak Ti. "I have ordered for the BARC speeders and they are on their way to the place where we were deposited as we speaking. We Jedi shall all run down to the area where they can be found and pilot one each, bringing another behind us via electrocable for the clones to use. Then we can begin our search for the lab."

"We don't even have to wait," said Lopmon. "Terriermon and I can take to the skies and begin our search from there."

"Excellent," said Plo.

"Which direction will you take?" asked Rika. "There's a lot of forest around here."

"My suggestion would be to head upstream," said Henry. "Since the Separatists obviously didn't dump the virus in the water right here, it must have flowed down here with the current. Therefore it makes sense for you to head in that direction."

"Upstream leads back onto the plains," said Ilyan. "There's a possibility of akul attack out there."

"Believe me, Ilyan," said Terriermon, his expression harder than any of them had ever seen it before. "Nothing is going to stand in my way with my mate in danger like this."

Ilyan took one look at his face and, for some reason, believed him.

"We'd best get underway then," said Ahsoka.

"But before we do," said Aayla. "Master Ti, who exactly was it that you called?"

Shaak Ti smiled, and turned to Aayla. "I called in a squad of extremely elite clones that will definitely be able to help us in breaching that laboratory when we find it. Tell me Aayla, have you ever heard of the Delta Squad?"

Aayla's eyes widened and a grin appeared on her face. All the Jedi had heard of the Delta Squad. Those four clones were about as elite as any clone could possibly get. If anyone could help them get the job done, it was them.

"Who's the Delta Squad?" asked Suzie, looking rather confused.

"I'm afraid we don't have time to explain," said Ahsoka. "You find out soon enough, but trust me when I say their help will be invaluable. In the meantime, we must go."

"Yes," said Aayla. "You two start looking. We'll join you quickly enough once we get our speeders."

"I concur," said Plo. Without saying another word, the four Jedi raced out of the tent and belted into the forest at incredibly high speed, using the Force to aid them in their run.

"Whoa!" cried Elu as he watched his sister run faster than any two-legged being he had ever seen before. "I am officially so jealous of my sister right now."

Alina and Catalin smiled at each other as pride rippled from their exposed toes to the tips of their montrals. Their little girl had grown into a fine young woman."

"Come on, Terriermon," said Lopmon. "Let's get moving ourselves."

Terriermon turned around and said, "Just a minute." He knelt beside the inert Renamon's head and whispered in her ear. "I know you can't hear me, Rena, but I just want to say this. My mind feels so empty without hearing your thoughts constantly. I am so sorry for doing this to you, but I will fight to my last breath to get you cured. Count on it. I will never abandon you."

He pecked the comatose Renamon on the lips, before turning to follow Lopmon out of the tent. Wordlessly, the two of them spread their ears and flapped into the air, rising through a gap in the canopy and soaring above the trees, ignoring the gazes of the Togrutas below.

Having seen the stream moving, they knew which way was upstream and the two of them began to move north at high speed, their eyes trained on the ground below like two falcons looking for prey.

Terriermon couldn't repress the enormous twinges of guilt that welled up inside him. Henry had warned him about these sorts of accidents, but he hadn't listen. His careless and happy-go-lucky attitude had gotten the better of him, again, and now Renamon was on the brink of death as a result. He sighed to himself, trying to force the image of his dying mate from his mind, but he just couldn't stop thinking about her.

Lopmon momentarily took her gaze off the ground and glanced at her brother. She smiled sadly. It was good to see him taking something so seriously. She only wished that the circumstances didn't have to be so dire. Lopmon realised that, in a bizarre twist, all three Digimon had been in grave peril so far on their trip here. First, Terriermon had been stuck on board a Separatist ship with no support and no way off. Then, she had been held captive by a bunch of zombie Geonosians. Now, it was Renamon's turn.

"I don't need mind access to feel your depression and guilt, Terriermon," she said, as she continued to look downward.

"You know as well as I do that if it wasn't for my actions, Renamon wouldn't be in the fix she is in now," said Terriermon bitterly. "All those times I thought that Henry was just overreacting to my antics and it turns out he was right. I should have listened to him."

"Yes," said Lopmon. "You should. There's no denying that. But Terriermon, do not think so negatively. Try and stay positive. This could be a valuable learning experience for you. You've made a mistake, but we've all made terrible mistakes at some point in our lives. The repercussions of this one are just a little larger, that's all."

"Yeah," nodded Terriermon. "But... what's Renamon going to think of me if she wakes up."

"You mean, _when_ she wakes up," said Lopmon, firmly. "We _are_ going to save her Terriermon. And as for what she'll think, I'll tell you. She'll thank you for all the effort you put in to save her and may love you even more than before. She's not going to blame you for something that truly was a mistake. Trust me on this, Terriermon. If you had done it on purpose, it would be a different story, but you didn't, so it's not."

Terriermon's serious face returned. "You're right. And I'm not going to rest until she is cured. Not even for a millisecond. Now, let's find that lab."

Lopmon nodded and the two of them redoubled their efforts.

* * *

I told you that nobody would like the outcome of that, but there you have it. Renamon is on the brink of death, but there is a way to save her. The only question is:- will they be able to pull it off in time?

Not much clone stuff in this chapter, but once the Delta Squad arrives, that will change, believe you me.

Anyway, I'm going home for the weekend, so you'll have to wait a few days for the next Impmon chapter. And you'll have to wait even longer to find out about Renamon's progress because after the next chapter, I'm going to write the oneshot for Geekgirl, which I personally think is overdue (sorry Geekgirl). But we'll get there eventually. And I think you've all been awaiting the big revelation in my next chapter.

Please review.

* * *

Next time...

MetalPhantomon is going to make a reappearance and he's after Impmon once again. Only this time, we finally learn who the mysterious person who is sending his minions after Impmon is.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 65 : The Master**


	65. The Master

Blimey. I think I received the most reviews for the last chapter than any other chapter I've ever written. And most of them came in so quickly. Usually it takes about an hour between each review, but they absolutely swarmed in. I hope it happens this time too, but it is slightly annoying to check your hotmail in the morning and find you've had no reviews from anyone on fanfiction during the nine hours you've been asleep, despite the fact you posted the chapter a couple of hours before you went to bed.

I know you've all been looking forward to learning who the Master is, so I hope you aren't disappointed with the answer. So, I'm just going to shut up now and let you read. Enjoy everyone.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 65:- The Master**

* * *

The victory against the three Digimon that had appeared a few days ago had been swift, decisive and, it had to be said, rather easy – at least compared with a normal incursion from rather powerful Digimon. It had been enough to put Impmon in a rather good mood for a few moments, right up until the point where Yamaki had delivered his news.

The news that the HYPNOS machines weren't picking up the bioemergence of these Digimon. Followed by the theory that this meant they were coming from a different world than the Digital World.

Impmon's attitude a few months ago would have been what could only be described as carefree. He shared Terriermon's traits from cracking random jokes and he always loved called every other person he came across by some random nickname he came up with on the spot. He'd grin, he'd laugh, he'd steal food from other people and blame it on someone else (occasionally going as far as claiming he wasn't even in the country at the time) and most importantly of all, he'd brighten up people's day with rude language and attempts to scare people, just like the old days.

Things were very, very different for him now. The events of the last few months had made a visible impression on poor Impmon. And over the last couple of days it had only gotten worse. Impmon had been determined to stay awake for as long as he can now that he knew his sleep-stalker was a MetalPhantomon, and that had left him tired and grouchy. His temper, already rather quick, had shortened considerably. He'd taken to flinching and flinging a fireball at any unexpected noise.

Even Mrs. Terada snapped at him less now, for fear of the response she's get, and because, just a little, she felt sorry for him. She'd never tell him that, of course, but even she didn't believe Impmon was just scheming any more.

Dark rings had formed under Impmon's eyes from lack of sleep. His ordinarily lively green eyes were dull and tired. His ear projections and even his bandana around his neck seemed to droop from lack of energy.

The other Tamers and Digimon watched Impmon from afar, feeling sorry for him, but not knowing what on earth they were supposed to do. How did you comfort someone who knew that some omnipotent-like force was sending minions to hunt him down, haunt him and torture him? How would they feel if that was happening to them? They couldn't possibly understand the full extent of what he was going through and they knew it.

At present, Impmon was also extremely restless, despite being so tired. He was pacing back and forth over the doorway of the hut that had once been Guilmon's hideout. It was a place he often came to think, as he could lose himself in the memories he had of the place. Ai and Mako weren't there. Impmon had insisted that they not be around him until they knew more about what they were dealing with.

Not that they were unprotected. Oh no. Impmon refused to have them with him, so they'd be out of potential harm's way, but he also refused to leave them alone. So, every morning, Jeri and Elecmon had taken to coming over to the Terada household to look after them while their mother was out, allowing Impmon to go off by himself. This arrangement had come about after Jeri had asked if there was anything she could do to aid the distraught Impmon.

The twins were, understandably, not particularly happy with this arrangement, but both of them knew that adding to Impmon's problems was not going to help.

Impmon kicked at the grass growing on either side of the concrete building and growled under his breath. His muscles were tensed and they had been for several days. He had been bracing for the mysterious Master's next move ever since the last one had occurred, and to be honest, his muscles were beginning to ache.

Even the rest of the general public, now that everyone in the city knew Impmon by sight (even holiday-makers and other non-locals) had noticed the change in him. There had been a news broadcast, as usual, about the Digimon attack, but the broadcast had also talked about Impmon's changing attitude, even going so far to suggest that Impmon was "going bad."

Impmon had to resist the urge to punch the TV and prove them right.

A faint rustle in a nearby tree instantly grabbed Impmon's attention and he whirled around, a fireball appearing in his hands instantly, and preparing himself for digivolution. But he angrily extinguished the flame when he realised that it was just a sparrow landing in a nearby tree.

"Just look at me," Impmon muttered to himself, plonking himself down and dangling his legs over the edge. "I'm jumping to kill sparrows now. Fanglongmon, my life is messed up. What the hell happened to the days where I could go for a stroll without some possibility of a fricking, metal Grim Reaper wannabe sneaking up on me and pulling me into the past?"

Impmon growled at himself and pinched the bridge of his nose, shutting his eyes and attempting to relax himself. It didn't have any effect on him whatsoever. He felt just as tense, frustrated and, quite frankly, alone as he had before.

He watched his feet dangling over the edge of the hut. This induced a non-MetalPhantomon-related flashback, as he remembered the day after Renamon and Terriermon had first mated, although he had not known it at the time. They had sat in the very spot that he was sitting now, smiling and laughing and sharing pieces of Battenburg cake with one another. Renamon had stared tossing bits of food in the air, revelling in the fact that she could eat alongside someone now as she caught them in her mouth. Then, she'd started chucking bits for Terriermon to catch instead.

They'd been happy. They had each other and Impmon knew that they could share their problems with each other. They had no choice but to share their problems with each other.

Impmon envied the two of them right now. He had Ai and Mako, but they couldn't understand what he was going through. With Renamon and Terriermon, they _always_ knew _EXACTLY_ what the other was going through. And they could always comfort one another if there was ever any trouble, facing down life's hurdles together.

Impmon, on the other hand, was alone.

And he didn't like it.

How soon would it be before the Master made another move? Who would he said this time? How powerful would they be? Which of friends, the friends he had earned despite everything he had done in the past, both to them and others, would end up suffering because he was now a target?

Sometimes Impmon felt like leaving.

But he had made a promise. A promise to Ai and Mako that he would never abandon them again. That he would always come back, no matter how long he was gone for. That they would be partners forever. And Impmon was determined to keep that promise.

"Impmon?" said a nearby voice. "Is that you?"

Impmon didn't bother to look up as two figures approached on the path, both of them larger than he was. "What's up, Pineapple-head?" asked Impmon, still staring at his feet. "And you too, Goggleface. You two having a good day?"

"Impmon," said Takato, looking up at the viral Rookie on top of the hut he used to hide his partner in. "Nobody had been having any good days for a while now. We've all been really worried about you. We don't know where you are most of the time and we're worried you might get attacked again."

"Is that right?" Impmon scowled down at him. "Well guess what, Genius. I don't need your pity. I'm not some charity case, you got that? I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself!"

He knew that he shouldn't be yelling at the bumbling, well-meaning and often dense Tamer, and he felt guilty for doing it, but these days he just couldn't seem to help himself. It was like a spirit took possession of his body and automatically rejected any help or advice the others gave him. He knew he should be accepting all the help that he could get, but this was his problem.

Perhaps his subconscious mind was making some vain attempt to stop the others from helping him by being nasty to them so that they wouldn't get in harm's way. He knew they would never do that though.

"You're acting all cranky lately," said Guilmon, staring up at him with the bemused expression he usually had on his child-like face. "Have you been sleeping well? Takato told me when I stayed up late all the time so I could sneak downstairs and eat some bread at night that I should always get at least eight hours sleep a day."

"Newsflash, dino-boy," Impmon said. "Every time I go to sleep for long periods of time, that bloody MetalPhantomOfTheOperamon screws around with my head. I'd quite like to keep the last shred of sanity I have left, if you don't mind."

"Why do you keep going off on your own?" asked Takato. "We want to help you. You don't have to fight this all on your own. We've always fought together in the past. We battled side-by-side against the D-Reaper, remember."

"How can I forget?" Impmon growled. "That thing almost shredded me."

"And Grani saved you," said Takato. "We've all been there to help you at some point. We look out for one another Impmon. That's how being a real Digimon Tamer works. Look at Renamon and Terriermon. They tackle every problem together. And you should let us help you tackle your problem."

Impmon shook his head. "Unless you're a psychic that can see inside my mind, I really do not see how you can possibly know what I am going through right now. The descriptions of some of my flashbacks are the watered-down version."

"What does that mean?" asked Guilmon. "Is it like how most people think wet bread tastes horrible, though I really don't see what they mean?"

"It means that I didn't tell it as graphically as it really was, genius," Impmon said.

"Oh," said Guilmon. "Right."

Impmon sighed. "Look Pineapple-head and Goggle-head, why don't the two of you just leave. Now that you know I'm effectively a wanted mon, you'd stop coming and talking to me if you were sane or intelligent. Associate with me and you'll just get hurt."

"Look, Impmon," Takato walked over to stand right beneath him, Guilmon standing beside him and the two looking up at the little imp. "When you went to rescue Jeri from the D-Reaper, when you went to fight Ogudomon to help protect this war, you knew there was every possibility that you could get hurt. But you did it anyway. And you did it because we are your friends and you were looking out for us. Well, its the same principle. We know the risks and we're prepared to take them."

Impmon shifted uncomfortably. He knew that this argument was effectively pointless, but he felt that this was all his fault. The burden was on his shoulder and he just couldn't face the idea of the others getting hurt because of him.

"If I could reach you," said Takato. "I'd slap you round the face. And then I'd say, 'I'm tired of your big, bad wolf act.'"

"He means 'lone wolf,'" said Guilmon.

"That's what I mean. What he said," Takato went on. "I'm not going to let you do this by yourself, get it? What about the people who care about you? At least think of your Tamers. We're here, we're helping and that's that! Wake up, Impmon!"

"Yeah, wake up, Stingmon. Here's your chance to stop him from doing something stupid," said Guilmon.

Impmon, for the first time in days, was struggling to withhold a laugh as Takato turned to his partner and said, "Uh, no Guilmon. You didn't have to continue the dialogue."

"Oh sorry," said Guilmon, brightly.

Impmon shook his head. "Did you really think that pulling a direct speech from the Digimon TV show, one that Davis Motomiya said to Ken, no less, was really going to help."

"Well, it always works for Davis," said Takato, sheepishly. "And he works miracle all the time. But seriously Impmon, you are acting exactly like Ken Ichijouji from the show by going it alone and rejecting all help from us, only you're going even further and rejecting the help of your own partners too."

Impmon sighed again. He knew that Takato was making sense (for once in his life) and he also knew that shutting the others out wasn't the way to go about things. Unlike Ken, he did have a lot of friends, and all of them were incredibly powerful in their own right.

That is, with the exception of the twins. They were the only Tamers left who still couldn't biomerge with their partner.

"Alright," said Impmon. "Alright, fine. Besides," he added, with false bravado. "How bad can this Master be? He can't be as bad as Ogudomon was, right?"

"That's the spirit," grinned Takato. "That's more like the Impmon I know."

"Oh don't get me wrong, I still feel grouchy," said Impmon. "But as long as you guys swear to me that you do your upmost best to stay safe, I'll let you help me."

"You'll let us?" asked Guilmon. "But Takato said that we're going to help you anyway."

"Oh whatever," chuckled Impmon.

"So, are you going to let us help you now?" asked Takato.

"Oh come on Gogglebrain. Didn't I just tell you that? What, have I got spell it for you too? Or do you want to try and guess it with a game of Pictionary?"

Takato slumped. "On second thought, I liked you better when you were a depressed wreck."

Impmon smirked. "You've only yourself to blame for my change in attitude, bub. But, I suppose I've been a little too tense lately." He rolled his arms, grimacing as he stretched his muscle shoulders. "You guys and your stupid little quoting made me realise that I should probably cross the bridge that is this master when I come to it. I've spent every bloody waking hour wondering when next he's gonna show, and, as usual, I am left in suspense. Where is his manners? I ask you."

"At least he's giving you breaks between his attacks," said Guilmon. "That's got to count for something, right?"

"He's not giving me breaks, Pineapple-head," said Impmon. "I reckon he's waiting for me to drop my guard and then BAM!" Impmon clapped his hands together with such force that Guilmon took a step back. "He'll strike."

"I still don't get what this guy wants with you," said Takato, placing a hand on his chin like Henry would do in a situation like this. "I've thought about this whole thing quite a lot as well and the only thing I can think of relating to your past that makes sense is another Demon Lord and we know that, apart from you, you're the last one, so that can't be right."

"I wouldn't put it past some of the Demon Lords to survive," grumbled Impmon. "Parallelmon did, remember. The Sovereigns all thought he was dead too, but he robbed us of our friends."

"True," said Takato. "Oh, I just can't figure it out. I wish Henry was here. He'd probably have several theories about all this already. I mean, Yamaki and Henry's Dad are cool for technical stuff, but Henry's the best for guessing the intentions of enemy Digimon. And Terriermon's not that bad at either, but of course neither of those are really options to us, are they, since, well they're locked away in a parallel dimensions and we don't appear to be getting much closer to getting them back. Well, we are, but its really, really slow and we probably don't have time to stick around a few months and wait for Henry to come figure this out and..."

"Takato. You're rambling again," said Guilmon.

"Oh yeah," Takato put one hand behind his head in embarrassment. "So I am. Uh, silly me."

"And something's wrong with Impmon," Guilmon pointed at the imp. Takato glanced at him and blinked. Impmon had gone as stiff as a board, his fingertips engulfed by flames. He was on his feet, every muscle in his body tensed to the maximum as he stared into the surrounding trees, his mouth twisted into a snarl and his eyes as narrow as slits.

"What's going on?" asked Takato, anxiously staring at Impmon.

Impmon didn't deign to answer for a few seconds and he didn't look at Takato. But, after a slight pause, he whispered. "He's back."

"Who?" asked Takato.

"Who do you think, dough-for-brains?" Impmon growled. "MetalPhantomon's around here somewhere. I can feel his presence."

That instantly put put Takato and Guilmon on the alert. They tensed visibly and copied Impmon's stance, staring out into the trees and facing different directions so they'd have all the bases covered.

But nothing jumped out at them. The trees remained as still and silent as they had before. Except, they weren't – they were even quieter. It was actually extremely eerie and the three of them listened hard for any sign of an enemy presence.

"I can tell he's somewhere nearby," Impmon hissed quietly. "But I don't have a clue where he is exactly. Keep your eyes peeled, you guys. I am _not_ going to let this guy into my head ever again if I can help it."

"Don't worry, Impmon," said Takato. "We won't let it happen either."

After this little confidence booster, they half-expected MetalPhantomon to make his move right then and there. But it was still silent. Takato wondered what sort of game MetalPhantomon was playing. Ryo would almost certainly be on his way here right now, as Cyberdramon will have picked up MetalPhantomon too. And surely the ghost knew that by now.

So why wasn't he attacking?

Unless... he wanted the others to get there first.

But that was absurd, wasn't it? Why would he possibly want that?

Guilmon wasn't thinking about this sort of thing though. It was quite a bizarre feeling to know there was an enemy Digimon nearby and not be going feral like he usually he did. But he didn't have a clue what he was supposed to be looking for. Unlike Impmon, he'd never set eyes on this MetalPhantomon. And his Digimon sense, normally very acute, wasn't detecting anything either.

Guilmon realised that he probably wasn't going to find MetalPhantomon by looking for him, so he shut his eyes completely and concentrated on his greatest sense. His sense of smell. Lifting his nose to the wind, he inhaled deeply several times, taking in the scents of everything around him.

Other than the scent of Takato, Impmon and the ordinary smells of the forest like grass, flowers, squirrels and dog poo, he did indeed detect a faint whiff of another Digimon, but he had to concentrate hard to pick it up.

The scent was stronger in his right nostril, so he turned, continuing to sniff the air as the scent gained strength. Once the scent was equal in both nostrils, he moved his head up and down, pinpointing the angle his neck had to be to get the strongest scent.

There!

His eyes snapped open and now, they were narrowed and wild, as they usually were in his feral state. Opening his mouth, he felt the energy build up inside as the red ball of energy materialized there and with a cry of** "PYRO SPHERE!" **he launched a fireball-like attack straight at a nearby tree.

The attack struck something else before it hit the tree and with a loud grunt, MetalPhantomon appeared, losing his invisibility as the attack made him lose concentration he reeled from an attack that, for a Rookie, was extremely strong. To an Ultimate like him, it still only stung a little though.

Impmon and Takato wheeled around, both surprised that Guilmon had detected and hit hiding Ultimate.

"Nice shot, Pineapple-head," said Impmon as he glared hatefully at MetalPhantomon. Guilmon, were he not growling like a rabid dog, would have been surprised that Impmon paid him an actual compliment.

Takato raised his D-Arc and examined MetalPhantomon. "Yep, this is the guy," he said unnecessarily. "MetalPhantomon. Cyborg Digimon. Virus Type. Ultimate level. His attacks are Grave Scream, Soul Predator, Scythe of Cyborgs and Metallic Hunter."

Now that MetalPhantomon was exposed all the Digimon would be able to pick him up and would probably be on their way. Impmon glared up at the Ultimate looming over them and said, "Alright, you floating rustbucket! Don't think you're getting away from us this time! You still haven't answered my questions from your last little visit."

MetalPhantomon leered down at Impmon. "I do not have to answer to a pathetic weakling such as yourself."

"I've heard all the pathetic wealking stuff many times before," said Impmon. "And I'm not interested in hearing it again. Now, start talking! Who are you working for? What is the name of this Master of yours? Why does he want me and why does he keep asking you to unearth buried memories in my head."

"Yeah, tell us now," said Takato. "And we might just go easy on you. And your Master too!"

MetalPhantomon's deep, gravelly voice laughed uproariously for a few moments, ignoring the scandalised looks on the faces of both Takato and Impmon. "You'll go easy on my Master? That truly is a laugh. You wouldn't last two seconds against him. He is almighty – the most powerful Digimon in existence."

"Yeah, sure he is," said Impmon. "Now answer the bloody question or I swear I'll-"

"What?" MetalPhantomon crowed. "What will you do? Will you snap my neck, like you did to that poor Mikemon? Will you stab me in the back like you did to that Ravemon? Or..." he paused and looked pointedly at Impmon. "Will you spear me with those spikes on your boots as Beelzemon, like you did to that poor, innocent little Lopmon?"

Impmon's expression deepened in fury. "Shut up!" he bellowed, his green eyes narrowing so much that he had a similar expression to Guilmon. "Shut up or else!"

MetalPhantomon laughed. "I've been inside your head so many time now," he said. "That I know everything that there is to know about you and your memories. "I know about that little crush you have on the Lopmon you have as a friend. The one who disappeared months ago. Do you miss her? Do you spend hours wishing you'd had the guts to tell her how you felt before she disappeared, possibly forever?"

Takato was looking stunned by this revelation of Impmon's feelings. Guilmon didn't care right now. Impmon was absolutely boiling with unsuppressed fury.

"GO TO HELL AND DIE!" Impmon shrieked and hurled his flaming attack, his rational brain being completely overruled by his rage at MetalPhantomon's cutting words. MetalPhantomon calmly dodged the attack and turned to float away into the trees. Impmon sprang from the hideout and followed him, hurling fireball after fireball at the fleeing Ultimate, blindly attacking and not thinking clearly.

"Impmon wait!" Takato cried. "He's trying to goad you! Don't let him..."

"HE MUST DIE!" Impmon roared.

Takato growled. "Come on, Guilmon," he said. "We gotta go and help him."

Guilmon was running after MetalPhantomon before Takato even completed the sentence. Takato sighed and followed the two Digimon at a run, determined to keep up with the two of them. Despite his bumbling whenever a game of tag was initiated, Guilmon could be pretty damn fast when he was chasing down an enemy Digimon. And Impmon was haring after the laughing MetalPhantomon.

"GET BACK HERE SO I CAN BEAT YOU TO A PULP!" Impmon shrieked at MetalPhantomon. In his berserk and furious state due to MetalPhantomon's taunts about his past and feelings for Lopmon, digivolving to Beelzemon never even occurred to him. He just wanted to end MetalPhantomon's miserable existence and be done with it.

Takato was already beginning to pant as he followed the others, but he doggedly kept running. He was distracted when, after a minute or two, he heard a shout of to left. "Takato!" cried a voice. "What's going on?"

Takato glanced to the side and spotted Kenta running towards him, along with MarineAngemon. Not that far behind him was Jeri, but she was being slightly slower, as she was shepherding the twins with her. Elecmon ran in front of them.

"We've picked up a Digimon," cried Kenta. "Is it MetalPhantomon again?"

"Yep," nodded Takato, pointing up ahead as the others joined him on the path. "And he's really ticked off Impmon. I can't get him to listen to me."

"Impmon! Wait!" cried Mako, as he and Ai picked up speed to follow their seemingly deranged partner. "Wait for us."

If Impmon heard them, he gave no indication of it, continuing to hurl Bada Boom attacks at MetalPhantomon's back. Many of the Rookie's attacks struck the ghost, but he didn't flinch or seem to notice. But Impmon still kept up the stream, as he also seemed not to notice the fact he wasn't causing any damage.

"We have to stop him!" cried Jeri, running quickly along behind the others, as Elecmon and MarineAngemon put on speed and drew level with the ever-growling Guilmon up ahead. "This has got to be a trap of some kind."

"What do you mean?" asked Kenta, turning to look quizzically at the girl.

"MetalPhantomon's a ghost Digimon," said Jeri. "If he really wanted to escape, he could just disappear into thin air like he did last time. But he isn't. He's just flying away."

Takato clicked as what Jeri said made it to his brain. "MetalPhantomon's not trying to get away. He's leading Impmon somewhere on purpose."

"Maybe there are more enemy Digimon hiding somewhere nearby," said Kenta fearfully. "Just waiting to ambush us. Impmon stop!"

There were shouts from all five of the present humans, as well as Elecmon and MarineAngemon, but Impmon simply ignored them, blanking them from existence.

"MarineAngemon!" cried Kenta. "You've got to go ahead and stop MetalPhantomon."

"But don't kill him!" Jeri added. "We can ask him questions if he's still alive. See if you can trap him in a bubble or something so that he won't be able to get away."

The tiny, Mega-level fairy nodded and started to move forward faster, overtaking Guilmon and Elecmon. But the orders didn't come quickly enough. Just as MarineAngemon flitted past Impmon and prepared to use his Kahuna Waves to engulf MetalPhantomon in a surprisingly tough heart-shaped bubble, the Ultimate Virus Digimon entered a clearing in the trees.

It was the children's playground.

Children looked around, along with their parents, and screamed at the sight of the evil-looking spectre. Pandemonium promptly followed as child and adult alike scrambled for cover, while MetalPhantomon turned and hovered at the top of the slide. His permanent grin that came as a result of having a skull for a face seemed more eerie than usual.

MarineAngemon pulled to a halt, as well as Impmon, whose fingers were still glowing with tiny flames. Guilmon and Elecmon pulled up behind them, with Guilmon still growling like a frenzied wolverine. The humans came to a stop behind them.

"Alright then!" said Takato, his fists clenched as he glared up at MetalPhantomon. "Are you ready to answer our questions now?"

"No," MetalPhantomon shook his head. "I have been given strict instructions by my Master not to let anyone get any information out of me."

"Oh I have ways of making you talk," Impmon growled harshly. The twins started as his sadistic tone, but Impmon didn't notice. He was too focused on the mon who had tormented him for months on end. "Make it easier on yourself, MetalPhantoFace! And tell me who you're Master is."

"Ah," said MetalPhantomon. "Right on cue. The last of you little wimps have gathered."

"What are you?" Kenta started, but then he turned at a growling sound. Cyberdramon was approaching, with Ryo on his back. And behind him was Guardromon, with Kazu, as usual, sitting uncomfortably on his head.

"It's such a shame that all of you could not be here," leered MetalPhantomon. "But, thanks to Parallelmon's interference, some of you are missing. Not part of our plans, but useful enough, if it means there are less of you to defend Impmon."

Cyberdramon and Guardromon landed. The former instantly stepped forwards, his growls mingling with Guilmon's as he too prepared for what seemed to be an inevitable battle.

"So, that's the guy, is it?" asked Kazu. "Sheesh, someone's got a bad case of the uglies."

MetalPhantomon didn't appear to care about Kazu's insult. "Now that all of you are here," he said. "Your questions, or most of them, anyway, shall be answered."

"But, I thought you just said you've been ordered not to tell us anything," said Kenta, confused and actually scratching his head as he tried to puzzle out MetalPhantomon's words.

"_I_ won't be telling you anything," said MetalPhantomon. "My Master wishes to speak you. In person."

Everyone tensed massively at these words, glancing around them for fear on some giant, horrifying monster jumping out at them. But nothing did. What did happen, was the air above MetalPhantomon ripped itself apart with a sudden incredible rush of wind. The Tamers lifted their arms in attempts to shield their faces as wind blasted over them from the centre of the vortex that appeared in mid-air.

"What's going on?" shouted Ai.

Impmon blinked, and turned to face her and Mako, seeming to notice they were there for the first time. "Teradalets!" he cried. "What are you doing here? It could be dangerous! Run away!"

"It is not dangerous," said MetalPhantomon, oblivious to the winds blasting from the black hole that had appeared behind him. "My Master just wants to talk with you. There will be no danger as long as you comply with his demands."

"For the last fragging time!" Impmon glared at him. "Who. Is. Your. MASTER?"

"That would be me," said a voice from the hole of darkness hanging in mid-air. The voice was deep, incredibly deep, far deeper than MetalPhantomon's. Even deeper than GranKuwagamon's or Zhuqiaomon's. The hole, which was now a giant, swirling, pitch-black vortex the size of the HYPNOS towers, began to fill with an image. An image that was still quite dark around the edges, but in the middle there was an enormous, hulking figure.

"Oh my God," whispered Jeri, her hand flying to her mouth. "Who is that."

"Ah, that, human, is the question, is it not?" asked the figure, as he came into focus. At first glance, it appeared to be an enormous centaur-like figure, with the body of a four legged animal on the bottom and the top half of a humanoid above that. But it was definitely not a centaur. His feet were huge, black paws with four enormous claws on each. His animal body was deep red in colour, with spikes jutting out of the backs of his legs, and a long, yellow tail swept out behind him – the only part of him that remotely resembled something that came from a horse. The shoulders of his animal body also had what appeared to a pair of enormous shark-like jaws extending forward from each.

As for the humanoid part of him, it was also a deep red, with a couple of belts close to the bottom and long clawed fingers. He had a collar-like structure around his neck that looked like two bat wings, only blue. And he had real bat like wings extending out behind him. As for his face, only the bottom half was visible, and had grey skin. The other half was encased in a blue helmet-like mask, with two sweeping devil horns extending behind him. Long blond hair also spilled from the back of his head.

The Tamers and the majority of the Digimon took a step back from the huge figure. Surely, he couldn't be that big, could he? And he seemed to radiate a strange aura. It was pure evil, there was no denying that. But at the same time it was almost... enticing. As if it was inviting him to come closer to him.

"Excellent work, MetalPhantomon," said the giant Digimon. "Return to my dimension at once."

"Yes, my Master," grated MetalPhantomon and with a whirl of his cloak he vanished into thin air.

"Now," said the giant Digimon, the Master himself, in a strangely polite voice for such an evil-looking Digimon. "Allow me to introduce myself. Oh wait, your little devices can read the Data of another Digimon, can't they. Why don't you scan me and find out who I am for yourselves."

Ryo, eyes wide, raised his D-Arc and waited for it to display the data. It took a couple of seconds. But, eventually, the image and information appeared in the little holographic image.

"GranDracmon," said Ryo, with trepidation. "Demon Beast Digimon. Virus Type. Mega level. His attacks are Crystal Revolution and Eye of the Gorgon."

"Yes, that is me," said GranDracmon, with a pleasant smile. "I am very pleased to meet you all in person, at last."

"O... M... G," said Kazu, slowly staring up at the enormous and imposing shape of GranDracmon.

"Now might not be the best time for that, Kazu," said Guardromon.

"_That's_ the master Digimon that has been after Impmon all this time?" Kenta sniffled, looking like he was ready to bolt at any moment. "Uh, I have to go potty."

"Kenta!" Jeri scowled at him. "We stay! We stay to help protect Impmon, you got it!"

"Yeah," said Kenta dejectedly. "But why can it never be easy?"

GranDracmon smirked down at them, his arms folded across his chest. Impmon stared up at him, his rage against MetalPhantomon completely forgotten. He'd been waiting and waiting for a long time to meet the mastermind behind his dream stalker and attacks, but now that he did, he wasn't entirely sure what he was supposed to do.

"Uh..." he said. "You're... you're big."

GranDracmon chuckled dryly. "Oh, I am not this large in reality. This is just my image, transported from my world to your world. In reality, I am not nearly this size, but it helps to be intimidating on your first impression, don't you agree?"

"You're image?" asked Impmon, his confidence beginning to grow again. "So, you're to scared to come and face us yourself are you? Why don't step into our world and see if you can take a beating, huh, Count Dracula?"

GranDracmon chuckled again. "Attempting to goad me into a foolish action won't work on me, like it worked on you." Impmon scowled and GranDracmon continued to chuckle.

"Hey, you!" shouted Ai, stepping forwards in a moment of bravery and insanity. "If you're the Master that all the other Digimon have been talking about then you're the one who's been making Impmon's life horrible. Why don't you just leave him alone?"

"Boldly spoken for someone who I could crush into oblivion just if I looked at them in the right way," said GranDracmon.

"Hey!" Mako shouted. "Leave my sister alone."

"Leave them both alone!" Impmon shouted.

"Shall we just proceed to the question and answer session?" asked GranDracmon. "I know you've been wanting your questions answered. Now, why don't you ask them. You have my word that I will answer most of them at least."

"Alright then," Impmon stood forwards. "If you guys don't object, I'll do most of the talking here!"

There were mutters of "Go ahead," or "I'm not stopping you," and other things of that ilk, from most of the kids.

"Right," said Impmon. "We now know that you're name is GranDracmon and that you're the one that's been after me. I'm sure you can guess my first question, punk! Why the hell have you been having that metallic fossil chasing around after me and invading my brain?"

"I assumed that would be your first question," said GranDracmon. "And my answer to that question is that there are three reasons for doing so. First off, I wanted to remind you of all the things that you once did when you were a Demon Lord. All the glory and the power you once had when you were feared by everyone in the Digital World. Can you not remember how good it felt to take the life of another, Impmon? Do you not wish to feel that rush again?"

Impmon wanted to snap that of course he didn't, but for some reason the words stuck in his throat. It was like there was something telling him subconsciously that yes, he did want to feel that rush again.

It took him considerable effort to shout "NO! I do not want to be a sick freak like you. Not now! Not ever!"

GranDracmon didn't reply to this outburst. Instead, he said, "The second reason is because there was something that I wanted to find out. I wanted to find out how a Digimon as evil as you once were turned to the good side. Because, MetalPhantomon doesn't put memories in your head, he simply unearths them from deep within your own mind.

"You're most recent flashback confirmed something I'd been suspecting. When you load Magnadramon's data, she purified you from within. She knew that you would betray her, and she'd already cast her magic so that her pure data would react with yours and cleanse it upon her death. She destroyed you from within too, using more magic to revert you, her and every other Digimon you killed to Digi-eggs."

Impmon blinked. So that was what the pink light exploding from his body had been all about. If her ever met Magnadramon again, he would thank him from the bottom of his purified soul.

"And the third reason," GranDracmon grinned. "Is something that I may or may not tell you later. Next question."

"Hey, you promised to answer them!" Impmon protested.

"I promised that I would answer most of them," GranDracmon replied evenly. "And I will, but not right now. Next."

Impmon growled, but there was really nothing that he could do about it. If GranDracmon was not really here, then he could hardly digivolve to Beelzemon and threaten to pummel him if he didn't give up the answer. His attacks would only destroy the image, or just pass straight through it or something.

"Fine," he growled. "My next question is, where the heck are you? I know you're not in the Human World and I know you're not in the Digital World, so where are you broadcasting from?"

"I should have thought that would be obvious. At least to one particular member of your group," said GranDracmon with a smirk.

"Make sense, damn it!" Impmon snapped at him. "What the hell did that mean?"

"I am talking about him," GranDracmon extended a bony, red arm and pointed a clawed finger right at...

"Me?" asked Takato. "Wha- What do you mean I should know what dimension you come from?"

"I've been watching you all for some time," said GranDracmon. "And I've picked up a lot of things about you Tamers, including your strengths and weaknesses, your likes and your dislikes and many of your past experiences before I began to take an interest. And I know that you are completely and utterly obsessed with this Digimon TV show of yours."

"Obssessed wouldn't be the word I'd use," spluttered Takato.

"Actually..." started Kazu.

"Anyway," Takato interrupted. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"The things of your world are not so different from the things of the world of the TV show," said GranDracmon. "Your world is intertwined with the Digital World. Their Human World is intertwined with the Digital World too. But, what else is their Human World and Digital World intertwined with?"

"Well, there's the D- Oh no. Oh wait," Takato paled. "You can't possibly mean..."

"The Dark Ocean?" asked GranDracmon. "Of course that is what I mean." And he stepped aside to reveal what he had been standing in front of them. Dark black sand stretching from left to right to form a evil-looking beach and the Dark Ocean that lay beyond it, like a sea filled to breaking point with black ink.

"Oh god," Ryo muttered under his breath at the sight.

"There are quite a few Digital Worlds out there," said GranDracmon as he blocked the Ocean from view once again. "Each with their own Human World and each with their own Dark Ocean. I happen to occupy yours. Or, to put it more accurate, I rule over it. I am the Supreme ruler of the World of Darkness. Quite fitting, don't you think, considering I created it in the first place."

"Alright," said Impmon, slowly. "Then here's my next question, why have you been sending minions in to take me to you instead of coming to do it yourself?"

GranDracmon's face seemed to darken momentarily. "If I could come and pick you up myself then I would. You would not be able to stop me, as my body is tied to the existence of the Dark Ocean. Neither it nor I can be destroyed as long as the other exists. It's rather convenient in many ways, as it makes me practically immortal, but, in other ways, it is annoying. My existence is _so_ tied to the Dark Ocean, that I cannot leave it. To try would be suicide for me."

"Oh, what a shame," cackled Impmon. "It's like you've been permanently grounded."

Ai and Mako sniggered.

GranDracmon frowned. "An interesting analogy. And an oddly accurate one. Yes, I am under permanent world arrest. But I can still create portals to relevant parallel worlds such as the Digital and Human World and send my minions through to do the job for me."

"Well, that makes things slightly easier for us then," said Elecmon. "If he can't die and he could come to us, then I would be worried."

"And if the rest of his minions are anything like the last ones we faced," said Guardromon. "Then this shouldn't be too much of a problem for us."

"Oh believe me," said GranDracmon. "Those servants I sent before are some of the weakest I have under my possession. I possess an army of extremely powerful virus type Digimon. I sent those three after you the first time, Beelzemon, because I was testing your strength. And you didn't disappoint, though I must say you could have done better. I have many others at my disposal."

"How many?" asked Ryo.

"Hundreds," leered GranDracmon. "And do you want to know who they are?"

"Yeah, I do," nodded Impmon.

"They are all that remains of the loyal army that used to follow the Demon Lords when they were fighting the Sovereigns," leered GranDracmon, absorbing Impmon's sudden shock with glee. "Yes, that's right. You did have an army at your disposal, although you still preferred to do things by yourselves mostly. Nevertheless, you had followers. When the Demon Lords fell at the hands of the Sovereigns I offered your army sanctuary in my world and now they serve me. And only me."

"Fine," said Impmon, determined not to look at all worried by this new revelation. "And now, for my next question, and perhaps the most important one of all. Why? Why do you want me? What will you do when I get to the Dark Ocean? What will happen to me when you get there?"

"Ah, finally," GranDracmon's leer seemed to intensify. "Well, the truth is this. While I rule supremely over the Dark Ocean, I would like to... expand my territory, you could put it. I want to become the lord and master of two more worlds – the Digital World and the Human World."

"I thought so," said Impmon. "But that still doesn't explain why you want me."

"Oh yes it does," said GranDracmon. "As I just explained, I cannot leave, but my followers can. However, while I intend to send my forces into battle soon, I find myself in need of a General to lead the armies. I am the most powerful here, but the next most powerful virus type, other than Zhuqiaomon, would be one of the Demon Lords. And you, Impmon, are the last Demon Lord."

"You..." Impmon spluttered. "You... you want me to join you? To become your right hand mon? What the hell have you been drinking?"

"Nothing," grinned GranDracmon. "You may not be the most powerful Mega level Demon, but you certainly used to have much more power than any of my current minions. That power is gone now, but with my help, you could start over again. You could begin to load the data of the innocent again and build up your strength, just as you did in the old days before your purification," he spat the word as if it left a bad taste in his mouth.

"I..." Impmon muttered. "I..."

"Join me, Impmon," GranDracmon said enticingly. "Join my cause. Join the fight to exterminate all the forces of good on both worlds. Leave these human meatbags and regain the glory, the fear and the respect that you once had! I promise that you will be revelling in the terror of the innocents before too long, and if you join me, you'll go much further and become much more powerful than you ever were when you marched under Lucemon's banner!"

"Impmon will never join you!" Ai shouted up at him.

"Yeah, tell him, Impmon," Mako agreed angrily.

But Impmon suddenly felt unsure of himself. He realised suddenly that he _would_ like that once more. He _would_ like the power once again. He had loved it before, all his flashbacks said so. He could get so much more satisfaction out of his life than he got in this dump if he just went with GranDracmon. What _was _he doing? Hanging around with these weaklings? He was better than them. He didn't need them.

He took a step forward and felt the words "I'm in," trot onto his tongue. But, with a sudden burst of resistance, he stopped himself. What was he thinking? Did he actually just think that he would prefer to go back to the days where he was an utter monstrosity? What the hell! What the hell! What the hell! What was wrong with him?

But infinite power would be so nice.

But he couldn't abandon the twins.

Who needed them? What had they ever done for him?

He made a promise that he would stay with them.

But GranDracmon was so powerful? Shouldn't he want to be like him?

No, he shouldn't.

Yes, he should.

No.

Yes.

No.

AAAAARGH!

The thoughts and memories that MetalPhantomon had unearthed of all the atrocities he had committed were called to the front of his mind. Impmon quickly replayed them all in his head and vividly recalled the disgust he had felt at himself right afterwards. He thought about Ai and Mako and all that they had strived for and risked to keep him by their side.

"Never!" Impmon shouted. "I will never join you. NEVER, EVER, EVVVVEEEERRRR!"

He growled at GranDracmon, panting heavily, and taking in the sombre expression on the face of the enemy Mega.

"I see," said GranDracmon slowly. "Most impressive. Your bond with the two children clearly runs much deeper than I ever believed. You see, the third reason I had MetalPhantomon resurface your memories was to weaken your resolve. To get you to isolate yourself, weaken your spirit and the fire in your soul. That would make you more susceptible to my powers of fascination, and it would be easier to draw you to me."

"You were using some kind of spell to try and get my to join you?" Impmon roared. He was furious and grateful – at least he knew his previous thinking had been the result of a spell and not real. "That's low."

"It's such a shame that most of MetalPhantomon's efforts were for nothing," said GranDracmon. "Since you refuse to come with me of your own accord, I shall move on to Plan B. I present you with a choice, Impmon. Either you come with me and become my General..."

"I just said NEVER!" Impmon roared.

"...Or," GranDracmon went on. "Your friends shall pay dearly and they will all suffer at my hands."

Impmon stopped and faltered, glancing back at all the others grouped behind him. Despite the fact that Kenta was on the verge of peeing himself, if he hadn't already, they were all still there and all staring with defiance at GranDracmon.

"Don't listen to him, Impmon," said Jeri. "He can't get out of his dimension, remember. He can't do anything to us."

"Such a naive little girl," laughed GranDracmon. "You would be surprised what I can do."

"Yeah?" Takato stepped forward and raised his fist, determination written across his features. "Well, we'll take anything you throw at us and we'll just throw it right back in your face, won't we, guys?"

There was a round of nodding from all the other Tamers and their Digimon, even Cyberdramon and Guilmon, both of whom looked like they were still spoiling for a fight. Impmon grinned at them and turned back to GranDracmon. "No deal, Dracula. I'm staying right here. We're stronger than we look and you know it. What exactly are you planning to do anyway?"

GranDracmon sighed dramatically. "I was hoping that I wouldn't have to do this, but you leave me no choice, Impmon. If you still will not join me, then perhaps a little taster of my warning will change your mind."

The tension for battle began to reach its peak as the Tamers and the Digimon all prepared for the worst, wondering what kind of enemy GranDracmon was going to summon and throw at them. None of them were expecting GranDracmon to actually attack himself.

"**EYE OF THE GORGON!"** roared GranDracmon. His wings flapped, and the shark-like jaws on his lower torso opened. A bright, light flashed inside each maw, and then they closed.

And... that was it.

"Ha!" Impmon crowed, folding his arms. "Did you forget that you're in an alternate dimension right now, so none of your attacks are going to work on us? Loser."

GranDracmon smiled. "Not all attacks are damaging, Impmon. Believe me when I say it worked. Now, I bid you good day. Enjoy my little gift."

The giant image switched off, like someone had hit the power button on a remote. Impmon blinked in confusion and turned to the others, who looked just as dumbstruck as he felt.

All except one.

Impmon took a step backwards in shock. Something was terribly, terribly wrong with Guilmon. His eyes, normally yellow and sparkling, were now glowing a bright red. It was a glow that Impmon had seen in his eyes before, a long time ago, back in his second attempt at being evil and right after he had destroyed Leomon.

"Oh no," Impmon gasped in horror as Guilmon's growling intensified and the hazard symbol on his chest started flashing. The others, including Takato, backed away from him as a red funnel-cloud of flame engulfed him, with orange circles of light shooting upwards from the ground and up the funnel. Inside it, Guilmon began to grow, expanding massively in size, bigger even than he was as WarGrowlmon.

"No," Takato whispered, his eyes full of fear and dread.

"It... It can't be," Jeri breathed in terror, her eyes already moistening.

Everyone except Ryo, Cyberdramon, Elecmon, MarineAngemon, Ai and Mako had seen this before. And those that hadn't could all take an educated guess. The funnel cloud dropped away to reveal a horribly familiar Digimon in its place. Enormous red and orange dragon-like wings uncurled from his back and spread into the sky. A long, coiling serpentine body with a spiked tail came down from the waist. Above the waist was a torso encased in Chrome-Digizoid armour, the hazard symbol prominent on his chest and a huge blade sweeping back from the armour on his arms and large spikes on his shoulder-armour, which also displayed the Hazard symbol. Huge metallic claws flexed on his hands and an enormous, grotesque head, which a huge, slavering maw filled with massive teeth. His eyes were still glowing red.

"Is... that..." Ryo whispered in horror.

"Megidramon," Kenta murmured in terror.

"No... not again," Takato whimpered, tears spilling from his eyes. "Not again."

_This is my fault,_ Impmon thought in dismay. _This is all my fault. I'm so sorry, Pineapple-head._

Megidramon flexed his wings and threw out his arms, announcing his return to the world with a gigantic roar that shook the heavens and would make gods themselves quake with fear. His teeth gnashed and his claws flexed, and with a terrific sweep of his wings, he launched himself into the sky.

* * *

Yes, I know. I am the most evil writer on this whole site (actually I'm not, but I love my cliffhangers). And the worst part is you guys have to wait four more chapters and a oneshot for Geekgirl before you hear the next bit. I'll try and get the latter done by Thursday.

Be honest, how many of you were expecting Megidramon when you started to read this chapter? Well, I just had to put him in somewhere, so why not here? I personally think they could have done a lot more with him in the series so in the next Impmon chapter, don't expect to see him just leaning over Beelzemon while attempting to bite him. He'll be a proper monster.

Please review.

* * *

Next time...

We meet the Separatist Leader in charge of the lab. We meet the Delta Squad for the first time. And not only that, but things are about to get even worse for the people in the village. The virus isn't the only thing the Seppies have been working on.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 66 : Search For The Cure**


	66. Search For The Cure

And now, yet another twist in the plot is going to be thrown into the mix. There seems to be a lot of plot twists being thrown around at the moment, aren't there.

Also, I've written and uploaded my oneshot for Geekgirl, so if you'd like to read it, head for Chapter 7 of the Every 50 fanfic. I'd love to hear some more opinions on how I did. And now for the chapter, and for four particular clones that some of you have been asking after for some time.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 66:- Search For The Cure**

* * *

A single Republic gunship descended into the atmosphere of the planet Shili, its blast doors closed and its engines roaring as it swiftly dropped through the sky, heading for its destination on the surface below. The co-ordinates given to it were very specific, and, other than the pilot driving the thing, the vessel contained four people. Or, to be more precise, four clones.

But these clones were anything but ordinary. Whereas most of their brothers were usually found in the same white armour, each identical to the rest except for colour scheme indicating their squad – their armour was very different. For a start, it was much broader and bulkier and tougher than the armour of a regular clone. The helmet was the most different aspect of their equipment. They lacked the spike on the top of the head and the front of the helmet extended further down than the helmets of other clones, designed to protect the neck areas.

One of them was holding a holoprojector in his hand. This one had armour that was painted a distinctive dark orange over the forehead, arms and chest. He was the leader of this group of four, and his nickname was, rather appropriately, Boss. A man of little words (rather like GranKuwagamon, but the bug was a mon of even less words), Boss cared a great deal for the three men under his command and had earned their respect a long time ago.

The next one along had a different colour on his own armour. He had numerous dark green stripes that ran up and down the legs and arms and down the centre of the helmet and around his waist. He was the second-in-command. He too was often a quiet person, but he was also very strict on sticking to the rules. His name was Fixer, and this was given to him due to the fact he was also the master of technology for the group.

The next clone had armour in what could easily be mistaken for blood considering the colour. The way it was splashed along his helmet made a lot of people think it really was. The red colour also could be found on his arms and legs. He was a fierce fighter who loved combat, so much so that he was easily the most aggressive of the lot. His name was Sev, which was only an abbreviation of the last number in his individual code.

The final clone was covered in armour that was mostly dark grey in colour with the occasional patch of yellow, but he was absolutely bristling with containers and pouches that were jam-packed with explosives. Scorch got his nickname for a good reason. He absolutely loved to blow things up and he was the most jocular of the four clones. He took an almost Terriermon-ish view to life in general, able to find humour in most situations.

Together, they formed the Delta Squad.

They were talking to another clone on the holoprojector in Boss's hand. "We know that General Shaak Ti called us out here for an important assignment that had something to do with a chemical," said Boss. "But that is the limit of our knowledge. Would you care to enlighten us, Commander Wolffe?"

"It's quite complicated," said Wolffe. "But I'm sure it'll be fine. We've discovered that the Separatists have released a deadly Blue Shadow Virus into the water system from a laboratory here, that has been poisoning the locals. We believe that this may be a test run of sorts and that if they are not stopped right now, they will move on to other systems and repeat the process. As you may have guessed, the Jedi want this ended and quickly."

"How many casualties have there been?" asked Fixer.

"Thirteen locals dead," said Wolffe. "And unfortunately one of our own got infected too and doesn't have long left to live."

Scorch chuckled and flipped open a pouch to pull out a grenade and toss it in the air casually. "Alright, I'm looking forward to this mission. Blowing up a Separatist laboratory is way better than idling around on Kamino for a few days."

"No, you mustn't," Wolffe said quickly.

"Aaw, why not?" asked Scorch.

"We have reason to believe that the Separatists may have a cure for this virus hidden within their lab somewhere. We must retrieve it before our ill comrade dies. But, once you have the cure, feel free to wipe the place off the map."

"Alright," nodded Scorch. "You hear that Sev? This is going to be a right old party."

"And one that you can't wait to gatecrash, right?" Sev asked.

"You know me," laughed Scorch.

"Unfortunately," said Sev. Their verbal sparring wasn't really serious – they would often do this sort of thing to maintain a brotherly relationship. Teasing each other often took place every minute or so.

"Secure your excitement, RC-1262," said Fixer, using Scorch's number rather than his nickname, like he often tended to do with his fellow squad members. "This is serious. If one of our fellow clone is dying, then we're gonna have to get serious and save him."

Wolffe coughed. "Er," he said. "Our fallen comrade... isn't actually a clone. She's a she, actually."

"Is she a Jedi then?" asked Sev.

"No," said Wolffe. "And not a local either."

"Then, what?" Scorch frowned in confusion beneath his helmet.

"Best wait until you meet them," said Wolffe. "It's going to be an awful lot to take in, even for hardened clones like you."

"Oh please, we can take it," said Scorch, waving his hand airily. "We've seen a hell of a lot of weird stuff since this war started. How much weirder can it get?"

"You have no idea," Wolffe said mysteriously.

"When we find the laboratory," said Boss. "What's the plan?"

"We're not entirely sure yet," said Wolffe. "It depends on the location and size of it. But Commander Tano says that its probably full of droids, so the general idea is that the Jedi create a diversion while you guys infiltrate the lab and find that cure, and also, apprehend whoever is in charge of the place. You'll receive a full briefing when you arrive."

"Alright," said Boss. "We're making our final approach now. We have an ETA of approximately half an hour."

"We'll call the Jedi back when you arrive," said Wolffe. Then he grinned and said, "As well as few other interesting guests. Commander Wolffe out."

The hologram disappeared and the Delta Squad glanced at each other.

"Something tells me this is going to be a good day," Sev patted his sniper rifle eagerly.

"Bet you can't wait to start trashing droids, huh, Psycho?" Scorch jabbed his elbow into Sev's side.

"It should be interesting to say the least," said Fixer. "And a new experience if what Commander Wolffe said is anything to go by."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," said Boss. "Prepare to move out."

* * *

The four Jedi; Aayla, Ahsoka, Shaak Ti and Plo, along with Bly, Echo and Fives, were seated on large BARC speeder bikes. The vehicles were hovering about a foot from the ground and had a large back end that held the seat and a long, thin engine sticking out the front in order to make it as streamlined as possible. They were covering the ground at a very high pace, zooming in and around the trees as they followed the river, searching for a place where the Separatists may have dumped the virus. The Jedi had split into pairs to search, and the clones were also searching as a group.

Terriermon and Lopmon were still searching from the air, scanning the ground below them as they went in great sweeping circles like vultures scouring the ground for a kill. Both were silently cursing the thick canopy. It was good for the Togrutas to provide cover, but unfortunately it provided the same service for enemy troops.

Aayla moved her speeder up a steep hill at high velocity and fluidly sprang off it once she reached the top. Fishing the macrobinoculars that could be found in a compartment in the speeder, she held them to her eyes and scoured the landscape and the trees for any sign of anything that could indicate the presence of Separatists.

"Anything?" Ahsoka shouted up to her from the bottom of the hill.

Aayla sighed and lowered her macrobinoculars. "No, nothing," she called back.

Ahsoka growled under her breath. "We're running out of time. Renamon's been sick for almost an hour. Where are the they?"

"I don't know," said Aayla. "But we have to keep trying."

"I know," said Ahsoka, as Aayla hopped onto her bike again and zoomed down the hill to join her. "Renamon is depending upon us. And we can't let her down."

"Exactly," Aayla said, as they sped away once more.

The four separate groups continued in this manner for yet another half-hour. They were more pressed for time than they had previously thought. Assuming Renamon had four hours to live to start with, they had wasted an hour trying to find the bloody lab in the first place, leaving her with three. That gave them three hours to find the lab, invade it, secure it, get the cure, mix an antidote and give it to Renamon.

Shaak Ti had thought ahead and ordered a medical frigate to head for the planet's orbit, which meant they'd only have to transport Renamon and the root up into space, instead of making any long hyperspace journeys. But even so, time was slipping by and quickly.

The clones were peeling off in different directions now, confident that they could handle themselves in a scrap and staying in touch via their comlinks. That way they could cover a lot more ground three times as quickly.

And, finally, one of them found the lab.

It was extremely well hidden, but eventually, Fives stumbled across it. He had ascended another steep hill, in order to get a good look across the terrain like before, and suddenly, he found himself on the edge of the tree-line. He blinked and stared out at what was not just an enormous clearing, but also a large valley. It was devoid of trees, although the lab would still be hidden from the air by the slope of the valley itself unless whatever was searching flew directly over it. The lab itself was a rather large construct – a series of corridors and separate rooms, presumably with different projects being done in each room. It stretched across the centre of the valley like a spider-web, but it was still some distance from any of the walls.

Fives hurriedly activated his comlink. "Guys," he said. "I found the lab. Mark my position and head over here."

"Copy that," said Bly. "I'll contact General Secura and give her the message."

* * *

It wasn't long before the other two clones and the four Jedi had all joined Fives at the edge of the valley overlooking the lab. It wasn't long after that before Terriermon and Lopmon joined them, nestling in the branches – alerted to the discovery by a brief mental message from Aayla.

"Well," said Plo. "There's the target. And it's larger than I expected it to be. Clearly the Blue Shadow Virus reconstruction is not the only thing they have been doing in there."

"That is not going to be an easy building to infiltrate, Generals," said Bly. "There's no cover whatsoever from here to the lab in any direction. And there's a lot of surveillance cameras so it would be practically impossible to approach the lab without being spotted."

"Not forgetting the many, many security turrets stationed all over the place," said Echo, dryly. "If we marched out there now we would be sitting ducks."

Terriermon frowned as he stared at the lab. "The building is the key to saving my mate," he said, with determination. "There is always a way to accomplish a task and trust me when I say that I will find that way."

"Don't worry, Terriermon," nodded Aayla. "We're behind you all the way."

"The only question is," said Ahsoka. "how are we going to go about this?"

"Commander Wolffe has sent us a message not that long ago," said Plo. "Apparently the Delta Squad have arrived on planet and are making their way towards the village as we speak. Perhaps they will have some ideas on what to do. They are, after all, experts at infiltration and elimination."

"Just what we needed then," said Lopmon. "Nice call, Shaak Ti."

"Anything to help," said Shaak Ti.

They continued to stare at the lab, each trying to think of a way of getting into the place. Terriermon was seething, because, once again, his usual tactic of exploding the place wouldn't work in this situation. Blow up the factory and he would blow up the only potential way of saving Renamon.

"There's one other problem," said Shaak Ti, breaking the silence. "A Separatist laboratory of that size probably has _a lot_ of battle droids guarding the place. Even if we manage to find a way to get to the factory and then get inside it, we'd still be faced with a horde. Plus, who knows what surprises that lab has in store."

"We don't have time to fight a horde," said Terriermon.

"I know that," said Shaak Ti. "We're going to have to try and think of a way to deal with them quickly and efficiently."

"Great," muttered Ahsoka. "This just keeps getting better and better."

They lot of the them continued to think hard. It took a couple of minutes but, eventually, their efforts were rewarded when an imaginary lightbulb appeared above Lopmon's head. "Hey," she said. "I have an idea on how we might be able to get close."

* * *

Amongst the ranks of the Separatists, particularly in the High Council, treachery was always not that far away. The members of the council were always trying to outdo, unseat or move against each other, all in order to gain more power and wealth for themselves. Passel Argente, one of the main council members of the Separatists, was no exception.

Passel was the Magistrate of the Corporate Alliance, a negotiating body for several of the galaxy's largest commercial firms. It was a very large business and was extremely efficient at raking in the money, just like many of the other influential businesses that had joined the Separatists like the Techno Union, the Trade Federation and the InterGalactic Banking Clan. Passel himself was a Koorivar. They resembled Nemoidians, but with more human-like faces and they also had two devil-like horns protruding from their temples, as well as a single, spiralling horn right out the top of his head.

Passel wore ceremonial orange robes that indicated his status as the Magistrate, as well as an orange headdress that were tucked behind his devil horns and had a hole in the top for the larger ones.

And Passel Argente was on Shili, striding through the laboratory that he had ordered to be built, hidden from view by almost everything overhead and on the ground. And he was here, because, once again, his greed had gotten the better of him.

Passel was constantly trying to paint himself in a good light to his fellow Separatist leaders. He was always conniving and scheming, trying to think up new and brilliant ideas to turn the tide of the war. It was he who had recruited Doctor Nuvo Vindi in the first place, paying him to create the plague. He thought that he could use the virus to cripple the Republic, thus making it easier to conquer by some distance. If such a brilliant scheme worked, then he could gain a lot of political support to help him fulfil his desires.

The first attempt at the Blue Shadow Virus had obviously failed, but Passel had not lost all hope yet. Vindi had transported all his plans to the scheming Koorivar, and so he had started from the beginning, this time in a place more remote than the swamps of Naboo.

This hadn't been his first attempt at gaining political power amongst the Separatists. Close to the start of the war, he initiated an attack on the clone planet of Kamino, seeking to destroy the cloning facilities and stop the production of new warriors from the very start. But in reality, that would just be an added bonus. What he was really doing was trying to gain the admiration of his colleagues and then use their backing to oust Count Dooku as leader of the Confederacy of Independent Systems and take his place.

But, unknown to Passel, Dooku and Darth Sidious both knew about his treacherous plan and deliberately leaked information to the Republic about the incoming invasion of Kamino. This meant that when the attack was initiated, it was an utter disaster, and Passel was blamed and disgraced. But that didn't stop Passel from trying again.

Passel never realised that his ambitions were all for naught even if he had succeeded and to this day he still didn't. Passel was one of the Separatist leaders who didn't know anything whatsoever about Darth Sidious and did believe that Dooku was the top of the hierarchy. Many of the other Separatist leaders did, and even if Passel could gain their trust, they would never try and overthrow Dooku for fear of both him and his mysterious master.

And now, Passel was trying his luck a third time, by resurrecting the Blue Shadow Virus once more. Only this time, he was overseeing the project himself. He had chosen Shili because he had assumed that this would be a good place to begin, as the locals had very little contact with the Republic, so he was unlikely to get any unwanted attention.

But, of course, he was hardly going to expose himself to any area where there was a potential way of getting himself harmed. As well as the usual battle droids, which the Corporate Alliance produced individually even before they joined the Separatists, he had followed in the footsteps of the Republic and gotten hold of the cure – the reeksa root that had defeated the virus before.

But, that wasn't the only thing he was producing in this factory. Oh no.

Passel had been carefully thinking out his plans. If he wanted to personally turn the tide of the war, he needed to come up with a foolproof plan. If he just snuck from planet to planet administering the virus to the water (he had decided the airborne strain was too dangerous), then eventually word was going to get out about what disease they were facing and they'd be able to prepare for it.

So he had plan that had two stages. The first stage was the Blue Shadow Virus release, which would hopefully weaken and kill off the locals and citizens of any area that they sent it too. Then, when the population was weak and unable to fight back, he would initiate stage two of the plan.

And the test run of stage two was all set to begin today on the Togruta camp that had been the intended target of the virus.

Passel smiled to himself, as he passed a large chamber and paused to listen briefly to the sounds of welding metal coming from within. Yes, all would be ready soon. Those savages out there wouldn't stand a chance against what he had in mind. And neither would anyone else.

Passel allow himself a hearty chuckle. Yep, he had outdone himself this time.

At that point, his holoprojector started beeping. He sighed, thinking that it was probably some stupid droid reporting a malfunction it had caused by tripping over a wire... again. Nevertheless, he answered it. "Yes?" he asked. "What is it?"

"Sir," said the hologram of the battle droid in his palm. "I think you might want to come to the main control room and see this. One of the probe droids has picked up something and it's not just a wild animal."

Passel frowned in bemusement. Was it possible that the Togruta tribesmen had discovered their base? Even if they had, Passel saw little reason to worry. They were only armed with spears and knives and, in all honesty, what good were they against metal droids, walls and turrets. There was no way he need fear attack as long as he remained behind these walls.

Still, he nodded and said, "Alright then. I'll be there shortly." Deactivating the hologram, he began to head down the corridor towards the main control room. He wished to sate his own curiosity about whatever the cameras had picked up. He wasn't like Nute Gunray or Wat Tambor, both of which had been captured due to his overconfidence and lack of planning, although Gunray had escaped while Tambor was still imprisoned. He'd come so far in this plan that he was unwilling to let any detail slip through his fingers and ruin it.

As he entered the room, he demanded. "What is it then?"

One of the battle droids sitting at the monitoring stations turned to face him. "One of the heat-seeking surveillance cameras detected a medium-sized group of beings on the side of the valley, so we trained the other cameras on that spot and zoomed in. It's quite interesting, sir." The droid turned back to his station and flipped a switch. An image from one of the cameras was displayed on the big monitor.

Passel blinked at the sight. Two of them were indeed Togrutas, but neither were wearing the classic Togruta clothing. One of them was wearing red cloth around her chest as well as red gloves and boots and white leggings. The other was wearing long brown robes. There was also a Rutian Twi'lek, also a female, and a Kel Dor standing there. And next to them were three men, clad in armour that unmistakeably signified them as:-

"Clones?" Passel bristled in fear. "Republic clones? What are they doing all the way out here? And who are... they?" he trailed off, his eyes widening even further when he spotted the lightsabers hanging from the belts of the young Togruta and the Twi'lek (the robes of the other two hid theirs).

"Jedi," he breathed in horror. "How can there be Jedi out here? We were so careful not to leave any clues of what we were doing here. Not even Dooku knows about this. How could they have found out."

"It's possible that they were just out here on holiday or something, right?" asked a droid.

"Of course not, you fool," Passel rounded on him. "The Jedi are all busy fighting the wall. They don't have time to go on holidays, especially to remote places like this. Somehow they must have found out about us. But how?"

"I haven't the slightest clue, sir," said the droid, shrugging its shoulders.

Passel placed a hand on his chin. He was seriously considering aborting the mission and leaving the plant immediately. Especially since he was sure he recognized most of those Jedi. Two of them were Council Members and the other two were members of the A-Team.

But as he mulled over his choices, his resolve began to toughen once again. "This changes nothing," he said eventually. "The Jedi and the clones can no longer get into this factory than the Togruta tribesmen. There is no way they can avoid all of our turrets."

"What if they just blow up the lab from afar with their walkers, sir?" asked another droid.

"They can't," said Passel smugly. "Remember, we have to carefully navigate the AAT tanks to get them through those trees. There is no way that they'd ever be able to get Republic AT-TE tanks from the scrublands to here. And if they try to come from the sky, we can just shoot them down."

"Alright then," said a droid. "What's our plan of action, sir."

"Well," said Passel. "Perhaps, when our little surprise is completed, these Jedi can be the first test subjects."

Just at that moment, a battle droid entered the room and said, "Sir, construction of phase two of the plan had been completed."

"Right on cue," chuckled Passel. "Alright then, listen up. I want a the droid army we have here to be mustered and ready to march out on my signal. Ready the secret weapon and begin to form up outside."

"Roger, roger," the droids turned to carry out their orders.

* * *

It didn't take long for droids to start spilling from the laboratory and forming lines outside – enormous lines, each with about twenty droids, forming ranks facing the direction that the Jedi, the clones and the Digimon were standing in.

"Well, looks like they spotted us," said Ahsoka dryly.

"That," said Aayla. "Or this is part of their plan, whatever that plan may be."

"It could be both," observed Fives. "I'm not seeing any signs of advancing yet. Looks like their mustering though. Perhaps they're preparing to march on the Togrutas camp."

"It's going to be difficult to defend the place against an army of clankers that size," said Echo.

"You're forgetting who you're with," chuckled Bly. "We've got four Jedi and two Digimon. That's going to be a tough force to beat in itself."

"Nevertheless," said Plo. "It would be wise to retreat back to the village and regroup. We can meet up with the Delta Squad and finalise the details of Lopmon's plan with them. After that, we can set up defences around the village."

"Looks like it's going to need them," breathed Ahsoka. "Look at all those tinnies. They must be practically emptying the whole place."

"That'll make it all the more easy to recover the cure," said Aayla. "Bly, stay here and monitor the droid's behaviour. Keep us informed. If they start advancing, then retreat immediately. We don't want you risking your life against a whole army."

"Understood sir," said Bly.

Terriermon glowered at the droids that were standing in his way, although he strongly suspected that they didn't even know he or Lopmon were there, due to the fact they were hidden by foliage. "I'll be back," he muttered to himself, and then dropped down onto Aayla's shoulders as she straddled her BARC speeder. Lopmon dropped onto Ahsoka's shoulders instead. The Jedi, with their Digimon passengers, plus the two ARC troopers, shot away through the trees. Bly quickly turned his speeder around, ready to make a quick getaway if need be and then turned to watch the massing droids through his macrobinoculars.

* * *

"Why couldn't they have picked a place with easier access to set up this camp of theirs?" complained Scorch, as he and the rest of the Delta Squad hiked through the dense woodlands in a steady uphill climb from the gunship rendezvous point. "Why do we have to walk all the way there?"

"What's the matter, boy?" asked Sev from up ahead. "Can't take a little walk in the woods? You need some more endurance training."

"Oh it's not the distance I mind," Scorch said. "It's just that usually when we land, something tries to shoot at us within the first couple of minutes and we can set about doing our jobs like the awesome professionals we are."

"True," chuckled Sev. "This hiking _is_ rather dull, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Scorch agreed. "I want to blow something up already."

"Cut the chatter, you two whiners," Fixer called over his shoulder. "We've almost reached the campsite now. Let's try and make a good impression."

"Oh, we always make a good impression," laughed Scorch. "Everybody knows just how amazing we can be once we put our minds to something."

"I have a visual on the campsite," Boss called from the front. "Come on, you slackers. It's time to meet our hosts for the day."

The Delta Squad regrouped on the edge of the Togruta camp and marched out of the trees and into the clearing. They saw the villagers mostly fishing out supplies of food and water from the crates that the Republic had sent down to them and that the Jedi had dragged to the campsite behind their speeders. Many of them were looking contented and refreshed as they tipped the contents of canteens down their throats.

"Heh, look at those spears they've got," Scorch said. "You reckon they'd be impressed by some of my grenades?"

"Nah," said Sev. "They'd take you for a pyromaniac and flee in fear. Oh wait – you _are_ a pyromaniac. My bad."

"Well, I may be a pyromaniac," said Scorch. "But you, Sev – you're just a plain old maniac."

"Here comes Commander Wolffe," said Fixer, nodded towards the clone who was making his way towards them. "But I don't see any sign of any Jedi. They must still be on patrol."

Wolffe marched over to the Delta Squad and stood to attention, saluting them with a firm hand. Wolffe may be a commander, but he knew that these four clones fare outclassed him. "It's good to see that you've arrived, sirs," said Wolffe. "I've just in contact with the Jedi. They've found the laboratory that we're looking for and are heading back this way to give you a full debriefing."

"Excellent," said Boss. "My men, particularly Scorch the scallywag, are itching for a bit of action. How big is this installation?"

"Apparently it's pretty big," said Wolffe. "And it contains an entire army of droids. This should be an interesting one, wouldn't you say?"

"Now I'm doubly excited," chuckled Scorch.

"Are they the Delta Squad?" asked a voice from behind Wolffe. The Commander stepped aside and, under their helmets, all four members of the Delta Squad blinked in surprise at the sight of three human children making their way towards them. They knew that no humans lived on this planet, so why were they here.

Rika, the one who had spoken, looked up at Wolffe. "Well, they are, right?"

"Yes, kid," said Wolffe. "This is the Delta Squad. Guys, these are the Tamers. They work alongside General Aayla Secura and have been for the past several months, helping the Republic pull off countless victories."

"Even the little one?" asked Sev, looking at Suzie in astonishment.

"I'm not little," Suzie protested, folding her arms and glaring at Sev. "I'm ten and don't you forget it."

"Whoa," chuckled Sev. "You've got guts, kid. Pretty brave to talk like that to a man when you're unarmed and he's in armour with a large sniper rifle and what looks like blood all over his armour."

Suzie reclined slightly at the mention of blood and looked Sev's red stained armour up and down. "It's not real blood, is it?" she asked tentatively.

"Maybe," said Sev.

"Kid, not even _we_ know what Sev uses to paint his armour," said Fixer. "Best not to think about it."

"You say that these guys help against the Separatists?" asked Scorch, sceptically. "What do they do – shoot lasers out of their eyes or something?"

"No, but that would be cool," said Suzie.

"We don't do any actual fighting," said Henry. "We're not warriors like you guys are, but we do have a certain skill that benefits the clone troops and the Jedi, and we also have very powerful friends."

"Word is," said Wolffe. "They took part in the gunship run to the surface during the second raid on Geonosis last week, and they used their talent to protect the gunships so well that not a single clone died on that day."

_That_ caught the attention of the Delta Squad and they stared with bemused and appraising, albeit still sceptical, expressions at the Tamers. They had a reason to feel admiration – they had been involved on the first assault on Geonosis and had been key to the taking of the planet, eliminating Poggle the Lesser's chief lieutenant, Sun Fac. However, the battle had still been costly, and exactly 4,982 clone commandos had lost their lives of that day. This massive loss had sparked Sev to start counting every Geonosian he killed throughout the war, as he intended to reach that exact same number to avenge all of the unfortunate clones who lost their lives in their first battle for the Republic.

To suffer no casualties at all was definitely a feat, even if Geonosis probably had been easier to take the second time around.

"Alright," said Boss. "But, if they are working under a key figure in the A-Team, how come we haven't heard about any of this?"

"Because it's an extremely discrete operation," said Wolffe. "The talent these kids and their friends possess is kept extremely well hidden. While there are many of us clones that know about it, along with quite a few of the Jedi, most of the clone army and Jedi Order don't know about it either. And nobody from the Senate does – not even the Chancellor."

"The Chancellor doesn't know?" Fixer exclaimed, startled at this revelation. "Isn't that going a little too far with a secret? Surely the Chancellor should know about everything that goes on in the war."

"That's what I thought at first too," said Wolffe. "But one of their biggest weapons is surprise and so far, keeping it a secret from the Senate has helped us to keep our edge. The Separatists are always completely unprepared for them, because even they don't know about them."

"When we go on a mission," said Rika. "Nobody escapes us. They either die, or they're taken prisoner. No-one gets away."

"I like this kid," said Sev.

"Of course you do," said Scorch. "You like anyone who doesn't let anyone get away."

"So, who are these friends of yours," Fixer asked. "Are they out in the woods with the Jedi? I would quite like to see this secret for myself."

"Two of them are," said Wolffe. "But unfortunately, one of them is the casualty of the virus that I mentioned to you earlier. She's lying comatose in the medical tent right now."

"May we see her?" asked Boss.

"Why not?" Rika sighed, her expression pained and heart-rending. "It's not like she can complain about it right now and you wouldn't exactly be getting in the way of the treatment, 'cause we don't have any."

"Come on," said Henry, and he lead the Delta Squad into the medical tent. Apart from Ranna the healer, and the body of Renamon, it had been emptied – the bodies of the dead Togrutas had been moved and Ilyan and Ahsoka's family were joining the other Togrutas in sorting out the republic supplies.

Scorch whistled in admiration when he spotted Renamon lying on the floor, dead to the world. All the Delta Squad could tell, although none of them were entirely sure how they would explain it, that they were in the presence of a very powerful warrior. "She's pretty cool," said Scorch.

"It's just a shame that the virus got to her," said Henry, sadly glancing at his girlfriend's partner. "But even the toughest warriors can fall to disease. You won't get to see Renamon in action this time, I'm afraid."

"What is she?" asked Fixer. "I've never seen anything like her before."

"You wouldn't," said Wolffe. "After all, she does come from an alternate dimension."

"Say what?" Sev blinked. "You're kidding right?"

"Not at all," said Wolffe. "She arrived in our universe only a few months ago. And she's already left her mark on it, and that mark is still growing."

"Hopefully it will continue to grow," said Rika. "If we can cure her."

"I just hate when the Separatists fight dirty," snarled Sev. "Poisoning the water is low, even for them. They're too scared to face us in a fair fight so they try and kill us off with chemicals."

"It may be low," said Boss. "But, unfortunately, it works."

Just then they heard the sound of engines outside the indicated a bunch of BARC speeders were pulling into the camp. The shout of "Hey, look. Ahsoka's back! And I want to ride one of those!" from Elu was also a hint.

"Well, looks like the Jedi and the other Digimon are back," said Wolffe. "Time for our debriefing."

"You still haven't really answered my question," observed Fixer. "What is she?"

"We'll have time to discuss what a Digimon is later," said Aayla, as she stepped into the tent, Terriermon still on her shoulder. "For now, I would like to welcome you to the fight, Delta Squad. It's a pleasure to meet you at last."

"And you as well, General Secura," said Boss. "And who's your little friend?"

"The name's Terriermon," said the small rabbit. "And that's my sister, Lopmon," he pointed to the brown bunny who had entered the tent on the shoulder of Ahsoka. "It's good to meet you too, though I wish it were under very different circumstances."

Plo and Shaak Ti, as well as Ilyan, entered the tent behind the others. The Delta Squad stood to attention and Boss said, "We are ready and waiting, Generals. Just give us the target and we'll go and make sure it doesn't see nightfall."

"Always a pleasure to see a clone that doesn't beat around the bush," said Shaak Ti, pulling her holoprojector from her belt. She'd taken a scan of the lab while she was there and she displayed the hologram of the large building in the centre of the group. "The lab is only about ten minutes from here via speeder bike if you know which direction you're heading. It's large, as you can see, and it's in the centre of a valley with no cover and a myriad of defences. It is not going to be any easy target to approach, let alone to attack."

"Fant-bloody-tastic," muttered Rika, quietly. "Is there any good news?"

"Let me finish the bad news first," said Shaak Ti. "An army of battle droids is massing outside the lab as we speak. Commander Bly is watching them for the moment, but it seemed to us that they were planning to move out, probably to attack the campsite."

"They're coming here?" Ilyan asked, startled. "They're going to attack."

"We must not jump to conclusions," said Plo, "but that is the most likely move they will make next, I'm afraid."

"We do have a plan, though, right?" asked Rika. "There has to be a way we can get that reeksa root for Renamon."

"We believe there is," said Lopmon. "I had an idea earlier about how we can attack that lab."

"And that," said Plo, "Is where you come in, Delta Squad. When the droids march on the camp, as we must assume they will, we Jedi and the other clones we have shall attempt to ambush them some distance from the camp and hold them back. Meanwhile, Ilyan, we are going to need you and your villagers to protect Renamon and the Tamers while we fight the droids. Do you think you could retreat into the forest and keep them away from the droids."

"Perhaps," said Ilyan, his eyes growing cold. "But I certainly won't be among them. We are warriors, Master Plo, and while we may be helpless against this virus, we can certainly defend ourselves. I shall help you fight those droids, and I'm sure that a most of my people will too. We shall hold our ground."

"I had a feeling you'd say that," chuckled Plo. "But you're spears will be largely useless against the droids."

"Then what do you suggest?" asked Ilyan.

"One of the crates out there contains a large number of blasters," said Shaak Ti. "I assumed you would stay and fight so I took the liberty of ordering weapons too. Echo and Fives will teach you how to use them – it isn't that difficult."

"Alright," said Ilyan. "I'll alert my people," and he left to spread the word.

"And finally," said Shaak Ti. "While we engage the droids and create a diversion, the Delta Squad and the Digimon shall sneak around them on the BARC speeders and attack the lab to get that cure and shut the place down."

"How are we going to approach?" asked Scorch. "You said yourself it'll be practically impossible."

"Well," said Lopmon. "If we can't go over or on the ground, we'll go under it. Terriermon and I can dig a tunnel right up to the lab, so we'll come out next to the walls where the turbolasers can't hit us."

"A tunnel?" asked Sev. "Forgive me for asking this, but won't that take too long."

"Not if you're capable of morphing your hands into drills like we are," said Lopmon.

"Pardon?" asked Fixer. "You can what?"

"Best wait until you see it," said Ahsoka. "You'll learn not to question a Digimon when they say they've got a new trick up their sleeve soon enough. If Lopmon says she can, then I believe her, considering everything else I've seen her do."

However, unbeknownst to them, their situation was about to get far more complicated and a lot more dangerous.

* * *

Passel stood beside an enormous, thick window that stretched across half the room he was standing in – the observation room, and watched as the droids that he was commanding stood to rigid attention outside, none of them moving even a fraction of an inch like the obedient little machines they were, and waiting for instructions.

Passel smiled to himself. The idea of taking out two of the A-Team and two of the Jedi Council members appealed to him greatly. If he could do that... well, the other Separatist leaders would probably idolise him. Passel was convinced that today would be the day he finally won all the political force he needed to overthrow Dooku and command the Separatist armies himself.

"What is the status on the Jedi, Captain?" Passel asked the yellow-painted droid standing next to him. "Are they still there?"

"Negative, sir," said the Captain-droid. "According to our cameras the Jedi and two of the clones departed on their speeders some time ago. There is still one clone left standing on the hill and watching us. He hasn't moved his position since the Jedi left.

Passel nodded to himself. "Ah well," he said. "It's a shame that the Jedi won't be here to witness the grand unveiling of my other secret weapon, but the clone will make a good starting point. Move it into position."

"Roger, roger," droned the droid.

* * *

Bly watched, his eyes narrowing at the army standing stock-still, as if they were on parade and waiting for the order to stand at ease. He peered through his macrobinoculars, sweeping the crowd to make sure he kept an eye on everything. But they didn't move an inch.

"Odd," he mused to himself. "They've stopped massing, so why haven't they moved out yet?"

The answer came in the form of a huge hangar door opening in the side of the lab, revealing an enormous weapons depot on the other side. Bly trained his macros on the door and watched as an AAT tank rolled out of the door, followed closely by another.

"Ah, I see," Bly muttered. "They were waiting for the heavy artillery were they? Ha, just you wait, clankers. Just you wait you wait until you see our _own_ heav—Wait a minute."

Bly paused in his mutterings as a third AAT tank rolled out of the weapons depot. But this one was different to the others. It had the same shape, but it had been fitted with an extra attachment around the top. A large, yellow cannon, manned by a droid sitting in the side-saddle, had been clamped to the top of the tank. Bly watched as it began to move, the cannon pointing upwards towards the sky.

Bly's heart pounded in his chest. He had seen that cannon before. And he knew what it could do.

He ran.

He was not about to hang around with _that_ thing on the loose. He leapt on top of his BARC speeder and shot away at high speed, dodging trees as he furiously tried to get away. Behind him, the cannon fired and a huge missile arced high into the air, looming over the forest and the fleeing clone commander.

The warhead slammed into the ground. It was nowhere near where Bly had been standing before, but that made little difference because from the moment it impacted on the ground, it created an absolutely enormous explosion and produced an enormous, fiery shockwave that whooshed out in all directions, like the blast front of a meteorite impact. A wall of fire engulfed the landscape, and zoomed after the clone commander.

Bly glanced over his shoulder, his heart hammering as he watched the blazing inferno get closer, obliterating all the trees it came into contact with where they stood. Bly accelerated, desperately trying to keep ahead of the raging fiery version of a tidal wave.

The shockwave whooshed so close to Bly that the wind it generated slammed into him and sent him flying from his speeder, landing in a heap on the ground nearby. Bly was extremely fortunate that the shockwave reached its limit and stopped spreading a few metres from where he lay. The clone was safe.

But then he got to his feet and stared at the decimated landscape. The trees had been completely destroyed by the cannon in an enormous circle around the impact zone and any vegetation that was left was dead and burning. Several droids had been engulfed by the blast, but they were completely and utterly undamaged. They were smoking a bit but other than that, they were fine. And then, they began moving, marching towards the campsite.

Bly sighed. Things had just got a lot harder.

He activated his comlink. "General Secura," he said. "We have a problem."

* * *

"What is it, Commander?" Aayla asked from the other side of the line. "What are the droids doing?"

"They're on the move and heading your way," said Bly. "But that's not the problem. Master Plo was right. The virus is not the only thing they've been manufacturing in there. They've got a defoliator cannon with them as well."

Aayla and Ahsoka both snapped their heads in the direction of the other and stared at each other in horror. Ahsoka placed her hand over her forehead and said, "Fantastic. Just fantastic. Things didn't need to get any more complicated, and they just did."

"Commander," said Aayla. "Get out of there now."

"Already on it, sir," said Bly. "They shot at me with it and I only just managed to get away. I'm on my way back to camp as we speak."

"What is wrong?" asked Echo. "What's a defoliator cannon?"

"Bly, Ahsoka and I have encountered one before," said Aayla. "When we were on Maridun we had to protect a bunch of Lurmen colonists from the Separatists that intended to use them as test subjects for the cannon's trial run. It's an incredibly destructive weapon that produces a blazing shockwave from the impact site. The shockwave is designed to destroy any organic matter that it touches, but leave machines totally undamaged. In short, they could shoot it at their own troops and it wouldn't hurt them, but we would be, as Terriermon would say, screwed."

There was silence as everyone digested this disturbing news.

"How did you survive this thing the last time you encountered it?" asked Fives.

"We had deflector shields with us at the time," said Ahsoka. "But this time, we don't have that option."

"We have to move Renamon immediately then," said Rika. "We can't leave her here."

"You guys get her out of here," said Terriermon. "Loppy and I will go with the Delta Squad. Mega bad-ass cannon or no, we still need to get that cure."

"Agreed," said Plo. "But moving Renamon in a condition like this is not going to be easy. While we can use the Force to hold her steady, we won't be able to move very quickly. And the droids would probably catch up to us sooner or later."

"And that cannon is still going to be a threat sooner or later," said Shaak Ti. "We must take it out, if we can."

"But it's being guarded by an entire army of battle droids," Rika said. "We can't fight through all of them fast enough to take it out before they can shoot at us with it, and the Digimon are needed to get Renamon's cure."

"No, Rika," said Lopmon, shaking her head. "Only one of us is needed to go. I'll go with the Delta Squad and take charge of drilling the tunnel, if that's alright with you guys."

"No problem at all," said Scorch.

"Hang on," Terriermon stared incredulously at his sister. "Why do you get to go to the lab and get that cure? I should be the one to go."

"Terriermon," Lopmon shook her head. "It would be better if you stayed here to defend the others."

"But I'm the one who got Renamon infected," he objected profusely. "I should be the one to help and fix her."

"Terriermon," Lopmon said. "Renamon's condition is not the only problem at the moment. You're thinking with your heart and its letting you overrule your head. You would be better suited to defending these people than I would from this defoliator thingie."

"Why?" Terriermon asked.

"Use your brain," Lopmon said. "The defoliator is an enormous cannon that kills organics but not machines. Therefore the best way to combat it is with an enormous machine. And you can become the biggest independently-moving machine this universe has ever seen. You can use your body to shield the others and then take out the cannon."

"Yes but..."

"No buts, Terriermon," Lopmon turned more aggressive. "What's more important, you saving your mate when I am perfectly capable of handling my part of the mission by myself, or saving Renamon _and_ making sure everyone else doesn't die too. As Cherubimon, I'd be utterly pounded by that cannon too. I'd heal, yes, but I'd be an utterly useless shield. You are the best choice."

"But..." Terriermon glanced from his downed mate to his sister. He was in an agony of indecision. It was his fault that Renamon was lying in a completely pathetic-looking condition on the floor of the tent, because he'd been stupid enough to knock her into an infected stream. Every urge in his little body was telling him that that justice was needed, that he should be the one to fix things. But, at the same time, Lopmon was right. She was more than capable, and MegaGargomon was a better choice in this sort of situation than Cherubimon.

He stared at Renamon's closed eyelids, wishing they would open. He knew what Renamon would do in a situation like this. She would say the same thing as Lopmon – saving her life was not as important as protecting everybody else too. He had to put aside his righteous guilt and put his trust in Lopmon and four clones he didn't know.

"Alright," he said. "Alright. You go. But make sure you find that cure."

"Don't worry, Terriermon," smiled Lopmon. "We've got it covered, right boys."

"You can count on us, little guy," said Sev. "We know what we're doing."

"You better get going then," said Aayla. "Before the droids get too close."

"Suzie," said Lopmon. "Stay in touch on the D-Arc. Wait until the fighting starts to digivolve me and upgrade me with the drills, okay?"

"Alright," nodded Suzie. "Be careful, Lopmon."

"I will," said Lopmon. "And besides, I've got four commandos beside me on this mission." She hopped onto Fixer's shoulder and said, "You don't mind if I sit here, do you?"

"Uh, no. Why not?" Fixer said, ignoring the snickers from Sev and Scorch at the sight of him.

"Alright lads," said Boss. "Enough talking. Let's move. We've got a mission to carry out."

The Delta Squad and Lopmon left the tent to carry out their half of the plan.

"Well, then," said Plo. "We'd best prepare for war."

"Looks like we'll be heading into battle together once again, Henry," said Terriermon.

Henry nodded grimly.

* * *

Well, this was quite a challenge. I've never played on the Republic Commando game that the Delta Squad feature in, and while I know that they will appear in the future in the Clone Wars series, I could hardly make you wait until then so I could see what they were like. Hopefully I got their characters right, based off what I read.

Get ready for two action-packed chapters coming up. Renamon's life is really hanging in the balance now, isn't it.

Please review.

* * *

Next time...

The first stage of the plan – dealing with the defoliator. Terriermon, Henry, the Jedi, Echo, Fives, Bly and the Togrutas must fight to defend the camp and protect the defenceless Renamon. This means a big battle. Goody.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 67 : Defensive Positions**


	67. Defensive Positions

Sorry for the delay, but I had an unusually busy few days, what with longer lectures than usual and a field trip on my usual free day. On the other hand, I did get to have a lot of fun in the massive amounts of snow we've got over here at the moment. Plus, I saw two waxwings earlier today, which has put me in a very good mood, as I've always wanted to see one of those.

I hope you all enjoy this chapter. I did.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 67:- Defensive Positions**

* * *

Echo and Fives looked out across the group of warriors standing before them. Once Ilyan had stepped out of the tent and announced that they had invaders heading towards them, the ARC troopers had expected the usual panic that they were used to seeing from civilians in these situations. But there had been none of that. The Togrutas had cheered instead, and looks of steely determination crossed all their faces.

Perhaps it was because after a fear-filled day, they finally had something that they could hit. Or perhaps they were always like this anyway.

Then, the unexpected happened again and Ilyan turned to the two of them. He had said, "Normally, we would never even think of taking up arms with anything except our spears and our knives. They are quite adequate for anything we would usually face. But we are aware they wouldn't be all that effective against metal droids."

"That is true," nodded Echo. "It's possible a lot of you could get killed."

"Getting killed is always an occupational hazard for us," said Ilyan.

"Oh," said Fives, a slight grin forming on his face. "We aren't so different in that."

"What I'm saying is," said Ilyan. "The Jedi said one of these crates is filled with those blasters that you clones carry around with you," he indicated the blaster rifle slung across Five's back and the smaller blaster holstered in Echo's belt. "And they also said that you would teach us how to use them."

Echo and Fives glanced at each other, and then at the expectant Togrutas. Many of them were eyeing the blasters with distaste but the majority of them looked determined and eager to get their hands on one, if only for a while.

"Well," said Echo to his fellow trooper. "These guys are already skilled warriors. How hard can it be to teach them?"

"Probably not all that hard," said Fives. "Alright, let's crank out the blasters then. This shouldn't take too long provided you all listen up."

The troopers quickly rummaged through the crates, ripping the lids off the ones that were still sealed shut in search of the blasters. About a minutes later, they pried the lid of the correct crate, which was absolutely bristling with neatly stacked blasters. Then, they set to work. Echo would lift a blaster and make sure the safety was on and that the ammo cartridge was full, and then he would pass it to Fives before picking up another. Fives would pass it to Ilyan, who would pass it to someone else, and blasters gradually began to filter through the group until every adult Togruta was carrying one.

They looked unsure as to how to hold them and they were turning over their bulky weapons and examining them critically. Echo unholstered his own blaster and propped it against his shoulder, his finger over the trigger. Seeing this, a number of adult Togrutas copied his actions and they all stood still and silent, waiting for the clones to tell them what to do.

Fives scanned the surroundings for a target and his eyes settled on a large block of wood not that far away. As he walked off to prepare it, Echo began to address the crowd. "Alright troops," he said, chuckling slightly as he did. "A blaster is an incredibly easy weapon to use, but it can also be extremely dangerous if you don't know what you are doing. I have ensured that currently none of your blasters will fire if you accidentally pull the trigger, but turning that off is really easy.

"Okay," said Echo. "Here's the deal. This end here is called the barrel," he indicated the tip of his rifle, "and this hole is where the laser will come out of, when the weapon is primed. You don't want to end up shooting yourself in the chest so ensure you know which way to point the weapon.

"Now, let's try a few practice runs," said Echo. "With the safety still on. Everyone point the blaster towards, uh, that tent over there. Hold your hand here underneath the barrel to stop it from wobbling around and throwing off your aim. Your other hand should be holding the handle here, with your finger pushed through this hole and resting lightly on the trigger, but not pulling it back."

The Togrutas did as they were told, some with more difficulty than others because a couple of them had originally tried to hold it like you would hold a spear. Once Echo had been through the lot of them and corrected the holds on a couple of them, he said, "Pulling on the trigger would normally release the laser. It won't at the moment because I have switched the safety on. Try a few imaginary shots at the tent by pulling down on the trigger."

The Togrutas pulled their fingers down. Nothing happened of course, but they simply stared at their weapons after a couple of tugs on the trigger.

"Is that it?" asked one of them. "I thought it'd be more complicated than that."

"How do you turn this 'safety' thingie off so you can fire a real laser?" asked another.

"That's this button here," said Fives as he returned to the group and showed them a small button beside the handle. "Rotate it slightly to turn the safety off and rotate it back to turn it on again."

Once the Togrutas had got that down, Fives said, "Remember, each blaster only has a certain number of shots before it runs out and we don't have any spare ammo packs, so make your shots count. For a real practice run, let's give you three shots each at that piece of wood." He indicated the large chunk of wood he had hung from a tree branch using an ascension cable.

"Groups of five, step up and take three shots each at the target," said Echo, loving the fact that he was giving orders like his old sergeant did. The Togrutas followed their orders and each carefully took aim and fired.

Echo and Fives were amazed at the precision the Togrutas had, especially considering they were first timers. Almost every single shot hit the piece of wood, so much so that Fives needed to replace the target three times because it kept getting torn to pieces and falling off. On later analysis, they decided the Togrutas needed good aim when throwing spears at a particular weak spot on mighty monsters, and a spear was much harder to aim than a blaster.

Echo and Fives both thought that these Togrutas were indeed a force to be reckoned with, when they saw how much they punished the wooden targets.

During this little demonstration and practice session, Lopmon and the Delta Squad made their exit from the tent and, after briefly waving to Echo and Fives, they boarded the BARC speeders that the Jedi had parked nearby and shot away into the trees. At roughly the same time, Commander Bly made it back to the campsite, hopping off his own speeder and walking up to the others.

"Whoa," said the clone, at the sight of all the Togrutas looking at the blasters they were holding with newfound respect. "We got ourselves a small army of our own now."

"That's right," said one, which the clones identified to be Catalin – Ahsoka's father. He was propping his blaster on his shoulder and grinning at the clones. "We will fight to the very end to protect our own and our planet."

"And we shall rid this land of the evil that took Lescu and all our other comrades from us," Alina cried with determination. Shouts of agreement and eagerness could be heard throughout the ranks of the Togruta people.

The Jedi emerged from the tent, with the Tamers and an upset looking Terriermon perched on top of Henry's head.

"I see things are falling into place," said Plo, indicating the blaster-carrying Togrutas. "Now, all we have to do is get into position and ambush that army. Hopefully we can hold them off long enough for Lopmon and the Delta Squad to infiltrate that factory."

"You guys all know this area better than most," said Aayla. "Is there an area nearby that might make a good ambush site?"

"Yes," nodded Ilyan. "There is a large area close by with a significant dip in the ground that the droids will have to march through if they want to get here. If we ambush them there, we should have the advantage of the high ground."

"Then we better get there before they do," said Terriermon. "You ready, Henry."

"Yes, but you know the plan, Terriermon," Henry said. "Don't be too eager to get back at them for harming Renamon."

Terriermon winced. He knew the Separatists were the ones at fault but right now the only one he was really blaming was himself.

"Rika," said Henry, turning to his red-headed girlfriend. "You and Suzie stay here with the kids, okay."

"Yeah," nodded Rika, heaving a sigh. She knew that without a partner she would be pretty useless in a situation like this. Suzie knew that she had to stay out of danger too, in order to implement the second stage of Lopmon's plan.

* * *

Ahsoka looked across the determined faces of the Togrutas and, despite everything, she found a smile curving on her lips. These were her people, and most of them had known her when she was a tiny little girl. She could see where she got her guts and her drive from now. And she couldn't wait to see them in action.

And speaking of guts and drive, she could also see from one particular member of her family that her stubborn streak came from.

"No, Elu!" Alina scolded her young son and Ahsoka's little brother, who was looking up at her with an expression that indicated he was in the middle of a full-scale strop. His fists were clenched at his sides, his eyes were streaming with tears and his body was entirely stiff, as he glared at his mother.

"You can't stop me!" Elu cried, loudly. "It's not fair. All of you guys are going off to fight. My whole family, even my big sister, is going off to fight those metal things. You can't make me stay behind."

"I can and I will," Alina said, firmly. "You are far too young to be fighting in a war. You have not reached the necessary maturity or skill with weapons. You haven't made a kill yet either. None of the children your age have. You are just not ready Elu."

"But I am ready," Elu protested vehemently. "I've been ready for ages. And I've been practicing with weapons and stuff. I could be really helpful."

"No," Alina said again. "You would probably just get in the way. Your technique is still shoddy and you would be an easy target for a droid even if it didn't have a long-range weapon. You're staying behind with those two – Rika and Suzie – and all your friends, and that's final."

Elu childishly stamped his foot and blubbed, probably hoping that this would make his mother change his mind. But, understandably, his mother didn't relent. And nor should she – she was absolutely right about Elu's skill. It's be a good many years yet before he would be ready for something like this. He hadn't learned enough about stealth or teamwork yet.

Ahsoka watched the argument, feeling at a slight loss about what to do about it. She wanted to help, but she was still unsure how to approach her little brother that she had only discovered existed at all today. He seemed eager and excited enough but the idea of having a younger sibling was still new to her.

The Padawan felt a hand settle on her shoulder and turned to find Aayla smiling down at her reassuringly. "Go to him," she said. "Maybe he'll consider your word over your mother's."

"But what will I say to him?" Ahsoka whispered back.

"That's easy enough," said Aayla. "Pretend you are Henry and he is Suzie. You've seen enough of their interactions to know how this works."

Ahsoka paused, frowned, then nodded and walked over to Elu, who was still shouting, "I want to help! I want to help!"

"Little bro," she said, causing Elu to instantly stop whinging and look up her with plaintive eyes. "You're not taking this very sensibly."

"Tell her," Elu pointed at their mother. "Tell our Mum that I should be allowed to go and help."

"I'm sorry but I can't do that," Ahsoka smiled sympathetically. "You know she's right, but you just don't want to listen. You aren't ready."

"How can you think that too?" asked Elu pathetically.

"Because I know the realities of war," said Ahsoka. "It's not always the adventurous and action-packed fun most children believe it to be. In fact, it's almost never that. People die. All the time. I'd be very surprised if everyone from this village came out of this alive. And you need to stay here."

"But I want to goooooooo!" Elu wailed.

"Elu," said Ahsoka, kneeling beside him and placing both hands on his shoulder. "Screaming and shouting until you get your way is proof that you aren't ready. Wait a few more years, practice more, get those skills you need and then you can fight droids, assuming any more come to this planet after this."

"But you're not that much older than me and you go off to fight all the time," Elu protested.

"Yes," said Ahsoka. "I'm young, even for a Padawan, but I've spent years training in combat. I'm allowed on the field because I know what to do. It takes a lot of work before you're allowed to go off and fight. Just ask any of the clones. They had to go through gruelling training for years."

"But I want to get out there and fight now," Elu griped, but it was obvious that he was beginning to relent under his sister's calm and reasonable arguments.

"Well, patience is a necessary virtue of any hunter," said Ahsoka. "And you can prove that you're maturing by being patient. You'll get your chance one day, don't you worry."

Elu made one last attempt at getting permission to go out and fight. "But that's going to be really hard. Are you sure that I can't just come along and kill a few droids myself?"

"Very sure," said Ahsoka. "You can stay here and help look after Renamon while we're gone. That's a pretty important job. In fact that's an _insanely_ important job. You reckon you're up to the task?"

Elu sighed and then stood straight, nodded to Ahsoka. "You can count on me, big sister."

"I know," said Ahsoka. "That's kinda why I asked. Now go over to Rika and Suzie and we'll talk again when we get back from this massive battle we're about to walk into."

"Okay," nodded Elu, and turned to walk towards the two girls. Several of the other children who had been watching this conversation mumbled with disappointment, as they had all rather hoped that they could come along too, so they could see the Jedi really fighting against something instead of sparring with each other. But they followed Elu's example.

"Well done, my daughter," Alina smiled down at Ahsoka. "And thank you."

"Hey, I just learned he existed," Ahsoka shrugged modestly. "I could hardly let him wander into certain death if I could help it, could I?"

"I am so proud of you, Ahsoka," Alina said once again.

"Thanks," Ahsoka smiled back.

Aayla, who had watched the whole thing, smiled too. "Come on, you two," she said. "It is time to go. We need to get in position quickly before those droids can reach the selected area."

Ahsoka and Alina both nodded. "Right," said Alina. "Let's get cracking."

The clones, the Jedi and the adult Togrutas turned and began to run into the forest at high speed. Henry ran after them, with Terriermon still on his shoulder. The bunny turned to glance at the tent that contained his comatose mate one last time, and then turned to look at Rika, Suzie and the other kids, along with a couple of adults who stayed behind as guards.

"Stay safe, you guys!" shouted Rika.

"Don't worry!" Terriermon yelled back. "We will. And we'll fix Renamon in no time. Just you wait."

Terriermon then turned around and remained silent while they entered the forest.

* * *

It took them a few minutes to reach their allotted area. It fit the description that Ilyan had given perfectly. It was effectively a large, wide ditch with sloping walls that the droids would have to walk through to reach the village. Terriermon, after being asked by Plo, took to the ear and shot away, searching for the droids. He found them quickly, marching forward at an ominously slow pace, and then returned to confirm they _were_ heading towards them.

"Battle positions everyone," cried Commander Bly. There was a flurry of activity following these words as everyone hurried to get into position, except for the four Jedi, who remained standing where they were, along with Henry and Terriermon.

"How long until they arrive, Terriermon?" asked Shaak Ti.

"About three minutes or so, I'd say," said the diminutive white bunny.

"Alright then," said Plo. "You and Henry stay back until the defoliator cannon is loosed. We're counting on you to ensure we survive when the time comes. We must hold that army for as long possible."

"You got it," said Terriermon. "I'll keep watch from a tree. And I'll send a message to Aayla once I see the cannon being loosed. She'll let you know."

Henry and Terriermon turned and went back about a hundred yards or so. Henry stepped behind one of the large trees where he would be protected from everything bar the defoliator itself. Terriermon swooped up to a nearby branch above and hid amongst the broad leaves, watching through a gap in the foliage.

"May the Force be with us," said Shaak Ti.

"Indeed," said Plo.

"You ready to show your tribe what you're really made of, Ahsoka?" asked Aayla to the young Padawan.

"Just try and keep up with me, Aayla," Ahsoka smiled. She and Aayla bumped fists, which Terriermon had told them meant respect, and the Jedi separated, moving some distance to the front and to the bottom of the ditch, where they stepped behind trees and pressed their backs to the bark, waiting quietly.

There was about a minute or so of absolute silence. The place was still and if Aayla didn't know better and didn't have the Force at her command she would have probably assumed it was empty. Good. That was the intention anyway. The Twi'lek shut her eyes and delved into the Force, meditating to sooth herself and also contacting Terriermon.

_Any sign of the droids yet?_

_Not yet,_ said Terriermon._ But I can definitely hear their stomping feet now. I'd give them a couple of seconds before they come into view... Yep, there they are now, heading your way._

Aayla could hear them now as well – the methodical and constant stamping feet reaching her ears. She opened her eyes and turned to glance at Ahsoka, who was hiding behind a tree about ten metres to her right. She nodded, and the Padawan nodded back. Both of them now that their lightsaber hilts held ready in their hands, the blades still deactivated.

The droids began to get closer and closer to where the four Jedi were hiding. And suddenly, the front lines were level with the trees. And, as predicted, the front lines passed the Jedi and kept moving, row upon row of them marching unsuspectingly past their lightsaber-wielding nemeses and none of them glancing to the side or behind them to check for danger.

Aayla smirked. She could reach out and touch the nearest droid if she wanted to. Everything was going as planned. She watched the droids marching up the hill.

_Wait for it,_ she thought to herself, since nobody here but Terriermon and Henry could hear her in her mind. _Wait for it._

* * *

"Now!" shouted Bly.

And that was when a sudden torrent of blue lasers burst from the trees and slammed into the first ranks of the droids, smashing holes in many of them and knocking them onto their backs sparking and hissing. And by torrent, that means that a lot of them came from above as well.

Bly, Wolffe, Echo and Fives swung around the trunks of the trees and into the view of the droids. "For the Domino Squad!" cried Fives as they opened fire, with blaster, rifle and twin pistols alike. The droids, bewildered and confused, turned their attention to the clones and raised their blasters.

"It's only four clones," said one of the droids. "Get..." He never got to finish his sentence because it was at that exact moment that a laser from the top of a nearby tree slammed into his head and knocked it clean off. The perpetrator was Ilyan, who stepped into view on the branch of a tree, balancing easily on his bare feet. The foliage erupted with red forms as Togrutas sprang from hiding places along the branches and began earnestly pulling on the triggers, sending many droids to their doom where they stood.

Even more Togrutas emerged from behind trees alongside the four clones, who were slowly advancing towards the droids, blasting constantly. Catalin and Alina were among them, the two rolling from position and falling onto one knee, sending blue lasers slamming into the enemy.

"That was for Lescu!" shouted Catalin as he jumped forward and grabbed the head of a nearby battle droid and slammed the barrel of the blaster into its chest, letting off a shot at point-blank range that smashed through the droid and smacked another one behind it.

"Ambush!" shouted one of the droids.

"Blast 'em!" shouted another.

"Roger, roger," chorused many others as they returned fire at last. Red and blue lasers whooshed across the battlefield, the blue ones with considerably better aim. Many of the lasers collided in mid-air as the flurry was so thick, resulting in miniature explosions between the two forces. The droids were quickly dispatched, but many more took their place.

Echo and Fives ran backwards a little way and both dodged behind separate trees, only to emerge from the other side almost instantly and belt the droids that were shooting at them with amazing accuracy. The two of them moved together, used to fighting alongside one another. They moved to a single tree, where Echo crouched down partially behind it and opened fire. His first shot slammed a droid in the face, his next taking out the leg of another, causing it to keel over and accidentally shoot its own comrade and two more slamming into the belly of a Super and knocking it back.

Meanwhile, Fives was standing behind Echo, his own longer weapon being held over Echo's shoulder and also blasting away. His own shot smashed into the chest of another droid, and a second slamming into the chest of another. Continuing to fire, he took out two droids almost simultaneously as he shot one, it fell backwards and the droid directly behind it was flattened under its comrades body. The two clones almost seemed to work as a single soldier, watching each others backs and vigorously attacking at the same time.

Bly and Wolffe ducked behind a tree of their own, and Wolffe unslung a backpack from his shoulders. "Good thing we decided to pack some these things, huh, Commander," he said, pulling two large grenades from the backpack. With the Jedi out in the field, they had packed numerous droid poppers so that there was no chance of accidentally hitting their Generals.

Bly picked up two of his own. "Aim for the middle-lines," he said, and the two dodged out of either side of the tree, hurling both of the EMP grenades each and ducking back undercover again immediately. Dozens of droids flared with blue electricity as the electro-magnetic pulse took effect and they collapsed to the floor.

One grenade landed close to Shaak Ti, but the patient Jedi Master simply kicked it sideways with a light tap of her foot, allowing even more droids to be terminated by the blast.

Not everything was going one way of course. Many of the droids were firing blindly upwards into the trees, desperately trying to hit the ducking and dodging arboreal attackers. The Togrutas in the trees showed amazing dexterity and ran along branches, jumping from roost to roost with relative ease to avoid shots. But there were so many lasers that inevitably some of them were hit. Five Togrutas had been slammed by red lasers and killed on the spot, while a sixth had been wounded, but then killed by the fall of the tree that followed.

Ilyan glared at the droids and glanced sadly at the bodies of his fallen people. He darted along a branch to avoid getting shot and let off a couple of shots, nailing his attackers right in their torsos. But a couple more turned to shoot at the exposed Togruta chieftain. Ilyan responded by dropping right off his branch, grabbing it as he fell past it and swinging right into another tree. As he sailed through the air, he dispatched another with a shot to the hip and then landed easily on another sturdy branch, before whipping around in a blur of lekku to shoot down several more.

Alina and Catalin emulated Echo and Fives by working together in order to reach their goal. The mated couple ran from tree to tree in their advance, one of them dashing out and firing on the run while the other stayed behind a tree to cover them. Then, they would swap roles. Together, they were blasting heads, chests and legs and the droid's attempts to shoot them were futile, as they moved to fast and any droid that even looked at one of them was swiftly picked off by the other.

Behind another tree, Alina grinned at Catalin. "We still make a very good team, don't we?" she asked.

"We certainly do," nodded Catalin. "Let's prove it on that guy," he pointed at a Super rounding the tree.

"Die, savages," the Super droned, and took a swipe at them with a metal fist that was intending to brain them. But the Togrutas dodged to either side and Catalin, grabbed the arm, leaping onto it and then flipping onto the Super's head and jumping over the other side. The Super turned to follow, forgetting about Alina completely, but he remembered soon enough when Alina jammed her blaster into its lower, less-armoured back and fired, killing it where it stood.

"Nice work, dear," nodded Catalin, dodging another bolt quickly.

"You weren't so bad yourself," chuckled Alina.

* * *

Ahsoka watched her parents battling droids from her position pressed against the tree-trunk. She grinned as they worked quickly and efficiently to deal with the droids that came their way. They were warriors to the core, just like Renamon was when she wasn't infected with a deadly disease that sent her into comas. She wished her Master, Anakin, could have met them, but, sadly, he was probably off somewhere else dealing with General Grievous.

Ahsoka glanced across at Aayla, Plo and Shaak Ti, her breath bated as she awaited the signal to begin their part of the attack. Aayla winked at her, and she winked back, watching the droids in front of her getting pounded by the clones and the Togrutas and continuing to march forward anyway.

Abruptly, one of the battle droids took a couple of steps backwards and turned, covering its head with its hands as its companions that had been in front of it were zapped by a droid popper. When it looked up again, it spotted Ahsoka standing beside the tree trunk.

"What the..." it said. Ahsoka smirked at it and calmly activated her lightsaber and lopped its head off.

"I guess that would make as good a signal as any," said Plo.

"Agreed," said Shaak Ti. "Let's make our move."

And the four Jedi leapt to the offensive. Aayla swung around her tree trunk, her blade springing to life in her hands as she swung through the stomach of a droid passing her tree before it knew what hit it. More nearby droids yelped at her appearance and shot at her, but the Twi'lek was already gone, leaping up and rebounding off a tree, swinging her blade through two more as she sailed over their heads and landing amongst a large huddle of them. They shot at her, but Aayla's blade whirled in deadly circles around her body, deflecting every single shot back into their owners, except for one, which she calmly stabbed in the chest a moment later. Right after that, she was away once again, bounding through a cluster of four more and cleaving all four into many pieces in one second flat and took a flying leap, slamming both feet into a Super and bouncing off it before it fell to thrust her blade into another's face.

Plo took a slightly slower approach to his attack. He strode forwards quite calmly, his blue blade exploding into life in his hands as he advanced on the droids. Panicked, they fired at him, but Plo was more than prepared and calmly turned the blasts aside with a flurry of lightsaber motion and extended a clawed hand, picking up a large boulder with the Force and hurling it at the droids, crushing them easily. Several more were shooting at the Kel Dor and backing away, but Plo used the Force again to grab them and heave them towards him. Plo took a mighty spin, his blade sweeping in a huge arc and cutting through half the airborne droids, then grabbed the others and smashed them into one another. He turned and slashed off the heads of two more that had gotten far too close, and then threw his lightsaber, sending it spinning through several droids and then calling it back to his hands.

Shaak Ti's fighting style included a slight mix of the two techniques. She ran towards the droids, confident that her kin could take out the ones behind her, and brought her blade, also blue, into motion. Leaping atop a Super and forcing it to the ground, she danced across the deactivated droid, her lightsaber twirling and miraculously missing all three of her enormous lekku. The droids were mown down by their own onslaught, and Shaak Ti sprang from the Super and swung upwards through a second one and then picked up the bodies of both Supers with her mind and hurled them into yet another cluster of droids. Then she stepped back and thrust out a hand behind her, grabbing droid poppers thrown by Bly and Wolffe from the air and hurling them at more droids. She watched as they crackled into life, then back-flipped over the shot of another and lifted three into the air smashing them against an overhead branch.

Ahsoka leapt upwards and sprang between two trees, rebounding off each one alternately as she ascended into the canopy. She landed neatly on a branch beside Ilyan. Pausing momentarily to nod and grin at the startled chieftain, she sprang right off the branch and sailed headfirst towards more oncoming droids. She batted aside the red storm of lasers they sent at her, killing many despite the high speed she was going at. As she fell, she gathered the Force in her palm and slammed her hand into the ground, generating a Force shockwave that sent the droids surrounding her flying in all directions. She then rushed forward to engage more, leaping over a number and slicing through a Super, before whipping around and slashing at those behind her, plunging her green blade into their metal bodies.

Aayla leapt right over Ahsoka and took out a Super that had been advancing on her back. The two members of the A-Team nodded at each other, both with a slight smirk on their face and continued the battle side by side. Aayla bounced on top of a Super, stabbing it in the face from on top of it and backflipping off, kicking the body into another battle droid. Ahsoka sprang over the sparking corpses and cut off the legs of several droids behind it, placing a well-aimed kick of her own right into the chest of another. She and Aayla pressed their backs against each other and span their blades in furious motion, repelling the countless shots coming their way, spinning around to cover all the angles. Then they separated and both rolled forwards, as if by a signal, taking out several droids each with a strike from below in mid-roll. Aayla blasted three Supers back with the Force and Ahsoka smashed two others with a fallen log, and then both back-flipped over to each other again to continue their attack.

Shaak Ti easily blocked the shots of several more and she advanced forward, leaping over another droid and slicing through it on the drop, before bounding away once again, taking out another droid in the same way, then another, then another. She then picked up the very same log that Ahsoka had just used and flung it like a Togruta spear, using the Force the help her. The tip squashed a Super flat and the rest tipped over to crush three more droids. Shaak Ti picked it up again and tossed it to Plo, who caught it, set it down and sent it rolling up a hill with a burst of the Force, running many more droids into the dirt. Plo rushed forward and quickly dispatched any droid that survived the log running over them and then lopped off the arm of a Super, bashed it in the head with its own arm and sent it tumbling to the ground.

* * *

The clones were used to seeing this kind of awesomeness on a regular basis – after all just about every single mission they'd ever been on had involved a Jedi leading the charge and slashing through the droid forces in front of them. The Togrutas, on the other hand, had only ever heard about this sort of thing. Even in Plo's last visit there hadn't been any of this. After taking care of the droids between them and the rampaging Jedi, many of them stopped to stare at the amazing spectacle before them.

None were more stunned than Ahsoka's parents. They stood, watching their daughter, the daughter they hadn't seen for the last ten years and whose fate and skills as a Jedi they could only imagine during that whole time, working alongside Aayla to punish the droids for their invasion of Ahsoka's home planet.

Catalin stepped up beside Alina and they stared at Ahsoka slicing through the battle droids with extreme prejudice, flipping and rolling so fluidly she seemed to put the best of their hunters and warriors to shame. Even the spar between Aayla and Ahsoka earlier in the day had been nothing compared to this, as both Jedi had been showing restraint so as to make sure they didn't accidentally injure one another. Here, they were going all out.

"That's my girl," Catalin smiled, wrapping an arm around Alina's shoulders.

"All those stories about the Jedi," said Alina. "All my little daydreams about how Ahsoka might be coming along with her training – none of it does this any justice at all."

Catalin nodded. "I know what you mean. Elu's going to be jealous that he missed this."

The two of them seemed to have completely forgotten that there was a battle going on around them. Unfortunately, the battle droids hadn't. Many were still advancing on the clones and the Togrutas from areas where they Jedi weren't – there were only four of them after all. Commander Wolffe spotted the Togruta couple standing side by side and completely oblivious to the Super Battle Droid with the bazooka arm bearing down on them and levelling that arm in their direction.

"Alina! Catalin! Watch your flank!" the clone shouted.

Alina was immediately alerted and on sight of the Super her hunter instincts kicked in and she dived to one side, slamming Catalin with her arm and dragging him along with her. The two of them rolled, but were still hit by the shockwave produced by the explosion of the missile in the place where they had been standing and were sent flying, to land in a heap.

* * *

Ahsoka stabbed through the torso of another battle droid and looked up. Her eyes widened in fear as she spotted the Super that was baring down on both her floored parents, along with numerous ordinary battle droids levelling their blasters at them. She could see Commanders Wolffe and Bly rushing to the aid of her parents but her heart hammered as she knew they wouldn't reach them in time.

A Jedi must not hold attachments.

But there was no rule saying that they couldn't save their own parents.

Without warning she sprinted off in the direction of the drama, the Force adding speed to her flight as she dashed forward so fast she would make a gazelle explode with envy. Aayla looked up, startled by her sudden disappearance. Deflecting a bolt behind her back without looking, Aayla spotted the scene and quickly ran after Ahsoka.

* * *

The Super was levelling its bazooka arm at Alina and Catalin again. Both of them knew that no matter how fast they tried to dodge a shot from such a close range would be unavoidable, and their blasters had been sent flying. The two of them gripped each other's hands, and watched as death descended upon them.

Apparently death changed its mind at the last second and chose to descend on the Super Battle Droid instead. The droid's arm suddenly jerked upwards and the missile was shot high into the air. The Super stared at its own arm in robotic disbelief and suddenly Ahsoka was there. In an enormous spring, she jumped the last sixty yards and slammed her lightsaber blade through the Super, cutting it cleanly down the middle. The battle droids jerked back in response and found themselves facing a determined (but not angry, as Ahsoka was keeping that feeling repressed, albeit with some difficulty) Togruta Padawan.

"You wanna be careful on the targets you pick," Ahsoka growled at them. "Picking on a Jedi's parents is never a good idea."

"Er, they're your parents?" one of them asked. "We didn't know, we swear."

"I don't think apologising is going to help," said another. "We're dead."

"Damn straight," Ahsoka replied and she set to work. Her lightsaber span and cut, lashed and hacked, slashed and struck, and pretty soon the droids – all fourteen of them – were lying in a mound of small pieces, with Ahsoka standing proudly in the middle of them.

"And that's the result," she said.

Alina and Catalin got to their feet and gave their daughter a look of unabashed pride. Ahsoka flushed at the expressions when she turned around, and looked at her toes.

"The first day back in ten years," said Alina, "And you still manage to save our lives."

"I don't think I've ever been more proud of anything in my whole life," Catalin said. He paused and then added, "Although, please nobody mention that to Elu."

Ahsoka chuckled and said. "Thanks. But next time try not to get too distracted in the middle of a battlefield. I don't want to check in at some point in the future to find my parents were killed by an akul while lost in a daydream about their daughter.

Alina and Catalin laughed and embraced their daughter.

Just then, the water in the nearby stream burst its banks. The three Togrutas jumped back, startled, as the Blue Shadow Virus filled stream water rose into a large tube of water, roiling around in mid-air and then the enormous amount of liquid pummelled a bunch of other droids that had been approaching them from behind like a fist, slamming them with great force and then slopping to the ground and getting washed back into the stream.

The three, completely dry Togrutas, glanced at Aayla, who had been behind that last stunt.

"Perhaps you should take your own advice and remember you're in the middle of a battle, Ahsoka," she chuckled, whipping around and swiping at a laser that would have nailed her between her lekku and sending it hurtling back it the caster.

Ahsoka chuckled too. "Yeah, that wasn't very well thought out, was it?"

"Not really," laughed Aayla. "Now come on. Let's get back to business.

* * *

Henry had taken permanent shelter behind the tree, not daring to peer around the side, because the laser fire had become so thick and he doubted he was as good at dodging blaster bolts as the clones or the Togrutas were. Terriermon, from up in his tree, was much safer as there were very few bolts heading in his direction. Henry watched the battle through Terriermon's eyes via the D-Arc instead.

Terriermon was getting impatient and rather fidgety. He knew that Lopmon had been right about staying here to help with the fighting against that cannon thing instead of her, but his conscience was demanding that he do more than sit around and wait for the right moment. He should be out there and fighting for his mate, not watching the battle from afar.

He shifted from foot to foot on his branch, watching the Jedi dice up the droids and the clones and the Togrutas batter at them. So far, thirteen of the Togrutas had lost their lives to the virus, and a further twelve were now lying dead at the hands of the droids. Terriermon itched for action, to help go and avenge the fallen natives.

But he knew his role, so he just sat and stewed, waiting and waiting. If he went charging in there now, he wouldn't be close enough to his partner when the time came, and if MegaGargomon went into the action too early, a lot of collateral damage could be done. Plus, they were trying to draw out the battle and give the others enough time to carry out their task, as they had no doubt whoever was in that lab was probably watching all this via probe droid.

So he waited.

And finally, his efforts were rewarded when the three AAT tanks finally rose over the lip of the hill at the other end of the giant depression in the ground that the battle was being fought in. Terriermon's eyes focused on the middle one, with the absolutely enormous cannon strapped to its top and the battle droid sitting in the side-cockpit. There were a couple of other droids walking beside the tank and carrying the heavy ammunition.

_The tanks are here, Aayla,_ he called with his mind. _Be ready when I say so._

_Alright,_ said Aayla, and Terriermon watched her deliver the word to Ahsoka, who quickly passed it to her parents. Pretty soon the word was beginning to spread like wildfire. The Togrutas in the trees abandoned their higher seats and leapt to the ground, jumping from branch to branch in their descent. The Jedi, who had been spread out before, now grouped together to form a shield facing the Separatists, their lightsabers focused solely on defence now. No laser bolt was getting between them – they made sure of that.

Terriermon leapt from his perch and swooped down towards Henry. "Our shield is in place," he said. "Let's go."

Henry nodded and jumped out from behind the tree, running forwards and into the midst of the clones and the Togrutas. He ran on, sprinting right past them as they continued to fire and eventually he was right behind the defending Jedi, crouched to the ground in what was possibly the safest place on the battlefield.

"Stand your ground!" Plo shouted to everyone. "Pull together!"

The clones and the Togrutas heeded his warning and quickly began to group around the Jedi themselves, still firing around them and at the droids that were still advancing. Wolffe narrowly avoided a shot to the head, and Ilyan had to dodge a laser that would have smashed him in the hip.

* * *

"Sir," said a droid from the cockpit of one of the other AAT tanks and holding the macrobinoculars to his photoreceptors. "The clones and the natives are grouping around the Jedi as we speak. They're packing together like peas in a pod."

"Boy," said the captain droid in the other tank. "They're just making this far too easy for us. This next shot should blow them away all at once no trouble. The day is ours."

"Yay!" cried a number of the droids.

"Shall we prepare the defoliator?" asked the technician droid in the seat of the cannon.

"Yes," nodded the captain. "Immediately. You two, load one of the capsules into the cannon and prepare to blast them into oblivion and back."

"Back?" one asked, startled. "We don't want them to come back from oblivion do we?"

"No," said the captain. "It's just an expression. Jeez, I may not have much sense but at least I have more than you do. Now, prepare to fire before those Jedi wipe out the rest of our unit."

"Roger, roger," the two droids placed the ammo containers on the ground and lifted one of the huge warheads out of the box. Hefting the enormous metal cylinder between them with some difficulty, they carried it slowly over to the main cannon and managed to push it into the giant slot, effectively priming the cannon.

"Prepare to fire," said the captain. The technician manning the cannons moved the controls, and the cannon tilted upwards, pointing towards the sky. The droids all around them stopped firing their blasters, confident that they no longer needed to do so and all very much relieved that they had been at the back.

"Ready," said the captain.

"Ready," repeated the technician.

"Aim," said the captain.

"Er, it's already been aimed," said the technician.

"Oh yeah," said the captain. "Er... well... er... FIRE!"

"FIRING!" repeated the technician, equally loudly, and slammed his two fingered hand down on the appropriate button. With a loud whoosh of air, the warhead exploded from the mouth of the giant cannon, leaving an enormous trail of smoke behind it. The droids watched it go, eager to finally see it being tested on something other than a battle droid.

* * *

"Heeeere it comes," cried Ahsoka, the moment the warhead was released from the tip of the cannon. "Now would be a really time for you guys to biomerge."

"I really don't know what's going on, but I do not like the look of that," said one of the Togrutas.

"Huddle together now!" shouted Shaak Ti, as she and Aayla stepped aside to allow Henry to step out in front. Terriermon landed on his Tamer's head and behind them all the Togrutas and clones huddled together behind the Jedi, like a group of Emperor Penguins in the Antarctic trying to conserve heat in the freezing temperatures.

Henry and Terriermon didn't say anything to prepare for the situation. Henry simply raised the D-Arc to his chest and cried, "BIOMERGE ACTIVATE!"

The cannon's warhead slammed into the ground some distance from the group at the exact same moment the biomerging began. It was like two enormous explosions going off at once, starting small and getting much bigger at speed, one generating a roaring, fiery shockwave and the other an enormous light that grew bigger by the second.

The Togrutas shielded their eyes from both intense blasts and they managed to hear a few words being shouted out over the incredible roaring of the approaching fire.

"**TERRIERMON BIOMERGE TO... MEGAGARGOMON!"**

As the incredibly massive machine took shape, the dog-bunny mecha stared down the approaching tsunami of fire, his eyes narrowing and his shoulders, cannons and all, squaring as he prepared for the inevitable impact. He slammed his enormous legs together to create a thick barrier of green armour and spread his arms so he would be able to maintain his balance.

Plo Koon, despite feeling overwhelmed at the digivolution himself, took charge of the situation. "You'll have time to gawk later. Stay behind cover. Do not wander out from behind MegaGargomon's legs."

The stunned Togrutas and clones (except Bly, since he'd seen this already) obeyed and instantly crowded closer together, crouching behind cover. The wall of flames slammed into MegaGargomon and washed over him. The enormous Mega grunted as the massive wave slammed into him, but his massive body resisted the push with relative ease and he held his ground, not moving back an inch. The flames rolled on either side of him and ran straight past him, whooshing past the figures crouched protectively behind his enormous feet.

The Togrutas grimaced at the immense heat searing on either side of them, but the Jedi and the clones merely grimaced. The effect was like it created behind MegaGargomon resembled the Red Sea (which was actually the Sea of Reeds – the Red Sea is huge) parting for Moses in the Bible to make a corridor, except the sea was made up of fire.

"Well this is certainly more intense than the last time that thing was fired at me!" shouted Ahsoka.

"At least we have cover again!" agreed Bly. "I don't even want to think about what it'd be like to be caught in that thing!"

_You guys alright back there? _MegaGargomon's double voices echoed inside Aayla's head.

_Yeah! We're fine! Keep it up!_ She shouted back.

_I think it's thinning out!_ MegaGargomon shouted.

* * *

The droids watched the massive fire shockwave and robotically chuckled to one another. "Wow," said the captain. "We actually won something. And we beat two members of the council and two members of the A-Team."

"Wait until Count Dooku hears about this," said another. "We'll all get promoted."

"Yay!" cried another. "And then we can do all the bullying other droids for a change."

"Er, guys," said the technician droid in the cockpit of the cannon. "What's that up ahead?"

The fire shockwave was dissipating now and something was visible through the smoke and embers. The droids watched in terrible fascination as the last vestiges of the explosion vanished, leaving only a huge plume of smoke. And out of that smoke stepped MegaGargomon. His thick, green armour was charred and blackened and his white face was smeared with soot, but he was very much intact.

"Suddenly I feel very inferior," said the droid captain.

"Where the heck did that thing come from?" asked another.

"Who cares?" said another one. "What I want to know is, which side is it on?"

MegaGargomon's chest unfolded to reveal the missile sockets inside. The sides of his legs slid out, his fingertips slid aside and the yellow faces on his shoulder cannons retracted to reveal more cannon openings. Two holes appeared in his forehead and he raised the enormous gatling guns on his arms and pointed them directly at the droids.

"Does that answer your question?" asked the captain.

"So much for that promotion," said another.

"**MEGA BARRAGE!"** roared MegaGargomon and unleashed his attack with maximum power. Now that the trees had had reduced to rubble by the defoliator cannon the droids had no cover at all, and even if they hadn't it wouldn't have done them any good whatsoever. The droids, the AAT tanks and the defoliator cannon were bombarded by the enormous attack and instantly blown apart. They were practically vaporised and when the attack cleared, it had been revealed that the rest of the droid army had been more heavily damaged than the environment around them.

"Well, Henry," said Terriermon. "I think we just proved that we are still the biggest and most awesome weapon of mass destruction that there is."

"Do you really have to call us that?" asked Henry.

"No, but it sounds rather appropriate, I thought."

The Jedi, clones and Togrutas walked around MegaGargomon's enormous feet and stared first at the landscape, which had been blackened and destroyed beyond all recognition, except for a belt of green behind where MegaGargomon had been standing. Then they took in MegaGargomon and they stared in wonder at the giant being, silhouetted against the afternoon sun.

"This is truly remarkable," said Catalin, turning to Ahsoka. "And this is daily occurrence for you?"

"Not quite," said Ahsoka. "This is only the second time I've ever seen Terriermon and Henry do this. Usually, Terriermon doesn't need to take on such a powerful form. And the other two Digimon are just as capable of destruction as he is."

"Well," said Shaak Ti. "I'm willing to bet that whoever is in charge of that laboratory is not feeling all that secure right about now."

"I hope that we managed to give Lopmon and the Delta Squad enough time to carry out their task," said Plo.

"MegaGargomon!" Aayla called up to him. "How are they getting on?"

MegaGargomon shut his eyes focused on the consciousness of Terriermon's sister to find out the answer.

_It's all up to you and your teammates now, Loppy,_ thought Terriermon. _Renamon's fate lies in your hands._

* * *

Alright, listen up. I'm going away on a trip to Wales for the weekend in order to photograph wild Red Kites. I'll be able to keep writing because I will take my laptop and I will have oodles of free time on my hands. However, I don't know if I'll have internet access so you may have to wait until Monday for my next update. However, even I don't I'll start writing the next chapter, so the next two should come in quick succession when they do get posted.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed that chapter. I really like writing fight scenes, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Thanks to all my reviewers, including my newest reviewer, **Riddick12.**

* * *

Next time...

The second stage of the plan – dealing with the lab. Lopmon and the Delta Squad must work together to ensure that not only do they prevent the Blue Shadow Virus from ever breaking out again, but saving the life of Renamon. Can they acquire the cure in time?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 68 : The Delta Squad Strikes**


	68. The Delta Squad Strikes

Sorry for the slight delay folks, but after careful consideration I decided to leave my laptop behind for the weekend, because I decided leaving it in a hostel where anyone could steal it was definitely not a good idea. So I didn't do any writing over the weekend. On the plus side, I had over 400 red kites swarming all around me and I also turned nineteen on Saturday. It was quite a birthday to remember.

But now, after my relatively long silence, at least by my standards, here is my latest chapter.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 68:- The Delta Squad Strikes**

* * *

Some distance away from the battlefield where the ambush was about to begin, the four heavily armoured clones known as the Delta Squad were standing and waiting for the signal to begin their part of the mission. Boss, Fixer, Sev and Scorch had been given the co-ordinates of the lab and has taken a roundabout route to get there. Now, they were standing on the slope on the other side of the valley, hidden from view from the lab by the hill.

Unfortunately, that meant they couldn't see the lab either.

But they didn't need to, because they had Lopmon with them too. The little bunny was standing in a tree on top of the hill, silently watching the lab and hidden from view by the leaves surrounding her. She was keeping watch to ensure the Delta Squad hadn't somehow been detected.

The four clones were watching her and whispering to themselves as they did.

"I'm not entirely sure what the Jedi were thinking," muttered Sev. "I mean, that big, yellow creature dying back at the camp looked like a serious fighter, but that little bunny sure doesn't look like much. So why did they send her with us?"

"Yeah," nodded Scorch. "And everything they said about being able to grow drills for hands and transform into giant machines and all that stuff... what were they going on about? Nothing can do that surely. It's just not possible. Right?"

"I would have thought so," said Fixer. "But I say we keep an open mind about this. I've learned that the majority of the time the Jedi _do_ know what they're doing, and those guys were council members and A-Team members so they're even better than most."

"Besides," nodded Boss. "We've seen some seriously weird stuff. You said so yourself, Scorch. This Lopmon may have a few surprises for us. She may not look like much, but she probably works alongside the A-Team for a reason. Keep that in mind, you two. It'd probably not be a good idea to go around badmouthing her when we don't know the full extent of her capabilities."

"But seriously, Boss," said Scorch. "I just can't picture something like her battling against Separatists, even if she can turn into a machine."

"It's only my brother that can turn into a machine," Lopmon, who had been listening to the entire conversation, called down. "And you might want to take Boss' advice... Scorch, was it? I can be pretty nasty when I want to be. I just don't want to be very often."

Boss, Fixer and Sev all chuckled while Scorch coloured under his helmet. Obviously none of them had thought that Lopmon might have almost super-hearing. "Alright," muttered Scorch, so quietly he could barely hear himself. "I suppose super-sensitive ears might be useful on the battlefield."

"Why, thank you," said Lopmon. Scorch started. She had heard him that time too? Blimey.

Lopmon was not just watching the base, she was watching what was going on at the battle through Terriermon's eyes. She watched the Jedi hiding behind their trees while the droids walked straight past them and she waited feverishly for the clones and the Togrutas to begin their attack.

From the moment Bly lead the charge on the droids, Lopmon called out with her mind, speaking to her Tamer through their psychic link. _Alright Suzie,_ she said, as she hopped down from her tree and flew to rejoin the clones. _The fighting has begun. The time to act is now._

_Okay Lopmon,_ Suzie replied. _Be careful in there, okay?_

_You know me, Suzie,_ said Lopmon._ I'm not a fan of committing suicide. Now hurry, we must breach that lab as soon as we can._

_Right._

Lopmon turned to Delta Squad as her Tamer back at camp fished for the correct card. "You guys have your doubts about me. I didn't need to hear your mutterings to know that – because to be honest, I get that a lot. But, hopefully, what is about to happen next will alleviate some of those doubts."

"And what _is_ about to happen next?" asked Fixer.

"This," said Lopmon. And she digivolved.

The Delta Squad all flinched backwards at the sudden bright light, which all of them usually associated with Scorch's explosives going off. But their rational thinking stopped them – Lopmon surely couldn't be exploding on the spot, could she?

She wasn't, but their rational thinking didn't account for the sight of a digivolution either.

"**LOPMON DIGIVOLVE TO... TURUIEMON!"**

As the light died away, the Delta Squad were stunned at the sight of the Champion level, purple-furred, switchblade wielding, bunny Digimon. They took in the sight of her from her plimsolls up to the red gloves on her hands with the wickedly curved blades on the back, and up to her enormous ears. Her stature was much leaner and more agile-looking relative to body-size than it had been when she was Lopmon, and suddenly the Delta Squad all found their doubts about her prowess in battle vanishing on the spot.

"Alright," said Scorch. "Now, I'm impressed. I particularly liked the light show during all that."

Turuiemon smiled at Scorch. "You'll find we Digimon are just full of these little surprises. It doesn't do to underestimate us, even if we just look like small blobs of goop or something, as we all do when we hatch from our Digi-eggs."

Sev nodded at Turuiemon approvingly. "You look like you could take on a whole battalion of droids by yourself."

"Not that we couldn't do that ourselves," said Scorch.

"Well, how about we get into that laboratory and then we can see for ourselves just how skilled Lopmon is in combat now," said Fixer. "And she can see us in action too."

"Technically my name changed to Turuiemon when I changed form," said Turuiemon, "but yes, that is an excellent idea. In fact, Suzie is just about to swipe the card that will give me..."

She stopped and raised her gloved hands. The gloves and switchblades suddenly glowed a similar bright light to the one that had occurred in her digivolution and they swiftly shifted form. When the light died away, her hands had been replaced by two enormous drills, just like the ones you would ordinarily find on the arm of a certain Knowledge armour Digivolution of Armadillomon.

"Ah yes," said Turuiemon. "Digmon's drills. You guys served me well against those zombies on Geonosis and now I need your help again. Step back you guys," she said to the Delta Squad. "This is going to get a little messy."

And with that, she raised her hands/drills and brought them plunging into the ground.

The result was an enormous shower of dirt fountaining up from the ground as Turuiemon thrust her transformed hands deep into the loam and pushed down. The rapidly rotating drills flung earth and soil high into the air, and right over the majority of the Delta Squad, who all hurried backwards to avoid the spray, which was thrown upwards on all sides of Turuiemon, masking her from the sight of the four clones.

Gradually, the spray of earth began to recede, until it disappeared altogether, revealing a large crater in the ground that Turuiemon had dug and disappeared down. Sev walked up to the side of the hole and peered down it. The tunnel already curved off in the direction of the laboratory, so Turuiemon was no longer in sight.

"Whoa," said Sev. "That's pretty darn useful."

"Are you kidding?" asked Scorch. "That damn amazing. We need to see if we can do that sometime with a machine or something."

"Once again, thank you," said Turuiemon, as she reappeared at the bottom of the vertical shaft, her clothing already smearing with grime and soil. "But while I may be able to dig a tunnel easily, I have no idea where I'm really going. And popping up to take a bearing would get us spotted. Haven't you guys got some gadget or something that could help."

"Yep," said Fixer. "I've got a handset here that we could use." He flipped open a side-compartment on his armour and pulled out the appropriate tool. "If I put in the approximate distance from here to our target destination, this should tell us when we need to ascend."

"Ah, a miniature SATNAV," chuckled Turuiemon. "Or something along those lines anyway. Perfect."

"That's our Fixer," said Boss, proudly. "He's got a little gadget up his sleeve for just about any problem you can face."

"Then get down here, you guys," said Turuiemon. "We don't have time for faffing around. Fixer, put in the distance and let's get underway."

"Alright," said Fixer. "Based on what I've seen, I'd say our location is approximately fifty-two klicks from the front door of the factory." He put the information into the little device into his hand and then quickly jumped down the hole. Turuiemon turned to continue the tunnel and Fixer followed her into the darkness.

"Well," said Scorch. "Here goes nothing. I hope you're not claustrophobic, Sev."

"I don't have a phobia of anything, Scorch," Sev countered, as he stepped to the rim of the hole in the ground. "You should know that by now." And then he jumped in, landed smoothly and disappeared into the tunnel.

Scorch shrugged his shoulders and followed. Boss took one last look at the trees around them. He wished they had a way to disguise the entrance to the hole but hopefully they wouldn't need one. He quickly jumped into the tunnel after his fellow clones.

Once Boss joined the back of the line, he could see that progress was being made at a steady and reasonably quick pace. Turuiemon's drilling hands shovelled the earth in front of her to either side, compressing it against the sides of the tunnel as she passed by. This made the tunnel effective but at the same time it was quite a tight squeeze, and the members of the Delta Squad had bulkier armour than the average clone.

Yet they carried on moving relatively quickly, squeezing through the earthen walls as Turuiemon soldiered on, moving her hands up and down as she worked to create a tunnel large enough for them to walk through with only a slight hunch instead of having to progress with a slow crawl. Behind her, Fixer kept a close eye on the device in his hand, watching the meter on it count down the number of klicks they had left to travel before they reached their destination.

"Watch out for zombies, Sev," Scorch chuckled, punching Sev in the shoulder playfully. "I hear that undead Geonosians live in tunnels, and they could be coming up from behind us."

"Don't even joke about Geonosians, Scorch," growled Sev, his grip on his sniper rifle tightening.

"Or zombies," said Turuiemon from the front. "They were extremely real – I can assure you of that. I can still hear their horrible wailing whenever I shut my eyes."

"Yikes," muttered Scorch. "Looks like I really picked the wrong thing to joke about."

"You know," said Turuiemon. "You remind me a lot of my brother, Terriermon. He makes jokes all the time, likes teasing people _and_ he loves explosions. You two would really get along if we had the time to do any relaxing."

"Sounds like my kind of guy," nodded Scorch.

"Cut the chatter, RC-1262," said Fixer. "I'm trying to concentrate. Only ten more klicks to go and we should be roughly in the right place."

"Alright then," said Turuiemon pushing forward with her drills even harder than before and picking up some speed. "Prepare yourselves, guys."

"Oh, we're prepared for anything," said Sev, patting his sniper rifle.

"We weren't prepared for Turuiemon," said Scorch.

"Time out, kid," said Boss. "Get focused. We've got a mission to carry out here. You can joke around after it's been completed."

"Five klicks," said Fixer. "Four... three... two... one... here! Stop now!"

Turuiemon withdrew her spinning drills from the wall and turned around to face Fixer. "Are you certain that this is the right spot?" she asked.

"Well based on distance, angle and approach vector," said Fixer. "Yes, this is the right place. When we come up, we should be right outside the main entrance of the laboratory."

"Alright then," nodded Turuiemon. "Going up."

She thrust her hands upwards and plunged them into the roof above her. Ignoring the dirt which showered all around her, she pushed her way upwards, digging her feet into the soft walls to give her a better grip. As she ascended, she morphed one hand back into its original form and thrust the switchblade into the wall as well, allowing her to climb upwards and tunnel out using one drill.

It took a little bit of effort but she quickly broke through the surface. Her head popped out of the ground and she found herself staring up at two enormous blast doors that looked incredibly thick and strong.

Fixer's calculations had been spot on. The trooper was a genius. They had indeed come out right by the entrance of the lab.

Using her remaining drill to widen the hole, Turuiemon clambered back out into the open air. She stood and glanced around quickly. It looked like she'd appeared so close to the building that she was not visible to any security cameras, which were all directed outwards. Perhaps whoever had designed the building had just assumed that nobody would get this far.

Satisfied that she hadn't alerted any battle droids, she morphed her other drill back into a hand and reached down into the tunnel. Fixer reached up and grabbed her gloved hand and the two of them worked together to haul the Delta Squad's technician out of the tunnel, with Sev giving Fixer a push from behind.

Once Fixer was out of the hole, the process was repeated with Sev and Scorch and finally, both Turuiemon and Fixer hauled Boss up and out of the hole, grabbing one of his arms each and heaving until the leader of the Delta Squad stood by his teammates. The five of them looked at their surroundings. They had yet to trigger any visible or audible alarms. All seemed to be going according to plan.

"Alright, men," said Boss. "Let's get cracking and break into this place."

"Ooh," said Scorch, pulling a couple of handfuls of explosives from the containers around his waist. "I am an expert at making spectacular entrances. What do you say, Boss? Can I blow something up?"

"I don't know," said Sev. "Can you?"

"Of course I _can_," Scorch snorted. "But am I allowed to?"

"Have you no sense of subtlety at all?" asked Fixer, as he headed over to the side of the doors. "We didn't go to all that trouble sneaking up on this place to announce our presence to everyone here with your little toys. Give me a minute and I'll crack the security and get these doors open."

He pulled a blowtorch from his toolbelt and set to work, the searing flame at the tip burning through the metal on the side of the door and moving in a rectangle to cut a small slab out of the metal wall. A bunch of wires were exposed underneath, of many different colours, including red, blue and white.

"I hate to nag," said Turuiemon. "But how fast can you go?"

"You can't rush this things," said Fixer, assessing the wires with a critical eye. "If I cut through the wrong wire then I could seal these doors and then we'd _have_ to use RC-1262's crude technique for breaking into this joint. Now let's see here." He pulled a pair of wire-cutters from his toolbelt and began muttering to himself. Most of what he said made no sense to Turuiemon, as it including a lot of technical lingo, but Fixer definitely seemed to know what he was doing.

Well, the Jedi had said that these guys were experts at their craft. Clearly they had been right.

Fixer carefully selected one of the wires – a bright green one (Turuiemon chuckled internally, because this went against the classic red wire theme that Hollywood Blockbusters seemed to have) and expertly snipped through it with the wire-cutters.

The result was instantaneous. There was a dull, thudding noise from the blast doors like a lock retracting and they began to slide open. Sev quickly raised his sniper rifle and pointed it at the widening gap, peering through the targeting lens. A battle droid standing on the other side of the door turned and was instantly smashed in the face by the blue bolt from the sniper rifle and fell without making a sound. A second battle droid started at the sight of its companion's death, but a second expert shot from Sev gave it a similar fate.

"Alright," said Boss. "We're in. Now, you boys know the drill, but Turuiemon, since you're new at this, here's the deal. We go in, and we methodically sweep the place. We break into every room we find, dispatch any battle droid inside without hesitation and scan the room for our objectives. Remember lads, we're looking for two things – the leader of this place and this reeksa root stuff. And Sev," he turned to the red-armoured clone. "We've been ordered to take this guy alive. No killing anything with a heartbeat today."

"You got it, sir," said Sev.

"Now, let's move," said Boss. The four clones and the Digimon jogged into the giant laboratory, and they began to carry out Boss' instructions with ruthless efficiency. They came to a door and Sev hit the button that opened it. As the door slid back, the room inside was revealed to be a storage area. It was empty, so they moved on.

The next door they came to did have occupants. The room was a large one that contained a power generator and there were five droids inside.

As the five droids turned to face the door, they started backwards. "What?" cried one. "How did you get in..." He was silenced by Sev's third headshot of the day, and the expert sniper pulled off a fourth the moment afterwards with a shot to another. Boss and Scorch raised their own blasters and between them they quickly took out the remaining three droids before any of them could do anything more than yelp.

"Nothing in here," said Boss. "Move on."

Turuiemon was impressed. The clones were indeed efficient at their tasks. When there was a job to be done, even Scorch put on a serious face and got it done. She was glad that these four were on her side, because despite her abilities she got the feeling that taking on these four in a fight would be difficult without a further digivolution. She could see why they were held in such high regard.

So, she decided to give them a bit of a show in return.

The next room appeared to be much larger and was filled with a total of eight droids. Numerous canisters lined the walls – lots of large jars filled with water and larger tanks also filled with water, as well as a bunch of odd machinery. This was clearly the room that the Blue Shadow Virus had been reborn in, and it appeared there was plenty more to spare if the large numbers of jars were anything to go by.

The first two droids were shot down by Fixer and Boss respectively but, just as Sev was lifting his sniper rifle, Turuiemon leapt into the fray. The third droid met its end when a switchblade was plunged into its torso and was pushed to the ground. Turuiemon sprang up, lopping the head of the fourth, catching its head in the air as she knocked another over with a sweep kick and took a scoop out of its metal chest with her blade. The sixth droid raised a blaster, but Turuiemon knocked it out of its hands by throwing the droid head in her hand and leapt atop the unarmed droid, crushing its body under her weight. Droid seven and droid eight had their ankles seized and were hauled off their feet. Droid seven was relieved of its weapon, and Turuiemon shot him in the head with it. Droid eight was sent flying towards a clones and slid to a halt by their feet.

Sev put an end to it.

"Nice," said Scorch, as Turuiemon rejoined them. "You're like a Jedi in combat. Very fluid."

"I reckon she was holding back," said Sev. "So that she wouldn't knock any droid into those canisters and drop virus water all over the place."

"We can exchange compliments later," said Turuiemon. "Let's keep going."

"Agreed," said Boss. "Move out."

* * *

They continued working in this method for the next few minutes as they descended deeper and deeper into the lab. They went from room and room, dispatching any and every droid they found within six seconds flat – Digimon and clone working together in synchrony to complete their task. But, as of yet, they had yet to find either of their targets.

Boss guessed that whoever was in charge of this laboratory would probably be in the central control room in the heart of the laboratory, watching the fight going on out in the woods through probe droid cameras. "It would be a good idea to head that way," he said. "Hopefully if we don't find this reeksa root on the way, we can get this guy, whoever he is, to tell us where to look for it."

"Two objectives in one go," nodded Turuiemon. "Alright. Which way?"

"Probably in this direction," said Fixer, and they followed his pointing hand down another corridor, continuing their methodical sweep of the lab and extermination of every droid they found.

Eventually, they came to a much larger door than any of the others. It was another pair of blast doors, similar to those that covered the main entrance. They paused outside it and glanced up at the thick, metal structure.

"What do you suppose is in here?" asked Sev, placing a hand on the blast doors.

"Not a clue," said Scorch, "but it must be pretty important if they're going to use blast doors like this. Shall we take a look?"

"Of course," nodded Boss. "Get to it, Fixer."

Fixer quickly repeated the process with these blast doors, cutting the frame, analysing the wires and snipping one. The blast doors slid open with a heavy, clanking noise and the clones and Turuiemon peered inside.

"Ah," said Scorch. "It was the weapon's depot."

The room was huge and was chock-full of battle droids. They had previously been moving about, carrying pieces of metal here and there and carrying out other menial tasks. But there was an AAT tank in the middle of the room, and huge, sliding garage-like doors in front of it that would allow it into the outside world. There was a yellow ring around the top of the tank, and it seemed that the droids were slowly building a second defoliator cannon.

And there were a lot of them.

"Hey, who are you?" asked one of them.

"Clones?" asked another. "How did they get in here? And what's that thing?"

"Who cares?" cried another. "Get 'em!"

The droids reached for their blasters and pulled them out.

"Suddenly my approach to things doesn't seem like such a bad idea any more, huh, Fixer?" asked Scorch.

"Defensive formation!" cried Boss, and the four clones sprang into action as the droids began their hail of red blaster bolts. They leapt behind various crates for cover, crouching behind them as the droids peppered the other sides of these crates with determination. Turuiemon leapt to one side as a storm of lasers swept through the point where she had been standing before, and joined Sev behind a crate.

"Well, so much for the quiet approach," said the Digimon.

Sev raised himself slightly above the crates and brought his sniper rifle into play. His aim was immaculate, and he began to fell droids with precision and a certain amount of grace. Each and every shot he took struck the target right in their spindly, pointed heads. The droids noticed this and concentrated their fire on his location. Sev dropped back below the crate.

Scorch made his move next. He sprang up from behind a crate and took quick aim, letting off a barrage of shots from his blaster that felled the droids quickly, striking them in the chest or the waist mostly. The droids turned in his direction, and he dropped back under cover as well. The droid's distraction allowed Fixer to leap from hiding and let off a barrage of his own shots, with similar results. Then Boss took his turn when the droids focused on Fixer, then it was Sev's turn again. The squad worked like a single, well-oiled machine that ran on autopilot.

Turuiemon decided to add to the melee. While Sev was taking his shots, she rolled out from hiding and crossed her switchblades in front of her to form an X. "Over here, greasepots!" she shouted, grabbing the attention of the battle droids that remained and drawing their focus away from Sev.

"Greasepot?" she heard Scorch mutter. "Can't she be more inventive."

But Turuiemon didn't care. As the droids fired on her, she leapt upwards and her switchblades glowed a bright white. In mid-air, she released her attack with a shout of **"GAUNTLET CLAW!"** The X shaped streak of energy blades lashed straight through a large portion of droids, slicing them into four pieces where they stood and cannoned into the AAT tank. The result was a massive explosion in the centre of the room that shook the walls and sent the majority of the droids flying from the shockwave it created. Many of the droids were killed in the blast.

"Now _that_ was explosive!" Scorch whooped. "I'm jealous now."

"Maybe a little too explosive," said Boss, quickly shooting a battle droid that was starting to stand up. "Check your fire, Turuiemon. We don't want to hit any of those shells over there," he pointed over to the wall, where a small number of explosive capsules that were probably intended for the defoliator were sitting.

"Good point!" said Turuiemon, dodging a barrage of bolts and stabbing a droid that had gotten too close.

"Whoever's in charge of this place probably knows we're here now!" said Sev, pulling off a spectacular headshot to another droid but hurriedly ducking the shots from its buddies.

"You guys deal with the rest of these droids," said Turuiemon. "I'll go and find this guy and cut him off. I'll try and herd him in this direction so we can surround him."

"Alright then," said Boss. "Get going. We won't take too long here."

Turuiemon nodded and sprinted out the blast doors, skidding to the side and darting down the corridor, ducking under a couple of blaster bolts as she did so. The Delta Squad glanced at each other. All of them were now really impressed by Turuiemon, now that they knew she could shoot those white energy blades from what looked like seemingly normal metal weapons.

"Alright then!" shouted Boss. "We're going on the offense lads! Let's give them a taste of real clone trooper firepower."

"You said it, sir!" shouted Scorch, and all four of the Delta Squad burst from their shelters simultaneously and attacked.

* * *

Passel Argente was watching the battle on the screens just as the Delta Squad had predicted he would be. He was eagerly watching as the Jedi battled against his droid forces, using the environment to their advantage and slowly but surely gaining the field. But Passel wanted to see his great weapon unleashed and he was waiting impatiently for the defoliator cannon to reach the area it needed to be in to fire on them.

"Come on," he muttered to himself. "Come on, hurry! I have been waiting so long for this moment!"

"Sir," said a battle droid. "The defoliator will reach the firing zone in approximately two minutes."

"That's two minutes too long for my liking," Passel growled. "I hope you are recording this."

"Yes, sir," nodded the droid. "As per your instructions, the probe droids are filming everything."

"Excellent," nodded Passel, rubbing his hands together gleefully. "When the Separatist council finally sees this recording and the ingeniousness of my plan, they will surely sway to my way of thinking. Dooku will be overthrown in no time flat."

"Isn't taking on Count Dooku a dangerous idea?" asked the droid. "What if he hits you with that Sith Lightning of his or something."

"Dooku believes in politics," Passel said. "If he is politically overthrown, I'm sure he will bow to the will of the council and..."

Suddenly a huge explosion rocked the control room, and it hadn't come from the screen displaying the battle. Passel whipped his head around, his eyes widening in fear as he stared at the blast doors that were the entrance to the control room. "What was that?" he cried. "That came from inside the base."

"We don't know, sir," said a droid. "We're trying to get a lock on the location now."

"Sir," said another droid from nearby. "We have an incoming transmission. It's a distress call from the weapons depot."

"Probably a malfunction," Passel said, sighing in relief. "But not the defoliator capsules, or I would probably be dead by now. Put it through."

"Roger, roger," nodded the droid and hit the button. A small hologram of a droid appeared in the centre of the room. Passel's eyes widened as he saw that the droid had a blaster in its hand and was firing it at something he couldn't see.

"What is going on in there?" Passel asked, suddenly much more urgently than before.

"Sir!" cried the battle droid. "Our laboratory has been compromised and we're under attack. Four clones have entered the weapons depot and are shooting at us."

"Impossible!" cried Passel. "How did they get past our security cameras without us noticing? They couldn't have come from land or sky, or we would know. How did they get in here?"

"Unknown, sir," said the droid hologram. "But they're doing quite a lot of damage."

"Well," Passel said, closing his eyes and calming himself. "It's just four clones. What are you waiting for? Destroy them immediately."

"We're trying, sir," said the droid, crouching down as the sounds of blaster fire grew louder. "But we haven't managed to hit them yet. They're too good. They're overrunning us and we need reinforcements."

"Then I shall send them immediately," Pasel said, sighing at the utter incompetence of the droids.

"And there's something else too, sir," said the droid. "The clones aren't alone. There's someone else inside the laboratory too."

Passel's blood ran cold. "A Jedi?" he asked, shivering with fear at the idea.

"No sir," said the droid. "At least, we don't think so. But it was a creature like nothing I've ever seen bef-ARGH!"

A laser took the droid's head clean off and a heavily armoured clone stepped into the hologram. It was Sev, and the trooper hefted his sniper rifle and said, "We're coming for you next, bigshot." Then the hologram vanished.

Passel was shaking now. Four clones that could take out the droids in the weapons depot on their own and a strange creature running around the place. This was not good at all. He had to escape. His brilliant plan had been compromised, but none of that mattered as long as he lived to tell everyone what had happened. Not that he ever would tell anyone how he failed again. There would be almost no chance of redemption if he did.

But still, there was a chance that the day was not lost. If the droids could hold the lab, they could continue. And besides, the defoliator cannon was still in place.

"Stay here!" Passel ordered the droids around him. "Keep recording that battle and send the recording to my ship once the Jedi are eliminated."

"Roger, roger," said a droid.

"And send the plans for the cannon and the virus to my ship at the same time," said Passel, and then he opened the blast doors and ran off into his laboratory. He needed to get away and as quickly as possible.

He ran from corridor to corridor, darting round corners as he headed for his ship. He didn't know it, but he was doing something quite similar to what his fellow council member Shu Mai had done a few months ago.

But he didn't get as far as Shu Mai did.

He rounded a corner, and then came to a skidding halt, his eyes widening in fear and dread. Turuiemon was blocking his escape route, leaning against the wall with her arms folded and a scowl on her face. She unfolded one arm and clenched her fist, causing her switchblade to spring into the attack position with a wicked SCHINK noise, like Wolverine's claws extending from his knuckles in X-men.

"Alright, you," said Turuiemon, pushing off from the wall and blocking the rest of the corridor, her other switchblade springing out with an equally wicked SCHINK noise. "I don't know who you are, but you have caused me and my family a great deal of suffering today. And as I'm sure you can imagine, that does not sit particularly well with me."

"Wh-" Passel backed away, his throat dry and constricting out of fear, as the Digimon bunny advanced towards him. "What are you?"

"I am Turuiemon," said Turuiemon, brandishing her switchblades. "And you are about to find out what an angry Digimon can do."

Passel yelped in fear and turned around, charging blindly away from Turuiemon. He had no particular destination in mind – he just knew he had to get away from whatever that rabbit was.

Turuiemon scowled as his disappearing back. "So, it's a game of fox and rabbit you want, is it?" she asked. "Only this time, the rabbit is out to save the fox." She bounded after him, covering three metres with each enormous stride and a grimace of determination on her face.

Passel risked a glance over his shoulder and yelped again when he saw that Turuiemon had already covered half the distance between them and was gaining extremely rapidly. Passel turned around a corner so fast he almost crashed into the wall. Turuiemon actually did, only she did it with her feet and leapt off from it, rebounding off the opposite wall and flipping right over Passel's head.

Passel skidded to a halt as Turuiemon landed right in front of him, her blades pointed at his chest. "Ah, ah, ah," Turuiemon shook her head. "Not this way. Go the other way."

Passel obliged and turned to run again, knowing that trying to escape from Turuiemon was probably never going to work, but he was convinced that the rabbit creature was out to butcher him so he had to try. Turuiemon ran after him, but this time she paced herself, loping along after him at roughly the same speed Passel was going at.

Passel turned around to find Turuiemon still about ten paces behind him and slowly but ever so surely gaining. The Magistrate of the Corporate Alliance had his heart in his throat and put on a final burst of desperate speed in a last ditch attempt to outrun Turuiemon.

He was completely unprepared for what happened next, as a clone with red daubs over his armour suddenly stepped out from a corridor in front of him and intercepted him, grabbing Passel around the chest as he passed and pressing him to his own chest. A knife appeared out of nowhere, extending from Sev's wrist armour and was pressed against Passel's exposed throat.

"Gotcha, Separatist scum!" Sev growled. "You aren't going anywhere. And I should slit your throat where you stand."

"Stand down, Sev," said Boss, as he, Fixer and Scorch moved out of the corridor Sev had been waiting in. Obviously, they had mopped up the last of the droids with almost no trouble and had moved on to help catch him. "We need some information from this guy first."

"Yeah, Boss," said Sev. "I know that. I said I _should_ slit his throat, not that I _would._ But if he doesn't tell us what we want to know then that may change."

"Who is this guy anyway?" asked Scorch.

"It's Passel Argente," said Fixer. "Magistrate of the Corporate Alliance and a member of Separatist Council."

"Even more reason for me to kill him," growled Sev.

"Looks like we struck big this time boys," said Boss. "Taking down such an important guy doesn't happen very often."

Turuiemon, who had been walking slowly towards them, nodded to Sev. "Nice catch," she said.

"Nice herding," Sev nodded back. "Alright then, let's get this interrogation started. You, my little slimeball," he pressed his knife meaningfully against Passel's terrified throat. "Are going to tell us where to find that reeksa root you took from Iego, or I swear I will slit your gizzard right here, right now."

"You cannot do that," Passel cried. "I am a prisoner of war, and the Jedi command that all prisoners must be treated with respect and safety. You'd be in a heap of trouble if you killed me. You could be stripped of all your privileges."

"Will you shut up and start talking," Sev sneered. "My armour paint is starting to peel and I could use some new red paint."

"Sometimes, Sev," said Scorch. "You just plain scare me."

Passel paled at the thought, but he cried. "No, you would not dare to kill me. I am safe and under the protection of the Jedi."

"There are no Jedi here," pointed out Sev.

"But they will find out sooner or later," Passel cried desperately.

Turuiemon's eyes narrowed and a feral growl worthy of Guilmon escaped her throat. The Delta Squad and Passel glanced at her, startled. The Champion level Digimon extended her switchblade angrily, knocked Sev's knife aside and pressed the tip underneath Passel's chin, forcing his head up.

"Listen here, scumbucket," she snarled. "I'm not usually a violent person but when one of my fellow Digimon is in danger, that goes right out the window. Back at the Togruta camp, a member of my family is dying as a result of the virus you created, and you are going to help us fix it. Or else."

"You cannot kill me," Passel wailed.

"Can't I?" Turuiemon growled. "The rules that the clones live by don't apply to me. The Jedi are not _my_ commanders. They are my friends, yes, but I don't answer to them. I can do whatever I want to you and I would get away with it too. You've caused plenty of suffering today and I am feeling very riled up right about now. You would be wise to listen to me."

"No," Passel whispered.

"Listen to this," Turuiemon said, pressing the tip of her blade so close to his chin that any further would draw blood. "A long time ago, I made a pact with my brother Terriermon and his mate Renamon. The three of us swore that if any of us were in danger, we would go to any lengths to save them, regardless of any consequences and who we had to disobey or go through to do it. And right now, my brother's mate is dying, and I'm going to hold by that pact. You have ten seconds to tell me where that reeksa root is, or I _will_ kill you and tear apart this laboratory to find it myself."

"Nice motivational speech," muttered Sev.

"Your choice, Argente," said Turuiemon. "Ten."

Passel stared into Turuiemon's determined eyes, searching their black depths for any trace of a bluff or a deception. To his shock, he saw none of that. Turuiemon was deadly serious. If he didn't cough up the information, then he _would_ die.

"Nine," said Turuiemom.

Passel gulped.

"Eight."

"Alright, alright," Passel screamed. "It's in a chamber not too far away. Take this corridor down there," he pointed to the left. "Then take the first turning on the left, the second turning on the right and then the first turning on the right after that. There's a small door with a green rectangle above it. That's the room that contains the reeksa root."

Turuiemon withdrew her switchblade. "Alright," she said. "I'll go and have a look. But if you've lied..."

"No, no, no, no," Passel shook his head emphatically. "No lies. Go and see for yourself."

"Fixer, Sev, Scorch," said Boss. "You three stay here and guard this prisoner with your lives. Turuiemon, you're with me. Let's get that cure."

The rest of the Delta Squad nodded, while Boss and Turuiemon ran down the left corridor that Passel had indicated.

"That was quite the performace," said Boss, as he ran alongside the Digimon.

Turuiemon sighed, shuddering slightly as she replayed her actions in her head. "I really don't like going into evil butcher mode like that. It creeps me out whenever I do it. It's just... not me. At all. But I was sincere – I will do anything to protect anyone of my extended family. My brother, my Tamer, Renamon, any of the other Tamers, Aayla, Ahsoka... they're all my family."

"I could see that," said Boss. "Let's make sure that the family stays together."

The two of them followed Passel's directions to the small room. They only encountered two random droids in the corridor on the way there, but they were dealt with swiftly. Boss shot another in the abdomen and Turuiemon sliced off the head of the other, neither of them breaking step in their run.

When they reached the door with the green rectangle above the door, they paused momentarily outside it. Turuiemon and Boss glanced at each other and tensed, ready just in case Passel really had made them walk into a trap – both had learned you could never completely trust a Separatist council member, even a cornered one. Turuiemon pushed the button on the side of the door and it slid open.

There were no droids on the other side of the door. Just as Passel had promised, it was a small room, relatively devoid of anything interesting. The one eye-catching thing about it was the small, round table and hovering above it, in suspended animation, was a small, green root with large root hair cells branching off it in every direction. It was roughly the length of one of Turuiemon's switchblades, but hopefully that would be all that would be needed.

"The reeksa root," said Turuiemon, walking up to it and plucking it out of its animation field. She had it in her hand, the one thing that could cure Renamon and bring her out of her comatose state and into the land of the living.

"Alright," nodded Boss. "We've got the cure. Now, let's get out of here and take it to your friend."

"I couldn't agree with you more," said Turuiemon, a genuine grin appearing on her face. Everything was going alright. She could feel the presence of MegaGargomon in her mind, investigating what was going on at the lab through her. She shut her eyes and did the exact opposite. The clones and the Jedi had pulled off a victory, and MegaGargomon had trumped the defoliator cannon with his Mega Barrage.

_Nice work, Tury,_ she heard Terriermon said. _Let's get that thing back to camp ASAP._

_Will do,_ nodded Turuiemon.

_Oh, and by the way,_ said Terriermon. _Shaak Ti says can you tell Scorch that he can "do what he does best" to the laboratory when you're all outside._

Turuiemon had a feeling she knew what Shaak Ti was talking about. She grinned, and then she took off back the way she'd come, followed by Boss.

"Did you get it?" asked Scorch, as they approached. Turuiemon held the root in front of them and nodded.

"Congratulations, Seppies," Sev said to Passel. "You get to keep your life."

"Now let's get out of here," said Fixer.

"Agreed," said Turuiemon, "and Scorch, you've got new orders from Shaak Ti. Once we're outside, wipe this laboratory of the face of the galaxy. Destroy everything inside it – the plans for the Blue Shadow Virus rebirth and for the defoliator cannon must be eradicated once and for all."

Under his helmet, Scorch beamed. "Alright! It's about time I got to do some serious destruction."

"Sev," said Boss. "Go with Scorch and head to the reactor core. We can't place explosives outside because the auto-turret grid is still online, but we can blow this place up from the inside. Watch each other's backs. Fixer and I will get this guy out of here."

"Gotcha, Boss," nodded Scorch.

Sev pushed Passel into Fixer's grasp. "We won't take long," he said. Then he turned, and he and Scorch headed off deeper into the lab.

"Well," said Boss. "Let's do our bit."

Fixer secured Passel's wrists in a pair of binders, and Turuiemon led the way back through the maze of corridors towards the entrance, the reeksa root grasped gently but firmly in her gloved hand. She was not about to let that root go, not for anything in the world.

_Suzie,_ she called with her mind. _We've got the root, but we still have little time. I need you to ready a Dragon Wings and a Hyperspeed card for me when I get out of this lab, so I can get back to the camp right away._

_Okay, I'm on it,_ said the little Tamer. _I'll tell Rika the good news._

It took them about a minute to traverse the lab, stepping over the bodies of dead droids and dragging Passel Argente with them. But eventually, they made it outside and to the hole that they had tunnelled to get there.

"What?" Passel cried at the sight of it. "How did you manage to dig such a long tunnel in no time flat?"

Turuiemon ignored him and turned to the others. "Alright, guys," she said. "I'm heading off. Make sure this guy doesn't get away. He has a lot to answer for and I want to make sure he gets everything he deserves."

"But how are you-" Fixer started to ask. Then he stopped and said, "Never mind," when he saw the huge bat-like wings sprout out of Turuiemon's shoulders.

"See you later," she said, and with a huge flap she took to the air. She came into the firing range of the turrets almost immediately and the huge guns swivelled around to fire at her, letting out enormous red lasers. Turuiemon displayed agility in the air equal to her agility on the ground, as she swooped under on shot, rolled away from another and swerved upwards to allow another to pass beneath her.

But all the ducking, dodging and weaving was no longer needed when Turuiemon felt the surge of energy that meant Suzie had swiped the hyperspeed card. She grinned and flapped her dragon wings, zooming forward like a purple, yellow-vested meteor, shooting over the trees and out of the range of the lasers.

"Wow," said Fixer. "She sure is fast."

"I don't reckon Sev and Scorch have any more doubts about her abilities now," said Boss, folding his arms.

"Neither do I," said Fixer. "But what an opportunity to fight alongside a being such as her. I can only wonder what the other two Digimon are capable of."

"Well, hopefully we'll find out one day," said Boss. "Alright then. Let's get this Separatist scum back to the speeders and wait for Sev and Scorch to complete their mission."

Fixer nodded and shoved Passel towards the hole in the ground. "Get down there, sleemo."

* * *

Sev stood impatiently outside the door to the reactor core, his sniper rifle primed and ready for anything. He kept sweeping the corridor with his gaze, the rifle following his head as he stared through the sights, ready to shoot down anything hostile that wandered around the corners. Sev took his sentry duty very seriously indeed.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately considering Sev was still spoiling for a fight, nothing did round the corners. No battle droids stumbled upon an untimely end just because they walked down the wrong hallway. But Sev never dropped his guard. Dropping your guard could be a fatal mistake and Sev was looking to stay alive for quite some time to come.

Eventually, after a couple of minutes or so, the door to the reactor core opened and Scorch stepped off. The clone with yellow daubed armour dusted off his hands and, beneath his helmet, grinned with mischievous happiness. "All done," Scorch said, lifting up a remote detonator for Sev to see. "I push this button and this entire place is kablooey."

"That's not even a word, Scorch," Sev muttered, still scanning the corridors for droids. "And make sure you hold your trigger-happy thumb still long enough for us to get out of this place."

"Sir, yes sir," chuckled Scorch. "But seriously, come on. Let's get out of here so I can start all the exploding and stuff."

Sev glanced at the pyromaniac clone and sighed. "You'll never change will you."

"Nope," Scorch grinned.

Sev turned around and glanced inside the reactor room. As he did, he cried, "Holy mother of Kamino! Scorch, just how many of your explosive charges did you use?"

"All of them," Scorch laughed, picturing Sev's dumbfounded expression beneath his helmet as Sev stared at the reactor core beyond the doorway, which seemed to be literally encrusted with small, medium and large explosive charges, all placed together like an elaborate jigsaw.

"And why exactly did you use all of them?" asked Sev.

"Because," shrugged Scorch. "I've wanted to make something blow up for a while now and it's not like I'm going to need those explosives to blow up anything else before I get back to base to restock on them, is it? So, why not use all of them."

"Don't you think this is a little bit of overkill?" asked Sev.

"Not at all," said Scorch. "This place needs to go, so I'm just making sure it does."

"Your love of making things go bang disturbs me sometimes," Sev shook his head.

"Yeah, and your love of making things go dead disturbs me all the time," countered Scorch. "Now come on. We haven't got all day." He ran off down a corridor and Sev quickly followed him. The two of them ran in silence through the network until they also reached the entrance. There was no sign of Boss, Fixer, Turuiemon or the prisoner, Passel Argente, but Sev and Scorch simply dropped down the hole and traversed the tunnel they had been through before.

Once they reached the other side, they found Fixer waiting for them. Fixer hauled Scorch up the hole and then both of them helped to haul Sev up after him. Back on the surface, Boss was guarding a very disgruntled, very dirty and very unhappy Passel Argente, who seemed just as disappointed that his robes were covered in soil as he was to be captured in the first place.

"Alright then," grinned Scorch. "The gang's all here now."

"I'm not seeing any explosions, Scorch," said Boss. "Get the laboratory blown up right now."

"Just a moment, sir," said Scorch, running to the top of the hill. "I want to watch this one."

"I reckon we need to limit the number of explosives he's allowed to take on these missions," muttered Sev.

"How many did he use?" asked Fixer.

"All of them."

"Ah. You know, that doesn't surprise me at all."

Scorch ascended to the top of the hill and stared at the laboratory. He waved cheerfully at it, hoping that a battle droid watching the security camera footage saw him (and knowing a droid, it probably waved back) and then he hit the trigger.

To say the laboratory went up in smoke would be an understatement. It went up in an enormous, roiling ball of fire that shot into the air, forming a mushroom-shaped cloud in the sky. The sonic boom from the explosion knocked Scorch backwards a little, but the clone watched with satisfaction as the mushroom cloud descended higher and higher into the air, like an erupting volcano.

Scorch chuckled and placed his hands on his hips and observing the destruction. "I think that one definitely belonged amongst my top five favourites," he said. "I should use all of them more often."

* * *

Everything seems to be looking up now doesn't it? Well, I hope that you all enjoyed that. Please leave a nice review and I hope that you're all relatively patient if I don't churn out chapter 69 as quickly as you would like. Now, I'm going to go and eat a fruit pastil lolly.

* * *

Next time...

They have the cure, but they still need to give it to Renamon before it is too late. Will they make it in time?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 69 : Extinction**


	69. Extinction

I know this isn't exactly late, but it did take longer than I would have liked because my laptop decided it might be a good idea to crash earlier and I lost about half the chapter and had to write it out again. It's the first time that's happened to me and I hope it doesn't happen again anytime soon.

I'll see if I can churn out the next chapter for Sunday. In the meantime, enjoy this one.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 69:- Extinction**

* * *

Victory on the battlefield was usually a time for celebration at the fact that you won and came out alive and also a time of mourning, where you considered all your faithful comrades that had been lost during the fighting. Indeed, the Togruta tribe had suffered most crippling losses over the last two days, more so than almost any other short period of time since the tribe was first founded. Through a combination of deadly disease and war, twenty-six Togrutas had lost their lives.

As Ilyan and many of the other Togrutas began to make litters to bear their dead back to camp on, several other members of the fighting force were not feeling very celebratory and they would have time to mourn the dead later. The Jedi, Henry and Terriermon still had work to do because Renamon was still lying back at camp, completely dead to the world.

Terriermon knew that Turuiemon now had the cure and was heading back to the camp with all speed, but worry still gnawed away at his stomach. During the conflict and the destruction of the defoliator cannon, he had completely lost track of time. How long did Renamon have left before she slipped away completely? An hour? An hour and a half? Ten minutes?

It was almost unbearable, and he was kicking himself for not keeping an eye on the proverbial clock.

Despite this, he pushed it as deep as he could and focused on telling the others what was happening. "The reeksa root was there after all," he said, with no small amount of relief in his voice. "And Turuiemon's got hold of it. They've also managed to get some guy named Passel Argente, who was the one in charge of this whole bloody operation."

"Well, that's another Separatist council member we can knock off the Wanted list," said Ahsoka with satisfaction. "Shame it wasn't Nute Gunray though. I'd love to see him again so I can kick his slimy ass."

"And the cure is in our possession," Aayla smiled in relief. "Thank the Force."

"Let's just hope it works," said Henry.

"It has to work," Terriermon said grimly. "The thought of what would happen if it doesn't work just doesn't bare thinking about."

"Sorry, Terriermon," Henry said. "You're right. I'm being a bit pessimistic, aren't I? I'm sure Renamon will be fine."

"You don't know that though, do you?" Terriermon muttered.

"You're taking this really badly," stated Henry. "It wasn't your fault, Terriermon."

"You were the one who scolded me because I could have gotten Renamon hurt," said Terriermon, bitterly. "And I should have listened to you. You were right and I was an utter idiot."

"Momentai Terriermon," said Henry.

"Henry," Terriermon sighed. "There are many times and places for Momentai but now really is not one of them. We have to get a move on."

"Terriermon is right," said Plo. "We must hurry, if we are to save Renamon. Even when we get back to camp, we will still have a considerable distance to travel before we reach an area for a gunship to pick us up."

"And yet we must help clean up the mess the Separatists made here too," said Shaak Ti. "The water system is still infected and that must be changed quickly."

"In that case," said Aayla, "I shall head back to camp and take Terriermon and Henry with me. We'll take Renamon and go to the rendezvous point by speeder. Everyone else can stay here to deal with the planet."

"Then let's hurry," said Terriermon. "We must go now."

Ahsoka turned to Aayla as the Twi'lek made to leave. "Make sure Renamon makes it through this, okay, Aayla?" she said.

"I intend to," nodded Aayla. "We'll see you back on the cruisers." Aayla turned and left without another word, pelting back through the forest in the direction that they had come from before the battle had started, back towards the camp.

"May the Force be with you," said Plo, as Terriermon and Henry followed her, Terriermon taking to the ear and Henry running faster than he had done for a long time. The boy was strong considering all the martial arts he practiced back home (and still practiced here) so as long as Aayla didn't Force run he could keep up with her for a reasonably length of time. Of course, he didn't have the endurance of a Jedi either, but the camp was fortunately not very far when it came to running.

The three runners; one adult Twi'lek, one human child and one Rookie level Digimon, passed the journey in silence. All of three of them didn't need to communicate with each other, not even with their minds, as they all knew the other was focused on one thing and one thing only – saving Renamon before it was too late.

* * *

Turuiemon zoomed over the forest. Her hyperspeed card had worn off relatively quickly as they usually did, but it had allowed her to get out of range of the turbolasers very quickly and across a good portion of the forest before she was forced to continue at a slower pace. She was still flapping her wings hard to gain speed, which she didn't normally do either – usually she just glided.

Her first was clenched tightly around the life-giving root that she had picked up from Argente's lab. She was holding it as if it were a lifeline and, in a way, it was. Her knuckles underneath her gloves were probably white. She glanced down at it, knowing full well that there wasn't much time left – she, like Terriermon, had long since lost track of the time – and she powered her wings even harder, sweeping them through the air in search of updrafts to keep her aloft.

She soared over the canopy and swooped over a section of the forest that had been completely and utterly obliterated, with trees razed, the ground fried and all vegetation burnt to a crisp. She knew she'd reached the area where MegaGargomon had faced off against the defoliator cannon and won, and she could see numerous small figures swarming about the place below them.

Knowing she was almost there just spurred her even harder and she powered her dragon-like wings in massive, graceful bursts, and at such high speeds that it felt like they were being pulled out at the roots. However, Turuiemon didn't care. Not if Renamon's life was on the line.

_Hold on Renamon_, she spoke to the fox's mind with her own. _I know you can't hear me, but just hold on a little longer. You don't have long to wait now, I swear. Please, please be okay._

* * *

Things had been nothing short of depressing for Rika over the last few hours. The orange-haired Tamer usually had a fiery personality and a quick temper, which is why back home Impmon often referred to her as Fire-head. But all that had changed when her partner had fallen ill. She'd become quiet and slightly withdrawn and it was completely understandable considering the circumstances.

Ranna the healer glanced over at Rika, from where the Tamer was sitting on the floor beside her unresponsive partner. Some time ago, Rika had carefully lifted Renamon's head and placed it in her lap and she had one of Renamon's paws clasped in her own hand. Ranna couldn't help but feel sorry for her, even though she hardly knew the human child. Anyone who didn't feel sorry for Rika at this point had a heart of obsidian.

Rika stared at the closed eyelids of her partner, hoping that they would just open and Renamon would be all better, but she knew that wasn't going to happen. Still, thinking about that was better than thinking about the deadly virus inside her that was slowly making its way to her Digi-core, where it would probably delete her on the spot when it finally reached it.

_I really hope that she gets better,_ Ranna thought to herself. _For all their sakes._

Rika looked up as the tent flap was pushed back and Suzie entered the tent, walking past Elu and the other young Togrutas, who were taking their guard duty very seriously indeed. "How is she?" asked Suzie.

"No visible change," sighed Rika, sniffing loudly. "But we all know that she's getting closer to death with each second."

"Well, there is some good news," said Suzie, brightly. "Turuiemon's got the reeksa root and the others are heading back here as quick as they can."

Rika's face split into the first real smile that she'd had for several hours. "That's great. Thank Fanglongmon that the Separatist leaders are such cowards, or... well, does it need saying?"

Suzie shook her head. "Turuiemon says that we need to get Renamon ready to move as soon as we can, so we don't waste any time."

"Good idea," nodded Rika, gently easing herself out from under Renamon's head. "Ranna, can you please help me take Renamon outside."

"Of course," said Ranna, walking over and placing her hands under Renamon's shoulders. "But we must be careful. Your friend is in a very delicate way right now. We don't want to damage her any further. Get her legs."

Rika gently grasped Renamon's ankles and the two of them heaved, lifting the rather light fox Digimon off the ground and manoeuvring her into the outside world. Elu and the other kids standing outside stepped back to allow them through, looking at the dying fox with terrible fascination.

"Is she going to be okay?" asked Elu.

"We hope so," Suzie replied sadly. She was doing her best to be a big girl and not burst into tears but it was difficult.

Ranna and Rika laid Renamon gently on the ground and laid her out, Rika carefully making sure she wasn't lying on her own tail. Then they looked up and waited for the others to arrive.

It didn't take very long before it finally did. Almost appearing out of the shadows as if by magic, Aayla hurtled into camp, with Terriermon swooping behind her and Henry, tired and panting but still strong, running several metres behind.

"Alright everyone," said Aayla. "Let's get Renamon ready for transportation," she said as she pulled to a stop beside the unconscious Digimon, Terriermon landing on her shoulder in almost the same instance.

"How are we going to get her to the rendezvous point?" asked Rika imploringly.

"Perhaps if we slung her over the front of a BARC speeder?" asked Terriermon.

"That would not be a good idea," Ranna shook her head. "Do that and you'll probably worsen her condition. If Renamon is to be moved then it will have to be done with extreme care."

Terriermon and Rika glanced at each other, both thinking the same thing at the same time.

At that point, with a heavy flapping sound, Turuiemon whooshed over the trees and soared into the campsite. The young Togrutas backed away in fear, not having witnessed a digivolution before and so not knowing who she was, but Turuiemon didn't have time to explain. She alighted beside Aayla and held up the plant matter in her hand.

"Here's the cure," she said. "This is the reeksa root."

"Excellent," said Aayla. "Keep that thing close, okay?"

"The only way I'll let go of this thing is if I'm passing it to a skilled medic," Turuiemon assured them.

"Turuiemon," said Suzie. "Maybe you can take Renamon with you in the air, because we can't throw her over a speeder."

"I'd be more than happy to ob..."

"No," said Terriermon. "This is my doing. I'm the one who knocked her into the river. And since you got the reeksa root, Turuiemon, I should be the one to carry Renamon."

Aayla nodded – and she would have done even if there had been time to argue. "Alright then," she said. "Prepare yourself then. I'll get Renamon."

Terriermon turned and gave a pointed look at Henry, while Aayla dropped to her knees and slipped one arm under Renamon's knees and the other under her shoulders, carefully picking up her good friend. Henry took Terriermon's hint and whipped out his D-Arc and a card, which turned blue.

"Digi-modify!" he cried. "Matrix Digivolution Activate!"

Terriermon ignored the gasps of the young Togrutas as he grew into his Ultimate form. **"TERRIERMON MATRIX-DIGIVOLVE TO... RAPIDMON!"**

The enormous cyborg-bunny towered over everyone present but at least half a body's length again, but he got down on one slender knee in front of Aayla and held out the two bazookas that were his arms. Aayla smiled at him and carefully laid Renamon in her arms of her now much bigger mate. Rapidmon tenderly pressed Renamon to his chest, the cannons which were normally capable of catastrophic destruction nursing her like a newborn.

"Be careful with her," said Aayla.

"Trust me, I'll treat her as if she's an ice sculpture," said Rapidmon.

"Let's hurry," said Aayla. "Head for the rendezvous point. Henry, you're with me. Turuiemon, can you take Suzie and Rika."

"Of course," nodded Turuiemon, already in the process of helping Suzie onto her back and between her wings and wrapping her arms around Rika. Henry followed Aayla to the nearest speeder bike and as the Twi'lek hopped on, he jumped on behind her and wrapped his arms around her stomach to make sure he stayed on.

"Let's go," said Aayla.

"Wait!" shouted Elu. "What about..."

"Don't worry," said Aayla, smiling at him. "All your family are still very much alive and kicking, but the same won't be said for Renamon unless we leave now. Bye, kids."

The Togruta children and Ranna waved goodbye as Aayla and Henry zoomed off on their speeder, while Rapidmon and Turuiemon took to the air and flew after them, both carrying their passengers with utmost care.

"Hold on, Rena," said Rapidmon. "It won't be long now."

As they raced through and above the forest, with Rapidmon and Turuiemon sailing above the canopy and Aayla steering her BARC speeder around the trunks down below, the Twi'lek Jedi Knight momentarily slowed her vehicle to avoid crashing into trees and skilfully continued to steer using only one hand. The other hand moved close to her mouth as she spoke into the comlink on her wrist.

"Jedi cruiser, come in," she said. "This is General Secura and it's an emergency."

The voice of a clone broke through the comlink. "Yes, General. How can I help?"

"Two things," said Aayla. "Firstly, we're going to need a gunship down at the rendezvous point as quickly as possible. Renamon is seriously ill and we need to get her back on board as quickly as we can."

"Right away, sir," said the clone.

"And secondly," said Aayla. "Has the medical frigate docked with one of the cruisers yet?"

"Yes, General," said the clone. "It's awaiting your arrival right now. Is there anything you want me to tell the crew?"

"Just tell them to prepare as much of the antidote for the Blue Shadow Virus as possible," said Aayla. "We have the key ingredient, the reeksa root, with us and we'll bring it up with Renamon."

"Alright General. Gunship's on its way."

"Thank you," said Aayla. She deactivated her comlink and accelerated her bike to catch up with Turuiemon and Rapidmon, who had gotten ahead during that conversation. Rapidmon was flying much slower than he usually would, but was still going rather fast. He didn't dare go any faster though, in case Renamon's condition worsened as a result.

Rika, from where she was being held firmly in Turuiemon's arms, watched Rapidmon and Renamon with an expression of anguish, concern for her partner welling up inside her. She shut her eyes and found herself mentally speaking a prayer, something which she had never done before. The prayer went to any god out there, but it focused on one in particular – the only one she had actually met – Fanglongmon.

_Fanglongmon,_ she whispered in her mind. _I don't know if you can use your godly powers to see any of this but if you know what's going on, please, please, please keep Renamon safe. Please make sure she survives this mess. I can't lose her. I just can't._

Eventually they arrived at the rendezvous point. Rapidmon and Turuiemon landed gently on the ground, while Aayla pulled her BARC speeder to a halt and then hopped off it, allowing Henry to clamber off as well.

"I can see the gunship," Suzie pointed upwards from Turuiemon's shoulders, as her partner's wings disappeared back into her back. The others followed her gaze and indeed there was a large white ship descending towards them at high speed.

"Good timing," said Henry. The others nodded.

The gunship slowed to a halt just in front of them, turning so it was side on and descending slowly and delicately to the ground, the wind from its descent whipping through the hair and clothing of everyone present. Rapidmon turned away slightly to shield Renamon from the blasting wind with his own body.

The blast doors opened and two clones stepped out, saluting Aayla and her friends. They had a hovering stretcher between them and they carefully pushed it forwards. "We're ready for take-off, General," said one of them.

Rapidmon's cannons weren't really designed for putting things down – Renamon would just slide or roll off if her tried, so, just like before, Aayla stepped over to him and carefully took Renamon from his arms and into her own, cautiously laying the yellow fox out of the stretcher. As Turuiemon and Rapidmon de-digivolved back to their Rookie stages, Aayla gently pushed the stretcher into the gunship.

"Come on guys," said Terriermon as he hopped in after her. "Not a moment to lose."

The Tamers, Lopmon and the two clones piled back into the gunship, careful not to jostle the hovering stretcher and disturb the patient. The pilot didn't need to be told to go. He shut the blast doors and steered the gunship back into the air, heading back to the cruisers.

The journey was silent. Rika and Terriermon both stood beside Renamon's head and stared down at her, not even glancing at anyone else. Suzie made to hug Lopmon and Henry, trying not to sniff sadly at their current situation. Aayla watched from nearby, ready to catch Renamon if a sudden jolt knocked her from the stretcher.

Fortunately, none came, and the gunship quickly entered the hangar of the cruiser. As the gunship landed and the doors opened, the occupants wasted no time. Aayla grabbed the end of the stretcher and steered it out, Terriermon hopping onto her shoulder and Rika right beside her. The others weren't far behind.

Aayla pushed the stretcher as quickly as she dared through the hangar and past all the clones who looked astonished the sight of a Digimon looking so weak. The small group quickly traversed a number of corridors through the ship, until they reached the docking station that would lead them to the medical frigate.

"Still got that root, Lopmon?" Aayla broke the long silence.

Lopmon nodded, both her small hands clamped out the large root like a pair of vices. "Right here."

"Hand it to one of the doctors as soon as we get through," said Aayla, opening the doors and pushing Renamon through the short corridor and into the medical frigate.

The walls were bright white and they were extremely clean, so as to ensure no infectious germs could be hiding about the place. The lights were bright and there were a few clones in clothing as white as the walls.

If the clones were surprised by the presence and appearance of the three Digimon, their professional air suppressed it once they saw they pathetically weak-looking Renamon. "We've prepared the majority of the antidote, General," said one of the clones without needing to asked. "Have you got the root we need?"

"Right here," Lopmon jumped up on Renamon's stretcher and passed the root to him. He examined it for a second and nodded.

"This will be perfect," he said. "Please, step this way." The clones led the newcomers through to a smaller medical chamber, where one of the clones carefully moved Renamon from the stretcher to a bed. Another clone hurriedly took a knife and diced up the reeksa root, adding it to a jar of green-coloured liquid that was bubbling slightly and stirring it in. Everyone else hovered anxiously around, no-one wanting to interrupt the clones from their work.

After a minute or so, the clone with the antidote said, "It's ready, sir," and stepped towards Renamon. Another clone gently took Renamon's head in his hands and lifted it up slightly, then moved so that he opened her mouth with one of his hands. The second clone carefully placed the neck of the flask to Renamon's lips and slowly poured the antidote into her mouth.

Rika's hands were over her mouth and Terriermon watched anxiously. "Come on, Rena," he muttered to himself. "Please, please swallow it."

Whether by accident, by instinct or if she somehow heard Terriermon's quiet pleas, Renamon swallowed.

There was a collective sigh of relief around the room, but now only one question remained. Had they been quick enough?

"It'd be best to leave her alone until the medicine has done its job," said a nearby clone. "Try not to disturb her."

The Digimon, the Tamers and Aayla nodded and all found a seat somewhere in the room where they could sit and wait anxiously for something to happen. Their eyes never left Renamon throughout that time.

* * *

Ilyan felt awful, as he watched one of his good friends being born away on a litter made from branches and twine. He knew that he was not to blame for the misfortune that his tribe had been through over the last couple of days, because nobody had had any idea about the plans of the Separatists involving the virus or the cannon until it was far too late. And yet, he still felt responsible for it all. It was his job to guide the tribe through rough times and to safety and he couldn't help but feel he had done a particularly good job.

"So much life lost," he murmured, turning to Alina and Catalin, who were both standing behind him. "On the whim of a single man in the Separatist council. I think I am beginning to fully understand the enormity of the challenge the Jedi face in this war they take part in. I can't help but hope that it never descends onto our soil again."

Catalin nodded, thinking about his long time friend, Lescu, the first casualty of them all. "War," he said. "There is nothing good about it. Why can't the rest of the galaxy take our approach and resolve things peacefully."

"Because," said Ahsoka, walking over to her parents. "Many leaders become drunk on all the power and the money they would receive through the war. That would never happen on Shili because our race don't care for money and riches, but money is, in reality, far more dangerous than any lightsaber."

"True," nodded Ilyan. "You two have a wise daughter."

Alina nodded, smiling. "We know," she said. "And that's the one good thing that I can think of about this war. It allowed us to meet our daughter again."

"But at a terrible price to your tribe," Ahsoka reminded them.

"Never look a gift-akul in the mouth," said Alina, pulling her daughter closer to her. "We will move on, eventually. It is, after all, what we always do."

"You were truly stunning on the battlefield, Ahsoka," Ilyan smiled down at the Togruta Padawan. "A real credit to the tribe. If you had stayed with us instead of going off to be a Jedi – why, we would have every akul on the planet trembling at the mere sight of you."

"I thank you for your compliments, sir," said Ahsoka. "But I am still a learner. You should see Master Yoda when he decides to practice some combat skills. He is just never still, even for a second."

Catalin nodded. "That may be," he said. "But between you and me, I reckon you could take him."

Ahsoka giggled. "I really, really doubt it. I can't win a duel against Aayla or my master yet. But, I'm getting there."

Ahsoka turned to look at the others. Shaak Ti was putting her healing skills to good use and was using the Force to closer a blaster wound in the hip of a faintly groaning Togruta. The clones were dutifully helping the Togrutas to bear the dead away. They had done this often enough with their own men to know what to do?

"What will happen to all those who died today?" asked Ahsoka. "As well as those who died yesterday?"

"We shall bury them," said Catalin. "That way they shall once more be at one with nature and rest in peace forever."

Ahsoka looked down at her bare feet, contemplating the dirt between her toes. "That's good, I suppose," she said. "Just as their spirits are now a part of the Force."

"Exactly," nodded Catalin. "Well, at least this whole ordeal is over now."

"Not completely," said Plo, walking over to them and folding his arms. "We still have the water supply to deal with. Fortunately, this is not a particularly fast-flowing stream that they have decided to place it in, so it won't have gone more than a few leagues, but that is still enough. We shall have to get ahead of it and wipe out the virus before it can infect too many other life-forms."

"How are you going to do that?" asked Alina, curiously.

"We'll probably build a dam or some other construct to obstruct the flow of water down the rest of the stream and then introduce chemicals that will kill the virus but be harmless to humanoids when ingested. Once we are entirely sure that the virus has been eradicated, then we can truly make sure it is extinct once again."

"Where it belongs," added Ahsoka.

"But I thought the Jedi were supposed to conserve all life-forms," chuckled Ilyan.

"Yes, but a virus isn't even properly alive," said Plo. "And you have seen the suffering its mere presence causes. There are exceptions to every rule, you know. We'll also need to make sure that no more of the virus is entering the stream from up ahead."

"Well, there's the way we can find out, Master Plo," said Ahsoka, pointing to the treeline. "Right on cue."

Ilyan, Catalin, Alina and Plo looked in the direction that Ahsoka was pointing and saw the Delta Squad stepping out from the trees. Boss was out in front, pushing a male Koorivar that had his wrists shackled and was wearing filthy orange robes in front of him. Scorch, Sev and Fixer were all walking behind him, steering their BARC speeders by hand. Fixer had attached Boss's speeder to the back of his own and was towing them both at once.

"Yes," said Plo. "That is definitely Passel Argente. I have to hand it to the Digimon, they certainly do seem to be experts at capturing leading Separatist council members. First Wat Tambor, then Shu Mai, then Poggle the Lesser and now him."

"Well, I was involved in all of those too, you know," Ahsoka said, in a false huffing voice, causing Plo to chuckle.

"Indeed you were, Little 'Soka," he said, patting the young Togruta's shoulders.

Boss walked up to Plo and stood to attention, as did the rest of the squad. "Sir," he said. "Our objective was completed as ordered. The reeksa root was recovered, we captured this guy and then Scorch blew up the laboratory. And with quite a big bang too, sir."

"Yes, I know," said Plo. "We could see the cloud of the explosion from here. In fact, we still can," he added, pointing up at the mushroom cloud in the distance.

"You and Terriermon would make really good friends," Ahsoka remarked to Scorch. "He likes big explosions too."

"Is that so, sir?" asked Scorch. "I take it he was responsible for the massive destruction that these trees have been put through then," he gestured to the massive field of debris and destroyed landscape that surrounded them.

"Yep," nodded Ahsoka. "The defoliator cannon did a lot of it, but he did the rest."

"Sounds like we'd get on like a house on fire," chuckled Scorch.

"Yeah," said Sev. "A house that the two of you had set on fire in the first place."

"Yeah, there is that," nodded Scorch emphatically.

"Alright," said Plo, addressing Passel Argente as Boss forced the scheming Magistrate of the Corporate Alliance to his knees. "We need to have a little talk, Passel. And you are going to answer all of our questions one way or another."

Passel scowled in anger and annoyance. "I shall not reveal any information about the Separatists to you. Not now, not ever. If Count Dooku ever mounted a rescue operation then I would be forever shamed and possibly struck off the Council."

"Well, that's alright then," said Ahsoka. "Because where you're going, there's no chance of you breaking out."

"The Republic is not infallible," said Passel confidently. "There is conclusive proof of that because I heard that a common Bounty Hunter managed to raid the Senate and set a heavily guarded prisoner free. I will be rescued one day, as will the other members of the council you have taken."

"I highly doubt that," said Shaak Ti as she walked over to join the conversation. "You're hardly going to be held in a normal Republic prison. You're going to head to the cells in the Jedi Temple itself. Rescue from that place is practically impossible."

"What?" Passel cried. "No! You can't do that."

"We can and we will," said Ahsoka. "You're not going to be telling of your buddies about our big, purple, long-eared friend anytime soon."

"That creature?" asked Passel. "It will not stay hidden for long. We have spies everywhere."

"We are aware of that," said Plo. "And you'd be surprised at how well a Jedi can keep a secret. Now, I want you to tell us one thing in particular. The Blue Shadow Virus. How were you putting it into the river? Was it from a bunch of crates that you just tipped over, or have you built a tap to send it directly from the lab to the stream?"

"I will tell you nothing," said Passel.

"We'll see about that," Sev growled, the knife in his wrist armour extending and gleaming in the sunlight.

"No, Sev," Shaak Ti raised a hand to calm the rampant clone. "There is to be no interrogating by using fear. We do not do things that way. We have other means with which to get him to talk."

"You should tell your purple friend that," spat Passel. "The creature pulled a blade to my throat and swore to kill me if I didn't tell her where to find that godforsaken root and she damn well meant it too."

"Did she now?" asked Plo.

"Yes, she did. And I demand that you have her struck from your forces immediately."

Ahsoka laughed. "You don't seriously think that you're in any position to make any demands of any kind, do you? And besides, Turuiemon is our friend, not our soldier. We don't tell her what to do."

"And considering how it was your creation that was killing one of her family," said Plo. "Her actions were justifiable. That does not make what she did right – at least not by our standards – but nevertheless I can see why she did it. I shall have a word with her about her methods, but I will not take any further action than that. Now, answer my question."

"Not a chance," Passel cried.

Plo raised his clawed hand, and for a moment Passel thought the Kel Dor Jedi Master was going to strike him across the face. But, suddenly, Ahsoka interrupted and said, "Wait, Master Plo."

"Yes, Little 'Soka?" asked Plo.

"Can I do it?" asked Ahsoka. "I've been practicing the technique and I think I know how to do it properly. I just need a test subject, and now that we've got one..."

"Of course you can, Ahsoka," nodded Shaak Ti. "Practice in the field is, after all, much better for building up your experience."

"I've lost track of this conversation," said Catalin.

"Don't worry, Dad," said Ahsoka. "You'll see. Hopefully. Right, let's see if this works." She shut her eyes and gathered her mind, before opening them and raising one hand, with her fingers outstretched. Focusing on Passel's mind, she waved her hand in a line from left to right in front of Passel's face and said, slowly and deliberately, "You will tell us what we want to know."

Passel paused for a moment, his expression turning rather blank for a second, and then he said, "I will tell you what you want to know."

"Yes!" Ahsoka grinned triumphantly. "My first successful Jedi Mind Trick."

"The Blue Shadow Virus is being pumped into the river by a pipe that runs from the lab to the river," said Passel, still with a blank expression. "Since the lab has been destroyed, the feed will have been shut off but there is probably still a lot of the virus left in the pipe."

"Very well," said Shaak Ti. "I shall go and locate this pipe. Then we shall know the extent of the virus' range upstream." She raised her hand and performed her own Jedi Mind Trick. "You will take me to the underwater pipe."

"I will take you to the underwater pipe," Passel repeated dutifully and got to his feet. He began to move and Shaak Ti followed him, signalling the Delta Squad to do the same and the group of six headed back into the forest.

"I shall bring him back to the cruisers once I have accomplished this task," Shaak Ti called over her shoulder.

Alina and Catalin were staring at their daughter – now they had a new reason to feel proud of her. "That was amazing, Ahsoka," said Alina. "I've never seen anything like it."

"Ah, any Jedi worth their salt can do that," said Ahsoka. "But that one was my first try on a real person. Plus, it only works on the weak-minded."

"Nevertheless," said Catalin. "That was quite a spectacle."

"Come," said Ilyan. "We must head back to the campsite. There are many things that we have to do before the day is out."

"Indeed," said Plo. "But I'm afraid Little 'Soka and I cannot stay. We must begin the extinction of the virus immediately. And I'm afraid that means you will have to say goodbye."

Alina and Catalin's eyes widened and they turned to stare at their daughter, their throats constricting slightly. Ahsoka glanced at her parents and then at the ground, shuffling her bare feet agitatedly and biting her lip.

"Let's head back to camp first," said Ilyan. The others nodded and the group of five followed the clones and the other Togrutas in the short walk to the campsite. During that time, Ahsoka walked between her mother and father, who both wrapped an arm about her shoulders as they went. The three of them savoured the moment.

* * *

When they got back to the campsite, they found that the young Togrutas were milling about, reluctant to approach the stretchers with the bodies for fear of finding a person they knew or a family member amongst the casualties. Ilyan sighed sorrowfully at the sight. He knew that not all of them were going to see nightfall without shedding more tears. Battle did that to people and that was the harsh reality of war.

Elu ran over to the rest of her family excitedly. "You're back," he said in delight. "And you're all okay. Of course, I knew you would be but I was a little bit worried. Just a little. An incy wincy bit."

Ahsoka chuckled. "What, you were worried? I'm insulted that you even thought there was a tiny possibility that I might die. I'm way too awesome for that."

"Yeah, you're probably right," nodded Elu emphatically. "I bet you could take on practically anyone. What was she like Mum, Dad? How cool was she on the battlefield? Did she do all that swinging and dodging and jumping that she did in the spar with the Twi'lek woman earlier? How many droids did she kill?"

"To answer part of your questions," said Catalin. "She was truly inspirational and yes, she did do all that stuff."

"I wish I could have seen it," Elu groused.

"But I don't think keeps count of how many droids she..."

"Sixty-eight," said Ahsoka brightly, interrupting her father. "I always keep count because sometimes me and my Master have competitions to see who can kill most. Usually he wins but I beat him about a third of the time."

The Togruta family chuckled at this thought. But Plo, standing nearby, said, "Ahsoka, I am sorry to break up this little gathering but I'm afraid it is time to go."

Elu looked shocked and stared incredulously at the Kel Dor. "What? You mean my big sister has to leave already?"

"I'm afraid so, little one," said Plo, with genuine sympathy. "Not to put fine a point on it, but your sister is a Jedi Padawan now, and a Commander in the Republic Army. We have to mop up the mess the Separatists left behind here and there are other battles raging across the galaxy now that may need our support. I am sorry, but we cannot stay."

Elu began to tear up almost immediately. "But... but... but we just met each other. After nine years of wondering what she'd like, I've finally met her and you have to go already. I don't want her to go."

Ahsoka shut her eyes sadly and knelt down in front of her little brother. "I don't want to go either," she said. "I'd rather stay and do some more catching up. But... I can't. Master Plo is right. I am a Jedi and... well, I have duties now."

"Can't you stay just a little longer?" asked Elu, pleadingly.

"I would if I could," said Ahsoka. "But I really can't. Maybe I'll come back and visit from time to time if I have enough of a break from the war but right now..." she sighed, paused for a moment and shut her eyes before finishing. "I have to go."

Elu flung himself upon Ahsoka and hugged her furiously. Ahsoka returned it, and, despite the fact that Jedi were not supposed to form attachments, she felt tears springing into her eyes as well. She knew just how Elu felt – she had had no idea that he existed either and now she had to leave.

Once she stood up and released her brother, she turned to face her parents. "I'm sorry that I couldn't stay longer," she said. "Really, I am."

"It's alright," said Catalin. "We understand. Just as we understood how you needed to become a Jedi back when you were small. The galaxy needs you, Ahsoka. More than we do."

"Your father is right," Alina agreed. "You're a member of the A-Team now. You're a beacon of light and hope for all of the Republic. And you have done us all proud. You're a credit to your tribe, your planet and your race, Ahsoka."

Ahsoka flushed. "Thanks," she said, sheepishly. "Thank you, Mum. Thank you, Dad."

"You're quite welcome," said Catalin.

"So," said Ahsoka. "I guess... I guess this is it. This is goodbye."

"We'll see each other again," said Alina. "I'm sure of it. Know this, Ahsoka. You may be a Jedi now, but no matter what, you will always have a home with us here on Shili. So, if ever you are in trouble and happen to be nearby, you will find welcome with us."

"I appreciate it," said Ahsoka. "And I assume that invitation extends to my friends as well?"

"Of course it does," said Alina, smiling. "And they should be glad to have a friend like you."

"Just promise us one thing," said Catalin. "Look after yourself. Don't take unnecessary risks in the other battles you fight in this war. And make sure that, when you do return, you're still in one piece."

"I will," said Ahsoka. "And thank you. Thank you both."

A few metres away, Plo and Ilyan watched as Ahsoka embraced first her mother and her father. "I think this has been a truly uplifting experience for Ahsoka," said Plo. "Fighting alongside her own family."

"She has certainly come a long way since I last saw her," nodded Ilyan. "Master Plo, if we are ever in trouble again, can I count on your support once more?"

"Of course, my old friend," said Plo. "Just call us and I shall do all I can to help. And Ahsoka will be right there with me. As will the Digimon, Aayla and Anakin probably, for they would do anything to help her."

Ilyan nodded. "I cannot thank you enough."

"There is no need for thanks," said Plo. "Farewell, Ilyan. May the hunting always be good."

Plo stepped forwards. "Come along, Ahsoka. We must be off."

"I know," said Ahsoka. "I'm coming." The Togruta Padawan followed the Jedi Master, walking away from her family, who bunched together behind her and watched her leave.

Ahsoka stopped on the edge of the clearing and turned around. Her family waved. She smiled and waved back to them. Then she turned around again, took a deep breath and followed Master Plo out of the camp. She didn't look back again.

* * *

Nobody in the medical ward made any noise during the length of time they waited for Renamon to show any signs of life. They hardly dared to breath normally, taking in tiny breaths only. Perhaps it was the fact that they were in a hospital of sorts but they sat in silence and waited. Even Suzie, who would normally be bored by now, didn't break the tense atmosphere.

Rika was sitting beside Renamon's head and watched her partner, while Terriermon was also sitting by Renamon's head, on the other side and actually on the bed itself. He and Lopmon had pulled the white covers of the bed over Renamon's inert form earlier, but now he sat, with his head in his hands. He felt himself sitting in a metaphorical puddle of guilt. He just couldn't shake the feeling that this was all his fault.

He sighed, and stared into his mate's face, hoping to spot any sign of recovery at all. But there was nothing. Then again, there was nothing to suggest she was getting worse either.

He gritted his teeth. The tense atmosphere was really beginning to grind on him. It was grinding on the others too. Rika just her eyes and appeared to be praying. Terriermon glanced at the others and saw Aayla staring at him. Sympathy was etched across her face and Terriermon offered her a half-smile, but that was about all he could muster right now.

Minutes ticked slowly by, and as they did, Terriermon became aware of a slight tingling in the back of his brain. He frowned and moved a hand to scratch the back of his head, then realised that probably wouldn't help. And now the tingly feeling was spreading across the rest of his brain too, until his whole brain felt like it had pins and needles.

Just like a body part that had been asleep for a long period of time.

Terriermon's eyes widened and his gaze flew to Renamon's face. She hadn't made any moves yet, but Terriermon was pretty sure he knew what was happening. He leaned over Renamon's face and whispered to her. "Rena, wake up," he said – his quite whisper catching the attention of everyone in the room. "I know you're in there, Rena," he said. "Wake up. Please."

Renamon's nose suddenly twitched. Everyone sat up at this sign of life and stared intently at her, watching with bated breath. Renamon's closed eyes scrunched up even further and she moaned slightly, her body shifting under the covers.

Terriermon's face split into his biggest beam ever and he looked up at Rika, who was looking equally happy. Their hearts felt like they were about to explode with relief, and the bunny reached over and offered Rika a high-five with his ear, which she accepted. The others all got to their feet and gathered around the bed.

When Renamon opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was her beloved mate smiling down into her face. She didn't need to ask what had happened, because from the moment she regained consciousness, everything that had happened over the last few hours was uploaded to her mind via Terriermon's. She smiled weakly at him.

"Hello Terriermon," she said, and leaned forwards to give him a quick peck on the lips.

Rika cheered and wrapped her arms around Renamon, who slowly got up until she was sitting and returned the hug. The others were all too relieved to say anything. Suzie hugged Henry, Terriermon joined the hug Rika and Renamon were having and Aayla sat on the edge of Renamon's bed, her lips curved upwards in a relieved smile.

Only Lopmon stepped forward. "Are you okay, Renamon?"

"I've been better," said Renamon. "But I am okay now, thanks to the efforts of everyone in this room. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to each and every one of you. And Lopmon, that was quite the interrogation you gave to that Separatist guy."

Lopmon flushed. "Well, you were in danger and..."

"I understand," Renamon nodded. "And trust me, I would do the same were I in your plimsolls at the time."

Lopmon grinned.

Rika didn't bother to hide her tears. "I was so worried about you, Renamon," she whispered into Renamon's mane.

"I know, Rika," said Renamon, as the Digimon soothingly tightened her embrace. "I know."

"We would have missed you, Renamon," said Aayla. "I'm glad you're out of that coma."

"As am I," Renamon winked at the Twi'lek. "And thanks for catching me when I fell."

"Let's not make it a regular thing," said Aayla. "I almost had a heart attack when you collapsed."

"I certainly don't plan on doing this again," Renamon chuckled. "Ever."

"No, I didn't think you would," Aayla chuckled back.

* * *

The group of heroes stayed together for a few minutes, talking about their relative experiences throughout the last few hours. But, some time later, one of the white-garbed medical clones stepped in through the sliding doors.

"Ah, I see you are awake," he nodded to his yellow-furred patient. "How are you feeling? Are there any remnants from your ordeal?"

"I feel a little light-headed," said Renamon. "But other than that I feel fine. I thank you and your fellow clones from the bottom of my Digi-core for helping me."

"Well, we have to do our jobs, miss," said the clone. "And while I hate to break up the little gathering, I'm afraid I must insist that everyone leave and give the patient a chance to rest. You may feel better but you need a good sleep before you'll be one-hundred percent better."

"Of course," nodded Aayla. "Come along then. Follow the doctor's advice everyone."

"Okay, okay, we're going," said Suzie. "Get well soon, Renamon."

"Alright," chuckled Renamon. "I fully intend to."

Everyone got up from their respective seats and headed towards the door. Except for one person. Henry stopped by the door and turned to find that Terriermon was still sitting besides Renamon. "Terriermon, aren't you coming?" he asked. "You heard the doctor. Renamon needs rest."

"Erm," said Terriermon. "Can... can I just have a few minutes here first. There's... something I want to say. I'll only be a few minutes and then I'll leave."

Henry knew that Terriermon could simply talk to Renamon with his mind if he so wished, but he got the feeling that Terriermon wanted to say it when he was face to face with Renamon. He smiled at his partner and said, "Alright. Five minutes, okay? And then you get out here and let Renamon get some sleep."

"Alright," said Terriermon. Henry quietly backed out of the room and slid the door back in place.

"Well, Terriermon?" asked Renamon, picking her mate up with one hand and placing it in her lap. "What do you want?"

"I think we both know the answer to that question," said Terriermon, wringing his hands nervously and sighing in a guilty way. "Look, Renamon. I am so, so, so, so sorry for what I did to you. Because of my lack of sense and over-carefree habits I managed to get you infected with perhaps the most deadly virus in the entire galaxy, possibly this entire universe. I... I honestly..." Terriermon struggled to find the right words, while Renamon watched him carefully. "I'm sorry," he repeated eventually.

Renamon felt a warm smile spreading over her features. "Terriermon, you've already had a discussion with Lopmon about how this wasn't your fault. Do you really need another one with me?"

"But it was my fault. I'm the one that knocked you over and sent you rolling into the river. I'm the one that got you infected."

"Yes," said Renamon. "You did knock me over without thinking of all possible consequences, but you are still not to blame. You couldn't have known that the river was filled with a deadly virus. You couldn't have known that there was rock halfway down that hill that would take me feet out from underneath me."

"But I shouldn't have needed to know," said Terriermon. "Ugh, I should have just curbed my eccentricity and then you wouldn't have ever gotten ill."

"Terrierrmon," Renamon stroked her mate's back in a slow, soothing manner that she knew he liked. "We can argue back and forth about who's to blame, but hear this. The only one to blame really is Passel Argente, for introducing that virus to the water system in the first place. You, on the other hand, are not to blame for a simple accident, which could, let's be honest, happen to anyone. It is true that perhaps you can learn something from this – less lollygagging in a potential danger area, but you... are... innocent."

Terriermon sighed and stretched under the caress of his taller mate. "Alright," he said. "Okay. From now on, I promise you that I will curb my endless joking and pranking and..."

"No!" Renamon said sharply, so sharply that Terriermon started and blinked in surprise. "I said less lollygagging in a "danger area." Not in general. I love you, Terriermon, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life with you as my one and only mate. But I want to spend my life with the fun-loving, joking and often absurd bunny that I mated with a year ago, and not anyone else."

"Are... are you sure?" asked Terriermon, surprised.

"Yes," said Renamon firmly. "Anything else wouldn't feel right to me. It'd feel fake, and if it didn't I wouldn't like it anyway. I've come to love your endless silly antics, Terriermon. And don't ever, ever even think about changing just because of this. Remain as Terriermon-y as you've always been. For me."

Terriermon stared up at Renamon from his position in her lap. And a warm smile slowly spread over his face. He shut his eyes and shook his head. "I don't deserve a mate like you, Rena. You are truly the best, and I couldn't ask for a better mate."

"None of that, Terriermon," Renamon said, warningly. "Of course you deserve me. Think about all the times you have pulled through to save the world in the past. Think about all the times you have saved me. You saved me from getting sexually abused by Goro, you saved me from Ogudomon and now you've saved me again. You are a true hero, Terriermon, and don't let anyone else tell you anything different. Here's a situation where you should take your favourite advice and Momentai."

"Thanks," said Terriermon, not in the least concerned by the fact that Renamon had used his word. "Thank you for not hating me or spurning me."

"I could never do either of those things to you again, Terriermon. You've changed my for the better and come through for me time and time again. Like I said, you deserve me for your mate, and, just as you said, I couldn't ask for a better one."

Terriermon blushed. Renamon lifted him up higher, so that he was perched in her arms at chest-height. "And do you know what else you deserve?" Renamon asked.

"What?" asked Terriermon, though he already knew what was going to happen next.

"This," Renamon captured Terriermon's lips with her own and plunged her tongue inside his mouth, giving him a full-blown French Kiss right there on the hospital bed. Terriermon responded in kind and the two of them sat there, engrossed in the kiss for a full minute. Neither of them noticed Aayla or Rika peering at them from around the door and smiling with happiness at the sight of the couple.

Even if they had noticed, they would have just kept going. It was practically impossible but the experience of Shili seemed to have made the bond between Renamon and Terriermon deeper than it had ever been before.

* * *

Well, wasn't that an emotion filled chapter. I won't bother going into any more detail about the eradication of the virus, particularly since I really have no idea how they'd do it since they didn't mention anything about cleaning the river in the series. Let's just say that the Jedi carried out their work with efficiency and the Blue Shadow Virus is extinct once more by the time the next arc starts.

Will Ahsoka's family return?

Perhaps. But I'm not saying anything.

Please leave a nice review. I'd greatly appreciate it.

* * *

Next time...

Megidramon has been unleashed once more and this time he's in the Human World. That means a massive feral Digimon on the rampage in Tokyo and the Tamers must stop him without hurting their friend.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 70 : Wrath of the Hazard**


	70. Wrath of the Hazard

Well, I finally got all those nasty, bloody assignments out of the way, so I can focus more on writing this than writing about an expedition that happened hundreds of years ago or something. Well, I'm sure you all want to know what's happening to poor old Guilmon, so I'm going to cut short this introduction and allow you to read on. I tried to make it as inventive as I could.

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* * *

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 70:- Wrath of the Hazard**

* * *

It was almost funny – how these days Tokyo could wake up to a calm, peaceful and incredibly sound day, with bright weather, fair skies and crisp air which would make anyone happy, only to have that day turn into an enormous ball of terror only a few hours later.

But that seemed to be happening more and more frequently these days. And on this particular day, one of the most terrifying-looking monster the citizens of Tokyo had ever seen was on the loose. And that monster had been living in the city for months without scaring anybody, until now.

People screamed and leapt out of their cars, preferring to trust their legs over the traffic as the enormous, black, winged shape swooped over the buildings, its huge whip-like tail lashing about behind it and the vast bat-like wings knocking people on ground level over with the gusts of wind they produced with each and every flap. The streets became awash with panicking crowds as they dashed for safety, even though there was no actual safety from something like the Great Dragon Digimon.

Megidramon's blazing red eyes roamed over the city as he swept overhead, his feral and one-track mind thinking of one thing and one thing only, something to fight. The flesh creatures below him were of no consequence – all they were doing was screaming and running away. Hardly worth the effort. Megidramon roared, drool flying from his jagged-tooth maw to crash on the hoods of the cars below and melt them into slag.

A lone policeman down below spotted the gigantic red dragon sweeping in his direction. Horror-struck, he dove behind his vehicle that was parked by the road and pulled out his pistol, cowering behind the car and raising his weapon, blasting at the giant airborne reptile. The bullets pinged off Megidramon's chest harmlessly but the dragon definitely noticed them. He looked down, searching for his attacker, and saw the bright flashes of the gun as it unloaded the bullets at him.

Megidramon bellowed in anger and swept his wings down hard, shooting over the policeman and knocking him down with the terrific burst of wind from his wings. The policeman tried to scramble up, thankful to be alive, but Megidramon came around for another pass, diving lower and dropping into the street, his wings curling to his sides.

The policeman yelped and grabbed his walkie-talkie. "All units!" he cried into it. "There's a rogue dragon on-"

Megidramon roared, drowning out his next words and launching a terrific blast of fire from his jaws, not even bothering to call out the attack name. The attack itself was Megiddo Flame and the flames washed over the entire street. The policeman never stood a chance and was wiped out instantly, along with his car and all the other cars in the streets.

Megidramon landed beside the smoking remnant of his attack, his tail propping him up. He brandished his claws and roared to the sky, anger layering upon anger as he unfurled his wings, so wide that they touched the buildings on either side of the street with ease. He wasn't thinking anymore. The only thing in his mind now was one single word:-

Kill!

Megidramon howled in fury as he lunged at a nearby building. His enormous claws tore out enormous chunks of concrete wall and sent them flying through the air and Megidramon continued to savagely tear into the side of the building. Fire leaked from his jaws, gushing out from between his enormous teeth as he spat a second Megiddo Flame through the gap he had just made. Any humans inside the building were fried alive as the attack gushed throughout the complex. Every window shattered as flames poured out from them and just like that, the whole building was ablaze.

Megidramon's enormous tail wasn't still either. It lashed out and struck the building on the opposite side of the street smashing through the wall and tossing debris into the street. Megidramon's wings flapped wildly as the Mega-level Dragon Digimon tore the street apart, swinging around and ripping through walls, the lashing tail cracking the road and throwing up parts of the street. The humans still surviving screamed and fled, but many was caught and consumed by the furious flames.

Megidramon bellowed again, not satisfied at the carnage and, with one final swing at a building that tore the roof right off, he swept his wings and took to the air once more. Rising above the buildings like a titan out of hell's inferno, Megidramon launched a Megiddo Flame into the sky, writhing and spinning on the spot and practically setting the clouds on fire, creating a massive plume of flames above the buildings. Bursting through his own attack with one mighty sweep, he descended again, sweeping another Megiddo Flame down another street, incinerating everything in its path.

Megidramon went deeper and deeper into the city, carving a path of destruction as he went. A bridge that crossed the street caught his eye. It was a railway bridge and a long passenger train was whooshing across it. Megidramon descended upon it in his fury, his tail wrapping around the bridge and the train and heaving upwards, splintering both and sending the train carriages into the air, while those that were disconnected fell into the street. He snagged one carriage in his clawed hand as it fell past and flung it, causing it to smash into the side of an apartment complex and explode, showering the street with debris.

Megidramon looked up and saw his way was blocked by a taller than average building that rose up above him. But Megidramon simply saw it as a foe that needed taking out and her spurred himself forward. His literally rammed the building as if he were a battering ram and burst straight through it, appearing out the other side in a shower of glass and concrete chunks. He roared again, and spat yet another Megiddo Flame into the air.

The masses of fleeing citizens included Takato's mother, Mie Matsuki, who had been out in town to buy new supplies while leaving Takehiro in charge of the bakery. She looked up in shock and horror as Megidramon burst out of the building and spat the flames. "Oh dear lord!" she cried, falling backwards on her backside and dropping the shopping she had collected. Megidramon was right above her now. And the red colouration combined with the design looked extremely familiar, if drastically altered.

"Guilmon?" Mie gasped in shock. "It can't be. It... that can't be Guilmon, can it?"

Her cries of horror caught Megidramon's attention and the growling, snarling dragon looked down, spotting her sitting on the pavement, paralyzed by fear. He bellowed in anger and descended towards her, his massive jaws opening as he prepared for his first meal. Mie screamed and shut her eyes as acidic drool fell all around her.

A black blur shot downwards and scooped her up at the last second, shooting out of the way just as Megidramon's snout crashed into the ground and he bit through an enormous chunk of the road, swallowing the shopping. Mie looked up at her rescuer, finding herself staring into the hard and angry face of Beelzemon.

"Wha- what's going on?" Mie asked him – she'd seen Beelzemon close up before and knew who he was. "Was that thing... was it..."

"Yeah," said Beelzemon gravely, setting down and placing Mie back on the road some distance away from the dragon that had tried to eat her. "That's Guilmon alright."

"What happened to him?" Mie asked, staring at the dragon which was shaking its head and sending concrete bits flying from inside his mouth. "He's so... different."

"That..." said Beelzemon, "is a very good question."

* * *

Megidramon reared upwards and roared furiously, angry that his prey had escaped him. His head swung about, in search of a new target, and spotted the Demon Lord Digimon some distance away, standing beside the woman that he had just tried to eat. Megidramon's one-track mind was suddenly pricked by something else. He recognized that black Digimon. It was the one that had defeated him before. It was a little different, but it was definitely him.

Now Megidramon had two thoughts running through his mind.

Kill!

Revenge!

With a roar that shook the subway in the street below, Megidramon launched himself back into the air, thrusting up from the ground with his bladed arms and he barrelled towards Beelzemon and Mie. His tail undulated behind him and further increased his speed as he soared towards his target.

* * *

"Whu-oh!" Beelzemon cried. "Time to go!" He grabbed Mie unceremoniously around the middle and whooshed into the air with a burst of his black-feathered wings, powering high and fast to escape above the buildings. Megidramon's massive jaws snapped just behind his tail, narrowly missing his target. Nevertheless, Beelzemon was once again subjected to Megidramon's saliva which splashed over his back. Beelzemon winced and gritted his teeth at the burning sensation, but he ignored it as best as he could and motored further into the air, carrying the screaming woman with him.

Megidramon followed, his own wings snapping out and sweeping him skyward.

Beelzemon risked a glance down as Mie shouted, "He's coming after us! Quick!" Megidramon's jaws were wide open, ready to snap shut in a moment's notice around the two and his huge wings powered back and forth with a steady motion. Beelzemon was having to flap frantically to stay ahead of giant dragon and was getting higher and higher above the buildings.

Beelzemon's eyes locked with his adversaries. Megidramon's glare looked even more untamed and mad than it had the last time, and Beelzemon was not willing to get into a second wrestling match with him.

The Demon Lord saw Megidramon's open maw begin to glow orange on the inside. On instinct, he pulled one wing in and rolled to the side, Takato's mother screaming the whole way. The maelstrom of flame that burst from Megidramon's mouth narrowly missed them both, and Beelzemon took the opportunity to change course while Megidramon's view was obscured by his own attack. He initiated a dive, pulling his wings in close and angling himself downwards.

"Hold on tight, Mrs. Matsuki," he cried. "This can be a little bit frightening for first timers."

Mie shut her eyes as the wind rushed through her hair, clenching her mouth shut for fear that if she opened it to scream, she'd be sick. And it was a good thing she did, because her silence meant Megidramon took several moments to locate them again and begin the pursuit once more.

Beelzemon descended towards the park, where he knew the others would be. If Ai and Mako were watching this through their D-Arc, they would know that Takato's mother was in serious danger and they would hopefully be able to think of something to change that.

Megidramon swept down after him, preparing another Megiddo Flame attack. But he was completely unprepared for what happened next. Cyberdramon suddenly swooped in from the side and tackled the side of Megidramon's face. The force of the blow knocked Megidramon off balance and his gaze was snapped away from Beelzemon. Cyberdramon fired a **"DESOLATION CLAW!" **at the viral Mega, smashing him in the side on the head with multiple shots from his claws. The blasts did little damage but they allowed Beelzemon to escape with Takato's mother.

Megidramon roared in fury and powered towards Cyberdramon. The other dragon was violent, but not suicidal and the Ultimate quickly dashed out of the way as Megidramon's jaws snapped shut behind him, and ducked under a swing from the clawed arms. Cyberdramon thought quickly and began to adopt a hit and run approach, sticking close to Megidramon's body where attacking him would be difficult and throwing attacks at him. He was just an irritant to the Mega, but he provided an adequate distraction from everything else.

* * *

Beelzemon soared down to where the others were standing in the park and carefully placed Mie Matsuki on the ground. The brown-haired woman collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath. Everyone else stared upwards at Megidramon, flailing about in the air and trying to hit the elusive Cyberdramon.

All except Takato. The goggle-headed boy couldn't bear to look at his partner. He was on his hands and knees in the grass, his eyes clamped shut and whimpering piteously. He could hardly be blamed. The last time Megidramon had shown up had been the worst moment of his life and now he was back. Unpleasant memories were being dragged back to the surface as he remembered what his rage had done to his best friend.

The part of him that was still functioning thought that he know had a vague idea of what Beelzemon had been going through with all his flashbacks.

"Not again," he whined, placing his head in his hands and curling into a ball on his knees. "Not again. Why did it have to happen again? I can't believe this is happening."

Takato felt like the bottom of his stomach had dropped straight through the earth. He was wishing desperately that this wasn't real, or that it would all go away. But there was no Digi-Gnome to grant his wishes this time. Megidramon was real.

"Takato," Jeri knelt next to him. "Snap out of it. Please."

"I can't," Takato shook his head wildly, refusing to look at Jeri. "I can't. Why did Megidramon have to come back? What did I do wrong this time? I was angry at GranDracmon but I kept my temper, I swear."

"It wasn't you this time, Takato," said Jeri. "It must have been GranDracmon. That Eye of the Gorgon attack must have done something to poor Guilmon that caused all this. It wasn't your fault this time."

Takato barely heard her, too absorbed in feeling miserable for both himself and for Guilmon. He had done this, he was sure of it. He was the worst Digimon Tamer in the universe to allow this to happen to his Digimon not just once, but twice. None of the others had ever done anything like this so why did it always happen to him?

"Takato, think about this," said Jeri.

"This can't be your fault. All of us who saw the last time Megidramon came into existence saw how you reacted, how angry you were. We all know that it wasn't you, isn't that right, guys?"

"She's right, Chumley," said Kazu. "You definitely didn't go all psycho on us this time around. Listen to her, it was blatantly GranDracmon that did this."

"He is seeking to mess with us," agreed Guardromon. "Mess up the group from the inside."

"You can't let it get to you," nodded Kenta. MarineAngemon nodded emphatically but didn't say anything.

Ryo tore his gaze away from his partner, who had just narrowly avoided being snagged by Megidramon's thrashing tail and turned to Takato, who was now looking up at the others with a mixture of anguish and relief – relief that it wasn't his fault but anguish because it was happening anyway. "What matters is this, Takato," he said. "Last time you did cause it, that much is true. But you were also able to break him out of it. How did you do it."

"I'm not entirely sure," said Takato, risking a glance up at Megidramon but looking away at the very first glimpse of him. "It was like I had some kind of weird dream where I entered Guilmon's mind or something. It was like I was in a room with lots of Guilmons floating around, but when I said that I only wanted the one true Guilmon, he was illuminated by a red light. I ran over and grabbed him and then I was back in the Digital World and Megidramon had turned back into Guilmon."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"What?" asked Takato, because, despite everything that was going on, everyone was staring at him like he'd gone completely insane. "That's what happened."

"Well, I don't think we should count on that happening again," said Ryo. "If it happened at all."

"Hey..."

"Anyway," said Kazu, interrupting the indignant Takato. "I vote we try the whole "Guilmon, don't you remember me" routine, and try and break through to Megidramon. Let's keep the hallucinations to a minimum."

"But will that work?" asked Jeri, who now had her D-Arc in her hand. "This thing says that GranDracmon's Eye of the Gorgon gazes into the opponent's heart, enslaving them to the darkness within. Will we be able to pull Guilmon back from that."

"The bond between Digimon and Tamer is strong," said Ryo. "We'll have to hope that it's enough."

"But if that's what the attack does," said Kenta. "Then why didn't GranDracmon just use it on Beelzemon? He's the one that GranDracmon wants to join his armies."

"Good question," nodded Ryo. "Perhaps it doesn't work on him because he was purified by an angel Digimon. Magnadramon's gift to him might be keeping him from being enslaved by force."

Beelzemon's eyes widened slightly, and he resolved to give Magnadramon a hug or something if he ever saw her again. A simple thank you definitely wouldn't be enough.

"But first, we're going to have to get Megidramon to actually listen to Takato," said Ryo. "And that's going to be hard." He glanced upwards and saw Cyberdramon narrowly avoid being cooked by a burst of Megiddo Flame. "If we had MegaGargomon or Cherubimon with us we could use them to pin him to the ground or something, but none of the Megas we have will be big enough to do that."

"Then we need to take the only other option," nodded Kazu. "Get him to de-digivolve back to Guilmon somehow. Then, it'll be easy to pin him down so Takato can talk to him."

"Are we going to have to beat him up or something?" asked Jeri.

"No!" Takato cried. "You can do that! You might kill him!"

"Maybe we won't have to," said Beelzemon. "Remember how we managed to solve the problem when Cyberdramon went on the rampage in Digital World, Ryo. Hand me that Reverse Digivolve card and we'll give that a shot. I am most at fault here because GranDracmon wants me, so I'll be the one to change him back."

"Good idea," nodded Ryo, pulling said card from his deck and handing it to Beelzemon, who in turn tossed it to Mako.

"Be ready with that thing," he said. "I'm going up!"

Mako nodded wordlessly and Ai passed him the D-Arc from around her neck. Beelzemon spread his great wings once more and took off, beating his wings once a second in order to gain height as he ascended towards the flailing Mega and the furiously dodging Ultimate.

* * *

Cyberdramon flung a Cyber Nail that clobbered Megidramon in the snout, but, once again, Megidramon barely noticed and lunged forward with gnashing teeth. The duel of the dragons was definitely very one-sided right now, but Cyberdramon managed to dodge once more, but this time he had to veer in almost the opposite direction straight away to avoid getting smashed by one of Megidramon's furiously flapping wings.

Beelzemon winged his way up, shooting past Megidramon's spine and getting up his target. Down on the ground, Mako took this as the right moment and swiped the card, while everyone else looked on, praying that it would work. "Digi-modify! Apocalymon's Reverse Digivolve Activate!"

Just as it had all those months ago, when Cyberdramon had been the one doing the attacking, Beelzemon felt his arms being drawn together to form the enormous, metallic claw that the final villain of Digimon Adventure 01 had many of. Beelzemon gritted his teeth and cried **"REVERSE DIGIVOLVE!"** as he aimed the claw at Megidramon's back. The claw shot forwards on the DNA-like arm, opening to grab Megidramon between his wings.

But some sixth sense must have warned Megidramon, or he reacted to Beelzemon's cry, because he swung around and saw the claw heading right for him. His eyes narrowed even further and he howled at the oncoming claw. But this wasn't an ordinary howl. His jaws opened to their limits and the roar that escaped them was immense, pulsing a massive shockwave of sound in Beelzemon's direction. Beelzemon roared in pain as the noise pounded at his eardrums and the shockwaves shattered the metal claw that his hands had become, rendering it completely useless.

As Beelzemon's hands morphed back to normal, leaving his hands thankfully uninjured, Beelzemon reeled as Megidramon continued the blasting noise. Through clenched eyes he saw Megidramon approaching him, jaws extended as he continued the attack on the move, and getting ready to swallow Beelzemon whole, like he tried to do the first time over.

Beelzemon was unable to move away, as he spasmed in pain at the noise, but help was at hand. Megidramon had forgotten about Cyberdramon, who swooped in and fired a Desolation Claw. The attack struck Megidramon in the base of each of his enormous wings, throwing him off-balance for a few moments and stopping his attack. This allowed Beelzemon to clear his head and flap out of the way, resulting in another near miss.

* * *

"Well, so much for that idea," said Kenta.

"What was that?" asked Kazu. "That was a devastating attack?"

"I think that was his Dragon Howling," said Ryo, his D-Arc scanning Megidramon. "A very appropriate name for it."

"Great," Takato groaned. "What are we going to do now? I'm never going to see Guilmon again, I just know it." His eyes began to tear up again and he collapsed to the ground once more.

"Don't be ridiculous, Takato," Ryo scolded him, hauling the blubbering Gogglehead to his feet. "Of course you'll see Guilmon again. But we're going to have to do this that hard way and attack him until he de-digivolves back to the Rookie stage."

"No!" Takato shouted. "NO! I WON'T LET YOU! YOU'LL KILL HIM! MEGIDRAMON, PLEASE STOP!"

"He's not going to listen to you, Takato," said Ryo. "We have to do this."

"NO! THERE HAS TO BE ANOTHER WAY!"

"THERE IS NO OTHER WAY!" Ryo shouted. "WE HAVE NO OTHER OPTION, TAKATO! Look, I don't like the idea of pounding on Guilmon any more than you do but if we don't do it he's going to destroy the city and us along with it."

"But..." Takato protested.

"Think about the TV show!" Ryo yelled. "The episode where Davis refused to attack MetalGreymon because he was their friend. That's exactly what you're doing now, and you have to stop it. We're going to do have to do this Takato, whether we like it or not."

"He's right, Takato," Jeri sniffed, sounding horrified at saying it. "If there was any other way out of this, you know I would take it, but there isn't so we can't."

"You'd say the same to us if it was one of our partners out there, Takato," insisted Kazu. "Just because Megidramon is your partner it doesn't mean there's a difference."

Takato looked desperately from one face to another and saw determination and resolve in all of them, even Jeri and Kenta. A pained expression crossed his face for a few seconds and then he sighed and sagged, nodding his head pathetically.

"Alright," he said. "Do it. Just... try not to hurt him too much."

"Don't worry," said Ryo, punching Takato's shoulder in a friendly way. "We won't. You can trust us Takato. We'll have Guilmon back to his old self in no time. Is everyone ready?"

The others nodded and held up their D-Arcs.

"We should try and keep Megidramon high in the air," said Ryo. "That way there will be no more casualties. Jeri, I know you and Elecmon can't biomerge into something with wings, but you can still help us out. If Megidramon gets too close to the ground, you need to force him back up into the air."

"Okay," nodded Jeri.

"Let's do this," said Ryo.

With a flash, MarineAngemon de-digivolved back to a Gomamon, and Kazu, Kenta and Jeri all shouted "BIOMERGE ACTIVATE!"

The usual flashes of light and shouts from the Digimon ensued.

"**GUARDROMON BIOMERGE TO... HIANDROMON!"**

"**GOMAMON BIOMERGE TO... MARINEANGEMON!"**

"**ELECMON BIOMERGE TO... SABERLEOMON!"**

The massive saber-toothed lion and the shiny, black android dominated the clearing, with the tiny little fairy floating between them. Ryo approached HiAndromon and said, "Would you guys care to give me a lift?"

"Sure thing, Ryo," nodded HiAndromon and grabbed the Tamer around the waist. HiAndromon activated its rocket boots and zoomed upwards towards where Beelzemon and Cyberdramon were desperately dodging Megidramon and getting closer and closer to being hit. MarineAngemon followed them up.

SaberLeomon turned to Takato and said, "Watch over the twins and your mother, alright?" Then, it turned around and ran off into the trees, where it would be directly below the action and ready to fight if it got close enough.

Takato forced himself to look up and watch the battle that began to rage in the sky.

* * *

Cyberdramon swept under Megidramon, while Beelzemon got the massive dragon's attention by shooting past his face. The Ultimate dragon spotted HiAndromon rocketing towards them, with Cyberdramon's Tamer clutched in his grasp.

"Special delivery for you, Cyberdramon," he said, jetting over to the dragon and depositing Ryo on Cyberdramon's shoulders.

"Thanks HiAndromon," nodded Ryo. "Now, let's join the party, Cyberdramon. BIOMERGE ACTIVATE!"

"**CYBERDRAMON BIOMERGE TO... JUSTIMON!"**

Now, everyone who was capable of going Mega in this world was at the Mega stage. It was unfortunate that one of those Megas was the complete wrong one.

When Megidramon noticed that he was now surrounded by a bunch of Megas, he felt no concern at all. The thought of killing them all screamed through his brain and he set to it with a will. He roared and charged HiAndromon, unleashing an enormous Megiddo Flame right at the cyborg, which would have melted his armour like butter. But, as Megidramon, he had none of Guilmon's memories and so was unprepared for HiAndromon's next move.

"**COPY PASTE!"** HiAndromon cried, throwing his hands together in front of him to block the attack. The force of it when it struck his hands was still enough to send him flying backwards several metres, but the android quickly recovered and absorbed the blast, before sending it right back. It slammed into Megidramon's face, startling him as it rushed right into his open mouth.

He roared in pain as his own flames billowed around his face, but he quickly tore away from the blast and whipped around, swinging his barbed tail like the world's biggest bullwhip right at HiAndromon. Knowing his attack wouldn't block something like that, HiAndromon hurriedly activated his jets and shot upwards, the tail skimming the air where his waist had just been. Megidramon roared in frustration and pursued HiAndromon upwards, but the android was quite easily able to outrun him thanks to the speed of his boots.

"What's the word?" asked Beelzemon pulling to a halt beside a hovering Justimon? "Is there a new plan?"

"We move to the fallback, I'm afraid," said Justimon. "We have to get Megidramon to de-digivolve, one way or another."

Beelzemon nodded grimly. He didn't like it, but he understood there was no other option. There was a slight humming noise, as Berenjena reformed on the Demon Lords arm. "In that case," he said. "Let's get this over with."

"Right," nodded Justimon and the two of them hurriedly flew upwards to help HiAndromon.

But someone else beat them to it.

As Megidramon pursued HiAndromon higher and higher into the sky, he was completely unaware of the small, pink fairy-like Digimon that was valiantly trying to keep pace with him from next to the dragon's swinging tail. MarineAngemon's small size was a hindrance at the moment, because Megidramon's beating wings were creating huge gusts of wind with each flap that threatened to blow MarineAngemon away.

The little fairy grimaced as he fought to keep going.

"Why do I have to be so small?" Kenta's voice came out of the tiny Mega.

"Well, sorry," the voice of Gomamon followed on. "I probably would have preferred becoming a Plesiomon too but that's not what happened."

"Yeah, I know," said Kenta. "But never mind. Let's do this."

"**KAHUNA WAVES!"** MarineAngemon shouted and launched a barrage of red bubbles shaped like hearts at Megidramon's face. The bubbles passed the wings with ease, ignoring the wind of the wings and expanding in size, pelting Megidramon in the side of the head. Surprised, Megidramon stopped and searched for his attacker. MarineAngemon flitted aside and avoided Megidramon's gaze, but unfortunately, the dragon spotted Beelzemon and Justimon shooting towards him from below.

A torrent of fire gushed from his jaws and pelted down towards the two Megas, who quickly separated in mid-air, allowing the massive gushing flames to pass between them. Justimon whooshed upwards, his scarves flapping wildly and his metallic arm morphing into its gun shape.

"Sorry about this, Guilmon," he said. **"JUSTICE BURST!"** The blue lasers that exploded out of his gun collided right into Megidramon's chest, directly in the hazard symbol, throwing the dragon backwards. Megidramon growled and his eyes blazed and he switched targets again, upending himself and plummeting towards Justimon.

"Well, he's fast," Justimon said as he dodged to one side and allowed Megidramon to shoot straight past him. Guilmon's dark Mega form quickly flared its wings, killing his speed and swooping back up again to blast another Megiddo Flame at Justimon. Justimon, surprised at how quickly Megidramon had turned, almost didn't react in time. But, just in time, his arm morphed again and with a cry of **"VOLTAGE BLADE!"** he swiped at the middle of the inferno, breaking it down the middle with considerable effort.

Nevertheless, Justimon's scarves were reduced to ashes and he was blackened by the attack. Justimon gasped as he saw Megidramon had followed his attack and his jaws opened wide. Justimon dodged wildly, missing the jaws but he was still slammed by Megidramon's nose and knocked away, winded.

Megidramon flapped to pursue, but then, HiAndromon was back in the equation. The android swerved in front of Megidramon's face and shot away, blasting the dragon in the eyes with the rockets on his boots as he went. Megidramon roared, writhing in pain as he clutched at his eyes, his wings the only things keeping him aloft as they flapped automatically. Bellowing in anger, Megidramon flapped after HiAndromon, but then Beelzemon swooped in to attack from behind.

The Demon Lord pelted underneath Megidramon's tail and then flapped upwards, landing on Megidramon's back and folding his wings. He began to run up Megidramon's spine, getting closer and closer to the dragon's head. Megidramon definitely noticed his passenger, because he abruptly began to buck and flail around in an attempt to dislodge him, snapping over his shoulder as best as he could. Beelzemon growled as he held on tightly, determined to stay on.

"Okay, Pineapple-head," he said to the feral beast that glared at him with his glowing red eyes. "I never thought I'd have to do this to you, and I hope there'll be no hard feelings when all this is over but... **CORONA BLASTER!"**

Berenjena's blast of pink energy slammed Megidramon in the back of the head. Megidramon bellowed in pain and was flung forwards and downwards, flipping in mid-air as his head followed the blast of the cannon. This also threw Beelzemon off his back, but the Demon Lord quickly found his balance and turned around, levelling his gun at Megidramon and levelling Berenjena at him again, ready for when he recovered.

But he completely forgot about Megidramon's tail, which, just like last time, whipped around and lashed itself around his torso several times. Beelzemon grunted as he was jerked forwards with Megidramon, and the Mega dragon slowly regained its balance, flapping his immense wings to stay aloft. Then he turned to face the Demon Lord in his grip and lunged forwards with his jaws. Knowing it was too late to launch another attack, Beelzemon morphed Berenjena back into a hand and grabbed Megidramon's jaws, holding them at bay with his strength alone.

"Ugh, why does this look familiar?" he cried as he stared down Megidramon's gullet again, struggling to hold him off. Megidramon seemed even more determined to eat him than last time and pushed his head down, forcing his teeth closer to Beelzemon.

Help came just in time, in the form of MarineAngemon. The tiny Mega spotted Beelzemon's predicament and quickly flew to sort of the situation. Beelzemon blinked in surprise as MarineAngemon flitted right between Megidramon's jaws, dodging droplets of saliva. He turned his back on Beelzemon and launched a **"KAHUNA WAVES!"** right down Megidramon's throat.

Megidramon's eyes widened as the attack bombarded the back of his mouth and reared upwards, roaring in agony at the unexpected attack. MarineAngemon only just managed to escape before the jaws snapped shut and trapped him. And now that Beelzemon now longer had to hold back the jaws, he used his claws to puncture Megidramon's tail, which made the coils go slack and allowed him to slip out.

"Nice save, little guy," said Beelzemon. "Cheers."

"No problem," said MarineAngemon. "But I hope I don't have to do that again."

Megidramon swung around to face them, snarling furiously. And this time, he did spot MarineAngemon hovering next to Beelzemon. He motored forwards towards the two, jaws wide. Once more the two of them got out of the way, but Megidramon turned to follow MarineAngemon. Opening his jaws, he began to draw in a massive lungful of air.

This tactic wouldn't have worked on the larger Megas but MarineAngemon was so small that he was pulled backwards by the force of the inhalation. "What the... Aagh. Help!" he cried, as he found himself tumbling through the air, drawn inexorably towards Megidramon's wide open jaws.

"Oh no you don't!" cried Beelzemon, flapping in hurriedly from below and delivering a massive punch to Megidramon's lower jaw that caused it to snap shut painfully and cutting off the air. Beelzemon grabbed MarineAngemon in one hand and tore out of there before Megidramon could regain his senses. The dragon spread his wings to go after them but Justimon whooshed out of the air and delivered a **"JUSTICE KICK!"** right into the side of Megidramon's head, which snapped to the side under the impact.

Megidramon whipped back around and snapped at Justimon's heels as the biomerged Mega moved away. Frustration was beginning to build up now and Megidramon was becoming increasingly annoyed. Gathering all the breath he had just inhaled, he pulsed another Dragon Howling attack down towards Justimon. Justimon heard it coming and tried to dodge but was slammed by the attack and was sent flying downwards, yelling in pain all the way, his hands clutched the side of his head where his ears would be and spasming under the barrage.

HiAndromon had to step in at this point. The black android jetted in rapidly and threw himself into the Dragon Howling, with a cry of **"COPY PASTE!" **But he hadn't banked on how continuous the attack was, and the android suddenly found himself being pushed backwards towards the ground as he struggled to repel the attack back onto his opponent. Megidramon winged down after him, continuing the stream of soundwaves all the way, while HiAndromon grunted and twisted as he repelled it, only for the attack to be redirected again by the rest of the attack.

It would have been a stalemate, but Megidramon's much larger size was a help here and HiAndromon was forced down towards the ground.

* * *

Down below, SaberLeomon watched worriedly as HiAndromon plummeted, very much not in control of his descent and with Megidramon right behind him. SaberLeomon could see Beelzemon and Justimon in pursuit, but it knew they would never get there quick enough.

"Looks like it's our turn, Jeri," said Elecmon.

"Yeah," sighed Jeri. "I'm really not going to enjoy this but we must save HiAndromon."

"Yeah," nodded Elecmon. "Let's go!"

SaberLeomon tensed its back legs and leapt upwards. It was an impressive leap, one that carried the yellow and red lion high above the trees and level with the tops of some of medium-sized skyscrapers of Tokyo. As HiAndromon shot past it, SaberLeomon's paw glowed a bright white and it cried, **"HOWLING CRUSHER**!" It slammed the paw into Megidramon's head, delivering a glancing blow that cut off Megidramon's attack, and allowed HiAndromon to right himself.

Megidramon turned its head to SaberLeomon as the lion plummeted down, obeying gravity. He roared and spat a Megiddo Flame right after it. SaberLeomon felt the searing heat approaching and gasped in horror. Falling as they were, there was no way it'd be able to dodge it and it wasn't falling fast enough to land and then use its impressive speed to escape.

HiAndromon came through for them and slammed his hands together, morphing them into a large cannon. **"ATOMIC RAY!"** he shouted and fired a burst of red energy upwards that intercepted the flame and the two attacks cancelled each other out. SaberLeomon nodded its thanks, and HiAndromon quickly aimed another attack right at Megidramon, which slammed into his torso and knocked him backwards and higher into the air, where he was battered once again by a Corona Blaster and a Justice Burst from behind.

As SaberLeomon landed, it looked up to see Megidramon whip around to engaged Beelzemon and Justimon in battle once again. It could see that Megidramon was exceedingly strong – much stronger than it had been last time when Takato had forced him to digivolve. Perhaps that was also GranDracmon's doing and the mastermind of evil had given Megidramon a little boost. At the rate they were going either he would destroy them all or they would end up accidentally destroying him before they could get him to de-digivolve.

There had to be a way.

SaberLeomon's eyes narrowed slightly as an idea came to it. It turned around and cried, "HiAndromon! Over here!"

The android, who had been about to rejoin the battle, took notice and rocketed over. "Yes?" he asked. "What is it?"

"I might have an idea," said SaberLeomon. "But for it to work I need to be nearer Megidramon and now he's too high for me, even if I jump. Could you give a boost up there?"

"Alright," said HiAndromon. "Any idea would be fine about now anyway. Jump up."

SaberLeomon leapt high once more, and this time, HiAndromon jetted up underneath and grabbed the lion around the middle. He activated his jets to their fullest and the two of them surged upwards towards the action.

* * *

Megidramon roared as Beelzemon delivered another Corona Blaster to his chest and was thrown backwards, flailing angrily at all and sundry. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw HiAndromon and SaberLeomon sailing towards him from below and turned to face them, letting off another Megiddo Flame right at them. This time his attack was blocked by MarineAngemon who slipped in and launched **"KAHUNA WAVES!"** that expanded quickly and formed a barrier. The Megiddo Flame slammed into it and dissipated, while the bubbles popped at the same time.

SaberLeomon, meanwhile, was causing the hairs of its mane to harden as it sailed upwards. When it got close enough, it cried, **"TWIN FANG!"** and let loose a barrage of needle-like hairs upwards the pelted the dragon. A large number bounced harmlessly off his armour, but a good deal of them punctured the skin.

Megidramon ignored them and prepared another Megiddo Flame, but Justimon swept in this time and slammed a **"THUNDER CLAP!"** right on top of Megidramon's skull. Infuriated and howling in anguish, Megidramon thrashed wildly and managed to slam Justimon in the stomach with one arm and sending him hurtling backwards. Beelzemon swooped in to help, but got smashed by Megidramon's tail and was flung towards the ground at high speed. He crashed through the tree branches and impacted hard, throwing up earth as he created his own miniature crater.

SaberLeomon jumped away from HiAndromon and fell back to the ground, while the android moved to attack Megidramon again. Landing smoothly despite the massive drop, SaberLeomon rushed over to Beelzemon as he rose from his crater. "Are you alright?" it asked.

Beelzemon rolled his shoulders and stretched his neck. "Yeah, I'll be fine. But just battering him really isn't working right now."

"I know," said SaberLeomon. "That's why I used my Twin Fang. It's supposed to paralyze the opponent by injecting them with a sort of venom." It looked up to see that Megidramon was still going strong, flapping after a fleeing HiAndromon and launching another fiery attack. "But Megidramon's rampaging so much that it might take a while to get through."

An idea clicked in Beelzemon's brain. "That's alright," he grinned. "I've got an idea on how we can end this." He spread his wings again and launched himself back up through the canopy and towards the aerial brawl.

* * *

Megidramon swung at Justimon with his claws. If anything he seemed to be getting even more violent than usual. Justimon was forced to execute a forward flip in order to escape from the metal claws on the ends of Megidramon's bladed arms. As Justimon rolled out of the way, he turned and fired another Justice Burst that crashed into Megidramon's neck. The Dragon roared, but shook it off and came again bringing its gnashing teeth within a few centimetres of Justimon's masked face. The saliva splashed over him and corroded his armour slowly. Justimon yelled in pain, kicking off from Megidramon's nose and clutching his face.

HiAndromon zoomed in from behind, but the noise from his rockets alerted Megidramon to his presence and the long tail lashed out blindly. The aim, however, was dead on and HiAndromon was nailed in the side of the head by the blowing and sent careening off to the side. Megidramon turned and spat a Megiddo Flame, which actually hit HiAndromon and sent him tumbling, metling a lot of his armour, but then ignored him and focused on Justimon still, but Beelzemon then made his move. Flying up from below, Beelzemon pulled out his shotguns and fired them. **"DOUBLE IMPACT!"**

The bullets did more damage than the bullets of the policeman from earlier, slamming into Megidramon's waist and digging in, causing the dragon to howl in fury. Beelzemon flew up and delivered a solid kick right to the Hazard symbol. Whereas last time this had caused it to shatter, this time it did nothing but annoy Megidramon.

But Beelzemon hadn't intended to damage him. He yelled at Megidramon, shouting. "Did you feel that, punk? Did that feel familiar, because that's what I did to you the last time I whupped your ass! You want a piece of me? Come and get me, if you think you're hard enough!"

Beelzemon turned and spurred himself directly upwards at high speed, pumping his wings as far as they would go to increase his speed as he ascended. Behind him, Megidramon's eyes narrowed as he remembered this was the one who beat him. Revenge filling his brain once more he surged after his quarry, racing to catch up.

"Guys!" Beelzemon shouted to the others. "Follow me!"

HiAndromon, Justimon and MarineAngemon all heard him and raced upwards too, pulling up beside Beelzemon as the four of them ascended together. "Is there a plan?" asked Justimon. "Because we could really do with one."

"SaberLeomon's Twin Fang hit its mark," said Beelzemon, so if it works then Megidramon should become paralyzed pretty soon. And if he's really high up when that happens, he's going to go plummeting a long way down."

"And you think the impact would- LOOK OUT!" HiAndromon cried, and all four rolled aside as a Megiddo Flame erupted between them. Megidramon roared in irritation as he missed his mark once again. "You think the impact will be enough to get him to de-digivolve."

"It better," nodded Beelzemon.

"We don't want to get too high though," said Guardromon, "or the impact could kill him, Mega or not. However, I should be able to calculate the optimum height for this task. I would say... about a hundred feet more would be sufficient."

"Alright!" nodded Beelzemon. "And let's be a little more organised this time!"

The four of them nodded and climbed higher into the air, until HiAndromon cried, "Here!"

"Split up! Use a hit and run!" cried Beelzemon and the four Megas whooshed in different directions as Megidramon snapped at their heels, coming to a stop at the height HiAndromon had suggested. Beelzemon wheeled around and, reforming Berenjena on his arm, he shot in for an attack. **"CORONA BLASTER!"** he yelled, pounding Megidramon with a blast from his cannon as he streaked past.

Megidramon reeled but recovered quickly and made to follow, when Justimon swooped past and fired a **"JUSTICE BURST!"** on his way by, knocking Megidramon back again.

Then HiAndromon rocketed out of nowhere and with a cry of **"ATOMIC RAY!"** he fired his own attack that crashed into Megidramon's shoulder and knocked him forwards.

Megidramon roared in defiance and spat a Megiddo Flame after him, but suddenly a **"SMILING FACE!" **attack lanced out seemingly thin air and slammed Megidramon in the face. MarineAngemon zipped away before he could be sucked in again.

They continued in this manner for roughly a minute, nobody giving Megidramon an opportunity to recover and go after anyone and always coming in from the side so Megidramon would not be knocked upwards or downwards. As the minute progressed and they bombarded Megidramon from every direction, they noticed that the dragon's movements were becoming increasingly sluggish. The wing-beats became slower and his attacks were becoming increasingly delayed.

"I think it's working," cried MarineAngemon.

"You think?" asked HiAndromon.

It was at this point that Megidramon's wings simply weren't flapping hard enough to keep him aloft. The dragon could go only one way – down. Bellowing in anger and aggravation, Megidramon dropped right out of the sky, tumbling and spinning round and round as he plummeted through the air and towards the park down below him. His muscles were seizing up until his wings stopped moving of their own accord and his tail stopped thrashing around.

"Follow that dragon!" cried Justimon, and the four Megas followed the other Mega down towards the ground, where SaberLeomon was waiting below them. The biomerged form of Jeri and Elecmon sprinted out of the way as Megidramon fell and landed with a sickening crash in the centre of the park, snapping trees and cracking the earth as he landed with a crunch, creating a brand new clearing. Megidramon's eyes were shut and his body rigid as a board, as the four airborne Megas came to a stop above him.

"Did it work?" asked SaberLeomon tentatively from beside the fallen dragon.

"He hasn't splintered into data," said Justimon. "That's a good sign."

Megidramon glowed and abruptly shrank. His form diminished down, down and down until it took on the familiar shape of Guilmon.

"Well thank Fanglongmon for that," Beelzemon grinned.

"I'll get Takato," said SaberLeomon, and turned to run off into the trees.

Beelzemon, HiAndromon and Justimon landed on the ground, while MarineAngemon continued to hover. The four of them crowded around Guilmon, who was still completely stiff. Beelzemon frowned sadly at him. He couldn't help but feel sorry for his good friend.

The feeling didn't appear to be mutual at the moment because Guilmon's eyes snapped open, though his body remained completely still. His eyes were still the same glowing red as they had been when he was Megidramon. He glared up at Beelzemon, snarling as best he could but unable to strike.

"Don't worry, Pineapple-head," said Beelzemon. "You'll be fixed up in no time flat, I promise you."

SaberLeomon returned extremely quickly, carrying not only Takato, but Ai and Mako and Takato's mother (who had insisted she come along). Takato leapt off SaberLeomon's back and ran to his partner's side, HiAndromon and Justimon moving away to let him through. "Guilmon!" he cried, kneeling beside the fallen dinosaur. "Are you okay?"

Guilmon only snarled viciously at him.

"He's not going to answer you, Takato," said Ryo from Justimon. "You have to try and break through to him before SaberLeomon's attack wears off."

"Okay," said Takato, sniffing as tears rolled down his cheeks. "Guilmon, listen to me. Please, listen to my voice. It's me. It's Takato... or Takatomon, if you like. I'm your best friend."

Guilmon continued to growl, not in the least bit interested.

"Don't you remember me?" Takato asked desperately, put his hands on Guilmon's paralyzed shoulders. "I'm Takatomon. I drew you, designed you in my little notebook when I was supposed to be doing work in class, I scanned the drawing through my D-Arc on the day I got it and there you were, a little Digi-Egg on a screen. But I knew you were real all along."

Guilmon's growling remained unchanged.

"And then you hatched and I was so happy to see you, boy. My very own Digimon, and a powerful one at that. I snuck you around, hiding you from my parents and from my schoolmates. And then we met Henry and Terriermon, and Rika and Renamon, and eventually you met Jeri and Kazu and Kenta and we had some great times together."

Guilmon's growls faltered slightly. Takato perked up and continued to plough on. "And you had some of the silliest habits, which you still keep to this very day. You love the bread we make at the bakery with all your life and you love it even more if it's shaped like your head or covered in peanut butter. You can barely last an hour without asking for food or if we can play tag. You remember tag with Calumon right?"

Guilmon stopped growling altogether and looked up at Takato with what appeared to be interest.

"You're not a monster, Guilmon," said Takato. "You're not this twisted abomination that GranDracmon has changed you into. You're a playful and energetic Dinosaur Digimon. You're best friends with so many people – Calumon, Impmon, Terriermon. You're a lovable, bread-eating goof," Takato chuckled tearfully. "Not a vicious, bloodthirsty beast."

Guilmon sniffed Takato's face.

"Come back to me, Guilmon. You're not evil. You're my partner."

Takato's D-Arc flashed and the light seemed to spread momentarily over Guilmon. It faded away and Guilmon's glowing red eyes stared up at Takato, all trace of hostility gone. And, ever so slowly, the glow faded away to reveal Guilmon's yellow eyes as they'd always been.

Everyone watched with bated breath. Takato stared into Guilmon's face and said, "Guilmon, is that you?"

"Ta... ka... to... mon?" Guilmon groaned faintly. "Did you... say something about Guilmon Bread? And peanut butter? And why can't I move my legs?"

"Guilmon! You're back!" Takato hugged his little partner in relief. Everyone sighed in relief and those that could all de-digivolved until there were no more Megas in the clearing, up until the point where Gomamon silently changed back to MarineAngemon on his own. Grins and looks of relief were spread across every face, as they crowded around Guilmon.

"Good to see you're back to your old self, Pineapple-head," Impmon chuckled, punching Guilmon in the shoulder.

Guilmon blinked. "My old self? What happened? And why didn't I feel that punch?"

"Don't worry, Guilmon," said Jeri. "The effects should wear off within ten minutes or so."

"Aaw, but that's so long," Guilmon muttered.

Jeri laughed. "Oh, it really is good to have you back, Guilmon?"

"Where did I go?" Guilmon blinked. "I don't get it. Why is everyone so happy?"

"We'll explain later, Guilmon," chuckled Kazu.

"Takato Matsuki," said a voice, and the group turned around to see that Mie had her arms folded and was tapping her foot expectantly. "What's this about drawing Guilmon when you were in class? You said you did it while you were at home."

"Oh... er... well, technically I did both," Takato said, grinning in embarrassment. Everyone else laughed, including Guilmon and Mie cast a stern expression over all of them. However, considering the situation, she couldn't stay mad for long and eventually, she chuckled too.

But the atmosphere was broken when suddenly a swirling vortex opened in mid-air. Everyone looked up sharply as, for the second time that day, the giant image of GranDracmon appeared in the sky.

"You!" Impmon roared up at him. "You great, overgrown..." he proceeded to use language that he shouldn't really have used in front of the twins. "What do you want now?"

"I am most impressed, Impmon," chuckled GranDracmon. "You and your little friends put up quite a show against my little surprise. But let me assure you this is far from over."

"There's still no way that I'll ever join you!" Impmon yelled defiantly.

"We'll see," said GranDracmon. "But I'm afraid that was just the first round. Until you decide to join me, Impmon, I am going to make sure that your friends suffer dearly for your refusal to obey. Guilmon was just the first. The others may follow at a later date. I have endless tricks up my sleeves that I've prepared for them."

"Leave them out of this!" Impmon shouted.

"I will," said GranDracmon. "If you decide to join me. Perhaps I may use my Eye of the Gorgon on Cyberdramon. That would be an interesting result."

Ryo paled and Cyberdramon snarled.

"You heartless bastard!" Impmon shouted.

"I'll give you one week to mull over my offer, Impmon," said GranDracmon. "One week. If you have not decided to join me by then, then rest assured your friends will be the object of my wrath. I can unleash unspeakable horrors on all of them, which will make Megidramon look like household pet. It's your choice, Impmon. Your choice."

The image vanished as quickly as it appeared. Impmon glared up at the sky, his mind on fire.

Did he join GranDracmon and become the evil creature he had once been, or did he stay behind and let his friends suffer the consequences?

Impmon gritted his teeth and put his head in his hands. GranDracmon had him well and truly cornered by his own emotions. What was he supposed to do now?

* * *

If anyone's wondering why there was no flashing hazard symbol or anything about the destruction of the entire world at Megidramon's mere presence, just remember that they are not actually in the Digital World, and I don't think Megidramon would be able to destroy the Human World in the same way, because the Human World is not data. I also finally had some deaths in a Digimon attack in this chapter, but I think that there should have been some eventually. After all, Ogudomon didn't get to kill anyone.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the ride. A review would be very much appreciated.

* * *

Next time...

This last arc focused on the character building of both Ahsoka and Terriermon, considering the various things that happened to the two of them. The next arc focuses more on Aayla, and we will finally get to meet her old master, Quinlan Vos. But it's certainly not going to be a walk in the park for anybody.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 71 : Bad News**


	71. Bad News

I have good news and bad news. The good news is that here is the first chapter of our brand new story arc, one which will be extremely important in the grand scheme of things. The bad news is that this is the last day I have at uni this year, as the Christmas holidays are about to start. Therefore, it is likely that my chapters will start coming in slower in the future. Term starts again on January 17th, so after a month of slowness I shall endeavour to speed up when I get back.

Anyway, let's get on with it. This chapter starts halfway through episode thirteen of Season 2, in the episode called "Voyage of Temptation."

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* * *

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 71:- Bad News**

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* * *

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How in the galaxy could such a simple task change into such a complicated one so quickly?

Obi-Wan Kenobi thought to himself as he rushed out of the dining room, where the bewildered and panicked Senators milled about in confusion. _And why did it have to be now of all times?_

Obi-Wan's mission had started out quite simply – a mission to a planet that he had been too once before when he was still a Padawan. The planet Mandalore, a prosperous and neutral system in the war, with most of the population trying to keep things as peaceful as they possibly could. The key word being most.

Some rumours had managed to reach that Senate and those rumours declared that Satine Kryze, esteemed Duchess of all Mandalore, leader of the Council of Neutral Systems which comprised of over 1500 different systems and long-time friend of Obi-Wan, was secretly dealing with the Separatists. Obi-Wan, who knew Satine extremely well, immediately volunteered his services to the Jedi Council, agreeing to go to Mandalore and investigate these rumours.

Obi-Wan simply couldn't believe that Satine was involved in the Separatists. She was the ultimate pacifist and despised war and violence in all forms (even more than Henry did) due to a civil war that nearly destroyed her world when she had been younger. And, as it turned out, he was right. Satine was very much against the war, refusing to aid either the Republic or the Separatists to fight in it.

However, there were some other people on Mandalore that despised their Duchess' peace-loving ways. Mandalorians used to be famous for their elite warriors, who would often spread chaos throughout the galaxy, the troopers wearing their very distinctive armour – the very armour that Jango Fett the Bounty Hunter had worn. When Satine had taken over, the warriors had been exiled and for many years it had been assumed they had died out.

They were wrong.

One of Satine's trusted subjects, Governor Pre Vizsla of Mandalore's moon, Concordia, had secretly been rebuilding the Mandalorian warrior ways, creating a Terrorist Group known as the Death Watch. The Death Watch were the ones who had been receiving help from the Separatists, who were seeking to add Mandalore to their conquests and gain valuable new warriors and resources from the planet.

Fortunately, Satine and Obi-Wan had managed to uncover this on a visit to Concordia, although both had narrowly escape the warriors of the Death Watch with their lives. They had quickly returned to Mandalore, but when they informed the Senate of the situation, declaring that Satine was not the traitor, the Chancellor had suggested they should set up a military presence on the planet, sending clone troopers there to guard it from the Death Watch.

Satine had been shocked. She hated the idea of soldiers on her planet and she was sure that if the peaceful ways of Mandalore were abruptly changed and troopers were garrisoned across the planet, the people would lose faith in her abilities and would be angry from being subjected to it. She was sure they would rebel and join the Death Watch in order to drive the Republic away and that would be an utter disaster. So she had immediately set out for Coruscant to plead to the Senate not to do this. Several Senators who had been visiting the planet at the time – Orn Free Taa of Ryloth, Onaconda Farr of Rodia and Kin Robb of Taris, as well as Mandalore's own Senator, Tal Merrik, had gone with her.

Despite the Duchess' protests, Obi-Wan had insisted that, at least for the duration of the journey, she should be guarded, because the Death Watch would surely try to stop her from reaching the Senate. So he had called the Jedi Temple and asked Anakin to join him and bring some clones with him. Anakin had done just that, but he had brought even more with him too. While Ahsoka was staying behind to practice some of her lightsaber skills, Anakin had brought Aayla with him, as well as, secretly hidden from the Senator's under a perception filter, the rest of the Super Seven.

Things started out well enough. They'd all boarded the ship and while Obi-Wan stayed with the Duchess and the Senators, everyone else was patrolling the cargo hold, where there were most likely to be stowaways or other people who may want to harm Satine.

In the darkness of the cargo hold, the keen ears of Terriermon and Lopmon detected a faint noise that sounded like the lid of a box opening. This was followed by a loud thud that even the clones could hear. With the bunnies in the lead, a bunch of clones had investigated to find one of the large wooden crates had been overturned and was completely empty.

Apparently it had been full of assassin probes. These droids were spider-like in appearance, with flat, cylindrical bodies filled with holes, a great red photoreceptor at the front and lots of long, spindly legs with sharp points at the ends. There were three of them and when the first one showed itself it went straight up the elevator shaft before anyone could even attempt to stop it. As it entered the dining room, it had immediately headed to attack Satine, but a timely intervention from Obi-Wan had killed it.

However, it hadn't killed the dozens and dozens of tiny little droids which all began to pop out of the holes on the bigger one's body and swarmed across the floor, once again heading for Satine, as if they had been programmed specifically to kill her. Obi-Wan and Satine had had to work together, the Jedi repelling the attackers while the Duchess used a tiny, handheld deactivator to stop the droids with miniature EMP blasts.

But one had survived.

And there were still a few of them on board, hidden in the cargo bay, which was now being searched by everyone else. Anakin and Aayla discovered that the crate they had been inside had been brought on board by one of the Senators. Getting an idea, Obi-Wan had trapped the remaining droid under a transparent bowl. Because it had deliberately gone for Satine, he guessed it was programmed not to attack one of the Senators, so he presented it to the four of them. The droid violently tried to break out when placed in front of Senator Taa, Senator Farr and Senator Robb, but had been perfectly calm in front of Tal Merrik.

Uncovered, Merrik had been forced to flee, but he had managed to grab Satine and hold her at gunpoint, backing out the door and pulling the blond woman with her, while at the same, releasing the little droid. This gave him enough time to escape while Obi-Wan struggled to kill the tiny thing before it could harm any of the Senators.

And now, Obi-Wan was in pursuit of the traitorous Merrik and the kidnapped Duchess. As he ran down one of the corridors of the _Coronet_, which was the name of the ship, Obi-Wan activated his comlink and called out, "Anakin! Tal Merrik is the traitor and he's taken Satine hostage."

* * *

"Copy that," said Anakin quietly, as he and Aayla moved slowly through the cargo bay, back to back and with their lightsabers out to defend from all sides. "But we've got problems of our own down here. We still haven't found the other two droids."

"This bunch are certainly a lot more subtle than what the Separatists usually produce," nodded Aayla, as the two of them moved along. R2-D2, who was trundling along beside them with his light activated and scanning the area, beeped in agreement.

"I hate it when enemies try and hide from you," Anakin growled.

"What's wrong, Anakin?" Aayla chuckled. "Can't take the suspense."

"Suspense?" Anakin asked. "You should try podracing. That's full of suspense."

Up above them, a tiny, little spider-like droid scuttled along the top of a crate and peered over the edge, looking down at them with its little, red photoreceptor. The droid didn't realise that attacking a Jedi on its own would probably be suicide, so it prepared to jump down on top of them.

It didn't get the opportunity because it was suddenly picked up in Lopmon's small hand and held in front of her face. "And I thought I was little," chuckled Lopmon, before spitting a single Blazing Ice shard at it, which completely annihilated half of its body. Terriermon, from where he was standing nearby, nodded at her, grinning.

Nearby, the clones had split into pairs and were moving around the large cargo bay with their guns at the ready, for when the assassin droids or their little buddies finally decided to show themselves. The Tamers, who were vulnerable to a surprise attack, were being dutifully guarded by Renamon, the fox-like Digimon, swishing her tail at any watching droid and scanning the room around her for any sign of a sneak attack.

She spun around and grabbed a little one that had jumped at her from the side. With a quick squeeze, she flattened it to scrap. The little ones were harmless enough on their own. It was when they swarmed you that you were in trouble.

"This place reminds me too much of the Geonosian tunnels," shuddered Suzie. "Not knowing when an attack's going to come, dark and full of corridors. I don't like this."

"Me neither," said Henry. "I've got that sinking feeling that we're going to be attacked at any moment."

"Well then, Renamon," said Rika. "Stay on guard. The last two times Henry had a bad feeling they were fully justified."

Renamon's ears twitched and she looked upwards. Her blue eyes narrowed. "And he just got a hat trick."

With an odd squealing noise, one of the two remaining larger assassin probes dropped down on top of them, its sharp legs splayed and ready to strike. Renamon, who had missed out on all the action last time due to that damn virus, was more than eager to challenge it and leapt into the air to meet it. Her Power Paw attack struck the assassin probe in the centre of its flat underbelly, denting it and sending it flying back into the air to land unceremoniously nearby.

But it wasn't done yet, as it got up, rearing upwards and charging Renamon. Motioning the kids to stay back, Renamon engaged the assassin probe in combat. The two raised legs lanced down to skewer her, but she dodged both of them, grabbed them in her paws and yanked, pulling them right out of their sockets. She thrust the sharp ends into the droid's front photoreceptor, blinding it partially. The droid shrieked and swung at her with its other legs, but Renamon leapt above the swing, charging up another Power Paw as she flipped through the hair so she was upside down.

"You go squish now," she told it as she plummeted downwards and mashed it in the top of its body, flattening it to the floor and leaving a huge dent. The assassin probe sputtered as it died. Renamon smirked.

But then, the rest of the little ones leapt out of the holes in their mother's torso and swarmed her, leaping onto her fur and scurrying up her body in an attempt to reach her neck. Renamon snarled as she twirled on the spot, flinging many of them away, but the majority kept on climbing.

That's when the Jedi, alerted by the sounds of a scuffle, rounded the corner. Lightsabers raised, they ran towards Renamon, who held her arms wide as they approached. She didn't flinch as they twirled their lightsabers, the blade humming within centimetres of her skin and dicing up the droids covering her without ever touching her once. Renamon had that much faith in their abilities.

There were still numerous little ones scuttling over the floor, but Artoo appeared at that point, following his Jedi Masters. Seeing the situation, the small electric prod he had in his head extended and shot little streams of electricity over the floor, overloading the little droids and causing them to collapse. A couple more little blasts and Artoo had finished them all off.

"And the astromech kicks some butt again," chuckled Renamon, patting him on the head. Artoo whistled in delight at the praise and jiggled from side to side comically.

* * *

Meanwhile, the other assassin probe had been found by Rex and Cody. The clones eagerly battled against it, firing lasers at it. It was surprisingly nimble and could run along the sides of crates as it charged them, its wicked blades raised. Cody took the initiative and charged it too, startling the probe droid enough to allow him to deliver a solid kick to its front, knocking it back. Rex ran in after him, grabbing the droid torso and heaving, flipping the droid onto its back.

Rex and Cody both fired on its defenceless belly, their repeated missiles slamming into it and making it totally immobile and it sparked into the droid equivalent of death.

Unfortunately for the clones this one had already released its little minions. Rex and Cody looked up to see a massive swarm of the little guys scuttling towards them, clambering over their fallen mother and flocking towards the clones. They backed away, knowing there was no way they'd be able to fight them all off with blasters. They were too small.

"Out of the way, guys!" shouted a voice behind them. Rex and Cody didn't need to be told twice and stepped aside, allowing Terriermon to run between them. The bunny launched into a spin and cried **"TERRIER TORNADO!"** The droids were not prepared for such a tactic and their tiny bodies were scooped up by the miniature windstorm and went swirling round and round the spinning bunny.

Lopmon appeared on the other side of the corridor and cried, **"LOP TWISTER!"** She charged forwards, scooping up the remaining droids as she joined her brother. Somehow, the two shot out an ear each and grabbed the ear of the other, merging together into the Twin Cyclone and sending the droids flying. Their lightweight bodies couldn't take being slammed into the wall at such high speed and they crumpled to the ground, useless.

Rex chuckled. "I think it's safe to say we owned that lot."

"True, Rex. True," said Terriermon as the bunnies stopped spinning. "High-fives!"

* * *

The Captain of the _Coronet_, a man dressed in clothes that looked rather like they had once belonged to Napoleon, only a little taller, was surveying the bridge and the four Senate Guards that were piloting it through hyperspace.

That was until the door behind him opened. The captain turned and was shocked to find the Duchess and Tal Merrik were standing there, except that Merrik had one arm locked around the struggling Duchess' neck and the other arm held out, pointing a blaster at him. He stepped back, alarmed.

Merrik quickly noted that he didn't have a weapon and turned his blaster on the Senate Guards, who did. The startled, blue-clad men leapt for their blasters but they were too slow, as Merrik brutally shot them all down, firing wildly across the room and managing to hit them all within about eight shots. As the men crumpled to the floor, dead, Merrik turned the blaster on the captain once more.

"No, please. I beg you!" the Captain stepped back again, completely defenceless. Merrik smirked and shot him anyway, nailing him right in the chest and killing him instantly.

"Monster!" cried Satine, stunned at the act of cruelty by her once trusted senator and advisor. She seemed to be losing her friends on Mandalore. First Governor Vizsla, now Merrik. "You're a horrid monster."

"Get used to it," sneered Merrik, dragging the struggling woman into the room.

* * *

Moving quickly, Aayla, Anakin, the Digimon and the clones took the elevator up to the top when they were sure that the cargo bay was completely clear, leaving a couple of troopers and the Tamers behind where there was no danger. Anakin hurriedly directed the troopers, sending platoons to each area where there were escape pods to cut off any potential escape for Merrik.

The Digimon hid under Renamon's perception filter, instructed to do by Aayla and they followed the human male and the Twi'lek female through the corridors and past many of the crew members who had no idea what was happening, but made no attempt to stop them.

They ran into Obi-Wan some time later. The older man ran over to them and said, a little more desperately than he usually might, "Did you find them?"

"Not yet," said Aayla. "But provided he hasn't already gotten off the ship, there is no way he's going to with clones guarding the escape routes."

"If he cannot get away then he'll try to contact someone for support," said Obi-Wan. "He may be up on the bridge, or at least heading in that direction."

"Then what are we waiting for?" asked Anakin. "Come on. Let's go."

The group made for the lift and got in. As the doors shut behind them, Anakin turned to Obi-Wan and said, "This may not be the time to ask, but... were you and Satine ever..."

"I don't see how that has any bearing on the situation in hand!" Obi-Wan snapped at him, before turning away sullenly. Anakin smirked, because Obi-Wan had pretty much answered his question before he could finish it. Obi-Wan and Satine had once fancied each other.

And under the perception filter, Renamon watched Anakin's reaction with scrutiny. Her suspicions were receiving more and more confirmation wherever she turned. Aayla just looked a little awkward.

At that point, they felt the ship come out of hyperspace. They were nowhere near Coruscant yet and wouldn't be for a while. "Well," said Aayla. "That answers that question. We know where Merrik is now."

* * *

Still holding Satine at gunpoint, Merrik made a call and man in Mandalorian armour appeared on the holotable. "Death Watch Command," said the man, who was actually Pre Vizsla himself.

"Tal Merrik here," said Merrik.

"Senator Merrik," acknowledged Vizsla. "Have you completed your mission?"

"Yes, sir," said Merrik, pulling Satine forward where she would be seen in the hologram at the other end. "I have the Duchess, but I'll need help getting her away."

"Very good," said Vizsla. "Reinforcements are on their way."

* * *

They must have planned out the rough rendezvous point because three _Droch_-class boarding ships were soaring towards the _Coronet_ within about half a minute. The spear-like spaceships dove down towards the _Coronet_, their bladed front ends slamming into the hull of the craft and penetrating the metal. Splitting apart, the blades uncovered a hatch in each ship that allowed racks of Super Battle Droids to extend outwards, their charges dropping to the floor and marching into the ship.

The alarm went off and instantly there was frenzied activity as the clones were called from their stations to deal with this new threat. As the troopers rushed passed the Jedi and the invisible Digimon, Anakin turned to Obi-Wan. "We'll take care of this, Obi-Wan. You, go find your girlfriend."

"Right," said Obi-Wan, then realised what Anakin had just said and cried. "Wh- No, Anakin! She's not my..." but it didn't matter, Anakin had already run off, chuckling to himself.

"Perhaps I should apologise on his behalf," said Aayla, smiling slightly. "But somehow I get the feeling that he's not sorry at all."

"No, Aayla, he's not," scowled Obi-Wan. "Well, you better go and help him."

"And you'd better see to the Duchess," nodded Aayla. Obi-Wan nodded and ran in the opposite direction to Anakin.

"What about us?" asked Terriermon. "We want to see some more action too, you know!"

"I'm well aware of that," said Aayla. "But if you come, try to be discrete, Terriermon. Some of Satine's bodyguards may also be helping fend off the droids."

"She has bodyguards?" asked Terriermon. "Well, they haven't been doing a great job, have they?"

There was a loud, smacking noise and a cry of "Ow! Rena!" from Terriermon.

"You deserved that," she chuckled.

Aayla shook her head. "Are you coming or not?"

"I think we should follow Obi-Wan," said Renamon. "That Senator traitor is a crafty one and I'm pretty sure you guys can handle a bunch of droids, can't you?"

Aayla shrugged. "You know I don't like to boast."

"It's not a boast, it's a fact," chuckled Lopmon. "Go trash them. We'll see you later."

"I have no choice, I can't see you now," Aayla laughed, but she turned around and followed Anakin to deal with the Super Battle Droids that were encroaching on the ship.

"Let's go then," said Renamon, invisibly hefting a bunny onto each shoulder and darting off after Obi-Wan.

* * *

Obi-Wan marched through the door of the bridge, a deep frown on his face as he activated his lightsaber pointedly and levelled it at Merrik, who was still there and still had the feebly struggling Duchess pinned under his arm.

"Come in, Kenobi," sneered Merrik. "You're expected."

"Tal Merrik," Obi-Wan glared. "You are under arrest. Release the Duchess."

Merrik's blaster was gone and in his other hand he was now holding a small device with a large red button, were it a cartoon, would mean it was a self-destruct device. And, as it turned out, that was the case here. Merrik brandished it and said, "I took the precaution of wiring the ship's engines to explode. I press this remote and we all die."

Satine looked at Obi-Wan with large, appealing eyes. "Obi," she said, pitifully. "If you have any respect for me, you will not take such risks with so many people's lives at stake."

"Satine..." Obi-Wan said sadly, neither advancing nor retreating but continuing to point the lightsaber at Merrik as he stared at the woman held captive by the man. (Admittedly her attempts to escape were pretty feeble and she probably could have tried much harder). This was one of the things he most greatly admired about the noble woman. Like a Jedi, she was willing to place the safety of other's well before her own. If it weren't for her lack of Force powers and her utter bullheadedness and stubbornness about not engaging in violence of any sort, she would have made a perfect Jedi.

Her flat refusal to fight aggravated him at times, although he could hardly be blamed because she often went out of her way to wind him up. Just earlier that day she had referred to him as "a collection of half-truths and hyperbole." And all because he was now a General.

Obi-Wan could still remember the time they had spent together when they were both teenagers long ago, and they had been constantly on the run for people who were hunting Satine. His feelings for the woman had grown over that time period and they were feeling rekindled right about now.

He snapped back to reality as Merrik edged around him, dragging Satine along with him and backing out of the door. Obi-Wan followed at the exact same pace, his lightsaber stoically remaining pointed at Merrik's face but never getting closer than a few feet away from the treacherous man. He contemplated using the Force to pull the remote from his hand, but it was held so tightly that he would have plenty of time to push the button with his thumb before Obi-Wan yanked it from his grip. So, for now, he settled himself to slowly following him.

Blaster fire could be heard in the distance and, if you listened closely enough, the distant humming of swinging lightsabers and the noise of droids being diced to pieces could also be heard. But it was happening on the other side of the ship, so Obi-Wan was sure he couldn't count on reinforcements anytime soon. He'd have to make do.

Merrik sped up, dragging Satine unceremoniously. Obi-Wan sped up too, still staying close but not too close to Merrik.

Eventually, with the sounds of raging battle getting louder in their ears, they came across what Merrik had been looking for – the three _Droch_-class boarding ships. Obi-Wan scowled. That explained why they sent such a small force to attack such a large vessel. The Super Battle Droids were just serving as a nice, little distraction and the Death Watch had probably expected them all to die anyway, which explained why there were no Mandalorians amongst the invaders.

Merrik activated the comlink around his wrist as he stood by one of the boarding ships and said, "This is Merrik. Stand by to disengage." Then he smirked and said, "Say farewell, Duchess."

"Obi-Wan," Satine said piteously to the bearded Jedi Master. "It looks like I may never see you again. I don't know quite how to say this, but... I've loved you from the moment you came to my aid all those years ago."

Merrik looked utterly bemused and disgusted. "I don't believe this," he rolled his eyes and turned away.

Obi-Wan, on the other hand, looked awkward and a bit disconcerted. It was true enough that he had been waiting a long time to hear Satine say that and a part of him was grateful and elated that his feelings were mutual, but he opted for saying, "Satine, this is hardly the time or place for..."

He stopped when he spotted the hurt, desperate and pleading look on the Duchess' face. He paused, sighed and said, "All right. Had you said the word, I would have left the Jedi Order."

Merrik put on a simpering grin and said, "That is touching. Truly it is." Then he scowled and said, "But it's making me sick, and we really must be going."

Satine snorted and turned to face him angrily, while he leered at her. "You have the romantic soul of a slug, Merrik!" he shouted the last word as she finally made a decent escape attempt, bringing her heeled both down on Merrik's toes. Merrik yelped in surprise and let go of the Duchess. In a fluid motion the Duchess stepped away, fishing the blaster out of Merrik's belt as she did so and whirling around to pointing it at his face.

"And slugs are so often trod upon," she growled.

Obi-Wan blinked, wondering why Satine hadn't tried that earlier and if what she had just said had just been a distraction for Merrik. It had seemed sincere, so it was possible she was attempting to find out if he felt the same way at the time. He shook his head and turned back to Merrik. Now, all three of them had a weapon – a lightsaber, a blaster and a detonator.

Merrik glanced from one to the other, but looked largely unconcerned. "Interesting turnabout," he mused. "But even if I do not deliver the Duchess alive to the Separatists, I still win." He smirked and carried on. "The second I'm away, I'll hit the remote and blow the _Coronet_ to bits."

"I will not allow that," Satine said through gritted teeth, though all three of them could see she was desperately struggling with herself. Her arms and the blaster in it were shaking violently.

Merrik chuckled scornfully. "What will you do? If you shoot me, you prove yourself a hypocrite to every pacifist ideal you hold dear." Satine knew that he was right and was desperately trying to decide between taking the violent course to save a lot of people or allowing them all to die. The choice should have been clear, but Satine was such a devout pacifist it was a problem for her.

Merrik rounded on Obi-Wan next, putting a bit more venom into his voice this time. "And you, Kenobi, you are no stranger to violence. You'd be hailed as hero by everyone on this ship. Almost everyone," he added, nodding his head at Satine and chuckling. Obi-Wan glanced at the blonde woman sharply, knowing that if he killed Merrik, Satine would probably never forgive him for doing it.

"Come on then," Merrik taunted them, tapping his chest and holding out his arms invitingly. "Who will strike first and brand themselves a cold-blooded killer?"

Obi-Wan and Satine both grappled with themselves, but it looked like Obi-Wan was about to take the right road for a moment, but then he stopped and glanced at Satine again. Satine had shut her eyes, the blaster trembling more violently than before, her finger on the trigger sweating profusely.

But, as it turned out, nobody would "brand themselves a cold-blooded killer," because at that moment, Merrik felt something invisible slam into his face. Startled, he was knocked over and he felt something seize the wrist holding the detonator and squeeze harshly. Reflexively, he let go on it and it dropped to the floor, or would have, if it hadn't been grabbed by something that was not there on the way down and hovered in mid-air.

The bruised Merrik felt something slam into his side as if he had been kicked and a heavy weight pressed down on his back, his arms forced behind his back and pinned there and his legs pulled up, leaving him completely immobilised.

"Hey!" he cried. "What? What's going on?" He struggled harshly, but found he could do nothing against the incredibly strong grip he was being held in.

Seeing that the situation was under control, albeit not in a way she had expected, Satine dropped the blaster to the floor as if it was a contagious object and watched as the detonator was invisibly tossed upwards towards Obi-Wan. The Jedi Master caught it deftly and stared at the immobilised traitor with about as much disbelief as Satine. However, unlike Satine, he knew what was going on. It had been agreed that the Digimon wouldn't show themselves to Satine because, although she was not a Senator, she was a close friend of many of them and had regular dealings with the Senate. Obi-Wan didn't need to guess what had happened. He knew it.

"Obi," said Satine. "That was... amazing. You have saved us all and with a solution that didn't involve killing anyone."

Obi-Wan smiled, knowing he had little choice but to take the false credit. "Well, I knew that I couldn't allow you to die or to take a life. Doing the latter would destroy you, and I couldn't allow that to happen."

Satine smiled. "Then it looks like once again, I am indebted to you, Obi-Wan. I cannot thank you enough."

"Really, there is no need," said Obi-Wan.

Satine flushed and said, "Erm, Obi. About what I said earlier..."

It was at this point that Aayla, Anakin and several clones rounded the corner, cutting Satine off before she let anything slip. She coughed and said, "Another time, perhaps. Thank you again."

She walked away. Obi-Wan glanced after her and then turned to the others. He nodded at the struggling Merrik, and Rex and Cody stepped forwards to secure the man. Then, in a side-whisper so nobody he could see would be able to hear him, he said, "Alright. How long had you three been there?"

"Oh, all the time," Terriermon's voice whispered back. "We were just waiting for the right moment to pounce."

"And how much did you hear?" he asked.

"All of it," said Lopmon.

"Yep," said Terriermon. "Every juicy little detail."

"Wonderful," sighed Obi-Wan, rubbing his temple. "I don't suppose you could do me a favour and not breathe a word of this to anyone else, could you?"

"If you would like," even Renamon was chuckling.

"Except Aayla," said Lopmon. "We tell her everything."

"Fine," Obi-Wan. "But no-one else, alright. Especially not Anakin. And make Aayla swear not to tell either."

"Naughty, naughty Obi," cackled Terriermon quietly. "Keep things from the Jedi Order is a big no-no, isn't it? And yet here you are, doing just that."

"Please," Obi-Wan asked.

"Stop teasing him, Terriermon," said Renamon. "I'm sure he wants to go and pretend to meditate when in reality he'll be feeling all fuzzy inside because his crush likes him back."

Obi-Wan scowled at where he sensed Renamon was standing. "Am I ever going to hear the end of this?" he asked.

"No," said Renamon. "Probably not."

"Fantastic."

"Momentai," said Terriermon. "We won't tell anyone except Aayla if you don't."

Obi-Wan looked grateful and turned to watch the clones drag a protesting Merrik away. "Anyway, that was good work that you guys did," he said. "If a little overzealous and rather painful on his part."

"Meh, he'll recover," said Terriermon. "But we wouldn't have if he'd gone and blasted the ship to bits now would we? And the best part of it is that he has no idea what just happened."

"Just the way we like it," agreed Lopmon. Obi-Wan chuckled.

Anakin and Aayla approached the invisible trio and Obi-Wan. "Well," said Anakin. "I guess we better start heading back to Coruscant now."

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "Before the Death Watch learns that their attempt to kidnap Satine failed and sends more troops at us."

"The captain and all the Senate Guards that were crewing the ship are dead," said Obi-Wan. "Merrik killed them where they stood."

"Alright then," said Anakin. "Guess I'll have to pilot the ship myself then."

"NO!" yelled all five of the others (and some of the nearby clones). Anakin stepped back, startled at this exclamation.

"Why not?" he asked.

"No offense, Anakin," said Lopmon. "But everytime you pilot a ship which isn't your own we somehow end up crashing. _And_ we sometimes end up crashing if the ship belongs to you as well."

"Avoiding crashing is good," agreed Terriermon.

Anakin fumed silently and muttered. "Fine. Who _is_ going to pilot this ship back to Coruscant then?"

"That would be me," said Aayla, patting Anakin's shoulder comfortingly. "Don't worry, Anakin. We'll let you do the flying again sometime in the future."

"When we all decide to commit suicide," agreed Terriermon.

"Oh, shut up," sighed Anakin.

"Momentai, Anakin," said Aayla, ignoring Terriermon's strangled cry of annoyance. "You can be my co-pilot."

Anakin shrugged. "Eh, better than nothing."

* * *

Aayla successfully piloted the _Coronet_ back to Coruscant with relatively little fuss, except for a few minor complaints by Anakin. The Twi'lek quite enjoyed piloting the large vessel, because it had an old-fashioned wheel like that on a pirate ship as its steering mechanism. It was unusual, but Aayla quite found she enjoyed the experience, what with Terriermon's considerable enthusiasm at the sight of Aayla steering like a pirate captain. The concept of pirates being cool bemused her, but hey, whatever floated Terriermon's boat.

At one point during the journey, the Duchess and the three remaining Senators walked into the bridge where the three Jedi and the others (the Digimon had descended by down to the cargo bay to collect the Tamers) were standing. Of course the Digimon and the Tamers remained out of sight.

The Duchess had announced. "I would like to thank you all, Generals Kenobi, Skywalker and Secura, and all your men for your valiant efforts to defend this ship and ourselves today. Though I would have preferred it if there had been less violence, I understand there was little other option. We are all indebted to you."

"Think nothing of it, Duchess," said Aayla from the wheel. "We did what any Jedi would have done."

"That may be," said Satine. "But it was you who did it this time. I cannot possibly 'think nothing of it.'" She smiled at Aayla, and the Twi'lek smiled back. Renamon noticed that Obi-Wan's smile was rather wry and Anakin was smirking at him triumphantly (though the Digimon had not told him what they'd overheard.) Perhaps he was doing it a bit _too_ triumphantly.

That part had been alright, but then her fellow Twi'lek Senator Orn Free Taa had started hitting on Aayla. Aayla rolled her eyes and pointedly turned away, indicating that she was not interested. When Senator Taa still didn't get the message, Aayla picked up the fat Twi'lek with the Force, levitated him out of the room and placed him in the corridor, before using the Force to close the doors. This caused a round of chuckles from the other Jedi, the Duchess and the other Senators. Aayla smirked.

When they dropped Satine off at the Senate Building so she could make her appeal to the Senate for no more Republic troops on her home planet, Aayla and the other hidden members of the Super Seven watched as Obi-Wan and Satine had a slight moment to one side. When Satine reached up to touch Obi-Wan's beard, Suzie giggled. Aayla glanced at her, knowing where she was despite the perception filter, with a questioning look, and Suzie began to tell her about the time that her brother and some of his friends had once abseiled down a cliff by using the beard of one of the Digimon Sovereigns as rope.

Aayla snorted and found it extremely difficult to picture, and not just because she'd never seen Azulongmon before.

* * *

After that, they headed back to the Jedi Temple in order to make their report to the Jedi Council as they were always supposed to do after a mission. Along the way up to the Jedi Council chambers, and with the Digimon and Tamers now visible, they ran into Ahsoka, who, for some reason, looked slightly concerned about something.

"Oh, there you are, Snips," chuckled Anakin. "Good to say you."

"I could say the same, Skyguy," Ahsoka nodded.

"Did you study hard?" Anakin asked, as his Padawan fell in line with them.

"As you instructed, Master," Ahsoka said. "How was your mission?"

"Eh, it was alright," said Anakin. "We got attacked by assassin probes, including dozens of tiny little ones, got betrayed by a Senator and had to stop him from blowing up the ship. Nothing special."

"Yeah, because things like that seem to happen to us all the time," laughed Terriermon.

Ahsoka chuckled. "That much is true."

The Padawan still looked uneasy, although she was hiding it rather well. However, Renamon spotted it and said, "Something's bothering you, isn't there, Ahsoka."

"Well, kinda," said Ahsoka. "Masters, are you going to the Senate later on so that you can watch the Duchess make are bid to the Senate?"

"We thought we would, yes," nodded Obi-Wan.

"In that case," said Ahsoka. "Can I tag along? I've just heard that my good friend Senator Chuchi has been having some trouble recently. Apparently the Trade Federation have set up a blockade around Pantora and I wanted to see how she was getting on."

Anakin sighed. The Trade Federation seemed to have a habit of setting up blockades around planets, pretending it was business when usually they were doing work for the Separatists. "Alright, I guess it wouldn't hurt."

"Thanks," nodded Ahsoka. "Anything else?"

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "Could you take these guys off our hands so that we can go report the council without constantly being interrupted by a certain white bunny I could name."

Terriermon laughed. "You know me better every day."

"And the more I get to know you," said Aayla. "The less I trust you." She grinned, to show that she was joking and Terriermon grinned back. Ahsoka chuckled and began to lead the Digimon and the Tamers to Aayla's chambers where they usually stayed. The three Jedi proceeded without them and finally entered the Council Chamber. It was depressingly empty. Only Master Yoda and Master Windu filled any of the chairs surrounding the room. Everyone else was out fighting somewhere in the galaxy.

Nevertheless, the Jedi quickly outlined what had happened in detail, and explained how Tal Merrik had betrayed them and how he had been apprehended, and that he was to be interrogated for information shortly.

After listening, Mace Windu nodded. "Very well," he said. "You have all done well. You may go now."

Aayla, Obi-Wan and Anakin bowed low to the two Jedi Master and turned around, striding silently towards the doors that would lead them back into the corridors. Behind them, they didn't notice Yoda and Mace exchange a look, a look that hinted at a slight foreboding and extreme reluctance, but Yoda shut his eyes and nodded at Mace.

"Knight Secura," said Mace, as the doors opened to allow the others out. All three turned around and stared at Mace.

"Yes, Master Windu?" asked Aayla. "What is it?"

"Master Yoda and I require a few more minutes of you time. We would like to speak to you in private," said Mace.

Aayla frowned. She had long since learned that private conversation with Mace and Yoda when they wore _that_ expression probably meant you were about to hear something that you didn't want to hear. But, she nodded and turned back to the other two. "Go on," she said. "I'll catch up with you later."

"You sure you don't want us to wait outside?" asked Anakin, who also had a bad feeling about whatever was going to happen next.

"No, I'm sure it will be fine," said Aayla. "Go on. Your Padawan is waiting for you."

Anakin nodded and he and Obi-Wan stepped outside, the doors sliding shut behind them. Aayla sighed, turned around and headed back to the middle of the room. She stood there, placing her hands together in front of her as decorum said she should and bowed again. "What is it that you want of me, my Masters?"

Mace and Yoda glanced at each other again. Aayla's throat constricted and her heart started to beat faster. She could tell from the looks of extreme disinclination that they were both trying to proceed cautiously. This could not be a good sign.

Mace turned back to Aayla. After a couple of moments of more silence, he said, slowly, "We regret to tell you that... we have some very bad news for you."

"Thought you should be the first to know, we did," nodded Yoda. "Considering the circumstances. Most unfortunate that it came to this, it is."

Aayla's foreboding increased, her mind running through a list of possible options and not particularly liking any of them. "Is this something to do with the Digimon?"

"No," said Mace. "I almost wish it were. The Digimon seem to have a habit of bouncing back when things get tough. No, this is about your good friend and former Master, Quinlan Vos."

Aayla's eyes widened. One of the options she had thought up was that Quinlan was in some sort of trouble. The Jedi Master who had taught her for years and was practically her father in all but bloodline had a dangerous role in the war. He was a Kiffar from the planet Kiffu. He looked exactly like a human in appearance, the only noticeable difference being the thin stripe of yellow that ran horizontally across the middle of his face. He also had long, black, dreadlocked hair.

Aayla's bond with her master had been very strong and to an extent it still was, although the two of them hadn't spoken for some time thanks to the war, because Quinlan spent most of his time working undercover and trying to find out as much information about the Separatists as he could from various sources. Concern welled up in her at the thought of him in trouble.

"What about him?" she asked, not entirely sure she wanted to hear the answer.

"Believe, we do," Yoda sighed slowly. "That fallen to the Dark Side, Master Vos has."

Aayla's heart stopped. Whatever she had been expecting, it had not been that. Her eyes shot as wide as they would go, and she took a step backwards in surprise, staring at the Jedi Master's in disbelief and horror.

"W... what?" she asked incredulously. "No! That cannot be right! There must be some kind of mistake?"

"We hoped that there was," sighed Mace. "But after the evidence that we have recently seen, we believe that that is indeed what has happened?"

"Evidence?" Aayla asked, quickly. "What evidence? Tell me, please? What could he have possibly done that would make you think such a thing?"

"Had our doubts about Quinlan for a while now, we have," said Yoda. "Infiltrated the Separatists he has, and a valuable source of information to us, he has been," said Yoda. "Infiltrated Dooku's inner circle itself, he has. But for some time now, showing signs of turning, he has. Recently, learned, we did, that Quinlan recently tried to rescue his great aunt from Dooku. But, for some reason, turn on her, he did, and brutally slain by his lightsaber, Tinté Vos was."

Aayla's eyes widened. "Well... Master Vos has always been a rather wayward Jedi," he said. "How do we know that he was not forced into killing her by Dooku or perhaps she turned on him and he was trying to defend himself?"

"We hoped so too," said Mace. "But all our reports indicate that he was acting independently and without any known provocation. Still, we had hope that Vos had not turned to the Dark Side, because he was still feeding us information at the time. But then, much more recently, in fact only yesterday, something else happened which has led us to assume your Master has turned."

Aayla swallowed nervously. "And what is that?"

"Master Vos broke into the apartment of one of the Galactic Senators, Senator Viento," said Mace. "And once again, he pulled off a spectacularly quick and equally brutal murder in the Senator's own home. We know this because Senator Viento was under the protection of Jedi Master K-Kruhk at the time and he witnessed the violent act."

"And," added Yoda, "Escape without injury, neither of them did."

"As you know," said Mace. "No Jedi would go and murder an innocent man like Viento. And the attack on K'Kruhk seems to support this theory. K'Kruhk was seriously injured by Vos' attack and is recovering in medical bay."

"But..." Aayla shook her head in denial. "It cannot be right. It just cannot be. Master Vos has always been a little different in his methods, that much is true, but I cannot believe that he would ever fall into the grip of the Dark Side. I just can't."

"Denying it will get you nowhere, Knight Secura," Mace said gravely. "As much as I would like to believe that Master Vos is still on our side, all the evidence points to the contrary. These aren't the only supposed murders he has carried out either. There have been several rumours of other murders he has committed."

Aayla felt like collapsing to floor and that _never_ happened to her. Yes, she was attached to the Digimon whereas other Jedi didn't hold any but she was still made of stern stuff. She was tough, much tougher than all other Knights besides Anakin. But the news at the conversion of her own Master hit her hard. Very hard.

"Sorry, we are, for your loss," said Yoda, as Aayla stared up at the ceiling.

Aayla was silent for a few moments, and she shut her eyes, gathering the Force as she briefly meditated in an attempt to clear her mind. Without opening her eyes, she sighed and said, "I just... can't believe it. Quinlan Vos... my own Master... the man who rescued me from my uncle and saved me from being devoured by a Wampa all those years ago... surrendering to the Dark Side?" she opened her eyes. "There must be an explanation for this. There must be something we're missing. Quin would never turn. I am one hundred percent certain of it."

"It's only natural that you would refuse to believe such a thing," said Mace. "And while we all hope that you are indeed right, Aayla, we cannot take that risk. We have to assume that Quinlan Vos is now one of the enemy and like all our other enemies, we must bring him to justice."

"But there are so many reasons I could list as to why my Master would not turn over," Aayla placed a hand over her eyes and massaged the tip of her left lekku with her other hand to calm herself down. "But... there is one in particular I could name. When I accidentally woke up the Anzati Dark Jedi, Volffe Karkko, from a one-thousand year stasis when I still couldn't remember who I was thanks to my uncle, I remember that I myself fell to the Dark Side, because I was under his influence and had a vulnerable mind due to my amnesia at the time.

"But eventually, Master Vos came and found me and I attacked him, blaming him for the death of my uncle, when in reality I had accidentally Force-pushed him off the cliff because I didn't remember I had Force powers and tried to help him when Quinlan confronted him to get him to change me back.

"I remember how we duelled and how Master Vos constantly called out to me during the fight, trying to turn me back to the light side. But when his pleas fell on deaf ears, I remember how he switched off his lightsaber and refused to battle me, offering his chest to me so that I could stab him then and there. That's what convinced me more than anything else, but then I was struck by Karkko's Force Lightning. My Master duelled with him and he won, and my memories were restored, changing me back to the light."

"Indeed," said Yoda. "An admirable thing, Master Vos did, on that day. And a great service to the Republic. However, though pain me to say it, it does, Master Vos has turned. No other explanation, we have."

"Bursting into someone's home and assassinating them on the spot is more the work of a Bounty Hunter or a Sith than a Jedi Knight," said Mace. "You know this, Knight Secura."

Aayla sighed. Everything about this just seemed so... wrong. So unnatural. Surely her master hadn't changed that much from the eccentric and occasionally utterly bonkers man that he had been a few months ago, had he? He had been a bit of a show-off, rather like Anakin in that aspect, but showing off wasn't a path to the Dark Side, so what was going on?

She knew Master Vos better than most people, and despite the fact that all the evidence presented to her pointed Vos in the direction of the Dark Side and the clutches of Dooku and the mysterious Darth Sidious, she just couldn't quite bring herself to believe it. She was sure that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the assassination of both his great aunt and Senator Viento. Vos had always done things his own way, so maybe this was just an example of that.

But what if Mace and Yoda were correct in their assumptions? What if Master Vos really had gone rogue and turned to the Dark Side? It had happened before. Dooku had been on the council once before he went to the Dark Side. Another council member, Depa Billaba, had also fallen to the Dark Side and had battled Mace, in the end trying to take her own life but ended up falling into a coma. She was still in a coma now and kept safe in the Jedi Temple, and her seat on the council had been given to Obi-Wan Kenobi. Another Jedi Master, Sora Bulq the Weequay, had been one of the survivors of Geonosis, but he had still fallen to the Dark Side shortly afterwards after being captured by Dooku.

Was Quinlan Vos just another in the list?

Aayla shook her head. The thought was painful. Far too painful to think about. She had faith that her Master was still intact and still in the light? But she had no way of knowing if her faith was justified.

She sighed. "What about Tholme?" she asked, referring to Quinlan Vos' own Master. "When will he be told?"

"Master Tholme is busy in the Dorin system at present," said Mace. "But he will be told once he returns."

"Alright," nodded Aayla. "You have... given me much to think about. I shall have to meditate over it."

"Do it immediately, you should," nodded Yoda. "Or consume you, it may."

"Yes Master," nodded Aayla. "Is that everything?"

"Yes, it is," said Mace. "You may leave now, Knight Secura. And once again, we are sorry for your loss."

"The loss is great," nodded Aayla. "And not just to myself, but to the Jedi Order as a whole. Vos was a great man." She bowed and turned to leave the room. "And let us hope that he is still a great man."

Mace and Yoda watched as she walked out and the doors slid shut behind her. Yoda sighed. "Distraught, she is. Understandable, it is. Losing a Padawan or a Master to the Dark Side, hard to take, it is." He thought of Dooku, who had once been his own apprentice.

"Do you think she will be alright?" asked Mace.

"Yes," nodded Yoda. "Strong, she is. And strong friends, she has. Pull through, she will, if she is given a little time."

"I hope you're right, Master," said Mace. "For her sake."

* * *

Quinlan Vos really did turn to the Dark Side in the expanded universe, and he really did do all those things that Mace and Yoda just accused him of doing. But the information on exactly _when_ this happened is non-existent, so I decided to put it now.

I hope to see you soon. Bye for now.

* * *

Next time...

Aayla is shocked at the news of her Master's descent into the Dark Side and not sure if she believes it or not. So what is she going to do? Why, go to try and find him of course.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 72 : The Twi'lek Rebel**


	72. The Twi'lek Rebel

Sorry for my absence, but I have been visiting relatives in London. I have also decided to start answering all reviews for my story, because other people I leave reviews with do this and I think I may have been a bit rude not to do the same. So, here are my answers to my last seven reviews. I'll answer by e-mail where possible in future.

**Bookworm Gal** – Yes, it most certainly is. And I certainly intend to enjoy the holiday,

**Geekgirl **– You were right. They will be.

**Movie-Brat** – Thank you. And yes, I did see that advert on . I agree. It is awesome, but I really hope that she'll be alright in the end. That part will probably be the season finale. And I have no idea who that badass guy was. Did you see the guy who morphed into some giant vampire bat thing in the middle of the trailer? Now that was weird. And thank you for that e-mail.

**smileyfox5150** – Thanks for the compliments. I have been carefully trying to lay out the timeline but with the way the show jumps around all the time it is difficult. Hopefully they'll stop doing that now all the characters have new looks and Ahsoka is so obviously older.

**White Keyblade Oathkeeper** – Good to know you feel sorry for her. I'd feel disappointed if you weren't.

**Forcystus5** – That has to be one of the most emotionally uplifting reviews I've ever received. Is this really that good? Wow, I am quite proud of it but I wouldn't have labelled it in that light. You've automatically become one of my favourite reviewers my friend. Can I expect to see your opinion regularly? And yes, it is the anniversary.

**Papercut** - That was an awesome review. I loved it. Thank you for the compliments.

Congratulations to **Forcystus5, Papercut **and **Movie-Brat** for spotting that yesterday, on the 22nd of December, is the anniversary of the day I posted Chapter 1 of "Secret of the 327th" I am afraid neither of you win any prizes but I leave you all with this knowledge. Chapter 72 is the chapter that makes this story approximately ONE THIRD COMPLETE! One year to write one third. I should be done before Christmas 2012.

HAPPY BELATED 327TH DAY!

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 72:- The Twi'lek Rebel**

* * *

The first thing that Aayla did when she stepped out of the room was slump against a nearby wall and sigh, placing her fingers over her forehead and staring at the toes of her boots. This just couldn't be happening to her. The young teenager who had leapt boldly to her rescue when she'd been about seven and carried her away from the rampaging Wampa on his back simply couldn't have turned to the Dark Side, could he? Everything about this positively _screamed_ of wrongness in her mind and it didn't help that she hadn't seen Quinlan for months. She had no way of telling if he'd been descending to the Dark Side.

The last time she had seen Quinlan had been shortly after the beginning of the war and before she met the Digimon. She had carried out a mission alongside him and another woman named Khaleen Hentz. Aayla frowned, recalling that she had noticed her Master seemed to have developed some slight feelings for this woman. She'd warned him not to get to attached, just as she had done to Ahsoka about her Master, but she still hadn't reported anything to the council about it. Of course, she later ignored her own advice when it came to the Digimon later on, but she had Master Yoda's blessing first.

Could Khaleen Hentz have been the reason for this potential descent into the Dark Side? Perhaps something had happened to her and Quinlan had gone mad with rage or perhaps Viento and his great aunt had been behind it in the first place. Khaleen had once been a spy of Dooku's before turning against the Separatists so it was possible that they had gotten revenge. But even if that were the case, why would Vos have joined them.

It made no sense at all.

Aayla glanced down the corridor that she knew Anakin and Obi-Wan had walked down to head to the Senate and watch Duchess Satine's bid to all the senators. But, to her, that suddenly seemed much less important. It was her Master that mattered to her now.

Aayla felt as if a bubble of freezing cold tar was slowly swelling up inside her and slurping through her. Her mind had gone practically numb from the shock of what the two Jedi Masters had said to her, and it felt... terrible. The horrific realisation that her Master was gone, and she didn't know where, she didn't know why and she didn't know how he was hit her hard. She knew that what she was feeling was grief – she had felt it when she'd lost her pet, T'da – but knowing what it was didn't make it any easier to bare.

She didn't cry. Apart from that one incident on Geonosis where she'd shed a couple of tears of happiness she had not cried for years. Not since T'da had died, in fact. And she was fairly sure that if her Master was still good that she would not want her to cry about it. So her eyes remained resolutely dry.

However, her mind was ablaze with unanswered questions, and she was desperate to find out the answers. Meditation wouldn't solve her problems this time around, she was sure of that. The only thing that would put her mind at rest would be to discover that her Master had not been seduced by the Dark Side.

So why couldn't she find out?

Her eyes widened as she thought such a thing. Had she really just thought that? Just thought about going to try and find her missing Master and demanding information from him to discover the truth?

Yes, she had.

And now that she thought about it properly, this course of action was extremely tempting.

Aayla glanced back at the door. She could hear the voices of Mace and Yoda discussing something silently on the other side. Neither of them would approve of her swanning off to find Master Vos. It would be a dark, dangerous mission where she would risk death and possibly even more. Even if Master Vos was innocent, he was still a spy in the inner circle of Dooku himself. Going to find him would probably be a very bad idea and it would certainly put her neck on the line.

But she had to know. It would eat her from the inside if she didn't.

She glanced back down the corridor once more. Her mind was struggling between two different things. Going off to find Vos would mean disobeying the Council. There was no doubt they would find out she was missing before she could return and she would probably in for a hell of a lot of trouble when she came back. That was something she would not be looking forward to.

On the other hand, if she ended up succeeding and bringing Master Vos back with her, then all would probably be forgiven and her mind would be put to rest.

Then she thought about what she would do if she went along with it. If she went and then found out that her Master _had_ turned to the Dark Side, that he really was one of Dooku's henchmen or minions, what then? She had a strong feeling she wouldn't be able to take the emotional pain, at least not without extreme difficulty. It would be practically like you discovered your father, who you had trusted all your life, was planning to murder you or something.

Eventually though, she came to a resolution. Her expression hardened and she pushed herself off from the wall and strode purposefully down the corridor, her boots leaving distinctive clapping noises of the carpeted floor as she moved along. She knew what she was going to do. She was going to find her Master and find out the truth. If she discovered he was still part of the light, then she would drag him back to Coruscant and show everyone else. If she found that he had gone to the Dark Side, then she would snap him out of it, whatever she had to do or whoever she had to go through to do it, and then drag him back to Coruscant and show everyone else.

She was not returning to the Jedi Temple unless her former Master was with her. And woe betide anyone who stood in her way.

And if she got in trouble for freelancing... well, she could always blame it on spending far too much time hanging around Anakin and Ahsoka. The two of them had a penchant for going against the orders or approval of the Jedi Council and people would probably accept that excuse, even them.

And she was going to do this alone.

* * *

"We shall come to set the dolphins free!  
We shall wash the dark and blood-red sea!  
Our songs will echo over the mountains and seas,  
The eternity will begin once again in peace."

Renamon span to a halt, flipping onto her hands and still managing to twirl her body on one paw, her tail lashing through the air as moved. Terriermon bounced to a standstill as well, coming to rest on the floor once again as Renamon whooshed back onto her feet and dropped to one knee behind him, both striking the pose that ended their graceful duet. Both of them really liked that song, because it had solo parts for both a male and female and allowed them to dance together vigorously.

The Tamers applauded and Suzie made a feeble attempt to do a loud whistle, sticking a finger and a thumb in her mouth and blowing a raspberry instead of the intended result. The dancers chuckled and Suzie giggled and shrugged as if to say _I'll get there in the end._

Anakin and Obi-Wan had stopped by a while ago to collect Ahsoka. The Togruta Padawan had left with them in order to head to the Senate Building. She'd been explaining beforehand about her Senator Chuchi, who was relatively new to being a Senator but was still doing an extremely good job of it. But Ahsoka was concerned for Chuchi because apparently the Separatists had been putting a lot of pressure on both her and the Chairman of Pantora, Chairman Papanoida, to join their cause. Up until this point the Pantorans had been able to refuse, but the blockade around their planet and the ridiculous amount of time it took for the Senate to agree to anything, many Pantorans were rallying to join the Separatists. Chuchi was desperate to find a way to end the blockade while remaining with the Republic and Ahsoka wanted to see if she could help.

Anakin had said to them, "The Council wanted to talk with Aayla for a bit, but she might stop by later. She said she was going to catch up and follow us to the Senate."

"Can we come along?" asked Lopmon. "I'd quite like to see the inside of that building."

"That might not be a good idea considering the numbers of Senators hanging around," said Obi-Wan.

"But we'll be hidden under the perception filter," said Terriermon. "And besides, we want to see how Satine does with her plea."

"But you hardly even know her," pointed out Obi-Wan. "And she has no idea you exist."

"Yeah," said Terriermon. "But we saved her from having to kill someone, so I'd quite like to see if it was worth it. Other than the fact that if we didn't he'd have killed us all, I mean."

"Many of the Senators will have droids," Ahsoka had said. "And the perception filter doesn't fool those, does it?"

"No, it doesn't," said Renamon. "They are right, Terriermon."

"Oh fine," Terriermon sighed. "Maybe we should try something else, like sneaking into Padmé Amidala's house and night and giving her a new hairstyle.

Anakin squawked at this, which made Renamon look at him sharply. "What?" Terriermon asked. "The woman's got at least a hundred different ones, and half of them look stupid by our standards back home. She might even like the new one."

Obi-Wan steered Anakin away before he could protest and Ahsoka followed, chuckling at Terriermon's incorrigibility and wondering if he'd actually go through with it and that if he did, would he let her tag along?

And after they had gone, the Digimon thought they'd indulge themselves in a little dancing, which is what they had just been doing.

"Phew, that was a workout," grinned Terriermon, wiping his forehead. "That songs just too damn bouncy to be anything else... even without the music."

"Shame that Aayla hasn't got back yet," said Rika. "She'd have enjoyed that one. I think that was the first time that song has been sung in this universe."

"I wonder which guy Aayla would choose as her dancing partner," chuckled Henry.

Terriermon laughed. "I can just imagine her grabbing Anakin or Obi-Wan and forcing them to dance their feet off. In fact, let's dare her to do just that."

"With which one?" asked Suzie.

"Oh, definitely Anakin," said Terriermon.

"Why?" asked Suzie.

"Because I think we should dare Ahsoka to do the same and seeing her do that to Obi-Wan would be even funnier than it would be if Aayla was doing that."

Suzie giggled. "Yeah, that is true."

As Terriermon and Suzie debated how they would be able to set up this scenario and how they could ensure they placed several cameras around to record the event so they could watch it over and over again, Lopmon sat on the bed and watched her Tamer and brother lark around. She was only half paying attention to the conversation though. The other half was wondering what was taking Aayla so long.

And that was why she was the first to feel it.

The bond between Aayla and the rest of the Super Seven was growing rapidly. Now that their minds had been connected for a while now, it became obvious to them just how fast this was happening, because they were able to do more and more things with each passing day. At first, they had only been able to hear Aayla's thoughts when she projected them to them. Gradually, they had started to begin to sense Aayla's emotions when they wanted to, and more recently they had begun to develop the ability to see through Aayla's eyes, just as they could with each other, and all three were getting easier with each passing day.

As Lopmon dwelt on the Twi'lek's whereabouts, she became aware of something nagging at the corner of her subconscious. She frowned, but she automatically knew that Aayla was connected to it. Aayla must be feeling a particularly strong set of emotions right now if Lopmon was able to pick them up without trying to. It was faint, but it was there, so faint that the others, too absorbed in their conversation, didn't pick it up.

Lopmon delved into the little packet of emotions that didn't belong to her and entered Aayla's mind. She jerked backed, shocked at what she found. Aayla's mind was practically a tight little ball of grief, pain, shock and, above all, resolve. Lopmon could sense Aayla's determination to succeed in something, but she couldn't go prying any further unless Aayla wanted her to know.

Her eyes snapped open and she cried, "Guys! Something's up with Aayla."

That got everyone's attention and they swung around to face her. "Huh?" asked Rika. "What d'you mean?"

"It's faint," said Lopmon, "but I can feel Aayla's emotions and she's not very happy about something."

Renamon shut her eyes and felt Aayla's emotions herself. "She's right," the yellow fox said. "Aayla's emotions are running high, but I can't tell why. Something must be wrong? What did Yoda and Mace tell her?"

"Look through her eyes," said Terriermon. "See if you can find out where she's heading." Renamon nodded and complied, and suddenly she could see what Aayla's brown eyes were looking at right now. She was in a corridor in the Jedi Temple, and despite the fact they might look the same to a newbie, Renamon had spent a lot of time in the Jedi Temple and knew her way around extremely well.

"I think she's heading towards the hangar in the west tower," she said. "She's going somewhere in a ship."

"She's going to join the others at the Senate Building, isn't she?" asked Rika.

"In this emotional state?" asked Terriermon. "Nope, something's up. It's so obvious."

Lopmon got to her feet quickly. "Come on," she said. "If we're going to catch up before she takes off in a ship then we're going to have to hurry."

Renamon scooped up Suzie, who was easily the slowest of the group, and sprinted out of the door, Rika and Henry on her heels and Terriermon and Lopmon swooping through behind them. The Digimon and the Tamers pelted through the Temple in pursuit of their determined friend.

* * *

Aayla was indeed heading towards the west tower hangar, with the intention of finding a fighter and getting it up into space, acquiring a hyperspace ring she could slot the ship into along the way and begin the search for her missing master. She had absolutely no idea what she would do after that, but right now she didn't care. She had adrenaline pumping through her at the moment.

She was actually doing it. She was doing what the other two members of the A-Team did regularly and proceeding on a dangerous mission without the approval of the council. It felt oddly exhilarating, if a little nerve-wracking.

Aayla walked through the sliding doors of the hangar, looking around at the Jedi starfighters that were stationed all over the place. Her own starfighter was parked in the hangar of the _Intrepid_, but she didn't particularly feel like heading all the way over there in order to get it. Her determination was getting the better of her. She wanted to find her Master now!

Selecting a starfighter, she walked over to it and was about to climb into the cockpit, when the doors opened behind her. Aayla froze, wondering if Mace or Yoda had found out what she was planning somehow and slowly turned towards the door.

"You weren't planning on going anywhere without us, were you?" asked Renamon, carrying Suzie on one shoulder as she strode into the room, flanked by Henry and Rika. Lopmon swooped in to land on her other shoulder and Terriermon landed on her head.

Aayla was relieved it was them and annoyed that she hadn't gotten away on her own. She shook her head at them. "How did you find out what I was doing?"

"We don't know all the details," said Henry. "But you're forgetting something Aayla. The bond you share with us is growing, as is our bond to you. Lopmon picked up your strong emotions from your room and we were able to find out where you were going."

"So what are you doing, Aayla?" asked Rika, folding her arms and tapping her foot. "Why are you going AWOL all of a sudden? What happened in the Jedi Council chamber?"

Aayla shook her head at them, her eyes shut and her lekku swinging. "You cannot come with me this time, guys," she said. "This is personal to me and I'd rather see it through on my own."

"We expected you to say that," said Terriermon. "But can you at least tell us where you're going and why?"

Aayla looked down at the ground, not meeting the eyes of any of the others. "It... might be best if you didn't know," she said, thinking along the lines that if she didn't return, the Digimon and Tamers wouldn't know what had happened and wouldn't end up charging into a potentially dangerous mission. And also, she didn't really have a particular destination in mind.

"Well, we do," said Lopmon. "We care about you. We just want to make sure you're alright, because your emotions certainly don't seem to be saying that you are."

"Please, Big Sister," said Suzie, as Renamon placed her on the ground. "Tell us what's happening."

Aayla looked up at them and sighed. She probably should have expected it to come to this. These guys were truly unique and Aayla felt glad that they had come to find her. Perhaps it was better that she didn't just slip away, leaving them all feeling worried about her.

And so, she told them everything the Council had told her, speaking of her Master and everything he had done for her in the past, and then the two terrible deeds he had carried out recently and the fact that the council now believed he had turned to the Dark Side of the Force. She felt her gut wrench at the mere thought, but she carried on regardless.

The Digimon and the Tamers were suitable shocked by the news of Quinlan Vos's turn, and immediately they all felt extremely sorry for Aayla. They could all understand how she must be feeling right about now and sympathy practically gushed out of them. Suzie ran forward and grabbed Aayla's leg in a tight embrace. Aayla blinked, but she probably should have expected that too.

"Oh, that's horrible!" Suzie cried. "That would be like my dad suddenly starting to help Ogudomon or someone else."

"It is not a pleasant feeling," nodded Aayla.

"Well, that explains the strong emotions," said Lopmon. "And it also explains why you were so determined to see this through by yourself. I'm sorry Aayla."

Aayla grimaced. "Thank you, all of you, for your concern," she said, levering Suzie off her leg and climbing onto the edge of the fighter. "I really appreciate it. More than you can imagine. But I am sorry to say that I will have to leave now, before it is too late. I must find Master Vos and find out the truth."

"Where will you go?" asked Rika.

"I don't know," said Aayla. "But I'm going to do some digging to see if I can find out where my Master might be. I'll probably go undercover again."

"You can't leave us behind, Aayla," protested Suzie.

"I can, and I will," said Aayla. "Sorry Suzie, but Quin was my master. Not yours. He's practically family."

"And that is exactly why we should come with you," declared Terriermon, pointing a finger triumphantly at Aayla.

"Huh?" asked Aayla, bemused.

"Quinlan Vos is practically your family, you said," Terriermon repeated. "And that, by default, makes him practically a member of _our _family as well, Aayla, because you _are _a member of our family. Suzie's adopted you as a big sister so you we are one big family now, including you. And that makes this a personal mission for us too. While we've never met the guy, you've talked about him a lot and he sounds like my kind of guy. This became our personal business the moment we walked into your life."

Aayla blinked, staring at Terriermon in amazement. It wasn't often the profound version of the little bunny showed its face, but when it did appear it appeared at exactly the right time and place. She stared at him for a few seconds, and then her eyes swept across the rest of the group, surveying each on their expressions. Each face she looked at held the same amount of sincerity and determination as Terriermon's and Aayla crumbled.

She smiled warmly at them, her spirits lifting at their loyal support. "Alright," she grinned. "You can come along." She chuckled and added, "How could I have ever have even thought of leaving your guys behind. We're the Super Seven, aren't we?"

"And the Super Seven is forever," agreed Terriermon. "Unless it gains another member and becomes the Awesome Eight, but you know what I mean."

"I should warn you though," Aayla said, looking at the Tamers in particular. "Wherever we end up going you can guess that its going to be pretty dangerous there. We may end up searching through the lowest places of the galaxy, filled with crime and disorder and when we reach the end of the line it will be even more dangerous. Master Vos may or may not have turned, but he's still part of Dooku's inner circle. And there are a lot of dangerous people in that circle."

"Don't worry about us," Rika socked her palm with her fist, and then pulled a piece of string from her pocket and used it to tie her hair into the spiked ponytail she only used on missions now. "We'll be right beside you every step of the way."

"Even if we have to search to the ends of the galaxy and back," agreed Henry.

"Or how many cans of ass-whupping we have to open before we reach our destination," nodded Terriermon. "This is going to be another epic adventure, and we wouldn't miss it even if there wasn't all this about your Master."

"Even if we have to battle Dooku and Darth Sidious themselves," nodded Renamon.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," said Aayla, but she was beaming. She'd never doubted the fact that her the Digimon and the Tamers were true friends, but rarely had she felt more glad to have them by her side than at this moment. Every one of them was willing to risk their lives to find a man they didn't even know, just so that they could help her.

"Alright then," Aayla folded her arms and hopped down from the starfighter she was standing on. "I am deeply humbled by your decision to help me and I hope that our efforts prove fruitful. The objective of this mission is to do one and possibly two things. Objective one is to discover if Quinlan really has turned to the Dark Side."

The others nodded firmly, game-faces on.

"If the answer to that question is no," said Aayla. "Then that's alright. But, if the answer is yes then objective two is to do whatever it takes to snap him out of it. Just as he once pulled me back from the Dark Side, I intend to return the favour. What's more, if ever any of you find yourselves in a similar situation as me, you can count on my support."

"Good to know," said Lopmon. "But I have a question? Where are we going to start? It's a pretty big galaxy out there and Quinlan could be anywhere."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," said Aayla. "For now, let's just focus on getting off the planet, before anyone wonders where we are."

"Good point," nodded Renamon. "But I think we're going to need a different form of transportation. None of these fighters will be big enough for all of us and if we are going undercover then it might not be a good idea to take a gunship."

Aayla nodded. "I know. This could be a slight problem. If we're going in a ship large enough to carry all of us and yet remain inconspicuous, we'll need one that looks a little rough and has seen better days. A shining new ship will draw attention to us."

"Hmm," said Terriermon, pretending to tap his chin thoughtfully, but a slow grinning spreading across his features. "I wonder where we can possibly find a ship like that around here." He paused and then cried, "Ooh! Ooh, I know. Pick me!"

Aayla frowned. "What are you doing?"

"Pick me already!"

"Erm, alright. Terriermon?"

"Let's just use the _Twilight,_" said Terriermon.

Aayla balked. "You want us to steal Anakin's personal vessel so that we can use it to track down my Master?"

"Why not?" shrugged Terriermon. "It looks rough and definitely looks like its seen better days. It's an old beat-up spice freighter redesigned by Anakin so it's not exactly a registered ship we use, is it? It doesn't exactly scream "Republic." Besides, it'll be fun to steal it, a good prank on Anakin and best of all, I'm sure he'd understand _why _we stole it."

"But he won't know why until we get back," said Aayla.

"Leave that to me," said Terriermon, cheerfully.

Aayla sniggered and shook her head again. "There is just no curbing you is there? We're talking about stealing a ship here, Terriermon. The last time I stole a ship was on Maridun where I took one from the Separatists."

"And Anakin was there at the time," chuckled Rika. "He'd be proud."

Aayla rolled her eyes. "Okay," she said. "Let's go and steal ourselves a ship."

* * *

The _Resolute_, Anakin Skywalker's Jedi flagship, was sitting serenely on the ground at one of the numerous docks dotted around Coruscant. The _Venator_-class cruiser didn't see much time on the ground due to the number of missions that it was usually needed on. However, since the A-Team's last mission had taken place on another ship, the cruiser had been resting quietly for a couple of days.

Nevertheless, Admiral Yularen understood the need to have the ship prepped and ready to take off at even the slightest notice. That happened a lot these days, where there was an emergency in some part of the galaxy that required the _Resolute_ to get there with all speed.

That was why the Admiral studiously went over every inch of the ship, even in his downtime, to ensure that everything was in order just in case such emergencies occurred. The grey-clad, uniformed, moustached man strode through the corridors of his ship, his hands clasped behind his back and his back straight, as the commanding officer was supposed to walk.

Nothing escaped his notice. If there was a gun that wasn't fully recharged, he would immediately ensure it was. If there was a starship that was slightly damaged or not completely refuelled, he would immediately ensure that it was. If the main engines were not fully primed, he would immediately make sure it was.

It was tedious work, but the Admiral understood that it had to be done. Lives could very well depend on all the speed they could muster and, on several occasions, it had. And it was his duty as Republic officer to ensure that as many lives as possible were saved.

The Jedi reminded him of himself in that aspect. As well as the Digimon.

Yularen frowned at the thought of the three extradimensional creatures and the three human children they kept close by. As far as he knew, he was the only Admiral who actually knew about them. He'd stayed true to his word and not informed anybody of their existence, not even the Chancellor himself. This fact didn't sit well with him, but he understood why it was necessary and, over the past five months, he had seen exactly how useful doing just that had been.

Like everyone on the _Resolute_, as well as their now regular partner, the _Intrepid_, Yularen had developed a certain fondness for these six. The clones and himself always did their best to put the children at ease during space battles and the personalities of all six, particularly Terriermon, made them difficult not to like. Not that Yularen had tried of course.

Still, while the Admiral generally didn't take much part in ground assaults which the Digimon were more specialised at doing, they had still been through a lot together. And that generated a deep trust that would be difficult to break. Renamon's keen skills of observation had been extremely useful in many places – meaning she had been able to spot a few Separatist tricks long before Yularen would have been able to, allowing the man to quickly find a counter before damage could be done. Yularen had a high respect for Renamon because of this. His respect for Terriermon was also high due to his skills as a pilot, despite the bizarre controls he used to fly his fighter. As for Lopmon, while she was less use in a space battle than the other two, she had once saved Yularen's life, knocking him out of the way of a falling turbine when they'd come under a surprise attack from Separatists once.

Like everyone else who fought beside them, Yularen counted it as an honour to see them in action and he would not betray their secret all that easily. He held them in just as high a regard as he did the two Jedi Generals he served under, Skywalker and Secura, as well as the younger Commander Tano.

As Yularen mulled over his relationship with the Digimon, he paused and stopped. He'd been sure that he had heard a faint scuffling noise. An extremely faint one, but nevertheless it had been there.

He turned around and looked back down the corridor he had just walked down. There was nobody there, not even a clone, and the _Resolute_ was full of clones at the moment. It was always full of clones, once again so they could be ready to fight as soon as possible. But not at the moment.

His eyes narrowed, searching the darkness for anything. But he saw nothing whatsoever.

Dismissing it as a mistake, the Admiral turned around and continued with his analysis of the ship.

As he turned the corner, Aayla stepped away from the wall she had been pressed against to allow Yularen to pass. The Digimon and the Tamers followed suit, all of them hidden under Renamon's perception filter, rendering them completely invisible to Yularen and the clones swarming the ship.

"I thought we'd had it then," sighed Suzie. "Sorry for slipping."

"Don't worry, Suzie," said Rika. "What matters is that he didn't see us. Should we keep going?"

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "Forgive my impatience, but I am anxious to get off-planet."

"It is perfectly understandable, Aayla," said Lopmon. "I'm sure we'd all feel the same. Come on, let's get to the hangar."

And so, the Super Seven continued to silently and skilfully slip through the giant cruiser. They dodged clones with ease, tiptoeing around the armoured men as they marched past, utterly oblivious to their presence. They pressed themselves against walls and quietly slid past their own troops, slowly making their way towards the hangar. At one point, Renamon jumped right over a pair of clones and they still didn't notice a thing.

The Tamers were considerably less stealthy than the other four, but they were stealthy enough to fool the clones.

"I hope we don't have to do this often," whispered Henry as they successfully got past another bunch of clones. "All this sneaking around doesn't feel right. Perhaps it's because these guys are on our side or something."

"Momentai, Henry," said Terriermon. "Think of it as the most one-sided game of hide-and-seek ever played. That's what I'm doing, and I'm enjoying myself immensely."

"Of course you are," said Henry.

"When you put it that way, it does sound fun," said Suzie.

"Keep it down back there," whispered Aayla, from where she and Renamon were crouching beside a corner and watching a couple more clones approach. Once again, they all flattened themselves against the metal and allowed the clones to walk round the corner and straight past them, before continuing on as fast as they could while staying silent.

Eventually, the Seven of them made it into the enormous room that was the hangar. This room was perhaps the busiest one on the ship. The clones were not as numerous as they would be if there was a mission, but there was still quite a lot of them around, ensuring that each and every fighter was in tip-top condition. It had to be said that most of what they were doing wasn't particularly needed because the majority of the ships were fine due to their Chrome-Digizoid armour. But they carried on with their work regardless.

And there was the _Twilight_ right in the middle of the hangar. As ships went, it definitely didn't look like much, but Anakin and Ahsoka were both rather fond of it. It was the ship they had used to make their escape from Teth with Jabba's son, and it had been used many times ever since. Aayla and the Digimon had first used it to leave the Behpour system after taking out Kul Teska and they all felt a certain fondness for the old junker too.

"There's our ride to your Master, Aayla," said Terriermon.

"Let us hope so, anyway," nodded the Twi'lek as the group crouched behind a bunch of crates, despite being invisible. "And remember that Anakin likes that ship, Terriermon, so keep yours pranks to a minimum while on board. He's going to be pretty riled at us for stealing it and it would help if we could return it back to him undamaged."

"No shenanigans," Terriermon nodded. "A-okay. Probably."

Aayla decided that was probably the best answer she was going to get from the little bunny. She focused her eyes on the ceiling and the huge, red doors up the middle of the room that would need to be opened if they were planning on escaping.

"Alright then," said Aayla. "I'll go get the _Twilight_ started and prepare to take off. Henry, do you think that you'll be able to get the doors open?"

"I should be able to," nodded Henry. "But won't the clones just close it again before we can get out."

"Leave that to me," said Renamon. "I know what I'm doing."

"Alright," said Aayla. "Renamon, Henry, get those doors open. Everyone else, you're with me."

"Got it, Aayla," said Terriermon. "And don't worry. I've got my bit covered."

"Good," nodded Aayla. "Come on then." That said, they separated into two groups and split into different directions. Renamon grunted with the exertion of splitting and extending her perception filter to cover two separate groups. It wasn't easy, but it was manageable.

As Aayla, Terriermon, Lopmon, Rika and Suzie ran up the extended ramp of the ship and headed quickly into the cockpit, Renamon and Henry hurried over to a large console at one end of the room. Henry ducked behind it, and Renamon stood before him. She focused her perception filter over the two of them, as the others no longer needed it and watched as Henry began to push buttons and twist dials like a real professional. The boy loved computers and the clones had been giving him some lessons on how things operated. He'd obviously taken them to heart.

There was the sound of thudding metal, like a giant lock being unlocked. The clones in the room glanced sharply up at the roof and they were astonished to see the hangar doors beginning to slide open.

"What's going on?" asked one of them to the room in general.

"I don't know," said another clone. "But get them shut, quickly."

"Right," said a clone and ran over to the console. But he was astounded and surprised when something invisible grabbed both of his wrists and held him back, preventing him from reaching the controls. "Hey, what the…" he cried.

The clones whirled around again as the engine of the _Twilight_ started powering up. The ship juddered and slowly began to rise into the air as its systems kicked into gear. Someone was inside it!

Denal, the clone lieutenant that kept an eye on things when Rex wasn't around, activated his comlink. "Admiral Yularen," he said. "We have a situation here in the hangar. The doors have opened and the _Twilight _is taking off."

* * *

Yularen, who happened to be close to the hangar when he received the call, cried, "What? Close the hangar doors immediately."

"We can't, sir," said Denal. "Something is preventing us from reaching the controls."

Yularen cursed and ran towards the hangar at top speed. In less than twenty seconds, he had burst into the room and watched in disbelief as the hovering _Twilight _turned around, so its back was to him and aligned itself with the open doors of the roof. Several clones had trained their blasters on it, waiting for the order to fire.

Yularen watched as the enormous hatch at the back of the spice freighter descended to form a large door and a platform on the back of the ship. And Yularen's eyes widened when he saw Terriermon hop out of the ship and onto the edge of the balcony.

"You guys alright?" he grinned cheerfully, waving a hand and an ear.

"Terriermon!" shouted Yularen. "What is going on here?"

"No time to explain, I'm afraid," said the bunny. "But trust me when I say there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this. This should explain everything." He pulled something from behind his back and lobbed it in Yularen's direction. The Admiral watched as it glided through the air and settled by his feet. It was a paper aeroplane, although to him it looked like a paper Jedi starfighter. It was a similar shape.

"Come on, Rena," said Terriermon. "We have to go."

Yularen turned and saw the clone by the controls grappling with something invisible. His eyes widened again as Renamon shimmered into view, dropping her perception filter. For a moment he thought the Digimon had turned on them, but that made no sense. Renamon could quite easily kill that clone if she wanted to, but she was just stopping him from reaching the controls. Henry also appeared behind Renamon.

"Sorry about this," the fox said and shoved the clone backwards a few steps. Then she grabbed Henry and bodily lifted him, dashing across the hangar and springing into the _Twilight_ with one almighty leap. Terriermon saluted Yularen and hopped back as the hatch shut and the spice freighter soared out of the doors and up into the sky.

There was a few moments of silence in the hangar, and then Yularen pick up the paper aeroplane and unfolded it, reading the message on it aloud to all the confused clones.

There was considerably less confusion and resentment by everyone once they understood what was happening.

* * *

Duchess Satine's bid to keep Republic troops out of Mandalore had not gone particularly well. In fact, it had not gone well at all. The Duchess' arguments on not using violence to bring the terrorist group Death Watch to its knees had been seen as rather optimistic by the majority of the Senate, but they had listened to her anyway.

They was up to the point that Chancellor Palpatine presented a recording of a Mandalorian addressing the people of Satine's world. Satine had recognised him as Deputy Minister Jerec, and in the recording he was claiming that they needed Republic troops in order to survive. Satine had demanded to speak to Jerek, but had been informed that he had been killed in a Death Watch bombing, which Palpatine used as just another reason to occupy the planet.

Anakin, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka had silently watched this exchange from a position high above the Senate, in a shaded corner that they could use to observe but remain unobserved. Their expressions were all grave, as they knew that things were not looking good for the Duchess.

Once the meeting had finished, Obi-Wan hurried off to speak to Satine. Anakin and Ahsoka, on the other hand, went to find Padmé Amidala.

When they did find her, they found her speaking with exactly the person that Ahsoka had come here to see – Senator Riyo Chuchi.

"Don't worry, Padme," Chuchi the blue-skinned Pantoran was saying. "I am aware that, at present, Duchess Satine's situation is far graver than my own. I can be patient and wait until tomorrow before I make my own case to the Senate."

Padme sighed in relief. "Excellent," she said. "I am sorry about all this. I really am. I promise you, Chuchi, that once this whole mess with Mandalore has been sorted out, we will move straight onto dealing with Pantora's problems. Sometimes the sheer inadequacy of the Senate to decide anything frightens me."

"And me," nodded Chuchi. "But my people are getting restless. I would never sanction turning to the Separatist Alliance, but the same cannot be said for a startling number of my fellow Pantorans. It is unsettling."

Padme nodded and then spotted Anakin and Ahsoka heading towards them. "Oh, look, Senator," she smiled. "It seems we have some company. General Skywalker, Padawan Tano. What are you doing here?"

Anakin gave his secret wife an affectionate smile. "We thought we'd come down to see how Duchess Satine did with her bill. Not the best result, huh?"

"You can say that again," said Ahsoka. "It didn't go well at all. I don't follow politics very much and even I could see it was a disaster."

"I'm not sure what most of the Senate is playing at," sighed Padme. "It's so startling obvious that peaceable people like most Mandalorians would not take an occupation well. And a Republic presence could severely harm the Council of Neutral Systems that Satine leads. If anything, sending troops to Mandalore would escalate the war even further. I'm not sure what the Chancellor is thinking."

"I'm sure the Chancellor has a plan of some sort," shrugged Anakin.

"I'm not so sure," said Padme.

Anakin decided to change the subject and said, "So, Senator Chuchi. What exactly are the Trade Federation doing?"

"The blockade is loose," said Chuchi. "They are allowing me and the Chairman to come and go, but any other ship is prevented from entering or leaving the system. We are getting hungrier and hungrier down there. Chairman Papanoida is coming over himself tomorrow. If the matter has not been resolved by tomorrow morning, he may need to bid to the Senate himself."

"Just like me with the Naboo crisis," Padme shook her head.

Anakin was about to suggest blowing up the Trade Federation ships like he had last time when he was interrupted by a beeping noise. Frowning, he unhooked his holoprojector from his belt and said, "Excuse me one moment," to the Senators, before answering it. Admiral Yularen's hologram appeared there.

"Admiral," said Anakin, while Ahsoka, Padme and Chuchi looked on. "You know I'm off-duty for the moment. This better be important."

"I am not sure about important, per se," said Yularen. "But it is intriguing. What is your position, General?"

"I'm at the Senate Building, in the company of my Padawan and two Senators," said Anakin. He now knew this had something to do with the Digimon, or Yularen wouldn't have asked where he was. The man had been checking whether he could mention them or not.

"Very well," said Yularen. "Anyway, I have news for you, General Skywalker. Approximately ten minutes ago, General Secura boarded the _Resolute_. She did so by stealth and did not show herself to anyone. And, unfortunately, sir, she stole the _Twilight_ and flew away before we could prevent her."

"What!" Anakin shouted, so loudly that a couple of nearby Senator stopped what they were doing to stare at him. "She made off with my personal vessel?"

"Yes, sir," nodded Yularen.

Anakin's eyes narrowed. "What in the galaxy is she doing? The _Twilight_ is my ship, not hers. Where is she going?"

"Unknown, sir," said Yularen. "We do not know where she is going, but we do know why she is doing it, sir. She managed to get this to us before she departed." The Admiral produced a piece of paper from behind his back. "It's a letter to you and Ahsoka, General."

Ahsoka walked over to stand beside Anakin. "What does it say, Admiral."

"It reads," Yularen cleared his throat. "Dear Anakin and Ahsoka, I sincerely apologise for both sneaking away without telling you and for stealing your ship. But I am afraid that there was no time to spare. Master Windu and Yoda really rattled me with what they had to say. They said that my own Master, Quinlan Vos, had turned to the Dark Side of the Force."

Ahsoka gasped and even Anakin inhaled sharply.

"By the Force," Ahsoka cringed. "That's terrible."

"There is more," said Yularen. "As I'm sure you can imagine, I was both upset and angry when I found this out, so I decided I would find out the truth for myself. I have gone to try and find my Master and I do not intend to come back without him. I'm sure Ahsoka would do the same for Anakin, and Anakin would do the same for Obi-Wan. Once again, sorry for not letting you know or come along, but this is a personal mission for me. I am not alone though – I have taken six members of our loyal force with me. Do not worry about me, and I will hopefully see you soon. Aayla. P.S. Don't worry Anakin, if I damage the _Twilight_ I will both rebuild it and allow you kick my backside. However, I am quite a skilled pilot so hopefully it won't come to that. P.P.S. Momentai."

Yularen folded the piece of paper away and placed it in his pocket.

"Is that everything, Admiral?" asked Anakin.

"Yes, sir," nodded Yularen. "I apologise for all this."

"You've nothing to be sorry about, Admiral," said Anakin. "And neither does Aayla. Thank you for telling me. I'll join you at the _Resolute _soon." Yularen nodded and Anakin ended the transmission.

"Wow," said Ahsoka, her eyes full of deepest sympathy. "Poor Aayla. I can't imagine what she must be going through. Imagine what would happen if you fell to the Dark Side, Skyguy."

"Snips, there is _no_ chance of that," said Anakin firmly. _Especially since we now know Darth Sidious is targeting me for just that purpose,_ he added in his head. "But I get your point. Aayla must be going through emotional turmoil right about now. And she was right – I know I would feel the same if Obi-Wan turned."

"You're not mad at her for stealing the _Twilight_?" asked Ahsoka.

Anakin shook his head. "No, I am not. Not now I know the full circumstances anyway. If the _Twilight_ could help her bring Master Vos back here, I would have let her borrow it."

"Next you'll be letting me fly your starfighter," remarked Ahsoka.

"Don't push your luck, Snips," Anakin frowned. Ahsoka chuckled. Anakin turned to the two Senators, who were looking slightly shellshocked, although Padme more so than Chuchi because Padme knew Aayla better. "Sorry Senators, but Ahsoka and I should really be taking our leave now. Even though we don't have a mission yet, I'd quite like to contact Aayla and see how she's doing."

"Of course," nodded Padme. "But at least she's not alone. She's got those six clones with her."

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "So she has. But still... she is a team member and the A-Team looks after its own, don't we Snips."

"That we do," nodded the Togruta Padawan. "Chuchi, I'll pop in later on to see how you're doing, okay?"

"Alright," nodded Chuchi. "Just one question though. What does Momentai mean?"

"I believe I can answer that," said Padme. "Aayla told me that it means 'Take it easy,' when we were working together on Behpour."

"Fair enough," nodded Chuchi.

"It's a catchy word," laughed Ahsoka. "I use it from time to time. Anyway, come on, Skyguy. I want to talk to Aayla."

"See you later," said Anakin, and Master and Padawan turned and ran down the corridor, narrowly avoiding a collision with Senator Organa of Alderaan as they went.

* * *

"That was so much fun," laughed Terriermon from where he was standing on the seat above Aayla's head. "Did you see Yularen's face when he saw me pop out of the ship, Rena?"

"Of course," nodded the fox, hooking him off the chair and placing him on her shoulder. "But pipe down for a few moments, Terriermon. Let Aayla concentrate."

The Twi'lek nodded gratefully and steered the old spice freighter upwards. It was quite an unusual ship to pilot, due to the odd alignment of the engines and rudder, a short one extending out the bottom and a longer one extending out to the right side of the ship. However, she had had some experience co-piloting this ship on a couple of missions and, as she said in her letter, she was a skilled pilot so it didn't take her very long to get used to the controls.

It wasn't long before the _Twilight_ broke through the atmosphere and came to a stop, hovering above the busy, swarming Republic Capital. The view of the network of sprawling lights was truly phenomenal, but the situation was so dire that nobody paid attention to it. Plus, they'd all seen it before anyway.

"Alright then," said Rika. "We got a ship, we've left the planet. What do we do now?"

"We have to find Master Vos of course," said Suzie.

"Yes, Suzie," nodded Rika. "I know that, but what I meant was how are we going to go about doing that. I mean looking for one person who could be anywhere in the entire galaxy is not going to be a needle in a haystack. It's going to be a single pebble on a beach. Or a single fish in the ocean."

"At least we know what species," said Lopmon dryly. "Not that that helps us much."

"Rika and Lopmon are right," nodded Aayla. "The galaxy is more than enormous. That's why, despite the masses of Jedi and law enforcement we have there is so much crime in the galaxy, even on Coruscant itself. It's practically impossible to find someone who doesn't want to be found. We could have our work cut out for us this time."

"Do not despair, Aayla," said Renamon. "We will find him no matter how long it takes us."

"Perhaps we can try and find him by using somebody else," said Henry. "You know, if we find someone who we know is closely connected with the Separatists, then perhaps they can tell us where to look."

"That is true," nodded Terriermon. "But equally, they might have no idea and then they might alert the Separatists that we are on to them. Or at least, that Aayla is, because we'll be hidden as usual."

"You both have valid points," nodded Aayla. "Henry's way is the best approach, but we must make sure that we are completely sure this person will have the information we need before we act."

"Any suggestions?" asked Rika.

Aayla shut her eyes, delving into her memory in an attempt to remember someone who might know where her Master might be. Ventress and Grievous would be far too dangerous a target and their locations were also mysterious. The same could be said of the other Separatist leaders, those who weren't locked up in prison that is. So, the only other option was a Bounty Hunter, but she didn't know of any of them that worked for the Separatists.

And then it hit her. _She_ didn't know, but she might know someone who would. She remembered something a friend of hers said to her about five months ago.

"_This isn't necessarily goodbye. If ever any of you require the services of a Bounty Hunter in the future, we would be more than happy to be of service."_

Aayla grinned. "I have a heading," she turned to face the others. "Do the co-ordinates 892247-cross-9KL92 sound familiar to anyone?"

Henry blinked. "Isn't that where... Oh. You mean...?"

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "We're going go and visit our old friends – Sugi and company."

* * *

Not an action-packed chapter, I know, but a rather character building one. It shows the development of not just Aayla, but Anakin and Yularen as well. Plus it develops the growing bond between Aayla and the Digimon. The next chapter isn't going to have any action either but don't worry. Much like the last arc, the action will come later on.

See you. And happy 327th Day. I had this chapter written for then, but I couldn't post it for some reason. Ah well. It's here now.

* * *

Next time...

They have a plan. Now they need to go and meet some old friends; the Bounty Hunters from Felucia – Sugi, Embo, Rumi and Seripas. I told you they'd be back.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 73 : The Crew of the **_**Halo**_


	73. The Crew of the Halo

Sorry! It's been a good long time since my last post on this fanfic, but I assure you that I am still going strong. There are three main factors that contributed to my tardiness this time. Firstly, I've been at home, which should be self-explanatory to my regular reviewers. Secondly, I've been doing a lot of revision for my Ecology exam, which I just took today. And thirdly, I've been distracted by my many Christmas presents.

Anyway, I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and a brilliant New Year. Because, I present to you, the first post of 2011. Enjoy this not very action-packed but very character-building chapter – I hope.

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 73:- The Crew of the **_**Halo**_

* * *

Aayla knew it would be bad decorum to just show up at the supposedly secret headquarters that Sugi and her fellow Bounty Hunters lived in. You couldn't just turn up somewhere and expect them to help you. They might have another job going, or they might be having some problems right now that meant they were unable.

However, the Twi'lek was sure that they would try and help, even if they didn't necessarily have the information she needed.

Fortunately, Sugi and her co-workers had not just given her the co-ordinates to where they had set up their base. Rumi Paramita, the tall Frenk sniper, had also programmed their scramble-set into Aayla's comlink, which she still had stitched into the sleeve of her left arm. Now, in the cockpit of the _Twilight_ and surrounded by her friends, Aayla put this scramble-set into the holotransmitter situated between the pilot and co-pilot seats on the dashboard.

"Do you really think that they will know someone who works for the Separatists?" asked Rika. "They don't seem to be the type to associate with those kinds of people if you ask me."

"It's not that they associate with them," said Aayla. "But if you're a Bounty Hunter like they are, then it pays to know where your fellow Bounty Hunters stand, even if your intentions are as good as theirs. That way they know where they might expect competition, or if they have any enemies that they have to keep an eye on. Being a Bounty Hunter is a dangerous profession and those that don't know what they're doing often don't last very long."

"Right," said Rika. "Remind me not to become one."

"Unless you can run around with Dog," remarked Terriermon. Aayla chuckled. Terriermon had told her of some famous Bounty Hunters back on their planet who even had a television show based on their exploits, although they worked to catch criminals instead of being the criminals themselves. Aayla had to admit this Dog the Bounty Hunter sounded very admirable.

"Alright, everyone," said Aayla. "Quiet down please. I'm making the call."

Aayla pushed the button and they waited. There was no sound like a telephone ringing, or any indication that the holotransmitter was doing anything beyond a slightly flashing red light, but everyone waited patiently for something to happen.

And, after about twelve seconds, a small hologram appeared on the dashboard. It was a very familiar face, albeit one that they hadn't seen for a few months. The figure was a Zabrak, and definitely a female, with an obscure topknot on top of her head in the middle of the numerous horns. She had a blaster holstered by her waist and a vibrodagger sheathed on the other side. Her arms were folded and she looked vaguely amused.

"You know," said Sugi. "When we gave you this scramble-set all those months ago, I honestly never expected you to actually use it."

"Neither did I," said Aayla. "But, all the same, it is good to see you again, Sugi."

"Likewise, Aayla," nodded the Bounty Hunter. Then she added, "I'm not in trouble, am I?"

"No," Aayla shook her head. "Not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact."

"Good to know," nodded Sugi. "How are you?"

"I've been much better," sighed Aayla, glancing down at the floor sadly.

"I see," said Sugi, frowning at Aayla's expression. "But, before you continue, I really must ask – are you alone, or are there certain someones standing behind you and watching me?"

"We're here," said Renamon, stepping forward and standing beside Aayla, where she would be visible on the other side. "Aayla barely goes anywhere without us."

"Except the bathroom," said Terriermon, bouncing onto her shoulder. "We don't follow her in there. And we're still as secret as ever so hush, hush."

"Well you haven't changed much," remarked Sugi.

"Actually, I have mellowed out a little bit," said Terriermon. "Not much though," he added, with a grin.

"And Terriermon is right," nodded Renamon. "I trust that you haven't told anybody about us."

"No, all four of us have kept our words," said Sugi. "Although, we tend to keep up with Republic News nowadays. We've been following your exploits ever since we parted ways on Felucia. When we hear of some of your amazing victories, we take it in turns to come up with theories as to who contributed where."

"Ah," said Renamon. "Well, you should know that I spent the entire time on Shili lying in a tent."

"Let's not talk about that one," Terriermon shuddered.

"Agreed," said Aayla. "Anyway, Sugi. I need your help."

"_We_ need your help," Lopmon added pointedly, as she hopped onto Aayla's head. "It's a clichéd phrase but, we are all in this together, Aayla."

"Thanks," smiled the Twi'lek.

"Is that so?" asked Sugi. "It's not like the Jedi to ask a Bounty Hunter for help, no matter how desperate the situation gets."

"This is not official Jedi business," said Aayla. "This is an extremely personal mission for us. In fact, we're not even supposed to be talking to you. We've crept away without the approval of the Council."

"Really?" Sugi raised her eyebrows, impressed. "Well, now I definitely want to help. What can I do for you?"

"We need some information mostly," said Aayla. "Although a little help in the field wouldn't go amiss either, I suppose. Here's the deal."

And she told her. Everything, right from the point where she entered the Council chambers until the point where she had made the call to Sugi in the first place. The Digimon and the Tamers were respectfully silent, listening with expressions of sympathy as Aayla told of her master's supposed downfall. Aayla had her teeth gritted through the majority of the telling, but she managed to get it out, as long as she firmly made sure she didn't believe a word of it in her mind.

When she'd finished, Sugi was silent for a few seconds.

"Do you know of anyone – any other Bounty Hunters – who might fit the bill?" asked Aayla, trying to keep the desperate hope out of her voice. Although, everyone else in the _Twilight_, who could sense her emotions quite clearly, were not fooled.

Sugi smirked and said, "You know, I just might have exactly what you're looking for. There is a certain someone I know who may have the information you seek."

Aayla grinned as her spirits rose back up at this heartening news. "Brilliant," she said. "I never doubted you."

"Although," Sugi added somberly. "You may need a bit of help getting to him. If you want to get more information on him, then come to the set of co-ordinates I gave you. You do remember them, don't you?"

"Of course," nodded Aayla.

"Then when can we expect you?" asked the Zabrak.

"I'd estimate a couple of hours," said Aayla.

"Very well," nodded Sugi. "I'll see you all soon, and in person." She nodded and the hologram deactivated.

"Well, that's a bit of good news," said Henry. "We might have a lead already."

"It's all about the friends you make," said Aayla, smiling broadly. "If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you can find useful allies in the most unlikely places or guises."

"And if you need a prime example," said Terriermon. "Just look at all of us. We're from another universe, after all."

Aayla nodded. "Now, let's get underway. We need to jump to hyperspace and meet up with our old allies."

"How do we do that?" asked Suzie. "Isn't there usually a little astromech standing at the back that programs where we go?" She pointed to the scomp-link at the back of the room. "That's where R2-D2 usually stands."

"An astromech would be easier," agreed Aayla, turning back to the controls. "But it is possible to do it by hand. Astromechs just do the job much faster, which is why they're useful in emergencies. But, if you'll just give me a minute or two, we'll be on our way."

Silence fell again as Aayla worked at the controls, pulling a couple of levers and flipping one or two switches. Tapping a few buttons, Aayla eventually reached over to one side and pulled on the one of the three largest levers in the centre of the cockpit. They turned to the windows and watched as the myriads of star outside seemed to lengthen and expand into beams of light that flew all around the ship, before they were suddenly shooting through the blue tunnel of hyperspace.

"Why do the stars always do that when we go into hyperspace?" asked Suzie. "It looks really weird and it's a bit scary."

"Who cares?" asked Terriermon. "It's a cool effect. And you need cool effects if you do space travel. Otherwise it would be just plain boring all the time."

"That strange sentence aside," said Aayla, "We have a couple of hours to kill before we reach the co-ordinates that we've set the navicomputer to."

"Who's up for a game of hangman?" asked Terriermon.

"A game of what?" asked Aayla.

"Oh, it's a game where one person sets out a number of spaces that indicate letters that make up a word," said Terriermon. "And everyone else has to guess the letters. If they get it right, the spaces get filled in, but if they get it wrong then the other person draws part of a gallows. If the drawing of the gallows and the hanging man is finished, then the others all lose."

Aayla frowned. "Isn't that a little barbaric?"

"The guy's not real," shrugged Terriermon.

"It's one of my favourite games," agreed Suzie.

"Although," said Rika. "All mind-reading is banned, which means that Renamon and Terriermon are not allowed to guess when the other is doing the drawing."

"And Terriermon is usually banned from doing it anyway," added Henry.

"Only because you're sore that you never get anything I do," argued Terriermon.

"I am not," objected Henry.

"Are too," said Terriermon. "You were so frustrated when you were unable to guess my Piatnitzkysaurus."

"Is that a word?" asked Aayla.

"That's what Jeri said," laughed Terriermon. "And the best part was, Henry grudgingly had to admit that it was."

"Oh, shut up," said Henry.

Aayla chuckled, but then stopped when she spotted a flashing button on the holotransmitter. She frowned, wondering if Sugi was calling them back, and pushed the button.

When she saw the hologram that appeared as she answered, Aayla raised her eyebrows and said, "I suppose I should have expected you to call at some point, Anakin. You did get my note, didn't you?"

"Yeah, I got it," said Anakin. "And first off, let me say that I really sorry for you."

Aayla shrugged heavily, her lips pressed together and sighing through her nose. "Well, it's not an easy burden to bear, as I'm sure you can imagine."

"I didn't assume it would be," said Anakin. "I don't know how I would personally handle a situation like that, and I can't begin to imagine how you must be feeling."

"Let's hope you never have to," said Aayla.

"Agreed," nodded the Chosen One. "And when you say "six of our loyal force" should I assume you mean our six interdimensional friends."

"Yes, you should," nodded Aayla.

"Right," said Anakin. "But, Ahsoka and I were wondering, why did you leave us behind, but take them with you? Forgive me if I sound a little disappointed but we _are_ the A-Team. Ahsoka and I could have helped."

"She tried to leave without us," said Lopmon, popping into view. "And she would have gotten away without us if it hadn't been for the fact that our mental bond picked up her distress."

"Ah yes," said Anakin. "The mental bond. I know jealousy is not the Jedi way, but I can't help but feel a little jealous that you have one of those with them, Aayla."

"I suppose it's because I was the first to meet them," said Aayla. "But I'm sure that you and Ahsoka will both get one someday."

"Well, it would sure make things easier," remarked Anakin. "Just think how many pranks I could pull on Ahsoka if Terriermon and I could talk telepathicOW!"

A gloved fist that clearly belonged to Ahsoka had appeared in the hologram and socked Anakin in the shoulder. Then, the rest of Ahsoka appeared in the hologram, pushing her Master to one side so they could both stand there.

"If we ever do get a bond," she said. "Don't you dare use it for pranking me, Terriermon."

"Well, what else am I supposed to use it for?" replied the white bunny.

"Anything else," said Ahsoka. Then she turned to Aayla, and said, "But I do agree with him on one thing, Aayla. I am so sorry for your loss."

"And I appreciate that," said Aayla. "And if you need me to help you beat some sense back into Anakin if _he _falls to the Dark Side, don't hesitate to let me know."

"Oh, I'll beat some sense back into him long before he turns to the Dark Side," said Ahsoka. "I'll be keeping a close eye on him."

"Oh come on," Anakin griped. "I'm not going to go to the Dark Side anytime soon. Not at all, in fact. Especially now that we know I've been targeted."

"Nevertheless," said Aayla. "You two keep an eye on each other all the same. When I find my own Master and get him back to Coruscant, I'll be monitoring him much more closely than I was before. If he hasn't turned yet he may be on the way there, and I am NOT going to let him fall the full distance if I have anything to say about it."

"You mean if we have anything to say about it," said Renamon.

"Are you going to say that every time I say that I'm going to do something?" asked Aayla, rolling her eyes slightly.

"With regards to the mission," said Renamon. "Yes, I was planning on it. And I assure you that everyone else was thinking it too."

"Well, at least you're in good hands, Aayla," said Anakin. "Or, at least, I think you are. Anyway, where are you heading? Do you have any idea where to start?"

"Well, we have some idea," said Aayla, "But I'd rather not say to be honest. I'll keep this mission under wraps as much as I can, and not just because I have the Digimon and the Tamers with me. But Anakin, you could do me a favour."

"You're going to ask me to cover for you in the Council asks where you are, aren't you?" Anakin raised an eyebrow.

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "Yes, I am."

"Well, I suppose I could do it this once," Anakin chuckled. "Just make sure that all of you, and my ship," he added pointedly, "get back here in one piece."

"Not to worry, Anakin," said Aayla. "We've got everything covered."

"May the Force be with you guys," said Ahsoka.

"And you too," nodded Aayla. "Because somehow I just know you'll end up in some sort of trouble before we get back."

"Probably," nodded Ahsoka. "Take care."

"Bye," said Aayla, and ended the call.

"It's good to know that we have such good friends," said Henry. "Even if they are getting us out of trouble for something we're doing."

"This isn't school, Henry," chuckled Rika. "It's not like we're simply skipping class. It's more serious than that."

"I know that," said Henry. "Far more important, in fact. But even so, something tells me that it's difficult to hide something from people like Master Yoda. What are the odds that we'll get in trouble when we get back?"

"Oh, one hundred percent," said Terriermon. "Because we're not coming back without Vos and it's going to be pretty obvious what we've been doing when we get him back to Coruscant. Anyway, now that the call has ended, who's up for hangman?"

"You're not going to use some extinct creature that almost nobody has ever heard of before, are you?" asked Henry.

"What's the matter, Henry?" grinned the bunny. "Don't you think you'll be able to guess it?"

Henry's expression hardened. "Alright then, where's the paper?"

"Uh, I don't think there is any paper on this ship," said Rika.

"Wrong," said Terriermon. "Ahsoka and I have a stash in the back, which we usually use to stick notes to Anakin's back."

"Why am I not surprised?" chuckled Renamon.

"Because you can read my mind?" suggested Terriermon.

"Besides that," Renamon rolled her eyes.

"I'll go get it," said Suzie, and the little girl ducked out of the door. As the others waited for her to return, Terriermon ran through a list of complicated words in his head, while Renamon looked on in amusement. For all his antics and silliness, Terriermon had an amazing vocabulary tucked away in his brain.

* * *

"Oh come on, Henry!" Terriermon shouted, a good time later, as Henry perused which words had already been guessed at, examining which ones had been accepted and which ones hadn't. "Make your guess already. Before we all die of starvation or something."

"I'm just trying to be patient, Terriermon," said Henry.

"Yes, but you've been staring at the paper for about seven minutes, and Suzie and I are both getting bored."

"And they're not the only ones," remarked Rika, reclined against the wall. She smiled and Henry and said, "You must really want to take Terriermon down a couple of notches, don't you?"

"It's about time somebody beat Terriermon at some form of game," muttered Henry. "I don't know how he does these winning streaks of his."

"Well, just give it your best shot," said Rika.

"And can you _please_ hurry up about it!" Terriermon groaned.

"But I only have two guesses left before I lose and seven spaces left to fill."

"Then take a wild stab in the dark!"

"How about..." Henry tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Y."

"Nope!" cackled Terriermon and, twirling his pencil, he drew a leg on the end of the torso of the hanging man. "Only one more wrong answer allowed, Henry."

"Alright, fine. What about the letter B."

"EEEENHHHH!" Terriermon made a loud noise like a buzzer and delightedly drew on the second leg. "You lose," he said.

Henry growled. "Well, what was it? What was it that I lost to this time?" Terriermon grinned and drew in a P, a D, two Cs, an E, an S and an H. The word spelt out – Opisthocoelicaudia.

"What the heck?" Henry asked, utterly bemused at the sight of the strange word written down before him. "What is that?"

"I've never heard of that one," said Rika. "Not that I'd heard of Piatnitzyksaurus before either, or any of the other words you seem to come out with."

"Opisthocoelicaudia was a sauropod dinosaur from Late Cretaceous Mongolia. It's a member of the titanosaur family. And if it beats Henry, I think it's an epic dinosaur."

"I've never heard of that one either," Henry griped. "And I'd heard of most of the others. How the hell do you remember all these things, let alone how to spell them, for five months after you could have last read about it?"

"Very simple, Henry," said Lopmon. "Simply put, he spent far too much time on the internet."

"All too true," said Terriermon. "But it's fun. So, is it my go again?"

"NO!" shouted all three humans and Lopmon. Terriermon blinked and then folded his arms, sticking his nose in the air.

"Fine," said the bunny. "You can go about your live without learning anything about Tuojiangosaurus. See if I care."

"Can I have a go," Suzie piped up. "I've got a couple of ideas."

"Of course you can, Suzie," said Lopmon. "Is it ice-cream?"

"No," Suzie shook her head, paused and then admitted. "Well, one of them was, but the other one isn't."

"I'd be a bit alarmed if both your ideas were ice-cream," said Rika, giggling a little bit.

"And the other one better not be Princess Pretty-Pants," said Terriermon to himself, shuddering slightly as he remember the tortures he had undergone while pretending to be a stuffed animal. The number of times Suzie had dropped him on his face was bad enough.

Renamon was watching the scene quietly from the corner, arms folded and back leaning against the wall in her classic Renamon pose. Her eyes took in the entire scene with a certain fondness.

She was glad that times like this – times where their little group could just be themselves – still existed. The war they were fighting in was totally unlike any of their previous experiences when they had still been at home, simply in terms of scale. Back home they had only had to protect the city of Tokyo from invading monsters. Now, they were constantly needed to help with some new threat and each and every time it was different.

She hoped the good times lasted.

But then Renamon glanced up at Aayla. The Twi'lek seemed to be only half paying attention to the game of hangman. Occasionally she would glance around at the Tamers and her fellow Digimon to watch an argument or a discussion but most of the time she spent staring out the window, watching the blue colours and shades whoosh past the _Twilight_ as they travelled through hyperspace.

Renamon frowned and carefully stepped around Suzie, who was currently drawing her bunch of lines for the next game of hangman, and approached the front of the cockpit. Pulling the swivelling co-pilot seat around, Renamon lowered herself into it. It still felt peculiar to sit in a chair. Usually when she wasn't on her feet she was sitting on either the floor or a tree branch or something which allowed her legs to dangle. But she ignored the odd sensation and said, "You wanna talk?" to Aayla.

Aayla glanced up at the yellow-furred Digimon. "I'm not sure it would help," she said.

"You're still thinking about Quinlan, aren't you?" said Renamon.

"How could I not be?" Aayla glanced out of the window again. "I feel so confused and unsure right now that I just don't know what to do."

"It's understandable," said Renamon. "But it doesn't do to dwell on such things."

"I know that," said Aayla. "But it's just one big puzzle for me. Master Vos has been accused of turning dark because of at least two murders that he has recently committed, both of which seemed to lead to the deaths of good people. Take Senator Viento, for instance. As far as I know, he was an upstanding and supportive member of the Senate. A good man. And Master Vos never killed anyone without a very good reason before."

"And you're wondering if Vos knew that Viento had an ulterior motive?" asked Renamon.

"I know it sounds selfish," Aayla grimaced. "But I'm hoping that Viento _did_ have an ulterior motive. I'm hoping that he _was_ an enemy of the Republic. Because if he wasn't, then... how could Master Vos do this to the Republic? To the Jedi Order? To me?"

"Dwelling on questions that are impossible for anyone present to answer will not help at all, Aayla," said Renamon, placing a reassuring and comforting paw on Aayla's upper arm. "All that you're going to possibly come across is more questions that require even more answers."

"I know," said Aayla, closing her eyes and reclining back in her seat. "But it's difficult all the same."

"It's perfectly natural to worry about someone as close as a father," said Renamon. "I've seen the Tamers do it often enough. And I know I have felt the same when my friends are in danger."

"Your friends only?" Aayla asked quizzically, opening her eyes and looking into Renamon's. "Didn't you have your own father figure? Or perhaps a mother?"

Renamon shook her head. "I never knew my parents. Most Digimon don't. If I've ever met my mother or my father then neither I nor they were aware of it. The Digital World is harsh in more ways than one. Most Baby Digimon are left to fend for themselves after they hatch from their Digi-Eggs. They might join a village or a community, or more likely they'll be deleted and absorbed by a bigger Digimon, but parental care is rare. Take Terriermon and Lopmon for instance. Neither of them even knew they were related when they first met because they were separated before they hatched. Their abandoned Digi-Eggs were left for anyone to find, and Lopmon's was taken away. It's fortunate that they discovered they were related at all. If they hadn't Ogudomon would probably still be at large and all six of us might be dead, along with the rest of the world."

Aayla looked at Renamon sympathetically and patted her paw. "I suppose I can sympathise a little. I had no real parental figure when I lived with my Uncle. But I at least found one in Quinlan eventually. And I care for him just as much as I care for any of you."

"But you've always been confident in his abilities, correct?" said Renamon. "You've never been really worried about him until now, because you always thought he could handle himself on missions, and you were right. But now that you don't know, it's hard to bear."

"Something like that," nodded Aayla.

"We've had many scares like that," said Renamon. "We Digimon. Our Tamers are so fragile that on the battlefield they are so vulnerable. Believe it or not, Terriermon almost killed Rika the second time we met."

Aayla's eyes widened. "What?" she asked.

Renamon nodded sagely. "We were all younger and much less experienced then. Terriermon accidentally digivolved to Gargomon for the first time after _I_ nearly killed _him_ with a Diamond Storm he ran in front of. But he couldn't control his power and he was firing his cannons willy-nilly. If Guilmon hadn't intervened, Rika might have been killed easily. And I can name many other incidents where we've been unsure as to the fate of the others, such as when we all got separated in the Digital World. My point is, we all know, to an extent, what you're going through."

Aayla nodded gratefully. "Thanks Renamon. I don't know where I'd be without you guys."

"Happy to help," said Renamon, leaning back in her own seat.

"Although, I have a question," said Aayla. "Since you and Terriermon are mated, you must have considered the possibility of having a child of your own one day, right?"

Renamon paused before answering. "Yes, we have. Although we both agreed not to go through with it until our Tamers were older."

Aayla nodded. "Sensible choice. But my question is, will the two of you adopt the same approach as your own parents and just abandon the egg?"

"No," said Renamon, with finality. "Definitely not. Being with the humans has changed us in many ways and this is one of them. If we have a child, then we shall raise it as a human would raise their own child. Of course, it would grow much faster than a human infant, but we are not the harsh creatures we once were, I can assure you of that."

Aayla smiled. "I reckon that you would make an excellent mother, Renamon. And Terriermon would be a good father, when he's not running around demolishing his own Tamer at hangman." Aayla glanced over at the bunny in question, who had obviously been following the conversation in his mind because he turned around at the exact same moment and gave her a smirk and a wink and a thumbs up all at once.

"We thank you for your compliments, Aayla," said Renamon. "But there is no need for us to worry about a child just yet."

"Nevertheless," said the Twi'lek. "You'd both be kind, caring and protective. And you have experience with kids already considering how you always run around with them."

"True," nodded Renamon. "True enough."

Aayla turned to stare out of the window again. Renamon glanced over at her and then back towards where the others were still playing hangman. Suzie's go had expired already, as it had not been difficult to guess hers – teddy bear. Rika was currently having a go as it was, but Terriermon suddenly cried "Platypus!" and the go was over.

"Hey, Aayla," said Renamon. "Why don't you have a go? It might help you take your mind off things. Believe it or not, that is what Terriermon had been trying to do with this game. He's not just goofing around like he usually does."

"I could sense that," nodded Aayla. "But, alright, if you think it will help." Aayla rotated her chair around and stretched out one hand, calling on the Force. A sheet of paper floated into the air as if it were a parachute caught in the breeze and the pencil sprang out of Rika's hand. Both ended up clutched between Aayla's fingers.

"So, Terriermon," said Aayla, sending a smirk at the bunny. "How do you feel when you beat Henry with some sort of animal he's never heard of before."

"Extremely triumphant," Terriermon laughed. Henry glared at him.

"Maybe it's time you were put in Henry's shoes," Aayla winked at the Tamer. "Let's see if you've ever heard of one of these."

* * *

Several minutes later...

"And what... exactly... is that?" Terriermon asked, deadpan, as he stared at the completed words that he had failed to guess at, while everyone else tried to contain their laughter.

"Well," said Aayla. "The Umgullian blob is a pink creature that you can find on Shili and Mimban. You can also find them on Umgul where they compete in the famous blob races."

"Blob races?" Terriermon asked. "What the hell! Blob races?"

"These Umgullian blobs," asked Henry, savouring the moment. "Are they very blobby?"

"Oh yes," nodded Aayla. "Extremely blobby. You couldn't really mistake them for anything else if you saw one. The only thing blobbier that an Umgullian blob is... well, a Hutt."

Terriermon seethed quietly, while everyone else stopped trying to bottle up the laughter building up inside them and let it explode outwards, filling the _Twilight_ with noise. Aayla patted Terriermon's head reassuringly.

"I'm sure you'll get it next time," she said.

"A blob?" Terriermon asked. "I was foiled by a blob?"

"Try not to take it personally," said Aayla. "The blob is an epic creature."

"Stop using my phrases. That's what I said earlier about the Opisthocoelicaudia."

"Momentai," Aayla patted his head again and leaned back in her chair. Terriermon glared daggers at her, but at the sight of Aayla's grinning face, he relented a little and grinned back. Terriermon found it difficult to stay mad at his friends.

* * *

The game continued for some time, before Aayla turned back to the controls once more and noticed that they were now getting close to their destination. The navicomputer was telling her that they only had a single parsec left to travel before they arrived at the co-ordinates Sugi had given her a long time ago.

"Guys," she said, turning back to the others. "We're almost there. Pack up the game and get ready for docking."

The group, who had all been laughing and enjoying themselves moments before, suddenly grew much more sombre, including Terriermon. The fun and games of the hyperspace journey were over. It was time to be serious.

The Super Seven got to their feet and stared out of the window as the _Twilight_ came out of hyperspace. The old spice freighter soared through space slowly and, just ahead of them, they could see their destination. It was definitely a space station of some kind – small and out of the way, with no planets or stars in the near vicinity.

The space station had a very familiar looking ship docked at one of the two airlocks. "Yep, that's the _Halo_," said Lopmon. "This has got to be the place." And so it was. The familiar ship, painted with flecks of green on the body and yellow across the huge, turbine-like engines on either side of the freighter was the exact same one they had seen flying over their heads when they had crashed on Felucia long ago.

"Come on," said Aayla. "We'll dock at the other airlock and get on board. We need to find out who Sugi has picked out for us to look for and question."

Aayla took the controls and the _Twilight_ followed her commands, turning and flying past the station at a slow and steady pace. The Twilight's airlock was situated in the top of the ship, which meant that Aayla had to rotate the vessel onto its side so that it would lock with the space station. However, despite this, nobody lost that footing and started to slide into the wall. They stayed where they were on the floor, due to the fact that the gravity generators were focused on the floor. This gave the occupants of the ship a bizarre view of seeing everything outside the ship at a ninety degree angle.

Aayla eased the ship into the docking port, which automatically clamped shut and locked the ship in place, leaving it on its side and firmly attached to the space station. Aayla nodded in satisfaction and stood up. "Let's go meet some old friends," she said, and lead the way out of the door. The group followed her to the ladder that would take them to the airlock and Aayla led the way up it. As the door in the roof of the ship slid open and Aayla climbed through it, the gravity changed so that Aayla was standing on the floor of the space station, at what looked like a completely impossible angle to everyone still in the _Twilight._ But they didn't bat an eyelid. They'd seen all this done before, and simply followed Aayla into the station.

Once they were all in and the door shut behind them, they waited. They knew that the occupants of the station would know they had arrived by now, so they waited patiently.

Well, most of them did anyway.

"Yello!" shouted Terriermon after a couple of seconds. "Is anybody in there? Only I really need to use the toilet."

"Smooth, Terriermon," Henry shook his head.

"Momentai, Henry," said Terriermon. "That usually gets people to hurry up, doesn't it?"

Just then, there was a loud noise like a buzzer and the circular door in front of them slowly began to open, moving outwards from the middle as if a hole was appearing and growing in the wall. On the other side of the door was a dark figure, leaning against the wall with folded arms in a very Renamon-esque pose. Glowing, yellow, pupil-less eyes could be seen staring at the Super Seven from underneath the brim of a wide-brimmed, circular, metallic hat.

The figure would have been extremely intimidating to anyone who hadn't seen him before.

"Jaii euune sension que nous rehcorerions enoor un joar," said the figure, in a deep, rhythmic voice.

"Good to see you too, Embo," said Renamon, nodding to the Kyuzo Bounty Hunter that had saved both her and Rika's lives from hungry Acklay on Felucia, even though she had no idea what he had just said. Embo tipped his hat in recognition and stood up, staring at the occupants of the airlock.

"Good to see you're looking as cool and collected as ever, Embo," said Terriermon. "Still chucking that hat of yours at people?"

Embo chuckled, glancing down at the small Digimon. "Bonsopir que vous avez chané pas nonpus. Plaire, me suit maitnant." He beckoned to the group and turned around, striding down to corridor on the other side of the airlock. The others glanced at each other. Embo had always been a bit of an enigma to them. Only Aayla had any idea what he was saying when he spoke, and the Kyuzo was usually a silent observer, watching quietly from a corner and then leaping into ninja mode when required.

But there was no denying, everything Embo did, he did with infallible coolness. If they were still at school, Embo would be the kid that every other boy secretly wanted to be, except that Embo wasn't an utter jerk, like many of the "cool kids" at school could be.

Aayla didn't need to tell the others that Embo wanted them to follow him, and they stepped into the space station, following the battle-hardened Bounty Hunter down the corridor.

Embo casually stopped when he reached the door on the other side and lifted a finger, pushing a button beside it. The doors slid open smoothly and Embo stepped through, allowing the others to get a good look at the room beyond.

There wasn't all that much to look at. It appeared to function as a lot of things – including kitchen, dining room, armoury and computer room. There were a few cooking implements on the far wall. To the left were the main computers that included security cameras and power terminals. Hanging next to the computers were a laser crossbow that belonged to Embo, and a sniper rifle that everyone else remembered belonged to Rumi.

The middle of the room was taken up by a large table, which could have been used for both eating and briefings. Sitting at it, were two other familiar figures. Sugi was sitting at one end, with both feet resting on the table in a relaxed fashion. The other figure sitting there was the tall, thin-and-red faced, hooded figure of Rumi, the Frenk.

"You don't mess about when it comes to time predictions, do you?" Sugi laughed, peeling some kind of fruit with her vibrodagger. "You say two hours and here you are, on the dot?"

"Well, what do you expect from a Jedi," offered Rumi in her high and squeaky voice, reclining on her own chair. "Nevertheless, it is good to see all of you in the flesh once more."

"Likewise," said Lopmon, as the others walked into the room. "How have you guys all been?"

"Well, it's been pretty much same-old, same-old for us," said Sugi, taking a bite out of the from the fruit she was peeling. "We get the occasional job now and then, we carry it out, we get paid and we head back here to wait for our next assignment. To tell you the truth, the jobs we've been having haven't been all that difficult. Have a seat."

"Thank you," said Aayla, as the children and herself took a seat, while Terriermon and Lopmon hopped onto the table and Embo and Renamon stood in the background.

"What we want to know is how all of you have been holding up," said Sugi. "Your lives seem to be far more interesting than ours. None of our missions, before or after our mission to Felucia, have been as exciting or full of danger as the one we went on with you. And you've been getting plenty of action yourselves, haven't you?"

"For the most part," said Rika. "Yes, we have. Even we Tamers have been able to do some fighting on some of our more recent trips. You should have seen what we did on Geonosis."

"We heard about that one," said Rumi. "Not anything about what you did, of course, but how the Republic somehow managed to take on the Geonosian droid foundry only losing a few clones in the process. We figured you had something to do with that."

"Je parie ces Méga fomes que nous avons intindus parlir d'on été en emplequées cel'un," Embo said from the background.

"Embo says that he bets you went all the way to the Mega stage on that one," said Sugi, helpfully.

"Right on the dot, E-man," said Terriermon. "It was a right old explosion-fest."

"By the way?" asked Lopmon. "Where's Seripas? Isn't he with you guys anymore?"

"Of course he is," said Sugi. "He's around."

"Which means," said Aayla. "He's right above you."

"What a-ACK!" shouted Terriermon, as both he and Lopmon started and leapt aside. Seripas had dropped from the ceiling and landed right between the two of them. The small, creature chuckled and grinned at them cheerfully. Evidently his days of hiding inside a giant, armoured body-suit were over. His confidence had skyrocketed since they'd first met him.

"You guys alright?" he asked.

"You almost gave me a heart attack," Terriermon grumbled.

"Momentai," said Seripas, grinning cheekily at the Rookie Digimon.

"Oh terrific," Terriermon folded his arms and gave his patented death glare. "You managed to remember my word over all these months. I was half hoping you'd all forgotten it."

"Nobody can forget Momentai," Sugi smirked. "It's too infectious. We were thinking of making it into our official slogan – Momentai, we've got it covered."

"Don't you dare," Terriermon hissed at the Zabrak.

Sugi raised an eyebrow. "Okay, maybe you've changed a little bit. You seem to have become even more defensive of your little catchphrase."

"You try coming up with one and then have people using it left, right and centre for five months," Terriermon pointed out. "At least most people at home thought it was annoying."

"If recall, I didn't take the constant use of it all too well when I found it annoying," Renamon added. "Perhaps you should take the fact that everybody here likes it as a good thing and leave it at that."

"Good point," Terriermon mused. "Meh, I'll figure something out eventually."

"And how have you been, Seripas?" asked Lopmon. "Been building any robot suits recently?"

"Nope," Seripas stood as tall as he could, which wasn't far, and stated proudly. "I am no longer ashamed of my stature. And I owe it all to you guys, but you in particular, Lopmon. Since you convinced me I don't need that robotic suit... well, I've been much more useful to the team since I abandoned the thing anyway?"

"He's right?" said Sugi. "He's been doing a lot more crawling through vents since we parted ways. Seripas' skills thanks to his small size are second-to-none. We've managed to pull of many jobs thanks to him. We're beginning to build a bigger name for ourselves. The jobs come more often."

"Good for you, Seripas," said Suzie. Seripas grinned cheerfully.

Sugi turned to face the solemn Aayla. "But now, I think it's about time we cut to the chase, isn't it?" the Zabrak said. "You want to know the identity of your target and where you can find him, right?"

Aayla nodded. "Preferably as soon as possible," she said.

"Fortunately," said Sugi. "The person I have in mind should be extremely easy to apprehend and question." She snickered. "He is honestly one of the most pathetic Bounty Hunter I have ever seen, isn't he, guys?"

Embo chuckled. "El ni paurraet pas ixécuter un travuel s'il lui-même est fait pour lui," he said.

"A very adequate description," said Sugi. "He's a disgrace to Bounty Hunters everywhere, whether they be good or bad. He's lucky he hasn't been killed already."

"If he's so pathetic," said Henry. "Then why have the Separatists employed him?"

"Because he's cheap," said Sugi. "And when I say cheap, I mean unbelievably cheap. His father was a great Bounty Hunter, and he wants to be like him so very much, but he screws up so many of his missions that he's had to lower his prices to almost nothing just to get work."

"I'm guessing that Nute Gunray employed him," said Aayla.

"Exactly," nodded Sugi. "And Gunray knows a lot about the inner workings of the Separatists, does he not?"

"Indeed he does," nodded Aayla. "This person sounds like an ideal candidate. Who is he and where can we find him?"

"Before I answer your first question," said Sugi, her face turning a little grave. "Let me answer the second. The second is the one factor in the equation that presents us with a bit of a problem. For you in particular," Sugi gave Aayla a significant look.

"For me?" Aayla frowned. "Why? Where is this Bounty Hunter?"

"I'll give a description and one guess," said Sugi, dryly. "He's in a place that's hot, smelly, absolutely heaving with sand, owned by an enormous invertebrate and has lots and lots of enslaved female Twi'leks."

Aayla shut her eyes and pressed her lips together in trepidation. She didn't need any time to think before he could answer that question. "He lives at the palace of Jabba the Hutt, doesn't he?" she asked.

"Unfortunately," said Sugi.

There was silence for a couple of seconds. Eventually Terriermon said, "Why do I get the feeling that this rescue mission just took a turn for the worse?"

Aayla had never been to the palace of Jabba the Hutt before and she had no desire to set foot anywhere near it. She'd heard the stories from Anakin and Ahsoka and other Jedi, as had the Digimon and the Tamers. However, she had promised herself she would go to the ends of the universe to find Master Vos and if she had to step into the nightmare all female Twi'leks have to find him then she would do so.

She opened her eyes and said, "Alright. Fine. Who is this person?"

Rumi picked a holotransmitter from her belt and placed it on the table. A large hologram displayed itself and slowly rotated, giving the spectators a clear view of the subject from all areas. The figure was clothed in a simple tunic, leggings and boots. His hands were green and had suckers on the ends of his fingers. His head was also green, and he had large, pupil-less eyes, no visible nose, a mouth that extended outwards from his face slightly and two antennae, along with pointed ears. It was definitely a Rodian.

"His name is Greedo," said Sugi. "Rather young for a Bounty Hunter – he's no older than twenty standard years or so. And an utterly dismal sack of uselessness. Jabba doesn't hold him in much high regard either. He allows him to stay at his palace out of respect for his father more than anything else. Greedo the Elder was a very good Bounty Hunter when he was still alive."

"Shouldn't be too hard to track him down," said Rumi. "We might even be able to get Jabba to help us out."

"How do you know all this?" asked Henry. "About Greedo and Jabba and everything."

"Embo and I occasionally pay a visit to Jabba's Palace," said Sugi. "Not for fun like most of the scum that show up there, or for business like most other Bounty Hunters. We go there to keep tabs on our fellow Bounty Hunters. And we never stay the night."

Aayla nodded. If half the things she'd heard about Jabba's Palace were true then she could hardly blame them.

"And we're sure that he can help us out?" asked Renamon. "That he can reveal the location of Quinlan Vos?"

"Not entirely," said Sugi. "However, he's easy to find and if he doesn't know the answer you can just arrest him. He's definitely on the wanted list. He's not exactly... subtle with his approach to things. If he doesn't know the answer you can definitely find some reason to put him behind bars. Jabba probably wouldn't care that much."

"Especially since Greedo's working for the Separatists," said Seripas.

"What do you mean?" asked Rika.

"I mean," said Seripas. "That Jabba doesn't want any of his Bounty Hunters to be associated with the Separatists right now. He doesn't trust them at all, not since they conspired with Ziro to kidnap his son, Rotta. If Jabba knew that Greedo was working with the Separatists then he might be all too willing to help us find him. He might hand him over on a platter."

"Not literally, I hope," muttered Henry.

"Why doesn't Jabba know that Greedo works for the Separatists?" asked Rika. "Surely people would have told him."

"Not really," said Rumi. "You never know when you might need dirt on someone. The Bounty Hunters that know about Greedo's dealings might wait for the correct time to use it. And for us, I think that time is now."

"Alright then," nodded Aayla. "It's decided. We shall head for Jabba's Palace."

"Not right now, we won't," said Sugi. "That would be a very bad idea."

"Why?" asked Suzie, worriedly.

"Because," the Zabrak turned to the little girl. "If we left now, then we'd arrive on the planet Tatooine in the middle of the night there. Jabba and his court will mostly be sleeping and if there is one thing that Hutts do not like, it is being woken up in the middle of the night. It would be best to wait a few hours before we go and try to find Greedo."

Aayla gritted her teeth, but she knew that Sugi was right. Jabba had a rather high temper and it would be best not to ignite it. She would have to wait until tomorrow before she could proceed.

"Okay," she said. "We'll wait. But I want to leave as soon as we can tomorrow."

"Certainly," nodded Sugi.

"And now, we can discuss you payment," said Aayla.

"Payment?" Seripas asked. "What payment?"

"My thoughts exactly," said Sugi. "I'm surprised at you Aayla. We are your friends, are we not? This is hardly an official job. We consider this to be a personal favour to our friend. Therefore, we will provide our services completely free of charge."

Aayla smiled. "You Bounty Hunters are truly four of a kind. I hope you realise that."

"Nous fuesans muentinont," said Embo.

"So, what are we supposed to do for all that time?" asked Rika.

"You guys wanna play hangman?"

"NO!" shouted everyone, including Aayla and excluding the Bounty Hunters, who all looked startled by the sudden outburst.

"I suggest," said Renamon. "That we all get some rest. It's been a busy day for all of us, especially since we also saved Duchess Satine of Mandalore from assassination this morning, and it sounds like we'll have a busy day tomorrow too."

"Good idea, Renamon," nodded Henry. "Is there somewhere we can get some sleep, guys?"

"We don't usually have company," said Sugi. "But you can always borrow our beds, if you like."

"Oh no, we c-" Henry started.

"Yes, you can," said Seripas. "It's the least we can do. One bed per Tamer – mine would be too small for any of you humans anyway."

"Come along then, guys," said Lopmon. "Bedtime."

As the Tamers were shepherded off to bed, Aayla went and sat in the corner, where she would be able to kept some sleep of her own. But her mind was reeling with the implications of what she was about to do. She was about to descend into the belly of the beast and head for Jabba's Palace, which was the last place in the galaxy you wanted to be if you were a female Twi'lek, except perhaps Nal Hutta where most of the other Hutts lived. Even though she was a Jedi, the mere idea made her shudder.

She had no doubt that Jabba wouldn't try anything. She was almost completely sure that Jabba would not try to kidnap her and make her one of his dancing slaves, as he probably would to most Twi'lek girls, or indeed girls of any sort, who entered his domain. She was a Jedi, and one thing that Jabba prized just as much as his slaves were powerful allies. Capturing and enslaving a Jedi would definitely put a hitch in the treaty he had signed with the Republic since the Jedi had returned his son to him.

Even so, you could never tell with a Hutt. It was best not to let your guard down in the presence of one at any moment. Aayla knew for a fact that there were rumours of a rancor pit beneath his throne room. And there were plenty of other people who frequented his palace who could still attempt something if they believed they could get away with it.

She would have to remain ready for anything. And she knew the Digimon would probably refuse to be left outside so they would probably come in as well, hidden from everybody's view. Aayla smiled to herself, imagining what Terriermon would say if she even considered leaving them behind. They would stick by her like glue.

Her thoughts turned to Greedo, hoping that the Rodian Bounty Hunter would have the information she sought. If he didn't then her search for Master Vos could be a long one.

Casting all thoughts from her mind, she turned over, shut her eyes and quickly drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Meanwhile, unknown to any of them, things had taken a bad turn back on Coruscant. While Duchess Satine had eventually managed to sort everything out and get the Republic to leave Mandalore alone, negating the threat that Death Watch posed, Senator Chuchi was under a lot of pressure. Her bid to reopen trade links had gone well, with what looked like the majority of the Senators agreeing to vote to end the blockade.

But then, Chairman Papanoida, the leader of Pantora, had arrived. While that in itself was a good thing, what happened shortly after this was a large problem. Someone had managed to kidnap both of Chairman Papanoida's daughters, Chi Eekway and Che Amanwe.

And Chairman Papanoida was, understandably, determined to hunt down the kidnapper.

* * *

Yes, by Greedo I mean the very same Greedo from Star Wars: A New Hope - the one that gets shot by Han Solo. And yes, he is alive at this point. He's roughly the same age as Anakin, because there was a deleted scene from the Phantom Menace where young Anakin got into a fight with young Greedo.

In that last little section, I am referring to two separate episodes. For more information on what happened to Satine, watch the episode – "Duchess of Mandlore." For more information on what happened to Papanoida's daughters, watch the episode "Sphere of Influence." And yes, this particular episode will be important – I'm not just putting it here for the hell of it.

Until next time everybody. I'm sure many of you have been waiting for Jabba to appear for some time. Well, here he comes.

BTW, note the quote in the title of the next chapter. Teehee.

* * *

Next time...

The crew must now go and find Greedo to see if he has any information. That means the next chapter will feature the planet Tatooine and its overlord, Jabba the Hutt. Ooh-er.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 74 : Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy**


	74. Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

And now, I'm back at uni to stay. And I intend to do some serious catching up so I can make up for some lost time from the holidays. I intend to trailblaze through the rest of this arc, and I'm sure most of you readers won't object to that. Sorry for my long absence again. It was quite anguishing for me to keep putting this off.

**Geekgirl** – Thanks, I'm glad you liked it. And I hope the important characters don't disappoint.

And, without further ado, I present to you a chapter that introduces one of the most iconic characters from the Star Wars franchise.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 74:- Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy**

* * *

The _Halo_ had been left behind at the base of the Bounty Hunters. The _Twilight_ was slightly larger and was a better craft for carrying larger numbers of people, which is why it was currently soaring through hyperspace and whooshing towards the other side of the galaxy. To a planet that had made a name for itself as one of the lowest places you could possibly find, rivalling the Coruscant Underworld in terms of seediness and crime. To a world that was dominated by one extremely fat slug.

Tatooine.

It was ironic really, Aayla thought. Now that they were going to Tatooine she was very glad that they had left Anakin behind. The planet may be his birthplace, but every single time it was mentioned or even alluded to in conversation, Anakin would immediately become sour and bitter, and, it had to be said, a bit unpleasant to talk to. Aayla wondered how Anakin would have taken to the idea of going back there... again.

Then again, Aayla was beginning to wonder if she would feel the same way as he did after she was done with the mission.

Fear wasn't the right word to describe the Twi'lek's feelings. She definitely wasn't scared. She wasn't nervous either – she was more... apprehensive. Unsure of what the future would bring. But, whatever the case, she was not going to back down. If this Greedo knew what she needed it was her duty to find him and extract the information for him.

The Digimon introduced to Bounty Hunters to the game hangman on the way there. This was really the best game they could try, because Pictionary and charades with people from other dimensions would be impractical, whereas hangman could work all the time. Seripas proved to be good at the game and even managed to get one up on Terriermon, which, as usual, annoyed the bunny no end.

Several hours later, and Sugi announced to the cockpit from her co-pilot seat – "We're approaching our destination. Everybody get ready."

Folding the game of hangman away, the Digimon and Tamers stood up and watched with a certain tension as the spice freighter they were riding in came out of hyperspace. The blue tunnel seemed to collapse and the planet rushed into view before them and slowing to almost a stop, like an extremely large ping pong ball that had been caught in mid-air by suspended animation.

"Well," said Terriermon. "It looks about as boring and featureless as I predicted." And he was right. The entire planet was basically one colour – the colour of sand. There was no greenery, no oceans, no large lakes, no mountains, no ice caps. Just endless, everlasting sand sweeping across the whole world.

"It looks even more inhospitable than Geonosis," remarked Henry. And indeed it did. The two suns the planet orbited where the same two suns that Geonosis rotated around, which was only a single parsec away from where they were now. However, while Geonosis had had large amounts of dark red sands and also a bunch of large rocks and mountains, Tatooine had light coloured sands and what looked like nothing but sand dunes for miles. It was like one giant beach, but without the ocean or the pleasantness part.

"Sahara, eat your heart out," muttered Rika. "That is one mean-looking desert."

"Appropriate isn't it," said Aayla. "A hellhole like that being run by a Crime Lord such as a Hutt. And yet, for all its inhospitality there are a lot of people who make their living here. Mostly junk dealers and smugglers and other people involved in crime, or people who run bars and cantinas, and several moisture farmers that collect the water that people drink. After all, there are no natural water bodies in a desert like that."

"They live on dew?" asked Lopmon.

"Effectively," nodded Aayla. "Yes, they do."

"How extraordinary," muttered Henry. "Anything else we should know?"

"If you were going into the desert," said Aayla. "Then there would be a lot of things you'd need to know, such as watch out for Krayt Dragons, Tusken Raiders and Sarlacc pits..."

"They have Sarlacc here?" asked Renamon, scowling at the memory of the one of Felucia. "That also seems rather appropriate. A veritable hellhole in a hellhole."

"Indeed," nodded Aayla. "However, we are merely concerning ourselves with one particular building. Just remember to stay out of sight. And I must insist that the Tamers remain with the ship."

"We're going to get left behind again?" Suzie complained.

"Trust me," said Aayla. "It is for your own good."

"Aayla's right," nodded Sugi. "Jabba's palace is no place for children, even ones as hardened as you. Besides you can help Rumi and Seripas guard the ship."

"Guard the ship?" asked Rika, frowning. "From what?"

"Jawas," said Rumi. "Little humanoids that make their living stealing bits of junk and selling it to people. Leave a ship unattended for too long and they'll have dismantled it by the time you get back. Nothing to worry about – they won't come close if you look strong enough."

"Alright," nodded Henry, all too willing to keep Suzie away from Jabba. "We'll stay behind."

"But we are definitely going," said Renamon. "There is no negotiation on that one, Aayla."

"I wasn't going to try," chuckled Aayla, truthfully. "I already knew that even if I expressly forbade you from coming with me, you would follow me in anyway."

"Yep," nodded Terriermon grimly. "We're seeing you kept safe and that's that."

"Embo and I will come in too," said Sugi, as she guided the _Twilight_ down into the planet's atmosphere. "We can help smooth your way. After all, we have both been here before."

"Unfortunately," Embo muttered.

They lapsed into silence once more as they watched the ground slowly approach. It was indeed endless sand dunes that stretched out forever, in the most bleak and desolate landscape that any of the Digimon or Tamers had ever seen. Even the desert level of the Digital World wasn't this harsh. At least that one had some decent shade.

When Sugi put the ship down, she did so in front of a large building made of several circular sections, a large main one and a few other branching off the sides. The palace of Jabba the Hutt.

"Well," said Terriermon. "Here we are. Can we leave now?"

"Not until we get what we came for," Renamon said, scooping Terriermon onto her shoulder.

"Right then," said Aayla, standing up. "Let's get this over with. If we have to go in there then I'd quite like to get out again as quickly as I can."

"Be careful, guys," said Suzie, as they began to leave the cockpit.

"As always, Suzie," nodded Lopmon. "We'll stay invisible the whole time. We'll be fine."

Aayla pushed the button that lowered the ramp from the bottom of the spaceship. "Let's not keep the mighty Jabba waiting," she said, as she strode down the ramp and into the baking hot desert air. Renamon raised her perception filter and followed with the bunnies, while Sugi and Embo followed after them.

"This is not a good planet to be on if you have a fur coat," remarked Renamon, as she stepped into the light of the suns, which glared down at her like a pair of blazing evil eyes.

"Chin up, Rena," said Terriermon. "Soon we'll be in a nice, shady building where the only thing we'll have to worry about are drunken Bounty Hunters and being overpowered by the smell."

"Race you there," remarked the fox dryly.

Aayla shielded her eyes from the gaze of the suns and looked out on the landscape. It was about as bleak as she'd expected. The only thing she could see except sand (and a solitary bantha standing on a dune not far away) was Jabba's Palace itself. The _Twilight_ had been parked a little ways down a sand-covered road that led to the building itself. It was about as featureless as the surroundings – a slightly darker shade of sandiness, with several circular sections of different sizes and a large main gate like a giant wall of metal right at the front.

She took a deep breath and turned to Sugi and Embo. "Why don't you two take point?" she suggested.

"That," said Sugi. "Might not be such a bad idea."

Embo, who had tipped his hat down a little bit to shield his eyes, strode out purposefully. He knew that you had to approach Jabba's Palace with confidence to avoid suspicion. Anyone who looked like they were sneaking, even in the tiniest amounts, would be regarded with distrust right on the dot. Sugi and Aayla and the invisible Digimon followed the striding Kyuzo.

As they approached the door, there were no signs of anyone on the other side letting them in or even any signs of life at all. The Digimon gazed up at the large structure, all three alert for any signs of trouble. Their hairs were standing on end. It was too quiet for their liking – it usually meant there was an ambush being set up.

Fortunately, there wasn't. As Embo walked up to the door, he banged his fist on it four times and folded his arms expectantly, staring at what looked like a small, circular flap in the middle on the door. Moments later, the Digimon blinked as the flap opened and a what appeared to be a security camera, shaped like a giant eyeball on a stalk, poked out and stared at Embo.

Renamon, with the bunnies in tow, quickly dashed off to the side and leapt behind a rock before they were noticed. Her perception filter wouldn't work on a camera. It had no mind to trick.

The camera spoke to Embo in a slight gibberish burble that sounded meaningless to everyone else. Embo replied to it with "Vous m'azev vu ezent, le carveau d'éteon." to which the camera replied with more burbles.

"I've got this," Sugi muttered to Aayla and walked up to the camera. "Hey, listen," she said, boldly, causing the camera to swivel in her direction and stare at her, shoving itself right into her personal space. But Sugi didn't flinch backwards or show any sign of weakness. She just stared back and said, "We've got some important business to discuss with Jabba. Are you going to let us in, or not?"

The camera stared at her for a few seconds, and then turned to Aayla. Aayla saw the camera tilt down to look at her waist and she knew that it was focusing on her lightsaber. The camera shutters snapped shut and open, as if it was blinking in surprise, and then it retreated back into the door. The flap shut behind it.

Moments later, the door slowly ground open and upwards, lifting its massive, metal weight into the air and revealing a dark corridor beyond. Sugi and Embo strode inside, and Aayla followed behind. Aayla felt a slight breeze whoosh past her, and didn't need her senses to know that the Digimon had just slipped past.

"Now, remember Aayla," said Sugi. "It's best to be up front in your approach. Jabba doesn't appreciate it when his allies try to keep secrets from him. He would think you have an ulterior motive. He can be very paranoid at times."

"If he asks, I will tell," said Aayla. "But if he doesn't, then I have no intention of revealing my mission to a room full of drunken pirates."

"Nor should you," Sugi nodded. "Jabba will respect the wishes of a powerful ally like yourself. If you don't want anyone else to know your intentions, he will order everyone else to leave the room so you can talk in private."

"How gracious," Aayla muttered. "Come on, let's go meet the Crime Lord."

The three visible and three invisible beings slowly strode down the corridor. A few pig-like Gamorrean guards regarded them from the shadows but made no attempt to stop them. Presumably the security camera had sent word ahead and the guards had been ordered to allow them to pass.

Sugi and Embo led Aayla through a few corridors and into a large room. And it was here that Aayla finally laid eyes on the great fatso himself.

Jabba dominated the room, perched up on a large stage at one end, where he could be seen by everyone else there. The slug was more of a normal slug-colour than his uncle, Ziro, a sticky, brownish colour across his body. He was even fatter than Ziro, though that was hardly surprising since Ziro had spent some time in prison since Aayla had seen him. His chin and nose were both oddly shaped, with one side smaller than the other and making his face decidedly unsymmetrical. But other than that, he looked like any other Hutt Aayla had ever seen.

He was accompanied on the stage by a protocol droid. It looked exactly like Senator Amidala's personal droid, C-3PO, except for its paintjob. Whereas Threepio was gold, this one was a rusty brown, with white stripes on its face from where its nose would be if it had one to either side of the jaw. And, nestled, in Jabba's curled tail, was Rotta the Huttlet. Basically, Jabba in miniature. Very miniature.

"That's Stinky? The Huttlet that Ahsoka keeps telling us about?" muttered Lopmon.

"Do Hutt's give birth by sneezing?" asked Terriermon. "Because that definitely looks like something that would come out of Jabba's nose."

Aayla almost snorted. She'd heard many different ways of describing Hutts, but _that_ had never been one of them. Trust Terriermon to come up with a completely new analogy.

The Twi'lek took her eyes off the Hutt and let the roam over the rest of the room. There was a large open space in the centre that was occupied by only one figure. Predictably, it was another Twi'lek, also female, and this one was swaying in time to the music that was playing from somewhere. When she turned in Aayla's direction, the Jedi saw a look of resignation on her face. She frowned sadly. Obviously this poor soul had been a slave for a long time now and had accepted her fate in Jabba's thrall.

On the other side of the room were a series of chairs and tables, where a bunch of other people, of various life forms, including Weequay, Quarren, a Rodian (although she could tell this one was not Greedo), a Nikto and even a couple of humans. There were Twi'leks there too – more females, who looked a bit relieved that they weren't the ones dancing for the Hutt at the moment, and a few males, who looked like they were enjoying themselves.

Aayla felt bile rise inside her as she stared at the male Twi'leks. Obviously she shouldn't expect any help from them on the grounds that they were the same species. They couldn't care less about the plight of the females. And Aayla could feel that plight. The slaves were all dead inside, filled with nothing but fear, emotional pain and disgust at their owner and what he made them do. It made her feel ill.

It also made her extremely reluctant to ask Jabba's help for anything. But she knew she was going to need it.

"Are we going in, or not?" asked Sugi, as they stood by the steps leading into the room.

Aayla nodded. "Yes," she said. "Against my better judgement. Guys, I know you're invisible to all organics right now, but I want you to stay hidden all the same, as there are a few droids in here. Can you do that?"

"Not a problem," Renamon whispered in a low voice, that Aayla could only just hear over the music. "We'll be watching. _Very_ closely."

"This place is disgusting," Terriermon remarked. "I could be asleep and I'd notice it."

"Come on, then," said Lopmon. "Let's do this so we can get out of this horrible palace as soon as possible."

"Agreed," said Aayla and then, taking a deep breath – and then wishing she hadn't due to the stench of Hutt filling her nostrils – she walked down the steps and into the room, flanked by the two Bounty Hunters. She kept her mind focused on her objective, so she couldn't tell where the Digimon were right now. But she knew they were hovering close by.

Aayla wasn't sure whether to go straight to Jabba, or wait for the dancer to finish before she did. On reflection, she decided that interrupting the dance might put the Hutt in a bad mood, so she moved over towards the other side of the room, towards the tables and their occupants, and the three of them stood, watching the dance and impatiently waiting for the music to stop. The swaying Twi'lek looked nervous, and Aayla tried to send her a reassuring pulse through the Force. She knew it wouldn't do much good in the long run, but it made both her and the dancer feel slightly better.

"Hoy, Embo," called a voice from nearby. Embo turned around, as did Aayla and Sugi, to look at the Weequay that had just called out to the Kyuzo. He was obviously drunk beyond belief and he was staggering towards them, a lewd grin on his face. "You look like you've been doing alright for yourself," he slurred, sending a glance in Aayla's direction. "Where'd you pick up the hot Twi'lek girl. And, if you don't mind my asking, could I borrow her for a few minutes? I won't be long, I pr-"

He didn't get to finish his sentence, because Embo had swung his fist with spectacular force and slammed it into the drunk Weequay's gut. The Weequay, suddenly much more sober, doubled over in pain, which allowed Embo to remove his metal hat and slam it into his face, knocking the Weequay unconscious and sending him sprawling.

"Parsinna les irrévérankas Aayla," the Kyuzo growled, placing his hat back on his hat and glaring down at the unconscious form.

"Wow," said Aayla. "Thanks, Embo. I'm touched."

"People like him deserve that and more," said Sugi with a disgusted sneer. "He was hardly going to take no for an answer anyway." Aayla shuddered. She knew she was more than capable of handling herself against a drunken Weequay, but even so, the thought of someone like that trying to make a move on her was disturbing to say the least.

"And, it looks like that has drawn attention to us," said Sugi.

Aayla looked up. Everyone in the room, including Jabba himself, was now staring at the three of them. The dancer had stopped dancing and was cautiously moving off the side, grateful that the song had been cut short. Meanwhile, the yellow eyes of the Hutt Crime Lord were fixed on Aayla.

"Now's as good a time as any, I suppose," she said, and she strode forwards, with Embo and Sugi walking on either side of her. As they approach Jabba, and Aayla decided that breathing through her mouth would be better option, Sugi picked up some speed and approached Jabba first.

"Great Jabba the Hutt," she said, and Hutt turned his gaze onto her instead. "May I present to you, General Aayla Secura, Jedi Knight of the Republic and a member of the A-Team."

Whispers of astonishment ran through the small crowd behind them. Aayla kept her mind partially focused on them – she didn't feel particularly comfortable exposing her back to a bunch of criminals, and wanted to be ready to deflect any blaster bolts fired at.

Jabba looked impressed, as he turned his gaze back to Aayla and took a few seconds to look her up and down. Aayla stood patiently, allowing the Hutt to finish his analysis of her, before taking another step forward and saying, "Mighty Jabba, I require your assistance."

Finally, the great, fat slug spoke. His voice was incredibly deep, an enormous contrast to his high-pitched uncle. What he said was, "Chowbaso, Secura. He rusco eyballet gumba?"

The red-painted protocol droid stepped forward to act as translator. In a slightly feminine voice, it said, "The all-powerful Jabba welcomes you to his palace, Master Secura, and wishes to know how the war is going."

"As well as can be, I suppose," said Aayla. "It would be preferable if we had won already, but we are certainly making progress. The Separatists are being pushed back further and further every day."

"Dana poolago gwan," said Jabba.

"That is good news," said the droid dutifully.

"Indeed it is," nodded Aayla. "And our alliance with you has certainly helped to speed things up. I hope you are satisfied by our end of the deal. I was involved in the recapture of your uncle, Ziro, after he managed to escape from custody."

Jabba laughed, a low and slow laugh that indicated pure delight. His fat belly bulged out with each laugh he took and Aayla made a point of not looking at it. Once Jabba had stopped, he turned serious once more and said, "Choy yana dabu Jedi wageekah."

"Mighty Jabba demands to know what business the Jedi have with him," said the protocol droid.

"That..." Aayla said, slowly. "Is the most interesting part, Mighty Jabba. This is not official Jedi business. This little mission has a much more... personal value to me. In fact, the Jedi Council doesn't even know that I am here."

Jabba looked intrigued, his wide mouth moving into the shape of a toothless grin. He stared down at Aayla for a few seconds before he continued. "Gaba kee chai chai cun kuta?" he asked.

"Then what are you doing here?" repeated the droid.

"This is the point where I ask my first favour," said Aayla. "As I said, this mission is personal, and I would prefer it if we could discuss it further where there are no prying ears standing behind me," she jerked her thumb over her shoulder to indicate the silent crowds behind her.

Jabba nodded and addressed the assembled crowd "Mikiyuna lapa. Ateema!" he barked.

"Jabba wishes for everyone not involved in the Jedi's business to leave the room immediately," the droid translated. There were muffled complaints from several people in the back of the room, but Jabba fixed them with a cold glare, which Aayla interpreted as a "Leave or you will not see nightfall," glare. There was scurrying and the crowd hustled to obey and they scurried out of the room. Soon, it was empty, except for Jabba, Rotta, the droid, Aayla, Sugi and Embo.

Now that she no longer had to focus on watching her back, Aayla stretched out her mind and searched for the Digimon. She almost laughed when she found them. Renamon was hanging from the ceiling directly above her, all four paws holding onto pipes and hidden from sight from the droid. Terriermon and Lopmon were holding onto her shoulders.

The exit was suddenly sealed, as a great metal door slid down and blocked the way in or out. Aayla didn't feel all that comfortable being locked in a room with a Hutt, but she knew she was safe. In fact, she was mildly impressed. Most of the stories she'd heard about Jabba indicated he was a scumbag, and while she had no doubt he really was, he was showing her respect and agreeing to her wishes, even though she was a female Twi'lek. He really did care about his allies.

"Jabba will now hear your request," said the protocol droid.

"Many thanks, Great Jabba," said Aayla. "As you have no doubt guessed, my visit has little to do with the war. It has to a degree, but that is all. I require some information, and I believe you have someone in your employ who might be able to give it to me."

"Klopdah choy da oto keeonka," said Jabba.

"Mighty Jabba wishes for you to tell him what you want to know," said the droid.

"I suspected you would," said Aayla. "Here's the deal..." And she recounted again, the tale of how she had learned of her Master's supposed side-switching, and how she was now looking for him to confirm and potentially rectify this situation. Throughout the tale, Jabba remained impassively quiet, except for one point where he turned around to scold his son, who was getting bored and stared humming a tune loudly.

Aayla drew the story to a close with, "And once a reached the place, Sugi told me that the Bounty Hunter you have in your employ, known as Greedo, may know the whereabouts of my Master, because he currently works for the Separatists, as well as you."

Aayla waited for the explosion of anger that she expected from Jabba at the revelation that one of his Bounty Hunters was working for one of his sworn enemies. But it never came. Jabba looked angry at the thought, but he certainly didn't look surprised.

"Doe ne hopolo wonka," Jabba said, scowling. "Scoobata barchock haygo owrupa regano."

"The all-powerful Jabba says that the news that Greedo works for the Separatists is not new to him," intoned the protocol droid. "But he also says that if you had come an hour ago, it would have been."

Aayla frowned. "What do you mean, Mighty Jabba?"

The Hutt scowled again and replied, "Yocheska hopko chooskoo tinghay bosco che Greedo garesha."

"You are not the first to come looking for Greedo today," said the protocol droid.

Aayla blinked. "I'm not. Well then... who beat me to the punch?"

Jabba said one word, which Aayla did not need the protocol droid to translate:-

"Papanoida."

Aayla frowned. "Chairman Papanoida of Pantora?" she asked, bemused. "He was here, looking for Greedo?"

Jabba nodded.

"Why?" asked Aayla. "What would he want with a Bounty Hunter like Greedo? He seems like a man who would have nothing to do with them."

"Bogookee wan jujuminmee fomwaa dopa maskey peedunkey," said Jabba. "Wonkee oto hoohah nallya."

"His daughters were kidnapped by the two-faced punk," the droid translated. "And he wants them back."

"Ah," said Aayla. "Well then, can you tell me what he has done with Greedo? I really need to speak to him right away."

Jabba turned to his droid and nodded, allowing the droid to retell the story for him. The droid turned to Aayla and replied, "Chairman Papanoida exposed Greedo for working for the Separatists, and demanded to know where his daughters are. Greedo admitted to his crimes and said that one of his daughters was being held in a cantina in Mos Eisley, not far from here. They left straight away."

"I see," said Aayla. "I don't suppose you know which cantina he was talking about, do you, mighty Jabba?"

Jabba nodded. "Mwaa dopa meekie kung garoota noowa grewumpa," he said.

"The double-crossing scum always goes to the same place," said the droid. "I can give you the co-ordinates, if you wish."

"I would be most grateful," nodded Aayla. The protocol droid took a few stiff steps down from the stage and walked up to Aayla. Aayla extended her wrist and allowed the droid to put the co-ordinates in the tracking function on her wrist.

"Thank you," said Aayla, as the protocol droid returned to the stage. "Oh Great Jabba the Hutt, you have my everlasting gratitude. And... if my mission proves successful, you will have the gratitude of the entire Jedi Order."

Jabba laughed again, and added, "Bu Jedi rook mah bukee nallya botaffa. Ateema jee galoono wontoro."

"The Jedi brought my boy back to me," said the droid. "I now return the favour."

"We should leave now if we hope to catch Greedo," said Aayla. "Farewell, Mighty Jabba." _And may we never meet again,_ she added in her mind as she bowed respectfully to the fat slug.

_Amen to that,_ said a voice that was definitely Terriermon's.

"Mee jewz ku," Jabba waved his thick, stubby arm in farewell. Rotta the Huttlet copied his action, and Aayla, Sugi and Embo turned and walked towards the closed door. It opened as they approached, and the three of them strode down the corridor and through the throngs waiting to be let back in. Aayla sensed Renamon invisibly scurry along the ceiling like a lizard behind her. How she stayed up there was a mystery.

As Aayla walked, she spotted the Twi'lek girl who had been dancing before Jabba when she had arrived. She regarded her sadly and paused in her stride and stopped in front of her. The slave-girl looked startled and a little nervous, looking down at her feet. Aayla frowned – presumably the slave-girl thought she was being inspected and had gone into her submissive pose.

Well, she wasn't having that. Aayla put her hand under the other Twi'lek's chin and lifted her head so they made eye contact. Then, Aayla used her other hand to grasp the hand of the slave-girl and give it a comforting squeeze. Aayla gave her a look which clearly said, _Don't worry. I'll come back for you... all of you... one day._

The slave-girl smiled gratefully, and then hurried back into the room.

Aayla turned and followed Sugi and Embo, until they were back outside. Silently, they made their way back towards the _Twilight, _where the others could be seen waiting patiently for them.

Some distance from the palace, Renamon dropped her perception filter and the three Digimon became visible once more.

"Remind me," said Lopmon. "To never enter the palace of a Hutt again."

"It was a ghastly place," nodded Renamon. "It's a shame that the Republic can't reign the Hutts in a little. I didn't like being in there at all."

"Me neither," agreed Terriermon. "Did you see the state of some of those slaves? That place reminds me all too much of Goro's place."

"I wondered how it felt familiar," Renamon bristled.

"Well, I may be back one day," said Aayla. "Jabba may have been helpful, but those slaves deserve much better. Nobody should have to go through what they have. And one day, I'll be the one who frees them all."

"Count us in on _that_ escapade," nodded Lopmon. "I'd come back here for that."

They reached the _Twilight_. Sugi turned to Rumi, who had take her hood off because of the heat and looked decidedly weird without it. "Anything interesting happened out here?"

"Only when Seripas got into a wrestling match with a brave Jawa," said Rumi. "That was amusing."

"And how did that turn out?" asked the Zabrak, curiously.

"I won," said Seripas. "I turned its own stun gun on it."

"Shame you missed it really," remarked Rika. "So, how'd it go?"

"Asides from feeling creeped out by the place in general," said Terriermon, "We do have a lead on Greedo now. We have to head to a place called Mos Eisley. Apparently, it's not far."

"Mos Eisley is a large city," said Sugi. "One of the two capitals of Tatooine, the other being Mos Espa. It's got a lot of junk dealers and other dangerous people, so we should still remain on our guard while we're there."

"Come on then," said Rumi. "The ship is ready for departure. Where are we heading?"

"I'll put in the co-ordinates," said Aayla, as she started up the ramp. The others followed her inside, and within moments, the _Twilight_ was lifting into the air and swivelling around, before whooshing off over the dunes at high speed and leaving a bunch of disappointed Jawas behind.

* * *

It only took about five minutes or so to reach Mos Eisley. It seemed to be a rather complicated city. All the buildings were simple, made out of stone that was the same colour as the sand around it, but the whole place was a veritable maze of corridors and every street seemed to be a main one. People scurried to and fro below, and paid no attention to the spice freighter flying overhead. They got a lot of those coming into the town.

Which had been the exact reason they had pinched Anakin's ship anyway.

During the flight, everyone had been filled in as to the situation with the Chairman of Pantora and Greedo.

"What do we do now?" asked Henry. "It's not like we can take Greedo with us to show us the way now. Chairman Papanoida is going to need him to find his daughters, and we can't just take his only lead away. It wouldn't be right."

"Agreed," said Aayla. "But hopefully we will only need Greedo's time for a few minutes. We just need to get the location from him and that will be enough."

"Yes," said Renamon. "But I'm afraid we will be next to useless at this next stage," she indicated herself and the bunnies. "We can't exactly reveal ourselves to Papanoida and expect him to keep us a secret, can we?"

"No," said Aayla. "Keeping you a secret is essential to the war."

"That's no problem," said Seripas. "We can help instead. We'll go in and scope the place out before we call you in. It's the least we can do, right?"

"Alright," nodded Aayla. "Let's do it."

Aayla piloted the _Twilight_ down into one of the large, circular hangars that were dotted around the city – the closest one she could find to the co-ordinates that Jabba had given her. She put the ship down and turned off the engines. Then she turned to the Digimon.

"Watch the ship for us, okay?" she asked. "We don't want it to get stolen, or Anakin would get really mad. More mad than if we smashed it up."

"You can count on us," nodded Renamon.

"Anyone who tries to steal the _Twilight_ won't know what hit them," said Terriermon. "Literally, because we'll be invisible."

Aayla smiled. "I almost wish someone would try," she said, before she and Bounty Hunters left the ship and ran across the hangar, following the tracking function on Aayla's comlink towards the cantina Jabba had hinted at.

* * *

As the five of them ran through the streets of Mos Eisley, people turned to stare at the unusual group, stepping out of their way as they passed. The prominent display of weapons from the Bounty Hunters was enough to ward people away. They didn't want to mess with professionals.

However, just before they reached the cantina, Aayla suddenly pulled to a halt. Everyone else behind her quickly stopped too, in order to prevent a comical pile-up in the street, as Aayla had been at the front.

"What is it?" asked Sugi.

"I'll have to thank Anakin for the impressive speed the _Twilight_ can fly at. It looks like we were faster than the Chairman." She nodded towards the street they had been about to enter. The Bounty Hunters followed her indication and spotted a man dressed in bright red robes and an equally red cowl on his head, walking down the street away from them, towards the building at the other end.

"That's Chairman Papanoida?" asked Seripas, peering around Aayla's legs.

Aayla nodded. "And that," she pointed to the taller figure wearing blue uniform like a guard, complete with blue cap on his head. "Must be his son, Ion Papanoida."

"And the third figure is definitely Greedo," nodded Sugi, staring at the thin Rodian that was walking in front, although walking wasn't really the right word, because Ion had a blaster jammed in the small of the Rodian Bounty Hunter's back.

Embo chuckled at the sight of the guy. "Il pereît affreié à la murt," he remarked smugly.

"Small wonder, really," agreed Sugi. "He is a cowards. And that Ion looks very angry."

"His sisters have been kidnapped," reasoned Aayla. "It's understandable."

"Alright," said Sugi. "We'll follow them in and listen in on their conversation, and provide back-up if need be. You wait outside. We'll bring Greedo out with us once they're done with him, then we grill him and give him back to the Papanoidas."

"Alright," nodded Aayla. She'd prefer to go in there herself, but she knew that Greedo would probably recognise her and try to bolt. But Sugi's gang knew what they were doing, so she had no real objections.

The group hurried silently down the street as the Papanoidas entered the cantina through the small door. Aayla rushed up to the door as it shut, and stood aside, allowing the Bounty Hunters to pass inside. The doors closed shut behind them and Aayla waited quietly, listening attentively for any sounds of conflict.

Sugi's gang walked into the casino after the Papanoidas. The Chairman, who had a big, white beard and wise-looking eyes, regarded them with no small amount of suspicion, but the Bounty Hunters pretended to ignore him as they stepped into the room beyond. It contained a large, rounded bar that took up most of the centre of the room, with tables on either side of it. The tables were occupied by a few Weequay, a single Quarren, an Aqualish, one male Twi'lek with orange skin and a Gotal standing in the corner. A Nimbanel stood behind the bar, cleaning out a glass.

The Bounty Hunters sat down at a nearby table where Greedo wouldn't see them and quietly listened in on the conversation behind them.

Greedo approached a Weequay standing by the bar and said, "Go get the prisoner," to him. The Weequay, grunted, but obediently left the room, while Greedo swiped the drink he'd been having and took a swig. Ion still had a blaster jammed into his back, but was keeping it hidden from the onlookers.

The Gotal moved from the corner and approached. It spoke in a vaguely bleating voice. "Greedo?" he asked. "What are you doing here?"

"There's... been a change on plans," Greedo invented quickly. "We're... going to have to move the prisoner."

"On whose orders?" asked the Gotal, suspiciously, staring at Greedo. Greedo fumbled, his eyes moving from the left to the right in a guilty fashion as he struggled to think of something to say.

Ion frowned and jabbed Greedo in the back with the blaster. "Gunray!" blurted out Greedo. "He contacted me at Jabba's Palace," he lied.

Sugi and Rumi shared a smirk. This proved that Gunray had indeed been the idiot so obsessed with money as to hire a useless Bounty Hunter like Greedo. Just as they had thought.

But the Gotal still wasn't convinced. "Why'd he contact you?" he asked, his eyes narrowing. "And who are those two?" he pointed at both Ion and Chairman Papanoida, using two fingers to do it. The atmosphere in the cantina was thickening quickly. Everyone was paying attention to the little conversation – so much so that the Bounty Hunters could turn around and watch without looking suspicious. The Nimbanel was obviously anticipating a fight to break out, because he gathered his empty glasses from the bar and ducked out of sight.

"They're emissaries of the Trade Federation," Greedo invented quickly.

The Gotal frowned. "Trade Federation? They don't look like Trade Federation to me."

At that point, the Weequay re-entered the room, pushing before him a young, female Pantoran whose wrists were clasped in a pair of binders. The Pantoran, at the sight of the Chairman and Ion, faltered and gasped, "Father!" in shock, completely blowing their cover in the same instance.

"Father?" the Gotal asked, glaring at Ion and Papanoida.

Greedo suddenly jerked out of Ion's grip and cried, "They're Pantorans! Blast them!" before dashing out of the way and ducking into a corner. Cover gone, Ion raised his blaster and shot the Weequay standing behind his sister right in the chest.

All hell quickly broke loose at that point. The Weequays that remained, along with the Twi'lek and the Aqualish, leapt from their seats and overturned their table, creating a shield and pulling out their blasters at the same time. Chairman Papanoida turned to face them – an angry look spreading across his features. They were not going to stop him from rescuing his daughter, no matter what!

Whipping out a pair of hand-pistols like a practiced gunslinger, Papanoida unloaded a few lasers in their direction, nailing the Twi'lek in the chest and the Aqualish in the stomach, killing them both on the spot. The Weequays jumped behind their table-shield and fired on Papanoida around it, but the quick-footed Chairman leapt to the side and upended his own table, copying their actions.

Ion, meanwhile fired on the Gotal and the Quarren. The Gotal dove behind the bar and the Quarren levelled a blaster at Ion, completely forgetting about the captive girl behind him. Despite having her hands bound, Che Amanwe, for that was her name, picked up a bottle from the floor and smashed it over his head, causing him to drop like a stone. She grabbed his blaster from the floor and brother and sister turned to help their father...

Only to find that their help wasn't actually needed. The remaining three Weequay were caught completely off guard when they were suddenly assaulted from behind. The first dropped when Embo sprang from his table and delivered a flying kick to the side of his head. The Weequay thudded to the floor, while Embo landed smoothly on a nearby table and, in one motion, unhooked his crossbow from his back and shot the floored Weequay.

The other two turned their attention to their attacker and fired on the Kyuzo, but Embo simply whipped his hat off his head and used it as a shield to parry the shots. And the other two Weequay quickly met their makers. One was suddenly grabbed by Sugi and the Zabrak heaved him into the air and slammed him to the ground. Quickly, she unsheathed her vibrodagger and brought it down.

The final Weequay was blindsided as Seripas ran over to him and leapt at his face, latching onto it and using all his strength to hold him there. The Weequay, confused and blinded, flailed wildly around as he lost his balance and dropped his blaster, bringing his hands up to try and pull Seripas off. Before his hands reached the little Bounty Hunter though, Seripas leapt away. Suddenly able to see again, the Weequay found himself staring down the barrel of Rumi's sniper rifle.

Rumi pulled the trigger.

Greedo, from where he was cowering in the corner, leapt to his feet and cried, "I'll get you guys for this," at the four other Bounty Hunters and sprinted towards the door.

It opened before he got there and Greedo found himself face to face with Aayla Secura. "Oh will you?" she asked, before picking him up with the Force and throwing him back into the room. Greedo collided with the Gotal, who had risen from behind the bar to try and shoot Papanoida in the back. The two of them fell in a heap behind the bar.

"Good work, guys," Aayla turned to the Bounty Hunters as she strode over to their groaning quarry, levitating both him and the Gotal into the air with the Force and holding them there.

"Wasn't much of a workout to be honest," said Sugi, nonchalantly. "I can see why those guys hung around with people like Greedo. They weren't that competent either."

Aayla turned to the stunned Papanoida family. She couldn't help but grin at their expressions of amazement. "You weren't expecting to see me here, were you?" she asked.

"Certainly not," said Chairman Papanoida. "A member of the A-Team on a far-flung place such as Tatooine. Whatever are you doing here?"

"Same thing as you," said Aayla. "Looking for this lowlife," she indicated the floating Rodian. "Although I'm doing it for different reasons. I didn't even know your daughters had been kidnapped until about quarter of an hour ago."

"Well, nevertheless," said Papanoida. "Thank you for your help, General Secura."

"My pleasure," said Aayla, pulling her lightsaber off her belt. "But most of the credit really goes to these Bounty Hunters. I wouldn't be on this planet if not for them. Now, how about I get to work." She ignited the blazing blue blade in her hand.

Greedo cringed. "No!" he cried. "Please, don't kill me!"

Aayla looked at him scathingly. "I'm not going to kill you," she rolled her eyes. "Killing helpless victims is not what the Jedi do. No, I'm simply going to cut the binders of your former prisoners wrists."

"Thank you," said Che Amanwe and stepped forward, holding out her wrists. Aayla skilfully sliced through the binders, before extinguishing her blade and putting it back on her belt.

"And now," said Aayla. "I need to borrow Greedo for a few minutes, Chairman."

"I need to find my other daughter, Chi Eekway," said Papanoida. "And Greedo knows where they are."

"Alright," said Aayla, turning to Greedo. "Where is Chairman Papanoida's second daughter, Rodian?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. Greedo gulped in fear, afraid of ticking off the formisable Jedi and quickly babbled, "She is being held on the Trade Federation flagship blockading the planet Pantora. I swear I don't know anything else."

"That's where Senator Chuchi went," said Ion, with relief. "And she took that Jedi Padawan, Ahsoka, with her. They may have already found her."

"Thank the moon Goddess," said Papanoida, sighing in relief, and pulling Che Amanwe into a tight embrace.

"Chairman," said Aayla. "I'm afraid that when I'm done with Greedo, I won't be able to hang about and take him back to Coruscant. I'm on a tight timeline. So, I must ask that you act as temporary law enforcement for a little longer, after I get what I need."

"Of course," nodded Papanoida. "These two will be spending some time in a cell if I have any say about it."

Aayla nodded approvingly, then frowned and turned back to Greedo. "And now, you," she said, stepping closer to the Rodian and staring into his wild, pupil-less eyes. "Are going to tell me exactly what I want to know."

"Please," Greedo whined. "What do you want from me?"

"I know you work for the Separatists. And I know that you are in the employ of Nute Gunray. How much do you know about the workings of the Separatist's inner circle?"

Greedo gulped, fear spreading across his features even more. "A... a fair bit," he said.

"Good," nodded Aayla. "Now, I'm sure you know that Count Dooku has a small group of Jedi that have turned to the Dark Side and now serve him. They call themselves the Dark Acolytes. Do you know of them?"

Greedo hesitated a moment, before saying. "Yes."

Aayla's spirits lifted, but she squashed the hope that was rising inside her. She knew it would be foolish to get he hopes up just now – this Bounty Hunter might still not have what she needed. But it was with bated breath that she said:-

"Then here's my main question. Where have the Dark Acolytes made their base?"

Greedo's expression turned to outright horror at the question and he appeared to be struggling in the grip the Force had on him, in a vain attempt to flee. "No!" he cried. "I cannot answer that question. You can't go there. If you do, Dooku will find out who told you, and he'll come after me. He'll hunt me down and kill me! No, I won't say."

"Well," said Sugi. "At least you now know that he knows the answer."

Aayla breathed out through her nostrils and said, calmly, "You should not worry about Count Dooku. You've been taken into Republic custody. You may spend a long time to come in prison, but you will be safe. You will have the protection of the Republic."

Greedo shook his head emphatically. "That won't stop Dooku. You've no idea the allies he has, the powers he has, the weapons he possesses."

Aayla smiled in a wry way. "And you have no idea the allies I have, the powers they have and the weapons we possess."

Behind her, Aayla heard the four Bounty Hunters she had as allies snickering.

"It won't be enough," said Greedo, stubbornly. "I won't say anything."

Aayla was fast running out of patience with the cowardly Rodian. Slowly, she lowered him so that they were at eye-level – she was taller than him – and said, "Let's put it this way. I _am_ getting that information today one way or another. If you don't let your mouth do some explaining, I'll simply pull the information from your brain with the Force. But let me warn you, that will be excruciatingly painful," she lied. In reality, it would completely and utterly painless.

Evidently Greedo didn't know much about Jedi, because he panicked and cried, "Okay, okay! I'll tell you! Boz Pity. They've made their base in a large building on the planet Boz Pity."

Aayla resisted the urge to punch the air in triumph. Finally, she had something to go on!

She frowned as she thought about her next destination. Boz Pity was an oddly appropriate planet for a base for the Dark Acolytes. It was known as "the graveyard planet." This was because the native Gargantelles had erected massive monuments for their fallen brethren before they had been driven to extinction by their neighbours on the planet Mourn, and now, many people went to that planet to bury their dead. It was in the Mid Rim, so it had easy access to many places. It was a good place for a Separtist base, but so far nobody knew of any Separatist activity there.

Until now, anyway.

Aayla rubbed one lekku thoughtfully as her brain whirled through a series of possible ways to infiltrate the building and try to find her master. It would be difficult – Boz Pity was largely uninhabited now, so any approach to the building might be a bit difficult. And if there were many Dark Acolytes there... then that could mean she had some very powerful adversaries in the not too distant future.

Things still weren't looking particularly good.

But then, an idea began to form in Aayla's mind. A potential way that she could get inside the building and locate her Master, without being discovered by the other occupants of the base. And a way that might ensure that, if she found her Master, she could get both him and herself out safely.

It would be difficult, dangerous and potentially deadly, but she had to give it a try if she wanted to find her Master.

"Thank you for the information, Greedo," she said. "Now, I must be going. I've got a little holiday to Boz Pity planned. Chairman, I'm placing Greedo and his Gotal associate back into your capable hands."

"I'll take him back to Coruscant right away," nodded Papanoida. Aayla released her Force-grip on the Rodian and the Gotal and the two dropped to the floor. Ion took a step towards them and levelled his blaster at them warningly, ready in case they tried anything.

Aayla turned to the Nimbarel bartender, who had been standing silently throughout the whole thing. "Sorry about the mess," she said. "Perhaps you should be more careful with who you let in here in future." The Nimbarel nodded but said nothing.

"Guys," said Aayla, turning back to the Bounty Hunters. "Can you head back to the ship and tell the rest of the crew that I'll be along shortly. I have one more thing that I need to do before we leave this dusty old planet and head for the sunny plains of Boz Pity."

"Alright," nodded Sugi. "See you soon."

As the four Bounty Hunters left, Aayla reclined her head respectfully in the direction of the Papanoida family, before leaving the cantina as well. Once she was back in the sweltering heat of Mos Eisley, she turned and walked off into the streets. There were a few things that she would need to find if her plan was going to work, and if there was anywhere she was going to find something like that, it was here.

She really couldn't believe she was about to go through with this, but she had to do what she had to do. And so, she walked through the bustling, sandy streets, glancing from left to right as she inspected every building or stall she came across.

It didn't take her very long to find exactly what she needed.

"Excuse me," she said to the stall-owner, a Gran that looked startled at seeing her coming to buy something from his stall. "How much are you willing to accept for that one there?"

* * *

Before anybody penalises me due to the fact that Greedo spoke Basic whereas he spoke in Huttese in the film, A New Hope, Greedo spoke in Basic in the episode of Clone Wars he has featured in, so he spoke Basic now. I don't know why they made him speak Basic but they did so he does here.

Jabba's speech was taken from the Huttese dictionary on Wookieepedia, except for any words that didn't feature, which I made up. I hope it sounded authentic, because that is certainly what I was going for.

I know there wasn't much Digimon action this time, but they'll be a lot in the next one. And after the massive cliffhanger from my last Impmon chapter, I hope you're all looking forward to reading Chapter 75.

* * *

Next time...

GranDracmon's left Impmon with a choice. Either join him and become evil again, or watch as his friends become the subjects of GranDracmon's wrath. What is he going to do?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 75 : Impmon's Decision**


	75. Impmon's Decision

Sorry about the delay everyone. I hoped to get this out sooner, but its been an important week at uni, because most of us are trying to sort out our accommodation for next year, and I've been busy trying to find a nice place to rent and trying to claim it before somebody else does. I don't exactly want to end up in a hovel somewhere. So, here it is, later than I wanted, but at least it's here.

I enjoyed writing this chapter, despite the fact I got a little mean to poor Impmon at points.

Let's get going.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 75:- Impmon's Decision**

* * *

It was quiet in the city of Tokyo, especially around the Shinjuku District. The entire city was still reeling from the devastating attack from Megidramon a couple of days ago. It had been a heavy blow – not as destructive as the attack from Ogudomon, but worse in a certain way. Lives had been lost – a lot of lives, and poor Guilmon was taking the brunt of it. Nobody had actually told the public that the massive dragon Digimon had been the sweet, little Rookie dinosaur, but people were making educated guesses.

After all, Megidramon and Guilmon were similar in as many ways as they were different. Same colour, both reptiles, and, most importantly, both with a large Hazard symbol. Guilmon refused to leave the bakery now, overcome with grief at the terrible things he had involuntarily done and wishing to be away from the staring eyes of the public, many of which were suspicious of the little dinosaur.

None of the other Digimon or Tamers blamed him.

As for Impmon, he was getting even more stares than Guilmon. Most of the public had seen the massive image of GranDracmon towering over Shinjuku park and word had been passed around and had reached the news as to what he had said to the little Rookie. A breaking news report had been given the following day, and now the whole city knew that GranDracmon was after Impmon, although they didn't know why.

Everyone knew that Megidramon had been unleashed on Shinjuku because of this, and many of them were finding the nearest person to blame. And, unfortunately, that was Impmon.

Impmon was forced to endure jeers and insults from people who had once thought him to be cool whenever he moved around. He steadfastly ignored them, but even so, the taunts were getting to him. Because Impmon was blaming himself just as much as they blamed him.

It _was_ his fault, to a degree. Yes, GranDracmon was to blame for the most part, but if Impmon wasn't around than this wouldn't have happened. Guilmon certainly wasn't to blame.

Now, a couple of days on, and night had fallen over Shinjuku. The suburbs were peaceful and quiet, and a gibbous moon gazed sleepily down on the city. There were even a few visible stars on this night, a rare occurrence in the city skies. They were the only lights on the street that the Teradas lived on, gleaming their silver light down on the houses below.

Ai and Mako were sound asleep in their beds. They didn't fully appreciate the gravity of the situation, as most kids usually don't, but they definitely understood that it was very serious. They'd gotten almost no sleep since the attack, but had now dropped from sheer exhaustion, leaving Impmon, who had more endurance, to his thoughts. Impmon stood on the windowsill, one hand on the glass and stared up at the night sky.

_Sometimes,_ he thought. _I wish my life could be as simple as the existence of the moon. All it has to worry about is going around the Earth once every day and causing the tide to go in and out. Getting pulverized by meteors doesn't bother it at all. Wish I was like that._

Impmon was wrestling with himself inside, just as was so often the case these days. He mulled over the choice that GranDracmon had given him every waking hour, thinking through each alternative over and over again in his mind.

Choice One – stay with the twins and the other Tamers.

Result – GranDracmon gets very angry and unleashes monsters worse than those in the pit of hell onto the city in an effort to get Impmon to him by force.

Rating – Zero out of ten. Not an option.

Choice Two – go with GranDracmon and become a Demon Lord once more.

Result – Go around slaughtering innocent Digimon _himself_ just like he did in all those flashbacks that bloody MetalPhantomon had dragged to the surface of his brain, leading GranDracmon's army to the ruination of both worlds.

Rating – Zero out of ten. Not an option.

Impmon knew that choosing option two was definitely not going to happen. The mere thought of him running with an evil overlord like him and renewing the unspeakable acts of violence and cruelty he had committed in the past, reliving them all, made him feel physically ill. And it really did, unlike all the times he had declared something had in the past, which had merely been ploys to drag the other Digimon from their Tamers.

In short, there was no way he was ever going to be joining GranDracmon and the Nightmare Soldiers.

But the thoughts of what would happen if he went with option one kept nagging at his mind as well.

Unbidden images were being brought into his mind. Images of a potential future this time, rather than the past or the present. He could just imagine the terrible damage the Nightmare Soldiers would inflict on the world and the city as various scenarios played through his brain. He saw Takato lying broken and bleeding on the pavement, while Guilmon fought a hopeless battle to defend his corpse. He saw Cyberdramon fighting fiercely against a swarm of Demon Digimon, desperate to defend a wounded Ryo, until he was brought down by sheer weight on numbers. He saw Elecmon deleted right in front of Jeri, as the poor girl was forced to watch as she lost her partner a second time. He saw Guardromon with his gears and wiring pulled out being used as projectile to crush his own Tamer. He saw MarineAngemon squashed under the massive foot of a giant Digimon as it advanced on Kenta.

He saw Tokyo in flames, buildings collapsing, the HYPNOS Towers smashed into rubble, killing Yamaki, the Monster Makers and everyone else inside and destroying the portal which meant their friends would never be able to come back to them. He saw the scene just before this incident, where GranKuwagamon battled against overwhelming odds before being brutally deleted. He saw monsters and devils and creatures of the night rampaging through the streets, feeding on the fleeing public.

And he saw Ai and Mako murdered by a cruel, faceless Digimon, while he was helpless to do anything to save them.

Impmon screwed his eyes shut as he desperately tried to force the unbidden images from his mind, but they just kept coming and coming. He was unable to stop himself picturing places in Tokyo he knew, such as the mall, Guilmon's hut, Rika's house, the Matsuki bakery, the school, and thinking about what they looked like now, and comparing that with what they would look like after GranDracmon's invasion forces.

It just didn't bare thinking about.

Impmon banged his head on the window forcefully, in a final bid to rid himself of the horrifying visions of the future. Behind him, Mako grunted in his sleep.

The sound of his Tamer jarred Impmon from the thoughts that ravaged his brain. Impmon's face fell, the usual expression of sadness returning as he took one last glance at the gibbous moon, before turning around to look at his sleeping Tamers. They looked so innocent and peaceful in their beds, sleeping in a world with far more pleasant dreams than his own. It was hard to imagine anyone wanting to harm these two.

But Impmon knew that the Nightmare Soldiers would kill them in a second. After all, he had seen himself slaughtering Baby Digimon in his flashbacks. He shuddered as he remembered the incident with the Frimon.

Impmon jumped down from the windowsill, landing with practiced silence on the floor and trudged across the room until he was standing between Ai's bed and Mako's bed. His head swung backwards and forwards like he was observing a very slow tennis match as he regarded each Tamer and then regarded them again.

The more he thought about these two lying slain upon the ground, the more the option of joining GranDracmon sounded more tempting. Impmon knew that GranDracmon would probably have little interest in the Human World. It was inconsequential. Like the Demon Lords before him, the Mega Demon would probably throw all his efforts into conquering the Digital World first, and then capture the Human World later on if Beelzemon were to join him.

But that still meant that either option would probably wind up with the deaths of these two children and the Human Race, as well as the rest of the Tamed Digimon. So even if Impmon joined to save their lives, he could end up coming back, twisted by evil and powered up on data, to wipe them out himself.

Impmon couldn't think of a way out of this situation. One way or another, he would lose.

Impmon clasped his head in his hands and groaned quietly. "What am I going to do, you guys?" he muttered quietly. "What am I going to do?"

Ai and Mako didn't answer. They remained sleeping.

Impmon looked sadly at them. Granted, they had not been the best Tamers to start out with, especially because of their constant squabbling and bickering over him as if he was some sort of possession or object. But after he had come back, they had been the best Tamers that he could have wished for, providing him with amusement for their naivety, laughing at his every joke and joining in with his attempts to prank other people. And they had constantly stuck up for him in the face of their mother's hatred of him.

"I will find a way to save you guys," Impmon murmured to the sleeping forms. "Even if I have to go to the ends of the Digital World to find an answer."

Impmon suddenly paused, mulling over what he had just said. "Wait a minute," he hissed through his teeth. "That's it!"

He had a solution.

But he didn't like this one either.

If GranDracmon was holding the threat of killing off the Tamers and the other Digimon over his head, then there was only one sure way to get around that without surrendering to GranDracmon's tyrannical will. But it would mean breaking the promise he had made to the two twins when he had become their partner properly, when they had finally gotten their D-Arc.

Impmon was going to have to leave.

It made sense. GranDracmon was more than likely watching his every move through some sort of sorcery or something else of that ilk. If Impmon left his Tamers and the other Digimon behind and went to the Digital World, then there would be no point in attacking them. Impmon would not know that they had been killed, and GranDracmon would have no leverage over him anymore.

Of course, that would stop GranDracmon from coming after _him_. That meant Impmon would be doing more than abandoning his Tamers. He would, effectively, be going on the run. He would have to be constantly on the move, and he could very well be chased to the ends of the Digital World. But he would never surrender to GranDracmon.

Two conflicting feelings spread through Impmon simultaneously. One was elation – Impmon had discovered an answer to his problem, and a potential way too stay away from GranDracmon's evil claws as well as keeping his friends out of harm's way.

The second feeling was sadness. He knew that Ai and Mako would be devastated when they discovered that he had gone away. And he felt torn up inside at the idea of leaving them. But he would not have them die because of him. He would not put them in unnecessary danger. He had to draw GranDracmon's gaze away from them, and if it was fixed on him right now, it would be fixed on them too. As long as he was around, they were in danger.

He looked down at the ground sadly. He was breaking a promise that he had never intended to break, the promise that he had been the most sincere about in his whole life.

But some promises were worth being broken.

And this was one of them.

Impmon walked up to the heads of the beds and softly spoke to the two sleeping Tamers. "I'm so sorry, guys," he whispered. "But this is the only way to ensure your safety. I'm going to have to go, and that's that. This is much bigger than a promise I made all that time ago. The fate of everything may be at stake. I have to leave."

Impmon's fists clenched and his teeth gritted as he wheeled around and slowly made his way towards the door. Once he reached it, he turned back, casting a single, mournful look at the twins. Impmon felt downright guilty at the thought of running away in the dead of night, completely unannounced. But it was better this way. He couldn't bear to see their distraught faces if he broke the news to them in the morning.

"Goodbye, Ai," said Impmon. "Goodbye, Mako."

Impmon silently clambered up the stool beside the door to reach the doorknob and quietly opened the door. Like a ghost, he slipped through the narrow opening and crept through the house, fighting back the wave of conflicting emotions inside him. The urge to protect his Tamers was already drawing him back into their room, but Impmon stiffly resisted this feelings, as he pressed on.

He tiptoed passed the master bedroom where Mrs. Terada would be sleeping and quietly slid down the banister to avoid making a racket on the stairs. He paused briefly at the bottom of the stairs, took a deep breath, and continued towards the front door, which had been refitted from when Guardromon had knocked it down during his guard duty some months before.

Quickly and quietly, Impmon opened the door, slipped outside and pulled it shut as quietly as he could.

He resisted giving a long look back at the house. It was just make things more difficult. Instead, he walked down to the end of the drive. Behemoth, his ever-loyal motorcycle stood stiffly at the end, beside the road. It looked for all the world like a regular motorbike, and those that knew it was alive might think it to be in the motorbike-equivalent of sleep. But Impmon knew that it was really wide awake and waiting for orders. Behemoth never slept.

Impmon briefly contemplated leaving Behemoth behind as well, but he knew that would serve no purpose at all. He might as well take the bike with him – it might help him if he was pursued by GranDracmon's forces.

"Listen, but please be quiet," Impmon said in a low voice. He could practically feel Behemoth's concentration intensify, in some obscure way. "We're leaving," Impmon declared. "You and me. We're heading back to the Digital World, alone. I can't involve my partners in my problems any more. Are you with me?"

Behemoth, understanding that its master was trying to sneak away in the dead on night, made no noise but it did blink its headlights on and off and couple of times to show that it was indeed ready to roll.

"Thanks," said Impmon. "Dunno where I'd be without you. Now, come on. Let's get out of this place."

But before Impmon could take a single step further from the house, the front door opened behind him. Impmon froze in his tracks, thinking that perhaps the twins had heard him leave the room and had come down to investigate. He slowly turned around on the spot, and stared at the doorway.

It wasn't the twins. It was their mother.

"And where do you think you're going?" Mrs. Terada asked, stepping outside and shutting the door behind her. She was fully clothed so obviously she hadn't been in bed like Impmon had presumed. She must have heard him sneaking out.

"Why do you care?" Impmon asked her. "You've never taken much interest in where I go as long as it's nowhere near you."

"I want to know where you're supposedly going at all times," Mrs. Terada scowled. "I know all the stories and rumours circulating around the city – the ones saying that the giant Digimon from a few days ago is coming after you – are true. It's obvious from the way you, my kids and all your other little kids have been acting recently."

"Your point being...?" Impmon asked, scowling. He really didn't have time for this.

"All those things I said," Mrs. Terada sniffed. "About you being a bad influence on my children, about you putting them in danger, making them a target for giant monsters and evil demons – it was all true. And now, everything I feared is coming to a head. So, I want to know what your intentions are, because these are _my_ children we're talking about."

"I know that," Impmon growled. "I know all that. I'm not stupid. I understand the bigger picture. And I don't like this situation any more than you do. I did not ask to be hunted down by a supremely powerful Demon. I did not deliberately put your children at risk."

"You didn't have to," Mrs. Terada replied. "I always knew that your presence alone would do the job. Whether you dragged them into a dangerous situation or brought the situation to them makes no difference. But, if you are going to stay, then I want to keep an eye on you. I want to make sure my children are safe."

"Lady," Impmon shook his head. "You are very naive if you think that anything _you_ can do is going to keep Ai and Mako safe from GranDracmon. It's what I can do that will make a difference."

"I didn't ask for your opinion," growled Mrs. Terada. "Now, what are doing out here?"

"I am fulfilling your wish," Impmon snapped back, albeit quietly. "You've never wanted me around and have been constantly trying to get me to leave. So, now, Haruhi," he contemptuously spat Mrs. Terada's first name, "you get what you want! I'm leaving!"

Mrs. Terada looked stunned. Whatever she'd been expecting, it had not been that. She'd been trying to get Impmon to leave for months, with no success. But he was going to leave now, when she'd practically given up hope?

After a few moments of stunned silence, she asked, "Why?"

"Why d'you think?" Impmon glared.

"I don't know," Mrs. Terada replied. "That's why I asked."

"Because, woman, I care about your children just as much as you do. I may be made of data, but I do have emotions and feelings, and I understand empathy. I am fully aware that my being here is painting a big red target symbol over your house and all its occupants, but it's bigger than that. This entire city – heck, the entire world – is in danger, just because I am in it. So, I'm going to remove that threat the only way I know how. By going home, to the Digital World."

Mrs. Terada looked amazed. To be honest she'd not seen much of Impmon's raw emotions. She had only really seen the face that he liked to put on in front of other people – the cocky, impudent loudmouth that liked to needle her. Because of this, she had labelled him as that character and never really thought about what he was like underneath the facade.

She'd branded him as a hazard.

But now, she could see real compassion in his eyes as he spoke. He really did care about the twins. He wasn't just hanging around because it was convenient. He was hanging around because he loved them.

"Are you satisfied?" Impmon asked her. "Because you've done little but bully me since I arrived. You've just been one problem on top of many others. Well, I hope you're happy now, because I know Ai and Mako won't be when they find out I've left them again. But if the only sure-fire way to protect them is to leave them, then that is what I will do."

"You really care about them, don't you?" Mrs. Terada said. "Ai and Mako really are dear to you."

"It's about time you realised it," Impmon growled. He knew he was being a bit merciless but he couldn't help it. He just wanted to release some of his pent-up anxiety and stress on somebody.

But as he ranted, he could see Mrs. Terada's face begin to soften slightly, until her expression of stone-cold fury that she had started the conversation with had become much closer to guilt. Impmon laid into her about all the times he had insulted him, raged at him, blamed him for things that weren't his fault.

However, eventually, he calmed down and stared up at the tall woman.

"So," he said. "Are. You. Satisfied?"

"Thank you."

Impmon paused, frowned, blinked and then said, "Come again?"

"I said thank you," Mrs. Terada said. "Thank you for... for looking out for my children and... for taking their best interests to heart. Thank you for trying to make sure they stay safe. It means a lot."

Impmon blinked again. He'd gone so long hearing nothing but negativity from this woman that hearing positivity was a shock for him. However, slowly, a slight grin broke over his face. "Now you get it," he said. "We Digimon look after our Tamers. We protect them from threats that others would be powerless to stop. And that's what I'm doing now."

"What will you do when you reach the Digital World?" asked Mrs. Terada.

"I don't know," Impmon shrugged. "I'll keep on the move, I suppose. Search for a place where I might be safe from GranDracmon. Maybe I'll go and see the Sovereigns. Perhaps they can help me."

"Good luck," said Mrs. Terada. This caused Impmon to blink in surprise once again.

"Yeah, you too," said Impmon. "Look after the twins. They will not understand why I..."

Impmon paused in confusion, because it was at this moment that a car, which had been driving slowly down the lane towards them, pulled to a stop next to them, parking on the pavement beside the drive. Impmon immediately tensed, ready for anything. You never knew what guises an enemy could come in.

Behind him, Mrs. Terada whispered, "He's back early."

"Huh?" Impmon asked articulately.

The door to the driver's seat opened and a man stepped out. He was a brunette, like the twins, and he was wearing an expensive looking business suit, complete with tie and cufflinks. He grinned at the sight of Mrs. Terada and said, "Hey there, honey? Did you miss me?"

It was the twin's father – Mr. Terada.

"Oh, what timing," murmured Impmon. "I get to say goodbye to both parents."

"What are you doing here?" Mrs. Terada asked her husband. "I thought you still had to stay in Beijing for a couple of weeks."

"They allowed me to come home early. The whole world has heard of the attack from that dragon Digimon creature, and I was worried to death. So, they allowed me to return to Shinjuku so I could check on and be with my family. And here I am." He frowned and then said. "I didn't tell you I was coming home, so why are you outside?"

"I was... talking to Impmon," Mrs. Terada replied, glancing down at the small Rookie standing beside her.

"Oh," said Mr. Terada, who hadn't noticed Impmon's presence until then. "Impmon. Um, how are you?" When he spoke, he sounded a little bit strained. Impmon knew why, as well. Mr. Terada was fully aware of the resentment Mrs. Terada had held for Impmon, and he was unsure what to make of the situation.

"I've been a heck of a lot better, I can tell you that," Impmon replied. He could be sincere with Mr. Terada. The man had never held his wife's views on Impmon, and the two had had a few nice conversations before he had gone off on his business trip. In fact, he had actually help to placate his wife's anger at Impmon being there.

"Yes, I heard there've been a few incidents over the last few months," Mr. Terada chuckled, referring to the loud telephone calls he'd received from his wife about the numerous things that Impmon had done. He glanced up at the house and said, "I see you had the wall fixed from when your dragon friend busted it down."

"There was a draught anyway," shrugged Impmon.

"So, er, what are you both doing outside?" asked the man.

"Well, I _was_ attempting to sneak off in the dead of night," said Impmon. "But your woman here waylaid me."

"Sneak off?" frowned Mr. Terada. "What for?"

"I see not _all_ the news reached Beijing," remarked Impmon, dryly. He quickly updated Mr. Terada on the situation regarding GranDracmon (some of the information he imparted was new to Mrs. Terada as well), and rounded off with, "So, in short, if I leave, GranDracmon's eye will be taken off the Human World and focus on the Digital World. And the Digital World will be harder for him to take over than here."

"And honourable gesture," said Mr. Terada. "But, are you sure it's necessary? I mean, you guys have always managed to keep the city pretty safe before."

"Except for the Ogudomon debacle," said Impmon. "And while I doubt GranDracmon has any allies that rival _that_ guy's power, he does have some incredibly powerful Digimon at his disposal and, more to the point, _a lot of them_. So yes, it is necessary."

"I see," Mr. Terada mused. "Well, it's a shame. I was looking forward to having a chat, Impmon. You never cease to amuse me."

Impmon shook his head. "I haven't been much fun recently, let me tell you. All this stuff that's been going on has been getting to me. Speaking of which, I really must be going. You ready, Behemoth?"

The motorbike revved quietly in response.

"Sorry that I have to leave right away," Impmon said. "But it's for the best. Bye, guys."

"Goodbye, Impmon," said Mr. Terada. "And good luck to you."

"Keep an eye on the twins, will you?" Impmon asked, as he clambered onto Behemoth's seat. "I'm not going to be around to keep them out of trouble anymore."

"Forgive me for saying this," said Mr. Terada, "but I thought they were more likely to get _into_ trouble with you around."

Impmon chuckled. "Probably. Bye then."

"Take care," nodded Mr. Terada. Mrs. Terada just looked at the floor in a rather guilty fashion. Impmon could tell she was thinking about all the times she had yelled at him and yelled at her kids for being with him. But he didn't press her about it. Instead, he quietly tapped Behemoth's seat. The bike shuddered into life much more quietly than any normal motorbike would and, with Impmon sitting astride the much bigger seat, steered itself out into the street and down the road at a slow but steady and ultimately quiet pace.

The Teradas both waved, although Mrs. Terada still wouldn't look at him. Impmon paused at the end of the street to wave back, before setting off at full pelt. Behemoth roared into life and raced down the street, Impmon clinging to the seat and feeling more and more torn the further he got from the Terada household.

"I'm not just leaving you behind like last time guys," he muttered, barely hearing himself over the roar of Behemoth's engines. "It really is for the best. I'm sure I'll see you again... one day... maybe."

He wrenched his mind from those thoughts. There were a couple of things he had to do before he made his trip to the Digital World to stay for good. And he would have to do them quickly.

"Come on, Behemoth," he said. "I want to be gone by dawn. Let's get this over with."

Behemoth's engines increased in volume and the living vehicle surged through the streets of Shinjuku, easily breaking the speed limit and whizzing around corners, leaving people still out in the streets bewildered by the loud blur that streaked past.

* * *

The first stop was the Matsuki bakery. Impmon pulled to a halt outside its doors, the motorbike skidding to a halt in the street. Impmon stared up at the building, one of his favourite places in the entire city. Hopping off Behemoth, he walked over to the door and picked a bun that somebody had dropped from the floor, dusted it off a little and bit into it. He savoured the delicious texture that only Matsuki bread could have – it would be the last piece he would have for a while.

He looked to the window that he knew led into Takato's bedroom, where no doubt the goggled Tamer and his red dinosaur were sound asleep. He sighed and said, "See ya, Googleface. Bye, Pineapple-head. You guys were some of the best friends a 'mon could have. I'll miss you both."

Unwilling to stay around for much longer, Impmon trudged back over to Behemoth, finishing off the last of the bun as he did so. It pained him to leave without saying goodbye to these two almost as much as it did to his Tamers. After all, they were indeed good friends, and they allowed him to have free bread. What wasn't to like?

He'd miss Guilmon's silly games and Takato's sheer stupidity. But the two of them had already suffered enough at his hands. Megidramon had been born twice, both times due to his actions in some roundabout way. A third time would be too much.

Behemoth kicked off again and roared down the road with its small, purple passenger, leaving the Matsuki bakery far behind. Once again, Impmon did not look back.

* * *

His next stop took him to the Katou residence. This place had almost as much meaning to him as the Terada household. Jeri and Elecmon were amongst his closest friends. Jeri had always been there for him – even sparing his life when he had destroyed her own partner. And since his rebirth, Impmon had made sure to be good friends with Elecmon. Impmon had been through so much with these two that it almost didn't seem right to leave them.

But the thoughts of what would happen to them if they stayed easily overrode his urges to stay.

"Goodbye Jeri. Goodbye Elecmon," he said to the house. "Don't you dare go dying on me. Either of you. When I get back I expect to see you alive and well... if I ever do get back, that is," he added, with a downcast expression.

In an obscure way, Impmon felt a little better. He remembered vividly how his presence had meant he had failed to save Jeri from the D-Reaper, because of her fear of her partner's killer. But now, he would manage to save her this time, and he would do it by not being there at all.

* * *

Kazu and Kenta didn't mean as much to Impmon emotionally as the other two, but he paid both their houses and quick stop and said goodbye nevertheless. He might not have shared as many close and personal encounters with them or their partners, but they were still good friends, and they joined in with his pranking at the school.

He also stopped by at both the households of the Wongs and the Nonakas, uttering a quiet goodbye to the family members that still lived behind those walls. Both were still grieving at the loss of their children. It wouldn't be right to leave without wishing them well.

Despite the fact he wanted to, Impmon did not visit Ryo's house. He knew that, more than likely, Cyberdramon would be standing on the roof and keeping watch, as he usually did. Especially the circumstances that led to Imnpmon's decision to leave in the first place. Cyberdramon would be more vigilant than ever, and Impmon didn't want to answer Ryo's questions. Ryo would probably insist that he stay, or at least that he be allowed to come along _with_ Impmon. And Impmon didn't want company.

However, he did make one final stop before moving onto the portal. Roaring into the town centre and zooming into the business district, Behemoth pulled up in front of the Tokyo Metropolitan Building. The HYPNOS towers.

Impmon's gaze shifted from the front door, all the way up to the top. He knew that at this time of night there probably wouldn't be much activity at the moment, but there would still be a few people up there working constantly on the portal. It was, after all, the only way they were going to get the others back from the dimension they were stuck in.

Impmon took a deep breath and said, "Yamaki, don't stop working on that machine. Get the others back home as quickly as you can. Never give up hope. Not ever." He paused and then added, "And, guys, I know I haven't seen you in the flesh for months now, but still, I guess this is goodbye. I hope you don't forget about me. I won't forget about you, that's for sure.

"Goodbye Henry. Keep everybody safe.

"Goodbye Rika. Don't lose that fiery spirit of yours.

"Goodbye Suzie. Congratulations again on reaching ten."

"Goodbye Terriermon. And Momentai, I'm sure I'll be alright. Keep smiling.

"Goodbye Renamon. Keep that mate of yours in line."

Impmon waited a couple of seconds before finishing his round of farewells, and then, he finally spoke with a gut-wrenching pang.

"Goodbye Lopmon. I know you can't hear me but, I suppose since this may be my last chance to say it to you, I've loved you for some time. Please, stay safe. And help Renamon keep the lid on your brother."

With Impmon's last goodbye, he felt a warm line of water fall from one eye, but he quickly brushed it away. He wasn't about to get too sappy at a moment like this. He may be leaving everyone he knew and loved behind but he was determined to go to the Digital World as the Impmon that he had once been. The one that wasn't constantly haunted by visions. The one that joked and laughed and played tricks and insulted people. Because, if he didn't, he wasn't sure how long he would last before he broke down.

With a final, "See you guys in hell," he turned around and drove towards the park.

* * *

"Well, will you look at this," Impmon said as he stood beside the small hut that had once been Guilmon's hideout. "Here we are again, Behemoth. Somehow, I always seem to end up coming back to this place for one reason or another, whether it be to find Guilmon and demand some bread, or have parties when we all come back from the Digital World, or have meetings with Devas or decide to try and get some information from Zhuqiaomon. And here I am again. I sure don't think the people who built this place knew what it was going to go through when they were doing it."

Behemoth revved in acknowledgement.

Impmon breathed out slowly. It was a cold night – as winter was beginning to approach once more, and his breath came out in a little cloud. The little Virus approached the doors of the little hideout, while Behemoth rolled up the hill behind him. The gates that once sealed the place were lying in a mangled heap, and the tunnel that Guilmon had dug had been vastly extended from what it once was, especially since Mihiramon the tiger Deva had once had to crawl through here. It was a miracle the giant cat had a slight frame, or he wouldn't have been able to squeeze himself through the door.

Impmon could see the orange, boring, pulsating ball of data that indicated the portal he would shortly be travelling through. Just about everything in Impmon's world had changed since his friends had disappeared courtesy of Parallelmon, but the orb of data had remained the same. It was almost comforting.

Impmon wondered where he would go once he entered the Digital World. He had no particular destination in mind, but he really needed somewhere where he could be safe, but not bring trouble down on other Digimon, as he was sure to do almost anywhere he went.

But who would show a hunted 'mon like him any friendship?

Impmon bit his lip in thought. It would be nice if he had some sort of guardian or something. He remembered the people from his visions of his friends, the human man, the orange-skinned girl and the blue-skinned woman. They had helped his friends adjust to their new life. But who would help Impmon adjust to his?

That's when it hit him.

The strange angel Digimon that had shown him those visions in the first place. She seemed to know what was going on. Perhaps she could provide him with some answers to his questions. Especially, who was she? And most importantly, was there a way to kick the stuffing out of GranDracmon?

It was decided. Impmon would go hunting for angels.

"Alright then, Behemoth," said Impmon. "You ready to go?"

Rev.

"Then let's get..."

"Hi Impmon!" cried a loud voice, making the purple Virus type almost jump out of his skin. "What are you doing here?"

"Quit jumping out at me from nowhere, Calumon!" shouted Impmon, a little of his old, occasionally grouchy self reappearing as he yelled at the white Digimon perched on top of the hideout. "It is not funny!"

"It's not?" Calumon cocked his head to one side. "Then why do I feel all giggly whenever I manage to make you jump?"

"I meant it's not funny for me!" Impmon yelled. "Jeez, I've have enough frights these past few weeks."

"Oh yeah," Calumon cooled off rapidly, his ears retracting into his head. "I heard about that. Did Guilmon really go all big and scary and drooly again?"

Impmon stared up at him incredulously. "Where've you been living?" he asked. "Practically the whole city saw Megidramon on the rampage. Come to think of it, I don't remember seeing you there at all. Where the heck were you?"

"I don't know," Calumon shrugged. "I think I ate too many creampuffs and fell asleep."

Impmon practically facefaulted. "Figures. The whole world goes to pot and you still gorge yourself on your little creampuffs."

"But they taste so good," Calumon giggled with delight, his ears expanding again as he skipped on the spot. If I had my wish, I would eat creampuffs all the time and never ever stop."

"You'd explode if you did that," said Impmon.

"Nope, because I would also wish that I would never ever be full."

"Then you'd be going to the toilet all the time instead."

"Oh yeah. I didn't think of that. Why do creampuffs look all nice and delicious when I eat them but then look so icky and yucky when they come out the-"

"Whoa! I think that's enough of that particular sentence," Impmon said quickly. "I don't need to hear about your crap, figuratively or literally."

Calumon looked down and Impmon and hopped off the hideout, coming to land beside the bigger Digimon. "So what are you doing out here, Impmon?" asked the Catalyst. "I've been coming out at night to try and have fun forever and ever now but nobody had come out to play with me for ages and ages and ages."

"That's because any sane Digimon would be asleep at this hour," muttered Impmon.

"But you're awake," said Calumon. "Does that mean you're just as insane as me?"

"NO!" shouted Impmon. "Although if I spend five more minutes with you, I will be."

Calumon's feelings might have been hurt some time in the past, but the pixie-like Digimon had come to learn that just about any insult Impmon uttered when he got like this was all bluff. So instead, he just giggled and said, "You sure know how to be rude to people, Impmon."

"It's a talent," Impmon said. "Now scram, Calumon."

"Don't you want to play?" asked Calumon.

"Play? Calumon, do I look like I have time for games?"

"But you never have time for games these days," Calumon whined. "It's... what's that word that Henry uses that means something that's not right?"

"Uh..."

"No, that's not it."

"Unnatural?" Impmon shrugged.

"Yeah, that."

"Well, it's actually perfectly natural, considering I've got an insanely powerful Demon Lord whose coming after my butt. Did you think about that?"

Calumon blinked. "Why does he want your butt? Doesn't he have one of his own?"

Impmon sighed. "Why am I still surprised by how naive you can be?" he asked.

"I don't know. Because you're silly?"

"Nuh-uh. You're the silly one."

"Am not."

Are too."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Am not."

"Look, can we not get into a pointless argument?" Impmon asked. "I really need to get going."

Calumon paused and frowned in confusion. "Get going? Where are you going, Impmon? Are we going to be going to that beach place where Takato's cousin lives again? That was so much fun."

"No, Calumon," Impmon said. "First off, you're not coming. It's just gonna be me and Behemoth. Second of all, I don't plan on having fun. I plan on keeping myself alive. And thirdly, I'm leaving because I have too."

"Why?"

"Because."

"That doesn't answer the question."

"It wasn't meant to," Impmon replied.

"I'm confused."

"When aren't you?"

"Isn't this a pointless argument, just like you asked us not to do?"

"No, it's... ugh, never mind." Impmon paused and groaned at the thought of having to explain to the little dunce that he was leaving and why. But he knew that leaving Calumon confused and upset would just be cruel, especially if Calumon was going to be the last of his friends to see him before he left.

"Alright, fine," he said. "You know all those nightmares I've been having recently?"

"The flashbacks about when you were all mean?" asked Calumon. "Yeah, I know about those."

"Well, do you know that we discovered that those nightmares were being put there by an evil, ghost Digimon named MetalPhantomon?"

"Yeah. I heard about that part too?"

"Well, a couple of days ago, we found this out." And Impmon told him all about GranDracmon and the proposition that the Master of the Dark Ocean had given him. Calumon was an intent listener when he wanted to be, and now seemed to be one of the moments that he did. He listened with an appropriate expression of fear and horror as Impmon retold the story for the second time that night.

When he had finished, Calumon was silent for about five seconds before he said, "Wow. I really need to keep up with all this stuff."

"It would help," nodded Impmon.

"So, if you go one way, lots of bad Digimon will come and attack the city."

"Yep."

"And if you go the other, you become a horrible baddie again."

"That's about the shape of things."

"So, you're leaving so you don't have to do either."

"Correct. Well done."

"But, what about Ai and Mako?" Calumon asked. "Don't they wanna come?"

"Of course they would," Impmon said. "But they're not coming. As Tamers, they're the most vulnerable – they're the only ones that can't biomerge. So I'm leaving them here."

"You mean they don't know?" Calumon looked shocked.

"It's for the best, damn it!" Impmon snapped. Calumon recoiled in fear, and Impmon groaned. He shouldn't be snapping at Calumon. Calumon wasn't to blame for any of this. "Sorry," he said. "But they can't come and if they knew I was going they'd probably follow me. At least this way I can keep them safe."

"Okay," Calumon nodded sadly. "Where will you go?"

"To try and find an acquaintance of mine," said Impmon. "The mysterious angel Digimon that showed up in my dreams of the others in their universe. Maybe she can help me out."

"Are you going now?"

"Yes," nodded Impmon. "It's nearly light, and I've wasted some time giving you your update. I need to be out of this world before Ai and Mako wake up. Fortunately, they like to sleep in."

"Okay. Let's go!"

Impmon blinked at Calumon's exclamation and stared, stunned, as Calumon skipped towards the portal. He couldn't be serious, could he? He really wanted to go with Impmon despite everything he had just been told about GranDracmon and his minions?

Apparently he did.

Impmon reached out and fished Calumon into the air, bringing him back and plonking him back down on the ground where he had been standing before. "And just where do you think you're going?" he asked, folding his arms and glaring.

"With you, of course," Calumon cheered. "We're going to go on an adventure – just you and me. And the bike, I suppose."

"Listen, simpleton," Impmon said. "What part of 'Just me and Behemoth' did you not get? What part of all that talk about me not having fun and probably running for my life all the time didn't make you stop and think 'Hmm, that sounds dangerous so I better stay away?'"

"But Impmon," Calumon reasoned. "You can't really go off on your own, can you? You wouldn't have anyone to talk to except your bike, and he can't answer you. The conversations would be really boring."

"I think interesting conversations will be the least of my problems," Impmon sighed in frustration.

"Yeah, especially if I'm there," Calumon laughed. "So why are we waiting?"

"Let's put it this way," said Impmon. "You are NOT coming!"

Calumon sagged, his ears shrinking again. "You don't want me to come?" he whined piteously. "You don't want my company?"

"It's not a question of company, Creampuff," Impmon explained impatiently. "The whole point of me leaving is so that I don't put anyone in danger. If you come with me, you would be in an incredible amount of danger."

"I could help," said Calumon.

"No offense," said Impmon. "But how exactly do you plan on helping? You can't digivolve and you're only other ability is to make other Digimon digivolve, which I don't need because I can already do that."

"Well, I don't know," Calumon shrugged. "But I could be. Besides, I'm tired of being left out all the time. Ever since the D-Reaper, I haven't done anything useful. I couldn't do anything when Ogudomon attacked, or when Parallelmon appeared, or when you were being haunted. I wanna come."

"Well, I don't want you to come. You could be deleted easily."

"And?"

"And that doesn't sit very well with me."

"I don't care," Calumon complained. "I wanna come with you, Impmon. I wanna come and help you on your adventure. I'll be useful at some point – you'll see."

Impmon sighed. "Is there anything at all I can say to dissuade you?"

"What's dissuade?"

"I'll take that as a no."

"Oh please let me come with you," Calumon cried. "Please! Please! ! Pleasepleasepleaseplease..."

"ALRIGHT! ALRIGHT!" Impmon shouted, halting Calumon's tirade of pleases right in its tracks. "Fine, you can come along. But on one condition – you do exactly what I say, when I say it. If I tell you to shut up, you shut up. If I tell you to run away, you run away. If I tell you to hide and not come out until the threat is gone, then that's what you do. Capiche?"

"Okay," Calumon nodded emphatically. "Now, come on. Let's go and have an adventure, Impmon!" He started off down the tunnel of Guilmon's hideout. "This is going to be so cool. They'll write books about us, and make a film and a play and we'll get to meet lots of new friends and we'll make great discoveries like all those explorer guys and..."

Impmon listened to the unending barrage of words from Calumon as he watched Calumon walk down the tunnel towards the portal. He sighed and turned to Behemoth, who had been patiently sitting throughout the whole conversation.

"Am I the only one thinking that I'm going to regret this?" he asked the bike.

Behemoth remained silent.

"Come on then," Impmon said, heading for the tunnel. "We'd better make sure Calumon doesn't accidentally kill himself by running out of breath because he won't stop talking." He walked into the tunnel in the hideout, following the bouncing Calumon. Behind him, Behemoth rolled slowly forwards. It was quite easy for it to fit inside the tunnel, but the ground wasn't exactly even, and the motorbike had to carefully traverse a number of boulders as it followed its master towards the Digital World.

Calumon was waiting beside the ball of data, one of his long ears flickering slightly because it was so close to the portal. "Come on, Impmon," he said, his green eyes shining brightly in the dark. "Let's go already."

"Alright, alright," Impmon said again. "Don't get too excited. You'll hyperventilate."

"I did that once already," Calumon shook his head. "It wasn't fun. I don't wanna do it again."

"Good," nodded Impmon. "Now, come on." Purging all thoughts of abandoning his friends and his Tamers from his mind, Impmon walked through the blob of data. The moment he touched it, he disintegrated into data particles, which zoomed into the centre of the orb and vanished.

"Hey, that looks like fun," Calumon giggled. "My turn." Calumon plunged his little hand through the edge of the sphere and immediately the same thing happened. Behemoth was left standing in the tunnel, but not for long. The motorbike inched forwards in a motion that was unusually delicate for the maniacal machine. The moment his front wheel touched the portal, he vanished as well, leaving the tunnel as empty as it had been five minutes before, while the blob of data serenely continued to pulsate.

* * *

The transition from Human World to Digital World never really registered with either of the two Digimon. One moment, Impmon was in the tunnel and the next he was floating in mid-air, surrounding by glowing question marks and hyphens. He blinked, and shook his head to clear it.

"Ugh, I'll never get used to that," he said. "Good thing we don't have to do it very often."

Suddenly, right next to him, a bunch of tiny particles appeared out of nowhere and rushed together, merging into one larger mass and forming the shape of Calumon. A moment later, the giggling In-Training Digimon was tumbling and flipping through the air around Impmon.

"Weeeee!" Calumon cheered as an exclamation mark floated through his head and he tumbled to and fro, enjoying the feeling of weightlessness. "This is fun already. Much better than the last times I went from the Human World to the Digital World. The first time, I was being carried in a cage by that monkey-face Deva, Makuramon."

"Maybe you can go and visit him," Impmon said dryly, as he waited for Behemoth to reform somewhere. "You both probably have plenty of catching up to do."

Calumon shook his head. "Nononononono! Makuramon creeps me out."

Impmon chuckled. "Yeah, Monkey-face does have that effect on people. Ah, there you are," he added to the motorcycle that had just appeared out of thin air, spinning slowly on the spot and causing the numerous flying symbols to vanish like wisps of smoke.

"So what do we do now?" asked Calumon. "Although, can we stay here for five more minutes please. This is fun."

"I tried to warn you, Calumon," Impmon declared. "This is not supposed to be fun. It is supposed to be serious, and you'd do well to remember that before you get your Creampuff patookie smeared under the foot of some giant Digimon."

Calumon pulled a face. "I don't want that. I like my patookie the way it is."

Impmon blinked. "I wonder how many people have ever said that before. Ever."

"Okay, I'm serious now," said Calumon, and indeed, he did seem to be more focused as he hung in a position that made him upside-down to Impmon. "So, what does happen next?"

Impmon shrugged. "I suppose we may as well get this over with. Okay, Creampuff, which way do you think is down?"

Calumon blinked, "Why? Is it a game?"

"Not really," said Impmon. "Just pick a direction that you think is down. Because once you've made your decision, that way _will_ be down."

"Wow," Calumon gushed. "The whole world matches what I want? Awesome! In that case, I wish Impmon was a giant carrot!"

Impmon opened his mouth to reprimand Calumon for such a ridiculous wish, but stopped and actually checked himself. He wasn't sure _what_ would happen in this crazy place. Fortunately, he was not a carrot.

"Aww, it didn't work," Calumon complained.

"Just pick a direction," Impmon said. "We haven't exactly got all night."

Calumon took a surprisingly long time to decide which way was down. Impmon waited impatiently, folding his arms and tapping his fingers on one arm as he waited for Calumon's verdict. Eventually, Calumon pointed off to Impmon's left and said "That way."

"About time," said Impmon. "Alright, it's that way."

"What happens now?"

"We fall," said Impmon. And indeed they did. Both of them, as well as Behemoth, suddenly tumbled in the direction that Calumon had pointed in. Calumon yelled as he suddenly found himself unable to stop himself from falling.

"Aaaargh! I changed my mind! This is not fun anymore!"

Impmon couldn't help but laugh as he broke through the Digital Barrier and saw the Desert level some way below. "At least now you have the right mindset," he shouted, as he prepared to warp-digivolve to Beelzemon Blast Mode so he could avoid smashing into the ground.

* * *

And there you have it. Impmon's decision to leave his Tamers behind. This is going to have massive implications for the story, and I hope you'll stick with Impmon every step of the way. I thought the middle part of this chapter was a bit sappy for my tastes, what with all of Impmon's goodbyes, but I wanted to make sure that I had a large element of Impmon's sorrow and other feelings before the comedy that is Calumon took over what had previously been a very serious chapter.

Ever since I've started writing 'A Sticky Situation,' I've struggled with Calumon. Not because I find him hard to write – in fact I love writing him because he's such a silly character – but because I just haven't been able to come up with any ideas as to how he might be useful, because he doesn't need to make anyone digivolve anymore and there is no depressed Jeri for him to cheer up. But now, Calumon's finally going to get a much bigger role, and a more important one too.

See you soon. Hopefully.

* * *

Next time...

The Digimon, Bounty Hunters and Aayla arrive at Boz Pity. And now, Aayla must go undercover, directly into the Separatist base itself, to try and find her Master.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 76 : Infiltration**


	76. Infiltration

Hello, everybody. Pleased to say that I think I have got my accommodation sorted out, so I won't be living in a tin shed next year, like some people I know who do now. So, now that that is out of the way, I can get back to this story.

I've been waiting for this chapter for quite a while now. But now, it's been written and I am quite happy with the end result. Let's have a look-see at what Aayla plans to do now that they have reached their destination.

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 76:- Infiltration**

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"There's Boz Pity, dead ahead," said Sugi from the pilot seat of the _Twilight,_ as the old spice freighter pulled out of hyperspace. The Zabrak's fellow passengers looked up from the game of rock, paper, scissors that Terriermon was playing with Seripas, and glanced out of the window. The old tub was rapidly approaching the orb spinning slowly through space, but was slowing considerably as they made their final approach.

The cockpit contained all the Digimon, all the Tamers and all the Bounty Hunters. Aayla, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen.

"Well," said Terriermon, as he hopped up onto the back of Sugi's chair so he could get a good look of the planet. "It certainly looks like a much nicer place than Tatooine."

"Anywhere looks like a nicer place than Tatooine," remarked Rika dryly. "But this place actually looks quite nice. Green lands and a few small seas. Much more hospitable than our previous stop."

"It's a shame that there is supposedly a Separatist presence down below," Henry said. "If there weren't then I'd consider this place extremely pleasant. A bit like Earth, only with a lot more land and less visible biomes."

"Not much sign that there is a Separatist presence here," said Sugi. "We can only assume there is and that Greedo was telling the truth until we get a bit closer."

"It's a small wonder that the Republic didn't know about it then," said Renamon. "Most Separatist planets that we've seen have large blockades and spaceships swarming above. But there's none of that here."

"They'd want to keep it under-wraps," said Rumi. "If this is where Dooku's top henchmen gather, then they would want to keep it as secret as possible, or Republic troops would be flocking here within the hour."

"True," nodded Lopmon. "But now that we know, or at least think, that there is one here, it makes it much more convenient for us. No running the gauntlet down to the surface of an enemy planet. That makes a change, doesn't it."

"Yeah," nodded Terriermon. "Ryloth, Felucia, Geonosis and a whole bunch of other places tried to shoot us out of the sky before we landed. It's actually quite annoying, and it's unfair play."

"Not that it usually matters," said Renamon. "It's a rare occasion where we can't bust through the defences on the first attempt. And if we don't, the second attempt hasn't failed us yet. But not this time, right?"

"Not this time," agreed Terriermon.

"Um, guys," said Suzie. "Does anybody know where Aayla is?"

"Yeah," frowned Seripas. "She stepped out of the cockpit half an hour ago. What is she doing?"

"She's in the back," said Renamon, jerking her thumb at the door. "She said that she was getting ready for the mission, but I am not entirely sure what she meant by that. She also said that under no circumstances was anyone to come out until she said it was okay."

"Ah," said Henry. "I wondered why you were standing beside the door like some kind of sentry."

Renamon chuckled. "I don't know what she's doing back there, but I will make sure her wishes are respected."

"Typical Rena," giggled Terriermon. "If you ask me, that's just an excuse to stand there and look all serious and imposing?"

"What was that, my dear mate?" Renamon glowered at Terriermon.

"Uh," Terriermon quickly said. "I said ... uh, I said... Oh, you know what I said. But you also know I was joking around, don't you?"

"Indeed I do," nodded Renamon. "Momentai."

"Now that's taking a joke too far," grumbled Terriermon. "I should know, I am a master of doing just that."

"I think we all know that," said Henry.

Embo stepped over beside Sugi and stared at the planet, his arms folded and his pose just as serious and imposing as Renamon's. "Olars, quil ist natri prachoen mauvimint?" the Kyuzo asked Sugi.

"Well, since out supposed leader seems to be indisposed right now," Sugi glanced at the door. "I suppose I'll call the shots. I'll scan the planet below for any signs of a secret base before we enter the atmosphere."

"Good idea," nodded Henry. "Much better than having to search a whole planet manually."

"Will there be any interference from other buildings?" asked Rika.

"This planet is supposed to be uninhabited – no sentient life anywhere," replied Seripas. "If there is a base down there, then the scanners will pick it up with no problems."

"Initiating scan," said Sugi, pushing a button. A hologram of the planet appeared on the holoprojector, and a holographic wave appeared to be travelling over it like some kind of giant energy pulse. It reminded both Henry and Rika uncomfortably of the time when Renamon and Terriermon had gone missing, and Yamaki had begun a search for them by scanning the city for any traces of the gallium electrolyte compound they had found at the last known location of the two. It brought up bad memories from that time.

However, unlike the scan for the compound, this scan actually worked. After about two-thirds of the planet had been scanned a large blip appeared on the holographic planet. "Okay, we've definitely got something," said Sugi. "I'll head for those co-ordinates and land nearby. But not too close, right? If it is a Separatist base, we don't want to be spotted."

"No, we don't," agreed Henry. "And watch out for anti-aircraft turrets. Those things can be hell."

"And we don't want to damage Anakin's precious ship, now do we?" Terriermon snickered.

The _Twilight_ whooshed into the atmosphere and flew low over the plains of Boz Pity for a few minutes, until they eventually came close enough to the dot. Once any closer would have lead Sugi out of her comfort zone, she pulled the _Twilight _to a halt and set it down on the ground. The building that had been spotted on the scanners was up ahead.

"Odd location," said Rumi. "It's halfway up that mountain."

"Good for strategic purposes though," said Sugi. "It means they can only be attacked from one side and approach from the ground would be easily spotted. At least if there are large armies on their way there."

"It looks Separatist," said Rika. "It's got the same look of most Separatist bases."

"Oh, it's definitely Separatist," Renamon said, her voice tense. Rika turned to her partner, as did the others, to find she had stepped away from the door and was staring intently at the building on the mountain, her fur standing on end. Terriermon and Lopmon were acting in a similar manner.

"What's wrong, guys?" asked Suzie.

"We may not be Force-sensitive," said Lopmon. "But we can feel the enormous waves of anger and evil emanating from that place. Greedo was definitely telling the truth. There are evil people in there."

The door behind the open and Aayla stepped into the room. "I sense it too," she said. "There's no question about it. We've reached the lair of Dooku's Dark Acolytes."

"Great," muttered Lopmon, as everyone looked at the base up ahead with dire expressions. "So, I trust that you have a plan, Aayla?" she asked, turning to look at the Twi'lek Jedi Knight.

Her jaw dropped.

"Whoa!" she cried, startled. "Aayla! What the... But... How...?" she spluttered, completely taken aback by the sight before her. Everyone else in the cockpit turned around to look as well. There were mixed reactions. Everyone's eyes widened. Terriermon did a pretty accurate impression of Lopmon's reaction. Renamon blinked in surprise. Rumi and Sugi stared uncomprehendingly.

Henry, on the other hand, covered Suzie's eyes and said, "Good lord, Aayla. What are you wearing?"

"Trust me," Aayla said, looking down at herself. "As Twi'lek slave outfits go, this one is pretty decent." Aayla was wearing nothing except a leather two-piece bikini that only just covered her breasts and a leather panty that had a short, blue veil attached to the front and back that hang down her legs a little. Other than that and her headdress, she wasn't wearing anything at all. Even the leather bands that usually encased her lekku had disappeared.

"I don't particularly want to wear this," said Aayla. "But in order for my plan to work, I will need one, and this was the most decent I could find at such short notice."

"Well, I can safely tell you," said Lopmon, "That it's not the slave getup that's gotten me completely blown out of my mind."

"What do you think?" asked Aayla, holding her arms out slightly. "Do you think you would have recognised me if you didn't already know it was me?"

"I wouldn't have," said Rika. "What did you do to yourself?"

They were all referring to the fact that the slave outfit wasn't the only new thing about Aayla's appearance. The other change, and perhaps the bigger one, was the fact that Aayla's skin was no longer the cerulean blue colour that it had been when they left Tatooine. It was now a deep red colour. Aayla had turned herself from a Rutian Twi'lek to a Lethan Twi'lek.

"You look like you have the universe's worst ever case of sunburn," remarked Terriermon.

"It's just dye," said Aayla, rubbing her arm slightly. The red colour remained on, despite the friction. Everywhere was red, even her eyelids. "Many Twi'lek dancers dye their skin various colours in order to give themselves a multi-coloured effect. But for the purposes of a disguise, I went all out. It should wear off in a couple of days, though, which is good because I think I prefer my skin blue."

"At least now we know why you didn't want anybody coming in," said Renamon. "Not when you were doing all of that."

"And just why have you changed into a lave outfit and dyed your skin red?" asked Rumi.

"Isn't it obvious?" asked Aayla. "I'm going to infiltrate that building to try and find my Master."

There was a few seconds of silence before Terriermon cried, "Are you insane? You want to infiltrate a building filled with some of the most powerful evil people in the entire galaxy, on your own, and hope that they won't recognise you? Have you lost it?"

"On the contrary," Aayla folded her red arms. "I have thought it through extremely carefully. This is the one way that I'll be able to get inside without being too hindered by them. I know for a fact that they will have a few slaves in there, probably supplied by the Trade Federation or some other Separatist party, so I will blend right in with this garb on."

"But what if you're wrong?" asked Henry.

"I'm not," said Aayla, simply. "The Separatists possess many slaves – it allows them to concentrate more on affairs to do with the war instead on the menial tasks such as preparing food. They prefer slaves to droids because it makes them feel more dominant. Trust me, it'll work."

"Alright, fine," nodded Renamon. "But I'm coming in with you. I'll use my perception filter to hide from them."

Aayla shook her head. "You know as well as I do that that won't work, Renamon. They'll still be able to sense your presence, and they would not hesitate to attack you. No, I must go in alone."

Renamon grimaced. "I don't like the sound of that."

"Neither do I," admitted Aayla. "But it is the only option. Nevertheless, you can still hide nearby and come to my aid if I end up needing it."

"But what if you need to defend yourself?" asked Lopmon. "We may not be able to bust through in time and, forgive me for saying it but, you can't exactly carry your lightsaber in with you, or they'll know you aren't a slave, and you can't really hide it anywhere in an outfit like that."

Aayla held up her lightsaber hilt, which had been clutched in her hand throughout the whole conversation. "I know that," she said. "I'm entrusting it to you, Renamon. Take good care of it." She pressed the weapon into Renamon's paws, and the fox Digimon held onto it, gripping it tightly. "As for your question, I still have the Force, and that should be more than enough to keep me alive for a bit. I'll send you a message via my mind if I need help."

"I am liking this idea less and less," said Rika. "You could be killed so easily if you're discovered."

"Then the solution is simple," smiled Aayla. "Don't get discovered."

"And there's another potential hole in the plan," said Terriermon. "They may not be able to recognise you with their eyes, but surely they'll be able to sense that you're a Jedi. They have the same mind powers you do, don't they?"

"Yes," said Aayla, a smirk on her face now. "But they won't know who or what I am if I use Force Concealment."

Terriermon blinked. "Force Concealment?" he asked, confused.

Aayla nodded. "It's also known as Buried Presence, and anyone who knows how to use it can mask their Force-alignment from other Force-sensitives. And, fortunately, I happen to know how to use it. All they will be able to sense from me is that I am a Twi'lek woman."

"Well, that's... handy," remarked Terriermon. "But... how are you going to get near and into the building without being spotted. I bet they don't let any slaves they have in there outside."

"A valid concern," remarked Sugi.

"For that," said Aayla. "I'm going to use another Force technique that I happen to be quite skilled in. The truth is that I have an extremely similar ability to Renamon's perception filter."

"You do?" Renamon asked.

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "It's called Force Cloak, and its effect is the similar to what you can do. However, it is slightly different. Whereas you trick the opponent's mind into not noticing you, Force Cloak enables to user to literally bend light and sound waves around themselves, rendering them completely invisible and inaudible to anything, even droids and security cameras."

"And you've never used it before now because...?" Rika asked.

"Because it required an enormous amount of effort and concentration to pull off," said Aayla. "And it only works to conceal the user, unlike Renamon's perception filter, which can make a small army disappear. Very few Jedi can use this technique, but Master Vos is skilled at it, and he passed the knowledge on to me. However, I don't think I'll be able to concentrate enough when I'm searching for my Master, which is why I went with the disguise as well."

"Alright," said Sugi. "The plan may be well thought out, but it is still extremely risky."

"The risk is worth taking," said Aayla, firmly. "I swore I would find my Master, and I intend to keep my vow. Now, are there any more objections?"

"Many," said Renamon. "But, I suppose, for lack of a better plan... we should give it a go. But if you spot anything that suggests a hairy situation is in the offing, anything at all, then let us know immediately. Deal?"

"Deal," Aayla nodded, smiling broadly. It was touching to see how concerned everybody was for her well-being. "Thanks Renamon."

"And where do we fit into this?" asked Seripas. "Do we just sit here like a family of eopies?"

Aayla glanced at the four Bounty Hunters, and took note of the looks of determination on each of them. "I don't want to ask too much of you," said Aayla. "If things don't go right, we could end up fighting for our lives. There are going to be a lot of powerful people in there. Do not feel like you have to stretch yourselves for my sake."

"Oh, come now, Aayla," said Sugi, folding her arms and giving the red-skinned Twi'lek a pointed look. "If we weren't prepared to help you out then we would have gone back to our base and let you continue on your own. We know the risks, and we are more than prepared to take them, just as you are more than prepared to take your own risks."

Aayla smiled. "Thanks guys. In that case, be ready. If things go smoothly then I will be in and out quickly and you won't need to do anything."

"But things never do seem to go too smoothly with us, do they?" Terriermon said, darkly. "Something will invariably go wrong at some point. It always does."

Aayla turned to look at the bunny, and noticed that he was looking extremely downcast for some reason. She frowned and walked over to him, the blue veils attached to her panty billowing around her a little bit, and she crouched down so she was closer to him. "Hey, what's wrong?" she asked him.

Terriermon sighed. "I just really don't like the idea of sending you into the lurch without your weapon. It would be like sending Henry into the stomach of a Sarlacc. It just feels ... so wrong. Do you follow me?"

Aayla nodded. She could understand how he must be feeling. Renamon walked over and looked down at the two. "That's Terriermon for you," she said. "My mate may be a total goofball most of the time, but he's an extremely protective Digimon. I assume he developed that particular trait after he protected me from Goro."

Terriermon sighed. "The scenario is slightly different, but the principal is the same. We don't want to lose you Aayla."

"None of us do," added Lopmon.

"Please be careful, Big Sister," said Suzie. "I don't want you to die. You're family."

Aayla smiled. "I don't want me to die either," she said. "And I promise, I will take all precautions."

"You better," said Terriermon, seriously. "When that red dye wears off, I want you to still be in one piece."

"Count on it," said Aayla. "But now, we must begin." She got to her feet and looked out across the cockpit. "Thank you, all of you."

Embo flicked his hat, but said nothing. Little Seripas had a look of steely determination on his face. Sugi got up from the pilot seat, looking ready to rumble.

"You guys better get into position," said Aayla, addressing them all. "Remember, stay as close as you can but make sure that you remain out of sight. No unnecessary risks, okay?"

"Got it," said Terriermon. "But I reckon we're going to need some big guns if we do need to storm the base. And since we know Gargomon won't really cut it against a Jedi, Dark or Not, I reckon I should head up to the Ultimate level. Rapidmon will be in the house!"

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" asked Henry. "You could end up blowing up Aayla by accident."

"Nah," Terriermon shook his head. "I'll bust my way through the walls without cannons first and then pick my targets."

"Well," said Lopmon. "Since my Ultimate form would be too big, I reckon my champion form would suffice."

"What about you, Renamon?" asked Rika. "Will you digivolve?"

Renamon shook her head. "We can use my perception filter to stay hidden if I stay in this form. I'll stick with the Rookie stage."

"I'm not entirely sure why it's called the Rookie stage," remarked Aayla. "You three all seem to be exceptional fighters as Rookies."

"We've done a lot of training," shrugged Terriermon. "Most Rookies don't. Now, shall we get this show on the road? The sooner it's over, the happier we'll all be."

"That remains to be seen," Aayla's face fell slightly. She'd spent so long desperately trying to find out whether Quinlan Vos had turned to the Dark Side, but now that she was so close to finding out the answer, she was unsure if she wanted to. But she had to know. She just had to know the truth.

Wordlessly, Aayla the Lethan Twi'lek, exited the room and walked down the ramp of the _Twilight_ and into the atmosphere of Boz Pity. She took in a deep breath, the fragrant smell of the surroundings completely contrasting with the alarm bells screaming in her mind as she sensed the presences of those inside the facility.

As the others walked down behind her, Aayla felt a paw settle on her shoulder. She turned to see Renamon – the fox giving her a serious and piercing look.

"It'll be alright, Aayla," she said. "You'll see."

Aayla nodded. "Get going," she said. "I'll keep in touch."

"Good," said Renamon. The two turned around, just as Henry and Suzie swiped a blue and a normal card through their D-Arcs respectively, resulting in both the little bunnies flashing into the light of digivolution.

"**TERRIERMON MATRIX-DIGIVOLVE TO... RAPIDMON!"**

"**LOPMON DIGIVOLVE TO... TURUIEMON!"**

Rapidmon's cannons made clicking noises as they were primed. "I'd like to see a Dark Jedi stand up to these," he brandished them in the air. "They may know what hit them, but they won't remember it for very long."

"Enough of that talk, brother," Turuiemon tapped one of her switchblades on Rapidmon's armoured boot. "Let's just get ready."

"Right," nodded Rapidmon, turning around so that his back was to everyone, the little bob-tail sticking out behind him. "All aboard."

"Can you take us all?" asked Sugi, dubiously. Rapidmon was large but not that large.

"No problem," said Rapidmon. "Renamon, Turuiemon, Rumi and Seripas can go on my back and I'll carry you and Embo in my arms."

Renamon bounded over to her much larger mate and leapt onto his shoulders. Turuiemon picked up Seripas and followed suit, while Renamon leaned down and gave Rumi a lift up. Rapidmon wrapped his cannons around the Zabrak and the Kyuzo and hoisted them into the air. The cyborg warrior turned to Aayla and said, "Go get 'em, tigress," before leaping into the sky with his passengers. Renamon raised her perception filter a few moments later, and they disappeared into thin air.

Aayla turned to the three Tamers. Before she could say anything, Rika interrupted and said, "Yeah, yeah, we know. Stay with the ship. It's the story of our lives right now."

Aayla chuckled. "Sorry, Rika, but yes. If things get dangerous then the last place you guys should be is anywhere near a bunch of people swinging lightsabers."

"It's the last place _you_ should be too," pointed out Henry. "But I get your point."

"It must be irking," said Aayla. "And I apologise for not being able to find a more active role for you."

"It's okay," Suzie agreed. "Just don't die and we'll forgive you."

"Deal," Aayla smiled. "Now, goodbye, you three. And when I see you again, hopefully I will get to introduce you to Quinlan Vos." With that, she turned around, her red-dyed lekku swinging out behind her, and started to walk towards the factory in the distance. Her sense of foreboding grew with every step she took, with every inch she covered. The Separatist compound loomed ahead of her, and the wind chilled her exposed skin.

But Aayla forced all of that from her mind. She was going to have to concentrate if she wanted the next part of her plan to work. She shut her eyes and continued to walk, using the Force to sense her surroundings and where was safe to put her feet. She kept up her pace and concentrated on her Force Cloak ability. As she did, the words of her own Master, the words Quinlan Vos had spoken to her when he had been teaching her this technique, ran through her mind.

"_We are not seen because we are not there,"_ her Kiffar Master had said to her. _"Place your mind where you would be. Leave no trace, no scent, no hint of your passing. What the senses perceive means nothing if the mind does not perceive it. Remove self from yourself and you can walk outside your opponent's perception. You will not be seen."_

She could feel it working, even if she couldn't see it. Her mind powers extended, and everything – light, sound waves, scent trails, bent just before they touched her skin and flowed around her, reforming behind her and continuing their path as they would have done were she not there. She was rendered completely invisible. Nobody would be able to see her, smell her or hear her. They could still touch her, but Aayla wasn't near anybody just yet.

_Focus,_ Aayla thought to herself, as she opened her eyes. Using her powers, she allowed light to penetrate her eyes, meaning she could still see her surroundings, but prevented light from bouncing back off her body, which would allow other people to see her. "I am not here," she said, aloud, although only she would have been able to hear herself.

The building grew bigger and bigger up ahead, as Aayla reached the foot of the tall mountain that it was situated on. The climb up to it looked steep, but that wouldn't stop the athletically built, invisible Jedi. She began her ascent, walking up the steep slope, occasionally using her hands to give herself better purchase on the rocks. Her ascent was steady. It would normally have gone faster, as she'd be able to use Jedi Force Powers to leap up and bound from rock to rock, but the Force Cloak took up too much of her concentration for that now.

She could feel the presence of the three Digimon somewhere nearby due to her psychic link with them. They were hovering nearby and unsure of her whereabouts. They had mostly withdrawn from her consciousness and were deliberately not making contact for fear of disrupting her intense concentration.

Aayla kept walking, clambering over the rocks like a puma on the prowl. She didn't need to be deliberately quiet, but she did have to avoid such things as dislodging stones and sending debris down the mountain, which might alert somebody to her presence. She continued her approach, staring up at the base ahead.

Her intense concentration remained unbroken as she successfully scaled the mountainside. Lots of practice had honed her athletic skills and endurance, so much so that she wasn't in the least bit tired when she finally reached the Separatist base. She would have to go through a lot more than that before she became even slightly out of breath.

Now that she was here, the feeling of evil was stronger than ever. Aayla could sense several presences inside, and an almost overwhelming feeling of malice seeped through the fibre of her being. This place was malevolent beyond words. And she had to go inside it.

She promised she would go to hell and back for her Master.

She seemed to have reached the hell part. Now she just had to go in and hope that she made it to the back part.

Keeping up her Force Cloak ability, she moved around the large building until she encountered the front blast doors. There was a single MagnaGuard on duty, standing vigilantly in front of the doors with its electrostaff in one hand. If Aayla wanted to get inside, she was going to have to get past it. There were security camera there too, so destroying it was out of the question. It might be seen.

Glancing at her surroundings, Aayla spotted a small pile of rocks standing nearby, on the other side of the MagnaGuard. Aayla extended her hand, and, ensuring that she kept her Force Cloak up, she used the tiniest amount of the Force to nudge one of the stones at the bottom of the pile. Like a Jenga tower, the rest of them toppled in a heap. The noise caught the MagnaGuard's attention and it turned, walking towards the pile with its electrostaff ready for action.

While it was preoccupied, Aayla walked past it and to the doors. Pushing the button to open them, Aayla slipped through them as they opened in the middle and hurriedly shut the door to close them on the inside, before the MagnaGuard could notice.

She was in.

And the Dark Side was in so much evidence that she was almost overwhelmed. Hurriedly, she forced her mind clear, keeping her Force cloak up, and slowly began to proceed down the corridor. Step by step, inch by inch, she moved on.

Her heart was going a little faster now. If Master Vos had not turned to the Dark Side, then how could he stand living in a place like this? It was unbearable. Aayla gritted her teeth, knowing that her concentration was wavering as a result of so much Dark Power slamming into her mind. She would have to lower the Force Cloak ability.

_Well, _she thought, as she ducked into a corner. _Time to see if this disguise does the job._ And she dropped her invisibility. At the exact same time, she shielded her mind with Force Concealment, raising mental walls around her mind to ensure that nobody inside this building would be able to sense that she was a Jedi. She was adept at this skill too – she was adept at most Jedi skills that required stealth, as she and her Master were both great at working undercover.

Taking a deep breath, Aayla stepped from her corner and walked down the corridor, to a place where she could hear sounds emanating towards her. Aayla paused when she reached a door. She could hear voices coming from behind it and a smell – the smell of cooking food. This must be the kitchen. And where there was a kitchen in a place like this, there were usually slaves.

Aayla opened the door at the push of a button and stepped inside. She had been right. It was the kitchen – and there were a load of people standing in the room, doing various chores. Some of them were stirring pots of boiling substances, while others were cutting up vegetables and meat. Others were washing up pots and pans and all of them were looking thoroughly downcast. They were all women, and they were all dressed in outfits as skimpy as Aayla's.

There were a several humans, a Rodian, a couple of Mirialans and even a Pantoran. But, most importantly, there were mostly a lot of Twi'leks there. A couple of Rutians, and several with green or brown skin. And there was one, single Lethan.

The slaves turned around fearfully as they heard her enter, possibly wondering if they had done something wrong and were about to be scolded or beaten by one of their masters. At the sight of what was apparently a Lethan Twi'lek entering the room, surprise crossed the features of all of them. Several of them glanced at the other red-skinned female in the room and back, as if making sure that they weren't seeing double.

Finally, one of humans spoke as she turned back to washing the greasy pot she had been doing before. "So," she said. "They've got another one, have they? Which party sent you to them as a gift? The Trade Federation? The Banking Clan?"

"Don't be like that, Fosso," chided one of the Mirialans. "The new girl's probably scared enough as it is." She turned and offered Aayla a hand. "There, there," she said. "You need not worry too much. I am Hytris Kaal. What's your name?"

Aayla didn't answer. She was glancing at the Lethan Twi'lek as an idea began to form in her mind, which would allow her to blend in even better with the crowd.

"No need to be shy," said Hytris. "Those Jedi abominations out there may give you a rough time, but we're all slaves together. We look after each other in here."

"We have to," the Pantoran remarked sadly. "Because the Masters certainly don't."

"Ssh," Hytris reproached the Pantoran girl. "Try and stay positive, girl. That's the only way we'll be able to survive in a place like this."

Aayla looked across at the room, and the numerous, tired, dogged expressions of all the slaves. She could sense their mood and it was almost as sullen and depressed as those of the slaves owned by Jabba the Hutt. They didn't have life quite as bad, because they weren't forced to dance in front of their masters... much, but they still had an awfully crap life. Aayla could see numerous bruises and scrapes on the majority of the slaves, signs that they had been kicked and beaten by their owners.

"Excuse me," Aayla started, gaining everyone's attention. "If you don't mind my asking, what is your name?" she pointed at the Lethan Twi'lek.

"Me?" the Twi'lek asked. "Why do you ask?"

"Trust me," said Aayla. "It's quite important."

The Lethan woman frowned, but answered anyway. "My name is Nalema Var. I've been at this place for some time, almost since it was built. But why do you want to know my name specifically?"

"Nalema," said Aayla, smiling broadly, which seemed to puzzle most of the slaves. "What do you normally do in this place? What's your job?"

Nalema, looking more confused than ever, indicated the bowl she was stirring in and said, "I cook food for the Dark Acolytes and serve it to them later on. Why?"

"In that case," said Aayla. "How would you like to pass your serving duties to me for the afternoon?"

"Huh?" asked Nalema. "Pass my... what are you talking about?"

"The Dark Acolytes don't know I'm here," Aayla winked at her. "I'm not a slave. I'm in disguise. My name is Aayla Secura, Jedi Knight and member of the A-Team."

_That_ set the kitchen abuzz with excited whispers. The slaves looked awed, amazed, excited or disbelieving. There was a disguised Jedi standing in front of them, and a member of the A-Team, no less. Even they knew about the A-Team – after all they had heard their masters talking about them several times while carrying out their duties.

"But what are you doing here?" asked Hytris the Mirialan. "What did you come in here for? And where's your lightsaber?"

"Are you here to set us free?" asked an excited Rutian Twi'lek.

"My lightsaber is being held by a friend outside the facility," said Aayla. "I did not come here alone – there are others waiting outside. And to answer your other questions, my original intention in coming here was not to free you, although now that I have seen you, I am modifying my plan a bit. If everything works, you will be free by the end of the day."

The excited whispering increased, although many of them looked doubtful. Obviously these ones were not going to start hoping for freedom too much just yet. They'd been here too long, and nobody had ever escaped here before.

But, then again, none of them had the help of a disguised Jedi before either.

"So, what was your original intention?" asked Hytris. "Was it to kill the Dark Acolytes?"

"No," Aayla shook her head. "No, I am searching for one in particular. Do you people know of a man called Quinlan Vos?"

"Vos?" asked Hytris. "Oh, yes, I know him. He's one of the Acolytes. He's not as bad as some of the others. We don't know that much about him really – he's more of the quiet, brooding type. Doesn't pay much attention to us, and spends a lot of time in his private chambers."

"He's here?" Aayla asked, struggling to keep her own excitement from her voice.

"Yeah," nodded Hytris. "He's in the conference room, right now. The Acolytes are having a meeting with their leader, Count Dooku, by hologram. That's why we're all in here, instead of going and serving them."

Aayla grimaced. The thought of Quinlan Vos speaking to Count Dooku like a leader was quite sickening, even if Vos wasn't a real member of the Dark Side. But, despite the fact that Hytris' words gave Aayla new hope, it did not answer the question that still burned inside her. Was he, or was he not, a real Dark Acolyte.

"Okay," nodded Aayla. "Well, I need to speak to him, quickly. Nalema, I want you to stay behind in the kitchen when it's time to serve these people. Give me the food, and I'll take your place. Once I've found a way to speak to Master Vos in private, I'll come back and get all of you."

"Is there a plan?" asked the Pantoran.

"Sort of," said Aayla. "But don't worry. I'll have it worked out."

_I hope you know what you're doing, Aayla_, she heard Renamon's voice echo in her mind.

* * *

It wasn't long before Hytris led the way into the conference room. It was exactly what Aayla had expected, some computer terminals embedded in a few of the walls and dominating the middle of the room was an enormous metal table with a single row of tall seats on either side, carefully arranged so the rows were exactly opposite one another. Most, but not all, of the chairs were occupied by Dark Jedi. They were all carefully watching the hologram of the man at the end of the table, Count Dooku himself.

"And there's the big man," muttered Hytris. "The man in charge of this whole, wretched war."

_Not quite_, thought Aayla, thinking about the mysterious Darth Sidious that they had yet to track down. _But close enough, I suppose._

"Grievous is moving his fleet towards the Cavamina system," Dooku was saying. "So, that section of space should be ours within one rotation. However, the planet of Glee Anselm still remains open for the taking. And, I wish for you to carry out the invasion of this system, Bulq."

Aayla's eyes snapped over to the figure he was addressing. He blood ran cold. She had known that there was a likelihood that Sora Bluq would be here, but she had been hoping she was wrong. Evidently, she wasn't.

Sora Bulq, was a large, male Weequay Jedi Master that had joined up with Count Dooku a few days after the Battle of Geonosis. But Sora's fall to the Dark Side had been even before the Clone Wars had begun. Sora was a master of all forms of lightsaber combat, so Mace Windu had asked for his help in developing a new style, known as Vapaad. Unfortunately, Vaapad required the user to become very close to the Dark Side, and while Mace had mastered it without turning, Sora had not. Mace still blamed himself for Sora's turning.

Sora had tried to convert a large number of Jedi to the Dark Side before the Order learnt of his changeover. If it hadn't been for the actions of Mace Windu, those Jedi would have probably joined the ranks of the Dark Acolytes. But Mace had been able to drive Sora away, and Sora had become a leading figure amongst the ranks of the Dark Acolytes.

"As you wish, my lord," Sora stood and bowed low to Dooku, before taking his seat again.

Aayla glanced around the table and took in the rest of the menacing, evil group. She spotted a couple of human male twins who she recognized to be Vinoc and Karoc – a pair of Dark Jedi who had comparatively small parts in the Clone Wars so far. Their operations were quite covert, and not much was known about these two.

She also spotted Tol Skorr, another human male, who had joined the Dark Side after actually being saved by Count Dooku, when his starship was shot down over the planet Korriban. Ever since then, he had followed Dooku with undying loyalty. He wasn't as skilled with a blade as Sora, but he was still a very dangerous opponent.

Sitting next to Tol Skorr was yet another human male. Aayla frowned when she saw this man, with bald head and lines running down the centre of his forehead. She was pretty sure his name was Trenox, a new addition to the forces of the Acolytes. He probably wouldn't be as much of a threat as the others yet.

There was also an Anzati there. Aayla recognized him as Nikkos Tyris, a former Jedi that had been believed dead after a battle near the start of the war. She shuddered as she looked at the Anzati. She had bad memories of that race. The Dark Jedi, Volfe Karkko, who had lured her to the Dark Side when she had lost her memories, had been an Anzati. The Anzati had the power to seduce other beings with their words, and while a strong Force-sensitive might use their mind powers to resist, Aayla had not known she had such abilities at the time and Karkko had easily lured her in. She doubted Nikkos Tyris was as powerful as Karkko had been, though. And she certainly wouldn't be falling for the words of _this_ Anzati.

Most Anzati looke like humans, but there was one key difference. They had two long, thin proboscises in hidden cheek pouches on their face. And when they were hungry, they uncurled those tubes and punctured their victim, draining their life force through the tubes. Effectively, they were this universe's version of vampires.

"And what of me, my Master?" asked a sultry voice at the end of the table, right next to Dooku. Aayla's blood went cold for the second time, as she looked over and spotted Asajj Ventress herself sitting at the table, and looking up at Dooku with an expression of reverence. Dooku looked down at her, his expression cold.

"You would be wise to hold your tongue, Ventress," he said. "I am still very disappointed in you for losing to a mere Padawan that you had completely at your mercy."

Ventress snarled, as Aayla tried to disguise a snort. Fortunately, a number of the other Dark Acolytes had done the same, so Aayla's action went unnoticed. "I do not know what happened, but I swear to you the next time I see that pathetic little member of this so-called A-Team, Skywalker's youngling will not be so fortunate."

"Did you enjoy your period of time trussed up and kept by General Grievous?" Tol Skorr sneered at her. "How long was it? Four months?"

Many of the members of group howled with laughter. Obviously most of them didn't like Ventress much, possibly because she outranked most of them. Ventress growled and stood up, grabbing her twin lightsabers and igniting them. "Care to repeat that, Skorr?" she asked menacingly, brandishing her weapons in the human male's direction.

"Come on," Hytris nudged Aayla. "We're supposed to be serving, not watching."

"Right," Aayla nodded and, adopting the pose of a submissive slave, she and the other slaves, led by Hytris, started forwards with their platters.

"Enough," Dooku barked. "Curb your temper, Ventress." Ventress growled, but did as Dooku asked, sheathing her lightsaber blades. "As a matter of fact, I do have a mission for you. I want you to head for the Exodeen system and start an invasion there."

"Yes, Master," nodded Ventress. "I shall set out tomorrow. And I will not fail you."

"You had better not," Dooku said, sternly. "Or it will mean more punishment for you."

Ventress bowed low to Dooku, and retook her seat, seething silently. Aayla moved forward in a timid fashion and carried a tray of food towards Ventress. She moved to put it down in front of the Rattataki assassin, but Ventress, clearly still in a temper, seized it from her hand and put it on the table herself. Aayla backed away, just as most slaves would do. Obviously her mind-shielding was working, or Ventress would have recognized her old enemy right away, regardless of any disguise.

As Aayla moved to serve the other tray to the person opposite Ventress and on the other side of Dooku, the Sith Lord, turned to the man and said, "And I have a special assignment for you too, Vos."

It took a considerable amount of self-control for Aayla not to jerk around and stare at the man Dooku was addressing. He'd been mostly in shadows for most of the conversation, but he leaned forward now as Dooku addressed him. Aayla forced herself not to look at him. Instead, she serenely placed her second tray in front of him and glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.

It was definitely Master Vos. She knew that face anywhere, as well as the long, dread-locked hair and the stripe of yellow running horizontally across the middle of his face. His eyes were as brown as her own, but whereas she usually remembered him with a grinning expression and a glint in his eye when not on the battlefield, she now see a face of impassive stone.

_That doesn't mean anything, Aayla_, she mentally reminded herself as she moved away, not wishing to stay in the same place too long and bring up some suspicion. _He could still be putting on an act. You need to see him alone before you can be sure._

"What is it you want me to do, Master?" asked Quinlan.

"I would like someone to eliminate a certain traitor to the Confederacy of Independent Systems," Dooku replied. "The Twi'lek, Kh'aris Fenn, to be exact. I have discovered that he has been using the funds that I have been giving him for his own, personal needs, and not for aiding our cause like he is supposed to. Naturally, this irks me. I wish him to be taken out of the game."

Quinlan sneered. "Just that?" he asked. "Couldn't you think of something a little more challenging?"

Dooku chuckled, while Aayla, who had her back to the table, gritted her teeth. "Possibly," Dooku replied. "But as you are my top assassin at the moment, and this is, after all, an assassination, then I thought you would be most suitable for the job."

Aayla risked a glance over her shoulder in surprise. Quinlan, her own dear Master, was Dooku's top assassin? Her heart wrenched when she heard those words. Everything she was seeing clearly indicated that Master Vos was just as deeply immersed in the Dark Side as Dooku. She also spotted that Asajj Ventress looked about as pleased as she did, which is to say, not at all. Despite herself, Aayla couldn't help but smirk. Ventress had been Dooku's top assassin from the beginning, but apparently she had screwed up so badly, Vos had replaced her.

_He's not evil! _Aayla mentally shouted. _He's not! He can't be! Don't be fooled, Aayla! Quinlan is acting the part he needs to act, just like you are! He must be!_ But, in reality, she just didn't know.

"In that case," Quinlan continued. "I shall depart within the hour."

"Very good," nodded Dooku. "Now, you all have your various assignments, and I fully expect them to be carried out before you speak to me again."

The Dark Acolytes bowed, and Dooku's hologram disappeared. Aayla went to rejoin the slaves, who were all standing in a huddle at one end of the room, so they could be out of sight of Dooku's hologram.

Aayla needed to wait for the right moment before she acted. She whispered to Hytris. "What do we do now?"

"We disperse to various positions around the room," said Hytris. "And we don't move unless we are dismissed or summoned to help them with something."

Aayla nodded and acting like the submissive Lethan slave, Nalema, she went and stood in a place where she could closely observe her Master without looking too suspicious. She watched carefully out of the corner of her vision as he dug into the food prepared for him by the slaves. She knew her search for any sign of a slip-up in a mask was futile. Either there was no mask, or Quinlan was very good at maintaining it. He would have to be if he was frequently hanging around with this lot.

She did notice one odd thing though. For some reason, Quinlan kept throwing brief glares at the figure of Nikkos Tyris the Anzati, who was eating calmly from his own tray. Aayla bit her lip in dismay. The looks Quinlan sent towards his fellow Acolyte was a huge mask of hate – one of the biggest things that leads to a Jedi's downfall. Everything she was seeing pointed towards the Dark Side.

She also noticed that Ventress was sending frequent glares are _him_, as was the human, Tol Skorr. That, she could understand. Both of them were extremely loyal to Dooku and no doubt saw Master Vos as some sort of competition. But Quinlan didn't appear to notice. He was absorbed with eating or glaring at Nikkos.

"Hey, you! Lethan girl!" shouted Nikkos. Aayla was startled from her thoughts as she turned to see the Anzati staring right at her. Calming herself, she reinforced her Force concealment and lowered her gaze, her hands clasped in front of her in a acquiescent slave pose.

Nikkos picked up a roasted Nuna leg and showed it to her. "You're in charge of cooking these, right? Well, I don't think they're been done well enough. Useless slave!" he shouted, throwing the leg of meat directly at Aayla's face. Aayla ducked quickly, the Nuna leg splatting against the wall behind her.

Several of the Dark Acolytes chuckled, and the other slaves sent her apologetic glances. Nikkos cackled and said, "Quick reflexes, huh?" He picked up a handful of rankweed and said, "Well, this time, you are not to move. Take this!"

"That's enough, Tyris," Quinlan suddenly intervened. Nikkos turned back, to see that Quinlan had gotten to his feet and was glaring at him, his muscled arms folded, and his jaw jutting out. He struck an imposing figure.

"What are you talking about, Vos?" Nikkos growled. "You don't tell me what to do, just because Dooku thinks you're his top assassin."

"I think you'll find that I can," Quinlan sneered. "And I order you to put the rankweed down and eat it, instead of throwing it at defenceless slaves."

"What's the matter, Vos?" Ventress asked sweetly. "Feeling sorry for the little Twi'lek girl, are you? Remind you of someone, perhaps?"

Aayla resisted the urge to growl, but listened intently to Vos' answer.

"Frankly, it is none of your concern, witch," Vos replied. "But, if you must know, I think picking on those who can't fight back is both a waste of energy and it doesn't prove anything. It certainly doesn't make you tough. If Tyris wants to take out a Jedi, then that's different, but throwing good food at slaves is just plain pathetic. It shows just how weak you are."

"You calling me weak, Vos?" Nikkos growled angrily.

"Yes, I am," Vos grinned savagely. "Glad we're on the same wavelength. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must prepare for my mission." He moved his chair aside, and strode towards one end of the room, exiting through a door, which shut behind him, cutting off Aayla's view of her Master.

Aayla was unsure about what to make of that little scene. While his words sounded perfectly genuine, hope sprang up in Aayla's heart again. The fact that Quinlan had stuck up for her, despite the fact that he didn't know who she really was, could mean that even if he was part of the Dark, there might still be a bit of the Light left in him.

Aayla frowned. Quinlan had gone off by himself. And if there was any way to finally discern the truth, she would have to confront him. She would have to speak to him face to face.

But she couldn't do that until she was dismissed. So she remained standing, along with all the other slaves, waiting impatiently for someone to say something, and give her any excuse to leave. At least Nikkos appeared to have listened to what Vos said, because he didn't throw the rankweed at her.

It was Sora Bulq the Weequay that finally gave Aayla the chance she had been waiting for. "I think we can eat the rest of this meal without assistance," he said. "You lot, get out of here. Go and clean up the place or something."

Aayla copied the subservient bows that the other slave-girls gave to the Weequay Dark Acolyte and turned around, following the other slaves back towards the kitchen doors. Hytris caught up with her. "Sorry," she whispered. "I should have warned you that Nikkos likes to do that."

"It doesn't matter," Aayla whispered back. "But I can't talk now. I must go and see Quinlan."

"How?" asked Hytris. "They'll see you."

"See you later," Aayla said, and still walking, she glanced over her shoulder, focusing on Ventress' plate of food. Using a small blast of the Force, she sent the plate flying right into Ventress' face. While the Rattataki spluttered and coughed and the plate fell to the floor and shattered and the other Dark Acolytes roared with laughter, Aayla took the opportunity to dart off to the side and through the door Quinlan had gone through.

She quickly shut it behind her and listened carefully. She could hear Ventress demanding to know who had done that, while the others laughed, but there were no sounds of pursuit. She sighed in relief – nobody had noticed.

She turned to the corridor she was standing in. She had no idea where Master Vos had gone, but she didn't need to. She shut her eyes and focused on his familiar presence. She quickly moved forwards, following her mind as it directed her towards her Master.

She pulled to a halt outside a door. She could sense her Master's presence on the other side, so this must be his private chambers.

Well, this was it. The moment she had been waiting for, for such a long time. This was the time where she would learn, finally, the truth about her Master.

_It's now or never,_ she thought to herself, as she slowly reached a hand up to push the button that would cause the door to open.

_All the same,_ said Turuiemon's voice. _Stay on guard, Aayla._

_Don't worry,_ said Aayla. _I will._

She pushed the button.

The door opened and she stepped boldly inside. Quinlan Vos, from where he had been standing beside a metal desk and packing a small backpack with provisions like ration bars, turned around and stared at her.

"Oh, it's you," he said. Aayla noted, with a slight happiness, that his voice was much softer and a little more like its old self than it was back in the conference room. "If you're here to thank me for helping you out back there, then you really shouldn't have. I suggest you head back to the kitchen."

He turned and continued packing his bag. But Aayla didn't move. She stood there, boldly, staring at her Master with hardened, determined eyes. Quinlan noticed that she hadn't left, paused and turned back in confusion. "How did you get away from the others?"

Aayla didn't say anything. Instead, she dropped her Force concealment shields.

Quinlan staggered backwards as if struck by a physical blow. He crashed against the desk, and grabbed it with both hands to keep himself upright. He stared at the red-dyed Twi'lek, his eyes wide, his mouth agape, completely stunned.

"Aayla?" he breathed, his voice expressing his shock just as much as his actions.

"Hello, Master," said Aayla. "I think it's about time you and I had a talk."

* * *

Yes, I had Aayla dress up in something like a slave outfit. Hey, if they did it to Princess Leia then they can do it to Aayla as well. The circumstances are a little different, that's all. As for the red dye, I came up with that one completely by accident. I was browsing random pages on Wookieepedia, to see if I could come up with some future stories, when I found a page about a yellow-skinned Twi'lek dancer, who dyed parts of her skin red. So, I thought Aayla could give it a go here.

Both those Force techniques Aayla used are also legitimate. And while I have no idea if she could use Force concealment, her ability to use Force Cloak is definitely canon. It's not quite as useful as Renamon's PF, because of the concentration needed and the lack of range, but I thought now would be a good time to bring it in.

Again, not much of the Digimon, but hey, this story can't be all about the Digimon, can it, or it wouldn't be a proper crossover. But don't worry, the Digimon will have quite a bit to do before this arc is over.

See you soon, guys.

* * *

Next time...

Fairly self-explanatory. We learn the truth behind what Quinlan has been doing recently. Has he really turned to the Dark Side?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 77 : Master and Padawan**


	77. Master and Padawan

I've been looking forwards to writing this chapter for a while, so I decided to get down to business and do it. Questions will be answered, decisions will be made. It's the moment you've all been waiting for – the confrontation between Aayla Secura and Quinlan Vos. I hope this long, dialogue-driven chapter doesn't disappoint. A lot of things will now be revealed.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 77:- Master and Padawan**

* * *

To say that Quinlan Vos was completely and utterly flabbergasted would be a serious understatement. The Kiffar was stunned out of his mind, his brain going numb and refusing to send signals to the rest of his body, leaving him totally fixed to the spot. Even his heart stopped beating for a second or two, such was his shock.

He stood, leaning against the desk he had fallen against in his surprise and holding himself up by placing his hands on it. Aayla Secura, his own Padawan, was standing right in front of him! Here... in perhaps one of the most dangerous places in the galaxy! A lair crawling with Dark Jedi and somehow, Aayla had managed to sneak inside, find him and get him on his own without being discovered by any of the other Acolytes.

Truly, he had taught her well in the ways of going undercover.

But... the lengths that she had gone through to get here...

"Aayla," he whispered. "Is it... is it really you?"

"Of course," nodded Aayla. "I would have thought it would be obvious now that you know who I am. I may be in disguise but my face is still the same. It's the face that you watched mature ever since you took me on as your Padawan all those years ago. Or has your encounter with the Dark Side blurred your memory so much that you can't see it."

Quinlan did not notice the implied, probing question. He was just too shocked. This would have been the last place in the galaxy he would have expected to run into Aayla, except perhaps the lair of Count Dooku himself, which was set apart from the base of his Acolytes. And while it was true that he now recognised the face of his former Padawan, everything else about her appearance was telling his mind that this wasn't Aayla at all.

"But..." he stammered. "You're red! What happened to your Rutian skin?"

"A nice touch to the disguise if I do say so myself," said Aayla. "I purchased the dye needed, as well as the costume, from Tatooine."

"You went to Tatooine?" Quinlan blinked in surprise. He knew full well just how sickening that planet could be, especially to Twi'lek girls. "What in the name of the Force did you go there for?"

"Why do you think?" Aayla replied. "I went to find you. I received a tip-off from some friends of mine that there was a Bounty Hunter named Greedo living there that might know of your location, and, as it turned out, he did. And here I am."

"Yes, I can see that," Quinlan got to his feet. He was a little bit taller than Aayla, by about half a head, making him roughly about the same height as Anakin and Obi-Wan. "Well, I must admit, I am impressed by your tenacity, Aayla. I can't think of many other people who would go to the lengths you have just to find someone. Going to Tatooine? Dying yourself red? Getting dressed into a costume like _that?_"

"Don't remind me about the costume," said Aayla.

"Are you here alone?" asked Quinlan. "Or did you bring friends with you?"

Aayla's eyes narrowed, as her brain set into motion. At the moment, her Master was simply stunned at her appearance, in both senses of the word. She still had nothing to imply that he was still part of the Light or was part of the Dark. And until she knew for sure, she shouldn't answer too many of his questions. The whole point of her coming here was to get him to do the answering.

"I think I'll keep that to myself for the moment," said Aayla. "If you don't mind. Right now, I am more concerned about other matters."

Aayla and Quinlan stared into each other's eyes for a few seconds. Aayla's gaze was piercing as she searched the depths of her Master's to try and find the answer to her questions. But Quinlan was still too surprised to find her here, of all places. Frustratingly, Aayla found nothing she was looking for.

Quinlan broke the staring contest and turned around, his mind spinning. He leaned heavily on his metal desk, breathing in and out deeply, and trying to rid his mind of some of this numbness that was seeping through it. Aayla took the opportunity to listen for any sounds in the corridor. There were none. Hopefully her real-slave doppelganger had taken her place again and the other Dark Acolytes saw no reason to be suspicious.

She kept one eye on Quinlan's back at all times. If he was Dark now, there was a strong possibility that he would jump around and try to stab her while she was defenceless. She hoped that the sight of his unarmed Padawan would make him think twice. After all, when she was being controlled by Volfe Karkko, he had snapped her out of it by putting his lightsaber down and refusing to fight her. She hoped the same little scenario would happen here, only with their roles reversed.

Eventually, Quinlan turned back around and looked at Aayla. "What are you doing here, Aayla?" he asked.

"You know the answer to that," said Aayla.

"Yes," said Quinlan. "But why did you go through with all this. This place is unimaginably dangerous to any Jedi, and you wander in here without your trusty lightsaber and hope for the best? If your identity was discovered, then the Dark Acolytes would kill you in an instant."

"You're a Dark Acolyte," observed Aayla. "And yet you haven't tried to kill me yet, even though you've known who I was for the past few minutes."

"That's not the point," Quinlan insisted. "The point is, while I know you came here for me... am I really worth it? Am I worth you descending into the lowest places of the galaxy, dressing yourself in the most humiliating disguise you've ever worn and breaking into a building filled with some of the most powerful evil forces of the galaxy?"

"Of course you are," Aayla insisted. "You're my Master. You've been with me since I began my Jedi journey. You were the first Jedi I ever met, and you saved my life that day, snatching me from the path of a rampaging Wampa when I was just a little girl. And then, you raised me into the Jedi that I am today. Mostly. The point is, that if I could call anybody a father to me – anyone in the galaxy – that person would be you."

"Aayla, I..." Quinlan said.

"Don't interrupt," Aayla held up a red hand. "I've felt concerned about you ever since I last parted ways with you many months ago. I often worried about how you were faring down here, in the realm of Dooku. I prayed to the Force that you would stay safe, that I would one day see you again, that you wouldn't pull off one of your stupid stunts..."

"My stupid stunts?" Quinlan blurted out. "I think this stunt of yours surpasses anything that I've ever done."

"That's beside the point," Aayla said. "The point is that I worried about you for a very long time. There wasn't a day that went by where I didn't think about you at least once, and wonder if you were okay. And do you know how it felt to return to the Jedi Temple after a mission and hear from Masters Windu and Yoda, the most important members of the Jedi Order, that you had turned to the Dark Side? Do you?"

Quinlan's face had returned to that 'set-in-stone' look he had had earlier when he had been speaking to Dooku. He said nothing, so Aayla answered her question for him.

"It felt absolutely heartrending," she said. "To know that you, who I have looked up to for almost my whole life, had cast in your lot with Dooku, made me feel horrible. Master Yoda himself believes that you have fallen to the Dark Side, and you know that Master Yoda is rarely wrong. What was I supposed to think?"

She wasn't entirely sure where this tirade of words was coming from. She supposed that she was attempting to relieve a lot of the pent-up anxiety that had been steadily growing and growing inside of her ever since she had heard the news. It probably wasn't all that fair to be taking it out on Master Vos, but then again, he was the source of all this.

"I don't know," Quinlan said, stonily. "What do you think?"

Aayla glared at him. "I don't know what to think anymore. I denied it at first. I completely refused to believe that you had turned to the Dark Side. I argued with Yoda and Master Windu, sticking up for you in front of them. But what they had to say didn't end there. No, they went on to discuss some other things that you've been doing recently, and by that, I mean the murders that you have committed."

Quinlan folded his arms and stared at Aayla, a little frostily, but he still didn't object to anything Aayla was saying. This was making Aayla more and more frustrated. For some reason, Quinlan seemed to be reluctant to divulge any information to her, and he was glaring at her, which were all signs that he was really a Dark Acolyte. But, at the same time, he had not even reached for his lightsaber, much less tried to use it or call for back up, which indicated he was still in the light.

But Aayla was desperate for the truth, and she decided to do something a little unfair in order to get Quinlan to start talking. She was going to throw all of the bad points that she had learned and observed over the last couple of days in his face, and none of the good points. Perhaps, if he wasn't evil, this would get him to start talking.

"Yes, that's right. Murders," she continued. "And not just any old murders either. Murders that have seemingly no explanation, as if you committed them in cold blood and on a whim. That is not just against the Jedi Code, it is wrong on so many other levels. For instance, I heard that you recently murdered you're very own Great Aunt."

Quinlan's expression suddenly changed into a ferocious snarl, so much so that Aayla actually took a step back in surprise. Her heart panged at the sight of her master looking so livid, a trait that Jedi of the Light were supposed to suppress.

"Do not speak to me of that woman ever again!" Quinlan snapped angrily. "She deserved to die!"

"Did she?" Aayla pressed at this weak spot in Quinlan's mask. "Did she really? The reports say that she was unarmed and totally defenceless. What was that you were saying earlier about not going after those who can't fight back? And nobody deserves to die, no matter how bad a crime they have committed. Not even Asajj Ventress or General Grievous deserve to die, and look at the atrocities _they _have committed. Killing should only be a last resort, done in battle and in self-defence. What was your excuse?"

Quinlan fumed, his teeth bared in a snarl as he watched his former Padawan's tirade.

"And what about Senator Viento?" Aayla continued. "He was a good man, as far as I knew. A trusted ally of the Republic and a valuable source of many resources. There was nothing to suggest he was evil, so what did you kill him for? Jedi Master K'kruhk told us about how you cut through him with that lightsaber you have at your waist right now! Did you have a reason to kill him?"

"As a matter of fact, I did," said Quinlan, glaring and folding his arms.

"Then what was it?" Aayla demanded.

"Frankly, it is my business, not yours," said Master Vos, stubbornly. "It has nothing to do with you, Aayla so..."

"And that's not all," Aayla interrupted. "When I went into the conference room, what I saw made me feel ill. I saw you, looking quite at home amongst all those other murderers out there. Lounging around as if you own the place, asking if Dooku didn't have anything more challenging for him to do instead of murdering someone, grinning like a wild animal. There was almost nothing to suggest that you were still on our side."

Vos remained silent, watching Aayla intently.

"And apparently," Aayla continued. "You've been committing several other murders recently too. Your great aunt and Senator Viento were not the only victims. How many others have you ruthlessly cut down? How many, Master? You're not just a one or two-time murderer. You're on a killing spree!

"All this, compiled together... well, there's no hard evidence of you remaining in the light. Everything points to the Dark Side, including the way you're looking at me now. There's not even a hint of happiness at the sight of me, no joy at our reunion. So, you tell me, Master. I've spent the last two days wondering ceaselessly about your allegiances, and it's been driving me up the wall. So, I've had enough. I want you to tell me, once and for all. Are you really a Dark Acolyte?"

Master and Padawan glared at each other, their eyes fixed on the eyes of the other, neither backing down for a microsecond. Aayla was almost on her toes with anxiety, but she didn't show it. Quinlan simply stared at her, long and hard, before finally saying, "It only took you a couple of days to track me down? I'm impressed, Aayla."

"I learned from the best," said Aayla. "And the fact that you, one of the best, seems to have gone over to Dooku, worries me a great deal."

Quinlan paused, before eventually saying. "You shouldn't have come here, Aayla. Even if you did want to find out the truth, coming here was putting yourself in a lot of unnecessary danger. And quite bluntly, there are many things about this you don't understand."

"Then enlighten me," said Aayla. "Tell me the truth."

"I cannot," Quinlan replied. "If I were you, I would get out of here, while you still can."

Aayla's spirits jumped. If Master Vos was willing to let her go then this was a good sign. But the fact that they were Master and Padawan did not make it conclusive proof, because the bond between Master and Padawan was about the strongest bond normal Jedi ever have.

"I swore when I left Coruscant," said Aayla. "That I would not return unless you were with me. And if I had to drag you there, kicking and screaming, I would do so. I'm not going anywhere."

"You must," Quinlan replied. "The longer you spend here, the higher the risk of discovery. And I cannot go with you."

"Why not?" Aayla demanded. "What's worth you staying here? What's so important that you would stay here and continue to murder people on the will of Dooku."

"It's a complex situation, Aayla," Quinlan replied. "Best not to involve yourself in it."

"Too bad," Aayla said, smoothly. "Because I'm going to involve myself in it. Now, let's begin with this. Why did you kill your Great Aunt."

Quinlan immediately flared up again, the livid expression of twisted fury returning to his face. "I thought I told you never to mention that woman to me ever again?"

"I am going to find the truth today," Aayla replied, not flinching back from his expression this time – she'd been prepared for it. "And I want to know the whole story. Why you killed your aunt, why you killed Viento, everything. Now, tell me."

"Don't," Quinlan growled.

"Why did you kill your aunt?"

"I said don't..."

"Tell me why you killed your aunt!"

"I'm warning you not to go there..."

"Why did you kill her? She was your family!"

"BECAUSE SHE WAS EVIL, ALRIGHT!" Quinlan roared. Aayla blinked at his strong reaction and listened out for any signs of the other Dark Acolytes responding to her Master's shout. Quinlan was taking deep breaths to calm himself, his forehead clutched in one hand. Aayla's mouth opened in surprise and her eyes widened at the sight of his expression.

It was an expression of grief.

It had been the last thing she had expected to see on his face. More confused than ever before, Aayla walked over to Quinlan and took his arm. This move effectively ended their confrontational demeanour. Aayla guided him to the bed and both of them sat down on the edge of it. Quinlan was wracked with anguish, and Aayla tried to sooth him gently. She'd never seen him this way before, not in all her years of training under his tutelage.

"Tell me what happened," she said, softly. "Get it out of your system."

Quinlan took a few more seconds of deep breathing to reply. "It all started when I was a kid," he said, slowly and doggedly, struggling to get the words out of his mouth. "I was a member of the Clan Vos, the rulers of my homeworld, and because of my enhanced abilities with the Force, which enhanced the psychometric abilities all Kiffar possess, I was considered to be the best of the best."

Aayla nodded. She had heard this story before. "Go on," she said.

"But, when I was four, I saw both my parent's brutally murdered at the hands of a pair of Anzati," Vos continued. Aayla's eyes widened. Her Master had never told her that part. She had had no idea.

"Well," she said, after a slight pause. "I suppose that explains why you kept sending angry glances in the direction of Nikkos Tyris. He's an Anzati too."

Quinlan growled. "Every time I see him, my blood boils with anger. I see the scene replaying in my mind, while I hid like a coward, unable to do anything to stop them. And, afterwards, my great aunt made me read the memories that were implanted in my mother's medallion. I screamed for days on end after that, unable to stop myself. Only Master Tholme could calm me down."

"I'm sorry," said Aayla. "Truly I am."

Quinlan shrugged. "You didn't know. I never told anybody that story, and Master Tholme didn't tell anybody either. Anyway, it's all in the past, or so I thought. But I learnt something new about that whole incident quite recently. Dooku took the Dark Acolytes to the planet Kiffex, my own planet, in an attempt to negotiate with them so he could make a Separatist base there. But my people refused and Dooku attacked. I tried to save my Great Aunt, and I ended up battling against two other Acolytes, Tol Skorr and Kadrian Sey, the latter of which I ended up killing.

"But then, Dooku showed up, and he told me that my aunt had a terrible secret and he encouraged me to use the Force to strengthen my psychometric powers, so that I would be able to look into my Great Aunt's past. Curiosity got the better of me and I did it."

Aayla was practically on the edge of her seat. "And what did you learn?" she whispered.

Vos's teeth were gritted and his face grew full of fury once again. "I learned that the attack on my parents by those Anzati was no random attack. In truth, my so-called family had sacrificed both my parents to those Anzati. And for what reason? As part of a business deal, and to fuel her own ambition. She wanted my parents out of the way, so that she could take custody of me, the best of my kind with my powers, and make me her heir. If it hadn't been for Master Tholme and my Great Aunt's brother, I would have been her pawn."

Aayla shut her eyes. "And when you learned what she had done, you killed her," she stated.

Quinlan nodded, his face still burning with hatred. "If anyone deserved death, she did. She was a sadistic, manipulative _bitch_, who killed others for her own lust for power. She had no place in this world."

Aayla looked back at her Master. She could tell he was still feeling vengeful, so perhaps it would be a good idea to get off the topic. But, despite the tragic tale, she couldn't help but feel her spirits rise. While Vos' actions were still against the Jedi Code, they were at least understandable in this instance. He had a legitimate excuse.

But now, she needed to know if he had an excuse for his other deeds.

"I suppose I can sympathise with this," said Aayla. "Your actions were still wrong, but they were justified. But what about Senator Viento? I am assuming he didn't have anything to do with that. What was your reason for killing him?"

Quinlan's expression softened a little bit now that he was off the topic. He still couldn't believe this was really happening. Aayla was really here, and he had finally revealed the truth behind his Great Aunt to her.

He supposed that if he gone this far, why not go the whole way?

"Aayla," he said, slowly. "I know that I have done some terrible things lately, but you must believe me when I say that I have _not_ gone over the Dark Side. I am no Dark Acolyte. I am still a Jedi."

Aayla's face split into one of the biggest beams that had ever been seen on her face. "I knew it!" she exclaimed. She couldn't sense any deception from her Master. There was no hint of a lie anywhere. "I knew that you were still a member of the Order!"

Quinlan chuckled. "I'm glad to see that you have so much faith in me," he said. "It does my heart good, and I can't tell you how much. There has been little that has done my heart good since I arrived at this place for the first time."

Aayla's grinning face changed back to its previous expression of doubt and slight confusion. "But, if you are still part of the Order, as you claim to be – and yes, I can sense you were telling the truth – then why would you kill Senator Viento like that, without reporting to the Council or anything else."

Quinlan grimaced, and Aayla could tell that he was bringing up another unpleasant memory. "You want the truth?" he asked. "Well, the truth is that Senator Viento was... an accident."

Aayla raised an eyebrow. "An accident?" she asked, sceptically. "You climbed up the wall of a Coruscant skyscraper, broke into the window of his apartment and slashed him through the chest, and you call that an accident?"

"You misunderstand me," said Quinlan. "The actual killing of him was deliberate. The accident part was that I wasn't supposed to kill _him_. He was not my target, but I thought he was and by the time I realised this it was already too late."

"Oh," Aayla mused. "I see. In that case... who was your original target?"

"The Second Sith Lord," said Quinlan simply.

Aayla blinked. "You mean Darth Sidious? The one that we've been looking for since we discovered his existence when Ahsoka Tano was captured by Ventress?"

"The very same," said Quinlan. "Honestly, Aayla. Viento was an error in my judgement. Dooku hinted to me that the second Sith Lord and his Master would be attending a banquet on Coruscant. As you might expect, I jumped at the opportunity to find out who Darth Sidious really was and, if the opportunity were to prevent itself, to cut him down."

"What happened?" asked Aayla.

Quinlan got up from his seat and began to pace up and down the room with slight agitation, continuing his story as he did so. "Well, I did something similar to what you're doing now. Dooku had given me a mark and I infiltrated the banquet that Dooku had mentioned, disguised as a Kiffari General that had recently been killed in battle. The mark told me that Senator Viento was the target that I was looking for – the one that Dooku wanted me to eliminate.

"But, he wasn't Darth Sidious," Quinlan growled. "I know that now. I was so eager to finally slay the mysterious Master of Count Dooku that I never stopped to consider the possibilities. I blindly followed my assumptions and killed Senator Viento. It was only afterwards that I realised that he couldn't possibly be the second Sith. Darth Sidious would not have been so easy to eliminate. He would have fought back. There would have been a duel of something else, but Viento was helpless against me.

"And then K'kruhk burst into the apartment," Quinlan continued. "Well, I suppose you could say that I was angry at the fact that Count Dooku had mislead me into thinking Viento was Darth Sidious, and K'kruhk was seeking to bring me in. But I knew I couldn't let him do that, so I engaged him in combat. I wasn't seeking to kill him – I just wanted to get him out of the way a little so that I could make my escape. And, unfortunately, I had to injure him in the process."

Aayla was silent for a while as she let her Master's tale roll around in her head for some time, considering the implications of what he was saying. She accepted the story, although a bit of worry was beginning to gnaw at her belly.

She pressed Quinlan for more information. "And all these other murders you've supposedly committed – what about them? Did you have any real reason to carry them out? Were they accidents too?"

"No," Vos shook his head. "They were real enough. But _they_ were all on Count Dooku's orders. The Count has a very long hit-list and he passed several jobs on to me. And so, I had to eliminate them."

Aayla got to her feet. "You _had_ too?" she asked incredulously. "You _had_ to murder over a dozen different people. Why in the name of the Force would any Jedi _have_ to murder so many people?"

"Come on, Aayla," Quinlan turned to her. "That's a foolish question and you know it. I have to keep up the facade. Count Dooku believes that I am his top assassin at the moment, and if I want to continue being undercover then he has to keep believing that."

"But Dooku believes that you are his top assassin, because you_ are _his top assassin. You're killing innocent people, or people who could simply be put in prison instead. There is no need for death and destruction."

"Yes, there is," insisted Vos. "Don't you see, Aayla? Don't you get it? The closer I get to Count Dooku then the closer I get to actually finding the _real _Darth Sidious. He is the most important person in this whole war, and if I can just find him and get rid of him, once and for all, then this war could finally be brought to a close. Do you see it now? I may be committing terrible deeds, but it is all going to a necessary cause."

Aayla shook her head. "I can't believe I am hearing this," she breathed.

Vos frowned. "Hearing what?"

"Hearing you talking about murder as if it's some trivial thing, or as if this little mission of yours is really worth killing lots of people. You've killed over a dozen, but how many more will have to die before you finally achieve your objective. Another dozen? A hundred? A thousand? There's no guarantee that you'll ever find out Darth Sidious' identity at all."

"But I must do it!" Quinlan cried. "Yes, people are going to die! But many thousands more will die if Darth Sidious is not found and killed. I am taking the lesser of two evils."

"No," Aayla said, forcefully. "I'll tell you what you are doing. You are obsessed, and this obsession is throwing your judgement out of the window. Have you ever stopped and actually thought, long and hard, about what you are doing?"

Quinlan blinked. "Aayla, I don't understand why you're objecting so much. Just think, if I can just get to Sidious, this whole war would be over. Don't you want that?"

"Of course I want that," Aayla replied. "But Master, you're going about it the wrong way entirely. I think now I finally understand. I finally get why I found it so difficult to determine whether you were on the side of the Light or the side of the Dark."

Quinlan frowned at her. "But, I told you, I am still part of the Light."

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "Yes, you are. For the moment. But how much longer is that going to last? Stop and think about what you are doing. No Jedi would ever even consider murdering an innocent person, no matter what the reason. It is against every moral that we hold dear, and here you are, talking about it as if there was no other option."

"What are you getting at?" asked Quinlan.

"You may not see it," said Aayla, "But since I haven't seen you for a few months the difference is fairly obvious to me. You may not really be a Dark Acolyte, but you are certainly much deeper into the shadows than you used to be. Murdering the innocent is something a Dark Jedi does. And I can see what's happening. With every murder you commit, you are immersing yourself deeper and deeper into the Dark Side, but you're not even realizing it because you're so obsessed with finding Darth Sidious."

Quinlan blinked again and paused, a thoughtful expression crossing his face. Aayla pressed on quickly.

"How many more is it going to take, Master?" she asked. "How many more times are you going to murder somebody before you completely convert to the Dark Side? From what I can see, it probably won't be that many."

Quinlan continued to look thoughtful. A hint of confusion appeared on his features, as he said, "But, I must..."

"There is no must," Aayla interrupted. "You are letting your fixation for finding Darth Sidious cloud your better judgement. This is not like you, Master, not like you used to be. You've been immersed deeply in the shadows, and you're sinking deeper and deeper by the day. Please, listen to me. There is still a chance that you can change. There is still a chance that you can turn back. But you have to do it now, before it is too late."

"Sidious is the key to..."

"Stop thinking about Darth Sidious and start thinking about everything else," Aayla cut across him again. "If you continue down this road, you'll reach a point where you'd only be seeking out Darth Sidious so that you could replace him as ruler and then there would be no turning back. You are slowly becoming everything that you are fighting against, and you don't even know it."

Quinlan looked dubious still, and Aayla could feel the conflict inside him. She knew how he felt, he was struggling between his ideals and his morals as a Jedi. It must be quite similar to how she had felt when she'd been getting closer to the Digimon, only there was so much more at stake this time. He was in her place, so she would have to fill the place of Master Yoda and guide him to the right path.

"Have you abandoned everything you were ever taught as a Jedi?" she asked him quietly. "Are you prepared to put everything on the line for this little quest of yours? Please, Master. Reconsider your course of action."

Quinlan's mental struggle continued. Eventually, he looked up at Aayla once more, and Aayla could see desperation etched across his features. But was this a good thing, or a bad thing? She was praying to the Force now. _Show him the Light_, she cried mentally. _Please, show him the light._

"What do you want me to do, Aayla?" Quinlan whispered hoarsely. "What do you want from me?"

"I want you to abandon your search for Sidious," said Aayla. "Or, if not that, then at least abandon your approach to it. While the idea of Darth Sidious eliminated is indeed a pleasant thought, you are going about it all wrong. Think about it this way. I came here today, hoping to find you and bring you back to Coruscant. I found you, and look where we are now. We've been talking for several minutes and you haven't tried to kill me. But if we had met a couple of months later, I know that you would not hesitate to cut me down.

"Please, Master. I implore you. Come with me. Leave the Dark Acolytes behind. The point of no return is fast approaching you. Do not go all the way. Return with me to the Temple. We can help you, guide you back to the Light. If you still care for the Jedi Order and for me or Master Tholme or any other Jedi, you will not do this to us."

Her little monologue finished, Aayla closed her mouth and stepped backward, giving her former Master some space. She had said all she was going to say. There was nothing more she could do. It was all up to her Master now.

She continued to pray to the Force, giving her Master a beseeching look at the same time. She carefully watched as Master Vos' fists clenched tightly, his hands trembling and his eyes narrowed, his teeth gritted together so hard it looked like his jaws were fused together. It was an internal war as Vos' Light side wrestled with the Dark Side that had been building up inside him for some time.

But Vos' Light Side had the advantage. The presence of his former Padawan, and everything that he had told her, along with everything she had told him, was helping to smooth his way. He realised that she was right. He had not realised just how much he had changed in the months since he had last set eyes on her. Every word she had said was true.

He was not a Dark Acolyte.

He was a Jedi.

And he was determined to make sure it stayed that way.

Squashing the Darkness inside him until it was as flat as a pancake, he opened his eyes and flashed Aayla a brilliant grin. The same kind of brilliant grin he had frequently given before this whole war had started. The glint in his eye was back as well.

"You, my former Padawan, are a marvel," he said truthfully. "I cannot think of anyone else who would be brave or reckless enough to infiltrate this place, and I can't think of anyone else who could have convinced me. You're right. I could not see it before, but I certainly can now, thanks to you."

Aayla's face mirrored that of her Master. "Then, does that mean...?"

"Yes, it does," Quinlan laughed. "It means that I will be leaving this dump behind and going back to Coruscant with you."

It was at this point that Aayla did something that she'd never done before in her life, although since meeting the Digimon, she seemed to be doing that quite often. She stepped forward and pulled Master Vos into a tight embrace. She startled herself by doing this, but not as much as she startled Quinlan.

She kept up the embrace for a couple of seconds before Master Vos gently returned it. "It's okay, Aayla," he said, quietly. "It's okay."

"I missed you, Master," Aayla said. "You are the father I never had."

"Well, speaking as a father," chuckled Quinlan, "perhaps we should save the hugging until you are more suitably dressed."

Aayla stepped back and looked down at the slave outfit she was wearing. "You're probably right," she muttered. "I think this is about the most humiliating disguise I have ever worn, and that's including the leotard I wore to pose as a dancer in a bar in the Coruscant Underworld."

"You what?" Quinlan barked. Aayla paused, and then chuckled as she remembered that Quinlan probably hadn't been keeping up with the latest Holonet news since joining Dooku's inner circle, so he obviously had not heard about that one.

"Perhaps later," she said. "Right now, we need to focus on getting out of here."

Quinlan nodded. "I could leave any time I want, under the pretence of going on that mission Dooku assigned to me. How did you get in, anyway?"

"I used my Force Cloak to sneak up to the doors and distract the MagnaGuard outside," said Aayla.

"Ah, you see," Quinlan laughed. "I told you that technique would come in handy one day."

"Indeed," Aayla agreed. "But there is another complication. I promised all the slaves down there that I would try to get them out."

Quinlan was silent for a couple of seconds, before saying, "A rash promise to make, but understandable. Especially if you'd just been to Tatooine, as you claim."

"Especially if I went into the palace of Jabba the Hutt," Aayla shuddered.

Quinlan blinked. "Exactly how much have I missed recently?"

Aayla laughed. "Oh, trust me, Master. This is nothing compared to what will be waiting for you once we get out of this place."

"Huh?" Quinlan said, coherently. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Let's just say that I've made a few... unique allies... since we last met," said Aayla. "And they're waiting outside."

"Right," Quinlan muttered. "Well, I suppose it can wait. Right now, I have an idea. How about this – you sneak back to the slaves and tell them to get ready, while I head for my ship and leave the building. Then, I land nearby, destroy the MagnaGuard and open the doors, which will allow you to leave the building. Then... I won't have a clue what he do next because my fighter certainly won't hold a bunch of slaves."

"Don't worry about that," said Aayla. "We have a ship. It's a reasonable size, although it would still be fairly crowded considering the number of slaves down there. But I think we could manage it."

"But you don't have a way to contact the pilots," Quinlan pointed out.

"Oh yes I do," said Aayla. "I'll use my mind."

Quinlan was about to ask what she meant, but Aayla held up a red-dyed hand and thought, _Guys, can you hear me?_

_Of course we can hear you, _Rapidmon replied. _We watched the whole thing through your eyes._

_Well played arguments,_ said Turuiemon. _And we're all very happy for you, Aayla._

_And we're looking forward to seeing the stunned expression of his face when he sees us for the first time,_ agreed Renamon.

_Great,_ said Aayla. _Now, can you get the ship ready?_

_No problem,_ said Rapidmon. _I can ferry one of the Bounty Hunters back to the ship, and they'll have it ready for you before you can say "gorba melt."_

_Good, _nodded Aayla. _See you soon, guys._ She focused back into the real world, to see her Master was staring at her quizzically and wondering why she'd been standing there quietly for the last half a minute.

"Sorry," said Aayla. "A couple of my new friends have incredible powers of telepathy." This was true, just not the whole truth. "I just relayed the instructions to them. The ship will be ready and waiting."

"I'm looking forward to meeting these friends of yours more and more," Quinlan chuckled. "They sound like interesting people."

"You have no idea," Aayla chuckled back. "Now, shall we proceed?"

"Yes," said Quinlan. "The sooner we're on our way the better. Come on, head back to the kitchen. I'll show you an easier route, where you probably won't be seen by the others. If I know them, they'll still be in the conference room, bickering."

"Alright," nodded Aayla. "Come on."

Quinlan and Aayla started to make their way towards the door, but suddenly, Quinlan went, "Oop. Hold on. I've got one more thing I need to do before I leave."

Aayla turned round curiously and watched as Quinlan moved to the other side of the room and pulled open a drawer. He reached inside and delicately picked something up from the bottom. He lifted it out and gently lifted it up for Aayla to see.

"Is that a lightsaber crystal?" she asked.

"Yes," nodded Quinlan. "It's _my_ lightsaber crystal, actually. You see, after a murdered a member of my so-called family, Dooku gave me another crystal to replace my old one. It makes my lightsaber blade like this." Quinlan unclipped his blade and ignited it. The harsh, red glare of a Sith lightsaber blade lit up the room.

"Turn it off," Aayla said, quickly. The image of her Master holding a red lightsaber was not something she wanted to remember. Quinlan, noticing her discomfort, did so. Pushing another button, the lightsaber handle split open, revealing another crystal inside.

"This crystal apparently belonged to some Sith Lord from a long time ago," said Quinlan. "Well, I can hardly show up to the Jedi Temple with a red lightsaber, can I? So, if I just do this..." he popped the crystal out of its socket and contemptuously tossed it over his shoulder and gently inserted the other crystal into the hilt. Flipping the handle shut again, he ignited the blade once more. This time, it came out as the green colour Aayla remembered it to be.

"There we go," Quinlan said, with satisfaction. "All done."

"Good," said Aayla. "Now, let's get this done."

"Couldn't agree more," Quinlan said, and he followed his former Padawan out of the door. He didn't look back at his room. It contained only one fond memory now, and that was the memory of what had just happened. How his Padawan had beaten all the odds and come to find him, dragging him back from the edge of the Dark Side.

Just as he had done with her when she was still his Padawan.

_I guess we're even now,_ Quinlan thought, as he overtook Aayla and led the way.

* * *

Nalema, the real Lethan Twi'lek slave that worked in the lair of the Dark Acolytes, had gone back to her duties once the other slaves had informed her that her doppelganger, the disguised Jedi, had crept off into the compound to speak to Master Vos. The slaves were having their momentary break, but they had been busy nevertheless. They had successfully managed to round up the few slaves who had not been working in the kitchen when Aayla had arrived, and were now waiting in the kitchen, each one filled with tension and jumpiness, many of them flinching at the quiet sounds the Dark Acolytes made in the nearby conference room.

"Do you think that that Jedi was telling the truth?" the Pantoran girl whispered. "Do you think she really will try and get us out of here?"

"She sounded pretty sincere to me," remarked Hytris the Mirialan. "I think this may be out lucky day, girls."

"Maybe," shrugged one of the humans. "But to be honest, I don't see how a single Jedi could possibly manage to get all of us out of here. There are seven Dark Acolytes in this building, if you don't include Vos."

"She's got a point," said another Twi'lek. "That Jedi went off to look for Vos. How do we know that she's not already dead? Maybe Vos ran her through the moment he saw her."

"We must have faith in the Jedi," said the Rodian. "I don't think any Jedi would be stupid enough to come here on their own. There might be others outside, waiting for a signal or something."

"That's the spirit," nodded Hytris. "Keep your chins up. We'll be out of here before you know it."

"Was that Jedi really Aayla Secura?" asked another human. "I overheard Ventress ranting about her once."

"Ventress rants about every Jedi though," pointed out the Pantoran.

"Yeah, but I think she was particularly vengeful in this one," insisted the human. "I heard her saying that since Aayla Secura had allied herself with Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano, her two most hated enemies, into something called the A-Team, she was going to take extra special pleasure in killing her."

"Well, Ventress is very adept at holding grudges," said Hytris dryly, rubbing a huge bruise on her leg that had been inflicted by an enormous kick from that very same woman.

"And there's another thing," said the other Mirialan, who hadn't been here for as long as the others. "That Jedi we saw was a Lethan Twi'lek, but from what I remember, Aayla Secura is supposed to be a Rutian. How do we know this is even a real Jedi?"

"Normally I would have blue skin," said Aayla, as she opened one of the doors and walked inside the room. "But I dyed my skin red for the purposes of infiltration. And it's a good thing I did, if Ventress has such a grudge against me." Aayla's Force Concealment shields were back up now, so that said Sith Witch would not be able to detect her.

"You're back," Hytris got to her feet and walked over to Aayla. "Were you successful?"

Aayla winked at her. "Was I ever! I managed to convert Master Vos back to the Light Side of the Force, just as I intended to. My former Master is back to his old self."

"He was your former Master?" asked the Pantoran, in surprise.

"Yeah," nodded Aayla. "I thought that he might be convinced if I came to find him in person. First off, let me say that I am terribly sorry that we were unable to free you sooner. We didn't know the location of the Dark Acolyte base until... well, earlier today actually."

"It's alright," said Hytris. "The point is that you got here eventually. So, what's the plan?"

"We have a ship nearby," said Aayla. "A ship that's ready to take you guys off this planet and back to Coruscant, where you should be able to find a way back to your home planets or to any family or friends you wish to find. In a few moments, when I receive the all-clear, we're going to head for the entrance, which, fortunately is not very far away. Master Vos will open the gate for us, and when he does, I want you all to run. I'll signal the ship and when it arrives, pack yourselves in as tightly as you can. We need to make sure everyone gets on board."

"But what if they pursue us?" asked a Twi'lek.

"I don't want you to change your course if they do," said Aayla. "Master Vos and I should be able to hold them off, with the help of a few friends waiting outside, long enough for you to reach the ship. If worse comes to worse, take off and leave without us. Don't worry," she said quickly, when several slaves opened their mouths to protest. "We have other methods of getting away. We'll be fine."

"All the same," said Hytris, "I hope it doesn't come to that."

"Neither do I," Aayla murmured.

Aayla approached the door that she had gone through in order to serve the food to the Acolytes before. Peering carefully around the door, she stared into the room.

She could see Vinoc and Karoc, the human twins, laughing and speaking with one another at the table. Aayla looked at the two of them sadly. Both of them looked so much like a pair of ordinary Jedi, chatting after a meal in the dining hall (which Aayla rarely ate in now, due to the fact she spent most mealtimes in her room with the Digimon and Terriermon's huge appetite) that it was upsetting to know that they were really a pair of corrupt individuals.

Sora Bulq the Weequay was standing in the corner, possibly thinking about how to go about the invasion assignment that Dooku had just given to him. It felt quite upsetting to see him there too. Aayla could remember briefly fighting side by side with Sora during the Battle of Geonosis, in the Arena. It had been a chaotic battle, and Aayla had fought beside many of the Jedi there, but apparently, even then, Sora had been a Dark Jedi.

Tol Skorr she didn't really know about, and the same could be said for Nikkos Tyris, the Anzati Dark Jedi, who were also sitting at the table and talking to one another, albeit more quietly than Vinoc and Karoc. The same could be said for Trenox, the bald man who was watching the equally bald Ventress. Ventress herself was standing in the corner. Both her lightsabers were switched on, and she appeared to be practicing a few of her skills and techniques. Trenox was staring at her, and, as far as Aayla could see, his expression indicated he was smitten with her.

_I can't imagine why anyone would be smitten with _her, Aayla thought.

_Yeah, she's a right bitch,_ agreed Rapidmon.

_Ssh,_ hissed Renamon. _Here comes Quinlan._

Aayla, and by default the Digimon, watched as Quinlan Vos entered the conference room. Quinlan had explained to Aayla that the only into the hangar was via one door and unfortunately, he would have to pass through the conference room once again in order to reach that door. And naturally, that would mean needing to walk past the Dark Acolytes.

Quinlan had got back into character. His face had returned to the cold, stony stare that he had worn in the conference earlier. The backpack he had started to put items in before was hung about his shoulders. And, to top of the image, he was using his own Force Concealment to hide the fact that he had once again joined the Light.

He didn't engage any of the other Acolytes in conversation. Instead, he just strode across the room and towards the hangar doors, making sure to eradicate all traces of suspicious activity. He moved quickly and quietly all the same, and, as Aayla watched him move, she hoped that none of the Acolytes tried to speak to him.

"Hey, Vos," said Tol Skorr.

Well, so much for that.

Quinlan turned around and glared reproachfully at Tol Skorr, as the human Dark Acolyte got to his feet. "What?" he asked, rudely. "I have an assignment to carry out. I suggest you carry out your own as well."

"Oh, rest assured I will," said Skorr. "But I thought that you might want to know that your days of being Count Dooku's favourite are numbered."

"Really?" Quinlan sneered. "I believe you said something similar to me last week. Is there a reason for your reiteration?"

"I'm just warning you not to get to comfortable with your position," Skorr sneered back. "Because I intend to replace you at the top of the pecking order. And then, we'll see how you like getting pushed around by your superiors."

"Is that right?" Quinlan laughed. "Well, I'm glad that you at least know your place to an extent. Yes, I am your superior, and you would do well to remember that. Just because you worship the ground that Dooku walks on doesn't mean you will be his favourite. Dooku only cares about results. If you want to replace me, I suggest you start getting some."

Skorr growled. "You ought to watch your back, Quinlan. It won't be long now before I take my rightful place at..."

"_Your_ rightful place?" Asajj Ventress cut into the conversation. Aayla had to resist groaning. "Need I remind you that _I_ am Count Dooku's apprentice and I have been in his servitude far longer than you have? If anybody deserves to be at Dooku's side, it is me, and not you Skorr. And not you either, Vos."

"Sure thing, Ventress," Vos leered at her. "I'm not going to disagree, but if you want, I can give you a little tip about how to get into Dooku's favour and stay there."

Ventress frowned. "What tip?" she asked, suspiciously.

Quinlan smirked at her and said, "Don't lose to Padawan learners when you have them tied up and are electrocuting them at the same time," he replied.

Vinoc and Karoc roared with laughter, and even Tol Skorr chuckled a little bit. Aayla bit her lip to keep herself from chuckling. Ventress still had no idea how she had been defeated by Terriermon while she was preoccupied torturing Ahsoka. Ventress' face twisted into the furious snarl that so often appeared on her features. She was an extremely volatile person at the best of times.

"I wouldn't go bragging about being his apprentice if I were you, Ventress," Quinlan said to her. "Count Dooku doesn't like failure, and that's one thing that you often decide to give to him. That screw-up with Skywalker's Padawan was the biggest screw-up I've ever heard of in my life. If you ask me, even Skorr has got a better chance of becoming Dooku's favourite than you have."

That sent both Ventress and Skorr growling dangerously.

"And," said Quinlan. "If anyone's days are numbered about anything, I think its Ventress' days as Dooku's apprentice. Look sharp boys," he glanced over at Vinoc and Karoc. "Dooku might come hunting for a replacement soon."

Now that he had finished insulting Ventress, Quinlan turned and began to stride towards the door that led to the hangar. But Aayla's gaze was fixed on Ventress. The Rattataki woman's snarl remained in place as she stared at Vos' retreating back. And she still had both lightsabers in her hands.

Aayla heard her mutter, "Your days are indeed numbered, Vos. And that number has just reached zero."

She suddenly leapt forwards, and in one fluid motion, she crossed the room, her lightsabers high above her head, ready to cleave downwards on the unsuspecting Quinlan.

Instinct took over and Aayla acted before she could even think about it. "NO!" she cried and sprang into the room, thrusting out her hands as she did so. Ventress was smashed in mid-air by a terrific Force-push and was sent hurtling sideways to smash into the wall.

Several things happened at once. Vos turned around and grabbed his lightsaber. Ventress slid to the ground but quickly got to her feet, brandishing her blades. And the other Dark Acolytes – Sora, Vinoc, Karoc, Skorr, Nikkos and Trenox – all drew their own blades and levelled them defensively in the direction of Aayla. The disguised Twi'lek was faced with a forest of eight red lightsabers.

"Who are you?" Sora asked. "How can you use the Force?"

"Who cares," Trenox replied. "Let's cut her down now."

Quinlan suddenly bounded over to Aayla and stood beside her, his green blade igniting in his hands as he stood protectively beside his former Padawan. "You shouldn't have done that," Quinlan reprimanded her.

"And you shouldn't have ticked her off so much," Aayla said to him. "I'm glad you're back, but you could have left your impudent side behind."

"What's going on, Vos?" asked Nikkos. "Why are you so protective of that slave?"

"She's no slave," Ventress growled, shouldering her way to the front of the group, all seven of them glaring at Aayla and Quinlan with various expressions, ranging from blank confusion to anger. "Are you?" Ventress demanded of her.

There was no point trying to pretend anymore. Aayla glared at Ventress and lowered her Force Concealment shields. "Hello again, Ventress," she said, coldly. "Aren't you happy to see me?"

Ventress sneered. "I have to admit, Aayla Secura," she growled. "That is a very clever disguise. Clever enough to fool us all. But now I look closely, I can recognise your face. You've blown your cover now. And I'm going to enjoy killing you!"

_Guys!_ Aayla yelled in her mind as the seven Dark Acolytes advanced. _I'm going to need back-up! NOW!_

* * *

Well, I've done two things in this chapter. I've managed to end Aayla's anxiety about her Master, and she's accomplished her mission to find him and bring him back to the light at last.

The bad news is, they're now being confronted by the other Dark Acolytes, with only one lightsaber between them. If that's not the definition of "in trouble" then I don't know what is. Hope you all liked that. Please leave a review.

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Next time...

Need I say it? I promised there would be action, and here it comes. Next chapter – one very big showdown.

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Coming up:- **Chapter 78 : The Dark Acolytes**


	78. The Dark Acolytes

And I'm not going to bore you with long speeches about my personal life this time. Hopefully you all want to read the story after the huge cliffhanger last time. So, go ahead and read it.

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 78:- The Dark Acolytes**

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Quinlan Vos held his blade defensively in front of him, partially shielding his unarmed former Padawan and saviour from the seven Dark Jedi that stood before them. Quinlan had been in many dangerous situations in the past, where it looked like he would not make it away from the scene with his life. But this – two Jedi, one of which was unarmed, against seven Dark Jedi, four of which were of very high lightsaber calibre – was the worst he could ever remember.

He growled warningly at his opponents as they took slow steps towards the duo, each of them savouring the moment as they copied Vos' pose, holding their lightsabers high and ready for action. Vos' green blade looked insignificant next to the eight red ones, two of which were being held by a smirking Asajj Ventress, who was flanked by Tol Skorr and Sora Bulq.

Quinlan's eyes roamed over his opponents. While Skorr, Ventress and Bulq were moving into attack position the others – Nikkos Tyris, Trenox, Vinoc and Karoc, were all spreading out across the room, blocking off any potential escape routes. The only one left was the one directly behind Aayla and Quinlan, and that would only take them deeper into the complex.

Vos' growl increased in volume, in a vain attempt to intimidate the approaching Dark Acolytes. But it wasn't doing any good. The Acolytes knew how desperate their situation was as much as he did. They had no reason to be afraid. Quinlan knew that he wouldn't be able to fight them all on his own.

Meanwhile, next to him, Aayla's brain was working overtime as she mentally communicated with the Digimon. _Seriously,_ she was saying. _We're in serious trouble! I'm going to need you guys to get here as fast as you can!_

_We can see that!_ Rapidmon cried. _We're on our way._

_This is going to be a tough battle,_ said Turuiemon. _We may end up revealing the secret of our existence to the enemy if we win and some of them get away._

_Never mind that,_ Renamon interjected. _Hold on as long as you can, Aayla. We're coming._

As Aayla listened, her mind quickly ran through a series of options. She'd rarely had to think so hard in her life, but she was formulating around a dozen plans a second and casting them aside, knowing that they wouldn't work.

But she did have a few potential ideas. Stringing a few of them together, she managed to come up with something that could just get them out of this jam. But it would still involve an awful lot of effort from all and sundry and was still full of danger.

_Guys!_ She cried. _I have an idea!_ Knowing there was no time for words, she quickly did something that she had been practicing with Renamon in some of her meditation sessions. She gathered all the details of her plan and envisioned them being gathered in a ball or a package and quickly used her mind to effectively "pulse" the entire thing into the minds of all of the Digimon at once. Like an instant e-mail, the information arrived in the brains of Rapidmon, Turuiemon and Renamon simultaneously and were processed in a flash.

_Got it! _Rapidmon shouted.

_Yep,_ Turuiemon cried.

_It's still risky,_ said Renamon. _But let's do it._

Aayla felt them getting into position and started things off. She stepped out from behind the guard of her former Master's blade, and said, "You know Ventress, I'm surprised at you?"

The Rattataki assassin paused in her advance across the large conference room, a frown replacing her smirk. She held out her arms, the blades blocking the path of Sora and Skorr and preventing them from moving forwards as well. As Dooku's apprentice, Ventress was the senior and the Weequay and the Human bowed to her will, albeit grudgingly in the case of Skorr. Sora probably just didn't care.

"What do you mean?" Ventress asked.

"Aayla, what are you doing?" Quinlan hissed in her direction.

"Master," Aayla whispered back. "I need you to trust me. Now more than ever, okay?"

Quinlan looked confused, but Aayla didn't give him the opportunity to answer her. She turned back to Ventress and said, "I mean, that I would have thought you wanted to prove yourself to Count Dooku. I heard what you were saying earlier, and how the Count was disappointed in you for losing to an unarmed Padawan."

Ventress snarled in rage. "I am Dooku's favourite disciple! I shouldn't have to prove myself to him!"

"But you do, all the same," Aayla smirked, knowing she had Ventress right where she wanted her. "You were knocked out cold and tied up by a Padawan that General Grievous had managed to capture for you, while she was restrained and being tortured. How did that feel? And how did Dooku take that? Not well, I imagine, to both those questions."

"What's your point?" Ventress snapped, her grip on her two lightsaber handles tightening exponentially, till her bone-white knuckles went even whiter.

"My point is that you have me here, unarmed and defenceless, just like Ahsoka was when you were torturing her, and yet you still seem to think you cannot fight me without the aid of all your fellow Dark Acolytes. What's the matter? Afraid to fight me on your own?"

That did it. Ventress took the bait and yelled, "Back off! All of you! Take care of Vos, if you want, but Secura is mine!"

"Aayla, this really isn't a good id..." Vos began, wondering if his former Padawan had gone insane.

"Quin!" Aayla hissed. "I know what I'm doing. More or less. Just listen to me. Back-up is on its way. And trust me, when it arrives, it's not going to be anything like you've ever seen before. Just remember, they're on our side."

Quinlan blinked in surprise at Aayla's peculiar words, but Aayla turned her back on him again and faced Ventress. "Well done, Ventress," she said. "It doesn't prove you have a spine, but I suppose it's better than nothing."

"You don't have Luminara Unduli to help you this time," Ventress levelled a blade at her. "And you have no weapon. By nightfall, you'll be cut into so many pieces we could send you back to Coruscant one crate at a time."

"Ah, yes," Aayla nodded. "About that. There is one little thing. If you want to kill me, Ventress, then you're going to have to catch me first." She spun around while Ventress was still processing her words and sprinted across the room. She hurtled through one of the unguarded doors at high speed and disappeared down the corridor.

"Why you...!" Ventress yelled after her. "Deal with the traitor!" she yelled to all the others and broke into a run as well, dashing towards the door and running through it, pursuing her red-dyed enemy deeper into the building.

"Get back here and fight me!" Ventress yelled after Aayla's rapidly retreating back.

_I may be reckless, Ventress,_ Aayla thought. _But I'm not suicidal. _"Catch me, if you can."

* * *

Quinlan was feeling torn. He had just seen his own former Padawan fleeing from one of the most deadly of Dooku's commanders and had done nothing to prevent it. Instead he had let them leave. His subconscious was wondering if her had made the right decision, but Aayla had said that she needed him to trust her now more than ever. And trust her he did. If she and her mysterious allies could get her in here, what else could they accomplish.

Plus, right now he had his own life to worry about. He turned from the door and focused on the six remaining Dark Jedi facing him, each with a lightsaber ready and waiting for blood.

Not good odds. For anyone.

Of course, Tol Skorr couldn't help but run it in his face. "Ha! Did I not say that your days were numbered a couple of minutes ago, Vos. I didn't realise that the number was quite so low, but I'm not complaining."

"You might as well surrender, Quinlan," Sora Bulq said, twirling his red lightsaber experimentally. "I doubt even you would be foolish enough to think that you can defeat us all. Make it easier on yourself and drop your weapon. We'll take you to Count Dooku and he can deal with you."

"The result would be the same," Quinlan growled. "Death, either way."

"Glad to see you have some degree of intelligence," Skorr laughed. "You must be feeling pretty lonely right now. You're on your own now, Vos. No back-up coming. Why don't you just present your neck to me and let me cut it in half? You could die with some degree of dignity."

"Being slain by you is dying with dignity?" Quinlan snorted. "I can't think of a more humiliating demise."

While he said this, Quinlan's mind dwelt on one of Skorr's sentences._ 'No back-up coming,' _is what he had said. But according to his trusted Padawan, Aayla, there _was_ back-up coming. But Aayla's words were sticking in his mind like glue. _'When it arrives, it's not going to be anything like you've ever seen before. Just remember, they're on our side.' _That's what she'd said.

Just what kind of friends had Aayla made since he had last seen her?

But that didn't matter right now. What mattered was he had to at least keep the Dark Acolytes occupied until this promised back-up did appear. He knew he was more than a match for Vinoc, Karoc, Trenox and Nikkos. But Sora and Skorr were in a different league to them and would be a much bigger challenge. Especially if they attacked together, as they seemed to be planning.

Quinlan's eyes narrowed and he spun his blade, ready for action. "I'll never surrender to the likes of you. I may be outnumbered, by I am a Jedi. And we do not break easily."

"If that's the way you want it?" Sora's muscles tensed to spring. "It's a pity. You were a good Acolyte. But all traitors deserve to die. You should know – you've helped us to ensure many traitors receive that fate."

Quinlan battle face appeared. It was a face that mimicked an extremely angry wild animal, which he used to intimidate his opponents when battling. With a might roar he charged forwards and initiated the first strike of the duel, cleaving downwards with the intention of slicing Sora's skull in two.

As predicted, Sora blocked the swing, and the duel began.

Quinlan instigated several blows, swinging his blade in from the left and neck height, but Sora turned it aside with ease. Quinlan quickly retaliated with a strike to the other side, his long hair flying behind him like the tentacles of a Nautolan, but Sora parried that too. Quinlan ducked under a retaliatory blow from the Weequay and stabbed forward, but Sora rolled aside swiftly and came back with a downward cleave of his own. Vos caught it, red slamming against green, and shoved backwards, forcing Sora to step back, and following up with a slice to the chest, which Sora dodged with a backwards flip.

Quinlan was forced to spin around and deflect a blow from the red blade of Skorr, as the jealous human joined the fight. Both of them stepped back and, after a brief stare-down, lunged forward at the same time, both with downward slashes. Their blades caught against each other and locked together, and the two strained against each other. Their blades fell to the side as they tried to muscle forward. Quinlan's superior strength won out and Skorr was forced backwards, their connected blades slicing a gash in the conference table. Skorr broke the lock and spun about, coming in from the side with a slash at elbow height. Vos turned it aside and swung upwards quickly.

Skorr stepped back just in time, the tip of Vos' blade scything past his nose. Quinlan's senses alerted him to the presence of Sora behind him, coming in with a low strike at the knees. At the same time, Skorr took a massive swing at hip height from the other side. Quinlan's acrobatic skills kicked into gear and he leapt into the air, Sora's strike passing beneath his feet. Quinlan arched his back and initiated a mid-air backwards somersault, which carried him over Skorr's attack as well and causing him to land on the conference table.

"Aha," he grinned savagely. "Now, I have the high ground!"

"Two can play at that game," said Sora, and he jumped up onto the table as well. Skorr swung upwards from his lower height and Quinlan found himself defending as both the Human and Weequay attacked the Kiffar at the same time. Quinlan stepped aside to avoid Skorr's attack and blocked a strike from Sora. Sora and Skorr pressed their attack, forcing Quinlan backwards across the table. Quinlan parried to successive cuts from Sora, jumped over a strike from Skorr and backed off a little. But Skorr gave him no chance of a breather and pursued, raining three blows on the Jedi Master.

Quinlan dodged one, causing it to cleave through the table and blocked the other two with his blade, then hurriedly blocking another strike from Sora. The Weequay pushed Vos back a few steps and Skorr came in while he was unable to dodge, preparing to strike at his feet. Quinlan beat him to punch and lashed out with one foot, kicking Skorr squarely in the head and sending him reeling with a yelp.

This action caused Vos to lose his balance and fall sideways, but he moved with the motion and rolled off the table, breaking the lock and causing Sora to stumble slightly. Vos quickly grabbed two chairs with the Force and threw them at the Weequay. Sora recovered swiftly and slashed through one of the chairs and attempted to leap over the other. It caught him in the foot and sent him tumbling forwards, but like Vos he used the fall to his advantage and rolled with it. Vos only just avoided the swing which cut into the floor.

Suddenly, Quinlan's senses screamed at him, alerting him to the danger that was right behind him. Quinlan whirled around, only just managing to block a strike from another red lightsaber. Quinlan cursed himself for not studying his surroundings. While he had been being pushed back, he had unwittingly gotten too close to Trenox, who had been guarding a door up until now. Trenox sneered at him and broke the lightsaber lock, swishing in two quick blows that Quinlan quickly turned aside.

Quinlan was definitely having to defend himself now, leaving him almost no room for a counter-attack. He blocked another blow from Trenox and spun about to deflect two more from Sora. He leapt aside, ducking under a swing from Trenox and side-stepping a swing from Sora. He attempted to retaliate and made a neck-high swing at Sora, but was forced to pull out of it as Trenox struck at him again. Shoving Trenox' blade aside, he parried two low shots from Sora and then leapt over a third, swinging his lightsaber around in a full three-sixty spin and slamming them into both enemy blades at once.

And it was at that point that Skorr leapt over the table at him with a mighty roar, blade held high. Vos spun about and caught the blade with his own, and quickly used Skorr's momentum to his advantage. He fell onto his back, carrying Skorr down with him, and brought his foot up to kick Skorr in the chest. Skorr was catapulted into Trenox and both went in a heap. Vos had enough time to block three swift blows from Sora, before he backed away quickly.

Skorr and Trenox scrambled to their feet. Skorr followed Sora and the two advanced on Quinlan once again. Trenox stayed where he was, guarding the escape once again. Quinlan continued to back away, but he knew he was being forced closer and closer to Karoc.

_When's that back-up going to get here?_ He thought to himself as he continued to retreat backwards.

"Bring him closer to me," Vinoc called to the others, blade raised in anticipation. "Let me have a go at slicing off his head."

"You couldn't slice your way out of a bodybag," Quinlan called over his shoulder.

Vinoc growled. "Let's put that to the test, shall we?"

It was at that precise moment that the wall directly behind Vinoc was blown to pieces. All the people in the room shielded their faces as rubble and debris poured into the room, sending up a cloud of dust around the impact zone.

"What the hell is going on?" yelled Skorr, uncovering his eyes. The fight temporarily forgotten, everyone stared at the settling cloud of dust where Vinoc had been standing. As it receded, it became quite clear that Vinoc was dead. A large segment of the wall had collapsed on top of him – only his hand was still visible, sticking out from underneath the slab.

And, filling the hole in the wall, was the strangest creature that any of them had ever seen. It was tall, covered in green armour and looked vaguely like a humanoid, bipedal, cyborg rabbit.

"I believe somebody called for some back-up," Rapidmon announced to the room. "And everyone else is calling for a major ass-kicking."

"By the Force," Trenox gasped.

"You... you..." Karoc stuttered, an expression of grief and intense fury screwing up his face. "You killed my brother!"

Rapidmon blinked. "I did?" he asked. He glanced down at the floor and saw the hand sticking out from beneath the wall segment he was standing on. "Oh, so I did. Well, at least it wasn't Quinlan Vos. Aayla would probably have never spoken to me again."

Aayla's words about how her new allies were like nothing he had ever seen before rang in Quinlan's mind. "You're Aayla's friend?" he gasped.

"You bet," Rapidmon said. "Nice to meet you at last, Master Vos. Aayla's been telling us lots of things about you. Apparently I sometimes remind her of you, so I'm going to take that as a good sign."

Quinlan's face split into a grin. He liked this creature's demeanour – whatever it was.

"You..." Karoc snarled, enraged and holding his lightsaber up. "I'LL DESTROY YOU!" he shrieked and he promptly abandoned his guard duty and leapt forwards, swinging his lightsaber directly at Rapidmon...

...who suddenly wasn't there and suddenly _was_ behind the angry Dark Acolyte. Before Karoc had even finished his swing, Rapidmon's foot slammed into his back and sent him crashing into the wall.

"You're going to have to do better than that!" Rapidmon crowed.

Karoc roared furiously and charged Rapidmon again, sweeping two successive blows at the Ultimate-level Digimon. Rapidmon jumped over the first one and blipped out of existence as the second passed through were his knees would be. Karoc's senses were unable to follow him – he was just too fast. As a result, he was suddenly nailed in the back and second time and sent flying. This time though, he recovered in mid-air and flipped to land smoothly. Then he charged again, and, once more, Rapidmon was not there when he swung. Karoc, determined not to fall for the same trick again, swung about, ready for Rapidmon to try and hit him in the back again, and then immediately got hit in the back, because Rapidmon had reappeared in the same spot he had been in before.

Karoc was catapulted into the wall again, but got to his feet quickly. Rapidmon shrugged at him. "I can do this all day, you know," he said.

"I'll destroy you!" Karoc shrieked.

"Shall we move this into the hangar?" Rapidmon gestured to the hole in the wall he had made, which lead to a large room full of starfighters. "There's more room and more things for me to blow up."

Karoc charged again. Rapidmon, unrushed, stepped back and slipped through the hole. Karoc blindly followed him through.

Meanwhile, the Dark Acolytes had recovered their shock, and were focusing their efforts of killing Quinlan again. Sora and Skorr were attacking him again, pushing him across the room once more, heading towards Nikkos Tyris instead. Quinlan parried their blows and dodged others, the flashing red and green lights creating what was almost a pyrotechnic display of flashing colours.

Sora began a flurry of attacks, striking from all directions in swift succession, putting Quinlan in a tight spot as he desperately started to parry them all. Skorr grinned as he approached, ready to put an end to this fight.

"Goodbye, Vos!" he muttered to himself, as he raised his blade to strike at Vos' side. Vos quickly tried to defend himself, but someone else beat him to it. Something human-sized bounded out of the hole in the wall and there was a clang of metal as Turuiemon caught Skorr's lightsaber blade with her curved switchblade.

"Oh no you don't," she said, smirking at Skorr's complete surprise. She glanced over her shoulder and said, "Good afternoon, Master Vos. I was hoping to meet you under different circumstances but I suppose beggars can't be choosers."

"What are... ungh!" Skorr began, but was interrupted when Turuiemon shoved him, twirled in the air and delivered a powerful kick to Skorr's stomach. As Skorr doubled over, Turuiemon backflipped, bringing her foot crashing into the underside of Skorr's chin and sending him flying. He landed in a heap beside Trenox.

"You alright?" asked Trenox, helping him to his feet.

"Yeah," Skorr snarled, as he twirled his lightsaber, then lowered it at the advancing Turuiemon. "Come on. Let's take that thing down!"

"Just a little word of caution," said Turuiemon. "Last time I was in a lightsaber duel, I was being hindered because I was fighting a friend infected by Geonosian parasite, so I didn't want to hurt her. This time, however, I have no such problems." She extended her switchblades, which made fearsome swishing noises. "Now, bring it!"

* * *

As the terrific sounds of explosions, yelling and clashing lightsabers echoed through the facility as the almighty battle raged in the next room, with two Digimon and one Jedi facing off against most of the Dark Acolytes, the slaves in the kitchen cowered behind each other or any of the work-surfaces that they could shelter behind.

"Well, this plan didn't exactly go as it was supposed to, did it?" one of the Twi'lek girls shouted over the noise. "What part of it involved a small war taking place in the next room?"

"So much for a quick and easy rescue," muttered the Pantoran girl, as she crouched in the corner.

"What do we do now, Hytris?" asked one of the humans. "What chance do the Jedi have out there against all of those Dark Jedi? Do we just sit here and wait for something to happen, or what?"

Hytris glanced towards the door that led to the conference room, where the sounds of lightsabers colliding could be heard coming from the other side. It sounded like a full-scale brawl was going on on the other side of the room. The Mirialan gritted her teeth in frustration. The rest of the slaves were looking up to her, but she couldn't think of anything that they could do.

"Perhaps we could try and sneak out while they're fighting," suggested another Twi'lek.

"But what about the MagnaGuards outside," objected the Rodian. "There's at least three of them surrounding the facility. We'd never be able to get past them – we don't have any weapons. Not unless you count pots and pans anyway, and they won't do any good against MagnaGuards."

A couple of Twi'lek girls shrieked in fear as there was a smashing noise from the other side of the wall they had been crouching beside. Evidently someone had been thrown into it and created a loud, banging noise. There was the sound of a whirring lightsaber and the tip of a red blade scythed through the wall between the two girls, who screamed and scrambled out of the way.

"This is a disaster!" cried one of the humans. "We're all going to die! I know it!"

"Calm down," Hytris said consolingly. "We'll think of a way out of this. There has to be a way out of here..."

She stopped talking because one of the doors on the opposite side of the room to her had just opened. The slave-girls scrambled backwards in fear, because one of the MagnaGuards was standing in the doorway, still as a statue and staring at them with the usual droid blankness.

"Leave us alone!" Nalema the Lethan Twi'lek yelled at it. "We haven't done anything wrong!"

The MagnaGuard made no movements for a couple of seconds. When it did move, all it did was fall forwards, collapsing onto its front and sputtering quietly. There was a vibrodagger stuck in its metallic back, and Sugi was now the one stood in the doorway.

"No yet, you haven't," Sugi smirked, as she bent down to retrieve her dagger. "But you're about to, because you are about to escape from this joint."

"Who are you?" Hytris asked, getting to her feet. She flinched slightly as a loud explosion rocked the wall beside her, but she remained on her feet and said, "Are you a Jedi, like Aayla Secura?"

Sugi sheathed her dagger. "Not quite," she said. "But I am an ally of the Jedi. And while they're busy holding off the Dark Acolytes, I'm here to get you out of here. Follow me! Quickly!"

The slaves glanced at each other, their faces filled with renewed hope and energy. The whole room quickly rose to their feet, eager to follow the Zabrak Bounty Hunter. Sugi nodded at them, smiling slightly, and then turned to lead the way back out into the corridor. As a throng, the slaves followed her out and followed Sugi as she rushed towards the front doors that Aayla had crept through before.

Nalema was one of the last to leave, and, as she followed the other slaves down the corridor, she jumped in surprise when she heard a loud crashing sound behind her. Swinging around, lekku flying behind her, she saw that another door that led to the conference room had been smashed open, and Trenox was lying against the wall, rubbing his head slightly.

Nalema froze in shock and dread, as she remembered how this Dark Acolyte frequently liked to punch and kick her for no good reason, other than the fact that he could. She was about to turn and flee from him as fast as her legs would enable, but then she realised that she was still holding her frying pan. In all the rush, she'd forgotten to put it down.

Trenox looked up and spotted her, groaning dazedly. "What the...?" he muttered. "Aayla Secura? Where did you...?"

Nalema screamed loudly, but it was not a cry of fear. It was a cry of anger. With all the strength she could muster into her arms she hurled the frying pan with both hands. It clanged against Trenox' head, and the bald human slumped, completely unconscious.

Turuiemon leapt into the corridor and glanced down at the out-cold Dark Jedi. "Well, that can't have been too good for his ego," she said, then quickly raised her hands to block as Skorr leapt after her and brought his blade down. Turuiemon's Chrome-Digizoid switchblades formed an X and caught the red lightsaber, and the rabbit Digimon pushed back, throwing Skorr back into the conference room. She quickly leapt after him.

Nalema didn't have time to process what she'd just seen and she turned to dash off after the rest of the slaves. When she arrive with the others, she saw another battle taking place. The slaves were watching with amazement as Embo took on the last remaining MagnaGuard (Rapidmon had blown up the third when making his entrance to the hangar).

The MagnaGuard twirled its electrostaff, its rotating wrist giving it a slight edge. Not that that bothered the Kyuzo Bounty Hunter. Embo's hat was clasped in one hand like a little shield and he swung it upwards, deflecting three rapid barrages of electrostaff swings. The Kyuzo dived backwards as the droid took another swing at his head, rolling and coming to stand-still right by the cliff edge.

Embo glanced over his shoulder and chuckled as he saw the drop. The MagnaGuard advanced, but Embo tossed his hat like a discus. But he threw it at the ground, by the MagnaGuard's feet. The MagnaGuard didn't appear to notice and trod on the domed hat. Immediately it slipped and stumbled forwards, right towards Embo. Embo quickly grabbed the electrostaff in both hands, and wheeled the MagnaGuard around until its back was to the cliff. Then, in one flowing motion, Embo wrested the electrostaff from the droid's hands, twirled about, unhooking his crossbow from his back at the same time. As he completed his spin, he plunged the electrostaff into the MagnaGuard's chest, released it and shot it in the face with his crossbow.

The deceased MagnaGuard tumbled over the edge.

"Nicely done, Embo," Sugi chuckled. Embo retrieved his hat, brushed it off and put it back on his head.

"Momentai," he said.

"I heard that!" a faint voice came from the hangar.

Sugi rolled her eyes, then turned to the slaves. "Come on girls. Let's get you out of here." The slaves followed her and Embo down the mountain-side, where Rumi and Seripas were waiting in the cockpit of the _Twilight_, which they had moved a little while ago.

"Hurry up and get on board," Sugi said, as they reached the old vessel.

"But what about the Jedi?" asked Hytris. "Will they be alright?"

"I've been told there's a plan," said Sugi. "But don't think about them right now. Get going."

* * *

Ventress raced through the halls in pursuit of her fleeing quarry, her furious expression staying put as she brought her two lightsabers forward, ready for action. Aayla glanced over her shoulder as her pursuer advanced chased after her. She raised her eyebrows wryly at the sight of Ventress' face. When it came to blind fury, only General Grievous could top this woman.

Aayla followed her senses as she dashed along a corridor and whirled around a corner so fast she needed to rebound off it with her feet and then the other wall before she reached the floor again. Ventress skidded to a slow as she neared the bend, but took off again at high speed, determined to catch up with the annoying Twi'lek.

With a spurt of speed, Ventress closed the distance between the two. She leered as she brought her lightsabers into play and slashed them both in a diagonal downward sweep, trying to cut Aayla from shoulder to hip. But Aayla sensed the danger and swung to the right, pulling to a halt and allowing Ventress to run straight past her. Ventress spun around, swinging her blades as she did. Aayla dropped under one and stepped back from the next,

"Hold still!" Ventress shouted, as she stabbed forward with one blade, only to have Aayla dodge that too.

"No thanks. I choose life," said Aayla as she dropped practically to the ground to duck under a cut that would have taken her through the chest. Ventress saw her opening and raised both blades, but obviously she didn't take into account exactly how athletic Aayla was. Employing a few of her dance techniques, Aayla flipped around so her back was to Ventress and sprang onto her hands. As her feet came up she kicked Ventress in the chest before she knew what was happening, dropped to the floor and span both legs around, sweep-kicking Ventress' feet from under her and bringing her crashing to the ground.

Aayla leapt to her feet and dived right over Ventress. The Rattataki swung her blades upwards angrily, but Aayla was already gone. She rolled with her landing and got to her feet, sprinting off down the corridor once more. Ventress sprang up as well, and began to chase her once again.

Aayla continued to follow her senses and eventually, she came across what she was looking for. It was an air vent in the ceiling, which curved upwards and went out of sight. Looking up through the grill, she could see light through the large, metal vent.

Perfect.

Using the Force, Aayla wrenched the metalwork open at the curving point, just as Ventress rounded the corner behind her. Aayla waved at her cheerfully, which was a deliberate act to rile up Ventress even more, and then sprang straight up and into the vent. Her Force Jump took her up the vertical shaft and towards a grate at the end. She sent the grate flying with a burst of the Force and sprang upwards and into fresh air. She flipped over and landed on the roof of the complex.

And Aayla saw it. Perched on the edge of the roof, not far away, was her lightsaber. She sprinted towards it and picked it up, igniting the blue blade in the same motion.

"Thank you, Renamon," she murmured, as she turned around, holding her blade in a defensive position as she faced the air vent she had jumped up. Sure enough, Ventress followed a couple of seconds later and landed on the flat roof too. She reignited both her lightsabers and smirked at Aayla.

That changed to confusion when she spotted Aayla now had her lightsaber. "Where did that come from?" she asked.

"If it's all the same to you," Aayla remarked. "I'll keep that one to myself."

Ventress grimaced angrily, but span her blades in a threatening display. "It matters not," she said. "You shall die today, Secura, weapon or no weapon. And then, the A-Team will find itself short of a member. And then, I'll eradicate the rest of the A-Team too."

"Careful," Aayla said warningly. "Darth Sidious won't be very happy with you if you go and kill Anakin, will he?"

Ventress growled. "How much do you know of Darth Sidious?"

"This and that," Aayla smirked. "And it's all thanks to you that we learned of him in the first place, Ventress."

Ventress screamed in rage and tore across the roof, towards Aayla. Aayla held her lightsaber ready and prepared for inevitable battle.

Ventress made the first blow swinging both blades upwards in a vicious cleaving motion, which Aayla avoided by rolling to one side. Ventress followed and turned her motion into a downwards cleave, but Aayla stepped back to avoid it. Ventress brought her blades down on Aayla's head and Aayla swiftly halted their progress with her blade and shoved them to the side, kicking Ventress in the stomach and shoving her backwards. Aayla leapt forward and carved the air towards Ventress' chest. Ventress quickly ducked under the blow, and stepped aside, hurriedly blocking Aayla's blade as she brought it back near the feet, and then striking with one of her own.

Aayla caught it hastily and backed off. Ventress followed, swinging both blades in a scissor-like motion towards either side of Aayla's head. Aayla spun on the spot, swinging her blade in an arc that parried both blades one after the other and dropped to the floor, cutting upwards from the ground. Ventress flipped aside to evade the slash and retaliated with the exact same action. Aayla brought her own blade down to meet hers and the two pushed against each other briefly.

Aayla won the contest – she had the advantage because she had the strength of two arms for one blade. Ventress jumped back and Aayla did the same, giving each other a respite of about a second before they both went charging in again. Ventress shrieked angrily as she swung both arms in rapid succession, forcing Aayla to parry them both hurriedly, then sweeping around with a slash that was aimed for Aayla's navel. Aayla leapt right over it and pirouetted in mid-air, lashing out at Ventress' face with one foot. Ventress ducked under the blow and Aayla sailed over her, swinging downwards as she did.

Ventress parried to blow over her head and tried to use the Force to push Aayla while she was still in the air. It worked, and Aayla was sent flying upwards, straight into the sky. Ventress smirked and stood beneath the airborne Jedi, both sabers ready for when the red-dyed Twi'lek came down. Aayla scowled and flipped in the air so she was upside down. Raising her lightsaber over, or rather under, her head, she pointed it directly at Ventress. Gravity took over and Aayla fell, blade-first. The Twi'lek added a spin, like a top, and she corkscrewed downwards and towards Ventress.

Ventress' eyes widened at the beautiful, yet deadly technique and wisely got out of the way as quickly as could. Aayla noticed, despite the spinning and pulled out of before she hit the ground, somersaulting back onto her feet and landing smoothly. She used the momentum to spring right back up again and leap towards Ventress with another downwards slash.

Ventress threw herself to the side and Aayla's swing cut only air as she landed where Ventress had been. But still, Aayla kept up the pressure, turning her miss into a spin and slashing for Ventress again. The Dark Jedi blocked the blow easily enough but Aayla pulled back quickly, slashing no less than four times, each slash coming from a different direction. Ventress was blocked quickly, one blade protecting each side of her body. But that had been Aayla's plan. The Twi'lek brought in a fifth swing from the left. As Ventress moved to blocked, Aayla revealed the strike was a feint and reversed it. She caught the inside of Ventress' blade and, with a flick of her wrist, Aayla sent one of Ventress' lightsabers spinning out of her hands.

Ventress snarled and, gripping her remaining blade with both hands, she lunged for Aayla, delivering some rapid strikes that were directed at Aayla's head. Aayla ducked beneath one and parried the others, but was nevertheless forced back a few steps. Ventress stepped back herself and whirled about to summon her fallen lightsaber, only to find it wasn't there. It had rolled off the roof and was probably halfway down the mountain by now.

Aayla stepped forward and waited patiently for Ventress to turn around, knowing that she couldn't stab someone when their back was turned. It wouldn't be right. Ventress scowled, as she turned back to face Aayla once again.

"Shall we continue?" Aayla asked, politely.

"You will regret saying those words," Ventress swore.

"Perhaps," Aayla replied. "But always remember – you can surrender anytime."

"Not a chance, Secura!" Ventress ran forward, lightsaber blade slashing through the roof beneath her, and moved into a powerful spinning attack that slashed towards Aayla with the force of both hands. Aayla intervened with her own blade. From there, the duel became a rapid flurry of spinning lightsaber blades. Ventress slashed for Aayla's neck, which Aayla countered and reposted, striking for Ventress' arm. Ventress pulled of a slick block and struck low. As Aayla intercepted it, Ventress twirled around and scythed her blade towards Aayla's waist. Aayla backflipped over it and launched two swift strikes at shoulder height. Ventress hurriedly turned them aside, but had to leap back to avoid a stab that would have impaled her through the navel.

But Ventress was instantly back in the game and charged forward with a powerful stroke. The blow knocked Aayla's blade aside and Ventress followed with a sweeping kick that caused her foot to slam into the back of Aayla's knee. Aayla cried out as she fell onto her back and Ventress brought her lightsaber up for a finishing stab downwards. Aayla swung up and successfully knocked it aside, but was forced to roll as Ventress followed up with a slash. Aayla flipped onto her front and her legs scissored into the back of Ventress', causing her to topple to the ground too. Aayla flipped up once again and Ventress scrambled up as well.

Both combatants suddenly slashed at each other, their lightsabers smashing together and locking. Both of them widened their stances and shoved, both furiously trying to force each other across the roof. Their eyes locked and they glared at each other. Aayla's face had a look of intense concentration, while Ventress' contained only fury.

As Aayla and Ventress both tried to force each other back, Aayla became aware of something. She'd been so focused on the intense duel, that she hadn't noticed the fact that her mind had been sensing Renamon's presence for some time. It just hadn't registered with her. Aayla's eyes flicked to the area where she knew Renamon was standing and saw no Digimon. Renamon's perception filter was up. But Aayla did notice that, somehow, a large rock had managed to get onto the roof.

She also noticed that Renamon had tied a large amount of rope around this rock, and the rest of this rope currently appeared to be floating in mid-air.

Renamon, from under her perception filter, smirked, once she noticed Aayla had spotted the fact she was there. She'd been waiting for the right moment to get Aayla's attention and had called out to her during the lightsaber lock.

Renamon tossed the rope, which she was holding in her paw, towards the battling duo. It unravelled as it sailed through the air and flopped to the ground, just behind Ventress. The Rattataki didn't notice – too busy trying to push Aayla backwards.

Aayla got what Renamon was trying to do easily enough. She grinned at the prospect. Unfortunately, Ventress noticed this, and she scowled as they continued to strain against each other. "Is there something funny, Secura?" she asked.

"Oh, no, not really," said Aayla, deliberately looking into Ventress' hate-ridden eyes so she could keep the Dark Jedi's attention on her face. "I was just thinking about something."

"And what would that be?" Ventress grunted as she pushed, completely unaware that Aayla was using the Force to manipulate the rope on the floor, so that it snaked between Ventress' feet and around one of Ventress' ankles.

"I was remembering something Tol Skorr said earlier," Aayla replied, grunting with exertion and pushing back harder and determined to keep her enemy in the same spot. "According to our intel, you went missing for about four months. Was that because Dooku ordered Grievous to keep you like a pet?"

Ventress screamed with rage and pushed Aayla back. Aayla quickly redoubled her efforts and the two were straining against each other so hard it was surprising that that there was no lightning searing between them and around them.

"Do not ever mention that!" Ventress yelled.

"Tied up like a prime roast," Aayla taunted her. "In the very bonds that Ahsoka put you in, I imagine. How humiliating must that have been? I bet you never even want to look at rope again."

"I will destroy that Padawan!" Ventress shrieked. "Right after I destroy you!"

Aayla finished using the Force to tie a loose knot around Ventress' ankle, so that it would hold, but the Dark Acolyte would not feel it. "Actually," Aayla continued the jibe. "I gave Ahsoka a promise after we rescued her from you. I promised that if we ever ran into you again, I would let her be the one to defeat you."

"She could never best me!" Ventress shouted.

"Perhaps we'll find out one day," Aayla growled as she pushed even harder, pushing herself to the limits of her strength. "But, in the meantime, I'll leave you to the rope!"

Renamon, invisible as ever, tipped the boulder over the edge and leapt aside. The rope tied to the boulder snapped taut almost instantly. Ventress yelped as she was yanked off her feet and dragged swiftly across the roof by her ankle and went hurtling over the edge in one second flat, plummeting down the steep Cliffside with the boulder tied to her foot. Aayla stepped to edge and watched her fall, while Renamon dropped her perception filter. The two watched until Ventress vanished from sight, and there was a distant thud.

"That takes care of her," Renamon said, with satisfaction.

"Indeed," Aayla nodded. "However, knowing her, she'll probably have lived through that. Ventress has a habit of coming back eventually, like an unwanted cold." She glanced at Renamon and said, "By the way, how did you get that boulder up here?"

"Strength card," Renamon replied. And that was all Aayla needed to know.

"Nicely done," Aayla nodded. "Now come on. Let's go back and help my Master. She turned and ran over to the vent, jumping back into the corridor below. Renamon was right behind her.

* * *

Quinlan Vos had almost no idea what was going on. The only thing he knew was that he was in the middle of a lightsaber fight with both Sora Bulq and Nikkos Tyris the Anzati, while the other Dark Acolytes were being attacked by some strange creatures he had never seen before. He had no idea what they were, where they'd come from or where Aayla was. But, he also knew that now was not the time to be thinking of such things, as he blocked a slash from Nikkos and leapt back to evade a stab from Sora.

Nearby, Turuiemon was locked in combat with Tol Skorr. Her other opponent, Trenox, was still unconscious after being smacked in the head by Nalema's pan. Turuiemon dodged and flipped over two consecutive attempts to kill her and lashed out with her left switchblade, the Chrome-Digizoid metal striking the red blade gripped in Skorr's hands.

"Why can't my lightsaber cut through your metal?" Skorr demanded. "My lightsaber can cut through almost anything!"

"You have a lot to learn about my universe," Turuiemon replied, striking with the other blade. Skorr parried quickly and slashed at the Champion Digimon. Turuiemon ducked under it and skewered one blade forward. Skorr desperately hacked it aside, and had to roll out of the way as the second switchblade swiped at him. He didn't get away clean and the tip of the metallic weapon cut a gash in his arm. He grunted in pain and ignored the wound, powering forward with two sweeping upward strikes. Turuiemon sprang up, almost to ceiling height, to avoid the first and slashed the other aside when she came down, landing on one foot and slamming the other into Skorr's chest.

Skorr was slammed into the wall and Turuiemon followed up with a huge punch/stab as she drove her bladed fist forwards. Skorr dropped down and Turuiemon's fist slammed into the wall where he'd been, although this didn't deter her at all. She was still able to leap aside to avoid the kick Skorr sent at her and leap back a split second later. Turuiemon struck at Skorr's chest, and Skorr parried, then swiftly blocked the strike from the other blade with his own, just before it punctured his hip. He roared and swung for Turuiemon's throat, but Turuiemon dropped to one hand, lashing up with the other to block Skorr's swing when he thought her vulnerable near the floor. Turuiemon rolled over and delivered a cracking kick to Skorr's knee.

Skorr yelped and stepped back, his knee throbbing with pain. But he didn't dare pause to check it, because Turuiemon leapt for him with another X-slash. Skorr lifted his blade vertically before him and intercepted both blades, but yelped as he was forced to lean backwards to stop his own blade from connecting with his face, as the force of Turuiemon's attack pushed it back. He dodged aside and spun, slower than before but still relatively quickly, seeking to decapitate Turuiemon from the side. He failed, as Turuiemon jumped over the lightsaber like it was a high-jump pole and slashed down towards Skorr's shoulder. She only just missed.

As Turuiemon landed and blocked a blow of Skorr's, reacting with a kick to the instep that almost broke Skorr's foot, Trenox re-entered the room. He was clutching his head painfully, but he was otherwise unharmed. He saw the strange rabbit creature duelling with Skorr and apparently winning, while Sora and Nikkos were fighting Quinlan and seemed to be doing slightly better. He growled as he glanced at the bunny creature, remembering how it had physically tossed him into the corridor.

He activated his lightsaber and ran forward, ready to strike at her unprotected back.

But before he got there, a yellow streak hurtled into the room with a cry of "I don't think so!" and rammed him in stomach before he knew what was happening. He yelled in pain as he was slammed into the wall, the new creature smashing there with her shoulder. Winded, he fell to the ground. He looked up and saw a yellow, fox-like creature standing over him.

"Alright then," Renamon said. "Let's see what you got, big boy." Trenox growled and slashed upwards. But the fox was no longer there, as Renamon sprang over the strike and, taking Trenox completely off guard, Renamon flipped over his head and came down from above and grabbed him around the neck with her arm. Trenox gasped as his air was cut off and was rendered helpless as Renamon brought her leg with a solid kick to his elbow, knocking his lightsaber from his nerveless grip. Renamon released him, punched him in the face and grabbed the lightsaber hilt from thin air. She threw it through the hole in the wall that her large mate had created earlier.

"No swords for you," she said. "Now, come on. Let's test your metal."

Trenox, reeling slightly from the blows Renamon had landed on him, lunged forward with a powerful punch, but Renamon blocked it with her own arm. A brief fist-fight began between them, with Trenox mostly doing the attacking while Renamon defended. Trenox struck from the left, but Renamon dodged, and then from the right, which Renamon knocked aside with her own fist. Trenox brough in two large swings from the left and Renamon jumped over them both, landing with her back to Trenox.

Trenox took the opportunity and aimed a kick at the base of her tail. To his astonishment, Renamon spun around and grabbed his ankle in mid-air, pulling his leg further forward and forcing him into the ground, doing the splits. Trenox yelled as Renamon jumped up and brought her fist searing downwards. Knowing the blow would pulverise him, Trenox desperately rolled to one side. Renamon's blow created a small crater in the floor. Trenox leapt to his feet and instigated a barrage of punches. Renamon turned them all aside, except for the final one. With this one, as Trenox launched his fist at her face, she brought up her palm and caught the attack in her paw.

Trenox yelled as Renamon delivered and gut-busting punch to his stomach and then threw the arm she was holding steady back at him, so he ended up punching himself in the face. He stumbled backwards and slumped against the wall.

"Are you ready to give up yet?" Renamon asked him, standing over him. "You know you're beaten."

Trenox yelled in anger and thrust out his hand, throwing Renamon back with an enormous Force-push that sent her flying across the room. He would have preferred Sith Lightning, but Dooku had not taught any of his Dark Acolytes how to use it.

"Your loss," Renamon muttered in mid-air, as she twisted and landed on the opposite wall, feet-first. She sprang right off it and hurtled _back_ across the room. Trenox' eyes widened in shock as he saw his death approaching, in the form of a glowing fist.

**"POWER PAW!" **Renamon cried as she slammed her attack into him. The impact was so huge that both she and Trenox busted right through the wall, Trenox dying in the process. As Renamon landed smoothly on her feet, she realised she had entered the hangar.

It was a complete and utter mess.

But there was a good reason for that.

"Wow, you move fast for a little guy," remarked Rapidmon, as he appeared behind another starfighter and kicked it, sending it spinning through the air and towards Karoc, the Dark Acolyte who had lost his brother. Karoc looked absolutely exhausted as he leapt aside, the starfighter slamming into the ground where he had been before. The whole large room was completely riddled with starships that had been tossed all over the place in the hit-and-run battle that was taking place.

"It's just getting started!" Karoc panted, getting to his feet and readying his lightsaber, glaring at the hovering Rapidmon.

"Actually I think it's nearing the close," said Rapidmon. "Either you put down your weapon, or things may have to get even more messy."

Karoc bellowed in rage and rocketed upwards in a huge Force-jump, seeking to cut Rapidmon in half. Predictably, Rapidmon was no longer there just as Karoc started to swing his blade and was suddenly on the other side of the room, his arms hooked underneath another starfighter and sending it flying. Karoc tumbled to the ground, and dodged in the nick on time, the starfighter barely missing his head.

"You were warned," Rapidmon said, simply. **"MIRACLE MISSILE!"**

The little missiles swarmed from the launcher on Rapidmon's back and zipped towards Karoc like a swarm of angry hornets. Knowing that blocking them with his lightsaber would cause them to explode anyway, Karoc threw his hands out. Calling on the Force, he managed to turn the missiles around and launch them back at Rapidmon.

Rapidmon didn't flinch and zoomed out of the way, causing a explosion that ripped open a large section of the outer wall. "Alright, fine," he said, raising his hands above his head. "You can redirect my missiles, but can you stop this!"

Karoc readied himself for another attack, but was totally unprepared for the **"TRI BEAM!"** that was launched at him. The enormous, green laser surged towards him at high speed. Karoc leapt aside, but Rapidmon simply followed his progress with his body and the attack slammed into Karoc. Karoc was thrown back and crashed into the wall. He did not get up.

Rapidmon turned to Renamon and shrugged. "I did give him the chance," he said. "But he didn't take it."

Renamon nodded. "My opponent didn't either. Too proud. Far, far too proud."

Rapidmon landed beside her and the two turned to look back into the conference room and watch the two battles still raging inside. They watched as Turuiemon span in mid-air, slashing at Skorr with one blade and bringing the other in immediately afterwards. Skorr parried both, but it was clear he was flagging now. Turuiemon's attacks to his legs and arm were taking their toll.

Turuiemon landed behind him, and Skorr turned around as quickly as possible, holding his lightsaber ready. He swung at her, but it was an embarrassing miss, because Turuiemon was long gone by the time his blade fell. He tried again, but the result was the same.

"You are in no condition to fight," remarked Turuiemon. "Just give up."

"I can fight as long as you can!" Skorr shouted. "Until I kill you, that is!"

"If that's the way you feel," Turuiemon said. "Let's continue." She lashed out with her switchblades, once again going for a slashing X attack. Skorr brought up his blade and countered. Just like Aayla and Ventress before them, they began to push against each other.

"You... cannot beat me..." Skorr panted. "Whatever you are!"

"Spoken like a complete fool," Turuiemon replied. "I happen to have a few tricks still up my sleeve." As she spoke, her switchblades began to glow an incredibly bright white, as if they'd been placed in a blazing inferno.

"What...?" Skorr yelled in shock.

"**GAUNTLET CLAW!" **Turuiemon shouted, stepping back and slashing the rest of the X. Skorr's lightsaber blocked the middle part of the attack but the rest of it slammed into his torso and threw him back into the wall with heavy force. Skorr slumped down, his deactivated lightsaber falling from his limp grip.

Turuiemon turned and nodded towards her fellow Digimon, who both nodded back as they re-entered the room. All three looked over to where Quinlan Vos was still furiously duelling against Sora and Nikkos at the other end of the room. Turuiemon's switchblades extended again.

"I'll go and relieve him of one of his opponents," she said, and started forwards. However, she was beaten there. Quinlan fell backwards, past one of the doors, to avoid a slash from Nikkos, but ended up in an undignified heap on the ground. The Anzati cackled, oblivious to the destruction of his comrades and moved forward, raising his lightsaber to strike. But, before he could, a blue lightsaber plunged _through_ the door on his left and caught his blade.

"Huh?" Nikkos blinked, staring at the blade in bewilderment. The door opened, the lightsaber slicing through it as it did, to reveal Aayla holding the hilt on the other side.

"This is for all the slaves you have abused, Anzati," she said. And she slashed forwards. Nikkos blocked the blow hurriedly, but was still too surprised to react as Aayla kicked him in the chest and sent him sprawling. Quinlan sprang to his feet to help, but he found that there was no need to. Aayla slashed at Nikkos again, and the Acolyte rolled over the table to avoid the hit. Aayla jumped after him and attacked.

Nikkos slashed and parried frantically as Aayla let loose a barrage of blows at him. Up, down, up, left, left, down, right – Nikkos was hard pressed to avoid them all. And, in the end, he just couldn't keep the effort up. It was a short lightsaber duel, but Aayla easily outclassed him. She struck from above, and her blade was intercepted, but she pulled out and performed a high sweep-kick that smacked into Nikkos' lightsaber hand. Nikkos yelled as his blade was knocked from his nerveless hand, but gasped as Aayla's next strike ran him through.

Nikkos died quickly, and Aayla withdrew her blade from his chest and let his body fall. She shut her eyes, sadly contemplating what Nikkos might be doing now if he had remained with the Jedi Order. But, it was too late for him. He had left her little alternative.

"Aayla, look out!" shouted Turuiemon. Aayla's eyes snapped open as she saw the last Dark Acolyte in the building, Sora Bulq, rushing towards her with a face of rage and his lightsaber raised in order to slice her in two. Aayla readied her blade as she prepared for impact.

However, it was unnecessary. At the sight of his former Padawan in danger, Quinlan Vos let loose an almighty roar and called on the Force with all his strength. The entire, long, conference table was ripped right out of the floor it was bolted to and flung at the charging Weequay, blindsiding the Jedi Master and slamming him into the wall, squashing him between two solid surfaces. Sora howled in agony as he was sandwiched between table and wall.

Sora Bulq opened his eyes and saw Quinlan charging towards him, blade held high. A flash of green and it was all over.

Quinlan stood, panting with exertion and looming over the body of his fallen ex-comrade. He glared down at the corpse of the Weequay, but, gradually, his face returned to a more normal, passive one.

They had done it. They had actually triumphed over the Dark Acolytes!

Quinlan felt a hand on his shoulder, and he glanced back to see Aayla. A red-dyed, disguised Aayla, it was true, but an alive Aayla too. "Thank you, Master," Aayla smiled at him.

Vos grinned wryly. "Well, I could hardly let my Padawan die after all the effort she put in to get me back, can I?" he said. Aayla rolled her eyes and socked him in the arm. "Ow," Quinlan frowned, rubbing it. "What did you do that for?"

"Ahsoka does it to her Master all the time," said Aayla. "I thought I'd try it out. I can see why she likes doing it."

"Right, whatever you say," Quinlan chuckled. Then, he turned around and got a good look at Rapidmon, Turuiemon and Renamon, who were all walking towards the two.

"Hi," Rapidmon waved a bazooka cheerfully. "I'd give you a thumbs-up, but I don't appear to have any thumbs at the moment."

"Just shut up," Renamon said, deadpan.

"I am yours to command, Rena," Rapidmon said, sardonically.

"You never were good at giving great first impressions," remarked Turuiemon.

"Momentai."

"Aayla," said Quinlan. "I think you have a bit of explaining to do."

Aayla grinned. "Master Quinlan Vos," she announced. "Meet the Digimon."

* * *

Woohoo! That was an epic battle-scene to write, and one of my personal favourites so far. I went all out on this one. And I realised why I like writing Star Wars and Digimon action scenes so much. It's because there are so many different possible environments and scenarios to use that each fight scene is unique. This one was fun, especially the part with the frying pan.

And I'm sure you can imagine, the destruction of the Dark Acolytes is THE BIGGEST change in the war that has been made so far in my story. And the changes in the Star Wars universe are just going to keep getting bigger.

Is Ventress dead? No, she's not. I could hardly kill her off now. I've got so much story left to write and she needs to be in it, regardless of how much we all hate her.

* * *

Next time...

Count Dooku has been dealt a critical blow with the destruction of the Dark Acolytes. But now, the adventurers must return to Coruscant and face the consequences of their actions.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 79 : Judgement on Coruscant**


	79. Judgement on Coruscant

Not much of an excuse for it being so late this time. I wanted to get this out on Saturday, but I didn't get much time to write because on Friday I went a climbed a couple of mountains, and when I got back I was pretty tired. This general feeling of laziness lasted throughout the weekend, so I wrote most of this chapter today instead. Ugh, perhaps now I can finally start to get something done around here.

Now, presenting the final chapter of the Star Wars part of the Quinlan Vos arc.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 79:- Judgment on Coruscant**

* * *

"The who-now?" asked Quinlan, as he looked from his former Padawan to the three mysterious beings that had just helped them to take out six of the deadliest members of the Separatist Alliance. Needless to say, the poor Kiffar was suffering from information overload, considering everything that had happened so far today. It had been a real podrace.

"The Digimon," Aayla repeated herself. "These three are my friends, and have been ever since I first met Renamon here on Christophsis many months ago, before I even became a part of the A-Team."

"Digimon," Quinlan rolled the word across his tongue. "It has an interesting ring to it."

"It's short for Digital Monster," supplied Turuiemon helpfully. "Not that we are the kind of monsters who go around trashing cities just for the fun of it."

"It's Digimon like that who give us all a bad name," said Rapidmon.

"But what _are_ they?" Quinlan asked.

"You know, we are standing right here," Rapidmon attempted to fold his arms, but gave up because the bazookas made that impossible. "You could try and include us in this conversation, you know."

"Rapidmon," Renamon said, warningly.

"Momentai."

"It's alright, guys," said Aayla. "Let me do the talking for a moment, okay?"

"Alright," nodded Rapidmon. "But, just so that your Master will have even more questions to ask, I'm going to do this now." Quinlan's jaw dropped when Rapidmon glowed a white colour and shrank down to the ground, until he was back in his Rookie form. Terriermon winked at the stunned Kiffar and said, "Yeah – I like showing off."

"Honestly," Turuiemon rolled her eyes, before following Terriermon's example and de-digivolving back to Lopmon. "Are you trying to give him a mental breakdown?" she asked.

"You de-digivolved too," Terriermon pointed out. "I just thought it would be a good idea to give him a good idea of just how unique we are, just so that the stuff that's about to come out of Aayla's mouth doesn't sound like garbage."

"Actually, he may have a point," said Renamon. She glanced over at Quinlan and saw that he was looking at her expectantly. She smiled at him and said, "I'm already at the same level as these two. I'm not going to de-digivolve."

"Uh... right," Quinlan said slowly, trying to find a place in his brain to store this information.

Aayla was almost giggling at the sight of her Master's face. The confusion was almost priceless. It took a lot to get Vos into a state such as this, but, then again, the Digimon had been a lot to take in for her too.

"I'd really like to have an explanation sometime soon," said Quinlan. "Just so you know."

"Alright, it goes like this," said Aayla. "These three come from a place extremely far away from here – so far away that it goes beyond the walls of our universe."

"Huh?" Quinlan blinked.

"I mean to say that they are from another dimension entirely. They come from a world that is absolutely crawling with Digimon of all shapes and sizes, each with their own unique abilities and personalities. They're called Digital Monsters because they are actually computer data that has been given life and a physical form. Essentially, they are artificial life-forms. Like the clones, but even more artificial that they are."

"I... see," Quinlan muttered slowly. "But, if they're from another dimension then how did they get to ours?"

"By accident," said Renamon. "Because we are computer programs we can do things that most organics would not be able to do, and there are several Digimon with truly astounding abilities. One such Digimon in Parallelmon, who has the ability to travel between alternate realities at will. But he's an evil Digimon and attacked us with a move of his called Absorbent Bang, which transported all of us here."

"Renamon almost crashed into me when she fell out the portal," said Aayla. "Oh, hold on. Before I go on, perhaps I should introduce them by name. This is Renamon, the first of the three I met."

Renamon stepped forwards and held out her paw. "It's an honour to finally meet the man who trained Aayla into the Jedi she is today," she said, bowing her head respectfully. Quinlan grinned and grasped Renamon's paw with his hand, shaking it firmly.

"Quite a strong grip you've got there," he observed. "A pleasure to meet you Renamon. I saw a little of your battle with Trenox out the corner of my eye. The way you took him out without the use of a lightsaber and only your hand-to-hand combat skills was pretty impressive."

"Thank you," said Renamon. "I've been practicing, just in case the scenario ever presented itself. I confess that I think I'd stand little chance against Jedi Masters, but I'm getting stronger."

"It doesn't even seem possible that she can," said Terriermon. "And yet, she is. It's a little bit frightening actually."

Renamon lifted a foot and rested it on the top on Terriermon's head, behind his little horn. Ignoring his complaints, Renamon said, "You'll have to excuse my mate, but he can let his mouth run off before his brain can catch up."

"Your mate?" blinked Quinlan, startled.

"Yes," Aayla chuckled. "Terriermon and Renamon have been mated for almost a year now."

"Yep," nodded Terriermon, from beneath Renamon's foot. "The anniversary of the day we first mated is coming up in a couple of weeks time, actually. Should we throw a party?"

"You always find an excuse to throw a party, don't you?" asked Lopmon.

"Well, yeah," shrugged Terriermon. "But isn't that what usually happens at anniversaries?"

"Moving right along," Aayla said. "The name of the little jokester down there is Terriermon. Say hi."

Renamon removed her foot from Terriermon's head and swished her tail under him, lifting him off the ground on the surprisingly strong appendage until he was level with Quinlan's chest. "Hello again, Quinlan," Terriermon grinned. "I'm Terriermon, but you can call me the Prankmeister. Everyone else does."

"No, they don't," Lopmon disagreed.

"Yeah, I know, and that's what annoys me," Terriermon huffed.

"Prankmeister, huh?" Quinlan grinned. "I reckon you were right earlier. I think that we'll get along just fine."

"You reckon we should team up and try to find a way to prank Mace Windu?" asked Terriermon.

"I wouldn't dare," chuckled Quinlan.

"High-fives," Terriermon shouted and held up one ear. Much like Aayla had the first time Terriermon had done this, Quinlan stared at it blankly. Aayla smiled and took hold of Quinlan's wrist, demonstrating the correct motion with his own arm.

"And now that that is done," said Aayla. "The third, but certainly not the least, of the three is Terriermon's sister, Lopmon."

Lopmon took to the air and glided upwards until she was perched on Quinlan's shoulder. "A pleasure," she said. "Please try not to encourage my brother too much, if that's alright. We don't want another incident like the time he somehow managed to glue Anakin's hands to the ceiling."

Quinlan snorted. "He what?"

"I recorded it," Terriermon sniggered. "You can watch it when we get back to Coruscant."

Quinlan laughed. But then, he paused and looked closely at the fox and the two rabbits, his eyes taking in all the details. "This is beyond belief," he said. "I can scarcely believe that I am standing here and doing this today. When I woke up this morning, the only thing I was planning to do was carry out Dooku's next assignment. And now, I've had a run-in with Aayla, rejoined the Jedi Order, killed Sora Bulq and am now having a conversation with three creatures from a completely different reality. How weird can it get?"

"By our standards," said Lopmon. "This was a fairly mild day. In terms of weirdness, I mean – not action. I wasn't exactly planning of getting into my second lightsaber duel today either, but it's just the luck of the draw really."

"And what about you, Aayla?" Quinlan turned to the red-dyed Twi'lek. "You must have had quite a few interesting experiences ever since you met these guys."

"Oh more than a few, believe me," Aayla grinned. "Would you believe me if I told you that Terriermon can turn into something so big that if he stood on this facility he'd completely flatten it?"

Quinlan faltered. "You're kidding, right?"

"Nope, she's not," said Terriermon. "But I require that aid of my Tamer to do that?"

"Tamer?" Quinlan asked. "What's a Tamer?"

"There is an awful lot of talking that we'll have to do before we manage to give you a full update, Master Vos," said Aayla. "But I will say this – the Tamers are the three Human children that accompany the Digimon and help them. They have the ability to give the Digimon extra abilities and upgrades, which has come in hand in numerous battle situations."

"And where are they?" asked Quinlan.

"Back at the ship," Aayla replied. "We don't generally let them come near the fighting, but they have ways of knowing what's going on. Anyway, if we're going to go into long discussions and recount stories then I suggest we do it someplace else. I would rather not stay in a place like this.

"Especially if Ventress is still alive," put in Lopmon.

Quinlan sniffed. "If she is alive, she probably will have scrambled away from this place as fast as she can. She has a knack for running off if things don't go her way. She's a fierce battler but she is also a coward. She'll put her own life first."

"Are we sure that Ventress _is_ still alive?" asked Renamon. "That was a pretty big drop. And she was attached to a boulder so she had no choice but to fall all the way."

"She's alive," Aayla said, sombrely. "I can still sense her presence. It's faint, and getting fainter, but it's there. She's running off into the mountains as we speak."

Quinlan sneered. "She probably sensed the deaths of her comrades. She's going to get someplace far away and then send a distress call to Count Dooku."

"Dooku won't be pleased about this, will he?" grinned Terriermon. "We just owned the majority of his fellow Force-wielding underlings."

Quilan couldn't help but laugh. "Oh, I wish I could see the expression on his face when he hears the story from Ventress. She'll probably make up some story about a massive Republic invasion, but more than likely Dooku will see through her lies and extract the truth somehow."

"But there is a bit of good news," said Lopmon. "Ventress is the only one who escaped, but she didn't actually see any of us. Which means, despite the fact we showed ourselves in front of most of the Acolytes, we still managed to keep our secrecy."

"Indeed," nodded Aayla. "The Secret of the 327th is secure. Of course, one day, the secret will get out there. It's almost inevitable. There are so many spies around. The only reason you haven't been spotted so far is because you spend most of your time in the Jedi Temple."

"Well, let's see how long we can keep the secret a secret," nodded Terriermon.

"Yes," said Aayla. "Now, let's go. I would like to get back into my usual attire as quickly as possible, if it's all the same to all of you."

"I can imagine," said Renamon, dryly.

"Closest way out of here is through the hangar," Terriermon pointed to one of the two large holes in the opposite wall. "I made us a nice, big, escape route when I blasted my way in here."

The Digimon turned around and began to walk towards the hole. Aayla turned and smiled at her Master. "Come on, Quin," she said. "Let's get out of here."

"I hear you," Quinlan grinned, and clipped his lightsaber hilt to his waist. Aayla realised she was still holding her own weapon, probably because she had nowhere to clip it onto in her slave dress.

"Next time," she muttered to herself, "Take the time to find an outfit that I can actually conceal a lightsaber in before I do the infiltration."

Lopmon, whose sensitive ears had picked up on that comment, half-turned and said, "Next time?"

Aayla chuckled. "Well, let's hope not," she said, as she followed the Digimon and Quinlan towards the busted wall.

They stepped out into the light again, after traversing the hangar which had become something like a starfighter graveyard after Rapidmon had finished tossing them all over the place. The beautiful plains of Boz Pity stretched out before them for miles and miles. It was a welcome sight, after all the stuff that had been going on inside the compound.

"It's a real shame," said Quinlan. "That the Separatists had to leave their dirty mark on a planet such as this. The Dark Acolytes have been stationed here for about three months or so. I wonder how long it would have taken before more Separatists arrived if they had not been stopped."

"Well, that's not going to happen anymore," said Aayla. "The Republic will begin a sweep of the planet before too long and keep an eye on it in future. If Ventress stays here too long, she'll be found. But, knowing her, she'll slip through our fingers once more."

"Where's the _Twilight_?" asked Lopmon. "I was too busy following Rapidmon to see where it touched down."

"It's down there," Renamon pointed down the mountainside and, sure enough, the spice-freighter-turned-Republic-vessel was nestled on a little ledge about halfway down. "Come on," said Renamon, and started her way down the mountain. She took the less easy route than the slaves, who had all followed a course that was more or less like a path. Renamon, on the other hand, leapt off the ledge and jumped from boulder to boulder like a giant grasshopper. Aayla and Quinlan followed, bouncing their way towards the shuttle, while the bunnies glided their way down.

Renamon, Aayla and Quinlan bounded to a final halt in front of Sugi and Embo, who were both standing outside the ramp like a pairs of guards. Sugi smirked at Aayla and said, "Well, it looks like you made it out of there in one piece, Aayla."

"There were a few close moments, but we pulled through," said Aayla. "How's everything down here?"

"Fine," the Zabrak Bounty Hunter replied. "All the freed slaves are inside the ship. They're still a bit shocked at everything that's happened, but they certainly are all delighted to be out of that place. A few of them are a little nervous, but they all seem to be relatively healthy, bruises and scrapes aside."

"Good," nodded Aayla.

"But, there is one problem," said Sugi, wryly. "And that's the number of them there are. There are over thirty slaves crammed into that ship. It wasn't exactly built to hold such large numbers of people. There are certainly too many of them for us to fly. The ship can't support the weight."

"Great," muttered Terriermon. "What are we suppose to do with them now? We can't leave them here."

"We won't," said Aayla. "Don't worry about it. I can handle it. Now, could you all wait out here, please?"

Aayla started up the ramp and entered the ship. Quinlan blinked in bewilderment and turned to face the Digimon, but they looked about as clueless as he did. Why wouldn't Aayla want them to go inside?

The answer came a few minutes later, when Seripas and Henry appeared at the other end of the ramp and quickly exited the ship. Rika and Suzie followed on, both of them giggling slightly, for one reason or another.

"Alright, what gives?" asked Terriermon. "What's Aayla doing?"

"She's getting changed," said Henry. "She says she doesn't want any boys on the ship until she's finished."

Renamon chuckled. "I suppose she wants to conserve whatever modesty she's got left. The slave outfit was enough for her, I reckon."

"You've got that right, Renamon," Aayla's voice came from the ship. Renamon, Rika, Suzie, Terriermon and Quinlan all snickered.

"So, Quinlan," said Lopmon. "While we wait here, is there anything else you want to know about us?"

A few minutes later, and Aayla walked back down the ramp. She was back in her usual clothing – the skintight brown leggings and single-sleeved top and her boots. The bands around her lekku were back as well. Apart from the fact that her skin was still red from the dye, she looked like normal Aayla again.

As she walked back down, the ex-slaves followed her. All the Twi'leks and humans, the Rodian, the Pantoran, and the two Mirialans had looks of excitement and anticipation splashed across their faces. And they could hardly be blamed. They were finally free from the evil clutches of the Dark Acolytes. Some of them had been serving various members since before the war had even begun. How could they not be happy?

Hytris the Mirialan stepped forward and said, "On behalf of all of us, may I offer my heartfelt gratitude. We cannot think of what would have happened if you hadn't come along and saved us all."

"We were glad to do it," said Aayla.

"And thank you as well, Master Vos," said Hytris. "For although you were a Dark Acolyte too, you never struck any of us, and you even protected some of us from the wrath of the others. We cannot thank you enough."

"No problem at all," Quinlan nodded.

"Extra credit goes to your doppelganger, Aayla," Lopmon grinned as she gestured to Nalema, the Twi'lek girl who really _was_ a Lethan. "I saw her chuck a frying pan at Trenox. It hit him in the head and knocked him completely out cold. It was brilliant!"

Nalema went even redder, almost purple, as she flushed when the other slaves looked at her with expressions of delight and respect. Even Quinlan looked impressed. "An unconventional choice of weapon," he said. "But a good one nevertheless."

"But what are we going to do with them?" asked Seripas. "We can't carry them all with us, even with my small size. We simply won't be able to take off."

"I know," nodded Aayla. "I'm going to make a call. There's bound to be a contingent of clones somewhere near here. They can come and pick up the slaves and take them back to Coruscant or somewhere else in their gunships. But first, I want you all to make a promise."

"A promise?" asked the Pantoran. "What promise?"

"A very important one," said Aayla. "One that, if you break it, could swing the tide of the war back in favour of the Separatists."

Hytris laughed. "I think I can safely say that after all _we've_ been through, we'll do anything we can to keep the Separatists from conquering. Name the promise."

Aayla grinned. "I thought you would," she said. "I want you not to tell anybody – and I mean _anybody_ – about these three creatures here," she gestured at the Digimon. "They are the ultimate secret of the Jedi and the clones. Not even the Senate know about them. You could say they are a trump card of sorts on the battlefield. So, I want you to swear that you will not tell a soul."

"Done," said Hytris. "Right, girls?"

The slaves all nodded enthusiastically.

"Alright then," Aayla nodded. "I'll go and make that call." She began to disappear, back into the ship, but she stopped and turned around and said, "And by the way, you boys are allowed back in now."

* * *

Jedi General Adi Gallia and her platoon of clone troopers were currently soaring through hyperspace, on their way back to Coruscant. They'd just completed a successful mission to the Yavin system and were on their way home to recuperate. Adi Gallia stood on the bridge, observing the clones manning their stations with a calm and reserved demeanour.

"General," said a clone from behind her. Adi turned around to see another clone speaking to her from the holotable.

"What is it, Static?" she asked, walking over to him.

"We've got an incoming transmission," said Static. "We're not sure who it is, General, but it's pretty strong so it must be from close by."

"Trace it. Where is it coming from?" Adi asked, her curiosity peaking.

After a few button pushes, Static frowned and said, "That's odd. It's coming from the planet Boz Pity, sir."

Adi frowned as well. "Boz Pity?" she mused. "But I thought that planet was uninhabited."

"It is," said Static. "Or, at least, it's supposed to be."

Adi paused to consider the options for a few seconds and said, "Okay then. Put it through. Let's see who's calling us and find out why."

"Copy that, sir," nodded Static, and flipped a switch. A hologram appeared, and it featured a person that had been on the list of people Adi least expected to see.

"Oh, it's you, Master Gallia," said Aayla. "Good. I'd hoped I'd picked up the correct wavelength."

"Aayla?" blinked Adi. "What are you doing on Boz Pity?" (Adi had been busy in the Yavin system for some time, and had not had the time to talk to the council, so she had yet to receive the news of Quinlan's supposed turning)

"It's a _very_ long story," chuckled Aayla.

"I have time to hear it," said Adi.

"Well, unfortunately, I don't have the time to tell it," said Aayla. "Not the full version anyway. Listen, are you busy, because I could use some assistance down here."

"At present, we're on our way back to Coruscant," said Adi. "I daresay we could spare a bit of time. What's the situation? Are you in trouble?"

"No, it's nothing urgent," Aayla replied. "It's just that I'm down here on the surface with the Digimon and a few other friends, as well as a bunch of about thirty slave girls that we rescued from a Separatist facility down here and I only have a small spice freighter to spare. Do you think you could mark our position and send a few gunships down here to pick up the slaves? I daresay they want to get off this planet quickly."

Adi nodded. "That won't be a problem at all. Commander, pull us out hyperspace and reset the navicomputer to Boz Pity. And prep some gunships for a recovery mission to the surface."

"Right away, General Gallia," the nearest clone nodded.

"Oh, and Master Gallia," said Aayla, catching the human Jedi Master's attention again. "You ought to know that there may be a couple of surprises in store for you."

"Surprises?" asked Gallia, puzzled. "Like what, for instance?"

One surprise came almost immediately, when another hologram appeared. This one was of a man standing next to Aayla. Adi started in shock. This man had been at the very _bottom_ of the list of people she least expected to see.

"Hey there, Master Gallia," said Quinlan. "You look healthy. Been slicing up a few droids recently?"

"Vos?" Gallia blinked. "But... what? I thought you were working undercover in the Separatist ranks to gain information."

"I was until about an hour ago," said Quinlan. "But not anymore. I think my assignment was successfully terminated when Aayla and the Digimon broke into the base of the Dark Acolytes and defeated them all."

It took several seconds for Adi to say, "Come again?"

Aayla sighed. "Master Gallia, we'll explain everything when we see you in person."

"Yes, I think that would be a good idea," nodded Adi, bewildered. "We'll arrive shortly."

Aayla and Quinlan bowed and the hologram disappeared, leaving Adi Gallia standing there and looking nothing short of completely confused.

* * *

The run to the planet's surface took a surprisingly short time. Since Master Gallia and her clone forces had not been that far from Boz Pity in the grand scheme of things, it only took them a few minutes to arrive above the planet. After locating the others down on the surface, the huge _Venator_-class cruiser entered the atmosphere and the gunships flew out of the side of the hangar and zoomed down to the surface.

There were so many slaves that it took at least five gunships to cram them all in. The clones that came down the surface had all seen Aayla Secura and the Digimon before – they had worked with them on more than one occasion during the war. They were all surprised to see that for some reason Aayla had red skin, but, professionally, they made no comment and did their jobs, ushering the slightly intimidated slave girls into their gunships.

The Digimon and the Tamers watched as the last of the slaves found a place in the ship and the blast doors shut and the gunships all began to lift into the air. "You know," said Rika. "You all did a great job in there. I'm glad you're all okay."

"So are we," nodded Renamon. "But let's not think about the kind of danger we were in. Let's think instead about what we have accomplished today. Between us, we have severely crippled one of Count Dooku's main strike forces. Now, only Ventress remains. The Republic may have a much easier time now. We can push the Separatists out of the Mid Rim soon if we're lucky."

"There's no such thing as luck," Terriermon grinned. "Not according to Mace Windu, anyway."

"Nevertheless," Quinlan Vos strode over to stand beside them. "The girl – Rika, isn't it – is right. I don't think I've ever seen any member of the Dark Acolytes get their butts handed to them like they did today. You three are something else."

"Thanks for the compliment," said Lopmon. "But we did have the element of surprise."

"True," said Vos. "But you still did extremely well. I'm pretty sure I would have been overwhelmed if you hadn't shown up. I'm looking forward to seeing just what you're capable of in the near future."

"We'll try not to disappoint," chuckled Henry.

"Is it time to go?" asked Suzie.

"Indeed, it is," nodded Aayla from the top of the ramp. "Come along, everybody. It's time to face the music and go and see the Council."

"Oh goodie," Terriermon muttered. "I can't wait to have Mace Windu's eyes boring into my brain. I can just picture it now."

Aayla snickered. "You'll have to do it sooner or later," she pointed out. "Might as well get it done."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Terriermon nodded.

"Hey, what about you guys?" asked Henry, turning to the four Bounty Hunters. "What are you going to be doing?"

"Well, since our mission is complete and we helped Aayla reunite with her Master," said Sugi. "I reckon we'll head on back home."

"But how?" asked Rika. "You left your ship back at you base."

"We'll accompany you to Coruscant," said Sugi. "Once there, it will not be difficult for us to find some kind of transportation. We'll get back."

"It'll be no trouble for us to take you back," Aayla offered.

"But we wouldn't wish to deprive you of the honour of standing before the Council for any longer than necessary," Seripas grinned cheekily.

Aayla rolled her eyes. "Fine," she shook her head. "Let's go meet Master Gallia."

* * *

Adi Gallia was suitably surprised when the _Twilight_ docked in the hangar of her cruiser and the ramp descended, because the first to walk down it was a red-skinned Aayla. But she held her tongue momentarily and greeted the passengers, including the four Bounty Hunters, who she had heard about from the A-Team and Obi-Wan's report on Felucia.

Things progressed quickly from there. The ship made its way back to Coruscant with its added load. The slave girls were intrigued and wandered around the ship. Unfortunately they had to stay in their outfits, because the only extra clothes they could have obtained on this ship was clone armour, and they didn't particularly want to put that on.

It took a couple of hours before they arrived at the Republic capital. The cruiser touched down. But the slave girls were reluctant to leave the ship. It was understandable – most of them had never been to Coruscant before, and they were wary of entering an environment that was alien to them.

Because they felt personally responsible for all these poor souls, Aayla and her team asked for them to wait here, with the promise that she would return and personally see to it that they were all returned to their original homes and families. Then, they left the ship.

As per usual, the Digimon and the Tamers were hidden beneath Renamon's handy perception filter, while Aayla and Quinlan walked out in front. The ship had landed in one of Corusant's many shipyards, and there were numerous species moving hither and thither, adding things to and making repairs to the numerous vessels dotted around the place. Mostly Republic cruisers, but smaller ships too.

"I suppose we should head back to the Jedi Temple," said Quinlan, glancing up towards the enormous building that towered over everything else in the distance. "It'll be quite nice actually. Last time I was here, I wasn't able to go anywhere near the Temple. It'll be like finally coming home."

"Won't they try and stop you from entering?" asked Henry, quietly. "After all, they believe you are an evil guy now."

"Got it covered," said Aayla. "I asked Master Gallia to send word to the Temple and let them know of our imminent arrival. No doubt we may have a welcoming committee at the doors when we get there."

"I can't wait," came Terriermon's reply.

"Hey look," Suzie's voice registered in everyone's ears. "It's Ahsoka, over there."

Everyone, some invisibly and some not, looked around. Aayla's face brightened when she saw her fellow A-Team member, standing with Senator Chuchi of Pantora. Also there was the entire Papanoida family. The Chairman was speaking with Ahsoka and Chuchi, while Ion and Che Amanwe stood to one side, along with Papanoida's other daughter, Chi Eekway. Evidently Ahsoka and Chuchi's mission to find the girl had been a success.

Aayla saw Greedo being marched away by a pair of blue-armoured Senate Guards out the corner of her eye, along with the Gotal he had been working with. She smiled. It just went to show how quickly things had gone today. She'd only apprehended Greedo this morning, and there he was now, being put away.

"Let's go and say hello," said Aayla, wandering over towards the group.

"...And if there is anything that you will ever need, young Jedi," Papanoida was saying to Ahsoka. "Please, let me know and I'll see what I can do."

"Really, Chairman, it's okay," said Ahsoka. "Just fulfilling my duty as a Jedi Knight. I'd quite like to hear your side of the story though. Did you really run into Aayla on Tatooine?"

Aayla was standing right beside Ahsoka at this point. Acting tentative, she gently nudged Ahsoka's shoulder, as if she were a worker trying to gain her attention. Ahsoka glanced at her and said, "Could you hold on for one second? I'll be there in a minute."

Aayla grinned at the fact Ahsoka had not recognised her and said, "Actually, Snips, I thought you'd like to speak to me now."

Ahsoka blinked and spun about to stare at the sniggering Twi'lek. "Aayla!" she cried. "You're back! Already! And you're... red? What in the galaxy happened to you?" she asked, her eyes fixed on the skin of Aayla's right, exposed arm. "Are you sick or something?"

"I've never heard of an illness that does this to one of my kind," chuckled Aayla. "No, I'm fine. It's dye. I purchased it on Tatooine so that I could sneak into a Separatist base belonging to the Dark Acolytes themselves and pretend I was a slave."

Ahsoka stared at her incredulously. "You infiltrated the base of the Dark Acolytes and I missed it?"

"Pretty much," nodded Aayla.

"Damn," Ahsoka murmured. "You've been even busier than I have, and I've had a pretty full day as well. I did some sneaking around too. Me and Senator Chuchi had a look around a Separatist battleship so we could find Chairman Papanoida's family."

"I heard," Aayla replied. "Great work, Padawan Tano. We'll make a Knight out of you soon enough."

"Pwah," Ahsoka waved her hand. "I'm still a bit young for that."

Aayla smiled and turned her attention to the nearby Pantorans. "Chairman," she bowed respectfully. "I am glad to see that everything worked out for you. And I am happy to provide at least some form of assistance to your mission."

"As are we," agreed Papanoida. "If it hadn't been for your timely arrival, Greedo might have escaped. But thanks to you, he will be behind ray shields shortly, where he should be."

"Good," nodded Aayla. "But what about the blockade around your moon? Is that any closer to being sorted out."

"Oh, I should think so," Ahsoka grinned. "You should have seen Senator Chuchi. She completely kicked political butt. She managed to force the Nemoidian guy who was in charge of the blockade into leaving the planet alone. She practically blackmailed him."

"No, I didn't," Chuchi said, a little bit sheepishly. "As I said to him, it was business, not blackmail."

Ahsoka waved her hand airily. "Technicalities. Besides, blackmail is the only way to get business done with the Trade Federation. You did an awesome job, didn't she, Chi?"

"So did you," Chi Eekway said. "I'd never seen a Jedi in action before, and it was so amazing."

"Thank you," Ahsoka said, modestly.

"Well done, Senator," said Aayla, patting Chuchi on the shoulder. "Let's hope that Pantora has some easier times ahead."

"Along with the rest of the galaxy," said Chuchi. "Thank you, Master Jedi. But what about you. I heard you were looking for your Master. How did that turn out?"

"Did someone call?" asked Quinlan, stepping behind Chuchi. The little Senator jumped in surprise and turned around, staring up at the much taller person.

Ahsoka beamed. "Oh, Aayla, you did it? Already? You brought him back to the Light?"

Aayla put her arm around Ahsoka's shoulders. "He was never part of the Dark, Ahsoka. He was getting closer to it, but he was never a real Dark Acolyte. But he's back now, and that's what counts. And now, I'm going to get into trouble for going to find him."

"You aren't the only one," Ahsoka said. "I wasn't supposed to go and help Chuchi either – I was meant to leave it to the police, so we're all in the same starfighter. Hi, Master Vos. How've you been?"

Quinlan frowned and looked at Ahsoka closely. Then he brightened and said, "Oh, I remember you. You were that Togruta youngling who was rushing down the halls of the Temple and almost crashed into me several times a couple of years ago. I never did learn your name."

"Ahsoka Tano," the Padawan held out her hand. "Nice to see you, Master Vos."

"You know, my friends call me Quinlan, and sometimes even just Quin," he nodded to Aayla, who grinned. "If you like, you can be my friend too."

"Okay," nodded Ahsoka. "Nice to see you, Quin."

"Er, sorry to interrupt," said Chairman Papanoida. "But we must be going. Senator Lott Dod of the Trade Federation is going to announce the fate of our moon sometime today and I would like to be there when he does, so we should really take our leave now."

"Of course," nodded Aayla. "But first, there is one last thing you can do for me."

"Yes?" asked Papanoida. "What would that be?"

"When we were inside the base of the Dark Acolytes, we rescued a large number of slaves that they had there," explained Aayla. "One of them was a young Pantoran girl. I was wondering if perhaps you could head into that cruiser," Aayla gestured to Adi's nearby ship, "And take her into your care for a bit. You might be able to get her home, as well as something decent to wear."

"Of course," nodded Papanoida. "I am always willing to help my people, and she is one of them. I shall leave now. Thank you for your help, Master Jedi."

"Goodbye," said Ahsoka, waving as the Papanoidas all began to head towards the ship. "And good luck with the blockade."

Chuchi made to follow the Pantorans, but turned back and said, "We'll be alright, Ahsoka. Momentai."

Aayla looked at Chuchi sharply and she also heard a faint sound which she guessed was Renamon clamping a paw over her mate's mouth. "Pardon?" Aayla asked. "What was that?"

Chuchi grinned. "Padmé Amidala told me that was a Twi'leki word for "Take it easy." Thought I'd put it into use."

"Ah," said Aayla, momentary scare over. "Yes, well, Momentai to you too."

"See you soon," Chuchi said, as she followed her fellow Pantorans.

Once she had gone, Aayla heard Terriermon whisper, "Twi'leki? A Twi'leki word?"

"Sorry," Aayla laughed. "I used it in front of Padmé by accident when we were back on Behpour. Saying it was Twi'leki would have been better than saying it was Cantonese, since the Cantonese language doesn't exist in our universe. Except for one word, that is."

"If you didn't use my word, this wouldn't have happened," Terriermon griped.

"Oh, Momentai yourself, Terriermon," Ahsoka replied, looking straight at the invisible bunny. "Is everyone okay?"

"We're all fine," said Lopmon. "Except for Terriermon, who appears to be sulking."

"What's Momentai?" asked Quinlan.

"Perhaps it would better to save the explanation until later," said Renamon. "Now, we have to..."

"Well, well, well," said another nearby voice. "I was expecting to run into Ahsoka, but I think an Aayla with dyed red skin was the last thing I was expecting. Still, it's good to see you're still okay, Aayla."

"Thank you, Anakin," said Aayla, turning to the Chosen One as he approached. "It's good to see you too."

"And what fine adventures have you been up to recently?" asked Ahsoka.

"Not much," Anakin shrugged. "Mostly just meditating and worrying about my ship. Speaking of which..."

"Is that all you can think about, Anakin?" Aayla chuckled. "If you must know, the _Twilight_ is fine. Just as I promised it would be. I made very sure that she didn't a scratch on her hull. You can relax now."

"Great news indeed," Anakin laughed. "But where is it?"

"It's in the hangar of Master Gallia's ship," said Aayla. "Feel free to pick it up whenever you want."

"Perhaps later," said Anakin. "But for now, I think I'll stick around for a little while. Master Quinlan, how are you doing?"

"Extremely well, Anakin," said Quinlan. "How's life at the Temple treating you? And, of course, Obi-Wan. How is the old rascal doing anyway?"

"Well, I'm certainly doing much better right now," said Anakin, putting his arms over Ahsoka and Aayla's shoulders so the A-Team stood together. "Now that I know my ship, my Padawan and my best friend are all safe and sound."

"Aaw," Aayla placed her hand over her heart. "I'm your best friend? Thanks, Anakin. That means a lot."

"Well, of course you are," Anakin grinned. "Obi-Wan doesn't count because he's my Master. Ahsoka doesn't count because she's my student, so that leaves the spot open to the other member of the A-Team and that's you, Aayla. You've been my longest childhood friend too. Besides, you saved my life when we fought General Grievous. I don't forget these things."

"What about Senator Amidala?" Renamon's quiet voice said from right next to Anakin's shoulder. Anakin had known she was there though, so there was no reaction. "I thought that she was a very good friend of yours."

"She doesn't really count either," said Anakin.

"And why not?" Renamon pressed him.

"Because..." Anakin faltered slightly. "Because, I hardly ever see her, and just about the only time we ever meet is on the battlefield or during a mission. But Aayla's around almost all the time."

"Alright," said Renamon. "Whatever you say."

"Perhaps it would be a good idea to move this conversation out of the docking area," said Quinlan. "If the you-know-whats are as secret as you say, that is. And I think we're beginning to draw attention to ourselves here."

"Good point," said Aayla. "And I suppose we better start our way towards the Temple. We don't want to be late for our telling-off, do we, Ahsoka?"

"Well, I wouldn't really mind," said Ahsoka. "Anything to keep it at bay. But, I suppose it'll only get worse. Let's do this."

As they began to move away, Quinlan Vos observed the three other Jedi he was walking with. From what he had seen, his Padawan had changed an awful lot since he had last set eyes on her. She seemed to have formed an incredibly strong connection with all three of the Digimon, all three of the Tamers _and_ these other two Jedi as well. And the feeling seemed to be mutual from all sides. He was sure this stretched the proportions of the Jedi Code, and possibly even broke it, but he could also see that it had changed Aayla for the better. Aayla wasn't as reserved and serious as she used to be – she was more outspoken and easy-going, and she seemed to be enjoying every moment of her life that she spent off the battlefield.

Vos remembered the relationship that he had with the ex-Separatist, Khaleen Hentz. Perhaps, once he was reinstated as a Jedi, he would try and find Khaleen in his time off. But for now, he contented himself with watching his former apprentice laughing and joking with her close teammates.

He couldn't be happier for her.

* * *

The group didn't usually walk up the steps that lead to the gates of the Jedi Temple. Most of the time they flew directly into the hangars or onto a landing platform near the top. But this time, they made the long, arduous trek up the steep staircase. Suzie began to complain that her feet hurt when they'd gone about halfway up, then made an "Oop" sound, which lead the Jedi to believe that someone – possibly Renamon or Henry – had picked her up and put her on their shoulders.

And, as they ascended, they saw figures gathering near the top.

"Looks like I was right," said Aayla, as they ascended the stairs. "We have got ourselves a welcome-home party."

"A grim-faced bunch I ever saw one," quipped Terriermon at the sight of the five Jedi Masters standing outside the door. Little Yoda was only just visible at this point, but he stood out in front, leaning on his gaffa stick and waiting patiently. Standing behind him and slightly to the left was Mace Windu, and on Windu's right was Ki-Adi-Mundi. Standing on either side of the two were Plo Koon and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

"Well, we all knew this was coming," said Ahsoka. "I can't wait to hear your explanation to them, Aayla. I think you're in even bigger doo-doo than I am."

"Thank you for pointing that out," said Aayla.

"They can't really put you in trouble, can they?" asked Suzie. "You didn't really do anything wrong, except do something they didn't want to. And I do things Henry doesn't want me to do all the time, and I don't get in trouble."

"Suzie, I'm your brother," said Henry. "It's different. Think of them as teachers at your school."

"But I do everything my teacher at school wants me to do," said Suzie. "Lopmon makes me."

"It's for your own good," said Lopmon.

"Don't worry, Aayla," said Quinlan. "I'll explain everything to them, if you like."

"No," Aayla shook her head. "This was my idea. _I_ disobeyed the Council. I'll be the one to explain my actions."

"It was _our_ idea to come with you," pointed out Rika.

"Yes, but they aren't _your _Council, are they?" Aayla replied. "Leave this to me."

They fell silent for the final leg of the climb. It took a few more minutes, but eventually the four Jedi and the invisible Digimon and Tamers made it to the top and stood before the five members of the Council. There was a thick silence in the air, as both group stared at each other momentarily, assessing the other side.

It was Plo Koon who broke the silence by saying. "Dare I ask why you have deemed it fit to dye yourself red, Knight Secura?"

"It's quite complicated," said Aayla. "I see that Master Gallia sent word ahead to you, just like I asked her to."

"Indeed she did," said Mace. "And I daresay that we all have a few questions for you. Other than the fact that you seemed to have turned into a Lethan Twi'lek."

"Am I in trouble?" asked Aayla.

"Remains to be seen, that does," said Yoda. The diminutive, green creature turned to the others and said "Padawan Tano, Knight Skywalker, ask you to leave, I must. Speak with you later, we will. Talk to Aayla and Master Vos alone, we wish to."

"And that includes all you invisible people," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "Please, head inside for now."

Ahsoka and Anakin took a last glimpse at their comrade-in-arms, before making their way past the five Jedi Masters and walking towards the Temple. "And don't think you're out of the lurch for a second, Anakin," said Obi-Wan. "We're still going to have a talk about you lying to us about the location of your Padawan."

"I know, Master," chuckled Anakin. "I know."

"See you later, Aayla," Renamon whispered as she passed by with her invisible followers.

"If I'm not polishing R2 units," Aayla whispered back. She could sense the life-forces of her good friends moving slowly away. Now, it was just her and Quinlan standing before the council members. Aayla looked at their various expressions. While Mace Windu wore the predictable grave face that he nearly always wore, the others were all different. Obi-Wan looked slightly happy, and he nodded in the direction of his good friend Quinlan, who nodded back. Ki-Adi-Mundi had a rather blank expression, as if he was unsure what to make of this situation. Yoda had a similar face, but Aayla could still see a definite twinkle in his eyes for one reason or another. And Plo Koon... was as expressionless as ever because he still had his facemask on.

"Aayla Secura," said Mace. "First off, I would like you to know that we are all very disappointed in you. You disobeyed a direct order from both Master Yoda and myself and you went gallivanting off into dangerous territory with no back-up other than your Digimon friends. Not very wise."

"I know, Master," said Aayla. "And believe me, I am sorry to cause so much trouble. You know that this is not usually like me."

"Indeed not," said Obi-Wan. "I blame the fact that you spend so much time around Anakin and Ahsoka these days. I think their own behaviour is starting to effect you as well."

Aayla half-smiled. "I think that you might be right, Master Kenobi."

"However," Master Yoda interjected. "Two sides to every argument, there is. Acted recklessly, you may have, but astronomical, the results are. Found you Master after only two days of looking, you did. Quite a feat, that is. And brought him back to the Jedi Temple, you have."

"Yes, Master," nodded Aayla.

Quinlan laughed, drawing the attention of the Council Members to him. "If you think that's a feat," he said. "Then you should hear about the other things that Aayla and her interdimensional friends have done since you all last saw them. They accomplished things that I wouldn't have thought possible this morning. How much of the tale do you know?"

"Plucky as ever I see, Master Vos," said Plo Koon.

"Always," Vos grinned.

"As to your question," the Kel Dor said. "We know very little. We only know that Aayla left without warning and wasn't heard from again until Adi Gallia picked them up on Boz Pity with a bunch of liberated slaves, four Bounty Hunters and her missing Master. That is why I think we would all like you to enlighten us as to what happened, Aayla."

"Indeed," said Yoda. "Here the story, we would. If so kind, you would be."

"Alright," nodded Aayla. "It's like this."

Aayla's shortened version of events still took over five minutes to explain. She told them of how they had stole Anakin's ship ("So that's why Anakin was in a mood yesterday," said Obi-Wan), about how Aayla had remembered the Bounty Hunters from Felucia, and about how they had gone to see them and had been given the information about the Rodian Bounty Hunter, Greedo, who worked for Jabba the Hutt.

She went on to talk about her trip to Tatooine to see Jabba (she was glad Anakin wasn't here – she didn't want to see his face when she described the trip) and about how she and the Bounty Hunters had helped Chairman Papanoida in the cantina, how she had extracted information from him and about how she had infiltrated the Separatist base, hence the red skin, which would slowly turn back to blue over the next couple of days.

She put most of her detail into the next bit, as she retold Vos' story about his escapades and re-explained her observations about how he was inching closer to the Dark Side but had not yet completely reached it. She was determined to paint her Master in the best possible light, because she knew the Council would sense deception if she lied to them. But then she finished with the epic struggle with the Dark Acolytes themselves and about how she had incapacitated Ventress and how the others were now all dead.

She finished the explanation with, "I'm sorry I caused trouble. It's just that I couldn't stand the wondering and the conflictions in my mind. And I felt that the idea of leaving him there without being completely sure that he was a Dark Jedi was wrong. Please, forgive me."

After some quiet contemplation, Ki-Adi-Mundi spoke up. "Well, that is quite a tall tale. However, I did not sense any deception so I must assume that you are telling the truth. It's remarkable to think that the Dark Acolytes no longer exist. The Separatists will certainly feel that."

"Yes," nodded Obi-Wan. "Perhaps this might swing the war even further in our favour. Dooku will struggle to replace those that he lured to the Dark Side."

"And you are certain that Ventress did not spot any of the Digimon?" asked Plo Koon.

"Yes, Master," nodded Aayla. "Without a shadow of a doubt."

"In that case," said Plo. "If you want my opinion, you have done remarkably well over the last few days, Aayla. Few have had to go through so many trials in such a short space of time and under the pressure that you must have felt, and yet you managed to succeed. You, the Digimon, and your Bounty Hunter friends are to be congratulated. It doesn't change the fact that you disobeyed orders, but still, in an obscure way, I suppose it paid off."

"I like to think so," said Aayla. "I did get my Master back, after all."

"Yes, welcome back, Quinlan," said Obi-Wan, stepping forward and addressing the Kiffar Master.

"Good to be back," Quinlan grinned and socked Obi-Wan in the arm, just as Aayla had done to him earlier. Obi-Wan looked a little miffed, but Vos just grinned at him.

"Yes," said Mace. "Your near-turn to the Dark Side and your actions under Dooku's commands are questionable, but nevertheless, I think that your actions today have made up for them to a degree. You are officially accepted back into the Jedi Order, Master Vos."

Quinlan nodded. "Thank you, Master Windu," he said. "I may not be able to go undercover anymore, but I can be useful in other ways now. Just point me towards the battlefield and I'll be there."

"And as for you, Aayla," said Mace. "While I am still disappointed in your recklessness and lack of discipline, I suppose all that you have accomplished more than makes up for it. You will not be punished. However, do not think that the result will be the same should you do it again."

"Oh, I don't," Aayla replied seriously. "As long as all my close friends remain away from the Dark Side, I have no intention of running off without the approval of any of you again. And I intend to try and make sure that doesn't happen."

"Sounds to me like you're forming some strong attachments," said Mace, dubiously.

The low giggling of Yoda was heard from the ground floor. Mace looked down and saw Yoda was grinning up at him. "Learned something today, have you, Master Windu? Hmm?" asked the Grand Master.

Mace frowned. "What do you mean, Master Yoda?" he asked.

"Explained to you, once before, I did," said Yoda. "That a normal Jedi, Aayla is not. Bonded with the Digimon, she has, and as a result the bonds she makes, strengths, they are and weaknesses, they are not, as they would be for most Jedi. Encourage these special bonds, I do. Unique amongst all Jedi, Aayla is."

"I still don't particularly like it, Master Yoda," said Mace. "You know as well as I that attachments can lead to the Dark Side."

Yoda chuckled. "Beginning to think, I am, that impossible, it is, for a close friend of Terriermon's to go to the Dark Side. Trust Aayla, I do. Momentai, you should, Master Windu."

Aayla and Quinlan both snorted at Yoda's casual use of Terriermon's word. The little Grand Master turned back to them and addressed the semi-disguised Twi'lek next. "And taught me something today, you have, Knight Secura."

"I have?" asked Aayla. "What is that, Master Yoda?"

Yoda smiled. "Thanks to you, realised something, I have. In this war, too quick, we are being, to judge. Jumping to conclusions, we are, without the full proof to back up our assumptions. A few facts, we were presented with, about Master Vos, and automatically conclude that he was a Dark Jedi, we did.

"You, on the other hand, doubtful, you were. Kept up your faith in your Master, you did. Sway from your beliefs, you did not, even going so far as to challenge us. Learn many things, we all could, from you, Knight Secura."

"You are too kind, Master Yoda," said Aayla, smiling down at him.

"Too kind, you say?" Yoda laughed. "Never too kind, can one be. But very serious, I was. Consider all the facts, we must, before we make decisions, in the future. Although, a different approach, we would probably take, to you."

Aayla looked down at her red skin and said, "Yes, I can imagine. I'd like to return to my old self as soon as I can. Too bad this stuff doesn't come off in water."

Yoda chuckled then waved his stick in the direction of the door. "Come, come, come," he said. "Eat, we shall. Hungry, you must be. And lecture Skywalker and Tano, you can, about disobeying the Council on our behalf."

Aayla laughed, as did Quinlan, as everyone turned and followed the slow-moving Master back to the Temple. Yoda abruptly turned around and said, "And also, back, your friend Barriss Offee is, from another mission. Let us see if recognise you, she does. Hmm?"

Aayla grinned and glanced across at Quinlan. "High-fives," she said, holding up her hand the way she had countless times now with various other members of the A-Team or Digimon or a Tamer. Quinlan had not forgotten the lesson from earlier and slammed the palm of his hand into Aayla's own, grinning right back. Then, former Master and former Padawan walked through the Temple doors, side by side.

* * *

This arc really advanced things in the grand scheme of the war. Master Vos didn't return to the Jedi in the comics until the final year of the war, but he's back now and his fellow Dark Acolytes are dead, except of course for Ventress. This means that the Separatists are going to get a little desperate in the near future. The next arc will feature an attack on a very familiar planet to Star Wars fans that wasn't really attacked throughout the Clone Wars before these changes.

The next arc will also strongly feature two other characters from the Star Wars saga with a central role. Kit Fisto the Nautolan will play a part and so will someone else – but I don't want to give too much away at once. I'll give you a slight clue though – things should get quite funny with him around. And a third important character will show up, one who many of you have been anticipating for some time.

But before all that, we have another Digital World chapter.

* * *

Next time...

We know that Impmon has run away to the Digital World to keep Ai and Mako and everyone else safe. But what will happen when Ai and Mako wake in the morning to find their partner has gone?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 80 : Tamer Endeavours**


	80. Tamer Endeavours

This took much longer than I wanted it to, and unfortunately, the next chapter might take a bit longer as well. After posting the last chapter, I was given an enormous Biodiversity assignment that I need to get done and it's still not finished. I did a lot of it on Wednesday so I got little chance to write. Then, on Thursday, I went to Edinburgh to the day to see Mark Cawardine to a talk on endangered species. And then on Friday, I had a school field trip to a wildlife sanctuary in Scotland. It was fun, but it prevented me from writing. I churned most of this chapter out today.

Well, read on and I will see if I can finish this assignment by the end of tomorrow.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 80:- Tamer Endeavours**

* * *

Dawn, or whenever it was the twins woke up because they usually liked lie-ins on weekends, was usually an exciting time for Ai and Mako. Since it heralded the start of a brand new day, the twins both knew that practically anything could happen. It could be an ordinary day, which would involve playing games together and talking to Impmon and general tomfoolery (although there was less of that than usual at the moment considering everything that was happening), or it could mean that an adventure was about to break out at any moment.

Today, Mako was the first to wake up. He spent a few moments staring at the ceiling, taking the time to recall who he was and what he was doing and all the other various things that become a little bit hazy after you've been to sleep. He then stretched, which didn't make him all that much taller, and yawned widely, before sitting up and scratching his scalp a couple of times. This was Mako's usual morning routine. Not very exciting, but he did it nonetheless.

Mako turned to Ai and said, "Hey sis. Wake up. It's morning."

"Go away," Ai pulled the sheets over her head and groaned. "I'm trying to do that thing that hedgehogs do when they go to sleep for months."

"But that means you won't wake up until about March," Mako giggled. "And you'll miss Christmas if you do that. It's only about a month away."

Ai's eyes shot open. "I'm not missing Christmas," she declared, sitting up and stretching her own muscles. "No way. Not for all the chocolate bars in the world."

"Me neither," Mako grinned. "I know it's still a month away, but I'm already really, really excited for Christmas. Aren't you?"

"Yeah," Ai nodded eagerly. "I just love all the piles of presents that we see when we come down the stairs, lying under the tree and waiting to be opened. I still haven't seen Santa though. I really wanna see him come for the night."

"You remember last year," Mako giggled. "When Impmon set a trap for him and it caught Mum as she was going to the toilet before Santa got here?"

Ai giggled, as she remembered how on earth Impmon had managed to rig a trap that had caused their mother to be tightly and inescapably cocooned in tinsel, to which Impmon replied that he had a few secrets and this was one of them, while their mother thrashed on the floor and demanded to be released, until Impmon had thrust a bauble in her mouth and gone back upstairs, leaving Mr. Terada to do a bit of early unwrapping.

"Are you going to do that again, Impmon?" asked Mako, turning around to look at Impmon's windowsill. "Impmon?" he asked, blinking when he saw that the space that Impmon usually occupied was empty. "Where'd he go?"

"Probably just went out on another walk during the night and went to visit Jeri or somebody ans hasn't got back yet," Ai shrugged. And this was true. Impmon made regular forays into the night so that he could scavenge from bins and play tricks on people in the park, like he used to do. He said he enjoyed the nightlife because he could sneak around without being stared at, which Ai and Mako could understand. They too felt uncomfortable at times when they went into town and people stared at them.

"Yeah, maybe," Mako nodded, stretching again. "Come on. Let's go downstairs and get some cereal or something."

"Dibs on the Coco Rocks," Ai cried as she clambered out of bed and wrapped herself in the miniature dressing gown that she owned.

Mako shrugged. "I wanted Frosties anyway," he said, as he put on his own dressing gown.

Ai and Mako left the room together and ambled down the stairs side by side. You'd never have guessed that a couple of years ago, the two of them were constantly at each other's throats. They looked, for all the world, like the perfect twins. They never argued, they never fought, they even tried to avoid minor disagreements. All because they were determined not to give their partner an excuse to leave them again. Being children, they didn't quite understand that one simple argument would probably not be enough to tip Impmon over the edge.

They walked into the kitchen together. Their mother was already there, sitting at the kitchen table with one hand supporting her head and staring off into the middle-distance, a thoughtful expression written across her face. She seemed to be stirring a mug of coffee with the other hand and not realising that the coffee in question had gone cold a long time ago.

"Morning, Mum," said Ai and Mako in unison. Haruhi, started from her reverie, turned around and gave her beloved children a smile that would seem a little false to older people, but Ai and Mako didn't notice.

"Good morning, you two," she said, in reply. "How are you doing?"

"Really well," said Mako. "Except that I am starving. I forgot to have supper last night. Can I have some Frosties, please?"

"I'd rather have a bowl of Coco Rocks," chanted Ai, giggling as she sang the little tune from the adverts.

Haruhi smiled again and nodded. "Of course you can. Sit down and I'll pour them out for you."

Ai and Mako sat at the table and watched as their mother took out the bowls and the spoons and the cereal boxes and began to pour their breakfast out for them. Despite the fact that Ai and Mako could eat at the main table now, they still hadn't reached the height where they could pour their own cereal or milk without causing a very large spillage. So Haruhi still did the job for them.

Once Haruhi had sat back down and the two kids were digging into their breakfast, Mako looked up and opened his mouth to speak.

"Don't talk with your mouth full, Mako," Haruhi said, a little half-heartedly, as she stared at the coffee that she now realised had gone cold and proceeded to drink it anyway.

Mako shut his mouth, chewed it quickly and swallowed it, before saying, "Mum, have you seen Impmon anywhere? He wasn't in our room this morning."

Haruhi paused a moment before saying, "Well... yes, I saw him last night. He was still awake when... well, it's a surprise. And then, he went off somewhere and I haven't seen him since."

"A surprise?" grinned Ai, excitedly. "We've got a surprise?"

"Yes, you have," Haruhi nodded. "And you'll get it this morning about..."

"Hey kids!" Mr. Terada walked into the room. "Did you miss me?"

"...About now," finished Haruhi.

"DAD!" both Ai and Mako cried and leapt off their chairs, abandoning their half-eaten breakfast, before running over to hug Mr. Terada, who knelt down and pulled them both to him.

"I'll take that as a yes then," he chuckled as he was almost bowled over when the twin's slammed into him.

"Yeah, we missed you loads!" Mako cried. "Don't go on a trip that long again, okay?"

"You were gone for ages and ages," Mako complained. "Almost half a year. Why do you have to work for... who do work for again?"

Mr. Terada laughed and ruffled Mako's hair. "Same old Mako," he said. "You two have definitely grown since I last set eyes on you. Mako, you're nearly as tall as Ai now. Well done. Keep up that growth spurt and you might even overtake her."

"No! Never!" Ai declared. "I don't want to be the short one."

"I don't want to be the short one either," Mako complained.

"Ha," Mr. Terada chuckled. "It's going to be a constant race between you two as you grow older, isn't it. I wonder who will emerge victorious when the two of you finally stop growing."

"Me!" Ai and Mako both shouted at the same time.

Mr. Terada laughed again. He looked down into the faces of his two children, who he had been very sorry to leave behind when he went away for so long. It lifted his spirits as he looked from grinning face to grinning face. It was good to see them happy.

In fact, they both looked much happier than they should be, considering the circumstances. Mr. Terada glanced up at his wife questioningly, and she shook her head, telling him all that he needed to know with a simple gesture.

"Oh, I can't wait until Impmon gets back," Ai cried. "Then we'll all be like one big family again. All six of us together."

"Yeah," Mako nodded enthusiastically. "And you can play games with us and Impmon. Maybe we can even get some of the others to come over and we can all play together! This is going to be the best winter holiday ever! Once we get out of school anyway."

Mr. Terada bit his lip. Now that he was back, he didn't want to demolish the extreme happiness that seemed to be filling up both of the twins. But he knew that, sooner or later, the truth was going to get out. Ai and Mako were going to wonder why Impmon wasn't coming home. They'd get worried, and he or his wife would have to tell them where he was, and then both would be very angry indeed and demand why they weren't told sooner.

They had to get it over with, and quickly.

"What do you think we should get Impmon for Christmas?" Ai was saying.

"I don't know," Mako shrugged. "Maybe a bunch of paper. He likes burning things."

"Kids," Mr. Terada said softly, placing a hand on the shoulder of his daughter and the other on the shoulder of his son. "Please, don't get too carried away."

"But I thought you should do Christmas shopping early..."

"No, that's not what I meant," said Mr. Terada. "Don't get too carried away with excitement. Because there is something that you both have to know first."

Ai and Mako were both naturally naive, considering how young they were, but even they recognized the grimace of their father's face and the sombre tone of his voice which both meant he was about to say something they didn't want to hear.

"You're not going again soon are you?" Ai asked, almost physically drooping.

"No," said Mr. Terada. "But there's something your mother and I have to tell you."

Ai momentarily panicked, remembering what happened between Rika's parents. "Please, don't say you're splitting up!"

"No, nothing like that either," Mr. Terada said. "Let me finish, please." The twin's stared at him in terrified fascination as their father carefully considered his next choice of words before moving on. Finally, he said, "It's... about Impmon."

Ai and Mako glanced at each other nervously. "Impmon?" Mako asked. "What about him?"

Haruhi spoke up from the table, causing them to swing around and look at her. "I was going to tell you before your father walked in," she said. "But I wasn't sure how to break the news to you. But, I suppose the quickest way is the best way. The fact is... Impmon's gone."

Ai blinked. "We know he's gone. If he wasn't gone, he would be here."

"No," Haruhi sighed. "You misunderstand me. I mean... he's ... he's run away."

...

...

...

Silence.

It felt like the entire world had come crashing down around Ai and Mako, plummeting to the ground around them until they were surrounded by nothing by blackness. Their stomachs plummeted to their feet. Their throats clogged up. Their eyes were instantly moist as the words that they had least wanted to hear – their very worst fear – was suddenly laid out in front of them.

Impmon had run away. Again.

It felt like both of the twins had been punched right in the gut, at the bottom of their ribcages. Their mouths were now dry as bones, as if all the moisture in them was being redirected to their eyes.

Ai spoke first after a shocked silence that last over two minutes, during which time both of the twins had sunk to the floor. "Why?" she asked, hoarsely. "Why did he leave us again?"

"We were good, weren't we?" Mako added, equally croakily. "We didn't fight. We didn't argue. We shared everything. And he still left?"

"I'm afraid so," nodded Mr. Terada.

Ai spun around and glared at her mother. "Was it you?" she demanded angrily, her voice suddenly finding new strength as she looked for someone to blame. "Did you get rid of him? Did you make him leave us behind?"

"Yeah!" Mako agreed loudly. "You never liked Impmon! You always wanted him to go away!"

Haruhi winced under the accusations, knowing that, in all reality, she deserved them. Because Mako's angry shouts were true. She always had wanted him to leave. But now that he had gone, she didn't feel as satisfied as she thought she would. She didn't feel satisfied at all.

"Kids," said Mr. Terada, sternly. "Don't blame your mother. It was not her fault that Impmon decided to go. The three of us had a long talk yesterday night, before he and his motorbike left. He explained everything."

"Why?" Mako wailed. "Why did he leave us?"

"To protect you," said their father. "He explained the whole situation with this GranDracmon to me. He said that he was threatening to destroy this world if he didn't join him, so Impmon has gone in order to keep you safe. He's gone back to the Digital World. He says GranDracmon will leave you alone if he is nowhere near you."

"But we could have fought him off!" Ai insisted.

"Impmon didn't think so," said Mr. Terada. "That's why he left. I'm sorry, both of you."

Ai and Mako began to sob freely, not caring at all about who was watching them. Mr. Terada pulled them closely and gently rocked them back and forth as they buried their faces in his shirt and wept openly, both wracked with grief.

"He promised," Ai whispered, voice muffled by her dad's shirt. "He promised he wouldn't leave us."

"Sometimes, in order to protect someone, promises have to be broken," said Mr. Terada. "I don't like this any more than you do, believe me."

"None of us do," added Haruhi, though she wasn't sure if the twins heard her.

They remained like this for some time, a little family tableax as Ai and Mako bawled into their dad's shirt, while both parents watched sadly. This had not been the reunion that Mr. Terada had been looking for when he had come home from early leave. But, events had spiralled far beyond his control. The recent attack by GranDracmon was proof enough of that. Mr. Terada thought that Impmon had behaved very responsibly in leaving – showing a much higher level of care and emotion than he usually did.

Of course, he didn't tell the twins this. They wouldn't see it in the same light.

After a while, Mako finally found his voice again. "Why didn't you try and stop him?" he asked, so quietly he was barely heard over Ai's continued sobs.

"You know I couldn't have stopped him if I'd tried," said his father. "If worst came to worst and I tried to stop him by getting in the way, he would have just turned into Beelzemon and forced his way away. There was no changing his mind."

"But he didn't even say goodbye," Ai added.

"It would have been more difficult for all three of you if he had," said Haruhi.

Ai turned around to look at her mother with a tear-streaked face. "Why aren't you happy?" she asked. "You have never wanted Impmon around and now that he isn't, you're sad. Why?"

Haruhi sighed. "I suppose you could say I realised something yesterday. I'd never really seen the caring and devoted side to Impmon before. I'd always thought he was simply rude and determined to annoy me as much as possible. I think I also assumed that he didn't really have feelings at all, because he was made of data. I never took his feelings into account when I yelled at him. But when I saw that he did indeed have feelings and how much he truly cared for you two... I finally realised how cruel I had been to him. I hope that you two can forgive me."

Ai and Mako stared at their mum for a few seconds, before running over to _her_ and grabbing her legs in tight embraces, crying into her trouser legs. Haruhi, unable to bend down to comfort them, stroked their hair soothingly. It didn't do much good, but it made her feel slightly better.

"We're sorry," Mr. Terada said, getting to his feet. "This must have been the very last thing you wanted to hear. But always remember – this was not your fault. Nobody is to blame except GranDracmon and his minions."

"We know," Mako sniffed. "I know why he did it. I get it. But now, I'm so worried. Impmon's out there in the Digital World, all on his own. How's he going to protect himself? GranDracmon's still going to follow him, isn't he?"

"I'd like to say no," said Haruhi. "But I'm afraid it's a very real possibility, if everything I know about this Digimon is true. But Impmon is more than capable of looking after himself. And you know as well as I that he has powerful allies in the Digital World – far more powerful than anyone in this world. I'm sure he'll be fine."

"But what if he's not?" Mako insisted.

"You'll just have to believe," Mr. Terada replied. "Because, I'm afraid we have no way of knowing what Impmon is doing."

Ai took the purple D-Arc from her pocket and she examined it, along with her twin brother. The screen was completely unresponsive. There was no static, like Jeri's had been when she lost Leomon. It was just completely blank. This was the final nail in the coffin. It proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Impmon was gone.

The twins began to bawl anew.

Everyone jumped in surprise when the phone rang. The phone had been sitting innocently on the table throughout this whole conversation, but now it suddenly sprung to life. The Terada family stared at it as if it were some kind of dangerous disease, each one reluctant to answer it at a time like this.

Nevertheless, Haruhi picked it up after about five rings and answered it. "Hello? Who is it?" she asked.

"It's Jeri," said the person at the other end. "I know it's early, and I'm sorry. I didn't wake you up, did I?"

"No, we were just having breakfast," Haruhi said, which was partly truthful.

"Oh good," said Jeri. "Well, sorry to call, but I just want to check up on Impmon. I feel really worried about him considering everything that's going on. Can I speak to him?"

Haruhi sighed, paused for a few seconds to glance at the tear-stricken faces of her children. Fearing she was about to bring forth another round of tears from someone else, Haruhi said, "Jeri, there's something that you should know."

* * *

Jeri was almost as heartbroken as the twins when she heard the news of Impmon's departure. She'd gotten extremely close to the little purple imp, almost like a third Tamer to him. She didn't cry, although she came pretty close to it. Once she had put down the phone, she stared into space and not moved for several minutes. She was too shocked to move, or even think of moving.

Elecmon, who's big ears had caught the whole conversation despite it not being on loudspeaker, felt a little helpless right now. He wasn't entirely sure what he was supposed to do or say in a situation like this. He felt lost.

Eventually, he managed to say, "I'm sorry Jeri. I know how much you cared about him."

"Yeah," said Jeri, sadly. "I understand his reasons, but I would have liked to see him again, one last time, before he went back to the Digital World."

"If it's any consolation," said Elecmon. "I did think I heard a motorcycle outside during the night. Perhaps he did come and say goodbye to you before he left. And that's something, right."

"I suppose," Jeri sighed. "But now I can't help but worry about him. He's going to be in a whole lot of trouble soon. You know that GranDracmon is not going to leave him alone now that it appears he has made his decision. He's going to send his followers after him."

"I'm sure Impmon will be okay," said Elecmon. "Beelzemon is a tough nut to crack."

"But cracked he can be," pointed out Jeri. "And now he's on his own, with no back-up at all. What are we going to do?"

"I don't think there is anything we can do," said Elecmon. "His fate is out of our hands now."

Jeri frowned and then got to her feet. "No!" she cried. "I refuse to accept that! I didn't become a Tamer again so I could sit on the sidelines and watch as other people suffered." She grabbed the phone and quickly dialled in a number, pressing it to her ear as if it were a lifeline.

A couple of moments later and a sleepy voice responded. "Ugh, who is it? Guilmon, get off."

"Takato," Jeri said, in a firm voice designed to wake him up immediately. "It's Jeri. Get yourself out of bed and go to Ai and Mako's house. Bring Guilmon. Go!"

* * *

The tone of Jeri's voice as she made her phone calls called a Tamer gathering in record time. She made a quick call to Takato, Kazu, Kenta and Ryo, who all immediately stopped lounging around (except Ryo who had already been up) and dashed out of the house, getting changed on the run and grabbing something to eat on the way.

Ai and Mako were sitting in their room, both of them feeling depressed out of their minds, when a large shadow suddenly flew past their window. Fear gripped their hearts momentarily as they wondered if GranDracmon had sent a minion to kill them anyway, but when they ran to the window, they found it had been Cyberdramon, who had landed in the street outside.

Since Jeri hadn't told them about the meeting, they hurried outside and asked Ryo what was wrong and Ryo gave them the update of a meeting. Jeri and Elecmon were next to arrive, having been up earlier than the others. Kazu was the next to appear, riding precariously on Guardromon as he always did. Kenta and Takato showed up at roughly the same time, the latter with a panting Guilmon in tow and the former with MarineAngemon peeking out of his pocket.

Allowing Guilmon to get his breath back, Jeri said, "Alright. Now that we're all here, there is something you should all know."

"Hold up," said Kazu. "We're not all here. Where's Impmon? Shouldn't we wait for him?"

"No, Kazu," Jeri shook her head, glancing sadly at the twins, who both looked ready to sink to the floor again. "We _are_ all here." And, struggling to speak as she did so, she told them everything Haruhi had told her that morning.

"He what!" Takato shouted once Jeri had finished talking.

"Not so loud, Takato," Jeri reprimanded him.

"But why would he just leave us all behind?" Takato shook his head. "It doesn't make sense. He's one of us and that means that we're all supposed to work together. You know what they say – There's no 'I' in 'Team.'"

"I think Impmon was worried that if he stayed, there wouldn't be any letters in 'Team,'" said Ryo. "Or any team to assigned the letters to."

"Yeah, but still..." Takato mumbled. "We could have thought of something. We're the Tamers! We could have taken anything that Demon Lord from the Dark Ocean could throw at us and throw it right back."

"Takato," Ryo shook his head. "Being an idealist is great but it only gets you so far. Things don't always turn out well for us – especially considering Ogudomon. That Demon Lord managed to wipe out the entire city of Tokyo, and would probably have taken the whole population with it had we not been warned and evacuated it. And GranDracmon is another Demon Lord. Who's to say that he isn't even more powerful than Ogudomon? Who knows just how powerful his forces are? We have no idea if we could hold him off or not."

Takato groaned. "I suppose your right," he said.

"But Takato is right, in a way," said Kenta. "At least if we were all together, we would have a much better chance. But Impmon has no back-up now."

"I know," said Ryo. "And worst luck, GranDracmon is probably following his every move. Sorry to be a pessimist, but Impmon may be in some very serious trouble."

"Don't say that!" Ai cried, sniffing loudly and face scrunched up. "I can't stand it! Impmon's all alone and we're not there to help!"

"He took his motorbike with him," pointed out Kazu. "And I'm sure Impmon's got more sense than to fight a losing battle when he hasn't got anything to protect. If he can keep ahead of them long enough, he might be able to find a GranDracmon-proof area."

"That would be awfully convenient," said Guardromon. "As long as it was Nightmare-Soldier-proof too. But is there such a place that can repel the like of them?"

"Eh, that's not exactly what I meant, Guardromon," said Kazu. "I meant somewhere that he could be safe, where he could be protected by others or hide all the time."

"Oh," said the robot. "Fair enough."

"Kazu has a point," said Elecmon. "Impmon should be okay, if he stays ahead of those following him."

"Yes, but that is no guarantee, is it?" asked Jeri. "Impmon has to do things like sleep from time to time, and the only one watching him is going to be his bike. But the Nightmare Soldiers might not need sleep. I just can't help thinking that if we don't do something, Impmon's going to be toast before the week is over, at best."

The twins looked up at the older Tamer, nervously. "So, what are we supposed to do?" asked Mako.

"Go after him of course," said Guilmon, before Jeri even had the chance to open her mouth.

"Yes," Jeri nodded. "What Guilmon said."

"We can't just leave him, can we, Takatomon?" asked the red dinosaur. "He's our friend and friends are supposed to stick together, right?"

"Right," nodded Takato, raising his fist into the air with determination. "We may not have any idea what we're taking on, but we simply can't sit back and do nothing. We couldn't call ourselves Tamers if we did do that. I agree. We need to follow him."

"Yay!" Guilmon shouted. "Another adventure! It's been so long since our last one."

"You mean it?" Ai asked, walking over to Takato and Guilmon. "We're really going to go after Impmon."

"You bet we are," Takato nodded.

"And we won't give up until we find him," added Guilmon. The dinosaur jumped in surprise when Ai's arms were around his neck in a fierce hug.

"Thank you!" Ai cried. "We'll find him and help him out!"

"Now hold on," said Kazu, stopping the twin's celebration in its tracks. "While I'm all for a rescue mission, we gotta think this through. You gotta admit, Chumley, that our rescue mission to save Calumon was a half-baked disaster most of the time. And what are the odds that this one will turn out any different."

"That's quite insightful for you, Kazu," said Kenta.

Kazu shrugged. "I just don't want to have my bum torched by some Digimon for a hopeless case. We need a plan don't we? The Digital World is a big place and Impmon could be anywhere in it. How are we going to find him?"

"Oh, that's easy," said Jeri. "Ai and Mako can use their D-Arcs and the tracking function on it to point us in the right direction. We'll run into him eventually. The point is, we have to do what's right and protect him."

"Yeah!" nodded Ai and Mako. "We're going."

"There's also the possibility of recruiting some help," said Ryo. "We have allies in the Digital World now, where we didn't before. All the same, are you sure you want to go through with this? Impmon left because he wanted to protect you, and while I also want to go and help him out, if we do then his departure would have been partly pointless."

"The city will be safe," said Takato. "Along with everyone that lives here. But if we need to go into danger in order to help a friend and keep him safe, then so be it."

"Good," nodded Ryo, a slight smirk appearing on his features. "At least I now know that you're up for it. But Kazu's still right. We do need more of a plan. Perhaps we should go and see if we can find the Sovereigns first. If we warn them about the threat of GranDracmon, they may be able to do far more about it than we could."

"Good idea," nodded Kenta. "I'd feel a lot more comfortable if the Sovereigns were watching my back. Even Zhuqiaomon."

"We're really, really, really going to find Impmon?" asked Mako.

"Yep," nodded Jeri. "And we're going to find a way to make sure that he stays with us and that we all get back in one piece. You can count on it."

"So, when do we set off?" asked Ryo. "Before we do, we should..."

Ryo paused and frowned, staring over Takato's shoulder and down the street. The Tamers and the Digimon turned around and stared at the large, black van which had just come around the corner and was heading towards them at a slow pace. None of them moved – they knew who was in the van already. They were just wondering what he was doing here.

Sure enough, the van pulled to a halt and Yamaki stepped out. His usual sunglasses were still in place and he was still absent-mindedly flicking his lighter. He approached the Tamers with his usual business-like demeanour and looked out across the whole group.

"I take it that you all know what's happened," he said. "Considering the fact that you are all here, when I was expecting to run into the twins only."

"If you're talking about the fact that Impmon has run away," said Kazu. "Then, yes, we do know about it. We were just discussing what to do about it."

Yamaki nodded. "Well, that makes my job a lot easier. I was just coming here to deliver the bad news to the twins, but it seems that it has already been delivered."

"Wait," frowned Jeri. "How do _you_ know that Impmon has gone? I didn't call you and tell you this morning. Did Ai and Mako's parents call you last night, or something."

"No," Yamaki said. "I know about it from my own sources. After Impmon's last little unplanned trip into the Digital World, with his Tamers and Ryo," he glanced at the Legendary Tamer, who flushed slightly. "I decided that we needed to upgrade our system a little bit. Now, our machine at HYPNOS can not only detect movement from the Digital World to the Human World, but we can detect movement in the other direction too."

"Ah," said Jeri. "I suppose that's handy."

"Indeed," nodded Yamaki. "And last night, about four o'clock in the morning, we detected three life forms moving across the Digital Barrier and entering the Digital World. We were able to identify them too."

"Hold on," Elecmon piped up. "Three life-forms? Impmon's one and Behemoth is probably another, but who was the third?"

Yamaki smirked. "Well, at least my trip here wasn't totally a waste of time. Interestingly enough, the first of the life forms to cross to the Digital World was none other than Calumon."

"Calumon!" Takato, Jeri, Kazu, Kenta and Guilmon all cried at once.

"Oh great," Kenta sighed. "Not only are we going to have to find Impmon, but we need to go on a rescue mission to find Calumon. Again. He doesn't know how to stay out of trouble, does he?"

"No clue," MarineAngemon giggled from where he was floating beside Kenta's head, like a little shoulder-fairy from a cartoon show.

"Back up a few seconds there, Kitagawa," Yamako turned his gaze on the bespectacled Tamer. "Did you say you were going after him? You're planning on making another trip to the Digital World, completely out of the blue?"

"We've got no choice," Jeri insisted. "How are we supposed to stand around while Impmon's life is in danger, and now Calumon's too. They are both out friends and we're going to rescue them."

"Whether you like it or not," said Kazu, boldly. He cringed slightly when Yamaki turned and looked at him. His sunglasses still gave him a creepy look, since he was more difficult to read his expression.

Yamaki shook his head. "Somehow this doesn't surprise me at all. I was half expecting the twins to insist they were going to go and find him when I was on my way here. In fact I was even expecting them to have already gone. I suppose I should be thankful that all of you are going this time."

"And we'll do a much better job this time too," said Takato. "We won't get separated by data streams and we'll stay together as a group. No splitting up of any kind."

"Good to hear," said Yamaki. "However, since I _was_ expecting you to decide to leave, I have brought you something." Yamaki reached into his pocket and pulled out a device the looked very similar to most of them.

"Hey, isn't that the communicator we had from before?" asked Guilmon.

"Indeed it is," said Yamaki. "We've made a few modifications to it and we believe it should work at all times now. Of course, with the Digital World, we can't really be sure. We'll have to test it out in the field."

"Great," said Takato, catching it as Yamaki gave him custody of the device. "Thanks, Yamaki."

"Of course, before you go, you should all explain to your parents that you are leaving and why," said the blond, suited man. "I don't want there to be any sneaking off this time around."

"Oh, great," Kazu muttered. "Guardromon, if my mum locks me in my room, promise me that you'll bust me out, okay?"

"Of course, Kazu," said the robot. "Although I may do considerable damage to your bedroom wall in the process. Is that acceptable?"

"Small price to pay, I suppose," said Kazu.

"Alright," said Takato. "Let's all try and meet up by the portal within the next couple of hours. Then, we can get underway."

"Should we begin the construction of a second arc?" asked Yamaki.

Ryo shook his head. "There's no need," he replied. "Since our last trip, I now know a way that we can get back on our own. You should keep focusing all your time on finishing that portal and seeing if you can iron out the kinks in the design. We're still going to need to get our other friends back too."

"Alright," nodded Yamaki. "Now, always remember to stay in touch when you can, stay together and try not to argue with one another. You're going to need teamwork in the Digital World. I'll come to the portal to see you off."

"Okay," nodded Ryo. "Let's get moving."

The group broke up.

* * *

Ai and Mako walked back into their house. Despite the excitement they both felt at the idea of going on another adventure and the relief they felt at the idea of going to find Impmon and make sure he was okay, both of them felt a small amount of trepidation as well. Neither of them knew what they were going to say to their parents about this and both of them also knew that until they found their partner, they would have to rely on the others for protection.

It was a good thing that they both trusted everyone else.

They traipsed through the door and entered the kitchen, where both of their parents were sitting at the table and quietly talking. The twins didn't know what they were talking about and to be honest they didn't really care. They paused at the door, both glancing at one another, and silently asking if the other one wanted to go first. Neither of them wanted to break the news to them, particularly to their dad, who had, after all, only just got back.

Eventually, Ai was the one that walked forwards, with Mako trailing slightly behind. Ai walked over to Mr. Terada and pulled on his sleeve. "Um, dad?" she asked.

"Yes, sweetheart?" asked her father, as both he and Haruhi stopped their conversation. "What is it?"

"Well," Ai said slowly. "There's kinda something that we have to say. It's just... um... we... er..."

Mr. Terada held up a hand to indicate silence and Ai's stuttering ground to a halt. The father of the twins smiled kindly and said, "Let me take a guess. You want to tell me that the both of you want to go and try to find your partner. Am I right?"

Ai's mouth fell open, as did Mako's, in child-like disbelief. "But... how did you know?"

"To be honest," said Mr. Terada. "I've been expecting you to say that at some point today ever since we told you that he had gone in the first place. Your mother and I were just talking about it because we assumed that's what your gathering of friends outside would choose to do. It looks like I was right."

Haruhi nodded. "Both of you," she said gently. "I understand how distressed you are feeling right now. Really, I do. But have you stopped to consider everything. If everything I've heard about the Digital World is correct, then you need to be on guard at all times. Was there not an attack by a very large Digimon the last time you were there?"

"Yeah," nodded Mako reluctantly. "That MarineDevimon was pretty scary. But we still managed to beat him. And we'll be with all of the others and all of them can reach the big Mega forms that Beelzemon can. Takato and Guilmon can even change shape again after that if they really, really want to. We just have gotta do this."

Mr. Terada smiled. "It's hard to believe that the two of you are the same children I left behind when I went to work abroad. You've both matured so much since then. Most children your age would still be squabbling about the pointless. I am very proud of you both."

Ai and Mako grinned at each other, glowing in the praise.

"But I still don't like the idea of letting you go into danger," he said. "I'm sure you can understand that, can't you?"

"We can," nodded Mako. "Impmon has always protected us, so we have to do the same to him now. He needs us. Both of us. Together."

"I understand," nodded Mr. Terada. "I also understand that nothing I'm going to do or say is going to change your minds, is it?"

Ai and Mako shook their heads. "We've got a special mobile phone thingie," said Mako. "So we can call you sometimes to let you know we're okay."

"Much appreciated," smiled Mr. Terada. "What do you reckon, Haruhi? Shall we let them go?"

The twins fixed pleading expressions on their mothers face. Haruhi smiled gently and said, "if you had asked me that question last week, I would have never agreed to it," she mumbled. "But, I suppose they might even be safer there than here as long as they were with the others. And you're right. They have matured beyond almost all recognition. You should have heard what their teacher had to say about them on parent's day."

"Mum!" the twins complained in unison.

Haruhi chuckled. "And to think that I thought Impmon was a terrible influence. I can see now that my children could have had no better influence if we had searched for one."

"Praise indeed," said Mr. Terada. "So, what shall we do?"

"Against my better judgement," said Haruhi. "I say we let them go."

"Really!" the twins both shouted in unison, running forward and hugging their mother. "Thanks Mum! Thank you so much!"

Mr. Terada smiled. "Well, while I hate to break up the family again, I agree. It's about time we realised that the fact they are Tamers now is something we cannot control. Now, come on, you two. Let's get upstairs and pack you a few necessities. While you may not need to eat, you may need some other things instead. Then I'll take you in my car and we can head for the meeting place."

"Where is the meeting place?" asked Haruhi.

"In the middle of the park, beside Guilmon's old hut," said Ai. "Don't worry. We know the way."

"Come along then," said Mr. Terada. "Let's get moving, gang."

The twins rushed out of the kitchen and followed their dad upstairs.

* * *

The goodbyes of the other Tamers had varying different results. As usual, Takato's mother was extremely reluctant to let Takato head back to the Digital World, stating how worried she'd been the first time. But, when Takato pointed out how much more powerful they were now and how they had a way back without an arc, she relented, with a little assistance from Takato's Dad.

Ryo's parents were almost used to their child going off on little adventures, so they resignedly agreed to let him go without too much argument.

Now that's Jeri's family was much closer together than it had been before she left last time, Jeri was more hesitant to tell them, but she eventually managed it. Both her dad and her stepmother were a bit distraught at the prospect of Jeri going off to a world full of monsters, but Jeri was surprised at how little coercing they needed.

So was Kenta. He fully expected his parents to completely refuse to let him go. He had left a note last time, but this time he decided to tell them face to face. But they only had a small argument that lasted for about three minutes, before his parents later.

Kazu, on the other hand, ended up losing one of his bedroom walls. His Mum dragged him into his room and locked him in – she'd had the lock put their especially. Unfortunately, she had forgotten to take his D-Arc away, and Kazu quickly told Guardromon, who broke in with a Guardian Barrage that trashed Kazu's room and carried him out before Mrs. Shioda knew what was happening.

* * *

It took a reasonably short amount of time for everyone to gather in front of the hut that had once kept Guilmon hidden from the public eye. Ai and Mako led their parents through the park once they dropped off the car as close as they could get to the rendezvous point. Already there was Ryo, who had flown in on Cyberdramon, and Jeri and Takato, who didn't live that far away anyway. Also there was Yamaki and Janyu Wong.

"Mrs. Terada," observed Yamaki, nodding in the direction of the woman who had called him multiple time to yell at him about Impmon. "I take it you're not here to ask if you can join these kids on their quest."

"No," Haruhi shook her head. "I'm just here to see them off."

Yamaki raised an eyebrow, but otherwise, he made no comment.

Takato was crouching beside the grass and staring at something on the ground, nodding his head thoughtfully. "Yep," he nodded. "Impmon was definitely here. These marks in the grass were definitely made by Behemoth's tyres."

"But, Takato," Guilmon said, confused. "We already knew that Impmon was here. Why do we need more proof?"

"Oh yeah," Takato scratched the back of his head. "I forgot about that."

"You should save your tracking skills for when we actually get to the Digital World," chuckled Ryo. "After all, we probably have a long journey ahead of us. Not only does Impmon have a faster mode of transportation than we do, but Behemoth just doesn't seem to get tired. If he's riding his bike, which he probably is, we'll have a lot of ground to cover."

"Thanks for the positive thinking," Jeri said dryly.

"I'm just being realistic," said Ryo. "There is an upside though. Perhaps Calumon will slow him up a little bit. His antics might be just what we need to catch up."

"There is that," chuckled Takato.

"Why did Impmon take Calumon with him but not anybody else?" asked Guilmon. "I thought we were all his friends."

"Not sure, boy," Takato shrugged. "More than likely Impmon ran into Calumon while he was trying to sneak away and Calumon wouldn't leave him alone. You know that little guy. His mind is only ever off playing games when he's hungry."

"Like me?" Guilmon asked.

"No, Guilmon," Takato shook his head. "You're the other way around. You only ever have your mind off being hungry when you're playing games."

"Oh yeah," nodded Guilmon. His stomach growled, as if on cue. "Come to think of it, I think we could have packed more bread."

"Sorry Guilmon," said Elecmon. "But I think we may be in for a bit of a breadless future. Plus, you know we don't need to eat in the Digital World."

"But I'd miss the taste," Guilmon shrugged.

"Hello fellow adventurers," Guardromon called down as he came soaring in to land beside the others. "We have finally arrived. And I can see we're not last."

"I was kina hoping we would be," Kazu groaned. "I want to get underway now, before my Mum comes storming out her to yell at Guardromon for breaking me out of my room."

"That actually happened?" asked Jeri, stunned. "I thought you were just joking when you said that earlier."

"No, I was very serious," Kazu said. "And I was right. Guardromon's cool and all, but Mum just doesn't seem to treat him like a living being."

Haruhi winced, as she heard her own words from earlier partially re-iterated. Mr. Terada noticed and put a comforting arm around his wife's shoulders.

"So, where are Kenta and MarineAngemon?" asked Kazu. "Don't tell me Guardromon and I are going to have to go and blow _their_ room open as well."

"I'd rather you didn't," said Kenta, as he rounded the corner. "I happen to quite like my room."

"You wouldn't be able to tell the difference," Kazu said. "Either way, your room would be filled with trash."

"Hey!" Kenta scowled. MarineAngemon scowled as well, but it didn't look particularly threatening on his pixie face.

"Guys," said Ryo. "I don't think we're leaving a very good impression on Ai and Mako's parents. They are, after all, entrusting their children into our care."

"You need not worry," Jeri assured the two of them. "Ai and Mako are two of us. And we will stick to them like glue. They couldn't be in safer hands."

"We know," nodded Mr. Terada. Then, he and his wife knelt down so they were eye-level with their children. "Alright, remember this," said Mr. Terada. "Always, _always_ stay on guard. Even if you have to go and relieve yourselves, never let your guard down."

"Don't worry about that," called Elecmon. "You don't need to relieve yourself when in the Digital World. Just like you don't need to eat."

"Okay," Mr. Terada said, slowly. "But, my point is, be careful. At all times. And look after each other as well, alright."

"We will," nodded Ai and Mako.

"Whatever happens," said Haruhi. "Come back to us, okay?"

"Don't worry, Mum," Ai said. Ai and Mako gave one parent each a final hug, before swapping over and giving the other parent a final hug. Then, they moved off to join the other Tamers. They both felt like the odd ones out, considering they were the only ones without partners.

Everyone was surprised by what happened next. As the twins turned back to face their parents and wave goodbye, Cyberdramon moved over and stood squarely behind the children, tail swishing from side to side and teeth very much in evidence. He towered above them, but he was assuming some sort of protective stance.

He spoke to Mr and Mrs. Terada. "If anything tries to interfere with these two, I will personally tear them apart," he snarled.

Despite the threatening display of claws and gnashing teeth, both the Terada parents did feel reassured. Ryo smirked at his partner and said, "Why, Cybderdramon. I do believe you're going soft."

Cyberdramon growled and snapped his teeth in his partner's direction.

"Or perhaps not," Ryo chuckled, who was used to this sort of thing by now.

"Alright," said Yamaki, stepping forwards and addressing the group of seven Tamers and five Digimon. "If it is at all possible, I want each of you to send us a message via the communicator at least once every twenty-four hours. And remember, you are on your own out there. We can do little to help you when you are in trouble, so stay alert."

"In the meantime," Janyu went on. "We will continue to work on the portal. We estimate it is nearing its completion. Perhaps only a month or two more and we may finally have a portal that works."

"Awesome," Takato grinned. "But hopefully, we'll be back before then."

"Yes, but all the same," Janyu nodded. "Good luck to all of you."

"Thanks, Mister Wong," nodded Jeri.

"Let's not waste any more time, guys," said Ryo. "Impmon has a big headstart and we need to decide what we're going to do while we're there."

"I don't know if God really does exist or not," said Yamaki. "But if he does, may he watch over you. And since I know that Fanglongmon _does_ exist, may he watch over you too."

"We could do with some divine help right about now," said Jeri. "Oh well. Here goes nothing."

"Bye Mum. Bye Dad," the twins waved, as the group of twelve turned around and began to walk in single file through the doors of the little hut. Yamaki, Janyu, Haruhi and Mr. Terada watched them go, silently observing as they dropped out of sight and entered the tunnel that contained the portal. They listened and they heard twelve swishing sounds, which indicated that each of them had been whisked into an alternate reality.

The children and the Digimon were gone.

"Did we make the right choice?" asked Haruhi. "Allowing them to leave like that?"

"I don't know about right," said Mr. Terada. "But we didn't make the wrong choice. I'm sure of that."

"You ought not to worry," said Yamaki. "Those Tamers are about the most responsible and mature kids I've ever known, even if they don't act like it all the time."

"KAZU!" shouted a voice from down the lane.

"Oh lord," Yamaki flicked his lighter and massaged his head, before turning around to prevent Kazu's mother from doing something everyone would regret as she stormed towards them.

* * *

Well, it wasn't very action-packed and _was_ extremely dialogue driven, but it definitely was a scene-setter. Although, I should probably tell you that the Tamers won't have nearly as much writing-time as Impmon. Impmon's going to have far, far more problems than they have in the future.

Please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

This doesn't have much to do with the whole arc – it's more to give an idea of the timescale. Anyway, the A-Team and six invisible friends go to see Padmé giving a speech to support Senator Farr's bill to cease production of new clones, but not everything is as it seems.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 81 : Senate Murders... Or Not**


	81. Senate Murders Or Not

Hello everybody. I am actually feeling quite good about myself for no particular reason, possibly because I wrote a lot of this chapter today. I intended to write more yesterday, but I went indoor climbing and decided to give my fingers a break. Ah well, here's the beginning of a brand new arc, which will contain some epic space action, some epic Jedi action and some enormously epic action from the Digimon, and even a little something from the Tamers. It will also contain a brand new scenario I've never tried before, and a large amount of silliness once we reach the second half. That is, if I write it well.

Without further ado, I present Arc Nine of "Secret of the 327th."

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* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 81:- Senate Murders... Or Not**

* * *

Fighting on the battlefield was a key part of the war effort – that much was obvious. The clones, the Jedi and their allies were constantly battling against the Separatists, fighting and dying in their efforts to free the galaxy from their evil grip. On the whole it seemed to be working – the Separatists were being pushed back in many places. But the Separatists were still pushing back and they still had a large number of victories.

But that was just one of the key areas of the war. The other, and the less exciting one, it had to be said, was the proceedings of the Galactic Senate. The many Senators that came from Republic-aligned systems were always debating and making proposals about the course of action that they should take.

But, that was the main problem.

The Senate rarely seemed to be able to decide on how to do anything at the moment. The ever-lasting debates often turned into bickering, with different Senators with very different views clamouring for their opinions to be heard and pushing for their ideals to be realised. Many Senators were just trying to get something to benefit themselves – everyone knew that.

Padmé Amidala sighed as she sat in her office with a couple of other fellow Senators. Sometimes she wondered what had happened to the democracy she so loved. The war was clouding the judgement of many Senators and fear was motivating them into making decisions that were hasty and not thought through properly.

One such example was what was going on now.

Since the start of the war, the planet Kamino had been offered a seat on the Galactic Senate. The spot had been filled with an elderly female named Halle Burtoni. For a Kaminoan, she looked wizened and she seemed to be one for sarcasm, but she was also extremely influential. She seemed to have a knack for getting people to side with her unless they were _extremely_ opposed to her suggestions. All in all, she was a good politician.

But recently, Burtoni had made a proposal to the Senate. She had suggested that they give more funds to Kamino in order to allow the Kaminoans to produce many more clones, which would help the Republic to replace the many clones that they lost in the field and push back the Separatists even further.

While the idea seemed to be one that made sense, Padmé and her allies all firmly agreed that it was the wrong decision. The war was long and arduous enough as it was, and it was severely bankrupting the Republic already. If even more money was spent to gain more troops, then the Republic would plunge even deeper in debt and the fighting would only be prolonged, which would, again, require the Republic to give up even more money. It was a never-ending cycle.

Padmé glanced over at the people she was sharing the room with. Onaconda Farr, the Senator from Rodia, was seated nearby. Padmé was very fond of him – she had known him since she was a little girl. She even called him her Uncle Ono when she wanted to. And she admired him as a Senator. Once Burtoni had introduced her bill, Senator Farr had immediately responded with a bill of his own, proposing the exact opposite idea in order to reduce the number of clones being produced.

Farr had made a mistake in the past. He had briefly (for a day) joined up with the Separatists, due to the fact that his people had been starving at the time and the Separtists had offered him what he needed while the Republic sat back and debated about other things. But Padmé and, surprisingly, Jar Jar Binks had managed to defeat the Separatists stationed on Rodia, and on seeing how evil Nute Gunray was, Farr had switched back to the Republic.

Now, he seemed to be determined to make up for his mistake and was fighting hard against Burtoni's bill.

Besides from him and the ever-loyal C-3PO, who was currently serving drinks, there was also Onaconda's representative and aide, a female Rodian named Lolo Purs. And finally, there was the Senator of Chandrila, another human female called Mon Mothma. Padmé was grateful to have Mon Mothma on their side. She, like Burtoni, was a very influential figure, and people looked up to her, although her views were not quite as selfish as Burtoni's. She too wanted what was best for the Republic.

Padmé squared her shoulders slightly. Her heart was going a little faster than normal. The debate was reaching its climax and she was, in a few minutes, about to head out and give a speech to the entire Senate, in an effort to convince more Senators to join their side. It was always nerve-wracking, but this particular bill was extremely important. More so than usual.

"Are you feeling alright, Padmé?" Onaconda asked her. "You seem to be a little on edge."

"Of course I am, Uncle," Padmé said grimly. "Everything rests on this speech I am about to give. It's a make or break point right now. If it goes well, we could win the vote, but if I get it wrong..."

"You will not get it wrong, Padmé," Mon Mothma said comfortingly, taking a sip from her drink. "If there is one thing that I know about you, it's that you are an extremely skilful Senator. I think you are undervaluing your own skills."

"Thank you, Senator Mothma," Padmé smiled. "I'm just... a little nervous. That's all."

"You'll do fine," Mothma smiled back.

"She is right, Padmé," Onaconda agreed. "Not only do you have a winning personality, but you always stand up for what is right, and not what is easy or something that would govern your own interests. You hold a lot of sway over the Senate, because they all know of this. You will go out there and talk, and they will listen. You wait and see."

"I hope you're right, Uncle Ono," said Padmé. "I hope I do as good a job as you have been doing throughout the course of this bill."

"We all have faith in you, Padmé," said Lolo. "Don't be nervous. We're all behind you. We just need to add a few more people to that list and this bill will be ours. And there are many still undecided. I'm sure we'll pull this out."

"Well, the pressure is certainly intense," said Padmé. "But I will go out there and do my best."

"Senator Amidala," said a voice, and the Senator from Alderaan, Bail Organa, a kind and equally peace-loving man stepped around the door. Padmé was also grateful for his support, even though she had not needed to do any convincing at all to get him to join their cause. "They are ready for your speech now. It's time," he smiled at her.

"Alright," Padmé got to her feet. "Let's see if all of your kind words amount to anything," she said. As the others got up behind her, Padmé walked out the door and lead the little procession down the hallway, towards the podium she would be standing on to give her speech.

They moved quietly, each anticipating what was about to come in a different way. Padmé's nerves were increasing with every step she took, but she suppressed them under the professional air of a Senator she would have to give off if she wanted to sound convincing.

As Padmé went over what she was planning to say a final time (there would be no script for her to read from after all), her train of thought was interrupted by Lolo, who suddenly said, "Hey, what are they doing here?"

Padmé looked up and saw Lolo was staring down the corridor ahead. Padmé followed her gaze and started in surprise. Three Jedi were approaching them from the other end of the corridor. And one of them was her secret husband. And the other two were his student and best friend.

"Senator Amidala," Anakin nodded to her as he walked up, flanked by Ahsoka and Aayla.

"General Skywalker," Padmé replied. "General Secura and Commander Tano. What are you all doing here?"

"We just came to wish you well," said Ahsoka cheerfully. "We know all about the important decisions that will be going on today."

"And just so you know," said Anakin. "If we could give you a vote that counts, we would do. But of course, we have little say in Senate affairs."

"I see," said Padmé. "I take it you'll be staying to watch then?"

"Of course," nodded Aayla. "You probably won't see us, but we'll be there."

"Well, that adds a bit more pressure," Padmé chuckled.

"Don't think of it that way," Aayla shook her head. "We're here to give you support, so there's no need to feel like that just because we're here."

"Well, in that case, I appreciate it. Thank you, all three of you. However, if you'll excuse me, I really must get to my speech."

"Right," Anakin stepped aside. "Good luck, Senator." He cast a significant look into his wife's eyes, trying to send her a mental message conveying his love for her. She seemed to pick it up and smiled back, before proceeding down the corridor. The other Senators followed. Bail Organa was last to go, but before he did, he paused and addressed the three of them.

"Can we expect to see you all later?" he asked. "After the speech, we're having a little gathering in Senator Farr's chambers. We'd be honoured if you joined us."

"Okay," nodded Anakin. "We'll come along."

"We hope the bill goes well," nodded Aayla. Bail bowed his head in respect and followed the other Senators away, until the corridor was empty but for the Jedi.

And three other beings that were completely invisible to the eye.

"I never was one for politicians," said Terriermon quietly, from where he invisibly perched on Anakin's head. "I mean, back home, most of them seem to be either stupid and bumbling, or selfish and conniving, with a few exceptions. But they all seemed to be really nice."

"Just goes to show that you can't really apply a label to a group of people, doesn't it?" agreed Renamon, who was standing behind Aayla and had one invisible paw clamped firmly on the Twi'lek's shoulder.

"There are a number of Senators in this building who are indeed selfish and conniving," said Anakin. "And yet they still seem to be in office. How Senator Lott Dod managed to remain in office after he poisoned Padmé is beyond me."

"The Senate seems to have a set of its own rules," said Aayla. "It's a shame really. I applaud everything that Padmé is trying to do, and I am behind her. I would rather find peace with peace and not with a lightsaber. It's just unfortunate that there are so many Senators with the opposite opinion, which makes Padmé's job harder or even impossible."

"Do you think she'll do well in this speech she is about to give?" asked Lopmon, from her precarious position on Ahsoka's shoulder.

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "She'll do it. If anyone can, she can. Now come on. Let's go before any Senate Guards come and find three Jedi standing around and talking to thin air.

The group walked away. The invisible Renamon kept her paw firmly on Aayla's shoulder. She needed to if their plan was to work. All six of them were well aware of the fact that any Senator in this building could be the hidden Sith Lord – Darth Sidious. That would mean that he would be able to sense the three Digimon if they got too close, regardless of Renamon's perception filter. An yet the Digimon had insisted they come along. All three of them were taking an interest in the other aspects of the Republic.

That's why Terriermon, Renamon and Lopmon were all making direct contact with one of the Jedi. It made the job of the Jedi easier – they were all using their Force concealment abilities to hide the presence of the Digimon mentally, while Renamon did the job physically. That was also way Aayla, who was the most accomplished at this, had been charged with hiding Renamon, while Ahsoka, who was skilled too but had the least practice, had been given one of the bunnies. Anakin had just taken the spare bunny.

"It felt a little awkward though," chuckled Anakin as they moved. "Talking to a group of Senators like that, while one of the big secrets we're hiding from all of them is perched on my head."

"I'm like a little parasite you can't get rid of," chuckled Terriermon. "Excuse me while I suck out your brain."

Ahsoka and Aayla both snorted. "Maybe I should put that as my next paper-on-back prank," Ahsoka giggled. "My brains have been sucked out."

"Don't even think about it," Anakin growled.

* * *

It didn't take long for them to reach the eaves where most non-Senators stood to watch the proceedings. The Digimon were impressed with the giant Senate room, which they had a good view of from above. Rows and rows of metallic podiums that stretched out across the entire circular room, with one raised podium in the middle that contained Chancellor Palpatine and his aide, Mas Amedda.

Padmé was visible, because her podium was floating in mid-air, having detached from the wall and was hovering where all the Senate could easily see her. She had already started her speech, and the Digimon listened with interest.

"The creation of more warriors will not end this war," she was saying, her voice echoing slightly as her voice was played out of hidden speakers so the whole, giant room could hear her. "The financial costs alone will bankrupt and cripple the Republic. By adding more clones to the conflict, we are only escalating destruction, not winning the war. Yes, the clones have been doing valiantly so far, but no matter how many battles are won, more seem to crop up somewhere else. The Separatists are getting desperate. I'm sure that in the not too distant future, if not now, the Separatists will be open to negotiation, and would be willing to bringing an end to the war with a peaceful motion. Which is why we must vote for this resolution, to promote more diplomacy, and bring an end to this killing and hatred."

There was a scattering of applause as various Senators who were already supporting the bill clapped their hands together. Gradually, this applause grew in magnitude as various other Senators, who had taken a few moments to process what Padmé has said, joined in, until most of the room was clapping their hands together.

Yet, the Digimon noticed there was still a fair number of Senators whose hands remained firmly at their sides. Many of them were glaring at Senator Amidala, and the Digimon all felt slightly concerned for Padmé's safety. Fortunately, these people were very much in the minority, and, even though they were supposed to be being quiet, both the bunnies added their own clapping to the applause. Renamon took a moment to wrap her tail around Aayla's waist (causing the Twi'lek to giggle slightly as the ticklish fur brushed her skin, which was now blue again as the red dye had worn off a few days ago), before joining in the applause. The A-Team, of course, joined in too.

The Jedi had missed a large portion of it, due to the fact that they still had to reach their standing point, but they were seeing enough to know that it had been a success.

* * *

Padmé smiled, thankful that her speech was over. And she had gotten a far better result than she had expected. Perhaps her faith in democracy was not as misplaced as she had thought. She had expected most of the Senators to hold back their applause, fear of the Separatists driving them to rash decisions, but they seemed to be listening to her.

Good, perhaps the bill could be won after all.

She turned around, as her podium floated back to its slot in the wall. She turned and walked back out into the corridor, with the sounds of applause still going on behind her.

Padmé started slightly when she saw that somebody was already waiting for her in the corridor. A man was leaning against the wall beside the door she walked through. He was a gaunt Umbaran, named Senator Mee Deechi, from Umbara. Padmé suddenly felt very uncomfortable. Deechi was one of the strongest advocates for the bill to increase clone production, and there had always been something about him that unsettled her. Perhaps it was his creepy demeanour.

Deechi turned to look at her. "That was quite a moment, my dear," he said.

"Thank you, Senator Deechi," Padmé replied, beginning to walk away. Deechi began moving too, keeping pace with her. Padmé glanced across at him warily.

"Oh, it wasn't a compliment," he sneered. "You shouldn't make speeches like that. It's unpatriotic."

Padmé sniffed. "The only thing I find unpatriotic is your warmongering," she stated boldly, before picking up speed. Deechi stopped and watched her leave, a slight leer on his face. Fortunately for Padmé, a much friendlier face, in the form of Onaconda Farr, was waiting for her up ahead.

"A wonderful speech, Padmé," said Onaconda, folding his arms over his chest until his fingers touched the opposite shoulder and bowed, which was a sign of respect in Rodian culture, almost like a salute. "I think you had your audience riveted to your every word."

"Thank you, Uncle Ono," said Padmé, as the two of them began to walk back to the Rodian Senators quarters. Other Senators were starting to file out of their separate podiums and fill up the corridor again. "I only hope the rest of the Senate will be convinced to join our cause as a result."

"I'm sure they will, Padmé," Onaconda said, proudly. "The passion with which you spoke, and the complete belief you had in your own words would be enough to sway all but the most loyal of the opposing bill's supporters. Rest assured, my dear, you did an excellent job out there."

"We'll have to wait for the results of the vote to know for sure," said Padmé.

Onaconda chuckled. "Indeed," he said. "But, I think that was enough to swing the balance in our favour."

"I hope so," nodded Padmé. "Where's Lolo?" she asked.

"She went on ahead to my chambers to help prepare a few things. I think a few drinks and a little food are called for on an occasion like this. And I hear these Jedi friends of yours are coming along, so I thought it would be prudent to make sure we had enough."

* * *

"Well, as speeches go, it wasn't all that bad," said Terriermon. "And coming from me, that is saying something. Usually when Henry's dad is watching the Prime Minister of Japan giving an announcement on the television I switch off. And don't even get me started on Speech Day that these guys have to attend at the end of every school year. B-O-R-I-N-G boring."

"Is it genuinely boring?" Aayla glanced at Renamon. "Or does this have something to do with his short attention span and his inability to sit still?"

"No, it's boring," said Renamon. "Even Henry and I both agree that it would be better if we didn't have to attend. Strictly speaking, I don't have to, but since Rika does I thought it would be unfair to leave her there."

"It was interesting once though," pointed out Lopmon. "I still don't know how you and Impmon managed to rig the headmaster's podium so that when he spoke into the microphone a boxing glove shot out on a spring and hit him in the face."

"It was a masterpiece," grinned Terriermon. "Both Impmon and I agreed. And the best part was since we aren't his students, he couldn't do anything about it, beyond rage at us for a bit."

"I bet that livened up this Speech Day a bit," chuckled Ahsoka, as the three of them began to make their way down towards Senator Farr's chambers. "I can imagine how it would be boring though. I don't think I could manage it."

"You'd probably jump up and cut your way through the wall in order to escape after half an hour," chuckled Renamon, whose paw was back on Aayla's shoulder.

"Too true, too true," Ahsoka nodded. "Then again, I'd probably do something like that during anything this school does. It sounds so dull."

"Sometimes life has to be dull, Snips," said Anakin. "If it was exciting all the time, the excitement would wear off after a while, wouldn't it."

"And we wouldn't want that, would we?" Aayla agreed.

"Heck, no," Terriermon replied.

"Agreed," said Lopmon. "It would be like if everybody was perfect. There would be no point to life. Fortunately, nobody is perfect."

"Well, if nobody is perfect," Terriermon grinned. "Then I must be Nobody! YOWCH!"

"Momentai, Nobody," Renamon chuckled, as she he whacked her mate over the head with her free paw. "If you're perfect, you shouldn't be able to feel pain."

"Stop using my word, Rena!" Terriermon demanded?

"Did you hear someone?" Anakin shot a grin towards Aayla.

"What do you mean?" Aayla grinned back. "Nobody spoke."

"Nobody's riding on my Master's head," giggled Ahsoka.

"And since Momentai is Nobody's word," Lopmon added. "I guess I can claim custody of it. It's mine now. Momentai, Momentai, Momentai."

"I hate you all," said Nobody.

"Momentai," said Everybody. Literally.

After this, the three Digimon fell silent as they reached the hallways where there were numerous Senators going about their business, or having quiet discussions by the walls, no doubt trying to pick which side of the debate to side with. A few of them stopped and turned to stare as the three Jedi walked past, oblivious to the three other creatures that they could all see and yet none of them seemed to notice.

It took little time at all to reach the private room belonging to Onaconda Farr. "Alright guys," muttered Anakin, as he stood outside the door, whispering quietly so any neighbouring Senators wouldn't be able to hear him, but the people he was talking to would. "When we go in there, my old protocol droid, C-3PO will probably be in there and he'll see you, regardless of any perception filter."

"We're going to have to let go of you if we want to hide from him," said Renamon, quietly.

"I don't believe any of them are the Sith Lord," said Aayla. "Or Lady as the case may be. If they were, they would probably be pressing for the increase in clone production. I think we'll be alright."

"We'll keep an eye on them all," said Lopmon. "If any of them glance in our direction, we'll let you know."

"Okay," said Anakin. "Let's go in." He pushed the button which caused the doors to slide open.

As soon as they did, all three of the Digimon sprang from their positions and shot through the door, dashing silently across the room and leaping behind a set of chairs, which they could hide behind quite easily. Anakin had been right. C-3PO was there, as was Mon Mothma and Lolo Purs. But, the gold-coloured droid was far too slow in turning around and so, did not see them.

"Okay," whispered Terriermon. "So far so good."

"Ssh," Lopmon hissed.

"Oh, Master Anakin," C-3PO cried as the three Jedi walked into the room. "And Misses Aayla and Ahsoka. I'm so pleased to see you both. Bless my circuits, it has been such a long time."

"It's only been a couple of weeks, Threepio," chuckled Anakin. "But it's good to see you too. How've you been getting along."

"As well as can be expected, Master Anakin," said Threepio. "It's actually quite an honour to be serving under a Galactic Senator. And to think, both you and I came from such humble beginnings, my maker."

"Yeah," said Anakin, wryly. "Who'd have thought?"

"I certainly would not have," said Threepio. "Well, as you can see, Miss Padmé is not present at this time, but I am sure she will be along very shortly. I suppose I better introduce you to everyone else. I don't believe you have all met Senator Mon Mothma before."

Mon Mothma approached and held out her hand, quickly shaking it with the three Jedi. "I have heard many great things about you from Padmé," the Senator said. "And it's good to finally be able to meet you in person."

"The pleasure is all ours, Senator Mothma," said Aayla.

"Ah yes," Mothma said, looking at the Twi'lek. "Excuse me if I sound a little forward, Master Secura, but is it true what the Holonet News has been saying?"

"I don't follow to Holonet very much," said Aayla. "You'll have to enlighten me."

"It's saying that somehow, you and your Master, Quinlan Vos, managed to take on and defeat all of the Dark Acolytes and defeat them all with only the aid of a few friendly Bounty Hunters, and only Asajj Ventress managed to escape," Mon Mothma replied.

"Ah. That," said Aayla. "Well, we did also have a bit of help from the slaves we liberated from their compound, but... I suppose, yes we did," she completely and utterly lied, feeling a surge of guilt as the massive amount of credit which belonged to the Digimon was not given to them. She kept a straight face all the same. Once this war was over, she was going to make sure the Digimon got all the credit they deserved, and there was a considerable amount of it.

Mon Mothma chuckled. "Then I guess that new nickname you've been given by the public is well deserved."

Aayla frowned. "Nickname?" she asked, warily.

"The general public have started referring to you as the Heroine With No Fear," Mon Mothma replied.

Aayla started. "They have?" she asked. "Oh dear."

Anakin sniggered. "You shouldn't be so surprised, Aayla. Remember when we got back from Behpour ages ago? The Chancellor said if you kept up your heroic feats, people were going to start calling you that. And you've kept up your heroic feats."

Ahsoka humphed and folded her eyes. "Great," she muttered. "Now I'm stuck working with both the Hero and the Heroine With No Fear, and I'm stuck as just plain, old Snips."

"Don't worry, Ahsoka," said Anakin. "You'll get there. Eventually." He chuckled when Ahsoka swatted him on the arm.

"And who are you, may I ask?" Aayla asked the other person in the room.

"Representative Lolo Purs," said the Rodian girl. "I'm Senator Farr's aide. It is a pleasure to meet you, Jedi."

"Likewise," said Aayla.

Before any of them could go on, the door opened behind the three Jedi. All eyes in the room turned as Padmé, Onaconda and Bail Organa, who had caught up with them outside, entered the room.

"Aha," Anakin grinned at the sight of his wife. "The woman of the hour. That was a great speech, Padmé."

"Thank you," Padmé smiled warmly. "The compliment is most gratifying, General Skywalker."

"Oh, come on, Padmé," Anakin said. "We're not on the battlefield, you know. You can call me Anakin instead of being all forming."

Padmé chuckled. "Sorry, Anakin. I guess I still have a bit of a formal air about me."

Onaconda chuckled. "She always did have a habit of fully engaging in character before giving her speeches, almost like an actor preparing for a play. And yet, it paid off. Does everyone else agree that our girl shone out there today?"

"Definitely," said Bail. "There is no doubt."

"Oh, stop it, all of you," Padmé said good-naturedly. "I'm afraid that you're going to flatten me under all this praise. How about we have something to drink? My throat is a little dry. Threepio, could you get the drinks?"

"Yes, Mistress," Threepio replied and wandered over to the table, where there was a tray with a bottle of some alcoholic beverage and several glasses lying in wait. The three Digimon, who were hiding nearby, ducked out of sight as the gold-plated droid approached, but Threepio didn't notice.

"Can we tempt you into joining us, Master Jedi?" asked Bail to the three members of the A-Team.

"No thanks," said Anakin. "We're not much for alcohol, and Ahsoka's too young for it anyway."

"I am fifteen now though," Ahsoka chuckled, "So I'm getting better."

"All the same," said Aayla. "The smallest amount of alcohol can cloud our senses. We'll pass, if that's okay?"

"Of course," said Onaconda, as all the Senators picked up a glass and Mon Mothma began pouring the drink, which appeared to be a wine of some kind. "But, the rest of us will-"

The Rodian Senator was cut off as the door opened again. They all turned around to see a very tall being enter the room, and it wasn't just because she had such a long neck, which ridiculously long and thin and seemed to defy the laws of physics. She was a Kaminoan, or to be precise, Senator Burtoni – the leader of the opposing bill.

The elderly Kaminoan took in the gathering before her and, due to the fact she was organic, completely failed to take in the three shapes hiding behind the chairs at the other side of the room. "Oh dear," she said, a little snidely, after a few moments. "Am I interrupting something?"

"As a matter of fact, you are, Senator Burtoni," said Padmé. "This is not your chamber and we are having a private meeting. It does not concern you."

"Oh, but I'm afraid it does," said Burtoni. "I simply wished to come and give my congratulations to Senator Amidala on such an inspiring speech earlier." Nobody was taken in by this, particular since the Kaminoan's voice was dripping with sarcasm.

"She was just expressing our views, Senator Burtoni," said Bail Organa, firmly. "As you have expressed your own in your bid earlier today. Yet, you did not find us coming to your chambers afterwards in an attempt to hassle you, as this so blatantly is. I suggest you leave now."

"Tut, tut, Senator Organa," Burtoni smirked. "That's hardly what you would call nice, is it?"

"Please," Mon Mothma stepped between Burtoni and everyone else. "Let there be no fighting amongst ourselves, verbally or otherwise."

"It's funny," Burtoni said, noticeably not laughing, "But were it not for the fact you have three Jedi accompanying you, I would have said that you were planning some kind of Separatist conspiracy."

"Watch it," growled Anakin. "Throwing around false accusations can get you into serious trouble, Senator. Kaminoan or not."

"I don't like this woman, already," Ahsoka whispered to Aayla.

"What are your views, Jedi?" asked Burtoni. "What are your views, really? As veterans on the battlefield, surely you must understand the need for more clone troopers to fight against the Separatists."

"Indeed, we do see your point of view," said Aayla. "But at the same time, we observe the other side of the argument and support it more than yours. Our primary role as Jedi is not to be a "veteran on the battlefield" as you put it, but as a peacekeeper. We fight only when we must. If a solution can be devised and executed with needed to lift a lightsaber, that is what we do. We agree with Senator Amidala."

"Well said," Bail nodded approvingly.

"Thank you," said Aayla.

"Maybe you should go out there and give a speech to the Senate," chuckled Onaconda.

"I'd rather not," said Aayla. "I don't particularly like attracting attention to myself. Although, for some reason, I seem to be unable to avoid doing just that these days."

"But, surely," Burtoni insisted. "You must see that Senator Amidala and these other's ideals cannot come to pass. Negotiating with the Separatists will never happen. They are far too proud and greedy for such a thing."

"Oh, you're one to talk about being greedy," Ahsoka snorted.

"And what do you of such things, young Padawan?" the Kaminoan asked.

"Not much," admitted Ahsoka, "But I know enough to know that producing more clones will mean that the Kaminoans will gain more money and, by extension, so will you. The longer this war keeps going, the wealthier you become. Am I right or am I right?"

"Excellent observation, young one," said Padmé. "And I agree with you on it."

Burtoni scoffed. "Please. My only thought is for the safety of the Republic."

"And you're retirement plan," Ahsoka smirked.

Burtoni's eyes flared, the black pools and white irises widening. "How dare you, you little upstart!"

"Excuse me," said Anakin. "That is my Padawan you are yelling at. Take up any grievances you have with her up with me."

Whilst this argument with Senator Burtoni was going on, the three Digimon were barely paying attention to it. They had their eyes set on something else, something which the three Jedi, during the midst of the debate, had not noticed. But, since they had been on the lookout for suspicious activity from any of the people in the room, they had.

It was definitely suspicious behaviour. But not the kind they'd been expecting.

Renamon had noticed it first and Terriermon and Lopmon had both noticed it as a result due to their mental link. But Representative Lolo Purs was behaving rather oddly. She seemed to be barely paying attention to the conversation, but she wasn't looking their way either. She seemed to be taking alternate glances at either the three Jedi, the bottle of wine (or whatever it was they were drinking) that was being held be C-3PO on his tray and the glass of the same stuff in Onaconda Farr's green hand.

The glancing seemed to be random, as in there was no particular order to which of the three she glanced at. But there was something else too. The Rodian's hand, the one not holding her drink, seemed to be hovering around the vicinity of one of the pockets of her white robe. It kept slipping inside and grasping something, before being pulled out and then put back in again. The Digimon all doubted that Lolo even realised she was doing it.

What was she doing? They stared at her intently, determined to find out.

"Senator Burtoni," said Onaconda. "I think this has gone far enough. You may be a Senator, but you are not allowed to barge into someone else's chambers and begin a debate without invitation. So, I would like to ask you to leave now, if you would be so kind. I am sure we would all like to continue our private meeting."

With that said, the Rodian Senator began to raise his glass of liquid to his protruding lips.

It came to Renamon in a flash.

_AAYLA! _She shouted mentally, so loud that the Twi'lek jumped in surprise at the sudden outburst. _DON'T LET HIM DRINK FROM THAT GLASS!_

Such was the urgency in Renamon's tone that the Twi'lek Jedi didn't pause to ask why. Instinct took over and her hand lashed out in Onaconda's direction. The glass was yanked right out the Rodian's hand as Aayla grabbed it with the Force and it sailed into Aayla's own hand. The liquid inside it didn't make it and sloshed over the floor, as well as Aayla's hand.

The Senators and the other Jedi all blinked in surprise. "My," Onaconda said. "Master Jedi, if you wanted a drink that badly, you need only ask."

"What was that for, Aayla?" asked Anakin.

_Yes, _Aayla said. _I'd quite like to know the answer to that question myself._

Renamon didn't have time to give her words, so she did the same thing Aayla had done on Boz Pity, enclosing the information in a bubble and pulsing it in Aayla's direction. The Twi'lek picked up the packet instantly and suddenly, she knew the whole story.

She grimaced, knowing she was about to receive the credit for something she didn't do. Again.

"I have reason to believe," the Twi'lek addressed the room, "That there has been some... underhanded activity that has occurred in this room recently."

The Senators all looked at each other in confusion, while both Ahsoka and Anakin looked nonplussed. None of them seemed to have a clue what Aayla meant. Aayla hadn't expected them to, but now she turned to Representative Lolo, who was fidgeting a little nervously, her protuberant eyes darting back and forth as if searching for an escape route.

"Representative Lolo," said Aayla, innocently. "What's that you have in your pocket?"

"M-my pocket?" Lolo croaked, her fidgeting increasing as everyone turned to look at her. "N-nothing. My pockets are empty. Why? What is this about?"

"Okay," said Ahsoka. "Now I am definitely sensing that somebody is lying."

"As am I," said Anakin, his gaze hardening as both he and Ahsoka stepped up beside Aayla and gave the twitching Rodian a double glare.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" Lolo asked.

"I think you know why," said Aayla. She extended the arm that wasn't holding the glass that had once been full of liquid and held the palm in the direction of Lolo's pocket. Then she flipped her hand over so it was palm up and her fingers rose. A small jar of something began to float out of the Rodian's pocket. Lolo made a grab for it, in a vain attempt to conceal it, even though it would do no good now, but the jar dodged aside in mid-air, evading her grasp and then zoomed into Aayla's outstretched hand.

Aayla lifted it up and inspected the label. It told her everything she needed to know.

Aayla turned around and showed the jar to all the other Senators. "Senator Burtoni," she asked the tall Kaminoan who was still in the room. "Do you recognise this little concoction?" she tossed the jar towards the Kaminoan who caught it in one, three-fingered hand and lifted it up to her eyes, lowering her head as she did so.

"Why yes," she said, after a moment. "I know what this is. We Kaminoans don't just make clones, you see. We make many other war-related products. This brew was developed by our scientists. It's a chemical designed specifically to kill Rodians if ingested, but not anybody else." Burtoni gave Lolo a glare. "How did you get your hands on this, Lolo?"

"I... I..." Lolo floundered.

Aayla turned to Senator Farr (she knew Burtoni was completely innocent in this affair. She'd be able to tell if she was lying). "Am I correct in assuming that Lolo prepared the drinks for all of you today?" she asked.

"Y... Yes," said Onaconda, who had also realised what was going on and was scarcely able to believe it. "She did. Was... was that chemical... in our drinks?"

"Yes," nodded Aayla, turning back to Lolo. "And since you don't look like the type to commit suicide, Lolo, I can only assume that you were seeking to murder Senator Farr."

Lolo blanched in horror, but she knew the jig was up. She attempted to bolt for the door, but Ahsoka moved like lightning, somersaulting backwards and right over Senator Burtoni's head, to land in front of the door, drawing her lightsaber and blocking Lolo's escape route. Lolo turned around, but found Anakin was already there, with his own blade activated and a grimace on his face.

"Representative Lolo Purs," he said. "I am placing you under arrest for attempting to murder a fellow member of the Senate. You are in some serious trouble, young lady."

All the Senators, with the exception of Burtoni, were staring at Lolo in shock, as Anakin grabbed her and pulled her arms behind her back, holding them there with his own hands because he didn't have any binders on him.

"Poison?" Padmé whispered in horror. "Lolo tried to poison Ono?"

"How can this be?" Bail agreed. "Lolo, why would you do such a thing? Why would try and kill your own mentor?"

Lolo, now that she was caught, knew that pretence would get her nowhere. She scowled at Bail, as well as the other Senators and Aayla, and replied, "Why do you think, Bail? Is it not obvious? He betrayed me and all my people, by joining up with the Separatists."

Onaconda looked stung and Padmé scowled. "Lolo!" she cried. "That was a mistake, which Uncle Ono freely admits to. And he rejoined the Republic almost straight away."

"That is no excuse," Lolo hissed angrily. "He brought war to my planet by allowing that slime, Nute Gunray, to set foot on it. He is not fit to lead us all. He doesn't deserve a place in the Galactic Senate."

"But, Lolo," Onaconda found his voice again. "I have said many times that I am sorry. So terribly sorry for the awful mistake I made. And I have been doing everything in my power to make up for that mistake ever since."

"That's not good enough," Lolo sneered. "You are a week leader, Onaconda Farr. We need someone who is strong to stand up for Rodia in this war, not somebody like you who throws the towel in with the Separatists when things get too difficult."

"I'd say," said Aayla, gaining the attention of everyone in the room. "That Senator Farr is stronger than you'll ever be. At least he doesn't resort to murder to get what he thinks is right. He uses fair means. If anyone has betrayed Rodia, it's you Lolo."

"Again, very aptly put," said Bail with distaste. "And to think we have all shown you nothing but friendship."

"You may have forgotten his mistakes," Lolo snarled. "But I have not."

"Well then," said Anakin. "It's a good thing you got caught. You're not going to be committing murder anytime soon. In fact, you won't be doing much of anything in the future, beyond sitting in a cell."

"And I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for that meddling Twi'lek," Lolo growled.

_Whoa, now that was weird,_ said Terriermon.

"Come on, Snips," said Anakin. "Let's take this one to the Senate Guards. They'll be able to deal with you."

"Right behind you, Skyguy," nodded Ahsoka, and the two of them left the room, leaving behind a room of shocked and stricken Senators, one Jedi and three invisible Digimon.

Mon Mothma coughed and placed her glass back on Threepio's tray. "I know the chemical in this only affects Rodians," she said. "But all the same, I think I'll pass."

"Agreed," nodded Padmé, as she and Bail placed their drinks on the tray too. "I'm so sorry, Uncle Ono."

"She... she was my most trusted assistant," Onaconda whispered, shocked to the core and staring at the puddle of liquid on the floor and the glass still in Aayla's hand, which would have killed him were it not for Aayla's timely intervention, thanks to Renamon. "How could she do this? Was my mistake... really unforgivable?"

"Of course not, Onaconda," Mon Mothma declared. "Everyone makes mistakes from time to time. But at least you realised it was a mistake and did not stay with the Separatists. And your actions to help promote peace have been just about second to none. You're an inspiration to us all. Don't let the beliefs of one person make you think any different."

"I ... I suppose," Onaconda nodded. The Rodian then turned to Aayla and said, "And as for you, Master Secura, I owe you my life. I would be dead now if you had not spotted what Lolo was up to. Am I in your debt?"

"It was my pleasure," said Aayla, leaving out the fact that while she had prevented it, she had not noticed it. "I could hardly stand by and let her poison you, could I?"

"Nevertheless," said Padmé. "We are all indebted to you. You saved one of my oldest and dearest friends. Thank you, Heroine With No Fear."

"Oh don't you start," chuckled Aayla. "I am not that good."

"I beg to differ," said Onaconda. "I would not be here now were it not for you. If there is anything I can do for you..."

"Let me stop you there, Senator," said Aayla. "A Jedi does not seek rewards, and there is no need to offer me anything. I am content merely in the knowledge that I could help."

"I know what we just went through is extremely distressing," said Bail. "And I sympathise. But we must not let Lolo's act of treachery distract us from this bill."

"Yes," nodded Onaconda. "You are right, Senator Organa. Let us continue with our meeting, while I try and recover from my shock. Senator Burtoni, I..." Onaconda blinked when he saw the Kaminoan had left the room and he hadn't noticed. "Never mind."

Before any further proceedings could take place, Aayla's holoprojector rang, the little device on her belt bleeping quietly. Aayla glanced down at it and said, "Excuse me," before unhooking it from her belt and activating it. The hologram it depicted belonged the Master Yoda himself.

"Master Yoda," said Aayla. "A surprise indeed. And, if I were to take a guess, something bad has happened somewhere in the galaxy."

Yoda nodded. "Correct, you would be, Knight Secura," the little guy said. "Sprung up out nowhere, a serious situation has. More extravagant, the Separatists are being, with their attacks."

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "I'm aware of this. And I suppose I need to go and see if I can curb this situation before it gets out of hand. Which system is it this time?"

"Hmm," Yoda sighed. "Been through many tribulations, this planet had, in the past. Both in the past and more recently. Invaded once again, the Naboo system has been."

"What?" Padmé suddenly cried in horror at the mention of her home planet. Yoda turned around to look at her shocked face.

"Ah, Senator Amidala," he said. "Greetings. Apologise, I do, for having to deliver this message to you. But true, it is. Received a distress call, the Council did, from Queen Neyutnee of Naboo. Told us, she did, of a large invasion force that has set up a blockade around their planet once again. Terrified, she was, but still calm."

"Is she okay?" Padmé asked earnestly.

"As of yet, still fine, she is," Yoda replied, with an air of foreboding in his tone. "Set down in the swamplands, the droid armies have. Advancing on cities such as Theed, they are not. But not long, it will be, before that happens."

"Not again," Padmé slumped, pressing her hand to her forehead. "It's only been twelve years since the last time Naboo was invaded, and the entire planet was scarred from that attack. We can't go through another invasion like that."

"It'll be okay, Padmé," said Bail. "The Jedi will see that you're planet remains free before they can get a hold, right Master Secura?"

"Yes, but that's not all," said Aayla. "If I were to guess, and if I know anything about the invasion of Naboo from twelve years ago, then there is a reason that they aren't attacking the cities yet, and have landed in the swamplands."

Padmé's eyes widened in horror as she realised what Aayla was getting at. "Oh no!" she cried. "They're trying to take out the Gungans first, before they attack the cities. The Gungans have the bigger army and are more capable of defending themselves, so they're going after them first!"

"Came to that conclusion too, the Council did," said Yoda, gravely.

"Then that means..." Padmé gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. "Oh no! Jar Jar! He's staying in Gunga City with his fellow Gungans right now. He could be in trouble too!"

"There is no time to lose," said Aayla. "What are my orders, Master Yoda?"

"Go to Naboo, you and the rest of the A-Team shall," said Yoda. "Take all your forces with you, you shall," he added, with emphasis on 'all.' Aayla understood that he meant that the Digimon should go too. "Company, you will have, once you get there. Closer to system, Master Fisto was, and heading there now, he is. Attempt to break through the blockade, he will and join him, you must, if he has not succeeded when you arrive."

"And then we descend to the surface and attempt to neutralise the droid threat?" asked Aayla.

"Exactly," nodded Yoda.

"This may be tricky," said Aayla. "Especially if they've already gotten underwater by the time we get there. It's a good thing Kit will be with us, since he can breathe underwater. Does he have his battalion of clone SCUBA troopers with him?"

Yoda nodded. "Yes, have them with him, he does. Apologise for my abruptness, I do, but leave immediately, you must, Knight Secura. Fear Master Fisto will need back-up, I do."

Aayla nodded. "I will leave straight away." And she shut off her holoprojector and clipped it back on her belt. She glanced sideways at Padmé, who was trembling with anxiety and frustration. Aayla quickly moved over and placed her hands on Padmé's shoulders. "Don't worry, Senator," she said soothingly. "Nothing bad will come to your planet or to your friend, Jar Jar, if I have anything to say about it."

"Thank you, Knight Secura," Padmé nodded. "You better go."

"Good luck with the bill," Aayla shouted as she headed towards the door. Anakin and Ahsoka reappeared just as she reached it.

"Aayla," said Anakin. "What's..." He yelled indignantly as Aayla grabbed both him and Ahsoka by the shoulders and spun them around, pushing the, back into the corridor with a declaration of, "I'll explain on the way, but we've received some urgent orders. Let's go."

Upon hearing that, Anakin and Ahsoka didn't protest any further and followed Aayla at a run as they hared through the corridors.

Before the Senators could say anything, they felt a gust of wind from behind them and turned around to find that one of the windows was wide open. Onaconda frowned. "That's odd," he said. "I'm sure that wasn't open a minute ago."

* * *

"This is about the coolest exit we've ever made!" Terriermon shouted as he and Lopmon were perched on each of Renamon's shoulders as the fox moved along. And how was she moving? Well, to answer that question:- she was sliding down the domed roof of the Senate Building on her back paws, as if she was some kind of surfer or snowboarder, except without the board. The three of them had bailed right out of the window, because they knew they probably wouldn't get through the door without C-3PO spotting them.

"You would say that," Renamon called up to him. "But we're going to have to get serious again. You heard what Master Yoda said in there."

"Yeah, I know," said Terriermon. "But this is still pretty damn awesome."

"I have to agree with Terriermon," Lopmon laughed. "Watch out Renamon. Here comes the big drop."

"I'm ready for it," Renamon smirked as they reached the lip of the dome. Just as they did, she sprang right off the edge, tucking her legs up to her chest and folding her arms around them until she became a furry, spinning cannonball. The two bunnies continued to grip her shoulders in order to stay under her perception filter, and got a real rollercoaster ride for their trouble. Not that they minded. It was pretty exciting, even for Lopmon.

Renamon whipped out of her freefall and landed neatly on the landing platform below the rim of the roof, not in the least bit put out by her fall or dizzy from the spinning. Unfortunately, this was not the landing platform she needed to be on, so Renamon didn't stop moving for longer than a second.

With Terriermon and Lopmon still riding her shoulders, Renamon dropped onto all fours, as she still did when she really needed to cut loose and pick up some speed, like now. She bounded across the landing platform and sprang off the edge, rebounding off a large pole and landing smoothly on another landing platform, front paws first. She continued her four-paw dash right across it and over it, flipping and sprinting as she headed for her destination in a display of impeccable acrobatics.

She did this headlong dash across three more landing platforms before she reached the one she was after. She continued to run across it, towards a bright yellow speeder. The colour made it easily identifiable as Anakin's who seemed to paint most of his personal vehicles yellow.

At the exact same time that Renamon bounded onto the correct platform, the doors from the Senate Building burst open and the three Jedi surged outwards, also running towards the speeder. The six of them converged on it, reaching it at the exact same time. Anakin wall-vaulted into the driver's seat and Aayla sprang into the passenger side, while Ahsoka, Renamon and her charges flipped into the back.

Quick as a flash, Anakin started up the speeder and took off, whooshing through the sky as they made towards the Jedi Temple with all speed.

"Poodoo," Anakin muttered. "Why does Naboo seem to get into trouble so much. First the Trade Federation, then the Blue Shadow Virus, then Kul Teska's weapon and now this. That planet deserves longer breaks."

"And it never seems to get them," remarked Ahsoka.

"Hopefully we'll be able to sort things out before it gets really nasty for the inhabitants," said Aayla. "But this may be quite a difficult mission to pull off, in more ways than one."

"They're _always_ difficult," said Terriermon. "Even the ones that are supposed to be simple suddenly change and become extremely hard. I wonder what we've got to look forward to on this mission."

"Asides from having to probably fight underwater," said Renamon. "I fail to see how we can possibly pull that one off. There are no Modify Cards that will give us gills as far as I'm aware. More's the pity."

"Yes, and that's not all," said Aayla. "We've got a very big problem indeed if things get too close to Gunga City. Senator Amidala said that Representative Jar Jar Binks was there now, and he's a member of the Senate. I have absolutely no idea how we're going to keep you a secret from him if the worst comes to the worst."

"Well, is revealing the secret to Jar Jar such as bad thing?" asked Anakin. "I mean, he's definitely not a traitor or a Sith Lord."

Ahsoka actually giggled. "Jar Jar Binks the Sith Lord. There's a weird image."

"That may be true, Anakin," said Aayla. "But do you think Jar Jar can be trusted with such a big secret. He's not exactly the best at keeping them, is he?"

"Good point," said Anakin. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Right now, let's focus on picking up the Tamers and going to help Master Fisto with that blockade."

I haven't been in a space battle for so long now!" Terriermon grinned maliciously. "This is going to be so epic. I'm looking forward to it. And as for battling underwater, I welcome the challenge. Bring it on, Naboo. Bring it on."

* * *

Well done to White Keyblade Oathkeeper, who correctly guessed that the planet they would be visiting is Naboo. Originally it was going to be Glee Anselm when I made out the plan, but I realised that I really wanted to include Jar Jar Binks in a prominent role at some point, because I really like the silly goof, so I moved it to the swamps of Naboo, which would work just as well for what I had in mind.

As for this chapter, it didn't really serve a prominent role in the story, but it did set the scene. The little interaction between Padmé and Deechi was completely unimportant, but it was in the episode "Senate Murders" so I put it in just to show that while many things have changed, not everything is completely and utterly different just yet.

As for Senator Farr, his survival is not particularly significant either, but I quite like him. Next to Chuchi, he is my favourite Senator, and I was rather annoyed that they killed him off. But since I'm the author of this story, I decided to let him live. And yes, I am aware that Farr doesn't die for some time (not until Ahsoka gets her older look), but I planned this before the Clone Wars made it like that by mucking up the timeline so I decided to be stubborn and not change it.

I'm going to watch Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner now.

* * *

Next time...

Big space battle coming up. The gang arrives to find that Master Fisto has already arrived and is fighting the enemy. But things are not going particularly well. But at least we finally get to see Terriermon battling in his starfighter.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 82 : The Second Naboo Blockade**


	82. The Second Naboo Blockade

There _is_ an explanation for such an epic lateness. It might not seem that valid, but it is an explanation nonetheless. Over Wednesday and Thursday I pulled a muscle in two fingers. I have no idea how I did it, and while it may not sound like much, it makes typing hell, so I wasn't able to churn out much. Then on Friday I went home for the weekend and only came back today. I wrote most of this on the train journey back to Penrith. And, as I have mentioned before, space battles are HARD.

Oh well, the long delayed chapter took its time, but at least it's here now.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 82:- The Second Naboo Blockade**

* * *

Tensions were running high aboard the two _Venator_-class cruisers as they flashed through hyperspace. It was completely understandable. Naboo may be an extremely important planet in terms of the Republic, but it was still extremely far away from Coruscant, which meant it would take a long time to get there, even in lightspeed. And who knew how far the Separatists could advance in their schemes if left to their own devices for that long?

Naboo's history over the last decade and a half had certainly not been the best. After all, the Trade Federation blockade from twelve years ago had left a severe dent in the planet, when Padmé Amidala was still a Queen there. Many lives had been lost, all of them good people. Dozens of the citizens of the capital city of Theed had been killed, and even more Gungans had lost their lives when their cities were attacked and when they marched into battle in order to draw the droid armies away from the city and out onto the grassland.

The Gungans were a race of people than many didn't usually take very seriously. Most of them had long, gangly features and limbs, with a protruding face that resembled a cross between the snout of a lizard and the beak of a goose, not to mention their long, flapping, largely-useless ears that resembled flippers. In reality, they _were_ flippers. The Gungans could use them as an extra set of swimming limbs when underwater. But on land it made them look a bit silly.

The Gungan people had been massacred by the droid army the first time. They had some pretty advanced technology, but there was a limit. While each of the droids had carried a blaster, the Gungans had only had their spears, which did little against a droid, even if it had an electric prod at the end, and large spheres that acted like EMP bombs, except they could only deactivate a droid if it actually hit them. They did have deflector shields, but eventually those had fallen, allowing a large portion of their army to be picked off by the fire of AAT tanks.

Nevertheless, the war had, in some ways, benefitted Naboo, although nobody really dared to put it that way. The land-dwelling humans and the water-dwelling Gungans had always been separate beforehand, probably because the Gungans thought the humans thought they were better. The war, however, had united them all, and they had been benefitting from their new friendship ever since.

But since the Clone Wars had begun, Naboo had definitely seen some close experiences. Had the Jedi not intervened just in time, all life on Naboo would have been wiped out twice over. Firstly, the Blue Shadow Virus, which had infected Renamon on Shili, had been recreated on Naboo, except that it was an airborne strain that would have killed everyone in the atmosphere if it had been released. And it nearly was too.

Following that had been the incident on the nearby planet of Behpour, where Kul Teska's secret base, creating a weapon that would destroy the sun by tearing it apart. If that had happened, the light and warmth Naboo received from that sun would have vanished, plunging the planet into an irreversible Ice Age that would have killed everyone within hours, if they were lucky.

Fortunately, the Jedi had interfered again, although this time, they had had some help.

Now, the system was being invaded a second time, and if the Jedi did not act fast, the Gungans were going to suffer even more dramatic losses than last time. They might even be wiped out altogether.

Aboard the _Intrepid_, Aayla stood on the bridge, never leaving her post or taking her eyes from the blur of hyperspace outside. Behind her, the rest of the Super Seven were in similar stances. None of them had ever been to Naboo before, but they all knew how important this system was right now, in more ways than one.

There was a hidden threat, as Aayla had explained. One that wasn't so easily noticed if you were a warrior, like the three Digimon were, but was there nevertheless. If Naboo were to fall, not only would it be disastrous in its own right, but the bill that Senator Amidala was standing for would also fall through. Many Senators who were siding with the Senator to stop more clone production would get spooked that their planet's would receive the same fate and would immediately sign up for more clone troops.

"Then, this attack doesn't make any sense," muttered Henry, when Aayla had informed them of this. "Surely Darth Sidious knows about this bill, considering he is supposedly in the Senate. Surely he knows about what's at stake here. And if he does, then why would he allow the Separatists to attack Naboo? If he's the leader of the Separatists, then he would want there to be less clone troops too, wouldn't he?"

"You might think so," said Aayla. "But don't forget who it is we're dealing with here."

"She's right," nodded Rika. "If this Sith Lord can trick millions of people into believing he's innocent, then who knows what he is either capable of or what his motives are."

"Perhaps Sidious does want more clones," said Lopmon. "But what I can't fathom is, why, if that is the case."

"There are two sides to this," nodded Renamon. "And no matter which way we look at it, we still cannot understand it. I say we put aside this conversation for the time being and focus on something more important, such as the imminent battles up ahead."

"Rena's right," nodded Terriermon. "This one might get a little weird in the not-too-distant future."

Commander Bly strode forward to speak to them. The faithful clone commander had been a little bit miffed that he had missed out of the great adventure that ended in the destruction of the Dark Acolytes, but he did understand that he and his clone forces would only get in the way. It was practically impossible for a clone to go undercover. Everyone knew the face of Jango Fett by now.

"Sirs," he said, standing to attention. "All the fighters are prepped and ready to go, and the gunships are on standby, ready to ferry us down to the planet's surface at a moment's notice."

"Thank you, Commander," nodded Aayla. "Have the men standing by. We know nothing of what the Separatists have in store for us, or indeed what forces they have on the planet's surface. We could be dealing with anything."

"Yes, sir," nodded Bly. "We all realise that. And if you don't mind me saying so, whatever it is, we'll scrap it to kingdom come."

"That's the attitude," Terriermon grinned, bumping his ear-fist against Commander Bly's.

"I still don't know how we're going to fight underwater," said Rika. "We aren't exactly used to it. The only Digimon who's ever done that is Guilmon, and he could breathe anyway because he was in the Digital World."

"Whereas, I'm guessing normal rules regarding water apply on Naboo," agreed Henry. "If it doesn't then that is one strange planet."

Abruptly the holotable behind them started to bleep, indicating an incoming transmission. Without missing a beat, little Suzie turned around and pushed the exact button needed to activate the hologram. She giggled a little when she saw the holograms of Anakin, Ahsoka and Yularen appear around the table, glad to see that her observations had paid off.

The others also turned around to speak. "Yes?" asked Aayla. "What is it?"

"We're receiving an incoming transmission from up ahead, General Secura," said Yularen. "It's Master Fisto, and it appears to be quite urgent."

"Let's put it through," said Anakin. "And be quick about it, Admiral."

"Yes, sir," the moustached man said, his fingers reaching down and pushing buttons which weren't being displayed by the hologram. A couple of second later, a hologram of a familiar face appeared. It was definitely Kit – the green-skinned, tentacle-headed Nautolan Jedi Master, who was the most recent addition to the Jedi Council and all the Digimon had a great fondness for. It was, after all, Kit Fisto who had suggested the concept of the Secret of the 327th to the rest of the council.

They had all gotten to know the Nautolan quite well since they'd met, and they all found his grin as charismatic as everyone else seemed to find it.

Which is why they were all especially concerned when they saw Kit's expression was very serious indeed. It took a lot to take the grin from his face, but clearly whatever was going on ahead was enough to do so. Kit had been known to grin his way through an entire lightsaber battle with a dangerous enemy.

His holographic form was sitting down and his hands were held out in front of him, grasping some handlebars in front of him, which indicated that he was in his starfighter. His face had a cross between a grimace and a mask of concentration as he seemed to swerve from side to side, presumably with the rolling of his small spaceship.

"Master Fisto," said Ahsoka. "Are you alright over there?"

"Ah good," said Kit, with a hint of relief. "Finally, my message is getting through. Who's there?"

It was clear that Master Fisto could only hear them at the other end. No doubt he had not activated the small hologram at his end, so that he could keep his large, black eyes fixed on whatever he was doing instead of staring at little figures made of bluish light.

"This is Anakin Skywalker," said the Chosen One in question, "Along with Aayla Secura and Ahsoka Tano, and as many forces as we could muster on short notice."

Kit's grin returned for a fraction of a second, before his previous mask returned and his teeth gritted, while he slammed his thumb on the button everyone knew to be the one that fired the lasers. "Thank the Force," he said. "I was beginning to think help would never arrive. But now it has, and it's you guys. This keeps getting better."

"We have an ETA of approximately four minutes, Master Fisto," said Aayla. "What's the situation up ahead?"

"Not a good one, I'm afraid, Aayla," Kit leaned to one side, presumably to avoid getting hit by an enemy. "The blockade is much stronger than I imagined it would be. Someone clearly doesn't want us to get through to the planet below, because they'd pulled out all the stops this time. There were at least a dozen Separatist frigates and one big droid command ship. We've managed to take out a couple of the frigates, but we're in some..." he wrenched the controls, and everyone got the impression he was swinging around to either pursue or escape an enemy. "... some serious trouble now," he finished.

"What kind of trouble?" asked Renamon.

"Ah, Digital assistance too," said Kit. "Well, a large portion of my squadron has been wiped out and we are currently struggling to hold the fighters back. We're being picked off one by one. If we don't receive assistance now, I may have to call in a retreat."

"We can't retreat," said Anakin. "Not a chance. We'll be with you in two minutes, Master Fisto. Hold out for a couple more minutes. Ahsoka, Aayla, Terriermon, let's get to our fighters. Admiral, make sure you're ready to engage those frigates in battle."

"Certainly, General Skywalker," said Yularen. Anakin and Ahsoka's holograms darted out of view and the holograms of them and Kit all vanished.

"Come on, Terriermon," said Aayla, turning to the little bunny. "We better go too."

Terriermon leapt from his perch on Henry's head and landed on Aayla's shoulder, wrapping an ear around her neck for balance. "We haven't had a good space battle for some time," he said. "And it sounds like this one could be quite a big one."

"Good luck, guys," said Suzie. "Please don't die."

"Stay safe, Terriermon," nodded Henry. "Don't do anything stupid out there, okay?"

"Wouldn't dream of it," Terriermon agreed. "Don't worry. The Chrome-Digizoid will leave them stumped. Just you wait."

"Yes, but Chrome-Digizoid is not perfect," said Renamon, stepping over to her mate and giving him a quick peck on the lips. "The glass is still vulnerable. Be careful. Both of you."

Aayla nodded. "I'll watch his back, if you like. Come on, Terriermon. We need to go."

Terriermon nodded and the Twi'lek whirled around and dashed out of the room, hurtling down the corridor beyond as they headed for the hangar. The others glanced at each other worriedly. They all felt so left out when there was a space battle. Only Terriermon and the three Jedi were able to do anything about it. None of them had their skill at piloting a fighter, so they were always left on the sidelines, helplessly watching from the bridge of a cruiser.

But, it could not be helped. Instead, they turned around and stared through the window as they abruptly whooshed out of hyperspace, above the planet Naboo.

It was not the best of views. While the planet itself seemed to be quite beautiful, with lush-looking jungles and large lakes that could be seen from orbit, what was happening above it was a totally different stories. Master Fisto's fleet consisted of two _Venator_-class cruisers. It had been three, but one of them had evidently been destroyed by enemy fire, and the other two were both in a bad way. The droid command ship resembled a sphere, with a large ring around it, like a small, metal Saturn or Geonosis. It was surrounded by the classic Separatist frigates that the Tamers and the Digimon were now used to seeing. As Kit had said, two of them had been blown to pieces, but ten still remained, leaving the Republic outnumbered five to one. And with the arrival of the _Intrepid_ and the _Resolute_, that was now two-point-five to one.

Starfighters were whirling and zipping around and between the two sides, red and blue lasers flying in all directions and occasional explosions occurring where a ship was hit and blew up. Vulture Droids wove between ARC-170 fighters in a deadly, aerobatic dance. The 170s seemed to be doing better than the Vultures in the grand scheme of things, but the Vultures greatly outnumbered the 170s.

It was almost a war unto itself out there. And the Separatists were winning.

_Let's see how long that lasts,_ Renamon thought to herself, as the cruisers got closer and closer to the action, preparing to come up alongside the two remaining cruisers.

* * *

Down in the hangar, Aayla and Terriermon burst in through the doors, running across the large room. The clones standing by their gunships stood to attention as they appeared, awaiting their instructions.

"Alright men!" Aayla shouted, so that the whole room could hear her. "We've arrived above Naboo, and there is a battle raging out there, as I'm sure you can all guess. We are needed out there badly, so come on. Let's get out there and show them the 327th Star Corps are not pushovers!"

There was a resounding roar of approval as the clones turned and scaled the ladders leading up to their taller fighters, jumping into the cockpits and sealing the durasteel covers to make them airtight. Terriermon leapt off Aayla's shoulder and soared to the special starfighter that had been designed for him – the one with the most ridiculous paintjob ever (a yellow strip down the middle, with one side of the stripe painted white with green flecks and the other side brown with pink flecks and a familiar purple symbol in the middle of the yellow stripe), while Aayla dashed over to her own, more ordinary starfighter.

"I got your back, Aayla," said Terriermon as he leapt into his cockpit, which had been fitted with a smaller, higher seat that allowed him to sit comfortably and see what was happening despite his small size.

"And I yours, Terriermon," added the Twi'lek, springing into her own.

Terriermon glanced up at the astromech droid that was seated in the slot of his starfighter. The round head swivelled around to look at him and the droid bleeped in acknowledgement. Terriermon nodded. "Alright, Arfive," he said, cheerfully. "Ready to give those Separatists a classic Terriermon smackdown?"

If R5-H7 could nod its head, it would have, but since it couldn't it whistled shrilly in response.

"I thought so," Terriermon grinned, lifting the specially designed Xbox 360 style controls. "Let's do it!" he cried, turning on the engines and lifting into the air with a press of the green A button. All around him, other ships were lifting off as well, and Terriermon slowly moved his ship in behind Aayla's. Then, both of them shot out of the hangar doors and into space, followed by a phalanx of ARC-170 fighters.

As they entered the vacuum of space, the fighters turned on a tight corner and shot towards the battlezone, like a flock of angry pelicans in V-formation. They were joined by a further two Jedi starfighters and another group of ARC-170s from the other ship.

"Hold on, Master Fisto," Ahsoka said from her own cockpit. "We're coming for you."

The lines of spaceships soared around the Republic cruisers and the lasers began to fly as they exploded into the midst of the aerial brawl. Terriermon was in his element, flicking triggers, moving thumbsticks and button-mashing for all he was worth. He motored forward by pressing the left thumbstick and moving it upwards, and pressed the red B button, causing his fighter to go spinning through a cluster of the enemy Vulture droids. The space-going droids seemed startled at the daringness, but quickly span about, preparing to fire on Terriermon's ship.

Only, they found that Terriermon had also turned around already. "Gotcha," the bunny grinned as he pulled back the right trigger. Blue lasers pulsed from the cannons on his fighter and lanced into the group of Vulture Droids. In some ways, real life was easier than the game. In a game, the Vulture Droids would have health bars that required them to be hit several times before they fell. In reality, Terriermon only had to nail each one once to finish it off. The four Vulture Droids never had time to move. Terriermon blasted the middle two in the heads, then knocked one of the legs off the one of the right, sending it careening into the one of the left and smashing both into smithereens.

Terriermon grinned, but a quick glance at his sensors told him there were more behind him. He didn't want to get the engines damaged or he would be unable to control the ship, so he zoomed ahead, dodging the incoming lasers with ease. Three more Vulture droids were pursuing him, firing red lasers at the back of his vessel, but none of them came close. Terriermon jammed the left thumbstick forward and the right thumbstick down at the same time, which caused his ship to do a sudden flip, so he ended up behind the pursuing droids. All three of them were promptly slammed from behind by blue lasers.

"These guys like to team up on us, don't they, Arfive," commented Terriermon, because one quick glance to the left told him that four more Vultures were heading his way. Arfive whistled in agreement, preparing to give the engines more power. But Terriermon didn't move. He hung in space, watching the Vultures get closer.

Only when the first one left off a shot did he move. He spun the ship, so the bottom of it was facing the droids. The red laser bounced off the Chrome-Digizoid hull easily, which Terriermon had been going for because it went ploughing the other way and crashed into the Vulture Droid's head, blowing it to bits. Then Terriermon zoomed forward and the three remaining droid whirled around to follow him, releasing volleys of lasers after the fleeing bunny's ship.

Terriermon accelerated forwards, searching for something in particular and dodging lasers with spins and flips. Considering the sheer number of Vultures, it didn't take him long to find it. Sure enough, he found another cluster of five Vultures and steered towards them. Letting off lasers, he signalled his presence to them by blowing one of them up. The rest lanced towards him and he, in turn, shot towards them, still dodging their lasers.

At the last second, Terriermon suddenly changed course, shooting straight upwards at an almost impossible angle. The two groups of Vulture Droids, one behind and one in front of him, were too slow to react and collided with one another, causing a humongous explosion that destroyed all but one of them. This one went careening away, thrown off by the force of the explosion. But it never got the chance to right itself because Terriermon quickly ended its existence. He did this by powering forwards and literally ramming the Vulture Droid with all the force of his engines. The Chrome-Digizoid hull of his ship came away undamaged. The Vulture was torn apart by the impact.

_Terriermon!_ Renamon's voice resounded in the bunny's head. _That was incredibly reckless and stupid! Don't do that again!_

_Okay, I won't_, the bunny promised. _But you've got to admit, it was pretty damn awesome._

_I will admit no such thing._

_You don't need to,_ Terriermon laughed as he blew up another Vulture. _I can tell from your mind._

_Just shut up._

* * *

Kit Fisto glanced out of the side of his cockpit while he wove around one of the Separatist frigates, dodging the fire of the turbolasers mounted on its hull, and sending a couple of lasers pummelling into the back of the Vulture Droid he was pursuing. His eye had been caught by a terrific explosion off to his left, and he was searching for an explanation.

His eyes widened when he saw a Vulture Droid spinning away from the wreckage, only to be broken to pieces when it was slammed into by another Jedi starfighter. One with the most obscure paintjob he had ever seen in his life. This, combined with the ridiculous recklessness of the act itself, was enough to tell Kit who was in the starfighter.

"That has got to be Terriermon," he murmured to himself, as he piloted his ship over the bridge of the enemy vessel and rolled to dodge a laser that would have vaporised him and his little ship.

Anakin Skywalker's voice abruptly broke through his comlink. "Master Fisto, do you read me?" he said.

"I hear you, Skywalker," the Nautolan replied in his slightly Jamaican accent.

"Since I'm assuming you saw that stunt that Terriermon just pulled I need hardly tell you that we've arrived," said Anakin. "We're going to pull out all the stops ourselves on this one."

Kit grinned momentarily. "I know that tone, Skywalker. You're actually jealous of what Terriermon just did, aren't you?"

"Well, maybe a little," Anakin said half-heartedly. "But let's not talk about that right now. Aayla and I both have a battalion of ARC-170s to help you take out these Vulture Droids, and a squadron of Y-wing bombers have been detached from both our vessels. The plan is to catch the enemy lines in a pincer movement. My squadron will sweep the enemy from the right while Aayla's goes in from the left. I suggest you and your own ships get clear of the Seppies as fast as you can."

"Right-o," Kit nodded, and quickly relayed the instructions to the remainder of his forces. Then he wheeled around and shot back into open spaces, blasting apart another Vulture droid as he went. But Kit promptly found himself veering to one side because he was pursued by a group of three Tri-droid fighters. These droids were about as insectoid as their Vulture cousins, but they were more compact and had tougher armour. That meant they weren't as fast as the Vultures, but they made up for it with their endurance.

They were quite manoeuvrable though. They zigged when Kit zigged and zagged when he did, and the small Jedi starfighter whooshed across the battlefield, the Tri-droids right behind him. Their nose cannons blasted red lasers in his direction, but Kit was able to avoid the shots. Kit's next move – a quick spin and nosedive under one of his own cruisers and a rapid climb up the other side, still wasn't enough to put them off.

"You're getting quite irritating," Kit remarked, and decided to pull off a little stunt of his own. His astromech, Arsix, beeped electronically in response as Kit suddenly slammed the brakes on, practically stopping his own ship in mid-flight. The Tri-droids were unprepared for this and completely overshot the Nautolan, zipping past him before they could slam on their own brakes. Foolishly, they did just that shortly afterwards, making themselves easy targets. Their armour was useless against a blast to the engines and Kit quickly picked them off.

"And that takes care of that," Kit nodded, starting up his engines again and swerving as a Vulture Droid came pelting towards him. However, the Vulture droid didn't get far, because it was blasted from the side, as Terriermon's ship shot overhead.

"Nice move, Master Fisto," Terriermon said over the comlink. "I pulled off a similar one on a video game once. Takato was crying after that, claiming he was so close to finally killing me."

"I'm not sure how to respond to that," said Kit, frowning slightly.

"Then don't," advised Aayla, as she shot overhead, preparing to go on the attack herself. The Twi'lek's eyes narrowed as she focused on her own targets - a bunch of three Vulture Droids that were zooming towards her at equally fast speeds. They seemed unconcerned by their collision course and we firing their red lasers, but Aayla was unconcerned, dodging them with rolls and a mid-turn which caused the projectiles to flash on either side of her. Using her targeting system, Aayla locked onto the middle Vulture Droid and quickly fired a pair of missiles, before nosediving straight down.

The Vultures saw the incoming missiles and swerved to avoid it, but it was too late. The missiles followed them and struck the middle droid dead on, blasting apart it as well as the other two in the shockwave that came with it. Aayla swept under the wreckage they made and span about, her blue lasers flying and taking out the red eyes of a Tri-droid in the process. The blinded Tri-droid swerved towards her, accidentally because it had no idea where anything was, but Aayla simply rolled out of the way and the Tri-droid careened right into one of the Separatist frigates.

Aayla accelerated forwards when she realised she was being tailed, although just about everyone was being tailed at the moment, by another cluster of Vultures. She spurted ahead, gaining speed and the Vultures quickly pursued trying to hit her with their own red lasers. Aayla wasn't about to let that happen anytime soon though, and, using a clever little trick Anakin had taught her, she killed the engines and spun around at the same time, halting her progress while faces the pursuing Vultures. She opened fire and completely annihilated the little group in three seconds flat.

Aayla's engines started again, with a little kick-start from R4-G9 and she zoomed off once again. She spotted an ARC-170, one of Anakin's men, being doggedly chased by two more Vulture Droids. The clone pilot spun and dodged and was able to avoid most of the lasers. One of them did catch his fighter in the wing, but since the clone fighters had also been layered in nigh-indestructible metal, it did no damage at all. Still, if the Vultures hit him in a critical place that would be the end of it, so he still had to be careful.

Aayla fell in behind the two Vultures and aligned her ship's laser cannons with them and let loose with one single blast. That blast pelted past the Vulture droid that was slightly behind and nailed the one in front, knocking it askew and causing the second droid to slam into it, defeating them both in a single explosion. Aayla spiralled through the smoke and called out, "Are you alright, trooper?" over the comlink.

"Yes, General," the clone replied. "Thanks for the assist."

"No problem at all," Aayla chuckled. "Are you going to take out that Tri-droid or shall I?"

"I'll do it," the clone said, and indeed he did, catching the droid in a weak spot between its armour plating and burning through its circuitry with a few shots of his own.

"Nicely done," observed Aayla. Then she extended the range of her comlink and called, "Ahsoka. How are you holding up?"

* * *

"Quite well, actually," said Ahsoka, piloting her ship on a curve and rotating ninety degrees so she was flying on her side, so that she zipped straight between two large chunks of metal debris from the cruiser that had not managed to make it through the battle. The Vulture Droids trying to blast her to pieces were completely the wrong shape to fit between the two pieces, even if they had been fast enough to avoid colliding with them. Ahsoka smirked at the explosions of light behind her as her pursuers were smashed to smithereens.

She was enjoying this method of taking out her opponents. She was weaving and ducking around and under large chunks of metal that had been blown from the destroyed cruiser. It felt like she was piloting her way through an asteroid field, except the debris wasn't moving much. And unwary Vulture droids were flying into the debris field after her and were shortly destroyed by their own lack of flying skills.

Ahsoka rammed her fighter forwards and shot around another large chunk of metal, charging around the corner and taking the three Vulture droids on the other side completely unawares. Ahsoka rained blue lasers on them before they knew what was happening and wiped out all three of them practically at the same time. She left a trail of smoke behind her as she passed over their remains. She continued to breeze along, until she found someone else to play with – a pair of Tri droids that had just succeeded in blowing up one of Kit's men's starfighters.

Ahsoka growled at the sight of the ruined starfighter. She hadn't known the man in it personally, but it was still a clone, who had died valiantly on the battlefield. Determined to make sure his killers didn't live to tell about it, even if Tri droids didn't actually have voices to tell anybody, she dove towards them and shot past, causing them to swing around and follow her. "That's right, boys," she said, under her breath, as she sensed them behind her and dodged their lasers. "Follow the little birdie."

Ahsoka hurtled towards one of the nearby Separatist frigates at high speed. The two Tri-droids on her tail were quickly joined by another and soon, all three of them were in hot pursuit of the Togruta Padawan. Their entire robotic focus was on her and her alone, completely ignoring their surroundings. This was a rookie mistake in space, but the droid's were not capable of learning from their mistakes. Ahsoka drew closer and closer to the bridge of the enemy vessel, her teeth gritting and her eyes fixed on her goal.

Moments before her fighter slammed into the glass of the enemy frigate she suddenly pulled up and shot upwards, completely wrong-footing the pursuing Tri-droids. The three of them slammed into the bridge of their own side's frigate. The deflector shields of the frigate were not enough and the bridge was blown to pieces, along with all the battle droids and the tactical droid inside it.

"That's what you get for trying to kill me," Ahsoka said, swinging back around and sending a laser into the Vulture Droid pursuing Terriermon sending it spinning in several different directions.

"Nicely done, Ahsoka," Anakin said as his own, yellow starfighter shot past hers. "We'll make a pilot out of you yet."

"Hey," Ahsoka frowned. "I resent that, Master. I'm getting better every time."

"Relax, Snips," chuckled Anakin. "I was just kidding. Now, how about we do some more scrapping before the Y-wing bombers get here, huh?"

"Sounds like a plan, Master," Ahsoka grinned.

"I thought you might say that," said Anakin and he shot ahead to engage some more droids in space combat. He skilfully wove his way around a rather large group of Vulture droids that were chasing down a couple of his men (who were, in turn, chasing down more Vulture Droids). His lasers were fired in a blue barrage, taking out two droids, dodging above a third, wheeling around to shoot a fourth and flipping under a fifth, then finally blowing up a sixth. The two he had dodged switched targets and chased after him instead of the clones.

Or they attempted to anyway. They might have gotten a bit further if Anakin had not suddenly zipped off to the right and wheeled around in a complete one-eighty turn to shoot them to pieces as they attempted to follow him. Anakin smirked and zoomed away again, followed this time by three Tri-droids, just as Ahsoka had been.

"Watch and learn, Snips," he said, as he flew helter-skelter away from them, the Tri-droids following his every twist and turn. Anakin whooshed down towards a different Separatist frigate, but instead of heading for the bridge as Ahsoka had done, he went for a completely different target.

The hangar.

The large doors in the side of the frigate where the Vulture Droids would have poured from at the beginning of this campaign were still wide open, just as Anakin needed them to be. The Chosen One smirked as his plan was swiftly drawn into motion. Yes, the Tri-droids were fast at turning, but let's see if they were as fast as he was.

Straight as a die, he soared towards the hangar, dodging Tri-Droid fire as he went. The Tri-droids were joined by a Vulture Droid but they were still unable to hit the twisting, yellow starfighter. Anakin pushed forward and shot straight into the enemy hangar, at full speed no less. Normally, a starfighter would slow down drastically as they pulled in for a landing, but Anakin wasn't attempting to land. Anakin's craft shot towards the far wall, but curved around, just before he could scrape against the opposite wall and shot back the way he had just come. The droid weren't so fast and slammed into the wall, exploding and sending flames bursting around the entire room. Anakin's starfighter shot back out into open space in the wake of a blast of fire, that indicated the enemy hangar had been totally and completely destroyed.

Ahsoka, who had watched the whole thing, rolled her eyes. "If that's not showing off," she said. "I don't know what is."

"Hey, it worked, didn't it?" chuckled Anakin.

"Yeah," nodded Ahsoka. "And it nearly gave me cardiac arrest in the process."

"You shouldn't worry about me so much, Ahsoka," said Anakin, blowing up another Vulture Droid.

"Well, you've never done anything quite _that_ stupid before," Ahsoka retorted. "You know what, I reckon you only did that because you didn't want to feel outdone by Terriermon's little stunt from before."

"I did not!" Anakin objected.

"Sure you didn't, Skyguy," Ahsoka said sarcastically.

"Well, put those thought aside for now, Snips," Anakin told his Padawan. "I can see the Y-wings heading our way." Ahsoka looked around and, sure enough, two V-formations of the bombers were now in sight, one coming from Aayla's ship and swinging around to the left and the other coming from their ship and swinging around to the right.

"You take the lead with Aayla's group," Anakin instructed her. "We can bring some heavy rain to those Seppies."

"Got it," Ahsoka grinned, wheeling about to join up with Aayla's squadron.

* * *

But, it was at that point that something else happened, that severely changed the plan. Something that was about to put a hamper in everything.

And it was a complete accident to boot.

Kit Fisto was winging his way past one of the Republic cruisers, having just destroyed a phalanx of Vulture Droids, when something caught his attention, both out of the corner of his eye and due to a screaming nudge from the Force. He turned his head and saw that a Vulture Droid that had collided with a hunk of debris and lost one of its wings was spiralling towards him at high speed, on a collision course with his ship.

Kit's eyes widened in surprise and he hit the brakes as fast as he could, but it wasn't enough. The Vulture Droid missed the majority of the starfighter but it still collided with the pointed nose of the ship, knocking it clean off. Kit and his ship were sent spiralling through space themselves, Arsix shrieking in alarm and Kit desperately trying to regain some form of control.

It took a couple of seconds, but Kit's skill as a pilot won through and he was able to right himself. However, that was about the extent of what he was able to do right now. He hurriedly pushed some controls and flipped a few switches, trying to get his ship to start up again, but nothing was responding at all. His core systems were shutting down. The Vulture Droid had taken out his stabiliser and a large portion of his engine.

And the middle of the battlefield was not a good place to have a breakdown.

Kit hung in space, still trying to get some semblance of response from his ship, when he saw three Vulture Droids soaring towards him at high speed. Kit was a sitting target and could only watch as the Vultures soared towards him. Jedi were rarely defenceless, but unlike Plo Koon, Kit could not survive in the vacuum of space. There was nothing he could do.

The Vultures fired.

Kit watched the lasers surge towards him, determined to stare death in the face.

What he saw instead was Aayla Secura's starfighter suddenly shooting between his own and the oncoming lasers. Aayla halted her ship and rotated it, taking the shots on the bottom of her Chrome-Digizoid hull. She was using her own starfighter to shield Kit from the oncoming droids.

And people who carry shields often carry spears too. The spear came in the form of Terriermon and his own starfighter, which lanced over the top of both Kit's defenceless ship and Aayla's own suspended one and opened fire, obliterating the Vulture Droids. Terriermon then proceeded to circle Kit and Aayla's ships, on the alert for any other incoming droids for him to blow up.

Aayla, sitting in her cockpit at a ninety-degree angle and not slumping to the side thanks to the gravity generators in her shuttle pulling her towards the floor, looked straight up and locked eyes with the Nautolan.

"Thanks Aayla," Kit grinned. "I owe you one for that."

"No you don't," said Aayla. "But never mind that now. Are you alright?"

"Physically, I'm fine," said Kit, pushing a few controls and getting no more results than before. "But I'm afraid my ship is not responding at all. Nothing I am doing is getting the engines working again. Arsix, is there any way to start the power?"

Arsix whistled.

"I thought not," Kit sighed.

Terriermon quickly blew up a couple of Tri-droids heading towards the two starfighters hanging in space. "Well, a large section of your ship is missing after all. That usually does the job of stopping you cold. What are we supposed to do now?"

"We need to get Master Fisto out of here," said Aayla.

"Er, how?" the little bunny Digimon asked, pulling the right trigger and nailing another Vulture Droid in the face. "Do these starfighters have tractor beams or something? Because nobody told me if they did or not."

"No, they don't," said Aayla. "A situation like this is virtually unprecedented. But the _Twilight _has enough space in the back for a small starfighter. Anakin, do you read me?"

Anakin, who was currently swerving over a Separatist frigate and leading a squadron of Y-wing bombers on a trail of destruction, heard Aayla's call and activated his comlink. "Yeah, I read you loud and clear, Aayla," he said. "What is it? I am kinda busty right now."

"Yes, but this is an emergency," said Aayla. "Master Fisto's fighter has been critically damaged and won't restart. Terriermon and I are defending him but we can't do anything to get him out of here. We need the _Twilight_, and fast."

Anakin blinked at this news and glanced over towards his own side. Sure enough, he spot the three-quarters-of-a-Jedi-starfighter some distance away, with two other starfighters circling it, one using itself to screen the damaged one from incoming lasers and the other blowing up attackers.

"Poodoo," Anakin muttered. "I'm on my way. Ahsoka, keep up the assault with the Y-wings. Wipe out as many frigates as you can."

"I got it, Master," Ahsoka replied. "You better get going."

"Yeah, I know," Anakin said. "Shadow Squadron, I'm transferring command to Ahsoka. I'm needed elsewhere."

"Yes, General," said the clone known as Broadside, before Anakin swerved his ship around and zoomed back towards the _Resolute_, where his trusty spice freighter was waiting for him.

* * *

Meanwhile, back aboard the _Intrepid_, Renamon was relating the situation to everyone else. "Anakin's heading back to the ship in order to get the _Twilight_."

"I hope he gets there in time," Suzie fretted. "I don't want Kit to die. He's really nice."

"And Terriermon and Aayla are putting themselves in danger in order to save him," added Henry. "Ugh, I hate just sitting here. My partner is out there, risking his life and none of my Modify Cards are going to do any good to help him."

"We can still help," declared Rika. "Not Terriermon or Aayla, but we can help Kit when he gets on the _Twilight._ We could... I dunno... do something."

"Like what?" asked Lopmon.

"I don't know," Rika hissed. "I just want to do something for a change. You all feel the same way as I do, and you know it. We can still do something."

"While I agree with you," Renamon said. "And while I do want to be involved in all this somehow, I should point out that there's no way for us to do so. We're on the wrong ship anyway, because Anakin keep his vessel on the _Resolute._ We're on the _Intrepid._ We're going to have to sit this one out, just like we usually do."

"Oh really," Rika said, a slight smirk appearing on her face as she lifted her D-Arc into her hands. "Well, we might be able to change that if we use a little card I happen to have in my arsenal."

"Of course," Renamon chuckled. "Why didn't I think of that? You do have a card for just aabout every situation after all."

Rika flushed. "Well, I've never tried this particular card before, because I never thought of it at the time. I was rifling through the deck the other week and I spotted it and filed it away for next time. Now seems as good a time as any."

"Alright then," said Renamon. "So, are we going to do this?"

"Yes, yes, yes!" Suzie cried. "I want to go too. I want to help Kit!"

"We all want to help Kit, Suzie," said Lopmon. "And while I think we might be being a little reckless about this, I agree. I'm going too. That is my brother out there, after all."

Henry sighed. "Once again, I have a bad feeling about this. But, Lopmon's right. Members of our family are out there, and I'll do anything to help. I'm in too."

"Alright," said Rika. "Everyone grab hold of Renamon. I'm swiping the card." Henry gripped the bipedal fox's arm, while Suzie hugged Renamon's bushy tail. Lopmon hopped up onto Renamon's shoulder. Rika, who needed both hands in order to do what she needed to, resolved to be quick and swept the card through the slot in her D-Arc.

"Digi-modify!" she cried. "Piedmon's Masks Square Activate!"

While Piedmon in the cartoon show had only used two attacks – Trump Sword and Clown Trick – he did technically have more attacks up his long, red sleeves. And Rika was putting one of them into good use right now. Having finished with the card, Rika suddenly grasped Renamon's wrist, as the fox felt the power of the new attack flowing through her.

Eyes blazing, Renamon let out a shout of **"MASKS SQUARE!" **Abruptly, the group of five were surrounded by a translucent ball of whitish light, which shimmered for an instant, like the deflector shield of a droideka. And then, the sphere, along with everyone inside it shrank into a tiny dot and vanished...

... and reappeared in the hangar of the _Resolute_. Numerous clones who were not part of the battle leapt in surprise and reached for their weapons, but relaxed when they spotted who it was. Although it didn't stop their hearts from beating faster than usual for a little while.

"Well, that was something else," said Lopmon, slightly dizzy from the journey.

"Just a small teleportation card," said Rika, stowing the card back into her deck. "I only got it about a month before we were left in this universe. Never thought about it. Don't know how well it does over long distances though."

"We'll worry about that another time," said Henry. "Here comes Anakin."

Indeed, at that point, the yellow starfighter than belonged to Anakin soared through the doors of the hangar and landed haphazardly in the middle of the floor – he didn't exactly have time to park it properly. The cockpit sprung open and Anakin sprang out, while R2-D2 popped out like a cork from a bottle and landed beside him. Anakin began to dash towards the _Twilight_ and faltered in surprise when he spotted the two Digimon and the three Tamers running in the same direction.

"Whoa," he cried, skidding to a halt. "What are you guys doing in here? And how in the galaxy did you get in here?"

"That doesn't matter," said Renamon. "The point is, we know what's going on out there, and we're going with you."

"But..." Anakin began.

"And nothing you can say is going to change our minds," said Rika, stubbornly.

Knowing he didn't exactly have time to argue with them, Anakin sighed and said, "Fine. Just don't get in my way, or Artoo's. We're in a bit of a hurry." With that, he continued towards the _Twilight_, pursued by two Digimon, three Tamers and one astromech, who all dashed or rolled up the ramp and into the ship. Anakin leapt into the pilot seat and everyone else stood behind him, while Artoo moved to the back and plugged into the scomp link at the back of the cockpit.

The ship quickly rose into the air, bottom wing extending downwards and swept over the yellow starfighter that had landed a matter of seconds before and into space.

"If you guys wanna help," said Anakin, "head into the back and help Master Fisto out when we draw him into the ship. We're gonna need to get him out of here quickly when we're done."

"Right," nodded Henry, and the three Tamers, with Lopmon riding on Suzie's head, ran out of the room. Renamon did not and sat down in the co-pilot seat, staring ahead intently, as she watched the ship she knew her mate was in, circling the damaged ship ahead. Now, both Aayla and Terriermon were playing offense and defence because the droids had noticed Kit's predicament and were coming faster than before, forcing the Twi'lek and the Digimon to alternate between acting as a shield and bombarding the attackers.

"Hold on, Terriermon," Renamon said. "Hold on, Aayla. We're coming to help. Anakin, we've got some fighters heading out way."

"I see them," Anakin replied, but kept his focus on his destination. "Blast 'em, Artoo."

Artoo whistled in response and twiddled his mechanical arm. Outside, the guns on the wing and main hull of the ship twirled around in response to his tweaking and opened fire on the approaching Vulture Droids, blowing them to pieces before they could even let off a shot.

"Good one, buddy," Anakin grinned, pushing down on the controls and causing the ship to accelerate forwards.

Aayla turned around when she saw the _Twilight_ approaching, quickly swinging her ship around to block the shots from one Vulture droids and shred another with her lasers at the same time. "Nice of you guys to join the party," she said, over the comlink.

"We wouldn't miss it," Anakin's voice replied. "Master Fisto. Stand by for retrieval."

"This is going to be an embarrassing one when we make our report to the council," the Nautolan replied. "Ah well, let's just get out of here while we can."

"Agreed," said Anakin, slowing to halt as his ship passed the deactivated starfighter of the Nautolan. "Alright then. Here we go." He rotated to the ship so its back was to the ship and the hatch lowered. The Tamers were visible inside the hold, but weren't sucked out into space due to the ray shield blocking the door.

A magnetic sucker-like object that was attached to a long cable was fired from the back of the _Twilight_.

The little thing was attracted to the hull of Kit's ship and stuck to it, like a limpet fusing to a rock.

"Okay," said Anakin. "We're reeling you in now." He hit a few switches and the cable swiftly retracted back into the _Twilight_. As a result, the damaged starfighter that Kit was sitting in was hauled in with it. The starfighter passed through the ray shield at the back, which meant that gravity kicked in so it crashed to the ground. The magnetic clamp unhooked itself and the cable was drawn back into the ship.

As Kit pushed the cockpit up off his starfighter and wearily climbed out, the Tamers rushed over to their Nautolan friend. "Are you okay, Kit?" asked Suzie, worriedly. "You didn't get hurt by the bad droids, did you?"

Kit knelt down and ruffled Suzie's hair fondly. "No, child. I am fine, I assure you. Just a bit of a shock to the system. Come on. Let's head for the cockpit."

Kit stood and he and the three Tamers began to make their way towards the door, when suddenly, the entire ship shook and juddered, the lights flickering for a second. All three Tamers were knocked off their feet and Kit only just managed to keep his own footing.

"What was that?" cried Rika, scrambling to her feet, while Henry did the same and helped his little sister up too."

"I don't know," said Kit. "But nothing good. Come on."

He dashed out the large room and into the cockpit, where Anakin and Renamon were in their respective seats and Lopmon was perched on the back of Renamon's chair. "Skywalker, status report," Kit said, standing between the two.

Anakin gritted his teeth in concentration as he manned the controls, causing his ship to dodge and weave slightly as he swerved through a forest of red lasers shooting past him. "They're coming in droves now, Master Fisto," he growled, as he wheeled the bulky ship around the laserstorm. "They must have picked up some vulnerability. There's a whole lot of them on us. I can't shake them!"

It was a maelstrom outside the ship. Anakin's beloved _Twilight_ was ducking and dodging at impressive speed for such a bulky ship, which was evidence of the adjustments Anakin had made to it as well as the skill of the pilot. Buzzing around the ship as it flew back to the _Resolute_, where it would be safe, were Aayla and Terriermon in their own vessels. They were returning fire at the mass of Vulture and Tri-droids shooting towards them, and were taking out a good portion with their blue lasers. More blue lasers were streaming forth from the cannons on the _Twilight_ itself, courtesy of Artoo and his scomp link.

"Ack!" Terriermon cried as he swerved the avoid having his duraglass cockpit shattered by a wild laser. "Where did they all come from?"

"The Separatists must have sent out the rest of their forces in a last-ditch attempt to kill us!" Aayla replied, nailing a Tri-Droid between the eyes and sending it careening through the swarm and knocking out several others. "Ahsoka and the Y-wings are decimating their frigates, so they're really having a go at us."

"Wonderful," Terriermon replied, dodging more shots and firing a round of lasers at a bunch of oncoming Vulture Droids. "This is so unfair."

The three ships hurriedly made their way across the battlefield, fleeing and destroying the small fleet of pursuing space-going droids. The _Twilight_ plunged through space, and the two starfighters swerved around it in a desperate attempt to protect it from harm.

But their actions were, in the end, futile. There were dozens and dozens of droids and only three of them, and no matter how skilled they were at flying, they had no lightsabers to defend themselves from the shots. It was almost inevitable.

One stray laser whooshed right between Terriermon and Aayla's starfighters and slammed into the wing of the _Twilight_ that was sticking out underneath the ship. While Anakin's starfighter had been covered in Chrome-Digizoid armour, the _Twilight_ had not. The result of this was that the wing snapped under the impact, the bottom half swinging away into space. The half that remained trailed smoke and the _Twilight_ lost all semblance of control.

Because that wing acted not only as a wing, it was also the like a rudder.

The occupants of the _Twilight _were thrown to one side under the impact. Even Artoo was pulled from the scomp link and was flung against the wall, shrieking loudly as he did. Anakin growled angrily as he checked the damage report.

"We've lost our stabilizer," he cried. "I can't hold the ship steady!"

"So, what does that mean?" asked Rika, from where she was struggling to stand up.

"It means," Kit turned gravely to stare at the three Tamers, "That we're going down."

"Oh nuts," Suzie said, while Henry muttered a swearword beneath his breath. The blue-haired Tamer didn't normally swear, but this certainly seemed like an appropriate occasion.

As the _Twilight _span in circles, its engines unable to control the ship and keep it aloft, the old spice freighter was caught up in the gravity of the planet below. It was as if Naboo was beginning to haul them down towards its surface and the _Twilight_ was not resisting. Trailing smoke from its damaged wing, the ship began to fall, inexorably and relentlessly, towards the jungles below, like a falling asteroid determined to wipe out the planet.

"What are we going to do?" yelled Suzie, on the verge of panic as the ship plunged Naboowards.

"Hold on tight!" Anakin cried. "I'm not going to lie to you! We _are_ going to crash! I'll try and soften the landing but..." Anakin didn't finish. He just fell silent. Renamon glanced over at him and leapt over to the three Tamers, pulling all three into her furry arms and holding them firmly. Lopmon crawled over to them and joined the embrace.

* * *

Terriermon swore loudly as the ship began to fall. Aayla did not reprimand him. Her eyes were wide with horror at what she was seeing, as well as the prospect of what would happen when they reached the ground.

Wordlessly, Terriermon swung his ship around and followed the plunging _Twilight_ in a completely vertical nosedive. He had no idea what he would do, but whatever it was, he would do it. Aayla followed a split second later and together, the three ships fell at meteoric speed, hurtling away from the action and into the Naboo atmosphere.

* * *

Well, you know me. I couldn't not end it on a cliffhangar. How on Earth are they going to get out of this one, particularly with such a high fall. The _Twilight_ doesn't have a parachute. Well, thanks for reading my newest space battle. I hope you enjoyed it and if you did, I'd appreciate it if you left a review.

* * *

Next time...

The _Twilight_ is in freefall, heading down to the planet below, while the space battle still rages. How are the intrepid heroes going to get out of this jam?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 83 : Plummet**


	83. Plummet

Not a particularly inventive title for this chapter, but an adequate one nevertheless. I reckon I've left you all stewing and wondering what's happening next for long enough. However, I do have one thing to say to you people. I was a bit disappointed by my review count for my last chapter. Out of the four days since I last posted, I have only received six reviews. Considering this story is on the favourites list of 36 people and on the alert list of 27, this is an extremely low number. I've been considering doing something mean, such as not even starting to write the next chapter until I receive ten reviews for the last, but I'm not going to do that, because I'm too nice, and I don't think I'd get anywhere. I'd really appreciate it if more people would review and give me their opinions.

Thanks, and now, back to our scheduled program.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 83:- Plummet**

* * *

Ahsoka Tano could help but smirk as she lead the wave of desolation on the Separatist blockade surrounding the planet of Naboo. They were completely unprepared for the move that they were implementing right now. The frigates were more used to bombers coming at them from the front, where they could be shot down even if it was with difficulty. But coming in from the side was something new, especially from both sides at once.

Having two squadrons of Y-wings at your disposal was one of the advantages that Anakin and Aayla had gained from working together.

Ahsoka flew her fighter over one frigate after another, blowing Vulture Droids out of the air as she soared through space. Behind her was one of the squadrons of Y-wings, which was spread out and all roughly level with one another, almost side-by-side, so that when they flew over an enemy ship and released their bombs, the whole ship was effectively detonated at once and it collapsed, the numerous pieces floating tearing off from the main bulk as the whole ship was unable to hold itself together.

Ahsoka could see battle droids floating off into space. Being robotic, they could survive in the vacuum and she took a great deal of pleasure blowing a couple out of the air, or lack thereof. A good droid was a dead one, as the clones often said.

Ahsoka could see the other squadron of Y-wings heading their way from the exact opposite direction, their strategy pretty similar to her own, except they had a couple of ARC-170 fighters with them to act as cover against incoming Vulture droids. The frigates were desperately trying to take them out, sending lasers blasting towards their vessels. But they were simply to small and good at evading the shots. A couple _were_ hit by the enemy lasers, as was inevitable when they flew through such a thick cloud of cannon-fire, but the lasers had almost no effect at all.

Under normal circumstances, a laser from a turbocannon could blow a Y-wing to bits.

But not anymore. All they left now was a slight ash-mark.

"Alright boys, that's it," Ahsoka nodded. She was immensely pleased the mission was going so well, especially since she was in charge of this bit. "Now, my squadron will take a pass over the main droid ship first, then the other squadron will take their pass."

"Copy that, Commander," said Broadside. "We're on standby."

"Let's give them a taste of some real firepower," another clone said eagerly.

"That," Ahsoka grinned. "Is a sentiment I totally agree with. Go, go, go!"

Ahsoks whooshed over the spherical command ship in the centre of the blockade and the Y-wings followed post-haste. Once more they released their bombs, which streamed downwards in a trail of smoke and impacted with the hull of the ship, rending the metal and blasting many segments of the large ship completely to smithereens. The occupants were tossed about by the impact and the ship was critically damaged by the pass, but it just managed to hold itself together. It was, after all, a larger target.

However, as the Y-wings from both squadrons shot past one another, the second squadron soaring over the command ship from the other direction, doom was spelled for the occupants and the ship itself. The second batch of Y-wings released their bombs and, just like the frigates before them, the command ship was torn to rubble in a spectacular explosion, the blast of which pushed the Y-wings aside.

Ahsoka fought the urge to cheer, while the clones didn't both and whooped loudly in victory. The Togruta Padawan grinned as she listened to their cries of elation. Except for the poor men of Kit Fisto's brigade, which had been beleaguered before they had arrived, the run against the Naboo Blockade seemed to have been relatively free of damage. Ahsoka couldn't remember a space battle of this magnitude with such success. It was a first.

She was about to call Captain Rex and Admiral Yularen to inform them that she and her men would be returning to the hangars, when she frowned, her finger hovering over the communicator. The Force was nudging at her slightly, trying to tell her something. And when the Force did that, it paid to listen to it. So she did.

What she sensed wiped almost all thoughts of victory from her mind. She could sense that her friends, namely her Master and most of the Digimon and all the Tamers, were in some sort of terrible danger. When last she'd seen them, they were in the _Twilight_ in the middle of rescuing Master Fisto. She whirled around and looked back towards the cruisers, expecting to see the _Twilight_ trying to return to the hangar but being attacked by innumerable Vulture Droids.

But the _Twilight_ wasn't there at all.

Almost with a mind of their own, her eyes were drawn downwards and what she saw made her heart stop.

The _Twilight_ was plunging towards the surface of the planet below in a nosedive that, along with the missing wing and the huge trail of smoke billowing out behind it, suggested that it was completely out of control. Aayla and Terriermon's starfighters were in hot pursuit, racing down just behind it, but there seemed to be nothing that they could do.

Ahsoka watched, helpless to intervene, as her Master's precious ship hit, wrecked and unable to fly and falling towards the ground at well over two-hundred miles an hour, entered the atmosphere of the planet below.

* * *

Inside the vessel, the journey was even rougher than it looked from the outside. The entire ship was juddering and shaking and objects such as tools and loose pieces of machinery that had become undone and R2-D2 were thrown around the ship. Renamon had had to wedge her back against the wall and her feet against the co-pilot seat to keep herself and the Tamers she was clutching from being tossed around as well. Lopmon had almost lost her grip several times already. Anakin and Kit, seated in the pilot and co-pilot seats respectively, were holding themselves in their seats.

Anakin was still pressing buttons and flipping switches, but to be honest, he had practically given up hope. He'd been in many, many crash-landings, but none of them seemed as potentially life-ending as this. They had all been from much lower down and had other variables which meant he had survived, such as the ship being larger, having some degree of control, softish terrain like sand down below or being able to eject from the ship. The _Twilight_ however, was small, completely dead, had no eject option and was plunging towards a thick forest.

The ship entered the atmosphere and lit up like a bright comet, the dancing orange light would have looked almost pretty if it hadn't been for the fact that it made the entire ship look like a giant fireball that was plummeting towards Naboo. The two Jedi clutched their seats as Anakin gave up on the controls completely, his mind racing as he desperately tried to come up with other options.

None sprang to mind.

Suzie was screaming her head off all the way down. "WE'RE GONNA DIE! WE'RE GONNA DIE!"

"NO, WE'RE NOT!" Henry shouted over the noise of juddering machinery, trying desperately to calm his sister. "WE'LL BE FINE, SUZIE!"

"NO WE WON'T!" Suzie shrieked. "WE'RE GONNA CRASH AND GET SQUISHED INTO JELLY!"

Renamon and Lopmon gritted their teeth as Suzie's screaming pierced their sensitive eardrums. Lopmon wrapped her ears around Suzie in an attempt to comfort her, but nothing could be that comforting when you were dropping through the air at such speeds. Henry was silently cursing himself for not stamping down on his bad feeling... again... and not letting the others get on the _Twilight_ in the first place. But it was far, far too late for regrets. He pulled both Suzie and Lopmon close to him with one arm and Rika to him with the other, forming a second group embrace under Renamon's.

Kit, holding himself in the seat with both hands, tore his eyes from the orange display outside the cut off the view of the ground they were plummeting towards and turned to Anakin. "Any success, Skywalker? Because we could really use some good news right about now?"

"Nothing, Master," growled Anakin, thumping the controls with his fist. "It's no use! It looks like the plasma conduit has been shorted out as well. And to top it all off, I think we've sprung a leak."

"That's great," Kit said. "Any bad news?"

"Yeah," said Anakin. "I think Suzie's right. Ugh, this is _not_ how I imagined going out!"

"Calm yourself, Skywalker," said Kit, though he didn't exactly sound calm himself. "If the Force declares we are meant to die today then there is little we can do. But there is a large chance that we'll live through this."

"I fail to see how!" Anakin yelled, as the flaming lightshow flickering outside began to clear slightly. "Three miles until we hit the surface of the planet!"

Kit caught as spinning Artoo before the astromech droid slammed into his head by using the Force. "Then there is still time."

"Time for what?" Anakin yelled, more than a little riled by the Nautolan's optimism.

"How should I know?" Kit's infamous grin was back in place. "That is up to fate to decide."

* * *

Outside the ship, Terriermon's triangular starfighter, powered on by the games controller in Terriermon's grip and the extra boost that Arfive was giving to the engines, powered after the _Twilight_ at incredible speeds, while Aayla's ship was not that far behind. The fiery entry on atmosphere was not lost on Terriermon's ship either, but since his vessel was smaller, it cleared up much more quickly. Terriermon drew level with the _Twilight_ as it plummeted, his eyes fixed on the conflagration that contained his mate, Tamer, sister and other friends and family.

There was no way he was going to let them down.

His brain was acting as feverishly as Anakin's as he tried to come up with a solution. If he could just biomerge with Henry and become MegaGargomon, he's be able to catch that ship with no problem at all, but that was impossible because Henry was still inside that ship. And there was no way Cherubimon was going to be any help here either. He could see Aayla's ship drawing level with the _Twilight_ on the other side. He glanced over at Aayla, hoping for some vague idea. But the Twi'lek looked about as desperate and helpless as he was.

_Terriermon!_ He heard Renamon call to him through their link. _If you are going to do something, now would be a really good time to do it!_

_Not to pile on the pressure, _Lopmon added, a slight strain in her voice as she struggled to hold on. _But I think it's all up to you now._

Terriermon's expression tightened in mental agony. _You're right,_ he nodded. _But I don't know what to do!_

_Terriermon, you have to do something! Before it's too late!_ Renamon replied. _This kind of pressure has never stopped you before! I have faith in you!_

_As do I_, Lopmon replied.

Terriermon bit his lip and glanced down towards the ground. Only two miles to go before impact. At this rate he was going to have to pull up soon to avoid smashing _his own_ starship into the ground, considering the speed he was going. But he couldn't. He'd lose everyone he had except for Aayla if he did. Everyone connected to his mind apart from the Twi'lek was in that falling ship.

He couldn't fail! He just couldn't!

He couldn't become the giant MegaGargomon, but he was going to have to make do.

His expression hardened and he turned, barking out orders to his astromech. "Listen, Arfive. What I'm about to say is going to sound stupid, but if we're going to save them you have to do what I say. When I give the order, I want you to take total control of the ship and open the cockpit! DO you understand?"

Poor Arfive felt the droid-equivalent of intense pressure, but beeped in affirmative response. Terriermon glanced again at the falling spaceship and said, with his mind, _Henry! When I give the word, you must swipe a blue card. It is your only hope!_

Henry didn't reply with words, but Terriermon could mentally feel him nod in response and begin to pull out his D-Arc as best as he could.

But Terriermon couldn't afford to wait. So, he screamed, both physically and mentally, **"NOW!" **and released the games controller. Arfive immediately responded and took the controls. The cockpit sprang open and air was sucked into the space. Terriermon was literally pulled out of the ship and thrown into open air. He went spinning in the complete wrong direction, flapping wildly with his ears for control.

But he regained it quickly enough, because he felt the influx of power. Henry had swiped the card, and with that he exploded into light. He had no time to dally around, not even taking the time to shout out the digivolution. Using his newfound, incredibly speed as Rapidmon, he blipped down until he was next to the _Twilight_ again in a mere second and overtook it.

"HANG ON, GUYS!" he yelled, as turned his back to the ground and flew in front of the tumbling ship, falling at the same speed as it did. Then, he slowly closed the gap between them, continuing to fall the whole time, until he was grasping the metal hull of the front. He winced at the intense heat as it burned at his stomach, but he ignored the pain and squared himself against the front of the ship. Then, he put on the brakes, trying to stop falling.

The ship jolted at the sudden, rapid, decrease in speed, throwing everybody forwards, sending both Jedi sprawling over the controls and everyone else over the floor. The fiery cloak outside cleared some more and now, Rapidmon could be seen, pressed against the cockpit window and his eyes screwed shut as he desperately tried to slow their descent.

But it wasn't enough.

Yes, Rapidmon was a large Digimon but, considering his size, he was a lightweight. Everything about him was designed for raw speed, including the lack of muscle or, for that matter, weight of any kind. Even with all his tough armour plating it probably wouldn't take much effort for Henry and Rika to lift him if they worked together. And that put Rapidmon at a huge disadvantage now as he strained to slow the _Twilight_ down.

They were still dropping at some heft. It was a good deal slower than it had been before, but it would still end in a crash that would probably wreck the ship and kill most, if not all of the passengers, as well as possibly Rapidmon himself now. Rapidmon was an Ultimate, but even he would be severely, if not fatally injured if crushed between the ground and a falling starship.

"Got... to... slow... it... down!" Rapidmon groaned, pushing against the starship with all his strength and still being pushed backwards at high speed. His teeth, beneath his facemask, were close to cracking because they were gritted together so hard. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the ground getting closer by the second, which rejuvenated his efforts. He pressed his cannon arms against the ship like vices and yelled loudly as he shoved his whole body weight against the hull of the ship.

The _Twilight_ slowed fractionally even further, but they were still going way too fast!

"Don't give up, Rapidmon!" Henry shouted from inside the cockpit as he scrambled to his feet.

"You can do it!" Rika yelled encouragingly.

"Keep going!" Suzie threw in for good measure.

"RRRRAAAAGHHHH!" Rapidmon roared as he heaved on the ship, slowing it down even further, but he knew that he simply wasn't going to be able to do this alone. He was too light. He'd never be able to stop to ship no matter how hard he tried.

* * *

In her starfighter, which was still swooping downwards and was level with the falling ship, Aayla was staring disbelievingly at what she was seeing. Rapidmon was putting his own life on the line in a desperate attempt to save the occupants of the ship, but it still wasn't enough. She could see the strain he was putting himself under and her heart went out to him. He wasn't designed for this. He was designed to blip in, wreack havoc with his missiles and blip out again, not catch falling spaceships.

And here she was, just sitting in the cockpit and unable to do anything herself.

Or was there?

No, there might be a way for her to help after all. They weren't falling at such a fast tilt anymore, which meant that maybe... just maybe... yes, that might just work.

Pushing against her handlebars she accelerated her starfighter, for the first and probably only time in her life, she overtook Rapidmon and rushed down towards the approaching ground. Then, she pulled out of her nosedive until the bottom of her ship was facing the ground and she was underneath the falling ship. She continued to descend like this at the same speed. Like Terriermon before her she said, "Take control of the ship," to her astromech. "I'm going out there." Arfour twittered in alarm, but did as he was bid.

Gripping the side of her seat, Aayla opened the cockpit. The rush of wind threatened to lift her out of the seat, but she resisted until she became accustomed to it and then, she clambered right out of the cockpit, until she was standing on top of her starfighter, as it fell towards the ground. In order for her plan to work, she needed to have split second timing and reflexes, otherwise she would probably end up getting herself killed in the process. The Rutian Twi'lek waited, judging the distance and tensing the muscles in her legs.

After a couple of seconds, she said, "Get out of here, Arfour," to the bronze droid she was standing next to, before she sprang right off her falling starfighter, rocketing straight upwards with one of the biggest Force Jumps she had ever attempted. Below her, R4-G9 shot away, which meant that if she missed, there would be nothing below to catch her except perhaps a tree, half a mile down.

Aayla's magnificent leap took her right across the gap. She tucked her legs to her chest and twirled her body in mid-air, flipping as Rapidmon and the _Twilight_ shot right past her. Reversing her position she was face-down, she began to fall once more, this time outside her starfighter, tucking her arms to her sides and her legs together to become more streamlined and using a burst of the Force to increase her speed. At the last second, she flipped and brought her legs down, landing on the roof of the now thankfully not fiery spaceship.

"Aayla!" Rapidmon cried in shock. "What the... What are you...?"

"Keep pushing," Aayla replied, sliding down the roof of the tilted ship towards him. The Twi'lek grabbed one of Rapidmon's huge ears as she fell past and swung herself onto his shoulders. She wrapped her legs around the small rocket launcher on Rapidmon's back, and released her grip on his ear, until she was only holding on with her legs.

"Are you insane?" Rapidmon hollered, as he continued to push against the _Twilight._

"No more than you!" Aayla shouted back. "Keep pushing! I'll help you out!" She shut her eyes tightly and raised her hands out before her, palms out. Her own teeth gritted together as she summoned every ounce of Force Energy she could and thrust it against the _Twilight_, enveloping it in the energy. Then, she too began to push against it with all her strength, though unlike Rapidmon, hers was mental.

The effect was gradual, but very noticeable. As Rapidmon and Aayla strained against the _Twilight_ it did indeed begin to slow down, getting slower and slower with each passing second. However, the ground was getting closer at the exact same rate. Aayla took a moment to check and saw that they were far, far too close for comfort.

"COME ON, RAPIDMON!" she yelled, thrusting her arms outwards as hard as she could. "YOU KNOW WE CAN DO THIS!"

It was almost as if Rapidmon felt a great amount of strength flood into him. "IF WE WORK TOGETHER!" he agreed. He roared as he pushed against the spaceship with all his energy. Aayla let out a similar yell as she focused all her power and threw it at the task in hand. The _Twilight_ suddenly slowed considerably, the Twi'lek and the Digimon pouring every ounce of force that they had at their disposal into their task, both of them quickly exhausting themselves but refusing to give up or slack off for a split second.

And, thank the Force, it worked.

The _Twilight_ crashed through the tree canopy at last, and Aayla was almost knocked off, but she managed to cling on, and plunged the last of the distance and much slower speed. Rapidmon threw his legs out behind him and his booted feet slammed into the ground...

... and they stayed there.

For a moment, the scene was frozen like some sort of strange tableau. The Ultimate level Digimon and the Twi'lek riding his shoulders with her arms thrusting her arms forward were holding the _Twilight_ in the air, Rapidmon standing on Naboo soil and the spaceship that had been falling now just hanging in mid-air. Then, Rapidmon's strength gave out and the _Twilight_ crashed to the ground before him, battered and charred by its descent, but still pretty much in one piece.

Rapidmon stood in front of it, his arms aching and hanging like slack ropes at his sides, panting hard as he tried and somewhat failed to get his breath back. On his shoulders, Aayla's only mental energy had been sapped by the effort and she collapsed forward, leaning against the back of Rapidmon's head and breathing heavily herself. Still, she was grinning. So was Rapidmon, but it was difficult to tell due to his mask. Both of them had put in so much effort that they were now rather lightheaded and giddy, but they had a good reason to be happy.

"We... did it," Aayla said, her chest heaving in and out as she sucked in the refreshing Naboo air.

"Yeah," agreed Rapidmon. "Knew we... could," he added, feeling his legs tingling slightly. Abruptly, the last of his strength gave out and, in a flash of light, he shrank downwards until he was the size and shape of a Terriermon and dropped to the ground, landing on his back. Aayla, now with nothing beneath her but air, dropped to the ground too, landing in a rather undignified heap on the ground. Fortunately, she missed landing on Terriermon and the two of them lay side by side for a few moments, both inhaling and exhaling deeply as their heartbeats slowly began to drop back to normal.

Terriermon glanced over at Aayla. "You know..." he said. "I still... think... you were... insane back there."

Aayla chuckled and coughed at the same time, which was rather unpleasant. "You can't really... talk can you? I've... never seen any...one attempt to catch a falling... ship without ... using the Force... before."

"Yes, well," said Terriermon, putting his ears and hands behind his head and gazing up through the hole in the canopy they had just crashed through. "If you were me, I'm... sure you would have done... the same thing. Am I right?"

"Of course you're right," Aayla turned and smiled at him. "I did, after all... do something pretty similar."

"I reckon this one will be... something for the history holobooks," Terriermon grinned. "When this war ends, I mean."

"Yes, well," Aayla shook her head. "I vote that we try and avoid having to pull off a similar scenario in the near future."

"I agree," Terriermon said. He glanced down at him stomach. Digimon heal fast but the burn marks from grabbing the incredibly hot spaceship were still visible and they still hurt. He poked one with his finger and winced. Aayla noticed this and sat up slightly, propping herself up on one elbow and extending her hand, holding it palm down over Terriermon's stomach. She shut her eyes and concentrated, drawing the small amount of energy she had regained and focusing it in the palm of her hand. A moment later, a soft blue glow began to emanate from her hand and washed over Terriermon's stomach. The burn marks began to heal over slightly until they were more or less gone. Then Aayla lowered her hand.

"Wow," Terriermon muttered, prodding his previously afflicted area. "Thanks."

"No problem," Aayla said. "Barriss was kind enough to teach me the basics of Force healing after the incident on Geonosis. I can't do things like mend broken bones or damaged organs but burns I can manage."

"Well, cheers," said Terriermon. Then, he scrambled to his feet and stood, facing the ship. "We should go and see if they're alright in there," he said.

Aayla nodded, levering herself up to her own feet. "Knowing them," she said. "They'll be alright."

* * *

And she was right.

Inside the ship, numerous pieces of machinery, hanging loose from where they were supposed to be, sparked and hissed slightly. The lights had gone out, meaning the only light was coming in through the window, which was, miraculously intact, and since they were under a thick canopy that meant the cockpit of the _Twilight_ was quite dark.

Slumped in the pilot seat, Anakin's was clutching his head in his hand, fighting to ignore the pounding headache that was building up inside, thanks to when he smacked his head on the controls when Rapidmon had grabbed the ship. He groaned and pushed himself up, turning to survey the other occupants of the ship. Kit Fisto was getting to his feet, a little bruised, but otherwise unharmed. R2-D2 was on his front in the corner. He was making no attempt to get back up, but his head was still swivelling from side to side and they could still hear nervous whistles coming from him so he was alright. Lopmon was leaning against him and appeared to be nursing a slightly squashed ear, but she was okay too.

Renamon was already back on her feet and was hauling Rika upwards from the floor. The fox looked completely undamaged. How she managed to keep from getting hurt at almost any time completely passed over Anakin's head. Rika too seemed to be okay, probably because she had kept close to Renamon the whole time. Nearby, Henry was comforting Suzie. Both appeared mostly unharmed, although Henry appeared to be pinching his nose, presumably to stop it from bleeding.

"Is everyone okay?" Kit Fisto asked, just to clarify. "No serious injuries."

"We're all okay," said Lopmon, getting to her feet. "Nothing to worry about really. Just a few bruises but nothing we can't handle."

"Good," nodded Kit. "That is a relief." He turned his grin towards Anakin. "You see, Skywalker? I told that there was still time. And it looks like all of us are going to be alright after all."

"Yeah, well," Anakin griped slightly. "We might be alright. But it's going to take me forever to get this ship back in working order." He glanced around his beloved ship, his eyes roaming over every detail and his brain coming up with one result – his ship was almost totally trashed. Why was it that when Aayla stole his ship to hunt for her Master she returned it without so much as a blemish, but at the next chance _he_ got to use it, this happened.

Life seriously wasn't fair sometimes.

"Well, it seems that we owe Terriermon and Aayla our lives," said Henry, his voice sounding a little obscure thanks to his nose-pinching. Everyone in the ship had seen the whole thing, where Aayla had jumped onto Rapidmon's shoulders and joined in his efforts. And it had paid off, big time.

"Indeed," said Kit. "That was incredibly brave of both of them, if extremely foolhardy as well. Aayla seems to be becoming more like you every day, Skywalker."

"Is that a compliment or not?" asked Anakin.

He took a moment to glance out of the window. When he saw nothing but trees and the ground, he frowned and said, "Speaking of which, where are they? They were just there a minute ago."

Just then, a blue lightsaber blade gently pushed itself through the wall of the ship nearby. It roamed downwards some distance, then across quite a way, then up, then across in the other direction and then back down to meet up where it had been before. The metal fell outwards and crashed to the forest-floor, forming a door. Aayla was standing outside it and she sheathed her blade and stepping inside the ruined spaceship. Terriermon was sitting on her shoulder – a bizarre juxtaposition of earlier, where she had been sitting on his.

"Is everyone okay?" asked the Twi'lek.

"Aayla! What do you think you're doing?" Anakin demanded. "Cutting a door in my spaceship like that? Don't you think it is totalled enough as it is?"

"I think that, considering the amount of damage already done to this ship, a hole in the wall is not adding much more to the list, if you ask me," Terriermon piped up. Anakin grumbled a little at this, but he fell silent.

"I think we're all okay," said Rika. "And we have you two to thank for it."

"And thank you we do," Renamon agreed, extending her arm outwards. Terriermon bounced from Aayla's shoulder and onto his mate's arm. "But, just for future reference, never do anything that stupid every again. Either of you."

"Don't ever be in a falling spaceship again and we may not have to," Terriermon chuckled. "Still at least we got through the blockade, even if it wasn't exactly the way we planned it out. And hey, we landed on Naboo ahead of schedule. That's gotta be a plus, right?"

Terriermon's attempts at humour allowed everyone a slight chuckle, allowing them to work off some of the oodles of tension that had built up over the previous few minutes. Aayla stepped backwards and gestured to her makeshift door. "May I suggest we all leave via this way, since the ramp seems to be out of order. And by that, I mean it's been crushed under the rest of the ship."

"Rather than stay here, I suppose we have no choice," said Henry, guiding Suzie, who was still trembling and slightly shocked, towards the door.

It took a little while for everyone to get off the _Twilight_, or what was left of it, and into the Naboo Forest. Aayla helped to get Henry and Suzie down by wrapping an arm around their waists and leaping down to the ground. Suzie yelped as she briefly felt herself falling again, but she soon calmed when she was set against the back of the tree, and Lopmon flew down to comfort her and help her get her breath back.

Henry looked out into the trees, still pinching his nose, and scrutinising the landscape for any sign of danger, that might have been attracted by their fall from space. He couldn't see anything, except trees and a couple of animals nearby that looked relatively harmless. They were vaguely reptilian, like small duck-billed dinosaurs without arms of any description and pinkish skin. Aayla noticed that he was staring at them and said, "Those are kaadu. Nothing to worry about, I assure you. They're probably curious. The Gungans use them as mounts."

"I see," said Henry, as Renamon sprang out of the ship, with Terriermon still on her shoulder and Rika in her arms. "Is there anything dangerous in this forest?"

"Aside from potentially Separatists, there shouldn't be," Aayla shook her head. "Most of the forest-dwellers are herbivorous. The only giant carnivores in Naboo are the ones that inhabit the deep waters, and trust me when I say that they can get pretty big. The sando aqua monster, one of the largest predators in the entire galaxy, is native to this planet, but you can only find them in the ocean depths."

"Momentai, Henry," Terriermon leapt onto his Tamers' head. "If anything jumps out at us, Lopmon and Renamon will go and beat it up. While I lie in the corner and restore my energy."

"Well, what are the odds of Separatists spotting us?" asked Henry.

Aayla shrugged. "I don't know. This is a big forest, Henry. They could be anywhere, and it's difficult to see things above the canopy. Unless they were close enough to hear our landing, which, as crash-landings go, was quite quiet, I doubt we'll be troubled by them. We're going to go looking for them if we want to fight."

Anakin, having helped Artoo get back onto his robotic feet, was the next to jump out of the ship. His astromech rolled to the hole in the wall and used the rockets embedded in his legs to follow his Master out of the _Twilight_ and land on the ground beside him, in a rather more controlled landing than his previous one. Anakin had checked the astromech for damage. Apart from his scomp link, which would need to be replaced, Artoo was in prime condition, which was surprising, considering what he just went through.

"Well," said Anakin, surveying the forest. "This complicates things, doesn't it? Does anyone know the direction of the proposed landing point from here?"

"Do you?" asked Renamon.

"No," Anakin shook his head. "I kinda lost my bearings when we went spiralling out of control. And now, I'm gonna have to leave my spaceship here. Fantastic."

"Relax Anakin," Aayla chuckled. "There are no Jawas here. Your ship will be in the same condition it is now when you get back. I know that's not really saying much, but it's something."

Anakin shrugged. "I wonder if Ahsoka managed to wipe out the rest of the blockade," he said. "She had things under control when I last checked."

"Your Padawan is reliable," said Kit, as he jumped out of the ship too. "I'm sure she'll be alright."

"Yeah, I'm just wondering if I should try to contact her though," Anakin pointed out. He turned to the Nautolan and asked, "How's your astromech?"

Kit had been last out because he'd gone into the back to check on his damaged ship and his astromech, Arsix, who he had left in the hold when he had entered the cockpit. Now, Kit shook his head. "The ship was tossed around during our unscheduled descent. Arsix was still active when I checked, but he was badly damaged. I've turned him off for now. We'll have to leave him here until we return to recover the _Twilight_."

Artoo whistled mournfully at the news that a fellow astromech had been damaged. Anakin patted his head mournfully. "Alright," he said. "Well, I'm going to try and contact Ahsoka." He activated his comlink and his wrist and said, "Hey, Snips. Can you hear me?"

There was no response. Kit glanced up at the trees above and said, "The canopy may be affecting the signal."

Anakin nodded and knelt beside his droid. "You reckon you can boost the power, Artoo?"

The blue, painted droid whistled, happy to be of use, and two panels opened in his hide. A radio sensor popped out of a socket in his head to boost the signal and a compartment in his chest opened and a little pincer-like hand snaked out and connected to Anakin's comlink.

* * *

Having lost track of the descent of the _Twilight_ several minutes ago, Ahsoka was close to panic. As she'd watched it go down, the shock and the horror at the spectacle had rendered her physically numb, and she froze up, with her eyes wide. In fact, she became so unresponsive that the gunner in Broadside's Y-wing had to save her life by blowing up a Vulture Droid that was heading her way. The resultant explosion jarred Ahsoka back to her senses, but by that time, the _Twilight_ was out of sight and she knew there was no way she would be able to catch up.

"Sir, the blockade has been crippled and broken," Broadside said into his comlink. "What are your orders?"

Ahsoka took a few moments to reply. When she did, it was only to shout. "Return to the cruisers, immediately!" She was in so much haste she forgot to congratulate the troops on their efforts and without another word, she whirled her fighter around and zinged back in the direction of the _Resolute_. The clones watched her for a few seconds, before following on. Most of them had been too engrossed in their task to notice the falling _Twilight_ and many were a bit peeved by Ahsoka's forgetfulness, until those that had spotted it filled them in. Then, they understood and let it slide.

Ahsoka whooshed towards the open hangar doors of her Master's cruiser and passed through the ray shields that were preventing everyone inside getting sucked into space. She then leapt out of her cockpit and dashed towards the bridge as fast as she good, which was very fast indeed because she was using the Force to give her extra speed.

She burst onto the bridge, through the sliding doors and rushing into the room. Admiral Yularen and Captain Rex, who were both standing beside the holotable, started at her explosive entrance.

"Did you see it?" Ahsoka asked, hurriedly. "Did you see what happened to the _Twilight_."

"Yes, Commander," nodded Rex, professional as ever. "We saw it go down. The bottom wing was knocked out by an onslaught of Vulture Droids and it lost control. But we don't know what's become of them since."

"Have to tried to contact them?" Ahsoka asked, a slight panicked edge to her voice as she tried to keep her emotions under control. It wasn't exactly working for her."

"Yes, Commander," Yularen replied, indicating the holotable. "We've been trying to get in touch with the ship, but it appears that the communicator was damaged in the fall. Out attempts have, as of yet, been unsuccessful."

"We have to find out what happened to them!" Ahsoka cried, stepping up to the table and quickly opening the channel that would allow her to speak with the occupants of the _Twilight_. "I have to know what happened to them! Hello, can anybody here me. This is Ahsoka Tano, calling Anakin Skywalker, or anyone else in the _Twilight_. Is there anybody there? Please respond."

There was nothing. Not even the sound of static coming through from the other end. No voice could be heard through the speakers. No hologram appeared in the middle of the table.

Ahsoka slammed her fist on one of the buttons in desperation.

"Please, please,_ please_ respond!" she almost shouted at the table. Her face was contorted into an agony of concern and as listened for a response, hoping against hope that Anakin was just being late to pick up like he normally was. But she knew that Yularen must have been right. Anakin knew to reply to calls during an emergency.

"It's no use, Commander Ahsoka," said Yularen. "We have tried several times, but they simply aren't responding. It can only mean two potential things. Either the communications are simply down due to fall, which is highly likely, or..."

"Please, don't say it," Ahsoka screwed up her eyes and shook her head in denial.

"I am sorry, young Padawan," said Yularen, with genuine regret and sorrow on his part. "But I am afraid we must be realistic. It is highly unlikely, perhaps even impossible that anyone inside that ship managed to survive a fall from a height such as this. As much as I wish I wasn't saying this, there is a very real possibility that your Master, along with Master Fisto, the Tamers, Renamon and Lopmon... are dead."

Ahsoka looked up sharply as Yularen said these words. "The Tamers, Renamon and Lopmon? What?"

Rex intervened. "We contacted the _Intrepid_ when we saw the ship go down, sir. Commander Bly said that they had used some kind of Modify Card to teleport over to our vessel and that they went with General Skywalker in the _Twilight._"

"What were they thinking?" Ahsoka asked.

"I assume they wanted to feel useful, sir," said Rex.

Ahsoka gritted her teeth. "But... but they can't be dead. They can't have gotten themselves killed. My Master's been in many crashes before. He... he could survived..."

"And while we all hope that is the case..." Yularen began to say, but he was cut off.

"They'll find a way!" Ahsoka insisted. "The Digimon always find a way to make stuff happen! They must have survived! I know it."

"Even Digimon have their limits, sir," said Rex. "But speculation will get us nowhere. We will just have to wait and see."

"Yes," nodded Yularen. "The Captain is right. In the meantime, we shall proceed to land our troops at the designated landing zone."

At the words of her friends and colleague, Ahsoka could feel water beginning to leak out of her eyes. She had felt helpless many times, but ever since she had become Anakin's Padawan, whenever she had witnessed one of Anakin's crashes she had been with him and in the ship at the time. She'd never been on the sidelines, so she'd never felt as powerless to help him as she had right now. It was an abysmal feeling. She now had some vague idea of what he must have been feeling when her and Aayla's gunship went down on Felucia, but his remained in the air.

Unable to keep the lid on her emotions, she turned around and threw her arms around a very startled Rex and began to cry quietly into his armour. Poor Rex was completely and utterly unsure of what to make of this. He'd never seen a Jedi burst into tears like this before. He just stared down at her a little helplessly for a couple of seconds, before reminding himself that Ahsoka may be a Jedi, but she was still a growing child. So, he did what he had learnt to do when Suzie started crying, and tentatively returned the hug with one arm and placed the other hand on the back of Ahsoka's head.

Needless to say, he felt a bit awkward about all this, but, it occurred to Rex that if this had happened to him before he met the Digimon and became accustomed to seeing and occasionally doing this sort of thing, he would probably have freaked out is Ahsoka had tried this. The Digimon had changed him as a person, and he was also trying not to think of the idea of two of them being dead.

As he tried his best to comfort the young Togruta, he glanced down towards the planet below, wondering what had become of the crew of the _Twilight_, when suddenly he spotted something a little peculiar. He frowned and said, "That's odd. Commander Tano, I think you should see this."

"What?" sniffed Ahsoka, turned around and releasing Rex from her hug and vice versa, glancing out of the window to see what Rex was looking at. What she saw made her frown and dash over to the window for a better look. She could see two shapes getting closer and closer, and she could already tell what they were. They were a pair of Jedi starfighters, and she could tell without even looking at the paint jobs that they belonged to Aayla and Terriermon. She remembered seeing them diving after the falling ship like a pair of pursuing insects.

What was unusual about the fact the two starfighters returning was the fact that the cockpits of both of them were completely empty. Both Aayla and Terriermon were nowhere to be seen, and the ships were being piloted by the astromechs still in their slots.

"What the..." Ahsoka murmured, her tears forgotten as she watched the two starfighters heading towards the _Intrepid_, where they would be able to dock in the hangar they had left not long before. "Where are..." she trailed off, completely bemused. Surely Aayla and Terriermon had not landed at the crash site and ordered their astromechs to go back up without them.

Had they?

Her brain was suddenly sidetracked when the comlink on her wrist started to bleep. She was so surprised by it that she jumped when the little noise started to go off beside her ear. But, once coherent thought returned to her, she wasted no time in pressing the button. "Hello?" she shouted. "Master? Master, is that you? Or Aayla? Who is this?"

"Whoa, whoa, take it easy, Snips," said an unmistakeable voice. "You'll hyperventilate if you keep going like that."

"Master!" Ahsoka shouted joyously. "You're alive!"

"Of course I am," chuckled Anakin's voice. "You didn't really expect me to be killed off by a measly space shuttle fall, did you? Honestly, Ahsoka, don't you have more faith in me?"

"Faith?" Ahsoka yelled, walking back over to Rex and Yularen. "I was worried sick! We all were! If I was standing next to you right now, I would hit you for making me so worried!"

"Right," Anakin replied. "That's good to know. What's the status up there?"

"Up here? Who cares about up here?" Ahsoka said, a bit sharply. "We all want to know what's happening down there. How is everybody else? Are all the Tamers alive? And the Digimon? And Master Fisto? And Artoo?"

"You're doing it again, Snips," said Anakin. "Just calm down, okay. We're all fine. All of us made it out of that little jam alright. A couple of bumps here and there, but otherwise we're all completely unharmed, except for Henry who has a nosebleed. But apart from that, we're all peachy."

Yularen stepped over to Ahsoka and spoke into the comlink. "Forgive me for saying this, General, but how is that possible? We were all pretty much resigned to the idea that you had all perished in the fall? How in the galaxy did you survive? With barely an injury, no less."

"It was one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen," said Anakin. "To cut a long story short, Terriermon digivolved into Rapidmon and tried to catch the ship, and Aayla actually jumped onto his back and used the Force to give him a helping hand. We're all okay, thanks to them. Both of them are recovering from the sheer amount of effort they put into the attempt, but they're okay too."

"Well, I suppose that explains why their starfighters came back without them," remarked Ahsoka. "You sure they're okay?"

"Let's put it to the test, shall we?" asked Anakin. "Momentai, Ahsoka."

A fairly muffled, but still quite loud shout of "HEY!" broke through the comlink.

"Evidentally, Terriermon's alright then," chuckled Rex.

"That he is. And Aayla's alright too. The only problem is that we're now in the middle of a dense forest and also a swamp and we have no real idea as to where we are, or which direction we're supposed to be heading in. And we can hardly ask the kaadus for directions."

"We could try," said a voice which sounded like Kit Fisto. "But I doubt it would get us anywhere."

"Probably not," said Anakin. "The only reason I can get through to your comlink at all is because Artoo is boosting the signal."

"Okay then," said Ahsoka. "We'll come and find you. Shouldn't be too hard. All we have to do is follow the big plume of smoke. Should lead us right to you."

"No, Snips," said Anakin. "There's no time. Sending ships through a canopy this dense is going to be tricky at the best of times and the Gungans are relying on us. Every second we waste puts them in greater danger. Listen closely. We want you to go ahead as planned and head down to the drop-off point. Begin preparations for our campaign without us. Once you land, we'll be able to follow your signal and head right to you. Then, we'll join up with you and we can come back for the _Twilight_ later."

"How is the _Twilight_, by the way?" asked Ahsoka, impishly.

"Don't go there," Anakin replied, which gave Ahsoka her answer. "Now get to it, Snips. You're in charge. You reckon you can handle the responsibility?"

"Hey, I did take out the Separatist Blockade, you know," said Ahsoka. "Heading down to the surface of the planet isn't hard. It's what we'll be doing after that that's the difficult part."

"True enough," said Anakin. "We're counting on you for now, Ahsoka. See you soon."

"Look after yourselves," said Ahsoka, and then the line went dead as Anakin signed off.

"Well, I'll be," said Yularen, shaking his head in disbelief. "Suddenly I feel like my previous realism was more pessimism than anything else. Perhaps I should put a bit more faith in the Digimon."

"At least they're all okay," said Rex. "That's the important thing. Although, I must say I'm a bit envious that I didn't see that. Rapidmon and General Secura actually catching the ship? That must have been quite a spectacle."

"Yeah," nodded Ahsoka. "But, let's talk about that later. Contact the _Intrepid_ and both of Master Fisto's ship. Prep all the gunships and tell the SCUBA troopers to make sure they have all their equipment on standby. We're heading down to the planet's surface."

"Understood, Commander," nodded Yularen.

* * *

Anakin deactivated his comlink and unplugged it from his astromech. "Thanks, Artoo," he said. R2-D2 jiggled and whistled happily. He seemed to be in bright spirits for someone who had just crash-landed from outer space.

Terriermon was scowling at Anakin, with his arms folded. The white bunny Digimon was sitting in Aayla's lap and the Twi'lek herself was sitting beside the trunk of a giant tree. Both of them were trying to get back the energy they had lost from before. "Did you have to use my word back then?" asked Terriermon. "I just saved your life and that's how you thank me."

Aayla smirked, although her eyes were shut and she was relaxing against the tree. "Oh, Momentai yourself, Terriermon. We all got out alive, so I'd say that is a good reason to do just that. Plus, _we_ saved their lives, remember?"

"Yeah, I know," Terriermon said. "I'm just saying... if he had a word then I wouldn't use it myself."

"Yes, you would," Henry said, releasing his nose to check if it was still bleeding and noting, after a couple of seconds, that it seemed to have cleared up. "And you know it. You'd use it _because_ it was someone else's word."

"Pretty much like why we all use yours," agreed Lopmon, grinning maliciously and flexing her bruised ear, testing her flight muscles. "And for the same reason I'm about to say the tree your sitting next has a pineapple growing on it."

"WHERE?" Terriermon yelled, leaping out of Aayla's lap and directly into Aayla's hand, because the Twi'lek had grabbed him out of the air, without opening her eyes. Aayla put him back into her lap and said, "Calm yourself, Terriermon. Getting agitated is not a good idea right now. Save your strength."

Terriermon sent a quick glare in the direction of his sister and said, "Yeah, I suppose. But still, that was mean."

"Actually, I'd say that taking the rip out of you is a good thing because it means things are returning to normal," said Lopmon.

"Shut up," Terriermon said, shutting his eyes and leaning against Aayla's stomach.

Renamon, who was leaning against the same tree they were, but was still standing, opened her own eyes and glanced fondly down at her little mate. He noticed in his subconscious and briefly looked up at her, giving her a wink, before shutting his eyes again and returning to his previous position. Aayla and Terriermon looked for all the world like they were dozing in the shade of the tree. And considering what the two of them had just done, they deserved a good siesta.

Renamon turned her gaze to the two other Jedi. "How soon do you think we'll be able to get moving?"

"It's hard to say," said Kit. "The tracking devices on our comlink may have similar trouble with signal, like the communication did. But, if it works then we can get moving as soon as the others land."

"And if it doesn't?" asked Rika.

"Well then, we think of a new plan," Kit shrugged.

Anakin, meanwhile, took his comlink off his wrist and tossed it to Artoo. A little, mechanical hand opened in the astromech's chest and caught the comlink quite smoothly. "Not to worry," said Anakin. "Artoo should be able to lead us there. After all, he can boost the signal again. And just to make sure there's not some problem with it, you reckon you could go and scope things out, Lopmon?"

"It would be my pleasure," said Lopmon. "See you in a bit."

"Where are you going?" Suzie asked, surprised, since she had not understood what Anakin meant by 'scope things out.'

"Don't worry, Suzie. I'm just going to the tops of the trees," the bunny assured her. "I'll be back." Flexing her ear slightly to prepare it for flight, she took off with one enormous flap and powered her way upwards. It was a bit of an effort, since she was more used to using her long ears to ride wind-currents and glide, but there was none of that in this forest, so she had to flap hard to gain altitude.

She quickly landed near the top of the nearest tree and scuttled the last several metres upwards, until her head poked out through the canopy. The sight was quite something to behold. The forest seemed to stretch out for miles and miles in every direction, a never-ending stream of dense foliage, thick as a winter blanket. Like most plants back on Earth, the view was mostly green, though there were a couple of blotches of purple in her view as well. Why the trees had purple leaves, she didn't know.

It reminded her a little of the forest level in her own Digital World, with a sky similar to that of Earth. It was beautiful.

Speaking of the sky, she looked up and saw that the four Republic cruisers were above them. They were still a considerable way up, but they were distinguishable because of their shape and size. And they were getting bigger, which meant that they were slowly making their descent into the atmosphere. Their trip was considerably less fiery and dramatic than hers had been.

She kept an eye on them, not wanting to miss an important detail. And, sure enough, after several minutes of watching, Lopmon spotted a group of white dots detaching from each one. LAAT gunships began a rapid descent down towards the surface. As they got closer, they flew right over Lopmon's head, still some distance up. Lopmon turned around to follow their progress and watched them until they disappeared from sight some distance away by dropping below the tree cover.

That was the direction of Lake Paonga, the location of the Gungan Capital – Otoh Gunga, or Gunga City.

Mission complete, Lopmon dropped down to the floor. Literally. She leapt right off the tree and, about half-way down, extended her ears like parachutes. She delivered her message from mid-air, calling to the others and saying, "We need to go that way," and pointing in the direction the gunships had taken.

"Alright then," said Anakin, as Lopmon settled rather gracefully on top of Suzie's head, and Aayla and Terriermon opened their eyes and got to their feet. "We have a direction. Lead the way, Artoo."

Artoo whistled and, extending his third leg from his underside, he began to trundle across the forest floor in the direction Lopmon had pointed, following the tracking device on the comlink Anakin had given him and using his internal servers to boost the signal. Everyone began to follow him as the little astromech lead them deeper into the forest and away from the smouldering wreck that had once been Anakin's personal ship.

All they had to do was join up with Ahsoka and the clones. How hard could that be?

As they were about to find out, it was going to be a lot harder than they thought.

* * *

I just couldn't resist ending on _another_ cliffhanger, considering how you all seem to think they're evil. It's not as big a one as the last time, but it's there.

I hope that rescue scene was as exciting as it was meant to be. Considering the lack of really heroic deeds the Digimon did for most of the last arc I decided to put one in here. Originally Rapidmon alone was going to save the ship, until I thought about his design and realised he probably wouldn't be able to. So I threw in Aayla because she was there, and is ridiculously good at acrobatics.

* * *

Next time...

Something sinister is stirring. While the heroes trek their way through the swamplands to the rendezvous, they are unaware that something is watching them. And it wants revenge. Can anyone guess what it is?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 84 : Return Of The Forgotten**


	84. Return of the Forgotten

10 reviews over two days is much, much better than six over four. I absolutely love the flood of reviews I received over the weekend. I'm sorry it took so long for this chapter to come out, but my Biodiversity assignment deadline was on Tuesday so I really had to knuckle down to it and make it a good one. But now, it's over, so I can write this more. Hooray.

However, I am actually quite stunned that none of you guessed the answer to the mysterious enemy correctly, out of those who reviewed anyway. I thought that at least one person would get it, though apparently I was wrong. Oh well. Hopefully you'll be looking forward to fighting out who it is, and the repercussions of it.

Thanks to my new reviewers. I have some answers to your reviews here, as well as a couple from older reviewers.

**megacoldfusion – **No, it is not Durge. I know who Durge is though, and I have considered putting him in this fanfic several times. But, so far, I have decided against it because I don't know enough about him and haven't seen him in anything other than on Wookieepedia, because I haven't read the comics and found the 2003 series of Clone Wars painful to watch because I thought personally that it was awful, unlike this awesome new series. However, if he does appear in Season 4 (because I know that I won't have finished writing this by the time it comes out) and I see him in action in that, I may put him in here after all in the later chapters. We'll have to wait and see. Thanks for the review.

**zigmas** – I have been asked to do this a number of times, and I have said that I will do something like that at some point. I'll let you in on a little spoiler – this will occur in the next arc. However, it will not be Daemon, BlackWarGreymon or GranDracmon. It will be someone else.

**jeremy hollis** – Thanks for the review. And don't worry. Keep working on that plot. It took me a while to get this plot together too. The only reason that its flowing so fast now is because I've planned out the whole thing pretty much in advance and I'm already planning the sequels, even though they are a few years away.

**

* * *

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 84:- Return Of The Forgotten**

* * *

The enormous trees of the Naboo swamplands loomed over the heroic group of survivors from the crash. They were huge, and although Henry had never seen a real Californian Redwood before, he was pretty sure that these humongous trees might be able to rival them in size. Perhaps the redwoods were bigger, but if they were, it couldn't be by much.

It made Henry feel a little nervous, but then again the boy felt nervous at the best of times, just as any overprotective brother should do, out of concern for his sister's safety. His partner's too, considering how Terriermon was still not completely at full strength and was flopped on his head and trying to recover it. The tree-line was so dense that anything could be hiding in it, unseen by their eyes. Namely – Separatist forces. They had no idea how far the Separatists had managed to go in carrying out their plan, whatever that plan was, and if they hadn't gotten very far, they could be anywhere in this forest.

Still, he trusted the senses of the Digimon and the Jedi to keep him and the other Tamers out of harm's way. But that didn't mean he felt completely secure. In dense forests like this, just about anything could happen, and nobody except those with you at the time would be able to help you out.

The blue-haired boy tried to shake off some of his anxiety by turning and listening to Anakin talking. The Chosen One was giving an outline of his experiences on this planet to Renamon, Suzie and Lopmon.

"The first time I came here," said Anakin, "Was when I was much younger, just nine years old at the time. I was one of the little party that managed to convince the Gungans to help fight the Trade Federation. Admittedly, I didn't actually do anything in that encounter. The negotiating was all done by Padmé, while I just stood there and looked stunned, because I'd only just learned that she was the Queen of the planet."

"Well, that would be enough to stun a lot of people," observed Renamon.

"If Padmé used to be a Queen," said Suzie, "Does that meant that she used to be a princess before that? That would be so cool, wouldn't it, Lopmon."

"Uh... I suppose," said Lopmon. Henry snorted. He could tell Lopmon was picturing the old days where Suzie would make her dress up as Princess Pretty Pants, hence Lopmon's rather unenthusiastic reply.

"Nah," Anakin shook his head. "Padmé was never a princess. The monarchy here is different to other places. A member of a high-ranking family becomes Queen for two terms and then has to step down from the throne. They do this to prevent corruption in the monarchy, I think. And it works. People don't usually have their power long enough to get so used to it that greedy thoughts take over. But Padmé still serves as a Senator now, because she was such a popular queen."

"Makes sense," said Lopmon. "Maybe we should try that back home if we ever have a monarchy thrown on us."

Anakin nodded and then went back to his story. "This planet was the second planet I ever set foot on once I finally managed to get off Tatooine – the first being Coruscant. I'll never forget my first trip here. I finally got to pilot a starfighter. Admittedly I wasn't brilliant at it. I ended up blowing up the Trade Federation control ship completely by accident. But still, everyone said it was a job well done, so I'm not complaining. This was also the planet where Obi-Wan told me I would be his Padawan one day. It's just a shame Master Qui-Gon had to die for that to happen."

Renamon nodded. "Yes. I would have quite liked to meet this Qui-Gon. He sounds like an intriguing person."

"He was," nodded Anakin. "I owe my life as a Jedi to him."

"When did you come to this planet after that?" asked Suzie.

"Not for a long time," Anakin replied. "I next came here right before this whole war started, when I was supposed to be guarding Padmé from an unknown assassin who turned out to be Jango Fett. Then, this whole war started and I came here again a few months in to destroy the Blue Shadow Virus. It's a shame all the blueprints weren't destroyed."

"Yes," Renamon said, grimly. "But, let's just hope that we've managed to destroy it once and for all this time."

"Hear, hear," Terriermon yawned from the top of Henry's head.

Rika, from where she had been walking beside her partner, turned to look at Anakin. "Any idea how long it will take us to get there?"

"Not a clue," said Anakin. "Ask Artoo," he indicated the astromech who was rolling across the loam in front of them. The little droid's head briefly turned around and whistled something, before turning back to face forwards. "Ah," said Anakin. "He said we're halfway there."

"Good," said Rika, glancing from side to side as she stared into the trees. "For some reason, this forest is creeping me out."

"You too, huh?" Henry asked wryly.

"Yeah," said Rika. "But I can't quite put my finger on why."

"I reckon I know," said Kit, looking over to the tamers. "It's the silence, isn't it?"

Briefly, everyone listened to the forest. Apart from the sounds of their own feet hitting the ground with each step and a slight whirring from Artoo as he moved forward, there was not a sound to be heard anywhere.

"Yeah," Rika nodded slowly. "I think that might be it. Why is it so quiet?"

Aayla supplied the answer. "Sounds don't travel very well in a forest as thick as this. Sound waves reverberate of tree trunks and foliage and don't get very far from the source. Even if you shouted at the top of your lungs, the sound wouldn't be heard by others a surprisingly close distance to us." The Twi'lek frowned slightly. "But, even so, I am surprised it is this quiet."

"True, Aayla," Kit nodded, his eyes narrowing slightly as he studied their surroundings. "I would have expected to hear at least some faint noises. Birdsong, perhaps – Naboo has a large variety of avian species."

"Perhaps the animals all know to keep quiet when Separatists are around," said Lopmon. "After all, do battle droids discriminate between their enemies and the locals?"

"Of course they don't" growled Anakin. "They are programmed for hostility, after all."

"Is there any chance there could be Separatists nearby?" asked Henry, drawing closer to his sister protectively.

"I doubt it," Kit said. "I'm sure we'd be able to sense potential danger if they were."

"Maybe we're all just getting creeped out for no good reason," Terriermon put in. "I say that we get off this topic and focus on something else instead. Who wants to talk about cookies."

"I do!" Suzie cried.

"Cookies?" Henry looked up at his partner a little incredulously. "Why cookies?"

"Because I'm hungry and it was the first thing I thought of," Terriermon grinned.

"Oy vey," Henry shook his head.

"Oy vey?" Terriermon asked, bemused. "Who says that?"

"Evidently, I do," Henry retaliated.

Terriermon abruptly began to grin. There was a slightly evil twist to that grin. He glanced down at his partner and said, "And you shouldn't have said that, because it's reminded me of a certain Dreamworks Film where those words are said by a hippo. You know which one I'm referring to?"

It didn't take Henry long to figure it out. "Oh no," he slapped a hand over his face in exasperation. "What was I thinking?"

"I don't get it," said Anakin, frowning.

"I'm referring to a film called "Madagascar," said Terriermon. "And of course, whenever somebody or something remind me of that film, I just have to do this." Terriermon sprung up so he was standing on Henry's head, which was quite uncomfortable for the Tamer, and Terriermon abruptly cried, "I like to move it, move it. I like to move it, move it. I like to move it, move it. Ya like to..." He held a hand to one ear.

"Move it!" chorused Suzie, Lopmon and, surprisingly enough, Aayla.

Terriermon began dancing a jig on top of his Tamer's head. "I like to move it, move it. I like to move it, move it. I like to move it, move it. Ya like to..."

"Move it!" chorused the others, Rika joining in this time, as Terriermon sprang off Henry's head, much to his relief, and landed on Renamon's shoulder. The fox dutifully held out an arm, which Terriermon, grinning the whole time, used as a stage, bouncing up and down as he went on.

"I like to move it, move it. You like to move it, move it. She like to move it, move it. He like to..."

"Move it!" Even Renamon joined in this time.

In a startlingly accurate impersonation of a certain lemur, Terriermon began to say, "All girls all over the world – Original King Julien 'pon your case, man. I love how all the girls a move their body and when ya move ya body uno move it nice and sweet and sassy. Alright?"

"This could go on for some time," Henry groaned as Terriermon bounced around on his mates arm. Suzie was also bouncing along with the imaginary music and even Anakin had a slight spring in his step, something which Aayla picked up on and resolved to tell Ahsoka later.

"What exactly is going on?" Kit asked him, looking bemused.

"This song was sung in a film that Terriermon likes to watch," said Henry. "Whenever the film is mentioned or adhered to, he just starts singing it."

* * *

As Terriermon was singing his jaunty tune and lifting the spirits of pretty much everyone – including Henry, although the blue-haired boy would never admit it – millions of miles away, a small, green creature with robes and big, pointed ears was sitting on a what resembled a large pouffe. His eyes were shut and his breathing was deep and regular, indicating he was in deep meditation.

Yoda did this often. As Grand Master, he held himself responsible for the well-being of all the Jedi and would frequently go into a deep state of mediation in an attempt to commune with the Force, hoping for enlightenment, so the Force could show him what was needed to win the war and end the suffering. But it was difficult. Almost everything was clouded and difficult to make out. Yoda knew this was the work of the Dark Side and was attempting to penetrate it to get something worth knowing from his silent meditation.

Then, in his mind, he suddenly felt something like a mental explosion, as an enormous and yet, at the same time, oddly faint, disturbance was made in the Force. He focused on it, determined to untangle some kind of meaning from the knot of disruption in his mind.

He did not like what he saw.

Yoda opened his yellow eyes. "Back, it is," he sighed. "For revenge."

* * *

"Woman! Physically fit! Physically fit! Physically, physically, physically fit! Woman! Physically fit! Physically fit! Physically, physically, physically f...mmph!" Terriermon's singing came to an abrupt end, when suddenly, Renamon withdrew her arm from beneath him, grabbing him in one paw and pressing him to her chest, one paw holding him there and the other holding his mouth.

"Thanks, Renamon," Henry said, chuckling a bit. He faltered in surprise when Renamon removed her hand from Terriermon's face and turned to face him, holding a warning finger to her mouth in a gesture to indicate silence. Only now did Henry notice that Renamon's fur was standing on end all her muscles were tensed, ready for action.

Henry glanced around the rest of the group. Despite being pinned to Renamon's chest in one paw, Terriermon now looked equally alert and wary. Lopmon did too – she had sprung from Suzie's head to the ground and was standing in a stance that indicated she was ready to jump into action at the slightest notice. All three Digimon were staring into the trees with intent, scouring their surroundings for any sign of a threat. And they were not the only ones to be doing so. Kit and Anakin had both tensed up a little. Their hands were hovering close to their lightsabers as if they were unsure whether or not they were going to need them in a minute.

But, out of the three Jedi, Aayla had reacted the most. The Twi'lek's lightsaber was already activated and in her hand. Her eyes were wide and her grip on her lightsaber was so tight that her knuckles were changing colour.

The three Tamers, who had no idea what was going on, stared at their companions nervously. "What is it?" asked Suzie, timidly moving closer to Henry. "Is something wrong?"

"I'm not sure," said Kit, frowning. "I felt a sudden disturbance in the Force. It was odd, but it was so strong. And so close too."

"I felt it too," nodded Anakin. "But I can't explain it. I have no idea what it was. I've never felt any disturbance like that before."

"I have," Aayla breathed. Anakin and Kit looked over to her sharply.

"My danger sense began to tingle," said Renamon. "All of ours did. It's most peculiar. None of us have felt anything like this since we entered this dimension."

"It almost feels like..." Lopmon began.

But Aayla interrupted. "Like it did back home whenever a Digimon bio-emerged?"

Lopmon glanced at her. "Yes," she nodded slowly. "Yes, it did. How did you know?"

"Because," Aayla sent a meaningful look at all three Digimon. "That disturbance in the Force felt exactly the same as the one back on Christophsis when Renamon flew out of the portal and almost hit me in the head."

All three of the Digimon's eyes widened.

"Then that means..." Renamon gasped.

"I thought it felt familiar," Terriermon growled.

"Hold on a minute," Kit said, slightly confused by all this. "I don't understand. Do any of you know what is going o..."

Abruptly, there was a cracking sound – a thick fallen branch had just been trodden on.

"**RUN!"** shouted Renamon, leaping into action.

She sprang forwards, in the opposite direction to the noise, hooking one arm around Rika and hoisting the surprised Tamer into the air as she did, bounding through the forest trees. Renamon's shout had been enough to galvanise everyone else, even though a couple of them still didn't know what was going on. Renamon never ran from anything unless it was very serious indeed.

Henry grabbed Suzie's hand and pulled his little sister after the fleeing Renamon. Terriermon, who had been freed from Renamon's grip, and Lopmon, took to the air and flew above both of them. But Henry wasn't going nearly as fast as the yellow fox on the ground and Suzie wasn't as fast as him, let alone Renamon. He wasn't entirely surprised when he heard the sound of a lightsaber being sheathed behind him and moments later, felt Aayla hoisting both him and Suzie into her arms, despite Henry's relatively tall height.

He didn't complain though.

Anakin and Kit brought up the rear, both their lightsabers in their hands, blue and green respectively. As they hurried, both the Jedi could hear noises behind them. Noises which sounded like something very big and very angry crashing through the undergrowth behind them. Both of them took quick glance behind them and saw nothing but rustling bushes and a huge, bizarre silhouette baring down on them.

"What is that?" Anakin cried, shocked at the sight of the thing, however vague that sight was. He couldn't make out a distinct shape, but he could tell it was gaining.

"If Renamon's acting this way, it might be best if we save the questions for later!" Kit yelled as they ran.

The whole group overtook poor Artoo, who wasn't as fast as they were on his wheels when they were running at full tilt, as they were doing now. The astromech quickly activated his jets and soared after his master and friends as quickly as the little rockets in his legs could carry him. As he flew, Artoo rotated his head to take his own look at their pursuer. And he saw it as it appeared. Something huge and bright white exploded from the foliage, huge purple claws brandished in their direction, single red eye blazing with ferocity and anger.

Artoo squealed.

The thing vanished.

But, as it did, it made an incredibly loud noise, which sounded like a high-pitched BACKEW!

"Yeah, it's definitely him!" Terriermon shouted.

"LOOK OUT!" Renamon shouted from the front as, with another loud BACKEW the thing reappeared right in front of the fleeing group, literally springing out of mid-air and lunging towards Renamon and Rika. An enormous clawed hand lashed out towards them, so large it would crush both of them on impact. Only Renamon's split-second timing, high-wired reactions and leaping ability saved her life and the life of her Tamer. She threw herself to one side, rolling and springing to her feet as Rika yelped in surprise and slight pain, while the huge claws slammed into the turf beside them, sending up a shower of earth that coated Renamon and Rika, as well as Aayla, Henry and Suzie, who had skidded to a halt and jumped backwards only just in time to avoid being smashed themselves.

The creature shrieked in annoyance and its other arm slammed downwards, going for the fox and the girl once again, curved claws causing the air to whistle as they slashed through it. Renamon sprang upwards, carrying Rika with her and only just managed to clear the massive claws. Renamon planted her feet on the creature's arm and used it to bounce skywards.

"Hurry, Rika!" Renamon shouted as they sailed into the air.

Rika, who fully understood what was happening now, needed no second bidding and pressed her D-Arc to her chest with a cry of "BIOMERGE ACTIVATE!"

It was the first time Kit Fisto has seen a biomerge. And it was as beautiful as he had been expecting as Digimon and Tamer alike burst into light.

"**RENAMON BIOMERGE TO... SAKUYAMON!"**

The fox-shaman being that was formed in the bright light had no time for theatrics. Sakuyamon burst out of the light before it had a chance to fade away by itself and dived down towards the creature, swinging her golden staff directly at its face. The creature leapt backwards at speed, avoiding the sweep, but Sakuyamon span on the momentum, bringing another swing forward. The creature dodged that too, but was unprepared for Sakuyamon did next, stopping in mid-swing and slamming the butt of her staff into the creature's gut. The creature doubled over for a second, yelping in pain, then growled and slashed at the shaman with its giant claws. Sakuyamon quickly caught them with her staff, holding it like a bo-staff, but was pushed back by the force of the strike. She managed to get in a quick kick to the stomach with her heel before being flung away and landing on the ground in a skid. The creature also skidded backwards and when the two came to a stop they stared at each other, brandishing staff and claws respectively.

The face-off gave the Jedi their first good look at their attacker – as they had pulled to a halt when the creature attacked Renamon. They stared in disbelief.

"What is that?" Anakin repeated himself as they stared at it. It looked like a giant humanoid that had been largely melted by being dipped in acid, because what flesh they could see was red and stringy and didn't look capable of supporting itself. But most of it was covered in white, rounded armour, which had several purple symbols etched onto it. Thick pointed plates covered its lower arms and hands, and lower legs and feet, with three, large purple claws sticking out of each hand and three on the front of each foot, with one protruding from the back of each foot too. It's pelvis and chest were also covered in armour, with huge, pointed shoulder-guards. It's face was covered in a mask with a pointed nose and two pointed protrusions like horns at the top. A single red eye blazed furiously in the centre. Only the eye, the lower half of its face, the upper legs and arms and the stomach were not covered in white armour.

Aayla stared at it, a wave on unease spreading through her. She had seen this creature before... at an extreme distance... but she still recognised it.

"Is that who I think it is?" the Twi'lek asked Terriermon quietly.

"Oh yes," Terriermon nodded solemnly. "That's Parallelmon alright."

And so it was. The last time the Digimon had seen Parallelmon he'd been beaten to a pulp by them. This armour had been cracked and caved, his stringy flesh bruised and smoking and his face-mask almost torn off. Now, he looked as pristine and strong, although also just as hideous, as he had been when he had first attacked them. The Jedi were stunned at what they saw. They'd all heard about evil Digimon from what they had been told but they had never seen one before, at least not up close.

It wasn't a pretty sight.

"Hello, Parallelmon," said Sakuyamon grimly, the eyes under her fox-head mask locking onto her enemy's single one. "It's been a long time."

Parallelmon laughed menacingly. "It certainly has, my old friend. You look like you've been doing well for yourself." His voice was just as rasping and unpleasant at it had been last time, like he had a thorn bush stuck in his throat.

"You don't look so bad yourself," Sakuyamon observed. "Aside from the ugliness, I mean."

Parallelmon laughed again. "If you think commenting on my appearance is going to get to me, you're wrong. I am a Mutant Digimon. I am well aware I am hideous."

"Well, you're certainly looking much better than you should be," said the Mega-shaman. "Shouldn't you be in a hole somewhere, dying as a result of how much we battered you."

"For a time, that is exactly what I was doing," Parallelmon admitted. "I sealed myself in some random dimension and I've been waiting there ever since, rebuilding my strength and restoring my energy. I only just had enough to stay alive and hold on to my Mega Form. I did almost die a couple of times, but I suppose you could say my hatred of you and my desire for revenge drove me to keep going."

"And now you're back to get that revenge," Sakuyamon stated.

"Correct," Parallelmon said. "Now, shall we get down to it? I've been looking forward to this."

"We always knew you'd return someday," Sakuyamon twirled her staff, ready for combat. "It was only a matter of time. So, you could say I've been looking forward to this too."

"Good," Parallelmon. "That will make this more satisfying. Let's go!" He lunged forward at almost blinding speed and lashed at Sakuyamon's head with his claws. Sakuyamon brought up her staff and caught the blow pushing the arm to one side and retaliating with a jab to the face with one end of the staff. Parallelmon avoided the blow and struck down with the other claw. Sakuyamon sidestepped quickly, but the blow was enough to tear up the ground and send earth flying, obscuring her view of her enemy. She quickly raised a Talisman Sphere and was rewarded by a sharp cry of pain as Parallelmon lashed out and slammed his claws into the shield.

Sakuyamon dropped her shield and prepared to launch a spirit strike, but Parallelmon made the first move and lunged forward, striking his smaller opponent in the ribs with his huge shoulder-guard in a swift rush. Sakuyamon was flung backwards by the attack, and thrown quite a way, through the trees. Quickly, she dug the end of her staff into the ground to slow her progress, creating a groove in the earth as she slowed to a halt and leapt forwards once more. She began a rush of her own and dashed towards Parallelmon.

BACKEW! Parallelmon vanished instantly as she made her attack, he staff cleaving through thin-air. After seeing Rapidmon's recent fights, Sakuyamon predicted he would appear behind her and slam her and she whirled around, only just catching the claws of Parallelmon as he reappeared in mid-lunge. Parallelmon vanished again as Sakuyamon skidded backwards under the attack and reappeared above Sakuyamon, launched a strike straight down. Sakuyamon desperately parried with her staff, but Parallelmon vanished again. And again. And again. Each time he reappeared and lashed out at her with claws on his hands or feet, and each time, Sakuyamon only just managed to block with her staff. He wasn't giving her any room to attack.

Thinking quickly, Sakuyamon rose a Talisman Sphere around herself. Parallelmon continued to appear and disappear, launching strike after strike at the protective barrier. Sakuyamon knew it wouldn't hold for long, but she also knew it didn't matter. She rested under it for a brief moment and then, she slammed her staff into the ground and the shield pulsed outwards in all directions. Parallelmon reappeared to attack and was surprised to find himself getting slammed by the energy sphere and sent flying.

Parallelmon slammed, back-first, into a tree and grunted in pain. His eye opened and he blanched when he saw four fox-spirits soaring towards him, eager to smash him with their elemental power. He pushed off from the tree and leapt over them, hoping that would do the job. It didn't. The foxes swerved around the tree and came back at him. The wind spirit surged ahead and summoned a huge gust that sent Parallelmon spinning toward the ground. The fire and electric spirits dived after him and began clawing and biting. Parallelmon clenched his teeth at the sensations of burning and electrocution. Then, the water spirit bombarded him with a deluge of liquid that washed him backwards and slammed him into another tree.

"Ouch!" he growled, as the fox-spirits returned to their owner. "That hurt!"

"It was supposed to," pointed out Sakuyamon, as she moved towards him to attack again.

"Well, you're not turn this into a one-sided fight," Parallelmon declared. He suddenly vanished into the omniverse once again. Sakuyamon growled in annoyance and whirled around once more to block him. What appeared out of thin-air was not Parallelmon, but, of all things, a large blanket. Startled by this unexpected move, Sakuyamon forgot to react in time as the blanket suddenly wrapped around her face, blinding her. She flailed at the unexpected loss of sight and reached up to tear it off, but she heard another BACKEW and felt three huge claws slash her across the back, opening large gashes there and flinging her forwards.

Sakuyamon was slammed into a tree of her own, yelling at the pain in her back. She tore the blanket from her face and whirled around, flinging an **"AMETHYST WIND!"** in Parallelmon's direction. Parallelmon grinned and crossed his armoured arms in front and charged right into attack. The purple diamonds shattered on his armour, leaving him completely unharmed. Leaping out of the last of the attack, he tore a huge boulder from the ground with a great heave. Sakuyamon dodged to one side, but Parallelmon dimension-jumped and grabbed the boulder before it landed, throwing it at her again. Sakuyamon was smashed by the boulder and with a cry of "Gaaah!" she was flattened into the ground. Fortunately, the boulder didn't land on top of her, but it was a close thing.

Sakuyamon scrambled to her feet, dazed and wounded, but still very capable of fighting. She turned again and saw Parallelmon flying towards her in another headlong rush. She side-stepped quickly and Parallelmon rushed right past her. Before he could stop himself, Sakuyamon launched another Amethyst Wind at him. This time it worked and the attack caught him in his unprotected back. Parallelmon howled in pain and crashed to the ground. He got back up again quite quickly and Sakuyamon leapt into the air, soaring over him. Parallelmon growled and sprang right at her. This turned out to be a bad idea, because he ran right into the four fox spirits which collided with him simultaneously and hurled him back towards the ground, crashing right into the boulder he had thrown earlier.

"RAAAGH!" Parallelmon cried, slamming the boulder with his claws and tearing it to rubble. "I'll get you for that!"

* * *

"Why are we just standing here?" Anakin demanded the assorted group, as they watched Sakuyamon and Parallelmon duking it out nearby. "Sakuyamon's getting injured out there, and we're just standing by and watching it happen." He raised his lightsaber with a determined expression and said, "I'm going in to help."

He took one step forward, before Terriermon stepped in front of him, halting him in his tracks. The rabbit shook his head. "Anakin, while your bravery is quite something, a human going up against a Mega level Digimon like Parallelmon would be suicide if they didn't know what they were doing - even a powerful Jedi like yourself."

"What?" Anakin snorted. "You don't think I can handle myself?"

"We're sure you can," Lopmon pointed out, before Anakin's pride could be wounded. "But, the problem is that Parallelmon need only hit you with one specific attack and it's all over. If his Absorbent Bang manages to hit you, you would be ingested instantly, and who knows what would happen to you inside Parallelmon's stomach."

"Whereas, if we Digimon get hit by it, we'll get transported to another dimension instead," said Terriermon. "Yes, that would be a disaster as well, but at least we would be alive. And we know that for a fact, because it's happened to us before."

"But I can't stand by and watch," Anakin protested. "I have to take action."

"You shouldn't take the risk, Anakin," Lopmon reprimanded him. "It wouldn't be worth it if something happened to you. Leave this to us."

"But..."

"Skywalker," Kit interrupted Anakin's protests. "They do make sense. They have fought Parallelmon before. We have not. They may have more of an idea of what to expect than we would and they can hit him with powerful attacks."

"Let us at least try to formulate some kind of plan before we step in," suggested Aayla. "I don't like this either, but getting myself killed is not going to help anyone, and the same could be said for you."

Anakin grimaced and lowered his blade. "Fine. But I hate sitting on the sidelines."

"So do we," said Henry. "But we've been doing that for pretty much the entire war and we've been able to help in our own way from there."

"Good point," Anakin sighed.

"Speaking of which," said Terriermon, raising his fist in readiness. "Shall we get in there and help, Henry?"

"You want to transform into MegaGargomon in a forest this thick?" Henry asked incredulously. "We wouldn't be able to move unless we blew up half the forest first, which would kill our friends as well. Plus, MegaGargomon is a huge target for Parallelmon's Absorbent Bang. As is Cherubimon."

"Oh. I suppose," Terriermon said, sagging a little. "So, I suppose it's to the Ultimate stage is it?"

"I think so," nodded Henry. "Suzie, you ready with a Blue Card?"

"Yeah," nodded Suzie, pulling one out of her deck. "Got one right here."

"Good," said Henry, pulling out one of his own. "Let's do this."

As you can probably guess, both of them spent the next few seconds running their cards through the slots in the D-Arcs and shouting, "Digi-modify! Matrix Digivolution Activate!"

For the second time that day, Terriermon grew two stages in his digivolution line. This time though, he did shout out the words:- **"TERRIERMON MATRIX-DIGIVOLVE TO... RAPIDMON!"**

And Lopmon joined her brother in this:- **"LOPMON MATRIX-DIGIVOLVE TO... ANTYLAMON!"**

The two large bunny rabbits filled the forest as the light faded down. Although neither of them came anywhere near the canopy in terms of height, they still looked absolutely huge, particularly Antylamon.

"We're going to have to rely on speed here, brother," said Antylamon.

Rapidmon brandished his cannons. "Then it's a good thing we both have plenty of that. INTO BATTLE!" he shouted as he zoomed towards the fighting.

Despite the situation, Antylamon sighed. "That might have been a bit too dramatic," she muttered, before following her brother's example and surging forward, except without the exaggerated battlecry.

* * *

Sakuyamon was still in the thick of battle with her evasive adversary. At the moment, she was being flung towards the ground by a backhanded swing from Parallelmon. Parallelmon turned about in mid-air and launched himself in a swift bull-rush at her plummeting form. Sakuyamon flipped over and landed feet first and quickly flipped aside as Parallelmon ploughed into the ground at some heft. Parallelmon rose from the earth almost immediately, which was a mistake because he was instantly struck in the face by a hail of shards from Sakuyamon's Amethyst Wind and sent flying backwards.

Just as Parallelmon righted himself in the air and prepared to dimension-jump, he was rammed from behind by a Rapidmon moving at top speed, which meant almost the speed of light. Parallelmon's armour absorbed most of the shock, but it was still an incredibly hard hit and he went flying through the air to plough through the ground and collide with the base of a tree.

"Ow!" both he and Rapidmon said at the same time. Rapidmon shook his head to clear it after the impact and grinned beneath his mask. "You aren't the only one who's good at coming out of nowhere."

Parallelmon rose from the loam, growling furiously. "I thought you were going to chicken out," he said, turning and standing with his claws ready for combat.

"No such luck, Parallelogram," Rapidmon taunted him. "I reckon you'll chicken out way before I do."

"We'll see," Parallelmon prepared to spring forward, then faltered and said, "Hold on, isn't there a third... Oh crap!" He leapt aside at the last second but was still too slow to avoid be slammed by Antylamon's Bunny Blades as the rabbit plunged downwards after an enormous leap and swung both axes into the Mega level's sides. Parallelmon, howling as the sharp axes cut into his mutated midsection, was sent flying _again_ and slammed into a tree _again._

"It doesn't do to get too focused on one person," Antylamon said, hefting her axes again.

"Thanks for the tip," Parallelmon growled, before dimension-jumping out of there and reappearing with a huge assortment of boulders that he flung towards Antylamon like a rockslide. Antylamon responded by raising her axes and firing off pink energy cuts from the blades which reduced most of the rocks to rubble and leaping forward, slamming the two remaining ones with the flats of her axes and sending them shooting back at Parallelmon like bullets.

Parallelmon was surprised at the speed the boulders flew at him and only just managed to lash out with his claws and smash them into rubble as well. He whipped around at sound from behind him and saw that Rapidmon had launched a Rapid Fire at him. Parallelmon leapt aside and the missiles skimmed under his arm. Growling he quickly returned fire with another headlong rush, claws splayed to tear Rapidmon apart. He was rather surprised when a similar tactic to his own was used against him. Rapidmon shot out of existence, making Parallelmon cleave empty air and "skid" to a halt in mid-air. He turned around to see Rapidmon had appeared behind him and had already launched a Tri Beam directly at him.

Parallelmon raised his arms to block with his armoured gauntlets and the green energy laser slammed against him, leaving him unharmed. He uncrossed his arms to retaliate, only to find Rapidmon was already right in front of him and had a cannon powering towards his face. Parallelmon had no time to even consider moving before Rapidmon punched him in the side of the head and knocked him towards the ground. Rapidmon sent a Rapid Fire down at him and the missiles caught up with Parallelmon before he got too far and blasted him downwards even faster.

Parallelmon was stunned when he was blasted once again, this time from behind, almost directly after the Rapid Fire struck him. Sakuyamon had got back in the action and had created the Twin Blades of Beauty and Truth that smashed Parallelmon in the small of his back and flipping him back into the air. Parallelmon howled as the attack seared his skin, doing more damage than the Rapid Fire had (which was hardly surprising because Sakuyamon was at a higher level). He was shooting towards the stout tree limb, which he used to his advantage and grabbed, swing upwards and flipping to land on the branch.

"It'll take a lot more than that to stop me," he growled.

"How much is "a lot?" asked Antylamon, springing upwards towards him with a huge leap and swinging an axe at him. Parallelmon dimension-jumped again and Antylamon sliced right through the thick tree branch. Parallelmon reappeared behind Antylamon and rammed her in the back, knocking her upwards despite her larger size. He seized the severed tree limb before it fell to far and swung upwards, smashing Antylamon in the face with it. Antylamon yowled at the hit, but quickly recovered as she began to fall, thanks to gravity. Parallelmon pursued and struck with the branch once again, but this time Antylamon seized it in mid-fall and heaved, flinging it and Parallelmon towards the ground.

Parallelmon righted himself, but was immediately blasted by an Arm Bomber from above. He was knocked towards the ground again, slamming into it. He looked up and saw Antylamon falling towards him, feet-first, intending to land on him with the full-force of her body. Parallelmon quickly dimension-jumped before she could and she slammed into nothing but the ground. Parallelmon reappeared not far away. Antylamon looked up and her eyes widened when suddenly a clawed tendril shot out of Parallelmon's eye. He was using Absorbent Bang on her.

Suddenly Sakuyamon was before Antylamon and she raised a Talisman Sphere in front of both of them, causing the Absorbent Bang to slam into it. Parallelmon growled in frustration and pushed power into his attack, the tendril pressing against the Talisman Sphere in an effort to break through. Sakuyamon boosted the power of her shield in response and the two briefly strained against each other. But Sakuyamon had the upper-hand and released her Spirit Strike. The foxes passed through the force-field as if it wasn't there and swept towards Parallelmon.

Cursing, Parallelmon withdrew his tendril and dimension-jumped before the spirits could strike him. He reappeared not far away and was immediately blind-sided by a speeding Rapidmon. It had been a completely unexpected strike for both combatants and they both went flying. Rapidmon quickly latched onto Parallelmon and went into a nosedive, spiralling towards the ground at high speed.

"Eat dirt!" Rapidmon cried, as they surged towards the ground.

"Oh no, you don't," Parallelmon replied and drove his knee into Rapidmon's gut. Since his lower leg was encased in armour with a spike on top, said spike was driven into Rapidmon's gut. Rapidmon gasped in shock and pain, but he refused to let go. Parallelmon growled and said, "Let go already! **ABSORBENT B-AARGH!"**

The four fox spirits that had previously missed him had come in for a second attack once they spotted him and struck him in the back, breaking his concentration and stopping his attack cold. Both he and Rapidmon plunged headfirst into the ground and both were dazed by the attack. Rapidmon was holding a cannon of his injured stomach and grunting in pain. Parallelmon got to his feet first and loomed over Rapidmon. He drove his claws downwards, but wasn't expecting Rapidmon to launch a Miracle Missile from the launcher on his back. The little missile struck Parallelmon full in the face.

"Aagh! My eye!" Parallelmon reeled backwards and clutched his face with both hands, which had been severely blistered by the attack. He staggered in pain and was abruptly smashed by an Amethyst Wind and an Arm Bomber at the same time, sending him flying. Sakuyamon leapt over the fallen Rapidmon in pursuit, while Antylamon quickly knelt over him and used MagnaAngemon's Magna Antidote, courtesy of a card from Suzie (which Sakuyamon had been unable to do because Rika was part of her and couldn't swipe any cards) to heal the wound in his belly.

"Ouch," Rapidmon said, getting to his feet. "That was painful."

"What have we told you about being reckless in battle situations?" asked Antylamon, relieved that her brother had not been too damaged by the initial strike.

"Yeah, I probably shouldn't have done that," shrugged Rapidmon. "Oh well. It's payback time now."

Sakuyamon was battering at the wounded Parallelmon, clouting him repeatedly over the head and exposed stomach with both ends of her staff and her feet in vicious kicks. Parallelmon was struggling to keep up with the barrage of the furious Mega – he had just effectively stabbed the mate of half of this being – and was receiving a pummelling at Sakuyamon's hands. Abruptly, Sakuyamon slammed her staff into his gut, throwing him into the base of another tree. He groaned in pain, and opened his eye, which was still functioning though painful. He saw Sakuyamon slamming the pointed end of her staff towards him face. His eye would survive that!

He hurriedly ducked and the staff slammed into the tree, splintering the wood. Parallelmon lashed out with the back of his hand and caught Sakuyamon in the chest. Sakuyamon lost her grip on her staff as she stumbled backwards, leaving it embedded in the tree. Parallelmon took advantage of this and lashed out two more times with his claws. Sakuyamon deftly avoided both swipes, but Parallelmon suddenly lashed out with both hands and grabbed Sakuyamon, pinning her arms in place. The larger Mega held Sakuyamon fast as she struggled furiously in his grip.

"Let me go!" Sakuyamon roared.

"Certainly," Parallelmon grinned, the blistered eye making it all the more sinister. "But first... **ENDLESS TRANCE!"**

"Uh-oh," Sakuyamon said, remembering what effect this attack had had on her last time. She tried to shut her eyes but she was too slow. The green beam emitting from Parallelmon's eye seemed to entice her to stare into it and the small part of her brain still conscious that was telling her to shut her eyes didn't seem to be effecting her body. She stared and suddenly began to feel very drowsy. Parallelmon grinned evilly, and prepared to strike.

"Claws off my mate! And Rika!" Rapidmon shouted as he blipped in from nowhere and slammed Parallelmon in the face with a furious kick. Parallelmon's gaze, and thus his attack, was broken and he yelled, releasing his grip on Sakuyamon. As the Mega shaman cleared her head, Antylamon dashed in and kicked Parallelmon into the air, following up with a sideways slash from her Bunny Blades.

This action was enough to hurl Parallelmon aside and into the foliage, where he disappeared from sight.

Rapidmon landed in front of Sakuyamon, with concern. "Are you to alright in there?" he asked anxiously.

"Yes," nodded Sakuyamon, speaking in Renamon's voice. "Thanks to you. That's twice you've stopped his Endless Trance attack cold. And I'm glad to see you're okay yourself."

"Meh, I can handle a hole in the belly," said Rapidmon.

"You sure about that?" chuckled Rika, as Sakuyamon retrieved her staff. "You wouldn't be able to eat anything, after all."

Rapidmon balked. "Okay, maybe not."

Sakuyamon glanced around. "Where did Parallelmon go?" she asked.

Antylamon was standing warily, her axe blades ready and her eyes roamed the surroundings. "I don't know," she said. "But I'm very sure I didn't kill him. He's still around here somewhere."

Right on cue, Parallelmon reappeared in mid-air and he appeared to be carrying a _tractor_ with him. Parallelmon roared as he flung the huge machine at Antylamon. Startled, the rabbit swung at it with her axes, but it was useless and the tractor slammed into her and sent her crashing backwards. Sakuyamon and Rapidmon scattered as Antylamon ploughed into the tree they had been standing and screamed in pain as the tractor crashed into her again. She slumped, apparently motionless.

"Antylamon! No!" Rapidmon cried. Anger surged through him and he flashed towards Parallelmon with another headlong charge, but this time he went cannons first. He slammed into Parallelmon at high speed, driving him backwards through the air, and then sprang off and loosed a Rapid Fire at point blank range. The missiles could hardly fail to hit the large Mega and Parallelmon roared in anger and pain as the exploded against his chest.

"I can get something for you too," Parallelmon growled and vanished again. Rapidmon immediately shot straight upwards, which turned out to be a good decision because Parallelmon reappeared and threw a van at where he had been before. Needless to say it missed hopelessly, and Rapidmon retaliated by blasting a Tri Beam directly downwards. Parallelmon howled again as the attack seared the back of his neck and threw him downwards... right into Rapidmon, who shot down much faster and launched a Miracle Missile from below.

Parallelmon recovered quickly enough, but suddenly he saw something come flying at him. He dimension-jumped just in time to stop himself being hit with the Twin Blades of Beauty and Truth a second time. He reappeared a couple of seconds later. Rapidmon and Sakuyamon both saw him, standing near the ground and converged on him, preparing their attacks simultaneously.

"I've had just about enough of this," Parallelmon growled. "You're all refusing to die! Well, perhaps I can rectify that if I split you up." He faced Rapidmon and his eye glowed a bright orange. **"ABSORBENT B-"**

He was interrupted when a tractor landed on top of him. Gripping the front of the farming vehicle was Antylamon, who was bruised and winded, but otherwise alright. "How ironic," she said. "You should pay more attention to where you park your tractor. Anyone could take it." She leapt up and bounced off the top of the tractor, eliciting a cry of pain from beneath it. Then she launched an **"ARM BOMBER!"** down on it, just as Sakuyamon threw an **"AMETHYST WIND!"** and Rapidmon hurled a **"TRI BEAM!" **The three attacks converged and pulverised the tractor with absolute ease.

But the smoking remains were devoid of Parallelmon. He had dimension-jumped at the last second.

"Damn," Rapidmon muttered. "Now I know how Kul Teska felt when he was fighting me. This guy is pretty resilient."

"Yes, unfortunately," said Antylamon, wincing as she clutched her stomach.

"But where did he go this time?" asked Sakuyamon and the three of them quickly looked about for their attacker. Their gazes whipped around at the sound of a loud BACKEW noise that indicated he was there. He was standing on the ground, his chest heaving as he breathed in and our rather laboriously. He was injured and battered, but he was most definitely not on his last legs.

"Damn you!" he shouted up at them. "Damn all three of you! Why will you never die?"

"We could say the same about you," replied Antylamon. "Dimension-jumping in battle is hardly fair."

"I don't give a damn about fair," Parallelmon snarled. "I just want you, and everyone else who came from the Digital World, to pay. I have been beaten to within an inch of deletion twice now. That will not be the case a third time."

"Care to test that out?" Rapidmon cocked his cannons expectantly.

"I would actually," Parallelmon shouted as his eye glowed bright orange once again. "You can only defend yourselves for so long. **ABSORBENT BANG!"**

The huge, clawed, fleshy tendril exploded from his eye and snaked its way through the air and towards the trio of Digimon. Sakuyamon sighed, thinking that perhaps Parallelmon was getting a little bit desperate if he was going to try this attack _again._ She raised her staff and prepared to raise her shield...

When suddenly, the tendril changed direction and shot off to the right. Startled the three Digimon turned to follow its progress and all of them gasped in shock when they saw the tip was shooting towards the two Tamers who were not part of the action – Henry and Suzie.

"Henry! Look out!" Rapidmon shouted, preparing to do something stupid like sacrifice himself by dashing into the tendril's path.

"Suzie! Move!" Antylamon yelled, preparing to do the same.

But, as it turned out, they didn't need to do either. Because, at that point, a certain Twi'lek jumped in front of the Tamers and into the path of the tendril. Aayla's blue lightsaber was drawn, her brown eyes hard and her expression full of determination.

Aayla hurled her lightsaber right at the oncoming attack. The blade hummed through the air, spinning like an airborne buzzsaw or helicopter rotors of death.

Not even Parallelmon could stand up to the blade. Parallelmon let out and unearthly scream of agony as the blade sheared right through the fleshy tendril, slicing the clawed tip in half and severing it from the rest of the tendril. The two halves of the clawed tip fell to the ground and disintegrated into data before they reached it. The data floated through the trees and out of sight. Aayla used the Force to call her lightsaber back to her.

Parallelmon continued to scream and swear at the top of his lungs, bawling in anguish as the tipless tendril was withdrawn back into his eye. He flailed about in distress covering his face in his claws. But, he saw the three enemy Digimon charging up their attacks from a gap between them, screamed, "WE ARE NOT DONE HERE!" and vanished with another BACKEW!

He did not come back.

Robbed of a target, Sakuyamon, Rapidmon and Antylamon powered down, stopping their attacks and settling back. Aayla, guessing that the threat had gone as well, since she could no longer sense Parallelmon, sheathed her lightsaber. Henry and Suzie, standing behind her, were both understandably gobsmacked.

"Aayla!" Henry breathed. "You... you saved us. Again!"

Aayla turned and smiled at him. "Well I could have let him eat you but somehow I don't think everyone, including myself, would have been happy about that."

"Yay!" Suzie cried hugging Aayla's leg. "Big sister Aayla is a hero!"

Anakin folded his arms and humphed. "And I didn't even get to do anything."

"We can't have it all our own way all the time, Skywalker," Kit chuckled. "You should know that by now."

"I do," said Anakin. "But it still bites."

The three Digimon moved back over to the little troupe that were waiting for them. Kit was the first to congratulate them. "That was a truly spectacular battle. I am impressed with all of your abilities and powers but I never thought I would see you brawling against another Digimon while using them."

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "This could be a problem. If Parallelmon's after you guys now, when is he going to strike next? And where? From what I saw of him in that battle he was an extremely difficult adversary, especially if he was giving the three of you trouble."

Both Rapidmon and Antylamon winced at this, rubbing their respective stomachs. "Yeah," said Rapidmon. "That buy packs a wallop. At least he didn't throw a missile at us."

"This time," added Antylamon grimly. "But Anakin is right? What are we going to do now? Parallelmon is an extreme threat, which we cannot simply ignore. He clearly wants to get back at all of us, but we need to make sure that his methods don't get too destructive."

"And that's not all," Renamon said from Sakuyamon. "He could pose a disastrous threat to this entire universe. We can't run from him. If we hide, he'll try and flush us out somehow. And with his dimension-jumping ability, he could cross this entire galaxy and wreak complete havoc in his wake, in less than half an hour."

"Would he really do that?" Kit asked.

"To get at us?" asked Rapidmon. "Oh yeah. He'd do it alright. Evil Digimon will do almost anything to get what they're after, and they don't care about the lives of others. Parallelmon and Coruscant put together would mean the slaughter of millions."

"Then it sounds like we have a serious problem on our hands," said Aayla.

"No, Aayla," Antylamon shook her head. "We have two very serious problems on our hands. The Separatists are still a threat, and we cannot get sidetracked by Parallelmon too much. They're still around here somewhere."

"Surely they must have heard all of that destruction," said Henry. "Why aren't they here investigating?"

"They may already be under the water," said Kit. "Which is a problem. Antylamon is right. We must remember why we are here."

"So, what do we do now?" asked Suzie.

"There's only one thing we really can do," said Sakuyamon.

"She's right," nodded Rapidmon. "Henry, Suzie, we want you two to go with the Jedi. They'll protect."

"Wait, what?" asked Henry. "Where are you going?"

"To buy ice-cream," Rapidmon rolled his eyes. "Where do you think we're going? Parallelmon is too big a threat to be left unattended to. He's got to be stopped or who knows how many lives could be lost. We're bloody lucky that he chose to attack us in an isolated place like this instead of on Coruscant."

"He could pose any number of dangers," said Antylamon. "Even if he doesn't to untold damage to everything around him, he could still do other things like reveal our presence to the Separatists or worse still, he might even join them if he gets wind of what we're doing. He needs to be dealt with. Right here, on this planet."

"What are you going to do?" asked Kit.

"There is no alternative," said Sakuyamon. "It would as useless to negotiate with Parallelmon as would with Count Dooku. And since there is essentially no prison capable of holding Parallelmon we're going to have to destroy him."

"Fair enough," said Anakin. "And you want us to leave you to it and continue with our mission?"

"Yes," nodded Sakuyamon. "It looks like you'll have to pull this one off without the help of Digimon. But we're pretty sure you can do it."

"But, guys," Suzie protested. "Why do we have to go with the Jedi. Why can't we go with you and help against Parallelmon?"

"Because while we're fighting Parallelmon, we can't protect you," said Rapidmon. "Parallelmon could easily get past us and absorb the two of you before we could do anything about it. Ludicrous as it may sound, you'll be safer going with the Jedi than you would if you stayed with us."

"But..."

"No arguing, Suzie," Antylamon interrupted. "You're not coming with us and that's that."

Suzie slumped, but Aayla put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry," the Twi'lek said. "They'll be fine. And we'll look after, right guys?"

"Most definitely," said Kit, while Anakin nodded.

Henry sighed. "Well, I suppose if we have to, we have to. Just make sure that you watch out for each other, all three, or four, of you."

"We always do," said Rika. "And you guys do the same."

"Alright," said Kit. "Come on, guys. We've lost a lot of time due to this fight. We must get a move on."

"Of course, Master," nodded Anakin. "Artoo, lead the way."

The astromech droid bleeped in response and began to trundle towards the rendezvous point once again. Anakin and Kit followed him. Henry and Suzie took one last lingering look at their partners and Sakuyamon, during which Rapidmon winked at them and Antylamon gave them a thumbs up, before turning and following the Nautolan and the Chosen One.

Aayla was the last to leave. She turned to the others and said, "May the Force be with you."

"And you as well," replied Sakuyamon. Aayla nodded and them and then turned to catch up with the rest of her group.

Rapidmon, Antylamon and Sakuyamon all glanced at one another.

"Well, I suppose we better get going," said Antylamon.

"One question," said Rapidmon. "What are we going to go about the tractor and the van?"

"You can blow them up, if you like," shrugged Sakuyamon.

"Okay," nodded Rapidmon and, after doing just that, the three of them set off into the trees in search of their elusive, dimension-jumping quarry.

* * *

I wasn't going to put Parallelmon in this story again at all when I first planned it out. I was planning on using Parallelmon as a recurring characters throughout the series, and the continuing reason for future crossovers. However, I thought that would make him less important to the story and more of a convenience to me for getting our heroes to other worlds. To make him seem more of a threat, I decided to include him in this arc, which I had been previously not looking forward to that much because I would struggle to write my current ideas with any decent length. Now, I have two plotlines running at once for the second four chapters.

See you soon. Don't forget to leave a review. I loved the flood of them for the last chapter.

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Next time...

The next chapter of the Impmon saga is coming up. Impmon is making his way through the Digital World, slowly losing his mind thanks to the incessantly cheerful Calumon following him about. But what else is following him?

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Coming up:- **Chapter 85 : Impmon's Journey**


	85. Impmon's Journey

I've been deliberating for a while that I should probably re-plan a large portion of the Impmon storyline, because the next several chapters I had planned out had practically no point to them. All they involved was Impmon getting attacked by various different enemies, with a new one virtually each chapter. While they may be interesting to read, it wouldn't make much of a story, so I decided to revamp the plan before I wrote this chapter. And it's a bloody good thing I did too, because a major development had to be pushed forward to this chapter to make room.

And now you are probably all wondering what that development is. So read on, and find out.

**

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**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 85:- Impmon's Journey**

* * *

There was no sun in the Digital World, considering it was just made of data and all that, but Impmon felt like there should be. The only orb hanging in the sky was the other world, where he had once been and where all of his human friends were born and lead their lives. Of course, it didn't look much like Earth really did, but it didn't need to. This place had drastically different rules to that world.

Impmon felt sweltering as he trekked across the Desert Level of the Digital World. He'd been doing this for two whole days and although he didn't actually need to eat or drink here, he couldn't help but feel extremely thirsty. He put this down to spending so much time in the Human World that he was just assuming he was thirsty, but that didn't particularly help to alleviate his parched throat. In fact, it just made it feel even dryer, as if his body was arguing with his mind and trying to make a point.

Impmon was not a happy camper. The guilt of him leaving his partners behind without so much as a word weighed heavily upon him. The little, niggling sensation that he had abandoned them wouldn't leave him alone, even though he was well aware that his choice had been for the best. He tried forcing himself to ignore it, but, once again, it seemed to increase in power when he tried. Impmon's subconscious was battling against itself.

Impmon sighed as he plodded through the baking sands, the soles of his purple feet burning slightly. A place without a sun should not be this hot, and yet somehow, it was. Impmon was well aware that he could get on his motorbike, which was ploughing slowly through the sand behind him, but that would just burn his backside – Behemoth's leather seat was also absorbing the heat.

Impmon wiped the sweat gathering on his forehead away. He couldn't remember feeling this hot on his last trip here. He driven across the desert for one entire week, and still not really felt bothered by the heat. He had eventually decided that he probably had not noticed it before, because he'd been a Mega most of the time and was therefore more resilient, and because he had a distinct goal in mind which he had focused on.

But this time, Impmon had little to no idea what he was supposed to be doing.

Yes, he was planning on trying to find the mysterious blue-armoured angel Digimon that had appeared to him in the two brief flashes he'd had into how his dimensionally-shifted friends were getting on. But that was about all he knew. He didn't know anything about this Digimon. He didn't know where she lived or how to find her, or what other powers she had in her possession. He didn't even know her name.

_Ugh,_ Impmon thought to himself as he traipsed through the Desert Level wearily. _What the hell am I supposed to do now? Go around asking where the angels live? I might get laughed at, or even driven away. I sure wish this woman would give me some more information about herself, or about the others. I could do with another look into how they're doing... or how my Tamers are getting on._

Impmon smacked himself. There it was again. Another sign that he was thinking about Ai and Mako and how sad they must be right now. He shook his head violently, trying to rid his head of the images of crying twins, and continued walking.

He was still considering how to go about finding the angel Digimon, when a voice piped up. "Impmon, why do you keep slapping your own face? Are there mosquitoes around?"

"No, Calumon," Impmon replied, turning to his companion. "There are no mozzies in the Digital World. I don't even think there's a mosquito Digimon."

"Good," said Calumon. "Big mosquitoes creep me out?"

"A lot of things creep you out," Impmon muttered.

"Oooh," Calumon pointed ahead, bouncing up and down excitedly. "Yay! Yay! Yay! Look, Impmon! It's more of those pink ball thingies. Hey guys! Wait! I wanna play too!" The little Catalyst, cheering ceaselessly, skipped and ran at practically the same time, towards the pink packets of data that were rolling across the desert like tumbleweed. Impmon groaned and put his hand over his forehead as he watched Calumon dance and leap manically about amongst the harmless little balls of uselessness. He was seriously beginning to regret bringing Calumon along with him.

That might sound like a terrible thing for him to be thinking, but if you got a look at things from Impmon's perspective, then you might understand where he was coming from. Impmon had told Calumon many times over the last few days that he needed to be quiet, that they could be being chased by evil Digimon as they spoke and that shouting and having fun was likely to draw beings from far and wide, which is something they didn't want if they were going stealth.

But while each time Calumon had been told this, it had subdued him, this had been for only a short length of time. Like, say, five minutes. The trouble with the little pixie-thingie, was that he only seemed to understand that there could be a chance of danger if he could actually see what that danger was. Right now there were no evil Digimon in sight, so Calumon had probably already totally forgotten Impmon's latest warning about fifteen minutes ago. Impmon knew Calumon could be very serious indeed when he wanted to be, like when he and Jeri had been trapped within the Kernel Sphere of the D-Reaper. But right now, there was nothing dangerous happening so Calumon was in Bouncy Mode.

He might start taking things more seriously after they were attacked, but Impmon wasn't all that keen to find out.

Impmon and his bike, Behemoth, drew to a halt and watched as Calumon chased after the balls of data. "It's times like this where I wonder if I should just ditch the little cream-puff," Impmon muttered to his bike. "He needs a serious reality-check."

Behemoth revved in agreement.

Impmon shook his head. "But, we both know that would just be cruel. He'd probably run into some kind of monster Digimon that GranDracmon commands and then get squished by it. After asking it if it wants to play with him, of course. What am I going to do with him?"

Behemoth remained silent. Other than revving its engine there really wasn't much it could do to provide an answer. Impmon grimaced and glanced out at their surroundings. He really didn't like the Desert Level for numerous reasons. Other than the fact it was baking hot, there were other problems to contend with.

"It's too exposed here, Behemoth," he murmured to his mount. "You can see for miles and miles around here. Yeah, it might help me see my enemies coming, but it was also help _them_ see _me._ We really need to get somewhere more covered."

If Behemoth could not, it would have. The intense sunlight was even getting to it as well as its master – perhaps even more so. Its paint was beginning to peel for one thing.

Impmon whistled loudly. "Hey, Cream-puff! Get your head out of the clouds and get back over here! We've gotta keep moving."

"But we've been walking for the last two days!" Calumon complained, as he reluctantly left the data packets behind and trudged back to Impmon. "Can't we just stop and have some fun for a while?"

"Don't you think you've had enough fun on this trip, Calumon?" Impmon sniffed. "Like the time that you insisted we play hide-and-seek?"

"You played too," pointed out Calumon.

"That's because you ran off before I could say now, and I was either going to have to find you or leave you behind," Impmon reminded him. "And remember what I told you after you did that?"

Calumon frowned for a moment and stood, tapping his chin thoughtfully. Impmon almost fell onto his back in sheer exasperation. Surely Calumon didn't have to delve into his memories for longer than a couple seconds.

Unless of course, he had not been listening at the time.

Which, considering this was Calumon, was highly likely.

"Ooh! Ooh! I know!" Calumon said, very pleased with himself for getting an answer. "You said – 'Quit picking your nose.'"

Impmon actually fell over this time. His brain was beginning to feel like it was slowly degenerating into mush, or possibly the equivalent of what Calumon called a brain, which could also probably be described as mush.

"Yes," Impmon said, from the ground. "I suppose I said that too. But what I wanted you to remember was that I said 'Stay close and stop wandering off, or both of us will probably end up regretting it.' Remember now."

"Oh yeah, I remember that too," nodded Calumon. "But I thought that the part about picking my nose was more interesting."

"Of course you did," Impmon shook his head. Under normal circumstances, Impmon would have been glad to have Calumon along for the ride. He would have found Calumon's little sentences, sheer brainlessness a welcome relief and something to laugh about and possibly take the rip out of later. But what with the sacrifice he had recently made in order to be here now, and the ever-present threat of GranDracmon's forces looming over him, he could really have done without it.

Impmon got to his feet and said, "Right, come on. We're moving out."

"But I thought we were taking a break."

"And at what point did I say that?"

"You decided to lie on the ground, so I thought we were stopping for a rest."

"Well, you thought wrong," said Impmon. "Come on, Cream-puff. We gotta find somewhere where we can hide from the people looking for us. It's too open here."

"Open?" asked Calumon. "I like open. When Takato's bakery is open I am happy, but when it is closed I get all sad because they won't let me in to get bread."

"I don't mean that kind of open," Impmon said as he started off again. "I mean we need to hide somewhere?"

"We're playing Hide-and-seek again?" Calumon asked. "I thought you said we weren't going to do that."

A flash of inspiration came to Impmon. "Yes, Calumon. Look at it this way. The both of us and all the armies of GranDracmon are all playing a game of hide-and-seek. You and me are the ones that are supposed to be hiding, and all of them are looking for us. If they find us, we lose the game. And we can't have that, now can we?"

"No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no!" Calumon shook his head so violently that his ears almost slapped Impmon in the face multiple times and Calumon himself became a little dizzy in the process. "No!" he cried again. "Come on, Impmon! Let's go hide!"

"Great idea!" Impmon cried. "Why didn't I think of that! Let's go!"

Calumon and Impmon set off... in completely different directions.

It took Impmon several steps to notice this fact. His head whipped round, startled, but he spotted Calumon heading off to the left and shouted. "Hey! Where are you going?"

"Well we can't both hide in the same place," Calumon said. "If they find us, we both lose together."

"Just get back here," Impmon sighed. "If we split up it could take us months to find each other again... if we're lucky."

"Oh yeah," Calumon said. "Good point. Hey, I have an idea!"

"Oh, this'll be good," Impmon murmured to himself. "I'm on the run from deadly forces and my brainless companion has an idea. What is it?" he enquired, more loudly.

"We could jump in that data stream," Calumon said. "Then we could be taken really far away."

Impmon blinked and turned in the direction that Calumon was pointing in. To his surprise, there was indeed a data stream on the horizon, which appeared to be making its way towards them, in the usual zig-zag pattern of the Data Stream. It was as pink as the packets of data and was looming bigger and bigger with each passing second.

"Actually," said Impmon. "That's not a half-bad idea. In fact, that's a great idea," he said, quite surprised that Calumon had actually come up with something useful instead of what he usually did, which was mess about. He was also glad Calumon had not come up with this idea during their last "game" of hide-and-seek.

Impmon thought back to the last time that he had jumped in a data stream. It had taken him straight from the desert level to beach on the ocean level. Perhaps this one could take him to somewhere useful as well, preferably somewhere with shade and with cover.

"It is?" Calumon looked equally stunned. "I came up with a good idea?"

"Yes, Calumon. Yes, you did."

"YAY!" Calumon abruptly hollered to the sky. "I HAD A GOOD IDEA! YAY! YAY! YMMPH!"

"That," said Impmon, his gloved hand clamped over Calumon's mouth. "Was not such a good idea! You'll attract our opponents to us with that sound."

"Oh yeah," said Calumon, once Impmon released his hold. "Sorry. I forgot."

"Yes, I know," said the purple Impmon. "Now, come on. Let's go and see what lies on the other side of this particular data stream."

"I hope it has food," said Calumon, eagerly. Impmon rolled his eyes, remembering how Calumon had constantly asked for food when they had been stuck in the Digital World after the D-Reaper despite the fact that it wasn't needed. He guessed that some things just never changed.

Impmon hopped up onto Behemoth, not climbing onto the baking seat but perching on the handlebars precariously. "All aboard, Calumon!" he called. "And come on, Behemoth. We're going for a ride!"

"Yay! I love rides!" Calumon cried, leaping up right on top of Impmon's head. Impmon yelled as his vision was obscured by Calumon's large ears and almost toppled off the bike, but Behemoth was already moving, so instead of trying to dislodge Calumon so that he could see again, Impmon contented himself with simply gripping the handlebars and hoping that he could stay on.

As Behemoth ploughed across the sands and practically dove into the pink, rushing, and rather noisy data stream, Impmon and Calumon both felt a familiar jerking sensation as if someone had had tied a harness or rope around their waists and yoinked them into the air. The sensation of going through the data stream was... a difficult one to describe. It felt like they were being pulled up a ridiculously strong ocean current that was pushing against them and trying to force them back, but not particularly succeeding.

If Calumon could have said anything during the transfer, he would have said, "Aaaghaaaghaaaaagh! I forgot that this is noooottt ffuuuuuuuunnnn!"

* * *

The brief journey ended when they came to an abrupt halt. A first-timer might expect them to feel like they crash hard into the ground or something when they reached the other end and get jarred or bruised by the impact. Instead, they just suddenly came to a complete standstill, and what was even weirder was that there was no aftershock – no sensation of dizziness or loss of balance at the sudden switch from moving really fast to not moving at all.

"I'll never get used to that," murmured Impmon, peeling Calumon's ears away from his eyes so that he could see where they had landed, while the data stream that had deposited them here fizzled out of existence, as they normally did after carrying someone. He glanced around at his surroundings and grinned. "Alright!" he said. "I don't think we could have gotten a better result."

"Wow, it's so pretty," agreed Calumon, jumping down and landing on the grass. Yes, grass. For they had ended up in the forest level, and it was a particularly nice spot as well. The trees formed a ring around a large, crystal-clear and sparkling lake that looked far too pristine to be allowed. It looked like the water had never been touched by anyone. The trees were lush and green, and there were a large number of what appeared to be fruits hanging from them.

In short, it looked like a cross between an oasis and the Garden of Eden.

"Blimey," said Impmon, as he clambered down from Behemoth. "I didn't know a place like this existed in the Digital World. This is fantastic."

"And it's got all kinds of yummy food," said Calumon, running up to a nearby tree and bouncing higher than something his size should, thanks to his ears. He grabbed a fruit that resembled a hybrid between a pear and a pumpkin and plucked it from the tree. He almost got squished by the large fruit, which was two-thirds the size of himself, but he got up regardless and began to munch on it.

"Heh," Impmon smirked, as he looked around the place once more. "Makes you think, don't it, Behemoth. What kind of jerk must I have been to think this place would look better if it was on fire?" He picked up what looked like a grape, except five times the size of a normal grape and bit into it. The juices began to quench the thirst that he knew shouldn't exist but still did. "But, I suppose thinking like that isn't going to do me any favours."

Behemoth juddered its engine but made no other move.

Impmon finished the fruit in silence, reclining against the tree as he polished off the juicy giant grape, uncaring as to the purple stains he was leaving in his glove. Were he back in the human world, he would have snuck the stained gloves into the wash – usually the white wash to deliberately turn everything else in it a sort of pinkish and annoy Haruhi, so it didn't really occur to him.

Impmon suddenly realised how tired he felt. He hadn't slept throughout the last two days that he'd been making his way through the desert and his feet hurt a little. The relaxing scenery, coupled with the peaceful sounds of the water flowing against the side of the lovely lake, were making his eyelids droop slightly.

He yawned and stretched. "I reckon this might be a good idea to catch a little rest," he said. "While the peace actually lasts. You reckon that you can keep watch for me Behemoth."

Behemoth made a noise that was probably the motorbike equivalent of "You need to ask?"

"Thanks," Impmon said. "Knew I could count on you." He shut his eyes and, with one quick yawn, he settled down to sleep.

"WAKEY-WAKEY, IMPMON!"

"GAAH!" Impmon shouted as he leapt up from his position almost instantly, fire springing onto the tips of his fingers as he readied his Bada Boom attack. He scowled angrily when he noticed that it was just Calumon, who was now rolling about on the floor, pointing at him and laughing rather loudly.

"That was so funny!" Calumon managed to gasp out in between his giggling fits. "You looked exactly like all those couples in the parks do when you decide you want to go out and scare them."

"Yeah, whatever," growled Impmon as he extinguished his attack. "That wasn't funny Calumon! At all!"

"But you always said scaring people is great, and I think I understand why you said that now!" Calumon giggled.

Impmon, determined not to sound hypocritical, said, "It's only funny if the situation isn't serious, Calumon! I only scare people who decide to get all mushy and touchy-feely when they're in the park at night. If I knew that _they_ were being chased down by evil creatures like I am, then I wouldn't do it."

"But there are no evil creatures," Calumon said, sitting up.

"Yes there are," Impmon said. "Just because they aren't here right now doesn't mean they won't be soon! Now quiet! I'm trying to get some sleep."

"But sleep is for when it is night-time," complained Calumon. "It's all bright and shiny in the sky so that means its daytime now. Come on, Impmon. Let's play."

"No, let's not!"

"Play! Play! Play! Play!"

"No, I am not playing games here!"

Calumon gave him the puppy-dog eyes that worked on Jeri all the time. "Oh come on, Impmon. Please, please, pleeeeaaaassee! You can't go to sleep now. Sleeping is so boring and it's a waste of time. You could be playing all the time, but instead everyone goes and lies in beds and snores or something. I want to do something else."

"Well, I want to get some rest!" Impmon said, his patience wearing dangerously thin by Calumon's complete and utter ignorance. "I must conserve my energy. I may need it later on."

"Yeah, maybe," nodded Calumon. Impmon sighed in relief, hoping Calumon had got the message. "But you don't need it now, so let's play!"

"Oh, come on!"

"Please!" Calumon jumped up and down, shouting loudly, "Please! Please! Please! Please! Please! Please! Please! Please! Please! Please! Please! Please!"

Impmon's eye was twitching with every "Please!" and his fists were getting more and more clenched and his teeth were pressing together harder and harder.

"I wanna play! I wanna play!" Calumon kept shouting, because he seemed to have learned by now that demanding things over and over again would cause someone to give you what you were asking for – like any typical three or four year old seems to think. He seemed to be surprised that Impmon was still saying no after so much begging, but he kept going nonetheless. "Play now! Play now! Play now! Play n-"

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" Impmon bellowed at the top of his lungs, which was actually extremely loudly for his size. Calumon was staggered at the raw power of his voice and fell over backwards as Impmon really let loose.

"THE WHOLE POINT OF ME COMING TO THE DIGITAL WORLD WAS TO GET AWAY FROM AI AND MAKO SO THAT THEY WOULD BE SAFE AND THEN TO HIDE MYSELF AWAY! HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DO ANY OF THAT WHEN I'VE GOT A LITTLE PEST LIKE YOU FOLLOWING ME AROUND LIKE A LITTLE LOST PUPPY, EH? I TOLD YOU WHEN WE STARTED THAT THIS WAS GOING TO BE A DANGEROUS JOURNEY, NOT A HOLIDAY! I HAVE TOLD YOU TIME AND TIME AGAIN THAT THERE COULD BE ENEMIES EVERYWHERE, THAT DANGER COULD LEAP OUT AT US AT ANY SECOND, BUT YOU KEEP ON IGNORNING ME!

"WELL, I'VE HAD ENOUGH! I AM HERE TRYING TO MAKE SURE I STAY ALIVE TO SEE EACH NEW DAY AS MYSELF, AND NOT AS A PAWN TO GRANDRACMON AND YOU ARE NOT HELPING AT ALL. YOU'RE JUST BEING A LITTLE NUISANCE BECAUSE THE ONLY THING YOU CAN THINK ABOUT IS HAVING FUN UNLESS THE DANGER IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE! NOW, IF YOU ASK ME, YOU NEED TO GET THESE TWO WORDS INTO YOU HEAD BEFORE YOU GET US BOTH KILLED. LISTEN CLOSELY TO THEM. **SHUT UP!"**

Calumon was beginning to cry as Impmon threw word after word at him, tears rolling down his white cheeks, but Impmon barely seemed to notice.

"AND IF YOU CAN'T FOLLOW THOSE WORDS TO THE LETTER THEN YOU MIGHT AS WELL NOT BE HERE AND YOU COULD GET US BOTH KILLED! SO, EITHER YOU SORT YOURSELF OUT, RIGHT HERE AND NOW, OR I AM GOING TO LEAVE YOU HERE! UNDERDSTAND?"

Impmon subsided, breathing heavily at his tirade. He knew that he normally would have no problem with Calumon's silliness, but now was simply no time for it. He shut his eyes for several seconds, trying to regain his breath. Then he looked down at Calumon.

He was rather shocked to see that the Catalyst was staring at him with something akin to terror, as well as sadness. Impmon instantly felt extremely guilty and ashamed of himself. He slumped against the tree and pummelled the side of his face, hard, giving himself a resounding slap for what he had just done. He sighed. Calumon had needed a serious talking to, and Impmon had certainly given him one, but he had gone about it the complete wrong way. Snapping at him like that was certainly not going to do anything for them. And if he could yell like that at one of his dearest friends for simply being themselves, then he might as well hand himself over to GranDracmon on a silver platter. And that was because Calumon's expression now resembled those of the petrified In-Training Digimon he had seen himself slaughtering in his flashbacks.

"Sorry," Impmon mumbled, as he stared at his clawed toes, unable to look Calumon in the eyes for fear of seeing the faces of his past victims again. "I shouldn't have done that. That was totally wrong of me."

"You..." Calumon trembled. "You... you haven't shouted like that since... you were a bad guy."

"Yeah," nodded Impmon. "Yeah, I know. But trust me. I am not a bad guy and I have no intention of ever becoming one again. That's what's at stake here, Calumon. I've given up almost everything I have – most of my friends, my home, my own Tamers even. And it's not just for their protection, but for mine as well. If GranDracmon's forces catch me, then my soul could be lost forever. They'll twist me and corrupt me until I am nothing but the mindlessly evil Beelzemon that I used to be back before I met any of you."

"That sounds bad," Calumon said.

"Yeah," nodded Impmon. "It is. And if that happens, not only is it bad for me, but it also means that I will have abandoned Ai and Mako for no reason. I've probably broken their hearts by leaving, so I have to make sure I didn't do it for nothing. I have to stay away from GranDracmon for all our sakes. For mine, for theirs, for yours, for everyone's."

Calumon's terror was receding now that he could see that Impmon was returning to himself, albeit a slightly depressed version of himself. "Is he really that bad?" asked the pixie-thing.

"You have no idea," said Impmon. "Literally. You weren't there when he spoke to me. He had this power in his voice that was compelling me to abandon all my friends and join him, and I only just managed to resist. And then, of course, he turned poor Guilmon into Megidramon again. I still can't believe that you missed that, by the way," he glanced up with a slight smirk, hoping Calumon didn't still look too afraid. He didn't, but it still looked like he was crying.

Calumon sniffed, a little noisily. "Sorry, Impmon," he said, after a short silence. "You tried to tell me... but I didn't pay attention."

"Nah," Impmon said. "I'm the one who should be sorry. I really shouldn't have exploded like that, not should I have expected you to completely understand it all off the bat. You're not that intelligent."

"Yeah, I know I'm... HEY!" Calumon pouted.

Impmon sniggered and poked him in the forehead, on the Catalyst symbol. "Gotcha," he chuckled. "But seriously, let me put it this way. You don't know the full extent of how bad GranDracmon is until you see him for yourself. So, let me also tell you that you do not want to see him for yourself. Ever. So, let me ask you one more time. Will you try and take this a bit more seriously?"

"Okay," nodded Calumon. "It has to be pretty bad if it can make you go all angry like that."

"Meh," Impmon said. "Everything's been weighing down on me for some months now. All the flashbacks, our disappearing friends, the attacks, the threats... I guess I've not been myself for months."

"No," said Calumon. "You're not as happy and pranky as usual. I saw that."

"Pranky?" Impmon chuckled. "Is that a word?"

"It is in the Calumon book of Calumon," said the Catalyst proudly.

Impmon blinked. "And what kind of book is that?"

"It's one that I'm going to write one day," declared Calumon. "It will contain all kinds of new words that were made up by me and some of the best games to play, especially new ways of making football pitches more exciting."

"Do you actually know how to read and write?" Impmon asked. "It took me a hell of a long time to grasp the basics on how to do either."

"No," said Calumon. "But I'll get Jeri to write it while I tell her what to write."

Impmon chuckled. "She won't be able to write anything that you say. She'll be too busy feeling completely confused or laughing so hard she falls off her chair and nearly suffocates."

"Suffocates?" Calumon asked, confused. "What's that? A new kind of cheese?"

Impmon snorted. "Now, this, I could get used to," he said. "Hear that, Calumon. Cheerful discussions, and quiet ones, are the best source of fun that _I'm_ going to get out of running for my life. Just remember, we need to be on guard at all times."

"Even now?" asked Calumon.

"Even now," nodded Impmon. "We must keep our eyes and ears open."

"Even when we're asleep?" Calumon asked. "I did try and sleep with my eyes open that one time and I got a headache because I was straining so hard."

"Well, maybe not when we're asleep. But that's what we have Behemoth for," Impmon patted the wheel of his bike. "He can warn us if there is any danger."

"Do you really think there could be?" Calumon said, and Impmon was pleased to note that Calumon sounded a little nervous, implying that Impmon's shouting had made him start to take things seriously, even if it still had not been the right way to go about it. "Could GranDracmon be following us right now?"

"It could be," said Impmon, shrugging slightly. "I don't know that much about him to be honest. I don't know how he managed to find out who I am. He could have learned it from a scout or something, or he may have some means of watching me at all times, which I find kinda creepy."

"Me too," Calumon shuddered. "That would mean he knows where my secret stash of sweets is."

Impmon raised an eyebrow. "You have a secret stash of sweets."

"D'oh!" Calumon slapped his forehead. "I shouldn't have said that."

"S'not like it makes a difference," Impmon shrugged. "What am I going to do – go back to the Human World and steal it? Not likely. Anyway, do you see my point here, Calumon? The fact he still hasn't found us after two days is a plus, but we still don't know if he knows where we are or not. We cannot let them take us unawares. Not now. Not ever. If we're gonna make it out of this little situation with our lives intact, then we can't afford to let anything sneak up on us, and take us by surprise."

"You might want to try harder to stay on guard then," said a voice from directly above him. Calumon and Impmon both yelped and leapt to their feet. Calumon sprang behind Behemoth and crouched fearfully, quivering the whole time. Impmon whirled around, both hands igniting with fire as he prepared to throw them at whatever had snuck up on him.

His jaw dropped and his eyes widened at what he saw. A female Digimon was lying on her side on one of the thick tree branches above him, her head propped up on one hand. She was wearing a yellow, sleeveless leotard, with pink arms and legs that ended in flower petals, leaf-like protrusions coming from her hips and shoulders, short, green ivy-like hair, a large pink flower on her back, another upside down one on top of her head and a tulip adorning the middle of her chest.

"Hello Impmon," Lilamon smiled sweetly. "It's been a long time."

"Lilamon," Impmon blustered, the flames on his palms going out. "How the... What... Wuh... buh...huh?"

Lilamon giggled. "Articulate as always, Impmon," she said. "You're looking healthy as ever, although I must admit I am quite surprised to see you again."

"What are you doing here?" Impmon asked, frowning at her. He had no reason to be suspicious, considering how helpful Lilamon had been on his last trip to this world in order to find a way to get all the victims of Parallelmon back, but still, he couldn't help but feel a little paranoid. "How did you sneak up on us like that without any of us noticing?"

"Sneaking?" Lilamon asked, looking a little hurt, but still grinning. "I never sneak about like some random Bakemon. I've been here the whole time. I was taking a nap in this tree when you suddenly woke me up with all that yelling of yours. It looked like you were having a moment that needed to happen though, so I decided not to interrupt for a bit. Naturally I eavesdropped though."

"You've been there the whole time?" Impmon blinked. "But... how come I didn't see you?"

"I dunno," Lilamon shrugged. "Maybe you thought I was just a ridiculously big flower. It wouldn't be the first time. There was this one time where a Sukamon squelched up the tree I was sleeping in and tried to drink nectar from my back." She shuddered. "It was only of the two creepiest moments of my entire life, the other time being when its accompanying Chuumon started hitting on me."

"You mean to tell me," Impmon said incredulously. "That the Data Stream that we just took to get here just happened to lead us straight to where you were having a nap."

"Looks like it," grinned Lilamon. She sat up and perched her backside on the branch, dangling her legs and swinging them back and forth casually. "The Digital World is one weird place. Maybe the Data Stream dropped you here on purpose."

Impmon frowned and turned around to look at Behemoth. "Did you know he was there?" he asked the bike.

The bike revved, and Impmon had come to know the motorcycle well enough to know that that noise meant "Yes."

"And you didn't think to let me know about it?" Impmon demanded incredulously.

Behemoth's engines made noises that made it sound like the bike was laughing. Impmon kicked it, then regretted it and rubbed his bruised foot. Then, he turned and looked up at the pink fairy Digimon. "Well, anyway, it's good to see you again," he said.

"Oh good," nodded Lilamon. "For a moment there I was worried I'd upset you. So, what do you think of my home?" She spread her arms and indicated the lake and the fruit trees.

"Wha-? You live here?" Impmon blinked, astounded.

Lilamon giggled and said, "Well duh. Why do you think it's in such excellent condition as it is now. We fairies can't do with pollution, so we only live in the most perfect of places, and I take a great deal of care to make sure this place stays that way. I use my powers to purify the water and to make the trees healthy and make such nice, fruity treats," she went on, plucking one of the giant grape things from the tree she was sitting in. She paused, frowned and said, "Should I be annoyed at you for barging in unannounced, or should I be happy that you dropped in?"

Impmon snorted. "Well, you certainly haven't changed much."

"I know," Lilamon winked. "But I liked the way I was already so I decided not to change and become an ordinary, boring person. Where would the fun in that be?" She bit carefully into the fruit.

"I suppose there wouldn't be any," Impmon laughed.

"Ooh, goodie," Lilamon cheered, swallowing her mouthful. "I made you laugh. That's certainly much better than all that stuff which I was hearing from before."

Impmon's expression suddenly fell. After a brief pause, he began to murmur. "Er... um... how much of that... exactly... did you hear?"

"Well, since it was your yelling that woke me up," Lilamon said. "I heard everything from after that. You were saying all this stuff that I didn't understand about some guy called GranDracmon, or whatever, and about how you needed to be quiet all the time and other stuff which went right over my petals. Any chance you could enlighten me? It sounds like there's been a lot of trouble in paradise for you and the other Tamers ever since we last met."

"Well," said Impmon. "To be honest... the whole story started before I even met you. But it definitely accelerated after I did. Are you sure you want to hear it though. I'm a bit reluctant to tell it."

"Aaaw, come on," Lilamon pouted. "You can't leave me out of the loop. Not after I heard all that stuff you were saying to your little friend. I'm your friend, aren't I?"

"Uh... well... technically... yes, I suppose you are."

"Hooray!" Lilamon cheered, though she did it much more quietly than she probably could have, which at least demonstrated she'd picked something up from his previous conversation. "Oh, but before that, can I ask something? Who exactly _is_ your little friend?"

Impmon blinked, having completely forgotten about Calumon. He turned to seek him out and found that the Catalyst was standing on top of Behemoth's seat – which had cooled down significantly, thanks to being in the shade – and was staring at Lilamon with fascination. "You're really pretty," he said to her.

"Phsawh," Lilamon waved a hand airily. "You're gonna make me blush."

"No, really," said Calumon. "I bet Suzie would really like you. Especially because a lot of you is pink. She loves pink."

"That she does," said Impmon. "That she does."

"Could I wear a flower on my head, like you?" Calumon asked.

"This flower is a part of me," Lilamon said, brushing her head petals with her hand petals. "I couldn't take it off if I tried. But if we could find a flower big enough for your head then, sure, why not?"

"Calumon, don't you get hayfeverish?" asked Impmon. "A flower on your head would be a very bad idea."

"Oh yeah. Never mind."

"What's hayfever?" asked Lilamon curiously. "Sounds gross."

"Eh, doesn't matter. I'll tell you later. Lilamon, this is Calumon, a little Digimon that hands around with us and the Tamers and can alternate between being a little ball of fun, or a pain in the backside."

"Hey, that's not very nice," Calumon said, sticking out his bottom lip.

"Oh relax, Calumon," Impmon said. "You know I was joking. Anyway, Calumon. This is Lilamon – the one I told you about from our last trip here."

"Oh yeah," Calumon nodded enthusiastically. "I remember now – Impmon told me you like to poke people to wake them up."

"That I do," Lilamon grinned. "I could do that you, but I wouldn't recommend it if you're ticklish. Not that that will stop me from doing it."

"Oh, but I love being tickled," Calumon jumped up and down happily. "It feels all... tickly."

"How unimaginative," said Impmon, dryly.

"In that case, I shall indeed do so," Lilamon grinned. "It's always great to meet another ball of fun. Wingdramon and Diatrymon can be such a drag sometimes. They still don't appreciate it when I chuck a piece of fruit at them to see what will happen. I never throw the same kind of fruit twice, you see. Well, not at the same person anyway."

"Do they live here too?" asked Impmon, curiously. "Where are those two at?"

"Well, they live here in a slight sense of the word," shrugged Lilamon. "And by that, I mean that they usually spend most of the day out doing something or other but always return here in the evenings to sleep. The two of them can't stay still for very long, you see. Wingdramon is constantly on the move and likes to spend his entire day soaring across the sky, which I personally don't get because it's not like he sees anything new on his circuits. Diatrymon just gets restless really easily, so he spends a lot of time moving around as well."

"So, they'll both be showing up here sooner or later?" asked Impmon.

"Yep," nodded Lilamon. "Although, now that I think about it..." she got up from her perch and casually floated out until she was out in the middle of lake. Calumon and Impmon watched her, bemused, as she pointed her arms in the air and cried, **"MARVEL SHOT!" **Iridescent energy spheres were fired from the middle of the flowers that were her hands and were shot into the sky. Then, she floated back over to them and, scooching Calumon over a little, she parked herself on Behemoth's seat.

"If I remember right, you like to be stroked," she said to the bike, rubbing her petals up and down the bike's seat. Behemoth's engine purred. "Looks like you haven't changed either."

"What did you go and do that for?" asked Impmon.

"Hmm?" Lilamon looked up. "Oh, I was just signalling the two of them. I figured that if you were going to tell me what's going on, then they should both be present too, so that you don't have to tell the story twice."

Impmon blanched. "But... I never said I was going to tell you the story."

"Oh, but you have to," Lilamon clasped her hand-flowers together in front of her and gave him _her_ version of the puppy-dog eyes. She turned her body side on, which seemed to make her look even cuter. She also fluttered her eyelashes for effect. "Pleeeeaaassseee," she said.

Impmon snorted slightly. But what he said was, "It's kinda depressing. Are you sure you want to hear it? Probably the less people who know about it, the safer it is. For all of us."

"You can't resist The Face," said Lilamon, pouting slightly. And, as it turned out, she was right. Impmon was astounded by how much a Digimon that size of a grown woman could look so much like a small child.

He could not resist The Face.

"Oh, alright," he chuckled. "Fine, Petal-head. I'll tell you the story."

"Ooh, Petal-head," Lilamon giggled, clapping her hand-flowers. "Nobody's called me that since you left."

"Hey, why did you cave for her, but not me," Calumon objected.

"Mainly because she was not asking me to play and begging like a spoiled brat," suggested Impmon. Calumon pouted himself and Lilamon laughed and ruffled his ears with her petals.

"Aaw, you're so cute," she said.

"And Wingdramon and Diatrymon will have seen that signal of yours?" asked Impmon.

"Well, Wingdramon will have," said Lilamon. "He'll probably pick up Diatrymon on the way back though.

"Good," said Impmon. "If I must tell the story, I'd rather not do it too many times."

Lilamon raised an eyebrow. "That serious, huh?"

"There's that," said Impmon. "And the fact that the number of times we explained our story last time caused it to get quite boring."

Lilamon giggled. "So true."

"How long will it take for them to get here?" Impmon asked.

Lilamon shrugged. "Meh, it depends where they were when I sent up the signal. They never take the same route two days in a row. So, while we wait for them, why don't we talk about something completely and utterly random?"

Impmon blinked. "Are you sure you're not related to Terriermon somehow?"

Lilamon snickered. "I wouldn't know. I've never met him."

"But the mannerisms and everything..." Impmon shook his head. "I wouldn't be surprised if you were another long lost twin, even if you do look nothing like a bunny."

* * *

It didn't take very long for Lilamon's signal to pay off. Calumon and Lilamon were chatting avidly together, the two of them getting along extremely well. Even if Lilamon was several level higher than Calumon, she still seemed to share many of his traits. Perhaps not his utter determination to play almost all the time, but both of them had bubbly personalities. Impmon had sat back down and was watching the two of them with amusement while keeping his eyes open for any sign of danger.

He couldn't help wondering though. Why had he run into Lilamon so quickly? The Digital World was a big place and it could take years to explore every part of it. It wasn't as big as Earth, that much was true, but it was much more complex and had a different set of rules to Earth. What were the odds of running into an old friend after a mere two days in such a place as this?

He couldn't find an answer, but he decided not to question it too much. After all, they had run into MetalSeadramon quite quickly last time. Not as quickly, that was true, but still pretty darn fast. And both times he had run into Lilamon had been complete accidents.

Impmon wasn't much of a believer in things like fate – but was it possible that that was indeed what had caused this. Was this all a complete accident, or was Fanglongmon, in his virtually-eternal slumber, causing this to happen. And, if so, why?

His thoughts were broken, when he spotted a shape in the corner of his eye. He looked up, focusing on the moving object heading towards them, muscles tensing just in case it was a threat. But, he relaxed a moment later and said, "Hey, Lilamon. Looks like your friends have arrived."

"Huh?" Lilamon blinked, turning and following Impmon's gaze. "Oh yeah," she grinned. She waved up at the approaching creature, which waved back.

"Is that a dragon?" asked Calumon.

"Yep," nodded Lilamon. "That's my good friend, Wingdramon."

And so it was. The blue scales of his armour shining in the non-existent sun, Wingdramon swooped down towards the ground, his wings extended as wide as they could go, which was a considerable wingspan of over forty feet. He swooped low over the leg and glided towards them at speed, causing the water beneath him to ripple outwards thanks to his slipstream. He pulled to a halt once over land again and then he just hung in the air, his wings still stretched out and his body almost hanging beneath them in mid-air.

Calumon stared at Wingdramon in awe. He was nowhere near as large as Sovereign or other giant Digimon he had seen, but the dragon was still fairly impressive. His shining blue scales, long whip-like tail, pointed head complete with helmet, orange-ear-horns and two red nose-horns, his hooked claws on his hands and feet, and his enormous wings, made him look exactly like a dragon from a fantasy story that Jeri had read to him once. The only difference was the huge lance that was attached to his back.

Wingdramon took in the scene in a quick second and said, "I don't think I need to ask why you called me back, Lilamon," in his rich voice.

"Well, I certainly hope you don't," Lilamon smirked. "Or you would be really stupid."

"You alright there, Wingdramon," nodded Impmon. "Long time, no see, eh?"

"It certainly has been," Wingdramon nodded. "It is a pleasure to see you again, Impmon. I trust that you have been keeping well?"

Impmon grimaced. "Er... not exactly," he murmured.

It was difficult to see under the eyeholes of Wingdramon's lizard-like helmet, but the dragon raised a questioning brow. "No?" he asked. "There is an explanation, I hope."

"Well, according to Lilamon there is," Impmon muttered. "But I'd rather not go into details until all three of you are here. Any chance of Diatrymon showing up soon."

A rasping screech echoed through the trees behind him, almost as if it were on cue. Calumon looked rather nervous at the sound and was about ready to jump behind Behemoth once again, but Lilamon merely rolled her eyes and said, "He always likes to make a nice, dramatic entrance, doesn't he?"

"Just like you always like to throw fruit at us and other similar stunts?" Wingdramon asked pointedly.

"Touché," Lilamon said. Impmon chuckled, remembering how he had taught Lilamon that word when they had last met and wondering if she'd been using it ever since.

He cast his thoughts aside, when Diatrymon stalked into the clearing. Stalking was about the only way that Diatrymon could move really, thanks to his stick-like walk that came with the huge, bird legs he walked on, even if they were half-metallic. His huge, metal talons dug into the ground with each step, causing Lilamon to mutter something about sorting those out later. His downy lower torso was the same mix of green and orange as before and the serrated, metal plumage covering his upper body and head shone as brightly as Wingdramon's scales.

Calumon unconsciously huddled closer to Lilamon at the sight of Diatrymon. While he wasn't making any intimidating gestures, Diatrymon was suddenly the most vicious-looking of the three, especially considering how his claws and talons all seemed to resemble curved blades and the lower half of his beak was filled with teeth.

Diatrymon glanced down at Impmon as he moved closer. The great, flightless bird shook his head slightly and said, "And here I thought we weren't ever going to see you again."

Impmon folded his arms. "Does that imply that you didn't want to see me again?" he asked, questioningly.

Diatrymon chuckled raucously. "On the contrary, I found your last visit extremely enjoyable. I liked all the little quirks that you and your friends had. But I reckon that wasn't the best greeting really, was it? Hello again, Impmon."

"Hello to you too, Diatrymon," said Impmon. "Just so you know, the little guy sitting next to Lilamon is called Calumon."

"Hiya," Calumon waved cheerfully, his doubts about Diatrymon having vanished when he saw how friendly the large bird was being.

"Pleasure to meet you," said Wingdramon.

"Wow, you're very small, aren't you?" said Diatrymon. Lilamon threw a piece of fruit at him, which he dodged.

"Where are your Tamers?" asked Wingdramon curiously as he hovered impossibly, glancing around. "Aren't they usually accompanying you on journeys that I assume you are on now?"

Impmon grimaced. "Normally, yes they would be. But not this time." He did not elaborate.

"Riiiggght," Diatrymon urged. "I'm guessing there is a story here."

"You would guess right," said Impmon bitterly. "But it's not one I like to discuss. However, I promised Lilamon that I'd tell you, so I suppose I should get it over with."

"Did she use The Face on you?" Diatrymon chuckled.

Impmon blinked. "Um... yes, she did. Why?"

"Let me guess," Wingdramon said, a slight smirk on his reptilian face. "You were unable to resist The Face."

"No, I wasn't," Impmon admitted reluctantly.

"Don't worry," Diatrymon grinned. "Nobody can resist The Face. Both of us have tried several times and yet Lilamon still seems to end up always getting her way."

"It's a good thing that she's not turning into a spoilt, little girl," said Wingdramon. "Otherwise she'd be a real handful. Well, more than she is now, anyway?"

Lilamon stuck her tongue out at him. Diatrymon settled himself down, folding his legs underneath him and apparently completely unfazed by the fact he was essentially sitting on a bunch of sharp blades. Wingdramon just stayed in the air, showing no sign of landing on the ground. He hadn't done that last time either, so Impmon decided not to question him.

Calumon did though. "How can you hover like that?"

Impmon decided to point out, "You can hover like that too, Calumon."

"Yeah, I know," said Calumon. "But, I'm so small and I'm so big."

"That has no effect at all on gravity, Calumon," said Impmon.

"What's gravity?"

Wingdramon decided to reply. "The scales on my wings have the ability to repel gravity which means that as long as I keep them outstretched like this, I can stay in the air indefinitely. The last time I touched the ground was around two months ago. And that was only because Lilamon thought it would be a good idea to jump on me in my sleep to see what would happen."

"More and more like Terriermon by the minute," said Impmon.

"I will take that as a compliment," said Lilamon.

"What's gravity?" repeated Calumon.

"Never mind," said Impmon.

"So, are we going to get onto this story of yours, or not?" asked Lilamon, leaning forwards and listening intently to Impmon. She seemed to be a very attentive listener and was also possibly looking for drama and a good story.

Impmon sighed. "Well, since you guys are my friends and all..." And he began to tell them to whole thing, trying not to sound to bitter whilst doing it. He failed spectacularly on that part, but he did manage to force out the whole story piece by piece. They were very good listeners, even Calumon, who had heard it already, as he told them all about the constant flashbacks he'd been receiving into his awful past, even describing a couple of the less horrific ones to them, then spoke of how MetalPhantomon had been discovered to be the culprit, of how the mysterious opponent had sent three enemies to attack him but they had been defeated. He added in the presence of the strange angel Digimon. He went on to explain what GranDracmon had told him about the Dark Ocean and how he was connected to Impmon's past, having control over the Nightmare Soldiers. He finished with the story of Guilmon's dark-digivolution to Megidramon, GranDracmon's ultimatum and his final decision to leave Ai and Mako behind in order to protect them and find the angel.

"And after Calumon and I took the first Data Stream we came across, we wound up right here, in Lilamon's garden-slash-home," Impmon finished. "And that's the end of it."

There was a brief silence as the three native Digimon exchanged glances with one another. Impmon knew that they weren't telepathic – they didn't have that glazed over look that Renamon, Terriermon or Lopmon had when they spoke to each other with their minds – but it looked like the three of them were holding a silent conversation with one another via expression alone.

"Well," said Wingdramon. "It seems to me that you are in a bit of piggle."

"That's putting it very mildly indeed," said Diatrymon. "I reckon you've been handed a really raw deal there. There's not much I can say to that."

"We're sorry," said Lilamon, her face looking genuinely sad for the first time that Impmon had seen it.

"Meh, what are you sorry for?" Impmon said, leaning against the tree and staring at the sky, where the strange globe that was the Human World was still visible high above. "It's not like you did anything."

"Well, no," said Wingdramon. "But still, it's a part of empathy, isn't it."

"Empathy?" asked Calumon. "That sounds scrumptious."

Impmon snorted, but made no attempt to correct the Catalyst. "And now, I guess I'm on the run. I'm like a wanted criminal or something, except I'm the good guy on the run from the bad guys instead. Not that that makes much difference – in fact it makes it worse."

"Well," said Lilamon, chirpily. "Look on the bright side, Impmon."

"What bright side?" asked Impmon.

"You've got yourself three new team-mates," Lilamon grinned.

"Oh. Okay," said Impmon. He paused, frowned and then sat up. "Wait. What?"

Lilamon laughed and floated off Behemoth's seat to hover beside her two friends. "You don't really think that we could listen to that story and decide not to come along and help you in any way that we can, do you? We helped you out last time. Why not this time?"

Impmon blustered. "But... but... last time we were only trying to find GranDracmon. This time, there is a very real danger that anyone associated with me could get killed by GranDracmon's Nightmare Soldiers. I was reluctant to let Calumon come with me, and only really did so because I was in a hurry and didn't have time to argue."

"We are well aware of that," said Wingdramon. "But nevertheless, we have all decided we would like to come along with you and help in any way that we can."

Diatrymon got off his haunches and stood up again. "Yeah, and besides, you could probably do with at least _some_ help. I mean, let's face it, what's better? One Mega-capable Digimon toughing it out with a single In-training and a motorbike at his side, or a Mega-Capable Digimon with a bunch of other Digimon helping him out too."

"Have you ever done any battling?" asked Impmon.

"Well no," said Lilamon. "Not really. But we've all got some skills up our petals, scales and feathers as the case may be. And we _are_ your friends after all. We can hardly leave you to go about this without help. Not only would it be a massive guilt trip for us, but it would be unfair to you too."

"But the whole point of me leaving was to stop people I cared for being put in danger," Impmon protested.

"Yeah, we got that," nodded Diatrymon. "But we want to help. What do you say?"

"But..." Impmon protested.

"Let's put it this way," said Lilamon. "Either you say yes and we come with you and we can all be one big, happy family and go and find this angel and discover a way to stop GranDracmon once and for all... or you can say no, and we'll follow you anyway and we can all be one big, happy family and go and find this angel and discover a way to stop GranDracmon once and for all. How's that?"

Impmon sighed, but he couldn't help but chuckle at Lilamon's repetition of herself. He knew now that nothing he was going to say was going to change their minds. At least, not right now. But maybe what they saw would in the future and anyway, he supposed it couldn't hurt to have a few friends watching his back. After all, they were Digimon that did not have Tamers, so they didn't have to worry about protecting their Human partners. And perhaps they could indeed help him find the angel. They'd been a big help before. Why not again.

Plus, he might find the company refreshing.

"Oh, alright then," he said. "Welcome aboard, you three."

He was quite unprepared for the cheer that Lilamon gave and the large hug she pulled him into afterwards.

* * *

Yeah, I've always been planning for these three to re-enter the picture, even before I started writing them before. I was planning on not reintroducing them until chapter 100, but, as I said, the previous storyline was partly pointless, so I moved it forward and it now has an actual plot to it. Impmon may be running for his life, but at least he has a passel of pals there with him. This also means I can develop their personalities a little. Believe me, they are not going to simply be there. They have a purpose to the plot to... but it is a good one.

Well, see you next time. A review would be very much appreciated.

* * *

Next time...

A double storyline is now taking place back with the main heroes. While the three Digimon begin their mission to wipe out Parallelmon, the Jedi and the clones head into unusual enemy territory – underwater.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 86 : Under the Surface**


	86. Under the Surface

Huge apology for the delay this time around. I've been working hard on my latest assignment and then I went home for the weekend. I could have gotten some more work done, but I was distracted by the release of Pokemon Black and White (I got both). And to top it all off, I accidentally left all the work I did on this chapter at home when I came back, so I've gone through a gargantuan effort – writing over 5000 words in four hours to get this churned out before bed. I'm about ready to fall asleep. Must... post... chapter.

Enjoy the unique battle coming up.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 86:- Under the Surface**

* * *

Ahsoka glanced over her shoulder, at the thick forest edge behind her, for what felt like the hundredth time and, since she had actually lost count, could very well have been. She was standing on the edge of an enormous lake – Lake Paonga, as it was locally known, that was ringed with trees on all sides. However, it was such a large lake that the other side was barely visible on the horizon. It could almost qualify as a very small, inland sea – except the lake water was fresh.

Additionally, Ahsoka was surrounded by clones that were all quickly and efficiently donning the gear they would need for their next assault. Ahsoka had been watching them with fascination ever since she had arrived on the surface of the planet. She'd never worked with Kit Fisto's platoon of Clone SCUBA troopers before. It was quite different to working with the usual battlefield style clone.

To start off with was their armour. While it looked similar to the armour of regular clone troopers, there were a few significant differences. While regular troopers wore thick plastoid-alloy, the armour of the SCUBA troopers was considerably lighter to help them move better while under the surface. Their helmets contained special sensors that would help them to see in the murky depths of the deep, and their bases were bulkier, as they contained miniature scrubbers that could both filter oxygen from the water and allow oxygen tanks to be attached for easy breathing. The clones were currently strapping these large, torpedo-shaped oxygen tanks to their backs, which also doubled up as propulsion packs to give them speed. The clones that were not shouldering their oxygen tanks were attaching their fins to their feet, much like regular diver fins. Wearing them of course made you slightly awkward on land, but they would definitely help when they got beneath the surface.

Ahsoka glanced around again, taking in the scenery. Aside for the clones gearing up all around here the only sign of anything technological were the gunships that were waiting obediently where they had landed to disgorge the troopers in the first place. And this was what worried Ahsoka.

She recalled how she and the clones had flown down in their respective, white gunships, a tense mood filling the air at the thought of what was to come. When the gunships had landed, they had sprang out of their ships, blasters raised and lightsaber ignited, ready to take on the droids that were waiting for them.

Except that there _hadn't_ been any droids waiting for them. Apart from the space blockade above, there was no sign to indicate that there were any Separatists here at all. Which either meant the Separatists had gotten hopelessly lost, _they_ had got hopelessly lost, or the Separatists were all already underwater.

Ahsoka strongly suspected the final option. And it was a worrying prospect.

If they were all already underwater, exactly how far had they gotten with their schemes? Were the Gungans safe? Was the city under attack right at that point while they dawdled on the surface? They had no way of knowing.

The Commander of the SCUBA troopers, who had been nicknamed Monnk, saluted Ahsoka. "We are ready and waiting, Commander Tano. We can move out at any time."

"Good," nodded Ahsoka, glancing back at the forest again. "But we must wait until the others arrive before we do anything. We may need their help."

"As you wish, General," Monnk nodded.

"What is taking them so long anyway?" Ahsoka wondered aloud. "Seriously, they should have been back long before now."

"That, I can't answer, sir," said Monnk. "Perhaps they ran into trouble."

"Perhaps," agreed Ahsoka. "But there aren't any giant land carnivores on this planet that could devour them, so unless there really are Separatist forces on land, I can't imagine what that would be." She toyed with the little device that she was holding in her hand – an A99 Aquata breather, which was basically a mouthpiece that had a small compartment of compressed oxygen on either side, which would allow her to breathe underwater for a couple of hours, which should be more than enough time to reach Otah Gunga when they began their descent. The thought of handling a mission underwater was still a bizarre concept to her. She was looking forward to the experience.

She continued to survey the troops for a couple more minutes, before she finally heard what she was listening out for. The loud whistling of an astromech droid sounded from behind her, and when Ahsoka turned to look, she grinned in delight at the sight of Artoo rolling out of the trees.

"Hey there, Artoo," she said, beaming as the astromech rolled towards her across the grass. "Good to see that you're still in one fully-functioning piece." Artoo beeped and chirped a couple of times in response. "Where are the others?" Ahsoka added. Artoo rotated his head around so that he was looking behind him.

Ahsoka followed his gaze and, sure enough, the others began to emerge from the trees. Master Fisto came first, with Anakin walking behind him. Ahsoka almost cheered at the sight of her Master still in one piece and promptly ran over to him. Anakin was startled when he was suddenly engulfed in a hug from his young Padawan. He blinked and hesitantly returned it.

"Hey, Snips," he said. "Uh... what's gotten you so excited?"

"Seeing you alive again, dumbass," Ahsoka said, stepping back and fixing Anakin with a glare-slash-look of relief. "Next time you feel like crashing the ship you're in, can you try and do it in one with an escape pod? Or better yet, next time you go flying at all, can you make sure not to crash. I was terrified up there."

"And we were terrified inside the ship," said Henry as he walked out of the tree-cover with Suzie in tow and Aayla walking behind the two of them. "I really hope that that is the last crash we are ever in."

"Which means we'll probably end up in another one eventually," said Suzie.

"Yeah, I know," sighed Henry.

Ahsoka moved over and gave the two of them a hug of their own, and, unsurprisingly, moved onto Aayla afterwards. Aayla chuckled at the emotional reaction. Poor Ahsoka must have been close to having a heart attack at the sight of seeing the rest of the A-Team and all the Digimon and Tamers plummeting towards the planet.

"What, no hug for me?" asked Kit, his grin in place and holding out his arms jokingly. Ahsoka released Aayla and turned to look at him, before shrugging and actually obliging. Kit blinked, having not expected Ahsoka to actually go through with it, but his surprise was temporary and he returned it quickly enough.

"Sorry, Ahsoka," said Anakin, causing the Padawan to turn back and look at him. "It won't happen again. And if it does, I'll make sure you are in the ship as well so you can plummet with us."

"That's reassuring," Ahsoka rolled her eyes. Then she frowned and said, "But where's Rika and the Digimon? Are they going to get here soon?"

"Er... not quite," said Kit. "Something came up."

Ahsoka's eyes widened in horror. "Are they alright?" she asked worriedly. "Were they injured from the shuttle crash or something?"

"No," Henry shook his head. "If they were, Suzie and I wouldn't be here. We'd still be with them. No, something even worse came up."

"Worse?" Ahsoka frowned in confusion.

"Yep," said Anakin. "We had a little encounter with an old nemesis of the Digimon – the one who landed them here in our universe in the first place actually."

"Parallelmon?" Ahsoka gasped. "What was he doing here?"

"Looking for revenge," said Aayla. "The three Digimon, and Rika because she and Renamon biomerged, may even be fighting him as we speak. They claimed he was too great a threat to be ignored, so it looks like we'll be doing the next leg of our mission without the aid of Digimon."

"It'll be like the old days," said Anakin dryly.

"Shouldn't we go back and help them?" asked Ahsoka.

"No," said Kit, shaking his head and causing his many tentacles to flap about. "We have a mission of our own to complete and if what I saw of the intense fighting going on back there is anything to go by, we would only be getting in the way. We have lost precious time already, so we must get going. Commander Monnk, are the men ready?"

"And waiting, sir," nodded Monnk. "All suited up and ready to move out."

"Excellent," nodded Kit. "Then I suppose we better get a move on."

"Uh, one question," said Henry. "How are _we_ supposed to get down there? I mean, I've done a fair bit of SCUBA diving back home, but I don't think any of those are in my size and there are certainly none for Suzie."

"Oh, that's alright," said Ahsoka, reaching into a bag she had with her and pulling out a large number of Aquata breathers. "You can use these instead. There's enough air in these things to last us two hours."

"Two hours?" Henry asked, impressed. "With these little things. Wow, that's pretty cool. Maybe I can find out how this works later on."

Ahsoka chuckled at Henry's fascination with technology as she passed more breathers to Anakin, Aayla and Suzie. "Well, you can test them out in the field now," she said brightly.

"Remember to stay close to us, you two," said Aayla, as she accepted her aquata breather. "There may be a number of potential threats down there and we've been tasked by the Digimon to keep the two of you safe. That means no swimming after pretty gooberfish, Suzie."

"Okay," said Suzie, as she examined her own breather. "But aren't we going to get any swimming costumes? And a private place to change into them?"

"Uh... no," said Anakin. "We're going to go in there wearing what we're wearing now."

Suzie looked shocked. "In my clothes? But they'll get all wet and icky when we get back onto land. I don't like wet clothes. They smell."

"If it's any consolation," said Kit. "The Gungans have special equipment in their cities that will dry us out immediately once we enter it."

"Okay," Suzie nodded reluctantly. "Will it be cold?"

"Probably," said Aayla. "But you're going to be a big girl and be brave, aren't you, Suzie. After all, you're ten now, right? A little cold water's not going to be any problem for you, is it?"

"Nope," Suzie shook her head. Henry rolled his eyes at the quick changes in Suzie's mood, but made no comment.

"Right," said Anakin, glancing across the wide lake. "Let's get this over with, shall we? This isn't an experience I am particularly looking forward to, but I suppose we have no choice."

"Well, we do, but it's not much of one," said Ahsoka. "Come on, Master. As Aayla said to Suzie, you're all grown up now. Surely you can handle it," she said teasingly.

"What happened to the hugging and looking relieved?" Anakin muttered. However, Ahsoka heard him, gave him a quick hug just to leave him flustered and walked down towards the lake.

"If everyone's ready," said Kit. "Let's move."

"Aren't you going to get a breathing thingie?" asked Suzie.

"I'm a Nautolan," said Kit. "We're amphibians, which means that we can take in oxygen through our skins while underwater, so I don't need one."

"Ah," said Suzie.

"Forward," Kit said, and took a few unflinching steps into the cold waters of the lake and then jumped high into the air, executing a graceful swan dive and disappearing beneath the surface with a plunge and barely a splash of water. He was just that good. Behind him, the SCUBA troopers began to wade into the lake, walking backwards so that they would be able to move quickly with their fins on their feet, before turning around at chest height and diving beneath the water as well. That left Anakin, Aayla, Ahsoka, Suzie and Henry on the shore.

Aayla glanced at the Tamers. "Do you want to wade in, or take the plunge?"

Suzie tested the water temperature with her finger and withdrew it, shivering. "Which is better?"

"I'd say the plunge," said Henry. "Wading in just draws out the feeling of chilly water going over you. Far better to get it done and over with, Suzie."

"Okay, big brother," nodded Suzie. She didn't resist as Anakin picked her up with one arm, while Aayla wrapped an arm around Henry's chest.

"Breather in, Suzie," said Anakin, to the little girl. "And don't take it out until we say so, alright?"

Suzie nodded, having seen Henry do SCUBA diving in the past and popped the mouthpiece behind her lips. "Bite down on the little nubs to make sure it stays in," said Anakin, and Suzie complied.

"And remember Suzie," said Henry, as the A-Team put their own breathers into their mouths. "You _can_ breathe underwater. First timers sometimes panic when they go under, but believe me, it's easy."

Suzie nodded and Henry popped in his own breather. Then, the A-Team, carrying Henry and Suzie with them, sprang outwards and plunged into the icy lake a good distance out.

The shock of cold water rushing over her body from her shoes to the top of her head made Suzie gasp, and this was probably a good thing because the first-timer test that Henry had just mentioned was taken instantly as a result. Instead of taking in a mouthful of water, Suzie found that she was able to breathe quite adequately, even while beneath the surface. She breathed in and out a few times more, just to check. It was actually an exhilarating feeling – something she'd always dreamed about. But she never had until now.

Anakin released his grip on her and Suzie looked around. She could see around the lake quite clearly, which demonstrated that it had not been very polluted, like many had back home. Weeds wafted in the little currents and bright blue gooberfish, which resembled small catfish thanks to their barbells, darted amongst them. The lake was extremely deep, so much so that beyond a certain point, Suzie couldn't see the bottom. This creeped her out a little bit – what lay in the depths that she didn't know about. She could see Kit and the Clone SCUBA troopers not far away, heading into the depths.

Ahsoka, Aayla and Anakin abruptly swam past her, all three doing breast-stroke as they followed Kit and the clones into deeper water. The three of them were excellent swimmers, propelling themselves through the water with their arms and legs with ease. The fact that they were underwater made Ahsoka and Aayla's lekku sway about like the weed, but they barely seemed to notice.

Henry swam up to Suzie and took her hand in his own, ignoring the chilly water. Suzie glanced over to him and Henry nodded in the direction of the Jedi, reminding Suzie that they were supposed to be staying close to them. Suzie nodded and then, she and Henry quickly followed the Jedi into the deeper water. Suzie was marginally afraid, having never swam in an area as deep as this before (she had only swam in the deep end of swimming pool and the shallow ends of the ocean), but as she kicked her legs, mimicking her brother's breast-stroke and catching up with the Jedi, she began to feel more comfortable with her surroundings.

Yes, Lopmon wasn't here to protect her, but she still had her friends and family to look after her in her place.

As they went deeper the pressure built up in Suzie's ears, but she knew how to clear that – pinching her nose and swallowing hard to clear her ears. Henry had already told her that technique and besides, she's used it to clear her ears on aeroplanes as well. Henry nodded when he spotted her doing this and gave her a diver's "okay" sign – thumb and forefinger in a circle with the other three fingers in the air. Suzie gave him the signal back.

The chilly water was giving both the Tamers goosebumps, but the spectacular scenery was more than enough to distract the two of them. They watched the luminescent flora waving in the current all around them and the glorious multi-coloured fish slipping amongst the fronds like quicksilver with awe. It may be a lake, but it was just as colourful and vibrant a place as any coral reef back home – and Henry had seen a few of those. One alarmingly large fish did drift right over their heads, but it made no sign of even noticing their presence and Suzie relaxed somewhat when it plucked a large clump of vegetation from a rock and swallowed it.

Henry wished he had a camera. A waterproof one, anyway.

Up ahead, Aayla turned around to check on their progress, her lekku waving behind her in the current. It was difficult to tell thanks to her aquata breather, but it looked like she was smiling at the two Tamers. She noticed that Suzie was struggling to keep up with the constant speed – Suzie may be a good swimmer but she had neither the energy nor the perseverance to keep up with the fast stroke of everyone else. Aayla gently reached out with a hand and took hold of Suzie's before turning round and continuing with breast-stroke using only one hand and also using the Force to give her a little boost. Henry, in turn, increased his own speed.

Kit and the clones were waiting for them at the rim of a large, underwater cliff. Kit's grin was still in place as they arrived, and he gave them all a wink with his big, black eye, his tentacles wafting all around him like... well... tentacles. Suzie and Henry glanced back up at the surface. It looked to be a long way up.

"Sir," said Monnk, the communicator in his helmet allowing him to speak and be heard quite clearly even while underwater. "Shall we proceed?"

"Indeed we shall," agreed Kit, who appeared to be able to speak underwater just as well as on the surface, while the other Jedi and the Tamers were effectively mute thanks to their breathers. "Over the edge, men. Keep up, you guys."

Kit Fisto stepped off the cliff and began to drop further into the depths at a slow and steady pace. The clones followed – their propulsion packs whirring as they pushed the clones along at a steady pace. As the rest of them reached the edge of the cliff, Henry and Suzie gasped in amazement as they beheld Otah Gunga.

It was an immense network of what appeared to be giant bubbles, connected by equally transparent corridors that looked to be made of the same substance. Henry knew they couldn't possibly be bubbles though, because each of them had a floor and pillars on the outside the held them upright, so he expected that they were globular force-fields of some kind that kept the water out. Bioluminescent lights illuminated it, making it stand out from the dark of the lake bottom. And even from here, Henry could see little people – Gungans – walking around inside the transparent spheres.

It was certainly a sight to behold.

Both Tamers were snapped out of their reverie by gentle nudges from behind by Aayla as Anakin and Ahsoka followed the clones over the edge. They pulled themselves together and followed, the Twi'lek swimming between them and guiding Suzie as they went deeper and deeper down. Normally, Henry would never think of coming this far down on a dive, but he trusted the Jedi so he made no comment.

They swam towards the city, gazing in amazement at the civilisation of bipedals that lived under the surface. Just what didn't this universe have? Now that there were Digimon in it, it seemed to have everything.

"Sir!" barked one of the clones. "Enemy troops inbound from the right!"

Henry and Suzie both started when they heard this and turned to their right to look. Sure enough, there was a large number of... something... coming out of the depths and rocketing towards them at high speed. It took a couple of moments for them to come into focus, but they were easy enough to recognise. They were bipedal and organic – not droids – and they had vaguely squid-like heads complete with four tentacles hanging around where their mouths would be. Quarrens. They'd seen a few of these before, on land, walking around the streets of Coruscant, but they had never been attacked by them.

Aayla grabbed the Tamers and put herself between them and the oncoming Quarrens. The clones unhooked large blasters from their belts and trained them on the oncoming enemy, which everyone seemed to agree must be the Separatists. Kit, Anakin, Ahsoka and Aayla pulled their lightsabers from their belts and, with four simultaneous whooshes, two blue blades and two green blades further illuminated the lake. Henry was surprised that the lightsabers actually worked underwater and decided to inquire about it later.

The Quarrens were armed with blasters as well, and a good number of them were also holding tridents as closer ranged weapons and they looked like they meant business.

The clones opened fire first – their blasters were specially designed to work underwater just as a normal blaster works above it, and blue lasers began to lance in the direction of the Quarrens. The Quarrens began to fire red lasers of their own back at them. Kit swam out in front and began to parry them, and the Nautolan was quickly joined by Anakin and Ahsoka, who were slightly slower. Aayla quickly pushed Henry and Suzie in the direction of the clones, indicating that they should stay behind them, before swimming out to join her fellow Jedi, blocking a red shot that would have hit her face and rolling in the water to avoid another, so it passed between her swaying lekku.

Henry and Suzie took shelter behind the clones and watched as the underwater battle began.

* * *

While battle began to break out below the surface of the lake, things still hadn't kicked off yet above it. The densely-packed tree trunks kept sound to a minimum, but there was no section of the forest that had any loud explosions or tremendous battle-zones. At least, not yet. It was still predominantly silent, more so than usual. The local birds seemed to have sensed that something was happening and had vacated the area a while ago, which is a wise decision when a brawl between Digimon is imminent.

On the thick branch that extended from the even thicker trunk of one of the trees was Rapidmon. The green, cyborg bunny was high above the ground, where the two other Digimon were standing and watching – so high that he was almost in the canopy. His eyes were shut and his head was panning very slowly from left to right, almost like a security camera. He was listening intently, his huge panel-like ears detecting the most minute sounds wherever he turned his head. As Sakuyamon and Antylamon watched from the ground, they were trying to breathe as quietly as possible, lest the slight noise they made by doing so drowned out other, more sinister noises from the surrounding swampland.

Eventually, Rapidmon opened his eyes and glanced down at them. He shook his head and called down. "Bupkus. Can't hear anything that might be Parallelogram. No snapping branches, no Backewing, not even any diabolical laughter quiet muttering as he plans our downfall."

Antylamon shrugged. "Well, it was worth a try. We'll just have to assume that he's in an another dimension at the moment. Confusing as that may sound."

Sakuyamon nodded. "In that case we'll need to stay on high alert. He could appear anywhere, and it will probably be right next to where we're standing again."

"Yeah," said Rapidmon as he hopped down to land smoothly beside the Mega and his taller sister. "How does he do that anyway? He always seems to know exactly where to blip into our universe. He even knows what direction to face when he does it."

"Who knows," said Sakuyamon. "Perhaps it's instinct, perhaps he's just had a lot of practice. We cannot really know for sure unless we ask him. And he'll probably not be up for sharing anyway."

"True," nodded Rapidmon. "He's not exactly one for small talk, is he?"

Antylamon glanced up at the surrounding woodland, all her muscles tensed and coiled, ready to spring at a moment's notice, which was all she was going to get if Parallelmon decided to appear. In fact, she'd get less than a moment's notice. "No, he's not," she said. "But I'll tell you what he is. He's a stubborn one. We've given him two beatings now and he still wants more."

"How are we so sure he's going to attack again soon?" asked Rapidmon.

"I just know," said Sakuyamon. "Perhaps it's an instinct of my own, but I can simply tell that Parallelmon is not through with us yet. And besides, we didn't injure him nearly as much in that last encounter as we did in the first one."

"Blame the trees," said Rapidmon. "If we could go Mega, that would not be the case."

"Probably," chuckled Sakuyamon. "At any rate, I can sense that he'll be back."

"It's ironic really," said Antylamon. "I know Parallelmon could hardly be considered a potential way for us to get home, but it still feels like that by taking him out, we'd also be taking out our only exit to this dimension."

"I know what you mean," said the Rika half of Sakuyamon. "It's kinda depressing actually. Parallelmon could be the only way I'll ever get to see my mum, or my grandma, again."

"But you know as well as the rest of us, Rika," said Renamon. "That Parallelmon would never consent to bring us back. Besides, we made a pledge to help Aayla and the other Jedi to win this war before we went home, if a way was discovered, and we cannot keep Parallelmon contained until then. No prison can hold someone with his abilities."

"They would be slightly handy, wouldn't they?" Rapidmon grinned. "Imagine how many kitchens I could sneak into with something like that."

"You'd find pineapples in a good deal of them," remarked Antylamon.

"Never mind," Rapidmon said quickly, shuddering slightly.

"Yes, watch where you're sneaking about," Sakuyamon chuckled. "You wouldn't want to be infested with a demon, would you?"

"No, I certainly wouldn't," Rapidmon gulped, horrified at the prospect of his own poem (which Aayla had copied onto paper and pinned to her wall in her quarters at the Temple) being carried out.

"We're getting a little sidetracked," said Antylamon.

"Yes," said Rapidmon, anxious for ANY change to the subject. "Do your senses tell you when Parallelmon will attack again?"

"Soon," said Sakuyamon. "In fact, I would say that he is going to reappear in our dimension... right... abbboooouuuttt..."

BACKEW!

"NOW!" Sakuyamon shouted as all three of them sprang in opposite directions, just in time to avoid the Mutant Digimon that had appeared just above them and plunged his claws in Sakuyamon's direction. Parallelmon's clawed hand slammed into the ground so hard that he penetrated the earth up to what counted as his elbow. He quickly withdrew it, and glared with one, heat-blistered eye at his three opponents. Sakuyamon gripped her staff tightly, Rapidmon cocked his cannons eagerly and Antylamon's hands morphed into her trademark axes.

"Damn you!" Parallelmon rasped angrily. "How do you do it? All three times that I've attacked you, you have all managed to avoid the opening blow."

"Maybe you should invest in finding a way to quiet that loud noise you make when you dimension-jump," said Rapidmon. "That might give you a hand."

"Oh," said Parallelmon, looking bemused. "I hadn't thought of that. But I quite like that noise. But, never mind all that. This time, there will be no retreating from the likes of you. To coin what I believe is a human phrase, 'Third time's the charm.' By the end of today, one of our sides will have been wiped out, and it is not going to be me. Ready to be deleted?"

"You do realise that whole 'Third time's the charm' thing applies to us as well," said Rapidmon. "Since this is the third time the three of us have faced off against you as well, and since we both have the advantage of third time lucky, we have no advantage of luck at all, because they cancel each other out."

"Rapidmon," Antylamon stared at her brother. "What are you doing?"

"Just trying to demoralise him slightly," said Rapidmon, shrugging his armoured shoulders.

"I think your succeeding in confusing everyone," Antylamon shook her head. "Or perhaps bemusing would be a better word."

"Meh," Rapidmon said. "I suppose Parallelmon's brain is too small to comprehend what I was saying anyway."

"Will you all just SHUT UP AND DIE?" Parallelmon leapt at Sakuyamon, whom he had naturally decided was the greatest threat, with a strike of his purple claws, hoping to catch her off-guard before she could react. He failed in that respect – Sakuyamon raised her staff and caught his claws with the metal. Instead of straining against him like last time, she demonstrated her skill with the golden staff by twisting it sharply, which caused Parallelmon to twist with it and get thrown violently to the left, his claws unhooking from the staff as he was thrown. Parallelmon quickly flipped onto his feet and skidded backwards, his huge claws cutting grooves in the turf as he moved.

"Fine," he said. "Let's play."

He sprang forward again, but vanished into thin air with another BACKEW almost the moment his feet left the ground. Sakuyamon shut her eyes and tried to sense his presence when he didn't reappear straight away, and it was a good thing she did. As she got her advance warning, she quickly brought up a Talisman Sphere, shielding herself and Rapidmon, who was standing nearby, in another bubble, right before Parallelmon exploded right out of the ground beneath where she was standing and collided with the bottom of the sphere, sending it flying into the air, along with its occupants. The bonk made him wince and rub his head slightly, but blinked as a shadow loomed over him. Yelping, he leapt aside just in time to avoid getting smashed into the ground by Antylamon, who slammed her axes into where he's been standing, throwing up earth and knocking him back. The Talisman Sphere landed nearby and Sakuyamon dropped it. She and Rapidmon leapt out of it and charged towards Rapidmon, with Antylamon joining once they drew level with her.

Growling, Parallelmon leapt into the air once more and dimension-jumped once more, rematerializing in the exact same spot with an enormous number of boulders in tow, which he hurled at his three attackers. But this turned out to be a futile gesture, because the three Digimon easily dealt with this attack in different ways – Rapidmon expertly dodged the barrage of boulders that came his way with his lighting reflexes, moving from side to side so fast he was barely visible, while Sakuyamon brought up another shield to protect her and Antylamon swung her arms in an expert manner, dashing the boulders to smithereens without breaking her stride. Parallelmon growled in annoyance and vanished again, reappearing with a second tractor (a red one this time, the last one had been yellow) and hurling it at Antylamon. The bunny smirked, not about to be taken out by a tractor a second time and swung an axe, sending out a pink energy blade that sliced through the tractor and batting the two halves aside. The energy blade went on, and Parallelmon dodged it quickly, only to look up and pale.

Parallelmon blipped out of existence just before Sakuyamon's four fox-spirits collided with him. He reappeared not far away, some distance off to the right, and was suddenly bulldozed from behind almost instantly by Rapidmon, who had got behind him almost instantaneously and rammed both feet into the small of Parallelmon's back, pushing him toward the four spirits. The spirits whirled around as they sense their victim and surged through the air to meet him, unleashing their elemental fury onto Parallelmon's stringy body. Parallelmon howled as the water and lightning spirits combined their powers to set his nerves of fire figuratively, while the fire spirit did it literally and the wind spirit sent him hurtling into a tree.

Rapidmon, who had been completely unaffected by the onslaught despite his close proximity to it, immediately launched a Tri Beam right after his foe. Parallelmon, his back stinging looked up to see nothing but green light, and he was then smashed by the attack so hard he made a large imprint in the thick trunk. It didn't help him with Antylamon bounded over and slammed him with an axe, hard enough to snap the tree he was pressed to an send him flying backwards a second time – right into the butt of Sakuyamon's staff, which she had been holding like a snooker cue. It struck him in the back and Parallelmon yelped in pain, sounding like a spaniel that had been kicked. Sakuyamon followed up by slamming her staff like a bat into the back of his head and sending him tumbling. Unfortunately, Parallelmon dimension-jumped before he hit the floor and reappeared, the right way up, some distance away. He grunted in pain at his injuries, but that turned into a growl as he vanished once more and reappeared a little closer, charging forward again.

Sakuyamon saw him coming first and launched an Amethyst Wind in his direction. Parallelmon growled and halted his charge, raising him arms and blocking the majority of the attack with his thick armour. Sakuyamon kept up the attack, forcing him to keep his guard up, which rendered him completely unable to dodge Antylamon's next move – she slammed her axes into the ground and unleashed her energy blades into the earth at the same time. The power was enough to generate a large shockwave through the ground, like a miniature earthquake, which knocked Paralellmon off his feet. He hissed in agony as his body was struck by the Amethyst Wind.

Through the pain, he saw Rapidmon heading towards him, readying a second Tri Beam while he was defenceless and on the ground. Parallelmon's eye narrowed and suddenly disappeared, reappearing right next to Rapidmon. In mid-attack as he was, Rapidmon was unable to dodge as Parallelmon slammed him in the gut with the back of his armour and sending him hurtling towards the ground, creating a trench as he ploughed through it. Parallelmon leered and plunged towards him, readying his huge claws and intending to seal the fate of his first victim.

Unfortunately for him, Sakuyamon got there first and quickly raised a shield that Parallelmon bashed his claws against once again. Parallelmon growled in annoyance and pain, his claws stinging, but he continued to pound against the shield regardless, hoping to wear it down slightly. He was a little bemused when Rapidmon stood up and pointed his cannons at him from within the sphere. He smirked, thinking that Rapidmon was being stupid and assuming he was about to blow himself up by accident, and was therefore very shocked when Rapidmon's Rapid Fire passed _through_ the shield and slammed into his stomach, throwing him upwards, gasping for breath and leaving the other two unharmed.

Antylamon ran up to meet him, her axes raised to swing. Parallelmon saw her coming and dimension-jumped, resulting in her cleaving only air. Annoyed, Antylamon whirled around in search of him and saw him reappear not far off, hovering in mid-air. Parallelmon leered at her and brought his arms down, clapping his clawed hands together with tremendous force. The result was a large vortex suddenly opening in the space below him and, to Antylamon's shock, a huge torrent of flames surged out of it, towards her. Quickly she raised her axes and caught it with the flats, but she winced at the searing heat as a large portion rolled over her. Ignoring the pain as best she could and already straining, Antylamon took a few slow and forced steps forward in an attempt to keep the flames away from the trees lest a forest fire was started. Parallelmon almost laughed as he watched her plight, but that soon changed to a cry of anguish as he was hit by a Rapid Fire from one side and the Twin Blades of Beauty and Truth from the other. He yelled as the attacks brutally struck him and the portal closed, sealing off the flow of fire. Antylamon, gasping with relief, didn't hesitate and hurled an Arm Bomber at Parallelmon while he was stunned, throwing him backwards once more as the spheres crashed into him.

As Parallelmon got to his feet once again, he roared in fury, his eye beginning to see red as incredible anger overtook him! How dare these three defy him and try to beat him around like this! They were not going to live to see nightfall! Parallelmon's roar continued as he went in for a full, headlong charge, claws splayed. The three heroes rolled their eyes at the sight, wondering when Parallelmon was going to get that this wouldn't work, before charging him themselves. Sakuyamon readied her staff, Antylamon her axes and Rapidmon brandished his cannon arms, all preparing to strike simultaneously with a triple punch that would hopefully knock him for a loop he'd never get back round.

But Parallelmon reacted differently this time. Instead of meeting them head-on, his charge had been a bluff. He suddenly vanished and reappeared behind Antylamon and Rapidmon almost simultaneously, each time hurling a large tree at their backs. Antylamon was taken off guard and pushed to the ground, while Rapidmon dodged but was clipped by the branches and sent rolling. Parallelmon blipped out again and reappeared right in front of Sakuyamon, delivering a huge, clawed punch to her gut, almost snapping her back with the sheer force of the attack and sending her powering backwards.

He leered and prepared to charge again, when someone else intervened. Rapidmon had managed to regain his flight as quickly as anything he ever did and slammed into him from the behind. Like before, he pulled them into a spinning climb, but unlike before he had Parallelmon from behind, so there would be no spike in the stomach this time. Parallelmon roared as he flailed wildly, his limbs slamming into Rapidmon's ears and legs, causing him to wince, but he didn't lessen in his flightpath. Eventually, he released Parallelmon and grabbed him by one foot with both arms and hurled him towards the ground at incredible speed, sending a Miracle Missile after him to increase his speed. Parallelmon, who had been preparing to dimension-jump, was distracted by the blows and howled as him was sent down even faster. Antylamon, who had gotten to her feet, was gripping the tree he had hit her with like an immense baseball bat and slammed it into Parallelmon as he fell, sending him shooting back up again. Rapidmon smirked and launched a Tri Beam, slamming him again and sending him hurtling back down once more.

Parallelmon, grunting through the pain, managed to pull off a dimension-jump. He disappeared for several seconds, during which time the others all looked around warily for him. Then, he reappeared above them, casting them all in shadow because he was carrying _an entire house_ with him.

"Oh dear," said Rapidmon, at the sight of it. "Would I be correct in assuming that we have really pissed you off now?"

"YOU THINK?" Parallelmon screeched, hurling the house in their direction.

"Out of the way!" Antylamon cried, as they all leapt aside.

* * *

The lake was filling up with flashing lights as the underwater battle raged, startling the gooberfish away in all directions. Red and blue flashed across the closing gap between the clones and the Quarren, as the latter made their way up from the depths at high speed, their tridents bristling and ready for action, while the clones held their position, along with the four Jedi, blocking the shots out in front.

However, it didn't take long for the Quarren to get closer. And, rather like a space battle, there were no obvious sides to the battle once close combat was made. On the ground, there was usually one group on one side and the other group on the other. Here, in the water, everything went into a free-for all.

Anakin glared at the approaching Quarren and decided to take the initiative, as he often did in situations like this. Using his natural buoyancy in the water, he allowed his legs to drift upwards until his body was aligned with the Quarren and used the Force to surge downwards with a pre-emptive strike. The closest Quarren started at the rapidly approaching Jedi and back-pedalled at speed, but this resulted in a collision with those immediately behind them. Anakin swung his blade as he swept past the cluster of squabbling and panicked Quarren and neatly decapitated a good deal of them – his lightsaber instantly cauterizing the wound, which meant there was, fortunately, no blood to fill the water.

The final Quarren was stabbed through the chest by Anakin's lightsaber as the Chosen One collided with him. Anakin, rather disrespectfully, grabbed the dead Quarren by its face tentacles and dragged the body up, using it as a shield to deflect more incoming fire and then blasting it down at the Quarren with the Force. Softened by the water, the bump of the body did little more than inconvenience the Quarren, but Anakin quickly swam towards them with a strong dolphin-kick, deflecting a shot from another attacker and then parting the three Quarren from their bodies. Anakin was now behind the main bulk of the Quarren, and he turned around as some turned towards him and resumed deflecting their fire, but still began to kick his way towards them.

Not to be left out by her Master, Ahsoka also began to move forwards and swim towards the Quarren at a slightly slower speed. The one at the forefront glared at her and aimed carefully at her head before letting off a shot. Ahsoka quickly brought up her lightsaber before her face and deflected the shot right back down the barrel of his blaster, causing it to explode. The Quarren gurgled in pain, it's hands friend, but Ahsoka quickly sliced him across the chest to put him out of his misery. Other Quarren surged past her and wheeled around to face her again, leaving her surrounded. Ahsoka, breathing quickly through her aquata breather, went on the defensive, using the lack of gravity that the water provided to flip and twirl her way around as many bolts that she ended up deflecting, moving in an intricate, underwater dance.

But the water could be used to other advantages as well, Ahsoka realised. A Force Push wouldn't normally affect an organic as much as a droid, but these were not ordinary circumstances. Ahsoka called on the Force and used her mind to send the water surging outwards in a ring around her. The sudden surge of pressure knocked the blasters out of the hands of the Quarren and they were carried away by the current. Undeterred, the Quarren gripped their tridents and began to thrust them in her direction. Ahsoka smirked around her breather and twirled in the water, swinging her blade around her and shearing off the heads of the tridents with ease. She stabbed her blade through the torso of a shocked Quarren, then planted her feet on his corpse and used the little purchase it provided to jump off and cleave through another, repeating this process until all her attackers were dead.

Aayla did not charge forwards like her two teammates, but opted to stay back slightly instead. The Quarren swam towards her, eager for blood, blasters and tridents pointed readily at her...

And she startled them all by turning around and fleeing, swimming dolphin-style towards the surface.

Only put off for a few seconds, the Quarren that had singled the Twi'lek out gave chase, swimming after her and firing their blasters at her fleeing form, tridents jabbing in her direction. Aayla glanced over her shoulder, as she reflexively blocked the blaster fire. They were much more at home in the water than her and were rapidly gaining, piling on speed as the thought of a kill filled their minds. Fortunately, that had been what Aayla had had in mind. When she judged they'd gotten close enough, she pulsed at the water above her with the Force. The backlash of this move caused her to come to almost a complete standstill, and, before they knew what was happening, the Quarren had swum past her. Startled, the Quarren pulled to a halt, but that had been a very bad idea indeed, because Aayla had started swimming again and she diced up half of them with her blade while they were still turning back around.

The other half fired at her quickly, a little bit more concerned than before. Aayla continued to block easily enough, but she was focusing her mind as well, calling on the Force to aid her. The Quarren were taken by surprise when there was a sudden, strong current of water that rushed into them from behind, carrying them right towards the floating Twi'lek Jedi. Aayla pirouetted and span a couple of times and the Quarren were in pieces, floating away in different directions. Aayla nodded, glad that Kit had taught her how to do that, before grabbing the tridents of the deceased Quarren with her mind and using the Force to hurl them towards the next bunch riding towards her like spears.

Speaking of Kit though, the Nautolan was the clear champion when it came to Jedi battling underwater. He had complete mastery of the water – so much so that he might as well have been flying through the air like... well... Rapidmon. Much slower than Rapidmon of course, but he was still pretty damn fast. Conjuring water currents was a specialty of Kit's and he used it to his advantage now. He flowed through the Quarren ranks, swinging his blade in all directions as he went, riding on a current he had generated like an underwater geyser that he could command at will. The Quarren had no time to move before he was suddenly there and swinging a lightsaber at them. Kit's grin was in place as he washed himself through, slashing through a pair of Quarrens on his right, batting aside a couple of stray shots with his blade. He rushed over to another, stabbing him and relieving him of his trident in one motion and then carried himself between two more, stabbing in both directions simultaneously and taking them both out.

Kit pulled to a halt in the middle of the Quarren ranks and proceeded to wreak havoc on them. Sheathing his blade and using his natural underwater agility of dodge the shots they were sending his way, he shut his eyes and, still dodging without looking, began to weave his hands in a series of complex looking motions. To anyone who didn't know the Nautolan, it would look like he was doing some weird form of meditation, but Kit was working more of his magic with the water. A new current sprang up which swept into a bunch of Quarren directly below him, carrying them away, but suddenly the current changed direction and the helpless Quarren went flying upwards to collide with some more, then the group was sent hurtling to the left where more were added to the pile of struggling men. This continued until no less than twenty-three Quarren were being pushed through the water simply by the power of Kit's mind. Kit's eyes snapped open and he changed the direction of the current so it was flowing right past him and his extended his blade. As the feebly struggling Quarren were swept past, Kit pulled off one massive swing with his lightsaber that sliced through all of them at once.

The clones were doing extremely well too, but they and the Quarren were having slightly more of a underwater brawl. Using the power of their propulsion units and their fins, the clones were more than able to match the speed and the co-ordination that the Quarren and the Jedi possessed, allowing them to dodge blaster-fire and sweep after a new target with relative ease. Lasers flashed all around them as they ducked and dodged through the water, adding their own lasers to the mix. Commander Monnk whooshed after a Quarren and, after a couple of misses from his evasive Quarren quarry, he put a laser straight between its shoulder blades, and rolled over onto his back and blasted another coming at him from above. The veteran SCUBA trooper dived down and looped back up, rushing through a throng of them and letting loose a barrage of bolts. Those that managed to evade him turned, tentacles flapping, and angrily let off several more rounds, but Monnk curved to the side of dodged them.

He didn't return fire. The Quarren turned to stare at each other, confused as to why he was fleeing. It wasn't until too late that they realised Monnk had left a small detonator floating in their midst. They turned to flee right as it exploded, sending them tumbling. Only one survived the blast and it was quickly picked off by another clone.

However, the clones were still not getting things their own way. As they manoeuvred and weaved around the lake, they were losing many of their men too. Many of them fell to trident stabs in the back or the front when the Quarren managed to get close enough to them. Unfortunately, tridents were more messy than lightsabers and their light armour was not enough to repel them, resulting in the unpleasant sight of blood seeping into the water. One clone had his helmet knocked off by the butt of another trident, resulting in a sudden lack of air. Panicked, the clone tried to swim to the surface, but he was easily shot by a Quarren blaster. Another clone was shot in the oxygen tank, which exploded and took out the two clones that were on either side of him as well as himself. The brawl was by no means one-sided.

Four clones had been assigned by Commander Monnk to guard Henry and Suzie, and they were carrying out their duties well. They had surrounded the Tamers on three sides facing the Quarren, and the fourth one was swimming beneath them to prevent attack from below. Attack from above was unlikely, considering how Aayla was up there and decimating anything that got too close to her. Nevertheless, both Aayla and Kit were keeping an eye on the situation, just in case. However, the clones were doing well, blasting any Quarren that came their way with extreme prejudice. Only one made it past their lasers and attempted to stab at the children between the clones, but one of them seized the trident and bashed the Quarren in the face with it, and another shot him in the stomach.

That didn't mean it wasn't a terrifying experience for the two children. Suzie had really been afraid of water, or even what lurked in it, but she was staying as close to Henry as possible, trying not to look at the bodies of the dead clones. Or dead Quarren for that matter. Henry had a comforting arm around and he was scanning the area for any potential threats he could warn the clones about as any good brother should.

Which was why he was the first to see something else rising up from the depths.

He stared at them. At first he thought they were large fish of some sort, but then he saw glowing red photoreceptors like those on a Vulture Droid. They were red in colour, which is why they'd been invisible in the gloom of the depths. A sleek body, like that of a torpedo, was sticking out the back, while the front of the new threat was shaped like a wedge, or a large semi-circle. And they were very, very fast.

Henry quickly grabbed the shoulder of the nearest clone. When said clone glanced at him questioningly, Henry pointed downwards frantically. The clone looked, spotted what Henry had seen and said, "Oh poodoo. I was hoping they wouldn't have any Manta Droid Subfighters this time around."

"Just great," added another.

The Mantas surged upwards at high speed, unleashing barrages of large, red lasers into the throngs of clones, while the Quarren scattered to get out of the way. A large number of unprepared clones were blasted to death instantly. Kit whirled around when he spotted them and grimaced at the sight of the Mantas. He had had experience with these before and knew they could be very dangerous. His men could get decimated unless he and the other Jedi acted quickly.

Suddenly, his senses pricked at him, telling him to look over towards the city. Kit grudgingly took his eyes off the approaching Mantas for a moment and did just that. His spirits lifted when he saw a bunch of other beings swimming towards them. Not Quarren this time, but Gungans.

"Commander Monnk!" Kit shouted through the water, towards the clone some distance away. Normally, the clone wouldn't hear him, but since sound travels better in water, he did and he looked down. "A Gungan escort has arrived. I want you to go with them, and get all our men and the Tamers into the city. Get the children out of harm's way! They are our top priority. We Jedi will handle this!"

"Copy that!" Monnk nodded. "Alright lads. Move out, on the double!"

"You heard him," said one of the clones guarding the Tamers. "Come on, you two. Stick close to us."

Henry and Suzie took one last glance behind them as they followed the Gungans towards the city. They watched as Anakin and Ahsoka dispatched the last of the Quarren that were not swimming for their lives, and then all four Jedi used the Force to surge down towards the Mantas.

Kit dodged around the heavy lasers that the manta droids were sending their way, using his skills with the currents once more the evade the fire. Powering down the centre of the throng, Kit brought his blade to bear as he swept right over the first, slicing it from nose to tail as he did so. As it fell into two halves behind him, Kit deftly blocked the firepower of two more and with a terrific surge of water, caused them both to slam into each other and spark into lifelessness. The Nautolan swerved around the fire of another and was about to return the favour when he saw Aayla beat him to it, landing on the droid and stabbing it right between the photoreceptors. He turned somewhere else and saw Ahsoka do something similar, only from below. He smirked and washed himself up to avoid some more shots and sever the wedge-like head from another droid.

But it was Anakin that really made the difference this time around. An idea had formed inside Anakin's mind – something he really enjoyed doing when it came to fighting very large droids. He liked to turn them on one another. With this in mind, the human had used the Force to let him dive at speed beneath the Mantas and come up from behind. He grabbed onto the backmost Manta droid and gripped its head, just behind the laser cannons.

If he had been able to talk, he would have cried, "EAT LASER!" as he used the water currents to angle the droid. The continuous stream of lasers the Manta droid was emitting was redirected. Instead of being fired at Kit, Aayla and Ahsoka, the lasers began to slam into the other Mantas from behind, taking them out one by one. And there were only about twenty Mantas in the first place.

After taking out about seven between them – the other three Jedi simply decided to defend and watch in admiration, as Anakin skilfully steered his droid, blasting away all the others and taking out the remaining twelve droids by himself. He seemed to grin around his breather and winked at the others, before flipping off his own droid and slicing it in half with his blade, giving him a grand total of thirteen Manta Droids to his credit.

Kit chuckled. "It seems the rumours are true, Anakin," he said. "You really do have a way with machines."

_If only he could do things like that in space_, thought Ahsoka. _Then he wouldn't crash nearly as much._

* * *

I hope you all liked that. I'd probably comment more, but I'm about to nod off at any moment. Goodnight.

* * *

Next time...

While the Digimon continue their all-out brawl against Parallelmon, the Jedi, Henry and Suzie enter Otah Gunga. There, they learn who is in charge of the Separatists and say hello to the goofiest person ever to be accepted into the Galactic Senate – Jar Jar Binks.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 87 : Two Kinds of Chaos**


	87. Two Kinds of Chaos

Hello everybody. Not much to say at this point, since I actually managed to churn out a chapter in time with no setbacks. My new schedule plan seemed to work with this new chapter and I intend to stick to it, so you should probably be expecting a chapter roughly every four days, unless I say otherwise at the end of the chapter.

Let's keep going with this story.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 87:- Two Kinds of Chaos**

* * *

Henry's mind was temporarily distracted from imagining what was going on to the Jedi behind him as they fought against the Manta Droid subfighters as he got closer and closer to the city of Otah Gunga. As he saw the flickering lights and the spacious hallways beyond the huge, bubble-like domes of the city, he was suddenly reminded of just how cold he felt. His thoughts had been preoccupied in the heat of the battle, but now the chilly water, particularly at a depth like this, was starting to get to him.

Henry examined not only the city as he got closer to the nearest bubble, but he also had a good look at the five beings that were guiding him, Suzie and the clone SCUBA troopers towards it. He had never actually seen a real Gungan before – the only one who really left his home world was Jar Jar Binks himself and since he was a member of the Senate, Henry had never been that close to him. The thought of this reminded him that he was about to get close to someone who he was supposed to be a secret from. The thought didn't exactly please him.

Anyway, the Gungans were all tall and gangly looking creatures – all their body parts seemed to be longer than they should be, as well as thinner. Their arms, their legs, their torsos, their faces and, most significantly, their long flapping ears all made them look like creatures that were ill-equipped for doing... well, pretty much anything. Despite this, they cut through the water with extreme ease, indicating they were experts at being in the water – which you probably had to be if you lived in it. Their long ears revealed what they were intended for – they were wide and flat as well as long and were being used as extra limbs for swimming, rather like paddles on oars. And perhaps their thinness was to make them more streamlined whilst swimming. It certainly seemed to work.

The first Gungan, who had a dark purple colouration along the back of his head, ears, and arms and who also had six fleshy tendrils, like short barbells on a catfish, hanging from his upper lip like some weird fleshy moustache and carried a electropole, turned back towards them and indicated for them to keep going, directly towards the bubble-like room in front of them. Henry frowned in confusion – he couldn't see a door anywhere.

But that didn't appear to put off the clones or the other four Gungans, who swam forwards towards the wall. Bemused, Henry and Suzie swam after them and both were surprised when the leading Gungan reached the wall and then simply slipped straight through it as if it wasn't there and stepped onto the floor of the bubble. Henry's eyebrows went up and he realised his earlier hypothesis had indeed been right. The domes were special force-fields that kept water from getting in, but allowed life forms to pass in and out whenever they wanted. A bizarre thought occurred to him – did the fish ever accidentally swim through the forcefield? Was falling fish a problem? Or was it somehow designed to keep the fish out too?

He shrugged and swam on as the clones in front of him and the other Gungans passed through the barrier as well. Henry paused momentarily in front of the bubble wall, and his sister overtook him, sliding through the forcefield and stepping into the city. She turned back to look at him expectantly and Henry shrugged and followed. He was surprised, but happy, to find out that he and all his clothes were instantly dried the moment he stepped out of the water, and he was warmed up almost instantly.

He sighed with relief and pulled out his breather, working his jaw slightly to get the muscles in proper order – they had been stuck in the same place to clamp down on the breather for the better part of half an hour. Suzie followed his example and stretched, rubbing her arms slightly. "That was really scary," she said, shuddering as some of the things she had seen, some of which a ten year old should not be subjected to, flashed through her mind. "But at least we're okay."

Henry nodded. "Let's hope the Jedi make it out of that mess in one piece too."

"They will," Suzie said, with confidence. "Did you see Kit out there? He was really, really awesome."

"Well, he is an amphibious creature," said Henry, chuckling. "Water is his element."

"Yeah, but I wish I could do that," Suzie said.

Henry nodded. He glanced around at the clones and saw them removing their helmets and fins now that they were no longer in the water, which would allow them to walk properly. His mind strayed back to the unknown fate of his partner and girlfriend, but they were both out of range of their mental link, so he had no idea what had happened to them.

Aayla, on the other hand, was much closer, and Henry was pleased to note that the Manta Droids had already been dealt with and the Jedi were heading their way, still very much alive. Smiling in relief, Henry turned to look at Commander Monnk, and saw that he was in the middle of a conversation with the purple-skinned Gungan. Obviously this particular Gungan was of a high rank, because the other Gungans were standing behind him obediently.

* * *

It didn't take long for the Jedi to arrive. All of them slipped through the barrier almost simultaneously and strode over towards the others as if they had not just been in the water at all, removing their breathers if they had them and stowing them on their belts – who knew when they were going to need them again?

"Greetings," Kit said to the leader of the five Gungans. "I hope you don't mind the little squabble we picked with your new neighbours. They started it, I'm afraid."

The purple Gungan shook his head. "Theresa be no needing to worry. No harm is being done to the Gungans, and wesa no likey them anyway. Daysa been attacking us for lotsa hours now. Wesa is glad to be seeing yousa Jedi. Wesa could be using your help."

"Then it is a good thing we've come to offer it," said Kit. "I am Master Fisto of the Jedi Council."

"Mesa General Roos Tarpals," said the Gungan, shaking Kit's hand with his own longer one.

"Tarpals?" asked Anakin, and then he chuckled. "I thought you looked familiar. Looks like you got yourself promoted since the last time I saw you. You were just a captain then."

Tarpals' stalk-eyes blinked and he stared at Anakin. "And whosa yousa be?" he asked.

"Don't recognise me?" Anakin asked. "It's me, Anakin Skywalker. The little kid who helped you guys out when the Trade Federation invaded your homeworld."

Tarpals brightened. "Ah yes. Mesa bees remembering yousa now. Yousa was so small back then. Yousa be welcome here in Otah Gunga."

"Glad to hear it," said Anakin. "This is my Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, and my best friend and fellow team-member, Aayla Secura."

"Hello," both the girls said at the same time.

"Always nice to meet an old friend of my Master's," said Ahsoka, cheerfully. "Do you have an embarrassing stories of him when he was a kid."

"Ahsoka!" Anakin said, glaring at her sharply.

Tarpals chuckled and said, "Mesa no bees remembering much of Skywalker because wesa was readying for big bombad battle."

"Yes, and it's unfortunate that another, similar scenario brought about the reunion," said Aayla. "We'll do all we can to help. How many casualties have there been so far and what damage have those Quarren done."

"Wesa gotten mucha, mucha stronger since last time," said Tarpals. "Gungan Grand Army is bigger and better than ever. Wesa repel enemy three times so far and no losen many Gungans. But wesa no be knowing how long it stay that way. But, wesa okeeday now."

"Well, the first thing we need to know is, who the heck are these guys?" said Ahsoka. "Then we can find out how to counter them. We did do a lot of damage in that previous battle but something tells me that won't be enough."

"I believe I can answer that first question, Ahsoka," said Kit. "But we should probably be taking this up in conference with the chieftain of this place."

"Mesa can be taking you to the Boss-man," said Tarpals. "Heesa be berry smilin to see yousa Jedi. Yousa follow me."

Tarpals clambered aboard a large kaadu that had been standing nearby, waiting patiently for a rider. Hefting his electropole, Tarpals lead the way into the city. Henry and Suzie were hanging back with the clones. So far, Tarpals had not brought up the question as to why there were two kids with the Republic strike force and while they both knew the question would be asked eventually, both we keen to put that moment off for as long as possible.

From the front, Anakin said, "By the way, General Tarpals, I have a favour to ask. Back on Coruscant, Senator Amidala asked me to find out whether Representative Binks is okay."

At those words, Tarpals winced slightly and hesitated a moment before replying. "Jar Jar is being... eeeehhh... berry, berry lively. But hesa okay. Mesa no knowing where hesa is right now..."

"ANI!" a rather high-pitched and excited voice cried from up ahead.

"Well, that answers that question," said Ahsoka, as they saw another Gungan running eagerly towards them – this one a reddish colour instead of purple.

Henry and Suzie stared at the approaching Gungan. He didn't look particularly different or out of the ordinary, except for the fact he had a long purple tie on for some reason, which was flapping behind him as he surged towards them. However, both of them were wondering why, now that they could see him approaching, they felt a certain sense of impending disaster.

"Mesa so smilin to be seeing yous...OOP!" Jar Jar shouted across to them, right before he tripped over the end of a electropole that one of the guards was holding, and the guard hadn't even extended it to trip him. While this act of clumsiness my seem perfectly ordinary, what happened next was most decidedly not. Jar Jar, in a wild attempt to keep on his feet, ended up careening off to the side with his arms flailing wildly and crashing right into the flank of an innocent kaadu. The kaadu, who had a rider, panicked and bolted and in some unfathomable way, Jar Jar's hand had been caught in the strap of the saddle and he was jerked off his feet and dragged along behind the kaadu.

The terrified rider dropped his electropole and hurriedly attempted to calm his mount, and, after a couple of seconds, managed to soothe the kaadu enough to bring it to a standstill. Jar Jar, looking none the worse for wear, got to his feet and tugged his hand out from the strap. Except he did it a little too hard and suddenly stumbled backwards, crashing into the back of another Gungan, who was laden with crockery, which promptly went flying all over the place to shatter, except for one, miraculously whole plate that rolled away down the corridor and then came to rest, where another Gungan immediately slipped on it and went crashing to the floor, his electropole going flying into the air to bonk another Gungan over the head.

Jar Jar hurriedly scrambled to his feet and brushed himself off, grinning sheepishly. He began to move towards the staring group again, at a more sedate pace... and slipped on the electropole the kaadu rider had dropped and went crashing to the floor again. In another wild attempt to stop from falling, he grabbed the nearest thing, which turned out to be the poor crockery-bearing Gungan who was getting to his feet and both went down once again. Jar Jar hurriedly disentangled himself, treading on his fellow Gungan's ear in the process. But in his haste to stand up, he knocked over one of the large bioluminescent lamps and was almost squashed as it fell towards him. In the process, he fell over again.

Henry and Suzie, as well as all the clones and three of the Jedi, who didn't know Jar Jar as well as Anakin, stared in disbelief. They had all heard that Representative Binks was accident-prone, but what they had just witnessed was like something out of the cartoons that Suzie liked to watch, like Tom and Jerry. It was unreal.

Henry was wondering how someone like this got to be elected as Representative of the Gungans in the Galactic Senate. Either Jar Jar did much better in the field of politics than he did in the field of walking around, or the other Gungans just wanted to get him out of the way.

Anakin chuckled, shaking his head as he stepped over to Jar Jar and hauled him to his feet. "You haven't changed a bit, Jar Jar," he said. "How've you been?"

Jar Jar grabbed Anakin's hand in both of his own and pumped it up and down in the most furious handshake Anakin had ever received. Jar Jar was almost bouncing on his toes. "Heyo dalee, Ani! Mesa so happy yousa besa here. Daysa bees having no chancen now. And mesa has moole palos again. Disa happy day."

"Glad to see you too, Jar Jar," said Anakin. "Padmé was worried about you when she heard that the Gungans were under attack. She'll be relieved to know that you're okay."

"I'd be worried about him all the time," Ahsoka remarked to Aayla. Aayla frowned at her, nudging her to remind her of her manners.

Jar Jar's attention turned to the others. His face brightened up again when he saw Ahsoka and he cried, "Little Snipsy!" before leaping over and glomping the surprised Ahsoka. He was much taller than she was so he had to bend down to do it properly. Over his shoulder, Ahsoka mouthed, 'Little Snipsy?' at the others, and scowled when she saw that both Anakin and Aayla were struggling to contain their laughter.

Hesitantly she returned the glomp and said, "How's it going Jar Jar?"

Jar Jar released Ahsoka and grinned lopsidedly at her.

"Mesa been mui, mui gooden since wesa besa stopping da Sickmaker," said Jar Jar, referring to the time that he and Ahsoka had both helped out in putting a stop to the scheme of Nuvo Vindi and the original Blue Shadow Virus several months before. "Except for da nutsen Quarren attackers. Deysa all big meanies."

"Yeah, I could see that," said Ahsoka. "Did you ever get that that training with a blaster that Obi-Wan promised you?"

Jar Jar rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Deysa besa spaking dat mesa make big mess when mesa try."

"Ah, I see," said Ahsoka. "Well, er, keep at it. You'll get there eventually."

"Mesa besa hopin' so," said Jar Jar, then he turned to the other two Jedi. "Oh, yousa is being Aayla Secura, yesa? Mesa been hearing all about yous success in war. Wesa saved for sure with all dee of de A-Team here."

"I am glad to see you have such faith in our abilities," said Aayla. "We'll certainly do everything we can to help."

"Mesa hope so," Jar Jar nodded enthusiastically. "And yousa besa a member of de Jedi Council," he said to Kit. "Mesa recognise yous face, but mesa bees forgettin' yous name."

"Kit Fisto of the Galactic Republic," said Kit, extending his hand to allow Jar Jar to shake it and instantly getting the same pumping up and down handshake treatment that Anakin had received. "And this is my battalion of SCUBA troopers – all ready to help the Gungan Army to defeat these invaders of yours."

"Hidoe boyos," Jar Jar waved at the clones, grinning almost insanely. The clones, who were all unsure of what to make of this apparently very friendly and also overenthusiastic Gungan, waved back uncertainly. Jar Jar didn't appear to notice, possibly because his attention had been drawn to one side. He had just noticed Henry and Suzie and was staring at them with slight confusion.

"Hmm," he tapped his bottom jaw thoughtfully as he stared at them. "Republic troopers besa getting mui, mui younger," he said. "Disa one looks like she besa ate-a years old."

"I'm ten, actually," said Suzie, pouting a little. She really didn't like it when people thought she was younger than she was, and yet somehow it happened all the time.

"Dat still bees purty youngen," said Jar Jar. "Why isa you duey here? Is yousa being part of de army?"

Jar Jar failed to take in the glances that the four Jedi were sending at each other from behind. They had all known this moment would eventually come but now that it had none of them were sure what to do.

_Uh, a little help would be really nice,_ Aayla heard Henry say in her mind. Both the Tamers were fidgeting slightly under Jar Jar's gaze. Jar Jar was the first member of the Republic Senate to set eyes on the Tamers, and they were more than a little nervous.

Deciding to act before Jar Jar's probably hyperactive imagination could take hold, Aayla stepped forward and addressed the Gungan. "Uh, they are a couple of children that we found in the woods after we crash-landed in there. They both claim they're from Theed, but they'd gotten hopelessly lost in the swamp somehow. We couldn't leave them there, but we also couldn't send someone to take them back home – the Gungan's situation is more important. So we brought them here with us, where they would be safe while we sorted out this whole debacle."

It sounded like a decent enough lie, and a plausible one as well. It could be very easy to get lost up top if you weren't careful.

"Okeeday," said Jar Jar brightly. "Yousa no needin' to worry, kiddies. Yousa in good hands now and yousa safe here. Gungans no letting kiddies from de Naboo getting cwunched by Separatist dummies."

"Uh, thanks," said Henry. "We're grateful for everyone's help. But we'll be glad to get home all the same."

"Nice save, Aayla," Anakin muttered to the Twi'lek. "Good cover-up."

"It was the first thing that came to mind," Aayla shrugged. "But it seems to have done the job. That doesn't mean I like lying though."

"Jar Jar," General Tarpals said from on top his kaadu. "Wesa should besa takin' dem to the de Boss-man. Hesa will besa wantin' to be spaking with dem. Wesa be in big doo-doo if wesa no besa taking them right now."

"Oh no!" Jar Jar cried, probably quite a bit louder than was necessary. "Wesa should no be keepin' Boss-man waitin'. Letsa hurry now."

Tarpals nodded and said, "Yousa follow usen," and turned and begin to lead the way once more. The brief but quite entertaining interlude was no over and Jar Jar walked alongside them as they made their way further into the city. His gait was rather stick-like and he seemed to bounce up and down as he moved, his arms swinging like pendulums the whole time. But at least he didn't have any other slip-ups... except one, where he somehow managed to trip on a coil of rope. Fortunately for him, Kit was able to catch him with the Force before he could smash painfully into the floor and/or cause any more chaos.

Things might be entertaining with Jar Jar around. But he was a likeable character, and seemed eternally happy, chatting away with the A-Team members in his strange method of speaking. Occasionally, Jar Jar would throw in a couple of words that Henry didn't understand at all – an example being when he said:- "Dosa Quarren besa makin' boopjak by comin' here. When yousa through with dem, deysa being lopity-pie."

To which Aayla replied, "Yes, they certainly will."

Henry would later come to learn that "boopjak" meant "big mistake," and that "lopity-pie" meant "kaadu-fodder."

Eventually they came to a large, open space – in what was probably the very middle of the entire complex. The enormous hydrostatic bubble created a room the size of a large theatre. A big, semi-circular table was placed at the opposite end and there were numerous seats across it, each filled with a Gungan. But at the head of the table, in the largest and most decorative chair of the lot, sat a Gungan that looked almost like a clone of Jar Jar, except that he seemed to be carrying himself with much better grace than Jar Jar ever could and was wearing a large, ceremonial hat and robes.

"Is that guy Jar Jar's twin?" Suzie asked quietly, staring blankly at the lead Gungan. "And why do they all look like newts?" Henry snorted. It was an accurate analogy. Henry wouldn't be surprised if he had a long tongue stowed in his mouth (and he did – all Gungans had long tongues).

General Tarpals rode forward and bowed. The kaadu he was riding on also bowed, though how it knew to do so was a mystery. "Boss Lyonie, your honour," said Tarpals. "May I be presentin', Master Kit Fisto and de A-Team, here to be helpin' usens with our problems."

Boss Lyonie looked imperiously over the group and a large grin that spread across most of his face appeared. In a deeper voice than the other Gungans, Boss Lyonie announced. "Yousa besa arrivin' just in time. Wesa havin' lots to discuss."

* * *

Sakuyamon fell through the air, screaming in pain and clutching her stomach, which was now sporting huge gashes in her chest armour from Parallelmon's enormous claws, as she tumbled towards the ground. Parallelmon had practically gone berserk and was now pulling out all the stops in the battle raging through the forest. Sakuyamon crashed into the ground hard enough to cause a crater. Being a Mega, the impact didn't do nearly as much damage as it would to a regular humanoid, but it was still extremely painful. Grunting, she levered herself back onto her feet with her staff, leaning on it for support.

And then Parallelmon fell towards her swinging his claws hard enough to skewer her if he landed a hit. Sakuyamon leapt aside as Parallelmon crashed into the ground, and followed with a spring upwards and another downward slash. Sakuyamon blocked with her staff, but the impact pushed her backwards and threw her off her feet once more. Parallelmon lunged for her, but she leapt aside once more and got to her feet, only to be met by a flurry of slashes from Parallelmon's legs and arms. She blocked and dodged hurriedly, but she was being driven back all the same, and Parallelmon just wasn't letting up. She hurriedly stepped back and unleashed the fox spirits to claw and bite him, but, to his credit, Parallelmon only grunted in pain and kept attacking Sakuyamon. She was shocked when he grabbed her staff and pulled it, and her with it, into the air and flung her into a tree.

Fortunately for her, as Parallelmon leapt towards her to carry out the final, crippling blow, a previously incapacitated Rapidmon arrived to help, delivering a full-powered kick to the side of Parallelmon's head and knocking him away.

"Are you okay, Sakuyamon?" he asked, landing before the biomerged Mega and helping her back up.

"Yes," nodded Sakuyamon, wincing in pain from her battered torso and aching arms. "Ugh, if only I had access to my move cards!"

Rapidmon turned around and focused on Parallelmon, who was scrambling to his feet too. "We'll worry about that later," he said. "Right now we've got bigger problems. We can't let up for on second."

"I know," said Sakuyamon.

"We need to keep the pressure up," agreed Antylamon as she stepped up behind them. "He's tiring as well. We may be weakening, but it's not all one-sided."

"That may be the case," Parallelmon growled as he brandished his claws, "but this battle will end soon, with my victory."

"Dream on, Trapezium," Rapidmon crowed. "Let's teach this guy who he's dealing with," he added and he leapt into the air and launched himself in Parallelmon's direction with a cry of "RAAAAAAAGGGHHH!" Parallelmon smirked and stepped aside as Rapidmon whooshed past him harmlessly.

"Pathetic," he said. "Utterly pathetAARGH!"

What Parallelmon hadn't noticed was that Rapidmon had released a Miracle Missile in mid-charge and the little missiles had been streaking along behind their launcher and while Rapidmon had missed the target, they did not. They slammed into his face and neck, giving his eye another dose of blistering pain that sent the mutant Digimon reeling in shock, clutching his face…

And it was at that point that Rapidmon doubled back on himself. First he launched a Tri Beam at Parallelmon's back, sending him staggering forward and falling to his knees. Then the cyborg warrior whooshed over to his fallen enemy and, clutched between his cannons, was a long, thick vine. Rapidmon circled Parallelmon, wrapping the vine around the startled Mega's neck and cutting off his air. Parallelmon choked and retched, bringing his claws up to try and cut the vine, but they were too big and unwieldy for reaching under his neck. Rapidmon tossed the end of the vine to Antylamon. His sister grabbed it in one huge hand and yanked hard, dragging Parallelmon into the air by his neck and throwing him some distance before he crashed into another tree, sliding to the floor in a choking heap.

"Quite a nice move," Antylamon said and pulled on the rope again. Parallelmon screeched as he was yanked forward, but this time he managed to slice through the vine with a swing of his foot claws, sending the two halves to the floor.

"That was a cheap trick!" he cried, his voice more rasping and choked than ever. "I've decided I'd rather kill you slowly for that one! You are nothing compared to me! Nothing! I am going to absorb your data right here today, and then I shall find those two kids and devour them to gain strength, and then all your friends back home will get the same treatment. I will be able to take on the Sovereigns themselves! I'll be a god!"

"Technically, the Sovereigns aren't gods," said Antylamon. "They are immortal guardians that are almost Gods, yes, but they aren't actually gods. The only Digimon gods are Fanglongmon and Anubimon."

"And we've met both," added Rapidmon, "and pretty soon, you'll be on your way to meet one of them, but you won't like the reception very much. I hear Anubimon can be pretty nasty to bad guys."

"And you definitely fit in that category," added Sakuyamon.

"Remind me why we're discussing this again," said Rapidmon.

"Search me," Antylamon shrugged.

Parallelmon laughed. "You can chatter on for as long as you like. It makes no difference to me, and it will make no difference to your inevitable outcome. Now, if we are done with the niceties, let's get back to the battle!" He roared as he leapt into the air once more, before disappearing with another BACKEW! He reappeared a moment later, directly behind everybody and clapped his hands, summoning another swirling portal in the air, this one above him. Antylamon braced herself, expecting another torrent of fire, but she, and the others, were rather shocked when a sudden wind picked up instead. Only it wasn't wind – it was suction. The giant, purple vortex was drawing them towards it and who knew what lay on the other side – it could be hell itself! Hurriedly they widened they stances, but they were slowly, and inexorably being drawn towards the portal.

Sakuyamon dug her staff into the ground, while Antylamon did the same with one axe, using the other hand to grab the lightweight Rapidmon before he could be whisked away. "This is not good!" she cried. "Any suggestion would be good right about now!"

"I got nothing," Rapidmon said. He fired a missile from one cannon at the portal, but it just disappeared through it. "Yeah, I thought that would happen. And now I could have blown up somebody of the other side. Damn it!"

"Antylamon!" shouted Sakuyamon. "I have an idea! But I need both my hands!"

"Okay, hold on!" Antylamon cried over the noise of the portal. Pulling against the suction, she moved Rapidmon down to the floor level and placed him on the ground, behind one of her legs. Rapidmom pressed his back to the back of her leg to keep from being blown away and Antylamon bent down and plucked Sakuyamon from the ground.

Parallelmon seemed oblivious to all of this. He was cackling madly and crying "GAHAHA! Yes! Die! All of you are doomed to destruction! GAHAHAHA!"

"He's finally cracked," observed Antylamon.

"He was already cracked," Rapidmon shouted.

"Let's crack him up even more then," Sakuyamon said, raising her staff in both hands from Antylamon's clenched fist. **"AMETHYST MANDALA!"** she shouted at the top of her lungs.

Parallelmon yelped in disbelief as he was suddenly surrounded by a large sphere, blazing with golden light that forced him to shut his eye in an attempt to protect it, which didn't help much since the light was so intense. To his horror, the sphere began to shrink, the intense light burning at his skin as he condensed his body into a ball. The sphere continued to shrink, pressing into his sides and beginning to crush him into himself. Slowly.

Roaring in pain, Parallelmon went for the only option left open to him. He dimension-jumped with another loud BACKEW noise, which was mingled with a slightly quieter whooshing noise as the portal he had opened snapped shut, unable to continue without the control of its creator. Antylamon almost fell over backwards at the sudden release of pressure.

"Hey, careful!" Rapidmon shouted as he dodged to the side to avoid being crushed by his bigger sister.

"Sorry," Antylamon replied. "Great work, Sakuyamon. You saved our lives there."

Sakuyamon nodded. "It's just a shame that that attack can't stop Parallelmon from escaping, or this battle would have been over long ago."

"It damn well should have been!" Parallelmon roared as he leapt into existence nearby, his skin singed and his armour severely blackened from the intensity of Sakuyamon's attack... and he was carrying with him a huge array of viciously jagged shards of ice. "Why will you never die?" he shrieked, hurling his burden at the three defenders, creating a sheet of extremely deadly hail that was just as dangerous as Sakuyamon's Amethyst Wind. Or, it would have been, if Sakuyamon had not generated a Talisman Sphere shield that took the attack with ease and causing the huge shards to shatter into thousands of useless pieces.

"Why won't we die?" Antylamon glowered at their irritatingly difficult to kill attacker. "What kind of question is that?"

"Because we're just too damn awesome to die," Rapidmon laughed.

"I was going to say because the Force is with us today, but that too," said Antylamon.

"Did this Force prepare you for this?" Parallelmon screeched. He dimension-jumped and appeared inside the Talisman Sphere, striking at Sakuyamon's unprotected back... only to be smashed to one side by Antylamon's axes and crashing into the side of the barrier, causing it to shatter. As he tumbled to the ground, he was sent flying again as Rapidmon blasted the ground directly where he was about to land with a Rapid Fire and the blast caught him in the back.

"Yes, actually. It did," said the former Deva.

Parallelmon flipped upright once more and roared angrily, rushing forward in a zigzag motion in an attempt to throw off his victims. He changed position suddenly, darting towards Antylamon's head instead of Rapidmon, only to find Rapidmon in front of him again and blocking his claw strike with both cannons in an X-shape. Rapidmon's eyes were smirking and Parallelmon scowled. How dare he smirk in the middle of his attack. He pressed forwards, trying to push Rapidmon back and preparing to lunge up with his spiked knee like in their previous bout. But, once again, he had forgotten about Rapidmon's back launcher. Rapidmon unleashed a Miracle Missile that blasted him in the head _again_, and at the same time a Spirit Strike and an Arm Bomber both struck him from behind. Parallelmon wailed in agony as his grip slackened, allowing Rapidmon to shove his claws aside and shoot a Rapid Fire at point blank range into his face.

Parallelmon, blistered and damaged, his face-mask only just holding together, was sent spinning backwards, flying uncontrollably between Antylamon and Sakuyamon, who both moved aside to let him smack, face-first, into another tree.

"You really do like trees, don't you?" Rapidmon chuckled. "You've become a treehugger."

Parallelmon whirled about, still as livid as ever and glared at Rapidmon. "I'm going to rip out your tongue before I'm through with you! Let's see you make snarky comments then."

"Momentai," Rapidmon said. This seemed to only infuriate Parallelmon even more. He sprang towards Rapidmon determined to make him pay for his insults, but he ended up flying directly into Antylamon's swinging axe, since he'd forgotten to pay attention to everyone else. He shook his head, dazedly. He was allowing his anger to get the better of him and it was costing him greatly. He growled and got to his feet and saw Antylamon diving towards him with a new attack ready. He hurriedly leapt out of existence and reappeared right behind her, slamming all his weight into the small of her back. Antylamon grunted at the unexpected blow and went flying. It became her turn to slam into a tree face first. She reeled back, clutching her face. Parallelmon kept after her, poised to claw the back of her head.

At the last second, he leapt aside as Sakuyamon's fox spirits swept towards him. Parallelmon scowled and fled, dodging in a wild flurry as the spirits relentlessly pursued him around the trees. Parallelmon growled and opened a portal, vanishing inside it. The fox spirits followed him through, and the portal shut. A moment later, another portal opened right next to Rapidmon and the fox spirits soared out and struck the bunny cyborg.

"GAAAAAAHHH!" Rapidmon cried as the elemental power coursed through him.

"RAPIDMON! NO!" Sakuyamon cried, horrified at what had just happened. Fortunately, the fox spirits seemed to realise what they had just done and withdrew quickly before they could cause any serious damage. They hovered beside Rapidmon, somehow managing to look apologetic, despite the fact that their faces couldn't change expression. Sakuyamon hurried over to him and said, "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," winced Rapidmon. "A little frazzled but nothing too serious."

"Now that was fun," Parallelmon leered as he blipped back into existence nearby. Which turned out to be a very bad idea, because the spirits immediately lunged at him, determined to seek retribution for Parallelmon's trick in forcing them to attack their master's mate/friend. Parallelmon howled as the full course of power surged through his very being. The spirits lacerated his body and forced him towards the ground... where a sofa landed on him.

Rapidmon and Sakuyamon blinked. "Where the hell did that come from?" asked Rapidmon.

"From the house he threw at us earlier," said Antylamon, stepping over with a smirk on her face and a fridge in one hand. "It was one of the biggest things that was still intact."

Parallelmon burst out from under the sofa and roared. "Will you stop throwing my own weapons at me!"

"No," said Antylamon and threw the fridge at him.

* * *

Meanwhile, back in Otah Gunga, Boss Lyonie the Gungan was in the middle of speaking with the Jedi, describing what had been happening over the last few hours in the odd, Gungan dialect. "Deysa came outta nowheres, tresspassin' in our waters wid deir beeg mackeneeks and weapons. Deysa try to get in troo de beeg bubas, but wesa gotten Grand Army to fight back. Wesa no fraidee frogs. Wesa been drivin' dem back outside, but deysa berry stubborn and come back, shootin' at usens wid deir wangzappers. Dis be a mui boopjak and wesa send dem packin' again and again, but deysa always comin' back. Wesa cannot besa goin' outside, or deysa bees attackin' straight away. Did bees goin' on for longo time, maybe foosa hours."

"Wesa in one big mess," said Jar Jar. "Deysa gotten mui big mackeneeks dat bees blastin' us alla time. Mesa nearly gettin' hit lots."

"Well, their big droids have been dealt with," said Kit. "We managed to take them out when we swam down here to help. And a large portion of their forces were destroyed by our combined efforts. But somehow, I get the feeling that this is far from over."

"Same here," said Anakin. "I've got a really, really bad feeling."

"Me too," nodded Aayla.

"Feeling's mutual," Ahsoka pipe up for good measure.

"There was something a little odd about their last attack," said Kit. "You see, Great Boss Lyonie, I have faced off against these Quarren invaders before, on a different world. The group refers to themselves as the Quarren Isolation League. You see, while Quarrens as a species are loyal to the Republic, but their former Senator – a man named Tikkes – betrayed us and joined the Separatists, triggering a civil war on their planet. Tikkes was forced to flee and was replaced as Senator, but he still had a lot of followers with him. The Quarren Isolation League is all Tikkes really commands now, but he is still a high-ranking member of the Separatists."

Boss Lyonie frowned. "Mesa bees tinkin' dat dis Tikkes guys is needin' to be taught bombad lesson."

"Indeed," the Nautolan nodded. "But that is what is strange about the last assault."

"Huh?" asked Anakin. "I don't get it."

"Let me put it like this," said Kit. "When I last fought the Quarren Isolation League, they were attacking the world of Mon Calamari, trying to take it for themselves because they were angry at their neighbours. All political stuff of course, and that's not really important. What is important is that with main attack forces there was always a commanding general that would direct the battle to ensure victory, and yet I saw no sign of one in that last fight."

"Actually, that's true," nodded Ahsoka. "All those Quarren were really doing was just attacking us blindly. There wasn't much strategy involved, and I didn't see or sense anyone commanding the troops either."

"Why do you think they don't have a General this time?" asked Aayla. "This lake is large, but it's still just one lake with one target, so it's unlikely that their leader is off pursuing another target. What could they be up to?"

"I'm not sure," Kit shook his head. "But I intend to find out. Tell me, your honour, during all these raids on your city, have you noticed any... strange behaviour... anything that you might regard as out of the ordinary that might give us a hint as to what they are up to."

Boss Lyonie leaned back in his chair thoughtfully, tapping his chin with one finger. "Mesa can no be tinkin' of anything. General Tarpals, what does yousa be havin' to spake?"

General Tarpals bowed low to Boss Lyonie and said, "Deresa bees only una ting dat mesa can tink off, yous Honour. Whenever deysa bees attackin' dey always bess comin' from below and around de bottom of de lake. And some of moole men bees reportin' strange sounden sometimes, like loud whirrin' noise."

"Whirring noise?" asked Anakin. "That doesn't sound good. But what does it mean?"

"Hmm," Kit said, thoughtfully folding his arms and biting his lip. "Whirring noise and always coming from below. That doesn't really mean all that much on its own – it could be any number of things but... hmm... let me think, let me think."

"Isa dere bees any problem?" asked Boss Lyonie. "Wesa bein' berry strong. Wesa can bees takin' anyting dey bees t'rowin' at usens," he declared proudly, puffing out his already over-inflated chest and pounding on it regally. The other Gungans at the table cheered.

Kit was still mumbling to himself. "Whirring noise. Always coming from below. No General. No sign of Tikkes himself. No-one above the lake. There has got to be a connection somewhere."

Anakin frowned. "Hold on a moment," he said. "If I remember right... there might be an explanation to this."

"Well, I'd love to hear one," said Kit. "Because I have got nothing."

"Jar Jar," Anakin turned to his old friend, who looked down at him with a serious expression – yes, he was a goofball but he knew when he needed to be serious. "During the last attack on this city twelve years ago, you said that the Gungans that survived the initial attack on the city managed to escape through a series of tunnels that ran beneath the city."

Jar Jar nodded. "Yesa," he replied. "Wesa bees makin' tunnels when wesa bees buildin' city. De bombad clankens no knowin' about dem and deysa manage to escape, easy-peasy."

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "The droids may not have known about the tunnels. But the Quarren might. Here's my theory. They always attack from the bottom because they are guarding something down there when they are not attacking, and they keep launching these attacks to draw the Gungan's attention away from other things. They also attack the Gungans whenever they leave to keep them in the city and make sure they don't discover anything. And... I think the whirring noise might have been some kind of drill. They've been tunnelling through the bottom of the lake and into the tunnels down there. I think they're planning to attack from below and get directly into the city through them."

There was a hushed silence as the Gungans digested this news. Then, Boss Lyonie surged to his feet. "WHAT!" he shouted angrily. "Deysa besa destroyin' our home tunnels? Deysa bein' sneaky and tryin' to cut off our escapin'? Disa mui bombad"

"That makes a lot of sense actually," said Aayla. "It would catch you unawares. And it would explain the absence of the General, because the only objective is to attack. The General, possibly Tikkes himself, may be overseeing the digging into the tunnels."

"Deysa can come up within de city walls!" Boss Lyonie cried. "Tarpals, mesa command you to besa blockin' up de tunnel entrances. Deysa cannot get in den."

"Yesa, yous Honour," Tarpals saluted with his electropole.

"Uh, forgive me, your Honour," said Aayla. "But that would only mildly inconvenience the Separatists. They could get by any barricade by blowing through it with relative ease. We may need to come up with an alternative solution."

Boss Lyonie frowned, and made an odd gurgling noise in the back of his throat. "Den what isa you besa suggesting?"

"Since they can get through the tunnels even if you block them up," said Aayla. "I would suggest we take that fight to them and enter the tunnels ourselves. We have had... certain experience with fighting underground before," she added. This sentence caused Suzie to shudder and hug herself fearfully, clearly remembering the terrifying, haunting cries of undead Geonosians. "If they enter the city then we may have a full scale battle raging in the city and, while we will do all we can to help you defeat them, we cannot guarantee anything. There will be casualties, innocent Gungan civilians shot down from simply being there."

"She's right," nodded Kit. "It is indeed the best option. If we fight in the tunnels then the only ones at risk will be ourselves. You and your people will be much safer and if we succeed, all's well that ends well. If we don't succeed... then a battle in the city may be inevitable. But still, it won't be best to avoid it, don't you think."

Boss Lyonie stroked his chin thoughtfully.

To the surprise of the others, Jar Jar spoke up to Boss Lyonie next. The goofy Gungan may be a complete idiot at times, but obviously his position as Representative carried a lot of weight, because Boss Lyonie turned to listen as he said, "Mesa bees tinkin' wesa should listenin' to dem, yous Honour. Mesa bees trustin' Ani and Little Snipsy with mui life, and de others too. Deysa bees savin' alla Naboo not so longo ago, an' Ani and Aayla isa being de Hero and de Heroine With No Fear." Aayla stared at Jar Jar incredulously as he said that – she had only found out people were calling her that this morning and Jar Jar was doing it now? "If deysa gotten big plan, mesa tinkin' it will worken."

Boss Lyonie nodded appreciatively. "Yesa," he said. "Mesa bees tinkin' yousa be right, Resempative Binks." Ahsoka disguised as snort as the Gungan leader failed miserably to say the word 'representative.' "Mesa can be seein' de benefits. Okeeday, mesa comen to a decision. Tarpals, yousa should be leadin' dem to de nearest tunnel entrance. Ifa dey askin' for help, yousa be given it to dem. Understand?"

"Right away, yous Honour," Tarpals saluted again.

"And Jedi," Boss Lyonie said, staring across at the group of four. "Wesa bees puttin' mui, mui faith in you. Mesa bees hopin' you no let usens down."

"Well, we certainly don't intend to, your Honour," said Anakin.

"Now go," Boss Lyonie pointed down a corridor. "And be stoppin' de Quarren garbareeno."

General Tarpals turned to the others and said, "Yousa bees followin' mesa. Wesa goin' to de tunnels, okeeday?"

"Alright," nodded Kit. "Lead on, General. We're right behind you."

As they began to walk away, Suzie turned to look up at Henry. "I can't believe we have to go underground again," she said. "I still get nightmares from Geonosis. Do we have to?"

Henry patting his sister's shoulder comfortingly. "I know, Suzie. But rest assured, there won't be any zombies this time. I don't think these good people would be ignorant of zombies beneath their feet, or willing to stay her or let them stay if they were. We'll be alright."

"Yeah," said Suzie. "But there is something down there. There's more Seppies. I wish Lopmon was here."

"Well, she's not. She's got a whole other problem to work with right now," said Henry. "But for what it's worth, Suzie, you've still got me. And if that's not enough for you, there's always Aayla and the rest of the A-Team looking out for us too."

_You got that right_, said Aayla. Henry and Suzie started and looked up to the head of the column, where Aayla was glancing over her shoulder at them. The Twi'lek winked before turning back around to keep walking.

"See," said Henry. "We won't let you down."

"Thank you," said Suzie. "Actually, I am getting a bit annoyed at myself for being so scared of everything."

"Scared is good," said Henry. "It may not seem like it but being scared makes sure you don't do anything stupid or reckless and it gives you speed if you need to run away. Always remember that, lest you turn into someone like Anakin, who just charges in."

"I heard that," said Anakin, while Ahsoka coughed loudly in a bad attempt to disguise laughter.

"Momentai," said Aayla, glancing across at Anakin and grinning cheekily.

"Momentai yourself, Heroine With No Fear," Anakin quipped, causing Aayla to flush slightly and look away, embarrassed at the name.

The clone SCUBA troopers had been listening to this conversation and glanced at each other in surprise. Unlike many of their fellows, they had never worked with the A-Team before, or the humans and their Digimon friends from another world. And while the Digimon weren't here right now, seeing the A-Team operate and tease one another was so different to most interactions between Jedi that it left them all mind-boggled. It was almost like they were all siblings, and the clones were unsure of what to make of that. It was like the relationship that they shared with one another – they were all brothers after all.

Did this mean that the Jedi and the clones were – while separate in many ways – not so different from one another?

The SCUBA troopers didn't know it, but every clone platoon that ended up working with the A-Team and their extradimensional friends pondered the same thing at some point. And many of them were still trying to figure things out.

* * *

Tarpals lead them through the city, with Jar Jar lolloping along beside the Jedi. After various twists and turns the purple Gungan lead them into another Bubble-room. In the centre of it was what appeared to be a large hatch of some kind, rounded like a manhole and jutting upwards from the ground like a hollow tube. Tarpals lead them over to it and hopped off his mount, which promptly walked off to stand some distance away and wait to be called upon again.

"Thisa be an entrance to de tunnel system," said Tarpals. "Dere bees quite a few twistin' and turnin' down dere. Mesa bees more dan willin' to be commen along, so mesa can be guidin' yousa troo."

"We'd be more than happy for your assistance, Captain Tarpals," said Kit. "What weapons do you have?"

"Just mui spark-ouchee," said Tarpals, gesturing to his electropole. "But mesa berry skilled wid it."

"I see," said Kit. "But do you have any skills with a blaster?"

Tarpals shrugged. "Mesa practice sometimes but mesa never need una."

Commander Monnk stepped forward and handed one to Tarpals anyway. "If you're coming along, you may need one down there," he said. "They may not get close enough for you to use your... er... spark-ouchee."

"Oooh, oooh, oooh," Jar Jar jumped up and down on the spot and almost falling over as he did so, waving his hand in the air enthusiastically. "Mesa come with yousa too. Mesa wanna besa helpin'."

There was a slight, uncomfortable silence that Jar Jar didn't seem to pick up on, as the Jedi and Tarpals all glanced at each other. After a couple of moments, Aayla and Ahsoka both looked expectantly at Anakin, electing him to be the speaker since he knew Jar Jar best. Anakin cleared his throat and said, "Uh, Jar Jar, are you sure that's a good idea? I mean, it could be pretty dangerous down there, and Padmé would be pretty upset if you were accidentally killed."

"Mesa no wanna be sittin' on de sidelines," Jar Jar said. "Dis besa mui home too and mesa wanna help in makin' it alla safe and cosy again. Mesa promise dat mesa no be gettin' in de way. Mesa know de tunnels too."

Anakin hesitated and glanced at the others, unsure whether he was looking for support or their opinion. His only response to his stare was that Kit Fisto shrugged, so Anakin turned around and said, "Well, I suppose it couldn't be too bad to have another guide. But remember, Jar Jar, this is a stealth mission followed by a full assault. So if you come along, remember to stay as quiet as you can and then stay out of the danger zone when the fighting breaks out, okay."

"Okeeday," Jar Jar nodded vigorously. "Mesa can be doin' dat. Can mesa be havin' a wangzapper too?"

"I thought you said Obi-Wan hadn't finished your training with a blaster," said Ahsoka hesitantly.

"No," Jar Jar shook his head. "But mesa can still be usin' una. And mesa wanna help fight de clankens. Deysa be invadin' mui home and dat be berry, berry wrongo. Mesa gonna fight." His fists clenched in a determined fashion and his stalk-eyes were narrowed in an expression that didn't seem to fit with his happy-go-lucky persona.

Anakin couldn't help but smile. Jar Jar wasn't a warrior, but he was very brave. What stood before Anakin now was a far-cry from the cowardly Gungan that he had lead back into his house on Tatooine to avoid getting caught in a sandstorm. Thinking back, Anakin remembered other occasions where Jar Jar managed to surprise everyone with how he handled situations. He had rescued Padmé on Rodia after she was captured by Viceroy Gunray, had helped out against Nuvo Vindi and his virus, and, most significantly, had led a small squadron of clones into defeating the Weequay pirates led by Hondo Ohnaka on Florrum.

Who knew, perhaps Jar Jar would be useful after all.

Anakin nodded to a nearby clone, who stepped forward and allowed Jar Jar to have another blaster. Jar Jar took it from him... and accidentally pulled the trigger. A blaster bolt shot out of the end of the weapon and crashed into the forcefield that made up the underwater room. Luckily the forcefield absorbed the shot, but the sound it made startled the kaadu standing nearby and it honked it fear and bowled Jar Jar over as it ran past, causing Jar Jar to squeeze the trigger again and let off another shot that collided with a crate and punched a hole in it.

Anakin grimaced. Then again... Jar Jar's lack of balance and coordination might be just as dangerous to them and to himself as it was to their enemies.

Well, there was nothing for it. They would have to go in and see what happened.

"Alright then," said Kit. "Are we ready to get underway?"

Jar Jar scrambled to his feet. "Mesa ready," he said, excitedly, bouncing on his feet again. Then he paused, frowned and added, "Are wesa takin' de little kiddies with us down dere?"

"Uh..." said Kit, unsure what to say.

"Yes," said Henry. "We're not staying behind. We... uh... don't want to leave Aayla's side... until we get back to Theed anyway."

"Yeah," Suzie nodded. "What he said."

"Oh. Okeeday," Jar Jar grinned, failing to see a problem with letting kids onto the battlefield. After all, during the last invasion of Naboo, Anakin had been just a kid, and he had gone up in space and single-handedly blown up the droid control ship that had been powering the droids on planet (which had been an older model called the OOM series which were not as advanced as the current B1 battle droids the Separatists used now and hadn't run on batteries).

"Follow mesa," said Tarpals and he reached over to the hatch and, with a little effort, flipping him open. Kit glanced down into the pipe and saw it was pretty much a straight drop, but there was a small ladder on the side which would take them directly down into the depths. It was extremely dark down there, but that wouldn't be an issue really, since all the clones had lights on their helmets for when they were in deep or murky water.

Tarpals hopped up on the rim and flipped inside the pipe, sliding down the ladder and into the darkness without using the rungs. Kit nodded and said, "Well, let's get going," before following his example.

One by one, the A-Team made their way into the darkness, leaping into the pipe and sliding down the ladder. Then it was the turn of the Tamers. Henry and Commander Monnk needed to give Suzie a little boost to get onto the rim. She shuddered when she saw the tunnel before her, but was slightly calmed at the sight of the blue and green light from below, indicating the Jedi had ignited their lightsabers. Slowly and carefully, she clambered her way down the ladder and into the depths, with Henry close on her heels.

Then, it was Jar Jar's turn. Jar Jar managed to get onto the rim easily enough and turned around carefully so would be able to go down the ladder. But then, he tried to do something beyond his skill level and attempted to slide down the ladder. This resulted in him bashing his thumbs and toes on the rungs unexpectedly and losing his grip and balance.

Yelling slightly, Jar Jar plummeted down the rest of the pipe, which Suzie and Henry had thankfully managed to vacate as he fell. But before he landed on his backside in the tunnels below, he was suddenly caught by Anakin's Force-powers. He hovered in the air for a moment before settling to the ground on his feet, surrounded by the glowing lightsabers of the four Jedi.

"We need quiet now, Jar Jar. Remember?" Anakin smirked.

Jar Jar grinned. "Okeeday. Mesa no makin' one peep."

And up above the tunnel as he prepared to go down himself, Commander Monnk shook his head and said, "Just what have we signed on for," before gripping the ladder and sliding down himself.

* * *

Well, I really enjoyed writing this chapter. Jar Jar is such a fun character to write. In fact all the Gungans are, because of their extremely unusual speech-patterns, which is difficult but fun to replicate. And yes, I included two characters from "Phantom Menace" that have not had a role in the Clone Wars so far. I hope you're all looking forward to finding out what Jar Jar's going to be doing, as well as seeing more of the fight against Parallelmon.

* * *

Next time...

Pretty simple really. While the Digimon continue to duke it out above ground, the Jedi, clones and the two Gungans delve into the tunnel network. Sure enough, they find the Separatists, but it turns out their plan id not what they originally expected.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 88 : Underground, Overground, Battling Rage**


	88. Undergound, Overground, Battling Rage

Hi everybody. I enjoyed writing this chapter for many reasons, not least because the battle between Parallelmon and other Digimon is still going on and has now become the longest standing Digimon battle that I have ever written. Due to the fact I have been having no long breaks like before I began this schedule, I really don't have much to be saying. Except thanks to new reviewer, **ECHO230**, for his morale-boosting and HUGE review from the last chapter. Nice one, mate. It's people like you who keep me writing this – asides from a stubborn streak to see it through to the end and the fact I enjoy it, that is.

So, I'll simply say, read on everybody. Read on.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 88:- Underground, Overground, Battling Rage**

* * *

Bathed in the blue and green lights emanating from the blades of the four Jedi and with the headlamps of the clones permeating the gloom ahead, the small strike-force progressed through the tunnels beneath Otah Gunga at a slow and sedate pace. Each one was placing their feet one the ground with the utmost care, trying to be as quiet as they possibly could. Their ears were straining to pick up any noises from any direction that might indicate enemy presence, whether that be due to an ambush or to a main base or something. But so far... nothing.

There was none of the loud whirring noise reported earlier either, which meant that if it really had been a drill digging through the bottom of the lake then they were either in the tunnels already, or they had given up. But given how fast the Separatists had been moving in this assault, everyone was probably guessing that it was the former.

General Tarpals lead the way, moving with a grace that his gangly form didn't look capable of producing as he hopped over boulders and slunk around corners with impressive stealth, almost worthy of a Jedi. Behind him walked Kit and Anakin, who had taken up positions to defend the clones if anything were to come from up ahead. The main bulk of the clones were behind them and right at the back were Aayla and Ahsoka and Jar Jar, along with the two Tamers, so that both sides of the column were covered.

Poor Suzie was really struggling not to hyperventilate with fear. Every flicking shadow in the light or every faint sound like a drip of water or a falling pebble echoing from far away made her flinch with fear. She was beginning to wonder if the ordeal she had been through on Geonosis would ever leave her alone. How many more tunnels was she going to have to traverse before she got over it and stopped thinking about Geonosian zombies? And would she have the nerve to walk down them all.

To his credit, Jar Jar appeared to have slightly better balance than usual. Perhaps his sheer clumsiness under normal circumstances had something to do with his mindset. He was constantly falling over when he was either happy, casual or panicked. But now, he seemed to be quite focused and his feet were mostly being put in all the right places.

Emphasis on 'mostly...'

There was an incident were Jar Jar accidentally wound up kicking a large boulder rather painfully. Involuntarily he opened his mouth to yelp loudly, but before he could make more than the strangled beginnings of one, a blue hand shot out and clamped over his extended jaws, clapping them shut and cutting off the noise almost instantly.

Jar Jar blinked and stared down at the hand, following the cerulean coloured arm attached to it and looking up into Aayla's face. The Twi'lek woman raised her eyebrows questioningly and whispered, "Are you alright?"

Jar Jar nodded his head, Aayla's hand still holding his jaws together.

"If I let go, you won't yell, will you?" Aayla asked.

Jar Jar shook his head, shaking Aayla's arm with it. Aayla nodded and released her grip. Jar Jar grinned sheepishly and whispered, "Mesa sorry. Mesa looky where mesa goin' from now on."

"Good," Aayla nodded. "But, you have been doing really well so far, Jar Jar."

Jar Jar beamed and stepped around the boulder he had stubbed his toes on previously. He and Aayla hurried along a little to catch up with those who had managed to get ahead of them.

The further General Tarpals led them into the tunnels, the more eerie they seemed to become. It was slightly slippery down here, which made it more difficult to keep their footing. Ahsoka was holding her lightsaber close to the floor so the two Tamers could see it and judge whether where they were about to put each foot was a good idea. There was quiet, echoing dripping from time to time, but other than this, there was nothing to suggest that there was any Separatists down here.

Anakin had taken to marking the wall with a sweep of his blade every so often shortly after they'd entered the tunnels, and he was pleased to note that he was not coming across any old slash-marks, which meant the Tarpals wasn't leading them in circles. Not that he had really doubted how well the Gungan General knew his way around – but he had just wanted to be sure.

After about twenty minutes of nothing (which wasn't that surprising since Otah Gunga was a huge place and therefore required an enormous cave network if it was going to cover the whole city), Anakin began to wonder if his theory had been complete rubbish. Perhaps Otah Gunga was getting attacked right now and they could do nothing to help them because they were stuck down here and didn't even know about it.

However, it was at this point that Tarpals turned around and placed a finger to his mouth with one hand, and, after tucking his electropole under one arm, used the other to lift his large ear and listen closely. Everyone else pulled to a halt and carefully watched the purple Gungan as he concentrated on the hallway ahead. Aayla and Ahsoka glanced at each other, both wondering, if Tarpals had heard something, how long it would have taken Terriermon, Lopmon or Renamon, all of whom had phenomenal hearing, to pick it up.

After about ten seconds, Anakin whispered, "What is it, Tarpals?"

"Mesa tinkin' dat mesa hearin' voices," said Tarpals. "Comin' from uppahead."

"Voices?" asked Kit. "Are they droids or are they organics?"

"Ogarnics," said Tarpals. "Mesa cannot besa hearin' what dey be spaking, but mesa know dey are dere."

"I don't see much up ahead," said Kit. "If we go much further then there is a strong possibility they'll see our lights, and then we will have been discovered."

"So?" asked Commander Monnk. "Aren't we supposed to be wiping them out anyway, General?"

"Ideally, yes," said Kit. "But ever since we arrived in the tunnels, the Force has been nudging me."

"You too?" asked Anakin. "I thought that was just me. Have you two back there been getting anything?"

"I have," said Ahsoka.

"As have I," said Aayla. "But its quite faint. However, now I concentrate on it, it feels like... there is a serious danger up ahead. And by that I mean more so than just a simple army. There might be a little more to this plan than we previously thought."

"My thoughts exactly," said Kit. "We must proceed with caution and gather intelligence before we make our move."

"What do you suggest," Anakin murmured. "We can't get too much closer without being seen and there's no way we can hear them from here. I can't even hear the voices at all."

"I'm not sure, Skywalker," said Kit. "Give me a moment to try and think of something."

"We don't have a moment," said Anakin. "That sense of foreboding is growing now. I can feel it."

"Perhaps only one of us should go ahead and check things out?" suggested Ahsoka. "Then report back afterwards."

"Any volunteers?" Anakin asked, dryly.

"I'll go, Master," said Ahsoka. "I'm smaller than all of you and so It'll be easier for me to conceal myself. I'll be in and out before you know it."

"It could be dangerous, Ahsoka," Anakin reminded her. "We don't have a clue what's up ahead. It could be anything."

"Well, we need to find out somehow and I'm more than ready," said Ahsoka. "Besides, I can handle myself pretty well, don't you think?"

"She makes a valid point, Skywalker," said Kit. "She has skill almost equal to a Jedi Knight. Let's let her go."

"She's still young," protested Anakin. "And she's not all that subtle."

"Oh and you are?" Ahsoka asked.

"I never said _I_ was," pointed out Anakin. "I'm just saying that you aren't either."

"And I think it's pretty obvious where she gets it from," said Aayla. "You're an infection, Anakin. Even I'm doing more reckless stuff now, like leaping out of a flying starfighter to catch your spice-freighter in mid-air."

"Tarpals," said Kit. "Are the voices moving this way?"

Tarpals shook his head. "Nosa. Deysa bees no movin' at alla. And dere bees only duey of them," he added, holding up two fingers for emphasis.

"So, am I going or not?" asked Ahsoka. Anakin grimaced, still reluctant to put Ahsoka in a dangerous situation, when the Force was warning him of something big up ahead. If only it would be more specific!

Meanwhile, little Suzie had been listening to this entire conversation and was thinking to herself. The ten-year-old girl was scared, that much was true. She was terrified of being down in the tunnels, and she would be for some time to come. But as she looked up at all four of the Jedi and the clone soldiers standing around her, she saw their bold and determined expression. She saw courage and iron will in all four pairs of eyes (she couldn't see those of the clones due to their helmets), particularly in Ahsoka, as she tried to convince her Master to get on with it and let her check things out.

They weren't afraid.

But she was.

Why was she here anyway? Why had she and Henry come along with them into the tunnels? What good could they possibly do without their Digimon? Their special abilities with adding modifications to their Digital friends were pointless seeing as the Digimon were probably fighting Parallelmon right now. Down here, without a Digimon to fight for them, both were useless and were just getting in the way. Suzie was scaring herself for no good reason, while she could have stayed safe up in Gunga City. She and Henry were spare parts. Heck, they weren't even that – a spare part would be able to take the place of something that stopped working.

Suzie almost wanted to cry. Her presence here seemed to be pointless.

Except... maybe...

No. No. Not an option. She was too scared. Way, wwwaaaayy too scared for that.

She winced at her own thoughts. Why could she not be brave? Why did she have to rely on everyone else to do stuff for her? If it wasn't Lopmon it was Henry, and if it wasn't Henry it was Aayla or some other Jedi.

Then, she remembered something that Renamon had said to once, some time before they had even come to this dimension. After a gruelling battle with a bioemergence, Renamon had knelt down and said to Suzie, "Being brave is not being without fear, Suzie. Being brave is about doing what needs to be done no matter how scared you feel. You help to fight against enemy Digimon all the time, despite the fact you are scared. You are brave. Always remember that."

As those words flooded back into Suzie's mind, her expression hardened. She would be brave. She was scared – she would be the first to admit it, but, like the Jedi, like the Digimon, like Henry and Rika, she wasn't going to let that get in her way.

Henry was so engrossed in the conversation that he didn't notice when Suzie stepped away from him and began to make her way forwards, stepping around the legs of the waiting clones as she headed towards the front of the column. She slipped past Commander Monnk without him noticing and crept past Kit, Anakin and Tarpals before making her way up the tunnel and towards the voices. She disappeared into the gloom, without alerting the others. She did this because she knew they would have tried to stop her, but this was her moment and she wouldn't let her.

Fortunately, she still had a method of communication and a totally silent one at that. Her connection with Henry was dead, because she was only connected to her brother via Lopmon and Terriermon, who were nowhere nearby. But Aayla had a connection with all six of them and didn't require a relay route.

_Aayla_, she called out in her mind. _I can hear the voices now. I'm heading over._

* * *

Back in the tunnel, Aayla started and immediately looked down to where she'd been standing and noticed she'd gone. _What... Suzie! What do you think you're doing? It's dangerous! Come back here!_

_No way, josé,_ said Suzie. _You guys were all taking forever to decide so I went on ahead. I'm getting closer._

_Suzie, have you thought this through? _Aayla asked.

_Not really,_ said Suzie. _But I'm the smallest here, and I happen to be quite good at hide-and-seek. I'll be okay. I'm going to brave, like I was that time I met that Bounty Hunter, Cad Bane._

Aayla's reply sounded mildly impressed. _Wow, Suzie. You never cease to amaze me. Alright, but make sure you stay out of sight and give me a warning the _instant_ you think you get spotted and I'll be there in a matter of seconds._

_Okay,_ said Suzie, making her way slowly towards the voices up ahead.

_And just so you know, you are getting a huge scolding when this is all over._

_I don't care. I'm doing what needs to be done._

Aayla almost smiled at the tone of her voice, as she also made her way towards the front of the line, her lightsaber ready just in case. _I don't know whether to be proud or angry._ She stepped past Kit and Anakin, who were looking at her questioningly. She turned and was about to fill them in, when Henry suddenly exclaimed in a loud hiss. "Wait! Where's Suzie!"

"She might have gotten impatient and gone up ahead," said Aayla.

"WH-MMPH!" Henry was cut off by... Jar Jar?

"Ssh," the Gungan said. "Yousa needin' to be quiet now, or deysa hear us."

Henry pulled Jar Jar's hand from his mouth. "But that's my sister out there," he said, immediately starting forwards.

"We know, Henry," said Aayla. "But we need to be quiet now. Let's see what she can tell us."

"You're not going to stop her?" Henry asked incredulously.

"I trust her," said Aayla. "I think you should too. And, just in case, I know exactly where she is. Don't worry. I'm sure she'll be fine." Then, she quietened down and looked through Suzie's eyes.

* * *

Suzie edged along the wall of the tunnel as quietly as humanely possible, trying not to breathe too much for fear that she'd give herself away. The voices were getting louder and now, Suzie was able to make out a few words. Eventually, she reached a turning and peered around the corner. She gulped fearfully as she beheld two Quarren standing like sentinels about halfway down the tunnel and it was they who were talking to one another quietly.

Suzie spotted a large boulder and, figuring that would be a good hiding place, she crouched so low she was almost sitting and crept into the tunnel, scurrying over to the boulder. When she reached it, she pressed her back to the boulder and listened as the Quarren continued their conversation, unaware of their eavesdropper.

"...and I'm telling you," said one of them. "I'll be happy to get out from under all this dirt and rock. Quarren aren't meant for this sort of thing. Underwater is fine. But underground? It gives me the creeps."

"You need to toughen up," said the other. "What do you reckon we're going to find down here? Ghosts? Mutant worms?"

"It could happen," said the first Quarren. "The mutant worms that is... I mean this planet's got some horrendously huge wildlife in the oceans and a lot of them are predators. Who's to say that there is not something like that here. Heck, what made these tunnels in the first place? Those Gungans don't look like the type to make them to me."

"You may have a point," the second Quarren shrugged, his face-tentacles flapping as he shuddered. "They've got stuff like Colo-claw fish on this planet. They looked really freaky. I think I actually saw one in the city up above, kept in a tank. I thought I was hallucinating."

"Yeah, I saw that," said the first Quarren.

"But still, mutant worms... I don't think so," the second Quarren shook his head. "There's nothing down here but rocks and water. Why did Senator Tikkes make us stand here on guard anyway? It's pointless. Those Gungan freaks are so preoccupied with the rest of our army up there to even think about us."

"Didn't you hear?" the first Quarren asked. "I heard there was a report saying that a bunch of Jedi and clones showed up not too long ago to help out against our armies. They've already destroyed most of our Manta-droid subfighters."

"No way," the second Quarren gasped. "Are you serious? Whoa... now I really hope I don't come up against one of them."

_No, you don't,_ Suzie smirked from behind her boulder. _They're waaayy to badass for you._

_Thank you,_ said Aayla.

"But even so," the second Quarren went on. "The Jedi probably won't be coming down here either. I mean, they'll want to help the Gungans fend off our army, won't they? They'll never guess what we're up to... uh... will they?"

"I don't know," said the first Quarren. "But you can't rule out that possibility. Which is yet another reason for me to anticipate getting out of this place. It means that we'll be able to get away from any potential threat from the Jedi. You should hear some of the stories about this lot. I heard it was the A-Team themselves that are on the scene."

"The A-Team?" the second Quarren yelped, startled. They had heard about the success of Anakin, Aayla and Ahsoka just as just about everyone else in the galaxy had. Fear gripped his heart at the prospect of them being so close, but at the same time, he felt something else. Suzie detected it too with his next sentence. Was it... anticipation?

"Just imagine," the second Quarren leered slightly. "Imagine what will happen if we manage to pull this off. We can claim to be the ones who finally put an end to not only the A-Team's winning streak, but the A-Team themselves. We would be showered with rewards from the rest of the Separatists."

"Yeah, well we have to do it first," said the first Quarren.

"We will," said the second Quarren, confidence bolstering him now. "We're going to blow them, along with all the Gungans and their entire city, sky-high. Do you have any idea how long it'll take for them to set up that bomb?"

Suzie's blood ran cold at that last word. Bomb? Did he say bomb?

"How should I know," said the first Quarren. "I'm not an expert with explosives. I just point and shoot at thing. But one thing I do know is that we'd better be somewhere far away when it goes off. I heard that it's got enough power to wipe the Gungan city from the map completely."

The second Quarren leered. "I can't wait to see that. When they see us retreating, they'll all be celebrating and thinking they've won the day and then BOOM! It'll all be over."

"Ssh, keep your voice down," hissed the first Quarren.

"Who's going to hear us?" the second waved it away. "There's no-one in these tunnels except us."

Suzie's heart was beating like it was trying to escape from her ribcage. A bomb? The Quarrens had dug underground alright, but they weren't trying to take the city from below. They were trying to destroy it completely with one, enormous explosion. Somewhere in these tunnels was an enormous bomb capable of wiping out an entire city!

The situation had just gotten a whole lot more complicated.

_What do I do now?_ She thought.

_Get out of there, Suzie,_ Aayla replied to her. _You've one magnificently, but now we need to find that bomb and disable it as quickly as possible. Time is of the essence now._

_Okay,_ nodded Suzie, and she began to creep back the way she had come, sticking close to the ground as before and slinking back towards the entrance of the tunnel, out of sight of the Quarren. Her throat was dry at the prospect of what she had learned, but at the same time, she felt a thrill of pride. She had actually done it. She had done something that was not only extremely brave but incredibly useful too. And she had done it all by herself.

She reached the end of the tunnel...

...and found herself staring down the photoreceptor of a hovering recon droid.

Suzie screamed involuntarily, falling backwards as the droid loomed over her. The Quarren behind her were instantly alerted and ran over, tridents at the ready, in time to see the girl backing against the wall as a probe droid extended one of its legs towards her, and electric prod at the tip that would give the little girl a dose of electricity that might be enough to paralyze her.

"Well, what have we here?" asked the first Quarren.

"A human kid?" asked the second. "What the hell is she doing here?"

"I dunno," said the first Quarren. "But she's not going to be telling anyone about us anyt..."

He was cut off when a Twi'lek surged out of the neighbouring corridor and sliced through the probe droid with a single cleave of her blue lightsaber.

"You were saying?" Aayla glared at them, as they paled in terror.

* * *

Eyes mad with rage, Parallelmon was still battling hard against his three adversaries and was giving blows as well as he got. The Mutant Digimon was slashing at Rapidmon with wild and rather uncoordinated swings, which made it relatively easy for the Ultimate level cyborg to dodge them, but Parallelmon quickly changed his strategy and rushed forward, seeking to impale Rapidmon on the spikes on what remained of his face-mask. Rapidmon quickly blipped out of existence and Parallelmon did the exact same thing at the same time. Both of them began an aerial bout, flashing into existence with speed or dimension-jumping and ramming into one another, over and over again, each attack more brutal than the last.

"You ready to quit now?" Rapidmon asked his cannons collided with Parallelmon's armour.

"Not a damn chance," Parallelmon growled.

"You might want to rethink that if you took a look at what's behind you," Rapidmon crowed. Parallelmon turned around quickly, to see nothing but trees. It was at this point that Rapidmon's Tri Beam slammed into his back and he was sent hurtling away, to crash into another tree.

"RAAGH!" Parallelmon screeched as he leapt into the air again. "I can't believe I fell for that!"

"Neither can I," Rapidmon snickered. "Oh hey, look behind you."

Thinking Rapidmon was trying to trick him into not turning around this time, Parallelmon turned around again. He was immediately slammed by another Tri Beam to the back. Rapidmon cackled so hard he doubled over in mid-air, almost losing control of his hovering. "You are rubbish at this!" he called, mockingly.

"You are so dead," Parallelmon decided, brandishing his claws menacingly once he'd gotten himself upright again.

"Not if what's behind you has anything to say about it," said Rapidmon.

"Oh come on! You really expect me to...UNGH!" Parallelmon roared as Antylamon slammed one enormous foot into his back with a vicious kick that almost broke his spine.

"Yes, actually, I do," said Rapidmon.

"That's it!" Parallelmon shouted.

"Didn't you already say that?" asked Antylamon.

"SHUT UP!" Parallelmon lunged at her once more. Antylamon formed her axes and swung to meet the charge head on, while Rapidmon fired more missiles from the side to intercept his flight-ath. Parallelmon spun through the air in mid-charge, tucking his arms into his sides as he passed above the swinging axes and beneath the whistling missiles. Then he reversed his body and slammed into Antylamon's face with both feet, knocking her backwards with a yelp and rebounding off her to come flying at the surprised Rapidmon once again. Completely not expecting such finesse from the mad Digimon, Rapidmon failed to react in time and was met with the full strength of the blow and both he and Parallelmon went tumbling to the ground. Dazed, Rapidmon watched his enemy draw back his claws for the final blow, but it never got to him because Sakuyamon appeared, dashing in from the side and slamming Parallelmon in the side of the head with her staff. Knocked off balance, Parallelmon was unable to defend himself as Sakuyamon unleashed the Twin Blades of Beauty and Truth that sliced through his back armour. He stiffened, roaring with pain as the attack struck him. But, through the pain, he reared up and shrieked, generating another portal that sent out a huge gust of wind that blew Sakuyamon and Rapidmon backwards.

Sakuyamon, after a couple of flips, dug her staff into the ground once more to anchor herself, and looked up towards her foe. With another BACKEW, Parallelmon was right in front of her and lunging for her throat. She blocked swiftly but was bent almost double from the force of the blow. Grunting, she let it carry her down and backflipped to kick him in the face, knocking him back, and then blasted him with an Amethyst Wind. Parallelmon growled and vanished again. Sakuyamon quickly leapt into the air and fired another attack down at where he'd probably reappear, tearing the ground to pieces with her crystals, but, unfortunately, she missed, because Parallelmon was powered down towards her from above instead, claws splayed and ready to cut her.

Before Parallelmon could strike though, two balls of compressed air blindsided him and threw him off course. He scowled at Antylamon once her finished righting himself as the bunny stepped towards her smaller adversary while Sakuyamon and Rapidmon recovered slightly. Parallelmon flexed his arms and roared angrily, jumping out of existence and powering through a number of dimensions at high-speed in order to pick up lots of momentum, before reappearing in the same spot a moment later and lunging towards Antylamon like a bullet, aiming for her stomach. Antylamon grimaced and jumped backwards, rebounding off a tree to shoot at the Mega with almost equal speed, her axes swinging to meet him with a terrific Bunny Blades. Parallelmon and Antylamon slammed into each and for a moment they both seemed to completely defy the law of gravity as they strained against each other (Digimon can do this often for some reason), glowering into one another's faces. It seemed an even match, Parallelmon's superior speed and Antylamon's size trying to figure out which was the most useful in a situation like this.

But, as it turned out, neither of them would get to find out, because Antylamon had other ideas. As she strained against Parallelmon, the edges of her axes began to go pink. Parallelmon's eye widened in surprise as Antylamon unleashed her ranged version of the Bunny Blades right in his, and her, faces. Both were flung back by the attack, but Parallelmon's face took the main bulk of the attack and he went crashing to the ground, bouncing and flipping across the soil as he skidded several metres, then came to rest just before he could slam into another tree.

He groaned as he tried to get back to his feet, but before he could, he was suddenly smashed into the ground again by having a large bed land on him, another piece of ammunition that Antylamon had picked up from the house. Antylamon soared over and delivered a huge downwards cleave that smashed into Parallelmon and the bed so hard that they were pushed into the ground.

"Ouch," Rapidmon chuckled as he watched the enormous blow strike. "That'll hurt in the morning."

"And he's already got the bed he can lie in, feeling miserable," chuckled Sakuyamon. "I don't suppose that's the end of it, do you?"

"You see any data particles floating off into the air?" asked the bunny. "Nah, he's still alive, but let's hope that that put a stopper on him, at least for a moment or two. And because I said that, he's going to explode out of the ground now, angrier than ever, isn't he?"

Parallelmon exploded out of the ground, angrier than ever, and reducing the bed to splinters as he glared at his enemies."

"Yep," said Rapidmon. "I really should learn to keep my mouth shut."

"This fight is far from over!" Parallelmon declared, rearing up as high as he could go. "And it won't be over until the three of you are in billions of pieces floating away into the sky!"

"Well, that'll definitely happen to someone," Sakuyamon growled.

Rapidmon prepared his cannons once more as he took to the air, ready for combat. Sakuyamon took her staff in both hands and held it steadily, glaring at Parallelmon and Antylamon loomed behind the other two, hands morphed into her battleaxes. Parallelmon growled at the sight of them all ganging up on him and held his own claws ready.

"Shall we?" he growled.

"We shall," said Antylamon.

"You may regret that," Parallelmon leered. "You forget – I have waiting for over half a year for a shot at revenge. It'll take a lot more than this to put me down."

"Let's see how much," Rapidmon said, initiating the first strike with a Rapid Fire.

Parallelmon sprang into the air as the missiles impacted on the ground behind him and darted forwards in Rapidmon's direction. Rapidmon shot upwards himself as Parallelmon zinged at him, flipping through the air so Parallelmon passed right underneath him and landed on the Mutant Digimon's shoulders, using him as a springboard to shoot up into the air, while his opponent staggered.

Rapidmon flipped around and launched a Miracle Missile at Parallelmon's unprotected back in an attempt to catch him off-guard. But Parallelmon heard the missiles whistling towards him and whirled about, backhanding them so they exploded against his tough hand armour, instead of hitting his eye for a fourth time. He quickly dimension-jumped and appeared right in front of Rapidmon, claws powering forward to strike. Rapidmon dodged but was still caught in the side and sent spinning.

Parallelmon roared and dived after him, but Rapidmon was more than ready for him. The cyborg bunny played it out a little, making it seem like he was tumbling when in fact he was fine. At the last second, he spun about and rammed the end of his cannon into Parallelmon's face. "GAH!" the Mutant cried as the pointed nose on his mask snapped off.

And it didn't end there. Rapidmon brought the other cannon to bear and unleashed another Rapid Fire with a cry of, "Someone call for a side-order of THIS?" as the missiles streaked towards Parallelmon. The twin weapons streaked across the gap and impacted on Parallelmon's stomach, driving him backwards and into yet another tree. Rapidmon whooshed forwards as Parallelmon attempted to regain his breath and prepared a vicious kick. Parallelmon judged the side, causing Rapidmon to smack into the tree hard enough to splinter it, but Rapidmon whirled around and socked Parallelmon in the gut with a cannon.

As Parallelmon fell earthwards and attempted to regain his balance, Sakuyamon moved in to the attack. Parallelmon saw her coming and turned over, disappearing for a moment and reappearing with what appeared to be a motor-home and flung it at her. Sakuyamon changed course and dodged as it slammed into the ground and then sent an Amethyst Wind roaring in his direction. Parallelmon blipped aside to avoid the crystals and growled at her. "Come and get me."

"With pleasure," Sakuyamon said, charging up towards him and swinging her staff with all the strength she could muster. But Parallelmon had had enough of that and grabbed it with both hands, lifting Sakuyamon into the air as he leapt from the ground.

"Enjoy the ride," he crowed.

"What ride?" asked Sakuyamon, who appeared quite calm for some reason. Parallelmon frowned, and then screamed as, without warning, the four fox spirits slammed into him from behind, having taken the roundabout route after being released earlier. Sakuyamon had just been keeping Parallelmon's attention, and now they savaged his back and neck. Gritting his teeth, Parallelmon dimension-jumped out of the way. When he reappeared, he cried, "Damn you and your trickery!"

"It's fun, though," Sakuyamon said. "And you do plenty of it yourself." She leapt after him, her staff ready to charge up another Twin Blades of Beauty and Truth attack. "Besides, it certainly gets the job done." She let off the attack, and her spirits charged along after it.

"That depends, really," Parallelmon hissed as he dodged the attacks and motored towards the floor, scooping up a fallen tree that looked too big for him. "Let's see if you can fight this!" he roared and swung the large tree-trunk at Sakuyamon, heaving it through the air. Sakuyamon looked startled by this attack, but she quickly blocked with a Talisman Sphere. The tree still sent the sphere smashing across the forest, where it impacted against another tree... and rebounded, shooting through the air like a cannonball to bulldoze into the surprised enemy Mega.

"UGH!" Parallelmon was able to say as all the wind was knocked out of him. "How the hell did you do that?"

"Actually, I had no idea that would happen either," said Sakuyamon.

"You... didn't," Parallelmon blinked. "OH FOR FANGLONGMON'S SAKE!" He clapped his hands angrily and a huge torrent of water spewed out – since his opened the portal so that the other side was under an ocean. Sakuyamon glared at the huge jet of liquid shooting at her like a water cannon from hell and raised her staff, sending of another Twin Blade attack. The first blade slashed through the jet of water, splitting it in half down the middle and impacting with the portal, while the second swept along after it and crashed into Parallelmon, throwing him off and causing the portal to close. Parallelmon was thrown back once more and howled in agony.

Just a second later, the motor-home was swung into him like a giant cricket bat. Of course, it was gripped in the hands of Antylamon, who seemed to like throwing everything that Parallelmon threw at them right back. Parallelmon actually went straight through the vehicle, leaving a gaping hole in it.

"Well that didn't go quite as planned, but what the hell," said Antylamon, tossing the large vehicle into the other hand and hurling it like a javelin at Parallelmon's retreating form. Parallelmon managed to regain his balance and catch the motor-home by the front. Grunting, Parallelmon tossed it right back at Antylamon and followed up himself, drawing his claws back. Antylamon used her agility to rush out of the way of both and dash in from the side, axes ready. She swung them up, but Parallelmon was gone instantly, BACKEWing out harm's way, Snarling for blood, he reappeared right over Antylamon and lunged down, attempting to brain her between the ears. Antylamon surprised him by throwing herself to one side and rolling back onto her feet, before lunging at him with her axes again, generating pink energy blades to go with it.

Once again, Parallelmon was able to dodge by dimension-jumping, reappearing not that far away and clenching his fists angrily. Then, he jumped again, reappearing on Antylamon's other side, then again on the other side, then behind her, and several more jumps in an attempt to confuse her. Antylamon glanced from side to side, attempting to anticipate where he would strike from. In the end, she decided to go with another sense and shut her eyes, listening for the sound of an attack. When it came at her, it came from the left and Antylamon sprang into the sky so high she almost touched the canopy and threw and Arm Bomber directly downwards at her attacker.

But just before the Arm Bomber could strike, Parallelmon was no longer there. Antylamon scowled in annoyance – this dimension-jumping ability of his was getting old really fast. It was like he played by a completely different set of rules. Actually, that was exactly what he was doing. Ugh.

Antylamon landed smoothly on the ground and bounded to one side, just in time to see Parallelmon reappear where she had been and swiped at where here head used to be several seconds ago. Parallelmon growled, flexing his claws and staring down at the Ultimate level. Sakuyamon and Rapidmon stepped over to join her.

"This is ridiculous," Parallelmon growled. "I understand why I may be having trouble with the shaman, since she is a Mega like me, but how are you two Ultimates still alive. You should have been dead many times over by now."

"Obviously someone's a little rusty," Rapidmon smirked

"We've been training together and battling as a team for months," Sakuyamon replied. "We've been honing our skills all that time. I reckon we might be giving you some trouble even if we were all at the Champion level only."

Parallelmon scoffed. "Care to test that out?"

"Not really, no," said Antylamon. "But let's see how long you can keep going."

Parallelmon growled and charged forwards once more, his eye red with rage and a roar ripping out of his throat. He brought his claws up and began madly swinging at all of them, going absolutely berserk. Surprised by his sudden lack of finesse, Sakuyamon only just managed to dodge the flurry of slashes, and then set to parrying them with her staff, leaping and dodging and bringing up the golden implement to parry and turn the strikes aside. Parallelmon forced her back across the forest and kept up his barrage.

Sakuyamon grimaced as she blocked a sideways sweep and then whipped around, smashing her staff through the air and slamming the tip into one of Parallelmon's claws. To the Mutant Digimon's horror and pain, the claw snapped off completely and vaporised, disappearing into data. He shrieked and clutched his hand.

"Aaw," said Rapidmon, swiftly launching a Rapid Fire at the back of Parallelmon's head. "Did you break a nail?" Parallelmon was smashed by the attack and flung forwards, but he vanished quickly as he dimension-jumped.

He reappeared a moment later, standing on the trunk of a fallen tree and holding up and enormous dining table, ready to hurl at them. Except that, suddenly, Antylamon hurled a single Arm Bomber at the table, splintering it to pieces above Parallelmon's head, and then hurled a second Arm Bomber at the tree-trunk, splintering that too and sending him flying. Rapidmon shot behind him and Tri-Beamed the Mega before he even stopped moving, whooshing him back into the air...

Where three attacks struck Parallelmon simultaneously. Rapidmon launched a Rapid Fire after their quarry, Antylamon hurled more Arm Bombers and Sakuyamon unleashed a Spirit Strike for good measure. All three attacks struck him at once and Parallelmon wailed in agony as he was clawed, bitten, blasted and busted all at once.

He seemed to lose his mastery over gravity and began to fall towards the floor, where Antylamon was waiting for him. Smirking, the rabbit slammed the falling figure but a solid punch from a huge fist, throwing him back up, where Sakuyamon swept in from the side and slammed the butt of her staff into his gut like a lance and poleaxed him, sending him sprawling once again.

They stared as Parallelmon lay still for a few seconds, and then began to struggle back to his feet. Parallelmon growled angrily, his armour blackened and cracked in many places but refusing to back down. He raised his claws to advance again, but before he could make a move, a swarm of Miracle Missiles rushed in from the side and crashed into his flank, knocking him back to the floor again.

Rapidmon smirked. "That was fun," he said.

"Wait," Sakuyamon cautioned as Parallelmon reared back up onto his feet once more.

"Unbelievable," Antylamon shook her head. "How are you still going after all that?"

"I told you," Parallelmon growled. "This fight is far from over."

"You seem to have toughened up a little to the last time we fought," said Sakuyamon. "Or were you holding back then?"

"He was holding back before," said Rapidmon. "He was just trying to incapacitate us, remember. But this time, he's trying to kill us. He was a problem for the Sovereigns for some time, so now we must be seeing some of his sterner stuff. I suppose it's a good thing Aayla wrecked his Absorbent Bang claw."

"It'll grow back," Parallelmon snarled. "After I load your data!" He roared and darted into the fray once again, charging pell-mell towards Rapidmon, because he had decided he hated him the most due to his snarky comments. Rapidmon shot upwards and Parallelmon followed, but suddenly Rapidmon was gone. Parallelmon felt something slam him from behind and turned to see nothing.

"Time to die," Rapidmon said, soaring up from above and swinging his cannons in a flurry of movement so fast it was barely visible to bombard Parallelmon in the face numerous times.

Parallelmon reeled backwards, clutching what remained of his face. "Gah! Why do you always go for the face?"

"Because..." said Rapidmon, as if that explained everything. "Oh, and by the way, look behind you."

"I'm not falling for..." Parallelmon frowned, his mind racing. Wait, was he saying that to hit him when he turned, or was that what he wanted him to think and there really was something behind him?

Frozen up with indecision, he was left completely and utterly open as he was once again struck by three attacks, one from in front, one from behind and one from below, so his best option would have been dimension-jumping. "GRRAAAAAHH!" Parallelmon cried as a Rapid Fire, a Bunny Blade of pink energy and an Amethyst Wind, all hit him at once.

"I can't believe he keeps falling for that," Rapidmon chuckled. He sobered up quickly as Parallelmon appeared in front of him again and sliced at him with both hands, forcing the cyborg to dodge away. Parallelmon made to follow, but was immediately struck by Sakuyamon, surrounded by her Talisman Sphere, knocking him into the air.

Sakuyamon bounced off and shot towards the floor, but her flight slowed and she came to a stop some feet above it, hovering in her protective shield. Parallelmon regained his bearings and lanced towards her, ready to pummel the shield into the ground with all the force he could muster. He was somewhat surprised when the shield rose to meet him, Sakuyamon making it expand rapidly and slam into him again.

Parallelmon winced, rubbing his sore stomach, which took the brunt of the attack. Then, he heard a noise like pounding feet and turned to look behind him. "Oh crap," he said, as he spotted Antylamon charging towards him with her tree in one hand and the motor-home in the other. Antylamon whirled and gave him a double-"bladed" strike, pummelling him first with the tree and then smashing him to the ground with the motor-home.

But Parallelmon was certainly not finished and, once he had forced himself out of the imprint of himself in the ground, he renewed his attack once more.

* * *

The two Quarren were edging backwards slightly as Aayla helped Suzie to her feet and put the little girl behind her, holding her lightsaber in preparation for combat. They paled even further as they saw more Jedi hurry around the corner, with a couple of Gungans and a large number of clones, until the tunnel ahead was completely filled by enemy forces.

"Are you going to say anything?" The Twi'lek asked them. "Or shall we?"

"Shall we take them out?" asked Ahsoka.

"That's pretty much what I was thinking," said Anakin.

The Quarren were beginning to hyperventilate slightly, but, fortunately for them, they earned a reprieve. Suzie's scream had attracted the attention of more than the two of them and the sound of plodding feet could be heard emanating from the tunnel behind them. The Quarren quickly fled back down the corridor, escaping through the ranks of droids that were stepping up the corridor of rock. But these were no ordinary battle droids – they were more like Supers than B1 droids, but they looked more skeletal and they had flattened heads with a single red photoreceptor in the middle and a long rifle-blaster on their arms.

"Ah, lovely," Anakin said, dryly. "Aqua droids. This just keeps getting better."

"Defensive formation!" Brien shouted to his men, who quickly obeyed their instructions. As the Aqua droids raised their rifles and began to fire red lasers down the corridor towards them, Anakin and Ahsoka immediately responded and dashed up in front of the clones, screening them behind a wall of swinging lightsaber as they hurriedly parried the shots aside, causing them to smash into the walls around them harmlessly. The clones separated out and crouched at the edges of the tunnel, seeking boulders as extra cover and raising their own blasters, initiating their half of the fire-fight by firing past the Jedi upon the droids.

The droids were tougher than they looked and it took several shots for them to be taken down. As the ones at the front fell, the others stepped over them as if they weren't there and kept advancing, firing ceaselessly. Ahsoka reflected a bolt right back into the photoreceptor of one of the droids. It seemed to hesitate, and, now blinded, opted to stay still and continue to shoot. Scowling in annoyance, Ahsoka crouched down and picked it up with the Force, throwing it to the side where it smashed against the wall. There, that dealt with it.

As Master and Padawan protected the clones, a hurried decision was being made at the back, as Kit, Aayla, General Tarpals, Jar Jar and both Tamers crouched down. Due to the fact that the two Gungans merely thought that Suzie was a bystander, Aayla had been unable to tell them what she had been seeing and she hurriedly explained it now, claiming she had pulled the information from the heads of the Quarren instead.

"A bomb?" Kit asked in alarm, his wide eyes widening even further. "That makes things more difficult."

"Deysa be makin' a bombad bang!" Jar Jar said, fearfully. "Gunga City is bein' lopity-pie if dat ting goes off."

Tarpals nodded gravely. "Wesa gotta be stoppin' dem."

"But that's not all," said Kit. "While the bomb is a priority, we must also try and capture the person in charge of all this. And, of course, we have to get past these droids and fast."

Aayla grabbed Jar Jar by the wrist and yanked him downwards, so a blaster bolt that would have struck him in the side of the head whizzed harmlessly past. "Where do you think they will have set up the bomb, Master Fisto?"

"Probably directly beneath the middle of the city above," said Kit, activating his blade to block another stray bolt before it could kill him. "Where it would wreak the most devastation if it went off."

"Then maybe we can bypass the droids," said Aayla. "This place is a maze of corridors, so if we double back, then perhaps our Gungan friends will be able to lead us down another network and get there by another way."

"Good plan," nodded Kit. He stood up and called out to Anakin. "Hey Skywalker! We have a plan, but we need someone to stay behind with the clones and keep these droids occupied."

"Got it!" nodded Anakin. "You reckon you can handle it, Snips?"

Ahsoka smirked and nodded. "Not to worry, Master. These droids are cake. There's just a lot of them, that's all."

"Alright," nodded Anakin. "Then stay here and deal with them. I know you can do it." He stepped back and dashed back down the corridor and, as he did, Ahsoka stepped into the centre of the tunnel and moved in a flurry of motion, her blade zigzagging across the space in an intricate whirl of green as she caught the red lasers of the droids and turned them aside, swiping them back the way they had come to join the blue lasers of the clones.

"Alright then," said Kit. "Let's go. Lead the way, General."

"Yousa can besa relyin' on mesa," Tarpals nodded and got off, vaulting over a boulder and setting off back the way they'd come rounding a corridor with three Jedi, two Tamers and Jar Jar hot on his heels.

"May the Force be with you," murmured Ahsoka. Then she cried, "Come on, boys. Tinnies are no match for us, no matter what form they possess."

The clones roared in agreement and upped the ante, squeezing their triggers harder and unleashing a storm at the oncoming Aqua droids. While Aqua Droids would have been more difficult adversaries underwater, here they were about as surefooted and lithe as an ordinary battle droid – not at all. They continued to fire blindly at the Togruta Padawan stationed out in front, seemingly unable to comprehend why they were failing to kill her.

As Ahsoka turned her blade to deflect three lasers all at once, she finally judged that they had gotten close enough. She leapt up and diagonally, the droid's heads swivelling as they followed her progress. They watched her spring off the wall, flip through the air and kick off _from the ceiling_ and shoot towards them. Ahsoka slashed the first droid in half where it stood, kicking one half into the droid next to it and blasting the other half down the corridor with the Force. The narrow space caused a domino effect that knocked several droids over as they were smacked into by the one in front, but they began to clamber to their feet all the same.

But Ahsoka wasn't about to give them the chance to attack and she quickly dashed forwards, cleaving her blade through the fallen as they attempted to rise. She pushed over another droid with her foot and brought it to a swift end with a stab to its chest on the floor, then rolled aside to avoid the shots of another and with a deft swing of her blade she sliced off its long arm rifle, grabbed it and jammed it into its face with the sharp end created when she slice through it. It plunged through the head of the droid and came out the other side. Ahsoka withdrew it as the droid collapsed.

Holding her lightsaber in one hand and the shorn-off metal rifle in the other, Ahsoka decided now would be a good time to practice the Jar'kai – the use of two blades at once – that Aayla had been so kind to teach her, as she sprang forward once more.

* * *

As the battle against the Aqua droids was raging and the others were discussing what to do, there was more activity back further in the labyrinth. "Sir! Sir!" the first of the two Quarren guards yelled as they ran up to where their leader, who was indeed the former Senator that went by the name Tikkes, was standing. "Sir, we bring grave news."

Tikkes turned about. The Quarren Isolation League's leader looked just about the same as almost every other Quarren that lived and breathed. The only difference was the clothing he wore – while most Quarren were garbed in an orange robe that stretched from his shoulders to his ankles, and he had a red cloak around his shoulder that looked completely out of place in search a dark and dank area as these tunnels. Yet Tikkes seemed to insist on wearing them.

"Yes, what is it?" the Quarren leader asked, sharply.

"We've got trouble," said one of the guards. "The Jedi are in the tunnels and they've found us. The Aqua Droids are engaging them as we speak but... well, it's the A-Team, sir. How are we going to proceed? Surely the Aqua Droids can't hold them back for long."

"The A-Team are in the tunnels?" Tikkes asked, astonished. "How did they know we were down here?"

"We don't know sir," said the first. "We just saw them come around the corridor towards us and we retreated immediately. There was no way we could have stood up to all of them for longer than a fraction of a second."

"I am aware of that," said Tikkes. "But this... this is excellent!"

"It is?" frowned one of the other nearby Quarren, bemused. "How? They could ruin everything, sir."

"I'd like to see them try," Tikkes chuckled. "Is the bomb ready now?"

"Yes, sir," nodded another Quarren. "It's primed and waiting for us to begin the countdown sequence."

"Good," nodded Tikkes. "Set the timer to the shortest amount of time possible, but be sure that time is enough for all of us to escape from the tunnels. We do _not_ want to be caught in the blast when that thing goes off. Then, we shall retreat back into the water and flee as fast as we can."

"But sir," said one of the Quarren. "Surely, the Jedi will just deactivate the bomb and come after us. I've heard that that Anakin Skywalker is a master with mechanical devices. He'll be able to shut it down with no trouble."

"Ah, but he won't," Tikkes said smugly. "Because we are not going to let him near that bomb. We're going to set our little surprise on them. That's keep them on the defence long enough for the countdown to reach zero, and when it does... no more Jedi. And imagine the rewards we will all get for this. Yes, this is excellent."

"Great plan, sir," cried another Quarren.

"Of course it is," Tikkes gurgled, his tentacles flapping as he attempted a scoff. "I thought of it, after all. Hurry, set the bomb and let us go."

The nearest Quarren turned around and began to fiddle with some controls.

* * *

Tarpals rushed down the tunnels, dodging through the corridors and leaping around the rocks that littered the place as they quickly searched out the bomb which they all knew lay in here somewhere. Two blue and one green lightsabers illuminated the way as the three Jedi dashed after him, grim expressions on all their faces – even Kit's now that they knew what they were up against. There was no joking on the Nautolan's face now. There was no joking on anybody's. Jar Jar was shepherding the Tamers along at the back and running after them. He seemed to be doing better at running than usual – it seemed he worked much better under pressure.

Tarpals glanced over his shoulder after a moment and shouted, "Mesa hearin' someting from uppahead. Mesa tink it be de Quarren."

"Lead on then," said Kit. "And quickly."

Tarpals needed no second bidding as he charged through the corridors, following the sounds that his large ears had picked up.

It didn't take long for them to come across something. As Tarpals rounded another corner, he pulled to a halt so fast that the three Jedi nearly crashed into him from behind, and Jar Jar certainly would have crashed into the back of the Jedi had Anakin not anticipated this and thrown out on hand to halt Jar Jar with the Force before that could happen.

"Hello Tikkes," said Kit to the Quarren former Senator at the other end of the corridor, flanked by several guards. "I've been looking for you for some time now."

The Quarren guards lowered the blasters in the direction the Jedi, determined to protect their leader to the end. But the robed amphibious creature simply raised a hand dismissively, indicating to his troops that they need to stand down. And stand down they did, lowering their weapons but still keeping a grasp on them, just in case.

"Yousa da Boss-man in charge of alla de garbareeno in oursa lake," Tarpals growled as he faced the Senator, holding out his electropole. "Yousa gonna be mui, mui sorry you camen here."

"I don't think so," Tikkes laughed. "I think you are the ones who will be sorry that we came here. It won't be long now before the entire city is blown to smithereens by my..."

"We know about your bomb, Separatist," Anakin growled distastefully. "Why don't you save yourself the trouble and tell us where it is?"

He was clearly not expecting such a quick response, because he blinked in surprise as Tikkes pointed off to the tunnel on his left and Anakin's right. "It's that way, Jedi. Good luck deactivating it. You will certainly need it." He cackled and then ran off down the opposite tunnel to the one he had just pointed at.

"Hesa could besa lyin'," said Jar Jar. "Howsa we supposed to be knowin' if hesa was tellin' de troot."

"He was," Aayla said, frowning in bemusement. "I sensed that he was telling the truth. But I also sensed a certain malevolence in that. There's some sort of trap around where that bomb is. I can feel it."

"Me too," said Anakin. "But we're going to have to spring it. There's no other choice. Let's go, quickly."

"Hold on," Kit said. "Do you two think you can take out that bomb by yourselves?"

"Sure," nodded Anakin. "We'll be in and out, with no problem."

"Good," said Kit. "Because we cannot let Tikkes get away. I'm going to follow him. He must not get off-world if we can help it."

"Oh, mesa come wid yousa," Jar Jar declared to the Jedi Master. "Mesa wanna help."

"Fine," Kit nodded, knowing there really wasn't time to argue and having Jar Jar anywhere near a bomb might be a bad idea anyway. "See you soon." He and Jar Jar ran over to the tunnel Tikkes had taken and dashed after the retreating Quarren. Anakin and Aayla glanced at each other, nodded with determination and followed Tarpals down the other tunnel, the two Tamers bringing up the rear.

* * *

And I'll end it there. Wow, I'm doing quite well at sticking to my schedule – the last two chapters were on time. If I don't get my next chapter up by Friday, send me a loud PM asking me where the hell I am. Because, I'm sure you all want to know how the final chapter of this Star Wars arc will play out. It'll be something special, I hope.

* * *

Next time...

Several things are happening at once now. Ahsoka takes on the droids. Kit and Jar Jar pursue the fleeing Tikkes. The Digimon continue their all-out brawl against Parallelmon. And the others run straight into Tikkes' trap. But, when they do, there's a surprise in store for Anakin.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 89 : Race Against Time**


	89. Race Against Time

Hello everybody. The thrilling (hopefully) climax of the Naboo Arc is here, except for the upcoming Impmon chapter. Now, let's see just how the three groups are going to deal with their various problems. Enjoy the ride. It will be a bumpy one, but each one will have a surprise in it.

Read on, people.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 89:- Race Against Time**

* * *

If Parallelmon wasn't so stubborn, he would probably have realised that his fight against these three was a lost cause quite some time ago. But he was naturally a completely bull-headed individual who believed his powers could match anything thrown against him, making him almost a typical eternally angry villain, and also similar to a large number of overblown heroes. Not even the fact that these three had beaten him before made him think otherwise, because he had been holding back then and they had been more powerful too because all three had been at the Mega stage.

While he was dealing out a lot of damage in return, it was obvious that _he_ was the one taking the most of it. His face-mask was almost gone, his armour had numerous rents and tears in it and he was sporting enormous unhealthy looking bruises on his already-unhealthy-looking flesh. His adversaries were not undamaged either – Sakuyamon had claw rents in her chest armour and a large gash down one leg, Antylamon had huge char marks on her arms and torso from his fire attack and Rapidmon also had large rents in his armour is certain places.

But neither side was backing down and Parallelmon did not retreat from anything!

Except Sovereigns.

But they weren't Sovereigns.

The badly-damaged Mega dodged aside as the tree Antylamon was wielding like an enormous sword in one hand smashed into the ground next to him. Antylamon bounded over, raising the tree again and spinning around to deliver a low sweep at her opponent. Parallelmon hurriedly jumped up again, but Antylamon had been anticipating this and followed him with her swing, snaring Parallelmon in the branches of the tree. Growling, she heaved the tree above her head and brought it slamming into the ground in an attempt to crush the caught Virus.

Only a hurried dimension jump saved Parallelmon from the unpleasant fate. As the tree splintered at the brutal impact, Parallelmon reappeared above and quickly obliterated the tree with another blast of fire from one of his portals. Antylamon leapt back as the tree burst into flames. She glanced around at the surrounding forest and grimaced, knowing that it would be all too easy to set the whole place ablaze.

But there was no reason she couldn't use this to her advantage too.

Grimacing, she grabbed a section of the trunk that was still devoid of fire and hauled the tree into the air again, wincing, but ignoring the searing heat. Parallelmon's eye widened in disbelief as the Ultimate swung the fiery weapon at him again. He made to back away, but he was suddenly slammed in the back by Rapidmon and knocked right into the trees path. Once again he was lodged in the tree's branches, but this time, they were ablaze.

"GAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" he roared as the blistering inferno washed over him. "IT BUURRRRNNNNSS!"

"Of course it does," Rapidmon crowed. "It's fire. And this a Fire of the Rapid variety!" He fired his missiles at the screaming Mega and they quickly found their mark, flinging him out of the blazing foliage and cracking his chest armour. Parallelmon vanished before he could collide with another tree. As Antylamon dropped the tree and morphed her hands into axes to use them as shovels to cover it in earth and put out the blaze, Parallelmon appeared again nearby.

He was still on fire, but that quickly changed as he opened another portal right above him, which caused water to deluge out and wash over him, extinguishing the flames with a hiss of steam. He sighed in relief at the cool flow.

But suddenly he squawked in surprise as the water began to cover him, rising from the ground to cover his feet, then his legs, then his torso. The perpetrator, Sakuyamon, smirked – in the cloud of steam she had constructed a Talisman Sphere around Parallelmon with the top open to allow the water in and the sphere was filling up like a fishbowl. Suddenly Parallelmon was underwater and he thrashed about in panic, particularly when the top of the sphere was closed off.

Before Parallelmon remembered that he would be able to escape if he simply dimension-jumped again, Sakuyamon opened two the four tubes on her belt and unleashed two of the fox spirits within – the water and the electric spirit. The water spirit whooshed forward first, phasing through the Sphere and whipping up whirlpool-like suction inside the Sphere that sent the Mega spinning in all directions, slamming into the walls of the Sphere and knocking what little air he already had out of him.

Then the electric spirit entered the watery prison and unleashed a full charge inside it with all the power of a lightning bolt. Parallelmon, who had no breathe left for screaming, convulsed and shook wildly as the electricity wracked him to the core, his mouth open in a silent scream and letting the raging water rush in.

Only then did he remember how to escape and vanished once more. Sakuyamon dropped her Sphere and recalled her spirits, the water within gushing all over the floor.

Parallelmon reappeared again some distance away, coughing and hacking as he tried to get the water out of his throat. "You..." he croaked, pointing at Sakuyamon with what used to be a claw, but had been the one she snapped off before. "I'll get you... back for that!"

"Will you be able to though?" said a voice and suddenly Parallelmon was slammed into by something moving so fast it was invisible and knocked for a loop... or he would have been if something hadn't slammed into him from the other side almost instantaneously and knocked him back, and again, and again. Rapidmon was doubling back on himself and striking so fast he was almost in danger of overtaking himself. Parallelmon was buffeted from all sides and span in circles with the blows, his breath being knocked out of him once again.

Rapidmon's barrage ended with a solid kick to the abdomen that flung Parallelmon back into a tree and was followed up by Miracle Missile blasts. Parallelmon managed to regain enough sense to leap out existence before the missiles struck, causing them to explode against the base of the tree hard enough to snap through the trunk. As the tree began to plummet, Rapidmon whizzed out the way. Parallelmon, on the other hand, appeared in exactly the wrong place, right in the path of the falling redwood-sized tree.

"Ack!" Parallelmon cried again, vanishing just before he could get smashed into the ground once more.

Rapidmon sniggered at him when he reappeared some distance away and the tree crashed harmlessly into the ground. "You're getting sloppy, Parallelmon," he said. "Usually you appear in just the place you need to be. Not watching where you're going, are you?"

Parallelmon's eye narrowed as he glared at the hated Ultimate. All words had escaped him now. He could think of no retort to what Rapidmon had just said and he was too angry to think straight now. His mind now only thinking about killing them, he charged for Rapidmon again, his claws poised to strike at the bunny cyborg.

Once again, Sakuyamon landed before him, holding her staff ready to protect her teammate, but Parallelmon wasn't about to be hindered this time. Roaring angrily, he shocked Sakuyamon by slamming her staff aside with the back of his hand, throwing her off balance, then seizing her by the ankle and literally tossing her aside as he continued his headlong charge towards Rapidmon. Rapidmon was equally shocked and seized up, allowing Parallelmon to bull straight into him, slamming the top of his head into Rapidmon's abdomen.

Rapidmon shot backwards as if fired from a cannon and slammed painfully into another tree. Parallelmon was on him in an instant, grabbing him and throwing the stunned Ultimate to the floor, where he slammed a foot down on the small of Rapidmon's back. Rapidmon yelped in pain, but that turned into a scream of agony as Parallelmon seized one of his arms and began pulling, determined to wrench it out of its socket.

Antylamon gasped as she saw her brother's plight and dashed towards the pair, eyes steely and preparing her axes for combat. Parallelmon saw her coming and growled. Reluctantly, he relinquished his grip on Rapidmon's arm, causing the cyborg to slump in relief, but then he was grabbed by both huge ears and tossed into the air, towards Antylamon. Parallelmon dimension-jumped, reappearing next to the tumbling Ultimate, grabbed him by both feet and swung him like a hammer. Antylamon attempted to halt herself but she was slammed in the face by her brother and both went flying backwards, landing in a tumbling heap, with Rapidmon on the bottom.

Antylamon grunted, but quickly rolled aside as Parallelmon powered towards her face. She grabbed Rapidmon as she leapt upwards, so Parallelmon missed them both and ploughed into the ground. Not remotely bothered by this, Parallelmon sprang up again and charged once more. Antylamon flung a Bunny Blade of pink energy at him, but Parallelmon slewed to one side and let it fly past and kept up the pace.

Rapidmon, his head now clear, broke out of Antylamon's grip and charged in to intercept, using his mass speed to knock Parallelmon off course. Parallelmon swiped at him angrily, but this time Rapidmon dodged with ease and unleashed a quick Tri Beam, blasting Parallelmon further backwards. Parallelmon grunted as he broke free of the attack and prepared to charge once more, only to find Sakuyamon shooting up from above, flanked by all four spirits. Parallelmon changed his course and powered down towards her instead. The fox spirits overtook their owner and charged at Parallelmon, but Parallelmon dimension-jumped straight past them instead and crashed into Sakuyamon, tossing her downwards again. Both slammed into the ground pretty hard.

Sakuyamon struggled to her feet, using her staff like a pole to lever herself up. She almost lost her footing when Parallelmon snatched the pole from her and used it himself, swinging it at her. Sakuyamon ducked underneath it and then dodged the following blow. She caught the next one, resulting in her palms stinging and she tried to wrench it out of Parallelmon's grip. Parallelmon clung on... until the fox spirits hit him in the back and he screamed in anguish. Sakuyamon pulled her staff free, but Parallelmon was still able to get in a backhand that clouted her across the face and sent her stumbling backwards. She was caught by Rapidmon, who appeared behind her as if by magic to steady her.

As the fox spirits relinquished their attack, Parallelmon heard Antylamon rushing in for the attack behind him. Dodging a swing from an axe, the Mutant Mega dimension-jumped and rammed Antylamon in the side, knocking her to the ground and almost on top of the other two.

"Ouch," Antylamon gritted her teeth as she heaved herself up again. "Where did this sudden surge of strength come from?" She hurriedly rolled to avoid another strike.

"I'm not sure," said Sakuyamon, leaping into the air with Rapidmon to dodge Parallelmon's next attack. "Perhaps we became slightly complacent what with how well we were doing."

"Or he's on his last legs," said Rapidmon. "And these are last-minute desperation moves. I've heard that when you're put under intense pressure like he is now, or the odds are really stacked against you, you can call on strength you never knew you had."

"I'd say it's a mixture of both," said Antylamon, swinging an axe to force Parallelmon to turn aside as he charged her again. "The second might explain how he's lasted this long. He must _really _want to kill us."

"Well," Sakuyamon declared, raising her staff again. "What do you say we show him some of _our_ hidden strength."

"I like the sound of that," grinned Rapidmon. "Let's take him together."

"Agreed," nodded Antylamon, brandishing her axes. "Let's go!" She initiated the charge this time, sweeping towards Parallelmon with her axes ready, while Sakuyamon released the Spirit Strike to come in from the opposite direction to catch Parallelmon between the two attacks. Leering as he saw them closing in on either side, Parallelmon jumped so that he reappeared behind Antylamon just before the attacks collided, causing the fox spirits to surge towards the bunny instead...

...but the spirits had learned their lesson from the last time he'd tried that. They separated, two flying outwards and sweeping around either side of Antylamon, before regrouping and charging Parallelmon again. At the same time, Antylamon whirled around and launched and Arm Bomber so it flew along in their wake. Parallelmon blinked in surprise, but then he was struck by the spirits once more and bellowed as the pain lanced through him, only to be struck by the balls of concussive shockwaves and tossed backwards like a bowling pin.

He was immediately struck behind by Sakuyamon and Rapidmon, as the two of them gave him a double blow – a cannon to the back of the head and a staff into the small of the back. Parallelmon lurched forwards from both blows and Rapidmon shot off a Rapid Fire right after him, catapulting him into the air again. Sakuyamon took off in hot pursuit and launched an Amethyst Wind at his back, tearing the rest of Parallelmon's damaged armour to shreds with the shards of purple crystal. Parallelmon howled... and then howled again when Antylamon slammed into him with a headbutt of her own, throwing him down again.

Parallelmon dimension-jumped while still in the air and reappeared on a branch, pausing slightly for breath. He didn't get the chance, because Rapidmon whooshed in and grabbed _him_ by the ankle, sandwiching it between both cannons and dragging him off the branch. The Ultimate began to spin in the air, dragging Parallelmon round and round and round in a terrific whirlwind before releasing him and sending him flying between Sakuyamon and Antylamon, who hit him with two Bunny Blades and the Twin Blades of Beauty and Truth – effectively making four pink energy blades – as he past.

Parallelmon slammed into the floor again. Rapidmon joined the others and the three of them stared at him expectantly. To their astonishment, he began to lever himself up again, but they were relieved when they saw how much effort it required. Parallelmon could barely stand now. He was almost out of the game.

"Shall we end this?" asked Sakuyamon.

"Yep," said Rapidmon. "But I am taking a loooong nap after this. And a bath."

The three of them dashed forwards again to instigate the final blow.

* * *

"Is wesa catchin' up to dem?" asked Jar Jar as he doggedly followed Kit Fisto through the tunnels that they ran through. To his credit, the Gungan had only tripped and fallen flat on his face three times so far, and he had quickly sprang up to his feet once more afterwards, looking none the worse for wear and chasing after the Nautolan once more, his long, gangly legs enabling him to keep pace due to his long, loping strides.

"Yes," Kit said, not breaking his speed for an instant. "Hurry. We must not allow Tikkes to escape."

Jar Jar shook his head as he ran, causing him to almost trip over again. "Nosa. Hesa must be broughten to justice for what hesa been doing to usens."

"Agreed," Kit nodded and turned another corner. The Jedi Master was delving into his senses, using the Force and his extremely attuned Jedi senses to tell which direction the Quarren leader and his men had taken as they fled. The corridors ahead seemed to twist and turn in a myriad of different directions, leading Kit to believe that the Quarren were probably trying to throw him off the scent with all the turns they were making. They probably didn't realise that that wouldn't stop him at all.

Soon, his mental senses were not the only things telling him they were gaining – his physical senses worked too. The sound of feet splattering on wet rock was coming from ahead, a clear sign that the Quarren were not far now. Kit grinned and mouthed, "Gotcha," and increased his speed slightly. Jar Jar hurriedly along in an attempt to keep up, but ended up tripping on another rock instead. Wailing as he pitched forwards, he stumbled wildly, flailing his arms to keep him as balanced as possible as he staggered towards Kit.

Fortunately, Kit turned another corner right before Jar Jar could smack into his back, causing the Gungan to go careening right into the wall. He peeled himself off, rubbing his face slightly. "Disa nutsen," he murmured to himself. "Desa accidenties gettin' less and less painful each time. Mesa wonderin' why." Then he started after Kit, once more, realised he was going in the complete wrong direction and whirled around, ears swinging out behind him and followed the Nautolan down the right passage, putting on more speed in an attempt to catch up.

Eventually Kit rounded another corner and he saw exactly what he was looking for. There was something protruding from the ceiling from up ahead – what looked like four metal plates that formed a square at the base and each tapered into a pointed tip. There was a large hole in the ceiling between the four pieces of metal and there was a ladder protruding from this hole. This was the end of the drill that they had been using. It had spiralled its way through the lakebed and into the tunnel, then the cone-shaped device had split into four sections and each section moved aside. This would allow people inside the main body of the drilling machine to descend into the tunnels without the tunnels being flooded by an influx of lake water.

The last of the Quarren were scrambling up the ladder and back into the drill machine as quickly as they could. The last standing in the tunnels clambered onto the base of the ladder and leered at Kit. It was Tikkes himself and he was already looking triumphant.

"I knew that one of you would follow me," he said. "Perfect. That means there are only two Jedi heading for my bomb. Exactly as I hoped."

Ignoring the feeling of foreboding that welled up inside him at this statement, Kit extended his lightsaber and pointed it at Tikkes. "I am afraid that I must ask you to surrender, Tikkes. Your plans have been discovered and you will not be able to escape us. You've done enough evil for one lifetime."

As Jar Jar caught up, the Gungan pointed at Tikkes over Kit's shoulder. "Yousa gonna fail. Gunga City is gonna stay mui, mui strong, and yousa going to jail now."

"I don't think so," Tikkes leered. "I don't particularly think you've thought this through very much, Jedi." He said to Kit, ignoring Jar Jar as if he was no consequence. "Feel free to try and follow me. Enjoy the flood." The ladder he was standing on suddenly was hauled back into the drill and the four metal components moved back together and reformed the wicked looking device, covered in spines with the viciously pointed tip poking into the tunnel.

Kit started forwards, but he was too late. The drill immediately began to pull out of the top of the tunnel. And, as it did so, water began to seep in from the sides, and then gush in, and then, as the drill removed itself completely, it rushed down in a vicious torrent and surged towards the two.

Kit reacted quickly, knowing that, while he may be a water creature, a flood that strong could smash him into a wall so hard it was shatter his bones. Extending his hands and focusing his mind he caught the torrent of water with the Force and held it at a standstill with a colossal effort. He gritted his teeth as he held back the flood, but he was not finished. He needed to pursue Tikkes and quickly. So, he brought one arm backwards and used another Force strike to bust in the ceiling behind him and Jar Jar, causing a huge rockslide that completely blocked off the tunnel behind them.

"What yousa doing?" Jar Jar asked in alarm, stepping back from the new wall behind him. Kit brought his arm back and did the same with the ceiling on the other side of the hole Tikkes had escaped through, sealing them away in their own small room.

"We need to hurry, before he can get too far," said Kit. "Remember – stay behind me. He may have a few more surprises in store for us."

"Uh, okeeday," said Jar Jar. Kit, grunting with exertion, released his grip on the water slightly and allowed it to flow over the two of them until their little section of tunnel was filled with water, submerging both. Thankfully, the newly formed rock walls held firm and stopped the water from gushing out into the rest of the tunnel network. Kit nodded in appreciation and, activating his lightsaber, he put on a spurt of speed and shot through the water, veering up and ascending through the circular tunnel created by the drill at high speed. Jar Jar followed quickly, holding his blaster ready, just in case.

Kit burst out of the tunnel and back into the lake. He was some distance from Gunga City, but was still not that far off. He could see the giant drill machine – what was effectively a submarine with the drill at the nose end – heading towards the surface, flanked by two Manta Droid Subfighters.

But, before he could pursue, he was immediately bombarded by a flurry of laser fire of what remained of the Quarren Isolation League in the water. Swiftly blocking their fire by going on the defensive with his blade, Kit growled in frustration as he watched his elusive target get further and further away. Tikkes was slipping through his fingers and all Kit could do was watch as he defended himself.

* * *

While Kit and Jar Jar attempted to apprehend the troublesome Quarren Separatist, the slightly larger group of Aayla, Anakin, Tarpals and the two Tamers were rushing down another corridor nearby, but going in the opposite direction. Their progress was slightly slower because, much to their irritation, they had to keep pausing at each corner so that the two Jedi could stretch out with their feelings to determine which direction they should be heading next – after all, they were not searching for life-forms, which gave off more Force energy than inanimate objects like a bomb.

At the fifth corner, they paused once more, and Anakin and Aayla shut their eyes and concentrated. It only took about five seconds, but it was still five agonisingly slow seconds that they were losing and time was precious when it came to deactivating such a dangerous weapon as a bomb.

Eventually, Aayla pointed down the corridor on their right, the one nearest to where she was standing and said, "This way." Anakin didn't doubt her and they quickly set off again down that corridor.

"Disa takin' too long," complained Tarpals. "Wesa gotta be findin' dat bomb quickfast."

"Would you rather we go the wrong way entirely?" asked Anakin over his shoulder. "Don't worry, we're getting very close now."

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "We can feel it. And it is not a good feeling. I fear we don't have very long at all."

"We never do," Henry muttered under his breath. Only Suzie heard him, but she agreed wholeheartedly.

They paused again at the sixth corner, but this time the pause was only for a couple of seconds. They were so close now that the Force practically pulled both the Jedi down the corridor on the left and they followed it obediently, trusting their instincts as any good Jedi should. They raced down the tunnel, dodging rocks and occasionally slipping on the damp ground, but regaining their balance quickly enough and charging forwards regardless.

"Mesa tinkin' wesa almost below de middle of de city now," said Tarpals.

"Just where I'd put a bomb if needed to plant one," said Anakin.

"Hey look," Suzie cried, pointing up ahead. "I see a flashing light up ahead."

"As do I," Aayla nodded. "That's the bomb alright. Good eye, Suzie."

"We need to hurry," Anakin cried and their speed increased even further, the two Jedi adding the Force to their stride and surging ahead of the other three. Aayla bounded over a large, rounded boulder and Anakin dodged around another. Both skidded to a halt in front of something that was definitely not a natural part of the tunnel. It was a huge, metallic half-orb, clamped to the wall and secured in place with what looked like giant screws. Wires crisscrossed around the edge, connecting various vital portions and heavy plates covered everything else, except for two large keypads that could be used to put data into bomb – like telling it how long to count down for. The flashing light was red in colour and blipped every second on the dot, corresponding with the large timer that could be seen right in the middle.

It read:-

00:00:02:34

A second later it read:-

00:00:02:33

And so on and so on.

"Right, we've only got two and a half minutes," Aayla said, putting all her focus into the task at hand as Tarpals and the Tamers caught up with the other two. "And this is not good."

"What isn't?" asked Henry.

"It's an anti-matter bomb," said Aayla gravely. "And trust me, that is not a good thing. If this thing goes off then not only will Gunga City be totally obliterated – practically disintegrated into nothingness along with all its inhabitants, it will pour radiation out and into the water, and this lake has a tunnel which leads to the sea. Naboo's water systems will be contaminated. Again. This bomb is a threat to the entire planet, not just the city."

"Better and better," Henry griped.

"Well, we don't have time to stand around," Anakin said, as the time hit its two minute mark. "We have to deactivate it!"

"How?" asked Aayla. "I don't know anything about anti-matter bombs. I know how to shut down many minor bombs and even nuclear ones but nothing of this calibre."

"Then it's a good thing I do," Anakin replied. Aayla stepped aside and allowed the Chosen One access to both keypads. Anakin immediately began pushing on various buttons, his hands flying over the controls as if they had a mind of their own. "It's a little complex," he said through gritted teeth. "But I should be able to shut it down with well over a minute to spare. Give me twenty seconds."

Aayla smiled and shook her head. "What would we do without you, Anakin?" she said.

"Does that mean we'll be alright?" asked Suzie. "It's over? We've won?"

"Mesa certainly hope so, kiddie," said Tarpals. "De city is gonna be okeeday after all. He banged his electropole on the ground and grinned. "Wesa would have been toast if yousa had not been here."

Suddenly, both Aayla and Anakin's senses flared warnings and their lightsabers were in their hands and activated almost completely unbidden. And not a moment too soon, because the large, rounded boulders that were on either side of the tunnel around them were moving, rearing up onto three legs, earth falling to the ground around them as they shrugged off their disguises with clicking sounds. Red photoreceptors flashed in the darkness and repeating blasters on their arms primed. There were six of them, three on either side of the tunnel and without a word they raised their deflector shields and opened fire.

"Droidekas!" yelled Henry in alarm, preparing to pull Suzie behind another rock, but later finding there was no need because of the frenzy of motion the Jedi went into. Aayla faced one way and Anakin the other and their blades flashed through the air at amazing speed as they deflected the bolts of the destroyer droids. And they were deflecting _ALL_ of the blaster fire that came their way!

Aayla grunted at the physical exertion of blocking every blaster bolt of three droidekas at once. "What do we do now?" she shouted.

"I don't know!" Anakin shouted over the noise over his and Aayla's blades moving so fast they resembled blue circles.

"Why are you blocking them all?" asked Suzie.

"If even one of those blaster bolts hit that bomb then it'll blow immediately!" Aayla cried. "We can't afford to let a single one past!"

"But if we don't deactivate that bomb then it will blow anyway?" Anakin growled in frustration, "which I can't do without turning around and exposing my back and dropping my guard, which would kill me and then leave the bomb wide open. We're stuck!"

Henry glanced at the timer, which now read:- 00:00:01:40.

"But we're running out of time!" he shouted.

"We know!" Anakin and Aayla shouted as they continued blocking, the droidekas forcing them to the limit of their deflecting capabilities. Back to the back, the two Jedi held off the droids in a stalemate that could only end with the destruction of both sides when the bomb went off, while Henry, Suzie and Tarpals looked on, powerless to do anything to stop it.

* * *

Unaware of the danger that their friends and Tamers were in due to the distance between the two groups, Sakuyamon, Rapidmon and Antylamon were making their final assault on the mortally wounded Parallelmon. The Mutant Digimon in question was flickering slightly as his Digital Code began to fluctuate, threatening to break up at any moment. Parallelmon was using a large proportion of his willpower to hold himself together, and his teeth were clenched and his eye screwed almost shut with the sheer effort.

Now he understood that he'd been fighting a losing battle. Now he understood that he couldn't win against these three. At least not as he was. He used to be a lot more powerful when he was a problem for the Sovereigns, due to the sheer number of Digimon he had absorbed. But, of course, after escaping from them, he had been forced to de-digivolve to the In-training stage and, in the process, he had lost it all. But, such was his desire for vengeance that he had foolishly sought them out before powering himself up on weaker Digimon again.

Through his clenched eye, he watched as his three most hated enemies – more so than any of the Sovereigns, more so than all the Sovereigns combined actually – drew closer to him with each passing millisecond. Rapidmon and Antylamon had expressions of extreme determination on their faces, and Sakuyamon appeared to mirroring the same under her facemask. If they landed an attack, it would be all over for him and he knew it.

So, he resolved to retreat instead. He _would _kill them one day, but this time he would be more level-headed. He would power himself up once more after he recovered again. He would not allow himself to be beaten completely. One day, he would return and they would pay for all the harm they had caused him and the humiliation they had put him through. This he vowed.

Growling, Parallelmon dimension-jumped.

Or at least, he tried to.

To his utter horror when he tried to activate the ability that was so second nature to him he could do it without thinking about it (he sometimes even did it in his sleep), nothing happened except a sudden shudder of pain as his data fluctuated even more. He was too weak! He was using so much energy to hold himself together that he had none to spare for dimension-jumping. And if he released that energy, he would die immediately, disintegrating into billions of pieces.

So, effectively, he was doomed. And he knew it.

And there was nothing he could do to change it.

As for the three charging Digimon, they weren't really thinking at all. The only thoughts on their mind were to end Parallelmon's reign of terror and pain once and for all. They didn't care how they did it, all they cared about was that it was done. Which is why, as they went in side-by-side, instinct took over and all three did something that they had no idea they could do.

"Say hello to Anubimon for us," Rapidmon said, as his body seemed to change into something like green crystal.

"And if there's a hell for you, say hello to Ogudomon as well," Antylamon added, as her own body morphed into crystal, this time a rich pink in colour.

"And if there isn't," said Sakuyamon, her own body crystallizing into a yellow form. "Then you won't be able to say hello to anyone. But we'll say goodbye now."

"Goodbye," all three echoed, as their bodies liquefied and morphed into beams of energy in their respective colours which whooshed towards Parallelmon. The energy beams interlaced with one another, whirling in and out and around the others in an intricate lattice, before colliding with one another and forming one beam, this one a bright white colour which took on the shape of a crane.

"**TRINITY BURST!"**

They all yelled out the attack name at the exact same time and the giant, white bird of energy exploded forwards like an angry comet. Parallelmon's eye widened in horror at the onrushing attack, but then closed, accepting that his end was here. And, for once, he was dead right.

The energy bird collided with Parallelmon in an ear-splitting and blinding explosion of white light, brighter than any digivolution, that rocked the entire forest and even caused the lake where Gunga City resided to swell and slosh about, and R2-D2, who was waiting for the others to return on the shore of the lake, squealed in alarm. An enormous outburst of blinding light pulsed outwards in all directions like a giant orb, uprooting nearby trees and flinging them away, until a half of a square mile of forest was completely levelled by the strike.

Gradually, the light died away, to reveal the three energy beams – green, pink and yellow – had split apart again. They took on the shapes of the Digimon once again and the correct colours returned, resulting in Rapidmon, Antylamon and Sakuyamon landed on the forest floor feet-first with three decisive thumps. And the three of them watched as billions of data particles began to float away into the sky.

Parallelmon was finished.

At last, he had been deleted.

"Well, that takes care of that," Rapidmon panted, grinning beneath the face-plate as they watched the data float away.

"Do you think perhaps we overdid it a bit?" asked Antylamon, glancing around at the levelled forest around them and thanking the fact the animals had had the sense to clear the area long ago.

"There is no kill like overkill," stated Rapidmon. "I learnt that rule when playing video games."

"Of course you did," Antylamon rolled her eyes.

"What do you think will happen to him really?" asked Sakuyamon, still watch Parallelmon float away in pieces. "Do you think he will get to Anubimon's realm? After all, we are in another dimension. Does Anubimon hold sway here?"

"Who knows?" Rapidmon shrugged. "But as long as he's not terrorizing anyone, I'm not complaining."

Suddenly, there was a whooshing noise as a swirling vortex opened up in mid-air above them. "What the...?" Antylamon shouted as all three stepped back warily.

"Oh come on!" Rapidmon cried. "Is he not dead yet? How the hell did he survive that last attack?"

"Look," Sakuyamon pointed at the portal. As they stared at it, they noticed it was different to any of Parallelmon's. While his had been purple in colour, this one was pitch-black, darker than the darkest night. And Parallelmon's particles were whooshing into them at high speed. When the last one had vanished, something appeared on the other side of the portal. In some impossible way, it was even darker than the surrounding portal, a pure silhouette that was easily visible. It was a familiar silhouette though, resembling an upright, humanoid jackal with angel-like wings. The only visible part of him were his eyes, which glowed white like a pair of headlights.

Anubimon had come to claim Parallelmon's data in person.

The three victorious Digimon stared at the Lord of the Deleted in disbelief. Somehow, despite the fact they couldn't see anything beyond shadow and glowing eyes, they knew Anubimon was smirking.

"Well done," he said, in his strangely melodious voice. "I particularly liked the part with the fridge."

Then, with a SCHWIP noise, the portal closed, leaving only empty air.

There was a long pause.

...

...

...

...

"What did he just say?" asked Rapidmon.

* * *

Representative Jar Jar Binks poked his head out of the tunnel that lead back into the lake, he had to resist the urge to duck back into it and hide. In front of him, a fire-fight was raging at the bottom of his home-water, with numerous Quarren surrounding the hole and all pointing their blasters at a single being and letting rip. Thankfully it was not him, but his companion, Kit Fisto. The Nautolan, even for a Jedi Master in the water where he belonged, was hard pressed to keep them all at bay, but he was doing the best he could, dodging from left to right weightlessly in the lake-water and flashing his green blade around to pulse the red lasers back into the throng of Quarren.

The Gungan's stalk-eyes looked upwards and he saw the drill machine ascending towards the surface and towards safety, with two big droid-like things along with it, one on each side.

He looked at the blaster in his hand and looked thoroughly downcast. He was helpless in a situation like this. He couldn't do anything to help the Jedi – even if he fired on the Quarren he could probably take out one or two before many noticed him and returned the fire, killing him instantly, and that was not accounting for his poor aim. He sighed, wondering why he had chosen to accompany the Jedi.

It looked like Kit was desperately trying to make his way upwards and towards the retreating drill machine, but he was being hindered by the Quarren army, meaning he only managed to get perhaps a metre or so higher up in the water than he had been previously before being forced to go on a blocking frenzy, dodging to the side or, worse still, forced to go back down. He wasn't making much headway. As he swung round to face him, Jar Jar could see frustration written all over his face.

Jar Jar's eyes narrowed slightly as he cudgelled his brain for anything that he could do. He looked from left to right, searching for an outlet or an object – something, anything – that he could use to his advantage.

As he turned to his left, he jumped in shock when he saw a dead body nearby. It was one of the SCUBA troopers that had been killed in the advance towards the city earlier. There was a perfect hole in his chest, where he had been shot by one of the Quarren and then sunk towards the bottom. Jar Jar recoiled slightly because, despite the fact he had a helmet on, he seemed to staring at him.

But then Jar Jar's gaze was drawn to the SCUBA tank slash propulsion unit on the clones back. And the beginnings of an idea came to him.

As usual, it didn't go quite as planned.

Jar Jar sprang out of the tunnel and made a break for the body, hurriedly pulling his arms, legs and ears through the water to pick up speed. A number of Quarren spotted him and opened fire, but Jar Jar managed to dodge to the side and reach the body of the clone. Lifting it up, the body lighter in water than it would be in air, Jar Jar used the body as a shield from the bolts, muttering a silent apology to the poor clone in question, and began to unhook the propulsion unit from his back.

Once this had been done, he quickly turned it on.

Only, he turned it on to max power.

Jar Jar was jerked upwards as the propulsion unit kicked into high gear and whooshed towards the surface. As so often happened with Jar Jar, his hand somehow managed to get ensnared in the material that normally held the object to the back of the clone and he was dragged along with it, completely out of control. He wailed as he ploughed through the Quarren forces, who dodged aside in alarm to allow him to pass. Jar Jar sailed upwards, in the direction of the fleeing drill-machine and the betraying Quarren former Senator within.

As he blocked the lasers of more Quarren, Kit's grin returned as he watched Jar Jar ascend. "Go get them, Representative Binks," he said.

Tikkes watched through a video monitor as the Gungan shot in their direction. "What is he doing?" he asked allowed. "He cannot possibly stop us on his own."

"It doesn't look like he's in control of his path, sir," said another Quarren. "That thing's dragging him along, see?"

"So it is," chuckled Tikkes. "Well, what do you know, we get a show before the bomb even goes off."

They watched through the window as Jar Jar shot straight past them, rising higher and higher until he cleared the surface of the lake entirely. Tikkes and the other Quarren laughed as Jar Jar disappeared from sight, sailing up into the air as he was dragged by the propulsion unit.

But the unit didn't work in air and it wasn't long before gravity took control. Tikkes blinked when he saw Jar Jar crash back into the lake, the propulsion unit dragging him downwards this time.

And right at them!

"If that propulsion unit hits us, it'll explode!" yelped Tikkes. "Order the Manta Droids to shoot him before he can reach us."

The Quarren he was yelling at obeyed, but he was too slow. The Manta Droids opened fire on Jar Jar, but the Gungan rushed downwards and the blaster bolts passed harmlessly behind him. Jar Jar desperately grabbed at the unit, pulling his hand free not a moment too soon. The unit continued going, whooshing towards the drill. Inside, Tikkes yelled in fear and dashed out of his chair, leaping into a side room and slamming his fist on another button, causing himself to be jettisoned out of the drill-machine, right before the unit hit it and exploded, tearing it to shreds and killing all of the Quarren inside, sending him blasting away.

Tikkes was panicked now. He desperately tried to regain control of himself and strike out towards the surface. He needed to get out of the lake and fast!

He was surprised again when he spotted Jar Jar kicking his way down towards him at high speed. The Gungan collided with the Quarren leader and the two of them grappled with each other, Tikkes trying to force his way past, but Jar Jar valiantly keeping him in place, forcing him back downwards.

"Yousa bombad bully!" Jar Jar yelled in Tikkes' face. "Mesa puttin' a stoppin' to yousa!"

At a whirring sound behind him, the Gungan glanced over his shoulder. Jar Jar paled when he saw the two Manta Droids heading towards him, their blasters primed to take him out. But they didn't get the chance because a moment later the water all around them whipped into a frenzy. A circular current began to form spiralling up from the depths and towards the surface to create an enormous whirlpool. Jar Jar glanced down and grinned as he saw that Kit Fisto had broken free of the Quarren at last and was using the Force to control the water, stirring it into a literal maelstrom. The Manta Droids were sent whirling around with the flow of the enormous whirlpool, until they suddenly slammed into one another with another terrific explosion that put them both out of the action for good.

Kit powered up towards the Quarren leader. Jar Jar shoved off from Tikkes and allowed the Nautolan to get in front and point his green lightsaber at the Quarren's face, the blade hovering between his eyes.

"Senator Tikkes," said Kit. "I reiterate what I said before – you are under arrest."

"You fools!" wailed Tikkes. "You've condemned me to death! The bomb will go off at any second and then... we'll all be doomed. YOU HEAR ME! DOOMED!"

* * *

Tarpals was firing over the shoulders of the two Jedi with the blaster that had been leant to him by one of the clones earlier, in a vain attempt to halt the droidekas in their tracks. But his efforts were completely useless, the blaster bolts were assimilated by the deflector shields surrounding the droids. And the droids were shooting back in turn and weren't letting up for even a second, determined to hold the Jedi back.

Henry and Suzie stood behind Aayla as the Twi'lek furiously swung her blade in spiralling circles determined to hold back the flow of blaster bolts streaming towards them from one end of the corridor, while Anakin did the same on the other side. But while they valiantly held off their opponents, the bomb was still counting down. Henry glanced over at it, staring at the timer.

00:00:01:10

"We've haven't got much time left!" he shouted over the din. "We need to think of something, and fast."

"Come on, Henry," Suzie tugged on her brother's arm frantically. "You're really good with computers. Can't you do something about the bomb?"

"Bombs and computers are different, Suzie," Henry replied. "And this bomb is like nothing I've come up against before. I don't have the first clue where to start, and if I make a mistake I'll blow us all up."

"If you do nothing, we'll all blow up anyway!" Suzie wailed as the timer hit the minute mark. They only had sixty seconds left before they, along with everything else in the tunnels and the city above would be blown to smithereens. No, less than smithereens – they would probably be completely vaporised.

Henry gritted his teeth. "I can't Suzie," he said. He stepped over to the keyboards, ignoring the flashing of blue blades on either side of him as the Jedi continued their desperate shield wall. "I don't have the first clue what any of this stuff means."

"If only I besa bringin' mui deflector shield," Tarpals hissed, referring to the literal shield that Gungans could hold in front of them to deflect blaster bolts. "Den disa wouldno besa happenin'."

Anakin growled as he kept up his swordplay, but both he and Aayla were beginning to tire already. They were both strong and had lots of endurance, but the sheer amount of effort required to maintain this much blocking of this much enemy fire was phenomenal and was taking its toll on both of them. But they kept going diligently, despite the hopelessness of the situation. If even one blaster bolt hit that bomb while it was primed, then it wouldn't need to reach zero.

Anakin found himself wishing, not for the first time, that he had what Aayla had – a connection to the minds of the Tamers and the Digimon. Suzie had been right – Henry was good with computers, but he lacked the knowledge of what to do with the bomb. If Anakin could tell the young boy what to do, Henry might be able to pull it off. But with only forty-five seconds to spare, any explanation by mouth would take too long. It would have taken too long even with the two minutes they had previously.

Sure that he was going to die soon, a small part of Anakin's mind that wasn't completely focused on holding off the droidekas began to think about his friends, and how they had changed him since he had met them. While Aayla had been a good friend in his Padawan days, she had been a bit distant, as most Jedi should be to prevent from forming attachments. He had been a bit distant with her in response. But since she had met the Digimon, Aayla had become much more forward and friendly; cracking jokes, laughing along with them and even pulling them into hugs on occasion. The Digimon were like that too, constantly having fun and being friends and opening themselves up to him. And he had found himself doing the same to them

Because of Aayla, the Tamers and the Digimon, Anakin knew he was a better person than before. Because of how he distanced himself from others, he had remained slightly aloof and in many cases, quite arrogant. That had all but disappeared now thanks to the Digimon. His bond with Ahsoka had grown due to them as well until they were practically flesh and blood. And he would admit that he had some darker tendencies, but the Digimon had cured him of them too, making him more level-headed. And Aayla had saved his life in the fight against General Grievous.

They were his best friends.

No... scratch that. He may have lost his mother to Tusken Raiders, and that still made his blood boil, but he had a new family now. The Super Seven and Ahsoka were more than his friends. They were his family.

With forty seconds left on the clock, Anakin's expression hardened and he did something which Aayla had described to him recently. Gathering all the information needed for disarming the bomb into something like a bubble in his mind, he reached out and mentally threw the bubble at Henry.

And he succeeded. At last, Anakin broke through the final barrier. Henry's eyes widened as he picked up the information and felt a new mind entering his own. Suzie and Aayla both had similar reactions at the feeling of Anakin's sudden presence joining their mental link network. But Henry didn't pause for a second and his hands flew to the keyboards. With the knowledge of what he needed to do running through his brain, Henry's fingers flew over the buttons; hitting switches, flipping dials and mashing buttons as if his life depended on it, which it did.

Henry worked in a frenzy of motion, his hands moving so fast they were almost blurred. He truly was skilled with computers, and now that he knew what he had to do, everything else was cake. Henry hit the final dial and glanced up at the timer, which had seventeen seconds remaining. Grinning, Henry reached up and yanked one of the wires out of the socket it was plugged into. Instantly, the timer shut off. The bomb was deactivated, with fifteen seconds to spare.

Suzie frowned. "I thought bombs only stop with one second left?" she said. "Isn't that how it's supposed to work?"

"Only in movies, Suzie," Henry sighed, flopping onto the floor at the intense effort, which, despite being only hand movements, had managed to wear him out since it was so fast. "Only in movies."

"Big brother saved the day!" Suzie cried, grabbing Henry's waist in one of her patented bear-hugs that almost cracked Henry's ribs.

_No,_ Aayla said with her mind, as she laughed out loud with relief that they were all still alive. _Henry and Anakin saved the day._

_Yes. Yes we did, didn't we?_ Anakin replied, a grin pasted over his features despite the fact he was still blocking droidekas, revelling in his newfound mental communication. _Fantastic work, Henry. You're an expert with machines. We couldn't have done it without you._

_And I couldn't have done it without you,_ Henry grinned back. Anakin's grin widened even further when he received a reply. _But we can talk later. We still have six destroyer droids to deal with._

_Not for much longer we won't,_ Anakin laughed. "Take cover!" he added, so that Tarpals could hear him. "Let's trash them, Aayla!"

"I hear you!" Aayla cried in response. As Henry, Suzie and Tarpals crouched behind a boulder, Aayla and Anakin made their attack. The bomb was useless now, even if a blaster bolt did hit it, so they were now able to let some past as they charged towards the droids that had almost been the end of them, lightsabers ready.

* * *

"I particularly liked the part with the fridge?" Rapidmon asked, incredulously. "What kind of thing to say is that? It's a bit anti-climatic if you ask me."

"You do realise something else, right?" Antylamon queried. "If he particularly liked that part, that implies that he was somehow, inexplicably, watching our battle the entire time. And we didn't even know it."

"You never do," the Renamon half of Sakuyamon said. "Anubimon is a silent observer most of the time, but he can look into the land of the living and watch us as we go about our lives. However, he usually does that when death is near. He must have known we would succeed and kill Parallelmon... somehow."

"It is slightly creepy," said Rika. "But I suppose he is the Lord of the Dead so that's only to be expected."

"He maybe Lord of the Dead, but we know he's a good guy," said Rapidmon. "Though I hope it stays that way. I shudder to think what would happen if Anubimon turned evil."

"But..." Rika went on. "If he was here then... perhaps we can ask him for a lift home."

"How?" asked Antylamon. "He only appears when someone gets deleted. The only way for us to contact him now would be for one of us to commit suicide. And we were all too stunned to ask him then before he vanished."

"Well... oh, never mind," Rika said. "I suppose we wouldn't want to leave this universe until we help the others win this war anyway."

"Not a chance," Rapidmon said firmly. "But, on another note, how the hell did we do what we just did. I didn't know that the three could use the Trinity Burst. The last and only time we used it was with WarGrowlmon, instead of Antylamon, and Sakuyamon was at a lower level. Plus, it wasn't quite as powerful as what we just pulled."

"Well, I'm not that surprised really," said Sakuyamon. "After all, the bonds between us are strong, just like our friendship with Guilmon was and is. We all simply pooled our power into that one attack. It was stronger because... well, we are a lot stronger than we were back then."

"True," nodded Rapidmon. "In hindsight, we should probably have used that attack more than once. It might have been useful against the D-Reaper."

Sakuyamon shrugged. "Probably. Come on. Let's head for the lake. We can de-digivolve and hide in the gunships, away from prying Gungan eyes."

The three Digimon departed together, leaving behind a scene of such utter destruction that nobody from Naboo would have a clue what caused it when they finally stumbled upon it.

* * *

"DOOMED! DOOMED!" wailed Tikkes, covering his eyes with his hands, cringing and waiting for the inevitable explosion from below and the pain-filled death caused by the radiation of his anti-matter bomb.

He was still cringing a minute or so later. When he realised this fact, he peeked out from between his fingers and glanced down at the still very much intact city below. "Um..." he said. "Shouldn't that have been destroyed and all of us forced to endure a grisly demise by now?"

Kit grinned at the bemused Tikkes, then grabbed him firmly by the shoulder to keep him from trying to swim away. "Well, it seems to me that our comrades succeeded in disarming your little toy."

"Impossible!" Tikkes yelled. "I took all precautions!"

"Dat is being nuttin' to Ani and Aayla," said Jar Jar confidently, grinning happily. "De Hero and de Heroine With No Fear besa savin' our city. Disa besa de greatest day of mui life!"

Kit chuckled at the delighted Gungan. "We have accomplished a great thing today, Representative Binks. That's yet another member of the Separatist Council that we can add to the little collection we have in the cells of the Jedi Temple. And if it hadn't been for you, he would have gotten clean away."

Jar Jar flushed and waved a hand dismissively. "Itsa no problem," he said, slightly embarrassed.

"Well," said Kit. "I'll tell you this for nothing, Jar Jar. You may seem like a very clumsy and goofy Gungan for the majority of the time, but you know what? I'm glad you're on our side."

Jar Jar chuckled in embarrassment, rubbing the back of his head. "Aaaww, yousa just be saying that."

"Nope," Kit grinned. "After all, a Jedi's word is his bond. Now come on, let's head back to the city. I'm sure that Boss Lyonie will want to meet with the Quarren leader responsible for the attack on his city," Tikkes paled as Kit said this but offered no resistance, knowing he was caught. "And of course, I'll mention to him the part you played in his capture."

Forcing the reluctant Quarren ahead of them, the Nautolan and the Gungan dived back into the depths.

* * *

Now that they weren't forced to block all the shots of the droidekas, they were taken out pretty swiftly. Aayla sprang over their assault and flipped over them. She deactivated her lightsaber and reactivated it inside the shield of the middle one, slicing it in two, before using a Force push to smash another into the wall, and then another to send the other rolling further into the tunnel, where it was quickly dealt with by a jab from Tarpals' electropole. Anakin adopted a slightly different strategy, dodging their bolts and sending all three rolling backwards with a massive Force burst, and then using his powers to collapse the ceiling in on them.

"Huzzah," Tarpals cried, thrusting his pole in the air, triumphantly. "De city is safe now."

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "Yeah, it is. And it's thanks to Henry and Suzie here."

"Me?" asked Suzie. "What did I do?"

"You went spying for us," smiled Aayla, strolling over to them. "If you hadn't done that we probably wouldn't have found out about the bomb in time to stop it. And since Henry shut off the bomb, that means you both played a key part. You should both be very proud of yourselves, and each other."

"Well, I am," said Henry. "Very proud indeed."

"Come on," said Anakin. "Let's regroup with Ahsoka and the clones." The others nodded, and as they started off, everyone except Tarpals heard Anakin say, _She probably won't be very happy when she learns I have this connection now._

Aayla chuckled. _You're probably right,_ she said. _But I'm sure she'll get there eventually. But for now, maybe I officially be the first to say:- Welcome to the ranks of the Super Seven, Anakin._

_Thanks, Aayla,_ Anakin grinned, his self-esteem peaking as he revelled in his new bond with his best friends.

_Technically there are eight of us now,_ said Henry. _So Terriermon will have to come up with a new alliterative name for us._

_I reckon I know what that'll be,_ Aayla chuckled.

_And what would your guess be?_ Henry inquired.

_Anakin,_ Aayla said. _Thanks to you, we are now officially the Epic Eight._

Anakin snorted, but felt ecstasy flow through him. He was with his family and right now, there was no place he would rather be.

* * *

Yay for Anakin! He's finally got someone other than Padmé to call his family. And I suppose that means Padmé is also part of this complicated family structure I've got going on here, although nobody except Anakin knows this. But how long will that last? Mwaahahahahaha! Sorry.

Don't worry, Ahsoka-fans. She'll get there soon enough. But under what conditions will she reach it? Aayla first used it to save Turuiemon and Barriss from a brainwashed Luminara, and now Anakin had used it to avoid everything getting blown up. As for Ahsoka you'll have to wait and see.

Finally the Tamers got to see more action, huh? There'll be a lot more of that going around in the future, I hope. I'm really looking forward to the next arc, and have been for some time. There are several things that will happen in it that will massively affect future events, making it one of the most important of the story so far. Then again, each arc seems to give a new, big development these days.

Please review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

With his three new companions along for the ride, Impmon continues his search for his guardian angel. But, while he's had a relatively easy time of it so far, he'll learn soon enough that GranDracmon is not about to let him off easy.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 90 : Pursuit**


	90. Pursuit

What's this? I'm a day early?

Yes, indeed I am. Over the weekend I decided to accelerate a little bit, because I'm going home next weekend and having a little camping trip thingie over Monday and Tuesday, so I don't know how much time I'd have to write. You could say that I am trying to make up for the time I'm pretty sure I'll lose beforehand instead of afterwards. I'm aiming to get Chapter 91 out for Thursday, so remember that.

**Everwolf** - Thanks for the review, but Impmon won't be heading over there anytime soon. I reckon he's got enough on his plate at the moment as it is.

Please read on, and I hope you enjoy Impmon's adventure with his new friends.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 90:- Pursuit**

* * *

For a moment after Impmon woke up the following morning, he had forgotten the majority of what had been going on the last few days. As his eyes slowly crept open and his pupils focused on the sparkling, pristine lake in front of him surrounded by the lush, blooming trees, he frowned in confusion, temporarily wondering where he was and why he wasn't on the windowsill in Ai and Mako's bedroom like he usually was.

Then everything that had been happening rushed back in to fill the void caused by his sleep and his actually rather pleasant, if weird, dream. It made a welcome change from all the flashbacks that MetalPhantomon had been forcing him to have, and since GranDracmon claimed that MetalPhantomon's work had been done, Impmon assumed that meant he was probably not going to receive any more. Not that he was complaining. In fact, it was probably the only thing that Impmon was grateful to GranDracmon for.

Anyway, waking up from the dream, in which he had been in an art gallery for some reason with Ai and Mako, and then Guilmon had entered carrying a huge mallet in his talents and rushed around the giant room, smashing all the pictures and screaming "GIVE ME CAKE! GIVE ME CAKE!" before leaving without taking any cake they offered him, Impmon groaned and rubbed his eyes, sitting up from where he had been leaning against his tree.

Why had his life taken such a horrible turn?

After Lilamon, Wingdramon and Diatrymon had told him that they would join him and Calumon in his search for the mysterious Angel Digimon that Impmon had encountered in his sleep a couple of times, Impmon had decided to spend the night in the glade that Lilamon called home, making the most of the fairy Digimon's hospitality. But now, it was morning, and they'd have to set out on their quest-slash-adventure-fleeing for their lives.

"Let's have you, Lazy Daisy," the voice of Lilamon giggled and Impmon felt a surprisingly firm petal poking him in the back of the head. "Up and at 'em. We've got some moving to do today if you ever want to find your dream girl."

"Yeah I know, I... Say what!" Impmon glanced up at the giggling fairy with a sharp glare. "My dream girl! She's not my dream girl!"

"Yes, she is," stated Lilamon, holding up a petal like a lecturer. "She's a girl and she appeared in your dream, making her a dream girl by default. Any girl who appears in dreams is a dream girl. Only this one is real too."

Impmon blinked at Lilamon's words, which, he had to admit, were one-hundred percent true, if a little confusing. He was wondering what he had gotten himself into by letting her come along, especially with Calumon along for the ride as well. The two of them could be dubbed the Hyperactive Twins, even if they did look nothing alike.

"Whatever," Impmon shook his head and got to his feet. "She's not my dream girl in the metaphorical sense of the phrase, is what I mean. By the way, is that hard?"

"Is what hard?" asked Lilamon.

"Hanging upside down from your feet like that," said Impmon, indicating Lilamon's foot-petals which were wrapped around the branch of the tree like fingers, allowing Lilamon to effectively stand vertically downwards.

"Oh that," said Lilamon. "Nah, it's really easy." She released her grip and gracefully flipped upright, hovering just off the ground. "So, when are we going?"

"Soon enough," Impmon said. "We should get going quickly really. The sooner we find this angel Digimon the happier I'll be."

"Aaw," Lilamon giggled. "You can't wait to find your dream girl. So cute."

"Shut up," Impmon sighed. "I'm having breakfast." Although he didn't need to eat here, the effects of living in the Human World made him automatically reach for something to eat after he woke up, so he picked up the fruit which resembled a peach but tasted like a giant bilberry and bit into it.

"That's my fruit you know," Lilamon pouted. "Isn't it good manners to ask before you take other people's food."

"Stop teasing him, Lilamon," said the voice of Wingdramon from the lake – the dragon Digimon was hovering over the shore towards them and probably hadn't settled on the ground at all during the night. "You don't have a problem with us eating your fruit without permission."

"Usually I throw it at your face," Lilamon giggled.

"That's what I mean," said Wingdramon, his huge tail lifting up almost of its own accord and plucking an apple the size of a pumpkin from a tree and lifting it up to his jaws, where he bit into it. "You have a penchant for mischief."

"I'm a fairy," pointed out Lilamon. "It's kinda in the job description." She plucked a large cross between a cherry and a banana form another tree and yelled, "Hey Diatrymon! Think fast!" and lobbed it at the sleeping bird, whose head was tucked under one wing in his slumber.

Evidently, Diatrymon was used to wake-up calls like this, because his head shot around and he caught the fruit between his beak mandibles with a terrific crunch that sent juice squirting out to the side in both directions. Some of this juice splattered across Calumon's face, and the Catalyst woke up with a cry of "WAARGH!" but then just sat there with his face stained red.

Lilamon laughed. Diatrymon smirked. "Nice try, Lila, but you'll have to be more inventive next time."

"Next time?" Lilamon pouted. "I won't again, I swear."

"Liar," Diatrymon shook his metal head. "With you, there is always a next time."

"Why did I agree to let her come along again?" Impmon shook his head.

Wingdramon chuckled. "Maybe your mind was subconsciously thinking you could use her as a distraction if we're attacked by enemy Digimon."

"Hey!" Lilamon complained, folding her arms and keeping up her pout. "That wasn't nice."

"You're right," Wingdramon said. "I'm sorry, Lilamon. It was impolite."

"No biggy," Lilamon grinned. "HUG!"

Apparently Wingdramon had been expecting this, because no surprise appeared on his face as Lilamon whooshed over and glomped him around the base of his neck. Wingdramon was many times Lilamon's size though, and Lilamon could only just make the tips of her petals meet. Wingdramon chuckled again and reached up with a scaly hand, attempting to prize her off. But she was like a limpet and didn't let go until she felt like it.

Meanwhile, Calumon was rubbing his face, wiping the juice onto his hand and then licking it off. As he did so, he got to his feet and bounced over to Impmon, full of energy – like he always was, regardless of whether was morning, afternoon, night, or even when he was asleep. "Are we going to go soon?" he asked. "I want to meet this angel that you keep talking about."

"So do I," said Impmon. "We'll set off in a minute. Let me finish this fruit."

"Aaw, but I can't wait. I want to meet her now."

"Well, you can't," said Impmon. "And you probably won't for some time. We have no idea where she lives, remember?"

"Why not?"

Impmon stared at Calumon incredulously. "Why not?" he repeated. "Because I don't know who she actually is and because we just don't know. There's no particular reason, Calumon."

"But you said that you could talk to her in your dreams, right?" Calumon pressed on.

"Yeah," nodded Impmon.

"Then why didn't you ask her then."

"I was more preoccupied with watching how our missing friends are doing," said Impmon. "And I didn't know that I would be looking for her one day, did I?"

"Okay," Calumon said. "But I hope we find out soon. I really want to meet this angel – she sounds so cool."

"So do I," said Impmon. "So do I."

"Aaw, on the search for your Dream Girl," Lilamon needled him as she hovered over, hovering on her back in the air. "Trekking across the unknown, never pausing in his stride to find down the one Digi-girl for him."

"I refuse to be baited," Impmon said, blandly.

"No, it's only fun for him when he's doing the baiting," laughed Calumon.

"True," Impmon shrugged. "But whatever."

"Still, I really want to see where this angel lives," Calumon bounced up and down in excitement. "I bet it's some really cool giant castle made out of sparkly stuff like diamonds that sits on top of a cloud with lots and big flags and colourful windows like those in the buildings with tall, pointy roofs and crosses on top in the Human World, and a big banquet room stuffed full of more cream puffs than I could eat, all the yummyness going to my tummyness!"

"Why would you want more cream puffs than you can eat?" Impmon asked. "That would leave you frustrated because there are some that you can't fit in your belly."

"I'd stuff them in my mouth for later like a squirrel," shrugged Calumon.

"What's a cream puff?" asked Lilamon. "Sounds like a parasite."

"Kinda like Calumon," Impmon sniggered. "That's why I call him Cream Puff."

"Hey," Calumon objected. "Meanie!"

"Relax," Impmon said.

Calumon turned to Lilamon and said, "Cream puffs are the yummiest of the yummy, and the ones Takato's mum makes are the yummiest of the yummiest of the yummy."

Even Lilamon struggled to process this sentence. "Uh. I'll take your word for it," she said, after a moment.

"Oh and by the way, Calumon," said Impmon. "There's a major flaw with your castle of a cloud idea."

"There is?" asked Calumon. "What?"

"There are no clouds in the Digital World."

"Oh yeah," Calumon sagged, looking disappointed. Then he brightened and said, "But hey, that means no rain, right?"

"What's rain?" asked Lilamon.

"When water falls from the sky," said Calumon. "It's very annoying 'cause it makes you all soggy."

"Water falls from the sky in the Human World?" Diatrymon looked flabbergasted. "That's not natural."

Impmon sniggered but said nothing. He polished off the rest of the fruit in his glove and then strode over to Behemoth. He still didn't know whether the motor vehicle slept or not since it was difficult to tell since he had no face. Experimentally, he tapped on Behemoth's front wheel a couple of times with his knuckles. The engine roared into life briefly, signalling the Behemoth was ready to rumble. Then again, when was he not?

"Alright then," said Impmon. "I suppose if we're going to start this search then we'd better get going. I'm still not sure whether I should let you guys come with me."

"I repeat – we will follow you anyway if you don't," said Lilamon. "Get used to it."

Impmon shook his head. "Right, yes, fine. Well, if you are going to come along, then by all means. I'm going to head out now, and head that way," Impmon jerked his thumb in a random direction into the forest. "If you want to come then you have to keep up."

"I don't think that'll be a problem," Diatrymon said, hopping from leg to leg with impatience.

"Come on then," Impmon said, turning around and setting off into the forest. Behemoth followed immediately and Calumon and Lilamon did the same thing after a second or so.

Wingdramon, on the other hand, didn't move. Frowning, he raised his voice slightly, bringing the others to a halt as he asked, "Do you actually have a particular destination in mind, Impmon? Or are you just planning to stroll around and hope for the best?"

Impmon shrugged. "I was probably going to go for the second option, to be honest."

"You won't get anywhere like that," Wingdramon reprimanded him. His tail swung up and jabbed its tip in an easterly direction. "We don't know anything about angel Digimon, and if we're going to find her we have to find someone or who does. There's a Gekomon village that way. Perhaps they've heard of something."

"Do we have to go there?" winced Lilamon. "Their music makes your internal organs explode it exposed to it for too long and they just don't stop singing."

"Which is why we won't stay long enough for that to happen," said Wingdramon.

"Maybe we can rush in, abduct one and question him out of earshot of the others," suggested Diatrymon.

"Wow, it must be really bad," Calumon said.

"You have no idea," the Champion level bird shuddered.

"Well, I suppose if we must," said Impmon. "I don't like the idea of involving others all the time, but I suppose we have no choice really. Let's go."

"I can give you a lift, if you like," Wingdramon offered. "We'd cover more ground that way."

"No thanks," said the Rookie Imp, clambering onto Behemoth's seat. "I've got my own ride, right here. Let's see if you can keep up with my old pal here." Behemoth revved in anticipation.

Lilamon suddenly plonked herself on the seat behind Impmon and said, "You're not leaving me in the dust, Impy. Giddyup, Behemoth," she patted the handlebars of the bike. The words had barely left her mouth when the bike in question surged into life and charged pell-mell into the forest at such a high speed that Lilamon was almost thrown off the back. Instead, the fairy Digimon regained her equilibrium, leaned over Impmon and gripped the handlebars in her petals.

"CHOO CHOOOOOOOO!" she cried in excitement as they whooshed into the forest.

"Hey!" Diatrymon shouted. "Wait for us!" Calumon managed to jump onto his back just in time, as the Bird Digimon hared off into the forest at high speed, his huge talons ripping chunks out of the ground with each step as the Digital Terror Bird pursued the bike and its passengers.

Wingdramon was the only one left, hovering in the clearing and shaking his head in amusement. "Lilamon will be the death of us one day," he murmured to himself. "And with that Calumon thrown into the mix, I can't help wondering what I've got myself into." Then, extending his gravity-defying wings even wider, he levitated upwards and soared off and over the forest trees, following the charging bike and bird, without flapping his wings even once.

Lilamon's clearing was left completely empty. Whether its occupant ever returned to dwell in its branches again was all up to fate now.

* * *

"THIS IS SOOOO COOOOOOLLLL!" Lilamon whooped as she gripped Behemoth with her knees as they went roaring through the forest at high speed, the motorbike swerving in and out and around the trees like some kind of wild Bucking Bronco. Impmon, perched on the seat with Lilamon's arms over his head, couldn't help but laugh at the way Lilamon was enjoying the ride so much. After all, this was the first time she'd ridden any motor vehicle, and now she was riding the most awesome one that ever existed.

She also provided a convenient backrest for him, so he wasn't about to complain.

However, he did say, "Keep it down, Petal-head. We're supposed to be not drawing much attention to ourselves, remember?"

"I think your bike's going to attract more attention than I am," Lilamon cried, having to speak up to be heard over the rev of Behemoth's engine. "Besides, if some evil Digimon comes after you now, they'll have to catch you first."

"Let's hope there are no evil versions of me then," Diatrymon cried. Impmon blinked and glanced to the left and was amazed to see that the Bird Champion Digimon was actually _keeping pace_ with Behemoth, and didn't look like he was exerting much effort into doing so. He was sending earth flying with each step, but that didn't appear to be slowing him down – his muscular, metallic legs pounding the ground like pistons and throwing him forwards like an antelope on steroids.

"Wow," Impmon said. "You're fast."

"Thanks," Diatrymon cried cheerfully. "I like running so I get in a lot of practice. Plus, I am built for endurance."

From on his back, perched uncomfortably on the metal spine of his mount, Calumon glared at Impmon. "Next time, let me come riding with you! You wouldn't let me near Behemoth before! Why does Lilamon get a go?"

"Because Lilamon wouldn't fall off before Behemoth even started moving," Impmon grinned at him.

"Meanie!"

"You already used that one."

"...Meanie!"

Impmon snorted, rolling his eyes at Calumon's utter lack of imagination when it came to insults. Then, he glanced upwards as something else caught his eye and he saw that Wingdramon was soaring above the tree-line, blotting out the light that the canopy wasn't already blotting out. The dragon didn't look like he was putting much effort into it either, and not once did his flap his wings. It was almost a bizarre effect, making it look like Wingdramon wasn't moving at all and all the trees were rushing past him instead.

"Well, at least I picked up some companions who can move at speed," he said.

"And I can be your nightlight," Lilamon grinned.

"Oh yeah," said Impmon. "I remember – you glow in the dark."

"Only when I want to," the fairy agreed.

"Aaw, that's so cool," Calumon said. "I wish I can do that."

"Have you ever tried?" Lilamon queried.

"Well, no," Calumon said. "I'll give it a go tonight."

"Don't," said Impmon. "You'll strain so hard that you'll end up farting and embarrassing yourself."

Calumon shrugged. "Maybe. But that would be funny. Farting is hilarious."

"Not when Diatrymon's doing the farting, it isn't," Lilamon replied.

"Watch it, Pinkie," the bird leered at her. Lilamon poked out her tongue at him.

"Hey, Scaleface!" Impmon yelled up at Wingdramon. "You any idea how long it'll take for us to reach the Gekomon village."

"Call me Scaleface and I won't tell you anything," the blue dragon replied.

"Don't take it personally," Impmon shouted. "Everyone gets a nickname from me."

"What's mine?" asked Diatrymon.

"At the moment, I'm going with Ironbeak, but if anything more inventive springs to mind, I'll use that instead," said Impmon.

"Ah," Diatrymon frowned in slight confusion.

"It shouldn't take too long," Wingdramon called down. "And trust me – we'll know when we get close to them."

"And we won't like it," Lilamon said, gripping Behemoth with her legs tighter so she didn't have to hold on with her hands. She figured that she'd need them for another reason soon – to stuff her petals in her ears to block out the noise.

* * *

The trip to the Gekomon village was indeed an unpleasant experience four all and sundry. The Champion-level Frog Digimon were croaking to their heart's content, the sound deafening everyone within three hundred yards, and that was just when one of the them was doing a solo. When they did it as a chorus, it almost made people's brains explode.

They attempted to talk to several of them, but they were mostly ignored and those that did acknowledge their presence didn't stop singing and only offered them a brief glance before turning away. Eventually, they managed to get one to stop when Lilamon started tickling him until he ran out of breath. Then, over the deafening crescendo of all the others, the Gekomon helpfully (sarcasm) told the group that since few people came their way these days, they received little news of the outside world and none of them would have any idea who this Angel Digimon would be. Nor did he know anyone who might.

They were glad to leave the area, and they could all guess _why_ the Gekomon had almost no visitors nowadays. There weren't even any Otamamon in the village with them. Not even they could stand the din, it seemed.

The little group spent the rest of the day following Impmon's previous plan, wandering aimlessly through the forest with no particular destination in mind and asking any Digimon that they came across if they knew anything. All the answers that they came up with were no more helpful than what the Gekomon had been able to tell them. The Digimon of the Forest rarely socialised with one another, preferring solitary existences. And, as a result, news didn't spread very much.

Impmon wasn't surprised that the day didn't turn up any results for him, but he could help but feel a little disappointed. He'd been hoping for something slightly more dramatic than that. But, the Digital World was a big place. Impmon knew that he could be searching for some time to come.

* * *

The first day of the "adventure" for Lilamon, Wingdramon and Diatrymon began to draw to a close. There was nothing like a sunset, since there was no sun to begin with, but it was almost like an instinct ingrained in all Digimon that let them know how much time they had left before nightfall.

Eventually, Impmon decided to call it a day and they found another reasonably large clearing that would allow Wingdramon to get below the canopy and still not land on the ground, before setting up a camp of sorts. Although it wasn't really necessary, Impmon gathered the twigs and made a little campfire in the middle of the clearing, just in case the coming night was a chilly one.

Lilamon was intrigued by the fire, and stared at it for some time. Diatrymon seemed to like it as well, because he settled down next to it and began to preen his feathers, enjoying the heat it offered.

"Well, not much excitement on the first day," said Lilamon. "But I suppose you can't have everything."

"I'm not complaining," Impmon declared. "No excitement is a good day for me recently. I've been getting an excitement overload when it comes to GranDracmon."

"You serious?" asked Lilamon. "Are you telling me that there isn't even a small part of you that isn't just waiting for GranDracmon to send some minion after them so you can beat the stuffing out of them for what MetalPhantomon did to you and to get back at GranDracmon for turning your friend into a monster?"

"I would," said Diatrymon.

Impmon paused and mulled over Lilamon's words for a few moments before saying, "Well... maybe a little bit."

"If any big bad Digimon shows up," Calumon declared, leaping over beside Impmon and wielding a large stick in both hands like some kind of sword. "I'll give them a beating so they'll never want to mess with me! I'll give them a black eye, I will!"

Impmon ducked as the twig whooshed over his head and his hand shot out and plucked the stick from Calumon's grip, tossing it on the fire. "Keep that up and you'll give _me_ a black eye, Cream-puff," he said.

Wingdramon decided to voice a question, "How exactly will changing their eye colour teach them a lesson?"

"Changing their eye c... Never mind," Impmon rolled his eyes. "I keep forgetting that there are so many new phrases and things I know since hanging about with Humans that you don't."

"The Human World sounds so fascinating," Diatrymon said, looking up from preening his green underfeathers. "Do you think that, when this is all over, we might be able to go there and have a little look around. It sounds like such a weird place."

"Hey yeah," Lilamon grinned, nodding. "That would be amazing. Pleeeaasssee," she clasped her petals together and gave Impmon another doe-eyed look.

"You don't need to use The Face," Impmon chuckled. "Sure, you can come. I'll even show you around." _If this thing ever does end,_ he thought to himself. Impmon leaned back and glanced up at the late afternoon sky, which was no different from the sky of any other time of daylight, but still...

He was wondering what was taking GranDracmon so long to get to him. He was sure the Demond Lord Digimon had some way of knowing where Impmon was and what he was doing, but it had been three days since he'd started his run and, as of yet, nothing. For one horrible moment, he wondered whether his ploy had worked at all, and wondered whether GranDracmon's Digimon were wreaking havoc on the Human World anyway. But he forced that from his mind. He was sure that GranDracmon would come after him before attempting to dominate anything.

"So, what's our next move?" asked Diatrymon. "What do we intend to do tomorrow?"

"We should probably leave the Forest Level," said Wingdramon. "I highly doubt that there will be anyone here that will know much about Angel Digimon. We should try somewhere else instead, like perhaps the Mechanical Level. They Digimon there might know a thing or two."

"Does that mean we have to take another Data Stream?" Calumon shuddered. "Those things make my ears go funny."

"You said you wanted to find the angel," said Impmon. "And if we have to go through a million Data Streams to find her, we will. If she can be found at all, that is?"

"What, you think she was just a figment of your imagination?" asked Diatrymon.

"Nope," Impmon said, tossing another Bada Boom at the dimming fire. "I know she was real, Ironbeak. What I mean is, does she live anywhere that we can get too. Is there a Heaven level in the Digital World or something? I mean, she is an angel."

"Well the closest there would be to a Heaven Level is the Sovereigns' level," said Wingdramon. "And only the Sovereigns and their servants live there."

"Maybe the Sovereigns have angel servants," shrugged Impmon.

"Probably not," said Wingdramon. "But, I suppose we'll have to wait and see. We need more to go on before we start guessing where we might be able to find this Digimon."

"Any ideas?" Impmon asked. "'Cause I'm drawing up a big, fat blank over here."

"Well," said Wingdramon, tapping his scaly chin with a claw. "Perhaps she lives with other Angel Digimon too. If we can find a place where _any_ Angel Digimon lives, then we may find her there too. Or at the very least, the Angel we find may be able to direct us to the right place."

Impmon nodded thoughtfully. "Better than anything I've been coming up with," he admitted. "As least we've got some brains in this little group. Thanks, Scaleface."

"Not a problem," said Wingdramon. "Learning how to keep Lilamon in line demands obtaining some brainpower. And yet I still don't seem to have enough to do that job."

"Hey, if he's the brains of this outfit then what am I?" asked the fairy in question.

"I dunno," said Impmon. "Comic relief?"

Lilamon folded her arms and humphed. "You won't be saying that when we get attacked by something evil. When that happens, I'll show you what I am capable of."

"You sure about that?" Impmon asked. "You said yourself that you haven't done a whole lot of battling. How would you handle yourself in a fight?"

"I have my methods," Lilamon winked. "But you'll have to wait until we actually get into a fight to see it in action."

"Ooh, ooh, ohh, do you sprinkle some kind of pixie dust on them that turns them into flowers?" asked Calumon.

Lilamon blinked. "Uh... no. But that would be pretty cool. Hmm. I wonder if my digivolved form can do that. I could plant evil Digimon in my glade back home to make it look nicer."

"Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd hear," Impmon chuckled.

"She does tend to do that," Diatrymon laughed. "I've never seen her battle anything before, so I can't say how she'd do in a fight either, but I reckon that if the worst comes to the worst, we could always use her as a distraction. She could confuse the enemy with her randomness while we slip away unnoticed."

"You wouldn't dare leave me behind," Lilamon glared sharply at the bird.

"How do you know that?" Diatrymon needled her.

"Because we're friends and friends don't do that," the fairy suggested.

"Touché," Diatrymon said, ruffling his feathers and causing a clinking noise from his armour plating. "You're right – we wouldn't leave you. Although you can't deny if we did try that tactic it would probably work."

"Throw Calumon into the mix and it would definitely work," Impmon chuckled. "They could put on a little circus act of their own. Calumon could be the world's biggest Cream Puff, or perhaps the world's smallest simpleton. And Lilamon would make a great clown."

"What's a simpleton?" asked Calumon.

"What's a clown?" asked Lilamon.

"Actually, both of them would make good simpletons," Wingdramon chuckled.

"Oi! Keep those jaws of yours shut Scaleface," Lilamon pointed a petal threateningly at Wingdramon. "Or I'll use your wings as sunshades."

"You do that anyway," said Wingdramon.

"Oh yeah," Lilamon grinned.

Impmon began to feel a sense of nostalgia as he followed this conversation. It felt like a large number of the conversations that he had had with his missing friends. Lilamon was taking Terriermon's role of jokester, while Wingdramon and Diatrymon were taking turns to needle her in turn, much like Renamon and Lopmon did with their mate and brother. He found himself wishing to see them once again. Perhaps he might get another vision as to what they were doing tonight. But if he did, he would be torn between wanting to watch them and wanting to grill the Angel Digimon giving them to him for information as to who she was.

He watched as Calumon began to circle Lilamon, bouncing along the ground and spouting out some of his completely random rhymes – half of which featured the word "underwear" at some point. Wingdramon and Diatrymon laughed and Lilamon began to twirl on the spot, little sparkles coming out of the flowers that made up her hands for effect.

Hopefully one day Impmon would see their missing friends in person again.

But for now, he supposed these four would do the job of keeping him sane.

It was at this point that he felt a bone-chilling tingle run up his spine, an obscure, new sensation to him. It was not dissimilar to feeling the presence of a bioemerging Digimon, but there was something much darker and more evil feeling about this one. His skin turned cold and the pupils in his eyes shrank.

The fire went out.

Impmon leapt up and yelled, "We've got company!" right at the point where something that looked like a bolt of lightning, except pitch-black in colour, seared through the treetops above them and struck the ground hard enough to shatter it. Lilamon stopped twirling and everyone leapt back, watching as the lightning-like energy congealed on the spot, growing and warping into a new shape, enlarging like some kind of digivolution gone all wrong. The new shape reared up and, once finished, colour began to seep into the giant form as if it was some kind of trench and someone was pouring paint into it, the colours flowing outward from a central point.

The adventurers stared at the figure that formed from the lightning-like blast. At first it resembled a horse and rider, but then they realised that it was in fact the top half of some kind of humanoid fused to the horse body. But not in the sense of a centaur where the human torso was attached to where the head and neck of the horse would be – this Digimon had the entire horse, and the humanoid body was fused to where the saddle would be if the horse had a rider.

The humanoid half-body resembled some kind of samurai from old films. His body was covered in chain mail, and his neck was encased in a orange cloak that flowed out behind him in the wind, even though there wasn't actually any wind, like some kind out mystical veil. He had huge, golden shoulderpads that were rectangular in shape and a helmet adorned his head, which was also gold and had what appeared to be a golden crescent moon attached to the forehead. Two long feathers jutted out from the back of the helm and the top half of his face was encased in a red mask. He had a sword in each armour encrusted hand. His right hand held an enormous blade known as a zanbato, and the other held a much slimmer one called a youtou.

The horse part of him was also encrusted in gold armour, but apart from its head it looked like a regular horse. The horse's head was nothing but a horse skull, except it was red for some reason and had a blade poking out of its forehead like a horn. All in all, the effect was quite striking. But this Digimon was emanating waves of evil that all the others could sense.

"Greetings," said the Digimon, with the humanoid's mouth. "Were you having a pleasant evening?"

"Who are you?" Impmon demanded, preparing himself for a Digivolution at any second. It was times like this that he wished he had the ability to identify different Digimon on sight, like Ai and Mako's D-Arc could do. He didn't ask what the Digimon wanted as well, since he was fairly sure that he already knew that.

The Digimon smirked, with both the horse and human head, which had an eerie effect. "I am Zanbamon," he announced. "One of GranDracmon's Generals. And I'm pretty sure you can guess why I am here?"

"Come to drag me kicking and screaming to King Uglyface, have you?" Impmon glared at the Viral Mega. "Sorry, but I'm still not interested in his offer. And I never will be, so you can go and tell GranDeadmon that he can kiss my ass."

"Eew," Lilamon recoiled. "Why the heck would he want to do that? And why would you let him?"

"No, I... It's a phrase! I didn't mean it literally!" Impmon cried.

"You are so confusing sometimes," Lilamon shook her head.

Zanbamon smiled, again with both heads. "My Master expected such a response," he declared. "Which is why I have been ordered to take you in myself should you say no, which he was one-hundred percent sure you would."

Diatrymon widened his legs in a battle stance and his armour seemed to rattle of its own accord in a threat display. "Just try and take him!" he screech raucously.

"I see you've collected a few new friends, former Demon Lord," Zanbamon said, surveying the group. Lilamon and Diatrymon were both glaring at him openly, while Wingdramon had an expression of both resignation and determination instead, readying himself for a fight. Calumon was hiding behind Behemoth, and the motorbike was growling, awaiting his master's orders. "You would do well to listen to me. If you turn over the Rookie now, then I will spare your lives. If you do not, then I may be forced to cut you down if you try and stand in my way," he hefted his twin swords, of vastly different sizes, for emphasis. "What shall it be?"

"Are you serious?" Lilamon asked incredulously. "You think we'd actually buy that?"

"Yes," Wingdramon nodded. "We are not fools. We know what GranDracmon seeks is someone to lead his armies into the Digital World. Why he is waiting until then to start his invasion is beyond us, but we know that Impmon is all that stands between him and starting a new reign of terror. Either way, we would end up fighting for our lives sooner or later."

"So why not sooner," Diatrymon agreed. "Bring it, Quadruped!"

Zanbamon shrugged and raised his swords out to his sides. "Alright then," he said. "But don't say I didn't warn you. Your friend shall be within GranDracmon's thrall before the day is done." The horse part of his body reared, forelegs kicking the air as Zanbamon prepared to charge.

He was completely unprepared for what happened next, because while he was intending to initiate the first attack, Impmon had other ideas. The little Rookie Digimon rushed the Mega Knight Samurai Centaur Thing in mid-rear and threw himself at the underbelly of the horse, warp-digivolving while in the air so that he was Beelzemon when he slammed his shoulder into the horses' ribcage. Startled, Zanbamon flailed his arms to try and prevent himself from toppling over backwards, but he needn't have bothered, because Beelzemon took advantage of his unbalance and seized both the kicking front legs of the horse and threw them aside, before grabbing the horse's neck with his arm and heaving.

Startled and cursing, Zanbamon was flung into a nearby tree. His hoofed feet scrabbled on the ground to prevent himself from falling over, as he'd have a great difficulty in getting back up again, and fortunately for him he managed it, stepping away from the tree trunk and levelling both swords at Beelzemon.

"That was a dirty little trick," Zanbamon smirked at him. "Well worthy of a leader of we Nightmare Soldiers."

"Listen, punk," Beelzemon clenched his fists so hard his clawed fingers almost cut into his palms. "Before we begin this little showdown in earnest let me tell you something. I ain't never going anywhere near GranDracmon. Never! I know the line is overused, but I would rather die than have anything to do with the bastard! There's no way what you're going to try today is going to work – I would rather kill myself than let you drag me back to the Dark Ocean."

"Is that so?" asked Zanbamon, a cruel smirk appearing on his face. "In that case, I shall first render you so weak that you will not be able to attempt such a thing."

"Sure you will," Beelzemon snorted contemptuously. "GranDracmon needs me to lead his armies, remember? How do you think I'm supposed to do that if I'm beaten to a pulp?"

Beelzemon was surprised to see Zanbamon's smirk widen even further. "If that's what you choose to believe," he said.

"Huh?" Beelzemon blinked.

"Enough talk!" Zanbamon cried. "Let's battle! **FOCAL BLADE!"** He charged towards the bewildered ex-Demon Lord, his huge, golden zanbato scything through the air. Beelzemon shook off his confusion in time to duck under the sweep of the enormous sword, allowing Zanbamon to go barrelling past him. Beelzemon whirled around, drawing his shotguns, in time to see Zanbamon turn with surprising agility, kicking up dirt with his hooves as he swung his blade at Beelzemon again.

Morphing into the Blast Mode, Beelzemon swept his wings and took to the air with a mighty flap, sailing over the sword this time. Swinging about in mid-air he focused his guns on Zanbamon's retreating back and let off a **"DOUBLE IMPACT!"** The bullets streamed across and found their mark, impacting on Zanbamon's golden armour. His three eyes widened as Zanbamon took the shot with relative ease, only grunting slightly in pain.

"Not bad," said Zanbamon, turning back again. "I see you have some speed on you. But allow me to show you mine! **MYSTIC FLAME!"** He raised the smaller youtou and slashed in the through the air in a flurry of slices so fast the eye could barely track it, generating a series of energy blades that combined to form a shockwave. Stowing his guns away, Beelzemon brought out Berenjena and held the huge cannon in front of him like a shield.

The shockwave proved to be more deadly than expected, because it could still cut. Beelzemon was flung backwards as the shockwave tore rents in Berenjena. Beelzemon slammed into a tree hard and roared as the impact between his wings bruised his spine. But the Mega level was by no means down. Pushing himself off from the tree, Beelzemon whooshed towards Zanbamon in a terrific charge at almost ground level.

Zanbamon rushed to meet him holding his zanbato in front of him like the lance of a jouster. Beelzemon smirked, not intending to get struck by that and pointed Berenjena forward. **"CORONA BLASTER!"** he yelled and let off the pink energy beam directly at the face of the horse.

Zanbamon responded by taking a terrific leap. Beelzemon stared in astonishment as horse and rider (thought technically they were on in the same) sailed over the attack, allowing it to splinter a tree nearby instead. Zanbamon fell towards Beelzemon, swords poised to strike. Beelzemon rolled aside in mid-air so the giant sword only clipped the tip of one feather, which Beelzemon didn't need, and rose over Zanbamon, releasing another Corona Blaster at the section where the human body and the horse body met.

This time the attack struck and catapulted Zanbamon across the glade, but Zanbamon managed to retain his footing and skid to a halt. Glaring in annoyance, he charged again, bringing his youtou to bear and releasing another flurry of air slashes to generate the Mystic Flame that sliced towards Beelzemon. Beelzemon stopped flapping and obeyed gravity, dropping beneath the attack and rushing to meet Zanbamon, swinging Berenjena to clout the horse across the face. As this threw Zanbamon off balance, Zanbamon made a desperate swipe with the zanbato with another Focal Blade. Beelzemon attempted to dodge again, but this time the sword raked across his back.

Beelzemon cried out in pain, as did Zanbamon as they both went crashing to the ground as a result of those strikes. Grunting at the stinging in his back, Beelzemon got to his feet swiftly, turning to find Zanbamon struggling to right himself. Taking advantage of Zanbamon's predicament, Beelzemon raised his cannon.

"**CORONA BLASTER!"** he yelled again, letting loose another pink energy beam at him. Zanbamon's eyes widened as he saw it coming and quickly raised the zanbato, slashing at the attack with a Focal Blade of his own. The zanbato slashed into the Corona Blaster and sheered it down the middle, cancelling it out.

Beelzemon's raised an eyebrow at this. "Not bad yourself," he admitted grudgingly. "There's not many people who can do something like that."

"How about this?" Zanbamon cried, still on the floor and let off another Mystic Flame. Beelzemon fired another Corona Blaster in response and the two attacks nullified one another again. This time, Zanbamon managed to scramble to his feet and faced off against Beelzemon again.

"I can see why GranDracmon is so interested in you," Zanbamon said. "But he told me that living with humans has softened you up. Ultimately, I will be victorious."

"That remains to be seen," said Beelzemon.

"Indeed," Zanbamon said. "Let's test our metal, shall we?"

"Aren't you forgetting something?" asked Beelzemon.

"What?" Zanbamon queried.

"I have friends," Beelzemon smirked.

"**LILAC DAGGER!" **shouted a female voice as Lilamon swooped it from behind Zanbamon, plonked herself on the horseback behind the human torso and rammed a short, energy dagger generated in the middle of her petals into Zanbamon's stomach, point-first. Zanbamon may have been a Mega while Lilamon an Ultimate, but even he felt an attack like that, which pierced his chainmail and rammed into his gut. He roared in agony, rearing onto his hind legs to throw Lilamon off, but the fairy Digimon rolled gracefully off his back and swooped to safety, coming around until she was hovering behind Beelzemon.

"How do you like them peaches?" Lilamon giggled.

"Apples," Beelzemon corrected her.

"Where?" Lilamon blinked, looking around.

"Never mind," Beelzemon chuckled. "Not bad, Petal-head. Not bad at all."

"Why, thank you," Lilamon winked. "Told you I had a trick or two up my sepals."

Zanbamon grunted as he inspected the hole in his flank and chainmail caused by Lilamon's attack. "By the time I'm done with you, girlie," he said, glaring up at her. "You won't have any sepals at all!" He hoofed the ground and leapt into the change once more, bringing his swords up to strike.

"**MEGA DASH IMPACT!"** screeched Diatrymon, as he rushed in from the side before Zanbamon could get moving and slammed himself into the side of the horse. This threw Zanbamon off-balance, causing him to skitter to the side. The attack itself did little damage, except for a couple of large rents torn in the horse's side by the spikes protruding from the back of Diatrymon's head.

Zanbamon managed to regain his footing and turned to face the Champion Digimon. "You really think that you are a match for m..."

"**WING BLAST!"** another voice shouted and Wingdramon, who had disappeared some time ago and flown off somewhere, now whooshed back over the clearing at supersonic speed. For the first time that Beelzemon had seen, Wingdramon flapped his wings, just once, as he soared over Zanbamon. Such a big flap at such speed was more than enough to generate a massive shockwave that crashed into Zanbamon from above and threw him off his feet.

"GAH!" Zanbamon cried as he collapsed onto his side again. "Curse you!"

"I'd rather you didn't," Wingdramon said as he wheeled about and came to a hovering standstill.

Zanbamon struggled to his feet. "So the three of you still choose to defy me," he laughed. "Well then, I cannot be held responsible for what happens to you next. You brought this on yourself." Zanbamon burst into motion, charging across the ground towards Diatrymon, readying his Zanbato for another Focal Blade. Diatrymon didn't move, tensing his muscles for action. As Zanbamon swung at him, Diatrymon extended his feet and sprang over the sword swing, lashing out with his bladed feet in mid-jump and slashing Zanbamon in the horse-shoulder. The flightless Bird Digimon landed on the ground quickly, springing backwards to avoid a strike from the youtou and going several metres before landing.

As Zanbamon came around for another pass, Diatrymon opened his beak and with a loud **"DESTRUCTION ROAR!"** he let out an ear-splitting shriek that pulsed soundwaves at the charging Mega. The noise was tremendous, worse than the singing of the Gekomon. Zanbamon halted in mid-charge and his fists flew to his ears, trying to block out the noise as the soundwaves slammed into him, doing little damage but forcing him backwards a bit.

"**MARVEL SHOT!"** Lilamon swooped down from behind and let loose a barrage of energy spheres from her hand flowers that struck Zanbamon in the rear of his horse body. They succeeded in knocking his back legs out from under him and bringing him crashing back to the floor slightly. Zanbamon flailed his arms to prevent his front legs from buckling too then turned about and let off a **"MYSTIC FLAME!"** at the Fairy Digimon.

As the bladed attack soared towards Lilamon, she quickly levitated out of the way and Wingdramon swooped down to replace her. **"BLAZE SONIC BREATH!"** the dragon roared, letting loose his own fiery attack that slammed into the Mystic Flame and caused a large explosion as the attack cancelled each other out. Zanbamon, back on his feet, charged towards the smoke, ready to make mincemeat out of the large dragon... and was shocked as suddenly Beelzemon came flying out of the smoke, Berenjena held ready and a shotgun in the other hand.

"**CORONA BLASTER!"** Beelzemon bellowed, launching another energy beam from his cannon that slammed Zanbamon's human torso. Zanbamon was pushed backwards, his hooves leaving small trenches in the ground as he tried to resist the attack, and Beelzemon continued moving forward until he was right in front of Zanbamon. Halting his attack, he slammed Zanbamon in the human face with the side of his cannon, then grabbed the neck of the horse section on his body in a lock and jammed the end of the shotgun into the horse skull's chin.

"**DOUBLE IMPACT!"** he roared and let off another shot. The skull exploded into data at the point blank attack (Normally Beelzemon would never think about attacking a horse, but since this horse was a part of Zanbamon it had to go too). Zanbamon's human head roared in pain as the attack destroyed his other head.

"And then there was one," Beelzemon growled. A furious Zanbamon roared and let off his own attack and point-blank range, slamming a Mystic Flame into Beelzemon's side. It was Beelzemon's turn to let loose a cry of pain as the attack sliced into him and flung him across the clearing. Despite losing his horse head, Zanbamon was still able to charge and ran after Beelzemon, readying another Focal Blade to finish the job.

But Wingdramon swooped out of nowhere at speed and grabbed Beelzemon in mid-air, swooping skyward and to safety, Zanbamon's attack just missing the end of his long, scaly tail. Zanbamon growled in frustration, watching them go, and he was suddenly blindsided by Lilamon's **"LILA SHOWER!"** which consisted of her firing slender beams of energy from the tips of her hand petals that pierced his armour and caused him to roar.

"Right!" Zanbamon shouted, shaking off the attack. "That tears it! And this tears you! **MYSTIC FLAME!"** Striking the air with his youtou repeatedly once more, he sent off another attack at Lilamon. Lilamon swooped upwards to try and avoid it, but Zanbamon had anticipated this and aimed it upwards, causing poor Lilamon to fly directly into it. Lilamon screamed in agony as the attack sliced into her body creating multiple gashes across her frame and flinging her backwards, smacking her into another tree.

Zanbamon bore down on her weakened form, bringing his zanbato to bear. Diatrymon quickly rushed across his path and took the attack, trusting his powerful back-armour to block the blow. To his shock, the Focal Blade cleaved through the armour as it wasn't there and bit into Diatrymon's side – the Champion was lucky, he would have been deleted if he had been hit full on. Diatrymon shrieked as he wobbled unsteadily, and Zanbamon clouted him across the face and sent him crashing to the ground nearby.

Lilamon looked up weakly as Zanbamon loomed over her. "I warned you," Zanbamon said, raising his youtou to finish the job.

But Lilamon earned a reprieve. While the battle was going on, the Digital World was still going about its business as usual and suddenly the light was switched off as night washed over the area like a blanket. Zanbamon faltered in surprise at the change and that was enough. Lilamon smirked and flashed on her bioluminescence, cranking it up to full power. Zanbamon reared backwards, shielding his eyes from the sudden, intense glare and Lilamon raised her hand and let off a bright Marvel Shot into his face, blinding him and causing him to go staggering backwards again.

When suddenly, his back legs were seized and pulled together as Wingdramon swung his enormous tail, which wrapped around them like a lasso. Wingdramon took to the air, dragging Zanbamon up with him from behind.

Wingdramon's jaws twisted into a smirk of his own as he flipped over, dragging Zanbamon high above his head and then throwing him downwards, releasing his grip on the struggling Mega's back legs and slamming him hard into the ground, almost breaking most of his limbs. Zanbamon groaned as he reached for his zanbato, which he had dropped in the wild ride, but a sound from up ahead caused him to look up. His eyes widened as he saw Wingdramon barrelling towards him, the huge lance sticking out of his back glowing with energy.

"**EXPLODE SONIC LANCE!" **Wingdramon roared loudly, channelling energy into his lance in the middle of his nosedive. Wingdramon superb aerial control allowed him to slam hard into Zanbamon, driving the yelling Mega into the ground as the lance caused a terrific explosion around them, but halt himself within millimetres of the ground to stop him from crashing into it himself. Wingdramon whooshed back upwards once more, hovering above the field and waiting for the smoke to clear.

Sudden, bladed energy beams of Mystic Flame whooshed out of the smoke towards Wingdramon. Startled, the dragon covered his body with his wings, the attack tearing huge rents in them. Wingdramon roared painfully, but didn't fall out of the sky, his gravity-defying abilities holding him aloft. He winced as he spread his wings once more, tattered but still able to hold him up.

Zanbamon leapt upwards with a terrific spring at the dragon, bringing his zanbato into play. Wingdramon whooshed higher to avoid the Focal Blade slash and then another attack, a Corona Blaster slewed out of nowhere to slam Zanbamon in the side. Zanbamon flew to the ground, landing on his feet and remaining upright as Beelzemon swept towards him once more.

"Got the message yet?" Beelzemon asked him.

"Have you?" countered Zanbamon, unleashing another Mystic Flame at the oncoming Viral Mega. Beelzemon flapped up and soared over the attack. Stowing away his shotgun, he readied Berenjena for his imminent attack. Zanbamon rushed to meet him, swinging the zanbato for another Focal Blade, but Beelzemon fired a small Corona Blaster that slammed into Zanbamon's hand and knocked the attack aside, giving Beelzemon a clear shot at his target.

"**DARKNESS CLAW!"** Beelzemon roared, driving his free hand directly into the wound that Lilamon had caused earlier with her Lilac Dagger. Zanbamon gasped, his eyes bulging as Beelzemon's claws plunged into him. Robbed of breath, Zanbamon staggered, barely able to maintain his footing as Beelzemon rammed his claws in deeper.

"Not bad for someone without a sword, huh?" Beelzemon growled at him.

Zanbamon gasped for a breath for a few moments, but then a wild look formed in his eyes. To Beelzemon's amazement, Zanbamon broke into a charge, with his hand still stuck inside his abdomen, driving him back across the glade. Zanbamon deliberately charged right into a tree, slamming Beelzemon's attack deeper into his chest but also sandwiching Beelzemon between himself and the tree.

Beelzemon roared in pain, now understanding why GranDracmon had sent this mon after him. He was strong! Very strong! Zanbamon raised his youtou, ready to deliver a crippling blow that would force Beelzemon to dedigivolve back to Impmon if it connected... when suddenly he was tugged back from behind. Something had grabbed hold of his horse tail and was pulling him backwards and drawing Beelzemon's hand from him. He lashed out with his hind legs, causing his assailant to grunt in pain as his hooves connected.

Zanbamon wheeled around to find his assailant had been Lilamon. He stared in astonishment, because Lilamon was completely uninjured – all the cuts from his previous attack were gone and any damage from his kick was healing before his eyes.

"How?" Zanbamon cried. "You should be on the verge of deletion!"

Lilamon giggled. "Maybe," she said. "But I am a fairy Digimon, and a forest spirit. If I'm surrounded by nature, I can call on its power at any time to heal any injuries I get. And we're in a massive forest, so I've got lots of woody helpers here."

"Then I shall put an end to you here and now!" Zanbamon began preparing another Mystic Flame... when a Corona Blaster smashed him from behind and send him stumbling forwards again. Beelzemon, looking bruised but none the worse for wear, leered.

"That was a good move," he said. "But don't count me out just yet."

Zanbamon began twirling his slender youtou again, preparing to launch another Mystic Flame at Beelzemon. But something else came tearing in from the side and with a **"MEGA DASH IMPACT,"** Diatrymon slammed into his side and slashed with the blades on his wings, before darting out of the way.

"You're healed too?" Zanbamon yelled, wincing from the new slash in his flank. "What's your excuse?"

"Did I mention I could heal others as well?" asked Lilamon, tittering a little.

"I'll finish you first then!" Zanbamon declared, twirling his youtou... but to his horror, the blade suddenly snapped at the base and fell to the floor, leaving him holding only a hilt. "WHAT! BUT... HOW?"

"I guess you didn't notice when I slashed your blade with one of my own," Diatrymon crowed, flexing his bladed talons for emphasis. "Talk about shoddy workmanship."

Unable to use his ranged attack now that his youtou was destroyed, Zanbamon growled and tossed the useless hilt aside, gripping his zanbato with both hands and charging towards Lilamon, but then Wingdramon whooshed overhead with a second **"WING BLAST!"** the threw Zanbamon off his feet and sent him flying several metres to crash painfully on the ground.

"Now, Lilamon!" Wingdramon shouted, as he swooped back over. "While he's down!"

"Right," nodded the fairy and gracefully flew over the struggling Zanbamon, corkscrewing through the air with a cry of **"UN DEUX POLLEN!"** Sprinkles of glittering pollen began to gush from the large flower on her back and floated down, covering Zanbamon like invisible snow.

"What was that supposed to do?" Zanbamon asked, pushing himself back upwards... when suddenly his muscles stopped functioning and he fell to the ground again. "WHAT!"

Lilamon smirked at him, coming to stand by his head and crouch down to whisper conspiratorially. "My Un Deux Pollen has to power to temporarily paralyze the opponent. You should be unable to move for a couple of minutes or so." Zanbamon growled and tried to cleave at her with a Focal Blade, but his arm barely twitched in response. Lilamon was mocking him by standing so close when he was unable to strike.

"Care to finish the job, Beelzemon?" asked Lilamon, lifting into the air once more. Zanbamon's eyes moved over to glance at Beelzemon, and he paled when he saw the former Demon Lord had already drawn a strange pentagram in the air in front of him.

"Sure," Beelzemon nodded. **"CORONA DESTROYER!"**

From where he was crouching behind Behemoth and watching the whole thing, Calumon stared in amazement as the massive pink energy beam that followed obliterated the paralyzed Zanbamon on the spot, his data floating away into the air, to be collected by Anubimon at some point. "Whoa," he said, in awe. He hadn't seen a Digimon battle that close up in ages. It had been quite a spectacle.

Beelzemon glanced around at the others, ignoring the pieces of Zanbamon. "You guys all okay?"

"Yeah, we're fine," said Diatrymon. "Had a couple of close calls there, but I'm alright, thanks to Lilamon."

"Just doing my job," Lilamon said. "So, now that that's over, what did you think, Beelzemon? Are we good enough to join your team after all?"

Beelzemon chuckled, shaking his head in wonder. "You know, I think I may have underestimated the three of you. You all performed really well against that guy."

"And?" Lilamon pressed him.

"Alright," Beelzemon nodded. "I'd be proud to fight beside you anytime and I'm glad that you guys are here."

"Praise indeed," Wingdramon grinned. "It was our pleasure."

"Yeah," said Beelzemon. "But don't let it go to your heads. Diatrymon's right, you had a couple of close calls there. Lilamon, you were almost deleted at one point. Just remember to stay on guard at all times during the battle. And watch out for each other."

"We know," said Lilamon. "And we did. We'll be there with you every step of the way, Beelzemon."

"Yes," nodded Wingdramon. "But there may be more servants of GranDracmon on their way. Might I suggest we move out and try and find somewhere else to spend the night?"

"Yeah. You're right," nodded Beelzemon. "Let's go."

And within a few minutes, they left the clearing behind. But there was an edge to their travel now. They now knew that they were indeed being pursued and there were a few questions on everyone's minds now:-

When would they be attacked next?

Who would be doing the attacking?

And would they be able to fight them off once more?

* * *

And there you have it. It seems that Lilamon, Wingdramon and Diatrymon are all more than capable of holding their own in a fight. Zanbamon was a tough adversary, but working together, they managed to defeat him. But Zanbamon was by no means that last minion GranDracmon will send after them, so you can expect more battles in the future.

As said at the start of the chapter, look for Chapter 91 on Thursday. Chapter 92 will probably come out the following Wednesday or Thursday, depending on how much time I get to write over the weekend and when I get back from the trip on Tuesday.

Please review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Anakin and Ahsoka have escalated their prank war by a huge amount. Seeing this as an opportunity, the Digimon decide to use this prank war to investigate something they've been suspicious about for some time.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 91 : To Prank Or Not to Prank**


	91. To Prank or Not To Prank

Again, I'm out earlier than expected. That may because I have been wanting to write this chapter for some time and also because I've devised a whole new schedule for spreading out the workload and getting fast updates. Now, I write 1000 words every time the clock reaches a multiple of three, so I write 100 words at nine o'clock in the morning (if I'm awake), noon, three in the afternoon, six in the evening and nine in the evening, and possibly midnight if for some reason I am not tired. This allows me to write at least 5000 words on a day I'm doing nothing.

And this chapter is something special. Like the previous two arcs, this chapter has little to do with the rest of the arc, but does cause another major development.

Read on to find out what.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 91:- To Prank Or Not To Prank**

* * *

Ahsoka Tano growled as she launched herself at her Master again, her lightsaber scything towards his neck. Anakin blocked the blow and reposted, forcing Ahsoka to duck under his guard and spin about, swinging her _other_ lightsaber at his midriff. Anakin stepped back and Ahsoka seized on the opportunity, swinging her first blade at Anakin's face and the second towards his stomach in a twirling spin. Anakin blocked both with ease, but fell afoul of a kick to the stomach as Ahsoka completed the spin with style. The Padawan learner then brought both blades crashing down towards him, forcing Anakin to block both at once.

Ahsoka quickly stepped back and made six rapid swings, three with each arm, all aiming for random parts of her the Chosen One's body. Anakin's blue blade went into a flurry of motion as he turned all six blows aside and then lashed out with the Force, knocking Ahsoka onto her back. Ahsoka backward rolled with the push flipping back onto her feet and charging again at high speed, seeking to slash downward before Anakin could bring up his guard. But Anakin did bringing up his guard and blocked the strike, his blue blade locking with both of Ahsoka's green ones.

They pushed for a moment, and Ahsoka attempted to detach her blades and bring in a double sweep from below, but Anakin's blade stayed locked with hers, so that they ended up continuing their straining match, blades pointing towards the floor.

"You've been improving a great deal, Snips," Anakin smirked at her. "Aayla has taught you well."

"I'm sure she'll be pleased to hear about it," Ahsoka replied, pushing with all her strength.

Anakin stepped back and broke the lock, initiating his own flurry of strikes. Reversing her grip on her lightsaber hilts, Ahsoka dodged about on the spot, parrying her Master's strikes with relative ease, but then Anakin caught her off-guard, feinting a downwards strike so Ahsoka brought up a lightsaber to block, but then spinning and lashing at the blade in her other hand instead, knocking it out of her nerveless grasp. Ahsoka backed up quickly and brought both hands to her remaining blade, ready for more action.

She blinked when Anakin sheathed his lightsaber. "I think that's enough training for now," he said, strolling over to the side of the training room and tossing the practice lightsaber into a crate full of them, then retrieving his real blade and attaching it to his belt. Ahsoka followed his example, summoning her fallen blade with the Force and chucking both in the same crate, before summoning her own. "Your Jar'kai is getting much better," said Anakin. "Who knows, soon you may even be a match for me."

"I'm a match for you now, Master," Ahsoka laughed. "I was just going easy on you because I had one more lightsaber."

"Have you ever considered moving on to wielding two blades all the time?" asked Anakin. "It might give you an edge in battle and you've got the skill to pull it off. Many Jedi struggle with using two blades, but you seem to be picking it up quite well."

"All thanks to yours and Aayla's efforts. And I don't know," Ahsoka shrugged as the two of them left the training room together and entered the corridors of the Jedi Temple. "I mean, maybe. But I'd have to practice a bit more – it is harder than I thought it would be."

"But you've got the strength to do it," said Anakin. "But, then again, it's what you prefer. I mean, I can do Jar'kai as well, but I prefer one blade to give me more power in my swings. But since you rely more on speed in your attacks, I'd say that you should give it a shot."

"Yeah," shrugged Ahsoka. "Maybe I will."

"Oh, hold on," Anakin brightened. "I have an idea. Why don't you continue to use one full length lightsaber and have your second one as a shoto instead?"

"A shoto?" asked Ahsoka. She pictured herself, wielding one full-length lightsaber and another one about half the size of it in the other hand, almost like a lightknife or lightdirk or something. She found she actually quite liked the idea of swinging a shoto through some of the droids. And a smaller blade might mean that she could get under the guard of an opponent in a lightsaber duel. She'd been in a few of those now, but had neither won or lost. Perhaps a shoto would give her an edge.

"Yeah," she nodded. "That actually sounds pretty cool. I'll give it a shot."

"We'll practice with one in our next training session," said Anakin. "Give you a feel for it."

"Roger, roger," Ahsoka smirked, casually using the most common phrase you heard from a battle droid. "Well, this is my stop," she said, as she came to the door that led to her chambers.

"What are you going to do for the rest of the day?" Anakin asked as they paused by her room.

"Well, I thought that I might meditate for a bit," said Ahsoka. "And then I'd head over to Aayla's room to hang out with the Digimon."

"Alright," nodded Anakin. "I'm going to talk to Obi-Wan. He's just returned from a mission to Dorin and I wanted to check in with him."

"Okay then," nodded Ahsoka. "See you soon." Anakin continued down the corridor and Ahsoka pushed the button to open the door to her room and stepped inside.

The moment she was in the room, some thick, gelatinous and freezing cold liquid suddenly splashed over her from the ceiling, covering her entire form with goop. Ahsoka yelped and held up her arms, staring down herself in disgust as the goopy substance oozed down her body towards her boots. "Ugh! By the Force! Urgh! Euck! Eew!" She held up her arms, and watched as the slimy stuff dripped off them and splattered on the floor like thick globs of honey.

"What is this stuff?" she asked aloud, holding her soaking arm to her nose and sniffing it. She recoiled suddenly. "Ugh! Gamorrean Slime Cat slime?" she asked. "What the..." She stopped and stared, taking in her room for the first time in entering it. She gawked in disbelief at seeing that absolutely everything was absolutely blanketed in the foul slime.

She, Ahsoka Tano, was standing in a room thick with slime, covered in so much of the stuff she was dripping as much as the Slime Cat that it came from.

One culprit immediately sprang to mind.

"MASTER!" she roared as she whirled around, that action alone causing slime to fly from her back lekku and sploosh across the wall at the far side of the room. She stormed back out into the corridor and spotted Anakin at the far side of the corridor, pointing a holocam at her. Anakin waved, roared with laughter at the sight of her and then darted around the corner, fleeing the wrath of his student.

"GET BACK HERE!" Ahsoka bellowed and started to rush after him, but she was so covered in the slime that it splashed over the floor ahead in a thick puddle, which she immediately slipped in.

Not only did she slip over and land rather painfully on her back, she ended up sliding down the corridor on a trail of the gooey stuff like some gross Hutt on a toboggan. She slid to a halt near the end of the corridor and flipped over onto her front, splashing the slime around and she pushed herself to her feet, almost slipping in the stuff again and feeling a little bit like Jar Jar. Eventually, she scrambled up, still plastered and dripping and glared down the corridor her Master had fled down.

"I will get you for this!" she shouted after him. "Stay on your guard, Master! You will regret it if you don't!"

Whether Anakin heard her threats or not, she didn't know. Ahsoka glanced back down the corridor, looking at the trail of sticky slime she had left down the corridor. She grimaced and flicked her arms, sending more of the stuff splattering over the walls, before turning and stalking away into the halls. She knew she definitely wasn't going to be the one cleaning that mess up.

She began to wrack her brains for potential comebacks from this disgusting prank. She wanted it to be something _really _special this time – something the whole Temple would not stop talking about for weeks on end, possibly months. If the whole of Coruscant didn't know about it within a week then it wasn't good enough for her.

But she couldn't think of anything suitable.

However, she knew someone who probably could.

Terriermon had not been playing a part in the prank war over the last few weeks. He'd claimed that Anakin and Ahsoka had both got the hang of it by now and he would like to just sit back and watch now, although Ahsoka was pretty sure that Terriermon wanted to make sure Mace Windu turned to somebody else for an explanation when the pranks were pulled this time. But Ahsoka decided on the spot to drag the bunny out of retirement and use his help to pull off the prank of the century.

She was still mulling over this when she walked right past Barriss Offee and Luminara Unduli. The two Mirialan stared at the dripping Togruta and the trail she was leaving behind her as she marched purposefully through the halls.

"What happened to her? Did she have an accident?" Barriss wondered aloud.

Luminara shook her head. "Not exactly. I would say that Skywalker had happened to her. Brace yourself, my Padawan. The repercussions of this one will not be pretty."

* * *

Aayla Secura's chambers were definitely more clean that Ahsoka's, although that could be said of _every_ other chamber in the Temple. However, it was currently devoid of Aayla herself, as the Twi'lek had gone to speak with Master Vos, who had also returned from the mission to Dorin, which was the first mission he had been on since rejoining the Republic. She wanted to see how he was getting on, and the Digimon and the Tamers had been left to their own devices.

Naturally, this meant only one thing, which Aayla would have joined in with had she been there. Renamon and Lopmon were both in action, leaping up and down on the spot, twirling and jumping over one another in an intricate dance, all the while belting out another song, again by the band Nightwish. They were halfway through a particular favourite of Renamon's known as Romanticide. The Tamers watched on, and Terriermon was bouncing on the spot, eagerly awaiting his turn to join in the dance.

"Leave me be!  
And cease to tell me how to feel!  
To grieve, to shield myself from evil!  
Leave me be!  
OD of lies is killing me!  
Romanticide!  
Till love do me part!"

They came to a spinning halt, raising their arms into the air and balancing on one leg. After a couple of seconds, Terriermon began the drum roll by banging on the side of Aayla's bed with his ears, before he bounded in-between his mate and his sister, and all three went whirling together, Renamon whooshing about on the spot, with the two bunnies leaping onto her shoulders and dancing across her spinning arms. Their minds were perfectly in sync, which was why neither bunny fell off the spinning fox.

Terriermon leered as he sang the next bit in a slightly evil voice:-

"Dead Boy's alive but without sense,  
I need a near-death experience  
Heart once bold,  
Now turned to stone  
Perfection, my messenger from Hell!"

The girls took over:-

"Wine turns to water,  
Campfires freeze,  
Love letters burn,  
Romance is lost  
Lord, let me be wrong in this pain!"

And then it was Terriermon again:-

"Temporary pain, eternal shame  
To take part in this Devil's chess game  
Spit on me, let me go, get rid of me,  
And try to survive your stupidity!"

As the song came to a spinning end, each one sprang outwards, with Terriermon and Lopmon landing in each of the back corners and Renamon landing in front of the door, all three facing inwards to form a triangle and in a crouching position, like three bows. As the Tamers applauded, Terriermon stood up and stretched himself.

"The lyrics may be a bit depressing," he said. "But that is a damn good song. Catchy tune, lots of guitar music. Again, I wish there was a guitar small enough for me to use that wasn't some crappy little kid's toy."

"How long would you play it before giving up?" asked Henry.

"I wouldn't give up," Terriermon shook his head. "I'd keep going until I was as awesome at guitar as I am at video games."

"Again with the modesty needed," Renamon chuckled as she scooped him off the floor and give him a noogie above his horn, which left the bunny squirming to get out of her grip.

It was at this point that the door slid open. Everyone turned to look at their guest and blinked as they beheld something which looked like it had crawled directly out of the swamps of Dagobah.

"Ahsoka?" Rika asked, staring in amazement. "What the heck happened to you?"

"My Master," Ahsoka growled, stepping into the room and leaving slimy footprints behind her. She approached Renamon and Terriermon and pulled Terriermon from the fox's grasp.

"Eew," Terriermon said, as the goop washed over his front. "What is this stuff? You smell worse than Ziro the Hutt on a hot day on Felucia... and I know what that smells like."

"You don't want to know," Ahsoka said. "Now listen. I am going to go in there and use Aayla's shower," she pointed at the doors which lead to Aayla's private en-suite. "Since I don't dare use my own with my room in that state. When I come out, I want you to have come up with the best counter-prank that you can come up with and then I want you to help me execute it. This prank war is going to end with me winning it."

"Yes, sir," Terriermon saluted, struggling not to burst out laughing at Ahsoka's tone and expression of disgust. "You can rely on me."

Ahsoka briefly smiled and said, "Thanks Terriermon. My Master can_not_ get away with this one." Then she handed the slightly slimed Terriermon back to Renamon and quickly stepped into the en-suite, shutting the door behind her, leaving everyone else staring at the door for a few minutes.

They waited until they could hear the sound of running water before Terriermon began giggling, peeling the slime Ahsoka had gotten on him off his torso and smearing it across the wall. "I have to commend Anakin for this one," he said. "It reminds me of the time I managed to cover Rika's mum with bubblegum."

"She didn't talk to you for weeks, as I recall," Rika said, snickering slightly at the memory – it had been funny even if it was her own mum.

"And now I've been commissioned to come up with a prank to end all pranks," the bunny said. "This could take some thinking about. So many ideas. So little time. And it needs to be _really_ elaborate. Hmm," he hopped up on the bed beside Henry and Suzie and adopted his thoughtful pose, placing his chin on his hand and sticking his tongue out the corner of his mouth as he ran through a large number of ideas.

Lopmon chuckled as she caught a glimpse of what was going on in Terriermon's head. "Careful Terriermon," she said. "It may need to be a good prank but we want to make sure that Anakin is still fit to battle afterwards."

"Yeah, I know," said Terriermon. "That's why I'm being selective."

"Actually," said Renamon, who had her own thoughtful pose on display – leaning against the wall, arms folded and staring at the ceiling – "This could provide us with an excuse for investigating something that I've been meaning to for some time. But we'd have to do it fast if we wanted to get it done between now and our next assignment, whatever it may be."

"What do you mean, Renamon," Rika asked, as the three Tamers turned to glance at the yellow fox.

"It concerns Anakin," said Renamon. "You all know that for months now I have been noticing some odd behaviour from our newest member of our mental network..."

"And the person who made us the Epic Eight," added Terriermon, snickering. He had loved the name that Aayla had given to them this time and it had stuck that way. Meanwhile, they had also focused on developing their new mental bond with Anakin. It was developing quickly, but not _nearly_ as fast as Aayla's had when she had first joined the link. They still couldn't look through his eyes yet, but they could communicate from fairly long distances away.

"Yes, that too," said Renamon. "But as I was saying, strange behaviour from him regarding a certain member of the Galactic Senate."

"Senator Amidala, right?" asked Suzie.

"Yes," nodded Renamon. "All those little stolen glances at one another, the expressions they both have when they look at each other and the way Anakin talks about her have all made me suspicious. And what happened when we got back from the mission to Naboo a few days ago was _really_ the icing on the cake."

"True," said Lopmon. "I would have noticed that even without our mental link. I know that Padmé was happy that her planet and her friend Jar Jar were safe and everything, but the way she hugged Anakin when he told her the news seemed a little bit _too_ sensual. And when she realised that everyone was watching and she let go, she seemed a bit _too_ embarrassed, if you ask me."

"Precisely," the fox nodded. "There's obviously something going on between those two. People who don't hang around with Anakin as often as we do and don't stay hidden and observe things half the time like we do might not notice it. But, if you look closely enough, it is there."

"What are you suggesting, Renamon?" Henry asked. "You think that Anakin is going against the Jedi Code and is in a relationship with this woman? That would be a gross violation of the rules, wouldn't it?"

"Yes," nodded Renamon. "But since when has Anakin ever cared about rules?"

Henry paused and said, "That... actually makes a lot of sense."

"I like the way you're thinking right now, Rena," Terriermon grinned maliciously as Renamon's thoughts ran through his head.

Renamon nodded. "I want to find out just how far this relationship between the two of them goes. It may just be a pair of little crushes or something like that, but somehow I get the feeling it runs deeper than that. And this prank war might give us just such an opportunity."

"I don't get it," Suzie said. "How can we use a prank war like that?"

"Simple, Suzie," said Terriermon. "We tell Ahsoka that we've come up with another kind of prank – one along slightly different lines to the physical kind of pranks that the two of them have been pulling on one another throughout the course of this war. We tell her that we're going to try and make Anakin think that Senator Amidala has fallen madly in love with him. She'll think that was a great idea, and we can go ahead and do our investigations without her being any the wiser."

"Should we really be doing that?" asked Henry dubiously. "I mean, if he's got a big secret like that, is it really any of our business? We can't just go prying into people's lives like that, can we?"

"We can and we will," said Terriermon, firmly. "Anakin's one of us now, and if one of us is keeping secrets from the rest of us, then it's not good for the rest of the group and the way we work together."

"Terriermon is right," said Lopmon. "We share a mental link with Anakin now and if he doesn't trust us with his secrets then he'll never truly integrate with it. I'm sure you've all noticed that Anakin's link with us is developing much slower than it should be – it could be something to with the fact that he's hiding stuff from us."

Renamon nodded. "We're a family that doesn't hold secrets. Anakin has to adhere to that rule too. When I go prying into his thoughts, I feel a tight little ball that he's clamped down on, a swelter of emotions that I can only pick up flashes of. Love is one of them, but there's also anger and hate there. Anakin's been bottling some things up inside him for so long now that it's affecting him and putting him under stress. As the phrase goes – he needs to let it all out. He needs to tell us. If he has others around him who know and share his secrets then that will take a lot of pressure off his mind. And besides, he needs to know that he can trust us, one-hundred percent."

Henry contemplated this for a few moments and then nodded. "Alright," he said. "So how do we go about this?"

"I have a few ideas," said Terriermon. "But we'll need Ahsoka's help. Of course, she'll think it's all just a big prank, but she'll do the job just fine. Leave it to me, guys."

* * *

When Ahsoka was told of the idea, that they were going to try and convince Anakin that Padmé, who was as far as she knew one of his oldest and dearest friends, had fallen completely head over heels in love with him, she had stuff her (slime-free) fist in her mouth to stop herself from laughing out loud. She couldn't wait to see the look on her Master's face when all of this came to a head and she agreed to help instantly.

Ahsoka and Terriermon spent the next five minutes going over the different things they would need to do to pull the stunt off, carefully analysing and covering the weak points in their plan. Once they came up with the final design, Ahsoka had rubbed her hands together eagerly and said, "So, when do we start?"

"Right away," Terriermon grinned. "No time like the present."

"Is that another Earth-ism?" asked Ahsoka.

"Why, yes. Yes it is," said Terriermon. "Shall we go?"

"Sure," Ahsoka said. "But what about Aayla? What do we say to her when she comes back?"

"Don't worry," said Renamon. "We'll just tell her that Terriermon got restless and went for a spin with you in your speeder. That'll be a plausible excuse."

"Alright," said Ahsoka. "Let's go."

* * *

The initial arrangements were easy enough. Ahsoka and Terriermon headed for the hangar, where they jumped in a speeder (Anakin's yellow one) and took off into the Coruscant air, the bunny ducking out of sight to avoid being spotted by other passengers. Ahsoka drove down the street-level and made a stop at one of the fanciest restaurants she knew of. Leaving Terriermon hiding in the speeder, she made her way inside and quickly booked a private meal for two, ready for tomorrow evening. It took a lot out of her expense account, but not as much as it should, because the manager agreed to let her book it at half price if he could get her autograph. She was just that famous now.

Arrangements made, Ahsoka made her way back outside – where she discovered a Weequay had attempted to steal the speeder, but had been knocked unconscious from behind by an unknown assailant, at least to him. Leaving the out-cold man for the police droids, she took off again and made her way to the apartment of Padmé Amidala.

"Are you ready for this?" she asked the bunny hiding beneath the passenger seat.

"Completely and utterly," Terriermon grinned. "Are you?"

"Of course," Ahsoka nodded.

A few minutes later and Ahsoka pulled into the landing platform that jutted out from the main apartment complex, bringing her speeder to a halt and stepping out onto the platform, dragging a backpack with her. She marched down the platform and gave three sharp knocks on the glass doors.

It didn't take long for Padmé to come rushing to answer it. Through the glass, Ahsoka saw her blink in surprise at the sight of her standing there, but she made her way forward anyway and opened the doors. "Hello, Ahsoka," the Senator of Naboo said, brightly. "How've you been?"

"Eh, I've been better," Ahsoka shrugged. "But I'm alright. You?"

"I am very well, thank you," Padmé replied. "What are you doing here?"

Ahsoka shrugged again. "Well, my Master just pranked me again and... well, I guess I wanted to get away from him for a while. Then I remembered that I haven't come to visit you for a while because of this whole war, so I thought I'd head over here and say hello. Is that alright?"

"No, it's perfectly fine," Padmé smiled warmly. "Come in, come in. Threepio, could you fetch us some drinks please."

"At once, Mistress," the gold droid standing in the living room beyond replied. "And may I say it is an absolute pleasure to see you once again, Mistress Tano."

"Thanks Threepio," Ahsoka grinned. "And to think, Artoo says that you can be so rude at times."

Threepio somehow managed to look offended despite his frozen face. "Well... what does that little bucket of bolts know about anything? Honestly." He turned and walked into the kitchen to get the drinks, his knees barely bending with each step.

"What's in the backpack?" asked Padmé.

"Oh nothing. Just a couple of holobooks. They're quite important though so I thought I'd better bring them in with me, just in case," Ahsoka lied, placing the backpack on the floor beside the sofa as she and Padmé both took a seat.

"So..." Padmé said. "Tell me. What was it that Anakin did this time that made you so mad?"

"Ever heard of a Gamorrean Slime Cat?" asked Ahsoka, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "He filled my whole room with its secretion and rigged my door so a large amount of it fell on me when I opened it."

Padmé recoiled slightly. "Wow. That is a bad one. That Master of yours can be very mischievous when he wants to be," she shook her head. She began to go into an anecdote about the time they had on Naboo when he was supposed to be her guardian from a mysterious assassin, who turned out to be Jango Fett. Ahsoka was only half-paying attention though. She had spotted Padmé's personal datapad lying on a nearby table, and this was exactly what she needed. While pretending she was listening, she used the Force to lift it into the air behind Padmé's back and floated it towards the floor.

She pushed it under the table when Threepio returned with the drinks, accepted one, and then picked up the datapad with her mind again, causing it to float across the floor and towards the backpack. When it got close enough, a small white hand reached out of the backpack and dragged the datapad inside.

From within the backpack, Terriermon smirked as he held up the datapad. _Right,_ he thought. _Time to put my Aurebesh to the test._

_Remember,_ Renamon's voice resounded in his mind. _You need to make it sound authentic. No overkill or dramatics._

_Yeah, I know,_ the bunny replied. Then he began to push a number of the buttons on the datapad, carefully typing out something like a letter in the odd written style of Aurebesh, which was how Basic was written down. He made it reasonably short and snappy, then double-checked it a couple of times to make sure he made no spelling mistakes, because he didn't think Padmé would. Then, he typed in the code of Anakin's own datapad and sent the letter in the form of a holomail, which was basically similar to the e-mail system of Earth, and could be used to send written messages from datapad to datapad.

Terriermon waited until it was sent, then moved into the Sent Items folder, brought up the file and deleted it, so Padmé would not have a clue. Then he carefully shoved the datapad out of the backpack. Ahsoka spotted it out of the corner of her eye and then levitated it back onto the table, in its original position, not stopping her chat with Padmé as she did this.

_Perfect,_ the Togruta thought. _That's half the plan done right there._

Feeling slightly bad about visiting the Senator just to get back at her Master, Ahsoka stayed on and chatted with her for over an hour, during which time Terriermon got very bored and very uncomfortable inside his rucksack. When Ahsoka judged that he was getting to the point where he would do something stupid and probably reveal himself just to do something more exciting, she made her exit, thanking Padmé for the drinks and then heading off back to the Temple.

They still needed to complete the second stage of the plan.

And this half might be slightly trickier.

* * *

Anakin entered his chambers after his lengthy discussion with Obi-Wan, during which Master and former Padawan had explained what had happened on their most recent missions – Obi-Wan rolling his eyes when he learned of how the _Twilight_ had been shot down _again._ (Incidentally the damaged ship had been recovered and Anakin was steadily repairing it, although he thought it would probably take some time to finish the job). But eventually the two of them had parted and Anakin had gone back to his room.

He'd half expected to find Ahsoka there, ready to lunge for him or at least demand to give her the holocam so she could delete the video he had taken. But she wasn't there. Shrugging nonchalantly, he walked over to his desk and picked up his datapad, checking his holomail box. As usual there was another holomail from Chancellor Palpatine, asking if it would be convenient for him to come around for a visit anytime soon – he'd been getting a lot of these recently for some reason – but this time there was another one waiting for him. He frowned when he saw that it was from Padmé.

He opened it up and read her message. As he did, his eyes steadily got wider and wider as he took in what she had to say:-

_Dear Ani,_

_I realise that it might be a bad time, but then again, it always seems to be a bad time these days. However, recently I have been feeling that this war has been drawing us further and further apart. The last time we spent some time alone together seems far too far in the past for my liking. I do not wish this war to drive a wedge between us, Ani, so I was wondering if you would like to spend another evening with me. I have arranged a private suite for two at the Skysitter Restaurant tonight from six to ten. I will be there, and I sincerely hope you can make it too. If you are too busy I completely understand, but please, be there if you can._

_Please do not reply to this – I will be busy with affairs of the Senate until shortly before six._

_With love,_

_Padmé._

Anakin glanced at the door and hurriedly deleted the holomail to make sure no-one saw it. Then he sat down and mulled over what he had read. This was an unusually bold move from his secret wife, but then again, he could understand what she was getting at. It had been almost a month since the two of them had spent any time alone together, and even that had been for about an hour.

He felt the same way she did, and had been considering trying to organise some like this for about a week. He was surprised that Padmé had made the first move, but he didn't care. Yes, he loved spending time with his Padawan and Aayla and his extradimensional friends, but he got to spend so much time with them and he didn't have to hide it. His moments with Padmé were among his most treasured, especially since they were so few and far between – maybe _because_ they were so few and far between, as well as the fact that he loved her of course.

Well, he didn't have anything that he knew of in the near future. Of course, if an emergency cropped up then there was little he could do about that, but if Padmé was going to be at Skysitter in a private suite, then he would gladly be there with her.

As he mulled over his plans for slipping away unnoticed, he started as the door opened and Ahsoka was framed in the doorway. "Enjoying yourself, Master?" asked the Padawan, smiling sweetly.

"Hey Snips," Anakin said, a little forced and hoping Ahsoka didn't notice. "You still mad at me?"

"You dumped Gamorrean slime cat goo all over me," Ahsoka sniffed. "You should be glad I'm still talking to you."

Anakin chuckled stiffly, trying not to give anything away. "I suppose I should count my blessings, huh?"

"Not just yet, Master," Ahsoka smiled, again with a sweet edge to it. "You see, I explained to Master Yoda and Master Windu what happened and they both agree with me on one thing – you made the mess..." she reached around the door and pulled a mop into view. "So you get to clean it up."

Anakin stared at the mop for a couple of seconds, and then chuckled again. "Alright, Ahsoka," he said, getting up and taking it. "I guess you're right. But, uh... well... I need to be somewhere at six."

"Oh?" asked Ahsoka. "Where?"

"I promised the Chancellor that I would pay him a visit," Anakin lied. "It's been a while since we last spoke you see, and he wanted to catch up." Technically the last half of that explanation was true.

"Okay," said Ahsoka. "But until then, get mopping, buster." She moved around him and shoved him out the door and into the corridor. The door slid shut behind them, leaving Anakin's room empty.

But not for long. A couple of seconds later, the ventilation grating opened and Terriermon leapt into the room. He landed smoothly on the floor and jogged over to the datapad on Anakin's table. He chuckled to himself as he got to work, typing out another holomail that mirrored the other one almost word for word, with a couple of changes to ensure that it made sense. Then, once again, he sent it then deleted it from the Sent Box, then placed it down and leapt back into the vents, replacing the grate behind him.

* * *

When Padmé received the holomail, she was absolutely flabbergasted. Anakin must have almost gone over the edge. Did he not know what the consequences would be if they were caught? He could be expelled from his order and she could be shamed before the Senate and possibly sacked herself. She had considered replying to tell him that he was crazy to do such a thing, but he had said he would be in an important meeting with the Council for most of the afternoon and she hadn't dared.

And yet...

It was true that every time she saw Anakin but couldn't go and be with him like an ordinary wife, her heart ached. It was true that she thought of him at least half the day, worry gnawing at her belly and wondering if he was alright, and the fact he had been sent to her home planet didn't help, because she'd worrying about both him and Jar Jar as well as the planet as a whole.

How she'd love to spend some more time with him.

And so, very much against her better judgement, she decided that she would go. And she spent the next hour picking out what to wear. And the next hour after that picking her hairstyle.

* * *

Anakin gave himself a quick shower to get the slime off himself at around half-five in the afternoon. It had been an eventful afternoon, cleaning up Ahsoka's sticky quarters and it didn't help that Ahsoka was there watching him all the while and occasionally flinging globs of the stuff at him.

He would be the first to admit that he was a little nervous, but only to himself. He always got the jitters whenever he was about to go and see Padmé, for fear of doing something to give away what he was doing to anyone else around him. He knew that once he was actually with Padmé, that would all change and he'd become completely and totally relaxed.

But first, he had to get there.

Once dressed in his usual attire again, Anakin stepped out of his room and into the corridor. He glanced to either side, apprehensively making sure that there was no-one else there to intercept him and make him late. To his relief, he saw nobody. Tuning into his senses to look out for people to avoid, he started off towards the corridor.

Once he had gone, there was a snickering sound from the corridor, and a perception filter was dropped, to reveal that all three Tamers, all three Digimon and Ahsoka had been standing there the whole time. Ahsoka lowered her Force-concealment shields that had prevented Anakin from sensing them. The Digimon and Tamers hadn't needed to do anything, as Anakin had blocked off his connection from them and didn't intend to remove it throughout the entire evening, to make sure they couldn't pry into his mind. He was, effectively, making their own job easier.

It was Ahsoka doing the snickering.

"Did you see his face?" Ahsoka asked. "Did you see the way he was acting just then? He must have been really thrown by that holomail you sent him, Terriermon."

"Of course he was," Terriermon bluffed, as they still wanted Ahsoka to think this was just a prank. "It was a love confession worthy of Shakespeare."

"No it wasn't," Henry rolled his eyes. Terriermon glared at him.

"I wonder what he'll say to her when he gets into the room," said Ahsoka. "This is going to be priceless. Come on! We need to get there before him so we can get a good view."

"You sure that holocam you placed in the suite is well hidden?" asked Lopmon.

"Yep," nodded Ahsoka confidently. "They won't see it if they were looking for it, which they aren't. Now's let's hurry or he'll get there before us."

The seven of them started off down the corridor and after Anakin, but all were brought to a screeching halt when a voice behind them said, "And where do you think you lot are going?"

"Hi, Aayla," said Suzie, as they turned and greeted the Twi'lek walking up the corridor towards them, a stern expression on her face. "How's your Master?"

"Very well, actually," said Aayla, folding her arms and tapping her foot expectantly. "But don't attempt to change the subject, Suzie. What exactly are the lot of you up to. And don't try and fool me – I can tell that you're all up to something from the look on Terriermon's face."

Terriermon blinked. "What? You can?"

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "After seeing the numerous pranks you pulled on other people I made sure to pay attention to your expressions so I could tell when you were planning something in future and attempt to avoid it."

"Ah," Terriermon said. "Clever. Uh... what would that expression be?"

"Not telling," Aayla smirked briefly. Then her stern expression returned and she said, "Now out with it. Come on, Renamon – you can tell me can't you? It's not like you to take this much of a role in whatever your mate is attempting to pull. And I assume it has something to do with Anakin."

Ahsoka hesitated for a couple of seconds, wondering if they should include the Twi'lek in what they were doing. The Digimon, on the other hand, saw no problem with including her, since as far as they were concerned this whole thing was about bringing them closer as a group and helping Anakin in the long run, as well as attempting to confirm some suspicions.

"We're playing a prank, you're right about that," Lopmon half-lied. "Anakin managed to pull off a big one earlier, covering Ahsoka with slime from a Gamorrean slime cat."

"And her entire room," added Rika.

Aayla grimaced. "Ouch. That is an unpleasant-sounding one."

"You have no idea," Ahsoka grimaced even more, opening her mouth in a retching motion.

"Zebra-head commissioned me to come up with a suitable comeback," said Terriermon. "And we're in the middle of it right now. We managed to arrange a meeting between Anakin and Senator Amidala and also convince Anakin that Padmé is madly in love with him. We want to record the awkward moment and the realisation that it was a trick, so we've set up a holocam in the private suite we booked for them."

Aayla paused for a second, staring at Terriermon blankly. Then she snorted and then laughter began to rack her body. Ahsoka joined in and the two of them laughed together for a while.

When Aayla managed to pull herself together, she asked, "Isn't that a little bit... excessive? Anakin may be terrified someone will find out about this and expel him from the Jedi Order."

_Somehow, I doubt he's that scared really,_ Renamon thought to everyone from her dimension. They hadn't been sharing their suspicions with Aayla for some time, since Aayla didn't sit and observe like they did so she had not picked up on the same things. Plus, they hadn't wanted her to worry about it.

"Not really," Terriermon shrugged. "It's not like we're going to distribute it to the Holonet news or anything. It'll just be a private joke between us. And Padmé I suppose, although we made sure that she still doesn't know about us."

Aayla shook her head. "Poor Anakin," she chuckled. "Alright then. Since I know about this prank now, I can hardly stand by and watch as you all carry it out. I'll come along, so that I can keep an eye on you and stop things getting out of hand."

"Why, Aayla," Renamon smirked. "Do you not think I am capable of doing that by myself."

"Renamon," Aayla smirked back. "You above all people must realise that when it comes to Terriermon, the more eyes there are keeping him out of trouble, the better."

"Hey!" Terriermon protested. "I'm not that bad, am I?"

"Yes, you are," Henry said. Terriermon fumed quietly.

"And I happen to know that Ahsoka is much the same," Aayla added.

"Oi," Ahsoka folded her arms and glared at Aayla. The Twi'lek didn't flinch and stared back, until Ahsoka broke eye contact. Aayla chuckled and beckoned to them to follow her.

"Come on," she said. "We'll use my speeder to get there. Which restaurant did you book them into?"

"Skysitter," Ahsoka said as they followed the Twi'lek.

Aayla turned around and stared at Ahsoka incredulously. Then she chuckled and said, "You must _really_ want to get back at him if you paid to get a _private_ room at _that_ place."

"Oh, I do," Ahsoka cackled maliciously. "I do."

* * *

Aayla's speeder shot across the Coruscant sky at high speed, along with many of the other speeders that were ploughing through the air along the highways that were only marked by the fact there were always loads of other vehicles on them. Ahsoka sat in the passenger seat, while everyone else was crammed into the back, invisible to the naked eye thanks to Renamon. It helped that three of them were small – Renamon was sitting in the middle with Henry and Rika on either side. Suzie was perched in Renamon's lap and feeling a little undignified about it (she was _ten_ now after all) and the bunnies were perched on either of their shoulders.

_I wonder how this is going to turn out,_ Henry thought to the other Tamers and the Digimon. _You know this might all turn out to be one big mistake and Anakin isn't really involved with this woman._

_I'm pretty sure that their relationship goes deeper than just friends,_ Renamon said firmly. _We just have to find out how much._

_What if he somehow senses we're there?_ Asked Rika.

_He won't,_ said Terriermon. _We'll be watching from some distance away and the holocam doesn't give off a life force does it?_

_Well no..._ Rika shrugged. _I suppose it doesn't._

_I would be cool if it did though,_ Suzie chuckled.

_True,_ nodded Terriermon, grinning. _Look lively everyone. We're here._

"Whoa," Rika and Henry both said at once as they looked up at Skysitter Restaurant. It was one of the fanciest looking places they'd ever seen. It reminded Henry of the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, because it was essentially an enormously tall spire that loomed over most of the other buildings in Coruscant, whereas at the top there was a huge round room that stuck out in all directions. The walls were made of glass so you could get an amazing view of the Coruscant skyline, and not only that but the whole restaurant was slowly revolving around on the spire, so that no matter where you sat, you could look out and see the _whole_ of the Coruscant skyline at some point.

"That looks like a seriously cool place," said Rika. "I imagine it would take my mum's entire earnings to get a seat there, even if she is a famous model."

"Yes," said Ahsoka. "Unfortunately, we won't be eating here. Even if my Master thinks that the Senator is in love with him he'll still get a really nice meal here. Suddenly I feel annoyed that I didn't pay for me."

"It'll all be worth it in the long run, Ahsoka," said Terriermon. "Just imagine the look on his face."

"Yeah," Ahsoka nodded.

"Hey look," said Aayla, pointing down towards one of the landing platforms. "Isn't that Senator Amidala's speeder?"

"So it is," Ahsoka grinned when she spotted the vehicle. "Perfect. She's already here. What did you say to her when you sent her the holomail, Terriermon."

"Oh Padmé just thinks that this is a formal occasion," said the bunny. "I didn't mention anything about Anakin being in love with her. That would be mean and probably frighten the poor woman to know she had a Jedi admirer."

"Good," said Aayla. "She's a good woman and using her in a prank like this is a little harsh. At least you're not overdoing it."

"We know she's a good woman," said Renamon. "We've seen enough of her while remaining invisible to know this. She's definitely a friendly person."

"Even if she is a Senator," said Terriermon.

"Terriermon," Henry said.

"Momentai," the bunny replied automatically. "But I'm serious. I never thought I'd encounter so many nice Senators like those guys back in their meeting a few days ago. Organa, Amidala and Farr and Mothma all seemed very nice, and so did that Chuchi woman when we saw her. All the evidence I saw back home indicated that the public just don't trust them. Of course there was also Lolo and Burtoni to show us that that can also be true here, but you know..."

"Yeah," said Rika. "I follow you."

"We're getting sidetracked," said Ahsoka, as Aayla pulled in to land. "We need to get into position before my Master gets here." She knew he wasn't here because his yellow speeder stood out in a crowd. That was why he had painted it yellow in the first place.

"True," nodded Renamon as they piled out. "Come on."

Aayla and Ahsoka and their invisible entourage quickly walked towards the doors and entered the restaurant. People dining at the tables looked up as they entered and seemed surprised to see two members of the A-Team walking into the complex. Aayla gave the crowd a brief nod before following Ahsoka.

The man she had made the reservation with earlier bowed to the Togruta. "Everything is in place, ma'am," he said. "One of the diners has already arrived."

"Thanks," Ahsoka said. "But remember, you did not see us, okay?"

"As you wish, milady," said the manager. Then he fidgeted and said, "But... perhaps... I could get Master Secura's autograph as well."

Aayla resisted to urge to roll her eyes and chuckle. Instead she nodded and said, "Of course, if it would please you."

The manager grinned and handed her another datapad and one of the special pens for writing things on it. Aayla quickly signed it and then turned to Ahsoka and said, "Where are we going to be?"

"This way," Ahsoka beckoned, leading them through a nearby set of doors and up a set of stairs. She led them into another private suite, one which she hadn't booked, but since they weren't intending to eat anything there, that didn't matter. It also happened to be the one directly above the one she had set up the camera in.

Placing the portable screen she had been carrying on the table, Ahsoka opened it up and tapped a few keys while everyone else crowded around her to watch. After a couple of seconds, the image from the hidden holocam appeared on the screen. It featured Senator Amidala sitting at the table and fidgeting slightly nervously.

"Wow," Suzie gushed at the sight of her. "She looks so pretty!"

As usual, Padmé had gone for the elaborate in her costume. Her hair, instead of being pulled upwards in some odd shape that made no sense, was down and pulled into a long ponytail at the back. She had an enormously long dress on, which was a deep purple colour and flowed from the top of her chest to past her feet, making it almost like a gown. It was patterned with flowers flowing down the front and back. Her shoulders were bare, but her arms and hands were encased in long sleeve gloves that almost reached her shoulders. There was also a pendant around her neck.

"Wow," said Ahsoka. "She really went all out with the get-up. You sure she thinks this is just a formal event?"

"Please," Terriermon scoffed. "My holomail was genius. It gave nothing away."

"Ssh!" Lopmon whispered, pointing at the screen as the door visible in the background opened. "Here comes Anakin. Let's just sit and watch." And with that, the group made themselves comfortable as they peered at the screen and watched the scenario unfold.

* * *

Padmé looked up from the menu she was perusing when the door slid open. She was half-expecting the manager or a service droid to come rolling in to ask for her drinks. But instead, her heart lifted and she smiled warmly as her secret husband, Anakin Skywalker, strolled into the room.

Anakin smiled back when he saw Padmé sitting at the table. His eyes took in her elegant clothing and before he even said hello, he said, "You look... radiant."

Padmé chuckled. "Why thank you, Master Jedi," she said. "I certainly did want to make an impression. This is supposed to be a 'special evening' after all," she added, quoting the words that she had received from (so she thought) Anakin.

Anakin strolled over and pulled out his chair, sitting squarely on it. "Oh, you know you don't need to call me Master Jedi here. No-one's here watching us, Padmé. We don't need the formalities."

"Sorry," Padmé smiled. "I guess it's just force of habit to call you such things in a public place like this, even if it is a private suite. You're a little late, you know."

"Yeah," Anakin rubbed the back of his head. "Sorry about that. I had a small run-in with Master Windu before I reached the hangar and I had to wait until he'd finished talking to me before I could get here."

Padmé nodded. "Perfectly understandable, of course. But... are you sure this is a good idea? I mean... I've been mulling it over and... well, what if we're caught?"

"We won't be," Anakin said. "Nobody saw me leaving the Temple and I've disabled my tracking beacon so they won't know where I am. And I'm pretty sure you didn't have anyone following you from your apartment, right?"

"I should hope not," Padmé chuckled. "That would be slightly disturbing."

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "But I thought this was a good idea before and I still do now. So, why don't we just relax, forget that we're Senator and Jedi and enjoy the evening, like we should."

Padmé nodded. "You're right, of course. It's just... well I suppose I may be over-thinking things a little bit. So... shall we get about choosing what we want to order?"

"You read my mind," Anakin chuckled, fishing a menu from the table and perusing it. "Wow," he said. "A lot of this stuff is quite expensive."

"Yes, I was just thinking that myself," Padmé nodded.

"Don't worry though," Anakin smirked up at her. "I got us a special discount – just now. When I walked in the manager said that we could have everything at only a quarter price in exchange for my autograph. That means we can eat to our heart's content."

Padmé frowned. "Isn't using your position as a member of the A-Team to get things at a lower price... dishonourable or against the Code or something?"

"Actually it's not," said Anakin. "But that doesn't mean anything – he was the one that suggested it. And he wouldn't take no for an answer. He seemed extremely excited for some reason."

"Yes, he did strike me as a bit of an eccentric," Padmé mused. "Well, let's have a look at the drinks."

* * *

Up in the room above, Ahsoka was frowning slightly as she watched the scene. "This isn't playing out quite the way I thought it would," she said, a little disappointedly. "Isn't my Master supposed to be looking extremely embarrassed and trying to ask the Senator why she's in love with him?"

"Yeah," Terriermon said. "He might be trying to build up a relaxed atmosphere around the two of them, though, so that when he broaches the topic Padmé might not take it the wrong way or something. Have patience, it'll happen."

"Yeah," nodded Ahsoka. "You're probably right."

Aayla was also frowning, but she was thinking along slightly different lines. The Twi'lek was thinking about something Padmé had said earlier – "What if we're caught." What would it matter if they were caught by anyone? Why was she concerned? Terriermon had said that his holomail had been about inviting her to a formal dinner so what reason would Padmé have to feel concerned about being caught on one of those?

Unless...

She glance sharply at the Digimon and the Tamers, remembering something that Renamon had brought up some time ago about Anakin's relationship with this woman, and how she thought that it might run a bit deeper than it appeared. She had shrugged it off then, stating that since Padmé and Anakin had been through so much together it was hardly surprising. But now she was wondering – had Renamon been right?

And she knew, right then, that the Digimon and the Tamers were only using the prank war as a ploy. The real intention of this spying was to find out the answer to that very question.

The Twi'lek turned her attention back to the screen.

* * *

After the waitress droid came and took their orders away, Anakin turned to Padmé and said, "You know, we should try and arrange more meetings like this one?"

Padmé chuckled. "How many credits do you have? Places like this cost a fortune."

"I don't necessarily mean places like this," said Anakin. "It's just... well, I've had so much on my plate recently, what with the war and everything that I've had other things on my mind. Of course, I still think of you all the time," he added quickly. "But... well there's a lot going on right now."

"I know," Padmé nodded. "The invasion of Naboo, the bill to try and stop clone trooper production, Senator Burtoni breathing down my neck at every possible opportunity... it hasn't been easy for me either."

Anakin glanced over at her and smiled. "Look at us," he said. "We're getting side-tracked again. We're not supposed to be thinking about the war tonight."

"I know," Padmé shook her head. "But it is difficult. After all, it does seem to reside over our heads like some dark cloud on the horizon."

"Hey, that's enough of that," Anakin interjected, reaching over and gripping her hand in his own (the real one) and smiling at her. "We're pushing the Separatists further back every day. It shouldn't be too long now before we have most of the Outer Rim back. And then we just need to capture Dooku and Grievous and it'll all be over."

"I hope so," nodded Padmé.

"But let's start on another topic," Anakin smiled gently. "Because despite the whole war forcing us to spend almost all of our time apart and not being able to tell anyone about us... I still don't regret marrying you."

Padmé smiled and the two pressed their lips together in their first kiss in a long time...

* * *

...And in the room above, Ahsoka's jaw dropped at what she was seeing, her eyes practically about to burst out of their sockets.

Aayla was also staring, stunned, at the screen, unable to think of anything appropriate to do or say and wondering how in the galaxy she had not seen this coming.

Renamon, on the other hand, smirked and triumphantly stated, "I knew it."

* * *

Yes, this first chapter has a sequel. I must be one of the most evil authors alive to end on such a cliffhanger. But don't worry – I'm already working on Chapter 92 as you read this. You won't have to wait too long to find out what happens next on this cliffhanger – which may be one of the biggest of the entire story so far.

Please review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Well, now the rest of the A-Team and the Epic Eight know about Anakin's marriage to Padmé. The question is, how will they deal with this? And what will they do when they confront Anakin with the truth.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 92 : Secrets of Anakin Skywalker**


	92. Secrets of Anakin Skywalker

Holy crap. I must have been looking forward to writing this chapter more than I thought. I ended up throwing my schedule out the window and just kept on writing and writing and writing. I was getting hooked to it. Who knows, maybe I can keep up this writing streak. I probably won't update again for some time though, since I'll be busy being at home and then going camping on a field trip to learn bushcraft and stuff. I suppose you could say I also didn't want to leave you on such a huge cliffhanger as that last one for too long.

Read on and tell me what you think.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 92:- Secrets of Anakin Skywalker**

* * *

Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala were left to enjoy the rest of their date together without being spied on by Padawans, team members and friends spying on them with the use of a hidden holocam. After the shocking revelation that Anakin was actually married to the Senator of Naboo, Ahsoka had stared at the two of them like both had grown another head. Aayla had glanced from the numb Padawan to the Digimon and come to a mental decision to leave.

Shutting the screen down and tucking it under one arm, Aayla had wrapped an arm around Ahsoka's shoulders and guided her to the door, the Digimon and the Tamers following while hidden under the perception filter once more. Aayla had guided the shell-shocked Padawan back to the speeder and they had quickly flown away back to the Temple.

It was mostly a silent trip, each member silently contemplating what they had seen and heard in their own thoughts. While the Digimon had suspected that the two of them were much closer than they showed everyone, they had not really been expecting something like marriage. That part was almost as much of a shock to them as it was to the rest of the A-Team. Anakin had a wife that they didn't even know about? He really had been hiding something big.

Aayla's mind was alive with unanswered questions, such as how had this happened, how long ago and why would Anakin be risking everything with something as against the rules as this. She had thought that her growing attachment to the others was bending the rules and that had put her in an agony of concern. But what Anakin was doing was in another league entirely.

As for Ahsoka, she was just stunned. She wasn't really thinking at all – her mind was just replaying the image she had seen on the screen over and over again with a blaring subtitle at the bottom which read:- WHAT THE HELL?

It wasn't until they were back in Aayla's chambers that Ahsoka finally exploded.

As the door slid shut behind them, Ahsoka suddenly bellowed, "HOLY FORCE! Did I really just see that and hear that? Did I really just see my own Master proclaiming his love to Padmé and saying that he married her and actually KISSING her! Did I really ser that or is this some horribly warped nightmare!"

"No, you saw it," said Terriermon, helpfully.

"But what in the galaxy is he thinking?" Ahsoka covered her eyes with her hands as she paced back and forth from one end of the room to another, causing Henry and Rika to dodge out of the way to prevent her from walking right into them. "What possessed him to get involved with her like this? If the Jedi Council finds out about this..."

"Then it is over for him," Aayla interrupted. "He could be put on trial and even expelled from the Jedi Order entirely."

Ahsoka's speed increased as she all but jogged from one end of the room to the other. "Why?" she asked. "Why take such a risk? Attachments like that are forbidden and he knows it full well."

"You have an attachment with us that works," pointed out Rika. "How is his any different?"

"There are many kinds of attachment, Rika," said Aayla. "And in some cases, like between Master and Padawan, and indeed with the lot of us, such attachments are acceptable. But a romantic one like Anakin's with Senator Amidala. That is one of the biggest violations of the Jedi Code that there is."

Ahsoka continued, still walking up and down. "Why is he going through with something like this and trying to hide it from the world? Surely he knew that it wouldn't be a secret forever, didn't he?"

"Who can say what Anakin was thinking at them?" Lopmon said soothingly. "None of us can. Only he can tell you the answers to your questions."

"Lopmon is right," Aayla nodded. "Fretting about it will not do you any favours. Calm down, Ahsoka."

"Calm down!" Ahsoka shrieked, tugging on her montrals in distress. "How am I supposed to calm down after learning that my Master has not only been hiding this from me, a secret just as big _if not bigger_ than the one we're hiding from the entire Senate about the Digimon, which could get him kicked out of our order if anyone else finds out? Oh hell, Padmé might even know about the Digimon! What if he broke that rule too and told her about that?"

"Well, if he did," said Terriermon. "At least we know that she's not a traitor."

"Ahsoka!" Aayla stepped forward to intercept the Togruta's path and grabbed her firmly by both shoulders, halting her progress and forcing Ahsoka's blue eyes to meet her brown ones. "Just stop," the Twi'lek insisted. "Control your emotions, young Padawan and calm yourself down."

"But he's my Master..." Ahsoka said, more subdued than before. Aayla was startled to see tears beginning to leak from Ahsoka's eyes. "I can't stand the thought of him being kicked out of the order. I'll have to be reassigned to someone else, and even though it would probably be you, Aayla, it wouldn't be the same with him gone. No offense."

"None taken," Aayla smiled comfortingly. "I know how that feels. There was a time when Quinlan went missing and was presumed dead and I was assigned to Master Tholme. I knew him quite well, but it certainly didn't feel like he was my true Master. I know how you must be feeling. But please, do not get too agitated by it. I'm sure everything will be alright."

Ahsoka nodded and embraced Aayla, burying her face in Aayla's shoulder. Aayla smiled and ran a finger down the middle of Ahsoka's back lekku, which she knew would help to calm her down. It seemed to work and Ahsoka stepped backwards and sat down on the bed beside Suzie.

"I think it's kinda cute," the little girl said. "Like one of those romantic movies that we get back at home."

"You don't like watching those," Lopmon frowned at her. "You told me you thought they were mushy. And the kiss scenes were icky."

"Yeah, they are," said Suzie. "But they're still quite cute." Lopmon rolled her eyes.

"Suzie has a point," said Renamon from where she was standing by the door. "Try thinking about the good things about this relationship instead of the bad ones for the moment. Anakin's obviously happy with this woman – you saw his expression on the holocam. And she, in turn, is happy with him. I know how that feels since I am mated myself."

"Me too," nodded Terriermon sagely. "They were definitely enjoying themselves. That has to mean something, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, I suppose," said Ahsoka. "But... romantic attachments can be used against Jedi as well. There is more than one instance in the past of a Jedi turning to the Dark Side because their love for another person was somehow used against them. If this mysterious Darth Sidious ever learns of this... Anakin could be seduced like them."

"Which is why he has us," said Renamon. "To light his path."

"How many of these former fallen Jedi have had people like us along for the ride?"

"Well, none I suppose," said Ahsoka. "But still... what are we going to do about this? Ugh, it was just a prank. How the heck did we end up with a situation like this?"

"Actually, Ahsoka," Aayla said. "That is not strictly true. Is it guys?" she looked pointedly at the others in the room, who all started fidgeting uncomfortably.

"Huh?" asked Ahsoka. "What?"

"May I be the first to officially apologise to you, Ahsoka," said Renamon. "The truth is, the six of us have suspected for some time that Anakin has had something going on with Padmé."

"You have?" Ahsoka surged to her feet again. "You knew already?"

"No, but we guessed," said Terriermon. "When you sit to one side like we do you pick up a few things. This little prank wasn't so much of a prank as an investigation to see if we were right. It turned out we were more right than we thought. Much more."

"You used me?" Ahsoka asked angrily. "You used me to spy on my Master?"

"We're sorry, Ahsoka," Henry said. "I told them this was a bad idea. As usual, I was ignored."

"Please understand that it was for a good cause," said Renamon. "Now that we have a connection with the mind of your Master, we can sense how much stress he's being put under due to all the secrets he's keeping close to his chest. We thought that if we could uncover one of those secrets and confront him with it, he might open up to all of us a bit more, including you. So yes, we used you, but our intent was far from malicious, I assure you."

Ahsoka sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation. "Well, I guess I can accept your apology, but next time let me know what you're really doing, will you?"

"We will," said Lopmon. "We only didn't this time because we didn't know how what affect such knowledge would have on you. We're sorry."

"The big question is," said Rika. "What do we do about all this? We now know that Anakin's had a secret marriage for God knows how long. What's our next move?"

"We can't tell anybody!" Ahsoka blurted out, hurriedly. "We just can't! I will not be the one to ruin my Master's life by spilling the beans on him! And I won't let you do it either."

"Won't let us?" Terriermon chuckled. "You actually think that we would tell the Jedi Council and get our friend and fellow team-mate, who we've been working alongside for so long we now have a permanent connection to his mind, kicked out of the Temple, which was the first place he ever had that he could call a true home? What kind of people do you think we are?"

"Right," Ahsoka smiled sheepishly. "Yeah. I forgot who I was talking to for a moment there."

"We'd never grass Anakin up," Rika said firmly. "He's just following his heart, and we all tend to do that a lot ourselves anyway."

"He is like a brother to all of us," agreed Lopmon. "Or perhaps an uncle or something, but you know what I mean."

"And even not counting our personal feelings, he is needed for the war," added Henry. "He is the Chosen One, after all. If anyone can bring this war to a close, it's him."

"What about you, Aayla?" Renamon asked the Twi'lek who had been silent for a while. "Where do you stand on all of this? I can sense doubt coming from you."

Everyone turned to look at the Rutian woman, who sighed and ran a hand over her face. "I'm not sure what to think right now," she said. "This is such a large infringement of the rules that my natural instinct is indeed to inform the council immediately, for the good of everyone. But... it's just an instinct – I don't actually want to do it. And even if I did want to do it, I don't think I could. You're all right, I've gotten too close to him, just as I have with all of you. He claims that I am his best friend." She shook her head. "And he in turn, is one of mine – since I couldn't possibly pick out a favourite from any of you. I couldn't tell on him if I tried."

"Good," nodded Renamon. "I'm glad we all agree."

"However," said Aayla. "That doesn't mean that we should go around pretending that we don't know about this secret when _he_ himself is with us. There are so many unanswered questions that I have for him and we are supposed to be combining our strengths. Renamon is right about one thing – actually everything to do with this situation but one thing in particular – teams should not keep secrets from one another."

"I could not agree more," said Renamon. "We'll have to confront him."

"That won't be pretty," said Ahsoka dryly.

"Probably not," Terriermon agreed. "But he's keeping too much far too close to his chest. I'm willing to bet he's got a lot more kept secret from us than his relationship with Padmé. A lot more."

"Well," Ahsoka said, "There's also the reason why he hates Tatooine so much. I know he was a slave there and everything but even so, he can't stand that planet and refuses to talk about his past there."

"I'll bet Padmé knows," said Suzie.

"Probably," said Ahsoka. "But we can't exactly ask her, can we?"

"I thought there might be something about that," nodded Renamon.

"Are we sure about this though?" Ahsoka asked worriedly. "I mean, every time I even mention the planet, his face takes on a look of... pain and suffering, and whenever I try and probe him about it he withdraws into himself and won't answer my questions. I usually just drop it after a couple of minutes."

"All the more reason for us to get the secret out of him," said Lopmon. "I'm willing to bet that Suzie is right and Padmé knows some of his secrets. But since he can spend so little time with her, he has to keep up his past bottled up almost the entire time. Since we have agreed we will not turn him over to the Council, hopefully he will open up to us. If we, his team-mates, his _family_, know the truth, that will take an unbelievable amount of pressure from his shoulders."

"We've let him in with us," agreed Rika. "We keep no secrets from him. It's about time he did the same with us."

"Well, at least one good thing may come from tonight," said Ahsoka. "I'll finally learn the truth about Anakin and his home planet."

Aayla smiled. "Oh, I assure you Ahsoka, many more good things than that will happen tonight. When Anakin hears what we have to say to him, he will finally understand that we are there for him no matter what happens, to help him on his way. When he knows that, he will give us the most precious thing that he can possibly give us."

"And what's that?" asked Henry.

Aayla smirked and said, "His trust."

* * *

Anakin Skywalker was in an extremely good mood when he returned to the Jedi Temple well after nightfall. Why wouldn't he be after all – he had just spent the last four hours with one of the most special people in the universe, undisturbed but for the occasional entrance by a service droid to take away their plates or receive new orders. While four hours still wasn't all that long in the grand scheme of things, compared to the other times he'd been able to spend alone time with Padmé since this war began it was an eternity.

No emergencies had cropped up, for either of them, and no-one had attempted to contact them to find out where they were. And while they spent the last few hours talking about the old days and other random things and occasionally kissing one another, they had both been having the time of their lives.

It was all that Anakin could do to repress the goofy-looking grin that he felt should be plastered across his face. But, of course, if he went round smiling like an idiot people were going to ask questions, especially since Ahsoka may have told people that he was going to visit the Chancellor, to which a grin like that would certainly not be appropriate. So, he retained his usual air of stoic seriousness and headed back to his quarters, intending to get an early night.

He was rather surprised when he opened the door of his chambers and was about to stretch luxuriously, because for some reason his room was filled with the rest of his team-mates. Ahsoka was sitting on his bed, leaning against the wall behind it. Aayla was sitting on a nearby chair with her arms folded and her back pressed against the edge of Anakin's table. Renamon was reclined by the wall in the corner, with a bunny perched in the palm of each paw, while the three Tamers were sitting on the floor, also leaning against a wall at various locations.

They all turned to look at him when he entered, and Anakin got the strange feeling that they had been doing nothing but waiting for him.

"Uh..." he said. "Hey guys. How's it going?"

"All things considered, Master," said Ahsoka. "I'd say things are going pretty well."

"All things considered?" Anakin asked. "Is this about the prank I pulled on you earlier, Snips? I told you I was sorry, when I was cleaning up my own mess, didn't I?"

"Yeah," said Ahsoka. "But you still owe me for it."

Anakin stared blankly at the rest of the group, who were still staring at him with serious expressions, even Terriermon and Suzie. It was, he had to admit, slightly unnerving, and he didn't have a clue what was happening.

He walked into the room and sat on the bed next to his Padawan. Ahsoka glanced across at him and said, "So, Master, how was your evening with the Chancellor. Did he take you to see another one of those weird tragic operas he likes so much?"

"Yeah, actually, he did," lied Anakin, chuckling. "It wasn't that interesting, because I'd seen it before. It was the one with all those Mon Calamari doing acrobatics in midair – I forget the name."

"Squid Lake?" asked Aayla.

"That's the one," Anakin nodded.

"Acrobatics?" asked Terriermon. "That's not an opera! Operas have singing!"

"Well this one doesn't," said Anakin. "Anyway, what are you all doing in here? I'd quite like to turn in for the night really, if that's alright."

"You tired, Master?" asked Ahsoka. "The opera wear you out."

"Nah, I just... I dunno... felt like it," Anakin finished, lamely. Ahsoka raised an eyebrow at him and Anakin attempted a disarming grin. It didn't seem to work though. Ahsoka turned around and exchanged a momentary glance with Aayla. The Twi'lek nodded and Ahsoka turned back around and asked:-

"So, Master, how long have you been married to Senator Amidala?"

...

...

Silence.

Anakin was staring at Ahsoka as if she'd just mutated into a rancor. His eyes were wider than any of them had ever seen, his jaw was slack and his entire body had gone rigid, like he'd been frozen in carbonite on the spot. Ahsoka stared back, unblinking, in order to show him that she wasn't joking around – she was deadly serious.

Anakin's head slowly tilted on his neck, taking in the other occupants of the room. Everyone was staring at him expectantly, but there was no surprise on any of their faces at Ahsoka's words. All of them had known that Ahsoka was going to say that and all of them wanted to know the answer.

His throat dryer than Tatooine, Anakin managed to croak out, "I... I don't know what you're talking about, Snips. Are you feeling okay?"

"We both know I'm feeling fine," said the Padawan – since she was the learner of this man the others were letting her do the talking. "And be both know that you know perfectly well what I'm talking about. I heard you say it yourself. You're Padmé Amidala's husband."

"You... heard me?" Anakin whispered hoarsely.

"We all did," interjected Lopmon. "At the Skysitter restaurant. Padmé didn't invite you to dinner earlier, we invited both of you and made you think it was the other one."

"What?" Anakin rasped. "You... set me up? You were watching the whole time?"

"Not the whole time, no," Renamon shook her head. "Only for the first ten minutes or so. Then we left to allow you to enjoy your time with your wife alone."

"H...how?" Anakin choked.

"Holocam hidden in a potted plant," said Terriermon. "Nothing fancy."

"But it was enough," said Aayla. "For us to hear every word you said and see everything that you did within that room.

Anakin stared at them all in horror and with a growing sense of anger! How dare they? How dare they pry into his life like that? What right was it of theirs to go spying on him – their own team-mate.

Sensing the growing anger welling up within Anakin, Aayla got to her feet and said, "Anakin, before you jump to conclusions, you should know the full story?"

"Full story?" Anakin cried, barely controlling his volume. "You were spying on me! That's all there is too it. What made you think that you could do something like that to me?"

"We were concerned, Anakin," said Lopmon. "We wanted to help you."

"Help me?" Anakin laughed derisively. "How is spying on my private moments going to help me?"

"If you think it through, it makes sense," said Renamon. "We can sense the little ball of emotions in your mind that you're trying to hide from us. While you may not know it, the amount of secrets that you've been keeping from everyone is tearing you up over time."

"But we knew that you would never willingly open up to us," said Terriermon. "But since we suspected that there was something going on between you and Padmé, we went investigating, in the hopes that if we found it out for ourselves, you would be more open with us. And if you must blame someone, blame us. Ahsoka and Aayla had nothing to do with this. Well, they did, but they thought it was an elaborate prank until we told them as much."

"We're sorry for the deception, Anakin," said Henry. "Really, we are. But we did it because we want to help you. Honestly."

"If we're meant to be a family then we should help each other with our problems," Rika went on. "And we thought this was the best way to go about helping you with yours."

"Please don't be angry, Uncle Anakin," Suzie finished.

Although Anakin was still angry, he listened to their explanations and his fury subsided a little (especially when Suzie piped up with that last line). But it was still there and his angry scowl remained in place, albeit softened a little bit. Taking note of this, Aayla stepped in next and said, "Anakin. I know this must be a shock for you, to learn that your secret has been discovered. But please, control your anger – you know it leads to the Dark Side. And besides, while I don't agree with their methods," she turned and looked pointedly at the Digimon, who all fidgeted uncomfortably, "I do agree with their motives. You know that they only want to help you really. You can sense it. And I too wish to help you, as does Ahsoka. So please, calm yourself."

Anakin bit his lip and grimaced, but he knew that Aayla was right. All three Digimon and all three Tamers had the grace to look guilty and ashamed of themselves, especially Terriermon, who had orchestrated the whole thing. So he followed the Twi'lek's advice and shut his eyes, calming himself down and letting his anger subside before he did something he would surely regret later on.

When he opened his eyes again, he fixed them all with a stare and said, "Have you told anyone else?"

"Not a soul, Master," said Ahsoka. "We swear it."

"And we do not intend to either," Lopmon added. "We know the implications of what would happen if your secret became public knowledge, and have no more desire to see that happen than you."

"But, all the same," said Renamon. "We would like to know the full story ourselves. Please, Anakin. Take a load off your chest and tell us."

"Nothing you say will leave this room," Terriermon agreed. "Not even from me, you can bet your life on it. Heck, you could even bet mine too."

Anakin felt the corners of his mouth twitch into a very faint smile and not just at Terriermon's attempt at humour. He felt relief flood through him that they wouldn't tell anyone, but it wasn't just that. He felt another kind of relief too – relief that he would finally be able to share his secret with somebody, _anybody_, without fear of potential repercussions. They understood. They were accepting it.

And even if they had spied on him to find out the answer, Anakin knew that if he had to share his secret with anyone, it would have been them anyway.

Sitting back down and noting, with a disturbed shiver, that his hand had been hovering close to his lightsaber (had he really been thinking about drawing it), Anakin clasped his hands together and sighed. "Alright," he said. "Well, since you know and... since I can sense you are telling the truth, I will tell you."

"Thank you, Anakin," said Renamon, as Aayla returned to her seat as well.

"Well, where to begin," Anakin shrugged. "I suppose it all started back on Tatooine, when I was still a slave to that filthy Toydarian junk dealer, Watto. I lived a rather wretched life on the whole, cleaning and fixing things for him and watching all the scumbuckets of Tatooine come and go. The only person who was ever nice to me was my mother." He paused and frowned for some reason when he mentioned this, but they others didn't press him about it and waited for him to continue.

"Then, one day, Master Qui-Gon Jinn, Jar Jar Binks, R2-D2 and Padmé arrived in the store," Anakin went on. "Padme was... well, she was one of the prettiest women I'd ever laid eyes on," he chuckled and added, "I actually asked her if she was one of the Angels of Iego."

Aayla and Ahsoka both chuckled. "Wow," said Ahsoka. "You must have been smitten."

"I was," Anakin nodded, and the Chosen One could feel his resentment subsiding and something else taking its place as he told his story. It was elation – elation that he was finally telling someone about it. "But I suppose, back then, it was just a childish crush. I never expected it to amount to anything. But, while I'd seen plenty of pretty looking slave-girls, I had never been allowed to talk to them, and Padmé was the first girl I got to really speak with. I became friends with her on the spot, and I began to do little kiddie things to try and get her attention, like carving her a necklace and showing her the droid I was building."

"You mean Threepio?" asked Ahsoka.

"Yep," nodded Anakin. "But I never thought it really worked and to be honest, it didn't. Padmé simply saw me as a little, overenthusiastic kid.

"After the celebration on Naboo after the blockade, when I left for my Jedi training, I thought about her all the time but I didn't see her again for years. The kid crush never really left me, not even when I was in my late teens and I was nearing the end of my training. But then I got to see her again when I was going to protect her from Jango Fett. I was happy – really happy – and it was a struggle not to do or say anything out of line in front of Obi-Wan.

But then I was given a mission to guard her when she went home to Naboo, and I suppose everything flowed from there. We had a lot of fun together, going out into the meadows and playing around with the shaaks, and dining together. It was some of the most fun in my life.

"But when I plucked up the nerve to confess my feelings to her, she turned me down, saying that if we went down that road, it would destroy both of us," he added, a touch bitterly. "And while it hurt me to say as much, I agreed with her and we didn't mention it again for some time. And when it was brought up again was right before we were marched into the Geonosian execution arena. That was when Padmé confessed to being in love with me too, as she thought that she was sure to die in the arena and wanted me to know before she died.

"But then we ended up surviving," Anakin chuckled. "And since we both knew that we loved each other, we decided to jump the blaster and get married before the Clone Wars got into full swing. We had a private ceremony on Naboo – there was no-one there except the minister, and Threepio and Artoo."

"Artoo knows about it too?" asked Terriermon. "Wow, he could have proclaimed it to the entire ship and I would never have known."

Anakin chuckled as he took in the faces of everyone around him. They were actually smiling encouragingly and were fully engaging with the story. Even Aayla, who was normally ever the Jedi, was giving him a warm look to reassure him."

"And..." Anakin concluded. "Well... we've been married ever since and have been trying to hide it from everyone as well."

"And a good thing too," said Aayla. "Heaven forbid what would happen if Darth Sidious were to ever learn about this."

Anakin's gaze turned into a dark glare. "Indeed," he said. "And he never will if I have anything to say about it."

"And you can change that 'I' in that sentence to a 'we,'" Terriermon nodded firmly. "After all, we're not about to let a member of the family be turned into bait for a Sith Lord."

Anakin frowned at the bunny. "Excuse me?" he asked. "What do mean – member of the family?"

"Oh come on, Anakin," Terriermon rolled his eyes. "You're an intelligent person, aren't you? We mentioned earlier that you are a member of our big and complicated and ever-expanding family – Suzie just called you an Uncle five minutes ago – and since Padmé is your wife, that automatically makes her part of the family to. She's an aunt three kids and she doesn't even know it."

Anakin stared at him for a few seconds. And then, after struggling not to for a few more seconds, he burst out laughing. "Sometimes," he laughed openly. "The words that come out of your mouth can be both extremely logical and ridiculous at the same time. And that was one of them."

"Jeez, Momentai, Anakin," Terriermon sniggered. "I was just saying."

"Yeah, but you're right," said Anakin, wiping away a tear of mirth. "I suppose Padmé does have a large family she's never met before waiting in the sidelines. Hopefully one day, when this war is over, she'll get to meet all of you in person."

"We look forward to it," said Rika. "And you can tell her that Henry and Suzie were the ones who helped save her home planet. I bet she'd love that."

Everyone laughed at this. When it subsided, Aayla turned to Anakin and said, "I have only one concern about all this, Anakin – and that is the potential for you to turn to the Dark Side."

"I know," said Anakin. "But I felt it was a risk worth taking. But ever since I learned that Darth Sidious was after me, seeking to turn me around, I've been more careful than ever when it comes to my emotions. I'll admit I had a little failure just now," he added sheepishly. "When I learned what had happened, but I swear to you that I will try even harder than ever to keep my emotions in check."

"I don't doubt it," Aayla nodded. "And, of course, we will help you."

"Huh?" asked Anakin.

"I mean you can count on our support, Anakin," Aayla replied. "Remember, we're here for you, and we don't particularly want to see you consumed by darkness either. If you start to display any aggressive tendencies, we'll give you a nudge and remind you of your position, won't we, guys?"

"Of course," nodded Lopmon. "You can count on us."

"Technically, we were doing that anyway," said Terriermon. "But we'll try even harder now."

"That is true," Aayla said, flashing Anakin a slight smirk. "Remember what happened when you got angry when Ahsoka was kidnapped by Grievous?"

"Huh? What happened?" asked Ahsoka, glancing from Aayla to Anakin. The Twi'lek was grinning and Anakin was flushing a deep red and rubbing his cheek for some reason. The Padawan glanced to the others, who looked just as confused as she did."

"Well... I may have gotten carried away a bit," said Anakin under Ahsoka's questioning glare. "Aayla was trying to calm me down and I... kinda flew off the handle and started yelling at her, accusing her of not caring about you. And... she... slapped me across the face."

Ahsoka's jaw dropped for the second time that night, and a good many others also dropped behind her. "She... slapped you?" Ahsoka asked incredulously. "And... I missed it! Oh, by the Force, that is so unfair!"

Terriermon grinned and called, "Hey, you reckon the two of you could re-enact the scene now?"

"No thanks," Anakin said quickly. "Aayla slaps hard."

"That was the only time I've ever slapped anyone in my whole life," said Aayla.

"Lucky me," Anakin murmured dryly.

"Anyway," said Renamon, deciding to change the subject. "Now that you've told us all about yourself and Padmé, how do you feel Anakin?"

"I feel..." Anakin paused and took and deep breath, shutting his eyes and allowing the breath to fill him up. As he exhaled, he finished, "Like a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders."

"That's pretty much what Renamon said you would feel," said Rika. "Almost word for word actually."

"Yes," the fox nodded. "We can feel the difference on your mind. Of course, we cannot tell anyone else about this, but much of the pent-up stress had been released. You should be feeling quite a bit better."

"I am indeed," Anakin smiled. "And I didn't even realise that I was feeling down. Thanks guys. You have no idea how much this means to me. You really don't."

"Actually we do," Suzie giggled, tapping the side of her head. "Psychic link, remember."

"Well, maybe for you guys," Ahsoka sighed, shaking her head. "But I am so ready for one of my own right now."

"Relax Snips," said Anakin. "I'm sure you'll get there in the end."

"I'd better," Ahsoka mumbled.

"But there is one other thing," said Renamon. "Are there any... other secrets that you're trying to conceal from us, Anakin?"

There was another long silence as the Chosen One and the fox Digimon stared at each other for a while, blue eyes meeting blue eyes in some kind of staring contest which neither backed down from, which said something about Anakin because Renamon could outstare a cat and her bright eyes seemed to search the fathoms of the soul.

Eventually, Anakin said, "No."

Renamon raised an eyebrow pointedly at him, as everyone else returned to staring at him once more. They could all tell that Anakin was lying.

"Remember what we just went through, Anakin," the kitsune pointed out. "We just told you that as members of a team and a family, we must help each other out. You might have taken a lot off your mind, but we know that there is more you have yet to reveal."

Anakin's grimace returned. "I don't want to talk about it," he said, a slight growl in his voice. Tension was beginning to build up again, because Anakin's attitude suggested that whatever he was hiding was something _very_ big. Those with mind connections to him could feel broiling anger under the surface, threatening to rise up to the surface and make itself known, but also other emotions too, like great pain, unending grief and also... was that shame? They knew without a shadow of a doubt that they were reaching a very touchy subject

"You didn't want to talk about Padmé either," said Terriermon. "But you did and you feel better for it now. Try us."

"I can't," Anakin said, turning away.

"Yes, you can, Master," said Ahsoka. "Please, tell us what's on your mind. You can't leave us guessing like this – we have to know."

"Do not contain your past, Anakin," Aayla agreed. "Do not lock it up. I know that it must be hard, but it needs to be said, whatever it is."

Anakin put his face in one hand rubbed it slowly, his mind conflicted. He knew that what they were saying had its merit but... what he had been through... what he had done... It was something he had never wanted to talk about again. As far as he knew, only two people knew about this. One was Padmé and the other was Chancellor Palpatine.

But not only was the memory painful, it was concerning. The others were claiming that they wouldn't think of him any differently – but would they be _able_ to hold to that when they heard it.

_We'll never know unless you tell us,_ Renamon's voice reverberated in his head, causing him to jump a little. He sighed. He'd forgotten to close off his mind and everyone had probably heard his doubts, except Ahsoka, of course. He still wasn't used to the mental link.

But now that they had heard that, he supposed he had no choice.

And since they knew about Padmé, why not go the whole way.

So, dredging up the knotted lump of pain in his stomach that was his past, he told them. As he spoke, the others could hardly fail to notice the effort it was taking him to go through with this – his voice was strained and all his muscles were tensed up.

"It... was about the same time as the last story," he grimaced. "Even though... I was supposed to be guarding Padmé from potential danger on Naboo... I... I... I found it difficult to sleep. I was having visions... horrible visions... every time I closed my eyes, I saw her. In pain, screaming, being tortured. Every night, it was the same."

"Saw who?" Suzie asked apprehensively.

"I think I know," said Aayla, sadly. "It was your mother, wasn't it?"

Anakin looked at her. "How did you know?"

"It wasn't that hard," the Twi'lek said softly. "Obi-Wan reported that you were on Tatooine when you were supposed to be on Naboo. And if dreams of a woman in pain prompted you to go there, to your least favourite planet in the universe, it could only be one person."

Anakin sighed and buried his face in his hands. "You're right," he moaned, not taking his palms away from his eyes. "It was my mother that I was seeing in my visions. Night after night, the only person I had while growing up on that planet was shown to me, in agony. At first I put it off as an nightmare, but it just kept coming back. I couldn't... I couldn't just sit back any longer. I had... to check. To make sure... she was okay."

Everyone was staring at Anakin with apprehension now and not just at his story. While his face was still in his hands, Anakin's body was starting to shake. He was _sobbing._

Anakin _**NEVER**_ sobbed. Anakin never even cried.

"And what did you find?" asked Henry, carefully.

Anakin took his face out of his hands and went on, and they could see the tears begin to stream down his face. "I went back to Mos Espa to see Watto, and asked him where my mother was. He told me that he'd sold her to a moisture farmer named Lars, so I headed there straight away. Padmé was with me, so that I could continue my duties as guardian. When I met this Lars guy, who had... freed my mother from slavery and married her, making him a step-dad or something, I asked where my mother was again."

His body heaved as a fresh sob came to the surface and he wiped his eyes. None of the others dared to interrupt now. They were all on a knife-edge, waiting for the rest of Anakin's tragic anecdote in silence.

"And then I found..." Anakin shook again. "I found..." he looked like he was about to break down. Ahsoka moved over and placed a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to comfort him. It seemed to work a little, because Anakin managed to blurt out the next part of the sentence. "...She... she had been taken... by... Tusken Raiders."

Aayla shut her eyes and sighed in sympathy. The Digimon and the Tamers looked a little confused, so Aayla threw another bubble on information with her mind, updating them as to the vicious and barbarian ways of the Sand People of Tatooine. What they learned on the spot did not exactly reassure them.

"I set out after them," Anakin's voice were barely more than a whisper now, but they others were beginning to notice that his fists were clenching tightly. "I tracked them down to their campsite in the Dune Sea. I crept in and snuck into the tent of their leader... and I... finally found my mother."

Anakin's eyes were drying now and something else was filling his blue irises. His grief and sadness was being rapidly replaced by another emotion – one which immediately put everyone in the room on edge.

Rage!

"They had her bound to a post!" Anakin's voice was getting stronger as his anger grew. "There were cuts and bruises all over her! They had been torturing her for Force knows how long and she was so weak that she could barely support her own wait. I took her down from the post but I was far, far too late. There was only time for her to say she was proud of me before she died, right there in my arms!" His voice broke as his rage and grief seemed to mingle for a moment, but he was practically shouting now.

"I couldn't believe it! My own mother was gone, dying right in front of me and I had been powerless to stop it! But she was not going to die unavenged! I went out there and confronted the Sand People. They tried to resist, but I cut them down! All of them! Every last man, woman and child – the entire tribe! All of them had had a hand in the death of my mother and all of them had to pay! THEY HAD NO PLACE IN THE GALAXY! **THEY HAD NO PLACE IN EXISTENCE! **_**I HATE THEM!"**_

Things were deteriorating fast now. The three Tamers had gotten up from the floor and everyone was standing away from the walls, because it felt like the entire room was shaking. The decorations like a couple of jars on a shelf, as well as other objects like the datapad on the desk, the desk itself, the bed, the chair that Aayla had been sitting on and many other things were all starting to vibrate wildly, as Anakin's rage built up and his Force powers began to act practically of its own accord.

"ANAKIN! STOP!" Renamon shouted as the shaking grew worse, like the room was the epicentre of a small earthquake that was growing bigger.

"_**I MADE THEM PAY FOR WHAT THEY DID TO HER!"**_ Anakin roared. _**"IT WAS NO MORE THAN THEY DESERVED! THEY HAD IT EASY! I DIDN'T TORTURE THEM LIKE THEY DID TO MY MOTHER! THEY GOT OFF LIGHTLY, IF YOU ASK ME!"**_

"Anakin, control your emotions!" Aayla cried, as the shaking became almost overpowering.

"Master!" Ahsoka yelled, trying to break him out of his fury.

"_**I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK ABOUT ME NOW!"**_ Anakin bellowed. _**"THEY DESERVED FAR WORSE THAN THEY GOT!"**_

"Uncle Anakin!" Suzie yelled, but even this didn't seem to break through the enraged chosen one. Both the jars on the shelf cracked open and fell to splinters. Anakin was fists were shaking almost as much as everything else and his face was twisted into a furious snarl. If things got any further out of hand, Anakin may end up doing something he would regret later on.

And that was why, for the second time in her life, Aayla rushed over to him and slammed the palm of her hand into the side of Anakin's face, slapping him across the cheek even harder than last time. It might not have been the usual method of snapping a Jedi out of a funk but it certainly worked. As her hand connected, Anakin's rage and internal torment was instantly replaced by shock as he was sent stumbling. Shock at the pain, shock at the fact that Aayla had just done that _again_ and, worst of all, shock at how close he had become to exploding.

Before he could say anything though, Aayla had stepped over again and pulled Anakin into an enormous bear-hug (maybe even a Wampa-hug). Anakin was startled by this action, but as the last of his rage melted away, he sighed and returned it. Aayla's arms were pinning him to her, but he didn't mind. Right now, he just needed someone to hold onto.

"Consider this my first act of ensuring you don't fall into the hands of Darth Sidious," Aayla said into Anakin's ear.

Anakin sighed. "Thank you, Aayla. Thank you all," he added to the others who were watching him sympathetically. "That was... hard... to relive."

"I understand," said Aayla, still not releasing him. "But we must all move on from that."

Anakin blinked. "You're not judging me for it? I slaughtered an entire tribe of Sand People in cold blood. That's even more against the Code than my marriage to Padmé."

Aayla finally released him, but only stepped back slightly and deliberately made eye-contact. "Yes, you did," said Aayla. "But no act is entirely unforgivable. Remember your Jedi training, Anakin. One of things most pressed upon is that Jedi do not dwell on the past. Or the future. We focus on the present. What you have done in your past means nothing – it is what you do here and now that matters. Is there not a small part of you that deeply regrets giving in to your rage?"

Anakin shut his eyes and said, "Yeah. There is."

"Then I can ask no more of you," said Aayla. "And nobody else can either. Focus on what is happening, not what has happened. And what is happening is that you have revealed your greatest secrets to us. And I know how hard that must have been – I'm actually rather proud of you, Anakin."

Anakin chuckled and said, "What are you, my Master?"

"Maybe I should have been," Aayla smirked. "I bet Obi-Wan never slapped you when you got out of control."

"Please don't make a habit of that," Anakin rubbed his cheek again.

"Please don't make me have to," Aayla replied simply. She turned her head as she felt a pressure on her shoulder and saw that Terriermon had swooped across the room from Renamon's hand to land there.

"You know Anakin, there's a saying I know that makes a lot of sense in this situation," the bunny said. "I'm not sure if it's real, or if it was made up specially for that (epic) Dreamworks film, but it is a good saying all the same. It goes:- Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift – that is why it is called the present."

The three Jedi, who had never heard this one before, snorted in amusement, but were forced to admit that it was not so different from their own morals. Aayla resolved that if she ever got a Padawan, that would be what she would say for that particular lesson.

"You're all so ready to forgive me?" Anakin asked, scanning the faces of the extradimensionals. "Just like that."

"There is no denying that what you did was wrong," said Lopmon. "But nobody is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes. And we know this better than anyone, don't we guys."

"Yes," Renamon agreed, as they walked over towards Anakin. "You see, you're not the only person we know who has given into their rage and done something terrible. There is someone from our world who did much the same thing."

Anakin's eyes widened. "There is?" he asked. "Why haven't I heard this story before?"

"It's not a story we like to tell either," said Henry. "It's not a secret but it's still uncomfortable. My best friend back home – a boy named Takato Matsuki, did something similar to you. We saw one of our own friends killed right in front of us by Beelzemon, who was still evil at the time." Anakin nodded – he'd heard enough about this Beelzemon to not need any more information. The three Jedi listened with intrigue when Henry pressed on.

"Takato had always been... somewhat emotional," said Henry. "And, like you Anakin, he went into a fit of rage towards Beelzemon. Because of the link between them, his partner Guilmon also went berserk. Takato was so angry that he forced Guilmon to digivolve to the Mega level for the first time, but he did so with such anger and fury that the process went horribly wrong. Guilmon went from being the lovable goofball we all know him to be," Henry took out his D-Arc and displayed Guilmon's picture on the hologram. "Into this," he flipped the hologram to the demonic visage of Megidramon.

"Whoa," Anakin breathed, staring at the picture in disbelief.

"It's called a Dark Digivolution," said Rika. "And it happens if we lose control of our own anger. So, in a way, we're not so different. We have to regulate our emotions too, or else the same thing could happen to Renamon, Terriermon or Lopmon."

"And we have no intention of letting that happen," said Lopmon. "Just as we know you have intention of ever losing control like that again. And we'll be there to make sure that you stay sane. You can trust us, Anakin. We won't let you down. And remember that Beelzemon himself managed to redeem himself in the end – so no matter what you do, no-one is above redemption."

Suzie, who had nothing to really contribute to the conversation, just nodded firmly to show she agreed.

"Thanks," Anakin said softly, relief filling him up once more. But there was still one person who had not said anything since his explosion.

"Ahsoka?" the Chosen One turned to his Padawan. "What about you? Do you resent me, or hate me, for what I did?"

Ahsoka sighed and smile spread across her face. "I could never hate you, Master," she said, and she stepped over to him and, for the first time, initiated a hug of her own. Anakin was taken aback, since Ahsoka had always refrained from giving him hugs in the past. But he gladly returned the favour.

"Thanks Snips," he said. "Should have known I could count on you. On all of you really."

"Yes, you should," said Rika.

"Listen, Anakin," said Terriermon, hopping from Aayla's shoulder to Ahsoka's and then up onto Anakin's head. "I never knew my mother, but I still understand that losing your own created a void that can never truly be replaced. But, for what it's worth, you still have us."

"Well, I suppose you guys will have to do," Anakin shook his head and chuckled. Ahsoka punched him in the ribs despite still hugging him and he chuckled. "I'm just kidding, Snips. I couldn't ask for a better surrogate family."

"And of course," said Terriermon. "You know what happens next."

"I do?" Anakin blinked, confused, but then he saw that everyone was approaching him from around the room. "Ah," was all he managed to say before he was surrounded and given a group hug from everyone present – the first group hug he had been part of. Lopmon and Terriermon sat on either of his shoulders, Ahsoka embraced him from the front and Renamon from behind. Aayla reinitiated her previous hug, this time from the side, while Henry and Rika came in from the other one. Suzie slipped in front of Ahsoka and hugged Anakin's leg.

And the strange part was, Anakin didn't feel embarrassed in the least. Renamon had been right – he almost felt like he could start floating into the air. Finally, he would be surrounded by people who knew his secrets and his mistakes and accepted him for them. Everyone with a bond to him could feel that bond increase on the spot, strengthening as Anakin finally put all of his trust into the others. He had no secrets from them now.

As the group hug broke up, Anakin took Ahsoka's shoulders in his hand and said, "But, Snips, there is one more thing I should probably say."

"What?" Ahsoka asked, a little warily.

"I think it might be a good idea if we drew this prank war to a close," the Chosen One says. "Don't get me wrong – I'm glad I got to let loose these emotions and tell you guys, but all the same... I think this should probably be the last one."

Ahsoka stared at him, and then a grin began to split across her face. "Does that mean I won?" she asked.

Anakin snorted and said, "Well, yes, I suppose it does," he said. "Congratulations, Ahsoka. You finally beat me in something."

"That's not true," Ahsoka said, pouting. "I managed to cut up more droids than you did on Naboo."

"That's because you stayed behind to do that while I went off to disarm a bomb," Anakin pointed out.

"Whatever," Ahsoka shrugged. She jumped when Terriermon landed between her montrals and used his ears to tug one of her arms into the air and hold it aloft.

"All hail the Champion Prankster of the Jedi Temple!" Terriermon cried. "Three cheers for Ahsoka!"

"Shut up," Renamon fished him off the Togruta's head, chuckling.

"Put me down!" Terriermon yelled indignantly.

"Momentai," Renamon said.

"Why must you ruin the moment like that!" wailed Terriermon.

"It's a shame I didn't bring any Jurcian fruit back from Skysitter," chuckled Anakin. "It was exquisite – one of the tastiest things I've ever eaten."

Terriermon paled and looked like he was going to throw up. "Well, if you turn into a fruit by the end of the day, remember that it was Ahsoka who picked out the restaurant."

"That's right, I did," said Ahsoka. "You owe me a _lot_ of credits for that lovely evening you just got to spend with your wife."

"No I don't," Anakin grinned. "You were the one who chose to spend it – I didn't tell you too." Then he frowned and said, "Wait a minute – that holomail came directly from Padmé's datapad. How in the galaxy did you get access to it?"

Before Ahsoka or Terriermon could answer that question, there was a knock at the door. Everyone froze, fearing that they may have been overheard, but when Anakin called, "Come in," it opened to reveal Obi-Wan Kenobi standing on the other side and looking extremely flustered.

"Oh good," the Jedi Master said. "I was hoping that I'd find you all here. Please, come with me. An urgent situation has cropped up and we need to get moving."

"Perfect timing," Anakin sighed. "Alright. Come on then."

The Epic Eight, plus Ahsoka, followed Obi-Wan out of the room and headed towards the briefing room for their next assignment.

* * *

When they reached the room, the found it was occupied by Yoda and Master Windu standing around the holotable. "Well, what is it this time?" asked Terriermon, sliding down the banister of the stairs. "Have the Seppies decided to try and jump another planet, or plant another bomb there or something?"

"No," said Yoda. "A new invasion, this is not, but an old and ongoing on, it is."

"We've received a distress call from the planet Mygeeto," said Mace Windu, bringing up a hologram of the ice-covered planet in question. "As you may or may not know it was attacked by the Separatists a couple of weeks ago and it's been a struggle to try and re-take it ever since. Master Adi Gallia is currently on planet and she's been pushing the Separatists back for some time."

"However," Yoda went on. "Received intelligence, we have, that on the planet, the director of the Banking Clan may be."

"You mean San Hill the Muun?" asked Anakin. "Brilliant. If we can capture him, the Separatists would lose one of their main sources of funding and they'd have to cut back on battle droid numbers and a whole host of other things that they need to keep the war going. With San Hill in our custody, we could turn the tide of the war."

"Exactly, Skywalker," said Mace. "But, Hill is very well protected. Master Gallia has attempted to assault his stronghold but she and her men got more than they bargained for. They've been pushed back several times now, and Master Gallia fears that she cannot penetrate the Separatist base on her own. She has requested back-up to help her catch Hill before he can escape off-world."

"Go to Mygeeto, you must," said Yoda. "Aid Master Gallia, you shall."

"And I shall come along with you," said Obi-Wan. "The more people there are trying to catch San Hill, the better."

"So, if we catch him," Henry said, "Then that could be a huge milestone to winning. I'm all for it. Let's get going."

"Someone's eager for some action," Terriermon chuckled.

"I just want to get this war over with," said Henry.

"Momentai, Henry. I know that. I think we'd all like the same thing. But we're wasting time just standing here. Let's get to that ice-planet."

"May the Force be with you all," said Mace. They nodded and rushed out the door, preparing to head off to yet another planet to deal with the attacks of the Separatists. And Anakin had a grin on his face, knowing that while he fought, he would be doing it alongside people who he could trust with his very soul. And since he had a tendency to succumb to the Dark from time to time, he meant that quite literally.

* * *

WOOOOOOHOOOOOO!

That was an epically fun chapter for me to write. I really hope that you enjoyed this one, especially since it's so important to the rest of the story. It was so much fun, but it won't be Anakin's only brush with the Dark Side. Can't have things getting too easy now, can I? The question is, can the others stop him from going too far in the future?

And now I'm going to go and walk around in a bog and be bored for the rest of the day. Damn Ecology field trip.

Please review and see you soon.

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Next time...

Huge battle scene! They have to land on the planet, come to the aid of Master Gallia and break through the Separatist defences without pausing for a break. They'll be a lot of action from the clones in the upcoming chapter..

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Coming up:- **Chapter 93 : The Battle of Mygeeto**


	93. The Battle of Mygeeto

Almost this entire chapter is one big battle-scene. I hope you like it. This is the first chapter I have managed to post from home in some time – never underestimate how much writing you can do on a long train journey where you have nothing else to do. And I'll have another one on the way back up to Cumbria tomorrow. I am on fire at the moment, aren't I?

For some action from the clones and Adi Gallia, as well as our usual heroes, please read on and tell me what you think.

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Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 93:- The Battle of Mygeeto**

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The freezing cold bit into Adi Gallia's skin, as the Korun human female stood firm on the embattled surface of the planet Mygeeto, but she ignored it, blocking out the unpleasant sensation and focusing on the task in hand, which was attempting to block the storm of lasers lancing towards them from across the bridge. Mygeeto was an ice planet and one of the most important worlds of the Banking Clan. Most of it was uninhabited, but there were a few large cities built on high platforms above the freezing surface.

And Adi Gallia and her men were at one of those now. Their initial attack and attempt to reach the surface had not gone to plan _at all_. Master Gallia cursed herself for a fool, having allowed herself to get carried away at the prospect of apprehending San Hill and what that would do for the warfront.

Half of her force had been exterminated before they even reached the platforms, as the city was riddled with huge turrets that had shot a large portion of the gunships out of the air before the poor souls within could even get the chance to fire a laser. Adi had been fortunate to be in one of the ships that had survived the gauntlet.

Regardless, once the survivors had landed, they pushed on. Adi led the clones across the bridges, taking on the numerous droid forces that they had there... but they were sadly outclassed. Not only were the turrets more than capable of firing on those on the ground as well, there were huge numbers of AAT tanks rolling through the streets, which created another huge dent in Adi's forces. And if that weren't bad enough, there were also a large number of Crab Droids scuttling about the place.

Adi knew San Hill was cunning, so he had been planning for a potential attack. And now, she and her remaining troops were completely boxed in. While the column of ordinary droids marching towards them from one side of the bridge was pretty much like every other Separatist defence, over six Crab Droids were advancing on them from the _other_ side too. They had been clinging to the underside on the bridge and had scuttled over the edge once the clones had passed, blocking them in.

Adi danced from left to right, parrying the shots as best she could, but she was just one Jedi and against this many droids, there was only so much she could do. The two clone troopers standing on either side of her valiantly held their ground, but it wasn't to be there day. One was shot right in the forehead by one of the Super Battle Droids and the other one would have had a similar fate if Adi hadn't managed to step in and block the shot at the last second. But then, the clone was shot in the back by one of the Crab Droids.

Adi grimaced, taking a moment to glance down at the two fallen clones sadly, before going back to the mad and seemingly futile blocking. The clones behind her, about thirty of them remaining, where taking what shelter they could behind the debris and slabs of concrete thrown up by blasts from the turbolasers, but roughly one of them was falling every five seconds or so, blasted from either direction as they desperately tried to defend from two flanks at once.

Just as Adi was beginning to think that the battle was a lost cause, the comlink on her wrist bleeped and voice she recognised as that of Obi-Wan broke through with, "Master Gallia, do you read me?"

Gripping her blue lightsaber in one hand and continuing to block with it, Adi brought up her comlink and said, "Yes, General Kenobi. I am here, but I cannot tell for how much longer that will be the case. We're vastly outnumbered down here and are getting picked off one by one."

"We have arrived on planet," Obi-Wan said. "We are making our run with the gunships as we speak. We're speeding towards you now – hold out as long as you can."

"No, you must not!" Adi cried, sharply. "You cannot attempt to run the gauntlet like that. The flak from the turrets is too thick – you would lose half your men on the spot, much like I did! It doesn't matter if we die here this day – you must not needlessly sacrifice any more."

"We know about the flak," the voice of Anakin replied, causing Adi to wonder whether the rest of the A-Team and possibly the Digimon were here too. "Masters Windu and Yoda briefed us on what you reported to them earlier. That's why we're going to wait up here for a while and send down some AT-RT walkers to help you take out those turrets."

Adi frowned as she turned aside six more enemy blaster bolts and grabbed a nearby clone by the shoulder, forcing him to the ground so that shot that would have taken him in the back of the head flew past him and nailed a droid instead. "Recon Transports?" Adi asked. "How will you get them down here without landing yourselves?"

"That's one of the advantages of having something as obscure as a Digimon on your side," Adi could _hear_ the grin in Anakin's voice.

"Who are you calling obscure?" shouted another voice.

"Gargomon!"

"Momentai, Henry."

Adi seemed to frown and smirk at the same time. Gargomon? She knew that was Terriermon's Champion Form, but why was he in it already? What kind of crackpot scheme had Anakin managed to brew up this time?

* * *

"Alright people," said Anakin, turning to the people riding in his gunship with him. "You know what to do. And I know that you won't let us down."

"You can count on us, General Skywalker," Captain Rex saluted, with Commanders Bly and Cody mirroring the gesture. "We'll carry out the job to the letter."

"As will we," said Turuiemon. She and her brother had both transformed to the Champion Level some time ago, in order to give themselves the slight boost they would need to pull off the plan that they had concocted on the hyperspace journey. "Shall we get going before it's too late?"

_Yes,_ Aayla's voice echoed in their minds – she and Ahsoka were in another gunship of their own. _And may the Force be with you all._

Renamon flexed the huge bat-like wings that were extending out of her back, thanks to the upgrade card from Rika, while Turuiemon and Gargomon flapped theirs in turn. "Hop on then, Commander," said the fox, presenting her back to Bly, who wrapped his arms tightly around her neck, while Cody and Rex did the same with Turuiemon and Gargomon respectively.

"Try not to make the ride too, bumpy," said Rex.

"Oh relax," said Gargomon. "This is the first solo mission we've had with you clones for ages. We want to make it as enjoyable as possible as well."

"That is true," said Cody. "It _has_ been a while."

"Then don't waste any more time," Anakin reminded them. "Go!" he shouted, opening the blast doors into the freezing air at the push of a button. "Go! Go!"

"Hold on tight!" Renamon shouted as the three Digimon sprang from the gunship, leaving Anakin and the three Tamers behind. The clones (who wearing jetpacks just in case) hung on tight to their steeds as they spread their wings and flapped upwards, heading towards a different gunship. This one was specially modified and had about six AT-RT walkers hanging from the place where the troops would normally stand.

Swooping in behind it and powering their wings to slow them down while attempting not to dislodge the clones with their beats, the Digimon closed in on the gunship, which was hovering at a standstill.

"Okay, guys," said Turuiemon. "We're in position. Give us the Strength Boost and we'll be on our way."

In their gunships, the three Tamers nodded and quickly gave their partners the extra strength they would need to carry out that task with three card swipes. Once they felt the boost, the Digimon powered forwards and gripped one of the walkers around the top of the legs in their arms, clutching them to their chests. Yanking them free of the gunship, they had no difficulty in holding it and remaining airborne, except in the case of Gargomon, who had to make do without having proper hands.

"Alright then," Gargomon cried over the sound of battle below them. "Let's go and show them what we can do, shall we?"

"I've been itching for a scrap for some time," Rex agreed with his mount. "Now seems as good a time as any."

"And that kind of attitude is why we get along so well," Gargomon laughed and the three Digimon, in what looked almost like co-ordinated synchrony, upended themselves and began to dive towards the platforms below, the clones unconsciously tightening their grip to keep from sliding off.

Anakin watched them go from his gunship as they flew around for another pass, waiting for an opportunity to land safely. _And don't you dare die on me,_ Anakin thought. _Not after everything we just went through._

_You know they can handle themselves, Anakin,_ said Aayla. _I'm sure they'll be fine._

_They better be,_ Anakin agreed. _Or you might have slapped me for nothing._

Aayla chuckled.

* * *

"Here we go!" Renamon shouted over the roar of the wind as they whooshed downwards, the three Digimon sweeping their bat-like wings to push themselves further downwards at speed, even faster than gravity would have normally allowed. The clones felt like they had left their stomachs behind in the gunships, but all three of them were whooping with alacrity and enthusiasm as it felt like they were freefalling towards the battle.

"I think they noticed us," said Turuiemon.

"You think?" Gargomon asked helpfully, as the droids manning the enormous turrets down below turned the giant cannons around, swivelling them on their bases to point them upwards. Huge, red lasers flashed from the tips of the giant cannons and pulsed towards the aerial group and the machines that they were holding.

"Take evasive action, guys!" Bly yelled from Renamon's back.

"You don't need to tell us twice," Gargomon said, sweeping to one side as a laser so big he felt it sizzling the air whooshed past where he had previously been. "In fact, you don't need to tell us once!" He suddenly powered in the other direction as another laser came lancing at him.

"Whoa!" Rex cried, gripping Gargomon tighter as he was almost dislodged.

"Sorry, Rex!" Gargomon shouted.

"It's fine," Rex reassured him. "Just make sure we stay alive! I'll make sure I stay on."

"I can see why the gunships had trouble!" Turuiemon shouted, swooping beneath another laser and dodging another, her speed slightly encumbered by the walker she was gripping in her arms, even with the Strength card. Even though the gunships had Chrome-Digizoid in certain areas now, none of them had it on the bottom of the craft, which would be exposed to the turrets when trying to land here, which was why such drastic measures were being taken. "This a seriously thick flak!"

"Watch your left, Turuiemon!" Cody shouted as he saw a laser come streaking towards them from an unexpected angle. Turuiemon, having no time to dodge unless she did so, dropped the AT-RT and swooping upwards, so the shot passed between her and the walker. Flipping over backwards him mid-air and almost sending Cody flying (but she gripped his arms to make sure he stayed on), Turuiemon powered back down even faster than before and grabbed the falling walker once again, continuing with her trajectory.

Renamon and Bly were weaving in and out and around the huge laser bolts streaming towards them. Renamon narrowed her eyes as two came flying at her at once, and twisted side-on so that one laser whooshed past her stomach and the other surged past Bly's back, but both came out unscathed as Renamon flipped back over onto her front.

"You okay back there, Bly?" Renamon asked.

"Oh yes," Bly yelled back, adrenaline coursing through him at the incredible sensation and thrill of battle. "I haven't felt this good for a long time now!"

Renamon grinned. "Well hold on to your helmet," she said. "Because this is where the real fun begins."

"You know, I didn't realise how much I missed fighting alongside you guys!" Bly exclaimed. "We haven't been on the battlefield together, and even then, MegaGargomon only came in at the end."

"Well then," Renamon nodded. "Let's make this one something to remember!"

"Couldn't agree more!" Bly laughed.

And this was the point where they reached the nearest platform.

Renamon quickly deposited her walker on the ground and immediately swept back into the air. Bly leapt off her back and fell towards the ground, activating his jetpack to allow him to more or less float down. The nearest turret wheeled about to point at him but it never got the chance. Still infused with the Strength Card, Renamon slammed into the bottom of the cannon and heaved, _bending_ the thick metal so that the long, thick metal formed the shape of the letter C. The droid manning the cannon let off the shot all the same, and the blast lanced out behind the cannon and slammed into another turret, causing it to explode. Renamon grabbed the droid and threw him off the edge of the platform.

Behind her, Gargomon and Turuiemon had also dropped off their walkers and allowed Rex and Cody to leap to the floor as well. There were two other turrets turning down towards the group of six, but the bunnies didn't give them the chance to fire. Gargomon surged forwards with a flap of his wings and slammed the cannon with a terrific Bunny Pummel. Thanks to the Strength Card, his blow was so hard that he tore the entire turret from its foundations and threw it off the edge of the platform, spinning towards the ground far below. Turuiemon attacked from range, throwing a Gauntlet Claw at her own turret. The slash of light swept through the base like butter and the turret collapsed on its side, utterly useless.

The Dragon Wings had about reached their limit, and the Digimon quickly landed and allowed them to be drawn back into their body.

"Well, that was a rush," said Rex.

"Hell yeah," agreed Bly. "But we've got no time to talk. General Gallia and her men are being beleaguered as we speak. Let's get a move on."

The three clone leaders ran over to the AT-RTs waiting patiently on the ground for them, leaping up them and into the seats waiting for them. Starting them up, the walkers seemed to practically spring into action as if they had lives of their own. As they began their headlong rush into the city, their legs pounded the ground so hard it was amazing the concrete didn't crack as they were propelled forwards with each step (much like Diatrymon actually, but they didn't know this).

"Hey! Don't leave us behind!" Gargomon protested as he and the Digimon raced after the walkers. Turuiemon and Renamon had the build to give them lithe speed which allowed them to keep up with the running walkers on their own. Gargomon wasn't quite as fast and had to ask Henry for a hyperspeed card to give him the necessary push to stay with them.

Charging across the nearest bridge, the clones glared beneath their helmets at two more turrets, which swerved around to face them, preparing to open fire. But the clones were not too concerned. As the fresh lasers pummelled towards them, they steered their mounts to one side with ease, dodging the blasts with long, loping steps. Bly steered his walker to jump right over a gaping hole in the bridge and land beside one of the turrets, wheeling around and opening fire with the cannon at the front. The turret attempted to turn and face him, but Cody started firing at it from the other side. The two walkers quickly reduced the turret to a pile of scrap.

Rex, on the other hand, faced off against the other one. He opted for a slightly different approach. Running past the turret and turning to face it, like Bly had done, he sat on his walker and _waited_ for the turret to turn around and face him, taking the time it took to set up his aim. As the cannon was pointed at him, primed to fire, Rex let loose a single shot from his walker, which shot straight down the barrel of the cannon just as the droid pushed the button to fire. The two energy blasts collided within the turret, tearing it to pieces from within with a tumultuous explosion.

"Yeah!" Rex whooped, punching the air. "That's how you do it!"

"Epic shot, Rex!" Bly congratulated him. "Worthy of Skywalker's Captain."

"I like to think so," Rex agreed.

"Let's keep going," Cody said, gesturing further into the city. "I can hear more explosions that way – that must be where the fight is."

"Take us to the action," Gargomon shouted as the Digimon pelted past the walkers. The clones quickly powered up their walkers and continued their headlong charge across another bridge, dodging more laser fire and occasionally leaping over it. As the Digimon took care of the turrets with their various attacks the clones pressed on, racing towards the battle up ahead.

* * *

Adi Gallia was getting desperate. Only fourteen members of her strike-force remained, including herself. The thirteen clones continued their brave but futile efforts, determined to take out as many clankers as they could before they were wiped out entirely. Adi admired their bravery, but in the end, it wouldn't help them escape.

Their fate was all in the hands of others now.

Adi cleaved the air with her lightsaber, defending an injured clone to with swift sweeps of her blade, sending red lasers flashing in all directions as she spun and pirouetted in an intricate dance, the tendrils of her Tholoth headdress flapping around her head like lekku.

"If we're gonna go down!" she heard one of the clones shout. "We'll go down fighting! FOR THE REPUBLIC!"

The clones took up the call and roared in defiance, leaping out hiding for a clearer shot at the droids on either side of them. Two of them were quickly shot down, but the rest bravely fought on, defending their honour and their beliefs to the bitter end.

And suddenly, the call was echoed from deeper in the city. "FOR THE REPUBLIC!"

Adi and her men were stunned when they saw three clones come charging around a corner from behind a building on three Recon Transports just as Anakin had promised, wheeling around the corner so fast they almost collapsed to the side and charging towards the back of the Crab Droids. Unleashing a hailstorm of blaster bolts from their cannons, they poured the larger lasers into the surprised droids. Three of the six crumpled and fell to the ground under the initial assault and the other three quickly attempted to turn around.

Adi Gallia saw her chance and dashed through her men, rushing one of the Crab Droids from the side and leaping on its back. It abruptly reared in an attempt to throw her off, but she grabbed hold of it with one hand and brought her lightsaber stabbing into the middle of its face. She leapt off it as it collapsed onto its back, twitching slightly.

The surviving clones of the party quickly took out the fifth, pouring lasers into its side, where it couldn't use its thick, shield-like legs to block them. The sixth Crab Droid managed to turn all the way around and unleashed its own barrage at Commander Bly. But the clone commander veered to one side, allowing the bolts to stream past and as the Crab turned to try again, Bly steered his walker into a flying leap. The walker landed, both feet first, on top of the Crab Droid smashing it into the concrete and flattening it instantly.

Rex and Cody surged past the downed Crabs and the cheering clones and began their assault on the other droids, trampling them into the ground and blasting them apart with their cannon fire like they were one with their machines. Bly, on the other hand, saluted Adi Gallia and said, "Good to see you still in one piece, General. We came as quick as we could."

"And it's a good thing you did," Adi nodded in appreciation. "But how did you get down to the surface...?"

"General!" shouted one of her surviving clones, pointing out towards the sky. "We've got bombers incoming! We need to get off the bridge!"

Adi looked up and her heart skipped a beat as she saw _Hyena_-bombers whooshing towards them from out of the sky. There was no time to dodge them and when they unloaded their explosive cargo anyone who wasn't killed in the resulting explosion would die due to the plummet when the bridge collapsed to the ground below.

Was there no hope after all?

Of course there was.

Their reprieve came in the form of a yellow fox which sprang _right over_ the enormous gap between the buildings on one side of the bridge and the bridge itself, her tail streaming out behind her like a banner. And she glowed brightly in mid-air, growing larger and changing shape as she sailed towards the action, carried by her mighty leap from the top of a building.

"**RENAMON MATRIX-DIGIVOLVE TO... TAOMON!"**

The fox Taoist finished her leap without touching the ground, hovering above the clones who (having not worked with her before) gasped in astonishment. Bly smirked, his fear of the incoming bombers vanishing on the spot as Taomon pulled a symbol from her long sleeve.

"**TALISMAN SPELL!"** she cried, at the exact same moment as the bombers dropped their cargo. The huge, transparent bubble was large enough to cover the entire bridge, including Rex and Cody who were still trashing the droid forces nearby. The flashing bombs collided with the bubble and exploded, smoke billowing out across the sky, but everyone within the bubble was completely unharmed.

The bombers whooshed past them and began to wheel about in mid-air. "Sir, they're coming around for another attempt," pointed out another clone. "Can the shield hold against it a second time?"

"Yes," said Taomon, answering the clone in place of Adi. However, she dropped her shield and smirked. "But, it doesn't need to."

"Why not?" Adi asked her, bemused.

"I've got this!" cried another voice as Gargomon ran out onto the bridge and leapt right over the edge, falling out of sight. Adi blinked at the sight of what looked like a Digimon committing suicide, but then she saw the flash of light coming from below and knew that was not the case.

"**GARGOMON DIGIVOLVE TO... RAPIDMON!"**

The green bunny-cyborg whooshed back up into the air, past the bridge and spiralled towards the bombers. He streaked between the group, unleashing a Miracle Missile from his back launcher, the little projectiles whistling out in all directions and slamming into all but two of the bombers, blowing them to smithereens. The other two streaked past Rapidmon, but the Ultimate simply turned around and unloaded a Rapid Fire at their backs, taking out both before they got the chance to drop any more bombs.

Adi shook her head in amazement. "I can see that the reports of your battles with us were not exaggerating," she said. "I did wonder a few times."

"You know who these guys are, General?" asked one of the clones.

"Of course," said Adi. "They are the Digimon."

"Hello," Rapidmon waved with a bazooka. A couple of the clones waved back uncertainly.

"Rapidmon!" Bly shouted up to the hovering Ultimate. "More bombers coming in from the right." Rapidmon turned to follow the clone's pointing finger and nodded when he saw the fresh wave of Hyenas hurtling towards them, flanked by several Vulture droids for support.

"You guys keep going," Rapidmon said, priming his cannons. "I'll take care of the air support."

"You sure you can take it on your own?" Bly said, though he knew the answer really.

"Do I have big ears?" Rapidmon replied and shot off to meet the newcomers in an aerial brawl.

As Rex crushed the last of the Supers beneath the feet of his walker, he turned and said, "This takes care of the last of the clankers."

"Yeah, but there'll be more," said Cody. "We need to keep our guard up. General Gallia, we've been told to inform you that the others are waiting to land. If we can clear a landing platform of its turrets, we'll clear enough space for them to land and give us some reinforcements."

"Alright," nodded Adi. "There's one not too far away from here," she pointed further into the city with her lightsabers. "We'll head over that way."

Suddenly, the remains of a Dwarf Spider Droid collapsed to the bridge between a couple of the clones, twitching slightly. The clones leapt back in surprise and saw that the droid had a couple of huge rents in it, like someone had driven a vibrodagger into it and torn it open a couple of times. They looked up in time to see another Spider, standing on a wall nearby and getting ready to shoot at them, get torn to pieces by Turuiemon as the bunny Champion leapt across to it and swiped her switchblades through it, kicking the body away so it fell to the ground and then somersaulting onto the bridge.

"Yes," she agreed. "Let's."

The clones didn't have time to stand around and look stunned at the appearance of _another_ creature. Adi lead the way, running across the bridge and back into the city. Turuiemon and the walker-riding clones followed on, with Taomon swooping overhead, while the survivors from the previous almost-rout followed on.

But they quickly encountered a problem in the form of a giant ray shield, blocking off the entire street ahead. Another small army of droids was standing in front of it, and the clones found themselves under fire once again.

"Let's go get 'em!" yelled Bly, and the three on walkers charged forwards. The droids attempted to back away, but the pounding feet of the walkers were shortly amongst them as Rex, Bly and Cody almost seemed to prance about, leaping around the army and blasting several dozen droids apart each before leaping to a new area, not allowing their adversaries to recover quick enough. The other clones cheered and charged forwards as well, firing their lasers at the droids. There was one other casualty – one clone was blasted in the chest by a stray shot – but everyone else began felling droids where they stood with extreme accuracy. The droids didn't know which way to turn.

Turuiemon darted forwards as well and joined the fray. Her switchblades punctured the chests of two droids as she ran past them, then she brought them slamming together, destroying their heads and flung them into a bunch of others. Cartwheeling over another and taking off its head at the same time, Turuiemon brought her feet crashing down on another droid and knocking it to the ground. She leapt onto her first, switchblades extended so they stabbed into the fallen droid, and her legs lashed out to either side of her in the splits, slamming another two droids in vicious kicks. Leaping back onto her feet, she threw a Gauntlet Claw at each of them as they tried to get back up.

Two more droids shot at her, but she somersaulted over the blows and landed in a crouch in front of them, dashing low between them and grabbing them by the legs, pulling them off their feet. One droid was simply tossed into a building and thus crumpled to pieces by the impact, and the other one was grabbed around the neck and flailed about, slamming a number of droids about it.

Bly dashed over on his walker and ran in a quick circle around Turuiemon, trampling the fallen droids into scrap. Turuiemon stabbed her weapon and tossed it aside, before leaping onto the walker with the clone commander.

"Enjoying yourself, Bly?" she asked, throwing another Gaunlet Claw at three Supers and cleaving them in half.

"Are you?" asked Bly, blasting a cluster of Spider Droids to pieces where they stood.

"You may be a clone and I a Digimon," said Turuiemon, "but we are so alike."

Bly laughed and gave Turuiemon a high-five, before the bunny leapt off the walker to dive, blade first, at another Super. Bly shook his head. The Digimon could be _so _odd, but they were amongst his best friends. And they were such good warriors. Bly was glad that he was not a Separatist right now, and he counted himself lucky to be their friend.

Two more turrets that were stationed high up on the buildings were rotating around and downwards, pointing their barrels into the middle of the melee – their orders to shoot down all the clones no matter how many fellow droids were taken out as collateral damage. But things weren't going to happen quite the way they wanted. As the first turret prepared to launch a laser towards Commander Cody, a symbol of light seared through the air towards it and pasted itself over the metal hull. The lines of white flared and sliced the entire turret to pieces instantaneously (as well as the droid in it), causing it to collapse into rubble.

Taomon smirked and whirled about, swishing her calligraphy brush through the air to paint another Talisman of Light in mid-air and send it flying towards the second turret, with much a similar result to the first. Taomon nodded to herself, pleased at the outcome and was about to stow her calligraphy brush away in her sleeve, when a plodding sound from behind her caught her attention. Turning, Taomon saw an Octuptarra tri-combat droid march out from around the corner on its stilt-like legs. Its bulbous, rotating head turned about, one of the laser cannons powering up and unleashing a huge red bolt at the backs of the clones.

Taomon dropped downwards and raised another shield to protect them from harm, the blast colliding with it and fizzling out with the resulting explosion. Wielding her brush like a sword of her own, Taomon charged towards the giant droid, slashing at its head with the painting end, drawing a massive symbol on the spherical head. It promptly collapsed inwardly on itself and fell to the ground in pieces, the three legs momentarily standing like weird pillars before crashing to the ground themselves. Taomon, nodding in satisfaction after stopping a second attempt to box in the clones, put her calligraphy brush back into her sleeve.

But she only did this so that she could float back over to the droids and rain a Thousand Spells attack on top of them.

And what was Adi Gallia doing throughout all this?

The Jedi Council Member was busy ensuring that they'd be able to proceed. She was springing up the side of the nearest building like a champion climber, leaping from balconies and rebounding off pillars as she climbed higher, leaping from potential ledge to potential ledge. She ran along a banister and bounced off the end, swinging from an extended pole that may have held a flag at some point and somersaulting through the air several times to land on another balcony. She leapt onto a pipe and scaled it like a rope and then flipped onto the roof of the nearest building.

After that, it was a simple matter of walking past the ray shield blocking the whole street from floor to roof, and then leaping right off and towards the street on the other side. Adi tucked her legs into her chest and tumbled towards the ground in a ball, gathering her Force powers within her as she fell. The group of about twenty or so droids on the other side of the ray shield spotted her and fired, but the only shot that would have hit was blocked by lightsaber blade even through all the spinning.

Gathering the Force in her hand, Adi sent it at the ground to soften her fall, slowing her down before impact with the street and allowing her to land smoothly. The droids all around her turned to fire, but Adi slammed her arms out, send the majority of them flying with a huge Force-push. Only two were unaffected due to being out of range, except for being pushed back a couple of steps, but they quickly recuperated and shot at her. Adi turned the shots aside and flung her lightsaber at them, slicing them in two without moving from her spot.

She quickly summoned her lightsaber back to her and rushed towards the large box-like structure at the side of the street, pulsating with green lights and humming quietly – it was the ray shield's generator. One quick lightsaber slash and the shield fizzled out of existence. The last remaining droids turned around in surprise, and were abruptly bombarded from behind by the rest of the clones.

The last droid standing received a slash to the neck from Adi, and she showed her appreciation with a nod. "Very well done to you all," she said. "Most excellent. But we must move on quickly."

"General! Tanks!" yelled another clone, pointing behind her. Adi whirled around to see that a large number of AAT tanks were now blocking their way, and were hovering towards them in rows of two, filling the street with their metal hulls. They opened fire with the giant cannons on the top. Adi sprang aside as the cannons blasted the street where her feet had been and grimaced in irritation. The Separatists were throwing _everything_ they had at them.

"Not for long!" someone cried, as if they'd read her thoughts (which they hadn't) and Turuiemon rushed past Adi and charged the tanks, leaping from side to side to dodge the incoming blasts.

"Is it crazy?" asked one of the clones.

"It is a she," remarked Bly pointedly. "And she also has a name, which is about change in a couple of seconds."

And he was right, because Turuiemon erupted into light, causing the tanks to stop firing as the photoreceptors of the droids inside them were practically shorted out.

"**TURUIEMON DIGIVOLVE TO... ANTYLAMON!"**

The enormous bunny slammed the first two tanks into the walls with a sweep of both hands, knocking them outwards and overturning them with a single blow. She sprang right over the second pair and her hands morphed into axes in mid-air, slamming them down on the tops of the third pair and cleaving them both in half with the sheer impact. Before the fourth pair could react, Antylamon had spun around, grabbed the second pair in her gigantic hands and heaved them into the air, bringing them slamming down on top of the fourth pair in a terrific burst of strength.

The fifth, sixth and seventh pairs quickly raised their cannons and opened fire. But Antylamon was not about to allow them to blast her in the chest that easily and powered upwards with a burst of energy from her legs. Flipping over in mid-air, she hurled an Arm Bomber down at them, decimating them with the shockwaves and tossing them into the air like broken twigs. The ninth and final pair attempted to shoot her on the way down. Antylamon blocked the shots with her axe blades and then launched a pink energy blade at them, slicing them horizontally in half and causing the tops to slide off the bottom half.

The droids inside were exposed. "Um, I think we're dead," said one of them.

"In a couple of seconds," another added. And he was right... for once. Antylamon hurled another blade at them, which sliced them in half as well.

"She's cleared a way through for us," said Cody. "Let's go."

"Alright, but I want to know who these guys are when this is over," said another clone.

They were about to move forward again when a Vulture Droid suddenly spiralled into the street. But it was missing one of its side-engines and was clearly out of control and trailing smoke. It slammed into a wall and exploded, showering debris down into the street below. Another one, this one intact, flew out of the street, when a huge, green beam of light slammed into it from the side and practically disintegrated it.

Rapidmon flew out over the street and waved. "Hi, guys!" he shouted, throwing another Rapid Fire at more Hyena bombers and lancing out of sight once more.

Antylamon chuckled. "That brother of mine," she shook her head. "So incorrigible."

"Go! Go! Go! Go!" Bly cried, leading the other clones forwards and out of the street, Adi and Taomon moving with them. They pulled to a halt as they saw yet more Separatist tanks rolling towards them and preparing to open fire. Taomon raised a shield over the troops to deflect the shots an Antylamon leapt over the shield to confront them.

"I'll take these ones," the bunny said. "You guys go and get those reinforcements."

"Alright!" Adi nodded. "This way," she swung her blade in the direction she was indicating as Antylamon rushed the tanks. Taomon lowered her shield and she and the small force of brave men followed the Jedi Master towards the outskirts of the city and towards another bridge. This bridge lead towards a circular landing platform that was surrounded by more of the turrets, but would be spacious enough to allow a large number of gunships to land if they were allowed.

But then, suddenly, a turret mounted on the walls behind them that they had not noticed sent a blast catapulting at them. Two more clones were killed in the blast and the red laser connected to the ground right in front of Rex's walker. The ground exploded and flung both machine and rider into the air and over the edge of the bridge plummeting towards the ground.

"Rex! Hold on!" Taomon shouted, rushing towards him and unleashed a Thousand Spells at the falling clone. Like it had against the Acklay, the papers connected together to form a continuous roll, but this time they lashed around Rex's torso like a lasso. Rex's walker plummeted to the ground, but Taomon was able to haul to clone back up onto the bridge. While Cody and Bly had spun about and launched another laser barrage at the turret, taking it out quickly, Rex caught his breath as Taomon released him from the attack.

"Thanks, Taomon," he said, breathing in heavily.

"Don't mention it," said Taomon. "Sorry I couldn't save your walker."

"Don't worry about it," Rex got to his feet and drew his twin blasters. "I'll just have to make do with these."

Taomon smirked. "They've never failed you before right?"

"Got that," Rex nodded, and they quickly joined the others as they continued towards the platform.

The turrets swivelled around to face them once more, but that wasn't the only thing they had to worry about. A bunch of commando droids were standing guard on the platform, and as they spotted the approaching enemy forces, they drew their swords or their blasters and dashed across the intercept them.

"Take care of the turrets!" Adi ordered the clones. "Taomon and I will deal with the droids."

"Copy that, General!" Bly cried as he motored forwards on the walker, Cody running alongside him and the rest of the clones following on behind. Adi and Taomon quickly engaged the droid forces together and, using their lightsaber and brush as their primary weapons, they went into action.

The clones, now numbering twelve men, including Rex, Bly and Cody, set about their job as quickly and efficiently as their military training allowed. There were seven turrets stationed around the perimeter of the landing platform and that meant they had to work fast. Splitting into pairs, the walker-less clones tackled one turret each. Rex and his partner rushed towards one of the turrets, running away from each other to opposite sides. Rex unleashed a barrage of blasts from his pistols to draw the attention of the droid manning it. The droid swivelled towards him, taking the bait, and allowing the other clone to get closer. As Rex dodged the blast by taking a terrific dive to one side and rolling, the other clone threw a thermal detonator at the base of the turret. The little bomb rolled to a stop beneath the unsuspecting droid and, after a couple of seconds, blew up, blasting the turret to pieces.

Most of the others went about the task in much the same way, although a couple of the decoy clones were not as fortunate as Rex, bringing the total number of clones down to ten. One clone through a droid popper at the turret instead of a thermal detonator, but that worked just as well because it left both the droid and the turret sparking and useless. Bly and Cody skittered around on their walkers, dodging the blasts of their targets and unleashing bursts of their own before dodging again. Three rounds of this each and the turrets were left smouldering.

Adi ducked under the sword swing of a commando droid and span aside to dodge the follow-up, stepping past the droid and stabbing under her arm, taking the droid out from behind. She withdrew the blade just in time to block some more shots from other droids which were running towards her. Adi grimaced and leapt backwards to avoid the next shots, as the droids pushed her closer to the edge. At the last second, she suddenly dove between them, rolling back onto her feet and cleaving a third down the middle with her blade, before lashing out behind her with the Force, and throwing her previous attackers over the edge themselves. Adi quickly dashed forwards and kicked another right in the face, dodged the sword swipe of another and slashed through both at once with a single twirl.

Taomon had quickly dispatched the two she'd been facing with another Thousand Spells, but then she had spotted some more swooping in towards her on a bunch of STAPs. As they fired on her, she surrounded herself in her bubble to shield from the flashing, red projectiles and waited for them to come closer. Like she could do as Sakuyamon, she suddenly expanded her shield, which surged outwards and struck the droids, knocking them and their vehicles out of the air to explode against the concrete.

One STAP managed to swerve out of the way in time and came back for another assault. Taomon hovered upwards to avoid the blasts this time and as the STAP streaked beneath her, she lashed out with her brush, swiping the rider in the head and knocking him off his STAP, which careened off and over the edge. The droid fell to the ground and attempted to get up and swing its sword, but Taomon knocked it out of his hand and painted a symbol on its chest. The droid looked down as the glowing symbol in bewilderment, before it fell to bits on the spot.

Taomon smirked as she looked down at the bits of droid throwing up sparks into the air in front of her. But what she didn't see was the commando droids – two of them – crouching behind a nearby crate of ammunition. One of them had a large sniper rifle in its metal fingers and was levelling it at the back of the Digimon's head. The droid tightened its grip on the trigger, preparing to fire.

Suddenly a blue blaster bolt slammed into the sniper rifle and knocked it out of the droid's hands. The droids whirled around to see Rex charging towards them, letting off several rounds of shots from his twin blasters as he moved. The sniping droid was hit in the chest and fell to the floor, damaged, and a second shot straight to the face took care of it for good.

The second droid reared up, drawing its sword and leaping at the clone captain with a mighty swing. Rex dodged aside at the last second, the sword whistling through the air as it passed by. The droid lashed out again and Rex ducked beneath it, then lunged forward himself and rammed his shoulder into the droid, knocking it back slightly. The droid regained its footing, and faltered in surprise when it saw Rex was running away from it as fast as he could.

A slight beeping noise reached its audio-receptors and it looked down to see that in the tackle, Rex had planted a magnetic bomb beneath the droids armpit. Panicked, it reached for it, but it was too slow and was blown to smithereens where it stood.

"Hah!" Rex said, walking back over and kicking the droid's head off the edge. "Who needs a walker?"

Taomon floated over and smiled gratefully. "Thank you, Rex. I saw what you did."

"Does that mean we're even?" asked Rex.

"Perhaps," said Taomon. "We shall see."

"Well done, men," Adi said as the clones regrouped around her. "You've all fought valiantly. But we need to hold our position until reinforcements can arrive."

"We'll cover the bridge," Bly said, and he and Cody made his way over to guard the only way onto the platform.

Adi activated her comlink and said, "Skywalker. Kenobi. Come in please."

"We read you, Master Gallia," Obi-Wan's voice broke through. "We're on our way right now."

Adi blinked. "But I haven't told you our position yet," she said.

"You don't need to," said a voice she recognised as Aayla's. "We've got direct mental links on our side. We knew it was safe the moment that Taomon did."

"Ah," said Adi. "Of course. I forgot."

"I can see them, General," one of the clones pointed upwards. All eyes turned upwards as a phalanx of gunships swept out of the clouds above and began to descend towards the landing platform, causing everyone to stand back to give them space to land. Two Vulture droids also seemed to have spotted them and were winging their way in from the city, firing their lasers wildly. The bolts ricocheted off the nose of the foremost gunship, and before the droids could figure out what on earth just happened, Rapidmon suddenly appeared between them, grabbed one and swung it into the other, before whooshing away once more.

As the gunships hovered above the platform, lowering themselves downwards and causing dust to swirl around beneath them, Commander Cody yelled out, "General! We've got destroyers coming in!"

Adi whirled around, as did a majority of the other clones, and saw the two in the tanks opening fire on the rolling Droidekas rushing across the bridge towards them. Their blasts managed to take out about five out the original number, but the Droidekas quickly unrolled and put up their shields, which even the AT-RT walkers would not be able to break through.

Adi ran over and began to do her best to block once more, but found that she didn't need to. Taomon raised a shield of her own – an enormous one that covered the entire landing platform and everything on it, shutting the Droidekas outside and causing _them_ to be the ones shooting at something uselessly for a change.

The blast doors of the gunships opened behind them and fresh battalions of clones leapt out, rushing out to the edges of the shield and preparing for battle the moment it was lowered. The clones of Adi's platoon took note of how none of them acted particularly surprised by the presence of the floating fox Taoist and were more confused than ever.

The A-Team and Obi-Wan were also present, rushing over to the rest of the group. "Master Gallia," Obi-Wan bowed to his fellow Council Member. "At least you are in one piece."

"Indeed, Master Kenobi," said Adi. "But most of my men did not meet the same fate. We were quickly overwhelmed by Mygeeto's defences. The Banking Clan have certainly invested in a lot of protection."

"That's because they can," said Ahsoka dryly. "They are the Banking Clan after all. I wouldn't be surprised if they've been secretly taking money from people's accounts to pay for all of this."

"Well, after we capture San Hill, we can find a less greedy person to take over," said Anakin. "Hopefully, anyway."

"Do you know where he is supposed to be, Master Gallia?" asked Aayla.

Adi nodded and indicated a large building in the distance. "That is where our intelligence says he has holed himself up. However, for all we know, he could have gotten away by now."

"My mate is keeping an eye on everything in the sky," Taomon reported, reinforcing her shield as the Droidekas continued their firing. "He says that he hasn't seen anyone attempting to flee, so either he left before we arrived, or he is still here."

"Then there is still an opportunity to catch him," said Adi. "We must take it while we have the chance."

Obi-Wan nodded. "But first, we'll have to do something about those Destroyer Droids out there."

"Oh, I don't think they'll be a problem for much longer," said Taomon.

Before anyone could enquire as to what she was talking about, a nearby clone cried "WHOA!" and pointed towards the city. Everyone turned to look and gasped in astonishment as they saw an _entire AAT tank_ flying through the air from the main city, over the massive drop to the ground and tumbling through the air as if it had been thrown and came smashing down on top of the clueless Droidekas. Their shields were no match for the enormous projectile and they were instantly flattened.

_Thanks very much, Antylamon,_ Anakin said with his mind. The giant bunny, who was still visible in the distance smashing into more of the tanks with her enormous axes, momentarily turned around and saluted them, before picking up another tank and tossing it over her shoulder and towards the ground far below.

Taomon lowered her shield and said, "Well, I suppose we better get moving again."

"Yes," said Obi-Wan. "Tell Rapidmon that if San Hill attempts to flee to the air, he should try and force the ship to land without destroying it. Hill will know a lot of useful inside information."

"Already done," said Taomon.

"In that case," said Obi-Wan, as he and his fellow Jedi all ignited their lightsabers at once, creating a strange mish-mash of activation noises and leaving Ahsoka's a solitary green one amongst a bunch of blue others, "We march on that building."

"And take down anything that gets in our way," said Anakin.

The Jedi broke into a jog and ran past the clone forces, who fell into pace behind them as moved out onto the bridge. The Jedi lead the way, moving around the battered AAT tank and the remains of the Droidekas as they crossed over into the city. The clones now numbered well over two-hundred, combining the forces of Adi's survivors with those of the 212th, the 327th and the 501st.

Taomon watched them go for a moment with a smile on her face, as the sea of white armour passed beneath her. Then, she turned back to the gunships, where the Tamers were standing inside the hangar and also watching. She shared a brief nod with them, before turning and flying off, swooping over the heads of the clone forces.

Predictably, it did not take them very long to run into trouble. As they ran across the edge of the giant platform in the direction of their target building, several more turrets were blocking their way. But that was why they had Taomon there, to take them out before they could swivel around and let off a shot. However, with Taomon and the Jedi out in front, the clones in the middle were left vulnerable.

Much like before, when Adi and her forces had been boxed in, the clone in the middle of the charge jumped as a large number of Crab Droids scrambled over the edge of the platform and squared off against them, smashing their armoured legs into the ranks of the clones and sending a number flying. Their laser blasts killed a number of others, but the clones quickly leapt back, those up ahead turning around and letting off barrages on shots at the Crabs.

The droid's armoured legs took most of the damage, but this didn't hinder the Crabs in the slightest. One reared up, preparing to bring its legs crashing down on Waxer, one of Cody's men. The clone stepped backwards, but quickly acted in order to save his life. Turning his blaster upward, he let off a shot at the building above, blasting a lump of debris from it, which came crashing on top of the Crab, smashing it on the spot.

Other clones quickly took up their own methods of defence against the rampaging orange droids. Ridge was there, and he leapt backwards, almost colliding with several others as the Crab attacking him slammed a leg into the ground where he'd been. Fishing and EMP grenade from his belt, Ridge hurled it, smacking the Crab between the photoreceptors and going off, sending it crackling into death.

Boil and Blade double-teamed their attacker. Blade danced to one side as the droid's flashing laser cannons tried to pin him down and returned fire with two quick shots of his own. The Crab screeched as its glowing photoreceptors were taken out and it struggled wildly, not seeing Boil come running around it and firing at the floor around its back legs, causing the platform to collapse beneath them. The Crab shrieked again as it slid off the platform, its front legs digging grooves in the concrete before it went tumbling into the abyss.

Conor was slammed into the wall by his attacker and groaned, winded. But, fortunately for him, that was when two of the Jedi arrived. Dashing along the side of the wall at speed to keep up her momentum, Aayla launched herself into a flying double kick that smacked the droid in the face and drove it back. As it recuperated, Aayla rolled underneath it and threw up her hands, blasting it into the air with the Force. As it fell towards her again, the Twi'lek jumped up to meet it and cleaved it in two in mid-air, bringing both pieces smashing to the walkway. She landed smoothly between them.

Anakin was there in a flash as well, blindsiding another Crab that was about to attack a clone called Edge. He landed on the back of the Crab and leapt off the other side, drawing its attention and making it turn towards him. Anakin smirked as it opened fire on him, forcing him to block the shots, but then he dodged aside and went into action. He dashed past the crab, slicing off on of its front legs and one of its back legs in a flash, then turning around and dashing past it on the other side, slicing off the other front and back legs. The body fell to the floor – a legless lump of metal and unable to move an iota. Anakin hooked his toe under it and calmly flipped it over the edge.

"Thank you, General," said Edge. "That thing almost had me."

"Not to worry, Edge," said Anakin. "I hope you're ready to do some scrapping of your own as retribution."

"Yes, sir!" Edge said enthusiastically.

The reason the other Jedi had not come back to help as well was because they were needed at the front of the line, as yet another load of battle droids were marching towards them, causing the Jedi to go blocking again while the clones fired around them. "If you two are done showing off back there," Obi-Wan shouted. "We could use some assistance."

"Patience, Master," chuckled Anakin. "We'll be right there."

Taomon moved over and cried, "**TALISMAN STAR!"** pulling another symbol from her sleeve and hurling it like a boomerang. The giant red thing went slicing through the centre of the droid line, cutting down all the droids in the middle three of the five columns in half across the entire length. The ones on the edges stopped, stunned and staring at their sparking ex-comrades.

Which was a perfect opportunity for a charge. Taking advantage of the momentary lull in blaster fire, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan and Adi dashed forward and set to work with their own blades, dicing up the droids before they could recover. The clones followed on after them, firing their lasers past their Generals to nail some of the droids at the back of the line.

As the next phalanx of droids was taken out, Obi-Wan lead the way through the streets and towards their destination. The giant building, which looked something like an enormous town hall or something similar, loomed overhead. The forces took a momentary pause as they stared up at it. The entire structure was absolutely bristling with turrets, with several balconies lined with row upon row of various species of droids, all waiting for them to attack. Every door, window and potential opening was ray-shielded and the walls seemed to be incredibly thick, meaning it would take several detpacks to break through that way.

It was a formidable looking structure.

"Well," said Obi-Wan. "Attacking something like that will not be easy. Any ideas anyone?"

The ground shook as Antylamon landed in the street before them, towering over everyone else present.

"Someone call for a giant lockpick?" she asked.

* * *

Yes, a huge battle-scene and it's not even over yet. But, I'm sure you can all guess that this battle is not going to take up the entire arc. No, there's something else on the horizon – a recurring request that I have been getting (which I was actually planning to do anyway). Let's see how our heroes cope with what is coming up in the future.

It's been some time since I got to do some clone action. It's quite cool actually, since their way of battling is so much different to the ways of the Jedi and the Digimon. Each one has unique tactics and stuff, so it makes each new battle-scene and interesting one. And the clone commanders are becoming almost as good friends with the Digimon as the A-Team are.

Please review and see you soon. Sooner than I thought I would at the start of the week.

* * *

Next time...

As the assault on the stronghold of the Banking Clan begins, there is another threat on the horizon. Something that absolutely nobody was expecting. It seems like something from long in the past is about to be reawakened. But what is it? And what does it want?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 94 : Incursion**


	94. Incursion

And here we go once again. Another train journey of nothingness provided ample excuse to churn out a lot of writing. And to think, if I had stuck to the original schedule I came up with, I would be posting Chapter 91 on Wednesday. Ha! Who needs schedules? I think I may have re-awoken an enthusiasm for this work that had dried up a little bit recently. I still enjoyed it, but not as much as before. Now, I've got lots more vigour to do this and get to the sequels and everything. I feel all bubbly.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 94:- Incursion**

* * *

A bunch of B1 Battle Droids were standing out on one of the balconies of the giant complex owned by the Banking Clan and staring out over the city. For the past hour or so they had been standing still and watching as explosions and columns of smoke began to make their way across the city in a clear indication of where the Republic troops were heading as they smashed their way through the city's defences.

"These guys must really be professionals," said one of the droids.

"What makes you say that?" asked its companion.

"Well look how far they've managed to get," said the first, pointing with his blaster at the line of smoke heading across the entire length of the raised city. "Considering all the defences we've got around here, they probably would have all been shot down a long time ago if they weren't."

"Good point," said the second. "Well, if they head this way, then they won't know what hit them. Look at what we've got here." He gestured with his blaster at the walls bristling with blaster ends. Huge heavy turrets designed to bring down air craft dotted various point of the structure. Each and every balcony was lined with B1 droids, Super Battle Droids, Droidekas and Commando Droids, several on which were manning smaller turrets that were basically large, repeating blasters. Even the walls had several smaller turrets jutting out, which could target any enemy attackers. Anything heading towards them would practically be attacked by the building itself.

"I don't know," said the first, sceptically. "I'm not sure why but I have a bad feeling about this."

"You worry too much," the second shrugged it off. "Isn't that right, guys?"

"Roger, roger," echoed every other battle droid on the balcony at various different times, creating a weird blend of about fifteen "rogers," almost like an odd dance remix.

"And look at that," said the droid, pointing upwards. "We've got some Vulture Droid reinforcements coming in."

"Oh yeah," the first replied as it spotted the incoming droids. It paused and said, "Wait. Why are they spiralling at us like that? And why don't either of them have any engines?"

There was a pause.

"Oh no," the second droid sagged.

"Roger, roger," agreed the first, also sagging.

A second later, the out-of-control Vulture slammed into their balcony and obliterated them all, while another slammed into another balcony containing Droidekas and wiped them off the map as well.

* * *

Rapidmon, from where he was hovering above the buildings, smirked as he started off the attack with a bang, and then went back to attacking the rest of the droids circling the city to make sure the ground troops stayed safe from an aerial assault.

"GO! GO! GO! GO! GO! GO!" yelled Commander Bly from the street as he and Commander Cody charged out of hiding on their AT-RTs and ploughed over towards the building, loosing barrages of lasers from the cannon and dashing off again. Over one-hundred-and-fifty other clones joined the attack, dashing out of hiding and taking up positions before the compound, crouching behind what cover the street could provided and trading lasers with the defences, as they began to shoot back.

The droids on the balconies stepped as close to the edge as the banisters allowed and levelled their weapons over the edge, pouring lasers over edges and towards the clones. Many of the white-clad men were felled in the first few seconds, slammed into by the barrages, but numerous droids also fell within moments, their bodies suddenly dotted with holes and toppling over the edge of the balconies to land it the streets below in sparking heaps.

The turrets on the walls also opened fire, scattering yet more blaster bolts in the streets and swinging from left to right like security cameras in an attempt to mow the clones down, while the bigger turrets began to swivel around as well, charging up their plasma rotors to let off their bigger shots.

But they were out of luck, because what appeared to be a transparent shield formed directly around the wall turrets, preventing the clones from shooting them, but also preventing them from shooting the clones in turn. Taomon always found it more difficult to project a forcefield that she wasn't standing in, but she focused her power into the symbol in her hand.

A number of clones faltered in surprise when they saw the shield appear, but they were re-energised by a shout from Cody – "Ignore the turrets, men. Focus on the droids on the balconies! Make them pay for what they did to our brethren on this day!"

The clones took to this with a will and leapt from hiding places, darting to new ones that were much closer in order to get clearer shots. But the larger turrets were still problems as they primed their cannons to rain blasts of devastation on the heroic gunslingers.

But they were quickly taken care of too. Rapidmon swooped down from the sky to initiate his second and final part of the plan, for he was needed in the sky badly – the place was swarming with Vultures and Hyenas. He streaked past the building, moving so fast he was almost visible and dodging the laser storm from both sides at the same time, before letting off a single Miracle Missile. The small projectiles spread out and each took out one giant turret on their own. As they fell into pieces, Rapidmon whooshed back into the air, his job done.

Bly steered his walker to a halt and spun it around, blasting upwards to nail a commando droid wielding a repeating turret in the torso and blasting the large blaster itself to pieces in the same shot. Bly turned his walker slightly to flatten the droids across the rest of the balcony so they fell like dominoes.

Cody made his walker jump over a rock and dodge a round of shots from another commando on its turret, before spinning around himself. He let off a single shot at full blast which caused the balcony that numerous Droidekas were standing on to collapse under their feet, sending them tumbling into the street.

Cody smirked, but the commando droid was still shooting at him, so he was forced to make his walker leap _backwards_ to avoid getting hit. But the commando droid was promptly slammed in the head by a precisely shot laser from Rex. Commander and Captain shared a brief thumbs up, before turning back to the battle.

The massive double doors swung open and more droids began to march out, priming their weapons to fire on the clones from ground level too. But a couple of the new reinforcements – a couple of members of the 327th, were more than prepared for them and, stowing their blasters back in their holsters, they hefted the larger, heavier rocket launchers from their backs to their shoulders and unleashed a pair of large missiles at the doors. The closely packed droid were all blown to ashes in an instant.

But yet more were still coming out of the door, and a couple of other clones responded this in a different way.

Lifting up and levelling their large Z-6 rotary blaster cannons, they ran forward a few paces and fell into a crouch, letting rip with them to send a torrent of blaster bolts towards the doors, filling the droids with more holes than a mountain of Swiss Cheese. Each. A couple of other clones ran forward too, in order to cover them, shooting upwards at anything that turned to stop the bombardment.

"That's it, boys!" Rex shouted, clambering up onto a large piece of debris and offloading more bolts into a Super on the roof. "We've got this down!"

The clones were fighting bravely but there were still many falling to the blasts of the droids across the enormous complex. Many more would be if the wall turrets, which were usually more accurate than the droids, weren't being blocked, and the clones were holding out. But the storm of lasers went both ways and while the clones fought hard, the droids fought back just as hard. A couple of thermal detonators were flung over the walls and a number of other clones fell to the blasts.

Taomon grimaced and as she saw another bunch of detonators being lobbed in the direction of Commander Cody and his men, she grimaced and concentrated almost harder than ever, pulling a second symbol from her other sleeve. It required a great amount of effort on her part to create more than one forcefield, and she could only muster a very small one at that. However, it was enough. The detonators were surrounded by a bubble and pulled up short, exploding harmlessly in mid-air.

* * *

But where were the Jedi in all this? And Antylamon?

Well, they were going along a slightly different tack. As the clones fought to breech the monstrous compound from the front, all five Jedi were coming from another direction. The building where San Hill was supposed to be hiding had its back to the precipice, and, since it assumed that not much could attack it from that direction, it only had a few anti-aircraft turrets as a defence.

A big mistake.

"This is not how I imagined spending my day!" Adi Gallia cried over the sound of the rushing wind.

"Don't worry, Master Gallia," Anakin shouted back. "We can trust Antylamon. She won't let us down."

"I certainly don't intend to," Antylamon agreed as she ran at almost full pelt. She had two Jedi on each shoulder, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka on one, and Aayla and Adi on the other. Anakin got the prime position on Antylamon's head. And Antylamon was rushing down the street that ended in a sheer drop and a massive gap between two platforms.

And on the other side of the giant gap she was running towards, was the building the clones were attacking.

"Here we go!" Ahsoka cried, gripped Antylamon's shoulder as tightly as she could, while the other Jedi did the same. Anakin gripped Antylamon's ears, but the giant bunny ignored it and thundered towards the edge. Her right foot slammed into the end of the platform hard enough to crack it and she sprang into the air, sailing over the gap in a truly enormous leap.

Time seemed to slow down as the Jedi held onto the flying bunny with grim expressions on their faces. Obi-Wan couldn't help but look down at the ground far, far below, but he needn't have worried. Antylamon sailed right over the gap with ease, moving at such speed the turrets didn't have time to respond.

In moments, Antylamon landed – somehow managing to make the landing gentle despite the enormous crash her bulk produced – right on the roof of the complex. The roof was as thick as the walls, which meant incredibly well fortified, but that didn't put Antylamon off for a moment. Morphing her hands into axes again, she sent two pink Bunny Blades lashing down beside her feet, splintering the roof in the shape of an X and weakening the structure, which meant when she brought her physical Bunny Blade attack slamming down into it the roof caved instantly, throwing up a cloud of rubble and creating an enormous hole in the structure.

Adi shook her head in amazement. "Not a lot of finesse," she said. "But certainly impressive. And it gets the job done."

"Yes, well," Obi-Wan called across to her from the other shoulder. "Anakin's head-on approach to things seems to work in sync with the Digimon and their impressive destructive capabilities."

"Much to your chagrin, I assume," Antylamon smiled across at him.

"Perhaps a little," the Jedi Master replied. "Well, let's not keep San Hill waiting."

"Assuming he's still in there," said Anakin. The five Jedi leapt off Antylamon, one by one, sailing towards the hole in the roof and landing smoothly atop the mound of concrete that had once been part of it on the inside. Antylamon nodded down to them and then leapt off the roof to aid the clones and Taomon in the attack on the front.

"Split up," said Obi-Wan. "Master Gallia and I will take the left while the rest of you take the right. Hopefully one of us will run into our host before he can escape."

"But if he does," pointed out Aayla. "He has a Rapidmon waiting for him in the air."

"Let's just try and make sure he doesn't get that far," said Obi-Wan.

Nodding, the Council Members ran off down one end of the corridor, while the A-Team took the other.

* * *

As Adi and Obi-Wan dashed through the corridors, they encountered extremely little resistance from the inside. Most of the droids were being sent to attack the clones outside, so while they occasionally ran into one or two, there were almost none others, giving them freedom of almost the entire compound. The Jedi Council Members methodically worked their way through the complex – which looked almost like an enormous mansion from the inside, opening doors and sweeping the room with their senses to check for life-forms, before dismissing one by one and darting to the next.

They covered several stories this way, moving in quick succession. At one point, one of the doors that Obi-Wan opened led onto one of the balconies. Four commando droids turned to look at him, and with a shove of the Force, Obi-Wan sent all four spinning into the street below, where three of them were killed in the drop, and the fourth was gunned down by Boil.

Eventually, Adi opened a door to find what looked like an ornate bedroom of some sort, with a long bed on one side. It was abnormally long in fact – San Hill's species, the Muun, were all extremely tall, so that seemed about fitting.

Something was pricking at Adi's senses. The Jedi Master turned and waved over at Obi-Wan, holding a finger to her lips to indicate silence. Obi-Wan nodded and crept over, both of them slipping inside the room and shutting the door firmly behind them. They scanned the interior, but while there were a large number of sumptuous items scattered around the places, worthy of the Head of the Banking Clan, there was no sign of any life-forms.

At least, not with their eyes. But their senses were telling them otherwise.

There was definitely someone in here. But where?

Both heads snapped towards the bed as a slight thump emanated from that direction. Adi and Obi-Wan frowned at it momentarily, and then turned to glance at each other. Obi-Wan threw a look that asked, _Really?_

Adi shrugged.

The two of them stepped forward as silently as they could, making their way towards the bed. Obi-Wan gestured that Adi moved around to the far side, and the Korun human nodded and did so, edging around the long, thin piece of furniture until the two Jedi Masters were on opposite sides.

Quietly and slowly, Obi-Wan knelt to the ground, his hand reaching out to pull back the covers concealing what was underneath it. Gripping it carefully, he suddenly flung it aside, giving him a clear view on beneath. The Muun that had been hiding underneath it yelped and stared at the human in horror.

"Not the best hiding place in the galaxy," Obi-Wan observed.

The Muun backpedalled quickly, rolling out the other side of the bed and straight into Adi's waiting arms. The Jedi Master grabbed the Muun by his shoulders and hoisted him to his feet. "Don't hurt me!" the Muun wailed, holding his hands in front of his face. "I surrender! I surrender!"

"Where is San Hill?" asked Adi, as Obi-Wan stood up again. For the Muun they now had prisoner was most definitely not Hill. It was a familiar face though – it was the Senator of the Banking Clan, Senator Nix Card.

The senator looked confused. "Mister Hill?" he asked. "What? Why are you asking me that?"

"We know that San Hill is in league with the Separatists," Obi-Wan said, stepping around to question the Muun himself. "We received intelligence that he is here. Where is he?"

"He's not here," the Muun wailed. "You must have got it wrong. Mister Hill hasn't visited Mygeeto in months! You've got the wrong planet!"

Adi and Obi-Wan glanced at each other sceptically. Yet they could sense no deception from the cowardly Senator, who had probably thought himself safe in the heavily fortified compound that he lived in. But they weren't about to give up on the possibility of apprehending the Separatist Council member just yet.

"Well, in any case," said Obi-Wan. "You can consider yourself under arrest."

"You can't arrest me!" Senator Card protested. "I am a member of the Galactic Senate!"

"That does not make you immune to Jedi jurisdiction," said Adi Gallia, fishing a pair of binders from her belt. "And considering the enormous armies of droids outside that attempted to massacre us, I'd say we have plenty of grounds to arrest you."

"I'll keep searching the place," said Obi-Wan, as Adi secured the struggling Muun. Activating his comlink, he called into it, "Commander Cody, please come in."

"I read you General," the sound of blaster fire echoed through the comlink as well as Cody's voice. "We're almost through the front way. I'll be joining you shortly."

"Good," said Obi-Wan. "When you get in, I want a complete sweep of the entire place. Scan the area for life forms. If San Hill is here, he cannot be allowed to give us the slip."

* * *

"Acknowledged, sir," Cody concluded, shutting off his comlink in time to steer his walker around the shot of a B1 and leapt forward, blasting his attacker off the balcony. As the clones pressed their attack, driving back the last of the droid forces guarding the massive place, Taomon floated forwards to take out the wall turrets she had previously been blocking. Raising her sleeves at the round bubble plastered to the wall, Taomon created two small holes in the structure and unleashed a **"THOUSAND SPELLS!"** into the gaps. The bubble was suddenly filled with the slips of magical paper disgorged from the ends of her sleeves. As they swirled around like wasps, each one lanced out and struck one of the wall turrets in turn, creating many little explosions in a pyrotechnic display across the walls.

All that remained of the defences was a single, solitary droideka. The droid, not programmed to surrender despite the hopeless odds, as there were still well over a hundred and fifty clones still very much alive down there, it turned around and prepared to fire at the fox Taoist below it. But it never got the chance, because a giant hand descended upon it, phasing through its deflector shield as if it wasn't there and plucking it off the balcony, before crushing the droid in its fist. Antylamon discarded the pieces and gestured towards the open doors.

The clones took her signal and swarmed into the building, cheering as they finished their side of the battle with a victory. Things had been grim and only six of Adi's original force was still alive, but they had succeeded.

* * *

But the battle wasn't entirely over yet. It almost was, but Rapidmon was still very much in the middle of a fight with more of the aerial droids. A number of the Hyena bombers had descended upon the parked gunships and as a result the Tamers still hiding within them and dropping their enormous bombs with intent to obliterate everything on the platform. But a swarm of Miracle Missiles has whooshed past them, connecting with the projectiles and blowing them up before they got anywhere near the landing platform. Rapidmon slammed into two of the Hyena droids with his cannons, knocking them out of the air, then flipping onto his back and shooting a Rapid Fire up towards the others and exploding them on the spot.

Rapidmon turned around as the last of his adversaries approached him – four Vulture Droids sailing towards him and unleashing more red lasers. Rapidmon spiralled through the spread of bolts, dodging them within millimetres. He gestured with a cannon and cried, "You wanna race? Come on then! Catch me if you can!"

He turned and shot down towards the ground, the Vultures blindly following him and firing more lasers wildly. Rapidmon continued to dodge without looking, his huge ears detecting the sounds of rushing lasers and swerving to avoid them as he corkscrewed towards the ice below. He glanced over his shoulder briefly, staring the droids in their huge photoreceptors and leered at them beneath his mask.

Just before he hit the ground, Rapidmon swerved around and landed on his feet, knees bending to absorb the impact of the fall. Then, he extended them and leapt upwards, rushing between the four Vultures too fast for the naked eye to track and out of sight. He watched with satisfaction as the four droids slammed into the icy side of a mountain with four huge explosions combining to form a gigantic one, throwing up huge pieces of ice and leaving a large, smouldering crater.

"And that's what you get for messing about with me," said Rapidmon. _Well, I think that's the last of them._

_You sound disappointed, Rapidmon,_ he heard Aayla comment. _Didn't you have enough fun blowing all the droids to pieces?_

_Are you kidding? I can _never_ get enough of blowing things up,_ said Rapidmon. _I could stop, but I'd still want more._

_It comes from playing video games too much,_ said Henry.

_That, and it's what I do best anyway,_ said Rapidmon.

_You have numerous other talents,_ said Antylamon. _In fact the list of things you can do extremely well is freaky. Heck, if I gave you a didgeridoo you could probably play it on the spot._

_What's a didgeridoo?_ asked Anakin. _Sounds like a Gungan swearword._

_Hey, that's a great idea! _Rapidmon declared. _Who's up for a holiday to Australia if we ever get back?_

_I just did something bad, didn't I? _Asked Antylamon.

_Depends,_ said Taomon. _On how good he is when he tries. If he's awful, then yes, because he won't stop._

_Got that right,_ Rapidmon said.

* * *

Back at the compound, the clones were fanning out and checking through the entire building as the Jedi had done before. Commander Cody was fiddling with the device on his wrist armour, which was scanning the entire place for life forms. The thing was able to detect exactly where every other life-form was, and the clones quickly headed for those destinations.

Soon, every single person in the building had been rounded up. Most of them were Muuns, like Senator..., but there were, predictably, a large number of Twi'lek slaves, who the clones automatically freed after reassuring them that they were in good hands and brought the timid people back with them reassuringly. Aayla immediately took pity on these poor woman and went over to them, giving them a similar pep talk to the one she'd given to the slaves on Boz Pity.

However, there was one big and extremely important problem.

San Hill was nowhere to be found.

Wondering if he'd escaped just in case during the initial attack, before Rapidmon arrived to stop him, Obi-Wan ordered a check of the security footage of the hangar for the past four hours, which was when Adi Gallia had arrived above the planet in hyperspace. Clone Lieutenant Galle immediately made his way to the security room and checked the feeds, with the Jedi Masters hovering behind him, while Anakin and Ahsoka joined Aayla in comforting the former slaves.

But Galle's results came up with nothing. No ships had entered or left the hangar during the attack. He even went further and checked over the entire day, but there was nothing. San Hill had not been in the compound at all.

Back in the main hall, when the Jedi Generals spread the word to everyone else, there were resounding groans throughout the place.

"Does that mean that we went through all of that," said one of the few surviving clones of Adi's troop. "All of those battles, losing most of our platoon like that, for nothing?"

"Not for nothing, no," Adi reassured him. "We may not have apprehended Hill himself, due to the intelligence we were given being false, but we still have gotten something out of this. Not only have we managed to take one of the largest Separatist strongholds in this sector, but we have arrested an important Galactic Senator, who may be able to provide us with almost as much information as Hill himself."

"I will not tell you anything!" Card yelled in defiance. He was ignored.

"And we managed to liberate a few slaves," added Aayla, gesturing to the girls who were peering cautiously around her at the white-clad men. "That is always a bonus."

"Yes," said Obi-Wan, "but our work is far from over. We must ensure that we retain our grip on the city. Anakin, send word to Adirmal Yularen. Ask him to send us down additional reinforcements and several tanks as well. They may prove invaluable in our defence of this place. There are many more places on this planet still under the control of the Separatists, and they may decide to launch a counter-attack."

"Got it," Anakin nodded, turning on his comlink.

"Commander Bly," said Aayla. "I am placing the captives in your care," she gestured to the Muuns, who all had different expressions, ranging from fear to resentment to plain annoyance, and the odd glance of confusion, wondering how in the galaxy they had managed to breech one of the most well fortified places on the entire planet. "Keep them under close watch at all times."

"Yes, General," nodded Bly and moved over to the Muuns, gesturing to other clones to follow his example as they surrounded the captives like the troops that they were.

"Skyguy," said Ahsoka. "Shouldn't we begin the interrogation of the Senator now?" she jerked her thumb at Card who blanched and stepped back from the Padawan. "When the Separatists learn that he's been captured they'll change their plans, so we won't have long before he's useless as an information source."

"Good point, Snips," Anakin nodded, winking at his Padawan, who grinned and wink back. "We'll take care of it. We'll start immediately. Care to join us, Senator?"

"No! I will not say! Dooku will have my head!" the Senator wailed.

"More proof, as if it were needed, of your allegiance," said Ahsoka, smirking. "Hey, I have a wild idea. Perhaps Senator Lot Dodd of the Trade Federation is a traitor to the Republic as well."

Anakin chuckled. "Whoa! Really?" he gasped hyperbolically. "I would never have even thought of such a thing myself! Perhaps our friend here will be able to tell us." Gripping Card by his arm, Master and Padawan marched him into another room to begin questioning him.

"Master Gallia and I will help the clones to fortify the defences and secure a perimeter," said Obi-Wan. "Aayla, I'm placing you in charge of the former slaves. Takes them back to the landing platform and instruct one of the gunships to take them back to the cruisers. They are to be examined for health problems by the medical droids and given anything they need."

"At once," Aayla nodded and turned, smiling warmly at her fellow Twi'leks. "Follow me, everyone. Take your first steps into a life of freedom."

She turned and walked out of the huge installation. The Twi'lek girls followed her timidly, a little unsure of themselves since many of them had been slaves to the Banking Clan ever since they were little girls, so slavery was practically all they knew. Aayla coaxed them outside and began to head towards the gunships.

Taomon and Antylamon were nowhere to be seen. None of the Muun had mentioned the Digimon during their capture, so the Jedi were assuming that they had not been watching the progress of the battle, possibly believing so strongly in the strength of their fortifications that they didn't actually need to. While they attempted to question as to whether they had or not, subtly so as to not give it away if they hadn't, the Digimon were staying out of sight of everyone, including the slaves.

_Great work, guys,_ said Aayla to thin-air. She knew Taomon and Antylamon were nearby – Mygeeto was a city where even a giant like Antylamon could easily hide. _We may not have gotten San Hill, but that was still a major victory for the Republic._

_It was quite a battle,_ Taomon agreed.

_And there may be many others like it,_ Aayla said forebodingly. _While we've taken the capital and the best defended of the few cities on this planet, there are still many others left._

_It's a good thing that this planet is mostly uninhabited if it's as rich as it is,_ said Rapidmon. _Or we'd have a hell of time taking it._

_We probably still will,_ said Antylamon. _But, who knows?_

_Yes, but when we do take this planet,_ said Aayla. _That will put perhaps the biggest cramp in the Separatists so far – even larger than when we destroyed the Dark Acolytes. While the Trade Federation and the Techno Union are very rich and supply the Separatists with a lot of money, the Banking Clan supplies it with the most funds for their droid armies, and considering how rich in minerals and precious metals this planet is, it's the Banking Clan's most important world. If we put the Banking Clan out of commission..._

_...then the war can end even sooner,_ Henry grinned in his mind. _Brilliant._

_Yes indeed, _Aayla projected a grin back. _And it will go a long way to helping the Republic recover from its finance problems when the Muun are replaced by some people less conniving. The Republic has gone into huge debt funding this war. Hopefully we can get someone to sort things out for us again._

_Put Padmé in charge,_ said Suzie. _She'd do it properly._

_I have no doubt that she would,_ chuckled Aayla. _But it's a bit more complicated than that._

_Yes, well, we have to take the rest of the planet first,_ said Taomon, her realism kicking in.

_Can we do that later,_ Rapidmon complained. _I'm starving. Dodging and blowing up Vulture Droids does more than work up an appetite._

_Alright,_ Aayla laughed. _Come back to the gunships when I've sorted out these slaves. We'll head back up to the cruisers and you can gorge yourself to your Digi-core's content._

_Yes! _Rapidmon cried, moving his cannons from one side to the other several times in a celebratory way. _Buns and beans and sauerkraut! I'm gonna eat 'til I pass out._

_What about slipping pineapples in there somewhere? _Antylamon chuckled.

_Don't go there,_ Rapidmon demanded warningly. _And don't you dare say 'Momentai,' Aayla._

_I wasn't going to,_ Aayla lied, laughing.

* * *

Rapidmon took on last look out across the bombed out ruins surrounding them. In all his battling, he hadn't really taken in much of what was going on around him, and he found himself wondering how many of the huge chunks in the concrete that he himself had caused, how many of the buildings had he wrecked.

He wondered briefly if he could have shown more restraint.

He shook it off quickly. The city had been practically empty of anything but droids anyway. The colonists must have fled some time ago. Apparently this was the planet where the Lurmen they had met on Maridun originated from. Small wonder that they had abandoned it if they wanted nothing to do with the war – they must have known it would be a target eventually.

_Right,_ he said. _I'm heading back._

However, before he could lance into the air at many times the speed of sound, he heard something. A loud, cracking sound, very much like the sound of snapping ice. He glanced down and saw that had indeed been the case – the ice in the crater that he had created by tricking the four Vulture Droids into flying into it had a large rent in it that wasn't there before. Rapidmon watched in confusion and amazement as yet another snap occurred and the crack got wider, while another crack appeared crossways from the original.

"Ah, crud," Rapidmon murmured. "Tell me this isn't going to be like those Ice Age films where that squirrel-thing, Scrat, causes an entire mountain to split in half using an acorn. How does that work anyway?"

There were a couple more snaps, and more cracks appeared it the same spot, the ice splintering before his very eyes. It was then that Rapidmon realized that something else was happening. It was almost like something very, very strong was smashing the ice from the other side. But what in the galaxy could there be buried under thick sheets of a glacier?

He found out the answer pretty quickly.

As Rapidmon watched, something slammed into the same place and the ice splintered enough for a pale, white arm – exactly like one belonging to a human, but slightly larger – slammed out from beneath the ice and into the air, the fingers flexing and the hand groping at the air. Rapidmon unconsciously rose a little higher, watching with terrible fascination as the hand withdrew back under the surface.

It reappeared again with another solid smash in the area right next to it, widening the gap in the ice, before retreating again. There was a pause, leaving Rapidmon on tenterhooks, and then suddenly two arms exploded out of the ice, smashing the hole wide enough to admit Rapidmon himself through into the darkness beneath the ice.

Rapidmon watched, his eyes widening, as the fingers grasped the edge of the ice and something like a tall and very, very, _very_ familiar looking humanoid creature pulled itself out of the darkness and got to its feet, staring out over the icy terrain. It looked like a tall, gaunt, human, wearing a jacket and trousers with a belt holding it in place and a long flowing cape resting over his shoulders. His hair was long, and his boots were patterned with skulls. And there was a mask over his eyes with wing-like projections sticking out to either side of it, and fangs were visible in his mouth.

Rapidmon's blood turned as cold as the planet around him. He knew what this was alright.

A Myotismon.

But not an ordinary Myotismon.

Another part of him resembled somebody that Rapidmon had met in person. His clothes, except for the flowing cap and the red mask over his eyes, as well as his face, were all pure white. His hair was the same golden colour as the Myotismon from the TV show too, but everything else was white. Whiter than white, in fact.

The television show had a Devimon in it, and Rapidmon had met an IceDevimon instead.

The TV show had a Myotismon in it.

Now, Rapidmon was staring at an IceMyotismon instead.

_What. The. Hell,_ Rapidmon said as he stared at the ice-cold, vampiric Digimon, who was rolling his shoulders and flexing his arms, causing them to click from disuse. _A Digimon? Here, in this universe? How the hell did he get here?_

He didn't need anyone to answer the question for him. He got the answer himself a moment later. _Parallelmon,_ he thought. _That bloody guy may be dead for good now, but his work still remains unfinished! Fanglongmondamnit! This guy must be one of Parallelmon's former victims when he went on his attacking spree many years ago!_

_But what's he doing here?_ Asked Antylamon. _On this planet? How long has he been buried under the ice._

_Oh hell,_ Rapidmon groaned. _He must have been locked down there, frozen in by the ice... until I released him by breaking the ice with those Vulture Droids. Damnit! Why did I have to choose that exact spot to cause them to crash!_

_It wasn't your fault, Rapidmon,_ said Taomon quickly. _How were you supposed to know that there was an evil Digimon buried down there?_

_Are we sure he's evil? _Asked Antylamon.

_He's a Myotismon!_ Rapidmon shouted. _Of course he's evil!_

IceMyotismon stopped getting his muscles back in working order with a final click of his neck. His fanged mouth twisted into a grin. He had no idea how long he had been frozen down there, but due to his icy nature it seemed that he had managed to survive the deep-freeze. And now, he was finally awakened once more, and the whole world wouldn't know what hit them!

He placed a hand to his forehead as he tried to process his last memories. Yes... yes, that was it. He'd been in the middle of battle with... with _him!_ Yes, him! He could remember it as clear as day now. They had been grappling with each other, each trying to tear the other's throat out, when suddenly that odd Mutant Digimon had appeared out of nowhere and shot some kind of tendril from his eye at them, engulfing them both and flinging them into who-knew-where. Then, the last thing he remembered was falling out of the sky and then... nothing. Then he had woken up, shaken free from his icy prison at last.

He glanced around and frowned at what he saw. He appeared to be on the side of a snowy mountain, but in the distance he could see a huge city-like place on giant, raised platforms. That was unlike anything he'd ever seen in the Digital World before. Where was he? Where had that cursed Mutant Mega transported him to?

He could see another Digimon, hovering above him and staring at him warily. He recognised it as a Rapidmon, but what it was doing here he had no idea. Still, it was as good a place to start as any.

IceMyotismon pointed upwards and declared in a strong voice much like the cracking ice from before. "You! Rapidmon!"

"What?" asked the cyborg in question, tensing his cannons for a fight. It was clear that the Ultimate did not trust him. IceMyotismon sneered – he had good reason not to after all.

"Where am I?" IceMyotismon asked. "And how did I get here?"

"Uh," said Rapidmon. "Well... this may come as a slight shock to you, but, you aren't in the Digital World anymore."

IceMyotismon paused and then cried, "WHAT?" in terrible anger, bringing Rapidmon's guard up even more.

"Tell me something," the cyborg asked. "Were you attacked by a weird-looking, armoured, Mega level Digimon and grabbed by a tendril that shot out of his eye?"

IceMyotismon scowled. "Yes," he said. "How did you know that?"

"Because the same thing happened to me," said Rapidmon. "That Digimon was Parallelmon – a Mutant type Digimon that could jump between dimensions and transport others there too. He hit you with his Absorbent Bang attack, which transported you to another universe entirely.

IceMyotismon struggled to maintain an air of regal dignity, such was the shock coursing through him. He had to physically stop his mouth from dropping open. It took him several moments to recompose himself, before saying, "Then, is this the Human World?"

"No," Rapidmon shook his head. "There are humans around, but this is an entirely different reality to both our world and theirs."

IceMyotismon supposed he should be devastated, but another thought was beginning to flash through his mind. If what the rabbit said was true, then that meant he was in a world where the Sovereigns had no influence. He might very well be one of the most powerful Digimon in the entire world. The thought appealed to him, and began to grow. This world was ripe for the plucking and the Sovereigns were not there to limit his ambitions.

But...

He and his mortal enemy had been grabbed by the same attack. Could that mean that He was here as well.

And he knew right away that this was true. He could feel the faint tingling in the back of his fangs, telling him that He was close. It was almost non-existent, which was why he had not noticed it before, but it was definitely there.

He would get about destroying the world _after_ he won his life-long feud with Him. Turning his head and noting where the tingling sensation which allowed all vampires to sense their potential prey was strongest, IceDevimon found himself facing further into the mountains. A sneer crossed his face at the prospect of ending this once and for all, and began to fly towards the mountains, lifting himself into the air for the first time in who knew how long. He licked his lips. This would be the beginning to the end of their battle.

"Hey!" Rapidmon cried, and suddenly, IceMyotismon was startled to find the cyborg warrior hovering in front of him, having moved so fast he had almost teleported. "Where do you think you're going?"

IceMyotismon curled his lip contemptuously at the bunny, glaring into the determined-looking eyes of the green-armoured creature. "My quarrel is not with you," IceMyotismon snapped. _Not yet anyway._ "I must find Him and put an end to this!"

"If you mean Parallelmon, you needn't bother," Rapidmon told him. "As a matter of fact, me and a couple of friends put paid to him just a few days ago. He's deader than a tree stump."

Whether IceMyotismon even took this in was unclear, because he levitated upwards to continue his way into the mountains. "Stay out of my way!" he warned him. "I must accomplish my goal."

"What goal?" Rapidmon shouted after him.

"I must kill my Ultimate Enemy," IceMyotismon said. "And if you stand in my way, then I will be forced to remove you through violence. Now, I have an enemy to kill. I can feel his presence somewhere in this world! He's close! So close," he sneered and kept going.

Rapidmon blinked at what this IceMyotismon was saying. He had a feud going against another Digimon – a bitter rival that he may have been fighting for who knew how long. And he could feel his presence, meaning that somewhere on this freezing polar world there was another Digimon, probably also frozen somewhere in the wilderness. And he could feel the waves of evil coming off IceMyotismon, which meant there was a possibility this Digimon was a good guy. It might not be, but still...

If a Good Digimon was in danger, then he had to help.

Rapidmon blipped in front of IceMyotismon again, bringing the arctic vampire to a halt again, snarling in annoyance.

"Sorry," said Rapidmon, priming his cannons. "But I can't let you go anywhere. You're and evil Digimon – I can sense it. And evil Digimon can_not_ be allowed to roam around this world."

IceMyotismon sneered. "A little fighter, huh? You believe that you can stand up to me? I am IceMyotismon. I bring Ice-cold death to all who oppose me!"

"I know who you are," Rapidmon smirked. "But do you know who _I_ am. I am Rapidmon, Warrior Cyborg, member of the Epic Eight and protector of this universe. If you want to go out there and commit evil, you'll have to get around me to do it."

IceMyotismon smirked and spread his arms and legs in preparation for battle. "Very well," he sneered. "But I warn you, I am not a playground bully. I have obtained great strength. You may not know what you are dealing with."

Rapidmon grinned. "I think it's you who don't know who you're up against."

"Shall we begin?" IceMyotismon asked.

For one puzzling second, Rapidmon seemed to flicker on the spot. Then he smirked and said, "We've already begun."

"Huh?" IceMyotismon asked in confusion at this rather odd statement, but then he was promptly slammed in the back by a pair of Rapid Fire missiles. He gasped in shock as the missiles tossed him forwards, his cloak absorbing most of the impact of the blast. Once he righted himself, he scowled at Rapidmon. "How did you do that?"

"Quite simply actually," said Rapidmon. "I moved behind you, fired my missiles and moved back to my original place so fast you almost didn't see it happen."

"Clever," IceMyotismon admitted grudgingly. "But speed will not be a match for me. Here I come."

"Here I come as well," Rapidmon pointed his cannons again and cried, **"RAPID FIRE!" **sending off two whistling missiles at the ice vampire. IceMyotismon stood his ground as the incoming projectiles approached and, grabbing his cloak with one hand, he pulled it across his front, allowing it to take the blasts which would have killed almost anything else his size without much difficulty.

"Nice cloak," offered Rapidmon.

IceMyotismon cast it aside so it flapped around his neck. "It's not nearly as nice as my moves," he flew upwards, raising one hand as a long, flowing stream-like weapon made of solid ice which still seemed to somehow flow appeared in his hand. **"GLACIAL LASH!" **he shouted, swinging it towards Rapidmon like a whip.

Having no desire to find out what would happen if that thing hit him, Rapidmon leapt above it, allowing it to lash beneath his feet. He quickly darted forwards and aimed a punch at IceMyotismon's face, seeking to knock his fangs out. With startling speed, IceMyotismon dodged aside and swung his weapon again. Rapidmon rolled aside as it sliced between his ears and unleashed a Miracle Missile to catch IceMyotismon off guard. The blasts came in from either side, forcing IceMyotismon to release his weapon and dodge backwards. The missiles exploded by colliding with one another, the resulting bang causing IceMyotismon to fly backwards slightly.

Rapidmon sent another Rapid Fire at him before he could recover, but IceMyotismon did so faster than expected and took the missiles head on, batting one aside and sending it spiralling to the ground below and catching the other in both hands. Rapidmon's eyes widened at this, but as IceMyotismon raised an arm to throw it back, he sent off another attack at top speed. The first missile collided with the one in IceMyotismon's grip, blowing up both and causing the vampire to yell painfully as his hand was burnt. The second one slammed him in the gut and knocked the wind out of him.

"You have technique," he admitted. "But that will not be enough to stop me." Throwing his cloak outwards, he shouted **"RAVEN SWARM!"**

Rapidmon had been expecting some kind of bat attack, like the Grisly Wing from the television show. What he got was similar but not quite the same. The vampire unleashed a swarm of large black birds from the folds of his cape – had they been hiding there all the time? It made sense – ravens were once thought to have supernatural properties in some cultures as well, and they could be found in the Arctic.

"Birds, huh?" Rapidmon said. "How about I feed them with a **MIRACLE MISSILE!"** he launched another barrage from his back-launcher. The missiles streaked at the birds, but like a baitball of fish they swerved as if the flock was a single entity and allowed the missiles to pass harmlessly by. IceMyotismon had to dodge the missiles intended for his birds and quickly flew upwards. Rapidmon was astounded by the bird's impressive flying and the flock ploughed into him, tearing at his skin with their beaks and talons. Rapidmon flailed at them, but they simply dodged out of the way.

Rapidmon put an end to the attack but bursting backwards out of the flock and forming a triangle of green before him. **"TRI BEAM!" **he shouted and fired the huge laser, disintegrating the birds where they stood. Rapidmon's ears warned him that IceMyotismon was coming towards him from below, so he tilted his body and moved the direction of the Tri Beam. IceMyotismon dodged to the side quickly to avoid getting hit.

"**GLACIAL LASH!"** he cried again and launched another ice-like whip at the cyborg. Rapidmon dodged to the side again and charged in, delivering a gut-busting kick to IceMyotismon's stomach. But the vampire gritted his fangs at the pain and swung again. As Rapidmon attempted to dodge aside, the whip coiled around his ankle. Immediately, Rapidmon felt like he had been plunged into water at minus forty degrees centigrade, and IceMyotismon took advantage of how he'd gone rigid with the cold and flung him into a snowbank.

"This ought to put you on ice!" he crowed.

"TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE AND VERY OVER-USED PUN!" Rapidmon shouted, firing a Rapid Fire up at him. IceMyotismon dodged aside and cried **"FROZEN NIGHTMARE!"** Spreading his cloak, what looked like some kind of ice raven spirit streaked down towards Rapidmon. Rapidmon got to his feet and launched another Rapid Fire, but it passed through the spirit easily. It did hit IceMyotismon though and the vampire yelled in pain.

Rapidmon was preparing to dodge, but suddenly Taomon appeared in front of him and rose a shield over them. The spirit collided with the shield, which meant Taomon probably knew something about blocking it out since she could use spirits as Sakuyamon. The domed shield was immediately coated with ice, creating an ice dome that Taomon and Rapidmon were trapped inside.

Not that that stopped them. Rapidmon blasted through the ice and lanced out and into the battle. IceMyotismon sent another Raven Swarm at him, but Rapidmon shot straight at them, ramming them with his body and bursting straight through the flock. Startled, IceMyotismon attempted to back away, but Rapidmon flipped over and gave him a glancing double-kick to the top of the head.

As IceMyotismon fell towards the ground, he saw Antylamon sledging down the mountainside towards him. "Pity these aren't stakes," she said, hefting her axes. "But they'll do!" IceMyotismon desperately tried to right himself as Antylamon charged him with a dull on Bunny Blades attack. He managed to roll aside to avoid the first swing, but the second took him in the back of the cape and slammed him into the ground. Antylamon slid past him and hurled an Arm Bomber back up the mountain. IceMyotismon sprang back up and lifted off, narrowly avoiding the explosions of the attack.

But he saw Taomon floating towards him, her paintbrush raised. The fox Taoist smirked and said, "In popular mythology, vampires are weak to holy magic such as mine," she raised her paintbrush and swiped a Talisman of Light in the air. "Let's see if the same holds true for you," she cried as it rushed towards IceMyotismon.

The vampire raised his cloak to defend again, but he was stunned with the glowing symbol burst through it and pasted itself on his side. He writhed in agony as searing, white-hot pain coursed through him.

"Evidently, it does," said Rapidmon.

"I thought as much," Taomon smirked.

But, as they watched, IceMyotismon shrieked the sky and seemed to surge with power – they could feel the air around them turn even colder. Taomon's Talisman disappeared from his torso and IceMyotismon was free, a searing burnmark on his side but otherwise looking unharmed and much, much angrier.

"Wow," said Rapidmon. "He's pretty strong considering he's been frozen in a glacier for some time."

"Well, he is an ice Digimon," said Taomon. "That is only to be suspected. And here, surrounded by his element, he is stronger than he would otherwise be, much like IceDevimon in his ice fortress. That's why he broke free of my talisman so fast."

"I hate you Holy type Digimon," IceMyotismon growled. "I'll enjoy tearing your throat out."

"Only if you manage to do it," said Taomon, bringing her brush in one hand and a Talisman Star symbol in the other. "Can you?"

IceMyotismon glared at the Ultimate level Taoist, but he was aware of Rapidmon hovering off to his right, just waiting for him to make a move, his bazookas ready to burst into action at any second. And he was also aware that Antylamon was charging back up the mountainside below them. But he didn't worry about her – she was too far down to hurt him.

Obviously he didn't know Antylamon very well.

While he was deciding upon a move, Antylamon sprang upwards in another mighty leap. As she swung her axes at him, IceMyotismon blanched and frantically rolled to dodge. This time, as Antylamon brought up her second axes, he managed to knock it aside with his surprising vampire strength and struck out with a Glacial Lash, the thing clouting Antylamon in the face and throwing her back down, but she landed on her feet after a quick flip.

Rapidmon surged in for another kick, but IceMyotismon had anticipated this and rolled underneath him, kicking off from his back and sailing over Taomon who had come in to help. He sent another Frozen Nightmare spirit at her, which would freeze her solid if it made contact, but Taomon raised another shield. Like before she was enclosed in a sphere of ice, but this time, in the air, that turned out to be a very bad thing and it dropped like a rock. Taomon quickly busted open her prison with a Talisman of Light and launched a Thousand Spells up at the vampire. He counted with another Raven Swarm, the two attacks cancelling each other out as one piece of paper destroyed one bird each. But IceMyotismon was suddenly slammed by another Tri Beam and tossed aside. Rapidmon rammed him from behind before he could recover, and then he was met by pink Bunny Blades from below.

IceMyotismon shrugged off the damage he had taken with a little difficulty, singed from the attacks but still going relatively strong due to his icy environment. But he was now surrounded by all three of them. Antylamon was charging with axes raised, Taomon with her brush at the ready and Rapidmon ready to plough his foot into him.

IceMyotismon acted fast and threw a Glacial Lash at the ground, the impact propelling him upwards and out of danger. He laughed, thinking that the three of them were going to slam into one another, but he was shocked as they moved around each other with ease. Antylamon leapt up and twirled her huge frame right over the other two, and Rapidmon and Taomon both turned side on so they skewed past each other, both giving the other a wink as they flew past. The three then quickly righted themselves and regrouped.

"What the..." IceMyotismon breathed. "How did you do that?"

"Mental link," said Antylamon, tapping her head. "Helps to avoid stuff like collisions from happening."

"Ah. I see," said IceMyotismon. "So you two females are not just random Digimon who decided to help out the Rapidmon."

"Nah," said Rapidmon. "These are my family – my mate and my sister. Do you want to see just what our mental link can do to help us to beat people like you?"

"Let's go!" Taomon agreed, launching another Thousand Spells from her sleeves. IceMyotismon countered with the same technique by launching a Raven Swarm, but _that_ was cancelled out by Rapidmon using the same technique too, blipping in between the converging attacks and blasting the ravens with a Tri Beam, before getting out of the way of the Thousand Spells. The papers continued forwards and began to do the trick when they moulded themselves together into rope-like tendrils. IceMyotismon flung a Glacial Lash, but this only managed to the take out a couple of them. The rest converged on him and wrapped him up until he was more of a mummy than a vampire. As they were imbued with holy energy, IceMyotismon howled again as they burnt into his flesh.

Antylamon had followed the Thousand Spells attack and flipped onto her hands before the vampiric Ultimate, lashing out with both feet and knocking him back. Rapidmon was suddenly behind him, grabbing him between his cannons and flinging him back at Antylamon with a spinning swing. Antylamon launched another Arm Bomber, impacting on the wrapped-up vampire with an explosion of pain.

It had the added effect of busting him out of the papers, making him sigh with relief despite the intense pain wriggling over his skin. But his respite was only a brief one because a Talisman Star swished out of nowhere and cut into him, gouging a deep gash in his side and tearing off a large portion of his cloak. He was then simultaneously hit with a Miracle Missile and ranged Bunny Blades.

He collapsed to the floor. Unlike Parallelmon, he knew when he was outclassed and these three were more than a match for him. It seemed he had let his arrogance get in the way for a moment, thinking that he could take on any Ultimate since he was so powerful.

As the three of them converged on him to finish the job, IceMyotismon suddenly stood up, the ice around him giving him more power to keep going and threw open his cloak. He was suddenly surrounded by ravens, the flock so thick that he couldn't be seen through it. As an Arm Bomber, a Tri Beam and a Talisman was launched at the ravens, they vanished on the spot, IceMyotismon vanishing with them.

The three Digimon waited on the spot, expecting him to reappear and attack from a random angle much like Parallelmon had. But the vampire didn't appear again. It appeared he was smarter than the Digimon that had transported him here in the first place.

"Damnit!" Rapidmon cried. "Why did he have to have a fancy little escape trick like that?"

"We cannot dwell on that now," said Taomon. "We have to report this back to the others. A Digimon incursion is not something to be taken lightly, even if we can beat him."

"Yes," nodded Antylamon. "And not only do we need to find him and deal with him before he attacks any of us again, we need to try and find this other Digimon he was talking about as well."

* * *

IceMyotismon is the first Digimon I've made up for this fanfic, but considering I wanted a Myotismon in it but thought that might be a bit too samey from the show, I improvised a little bit and changed it to fit. Myotismon is Devimon's digivolved form anyway, so there's no reason there can't be an IceMyotismon as well. His attacks are similar to those of Myotismon, its true, but there are key differences in all of them.

Well, it's camping tomorrow and Tuesday, so I probably won't be posting the next chapter for a few days. But we'll see.

Any guesses as to who IceMyotismon's rival might be?

Please review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

This chapter focuses on the exploits of the Tamers, instead of Impmon. Deciding that the best way to help Impmon would be to find a way to stop GranDracmon, they have headed up to the Sovereigns level first. But what information will the four mighty beings reveal?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 95 : Back To the Sovereigns**


	95. Back to the Sovereigns

Well, I thoroughly enjoyed the camping trip, despite the fact I got almost no sleep, woke up the moment dawn broke and got a blister the size of a pea on my finger from lighting the bloody fire. This chapter would probably have been out sooner, but I had a lot of sleep to catch up on. I even slept straight through one of my lectures by accident, flopping on my bed the moment I got back and so missing the lecture that was on next. Apparently it was the boring of the year so far though, so that was alright.

Anyway, every single one of you who hazarded a guess at IceMyotismon's rival all assumed it would be a Holy type and so put either Angemon and MagnaAngemon, and in a couple of cases even Angewomon, despite the fact I made it very clear that the rival was a guy. However, you were all completely and utterly wrong. IceMyotismon's rival is not a Holy Type. **Papercut** came unbelievably close with one of his four guesses but not quite. **Panthermonspartner **got the answer right after a couple of attempts – well done. So, would the rest of you like to guess again?

Also, those who are in America and will be getting the season finale of Clone Wars Season 3 in a couple of days time are in for a REAL treat - we got it early here in the UK. It was amazingly epic, and one of my favourite storylines so far.

Right, questions will be answered.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 95:- Back To the Sovereigns**

* * *

Ai and Mako were beginning to feel the weight of not having a handy motorcycle to ride around in when they went on missions. This was, after all, only the second time they had been on a proper mission and the first one had been many months ago now, and they had spent the majority of their time sitting on Behemoth's back or MetalSeadramon's head.

Now, with neither of those options available, they had been doing an awful lot of walking. For the young twins, who could both barely run up the stairs without sweating profusely since they didn't get a lot of exercise one, trekking through a desert like the one in the lowest level of the Digital World was a gargantuan effort and it wasn't too long before they were panting as they struggled to keep up. It was a good thing that they didn't need to drink here, otherwise they probably would have flopped ages ago.

Nevertheless, they struggled valiantly on, refusing to slow down until it became almost unbearable. That was why the other Tamers didn't notice that they were having problems for quite a while. When their false bravado broke and Ai and Mako were practically staggering to keep up, Jeri noticed this and immediately scolded them both for trying to seem that they were okay when they were clearly suffering.

Ai and Mako had said they were sorry profusely and Jeri had sighed, reminding them that they were supposed to be a team and that the area was an extremely dangerous ones, where a pair of severely worn-out Tamers that didn't have the energy to run from a threat was a very bad idea. That got a message through the struggling twins and pretty soon they were on the move again. Jeri had digivolved Elecmon to his Champion form of Leomon and the twins then began to ride on his shoulders, gripping his mane to keep themselves in place while they recovered their energy.

Ai, who was holding the D-Arc, stared sadly at the little arrow on her D-Arc that was pointing towards where Impmon was right now. It was pointing in pretty much the other way to the direction that they were going. This made the twins feel uncomfortable, but they understood the reasons that Ryo had brought up on the first day of their new adventure.

When they had first set out, Ryo had suggested that instead of looking for Impmon directly, since the Digital World was such a big place and Impmon could be anywhere in it _and_ was probably trying to stay hidden from just about everyone else then they might take forever to find him, even with the use of the tracking function on the D-Arc. The Legendary Tamer had suggested a different approach and voiced his opinion that they should try and find the Digimon Sovereigns instead.

Naturally Kazu and Kenta both agreed to this right away – Ryo was safe from hero-worshipping for the most part, although he still got a little bit from those two, but they still held him in incredibly high regard. Kazu had pointed out that Ryo had survived in the Digital World for a lot longer than they had and that they should listen to what he had to say when it came to this place.

Ryo had remained adamant that they should visit the four Sovereigns on their layer of the Digital World. His argument had been, "Not only will we be able to question them as to who this GranDracmon is and probably get some more answers from them, they also have a large number of subjects that might help us. Subjects that know the Digital World much better than we do and can cover a lot more ground."

Jeri had agreed to this plan as well, claiming that it was "A lot more efficient and probably faster."

Takato, other the hand, was extremely reluctant to agree with it. His reason for this was, "I feel like we should be trying to help Impmon ourselves, without the help of the Sovereigns. It's nothing against them, but... well, _we're_ Impmon's friends, not them. And there's nothing more important than friendship."

"You sound like Matt from the TV show," Kenta had chuckled. "And here I thought you wanted to be like Tai or Davis."

"Hey, Matt's cool too," said Takato.

"Yeah, but he doesn't wear goggles," Kazu laughed. "You may need to lose them if you start becoming more like him."

Takato had clutched at his goggled protectively and Guilmon had protested, "But his goggles is what makes him Gogglehead."

After the laughter subsided, Takato had reiterated, "I just think that we should be focusing more on finding Impmon ourselves."

It had taken a couple of minutes for Jeri to sway Takato to Ryo's way of thinking. GranDracmon was obviously a very powerful Digimon, and while he himself was apparently confined to the Dark Ocean, his minions, who were also very powerful, as well as his influence on events, were not limited to his world-slash-prison. And surrounding yourselves with powerful allies like the Sovereigns was definitely a good way of ensuring that you had plenty of ammunition to throw at him.

Eventually, Takato managed to get around his sense of personal involvement and saw practicality and had agreed.

And the twins, seeing that the majority was against them, reluctantly gave up the idea of searching for Impmon directly and went with the others. And a couple of days later, they realised that they had probably made the right decision, when they were watching Impmon's arrow on the D-Arc, pointing off to the right, until it suddenly changed to almost the exact opposite side of them. They had looked confused, until they realised the Impmon must have taken a Data Stream and moved across the Digital World quickly.

And that was what the Tamers were doing now.

They were currently walking through the strange black and white twisted looking town that the Tamers had passed through a long time ago on their initial search for Calumon, the twins still riding on Leomon. Knowing that it would be practically impossible to locate the level of the Sovereigns without knowing where it was, the Tamers were taking any Data Stream they could find and hoping that they struck lucky. So far they had briefly stopped on the beach and the forest levels and they had a slightly longer stay in the Clockwork level, but now they had found themselves in this place.

Mako was staring at a Knightmon that was wandering through the streets. The Digimon had an enormous sword strapped to his belt and the little child couldn't help but wish that he had a sword – it would be awesome to go into battle against another Digimon wielding something as big as the one the Knightmon was carrying. Of course, Mako wouldn't be able to lift that sword, but it would be pretty cool all the same.

"You guys alright back there?" Ryo called from the front of the group.

"Yeah, we're okay," Takato called back. "Still moving."

"My feet are getting crampy," Guilmon moaned, plodding along in the wake of his Tamer. "Is it my turn to be carried by Leomon?"

"I'm sure you can manage for a little bit longer, Guilmon," said Leomon.

"Easy for you to say," the dinosaur griped. "I haven't eaten any bread for over an hour. I'm wiped."

"Guilmon, I told you if you want to keep eating bread then you're going to have to pace yourself," said Takato. "You've already eaten over two-thirds of it, and I think we won't be heading back to our world for a while."

"I know," said Guilmon. "But I just love it so much."

"It feels so weird," said Mako, glancing around and the soot-and-whitewash world that they were walking through. "I haven't eaten anything for over a day and I still don't feel hungry. It's weird."

"You'll get used to it eventually," said Takato. "We did."

"You organics can be so amusing when you talk about your stomachs," said Guardromon. "I have been monitoring you from months and it is still a bizarre concept to me."

"Well, it would be if you're made of metal," said Kazu. "You don't even have a mouth. How do you even talk?"

"I don't know," said Guardromon, shrugging his broad shoulders.

"Well, that's... bizarre," Kazu blinked as they continued on.

After a few minutes of wandering through the bleak landscape, Ai glanced across at her twin brother and said, "Mako?"

"Yeah?" said the young boy.

"Do you think Impmon's okay without us?" Ai fretted quietly. "I mean, he's tough, but he's all on his own and who knows what is chasing him. I wish he could have let us come with him."

"Me too," said Mako. "But he wouldn't have even if we had been awake."

"He was just trying to protect you," said Leomon from between the two. "He did the honourable thing, even if it does mean grief for the two of you and a good deal of others. And it shows you just how much he cares for the two of you – if he broke a promise as big as not leaving to keep you safe. I'm willing to bet that there is nothing that he would not do for you."

"He'd tear the entire Digital World from its foundations if you were in danger," said Jeri. "I just know it."

"But we're not the ones who are in danger," Ai pointed out. "He is."

"You are only not in danger because of what he did," said Leomon. "If he had stayed, you would have been far more at risk. That is what was running through his head when he left."

"I know," said Mako. "But now, I can't help wondering... if he left to protect us, does that mean we're doing the wrong thing by trying to find him and help him?"

"I wouldn't say so, no," said Takato. "It's like you said – he's the one in danger. And if he is then the rest of us should not stand aside. All for one and one for all and all the stuff."

"Who knows?" Jeri said. "Maybe Impmon is even heading for the Sovereigns as well, to ask them the same questions as us. We might even run into him on their level."

"Maybe," Ai and Mako said together, brightening slightly.

A growling sound suddenly penetrated the air. The twins tensed slightly, fearing a Digimon attack, but they relaxed again when they spotted that it was just Cyberdramon. The Ultimate dragon Digimon has been using his wings to scout ahead, searching for another data stream from the skies, and now he returned, landing on a building with such a thump that the roof almost caved in.

"Find anything, Cyberdramon?" asked Ryo.

The dragon nodded and pointed off to the left with a clawed finger, no words coming out from behind his teeth and his expression still permanently angry.

"Thanks," said Ryo, as he changed direction and began to lead the group through another street in the direction his partner had pointed.

"Where do you reckon this Data Stream is going to transport us to?" Kenta sighed. "Back to the Forest level? The middle of the Ocean? Fifty feet in the air back on the Desert level... again?"

"Yeah, you just had to use me as a landing platform when that happened, didn't you?" Kazu frowned, rubbing his back.

"I don't know what you're complaining about," Guardromon said. "You all landed on me."

"You're made of metal!" Kazu cried.

"Yes, but I have feelings," said Guardromon, completely misusing the common phrase. Kazu slapped his forehead.

"Moving right along," said Ryo. "You'll just have to wait and see, Kenta."

"I know," the bespectacled Tamer sighed. "Just like every other time we head towards one of the things. I really, really hate the feeling you get when you get pulled through one. It feels like you get dissolved painlessly and reassembled somewhere else."

"That might be because that is essentially what happens to you," said Ryo.

"Thanks for the mental imagery," said Kazu. "And speaking of Data Streams, there's our ride up ahead."

Ryo nodded, having spotted the column of pink data rushing down the street towards them. Unlike most Data Streams, this one appeared to be travelling in a completely straight line, motoring down between the buildings on either side of the street and making the familiar whooshing noise associated with Data Streams. It was also making a sound disturbingly similar to that of an approaching freight train, which was not really a confidence booster. Ryo had been through more Data Streams than he could count though, so he wasn't particularly bothered by the noise any more.

"Group together guys," he called out. "We're going for another trip."

As everyone huddled together into a group, they watched the Data Stream rushing towards them like a runaway Juggernaut. Kenta was trembling slightly – he couldn't help it, he always felt nervous before this – prompting MarineAngemon to say, "Calm. Big fun."

"You may like the feeling when you go through those things," said Kenta. "But I d-"

He was cut off as the Data Stream rolled over them and the Tamers and Digimon once again experienced the bizarre sensation of being completely disintegrated without feeling pain, then having billions of bits of themselves sucked up into a vacuum and then thrown together again, congealing back into the shapes of themselves as they materialised on another plain of existence.

"Ugh. It's a good thing I don't eat here or I'd hurl right now," Kenta said, clutching his stomach.

"I believe you said something similar every other time we went through a Data Stream as well," said Kazu. "Get a grip, dude."

"Stop telling me what to do, Kazu," Kenta said, making sure that all his limbs were still attached and in the right places. To his relief, they were and he said, "So where did we end up?"

The Tamers and Digimon glanced around them. They appeared to be surrounded by swirling mist of some kind, but the fog was blowing over them slowly. As they watched, something began to become visible in the mist up ahead. A tall conical structure, with jagged spikes running up its entire length and tapering to a vicious point. The whole thing was glowing a bright white.

Ryo grinned. "That's Baihumon's castle," he said. "It looks like we've arrived."

* * *

Not far away from the current location of the Tamers, four extremely large and extraordinarily powerful Mega-level Digimon were gathered together beside and enormous crater in the ground that ran right down into the core of the Digital World – the same crater that the Chaos from the D-Reaper had arisen from originally back when the Tamers were younger and much less experienced than they were now. The same crater in which Renamon and Rika biomerged for the first time.

The Sovereigns were in the middle of important discussions and as the area that marked the closest distance to all four of the Sovereigns' castles, this was usually where they met up.

Presiding over everything was the enormous form of Azulongmon, Guardian of the East. The kindly and wise Digimon was ridiculously large; his huge, sinuous body stretching over a kilometre from the tip of his nose to the end of his long, serpentine tail. He resembled a giant snake of sorts, although this was only in a loose sense since he did have legs, although they didn't look like they were used because he was hovering effortlessly above the ground, and each was being orbited by three blue Digi-cores. His body and his limbs, which each had three claw-like fingers – two forwards and one back – looked like they were almost completely gaseous and yet somehow solid at the same time, since it was translucent. He also had angelic like wings – five pairs of them running down his body and decreasing in size as they got closer to his tail, and his body was surrounded by chains. His tail resembled a bolt jagged lightning bolt. His head was encased in a blue helmet with yellow lightning patterns and a jagged horn projected between his four eyes. To cap off the image, he had a ridiculously long beard hanging from his face.

Immediately across from him was the Guardian of the West, Baihumon the enormous white tiger. His fur was snow-white and his body was covered in large blue stripes from his ears and neck to the blue tip to his long tail. Although he was a tiger, he had a lion-like mane around his neck and he also had three large spikes sticking up from between his shoulder-blades. His enormous claws glinted like metal and his forelegs had large, ornate vambraces with a different symbol on each, which read "White Tiger," while his back legs had studded iron rings around the ankles. His tail also had one, although this one was spiked. His face was also encased in a mask that covered everything from his ears to his chin except for the four eyes and the jaws. It was blue, with white stripes and had a huge, backwards-pointing spike on either side of his face. His torso was surrounded by twelve yellow Digi-cores.

The Mega on Baihumon's left and Azulongmon's right looked too big to be allowed on land. It was a miracle that Ebonwumon, turtle Sovereign of the North, could support not only his own weight, but the weight of the shell covering his torso and the _ridiculously large tree_ that was growing on the back of the shell. The trunk of the tree was as thick as the shell was wide and its leaves combined to form a circular canopy like a giant bush, with numerous creepers hanging from the branches. The trunk was surrounded by twelve white Digi-cores. Ebonwumon's tail also seemed to be wooden and had thorn-like spikes jutting out the top along its length. Huge, thick legs held the shell up and two heads jutted out from the front of the shell on two long, scaly necks. The head on the left was adorned with a wooden helm that ran from the nose to the back of the head, with spikes along the middle, while the other head had a similar helm, but which encased the entire upperhead but for the eyes and had two spikes sticking up at the back like horns.

And across from him was the familiar blazing form of Zhuqiaomon.

"It seems that all of our fortifications over the last few months have been a waste of time," said the growling voice of Baihumon. "Despite the warning from the humans, we have yet to see any sign whatsoever of Parallelmon returning to plague us."

"Are we sure dat de Tamers were no mistaken," said the left head of Ebonwumon, who spoke in an Irish accent for some reason. "It may not 'av been Parallelmon they saw at al'."

"You know full well that it was indeed Parallelmon they encountered," Zhuqiaomon rumbled. "How else do you explain the fact that, after several months, my former servant – Lopmon – and her friends are still missing? I am sure the Tamers would have gotten in contact with us had they returned."

"He's reit," Ebonwumon's other head, which has a Scottish tongue, stated. "They wouldnae lae us oan edge if it turned it tae be a false alarm. They arenae loch that."

"Oi suppose yer are roi," Irish-Ebonwumon conceded. "But still, what are we suppose to do aboyt Parallelmon nigh. Baihumon's roi. Dare 'asn't been 'ide nor 'air av 'imself anywhere."

"We cannot afford to let our guard down," said Azulongmon. "Parallelmon is more of a threat than almost any other Digimon to the Digital World – he is the only one who could simply get rid of any one of us with a single attack, banishing us to another world entirely with one move, and without us to protect over the Digital World, who can say what will befall it."

"I am actually hoping that Parallelmon does show his mutated and masked face," Zhuqiaomon growled. "So I can fry it off for banishing one of my former servants."

"Wa, Zhuqiaomon. Ah dae believe ye ur growin' soft," chuckled Scottish-Ebonwumon.

"Be quiet!" Zhuqiaomon flared up instantly, his aura blazing around him more intensely than before.

"Calm yerself, Fiery McTurkey. He wus only makin' a comment," put in Irish-Ebonwumon.

"Well, I'll thank both of you to keep your comments to yourself," the phoenix Digimon rumbled. "Both of you!"

"Enough arguing," Baihumon interjected before Ebonwumon could cut in with another wisecrack. "It's not getting us anywhere. Are we decided then? Do we simply continue as we have done for the last few months?"

"Until such a time as we can confirm that Parallelmon is no longer a threat, then we must remain vigilant," Azulongmon declared. "For the sake of the entire Digital World. After all, we are its protectors, and we cannot call ourselves that if we cannot protect ourselves."

"I suppose you have a point," Baihumon nodded. "But we may not know if Parallelmon will return until we speak to the ones he attacked. Do we have any idea if any progress is being made to finding them once again?"

"No, we do not," Zhuqiaomon said. "Since Azulongmon insists that we do not look into the Human World ourselves to find out that answer."

"The humans deserve their privacy, Zhuqiaomon," the air-serpent replied calmly. "We must respect that. I am willing to assume many are still unhappy about the idea of us, just as many of us are of them. Until we receive an update of some description, we must be patient. After all, it is a virtue, especially to us."

* * *

Baihumon's castle had been considerably easier to reach than Zhuqiaomon's had been, since the tiger Deva didn't have a huge chasm that took fifteen minutes or so to cross in a bubble. The Tamers and their partners had walked right up to the doors of the massive stronghold and had called, asking if there was anybody in or not.

But they had received no answer. The doors to the castle remained securely closed, an impregnable barrier against the entire Digital World.

"Well, either he's not to most forthcoming of the Sovereigns," said Kazu. "Or he's not in."

"Maybe he's gone out to lunch," suggested Kenta.

"Asides from the fact you _don't need to eat here_, where would a Sovereign go out to lunch?" Kazu snorted. "Come on, Kenta. I thought you were meant to be smart."

"Stop nitpicking at him, Kazu," Jeri reprimanded him. "He need to focus more on where Baihumon actually is."

"Well, he _is_ a Sovereign," said Takato. "Maybe he's... I dunno... going about the Digital World doing Sovereign-y duties or something like that."

"That actually may not be far from the truth," said Ryo, rubbing his chin in a Henry-like way. "I didn't really get the chance to meet Baihumon properly, or even speak to him, but he always struck me as a sort of hands-on Digimon. He was fighting against the D-Reaper already when I showed up here last time."

"So, does that mean he could be anywhere in the Digital World?" Mako asked. "Did we come here for nothing?"

"Of course not," Ryo said reassuringly. "Don't forget that there is more than one Sovereign. We should try another castle. This layer of the Digital World isn't too large. It won't take us long to walk to another. I think Ebonwumon's is pretty close by. Maybe we should give him a try."

"Ebonwumon would probably be much easier to find than any of the others," said Leomon. "Considering two of the others can fly and the other can run extremely fast."

"Yeah, plus the guy was massive," Guilmon spread his arms out as wide as they would go and didn't do Ebonwumon's size nearly enough justice."

"Enormous," agreed Guardromon, doing much the same thing.

"Well, where can we find his castle?" asked Jeri.

"Ebonwumon is the Guardian of the North," said Leomon. "Therefore we should head in that direction," he indicated by looking north. "It will not take us long to reach the Green Castle."

"Then let's go," Ai said. "We need to go talk to somebody quickly. Then we can find Impmon much faster and help him out."

"Alright," Ryo nodded. "You heard the little lady. Follow me, guys."

"Wait."

Ryo took a couple of steps northwards before he stopped, interrupted by the growl from his partner. Everyone turned to look at the cyber dragon, whose teeth were bared even more than usual and whose claws were flexing. His wings were stretched out and ready for combat and his tail was swishing backwards and forwards, which they had all learned was a prime indicator that Cyberdramon was preparing to pounce.

Naturally, that got everybody wary.

"What is it, Cyberdramon?" asked Takato, as his own partner started to tense up slightly. "Is it an evil Digimon?"

"I hope not," said Ryo, worriedly. "An evil Digimon would have to be a powerful to be able to reach the level of the Sovereigns without being instantly detected and closed in on by the four."

"I don't see anything," Kazu shaded his eyes from the non-existent sun and stared out across the horizon. "Are you sure your danger sense isn't giving us a false alarm, Dragon-boy."

"Look up," Cyberdramon pointed towards the sky, his teeth remaining clenched and his tail swishing even more. The others followed his gaze and, sure enough, a dark silhouette began to home into view against the sky. They watched it with apprehension as it grew larger, heading towards them.

"What is it?" Mako whispered.

"I can't tell," said Jeri. "Wait a minute."

The twins shuffled uncomfortably, unused to the tension that might prelude a Digimon attack (usually they just got thrown in at the deep end). As the dark shape grew closer it began to take on a more distinguishable form. It was long and vaguely serpentine and was undulating up and down as it soared through the sky.

"Is that Azulongmon?" asked Ai. Neither she nor Mako had ever met the Sovereign in question, but they'd heard him described as a giant, flying serpent. And the creature coming towards them was certainly very large.

"No," Leomon shook his head. "That Digimon doesn't even come close to Azulongmon's size. But I believe I know who it is."

"As do I," Cyberdramon growled.

"Is it a threat?" asked Kenta.

"That remains to be seen," said Leomon.

"Why?" asked Takato, a frown appearing on his face in confusion. "Who is it?"

"It's Majiramon," said the Lion Champion.

And so it was. The Dragon Deva swooped down towards them from out of the sky. Green scales covered his body but for his pale underside and the red ridges along his sinuous back. It had four huge legs jutting out of its body about half way along, with a long, whip-like tail extending out past them and a large torso at the other end. He had two pairs of arms as well, giving him a total of six limbs, each adorned with three, huge claws. Its draconic face had a white moustache over the chin, and his head had a pair of antlers on top, just before the long, flowing white hair.

Majiramon landed in front of the group, towering over them. He was as tall as Antylamon when he stood on the ground, but would be twice as long if you included his huge tail.

Majiramon had not really said much the last time they had met. He had just attacked, following Makuramon's orders. Ryo remembered what Pajiramon had said on his last visit – some of the Devas were still against humans, while others weren't. However, she had said that Majiramon was one of two bordering on the fence between the two groups, the other being Caturamon.

"Well, well, well," Majiramon rumbled. "What do we have here? Did you get lost on the way to the park, kids?"

"Hardly," said Kazu, and then stopped, wondering why he'd been so bold as to say that. Majiramon's amber eyes turned to stare at him, back the brown-haired Tamer shift uncomfortably beneath the dragon's gaze.

"Hello again, Majiramon," said Takato. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

The dragon rumbled again, and it sounded like a chuckle of some sort. "It certainly has. And I may have been a little discourteous the last time we met. After all, we Devas considered you all vermin to be eradicated back then."

"And now?" asked Jeri, warily.

Majiramon grinned toothily. "Well, Indramon, Makuramon and Vikaralamon are all still extremely bigoted. Kumbhiramon was as well for a while, but he's beginning to sway to the other side, albeit very slowly. As for me, I wasn't sure what to think, but now that I serve Azulongmon it is difficult to hate you when he paints you in such a good light."

"So, you joined the side that are for our existence?" Ryo asked.

"Correct," the Dragon said.

"Well, that's a relief," said Kenta. "I was beginning to think we were finally going to have a fight on our hands."

"If I started a fight with you, I would get into very big trouble with the Sovereigns," Majiramon replied, his gravelly voice making it sound like he was growling. "But what are you doing here? Coming to the Sovereigns' level from the Human World is no easy journey."

"Well, naturally we're here to see the Sovereigns," said Takato. "Or, at least one of them. We have a couple of questions and we also need to give them an update about some things that have been going on recently?"

"An update?" Majiramon asked. "About what? About the missing group?"

There was a brief pause as the Tamers all glanced at each other. Majiramon looked down at them all earnestly, scanning the group from side to side as he tried to read their expressions.

"Ah," he said. "I take it the news about them is not good?"

"Well, it's... just news really," said Jeri. "It's neither good nor bad, you see. The special machine that our friends at HYPNOS are building is in the final stages of its development, so it should be up and running soon. The only problem is that we don't know if it will work properly when it finally is ready."

"I see," Majiramon said. "Well, I wish you all well. I always liked Antylamon. She was kind to all of us, even the more stuck-up of us like Makuramon and Indramon. It's a small wonder that she was the one who became partner to a human if any of us would. But, if your visit has nothing to do with them, what is it about?"

"Well, perhaps we should tell the Sovereigns in person," said Ryo.

"Yeah, where are they?" asked Guilmon. "Baihumon's not here. He's gone EWOK."

"AWOL," Takato corrected him.

"Oh, yeah. My bad," Guilmon said.

"The Sovereigns are not far away," Majiramon said. "They are in the middle of a meeting with one another – they have one roughly every month or so to discuss important issues regarding the Digital World and decide upon and appropriate outcome. Me and a couple of the other Devas were doing a sort of security round to check for potential danger while the Sovereigns continued their discussions."

"All four of them are in one place?" asked Leomon. "That may actually be useful – telling them all at once will get the job done faster."

Majiramon nodded. "I shall take you to them. Normally they do not like to be interrupted from their important meeting but I think that they will make an exception this time. Follow me. And can someone tell that Cyberdramon to stop growling at me?"

"Cyberdramon, calm down," Ryo said. "We're not getting into a fight here. Majiramon is an ally and besides, you've already defeated him once. Isn't once enough."

Cyberdramon gave Ryo a look that clearly indicated the once was most definitely _not_ enough, but he stood down all the same. Majiramon made a mighty leap, springing upwards on his four legs and leaving grooves in the ground with his claws. His body flexed in powerful undulation to power himself forward, but it became apparent that he was much faster than the ground-bound Tamers.

To prevent Majiramon from continuously having to double back on himself, Takato digivolved Guilmon to the Ultimate level, and soon, WarGrowlmon took to the air, carrying Takato, Jeri, the twins and Leomon, as well as Kenta, on his broad shoulders, pushing himself through the air with his rockets. Ryo got on Cyberdramon and followed, while Kazu climbed aboard Guardromon and looked very unhappy about it. MarineAngemon flitted along behind the group.

Majiramon lead the way east towards the centre of the Sovereigns level and the giant pit where they had originally encountered the D-Reaper.

* * *

It didn't take long for them to receive company of another sort. After a few minutes of flying, the aerial group was suddenly joined by another member. A winged tiger with shields on its upper legs and three horns on its forehead swooped into few, flapping alongside WarGrowlmon.

"And here I thought sentry duty would be uninteresting," the tiger said. "It usually is."

"Hello, Mihiramon," said Takato brightly. "How've you been keeping yourself?" Every member of the Tamer group held Mihiramon in high regard, because it had been the tiger Deva that had finally put an end to the disgusting man that had captured and imprisoned Renamon and Terriermon some time ago.

"Reasonably well, actually," said Mihiramon. "Serving under Azulongmon brings its own rewards – he is a thoughtful Digimon. What about yourselves? I notice that you are missing a few members."

"Well, you'll find out soon enough," said Jeri. "We're going to talk to the Sovereigns. You can listen in, if you want to. You might as well."

"Well, somebody sounds pretty downbeat," said Mihiramon. "By the way, where's that Imp Digimon – the one that can become the former Demon Lord, Beelzemon. Why is he not here with the rest of you?"

There was another uncomfortable silence.

"Ah," said Mihiramon. "I get the feeling that I probably should not have mentioned that. Does the answer to that question have anything to do with your visit?"

"Yes, it does," said Takato, a little sourly. "But still, it is good to see you again, Mihiramon."

"And it is good to see you in turn," the tiger announced. "You didn't happen to bring any pepperoni pizza with you, did you? That is one of the things that I miss most about the Human World."

"Tell me about it," said WarGrowlmon. "Takato's limiting me to the amount of bread I'm allowed to have every day. I think my tummy is cramping up?"

"Oh, you brought some of that bread too?" Mihiramon grinned. "That was very nice. I don't suppose..."

"Keep away! It's mine!" WarGrowlmon lurched, almost throwing off his passengers.

Mihiramon chuckled. "I see you have not changed very much at all."

"And you all get along so well," said Majiramon, falling back slightly so that he could fly alongside WarGrowlmon. "It's a shame that we Devas are not like that. A lot of us are good comrades, but it is slightly depressing at how often we argue with one another. We're supposed to be the Generals of the Sovereigns, and yet we still cannot stop Vajramon and Indramon from squabbling with one another."

"I agree," Mihiramon nodded. "I've said it before – we could learn a thing or two from you lot. Or, at least, the others could. I'm all for bringing the rest of us together."

"Yes, but remember who we're talking about here," Majiramon growled. "Makuramon's head is too big in more than one sense of the word, Vikaralamon is as stubborn as he is large and Indramon... well, he's Indramon."

"What about Caturamon?" asked Ryo. "Last I heard, he was teetering on the edge, like you were, Majiramon."

"And he has decided to remain that way for the time being," said the Dragon. "I asked him about it, and he said that he shall wait to see the great deeds that you can pull off with his own eyes first. He always was a practical Digimon."

"Man, talk about trouble in paradise," Kazu shook his head from Guardromon's back.

"Well, there's a whole lot of trouble going around lately," said the robot. "It seems we're not the only ones who are going through some tough times."

"Yeah, but our situation is way tougher than theirs," Kazu said, a little smugly, which was just like him really since there was nothing to be smug about in all reality.

"We are nearing the gathering place of the Sovereigns," said Majiramon, speeding up and winding his way towards the ground. As everyone else followed him, Ai and Mako felt their breath being taken away as they beheld, for the first time, the rest of the Digimon Sovereigns. They were all so big! They could crush giants and skyscrapers with a single step. The projection of GranDracmon had not been as big as these guys and it seemed practically impossible that anything so big could ever exist.

As the Dragon Deva approached, five heads swivelled towards him as he landed nearby and bowed his scaly head, and sixteen eyes widened in surprise as the Tamers and their Digimon followed on behind Majiramon. WarGrowlmon landed with a thud and allowed Leomon to leap off his back, carrying the other passengers before de-digivolving to his Rookie form, while Mihiramon, Cyberdramon and Guardromon all landed a little ways back.

"My Sovereigns," Majiramon growled. "I found them outside Lord Baihumon's White Castle, seeking to gain entry. They request an audience with you. Apparently, it is rather urgent."

"What a coincidence," Azulongmon said brightly, looming over the group so high that his head would have disappeared into the clouds if he had any. "We were just talking about you lot."

"You were?" Takato blinked. "What about?"

"About the whole situation with Parallelmon. Shall I presume that the reason you are here is to give us an update on this, or is it something else entirely?"

"He must have really good hearing if he can hear Takato from all the way up there," Mako whispered to Ai, who nodded.

"Yes, indeed I do have good hearing," the Guardian of the East replied, causing both twins to flush and back away slightly. "That is strange. I do not recall seeing either of you two young ones when I last set eyes on the Tamers."

"I know who they are," Zhuqiaomon stepped closer, his feet creating giant thuds as his talons hit the floor. "They are the human partners of the former Demon Lord, Beelzemon. They were amongst the group that came to me to deliver the information about Parallelmon in the first place."

"Ah, kids today," Irish-Ebonwumon chuckled. "They're becomin' more adventurous at much younger donkey's years nowadays."

"They certainly are very small," Baihumon acknowledged. "Then again, the same can be said of all humans."

"Indeed," Azulongmon said from on-high. "But while I can see you are here, I notice that there is a lack of a partner to go with the pair of you. I understand that Impmon is the Rookie form of Beelzemon, and yet I do not see an Impmon or any of its digivolutions. Where is he?"

Checking her D-Arc, Ai said, a little falteringly considering both she and Mako had been thrust into the spotlight before these huge beings, "Somewhere in that direction," she pointed. "But other than that, we have no idea."

"Oh?" Azulongmon appeared to raise his brows but it was difficult to tell.

"Yeah," said Ryo, sighing. "Things haven't been going that well for us recently. We can tell you that the machine we're seeking to use to get the others back from their parallel reality should be finished soon, but that's all we can say. We haven't come here to talk about Parallelmon though."

"Have you not seen any more signs of him?" asked Baihumon. "Forgive my interruption, but we need all the information we can get so as to make a decision on what to do."

"No, we haven't," Jeri said. "There's been no sign of Parallelmon anywhere. Not even a whisper in all the months since you were warned."

"He may be rebuilding his strength," said Azulongmon. "He may not return again for many years to come."

"Small comfort," Zhuqiaomon said. "We may be hanging on a knife edge for years, just waiting for him to return once more, only to find that it all means nothing."

"A necessary precaution. Ah dornt wish tae follaw th' sam fate," Scottish-Ebonwumon declared.

"Aye, me neither," agreed the other head. "An' 'til we can ascertain anythin' whatsoever – any proof dat Parallelmon 'ill never return, dat is 'oy we'll stay."

"Um, hello?" Takato waved. "We kind of have our own problems down here and we did just travel all the way from the Human World to tell them to you."

"My apologies, Tamers," said Azulongmon truthfully. "It is not easy for us to dismiss such important matters. How long did it take for you to travel here?"

"Only a few days," said Ryo. "We got lucky with a Data Stream which transported us right next to Baihumon's castle. We called in but there was no answer."

Baihumon growled. "Oh, there wasn't, was there? That's funny, because I _know_ I left Makuramon watching over the Castle. Either he was deliberately ignoring you or he was napping again – either one could be a distinct possibility. I'll have words with that monkey later on."

"Can we watch?" Kazu asked, a little too eagerly.

"Kazu!" Kenta elbowed him.

"What?" Kazu asked. "It's not like we like the guy. He is a greedy git, remember."

"Hear, hear," Mihiramon chuckled.

"If I might interrupt," said Zhuqiaomon, a slight edge to his voice. "I believe you were about to tell us something quite important. And we do have many matters to attend to, so perhaps it would be a good idea to get it over with."

"Yes, quite," said Baihumon. "Tell us what's been ailing you and we'll try and help where we can."

"As long as it doesn't cleave into de time oi nade ter git me tree trimmed," Irish-Ebonwumon added. "De foliage is growin' oyt av proporshun again."

"Haud yer weesht," the other head cut in.

"Shut yer bake yerself," the first head added.

"Before Ebonwumon can break into a full-scale argument with himself... again..." Zhuqiaomon growled, pointing his beak at the Tamers and glaring at the giant turtle. "Spit it out, Humans. And it had better be good, if it means interrupting this important meeting."

"I'd say it qualifies as good," said Kenta.

"I wouldn't," Takato added. "I'd say it qualifies as really, really, _really_ bad."

"Since nobody else seems to be stepping up to the plate," Ryo said. "I'll do the talking, shall I? Mighty Sovereigns..."

"There is no need for pleasantries and titles here," said Azulongmon. "We are all comrades, and you most certainly do not answer to us. You are allies, not subjects. Now please, continue if you would."

"Er... thanks, I guess," said Ryo. "Anyway, I don't know all the details, but apparently it started even before the whole thing with Parallelmon. Impmon's been having quite a few troubles as of late and we thought perhaps you could help."

"By trouble, I hope you mean something more than trivial, everyday nonsense," Zhuqiaomon said, not a little warningly.

"Oh, it's far from trivial," said Ryo. "About as far from trivial as it gets, in fact."

And the Sovereigns listened intently to the Legendary Tamer as he outlined what he knew about Impmon's situation, starting with the mysterious flashbacks and running right up to the time where he'd run away a few days ago. None of the four enormous beings interrupted at any stage – in fact Ryo had stopped at one point because he was pretty sure that Ebonwumon had fallen asleep, but the turtle Sovereign ensured him that he was awake and he kept going. Jeri and Takato chipped occasionally to add in some details that Ryo had unwittingly omitted. Whenever Kazu or Kenta tried to say something, Takato and Jeri both shushed them, much to their chagrin. However, Takato and Jeri figured that anything the other two said would ruin the atmosphere a little bit.

"And that's why we're standing here before you now," said Ryo. "In the hopes that you might be able to help us find Impmon, and put a stop to GranDracmon's plans."

There was a heavy silence as the four Sovereigns regarded one another, silently asking each other if they others held any scepticism for what Ryo had just explained. But, for all its extravagance, the pieces seemed to fit together.

"So," Azulongmon finally said at last. "GranDracmon is beginning to make a move at last. I wondered when he would try."

"What?" Takato asked, sharply. "You knew he was going to go after Impmon?"

"No, we did not," Azulongmon assured them. "But we know all about GranDracmon and the Dark Ocean that he is confined to. And we assumed that one day he would make a move against our universe, but we had no idea what form that attempt would take. If we had known that he would go after your friend, we would have mentioned as much."

"Yes, but it does make sense," said Baihumon. "I am rather surprised that none of us foresaw something like this. I suppose we should offer our apologies."

"What for?" asked Guilmon. "Did you do something wrong?"

"We might as well have," Baihumon replied. "And to understand what I am talking about, we should probably tell you a little more about your adversary and his mysterious universe."

"Brace yerself, kids. Dis may git a bit long-winded," Ebonwumon shook both his heads, sadly.

"Well, where to start?" Azulongmon said. "We know that GranDracmon is tied to his Dark Ocean home universe, a universe that he created himself in fact. That might seem like a strange thing – why would you create your own universe and then lock yourself in it? Well, the fact of the matter is that GranDracmon is a being of pure evil – such a being of pure evil that he cannot stand to be around too much that is good. He, effectively, feeds on evil, and he needs a constant supply of it. It gives him is mighty strength. We Sovereign Digimon have strived to make the Digital World as good a place as it can be, eliminating rogue and evil Digimon that threaten our infrastructure. Because of this, GranDracmon couldn't possibly live in our world for more than thirty seconds – he would die straight afterwards from the sheer, overpowering presence of good.

"That is why he created the Dark Ocean in the first place. When he first digivolved to his final stage the Digital World was a much more evil place, so much so that he could live here. However, as we began to eliminate more and more evil, GranDracmon became weaker and weaker. We were, effectively, giving him indigestion. Before it was too late for him, he pooled his power into creating the Dark Ocean, which is an entire universe that is practically bathed in evil. It took almost all his strength and he only just managed to enter it before his deletion. And ever since then, he has been confined to his world, unable to enter the Human World or the Digital World for any longer than half a minute, lest he run out of energy. And if he ran out of energy, he may not have enough to get back to the Dark Ocean in time."

Zhuqiamon took over. "But we never assumed that would be the end of it. We received a message from our lord and god, Fanglongmon, before he went into his great slumber that GranDracmon was gaining strength again. He still cannot leave his world in case he dies, but we now know that he can send others to and from the area. We always knew that if he did make a move on our world, that would be how he did it. Once enough good was eliminated from the Digital World, he would be able to re-enter it once more."

"Just how powerful is GranDracmon?" asked Takato, "if he can create an entire world on his own like that?"

"He is extremely powerful," Baihumon replied. "So much so that he rivals any one of us, and his power was almost greater than that of all seven of the Great Demon Lords combined."

"Whoa! Really?" Kazu cried. "Bloody hell, that's pretty damn strong."

"Pretty damn strong," echoed Guardromon.

"Don't start copying me again," growled Kazu.

"But there's something I don't understand," said Jeri. "If he's so powerful, and he's got all of these minions of his at his disposal – the Nightmare Soldiers that once followed the Demon Lords – then why doesn't he send _them_ to the Digital World _now._ Why is he playing games and trying to recruit Impmon first?"

"Because, like how his strength would be weak were he to enter our world," Azulongmon said. "So is his power with regards to it."

"Huh?" asked Jeri.

"He means dat 'is speshal abilities are relatively weak whaen it cums ter our warrld t'anks ter al' de good in it," Ebonwumon's Irish head spoke up. "Includin' 'is portal openin'. He doesn't 'av de strength ter send more than a few digimon ter our warrld at a time, an' he needs ter recover dat strength before he can do it again. He can't send 'is whole army through at once. 'Tis impossable for 'imself."

"Well, I suppose that's a relief," said Ryo. "It means we don't have to worry about huge armies descending on us."

"But, does that mean that what he said to Impmon was a bluff?" asked Kenta.

"No," said Zhuqiaomon. "It was very much not one. He might only be able to send a few minions at a time, but some of those minions are incredibly strong. It would only take a few attacks to send the Human World into ruin unless we personally went there to stop him, and we would probably not have the knowledge of this until it was too later. Now do you still think that we should not watch the Human World more closely Azulongmon?"

"I still believe that humans deserve their privacy," said the giant serpent. "However, I agree that more threats seem to be rising up nowadays and we should work more closely with the Tamers to neutralise them. Perhaps we should attempt to set up some kind of method of communication so that in the future, you Tamers can call us directly."

"Yeah, that would be useful," said Takato. "Then we wouldn't have to do all this walking to find you."

"What would you do – get speed-dial?" asked Kazu, cackling. "Mihiramon here could get pizza delivered to his doorstep."

"You can do that?" Mihiramon asked, bemused.

"Kazu, stay focused," said Guardromon. "Our friends are in danger, remember."

"I know," said Kazu. "I just couldn't resist."

For the first time in a long time, Ai spoke up, timidly glancing up at the massive Digimon answering their questions. "But... well, I get that GranDracmon can't send that many of his followers at a time, but why is he trying so hard to get to Impmon?"

"Yeah," Mako nodded. "Would that help him or something?"

"Well, I fear that it probably would," said Azulongmon. "If Impmon does side with GranDracmon, whether that be by force or by his own volition, it could spell doom for the entire Digital World."

That was enough to send chills sown everybody's spines. "But why?" Leomon spoke up next. "What is so special about Beelzemon that means that GranDracmon would go to so much effort to recruit him?"

"We waur gettin' tae 'at. Hae a bit ay patience, lion loon," said Scottish-Ebonwumon.

"Lion loon?" Leomon asked, bemused.

"Whaat Mister Scotsboy O'Numbskull 'ere wus gonna say is dis," Ebonwumon's other head interjected. "De Seven Deadly Demon Lords, bein' creatures dat were pure evil themselves, gained de ability ter travel ter de Dark Ocean at will once GranDracmon created it as well. They cud pop dare an' back whenever they wanted an' they cud take people wi' dem too."

"Are you serious?" asked Ryo, with trepidation.

"Yes," said Azulongmon. "It's the main reason why the Seven Great Demon Lords were such a problem for us. They were intent on making the Digital World theirs, but without this ability we would have been able to end their reign of terror almost as soon as it began and end the suffering and the pain. But they spent a good deal of their time in the Dark Ocean, recharging when damaged and holding their meetings for conquest of the Digital World there as well. And when they made their attack, they came out of nowhere, jumping back into the Digital World to wreak havoc on the population and then disappearing again before we could arrive to stop them. It was a terrible time."

"We eventually managed to stop the Demon Lords with a little outside help," said Baihumon. "You mentioned in your narrative that Beelzemon was purified by the angel Digimon, Magnadramon. Well, Magnadramon is, as you know, an angel Digimon. And she had a sister, an Ophanimon, who, in turn, had a husband in the form of a Seraphimon. These three Angel Digimon live in the Celestial Heavens, and answer only to Fanglongmon, therefore we were not able to turn to them for help ourselves. However, one day, Ophanimon and Seraphimon got into contact with us and told us that they had managed to take care of Beelzemon, but they had also read his most recent memories and they knew where the Demon Lords were going to strike next."

"We went to the location and lay in wait," said Zhuqiaomon. "Sure enough, the remaining six Demon Lords appeared, and were able to destroy Lucemon, Lilithmon and Daemon, while the other three escaped back to the Dark Ocean. Then, of course, Belphemon went back to sleep and the other two became Ogudomon, thought they could challenge us and became imprisoned. But now, with the deaths of Belphemon and Ogudomon, Beelzemon is the last Demon Lord, and therefore the only one besides GranDracmon that can go to the Dark Ocean and back _and _take others with him."

"So _that's_ why GranDracmon is after Impmon so obsessively," Ryo said grimly. "Beelzemon's the only real method that he has left for taking over our world and the Digital World."

"Yes," said Azulongmon. "And we should have forseen this, which is why we apologise. We assumed that since Beelzemon was now no longer an evil Digimon that he lost the ability to go to the Dark Ocean. But, evidently, GranDracmon does not think so."

"It does make sense," Irish-Ebonwumon went on. "Beelzemon may not be a member av de groop anymore, but he is still a Demon Lord Digimon. He still retains de powers he 'ad back den, includin' gonna de dark ocean. He jist doesn't nu it yet."

"Then it's even more important that we find him," said Ryo. "His decision to run away in order to protect his Tamers and the rest of us may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but if Impmon had known that doing so would put the entire world at risk he probably wouldn't have done it."

"So, the fate of the entire world rests on our shoulders once again," said Kenta.

"Fear not, young Tamers," said Azulongmon. "For this time, you have us to help you. We must protect the Digital World and we shall do all we can to help in finding your missing friend. We can shelter him from GranDracmon on our level."

"Of course that will not stop him from trying," Baihumon growled. "He may find other ways to try and tempt Impmon to his side."

"Well, you might not need to," said Takato, beginning to look excited.

"Yer luk loike you've got a feather ticklin' yisser feet' dare, young 'Oppy McGrinner," Irish-Ebonwumon said, chuckling.

"What's on your mind, Takato?" asked Jeri.

"Well, it's actually quite simple," said Takato. "If Beelzemon has the ability to take others to the Dark Ocean, then maybe he could take all of us, including the Sovereigns there. Then the Sovereigns would be able to fight GranDracmon in the Dark Ocean and put an end to him once and for all."

The four Sovereigns stared at the Goggleheaded boy in silence, all sixteen eyes fixed on him until he was practically squirming on the spot. Then, both of Ebonwumon's heads burst out laughing.

"'Ahahahaha! Jist goes ter show, age an' experience doesn't mean everythin', does it?" the Irish head laughed.

"De wee fella 'as definitely got somethin' dare," the other head agreed.

"It's such a simple idea," said Baihumon. "And once again, I am astounded that we did not think of that."

"You see, Zhuqiaomon," Azulongmon turned to the giant phoenix. "Our allegiance with the Tamers shines through yet again. I hadn't even considered the possibility of using Beelzemon to get to the Digital World. It's so simple, but it's brilliant."

"I suppose the humans do have their merits too," Zhuqiaomon grumbled. "It seems the Digimon don't do all the work after all."

"We know you love us really," Kazu grinned. Zhuqiaomon immediately flared up and roared in anger, a blazing inferno igniting around him, causing the Tamer to yelp and hide behind Guardromon.

"Then everything's going to be alright after all?" asked Ai.

"We've got a way to take GranDracmon down?" asked Mako. "And get Impmon back."

"Indeed," said Azulongmon. "GranDracmon is massively powerful, so the battle will be tough, even for we Sovereigns. But should Beelzemon take us to GranDracmon's inner sanctum, we shall prevail, provided you can hold off the Nightmare Soldiers for long enough. GranDracmon will have no means of escape. Majiramon, go and round up the rest of the Devas. We have a former Demon Lord to find."

"At once, Mighty Sovereign," Majiramon said, as he launched himself into the air.

* * *

Ta-da. What do you think? We've got several unanswered questions accounted for now, and there's also a sense of dramatic irony because Impmon still doesn't know about any of this. And the upcoming chapters should prove interesting if the Tamers have to work alongside a bunch of other Digimon, several of which hate their guts. I love writing the Sovereigns, particularly Ebonwumon. It's great.

Please review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

With IceMyotismon loose somewhere on the world of Mygeeto, the Digimon and the A-Team must find him before he can cause too much damage. But an white Digimon in a white wilderness will not be easy to find.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 96 : Vampire Hunt**


	96. Vampire Hunt

A couple more of you have managed to correctly guess the identity of IceMyotismon's rival. I won't say who you are though, in case people decide to go check my review page and all the surprises are given away at once. You'll all find out the identity of him soon enough.

Another large amount of character building goes on in this chapter for two of our intrepid Star Wars characters. And there is also an enormous reference to the Digimon Adventure series thrown in. I was watching parts of it on YouTube and I thought that it would be appropriate. Just wait and see.

Read on.

**

* * *

**

Secret of the 327th

**Chapter 96:- Vampire Hunt**

* * *

A makeshift meeting chamber had been set up in the entrance hall of the giant mansion-slash-fortification that had been the final stage during the battle that raged across the city, where Nix Card had been taking refuge. R2-D2 had trundled across the city from the gunships to join the others and he was know being used like a holotable – meaning that he was displaying the holograms of Mace Windu and Yoda in front of him dutifully. Anakin, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan and Adi Gallia were standing around so that the six Jedi created a circle.

"Most unfortunate, it is, that the information about San Hill was false," said Yoda. "But still, in order, congratulations are, for your valiant efforts on the field of battle today."

"I agree," said Mace. "And it is a relief to see that you are unharmed, Master Gallia."

"There were several moments where I thought that we would be lost for sure," said Adi. "And I lost my Commander in the field today. Such a waste of human life – he was a good soldier. As were all the others who perished out there today."

"Yes, but at least we made sure that their efforts were not in vain," Anakin said, firmly. "Ahsoka and I began the interrogation of Senator Card. We believe he knows nothing of the Digimon, having cowered under his bed during the attack instead of watching the battle itself. And we've also extracted a list of potential targets that the Separatists may be about to strike next, as well as a couple of base locations."

"And what have you done with him now?" asked Mace.

"We've sent him up to the cruisers to be placed in the detention block with his fellow Muun," said Ahsoka. "You can continue the interrogation when he is safely back in the Jedi Temple, Masters."

"Very good," Yoda nodded. "No small victory today, this was."

"That may be, Master Yoda," said Obi-Wan. "But all the same, the rest of Mygeeto is still very much under the thumb of the Separatists. And there is a distinct possibility that San Hill might be hiding out in one of the other cities instead of this one. Our work is far from over."

"Indeed not," Mace agreed. "But I'm afraid we cannot really give you any more back-up. Our forces are stretched too thinly. You will have to sort out the rest of Mygeeto with what forces you have, at least for the time being."

"That may be difficult, Master Windu," Obi-Wan stroked his beard thoughtfully. "But we shall see what we can do."

Adi chuckled. "With your Digimon friends thrown into the mix, it might prove easier than we think."

Suddenly, the doors behind them were thrown open, and the startled Jedi turned to see Aayla hurrying into the room, with three Rookie Digimon and three Tamers running along in her wake, all with grave expressions on their faces.

"Yes, Master Gallia," Aayla answered. "But the question is, will the Digimon be available to help you out?"

"What do you mean?" Adi asked, as the Jedi spread out to allow the others to join the circle.

"I mean," Aayla said. "That another situation has just arisen. And a very dire one at that."

"Oh?" asked Mace. "And what would that be?"

"You all know that when we on Naboo, we managed to finally destroy the Digimon that landed us in this universe in the first place," Renamon reminded them. "Parallelmon had appeared and tried to kill us, but we managed to send him to the realm of Anubimon."

"Yes, remember this, we do," said Yoda, curiosity etched on his gremlin-like features.

"Well... it seems that Parallelmon's legacy still remains here," said Lopmon. "We just encountered another Digimon out there in the wastelands."

Numerous eyes widened in astonishment at this news. "Another Digimon, you say?" Obi-Wan asked. "Where? Where was he? Where is he now?"

"We have no idea," said Terriermon. "But it seems that we were not the first Digimon to enter this universe, as we thought before. He was buried under the ice near the mountainside and the heat of the battle was enough to thaw him out. Now he's on the loose somewhere out there."

"I take it from the expressions on your faces that this Digimon is not a friendly one," said Adi.

"Most decidedly not, Master Gallia," said Anakin, who was reading the memories of the recent battle against the vampiric Digimon. "Except for the fact he seems to be a creature of ice, he looks like something that the Sith might be able to produce."

"He is an IceMyotismon," said Henry, stepping forward and displaying the image on his D-Arc for all to see. "An Ultimate level Digimon that lives in the coldest possible places. He's definitely an evil Digimon and he's a vampire."

"So, essentially, we've got a bloodsucking, icy maniac on the loose out there," said Rika. "And we don't know where he is."

"Most intriguing, this situation is," said Yoda. "And most dire as well. Allowed to cause destruction, he cannot be. A threat to the entire planet, he may be, and everyone on it."

"An Ultimate level Digimon shouldn't be much of a problem for you guys though, right?" asked Ahsoka. "I mean, you can all go the Mega stage, can't you. He can't do that, right?"

"No, I don't think he can," said Renamon. "However, he is stronger than your average Ultimate level Digimon, especially when surrounded by his icy element like he is on this planet. We hit him with several of our attacks before and he got back up regardless, even if they did hurt him. Most other Ultimates would have been defeated by then, but not him. He may be a serious hazard."

"In more ways than one," said Mace. "If this Digimon is as violent as you make him sound then there is a distinct possibility that he will make an attack soon. And if he does that, then he may end up exposing the secret of the Digimon to the galaxy if you are forced to fight him in the view of the public."

"Yeah, IceMyotismon wouldn't play by our rules," said Terriermon. "He wouldn't care about things like that."

"The problem is that vampires are creatures of the shadow and of stealth," said Henry. "I doubt he would launch a full-on assault, so hopefully that won't be an issue. The main problem is finding him before he attacks a city."

"Fortunately, Masters, that may be a while in the offing," said Aayla. "There is something else that we haven't mentioned. Before the battle began, Rapidmon was able to question this Digimon about his motives and this IceMyotismon revealed that there may be a second Digimon somewhere out there, frozen beneath the ice."

"An ally of his?" asked Obi-Wan.

"No," said Lopmon. "Quite the opposite, in fact – a bitter rival. Apparently the two were in the middle of a battle when Parallelmon caught them with his attack and sent them here."

"IceMyotismon hates this Digimon with all his guts," said Terriermon. "The expression on his face when he spoke about him was more than enough to tell me that. Wherever he is now, he'll be looking for this other Digimon first, in order to destroy him, before he does anything else."

"Did he give any indication as to what kind of Digimon this rival of his might be?" asked Mace.

"Squat," Terriermon shook his head. "That's all the information I've got really."

"What is your opinion?" Yoda asked. "A Good Digimon, could it be, hmm?"

"We have honestly no idea, Master Yoda," said Lopmon. "The Digital World is a complex place. Bitter rivals can come in many forms, but where an Evil Digimon like IceMyotismon is concerned there is every chance that the rival he hates is also an Evil Digimon. On the other hand, there is a significant chance that it _is_ a good guy, so it's about fifty-fifty."

"Either way, we should try to find him as well," said Aayla. "If he is a good Digimon, we can help him against IceMyotismon and he can help us in turn. If he is an evil Digimon, we must put a stop to both."

"But we cannot simply stop our campaign here on Mygeeto just because of a couple of Digimon," said Adi. "The Muuns may be fortifying their remaining cities as we speak. It is imperative that we put a halt to it before it becomes to difficult."

"Quite right, Master Gallia," said Obi-Wan. "This is quite a quandary we are in right now. Something needs to be done about the Digimon but we cannot let everything else grind to a halt as well."

"Then the solution is simple, Master," Anakin chuckled. "We'll split up. I'll take Ahsoka, Aayla and the Tamers and the Digimon with me and we'll attempt to track down IceMyotismon and his mysterious rival. And we'll take Captain Rex and Commander Bly with us. That leaves you and Master Gallia to take out some more cities on this iceball with your troops and ours. That way we aren't dividing our forces too much."

"Yeah, I agree," said Ahsoka. "We can take care of the Digimon by ourselves. We just need to find him and we can use our senses to do that. Who knows, we may even get it done before you guys start your next assault and we can come and help out."

"A simple solution, this is," said Yoda. "And a practical one, it is too. Go, you must, and find this IceMyotismon and his rival, you will."

"Well, alright then," said Obi-Wan. "I suppose we should probably get underway, shouldn't we?"

"We'll leave at once, Masters," said Aayla. "We will do our best."

"May the Force be with you all," said Mace. "You may need it before the day is done."

"And now, we must discuss our plans for the rest of Mygeeto," said Adi. "Take care of yourselves."

"We will," called Suzie, as the Epic Eight and their Togruta sidekick-of-sorts hurried out of the doors.

"Why do I have a bad feeling about this?" asked Obi-Wan.

Yoda chuckled. "Because involved, your former Padawan is? Hmm?"

"Probably," Obi-Wan sighed. "We'll just have to see what transpires I suppose. Alright, now what about the city to the north of here..."

* * *

"We'll borrow a pair of gunships," said Anakin as he lead everyone else out of the doors. "That should be more than enough for what we need and we don't want to take too many. We'll split into two groups as well, to cover more ground."

"How do we know that he's anywhere near here though?" asked Ahsoka. "I mean, he could be on the other side of the planet for all we know. It'll take a while to cover this whole planet with a gunship, and it looks all the same to me."

"He won't have gone far, Snips," said Anakin. "According to Terriermon's memory, this IceMyotismon could sense the presence of his rival, which probably means that he is also relatively near the area."

"Oh, is that so?" Ahsoka sniffed. "Well, if I had a connection to everyone's minds, I wouldn't have to ask that question."

"Momentai, Ahsoka," said Terriermon. "You'll get there – it is inevitable after all."

"And then you can really be like a cousin or something," grinned Suzie, trotting alongside the taller child. "Since Anakin's like an Uncle and you're like his daughter almost, that makes you a cousin."

Ahsoka shook her head, chuckling. "Your familial logic never ceases to amaze me, Suzie. Don't ever change, okay?"

"Okay, I won't," said Suzie, brightly.

"I hope she will," Henry murmured. Rika punched him in the arm, snickering.

As they approached the clones outside, Commander Bly turned towards them and stepped forward, standing to attention and giving them a firm salute, his helmet tucked under one arm. "Good to see you, sirs," he said. "Everything's under control here. The wounded have been loaded back onto the gunships to be taken to the medical bays on the cruisers and everyone else is standing by, ready to roll. We await your signal to move out."

"Very good, Commander," said Aayla. "But I'm afraid that they'll have to wait a little longer for that order to come. Something else has cropped up now, and we need you to come with us. Have someone else take over the 327th until we return and instruct them to follow the orders of Generals Kenobi and Gallia. We'll brief you on the new situation on the move."

Bly looked momentarily surprised, but like the trained soldier he was, he didn't question Aayla's orders and said, "Yes, sir," and turned to give the instructions to Lieutenant Galle.

"The same goes for you, Rex," said Anakin to his Clone Captain. "And make it fast. We don't have a lot of time." Rex nodded and gave his own instructions to Denal.

"Alright, follow us," said Anakin and took off at a run towards the gunships, with everyone else trailing along behind him. "We're taking the gunships out into the wilderness. Aayla, you're with me and we'll take Bly with us. Ahsoka, Rex, you two go with the Digimon and the Tamers in another gunship. We need to sweep the entire area for any signs of this Digimon incursion. We'll take the west side. Ahsoka, you take the east. You think you can handle it?"

"I'm ready for the challenge, Master," said the Padawan.

"Alright then," said Anakin. "Let's do this."

"And while we do, I'd quite like to be clued in to the situation if that's okay," said Rex.

As Renamon began to fill the two clones in on the run, Aayla turned to Anakin. _You worry about Ahsoka, don't you?_

_I never said that,_ said Anakin.

_You don't have to. I can see it. You're already wondering if your decision to send her off without you is a good idea._

_She's still so young, Aayla. She doesn't have the experience that you or I have yet._

_Yes, but she needs room to grow, Anakin. You've made the right decision. If you kept her by your side all the time, she would think you're being overprotective and not letting her pool of experience grow deeper. Besides, she'll have the Digimon by her side. I'm sure she will be okay._

_I know that. But still, I can't help but worry about her whenever I put her in charge of something._

_That's what being a Master is about. It's natural. Momentai, Anakin. The Digimon will look out for her, I'm sure._

_You know, I heard that,_ Terriermon griped.

* * *

The wind blasted across the surface of the planet, running low to the ground and sweeping up and over the enormous heights created by the numerous mountain ranges dotted about the system. Clouds were beginning to gather in the sky, a sure-fire sign that it would soon begin to snow, and from the looks of them, it looked like it would be a pretty hard snowstorm. The sunlight blaring off the whiteness was minimal but it was still enough to cause people to squint if they looked at it from a certain angle.

None of this bothered IceMyotismon, of course. He was almost literally made of ice, and he could withstand being plunged into temperatures nearing that of absolute zero itself before he began to feel the cold. The fact that he had been frozen beneath the ice for who-knew-how-many-years meant nothing to him, although he was pretty embarrassed about it. That was why he'd been fighting fit the moment he emerged from his long slumber. If anything he'd been even more invigorated that if he had not been in the ice.

The icy vampire was stood at the very top of a high mountain, overlooking the giant city below. It was a curious structure and it intrigued him. He'd never seen anything like a city of this scale, let alone one that was practically on stilts, suspended high above the ground by giant pillars beneath the structure. He wondered how many pillars he could destroy before the entire structure collapsed and went crashing down.

Perhaps he would find out at a later date.

But, for now, he was more focused on another matter – the location of his ultimate rival.

The search wasn't going as quickly as he had hoped. The tundra, like where he was right now, might be his natural habitat, but that didn't make things that much easier for him. All he had to go on was his senses – the tickling that he was getting at the back of his fangs that suggested he was getting closer. But such a continuous expanse of frozen wasteland – glorious frozen wasteland – made it difficult for IceMyotismon to tell whether he was closing in or not. The tingling was still faint and it was slightly annoying.

IceMyotismon cast this aside momentarily and turned his mind to another subject – the three Digimon that had attacked him before. They were a very confusing bunch, and there was something about them that made IceMyotismon stop and think. He wasn't sure what it was, but as a vampire he had the ability sense the power of other Digimon, in order to assess whether they would be potential victims. And he had been able to sense the concealed strength hidden inside each one of the three.

And they were a family unit too.

IceMyotismon's lip curled in contempt. Who needed families? He certainly had never had any need for one. He'd grown up on the tundra of the Digital World, fending for himself and himself alone. And that had made him strong, eliminating all the competition that had been around him, defeating Baby Digimon, then In-trainings, then Rookies and finally heading up to Champions. Life had been so simple for him back then.

But then, when he had been a simple IceDevimon going about and freezing other Digimon for his own amusement and laughing at the petrified looks on their faces that remained etched there when he encased them in a block of ice, he had met Him. His rival. The one who had been the scourge of his existence ever since the two of them had first clashed, tooth and claw.

He remembered the day well. He had encountered a Vegiemon who had been caught in a Data Stream and dumped in the middle of the icy wastelands – a very bad place to be for a plant Digimon like Vegiemon. IceDevimon had laughed, toying with him and drawing out the chase as the terrified, yellow critter bounced along, trying desperately to escape the aerial pursuer. IceDevimon had been deliberately missing the petrified prey, throwing his shots wide to increase the length of the chase and get the prey as terrified as could be before he made the final kill.

But then, He had sprung out of nowhere, dashing out of the snow and catapulting himself off a large rock in a terrific pounce and caught him in a flying tackle. IceDevimon had been so startled by the attack that it took him a few moments to get his act together and get back onto his feet, only to find his new attacker was hurtling at him again in another enormous pounce that drove IceDevimon into the floor.

IceDevimon had lashed out with a Frozen Claw, but his opponent was no longer there and that had been the end of the swift encounter. He had turned around and rushed out of there, scooping up the Vegiemon with his tail and dashed out of sight at a speed that IceDevimon couldn't possibly hope to match. IceDevimon had set off in pursuit, but it was useless. They were long gone.

Both of them had been at the Champion level at that stage. Now, both of them were at the Ultimate stage. They had clashed again, numerous times over the years that followed, each encounter swift and almost always ending in the favour of Him and not IceMyotismon, much to the vampire's frustration. They were usually repeat performances of the first encounter – IceMyotismon would be terrorizing somebody for fun when he would spring out of seemingly nowhere and blindside him, knock the living bejeezus out of him before he knew what was happening and then dash off before he could recover and shepherd the former prey to safety.

Rarely had they met in a fully fledged battle, but when they did, they were usually fairly evenly-matched. IceMyotismon had won these bouts about as many times as his nemesis had, but the speed at which He moved allowed him to escape before IceMyotismon could make the final move that would end it once and for all.

But his nemesis, while being used to cold conditions, was not a creature of the arctic like IceMyotismon. If IceMyotismon could find him, somewhere buried in this wilderness then he would finally have a crippling advantage over Him. Whereas he had been able to recover almost instantly from his deep freeze beneath the mountain, his nemesis would not be so fortunate. He would require some time to recover his strength from being frozen solid for so long. And IceMyotismon was determined not to give him that chance.

_And once you are finally dead,_ IceMyotismon sneered. _I shall finally load your data into my body, so you can give me more power. And once that happens, the only ones standing in between me and domination of this whole world, are those three Digimon. And they will feel my power soon enough. The Holy Type, Taomon – she will go first. I shall creep up on her during the night and butcher her in her sleep. The Antylamon will go next – she reminds me of that servant of the Sovereigns, so I'll take great pleasure in ripping out her Digi-core. And I'll save the Rapidmon for last. His speed will be no match for my power, once I load you and them as well._

He chuckled maliciously for a moment, then lifted off in order to continue his search.

* * *

Two LAAT gunships lifted off from the landing platform and began to whoosh in almost completely opposite directions, their engines thrumming the air as they powered their large bulks through the sky with minimal effort. Hawk, the pilot of one of the two gunships, was wearing a special helmet with a visor that would stop him from having to squint at the glare of the snowy landscape, which was particularly important if you wanted to fly an aircraft.

The blast doors were open on the craft that Hawk was piloting, and fourteen year old Ahsoka, who would fifteen in a matter of weeks, was practically leaning out the side. She was clinging on to the gunship with one hand holding the special handhold that dangled from the ceiling, and the other hand was shielding her eyes as she scanned the surroundings with her vision and her senses.

She didn't particularly know what she was looking for. Ahsoka had received a description from the Digimon, but looks didn't mean anything right now – a white Digimon would be practically invisible down there at the moment. What she didn't know was what she was searching for with her mind. Once again, she felt envy at the fact that she had not yet received the mental bond with the others, and she couldn't help but feel a slight bit of resentment at this fact. She had been with Anakin longer than the Digimon, and had socialised with them more than Anakin had, and yet it had been her Master to break through to them first.

It wasn't particularly fair.

But, she attempted to squash this down – resentment and envy were not good things for a Jedi to feel. She focused on trying to detect IceMyotismon, even though she had no idea what she was looking for. However, she was pretty sure that she would know when she sensed it.

"Careful, sir," said Rex, a little apprehensively, as he watched Ahsoka lean casually out the side of the gunship. "You don't want to end up falling out. If you did, Renamon would have to jump out the gunship... again... in order to catch you."

"Thanks for your concern, Rex," Ahsoka turned briefly around and smiled at the clone captain. "But my Master's given me a mission and I will not let him down if I can help it."

"Just be careful, please," Rex said, taking his helmet off and returning the smile. "Your Master would have my hide if something happened to you."

"He's have _all _our hides if something happened to Ahsoka," said Renamon, stepping closer to the Padawan. "But don't worry, Rex. If she loses her footing I'll grab her ankle before she can fall out the ship. Then, I'll leave her dangling upside down for a while to make sure she doesn't make the same mistake again."

"Wow, thanks," Ahsoka rolled her eyes and turned back to staring out at the horizon.

"Don't take it personally, Ahsoka," Lopmon wandered over to stand by the Togruta's feet. "Renamon did something similar to Suzie once, when she tried climbing a tree to see what Renamon could see from where she usually sits in the branches."

"It made my head go all tingly," Suzie giggled. "And Henry was having a panic attack beneath me in case Renamon dropped me."

"I was _not_ having a panic attack!" Henry protested.

"Yes, you were," said Terriermon, Renamon, Suzie, Rika and Lopmon all the same time. Ahsoka laughed as Henry blinked at the mass ganging-up from all the other members of the Super Six, before they gained two more members of course.

And there was that thought again. Ahsoka sighed, but pushed it aside again and drew her attention back to the surroundings.

Lopmon looked up at her, having heard the sigh from where she was standing by Ahsoka's feet, even over the noise of the gunship engines.

"You seem a little bit downbeat, Ahsoka," she said. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," shrugged Ahsoka. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well, the rather non-committal way you just said that is a bit of a clue that you aren't," the bunny replied. "Something's on your mind isn't it. I can tell – when you have mental links with people so that you _always_ know when they have something on their mind, you begin to recognise the faces that people pull when that happens."

"Yeah?" Ahsoka glanced down at her. "I'm like a holobook or something?"

"Something like that, yes," Lopmon grinned. "And since your face twisted a little bit when I mentioned the mental link there, I'm guessing that the thing you have on your mind is the fact that you are the only member of our little group without that same, mental link, isn't it?"

"By the Force, Lopmon, I really am like a holobooks to you, aren't I?" Ahsoka said in amazement.

Lopmon shrugged. "Blame being the partner of Suzie – who likes to make her emotions very, _very_ clear."

Ahsoka sighed and stepped back a little standing more inside the gunship than before. "It's just that I feel like I'm doing something wrong," she confessed. "I mean, I do things with you guys that Skyguy never does, like dancing and singing and stuff, and I've spent more time plotting with Terriermon than he did when we had our prank war, so why haven't I broken through yet?"

"You are not doing anything wrong, Ahsoka," Lopmon snorted. "That's a ridiculous thing to think. You've been far more open with us than Anakin ever was until recently, and yes, there probably is a reason why you have yet to form that link with us. If you ask me, it's simply because you're a Padawan learner and not a fully fledged Knight and your connection with the Force is not as strong as either Anakin's or Aayla's..."

"You think that may really be the answer?" asked Ahsoka. "That I'm not good enough?"

"What! No? You..." Lopmon shook her head. "That wasn't what I was trying to say at all. You didn't let me finish. Get rid of all this self-doubt that you have at the moment and listen closely. Having a weaker connection to the Force is not something to be ashamed of – you're much younger than Anakin and Aayla. But you are a prodigy Padawan – everyone says so, even the Council. Now, let me finish... it's because you are a Padawan learner and don't have as strong a connection to the Force that you haven't formed that link with us _**because**_," Lopmon said quickly and putting particular emphasis on the word, "that is all you are thinking about. You are standing in your own way at the moment Ahsoka. You are no less capable of forming the link with us than the rest of the A-Team, but because _you_ think that you are, it's not working for you. Get rid of all the self-doubt. Knock down the self-constructed barrier that you've placed between yourself and the rest of us and you'll get there soon enough."

Ahsoka thought Lopmon's words over for a few moments. "You really think so?" she asked.

"I'd be willing to stake my life in it," Lopmon nodded, firmly.

Ahsoka turned her gaze back to the outside of the gunship thoughtfully and frowned as she tuned her senses into the surroundings once more. _I'm standing in my own way?_ She thought. _I'm not forming the bond because I don't think I'm good enough? That... sounds a lot like some of the lessons Anakin's been trying to tell me. It's impossible because I deem it so. Could that really be the answer?_

From behind, Rex was watching the two of them staring out the gunship, along with Renamon. Renamon had a fond expression on her face – both of them had been listening to the entire conversation.

"That's our little Lopmon," Renamon smiled. "She always knows just the right thing to say at times like this. I'm glad to have her as a sister-in-law."

Rex nodded. "You know, every time I stand her and watch the interactions between you guys I get more and more amazed. I've served under General Skywalker since pretty much the start of the war, and Commander Tano's been my superior for some time now as well. I remember that General Skywalker was much more withdrawn then, kept himself to himself for most of the time. But now... he's much more willing to laugh and joke around when not on the battlefield. It's just amazing."

"Yes," said Renamon. "We do seem to have a habit of changing people wherever we go. There are several times when people who have previously hated everything about us have gone on to be trusted allies, such as Yamaki, Zhuqiaomon and Beelzemon. I hope that we manage to help Ahsoka through her own problems. The sooner she joins our mental link the better – it will boost her self-confidence."

"This whole mental link stuff is still mind-boggling to me," said Rex.

"And you think is _isn't_ mind-boggling for us?" Renamon chuckled. "_We're _the ones experiencing it. Our minds are permanently boggled."

Rex snorted. "Good point. I wonder what it feels like."

"Honestly," said Renamon. "It feels like the oddest sensation you have ever felt. But you get used to it quite quickly."

"It's a shame that I'm not a Jedi really," said Rex. "I'd quite like to see what it's like, but we know that can't happen because I can't connect with the Force like they can."

"Never say never, Rex," said Renamon. "Stranger things have happened."

"Of course they have," Rex rolled his eyes. "I forgot – when it comes to you guys, strange is normal."

"That depends what viewpoint you're looking at it from," said Renamon. "Even we are still surprised by some of the things that happen to us on occasion."

"Fair enough," said Rex. "But still, as I was saying before, it's amazing what effect you guys have had on General Skywalker."

_You don't know the half of it,_ thought Renamon. She said, "Well, we all feel very strongly that friendship is one of the most important things that you can have. Tell me, Rex, have you ever heard of the Nine Crests?"

"Huh?" asked Rex. "The Nine...? No, I haven't."

"I'm not surprised," said Renamon. "Well, I'll tell you what they are. Each of the Nine Crests represents a particular trait of humanity that if you were to combine them together would essentially make you the best that you can be. If you are without one of these traits then you can still be a good person, but you can only be called the best you can be if you have all nine and you live by them and let them flow through you. Perhaps you would like to know what these traits are?"

"Yeah, I would actually," said Rex, his curiosity peaking.

"Well, they are Courage, Friendship, Love, Knowledge, Sincerity, Reliability, Hope, Light and Kindness," said Renamon, who, despite the fact that she had never particularly watch the show she was taking this stuff from, knew all this stuff because Terriermon did. "We Digimon strive to embody all of these traits, and so should everyone else who thinks of themselves as a good guy. If you have all of them, then you'll go a long way to becoming like an ordinary human being, and not just a soldier bred for war."

As Rex pondered this, Renamon folded her arms in satisfaction. She remembered how, way back on Ryloth, she had promised the clone Blade, after she had saved his life when he fell out of a gunship, that she would help him and his fellow clones to become more like regular people in preparation for the end of the war. She'd been subtly helping to do this ever since, by integrating with the clones and socialising with them as if they were ordinary people, and the others had been helping in this way. When Rex had mentioned Renamon jumping out of a gunship after Ahsoka, it had reminded her of that promise to Blade and she decided to try something else to help the clones.

The idea might have come from a TV show, but it was a good one nevertheless. Hopefully Rex would spread this among his soldier brethren. That might get them all thinking.

And Rex was certainly thinking hard now. Which of those nine traits did he have and which did he not have? Well, he definitely had Courage, since he would gladly put his own life on the line to save others and would charge into danger if it meant doing the right thing. And he certainly liked to think that he was a Reliable person who the Jedi could depend on, again in battle. And he had Hope that one day the war would end and that he could become more ordinary.

But what about the others?

Friendship – he was friends with the Jedi and the Digimon and the Tamers so he probably had that. But did he have enough of it? Rex wasn't sure.

Love – Rex was pretty sure that he didn't really have this one. He cared for his brothers, that much was true, because they were like his family. But did he love anyone else? This one was a puzzling one.

Knowledge – He supposed he had it to a degree.

Sincerity – Again, he was sure this one wasn't up his alley. He usually remained tight-lipped and followed the orders of his superiors. He rarely expressed his personal feelings on some matters.

Kindness – He definitely liked to think he had this one, particularly after not reporting the deserter clone on Saleucami, Cut Lawquane, because if he had, he would have broken up their little family.

And Light – well, that one he wasn't particularly sure what Renamon meant by it.

So, he had some of them to a degree but the majority of them he had only in small amounts. He didn't embody them, like Renamon said the Digimon did. And, after a moment's thought, he realised he was attributing all these traits to being a soldier instead of a person.

He was going to have to think this through a little more. If he wanted to become more like a regular human, or anything like the Digimon, he was going to have to try harder and express these traits. Rex realised he had some way to go. But his expression hardened as he resolved that he _would_ get there. And his fellow clones would too.

"Well, somebody looks determined," Renamon remarked, as she saw the look on Rex's face.

"Yeah, that would be because I am," said the clone Captain. "I thought that I'd come quite a long way since we met..."

"You _have_, Rex," said Renamon. "And don't forget that."

"Yes, well, I realise now that I still have some catching up to do," said the clone. "And I Hope that I can do it quickly. Thank you, Renamon."

"I promised I would help, and I intend to keep that oath," the fox said. "You can count on me, Rex. After all, I am Reliable."

Rex laughed and said, "I'll hold you to that... my Friend." Then he held out a hand to shake Renamon's paw.

Renamon stared at it for a moment, then ignored it, stepped past it and gave Rex a quick friend-style hug instead. Rex blinked in surprise, but then realised that he should probably have expected that and briefly returned it. They stepped apart a moment later.

"You have to be more Sincere about your Friendship," said Renamon, chuckling (that line had been fed to her mind by Terriermon) "The real secret is not just having all of these traits, but combining them as well. Do you feel up to the challenge?"

"Definitely," Rex nodded.

"Good," said Renamon. "Now, armed with the Knowledge of what you have to do, you'll have the Courage to step up to the plate until you see the Light. Then, you'll be Loved by everyone." _How do you do that, Terriermon?_

_I dunno. It just flows._

"Thanks, Renamon," said Rex. "You're doing us all a great Kindness."

The two of them stared at each before they erupted into laughs. Terriermon and the three Tamers, who had been watching the whole time and trying not to burst out laughing themselves, finally did so and the cockpit was full of laughter. Ahsoka, who had not been paying attention, turned back in confusion and stared at everyone else. She looked to Lopmon for an explanation, but found that the brown bunny was laughing as hard as everybody else.

Ahsoka shrugged and turned back to stare out into the wilderness once again – the gunship had turned around some time ago and was flying back the way it had come, and would continue to do so until they made a complete sweep of the area. She focused her mind once more, searching for the unfamiliar presence of this strange IceMyotismon.

No sooner than she did, she suddenly felt something new. A strange presence began to register in her mind, coming from below and somewhere near the ground. Her eyes shot open and her whole body went rigid. She knew instantly that she had come across the right being – the pure evil that it radiated was unmistakable. It felt incredibly sinister, the most evil that she had ever sensed – moreso even than General Grievous and even Asajj Ventress.

This guy was going to be bad news.

Lopmon noticed her body stiffened. Her laughter instantly subsided and she stared up at the Togruta Padawan. "What is it, Ahsoka?" she asked quickly.

The laughter ebbed at these words and everyone turned to stare at Ahsoka expectantly. Ahsoka turned around and said, "I've got a lock. I'm pretty sure it's the guy we're looking for. She reached up and activated the comlink that would allow her to speak to the pilot. "Hawk, take us down and a couple of clicks further to the east. We've picked up the trail."

"Copy that, Commander," said Hawk, instantly hitting a button that caused the blast doors to shut and bringing the gunship swerving around.

Ahsoka braced herself as the gunship swerved around. She was a little apprehensive – since she was about to encounter her very first evil Digimon. She's missed the fight with Parallelmon on Naboo, so she wondered what this one would have in store.

And as they moved closer to the target, Ahsoka decided she might try something slightly different to normal. Instead of doing what a warrior might do and charge into the fight like she usually did, she would try and do what a Jedi should do before conflict.

Negotiation.

And if it didn't work, she could always resort to violence afterwards.

* * *

IceMyotismon, who was getting closer and closer to the whereabouts of the Digimon he hated most in the entire omniverse, paused briefly as a strange sound filled the air. It was like a loud rumbling that was steadily growing louder, but it didn't sound like some kind on animal growl. It was a steady noise like... well, he didn't really know what he could compare it to.

He frowned in confusion and turned to look around him, his ears pricking as he sought out the location of the noise. After a moment or two his gaze was directed upwards as they noise grew louder in his ears. Something was descending out of the sky towards him, unlike anything he had ever encountered before. It was metal and didn't appear to have a face, but it had two wings that jutted out from the top and pointed diagonally downwards and it had a large torso and a front that sloped downwards.

It didn't look like it could possibly stay in the air and yet it did.

IceMyotismon continued to stare as the snow whipped into a frenzy beneath the strange thing as it settled onto the ground nearby. The noise began to die down as it did and then the thing actually split in the middle and a section of it rolled aside to reveal what was inside.

And several things immediately leapt out of it. Three Digimon were the first out and IceMyotismon were astounded to see the Rookie forms of the three Digimon he had faced off against before – a Renamon, a Terriermon and a Lopmon. The Renamon got into battle position, while the other two squared off in front of her, all preparing for the worst.

"Hello again, Icy Breath," said Terriermon. "Surprised?"

"How did you find me so quickly?" IceMyotismon asked in surprise. "And why are you in your Rookie forms?"

"Does that matter?" asked Renamon. "What matters is that we shall put an end to you today."

"Wait!" cried a voice. The three Digimon faltered and the Renamon stepped aside to reveal another strange creature walking up behind her – one that IceMyotismon most decidedly did _not _recognise. It was humanoid, like him, with orange skin and strange, black-and-white striped tails dangling from her head. There was another humanoid clad in white and blue armour walking with her and three... were they human children? IceMyotismon had never encountered a human before, so he couldn't be sure.

"What is it?" asked Terriermon. "We were about to go and do some serious damage."

"Yes, but before you do," said the orange-skinned girl. "I want to try something out. Let me try the Jedi approach to things first, before we immediately leap into a confrontation."

"Jedi approach?" asked Lopmon. "You mean you want to negotiate with this guy?"

"Yes," nodded the girl, firmly. "I would."

"Ahsoka, are you sure this is wise?" asked one of the human children, the boy. "He is an evil Digimon."

"I know that," said Ahsoka. "But I am a Jedi, and Jedi are supposed to be peacekeepers. We are not meant to start confrontations – we're supposed to try and end them before they even begin. Can you understand that, guys?"

Terriermon grimaced. "I'm not sure this is a good idea."

"I... have to agree with them, sir," said Rex. "That guy looks like trouble."

"Just give me a chance to try," Ahsoka said calmly. "We can beat the crap out of him if it doesn't work. And I know that it probably won't. I'm just trying to stay true to the Code and be a better Jedi for it."

Although Renamon didn't lose the tenseness of her muscles, she stepped back a little. "Well, I can understand that," she said. "Just make sure you don't get too close to him, okay."

"I won't," said Ahsoka, and took a couple of steps further forwards. The others gathered around her as the Togruta Padawan faced off against the vampiric Digimon who was watching them with bemusement.

"And just what are you supposed to be?" IceMyotismon asked her, sneering at the being who was obviously still extremely young.

Ahsoka smiled and said, "My name is Ahsoka Tano and I am a Jedi Padawan learner. I wish to speak to you under a temporary flag of truce before we break into another full-scale battle."

"Really?" IceMyotismon folded his arms and glared, lowering himself to the ground slowly like some kind of hovercraft and coming to rest on the snow with ease. Ahsoka noticed that he didn't actually sink into the snow – he seemed to be able to stand on the top of it. "And there is no planned ambush or surprise attack?"

"Nope," Ahsoka said. "We're completely alone – everyone with me is standing behind me."

"Alright then," said IceMyotismon, sneering. "I don't know what a Jedi is supposed to be and in truth I don't actually care. All I care about is that I find my Ultimate Rival and eliminate him once and for all and right now you are preventing me from going about doing that. So, to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit to see me?"

"Quite simple really," Ahsoka replied. "I've come to ask you to surrender yourself."

IceMyotismon was so stunned by this statement that he took several more moments to recompose himself, struggling not to let his jaw fall open in disbelief at the girl's audacity. Surrender? She wanted _him_ – the mighty IceMyotismon who had defeated hundreds of other Digimon, many of which were larger than she was – to surrender? That was completely and utterly beyond comprehension.

After he had regained his composure, he lifted his eyes to the sky and laughed at what he viewed as a ridiculous comment. Ahsoka raised an eyebrow at him and waited from him to subside, while everyone else glared at him for having the gall to laugh at Ahsoka while they were standing there.

Once IceMyotismon stopped laughing, he sneered at Ahsoka. "You expect me to surrender to whelp such as yourself. You can't seriously expect me to even consider doing that, do you? I could wipe you out of existence faster than you could think. You wouldn't even know what hit you."

"You wouldn't be saying that if you knew what a Jedi was," said Ahsoka. "We happen to have a few tricks that you don't know about. But I'm offering you a chance at life here, IceMyotismon. If we were to go for a full out attack against you, you would not stand a chance."

"And what makes you say something so utterly ridiculous?" asked IceMyotismon.

"You see the three Digimon standing behind me?" Ahsoka asked, she inclined her head slightly to indicate the three Rookies watching her back apprehensively. "You'll probably recognise them as the ones from before who attacked you near the city."

"What of it?" IceMyotismon shrugged. "They are no threat to me now in their Rookie forms. I admit that as Ultimates, they were very strong, both individually and as a team, but now they would not stand a chance against me. A shame that they de-digivolved for whatever reason. They may have finally allowed me to reach the Mega level when I absorbed their data if they had not done so."

"Ah, yes, but they have the ability to digivolve whenever they want to and they can all already reach the Mega level," Ahsoka couldn't quite keep the smug edge out of her voice.

IceMyotismon faltered in surprise once again. He glanced across at the Rookies, who were all looking a little smug themselves now. "Impossible!" he cried. (He had been thrown out of the Digital World before the Tamers ever even existed so he wouldn't know anything about them.) "No Digimon can do such a thing."

"We can," said Renamon. "And I'll tell you something else – you'll never be able to reach the Mega level as long as you remain in this world. No ordinary Digimon can digivolve here. Ordinary Digimon require the Catalyst to digivolve and the Catalyst does not exist in this world."

"What?" IceMyotismon cried. "I can never achieve my full potential! I must reach the Mega level!"

"Well, you can't," said Terriermon.

IceMyotismon actually looked slightly lost for a moment. But then his lip curled again and he pointed an accusatory finger at them. "No! That is rubbish! I can tell you are trying to trick me! If you can digivolve here as well then so can I?"

"No, no, no," Renamon shook her head, smiling thinly. "I said that no _ordinary _Digimon can digivolve here. We are far from ordinary. We have alternative methods of Digivolution. We do not require the Catalyst as you do. We are unique in that regard, because we belong to Tamers."

"So, you see, what you are trying to do will ultimately end up being pointless anyway," said Ahsoka. "There's a lot that you don't know about this world and its occupants. You would be wise to surrender yourself, as I requested of you before. Spare yourself an agonizing death and come with us, or my friends will warp digivolve to the Mega level on the spot and crush you where you stand."

"You could never hold me captive!" IceMyotismon declared.

"Couldn't we?" Ahsoka asked. "We know all about Digimon, considering these guys have been my friends for months now. If nothing else, we have the technology to build a cell made entirely of Chrome-Digizoid. Would you rather live, or would you rather get given the boot into Anubimon's realm."

IceMyotismon seemed to consider this for a few moments and looked torn between two options. But it didn't take him long for him to resolutely clench his fists and cry, "No! I shall never demean myself with surrendering. Even if I am unable to digivolve, I will still dominate everyone else! I shall find and slaughter my hated rival once and for all and I will kill all of you! I will still load your data, because I can still do that. I might never reach the Mega stage, but I shall become the world's most powerful Ultimate and there is nothing you can do to stop me!"

"I'll take that as a no then, shall I?" asked Ahsoka.

She used the Force to float her lightsaber away from her waist and zip into her hand, where she activated the blade. "Well, nobody can say that I didn't try, right? I hear that vampires die when you stick a stake through their hearts. Do you think that a lightsaber would provide a good surrogate stake?"

"Let's find out," said Terriermon as the three Digimon stepped forwards, ready for combat.

IceMyotismon glared at them and decided to initiate the first strike before they could digivolve. "You will not be given the chance," he cried, an enormous whip-like stream of ice appearing in his hand. "I shall cut you down when you stand. **GLACIAL LASH!"** He reared the hand back and send the attack slicing through the air towards Ahsoka.

The Padawan learner stood firm and braced to try and deflect the attack but she found that she didn't need to because Renamon leapt over her head, data streaming together in front of her to form WarGreymon's Brave Shield, which Rika had been preparing just in case things got out of hand and there was no time for a digivolution to take place.

The attack struck the shield with a brutal force. The shield held firm – it was Chrome-Digizoid after all, but the attack was still enough to push Renamon back a couple of feet or so. But the fox was uninjured and grinned, lowering the shield slightly so she could get a good look at IceMyotismon's stunned expression.

"WHAT?" IceMyotismon cried. "That's impossible!"

"Nothing is impossible!" said Renamon. "Especially not where we are concerned. You are a Digimon yourself, so you should understand this concept."

IceMyotismon growled. "Well, let's see if your fancy-looking shield can protect you from this! **RAVEN SWARM!"** He leapt into the air and spread his cloak as wide as it would go, the thick flock of ravens pouring out from its dark depths. The screeching and cawing birds whooshed down on the Togruta and the three Digimon, beaks ready to tear and talons ready for ripping.

Rex leapt into action and withdrew his pistols letting off a round of shots that took out many of the birds before they reached the target, the lasers shooting through their first targets and taking out several of the ones behind. But there were so many birds that this made little difference when they descended upon the group. Ahsoka swung her lightsaber wildly, leaping around and slashing through countless birds, but many still got past her guard and managed to give her numerous scratches across her arms before they were cut down in turn.

IceMyotismon kept up the attack, replacing the ravens he lost and using up a great deal of his energy in the process, determined to carry out his plan before they could digivolve. Renamon shielded the others from the swarm in front, forcing the ravens to go around the metallic shield instead, where they encountered Ahsoka, and also Terriermon and Lopmon. The bunnies joined leapt behind the cover of Renamon's shield and launched Bunny Blasts and Blazing Ices into the swarm, taking out many birds with similar results to what Rex was doing.

But it did little to affect the overall swarm, who were pushing Ahsoka closer and closer towards the back of the shield. The Padawan gritted her teeth, blocking out the pain of the lightly bleeding marks now covering her arms, legs and, even worse, her lekku.

_Yeah,_ said Terriermon. _Now might be a really good time to pull off a digivolution, guys._

_Biomerging?_ Asked Rika, a little hopefully.

_No,_ said Renamon. _You would have to get through the ravens to reach us._ The birds were surrounding them like a thick layer of black, so much so that Rex had stopped shooting at them for fear of hitting the others. _The Ultimate level will be fine._

_Alright,_ said Henry. _Prepare yourselves._

The Tamers withdrew their cards and began to swipe them. Their actions drew IceMyotismon's eyes, and when he saw the D-Arcs he automatically knew, without even realising how, that this was what the Digimon had meant. The human children were the key and they were about to digivolve them with those little devices.

It was now or never!

IceMyotismon whirled back towards the flock of cawing birds that were surrounding his main victims and with a tremendous cry of **"FROZEN NIGHTMARE!"** he expelled the enormous, raven-shaped ice spirit, disgorging it from the dark recesses of his cloak and sent it hurtling towards the others.

On hearing that attack and hearing the familiar whooshing of a spirit soaring towards them, Renamon's eyes widened in surprise and horror. Quickly, she lunged outwards and grabbed Ahsoka by the shoulder, hauling the startled Padawan backwards and behind the safety of the shield. The back of Ahsoka's head slammed painfully into the shield and her lightsaber went flying through the air to land in the snow nearby.

"Hold on!" Renamon shouted, as the ravens closed in on them, hemming them in even further and the ice-spirit whooshed towards them.

The ice-spirit slammed into the shield at full tilt, the Chrome-Digizoid metal repelling it from phasing straight through, but the effect was still instantaneous. The shield and all the ravens around it were instantly frozen solid, creating an enormous dome of ice about a metre thick that surrounded the three Digimon and Ahsoka, trapping them inside.

There were cries of horror from all three Tamers at the sight of the dome trapping their friends inside. Rex was stunned with shock, but he instantly snapped himself out of it and roared, "NO!" Turning his pistols on IceMyotismon, he let off a round of bolts at the vampire, who was in the beginnings of a gloating laugh. The bolts struck him in the front and sizzled through his ice body in many places, making him roar in pain and double over in surprise from the attack. However, it was still only a minor wound for an Ultimate like him.

"You dare strike me!" he roared, preparing to throw a Glacial Lash at Rex. However, he faltered in surprise when the gunship suddenly kicked into action again and lifted off from the ground, rotating to face him. Inside the cockpit, Hawk hit the firing mechanism and around of enormous blue lasers that would melt half of IceMyotismon's body were they to make contact lanced towards him.

IceMyotismon leapt into the air in surprise and the bolts struck the ground where he's been. Hawk lifted the gunship up in pursuit. But IceMyotismon was not about to stick around. He had successfully eliminated the others, entombing them in ice. He did not need to deal with this strange contraption.

Conjuring more ravens, the vampire pulled off the vanishing trick he had used before, making the birds swirl around him and then disappearing into thin air, leaving Hawk staring only at empty air.

Down on the ground, Rex dashed over to the ice dome, the three Tamers in his wake. "Commander Ahsoka!" he yelled desperately, hammering on the ice with his fist, but it was like hitting a cliff. "Renamon! Terriermon! Lopmon! ANYONE!"

There was no reply. The ice dome remained as silent as the boulder it now resembled.

* * *

If anyone thinks that what Ahsoka tried with the negotiation was stupid, then you really have no appreciation for what I was trying to do with it. It showed us that Ahsoka is growing up, reaching the stage that she's at when she gets her older look ahead of schedule. It was meant to show her that she is maturing, and not just willing to charge into danger as she is until partway through season 3. And the Jedi _are_ supposed to be negotiators, so she was doing what was right. Jumping into action first would generally lead to the Dark Side. And we don't want Ahsoka going near that, do we?

Anyway, several things happened in this chapter. It was largely another character building one, that much is true and it had a little action at the end. But there will be a lot more than that soon enough.

* * *

Next time...

What lies in store for our heroes now that they are trapped inside the ice dome? IceMyotismon is getting closer to finding his nemesis. Can they escape their icy prison in time?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 97 : Frozen Nightmare**


	97. Frozen Nightmare

I'm on a roll.

Several more of you have managed to guess the identity of the rival of IceMyotismon, but since some of you haven't I will not actually tell you now – you'll have to wait and see. (Although, **Geekgirl**, the answer that you said would have been too easy...was the answer. Must come from being a geek. ;). lol).

Not much to say at the moment, so I will simply let you get on with the chapter.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 97:- Frozen Nightmare**

* * *

Renamon groaned and lifted her head up a little from where it had been partially buried in the snow. Her yellow fur was caked in the stuff and it was smeared over her face as well. The moment she did lift her head, she accidentally banged it against something.

"Ow," she said, dropping back down and rubbing it. She glanced over her shoulder and took a look at her new surroundings. The ice dome that IceMyotismon had imprisoned them inside was as bleak looking as every other ice-cube, except for the imprint of WarGreymon's Brave Shield that was still visible above them. But the space that they were imprisoned in was absolutely tiny. Renamon couldn't lift herself higher than a few inches before she hit the top and she certainly didn't have any room to turn around. She was stuck on her front.

She checked up on her fellow prisoners. Ahsoka was lying next to her, and the Jedi Togruta Padawan appeared to be unconscious. She was still breathing, albeit quite shallowly. And Renamon was not pleased to notice that there was a rather nasty lump on the back of her head. It seemed that, in her haste to get Ahsoka to safety behind the shield, Renamon had inadvertently knocked her friend out when she slammed into the back of the shield.

On the other side of Ahsoka, Terriermon and Lopmon were still awake but both of them were in an equally tight spot. The space was so tight that they couldn't even stand up, although they could crawl around a little bit.

Renamon guessed that they were extremely fortunate. Moments before impact with the ice-spirit, Renamon had yanked everyone slightly away from the shield – if any of them had been touching it at the time they would not only have been frozen, they would have been _completely_ frozen, including their insides which would have killed them instantly. Renamon had to grudgingly admit that IceMyotismon's strategy had been a good one. She'd never expected him to freeze his _own_ ravens. But that's what he had done and now they were paying the price.

"Are you alright?" asked Terriermon, who was cramped next to his sister and barely able to move.

"Yes," said Renamon. "I am fine. But I don't think Ahsoka is."

"She'll be okay," said Lopmon, who also had practically no room to move. The group was practically pressed against one another and the ice walls were hemming them in so tightly that they could do little but remain where they were. "But we need to focus on getting out of here. Terriermon and I can't risk an attack in a space like this – we could end up seriously injuring the both of you in these conditions."

"I hope Ahsoka isn't claustrophobic," said Terriermon. "Because if I was, I'd be having a panic attack right about now."

"Hold on," Renamon said, squirming a little to get into a better position and only managing to move a couple of inches before she couldn't move any more. "Let me try." She lifted a fist slightly, which began to glow blue. With a cry of **"POWER PAW!"** she extended her fist and slammed it into the side of the ice prison.

And it had absolutely no effect whatsoever.

Renamon growled as she pounded at the side a few more times, but nothing happened at all. There wasn't enough space. While her Power Paw attack was strong, a lot of its strength relied upon how much swing-room Renamon had and hear she had almost nothing to work with. She could effectively only jab her paw forwards about thirty centimetres and that was almost nothing compared to the mighty punches she could normally produced. That, coupled with the fact that the ice above and around them was over a metre thick in all directions, made her attack completely useless.

"Ugh," she groaned and gave up, letting her paw drop back into the snow. "It's useless. I can't break loose."

"What about Ahsoka's lightsaber?" asked Lopmon. "Could we use that."

"We could..." Renamon glanced at Ahsoka's empty belt. "If it hadn't gone flying out of her hand when I grabbed her."

"So... we're stuck," said Lopmon.

"Yeah. We're stuck," nodded Renamon.

"Momentai, guys," said Terriermon. "At least we're all still alive. And we don't have to worry about running out of air since ice is porous."

"Yes, but the longer we wait, the close that IceMyotismon gets to finding his rival – which either means a good Digimon is in danger or another bad one is about to be set loose. Neither of those are great options.

_Guys!_ Rika's voice suddenly echoed in their minds. _Guys! Are you okay?_

_Yes, Rika,_ Renamon replied. _We're all okay. Ahsoka's unconscious but we're all still alive._

_Can you get out?_ Suzie asked. _We'll stand back if you want._

_We can't,_ Lopmon said. _There's no room for us to use our attacks without seriously hurting someone else._

_Well, maybe we can use another attack with a Modify Card,_ suggested Rika.

_There's nothing destructive enough that will work without risk of collateral damage,_ said Renamon gravely. _There is almost literally no space at all. We can barely move in here._

_Well, I've got Ahsoka's lightsaber,_ said Henry. _Do you think that I can use it to cut them out?_

_Are you crazy, Henry! _Rika objected immediately. _You aren't a Jedi. You can't use one of those things properly! We can't tell how thick the ice is from here and you could end up accidentally stabbing and killing anyone in there. No, if anyone uses a lightsaber to get them out, it'll be a Jedi. And it can't be Ahsoka since she's stuck in there too and knocked out._

_Then the solution is simple, guys,_ said Terriermon. _Call Anakin and Aayla. Get them over here as fast as you can. They'll be able to get us out of here._

_They're out of range,_ said Henry. _And even Rex's comlink can't get in touch with them because the transmitter doesn't reach that far. We can't contact them._

_So?_ Asked Terriermon. _Hop in the gunship and fly off until they _are_ in range._

_But we can't just..._

_Yes, you can leave us here,_ Terriermon said. _And just so you know, I am rolling my eyes at the moment._

_He's right, _said Lopmon. _There's nothing you can do to help us by just standing out there. Go and get help. We'll be alright. Now go... get us out of here as fast as you can._

There was a pause. Then Rika said, _Alright. Rex will stay here and watch over you guys, while we go and get Aayla and Anakin. Look after yourselves in there._

_We will,_ said Terriermon. _It's not like we can do much else, to be honest._

_Terriermon._

_Momentai._

_We'll be back with the others real soon. We promise,_ declared Suzie.

The three Digimon listened, but could hear nothing through the ice, which was cutting off all the sound, including the wind, and creating a rather eerie silence within their secluded little prison. They didn't even hear the gunship when it started its engines and lifted off from the ground, carrying their Tamers back into the wilderness. They knew it was happening though, because they could feel the presences of their Tamers getting further away, until they could no longer feel them at all.

And then, they were all alone, except for a clone Captain that they knew was standing out there but couldn't see, hear or sense. They felt sorry for poor Rex, standing out there in what was apparently a brewing snowstorm beside a huge block of ice that contained his friends and unable to do anything but wait for the others to arrive to cut them out.

The claustrophobic conditions of the ice prison did have one advantage – it provided an adequate shelter against the storm outside.

However, this was a small comfort.

"Well, what do we do now?" asked Terriermon. "Do we just sit here and twiddle our thumbs until Anakin and Aayla get here? Do we even have enough room to twiddle our thumbs? And this bent over position is already beginning to cramp up my back."

"Well, we can't really do much of anything to be honest," said Lopmon, squirming around slightly and bumping into Terriermon a couple of times before she managed to settle into a reasonably comfortable sitting position. "But sit and wait."

"Yeah, I suppose you're right," said Terriermon, doing the same thing. "But I hope they get here soon. Even "I spy" is really out of the question at the moment. There's nothing to see here except the four of us and solid ice. Not much fun."

Renamon ran a paw over the ice. It was definitely not completely normal ice, because when she pulled her paw away, the layer of melt-water that would normally be covering her paw didn't even exist. The ice just remained as one solid block. "Well, I suppose we can't count on this stuff melting. Then again, it was made by an Ice Digimon, so that is probably to be expected."

"How did this day take such a weird turn?" asked Terriermon. "We start out doing what we do best and kicking the stuffing out of some Separatists and we end up accidentally releasing a Digimon previously entombed in the ice and then getting stuck in a makeshift igloo with no exit. This could only happen to us really, couldn't it?"

"Complaining is not going to get us anywhere," Lopmon said. She paused and then added, "Then again, nothing we do is really going to get us anywhere, is it?"

"So, I'm free to complain?" asked Terriermon.

"Knock yourself out."

Terriermon sighed. "I don't really have the heart to do much complaining to be honest. Anyone up for a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors to pass the time?"

"Why not?" Lopmon shrugged. "We haven't exactly got much else to do. And tag is definitely out of the question."

"Is it?" Terriermon said. "Tag." He poked Lopmon with his ear.

Lopmon rolled her eyes, but said, "Tag," and poked him back.

"No tagbacks," Terriermon said, grinning.

"Yeah, I was right. It _is_ out of the question," said Lopmon.

The two of them began to play the game, both of them wrapping their ears around themselves to conserve their body heat by making them act like coats. Renamon could barely see them, as she had to peer over the top of Ahsoka to look at them on the other side, but she still smiled all the same. You could always trust Terriermon to be Terriermon, after all.

But, as the games continued, Renamon began to notice something. Her eyes caught movement from Ahsoka and she glanced at the young girl as best she could. It was thin she noticed another serious problem – Ahsoka was beginning to shiver slightly, and right before Renamon's eyes this self-same shivering began to get slightly more and more violent.

Renamon frowned in apprehension. Ahsoka might be unconscious but her body was still reacting. Her skin-tight leggings and bare stomach and shoulders were definitely not the best sort of outfit to be wearing when you were lying in the snow and trapped inside a freezing cold ice dome. Renamon was being less affected by this due to her thick fur, but poor Ahsoka's body was desperately trying to warm itself up, causing unconscious muscle spasms to produce heat by friction.

But it probably wasn't going to be enough. Ahsoka might be alive for now, but she was slowly but surely freezing to death.

Renamon's expression changed to one of determination. They were not about to let one of their best friends die while they were lying around and doing nothing. She quickly gained the attention of Terriermon and Lopmon by saying, "Guys, excuse the interruption, but Ahsoka's in trouble. We've got to warm her up as fast as we can and make sure that she stays warm until the others arrive."

Terriermon and Lopmon took in Ahsoka's shivering body with trepidation. Lopmon piped up, "Okay, but how are we supposed to do that? We can't exactly light a fire in here."

"Isn't it obvious?" asked Renamon. "We'll have to share body heat. It's the only way we'll be able to keep her warm long enough."

"You mean we have to do the penguin huddle?" asked Terriermon.

"Yes, Terriermon, I do," nodded Renamon. "Unless you have any other ideas."

"Nothing springs to mind, no," the bunny shook his head. "Hoo boy, this is going to be slightly awkward. But if it saves Ahsoka's life then that's what we'll do."

"Exactly," nodded Renamon. "I'll go first. Hold on a moment."

Terriermon had been right. It was extremely awkward. Renamon was still trapped on her front and unable to even roll onto her side, but the yellow fox was not about to let that stop her. Slowly and uncomfortably, Renamon moved her body closer to Ahsoka's pressing her furry flank against Ahsoka's side. She managed to lift one arm and slip it over Ahsoka, covering the Togruta's shoulders with the material of one of her purple gloves. Renamon then brought her large tail into play and forced the huge, bushy appendage into the gap between Ahsoka's legs and the top of their prison, wrapping the yellow tail around them in order to give her a thicker layer of protection than the white leggings that she was wearing.

"That's about the best I can do," she said, grunting slightly at the uncomfortable position. "What about the two of you?"

Lopmon inched forwards and slowly began to turn around, pressing her back against Ahsoka's other side. Only now did she really get a feel for just how cold Ahsoka was, because she stiffened as her back, which had considerably less fur than Renamon's touched Ahsoka's stomach. It was like pressing her back against something almost as cold as the ice itself.

"Yeesh," she said, beginning to shiver herself. "I really hope this works." She unwrapped her ears from around her body and stretched them out behind her, draping them over Ahsoka's stomach like small towels. She spread them out as wide as they would go in order to give them the largest surface area that she could.

"Wow, she's cold," said the bunny, squirming for a better position and also trying to generate some more heat of her own.

"There's almost no room for me," Terriermon said, glancing over to see that Renamon and Lopmon had managed to cover most of the major exposed areas. There was nothing they could do about Ahsoka's back that was pressed into the snow – they could no more turn her over than Renamon could turn herself.

However, there was still one thing that Terriermon could do. Inching his way along, he squeezed into the narrow space between the ice wall and Ahsoka's head. "Hey, sorry about this, Ahsoka," said Terriermon. "But you will thank me when this is all over." Terriermon settled his own back between Ahsoka's montrals on the top of her head and, like Lopmon had done, he stretched his ears out behind him. He did so with extreme delicacy, spreading his ears out over the black and white striped skin of Ahsoka's lekku. He had effectively turned himself into a pair of lekku warmers.

And that was the position that the Digimon held as they continued to wait for any potential help to arrive. It was uncomfortable and cramping, but it was certainly working. All three of them felt Ahsoka's muscles beginning to calm down slightly as her skin began to warm up thanks to their efforts. The shivering continued, but at a much more sedate pace than previously. Several of the goosebumps on Ahsoka's skin began to recede and her breathing, which had started to become slightly ragged with the cold, returned to normal, although it was still a little shallower than usual.

Terriermon winced as he began to lose his grip and thrust his feet out to stop himself from sliding down, causing the bottom of his feet to come into contact with the side of the wall and instantly turn cold as a result.

"Well," he said, after a moment. "I have to hand it to IceMyotismon. He sure does know how to put a downer on your spirits – by freezing them solid and tossing them aside like trash."

"It's almost a shame really," said Renamon, shifting a little for a better grip and fluffing out her tail as much as she could with the space she was being given. "For a few moments there, I thought that Ahsoka's negotiations with him would actually work. But it seems that his pride was too much for him, otherwise he probably would have done so."

"That," agreed Lopmon. "Or he's just stubborn. Or perhaps resolute in the belief that it is his destiny to become the ruler of this world. It wouldn't be the first time that a villain has been sure they can win against us because they think fate has decided that they'll win."

"Yeah, but we always prove them wrong in that regard," said Terriermon. "When we get out of here, I am going to go find that frigid vampire, beat him to a pulp, drag him back to the city, stuff him in an oven and watch him melt. That would be what I call getting a taste of his own medicine. Or perhaps the exact opposite of that considering we're in the cold and he'd be in the heat."

"Our Jedi friends probably wouldn't condone that," said Renamon. "Even if we could find an oven big enough to hold all of him."

"Yeah, I know," said Terriermon. "But still, it would be karma."

"Probably," said Lopmon. "But we'll have to be careful. He's proven by trapping us in here that he is resourceful – freezing his own attack was something I never would have expected."

"Maybe we should file that away for future use," Terriermon said. "With a Seadramon's Ice Blast card, we could do something similar with a Shellmon's Aqua Blaster or some other large attack like that. That would be pretty cool."

"We'll think about it," said Lopmon.

* * *

Captain Rex, from where he was standing beside the giant ice dome, was watching the approaching snow-storm. The clouds were beginning to swirl overhead and the sow was already beginning to fall in sheets all around him. The ice dome was already covered in another layer of snow that added a further two centimetres to what was already there, and Rex had to keep shifting his feet to prevent his toes from getting cold, despite the waterproof armour that he was wearing down at ground level.

He sincerely hoped that the Tamers would hurry up and get the others quickly. Gunships were handy means of transportation, but they couldn't handle particularly heavy weather, like sand and snowstorms. If the Tamers failed to bring Generals Secura and Skywalker back here before the main bulk of the snowstorm hit them, then the gunships might not be able to reach their location. The others would have to get out and march on foot, and there was no guarantee that they would get here in time to save those trapped in the ice.

Rex glanced over at the ice-dome. He briefly considered attempting to blast the others out with a thermal detonator, but he cast that idea aside almost as soon as it began. Not only would a thermal detonator probably damage those inside in the blast itself, it might cause an enormous block of ice to collapse inwards and possibly crush some of the people inside.

It was so frustrating!

He walked round and round the giant thing, tapping on it occasionally with a blaster and wondering if those inside could hear the tapping. He had absolutely no idea what was going on in there. He only had the Tamers word that the occupants were alive, and while he trusted that word, the Tamers were now gone and anything could have happened in their absence.

There was nothing he could do.

So all he did was march round and round the ice prison, reminding himself that his friends were in there and he wasn't just walking around an ice rock and wishing that he had brought a flamethrower. But he hadn't, and wishing was mostly pointless.

He was beginning to feel the effects of the cold himself too – he wasn't wearing the special clone armour designed to retain heat and keep them warm – he was just wearing the ordinary clone armour, which did a reasonable job of keeping him toasty, but did little in the extremely low temperatures. And the temperature was dropping all the time.

After about five minutes or so of walking, Rex ended up sitting on the ground, leaning with his back to the ice that his friends were trapped in and staring out across the sky, searching for any sign of the gunship approaching. He was gripping a flare that he had picked up from the gunship before Hawk had taken it away with the Tamers. If he spotted the gunship approaching, he was supposed to use the flare to help direct them to the right location as quickly as possible.

But the sky in front of him remained empty.

And when he looked to the sky behind him, he saw the clouds and the sheets of snow getting closer and closer. He estimated that it would be fifteen minutes before the main bulk of the storm broke over them. Would they others get back here in time? Would the imprisoned even survive that long?

He just didn't know. As a soldier, he had never felt so powerless. Not even when battling the Geonosian zombies had he ever felt completely helpless. But now...

_Come on, you three,_ Rex thought, more to himself than the Tamers, who, of course, couldn't hear him. _You've got to move fast. For all our sakes._

* * *

As Aayla Secura stared out at the wilderness out of one side of the gunship and scanning it with her mind, Anakin Skywalker was doing the exact same thing on the other side. The two Jedi were attempting to cover as much area as possible, each taking one side of the ship so they could extend their senses further afield. But so far, they had not come across anything.

Worry for Ahsoka was gnawing at Anakin's belly. But, then again, worry for Ahsoka was _always _gnawing at his belly whenever she was on an assignment and was not being supervised by him. He supposed it was like some kind of fatherly instinct, compelling him to feel concern for the safety of his Padawan. Of course, he was worried about the others as well, wondering if they were all okay or not.

Aayla could sense the swirl of emotions that were going through Anakin's mind at the moment. She would have been able to even if they didn't have the mental link now. The others were too far away to sense, so monitoring their progress all the time was impossible. She had to admit that she was a little worried herself. For some reason, ever since they had taken off in their gunship, she'd felt a feeling of foreboding begin to creep up her spine. The Force was telling her something – that something big was about to happen and probably would at any time. Anakin could feel it too, but neither Jedi knew what the source of this disturbance would be.

Would it be affecting them?

Or would it be affecting the others?

Both of them had no answer, and both were focusing part of their attention on the mind of the other A-Team member, so that if one of them got wind of what it might be then they would know instantly. The rest of their attention was focused on trying to locate their elusive quarry.

"Are you getting anything, Generals?" asked Commander Bly, from where he was standing in between the two Jedi and looking from one to the other, wondering what was going on."Any sign of that Digimon?"

"Nothing as of yet, Bly," said Aayla, without taking her eyes off the snow plains below them. "There are almost no life-forms down there, let alone one from another dimension. But if we sense him, we will know about it."

"If you don't mind my asking, Generals," Bly said. "What are we going to do if we _do_ find this Digimon? We don't exactly have any back-up of our own in the Digital sort."

"Perhaps not," said Anakin. "But we know what this vampire is capable of doing and what its attacks are, so we've got a pretty good measure of it."

"And if we can't force it to surrender," said Aayla. "Which we probably can't, we will have to battle it ourselves."

"Well, I hope it's not anything like our Digital friends," said Bly. "Or we could be in for a tough time."

"Well, we..."

"Sirs," interrupted the clone pilot, a man named Winger. "I'm picking up a contact. There's another gunship closing towards us – the other one that went out to search for this rogue Digimon."

"What?" Anakin asked sharply, taking his eyes off the surroundings. "What are they doing here? We were supposed to be doing a sweep of two different areas?"

"Something's wrong," Aayla said, worry creeping into her voice. "Use your link, Anakin – I can feel the presence of the others on that ship, and its only the Tamers. The Digimon and Ahsoka are not on board."

Anakin's stomach screwed up in worry at this statement. He ran over to Aayla's side of the gunship and the human and the Twi'lek stared outwards towards the gunship that was fast approaching them.

Aayla reached out with her mind and made the connection first. _Guys, what's going on?_ She asked quickly. _Where are all of the others?_

_Big Sister Aayla! Uncle Anakin! Thank Fanglongmon we found you guys!_ Suzie cried at the top of her mental lungs.

_Where is Ahsoka and your Digimon partners? _Anakin asked urgently. _Are they alright? Have they been hurt?_

_No, they're okay. For now,_ said Henry. _But we need you to come with us quickly to make sure they stay okay! We ran into IceMyotismon and after Ahsoka's negotiations with him didn't work we were about to get the Digimon to digivolve and fight him._

_But things didn't work out like that,_ said Rika. _IceMyotismon managed to trap Ahsoka and all three Digimon before they could digivolve inside a dome of thick ice that they can't break out of._

_WHAT!_ Anakin shouted.

_Rex and Hawk managed to drive IceMyotismon away for the time being, _Henry said. _But we need you to follow us because we can't get them out of the dome. We didn't dare use Ahsoka's lightsaber just in case we accidentally cut them._

_Wise decision, _said Aayla. _Alright then. Turn the gunship around and we'll follow you._ "Winger, a new situation has cropped up. We need to follow that other gunship and do not let up on the speed. This is important."

"Acknowledged, sir," Winger said, and wheeled the gunship about, just as Hawk in the other gunship did the same thing.

_We have to be quick, _said Rika. _There's a snowstorm closing in on that area. We've gotta get there first._

_Then let's not waste any time,_ Anakin said, as the two gunships rocketed towards the distant mountains where the incident had occurred. As Aayla filled Bly in on the situation, Anakin clenched his fist angrily. _I'm coming Ahsoka. I'm coming, guys. I swear, I will not let you die._

Aayla glanced across at him again. She could see his fist clenching again and could feel the anger pulsing from him. She quickly put a hand on his shoulder and said, _Calm down, Anakin. Your anger is beginning to build up again. Remember what we said last night about your emotions._

_If Ahsoka is hurt in any way,_ Anakin sent back. _I'll... I'll..._

_You'll remember you are part of a team,_ Aayla said pointedly. _Calm yourself down as best you can before I am forced to slap you again and you will do your duty as a Master and tend to your Padawan's injuries._

Anakin bit his lip and calmed himself. Aayla was almost becoming a proverbial rock preventing him from giving in to his negative emotions.

_That's what I'm here for,_ said Aayla.

_I should never have let her go off like that,_ Anakin sighed, rubbing his face as worry continued to eat through his gut. _This is my fault – I should have been there, by her side._

_No,_ Aayla shook her head. _I stand by what I said before – you made the right choice by giving her that responsibility. Just because things didn't go as ideally as they could have doesn't make the decision itself a wrong one. There's always going to be danger and Ahsoka knows that. Remember that, Anakin. Just because something went wrong this time does not mean that you should not give her assignments like this in the future. And did you hear what Henry said – she attempted to negotiate with him first. That, if anything, shows you made the right choice. Our Snips is growing up._

Anakin was forced to admit that Aayla was right. But that didn't stop him from worrying for his Padawan. Of course, it didn't stop Aayla from worrying either.

* * *

Ahsoka regained consciousness slowly and rather painfully, grunting slightly as her receptors began to connect to her brain once again she began to feel multiple things flooding into her mind at once. The first of these was pain – there was an extremely sore point at the back of her head that was throbbing slightly, in a pretty similar place to the spot where General Grievous had slammed her into a wall over Ord Mantell.

Her back also felt extremely numb for some reason and that seemed strange to her as well. But there were numerous other bizarre sensations crisscrossing her body. There was a slight weight on her legs that she couldn't recognise, and there was also pressure on her stomach, over her shoulders and also on either side of her face and covering both lekku.

What is the galaxy was going on?

Her eye cracked open. All she could see was whiteness, and for a terrifying moment, Ahsoka wondered whether she had gone blind. But then, she opened it a little further and saw that it was in fact ice, a thick sheet of it less than thirty centimetres away from her face. How had that gotten there? The last thing she remember was being grabbed on the shoulder by Renamon and hauled back behind the shield. Then, she had blacked out.

She groaned.

There was an immediate reaction from all around her, as she felt the things covering various parts of her body shift slightly. Whatever was covering her lekku practically withdrew entirely, and there was a sensation of something rubbing against the top of her head, before a white face appeared on the edge of her vision.

"Ahsoka!" Terriermon grinned down at her. "Thank Fanglongmon! You're awake!"

"Yeah," grunted the Padawan. "I'm awake. What happened?" She raised her head a little and found, much to her shock and dismay, that she was almost completely surrounded by ice. She was also lying in the snow, which explained why her back was numb – it was from the cold. She was also surprised to see that Renamon was practically lying against her and that Lopmon had her ears draped across her orange stomach. "And why are you all crowded around me?"

"IceMyotismon managed to seal us inside a dome of ice," Renamon said, a little bitterly. "We've tried to get out but we're stuck in here."

"My lightsaber?" Ahsoka groaned, reaching up to the back of her head as best she could and rubbing the sore spot gingerly.

"It fell into the snow outside when I grabbed you," said Renamon. "Our Tamers have gone to get Anakin and Aayla though, so we probably won't be trapped in here for much longer."

"And as to why we're all crowded around you," said Lopmon. "You were freezing to death, and since we lack fire or a blanket, we were helping to keep your warm with our own body heat."

Ahsoka winced as she prodded the sore area again and resolved to leave it alone. She smiled and said, weakly, "Thanks guys. You probably saved my life. I can't tell you how grateful I am. I... I knew that I could count on you."

"Of course you can, Ahsoka," said Terriermon.

"You guys are the best, you know that?" Ahsoka said, shifting to try and get some heat to her back but not particularly managing it. "I mean it."

"Don't let Anakin hear you say that," chuckled Lopmon. "He'll turn it into a competition."

"Yeah, probably," Ahsoka nodded. "That is, if he gets here in time."

"Momentai. We'll be out of here before you know it. I'm sure that the Tamers will get your Master and Aayla here before too long and they'll have us out of here in a nanosecond. Just you wait and see."

"I'd rather I didn't to be honest," said Ahsoka. "I feel like I've really botched this mission up. My negotiations didn't work and now I'm stuck inside an ice dome and you guys are stuck in here with me. That's not exactly going to look great on my report."

"Well the part about the negotiations was all due to IceMyotismon. You handled your part in it extremely well," said Renamon. "And as for this situation – we're veterans at fighting other Digimon and we still fell for it."

"Well, I suppose that's true," Ahsoka said. "But I would still prefer it if we could escape on our own."

"As would I," said Renamon. "But I can't use a full strength Power Paw in here due to the limited space. The three of us have tried what we can to get out of here and nothing's worked. We may just have to sit tight and wait."

"And freeze while we're at it," Terriermon said, shivering slightly. He and Lopmon were both really beginning to feel the cold now – their huge ears were not useful in cold conditions because their wide surface area gave off a lot of heat. "But, I'm not complaining."

"Well, maybe you guys can't get us out," said Ahsoka. "But if I can just use the Force, I might be able to break through the ice."

There was a slight pause, during which the others thought for a moment. Then Renamon said, "Do you think you can pull it off. The ice sealing us all in here is incredibly thick. It would have to be for my Power Paw to leave no mark on it whatsoever. I might even struggle to break through it even if I could use it at full power."

"Well, we'll never know unless we try, will we?" asked Ahsoka.

There was another pause.

"Well, it is worth a shot, I suppose," said Lopmon.

"Better than sitting on our bums – or lying on our backs or fronts as the case may be – and slowly freezing them off," said Terriermon. "If you think you can do it, then go ahead."

"I'll try," Ahsoka nodded. She briefly rubbed her arms as best she could in the cramped conditions, trying to massage some warmth back into the one part of her body that the Digimon had not been able to completely warm up with their body heat. She took a few moments to flex her fingers as well, which were frigid and stiff and almost completely numb. And then she shut her eyes and began to draw on the Force.

The three Digimon watched with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension as Ahsoka raised her hands and placed both of them on the ice above her face, ignoring the freezing cold that shot down her nerves, trying to tell her brain to move her hands away. Ahsoka gathered the Force in her mind, drawing its power and allowing it to flow through her entire body, just as Anakin and Aayla had both taught her to do in her meditations.

And then she pushed the Force through her hands and into the ice.

At first, nothing happened. Ahsoka gritted her teeth and her muscles started trembling again, this time from the effort of what she was trying to do. She pulsed more power into her ice and exuded it into the ice. Her power grew and, to the amazement of the Digimon, small cracks began to appear in the ice.

"Whoa," Terriermon breathed. "She's actually doing it."

Ahsoka's eyes opened, but remained narrowed as she glared at the cracks in the ice, her teeth clenching even tighter as she put more and more energy into her efforts – determined to break free of their icy prison. Before her ice, larger splinters appeared in the ice surface above her, criss-crossing around each other so that it looked almost like a spider's web of lines.

The Digimon watch with bated breath as they saw sweat beginning to form on Ahsoka's forehead. Ahsoka made one last pulse of energy from the Force, creating more cracks that covered a large portion of the ceiling of ice.

But then, she collapsed back into the snow, breathing heavily and letting go of the energy gathered from the Force. The three Digimon did their best not to look disappointed, since all three had been hoping to get out of the cramped space, and Ahsoka had done her best. But, it seemed that her best wasn't good enough.

"Never mind, Ahsoka," said Terriermon, consolingly. "That was a good effort, and it looks like you did a lot of damage to the ice. Good try."

Ahsoka looked grim as she continued to gasp from breath, still glaring up at the lattice of crossing lines she had created with her mind.

"Don't take it too hard, Ahsoka. That was incredible nevertheless," said Renamon.

"I'm... not taking it too hard," Ahsoka panted, her fingers curling into fists as her look of determination returned. "And I am not... about to give up either. I can do this."

"Ahsoka," Lopmon said. "Don't overexert yourself with something that's beyond you."

"No, Lopmon," Ahsoka shook her head avidly, her montrals bumping into Terriermon's sides with the head motion. "I _know_ that I can do this. It's like what you said earlier, back in the gunship – the only thing standing in my way is myself. It's only impossible, if I think it is impossible. You told me to get rid of my self-doubt and I would be able to do anything. Well, I'm putting aside my self-doubt right now. And I am going to bust us out of here."

Determination set across her features, Ahsoka placed her palms back on the ceiling again and concentrated once more, drawing the energy from the Force back into her hands again. The three Digimon glanced at one another for a moment, before smiles began to appear on all of their faces.

"You're right, of course, Ahsoka," said Renamon. "This is your moment. We _know_ that you can do it."

"Go and grab it by the horns, Ahsoka," Terriermon said.

"We're all behind you," Lopmon added. "We _will_ get out of here, because you _can _do it."

"Yes," Ahsoka said, and with her face screwing up in intense concentration she gathered all the Force energy she had obtained in her mind. "YES. **I. **_**CAN!"**_ With a roar of determination, Ahsoka rammed all of her gathered power into their icy ceiling all at once, a cry like a wild animal tearing from her lips as she poured her soul into the task. The Digimon echoed the roar with enthusiasm as the entire structure began to judder and huge splits appeared right across the top. Their prison was beginning to break up.

And, with a surge of triumph, Ahsoka felt something else happen as well. She felt her mind break through her self-made barrier and suddenly she could feel the presence of her three, fellow prisoners – brighter and clearer than she could before. She received mental whoops from all three Digimon and a savage grin appeared on her face. She had done it! She had formed the mental link! She had finally done it!

Increasing the volume of her roar, she plunged the rest of her energy into the ice.

* * *

Outside, Captain Rex, who still had his eyes fixed firmly on the sky, jumped in surprise as the ice dome that he was leaning on started to shake violently, like it was at the epicentre of a miniature earthquake. The clone captain scrambled to his feet and turned around, watching the dome with astonishment. Huge rents began to appear across the entire, three metre structure, the ice parting with ear-splitting cracks, until the entire structure resembled some kind of white reptile with many large scales.

There was a momentary lull.

Then, the top of the dome exploded outwards in a shower of enormous shards of ice. Rex stepped back quickly as large chunks fell to the ground in many places before him and his front was suddenly splattered by a layer of snow that went flying into the air as well. Wiping the wet snow from his helmet, he stared in disbelief at the massive hole torn into the top of the dome, leaving many of the walls still standing around it.

And his face took on an expression of delight at the sight of Ahsoka rearing out of the hole, clambering to her feet and breathing heavily, holding on to the sides of the hole she had just made for support – exhausted but very much alive!

"Ahsoka!" he cried, forgetting to call her Commander in his joy, which further increased when suddenly Renamon exploded out of the hole as well, her paws glowing blue as she finally got the swing room she needed and pulverised the nearest ice wall to shards with a double hit. Then, Terriermon and Lopmon scrambled out from hiding as well, huge grins plastered on their faces.

"You did it, Ahsoka!" Terriermon cheered, leaping up onto the Padawan's head. Ahsoka was beaming herself, despite her obvious exhaustion, and she had room to laugh as Terriermon began punching the air with both hands and chanting. "Go Ahsoka! Go Ahsoka! It's your birthday! It's your birthday!"

"Not for a few weeks, it isn't," Ahsoka said, panting with exertion. Her legs wobbled slightly and she almost fell over, but she was caught by Renamon before she could.

_That was wonderful,_ Renamon said with her mind and Ahsoka almost exploded with joy on hearing the voice in her head and feeling the fox's thoughts being projected to her. _But take it easy now. You must recover your strength._

_Thank you guys, _Ahsoka said. _I... am so glad I met you._

_As are we,_ said Lopmon, and Ahsoka grinned again upon hearing an actual reply to her own thoughts. _As are we._

Rex ran over as Renamon helped Ahsoka out of the rest of the former prison and helped her to settle on the ground, sitting on the floor as the Padawan sucked in breath gratefully. "Are you alright, Ahsoka?" he asked. "Are you injured?"

"Well, apart from a bruised head," said Ahsoka. "I think I'm okay."

"She's freezing," said Renamon, placing a hand on Ahsoka's arm, which was indeed almost as cold as the ice she was leaning against. "It wasn't exactly cosy in there, even if it did protect us from this wind, which isn't helping."

Rex switched to thermal vision to have a look at Ahsoka and was alarmed to find that she was showing up almost completely green, which was _not _a good thing for anybody not in deep hibernation. They should have been red or orange if they were to be even considered healthy.

"We need to get her to medical as fast as we can," said Rex. "Let's hope that the others get here with the gunships soon enough."

"How soon is soon enough?" asked Terriermon. "It's like this is a movie and that was their cue or something, because here they come now."

Rex turned to look and, sure enough, two gunships were beginning to loom on the horizon, soaring over the snow-blanketed wasteland in their direction. Rex's hand immediately flew to the flare on his belt and pulled it loose, letting off the shot into the sky. The large, smoking and glowing projectile lanced upwards into the sky, curving back down once it reached its peak. The gunships seemed to home in on it and altered their trajectory slightly, heading downwards and towards them.

"Well, here comes, my Master," said Ahsoka. "To smother me with worry."

"Don't think of it like that," said Renamon. "You know that he's just concerned for your well-being. He'll just be very glad to know your safe."

"Safe is not exactly the word I would use right now, Renamon," said Rex. "She still needs to be warmed up as quickly as we can, or she could succumb to frostbite quickly, particularly with that snowstorm on the horizon." The Digimon glanced at the storm and saw that Rex was right. It was almost on top of them now. If it got much closer there wouldn't be time.

The gunships alighted on the ground and the blast doors slid open. Immediately, Anakin sprang out and dashed over to where the others were standing, Aayla hot on his heels, while the Tamers hopped out of the other gunships and rushed towards them at a slower tilt, though they were still running as fast as they could go towards their partners.

"Ahsoka!" Anakin cried, rushing towards his Padawan. Before Ahsoka could reply or even do anything beyond blink in surprise, Anakin caught her in an enormous hug, pulling her close to his body and even rocking her gently like she was some kind of fragile object.

"Well," said Ahsoka, slightly muffled due to her face being partially buried in Anakin's chest. "That's one way to try and warm somebody up. Is it me or does there seem to be a lot of hugging going around at the moment?"

Anakin stepped back and looked down at her. "I was going to ask if you were okay, but the sarcasm answered me question for me. Uh... er... you are okay, aren't you?"

"Well, apart from the fact I feel like I've been hanging from the roof of a Wampa's cave for a week, I feel fine," said Ahsoka. She grinned at Anakin and said, _In fact, I am more than fine._

Anakin blinked as he heard Ahsoka's voice resounding in his head. He had been so busy worrying about whether Ahsoka was injured that he had failed to notice her presence amongst the mental network. Ahsoka smirked at his expression, as did Aayla, who _had_ noticed.

_Congratulations, Ahsoka,_ said Aayla. _I knew that you had it in you._

_Apparently I didn't,_ said Ahsoka. _And that was what was stopping me. But now, I feel brilliant. It's good to have finally reached this point._

Aayla chuckled. _Well I suppose these means the reign of the Epic Eight has come to an end already,_ she said. _It was short but sweet. And hopefully this new one will be longer and sweeter. The only problem is... what do we call ourselves now?_

_The Noble Nine, of course?_

_Noble?_ Aayla snorted. _With Terriermon in it?_

_Watch it, Twi'lek,_ Terriermon said from where he was being fussed over by Henry and simultaneously trying to stop Suzie crushing Lopmon to death with one of her infamous hugs.

_So sue me,_ said Ahsoka. "It's the best name that I can come up with that begins with N. Nifty doesn't really work, does it?"

"No, I suppose it doesn't," said Aayla. She turned to Anakin and nudged him. "Don't you have anything to say?"

"Well..." said Anakin, faltering for a moment. "Um, well... well done, Ahsoka. You have no idea how proud I am of you right now."

"Thanks, Master," said Ahsoka.

"But... out of curiosity, how did you escape that dome?" Anakin glanced across at the battered and broken thing that had once been a prison. "I was under the impression that you were stuck in there."

"Ahsoka was phenomenal today, Anakin," said Renamon. "Not only did she almost tempt IceMyotismon into surrendering himself, but she also managed to call on the Force to break out of ice over a metre thick. She's advancing in her studies faster than ever."

Anakin stared at Ahsoka in amazement. "Is that true, Snips?"

"Well," Ahsoka shrugged. "You know what you always say, Master – a Jedi is humble."

"So, should that be a yes?" asked Anakin.

"Yeah, it is," nodded Ahsoka, unable to completely suppress the sense of pride. However, then, she staggered slightly as the cold began to take more of a toll on her body. Anakin was immediately by her side, supporting her.

"We've got to get her to medical immediately," said Anakin.

"But..." Ahsoka protested. "You can't leave IceMyotismon. He told us that he was getting close to finding his rival. Who knows how much time he's managed to gain."

"If we don't get you to medical, you could still die, Ahsoka," said Anakin.

"You go," said Aayla suddenly, gesturing towards the gunships. "Look after your Padawan, Anakin. The rest of us will continue the search for IceMyotismon."

"But the gunships won't be able to handle the snowstorm," said Anakin.

"I never said, we'd be taking a gunship," said Aayla. "If we are indeed close to the Digimon that IceMyotismon is looking for than we should be able to continue the search on foot."

"What?" Anakin asked. "With a snowstorm on the way."

"We'll manage," said Aayla. "We'll have to. Now go quickly, before it's too late."

Anakin looked torn for a moment, but as he saw the looks of determination on the faces of everybody else, who had been listening to the conversation for the last several moments, he nodded and said, "Alright, if you're sure. But I don't like leaving you out here without communications."

"A snowstorm is not going to stop IceMyotismon for a second," said Lopmon. "And we can't let it stop us either."

"We'll get through it somehow," said Rika. "There's too much at stake otherwise."

"Excuse the interruption, General," said Bly. "But if you're going to leave, you must leave now. The snowstorm will be here any minute."

Anakin nodded and said, "May the Force be with you all. You'll probably need it."

"Probably," said Terriermon, grinning. "Now go. Mush. Schnell!"

Anakin took the hint and helped Ahsoka into one of the gunships where the doors closed behind them. From there, both of the LAATs lifted off from the ground and whooshed off into the distance, heading back towards the landing platforms and leaving the others standing on the mountainside.

"I hope we know what we're doing," said Rex. "Because if we don't then there's no way for us to get off this mountain until the snowstorm lifts."

"No problem," said Henry. "If things get too bad, we can have the Digimon build a snow cave."

"Oh goodie," said Terriermon. "We get to make sure that we're surrounded by snow and ice. Again."

"Terriermon."

"Momentai. I was just kidding. We'll do it if we have to. But let's get out there and try and find that vampire and kick his ass so hard he'll never be able to sit down again, or stand up because he'll be in many, many different pieces."

"I hear that," Renamon said. "Aayla, will you be okay? I mean, you don't exactly have the best clothing for such cold conditions as this either. And neither are the Tamers."

"I will endure," said Aayla. "If I must. As for you three," she glanced down at the Tamers, all of which were starting to shiver themselves. "We'll probably have to manage, since we can't call the gunships back now."

"Don't worry about us," said Henry. "We've got some handy Modify Cards that could give us some nice heat from the Digimon with some fire attacks if we get too cold."

"And what about you three Digimon?" asked Bly. "You were trapped under that ice too. You're probably almost as cold as Ahsoka was, especially the bunnies."

"Yes, well, we were," Lopmon nodded. "But unlike Ahsoka, we have Tamers to help us along. We're fighting fit right now – we all used MagnaAngemon's Magna Antidote on one another a short while ago to heal all the problems that we received during our imprisonment."

"Yeah, but now we have to be more careful than before," said Henry. "Since it takes a while before you can use a card in the D-Arc a second time."

"Don't worry," grinned Terriermon. "We'll get this guy right where we want him."

"Now, we'd best get going," said Aayla. "Since you were the people who encountered him before, which way was he heading when you saw him?"

"Further into the mountains," said Renamon, pointing up at them with a claw and causing everyone to turn their gazes into the hills in question. "I think that his rival must be buried somewhere in there."

"Then let's follow on," said Aayla, and without another word the Twi'lek began to walk in the direction Renamon was indicated, stepping lightly through the deep snow and not seeming to be particularly bothered by it. She had traversed tougher terrain than this before. She'd been to _Hoth_ once as well as Alzoc III, and both of them were far worse than anything Mygeeto could throw at them.

Rex and Bly dutifully followed her, with much the same results, since both of them had prior experience on ice planets as well.

As for the others, Renamon almost immediately became some kind of express train. She hoisted Suzie onto her back, piggyback style, and said, "Are you going to be alright back there, Suzie?"

"Yeah, I'll be okay," the little kid said, snuggling into the warm fur that Renamon provided.

"Good," said Renamon. "Hopefully I'll shield you from the brunt of the snowstorm."

Then, with a bunny on each shoulder, Suzie on her back an shepherding Henry and Rika in front of her, Renamon made after the other two. Aayla, who had momentarily paused to look back and make sure they were alright, sent Renamon a questioning look. The fox sent back a through projection of determination, causing Aayla to smile and nod, before turning back and continuing on their way.

Progress was slow but not necessarily slow as it could have been. Henry and Rika were both getting numb toes already and Terriermon and Lopmon were providing blanket services for Suzie, much as they had done with Ahsoka. Yet they still made good time and managed to get quite some distance in five minutes.

Then, the snowstorm finally struck.

The snow came down in sheets, the wind swirling and whipping around them like a miniature hurricane, or perhaps just a very, very strong gale. Even the snow itself, which was usually a soft substance, seemed to batter at the group like hail. The clone were less affected by this thanks to their armour, and Aayla was able to redirect the brunt of the storm using the Force, but the others weren't so fortunate.

Rika shielded her face from the flurrying snow and stepped backwards, right into Renamon, to keep her from losing her balance in the wind. "I think we may have made a slight mistake here!" she cried, barely hearing herself over the enormous winds.

"Probably!" Henry cried. "This is a strong storm!"

Aayla moved back to them and stood in front of them, extending her powers to redirect it around them as well. The winds were still incredibly strong and the snow was lashing down at them as hard as ever wherever it did get past, but it was still a welcome relief.

"Thanks, Aayla," said Suzie. "I am so cold."

"You're welcome," said the Twi'lek. "But I'm afraid that I can't search for IceMyotismon quite as hard when I'm shielding you guys as well. If anyone has any bright ideas, I'm more than happy to listen."

"I've got nothing," shrugged Rex.

"Me neither," added Bly helpfully.

"Well," said Rika. "I may have something in my deck that might help. You up for a challenge, Renamon?" she asked, pulling a certain card from her arsenal and smirking at the familiar face on it.

"Always, Rika," Renamon replied, picking up what Rika was planning to do in her mind. "But in order for that to work, you are going to have to get off my back, guys."

"I can walk," said Suzie, bravely, jumping down from the tall fox and shivering slightly as she moved to stand beside Henry. Terriermon and Lopmon jumped off as well, the former landing on his Tamer's head instead, while the latter landed on Rika's, since she figured Suzie could do without the extra weight.

"Okay," said Rika. "Here goes. Let's see how long you can sustain this, Renamon. Digi-modify! Flamedramon's Fire Rocket Activate!"

Renamon crossed her arms and with roared out to the sky, so that her voice was easily discernable even over the raging wind. **"FIRE ROCKET!"** Aayla and the clones stepped back in surprise as Renamon literally erupted into flames, the orange flickers pulsating her entire body in a single, raging inferno. Renamon was still discernable in the middle of the blaze and, not surprisingly, she seemed to be completely unaffected by it.

Aayla hesitantly lowered her Force powers that were shielding the others and found to her amazement that even with the full force of the snowstorm, pounding at Renamon, the fire didn't go out. The snow around her seemed to melt before it even hit her and the wind wasn't enough to blow out the flames.

"Again, you pull through with something new," Aayla chuckled.

"It is an effort to sustain this," Renamon replied. "But Flamedramon's Fire Rocket is essentially surrounding yourself with fire and ramming them, so as long as I don't ram someone it shouldn't be too difficult for a while."

"Well, now that we have our own mobile campfire-slash-inferno," said Aayla. "Do you feel up to moving again."

"Very much so," said Henry. "I already feel a lot better. Nice thinking, Rika."

"What do you expect from the Digimon Queen," Rika smirked.

And with that, they moved deeper into the mountains, the blazing Renamon walking in the middle of the group to keep everyone warm while Aayla took point to continue the search and the clones brought up the rear, both wishing they had a holocamera. After all, how often did you see someone walking around, on fire, and yet completely unhindered by it.

* * *

And the Noble Nine is born. Alliteration with an N is difficult and Noble is the best that I could come up with. If it weren't for the fact that I'm hoping to do a Lord of the Rings crossover at some point in the future, I would have had Terriermon name them the Fellowship of the Force or something, but I am so I didn't. Most of the other N words were either very mild or very negative.

What did you all think?

* * *

Next time...

IceMyotismon finally manages to locate his rival and he now has a major advantage over our potential new friend. If the others don't get there in time, it could be curtains before its even begun.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 98 : Ancient Rivalry**


	98. Ancient Rivalry

O...M...F.

Oh... my...Fanglongmon.

I have just posted two full length chapters in the same day, having written _all_ of this second one since I posted the first one earlier this morning. I _must_ have been anticipating for this chapter more than I thought. I am feeling great right now. So great, I'll go eat some Frosties, because they're GRRREAT too.

And now, all those who haven't guessed the identity of the nemesis of IceMyotismon will find out, as well as many of those of you who did, since I didn't actually tell you. Read on, you sunnuvaguns, you. Read on.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 98:- Ancient Rivalry**

* * *

The tingling at the back of IceMyotismon's fangs was growing and growing with each passing second, so much so that, in an obscure way, they were starting to itch. But not itch in the literal sense of the word. In the metaphorical sense. It was like his fangs had minds of their own and that they were itching to taste the blood of the scourge of his entire life, finally. After so many bouts together where one of them had been forced to escape from the other, it was like his fangs were finally anticipating the end of their feud.

But then, IceMyotismon was completely with his fangs on this point. Oh how he would rejoice when he finally stood back and watched as the particles that had once been his rival floated towards him, entering his body through his chest to re-energise and strengthen him, flowing into his Digi-core to add power to his attacks, add armour to his defence. And soon, he might even be able to...

No, wait. He _couldn't _digivolve to the Mega level, could he? Those brats back there had told him as much. It was extremely aggravating.

IceMyotismon forcefully cast the idea aside. For all he knew the little gang of Rookie Digimon and that orange girl – what did call herself? A Jedi? – had simply concocted all of that as a lie simply to coerce IceMyotismon into surrendering when he didn't even need to. IceMyotismon decided he would wait to find out if this was true or not by himself.

It was almost a pity that he had been forced to kill that lot back there. There was little chance of them surviving that attack – they would have been completely frozen on the inside and out. Those Rookie Digimon in their Ultimate forms would have provided much more data for him, but it seemed as those fate was denying him that option.

But what of it really? He was _IceMyotismon_. It was his destiny to plunge everything he saw into the middle of an Ice Age that it would never wake up from and nobody had the power to stop him. Not even the Sovereigns themselves could reach him here. In a bizarre way, he supposed he should be thanking that strange Digimon that had sent him to this other universe. It was here that he could fulfil the things that had always wanted to do. He would become the Supreme Ruler of everything that he encountered, and the Digimon that would have the greatest chance of stopping him was about to be found and crushed due to the enormous disadvantage that he would have against IceMyotismon now... again thanks to that Parallelmon.

IceMyotismon chuckled maliciously.

Soon... it would be soon.

The tingling increased even further and IceMyotismon could tell that he had arrived. Lowering himself to the ground, settling on top of the snow without leaving even the slightest indentation in it, he stared ahead of him through the swirling storm that thrummed around him like a giant snowy cyclone. It didn't bother him whatsoever and he took a couple of further steps forward. Homing into view just up ahead, there was an opening in the mountainside.

An ice cave.

IceMyotismon leered at the sight of the dark cavern in the thick snow. It could not have been more perfect if he had wanted it to be. He could tell that the one that he was looking for was somewhere in there. Finally, a battlefield that he could _really _use to his advantage.

The vampire walked the rest of the way, his cloak streaming out behind him in the gale-force winds, the snow blurring his form and making him look more like a shadowy ghost than a vampire. It took him a further minute or so to reach the cave and he took a moment to stare up at the wide mouth. Snow had built up in a huge pile in front of the entrance, which IceMyotismon easily levitated over. The entrance to the cave was not tall, but it was rather wide, something like three metres in height but ten in terms of width. Inside, the space opened into something like a large cavern. The bare rock was covered in snow and encrusted with ice in several places, making the stalactites hanging from the ceiling look like enormous icicles instead, and the stalagmites on the floor like upside-down ones. The roof and walls were completely covered in ice, but the floor contained dark rock with a few icy patches.

"Perfect," IceMyotismon sneered. "Absolutely perfect. This couldn't have turned out better if I'd planned it."

He walked a little way into the cave and then turned around to face the entrance again. The weather continued to rage outside, but now it didn't touch him. Not that that really mattered to an Ice Digimon.

That entrance wouldn't do at all. It was simply too large. If IceMyotismon slipped up and allowed his enemy a breather, he could quite easily bound out of there and lose himself in the storm, where even IceMyotismon would struggle to find him.

It had to be dealt with.

Forming his Glacial Lash in one hand, and another one in the other, IceMyotismon swished both through the air to smack into the top of the entrance with cracks like a cannon being set off. There was a rumbling sound as the ice-whips slammed into the rock and knocked enormous portions of the ceiling around the entrance loose. There was a cascade of boulders as they tumbled down around the entrance.

IceMyotismon shielded himself from the resulting cloud of rock bits and debris with his cloak, and when he lowered it again, he saw that the entrance was no almost completely non-existant. There was still a small gap at the top that allowed the minimal amount of sunlight available to still stream through and light up the cavern, but that didn't matter. There was no escaping through there.

IceMyotismon turned back into the cave. There were no other entrances, so it seemed as though this would be the final showdown. Both of them would be trapped in here until the battle was over and only one of them would be walking away from that battle. And IceMyotismon knew that that would be him.

He stepped further into the cave, twisting his head from side to side to feel the tingling in his fangs increase or decrease, homing in on the presence of his rival like a radar dish. He sneered. He's had so many clashes with him that he knew that presence several miles away. Now, it was only several metres.

IceMyotismon stepped to the back of the cave and placed his hands on the wall. It was almost entirely made of thick ice and the presence here was stronger than ever.

"Gotcha," he growled, his instincts taking over as he stepped backwards a little and formed the Glacial Lashes once again. With a roar of triumph, he flung one of them at the wall, the lash curving through the air to slam into the solid ice. There was a sound like a thunder-crack as an enormous portion of the ice splintered into a myriad of pieces and fell to the floor is several huge chunks, creating a large crater in the ice wall.

"Wakey-wakey," IceMyotismon laughed as he lunged at the wall with the other Glacial Lash next, creating another huge rent in the wall, within the first one. "It's time to come out and play." He swung wildly with both of his weapons, slamming the wall repeatedly and digging further and further into the ice, sending chunks of it flying all over the place with each attack. It wasn't long before the ground was littered with the stuff and the crater being created in the wall was several feet deep and many metres wide.

With a final cry, IceMyotismon swung another Glacial Lash that smacked right into the centre of the crater that she had just caused. With another loud crack another large portion of ice fell away and then, IceMyotismon could finally see his rival. To him, it hadn't been that long since he had last set eyes on him, but he knew that it had really been years.

He sneered at the limp form that was now hanging with a large portion of his front half hanging out of the wall, his face still encrusted with small ice shards. But the form did not stay limp for long. The new Digimon's eyes snapped open, their amber pupils blazing in the shadows of the cave. With a roar, the Digimon, who was about the same size as IceMyotismon himself, brought his hands slamming down onto the ice he was contained in. The rest of the ice shattered around his legs and he dropped to the ground, landing in a crouching position and breathing heavily through his jaws.

The new Digimon was also humanoid in build, but the similarity with humans pretty much ended there. He was wearing what appeared to be blue jeans on his legs, held up at the waist by a brown belt. The jeans had a tear across the upper right leg and a skull and crossbones pattern in the same place on the other. His knees were covered in pads, the right one of which had three spikes on it while the other one was bare. His chest was bare but for a belt that ran from his right hip to his left shoulder, which also was covered in a large pad. His left arm was completely encased in a long, blue glove, except for the fingers. The hand had a couple more belts crossing along it and he had a set of brass knuckles on his fingers. His other arm had a couple of bandages wrapped around it at some points, as did his right foot.

And everything else about him was lupine. He had large, purple claws at the end of each finger and toe and his body was covered in light blue fur with darker blue stripes running along his back and his snout. His head was very much like a wolf, complete with sharp teeth in his maw and a black, dog-like nose.

"Hello again," IceMyotismon smirked at him. "WereGarurumon."

WereGarurumon looked up, his jaws curling as a guttural snarl from the back of his throat escaped his maw. He locked onto IceMyotismon's cold eyes with his blazing amber ones and glared into them, while he continued to try and regain his breath. His muscles were aching from being frozen in the same position for so long, and while the ice had helped to soothe the pain, the sheer amount of time he had spent in it had taken its toll, the muscles stiff and painful from disuse. His vision, which was normally as sharp as that of a Hawkmon, was now slightly blurry. He shook his head to try and clear it and focus, but that just made IceMyotismon swim slightly before him.

He unclenched his fist and could hear the clicking of his bones as they were moved for the first time in years. He was weak, far too weak to be caught in a confrontation with IceMyotismon, who appeared to be in peak condition. There was no way he could survive.

And while WereGarurumon was certainly not a coward and definitely was a brave warrior, he knew that the best option right now would be flight rather than fight.

"How the mighty have fallen," IceMyotismon crowed, raising his Glacial Lashes in a display designed to intimidate WereGarurumon. "You have been the bane of my existence ever since you first dared to attack me all those years ago. Forever refusing me my kills and attacking me from unexpected angles. But now, you are completely at my mercy. I shall enjoy this!"

IceMyotismon sudden reared upwards, swinging one Glacial Lash high into the sky and preparing to swing it down on the weakened Ultimate before him.

Knowing that while he might survive the attack it would seriously injure him, WereGarurumon quickly took the initiative and lunged forwards, springing up from his crouch with his powerful legs extending like coiled springs, despite the fact that they screamed at him when he did. He brought the fist with the brass knuckles slamming into IceMyotismon's gut, causing the vampire to gasp in pain and stumble backwards, bringing his arms to his wounded belly.

WereGarurumon quickly made for the exit, dashing across the floor on all fours as he prepared to leap towards the small hole that was left at the top of the entrance to the cave. But the effort it took to make his body move at such a tilt slowed him down, and IceMyotismon was able to lash out with his other weapon, which snapped around WereGarurumon's waist and haul him backwards, sending the werewolf crashing into the wall hard enough to crack it. WereGarurumon roared in pain and sank to the ground, falling onto his front.

IceMyotismon chuckled as he advanced towards the werewolf who was attempted to push himself onto his feet again. "I see you still have some fight left in you. You always were a stubborn one."

"No... more... than you," WereGarurumon finally spoke, his voice as growling and guttural as you might expect from a lycanthropic Digimon such as himself. "It is you... who turned this into a rivalry. I gave you every chance. I... warned you to stay away from those poor, innocent Digimon you were slaughtering, but you never listened to me. You... pushed me to act and put an end to... the terror that you caused."

"And it's a good thing that I did not heed your warnings," IceMyotismon sneered triumphantly. "Because if I had, then this moment would never have come to pass. You cannot win against me, WereGarurumon. I have every advantage over you."

WereGarurumon forced himself to stand upright, despite the fact that the action made his head spin and the world around him blur even further. He would need to rest for a long time before he would be able to operate at peak efficiency again, but IceMyotismon was not giving him the chance.

"Then... if I must die," WereGarurumon growled, his fingers clicking as he curled them into fists once more. "I shall die a warrior's death. I shall go out fighting until the bitter end. Do not think that I am not still capable of putting up a good fight, IceMyotismon. I may have been weakened from being entombed for Fanglongmon knows how long, but I will not let that pull me down."

"Good," IceMyotismon sneered. "I'd hate for this to be _too_ much of a slaughter-fest. Shall we begin?"

Without waiting for an answer, IceMyotismon leapt backwards, spreading his cloak and crying **"FROZEN NIGHTMARE!"** The ice spirit exploded from out of the darkness and soared across the space and towards WereGarurumon. Knowing what would happen if that attack hit him, WereGarurumon rolled to one side quickly, resulting in the ice-spirit slamming into the wall where he had been standing. The werewolf struggled momentarily to roll back onto his feet, slightly dizzy from still being out of breath.

But he quickly tried to take advantage of the situation and rushed IceMyotismon, dashing over on all fours and doing his best to ignore that screaming protests from his body. Drawing back his hands, he made a terrific leap over the top of the vampire and cried, **"WOLF CLAW!"** slashing the air with his claws as he did so. They left red slashes in the air that plunged down towards the vampire, who smirked and leapt aside, the attack smashing into the floor and throwing up a huge cloud of debris. WereGarurumon tried to land smoothly but lost his footing and rolled several feet before coming to a painful stop.

Nevertheless, he pushed himself to his feet again, just in time to see IceMyotismon sending another Glacial Lash his way. The werewolf dodged as best he could, but the attack still slashed across his leg drawing blood from it and a howl from WereGarurumon's throat. He landed on his shoulder pad, which cushioned the blow and allowed him to roll back over, but IceMyotismon had already sent a second Glacial Lash his way. The attack whipped around WereGarurumon's wrist in mid-roll.

IceMyotismon leered and heaved the attack upwards, hauling WereGarurumon into the air and causing him to slam into the ceiling head-first and causing another roar and the splitting pain. But the vampire wasn't done yet and flung his arms out, dragging the werewolf across the room again, and slamming him into another wall.

Through the daze of the beating, WereGarurumon managed to spot a nearby stalagmite lying almost next to him. Acting quickly, he wrapped the attack around his wrist around it a couple of times before IceMyotismon could swing him again. When the ice vampire did so, the attack fell from its original target and ripped the stalagmite out of the ground. The sharp, ice-covered rock went skewing towards IceMyotismon, whose eyes widened at the projectile and sent another Glacial Lash at it, disintegrating it into rubble.

Sucking in air, WereGarurumon pushed himself back onto his feet and dashed towards his enemy once more. Annoyed, IceMyotismon sent a** "RAVEN SWARM!" **at him, hoping that the bird flock would slam into him and force him to stop and defend himself from their beak and claws.

But WereGarurumon had other plans. Bringing up one leg, he cried out **"GARURU KICK!"** and swept it through the air towards the ravens, creating a green wave of energy that slammed into the centre of the swarm and cut a swathe straight down the middle, obliterating many of the birds and slamming into IceMyotismon. The vampire cried out in pain, clutching the point where it had connected, but he was pleased to note that it was not as painful as it usually was, a sure sign that WereGarurumon was nowhere near at full strength.

He looked up and was shocked to see WereGarurumon sailing through the gap in his flock of birds that he had made with the last attack before the rest of the swarm knew what was going on, claws poised to tear into him. IceMyotismon dropped to the floor and WereGarurumon shot over him again, sailing towards the wall instead. But WereGarurumon forced himself to turn in mid-air and hit the wall feet-first, springing off it to come back at IceMyotismon again.

Unfortunately, he ended up sailing into another Glacial Lash, which smacked him across his furry chest and flung him backwards, slamming painfully into the wall hard enough to dent it, creating a vague imprint of his body in it which held him there for a couple of seconds before he collapsed to the floor. And it was then that the rest of the Raven Swarm caught up and descended upon him. WereGarurumon howled as beaks and talons began snagging at his fur and ripping into his skin, pulling at his ears and aiming for his eyes.

IceMyotismon watched in satisfaction as his birds covered the writhing, screaming form of his most hated enemy, far more hated than any holy type in his book. He savoured the moment of watching the torment that WereGarurumon was going through, then spread his cloak again, readying another Frozen Nightmare.

When, suddenly, there was a roar of _**"WOLF CLAW!"**_ from within the flapping wings and with huge swipes of his arms, WereGarurumon pushed himself upwards and swung in a full circle, trailing the red energy waves behind his claws on one paw in a complete circuit of his body that disintegrated most of the birds on the spot, and then swiping in IceMyotismon's direction with the other paw and sending another huge energy wave right at the startled vampire. IceMyotismon only just managed to roll to one side, and the attack sliced off a large portion of his cloak at the base.

IceMyotismon stared at the heavily-breathing, sagging lycanthrope that was glaring at him from by the wall. "Well," he said, reluctantly. "I have to admit I am impressed you are putting up this much of a fight. However, the result will still be the same."

"And I still have not changed my mind," WereGarurumon growled, trying to ignore the stinging cuts that covered most of his body and the new rips in his jeans and arm-glove. "I will not yield to you." Dropping to all fours again, he jumped towards IceMyotismon, leaping over boulders like a predator on the hunt. IceMyotismon threw a pair of Glacial Lashes, but WereGarurumon jumped over the top of them, missing them by a hair, and grabbed the tip of one of the stalactites and swinging off it, using it to spring higher and launch another Garuru kick from above.

IceMyotismon launched another Frozen Nightmare spirit to counter the attack, both of them cancelling the other out in mid-air. The blast was enough to knock WereGarurumon back into the stalactite he had just swung from and slam into it painfully, before dropping to the ground in a heap. He pushed himself up and threw another Wolf Claw quickly, but IceMyotismon was having none of that this time. Leaping over the attack himself this time, IceMyotismon unleashed another swarm of ravens, which split up and swooped around to either side in two groups.

WereGarurumon lunged forward and delivered another gut-busting punch to IceMyotismon's stomach, but the vampire recovered before he could attack again and slammed WereGarurumon upside the snout with a punch of his own. His strength in punching was about equal to his adversaries and WereGarurumon's head snapped back as he jaws were slammed shut, his teeth cracking together painfully. And then, IceMyotismon slammed his foot into WereGarurumon's chest and followed up with another Glacial Lash, which flung the werewolf backwards...

...straight into the next Raven Swarm that was waiting for him.

WereGarurumon almost fell to the floor in exhaustion as the birds assaulted him again, but he doggedly continued, taking shelter behind a rock. The ravens cawed all around him as IceMyotismon closed in from behind, anticipating the kill that was sure to come soon.

* * *

"You know, I reckon I could get used to this," chuckled Bly as he marched through what had previously been snow, but was now mostly just slush on rock. He still had to watch his footing, but the progress was made much easier. "Walking around with a nice, toasty fire moving about in front of me like this. You reckon you could do this if we ever end up on another ice planet, Renamon?"

"Probably," said Renamon, from inside the flames licking around her body and shrugging as she spoke, causing the entire fire to almost seem to shrug with her. "It's not that hard an attack to master considering it only comes from an Armour-level Digimon and not something like a Mega."

"Armour-level?" Bly blinked. "What's that? You've never mentioned that one before."

"That's because we don't have armour forms," said Lopmon. "Basically it's an alternate version of the champion level that can only be reached in a special kind of way, but we've never used it before. The Digimon this Fire Rocket comes from is an Armour Digimon though."

"Hmm, interesting," said Bly. "Digivolution's even more complicated than I thought."

"Yeah, there's a ton of stuff about digivolution that we can't use," said Terriermon. "Like there is the choice of digivolving to the Mega level without merging with your Tamer, but we've never done that one. Then there's DNA digivolution as well, which would be like two Digimon combining to form a Digimon of a higher level instead of Digimon and Tamer."

"Really? Wow."

"Indeed," said Renamon. "But we've never tried that one because frankly we think that if everyone can become a level higher on their own it would build up more strength than getting there quicker and halving the forces available to you."

"Yeah, that's a point," said Rex. "That's like how we clones are superior to droids. The droids get made faster but are not nearly as good, whereas we clones get trained for over a decade before we're ready for war and we are much better on the battlefield."

"Very aptly put, Captain," said Bly. "It'll take a _lot_ of droids to get the better of us."

"Yeah," nodded Rex. "It's just a shame that the Seppies actually _have_ a lot of droids."

"We'll see how much longer that lasts," Terriermon said. "There's a lot of droids out there that have yet to feel the wrath of a Digimon, but when they do, it'll all be over."

"He's write," said Henry. "One day, this war will end. And when it does the galaxy will finally be in peace and we can stop hiding from everyone."

"I actually quite like hiding from everyone," Suzie giggled, as she walked alongside Renamon's blazing form, trying to too close to avoid getting seared but not too far away so as to make her feel cold again. "It's like the Ultimate game of Hide and Seek."

"Only you can turn something as serious as the secret that we represent into a game," Henry chuckled.

"Well, you know what I think?" asked Aayla from up ahead. The Twi'lek was walking out of the heat of the fire, ignoring the cold around her and leading the way up the slope of another mountain. She was still treading through the snow, whereas everyone else was stepping through the slush created by Renamon's flaming body melting all the snow a metre or so before she actually reached it. "I think what we're doing now is the Ultimate game of Hide and Seek. This IceMyotismon is proving to be difficult to find."

"How far out can you extend your senses, General?" asked Bly.

"At present?" Aayla called back over the wind. "Not as far as I would like. I can only scan about three-hundred yards or so in front of myself and in a wilderness like this, that doesn't exactly mean very much."

"Well, is there something that we can do to help perhaps?" asked Rika.

"Well, there might be something," Aayla said. She turned back to face them, the snow whipping around her from behind as she shielded herself from the worst of it with the Force, and the bright white landscape behind her almost seeming to make her a silhouette against the mountain. She doubled back on herself and headed back down to the others, who pulled to a halt as they saw her approaching. "If I wasn't having to re-direct a snowstorm at the same time I might be having some better luck."

"So, what do you suggest, General?" asked Rex. "Should I attempt to scan for life-forms?"

Aayla shook her head. "You know that life-form scanners don't work on Digimon, Rex," she said. "They may be real life-forms but since they are computer data they don't show up when we try." (This had proven extremely useful at one point in the past, when the Digimon had been able to sneak down to a Separatist outpost in the past in a ship piloted by R4-G9 and infiltrate it and take out the anti-aircraft turrets, allowing the others to land safely).

"However," said Aayla. "If I take shelter behind Renamon, I might be able to widen my search."

"Be my guest," said Renamon, stepping around Aayla as the Twi'lek moved into the centre of the group.

"Thank you," said Aayla, and she began to settle down onto the floor in a sitting position.

"Aayla, what are you doing?" Suzie asked. "The ground is all wet."

"Yes, Suzie, I know," Aayla smiled at her – she was almost at head-height with Suzie now. "But considering what's at stake at the moment, I think I can stand a wet backside for a while."

"Oh. Good point," said Suzie. Terriermon sniggered.

Aayla folded her legs and placed her hands on her knees in a meditative position. Freed from having the protect herself from the brunt of the storm, she shut her eyes and fully delved into her senses, allowing the Force to fill her up, as she did during her regular practices back at the Temple and then extended them outwards as far as they could go, which was actually a considerable distance. She began to search for any potential life forms anywhere within a half-mile radius.

She slowly moved her senses along, scanning every nook, every cranny and every snowdrift of the mountains for some distance around her, sweeping her senses in a circuit of her body, starting with what was direction in front of her and scanning to the east.

As she mentally searched the mountains around her, she picked up a very large life-form a little further down the mountain which she recognised as a Crystal Worm, an enormous and very aggressive creature that was burrowing its way through the mountain on their immediate left. She made a mental note to avoid that area. They did _not_ need to come up against one of them. They were rare, but they were titanic invertebrates.

Then, as she searched up the slope of the mountain they were currently standing part of the way up, she sensed something else. Two life-forms, one of which was radiating evil and other extreme good. She could feel a swelter of emotions, coming from them, including pain from both, but especially from the good one.

Her eyes snapped open.

"Did you find them?" asked Rika, sharply.

"Yes," nodded Aayla, leaping to her feet. "And IceMyotismon's rival... it's a good Digimon.

* * *

The battle continued to rage on in the ice cave. Vampire versus werewolf, neither side willing to let the other one gain much ground, but one side in particular not having a lot of choice in the matter.

WereGarurumon swung blindly into the swarm of ravens that were mobbing him, gnashing outwards with his teeth and grabbing two birds in his jaws crushing them back into data. His claws tore through countless birds, causing them to drop to the floor in little, feathered bundles before they vanished into data as well. But WereGarurumon was flagging more than ever now – his swings were slower than usual and he was breathing more heavily than ever, his heart pounding in his chest as he continued to battle valiantly.

As he tore through another portion of the flock, he cleared enough space to see that IceMyotismon was currently heading towards him, his fist reared back to punch him. Reacting as quickly as he could in his condition, he threw a punch of his own, seeking to slam his own fist into IceMyotismon's and stop him in his tracks. The attack from neither side played out the way they were hoping. IceMyotismon slammed his fist into WereGarurumon's and in his weakened condition the werewolf was flung backwards across the cave, his arm nearly being wrenched out of its socket as it was flung backwards. He crashed painfully into another stalagmite and slid to the ground, groaning.

But IceMyotismon cried out in pain as well... because WereGarurumon had thrown out his left fist – the one with the brass knuckles on the fingers. The vampire shrieked in pain as the spikes on the brass object rammed into his fist. He reared backwards clutching his wrist and staring at his hand, which looked almost broken and was rather unresponsive. He tried to clench his fist again, but not only did his fingers not respond for a few moments but he also hissed in agony at the pain the muscle contraction caused.

His face turning livid, IceMyotismon glared at the form of his opponent, who was shakily getting back to his feet, his legs threatening to collapse underneath him and forcing him to lean on the stalagmite for support. "You will pay for that!" he screeched and he dashed towards him, knowing that if he loaded WereGarurumon's data the injury to his hand would be healed.

WereGarurumon snarled himself, but it was difficult to tell with this was defiance or pain – probably both. Releasing the stalagmite, he raised both hands and sent another Wolf Claw surging towards the charging vampire. With his good hand, IceMyotismon formed a Glacial Lash and batted the attack to one side, causing it to fly up and smash a stalactite to pieces, and continued to charge at the werewolf. WereGarurumon readied his claws for combat, but a sudden dizzy spell caused him to sway on the spot and grab the stalagmite again, giving IceMyotismon plenty of opportunity to rush past his guard and seize him by the neck in his good hand.

WereGarurumon let out a strangled yelp as the hand cut off his air supply. Enraged, IceMyotismon swung his body around, dragging WereGarurumon from the ground and into the air by his neck and slamming him into the floor. WereGarurumon yelped again and swung up with his claws, aiming for the vampire's chest. IceMyotismon dodged backwards to avoid the swipe, releasing WereGarurumon in the process, but then he sprang forward again and delivered a kick that could shatter bone to WereGarurumon's stomach, lifting him into the air once more and throwing him across the cavern.

WereGarurumon's eyes screwed shut, but he managed to briefly clear his head and right himself in mid-air, slamming into the floor and digging his claws into the solid rock slowing his progress before he could slam into another wall. But his energy was being further and further depleted with every passing second. He looked up and saw that IceMyotismon had already sent another Frozen Nightmare right at him. His eyes widened at the sight – the ice raven was _huge_ – almost half as big again as IceMyotismon himself. Evidently the vampire had put a lot of energy into that attack.

Knowing he didn't have time to dodge the huge thing, WereGarurumon's mind moved in a frenzy of thought and he rolled onto his back, quickly sending a Garuru Kick at the ceiling. The attack collided with the base of one of the stalactites causing it to drop like the icicle it resembled and slam into the ground between him and the ice-raven. The ice-raven slammed into it and it exploded into dust and ice particles, but had the added effect of cancelling out the attack as well.

IceMyotismon bared his teeth in anger. Even in his weakened state, WereGarurumon was putting up and extremely good fight. Of course, he was still getting pounded on, but IceMyotismon was getting frustrated at the lycanthropic resilience that WereGarurumon seemed to have. He was still relatively fast, although not nearly as fast as he would usually have been, and had actually managed to cripple his hand.

He was not going to get away with this!

IceMyotismon lifted into the air again, almost to the ceiling, and flew towards WereGarurumon. Gasping for breath, the werewolf launched another Garuru Kick, but this time it went embarrassingly wide and IceMyotismon didn't even have to dodge to avoid getting hit – it crashed into the ceiling a couple of metres to his left. The vampire sneered. "It looks like you are finally reaching your limit, WereGarurumon," he taunted. "Let me make you a deal. If you give up right now, then I will make your death a quick one."

"There is no honour in surrender," WereGarurumon gasped, wobbling to his feet once more, but the effort it required for him to even stand up straight was very easily noticeable. "I shall fight right up until the time my very last breath leaves my body."

"And that time will be soon," IceMyotismon laughed. "Prepare to breathe your final breath as you put it. **RAVEN-"**

"_**WOLF CLAW!"**_ WereGarurumon bellowed and with what looked like the last vestiges of his strength, he launched his own signature attack. Like IceMyotismon's previous Frozen Nightmare it was much bigger than normal and it slammed into the vampire with searing pain, slicing into his front and flattening the vampire against the ceiling, roaring in pain the entire time. WereGarurumon sagged as the energy he had used in that final attack depleted the very last of his reserves and, after a couple of seconds, went the red light caused by his huge attack faded away, he finally collapsed onto his front.

Groaning in exhaustion, WereGarurumon spread across the rock floor, his limbs splayed in almost unnatural positions. The werewolf raised his head slowly, the effort of doing just that almost too much for him and looked up at the ceiling at the spot where he had struck IceMyotismon with his attack.

He blinked.

For a moment, he wondered if, somehow, he had actually won, because beyond the cracks in the ice where he had slammed into the ceiling there was no sign of the vampire.

But then, an icy boot with a skull on it stepped into his field of vision from the side. WereGarurumon's eyes rolled in their sockets to look up at the vampiric menace standing over him. He was blackened a little by the attack, but he was still very much undead.

"I win," IceMyotismon sneered.

* * *

The group of others had taken off running almost as soon as the words that she had found them had left Aayla's mouth. Homing in on the direction that her senses were indicating, Aayla ran ahead, jumping from ice-covered boulder to ice-covered boulder in a way that didn't look quite right, the fact that they were ice-covered not seeming to slow her down whatsoever. She skidded a little on each one, but she seemed to be using the skidding to her advantage, keeping her balance as she did so and using it to add a small bit of momentum to her next leap.

Behind her Renamon was trailblazing in a completely different sense of the word to its usual use – which was marking a trail in a forest marking trees or posts with particular colours. Renamon was doing it in a much cooler way, dashing after Aayla on all fours with the fire swirling around her body and quite literally blazing a trail through the snow to form a path up the side of the mountain.

The others were scrambling along behind her, following the path in the snowdrifts that the yellow Digimon was creating, the two clones helping the Tamers up the slope. The Tamers were struggling to keep up – running up a mountainside was most definitely not an easy task for someone who had never done such a thing on a regular basis before, and the two clones were having to usher them along. Bly had even consented to become Suzie's new and temporary ride, lifting the young child onto his broad, armoured shoulders and carrying her like that while helping Henry to run up the steep terrain as fast as he could.

"It's a good... thing that we... do a lot of... running... anyway," panted Henry as they ran. "Or... this would be... even harder."

"There's an... unpleasant thought..." gasped Rika as she half ran and half got pushed up the slope by Rex.

"Come on, you guys!" Terriermon cried from further up ahead – both he and Lopmon were also running along, with short jumps into the air since neither of them dared to go flying in the winds like this. They were making much better progress than their Tamers. "You're being left behind."

"We... know!" Henry shouted, putting on a spurt of speed as he tried and failed to keep up with the others. "You guys should just... go on ahead... We'll make it up... at our own pace."

"Yeah..." nodded Rika. "We aren't needed... at the actual battle...scene. We can just upgrade you from... here."

"Are you sure?" Lopmon asked. "We don't want to leave you in the middle of a storm."

"Saving that ... good Digimon... is more important," Henry insisted. "We'll be fine for the time... being. Just... go! We'll catch... up."

"Don't worry you two," said Rex. "We'll take care of them and help them get up there. They're right. You've gotta go and help that good Digimon, whoever he is."

Confident that their Tamers would be safe in the hands of the two clones, Terriermon and Lopmon rushed back up the slope in what was actually a comical way. The two of them were flat out running but they were also both making enormous flaps with their ears as they did so. It looked ridiculous since they were not in the air at the time, but it had the added effect of speeding up their running and allowing them to gain a little ground over the Twi'lek and the fox that were up ahead of them.

It didn't take long for Aayla to reach a point where her senses were telling her the two presences were coming from, but when she did, she faltered in surprise. Her mind was telling her that the IceMyotismon and whoever he was currently battling against were coming from what appeared to be a wall of snow in front of her. But that didn't make much sense at all. There was nothing on the ledge she was standing on but snow, and yet the signal in her mind was coming from directly in front of her.

Frowning, the Twi'lek stepped up to the snowy wall of the mountainside and pushed against it with one hand. Her hand went through the snow and, sure enough, it encountered rock. How did they get inside the mountain itself?

Aayla realised there must be an entrance to a cave somewhere that led inside, but that was not a good thing at all. She might be able to sense the Digimon inside the cave, but she had no way of knowing where the entrance was. It could be anywhere, even at the bottom of the mountain or at the other end at the very top.

That's when Renamon arrived, bounding onto the ledge beside her and still very much ablaze.

"Why have we stopped?" she asked urgently. "We need to find the two Digimon." Aayla pulsed the information into her mind and Renamon frowned. "Oh," she said. "You're right. That is definitely not a good thing."

"You wouldn't happen to have some kind of weird Cave Entrance locating Modify Card?" Aayla asked.

"No, sorry, we got rid of it. Never thought it would be useful."

"Just thought I'd check," Aayla shook her head. "You seem to have a Modify Card for everything else."

There was a slamming sound from deep within the rocks and a very faint cry of pain – more evidence, as if it were needed – that there was indeed a Digimon brawl going on inside.

"Well we can't just stand around here and do nothing," Renamon said. "We need to search for that entrance..."

"Hold on," Aayla said, holding up her hand and staring at the snow in front of her. Renamon's flames had been melting it extremely rapidly ever since she had been standing there and both of them watched as it melted away to reveal that it wasn't a wall in front of them at all, but an enormous pile of boulders and debris that looked suspiciously like it had been blasted loose of the mountainside. And, at the top of the pile of boulders there was a space – a black gap which lead into the side of the mountain.

It came to both of them in a flash. They were standing right in front of the cave entrance, but IceMyotismon had sealed most of it off and the snow from the storm had covered up the boulder pile since then.

Despite the situation, Aayla chuckled. "It seems you do have a Cave Entrance Locator card after all," she said. "Flamedramon's card."

Renamon chuckled as well. "It's even more useful than I originally anticipated."

Terriermon and Lopmon caught up at that point. "Not to nitpick," said Terriermon. "But shouldn't we be getting inside that cave now that we know where the entrance is?"

"Yes, indeed we should," said Aayla. "Stand back, guys." As the three Digimon stood well out of the way, Aayla raised her arms in front of her, palms upwards and fingers slightly curled as if they were holding something. Focusing with her mind, she began to shift them ever so slightly. She moved to the side herself, so that she wouldn't get knocked over herself by what she was about to do next.

The rocks began to tremble even more violently as Aayla exerted more of her power into them. Then, the Rutian Twi'lek Jedi Knight snapped her eyes open and swept her arms through the air and down towards the edge of the ledge. With juddering leaps the boulders at the bottom of the pile broke loose and went flying over the edge and more of the boulders around the middle followed on, producing a cascade down the mountain – which was nowhere near the others still climbing up it because they were off to the right by some distance.

The boulders bounced and rolled and picked up snow until there was a veritable avalanche rushing down the mountain. But the Twi'lek and the Digimon ignored it – it wasn't exactly going to kill anything out here in the bleak snows of Mygeeto. Instead, after shielding their eyes slightly from the blast, the four of them looked up at the enormous entrance to the mountain that Aayla had just created.

"Sometimes," said Terriermon. "The amount of power that Jedi possesses frightens even me. And I can become a giant weapon of mass destruction at will."

"Come on," said Aayla, as they made their way towards the cave entrance.

But they didn't need to go much further because at that point, the fight was brought outside.

* * *

A few moments earlier...

IceMyotismon had once again gripped WereGarurumon by the neck and lifted him into the air by it, his vampiric strength allowing him to pull off a feat that no ordinary humanoid of his skinny build could ever hope to pull off. WereGarurumon struggled feebly and kicked a little bit, the claws of his foot scratching another gash into IceMyotismon's leg. But the vampire ignored it and stepped closer to the wall, before rearing his arm back and slamming WereGarurumon into the icy wall continuing to hold him in the air by his neck.

Once again, he couldn't resist the temptation to savour the moment as WereGarurumon gasped for breath, barely able to get even a few particles of oxygen into his lungs. His paws were hanging limply at his side, the werewolf not even having the strength to lift them and try to wrench IceMyotismon's hand away. IceMyotismon tightened his grip even further, until WereGarurumon was completely unable to breathe.

"You know," IceMyotismon smirked at him, his cold, blue eyes leering into WereGarurumon's unfocused amber ones. "I was considering to actually end your suffering with a snap after all and kill you quickly. But right now, I have changed my mind. Considering the damage you managed to do to me with that punch to the gut, breaking my hand and hitting me with that powerful Wold Claw, I have decided that you don't deserve a quick death. Especially what with that warrior thing you were going on about before. Dying with honour, wasn't it? Well, just to add insult to injury, of which you seem to have plenty, I'm not going to let you go out in a blaze of glory. I'm going to watch you choke to death right in front of me."

WereGarurumon squirmed weakly at these words, his claws rising ever so slightly and beginning to glow as he began to make an attempt at another Wolf Claw. But, even though it would be an attack that was beyond weak, IceMyotismon wasn't about to let him do it and he brought his knee forward, slamming it into WereGarurumon's gut. The jolt forced what little air WereGarurumon had left in his lungs out and then the werewolf was running on empty and slowly dying due to the lack of oxygen.

"I admit I was quite impressed at how well you handled yourself during that fight, even during your weakened state," IceMyotismon said. "Where's all that hidden lycanthropic strength now?"

As he prepared to tighten his grip and finish it, the boulders he had placed at the front of the cave suddenly juddered violently. IceMyotismon blinked and turned towards it, watching them as they began to shake a little more. In bemusement, his grip of WereGarurumon's neck unconsciously slackened, allowing the werewolf to take in a huge gasp of air, filling his lungs with the life-giving stuff. IceMyotismon barely noticed, watching in fascination as the boulders began to shake even harder.

And then, to his astonishment, the bottom ones moved on their own and slid outwards, resulting in a tumble of rocks. He watched in amazement as enormous rock-pile fell out of sight, seemingly of its own accord, and he could hear it rolling and banging and crashing its way down the entire mountain.

"What in the name of the Digi-World?" he whispered to himself, staring at the opening, which was now as wide as it had been when he first walked through it save for a few boulders dotted about that had not gone tumbling down the mountainside.

But, as WereGarurumon slowly regained his breath and the dancing lights before his eyes began to ebb away, he too had watched the whole thing. And, whereas IceMyotismon had merely stared in astonishment and wondered how that could possibly have happened, he saw the avalanche in a completely different light. He saw it as an escape!

A last-ditch attempt at energy surged into him again as hope sprang into him anew. With luck on his side, he might actually be able to get away! But he wouldn't if he just hung here in IceMyotismon's grip.

Before the vampire could recover his wits, WereGarurumon took his turn to bring _his_ knee slamming into his opponent's gut, only he did it with the knee that had three spikes sticking out of the pad. As they buried themselves in IceMyotismon's stomach, the vampire gasped in shock and reeled back, dropping the werewolf and bringing his hands to his stomach, which had already been weakened from the previous Garuru Kick that had hit him.

WereGarurumon dropped to all fours and, while he was still gasping for breath, his new energy, while slight, spurred him to keep going. Claws glowing red, he unleashed a **"WOLF CLAW!"** at the stunned vampire. The attack was weaker than any of his previous ones, but it was enough to catch IceMyotismon in the chest and send him stumbling backwards into a stalagmite.

WereGarurumon immediately leapt for the exit, rushing as fast as he could on all fours towards the snow outside. He could make it! If he could just get outside and lose himself in the blizzard that he could see raging out there, then there was a slim chance that he might be able to hide from IceMyotismon long enough to recover.

He dashed out into the open on all fours and made to leapt off the ledge, willing to let gravity take him the rest of the way down.

But it seemed that luck wasn't on his side today after all. A Glacial Lash from behind suddenly cracked out of the cave and snagged him by the throat. WereGarurumon almost squawked as he was jerked backwards by his neck and slammed into the ledge once again. He rolled over, his last-ditch energy almost gone itself now and saw IceMyotismon bearing down on him again, more livid than ever. Dissipating his Glacial Lash, IceMyotismon bore down on the hapless Ultimate.

IceMyotismon swung his arm and delivered a terrific punch to the side of WereGarurumon's snout that almost broke his jaw and then loomed over him, lifting his boot and pressing it down on WereGarurumon's neck, pushing him into the ground and reducing the werewolf to a choking mess once again, finishing off the last of the energy that he had left, so much so that he could barely move a muscle and could hardly have drawn a breath even without IceMyotismon applying pressure.

"Nice try," he sneered. "But I swore today would be the day you die and I meant..."

"**FIRE ROCKET!"**

IceMyotismon's head snapped to the side, and WereGarurumon's eye rolled in the same direction. Both had only enough time to see a huge plume of fire containing a furious looking fox Digimon surging towards them before Renamon slammed into the side of IceMyotismon, the flames consuming them both as she knocked him off the depleted werewolf.

Now, while IceMyotismon might be an Ultimate level Digimon and Renamon two levels lower than him at the Rookie stage, let's remember several things for a moment. Firstly, Renamon was much, much stronger than the average Rookie, thus giving her more power behind her attack. Secondly, the attack itself was that of an armour level Digimon, and combining those two together meant that the attack produced was that of a very strong Champion level Digimon. And thirdly, fire and ice certainly do not mix and for a being like IceMyotismon, who was almost made of ice, fire was a very bad thing indeed.

The result of all this was that Renamon's attack hurt.

A lot.

IceMyotismon screeched so loudly that the entire mountain could probably have heard him (The Tamers and the clones still climbing up the slope certainly did). As Renamon leapt backwards, the flames of the attack finally fizzled out of existence, leaving her looking none the worse for wear, but IceMyotismon was much different. He didn't melt, since his body was too strong for that, but he did give off a very large amount of steam.

Renamon stood protectively over the floored WereGarurumon, while IceMyotismon writhed on the floor, rolling in the snow to try and put out what fire still remained on his body. Terriermon and Lopmon sprang over from where they were standing and joined her, facing off against the vampire as he staggered to his feet and glared at his attackers.

He immediately went slack-jawed when he saw who he was looking at. "You three?" he cried, stepping backwards, and then immediately cursing himself from acting like he was scared of three Rookie-level Digimon. "But... But... you can't possibly still be alive. I hit you with my Frozen Nightmare attack. Your insides should have solidified into ice and killed you where you stood!"

"I think you'll find that we're a lot more resilient than we seem," said Terriermon, glaring at the much taller Digimon. "Would you care to see how much more?"

IceMyotismon briefly considered his options. These three Digimon were clearly not to be trifled with if they had somehow managed to survive a direct hit from his most lethal attack while they were still at the Rookie stage. And they claimed that they had the ability to digivolve at will, and while he had yet to see this actually happen the fact that he had first encountered them as Ultimates was enough to support that particular claim.

Plus they had claimed that all three could reach the Mega level. IceMyotismon liked to think that he was well versed in what kind of Digimon became what when they digivolved. He had no idea what the Renamon would become since they were extremely rare Digimon and he had never actually encountered one before this one. But Terriermon and Lopmon were both much more common and he knew that both their Ultimate stages and probably their Mega stages were very large indeed. Plus, they were strong, he knew that from his previous bout with the three of them.

A fwooshing sound made him look around and he saw another creature that he had never seen before – a humanoid woman with blue skin and what appeared to be a pair of tail-like extensions dangling from the back of her head like hair. She was also holding a humming laser sword, like the one the orange-skinned girl had used before, only this one was pale blue and barely visible against the white snow.

He remembered seeing how the laser sword of the orange-skinned girl had cut so easily through his ravens. If he got sliced by that thing, who was to say that he would not go the same way. These four were not to be underestimated.

Drawing them all together, he acted upon his best option and retreated into the cave. He had no doubt that they would follow him in, but the enclosed space would be too small for most of the Digivolutions of the three Digimon and it was completely ice – his natural element. In there, he would be stronger than he would be anywhere else in the entire world, almost completely surrounded by ice.

Besides, WereGarurumon clearly wasn't going anywhere in his current condition. He would deal with his rival when he had dealt with his new attackers.

When IceMyotismon disappeared into the depths of the cave, Aayla quickly ran over to the floored Digimon and knelt beside him. The other three Digimon turned around and Renamon did the same. "What is he?" asked Aayla.

"He's a WereGarurumon," said Renamon. "Another Ultimate level Digimon and you were right – he is very much a good guy."

_Is anyone else noticing the werewolf versus vampire rivalry thing here?_ Asked Terriermon, in his mind.

"Now is not the time for that," said Renamon, out loud. "He's dying. He won't last much longer unless we do something to help him."

"Alright," nodded Aayla, getting to her feet. "You guys help him out in any way you can. I'll go and distract that vampire Digimon, so that he doesn't come back out and stop you."

"What?" Lopmon asked, staring at Aayla in disbelief. "You want to take on a powerful Ultimate level Digimon by yourself?"

"You guys know more about healing Digimon than I do," pointed out Aayla. "I'm sure that I can hold him off for a while. Besides, I have... a slight history with vampires myself."

The Digimon remembered what had happened with the Anzati vampires in Aayla's past and the three of them glanced at each other. Eventually Renamon nodded and said, "Alright. We'll help him and we'll join you as soon as we can."

"Alright," nodded Aayla, activating her lightsaber and turned towards the cave.

"Aayla, wait," Terriermon said, causing the Twi'lek to pause and look down at him. "Be careful, alright," he said. "And to quote Anakin and Mace Windu from earlier today – May the Force be with you."

Aayla smiled at the three of them warmly. "Momentai," she said. And for once, Terriermon didn't react to it. "I'll be fine. I hope."

Then, the Twi'lek Jedi turned around and dashed into the cave.

* * *

I am so evil aren't I? But let's all hope that it makes for a great finale to the chapter. That is what we all want, right?

Yes, WereGarurumon is the rival of the vampire. Congratulations to all of you who got it right, even you put down the answer when stating you thought that option would be too easy. I think WereGarurumon is a badass Digimon, as was shown in this chapter by how well he managed to put up a fight despite the enormous disadvantage he had against the vampire, and that he was underused in the television series. It's a shame he had to get so injured, but he certainly left his mark. Oh, and for the record, I don't like Twilight. I hate it - films and books. However, I do like the Van Helsing film, which has the same rivalry.

Finale coming up. You can probably expect it sometime tomorrow.

Oh and by the way, THIS STORY HAS OFFICIALLY EXCEEDED ONE MILLION WORDS! YAAAHOOOOOOO!

Time for those Frosties.

* * *

Next time...

With WereGarurumon badly injured and on the brink of death, the Digimon must help him before it's too late, while it's up to Aayla to take on IceMyotismon by herself. Who will emerge victorious?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 99 : Clash of Two Worlds**


	99. Clash of Two Worlds

Hello?

Hello?

Where's everybody gone?

I posted two chapters yesterday – TWO – and yet I only got a handful of reviews, whereas I received loads for the rest of the chapters in this arc. Thanks to all those of you who did though – I really appreciate your input.

Now, enough dilly-dallying, let's go add more words to this fic that is already over a million words in length. Haha! Sorry, I still haven't gotten over that yet. I'll shut up and let you read it now.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 99:- Clash of Two Worlds**

* * *

The ice walls glinted slightly in the mild sunlight seeping in through the cave entrance, numerous pinpricks of light being reflected back towards the entrance. As Aayla stepped into the cave, her hand gripping her lightsaber hilt firmly, she glanced around her at the damage that had been done during the clash of IceMyotismon and WereGarurumon before they had arrived. A numerous of the stalagmites had been snapped off at the base or at least severely dented, and there were a couple of huge dents in the walls and ceiling, especially the enormous one at the very back, which was most likely where the vampire had dug his adversary out of the ice. Even a fair amount of the stalactites were badly damaged in some form or another, and Aayla could see several places where it seemed they had been snapped off and fell to the floor, yet there was nothing beneath them but dust.

Clearly the showdown between the two had been very destructive. Aayla briefly wondered if she had made the right decision by coming in here after the dangerous Ultimate-level Digimon. But she cast that aside – she only needed to buy enough time for the others to do something about the injured WereGarurumon, whose life-force she could sense ebbing away behind her.

Aayla couldn't see any sign of IceMyotismon but she knew full well that he was there, hiding somewhere in the cave. She didn't let her guard down for a moment, her eyes sweeping around the giant cavern in search of the white Digimon.

A last second warning from the Force made her instincts kick in and she suddenly sprang forwards, executing a perfect forward-roll and whirling around without stopping, right as a stream of ice smashed into the ground where she'd been standing previously. Aayla glanced up and saw that IceMyotismon had been floating behind one of the larger stalactites, hoping to ambush the first person who came in after him.

IceMyotismon sneered at the Jedi and lowered himself down to the ground, settling on the rock. He was clearly still very much fighting fit, but his previous battle had taken a slight toll on him, as could be seen by his blackened front and his damaged hand, not to mention the char marks from Renamon's recent Fire Rocket.

"So," said IceMyotismon, baring his fangs at Aayla in a feral grin. "The one who comes to challenge me is the one who is not even a Digimon. How could a mere flesh-and-blood creature possibly think you can stand up to me? I am a sadistic and merciless killer and I am quite proud of that. I was hoping for more of a challenge."

"Clearly you have not met many Jedi," said Aayla, holding her lightsaber in front of her with both hands. "Or you would know not to underestimate us simply because we are not Digimon. We are not as defenceless and you seem to think."

"Oh, I'm sure," IceMyotismon chuckled. "Though you are right. I have not met many Jedi. The only other person I have met who claimed to be whatever a Jedi is was a young girl with orange skin, and since I see that she didn't accompany you to stop me, I feel it is safe to assume that she didn't survive my attack, even if her Digimon companions did."

"Oh no," Aayla shook her head. "Ahsoka is very much alive. She had to be taken to medical to be treated for cold thanks to what you did, but that won't keep her down for long."

"Impossible!" IceMyotismon shook his head firmly. "While some strange anomaly might have prevented those Digimon from being killed there was no chance of a non-Digimon surviving that attack. You're lying."

"No, I think you'll find that I am not," it was Aayla's turn to smirk. "Actually it was Ahsoka who managed to break out of that little ice prison, while my three Digital friends could not do it. That is how we work, we cover the weaknesses of the other."

"Whatever," IceMyotismon cast the topic aside. "That is not important now. What you should probably be thinking about is how you are going to survive for five seconds against a powerful Digimon such as myself."

"That may be," said Aayla. "But I have faith that I will be able to hold my own. I have fought alongside my friends for months now, and while the fighting style of each Digimon is different, I believe I have a good measure of how to put a stop to you."

IceMyotismon paused for a few seconds, and regarded this strange woman. After a his pause, he went along a different tack and said, "Who exactly are you anyway?"

"I am Aayla Secura," said the Twi'lek in question. "Jedi Knight of the Galactic Republic."

"Tell me, Aayla Secura," IceMyotismon folded his arms. "What do you have against me? I can understand why those Digimon friends of yours," he spat the word 'friends,' "Might want to see my downfall, since they claim to be heroes that go around protecting the weak, which, if I may say so, is stupid and pointless since the weak do not do anything for you in return. But what reason do you have to face off against me in what will undoubtedly be a suicide mission for you?"

"Oh, there are many key factors to answer that question," Aayla said, twirling her lightsaber a couple of times in preparation for the inevitable fight. "Firstly, they are my friends – in fact, they are my family – and families stick with each other to the very end. We fight with each other and if they feel that you are worth eliminating then I cannot let them face you without offering my assistance.

"Secondly, I am a Jedi. We are a special order, who are meant to try and keep the peace. Wherever feuds break out, we settle the dispute as best we can, only resorting to violence if initial negotiations fail, as they did with you earlier. And you are a threat to every life-form on this entire world. There are thousands of people living here, a good many of them innocent people. If you are allowed to roam unchecked, doing whatever you please, countless numbers of these people would perish. I cannot stand back and allow you to commit such atrocities in my universe."

"I see," said IceMyotismon. "Then you are just another sappy do-gooder who thinks that they will be helping people by destroying me. I thought as much. Do you have no ulterior motive?"

"The Jedi are selfless," said Aayla. "We care only about others. We would disregard our own safety in moments if it meant saving a bunch of lives in the long run." She levelled her lightsaber at him challengingly. "And that is exactly what I am doing now."

"I'm giving you one last chance to reconsider," IceMyotismon spread his cloak, which seemed to flare up behind him like the wings of a black bird, almost of its own accord. "You will regret it if you do not."

"What's the matter?" Aayla asked. "Afraid to fight me? Are you worried that you might lose to a girl?"

"I fear nothing!" IceMyotismon snapped furiously.

"Except Sovereigns," Aayla winked knowingly. "And girls, it seems."

"Why you...!" IceMyotismon snarled.

"**GLACIAL LASH!"** he cried and he formed the large icy whip in one hand and slewed it through the air towards the impudent Jedi-whatever-she-was. But Aayla had been expecting this – after all she had been deliberately goading the vampire – and she sprang into the air, somersaulting over the attack and landing nearby. IceMyotismon snarled and changed the path of her swing, sending the whip lashing at her from the side, but Aayla dropped into the splits and allowed it to pass over her head.

Thrusting her hands into the floor to throw her into the air and flip back onto her feet, Aayla dashed towards IceMyotismon with her lightsaber at the ready. The vampire smirked and levitated into the air, hovering near the ceiling and thinking that would be enough to keep him out of the Twi'lek's reach. He cracked his Glacial Lash down towards her once again, but Aayla side-stepped it and sprang upwards, corkscrewing past the attack and slashing at it when about half-way up. To IceMyotismon's astonishment and dismay, the lightsaber in her hand sliced straight through the Glacial Lash, causing the bottom half to melt into nothing instantly.

IceMyotismon barely dodged aside as Aayla took a swipe at him as she reached his level with her mighty jump. Flying backwards at full speed, he unleashed a Frozen Nightmare, hoping to catch her while she was defenceless in mid-air. But Aayla saw the attack coming and lurched her body downwards, spinning out of the way as the ice-raven slewed overhead and collided with a stalactite, slicing through it at the base and causing it to fall.

Aayla landed on her feet and saw the huge, sharp thing falling down to the ground, where it would have landed nearby if she hadn't thrown out a hand and caught it with the Force. IceMyotismon, focused on his target, didn't notice and flung a second Frozen Nightmare at the Twi'lek on the ground. Aayla glared up at it and, sheathing her lightsaber briefly, she brought her other hand into play, bringing the stalactite in front of her with the point facing the airborne Digimon before sending it bursting forwards with a surge of the Force.

The former-stalactite collided with the ice-raven and received a fresh coating of ice, but otherwise remained intact as it speared towards IceMyotismon. Alarmed, the vampire formed a Glacial Lash and flung it at the stalactite, slamming the whip into the tip and blowing it to pieces. Acting quickly, he flew downwards and sent the whip slicing towards Aayla again. Aayla backflipped to avoid the blow, but was forced to jump aside again straight away as IceMyotismon swung at her again. IceMyotismon rained a flurry of blows down at his opponent, who dodged and flipped about with expert athleticism.

IceMyotismon, growling in frustration as his quarry continued to elude his blows, brought back his arm for a full swing and powered his Glacial Lash down. Aayla watched it coming, her eyes narrowing as it lanced towards her head, before leaping backwards in a backflip at the last second, the powerful attack passing right between her ankles and slamming into the floor, throwing up a cloud of dust and rock debris that obscured Aayla from view. IceMyotismon quickly flung a Frozen Nightmare into the cloud, then waited for it to clear.

When it did, it revealed nothing. Aayla was gone, not frozen solid in a block of ice as IceMyotismon had hoped.

"What the..." IceMyotismon shifted his gaze from left to right. "Where did she...?"

He spotted his slippery adversary coming towards him from ceiling-height. Aayla had used the cover of the dust to slip away and then she had darted up the wall and was springing from stalactite to stalactite, rebounding off each one like a pinball to soar towards IceMyotismon again. The vampire dropped down quickly to avoid getting beheaded, but he wasn't fast enough to avoid Aayla's foot, which landed bottom-first right on his _face!_ Aayla put her weight into it and then leapt off again, rebounding off the vampire's head to fly towards another stalactite.

As IceMyotismon clutched his nose, yowling in pain from what had been less of a kick and more of a stomp, and as he did, Aayla grabbed the tip of another stalactite with her hand and used it like a pole, swinging around it in mid-air to come sailing back at IceMyotismon once more. Unfortunately, the vampire had turned towards her, seeking revenge and spotted her flying towards him again.

"**RAVEN SWARM!"** he cried and let loose his flock of birds from the folds of his cloak. For the first time, Aayla was actually hit with the attack and pushed backwards by the cawing, pecking birds, crashing into the stalactite she had just swung from. She yelped in pain, trying to shield herself from the attacking swarm, but then gravity instantly took over and she fell towards the ground and right towards the point of a stalagmite.

IceMyotismon watched eagerly, waiting for Aayla to get skewered by her landing. But it didn't happen – Aayla's fall had momentarily gotten her out of the flock of birds and she saw what would be her end coming as well. She quickly righted herself and landed with her feet next to the tip of the stalagmite and slid down it like a skateboarder on a ramp. Halfway down she sliced through the rock with her blade and sent another stone stake streaking up towards IceMyotismon. The ice vampire rolled aside, allowing it to crash into the ceiling behind her and then whooshed down towards Aayla, forming another Glacial Lash and flinging it at her.

Aayla had stopped by this time and saw the attack coming. She dashed off to the left and the attack slammed into the ground once again. But the ravens descended on her once again and Aayla was surrounded by the flock, forcing her to shield her eyes from the onslaught, and receiving numerous peck and claw marks on her arms for her trouble.

IceMyotismon saw his chance and launched another Frozen Nightmare, seeking to freeze his own birds and his opponent with them, as he had attempted to do to the others out in the snow. He leered as the ice-raven soared down towards the black ones in a move that was sure to spell doom for the irritating Jedi.

If it hit, anyway. Aayla gritted her teeth to block out the pain and then she flung her hands out with an enormous force-push that sent the raven flock pulsing away from her and tumbling back up into the air, out of control. The flock collided with the ice-raven and were frozen in a large block of ice. However, this ice block was still falling straight towards Aayla. The Twi'lek glared at it and threw out her hands, stopping it with the Force moments before it hit her, levitating it in the air. Igniting her lightsaber again, she slashed across the chunk of ice diagonally twice in an X shape, slicing it into four separate pieces and then banishing them up towards IceMyotismon.

The vampire growled in annoyance and dived towards the incoming attack, throwing out a Glacial Lash to blast the ice chunks into shards. Powering through them, he soared towards Aayla and powered his fist down towards her with a blow that would cave in her skull.

Aayla leapt backwards as IceMyotismon smashed his fist into the floor, splintering the rock beneath his knuckled. Seemingly undeterred by this, IceMyotismon quickly sprang back up in a wide spring, catching the unprepared Aayla in the stomach with a vicious backhand. The wind was knocked out of the Twi'lek Jedi and she went hurtling backwards, her lightsaber flying out of her hand and clattered amongst the rocks nearby. Aayla collided painfully with the wall, grunting at the impact.

She looked up to see IceMyotismon swooping at her again. She tried to dodge aside but this time it was _her_ that was grabbed by the neck as she tried to flee and slammed into the wall again. She didn't have much opportunity to cry out due to the icy-cold hand constricting her throat. IceMyotismon leaned closer to her face and glared into her eyes furiously.

"Alright," he said. "I admit, you are much more skilled than I gave you credit for. I severely underestimated you. But it seems that you have underestimated me in turn."

"You..." Aayla gasped as the hand tightened around her neck even further. "You seem to have... a habit of... going for the neck."

IceMyotismon sneered. "I am a vampire," he said. "That is what we do. And that just gave me an idea. Instead of crushing you into a pulp like I normally would, I'm going to get rid of you the old fashioned way." He sneered and Aayla's eyes widened as his fangs seemed to lengthen slightly and he switched the hand holding her neck to his damaged one so that he could fend off any defence with his good one. Then, he slowly but surely began to lead towards her neck, his fangs aiming for the exposed jugular on her neck.

What would happen were he to bite her there, Aayla had no idea. She might turn into a vampire herself or she might just die a horrible death, but either way she was not willing to find out. Her hand lashed out to one side and her lightsaber leapt into the air, flying into her outstretched hand as if it had been magnetized and Aayla slammed her thumb on the button to ignite the blue blade. IceMyotismon had clearly not been expecting this, for her faltered and then quickly let go and attempt to back away, having seen that blade cut clean through rock.

But he was far too slow – Aayla swept her blade through the arm clutching her by the neck, slicing it off at the elbow. IceMyotismon shrieked with an ungodly sound as his lower arm disintegrated into data. Aayla dropped to floor, falling into a crouch and gasping for breath, but she acted quickly and leapt up again regardless, pirouetting with a swing at IceMyotismon's face. The Ultimate saw the blade coming and tried to dodge again, but the tip of Aayla's blade sliced off the ends of his extended fangs, disintegrating them on the spot.

As Aayla fell to one knee to recover her breath, IceMyotismon stumbled backwards, clutching at his mouth with his only remaining hand while he arm stump waved in the air. "You... BITCH!" he shrieked. "You've slice off my fangs! And my arm!"

"Well," Aayla smirked up at him. "Think of the arm part as a favour. At least... your hand doesn't hurt anymore, right?"

IceMyotismon snarled and gnashed his blunted teeth, glaring with undisguised rage at the Jedi hauling herself to her feet, a slight bruise around her neck and a couple more on her back but otherwise relatively unharmed. She was still breathing heavily, but he wanted to make sure she had no breath left in her body.

"You'll die in agony for this," IceMyotismon cried, spreading his cloak with both arms, even if one was now a stump. **"RAVEN SWARM!"**

Aayla watched as the birds streamed out of the darkness towards her. She needed a moment more to recover her breath and IceMyotismon knew it – dodging a flock of pursuing birds was not going to help her get it back. She narrowed her eyes, an idea forming in her mind as the ravens loomed closer. She thrust out a hand in her direction and yelled in a loud, clear and commanding voice, "STOP!"

The ravens faltered in mid-air and flapped to stay aloft, but they didn't move an inch further forward, staying halfway between the two combatants in a squawking, cawing mass.

"What!" IceMyotismon stared in disbelief.

Aayla smirked and then gathered her power, waving her hand from left to right in front of the flock and as she did, she said slowly and clearly, "You do not want to attack me."

The ravens cawed some more, but if they could speak then we all know what they would be saying. IceMyotismon just stared blankly as Aayla waved her hand again and said, "You will turn around and attack IceMyotismon instead."

"They wouldn't dare to attack their own..." IceMyotismon protested, but he gasped in shock as the ravens did exactly that and whirled around in mid-air and swamped _him_ instead of Aayla. He shrieked again as the ravens tore at his clothing and pecked at his eyes, flapping around him like a great cloak of darkness. As they did, Aayla shut her eyes and momentarily meditated on the spot, regaining her lost breath quickly and then readying herself for battle once more.

She wouldn't have long to wait. There was a flash of white as IceMyotismon unleashed a Frozen Nightmare at the ravens, freezing them all around him. But being encased in ice himself didn't bother the vampire one bit and he swiftly smashed his way out and formed a Glacial Lash in his remaining hand.

"You will pay!" he roared and swung at her quickly. Aayla cartwheeled to one side, and IceMyotismon swung at her again, forcing her to sidestep, then again, then again, keeping up a relentless stream of blows to try and drive the Twi'lek back. And it seemed to work. Aayla was hard pressed to dodge all the strikes, which would have caused serious damage to her if they managed to connect. She was pushed back across the cave, leaping and flipping aside as IceMyotismon rained blow after blow at her.

Aayla backed up some more until she backed into a stalagmite. As IceMyotismon lashed out at her once more, she backflipped over the top of the rock spike and landed on the other side, watching as the Glacial Lash quickly pulverised it. Aayla, using her senses to tell her where to aim, flung her lightsaber out of the debris cloud like a boomerang from hell, the blue blade whirling round in a deadly circle. IceMyotismon faltered and dodged but his weapon was shorn off at the base, the lightsaber barely missing his outstretched arm.

Aayla dashed out after it and called it back with the Force before IceMyotismon could attack her while unarmed. The vampire quickly spotted her grabbing her weapon and threw another Frozen Nightmare, just as Aayla charged at him. Aayla quickly reversed direction and dashed across the cave, pursued by the ice raven. When she reached the far wall, she ran straight up it a short distance and sprang off, leaping over the ice spirit, which passed beneath her back and crashed into the wall.

The battle was becoming a bit of a stalemate. IceMyotismon was not letting Aayla get near him, but similarly, Aayla was not letting herself get hit.

Nevertheless, the two continued to duke it out, neither side willing to back down anytime soon.

* * *

And while the battle between Digimon and Jedi continued to rage inside the cave, on the outside, things were slightly different. WereGarurumon was lying on his back in the snow, sucking it what vestiges of air he could manage, but the continuous abuse to his throat, what with the choking hand throwing him about by it then squeezing it, then being grabbed in a Glacial Lash and then pressed down on by a foot, had taken its toll and now the werewolf was severely struggling to draw any air into his lungs at all.

Meanwhile, the three Digimon standing over him were having a hurried, mental conversation between themselves and the Tamers who were still scrambling up the mountain with the clones, but were getting much closer to the summit now, despite the swirling snow around them.

_What are we supposed to do with him?_ Terriermon asked. _None of us know any healing attacks and this guy definitely needs a healer and fast._

_Can't we just use the Magna Antidote card? _asked Suzie. _I'll get it out now._

_Wait, Suzie, there's no point,_ Henry said. _We already used it to heal our own Digimon when they got out of that ice block half an hour ago and remember that it takes some time before you can use a Modify Card in the same D-Arc again. And all of us used it._

_In hindsight, I wish we hadn't done that,_ said Rika. _Our Digimon would have been alright without it, but WereGarurumon really needs it._

_You were only ensuring that we were at full strength,_ said Lopmon. _That's no fault of yours. We didn't attempt to stop you._

_We know,_ said Rika. _What about if I digivolved Renamon into Taomon?_

_I still wouldn't know any healing magic,_ said Renamon. _It's one of the things that Taomon doesn't have in her arsenal. If I did I would have used it in some of our harder battles in the past, such as when we were fighting the D-Reaper or Zhuqiaomon._

_Great,_ said Terriermon. _So does anyone else have any ideas? We've probably only got a couple of minutes to help this guy and we're all standing around here, completely and utterly clueless as to what to do._

Just then, WereGarurumon grunted slightly, causing the three Digimon to look down at him. The Ultimate-level werewolf's vision was clouded and continuously sliding in and out of focus but he appeared to be trying to look at Renamon, who was more easily distinguishable than the smaller bunnies any way. As the three Digimon watched him, he slowly began to moan out faint and almost indistinguishable words, but words they still were.

"Wh...wh...whooo...aaa..rree... yyyy..ouu?" he moaned, blinking to try and clear his vision and failing.

Renamon knelt down next to him and said in a kindly way that you might expect to someone on their death-bed, which is where WereGarurumon was effectively lying. "I am Renamon," she said softly. "And this is my mater Terriermon and his sister, Lopmon. Please, try to relax yourself. We're trying to think of a way to heal you."

"Iii...cccee...my...ooo..." WereGarurumon suddenly coughed and choked, cutting him off mid-word as he was wracked with pain throughout his upper body.

"If you were about to ask about IceMyotismon," said Renamon. "Then he's still alive, but he's fighting against a friend of ours in that cave. Now please, relax."

"Hhheee...eee... cannn..ot," WereGarurumon coughed again. "Beeee...alllo...oowwed... tooooo...essss...cape!"

"And we have no intention of letting him," said Terriermon. "But we also have no intention of letting you die so will you just calm down and Moment-I mean, take it easy, already."

WereGarurumon's head fell back and he began wheezing slightly as his eyelids fluttered, threatening to close for good at any moment. It was at this point that Bly hauled himself onto the ledge, carrying Suzie on his back, and followed up by Rex. Then the two of them turned around, and after Bly allowed Suzie to get off, they reached down and helped to pull Henry and Rika up onto the ledge.

"I hate mountains," Rika gasped, as she sat down, panting for breath herself.

Rex and Bly, neither of whom looked particularly worse for wear, turned to the Digimon and Bly immediately said, "Where's General Secura?"

"In the cave," Lopmon pointed in, and the sounds of combat could be heard from within. "She's fighting IceMyotismon and holding him off while we try and fix WereGarurumon."

"Alright," nodded Rex. "We'll go and help her. You guys so your stuff."

"Be careful," Lopmon called after them as the two clones rushed into the cave as well.

WereGarurumon began hacking slightly as his raw and damaged throat stung painfully. Then there was a sure sign that he was _really_ close to death – his entire form flickered and blurred for a moment as the data within him began to fluctuate, threatening to break up since it was struggling to continue holding itself together.

"What do we do?" Suzie asked, staring sadly at the dying werewolf. "He's going to die, isn't he? I just know he's going to die."

Renamon couldn't help but agree. There seemed to be nothing that they could do to help the Digimon who could potentially have been a great new ally. He was going to disperse into data while all they did was stand back and watch helplessly.

But as WereGarurumon flickered again, a sudden flash of an idea appeared in Renamon's mind, and was instantly picked up by Terriermon and Lopmon. The three of them glanced at one another sharply at the thought of such a fragile plan, but right now it was WereGarurumon's only hope.

"Do you think we should?" Lopmon asked.

"Let's do it," Terriermon said, firmly.

"What are you...?" Henry asked but he stopped and watched as the three Digimon grouped around the fallen fourth one. Knowing that there was no time to digivolve before WereGarurumon disintegrated, they placed their hands on the werewolf's chest and screwed their eyes shut. The Tamers watched in morbid fascination, wondering what on Mygeeto their partner's were up to.

Suddenly, all three of them began to glow in a bright white light. The Tamers stared in disbelief, thinking that they were starting to digivolve _without their help_, which should have been impossible in a universe without the Catalyst. But they watched in amazement as instead of growing, their partners were beginning to shrink. They weren't digivolving at all – they were doing the exact opposite. They were _de-_digivolving.

The Tamers continued to watch as the bright white light not only began to shrink down, but a large portion of it began to seep into WereGarurumon's chest in the area where he Digi-core would reside. And it was then that they understood. Their partners were transferring their own energy into WereGarurumon in a last ditch attempt to save his life.

Eventually, the light died away. WereGarurumon still looked horribly injured, but he was beginning to breath slightly better than he had before, especially when the three newly-formed In-Training Digimon hopped off his chest and crowded around him in concern. As Rookies, the amount of power they were able to transfer wasn't nearly as much as it could have been were they at higher digivolution stages, so WereGarurumon was still horribly weak.

But the question now was, would he survive?

* * *

Aayla dashed across the floor of the cave as the stalagmite that she'd run past was smashed to pieces by another Glacial Lash, and as the whip lanced at her again she sprang off her feet and into a full scale dive, rolling across the rock and springing to her feet once more having successfully avoided the newest attack. IceMyotismon flew after her in pursuit and screeched loudly as he flung the whip at her again with his remaining arm. Aayla sidestepped and sliced a large portion off the whip with her blade.

IceMyotismon took the opportunity to try and close in for a closer ranged attack, grabbing Aayla's wrist in his hand after dissipating his attack and trying to push her backwards. Aayla stumbled back a couple of paces, unable to use her lightsaber due to IceMyotismon holding it in the air, but she wasn't about to let herself get pushed into the wall again. Leaning back on one foot, she drove her boot into IceMyotismon's stomach, causing him to grunt and release her and had no time to block as Aayla lashed up with her other leg and smacked him in the face with foot. Screeching and clutching at his nose again, he slammed another swarm of ravens at her before she could attack with her blade.

Having no time to take control of this flock, Aayla was pushed back against the wall, surrounded by birds once more. But she'd learned from the last attack and knew not to let them get started so she quickly lashed out with the Force, pulsing it in all directions and sending the birds flying outwards and leaving her alone. This had the added effect of pushing IceMyotismon back a little as well. Aayla sent a Force push at him that drove him back some more, but he wrapped a Glacial Lash around a stalagmite to stop himself before he got too far.

Aayla was beginning to breathe heavily herself now and her body was covered in scratches from the birds. She glared as IceMyotismon unwrapped the whip and sent it hurtling at her again, forcing her to duck as it splintered the wall behind her. Unfortunately, the attack knocked a large chunk of ice loose that slammed into Aayla's back and pushed her to the floor, gritting her teeth in pain.

IceMyotismon quickly prepared to attack, but suddenly he was slammed in the back several times by what felt like enormous wasp stings of fire. He cried out as he was thrown forwards slightly, whirling around to see the two clones running at him as well.

"You started the party without us, General," said Bly, offloading a laser at IceMyotismon and forcing the vampire to shield with his cloak, only to find the laser burnt right through the cloak and struck him in the shoulder, causing him to hiss in pain.

Aayla chuckled as she got to her feet, pushing the ice block off her and levitating it into the air with the Force. "Yes, but at least I didn't end it without you."

"True enough," said Bly. "Shall we take him?"

"Let's go," nodded Aayla.

The clones charged forwards with a loud warcry, blasting continuously at the vampiric Digimon with their blue lasers as they ran. They weren't enough to cause a lot of damage to him, but IceMyotismon certainly did feel the attacks and they were very painful. He levitated out of the way, but the clones followed his movements with their arms, forcing him to be the one that was dodging continuously this time.

He tried to shelter behind a stalactite, but he was suddenly slammed in the back of the head by the chunk of ice thrown by Aayla, which had the added effect of making him lurch forward and smack into the stalactite face-first. He whirled around and saw Aayla leaping towards him, lightsaber raised once more. He dropped down to ground level quickly, but Aayla sliced through the stalactite and it dropped towards him, forcing him to dodge again as it crashed to the floor.

As Aayla continued on her flightpath and went straight over the clones, Rex pulled out a thermal detonator and lobbed it at the vampire. IceMyotismon saw the little bomb and smirked, side-stepping and watching as it nestled into a crook in the rock beside his feet. Evidently he had not been expecting it to explode, because he cried out in alarm when it did and consumed him in a blast of smoke that knocked him backwards several steps.

"Right!" he yelled. "That's it! **FROZEN NIGHTMARE!"** He launched another huge ice raven at the two clones, who stepped backwards in alarm at the size of the spirit surging towards them. Thankfully for them, Aayla was behind them and she rushed over, slamming an arm into each of their backs and knocking them to the ground, so the ice-raven surged over all three of them.

"Phew, that was close," said Rex.

"Take this!" IceMyotismon cried and launched a Glacial Lash at the three on the ground. Bly and Rex quickly rolled to either side, and Aayla flipped back onto her feet to avoid it. The clones got back up onto their feet as well and with a nod to one another they separated, both running out across either side of the cave. Bly ducked out of sight briefly and Rex remained out in the open, drawing IceMyotismon's attention with a flurry of lasers. IceMyotismon flung another Glacial Lash at him, and the clone was almost hit by it, stopping his run at the last second and allowing it to hit the ground where he would have been if he hadn't. Then, Rex pulled out another grenade and threw it.

IceMyotismon thought he had learned his lesson from last time and backed away quickly, unaware of the fact that Rex had thrown a droid popper, which would do absolutely no effect to a creature like him. But, behind him, Bly jumped out hiding and threw a real thermal detonator, which knocked into the vampire's back and exploded. IceMyotismon yowled as he was knocked forward once more, his back severely scorched.

His eyes narrowed now. Enough was enough! He saw Aayla leaping towards him, blade held high, but he rolled to avoid the swing and grabbed Aayla's arm and flung her aside. Not waiting to see if she crashed into a wall (she didn't because she righted herself in time, IceMyotismon rushed Rex, who offloaded more lasers from his pistols at him. IceMyotismon stubbornly ignored the lasers this time and Rex was surprised when he received a vicious blow to the chest from IceMyotismon's fist. His armour was tough though and protected him from most of the damage, but he still went rolling backwards to land in a heap.

Bly ran in to defend his fellow clone, shooting at IceMyotismon's back. The vampire whirled around and with a wave of a hand, he sent a Raven Swarm at the Commander. But this turned out to be a bad idea because the clone was largely unaffected by the birds thanks to his armour and he charged through the flock, sending a laser whooshing into IceMyotismon's stomach. The vampire winced, but summoned a Glacial Lash which had a greater effect on the clone, cutting a large rent in his armour and throwing him away to collide with a stalagmite.

IceMyotismon bore down on the fallen clone Commander, but he was suddenly lifted into the air and thrown backwards by what appeared to be an unseen force. As he collided with another stalagmite, he saw Aayla rush over to Bly's side and kneel beside him, helping him back to his feet and checking his torn armour for damage – fortunately the attack had not pierced the skin or it could have ended very badly indeed.

IceMyotismon lurched back up and launched a Frozen Nightmare at the two of them while he thought they were distracted. Aayla saw it coming though and pulled Bly out of the way, causing the spirit to go whooshing past. IceMyotismon knew that sending another Raven Swarm at them from this distance would not be a good idea, since Aayla could take control of them again, so he charged up a Glacial Lash and prepared to charge, but before he could, he was suddenly blindsided by a barrage of bolts from Rex, which pummelled the stump of his missing arm. The vampire whirled about and launched the attack at him instead, but the clone dived to avoid it.

Nevertheless, it curled around his ankle. IceMyotismon yanked and Rex was hauled off his feet and dragged forwards. Desperately, Rex grabbed hold of a stalagmite and clung on grimly, halting his progress but also making him feel like he was being stretched. IceMyotismon leered as he pulled harder intent to either haul the clone off or rip him in two, when suddenly something whooshed in from the side and pierced his leg. IceMyotismon gasped and turned to see that Bly had launched a cable from his larger rifle, that had stuck in the Ice Digimon's leg. The clone had wrapped the cable round a boulder and was hauling on it, so he was no pulling IceMyotismon.

IceMyotismon tried to pull back but he was distracted when Aayla came charging at him once again, lightsaber poised to strike. He released Rex from his Glacial Lash and sent another Frozen Nightmare at her. Frustrated at the fact that her trusty lightsaber could not block any of his attacks, Aayla was forced to dodge again. IceMyotismon then leant down and snapped the cable, resulting in Bly falling over onto his back, but then he had to dodge another boulder thrown at him by Aayla.

"I've wasted enough time with the three of you," IceMyotismon declared, spreading his cloak as wide as it would go and preparing to launch the biggest Frozen Nightmare he could manage, which could probably take up half the cave itself. "Now, let's see if you can dodge this."

As the ice-raven began to form in front of him and grow to a massive size, he sneered as Aayla and the clones stared at it is shock. This would finally be the end of them! Finally!

But, just as he was about to launch his enormous creation...

"**WOLF CLAW!"**

...He was nailed in the back by two huge, red energy slashes. The ice-raven fizzled out of existence and he was thrown forwards some distance, only to be pushed back again by a burst of the Force from Aayla. As he collided painfully with the ground, he reared up again and whipped around to face the entrance. There, framed against the light filtering in from outside, was the form of WereGarurumon. He was still very battered, very bruised, very bloody and still clearly very exhausted, but on his feet and alive.

"YOU!" IceMyotismon screeched in anger. "How are you still able to fight?"

WereGarurumon let out a chuckle. Clearly it still pained him when he did so, but it was still a chuckle. "Well, that's a little bit of a secret," he growled, coughing slightly. "But don't count me out just yet, IceMyotismon. I will not rest until you are finally stopped."

"We will see," IceMyotismon shouted. **"GLACIAL- AARGH!"**

"Forgetting about somebody?" asked Bly as he and Rex fired another round of lasers into the vampire's back, catching him off-guard before the attack could land. This gave WereGarurumon the opening he required and he charged forwards at blinding speed and lunged at IceMyotismon, tackling into him. The two rolled some distance into the cave, forcing the clones to dodge aside as they punched and clawed one another in a frenzy of limbs.

But WereGarurumon got to his feet first and lifted IceMyotismon into the air, holding him by the stump of his arm and swinging him round and a circle before releasing him to send him crashing into another wall. The werewolf charged again, and IceMyotismon responded by sending out another Raven Swarm at him. But the ravens cawed and scratched in vain as WereGarurumon powered through them and unleashed another Wolf Claw, which slammed IceMyotismon back into the wall.

As the werewolf bore down on him, IceMyotismon hurriedly struck with another Glacial Lash, slamming WereGarurumon across the chest and throwing back, howling in pain. To his credit, WereGarurumon was able to flip onto his feet in mid-air, but he fell to one knee, the energy that had been restored to him already beginning to vanish. His nemesis flicked out his Glacial Lash once more, slamming WereGarurumon upside the jaw and knocking him onto his back, almost taking him out once again. IceMyotismon sneered as he raised his Glacial Lash for the final blow...

...When suddenly he saw _two_ grenades flying towards him. He stepped back but not nearly fast enough as they exploded by his feet and knocked him backwards, almost making him trip on a rock behind and forcing him to lower his attack to steady himself against the wall with his remaining arm. Meanwhile, Aayla ran over to WereGarurumon and helped him back onto his feet. The werewolf glanced across at the strange woman in confusion, and Aayla winked at him.

"Are you ready to take him down for good?" the Twi'lek asked.

WereGarurumon paused for a moment before grinning and saying, "Well, somebody has to."

"Good," nodded Aayla, and without another word, she pressed her activated lightsaber into his paw. "Good hunting."

Then, weaponless, she turned around and dashed towards IceMyotismon. The vampire saw her coming and quickly formed a Glacial Lash and prepared to launch it to make her dodge, but with a wave of her hand, Aayla mentally pushed his arm to one side to make the shot go extremely wide. Then, she thrust both hands out in front of her and shoved IceMyotismon back into the wall and held him there, pressing his body against the ice with the Force.

IceMyotismon writhed and struggled, desperate to break free, and sweat appeared on Aayla's forehead as she redoubled her efforts to keep him there. And it paid off, because a couple of seconds later, WereGarurumon took an enormous, flying leap that cost him most of the rest of his strength, straight over her head and sailed towards IceMyotismon, the blue blade Aayla had given him in both paws and raised above his head.

At the sight, IceMyotismon twisted and fought harder than ever, but he was too slow. With a final roar, WereGarurumon plunged the blade into IceMyotismon's chest, burying it up to the hilt as it pierced the vampire's Digi-core and the wall behind him.

Nobody moved for a few moments.

IceMyotismon gasped, now struggling to breathe himself and stared down at the lightsaber that was buried in his chest for several seconds in disbelief. Then, he slowly looked up into WereGarurumon's amber eyes. The werewolf was panting hard himself, but there was also a look of justice burning within the depths of those eyes.

"You... lose..." he panted, with finality.

A split second later, IceMyotismon cried out as he exploded into data, his cry seeming to echo even after he had long since started to float away into the air. WereGarurumon, Aayla, Rex and Bly watched them go, all of them battered and bruised but all still okay. Eventually, the data seemed to vanish from existence entirely, as it neared the ceiling. There was no portal opening – no sign that Anubimon was coming to pick it up. It simply vanished into thin air.

"At last," said WereGarurumon, breathing heavily but his eyes still burning with the fire of triumph. "His reign of tyranny is finally at an end."

There was cheering from the entrance to the cave that caught the attention of Aayla and the clones. They turned around to see the three Tamers clambering over the rocks towards them, huge grins pasted across their faces but it wasn't the Tamers doing the cheering. The three of them stared in astonishment at the little beings that were running ahead of the Tamers, cheering at the top of their lungs.

"What in the galaxy?" Bly breathed. "Is that... Is that you, guys?"

"You'll have to be more specific with that question," smirked a small green creature with a circular head with two small ear-like projections sticking out of either side, a single horn on top and a body that would look at home on a jellyfish hanging beneath the head as it bounced towards them. "Momentai, guys. You look like you've all swallowed a frog."

"Actually, I'd say it looks more like they've swallowed a Gummymon," chuckled a small yellow blob with large, pointed ears, little nubs for legs, blue eyes and a small fox-like tail sticking out the back.

"Ah, shut up," said the green one.

"Momentai," said the brown one, which looked exactly the same as the green one except for colouration and it also had two more horns.

"Again, shut up," the green one pouted, turning his head to the side and putting his non-existent nose in the air and making a humphing noise.

"Yeah, it's them," said Rex, in astonishment. "Blimey, what happen to you guys?"

"We de-digivolve to our In-Training forms," said the yellow one. "We transferred our power as Rookies into WereGarurumon to give him some more strength to stay alive."

"Does that mean that you won't be able to digivolve anymore?" asked Aayla in slight alarm.

"Nah, we're alright," said the green one. "We've got Tamers, so we'll be able to transform back soon enough. By the way, in this form, my name is Gummymon. And the yellow one over there is Viximon, while this one here is not, in fact, a chocolate present for the Easter Holidays but my sister, Kokomon."

"Don't push it, brother," Kokomon glared at Gummymon, who grinned.

"What?" asked Gummymon. "It's a reasonable joke – your name even sounds like 'Cocoa.'"

Kokomon opened her mouth to retort, but paused and closed it, looking thoughtful. "So it does," she said. "I never thought about that before."

"Ah, you're alright, Kokomon," said Henry. "Your brother's new name sounds like something that most people stick in their mouth, chew to a pulp and then stick under their desk at school."

"Which is then usually scraped off by Kazu or Kenta in detention," said Gummymon, grinning from ear-nub to ear-nub.

Aayla shook her head. "This is just beyond belief. I've seen you turn into so many big and destructive things that seeing you turn into something small for a change is just weird."

"We don't make a habit of it," said Viximon. "I find my little legs in this form annoying."

"At least you _have_ legs," said Gummymon.

All further joke-making and marvelling at the tiny little forms that the Digimon had taken on were abruptly cut off though, when WereGarurumon suddenly toppled backwards and collapsed onto his back. This startled everyone present and they immediately crowded around the werewolf.

"Are you okay?" asked Rika.

"I don't think so," WereGarurumon winced as pain coursed through him again. "I fear that I have reached my limit. My... end is near."

"What?" asked Henry, in alarm. "But... our partners put some of their power into you. Why are you still dying?"

WereGarurumon chuckled wryly, coughing as his chest rose and fell sharply. "Kid," he said. "Compared to an Ultimate like myself, the strength of three Rookies is not a lot, even if they were incredibly strong for their level. Plus, with the energy I had already sustained from IceMyotismon, I was still only just able to fight. And during the last struggle, IceMyotismon still managed to severely damage me, so now I'm back to square one."

"Why didn't you absorb IceMyotismon's data?" asked Rika. "You could have healed yourself then and..."

"No!" WereGarurumon growled firmly, startling Rika into silence. "I would never, ever absorb the data of a Digimon as tainted and evil as that. Who knows what having such data in my could have done to me from within?"

"But you're dying," Suzie said.

"Yes," nodded WereGarurumon, a slight smile curling on his snout as he glanced at the little kid. "But do not worry child, for I shall die in the knowledge that I died with honour and perished while defeating a powerful opponent who would have gone on killing if I had not done so."

"We can digivolve," said Kokomon. "Into a higher level and then we could transfer out energy to you then."

WereGarurumon chuckled painfully. "I appreciate the offer," he said. "But it's already too late. Look." He pointed down at his feet with his muzzle and as the others turned to see, to their dismay, they saw that WereGarurumon's feet were already gone and his legs were beginning to splinter into data particles as well, the wave of death slowly making its way up the werewolf's body.

"Oh no," Rika said, shutting her eyes and unable to look. "Not again." This scene was an uncomfortable reminder of the death of Leomon long ago. They hadn't known WereGarurumon for nearly as long but still, they were losing another good friend before their very eyes.

"Don't worry," said WereGarurumon. "I am sure that I will be... reconfigured by Anubimon," he grunted as the disintegration reached his knees.

"But that could take a long time," said Gummymon. "And there's no guarantee that you'll even remember who you are when you get back to the Digital World."

"Nevertheless, I shall return one day," WereGarurumon said. "No matter how long it takes me. In the meantime, before I pass on, I'd like to thank all of you from the bottom of my Digi-core. I have no idea who any of you are... or even _what_ a number of you are," he glanced at Aayla, who smiled back sadly. "But that doesn't matter. You assisted me when you did not have cause to and without your help, my death would have been in vain."

"It was the least we could do," said Aayla.

"Yeah," agreed Bly. "You, my friend, are one seriously tough Digimon."

"It was an honour to fight beside you," agreed Rex.

"And you as well," WereGarurumon stiffened as the deletion spread up towards his waist. Looking up at Aayla, he limply lifted his arm and passed Aayla's lightsaber back to her. "And you," he said. "Hold on to that weapon. That is one seriously good weapon. I take it that it was you who cut off IceMyotismon's arm?"

"Yeah," Aayla nodded. "It was."

"Nice one," he chuckled, and then coughed again as his stomach began to disappear.

Everyone had solemn expressions on their faces, except for Suzie who was looking downright tearful. She sniffed loudly as she looked down at the dying WereGarurumon, feeling, along with everyone else, that they had partially failed in their mission.

"Don't cry, child," WereGarurumon said. "There is a chance that we may meet again someday."

"I know," Suzie sniffed. "It's just, I wish it didn't have to end like this."

"Well, I'd rather stay alive as well," said the werewolf, "but sometimes death in unavoidable. But always remember, all of you, that you have my undying gratitude."

"Yeah," said Henry, wrapping an arm around Suzie comfortingly. "It was a pleasure to know you, even briefly."

WereGarurumon's chest and most of his arms were gone now. He smiled up at them and said, "Farewell," before closing his eyes one last time. Fresh tears bubbled up from Suzie as WereGarurumon's head was consumed by the deletion and then, the great, warrior werewolf Ultimate Digimon was nothing but particles floating around in the air. There were mixed reactions – the three Digimon stared at each other sadly, Suzie buried her face in Henry's stomach, resulting in both him and Rika kneeling down to comfort her, Aayla placed a hand over her heart and bowed her head to honour their fallen, temporary comrade, while the clones just stared at the data, removing their helmets to watch it vanish.

And that was why they were the first to notice it.

It didn't vanish. It didn't float away either. Instead, it began to fall towards the floor, the particles regrouping together. "Hey, guys," Rex said quickly. "What's going on?" Everyone looked up at the clones words and stepped back in alarm, watching as all the particles that had previously been WereGarurumon seemed to swirl downwards like a miniature tornado, coming together at ground level and congealing into one solid mass again. The particles seemed to pieces themselves together once more and, eventually, when whatever was going on stopped, the group of nine stared at the thing which had been created before their very eyes.

"I don't believe it," breathed Rika in awe.

"Is that what I think it is?" asked Aayla, equally stunned.

"Yeah," nodded Henry, his mind boggled. "It's a Digi-Egg. WereGarurumon became a Digi-Egg."

And so he had. Sitting calmly on the stones right in front of them was a large egg. It was white in colour, patterned with numerous blue equilateral triangles, all at seemingly random angles across the entire surface.

"But..." Viximon whispered, as surprised as everyone else. "But... that's impossible!"

Bly frowned. "I thought that all Digimon were born as Digi-Eggs," he said. "Isn't that right?"

"It is," nodded Kokomon. "And when they're reconfigured by Anubimon they come back as Digi-Eggs as well, but what happened here just isn't possible."

"Care to explain?" asked Bly.

"Alright," nodded Viximon. "WereGarurumon just died, so he should have gone straight to Anubimon's realm, unless he was absorbed by another Digimon, which he wasn't. But instead, he transformed into a Digi-Egg on the spot. That has never, _ever_ happened before. Well, not unless Anubimon pays a special visit while the Digimon is dying or extracts their data from another Digimon, but that certainly didn't happen."

"Maybe he went to Anubimon's realm and then Anubimon immediately sent him back?" asked Rika.

"No," Gummymon shook his head. "His data didn't go anywhere. It just, sort of, pooled together and became a Digi-Egg on the spot. You saw what happened to IceMyotismon's data – it vanished into thin air. The same thing would have happened with WereGarurumon's, but it didn't. It didn't go anywhere. And besides, if Anubimon was behind this, he would have sent the Digi-Egg to the Digital World, not back here."

"So, you're saying that what just happened here is completely unprecedented?" asked Aayla in amazement.

"Exactly," nodded Kokomon. "We just witnessed an anomaly."

"Well," Gummymon grinned. "An anomaly it may be, but I'm going to call it something else instead. I'm going to call it a miracle. Our new buddy may be stuck in an egg at the moment, but we've still got him."

"Indeed," agreed Viximon. "Gummymon is right. It _is_ a miracle."

"So we didn't lose him after all?" asked Suzie.

"Only temporarily," said Rika. "We only have to wait until he hatches before we see him again."

"Yes," said Bly. "That's all well and good but what are we going to do with him in the meantime. I'm not exactly qualified to take care of unhatched eggs. I'm not a farmer."

Rex almost pointed out that he knew a clone who had deserted the army and had become a farmer, but that would mean breaking his promise not to turn him in for deserting so he didn't mention it.

"We'll have to look after him," said Aayla, stepping over to the egg and delicately picking it up and holding it like it could break at any moment. "Does it require any special treatment?"

"Not really," said Viximon. "The best thing to do with a Digi-Egg is to leave it alone. It'll hatch when it feels like it, and that could be later today or not for a year's time. We'll just have to take it back to the Jedi Temple with us and keep an eye on it until it hatches."

"And then," Gummymon sniggered. "We might have a new Digimon friend fighting on our side."

"There's always room for one more of you guys," said Bly, chuckling.

"Alright," said Aayla. "Then until he hatches, this Egg is our responsibility. What we do with him when we're on missions and stuff, I have no idea though."

"We can hire an egg-sitter," Gummymon laughed. "Or maybe we can find and duck and teach it to sit on it."

"Gummymon," Henry rolled his eyes.

"Momentai," chuckled Gummymon.

Not long after the death and surprising and mysterious rebirth (almost) of WereGarurumon, the snowstorm outside began to pass. After it had died down significantly enough, the In-training Digimon digivolved back up to the Rookie level and Lopmon went a step further, becoming Turuiemon and the new moving campfire, courtesy of Flamedramon's Fire Rocket. Then, the troop left the cave and began the long trek back to the city, Aayla using her senses to avoid the native Crystal Worms and holding the Digi-Egg in both arms.

And, after they had gone, the Digi-Gnome that had granted Suzie's wish to have it not 'end like this' and had been concealed behind a stalagmite after it had been smashed free of the ice it was contained in during the battle emerged from hiding and giggled. Feeling its work was done, it flew off into the cosmos, eager to explore this strange new dimension that Parallelmon had landed it in.

* * *

Be honest. How many of you were expected _that_ little twist at the end?

No, WereGarurumon will not be appearing again for a while, but he's still there, just waiting to emerge once more later on in the story. But what will the circumstances surrounding his hatching be? You'll have to wait and find out.

Well, that brings an end to the Star Wars side of the Mygeeto arc. And with the completion of the next chapter, I will finally hit triple digits. I am so psyched for writing the next chapter, because it should be a doozy as well as the fact it will be Chapter 100. Woot! If I keep going like this, this story is going to exceed two million words. Won't that be something? It'll take people a week to read it cover to cover – if it had covers anyway.

* * *

Next time...

Impmon and his friend's search for the location of the angel Digimon continues, but their footsteps are being dogged by GranDracmon's henchmon. But they're about to meet someone who might be able to give them a lead.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 100 : One or Two Old Friends**


	100. One or Two Old Friends

And at last this monumental day has come to pass. The chapter count for my story has now reached three digits. I am immensely proud of myself and this story. And now, I am hopping to do even more, so much so that I should probably slow down and take a break from writing for a week or two, but I can't seem to be able to make myself.

I hope you all enjoy Chapter 100. I liked writing it. Please read on.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 100:- One or Two Old Friends**

* * *

While the Digimon, Rex, Bly and Aayla were traipsing through the mountains of the planet Mygeeto in a completely different dimension, a close friend of some of theirs was doing something pretty similar in the Digital World.

"Okay," Lilamon griped, as they moved along, attempting to shield her head-petals from the blazing sunlight that didn't actually come from a sun. "Who was it who decided that walking through a desert would be a good idea?"

"Don't look at me," Impmon said, as he trudged through the baking sands in front of her. "It wasn't my idea to come back to the Desert Level. Blame that Data Stream we went through for dumping us in the middle of nowhere again."

"I can't blame a Data Stream," Lilamon whined. "They just put you somewhere random – it's not like they have any thoughts of their own. And since I can't blame the Data Stream, that means I have to blame you, Wingdramon."

"Me?" the dragon complained from where he was hovering nearby. "Why me?"

"Because it was your idea to go through the Data Stream in the first place," Lilamon pointed out.

"She has a point," said Diatrymon. "It didn't exactly do us much good. But we can't blame Wingdramon either – it's not like he deliberately made us land in the middle of the worst place in the Digital World to be any more than the Data Stream did."

"And it could have been worse," said Wingdramon. "We could have landed in the middle of the ice-fields."

"Maybe," said Lilamon. "But I'm a plant Digimon as well as a fairy and Plant Digimon to not do very well in conditions with searing heat and no water like this place. Unless you're a Togemon that is, and I most certainly am not a Togemon."

"Didn't you used to be a Togemon when you were a Champion Digimon?" asked Impmon.

"No," Lilamon shook her head. "I was a Sunflowmon."

"Ah, of course."

"But that's beside the point," said Lilamon. "The point is that most plants and places like this do not mix. Unless I get out of this sun and find some water then I'll go all brown and crinkly and... floopy."

"Hey, that's a good one," said Calumon. "I like that word. I'll put it down in the Calumon Book of Calumon."

"Wingdramon," Lilamon shouted at the dragon. "Since it was your idea that got us into this mess, I demand that you fly higher and allow us to take shelter in the shade of your wings."

Wingdramon sighed, but nodded, knowing that if he didn't do so then his friend would probably be in very real danger of wilting, and also he would get yelled at some more. Lilamon might be a bubbly, friendly Digimon most of the time but she had a slight vindictive side as well. So, he hovered up higher and stretched his wings out to their fullest capacity, which was extremely wide and bathed Lilamon, Diatrymon, Impmon and Calumon in its heat.

Abruptly as the cooling shade washed over her, Lilamon's usual grin returned and she chirped, "Thanks, buddy. Knew I could count on you," up at him.

Wingdramon rolled his eyes. Diatrymon shook his head and said, "Sometimes, Lilamon, your mood swings scare me to death."

"Zip it, Beaky," Lilamon glared at him.

"Case in point," Diatrymon said, stepping away from her slightly. Lilamon giggled. She just loved it when she managed to rattle Diatrymon because usually when she did so the word 'rattle' became onomatopoeic, because Diatrymon ruffled his feather to calm his nerves, resulting in the metal plates clanking against one another. It was a private joke that Lilamon had developed, and Diatrymon still had yet to understand why she giggled whenever he ruffled his wings.

Impmon, now no longer blinded by the intense heat and feeling the coolness himself, glanced up at Wingdramon and said, "Thanks, big guy."

"Yeah," said Calumon. "I was beginning to feel like I'd been caught inside an oven again."

Impmon blinked. "Again?"

Calumon rubbed his ears sheepishly. "Well, there was this one time where Takato's mum made creampuff and they smelled so good that I couldn't wait for them to be baked and I got shut in the oven. If Guilmon hadn't smelled deep-frying Calumon I would be all crispy now."

Impmon laughed. "You may be an In-Training Digimon, Calumon, but you can be incredibly resilient."

"What's that mean?"

"If dense."

"Hey!"

"Keep it up, Wingdramon," said Lilamon. "I could get used to this. But I could still do with some water. Do you see an oasis or something from up there?"

"No," Wingdramon shook his head. "There's a large mountain up ahead but no sign of any liquid."

"Well, maybe they have water on that mountain," shrugged Lilamon. "Shall we head that way?"

"Might as well," said Impmon. "We're more likely to find someone living on a mountain than we are in this Fanglongmon-forsaken desert. Your plan of going through a Data Stream in the hope of finding more Digimon to ask about those angels really didn't work, huh, Wingdramon?"

"We knew there was a chance it wouldn't," said the dragon.

"Okiedokee," said Lilamon. "Full steam forwards. But don't go too fast, Wingdramon. We want to stay in your shadow, where it's nice a cool."

"Yes, and while your all cooling off down there, my back is still baking," Wingdramon complained.

"Oh, suck it up," Lilamon shouted. "You're a reptile _and_ a dragon. You're made for the desert."

"Again, she has a point," said Diatrymon. "I wasn't doing so well wither – metal conducts heat after all and if _I'd_ been out in the sun for much longer you would have started to smell burning feathers and that certainly isn't pleasant."

"What – the smell or the burning itself?" asked Impmon.

"Both," said Diatrymon, "but the burning specifically."

They continued walking in silence for some time. Impmon thought back to the last couple of days, which they had spent traipsing around the Forest level in search of anything better than the results they had already acquired, which was basically zilch. None of the Digimon they encountered seemed to have any clue as to how to find an Angel Digimon, except for one Digimon in particular, a Baronmon they had encountered meditating on a rock. Thinking that he might be able to offer some answers, they had gone to him.

When asked, the Baronmon had said, "Well, of course I know how to find the angel Digimon."

Calumon and Lilamon had cheered excitedly and Impmon had quickly said, "Well go on then, Totem-face. Tell us quickly."

"Sure," the Baronmon had nodded and then he had gone silent. After several moments of waiting, the tension mounting and mounting with the group of Digimon on a knife-edge. You could have heard a pin drop in that glade, even if the pin had been half a mile away.

Then, the Baronmon had opened his eyes and said, "I forget."

It took considerably effort for Impmon not to warp-digivolve to Beelzemon Blast Mode and blast the rock the Baronmon was sitting on to pieces just to see him fall on his bum. Lilamon had had not qualms with this though, and had done just that with her Marvel Shot. Then, the group had left, leaving the bemused Baronmon behind.

Then, of course, the following day, they'd been attacked by another one of GranDracmon's flunkies. This time it had been a Devitamamon, and despite the fact he was essentially a Mega level Egg with crocodile-like jaws and huge limbs sticking out of the gaps in the front and sides of his shell, (as well as some puny little bat-like wings sticking out the back that weren't really good for anything) he had put up an extremely good fight, proving incredibly difficult to harm. Nothing they did even seemed to make a dent upon the eggshell, which was bizarre since... well it was an _eggshell_. They were supposed to be fragile.

In the end, they hadn't actually defeated the egg Digimon in an all-out battle. Lilamon had actually been the one to save the day that time around. She had come up with a clever strategy – instead, she had pulled a couple of vines from a nearby tree and, while Devitamamon had been distracted trying to blast Diatrymon, she had snagged his jaws with one of the vines and tied them shut, before looping to other beneath the jaws and around the shell several times and then done the same around a nearby tree.

Devitamamon had thrashed around, but was unable to free himself. Beelzemon had had half a mind to just leave him there and get away before he could break out and pursue them, but he had no doubt that Devitamamon would probably kill a whole bunch of innocent Digimon if they left him still alive, so he had stepped up to the shell, pushed the jaws aside and fired a Corona Blaster directly into the depths of the cracked egg. It hadn't been his proudest kill ever, but it had been a lesser of two evils and they all knew it.

Impmon shook his head a little angrily, trying to clear it of these thoughts. The way he had destroyed that Digimon still felt extremely uncomfortable for him and ever since that had happened yesterday a wave of paranoia had hit the little Rookie – a bigger one than normal anyway. Although he _knew_ that he was not an evil Digimon, there was a small part of his brain that was worrying if he was becoming evil slowly and that the way he'd killed his enemy, helpless against the tree, had just been the next step. He was trying to ignore it or stamp down on it, but it just kept niggling away at him in an extremely frustrating way.

Impmon hoped that it would be a while before GranDracmon sent another soldier at him. Hopefully passing through that Data Stream had thrown him off the scent, at least temporarily if nothing else. But somehow, Impmon sincerely doubted it. Who knew what GranDracmon was capable of doing?

Diatrymon suddenly spoke up. "I am sensing a great deal of anxiety from you, Impmon."

Huh?" Impmon looked up at the Terror Bird questioningly. "What, are you psychic now?"

"No," said the bird. "But it was pretty easy to tell from that facial expression."

Impmon shrugged. "I'm always anxious about something at the moment. It always about whether we're safe, whether we'll ever find the angels, if my Tamers are okay, if the others are okay, if my friends who are trapped in an alternate dimension are okay and the list goes on and on. I'm getting used to it."

"Well, I am afraid that I can't be of much help in most of those fields," said Diatrymon. "But I can tell you one thing. I can see the mountain up ahead now. Can you?"

Impmon looked up and had to squint against the bright light that was reflecting off the desert sands, but he could just about make out a giant structure looking in the distance. It was a mountain alright, and a very tall one at that. It almost didn't look real because instead of sloping up rather steeply like most mountains did, it appeared to be made entirely of a set of cliffs which got steadily narrower and narrower as it got the top, which appeared to be slightly flat, although it was difficult to tell at such a distance. It looked like a series of cylinders stacked up on top of each other, each one smaller than the last.

"That is one weird looking mountain," said Calumon. "When we went on that camping trip thingie and went up that mountain it didn't look anything like that. And it had snow on the top. Why doesn't that one have snow on the top, Impmon?"

"Maybe because it's in the middle of a desert?" asked Impmon.

"So?" asked Calumon. "_All_ the mountains I've seen have snow on the top."

"How many mountains have you seen?" asked Impmon.

"Loads on cartoon shows," said Calumon firmly. "And there's these mountains back in the Human World called the Hammer-layers, which are almost completely covered in snow, and they think there might be some kind of undiscovered ape-man thing in them. I bet you didn't know that, did ya?"

"I think you mean the Himalayas, Calumon," said Impmon, who _had_ heard of it. "And as to that creature – if it exists at all – it's probably a very, very lost Mojyamon or something."

"That poor Mojyamon," Lilamon said. "You guys should go to try and find him when you get back and help him get home."

Impmon paused and said, "You know, I might just do that."

"Yes, well, anyway," said Diatrymon. "What I was going to say was that even if there's no life on that mountain either, it seems to me like it would be a good place to take shelter for the time being. We can protect ourselves there and there's less chance of somebody sneaking up behind us, isn't there?"

"Well, I suppose that's true," nodded Impmon. "But it looks kinds deserted to me?"

"How can you tell from this distance?" asked Calumon.

"I can't," said Impmon. "I'm just saying that because it's on this level and there's almost nothing around here. Besides, what kind of sane person would live on a mountain like that?"

"Actually it doesn't look that bad to me," said Wingdramon. "If I were a Digimon that lived in the Desert level I might want to nest on that mountain, so that I could see the lay of the land. And we might be able to do the same thing. If we climbed up there we can get a good view of the surrounding area and see if we can spot any further signs of civilisation or at least life of some kind."

"Or preferably a Data Stream to get us out of this place," said Lilamon. "I'm all for jumping on the nearest one and high-tailing it out of here."

"You and me both," said Diatrymon. "I'm beginning to feel really thirsty. And I don't even _need_ to drink."

"Well, what about me?" Lilamon asked. "I'm an actual _plant_! I- wha- hey! Impmon why'd you stop." She was referring to the fact that she had almost tripped over the little purple Rookie, as her foot petals had brushed against the back of his head when Impmon stopped. The Rookie was standing stock-still and it looked like every nerve ending of his was jangling. His green eyes were wide and his fingers splayed.

"Hey, what's up?" Lilamon leaned around him and waved a petal in front of his face, while everyone else turned to look back at them curiously. "Helloooo? Anybody in there?"

"Ssh," Impmon said, holding up a gloved hand for silence. Lilamon immediately shut up and started listening, as did the others. Even Behemoth, who had been trundling along behind the others for most of this time, shut off his engine so they could listen harder. The silence was absolutely deafening. There wasn't a sound to be heard anywhere – not even a slight breeze rustling at the sands.

Lilamon frowned. After about half a minute of nothing, she looked back down at Impmon and said, "I don't hear anyth-WAAGH!"

Impmon had spun about to face her, exploding into bright light in the process and morphing into the intimidating form of Beelzemon Blast Mode right in mid-turn and lunged at the fairy Digimon. For a terrifying moment, Lilamon thought that Beelzemon had gone rogue and was attacking him, since his claws seemed to be aiming at her chest, but instead, the former Demon Lord grabbed her by her shoulder and flung her to the side, causing her to land in a rather dirty heap in the sand, and then Beelzemon grabbed the enormous, bladed tail that had surged out of the sand and had been plunging towards Lilamon's exposed back, halting it in its tracks.

Lilamon stared at the tail sticking out of the sand – it appeared to be completely made of bone, with several segments running along its length to the bulbous end, which had several backwards pointing spines and an enormous, serrated and curved metal blade sticking out the tip. Beelzemon had grabbed it just past the metallic blade, and the point of the blade stopped just before it stabbed him between his eyes. Lilamon almost hyperventilated – if Beelzemon had been any slower that thing would have stabbed into her back and that would have been the end of it for her.

"Nice try," Beelzemon growled. "But you'll have to do better than that."

He abruptly leapt back as the ground beneath him exploded and the rest of the Digimon rose from the sand. The rest of its body was made of bone as well, and the creature stood on its hind legs, which had huge claws on it. A hunched ribcage extended from the pelvis and the creature's arms were huge, thick pincers, with red lower mandibles. It also had four red, spike-legs extended downwards from the ribs, though it didn't appear to use them. Its head was a insect-skull with three, glowing yellow eyes and a large jaw full of teeth.

The Digimon growled at the group as Lilamon got back up again and the others faced off against it. "It takes a skilled Digimon to detect me when I do not want to be detected," said the Digimon. "You just denied me my kill."

"Who are you?" asked Beelzemon.

"He's a SkullScorpiomon," said Wingdramon gravely. "Also known as the Desert Assassin. They are very good at killing and they have a venomous tail, with poison that works so fast that if he had hit Lilamon, she would have died before she even felt that she'd been stabbed."

"That's encouraging," said Lilamon, gulping slightly.

"You may have foiled my initial attack, Beelzemon," said SkullScorpiomon. "But can you defeat _all_ of us?"

The sand exploded in five other places as well, and more of the same type of Digimon rose out of the desert ground, until there were six, SkullScorpiomon surrounding the group. Calumon started trembling fearfully and everyone else got ready for battle.

"Let me guess," Beelzemon growled, readying his cannons. "More of GranDracmon's minions come to try and take me back with you?"

"We would have preferred to pick off your companions one by one," the first SkullScorpiomon sneered. "But this way works good with us too. Attack!"

The SkullScorpiomon charged forward and began their assault on the group. One of them charged towards Diatrymon, tail poised to strike and ready to plunge it into the Terror Bird's side. Diatrymon stepped back, but the SkullScorpiomon lashed out at him with blinding speed, the tail lancing over the head of its owner to strike at the Champion level Digimon.

At the last second, Diatrymon brought the blade on his wing into play and blocked the strike, but he was still pushed backwards, the grip his talons usually gave him useless in the smooth sand. He had to strain hard to keep the bladed tail from pushing his wing down and piercing his side anyway, but he managed to hold it. Annoyed, the SkullScorpiomon brought his pincers into play, lashing them out and grabbing Diatrymon by the neck in one and by one of his legs in the other. Diatrymon squawked in shock and surprise as he was lifted bodily into the air and raised above SkullScorpiomon's head.

The SkullScorpiomon laughed triumphantly as he reared his tail back to strike again as Diatrymon struggled in the grip of the Ultimate-level Digimon. Gnashing his beak, Diatrymon desperately tried to free himself by lashing downwards with his other foot and slamming it into the SkullScorpiomon's face. The impact itself did little damage, but one of Diatrymon's talons stabbed into SkullScorpiomon's central eye. SkullScorpiomon shrieked and dropped the bird, backing away and rearing upwards, shaking his head to try and flailing at the air with his pincers in pain.

Diatrymon quickly scrambled to his feet and took advantage of the SkullScorpiomon's exposed ribs with a **"MEGA DASH IMPACT!" **and slammed himself into the enemy's underside, his armour protecting him from the sharp, spike legs that were dangling there. SkullScorpiomon cried out and was flipped onto his back, where he started struggling to get back onto his feet, his legs flailing in the air.

Diatrymon smirked, but that smirk was promptly wiped from his face when SkullScorpiomon's tail lashed out at him from the ground. Springing upwards, Diatrymon jumped over the swipe, but as he landed, the tail swung at him again from the other side. Having no time to dodge, Diatrymon did the first thing that came to mind, he swung his head forward to meet it and grabbed the tail about a quarter of the way down from the tip in his jaws.

SkullScorpiomon blinked in amazement. Diatrymon was pretty stunned himself, but he didn't question it and quickly heaved, pulling SkullScorpiomon into the air and flinging him back to the ground again. But SkullScorpiomon quickly broke loose and managed to right himself, turning around to face the Ancient Bird Digimon again. Diatrymon growled and backed off a little as his adversary advanced.

* * *

Two more of the SkullScorpiomon were going up against Wingdramon, although they had encountered a problem with this – they couldn't actually reach the dragon Digimon with their main attack, because he was hovering out of reach.

"Get down here and fight us!" one of them shouted. "Stop floating there like a coward and join the battle!"

"I'm perfectly happy where I am, thank you," said Wingdramon. "I have no desire to be killed before I even realise it."

"Pathetic," sneered one of the two. "In that case, if you won't come down towards us, then we're going to have to bring the fight to you, right?"

"Yes," nodded the other. "Let's do it."

"**BLACK OUT!" **they both cried and they began to spew a foul-looking black fog from their jaws that rose into the air towards Wingdramon. The dragon type Digimon stared at it as it approached, but he wasn't just assuming that it wouldn't do much damage. He knew what would happen if that stuff hit him and it would not be a desirable outcome.

As it floated towards him though, the Ultimate grinned wryly and said, "Don't you know that you should never use a gaseous attack like Black Out on a Digimon with wings as big as mine?"

"Huh?" asked the SkullScorpiomon duo uncomprehendingly.

Then, Wingdramon began to flap his wings hard, creating huge gusts of air down at the thick, inky looking fog with each sweep that pulsed it back towards the SkullScorpiomon instead. The two Viral Ultimates only had time to gasp fearfully before their own attack swept over them.

"GAH! MY EYES!" yelled one of them. "I'M BLIND!"

"OF COURSE YOU'RE BLIND, YOU IDIOT!" yelled the other one. "THAT'S WHAT OUR ATTACK DOES. DAMN YOU, FLYBOY! DAMN YOU!"

Wingdramon smirked. "Let's see you try and hit me now that you've been robbed of your sight," he said, for even when all the fog had blown away, both the SkullScorpiomon were still very much blind. After all, that was what their attack did. But Wingdramon stopped flapping and rose higher into the air, opening his jaws wide and expelling a **"BLAZE SONIC BREATH!"** down on them. The attack nailed them both and sent them screaming and writhing as they were cooked inside their shells by the firey attack. But it didn't finish them off – they emerged from the flames broiled but still alive.

"Get back here!" one of them waved its pincers blindly and flailed about with its tail. "Come back and fight!"

"Ow!" yelled the other one as it received a whack in the face with the other's tail. "Watch it you!"

"Sorry," said the first. "But where'd the dragon go!"

"How the heck am I supposed to know?" asked the second.

Suddenly Wingdramon streaked over ahead and cried **"WING BLAST!"** sending a pulse of air down at speed and flinging one of the SkullScorpiomon into the other, so the two went rolling across the sand to land in a heap.

Without waiting for them to get up, Wingdramon reversed his flight and dived down towards them, retracted his head slightly so that the lance on his back stuck out and with a cry of **"EXPLODE SONIC LANCE!" **he rammed the point of his weapon into the two, generating a colossal explosion around all three. Wingdramon quickly backed out of the smoke and waited for it to clear. When it did, he was surprised to see that the SkullScorpiomon were still alive and only a little damage. They were still blind, but their thick armour was extremely tough indeed. It would take a lot of pounding to bring them down.

* * *

The fourth SkullScorpiomon was facing off against Lilamon. The plant/fairy Digimon folded her arms and glared at it. "So you think that you can take me down all on your lonesome, do you?" she asked it.

The SkullScorpiomon snickered. "This should be a piece of cake. What's a fragile little thing like you going to do to an armoured creature like myself."

Lilamon smiled and wagged a petal like a finger from left to right. "Ah-ah-ah," she said, like she was lecturing him. "It's that sort of attitude that gets you killed." She changed the direction of her petal waving so that she was beckoning to her opponent instead. "Why don't you find out what this fragile little thing has in her arsenal?"

"Alright," said SkullScorpiomon, and then instantly charged forward, raising its tail above its head to strike her and yelled, **"POISON PIERCE!" **at the top of its lungs and then lashed out so fast that it was impossible for the eye to track it. But Lilamon was equally fast and darted out of the way, spinning upwards and hovering out of reach. As the SkullScorpiomon flailed wildly upwards with its tail, Lilamon pointed her flowers down at it.

"**MARVEL SHOT!"** she shouted and unleashed her iridescent energy spheres down on top of it. They slammed down on top of SkullScorpiomon's head, but Lilamon was shocked to see that other than a slight flinch and a couple of char-marks the attack did absolutely nothing.

"Ha!" SkullScorpiomon crowed. "I may not be made of Chrome-Digizoid, but it's going to take a lot more than that to get the better of me, or even damage me in the slightest."

"Alright," said Lilamon. "Try this one. **LILA SHOWER!"** she sent down the pink energy beams from the tips of her petals but to her dismay the attack had no more effect than the last one. It just seemed to bounce off the thick bone.

"My turn," sneered SkullScorpiomon. **"BLACK OUT!"**

Lilamon started as the thick, poisonous fog billowed out towards her. She quickly floated backwards and swept around it, having no desire to become blind any time soon. Unwittingly she moved a little too close to the ground and SkullScorpiomon charged her with his tail again. She yelped and leapt back into the sky again before she could be struck at SkullScorpiomon continued to lash upwards at her.

Thinking quickly, Lilamon thought up her options. Her attacks were having little effect, and she doubted her paralysing Un Deux Pollen would work either because that attack needed to touch skin to work. Sighing, she used the only attack she had left to her, although she wasn't a fan of the attack question.

"**BEAUTY SLAP!"** she raised her hands and slapped them through the air, generating translucent energy blades in the air that struck SkullScorpiomon in the face. The attack did no damage, but suddenly SkullScorpiomon stopped and stared at Lilamon.

"Wow!" he breathed, taking in her appearance. Then he started gushing, "You're beautiful! I think I'm in love! Would you please go out on a date with me! Please! Please!"

Lilamon shuddered. She hated using Beauty Slap to halt a Digimon in its tracks, preferring to use Un Deux Pollen instead, because the attacking Digimon was usually a bad guy or a creep anyway and the thought of gaining the affections of someone like that sent a chill down her spine. But for now, she put the matter aside and just concentrated on barraging SkullScorpiomon with Marvel Shots. The starstruck Digimon offered no resistance.

* * *

And that left the other two SkullScorpiomon facing off against Beelzemon himself. But this turned out to be the biggest mistake of their lives because, while they might be powerful Ultimate level Digimon, they were no match for their far more powerful Mega level opponent at all, particularly in his even more powerful Blast Mode.

"**POISON PIERCE!"** cried one, charging towards Beelzemon with his tail held high, while the other one rushed in from the side to try and catch him off guard. Beelzemon folded his wings against his back and then lashed out, seizing the tail of first attacker and throwing him into the air, straight up, before he knew what was happening.

Then, he turned to the second one and offloaded a **"DOUBLE IMPACT!"** right at it. He had to admit he was surprised by how little damage the attack did, but the bullets still severely dented the enemy's skull.

The SkullScorpiomon staggered backwards with a cry of "OW!" and trying to clear the ringing from his head by shaking it vigorously. Beelzemon smirked and surged forwards, grabbing the enemy by the base of its pincers and throwing it to one side, tumbling into its side nearby.

"Hah!" it crowed, scrambling up. "Is that all you-OOF!" he suddenly stopped its taunting when the first SkullScorpiomon landed on top of it and the two of them groaned, and tried to separate from one another, but their tails kept snagging on the others.

"Get you tail out of my way!" the first one cried.

"Your way?" cried the other. "Your tail is in _my_ way."

"Aaw," Beelzemon said. "Allow me to give the two of you a hand," he raised Berenjena and pointed it at the two, who gulped and struggled harder than ever, but they were far too slow and Beelzemon launched a **"CORONA BLASTER!"** at the two of them. The impact from the blast was enough to separate the two SkullScorpiomon, who went rolling in opposite directions, both of them smoking.

One of them scrambled to its feet after a couple of seconds, causing Beelzemon to raise an eyebrow in surprise. "You guys certainly have some endurance, if you can stand that attack," he said.

"Let's show you how much endurance we have," the SkullScorpiomon said and scuttled towards Beelzemon in another speedy charge, pincers and tail both poised to strike at him. Beelzemon braced himself and didn't move out of the way, waiting for the SkullScorpiomon to get close to him. When it did, he seized it beneath both pincers once more and held it back, keeping it at bay fairly easily despite the pushing from the Ultimate. SkullScorpiomon whipped his tail down (seeking to wound Beelzemon, not to kill him), but Beelzemon then brought his own tail into play and the prehensile appendage wrapped around the enemy's.

Beelzemon yanked with his tail and pulled the SkullScorpion into the air, then kicked it heavily as it came down, sending it flying a short distance, and he leapt after it, landing heavily on it afterwards.

At a scuttling noise, he looked up and saw the other SkullScorpiomon rushing towards him, but suddenly that adversary was rammed in the side by none other than Behemoth, the motorcycle getting under the ribs of the enemy Digimon and flipping him onto his back. Behemoth continued to ram against the flailing SkullScorpiomon, keeping it off balance.

Beelzemon chuckled and then turned to the one he was standing on, which was attempting to get to its feet. "Let's see if you can stand up to this! **DARKNESS CLAW!"** He stabbed down into a chink in the enemy's armour with his claws, plunging them into the gap and levering outwards. SkullScorpiomon shrieked as there was a crack like a gunshot as a portion of his armour snapped and went flying off, revealing the skin beneath. Beelzemon stabbed a second Darkness Claw into that flesh and it was all over. The SkullScorpiomon disappeared into data and floated away.

With that done, Beelzemon turned around to survey the rest of the battle. It seemed like the others were holding their own but they were all struggling to penetrate the thick bony armour of their opponents. Calumon was hiding behind a rock nearby, knowing that throwing himself into the battle would only get him killed. Beelzemon wondered again why he had volunteered at all.

But he cast that aside and was preparing to go and help Diatrymon, who looked the most in trouble at the moment, he was briefly plunged into shadow. He blinked, only out of the light for a split second, and he watched as the blotch of shadow moved away from him on the ground. Looking up, he spotted the thing causing that shadow. He shielded his eyes, trying to get a better look, but he could still see only a faint blotch against the sky since whatever it was was so high up.

But, as he watched, the shadow-caster began to dive lower and towards the ground, straight towards the battle area. Beelzemon readied his cannon, fearing that this was another henchmon of GranDracmon. But, as he began to discern a form from the approaching figure, Beelzemon's eyes widened in surprise.

Flying down towards the action at high speed was a Digimon with an unusual body plan. His head, like Diatrymon's, was that of a bird wearing a thick, metal helmet, only this Digimon's had a huge spike pointing out the middle of the back of it, and had no other armour on his body and there was a crest of feathers poking out the back. It had a four-legged body, with a mane of white feathers around its neck, but its body was unusual in that the front half looked like something that belonged on a bird Digimon, including the taloned legs, whereas the back half was like some sort of tiger. It tail had a green tip with a mouth full of sharp teeth at the end and the wings sweeping out from his shoulders were bat-like in appearance.

Beelzemon had seen this Digimon before. It was one of the ones who had come to help in the fight against Ogudomon.

It was Gryphonmon.

As Gryphonmon plunged towards the fighting, Beelzemon saw the Mega level Mythical Beast Digimon open it jaws and he realized what he was about to do. "Guys!" he cried. "Get out of there, quickly! Now!"

The others heard Beelzemon's shout over the sounds of battle and didn't stand around to question him. Wingdramon and Lilamon quickly swooped out of the way, whereas Diatrymon and Behemoth ran off along the ground, leaving the five remaining SkullScorpiomon standing around in bemusement.

"Hey, where'd they go?" asked one of them.

"My love! Come back!" wailed another.

"Oh, leave me alone," Lilamon shouted, shuddering. "I hate that attack. I'm never using it again."

"I can't see! What's going on?" cried another.

"Get back and here and fight, you..." another started, but he didn't get to finish because at that point, Gryphonmon unleashed his attack.

"**SOLAR ROAR!"** he bellowed in a deep voice, and let off an enormous screech that pulsed a huge shock-wave from his mouth, an attack that put Diatrymon's Destruction Roar to shame. The pounding shockwaves washed over all five SkullScorpiomon, who wailed in agony, but were barely heard over the screeching of the attack that was pummelling them. The other Digimon regrouped and watched in fascination as the SkullScorpiomon writhed and tossed about on the floor.

And, to their amazement, all five of the SkullScorpiomon were disintegrated on the spot.

"Whoa," said Diatrymon, eyes wide with envy. "I wish I could do that!"

"Hey, that's no fair?" Lilamon pouted. "How come that guy's attack worked so well against them when all of mine did nothing?"

"Most of our attacks are physical," said Wingdramon. "Designed to pummel the enemy on the outside, which the SkullScorpiomon were able to resist thanks to their armour. But Gryphonmon's Solar Roar disrupts the entire data structure of its target, which means that armour is useless against it, no matter how much of it you have."

"I want to do that," whined Diatrymon.

"How do you know all this stuff anyway?" asked Lilamon.

"I've travelled a lot," Wingdramon shrugged.

Gryphonmon landed amidst what had previously been a battleground, thudding to the ground on all fours and turning to face the group of other Digimon. He spread his wings threateningly and growled, "Who is it that dares to enter my territory?"

"Hey there, Gryphonmon," said Beelzemon, stepping forward and grinning and the Mythical Beast Digimon. "It's certainly been a long time, hasn't it?"

Gryphonmon stared at Beelzemon for a few moments, his eyes widening as if unable to comprehend what he was seeing. Then, another voice broke out, which made Lilamon and Diatrymon jump in surprise. It said, it a drawling tone of voice, "Haven't we met him before?"

"Of course, we've met him before, you idiot!" Gryphonmon snapped in the direction of his tail, which had been the thing to just speak. "Can't you see that?"

"Actually, no," said the tail, huffily. "In case you'd forgotten, I don't actually have any eyes, remember?"

"Since when has that ever stopped you before?" Gryphonmon growled. "Now shut up and don't speak again. Preferably ever!"

"What are you going to do about it?" the tail sneered, its toothy jaw twisting into a grin. "It's not like you can get rid of me."

"I could get rid of you if I want to and I will if you don't shut up!" Gryphonmon roared. "I would gladly go and find some friendly Digimon with a sword or something to cut you away from me if I so desired. I could go the rest of my life without a tail, no problem. It's not as if you do anything for me."

The tail seemed to pale, but it was difficult to tell. However, it did rear backwards and appear to look shocked, so it said, "I'll be quiet then."

"You'd better," Gryphonmon growled. He turned back towards Beelzemon and said, "Sorry about him. As you can see, he has not changed whatsoever since the last time we met."

"And he's not the only one," said Beelzemon, a little falteringly and reeling mentally from the argument he had just witnessed. "You're still... arguing with your tail, then?"

"He annoys me," Gryphonmon shrugged, folding his bat-like wings to his sides and nestling them there comfortably.

"But isn't he... I dunno... a part of you, or something?" asked Beelzemon. "Would you really cut your tail off?"

"Hey," Gryphonmon said. "You should just be glad that _your _tail doesn't answer back whenever you say anything. Do you have any idea what it's like to live with a little voice over your shoulder constantly making snarky comments at everything you say, everything you do, all the time. He even wakes me up at night sometimes because he's bored and wants to bicker with me." He snorted. "Frankly, I'm surprised that I haven't gotten rid of him already."

"Yeah, I guess that would be pretty annoying," said Beelzemon.

"Annoying doesn't cut it," Gryphonmon shook his head firmly. "It's downright infuriating. Why did _I_ have to get stuck with a tail like him?"

"Sometimes I wonder why I got stuck with a body like you," the tail remarked.

"I am being serious, you know," Gryphonmon growled warningly. "Just one more word, and I'll ask that Bird Digimon over there to bite you off."

The tail nodded and shut up.

"Wouldn't that be murder?" asked Beelzemon.

"Probably," shrugged Gryphonmon. "But since he is a part of me, I think that I am completely justified in deleting him if I want to."

"Ah, good point," said Beelzemon.

"Well," said Gryphonmon. "What are you doing in my territory anyway? Shouldn't you be in the Human World with those little Humans of yours, protecting it from Digimon that get whisked there by accident? That's what you were doing when I paid you a visit before."

Beelzemon sighed and de-digivolved back into Impmon. "I probably would be if things were still going normally," he said. "But things haven't been going normally for me lately."

"Oh really?" Gryphonmon asked. "How so?"

"Um, guys," said Lilamon, as she hovered over to them. "I hate to interrupt and everything, but you know that I hate getting left out of a conversation, Impmon. Aren't you going to introduce us to your friend?"

"Yeah, I suppose I should," he said. "Everybody, this is Gryphonmon, one of the Digimon who came to the Human World to help battle against Ogudomon when he went on the rampage."

"Oh yeah," said Lilamon. "I know about you. GranKuwagamon spoke about you sometimes, and when I mean sometimes I mean hardly ever, but in terms of how often he says anything at all, sometimes seems adequate to me."

"You know GranKuwagamon?" asked Gryphonmon. "Then perhaps you can tell me where he is? I tried to pay him a visit a month ago and I couldn't find him anywhere."

"Ah," said Impmon. "I believe I can answer that. He's in the Human World."

Gryphonmon blinked. "He is? Why?"

"He's there trying to help the humans to create a special portal," said Lilamon knowingly, "that will enable them to cross into another dimension to retrieve the Prophecy Trio, who have been lost for several months due to being whisked to another dimension by the evil Digimon, Parallelmon."

"Say WHAT?" squawked Gryphonmon, his eyes widening in surprise and anger. "The Prophecy Trio – the ones who stopped the reign of Ogudomon once and for all – are gone? Since when?"

"Actually, they've been gone for about half a year now," said Impmon, sadly.

Gryphonmon's jaw dropped. "That long?" he asked. "Damn, nobody tells me anything."

"Perhaps that's because you live out in the middle of nowhere and attack things that enter your territory," drawled the tail.

"Right, that's it!" declared Gryphonmon. "Bird Digimon, whatever your name is, care for a snack?"

"I'll be good, I'll be good, I'll be good," the tail cried. "Please don't kill me!"

"Last warning," growled Gryphonmon. Then he looked across at the others and said, "Who are you guys anyway?"

"Well," said Impmon. "You may or may not remember Calumon, but he was there during the battle against Ogudomon, except he just watched on the sidelines."

"Hello again," chirped Calumon.

"Oh, yes, I remember you," said Gryphonmon. "You pulled my tail that one time and called it a Big Meanie."

"About the only insult he knows," said Impmon, dryly.

"Well, anyway, it made me laugh," said Gryphonmon. "Anyone who thinks my tail is as rude and insufferable as I find it is welcome here."

"Goody goody," Calumon cheered. "Got any food?"

Gryphonmon blinked. "But we don't need to eat in this world."

"That doesn't stop him," said Impmon. "And as for these guys, this is Lilamon and the other two are Wingdramon an Diatrymon. They've been travelling with me for a couple of days and... well, you could say that we're on the run."

"On the run?" repeated Gryphonmon. "From who?"

"Some guy named GranDracmon," said Impmon. "He's the reason I'm not still running about in the Human World with my Tamers. Do you know of him?"

"Never heard of him in my life," said Gryphonmon. "You better tell me the whole story. It sounds like I've been missing out on a lot thanks to my isolation."

"Yeah," said Lilamon. "You live in a place like this? I imagine you don't get much company."

"To be honest, I prefer it that way," said Gryphonmon. "The git sticking behind me is about all the company I can stand on most days."

"But you live in the middle of a desert," Lilamon protested. "It's baking hot and there's nothing for miles and miles. And speaking of baking hot, Wingdramon get over here. I'm starting to wilt again."

"As you command, Queen Lila," Wingdramon rolled his eyes, but proceeded to bathe Lilamon in the shade with his wings again. Diatrymon and Calumon moved to join the fairy in the shade.

"Yes, it's a desert," said Gryphonmon. "But I actually live on that mountain over there." He unravelled a wing momentarily and pointed it in the direction of the mountain they had been heading towards since he didn't have any hands to point with. "I call it Column Mountain, which isn't perhaps the most inventive name in the world, but considering its structure, it seemed appropriate enough for me. I built my eyrie right on the top."

"You built your what on the top?" Lilamon asked.

"An eyrie," said Diatrymon. "That's what they call the nest of an eagle, isn't it. And Gryphonmon's close enough to an eagle to live in an eyrie."

"Yes," nodded Gryphonmon. "I prefer it up there. I give me a, to use a phrase, bird's eye-view of everything around me. I saw the battle from up there and decided to investigate. Those SkullScorpiomon were new to the area but I've seen a couple of them before. They have no place here, which is why I eliminated them quickly."

"You saw the battle from all the way up there?" Calumon asked, in awe. "Wow, you must have really good eyes."

"Well, I _do_ have the eyes of an eagle," pointed out Gryphonmon. "But enough of that, I believe you were about to tell me something about what's been going on since I last saw you and it sounds like I've got a lot of catching up to do so why don't you get started?"

"Must I go over the whole thing?" asked Impmon. "I don't particularly like reliving it."

"Well, now that I know something has been going on I can't very well just cast it aside," said Gryphonmon. "Start from the beginning and I want to hear every detail."

"Alright," Impmon said. "Lilamon, could you restrain Calumon if he gets bored?"

"Gotcha," said Lilamon.

"And who will restrain Lilamon if _she_ gets bored?" asked Diatrymon, chuckling as Lilamon raised a hand to swat him, stared at his armoured and spiked back and thought better of it.

The telling of everything took well over half an hour. Impmon retreated under Wingdramon's shadow and sat down in order to speak. Gryphonmon sat down as well, settling back on his haunches and deliberately sitting on his tail to muffle its protests as he listened to what Impmon was saying. Unlike some of Impmon's other listeners, Gryphonmon pried around in the story, asking questions about certain things. Because of this, Impmon eventually gave up and recounted a few of his horrible flashbacks to the audience. This part of the story was new to everyone else and they listened, enthralled by the atrocities that the Demon Lords had committed and relieved that they had not been subjected to it, or that if they had they did not remember it. The carnage that the Demon Lords had wrought was beyond anything they imagined.

After seeing some of their horrified expressions, Impmon quickly went on to recount his most recent and final flashback, the one where he had been purified by the Angel Digimon, Magnadramon. Gryphonmon seemed to take a lot of interest in this one and listened carefully to the process that Impmon described without comment.

Impmon also explained about the whole situation with Parallelmon regarding the disappearance of the Prophecy Trio. This part really made Gryphonmon bristle, as well it should have done. Terriermon, Renamon, Lopmon and their partners were held in high regard for what they had managed to achieve that day by every Digimon that had been present. Even the tail would not have commented against them, even if it could have done.

And Impmon finished up with the reason that he had been forced to flee in the first place and what he was doing now, explaining his visions of the other Digimon lost in their new dimension and the Angel Digimon that had been showing them to him.

This part caught Gryphonmon's attention – well, all of it had really, but this part in particular. He asked Impmon to describe the mysterious angel that they were searching for. Impmon obliged, talking about the blue, armour covering her body, the combination of feathered and metal wings, the shield with the golden unicorn head emblazoned on it on one hand and the huge javelin in the other and the helmet that covered her face.

As his description went on, Gryphonmon listened intently and nodded a few times, but as he did, a slow and steady grin was beginning to spread across his beak. As it did, Lilamon frowned and pointed accusingly at him. "Alright, out with it," she said. "You know who she is, don't you?"

Gryphonmon chuckled. "Indeed I do. I don't know her personally, but I know of her."

"You do?" asked Impmon. "How?"

"I'm a Mythical Beast Digimon," said Gryphonmon. "Angel Digimon like her and her brethren are among our Ultimate Masters. We serve them with our lives if need be. The angels have never called upon me though, so I have not needed to, but I know who she is."

"Well then," said Impmon, getting to his feet. "Don't leave me hanging here, Metal-head. I've been searching for this person for almost a week. Who is she?"

"Her name is Ophanimon," said Gryphonmon. "She is one of the three Great Angels, the other two being Seraphimon and Cherubimon."

"Cherubimon?" Impmon blinked, startled. "But that's Lopmon's Mega form."

"Exactly," nodded Gryphonmon. "That may be the reason she's taken an interest in you. Perhaps she feels that you are the best hope for getting the lost Great Angel back where she belongs."

Impmon paused and thought about it for a moment. "Okay," he said. "Well, I suppose it's nice to know that she has such confidence in me? But what's stopping her from going and getting them back herself?"

"That, I don't know," said Gryphonmon. "You'll have to ask her yourself if you find her."

"Do you know where she lives as well?" asked Diatrymon hopefully.

"Yes," nodded Gryphonmon. "But I'm afraid that while I might be able to tell you that she and her fellow angels live in the Celestial Heavens, which is where Fanglongmon himself lies in deep slumber, I couldn't tell you how to get there. I'm afraid that I don't know the answer to that one."

Impmon tried to not feel too disappointed and depressed by that answer. He stood as tall as he could and said, "Well, now I have a name to place with the face and an idea of where to start looking at least. Now all I need to do is finding a way of getting to the Celestial Heavens, wherever that is."

"That sounds rather difficult," said Wingdramon, dubiously. "We could still be searching for some time before we actually found a way to get there."

"I know," said Impmon. "But if that angel, Ophanimon, has so much faith in me to do whatever it is she thinks I can do, then I won't let her down. Not if I can help it."

"The only problem now is, where are we supposed to start looking?" asked Diatrymon.

"Well, if you guys would care to look," Lilamon said. "You might notice that our new friend, Gryphonmon, is still grinning."

Impmon looked across and saw that that was indeed the case. The Mega level Digimon had a grin plastered across his beak. Impmon frowned and asked, "What's with the beaming? I thought you didn't know where the Celestial Heavens were."

"I don't," said Gryphonmon. "But I might know someone who does. Or at least, I might know someone who can find out for you."

"What?" Impmon asked sharply. "Who? How? Where is he? Quickly, answer me, Metal-head!"

"It might just be your lucky day," said Gryphonmon. He paused and then added, "Then again, it might not. It's kinda difficult to be sure whether the guy I'm thinking about with help with your problem?"

"Pardon," asked Diatrymon. "You announce that you know a guy you can help and then you say that he might not be able to?"

"Oh, he should definitely be _able_ to," said Gryphonmon. "The question is whether he actually _will_ help you."

"You've lost us," said Wingdramon. "Would you care to start for the beginning in a less confusing manner."

"Okay," said Gryphonmon. "It's like this, you see. A couple of months after I returned from the Human World and reclaimed my old territory from the clutches of some annoying Halsemon that thought he could take it over in my absence – the nerve of him – anyway, a couple of months after that, I received a visitor to my mountain. He claimed that he had been searching for a long time for a place to live and asked if he could make a home on the slope lower down. Naturally I was a little reluctant at first, but when he assured me that he wouldn't bother me and would keep to himself, I agreed.

"So, he built a little shack about halfway down my mountain and he's been there ever since. We've actually become quite good neighbours, so much so that I asked him why he wanted a secluded area way out here, when he might want to be with people. And, somewhat reluctantly I have to say, he told me that he had the power to see into the past, the present and the future."

_That_ caught the attention of the listeners. "Really?" asked Impmon in bewilderment. "Just what kind of Digimon is this guy?"

"He's a Wizardmon," said Gryphonmon.

"Ah," said Lilamon. "A Magical Guy. Yeah, that kinda makes sense."

"But what does that have to do with why he wanted isolation?" asked Wingdramon.

"Well, apparently he used to live in a village some distance away from him," said Gryphonmon. "And he used to use his gift of the Sight, or whatever it's called, to help others, like predicting when there might be serious weather conditions that could damage to crops they were planting, or if a Data Stream would plough into their village at any time in the future, and important stuff like that. He did it simply in return for a place in the village, and things seemed to work well for him.

"But then, people started to take him for granted and they used to come to see him for reasons that were less and less important, asking him things like would they ever get mated and who to, what would the weather be like at the weekend, how long it would take for them to digivolve to the next level, and then more and more pointless questions and so on and so on. Apparently people started to queue up before his building, coming from far and wide to get him to answer personal and rather selfish issues. He began to get frustrated with this, annoyed at being taken for granted like that, but he couldn't seem to get rid of them. He even swore on his life that he would never use his power to see into the future again, but they still came to see him, pestering him to change his mind. So, in the end, he packed up and left during the night and went to find some place secluded where he could live undisturbed. And that is why he lives on my slope. I haven't asked him anything about the future so we get along."

"An interesting story," said Wingdramon. "But if this Wizardmon has sworn off looking into the future, as you say he has, then surely he wouldn't break it simply to help us, would he?"

"Well, he might," said Diatrymon. "I mean, the fate of the Digital World could depend on it."

"He probably wouldn't even then," said Gryphonmon. "But I was thinking more along the lines of asking him to look into the past."

"The past?" asked Diatrymon. "Why the past?"

"Because Impmon here has been to the Celestial Heavens before," said Gryphonmon. "When he went into the castle of Magnadramon. And Magnadramon is Ophanimon's sister."

"Hey, that's right," Impmon snapped his fingers. "I remember now, Magnadramon said that her sister Ophanimon had the castle built for her. Huh, guess I actually have something to thank that fricking MetalPhantomon for after all."

"I think I am beginning to understand," said Wingdramon. "If this Wizardmon can look into Impmon's past..."

"...then he'd be able to find out how Impmon managed to get to the Celestial Heavens the first time round," Lilamon said. "And then we might be able to do it all over again. Woohoo! We have a lead, boys. And sounds like a pretty solid one too."

Impmon couldn't help but have a grin start to spread over his face. "Well, Wingdramon, it seems that we owe you an apology. Your plan to have us sucked into that Data Stream was sheer brilliance, Scaleface."

"Thank you, Impmon," said Wingdramon. "Did you hear that, Lilamon? My idea was a good idea after all."

"Yeah, don't milk it, Wingy," Lilamon said. "And don't let it go to your head either, because if you do, you'll receive a face-full of something every morning."

"Well, there's nothing wrong with that," said Wingdramon. "Since I usually wake up like that anyway."

Lilamon giggled and said, "Well then, what are we all standing about here for. We're off to see the Wizard."

"The wonderful Wizard of Mon," chuckled Impmon.

"Pardon?" Lilamon asked. "That doesn't even make sense. Oh, never mind. Come on, Griffin-boy. Get off your tail and lead us to Column Mountain, quicksharp."

"What are you, an army general?" asked Gryphonmon.

"When she feels like it," said Diatrymon.

Gryphonmon chuckled and said, "Well I can tell things will get interesting at Wizardmon's place with someone like her around. Alright then, follow me." He lifted himself to his feet, and his tail shot into the air angrily.

"Finally!" it snapped. "Do you have any idea how stuffy it is underneath your bum? Do you? Never put me through that ever again?"

Gryphonmon growled. "Excuse me – Diatrymon, wasn't it? I'm sure you're feeling a bit peckish, right?"

"Well, now that you mention it..." Diatrymon giggled.

"Oh, come off it," Lilamon said, and she pointed a petal at the tail, sending a Lila Shower beam out from it that wrapped around the tails mouth and sealed it shut, even after Lilamon stopped firing it.

Gryphonmon stared at his muted tail for a moment, then turned back to Lilamon and said, "I should have met you long ago. You're a marvel."

Lilamon giggled.

* * *

And there you have it folks. One hundred chapters of Secret of the 327th have come and gone. Double this number and add ten and then the story will be over. It's been a long road, but there's still so much more waiting, so stay tuned everybody.

I'm also sorry to say this period of Mega-fast updates has come to a close. Expect them to come frequently in the near future, but not nearly as frequently as the past five days. I have an assignment to work on for the rest of the week and then the expeditions I need to go on before I can do the others will come to pass, so I can get on with them. However, since my chapters of this story are all over nine-thousand words, and all three essays I have to do are just two-thousand, they should be a doddle.

See you soon. And please leave a review to mark this exciting day.

* * *

Next time...

While the others continue battling on Mygeeto, Suzie and Lopmon decide to take a break from the fighting and accompany Jedi Padawan Barriss Offee on a mission to the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk, unaware of the fact that things are about to take a sinister turn.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 101 : Walking Carpets**


	101. Walking Carpets

Well, I managed to successfully nail the largest of my four assignments over the last few days. Tomorrow I had out to a woodland about an hour from the university to complete my next one, which is practical based. But I still found time to write this chapter out between the two. I fully expect the chapter after this one to appear on Tuesday, or definitely Wednesday at the absolute latest. But the Easter Holidays begin soon for me, and I'll have much work to do for it. Still, I'll update when I can, albeit slowly.

Many thanks go to **megacoldfusion** for helping me with ideas for this particular story arc. He really knows his Star Wars stuff. I'm almost afraid I'll disappoint, but I certainly tried my hardest. I hope you like the chapter coming up.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 101:- Walking Carpets**

* * *

After the death of IceMyotismon and the mysterious death and rebirth of his previous arch-rival and nemesis, WereGarurumon, in the form of a Digi-Egg, there were still several things that needed to be attended to on the planet Mygeeto. It had been a while since the A-Team and the Digimon had actually attacked a Separatist planet where they had a strong foothold – most of what they had been doing in recent months was going to defend a Republic planet that was being invaded or attacking a Separatist planet before their presence could become too established.

By Mygeeto wasn't like that. The Muuns had been living there for years and they were not about to simply surrender themselves without a fight, digging their heels into the snow to stop the Republic troops from taking them as best they could. There was still a lot of work to be done before the ice planet could be considered a part of the Republic again.

They were making progress though. It had been another week since the death of IceMyotismon and already the Jedi and their secret allies had managed to take three other large and previously well-fortified cities. The Muuns were slowly being pushed back, and it didn't help that if they tried to flee the city in their ships that there was some weird-looking green cyborg thing flying around that would appear before them as if by magic and force them to land.

The Republic was still combing through these cities but so far there had been no sign whatsoever of San Hill. The Muun didn't appear to be on planet at all, although that did not mean that they were about to give up hope that easily. There was always a slight chance that he was still around, but they knew that it was unlikely.

Now that you know about the entire situation on Mygeeto, which is still ongoing, you might wonder why Lopmon was currently sitting on a ship that was in hyperspace, staring out the window at the bluish swirling corridor that they were speeding through and heading at very high speed _away_ from the planet Mygeeto and all the fighting.

* * *

Well, to answer that question, we'd have to go back in time a couple of days. During the raid on the most recent Mygeeto city on platforms, the Tamers had been not far away from the action, as the raid had not begun very long ago. They were still by the gunships as usual, but as the main strike force of the Republic moved further into the city, the Tamers had received a surprise. A few Crab Droids had clambered over the edges of platform with instructions to take out the gunships, in the hope of trapping the Republic forces in the city. Naturally, the Tamers weren't alone and there had been a few guards standing close by who immediately started to take on the opposing Crab Droids.

The clones had managed to pull off the win with relative ease, since they were all mounted on AT-RT walkers, which were more than a match for the orange quadruped droids. However, a couple of the gunships didn't survive the assault, including the one that the Tamers had previous been standing beside. They managed to get out of the way of the explosion, but the blast had still sent all three flying forwards.

Suzie had taken a large amount of damage in the fall. She had skidded across her back, and since the platform was made of concrete this was, understandably, extremely painful, and had caused a very serious and very nasty scrape to open up on a large portion of her back. It was quite deep in many places, and she also almost broke her arm and severely strained her ankle. Having all those injuries put on you at once was understandably very painful and very traumatising to such a young girl, especially since it was during the heat of battle.

Sensing her Tamer had been in danger, Antylamon had immediately made her excuses and departed the battle, rushing back towards the gunships to check on her Tamer, arriving just in time to kick the last of the Crab Droids off the platform and to its doom. De-digivolving to Lopmon, she had helped Henry, Suzie and one of the clones get her aboard one of the gunships. A nearby clone had injected Suzie with bacta, which would help ease the pain but do little for such a large injury, and the clone pilot had immediately been instructed to take Suzie up to medical in a gunship.

But space had not been a particularly safe place to be either, since the Separatists had somehow learned of the attack on Mygeeto, despite the Republic making extra specially sure that no transmissions got off the planet on _any_ frequency (more evidence, as if it were needed, of a spy in the Senate, of which there were probably several). Admiral Yularen had been in the middle of a full-blown space battle of his own. With his cruiser as well as all the others under such heavy attack, Yularen quickly organised a strategy to get the injured Suzie to safety while still maintaining their blockade. She had been quickly transferred to a shuttle on board a cruiser and the shuttle had taken off in order to get Suzie back to Coruscant as fast as possible. Unfortunately, since their partners were still battling on the surface, Henry and Rika had had to stay behind. But Lopmon had accompanied Suzie on the shuttle and, under heavy guard, the shuttle had punched through the Separatist forces and jumped to hyperspace.

Fortunately, Coruscant had not been far away. Since Suzie was supposed to be as secret as the Digimon, the clone piloting the shuttle had directed it straight to the Jedi Temple, sending word ahead of the injured Tamer. That had been why Barriss Offee had been waiting at the landing platform when the shuttle arrived. The Mirialan Padawan darted onto the ship and put her renowned healing skills to good use in fixing up Suzie's injuries. Afterwards, she had patted Suzie on the shoulder, drawing no flinch from the child at all, and said that provided she rested her ankle for a few days, she would be fine.

And that meant she was not to be anywhere near the battlefield, where she might be required to run for her life, for a maximum of two days.

This had annoyed little Suzie to no end. The young girl had declared that she couldn't just stand back when she wasn't seriously injured and let everyone else like her brother be in danger while she hung back. She claimed it didn't feel right – like she was abandoning him or something. Despite both Barriss and Lopmon reassuring Suzie that she wouldn't be abandoning anyone, Suzie had remained adamant that she wanted to be useful.

And then, what sounded like a reasonable solution had presented itself when Master Yoda walked onto the ship. Slowly. The little green... thing... had smiled warmly at them and said, "Hmm. Glad, I am, to see that you are feeling better already, little Suzie."

"Yeah, I am," said Suzie. "Much better already. See, Yoda thinks I look okay. Can I go back to the battlefield."

"No Suzie," said Barriss soothingly. "You have to rest."

"But I don't wanna rest," Suzie protested vehemently. "Master Yoda, can't I go back?"

Yoda chuckled. "Enthusiastic, you are, young Tamer. But, dare to disagree with the Doctor's orders, I would not. Hmhmhmhm."

Suzie looked a little dejected. Lopmon turned to look at her and placed a small hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry about it, Suzie. It's only for a couple of days. You'll be helping out again soon enough – just you wait and see."

"I know, I know," Suzie sighed.

"Still," Yoda said, turning his attention to Barriss. "Only here to discuss the well-being of the patient, I am not. Padawan Offee, an important assignment I have for you."

Barriss blinked and got to her feet. "An important assignment, Master? Has somewhere else come under attack already?"

"No," said Yoda. "Though the beginnings of a potential assault, it seems there was. Set up, a Separatist Listening Post was, in the Mid Rim, close to the planet Lantilles."

Barriss' eyes widened in surprise. "Lantilles!" she asked in alarm. "That's a very heavily populated planet, isn't it Master?"

"Yes," nodded Yoda. "And aligned with the Republic. Suspect we do, that trying to pick up transmissions to help them plan out an attack, they were."

"And you want me to take out the listening post?" asked Barriss.

Yoda chuckled and raised a hand. "Getting ahead of me, you are, Padawan Offee. Calm yourself, and allow me to finish my tale, you should."

"Yes, Master. My apologies," said Barriss. "You were saying?"

"Need to take out the listening post, you do not," said Yoda, a slight smirk appearing on his face. "Taken care of it for us, the locals have. Built the post over the planet of Kashyyyk, the Separatists did."

Barriss snorted. "Kashyyyk?" she chuckled. "Wow. They must really be getting desperate if they were willing to risk putting a Separatist base in the atmosphere of _that_ planet."

"Indeed," said Yoda. "Perhaps thought that the locals would pay them no mind, they did. Wrong, they were. Severely. Assault them, the locals did, and destroyed many more droids for us, they have. And, made a very important capture for us, they have. There, Senator Po Nudo of the Hyper-communications cartel was. No doubt overseeing some of his work at the time, he was."

"But that's wonderful news," said Barriss. "That means that yet another member of the Separatist Council has been captured."

"Yes," nodded Yoda. "Good relations with the people of Kashyyyk, I have. Contact me, they did, when they made their prisoner. Neutral, they have been, in this war, but recognise the work of the Separatists, they do. Wish to open negotiations to join the Republic, they do."

"And you want me to go and begin them?" asked Barriss.

"And ensure that brought back, Senator Nudo is, to the cells of the Jedi Temple as well," said Yoda. "A big step for you, this is, Padawan Offee. Combat based, many of your assignments have been, and only a last resort, combat should be, for a Jedi. Let us see how well you do with an assignment more befitting for one of us."

"I will not let you down, Master Yoda," said Barriss, firmly.

"Hey, can we come?" Suzie had suddenly piped up. Barriss, Yoda and Lopmon all turned to look at the Tamer, who was looking enthusiastic. "I really want to actually do something," she said. "Instead of just sitting here. If you won't let me go back to all the fighting, can I go with Barriss to this planet?"

"Suzie, Barriss said you should rest," Lopmon said.

"And I will," said Suzie. "I won't be running anywhere, will I? Oh please, let me go and do _something_ useful."

Yoda laughed. "Very enthusiastic, you are, young Tamer," he has said, leaning on his stick. "What say you, Padawan Offee? Maybe show her how a Jedi should really act, you can."

Barriss shrugged and smiled at the same time. "Sure," she said. "I don't have a problem with it."

Suzie cheered and Lopmon chuckled.

* * *

And that was why Lopmon was now sitting in the cockpit of a Republic shuttle and heading towards the planet Kashyyyk at impressive speed, perched on top of the co-pilot seat that Suzie was sitting in while Barriss had the controls in the pilot seat. She was listening casually to the sounds of Suzie and Barriss talking a little bit about the planet they were heading to.

"So what do the people there look like?" asked Suzie. "Are they really weird like some of the other species I've seen in their galaxy?"

"The people of Kashyyyk are known as the Wookiees," said Barriss, flicking a couple of switches on the dashboard. "They are... actually quite intimidating-looking creatures, but despite the fact they look fierce they are a pretty friendly race for the most part. They are very tall humanoids, covered with long fur all over their bodies, usually brown, and they have claws and sharp-looking teeth."

Suzie flinched. "They actually sound a bit scary."

"Having second thoughts, Suzie?" asked Lopmon.

Before Suzie could reply, Barriss spoke up again. "I wouldn't worry about it. Wookiees are a very honourable race and they would _never_ attack a dear friend or a friend of a dear friend unless they had done something really bad. Yoda has been on several assignments to Kashyyyk and he is well respected there amongst the people. And since he is Grand Master of the Jedi Order, all Jedi are greatly respected by the Wookiees as a result. They will give us a warm welcome, so you have nothing to be afraid of."

"Oh, that's good," said Suzie. "The idea of giant bear men scares me a little bit."

"Well, if they start trying to scare you too much then I can become Antylamon and dwarf them all," said Lopmon in an attempt to lighten Suzie's mood.

It worked and Suzie giggled. "Yeah, I bet you'd be many times bigger than them."

"I wouldn't recommend transforming into something as large as Antylamon," said Barriss. "Kashyyyk is a planet of very dense forests, and the Wookiees all live on wooden platforms they build in the ridiculously tall Wroshyr trees that are all over it. While its strong, I'm not sure it could take the weight of your Ultimate form."

"Oh," said Suzie. "In that case, we'll find a place big enough, jump off the platform and become Cherubimon. Then we'd be even bigger than even bigger than them."

Barriss chuckled. "Well, anyway, just remember you want to stay on the good side of a Wookiee. Setting up a listening post in their atmosphere was a very bad idea from the Separatists. The Wookiees don't take kindly to invasions of any form, and while they don't have much in terms of space-craft they are still quite technologically advanced in terms of weaponry and communications. They probably let the Separatists have it."

"Why did they try if it was such a bad idea?" asked Suzie.

"Because Kashyyyk is relatively close to a number of the most heavily populated worlds in the Mid Rim," said Barriss. "If they had been able to attack them, it would have been a massive loss for us, but its so close to Coruscant that they thought they'd try and gain more intel first with the listening station. And the Wookiees put a stop to that one almost before it started."

"They sound really cool," said Suzie. "Are we nearly there?"

"As a matter of fact we are," said Barriss. "Pulling out of hyperspace in a couple of minutes."

"Whoa, really?" asked Suzie. "That was quicker than I thought it would be."

"Well, Kashyyyk is a lot closer to the Inner Core than many other planets you guys have been heading to in the far Outer Rim," said Barriss. "Another reason why it's a bold move by the Separatists. We're going to have to be more careful to keep them away from Coruscant in the future."

Suzie and Lopmon nodded, before both of them focused out of the window. Sure enough, the blue blur gave way to the black sky of space, dotted with many white stars and the large orb in front of them that was the planet Kashyyyk. Predictably for a forest planet, the large majority of it was green, although there were streaks of brown and blue that indicated mountains and small seas or large lakes, as well as a large number of rivers. Suzie and Lopmon drank in the details with their eyes as Barriss piloted the ship forwards.

The shuttle eased its way into the atmosphere of the planet and began to descend towards the surface. It didn't take long for them to touch down, and Suzie was hopping to go outside and explore.

"Let's go, let's go," said the little girl excitedly. "I want to see this new planet. It looks so much warmer than Mygeeto."

Barriss chuckled. "Steady on, Suzie. We'll get there."

"Calm down," said Lopmon, walking over to her Tamer. "Remember what Barriss said – these Wookiees build their homes in trees. And very large trees at that. You don't want to accidentally fall off the platform, do you?"

That got Suzie's attention. The little girl quickly shook her head. "No. I'm be calm, Lopmon. I just want to go out and explore, that's all."

"I know Suzie," said Lopmon. "I had to remind you though. I just worry about you, that's all."

"Thanks, Lopmon," said Suzie, hugging her partner. Barriss smiled down at them, and hit the button that extended the ramp.

"Well, are you coming?" she asked, and stepped down the ramp and out into the sunlight. Suzie and Lopmon followed after they separated and took their first look out into the world of the Wookiees. The sight took their breath away. The trees were bigger than they had even imagine possible – far larger than the trees on Maridun had ever been. They were standing on a large wooden platform that seemed to almost be near the clouds. Looking up at the giant foliage above them, they could even see that some of the treetops _did_ disappear into the cloud layer.

And the city around them looked incredibly impressive as well. Each of the massive trees seemed to have at least one enormous huge structure of wood built around it, like enormous cone-shaped houses, with numerous balconies and walkways and lots of tough wooden bridges extending between the trunks and connecting them to one another. Up ahead though, was the biggest of them all, almost a wooden fortress that bent around the tree it was built on _and_ extended past it to a large number of other trees, making it seem like a wooden castle almost in the canopy.

"This place is amazing," Lopmon said. "I wish the others could see it."

"But they're all too far away for us to contact them with our minds," said Suzie.

"I know," said Lopmon. "And the only thing they'll get of this planet is our memories when we get back in range. But this is absolutely phenomenal, wouldn't you say?"

"Heck, yeah," nodded Suzie.

"It's certainly impressive," said Barriss. "This is the Capital City of Kashyyyk. It's called Rwookrrorro."

"Are all the names here barely pronounceable?" chuckled Lopmon.

"Wait until you meet the locals and you'll understand why that's the case," said Barriss. "And that palace up ahead – that is where the king of the Wookiees, a person named Grakchawwaa, lives. And it is with him that I will be making my negotiations with. Unfortunately that means that the two of you cannot go in there, because we can hardly ask a king to keep a secret from the Senate he will hopefully soon be supporting. But you can tag along for a bit. Then, you must return to the ship."

"Alright," said Lopmon. "Since we don't have Renamon's perception filter to help us here, I suppose we don't have much choice."

"But I wanted to see you doing some negotiating," said Suzie.

"Trust me, it probably won't be all that interesting," said Barriss. "Come on, you can see me talk to some of the other Wookiees. I believe that one over there is waiting for us."

The Mirialan Padawan pointed across the bridge. Suzie and Lopmon started at the size of the being standing on the other side. It was enormous, standing well over two metres tall and had an enormously burly build. He was covered in shaggy brown fur and had a huge rifle across his back and armour on his chest and shoulders and a helmet on his domed head. He did indeed appear to be waiting for them, standing patiently on the other side of the bridge.

"Let's go," said Barriss, waving to them to follow her as she confidently made her away across the gap and the almost infinite-seeming drop below her. As Suzie and Lopmon followed on, the former risked a glance over the edge of the bridge. She was amazed at how little she could see besides trees. Everything seemed to descend into darkness down there and there was absolutely no sign of the ground whatsoever.

"Wow, its dark down there," she said.

"That's because the trees cut off all the sunlight down to the ground floor," said Barriss. "Unless a tree falls, which almost never happens, it is perpetually dark on the forest floor. You don't want to go down there – it's dangerous. Even most Wookiees don't dare to go down to the very bottom."

"Is it as bad as Felucia?" asked Lopmon, a little dubiously.

"I'm not sure," said Barriss. "I've never been down there to check. But I'd say that if it isn't worse than Felucia then it is definitely on the same level. Now come on, the Wookiees await."

Somewhat unnerved by what might be lurking several thousand feet below them and not eager to find out, Suzie and Lopmon followed Barriss. As they moved away from their landing platform, they began to see more and more parts of the city. Other Wookiees were walking from place to place, and there were even a couple of small ones nearby.

A sound startled the both of them and they looked to the right, but they simply saw a couple of Wookiees swinging through the branches of the trees nearby like very large and very woolly gibbons. It was almost a bizarre sight to see something so large moving so agilely through the forest without touching the ground. Obviously these Wookiees got in a lot of practice.

Suzie and Lopmon were still in awe of them though. Barriss had been right, they all did look extremely intimidating from a distance, and even more so from close-up. They looked like a cross between bears and men, but definitely leaned more to the bear side.

The Wookie waiting for them on the other side of the bridge was no exception. He seemed to get even larger the closer they got to him. Lopmon couldn't help but analyse his posture and expression for any sign of a threat, but he was standing casually enough, so she assumed it was alright.

Eventually the three of them stood before the Wookiee. The furry humanoid completely dwarfed all three of them – he was well over half a metre taller than Barriss. He looked down at them sombrely and appeared to be waiting for them to make the first move. Barriss started things off by bowing to the taller being and saying, "A pleasure to meet you, Mighty Wookiee. I am Jedi Padawan Barriss Offee, and I come under instruction from Master Yoda."

The corner of the Wookiee's mouth curled upwards into what was probably a grin, although it still managed to look a little bit savage. And then the Wookiee spoke. Lopmon and Suzie both blinked when it didn't reply in Basic. Despite the fact that it was almost nothing like a humanoid apart from stature, they had still expected it to talk back to them in the same language. But, apparently, that wasn't the case. The noise that came out of the Wookiee's mouth sounded like a series of miniature growls, howls and rumblings.

What came out sounded a little bit like this:-

"Wyaaaaa. Scwo oaacaraahwh aorarcwwwwhuan. Worachurcwo aooo scwowoao."

Barriss bowed again and turned to look at the others. "He says that his name is Tarfful and that he is very pleased to meet us."

"Wow," said Suzie. "You can understand that. It just sounded like growling to me. Uh, no offense," she added, looking up at the Wookiee, now named Tarfful, a little nervously. Tarfful just chuckled though.

"I understand basic Shyriiwook," said Barriss. "It should be enough to get me through the day. Now, Tarfful, let me introduce you to Suzie Wong. She is... a Jedi Youngling who is tagging along with me for a bit. And this is her friend, Lopmon. We don't know what she is, but she's quite a faithful pet of Suzie's, isn't that right?"

Lopmon got the impression that if she was masquerading as a pet, she probably shouldn't say anything coherent. She didn't mind pretending to be a pet – it was certainly a step up from a doll. Suzie nodded, catching on as well and said, "Oh yes. She follows me everywhere, don't you, Lopmon?"

Lopmon responded by jumping on top of Suzie's head, causing the girl to giggle as the large rabbit Digimon clung there. Tarfful seemed to find it amusing and chuckled. "Coo oahuaowo," he said.

"He thinks you're cute," said Barriss. Lopmon resisted the urge to giggle.

"Which one of us was he talking to?" asked Suzie.

At this, Tarfful threw back his head and let off a loud, barking laugh of his own. Suzie almost stepped back at the deep, growling noise, but it sounded friendly and cheerful. Tarfful suddenly didn't seem so intimidating any more. If it weren't for the rifle on his back he could almost be an overgrown teddy bear.

When Tarfful stopped laughing and said, "Ahc Rooowara ooorraro?"

"Yes, Master Yoda is very well considering the turmoil the galaxy has been in recently," said Barriss. "Do you know him personally?"

"Uma," said Tarfful. "Ah ohrac oowhwo ohacoo oaraanan rarhoohuao aoacahc. Rooowara ahc rroooowa wwrcahwowhwa."

"Ah, I see," said Barriss. "He says that he knows Yoda very well. In fact, he was the one who made the transmission to Yoda regarding the whole situation with the Separatists in the first place."

Tarfful nodded. "Scwo acooakwo aooo cwowo acahsc, rhhuao acwo akrcoorhc howorcro rhhucro."

"With the war going on he is indeed extremely busy," replied Barriss. "He has to direct his fellow Jedi across the galaxy almost all the time. He's very uncomfortable with his position at the moment, sending Jedi to their deaths, but he says that it only will make him work extra hard in future to make sure that this doesn't happen again."

Tarfful nodded again. Lopmon was finding it a little difficult to keep track with the conversation already. She wondered why it was that Tarfful was not conversing with Barriss in the same language. She supposed it had something to do with his voice-box not being able to make the correct pronunciations on many, if any, words in Basic, meaning that he could only converse in his native tongue.

"What can you tell me about what transpired here, Tarfful?" asked Barriss. "I need to know all the information I can for when I report back to the Council later on."

Tarfful began to explain, "Scwo oaacahwoww ooww whworarcrhro oaahaoro. Scwo howorcro anoororaan aooo orahwhrr."

"He says that he is the Chieftain of a nearby city to the capital," said Barriss for Suzie and Lopmon's benefit. "And that he is an extremely loyal subject of the King."

"Wow, cool," said Suzie. "So should we be bowing to you or something, Chief Tarfful?"

Tarfful chuckled and said, "Whraac, whooao whwowowawowa."

"He says that will not be necessary," said Barriss. "Please, do go on."

"Oowhwo wararo, Woohie coaoohuao oaooscwo rhraoaor, craro rhahrr rranoorhwo rrwoao rhhuahanao oohoworc wwoorcwocao aooo whoorcaoac."

"He says that a couple of days ago a Wookiee scout returned to the capital with a report, saying that someone was building a strange globe in the sky some distance away from the city," Barriss went on.

"Anooaoc rawhwa anooaoc ooww oids. Ohrac oaanrawhorworcc."

"They could tell it was the Separatists due to the presence of many battle droids," said Barriss.

_Well, that is always kind of a giveaway,_ chuckled Lopmon.

"Well, that is always kind of a giveaway," chuckled Suzie.

_Hey._

_Momentai._

_If Terriermon heard you say that._..

Tarfful laughed and pointed a furry hand at Suzie and said, "Rooohu howorcro ohahaoaoro."

"He thinks you are hilarious," said Barriss. Lopmon fumed silently, annoyed that she was having to play a mute right now. She was cracking jokes like her brother did and Suzie was getting the credit. She wasn't really _that_ annoyed but still... it would be nice to talk to the Wookiee.

"Well, what happened next?" asked Barriss.

Tarfful then went into a very long series of growling noises:- "Ohwo rrwoao scrawa raao aoacwosc coo ohwo racor wwoorc acwoanak. Ohacwowh acwoanak oaooscwoc, ohwo rcahwawo ahwh cacahak rawhwa rroo oohoworc rranoorhwo. Aoacwowh, ohwo warcooak waooohwh oowh hoahwhwoc rawhwa rhanoooh oohurc ohraro."

"Really?" asked Barriss. "What kind of help?"

"Rhoohuwhaoro achuwhaoworcc," Tarfful said.

Barriss raised an eyebrow. "Should I be concerned with that?"

Tarfful waved a hand, "Whraac. Aoacworo rroooowa rrhuroc."

"Well, I suppose I'll have to take your word for it," said Barriss.

"Um, Barriss?" asked Suzie. "I got lost some time ago."

"Oh, sorry," said Barriss. "I stopped translating didn't I? To put what he said in a nutshell, the Wookiees decided to act immediately and the king put Tarfful here in charge of the assault on the listening post. They hired the help of a couple of Bounty Hunters to fly them over the globe to get on top of it and blow their way inside."

"Okay," said Suzie. "Sounds cool. Blowing things up is fun."

Tarfful looked momentarily bemused and Barriss cleared her throat and said, "Now, Suzie. Remember that violence is not the Jedi way."

"Huh? Oh, yeah," Suzie said, mentally cursing herself for forgetting she was pretending to be a Jedi youngling. "Sorry."

Barriss nodded and said, "You'll have to forgive her – she's relatively new to the training and all of our Jedi morals haven't quite been fully ingrained into her yet. Now then, what took place after that? I assume the place was swarming with battle droids."

Tarfful nodded. "Ohwo raaoaoraoaor ohahaoac raanan ohwo rrooao. Orahanan oids aoraorwo rarqhura anahcac akrcahcoowhworc."

"He says that they stormed through the base, killing all the droids they found and taking anything they found alive prisoner," said Barriss dutifully. "How many men did you lose, Chieftain Tarfful?"

Tarfful smirked and pounded his chest armour with a furry paw and proudly exclaiming, "Whooao ra cahwhrranwo ah!"

"Wow," said Barriss. "That's very impressive. He says he didn't lose a single one of his men."

"Really?" asked Suzie in awe. "But weren't some of them hit by blaster bolts?"

Tarfful slammed his chest once more with a paw and looked down at the little girl. He said, "Aoraorwo scoorcwo aoacrawh rhooanao aooo orahanan Woohies!"

"He said it'll take a lot more than measly blaster bolts from those cheap droids to kill a Wookiee," Barriss said. "And I have to say that I agree. Droid blasters aren't really equipped to take down something as formidable as a Wookiee in just one shot. It would probably take at least six to kill one provided they didn't strike in an unlucky place like the brain or the heart. And I'm assuming that Tarfful's men didn't give them the chance to get that far."

Tarfful made another series of growling noises, curling his fingers, which were barely visible amongst the mass of fur dangling over his paws, and bringing them close together, before wrenching his arms apart in a pulling motion. Barriss translated, "He says that they ripped the droids that got too close limb from limb before they could do much damage to them, if any at all."

_Sounds like someone we know,_ said Lopmon. _I think Renamon and these Wookiees would get along famously._

_Yeah,_ nodded Suzie. _Pity she isn't here._ Out loud, she said, "Was it hard to do that, or can you do it easy as winking?"

Tarfful chuckled and winked at her.

"I'll take that as the second bit then," said Suzie. "Wow, you guys are really, really strong, aren't you? Maybe I'd get stronger if I started to try swinging through the trees."

_Don't even think about it,_ Lopmon said.

_Too late,_ said Suzie.

"Well," said Barriss. "While I am sure that what you say is indeed the truth, Chieftain Tarfful, I must check for procedure's sake. Do you think you could show me the prisoners you've taken so that I can confirm that it is indeed Po Nudo that you have in your custody?"

Tarfful nodded and turned around beckoning for them to follow him with a wave of his paw. He strolled across the walkway with a strange almost lolloping gait as he swayed from side to side like a tipsy person, swinging his arms. All the Wookiees were walking in this manner, and as Barriss, Suzie and Lopmon followed the larger being, Tarfful led them deeper into the city.

The deeper in they got the more platforms and arboreal buildings that they could see, and the more Wookiees became visible. Many of them turned around to watch them as they walked past, stopping what they were doing to stare at them. Lopmon noticed that a lot of their stares seemed to be focused upon her, since many of them might have seen Jedi before, but certainly nothing like her. A young Wookiee pointed at her excitedly, and let of a series of barks and growls towards another which was probably his mother. Whatever he had said had probably been inappropriate, because the mother Wookiee swatted him upside the head with a blow that would have floored any adult human, but was just a light tap to the young Wookiee.

Lopmon chuckled. And she couldn't resist putting on a bit of a show for the crowd. Still perched on top of Suzie's head, she spread her ears as wide as they would go, fanning them out like the sails of a hang-glider. Then, with a flap, she took to the air and began to glide above the walkways. The Wookiees watched her in amazement as she swept in large circles in the air, diving and climbing with minimal flaps. Lopmon grinned at their expressions and pulled out a few more stops, corkscrewing downwards past a bridge, swooping underneath it and flapping upwards on the other side. A couple of Wookiees took to the trees to swing after her, and Lopmon raised them through the foliage for a few moments, before banking and flapping back to land beside Suzie once again.

It was a nice change to be in a place like this, Lopmon realised. Apart from the various places of Coruscant that she had visited, everywhere in the galaxy that she had previous gone to had been war-torn or at least about to be so. Coming to a peaceful and happy city like this, in such a natural environment, was quite a change of pace really. And it was nice to be able to practice her aerobatics outside once more _without_ being shot at by a bunch of enemy forces.

She was about to land beside Suzie and walk the rest of the way, but at the last second she changed her mind and alighted on Tarfful's shoulder instead, plonking herself down on his shoulder-armour and holding on with her little hands. Tarfful didn't react except to let out a slight gurgling chortle and allowed her to remain there as he continued walking from platform to platform.

Eventually, Tarfful led them into a small hut based around one of the thinner wroshyr trees. There were large gaps in the side that provided a nice view of the forest, which probably meant it was a lookout post or something like that. And inside, a couple of Wookiees carrying large bowcasters, similar to the one that the Bounty Hunter Embo often used, were standing guard over three other beings that were on their knees and definitely not Wookiees.

As Barriss and Suzie followed Tarfful and Lopmon into the tent, Barriss could plainly see that the person kneeling in the middle was definitely Po Nudo. Two of them were Aqualish, but Po Nudo had the ceremonial robes that came from being the head of the Hyper-Communications Cartel, easily identifying him from the other Aqualish. The third being appeared to be a Shi'ido changeling. Obviously Nudo had been attended by his two aids during the inspection of the listening post that had been nearing completion, but the disguises of the changeling had done nothing to stop the Wookiees.

Po Nudo glanced up at Barriss as she walked in, completely ignoring Suzie. This was a good thing, as Suzie didn't particularly want the gaze of another member of the bad guy council to be focused on her. Poggle the Lesser had been enough, thank you. Lopmon sent a comforting wave to Suzie but remained on Tarfful's shoulder, hoping that if any of the prisoners took an interest in her, they would assume she was a native of the city.

Barriss nodded as she glanced over the three captives. "Oh yes," she said. "This is definitely the person you claimed him to be. One of the last members of the Separatist Council to retain his freedom until today."

Po Nudo said nothing, but he scowled at Barriss and seemed to gurgle slightly.

"Well," the Jedi Padawan turned to the Wookiees guarding him. "May I be the first on behalf of the entire Republic to thank you all for your valiant efforts today? You have our appreciation. If you could keep him under guard for just a little bit longer, that would be extremely appreciated too. I will return to collect the prisoners and take them back to Coruscant when I have finished by negotiations with his majesty the King."

The Wookies growled and rumbled their assent, lifting their weapons meaningfully to remind the prisoners who was in charge. Since Wookiees didn't have cells to hold their captives in the guards were the only thing getting in the way of their escape. But Po Nudo and his aides knew better than to try and anger a Wookiee, lest they suffered the same fate as their former battle droids, which had been torn in half right in front of them.

Barriss made her exit almost as quickly as she had entered, with Suzie and Tarfful, along with the large Chieftain's Digital passenger, following on behind her. Now that they were out of sight of the prisoners, Suzie asked, "How many members of the Separatist Council are there still out there?"

"Not many now," said Barriss. "Although, unfortunately, they are two of them most influential and they can keep the war going for some time with their funds alone, although thankfully not as long as with all of them combined. As well as a couple of minor Senators, there is obviously San Hill of the Banking Clan and Nute Gunray of the Trade Federation. It's going to be harder than ever to catch those two now – they have always been slippery but now that they are some of the only ones still around they will be trying harder than ever to evade us. Fortunately, neither of them like spending too much money. They might even withdraw their funds if the war progresses for too long."

"Does that mean it's almost over?" Suzie asked.

"It could well be," said Barriss. "It could well be. And I think I can safely say that most of the Galaxy will celebrate when this war finally draws to a close. This has been by far the largest war in the lifetime of almost everybody left in the galaxy. The Jedi in particular will be glad to step down as Generals and Commanders. I know I will be."

"Yeah," said Suzie. "And I think Aayla and the others will be the same."

"Right," said Barriss. "It's time to meet the king. Tarfful, do you think that you could take me into the palace to open negotiations?"

Tarfful grunted and said, "Churcwo aoacahwhrr."

"Thank you," Barriss nodded. "As for you, Suzie, I think it would be best if you headed back to the ship and waited for me."

"Are you sure I can't come in with you?" asked Suzie.

"Quite sure," nodded Barriss. "This is an official Jedi mission which, as a youngling, you aren't quite ready for yet. Don't worry, though," she added kindly. "You'll be more than ready soon enough. Just not today, alright?"

"I guess so," said Suzie, determined to do her best to keep up the facade. "Alright. Come on, Lopmon. Let's go back to the ship."

"Rooohu orwhoooh aoacwo ohraro?" asked Tarfful.

"Um, pardon?" asked Suzie, as Lopmon hopped off the Wookiee's shoulder and soared back onto the top of her head.

"He wants to know if you can find your way back on your own," said Barriss. "Or whether you'd like an escort."

"No, it's okay," said Suzie. "I've got Lopmon to help me if I get lost. She may be my pet, but she sure is smart."

_Well, it's nice to know that I'm not completely like a household bunny,_ said Lopmon.

_Nah, you aren't,_ said Suzie. _Household bunnies couldn't do what you and Terriermon did to that cat that tried to pounce on you that one time._

_Yes,_ said Lopmon. _That's true. I'll never forget the stunned look on its face. Although I thought Terriermon shaving the words "Digimon hater" out of its fur was a bit much._

Tarfful seemed to accept Suzie's excuse and nodded. Suzie turned around and headed back onto the bridge, still a little cautiously – after all they _were_ ridiculously high up. She turned back and waved to Barriss. "See you later, Barriss," she said. "Good luck with the-, uh, I mean, my the Force be with you."

Barriss chuckled. "Yes, indeed, I hope it is. See you soon."

Suzie watched and waved some more as Tarfful led Barriss away towards the enormous palace at the far side of the city. She was still a little disappointed that she wouldn't get to see inside the royal court, but still the sheer majesty of the city itself was more than enough.

"I'll say," said Lopmon quietly, having read her mind. "I know that the Digital World is very diverse, but I can't help but wish it had places like this. If this were back on Earth, this would be made the Eight Wonder of the World. No, scratch that, it should be made the First and push everything else down a bit."

"Yeah," nodded Suzie. "I wish we lived in a place like this back home. It's so much cooler than Shinjuku. No offense to it."

"Heh," said Lopmon. "I think most of the people from Shinjuku would probably agree with you, Suzie," she said. "Now come on. Let's do what Barriss says and head back to the ship. We may be able to reveal ourselves to the public without too much suspicion on this planet, but we should still limit that attention."

"Limit it?" asked Suzie. "You're the one who was flying around and showing off the them all earlier."

"Well, yeah," said Lopmon. "But I don't know what came over me. The need to spread my wings and just fly around in the open air again got the better of me. Now come on." She hopped down onto the bridge. "Let's get going."

"Oh, I can't wait to see the looks on the faces of the others when they read our minds about all this later," said Suzie. "Henry will be so jealous of me."

"I know," chuckled Lopmon. "And every part of my brother that isn't already green will turn green with envy when he gets a load of this place from my memories."

The two of them lapsed into silence as they walked through the Wookiee city again, drinking in the scenery as they moved, taking in every crag in the bark of the Wroshyr trees and every leaf on their branches and every rustle of the breeze and what all of the visible Wookiees were doing. This would make an absolutely fantastic story if they ever got home. Of course, everything they'd done would make a great story, but they wanted this part to stand out. It was just stunning, and it had all been built be creatures that many Earth people might assume were primitive at first glance, but they would be so very wrong.

* * *

It wasn't long before they arrived back at the shuttle that they had flown to the planet in. The landing platform is stood on extended out into the forest a little, in order to lie under a gap in the trees large enough for reasonably big vessels to descend through. They were on the outskirts of the city and there were almost no visible Wookiees there now and all the ones that were around were still some distance away.

Suzie sat down on the ramp and glanced out at the surrounding forest. "So, what do we do now, Lopmon?" she asked.

"There's really nothing that we can do," said Lopmon. "Except wait for Barriss to return and hope that she will be successful in her negotiations with the King."

"Do you think things will go bad for her?"

"I doubt it," Lopmon shook her head. "If you ask me, she'll have a relatively easy time of things here. We won't have to wait for long. Did you see the expression on Tarfful's face when he was talking about the Separatists and when he was looking at that Po Nudo guy earlier? I'd swear that while he might be friendly and caring he can also be very fierce when he wants to be and he certainly didn't like having the Separatists having the gall to build bases on his homeworld. He's probably very protective of his people – he is a chieftain after all. The King is probably the same way."

"So, he'll probably sign up with the Republic straight away," said Suzie, nodding her head.

"Exactly," agreed Lopmon. "All Barriss has to really do is help decide what form their alliance will take – if the Republic can build a base here or if they can rely on Wookiee support if there's an attack nearby and stuff."

"You're starting to sound like one of those guys in the war films that Rinchei likes to watch," said Suzie. "Those... tacticians, I think they're called."

"Well," shrugged Lopmon. "If you fight in a war like I have been for the past half a year, you have to start picking these sort of things up and think ahead I suppose."

"Yeah," said Suzie, and she seemed to deflate a little. "I can't believe that it's nearly been half a whole year. Nearly six months since I last saw my Mum or my Dad."

"Hey," Lopmon said, wrapping an ear around her Tamer comfortingly. "We've been over this before, haven't we? Don't start thinking about our isolation in this universe in that sense or you'll just start getting upset."

Suzie nodded, blinking back the tears that threatened to spill over her cheeks. "Okay," she said, quietly. "You're right. I should think about all the really good stuff that's been happening since I got here, right?"

"Yep," smiled Lopmon. "And there sure has been a lot of that, right?"

"Yeah," Suzie grinned. "We've all become much closer as a little family, we've gained lots of new members to that family and loads and loads of new friends of all different species, we've gotten to see all these really cool places and go on these exciting adventures. I think we've really grown up a lot – all of us."

"Even Renamon?" chuckled Lopmon.

"Well, probably not, 'cause she was practically all grown up anyway, but you know what I mean."

"Yes, I do, Suzie," said Lopmon. "But I think out of all of us, you have changed the most. Wouldn't you agree with that?"

"Yeah," said Suzie. "I remember when I was back of Ryloth, I was crying all the time and hiding behind crates with Numa and trying not to be found by any of the droids."

"And this morning you were begging to be allowed back on the battlefield," said Lopmon. "You've come on in leaps and bounds, Suzie. And when we do find a way home, and rest assured after this war is over we _will_, you can show your parents just how much you've matured."

"Yeah," grinned Suzie. "I'll do that. Won't they be so happy for me?"

"Of course they will," said Lopmon.

Suzie smiled and leaned against the metal pole of the ramp. "Well, I still hope the wars over soon," she said.

"Don't we all," Lopmon said.

Then, Lopmon stiffened slightly and her ears pricked up. Suzie noticed this out of the corner of her eye and turned around to see a tense Lopmon raising said ears and listening carefully to the surroundings. Before, Suzie might have loudly asked Lopmon what was wrong, but she'd seen the Digimon do something like this so many times now that she knew not to say anything.

And she was right. Lopmon had thought she had heard a slight rustling noise coming from nearby. It was incredibly faint, even to her great hearing powers. But she had heard it nonetheless. Listening carefully, she heard it again briefly, and she whirled around to stare in the direction of the noise and saw the dense foliage of one of the wroshyr trees beside the platform shaking ever so slightly in a way that made it clear that it was not being caused by a breeze.

Lopmon stared at the patch of branches and Suzie followed her gaze slightly, both of them staring at the foliage expectantly. It didn't appear to move again, but Lopmon could tell that there was something in there. But she didn't know what. Slowly and carefully, the little Rookie Digimon began to inch closer to the leaves, placing each foot in front of the other with the utmost care. Suzie followed behind her, fishing her D-Arc off her belt as well as a Digivolution card, and preparing it, just in case.

If there was one thing they had learned in this universe, it was that in never hurt to be prepared.

The two inched closer and closer to the foliage, until they were only about six feet away from it. It made no further movements though, but Lopmon got the sense that there was something in there, listening just as hard as they were.

Then, another sound reached her ears. It sounded like faint but very high-pitched noise that was increasing in pitch every passing second – quite like a rather large weapon being primed to fire!

Lopmon whirled around and cried, "Suzie! Get down!" and tackled her Tamer to the ground, but it was no good. What came flying out of the foliage was not a large blaster bolt like she had expected, which would have gone flying over their heads harmlessly, but a large net that appeared to be made out of crackling, yellow electricity, that engulfed Tamer and Digimon. Neither of them screamed, the electricity coursing through them seeming to paralyse their nerves and preventing them both from making any noise beyond a long, groaning noise as they convulsed beneath its crackling folds.

It didn't take long for them to slump to the ground, both of them stunned and knocked unconscious by the electro-net thing. Its task done, the net faded out of existence and the perpetrator of the attack stepped out of the branch and onto the platform. He remained crouched low to try and stay hidden, which was important because he was a very large creature.

He was not a Wookiee. Far from it actually. He didn't have a single hair on his body – his body was covered in yellowish-brown scales instead, making him a reptile instead of a mammal. However, he was as tall as a Wookiee, with long limbs that each ended in three vicious looking claws. He had no tail, but he did have a rather large and unfriendly looking head that somewhat resembled that of a small Tyrannosaurus Rex crossed with a human – extended snout and jaw filled with needle-like teeth, large nostrils perched behind the snout and a series of ridges running up the top of his head like a crest, with two more similar lines to either side, making him seem like his head was covered in very small horns. His eyes were yellow and had no irises – only horizontally slitted pupils. He was wearing simple, dark clothing and was carrying a very large electro-net caster in both of his thick hands.

He was a Trandoshan. And a tall one at that.

The Trandoshan glanced from left to right, expecting Wookiees to come charging towards him at any minute, before he looked down at the two creatures that he had just netted, analysing their unconscious forms. No, they wouldn't do at all. Both of them were far too small to be much use with what he had in mind. He was looking for large creatures that could run fast or put up a good fight, and these two surely couldn't do much of either.

They would hardly make good trophies.

When he had heard the sounds of someone sneaking towards his hiding place, he had aimed his electro-net at them in the hope that he would be ensnaring a Wookiee, though he had also done it to prevent them from raising the alarm. He was alone out here, with limited back-up and he would be no match for the Wookiee military. The Trandoshan hissed in distaste. He despised all Wookiees. Many Trandoshans did, as there was a long-standing rivalry between the two species but due to their stronger build it was the Wookiees that normally came out of their regular disputes on top.

The Trandoshan considered his options. He didn't know how long it would take for these two to wake up after being stunned by the net and if he remained here for too long, he would surely be spotted by the Wookiees. But if he just left them here and they woke up then they would raise the alarm anyway. He wasn't sure what one of the two creatures even was, or what the human child was doing at the Wookiee capital, but that was not important right now. What was important was what he was going to do with them.

He'd have to take them with him – that was for sure – in order to stop them from raising the alarm. But he was sure both would be useless to him or his brethren. Unless...

Yes... that might work. His chances of bagging a Wookiee might be out on this particular trip to their home-world, but there were always other trips. And there were still a large number of other species on this planet that he could catch – he wasn't picky whether he caught something sentient or not. It didn't matter what the target was, but the Hunt had to go on. But many of the other creatures of Kashyyyk were predatory.

And he had just bagged what looked like two nice, juicy pieces of bait to lure those creatures in.

He sniggered to himself, but he figured that his time was running out. Pulling a large sack from his belt, he placed the caster on the floor and bundled the unconscious Suzie and Lopmon into the sack and tied it shut, sealing them in. Then, slinging the sack over one shoulder and gripping the caster in his other arm, the Trandoshan jumped back into the foliage and made his way off into the dense forests with his new catch.

The Hunt would be a good one this time around – he was sure of that. He'd catch something that would really please Garnac this time around.

* * *

Barriss' negotiations went extremely well – almost perfectly in fact. She met with the king and, together with Tarfful, they discussed the arrangements for an alliance between the Wookiee people and the Galactic Republic. The King had been eager to join with them and almost agreed before Barriss asked the question. Then, the group focused their efforts on military operations. The King consented to allowing the Republic to build a base in their system and garrison troops there, as long as the troops posed no ill will to the Wookiee people. Barriss was quick to assure the King that the Republic only had the best interest of the planet and all its inhabitants at their hearts, and that if the Separatists ever sought retribution for the capture of Po Nudo, as they probably would, that they could count on all the support the Jedi could offer, which as a lot.

The process only took about twenty minutes or so, and as Barriss left the Palace, bidding farewell to Tarfful, the King and his subjects, she couldn't help but feel proud of herself for handling things so smoothly. She would never express it like that in her report to the Council – a Jedi is humble after all – but as a Padawan learner, what she had accomplished today was a big step forward for her.

The young Mirialan walked quickly through the city and back towards the ship, sending smiles towards the Wookiees that stopped and waved as she walked past. It was a good idea to give them a good impression after all – to reassure them that they were making the right choice allying with the Jedi.

There was no sign of Suzie and Lopmon as she crossed the bridge over to the ship, so she assumed that they were in the ship itself, waiting for her to return. So, she walked up the ramp and announced, "Alright then, guys. Let's be on our way."

There was no response. Barriss blinked and looked around the empty cockpit. Where were they? She knew that Suzie liked to play hide and seek but surely she didn't think now would be a good time. And Lopmon wouldn't go along with it as well, would she?

But she knew that was a stupid thought anyway, because she couldn't sense the presence of either of them.

"Hello?" she called, turning and walking back down the ramp and onto the platform, scanning around for any sign of them. "Suzie? Lopmon? Are you there? Hello?"

There was no reply. Barriss frowned, wondering what in the galaxy had happened. But then, as her eyes swept the platform again, so caught a glimpse of something glinting in the sunlight. There was something small and metallic lying on the wooden platform several metres away from her. Barriss crossed over to and knelt down and as she identified it, her blood ran cold.

It was Suzie's D-Arc. And lying next to it was one of their Modify Cards. Barriss picked both of them up and stared at the surface of the card. She knew enough about them to know that this would be one that took Lopmon to the Champion Level if swiped through the D-Arc. If both of these were lying on the ground, that must have meant Suzie was holding them, but then something happened which caused her to drop them. And if she'd been about to digivolve Lopmon, that something could not have been good.

Standing up, she dashed back into the city to find Tarfful.

* * *

Am I mean, or am I mean? Yep, I'm pretty extra sure that I am mean. Still, my cliffhangers are becoming infamous now – I've been called Grand Master of the Order of the Cliffhanger before, so I kinda need to keep them going.

If some of you are thinking that this Trandoshan bears a remarkable resemblance to the one who captured Ahsoka in the series, you would be right. And the rest of this arc will be different but similar to the episode he first appeared in and the one after that. It's a little earlier in the timeline this time around, but does that make it any less interesting. I happened to think those two episodes were epic and I'll be honest and say that I was already planning this arc to be something to do with Wookiees and Trandoshans. I just thought I'd tweak the original idea.

And if there are any complaints about a certain famous Wookiee not being present in this chapter, I have one word for you – patience. The time will come, I assure you.

See you soon. And please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

With Suzie and Lopmon in the possession of the Trandoshan hunter, Barriss must pursue him into the most dangerous part of Kashyyyk – the forest floor. What dangers await her and the captured duo down there?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 102 : The Shadowlands**


	102. The Shadowlands

After absolutely hammering two of my four assignments I set down to working on this next chapter. My expedition was a huge success, and I saw lots and lots of interesting wildlife and got some great pictures to boot. Hah, I feel pretty good about myself right now.

What's more, I now have something else to show you guys. Some months ago, I asked a guy from DeviantArt if he could a couple of pictures relating to my fic. It's taken him several months to do them, since he had many other people with requests for him as well, but my friend raikoh14 had now posted the first of the two pictures with the promise that the second is coming soon. See my profile for the link to it. It's a fantastic piece of work.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 102:- The Shadowlands**

* * *

A large, insectoid creature, roughly about half the size of an average human, scuttled out onto the thick branch of the wroshyr tree in the darkness close to the surface of the planet. It's small head turned on the spot, perched on the top of its long, thick neck and it allowed various scents to trickle through to help it in its search for prey. Its eyes were tiny and they didn't actually work at all – the creature was blind, but it had an extraordinary sense of smell and it was putting it to good use now. Its skin was a yellowish-brown colour that helped it to blend in with the surroundings.

It was known as a kinrath, and, picking up a faint whiff of something unfamiliar, it began to skitter along its branch on its four multi-segmented legs in pursuit of that scent, determined to make a kill and dutifully bring it back to the matriarch, or the queen, waiting back at the nest so that it could feed the queen's young, the hive mind operating it driving it forwards.

As it followed the scent, it heard a sound behind it and swivelled around to face it. But he could smell that it was just another member of the same hive, therefore not a threat or potential prey. It seemed to be a bit warmer looking than normal on its heat sensors, and there was another scent in the air, but it was still no threat.

At least, that was what the kinrath thought.

As it turned around to ignore its fellow hive-member and continue following the scent, a green laser slammed right into the back of its head, killing it on the spot as the body slumped over and began to slide over the side of a branch. But before it could take the plummet all the way to the forest floor some distance below, a large, furry paw shot out and grabbed it by one leg, hauling it back onto the branch.

And who did this paw belong to?

It belonged to a Wookiee with a bowcaster over one shoulder and Wookiee armour slung over the other one that went by the name of Chewbacca.

Chewbacca hauled the dead kinrath in front of him and proceeded to pull its four legs together and tie them together with some cord, so that he could sling it over his shoulders and carry it without much difficulty on his back. He went about the work with a slick, professional air, which implied that he had done this sort of thing many times before. And indeed he had. Chewbacca was an expert at catching the various creatures down in the darkness of Kashyyyk. This kinrath would provide him and his family with a good meal tonight and probably tomorrow as well.

Chewbacca was still relatively young for a Wookiee. Although that wasn't saying much because he was still over one-hundred years old. His father's name had been Attichitcuk, and he was of noble birth, sharing the name of a great Wookiee warrior – the great Bacca himself. He had been around his planet quite a lot, helping his father to create many new villages around it, and also on their moon of Alaris Prime. He had always been quite adventurous for a Wookiee. While Wookiees were all tough creatures, not many of them liked to venture too far from their homelands. But Chewbacca often went into space, and even down here where he was now in the Shadowlands, where few other Wookiees dared to tread very often due to all the dangerous fauna around the place.

And speaking of dangerous fauna, he tossed the object which had allowed him to fool the creature he had just killed into thinking he was a member of the same species over his shoulder – a special sweat gland that he had taken from the last kinrath he had managed to bring down, which emitted an odour that disguised most of his Wookiee smell and made the kinrath think he was one of them. He had no need for it now, and he would take the sweat gland of this kinrath when he next ventured down to the darkness of the Shadowlands to hunt for his meal.

He finished tying the legs together and slung the light but large insect creature over his shoulder, securing his bowcaster in the same way. Now, all he had to do, was ascend through the trees back up to the capital city of Rwookrrorro where he lived with his wife, Mallatobuck, as well as his father. The three of them would dine well on this kinrath as long as he could get it up there. Fortunately, that would not be a problem for him. Chewbacca was a master of swinging through the branches of the trees. He was well known for it actually, as well for his prowess at fighting and skill with machines. He looked up into the darkness above. It was going to be a long climb and he would be burdened down by his catch, but it was a climb he had made many, many times before, and sometimes with lunch bigger than the one he had just caught.

"Rcahrracao, aoahscwo wwwowowa wwrascahanro," he muttered to himself, which basically translated as, "Right, time to feed the family." He leapt upwards and grabbed onto a branch and swung from it onto another, latching onto it and powering himself through the air towards another one. He landed squarely on it and ran along its length, the dead kinrath bumping against his back barely affecting him at all. He sprang of the end and grabbed another swinging up and over to flip squarely onto the surface of this branch too.

But then, something caught his attention – a sound like something heavy hitting a branch and claws scraping against wood. He listened carefully to the sounds and after a moment he determined that something large was heading his direction at a slow but steady pace, clambering about in the branches.

Knowing that it would not be wise to reveal yourself unless you knew what you were dealing with, Chewbacca crouched behind the trunk of the huge tree that he was standing on and peered around the edge. It took a minute or so for the perpetrator to reach him, but his eyes narrowed and his paws clenched into fists when he saw the creature emerge from the darkness. It was a large Trandoshan, with a electro-net caster over one shoulder and a bulging sack over the other. The Trandoshan in question was hopping from branch to branch and descending towards the forest floor at some speed.

Chewbacca watched it as it disappeared into the foliage again. Chewbacca had had more than a few encounters with Trandoshans, many of whom often came to their planet in attempts to enslave the occupants. But this one had already managed to get something, it seemed.

What had been in that bulging sack? Certainly not an adult Wookiee – it was far too small for that. Chewbacca frowned. There was the possibility that the Trandoshan had managed to get its greasy claws on a Wookiee child instead, but that didn't make a lot of sense either. Trandoshans wanted adult Wookiees which could do a lot of heavy lifting. Why would it grab a child?

Unless it wasn't a Wookiee in there at all, but something else.

Chewbacca knew that the ordinary thing to do would be to go straight to the king and report that he had spotted a Trandoshan wondering around on their planet once again, so that the city could be warned and everyone could stay on alert until the intruder revealed himself and was dealt with. But, he also knew that whatever was in that sack might not remain alive for much longer. It might just be some un-sentient creature that the Trandoshan was planning to eat himself, but for some reason the warrior Wookiee severely doubted this.

There was only one course of action he could take.

Chewbacca had always prided himself on being a dependable, reliable and caring individual. He could not stand by while some innocent life-form was potentially at risk, or he would be violating his own code of conduct. Even his very name meant "trusted friend." He might be wasting his time. But then again, he might not be. And the question of whether he was or not would haunt him for some time if he just turned around. He'd never be able to live it down.

And so, the Wookiee did the noble thing and, putting aside his previous thoughts, he set off in pursuit of the Trandoshan and its mysterious burden.

* * *

The first thing Suzie felt when she slowly began to regain consciousness was a dizzy feeling in her head. She groaned and brought a hand up to her forehead, shaking her head slightly in an attempt to repel the weird sense of disorientation that was rolling around inside her mind. Something felt off. Really, really off.

The sight of the electro-net snapping out of the bushes to engulf herself and Lopmon lanced out of her memories and to the forefront of her mind. Shocked, Suzie's eyes snapped open. Almost immediately, she wished that she had kept them shut. She could barely see anything due to the darkness surrounding her – that was odd in itself, how long had she been out? – but what she could see terrified her. There was a tall and scaly lizard-man with hooked teeth standing nearby. He appeared to be tying a sack to the bare branch of a tree and hissing to himself as he did so.

And aside from the fact that the sight of the lizard-man himself was nightmare-inducing enough, there was something else that scared Suzie. He was upside-down. As was the sack, and the tree that it was being hung from. And the ground was where the ceiling should be and... and... and... wait a second. The lizard man wasn't upside down. _She _was.

Suzie gasped and looked down, or rather up, at her feet. They had been ensnared with rope around the ankles and she had been hung upside-down from the tree just like the sack was being hung now. That explained the dizziness as all the blood was rushing to Suzie's head. She then looked up, or rather down, at the ground, which was about a metre or so below the top of her head.

She gulped. She didn't like this situation at all.

Suzie had never been good at many sports, but she was reasonably skilled at acrobatics. She was still very junior, but she had almost mastered handstands and she could definitely touch her toes. So it was without much difficulty that she reached up and began to fumble at the rope around her ankles securing her upside-down. She didn't care that when it came loose there would be a large drop. She just had to get down.

A hissing, growling noise behind her made her freeze and turn around. The lizard-man was standing behind her now, having finished with the sack, and he had produced a viciously curved knife from somewhere and was holding it lengthways in front of Suzie's face.

"Not a chance, kid," the lizard-man growled. "You're not getting down from that tree unless I say so. You're not even going to attempt it, because if you do, I will slit your throat right now and leave you hanging there as a corpse. Do you understand me?"

Suzie nodded fearfully, her eyes on the sharp tip of the knife. The Trandoshan nodded and withdrew it, chuckling slightly. "Good," he said. "I'm glad we have an understanding, human."

"Who... who are you?" asked Suzie.

"Curious one, aren't you?" he chuckled again. "My name is Lo-Taren, and that's all that you're going to learn about me."

"What have you done with Lopmon?" Suzie asked quickly, remembering how her partner had been caught in the net thing as well.

"If you mean the little, brown creature that I found you with," the lizard-man, Lo-Taren, said. "It's in that sack." He gave the sack a sharp backhand and it was sent swinging, the blow eliciting a muffled grunt and a groan from inside, which meant that Lopmon was probably just beginning to regain consciousness herself and was probably wondering where they were. Lo-Taren laughed and then picked up his enormous electro-net caster. "Quiet, runt," he said, jabbing the butt of it into the sack and drawing another grunt from within.

"Leave her alone!" Suzie cried angrily.

"That's right," Lo-Taren nodded encouragingly. "Scream away. Attract all the attention you can. My job will be over sooner if you do."

Suzie clammed up instantly, although she wasn't sure what this strange lizard-man meant by that. She turned to look around the forest. She couldn't tell if it was night or day, because she remembered how Barriss had said that the forest floor of Kashyyyk was always in total darkness due to all the foliage at the top. She wondered how she could see anything at all in the darkness, but her eyes seemed to be growing accustomed to it. There was no sound around her, which unnerved her a little.

"Why have you brought us here?" she asked. "And why have you hung me in this tree? I want to get down."

"Why do you think you're down here?" asked Lo-Taren, laughing harshly. "I am using you as some nice, meaty bait to lure in some nice-sized, large predators."

"What?" Suzie asked, her eyes widening in horror and fear. "Bait? But... but why are you doing this?"

"Partly for my own amusement," Lo-Taren sneered. "And also because I need to catch something nice and large to join the Hunt."

"The Hunt?" asked Suzie, incoherently.

"Yes, the Hunt," Lo-Taren nodded. "Unfortunately, neither you nor your friend will be part of it, since the both of you are far too small to put up much of a challenge, but you see, we Trandoshans love to kill things. It's in our nature. Part of my job is to go around the various planets and catch nice, interesting forms of animal life... or people life..." he sniggered. "Then, we take what I catch back to our hunting grounds and release it."

"And then?" Suzie asked with trepidation, although she feared that she already knew the answer.

"And then," Lo-Taren smirked evilly. "We wait until dawn to give them an appropriate head-start. And then, we hunt them down," he whipped up his knife and held the tip in front of the terrified girl's eye. "And slaughter them all. They make fine trophies for our base."

Suzie was mortified by what she was hearing. The concept of such cruelty was utterly beyond her.

She'd heard of the atrocities that some people back on Earth committed to the local wildlife, hunting them down simply for parts of their body to use in medicine or to make ornamental decorations and clothing instead of for food and then leaving them to rot. But if what the Trandoshan, Lo-Taren, was describing was true, their actions were even _more_ barbaric than that. They were talking about capturing things and placing them in an alien environment and turning them loose, most of them knowing full well that they were to be hunted down and killed. The fear would be there constantly. It was, to put it bluntly, almost exactly like fox-hunting, if not worse – if that was at all possible.

The thought made Suzie's blood boil.

And it showed too. She glared angrily at the Trandoshan and growled, "You... you... you BASTARD!" She immediately shut up, horrified at what she had just shouted. Terriermon had accidentally used that word in front of her and her mum had pressed her never to use it. However, the situation did seem appropriate.

It also served to amuse Lo-Taren. He threw back his head and laughed. "Bwahahahaha!" he said. "You've got guts, kid. If you weren't so small and slow on your feet then you'd be a perfect candidate for the hunt. However, as it stands, you are merely food for the locals around these parts and they can get quite ravenous down here once they smell potential prey. Now, you just hang tight and wait for the nice hungry predators to come calling."

"No!" Suzie shouted, too angry to remember the knife. "Let us go, right now!"

"Suzie," a muffled voice came from the sack. "Is that you?"

"Lopmon!" Suzie cried.

"It talks!" Lo-Taren exclaimed, amazed.

"Lopmon, you gotta get out here!" Suzie shouted. "Teach this guy a lesson!"

Lo-Taren chuckled again. "Forget it, small fry," he crowed. "There's no way your little friend will ever escape my..."

"**BLAZING ICE!"**

Lo-Taren jerked back in surprise as shards of ice ripped through the material of the sack, causing Lopmon to spill out and land on the ground in a crouch position, her ears slapping to the ground on either side of her. Her little, black eyes glared daggers at Lo-Taren. They flicked to Suzie briefly and then hardened even more. "How dare you!" she snarled. "How dare you treat a child in this manner!"

Lo-Taren, who was at least fifteen times larger than Lopmon, actually found himself taking a step back in fear at her voice. Then he recovered himself and held his knife ready for combat. "You think you can take me on, whelp?" he asked. "Try your luck."

Lopmon did. She charged forward and sprang into the air, powering her body towards Lo-Taren's gut. The Trandoshan slashed at her with the knife, but she rolled in mid-air and shot straight past him instead. He blinked, bemused, and whirled around to see her flying upwards, flapping her ears for another pass. "It flies too!" he gasped.

Lopmon powered back down towards Lo-Taren and rammed head-first into the startled Trandoshan's gut. Lo-Taren doubled over as the horns on her head pricked his body and the blow itself threw him off balance, but Lopmon scarcely seemed affected and jumped backwards, opening her mouth and shooting out another Blazing Ice barrage at him. The lizard-man on the ground shielded his eyes quickly, throwing a scaly arm in front of his face and flinching slightly as the ice pellets slammed into his skin. But the attack was largely ineffective. The scales of a Trandoshan were extremely tough.

Seeing that her ranged attack was doing little damage, Lopmon charged forward again as Lo-Taren threw himself back onto his feet. Lifting his knife, the Trandoshan stabbed downwards at her, but Lopmon jumped backwards so it buried itself in the turf instead. Then, she leapt upwards and delivered to fierce punches with her ears, one to each eye. Lo-Taren screeched and reared up, clutching them with one hand. Lopmon leapt forward to ram him again, but this time his careening fist slammed into her and she was sent shooting backwards, crashing painfully to the ground.

Suzie, seeing Lopmon floored so easily (even though she was getting back up), automatically reached for the D-Arc that was usually strapped around her waist. To her shock, her fingers closed on nothing but air. She realised that she must have dropped her D-Arc during the initial attack back in the city and that meant that she was useless to help Lopmon. Lopmon couldn't digivolve or receive any Modify Card updates. She was stuck as an ordinary Rookie.

Suzie settled for crying, "You can do it, Lopmon."

Lopmon was back on her feet now, as was Lo-Taren. The two squared off against one another, before Lo-Taren made the first move, charging forward and pouncing at the little Digimon, hoping to push her to the ground with his body weight. This turned out to be a huge mistake though, because Lopmon responded by spinning on the spot and crying **"LOP TWISTER!" **before leaping forward herself and striking Lo-Taren full in the chest with all the power of her whirling attack. The Trandoshan was flung backwards and tumbled head over heels until he was brought up short by a tree-trunk.

Lopmon ran forward to meet him while he was stunned, but she was shocked when Lo-Taren, scrambled up and lunged at her again so quickly – clearly Trandoshans were far tougher than your average humanoid. Her assumption that he had been stunned cost Lopmon severely as Lo-Taren grabbed her in his clawed hands and rolled with her, flattening her beneath his body. Then, he stood up, gripping her by the ear in one hand and swinging her bodily into a tree. Lopmon screamed at the impact which shook her whole body, but she was made of stern stuff herself. After all, her main attack did involve slamming into things.

Lo-Taren seemed similarly surprised that Lopmon was still awake, albeit slightly dazed. But the Trandoshan was unwilling to let Lopmon gain another advantage. Brutally and sadistically, he swung her again into the same tree once, twice and then thrice, each impact eliciting a cry of pain from the Rookie Digimon and severely bruising her little body. Then, Lo-Taren pulled off the finishing move, throwing her into the base of the tree. Lopmon, battered and stunned, could only watch as Lo-Taren brought up his foot and slammed it down on her in a vicious half-kick and half-stomp.

That blow was too much for her and she slumped, unconscious once again.

Suzie stared at her Digimon in disbelief. It had been so long since she had seen Lopmon lose a one on one battle with anybody, no matter what level she was at. She was gobsmacked at the fact that the one who had bested her wasn't even a Digimon or a Jedi. Lopmon had put up a good fight, but she had underestimated Lo-Taren's endurance and it had cost her the battle.

Lo-Taren was staring at the unconscious Digimon thoughtfully. "I don't know what you are," he said, even though she couldn't hear him. "But it seems I underestimated you. Perhaps you are fit to join the Hunt after all."

Suzie's blood ran cold at this sentence. But Lo-Taren sneered and said, "But still, I can use you as bait as well first."

* * *

Chewbacca's momentary indecision as to what to do had meant that he had lost sight of the Trandoshan that he had spotted before. It was difficult to track something through the trees, although Chewbacca was managing to do it slowly but surely, finding fresh groove marks in the trunks of the trees made by the claws of his target. Each one made him clench his fist angrily at the thought of the vile lizard damaging his home-world, but he cast it aside and moved on.

The trail eventually led him down to the forest floor itself. Few Wookiees ever dared to tread down here, and Chewbacca had to admit, reluctantly, that the Trandoshan obviously had some guts coming this far into the forest. Not that he would ever admit it out loud.

He concentrated of following the trail once again. It was much easier now that they were on the ground, because the Trandoshan had left huge, gaping marks in the ground from where his heavy feet had been treading. The claw marks were deep and the rest of the foot held a wide imprint, an easy trail for any Wookiee to follow, even in the darkness of the Shadowlands. Yet, Chewbacca always kept an ear on the surroundings. He knew better than anyone of the things that lurked at this level and being caught off guard by one of them was not a pleasant thought.

However, he progressed quickly enough through the forest floor, jogging slightly and his captured krimgan still bouncing on his back quietly, determined to catch up to the invader of his beloved forests, who dared to walk so close to the capital. Any Trandoshan that bold meant trouble.

It didn't take him long to run into something of interest, that definitely told the Wookiee that he was very, _very_ close now. Crouching behind a tree, he peered around the trunk slowly and carefully and he saw, to his astonishment, a being that he most definitely had not expected. It was a human child, a female, and she was hanging upside-down from a tree branch. He could see the rope around her ankles holding her in mid-air and this was clearly the work of his quarry. It explained what had been in the sack.

Chewbacca didn't understand how the Trandoshan had managed to get its claws on a human child. There were no children of that species anywhere near the capital city, and if it had been a visitor then why had it come. It made no sense to him.

However, the valiant Wookiee put that aside for now. He had to help the poor kid and he had to do it fast. But there was a slight human child had its back to him, so she probably didn't know he was there. However, he was pretty sure that the Trandoshan was somewhere nearby. Chewbacca was sure he wouldn't just string her up there and leave her there. This was obviously a trap of some kind and she was the bait. The Trandoshan would probably be waiting nearby for anything that might try to grab her. He would have to proceed with caution.

Carefully and surprisingly quietly considering his huge frame, Chewbacca moved forward slowly, crouching low and often resorting to all fours as a means to keep quiet. There was one advantage of the forest floor with a canopy so thick is blocked out the sun – it also caught most of the twigs that dropped from the higher branches. There was almost nothing to impede Chewbacca and give his presence away, and the Wookiee carefully avoided the bits that were.

As he got closer, he scanned the area for any sign of the Trandoshan, but he saw nothing still. However, he knew the lizard was there somewhere. He could almost feel it. The problem now was how to get the girl down quickly and make sure he didn't give the Trandoshan the opportunity to strike. The girl had been hung out in the open, nowhere near any cover that Chewbacca or large carnivores could hide behind, which was obviously designed to draw them out into the open.

As Chewbacca moved forward a little more, trying to spot the elusive lizard-man, a sound – an ever-so-slight one that only just registered in his ears, came from directly to his left. He whipped around and pointed his bowcaster at the thing making the noise. He only had enough time to blink at the sight of a strange rabbit-like creature with enormous ears, which looked like it was waking up from unconsciousness, and was stretched out between two trees with a rope around each ear at one end and around the tree at the other end, another pinning her small arms to her sides and a cloth wrapped around her mouth, before he was suddenly slammed in the back by the sparking, yellow electro-net.

Chewbacca roared and convulsed as the electricity rippled through his body, making several of the hairs on his body stiffen and stand on end. He gritted his teeth and fought to stay awake, desperately trying not to succumb to the blackness of unconsciousness. But the electro-net was too much even for a mighty Wookiee, and it wasn't long before Chewbacca was passed out on the ground, out cold.

Suzie, who had only heard the sounds and not been able to see what just happened, desperately tried to wiggle around to see what was going on. Lopmon shook her head, trying to figure out where she was as she regained her thoughts once more. Both had time to see the Trandoshan leap out of a nearby tree with the net caster over one shoulder, laughing uproariously.

"I can't believe it," he crowed, placing a foot on the out-cold Wookiee. "I thought for sure that I wouldn't be getting any Wookiees in the bag today and lo and behold, here is one right now. Ha! This must indeed be my lucky day."

"You're the biggest jerk I've ever met in my entire life!" yelled Suzie.

Lopmon growled through the gag wrapped around her lower face. She started forwards but the ropes stretching her ears out almost wrenched them out of their sockets with just one step, forcing her to step back and her arms were too short to reach them and untie herself. Plus, the cloth pulled around her head was sealing some round, hard object – possibly a tree seed or something similar – in her mouth and preventing her from using her Blazing Ice attack. She was stuck and she was loathing every moment of it.

"I've heard words of that ilk before, young one," snickered the Trandoshan, forcefully rolling the Wookiee over onto his front and, as a result, crushing the dead krimgan tied on his back. "But the people who said it never had the chance to fulfil the retribution they desired. Now, quiet. I have a call to make." He lifted his wrist, which had a metallic cuff around it, and pushed the button.

"Lo-Taren," another growling voice emanated from the little device. "How goes the recruiting for the Hunt."

"Better than anticipated," said Lo-Taren. "I have a large Wookiee here, as well as something new – something we've never seen before. I don't even know what it is. Mark my position and bring down a speeder to pick us up."

"Gotcha," said the other voice. "Something new you say? Will it be good for the Hunt?"

"Oh, I'd say so," Lo-Taren leered at Lopmon. "Most definitely."

Lopmon growled.

* * *

Barriss Offee couldn't help but feel like she'd failed.

She knew it wasn't her fault really. She had told the two of them to wait by the ship, that was true. But how was she supposed to know that something would happen to them. She didn't even know _what_ had happened to them, but whatever it was there was probably no way that she could have predicted it. Still, there was a small part of her that was holding herself responsible for losing Lopmon and Suzie like this.

When she had discovered the D-Arc on the platform, she had immediately run off to find Tarfful and explain the situation. The large Wookiee had displayed concern right away and he had leapt into action, gathering as many Wookiees as he could within the next couple of minutes and sending search parties into the surrounding woodland to try and find the two of them, while several others began to search the entire city. Those that went off into the trees either did so by swinging, or by riding large crosses between reptiles and mammals (they looked like lizards but had skin instead of scales as well as the legs and tail of a rat), known as katarns, that went bounding away into the branches.

Barriss had been among the ones that had helped to search the town, but she had found nothing. None of them had. They didn't have a clue what they were looking for really. Nobody had seen what had happened to the two after they had gone back to the ship, so they could find no clues as to what was going on.

And so, Barriss was now sitting on the ramp of the shuttle that she had sent the others back to and was staring sadly at the small, white and pink-rimmed D-Arc nestled in the palm of her olive-skinned hand. Her other hand was by her side, but the Modify Card was still clutched firmly but gently in her fingers.

Barriss knew that she should really be reporting this to the Council, but she was reluctant to do it. What would she say – they had disappeared off the face of the planet. By the Force, what was she going to tell the others? What would Suzie and Lopmon's brothers think of her, as well as Rika and Renamon, and not to mention her childhood friends Aayla and Anakin and her fellow Padawan, Ahsoka? How would they take the news?

Badly, she knew. She didn't want to see their expressions anytime soon. But her guilt was beginning to fester inside her and she knew that she would have to report in with their loss relatively soon. But she was waiting for the return of the Wookiee scouts and their tame katarns, hoping to hear some good news from them that she could add to the report to reassure the Council that everything was okay.

But her hopes were not high.

And so, she continued to stare sadly at the little device. She flinched as numerous thoughts and theories as to the fate of her two travelling companions flashed through her head. None of them were particularly pleasant options. Suzie was such an innocent little child, and Lopmon was such a nice and polite creature that the thought of anything bad happening to either of them was repulsive.

She found herself wishing that she could have spent more time with them. She recalled some of the things that Ahsoka had told her during the brief periods where both of them were at the Jedi Temple and had nothing to do, and about many of the adventures they'd been on. They all sounded so absolutely amazing. It was clear how close they had all gotten as a single family. Barriss could still see the expressions of shock, despair and heartbreak on all of their faces when she would inevitably tell them, as if they were burned on her retinas. They were still there when she closed her eyes.

_They're tough,_ she thought to herself. _They may not look it but they are tough. I'm sure that they'll pull through somehow. If half of what Ahsoka's told me is true, they'll find a way._

It sounded reassuring, but Barriss knew it was only a hope.

And then, with her thoughts still on the stories that Ahsoka had told her, she remembered something. Something which made her leap to her feet and caused hope to surge into her anew. She stared at the little D-Arc in her hand in excitement. It might be a blessing that Suzie had dropped it after all.

She could use the tracking function on it to lead her to Lopmon.

While Suzie was the only one who could use the D-Arc to power up Lopmon with digivolutions and upgrades, there were certain functions on it that could be used by anyone. Barriss had no idea how to work the D-Arc, but she decided to use trial and error. She pushed a button once and some sort of menu screen appeared. She pushed the same button, flicking through the various applications, until, sure enough, she came across something that resembled a red, compass-like needle swinging around in a circle.

With bated breath, Barriss watched the little needle swing around a couple of times before coming to a stop, pointing out into the trees. Barriss reacted immediately. She had no time to wait for the Wookiees to return, so she ran to the edge of the platform and hurled herself off it and into the trees. Her Jedi skills helped her to navigate through the branches, dashing along their lengths and leaping across the massive gaps with ease, bouncing across the foliage.

She was on a mission, and she meant business.

But, then, another thought struck her, which made her pause. She was in a giant forest, where Suzie and Lopmon could be on any level. She looked at the arrow on the D-Arc. It only told her which direction Lopmon was. It didn't tell her if she was above or below her.

She paused for a moment, frowning in consideration. Then, she turned the D-Arc of its side to the screen was pointing towards her face. Sure enough, the arrow immediately changed direction ad began to point downwards instead. Barriss smirked, and began her passage into the trees again, regularly making brief stops this time to check on the arrow in both directions to ensure that she was going the right way. As she moved, she began to descend lower and lower into the forest, following the arrow downwards and into the depths.

As she got further and further away from the capital and further and further from the main tree canopy, she began to notice everything around her getting darker and darker with time passing. She already knew about the Shadowlands, but it was rather unnerving to see it in action. She paused momentarily and looked up. Already she could barely make out the sunlight that was only filtering through the canopy at certain points. It wouldn't be long before it was completely lost to her eyes.

A faint cracking noise in the distance caught her attention. Barriss remembered her earlier description of Kashyyyk's understory being as bad, if not worse, than Kashyyyk. She might be on an important mission, but she was still walking into dangerous territory.

Her hand strayed to her lightsaber and unhooked it from her waist. She activated the blade the created a blue glow around her. It was one of the few times where a lightsaber could be both a blessing and a curse of sorts. The blue light would help her to see, but at the same time it might attract some unwanted attention from the wildlife.

Either way, she would need the blade in order to see the arrow on the D-Arc. As she started up again and began to head deeper and deeper into the forest, things were beginning to get far too dark for her to see the little arrow swinging about the place without the blade. She continued to run further into the wilderness, periodically checking to see the arrow and ensure she was moving in the right direction.

Eventually things were starting to get so dark that it actually hurt her eyes if she looked directly at the lightsaber. But she ignored it and kept going.

It wasn't that long before she finally ran into one of the locals. A rustling sound nearby caused her stop and turn around, holding her lightsaber above her head to create a field of blue light to see by as she squinted into the darkness. She saw nothing for a few moments, but then she was able to make out several small, dark shapes on the edges of the light field, milling about there uncertainly as if unsure how to proceed. Barriss moved her lightsaber forward quickly, briefly bathing the creatures in light before the screeched and darted back to the edges.

Barriss allowed herself to smile in relief. Her glimpse was only a brief one but it was enough to identify the small creatures as tachs – little creatures that resembled blue-furred lemurs with bright white hands and large tufts of fur on either side of their heads which made them look a little like boomerangs. Completely harmless creatures and therefore nothing she had to worry about. They were just showing their primate-like curiosity as to the strange, alien blue light in their otherwise perpetually dark world.

Barriss turned to move on and leapt down into the branches again. It only took her a couple more minutes and several more mega Force-jumps before she finally landed on the surface of the planet, her feet landing smoothly on the floor of the forest. She looked around her. The silence was eerie as the thick trunks of the trees seemed to shut off most of the sounds. There was no bird-song around here. The total darkness seemed to be trying to press in on her, held at bay only by the glowing, humming blade held aloft in her hand.

"Alright," she said quietly to herself. "I've gotten this far." She sighed. "I can't believe I've actually come down into the Shadowlands. This was not supposed to happen. How did such a simple mission end up becoming so complicated anyway?"

She shook her head, devoid of an answer to that question. Glancing at the arrow, she determined that Lopmon was somewhere northwards. She could only hope that Suzie was in the same place, and hopefully if she wasn't then Lopmon would be able to use her mental link to track her.

"Hold on, guys," she murmured to herself. "I'm coming."

But she had only taken a couple of steps forward before a loud, yelping noise caused her to whirl around. She exhaled sharply in irritation when she saw that the tachs had followed her, and were now standing in plain sight of the light. A couple of them made more loud, yelping noises, as if they were trying to communicate with the Padawan. Unfortunately, Barriss didn't have much time for their games right now.

"Go on," she said, waving her hand in a shooing motion. "Get out of here."

The Tachs did the exact opposite and came even closer to her. Barriss stepped back a little, unafraid but trying to tell the Tachs that she wasn't interested in their curiosity. The Tachs ignored her and suddenly ran towards her, crowding around her feet and pulling at the hem of her robes, curiously fiddling with the soft material. Barriss plucked her robes upwards and tried to step backwards, but she was hemmed in by the annoying little rodents.

"Get away," she said. "I don't have time for games. My friends could be in danger."

The Tachs probably didn't understand her and even if they did, that wouldn't have made much difference. One of them leapt onto her shoulder and stood up, reaching out to touch the blade of her lightsaber. Knowing that it would lose a hand if it did this, Barriss quickly plucked it off by the tail in one hand and dropped it on the floor, feeling slightly guilty for hurting it a little but knowing she had saved it a lot of trouble in the long run.

The other Tachs were starting to try and climb up her legs, but Barriss had now decided that enough was enough. Wondering why she didn't do it sooner, she shook them off and backflipped out of the circle in a terrific Force-jump, landing on a branch not far away.

And at that precise moment, something large and reptilian burst out of the darkness nearby and landed in the midst of the Tachs right where Barriss had been standing, snatching one up in its jaws and shaking it like a doll. The other Tachs screamed and ran for cover, but the creature slammed its clawed limb down on the back of another one to prevent it from escaping. It was a katarn, like the ones that the Wookiees rode, but this one was definitely a wild one. Picking up the limp body of the second Tach in its mouth alongside the first, it turned and stared at Barriss for a couple of moments, before leaping away and disappearing swiftly into the forest again.

Barriss couldn't help but sigh in relief as she realised just how close she had become to being pounced on by that katarn. She couldn't afford to let her guard down again. Not even for a moment. Checking the arrow once more, she turned around and dashed off into the forest at high speed. She had to find Suzie and Lopmon as fast as she could. She had no doubt that Lopmon was still alive if the arrow was still working, but anything could have happened to poor Suzie.

The darkness of the forest seemed more menacing than ever now. Beyond the sight of the blue glow coming off her lightsaber, absolutely anything could be lurking, out of sight. Barriss had heard stories about the creatures of the Shadowlands and few of the things that she had heard were pleasant. Having no desire to run into anything else, Barriss ran at full tilt, adding the Force to her run to give her some speed and hoping that it would be enough to leave most predators in the dust. Whenever she stopped to check the D-Arc, she would bounce into a branch once again and then check it before continuing on her way.

While the D-Arc didn't tell her if she was getting close or not, Barriss could almost feel that she was closing in now.

* * *

It didn't take very long for the speeder that Lo-Taren requested to show up. Suzie and Lopmon, helpless from their positions hanging from or stretched between the trees, watched it coming down towards them. It wasn't like any speeder they'd ever seen before – it was large and bulky and slightly resembled the front of a jeep, except for the three legs underneath it which it stood on when it was on the ground and the huge rotary blaster cannon on the front. It was open to the air, and there were two more Trandoshans standing in it as it sailed through the air towards them.

How something so large had been able to descend through the thick foliage, Lopmon had no idea. They might have a corridor from the top, or perhaps they had come in from the edge of the forest itself and passed underneath the canopy that way.

As for the two Trandoshans, they were similar in appearance to Lo-Taren, but there were distinct differences between them. One of the two was shorter and stockier than Lo-Taren, and also had green skin. The other wasn't as tall as Lo-Taren either, although he came quite close and was also brown skinned, with darker brown stripes running across his face. Both also didn't have as many ridges on his head as Lo-Taren, perhaps meaning that Lo-Taren was the senior.

The bright headlights of the speeder was blinding to both Suzie and Lopmon, but Lo-Taren barely seemed to be affected by it – maybe he had had to endure it many times before, or perhaps he was just acting tough. The speeder alighted on the ground in front of the group and the two Trandoshans hopped out the open back and walked towards them.

"Krix," Lo-Taren nodded to the smaller one, before turning to the other and addressing him as, "Smug. Are the two of you ready to lift up some heavy cargo?"

Krix looked down and spotted the fallen Wookiee that was lying beside his fellow Trandoshan's feet. "Whoa," he chuckled. "You caught yourself a whopper this time, Lo-Taren. This one's big even for one of their hairy race."

"I know," said Lo-Taren. "We got lucky this time boys. I thought that I'd blown my chances of catching a Wookiee when I snagged this girl instead," he jerked a thumb at Suzie. "But hanging her up like a piece of meat lured in this big guy. Come on, let's load him into the speeder before he wakes up."

Smug chuckled. "I can imagine that he won't be very happy when he does," he said. "We'd better get him onto the ship and quickly."

"Yes," nodded Lo-Taren. "But there's something else I want to show you before we depart. But first, the Wookiee."

The three Trandoshans grabbed hold of the furry arms of the unconscious native and working together, they hauled him towards the speeder. It seemed to take quite some effort even for the three of them combined, implying that the Wookiee was no lightweight. But it didn't take them long for them to heave him up into the floor of the speeder.

"There we go," Krix said. "He should provide some great amusement for the Hunt."

"Indeed," said Lo-Taren. "And I just happened to catch something else that might provide a little extra entertainment on the side. Come and have a look at this." He waved them over, and the two Trandoshans moved beside their fellow lizard-man. The three of them stared down at Lopmon, who clenched her fists and glared daggers at them, but restrained and gagged as she was, she was unable to do anything else without causing herself serious injury.

"What the hell is it?" asked Smug. "It looks so puny."

"Yeah," said Krix. "You're saying that this little thing will be good for the Hunt. I don't see it. The best thing something like that is good for is attracting bigger prey."

"You would think so, wouldn't you?" Lo-Taren chuckled. "Well, would you still be thinking the same thing if I told you this little critter almost got the better of me in a one-on-one fight?"

Smug and Krix both gasped in amazement. "Are you serious?" Smug asked.

"Yes," hissed Lo-Taren. "I'll admit it freely. This thing can talk and it can fly as well. Plus it could create a miniature tornado by spinning on the spot and the best part is that it can even shoot pellets of ice out of its mouth. I've never seen anything like it."

"Pellets of ice?" Krix asked dubiously.

"Yes," nodded Lo-Taren, holding up his arm and displayed the minor dents in his scales that Lopmon's Blazing Ice had caused. "That's why I bothered with that gag. Still think she wouldn't fit in with the other victims of the hunt?"

Smug hissed. "Perhaps we could give it a shot. Call it an experiment."

"Alright," nodded Krix. "Let's take it."

"Leave her alone!" Suzie cried from the tree. "Don't touch her!"

"Hehehe," Lo-Taren said. "Close your mouth, kid. You can't exactly stop us, can you? Come on boys, let's do it." Lo-Taren stepped forwards and he and Krix untied the ropes around the respective trees. Lopmon came loose and immediately tried to charge at them, but Lo-Taren had realised this and lunged forward, grabbing her and pinning her under one knee. Taking one of the ropes, he wrapped it around both her ears several times, pulling them together like some enormous pony-tail behind Lopmon's head.

"No flying for you," he said, lifting the struggling, kicking and mewling Digimon in one hand, by her bound ears. Lopmon's eyes started to water with the pain of being held up in this manner, but she valiantly refused to stop struggling and continued kicking vainly. "Let's get going now."

"What about the girl?" asked Smug.

"What about her?" Lo-Taren sneered. "Leave her there. She can provide the locals with a nourishing afternoon snack."

As Lo-Taren hopped aboard the speeder with the struggling Lopmon and Krix followed, while Suzie fought to get herself down from the tree and pleaded with them not to take her partner away, Smug spotted something out in the treeline. "Hey," he cried, pointing out with a claw. "What's that?"

All the others turned around to look at where Smug was pointing. There was a strange, blue light emanating from between the trunks and it was getting brighter. Suzie's heart leapt. She recognised the light as that given off by a lightsaber blade. It was Barriss! Barriss was coming to save them!

"I'm not sure," said Lo-Taren. He frowned and then said, "Let's find out, shall we?"

* * *

Barriss continued running and paused once again to check she was still going in the right direction. To her relief, she found that she was, and she powered through the trees, throwing herself forwards with her legs. A frown creased her face. She knew that she was getting unbelievably close now. She could feel it in the air.

And, sure enough, the light from her lightsaber blade eventually illuminated what she had been searching for. The sight was enough to make Barriss stop and gasp in horror. There, right in front of her, was Suzie, hanging upside down from a tree by her ankles with a towering, brown-skinned Trandoshan standing beside her.

And to make matters worse, a struggling Lopmon was being held captive by a shorter, green-skinned Trandoshan standing in a speeder not far behind Suzie.

Barriss eye's narrowed and she raised her lightsaber, and charged forwards towards Suzie and her tall captor. The Trandoshan, Smug, had seen her coming though and reacted immediately, pulling a knife out from a concealed sheath around his waist and holding it to Suzie's throat. This immediately made Barriss stop in her tracks, her teeth gritted in frustration.

"Well, well, well," said Smug, looking highly amused by what he was seeing in front of him. "If it isn't a little Jedi. Come to play the hero have you, youngling?"

"I am not a youngling," Barriss said. "And you, release that girl and her friend right now, or you I will be forced to take action against you. If you surrender now, then the Jedi Council may be lenient with your sentence."

"Barriss!" Suzie shouted. "It's a..." She stopped suddenly when Smug push the dagger further against the front of her neck.

"And not a word out of you, runt, or I will slit your gizzard where you hang," Smug growled. "And as for you, Jedi – you may claim to be a Padawan learner and not a fully fledged Jedi Knight yet, but I am aware of the Code that you live by. You would not let a little, innocent kid like this one get hurt, would you? Back off, or she gets it."

"As does this little kicker here," said Krix, with one thick, scaly hand around Lopmon's throat. Lopmon growled again and kept struggling but the Trandoshan's grip was far too strong and her efforts were completely useless.

Barriss growled as well, but lowered her blade slightly. It had become a stand-off almost immediately. There was no way for her to get to Suzie fast enough for her to save the girl from having her throat cut by her large captor. If she used the Force to push the Trandoshan then the blade would still cut into Suzie's neck. She supposed that a Force pull might work and she would be able to dash in and save Suzie's life, but even if she did that there was absolutely no way for her to save Lopmon as well. The little Digimon could have her neck broken if her captor's hands so much as twitched.

Barriss stared at the smug looking Smug and Krix, desperately trying to figure a way out of this situation. She had no idea what the Trandoshans wanted with these two but it was certainly nothing could and must not be allowed to happen if she could do anything about it.

Then Barriss noticed a slightly odd behaviour from Suzie. The little girl might not be allowed to say anything but in the light of her weapon, Barriss could see the little girl's eyes repeatedly and violently flicking from herself to her right, as if trying to gain her attention without words and get her to look in that direction. Instantly, Barriss turned around, just in time to see a third Trandoshan lurking behind a tree and pointing a large weapon at her before the previously hidden enemy fired an electro-net at her.

Barriss instinctively brought her lightsaber forward to defend herself, but it was useless. The majority of the net passed around it and slammed into Barriss, throwing her against the trunk of another tree. Barriss groaned through gritted teeth, her eyes wide as the electricity ran across her, her lightsaber falling from her nerveless grasp and deactivating, falling to the ground as a hilt and plunging the scene into darkness once again, and Suzie's D-Arc went the same way, falling out of her fingers. Barriss followed them both to the ground a moment later as the net dispersed and she collapsed onto her front, her robes smoking slightly and completely out cold.

Lo-Taren strolled forward and laughed as he stared down at his latest victim. "I literally cannot believe it," he crowed. "This day has to be one of the best we've ever had. A Wookiee warrior, a strange, unknown creature with special powers and now a young Jedi to add to our little collection. That's more than I could ever have hoped for."

"You horrible, evil person!" Suzie shouted. "Leave Barriss alone. Leave Lopmon alone. Leave us all alone, you filthy crawlers."

"Filthy crawlers," chuckled Krix. "That has to be a new one for the books."

Lo-Taren chuckled and grabbed Barriss by one foot, dragging her unceremoniously across the dirt and towards the others. Suzie watched sadly as Barriss was dragged past her, her eyes shut and her hood having fallen off to reveal the short, blue hair beneath it.

"Well, we'd best be getting back now," said Lo-Taren, lifting Barriss bodily into the air by her ankle and dumping her on her back in the speeder, on top of the unconscious Wookiee splayed across the floor. "We've tarried for long enough and we should get this Wookiee into a cage before he wakes up. I gave him near maximum voltage, but it might not keep him down for much longer."

"Good point," said Smug. "We still leaving the kid here?"

"Of course," said Lo-Taren. "There's no point in taking her along. Leave her hanging there. She'll get eaten eventually."

Smug took his knife away from Suzie and walked towards the speeder. Suzie was crying freely now at the sight of her friends being taken away. "Please," she wailed. "Please stop this. Let us all go!"

"Not a chance," Smug crowed. "Release a catch like this one? There's no way we'd ever do that."

"Not that we'd ever release any kind of catch we make," added Krix.

Smug laughed. "There is that."

"Alright then, Krix," said Lo-Taren. "Let's leave this World of the Furballs behind and go and have some fun with our new victims."

"Alright," said Krix. The squat Trandoshan handed the struggling, growling Lopmon to Smug as the third Trandoshan jumped in the speeder. It was a tight fit for all three and their passengers, but they managed it without too much difficulty. Then, Krix turned to the controls and flicked a few buttons. The headlights of the speeder flashed on and it began to rise into the air.

"No!" Suzie shouted. "Lopmon! No!"

"Save your breath, kid!" laughed Lo-Taren over the sound of the speeder. "It'll only draw in the predators!"

Suzie, her heart hammering and hoping desperately that this was all a terrible dream, locked eyes with her partner. Even though Lopmon's mouth was concealed by the white cloth wrapped around her face, Suzie could plainly see Lopmon's expression. It was one of guilt and failure.

Lopmon's voice echoed in Suzie's mind.

_I'm so sorry, Suzie,_ she said, quietly and mournfully. _I have failed you. I have failed everyone._

"No! Lopmon!" Suzie cried as Krix accelerated the speeder and the craft jolted away into the trees. Suzie's eyes stayed with Lopmon's for as long as they could, but eventually, the Trandoshans, their craft, the unconscious Wookiee, Barriss and her beloved partner were all swallowed up by the darkness of the Shadowlands.

Suzie was alone in the dense woodland.

"LOPMON!" Suzie screamed. "LOPMON! COME BACK!"

There was no reply.

* * *

Wow. I feel really, really guilty for all the crap I'm putting our main characters through at the moment. However, at least it makes for an entertaining and suspenseful read and it makes us all hope for a happy ending. And so begins the rest of the arc, where we'll have two storylines going on at the same time – one featuring what happens to Lopmon, Barriss and Chewbacca, and the other on poor Suzie.

I admit it wasn't the most glorious entrance for our favourite Wookiee into the world of the story, but he definitely has more to come in this arc. Keep reading to see more of him.

See you soon. And please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

Suzie is now alone in the Shadowlands – Lopmon and Barriss have been whisked away to fates unknown and she can't sense anyone with her mind. Can she survive the creatures of the night on her own?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 103 : Lost in the Dark**


	103. Lost in the Dark

You guys will have to be patient for a little while longer if you want to find out what's happening with Lopmon, Barriss and Chewbacca. This chapter focuses entirely on what's going on in the Shadowlands, with little Suzie. She is the most defenceless of the group and she's certainly in some big trouble now. Why don't we see how much trouble?

Read on and tell me what you think people.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 103:- Lost in the Dark**

* * *

For almost a minute after her partner's presence had been lost from her mind due to the distance between them, Suzie hung limply from the tree, her arms swinging above, or rather below, her head like they were in a daze, which the little girl's eyes remained fixed on the spot where she had last seen Lopmon's face before it had been swallowed up by the darkness that now pressed in on her from all sides, threatening to smother her like the walls of despair that were hemming in Suzie's mind.

For the first time in a long time, Suzie was well and truly alone.

The last time she had felt like this even remotely was when she had been whisked away into the Digital World for the first time. But it was a hundred times worse now. When she'd appeared in the Digital World she'd been a bit too naive to realise just how dangerous the situation she was in was. Plus, at first she'd had those Digi-Gnomes to keep her company for a few moments. The sadness she had felt in the Digital World had not lasted long either, because she had met Antylamon for the first time.

But ever since that day, Suzie had always had somewhere there to look after her. Lopmon had been there during the D-Reaper crisis, and her dad had always been on the scene whenever Lopmon went off to fight. Then, when Lopmon had been sucked back into the Digital World by Operation Doodelbug, Henry had always been there to look after her. He would always be close, in the next room or at least somewhere in the building. And then Lopmon had come back and shortly afterwards the mental link had been born, which meant that Suzie had almost literally never been alone.

But now, there was no-one.

Lopmon was gone.

The others were all too far away, probably in the middle of a full-scale battle against the Separatists on Mygeeto and having absolutely no idea what was going on. She knew that Henry would start worrying if they didn't check in soon. How long would it be before someone came looking for her?

Would she survive that long?

And when they did come looking for her, would they actually be able to find her?

All these questions whirled around in Suzie's mind, thickening and intensifying like a blanket of fog that surrounded her brain and made her withdraw into herself. She could barely see anything in front of her, this place was rife with predators, and she was hanging helplessly by her ankles from a tree branch and there was nobody to look after her but herself.

The thought terrified her.

Suzie would be the first to admit that, despite everything she'd been through, she wasn't ready to handle things by herself. And she shivered with fear as she remembered what Barriss had said – the Shadowlands of Kashyyyk could be almost if not more dangerous than Felucia. It looked like she was going to be the guinea pig and find out whether this was true or not. She didn't want to be a guinea pig. But it looked like she would have no choice.

Thinking of Barriss just depressed her and made her heart clench in her chest. Lo-Taren the Trandoshan had said they would be released somewhere else, only to be hunted down and killed. She knew Lopmon and Barriss could normally handle themselves, but these Trandoshans were cunning, strong and fierce. Lopmon was unable to digivolve as well. Would the strength of a Rookie Digimon, a Jedi Padawan and that Wookiee that had been taken as well be enough to defy them?

Suzie didn't know.

And she wasn't sure whether she wanted to know the answer or not.

But while Lopmon and Barriss might be in incredible danger right now, one of the worst situations they'd ever been in, Suzie had no choice but to think about herself for now. Gulping and hating the very thought as it ran through her head, Suzie realised the Lopmon and Barriss' fates were out of her hands. She couldn't help them now. They would have to fend for themselves and she would have to do the same.

The thought was unpleasant, but a necessity. While Suzie longed for a happy reunion, and soon, that could only happen if _she_ survived this mess as well.

Sniffing and wiping her tearstained face with her hands, Suzie murmured, "Don't worry, Lopmon. I'll do my best to stay alive down here. I won't... I won't let you down. I hope."

She looked up at the rope around her ankles. The first step of surviving the Shadowlands would be to get down. Lifting herself upwards, she managed to grip the rope and began to fiddle with the knot. It was uncomfortably tight and her feet were tingling due to lack of circulation, but Suzie relentlessly picked at the knot around it. The Trandoshan had tied a difficult knot, but, after a couple of minutes of effort, Suzie had managed to pull it loose.

This resulted in a long drop of about a metre to the ground below. Remembering some advice Renamon had given her once, Suzie deliberately landed on her side and rolled in an attempt to soften the impact. It still sent huge pangs of pain lancing up her arm and severely bruised her shoulder, drawing a yelp of pain from her mouth, but it certainly wasn't as bad as falling on her head.

Suzie struggled to her feet after a couple of seconds lying on the ground. She tottered a little, unsteady on her slightly numb feet, but she was able to stand up.

Seeing everything right side up didn't particularly make anything easier to bear. The darkness was still surrounding her and the darker outlines of the trees were still as huge and imposing as ever. Suzie listened carefully, but her ears were only rewarded with silence for the time being.

"Okay," said Suzie to herself. "What do I do now?" She found that saying things out loud helped to calm herself slightly, albeit not by much, and it reduced the unnerving effect of no noise whatsoever. "Do I just go around and see what I can find?" She looked up, staring at the darkness above that blotted out the sunlight – that was if the sun was still even up. She had no idea how long she'd been down here after all. "The Wookiees live near the top of those trees," she reminded herself. "But there's no way that I'll ever be able to climb up there."

And she was right. The behemoths of the forest towered over her like giant monoliths, far taller than any other tree she'd ever encountered. There were not many branches that low to the ground and all the ones that were around at such a low level were still all too high for her to jump up to. And scaling the trunk was out of the question. It was just too wide. Plus, there was the sheer height to take into consideration, and even if she reached the top she'd still be no better off than before, since she'd still be alone, and she could hardly traverse through the branches like a Wookiee, jump like a Jedi or fly like Lopmon.

"So," Suzie said, trembling slightly as she looked around. "I'm stuck on the ground with all the dangerous stuff. What am I supposed to do then? Wander aimlessly around and hope for the best?"

The forest didn't answer her, but Suzie got the distinct impression that this was about the only thing that she could do. There were simply no other options available to her. She sighed, and the sound seemed to rebound off the trees. She really, really hated the dark. She wasn't afraid of it, but what was in it. Firstly Geonosian zombies, then droids, now this. When would it end? And at least all those other times she had Lopmon or a Jedi watching over her every move. Now, she had nothing.

As she looked around, wondering where she was supposed to go next and her eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness around her, she caught a glimpse of a couple of small objects on the ground beside a tree nearby. There were char marks on the trunk in a lattice like a spider web. This had been the tree that Barriss had been pinned to by the electronet.

Suzie hurried over and knelt beside the tree, staring at the objects on the ground. Her heart wrenched at the sight of them. One of them was her own D-Arc, the tracking function still on and the arrow whirling around as it tried to locate Lopmon, but it seemed the Digimon was constantly on the move. That explained how Barriss must have found them. Suzie found herself blaming herself. If she had managed to keep hold of the precious device then she would have been able to digivolve Lopmon, and Barriss wouldn't have been able to find them and get caught too.

Her rational mind was telling her that she could not be blamed, but the rest of her was stamping on those thought. Tears began to leak out her eyes again at the thought of what the others might be doing, especially as she recognised the second thing lying on the ground. It was Barriss' lightsaber, the deactivated hilt lying there like a simple lump of metal.

Dejectedly, Suzie picked up her D-Arc and slotted it into the slot on her belt, hoping that she would get the chance to use it again one day. Then, she picked up Barriss' lightsaber hilt and stared at it.

"I'm sorry, Barriss," she said. "And you too Lopmon. If I was stronger then maybe none of this would ever have happened. You guys are strong, but I'm not. Why did I get picked to be a Tamer anyway?"

Self-doubt was beginning to riddle through her now as she stared at Barriss' lightsaber. But, Suzie quickly realised that she was merely sinking deeper into a state of depression quite quickly and wrenched herself away. "Momentai, Suzie," she breathed to herself. "Momentai. We _will_ see each other again. I... I know it."

But she didn't. She didn't know anything anymore. Lopmon and Barriss might already be dead. One of the others on Mygeeto might have died and she had no idea.

But she resolved that she would try. She would try her hardest and best to survive out here, just as she knew that Lopmon and Barriss would try their best to survive the Trandoshans. And while she might not be able to escape these dark forests, the same might not be said of Lopmon and Barriss from their captors. And if they broke loose then they would definitely come looking for her. Suzie just had to make sure that she stayed alive long enough for that to happen. And when they came for her, she would give Barriss back her D-Arc and hug both her and Lopmon harder than ever before.

"Okay," she murmured to herself, looking up and off into the trees. "Barriss came from that direction. That probably means that the city we were in before is that way. Maybe all the scary animals stay away from the city so that would be my best bet."

She was actually impressed by her own strategic thinking. She supposed spending so much time around a warfront, with smart Jedi, clones and Digimon who were good at thinking ahead, had affected her mind and she had picked up bits and pieces of it from them. The thought lifted her spirits a little. Maybe she might just have a chance of surviving this after all.

And with this in mind, she quietly set off into the forest, in the direction that Barriss had come from and in the opposite direction to the way that the others had been taken.

* * *

The minutes ticked by as Suzie walked slowly and quietly, each one seeming to stretch on for an eternity as she placed her feet with the utmost care on the ground, sneaking along as quietly as she could. She'd had plenty of practicing in her younger days at sneaking – she would often sneak out late at night and pull some ice-cream from the fridge and eat it while everyone was asleep. Of course since Lopmon was now around, she got busted every time now. But still, the practice came in useful here. She thought that making as little noise as possible would both help her avoid detection by predators and help her hear them coming.

Wow, she was getting pretty good at this kind of thinking. Then again, she had been thrown in at the deep end. She had no choice but to think like this if she wanted to survive.

Her eyes roamed around the forest constantly as she moved, searching the darkness for even the slightest sign of movement. This action seemed to make the darkness condense a little as if it was deliberately trying to obscure her view and make it harder to spot approaching danger. The eerie silence pressed in on her eardrums, broken only by her faint footsteps and the sound of her own heart beating at twice the normal rate.

"Ssh," Suzie hissed at it, sure that anything within a mile or so might be able to make it out since it was drumming so hard. But she couldn't help it. She was breathing deeply, despite not being tired and all of this combined with the utter lack of noise from everything else was turning Suzie into the noisiest thing in the forest despite her sneaking about.

She shivered fearfully as she glanced over her shoulder, half expecting some huge and terrifying Acklay-like creature to be rearing out of the darkness behind her. She wished that she had one of those friendly Acklay from Felucia with her. She remembered how her friends had said that no sane creature would dare to take on an Acklay. Would the creatures of Kashyyyk be the same as the creatures of Felucia?

But there was no Acklay. There was just more darkness.

Everywhere she went, she found herself flicking her eyes from side to side. Each time she passed a tree, she hesitantly glanced towards it. The trunks were thick enough to conceal two whole elephants, so almost anything could effectively be lurking behind it. The branches above were similar – they seemed to just float almost out of Suzie's vision range. There could be anything sitting up there, with eyes adapted to a nocturnal lifestyle, watching her every move and waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

Suzie almost unconsciously found herself drifting from tree to tree as well, creeping between the trunks and pressing up to them in the hope that she could hide in the deepest parts of the shadows, and so make it less easy for some of those hostile eyes to see her.

She wandered in the same direction, or at least she hoped that it was the same direction since it almost didn't seem like she was getting anywhere at all since everything looked more or less exactly the same, for quite some time. She completely lost track of how much time had gone by since she'd lost sight of Lopmon after only about five minutes of walking and now she was just alone and surrounded by the darkness of the night.

Her thoughts drifted back to Lopmon once again. Her poor partner was probably terrified for her safety too, more so than her own in fact. That was Lopmon for you, though. She was loyal to the bitter end. And while not having her by her side was hard enough as it was, never seeing her again was simply unthinkable.

Suzie paused by the trunk of another enormous wroshyr tree, momentarily lost in thought. She glanced around, but she still couldn't see anything that looked threatening. Not that that really meant anything in the darkness of this place. Still, she thought that stopping just briefly wouldn't hurt. Falling to one knee, Suzie, struggling not to burst into tears again already, brought her hands up in front of her face and pressed the palms together. Then, she shut her eyes. She almost snapped them open again in terror at not being able to see anything at all, but she had to do this. It would make her feel better.

"Great Fanglongmon," she murmured quietly. "I don't know if you can hear me or not, but if you can then please listen to me. You probably know what's happened already, but my partner Lopmon had been kidnapped by a bunch of lizard-men called Trandoshans and she's going to be hunted down like an animal, along with another friend of mine. Please, please, please watch over the both of them and make sure they stay alive. I probably couldn't deal with it if something happened to either of them." She paused for a moment after her prayer and then added, "Amen," as an afterthought. She didn't know if Fanglongmon would appreciate the prayer if he had heard her, but she felt slightly better at the prospect of having done something to help Lopmon and Barriss.

It might have just been her imagination, but the faintest of breezes seemed to blow across her as she opened her eyes. If it had not been her imagination it was probably a natural wind, but still it heartened her slightly.

Just as Suzie climbed back off one knee, she heard something which made her heart practically stop. There was a tiny scratching noise from nearby, like some kind of sharp claw scraping against the wood of a tree.

Suzie froze and listened intently, so hard that her ears almost started to hurt already. She didn't dare to move a muscle, not even to blink, as she tried desperately to pick up any kind of sound with her ears over the vast silence all around her.

And indeed, she heard something. There were some tiny clicking noises coming from somewhere, and when Suzie looked around she found that she couldn't tell which direction it was coming from. But it definitely sounded like more claws on tree bark. And, as she listened with a growing sense of dread to the noise as it grew louder, she also began to hear something else. A faint snuffling sound, like a creature that was trying to pick up a scent.

Suddenly, Suzie found herself wishing that she had asked Fanglongmon to watch over her as well.

She was still looking around, trying to determined where the noise was coming from, but even the faintest noise seemed to reverberate off the enormous tree trunks, making it almost impossible to tell which direction the claw clicks and the snuffling were coming from. For a split second, Suzie contemplated running as fast as she could, but then she decided against it. All she knew was that there was a creature nearby. It might not have located her yet. And it might not even be dangerous at all. If she ran, it would almost certainly find out where she was, and if it was dangerous then it would be on her tail instantly. If it wasn't then something else that was might hear her running anyway.

So, she began to creep forward quietly once again, sticking to the shadows of the tree as much as she could, even moreso than before, crouching as low as she could manage to try and avoid being seen. It only occurred to her a couple of moments later that something that was using smell wouldn't need to rely on its eyes. And that just made her heart beat even faster. Surely the animal could hear that unless it was deaf.

But things didn't seem to be getting better. As she kept sneaking along, the noise still steadily began to get louder, which meant the creature was coming closer to her or she was coming closer to it. Suzie swallowed silently and slipped into the shadow of another tree, before creeping towards another. And then, her heart received another large fluctuation in beat when she began to pick up the sound of a _second_ animal, also snuffling and making claw-clicks on the wood of the trees from nearby.

Resisting the urge to swallow in fear, Suzie pressed on, with the sounds of the two creatures reverberating around her once more. No matter how far she went, she couldn't seem to lose the two of them and she couldn't even see what she was up against either. It was one of the most gut-wrenching and terrifying experiences of Suzie's life.

Abruptly, Suzie turned the corner of another tree and had to resist the urge to gasp as she immediately jumped back behind it. Her eyes had been able to make out a dark shape nearby and it had been moving. Suzie quickly peered around the side of the trunk and stared at the creature on the other side.

She didn't know what she was looking at, but it was something that Barriss had seen earlier. The long, reptilian body, with several horns poking out the back of its head, pointed snout, legs tucked underneath its body like a mammal and the long tail of a rat would identify it as a Katarn to those who knew what it was. But to Suzie, who had no idea what the creature was, all she saw was a giant and scary looking lizard-like creature standing on the ground not far away.

She watched it quietly. It wasn't doing much of anything. In fact it appeared to be hunched over, with its head close to the ground. Suzie couldn't see much of the details thanks to the darkness but after a few moments, she saw the reptile thing throw back its head, and there was a tearing sound as it made gulping motions. Suzie balked as she realised the creature was eating something it had just killed.

She really didn't want to know what it was.

Suzie withdrew so she wouldn't have to watch the Katarn chowing down on its unknown prey and pressed her back against the trunk of the tree. She was petrified now, wondering if she should attempt to sneak away. But she was afraid that if she tried moving away now, the Katarn might notice her and decide to add another to its list of kills for the day. And Suzie would obviously prefer it if that didn't happen.

But what would happen if she stayed there? Would it smell her and come for her anyway?

As Suzie's fevered and terrified mind tried to come up with an alternative and fast, and she tried to drown out the sound of crunching bone and tearing flesh coming from behind the tree she was hiding behind, her mind was made up for her, when a small dollop of gloopy, thick liquid suddenly landed on her shoulder.

Suzie glanced down at it in bemusement. It wasn't rain – it was too thick for that and rain probably couldn't get down here much anyway. As she stared at it, another dollop appeared right next to it and her muscles seized up once more, her heart almost turning to ice and her eyes widening as she realised what she was looking at.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Suzie's head turned on her neck and she carefully looked upwards, at the tree trunk she was standing next to.

There, slinking closer and closer to her, head-first down the branch and drooling slightly, was another Katarn. Suzie could see its eyes, in the dark, and they definitely looked hungry. It stopped moving when it saw that it had been spotted and Suzie saw its muscles tense as it prepared to spring.

And from there, everything kicked into high gear.

An involuntary scream was ripped from Suzie's throat as she lurched off the tree so hard she almost fell over, before dashing off into the trees just as the Katarn on the tree trunk sprang, landing heavily, claws first, in the spot where Suzie had just been. Its teeth snapped behind her and almost snagged the back of her shirt, but Suzie was untouched, breaking into a full-scale run and heading for the trees.

Suzie didn't dare look around, but she could hear the Katarn take off in pursuit, leaping towards her with huge leaping bounds and covering the distance between them almost instantly. The Katarn leapt right over her shoulder and latched onto the trunk of a nearby tree, before bouncing off it to land in front of her, snarling loudly. Suzie skidded to a halt and screamed again, before turning quickly to her left and just avoiding the sharp teeth of the Katarn is it snapped around the empty air where her arm had just been.

Suzie's mind was now only focused on escape, and in her panicked state she dashed through the trees wildly. The Katarn growled in frustration as its prey managed to elude it a second time, but it turned around and watched it run for a moment before streaking after Suzie once more. The Katarn was many, many times larger than Suzie and had no problem with catching up to her. Suzie screamed as the teeth slammed down behind her, catching her by the back of her shirt and stopping her short, causing her legs to slip out from under her as she collapsed onto her front.

"Let go!" she cried uselessly, as she was lifted bodily into the air, screaming the whole way and was dumped on the floor with a crash that knocked the breath right out of her and bruised her back. The Katarn loomed over her, a forked tongue sliding out of its mouth as it tasted the air, as if deciding whether or not this creature would make and appropriate meal. Suzie lashed up at it with her foot and pummelled its snout, but the Katarn barely seemed affected. It shook its head in brief bemusement, but then snarled and lunged downwards.

Suzie screamed and covered her face with her arms, expecting the end to be swift. But another sound registered over the growl of the Katarn – the sound of rushing feet and a tail sweeping the ground, storming towards her from the side. The Katarn was suddenly blindsided by another Katarn – the one that had been feeding from before. The two predators rolled over and over one another and away from Suzie, reducing themselves to a hissing, slashing ball of fury.

Suzie watched for a moment as the two Katarn battled one another angrily. She knew that the Katarn that had saved her wasn't trying to help her – she wasn't naive enough for that. But she knew that it wanted to eat her itself and was battling the other Katarn over the rights to the prey. Lying there would be suicide, because eventually one would win and would come for her again, so quickly she rolled onto her front, doing her best to ignore the pain in her back, and ran off into the trees again.

The sounds of combat behind her stopped and Suzie risked a glance over her shoulder. To her terror she saw that both Katarn had ceased fighting and were charging towards her again and gaining rapidly. Suzie screamed and increased her speed, but it was no use. The front most Katarn sprang, claws splayed and teeth bared as it sailed through the air towards her.

Suzie quickly darted behind a tree, causing the Katarn to crash into the ground and go rolling away. Suzie didn't rest there though, and prepared to run off, when there was a thud on the other side of the trunk that implied something heavy had landed on it. She backed away swiftly as the second Katarn scuttled around the trunk and swiped at her with its claws. She fell over backwards by losing her footing, which turned out to be her saving grave, because if she hadn't the claws would have decapitated her. She quickly rolled with it and got up, dashing away.

But in her panic she forgot that she was running the same direction that the other Katarn had rolled and pulled up as it emerged from the shadows in front of her and leapt again, teeth lancing towards her like an airborne (and inhumane) badger trap. Suzie backed away and the teeth slammed shut before her face. Suzie screamed again and turned, while the Katarn lunged a second time. The only thing that stopped its teeth snapping on her leg and pulling it off was the second Katarn, which charged forwards and slammed head-first into the other one in an attempt to make it back off.

Suzie risked a glimpse behind her and saw the two reptomammals were up on their hind-legs and were scrabbling at each other's flanks with their claws and biting down on their opponent's necks and attempting to throw them to the floor, in a scene that reminded Suzie of a nature documentary she'd seen of two fighting Komodo Dragons, except these guys were far large than any Komodo. Not waiting for them to finish, she hared off into the trees, intent on leaving them behind.

She ran on, breathing heavily and heart pounding nineteen to the dozen as the sounds of clashing giant reptile grew fainter behind her. She was going to be okay. She was going to be...

Suzie let off another scream as a third Katarn sprang from the branch of a tree some distance in front of her and landed on the ground several metres away, eyes seeming to shine in the darkness and tongue lashing out malevolently. This was probably the second one that had been stalking her for some time, and as the other two scrabbled with each other, it had decided to take the opportunity for an easy meal.

Suzie backpedalled as the large reptomammal motored towards her on its thick legs, saliva dripping from its teeth as its maw opened wide, ready for the kill. Suzie knew she could never hope to outrun it. All of them were way too fast for her. She needed a place to hide, and quickly. And her time was running out.

As the Katarn was two metres away from her, Suzie quickly made to go to the left. The feint worked perfectly and the Katarn lunged to her left and its right, whereupon Suzie instantly changed direction so that it slammed its claws into nothing but the ground instead and dashed past it while it was confused. She actually felt slightly proud of her for outmanoeuvring the giant creature and she ran on, her feet pounding the ground as she tore past the creature's hind legs and away.

But suddenly, she was brought up short when the large rat-like tail of the Katarn suddenly swung at her. Suzie cried out in pain as the large appendage slammed into the front of her legs and knocked them out from underneath her, sending her crashing painfully onto her front and almost making her bite her tongue. The Katarn, recovered from its momentary confusion, whirled around and stood over her. Suzie, ignoring the injuries of her front, rolled on her back and tried to crawl backwards. The Katarn lunged and Suzie flattened herself against the ground as the teeth snapped shut right before her eyes. Suzie scrambled back even more, kicking up again with her foot.

This time it had slightly more effect because Suzie's shoe caught it in its throat. With a slightly strangled cry it reared upwards. Suzie rolled onto her front again and pushed up to try and get onto her feet, but the Katarn fell to the ground over her again and its foot slammed down on Suzie's right arm. Suzie screamed as the Katarn's weight slammed over her hand and lower arm...

...Fortunately, it was lifted away almost immediately and the Katarn was also shrieking in pain – more so than Suzie in fact. This was because it's foot had unwittingly pushed down on the activation button of Barriss' lightsaber, which was still clenched in Suzie's hand and the young girl had completely forgotten about due to her fear. The bright blue blade flashed into existence and sliced off two of the Katarn's toes.

As the Katarn collapsed onto its side and rolled over, flexing its remaining claws in agony, Suzie shielded her eyes from the horrendously bright lightsaber blade and quickly turned it off. The sudden blue light amidst the darkness had almost completely blinded her and destroyed her night-vision again, so now she could only hear the sounds of the Katarns around her.

Suzie scrambled to her feet, listening to the sounds of the two fighting lizard-rat things come to an abrupt end with a choking sound, implying that one of the Katarn had managed to get hold of the neck of the other and had probably snapped it. She heard the thud of a body hitting the ground, and she also hear the third Katarn getting to its feet again and hissing ominously. Suzie backed away, wary of colliding with another tree as she desperately squinted, trying to get her eyes to adjust to the darkness again so she could see her two attackers, her heart hammering harder than ever as her ears relayed all the information to her.

And her ears were telling her that one of the Katarns was getting closer – she could hear its long tail swishing backwards and forwards angrily. Then she heard it break out into a charge.

But this time, she remembered that she had a lightsaber in her hand.

Holding an arm over her eyes and shutting them, she switched on the blade again. She heard a yelping noise as the Katarn that had been running at her reeled back, blinded by the sudden intense light in its face and collapsed onto its back, pawing at its eyes. Suzie realised that, in a strange way, Barriss was still protecting her, even if she wasn't here. It was a small comfort though.

She could hear the other Katarn prowling around nearby, probably at the edges of the light and waiting for Suzie to try and make a move. Suzie swallowed as she remembered that she was still very much in danger, even though one of her three attackers was dead and the other temporarily blinded. And now she was blinded as well, so she couldn't see anything.

Suzie desperately tried to think. If Terriermon or Renamon or Aayla or Anakin or any of the others were in this situation, what would they do? How would they get themselves out of trouble?

And an idea came to Suzie right then.

Thinking that she was probably insane, and still very much blind with her arm over her eyes, she charged right in the direction of the sounds of the second, prowling Katarn, holding the lightsaber high. The Katarn was stunned by this bold action and didn't move for a moment, which was more than enough for the light to seriously pierce its eyes before it could shy backwards, shaking its head in an attempt to clear its vision, while the other one was pushing itself to its feet nearby.

Suzie quickly shut off the blade and uncovered her eyes. She could still barely see, but she could see enough of the creature ahead of her and the surrounding forests to know where she could run if she needed to. She could see the Katarn before her was recovering itself and was crouching low, preparing to charge and pounce once again.

Suzie, breathing rapidly with adrenaline as fear pounded through her veins, carried out the second part of her desperate strategy and ran the other way, towards the more blinded Katarn that was tottering about on its feet and trying to see where it was going. The other Katarn plunged after her and into two huge bounds it had almost reached her. Its teeth gnashed behind her, just as Suzie dropped to the ground and rolled right between the legs of the second Katarn.

The result was an almighty collision that sent both rolling away, almost rolling right over Suzie as they tumbled in a frenzy of limbs. Nodding in satisfaction as they bit and clawed at one another angrily. Suzie turned and fled into the forest once again. The sounds of combat behind her eventually began to recede into the distance, getting quieter and quieter until, once again, Suzie could hear nothing but silence. And this time, no other Katarn jumped out at her, looking for an easy meal.

* * *

After about five minutes of flat out running, Suzie eventually flopped to the ground, leaning her back against the base of a wroshyr tree, her heart still hammering and her arteries pounding as she breathed in and out deeply, desperate to pull air back into her starved lungs.

She was worn out, bruised and terrified, but she was alive. She had actually come out of that mess alive.

Despite everything, Suzie couldn't help but feel slightly proud of herself for what she had achieved back. She had actually managed to outwit a couple of dangerous carnivores and escape from their predatory chasing. Granted, she also had an enormous amount of luck on her side, as well as the fact that a couple of them had turned on each other over competition for food, but still even a small victory was an enormous bolster in Suzie's confidence.

Nevertheless, what she had just been through had possibly been the single most petrifying point of Suzie's entire life – almost worse than the Geonosian zombies, which she had at least been able to see properly due to the light from the lightsabers and she'd had others with her to protect her. Suzie would never forget the growling and the snarling from the Katarns as they chased after her and the pounding on their footsteps on the ground as they ran up behind her.

Suzie checked the arm which one of the Katarns had put its foot on. Fortunately it didn't seem too damaged, although it was difficult to see anything the incredibly low light conditions. She poked it a little and winced at what felt like a large bruise developing on the back of her forearm, but other than that she seemed to be okay.

The only problem now was what to do next. During the attack, Suzie had completely lost all sense of direction. "Where do I go now?" she murmured quietly as she glanced around. "Which way is the Wookiee City? I can't remember now."

She sighed, suddenly feeling more lost than ever before. Why did this have to be happening to her? Why now, when she was away from her family for the first time in months. It just didn't seem fair. The scary stuff always seemed to happen to her.

She sat there quietly for a few more minutes, before she realised, "I can't stay here. Something will probably find me and try to eat me again. I need to keep moving."

Where she was going to she had no idea, but staying put in a dangerous place like this was definitely asking for trouble. Then again, would moving around be any better? Probably not, but at least there was a slim chance that she would be moving away from danger. But, as Suzie found out when she stepped out from behind the tree, she wasn't quite as out of danger as she thought she was.

She began to walk off aimlessly in another direction, but almost as soon as she did a growling sound made her whirl around. There, emerging from the shadows, was one of the two Katarns, the one that had obviously one the little spat between them as a result of Suzie's little trick. The Katarn snarled at the sight of her and charged once more.

Suzie screamed and ducked behind the tree she had been leaning on once more, her heart picking up in pace again. She ran around it the Katarn landed beside her and lashed out with its teeth, slamming them shut just behind the little girl's rear end as she scrambled around the trunk. It lashed out with its claws too and the vicious things scraped against the bark, missing Suzie by a fraction. Then, the giant reptomammal scrambled after its elusive prey.

Suzie hurriedly ran around the tree, trying desperately to make sure that the thick trunk stayed between her and the Katarn. But she had no idea where it was going to strike next and at one point she almost blundered into the attack from the other direction, making her backpedal again, trying hard to avoid the gnashing teeth at one end and the lashing tail at the other, which she also learned could be dangerous when she went too far and was forced duck as it smashed into the tree above her with a shower of bark.

"Leave me alone!" Suzie shouted, hoping the noise of her voice would startle it slightly. But it seemed only to aggravate the creature still further and as she yelled it, it leapt onto the trunk of the tree and scuttle nimbly around it and to her side. Suzie ducked again as the teeth snapped shut above her, almost snagging her hair and hurriedly turned and ran the other way as fast as she could.

The Katarn, sensing that a kill was at hand, dropped down from the tree and hissed, before darting forwards, ready for its next meal. Suzie dashed past another tree, and the Katarn followed her, closing the gap between them... when suddenly something huge loomed out of the darkness in front of them both, seeming to appear from the shadows itself. Suzie screamed as she almost collided with the enormous hind leg of the creature. The huge thing towered above her, bipedal and with two huge arms coming out of its sides and another from the middle of its chest, with a huge bat-like head full of teeth that were incredibly sharp.

The Katarn, which was in mid-leap, never stood a chance. The huge thing grabbed it out of the air with the hand on its chest. The Katarn shrieked and clawed, but it was useless and the huge creature lowered its head, opening its mouth to ingest its new prey.

Suzie, unable to watch as the Katarn, which she suddenly felt quite sorry for, was devoured, turned and fled into the forests once more. She had no idea what that thing was that had suddenly appeared in front of her but since she had no desire to be its next victim, she set off running again.

* * *

This time, she didn't stop for a good fifteen minutes or so, during which time she passed a small group of Tachs that leapt off into the branches as she approached, screaming like the lemurs they resembled. When she finally did stop, she collapsed onto her hands and knees, panting heavily as she tried to regain her breath. That had been far too close for comfort. Both of those things had nearly got her.

"I'm... not safe... here," she panted, as she tried to get to her feet, struggling due to the amount of oxygen she needed to breathe in to replenish her strength. "I'm... not... safe anywhere. What can I do now? I need somewhere to... hide."

It took about five minutes for Suzie to regain her breath slightly. She pushed herself onto her feet slowly and glanced around behind her, wondering if the third Katarn was going to leap out at her, or whether the large thing, whatever it was, was going to come after her for dessert. She saw nothing but she knew that didn't mean anything. That huge dark creature had almost leapt out of the shadows at her and if something that big could hide down here then what else could be lurking around here.

Suzie might have escaped, but she was certainly not out of danger.

Dejected, forlorn and alone, Suzie started walking again. This time she almost didn't bother with sneaking. What good would it do her anyway? A lot of the creatures around here relied on smell to hunt for their food anyway and there was little she could do about that.

Suzie's situation seemed to be just about hopeless. There was nowhere for her to run, nowhere for her to hide and a myriad of flesh-eating creatures out there, who all would not hesitate to take a light snack of ten-year-old Tamer. She wondered who was in more danger right now – Lopmon or herself.

Herself, she concluded. Probably.

But that just made her miss Lopmon all the more and she sighed, trying desperately not to cry, because if she cried she would start sobbing and that would definitely draw in the predators. _I'm so sorry, Lopmon,_ she thought, even thought she knew that her partner would be unable to pick it up. _You thought that you had failed me but I'll be the one to fail you. If I hadn't dropped my D-Arc none of this would have happened. You could have digivolved into Antylamon and squashed that lizard-man flat. And now, I'm never going to see you again because I'm going to die here, all alone in the dark. And no-one will ever know what happened to me._

Suzie stopped and wiped her eyes, desperately trying to contain the sobs that threatened to break loose. Was all this some kind of retribution? Had she done something wrong? Was she paying the price for something she'd done that she wasn't aware of? If there were any gods in this universe, they might be pointing and laughed at her right now.

Was there no hope for her? Nowhere for her to hide?

Trying to sniff as quietly as possible, Suzie looked up and glanced around again to see if her sobbing had attracted any more predators. She couldn't see any sign of life, but as she looked around, her eyes suddenly focused on something else, which she had missed in her state of depression beforehand.

Suzie stared at what looked like a large cube-like shape up ahead. She didn't move, but she didn't think that whatever it was was a predator – there was surely no kind of predatory animal that was shaped pretty much exactly like a cube, was there? So what could it be? The little girl cautiously began to approach it, the darkness obscuring her view but each step allowing her a slightly better look at what was before her. She stopped right next to the thing and stared at it in amazement.

What the hell was a shack doing down here?

The structure appeared to be some kind of little wooden hut, which was backed up to one of the giant wroshyr trees. It was a simple structure, that looked like a cross between a wooden shed that you might find in a back garden and a makeshift shelter that you might expect to find on a campsite. Whatever the case, it was clearly a dwelling of some kind. But what kind of person would be insane enough to live in a place like this in such a frail-looking hut, surrounded by massive monsters?

Whoever it was obviously wasn't around anymore. The hut was obviously very run down, and several of the slabs of wood had fallen away to reveal gaping holes underneath which lead to the inside. But Suzie noticed that, despite the fact that there were obviously a large number of predators around her, there didn't seem to be any marks on the wood to indicate it had been attacked ever, even though it was obviously an incredibly old structure.

Suzie glanced around her. Whoever had lived in this hut had probably been a powerful person if they could endure for any length of time down here. Maybe there was something about the hut that kept it from being detected or maybe there was an aura around the place that warned all the predators to stay away or something like that. But whatever the case, it seemed that Suzie might have actually found a place that could be considered safe.

Even so, she was wary of going in. What if whoever had lived her was an evil person? What if they had died in there and left a skeleton inside which would seriously freak Suzie out. Could she stay in the same place as a dead person? What if there was some freaky artefact inside or something? This sort of place, a hut in the middle of a deep, dark wood, was always a place of danger in all the movies that Suzie had seen back home.

As Suzie was making up her mind, she suddenly heard the distinctive growling sound of another Katarn some distance behind her – so faint it was barely audible but still too close for comfort and that alone made Suzie decide to risk it. She reached for the door and tried to pull it open, but found that the thing was jammed shut, and there was no handle or knob for her to turn anyway. It also made the wood creak loudly, which made Suzie freeze and listen hard for any sign of approaching danger.

Sure enough, once more she could hear the snuffling of some kind of predator not far away. Breath bated, Suzie slunk around the side of the hut until she came to one of the gaps from the fallen planks. She hurriedly tried to squeeze through the gap between the ones that were still standing, breathing in to suck in her stomach, then remembering something Henry had told her – breathing in was actually a bad thing to do in a tight space because it made your chest expand because your lungs were filling with air and your ribs were being pushed out – so she quickly breathed out.

It was still a tight squeeze, but Suzie quickly found herself thanking her small size when she almost popped into it like a cork and fell onto her backside. Breathing in again to replenish her lost air, Suzie took a look around the place. There wasn't much to see, especially since it was even darker in here than outside thanks to the roof, which also had a couple of missing planks that were lying on the floor inside. Other than that, there appeared to be some sort of table, which had lost two of its legs and so was lying with one end sticking up in the air and the other practically on the floor. And there also appeared to be some sort of hollow in the ground about the size of a grown man, which might have been where the person who used to live in here slept. And that was it.

Suzie barely had time to register this, before there was a thump outside the cabin. Suzie immediately froze up again and held her breath listening to the sounds of what was probably another Katarn outside, or possible some other giant lizard-like creature. She could hear the slight slurping noise of the long forked tongue slinking out of its mouth and flicking through the air, and she could hear the sharp inhalations as the creature drew air into its nostrils.

Suzie quietly began to crawl underneath what was left of the table and curled up underneath it, covering her head with her hands and quivering on the floor as she listened to the thud of feet hitting the ground and coming closer to her and the scrape of a long tail sliding across the ground as it got closer and closer to her little hideout.

Suzie shut her eyes tightly as the creature seemed to stop within two feet of her, and continued to sniff the air, waving its head back and forth in an attempt to sniff her out. Suzie bit her lip to keep from whimpering and rolled even further into a ball to try and stop herself quivering. She jumped as she heard another heavy footstep move closer to her once more, claws scratching at the turf and the creature hissing slightly.

Suzie opened one eye as it stayed put, wondering just how close it was to her. Ever so slowly, she turned her head and stared at the wall. There was nothing to indicate there was anything on the other side. In fact, the creature seemed to have gone totally silent. But Suzie noticed a crack in the wall and, slowly as possible, she inched further towards the small gap in the wood. She pushed her eye close to it and looked out into the woodland.

She saw nothing.

Until a large, reptilian head moved downwards and was level with the ground in front of the hole, huge spikes pointing backwards out of its head. It was indeed another Katarn, but this one was massive – perhaps a bigger subspecies. Suzie froze up, hardly daring to move as the slavering jaws only about a foot and a half from her eye opened slowly, the tongue flicking out and seeming to lap at the ground as the creature gave a long, drawn-out hiss that went right through Suzie and up her spine to her brain.

Suzie was riveted, starting at the enormous teeth that could snap her body in half if they managed to get around her. She spotted the eye of the lizard-mammal thing, roving backwards and forwards in its socket as if searching for prey. But it didn't appear to notice her. It just roamed over the gap in the wood that Suzie was staring through. Perhaps it was just too dark, but it didn't seem to be able to see her. But it must have known that something was there, or it wouldn't be hanging around like this. It just didn't know what.

The Katarn and Suzie stayed in almost a frozen tableau, one on either side of the wall and both almost as still as statues for almost a minute, before the Katarn lifted its head again and poked its nose into the air, casting about for a new scent. After a couple of moments, it slowly moved away walking right past the hut and back out into the forest. Suzie's eye remained fixed to the hole in the bark throughout that whole time and she watched as its huge bulk past her by, each left foot slamming into the ground right next to her peephole and the large tail slipping along the ground after it, until it was lost from sight.

Only now did Suzie gasp and let in more huge breaths. She didn't know if her lungs could take much more oxygen deprivation. But she was alive. She had had a couple of very close brushes with death today, but she was still alive.

She could have rejoiced, but Suzie didn't feel all that much joy at the moment.

"I'm alive," she said, miserably. "I'm still okay. But I'm still in trouble. My situation hasn't changed. I'm still stuck in the middle of a giant woodland with nowhere to go, no idea which way I'm supposed to go and nothing but a broken table and a hole in the ground to keep me company. Oh Lopmon, why did I say that I had to be useful and go on a mission, even though I'm supposed to be resting my back? I wouldn't be here otherwise?"

Upon remembering her back, she reached around and touched it gently, wincing slightly as her fingers brushed the tender skin under her shirt. Her shoulder and back were seriously panging now. So much for resting it – she'd been doing far more running today than she could have if she had returned to the battlefield. At least there she would probably have stayed at the back like usual, albeit with a bigger guard this time to avoid the situation with the Crab Droids.

But instead, she was in the middle of a Katarn-infested forest in a shack of someone who had deserted it long ago.

Her curiosity was peaked as she poked her head out from under the table again and glanced around. Whoever had built this place was obviously quite skilled at it. This place was certainly not new, in fact it was positively ancient, but most of it was still intact and standing after so long. But what kind of person would live way down here, where even the local Wookiees feared to tread?

Suzie had no way of knowing. Although she supposed that she should be quite grateful to the mysterious person who had lived here. He or she had just saved her life, after all, by providing a place to hide away that the predators didn't seem to notice.

But still, she would gladly exchange any protection this guys had to offer for Lopmon's and the other's absolutely any day.

Suzie shifted back under the table and hunched over, hugging her legs to her chest with her arms and placing her head on her knees. She sniffed, a little louder than she would have dared to do in the outside forest.

_Well,_ she thought to thin air. _I'm still alive guys. I know that you can't hear me, but wherever you are I really hope that you're still okay, Lopmon. I hope that you and Barriss are still alive. I couldn't bear it if you... if you..._

Suzie broke off as water began to leak from her eyes once more. She was ashamed at herself for crying all the time, but she really couldn't help it. She didn't know what was worse – the thought of Lopmon being dead, or the constant not knowing about whether her partner was okay or not. It was numbing.

Suzie didn't dare to venture outside the hut again. She just curled up under the table, hoping that it would provide better shelter than the hollow in the ground where the previous owner had slept and slowly cried to herself as horrible thoughts of Lopmon and Barriss fleeing for their lives from those vile Trandoshans filled her mind. And the worst part of all – she knew that that would probably be what was going on.

Eventually, sobbing quietly for a good twenty minutes, Suzie finally began to succumb to the tiredness seeping through her body. Her sobbing gradually subsided, although her screwed-up, miserable expression remained, as she slowly began to drift off to sleep. Eventually, she was completely under the spell of the sleep. Her breathing eased back to normal as she slept in relative peace, especially considering the environment surrounding the hut that she was sheltering in.

And, as she slept, she was completely unaware when something else entered the cabin with her and gazed down at her sleeping form with old, blue eyes.

* * *

That's weird. I don't think I've ever done a chapter entirely devoted to young Suzie here. I hope the read was exciting, since there were certainly a few close calls for our favourite little Tamer in this chapter. And just in case anyone was wondering, the large creature that appeared and ate the third Katarn was a Shadow Keeper. I put that in as a scene reminiscent to how the Sando Aqua Monster ate the two smaller creatures attacking the sub in the Phantom Menace, since I can't exactly bring a Sando Aqua Monster into a forest.

See you soon. And please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

While Suzie struggles for survival, Lopmon and Barriss are being taken to the Trandoshan Hunting Grounds for release to be hunted down, along with their new comrade, Chewbacca. But when they arrive on the island, all of them, especially Lopmon, get more than they bargained for.

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Coming up:- **Chapter 104 : The Hunt**


	104. The Hunt

This may be my last update for a while, because the Easter Holidays begin tomorrow. While I shall endeavour to write whenever possible during the Easter, I will have a couple more expeditions to do and my Ecology module to complete. Fortunately, once the expeditions are done, it will not take me long to finish. And here's the juicy part. I have a short summer term where I have literally nothing to do for almost three weeks. And that means over twenty days of almost nothing to do but sit around and write stuff. I may go for the old one chapter a day approach then, so that'll give you something to look forward to after the next two weeks of Easter.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 104:- The Hunt**

* * *

As Barriss slowly began to come back to the land of the living, her eyelids twitched a couple of times before they opened slowly and she stared upwards at what was in front of her. The first thing that she registered was the darkness, and it took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to it. When they did, she frowned in confusion. Why were there large, criss-crossing pieces of metal right in front of her? And beyond the thick struts of metal she could see nothing but what appeared to be some sort of dank ceiling. What was going on?

She just stared blankly for a couple of seconds. Then the image of the Trandoshan firing the electro-net at her came rushing back into the forefront of her memories and with a gasp, she sat up, almost banging her head on the metal struts in front of her. Looking around wildly, Barriss saw that she was surrounded by the metallic criss-crossing sections. She was in a cage! A cage with ridiculously thick bars, that hemmed her in on all sides. She only had about a foot of room in any direction. Her hands flew to the bars and tested their strength, tugging on them as hard as she could. Predictably, absolutely nothing happened.

Her immediate thought was her lightsaber, which would be able to cut through these bars with no problem whatsoever, but when she reached for it, she found it wasn't there. She gritted her teeth and clenched her fist, remembering how she had dropped it to the floor, along with Suzie's D-Arc, when she'd been shot. She'd be lucky to get that lightsaber back now, if she got out of this mess alive.

Her next thought was to use the Force to try and break out, but she could also see that that was not going to do her any good either. She was well-equipped with the Force, but even it had its limits. The cage was clearly well-constructed and very compact. She'd be unable to break it if she tried, so she didn't even bother with that approach.

Her next thought was to call for help, but when she reached for the comlink that was usually on the fabric of her sleeve, she found that that was missing as well. Surely she could not have dropped that, so that probably meant that her captors had taken it from her. Those scaly bandits were obviously used to catching prisoners. They seemed to have all the bases covered.

Frustrated, the Mirialan Padawan grabbed the bars and wrenched them again. It had about as much effect as the last time, which meant nothing at all. She couldn't believe this was happening. She had thought that the simple diplomatic mission to Kashyyyk had been going badly before, but now things seemed to be getting even worse.

Once the Padawan determined that she wasn't going to be getting out of here anytime soon, her next thoughts turned immediately to the well-being of her companions. Were Suzie and Lopmon still okay?

For the first time, she looked beyond the cage at the surroundings around it. She appeared to be in some kind of spacecraft, her small prison located in a narrow corridor that was lined with cages right along its length, each one separate from the others. Most of them were empty, but a couple of them were filled. And the one directly across from her was filled by...

"Lopmon!" Barriss cried, crowding closer to the side of the cage and holding the bars as she peered through to her fellow prisoner. Lopmon was a mess. She was facing Barriss, so the Padawan could not see much of her back, but she could see enough to know that it was extremely battered and bruised. She also had a large cut on her cheek that looked suspiciously like it had been made by the claw of a Trandoshan. She was also bound in a cruel position, a rope pinning her arms to her side and another around each of her ears, stretching them out and pinning them to the sides of the cage. There was also a cloth gag around her lower face. Her eyes had been shut, but as Barriss called her name, they opened and gazed blearily at the Padawan with an expression of utter despair.

Barriss winced at the sorry condition that Lopmon was in and quickly moved to help as best as she could. She was still able to use the Force for something and she stretched her hand outside the bars and called it to her will. Lopmon barely seemed to notice as the cloth unravelled from around her face and fell to the floor, although she did spit out the hard seed that it had been holding in. The rope around her arms slackened and fell next, and then the ones around her ears unwound as well, causing the little Digimon to fall to the ground on her front.

Frustrated at not being able to comfort her, Barriss asked, "Lopmon, are you okay?" It was a stupid question, she knew. Lopmon was obviously very much not okay, especially now that Barriss could see her back and head were covered in livid bruises. But it was the best she could do.

Lopmon's voice croaked as she looked up at Barriss with that same expression of loss. "I failed Barriss. I failed everyone. I am Suzie's Digimon – I was supposed to protect her. I have fought off giant killer computer programs, nearly-indestructible Demon Lords and hordes of Separatist Droids, and yet I couldn't protect her from a couple of lizard-men. I've failed her..." Lopmon's voice broke and she collapsed back onto her front, burying her face in the floor and sobbing freely.

"Where is Suzie?" Barriss asked, carefully.

"Those Trandoshans left her behind," Lopmon mumbled, so quietly that Barriss was barely able to hear her. "In the most dangerous part of Kashyyyk and all alone. What chance does she have of survival without me to help her? She's just a little girl. She's an amazing little girl, but still only a little girl. I've failed her."

Barriss' heart went out to the poor little bunny. She simply couldn't imagine what Lopmon must be going through right now. She'd seen Lopmon and Suzie's bond at work and it was like nothing she'd ever seen before. And Barriss was helpless to comfort Lopmon, although she certainly tried her best.

"No, Lopmon," Barriss said. "It was I who failed both of you. The mission was mine and not yours – you were just tagging along for the ride. If anyone is to blame for this, we must blame me."

"No, Barriss," said Lopmon. "You were not the one who got attacked at the beginning. I did. It was I who failed."

"I got attacked too," pointed out Barriss. "And I met the same fate. I should have been prepared for it, but I wasn't."

"You still aren't to blame."

"Neither are you."

"Yes, I am."

Barriss sighed. "Look, Lopmon. We must stay positive. Can you see what Suzie is doing now?"

Lopmon shook her head. "She's on her own – she's too far away for me to sense with our link. She's probably terrified. If she's even still alive. She's probably already dead and providing the next meal for some large predator. And it's all my fault."

Barriss closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. Lopmon was obviously in a deep state of depression and she needed to be broken out of it if she was going to have any chance of surviving this ordeal, whatever it was.

"Look, Lopmon," said Barriss. "You have two choices right about now. Firstly, you can either do what you're doing now and lie there feeling guilty and sick with worry and do nothing, or you can focus on the present instead of the past and help me figure a way out of here so that we can get back to Suzie as quickly as possible. There is still a chance that she is alive, and if we want to find out the answer for sure and make sure she stays that way if she is, then we have to act."

These words seemed to jar Lopmon out of her funk a little bit. Both of them knew that the odds of getting back in time before Suzie was attacked by something were almost certainly zero. But Lopmon seemed to realise that Barriss' words were making sense. Lying around certainly wouldn't get anything done, and would her brother, or Renamon, or Aayla or any of the others think of her if she continued acting like this. She still had a duty to fulfil and until she knew for sure that Suzie was dead, she was going to carry it out.

Taking a deep breath, Lopmon pushed herself up and sat on her rear, so that she was facing Barriss, her face a bizarre mix between sadness and determination. "You're right," she nodded. "We have to escape from these Trandoshans and find a way back to Kashyyyk."

"Does that mean we're in space?" asked Barriss.

"I think so," said Lopmon. "The Trandoshans told Suzie that they were intending to release us in their hunting grounds and then give us until dawn before they chase after us again and hunt us down, this time going for the kill instead of the capture."

"Oh, wonderful," said Barriss. "Well, at least we know that we won't have long to wait."

"What do you mean?" asked Lopmon.

"I'm assuming that the Trandoshan Hunting Ground is at least near their home planet," explained Barriss. "And Trandosha is practically next door to Kashyyyk. The two of them have a long history of being unfriendly neighbours."

"Yes, but what are the odds of us getting away from their hunting grounds?" asked Lopmon. "I mean, if we want to get back to Kashyyyk then we're going to need a spaceship, and there's is probably the only one anywhere near it."

"Then we'll have to hi-jack it," said Barriss. "I've dropped my lightsaber, so I can't cut my way out. Do you think that you could squeeze through the bars?"

Lopmon got to the feet and walked over to the bars, gripping them with her ears and pressing her face to a gap between them to test it. But it was no good. While Lopmon may be small and the gaps between the bars large, neither were small or large enough. She sighed and shook her head. "No, I don't think I'll be getting out that way," she said. "Maybe I could break the bars with my Lop Twister, but they do look a bit strong. I'd never be able to do it, especially bruised like this."

"Exactly right, my dears," said a hissing voice from the doorway. Barriss and Lopmon turned around and glowered as they saw that another Trandoshan had entered the room. Lopmon didn't know much about these creatures, but it was fairly obvious that this one was the leader. He wasn't as tall as Lo-Taren or Smug had been, but as well as the ridges on his head, he also had a large number of feather-like red plumes jutting out in various places like some kind of crown.

The new Trandoshan was alone and he strolled nonchalantly towards the cages. Lopmon considered throwing a Blazing Ice at him, and Barriss thought about a Force push, but both quickly decided against those options because neither would do them much good while still trapped in cages.

"Who are you?" asked Lopmon, glaring angrily at the Trandoshan.

"My name is Garnac," said the Trandoshan. "I am the leader of this little group of hunters, and the one with the most kills to his name. My trophy collection is quite large, and it will not be long before the three of you are added to it. And quite some prizes you will be too, especially if what Lo-Taren told me is true about you, little one."

Lopmon growled.

Barriss blinked.

"Excuse me?" asked the Padawan. "Three of us? Who...?" Lopmon interrupted by pointing to the cage on her immediate right. Barriss turned to looked and started in surprise, wondering how she could have missed such a large Wookiee sitting there. The Wookiee was unconscious still, but it was a very tall specimen.

"It seems that Lo-Taren might have given this one an overly large dose when he hit him with the electro-net a second time," said Garnac. "But regardless, I did not come down here to exchange pleasantries. Well, I suppose I have actually. I wish to know, before we release you, what kind of creature are you, little one?" he asked Lopmon, walking past her cage. "You are like nothing I have even encountered, and I assure you that I have hunted down and killed at least one of almost all sentient species during my long career as Head Hunter." He snickered at his own private joke.

"None of your damn business," Lopmon scowled at him. "I'm not going to tell you anything. Since you are orchestrating all this, I can blame you from separating me from my human partner and leaving her for dead. You will not get even the slightest co-operation from me."

Garnac nodded. "I see. Well, it seems the Lo-Taren was not exaggerating when he said that you had guts. However, guts will not help you where you are going. We're almost at your final destination. You'll be released into the fresh air again soon. Enjoy it while it lasts – because you'll have until dawn before we hunt you down."

"We will find a way out of this," said Barriss. "I may be unarmed but a Jedi is never without a weapon."

"So I've heard," said Garnac, snidely. "There were other Jedi younglings and Padawans before you that thought the same thing before they were ruthlessly exterminated by me and my men. You shall go the same way, sure enough."

Just then, there was a grunting noise from the third occupant of the prison level. The Wookiee was waking up again. Lopmon had seen him start to come to on the trip back up to the ship. The three Trandoshans had been alarmed, saying that he was coming around quickly, and Lo-Taren had quickly moved Barriss aside and fired the electro-net-gun down at the recovering Wookiee, putting him out again immediately, which was why Barriss had awoken before him despite being shot second.

Lopmon took that as a good sign. This Wookiee was obviously tough, even amongst their kind. He would be a good ally to have on their side.

Garnac chuckled and strolled over to the cage containing the Wookiee. "Well, it looks like our final guest is coming to," he sneered.

"Wakey-wakey, Mister Wookiee. It's time for your early morning run," he cackled and kicked the side of the cage, sneering down at its occupant.

Seeming to be almost re-energized by the loud noise created by the Trandoshan's foot hitting the bars, the Wookiee's eyes sprang open and it pushed itself upwards. It, like Barriss, nearly hit its head on the roof of its cages, which was far more cramped for it that it was for the Padawan. It took him a few moments to glance around his surroundings and when he saw the Trandoshan standing over him, the Wookiee's face twisted into a snarl, baring his sharp teeth and letting out a loud growling noise.

"Growl all you like," Garnac said. "It won't help you avoid becoming a trophy in my collection. Maybe I'll turn your stuffed hide into my new throne. My old Wampa one is beginning to get a little mangy." He threw back his head and laughed once more.

The Wookiee roared in defiance and, despite the fact it didn't have enough room to sit up, it brought its large, furry fists swinging into the roof of the cage with two huge metallic bangs. The entire cage rattled, but other than that the Wookiee's furious blows left no mark. Garnac sneered again. "Save your energy for the hunt, Wookiee," he said. "You'll need it!"

"Leave him alone!" Lopmon shouted.

"Don't talk back to me like that, prisoner," hissed Garnac. "I will have your tongue!"

SLAM!

The Wookiee had brought its fists crashing into the ceiling of the cage a second time. Lopmon, Barriss and Garnac turned to watch him as he pummelled the bars up above him with furious energy, making it seem like he had not even been unconscious a mere minute ago. He brought his fists up again, and then again, and then again, each time creating the same enormous crashing noise.

Then, to the astonishment of all of the others, his sixth blow actually _dented_ the incredibly thick metal bars a little. Garnac stepped backwards in shock. "What the..." he breathed in disbelief. The Wookiee roared and slammed its fists up again like a sledgehammer, enlarging the dent with another crushing blow. Letting rip with an even louder roar, his next blow brought half the ceiling of the cage completely out of joint, the metal screeching as it was bent by the sheer brute force.

The Wookiee then tried a different tack. He grabbed the bars in his hands, his fingers concealed by the fur hanging all around them and, growling ferociously, he began to pull his fists in opposite directions. Slowly and with an ear-splitting grinding of metal, the Wookiee was actually beginning to pull the cage apart.

"Wow," breathed Barriss as he watched the Wookiee single-handedly do something she wouldn't have thought possible for a humanoid. "He is a strong one."

The Wookiee continued to pull with one hand, and started pummelling the cage upwards with the other, pulling and punching at the same time until there was a huge split in the metal, as the bars were stretched and the gaps between them seemed to widen. Garnac seemed to be jolted out a stupor that he had fallen in, and he quickly reached upwards. Before Barriss or Lopmon could stop him, he had jabbed a button set in the wall above the Wookiee's cage.

Abruptly, the cage bards became alive with electricity, and for the third time that day, the Wookiee found himself roaring in pain as his nerves were practically set alight by a powerful electric shock. But he didn't let go of the bars. He gritted his teeth and kept going. Alarmed, Garnac twisted a dial on the wall and the electricity increased in amount tremendously, until finally the Wookiee admitted defeat and collapsed to the ground, spasming slightly as his nerve refused to respond in the proper way.

Garnac breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, this one is certainly tough," he said. "It looks like this could be the best haul Lo-Taren has ever made. I shall have to congratulate him." He raised the cuff around his wrist and pushed a button. "Ratter," he called into it. "Are we on schedule?"

"Yes, sir," hissed the voice of another Trandoshan through the link. "We're arriving at Island Four on Wasskah as we speak."

"Good," said Garnac. "We should be in for a real treat in the Hunt this time. Tell Dar that he shall be accompanying me on this trip to see how things are done and release the captives as soon as you can. This Wookiee is not going to stay down for long."

"Yes, sir," said Ratter.

Garnac then strode back towards the door, pausing at the edge to leer at Lopmon and Barriss. "Like I said before," he said to the two of them. "Enjoy your brief moment of freedom." Then, he was gone and the door slid shut behind him.

Barriss and Lopmon glanced at each other. "Wow," said Lopmon. "That was quite a show our new ally put on."

"Yes," said Barriss. "Pity it didn't work."

The Wookiee groaned and rubbed its head, as it tried to sit up slightly, but he was still under the effect of the electricity and was struggling slightly. Lopmon turned back to Barriss and said, "That Trandoshan piloting the ship said we were landing on Wasskah. Where's that?"

"It's one of Trandosha's moons," said Barriss. "Tropical place. Mostly ocean with several islands. You'll see it soon enough."

"Goody," Lopmon mumbled. "I've always wanted to go to the moon... Ack!"

Suddenly the floor gave way under all three of them and sent them plummeting out into thin air as trapdoors opened in the bottom of the ship and they dropped like stones. Barriss managed to right herself and she landed with a soft thump in some sand. Lopmon threw out her ears and steadied herself, floating down. The Wookiee was not so fortunate and slammed onto his back. He groaned again, but he didn't seem that affected as the drop had not been long and the landing was soft. He began to push himself to his feet as well.

The three of them stood together and looked upwards at the ship that had dropped them off. As they had thought, it was long and thin like the corridor, and it had a claw-like front to it. Other than that, it looked pretty much like a large freighter of some kind, except for the various weapons bristling from it.

"Well," said Lopmon. "Here we are. Now what do we do? We need to find a way back to Kashyyyk quickly."

But, at that moment, the ship lifted away from them, the trapdoors closing again and the guns swivelled towards them. Barriss didn't need her senses to warn her of danger at the sight of that, and she cried, "Now, we run!"

"But we need that ship," Lopmon protested.

"We'll get it later," said Barriss. "Hurry, run!" She turned and fled, gesturing wildly for the other two to follow, just as the large rotary cannon on the front of the ship released a storm of lasers down onto the beach that they were standing on. Barriss forward rolled to avoid a stream of lasers and came up with sand covering her cloak, but she quickly ducked into the large, tropical trees at the end of the beach and beckoned with hurried hand motions to the others.

Lopmon took one last glance up at the Trandoshan vessel hovering above them, but as she saw the giant rotary blaster cannon heading her way, she knew that Barriss was right and hanging around was definitely not a good idea. She turned to the giant Wookiee towering over her and said, "Shall we run?"

The Wookiee nodded and the two of them quickly made to follow Barriss. The cannon turned on Lopmon next and unleashed a barrage of red lasers at her. She didn't need to look to hear them zooming towards her, her sensitive ears picking up the sounds of them whooshing through the air. With a flap of her huge ears she sprang into the air, thankful for the Digimon's ability to heal fast and motored her way forwards, the lasers lashing all around her. Lopmon span and dodged and weaved around them at speed, knowing that even if one of them struck her that would be the end of it.

Lopmon didn't really know why they were being shot at. She reasoned it must have something to do with picking off the targets that would not provide much amusement for the actual Hunt itself. Fortunately, she'd had plenty of practice dodging lasers by now and she made it to Barriss' hiding place without much difficulty, landing on the branch of one of the trees and turning back to face the beach.

What she saw made her bite her lip. The Wookiee was running towards them, but Lopmon was pretty sure he could be moving faster than that. He stumbled occasionally, sometimes to one side instead of forward, as if his muscles were sluggish and not responding. He almost looked like he was slightly drunk.

Lopmon realised that he must still be feeling a little numb and unresponsive from the electricity that had been sent running straight through him. He wasn't moving as fast as he normally could have. And as Lopmon and Barriss watched, the rotary cannon turned towards him instead as he hurriedly tried to make his way to safety.

Wookiees may be tough. But how many shots from a cannon that size could this one take? Lopmon was willing to bet not many, and they came at such velocity that the Wookiee made be dead in a couple of seconds.

Lopmon's eyes hardened. She didn't know the Wookiee, not even his name, but she was not about to let him die right in front of her. She wouldn't fail him the way she had failed Suzie.

Launching herself off the branch, she soared towards then Wookiee, shooting forwards by powering her ears just as the cannon opened fire on his furry back. Lopmon banked sharply and she crashed into the Wookiee from the side. The large creature seemed surprised that such a small creature could knock him over, but he went tumbling some distance to the right as the blaster bolts crashed harmlessly into the sand.

Lopmon tried to help the Wookiee up, pushing at its arm and saying, "Hurry! Run for it! I'll draw their attention. Go!"

The Wookiee looked at her with gratitude and then scrambled to his feet and kept going as the cannon turned his way again. His movements were still sluggish, so Lopmon decided to take the initiative and sprang into the air again. She flew towards the ship as fast as she could and landed on the window. The Trandoshan on the other side lurched backwards in surprise as Lopmon glared through at him, flapping her ears to stay in position. He quickly lurched the ship backwards, causing Lopmon to off and go tumbling towards the ground, but she quickly righted herself and shot away as the blaster cannon started to fire at her again.

Lopmon weaved her way through the air, dodging more lasers. She glance to the side and saw that the Wookiee has just made it to the safety of the trees. Her work done, she winged her way towards the forest, flipping onto her back and launching a **"BLAZING ICE!"** at the cannon as it turned to follow her. The ice pellets slammed into the side of the cannon and dented it severely, knocking it aside and sending the bolts towards the sea. Lopmon nodded in satisfaction of her parting shot.

She swooped low over Barriss and the Wookiee and headed into the forest, with the Padawan and the Wookiee following on behind her.

* * *

They didn't go far in, coming to a stop after about two minutes or so. Lopmon landed on a large tree root and Barriss and the Wookiee pulled to a halt as well. All three turned to look back in the direction of the beach and were silent for a few moments.

"Well," said Barriss. "We've got ourselves into a real mess now, haven't we?"

"No kidding," said Lopmon.

"Roworaac," said the Wookiee.

"And what do we do now?" asked Lopmon, turning to Barriss. "We aren't exactly equipped for taking on those Trandoshans, but we need to get off this planet as soon as we can."

Barriss sighed. "I don't know, Lopmon," she said. "I agree that we don't have much time, but we're stuck on a tropical island with no technology to help us. I cannot think of anything as of now. Give me a few moments and maybe I'll think of something."

Lopmon nodded, shutting her eyes rubbing them with her hand. The feeling of failure and uncomfortable depression at the unknown fate of her partner was beginning to seep back into her body again and she tried to stamp on it quickly. She had faith in Barriss, but it was difficult to be patient with the situation she was in. She had to resist stepping from foot to foot in agitation.

A low growling noise caught her attention and Lopmon turned to their third companion. She noticed that the Wookiee was staring at her curiously, head cocked to one side. "Oh, sorry," said Lopmon. "I suppose I better introduce myself. My name is Lopmon, and this is Barriss Offee. What is your name?"

"Oaacwoohrhraoaoara," said the Wookiee.

Barriss looked up from her confrontation and said, "He says that his name is Chewbacca."

"Chewbacca," Lopmon said. "That's an interesting name. I like it. It's a pleasure to meet you, Chewbacca. It's a shame that it has to be in a place like this," said gestured to the forest with distaste. "But still, I hope we can be we allies."

Chewbacca nodded. Then he paused slightly and said, "Rooohu crahowo scro anahwwwo."

"He said – 'You saved my life,'" said Barriss. She paused and turned to her contemplation. Then, her eyes suddenly widened in shock. _Oh my,_ she thought. _This should be interesting._

"It was the least I could do," said Lopmon. "We're all in the same situation. How are we supposed to call ourselves people if we leave others in the lurch?"

"Rooohu acrahowo rroooowa acworarcao," said Chewbacca. "Ah acrahowo whoo rcworrrcwoaoc."

"Um... he said:- 'You have a good heart. I have no regrets,'" Barriss said. Lopmon frowned and glanced at the Mirialan in confusion at that last part and she spotted that Barriss looked like she was trying not to laugh.

"No regrets?" Lopmon asked. "No regrets about what? And what's so funny, Barriss. This is a serious situa...tion..." she trailed off, staring at Chewbacca as the Wookiee began to get down onto his knees in front of her, placing his furry hands on the floor and bowing his head. Lopmon blinked and stared at his unusual behaviour, wondering what in the Galaxy was going on. "Um, what are you doing?" she asked.

Chewbacca didn't look up at her, but he moved one paw from the ground and placed it over his heart. And, he began to speak in a complicated series of growls that left Lopmon completely bemused and a little uncomfortable, not sure what the Wookiee was doing but a little put off by it:-

"Wwoorc crahoahwhrr scro anahwwwo, Anooakscoowh, ah whoooh ooohwo rooohu ra anahwwwo waworhao. Ah acworcworhro akanwowarrwo scro cworchoahoawoc aooo rooohu. Ohacworcwohoworc rooohu rroo, ah cacraanan rroo aooooo. Rawhwa ahww whwowowa rhwo, ah cacraanan anraro waooohwh scro anahwwwo aooo akrcooaowooaao rooohu. Scro anahwwwo ahc rooohurcc - coo scooaowo ahao rhwo."

He looked up at Lopmon expectantly. The little Digimon stared at him in bemusement and turned to Barriss for a translation. Barriss was biting her lip now and a slight grin was forming on her face. "Um," said Lopmon. "I think a translation is in order."

Barriss demonstrated her amazing memory by reciting the whole thing, word for word. And Lopmon's eyes steadily grew wider and wider the more Barriss spoke:-

"For saving my life, Lopmon, I now owe you a life debt. I hereby pledge my services to you. Wherever you go, I shall go too. And if need be, I shall lay down my life to protect you. My life is yours - so mote it be."

Lopmon was beyond words. She turned and stared at Chewbacca in disbelief. The Wookiee looked sincere and there was not a trace of a joke on his furry face. Lopmon could do nothing but stare at him, slack-jawed for almost a minute, shifting uncomfortably on the spot. Eventually, she had to sit down on the tree root she was standing on and she coherently said, "Pardon?"

Barriss chuckled. "Congratulations, Lopmon. You now have a new companion."

"But..." Lopmon frowned, turning to Chewbacca. "Why are you pledging your life to me? You barely know me."

"Aoacraao whooao scraaoaoworc. Rooohu crahowo anahwwwo. Rhro oaoowawo ooww acoowhoohurc, ah ooohwo rooohu anahwwwo waworhao."

"He says that he must according to Wookiee tradition and honour," said Barriss. "All Wookiees abide by it, you see. If you save their life, then they must pledge their lives to you. They would see it as a dishonour not to repay the debt and he will be a companion of you for some time to come now."

"For how long?" asked Lopmon.

"Until one of you dies," said Barriss.

"What?" Lopmon cried. "But... That would be like having a servant. A slave. I don't want that. Don't I have a say in this?"

"I'm afraid not," Barriss shook her head, chuckling slightly. "Once he has pledged, he will follow you to the end of the universe. Don't think of it like slavery, because it's not. Chewbacca is choosing to follow you and protect you. It's more a friendship than servitude. Of course, there are unscrupulous people who would take advantage of such a life debt, but we both know you are far from unscrupulous."

Chewbacca nodded. "Ahao scro acoowhoohurc aooo wwahrracao rhwocahwawo rooohu, Anooakscoowh."

"He said it is his honour to fight alongside you," said Barriss.

Lopmon sighed and put a hand to her forehead. Things had been complicated before, but now it seemed like she was stuck with a friend that she'd only just met for the rest of her life. How did everything devolve into this?

Then again, maybe Barriss was right. Chewbacca was staring at her with an earnest expression. He wanted this – it wasn't _only_ about tradition. And maybe having a constant companion like him wouldn't be such a bad thing. If she got Suzie back, Chewbacca might be able to ensure that nothing like this ever happened again.

So, Lopmon eventually turned to the Wookiee and got to her feet. "Alright then, Chewbacca. If you want it so badly, then I guess I accept your pledge. And, while I'm sure you would do this anyway, you need to help us get off this planet. We need to get back to Kashyyyk and fast. My friend, the human girl you saw earlier, was left in the Shadowlands by those pirates. If there is any chance that she is still alive, then I will find her."

Chewbacca also got to his feet and cast Lopmon in his shadow. He pounded his chest and proclaimed. "Ah orwhoooh cacrawaooohanrawhwac rhwoaoaoworc aoacrawh rawhrooowhwo. Scwo rhwo rhahrr acwoanak."

"He said he knows the Shadowlands better than anyone," said Barriss. "If she's still alive, he should be able to find her."

"Great," said Lopmon. "Although, I suppose if this is going to work, I am going to have to learn to speak Wookiee."

Barriss and Chewbacca chuckled, and then Chewbacca stepped forward and grabbed Lopmon in his hands. Alarmed, Lopmon almost struggled, but the giant being pulled her into a surprisingly gentle hug, especially considering Lopmon was almost completely covered by his furry arms. Lopmon chuckled, and, when Chewbacca released her, she clambered up onto his shoulder and perched there.

"Welcome to the family, Chewbacca," she said. "There are many more members for you to meet when we get out of here, but we'll get to that later."

"Actually," said Barriss. "A Wookiee's life debt extends to the entire family of the person who saved their life."

"Really?" asked Lopmon, curiously. "Then, you've got a lot of people to protect, Chewie." Chewbacca chuckled, indicating that he liked the nickname and nodded, pounding his chest to demonstrate that he was up to the challenge.

Barriss smiled at the two of them. It looked like something was looking up already, now that they knew they could count on the support of the Wookiee.

Just then, a faint noise registered in Barriss' ear. It sounded remarkably like another being saying, "Psst," from behind her. Barriss frowned, listening, and then there came a second "Psst." Barriss turned around slowly, her eyes searching the foliage for any sign of someone else. After a couple of moments, she spotted a face amongst the leave. It was a human face, another young girl, albeit several years younger than Barriss. The Mirialan stared, as the human pressed a finger to her lips and then motioned for her to come into the bushes.

Unfortunately, the human had not reckoned on Lopmon's exceptional hearing, and she had looked up and spotted her as well. "Hey, who are you?" she asked, suddenly slightly alert. Chewbacca tensed and turned around, squaring up for a fight. The Human looked alarmed that she had been spotted and seemed to be debating whether to flee or not. But there were whispering voices coming from behind her, that seemed to be ushering her to move forward. The Human hissed at them, annoyed, but the other whispers were insistent, and after a couple of minutes or so, the Human stepped out of the foliage, followed by two other beings.

Barriss, Lopmon and Chewbacca stared at the three newcomers. Asides from the young Human female, there was also a couple of males – a green skinned Twi'lek and a Cerean. All three of them were roughly the same age – perhaps twelve or so, and all three were wearing filthy clothing. Their faces and hands were similarly smeared with dirt, and it was clear that they had been living rough for quite some time.

But the most startling thing was that Barriss spotted a familiar braid hanging to the side of the Human's face.

"Wait a minute," Barriss said. "That braid. That... that's the braid of a Jedi Youngling or Padawan learner."

"How perceptive of you," said the Human girl, who had short brown hair that settled around her head. "Yes, indeed it is. Although why I've bothered to keep the thing I have no idea since I can hardly be called a Jedi anymore," she added bitterly.

The Twi'lek and the Cerean both glanced at one another, before the Cerean put a hand on the girl's shoulder and said, "Calm down, Kalifa. We decided to keep the braids to remind us what we are and that we will survive this place, remember?"

"Yeah," said the girl, now dubbed Kalifa. "But what are the chances of any of us surviving this wretched place for much longer really, O-Mer?"

"We've managed to stay alive so far," said the Cerean. "Those Trandoshans haven't been able to catch us for a couple of months. Or... at least I think it's been a couple of months." He sighed, "I lost track of time some time ago."

"We all did," said the Twi'lek. "We've seen too many sunrises in this place for my liking. But what other choice do we have? It's either survival or death."

"Sometimes death seems like the better option in this place," the girl said.

"Well, I wouldn't go that far," the Twi'lek said. "But I can see your point."

Barriss and Lopmon glanced at one another for a moment. All three of these people were obviously Jedi younglings, but how they had come to be here they had no idea. And they all sounded so bitter, particularly the girl and also the Twi'lek to a degree. If what they said was true and they'd been there for at least two months, then it was small wonder that they sounded so thoroughly depressed.

"Um," said Barriss, waving to get their attention. "My name is Barriss Offee. What are your names?"

"I'm Kalifa," said the girl. "And these two are my fellow former-younglings, O-Mer and Jinx," she indicated the Cerean and the Twi'lek respectively. "We've been on this island for some time and we know our way around it reasonably well. You must come with us. We can show you the safest parts of the forest to hide from those filthy reptiles."

"Sorry," said Barriss. "But we have no interest in hiding. There's a rather urgent situation we need to attend to and we need to find a way off this island as quickly as possible."

"Find a way off?" asked Jinx the Twi'lek, folding his arms. "If only it were that simple. Don't you think that if there really was a way off this island, the three of us would have found it by now? The only way for us to escape from here would be to defeat the Trandoshans and take their ship and there is no chance of that happening. They're just too powerful."

"We've been stuck here for so long," said O-Mer the Cerean. "That sometimes we wonder if anyone is still looking for us. We were attacked some time ago, on a training mission. We were completely unable to defend ourselves against those electro-nets. And every dawn since we arrived here, those lizards head out in their speeders and try to kill us. There were more of us before, but now it's just the three of us left."

Barriss looked impressed. "If you've been able to survive for this long then you must be tough for people so young."

"Thanks for the compliment," said Kalifa. "But hurry, you must come with us so we can hide away for another day. Escape is impossible – we've tried everything we can think of. I suggest you come with us, if you want to live."

Barriss frowned. "That's a very negative attitude, isn't it?" she asked.

"If you had seen the things we've seen since coming to this island," said Jinx. "Then you would know that looking at things negatively is what keeps you alive. Now, are you coming or not?"

"Sorry," Lopmon spoke up from behind Barriss. "We're not interested. Barriss and I have to get going as quickly as possible. A friend of ours is in extreme danger and only we can help her."

"You're friend is doomed," Kalifa shook her head. "And so will you be if you don't come with us."

"How dare you talk like that!" Lopmon scowled. Chewbacca looked displeased as well and roared loudly, causing Kalifa to step back slightly.

"Steady everyone," Barriss got between the two and raised her hands. "Let's not fight amongst ourselves. Lopmon, don't take your anxiety out on them. And Kalifa, have you truly lost all hope? Do you not think that there is any way at all for us to escape? Neither of us may be Knights but we are Jedi. And Jedi do not give up easily."

"No," said Kalifa. "We do not. All the training we received at the Jedi Temple only helps us to survive, not to escape. We cling to existence here, barely making it through each day and wondering which one of us will be the next to be picked off. We've seen friends die before our very eyes. Try to take on the Trandoshans and you will suffer the same fate."

"How do you know that for sure?" asked Lopmon, drawing the attention of the younglings to her instead. "How do you know that the new people, like the three of us, won't come up with some kind of idea that none of you even thought of which might actually work."

"Sorry," Kalifa said. "I don't know what you are, but you are not part of this. This is between former Jedi. Neither you nor your big friend are part of this conversation."

"What?" Barriss asked, glaring.

O-Mer and Jinx looked uncomfortable. "Kalifa, don't you think you're being a bit harsh?" asked O-Mer. "I mean, they obviously know one another... and... well, splitting them up wouldn't be a good idea."

"Every other non-Jedi we've tried to protect winds up dying quickly anyway," said Kalifa. "What makes you think those two will be any different?"

"I dunno," said Jinx. "But can't you feel it?"

Kalifa frowned. "Feel what?"

"The power," said Jinx. "I didn't know where it was coming from at first, but I can definitely sense a large amount of pent-up power coming from somewhere and I think it's coming from her," he pointed at Lopmon. "Whatever she is, she's strong. I know it."

"Well, now that you mention it, Jinx," said O-Mer. "I do kinda feel something about her as well. Yeah, I see what you're saying."

Kalifa turned and studied Lopmon for a couple of seconds. But then she shook her head and said, "I doesn't matter. We Jedi still need to survive, and that creature cannot come with us. We are not Jedi here, remember. We are mere survivors. The Tranoshans will probably get her no matter what we try."

"I am right here, you know," said Lopmon.

Chewbacca growled and said, "Anwoao aoacwosc aorcro."

"Now, hold on for just a moment, Kalifa," said Barriss, turning so that she was facing the Human girl head on. "I can see that things are bad here. But surely they are not so bad as to make you forget your Jedi training. Jedi are supposed to be selfless beings that care about other life forms."

"And I do care," said Kalifa. "I help to protect these two and I'm offering you the same invitation."

"You misunderstand me," said Barriss. "Jedi are supposed to care about _all_ other life forms, not just other Jedi. Why would you not allow Lopmon or Chewbacca to come along with us?"

"It's about survival," said Kalifa, firmly. "They might slow us down. I'm trying to ensure that all of us Force-sensitives stay safe, aren't I?"

"Yes, but at the cost of your morals?" asked Barriss. "Leaving someone to die just because it's inconvenient for you isn't the sort of thing a person, let alone a Jedi, does. We are people, not animals that go about their own business in nature."

"We might as well be around here," said Kalifa. "The Trandoshans are the predators and we are the prey. The rules of civilisation don't apply here."

"Only if you don't make them apply," said Barriss, just as firmly as Kalifa. "You may have been here long enough to forget your teachings, Kalifa. But I have not been here long and I guarantee you that no matter what length of time I spend on this island, I will not lose my way. I may be only a Padawan learner, but I'm still a Jedi. It is the Jedi's duty to help out those in need or in danger, and right now, that includes all of us."

Kalifa sighed. "I guess that means that you won't be accepting our invitation to join us."

"No, I won't," said Barriss. "I am staying with these two. However," she cast a significant look at all three in turn. "Let me extend my own invitation to the three of you. If you join us in our attempt to get away from here, then we'd have a far better chance of succeeding."

There were various different responses to Barriss' offer. Kalifa looked disgruntled and turned away, while O-Mer was beginning to look slightly hopeful, whereas Jinx was a little between the two, like he wanted to believe that they might have a chance but was extremely reluctant to put it to the test. It was he that spoke up first. "What makes you think that you have a better chance than anyone else? Nobody has ever escaped this island while we've been here. And there were other Padawans who tried to take on those Trandoshans and they all failed. They were slaughtered – every last one of them."

"I have faith," said Barriss. "And if we don't have faith then we truly have nothing."

Lopmon had to admit that she was impressed with the way that Barriss was handling things. She was taking charge of the situation and she seemed to know exactly the right words to be saying, like a natural leader. She seemed to be swaying at least one and possibly two of the younglings to her cause. O-Mer the Cerean looking pretty convinced, although he still obviously as doubts, as was made clear when he asked, "Yes, but don't forget that they are simply far too strong for us. We could never hope to overpower one."

"Well," said Barriss. "We do have some added muscle of our own right now," she glanced around and smiled at Chewbacca. "I'm assuming you are ready for some payback, Chewbacca?"

"Anworawa scwo aooo ahao," Chewbacca punched his palm with his fist and beat his chest a couple of times, almost like a silverback gorilla, with longer fur.

"That's what I thought," said Barriss. "And don't forget that I have been fighting in the Clone Wars for some time, as has Lopmon here. We know a thing or two about strategy?"

"You've been fighting in the Clone Wars?" asked Jinx, staring at Lopmon in surprise. "How much have we missed since we got here?"

"Probably a lot," said Lopmon. "But I've been fighting alongside the Jedi for almost six months. I'm a being from another dimension, and I'm stranded here, much like how you are stranded on this island. Me and some others of my kind sided with the Jedi when we learned of the war. It isn't common knowledge though to prevent it from being picked up by spies."

"You know of the A-Team?" asked Barriss. All three, even Kalifa, nodded as Barriss mentioned the three Jedi non-Council-members that just about everybody knew of. "Well, Lopmon and her brethren have been fighting alongside them since before they were even called the A-Team."

"Seriously?" asked O-Mer, as he and Jinx stared at Lopmon in disbelief. Lopmon nodded warmly. "You know," he said. "I think we might just have a chance after all."

"Well, yes," said Jinx, who looked like he was still trying to convince himself. "But let's not forget that we still have no weapons. Not to mention that while we may have a Wookiee on our side, there is only one of him and there are lots of these Trandoshans. And we don't know where their secret base is either."

"Jedi are never truly unarmed," said Barriss. "And I admit that we are still at a massive disadvantage. But we can use our minds to our advantage instead of our muscle. I realise that we have little chance of success if we go against the Trandoshans in a full-frontal assault, but as Master Yoda always says about droid forces – outthink them, we can."

"Fair enough," said Jinx. "Alright. Say I go with you. What's the plan? How would we go about outsmarting the Trandoshans? They know this forest even better than us and we've been lucky to escape them at the best of times."

"I'm still trying to come up with a strategy. You say they only come at dawn?"

"Yes," nodded O-Mer. "Apart from when they drop off the new captives there is never any sign of them at night."

"Then we have until dawn to come up with a strategy," said Barriss.

Lopmon bit her tongue. She was loathe to wait who-knew-how-many hours until dawn came around and the Trandoshans began their morning Hunt. But, she deflated slightly as she realised that she didn't really have much of a choice. Suzie would have to wait, and there was nothing that Lopmon could do to change that.

Lopmon sighed. Chewbacca seemed notice, because he looked across at her and said, "Cooscwoaoacahwhrr ohrcoowhrr?" in a soft voice.

Lopmon assumed he was asking her what was the matter or something like that, so she said, "It's just my Tamer. She's out there all alone in the Shadowlands, Chewbacca. It's... well, how do I put this. You say that you are sworn to protect me, right?" Chewbacca nodded. "Well, I suppose you could say that I am sworn to protect her in a similar way, though not through a life debt, and I feel like I failed."

Chewbacca looked sympathetic and said, "Whooao ohoorcrcro. Ohwo wocoaraakwo rcworaan wwracao rawhwa wwahwhwa acworc."

Barriss glanced up and said, "He said not to worry. We'll escape and find her quickly enough."

"I hope you're right," said Lopmon. Another pang of guilt tweaked her stomach, but she mentally kicked it aside. She had to stop thinking about what might be happening to Suzie – it wasn't helping her. She had to focus on coming up with a strategy to beat the Trandoshans that had started this whole mess so that she could get back to Suzie and find out for herself.

But she was at a loss as to what to do.

She knew that Barriss was right. The chances of them physically overpowering the Trandoshans were slim. They were tough, as she had found out to her cost when she had battled against Lo-Taren. But could they be beaten in a different way? And what would that different way be?

She turned and looked out to the surrounding trees. What advantages did they have? Not many – the Trandoshans knew the area and they were in speeders, while they didn't and had to rely on their feet. But... maybe...

The beginnings of potential ideas began to form in Lopmon's mind. She deliberated it carefully, folding it over and over in her mind and trying to smooth out the flaws. There would be a lot of risks involved, but Lopmon knew that there would probably be a lot of risks no matter what happened or what strategy they used. So, perhaps it was worth a shot.

"I may have something," said Lopmon, turning to address the others, who all looked at her, placing her in the proverbial spotlight instantly. Lopmon hopped off Chewbacca's shoulder and stood on top of a log in the middle of the group, before saying. "Obviously this is the home hunting ground of these Trandoshans, so they pretty much know what to expect when they come down here to attack us. And if there is one thing that I learned from my brother Terriermon, it's that often the best thing to do is the completely unorthodox and unexpected."

"What are you suggesting?" asked Barriss. "And I hope it's not too Anakin-ish, or we might end up committing suicide."

"No, it's nothing like that," said Lopmon. "What I'm saying is that we can take out the advantage of the area and turn it over to our own side. If we do things like set up some traps in the woodlands and lure the Trandoshan hunters into them, then maybe we can pull this over to us. Can you guys tell us exactly what the Trandoshans do when they come hunting?"

"Well," said O-Mer. "They usually just fly in here on their speeders and chase us through the undergrowth and the trees, shooting at us with pistols, sniper rifles or the blaster cannons on the front of their speeders if they are feeling particularly vindictive."

"How many speeders?" asked Lopmon.

"Well, I've never seen more than three at a time," said O-Mer.

"And how are we supposed to make a trap for a speeder?" asked Jinx. "We don't have any handy tractor beams or giant magnets to pin them to the ground, so I don't see how we can do that."

"Well, then," said Lopmon. "I guess I'll have to pretend I'm my prankster of a brother and figure out some ways of doing that. I have a couple of ideas already, but we need to hurry up and get them sorted out before dawn comes if we're going to have any chances. Are you guys up for the challenge?"

O-Mer and Jinx hesitated and glanced at each other. Then, Jinx asked, "You really think that you can get us away from this place?"

Lopmon nodded, "Having a friend in danger is a strong motivator. But I don't think I'll be able to do this on my own. I need help, and frankly if we all work together, we should be able to do this."

"I agree," said Barriss, stepping up behind Lopmon, while Chewbacca stepped up behind her. "I've seen Lopmon in action before and when she gets going she can become practically unstoppable. If she's got a plan, then I say we go for it."

"Alright," said O-Mer. "Let's give it one more shot, Jinx."

"Yes, and let's hope that this one works better than the last attempts," the Twi'lek youngling agreed. "What about you Kalifa? Are you coming?"

"You're seriously considering doing this?" asked Kalifa, staring at her two fellow younglings in disbelief. "You'll be killed. Do you want to go the same way as all the others?"

"No, we don't," said O-Mer. "But I think Barriss is right. We've become complacent in our Jedi beliefs. And I think it's about time we actually started to fight for our freedom once again."

"And the idea has some merit," agreed Jinx. "We never thought to try trickery and traps. If this... er... Lopmon... can think of something to help us get away, then I'm all for following her."

"But..." Kalifa protested. "You'll die."

"Not if we have anything to say about it, they won't," said Barriss. Chewbacca rumbled in agreement.

"And besides," said Lopmon. "If my plan works then the Trandoshans are not going to know what hit them, and I mean that quite literally. Yes, it will be risky, but I can guarantee that it's better than what you were doing before. Running will only get you so far. It's when you make a stand that things happen – whether that be on the battlefield, in politics, even in everyday life."

"I..." Kalifa seemed to withdraw slightly and stepped backwards. "I don't think that this will work."

"Alright," said Lopmon. "You can stay behind if that's what you want. If we succeed then we'll come and pick you up before we leave, alright? Okay, guys, I'm going to need you to show me some nice large open spaces between the trees, preferably some that the Trandoshans like to fly through."

"Alright," said Jinx. "I know a good spot. It's this way," he pointed into the forest and began to make his way through the foliage at a jog. Lopmon took to the air and followed, while the others ran along the ground, leaving Kalifa behind in the clearing. The young girl stood and watched in disbelief as her two comrades vanished into the surrounding jungle.

Kalifa bit her lip in agitation. Jinx and O-Mer had not been here for as long as she had. They had all known each other in the Jedi Temple, but Kalifa had been captured before either of them, and she had had to survive on her own for a long time.

That was why she was so much more pessimistic than the other two. They had been there for a long time too, but not so long that they had completely given up all hope. She, on the other hand, had spent so long here that escape now seemed like a faraway dream – an impossibility.

She frowned. Could the little bunny thing and the Mirialan Padawan really lead them all to safety at long last. Could they really finally get her out of this jungle and back to civilisation. She scarcely wanted to believe it. But what if...

No, they couldn't.

Could they?

Ugh, this was an agony.

But Barriss words about Jedi had ignited something in Kalifa, and the embers began to grow as she dwelt on the subject. She was reminded of some of her teachings at the Jedi Temple. Jedi were there to help those who needed their help. She had been neglecting that duty as of late. Could she just stand back and watch as the others put their lives on the line. Would she be able to live with herself if they died? Or if they managed to escape and she played no part in helping?

Neither option appealed to her.

Kalifa's eyes narrowed as fresh determination sprang into her. She quickly ran after the group, crying, "Hey, guys. Wait for me. I'll help."

Barriss turned around and smiled at Kalifa as the younger girl almost fell out of the bushes. "Well done, Kalifa," she said. "I knew you wouldn't let us down."

"I can't just stand back while you guys risk your lives," said Kalifa. "That is not the Jedi Way. You, Lopmon, what do you need me to do?"

Lopmon nodded and smiled. "I'm going to need a couple of things. You reckon you can get them for me?"

* * *

And there you have it. How many of you were surprised by Chewbacca's actions towards Lopmon. I was always planning to have him owe a life debt to someone amongst the Noble Nine. It's similar to why he always hangs out with Han Solo in the films – Han saved Chewbacca from being whipped to death by an Imperial officer. And before anyone complains that Chewbacca is giving his life debt to someone other than Han, just remember that with the way things are panning out at the moment it's likely that Han might never meet Chewbacca anyway.

Also, has anyone checked out the artwork marked on my profile yet? I'd like people to tell me what they think.

See you soon. And please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

Impmon and company are led to Column Mountain to meet the much-respected by lonesome Wizardmon. What kind of person will he be? Will he help them? And if he does, then what will he be able to reveal?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 105 : The Magical Man**


	105. The Magical Man

Well, here I am, back at home and still writing. Slowly but surely, that is. General laziness takes over for the majority of my time back here, but since I have already done most of my work for assignments and suchlike, I have a large amount of free time on my hands. And some of it can be spent working. I'm going to try and finish this arc before the holiday is out. It may be difficult, but I'll give it a shot.

And now, let's see what the next big development is for Impmon.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 105:- The Magical Man**

* * *

The unusual mountain loomed up ahead as the equally unusual party of Digimon moved towards it. At the head of the party was Gryphonmon, soaring through the air in large sweeping circles and guiding them towards the mountain where he made his home. He was forced to keep doubling back on himself, because the others were taking their time, recovering from their previous bout with the SkullScorpiomon. Wingdramon was still providing an ample amount of shade for the others with his huge wingspan.

Impmon couldn't help but feel a little bouncy as he made towards the mountain, so much so that he thought he was beginning to act a little bit like Calumon or Lilamon. There was a new spring in his step. He was no longer trudging through the sand, but almost skipping along. Not quite skipping of course – skipping would just be demeaning, but almost skipping.

"Somebody's excited," said Lilamon, giggling as Impmon seemed to bounce along on his toes.

"And he had every reason to be," Diatrymon put in. "After all, we might just finally get an answer to what we're supposed to be doing to finally meet up with Impmon's Guardian Angel."

"What do you mean – finally?" asked Wingdramon, looking down at them with his head upside-down. "We haven't been searching for her for that long."

"Well, _we_ haven't," pointed out the Champion bird. "But Impmon's been searching for some answers for months now. So, yeah, he's bound to be excited isn't he?"

"Yeah," Lilamon nodded. "He'll finally get to meet up with his..."

"Don't say it!" Impmon turned around and raised a finger warningly at her.

"...Dream Girl," Lilamon laughed, winking cheekily at the little Impmon. Impmon scowled a little and a fireball appeared on the tip of his finger to form a little Bada Boom, as if daring Lilamon to say it again. Lilamon responded by leaning over and blowing out the little flame like a candle. She giggled, and the others chuckled.

"Aww, don't be so tetchy, Impmon," Lilamon said. "You know I'm just kidding around."

"Yeah," said Impmon. "I do know that. But can you not mention the Dream Girl thing. In case you've forgotten, Gryphonmon said that this angel, Ophaniomon, already has a husband in the form of a Seraphimon."

"Oh, I remember," said Lilamon. She shrugged and said, "Well, you know what that means, don't you?"

"Yeah, that she's not my Dream Girl," said Impmon.

"No," Lilamon smirked. "It means you've got some competition."

"Oh, for the love of..." Impmon groaned, as the others laughed at his expense once again. "Maybe I should ask this Wizardmon if he knows a couple of spells that can make you be quiet."

"Nothing could ever keep me quiet," said Lilamon.

"No, you're probably right," Impmon conceded. "Fanglongmon himself probably couldn't shut you up."

"Not a chance," said Lilamon.

Wingdramon looked up towards the circling Gryphonmon, who was currently on one of the circuits back towards them. "Where exactly is this Wizardmon's home located, Gryphonmon?" The dragon called up to the other mythical creature.

"Well, you see there are roughly about twelve segments to the mountain?" called down the Gryphonmon. "His little hut is built right on the sixth one, directly in the middle. He said he wanted a good view of the area but didn't want to intrude too much upon my living space. I tolf him it wasn't a problem but he insisted?"

"Sixth level, huh?" asked Calumon. "Six comes after eleven, right?"

Impmon turned to the little creature. "Come on, Calumon. You can't even count?"

"I can count," said Calumon defensively, folding his little arms as he trotted along beside Impmon.

"Oh yeah?" asked Impmon. "Can you count up to twenty for me?"

"Of course I can," Calumon said. "Listen."

"Oh, this'll be good," Impmon murmured to himself as Calumon started.

"One, two, three, one, eleven, six, twelve, nine, ten, three, fiveteen, eight..." he paused and suddenly looked uncertain. "Um..." he paused. "What was the next one?"

"Fish?" Lilamon asked innocently.

"Yeah, that was it," Calumon said immediately. "Eight, fish, nineteen, twenty." He looked at Impmon smugly and said, "Beat that, Impmon."

Impmon was trying very hard not to laugh. Lilamon and Diatrymon were not – they were both laughing uproariously. Impmon managed to splutter out a, "Don't ever change, Calumon," before bursting into fully-fledged laughter himself.

Gryphonmon, from up on high, could still hear every word. He shook his head in wonderment. He'd forgotten just how silly things could sometimes get around the Digimon that belonged to the Tamers. It was one of the things that he had most enjoyed about the Human World. All of his fellow Megas that had journeyed there, with the exception of Jijimon and Babamon, were all very serious Digimon that rarely had any kind of fun.

"This is quite refreshing," he said to himself quietly. "And a reminder of the good old days."

His tail, which still had the pink strip wrapped around its jaws and sealing them shut from Lilamon, tried to make another snarky comment, but all that came out were muffled and barely distinguishable noises. Gryphonmon flat-out laughed, which seemed to incense his tail even more. It had taken him a long time to find somebody who could shut the damn thing up, but just hearing it trying and failing to speak was heaven.

"Okay," he called down. "We're approaching the foot of the mountain now. You should start thinking about making your ascent now."

"Alright," Impmon called back up. "Hey, Lilamon, do you think you could give me a lift?"

Lilamon blinked. "Um, yeah, I could if I wanted, but... aren't you going to fly up yourself?"

"Yeah, I could if I wanted," Impmon repeated. "But I'm trying to get this guy to help me and I think that if a Demon Lord, even if it is an ex-Demon Lord like Beelzemon, showing up at his front door would be a very bad idea, don't you?"

"Good point," the fairy said. "Okie-dokie. I'll give you a lift."

"What about me?" asked Calumon. "Can I get a ride too?"

"But you can fly up on your own as well," said Impmon.

"Yeah, but..."

"Wait, don't say it," said Impmon. "Let me guess. Getting a piggy-back ride up is more fin, right?"

"Yeah," nodded Calumon. "How did you know I was going to say that?"

"I've gotten good at guessing what you're going to say," said Impmon. "After all, most of it is along the same lines."

"I don't think I'm going to be able to get up there on my own," said Diatrymon, looking at the completely vertical surfaces of the columns stacked on top of one another. "Not without serious effort and a long climb, anyway. Could I get a lift, Wingdramon?"

"Sure thing," said the dragon. "Impmon, do you want me to lift up your bike as well?"

Behemoth suddenly protested very loudly, blaring his engines in a full-scale thrum that clearly indicated he was not interested.

"Uh, thanks for the offer," said Impmon. "But Behemoth is not a fan of being in the air unless he's jumped into it himself for some reason. I think he prefers to have both wheels on the ground. Do you reckon you could do circuits around the mountain in a patrol for us, Behemoth? Keep a headlight out for any more SkullScorpiomon?"

Behemoth seemed satisfied with that idea and thrummed more quietly.

"Alright then," said Impmon. "Give us a boost, Petal-he-ad. We've got ourselves a Magical Man to meet."

"Good afternoon everybody and welcome to the Lilamon Express," Lilamon quipped as she picked up Impmon in one hand, wrapping her petals around his waist and hoisting him into the air, plonking him down on her back, nestled on one of the petals of her large back-flower. "Please remember that smoking is illegal it all times on this service and there is no shop available. Also, please ensure you take care of all toiletries before getting aboard, as there are no services of that kind on this vehicle."

"You're one bossy train," said Impmon.

"What's a train?" asked Lilamon. "I was doing an impersonation of a Trailmon."

"Ah," said Impmon. "Of course." Suddenly he was blinded as Calumon landed on his back and his large ears fell down over Impmon's face, almost causing the Rookie to lose his balance.

"Yeah," asked Calumon. "Well, I'm going to pretend that you're a horsie instead of a Trailmon. Mush."

"You don't say mush to horses, Calumon," Impmon said as he peeled Calumon's ears from his face. "You say Giddyup to horses, and mush to huskies. And I think I saw a play once where someone said you say Yeehaa to a camel, although that makes no sense to me."

"Come along then, Diatrymon," said Wingdramon, lowering himself towards the ground and gripping the flightless bird by his metal shoulders in his blue-scaled, clawed hands. "You ready for a lift?"

"Yeah," said the bird. "Let's get at it."

"Follow me then," said Gryphonmon. He chuckled and added, "And stop trying to talk back there. It's futile. I gotta say, Lilamon, you are a miracle-worker. Do you reckon I could commandeer you to keep this tail shut?"

"It'll be some time before that strip wears away," said Lilamon. "It could even be months."

"Months!" Gryphonmon cried.

"Mhnmmph!" came a loud exclamation from the tail.

Gryphonmon screeched in laughter. "Oh, that has just made my day, that has. Come on. I'll take you to see the Wizardmon." He turned around, his tail making muffled protests and probably demanding the Lilamon release the charm right away, but it was completely ignored by all and sundry. Gryphonmon winged his way upwards at high speed, his bat-like wings sweeping through the air like those of a real bat.

"Up we go," Lilamon said, lifting herself up off the ground and hovering upwards after the Mega-level griffin with no visible means of support, which greatly juxtaposed against Gryphonmon's powerful flapping. Calumon whooped as the wind seemed to rush by him as Lilamon rose higher, and Impmon chuckled as Lilamon joined in. The fairy Digimon almost threw her passengers off as she span in the air like a ballet dancer, enjoying the freedom of the open air, despite the searing heat.

And then came Wingdramon and Diatrymon. The former seemed to be a mix between the other two in terms of flight – with wings that weren't flapping, causing him to float upwards pretty much like Lilamon. Diatrymon's wings were outstretched as Wingdramon had a grip on his shoulders and was pulling him into the air. It wasn't painful for the bird – his wings were strengthened by hard metal after all. But it didn't feel a little awkward, his legs swinging freely in the air underneath him.

And that left Behemoth on the ground, and the motorbike zoomed away to carry out his instructions, racing around and around the mountain in a demented state. Like Lilamon, he was enjoying the feeling of being able to go wherever he wanted.

As they rose higher into the air, they passed by the thicker ground columns. Each column was thinner than the last, and since it was situated in the centre of the last as well, that left a perfect circular ledge all around the mountain at each new stage.

As they ascended, Calumon counted off the ledges that they passed by. "That's one," he said, pointing at the first one. "And that there is the second one, and this one coming up is the third one, and then that one up there – yeah, that one – is the first one again. And here comes number eleven. And here's the sixth one. Here we are. We've arrived."

And indeed they had. Because, somehow, in Calumon's mis-matched number chart, the number six was actually in the right place. Gryphonmon flapped over the edge and quickly reversed the direction of his flaps to slow him down, before alighting on the ledge with a small thud. Lilamon climbed over the edge too and alighted on the tips of her petals, while Wingdramon placed Diatrymon on the ground and then stayed in the air. Predictably.

"There it is," said Gryphonmon. "That's where he lives. If there's anyone I know that can help you, it's him."

"That's his place?" asked Impmon, hopping off Lilamon's back and staring at the run-down mess that was in front of him. "It doesn't look much like the dwelling of a magical guy to me."

The small hut was about the same size as a portacabin. All of it was still standing but the wood was obviously beginning to rot right before their eyes. There were huge gashes in the woodwork and it looked like just about every part of it was covered in some kind of lichen or fungus or something like that. It looked like it was about to about to collapse at practically any second. It almost looked like an attempt at building a shelter from someone who didn't have the first clue about what they were doing.

"Yes, that is where he lives," said Gryphonmon. "It may not look like much, but then again, it isn't really meant to. Might I suggest you go up and knock?"

"Knock?" asked Impmon. "Are you kidding me? It looks like the whole place will collapse and crush whoever is inside if I so much as fart on it. Knocking on it will probably send the whole thing cascading down the mountain."

"It is stronger than it looks," said Gryphonmon. "Trust me. It'll hold."

"Well," said Impmon. "I suppose. Alright, I'll go up and try and get his attention. But if I end up making the place fall down and killing him by accident then it wasn't my fault, alright?"

"Fine," said Gryphonmon.

"Do we know if he's in or not?" asked Wingdramon.

"He's in," said Gryphonmon. "He almost never leaves this place. I'm sure that he's in there."

"Alright," said Impmon. "Here goes." He walked quietly up towards the door and looked up at the wooden thing. It looked like it was fall off its hinges and crush him where he stood at the slightest touch, and so it was with a very tentative motion that he raised his fist and gently tapped it with his knuckles. He flinched backwards, but the door held firm.

The others all crowded round him as they waited for a few moments, but there was no reply.

"Maybe you should try again, a little bit harder," said Lilamon. "I mean, I think even a bat would have had problems hearing that little knock."

"Alright, alright," said Impmon. "Here goes." He raised his fist again and lightly tapped on it again, albeit still harder than the first time. His knocking gave off three reasonably quiet but still fairly audible thumps.

There was the usual bated breath and staring at the door that came after knocking, But nobody came out to see who was coming to call. Impmon frowned slightly as he stared at the unmoving door. Lilamon exchanged a glance with her fellow Digimon for them forest level and Calumon began to hop from foot to foot in impatience. And still there was no reply to Impmon's summons.

"Who are we waiting for?" asked a voice behind all of them.

"AAAAAAGGGH!" many of them cried, jumping in shock and whirling around in surprise, Impmon immediately lighting a fire in his palm in preparation for an upcoming battle. They found Gryphonmon chuckling as another Digimon leaned against him, clutching his ribs with one gloved hand as he struggled to control his mirth.

"Oh, I love doing that to people," said the Wizardmon, snickering and choking as he tried to contain his laughter and completely failed to manage it. "The expressions on all of your faces just then were absolutely priceless, I can tell you."

Lilamon giggled. "You got us good. I'm actually quite envious. Were you hiding behind a rock or something?"

"Nope," said Wizardmon, brightly, standing up, but still trying not to laugh too hard. "I heard the knock and teleported outside, right behind you. It's been so long since I've had a visitor that I forgot hoe completely hilarious doing something like that is. One of the disadvantages of being so isolated."

"I remember when he did that to me for the first time," said Gryphonmon. "I almost took his head off."

"Yes," said Wizardmon, folding his arms. "And you did ruin my best hat."

"I said I was sorry," said Gryphonmon.

"I'll believe it when I see a new one," said Wizardmon.

"You've got plenty more," Gryphonmon grouched.

"Not the point," Wizardmon turned away, humphing slightly.

Impmon and the others got a good look at the newcomer. He looked pretty much exactly like Impmon has expected – like the Wizardmon from the televisions series. His head was adorned with a wide-brimmed blue pointy hat, patterned with a skull on it. He had a long, blue cloak nestled around his shoulders and down his back, decorated with various symbols, complete with a cowl that hid the lower half of his face, including his mouth. The rest of his clothes were baggy and brown, also with various symbols, and long blond hair tied in a pony-tail hung down behind his hat. To top it off, he was leaning on a staff with a ball at one end and several circled spikes around the ball, making it resemble some kind of sun.

Wizardmon was now trying to get his mirth under control again. He coughed and thumped his chest a couple of times, trying to get his breath back. Then he said, "I do apologise for surprising you in such a manner. Usually am not so... well, free-spirited, but I suppose you could say that greeting my guests from behind is a bad habit I've picked up. Although it is one that I probably won't be giving up any time soon. It's very amusing."

"Yeah," said Impmon. "Sounds like the kind of thing I used to do in the park in the Human World. Although I usually went for terrifying someone instead of just making them jump, but same difference."

"Oh indeed?" asked Wizardmon, eyeing the group. "And who might you lot be anyway? I haven't received any visitors besides Gryphonmon for months and when I finally do I get five of you here at once?"

"We're like buses," said Calumon. "We don't appear for ages and then there's lots of us."

"Don't listen to him. He's hyperactive," said Impmon. "Uh, but as to who we are and why we're here – well, it's kind of a long story."

"I see," said Wizardmon. "Then perhaps we should take this story inside and I'll make everyone some nice beverages to make up for startling you. How does that sound?"

"Well, the idea sounds great," said Lilamon. "But, uh... no offense or anything, but your house doesn't exactly look safe."

"And it's a bit small for the likes of me," said Wingdramon.

"Oh, I assure you," Wizardmon waved a hand dismissively. "Appearances can be deceiving. If you would all like to take hold of the end of my staff," he held out said piece of wood in the middle of the group, so that the sun was surrounded by other Digimon. "Then I will take you in."

Impmon was naturally a little bit wary of something like this – wondering if Wizardmon was trying to trick them with something, especially since he had no idea what would happen when they touched the staff. But then, he saw Gryphonmon extend a wing and touch the staff with the tip of it.

"Well, go on," said Gryphonmon. "You can trust him. He's no servant of darkness."

"Yeah, I can tell," said Lilamon, placing a hand on the staff as well. "He's too cool to be a bad guy."

"Why, thank you, Miss," said Wizardmon. "It's been a long time since anybody has ever called be cool. Ah, the good old days. I may just do a bit of reminiscing later, but business first."

"Well, I trust him," said Calumon, skipping over and leaping on top of the end of the staff, so he was standing on the round ball of the sun. Wingdramon moved next, moving his massive tail and wrapping the tip around one of the spikes, while Diatrymon squeezed in between Lilamon and the tail and touched the staff with a claw.

"Well," said Impmon. "If everyone else is going," he stepped forwards and well and laid his glove on the staff too, until the seven Digimon were standing or floating around in a strange circular formation.

"By the way, Gryphonmon," said Wizardmon. "What happened to your tail?"

Gryphonmon chuckled screechily. "It was our new flowery friend. She finally shut it up."

"It was annoying me," said Lilamon.

"Is that so?" asked Wizardmon. "You are aware that I have a few spells in my arsenal that could strip it of its voice. All you had to do was ask."

Gryphonmon stood there, blinking for a few seconds in stunned amazement. Then he said, "I cannot believe I never thought of that."

"Neither can I," said Wizardmon. "Hold on tight."

Suddenly, everyone felt like they were being sucked into a vacuum cleaner, in a rather similar sensation to being pulled into a Data Stream. All noise was blotted out except for a loud rushing like a hurricane-force wind as they disappeared from their spot on the cliff and after a couple of seconds of everyone tumbling through space, yet somehow still glued to their staff in their strange circle, their feet all suddenly found the floor again. Even Wingdramon's feet touched down, and they released the staff, heads spinning and feet tottering slightly as they moved about in a dizzy fashion.

"Whoa," Calumon said. "That felt like the world's most wild rollercoaster. What happened?"

"That..." said Wizardmon, who didn't look remotely affected. "Was teleportation."

"Well, it's certainly a rush," said Lilamon. "That was weird."

"And where exactly are we?" asked Diatrymon.

"Inside my house," said Wizardmon. "Take a look around."

"Inside your house?" Wingdramon asked, raising his head and his jaw dropping in disbelief at what he was seeing. "Phenomenal."

One by one the others looked up and there were similar expressions of disbelief on everybody's faces, except Gryphonmon and Wizardmon of course. The former chuckled as the others all turned round and round, and Wingdramon got back into the air, gazing at their surroundings in utter stunned shock. "Impressive, isn't it?" The griffin asked. "I reckon there was a similar expression on my face the first time I was in here,"

"But how does it all fit in here?" asked Calumon.

"Yeah," Diatrymon agreed. "It couldn't have been wider than one of Wingdramon's wings from the outside. But on the inside... it's enormous. It's like the size of Lilamon's lake back home."

This is incredible," breathed Impmon as he took in what resembled almost an entire banquet hall combined with kitchen, living room and bedroom all in one big, single unit. There was a long trestle table right in the middle, with a sofa and a bed at one end, and kitchen appliances like fridge and sink and drawers on the other side. There were light fixtures hanging from the ceiling, which was, along with the walls, covered with plaster that looked clean, like it had just been freshly put down. And it was completely and utterly flat, like the rotting wood it was plastered on was not rotting wood at all, but brick or something. It looked like a whole house fitted in one room.

"I have a swimming pool out back," said Wizardmon. "You wanna check it out?"

"A pool?" Impmon spluttered. "Now, you're pulling my leg."

"Yeah," said Wizardmon. "I am. "But if I wanted a swimming pool I could get one. There are several advantages to being a magical Digimon. I can't make my own food, though, but that's okay because I don't really need it. Still, I do sometimes pop out and get some sometimes. I believe that I still have some hot chocolate. Does anybody want some?"

"What's chocolate?" asked Diatrymon. "Sounds like something you just made up on the spot."

"I love chocolate!" Calumon cheered. "Whether it's hot or cold. Next to the cream puffs that Takato's mum makes, chocolate is the bestest food in the whole wide world. Please can we have some Mister Wizard Guy? ."

"Well, you're certainly an energetic one," said Wizardmon. "Perhaps giving you some chocolate wouldn't be the best idea. You're already slightly hyper."

"Calumon's couldn't get any more hyper if you tried to make him," said Impmon. "I reckon it's alright. Besides, I quite like hot chocolate myself. Usually I just guzzle it, but it's a far better alternative to that coffee stuff that Ai and Mako's mum always drinks. That stuff is just gross."

"Sounds gross," agreed Lilamon.

"Alright then," said Wizardmon. "A round of hot chocolates coming up." He strolled over to the kitchen area and began to busy himself at the counter, taking several mugs or bowls out of the drawers and preparing the drinks for everyone. "And while I can get them," he added. "You can give me a full introduction as to who you are and why you're here."

"Okay," said Impmon. "But I really, really hope that this is the last time I'll have to explain things. Anyway, my name is Impmon, and... well, have you heard of the Digimon Tamers?"

"The Tamers?" clarified Wizardmon. "Of course I've heard of them. I did live in civilisation before I moved out here you know. Quite often the humans partnered with their Digimon were the talk of the town. I heard how they managed to defeat Ogudomon, with Gryphonmon's help, of course."

"Yeah," said Gryphonmon. "Did you know that Wizardmon's town was one of the ones wrecked by Ogudomon as he made his way towards the Human World?"

"It was?" Impmon asked in amazement. "Oh Fanglongmon. I'm sorry, mate."

"Nothing to be sorry about. There was nobody in the town at the time. We all lost our houses and stuff like that, but we managed to rebuild. That was around the time I left civilisation though. I suppose it was the destruction of my home that made me decide to finally seek a new life."

"That, coupled with the demands of the Digimon always coming to you for visions," said Gryphonmon.

Wizardmon tensed visibly, and then turned slowly to face Gryphonmon. "What was that?" he asked.

"It's alright, Wizardmon," said the griffin. "They know about it. I told them your story before they got here. But I happen to know they're on the level. They can be trusted to keep your secret. Even the little one."

"Yeah," said Lilamon. "We won't breathe word to anyone about where you live. In fact, we'll pretend we've never even heard of you."

"We really can't imagine what it must have been like to be bothered by all those people pretty much all of the time," said Wingdramon. "We've all lead pretty secluded lives on the forest level. If you'd happen across us in your journey to find a new home, we would have let you in without asking you about your visions."

Wizardmon looked relieved. "Well, that is good to hear," he said. "For a moment I was beginning to think that the reason you'd come to visit me was to ask me to look into the future for you. That would have been irritating and besides I wouldn't be able to help you. I've sworn never to look into the future again. Not even for myself. Whatever comes my way will be a surprise to me now."

"I bet it makes life a bit more exciting," said Diatrymon. "I can't imagine what it'd be like to know stuff before it happens. Like when you are going to die and everything. That would creep me out."

"Well, the future can be changed," said Wizardmon. "So if I foresaw my death I could go about trying to prevent it. But there are so many futures that I might end up causing it sooner and there is almost no way to tell what's going to happen for sure. Only the past is set in stone. Even when I was doing predictions for people, I would still have to pick what I thought was the most likely future for what they were asking – I can sense that too. But, in the end, you just never know."

"Were you ever wrong?" asked Lilamon. "Did you ever get complaints or something?"

"Only once or twice," shrugged Wizardmon. "But most of the time I was right. I foresaw Ogudomon ploughing through our village though and everyone trusted me enough to evacuate. And it's a good thing that we did. Now, I believe we were about to start talking about the Digimon Tamers."

"Yes," Impmon piped up again. "Yeah, the conversation kinda started to follow its own path there, didn't it? Well, actually, the thing is that I am a Digimon Tamer's partner."

"Oh?" Wizardmon turned around, one hand in the air and a perfectly balanced tray with steaming mugs and bowl of hot chocolate hovering above it. "That's interesting."

"Yeah," said Impmon. "But the thing is... we kinda have come to you because of your visions. But..." he added quickly as Wizardmon looked incensed immediately. "Hear me out first, and you'll understand what I'm getting at."

"I'm sorry, but I cannot help you," snapped Wizardmon. "I will not break my vow to look into the future. Not for you, and not for anyone either. Not even the Sovereigns. Now I suggest you finish your hot chocolate quickly and leave."

"But that's the thing," Impmon interrupted. "We _aren't _going to ask you to look into the future."

Wizardmon blinked, a look of pure confusion filling his eyes. "You're not?" he asked. "But... you just said..."

"That's why we need you to hear us out," Lilamon put in. "You better prepare yourself for one, long complicated story."

Wizardmon frowned for a moment, staring at the group in confusion. He glanced towards Gryphonmon, who nodded. After a couple more moments, Wizardmon shrugged and levitated the mugs in front of those with hands and the bowls in front of those without them. "Alright then," said Wizardmon. "In that case, let's hear your story. I'm afraid you've all completely lost me at the moment so shedding some light on the situation would definitely be desirable."

"Alright," said Impmon, picking up his mug and blowing on it. "One more time. And the only time I want to tell this story again after this, is if the others trapped in a parallel dimension ever get home."

And so, as the others sipping or gulped their drinks after waiting for it to cool down, Impmon explained to the attentive Wizardmon. He went into intricate detail about absolutely everything, putting particular emphasis on the evil that GranDracmon represented, his attack via Megidramon and the threats to his Tamers, in an attempt to make Wizardmon truly understand just how important coming to him really was. He also described the various attacks since then, and how GranDracmon seemed to be following him with his minions.

Afterwards, Wizardmon was silent for a long time, a look on his face that suggested that he was unsure exactly what he should be thinking. He then raised his staff off the table and pointed the butt at Impmon before bringing it down and tapping it against the floor a couple of times. The sun on the top of the staff flashed green after a moment.

"Amazing," said Wizardmon. "The lie-detecting spell says you are telling the truth. You truly are a reformed Demon Lord on the run from evil."

"Yeah," said Impmon, finishing off his drink quickly with a couple of gulps. "And I really need your help, mate. If you don't, then who knows what the consequences will be."

Wizardmon got to his feet and strode over from the table to the kitchen, before turned around and leaning against the counter slightly. "And just to clarify," he put in. "You want me to use my powers to look into the past instead, to unearth a long-distant and buried memory into order to tell you how to get in contact with Ophanimon herself."

"You know of her?" asked Impmon.

"I know many things," said Wizardmon. "I do have the Sight. I know little of GranDracmon I'm afraid. But yes, I know of Ophanimon, as well as Seraphimon and Magndramon." He waved a hand and the lights dimmed slightly, and then he waved his hand again, until three bright, angel Digimon appeared before him. They weren't real – they were just images that were slowly circling on the spot, but the eyes of the others widened all the same.

"Whoa," gasped Impmon. "That's her. That's the Angel I saw in my visions," he pointed at the angel in the middle of the three. "And that one's Magnadramon," he added, pointing at the large one on the right.

"Indeed," said Wizardmon. "And the other one is Seraphimon, husband to Ophanimon and brother-in-law to Magnadramon."

"And Impmon's competition," added Lilamon with a giggle.

Wizardmon blinked. "Excuse me?" he asked.

"Ignore her," said Impmon. "It's a little joke she keeps spouting out. He stared at Seraphimon – the only one of the three that he had not seen in a vision of some kind. He was covered in blue armour like Ophanimon was, only it was broader and thicker. Eight, metallic bronze wings jutting out from his back and his helmet covered his entire face. A small symbol was emblazoned on his chest, which resembled a small lantern or a lighthouse – the Crest of Hope.

"They all look awesome," said Calumon, reaching out to touch Magnadramon's tail, but his hand just phased through the image as if it wasn't there. "I wish I sparkled like that."

"They are beings of pure light," said Wizardmon. "They radiate it off themselves wherever they go."

"But Cherubimon's not like that," Impmon pointed out. "She doesn't glow when she appears."

"She probably would if she appeared in the Celestial Heavens," said Wizardmon. "They rarely come down from there but when they do they don't glow powerfully as they do here."

"Well, anyway," said Impmon. "You have got to help us, Wizardmon. I didn't just journey all the way out here, abandoning my own Tamers, despite the fact I promised them I would never do that, just so that you could turn me away."

"There is an awful lot at stake here," said Wingdramon. "Possibly the fate of two entire worlds."

"If you don't help us," said Diatrymon. "You cannot call yourself a compassionate Digimon."

"Yeah," said Lilamon. "We're not even asking you to break your sacred magical voodoo-y vow thingy that you made all that time ago. You can help us out, can't you?"

"Please," said Calumon. "I really want to see these sparkly guys for myself. It'd be so cool."

Wizardmon held up a hand for silence and shut his eyes, sighing beneath his cowl for a moment. Then he opened his eyes and said, "While I still feel slightly aggravated for people travelling to see me just for ore visions, I have to admit that I cannot just turn a blind eye. That would be rude, and wouldn't speak great volumes around me. And if things were to come to a bad ending, that would make me just as guilty as the perpetrators."

"So, you'll help?" asked Impmon. "Seriously?"

"Yes," nodded Wizardmon.

"YES!" Impmon leapt onto the table and punched the air. "Epic! The Magical Man's not gonna let us down after all!"

Wizardmon chuckled. "Well, I'm glad to see that pleases you."

"Pleases me?" Impmon snorted. "Are you kidding? I'm downright ecstatic here – the first time I've been like this for... I-don't-know-how-long. You Mystic-man, are at the top of my friend list at the moment."

"You have a list?" asked Calumon. "Where am I on it?"

"And don't worry," said Lilamon. "When this is all over, as I'm sure it will be someday, we'll come and see you again, if you like. We'll come and drink more of that hot chocolate stuff – that was delicious, by the way – and just laugh and joke about stuff. Would you like that?"

Wizardmon seemed to smile, but since his mouth was hidden it was difficult to tell. "Indeed, I would," he said. "It'll be nice to have some more company hanging around from time to time."

"Glad to oblige," said Lilamon.

"Now," said Wizardmon, turning towards Impmon. "Before I do this, I must first ask you something. Do you wish for me to simply look into the past and tell you with my mouth, or do you wish for me to take you into the vision to see it for yourself. I should tell you that the second option is probably the easiest, but it might make you feel uncomfortable."

"Why?" asked Lilamon.

"Because it'll be extremely similar to those flashbacks that MetalPhantomon was showing him beforehand," replied Wizardmon, gravely.

That made Impmon freeze up, his eyes almost bugging out of their sockets at the prospect of what Wizardmon was saying. A chill automatically went up his back and he shuddered at the prospect and memory of all the horrendous things that metal spectre had extracted from the recesses of his subconscious. The others in the room looked similarly alarmed. Lilamon shook her head quickly and said, "No. No way. You can't ask him to go through another one of those."

"I can ask," said Wizardmon. "And I'm aware of the potential stress it might cause, which is why I mentioned it before I carried it out."

"But some of things he must have seen," Lilamon insisted. "There's no way he'll want to go through any of that again."

"Geez, Petal-head," said Impmon, with a weak chuckle. "You can switch from being a giggly little girl to a mother hen almost instantaneously, can't you?"

"I'm just trying to look out for you," Lilamon folded her arms defensively. "After all, we are team-mates now, aren't we? And we're supposed to have each other's best interests at heart."

"She's right," said Wingdramon. "Perhaps it would be better if you were to just tell us..."

"No," Impmon said, standing up straight and as assertively as he could considering he was the second-shortest being in the room. "No, I gotta do this."

There was a slight pause before Lilamon floated over and murmured, "Are you sure. I mean, you said all the last ones left you in jitters for some time afterwards. Why should this one be any different?"

"I dunno," Impmon stated, looking up into Lilamon's eyes with his own green ones. "But... something's telling me that I gotta do this. Maybe having one final flashback into the past – a flashback that might actually help me to end all the problems that I've been having recently even if it horrendous as the others – well... I suppose it was be something like... I don't know... closure. Besides, I've seen so many awful things already. What could I see this time I haven't already?"

"I'm not sure about this," said Diatrymon.

"If it helps, I can extend the field so that everyone sees what's happening instead of just Impmon," suggested Wizardmon. "That way Impmon won't be going into this one alone."

Impmon looked alarmed. "What?" he cried. "Are you nuts? Telling them about the things I've seen is one thing, but having them see it...? They'd never be able to look at me in the same way ever again."

"Sure we would, Impmon," Calumon said, as he bounced over to the taller Digimon. "Yeah, I know that some of things you've done are really bad, but I've seen you do a load of really good stuff too. I know you're not evil – I saw you risking your own life to save Jeri from the D-Reaper and you protected me from its agents and you fought against Ogudomon. That's who you are now, and the person of the past doesn't exist anymore. It's just a memory. It's like yesterday's cream-puff. Why think about that one, because you can't eat it. Think about the one you're eating now or going to eat soon."

Impmon stared at Calumon, completely dumbfounded at how philosophical the Catalyst had just sounds. Then he asked, "Did I just hear cream-puffs getting used in an argument about who you are. That's it. The world's gone mad."

"However bizarre his imagery," said Wingdramon, "he does have a point."

"Yeah," nodded Diatrymon. "We've fought beside you, haven't we? We swear we won't think any less of you."

"Bring on the flashback," said Lilamon. "If you want to see it then so do we?"

Impmon smiled, his unending gratitude extending out to his friends. "Thanks guys," he said. "That really means a lot. Okay," he clenched his fists and declared, "Let's get this done. One final flashback to solve all our problems. Do your thing Magic-Man."

"Gladly," Wizardmon answered. Then, he rolled his eyes back in his skull and raised his staff, muttering a few words under his breath for roughly ten seconds or so, words that were indistinguishable to the others and wouldn't have meant much if they did hear them anyway. Then, Wizardmon brought the butt of his staff cracking down onto the floor of the large room.

The room melted away. The other Digimon watched in amazement as everything around them seemed to run like wet paint, changing colour and shifting until they were standing in what appeared to be a giant meadow. It was clearly in the Digital World, as Earth was visible in the sky.

Impmon blinked and looked down at himself. This was the first time in a flashback that he'd had a visible body, even if it was slightly transparent. Mostly he had just watched events unfold like it was on a television in previous flashbacks. "This is new," he stated.

"Whoa," I can see the grass through my stomach," said Lilamon. "This is cool."

"These are your incorporeal selves," said Wizardmon. "You aren't really here – you're just ghostly projections and this is all in your own mind. But we can see that past from here, although we have no effect of it."

"Alright," said Impmon. "So where are we?"

"Looks like the Prairie Level," said Wingdramon. "The only one with large expanses of grassland."

"The Prairie Level?" asked Impmon. "I don't think I've ever been there."

"Well, evidently you have," said Lilamon. "If this is a flashback about your past."

"Touché," said Impmon dryly.

"Hey guys," asked Calumon. "What's that sound?"

Everyone clammed up and listened carefully. It was very faint, but in the distance they could hear noises. Noises which they realised were probably extremely loud but far away. It was screaming! Screaming and yelling and crying and also something even worse... maniacal laughter. They whipped around, trying to locate the source of the noise.

"Look", Gryphonmon pointed with a forepaw into the distance. With his keen eyesight, he had been the first to spot it, but as the others turned to look, they saw that in the distance there was an enormous plume of smoke rising into the air and a very faint, orange glow on the horizon. And since there was no sunrise or sunset here and it was broad daylight anyway, that could only mean one thing.

"Something's burning," said Wingdramon.

"Yes," nodded Wizardmon. "It's a town and in the middle of this vision it is under attack by the Demon Lords."

Impmon bit his lip. There was a thick silence now except for the distant noises and Impmon wondered if the others were trying to pick out which of the people laughing evilly was him. It wasn't a pleasant thought. He glanced at the expressions of the others, and was relieved to see that they merely looked solemn instead of accusatory, although Calumon looked a little freaked out.

Gryphonmon spoke up next. "If this is supposed to be a flashback about Impmon, then why are we nowhere near the attack? Wouldn't it be easier to find an answer if we were closer."

"We are in the right place," Wizardmon disagreed. "And the answer as to why we need to be here will become clear in a moment."

"Thank Fanglongmon we're not close to the attack," Impmon sighed. "I've seen plenty of those. They are not very pleasant."

"As evidenced by the horrible noises," Lilamon shuddered as a particularly loud scream pierced the air.

"Wait," said Gryphonmon, holding up a wing. "Something's coming this way."

"What?" asked Diatrymon.

"A small Digimon, running towards us across the grass from the direction of the screaming," said Gryphonmon. "It's a Pumpkinmon, and he looks terrified."

"Terrified?" Impmon asked. "I'm really, really

"A small Digimon, running towards us across the grass from the direction of the screaming," said Gryphonmon. "It's a Pumpkinmon, and he looks terrified."

"Terrified?" Impmon asked. "I'm really, really not surprised."

"He'll be here soon," said Gryphonmon, focusing on the little Ultimate-level Digimon as he ran towards them. And he was right. It wasn't long before the Pumpkinmon hove into the view of the other Digimon as well, sprinting along across the grass as fast as he could go. Their hearts went out to the little Digimon, with his toy-like body and round, orange head. His face was indeed etched with terror.

"Wow," murmured Lilamon. "I can't imagine what must be going on back there to make him that scared."

"I can," said Impmon, darkly.

As the Pumpkinmon drew closer to them, they could hear him mumbling slightly to himself as he ran. It sounded a little quiet and they strained their ears to listen to him. But they managed to discern a few words from his jagged mouth. "Must get there... safety... get there... protect me..." and so on and so on.

The Pumpkinmon ran towards them, completely ignoring the lot of them and running straight through Diatrymon as if he wasn't there, which of course he wasn't. The others turned to watch him keep running over the hills.

"Something tells me that wherever he's going," Impmon sighed. "He's not going to make it there."

And, indeed, he was right.

"**DOUBLE IMPACT!"** yelled a voice right behind them and bullet whizzed out of nowhere, sailing straight through Lilamon's intangible chest, much to her shock and horror, to nail the Pumpkinmon in the small of his back. The Ultimate-level Digimon cried out in pain as he was sent tumbling forwards and rolled in the grass, yelling in agony at the bullet in his matter. The invisible observers whirled around to see Beelzemon, with red eyes and no wings, walking towards them with a sinister grin on his face. Where he'd come from they had no idea – he had definitely not been there before and they could have seen him coming half a mile away. It was like he had sprung out of mid-air.

Impmon clenched his fists. The version of himself that stood before them looked exactly the same as he did in his Mega form. But he could practically feel the waves of evil pouring from him, even though neither version of him were actually real at the moment since one was from the past and the other was in a memory.

Beelzemon stalked towards the Pumpkinmon and walked through Wingdramon's wing and actually stepped on Calumon, the little white guy flinching as the foot went straight through his head. But Beelzemon didn't appear to notice and walked over to the floored Pumpkinmon.

"Hey there, little guy," he crowed down at his victim. "Didn't anybody ever tell you? Nobody escapes the power of the Demon Lords. Not even you could hope to get away. Now, how should I kill you – shooting or stabbing?" He cocked a shotgun in one hand and brandished the claws on the other.

Impmon glanced around at his companions again. Now they all _did_ have disturbed looks on their faces. They had been right. Hearing about it was one thing, but actually hearing one of Impmon's digivolutions that they had fought alongside talking in such a vile manner was a real shocker for them. Calumon was trembling a little.

The Pumpkinmon apparently had not given up yet though. He was still crawling forwards, incredibly slowly and each movement obviously causing him considerable pain, but he kept going nonetheless. He was still mumbling. "Got to get to... ungh... the Temple. The Holy Ones will... uck... save me. Must... get there."

Beelzemon looked intrigued upon hearing this. The others could practically see the gears turning beneath his black biker's helmet. If the Pumpkinmon was talking about angels, that that meant some potentially powerful Digimon to upload. More. He had to learn some more information about this. If he was to become the strongest Demon Lord then he would need some bigger victims.

Beelzemon stepped over to the Pumpkinmon and place a boot to his back, eliciting a scream of agony from the Pumpkinmon as he pushed down on the wound, causing all the watchers to flinch backwards at the horrible, heart-rending noise. "Say what?" Beelzemon whispered, leaning down on one knee to speak quietly to the Pumpkinmon. "What was that about a Temple?"

Pumpkinmon stared, terrified, into Beelzemon's leering face, but he managed to choke out... "I... I... I will tell you nothing."

"Oh, like others haven't said that to me before," Beelzemon sneered. "But I always manage to get the information out of them in the end. One way or the other."

"I will not talk," Pumpkinmon insisted, looking like he was going to wet himself in terror. "They would never forgive me if I gave any information to the likes of you."

Beelzemon scowled and pushed his shotgun between the glowing eyes of the Ultimate. Lilamon flinched backwards and covered her mouth with her petals and Calumon looked away as Beelzemon growled, "Talk and I'll grant you a quick death. Don't talk and it'll be a slow and excruciatingly painful process for you. I'll take you apart molecule by molecule."

"The result would be the same," Pumpkinmon stammered. "I would still join the ranks of those you've slaughtered. I will not speak."

Beelzemon smirked and removed his gun. "Alright," he said. "How about this one? If you talk and tell me what I wish to know... then I will let you live."

Pumpkinmon looked astounded. As did Impmon. If there was one thing either of them really knew about the Demon Lords it was that they had no mercy. They _never_ let anybody live unless they were another Demon Lord. Not for any reason. Even their own minions were expendable if they made the tiniest of slip-ups. "I don't believe it," Pumpkinmon declared.

"Alright," said Beelzemon. He stood up and said, "I swear on the fact that I am the Demon Lord of Gluttony, that I will neither stab, shoot, crush nor use any of my other weapons to kill this Pumpkinmon if he reveals what he knows to me and _only_ if he reveals what he knows."

Pumpkinmon was still staring it disbelief. Could it be? Could he really be being offered an opportunity to be the first Digimon to ever escape and attack from one of the Demon Lords? It seemed that way. Beelzemon was the Demon Lord of Gluttony so that part wasn't a trick. And even Demon Lords had to abide by the oaths that they made.

It took him a few moments, before he muttered, "Won't the other Demon Lords track me down?"

Beelzemon snorted. "I'll let you in on a little secret, my friend. The Demon Lords are not omnipotent. What Lucemon and the others don't know won't hurt them. Now, tell me what I want to know about these Angels if you want to live."

Pumpkinmon remained silent for a few more moments but then, his need to survive kicked in and he said, "Alright, alright. I'll tell you. Just, please don't kill me."

"I shall abide by my oath," said Beelzemon.

"Okay," said Pumpkinmon. "It goes like this. Somewhere not far from here in the Prairie Level is a sacred Temple, constructed to honour the Angels of the Heavens and the servants of Lord Fanglongmon, as well as Fanglongmon himself of course. Lots of things go on there. Sometimes the Digimon of the nearby villages gather for prayer and sometimes they come to ask the Angels to purge them of all their sins and purify their souls or something. The Angel Digimon don't usually appear there very often, but they do respond to people's prayers and sometimes, when a person is really, really desperate for to be forgiven for something they've done, the angel Digimon appear in person."

"Do they now," said Beelzemon, hiding a smirk. "And who appears exactly. Have you ever seen them?"

"Well, no," said Pumpkinmon. "They only come down for _really_ special cases. Although, I once heard a story of a case where they did come down, or at least someone did. There was this LadyDevimon, you see, who went about wreaking havoc on a bunch of nearby villages with the aid of her husband – a Devimon. But one day, the Sovereign Zhuqiaomon descended upon them to stop their destruction and Devimon was killed. The LadyDevimon was wracked by grief and she suddenly understood what kind of pain that her victims must have felt when she killed their loved ones before them and she hated the feeling. So she rushed to the Temple and begged for purification, and Lady Magnadramon herself came down to do the job. She took her up to the Celestial Heavens and purified her, turning her into a beautiful Angewomon. The Angewomon was so grateful to Magnadramon that she pledged her lifelong service."

"Right," Beelzemon said, slowly, looking unsure as to whether to believe the Pumpkinmon or not. "And where is this Temple now?"

"Well, it's not far in that direction," said Pumpkinmon, pointing. "But you'll never be able to get in – it keeps evil Digimon that don't want purification out. And it moves too – it travels to various places around the Prairie Level, appearing in a column of golden light that can be seen for miles. We saw it appear the other day and were getting ready to go and have a service when you attacked us."

"Alright," said Beelzemon, nodding and staring in the direction that Pumpkinmon had indicated. "You have been... most helpful. Thank you."

"Does this mean that I can go?" Pumpkinmon asked hopefully. "That you aren't going to kill me?"

"Not kill you?" Beelzemon looked down at him in fake shock. "Now what would be the fun in that?"

"What?" Pumpkinmon gasped and began to back away, wincing in pain from the wound in his back. "But... but... you promised."

"Promises," snorted Beelzemon." Gotta analyze them carefully, haven't ye? I said that I wouldn't kill you with anything in _my_ arsenal. I never said anything about killing you with something in _yours._" Beelzemon suddenly lashed downwards with one hand and grabbed the axe stuck in the top of Pumpkinmon's head and wrenched it out, causing Pumpkinmon to scream in pain, and raised it high into the air.

"No, no!" Pumpkinmon wailed. "Please Angels, forgive me!"

"I think that's enough," said Wizardmon and just as Beelzemon brought the axe scything down towards Pumpkinmon's face, he ended the vision of the past. The image melted away before the fatal strike could occur and suddenly everyone was back in the large dining area that made up Wizardmon's house. Calumon was shaking like a leaf and Impmon had his face in his hands. Lilamon looked like she was trying not to cry.

"Dear Fanglongmon," she breathed. "You really were evil back then, weren't you?"

"That?" asked Impmon. "You call that evil? That was tame compared to the other stuff I've seen. Does this mean that you're having second thoughts about me after all."

"Nah," Lilamon shook her head. "You're still you now, I suppose. But I can't help but wonder whether you were just that evil, or whether you'd spent so long hanging around with the other Demon Lords?"

"Eh?" asked Impmon, glancing up at her with an eyebrow raised. "What does that mean?"

"Well, maybe you just fell in with the wrong crowd or something," shrugged Lilamon. "I mean, we know that Magnadramon did purify you in the end, and she must have known you were going to deceive her, but maybe she did it anyway because she knew that there actually was a teeny-tiny part of you that wanted purification after all."

Impmon stared at her in fascination. Could that really be true? He remembered how he had started down the path of evil in this life – all due to some petty grudge he had against his Tamers, which then extended to all Tamer bonded Digimon and the fact that they could digivolve when he couldn't. If Jeri had not snapped him out of that early, who knows what could have happened? Could that have been similar to what happened the first time as well, except there was no Jeri-alternative to stop him?

"Some Digimon are born evil," said Wingdramon. "It's a fact of Digital existence. I understand that that is not the case with the Human race, but for Digimon it is. However, most Digimon that go bad do not start out that way. I think Lilamon is right. You were only evil because you were brought up by the wrong people."

"That..." Impmon paused. "Actually makes me feel a little better. Maybe you're right. Maybe I wasn't as evil as even I believed back then. Of course, most of the things I committed are still totally and completely unjustified but still... Thanks guys."

"No problem," said Diatrymon.

"You alright there, Cream-puff?" asked Impmon to Calumon.

"Yeah," shuddered Calumon. "Just promise me you'll never do that sort of thing again, okay."

"Yeah," Impmon smiled lightly. "Yeah, I promise. Never again of my own free will."

"Well," Wizardmon interjected. "Now you know to a certain extent of what you have to do. You must travel to the Prairie level and find the Temple that the Pumpkinmon mentioned."

"But the Pumpkinmon said that the Temple moves around a lot," said Diatrymon. "It could still take us a while to find it."

"Then it would be best if you got started," said Wizardmon. "And I can give you a hand once more. I can use my magic to teleport you to the Prairie Level right away."

"Really?" asked Impmon. "That'd be swell."

"It was my honour," said Wizardmon. "I wish you well in your quest, Impmon. And all the rest of you as well. I feel gratified that I could help in some small way?"

"Small way?" Lilamon snorted. "You just gave all the answers we need. I'd say that's pretty big."

"Thank you," nodded Wizardmon. "And now, I bid you farewell. I wish you luck in finding that Temple."

"Do you know what it looks like?" asked Diatrymon.

"Yes," said Wizardmon. "And I'm fairly certain you will know it when you see it. Now, farewell. And good hunting." He raised his staff and waved it at the group. With a noise like a loud slurp Impmon, Calumon, Lilamon, Diatrymon and Wingdramon vanished, leaving Wizardmon and Gryphonmon alone in the room.

"You reckon they can do it?" asked Gryphonmon.

"They are strong," said Wizardmon. "If they all work together they may just prevail."

Gryphonmon nodded. Then he said, "Now, about that spell to silence my rear end."

"MMMHHPPHH!" growled the tail.

* * *

Yeah, I know the Prairie Level never appeared in the anime, but there were two of the Seven Levels of the Digital World that were left blank from that anyway. There was the Desert Level, which encompassed all the random stuff like the black and white town as well, the Forest, the Ocean, the Clockwork and Sovereigns Level. So I decided the other two should be Prairie and Tundra to cover lots of biomes.

So, Impmon's on his way to a Temple that could be anywhere on the Prairie Level. What grand adventures wait for him and his friends there? You may have to wait a while to find out.

See you soon. And please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

Suzie's still all alone in the Shadowlands, protected only from the predators outside by the wooden walls of a strange hut. Only, she is about to discover that she is not quite as alone as she thinks she is.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 106 : Ethereal Guidance**


	106. Ethereal Guidance

And now, I'm sure you all really want to know what's happening to poor Suzie. So, I decided not to keep you waiting. And **megacoldfusion**, you may find a slight surprise in this chapter yourself – something I added to the plan you helped me to construct, but didn't tell you about. I hope you like it. I certainly do.

Read on everyone. And prepare for a couple of surprises.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 106:- Ethereal Guidance**

* * *

A shrill scream suddenly tore through the Shadowlands, jerking young Suzie from her unrestful slumber with a start, heart hammering at the rude and terrifying awakening. It took Suzie a few moments to remember where she was, and when she realized that she was in the middle of the most dangerous part of Kashyyyk, protected from the outside only by thin wooden walls with no Lopmon or anyone else to look out for her, she almost screamed in terror herself at the mere thought.

And yet, she knew that would probably be a very bad idea. If the predators outside suddenly got wind of her, the walls she was enclosed by and the broken table that she was crouching underneath were not going to be any defence from their hunger. They would tear the place apart splinter by splinter to get to her. Suzie could imagine it already – forked tongues flicking and eyes burning as claws slashed and hacked. She shuddered at the thought. It was altogether too realistic for her liking.

The screech that had awoken had come from ridiculously close by. Suzie quickly pressed her eye to her little peephole from before and looked outside. For a moment she saw nothing, but then the dark shadow of another Katarn moved passed some distance away, the limp form of a Tach dangling from its large jaws. The Katarn leapt onto a tree branch proceeded to flip the dead Tach into the air and swallow it whole, pulling it down its throat with strong neck muscles. Once the tail of the Tach was gone, the Katarn hissed slightly before clambering away into the trees, presumably searching for more prey.

Suzie drew a shaky breath of relief. It was still incredibly dark outside, so Suzie didn't have a clue what time of day it was. It might be anywhere between dawn and dusk on either side of the clock. It could be the middle of the night, or a new day might be beginning. She just didn't know.

Previous questions sprung into her mind, still unanswered from when she was wandering out in the woods. Thoughts about Lopmon and Barriss and the others still on the embattled surface of Mygeeto circulated around her mind. As she moved away from her peephole and pressed a hand to her eyes, struggling not to break down crying once again, she tried to banish these thoughts from her mind. She needed to focus on what she was going to do herself, because that was the only thing she could do.

But other than continuing to cower in this hut and wait for someone to come and find her, Suzie really couldn't see many other options. But there were other things to think about too. She was beginning to get hungry and she had a raging thirst, but where was the nearest water and was there anything down here that was safe to eat, or would she have to resort to catch Tachs herself – not that she actually knew what they were called. The thought repulsed her and she had to admit that catch one of the lithe little primates was probably beyond her anyway.

And as for water – was there any water down here? There had to be some somewhere. One of the rules of her homeworld that still seemed to apply in this galaxy was that just about everything needed water in some form. So where did the predators outside get theirs? And would it be safe?

Probably not, she realised.

She was just as stuck as ever.

Fighting the urge to whimper in frustration and fear, Suzie rolled over so that her back was to the wall and she was looking out from under the table, pondering what she was going to do next.

She froze.

There, no more than a metre away from her face was a pair of boots. And coming up from the boots were legs, the tops of which and everything above them being hidden by the sloping top of the broken table that Suzie was hiding beneath. Suzie shuffled backwards slightly out of fear as she stared at the boots in front of her.

They looked like ordinary boots, similar to the sort that Anakin wore, but there was a couple of key differences. Firstly, they was a slight, light-blue aura surrounding them and the legs that were nestled inside them. And secondly, they appeared to be semi-transparent. Although they were still clearly visible, Suzie could still see the wall on the other side of the hut straight through them at the same time. It was an incredibly bizarre effect.

Suzie didn't have a clue what she was looking at but frankly it terrified her. She held her breath, hoping against hope that whoever this person was, probably the owner of the shack, had not spotted her.

And then, a voice spoke from above. It was a soft, gentle and wise-sounding voice, and it said, "You have nothing to fear, child. Come out. I wish to speak with you and it is rather important that we talk immediately."

Something about that calm voice seemed to soothe Suzie's jangling nerves. She frowned in confusion as a large portion of her fear ebbed away. The voice was unusual as well, as it seemed to echo slightly, and Suzie wasn't entirely sure whether she heard it with her ears or not. But she got the overwhelming sense that she could trust this strange person standing over her.

To that end, after only a moment's hesitation, Suzie slowly edged outwards from underneath the table and peered upwards at the person standing over her. The rest of the body was semi-transparent and surrounded by a bluish tinge as well. The person was swathed in what appeared to be beige robes. He had kindly, blue eyes, long brown hair and a small amount of facial hair surrounding a kindly smile.

"That's it," said the weird being. "I am not your enemy. Rather the opposite in fact. Come out, Suzie so we may speak face to face."

Suzie paused when she learned that the being already knew her name. She knew she should probably be suspicious but something was stopping her from being so. As the stranger stepped back slightly to give her room, with his hands clasped behind his back and his friendly smile still in place, Suzie crawled the rest of the way out from under the table and stood up. She barely came to the person's waist – he was a tall being. Possibly as tall as Anakin.

She spent a couple of moments staring at the strange man, as if to confirm that he was really there, before she finally found her voice and asked, "Who... who are you? And... why do I have the feeling that I know you from somewhere?"

The man chuckled and replied, "Well, while you and I may never have met face to face, Suzie, I have never been far away since you entered this dimension. And I believe that you may have at least heard of me."

"Really?" Suzie frowned in puzzlement. "Then... what is your name?"

"To put it bluntly," the man said. "I have had numerous names in my travels, but the one you probably know me as is the one you have been told of by Anakin and Obi-Wan, as well as your friend Aayla a couple of times. My name is Jinn. Qui-Gon Jinn."

Suzie's eyes nearly bulged right out of her skull as her eyelids retracted backwards and her mouth fell open at the full implications of those two words fully hit her. This man was claiming to be Obi-Wan Kenobi's former Master, and the man who had found Anakin on Tatooine and rescued him from slavery. The man who had saved the life of Jar Jar Binks and introduced him to Republic life. The man who had been killed on the planet Naboo at the hands of the Sith Lord, Darth Maul, who was killed by Obi-Wan in turn, and whose final request to his Padawan had been to train Anakin as a Jedi.

Qui-Gon Jinn was standing before her right now, and amused smile on his face.

"But..." Suzie blustered in disbelief. "But you're supposed to be dead."

"No," Qui-Gon shook his head. "I am both dead and alive. Death is merely a state of mind. My real body no longer functions and in that respect, I am dead. But it is my spirit that still survives. I have simply become one with the Force, as all Jedi and indeed all beings do once their body stops functioning."

"So your soul is still alive then?" asked Suzie.

"In essence, yes," nodded Qui-Gon. "Although when most beings die they lose all sense of self and their spirit mingles with all the others that have also passed on to become a part of the living Force that the Jedi can call upon at will. However, I have had some training in an almost forgotten art that has allowed me to retain my sense of self after death."

"That is so cool," Suzie breathed in astonishment. "So you've been keeping a watch over us all this time?"

"In essence, yes," said Qui-Gon. "My perception of the Force has increased exponentially since I became a part of it. And I wished to follow Anakin's training as he became a Jedi. I wished to see the Prophecy realised and for balance to be brought to the Force. I have been following the progress of the Chosen One ever since he was a boy, although he does not know of this."

"You're like a spirit guardian," said Suzie, grinning slightly, all fear of her location forgotten in the face of this wonder. "Wow, I'm so jealous of Anakin right now?"

Qui-Gon chuckled and said, "You needn't be. Essentially I am a spirit guardian to all of you, yourself included. Which is why I'm here now. Just as I have followed Anakin's progress since my death, I have been following you and all your friends, including young Aayla, ever since you arrived in our dimension."

"Really?" Suzie asked in amazement. "What kind of things have you been doing?"

"Not much," Qui-Gon admitted. "While I am still here and am able to take on a semi-physical form in the guise of the Force-Ghost you see before you," he gestured to himself. "My effect on the living world is quite limited. I can no longer manipulate things as I could have done while alive, which makes me useless in battle situations where I could have used my powers to protect you while alive. However, I can appear and offer my guidance sometimes. Though I must admit, I have had little need to. Ever since the A-Team was formed and grew into the Noble Nine it is today, you have all been managing quite well on your own."

"Thanks," said Suzie. "We certainly try."

"Yes," said Qui-Gon. "But believe it or not, you have me to thank in some small way for the family unit you have today."

"Huh?" asked Suzie. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I have been in contact with Master Yoda," explained Qui-Gon. "He does not know what I am, but I have been making suggestions and introducing him to ideas ever since the Clone Wars began. He knows that there is something out there, but he does not know that it is I. When I sensed the great surge of the Force that indicated you and your friends were arriving in this dimension, I alerted Yoda immediately. His response this was to pay Aayla a call and as a result, send her out on the mission to locate your friend Renamon."

Suzie gasped in amazement. "Wow," she breathed. "What else have you done?"

"A couple of other things," said Qui-Gon. "It was I who planted the suggestion in Yoda's mind to back up Kit Fisto's original idea of keeping you a secret from the Senate. And then, after the incident on Behpour, when I saw how well you fought alongside Anakin, I made another the suggestion – that he and Aayla and all their assorted allies team up to work together in the war. And as a result, you have all steadily been growing closer and closer together."

"So you're the one I can thank for giving me a new big sister, uncle and cousin," Suzie grinned. "Thank you! Thank you so much, Mister Qui-Gon. Everything you've done for us has made me so happy."

"It was my pleasure," Qui-Gon smiled. "I have the galaxy's best interests at heart, as well as the best interests of all of you as well."

Suzie nodded. Then she paused and frowned. "But why did you take so much interest in us anyway?"

"The answer to that question is simple," said Qui-Gon. "When I sensed your imminent arrival into our universe, I could sense the potential for a great change as well. Changes that could completely alter the universe as we know it for the better if utilised correctly. Not to mention you were six beings that would be completely lost and alone and separated across a galaxy unless I helped to pull you back together. I could hardly call myself a Jedi if I didn't try.

"And then I realised how much potential for good you all had. You see, I have constantly been aware of Anakin's... fluctuations from the path of the light and into the darkness. I was there when he slaughtered the Sand People on Tatooine. I attempted to contact him and make him stop, but I doubt he even heard me in his rage. It was then that I realised that things could turn out disastrously if something was not done. Anakin is the Chosen One, of that I have no doubt. One way or another, he will bring balance to the Force. But I saw the potential for so much suffering before that finally happened on that fateful day."

"So you introduced us to Anakin because of that?" asked Suzie.

"Yes," nodded Qui-Gon. "I believed that having someone alongside them who shared the burden of a prophecy would help him. And having Aayla there couldn't hurt either – the two are childhood friends and Aayla has fallen under the influence of the Dark Side in the past, but withdrew, so I believed that she could stop Anakin before he went too far in the future."

"Well, she really did," said Suzie. "She slapped him. Twice."

Qui-Gon chuckled. "Yes, indeed. My plan worked far better than I could have ever foreseen. I merely thought that you might be able to help him on his way, but you have all done far more than that. You have gotten close to Anakin and he has opened up to you. His past sorrows and forays into the Dark Side have almost completely been put behind him. You've all done a wonderful job in steering him further into the Light than he has ever been before."

"What might have happened to him if we hadn't shown up?" asked Suzie, a slight frightened edge creeping into her voice.

"That I cannot answer," said Qui-Gon sadly. "While I may be part of the living Force now I am still a part of the Light Side, and the Dark Side is clouding things for me just as it is for everyone else. If that were not the case then I would know the identity of the Darth Sidious that you discovered and I would be able to point the Order in the right direction. But I don't, so I can't. But as to Anakin – he may have destroyed the Darkness soon enough, or he might have turned to the Dark Side and destroyed the Darkness later. Who can say? However, his time with all of you has been well spent. I believe the chances of him going bad now are very slim indeed. There is still the possibility of it, as there is for all sentient beings, but that possibility has been greatly reduced."

"Darth Sidious probably isn't very happy about that," Suzie murmured.

"No," Qui-Gon shook his head. "I don't think he is."

Suzie stared at the projection of the deceased Jedi Master for a few moments before saying, "This is so weird. I should be terrified of you – ghosts freak me out. There was this time when a Soulmon jumped out at me from a graveyard and I haven't been able to watch ghost movies ever since. But I'm not scared of you at all."

"That is because you have no reason to fear me," said Qui-Gon. "And deep in your subconscious, you know that."

"Wait," Suzie suddenly perked up. "If you know things about the good side and everything, can you tell me what's happening to Lopmon? And Barriss? Do you know what's happened to them?"

"Indeed I do," said Qui-Gon. "I have been present through all the trials and tribulations you have been through ever since you arrived here and this is one of them. I am part of the Force, and the Force is everywhere, so even though a large portion of my spirit is concentrated here in this projection, I am still with Lopmon as well. She and Barriss are fine. They are preparing to meet the Trandoshans who kidnapped them. I am sure that things will turn out okay."

"That's good," said Suzie.

Just then, there was another hissing noise from outside, that indicated there was another Katarn not far away. Suzie immediately stiffened and shrank back, preparing to go back under the table. But Qui-Gon raised a hand soothingly and she stopped.

"Be at ease, child," said Qui-Gon. "You are safe within these walls, unless you give yourself away."

"What is this place anyway?" asked Suzie, looking around at the wooden walls.

"It was once the dwelling of a Jedi named Jolee Bindo," said Qui-Gon. "He lived here during the days of the Old Republic, in exile, for many, many years. He used his powers to conceal his residence from unfriendly eyes, which allowed him to live here for long years safe from the outside predators. Things were even more dangerous here then than they are now, for tarentateks roamed the Shadowlands back then."

"Tarentateks?" asked Suzie, uneasily. "I don't like the sound of them."

"Nor should you," Qui-Gon said. "Though you yourself would be relatively safe from them. They are creatures of the Dark Side, that prey on the blood of Force-sensitives. There are many here in the Shadowlands, but they usually lie dormant until the Dark Side begins to take over the galaxy. If Darth Sidious gains power, more will rise from hibernation here. If the Sith are not stopped, thousands of worlds will be plunged into grief and tyranny and evil."

"Yeah," nodded Suzie. "I've fought evil before. I know what it's like."

"Yes," nodded Qui-Gon. "And by helping Anakin, each of you in turn has helped to keep the grip of darkness at bay from this galaxy. The Separatist territory would probably extend much further than it does now if you had not appeared."

"Me too?" asked Suzie. "What did I do?"

"Your innocence and your pure heart was one of the many things that helped influence Anakin. He was never like you as a child – he had been through a tough life of slavery instead. But you have helped him to see what true purity really is. And your contributions to the battlefield are noteworthy as well."

"Thanks," Suzie smiled, touched that she – little she – had contributed such a large part to the potential safety of the entire galaxy. There was a significant pause next, as Suzie thought about all the battles that she had been in or at least near, fighting alongside her friends, whether that be crouching beside Numa at the Battle of Nabat, digivolving Lopmon into Antylamon on Felucia to save Bly from the Sarlacc, blowing up everything in sight as Cherubimon on Geonosis, or scouting ahead in the tunnels of Naboo. She really had done a lot after all.

"Yes," Qui-Gon agreed as if he had read her mind. "Wherever you and your friends go, you leave change behind you. I have seen it in many of the other Jedi. One of the things that I noticed in life is that the Jedi are becoming too set in our ways. Yes, we must stick to the Code, but I always felt that some rules are meant to be broken and that the Jedi Order needs to adapt to change instead of hoping that we could remain the same no matter what situation arises. Sometimes I would defy the Council to that end, much like Anakin and his apprentice, Ahsoka, do nowadays. But I was never able to enforce this opinion on other Jedi, not even my own apprentice, Obi-Wan. But you and your five family members from another world... you have done all that and more. The Jedi Order is changing, slowly but surely, and we have you to thank for that."

"I had no idea that the influence we were having was so big," said Suzie.

"That is because you only integrate with a small number of the Order," explained Qui-Gon. "And you did not see much of how we were before you arrived. But I keep watch over all and did, so it is quite plain to me. You are all to be congratulated."

Suzie paused for a few seconds, and then something else occurred to her and she said, "Why did you decide to come and talk to me?"

Qui-Gon smiled and asked, "What do you mean?"

"I mean – did you just come here to tell me this stuff, or was there another reason that you came here to see me? Because you said that you hadn't shown yourself to anyone before now.

"Well, there are a couple of reasons," said Qui-Gon. "Firstly, I thought that you could do with some company. I have come to care significantly for all of you since I have watched over you, and what I saw saddened me. Lopmon still has friends with her, but you were all by yourself. I could see the stress building up inside you and I decided to act to suppress it before it grew out of control."

"Thank you," said Suzie, and she meant it. She realized that a lot of her fear _had_ ebbed significantly. She was very grateful.

"And the first reason has now been fulfilled," said Qui-Gon solemnly. "But the second reason is coming up next. I am here to offer you guidance and to help you to escape from the Shadowlands."

"Really?" Suzie blinked in astonishment. "You can get me out of this place?"

"Yes and no," replied Qui-Gon. "Remember that I cannot affect the living world directly. It is completely impossible for me to do so now. But I can tell you how to get out of here yourself. And that is the most important part of it. The key part – escaping on your own."

"But..." Suzie stammered, backing away a little. "I can't get out of here on my own. I need help. I can't climb those trees or... or fly or whatever I would need to get out of here. Besides, you said I was safe here in this hut. Can't I just stay here and wait for someone to come and find me?"

"The Shadowlands are a big place, Suzie," said Qui-Gon. "Even if Lopmon comes back for you soon, it may still take her a while to find you even with your connection. And remember I also said that this hut was not a foolproof defence. You could still be found here if you were to slip up."

"Well..." Suzie said. "Okay but... but... I still can't get out of here on my own. I can't get up to the tops of the trees on my own."

"No, I agree that you cannot," nodded Qui-Gon. "It would be an almost impossible task for a none-Jedi human child without all the dangerous predators. But there is a way for you to get out of here. And I can tell you what it is."

"But it's so dangerous out there," Suzie protested. "I know because I was attacked last night and I only just managed to get away from those lizard things. I can't do it again. I just can't."

"You can," Qui-Gon assured her. "You must have confidence in yourself, Suzie. I know that you can do it, but you have to know it yourself. And also, you have to think about the long-term effects that this experience will have on you as well, not just the situation you are in."

"Long-term effects?" asked Suzie in bemusement and a little anxiousness. "What kind of long-term effects?"

"I have seen your past experiences," Qui-Gon replied. "You have been through more ordeals than your fellow Tamers since coming here, young one. You were stranded in Nabat with only a fellow little girl for company and you could do nothing about it until you were rescued by the clone troopers. You were taken captive by Geonosian zombies and were unable to fend for yourself without the help of Barriss or your partner. And now this. Can you not see where this is leading? If you simply wait for Lopmon to arrive and fetch you, then that will be a serious blow to your confidence, because you will have to be rescued once again."

"But Lopmon is my Digimon," said Suzie. "I thought she was supposed to protect me."

"She is," said Qui-Gon. "But she cannot always be there to protect you. Like now, for instance. There may be times in the future similar to this where you are not so fortunate as to find the protection of an ancient Jedi dwelling. What then? You cannot rely on your partner all the time. Henry and Rika know this, and is time you learned the same. Ten is a critical age in the lives of most humanoids, Suzie. It's a big leap between being a young child to an independent girl. At the moment you are slightly between the two. If you rely on your partner all the time, you will never grow as a person. You may live for many more years, but you will still be relying only on your partner."

Suzie was silent as she digested this. Was he right? Did she rely on Lopmon too much?

She realised that she probably did. Lopmon had her own problems right now, and she was just adding to the list by being helpless in this hut.

"If you need more inspiration for what I am trying to say," Qui-Gon went on. "Look at your friend, Ahsoka. She used to rely on her Master a lot, but she is growing and maturing and becoming more independent as time goes by. You must do the same. The Shadowlands may not be the best place for this maturation, but I'm afraid that it is what you are now stuck with. I realise that I am asking an awful lot of you with this and were you my Padawan learner, I would never have allowed you to come down here on your own at this age. But always remember, I do have your best interests at heart."

Suzie bit her lip. She was still mortified at the prospect of leaving the relative safety of the hut that she was hiding in and facing the monster outside, but she knew that Qui-Gon was right. She was always claiming that now she was ten that she was a big girl. But she wasn't really. She was still a little one. And if she wanted to become a big girl then she might have to do this sort of thing in the future anyway.

So, why not start early? She wanted to mature? She wanted to become more independent, like Ahsoka was doing and like how her big brother was. If she had been introduced to the whole Tamer thing earlier, when they were still learning how to be proper Tamers and the Digimon were no guarantee of protection, she might have matured faster. But she didn't.

The time for cowering was over. She needed to do what Qui-Gon said and act for herself.

"Okay," she said, clenching her fists and squaring her small shoulders. "What do I have to do?"

Qui-Gon's serious look remained in place as he said, "Before I tell you, I feel obligated to mention that if trouble arises – I will not be able to help you. You will be on your own."

"I know," said Suzie. "But I'll do it anyway. I have to do this – you're right. I can't be a little girl all the time so what do I have to do."

Qui-Gon smiled warmly and nodded, "Excellent," he said. "In that case, here is what you must do. You must head in that direction," he pointed in the direction of Suzie's peephole. "For approximately two and a half miles. If you travel in a straight line, then you will come across a waterhole – a small lake in the forest. Once there, you will find the answer to your escape from this forbidding landscape."

"Okay," said Suzie. "Aren't you going to tell me what that is?"

"No," said Qui-Gon. "Not yet, anyway. Go to the lake and the answer will be there. You will probably figure it out for yourself, but I will meet you there all the same."

"Okay," sighed Suzie. "I'll do it."

"Well done," Qui-Gon nodded. "Under normal circumstances I would say, May the Force be with you. But since I am part of the Force and I will be with you all the way anyway, wherever you go, that phrase is made redundant. See you soon."

And as he finished speaking, the image of the Jedi Master which nobody had spoken to for over ten years slowly faded away, vanishing into thin air. The blue aura surrounding him was the last thing to fade and then, Suzie was alone in the little hut once more.

Except she wasn't. Suzie knew that Qui-Gon was still there, all around here. The thought weirded her out a little bit, but it was still comforting. Especially since everything seemed to have gotten darker again since the Force Ghost had vanished from view.

Suzie gulped and turned towards the gap in the wall nearest to the direction that Qui-Gon had pointed and stepped over to it, peering out into the surrounding forest and the darkness beyond. It looked just as dangerous, scary and foreboding as it always did. Suzie hesitated for a moment as she stared out there and remembered her terrifying experience with the three Katarns. There were more like them out there and other large predators like that giant creature that had grabbed and eaten her final attacker. It certainly wasn't like a walk in the woods back home.

Yet Suzie knew that Qui-Gon was right. Her confidence had been a bit shaky recently considering all the scary situations she got into. If she didn't do this and sort herself out right now, then she might never be able to do so. She could imagine herself as a thirty-year-old woman, following on behind her fellow Tamers and still cowering behind Lopmon, who seemed much smaller now, while the others walked ahead boldly.

She didn't want that.

It was time to step up to the plate. Though hopefully not a dinner plate for a Katarn.

Taking a deep breath, Suzie squeezed herself through the gap in the planks, breathing out to deflate her ribs again to allow her to get through without too much difficulty.

Suddenly she felt very exposed again now that she was back outside the hut of the old, exiled Jedi. A myriad of eyes could be watching her and she wouldn't know about it for some time to come. She listened, but could hear no indication of a potential threat. Not that that really meant anything.

After pressing herself against the wall for a few moments, she clenched her fists, plucked up her courage and stepped out and away from the wall. She froze after the first step, but nothing jumped out to try and grab her. She took one step, then another, then another, and finally she froze again.

Still nothing.

"I'm never going to get anywhere at this rate," she murmured to herself. Qui-Gon had told her that her destination was about two and half miles away. That would take her sometime between half an hour to forty-five minutes if she walked at a fast pace, and she certainly wasn't doing that right now.

Sucking in another deep breath, Suzie finally set out in earnest, walking quickly but still as quietly as possible, in the direction that her invisible, dead and not-dead mentor had shown her, always keeping her senses alert like the others had told her too, but still trying to make good time as she did so.

And as she moved, she felt a slight bolster in her confidence. She was actually doing it. She was actually setting out, on her own, into the dangerous wilderness. For a ten-year-old girl who had nearly been mauled by Katarns several times, that took a lot of courage. She allowed herself a small smile as her walk became just a little bit bolder. And she was sure that if Qui-Gon was here and had a face, he would be smiling too.

* * *

The journey progressed in more or less total silence. Suzie kept the volume of her breathing to a minimum at all times and her heart was still pounding behind her ribs, but there was no loud attack this time. That made the walk more or less completely uneventful – a single, long stroll through the darkness. She still couldn't help but wonder what time of day it was though. And the knowledge that Lopmon was fine helped put a slight spring in her step. Though the thought of Lopmon not knowing how she herself was dampened that down a little.

There was only one brief scare during the whole walk. And that came in the form of a loud clicking noise from not far away that made Suzie stop as if she had been instantly frozen in ice. There were several clicking noises that sounded suspiciously like some kind of giant insect-like creature nearby. Suzie remembered the Wookiee that Lo-Taren had caught, who had some kind of large insectoid thing tied to its back at the time, and decided that she did _not_ want to meet the creature in life. She kept walking quickly, and it wasn't long before she left the noise behind.

She breathed a sigh of relief as she did and focused on walking in a straight line, hoping that she hadn't veered off course by accident in the darkness.

After approximately half an hour of tense walking, Suzie finally thought that she might have found what Qui-Gon had been referring to when she spotted something in the distance. Suzie faltered for a moment and squinted, staring out straight ahead of her in the direction she'd been walking. There was something there. A faint glow.

"Is that..." she breathed, excitedly. "Is that light?"

Indeed it was. Some distance ahead of her, was some bright sunlight. Suzie resisted the urge to whoop with joy and she broke into an even faster walk than before, hurrying along across the ground and around the enormous wroshyr trees and their massive roots. Maybe Qui-Gon had pointed her to the edge of the Shadowlands or something. Maybe she might find some kind of civilisation that lived on the ground.

She kept moving in her trot until she almost broke into a full-out run. The sunlight grew brighter and brighter before her, intensifying into something like a thick wall through the trees. It didn't take long before Suzie burst into brightness and felt the warm light of the sun on her skin once again. She hadn't realised how much she'd missed it and she took a moment to shut her eyes and spread her arms, enjoying the feeling of warmth on her once more.

"I'm never taking the sun for granted again," she grinned to herself. "So warm."

Then, she opened her eyes and finally paid attention to her surroundings. What she saw made her heart sink a little bit. She wasn't at the edge of the forest at all – but she was in a pretty large clearing of the trees. It was so large because there was a very big lake in the centre of it and evidently the wroshyr trees couldn't grow in water. Because of this there was a gap in the canopy above, a small pool of light that filtered all the way down to the Shadowlands below.

Suzie realised that this was probably how the Trandoshans had managed to get their large speeder down into the Shadowlands in the first place. They had hovered down through this gap in the foliage. The water lapped at the banks gently beside her feet, wetting the toes of her shoes. Not that she minded particularly. It was a very welcome change.

And it was also a stark contrast. Suzie turned and looked behind her to see only the darkness of the Shadowlands, but when she turned back she saw the light of the sun. It was like she was standing in some bizarre Twilight Zone with darkness on one side and light on the other. But she infinitely preferred the light side – it seemed to be far more peaceful.

But there was no sign of Qui-Gon Jinn anywhere around. She glanced about. The banks were a slight mix between sand and dirt and the water was absolutely crystal clear. And she had never really said that about any water she'd ever seen before. But Kashyyyk didn't have much technology anyway and what technology they did have certainly never made it down here. The water was completely unpolluted.

Suzie remembered her thirst and knelt by the lake and scooped up a couple of handfuls of its contents. Normally she would never do this, because Henry had told her not to drink water from pools unless boiled, but she decided to take the risk and drank several handfuls before standing up again, feeling slightly rejuvenated.

She was hesitant to raise her voice, but she called out a little timidly, afraid of attracting the attention of a predator. "Um. Hello? Mister Qui-Gon, sir? Are you there?"

There was no response. Suzie knew that he probably was there though. He was just choosing not to show himself to her for some reason.

"Okay," she muttered to herself. "So, you want me to figure it out on my own, do you? Alright then, what am I supposed to do now that can get me back to the villages of Kashyyyk where I can get help?"

She glanced around again, hoping for a clue or two. But the trees around her remained as vastly tall and unclimbable as they'd ever been. Even here she could barely see the canopy up ahead as it was. It was just that far away. She would never be able to climb up there, even though she could see where she was putting her hands and feet now, so that was out of the question. Looking up made her squint at the brightness though so she looked back down.

She looked at the water next. Her mother had always said that if she were ever to get lost to follow the course of the water until it led her to some kind of civilisation, because there were lots of places built beside rivers. But this was a stand-alone lake. There was no flowing water whatsoever. So that was out of the question as well.

She remembered the last time she had tried following a watercourse to find help. It had been in the Digital World when she'd first landed there. It had almost wound up with her falling off the edge of an incredibly steep cliff, and that hadn't helped matters at all. However, there was a positive side to that too – she had first met Antylamon because she had headed for the water.

"If only I had some kind of big friend to help me out this time," murmured Suzie. "But Antylamon's not going to carry me away this time."

She stood there, pondering for a few more minutes, wondering what in the galaxy Qui-Gon had meant. He had said that she would recognise her way out of it when she saw it, and she couldn't see anything that looked remotely like a way out.

Had he been wrong?

Was she stuck again, this time with no protective walls?

Just then, a very loud and slightly shrill, ululating call echoed all around the glade. Suzie's breath caught in her throat as her muscles froze up, raising her head slowly, and looking around her at the previously still lake. Numerous other loud calls, each variations of the loud call before, which sounded like some kind of bizarre mixture between a scream, a hoot and a whistle all at once, began to echo from the nearby trees. Suzie could tell that they were all being by one single animal, which was calling over and over again with hoots at different pitches.

But it wasn't the monkey-like thingies, the Tachs.

It was something new. Something that Suzie had not encountered before.

Suzie was just debating whether or not she should find a place to hide when a flash of movement caught her eyes in the trees on the other side of the lake, approximately fifty feet above the ground. She tracked it with her eyes – something was moving through the branches towards the lake at high speed. _Very_ high speed. And it was also very, _very _large. Larger than any of the Katarns that Suzie had encountered before. In fear, she froze up, and watched with fascination as the dark shape neared the tree-line.

And suddenly, the shape sprang off the branches and into thin-air, sailing downwards and towards the ground from an incredible height. The creature entered the light and Suzie stared in fascination as the beast slammed into the ground on all four feet, completely unharmed, then reared back on its hind legs and called out several more time in its loud, ululating hoots, before settling back on all four limbs. Then, it walked towards the edge of the shore, lowered its head and began to drink. It didn't appear to even notice Suzie's presence and Suzie was determined to make it stay that way. She didn't move a muscle.

But as she stared at the new creature, eyes taking it in, in all its detail, there was one thing that Suzie couldn't deny. The creature was absolutely beautiful. It had the same build as the Katarns from before – long, slender body with four legs on the side, a long tail jutting out its back and a large head. But the similarities stopped there. It was clearly reptilian, as it was covered in green scales that seemed to glint and glisten in the light of the sun. It was larger than the Katarns as well, maybe about ten metres from the tip of its beak to the end of its tail. Yes, beak. While the Katarns seemed to be a bizarre mix between reptiles and mammals, this reptile had bird-like traits instead. It had a hooked beak-like mouth – like a cross between the jaws of a lizard and the bill of a parrot. A large crest of blue feathers jutted out all around the back on its head where the horns were on the Katarns. There was also a large ridge of feathers running down its spine from its hind legs to the tip of its tail – the feathers on the tail longer and also running down the bottom so they were on either side, like the tail of an Archaeopteryx, only side-on.

Suzie watched it drink in fascination. Its tongue was sliding out and lapping up the water into its beak as it gulped it down. Suzie was surprised to see that, unlike the Katarns, the tongue of this creature was not forked but normal and whole. Somehow that made it much less threatening. And Suzie thought she knew why – she had seen several nature programmes with Henry, Terriermon and Lopmon back home (they had all loved that sort of thing). She remembered that of the reptiles, only snakes and some lizards had forked tongues, and of the lizards that had them it was only the really predatory hunters like the monitor lizards and some others that had them.

Was it possible that this lizard was not a hunter like the Katarns were?

Almost unconsciously, Suzie took a slow step forward, trying to get a better look at the enormous lizard. The moment she did though, she stepped on a twig, which had been allowed to fall all the way down here thanks to the lack of obstructing branches above. Suzie froze and stared at the creature, hoping it hadn't heard.

It had.

The creature immediately looked up and fixed Suzie with a stare, turning its head slightly side-on so it could focus on her with one of its orange, reptilian eyes. The two stared at one another over the water of the lake, Suzie fearfully wondering whether it was going to jump in and swim over towards her for a light snack.

But the reptile didn't move. It simply stared at her curiously for a few moments, cocking its head to one side slightly as if wondering if she would look any different from another angle. Suzie slowly stood up a little straighter and continued the staring match.

Abruptly, the reptile opened its beak and let rip with an incredibly loud, shrill call in Suzie's direction. Suzie flinched slightly at the noise, but she made no further move. Neither did the reptile. Its large head turned away from her and it lowered back down towards the lake and began to drink again. Apparently, it had deduced that Suzie was not a threat, nor was she lunch.

Suzie breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed too good to be true. She'd finally found a large animal that didn't see her as a potential food source. It was almost like a miracle.

Or perhaps it just thought she was too small.

Either way, it wasn't chasing her. Suzie remembered the speed the creature had moved through the trees earlier. She'd never be able to outrun something so fast.

But Suzie was still stuck down here in the Shadowlands with no way out. She looked up, wishing that she could scale the trees as quickly and efficiently as the lizard-thing before her could. Then she could get back to the city in almost no time flat. And she could probably outrun all the Katarns as well.

And suddenly, a wild thought occurred to her and she looked across at the lizard again as it continued to drink. Could _it_ be what Qui-Gon had been talking about before? Could the lizard be the key to getting her out of here?

Suzie really couldn't see any other options. But it was something more than that. She just couldn't get the thought out of her head that this lizard was something special – that it might be Suzie's only hope of getting out of here safely. She wondered if that niggling thought was Qui-Gon propelling her forward, but she suddenly found herself cautiously making her way around the lake and in the direction of the lizard.

She slowly made her way around the water, keeping her eyes on the lizard but her ears open for potential danger. The lizard ignored her, focusing on filling itself with liquid. As Suzie got closer to it she saw another detail that she had previously missed – its feet did not have clawed toes. Instead, it had toes that were flattened and shaped like suckers instead, more like a gecko than a monitor lizard. This thing was like some kind of giant gecko, but with feathers and a bird's beak. How obscure.

As she got closer, she began to move forward more cautiously, trying not to startle it and deliberately making sure she didn't stand on anymore twigs. She inched forward as it continued drinking from the lake water. She'd gotten within roughly twelve metres of the thing when it lifted its head, water dripping from its beak and sniffed the air. Suzie stopped, and watched as the lizard's gaze swept towards her once again, staring at her.

Another staring match began, with neither side giving an inch. Suzie was suddenly slightly unsure of herself, wondering if she had misjudged the creature and that it might spring at any moment. It didn't help when the lizard turned its body around so that it was facing her completely and lowered its head to the ground level as if it was going to pounce.

But it didn't pounce. It just stayed put, watching her intently.

Suzie could feel fearful swept prickling the back of her neck. Not entirely sure why she was doing this, Suzie took a couple more careful steps forwards towards the creature, then a couple more, closing the gap between them to about the creature's own body length. The lizard took a step backwards, as if uncertain itself. It wasn't scared of her, just unsure.

Suzie became a little emboldened by this and took a couple more steps. This time, the lizard did not step back but watched as Suzie continued to come closer and closer, inch by inch. Suzie slowly lifted her arm and reached outwards with her fingers as she continued to move slowly forwards, seeking to touch the lizard's beak. The lizard cocked its head again, but did not move away.

It wasn't until Suzie was only about five metres away from the lizard that the lizard made another move itself. It stepped forward, lowering its head so it was roughly about eye-level with Suzie, its feathery tail creating a fan-like breeze as it swept back and forth slightly. Suzie stopped for a moment as the lizard took another step, then another, its steps far larger than hers and closing the distance between them to only about three metres.

Suzie stepped forward again, causing the reptile to lift its head sharply, its beak mandibles snapping the air in uncertainty. Suzie stopped and waited for the lizard to make the next move, and it quickly returned to original position and stepped forward again. She did the same and now, Suzie's outstretched hand was only about a metre from the lizard's sharp beak.

One more step from either side closed that gap and slowly, Suzie reached forward and her fingers brushed against the lizard's beak. She shut her eyes, half-expecting it to grab her arm and toss her into the air, ready to devour her when she came down. But nothing happened. Suzie's eyes opened a crack and saw it press its beak a little further into her palm and rub against it slightly, as if it enjoyed the sensation.

Suzie stepped a little closer again and brought up her other hand, touching the side of the lizard's face. The scales were incredibly smooth, not slimy like a lot of people seemed to think reptiles were (leave slimy to amphibians.) Her hand then reached further and gently stroked the lizard's crest-feathers, which were a contrast to the scales because, while still smooth, they were much rougher.

Suddenly the lizard pulled back and reared up, towering over Suzie with its incredible bulk as it stood as tall as it could. Suzie stepped backwards hurriedly, but the creature only made another loud hooting, shrill call a couple more times, before dropping back down onto all fours. Suzie found she quite liked the noise – it sounded slightly funny and much friendlier than the other noises that echoed through the forest. It also demonstrated that the lizard wasn't afraid to announce its presence to everyone.

But what she liked even more was when the lizard pressed its nose into the crook of her arm and seemed to be making a low chirping noise, like it was purring or something. Suzie hesitated for a moment and then grinned and rubbed the side of the its face under the eye. It seemed to like it. It was almost like having a large, scaly horse. And it was tall enough to be one – Suzie realised that it was probably about four metres tall at the shoulder. It was a very big reptile.

"Good boy," she whispered to it soothingly. "Good lizard." She chuckled as the lizard bumped her gently to encourage her to keep petting it.

"Actually, it's a girl," said a familiar voice behind her. Suzie turned around to see the Force-ghost of Qui-Gon standing behind her a few metres away, his smile in place. Qui-Gon nodded in acknowledgement and said, "Female Varactyl have the bright green scales that you see before you now. Males are a duller orange-brown colour."

"Oh," said Suzie. "Okay. Good girl. Um, what did you say it was?"

"It's called a Varactyl," explained Qui-Gon. "They aren't found on many planets – in fact the only known places where they can be found are here on Kashyyyk and on the planet Utapau some way away."

The Varactyl looked at Qui-Gon curiously and stepped forward a little, placing a leg in front of Suzie as if it was standing protectively in front of her. Qui-Gon nodded appreciatively and said, "It looks like you have found a good friend. Varactyl can become extremely loyal to the people that they like. You need not worry, bold lizard," he held up a hand in a calming fashion. "I am not here to harm her."

The Varactyl may or may not have understood the words but it got the gist of the meaning and stepped backwards. Suzie gazed up at her new scaly and feathered friend in wonderment, and then turned back to Qui-Gon. "Did you make her decide to come over to me like that?"

"No," Qui-Gon shook his head. "I knew that it would be coming to this lake and I merely instructed you to do the same. And I did nothing to influence you either, like making you bolder. You bravely approached the Varactyl under your own steam. A valiant and daring thing to do, but nevertheless – well done. You see. You are not as weak-willed as you believe you are."

"You really did nothing?" asked Suzie. "I walked up and made friends with this lizard – Varactyl – on my own?"

"Indeed," said Qui-Gon. "I gave you a slight nudge at the beginning to let you know that was what you needed to do, but apart from that I did not help. If I had attempted to coax you to move forward it would have defied the point of the lesson I was trying to give."

Suzie grinned a little and said, "I can see why Obi-Wan and Anakin think you're so cool. You _are_ so cool. You're a great teacher. I bet Henry and Rika wish Ms. Asaji was like you. Kazu and Kenta and Takato do."

Qui-Gon chuckled and said, "Thank you Suzie. I appreciate the sentiment, and it is good to know that I am still of use after my body's unfortunate end at the hands of Darth Maul. But I believe that it is time for your new friend to bear you out of here."

"You mean I can really ride her?" asked Suzie, glancing up at the Varactyl hovering behind her.

"If she'll let you," said Qui-Gon. "And I get the feeling she will. Varactyl are also called dragonmounts on Utapau, and they are often used as transportation by the locals. Utapau consists of numerous giant sinkholes, you see, and the locals build their cities there. Varactyls are a good way of get up and down the various levels at speed. However," he added with a slight smirk. "Most Varactyl have to be specially caught and trained by special wranglers for that. Yet you did not need to do such a thing."

"Cool," Suzie beamed. She turned upwards to look at the Varactyl, which let loose with another loud, shrill call, as if celebrating a new friendship. "She seems really smart."

"She is," said Qui-Gon. "Varactyl are semi-sentient. They are very clever animals indeed, and they obviously know a good friend when they see one."

"And I'll really get to ride you," Suzie grinned. "But first, I need to give you a name." She hesitated for a moment. She'd never been particularly good at naming things, and she definitely wasn't going to call it Princess Pretty-Pants. She briefly toyed with naming it Numa after her Twi'lek friend on Ryloth but then decided against it for some reason. Then, she randomly dug into her mind and pulled out a few words, stringing them together and said, "I'm going to call you... Zarza. How's that sound?"

The Varactyl, now named Zarza, lifted its head and hooted in response. Loudly. But it sounded pleased, so Suzie decided to stick with it. Zarza it was.

"A good name," said Qui-Gon. "Now, climb aboard behind the front legs. Then tell her where to go. She'll take you there. I wish you well." Suzie looked back and saw Qui-Gon disappearing into thin air once more. She smiled, knowing that he was still there. Qui-Gon would always be with them, wherever they went. Except the bathroom, she hoped. That would be weird.

She turned back to Zarza and said, "Can I get on?" Zarza seemed to understand this and lowered herself to the ground as far as she could. Even so it was still quite a climb, and Suzie had to scramble up Zarza's leg and hoist herself off her knee, hauling herself up and onto the smooth scales of her Varactyl friend's back.

She felt like she was some kind of queen or something, atop her exotic mount. She was reminded of the Acklay she had ridden on Felucia, and wondered just how fast Zarza would go with her on her back. And how long it would take to reach where she needed to go.

"Okay, Zarza," she said. "I need to go to the Wookiee capital city. I can't remember its name, but it's a big city near the tops of the trees. Do you think you can take me there?"

Zarza's response was to look upwards, glancing at the tops of the trees intently for a few moments. Suddenly, Qui-Gon's voice came out of thin air, saying, "Oh, and one last thing – hold on tight."

Suzie barely had time to process this before she was forced to grab Zarza's shoulders in a tight embrace as the Varactyl reared up again and with a loud, bellowing hoot she suddenly catapulted into action. She sprang off from the ground and dashed along it for several metres, rushing past the lake they had been standing beside and suddenly springing into the trees. Suzie's stomach was practically left behind as Zarza landed on the trunk of a nearby tree and immediately sprang off it again, landing on another and racing up the trunk, her sucker-like feet giving her a firm grip.

Then, she sprang onto a thick branch capable of holding her weight and sprinted along it at incredible speed, faster than a running greyhound, dashing helter-skelter from branch to branch as she ran along, hooting and screeching all the way.

And as Zarza ran through the branches – one thought filled Suzie's head:-

_THIS. IS. AWESOOOOMMEEEE!_

* * *

Looks like things are looking up for Suzie with the arrival of her latest friend. In case somebody has not figured it out yet, Zarza the Varactyl is the same kind of animal as Boga, the creature that Obi-Wan rides when chasing General Grievous through Utapau in the third film, Revenge of the Sith. Normally I would have introduced Boga herself, but since our heroes won't be heading to Utapau at any point in the future, and I really wanted to introduce a Varactyl, I brought one in here.

I may be bending the rules a bit here. Wookieepedia states that Varactyl were introduced to Kashyyyk sometime before the Galactic Civil War, but it doesn't say how much earlier. So, for the sake of argument, let's say it happened before the Clone Wars as well.

If you're interested, I decided to name my Varactyl Zarza because apparently Boga was named after a soft drink in Tunisia, so I decided to name my Varactyl after a soft drink as well – this one comes from Costa Rica though, as I plan on being in that country this time next year.

I just love the noise Boga makes, and not just because it's the same noise as Palkia the Pokémon, although Boga came first. They should find an excuse to bring Boga into the series.

See you soon. And please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

The Hunt is on. The Trandoshans descend into the jungle to hunt for their new prey. But while they think they have an advantage, their prey is not as helpless as they believe. Can Lopmon and the others survive them?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 107 : Terriermon's Influences**


	107. Terriermon's Influences

Not much to say other than this one took me quite a bit of effort to do. But we finally get to see a little action in this arc that doesn't involve only running away or a short fight between a Rookie Digimon and a Trandoshan. Prepare for some Wookiee madness and read on. Can't wait for some reviews

Also, check out my profile for another art commission of the Felucia Arc of my story.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 107:- Terriermon's Influences**

* * *

Kalifa wasn't sure if she felt a change in the air or whether she was just being a little bit overly hopeful. But it had been some time before someone had even made an attempt to get away from the island and even though she still wasn't sure whether or not the strange creature's plan would work – Lopmon was her name – she began to feel a few vestiges of hope creeping into her. She smothered them quickly, determined not to get too confident in herself just in case it got her killed or disappointed.

The young girl turned back to the preparations that she was doing, tying the vine in her hands to the branch as tightly as she could, hauling on it several times to check that it was secure. It still felt a little loose and it was important that this was not the case considering what it was going to be used for.

Kalifa stood up and pressed a foot to the vine wrapped around the branch, holding it in place and she pulled on the vine with all her strength, gritting her teeth as she hauled upwards, watching in satisfaction as the last vestiges of slack in the knot she had created disappeared.

"It looks like somebody is putting a lot of effort into the escape plan now," said Barriss, as she walked along the branch. The Mirialan's face was now smeared with a few traces of dirt, as were her hands and robes. Not nearly as much as Kalifa's or the other Padawan's but still a slight amount.

"Well," shrugged Kalifa. "If this is going to be our one-last ditch attempt at freedom, we might as well give it everything we've got."

"I wouldn't call it a last-ditch attempt," Barriss shook her head. "If this doesn't work that I intend to try again with some kind of different tactic instead of simply giving up. However, I do have faith that Lopmon's ideas will work?"

"How can you be so sure?" Kalifa queried, raising an eyebrow.

Barriss chuckled and said, "She's Terriermon's sister. There has got to be some kind of prankster part of her in there somewhere. And I've seen the kinds of stunts that Terriermon has pulled. There was one time where he somehow managed to replace Master Yoda's gimmer stick with a large rubber nerf. And Master Yoda went ahead and used the thing throughout the day."

Kalifa snorted as she heard this. "Wow," she said. "This Terriermon must be pretty bold."

"He will prank anyone in the Temple except for Mace Windu," said Barriss. "And that's only because he's terrified of him. Oh, and he won't prank his mate, Renamon, either."

Kalifa sighed sadly and moved up her branch until she reached a gap in the foliage. She stared out at the night sky, which was slowly beginning to turn orange as the sun began to near the horizon. "I've missed so much since coming here," she said. "So much of me has changed. I mean, look at the sky now, Barriss."

Barriss walked over to stand behind her, and watched as the first vestiges of the dark began to recede with the faint glow. "Yes," she said. "It's beautiful."

"Indeed," said Kalifa. "But sunrise has not brought me joy for some time now. Sunrise is supposed to signal the start of a new day, where anything is possible. But here, in this hellhole, it's just a warning alarm, telling you those disgusting lizard-men are about to come and find you."

Barriss looked at her sadly. She couldn't imagine much of what Kalifa was going through right now. She'd been in some pretty tense situations herself, the worst being fighting against her own Master in the Geonosian tunnels, but that had just been a temporary thing. The sustained horror of the situation Kalifa and her friends were in was actually quite scary to think about.

"Well," the Mirialan said, turning out to look at the sunrise. "Today, the sunrise is different. Today, it does signal a brand new day for you. The day that you will finally get off the island. And it's a warning as well, but not to us. This time its a warning to the Trandoshans, warning them that when they go about their normal routine today, they will get a lot more than they bargained for."

Kalifa nodded, and allowed a small smile to break out across her face. "Yes. I suppose it does."

"However, it also means that we need to get into positions," said Barriss. "We all need to do our bit for Lopmon's idea to work."

"My thoughts exactly," said a voice behind them that distinctly belonged to Lopmon herself. Barriss and Kalifa turned around to see the other four in their little scheme heading towards them. Lopmon was riding on Jinx's head, and the young male Twi'lek looked like he wasn't entirely sure about the situation, but he ignored it. O-Mer walked along beside Jinx and the hulking figure of Chewbacca brought up the rear.

"Has everything been done?" asked Lopmon. "Are we ready for this?"

"Yes," nodded Barriss. "I don't think that we could be that much more prepared."

"Those lizards are going to get quite a surprise this time," said O-Mer.

"Let's just hope that it works," Jinx replied.

Chewbacca made a loud, rumbling growling noise that probably meant something like, "Don't worry. It will."

"It's still going to be dangerous," said Lopmon, hopping off Jinx's head and landing on the floor. "For all of us."

"Danger we can handle," said Kalifa. "Merely living in this place is dangerous whether you look for it or not. I think we can manage just a little more today."

"Good," said Barriss. "It will all be over soon."

"Where are we stationed?" asked O-Mer. "We've built all three of the traps, but which ones are we going to be manning?"

"Alright," said Lopmon. "Here's the idea. We need to make sure that only one speeder heads towards each trap area, otherwise the second speeder will be alerted to potential traps by seeing the first blunder into one. That means that unfortunately, we're going to need some of you to act as decoys and draw the speeders away from one another." She looked up with a slightly pained expression. "I hate to ask this of you, but someone has to do it."

Barriss glanced at the slightly apprehensive faces of the three younglings around her. They certainly didn't like the idea of volunteering themselves. And she knew that she could hardly call herself a leader if she didn't share the same risks as everyone she was leading. So she almost automatically said, "Well, since Lopmon is required for Trap B to work and therefore cannot be bait, I will be the bait for that trap. I'll make sure to lead one of the speeders to exactly the right place, Lopmon."

"Thank you, Barriss," said Lopmon. "I know I can count on you."

Kalifa immediately stepped up to the plate afterwards. "Alright," she said. "In that case, I volunteer to be the bait for Trap A. O-Mer, Jinx, to the two of you think that you can pull the trap at the right time."

"Sure we can," said O-Mer. "We're just as eager to get out of here as you Kalifa. We're definitely not messing this one up."

"Okay," said Lopmon. "Chewie, that leaves you to be both the bait and the trigger for Trap C. Do you think that you can pull it off by yourself?"

Chewbacca hollered in the affirmative and clenched his fists in readiness.

"The sun has risen," Jinx pointed out to the horizon, where the orange orb was slowly but surely peeking over the top. "They'll be coming for us now."

"Alright," grimaced Kalifa. "Let's do this. One more time. And this, time we won't give an inch."

* * *

Floating in the sky not far away from the little band of fugitives was an enormous structure of metal, kept aloft by a series of repulsorlift hoverpads that suspended it several hundred metres above the forest. The Trandoshan fortress was basic enough in design. A large landing platform jutted out to one side of the rest of the structure, which consisted of several rooms enclosed by metal walls. It hovered ominously, as the sun slowly began to climb into position in the sky, like a vulture of some other bird of prey just waiting for the opportune moment to snag its prey.

On the outside it was just a bleak looking hulk of metal. But on the inside it was almost a morgue.

The main doors opened up into a large room which was chock full of atrocities of all kinds. The Trandoshans' work was on full display for everyone to see – presenting an image that would chill the blood of any warm-hearted individual. And those without strong stomachs probably would have hurled on the spot at the sight of the butchery that the lizards had been getting up to over the years.

The walls were absolutely lined with stuffed heads of many different species of humanoids. It demonstrated just how many planets these Trandoshans had been to in their quest for new prey. Such things as Gran, Gungan, Ithorian and Patrolian decorated the walls, each one situated on its own little plinth, their eyes staring glassily out at nothing in particular. There was even another Trandoshan head, which was perhaps the most chilling part of all as it demonstrated these beings were not above turning on their own kind if disagreements occurred.

Taking pride of place in several locations was the grisly sight of several Wookiee heads. Evidently these Trandoshans shared the animosity of the rest of their kind when it came to their furry neighbours. The Wookiee heads all had their jaws hung open as if they were in mid-roar and their eyes were all empty sockets. It was a gruesome spectacle.

And then there were the other kinds of stuffing. There was clear evidence that the larger life-forms of the galaxy were no safer than other humanoids. Dominating several places in the room were the entire stuffed bodies of larger animals, mostly fierce predators that the Trandoshans probably enjoyed killing in order to demonstrate who they thought was the top predator. The blue-furred form of a narglatch snarled down on the room from above, crouched in a pounce that it would never spring into. The hulking body of a gundark had its head raised to the ceiling in a silent screech that would last forever.

And right at the end of the room was the beastly shape and white fur of a Wampa, which was hunched over and staring a perpetual stare, its pelt sewn around a large chair that seemed to be like some kind of throne. It had once been a mighty hunter that feared absolutely nothing. Now, it was just the cherry on top of the macabre cake that was the Trandoshan trophy room.

The Trandoshans themselves were completely unaffected by the morbid scene of death that completely surrounded them. All the Trandoshans on the base were now gathered in the middle of this room. It was here that you could see the big variations between them. There were several extremely tall ones, and several squatter ones. And none of them had the same patterns on their scaly skin. Flecks of colours were in different shades and places across their assorted bodies. There were thirteen of them in total, and they were all standing in silence, shifting slightly in glee and anticipation, the quietness only being broken by the occasional hiss or shuffling noise as they moved about a little.

All except for one, that is. The leader, Garnac, with his distinctive, red-feathered head, was not standing at all but sitting down in the throne made by the hulking Wampa. And he was not moving at all. He was leaning forward slightly, and his eyes were clamped shut slightly, his breathing slow and also the only thing indicating that he was still alive at all. The gazes of the other Trandoshans were all fixed on him, their breath bated as they waited for the signal they had all been waiting for some time for.

And then, it came. The sun rose high enough for its light to shine directly through the window in the ceiling, causing the light to fall directly over Garnac's face. As the light permeated through his eyelids and alerted him to this fact, Garnac leaned backwards and opened his eyes. He hissed once and growled, "The sun has risen!" Then, he slowly and imperiously rose to his clawed feet and clenched his fist before him with a loud declaration:-

"Let the Hunt begin!"

There were several hissing versions of whooping from the other Trandoshans as they turned to the table they had been surrounding. Several of them picked up one of the various assorted pieces of weaponry on it, sheathing knives and hefting heavy blasters or sniper rifles of smaller pistol-like blasters until each of them was bristling with armour. Some of them stood back, knowing that it was their turn to guard the fortress while the others went on the Hunt. While they were always disappointed that they could not go and do it themselves, they still anticipated the sight of the others returning with the dead bodies of the Wookiee, the Jedi and the strange creature they had seen before.

The Trandoshans marched outside, through the front doors and quickly descended the stairs onto the landing platform, heading towards the three speeders that were waiting for them there, each one of the same make as the one from Kashyyyk. Garnac took a moment to stare smugly out over the group as one of the speeders took off and began to descend the forest below, the occupants letting out blaster bolts into the air in excitement. The rush of them hunt was already beginning.

Then, Garnac motioned for his sun, a Trandoshan nearing adulthood, which meant he was almost twenty-five years old, named Dar to follow him as he headed for his own speeder, where one of the other Trandoshans, called Lagon, was waiting for them.

As Garnac and Dar hopped into the speeder, Garnac growled, "Take us down. And step on it. We don't want to be the last to catch up with the Jedi down there. And besides, perhaps young Dar might get in a kill today."

"I will not disappoint you, father," Dar growled.

"I know it, son," Garnac said, as Lagon piloted the speeder off the platform and raced to catch p with the two others that were ahead of them. "I wonder which one of them you will get to pick off. It may not have looked like much but that small brown creature might be an interesting trophy."

"I would rather take the Jedi or the Wookiee," growled Dar.

"That may be," Garnac said. "But if we encounter her first, you can try and take her. She may present a challenge to you, Dar. She almost managed to defeat Lo-Taren. She is not to be underestimated."

"Yes, Father," said Dar. "I will not let my guard down."

The group fell silent as their speeder followed the others into the forest and they began to scan the surroundings with their eyes for potential life-forms.

* * *

Chewbacca peered through the foliage that he was crouched behind, his eyes searching the recesses of the forest for any sign of approaching danger. He was standing not far away from one of the main areas that Jinx had pointed out as where the speeders liked to enter the forest. There were a few of these spots, but some of them were rarely used and the Twi'lek youngling had shown the three of them the and most likely places where the plan would start.

Chewbacca grunted to himself as he continued watching. He was a little reluctant to not be by Lopmon's side, but he knew that the little rabbit Digimon, for that is what he had learned she was, would probably be safe for her part in the plan. Truth be told, Chewbacca was still feeling a little bemused himself about the how life-debt thing. He had never imagined that he would be required to make one, and certainly not to something so small. Yet, he had seen goodness in her. And the Wookiee was not planning to let her down. Even if it meant fighting in a war that he had previously had nothing to do with.

And apparently, Lopmon had a huge family. He couldn't wait to meet them. He had spoken to Barriss and apparently they were a... lively bunch. His life had certainly gotten a lot more interesting, that was for sure.

And right now, he was determined not to let Lopmon down.

His ears suddenly began to pick up the faint sounds of a speeder heading his way. Quickly, the Wookiee got into position and strolled out across the log, so he could make it look like he had just been walking along there and not waiting for the speeder so as to allay suspicion. He whirled about, pretending to be shocked, as the speeder slipped through the gap in the tree-line and moved towards him.

The speeder contained two Trandoshans. One of them was Lo-Taren, who was steering and started in disbelief at the sight of the Wookiee in front of him already, pulling the speeder to a halt. His companion, another tall Trandoshan called Clutch, looked equally amazed. The two of them stared at Chewbacca for a moment and the Wookiee simply stared back, waiting for the right moment to act.

Clutch's face broke into a sneer as he said, "Well, looks like we've got ourselves an early kill, Lo-Taren."

Lo-Taren returned the gesture and said, "Yes. The first blood of the days will be ours and it'll be this strong specimen of a Wookiee too. I'll steer, you shoot, alright."

"My pleasure," Clutch chuckled nastily as he took hold of one of the consoles on the speeder. Chewbacca saw the rotary blaster cannon on the front of it jerk as it began to warm up and prepare to spew lasers at him. Chewbacca's eyes narrowed and he took that as his signal to start moving. If they thought they could catch him when he was fully aware of where they were, they were going to be sorely mistaken. And this time, _they_ would be the ones heading into a trap.

Chewbacca turned around and flung himself off the branch he had been walking on with a huge leap, grabbing hold of another branch across the gap with both hands and swinging hard underneath it once, throwing himself into the air again to snag another thick branch in his paw. Behind him, Lo-Taren was briefly amazed at the speed which the Wookiee moved – faster than any of the Wookiees they had brought here before. But he cast that aside and quickly steered in pursuit as Clutch brought the cannon to bear.

"One dead Wookiee, coming up," Clutch sneered and he hit the button which caused the red lasers to spurt out of the cannon about six times a second, lancing towards Chewbacca's virtually unprotected back. But the Wookiee heard them coming and when he grabbed the next branch and swung from it he carried the swing on, sweeping over the top of the branch and landing on it with his feet so the lasers passed beneath him.

As the cannon was brought upwards, Chewbacca dashed to the edge of the branch and sprang off it, the lasers right behind him. Chewbacca grabbed another branch and swung sideways, throwing himself behind the thick trunk of another tree. Lo-Taren cursed and was awkwardly forced to fly around the tree before Clutch could fire again, and by that time, Chewbacca had already gained quite a bit of ground.

This sort of thing continued for several minutes, Chewbacca evading the majority of the shots with relative ease. He was a master of hunting in the forests, and therefore knew what to do to avoid another forest hunter. He constantly placed trees and branches and other such things between himself and the speeder, allowing him to gain a lot of ground from his pursuers as they were forced to try awkward turn to try and get to him. He was caught in the back only once by a couple of lasers hitting him in rapid succession, but only one hit his skin – the other clipped the armour around his shoulder. And Chewbacca simply shrugged off the hit. He could take more than that.

Chewbacca allowed himself a small smirk as he neared the trap zone. Everything was going according to plan. As the Trandoshans loomed up behind him, still firing, Chewbacca jumped into some leafy foliage to hide himself and quickly darted to one side instead of ahead like most people probably would. He reached the trunk of a thick tree, hidden from view by the leaves and quickly clambered up the trunk.

As the Trandoshans hovered through the leaves, still blasting continuously, Lo-Taren brought the speeder to a halt in surprise when he found he could no longer see their quarry. Clutch stopped firing as well, and the two stared around them.

"Where'd he go?" asked Clutch.

"I don't know," Lo-Taren replied. "Perhaps... he went that way," he pointed into the trees with a claw. "There's a lot of branches for him to swing on there. Let's try that way."

But just as he prepared to head down that route, the growling roar of a Wookiee behind them caught their attention and they whirled round in their speeder. There was no sign of him. Then, another roar made them look up, and they spotted him, standing in the branches about thirty metres above them, with a vine in one paw.

Chewbacca waved cheerfully with the other paw and before the Trandoshans knew what was happening, he pulled on the vine. There was a snapping noise above them, and the two Trandoshans looked up, gaping in horror as they discovered the vine had been a critical point in holding a huge number of logs in the trees above them, which came cascading downwards when the vine was yanked free.

"GO!" yelled Clutch, but Lo-Taren grabbed the controls too slow. The barrage of logs slammed into the top of the speeder and the Trandoshans screamed as they plummeted towards the ground, battered by the enormous woody projectiles and slammed into the ground. The speeder exploded with a bright flash, killing both its occupants instantly and sending logs flying in all directions and smoke rising into the air, until all that was left was a crushed pile of metal half covered by charred, splintered logs.

Chewbacca growled in victory. Death was never a pleasant affair, but in this situation it had literally been kill or be killed. And the Wookiee needed to stay alive to fulfil his life-debt. Job done, he turned his back on the remains of the speeder and sprang into the trees to give help to the others if it was needed.

* * *

Kalifa had no idea if her fellow younglings had gotten into position or not, but she was going to have to trust that they had gotten it right. She had little reason not to. They had all been working unbelievably hard so far, going throughout the remaining hours they had had almost non-stop before dawn arose. They had spent a great deal of energy and effort lifting those logs into the trees with the Force for the trap that the Wookiee was supposed to trigger. And the other two traps were no exception. She knew that they were not going to miss the opportunity to finally get away from the island if they could.

She still scarcely dared to believe that what she was about to do would work. After so many disappointments, it was extremely difficult _not_ to. But she had to trust in the Force to show her the right way. And she knew that she had forgotten this during her exile here. She was going to need to believe solidly. If she believed, then she was sure it would work.

But how sure?

Kalifa didn't know and now was not the time for a debate. At that moment the sounds of engines reached her ears and she peered out as she saw one of the speeders heading towards them. It contained two Trandoshans. She knew none of them by name of course, but she knew them by face – having seen each and every one of them at work, slaughtering the creatures that they dumped here.

She quickly analyzed her opponents, and she couldn't help but curse under her breath as she did so. She had gotten a couple of the most professional of all the Trandoshan hunters to run from. There was Ratter, who she knew as the one who preferred to wield two pistols and could send flurries of blaster bolts down to take out anything that didn't move quickly enough. But perhaps more alarming was the other one – Sochek. Sochek were the most precise sniper-shot of the whole Trandoshan group. He could hit a moving Lurmen from fifty metres away. She knew – she'd seen him do it.

Hanging around was definitely not going to be a good idea, so Kalifa immediately dashed from cover, trying to make it seem like she was bolting in fear, which wasn't that hard to do to be honest since there was not much acting involved. Ratter immediately spotted her and pointed, "There's one," as he manned the controls to steer after her.

Sochek leered at Kalifa's retreating back as the Jedi youngling bounded through the trees, flipping from branch to branch and running along their lengths hurriedly. "Isn't that one of the younglings that's been eluding us for some time?"

"Yeah," said Ratter, as they quickly followed on. "Looks like this one was a little bit careless today. It may not be new prey but if we can bag her that will definitely be worth it. I'll ready the cannon."

"No," Sochek raised a claw, and hefted his sniper rifle. "Let's see if we can take this one out with our handheld weapons."

Ratter chuckled. "Alright," he said. "Take her out."

Kalifa risked a glance over her shoulder as the speeder approached her, before immediately turning back and somersaulting onto another branch, rebounding off it diagonally almost immediately to land on another as the speeder moved behind her, gaining ground as it soared over the foliage. It looked like Ratter wasn't going to be doing any shooting, but he was a good pilot too so that didn't matter. And she had spotted Sochek raising his sniper rifle and taking careful aim.

The fact that he was on a constantly moving vehicle didn't make much difference to the Trandoshan and he gazed through the sights and settled on Kalifa's back between her shoulder blades. He quickly squeezed the trigger and let off a shot. Kalifa heard the sound of a sniper being fired and quickly dived off the branch, the blaster bolt whistling past her back as she grabbed another branch and swung from it to get back onto another.

"A slippery one this one," Sochek sneered. "Obviously she's had a lot of practice."

"So have you," Ratter reminded him. "Go on! Nail her!"

Sochek nodded and let off a second shot. Again, Kalifa heard it coming and she rolled on the branch so the shot almost hit in the side but missed by a fraction. Kalifa grimaced as she bounded into the trees, leaping and spinning and dodging for all she was worth, weaving back and forth in an attempt to make herself a less easy target. Sochek fired again, and, despite Kalifa's best efforts, this time she was hit. The blast caught her right in the shoulder. The young girl gasped at the excruciating pain, too shocked to scream and she almost toppled off the branch.

But some kind of fire awoke inside her and her eyes narrowed, _No!_ She thought to herself. _Not now. I will not die now. Not when we are so close._ Ignoring the pain as best she could, she sprang off the branch and made a few more leaps into the foliage, her nails digging into her palms to try and detract from the intense, fiery pain in her wounded shoulder.

"She's tough," Sochek observed. "But that only makes her a better prize. This time, it's the back of the head." He raised his rifle again and took aim.

"NOW!" came a shout from above the two Trandoshans and something dropped down right in front of them. Ratter hit the brakes but was too slow to stop the speeder before it ploughed into a makeshift net that was constructed of intermeshed vines. The top corners of the net were tied to the trees above and the bottom corners were tied to weighted rocks.

Above, O-Mer and Jinx were using the Force to manipulate the rocks. They dropped them down in front of the speeder, carrying the net with them, but they didn't stop there. As the speeder became enmeshed in the net they kept going, bringing the rocks out so the net passed beneath the speeder too, then back up the other side, wrapping the speeder and its occupants up as if they were in some kind of strange parcel. Then, grunting with exertion, they dropped the rocks over the same side of the thick branch as before, securing the netted speeder to the bottom of the thick branch.

"What's happening!" yelled Ratter, reaching for his pistols. But suddenly, they and Sochek's sniper rifle were yanked out of their hands by an invisible force and pulled out the folds of the net, levitating up into the hands of Jinx and O-Mer.

"Wow," breathed O-Mer, staring in shock at the netted Trandoshans. "We actually did it."

"Yeah," agreed Jinx, equally stunned. "It really worked. We have got to thank Lopmon for this."

"And we will," said O-Mer. "If it weren't for her and Barriss, we might be cowering in a cave right now. But look at us. _We _did this." He looked on the verge of laughing. "We captured two of the Trandoshans."

"We can celebrate later," Jinx said philosophically to the Cerean. "Come on." He jumped down, past the cursing, struggling Trandoshans who were barely able to move thanks to the net. The two younglings hurried down to their fellow, who had collapsed against a tree-trunk and was holding her shoulder.

"Are you alright, Kalifa?" asked Jinx, worriedly.

"Can you walk?" added O-Mer.

"Well," grimaced the girl. "I might need a bit of help." O-Mer immediately responded and helped to pull Kalifa up by her uninjured side and supported her weight. "Agh. It hurts."

"I'm not surprised," said Jinx. "But you kept going anyway. That takes real determination, Kalifa. You're a Jedi alright."

Kalifa chuckled painfully. "Yes," she said. "I suppose I am, aren't I?"

And with that, Jinx and O-Mer helped the hobbling Kalifa away, leaving behind a netful of Trandoshans. Despite their claws and teeth, they were not getting through that net anytime soon. Besides, it they tried, they would just fall to the ground and get crushed by a falling speeder.

* * *

When the third speeder made its way into the forest, Barriss grimaced with distaste when she saw one of its occupants. Lagon and Dar were completely new to her, but Garnac was easily distinguishable as the Trandoshan that had come to mock them after their capture. The leader of the group had come to the place where she was lying in wait. In a way, it was slightly appropriate – the leader of the enemy was going to face the leader of the fugitives.

Barriss only hoped that she could be a good leader and succeed in her part in what was to come. She would ensure that, regardless of the outcome of her little escapade, these three were going to get quite a shock. But she might have the most difficult task of all. Because they knew that if they were going to get out of here, they were going to need one of the three speeders. They could use the navigation device to fly to the Trandoshan base and find a way to take it over and communicate.

The other speeders had been involved in traps designed to destroy or put them out of use. This one needed to remain intact. And that was going to be difficult.

As the speeder approached the Mirialan's hiding place, Dar leaned out of the edge and sniffed the air. Barriss knew that she was downwind of the Trandoshans, but that didn't matter right now. After all, she needed their attention. "Father!" Dar cried. "I can smell something."

Garnac motioned for Lagon to pause and sniffed the air himself. "Yes," he sneered. "As do I. That recently acquired youngling is nearby."

"Technically," said Barriss, as she stepped out of cover. "I am a Padawan, not a youngling."

All three Trandoshans hissed at her as she appeared. "You're not very good at hiding yourself away," observed Garnac, growling lightly. "You could have made it a bit more challenging for us."

"Can I be the one to kill her, father?" Dar enquired. "She can be the first Jedi to die at my hands."

"Hold yourself, young Dar," Garnac replied. "There is no fun in a kill without a chase first, would you not agree, Lagon?"

"Well, there is fun," Lagon said. "But not nearly as much."

Garnac chuckled. "Well said. Now, young Padawan," he sneered the word patronisingly. "I suggest you start running. If you are still there in five seconds we will gun you down where you stand."

Barriss didn't move for about a second, before she suddenly whirled around with a flap of her cape and leapt from her perch and into the forest, bounding along several relatively close branches with several quick strides before springing off the end one and flipping further into the forest. She halted for a moment, turned around and said, "Then come and get me."

"If you insist," Garnac called back and suddenly Lagon steered the speeder forwards and unleashed a barrage of laser fire from the rotary blaster cannon on the front. Barriss somersaulted aside and rebounded off a tree-trunk, landing on another branch on her hands and springing off it again and flipping back onto her feet in another. She moved in a series of fluid and complex motions designed to force the cannon to follow her wildly. Several times she jumped over the red lasers streaming into the forest.

"You're right," Dar laughed. "This is much more fun! Die, Jedi! Die!"

The cannon suddenly swerved in Barriss' direction and only a timely backflip saved the Padawan's life, several holes being punched into her cape as it streamed out behind her. She grimaced, annoyed that her cape had been ruined again, but she kept going forwards.

Fortunately, she didn't have far to go in the grand scheme of things and when she reached the staging area she quickly put the plan into motion. She whirled around and suddenly doubled back on herself, dodging laser fire and leaping right over the speeder and the startled occupants, landing on a thick branch nearby. There she stood, resolute, and watched as the speeder turned around and rose up to meet her.

"Time's up, Jedi whelp," Garnac sneered. "I don't think we have a Mirialan in our trophy room yet. A Jedi one makes it all the more special. Fire, Lagon."

But, as Lagon reached to the button that would initiate the fire of the cannon again, Barriss immediately did one thing that made him halt in his tracks – one thing that none of the Trandoshans had been expecting and made them stand there, staring at her in slack-jawed disbelief.

She burst into song.

There had been one time where Barriss had been introduced to one of the song and dance sessions by Aayla and Ahsoka. She hadn't done a lot of the dancing, and had mostly sat back and watched, but she had learnt the words of one particular song. And it was this song that she sang now, and she even danced a little, leaping back and forth gracefully in time to the words, since she didn't know the tune of the music:-

"Soon I will be here no more,  
You hear my tale through my blood,  
Through my people and the eagle's cry,  
The pair within will never lay to rest.

"Wandering on horizon road,  
Following the trail of tears.

"White man came, saw the blessed land,  
We cared, you took,  
You fought, we lost,  
Up the war-barren unfair fight,  
Sceneries painted, beautiful in blood.

"Wandering on horizon road,  
Following the trail of tears.  
Once we were here,  
Where we have lived since the world began,  
Since time itself gave us this land."

Apparently the song was something to do with the subjugation and discrimination against a bunch of native people in a place called America when people came from over the sea some time ago. But that wasn't important. What was important was that the sight of a singing Jedi had stopped the Trandoshans in their tracks and they stared uncomprehendingly, unaware of their surroundings.

And that was when Lopmon made her move. As Barriss sang, she crept out of hiding from behind the Trandoshans, behind a branch that had been easy to conceal her small frame behind. In her hands was a small noose, connected to a rope made of several vines intertwined together to give it strength, the other end of which was securely attached to the trunk of a thick tree.

Satisfied that the Trandoshans were gawping at Barriss in stunned amazement, Lopmon silently spread her ears and lifted herself into the air, trailing the vine rope behind her as she swooped silently towards the Trandoshans in the hovering pod, which probably would have fallen out of the air if Lagon had needed to manually keep it aloft.

As silently as she could, Lopmon swooped beneath the speeder, and brought her ears up to grip the metal bars of its underside. Her light weight had no effect on it, and she quickly rearranged her limbs so that she was holding the vines in her ears and was upside-down on the pod, holding it with her hands. Then, she reached out for the front of the speeder, which had some kind of strange hook jutting out from it. Lopmon had no idea what the hook was for, but it was useful in this situation.

It took a couple of attempts, but she quickly managed to loop the noose over the hook and pull it tight, without the Trandoshans noticing. Her work done, she winked at Barriss and detached herself, flying away quickly.

Barriss responded by suddenly stopping her singing and springing off into the forest, darting back the way she'd previously come.

It took a few moments for the three Trandoshans to regain their senses. Garnac was the first to do so and when he did, he snarled and slammed his fist on the side of the speeder. "Accursed Jedi trickery," he growled. "Lagon, after her, and this time shoot her if she starts singing again."

"She had a nice voice though," remarked Lagon. Garnac snarled at him and brandished his claws threateningly. Lagon took the hint and quickly propelled their craft forwards. Lopmon, from where she was watching nearby, watching as the vine line began to lose its slack. After only about three seconds or so, if snapped taut with a decisive twang and held firm, the numerous vines comprising it more than enough to keep it strong.

The speeder tried to keep going at high speed though, and this had disastrous consequences for all three inside it. Since the vines were attached to the front of the craft, it was halted, but the back kept going and the speeder was completely flipped over, so it was upside-down. The three Trandoshans were completely taken off guard and all three of them immediately fell right out, screaming in shock as they plummeted to the ground, landing with three decisive blows on the soft soil. They were only a little battered by the fall though and sat up, rubbing their heads.

The upside-down speeder began to careen off to the side, but Barriss had not gone too far and turned back, throwing out a hand and steadying it with the Force, bringing it to a halt and slowly rotating it back onto its front and back a little, where another flick of her hand sent the noose sliding off the hook, it's work done.

Then, with a titanic leap, Barriss leapt from her perch and landed in the speeder, grabbing the controls and deftly turning it around, flying back to the place where Lopmon was. The little Digimon smiled at her and launched into the air again, swooping towards the speeder.

"Looks like the plan worked," said Barriss, as she brought the speeder to a halt.

"Yeah," nodded Lopmon, flapping her ears to keep aloft. But, as she did, she immediately heard the sound of a blaster being fired from below and rolled to one side quickly as a red laser skimmed past where she'd been. Garnac was on his feet and growling, "It's that creature! Quickly! Kill it!" and letting off another round of lasers from it. Lopmon was forced to loop upwards as the shot streaked in front of her, and Garnac kept up the rate of fire.

It didn't help when Dar picked up his own rifle and helped out and Lagon did the same with his blaster. Lopmon wheeled backwards and away from the speeder as the lasers skimmed between her and Barriss, preventing her from reaching her target.

"How dare it!" roared Garnac. "How dare it unseat me like that in such a demeaning manner. It must not see nightfall! Shoot her dead!"

Lopmon landed on another branch and ducked behind it, growling slightly. The Trandoshans were continuing to delay her from getting out there and trying to find Suzie. She wasn't going to pretend that flying _through_ a field of lasers was a good idea. "Barriss," she cried. "Come over here, quickly."

But, as Barriss started to steer their newly acquired transportation towards the beleaguered Digimon, a familiar roar echoed through the forest. Lagon, who was closest, whirled around in surprise as a Wookiee landed heavily right next to him and didn't react quickly enough before Chewbacca had grabbed his blaster and yanked it out of his grasp, crushing the tip and rendering it useless, before tossing it aside and grabbing Lagon's leg.

Lagon squawked in shock as he was hefted bodily into the air by the strong Wookiee, who spun him around once, shrieking as he whooshed through the air, and then lobbed him at both of his companions. Garnac and Dar whirled around, but both of them were struck in the front by the flying Lagon and knocked backwards, their rifles flying out of their hands to land nearby.

"Chewbacca!" Lopmon grinned as she emerged from hiding. "Nice timing!"

"Awoc ahroawoko," Chewbacca replied, looking a little bit smug. Then, he readied himself as the three Trandoshans sprang to their feet.

"This one looks strong," Dar observed and quickly dived for his rifle, scooping him up and pointing it at Chewbacca's face. He let off a shot quickly, but before the laser was fired from the blaster, it was suddenly jerked to one side as if Dar has suddenly lurched upwards for no reason. Barriss knew it had not been her, and her search for the perpetrator didn't take long. Jinx was standing not far away, and behind him was O-Mer, supporting an injured Kalifa.

"That's just unfair," Jinx said, as he used the Force to yank the rifle out of Dar's grip and pull the rifle and the blaster on the floor away before the other Trandoshans could get their claws back on them, before tossing them over his shoulder. Barriss had to admit that, for a youngling, these three were strong with the Force. It seemed that since it was their only defence here for over two months, they had needed to perfect it fast or die.

"And you call six against three fair?" Lagon hissed angrily.

"Perfectly," said Lopmon. "You never had a problem outnumbering these Padawans before. Now it's your turn to be on the side with the fewest members. Get 'em, Chewie."

Chewbacca roared and charged forwards. Dar backpedalled, but he was not nearly fast enough as Chewbacca ran over and delivered a pulverizing uppercut to his face that almost broke his jaw and sent him flying backwards to land on his back. Dar groaned gripped his jaw in pain.

"Don't treat my son like that!" Garnac cried and lunged at Chewbacca, bulling into him and pushing the Wookiee backwards a few steps, trying to knock him onto his back. Chewbacca grunted and dug his toes into the ground to pull them to a halt, reaching down and engulfing Garnac's waist in his arms, lifting the struggling Trandoshan into the air, upside-down before tossing him to one side to collide with a tree.

Lagon charged in next and slashed at Chewbacca's face with his claws. Chewbacca ducked under the blow a delivered a solid punch to Lagon's stomach, causing the Trandoshan to stumble backwards, gasping for breath. Chewbacca bore down on him and grabbed him by the neck, cutting off his air supply for a few seconds and then tossing him aside, whirling around just in time to see Garnac coming for him again. Garnac delivered a hard blow to the side of the Wookiee's head, knocking Chewbacca aside slightly, but he roared and quickly retaliated with a swing to the hip which Garnac barely managed to dodge.

Garnac growled and punched Chewbacca in the face, knocking the Wookiee back a little and then delivering a blow to the chest with his other fist. Or at least he tried to – Chewbacca's paw lashed out and grabbed the clawed fist before it struck him and with a wrench, Garnac was lifted clean off his feet and thrown into Dar, who had been approaching the Wookiee from behind. As father and son fell in a heap, Chewbacca turned back to Lagon, who aimed a punch at Chewbacca's midriff. Chewbacca swept the blow aside and threw in his own punch, which impacted on Lagon's chest and sent him hurtling backwards. Lagon only had time to groan before suddenly he was grabbed by his vest in a woolly paw and hauled up again.

* * *

As this was going on, Lopmon had successfully managed to rejoin Barriss, standing on the front of the speeder as Barriss steered the device over the battling Trandoshans and Wookiee towards where Kalifa and the others were. Barriss was quite a good pilot – not as good as any of the A-Team but still relatively skilled at it. As a result, she was able to steer her speeder in reverse slowly until it bumped against the tree branch that the others were standing on. Since the back was open-ended, it was relatively easy for Jinx and O-Mer to assist the wounded Kalifa onto the speeder.

"Are you okay, Kalifa?" asked Barriss, as she knelt down beside the Padawan and gently took away the hand that Kalifa had pressed to her shoulder. She winced at the gaping wound in Kalifa's shoulder, which had almost gone straight through her body and come out the other side. It was a miracle that it had not burnt through any bone.

"Not really," said Kalifa, wincing herself painfully. "I think that this is about the worst injury I've received since coming here."

"You can tough it out, Kalifa," said Jinx confidently. "If anyone can it's you."

"I'll live," Kalifa grunted as Barriss inspected the wound. "But it hurts like hell. And it may take a while for my arm to start working properly again."

"Well, you should start counting your blessings," said Lopmon. "Because it just so happens that Barriss and her Master, Luminara, are amongst the most renowned healers in the entire Jedi Order."

"Really?" O-Mer asked. "Well, that is indeed a blessing."

"I'll need you to hold still, Kalifa," Barriss said. "Try not to move."

"Will it hurt?" asked Kalifa as Barriss gently held her palm over the gaping wound.

"A little," Barriss said, and then she focused the Force into her palm. Kalifa gasped as she began to feel the effects of whatever Barriss was doing almost instantaneously. She grimaced a little as the hole in her shoulder, cauterized by the hot laser that it had originated from, slowly began to close over as Barriss stimulated the cells in her body to divide at a rapidly accelerated rate. After only about twenty seconds or so, it was as if there had not been a hole at all, except for some slight charring.

Kalifa began to flex her arm, but Barriss gently took hold of it to stop her. "Don't," she said. "I have healed the injury itself, but you still need to rest it. Still, you should be free of any pain now."

"I am," Kalifa marvelled. "You really are skilled. Thanks, Barriss."

"My pleasure," said Barriss. "Now, the question is what do we do now?"

"We have to help Chewbacca," said Lopmon immediately. She was slightly surprised at how quickly she said this. That would have been what she was going to say anyway, but it was the speed that surprised her. It seemed that she had formed a bond with the Wookiee of some kind that ran slightly deeper than she'd originally realised. She'd have to look into life debts a little further when possible.

"I dunno," said Jinx, folding his arms and looking down at them. "He seems to be doing pretty well for himself."

"Yes," said O-Mer. "We could have done with someone like him some time ago."

They all took a moment to look downwards at the brawl going on between Chewbacca and the Trandoshans. They watched as Dar slashed at Chewbacca's chest once and then a second time. Both times, Chewbacca stepped backwards to avoid it. As Dar made a third swing, Chewbacca ducked under his guard and rammed him with his shoulders, then lifted the alarmed Trandoshan into the air and flung him at Lagon, who fell aside and allowed Dar to crash painfully into a tree instead. Chewbacca whirled around to see Garnac coming at him again with both hands high for a strike. Chewbacca roared and charged in to meet him grabbing him by the arms with both his own and then ramming his knee into Garnac's gut.

Garnac doubled over in pain and gasped for breath, just in time for Chewbacca to kick him in the chest and knock him onto his back. Lagon charged in from behind the Wookiee with a loud battlecry, which turned out to be a very bad idea because the cry allowed Chewbacca to whirl around and grab him in a headlock. Lagon yelped as his head was crushed against Chewbacca's side, and yelped even more when Chewbacca swung him by his neck. That would have broken the neck of an ordinary humanoid, but for Lagon, it just meant he was swung into Garnac as the leader got to his feet.

Dar, enraged, leapt on Chewbacca's back as the Wookiee loomed over his father and comrade. Chewbacca roared as Dar's teeth found his shoulder, but the Wookiee's fur absorbed a lot of the damage and Chewbacca reached backwards and flipped him off his back. Chewbacca raised a foot to stamp on Dar, but Garnac leapt to his son's rescue and threw his weight at Chewbacca, knocking him backwards. Garnac drew a previously hidden curved knife from his belt and brought it up, preparing to plunge it into the Wookiee's chest.

It was at this point that a stream of small but extremely sharp ice pellets slammed into Garnac's clenched fists. The Trandoshan yelped in surprise more than pain but the pellets did succeed in slicing into his fingers and making him drop the knife. Garnac whirled around and snarled as he saw Lopmon swoop to the ground nearby and launch herself into a spinning twister and surge at him. He tried to dodge, but Lopmon turned with him and rammed him in the chest, knocking him over.

"Nobody messes with my friends," Lopmon declared as she stopped spinning.

Chewbacca roared in agreement, "Rrwoae hroa rroarara."

Garnac got to his feet angrily and Dar and Lagon stood behind him, ready to fight against the largest and the smallest members of the group they had tried to hunt that morning. But the rest of the group were not far away and as Garnac lunged at Lopmon, Barriss landed in front of him and threw out her arms, blasting him backwards with the Force and forcing Dar and Lagon to sidestep to avoid him.

As the two Trandoshans turned to watch as Garnac slammed against a tree root, they saw Jinx and O-Mer land in front of them and promptly received similar treatment, being blasted backwards with slightly weaker but still strong Force blasts. They were grabbed in Chewbacca's furry arms and the Wookiee proceeded to bash their heads together, eliciting painful yelps from both. Then, he socked Dar in the side of the face to send him tumbling and slammed Lagon in the top of the head, knocking him to the floor.

"Kalifa!" shouted Barriss to the remaining youngling, who was now manning the speeder above them. "Steer down to us. Everyone else, keep these guys at bay for a few moments."

Everyone nodded and set to their task with a will, splitting into smaller groups to take on each of the different Trandoshans. O-Mer and Jinx squared off against a recovering Dar as the younger Trandoshan climbed to his feet.

"This say is not going at all like we planned out," Dar snarled as he faced off against them in turn. "But I still intend to kill my first Jedi before the day is out."

"Right," Jinx rolled his eyes. "Like we're going to hand our heads to you for decapitation."

"We've been evading you for a long time now," O-Mer agreed. "If there's one thing that we can thank you for, it's for toughening us up."

Dar snarled and lunged at the Cerean, his huge claws scything through the air at O-Mer's elongated head. But the blow was far too slow, and O-Mer rolled to the side. Dar turned with him and struck again, but O-Mer dodged it and the blow afterwards, before leaping backwards as Dar brought his fists slamming into the ground hard enough to throw up dirt. O-Mer lashed out with one foot, catching Dar in the snout, which hurt. Dar reeled backwards, giving Jinx a perfect opportunity to leap into the air and give a flying roundhouse kick to the back of Dar's head.

As Dar tasted dirt as he was knocked forwards, Jinx and O-Mer regrouped, staying on the alert. And they were right to. Dar was young for a Trandoshan but he was tough. He leapt upwards quite quickly and leapt towards Jinx. The green-skinned Twi'lek attempted to roll aside, but Dar still managed to grab his ankle and sending him flying a short distance, rolling in the dirt.

O-Mer quickly responded with a punch to Dar's face, but this had more effect on him than Dar and he stepped backwards, crying out in pain from the blow as he clutched his numb hand. Dar smirked and slammed O-Mer in the chest, knocking him onto his back and then grabbed him by the neck. O-Mer coughed as Dar's thick fingers began to wring it, threatening to break it on the spot.

A yell caught Dar's attention and he looked up to see Jinx' foot come flying right at him and slam him between the eyes. He released his grip on O-Mer's neck and clutched his face, allowing O-Mer to slam his boots into Dar's stomach and knock him backwards. As Dar recovered from the double blow, O-Mer scrambled to his feet and both he and Jinx lashed out with the Force, knocking Dar backwards into a tree.

* * *

Meanwhile, Lagon was beginning to think that he had pulled the proverbial short straw. Why did he still have to be going up against the Wookiee, as well as that mysterious creature with the odd powers? He backed away slightly as the tall, furry humanoid approached him.

"You could make this easier on yourself and give up," offered Lopmon.

But evidently, Lagon was not going to go with that option, because he abruptly charged forwards and leapt towards Lopmon, trying to bring up a foot to stamp on her. Chewbacca roared a warning, but he needn't have bothered, because Lopmon saw it coming and darted aside quickly. Lagon's feet landed hard in the spot where she'd been, and Lagon realised that had been a bad plan, because he had left himself exposed to the Wookiee.

Chewbacca swung his fist and Lagon surprised himself by ducking underneath and retaliating with a blow to the stomach with both fists that made Chewbacca groan in pain a little. Lagon leered and quickly made to strike at Chewbacca's face with his claws, but Chewbacca grabbed him by his wrist as he did and wrenched. Lagon howled as he was sure he felt bone snap and he definitely heard an unhealthy noise. He quickly brought his other hand down and pulled out his own knife to try and stab Chewbacca in the arm.

Lopmon swooped in and slammed into Lagon's chest, knocking him back and allowing her to wrest the knife from his grip. Lopmon tossed it aside disdainfully, but then Lagon managed to grab her around the waist and lift her upwards, opening his mouth as if preparing to use his teeth and bite her.

But Chewbacca was having none of that. His fur-covered fist slammed into Lagon's lower jaw, slamming it shut painfully. Lagon squeaked almost comically in pain and his grip on Lopmon loosed, allowing her to pull herself out of his hand and stand on top of his fist, before whirling into a Lop Twister at point-blank range and slamming Lagon onto his back.

Lagon tried to scramble backwards, but Chewbacca grabbed him by the ankle and hefting him into the air, right over Chewbacca's head and brought him slamming down onto the ground on the other side. If Lagon was not unconscious by now then he was a very tough Trandoshan.

Fortunately, he was unconscious.

* * *

Barriss grimaced as she stood facing Garnac. The leader of the Trandoshans growled at her. "So, you are the leader of this little bunch then. Well, you won't be for much longer. Let's see how well you can sing after I rip your head off!"

"I'd prefer to keep my head, thank you," said Barriss as Garnac lunged for her to do exactly that. She rolled backwards and out of the way. Garnac lunged for her in a barrage of swings, but Barriss twisted and turned aside to avoid each one. This continued for several swings until Garnac lashed out with both hands to try and grab her neck. Barriss ducked under his arms and placed her palm on the lizard-man's chest.

The moment she did, it almost seemed like he had been caught in an explosion as he was hurled backwards and slammed into another tree. He growled as he looked up at Barriss as the Mirialan Padawan walked towards him. "It is over for you," Barriss replied. "Accept that."

"Never!" Garnac cried. "I am the predator and you are the prey!" he lunged towards Barriss again in a full leap, like a tiger leaping for the sambar deer, teeth bared and claws in evidence. He came down on top of Barriss, but Barriss rolled aside so he landed on all fours. He whipped around with surprising speed and took Barriss' legs out from under her, before leaping on her and grabbing both her wrists in one hand, standing up and hauling her into the air and bringing back his fist to slam it into the dangling Padawan.

But Barriss kicked forward with both legs like lightning and fell to the floor, landing with her legs wide and ready to fight as Garnac was sent stumbling backwards.

Garnac suddenly saw out of the corner of his eye, the speeder coming to land on the ground not far away, with only a Jedi youngling that looked like she was wounded manning it. He quickly dashed for it, but he had underestimated Kalifa and she sent him hurtling backwards with a terrific Force-burst. As he got up, he was picked up again and pressed against a tree-trunk by Barriss, holding her hand out to keep him there.

"Everyone in the speeder!" she yelled. The others quickly looked round and abandoned what they had been doing, dashing towards the speeder and piling in quickly. It was crowded in there, but Chewbacca, O-Mer and Jinx managed to fit in beside Kalifa relatively easily. Barriss released her hold on Garnac and ran for the speeder, leaping in as Kalifa took off and began to steer it through the trees and away, leaving the Trandoshans stranded on the ground.

Garnac and Dar stared up at the retreating speeder and its occupants in anger and disbelief (Lagon was out of it). How could this have happened? "Go ahead and run!" Garnac yelled afterwards. "I will hunt you down and kill you all."

Lopmon landed on his head and plucked a feather from it, before leaping into the air before he could swing at her. "I think you know as well as we do that you're stuck here," she said. "Give my regards to that one when he wakes up." Then she turned and flapped off after the speeder. Her face was set in determination. Now all they had to do was acquire a spaceworthy vessel to get them back to Kashyyyk and quickly.

That sounded simple enough, but Lopmon knew they still had to take on the enemies' fortress to do it. And even without their leader, that was going to be tough.

* * *

Phew, this one was slightly longer than usual, but since we've got two storylines going on at the same time, I think that that is perfectly allowed. Thanks for reading guys and please go and check out my second and final commission from Raikoh14. He worked hard on that picture and it's a great credit to him.

Wish me luck everyone. I'm going to the Forest of Dean to look for goshawks as one of my two assignments expeditions. It doesn't matter if I find them or not – the point is just doing the expedition. But it would be a nice bonus. Shame there won't be any Varactyl in it.

See you soon. And please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

Two things are going on at once now on the two neighbouring planets. Suzie and Zarza race through the trees of the Shadowlands in a dangerous run, while the others on Wasskah prepare to take on the Trandoshan fortress. Lots and lots of danger.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 108 : Flight and Fight**


	108. Flight and Fight

Sorry for the lateness of this chapter. The expedition took a lot out of me and I decided to have a couple of lazy days afterwards to recuperate myself. I'm not even saw if I saw a goshawk or not. The only birds of prey I saw were too far away to distinguish, but they were large so they were either goshawks or buzzards. I like to think it was the former.

Anyway, read on and prepare for some action scenes.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 108:- Flight and Fight**

* * *

Suzie knew several facts about animals – something that made her one of the top students in the science class whenever they covered that kind of topic. For one thing, she knew that the fastest Earth land animal was the Cheetah, which could reach up to seventy miles an hour – a very impressive speed for something using legs.

But Suzie was pretty sure that her new friend and steed, Zarza the Varactyl, was running almost as fast if not faster than this.

She also knew that Cheetahs could not sustain their incredible speeds for very long and had to rest after roughly about thirty seconds.

But Zarza was showing absolutely no signs of flagging whatsoever. She just kept up the amazing pace, dashing through the branches of wroshyr trees with the speed of a pronghorn and the steadiness of a chameleon, her sucker-like feet gripping the wood with ease as she dashed into the higher reaches of the forest. All the while, she kept up her loud, screaming calls.

Suzie laughed with exhilaration as the air whooshed by her in a wind that was made entirely by the speed they were going at. She could tell that Zarza was enjoying the mad dash through the tree-trunks every bit as much as she was – the loud hooting coming from her horny beak roughly every four seconds or so was definitely the Varactyl version of a whoop.

Suzie had also expected it to be difficult to hold onto the Varactyl, and while it was a little bit of a challenge it was much easier than she had thought. She had expected to be thrown off at any moment, like she'd seen happen on television when people rode horses. But Zarza was ridiculously easy to hold onto. Suzie put it down to the fact that the giant lizard's body was moving from side to side in the long dash instead of up and down, which would have surely tossed her into the air every time the body rose underneath her and fell to leave her in space.

Zarza's tail lashed from side to side as she ran, swinging in the exact opposite direction to where her body was going to counterbalance the change in weight that would come about if she didn't. Suzie wished that she could take Zarza home with her and show everyone this, but she doubted there were many trees that could hold the huge Varactyl's weight back home. Even redwoods wouldn't do – their branches were far too small.

So, she contented herself to enjoy the thrill while it lasted.

"Go faster, Zarza!" she urged the lizard beneath her. "Keep going!"

Zarza shrilly screamed in response to the challenge and seemed to do just that, dashing along the thick branch she was standing on and bounding onto another, leaping straight off it almost immediately until she was dashing across another branch that ran diagonally upwards. Suzie momentarily raised her arms and made an attempt to whoop, but was forced to bring them back down to grasp Zarza's scales very quickly when the Varactyl momentarily landed on the vertically surface of a tree trunk and took off from it landing on another branch.

Suzie noticed that the light was beginning to change the further up they got. It was still dark as the canopy was still quite a ways above them, but it wasn't as totally dark as before. Suzie was relieved at the thought of finally coming out of the Shadowlands.

And with that came a sense of accomplishment. She had survived! She had actually managed to get away with her life! The thought filled up her mind and caused her to whoop again. Zarza hollered with her and the two of them almost seemed to laugh together like old friends as Zarza ploughed along another branch which quickly tapered to the end and forced her to jump off it and fall several feet to a thicker one below.

Zarza seemed to recognise that Suzie could fall off if she tried to do something too reckless like dash straight up the trunk of a tree – which would help them to gain altitude much faster than they were at the moment, but might also cause her passenger to plummet to an untimely death. Zarza was taking no risks and climbing higher the longer way, occasionally doubling back on herself to utilize a route through the branches that allowed her to gain height better than without it.

"You're so cool, you know that?" Suzie laughed as she rubbed Zarza's flank. "The animals of my planet have got nothing on you. We used to have giant reptiles to, but not even they could do stuff like this."

Whether Zarza understood her words or not was unclear, but as the Varactyl kept running, she seemed to decided to do something that would heighten the opinion that Suzie had just voiced. Zarza suddenly changed direction slightly and dashed off a little to the northeast. Suzie watched the forest flash by around her and looked up to see where Zarza was heading.

What she saw was an enormous gap in the tree-line up ahead.

"Whoa!" she cried, a little fear creeping back into her voice. "Er, Zarza look out! We'll fall down there if you keep going!"

Zarza responded with another hooting scream and actually increased her speed instead. Suzie yelped as the lip of the gap in the tree-trunks surged towards her at high speed and her knees unconsciously gripped Zarza all the tighter. Zarza leapt onto the final branch and hared along it for a short distance before she took off a leapt into the air – they were so high off the ground now that it was no longer visible.

Suzie's mouth opened in a silent scream of both fear and exhilaration as the enormous reptoavian appeared to defy gravity and soared across the gap as if she were one of those flying lizards with flaps of skin between their legs. She wasn't, but she flew just as well as one anyway. Zarza crowed out with another hoot and landed neatly on a branch _higher_ _up_ on the other side than the one she had jumped from and was immediately off again into the branches, not even pausing for a split second in her stride.

"My all-time favourite animal just became a Varactyl!" Suzie gasped for breath as she tried to recover he wits. Zarza almost chuckled with her next cry and leapt onto another branch, then rebounded onto another, then another all in extremely quick succession.

Suzie wondered how long it would take for them to reach the capital. She had no idea how far they had gone from it when she had been taken by the Trandoshan, and she had probably gone the complete wrong way when she had been on her own. But Zarza was making extremely swift progress, so Suzie doubted it would take very long.

However, as Zarza continued to run and they continued to go higher and the air continued to lighten, Suzie became aware of something. Zarza's footsteps against the woody branches were not exactly discrete and each one was a loud thud, and topping it off with the lizard's loud screaming, Suzie was practically unable to hear anything else.

But she could still see things. And a flash of movement caught her eye, drawing her head to turn to the right, so that she could focus on the subject a little better.

What she saw chilled her.

She still didn't know the names of the creatures, as Qui-Gon had only told her about the Varactyl and not anything else, but Suzie could see a large Katarn in the trees nearby, running along and keeping pace with them as it dashed through the branches itself. And beyond it, there was a second Katarn slightly further away. Both of them were staring at her with hungry eyes.

Suzie heard a slight thud on her other side and whirled around again. The sight of a second pair of Katarns dashing along nearby to Zarza didn't do very much to draw up her confidence. There were four of the large lizards that were running along with them. And Suzie very much doubted that this was a friendly jaunt. All four Katarn had their eyes fixed on her.

Suzie wondered briefly how long they had been tailing them. Perhaps they were slightly apprehensive about approaching too close for fear of what Zarza might do to them if they did. But that fear seemed to be wearing off, as they were getting closer and closer with each passing branch.

Suzie quickly pounded Zarza's side and cried, "Zarza! Look out! We've got company!"

Zarza seemed to look round and spot the Katarn on her left. Her eye narrowed slightly as she watched the Katarn approach and hollered at it, daring it to come any closer, and not breaking her stride as she did so. But it was the Katarn on the right that made the first move instead, claws digging into the branch as it sprang towards Suzie, teeth bared to bite down on the little girl's head.

Suzie screamed and the sound seemed to effect Zarza like electricity. The Varactyl turned on a penny, faster than seemed possible for a ten-metre reptile and sprung aside onto another thick branch with a powerful jump, causing the Katarn to slam into the branch instead. The Katarn landed feet-first and pushed off again, bounding into the branches and quickly coming around for another pass, while two of the other three closed in on Zarza, tailing her from behind.

The Varactyl responded by increasing her speed even further, dodging around a tree-trunk and beginning to leave the pursuing Katarn behind. She was faster than they were, and it seemed for a moment that she would be able to outrun them.

But Fate seemed to be playing games with them, because suddenly a fifth Katarn emerged out of the gloom ahead of them and sprang, slavering in preparation for its next meal of little girl. Suzie pressed herself to Zarza's flank as the Varactyl moved with precision, sweeping around and slamming her thick rudder-like tail into the Katarn's side, sweeping it away to slam into a tree-trunk with a pained yelp.

But the motion had allowed the other Katarns to gain a little. The first Katarn to try and strike lunged at them once more, teeth aimed for Suzie. Zarza turned again and sprang onto a lower branch, causing the Katarn to go sailing right over her and Suzie to land in the branches nearby. But another Katarn came forwards and sprang at them from ahead once more. Zarza skidded to a halt, causing the Katarn to land in front of them and advance, it's forked tongue flicking in and out in anticipation.

But, as another Katarn landed on the branch behind Zarza, the Varactyl bellowed a shrill warcry and charged the Katarn head-on. The Katarn probably hadn't expected such an attack from what was usually a passive herbivore, but Zarza seemed to recognise that the danger was to Suzie, and Suzie remembered that Qui-Gon had said Varactyl could be extremely loyal to their riders.

Zarza sprang towards the Katarn as the Katarn sprang at her in turn. The two of them collided together with a mighty crash above the branch, causing Suzie to grab on in desperation. But the Katarn was only about two-thirds the size of Zarza and the Varactyl easily outmuscled it and carried it back to the branch. The Katarn cried out as Zarza landed on it and ran straight over it like a juggernaut, deliberately stepping on its face as she did so with her hind foot.

The Katarn from behind bounded over its fellow reptomammal and dashed forward, catching up with Zarza as she was still getting her speed back up and lunging over the top of her towards Suzie. Suzie yelped, but the Katarn fell short of her and its teeth latched into Zarza's tail instead, pulling out a few blue feathers. Zarza screamed, more out of anger than pain, and swung her tail violently, sending the Katarn flying off into the trees.

Two of the other Katarn were beginning to close in from the right hand side, and Zarza saw them coming easily enough, even though Suzie shouted out a warning as well. The Varactyl dashed towards them both violently, leaping onto the branch they were running towards her on and motoring towards them like a freight train. They scattered before her onto differing branches but immediately changed direction and lunged at her again.

But Zarza had anticipated that and had sprung straight up, grabbing an overhanging branch with her feet and hauling herself up and onto it, causing the two Katarn to slam into each other almost comically. As the two Katarn angrily scrabbled at one another, Zarza took off once again into the forest.

But she wasn't fast enough this time, and one of the other three Katarn leapt down at her from above. Suzie yelped as the claws of the beast missed her by a hairs-breadth and the creature latched onto Zarza's side, teeth gnashing upwards and seeking to snag the little girl from the larger reptile's back. Zarza bellowed in irritation and anger and changed direction suddenly, hoping that would throw the Katarn off. It didn't, and the Katarn clung on grimly, teeth clashing together before a trembling Suzie's face.

But it didn't get the chance to finish off the girl for good because Zarza promptly threw herself at the thick trunk of a wroshyr tree and slammed the Katarn between the wood and her own body. The Katarn yelped and released its grip, falling to the branch a little limply. As it struggled to get up, Zarza angrily swatted it in the side of the head with her own, tipping it off the branch to slam into another one about thirty feet below.

"Yeah!" Suzie cried. "Way to go, Zarza! Thanks for – WAAGH!" Suzie didn't get to finish because her steed had promptly surged into action again as another Katarn sprang towards her and landed on the branch instead thanks to the Varactyl's quick actions. But Zarza was still very much up for action and immediately turned and, almost throwing Suzie off, and charged the Katarn before it could recuperate. She slammed her horny beak into the Katarn's side, knocking it off the branch and sending it flying out into space.

Zarza bellowed shrilly a couple of times and reared up slightly as if declaring to the forest, "Let this be a lesson to you."

But evidently, the three other Katarns out of the five didn't speak in the same language, because they were recuperating and slinking towards her, all from branches higher up. Wary of protecting her charge, Zarza backed up a little on her branch until she was by the trunk as the Katarns moved closer and closer, trying to anticipate her next move. It was unlikely that she could dodge all three at once.

Suzie looked apprehensively at all three of them, wondering which of the three would be the first one to strike. She was vaguely hoping that they would turn on one another again, like they did the first time that she encountered them, but while two of them did bear the scratch marks of a brief clash, they were showing no signs of doing it now.

They'd probably fight each other _after_ they overpowered Zarza.

Zarza shrieked out another warning, clacking her beak together menacingly. One of the Katarns responded with a hiss and landed on the branch some distance away, stalking towards the Varactyl as she pressed herself against the tree-trunk. Zarza looked from left to right, looking for an escape route, but the only real way she could see was straight up. But her rider would never be able to hold on – this she knew.

But the sounds of another recovered Katarn scrambling up towards her made up the Varactyl's mind.

Suzie suddenly screamed as Zarza's unexpectedly bucked her hindquarters upwards. While Suzie had been holding tightly, the movement from an odd angle surprised her and she lost her grip, flying upwards into the air. The Katarns lunged towards her, but Zarza was quicker, snagging the back of Suzie's shirt in her beak and then leaping onto the tree-trunk, motoring upwards at high speed and into the higher branches. The three Katarns landed around where she'd been and snarled in irritation before leaping into the branches in pursuit.

"Don't let go!" Suzie wailed as Zarza powered her way upwards. The Varactyl made no response – if she had then she would have to do just what Suzie asked her not to do. Zarza quickly gained ground on the Katarns and then sprang off the tree-trunk and back onto a thick branch, Suzie swinging precariously from her mouth. Zarza quickly ran on once again, not wasting time to stop and put Suzie back on her back.

Suzie felt a little bit like a kitten being carried in the mouth of its scaly mother by the scruff of its neck. She looked down, gulping at the fact that she couldn't see the ground below her and hoping fervently that Zarza didn't let her go.

But, as it turned out, circumstances brought that exact thing about. One of the Katarns managed to put on a spurt of speed and lunged for the girl dangling from Zarza's beak. Zarza hurriedly pulled to a halt, causing the Katarn to land in front of her, and the smaller creature turned around and snapped at Suzie again. Zarza quickly did the first thing which came to mind – she flicked her head, flinging Suzie right over the Katarn's snapping jaws and then rammed into the reptomammal.

Suzie landed, sprawling painfully on a branch several feet down, but she ignored the stinging in her elbows and knees and turned to watch in concern as Zarza and the Katarn rolled off the branch above, and landed on another, still slightly above the little girl. The other three Katarns quickly caught up and attempted to dart past the brawling reptiles and snag Suzie while Zarza was preoccupied.

But it was plain to see that Zarza was the superior in every aspect. She was larger, faster and more intelligent than any of her adversaries and it showed. No longer burdened with a rider, Zarza really came into her own as the pacifist herbivore became a broiling fighter. Her tail slammed into one of the Katarns and knocked it aside and her head swung like a bat to clout another in the chest and flung it backwards. Her previous combatant lunged at her and knocked her askew, sending the two rolling over and over as they clawed and bit at each other. But Zarza's hind legs lashed up in a vicious kick that sent the other slamming into the fourth as it tried to sneak past.

Zarza righted herself and charged over to the two Katarns before they could get up. She hooked her head under one of them and tossed it skywards, sending it crashing painfully into the underside of a branch. The other snapped at her and fastened her teeth into her shoulder. Zarza bellowed in anger and bulldozed forwards, pushing her opponent off the branch until it was only clinging on with its teeth and scrabbling claws.

The two other Katarns closed in on Zarza from behind. Suzie started to shout a warning, but Zarza heard them coming and, despite wrestling with the hanging Katarn, she brought up her tail and clouted the first of the two in the head so hard it was sent spinning away, dropping into the branches over a hundred yards before being halted by a branch. The other snapped at her heels, trying to hamstring her, but Zarza swiftly lifted a foot and deliberately stamped on its head, pushing it into the branch and pinning it there, holding its jaw shut. The Katarn thrashed, but Zarza's sucker-like feet seemed to envelop its head and hold it in position.

The other Katarn out of the four landed on the branch before Zarza and charged at her, ready to leap upon her and snap at her neck. Zarza, spotting it coming, hurriedly reared up on her hind legs, bellowing in her shrill hoot to the sky for all to hear and dragging up the one clinging to her shoulder in the process, before twisting her body violently, causing the one on her shoulder to swing and slam into the other, sending them both rolling. The Varactyl whirled around, lifting her foot from the one behind her and them ramming it in a full-on tackle before it could recover and sending it crashing into more branches.

Suzie couldn't take her eye off the spectacle. Zarza was outnumbered four to one but she was holding her own incredibly well. And she was using strategy as well. Clearly she was far from an ordinary lizard. The sight was breathtaking.

But suddenly, something else drew her attention. The fifth and final Katarn, which had been lagging behind a little, suddenly landed on the branch in front of the little girl and crept towards her. Suzie yelped and backed away, trying not to slip off the thick wood. The Katarn snarled, knowing that it had its prey cornered.

Instinctively, Suzie reached for her D-Arc, remembering as she did so that it wouldn't do any good, since Lopmon wasn't here. But as her hand closed over it, it closed around something else too.

Barriss' lightsaber.

Suzie had completely forgotten she had the thing, but she had tied it to her waist beside her D-Arc. She looked down at it briefly, and right at that moment, the Katarn charged towards her. Suzie's body almost moved forward as she yanked the small hilt from her waist and pressed the button, swinging the bright, but not blinding anymore due to the change in light, blade at the leaping Katarn.

The Katarn shrieked in agony as the tip of the blade cut a thin line from the tip of its snout to its horn crests, passing beneath its eye. Suzie balked at the thought of almost putting the Katarn's eye out completely, but she also realised that she didn't have time for that sort of thought and she hadn't done it anyway so she didn't have to think about it.

She swung the lightsaber meaningfully a couple more times in the direction of the Katarn, which backed away cautiously. Clearly the little creature was not as weak as it had believed.

"Yeah," Suzie shouted at the Katarn, stepped towards it boldly and holding the blue blade in front of her with both hands, jabbing it warningly in the direction of the reptomammal. "That's right. You made a big mistake when you picked on me! I'm not a weak little girl who just hides behind her friends anymore. I'm Suzie Wong. And you are not going to kill and eat me! Not now! Not ever!"

The Katarn probably didn't have clue what Suzie had just said but Suzie felt much better for saying it. She stepped forward again and the Katarn stepped back once more, the huge scar on its face clearly visible. It was a status quo. The Katarn was reluctant to give up its prey, but at the same time it knew that the girl was more than capable of defending herself.

Should it flee or fight?

In the end, it did neither, because with a loud thud, Zarza landed on the branch behind it. Quick as a flash, the Varactyl lunged and grabbed the Katarn by the base of its rat-like tail in her parrot-like beak. The Katarn squawked as Zarza hoisted it into the air by its tail by rearing up and tossing it straight upwards. Zarza fell onto all fours and walked forward a few steps, then raised her huge tail and slammed it into the falling Katarn like a tennis racquet used in a serve and knocking it flying. It crashed into the branches some distance away.

When it got up again, it hissed at them, flicking its forked tongue, and then turned away, deciding that a bite of Suzie wasn't worth the risk. It darted off into the forest.

Suzie breathed out and deactivated the lightsaber, glancing up into the branches above. The other Katarns were nowhere to be seen either, except for one which was draped across a branch and appeared to be unconscious. "Thanks Zarza," she said, gripping the hilt in her hand. She might have seriously toughened up but she knew her limits – she could _not_ have taken on all the Katarns by herself. One was enough thank you.

Zarza dipped her head and bellowed a victory howl into the forest, rearing up once more and towering over Suzie. Then, she dropped to the ground and presented her shoulder to the little girl again, offering to help her back on. Suzie smiled and nodded. Once the ten-year-old was seated again, Zarza cried out and stormed away once more, turning back in the direction of the capital again.

As Zarza ran on, Suzie sighed as she contemplated the past couple of days. She had been extremely busy, but she felt that she had changed a lot. And she had made two new friends – her faithful Varactyl, Zarza, and a man that had always been there, except she had never known it until today – Qui-Gon.

"Thank you for the lesson, Master Qui-Gon," she murmured to herself. "I'll never forget you for this."

And it might have been her imagination, but she could swear she heard a reply:- "Your welcome, my child. You are in capable hands now."

Suddenly, Zarza pulled to a halt and made a gurgling, deep-throated noise, unlike the usual high-pitched ones she normally gave. Suzie blinked – they were close to the canopy now, almost into the leaf-litter. Why had Zarza stopped?

"What's wrong?" Suzie asked.

That was when there was a heavy thud as a Katarn, larger than the ones that had attacked them before, dropped out of the leaves and onto the branch in front of them. It still wasn't as large as Zarza, falling short by a good three metres, but it was still pretty big.

"Oh, not another one," Suzie groaned. "They just keep coming don't they?"

But then, she heard a quite different sound and a familiar one too – the low rumbling noise that could only be produced by a Wookiee. Suzie blinked and stared at the Katarn, noting for the first time that it, like Zarza, also had a rider. A broud-shouldered, dark-furred Wookiee was sitting astride a saddle that encircled the Katarn's front-limbs. The helmet on its head was incredibly familiar.

"Wait," Suzie breathed. "Tarfful? Is that you?"

Tarfful blinked and leaned to one side. Evidently, the only thing that he had seen had been Zarza and he was trying to identify where the voice was coming from. Zarza seemed to notice this and helpfully leant her head in the other direction, so that Suzie was no longer obscured behind her crest of blue-feathers.

When Tarfful spotted Suzie, he beamed (it looked slightly feral on him) and announced, "Ooac Chuufahwo. Scwo coo rranrawa aooo cwowo rooohu. Scwo aoacoohurracao rooohu anoowhrr waworawa."

"Tarfful!" Suzie cheered, not knowing a single word of what the larger humanoid had just said. "Am I glad to see you? I've been down there in the Shadowlands for hours and no-one came for me. If I hadn't run into Zarza, I would probably still be down there." She didn't mention Qui-Gon. That might sound a little bit too far-fetched.

Tarfful looked astounded by this revelation. "Eooohu rhwo ahwh Cacrawaooohanrawhwac?" he asked. "Acoooh rooohu churchoahhowo? Acoooh rooohu aorascwo anahufrarcwa-rhahrcw? Rawhwa ohacworcwo rhrarcrcahcc rawhwa anooakscoowh. Aoacworo whooao ohahaoac rooohu?"

Suzie just stared at Tarfful for a few moments. "Um," she said. "I think we might have a bit of a problem," she said. "I still don't know how to speak Wookiee."

Tarfful chuckled, shaking his head for a moment. Then he shrugged and said, "Ooac ohwoanan. Scwo wwahwhwa cooscwooowhwo aooo cakworaor wwoorc scwo. Oaooscwo. Wwooananoooh scwo. Scwo aoraorwo rooohu aooo oaraakahaoraan." He motioned with one big, furry paw as he spoke and flicked the reins that were holding him to the large Katarn. The reptomammal – which looked very much like it should have ignored orders and leapt at Suzie right there, dutifully turned around and jumped away into the branches.

After a couple of leaps, Tarfful waved to them to follow on again.

Suzie grinned as a thought struck her and she whispered conspiratorially to Zarza, "You wanna race him?"

In a way, the question was a sort of test to see how intelligent the Varactyl was, and whether she could understand half the things that Suzie was saying. It was strange though, because despite the fact that nobody could have taught Zarza any Basic, the Varactyl seemed to understand Suzie's meaning perfectly. Suzie almost fell off again as Zarza eagerly yowled and launched herself into motion, dashing along the branch and clearing the space between her and Tarfful's Katarn with a single, mighty leap.

Tarfful watched in astonishment as the Varactyl surged past him and heard Suzie shout, "Race you back to the city!" The Wookiee laughed and instantly rose to the challenge, flicking the reigns of his Katarn. The large beast also rose to the challenge – it knew what was happening since the Wookiees would often race on their mounts.

The two reptiles charged through the canopy side-by-side. Zarza understood that this Katarn was not an enemy and almost seemed to yodel slightly as she poured on more speed, overtaking the Katarn. Tarfful flicked the reigns more and his Katarn increased its speed, but even the large variant couldn't keep pace with Zarza. It wasn't long before Zarza was several yards ahead and she was still gaining ground.

"Uh..." Suzie called back. "See you there, I guess."

* * *

A head-on approach probably wasn't going to do them much good this time around. Down in the forest floor, the group of former-prey had had the advantage of surprise over the Trandoshans in the speeders, thanks to the traps that they had lain out. And they had been able to get those lizard-men that they had had to fight without any blasters. But when it came to the fortress, they knew they wouldn't have that luxury.

The enormous, hovering structure sailed over the island beach like a gigantic harbinger of doom for all those that resided below. It was like some kind of giant, unsinkable ship that nobody could ever possibly have a hope of taking down.

But Lopmon was well aware that unsinkable ships could quite easily be sunk given the right circumstances.

The little brown bunny was getting more and more anxious with each passing moment. The agony of wondering whether her Tamer was okay was beginning to get to her again and she was trying desperately to squash it back down. She didn't have time to think these things – she needed her full concentration on the task at hand.

And that task was moving slowly along the roof of the giant enemy fortress, tip-toeing across the metal. Lopmon had an advantage over the speeder, and that was the ability to fly without making a noise, and she was currently using that advantage to sneak aboard the enemy fortress, which she had now done, and then scope the place out a little.

Lopmon reached the edge of the roof and fell onto her stomach, peering over the edge and feeling a little bit like some kind of spy from a James Bond film. Normally, she could hide under Renamon's perception filter, but she was now having to rely only on her own stealth and small size to avoid detection.

She ducked out of sight when she saw a tall Trandoshan she recognized as Smug, along with another tall one that she didn't recognize, walking past, each with a weapon in their claws – Smug was carrying a sniper rifle, while the other had a pair of pistols. After a couple of seconds, Lopmon peered over the edge again and saw them moving away, turning their heads from left to right as if searching for something.

Lopmon sighed. "Yeah, I thought so," she muttered to herself. She knew they would be on the alert really. They had been unable to deactivate the wristcoms that each of the Trandoshans had around their wrists and they had no ways of blocking the signals. It was likely that Garnac had contacted the Trandoshans still on board the vessel the moment he had remembered and warned them about the approaching Padawans.

_They're expecting us to attack,_ she thought. _And we probably will. We just need to figure out some kind of strategy to do it._

The lack of response from any of her usual mind-contacts was depressing, but Lopmon ignored the feeling as she moved to the side a little more, scanning around for any more details that might help the group out later. She saw two more Trandoshans – Krix and another one that she didn't recognize at all, walking nearby. So, there were at least four Trandoshans on the base. Possibly more.

She saw that there were no more speeders on the landing platform at the front of the facility. That meant that it was unlikely that Garnac and the others would be getting up here to join in the fun anytime soon. Unless they were willing to cut the net that the other one was trapped in, which would cause it to drop out and possibly kill the two Trandoshans trapped beneath it as well as potentially wreck the speeder on the forest floor with the drop.

Lopmon couldn't help but feel a smattering of pride at what her ideas had accomplished today. Who knew that she had such a Terriermon-like streak in her? Next she'd be saying Momentai all the time. Oh wait, she did that anyway, although that was more to annoy him. She wondered if Terriermon would be proud of her accomplishments as well. She hoped he would, but if he was, would he try and take it further and expand on Lopmon's mischievous tendencies – trying to turn her into an almost-identical version of himself? She shuddered at the thought, but chuckled quietly at the same time.

She heard more footsteps and ducked out of sight again. Below her, the wide doors that led to the interior of the fortress slid open and she saw two more Trandoshans step out and scan the area with their rifles raised. That made a total of six that she knew about now.

Her curiosity tweaked at her as she wondered what was in the room that they had just exited from. But the doors slid shut behind the Trandoshans before she could look inside. Frowning, she remembered that she had passed by a large hole in the ceiling not so long ago. That might be a good way of getting inside to take the Trandoshans by surprise.

She took one last look over the edge to see if she'd missed anything and spotted that the railings of the balcony overlooking the landing platform held a pair of large rotary blaster cannons. The Trandoshans seemed to like these kind of weapons very much. It satisfied their terrible, trigger-hungry ways. Lopmon scowled. They were going to have to do something about those guns before they could act any further.

Her scouting done, Lopmon turned and padded across the roof once more, before leaping into the air and quietly dropping down past the fortress and lower above the island, to where the speeder and its occupants were waiting for them. The small space was extremely crowded and Jinx and O-Mer were standing precariously on the sides to give everyone a little personal breathing space.

Lopmon landed on the railing in front of everyone else and quickly explained what she'd seen. Barriss bit her lip as she mentioned the cannons and said, "We're going to have to take those out. These Trandoshans are not going to have any qualms about killing us. And aside from the Force, we don't have any weapons of our own."

"And how are we supposed to go about that?" asked Jinx. "We can't fly up there with them all on their guard for us. They'd shoot us on sight. And if they knock out our speeder then we'll all go plunging to our dooms."

"Then we'll have to be discrete," Kalifa said, standing up as straight as she could. Her eyes were like steely flints. Lopmon couldn't help but smile at the determination she saw there. She couldn't blame her really. Kalifa had never assumed they would get as far as they did and yet here they were, planning out their assault on the enemy fortress.

"We'll have to split into three groups. There are six of us so there will be three in each group. If we can surround them then we might have a slight advantage. And since there are six Trandoshans as well, we might be able to take on one each."

"Are you sure that's wise?" asked O-Mer. "Trandoshans are still very strong. And these ones are armed."

"It's the best choice we have," shrugged Barriss.

Chewbacca piped up with. "Scwo aoraorwo oararcwo ooww rrhuwhc. Rhhuao scwo whwowowa rrwoao oaanoocwo."

"Chewbacca says that he can take out those turret guns for us before we begin the main attack," said Barriss. "He'll need a way of getting close to them, but still, if we can get rid of them then it will level the playing field a little."

"Leave that to me," said Lopmon. "The cannons are stationed just outside the main doors to the fortress. And there's a large opening in the ceiling of the fortress. If Chewbacca and I can jump through there, we can make for the doors and surprise them by coming at them from within. Then Chewie can take out the guns."

"Scwo waoo scro rhwocao," Chewbacca nodded in response.

"Alright then," said Barriss. "Then here's what we'll do. Chewbacca and Lopmon can head onto the roof and drop down to do that. O-Mer and Jinx, you two can join them on the roof but don't jump down. Kalifa and I will distract them from the front to allow Chewbacca to take out the guns, then the four of us will take on the Trandoshans. If you two, Jinx and O-Mer, see any of the others heading towards us from another angle, you can jump down and engage them."

"Sounds as good as any other plan," said O-Mer. "Let's just hope that it works."

"You better believe it," Barriss smiled comfortingly. "Feel up to the task, Kalifa? How's your shoulder?"

"My shoulder is fine. And I am more than up to the challenge," the young human declared. "I am never going to set foot on the ground of this moon again. And the sooner we leave its atmosphere, the happier I'll be."

"Yeah," Jinx nodded. "I say we go up there and show them that if they think they can keep us from getting away after all we've achieved now that they are sadly mistaken."

"Okay," Barriss said, indicating the male Twi'lek youngling should lower his voice. "In that case, let's get a move on. Take us up Kalifa."

Kalifa nodded and gently eased the controls forwards so that the speeder began to ascend towards the fortress hanging above it. She moved it slowly to minimize noise made by the engines, and moved outwards as well, so it rose slowly past the fortress some distance to its left. Then she moved it back over the top slowly, until it was hovering above the roof.

"May the Force be with you," Barriss said to the group that were about to jump off.

"It's about time it was," Jinx cracked, his dirt-smeared face contorting into the beginnings of a grin, before he nodded to Barriss and Kalifa and leapt off the speeder, landing smoothly and quietly on the metal roof. O-Mer followed with a similar result and then Chewbacca followed on afterwards. The Wookiee's landing was surprisingly light considering his huge frame and he barely made a sound as he did so. Obviously he had a lot of practice at being stealthy when jumping about. He needed to be considering the types of prey he hunted back home.

As the speeder and its two remaining occupants sailed away swiftly, Lopmon motioned for Jinx and O-Mer to head over the edge. "See you in a minute," she said. "Chewie. Follow me."

As the Twi'lek and the Cerean ran over towards the edge of the wall to crouch down and wait for their turn to be called into action, Lopmon lead Chewbacca towards the hole in the roof and quietly dropped down it and into the dark room beyond.

She looked up and immediately wished she hadn't as the macabre scene of death met her gaze. She balked and was fortunate that she hadn't had time to eat anything recently otherwise she was sure she would have lost it then and there at the heads of various species staring silently at her with glassy eyes. The Wampa that constituted the throne no longer looked like the savage predator it had once been. It was just a sad reminder of a powerful hunter now. The Gundark and the Narglatch were similar to it in that regard.

Lopmon had landed on a table in the middle of the room and she slowly looked around her, her stomach clenching as her fists did the same, including the ends of her fingered ears. Who knew how long these Trandoshans had been playing their sick game, unnoticed by the Republic as they brought down and killed many hundreds of innocent life-forms. How many families had loved ones mounted on these walls?

A deep hatred of trophy-hunters was ingrained into Lopmon. She remembered what the others had told her of Goro and the rare animals that he had kept stored in a room in his house. Right now, Lopmon didn't know who was more twisted – Goro for keeping the animals suffering but alive, or these Trandoshans, who granted their victims no honour in death. She couldn't decide. But she did decide right then that, when all this was over, she was going to take these poor souls to Boz Pity – the Graveyard planet where they had defeated the Dark Acolytes, and see to it that they all got a decent burial.

It took her a few moments to notice that Chewbacca had joined her in the room. The Wookiee had moved over to one of the walls and was staring with sadness and smouldering fury at three, eyeless Wookiee heads clustered together on the wall. Lopmon could see his own fists clenching beneath the fur on his hands. She couldn't blame him. The fact that Wookiees had no eyes was grisly enough in itself, but it was also another insult to add to the poor individuals that had been unlucky enough to be brought here before this little escape.

Lopmon walked over to Chewbacca and looked up into his face. "Chewie?" she asked. Chewbacca looked down at her, and Lopmon could see the fangs in his mouth as his lips were curled back in a snarl of anger. "Chewie. I understand that you are feeling pain. But we still have a job to do. Let's get out there and make sure that the bastard," she had no regrets about saying the word and said it venomously, "who did this get just what they deserve. No mercy, right?"

Chewbacca nodded. "Whoo. Whoo scworcoaro," he agreed. "Aoacworo wawocworchowo canoooh, akraahwhwwhuan waworaaoac wwoorc aoacahc."

"We'll exact vengeance upon them on behalf of their victims," said Lopmon. "On behalf of _all_ their victims." With that, she turned towards the doors and motioned for the larger creature to follow her.

Chewbacca took one last look at the three Wookiee heads and said, "Rooohu rcwocao ahwh akworaoawo coooowh. Scwo cwowo aooo ahao," before turning to follow Lopmon. Lopmon had her ear pressed to the door and was listening to the sounds coming from outside. She motioned for Chewbacca to remain quiet as she listened.

After a moment, she nodded and said, "Go." Then she dashed to the side, leapt up and slammed an ear into the large button that would open the door. The huge, metal doors slid open slowly. And, right at the same time, Barriss and Kalifa rose into view on the other side of the landing platform, ready for action.

There were four visible Trandoshans outside – the two that Lopmon had seen exiting through the doors were still standing outside on the balcony, while Krix and the other Trandoshan were on the landing platform. All of them turned around to face the Mirialan and the Human as they rose into view. Barriss waved at them and for a moment, the four Trandoshans faltered in confusion at the fact that there were only two in the speeder.

But they quickly cast that aside and all four of them lowered their weapons and opened fire with bright red lasers. Barriss ducked out of sight to avoid getting nailed in the head and Kalifa growled as she angled the cannon on the bottom of the speeder and slammed her fist on the button, unleashing a hailstorm of her own lasers at Krix and his companion, Gilas. The two Trandoshans skittered out of the way running for cover as the speeder slipped over the landing platform and Kalifa carefully landed it, before ducking out of sight as well.

The other two Trandoshans – Goron and Ramy – quickly slung their rifles over their back and prepared to go and man the larger turrets, which would give them a real edge against the Padawan and the youngling. But before they could take so much as a step forward, they became aware of the noise of the doors behind them opening. They turned around in confusion and balked at the sight of the furious Wookiee charging out towards them.

Chewbacca roared in rage and grabbed Goron and Ramy by the neck with one paw each. The Trandoshans shrieked and attempted to break loose but Chewbacca jerked his hands, bashing the heads of the two lizard-men together with an audible slam and severely dazing them both, before pushing backwards. The two Trandoshans stumbled into the railing and grabbed hold of it, trying to steady themselves.

Chewbacca, his blood still boiling at the sight of the desecration on his fellow Wookiees, yearned to go after them and bunch the living daylights out of them, but he knew that he had a job to do. He ran over to one of the two cannons attached to the railing and grabbed it in his arms, heaving with a mighty roar as he ripped it off the banister and hurled it, where it landed in a useless heap on the landing platform.

As the two Trandoshans began to recover, they rounded on Chewbacca, unslinging their rifles again and preparing to shoot at the Wookiee before he could take a step towards them. But they didn't see a spinning Lopmon whooshing towards them from the doors until it was too late and the bunny Digimon collided with both of them. Goron was knocked to the floor by the Lop Twister, but Ramy suffered the brunt of the attack and was slammed in the stomach. This resulted in him crashing into the railing and tipping right over it, falling to the landing platform below with a wail. Fortunately for him, he had the sense to embed his claws in the wall to slow his progress but he still hit the ground with a thump.

Chewbacca dashed past Lopmon and the fallen Goron to the other heavy cannon and slammed his fist into the barrel in a heavy punch. The barrel was completely bent out of shape from the single blow, but Chewbacca pounded on it a second time for good measure as well, leaving it a lump of almost unrecognisable metal.

Chewbacca growled in victory and turned back to Lopmon as Goron clambered to his feet and loomed over the bunny. He lunged down at her, but Lopmon leapt into the air and he hit the ground instead, bashing his snout into the metal. Lopmon propelled herself downwards and added to the injury by landing on the back of his head, hard, making him bash his snout into the floor again. Lopmon turned to Chewbacca. "You go after the other one," she said. "I've got this one."

Chewbacca nodded and vaulted over the railing, coming to land beside Ramy as he was getting to his feet. Ramy stepped back fearfully but was too slow to avoid the terrific blow to the jaw that Chewbacca threw at him.

* * *

With the destruction of the rotary cannons, Barriss and Kalifa immediately leapt out of hiding and wordlessly charged towards Krix and Gilas before they could shoot at Chewbacca. Upon seeing the greater threat, the two Trandoshans turned and levelled their rifles. Barriss thrust out both hands, semi-clenched and with a burst of the Force the rifles were jerked upwards, causing the shots to fly into the sky instead.

Kalifa quickly followed up by dashing past Barriss and leaping into a flying kick at Krix, using both feet in one motion – the first to swipe the rifle out of Krix's clutch while in mid-air and the second to deliver a blow to the squat Trandoshan's chest, knocking him backwards. Gilas turned on Kalifa and made to shoot her at point-blank range, but Barriss quickly intervened with a kick to the face, which caused Gilas to shriek and lower his weapon, allowing Barriss to pulse him backwards with a burst of the Force.

* * *

It was at this point that that Smug and the final Trandoshan – Komo – rounded the corner on the balcony, running over to investigate the sounds of commotion. The first thing the two of them saw was Lopmon dodging aside as Goron leapt at her again, causing him to crash into the wall and then hurl herself into a Lop Twister at his back, smashing him into the metalwork.

"Looks like Lo-Taren wasn't joking about the creature after all," Smug observed. "Come on, let's kill it."

Before Komodo could respond, a voice behind them declared, "Not so fast!" Smug and Komo turned to see that Jinx had dropped from the roof behind them and landed on the railing. The young Twi'lek launched himself off the metal bar and planted his knee in Smug's face, sending the Trandoshan rolling backwards.

Jinx looked up at Komo as the larger being brandished his claws, but the Trandoshan was suddenly flattened by O-Mer, who landed on his shoulders from above. The Cerean nodded to Jinx and said, "You take that one. I'll take this one." Jinx nodded and charged Smug once more as Smug got to his feet. Smug raised his rifle and fired at close-range. Only Jinx' quick reactions saved him as he dived beneath the shot, which shot forward and nailed Komo in the hip as the other was getting up.

Komo yelped and staggered again, allowing O-Mer to deliver a kick to his neck, causing his head to snap backwards painfully and the Cerean quickly added a small burst of the Force which sent the choking Trandoshan backwards to collide with Goron, who was attempting to snag Lopmon out of the air with his claws and the two fell in a heap. Lopmon grinned and gave the Cerean a thumbs up, but the two quickly squared up again as their opponents got to their feet.

At the same time, Jinx had turned his dive into a roll and slammed into Smug's feet with his body. Smug cried out as his feet were taken out from underneath him and he went crashing onto his front, while Jinx rolled back onto his feet behind him. The Twi'lek quickly disarmed the Trandoshan, using the Force to toss his blaster over the edge of the fortress, but Smug instantly reared up and slashed at him, forcing him to dodge once more.

* * *

As the six on six battle continued, it became pretty clear that the Trandoshans, who had previously been quite cocky and confident in their defence, were having a change of heart now. They were fighting for their lives, desperately trying to fend off the co-ordinated and strategic attack from those they had brought here to hunt. The execution of the attack was precise, and the Trandoshans were quick to fall under the assault, one by one.

Ramy was the first to go down. The mid-height Trandoshan was no match whatsoever for the vengeful Wookiee that had become his opponent. He didn't even get any chances to defend himself as Chewbacca rained blows on him, striking him with the strength of a leaping nexu in the chest with a hammer-like blow and knocking him backwards. Chewbacca then stepped forward and backhanded the Trandoshan across the face, sending him crashing to the floor.

Chewbacca loomed over the floored lizard-man and raised a foot to stamp on him. Ramy lashed out and grabbed it as it came down, but it was like trying to catch a falling whale. Chewbacca's stamp caught Ramy full in the gut and the Trandoshans eyes bulged and he began wheezing, certain that something had ruptured in there from the colossal blow.

A small part of Chewbacca was determined to make the Trandoshan suffer for as long as possible for what he and his brethren had done. But he knew that he was better than that, deep-down, so he quickly brought an end to Ramy's suffering... by grabbing him by the neck and one leg, hauling him into the air and hurling him off the edge of the fortress. As Ramy fell out of sight, doomed to a swift ending once he reached the ground, Chewbacca bellowed out a roar in victory.

* * *

Gilas brought his claws smashing down towards Barriss, but the Mirialan somersaulted backwards, avoiding the blow with ease. Gilas snarled in frustration – the Padawan was barely striking him back. She was dancing out of reach of his own attacks and it was incredibly irritating. His swung again with a blow that would have taken her head off if she hadn't ducked under it and launched out with a punch quickly, but Barriss merely span to the side and avoided it again.

"Power is not the only way of getting the job done," Barriss reprimanded him. Now she was telling him what to do as well? Gilas roared in anger and launched four quick strikes, seeking to overwhelm with quick attacks, but Barriss was harder to catch than smoke, dodging each blow with ease and then lashing up with a kick to the snout.

Gilas clutched his nose angrily as he saw Barriss retreat, backflipping across the landing platform a couple of times until she reached the railing which she landed on smoothly and stood on as if it were a balance beam, folding her arms and raising an eyebrow challengingly.

Gilas' fury overwhelmed his judgement at the obvious trap and he charged right at Barriss. Barriss waited until the last second before flipping over Gilas' head, causing him the crash into the railing, before turned around and using the Force to shove him over the edge as well. Gilas wailed as he plummeted down towards the ground below.

* * *

Kalifa and Krix were moving in similar fashions as the young Human dodged her way across the landing platform while Krix futilely tried to hit her. The squat Trandoshan had taken out his knife and was slashing it through the air in an attempt to cut open his prey, but Kalifa had had a lot of practice at dodging the attacks of Trandoshans. She leapt over a slash and landed on her hands on Krix' shoulders, flipping again to land on his other side.

Krix found himself facing the speeder that the others had landed on. A sneer appeared on his face and, after quickly glancing behind him at Kalifa, he ran forward and jumped into the cockpit, hitting the buttons as he prepared to lift off and turn around to shoot at Kalifa.

But the Human's eyes hardened as she saw the speeder rise into the air. She raised both hands in front of her and exerted every ounce of energy she had into the Force, lashing out at the speeder with it. Krix' grin vanished as his speeder stopped in mid-air. He hit the controls frantically, but nothing seemed to get it moving again.

In an astonishing display of Force prowess for one so young, Kalifa hurled the speeder into a wall nearby. Krix cried out as he was hurled from the speeder, only to be crushed between it and the wall a moment later. His life was instantly snuffed out. Kalifa breathed out and released her hold on the wrecked speeder.

* * *

The final three – Smug, Komo and Goron – were all trying to distinguish one target from the other up on the balcony. Lopmon had vanished for a few moments, and the three Trandoshans were all facing off against Jinx and O-Mer. It was clear who had the advantage and it was not the younglings.

But O-Mer and Jinx seemed to be just about everywhere at once. They weren't letting the Trandoshans even get close to them, as they dashed in circles and between the tree, rebounding off walls, swinging on the railing and leap over or rolling between them. The three Trandoshans didn't seem to know which way to turn and they were singing blindly at anything the flashed past them as they tried to keep up with the younglings' movements. At one point, Komo accidentally clouted Smug in the eye as O-Mer dashed between the two.

"Can't hit me," Jinx declared as he landed in front of Goron. Goron lunged at him, but the Twi'lek sprang upwards and Goron only succeeded in throwing himself off balance and onto the floor.

"You looking for me?" asked O-Mer to Smug from behind. Smug spun about and ended up slamming his fist into Komo this time. Komo yelped and hissed angrily at Smug.

Then, suddenly, Lopmon reappeared, dragging a long piece of rope she'd found inside behind her by one end. She quickly deposited it and slammed into Komo's back, knocking the angry Trandoshan into Smug and sending them both to the floor. O-Mer then landed beside Goron and hit him with the Force, knocking him into the other two as well.

To finish, Jinx and O-Mer waited for the tree to get up and then used the Force to pin them to one another – back to back. As they struggled to get loose, Lopmon retrieved the roped and swept around them, dragging it behind her as she soared in a loop several times. Then, O-Mer and Jinx released their hold and tightened the rope, pinning the three of them together. They struggled and thrashed, but could find no purchase.

Lopmon landed in front of them and said, "You three can explain to the Jedi Council exactly what's been going on here for all these years." She glared at them and added, "I wouldn't expect a lot of mercy, if I were you."

Smug looked like he was about to respond, but before he could, Chewbacca finished climbing the stairs and punched him in the face, sending the three of them crashing to the ground once more.

Barriss and Kalifa joined to group and they stared at each other in amazement.

"We did it," breathed Jinx. "We won."

"Yes," Kalifa grinned. "We finally did it!" She rushed at O-Mer and Jinx and engulfed them both in a hug which they gladly returned. Never before had any of them felt such joy. They were finally, FINALLY, going to be able to get away. And all three of them had lived to tell the tale.

Lopmon and Barriss glanced at each other and smiled, knowing that this definitely meant a lot to the three younglings right now.

But Lopmon didn't have much time to waste. "We have to leave," she said. "And quickly. We need to find Suzie quickly. Chewbacca," she turned to her large companion. "You reckon you can contact your homeworld?"

Chewbacca nodded and rushed inside, Barriss and Lopmon hard on his heels.

* * *

Once again, apologies for the lateness. I've had several things cropping up, after all. Also, it's my Mother's birthday today, so even though she may never read your reviews, wish her a happy birthday everyone. Lol.

Hope this chapter did not disappoint. I hugely enjoyed writing the brawl between Zarza and the Katarns.

See you soon. And please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

The resolution to the Kashyyyk arc. Everything seems to be turning out alright – Suzie and Lopmon are reunited at long last, and the group returns to Coruscant. But there's a surprise in store for Barriss.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 109 : Rising Mirialan**


	109. Rising Mirialan

Short foreword this time. Read on everyone. Tomorrow, I'm going to go look for stoats.

Randomness.

Sorry, I'm in a giddy mood. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 109:- Rising Mirialan**

* * *

There were several astonished looks on the furry faces of the Wookiees in the capital city when a large, female Varactyl suddenly landed with a crash on one of their platforms, rearing onto her hinds legs and bellowing victoriously for the entire world to hear. Zarza was feeling extremely pleased with herself for not only getting her charge safely back to civilisation, but also winning the race she had just been part of.

Suzie was practically out of breath on board her large friend's back and she slumped down against the scales, waiting for Tarfful and his Katarn to catch up, while the Wookiees stared curiously at her and Zarza from a reasonable distance away. Eventually, Tarfful did arrive – roughly about forty-five seconds after Zarza had reached the capital, which is by quite a margin considering he had started out in the lead.

The Wookiee Chieftain chuckled and shook his head at the sight of the tuckered-out Suzie. He could tell without needing to look that she had had an extremely long day indeed. The large, furry humanoid, dismounted his Katarn, which was panting slightly breathlessly, and passed the reins to another Wookiee before walking over to Zarza. Zarza moved her leg forwards, allowing Tarfful to scoop Suzie into his huge paws and haul her off the reptoavian, placing her gently on the ground.

"Rooohu rhwowowh aoacrcoohurrac aooohurrac oorcwaworaan," he observed.

Suzie didn't know what he said, but he was probably right, whatever it was. She was very tired, even after the exhilarating run. She hadn't had a proper sleep for some time, since the sleep in the shack couldn't really be called a proper sleep since she had really rested during it.

But she still needed to find Lopmon somehow. "Mister Tarfful," she said, looking up at him plaintively. "We need to be quick. Lopmon and Barriss were taken by some kind of big lizard man. A Trandoshan, I think it was called."

Tarfful's face instantly twisted into an angry snarl and he let loose a sound that was like a cross between a snarl and a howl. Obviously that meant something to him and nothing good. Several of the other nearby Wookiees were making similar faces and noises. Tarfful motioned to Suzie to follow him quickly, and started across the bridge to another platform. Suzie started to follow, but then took a look at the bridge and wandered if it would support Zarza's weight.

She turned around. But she found that Zarza had already gone. But it didn't take her long to locate her – the hooting Varactyl had taken to the trees again and was already halfway across the bridge. Zarza glanced back at her from a tree-trunk and flicked her head encouragingly, as if to tell her to hurry up. So, Suzie did just that and quickly scurried across the bridge in Tarfful's wake.

Tarfful lead Suzie and the following Zarza across a couple more bridges in the large city, surrounded by the ever-present Wookiee populace, who all stopped to stare at Zarza. A couple of them gripped rifles defensively, but since Zarza made no move against them, they did nothing back.

After a couple of minutes, Tarfful came to a reasonably sized wooden hut. Motioning for Suzie to wait outside, he went in for a couple of moments. Suzie listened and overheard the Wookiee saying something in their growling language.

Then, she heard someone else reply, saying, "Already? Well, that didn't take long."

Suzie frowned in confusion, as Tarfful said something else.

"Alright," said the voice, which Suzie identified to be female and also, oddly familiar. "Bring her in. I'll brief the others later."

Tarfful stuck his head out of the door and nodded it, indicating that Suzie could come in now. Suzie was a little hesitant at first, but a helpful nudge in the back from Zarza's beak was enough to bolster her confidence and she walked through the door. She beheld a figure seated at a wooden table in the middle of the room.

She blinked.

So did the other person.

The two of them stared at each other for a few moments, before a wry smile crept onto the face of the room's occupant and she said, "I know you from somewhere, don't I?"

"What are you doing here?" asked Suzie, not sure whether to be smiling or frowning in confusion.

"I could say the same to you," said Sugi, the Zabrak Bounty Hunter they had met on Felucia and who helped them track down Quinlan Vos not long ago. "I wouldn't have expected to find you here."

"Well, I asked you first," pointed out Suzie. "So you have to answer first."

Sugi chuckled. "Well, someone's bossy today. Momentai. This city happens to be our newest headquarters – taking the place of the little station that you guys came to before. The others are here as well, but they're exploring their new surroundings at the moment," she explained. She lifted a jug of something to her lips and drank it for a few moments, then she went on. "Our reputation has been growing more and more, you see. So much so that these Wookiees heard about us and they requested our assistance about a week ago."

"What for?" asked Suzie.

"Some Wookiee from one of the outlying cities went rogue," said Sugi. "Apparently his brother was killed in an honour-duel and he lost it. The Wookiees called on us to help us hunt him down and stop him, and we could hardly resist. After all they needed our help. And the pay is good too."

"And did you do it?" asked Suzie.

"Of course," Sugi grinned. "It took a while to track him down, and it probably would have taken longer if not for Seripas and Embo with their jumping skills in the branches, but we finished the job and returned here late yesterday. The Wookiees were so pleased with us that they offered to take us on and let us stay in the city. How could we refuse such a generous offer?"

"Cool," said Suzie, grinning back. "This place beats the last one you guys were living in."

"That it does," Sugi agreed. "It's much more lively, and there's a lot more people to talk to. But, I think that's enough about me, don't you. Tarfful here tells me that he had someone outside who had a job for us. Imagine my surprise when I saw you coming in through the door. This isn't some joke is it? Is Terriermon watching?"

"No," Suzie said, looking a little downcast. "I wish he was. He's on Mygeeto, fighting the Separatists, and so is everyone else, except me and Lopmon."

"Then where's Lopmon?" asked Sugi.

"I don't know," Suzie sniffed, threatening to break down in tears again. She might be stronger now but the loss of her partner was still a very heavy weight. "She was taken away from me yesterday. I don't know where she is."

Concern immediately flared up on Sugi's features. The Zabrak stood up and strode over to Suzie, kneeling down beside her and placing a hand comfortingly on her shoulder. "Okay," she said. "Crying about it isn't going to get us anywhere. Start from the beginning and tell me exact what happened. Then, we'll do everything we can to find her."

"Thank you, Sugi," said Suzie.

"You welcome, Suzie," said Sugi.

"Wow, our names are so alike," said Suzie, half-heartedly trying to be funny.

Sugi chuckled equally weakly, and led Suzie over to a chair. When the little girl had plonked herself in it and Sugi had settled back into her own chair, the little girl began to tell the Zabrak everything. Sugi listened intently to Suzie's story, absorbing every possible detail of what Suzie knew – how the Trandoshan, Lo-Taren, had captured them both with the electro-net, then used Suzie as bait to lure out something else, how Lopmon had tried and failed to stop him, how Lo-Taren and ensnared a Wookiee and Barriss and how she had been abandoned in the Shadowlands to fend for herself.

During the talk, another Wookiee entered the hut at one point and quietly spoke with Tarfful. The large Wookiee interrupted Suzie for a moment to excuse himself and then he and the other Wookiee left the building.

When Suzie reached the part about Qui-Gon she omitted it, pretty much as she had done with Tarfful earlier. The story just seemed to be so... wild, that she didn't know if Sugi would believe in her or not. And she needed Sugi to be as serious as possible. So she went on as if the hut she had found had hidden her and then she decided to move on by herself.

Then, she described her flight here on top of Zarza and then finished as quickly as possible. "Do you think that there is anything that you can do to help me find Lopmon?" she asked. "Do you know where the Trandoshans take their prey for the Hunt?"

"I'm afraid I don't," Sugi shook her head. "It doesn't sound like common knowledge – if it were then the Trandoshans would have been discovered and brought to justice a long time ago. And as things stand I tend to try and avoid contact with Trandoshans. I do have an acquaintance though, named Bossk. He's not a friendly acquaintance at all – he's quite a ruthless Bounty Hunter and not at all honourable like we are. Not to mention he was in prison the last time I checked. But he might know something."

"Do you think you might be able to contact him?" asked Suzie hopefully.

"I'm not sure," replied Suzie. "I'd have to explain to him _why_ I want to know the answer to that question and since Lopmon is supposed to be a secret, I can't really tell a dangerous criminal like him about her. But perhaps I can invent another story. But then there's the fact that he won't give up the information unless he gets something in return. Bossk doesn't grant favours. Not many of us do."

"Oh," Suzie said, biting her lip. "Well, can you at least try? I can't stand being apart from Lopmon for much longer. If anything happens to her..."

"Hey," Sugi interrupted. "None of that, Suzie. I'm sure Lopmon is taking care of herself. She is more than capable if I remember correctly. She might not be able to do any of those Digimon tricks if you're not there, but I still remember how she faced off against an Acklay to try and protect you. She'll be alright."

"I hope so," said Suzie. "But I..."

Suddenly, Tarfful re-entered the tent hurriedly, startling both Suzie and Sugi, the latter instinctively reaching for the vibrodagger tucked in its little scabbard on her belt. But when she saw who it was, she relaxed slightly. "Damn it, Tarfful," she breathed. "You almost gave us heart attacks."

Tarfful looked unapologetic. In fact, there was an expression that indicated urgency on his face. He pointed to the door and waved his hand hurriedly and crying out. "Achurcrcro! Achurcrcro! Scwo rrooao oaraanan wwrcoosc oaacwoohrhraoaoara. Acwo oowh aorcrawhwaoocacrawh scoooowh. Acwo ohahaoac chuufahwoc wwrcahwowhwac. Rqhuahoaoranro, wwooananoooh scwo."

Sugi's eyes widened at this proclamation and she was instantly on her feet, grabbing the startled Suzie by the hand in her own and hurrying after the Wookiee out of the door. "Wha-!" Suzie cried as she was jerked out of her chair and out the door. "What's going on?"

"Tarfful says he just got a call from a friend of his," said Sugi. "A friend who was also captured by Trandoshans yesterday and his signal is coming from Wasskah, a Trandoshan moon."

Suzie gasped as she realised the implications of that, while she, Sugi and Tarfful rushed past Zarza, who had been waiting outside and leapt into the trees in pursuit, hooting shrilly. "That might be the Wookiee that I saw getting caught by that lizard-guy yesterday?"

"That's what I thought," said Sugi. "Let's go."

Tarfful led Sugi and Suzie across another bridge, the taller Zabrak almost dragging the smaller Human along behind her, although Suzie wasn't complaining. Tarfful then ran into another hut, where a couple of other Wookiees were standing beside a computer terminal – which was about the most advanced thing Suzie had seen in the whole city, although to be fair she hadn't seen a lot of it.

Tarfful quickly spoke to the terminal. "Oaacwoohrhraoaoara. Ah rhrcahwhrr anahaoaoanwo rrahrcan. Cacwo acworcwo ohahaoac scwo whoooh."

Another Wookiee voice began to emanate out of the speakers on the terminal. "Rroooowa. Akhuao acworc oowh. Scwo rrooao acworc wwrcahwowhwa ohacoo ohrawhao aooo aoraanor aooo acworc."

Tarfful ushered Suzie forward, and the little girl needed no second bidding. Seeing no microphone, she just spoke at the speakers and said, "Hello? Hello? This is Suzie – is Lopmon and Barriss there?"

"Suzie!" came a cry of joy that was definitely Barriss. "Oh thank the Force! You're okay! I have to admit I was assuming the worse but somehow you survived the Shadowlands! Oh, the Force be praised!"

"Barriss!" Suzie said. "You're okay too. What about Lopmon. Is she there?"

"Yes," said Barriss. "Your little pet is right here on my shoulder." Suzie blinked at the reference to Lopmon being a pet, but then she remembered the little ruse they had had going on when they got here, which she had totally forgotten about in all the chaos of the last several hours. She was supposed to be a Jedi youngling and Lopmon was a very clever pet.

"She's very happy to hear your voice," Barriss assured her. "In fact, she's so happy, she's crying."

"So am I," Suzie sniffed, as she felt tears cascading down her face again. She was surprised that her tear ducts hadn't shrivelled up and lost all its contents – she'd cried more than she had in a long time since coming to this planet. "Tell her I love her."

"Oh, she heard," said Barriss. "We've had ourselves a couple of interesting adventures while we're here. But I am willing to bet we'll face stiff competition from your own story."

"Maybe," Suzie laughed, relief flooding through her as she finally found out that they were all alright. "We'll have to find out."

"Yes," said Barriss. "Although we would appreciate it very much if someone could come and give us a ride back to Kashyyyk. Then we can complete our mission and get Po Nudo back to Coruscant."

"You're still thinking about that?" asked Suzie.

"I kind of have to," Suzie could hear the smile on Barriss' face. "I am supposed to be the leader, and the leader is supposed to think of this sort of stuff. Now, can anybody arrange a lift for us?"

Sugi stepped forward and said, "This is Sugi here. I've got my own personal ship not far away. We'll be up and will have reached your position within half an hour if we move now."

"That soon?" asked Barriss. "Well, that's something. It would be greatly appreciated as well. We're standing in the middle of what is practically a mausoleum – there are so many dead around us. If you would hurry, we will thank you all the more."

"Right then," Sugi said. "I suppose we'd better get underway. We wouldn't want to keep these two apart any longer than necessary, would we?"

"Most certainly not," agreed Barriss. "I hope your ship is relatively large though. Asides from myself, Lopmon and Chewbacca – our Wookiee friend – there are also three Jedi younglings we found who were already on the island and three Trandoshans we have taken prisoner."

"The _Halo_ will more than suffice for that," said Sugi. "We're on our way. Come on, Suzie. Let's get moving."

"Okay," nodded Suzie. "See you soon Lopmon, Barriss. I'm coming."

With that, Sugi turned to Tarfful and said, "If my fellow Bounty Hunters enquire as to my whereabouts, could you tell them that I should be back within an hour and a half at most? I don't have time to round them up."

Tarfful nodded, and said, "Anworahowo ahao aooo scwo."

"Thanks," said Sugi. "Come on then, little one. To Wasskah, and your little friends?"

"Yes!" Suzie cheered and followed Sugi as the Zabrak lead her out into the city again at a run. "Finally! I'm coming, guys. I'm coming."

"Somebody's enthusiastic," Sugi chuckled. "By the way, since when was Lopmon your pet?"

It didn't take very long for the Sugi to lead Suzie to the familiar looking ship that was the _Halo_. Oddly enough, it was the first time that Suzie had actually ridden in it, even though she had seen it twice before. It was quite spacious on the inside, but Suzie really didn't take in many other details as she watched Sugi priming the engines and pulling various levers.

Unfortunately, despite the fact the ship was relatively large, it wasn't large enough to contain a ten-metre lizard. Zarza, who had followed Suzie dutifully to the ship, could do nothing but watch as it lifted into the air. Suzie had bid the lizard a hasty goodbye, promising that she would be back to see her in less than two hours.

Zarza had rubbed her beak against the side of Suzie's face affectionately, which seemed to be her way of saying, "I'll hold you to that."

The Varactyl reared up as the _Halo_ whooshed overhead and hollered her own, shrill goodbye to it. And then, the lizard dutifully hunkered down on her hind legs like a dog and began to display one of the key traits shared by all reptiles – patience – as she waited for the ship to return.

* * *

Meanwhile, Suzie wasn't the only one feeling very happy. Poor Barriss wasn't entirely sure what she was supposed to doing to Lopmon, who had been crying tears of joy from the moment she heard Suzie's voice. But when Chewbacca had signed off, allowing her to make noises again, she had promptly burst into fully-fledged tears and buried her face in Barriss' shoulder.

The Padawan, unsure of how to proceed, decide to emulate what she had seen Aayla do a couple of times when someone got upset and hooked Lopmon of her shoulder, cradling the much smaller creature in her arms and making soothing, shushing motions. Chewbacca looked on from next to them as Lopmon bawled into Barriss' robes. He also didn't know what to do. Should he look concerned, or should he look amused?

"It's okay, Lopmon," Barriss said. "Suzie is alright. She's fine."

"Yes!" Lopmon said, slightly muffled, but only slightly because it had been a loud cheer. "She's alright. Thank Fanglongmon that she came out of that mess alive. And it was no thanks to me, either. I still should have been there to protect her."

"Oh, we're back here again are we?" asked Barriss. "Didn't I tell you that you really shouldn't beat yourself up over something that was my fault as much as anybody else's?"

"I still say it was more my fault than yours," Lopmon replied, more muffled this time.

"And is there anything that I can do to convince you that it was, in fact, not your fault at all?" asked Barriss.

"Ahww ah oaoohuanwa scraorwo akooahwhao," Chewbacca raised a hand. "Aoacahc whoorhoowaroc wwrahuanao. Ohwo raanan oarahurracao ahwh crascwo scwocc. Ohwo raanan cwhrarrrrwowa rhro anahufrarcwac. Whooao scro wwrahuanao, rooohurcc oorc rooohurcc," he indicated himself, Barriss and Lopmon in turn.

"You are absolutely right, Chewbacca," said Barriss, peeling Lopmon from her robes. "He says that this is nobody's fault. Not yours, not mine and not his. We all got caught by those Trandoshans and they were cunning and sneaky about it. And we outdid them at their own game today, by being more cunning and sneaky than they were."

Lopmon sighed. "Thanks," she said. "Both of you." Then she smiled and stared at the ceiling for a few moments. "Did you hear her voice when it came out of the speakers?"

Barriss frowned, confused. "Er... yes. I answered it, remember?"

"No, that's not what I meant," Lopmon replied. "I meant, did you hear what it sounded like. There was something a little bit different about it. I hate to say it, but I think our separation might have been a good thing in some perversely obscure way. It's made her grow as a person. Her voice sounded a little bit more mature than before."

"Yes, it did, didn't it?" Barriss said thoughtfully. "That just makes me wonder what happened to her down there all the more. It just seems impossible for anyone as young and inexperienced as Suzie to survive that place for more than two hours maximum. I admit that my hopes were certainly not that high, but she got out there not only alive, but apparently stronger than before. It's a miracle."

"No," Lopmon shook her head. "Not a miracle. She's a Digimon Tamer. They always seem to muddle through somehow. Giant monsters are becoming a speciality of ours."

Barriss chuckled. "If Terriermon's wild and wacky tales of your world are to be believed."

"Not just our world," Lopmon clarified. "This universe has more than its fair share of giants to keep us entertained."

"True," nodded Barriss.

"Ohahanan ah anahorwo rrahrcan?" asked Chewbacca. "Cacwo anahorwo scwo?"

"He wants to know if he will like Suzie," Barriss translated. "And if she will like him in turn."

Lopmon looked at Chewbacca, a grin appearing on her face. "Oh, Suzie's going to love you, Chewbacca. And I'm sure that you will love her in turn. It's almost impossible for anyone with a kind heart not to like Suzie. She has an essence about her, a bit like Master Yoda, that seems to make you like her."

"Ooac rroooowa," said Chewbacca. "Scwo rranrawa aooo acworarc."

"However," Lopmon added, conspiratorially. "Let me give you a little bit of advice." Chewbacca leaned forward, as did Barriss, as they both listened to what Lopmon whispered next, which was:-

"If you see her approaching you with a giant, pink, frilly dress or a very large diaper, run the other way as fast as you can."

Barriss howled with laughter – she knew all the stories of Princess Pretty Pants days, since Lopmon and Renamon loved to tell the stories to embarrass Terriermon. Chewbacca looked alarmed and stepped back, but then she noticed Lopmon sniggering and burst into growling laughter himself, although there was still a slight look or relief on his face.

* * *

True to her word, Sugi's ship pulled out of hyperspace within roughly half an hour of their departure from Kashyyyk. This wasn't very long at all in the grand scheme of hyperspace and Suzie was thanking whatever gods that existed, Fanglongmon being the first on her list, that Lopmon had not been taken further away than the neighbouring planet.

Suzie didn't interrupt the Zabrak as she monitored the machines and deftly flicked a few buttons. Suzie had never really grasped just how people seemed to know exactly where they needed to go to land on a specific sight on each planet, even landing by specific buildings. She assumed it had something to do with scanners because they couldn't just enter the atmosphere and happen upon the right place.

But thinking any further about it hurt her head, so she just let the Bounty Hunter get to work as the _Halo_ dove down between the clouds on the moon and whooshed across the skyline for several miles. Suzie glanced out of the window and could see the ocean beneath her, but as she kept watching something began to loom out on the horizon, steadily growing larger with each passing second. It looked like some kind of giant building, hovering several hundred metres in the air above some kind of island.

"There's our destination," said Sugi, turning and smirking at Suzie. "You'll be reunited with your Digimon partner before you know it."

Suzie felt her excitement bubbling up inside her once more, but before they reached the large floating fortress, Suzie felt something else too – a tingling in the back of her mind. She knew immediately what this was and mentally dove right into it as the blessed connection that she shared with Lopmon awoke once more. She could finally feel Lopmon's presence once more. And she knew that Lopmon could feel hers too.

There were no words interchanged across the link. Both of them thought that words would be better when they were spoken via mouth. But both of them could feel the joy of the other radiating across the link like blazing sunlight. Suzie's face lit up once more and she had to resist the urge to leap over and hug Sugi, lest the Zabrak lost control of the _Halo_ due to being startled.

Roughly a minute later, the _Halo_ thrummed over the fortress and gently pulled to a stop above the landing platform, before slowly lowering itself down onto the metal beneath them. There was just enough room for it, although Sugi had to avoid what looked like the mashed remains of a speeder trapping a dead Trandoshan against the wall. Suzie peered out the window and saw what appeared to be three young people, older than her but younger than her older brother, standing and waving at them – a human girl, a Twi'lek and a Cerean, standing next to three trapped Trandoshans, one of which she recognised as Smug.

Her gaze swept over to the main doors. There, standing outside and grinning, was the tall Wookiee that the Trandoshans had captured. Standing in front of the Wookiee was Barriss and perched on Barriss' head was Lopmon, looking none the worse for wear than when she had last seen her. Even her back appeared to have healed.

Suzie was out of her chair the moment the _Halo_ landed. Sugi chuckled at her impatience and slammed the button which caused the doors of the _Halo_ to slide open, like those on an LAAT gunship. Suzie dashed out immediately, and was met with the sight of Lopmon diving towards her from the balcony. She stretched out her arms and caught the little bunny in a hug so tight that it was surprising that Lopmon's eyeballs didn't pop out. Not that Lopmon noticed because she was doing much the same thing.

"I never thought I'd see you again," Suzie sniffed quietly as they embraced.

"I could say the same," Lopmon replied softly. "I thought... I thought that I had failed everyone."

"You didn't," Suzie said quickly. "You couldn't have known."

"I know," Lopmon sighed. "I know." She released her hug and looked up into Suzie's eyes. "But I promise you now, Suzie. I will never leave your side again, unless it is at your request or my desire. No-one will ever take me away from you again."

"Thank you, Lopmon," Suzie smiled, threatening to cry again. "And I promise to fight hard to keep you beside me."

"Oh, Suzie. How did you do it? How did you get yourself out of that hellhole?"

Suzie chuckled weakly. "Not everything about it was hellish. But you probably won't believe me."

"At this rate, I would be willing to believe anything. You could tell be that a flying dolphin led you to safety and I'd believe you."

"That would have been cool," Suzie laughed. "But what I went through was even cooler."

"You'll have to tell us all about it," said Barriss, as she approached the two of them – three if you counted Sugi, who was watching the scene from the wall of the _Halo_ with a warm smile on her face. "The Shadowlands are notorious for being a dangerous place, especially to Jedi."

"Because of the ter... taran... the things that suck the blood of Force-sensitives?" asked Suzie, having forgotten the name that Qui-Gon gave her.

Barriss' eyes widened. "How do you know about them?" she breathed.

"Spoilers," Suzie grinned.

"You didn't meet one did you?"

"Nope," Suzie said. "But I did make a couple of new friends down there. You can meet one of them when we go back to Kashyyyk."

"Sounds like you had quite an adventure," said Barriss.

"Oh, she did," said Sugi, "She told me so that I could help track you down once she got back to the city. It's a wild tale if ever there was one."

Lopmon turned back to Suzie and said, "Well, Barriss and I have had quite an interesting experience here ourselves. But, I think one of the most important things to mention would be that we have gained a brand new member of the family, Suzie."

"We have?" asked Suzie, bemused.

"Yes," Lopmon said, clambering out of Suzie's arms and perching on her head. She gently turned Suzie's head around, until the young girl was looking at Chewbacca, who was loping towards them from the stairs. "Our furry friend there, Chewbacca, has agreed to come with us. I saved his life, and apparently he now owes me a life debt. He's going to join us in our fight against the Separatists."

"Really?" asked Suzie, looking excitedly at the Wookiee, who was even taller than Tarfful, though not quite as broad. "We've got a Wookiee coming along for the ride? That's awesome."

"Yes, it is," said Lopmon. "You should have seen him in action, Suzie. He was a regular King of the Jungle."

"Better than Tarzan?" asked Suzie.

"Tarzan has nothing on him," Lopmon chuckled.

"Better than Simba?" Suzie asked, excitedly.

"Er... technically Simba is King of the Savannah, not the Jungle, but yes, Simba has nothing on him either."

Suzie approached Chewbacca and said, "You're really going to join us?"

Chewbacca nodded and knelt down, his furry paw engulfing most of Suzie's lower arm as he shook it. "Scwo wwooananoooh Anooakscoowh aooo wowhwa ooww rrraanrakro. Scwo akrcooaowooaao raanan ooww rooohu ohahaoac scwo anahwwwo."

"He says he'll follow you to the ends of the galaxy and guard you with his life," said Barriss.

"No," Suzie protested. "Don't get yourself killed for me. That wouldn't be very nice at all. Try and make sure you stay alive, at least."

Chewbacca chuckled and said, "Scwo arroppoaora."

"But what am I going to call you?" asked Suzie, tapping her chin. "Out of the new family members I got in this universe, I've got Aayla as a big sister, Anakin as an uncle and Ahsoka as a cousin. But what are you going to be?"

"Well," shrugged Lopmon. "You can have more than one uncle you know."

Suzie paused and seemed to mull it over for a few seconds before loudly claiming, "Yeah. That's what you'll be. Uncle Chewie. How does that sound?"

"Huwhoaanwo Oaacwoohahwo?" Chewbacca asked, his eyes lifting skyward as he seemed to think about it. Then, he laughed and nodded, adding, "Scwo anahorwo aoacraao. Rooohu scro whahwooawo whoooh."

Barriss snorted and said, "He said he is glad to have a niece at last."

Suzie grinned and spread her arms, anticipating a big Wookiee-hug from the latest addition to her ever-expanding family unit. Chewbacca grinned and responded by reaching down, scooping Suzie up in his arms and plopping her down on his shoulder. Suzie laughed and ruffled the top of Chewbacca's head. Lopmon, who was still on Suzie's head, vacated the spot and perched on Chewie's instead, but still had one ear wrapped around Suzie to create what would have made a wonderful photo of a little family, where all the members had brown hair.

"Hey guys!" shouted a voice from above, and everyone looked up to see O-Mer looking down at them. "Not to break up the little moment, but we really don't want to have to spend much longer on this moon. Would it be possible for us to leave now?"

"Yes," nodded Barriss. "Come on everyone. Let's get out of here."

* * *

It took about five more minutes, as they had to manoeuvre the three captive Trandoshans down the stairs without releasing them from their imprisonment. Chewbacca was all for pushing them down and Lopmon silently agreed with him, but they co-ordinated them slowly down instead and pushed them into the ship. Sugi coldly pushed them onto the floor and made sure they didn't get up again anytime soon.

Chewbacca paid one final visit to the room with all the Trandoshan trophies, bowing his head in respect to his fallen brethren. Lopmon and Barriss joined him in his lamentation – Lopmon insisted that Suzie did _not_ want to see what was in that room and Suzie believed her. Lopmon renewed her promise to lay all the fallen victims to rest on Boz Pity, before they turned around and left.

Once everyone was on board the _Halo_, Sugi took control of it and steered the ship up and away, leaving the Trandoshan fortress floating alone and devoid of all life. The three younglings crowded the cockpit, excitement etched across their faces as they finally beheld the darkness and twinkling lights of space once more.

As Sugi jumped to hyperspace, Lopmon, Barriss and Suzie exchanged stories. While Lopmon and the others omitted no details, Suzie once again hesitated when she reached the part about Qui-Gon, debating whether or not to tell them all about it.

"What's wrong, Suzie?" asked Barriss, tenderly, assuming Suzie was halting because the next bit of the story was too horrible to recount. "What happened?"

"Um..." Suzie said. "Well... it's... a bit difficult to explain."

"Do not worry, child," said a voice from the corner. Lopmon, Barriss and Chewbacca, who was also there, whirled around in surprise and stared in stunned amazement at the semi-transparent being that was standing there, smiling at all three of them. "You can tell them about me. I believe it may finally be time for the Jedi to know of my presence."

"What?" Barriss asked, but the Force-ghost merely smiled at her and faded away entirely, leaving the space empty again. "Was... was that who I thought it was?"

Suzie smiled and nodded, continuing her tale and explaining the things that Master Qui-Gon had told her. She still didn't mention the whole thing about Anakin and the Dark Side, because she had promised Anakin that those details would not be told to anyone else, but from then on, she held no secrets back from the others.

* * *

Things progressed quite rapidly from there. Sugi landed the vessel on Kashyyyk again roughly half an hour later and everyone disembarked. When Suzie stepped back onto the platform, she was more than a little surprised to find that Zarza had not moved from the spot where she had been before. The huge Varactyl bounded over to her and chirped happily, lowering her face down to Suzie's level and allowing Suzie to stroke her beak affectionately.

"Guys," she said. "This is Zarza. The one who gave me a ride back to the city and protected me from those big lizard-rat thingies that were always attacking me."

Lopmon looked up at the Varactyl with curiosity and stepped forward. She didn't even come up to Zarza's knee and was barely bigger than any of Zarza's feet, but the Varactyl noticed her and stepped back slightly, lowering her head to almost the ground level so her orange eyes looked into Lopmon's black ones.

"Listen," Lopmon said. "I... I want to thank you from the bottom of my Digi-core, for keeping my Tamer safe. If it hadn't been for you... I don't know how I or any of the others would have coped with her loss."

"Indeed," said Barriss, prompting Zarza to look up at her instead. "You have my gratitude too. In fact, today, you have the gratitude of the entire Jedi Order. We all care about Suzie – and we will not forget it."

Zarza hooted shrilly in response to this. Barriss could sense Zarza's intelligence, as well as her unwavering loyalty to those she called her friends. She wasn't just an animal. Zarza was something special, even among her own species. There weren't many Varactyl with her kind of dedication and resolve.

They didn't spend long on Kashyyyk after that. Barriss moved over and found Tarfful, who expressed his relief that she was alright. After that, she helped the large Wookiee and a couple of others to escort Po Nudo and his two aides, who had been languishing under Wookiee guard throughout the entire trials that the others had gone through, ("He had it easy," Lopmon said, dryly) to the ship that they had landed on Kashyyyk on in the first place.

Then, the same Wookiees helped to transport the three other prisoners, the Trandoshans, to the same vessel. The three Trandoshans were treated extremely roughly, until Barriss actually had to step in to stop the Wookiees from doing it, for it pushed against the Jedi Code, and besides the Trandoshans were needed to tell the Council about their deeds while under Garnac's command.

Chewbacca disappeared for about ten minutes once they arrived back on planet. After Suzie and Lopmon questioned his whereabouts, Tarfful informed them, via Barriss, that he had gone to say goodbye to his father and wife. Lopmon immediately felt excruciatingly guilty – Chewbacca had never told her that he had family and she'd really never thought about it. Perhaps she had subconsciously assumed that he hadn't considering he was pledging his life to her, thinking that he had no other commitments. She spoke to Tarfful, via Suzie as she voiced her questions to the girl via their link and she spoke them aloud, about life debts, asking if it could be relinquished somehow, but Tarfful shook his head.

"Oaacwoohrhraoaoara acrac scrawawo huak acahc scahwhwa," he said. "Whoo aohurcwhahwhrr rhraoaor whoooh."

Barriss translated it as, "Chewbacca has made up his mind. There is no turning back now."

"But..." Lopmon protested. "I can't split up his family, can I?"

"Aoacworo huwhwaworccaorawhwa," Tarfful said. "Acwo oarawh hoahcahao cooscwoaoahscwo rawhwa acwo oaooscwo acooscwo wwoorc acooanahwararoc."

"He says that they will understand, since all Wookiees must live up to this tradition," Barriss repeated. "He can come home and visit them on occasion and if he decides to do that, you can't stop him."

"And I will have no intention of doing so, believe me," Lopmon said. "I know that family is important. Probably more than almost anyone."

Suzie didn't repeat the last bit, but she smiled a little sadly at Lopmon. Eventually Chewbacca returned and nodded to the others indicating that he was ready to leave for Coruscant. Barriss made a couple of final checks to make sure everything was alright and then they were ready to leave the planet.

But there was one more goodbye that had to be said. Unfortunately, the ship they were using was no better than the _Halo_ for transporting large reptiles, regardless if they were willing subjects or not. It was with no small amount of regret that Suzie was forced to leave Zarza behind. At first she protested, stating that they could come back with a bigger ship and pick her up later but, as Lopmon rightly pointed out, the big city like Coruscant was not the right environment for a jungle-dwelling creature such as Zarza. Zarza was not a pet, and deserved a better life than that. Plus, it was going to be difficult enough to explain why the A-Team now had a Wookiee following them around now. Throwing a Varactyl into the mix would be too much.

Suzie forced herself not to cry this time, as she spoke her farewells to Zarza. "I'm never going to forget you," she said, hugging the huge reptile's neck. "I promise. We'll always be friends, won't we? Even though I have to go away, you won't forget me either, will you?"

Zarza's response was a low sustained noise that sounded a little bit like a mournful keen. That just made Suzie want to let go of her even less, but she eventually did so, looking up at her reptilian friend with sadness clearly expressed in her eyes. Suzie wiped the wetness from her eyes and turned to Tarfful.

"You look after her, won't you?" she asked.

Tarfful nodded solemnly. Apparently Zarza was going to stay at the capital with the Wookiees now that they had accepted her presence. Tarfful had mentioned that they would craft a saddle for her and everything.

Suzie lifted a hand to wave goodbye to Zarza, but then she noticed that the Varactyl had turned side-on, and was presenting her shoulder to Suzie, looking at the little girl a little bit plaintively. It took Suzie a couple of moments to grasp what Zarza was trying to say, but then a small grin split onto her face. "One last ride?" she asked.

Zarza hooted in response.

"Okay," Suzie nodded and quickly clambered aboard Zarza. She waved to the others and said, "Come on guys! Get on! It is so much fun."

Although Barriss was reluctant to delay their departure when they were already late enough as it was, she complied and leapt aboard the huge reptoavian, sitting astride her broad back behind Suzie. Lopmon landed on Suzie's head and, after a moment, Chewbacca hopped aboard as well, sitting behind Barriss. Once everyone was on, Zarza trumpeted a loud call and took off into the branches, dashing across them and leaving whooping noises from Suzie in her wake and laughter from Barriss and Chewbacca, who both had to admit the ride was incredibly exhilarating. Lopmon took to the air again and raced against Zarza, and was surprised to find herself being outstripped by the Varactyl. She had to grab Chewbacca before she could be left behind.

Zarza made one complete lap around the whole city in the branches before returning to the landing platform and landing beside the ship once more. Reluctantly, Suzie slid off and followed Barriss, Lopmon and Chewbacca onto the ship, where the three younglings and the prisoners were all waiting. The little girl took one last look back at Zarza, who nodded her head, indicating that Suzie should go. Suzie smiled sadly and then disappeared into the ship. A moment later, the ramp ascended and it began to lift into the air.

Zarza, Tarfful and Sugi all watched it go as it rose slowly above the canopy through the gap in the trees, before it winged its way upwards and disappeared from sight. Zarza reared up after it and gave one last, shrill goodbye call, before settling back onto all fours.

* * *

The journey to Coruscant was an uneventful one. Everybody was studiously ignoring the prisoners in the hold, and the three younglings were conversing with Suzie and Barriss, as the latter steered the ship and the former started talking about all the adventures she and Lopmon and the others had shared in the past, which Lopmon really hadn't had time to do on Wasskah.

After some time, Barriss broke off from that conversation and joined in the other one. Lopmon admitted that she had to learn how to speak or at least understand Shyriiwook, and Barriss and Chewbacca were more than eager to begin her education. Chewbacca began to talk in relatively simple terms, listing Wookiee letters and numbers and as he did so, Lopmon attempted to memorize them while Barriss provided the translation.

Lopmon had to admit it was difficult, and she struggled to make headway, as a lot of the noises that Chewbacca was making sounded incredibly similar. But she kept at it, knowing it was important if the bond between them was going to work. She wondered if any of the A-Team knew how to speak it. The mental link between them would certainly save a lot of time if they did, and make the learning process much easier.

Eventually, Coruscant came into sight as Barriss pulled the ship out of hyperspace.

"Just look at it," Kalifa sighed as they beheld the lights of the city. "I never thought I would be so pleased to see this place again after all that time we spent in the jungle."

"Yeah," agreed Jinx. "If I turn into some kind of city-lover and nature-hater after this then you should all be aware that it wasn't my fault."

"I'd still prefer nature," said O-Mer. "But just think. By tonight, we will actually be able to sleep in a bed. A proper bed."

"And we can eat properly cooked meals again," added Jinx – the normally slightly reserved young Twi'lek getting excited at the prospect and his mouth actually watered slightly. But considering the things he'd had to eat for two months on Wasskah, he could hardly be blamed.

"And we can finally have a bath," said Kalifa. "And get out of this filth-stained clothes and into something that's actually clean. I never thought I would miss this sort of everyday thing so much."

"You can have all that and more," Barriss said warmly. "But first, you should make your report the Council before that happens. If they see the condition you're in as you do it, the story will be more impacting, don't you think?"

"Yes," nodded Kalifa. "We'll do that. Look! There it is! The Jedi Temple!"

"Our home," O-Mer grinned.

As the ship lowered itself to one of the Jedi Temple's landing platforms, Barriss glanced out of the window and was surprised to see a welcoming committee for them. How Master Yoda had known they were about to return, she had no idea. Maybe Qui-Gon had informed him. But he wasn't the only one there. Also there, although in the form of a hologram portrayed by an astromech, was her Master, Luminara. Luminara herself was probably still somewhere near Devaron.

And, they were not the only ones there either. Barriss blinked at sight of all the remaining members of the Noble Nine. What were they doing there? Weren't they supposed to still be on Mygeeto fighting the Separatists and trying to capture the planet in the search for San Hill?

She resolved to ask them in person as she landed the ship and quickly lowered the ramp. Suzie was the first to descend down the ramp, and she blinked at the sight of her older brother running towards her, Terriermon flying above him. She had no more idea than Barriss as to what he was doing there, but she didn't question it. She just ran to meet him. She seemed to be giving out a lot of hugs today, but another one from Henry was more than welcome.

"Oh thank God," Henry whispered to Suzie as he lowered himself down to his sister's level. Suzie heard Terriermon whoosh overhead and there was a slight yelp from behind her as the white bunny tackled his own sister and hugged her as well. Lopmon didn't protest. Henry went on, "I was so worried about you, Suzie."

"Why?" asked Suzie. "What's wrong?"

"Master Yoda called us earlier," said Rika as she knelt down beside the little girl as well, but allowed the siblings to hug without intervention. "He said that you had not returned from a small mission to some planet that you went on and that when he contacted the natives as to your whereabouts, they told him you'd all gone missing. We came back here straight away and were about to try and convince Yoda to let us go and find you, but here you are."

"I'm okay," said Suzie. "Really?"

"And so am I," said Lopmon. "We did have... a couple of incidents but we all came out alright. But shouldn't you still be on Mygeeto?"

"We earned a reprieve," said Terriermon as he released his sister and led her back to the others, where he hopped up onto Renamon's shoulder and she jumped onto the other. "The guy on the council with the horns on the side of his head – Saesee Tiin – came with his own forces to replace our own. He, Obi-Wan and Adi Gallia have things covered."

"We were concerned about you," said Renamon. "In our opinion, Mygeeto could wait anyway."

The three A-Team members moved over next. "And right now," Aayla folded her arms, "I think some kind of explanation as to what's being going on is due. Henry and Terriermon were both going out of their minds with worry."

"And we weren't that far behind them," added Ahsoka.

"It's quite a long story," said Lopmon. "And... actually there are two separate parts to it."

"Then give us one of your thought bubbles," suggested Anakin. "We'll sift through the details later."

"Okay," shrugged Lopmon and hurled a mental thought bubble across the seven other minds who hadn't yet heard the story, showing them the memory of her side of things, while Suzie did the same for her side. The effect was... actually rather comical... as seven pairs of eyes instantly widened in disbelief and amazement."

"You received a life-debt from a Wookiee?" Ahsoka asked Lopmon.

"You rode a giant lizard?" Terriermon asked Suzie.

"You found three lost younglings on the moon of Wasskah?" Aayla asked Lopmon.

"YOU SAW MASTER QUI-GON!" exploded Anakin, staring at Suzie in complete disbelief. Suzie didn't flinch at the outburst, knowing full well that Anakin was not angry, just shocked beyond comprehension. Indeed, the Chosen One looked a little bit dazed as he played the conversation Suzie had had with the first Jedi he had ever encountered in his mind.

"Need to sit down, Master?" asked Ahsoka.

"I think I need therapy," Anakin muttered. "I can't believe it. Qui-Gon is still around? He's still helping out the order when he can? It's inconceivable. Wait until Obi-Wan hears about this."

Aayla tapped Anakin on the shoulder. The Chosen One looked at her questioningly, and the Twi'lek pointed over his shoulder. Anakin noticed that the others were staring in that direction with wide eyes, and he slowly revolved on the spot. He wasn't entirely surprised to see the ghostly visage of Qui-Gon standing there. The Force-Ghost nodded and said, "You have been well-trained Anakin. I know that you really are the Chosen One. You will bring balance to the Force. Look after your friends, Anakin. You need them... more than you know."

Anakin could only stare in astonishment as the Force-ghost faded into nothingness. If it weren't for that fact that everyone else had seen it too, he would have probably had cardiac arrest at the sight.

Ahsoka and Aayla both stood on either side of Anakin, just in case he needed some support or collapsed or something. But Anakin instead started to grin, ever so slowly.

"He's still around," he breathed. "He's been looking out for me. And I... I never knew about it. This is... incomprehensible."

"Well," said Aayla. "He did promise to watch over you as you completed your Jedi training. And it seems even death wasn't enough for him to break his promise."

Ahsoka glanced over at Terriermon. "You don't seem all that surprised by this, Terriermon. Care to explain?"

Terriermon shrugged. "Well, I suppose you could say that I've been waiting for a ghost to crop up at some point. We've had zombies, vampires and werewolves so far. We just needed a ghost and we'd have the four major supernatural creatures. You wait, there'll be a mummy next."

"Terriermon," said Henry. "Our sisters just went through a traumatising ordeal and your still making jokes?"

"Momentai, Henry. They're okay now. In fact, I'd say that, on the whole, this was a good thing, even if it was terrifying."

"And I would say," Renamon added, "That we've been ignoring our new friend for too long." She turned to Chewbacca, who had been patiently waiting for them to notice him and held out her paw. "Good afternoon, Chewbacca. My name is Renamon, Lopmon's sister-in-law. It is a pleasure to meet you."

The Wookiee nodded and shook Renamon's paw with his own. Both had firm handshakes and Chewbacca could tell instantly that he would get along with Renamon. The others came over to him and introduced themselves one by one. Chewbacca was surprised at how friendly they all were. They were making him feel extremely welcome and they almost didn't know him.

"I'm sure you'll be a great asset to our little team," said Anakin. "Although, there is a little bit of a problem we have to deal with here."

"And that is?" asked Rika.

"How are we supposed to explain to the Senate that we now have a Wookiee following us around all of a sudden since none of them know of the existence of the Digimon or the Tamers? And everyone knows that none of us," he indicated himself and the rest of the A-Team, "have been to Kashyyyk recently because we've been fighting on Mygeeto, so we can hardly say he owes us a life debt."

"Yes, I thought the same thing," said Lopmon. "I considered the possibility of keeping him a secret as well, but for some reason I'm not sure that that is really plausible."

"Answer this question, I believe I can," said the unmistakable voice of Master Yoda. Aayla and Anakin stepped aside to allow the little, green Grand Master to hobble through to join their circle. While the others had been talking, Barriss had presented the three younglings to the hologram of Luminara and to Yoda and had explained in as few words as possible, exactly what had happened. Barriss stood behind Yoda, and the three younglings stood a little way back. The astromech that was displaying Luminara's hologram trundled forward too, dutifully moving the hologram with it.

"Alright then," said Anakin. "Any suggestion is welcome, Master Yoda."

Yoda chuckled and said, "Since present the true reason as to why Chewbacca is with you now, we cannot, present a slight altercation, we will. Say, we will, that our Wookiee friend has formed a life debt to a Jedi that _has_ been on Kashyyyk recently."

"Huh?" Terriermon frowned. "I don't follow."

"I think I do," said Aayla. "And if I may say so, it's about time."

"Uh, if someone could fill the rest of us in, that would be greatly appreciated," said Terriermon.

Yoda looked up towards Luminara and said, "Believe she is ready, do you?"

Luminara nodded, "I do indeed, Master Yoda. Barriss has proven herself to be capable of the responsibility on more than one occasion. I am prepared to let her go, to become who the Force wills her to be."

"In your verdict, we will trust," said Yoda. Then he turned to the younger Mirialan, whose eyes had widened as she began to get an inkling as to what they were talking about. "Come, come, Padawan Offee. Time, it is. Ready, are you?"

"I... I don't think so, Master Yoda," Barriss murmured. "There is still so much I have left to learn. I... don't think I..."

"Let me stop you there, Barriss," Lopmon said, who also was beginning to think she understood what was going on. "Forgive me for saying so, but was it not you who led us all through that whole incident on Wasskah? Was it not you who got us all out of that mess?"

"Well..." Barriss, faltered. "Yes but... you helped."

"I came up with the ideas, yes," said Lopmon. "But it was you that did the leading. I think you are ready."

"Listen to the Digimon, you should, Padawan," said Yoda, smiling up at the young Mirialan. "Right, she is. Come. To the Hall of Knighthood, we must go."

"Can we watch, Master?" asked Anakin.

"By all means," Yoda said, as he turned and hobbled his way back into the Temple, with the others hard on his heels. A couple of clones were called in to deal with the prisoners, but there was something more important currently on the minds of everyone else. Barriss was biting her lip, nervous and uncertain. But then, she felt the familiar weight of Lopmon settling on her shoulder.

"This is going to be a day to remember," the little bunny said.

Barriss smiled slightly, and followed Yoda through the halls.

* * *

About half an hour later, the doors to the Hall of Knighthood slid slowly open. It was dark inside, but Barriss knew exactly what was waiting for her inside as she stood, framed in the light that was emanating from the outside. The young Mirialan stared at the darkness apprehensively. She had long waited for this day – as many Jedi Padawans did – but now that it was here, she wasn't sure what to make of it.

She received a little nudge in the ankle, probably from Terriermon, but it was enough to get her moving. Slowly, her footsteps echoing across the room, she strode several metres forwards and came to a stop, where she knew the middle of the room to be. The door slid shut enclosing her in total darkness.

But not for long. Suddenly, bright green and blue, and in one case – purple, light suddenly flooded the room as twelve lightsabers were activated in a ring around the Padawan. Barriss could see the Jedi holding the lightsabers before their faces in warrior's salutes were mostly members of the Jedi Council, with a couple of other Jedi from lesser councils stepping in to take the place of those who couldn't make it, such as Obi-Wan, Adi and Seasee. Beyond the circle, she could see the Noble Nine, Chewbacca, the three younglings and the hologram of Luminara watching on, all with smiles on their faces.

Yoda was standing right in front of her on his small pouffe-like chair. "Step forward, Padawan," he stated. "And lower your hood."

Barriss did not hesitate and took a few steps towards Yoda, settling down on one knee before him and lowering her hood, so that her short blue hair and longer Padawan braid hanging beside her right ear were visible in the glow of the blades. She stared at Yoda, as the Jedi intoned "Jedi, we all are. Through us,The Force speaks.. Through our actions, proclaim itself, the Force does and what is real. Today here, we are to acknowledge what the Force has proclaimed."

Then, Yoda held his lightsaber outwards and lowered the blade to the left side of Barriss' head, almost touching her shoulder. He smiled encouragingly and said, "By the right of this Council, by the will of the Force," then he raised his blade and lowered it to the other side of Barriss' head. "Dub thee, I do – Jedi," with a flick of the blade he severed Barriss' Padawan braid, which fell to the floor. "Knight, of the Republic."

Wordlessly, Barriss scooped her up former braid and rose to her feet, raising her hood once more. She bowed to Yoda, who bowed back. Then, all the lightsabers were deactivated, plunging the room into darkness once more.

The lights came on a few moments later. Luminara stepped forward in her holographic form and said, "Well done, Barriss. I am exceptionally proud of you. And all you have accomplished. I have no regrets – you are no longer my Padawan. You are a Jedi Knight."

"Thank you, Master," Barriss bowed to the older Mirialan. "It was an honour to be your apprentice. I will not let you down. Your teachings shall always remain with me."

Barriss then glanced across at the Noble Nine, all of whom had beaming expressions on their faces. She frowned. She knew they were happy for her, but they weren't that happy, surely."

"Knight Offee," said Mace Windu. "Another decision has been made by this council. Should you choose to accept it, you shall now be a General in this war and you shall fight alongside Aayla Secura, as a fellow commander of the 327th, and thereby the rest of her team as well. Do you accept this proposition?"

Barriss gasped in astonishment, but at the same time she could practically feel her eyes light up. Terriermon smirked at her and added, "Oh, by the way – if you say no, then you had better watch your back for the next year, because I will play the biggest prank that this universe has ever seen on you, that will put the prank war Anakin and Ahsoka had to shame."

Barriss laughed and said, "Then it's a good thing I'm not going to say no. I accept."

"Welcome to the family, Barriss," Ahsoka grinned. "You can be Suzie's other cousin."

Barriss laughed again.

* * *

And there you have it. We get not one new friend, but two to add to the party. However, the name "The Noble Nine," has not changed, since neither Chewbacca nor Barriss has a mental link to the other two. That may change with Barriss one day, but it's unlikely that our Wookiee friend will ever receive one. I'm sorry I had to leave Zarza behind, but our Varactyl friend will probably make a reappea

And coming up is Chapter 110, which marks the halfway point of the whole story. In the second half of this large series, things are really going to start accelerating, until things have been warped beyond almost all recognition from the original story. Brace yourselves. It's gonna be a wild ride.

See you soon. And please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

We've had a couple of chapters looking at what Impmon has been doing. Now it's time to visit the world of the Tamers as they continue their search for Impmon. But now they have to do it alongside twelve other being – several of which hate their guts – the Devas. Character galore.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 110 : Uneasy Alliance**


	110. Uneasy Alliance

Read on everyone. The half-way point of the story will have arrived by the time you finish this chapter. Hope you enjoy it. And I hope you don't get too confused by all the characters, because all the Devas apart from Antylamon show up in this chapter.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 110:- Uneasy Alliance**

* * *

There were extremely mixed reactions when Majiramon's summons had been answered. The dragon Deva had followed Azulongmon's command and had swept across the level of the Sovereigns, gathering the rest of the Twelve, although in this case it would be Eleven since Antylamon was no longer among them, Devas to the centre of the Sovereigns level, where the Sovereigns and the Tamers were waiting for them.

It took some time for all of them to arrive. The first to show up was the rooster – Sinduramon. He was no longer the giant sized bird creature that Henry and Takato had remembered him to be – but the small and seemingly harmless looking being that they had first seen him as. The rooster landed neatly beside Mihiramon. He looked a little uncomfortable at the presence of the Tamers, but he merely saluted with a wing and made no further comment.

Next to arrive were the two Devas who were, allegedly, the ones that were still not sure what to make of their new alliance with the Tamers and their Digimon – Kumbhiramon and Caturamon. The dog bounded out of the distance at high speed, the rat standing on his back. Caturamon didn't look entirely happy about this, but he didn't remark on it as he pulled to a stop nearby and bowed to the Sovereigns.

One by one, the other Devas had begun to filter in to the area, responding to the summons as quickly as they could, although for some of them that meant quite a slow pace. Makuramon bounded in and scowled at the Tamers and the Digimon. The Tamers scowled back – none of them looked on the monkey with fond memories. Makuramon looked like he was about to make some sort of disparaging comment, but he noticed Baihumon glaring at him and that seemed to shut him up. Apparently he still wasn't out of trouble for ignoring the Tamers when they went to the tiger Sovereigns Castle.

There were mixed feeling when the three Devas that still served Zhuqiaomon all arrived together. Pajiramon and Sandiramon, the sheep and the snake, both looked delighted to see the others again and immediately went over to strike up a conversation with them. But, unfortunately, Indramon the horse was also with them. The tall, aloof Deva was almost openly hostile when he spotted Guilmon, who had been the one to finally take him down, after all. He snorted and remarked, "Well, well, if it isn't the little bread-scarfer. It's a shame that you haven't choked yourself on anything with the amount you eat."

Guilmon had immediately growled and begun to go into feral mode, as he did when it looked like any Digimon was about to pose a threat to him. Takato looked concerned and was about to try and calm Guilmon down, when another voice spoke from behind him, which said, "Save your snarky comments, Indramon. Nobody finds them amusing and just in case you didn't know, these Tamers are one-thousand times better than you'll ever be."

"Vajramon," observed Jeri, grinning as the Ox Deva stepped into view behind them, his broad-swords in his hands. "We haven't seen you for some time."

"Yeah," agreed Takato. "And I never thought I'd ever hear you make remark like that. Thanks, it means a lot."

Vajramon snorted and said, "Indramon needs to be put in his place now and again, and more often than not it seems that I am the one to do it. But I did not exaggerate. I believe you are by far his betters."

"Aw shucks," Guilmon grinned.

"What's the matter with you, Vajramon," Indramon murmured. "You used to be so much more likeable when you didn't like them either."

"That's bullcrap and you know it," Mihiramon growled. "No offense, Vajramon," he added.

"None taken," the bull in question replied. "And you're quite right. You never liked me regardless of whether I shared your views or not, because I'm stronger than you are."

Indramon snorted. "Care to test that?"

"Gladly," Vajramon crossed his swords and growled challengingly at the taller horse.

"Enough," Caturamon declared, stepping between the two. "Now is not the time for petty debates. We have been called here for a reason and it is not to fight one another. I am not sure whether to agree with either of you, but we can settle this dispute some other time."

Indramon humphed and turned away, reluctantly showing deference to the smaller dog. Vajramon similarly sheathed his swords, and then turned around, flicking his tail mockingly at the horse before starting up a conversation with Ryo.

That meant that all but one of the Devas were present, not including Majiramon as the dragon was probably away fetching the final member. It took a further ten minutes or so, but eventually, they did get to the scene. Majiramon settled on the ground not far away and turned back as a dark shape became visible in the distance, which slowly resolved itself to be the massive and ungainly, although not nearly as massive as any of the Sovereigns, body of Vikaralamon, the Pig Deva. As the gigantic and, it had to be said, terrifically ugly boar homed into view, Kazu turned to Kenta and murmured, "I see he hasn't gotten any better looking with his regeneration. Shame that – he really needs a new look."

A loud snort from Vikaralamon indicated that the pig had overheard the comment. Kazu cringed slightly as the pig's giant eye focused on him and glared angrily. Guardromon stepped protectively in front of his Tamers, readying his missiles just in case something broke out. But it turned out they didn't need to, since Vikaralamon turned away, choosing to ignore the Tamers instead. Guardromon relaxed a little, and also thanked Fanglongmon he didn't have nose, because it looked like Guilmon and Cyberdramon's noses were being assailed with the horrible smell given off by the giant pig. Many of the other Devas had turned away from him slightly as well.

Ai and Mako were staring around them, gaping in awe at what they were seeing. They had never witnessed such a large gathering of Digimon all in one place before. And many of them were just so large it was unbelievable. There was the familiar forms of their fellow Digimon like Guilmon, Cyberdramon, Leomon, Guardromon and MarineAngemon standing around them. Beyond them were eleven other Digimon, all but two of which were larger than any of the humans. And beyond them were the mighty figures of the Sovereigns themselves.

It was just amazing.

"Devas," Azulongmon boomed over the assembly, causing all eleven of the Digimon in question to step forward in a line and bow their heads in respect for their leaders. "A new situation has arisen. One which we have all been waiting for for some time. We knew that this day would come, although we all really hoped that it would not. But now, GranDracmon is beginning to make his move on our world once more."

Many of the Devas had looked up in alarm upon hearing this and glanced at one another, with something akin to fear in many of their eyes. Rarely had the Tamers seen the Devas show that emotion. They had all remained defiant against them until the end. Sandiramon had even laughed at them when he was dying, and Caturamon had died bravely calling out "Long Live the Sovereign." Only Makuramon often showed fear, and he looked like he was about to wet himself now.

"Fortunately, there is a solution to our problem," announced Azulongmon. And he went onto explain to the Devas the significance of Impmon to GranDracmon's designs. The Devas listened with interest to his every word, but kept their heads bowed respectfully.

That is, until the part where Azulongmon announced, "And now, we assign you this task. You must go forth into the Digital World and assist the Tamers in finding Impmon, using any means necessary to you."

_That_ certainly caused a couple of interesting reactions amongst the ranks of the Devas. Vajramon and Pajiramon glanced at one another with expressions that seem to say to one another "Well, this should definitely prove interesting." Makuramon stared at Azulongmon with a look that indicated he was absolutely gobsmacked. Kumbhiramon and Caturamon both seemed to shift uncomfortably at the suggestion. Vikaralamon's mouth twisted into a growl filled with sharp teeth.

It was the Monkey Deva that spoke up first. The round-faced primate stared up at the giant dragon and spread his arms plaintively. "You cannot be serious, my liege," he declared. "You expect us to work alongside these abominations against all of Digital kind and their measly human children who are so pathetic that they would fall if hit with the slightest of any of our attacks?"

"Yes, Makuramon," Azulongmon said, without a trace of annoyance in his voice. "I do. And if you value your position as a Deva, I suggest that you do not refer to them as such again."

"But, my lord," Indramon piped up. "He does have a point. A human and a Digimon working side by side is simply not natural. Humans created Digimon to be their slaves and that is exactly what these Tamers have done. You cannot ask me to have anything to do with them."

"We can and ye will, laddie," Ebonwumon's Scottish head glowered. "Ye cannae stand by and watch as the whole Digital World gets bloon to all hell."

"Ebonwumon is right," Baihumon declared. "You are letting your biased hatred towards the Tamers cloud your judgement, Indramon. You are also letting it make you forget your place. We are the Sovereigns and as our lieutenants, you will do what we order."

"But what if we end up like one of their enslaved Digimon," Makuramon continued to protest. "Look what they did to Antylamon – reduced to a common Rookie to wait on the beck and call of a measly human child."

Cyberdramon snarled and made to grab Makuramon by his neck, but Makuramon yelped a loud "MA-CAAA!" and jumped out of the way. The Tamers glared at the monkey with open hostility and Jeri said, "Don't ever make disparaging comments about Suzie and Lopmon – especially when we don't even know if either of them are still alive."

"I agree," Majiramon said, towering over the frightened monkey. "Lopmon was our ally and a close friend of us all. You'd better remember that before you start making comments about her and her choices." Makuramon glanced around to notice that almost all the other Devas, including Kumbhiramon and Vikaralamon, were glaring at him now. He swallowed nervously and subsided into silence, momentarily placated and cowed.

"Be that as it may," Indramon added. "I do not see why we need their assistance in this matter at all. Why can we not just go out there and find this Impmon by ourselves. We do not need these Tamers tagging along and slowing us down."

"Are you suggesting we are incapable?" asked Ryo.

"No," said Indramon. "I am flat out saying it."

"That's rich coming from you," Vajramon snorted condescendingly. "Especially since the Tamers and their Digimon have done far more for this world than your sorry hide ever has. Even in the many instances we went through before the Tamers even existed you barely lifted a hoof to help the Digital World."

"The Tamers, on the other hand," Sandiramon added, "Have been putting their hearts and souls into everything they do for both of our worlds. I should know. I have watched them battle."

"And since when did you care about Impmon anyway," Pajiramon agreed. "You threatened him the last time you saw him. The Tamers will be needed to convince him to come with us because I know for a fact that he won't go anywhere with you."

"Who would?" Kumbhiramon added loudly. A couple of the Devas chuckled in response. Indramon snorted angrily, but when he opened his mouth to protest, he was immediately cut off by his master.

"_**SILENCE!"**_ Zhuqiaomon roared, interrupting Indramon before the horse could even get a sound past his teeth. The giant phoenix loomed over the Devas, casting them all in the shadow of his wings. Indramon immediately knelt again, and could feel Zhuqiaomon's eyes burning through the back of his head.

"What part of 'you are forgetting your place' did you not understand, Indramon?" Zhuqiaomon shouted at him.**"**You may not like it but there is no escaping the fact that the Human World and our world are inexorably linked now. What affects one of us will be likely to affect the other in some way. GranDracmon poses a threat to all of us, therefore it only makes sense that we all unite under one banner to oppose him.

"As for Impmon, he himself has done a lot more to aid our world that you have – and he once went on killing sprees. You ought to think about that before you start bad-mouthing anyone. He's even done more for his fellow Devas than you have. It was he, along with his Tamers and a couple of others, who located the potential way of bringing back your missing sister-in-arms after she was swept away by Parallelmon. You have every reason to trust the Tamers now. But hatred is stopping you from seeing that."

"Or perhaps it's his mane," quipped Sinduramon, inducing more chuckles. Indramon, suitably cowed, made no further comments.

The other Deva who was still extremely opposed to the Tamers, Vikaralamon, mostly made no comment at all. Then again, he hadn't really been known for his conversation. The pig Deva seemed to obey the will of the Sovereigns, no matter what he had to do in the process.

"If all the arguments have been settled," Azulongmon said, pointedly. "I believe it is time for you to move out and search for Impmon. We have a large area of ground to cover, and finding a small Digimon who does not want to be found is not going to be an easy task."

"Can you... I dunno... scry him or something?" Kenta asked.

The Sovereigns stared at him in bemusement, causing the Tamer to flush red from embarrassment and mumble something that sounded like "Just a thought."

"They may be deities, Kenta," said Leomon. "But they are not omniscient. They cannot scry the Digital World to search for anybody. It doesn't work that way."

"Quite," Azulongmon said. "Children," he looked down at Ai and Mako, who gulped at being addressed directly by the mighty serpent dragon. "If you could point us in the right direction to where Impmon is right now, it would be appreciated."

Ai nodded and displayed the hologram from their D-Arc. She pointed in the same direction as the arrow and said, "He's that way."

"Well, that's rather vague," said Caturamon. "That doesn't give us a lot to go on."

"No, but it's a start," said Azulongmon.

"Any ideas on where we should start?" asked Ryo.

"I'd suggest you start at the Desert Level first," said Baihumon. "As that is the largest level and the lowest, and will be the one that Impmon appeared in when he entered the Digital World anyway. Scour it from top to bottom in search of him and if you don't find any information about him there, then you can split into smaller groups to cover the higher levels. We must sweep the whole Digital World and find him before GranDracmon can get to him."

"Baihumon is right," said Azulongmon. "Time is of the essence in this situation." His eyes flashed and, a moment later, a part of the clouds that seemed to swirl around him detached itself and floated down towards them. It was an enormous piece of cloudiness, that would be able to engulf everyone on the ground level. "Go," Azulongmon said. "Use this to get yourselves there quickly. And good fortune go with you."

"What are you going to do yourselves?" asked Takato.

"We must marshal our forces," said Azulongmon. "We must prepare for the eventual conflict with GranDracmon. One way or another, we will face him in combat, whether that be on our terms or his. We must be ready for it, as he will not be an easy opponent."

"Just try and make sure we can bring the fight to him and not the other way around," said Zhuqiaomon.

"We'll do our best," said Ryo. "Come on, guys. Let's get moving." He stepped forward and began to walk towards the cloud floating just above the ground, followed by Cyberdramon and several others. Ai and Mako, who had never travelled by Azulongmon cloud before, hesitated in uncertainty, but upon seeing several other Tamers and all the Devas walking towards and disappearing into the cloud, they quickly followed on.

It was an obscure feeling, to be standing on what looked like something that should be completely unable to support their way out, and was squishy under their feet. But they were left in awe as the felt the cloud lifting into the awe and saw nobody inside their transportation even sink into the mass – not even Vikaralamon. They could tell that they were flying through the air a moment later, but they had no idea how fast they were going.

The divide between the group was plainly visible as they flew through the air. All the Tamers and their partners grouped on one side of the room, while the Devas that didn't like them grouped on the other. The other Devas stood between the two, and the Tamers distinctly noticed that Vajramon and Pajiramon were both keeping a close eye on their fellow Devas, as if they were concerned they would try and attack.

And the Tamers conceded that the Ox and the Sheep just might have a valid point.

* * *

That had been about three days ago and the search of the desert level was still going on. A large portion of the lowest and most primitive level of the Digital World had been scoured. The Tamers had to admit that the Devas were certainly thorough with their searches. It almost seemed like every grain of sand was turned over in search for Impmon. Of course that wasn't the case. But every rock was.

Tensions ran high amongst the group a lot of the time as they moved. Makuramon, Indramon and Vikaralamon continued to maintain little contact with the Tamers, whereas Vajramon, Pajiramon, Sandiramon and Mihiramon chatted to them like old friends.

Over the course of time, several of the other Devas became slightly better integrated with the group of humans. Sinduramon was quick to get to know them a little better and the rooster had to admit they were certainly an interesting bunch – much more interesting than the other Devas. Majiramon was not far behind, and on the third day the enormous dragon was giving rides to Ai and Mako, the two twins clutching the antlers on his head as he swooped through the air.

After a couple of days of the seemingly fruitless search, Guilmon slowly approached the Dog Deva, Caturamon. The day was ending it seemed likely that night was going to was over them at any moment and several of the exhausted Tamers had called a rest. Caturamon had promptly gone to sit by himself, as he often seemed to do, and sat atop a boulder, staring out across the horizon contemplatively.

The large Rookie dinosaur went and stood beside Caturamon, copying his actions. The odd Dog-like creature glanced down at Guilmon for a moment but made no more remarks. The two stood side by side for a few moments before Guilmon said, "Whatever you're staring at, I don't think I can see it."

"I am not staring at anything in particular," Caturamon replied. "I am merely mulling things over in my mind, meditating on the day that I've just had. I often to do this as night is about to break out across the Digital World."

"Seems terribly boring," Guilmon complained. "Don't you ever want to have fun?"

Caturamon glanced down at the dinosaur in bemusement. "Fun?" he asked. "Being a Deva is not about having fun. It is important to be serious – we have an extremely important responsibility to live up to, since we are the servants of the Sovereigns themselves."

"So?" Guilmon asked. "We have a big responsibility too, because we're the protectors of the Human World, but we try and have fun as much as we can. Why should you be any different."

"There are enormous differences between you and I, Rookie," snorted Caturamon. "For one, you are a partner to a Human and I am not. For another, I am not a child, like you seem to be. And for another, I keep my head at all times."

"Yeah, but still," Guilmon replied. "Do you really think that we're that different. We're still Digimon that have to fight to protect our homes when we need to. I used to think you were a bad guy, while you used to think I was, and we were both wrong. So we have lots of similar things to."

"Perhaps," said Caturamon. "But equally we are different and you would do to remember it."

"You know, for a dog – you aren't very dog-like," Guilmon said.

Caturamon looked offended. "And what is that supposed to mean?" he demanded.

"I mean that all the dogs I've seen in the human universe are almost always really playful," Guilmon laughed. "Except the growly ones that is. But the playful ones are really nice and you can throw balls for them and race them to try and get it first – they always win though. And they like to run around and bark and chase squirrels, which I like because I like doing all of those things too."

"What is a squirrel?" asked Caturamon.

"You've never chased squirrels?" Guilmon asked. "Wow, you must have a really boring life."

Caturamon snorted and then said, "Sometimes. But boring or not, it is still important."

"Maybe you should cut loose a bit more," Guilmon said, turning to leave. "You can always come and talk with us if you want to."

"I'll consider it," Caturamon replied, and turned to look back at the skyline.

"Oh, by the way," Guilmon said, turning back and causing Caturamon to look back at him in turn. "I'm sorry I destroyed you. So is Takato. We wouldn't have done it if you hadn't been threatening our friends. You were the last proper Deva – we're sorry we killed you all."

With that, Guilmon turned back and walked towards the other Tamed Digimon and the humans, who were listening to a story from Sandiramon that told of the previous attacks by Parallelmon. Caturamon watched him go in slight bemusement. He didn't think he'd ever encountered anything like Guilmon before. Or any of the Tamers it seemed.

He could see quite plainly that, apart from the Devas who were still extremely hostile, the Tamers bore absolutely no ill will to any of them. He could see the twins leaning against Mihiramon's side – the two of them had fallen asleep thanks to the relaxing rise and fall of the tiger Deva's abdomen. Sinduramon was perched between Kazu and Kenta and apart from the fact the two of them occasionally tickled him with his own feathers he seemed perfectly at ease there.

And Guilmon had sounded so sincere when he spoke to him. Caturamon could plainly see that they were not bad guys and never had been. So why was he still unsure what to be making of the group? Was he, like Indramon, clinging to the former thought that they were disgusting vermin to be eradicated like he had before, even if it wasn't as firmly.

Caturamon realised that he probably was, and, after a couple of moments of thinking, he stood up and hopped down from his boulder, padding slowly over to the group and settling down on his hindquarters behind Jeri, listening to what Sandiramon was saying as well. He exchanged a brief nod with Mihiramon and the tiger Deva smirked at him. Caturamon rolled his eyes and lay down in an attempt to integrate with them. The Sovereigns were adamant that they were close allies, so he would try and get used to their presence.

Who knew, maybe he too would start to think of them as friends.

But Caturamon knew that others were going to be harder to convince. As he lay there, his sensitive ears picked up the faint sound of Makuramon muttering, "Oh look. There goes another one of us to their side. We're falling like wheat."

Although Caturamon's face was almost permanently a smirk anyway, he smirked even wider. Anything that irritated Makuramon was good enough for him. The monkey's head was far too big, both literally and figuratively.

* * *

The following day, the search was beginning in earnest once more. While the ground forces followed the direction of the arrow to the best of their abilities, Ai and Mako were beginning to grow a little restless as their search for Impmon continued to come up with nothing. For that reason, Majiramon offered to take them with him as he scouted from the air with the aid of the other two airborne Devas. Ai and Mako eagerly accepted.

And that was why, they were soon flying high above the Desert level holding onto the antlers of the moustached dragon Deva as he undulated through the air. The flapping on wings could be heard nearby, as Mihiramon was flying not far away, alternately soaring and flapping to keep himself along. In an obscure way, the tiger Deva's legs seemed to move as if he were running along the ground as well whenever he flapped his wings, almost as if he were dashing on air.

When Ai and Mako asked about it, Mihiramon glanced down at his moving legs and said, "You know, I never noticed it before."

Sinduramon the rooster flew not far away, despite the fact he looked like he should be dropping like a stone, especially since his body was encased in a metal sphere that made it look like he shouldn't possibly be in the air. Every now and again, the rooster's caw seemed to echo across the desert, as if trying to call Impmon out of hiding.

It was now that Ai and Mako began to seriously get a sense of just how big the desert level of the Digital World. They knew it was large but from so high up, where it still stretched from horizon to horizon, further than the eye could see, the enormity of their task crashed down on the two of them.

"How are we supposed to find Impmon in all of this?" asked Mako, biting his lip sadly. "It's just too big. It's like... I dunno... trying to search the entire ocean for just one particular fish."

"We may have to do just that," Mihiramon called across to them. "Search the ocean, I mean. It's not often that a non-ocean going Digimon spends much time in the great waters but as you know, it is possible to enter it, even for an air-breather like you. He could be there as well."

"We'll find him somehow," said Majiramon. "From what I heard of Impmon, he's not an incredibly subtle being. He'll be out there somewhere and when we find him, we can end the conflict."

"Yes, but is that a good thing?" asked Sinduramon. "Not being subtle I mean. I'm willing to bet that GranDracmon still has an inkling of where he is. Impmon might be fighting against some of his minions as we speak."

"Oh, don't say that," Ai said. "I hate the thought of him being in a battle while we're up here and can't help him."

"I apologise," Sinduramon said. "I am just trying to be realistic."

"And if he is in a battle," said Mihiramon. "We'll go charging in and help once we track him down. And we will track him down – there's gotta be somebody out there who knows where Impmon is or has at least seen him recently so we can know we're looking in the right place."

"Yes," Majiramon agreed. "But which of the six levels besides the Sovereigns' level is he on. If I were to guess, he wouldn't stay on this level for any longer than necessary. The desert level is not a place to be if you want to hide. Yes, it's big, but you can be easily seen for miles."

"Does that mean we've been searching for nothing all this time?" asked Mako.

"I didn't say that," Majiramon said, having to remind himself not to shake his head lest he accidentally send his passengers flying off. "I don't know what's going on in Impmon's head so it's entirely possible that he's still here for some reason."

"Majiramon, you've got a Data Stream coming in from the left," Sinduramon called across to him. The dragon glanced in said direction and spotted the pink strip of data that would hit him if he maintained his present course. Majiramon dropped back for a few seconds and swooped around the Data Stream, then continued on his way as if nothing had happened.

"Still, it's doubtful that he is here," said Mihiramon. "Nobody with a sane mind would stay here unless they had no better options."

"Check the arrow again, kids," Sinduramon replied. "Let's make sure we're going in the right direction."

Ai picked up the D-Arc and displayed the tracking function once again. She nodded and said, "Yep. This thing says that he's still in that dire... Hey! What the...!" Ai cried out in surprise as she saw the arrow suddenly swing in another direction almost immediately, swinging at a one-hundred and ten degree angle to where it was originally pointing and going off in another direction entirely.

"What happened?" Mako asked, staring at the arrow. "Did we just fly straight past him or something?"

"The arrow moved," Ai informed the three airborne Deva. "It's pointing in another direction entirely now."

"Well, that's just great," Mihiramon griped. "Wherever he was, he must have just taken a Data Stream. If he keeps jumping from place to place like this it is not going to do us any favours."

"Yeah," Sinudramon agreed. "You know what I think?"

"You're going to tell us," Majiramon replied.

"I think we're not covering enough ground," the rooster stated simply. "There are a lot of us, and we're all wandering around in what's basically one big group if you don't include our scout force as a group. We'd probably be doing much better if we all split up."

"I was thinking the same thing," said Mihiramon. "But can we do that without adding risk to what we were doing. If we're going up against GranDracmon's forces then it would be important to stick together and watch one another's backs in a battle situation."

"Yeah, like Indramon and Makuramon are going to watch the backs of any of the Tamers," snorted Majiramon, smoke billowing out of his nostrils and momentarily engulfing Ai and Mako as he did (the Twins didn't complain – they thought it was cool.) "When battle breaks out, Makuramon will just run hiding with his tail between his legs and Indramon might backstab one of the Tamers."

"There is that," Mihiramon nodded. "Maybe we would all benefit from splitting up a little. Then we can send a search party to different levels of the Digital World. He's on one of them. We just have to find him."

"Come on," Sinduramon called as he tilted his wings and swooped back the way he'd come. "Let's go back to the others."

Mihiramon and Majiramon quickly followed the rooster, Mihiramon looping over onto his back and flipping back onto his front to change direction, while Majiramon seemed to snake through the air, turning around head-first so that to start with his front end and back end were going in opposite direction before his back end swerved around to join the rest of his body. The group hurriedly flew back towards where the others would be scouring the area from the ground.

* * *

Things were as tense as ever from the ground. There was mostly silence as the group continued to walk in the same direction. Vikaralamon made a loud scooping sound as he giant form seemed to plough through the sand, leaving a giant furrow like a huge snail-trail behind him as he went.

Guilmon was out in front, sniffing the ground and the air alternately and trying to detect any sign of Impmon's scent, but as of yet he had yet to catch anything familiar. The others moved along in front of him, fanned out in a line like some kind of living, moving barricade, stopping everything from slipping past them. Caturamon and Leomon, who had still not de-digivolved back to Elecmon for a number of days, were also dashing out ahead, moving back and forth as they scoured the ground.

Cyberdramon glanced into the air and momentarily sniffed it, following Guilmon's example as he tried to locate Impmon. At present, the dragon was possibly one of the most eager to find him, although whether this was out of concern for him or due to the fact that when they did find Impmon he would be able to provide them with an enormous fight was unclear. But, as it was, Cyberdramon was throwing all of his efforts into the search.

Suddenly, something caught Cyberdramon in the back hard enough to knock him forward a few steps. He whirled around to find Indramon standing over him, quietly chuckling to himself. "Oops," the horse said, sarcasm dripping from his voice. "Sorry. Didn't see you there."

Cyberdramon growled angrily, but forced himself to do nothing about it. He knew that Indramon was trying to irritate him and while it was mostly definitely working, he had a more immediate concern at the moment and that was finding Impmon and not paying attention to an irritating donkey. Cyberdramon turned around and began to walk away, eyes returning to the horizon.

But then, he heard Indramon say, "I see your slavedriving Tamer has gotten you completely under his thumb. How pathetic, for such a Digimon such as you to be suppressed by an utter weakling like that bag of flesh."

Cyberdramon's fist clenched and his snarl rose in pitch. Indramon laughed and added, "You all deserve to be purged from existence, especially your filthy little brats that you travel around with, following them around like lost Baby Digimon."

That did it. Cyberdramon growled and whipped around, launching himself at the sneering Deva and delivering a thrashing blow to his snout. Indramon was actually surprised by the strength behind the attack and went toppling over onto the sand, crashing onto his back. Cyberdramon growled and leapt on top of him like a maniacal demon, lashing out with his fists once more and delivering another blow to the side of Indramon's head, dazing the horse for a moment.

The dragon's claws began to glow green as he raised them into the air, leaving slashes of green behind them in the air where they momentarily deleted the fabric of the Digital World in those spots before it glued itself back together and he prepared to unleashing a Desolation Claw at the horse, who wasn't looking quite so smug anymore.

But it was at this moment that the long, green whip of Ryo's D-Arc lashed out and curled itself around Cyberdramon's arm. Cyberdramon cried out and growled angrily at being denied to use the attack, turning and growling at the young boy who was holding the whip taut. "No, Cyberdramon," Ryo yelled. "Ignore him and his attempts to annoy you. The only thing you're doing is letting him succeed with his intentions. We're supposed to be allies with him, so you have to set an example."

"You see," Indramon crowed. "You are a slave. Your human even controls you with a whip. Oh the shame of it."

Cyberdramon snarled in rage, but he reluctantly obeyed Ryo, stepping off Indramon's chest and moving back to allow him up, although he did stand protectively in front of Ryo as Indramon got to his feet.

"And yet you still move to defend him with your life," Indramon snorted. "Why would you throw your life away for such an insignificant little..."

"That's enough, Indramon," roared Vajramon as the Ox galloped over to where they were standing. "Drop the petty act this instant, or I shall inform the Sovereigns of your actions."

"Ha!" Indramon laughed. "Of course you would. They have you wrapped around their fingers as much as they do their own partners, Vajramon. Look at us. We were once the proud and mighty Devas that the Digital World looked up to. Now, what are we? No more than little servants sent out into the world to work alongside puny weaklings to find another puny weakling? What have we come to?"

"I'm getting seriously tired of listening to you and your discrimination against human-kind," Vajramon growled.

"We all are," Caturamon said, as he approached as well.

"And you, Caturamon," Indramon said. "You're no better than the others now. You have finally fallen in amongst the group of the humans. You disgust me."

"Why do you hate us so much?" asked Takato, a little angrily. "Aside from the fact we defeated you, we've done nothing to make you hate us. Even Zhuqiaomon has lightened up on us more than you have."

"He has no real reason to hate you," Caturamon said. "He always was a stubborn one. The most stubborn of us all. Stubborn as a mule, in fact."

"How very apt," Sandiramon hissed.

"Just look at you all," Indramon shouted. "Siding with these humans against me, your comrade, and one who has been your comrade for years. Who will be the next to fall, hmm? Will it be you Kumbhiramon? Will you succumb to the same weakness as most of the others and side with these humans?"

"I want no part of this argument," Kumbhiramon replied. "But if you past know what I think, I'm beginning to see why our masters think so highly of these so-called puny humans. They're certainly a lot more cohesive as a group than we ever were, and I know all about working as a group."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence Rat-boy," said Kazu.

Kumbhiramon's eye twitched and said, "Although I could do without the name-calling," pointedly. Kenta elbowed Kazu in the ribs to remind him that any ally amongst the Devas was a valuable one."

"So..." Indramon said slowly. "Even you and your cockiness has turned over to the side of the humans."

"Oh," Kumbhiramon flared up immediately and squared up to the much taller Deva. "So it's insults now, is it Indramon. Well, I can think of a few for you too, you pompous, haughty, narcissistic overzealous ass!"

"Wow, he's good," Kenta observed. "And the ass part was appropriate in two ways."

"Is that what you think of me?" Indramon glared, though it was difficult to tell through his mane.

"All that and more," Kumbhiramon said. "In fact, yeah. I'm gonna side with the humans now just to irritate you. How do you like that?"

"Er..." Jeri said. "I'm not entirely sure whether to take that as a good thing or not."

"Well, I say take as a good thing and forget about the reason why Kumbhiramon has joined you," Pajiramon said to her quietly. "He may be a bit eccentric at times but he is loyal to his allies."

"Sounds like another rodent we know," Kazu said to Kenta.

"Who?" Kenta asked, confused.

Kazu rolled his eyes and said, "Terriermon."

"Terriermon's a rabbit," Kenta said. "Rabbits aren't rodents. They're lagomorphs."

"Oh, who cares," Kazu snorted derisively.

"And what of you, Vikaralamon?" asked Indramon. "And you Makuramon? Are you turning against me in order to favour these humans as well?"

"Not a chance," Makuramon said angrily. "They foiled me at every turn when we faced each other last time and I'm not about to forget that! Rest assured, Indramon. I am as disgusted as you are by our alliance with them."

"Well, it's good to know that I am not the only one who has not taken leave of his senses," Indramon nodded. "And Vikaralamon? Have you been having second thoughts about these humans and wondering whether or not we should 'get to know them,'" he sneered contemptuously at that last bit.

Vikaralamon turned his whole body around like some kind of huge tank so that he could look at Indramon. "No, I have not," he said in his low, growling tone of voice. "I cannot see why our fellow Devas have become so friendly with them considering what they did to us in the past."

"Good," Indramon said.

"However," Vikaralamon added pointedly. "I do think we should work with them. The Sovereigns have commanded us to, and you are questioning their judgement and disobeying their instructions with this tirade of yours, Indramon. I suggest you quite while your ahead and get on with the job we have been given."

"I cannot believe this," Indramon cried out. "How can you take that attitude, Vikaralamon? You watch, continue down that road and you'll be worshipping the ground they walk on within a week like the rest of our so-called comrades..."

"I'VE HEARD ENOUGH FROM YOU!" Vajramon shouted and charged Indramon, lowering his horned head and galloping forward like the bull he was. Indramon was startled by the attack and stepped back, but Vajramon rammed into him in a furious slam that knocked the horse several metres before he crashed to the ground. Vajramon snorted and folded his arms, hoofing the ground challengingly as Indramon pushed himself back onto his feet.

"So, it's a fight you want is it, Vajramon?" the Horse sneered. "Well, if that is the case," he spread his arms and the straps holding his huge horn to his back disintegrated, allowing it to rise into the air and levitate over his head, where he grabbed it in his hooves. "Then it's a fight you will get."

"Don't point that thing at me," Vajramon growled threateningly, drawing the swords from the scabbards on his back and holding them in front of him threateningly. "Or else you'll be asking for it."

"You started this," Indramon pointed out. "And I'll finish it."

"Stop it, you two," Sandiramon hissed angrily, sliding up to the two of them on his narrow, serpentine belly. "We have more urgent things to be doing than fighting one another."

"Tell him that," Vajramon growled. "He's the one that pointed the weapon first."

As he spoke, Indramon was pulling the horn towards his mouth and blew into it with immense lung capacity. Vajramon whirled around as he saw a huge beam of explosive energy surge out of the horn towards him as Indramon also shouted **"HORN OF DESOLATION!"** Vajramon jumped backwards to avoid the brunt of the blow and slashed his swords, dissipating the rest of the attack that would hit him before it did so.

"A cheap shot, huh?" Vajramon growled. "I'll teach you to attack someone when they are not paying full attention." He dashed forwards and slashed his swords with a shout of **"DEVA BLADE!"** which sent out energy blades from the swords at the Horse Deva. Indramon smirked and inhaled through the horn, sucking up the attack into the huge, golden device, where it vanished as if nothing had happened. Vajramon flung a lot more of the same attacks at Indramon but the result was the same.

"Stop hiding behind that infernal device, you coward!" Vajramon cried, infuriated.

"Vajramon, that's enough," Pajiramon approached him. "You are not proving anything with this pointless fighting."

"Stay out of this, Pajiramon!" Vajramon growled. "I've been itching for a scrap at him for some time. Block this, pony-boy. **TERRA BLADE!"** He slammed his blades into the ground and generated two huge fissures from each one that whooshed towards Indramon and split the ground from underneath him. Indramon stumbled backwards but managed to keep his footing. Vajramon charged towards him, ready to tackle him again. Indramon quickly brought his horn downwards like a huge club, but Vajramon sheathed his swords and grabbed the horn in his hands.

The Tamers eyes widened at Vajramon's impressive strength – the horn was about as large as he was and he stopped it with minimal effort. Vajramon yanked the horn out of the startled Indramon's grasp and tossed it aside, lunging forwards to ram him again. Indramon neighed in anger as he was forced back and swung a huge golden hoof like a club, slamming Vajramon in the side, and knocking him off his feet. But the ox was up again quickly and charged again, bringing his fists into play as he tried to muscle Indramon over.

The Tamers watched in abject horror and fascination as the two went at it blow for blow, stepping back and swinging with their mighty punches as they slammed and battered at one another's defences, neither willing to back down from the fight.

"Oh my," Guardromon observed as the two pushed the other back and forth, trading furious blows. "Those two sure know how to pick a fight with one another. I don't think I've ever seen such a violent punching contest."

"Stop it!" Jeri shouted towards the two of them. "Stop fighting right now! We have to work together like Vikaralamon said!"

"She's right!" shouted Ryo, as Indramon bore down on him backwards. "Think about Antylamon! Would she have wanted you to fight one another like this...?"

"Ryo! Look out!" Kenta cried as the horse Deva raised a foot that would have mashed Ryo into the floor. Cyberdramon hooked his claws into the back of Ryo's shirt and jerked his Tamer out of the way, flying the young boy to safety.

"Ryo's right!" Takato cried. "Digimon and Humans can work together, but only if the Digimon work together between themselves as well. Come on guys, break up the fighting."

"No human tells me what to do!" Indramon cried, as he lashed towards Vajramon, who ducked and delivered a furious punch to the horse's stomach, then reared up to drive his front hooves into the same spot.

"Stop being so biased!" Leomon shouted back. "Can you not just call a temporary cease-fire until we find Impmon and go our separate ways at the very least? This is not how warrior's are supposed to behave."

"I do not believe they are listening," Guardromon sighed.

"Gee, really?" Kazu asked. "That's funny, 'cause I could have sworn we were getting through to them. Thanks for letting me know."

"You're welcome, Kazu," Guardromon missed the sarcasm completely. "I am glad to be of service."

As Kazu palmed his face, Pajiramon growled in annoyance at the petty behaviour of her fellow Devas. "This is ridiculous," she said. "When they start fighting like this then there is no negotiating with either of them. They have to be broken apart by force."

"We're sorry we caused this," said Jeri.

"You caused nothing," Sandiramon shook his hooded head. "It is Indramon's priggishness and Vajramon's bullheadedness that caused this."

"So many horse and ox puns today," murmured Kenta.

"But, sadly, Pajiramon is right," said Sandiramon. "Normally one of the Sovereigns is on hand to break them up but it seems it is up to us this time." He turned back to the fighting pair, watching as Vajramon ducked under a swing from Indramon but was two slow to avoid the next which bashed him in the side of the head, creating something like a lout _dong_ noise against the Ox Deva's horn, and sending the bull reeling. Indramon raised his huge arms to hammer Vajramon into the floor, but before he could drop them on the ox, Pajiramon stepped in.

A pair of yellow streaks flitted past Indramon's face that startled him into taking a step backwards. He glanced at Pajiramon, who had fired a precise warning shot from her crossbow. "Pack it in, both of you," she warned them. But evidently Vajramon was not listening as he bellowed loudly and charged again. Frowning in irritation, Pajiramon raised herself on her hind hooves and brought the fore ones crashing into the ground with a cry of **"THUNDER STOMP!"**

The ground shook slightly and sand slid everywhere, but the tremor wasn't quite as violent as they others had expected it to be. Indramon and Vajramon only stumbled momentarily before striking at one another again. Pajiramon groaned and glanced down at her hooves.

"It's no good," she said. "This sand is softening my attack so it's not as powerful as it should be. We'll have to separate them by another means."

"How are we going to do that?" asked Kazu. "Those two are going at it like championship boxers."

Sandiramon and Pajiramon glanced at one another, then they both sighed and said, "We'll have to do it," at the exact same time.

"Do what?" asked Takato, confused.

"The most unpleasant form of stopping someone in their tracks we have," said Sandiramon. "But in order for it to work completely, we still have to separate the two of them beyond the reach of the other. Kumbhiramon," the Snake turned to the Rat. "Can you try and keep them from causing too much damage to one another?"

"I can try," Kumbhiramon said. **"DEVA CLONE!"** he added, and suddenly there were six of the odd, winged rats standing where there had previously been one. The six of them leapt into the action and darted backwards and forwards between the brawling Devas, leaping all around them in attempts to distract the two of them from the fighting. It seemed to work – both Indramon and Vajramon had their attention stolen as they were about to throw punches, and several times had pulled up from a blow as a Kumbhiramon clone whooshed between them. Kumbhiramon was certainly an agile little rat.

"Okay," said Pajiramon. "We need to come up with a plan of some kind, to force them apart."

"That doesn't sound easy," said Jeri.

"It isn't," said Sandiramon. "But I daresay we can do something if we call pool our minds together."

"I believe I know a way," said Caturamon. "If I can get up high enough somehow, I should be able to separate them on my own. But I can't jump that high on my own and there's nothing to jump off around this area."

"Then allow me to assist you," said Leomon, kneeling down and cupping his giant hands to making a step. "I've been told I have quite a good throwing arm," he added.

"Alright," nodded Caturamon. "But I will also need them to know that I'm coming down towards them, so we'll need something that will draw their attention upwards as I am falling. But how are we going to do that?"

"It would need to be something big to grab the attention of those two," said Kenta.

"Cyberdramon's Desolation Claw produces quite a light show," said Ryo. "Maybe we could use that, but it still needs to hit something before it can do that."

"Any volunteers?" asked Kazu, dryly.

"No, that could work," said Sandiramon. "If we all pool our attacks and launch them above their heads, then we can provide a large target for Cyberdramon. Then he can hit them with his Desolation Claw."

"It's a plan," said Caturamon, hackles rising as he lowered himself to the ground. "Ready Leomon?"

"Ready," the bipedal lion replied grimly, interlacing his fingers again. Caturamon leapt into action, bounding towards the Champion Digimon and leaping into the huge palms of his hands, his smaller body planting all four feet at once into the palms. With a surge of strength, Leomon flung the Dog Deva skyward, which when combined with Caturamon's own jump took him a long way into the sky.

"Now everyone!" Sandiramon cried. **"VENOM AXE!"** he spat his poisonous weapon into the air above the clashing horse, rat and ox.

"**PYRO SPHERE!"** Guilmon cried, launching his large, red orb of energy.

"**GUARDIAN BARRAGE!"** Guardromon shouted, launching his whistling missiles.

"**KAHUNA WAVES!"** MarineAngemon squeaked, spitting out his heart shaped bubbles.

"**TREASURE BOW!"** Pajiramon hollered, firing a volley of crossbow-bolts.

"**FIST OF THE BEAST KING!"** Leomon added as he got back to his feet and threw the lion's head of energy from his glowing fist after the other attacks.

The six attacks soared around one another as they flew into the air. Cyberdramon growled and spread his arms, his claws glowing green once more as he growled loudly and slashed them through the air, before throwing his claws outwards with a cry of **"DESOLATION CLAW!"**

The pulses of energy that flew from his claws engulfed the other six attacks and blew them to data – the more physical attacks like Guardromon's and Sanidramon's disintegrating on contact with the attack from the Cyborg Dragon. The huge explosion that followed the collision of the attacks, as well as the sparking and multitudes of flashing lights that were created by the Desolation Claw were more than enough to draw Indramon and Vajramon's attention upwards.

"What the...?" Vajramon cried. "What's going...?"

Suddenly Caturamon blew through the smoke right above them, dropping towards them at high speed. Kumbhiramon's six selves instantly darted out of the way, and both Indramon and Vajramon stared in disbelief as the Dog Deva morphed into his alternate form, an enormous, metallic mallet.

"**TREASURE HAMMER!"** cried Caturamon as he dropped towards them. Vajramon and Indramon immediately leapt apart, jumping out of the way as Caturamon landed between them with an almighty crash that shook the ground and probably would have been more violent were it not for the sand absorbing a large proportion of the shock.

"Hey!" Vajramon bellowed. "What's the big idea, Caturamon?"

Caturamon ignored the ox and shifted back into his dog form, before dashing out of the way and shouting, "Now Vikaralamon!"

Vajramon and Indramon both looked like they were going to charge each other again, when the enormous wild boar standing not far away from them opened his enormous mouth and roared, **"BOAR BOG!"** A thick, gelatinous and extremely sticky goo poured out of his mouth and engulfed both Indramon and Vajramon. Startled, they struggled against the thick, gloopy mass, but it held in place, stopping them in their tracks with only their heads and shoulders visible above the substance.

"What are you doing, Vikaralamon?" shouted Indramon. "Release me at once!"

Vikaralamon made no reply, the strange ooze still trailing from the trapped hoofed Devas into his mouth.

Sandiramon slithered over to the stuck pair and said, "I am sorry for having to resort to such measures but perhaps now that you aren't trying to tear each other's throats out, you will be more willing to listen to me. The two of you must stop fighting, this instant. We are supposed to be working for the Sovereigns. GranDracmon is the one we should be fighting against, not each other. Vajramon, I know you start out with good-ish intentions, but then you went too far. Indramon, you went too far from the start."

Vajramon and Indramon glared at each other and huffed.

"Now, Vikaralamon will release you if you both promise to stop fighting and not pick up this brawl again in the near future," the Snake continued. "It doesn't help. It just wastes time."

"Fine," Vajramon said. "I'll leave him alone if he leaves me alone."

"Likewise," Indramon growled, a little more forced than Vajramon. "Now release us."

As the goopy stuff began to slid off them and re-enter Vikaralamon's mouth, Caturamon settle back on his hindquarters and said, "Well, at least one good thing came from all of that."

"And what was that?" asked Ryo.

Caturamon smirked and said, "It proved that we can fight together after all – we Devas and you Tamers can work as a group, or at least most of us can," he glowered at Makuramon, who was notably the only Digimon there that had not made any effort whatsoever to break up the fight. The Monkey Deva took a few moments to notice the Dog Deva scowling at him, and when he did, he immediately went "MA-CA!" and darted away.

"Indeed," said Leomon. "It's just a shame that our first test of comradeship had to be against some of our own force."

"Yes," Caturamon nodded. "But hopefully we will not have to resort to doing that again."

"What in the Digital World did we miss when we were flying up there?" called a voice from above. Majiramon swooped overhead and alighted on the ground nearby, with Mihiramon and Sinduramon whooshing to the ground not far away and settling down with swirls of sand kicked up by their wings before they were folded against their sides.

"Looks like there was a scuffle of some sort," Sinduramon observed, noticing the stirred up sand and huge depressions in it that indicated the fight that had just happened. "You guys weren't attacked were you?"

"No, nothing like that," said Pajiramon, folding her arms. "It was just Indramon and Vajramon facing off against one another."

"Again?" Mihiramon said, deadpan.

"Again," Pajiramon confirmed.

"I promised that I wouldn't do it again," Vajramon muttered, looking more sheepish that Pajiramon, who _was_ a sheep.

"See that you don't," Pajiramon replied, whacking Vajramon in the head with her crossbow. It caused no damage but the bull looked a little offended.

"Are you guys alright up there?" Jeri called up to Ai and Mako from their perch on Majiramon's head.

"Yeah, we're okay," said Ai. "Although we have a small problem. Impmon's moved again. The arrow is pointing in another direction now."

Guilmon sat down and his bat-ear things sagged slightly. "Oh," he moaned. "Does that mean we have to start all over again? My feet have been killing me. I'm not built for walking long distances without lots of bread to eat."

"I didn't design you specifically with bread in mind, Guilmon," Takato said. "But he's right. What are we supposed to do now? Just double back on ourselves. That just seems like such a big waste."

"Well, we thought it would be a good idea to split up," said Majiramon. "Each group of us taking a different level. But now that I've heard we've had a little spat while we were away, I think splitting up is an even better idea than before."

"What do you suggest, Majiramon?" asked Ryo.

"I think that we should split into three groups," the Dragon Deva replied. "That way we'll be able to cover three of the other five levels. There should be some Tamers in each group and some Devas in each group too."

"Shotgun not in the same group as Indramon or Makuramon," Kazu said immediately.

"That suits me just fine," Makuramon growled.

"I think that would suit everyone just fine," said Ryo. "We'll sort out who goes in which group later on, but I think Majiramon is right. We've got so much Digital World left to look and only so much time. We're in a race against GranDracmon and, at the moment, we are losing."

"We should go for the three largest levels besides this one," said Majiramon. "Those are the Prairie Level, the Ocean Level and the Forest Level respectively. It doesn't really matter who goes in which group, but Ai and Mako should definitely go to the Prairie Level. It is the second-biggest by quite some way and their D-Arc will help narrow down the search of that level."

"Alright," said Jeri. "I'll go with them. If they want me to come along."

"That sounds good to me," Mako confirmed – the twins seemed to have adopted Jeri as some sort of mother figure, and Jeri didn't mind at all. She knew how to handle kids, and Ai and Mako were much more mature than her younger half-brother."

"We should get some rest for now," said Sandiramon. "Because, whether we like it or not, the odds are the search will still be a long one."

* * *

I really enjoyed doing this chapter because of the sheer number of characters in it, and the best part of it is that I managed to give each of them, except MarineAngemon and Cyberdramon who don't say much anyway, at least two lines in it. The only problem is that a lot of the Deva's names are quite similar, so if there are any mistakes where I mixed up Sandiramon with Sinduramon or anything like that, then I apologise.

And I am looking forward to the next arc hugely. And I have been for some time.

I hope you enjoyed your ideas being brought to the site, **megacoldfusion**.

And now, this story is 50% PERCENT DONE! COWABUNGA! Now, I just need to do the equivalent of all of this again and I'll be done. I'm looking forward to it.

See you soon. And please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

Since the Digimon and the Tamers arrived in the Star Wars universe, they've encountered many dangerous creatures – Gutkurr, Acklay, Sarlacc, Nexu, Katarns and more besides. But they have yet to encounter the galaxy's most dangerous life-form. The next arc will be dedicated to that creature – the Zillo Beast.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 111 : Discovery on Malastare**


	111. Discovery on Malastare

The time of the one chapter per day has once again arisen. I want everyone to remember that, because if I haven't updated once a day until the 25th of May without giving a very good reason beforehand, then you can all send me angry PMs asking me what the heck I've been doing. I'm trying to get two arcs done before I have to go home for the summer holidays at the end of the month, and since I have literally no other work I should be doing since I've done all exams and assignments that means I should be able to do it.

Anyway, if you'd like to keep reading. This next arc should prove to be _very_ interesting. And very exciting too if I can get away with it.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 111:- Discovery on Malastare**

* * *

Most of the time, life as a member of the Galactic Senate was actually remarkably boring. The endless debates about seemingly inconsequential things seemed to drag on you for all hours of the day, and of course skipping them was completely out of the question if you wanted to remain in office.

Most of the time you didn't even get to voice your own opinion, as the debating mostly consisted of those who were directly involved in the problem. But you had to listen to these problems and the arguments and the counter-arguments and the counter-arguments for that and so on and so on until you were struggling to remain awake, but you couldn't fall asleep because you had to decide which side of the argument you were going to vote for.

Yes, sometimes an actual interesting case cropped up, something that might grab your attention and hold it for a good long while as the tenseness mounted, but these occasions were getting a little bit rarer these days. The Separatist threat seemed to be vanishing bit by bit, and less planets were being invaded nowadays. And even many of the major decisions that involved the war were becoming a little less interesting, but that was mostly because they would drag on and on and on for hours and sometimes even days at a time. The argument about whether or not they should deregulate the banks had taken seemingly forever, almost an entire week of nonstop arguments, and when people hadn't been arguing and the Senate hadn't been in session, you received house calls so that you could be told the same thing over and over again, even though you just heard it in the Senate session beforehand.

Sometimes, Senator Chuchi wondered why she had decided to go into office at all.

Of course, she would remind herself of the answer straight away – so that she could her part. So that she could help the people of Pantora in any way that she could, and serve the Republic too. So that she could, hopefully, do some good. She wanted nothing more than to help those who needed it.

But Chuchi knew that this was a view shared by remarkably few Senators nowadays. It was sad really, how many people in power seemed to vest more in their own interests than the interests of their people. There were those like Senator Lott Dodd, who only sought to fill their own pockets. And, thank the Force, there were Senators like Amidala and Organa that still thought as selflessly as they could and only considered the needs of the people. And then there were the people like Senator Free Taa who seemed to care about his people to a degree, but still thought about himself a lot more than he probably should.

Overall, Chuchi was glad that she knew what she wanted. It meant that she could make her decision in the votes early, and she often found herself taking the same side as Padmé and Bail. In fact, Chuchi couldn't remember the last time she hadn't – she agreed with everything they strived for. But that didn't stop the Senators from other sides trying to coerce her into joining their sides. The number of times she had received bribes was literally disgusting. She turned them down, of course, no matter how high the offer was. She wasn't some Bounty Hunter loyal to the credits. She was a servant of the Republic, and the Republic always came first.

It was a shame that her voice counted for comparatively little in the Republic compared to other Senators like Bail and Padmé, who both had an extraordinary amount of influence amongst the rest of the Senate. But Chuchi was still relatively young as a Senator. She'd only become Pantora's new Senator a couple of months before the Clone Wars had started, and it had proved to be a very bad time to become a Senator. But the Clone War had cropped up almost out of nowhere – there was no way that she could have known about it.

So, yes, life as a Senator could sometimes be extraordinarily dull. Unless of course you were Padmé Amidala, and you found yourself in trouble almost every other week. But things like that almost never happened to Chuchi and sometimes she wished they would. It might liven up her life a little, even if it was dangerous.

But the young Pantoran forced herself not to think about it as she paced back and forth in her office, massaging her forehead with one gloved hand. She was wearing her usual dark blue clothing, boots and gloves, and her long purple hair was tied around her head, held up with her normal golden headdress. She tended to save the more fancy clothing she had for special occasions, like when she had addressed the Senate about the blockade of Pantora.

She was pacing because she was attempting to clear her head a little. She'd just received a visit from Senator Deechi, who had been trying to convince her to change her mind about the bill to cut the numbers of clone troopers to the battle field. Now this was an argument that had been raging on and off for the past few months. The last time, which had almost culminated with the death of Onaconda Farr at the hands of his own aide, had practically vanished off the charts for some reason, as if it had been forgotten or cast aside in favour of something less important, and now it was back in the air.

Chuchi had voted once again for the option to cut the funds, knowing that the Republic was already paying a ridiculous amount of money to keep the army going, while the Separatist threat still seemed to be shrinking. For some reason, despite the best efforts of many Senators, peace negotiations with the Separatists just were not being introduced. It was extremely frustrating.

And Chuchi had another problem weighing on her shoulders as well, which had cropped up a little more recently. The Pantorans of her native homeworld were, despite being released of the blockade of the Trade Federation, complaining about a myriad of minor problems that the Senate were not sorting out because they had vastly more important things to consider.

Chuchi knew that many Pantoran dignitaries could be extremely stuck-up and rather self-centred people. That was actually one of the reason the populace had elected her to be their Senator – because she _wasn't_ like that. But the more important Pantorans seemed to want what they wanted when they wanted it, regardless of what else was going on.

_Hmmph,_ Chuchi thought to herself as that thought popped into her head again. _Maybe I should invite those people over to see what it's like here on Coruscant. If they saw the enormity of what I have to do here then they might stop thinking about themselves and about people worse off than them. Then again, that's not always likely. Thank goodness Chairman Papanoida and his family aren't like that either, otherwise I would have a really difficult job on my hands. More difficult than what I have anyway_.

The thought of Papanoida turned Chuchi's mind to her most recent adventure... or at least as close to an adventure as she'd ever gotten. She'd only found herself in really tense situations three times during her career as a Senator, and she was quite proud of the fact that in two of those times she had managed to find a peaceful resolution.

First, there had been the war against their neighbours – the Talz, started by their former Chairman Cho, due to his inability to recognise the Talz as people. He had declared war on the "savages," believing he had done the right thing, but after his death Chuchi had been able to salvage, repair and begin new negotiations between the Talz and the Pantorans. Then there had been the situation where the Separatists had attempted to take Pantora by force. Chuchi hadn't expected to accomplish that one peacefully, but Master Shaak Ti had been able to put a stop to it (as had Taomon, but Chuchi didn't know that part).

And then, of course, there had been the time very recently, when she had had to rescue Chairman's Papanoida's daughter, Chi Eekway, from the clutches of the Trade Federation. That had been quite an exciting point in her life. She had worked alongside Ahsoka, infiltrating the Separatist prison level and searching the cells for any sign of the missing girl. When they had found her, they had been able to leave with her due to the combined efforts of Ahsoka's skill with a lightsaber to take out a bunch of Super Battle Droids, and Chuchi's negotiations, which had managed to remove the blockade of Pantora at the same time.

Chuchi stopped pacing and moved over to her desk, perching herself on it as she fondly remembered the day she had first met Ahsoka. She had been brand new in the Senate building at the time, and was just finding her feet, getting to know the interior of the place. She had been walking through the corridors, glancing about her and slightly awed by everything around her, watching the other Senators stride purposefully about, knowing exactly where they were going at all time.

It was because she had been taking in the striding of the other Senators that her eye picked up another being who looked like she didn't know what she was doing. That being had been Ahsoka, who had been a little shorter and had shorter lekku than she did now. The young Togruta had looked like she was trying to catch the attention of some Senators walking past her but they either didn't hear her or ignored her.

Chuchi had walked over to the girl, who looked to be about later thirteen to early fourteen and had said, "You look lost, little one."

Ahsoka had looked across at her. "Little one?" she had asked. "I'm almost as tall as you are, you know."

Chuchi had chuckled – she was quite petite and she knew it. "Yes, but I'm willing to bet I'm quite a few years older than you are," she had laughed. "Anyway, as I said, you look lost. Is there any way I can help you?"

"Well, maybe," said Ahsoka. "I've kinda got separated from the Jedi Master that I was supposed to be sticking with. His name's Master Plo Koon, one of the council members. He thought that it would be a good idea to show me the Senate Building because I was curious about it. I've never been in here, you see. But now I can't find him."

"You're a Jedi?" asked Chuchi, in slight excitement. She'd never actually encountered a Jedi before this, and she felt a little eager at the thought of talking to one.

"Yep," nodded Ahsoka proudly. Then, she faltered and said, "Well, actually I'm still just a youngling, but Master Yoda says that I might be able to become a Padawan learner soon."

"Wow," said Chuchi, smiling. "You're the first Jedi I've met. I haven't been to Coruscant that much – I'm new here you see. Only just got elected as a Senator last week." She extended her hand and said, "I'm Senator Riyo Chuchi."

Ahsoka paused for a moment and then grinned and gripped her hand, "I'm Ahsoka. Ahsoka Tano."

"Pleasure to meet you Ahsoka," Chuchi had smiled warmly. "Now, I'm afraid I don't know a lot about the Jedi Order – yeah, I know. I have a lot to learn and believe me, I'm quite eager for information. But I'm beginning to know my way around. Come on, let's see if we can find this Master Koon. And, as we go, you can tell me all about the Jedi Order. How does that sound?"

"Sounds good to me," Ahsoka had said. And the two of them had been good friends ever since, being the first Senator and Jedi the other had spoken to respectively.

Chuchi shook her head at the thought of how far both of them had come since that day, although she thought it was fair to say that Ahsoka had gone a lot further than she had. Who would have thought that she would make friends with someone who would be a future member of the A-Team?

Chuchi sighed, and stopped her reminiscing. She needed to make a call. She stepped behind her desk and sat in the chair instead, before activating the holocommunicator set in it. She waited patiently for the reply and, after several second, it came in the form of a small hologram of Padmé Amidala.

"Good afternoon, Senator Amidala," said Chuchi.

"Good afternoon, Senator Chuchi," Padmé replied. Formal greetings over, the Senator from Naboo smiled warmly and said, "What can I do for you, Senator? I hope everything's alright and you are well. I haven't really spoken to you properly for about a week now."

"I know, Padmé," said Chuchi. "And everything's perfectly fine with me. I just wanted to inform you that you might have a bit of a problem with your bill. Senator Deechi came snooping around my place earlier and tried to make me change to the opposing side of the bill."

"And did you?" asked Padmé, with slight concern.

"Of course not," Chuchi smiled. "I'm not about to cave to the bribes of a man who only wants to see the war continue, no matter how much he tries to press upon me. But you know that other Senators might not be so resistant. I thought you should know, so you can try and pay some visits to the Senators he's been meeting with. They might need a little re-persuading."

Padmé sighed sadly and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "What happened to the days when politics was less underhanded?" she asked. "When people thought about the people first? Sometimes I wonder if everything I strive for is even worth it since there's so much against me."

"I wonder the same thing," said Chuchi. "But we cannot give up on the Senate. We must hold hope that people will do the right thing, even if that's just because it'll weight on their conscience if they don't."

"Yes," said Padmé. "Would that more Senators held your views, Chuchi. This war might even be over if there were."

"Very probably," agreed Chuchi. "And thank you for the compliment."

"And thank you for the warning," Padmé smiled back. "I should go. I'll need to find out where Senator Deechi's been creeping about."

"Good luck, Senator," said Chuchi, as she shut down the communicator. She smiled, feeling slightly better for having helped the bill progress in some small way. After all, many small things together added up to something bigger.

A shadow suddenly past over her window briefly. Chuchi frowned and got up, peering out into the sky above, where she saw a huge _Acclamator_-class cruiser sailing out over the city. She frowned as she saw it wasn't heading towards the docks where they usually went, but almost in the complete opposite direction. How strange.

She wondered what it could be doing. But she guessed she probably wouldn't find out anytime soon.

* * *

What Chuchi didn't realise was that the answer to that question was massively important. The _Acclamator_-class cruiser was currently transporting something that could, apparently, tip the scale of the war even further in favour of the Republic. But despite the fact that he wanted the war to come to an end as quickly as anybody else, Anakin Skywalker was concerned this time. He wasn't entirely sure what the Chancellor was thinking by doing this but something about it put him on edge.

After the Knighthood of Barriss Offee a few days ago, the Noble Nine and their new comrades – the Mirialan in question and the Wookiee, Chewbacca, had mostly collectively decided that they deserved a few days of rest and relaxation. They needed to recuperate after the trying events of the last week or so. First IceMyotismon, then the Trandoshans which had taken Lopmon and Barriss prisoner, all in a ridiculously short space of time – it was a lot for anybody to take. They were tired, and they all knew it.

Except for Anakin that is. Anakin wasn't tired at all, because he had seen the least amount of action in the last two escapades, which meant that he had done almost nothing. When IceMyotismon attacked, all he had been able to do was take Ahsoka to medical and while that had been stressing, it was hardly tiring. And then of course, he was still on Mygeeto when the others were captured by the lizard-men. He was battling incredibly hard yes, but still, he didn't require rest like the others did.

Like Suzie before him, he felt he needed to be doing something to help the war front. So, when Mace Windu had reported that the planet Malastare had been practically on the verge of defeat, Anakin had immediately volunteered to come along and help. Losing Malastare would be a disaster if it was because the planet was a vital fuel resource and such a loss might be enough to get the Separatists back on their feet, because if the Republic lost fuel, it would take them a long time to respond to any fresh attacks or provide reinforcements to other areas.

The others didn't mind being left behind, as it gave them time to let Barriss and Chewbacca settle in with them more and Terriermon grinned that it would give them more of a chance to induct Barriss "into the world of Nightwish songs and bouncing around." Barriss had looked a bit nervous at this, but Ahsoka had clapped her on the back and told her not to worry about it. So, Anakin had set off with Mace to Malastare to help in the final showdown that might or might not cost them the planet.

Things had been almost worse than Anakin had expected. Thousands of battle droids were marching on the capital, supported by dozens of tanks and an equal number of Crab Droids, Vulture Droids and Hyena bombers. It would be practically impossible to take on such a big force with only clone forces and tanks.

Fortunately, Palpatine had declared that they would be allowed to use the latest weapon the Republic had acquired – a device called an electro-proton bomb, which functioned like a EMP grenade only at a much, much larger scale, which would decimate the droid army but leave the clones completely intact. As Anakin watched the final battle unfolding as the clones held the droids back while the bomb was prepped, he found himself thanking the Force that the Digimon had _not_ come with him. This was because the Chancellor was standing right behind him as a hologram, insisting that he watch the battle playing out. So, he, Palpatine, Mace, the leader of the native Dugs – Doge Urus, and the scientist that had designed the weapon – Doctor Sionver Boll, who was of a species that Anakin didn't know with maroon and blue patterned skin, a thin fish-like head and protuberant, golden eyes, had watched as the bomb was dropped by a Y-wing.

It had worked spectacularly, decimating the entire droid army down to the last B1 in one giant EMP burst, leaving the clones unharmed. Unharmed, that is, until a sudden complication appeared. At the epicentre of the bomb, an enormous sinkhole had abruptly opened that had forced the clones and the Dugs to flee. Many poor souls trapped in deactivated AT-TE walkers had fallen into the chasm. Captain Rex had barely escaped falling into the hole himself.

Mace had promptly ordered some LAAT gunships to enter the hole and try and find any survivors of the fall, which was likely as the AT-TEs had tough shells. But, as Mace joined the searchers in the hole, they had discovered that it was not as empty as they believed it to be. There was something down there with them.

Something that had previously been lying dormant.

Something that had now awoken.

Mace and his troopers suddenly found themselves running for their lives as the largest land-dwelling creature any of them had ever set eyes on – an enormous reptile that seemed to be some sort of cross between a huge lizard and an equally big snake, with a few insect-like features thrown in. It was truly a leviathan, almost one-hundred metres from its snout to the end of its spiked tail. And it was irritated at being awoken from its slumber. Thankfully, Anakin had managed to get in his fighter and distract the creature by flying around it while Mace and the clones escaped. However, Anakin's starfighter didn't make it, and Anakin was forced to escape the sinkhole by riding on R2-D2.

But there was one thing that Anakin had learnt which was of particular interest to the Chancellor once he learnt of it. The beast's armour was so tough that not even his lightsaber had been able to cut through it.

Doge Urus had named the creature a Zillo Beast, which was a creature that the Dugs had thought they had driven to extinction in times gone by, using their fuel as a poison to kill them off. And they intended to do the same thing to this Zillo Beast – the last known member of its kind, the end of a dynasty of magnificent reptiles that put all dinosaurs to shame.

Anakin and Mace had been uncomfortable with this decision. Killing the creature was wrong, as it violated their morals as Jedi, but they were put in a tough position – the Dugs were threatening to keep their fuel out of Republic hands if they tried to prevent them from killing the creature. Mace and Anakin had taken it up with the Chancellor, and what he learnt about the creature's tough armour seemed to be of great interest to him.

It was then that Anakin had come up with a compromise – they could trick the Dugs into thinking the beast was dead by using stun tanks to put the Zillo Beast into a deep sleep that would make it look like it was dead, so they could get the fuel they needed, and then transport the Zillo Beast away. It seemed the only solution they had, so they had immediately set out to do it.

Only to find that the Dugs were already taking matters into their own hands (or feet, as the Dugs walked on their hands and used their feet to hold things instead), and were pouring the fuel that was toxic to the creature into the hole where it lurked.

Anakin could remember hearing the high-pitched screams of the Beast from the hole, and he wasn't sure whether it was in pain or angry, but either way he could tell that if something wasn't done quickly the Zillo Beast would die in that hole.

However, before Anakin could think of doing anything to stop what was going on, the Zillo Beast took matters into its own hands. Enraged by the attempt to kill it, the Beast proved to be tougher than the Dugs had expected and scaled the vertical walls of the sinkhole, ignoring the poisonous gases that were threatening to envelop it. Anakin could still see the moment where the enormous head had appeared of the lip of the hole, the creature's big green eyes glaring down at them with undisguised anger.

As it clambered its way out of the hole, it had promptly gone on a destruction spree, slamming the machinery used by the Dugs aside as it advanced towards the Capital, its enormous feet crushing small buildings beneath it, as well as several unlucky Dugs that didn't get out of the way quickly enough. The Zillo Beast's anger was impressive, but it could hardly be blamed. However, Anakin and Mace both knew that they had to do something, or the entire capital could be at risk.

So they had set out to do what they originally intended to do and order the clones in the stun tanks to fired their highly-concentrated energy beams at the Zillo Beast. There were fifteen tanks in total, and the Beast roared in defiance at them as they lit it up with their beams in an attempt to slow it down.

At first it seemed that there was no effect on the creature whatsoever, and six of the tanks had been wiped out quickly, scooped into the air and tossed outwards to crash in tumultuous explosions. The Zillo seemed to be completely unstoppable, slamming its way through the ranks of the tanks and screeching to the sky. Anakin was extremely impressed with it. The only life-forms he'd ever seen that could take that much of a beating were the Digimon.

But, eventually, the Zillo Beast had begun to feel the effects of the stun tanks and began to slow down a little. Its head had started to droop and its shoulders slumped and it stopped its advance, looking like it was about to fall asleep on the spot. And, eventually, it did just that and collapsed forward like a colossal falling monolith – its head nearly crushing the tank that Mace and Anakin had been riding in when it hit the floor. And, slowly, its huge eyes had closed and it was in a deep sleep.

Anakin and Mace had immediately reported the success to the Chancellor, but when they enquired as to which planet the Zillo Beast would be released onto, Palpatine had surprised both of them by saying, "There had been a slight change of plans. The scientific community has reviewed the data on this rather... unique creature. They believe it should be further studied in a more _controlled_ environment before it is released into the wild."

"And where is this controlled environment?" Mace said, although he and Anakin had had a bad feeling that they already knew the answer.

"On Coruscant," Palpatine had said. "Master Windu, you and General Skywalker will safely bring the Beast... here." And then he had shut off, leaving Anakin and Mace staring at one another with trepidation.

* * *

And now, Anakin found himself walking towards Chancellor Palpatine, with Mace Windu beside him and R2-D2 trundling along behind them, back on Coruscant. They were standing outside an enormous dome that contained one of the Republic's science labs, hastily re-arranged to accommodate the enormous creature. The _Acclamator _-class cruiser that the Zillo Beast was being transported in was pulling to a stop above them, hovering above the platform, it's huge ramp descending down towards the lab.

"Your Excellency," said Mace, as he and Anakin bowed to Palpatine, who was standing with Mas Amedda and a couple of Senate Guards. Palpatine nodded to the both of them, before turning to look at the ramp, his grey eyes gazing almost greedily at what was coming down it.

Anakin turned to look as well, and his stomach knotted at the sight. The Zillo Beast didn't look anything like the fierce creature that he had first seen on Malastare. It was limp and almost looked dead. It was lying on top of an enormous hoverpad, usually used for transporting damaged cruisers, which was slowly descending down the ramp. Even then the creature barely fit on it, and somehow they had managed to neatly arrange all five of its limbs (yes, five – it had a third arm sticking out of its back between its shoulder-blades) and its tail so that it was practically curled into a ball so it would stay on top of the hoverpad.

The sight made Anakin uncomfortable. A creature like this should be out in the wild, dominating the planet on which it lived, hunting when it felt like it and roaming wherever it chose to. Not lying there meekly as it was transported into a laboratory.

The landing platform that the Beast was descending towards was covered in clones, all pointing their rifles up at the creature just in case it woke up. Almost a dozen AT-TE walkers were standing like sentinels, their cannons focused on the Zillo Beast's head, and many gunships were hovering above, each one prepared for action. If they were dealing with any other creature, this number of defensive weapons would be gross overkill, but Anakin knew that actually this was not enough. If they thought they could bring the creature down with weapons like that then they were going to be sorely mistaken.

Fortunately, the beast remained asleep, the effect of the stun cannons still keeping it sluggish and unresponsive to its surrounding environment.

"Such size," Palpatine breathed from beside Anakin. "Such power."

"With respect, Chancellor," Mace said, a little darkly, "I believe this creature could pose any number of dangers. Bringing it here to Coruscant is a mistake."

Palpatine focused on Mace and said, "Oh, I assure you, I did not make this decision lightly, Master Jedi. The sooner we unlock the Zillo Beast's secrets, the sooner we can end this terrible war."

"How?" asked Anakin, watching as the enormous doors of the dome slid open to allow the creature and its huge hoverpad to slip inside, followed by an abundance of clones. "What exactly do you intend to do with it?"

Palpatine smiled at Anakin and patted his back with one hand, "Why, I would have thought it would be obvious, my dear boy. You told me yourself that the Zillo Beast's armour was virtually impenetrable. The blaster fire of the clones did nothing to it and you told me that not even your lightsaber worked against it."

"Yeah," nodded Anakin slowly. "I did. I think I understand what you are trying to say, your Excellency, but you please clarify it just so I know for sure."

"Very well, my boy," Palpatine nodded. "I talked things over with a few of the scientists that I have working for me and we have agreed that if we can somehow find away to duplicate the armour of the Zillo Beast, we could synthesize it and layer it over the armour of our ships and our soldiers. Think of how many deaths we might be able to prevent with such indestructible armour at our disposal."

So, that was it. The Chancellor wanted to use the Zillo Beast's nigh-impenetrable defences for their own gain. Anakin frowned as he considered the possibilities. It made sense – many clone lives could be saved through that and the war would indeed be brought to a quicker end, but really was everything they were going through worth the effort?

For a start, they already had an indestructible armour at their disposal, although the Chancellor actually had no idea that the Chrome-Digizoid that the Digimon had provided them with even existed. The Chrome-Digizoid had provided them with enormous amounts of assistance in the past, saving many, many lives and leaving the enemies stunned as their firepower bounced off the gunships or the tanks plastered with it.

But they hadn't been able to replicate the Chrome-Digizoid in large amounts, and the small amount that they had been able to produce had taken a long time to synthesize. Would the Zillo Beast's armour prove to be the same?

Palpatine glanced across at Anakin and noted the frown on his face as Mace walked over to Doctor Boll to discuss the Beast's care. "What is it, my child?" Palpatine asked, stepping forwards slightly so that he could look Anakin in the face. "Something appears to be troubling you?"

"Well," Anakin murmured, rubbing the back of his neck. "I'm... just a little uncomfortable with all this."

"With all what, Anakin?" Palpatine enquired.

Anakin paused for a moment before waving it off and saying, "Nothing. Just forget I mentioned it."

"Oh, come now, Anakin," Palpatine said reproachfully. "You know that you can trust me, my boy. You can tell me anything and I will try my very best to help you in any way I can."

Anakin was silent for a couple of seconds before nodding and saying, "Well, if you must know, I don't like the idea of keeping the Zillo Beast locked up and kept prisoner like some criminal or nerf. It's clearly a top predator and I think it should be treated as such. I don't think it should be here, Chancellor. It should be out in the wild, where it belongs."

Palpatine eyed Anakin for a moment, a slight frown appearing on his angular features, before he said. "I see. You are questioning my judgement on this matter, Anakin?"

"No, no, it's not that," Anakin said hastily, "It's just... well... the idea of it being caged and experimented on – poked and pried by Doctor Boll and her droids just doesn't sit well with me. I understand the need for better armour as much as you do, but do you have any idea how long it's going to take to do? How long will it be before we can release it?"

"Your concern for the welfare of such a dangerous creature is... admirable, Anakin," Palpatine acknowledged. "And I'm sure that it will not be too long before we have finished analysing the beast. And once we get the armour... well, you've been out on the front lines. I'm sure you would agree how useful it would be."

Anakin squirmed on the spot. He _had_ seen how useful something indestructible could be but he couldn't mention it to the Chancellor. But he couldn't shake the feeling of wrongness which was just intensifying with every word the Chancellor said. He remembered the look on Mace's face when they had discovered what was going to become of the Beast. What would the rest of his team make of it when they found out?

He had a pretty good idea. They would all be very, very angry indeed. He could already picture the looks on the faces of the three Digimon. And they would have every right to be. Anakin could see a couple of similarities between the Digimon and the Zillo Beast. Asides from the fact that two of them could turn into giant almost indestructible creatures themselves, they were all out of place in the world too. They were the only members of their kind in this universe. So was the Zillo Beast.

Maybe it was this connection between the Beast and the Digimon that was making him so uncomfortable. But it was more than that. There was something else about the creature itself that made him feel uneasy.

"You still seem perturbed, Anakin," said Palpatine. "What can I tell you that will put your mind at ease?"

"Will it hurt?" asked Anakin.

"Excuse me?" Palpatine blinked.

"The procedure for replicating the armour," said Anakin. "Will it hurt the creature?"

Palpatine seemed bewildered. "Anakin, don't you think that the lives of the troops are more important than whether the creature will be in pain or not."

"No, Chancellor," Anakin shook his head firmly. "I do not agree with this as it is, but if it hurts the creature then I will be definitely opposed to it. I will not condone torture under any circumstances – no matter what the recipient is or how good the cause is."

"It is just a savage animal, Anakin," Palpatine protested. "You know that it doesn't have feelings."

"Actually, I'm pretty sure it does, Chancellor," Anakin folded his arms. "I think that creature in there, which _you_ are locking up, is semi-sentient. I looked it in the eye when I fought against it and I could see intelligence in there. I could see its emotions – it was angry. And when it climbed out of that sinkhole, it glared right at Doge Urus, as if it knew who was responsible for trying to kill it."

Palpatine paused for a moment, then said, "Well, be that as it may, is it not the Jedi approach to put the lives of many in front of the lives of one."

"Under most circumstances," nodded Anakin. "But not this one. Sorry, Chancellor, but that creature is the end of an era. It's a magnificent creature, and it's smart. Locking it up and experimenting on it would be like locking up another human and shoving needles into him against his will. I don't like this at all." Anakin was getting more and more sure of himself with each passing word.

"Anakin..." Palpatine said, but Anakin cut him off.

"Forgive me if I am speaking out of turn, Chancellor," he said. "But what right do you have over the fate of this creature? It's not a citizen of the Republic. It answers to nothing except itself, and yet you're going ahead and deciding what happens to it. And I think I speak for the whole Jedi Order when I say that I think this is wr..."

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" Palpatine suddenly snapped. Anakin faltered in surprise and stared at the man who he had known for years. Ever since the day they had first met on Naboo, Anakin had never heard Palpatine snap at anybody. And now, the man was glaring down his pointed nose at Anakin, anger very much present in his features.

For the first time in his life, Anakin found himself glaring back at the Chancellor. Palpatine's expression immediately softened and he placed his hand on Anakin's shoulder. "I apologise, my boy," he said. "I shouldn't have lashed out like that. It's been a long night for all of us and I think it would be a good idea if we all got some rest. I'm sure that when you have relaxed a little, you will come to terms with what I am trying to do here."

Anakin was about to say that he didn't think that he would, when the Chancellor turned around and called, "Goodbye, Anakin," before walking into the lab with Mas Amedda and his guards in tow. Anakin scowled at Palpatine's retreating back and turned back towards Mace Windu. He knew a slight wedge had been driven between him and the Chancellor, and while he didn't want to lose the man's friendship the plight of the Zillo Beast was too great to ignore. He'd have to tell the others about this. And they wouldn not like what they heard.

* * *

Ever so slowly, the great eyelids retracted a little. The nostrils situated on the top of its head flared as it exhaled sharply. Its head was pounding, and that was not something it experienced very often. A low, moaning growl emanated from deep within its long throat. It shifted its enormous muscles, but for some reason they didn't appear to be responding properly – occasionally they moved in the complete opposite direction to what it wanted to do.

As the eyelids opened wider, the green glow that they gave off seemed to light up what was in front of it like a pair of headlights, making most of what it saw have some sort of greenish tinge. It could also distinguish faint red light emanating from all around it, but other than that it couldn't really distinguish much. A solid metal sheet before it, curved slightly upwards and inwards. That was not natural.

A deeper growl which sounded a little bit like a moan gushed out of its mouth, switching to the high pitched sound of its species at the end. It raised its gargantuan head and briefly shook hit, closing its eyes momentarily as it tried to clear its thoughts. But when it opened its eyes, the only thing it saw was that same metal wall in front of it. It wasn't natural. What was this place?

Keening lowly, the enormous reptile shifted its neck, which it soon discovered had been resting on something. It could feel that in some strange way it had been sleeping in an odd position, its body splayed out across the floor but its long neck and shoulders lifted off the ground in an almost upright posture. It growled in confusion, its gaping maw opening for a moment and display the rows up rows of huge shark-like teeth that lined its mouth, its wide and yet forked tongue flapping unresponsively.

For some reason it couldn't move any of its limbs without feeling some kind of uncomfortable crackling that immediately made him stop. It raised its head a little and looked down at its right arm, moving its slightly and witnessing an odd crackling of blue light around its limbs. That was not natural either.

It could hear sounds that were a little bit like small feet pattering around as well as a slightly strange whirring sound coming from somewhere. Growling in bemusement and shaking its head, the Zillo Beast, glanced around at its surroundings. Everywhere it looked it saw metal, metal and more metal. And some of the bits of metal were moving of their own accord, flashing lights emanating from them as they seemed to walk about. How odd.

A distinctive whirring sound made its turn its head as it saw something finally rise in front of it that registered as a life-form to it. A large piece of metal something had slowly floated up in front of it with seemingly no means of support whatsoever. It was round and disc-shaped, about twice the size of one of its eyes, and standing in it was a creature that it had never encountered before – some bizarre, small creature that walked on two legs with a domed crest on top of its head, protruding mouth and eyes and an extremely thin face. It was holding some strange object in its hand and was staring at it. Then it looked up at the Zillo Beast's face. She seemed slightly surprised and stepped back when it spotted the eyes were open and it was staring at her.

What was going on? This had all started yesterday when those little fleshy creatures had awoken it from its deep sleep and attacked it with those little flashing lights. They had done no damage to it but still they were trying to harm it and the Zillo Beast didn't appreciate that. Why couldn't they have left it alone? It hadn't been bothering them and yet suddenly they had come charging into its hole, trying to kill it, pouring noxious fumes down onto it and making it woozy with those strange blue beams.

Life had been so much simpler when it had lived alone and without disturbance. Now it was in some alien environment and it had no idea where it was. And its muscles still weren't responding properly.

Suddenly there was a horrific pain in the side of its head, as the Zillo Beast felt something grip the armour on the side of its face and pull it upwards. It wasn't supposed to bend at that angle and the Beast yelped a long, low growl. Out of the corner of its eye, it could seem one of the metal things holding the armour up, leaving the beast in excruciating pain as another, smaller metal thing slipped between the armour and the softer skin and pushed something sharp into it. The Zillo Beast moaned – it had been long since it had last felt pain and the feeling was not a pleasant one.

The small organic thing seemed to notice the Beast's distress and called out, "That's enough," quickly. The two metal things quickly withdrew and the Zillo Beast's armour was moved back into place. The Zillo Beast moaned in relief and looked at the strange flesh creature with a look of gratitude. It didn't know who she was, but she seemed nice enough.

Then again, maybe it was her fault that it was here and couldn't move. It just didn't know. But it held its suspicions in check, because at that moment, another floaty thing hovered up next to the other one. This one contained four men, two of them purple and hard-looking, one pale with red drapes hanging round it and one blue with little horns and more drapes of a similar colour. Its huge, green eye fixed on the tiny creatures and fell silent as it listened to them conversing with one another.

"It's scales are remarkably strong and light," said the fish-woman thing. "If we could examine their composition we might be able to synthesize them to reinforce our clone armour."

"And what is stopping you?" asked the pale man.

"We need to remove the scales first," the fish-woman said, sounding a little bit reluctant. "It's very difficult. Not to mention painful."

"Would it not be more efficient to simply kill the Beast?" asked the pale man.

Immediately the Zillo Beast's eye swivelled and fixed on the wrinkled face of the pale man, ignoring the look of shock on the fish-woman's face and the uncertainty on the blue man. The pupil of the giant, green eye narrowed as it stared at the pale man. The pale man stared back unafraid. The Zillo Beast felt anger – who did this insignificant being think he was to stare him in the eye like that.

And yet there was something really, really off about the pale man. The Zillo Beast could tell that there was something dark about him. This man was bad news and it knew it. It just didn't know why.

"Kill it? Are you sure?" asked the blue man.

"Chancellor, I must protest," the fish-woman said immediately. "Besides being the last of this kind, this creature may be intelligent."

"I find that hard to believe," the pale man responded. "It is, after all, just an animal." The Zillo Beast growled and considered lunging at the pale man for such an insulting remark, but thing its neck was lying on prevented it from reaching him and its muscles weren't working enough to let it move back and try from another angle. It settled for baring its teeth and glaring, a low guttural sound rolling from its throat.

"It didn't seem to like your comment," the fish-woman observed, a little dryly. The Zillo Beast ignored her and continued to focus on the pale man, who frustratingly did not back away, assuming that he was safe. And to the Zillo Beast's increasing annoyance, he was.

"I applaud your high moral stance, Doctor," said the pale man. "After all, principle is in short supply these days. However, every passing minute of warfare brings countless deaths. Deaths that could be prevented once the Zillo Beast's secrets are unlocked. If there is any way to shorten that process, it is our moral duty to explore it."

The Zillo Beast's eye flicked over to the fish-woman, who was looking down at her feet sadly and replied with some reluctance, "I serve at your pleasure, Chancellor. I'm just not sure where to begin. The fact remains that the Beast is indestructible."

"Nothing is truly indestructible, Doctor," said the pale man, a little menacingly. The Zillo Beast's attention turned back to him and he bared its teeth at the tone of his voice, now more sure than ever that this man was a monster in disguise. "Wasn't there something in Malastare fuel that affected the Beast?" the pale man added.

"It weakened the Zillo, yes, but..." the fish woman began.

"Excellent," the pale man interrupted. "I suggest you start there. Doctor, you need to find a way to kill that Beast," he smiled at her in a slightly steely way and finished with, "Or we shall replace you with someone who can."

The fish woman bowed as the floaty thing the pale was standing on began to hover away from the Zillo Beast and towards the ground. The Zillo Beast stared after him, eyes narrowed in undisguised fury as he took in the man's features, committing them to memory. The pale man stared back, the corners of his mouth upturned in a nasty smirk, causing the Zillo Beast's eyes to narrow even further.

That man did not know what he had gotten himself into. The Zillo Beast was not about to let this lie. It would find some way to escape and when it did, it was going to go after the man that had ordered its execution and make him pay. No matter what it had to go through to do it!

* * *

"Please..." Barriss gasped as she flopped against the wall and slid down it into a sitting position. "Please, I'm wiped out. Can we please take a break?"

"Now?" Ahsoka asked, twirling to a stop and folding her arms. "But we're right in the middle of a song."

"Yeah, I realise that," Barriss smiled, breathing heavily. "But I don't understand how you guys can have so much energy for dancing about. Where does it all come from? You seem to have it in endless amounts."

Renamon chuckled and said, "Well, we have been doing this a lot longer than you have, Barriss. Give it time. In a month or two, you'll be just as full of limitless energy as we are."

"Maybe," Barriss huffed. "But in the meantime, can you guys at least cut me a little slack. We've been doing this almost non-stop for _three_ hours. That's a lot of dancing."

"She has a point," said Lopmon. "We can break her into it a little gently. And even I'm starting to get a bit tired of this now. I say that we take a break for a while, to rebuild our strength."

"Aaw, come on Barriss," Terriermon said, landing on Barriss' head and looking down into her face upside-down. "You're a Jedi Knight now. Surely you can handle a couple more hours of this."

"My skills in endurance are not quite as pronounced as those of other Knights," Barriss pointed out. "I focused more into healing than combat, like Aayla and Ahsoka have. I have a bit of catching up to do."

"You'll get there in the end," said Suzie.

"Not if you guys kill her by exhausting her completely, she won't," said Henry, pointedly. "That's enough for now, Terriermon. You've practically run out of tunes to do anyway."

"I have not!" Terriermon objected. "I could go on for a whole twenty-four hours if necessary."

"Go on then," Aayla grinned as she settled in a seating position beside the Tamers on her bed. "Rise to the challenge, Terriermon. Show us that you're not just exaggerating."

"Uh, I think I'll pass," said Terriermon. "I could do with a bit of a break too actually."

"Perhaps you require a bit of motivation," Ahsoka smirked.

"My thoughts exactly," Aayla laughed, glancing around the room. "Now where did I leave that Jurcian Fruit?"

"ACK! KEEP IT AWAY!" Terriermon yelped and pulled Barriss' hood off, ignoring the Mirialan's protests as he jumped in the hood and wrapped himself up in it like it was a blanket, creating a small bundle hanging around Barriss' neck. The Mirialan glanced over her shoulder at the hiding Terriermon and, ignoring the laughter from most of the room, she looked at Renamon imploringly for help. The fox chuckled and strode over, kneeling down beside Barriss to extricate her mate from the hood while the others just laughed.

"Relax, Terriermon," Aayla chuckled. "There isn't any Jurcian Fruit. Momentai."

"Oi," a muffled complaint came from the hood.

"Don't worry about it Aayla," Renamon said. "He just turned himself into a nice, little present for me." She pulled him free of the hood and pulled the little bunny close to her. Most of the others pointedly looked the other way as Renamon began to soothe Terriermon in the best way she knew how – snogging him senseless. They hadn't done this for a while and both of them had begun to think they were long overdue for one.

From where he was standing in the corner, Chewbacca chuckled and said, "Aoacahc anooaoc ooww wwhuwh. Schuoaac scoorcwo ahwhaoworcwocao aoacrawh rhraoaor acooscwo. Rooohu rrhuroc ohwoahrcwa."

Barriss opened her mouth to translate, but Lopmon held up and ear and said, "Hold on, let me have a go." She turned to the Wookiee that owed her a life debt and slowly repeated what the Wookiee had just said in English, or Basic, or whatever. "This is a lot of fun. Much more interesting than it is back home. You guys are all weird?"

Chewbacca barked his approval and nodded his head. Lopmon grinned and looked quite proud of herself, while the others applauded quietly. "Well done, Lopmon," said Barriss. "You're picking up Shyriiwook fast, and its certainly not an easy language to understand."

"It's a very interesting language," said Rika. "But I'm having a whole lot more problems with it than Lopmon."

"Maybe its the fact that she's brown and covered in hair like a Wookiee that makes it easy for her," Suzie giggled, eliciting a round of snorts from around the room.

"Somehow, I don't think that's it," Lopmon said, chuckling.

Terriermon peeled his face from Renamon's and pointed at Chewbacca. "Although," he said, "I resent being called weird."

"You _are_ weird," Renamon said, pulling him back to her. "Deal with it." And she captured his mouth with her own once more.

"I think Chewbacca may have a point," said Ahsoka. "We are a weird bunch. Just look at us. Four of us, including my Master, are human, but the rest of are all different species, or at least don't look anything like the others. We must be the weirdest collection of beings ever to walk around the universe."

"If the other Digimon were here," Rika chuckled. "Then we definitely would be."

It was at that point that the door opened, sliding back with its hiss of hydraulics to reveal Anakin standing on the other side. Immediately, there was a clicking noise and the elaborate catapult that Terriermon had set up in front of the door was set off, the large spoon-like chamber that house the ammunition – a gorba melt – flicking upwards to fling said food item towards Anakin's face.

But Anakin seemed to have predicted that something like this would happen because he immediately ducked and the gorba melt went flying over his head. But instead of plastering against the wall, it squelched over the side of Mace Windu's head, covering the Jedi Master who had been walking with Anakin but was about to go and speak to the council in dripping dessert.

Nobody moved for several seconds, except Anakin who stepped into the room and moved to one side as everyone stared at Mace Windu, who had frozen on the spot the moment the gorba melt plastered over his face. Terriermon's eyes were as round as saucers and he was desperately trying to stop his legs from shaking.

Slowly, Mace Windu turned around and stared impassively into the crowded room. He looked quite ridiculous with the gorba melt dripping from the side of his face, but nobody laughed – everyone was holding their breath to see what happened next. Mace's expression was completely neutral as he stared at Terriermon, whom he knew had been the culprit. Terriermon fidgeted nervously in Renamon's lap, resisting the urge to hide behind her.

Slowly, Mace lift up a hand and trailed a couple of fingers through the gorba melt, before briefly sucking it off. He frowned and said, "This doesn't taste that bad. Maybe next time you should eat tasty food like this instead of throwing it away needlessly, Terriermon." Then he turned and walked away, the dessert still dripping from his face. Presumably he would wash it off and the earliest opportunity.

"Oh my Fanglongmon," Terriermon breathed, collapsing backwards in his mate's lap. "I thought I was going to die right then and there when he looked at me."

"He's not a basilisk, you know," said Renamon.

"No, but he might as well be. That was terrifying."

"It was funny, that's what it was," Suzie giggled, as a round of quiet laughter which steady began to grow louder started up around the room. "His face was so priceless. Why do we never have cameras at the right times?"

"That is one of the great mysteries of the Force, Suzie," Aayla laughed.

"Nice reflexes, Anakin," said Rika. "You provided us with one of the best moments we've had all week with that."

"My pleasure," said Anakin. "I had a funny feeling that there was some kind of elaborate trap set up for me when I walked in here." He examined the catapult that Terriermon had built, and said, "Nice craftsmanship, Terriermon. Is there anything you can't do?"

"Many things," said Lopmon. "But brother has a bizarre ability to be either amazingly good at something or hopelessly useless at it. There is no middle ground where he is concerned. For instance, he can pick up a game controller and defeat previous undefeated champions at the game on the first attempt, and believe me I've seen him do that, but he can't paint a picture to save his life."

"Yes, I remember that particular day," said Henry. "The stains still haven't come out of my clothing. The trousers I wore on that day are practically completely turquoise. And they were brown to start with."

"What happened?" asked Ahsoka curiously.

"He attempted a self-portrait and after he failed dismally, he started a paint-fight in an attempt to cover up how bad it had been," said Renamon. "He was wise enough not to hit me though, otherwise he would have regretted it from a very long time. I would have sat him down and made him wash it out of my fur for hours until it was gone."

"Excuse me, but If I recall correctly, I had to spend hours getting my hair back from purple to orange," Rika muttered. "Why didn't you make him do that, Renamon?"

"I reserve my grooming services only for Rena," Terriermon laughed.

"Anyway," Aayla interrupted. "Back on topic – hello there, Anakin. How did the Battle of Malastare go?"

"Yeah," added Ahsoka. "You didn't overexert yourself did you?"

"Overexert myself?" Anakin snorted. "As if. I barely did anything in the battle anyway. I just stood back and directed the bomber who dropped the bomb. It was only after the battle ended that I saw any action myself."

"Huh?" asked Suzie. "What do you mean?"

Anakin paused for a moment and surveyed the myriad of faces in front of him. "Uh," he said. "I... kinda have something to tell you guys," he said. "And... you're not going to like it. At all."

"About what?" asked Barriss. "You don't have any more secrets from your past, do you?" Barriss had been updated on everything to do with Anakin's relationship with Padmé and the instance on Tatooine with the Sand People when she had joined the team. Chewbacca had as well, although it meant less to him than it did to Barriss. The Mirialan Knight had been suitably surprised when the others had pulled her into an empty room, locked the door and made her swear not to tell anyone what they were about to say. Apparently they had discussed whether or not to tell Barriss at length, but Renamon had pointed out that the same argument of "Teams don't keep secrets," applied here if Barriss was going to join their ranks.

Needless to say, Barriss had been as shocked at the others, but she had sympathized with her childhood friend and vowed to keep her promise not to tell anybody.

"Can we not mention that?" Anakin grimaced. "And no, it's not that. Something... interesting happened on Malastare that I certainly was not expecting. Aayla," he turned to the Twi'lek. "Have you ever heard of a Zillo Beast?"

Aayla's eyes widened in shock – apparently she had. Anakin had expected her to since Aayla had a keen interest in wildlife and had spent some time studying the various creatures of the galaxy, both past and present.

"A Zillo Beast?" Aayla breathed. "You saw a Zillo Beast?"

"Saw it," nodded Anakin. "Ran from it. Ran _on_ it."

"How big was it?" Aayla asked.

"Huge," Anakin said. "Absolutely enormous."

"Slow down, guys," said Henry. "What's a Zillo Beast? I've never heard of one of those before."

"It's not some absolutely enormous lizard thing, is it?" asked Terriermon.

Anakin blinked. "How did you guess that?" he asked.

"Lucky guess," Terriermon lied. "Come on, you've gotta tell us what happened so that I can complain that I missed it. Fill us in."

"Okay," sighed Anakin. "It's like this." And he told them everything about the sinkhole and the fact that he'd lost his starfighter to the creature and how the Dugs had wanted to kill the creature (at which a large number of his audience flared up and looked angry), and went on to how they had managed to stun the creature and put it into a deep sleep.

"An ingenious strategy, Anakin," said Aayla.

"Thanks," said Anakin. "But it doesn't end there. Chancellor Palpatine was quite interested to learn more about the Zillo Beast's indestructible armour, so, on his orders, it's been brought back to Coruscant, where his scientists are going to perform some tests on it to..."

"WHAT!" yelled several voices at once. Anakin stepped back in surprise at the faces on all three Digimon. All of them were looking absolutely livid.

* * *

And there we have the first chapter of the Zillo Beast arc. Again, not the most glorious entrance for the Beast, but things are going to get quite interesting later on. To see pretty much the events described on Malastare, watch the eighteenth episode of the second season of Clone Wars. The rest of this arc will expand on the events of episode nineteen.

Those of you who have seen these episodes will have noticed that Anakin's reaction to the imprisonment of the Zillo Beast in this story is different to his reaction in the series. That's a mark of how much he's been changing. If he'd just remained the same then that would have made everything I've been writing about when it comes to the Digimon altering the personalities of the people around them would have been made pointless.

Also, the part about Senator Chuchi at the beginning wasn't really important to the plot as a whole. It was just introducing her into the arc, since she's going to have quite a significant role to play later on.

See you soon. And please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

The life of the Zillo Beast is at stake. The group of eleven need to try and find a way of getting the creature out of the clutches of Chancellor Palpatine, without revealing the presence of the Digimon. Can they do it?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 112 : A Different Path**


	112. A Different Path

No action in this chapter – it's basically a necessary filling chapter that we need to put in before we begin to get to the really interesting stuff. Most of this chapter is conversation or arguments, but still, I think it should prove quite interesting to read. It was certainly interesting to write. The title is more about how Anakin's approach to the imprisonment of the Zillo Beast is vastly different to what it was in the original series. Change is in the air.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 112:- A Different Path**

* * *

Anakin was amazed at the sheer, overpowering sense of anger that he could feel emanating from the Digimon. It was just as well that they weren't Jedi – or what they were feeling now would be breaking the Jedi Code to an extraordinary degree. Renamon's fists were shaking as she clenched them, her piercing blue eyes ice-cold and her tail lashing backwards and forwards with anger. And while the reactions of both the bunnies were less intimidating, they were still pretty impressive. Rarely had Anakin seen such impressive glares on either of their faces.

"Whoa, guys," Anakin said, holding up his hands to placate them. "Calm down. Getting angry is not going to do us any favours."

Anakin had to admit he was surprised to hear those words coming from his mouth – he had gotten angry many times in the past. But he cast it aside for now, focusing on the problem to three furious and very powerful beings in front of him.

"Chancellor Palpatine..." Renamon bristled, her fur standing on end. "The so-called ruler of the Republic we are fighting for... has locked up the last of a great dynasty of creatures... for experimentation? That BASTARD!"

"I could come up with many ruder names than that," Terriermon scowled. "And all of them would be extremely appropriate. How could anyone with a heart even think of doing something like this?"

"Isn't not right," Lopmon agreed. "We've seen that man on holoscreens, acting all smiles in front of the cameras and putting on the face of a good man to the rest of the Republic and then he has the gall to turn around to do this?" Lopmon agreed. "I cannot tell you how much I want to wring his neck right now."

"And Lopmon _never_ wants to wring anyone's neck," Terriermon agreed.

"Guys, seriously," Anakin said. "I knew that you weren't going to take this well, but I didn't realise the three of you would take it this badly. What's the problem?"

"What's the problem?" Renamon growled, looking Anakin in the eye with her own, so Anakin had to make a considerably effort not to flinch backwards. "I'll tell you the problem, Anakin. We have a huge dislike for anyone that keeps living beings, sentient or not, locked up in a tiny space. Both Terriermon and I have experience that kind of cruelty first-hand and ever since then, anyone who does that sort of thing is on our list."

"List of what?" asked Barriss, cautiously.

"The list of people we would like to visit in order to bash their faces in," Terriermon said darkly.

Anakin nodded, remembering the story of the man that had imprisoned both Renamon and Terriermon like they were prizes. He could understand what they were thinking, and he cursed himself for not thinking about this other connection between the Digimon and the Zillo Beast sooner. The imprisonment was for different reasons, but it was still imprisonment.

"While I agree that what Palpatine is doing right now is cruel beyond belief," Henry said, rising to his feet to confront the three angry Digimon. "And while I agree that we can't just stand by and let this happen, Anakin is right, guys. Seriously, calm down. You're not going to be able to do anything while fuming at the man."

"We can't let this continue, Henry," Terriermon growled.

"No, we can't," Henry agreed. "But let's go about this calmly and logically, otherwise we won't be doing any good at all. Now relax and let's put our thinking caps on."

Gradually, the three Digimon's anger began to subside, Lopmon recovering first and Renamon last, but it was still simmering beneath the surface slightly. Renamon nodded and settled down on the floor, folding her legs and meditating for a few seconds to soothe her anger. Then she opened her eyes and said, "Alright, we're calm."

"Thank the Force for that," Ahsoka breathed. "I thought the three of you were going to explode and knock the doors over as you rushed off to aid the creature."

"We weren't far away from doing that," said Lopmon. "We're all familiar with the different kinds of cruelty to other creatures. Renamon and Terriermon aren't the only ones who have experienced it slightly, though their encounters were greater than mine and the others. But, there was a time when, after the Ogudomon Debacle and before we came here, there were several government units and scientists that were adamant about performing similar tests on we Digimon. So they could learn how we work, apparently. It took all of Yamaki's influence to get them to leave us alone."

"The humans of our world can be cruel and heartless," agreed Rika. "We've all seen that kinds of things that scientists sometimes do via the internet. They do all kinds of pointless tests just to see what will happen like attempting to grow a human ear on the back of a mouse."

"That's awful," Aayla breathed. "What kind of person could do that to a living, breathing animal and sleep at night."

"I don't know," Terriermon shook his head. "But it's downright wrong. Don't get me wrong – there are just as many humans who are nice to animals where we come from as there are that are cruel. There are those who run zoos that keep animals in enclosures, and while we think it would be better if they were out in the wild, the zoos help to conserve the species they have in them, trying to correct the damage that other humans have done, so we like them. And we don't have a problem with humans eating meat – they are omnivorous for a reason. So that's alright too, as long as its free-range. But scientists doing animal testing – that _really _gets under our skin."

"And hunting for sport," added Henry.

"Like those Trandoshans," Suzie shuddered at thought of the reptiles.

"Indeed," said Renamon. "With this act, I'm beginning to wonder if Palpatine is any better than those lizard-men."

"Now, hold on?" asked Anakin. "Isn't that a bit much? I've known Chancellor Palpatine for many years and he is a good man. You really can't compare him to those sport hunters."

"Don't tell me you agree with what he's doing at the moment," Renamon glared at him.

Anakin bristled and said, "Of course I don't. I think it's just as wrong as you do. In fact, I told him as much myself when the Zillo Beast was taken into the laboratory. I told him that I thought he had no right over the creature's fate."

"Really?" Ahsoka asked, looking at her Master with newfound respect. "You stood up to the Chancellor and you told him that? Wow, way to go, Master."

"Yeah," Terriermon grinned. "I wish I could have been there."

"How did it go?" asked Aayla. "What was the Chancellor's reaction?"

"Well, it wasn't a good one," Anakin confessed. "He got angry at me because I kept protesting since he didn't appear to be listening to my arguments."

"He got angry?" Aayla repeated. "That's strange. I don't think I've ever seen him angry before. Least of all at you. He practically dotes on you."

"I thought it was strange as well," nodded Anakin. "But that's not important right now. Even if what the Chancellor is doing is wrong, his motives behind it are good overall. He _is_ trying to protect our troopers on the field by giving them stronger armour. That's no different to what you did when you guys gave us the Chrome-Digizoid."

"That may be the case," said Terriermon. "But as you know, I am full of sayings from Earth and another one of them that I can pull up right now is 'The ends don't justify the means.' Palpatine may be looking to protect the soldiers and restore peace to the galaxy, but torturing the Zillo Beast is not the way to go about it."

"And our loaning of the Chrome-Digizoid was different in many ways," said Renamon. "For a start, we chose to do that, whereas the Zillo Beast doesn't have any choice in the matter whatsoever. And for another, we supplied that metal from a shield we could create, whereas the Zillo Beast's armour is a part of itself. I could go on, but I think I've made my point."

There was a pause as everybody considered the situation in hand. Anakin sighed and leaned against the wall. Chewbacca looked from one face to another, wondering if this was the sort of thing that often happened to them. It certainly seemed to make life interesting.

"Ohwoanan," the Wookiee piped up. "Ohwo oarawhwhooao anworahowo ahao aoacworcwo. Aoacraao rhwo ohrcoowhrr, oaoorcrcwooaao?"

"You're absolutely right, Chewie," Lopmon nodded. "We can't sit here and do nothing. Something has to be done."

"Loppy has a point," Terriermon agreed. "We're not just going sit back while the last of its kind is brought to its knees by some wrinkly man who thinks that his position means that he can do anything that he wants."

Anakin rolled his eyes at Terriermon's casual insult of Palpatine but made no further comment.

"But, what are we going to do about it?" Ahsoka asked. "If the Chancellor didn't listen to Master Skywalker then he must be dead-set on studying that Beast – because Aayla's right. He listens to just about anything Skyguy has to say. So what are we supposed to do in the meantime?"

"Isn't it obvious?" asked Terriermon. "We're gonna have to bust it out?"

"Whoa, whoa, wait," Anakin immediately got to his feet. "Have you lost it? You can't serious think that we can free that Beast ourselves."

"And why not?" asked Renamon.

"Well, for a start, that would be completely going against the Chancellor's orders," Anakin replied. "That could be misconstrued as treason to the Republic, and that is the last thing that we need right now."

"Then commit treason," Terriermon said bluntly. "It's for a good cause, isn't it?"

"Yes, but we could all pay the price for that," Anakin said. "We could all be thrown in prison, and I don't want all of you guys to suffer for that. The Republic needs us – all of us. We've become like a figurehead for them, even though most of them don't even know about half of us. And if we're languishing in jail, then what?"

"So what?" asked Rika. "You want to let the Beast suffer because of that?"

"No..." Anakin flustered. "But..."

"Anakin," Renamon interrupted, getting to her feet as well and looking Anakin in the eye. "Think about it this way. What if it was not the Zillo Beast being experimented on in that lab, but the three of us," she indicated herself and the two bunnies. "What if we were the one that Palpatine was holding prisoner and performing tests on? What would you do then?"

"But you aren't..." Anakin started.

"No, but if we were," Renamon insisted. "What would you do?"

Anakin hesitated only for a moment and then he sighed and grinned wryly. "I would defy the whole Republic," he said. "I would organise the rest of the team to bust you guys out of that prison in absolutely any way that we could. And then if they came after us for treason, we would leave – all of us. We'd find a peaceful place in the Outer Rim, Maridun perhaps, where we could live in isolation like the family we are."

"Damn right we would," Terriermon nodded approvingly.

"You'd really do that, Master?" Ahsoka asked.

"Hey," Anakin grinned. "I couldn't call myself a member of the Noble Nine if I didn't."

"Would you even leave Padmé behind?" asked Suzie.

"Well, I'd try to convince her to come with me, obviously," Anakin said. "And if I failed to do that then I'd sneak back from time to time to visit her here or on Naboo. But still, I could leave you guys behind. And you're right. Why should the Zillo Beast be any different?"

"Three cheers for Uncle Anakin!" Suzie cried.

Aayla chuckled and put an arm around Suzie's shoulders. "Perhaps another time, little one," she said. Then the Twi'lek looked up at the assembled group and said, "While Renamon's argument is a sound one, you are forgetting one thing. Zillo Beasts are massive, and this one is apparently no different. And unlike you Digimon, they cannot shrink into smaller sizes. So, even if we were to somehow bust it out, even if we managed to cover our tracks so no-one could trace it back to us, we'd never be able to get it off the planet."

"Yeah, I suppose there is that," Lopmon murmured.

"And not only that," Aayla added. "But having a Zillo Beast loose on this planet would be a disaster. They are practically indestructible and having one of those tearing a pathway through the cities of Coruscant could kill hundreds of thousands of millions of people before someone found a way to stop it. It think we can all agree that it would be best if we avoided that outcome."

"Yes, that would be best," nodded Barriss.

"But we can't leave..." Renamon started, but Aayla held up a hand.

"I never said we would leave it there," the Twi'lek said. "All I'm saying is that we need to come up with some kind of strategy of our own. Smuggling it off the planet is going to be practically impossible and I'm willing to bet that the creature will not be that co-operative with us anyway. We need an alternative method."

"Ever the practical one, Aayla," Ahsoka said. "Always pointing out the best course of action."

"Just trying to help," Aayla said. "However, when it comes to what our strategy should actually be, I'm completely out of ideas."

"Well," Ahsoka remarked. "Maybe we should all get thinking. If we're going to do something, we should do it before the Chancellor has a chance to do too much damage to the Beast."

"Freeing the Zillo Beast won't work, as you said," said Henry. "So the only thing we can really do is to try and convince the Chancellor to change his mind. That way, we can count on the assistance of the rest of the Republic in getting the Zillo Beast off the planet."

"Yes, but therein lies our problem," said Anakin. "I've already tried to convince the Chancellor to change his mind, but it did no good. So what else can we try to get him to free the Beast? Ugh, this really isn't my strong suit. I'd rather be out on the front lines blowing things up. It's so much simpler that way."

"Yes, but that will only work in wartime, Anakin," Barriss pointed out. "After the Clone Wars are over it'll be back to diplomacy as usual. Hopefully, anyway."

"Barriss is right," nodded Aayla. "Use this as an opportunity to practice your negotiation skills. We need to speak with the Chancellor again, and let's face it he's more likely to listen to your arguments than ours, even if he did snap at you."

They spent the next few minutes thinking about what they could be doing – marshalling arguments and counter-arguments against what the Chancellor might say and discussing things a little bit between them. But still, everything they were coming up with was effectively still just hopes. They had no guarantee that the Chancellor would change his mind.

"I wish Yamaki were here," Rika groaned after a couple of minutes. "He knows loads more about how politics works than I do. He'd know what to do."

"That's it!" Ahsoka cried, startling a large number of people in the room. "It's so obvious. We can come up with idea until we're blue in the face – or even bluer if you're Aayla..."

"Thank you," Aayla chuckled.

"But we can't really compare to some-one who knows politics," said Ahsoka. "Maybe, if we told a member of the Senate about this – someone who we know we can rely on and who has a big say in what happens in Republic affairs – and get them on our side, then maybe that person could help us sway the Chancellor's opinion and get him to release the Beast into the wild."

"An excellent suggestion, Ahsoka," Aayla smiled. "And so obvious too. We really should have though about that ourselves."

"Well, we are Jedi Guardians," pointed out Anakin. "More into combat than this sort of thing. Anyway, Ahsoka's right. We need someone else who the Chancellor listens to closely and knows politics. And I think we all know who the best candidate is."

"Padmé?" Renamon smirked.

"Yep," nodded Anakin. Then he caught Renamon's look and said, "Oh shut up. I'm not just picking her because she's my wife and it means I can spend more time with her. I'm picking her because not only is she exactly what Ahsoka described, she's also the Senator from Naboo. Naboo is Palpatine's homeworld and he's known Padmé for longer than most of the other Senators. He trusts her and he listens to her arguments in the Senate. If anyone can help us, it's her."

"Yeah, imagine it," Terriermon laughed. "The two of you – husband and wife – are the two people that the Chancellor listens to most in the entire galaxy. And, of course, when married or mated couples combine forces there is nothing that they cannot accomplish."

"We know this from experience," Renamon added, smiling slightly.

"And when they're backed up by the rest of their family," Lopmon put in, also smiling. "Then that strength grows all the stronger. And you certainly have our support, Anakin."

"Thanks, guys," said the Chosen One, getting to his feet. "Well, I suppose I'm overdue with a conversation with Padmé. I haven't spoken to her properly yet since that faux date you guys set us on?"

"You enjoyed it," Ahsoka griped. "Stop complaining already."

Anakin chuckled and said, "Yeah, I know. I know. Padmé still has no idea that it was faked by you guys though. She thinks that I really did invite her to Skysitter."

"Skywalker stopped skywalking and started skysitting at Skysitter," Terriermon quipped. "And his beautiful wife was there too of course," he added quickly when Anakin glared at him.

"Perhaps we should stop teasing each other," said Aayla, standing up. "And get going ourselves. We'll need to let the Council know what's going on – we can't go operating under the radar this time Anakin. But I'm sure that they'll understand this time – they're probably debating about what to do about the Zillo Beast just as we are."

"Alright," nodded Anakin. "I'll take my fighter and head over to the Senate to speak to Padmé and the Chancellor, while you guys go talk to the Council. Hopefully what I have in mind won't take too long. Padmé will join us instantly if I know her. She'll be concerned about the welfare of the Beast too. She's like you Digimon – she cares about things."

"You don't have to sell her to us like a sales-pitch," Terriermon laughed. "We already know all that."

"We'll come with you, Anakin," said Rika immediately. "We want to see what happens."

"No, you can't," Anakin shook his head. "If there's one place in the Senate Building you can never go, it's the Chancellor's Office. In the corridors its relatively easy for you guys to hide under the perception filter and dodge the security cameras. But in the Chancellor's office, there is loads of security so that won't be an option. Besides, Threepio will probably be there, and we can't let him see you."

"So we get left behind _again_?" asked Rika.

"No," Renamon shook her head. "Not this time. I want to do something else. I want to go and have a look at the Zillo Beast for myself. I want to see what kind of creature the Chancellor is keeping captive, and what kind of condition its being kept in."

Anakin hesitated for a moment and said, "Uh, you won't do anything rash like release it, will you?"

"Anakin, you know us better than that," Lopmon said. "We already established the destruction it would cause if it got loose. We're not about to try something stupid like that."

"It's alright, Master," said Ahsoka. "I'll take them there and keep an eye on them so they don't try anything."

"That doesn't exactly reassure me," Anakin sighed. Ahsoka snorted.

"Please, Anakin," Henry said. "What about me. You know that I can be relied upon."

"I know that all of you can be relied upon really," Anakin said. "Sorry, I guess I'm just a little on edge thanks to all of this. Alright then, you guys go, but make sure you keep out of sight at all times. It's being held at the Republic Science and Technical Centre. You reckon you can find it, Snips?"

"I know the way there, Master," replied Ahsoka evenly. "We'll take a speeder. Who's coming with me?"

"All the Digimon, Tamers and Chewbacca," said Lopmon straight away. "Let's hurry. We might not have a lot of time."

"Barriss," asked Aayla, turning to the Mirialan. "You up for heading to the Council to explain the situation with me?"

"Alright," nodded Barriss. "Let's do this."

The whole group filed out of the door and split into two groups. While everyone else headed towards the hangar, where Anakin would take his starfighter and Ahsoka and the others would commandeer a speeder, Barriss and Ahsoka started walking towards the Jedi Council chambers.

They encountered one of the members of the Council before they got halfway – Obi-Wan spotted them as he rounded the corridor, walking towards him. He hailed them with a wave and hurried over towards them. He nodded and said, "Aayla, Barriss, have either of you seen Anakin? I need to talk to him immediately."

"Is this about the Zillo Beast?" asked Aayla.

Obi-Wan blinked. "How did you...?"

"It's alright, Master Kenobi," Aayla said reassuringly. "Anakin has already gone – he's heading over to the Senate Building as we speak to find and talk with Padmé, so that both of them can confront the Chancellor about the Zillo Beast's predicament."

"He is?" Obi-Wan stuttered. "But... I was just on my way to ask him if he would be so kind to do exactly that? And he decided to do it on his own?"

"He had a little help from us," said Barriss. "And it was Ahsoka's idea to speak to Padmé, but he was as eager as any of us to help the Zillo Beast."

Obi-Wan paused for a moment and then shook his head in amazement. "Well, I'll be. And there was me thinking that I might have to talk to Padmé first. Anakin is certainly becoming a real Jedi these days."

"Indeed he is, Obi-Wan," Aayla agreed.

* * *

As Anakin pulled to a halt over the landing pad on the Senate Building, he quickly settled his starfighter – a replacement one that he would have to be using until he got himself a proper new one since his original yellow one got crushed beneath the foot of the Zillo Beast (why did his stuff always get destroyed and then only when he was flying it anyway), down on the concrete.

Anakin pushed back the cockpit and hopped out. He glanced across at R2-D2, sitting in his little astromech slot, and the small droid's head whirled around to look at him and he chirped a little. "You coming in, buddy?" he asked. "I'm probably going to be in there for a while, and you might find what goes on inside to be a bit more interesting than just waiting out here."

R2-D2 responded by popping out of the slot like a cork from a bottle and landing beside his master with a thump, whistling shrilly. Anakin chuckled at his old friend and headed into the Senate Building quickly, closely followed by the small droid rolling along on his three legs. Anakin gave a brief nod to the Senate Guards, who saluted him as he walked past and entered the building.

As he entered the hallways, he had to make his way through the bustling crowds of various Senators, which was not a very easy task at the best of times. For one thing a lot of them stopped his progress so that they could thank him for all the effort he and his team-mates had been putting into the war effort. Anakin had to politely excuse himself each time, promising to past on the message to the rest of the group.

When he finally reached Padmé's office and knocked on the door, there was no reply. Anakin knocked again, and then did so a couple more times before he pushed the button to let himself in and glanced inside. The place was empty – Padmé was somewhere else.

Anakin groaned. _Great,_ he thought. _There could be any number of places that she could be in a building this size... ah well, I guess it can't be helped. I'll just have to find her myself_.

He set off into the Senate Building again, glancing around through the crowds for any sign of his secret wife. The fact that he was taller than most helped a lot, but there were so many different species and people walking around that distinguishing any one person from the crowd was a feat in itself. And Anakin was wary about asking if anyone had seen Padmé, both for the sake of the secrecy of his relationship with her and also because relationships between the Senate could be strained.

"Keep an eye out for Threepio, okay, Artoo?" Anakin murmured to his droid. "Hopefully his golden plating should stick out from the crowd. You know how he insists that he must look presentable?" he added with a chuckle.

Artoo chuckled back – a bizarre series of low-pitched buzzes that sounded a bit like an insane giggle. Anakin snorted at the ridiculous sound, and then kept up the search for Padmé.

Eventually, he ran into someone who might be able to help him. Literally, he collided with a small figure as that person stepped out of the door he was walking past. The figure was smaller than him and his heavy weight knocked her over, but Anakin's quick reflexes made him lash out and grab her shoulders to steady her.

"Oh, sorry about that," Chuchi said. "I wasn't paying attention... oh hello, Master Skywalker."

"Hello Senator Chuchi," said Anakin, releasing the Pantoran's shoulders. "Fancying running into you here."

"I could say the same," said Chuchi. "Only for me it would be more relevant since I work here and you don't. What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at the Jedi Temple resting? I heard that the Battle of Malastare was won but at quite a cost to the troops. It's one of the arguments circulating back and forth for the increase in spending on clone troopers."

"I'm alright," said Anakin. "I didn't do much except stand back and watch the battle to be honest – I was directing where the bombers had to strike. But, I'm looking for Senator Amidala. There something quite important that I'd like to discuss with her and she's not in her office."

"Ah," said Chuchi. "Well, Padmé's heading around, trying to sway other Senators to support the bill to cut clone numbers. I'm sure you can understand how important it is to her, since you seem to know her quite well."

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "She loves peace a lot. Any idea where it might be. I'm afraid that what I need to talk to her about can't wait." He felt comfortable talking about Padmé to Chuchi – he was aware that the two of them were very good friends.

"Well, maybe," Chuchi shrugged. "You should try Senator Stonk's office. She's been in there quite a lot recently, trying to convince him to join her cause. Stonk withdrew the previous time because he was worried about public opinion, you see, so she wants to make sure that he understands just how important it is this time."

"Thanks, Chuchi," Anakin nodded. "Can you take me there – I don't know the way."

"Alright," nodded Chuchi. "It's this way. Come with me." She walked off into the crowd, and Anakin followed behind her, with Artoo bringing up the rear.

"So, how are things in the Senate right now?" Anakin asked.

"In all honesty," Chuchi sighed. "Things have been better. I think I'll be glad when this vote is over, regardless of the result, although I still want Padmé's side to win, of course. I'm getting worn out from constantly hearing the same arguments. It'll be nice to move onto something else at last."

"I see," Anakin said. "I'm afraid I can't really relate. I prefer to stay out of politics as much as I can."

"A wise choice," said Chuchi. "Things rarely seem to get done nowadays. It can be quite frustrating."

"Heh," Anakin chuckled. "In some ways, you're braver than I am Chuchi. You and all the other Senators are tackling something I wouldn't have a hope of doing, despite all tediousness. In our group, Aayla is easily the best at negotiation. I don't have a clue when it comes to words."

Chuchi giggled. "Well, I suppose you can't have everything," she said. "And thank you for the compliment. I think that's the first time someone's called me brave."

"Really?" Anakin asked. "Are you serious? Come on, Chuchi – you're very brave. You held your ground in front of Thi-Sen when it looked like he was going to stab you with a spear. I reckon of lot of these people walking around us will have turned around and run away. And you walked into the middle of a Separatist ship with only my Padawan for company. I'd like to see many other people here try that. And you helped me out during that whole Senate hostage thing."

Chuchi was silent for a few moments, digesting what Anakin had just said. Then the little Pantoran glanced up at Anakin and said, "Thank you, Master Jedi. That means a lot to me. I needed a morale boost."

"Hey, no problem," said Anakin. "That's what friends are here for."

"I thought you said you didn't have a clue when it came to words," Chuchi chuckled.

"Well, sometimes I say the right thing by accident," laughed Anakin.

"The point is, don't think any less of yourself. You're young, but then again, so am I. And unlike most of these other people, I'd say you earned your place here."

Chuchi smiled warmly. "Thank you, Master Jedi."

"Please, just Anakin," said the Chosen One. "You're a friend, so you don't need to be formal."

"I'm glad that you consider me a friend, Anakin," Chuchi replied. "Senators need all the friends they can get. By the way, we're here. This is Senator Stonk's door," she indicated the large doorway that she had stopped beside. Anakin moved towards it and pressed his ear against it. He could hear the grumbling tones of an Ithorian speaking on the other side and then, sure enough, there was the familiar sound of his wife, which he recognised even through thick metal.

"Yep," he turned around and nodded. "She's in there. Thanks for the help, Senator."

"Please, just Chuchi," smiled the Pantoran. "You're a friend, so you don't need to be formal. And I prefer being referenced to be my surname anyway."

"Alright then, Chuchi," nodded Anakin. "Thanks again.

"Bye, Anakin," Chuchi turned and walked away, pondering what Anakin had said. She had never really thought of herself as being brave before. It was an interesting thought indeed. But now she was more determined than ever before to do some good in the Republic. Anakin's words had bolstered her confidence, and she kept walking her yellow eyes were practically twinkling and she had a smile on her lips.

* * *

Anakin waited outside the door of Senator Stonk's office, shifting from foot to foot slightly, for about five minutes under the door finally opened and Padmé stepped out. The Senator from Naboo started when she saw who was waiting for her in the hallway.

"Ani," she started, then corrected herself and said, "Uh, Anakin, what are you doing out here?"

"Waiting for you, of course," he said, with a smile.

"But how did you know I was in there?" Padmé asked. "I've been in there for almost twenty minutes."

"I ran into Senator Chuchi. She said that you'd probably be in here. And she was right."

"I see," Padmé said.

"Oh, Master Anakin," C-3PO declared happily as he walked stiffly out of the door. "I was hoping that I would get to see you again soon."

"Hello, Threepio," Anakin chuckled. "Good to see you too."

"And you brought Artoo with you this time," the gold-plated protocol droid cried. "How have you been my obtuse little friend. I hope you've been keeping yourself out of trouble like I have been, or you'll be melted down for sure."

Artoo whistled a protest. As the two droids began to converse, Padmé turned back to Anakin and said, "Well, what can I do for you? I'm assuming that this isn't some friendly visit?"

"No, it's not," said Anakin._ Though I wish it were,_ he thought. "However, it's very important but also quite confidential, so is there somewhere we can talk where we won't be overheard."

Padmé glanced from left to right, then stepped closer and muttered, "If this is some ploy to get me alone, Anakin..."

"It's not," Anakin replied. "Really. I need your help."

"Alright," Padmé nodded. "Come on. We can use one of the hoverpods in the Senate." Anakin nodded and followed Padmé out into the main Senate, where all the discussions took place. Padmé flicked the controls of one of the many hoverpods. As Artoo and Threepio moved into the pod behind them, the large hoverpod detached from the wall and floated out into the middle of the room. This was a good place to meet because people could see them, so there was less chance of rumours of them sneaking away together, but they couldn't hear them so they could talk privately.

"Well," Padmé asked. "What kind of trouble is the Republic in for this time? I'm not going to be asked to spying on another Senator again am I?"

Anakin grimaced and said, "No, not this time. The problem has nothing to do with the Separatists this time. Although it does partially lie within the Senate."

Padmé frowned. "What do you mean?"

"It's the Chancellor," said Anakin. "He's... doing something which I and the rest of the Jedi Order don't agree with and I've been unable to convince him down an alternate path. I was kinda hoping that you would help me try and sway him."

"He's doing something you don't approve of?" Padmé frowned. "That's odd in of itself. Usually Chancellor Palpatine does his best to conform with what the Jedi wish to help them with their difficult position as Generals. What's he been doing?"

"It's sort of a long story," said Anakin. "But if you want the very, very watered down version of it – after the Battle of Malastare, Master Windu and I came face to face with a creature called a Zillo Beast, which is a huge creature that was previously thought to be extinct. It has very tough scales, so tough that even my lightsaber was completely ineffective against it."

Padmé's eyes widened in shock. There were very few things a lightsaber could not cut through. "What happened?"

"We managed to stun it before it could do too much damage," said Anakin. "But the Chancellor has insisted on bringing the Beast back to Coruscant. He's got it locked up in the Science and Technical Centre and its being experimented on."

"What?" Padmé gasped, her face clearly showing instant distress, just like Anakin had thought it would. "What for? What's possessed him to do such a terrible thing to a living creature?"

"A living creature that's the last of its kind," Anakin reminded her. "Anyway, he claims that he want to try and find a way to synthesize the armour of the Zillo Beast so that we can create new armour for the clones."

Padmé's distressed face turned into a scowl. "So you're saying the Zillo Beast is being exploited thanks to this wretched war that's been consuming the whole galaxy?" she asked. "Even the wildlife is being dragged into the conflict now, even indirectly."

"Apparently," sighed Anakin. "I tried to get him to listen to me and tell him that I thought it was wrong, but he wouldn't listen to me. When I went and talked it over with the rest of my team, Ahsoka thought that it would be a good idea if we told you about it. It's supposed to be a secret, but we all agreed we can't stand back and let him do this."

"And you shouldn't either," Padmé agreed. "That poor creature. I can't imagine how it must be feeling – locked up in an alien environment, probably sedated to keep it from breaking out. It probably doesn't have a clue what's happening to it."

"I agree," nodded Anakin. "It's awful. You should see the size of the thing. It's massive! It probably barely fits inside the Science and Technical Centre. It doesn't belong in urban places like Coruscant. I take it we can count on your help to try and sway the Chancellor?"

"Absolutely," Padmé nodded firmly. "Who knows what they're doing to it right now? The Chancellor might even decide that it would be better off if we killed it, and then an entire species might be lost forever. That would be genocide."

Anakin looked uncomfortable. "Well, I don't think he'd go that far," he said, truthfully. "But you are right. It can't go on. When shall we go and speak to him?"

"Straight away," Padmé said. "That Beast must be released as soon as possible."

Anakin smiled as Padmé turned to the controls to steer the hoverpod back to the wall. "You know," he said. "Somehow, I knew you were going to say that."

Padmé turned and smiled back. "Well, I'd be disappointed if you hadn't. Now let's get going."

They walked out into the corridor and back into the throng of Senators, quickly threading their way through the crowds as quickly as they could. Anakin turned to look at his wife, who was wearing her usual outfit in the Senate of purple robe covering a blue top, with her hair done up and contained in a long, golden, cylindrical object behind her head.

"What are you going to say?" he asked her quietly.

"I'm not entirely sure," Padmé replied. "But I'm going to press the point. We'll have to be quick though. There is supposed to be another meeting of the Senate tonight – that's why the place is so crowded at the moment. Besides, who knows what they could be doing to that Zillo Beast at the moment?"

"Well hopefully we'll have some time," Anakin agreed. "That Beast is a tough one. It'll be able to take a lot."

"That just makes me worry all the more," Padmé sighed. "It's suffering would be prolonged if its harder to find a way of duplicating that armour."

"Good point," Anakin frowned. "We'd better hurry."

* * *

It didn't take them very long to reach the Chancellor's office, which everyone knew the location of and had been called to at least once in their lives. Anakin hadn't actually been in this room for a surprising amount of time. Usually, he was in here once every week or so unless he was on longer assignments in the war, but he hadn't been coming here in person recently, giving all his reports to the Chancellor via hologram from the Temple and generally excusing himself as quickly as possible to spend time with the others.

Once the two Senate Guards standing on the outside granted them access, the blue-armoured men stepped through the door first and stood like sentries on either side as Anakin, Padmé and the two droids walked in after them. Chancellor Palpatine, who had been looking out of the enormous window at the back of the room from his swivel-chair, turned towards them and smiled as they approached. From next to him, Mas Amedda looked as impassive as ever.

"Your Excellency," Anakin nodded.

"Chancellor," Padmé agreed.

"Ah yes," Palpatine smiled warmly. "A pleasure to see the both of you again. What can I do for the two of you?"

"I think that you can probably guess the answer to that question, Chancellor," said Anakin. "I've come to renew our discussion about the fate of the Zillo Beast that we found on Malastare."

"Yes," nodded Padmé. "And I would quite like to voice my own opinion on the matter as well."

Palpatine's smile wavered slightly and he looked from Anakin to Padmé with a neutral expression for a few moments. "I see," he said. "So, it seems that I was wrong, Anakin – you have not come to terms with what I am trying to do after getting some rest. This is unfortunate. Very well then, if the two of you would like to take a seat, we can open discussions. I'm sure you'll come to understand what I have to say soon enough."

"If it's all the same to you, Chancellor, I'd rather stand," said Padmé, before Anakin could say anything.

Palpatine paused and said, "Alright then. I suppose you would like to begin with some sort of accusation."

"I certainly would," Padmé said, stepping forward with an expression of adamant defiance. "Chancellor, while I respect you and the difficult decisions that you have had to make with regards to this terrible conflict, I feel that this time you have taken a wrong turn. Why must we inflict suffering on a proud and noble creature such as the Zillo Beast, even if it is supposedly for a good cause?"

"I agree," Anakin folded his arms. "I learned a new saying recently that goes 'The ends don't justify the means.' I'd say that this definitely applies in a situation like this."

Padmé glanced across at Anakin and the Chosen One thought he detected a slight hint of admiration in her eye, which clearly told him he had said the right thing. He'd have to remember to thank Terriermon for his new Earth-ism later on.

"Why must we?" Palpatine asked, placing his hands together on the desk and interlacing his fingers. "It seems I shall have to explain it once more to you, Anakin, for Senator Amidala's sake if nothing else. Do you not see how many people have died out there in the fight against the Separatists? And I'm not just talking about the clone troopers, but also the loyal citizens of the Republic. Once we figure out how to replicate the armour of the Beast, then hundreds if not thousands of lives could be spared."

"At the cost of what?" Padmé asked. "Will we go as far as to lose our moral highground for this. If we are willing to go ahead and exploit the innocent Zillo Beast for our own gain, then we are no better than the Separatists."

"Don't you think that is being a little bit harsh, Senator?" asked Mas Amedda. "Comparing us to villains like the Separatists is an extraordinarily low blow. I would have thought you were above such things."

"And I would have thought that we were above experimenting on an innocent creature," Padmé argued back. Anakin had to suppress a smirk as he stepped back and let his wife do all the talking. "But clearly we are not."

"Yes, but think of the lives, my dear," Palpatine said calmly. "Try and put aside your concern for the Beast for one moment and think of our valiant soldiers on the field. You know as well as I do that the clones are not merely the cannon fodder that so many believe them to be. They are more than that – they are people. Would you deny the opportunity to save all those lives?"

Anakin felt a slight pang of guilt at the thought of all the clones that would die if they did not do this, but he also felt another pang of guilt when he thought of the Zillo Beast. So he stepped up to the plate again and said, "Yes, a lot of lives could indeed be spared, your Excellency, but there is something else that you aren't considering. While the clones _are_ people and not weapons, _they_ are prepared to die in service to the Republic, since that's what they've been brought up to do. I know if my valiant captain, Rex, was here, he would tell you that in an instant. But the Zillo Beast is different. It wasn't brought into this world so we could use it for our own gain."

"A sound argument," said Padmé. "And I agree. The Zillo Beast has always been its own master, until we dragged it here to a place where it blatantly doesn't belong, so that we could use it to our own advantage? Doesn't any part of you feel sympathy for the beast yourself?"

"Yes," Palpatine said instantly. "Yes, it does. It's such a powerful creature and I agree that it deserves more. But in these difficult times, I have to make the decision for the greater good. The people come first."

Padmé's sighed and put her fingers to her forehead for a moment. "I understand the position you're in, Chancellor. Really. But if we start this – if we experiment on something which we have no right to experiment on – where will we stop? What lengths would we go to in order to achieve peace? And if we start down that road, how difficult will it be to turn back? Please, don't do this."

"You know, it's strange, my dear," said Palpatine. "I would have thought you would be happy that we could gain some form of indestructible armour. After all, with this bill that is currently on the floor to reduce clone numbers, I would have thought procuring an indestructible armour would be an excellent argument to use for stopping the production. If the clones we had got that armour, then we wouldn't need to produce any more."

"Well..." Padmé faltered for a moment. "Yes, there is that."

Anakin glanced across at her and saw that she was flagging a little with this new and sound argument that Palpatine had given her. He decide to speak up next and said, "Why do we even need that indestructible armour, Chancellor?"

Palpatine blinked. "Have you not been listening to what I..."

"No, I mean, what good would it do us now at this stage in the war?" Anakin clarified. "We've managed to push the Separatists back a considerable way. Within a couple of months or so the war might very well be over completely anyway, regardless of whether we have indestructible armour or not. We could have done with it earlier, but do we really need it now?"

Palpatine paused for a moment and then slowly rose to his feet. "An interesting argument, Anakin. But still, there is more to it than that. Though I seek the end to the Clone Wars, there is always potential in the future for another war to spring up out of nowhere. If that happens, then with the indestructible armour we could potentially end it almost before it even began. Surely it does not matter if one creature has to die if the entire galaxy becomes a safer place for it?"

Anakin hesitated himself at that argument and replayed it in his head. And it was a good thing he did because he picked up one word that had not really registered with him the first time.

"Die?" he asked.

Palpatine froze for a moment, as if suddenly concerned. Evidently he had not meant to say that. Anakin and Padmé glanced at one another and fixed Palpatine with a double glare. "Die?" repeated Anakin. "Now you're saying that you're planning to kill the Zillo Beast? That was not what you told me earlier on – you said that you would experiment on it but that once you had done you would release it into the wild. When did you change your mind?"

"Anakin, please, listen to reason..."

"Reason?" Anakin repeated, trying to smother his anger. "You're talking about killing an intelligent creature that is the last of its kind known in the entire universe. I'm sorry, Chancellor – really, I am. I have supported you when others have doubted some of the decisions you've made, but this is going too far. You're practically talking about committing murder."

"And if murder weren't bad enough," Padmé added. "You're also talking about genocide. We've been supposedly fighting this war to prevent the subjugation of all life in the galaxy and here we are now, on the verge of committing the most atrocious act of all? Does the Zillo Beast's suffering mean nothing to you? Were you going to do all this without even mentioning it to the Senate?"

"The Zillo Beast will not suffer," Palpatine insisted. "Yes, I admit that we are planning to kill the Beast, but it is for the best. Whether we like it or not, the species is doomed anyway. The Zillo Beast cannot reproduce without a mate so eventually its race would be doomed. If we kill it now, we would be getting it over with and it will not feel any pain due to the experiments. I made this decision for the benefit of the Beast as much as the Republic."

"What?" spluttered Padmé. "You're talking about killing it! How is that the best thing for it? It's not injured or sickening with a terminal disease. It sounds like a perfectly healthy creature to me."

Mas Amedda spoke up again. "Nevertheless, the point about the eventual fate of the Zillo Beast's race that the Chancellor made is still a valid one, don't you think? There will never be any young Zillo Beast roaming the plains of whichever planet we would have released the Beast on."

"Perhaps not," said Anakin. "But it would still live for a long time to come. Doge Urus told us that no live Zillo Beast had been seen for many generations, which proves that if there are no others lurking under the surface of Malastare then this one has been around for a long, long time, so it would probably stay alive for some time to come too."

"Yes," said Padmé. "Plus, we don't know if it really is the last of its kind anyway. What if there _was_ another Zillo Beast somewhere on Malastare that we didn't even know about? We don't know for certain that the species is doomed, but if you kill it then the likelihood of it being doomed would be far, far greater."

"I can see that neither of you are going to be swayed by this," said Palpatine. "But I should inform you that neither am I. I admire the fact that the two of you are so dedicated to the life of one savage creature, particularly since I recall you saying that it tried to eat you back on Malastare, Anakin, but I am afraid my decision still stands. The Zillo Beast and its armour is too valuable a resource for us to pass up."

Anakin had to keep himself from snorting as he glared at the Chancellor. He'd didn't think that he had ever felt the urge to punch him before, but he could feel his fingers itching to curl into a fist and launch at him – even the ones on his robotic hand. The Chancellor had always been such a kind, benevolent and almost fatherly figure to him, but thanks to this one Beast, he could practically feel their relationship falling apart. He just wasn't listening to their arguments.

In fact, he didn't look like he was regretting his decision at all, or that he was admiring the stance that he and Padmé were taking. If anything, he looked irritated at them both, particularly Anakin for some reason. He looked like he was trying to hide it, but it was there. Anakin could see it.

"Even your argument about us needing to protect the Republic in the future has flaws, Chancellor Palpatine," Padmé was saying. "If you recall, the members of the Separatist Alliance were all members of the Senate once too, and they were mostly in positions of high authority in wealthy companies. It would be these sort of companies that the invulnerable armour would go too, would it not? We would be giving future enemies the armour too?"

"No, you misunderstand," said Palpatine. "I would not authorise the distribution of the armour. It would be kept safe somewhere where only the most trusted members of the Republic could reach it."

"Trusted Republic members can fall too," Padmé reminded him.

"Dooku was a member of the Jedi Council, if you recall," said Anakin. "One of the most esteemed places in the entire order and yet he fell to the temptation of the Dark Side. Others might do the same."

Palpatine took a deep breath and slowly exhaled through his mouth, shaking his head slightly as he did so. "Look," he said after a while. "Please understand that..."

"Chancellor," interrupted Mas Amedda suddenly. Palpatine glanced across at him and the blue-skinned humanoid nodded at something on Palpatine's desk. The Chancellor turned back to Anakin and Padmé and said, "If you would excuse me for a moment, we can resume this conversation in a bit."

As the Chancellor turned towards Mas Amedda, Anakin and Padmé both stepped backwards from the desk and withdrew a short distance. Both of them were quietly fuming under their breaths and both of them could tell the other was as well.

"I just don't know what's gotten into him," Padmé murmured quietly so that the Chancellor would not pick up what she was saying as he spoke with Mas Amedda. "This is all just so unlike him. I've never seen him so adamant to go through with something in my entire life."

"Neither have I," Anakin shook his head. "And I've paid him a visit many, many times throughout my life at the Jedi Temple."

"Things appeared to be heating a little bit over there," remarked Threepio. "Might I suggest that we all try our very hardest to remain calm and stay as good comrades. Mistress Padmé, it may not be a very good idea to lose the favour of a man as important as the Chancellor."

"That may be, Threepio," Padmé sighed. "But it'll we worse to allow him to kill of the last of a great species. We need to think of some new ideas. We must convince him that this is not a good path to go down."

"But what can we do?" asked Anakin. "I thought for sure that if the both of us stood up against him that he would relent but he didn't even look like he considered changing his mind throughout our whole argument. He just seemed to get more and more exasperated with the both of us."

"I don't know," Padmé asked. "I just don't understand it. All of our points were valid and yet he simply came up with only a couple of reasons for justifying the killing of the Zillo Beast. We came up with far more reasons as to why it should live. I've encountered many Senators that refuse to change their mind on anything but I've never seen the Chancellor taking that viewpoint before. It's just ... weird. And so out of character."

"Do you think there might be some other reason why he wants that armour so badly that he's just not telling us about?" asked Anakin.

"I don't see what that could be," Padmé shook her head. "But we cannot think about what is going on inside his head. Right now, all that matters is how we stop him."

"What if we went public with it?" asked Anakin. "What if we made a statement to the Holonet news, tried to round up a bunch of the citizens to our side to help protect the Zillo Beast. The Chancellor might have no choice but to accept our demands."

"I don't like the idea of forcing him to do anything," Padmé said. "But even if that were the case, I doubt the people would be very eager to support us once they heard the Chancellor's arguments in response."

"Huh?" Anakin asked. "Why not? Surely the people will not condone the death of a whole race?"

"Anakin, you're forgetting something," Padmé sighed. "The people are terrified. Because of this awful war, the citizens of the Republic constantly live in fear that they will be the next in a long line of lives that the Separatists have claimed throughout our struggle since the war broke out a year ago."

"And you think that once they learn of the indestructible armour we could acquire from this, the people will vote to kill the Beast?" asked Anakin.

"It is the nature of humanoids to be selfish," said Padmé. "It's sad but true. While you Jedi and some others always strive to think about others only, most people will put their safety in front of others in an instant. In times of warfare, people will grab at anything that means they have a better chance of survival. I've seen this firsthand through the bill to try and stop the production of the clones. So many Senators out there who are good people at heart are voting to poor more resources into clone production because they are afraid of becoming victims of the Separatists."

Anakin sighed. "You're right," he said. "Sometimes it's hard to remember that kind of thing, what with the company I keep. You, as well of the rest of my team, are not those kind of people. Sometimes I forget that others are different."

"Unfortunately, I _can't_ forget that others are different," Padmé shook her head. "I see it all the time."

"Hold on," Anakin frowned as he glanced back up at the Chancellor, who was now speaking to the hologram of a woman on his desk. "That's Doctor Boll. She's the one who was put in charge of the Zillo Beast."

Padmé turned around just in time for them to hear Doctor Boll say, "If... that is still how you wish to proceed."

"I wish I saw an alternative," Palpatine said. "However, sadly I must ask you to proceed with your assignment."

"What? Assignment?" Padmé gasped.

"He's order the Zillo Beast to be put to death now!" Anakin growled under his breath, and he rushed forwards, darting behind the Chancellor's desk, trying to get in front of Doctor Boll's hologram before she vanished. Palpatine jumped in surprise and the Senate Guards immediately went on the defensive, pointing their weapons at the Jedi.

"Wait! Doctor Boll! Stop!" Anakin cried, but he was too late. The hologram of the fish-like woman had already vanished. Anakin stared at the empty space with barely undisguised anger. Right now, Doctor Boll would be setting about trying to kill the Zillo Beast.

Anakin rounded on the Chancellor and yelled, "Call her back! Now!"

"I'm sorry, Anakin," Palpatine said, and he looked it. "But this has to be done."

Anakin felt his fist clench and to his horror he was thinking about picking the man he called his friend up by the front of his robes and shaking him like a doll. But he knew that would not accomplish anything and with a cry, he whirled around and slammed his robotic fist into the desk, so hard that he actually managed to dent it. Then he leaned against it with both hands, breathing heavily and shutting his eyes, trying to get the lid back on his anger and shovel it down. Aayla was not here to slap him if he lost control and falling to the Dark Side here would be a very bad idea.

Once he had composed himself, he turned slowly back to look at the Chancellor, a look of clear betrayal on his face. Even the scar over his eye seemed to radiate it.

"What have you done?" he breathed.

* * *

So, yes, lots and lots of dialogue and politics in this chapter. Politics is not my strong suit and I prefer writing the action chapters or the joking around, but since political stuff is so important in the Star Wars universe, particularly in the Clone Wars era, if have to put some of it in occasionally, since I'm not planning to do entire arcs based on politics like the Padmé episodes of the series.

Also, as a little bit od side trivia that has nothing to do with the story, I recently started watching the Japanese Dub of the sixth season of Digimon - Digimon Xros Wars. I've watched all thirty-five episodes that have aired so far and let me tell you, it is now tying with Digimon Tamers as my favourite of the seasons. It might even surpass it soon. It's got awesome action sequences, lots of cool Digimon, extremely varied and interesting characters, each with a unique backstory that helps you engage with them. Plus, it's hilarious. I'd recommend it to anyone who likes Digimon.

See you soon. And please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

While Anakin went to see the Chancellor about the plight of the Zillo Beast, the Digimon went to see it for themselves. What happens when they reach the lab where the Zillo Beast is being held? And what happens when Palpatine issues the final order for the Beast's death?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 113 : Renamon's Promise**


	113. Renamon's Promise

I'm back again. Little to say, since it hasn't been long since it hasn't been that long since my last post – yesterday. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter. It holds the promise of excitement, and I enjoyed writing it.

**leDiachan** – Thanks for reviewing and the answer to your question is – No, Palpatine really does want the armour for the clones. However, he's not really concerned for their safety. He wants to give the clones armour that is impervious to lightsaber attacks, so that when he finally gives out Order 66, it is more likely to work.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 113:- Renamon's Promise**

* * *

Ahsoka steered the speeder she had borrowed from the Jedi Temple deftly as the little vehicle wove its way between the large buildings that made up the main city on Coruscant. The towering structures extended upwards until they really did almost scrape the sky. The myriad of lights coming from the buildings all around her created an almost pyrotechnic display as she piloted the craft past the buildings.

Dusk was beginning to approach as the speeder and its occupants zoomed towards the Science and Technical Centre across the other side of the city. Ahsoka would have preferred going faster, but she had to stay amongst the various lanes of traffic. Flying off-route and at higher speed could get you stopped by the police droids unless you had a very good reason, and having police droids coming to check them out would be a very bad thing indeed.

"How long before we arrive at the place, Ahsoka?" asked Renamon from the back seat, leaning over so she could talk in Ahsoka's ear without having to shout. The fox had her perception filter up so that she and all the passengers except Ahsoka were invisible to the other drivers, so Ahsoka didn't see the movement, but she felt it.

"Shouldn't be very long," Ahsoka replied. "It's not that far now. I'd say we'll be there in roughly ten minutes or so."

"Good," said Renamon. "I want to get a look at the Beast as quickly as we can. Maybe then we can come up with some kind of back-up plan in case Anakin and Padmé's talk with the Chancellor falls through."

"There is one problem with that, Renamon," said Henry. "How are you actually planning on getting inside that building? I mean, it's probably going to be quite heavily guarded and covered in security if its containing such a dangerous creature."

"We'll muddle through somehow, Henry. We'll slip in unnoticed, never you fear. There's not a building in this galaxy that can keep us out if we don't want to get inside."

"I don't doubt that," Ahsoka called back to him. "But that's usually because you just blow up the wall. I don't think you can do that this time."

"I can handle being sneaky as well," Terriermon replied. "And when I don't know what to do next, I'll just follow Lopmon's example."

"I'm not a master of stealth, Terriermon," Lopmon objected.

"Whoo, rhhuao rooohu rarcwo scracaoworc ooww rhrcraahwh," Chewbacca observed. "Rooohu oarawh rrwoao ahwh ahww rooohu ohrawhao aooo, rawhwa scwo rhwo rcahrracao rhwoacahwhwa rooohu."

"Thanks, Chewie," said Lopmon.

"Hey, I am a master of the brain too," objected Terriermon. He didn't understand anything that Chewbacca had said, but he still knew the words via his link to Lopmon's mind.

Chewbacca chuckled and replied, "Ooac churcwo. Rhhuao oowhanro ohacwowh ahao oaooscwoc aooo akrcrawhorahwhrr rawhwa aorcahhoahra."

"And gaming," added Terriermon. "Don't forget g... Hey, what do you mean by that? I can be smart about other things too."

"Scooscwowhaoraah," Chewbacca chuckled.

"Oh for the love of..." Terriermon fumed. "Even the walking carpet is using my word now... yowch!"

"Be more polite, Terriermon," Lopmon said, lowering her ear and uncurling the fist at the end she had used to bop her brother on the head as Ahsoka swerved the speeder around another corner. "If you are a master of the brain, prove it by being a master of knowing when to use tact."

"Tact? What is this word?"

"I don't think he'll ever learn the meaning of that particular word," Rika murmured.

"Oh, he knows the meaning," said Henry. "He just doesn't know when to use it."

"Or how," Ahsoka snickered.

The sun continued to dip further down the skyline as Ahsoka steered the speeder further across the city. Sure enough, roughly ten minutes after she had said they'd be there in ten minutes, she rounded a corner and pointed up ahead, streaking out of the lanes of speeders and into a much quieter lane.

"There it is, you guys. That's our destination, straight ahead."

Everyone looked out of the speeder they were riding in and saw, between the corridor of buildings, a very large dome of metal rising up in front of them like some opaque section of the Eden Project or some other dome for tropical plants. But unlike them it looked cold and barren, devoid of any decoration. That in itself was enough to make the Digimon feel a little angry. The place was clearly designed to be a workplace only. And within that dome up ahead was a giant creature that had never set foot on Coruscant before, and never should have.

"So, that's the place, huh?" Terriermon asked. "Doesn't look very inviting."

"It isn't supposed to be a tourist attraction," Ahsoka said. "The stuff that goes on in there is not meant for the public eye. So I suppose its a good thing that you guys aren't part of the public."

"Nor are we citizens of the Republic," agreed Renamon.

"Even though we've done so much for the Republic that we should be," added Terriermon.

"We'll get the papers to make us Republic citizens sorted out when the war is over," said Henry. "For now, let's just focus on what we do next before we get there."

"I should have thought it would be obvious," said Renamon. "We're going to find a way to sneak in, and to do that, we're going to need you to fly over the roof, Ahsoka."

"Fly over the roof?" Ahsoka started. "You're going to jump off and land on top of the dome?"

"You betcha," nodded Terriermon. "We'll be alright, don't worry."

Ahsoka shook her head. "You're lucky that the entrance is on the other side of the done then, otherwise flying over it would look suspicious. Alright then, I'm heading up and over now."

Renamon invisibly stood up and gathered up Rika and Henry in her arms, while Chewbacca did the same and carefully picked Suzie, holding her as gently as he could. Suzie grinned up at him, and the Wookiee grinned back, before Ahsoka skewed the speeder over the top of the dome.

"See if you can distract the people running the place while we're inside," Lopmon said to Ahsoka, before she dived off the speeder alongside her brother, the two of them swooping downwards in almost perfect synchrony. Renamon and Chewbacca, along with their precious cargo, were not far behind the two bunnies, leaping into space and plummeting the short distance towards the dome before landing with a metallic thunk, knees bending to absorb the shock.

"The things we do sometimes," Henry sighed.

"Relax, Henry," Terriermon reprimanded him, landing beside him along with Lopmon. "We're not going to get caught. We've never been caught before, have we?"

"Yes, but this is the first time you guys are trying to break into a heavily secured Republic building."

"So what?" the bunny shrugged. "We've broken into heavily secured Separatist buildings many times. We can do this easy."

"Come on," said Renamon. "Let's see if we can find some ventilation shaft or something that we can use to get inside."

* * *

Doctor Sionver Boll was quietly typing on a few buttons on the keypad in her hand, analysing the different compounds of the Malastare fuel that she had manage to acquire from the clone troopers and trying to extrapolate the ones that would be most deadly to her enormous charge that would also be in a gaseous form. As she worked, a glum look was constantly etched on her thin, fish-like features.

This was not the kind of thing she had envisioned herself doing when she had decided to become a scientist. She loved everything about science in all its forms, including the natural world and the myriad of different creatures that existed throughout the galaxy. Their different anatomies and lifestyles and habits amazed her, and she considered herself fortunate indeed that she had encountered the last of a particular species once thought to be extinct.

She considered herself massively unfortunate, however, that she was being the one tasked with putting it to death. She had yet to fully finish creating the special toxic gas that would kill the Zillo Beast but when she did, she knew the Chancellor would order her to kill the creature before her.

She couldn't say how horribly she didn't want to follow through with it. She was supposed to conserve the life of the species. If it weren't for the fact that there were less scrupulous scientists out there that also worked for the Chancellor, she might have resigned in protest, stating that she wanted no part in the death of the beast. But she remained because she wanted the beast's final hours to be as comfortable and free of pain as she could make them. Other scientists wouldn't hesitate to cause it pain, but other than regular doses of anaesthetic to keep the Beast sedated, Doctor Boll left it alone.

Doctor Boll didn't want the Beast to suffer any more than it had to.

She sighed. She had considered working as slowly as possible to ensure the Zillo Beast stayed alive for as long as she could let it, but then she considered going faster to put it out of its misery. Undecided, she worked at a moderate pace, hardly able to look at the enormous animal in front of her, even though she could feel its huge, luminescent green eyes staring at her.

There was a sudden dull thunk of metal from somewhere. Doctor Boll looked up momentarily from her work, but then she shrugged and went back to what she had been doing, assuming that the cause had been the same as the last four time – the Zillo Beast's huge tail had knocked against the back wall several times now – more evidence that the space wasn't big enough for it.

A couple of minutes later, and a small human-sized door at the base of the larger ones that made up half the dome opened up and a clone stepped in. "Excuse me! Doctor!" he called up to the fish-like woman in the hoverpod, who turned around curiously. "There's a visitor down here who wants to have a word from you."

"Is it a messenger from the Chancellor?" asked Boll, not missing the growling noise from behind her at the mention of that man.

"Negative," the clone shook his helmeted head. "Actually it's a member of the A-Team. The young Togruta, Ahsoka Tano. She wants to see you."

Doctor Boll glanced back at the creature and the work she had been doing and looked up into the eyes of the Beast for the first time in a while. She could see the look of forlorn depression in the Beast's eyes, brought on by its sedation-addled state. She sighed, and nodded, thinking that anything that could put off the final moment where she'd have to kill the Beast was good enough for her. "I'll be right there," she said.

She steered the hoverpod down to the floor and stepped out of it, making her way towards the door. The clone stepped aside to allow her through, and Doctor Boll blinked at the bright light of the setting sun – the lab had been comparatively dark compared to this. Shielding her protuberant eyes, she spotted the young Togruta, who was waving at her from near the AT-TE tanks and leaning against a parked speeder.

Doctor Boll walked over to the young Padawan and said, "Good evening, Master Jedi. What can I do for you?"

"Well, technically I'm not a proper Jedi yet," Ahsoka smiled. "Unlike my friend Barriss who got Knighted a few days ago – lucky girl. Anyway, I'm Ahsoka," she held out her hand and Doctor Boll shook it. "Pleased to meet you."

"And you too," Doctor Boll replied. "I worked beside your Master at the Battle of Malastare. He is quite a skilled Jedi."

"Yeah," said Ahsoka. "Actually, it was the Battle of Malastare that I came to talk to you about, to be honest."

"Oh?" Doctor Boll asked. "What do you mean?"

"Well..." Ahsoka said. "When I heard from my Master about everything that happened on that planet, I seriously thought that he was just trying to wind me up or play some kind of joke on me or something. All this stuff about giant lizard things emerging from sinkholes sounded really, really weird, even from him. I wanted a second opinion, so I came to speak to you. My Master said I could find you here."

"Me?" Doctor Boll asked. "Why not someone else? The Chancellor and Master Windu both know about it."

"Well, yes," Ahsoka shrugged. "But I'm not really on first name terms with the Chancellor so I can't go talk to him about something that's not really that important and Master Windu... well, he scares me."

Doctor Boll chuckled. "He is quite an intimidating man," she agreed. "I see. Well, what would you like to know."

"Well, for a start, is there really a giant lizard-like creature in there?" Ahsoka pointed to the huge dome.

Doctor Boll's expression turned sad once again. "Yes," she said. "I'm afraid that there is. The Zillo Beast is quite real. Your Master wasn't telling lies about that?"

"Really?" Ahsoka asked. "Can I see it?"

Doctor Boll shook her head. "I'm afraid I've been forbidden from letting anyone into see the creature besides the Chancellor, no matter what their position in the Republic. I'm afraid that I can't let you in to see it."

"Fair enough," Ahsoka sighed, looking disappointed. "Well, can you at least tell me what it looks like? My Master was a little vague on the details, other than scaly, lizard-like and very, very big."

"Well, while that might not be the best description I've ever heard, it's certainly an appropriate one," Doctor Boll said, and she and Ahsoka began to talk about the event that had transpired over the last few days. As they did so, Ahsoka kept her eyes firmly on Doctor Boll's own eyes. The only thing watching the progress of her friends on the Dome was her senses.

* * *

Renamon slid down the dome in search of a way inside, stopping momentarily when she spotted a rotating security camera on the side of the dome below her, her paws clinging to the metal as the camera whirled in all directions. She looked up and flicked her head downwards and after a couple of moments, Terriermon swooped down and landed on top of the camera. His small hand reached towards the wiring and yanked one of them out. Renamon hurriedly slid on past and Terriermon quickly reattached the wire to make it look like a momentary glitch, before diving after his mate.

From the top of the dome before the curve of the sides got too great, the others were watching the progress. They couldn't see either of them thanks to Renamon's perception filter, which she had removed from the others and placed solely around herself and Terriermon, but apart from Chewbacca they could all sense their movements.

Renamon glanced around her as she somehow managed to traverse the smooth sides of the giant facility, avoiding the gaze of the various security cameras where she could, with Terriermon swooping along above her. Both were getting increasingly frustrated as they scoured the place. There seemed to be no potential opening to the place except for the door that Doctor Boll had emerged from. Other than that, it was completely secure and the metal was probably extremely thick as well.

_Looks like there's just about no way for us to get in there,_ said Terriermon in his mind. _Not even a vent that we can use to slip through. This is quite irritating._

_And we can't use the door,_ Renamon agreed, coming to a halt above one of the security cameras, which moved backwards and forwards, completely unaware that something that should not be there was standing directly above it. _It's too heavily guarded and if we unplug too many security cameras briefly then people are going to start getting suspicious._

_Well, we knew that it wasn't going to be easy,_ said Henry. _And now it seems we're stuck._

_Au contraire, Henry,_ Rika said, the smirk clearly evident in her thoughts even if you couldn't see her face. _I know a way for us to get in. I was hoping we wouldn't need to resort to using a Modify Card, but since it seems Renamon can't find any potential ways in, we'll probably have to._

_Which one?_ Asked Suzie.

_The teleporting one, of course,_ Rika said. _The one we used to cross from the _Intrepid _to the _Resolute, _back over the planet Naboo. It looks like we don't have any other options at the moment and let's be fair – what are the odds of them preparing for someone teleporting in._

_Teleporting without knowing where you're going can be a risky business,_ said Renamon. _But I suppose we don't have many other options. We're running out of time. Ahsoka can't hold the Doctor off indefinitely. I guess we'll have to do it._ She turned around and began to deftly run up the side of the dome on all fours, hardly leaving a sound as she ran upwards, Terriermon swooping above her.

"There will also be droids in there," Henry said, speaking aloud so that Chewbacca could hear as well now – Lopmon was quietly filling him in on their decision. "Which means that Renamon's perception filter will be of little use. I suggest that we three Tamers remain outside, since it might be easy for them to see us, whereas the rest of you guys have a much better chance of getting around without getting caught."

"But we..." Rika started.

"Can still watch through the D-Arcs," Henry said in an attempt to placate her. "We need to be careful. Getting caught in there is not going to help anyone."

Rika hesitated for a couple of seconds, before sighing and pulling a card from her deck. "Alright then," she said. "All those going in group around Renamon." Lopmon and Terriermon immediately took up their positions on the shoulder of the yellow fox and Chewbacca moved over to stand beside her, prompting Renamon to place a firm paw on the taller, furry creature's shoulder.

Rika swiped the card and said quietly, "Digi-modify. Piedmon's Masks Square Activate!"

"Masks Square," said Renamon, not shouting so as not to draw attention to them and within a moment they were surrounded within the ball of whitish light that had been used last time. As it shrunk and vanished into a dot, Renamon poured all her concentration into trying to land in a distant corner of the building inside.

The ball of light reappeared inside the dome and quite close to the edge of the wall near the bottom. It briefly illuminated a small portion of the room, and then vanished, leaving Renamon, Terriermon, Lopmon and Chewbacca on the inside. The group quickly shrank backwards into the shadows, hoping that no droids had spotted them, but it appeared that none had. There were only a few droids in the building, all of them up high on the various walkways. There were a couple of clones there too, walking up and down on patrol.

But the Digimon didn't care about that. All three of them, along with their Wookiee friend, had their eyes drawn to one thing in particular. In front of them was what appeared to be an enormous foot, one that could crush all four of them under a portion of one of its toes, which were flat and elongated and apparently slightly prehensile. The foot was covered in heavy-looking brown, ridged armour plates. It also appeared to be quite close to a glowing blue globe that they recognised as a containment field, and whenever the foot moved slightly it looked like blue light crackled across the enormous ankle like electricity.

Eight eyes travelled up the enormous leg, which was also covered in ridge armour and many small spikes, until they came to the base of a gargantuan tail, which trailed out from the hindquarters of the rest of the creature for a considerable way, at least the same length as the creature's body itself, ending with a series of huge parallel spiked plates near the tip. The tail shifted back and forth slightly now and again.

Their eyes travelled back up the tail until they took in the rest of the creature, surrounding by the elevated metal walkways that enclosed it like thick cage bars, although there were only two of them. The Zillo Beast was even bigger than anything they'd imagined. Renamon and Chewbacca slowly stood upright to give themselves better views. The creature's body was serpentine, long and slender, covered with brown and tan plates all across its length and neatly arranged small spikes across its back and limbs. Its arms were laid across the floor and each was enclosed within another containment field that made it difficult for the Beast to move its limbs. There was even a third arm that extended out of its back between its shoulder blades. The limbs and fingers were all long and slightly flattened and the fingers ended in blunt tips instead of claws, as did the toes.

And at the top of a comparatively short but still very long neck was the armour plated, rounded head of the creature facing away from them. It was leaning on one of the walkways sluggishly and it was ridged with large spikes around where its earholes would be. The creature's eyes were visible from here, huge organs that seemed to be glowing a luminescent green, but were also half-closed due to sleepiness. It's mouth was hanging slightly open, revealing rows of sharp teeth and a double tongue inside the gaping jaws.

They had appeared behind the Zillo Beast, and but they could see just about every detail. It was a giant, a colossus, a living tower of armour and strength. But it was also held captive and drugged and lolling around.

"By Fanglongmon," Lopmon breathed as she gazed in wonder at the enormous reptile that was stretched out in front of them, heaving up and down as it took in huge gasps of breath.

"That's almost literal," Terriermon agreed. "This guy actually looks like Fanglongmon in many ways, doesn't he. Fanglongmon's also a reptile with tan coloured armour plates. Although he doesn't have a third arm coming out of his back. I bet he wishes he does though."

"This is astounding," Renamon said. Chewbacca grunted in agreement as they risked stepping forward to look at the creature even closer. "I've never seen a creature that wasn't a Digimon of some kind that was as big as this one. It's amazing."

"Yeah," Terriermon nodded. "I think that if it was standing at is full height, it would be even taller than me when I became MegaGargomon. Not by much, but still, there aren't many living creatures that can hold that title, even amongst the Digimon world."

"And do you know what?" Lopmon frowned, glancing across at the others. "The fact that its such an utterly magnificent creature, makes me hate what Palpatine is doing to it all the more."

Renamon's eyes narrowed further and her fist clenched. "You're right," she said. "Such majesty restrained like some household pet or criminal or something. There is no way that we can let the Chancellor get away with something like this."

"And what are we supposed to do about it?" asked Terriermon, in a rare moment of practicality. "We can't let it go or it would cause a whole lot of destruction, and we can't confront the Chancellor with it, since we're supposed to be a secret."

"That may be the case," said Renamon. "But you know as well as I do that this is wrong, and the more I stay here the more wrong it seems to get. And when the war is over and I no longer have to hide from people like Palpatine, he will be hearing from me – you mark my words."

"Acwo'anan rhwo acworarcahwhrr wwrcoosc raanan huc," Chewbacca growled, his own fists clenching. "Rawhrooowhwo ohacoo waahwa aoacahwhrr anahorwo aoacahc oowh scro akanrawhwoao rhwo oarcahscwo rrhuro."

"Maybe we should turn him over to the Wookiees then," Lopmon muttered darkly. "We'll see what kind of punishment for this they can devise."

Renamon stepped forward a little further, inching forward until she was standing beside the Zillo Beast's enormous tail, which was quite still for the moment. She glanced up at the clones and the science droids walking around on the walkways above her and crouched down beside the enormous tail and slow lifted a paw to place her hand on the tough scales. Despite the fact that the armour was supposedly impenetrable, it was remarkably smooth to the touch. Renamon brushed her paw across it slightly, marvelling at the feel beneath her fingers.

A groan emerged from the creature, causing Renamon to look up towards it at the low, guttural sound that emanated from the creatures throat. The tail shifted slightly, forcing Renamon to leap back to avoid being flattened by the enormous appendage. The beast appeared to be shaking its head slightly, as if trying to clear his ears of a buzzing noise that it just couldn't get rid of.

Renamon's heart went out to the creature. Though they had been restrained for different reasons, the Zillo Beasts predicament seemed to be just as bad as her own. It had probably never felt more helpless in its life. When she had been caught by Goro, she had felt extremely vulnerable, as she had always been a proud warrior, maintaining her dignity even when unable to defend herself from attacks. But the Zillo Beast was more than a proud warrior – it was a top predator, the king of where it came from, where nothing could challenge its power. The helplessness that it must have been feeling right now must have been leaving it stricken. Back home, it could have torn mountains apart if it wanted to. Now, it could barely move at all.

She had to get closer. She had to get a closer look at the creature.

She turned to the others and whispered, "Anyone up for trying to get in a little nearer to it?"

"You mean a daring and possibly quite stupid approach that means we could be caught at any second because you can't hide your presence from the droids up there?" asked Terriermon. "Sure, why not?"

"Where do you want to go?" asked Lopmon.

"Up there," Renamon pointed. "By its head. I want to look the Beast straight in the eye before I have to leave."

Terriermon nodded. "Okay, I'll fly ahead and show you the best route with my mind." He lifted off from the ground and silently drifted on his ears into the darkness, so that he disappeared from sight from the others. A moment later, they heard his voice saying, _There's a pole over here that you can use to climb up if you want to. Feel like doing some climbing practice?_

_More than ready,_ Renamon said. "Come on," she added. And swiftly but stealthily, she dropped to all fours and bounded across the floor, slipping under the Zillo Beast's enormous left leg, with Lopmon and Chewbacca following on behind her. It took them a few moments to quiet movement to reach the pole that Terriermon was standing beside, which was actually more of a metal strut that held up the walkways. Terriermon briefly nodded at Renamon before he and Lopmon flapped quietly upwards.

Renamon glanced at Chewbacca and said, "Do you think that you could climb this thing too?"

Chewbacca looked down at his hands and then up at the vertical pole. It was true that he was a master of traversing through the branches but he wasn't sure that he could handle a metal pole without anything to put his feet on for most of the length. She shook his head and murmurmed, "Rooohu rroo. Ah ohraahao acworcwo."

Pulling up some of the vocabulary that Lopmon had learnt, Renamon translated that as, "You go. I'll wait here," she nodded and quickly leapt up the pole, scaling it swiftly and silently as she could, her sights focused on the walkway that the Zillo Beast's head was resting on.

Chewbacca watched her ascend into the darkness and he had to admire the skill with which she climbed the pole towards the Beast. It seemed that he had fallen in with an extremely strange group of individuals, but he was enjoying working with them. He couldn't wait to see this digivolution that Lopmon had told him about.

After a couple of moments, Chewbacca spotted one of the scientific droids walking across the walkway towards where Renamon was climbing up. Renamon didn't appear to have noticed it, and if she wasn't careful the thing might see her. But he didn't have a way of contacting her with his mind, and calling out would give away the fact that he was there.

Chewbacca quickly glanced around him and spotted an old datapad lying piece of pipe sitting on a console nearby, presumably the result of a quick repair job or perhaps left there after the place was swiftly reconditioned to house the Beast. Either way, Chewbacca quickly picked it up in one paw, whirled around and threw it up at the droid. The pipe slammed into its leg with a slight clang and it tipped over onto its front, the pipe falling back towards the ground where Chewbacca caught it and quickly returned it to the place where he'd found it. The droid wouldn't know what tripped it – it was just a drone with almost no mind of its own.

Renamon, who had seen what Chewbacca had done, turned back down from halfway up the pole and gave him a grateful thumbs up. On spotting that a couple of clones were running over to help the droid up, Renamon raised her perception filter and continued up the pole as quickly as she could.

When she reached the top, Renamon somersaulted over the railing and landed smoothly and quietly on the walkway. Terriermon and Lopmon were waiting for her, but neither of them paid her a moment's look, merely acknowledging her presence with her mind. They were staring at the head of the Zillo Beast which was no more than ten metres away from where they were. The single eye that they could see from this side of its head was bigger than both Terriermon and Lopmon combined. The light it gave off bathed a portion of the walkway beside it in green.

It was huge. But it was also lagging, its neck resting partially on the walkway and its eye half-closed. Its head bobbed slowly up and down with each breath the beast took in and its teeth glinted in the faint light coming from the ceiling. It looked like it was about to fall asleep, or else was just bored out of its mind. But the three Digimon suspected the former, considering it was drugged. Not to mention it seemed that the beast's neck was imprisoned in a containment field on either side of it.

Renamon slowly and noiselessly approached the head of the Beast, carefully avoiding the containment field and mentally asking Terriermon and Lopmon to keep an eye out for anything that might see them. She paused a mere metre from the head of the great reptile and felt utterly dwarfed by it. It almost seemed too big to be allowed. Her perception filter was still up, so she knew that the Beast couldn't see her, and she briefly considered placing a comforting paw on the Beast's face, but then decided against it. She could feel the hearts of Terriermon and Lopmon panging along with her own at the sight.

Then, the Zillo Beast groaned again, in a slight, high-pitched wailing noise. Its eye opened slightly wider and Renamon stared into it. Where her eyes were white, the Zillo Beast's eye was green, and its irises where green too, albeit with a more yellowish tinge than the rest. Its black pupil was enormous, just like everything else about the creature. But Renamon watched as the pupil turned towards her and shrank before her eyes, a clear indication that it was focusing on something closer to it. Its eyelid retracted even further and it stared intently at her.

"You know I'm here," breathed Renamon. The Zillo Beast moaned in confusion, and Renamon knew she was right. It did know she was standing there, and it had heard her, but it couldn't see her. After briefly ensuring that there was nobody looking, Renamon slowly dropped her perception filter, allowing the Beast to focus on her properly. The two stared at each other for a moment. Renamon was quite aware that if the Beast moved quickly enough it could move its head and crush her where she stood. But she remained relaxed, in a clear display of non-aggressiveness.

The Zillo Beast made no move. It merely stared at her a little incoherently. When Renamon took a step closer to it, it still didn't move. Renamon placed a paw beside the creature's giant eye, and heard its quiet moaning keen once more as the two continued to stare at each other.

"Listen," Renamon said quietly to the Beast, although she was sure it could hear her even if nobody else could. "I don't know if you can understand me or not, but I want you to know something. I am utterly appalled by what these people have done to you. And I'm not the only one. There are others out there who are working to your release as we speak."

The Zillo Beast rumbled lowly, and now Renamon was sure that even if it didn't know exactly what she was saying, it got the gist of it.

"My name is Renamon," the fox told the Beast. "And I want to make a promise to you. I promise that even if I have to take down the entire Galactic Senate, I will find a way to get you safely off this planet and back into the wild where you belong. I swear with every particle of data in my being that I and my family will not stand by and watch as you languish here. We will not fail you. This, I vow."

The Zillo Beast stared at her a moment longer before its massive pupil turned away and its eye began to droop closed again. Renamon stepped back, removing her paw from the Beast's face. She bit her lip in resentment as she turned her back on it, desperately hating herself for leaving it here for a moment longer, but she knew that they had to leave now before they were caught.

As Renamon made her way back to Terriermon and Lopmon, Ahsoka's voice broke through their mental link, _Guys,_ she called urgently. _I've held off Doctor Boll for as long as I can, but she's about to head back into the lab. If you're still in there, which I know you are, get out now._

Renamon reacted quickly and dashed across the walkway, grabbing Terriermon and Lopmon in either paw and leaping off the walkway, raising her perception filter at the same time. Transferring Terriermon to her head she planted one hind paw and one hand on the pole and slid down it all the way to the ground floor and speed and leaping off to land beside the crouching Chewbacca. The little group quickly hurried back to the shadows they had appeared in and gave the signal for the Tamers above to swipe the card. Since Renamon wouldn't be able to use the attack again for a while, Terriermon was the recipient this time and he quickly transported everyone back to the roof right before Doctor Boll entered the lab again.

As they reappeared on top of the facility, they spotted three extremely downcast looking Tamers. "How could anyone keep a creature like that caged?" asked Henry.

"I know," Rika replied. "It just... reeks of wrongness."

Suzie said nothing. She was just too depressed. As Lopmon hopped off Renamon to comfort her Tamers, Ahsoka's speeder hovered into view and the Togruta Padawan quickly floated over to them and hovered low, allowing the others to board quickly, before swooping away again.

Ahsoka quickly picked up the details of what had happened in there from Terriermon's mind. She sighed and said, "I really hope that Master Skywalker and Padmé succeed in changing the Chancellor's mind. How can that man have a clear conscience?"

"He probably doesn't care," shrugged Lopmon. "It feels so wrong to be just leaving it behind like this."

"Well," said Ahsoka. "At least there were a couple of good things that came from that. I think you might have given that Zillo Beast some hope, Renamon."

"Let's hope that hope is not the only thing we'll be able to give it," replied Renamon. "We should also strive to be giving it freedom."

"And if we have anything to say about it we will," said Ahsoka. "But there is another little titbit of information you might want to hear. Doctor Boll isn't the malicious scientist that I was expecting her to be. She seems as concerned for the welfare of the Beast as we are. She means well, but she just doesn't to go against the orders of the Chancellor."

"That's great, but it doesn't really help us find a way of getting it out of here," said Rika.

"I know," said Ahsoka. "I just thought you'd appreciate the news. Come on, let's head back to the Jedi Temple and let the others know what happened."

* * *

What a strange creature that yellow furred mammal had been. It walked around on two legs like the rest of the small creatures that were walking around it but he had yet to see any of the other ones appearing out of thin air and then disappearing again later on. Nor had it seen anything like them jumping off the large thing that was surrounding its huge form. He hadn't seen what had happened to it, but he was pretty sure it was still alive.

The Zillo Beast had been able to get the gist of what the yellow fox-like creature had been saying. It had been offering its condolences, and it could tell that she had been very angry. Its confinement had angered her almost as much as it angered itself. That was odd. These small being were all of conflicting opinions. The pale man from before had been nothing but cold and arrogant around it, putting himself above the Beast as if it was a part of his hierarchy. And the fish woman seemed to be concerned about him as well, but she was submissive and was following what the pale man told her to do anyway.

The thought of the pale man made the Zillo Beast growl in anger, but it still felt weary thanks to the sedative that it had been filled with, so it could do little more than that. But at the thought of the yellow creature, it felt something else. A certain kinship perhaps, although it wasn't entirely sure why it was feeling that way. Things had been confusing for it ever since the ground above it had suddenly given way to open air for the first time in years.

Renamon.

That was a word that it remembered the creature saying. It didn't understand the majority of the things that these little organisms were saying to one another but it had begun to get the gist of a couple of them. It knew that the pale man had called him a mere animal and that it had also ordered the fish woman to kill it somehow. It also now recognised the words 'poison gas' which had something to do with the green stuff that the little waddling things from his homeworld had poured down his hole.

And now it had a new word to add to what it understood. Renamon. It sounded like the creature had been introducing itself to him when she had said that. The Zillo Beast would remember that word. Renamon had been offering it help when others were turning a blind eye, even if it was with reluctance. It would remember Renamon.

The Zillo Beast groaned again and it felt another wave of sluggishness entering it. It felt tired and sometimes it had considered just going to sleep, but if he did that it might never wake up. The Zillo Beast was determined that if it was going to die, it would remain awake until death came to him.

Now, the fish woman was floating back into view, standing inside the hovering thing from before that levitated in front of him. In a way, the floating thing was mocking the beast. It was still free to move about, but the Zillo Beast could do nothing but lie there and wait for its inevitable fate.

The fish woman resumed the work that she had been doing before, bustling about on her hovering pod and fiddling with little round, hollow objects, several of which contained the strange green stuff. The Zillo Beast watched her work intently, willing to look death right in the eye if need be. The little whirring floaty things that occasionally flitted past its head didn't help matters much though.

The fish woman spent another ten minutes working on whatever she was doing, before she stood up straight and sighed, apparently deciding that whatever she had been doing, she was now finished. She looked up at the Zillo Beast, but quickly averted her gaze when the Beast stared into her yellow eyes with its own green ones. She looked extremely reluctant and the Zillo Beast could sense it, but it watched as she slow lifted a small device into the air and pushed a specific place on it.

A little blue image of a man fizzled into existence in the palm of her hand. The Zillo Beast blinked in surprise, but then focused on the small thing, trying to decide whether it was real or not. But, after a couple of seconds, he recognised the back of the head of the little man. It was the pale man from before. The Zillo Beast's eyes narrowed, pupils shrinking as it focused on the back of the man's head, urging it to turn around and face his gaze.

"Ah, Doctor Boll," said the voice of the pale man. The Zillo Beast snarled – somehow the pale man was communicating with the fish woman through that image despite the fact that he wasn't even there. And he still wasn't turning around.

"I trust you have some progress to report," the pale man's image said, shimmering in front of the eyes of the Zillo Beast.

"Yes, Chancellor," nodded the fish woman, a little slowly and slightly reluctantly. She gestured behind her at the little hollow objects full of green stuff. "I was able to convert the Malastare fuel toxin into a poison gas." The Zillo Beast bared its teeth at the words, but could still do nothing about it.

The fish woman went on, "I believe it's now strong enough to kill the Zillo Beast." She paused, looking down for a moment and then said, slightly plaintively, "If... that's still how you wish to proceed."

"I wish I saw an alternative," sighed the pale man, in a voice that indicated he was sorry, although the Zillo Beast could tell that he wasn't sorry at all, and a faint growl emerged from its throat as its hatred for the pale man grew, festering in its chest. Its fingers flexed slightly, but the strange blue light holding its arms still stopped them. "However, sadly I must ask you to proceed with your assignment."

The fish woman nodded sadly and deactivated the image of the pale man. The moment before she did there was some kind of scuffling noise from the device, and she took a moment to stare at the device in slight confusion. But then, she put it down and turned her back on the Beast to pick up one of the hollow things.

So that was it, was it? The pale man wasn't even going to deign to come and watch the death of the Zillo Beast, and the death of its entire species along with it. The Zillo Beast's teeth bared and anger boiled in it. Who did it think he was? He clearly thought that he was the more dominant of the two, that he was in charge of the Zillo Beast and was dismissing its demise as if it was unimportant. The Zillo Beast's fingers flexed another time, but once again the blue light stopped it from doing any more than that.

The Zillo Beast turned its attention back to the fish woman and watched her progress as she bent down and scooped up one of the large, hollow objects in both hands. It was clearly neither heavy nor light, but it was large so the woman needed to use both arms and lean back slightly in order to balance the thing.

One of the irritating little floating whirry things floated in front of the Zillo Beast's face. Had the Zillo Beast's reactions been up to speed it would have been able to snatch the creature in its jaws since it came so close to it, but all he could do was watch as it floated along down to the hovering thing that the fish woman was standing in and turn around so that a slot on its back was exposed to the fish woman.

The fish woman walked over with the hollow thing and carefully placed it inside the slot, where it fit quite snugly, as if it had been specifically made to put the thing in there. The metal things were an anomaly for the Zillo Beast. They moved around all on their own, but they weren't alive. It wasn't entirely sure how it knew that they weren't alive, but they just weren't. They were contraptions, built by the little creatures, so that slot in the back of the metal thing _had_ been made to put the hollow thing in.

There was a slight hissing noise as the hollow thing filled with the 'poison gas' was clamped inside the slot, and the whirring metal thing immediately flew away and up towards the head of the Zillo Beast. The Beast ignored it and focused on the fish woman, who was looking extremely depressed now. For the first time in a while, she looked up and stared straight into the Zillo Beast's eye.

After a second or two of eye contact, the Zillo Beast shut its eyes and nodded its head slightly, exhaling with a guttural groan in a sigh that was clearly an indication to the fish woman. He had been saying 'Let's just get this over with.' Then it glared at the floating thing hovering above its head and out of its reach, ready to die – the last of its kind, alone on an alien planet at the hands of some tiny little metal thing at the will of a pale man the beast could swallow whole. It was almost shameful, and not a befitting end to his magnificent race at all.

"I'm sorry," he heard the fish woman say to him. "Don't worry. It'll all be over soon." The Beast felt a slight bit of gratitude to the fish woman for trying to comfort it in its final moments, much like that Renamon creature had before hand.

Then, it heard the fish woman say, in a much louder and clearer voice, which still contained a slight edge of reluctance and defeat, "Begin procedure."

Almost immediately, he saw the little floating thing point an arm at the top of its head, close to its right nostril above its eye and a stream of green, gaseous fumes begin to hiss out of the tip of its arm. The gas pooled against the Zillo Beast's armour and spread out, thinning as it did but not diminishing. The little floating thing moved across the Beast's forehead, continuously spraying the green 'poison gas' until a large stream, until it spread out and began to engulf most of its head.

The Beast began to feel the effects of the 'poison gas' almost immediately. It could feel itself getting even more sluggish than it was at the moment, and as the gas streamed out to engulf its entire head in a thin, green cloud, some of it entered through its nostrils and mouth. The Beast heard itself give off a faint wail as it felt itself shutting down, becoming woozy and incoherent as more of the gas entered its body through its open mouth. It vaguely heard the fish woman murmur, "Vital signs are dropping." Whatever that meant, it was sure that it meant that it was dying, and it certainly felt that way, as if its body was slowly shutting down.

A growling noise escaped the Zillo Beast's throat as it lifted its head, trying to clear the cloud of noxious fumes. It didn't want to die. This was not how his race was supposed to go out. It remembered how the little things on Malastare had tried to kill it in the same manner, but they had just been scared of it and trying to defend themselves, so while it was angry they had tried, the act itself was forgivable.

But this? Trapped in an unknown place where it was no threat to anyone? It was willing to bet that it wasn't even going to be eaten after it was gone – a waste of resources and a pointless death for his whole species. And all at the whim of one, pale man.

As the cloud of green gas dissipated and it breathed more of it in, the Zillo Beast began to feel its boiling fury rising to the surface. That man was going to go unpunished if he got away with this and succeeded in killing it. That man who had so callously ordered its death would not get what he deserved. The thought made the Beast angry. It wondered if the Renamon creature would avenge it after it was gone, but in its thoughts, the right to punish the pale man did not belong to the Renamon creature.

The right to punish the pale man belonged to the Zillo Beast and the Zillo Beast alone.

And it was going to be damned if it let its life waste into nothingness here just because the pale man wanted it too!

The Zillo Beast's senses began to clear and it began to feel sharper again, sharper than it had been all day. Its wooziness was disappearing as adrenaline pumped through its body, responding to the Beast's unwavering fury and hatred of the pale man. It felt strength returning to its body as that adrenaline overtook the sedative that was filling its system and overpowered the 'poison gas' that it was breathing in.

With a lurch of its left arm, it felt its strength returning as it collided with one of the metal walkways wedging it in. He heard a scream as it did so, evidently it had knocked one of the figures covered in white, hard material off the walkway and to the ground below. But it ignored that fact as the walkway buckled above its arm. This act of minor destruction seemed to fuel the fires and the Zillo Beast was now feeling more awake than it had in a long time.

It moved the two arms on its sides, feeling the crackling light pulling at them and trying to make them stop moving, but this time it wasn't going let them. A loud growling escaped from its throat as it pulled its arms free and moved them backwards, planting themselves on the ground and pushing upwards, lifting the Beast off its stomach at long last.

"No," the Beast heard the fish woman gasp. "It should have been enough." But right now it was ignoring her as it began to thrash in the metal holding it restrained, pushing itself back onto its feet at last. It roared, as it took its weight on its back legs and grabbed hold of the metal walkway below its head with both its side arms, using them as supports until it got back onto its feet properly, ignoring the blue light that tried to pull it back into its original position.

The Zillo Beast roared.

The fish woman stepped back in alarm.

The Zillo Beast moved its right arm until it was gripping the metal pole that was in front of it and stepped backwards, before moving its head between the two walkways in front of it. With a final roar it gave a mighty wrench with its arms, and with the sound of grating metal, the entire metallic structure all around it groaned as the Zillo Beast tore it in half, sparks flying everywhere at the metal was ripped in two like it was a piece of paper. The Beast's colossal strength had returned at last!

The fish woman gasped, gaping in shock as the Zillo Beast stepped free of the area where it had been contained, the metallic walkways falling to the ground around it with loud thuds that mixed with the loud sounds of the Zillo Beast's feet hitting the ground as it finally moved away. The Beast walked straight past the hoverpod that the fish woman was standing on, studiously ignoring her as a snarl graced its features.

As an afterthought, the spiked tail came up and swatted the hoverpod containing the fish woman aside, where it crashed to the floor. The fish woman would live, but that swat was a small warning to her. Maybe next time she would stand up to the pale man.

The rage at the thought of the pale man continued to bubble inside the Zillo Beast's huge serpentine chest. But after only a couple of steps, the Beast found itself contained once again, as it was still inside the huge metallic dome that it had woken up in some hours before. But he wouldn't be for long.

The Beast let loose with a deafening roar and swung one huge arm, slamming it into the metal with such force the metal, which was over two metres thick, received an enormous dent that pushed a huge segment of it outwards, stretching the metal around it such was the force of the blow. But to the Beast's frustration, it didn't break completely.

The Beast reared up and brought its other arms into play, delivering another two crushing blows that had similar results to the first and pushed a huge section of the wall outwards each time. But still the wall did not break. Clearly it had been well-constructed. The Zillo Beast turned around and brutally slammed its spiked tail into the wall, creating yet another dent, but still there was no more effect than that. They really wanted to keep him in here.

The Beast roared in frustration and slammed its arms into it three more times, and then rammed it with his head. Half the entire wall had now been bent out of joint. The Beast turned again and delivered two more crashing blows with its tail that knocked the metal out of shape even further, but it still held. The structure of the dome was well-designed to ensure that things couldn't break in or out of its easily, as it was a compact shape.

A snarl escaped the Zillo Beast's jaws and it paused briefly, taking a couple of steps backwards to gain some slight momentum before hunkering down onto the ground on all fives, lowering its head almost to ground level. Then, with a defiant bellow of rage and determination, the giant tower of armour and teeth and burning eyes surged forward and slammed into the metal like a falling mountain, its shoulder crashing into the metal with an impact that would have shattered every bone in the body of just about any other creature. But thanks to its tough armour, the Zillo Beast barely felt the strike.

And this time, its efforts were rewarded. The huge doors of the dome were completely ripped free and collapsed outwards, crushing many clones and tanks that had been surrounding the fortress and pointing their weapons at the facility the moment they heard the bangs. Those that survived scrambled out of the way as the Zillo Beast's enormous form rose out of the dust cloud and howled to the sky, stepping out into fresh air once again.

Ignoring the white-clad men running around nearby, the Beast turned around and pulled itself up onto the top of the building which had previously been its prison. It hefted its huge weight with seemingly no effort at all and clambered across it in four huge steps before settling down on the ground on the other side, clambering down head-first.

Once it did, it stopped and reared up to its full height and gazed at its surroundings. It's environment was still far too alien for its liking, but up ahead if could see enormous structures made by the small creatures. Structures that were much bigger than it was by a remarkable distance. The Beast took a moment to gaze on those structures with interest. Rarely had it encountered anything bigger than itself, but it was practically a forest of concrete and metal fortifications and glowing or flashing lights out there, stretching as far as the eye could see. In the distance it could see little things flitting through the sky with glowing lights.

It turned back to look at the sun, which was already half-way below the horizon. Then it turned around to look at the forest of concrete in front of it again. Somewhere in that enormous jungle created by the small beings, the pale man was hiding. And if the Zillo Beast had anything to say about it, that man was not going to exist anymore by the time the sun rose above the skyline once again.

With that thought in mind, the Zillo Beast roared and made its way into the city. It was time for vengeance.

* * *

Doctor Boll slowly regained consciousness just as the sun dipped below the horizon completely. There was a sharp pain in her arm and her opposite hand immediately moved to grasp it. She pressed her protruding lips together to try and blot out the pain. She felt dazed and dizzy and she glanced around her. The entire Science and Technical Centre had been almost completely wrecked and the doors were a mangled mess and lying completely out of their foundations.

Several clones were rushing about the place, attending to the wounded and helping the injured out of potential danger zones like the trained soldiers they were. She clambered out of the wreckage that had once been her hoverpod and slowly exited through the doors, or what was left of them. The tanks that had been stationed outside were completely flat under the doors and there was no chance that anyone inside them had survived.

As she exited the doors of the Science and Technical Centre, a familiar screaming call pierced the night, causing her head to swing around and look. There were several other similar domes and buildings in the rest of the centre where other experiments were being carried out between where she was standing and the main city. Already, most of them had been torn to wreckage and there were fires everywhere, so it seemed like the Beast might have destroyed several vehicles and possibly some experimental weapons. The Zillo Beast itself was nowhere in sight.

It had already entered the city.

"Oh no," Doctor Boll breathed, her protuberant eyes widening in horror. What had they done? They had unleashed a huge and very angry creature into the heart of Coruscant! A creature that would be nearly impossible to stop!

* * *

Writing from the perspective of the Zillo Beast is certainly interesting and I find I rather enjoyed it. It'll certainly give us a view of both sides of the fight that is about to come. The Zillo Beast is on the move now, and there is very little that can stand in its way. Lots and lots of destruction will now ensue.

See you soon. And please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

The Galaxy's most dangerous life-form is on the loose in the most heavily populated city in the universe. It's very, very angry and the only thing it wants is to find the perpetrator of its misery and make him pay! The Zillo Beast is out for blood!

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 114 : Rampage Through Coruscant**


	114. Rampage through Coruscant

Prepare for the greatest level of destruction wrought by one being that I have ever written in my entire life. I have been anticipating this chapter for a very long time and I loved writing it. I really, really hope that it doesn't disappoint. We don't see a lot of the Digimon in it, but we'll see a lot of them in the second half of the arc, I assure you..

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 114:- Rampage through Coruscant**

* * *

Aayla and Barriss looked up from where they were standing as the sound of engines reached their ears. They were standing on either side of the door in the hangar of the Jedi Temple. Having made their report to the Council, they were waiting for Ahsoka and the others to get back with news of what had happened at the Science and Technical Centre and hoe the Zillo Beast was being treated.

Sure enough, a few moments later, a large speeder pulled in through the doors that were at the other end of the room that opened out into the Coruscant sky. The hovering craft quickly found a space a rotated to the best angle to fit in the gap before it lowered itself to the ground. As it did, the perception filter that had previously hidden the Digimon, Tamers and Wookiee from sight lowered itself.

Ahsoka hopped out of the driver's seat and landed smoothly on the floor. Renamon flipped onto the back of the speeder and proceeded to help the three Tamers out, since the speeder didn't have any convenient doors for them to use, while Chewbacca also stepped out himself, a bunny riding on each shoulder like a pair of differently coloured parrots or something.

Aayla and Barriss both glanced at one another when they spotted the bitter looks on the faces of most of their team members. In fact all of them were looking slightly angry, as if they had previously been more so and had calmed down but were still holding onto that anger now.

"I'm guessing that you didn't like what you found," Aayla remarked as the group walked over towards them.

"Were you expecting us to find anything that we _did_ like?" asked Renamon.

"No," the Twi'lek replied. "In truth, I was expecting something pretty much like what I am seeing right now once the lot of you got back."

"What happened?" asked Barriss. "Did you see the creature?"

"Yes, we did," said Terriermon. "It was one of the most incredible animals that I've ever laid eyes on."

"Well, you can't leave me waiting like this," Aayla said. "Come on, tell me what happened."

Renamon hurled a thought bubble at Aayla, encapsulating all the events that had taken place ever since they had spotted the huge dome that the Zillo Beast was contained in. Aayla blinked as she stared at the image in her mind of the enormous Zillo Beast and the poor condition that it was in, with the containment field and the sleepy expression and the low groaning. She frowned, a slightly bitter look appearing on her own face now.

"Yes," she murmured. "I can understand why you all feel so angry if that is what you saw. Nothing should be treated like that, least of all the Zillo Beast."

"Uh, I hate to point something out," said Barriss, "But I don't have a mind connection, so I still don't know what happened."

"You mean you don't have a mind connection _yet_," Lopmon said pointedly. "You'll get one eventually, Barriss. How that mind connection will come about, I have no idea, but you'll get there eventually."

"I won't," Chewbacca murmured. "I no have mind powers."

"Aw, Momentai, Chewie. The mind connection's not all its cranked up to be anyway. I know all the presents that Renamon gets me for Christmas well in advance."

_It's not all its cranked up to be?_ Renamon asked. _If I didn't know you weren't just trying to cheer him up, I would have swatted you round the head for saying that about this aspect of Renamon mating culture._

_Yeah, but you know I was so the point you just made is void anyway,_ Terriermon replied. Lopmon giggled, evidently having been privy to that little conversation.

Rika was about to start explaining what they had seen to Barriss, before Aayla raised a hand and said, "Wait a moment. When we told the Council where you had gone, they were a little irritated that you had gone to have a look without their approval, although they admitted that they don't have a lot of power of you. Nevertheless, they are keen to learn what you saw, so perhaps we should go and speak with them as well so that you don't have to tell the story too many times."

"Good idea," said Henry. "Lead the way, Aayla."

"Don't you know your own way around the Temple by now?" Aayla chuckled jokingly, as she turned and did just that anyway.

* * *

The Jedi Council room was not far away from the hangar and so it wasn't long before the group walked in through the doors and into the centre of the room. The three Jedi bowed to the three Council members that were there – Obi-Wan, Mace and Yoda. The room had rarely been so empty when all the members on Coruscant at the time were in attendance. Every other member of the Council was away somewhere else, fighting in the war.

This allowed Terriermon to hop over and place himself in the little pouffe-like chair that was meant to house the Lannik Master, Even Piell. He figured that since the little guy wasn't there, he wouldn't mind. Mace and Obi-Wan raised eyebrows at his behaviour but made no comment.

"Good evening to you all," Yoda began the speaking. "Sincerely hope, I do, that you were not caught in your little expedition to see the Beast."

"We were careful, Master Yoda," said Renamon. "We made sure that not a single eye, photoreceptor or camera lens saw us throughout the whole time we were there, except one. We did see the Beast for ourselves and the Beast saw me as well, but nobody else did."

"And I think it's safe to say that all of us were gobsmacked by what we saw," said Lopmon. "That creature was enormous."

"Indeed," said Mace. "What was the Beast's condition?"

"Not good," Terriermon shook his head. "We were quite disgusted by what we were seeing." The Digimon briefly outlined the imprisonment of the creature and the fact that it was being kept restrained and drugged throughout the whole time it had been there. Renamon described the look in its eye in great detail, stressing the sense of forlorn despair she had sensed from the creature as she stood by its head.

Mace looked very irritated when the Digimon had finished what they were saying. "I was assured by Doctor Boll that the Beast would be well-treated. But, I for one do not think that what you are describing qualifies as good care. I knew it was a mistake to bring that Beast to Coruscant."

"Nevertheless, we did," said Obi-Wan. "And we cannot dwell on what might have been. We need to decide what we're going to do now."

"Have we heard from Anakin or Senator Amidala yet?" asked Henry. "They should have spoken with the Chancellor by now. Maybe they managed to succeed in changing his mind."

"Heard nothing, have we," Yoda sighed. "No word from Skywalker, we have received. Perhaps still in debate about the topic, they are. Patient, we must be."

"Yes," nodded Mace. "And if Skywalker does not succeed, then what do you say we all head over there to have a little... discussion with the Chancellor ourselves. Excluding those from other galaxies, of course," he added. "Perhaps the combined weight of three Council members, along with Skywalker and the rest of his team will help sway the Chancellor where I could not succeed alone."

"Sounds good to me," said Aayla.

"It's a shame though," said Terriermon. "I still that guys deserves to have his hooked nose broken."

"Terriermon," Henry sighed.

There was a notable absence of a following Momentai. Terriermon had been joking, but only just.

* * *

Anakin Skywalker was sitting on one of the sofas that stood before Chancellor Palpatine's desk, leaning against the back with a vacant expression on his face and staring at the ceiling, a sense of dull failure surrounding him. It was a feeling that he had not experienced for some time, considering the winning streak he and the rest of the team had been on during the war, and it was almost an alien feeling now.

He knew that he had quite literally done the best that he could to sway the Chancellor, using any and all arguments against him. But for reason, Palpatine was so insistent on acquiring the armour of the Zillo Beast that he hadn't changed his mind no matter what arguments were put before him. Anakin knew he couldn't blame himself, but at the same time there was a sense that he had let the team down.

He could feel Padmé's presence – his wife was sitting next to him on the sofa, as close as she could get without it looking suspicious in front of the Chancellor and she had a comforting hand on Anakin's shoulder. Anakin was grateful for her help, although he could have done without Palpatine's attempts to help him, which were basically attempts to get him to understand his decision to kill the Beast by plying him with the same arguments as before. It was similar to what Senator Chuchi had described to him earlier.

If this was what it was like to be a Senator, Anakin was more glad than ever that he was not one.

After he had calmed himself down after nearly hitting Palpatine, he had been half tempted to storm out of the office right then and completely blank out the Chancellor. As it was, he was already tuning out the voice of the Chancellor as Palpatine continued to talk to him. He had been tempted to immediately try and contact his friends and family to tell them that it hadn't worked and that the Chancellor was going to kill the Beast off.

But he had kept himself from doing so, because he was pretty sure that the Digimon's emotions would overtake them if they did and they would immediately launch a mission to take over custody of the Zillo Beast, which would be pointless and stupid. Not only would it not help the Zillo Beast in the long run, it would also expose their existence and they probably wouldn't even reach the Zillo Beast before it was killed. And while the Zillo Beast was precious, so was the importance of conserving the Secret of the 327th.

He sincerely hoped that the Digimon had not overheard Palpatine's order to kill the Beast because they were hiding in the shadows at the other end of the line.

The only reason he was still in Chancellor Palpatine's office at all, was because he was waiting for the call from Doctor Boll that would confirm that she had carried out the Chancellor's order and that the Zillo Beast was dead. That way, when he told the others it hadn't worked, they were less likely to do something stupid and it would be easier to stop them if they tried.

"You did all you could, Anakin," Padmé said quietly. Anakin turned to look across at her. C-3PO and R2-D2 were both hovering in the background, somehow looking anxious despite the fact their expressions couldn't change and Artoo barely had a face. "You tried your hardest to keep the Beast alive and ensure it was freed."

"I know," Anakin sighed. "By my best apparently wasn't enough. Maybe Obi-Wan or Aayla should have come in my place. Both of them are much better at talking."

"You underestimate yourself, Anakin," Padmé said. "You did extremely well. In fact, I was quite proud of the way you handled things during the debate. I didn't know you had it in you."

Anakin shrugged. "Heh," he said, without humour. "I had good teachers I suppose. But still, I wish the outcome could have been different. I wish the Beast had never been brought to Coruscant."

"So do I," said Padmé, sadly.

Just then, the light of Palpatine's desk that warned of an incoming transmission began flashing and a faint bleeping noise could be heard. Anakin immediately snapped out of his state and he turned to look at the Chancellor's desk, just as Palpatine sat up straight and professionally in his chair and pressed the button with one finger.

Sure enough, the hologram of the fish-like scientist, Doctor Boll, (what species was she anyway) appeared in the holoprojector set in the desk before the Chancellor. Anakin, who was used to picking out details thanks to experience on the battlefield, noticing that one of the Doctor's arms was a bit limp and there was a large scratch on the upper part of that arm. How had that happened?

"Doctor," said Palpatine. "Were you successful?"

"We have a problem, sir," said Doctor Boll, a worried look plastered on her face as Anakin and Padmé got up from the sofa and moved around so they could see the scientist's face. "The poison gas was not sufficient to kill the Zillo Beast. It's still alive. Unfortunately..."

Anakin quickly interrupted, stepping next to Palpatine where Doctor Boll could have seen him in the hologram at her end. "Hold off before you try and kill it again, Doctor. I want to have a little discussion with the Chancellor before that happens."

"Anakin," Palpatine looked up at the taller man, a stern glare on his face. "I've asked you several times and I'll ask you again now, please do not interfere. I have a democracy to run and the clones need that armour if we are to save as many lives as we can, as I have explained many a time."

"Yes, but killing the Beast is still morally wrong," Anakin glared back. "We have to set it free and..."

"Gentlemen!" Doctor Boll suddenly interrupted, causing both Anakin and Palpatine to look at her in surprise. Her harsh tone had hardly been appropriate as both of them outranked her and she didn't usually step out of place.

"I'm afraid the problem is much bigger than the simple fact that the Beast is still alive," Doctor Boll said. "The fact of the matter is that not only is it very alive, it's also very angry. And we won't have to set the Beast free, General Skywalker. It managed to escape on its own."

"What?" both Anakin and Palpatine asked in shock, their eyes widening. Padmé's hand flew to her mouth and C-3PO immediately went, "Oh my! We're all doomed!"

"What do you mean escaped?" Palpatine asked quickly. "I thought you were supposed to be keeping the Beast sedated!"

"I was, Chancellor," said Boll. "And I can't tell you how sorry I am, but it seems that once the Beast realised it was dying it must have had a rush of adrenaline that overrode the sedative. It broke loose of the containment fields and the other confinements we had it in and smashed down the doors of the centre before escaping into the city."

"Into the city!" Padmé cried, looking out the window immediately. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the horizon, and then she gasped as she spotted something – in the distance, there was a large plume of smoke rising from the buildings. It was still far away and she would have missed it if she were looking out the windows before, but now she could see exactly where the Zillo Beast was.

"Damn it!" Anakin shouted.

* * *

The group in the Jedi Temple that were standing around in the Council chambers didn't have as long to wait as they anticipated. Even Terriermon didn't joke around much through the silence as they waited to receive some sort of correspondence from Anakin – the Senate building was too far away from the Temple for the mind link to work so they were waiting for a hologram communication of some sort. Though the little bunny did continue to occupy the chair of Master Piell since the Jedi in question was not there to occupy it.

However, roughly five to ten minutes or so after the others had finished making their report, during which Obi-Wan, Mace and Yoda were quietly communicating with one another, marshalling fresh idea to present to the Chancellor, the communicator button in the armrest of Mace Windu's chair began to bleep. The others glanced at it and Mace nodded to everyone before pushing the button.

A double hologram appeared in the centre of the room, featuring both Anakin and Chancellor Palpatine. At the sight of the man they were supposed to hide from, the Digimon tensed, ready to jump behind chairs if he turned their way. But the Chancellor was looking urgent and immediately focused on the three Council members in front of him.

"Oh thank goodness we were able to contact you so quickly," Palpatine says. "I'm afraid it's a massive disaster! We must do something quickly before too many lives are lost!"

"Hold on, Chancellor Palpatine," Mace Windu raised a hand to stop the man, but everyone present was immediately engaged thanks to the Chancellor's urgency. "Slow down and tell us what is going on?"

"Slow down?" Palpatine shook his head. "There is no time to slow down, Master Jedi. I am forced to concede that you were right, Master Windu. Bringing the Zillo Beast to Coruscant was indeed a mistake. Somehow it has managed to break out of its stronghold and enter the city!"

"What!" a myriad of voices cried out at once, though the Digimon had enough sense to keep quiet as everyone looked at one another in disbelief.

"It broke loose?" Obi-Wan pressed. "How? How could that have happened?"

"Is that relevant right now?" Palpatine asked. "The point is that there is a large and hostile creature on the loose in the heart of the city. We must hurry if we are to put a stop to it! You must act quickly or we will all be in trouble."

"He's right, Masters," said Anakin. "We need to get some LX-400 stun tanks to the Beast's location and quickly. We need to stun the creature and recapture it quickly. I can see the plume of smoke it's creating from its destruction from here."

Ahsoka immediately ran to the window of the Council chamber and peered out through it, pressing her forehead and hands to the glass. She scanned the horizon and in the distance she could hear the faint droning wail of klaxons going off as they sounded the alarm and a she could see a trail of smoke leading through the city. "There!" she pointed. "I can see the path it's been taking! It's already gotten a mile into the city and its getting further in with each passing second!"

"We'll have to hurry!" said Mace. "We'll acquire stun tanks and get them as quickly as we can!" he added, as he got to his feet.

"I have sent word to Doctor Boll to begin construction of more poison gas concocted from the Malastare fuel," Palpatine said. "I'm afraid we may have no choice but to kill the Beast if the stun tanks will not do the job. And we do not have the facilities to contain the creature it seems."

"Then we will transport it off the planet as soon as we have stunned it," said Mace. "Clearly it is too dangerous to be there. Skywalker, stay there and monitor the progress of the Beast from the Senate building. Let us know where it's been going."

"I'm on it," said Anakin. "Although," he added. "I feel I should point out that this might not have happened if the Chancellor had not tried to kill the creature."

"We will discuss this later, Anakin!" Palpatine said harshly, ignoring the looks of disbelief on the faces of the Jedi. "Hurry Jedi. All of Coruscant is depending on you."

"I'll contact Rex to come and support you," said Anakin, before the hologram vanished completely.

"He was going to kill the Beast?" Renamon bristled. "He's even worse than I thought."

"We'll have time to discuss all of that later on," said Mace, running for the door. "We have no time to waste. Come on."

"Acquire the stun tanks, you must," Yoda said. "Meet you where the Beast is, I will."

"Alright, Master," nodded Aayla as everybody else ran from the room.

As they ran towards the hangar, Mace called over his shoulder, "By the way, I do feel obligated to ask – did you Digimon have anything to do with this?"

"Give us some credit, Master Windu," Terriermon replied as he soared overhead. "We do have the sense not to release the Beast. We didn't want it to go on a rampage anymore than you did. It must have somehow broken out on its own."

"Nevertheless," Mace replied. "The situation has become a whole lot worse. I'm afraid the Chancellor is right. We may be facing the possibility of having to have the Beast killed to protect thousands upon millions of people."

"I refuse to think like that!" Renamon growled as she ran. "If I have any say in the matter at all, that Beast will only die of natural causes and not because we were forced to kill it for the greater good."

"Don't let your concern for the Beast overwhelm your judgement," Mace said reproachfully as they ran into the hangar. "Perhaps it would be a good idea if you Digimon were to wait here..."

"Forget it," Lopmon said instantly.

"Loppy's right," said Terriermon. "We're all going. And there's nothing you can do to change our minds either."

"But you cannot be exposed to the citizens," protested Mace.

"Master Windu," Aayla said, interrupting the Korun Jedi Master. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but you should let them come. It's very likely that we may need their help before all this is over. If anyone is capable of combating that Beast, it is them. And they are ingenious thinkers – they may be able to think of some things which would not have occurred to us."

Mace hesitated for a second, before turning to the Digimon and saying, "If the worst comes to the worst... are you prepared to fight against the Zillo Beast to stopping it from harming the populace of the Republic?"

"We are," nodded Renamon, sighing bitterly. "We may not like it, but we will do everything we can to stop the creature's rampage."

"Even if it means revealing yourself to the general public and the Senate?" asked Mace. "And thus losing the advantage we have in the war?"

"It will be a last resort," said Lopmon. "But if the time has come for the Secret of the 327th to be revealed then so be it. The Beast must be stopped."

"However," Renamon added. "We will still be looking for potential ways to stop it _and_ keep it alive."

"Don't worry guys," said Aayla. "I promise, I will do the same." She smiled at the fox, well aware of the promise that Renamon had made to the Beast. The Twi'lek knew that she was going to use any means possible to help the fox fulfil that promise. They may eventually have no choice but to do so, but until then, she would be casting about for ideas.

"As will we," said Barriss.

Then, a pair of gunships breezed in through the hangar doors. The white blast doors on the side slid open to reveal Rex standing there. "Looks like we have our work cut out for us this time," he observed.

* * *

A young, male Rodian cried out in pain as he was slammed against the wall, and looked up with pleading eyes as he stared up at his attackers. He had known that descending into the Coruscant Underworld had been a bad idea, but he had wanted to see what it was like. Now he was regretting it, as he was being assaulted by two Weequay, a Quarren and a Nautolan with a pair of daggers in his hands.

"I'll ask you one last time," the Nautolan sneered as he placed his boot cruelly on the Rodian's ribcage and pressed down with a sneer, ignoring the squeals of pain from the unfortunate victim. "Hand over the all the money you have, or else."

"Please," the Rodian gasped. "I already told you. I have nothing."

"Hah," the Nautolan scoffed. "I find that hard to believe." Deftly flipping his daggers, he held one to the Rodian's throat and the other with the tip between his eyes. "Are you sure that you don't want to reconsider?"

"Just stick him," one of the Weequay said. "We can always take his money after he's dead."

"Yes, but this way is more fun," the Nautolan replied. "Now, hand... it... over."

"I... I can't," the Rodian gasped.

The Nautolan sighed and stood up. For a moment, the Rodian thought it had earned a reprieve, but then the Nautolan flipped his dagger and caught it by the blade, his arm rearing back as he prepared to throw it at the defenceless Rodian. "In that case," he said. "Goodbye."

Just before he threw the knife, he stopped in confusion as a loud screeching sound broke through the relative quiet of the darkness of the Coruscant Underworld. He and all the others in the street (nobody was bothering to stop and help the Rodian) looked around in confusion. That screech had been almost unnatural and had sent shivers up everybody's spines.

"What was that?" the Quarren asked, but nobody was able to answer him. In the quiet that ensued, more sounds became discernable – deep, and regular thudding noises like some kind of giant was stamping on the ground nearby and also the sound of crumbling masonry, as if a nearby building was slowly beginning to collapse.

Then, the gargantuan head of the Zillo Beast rose into view from the darkness below, an angry roar bursting from its jaws as its huge bulk appeared out of seemingly nowhere. The people of the Underworld gaped in astonishment, and then the screaming began as people began to flee as the Beast bellowed again, its huge arms rising up and grabbing hold of the walls of the buildings on either side of the street, its huge fingers crushing the building work and providing an adequate hold as it climbed from the bottom of Coruscant up.

The gang stared at it as it rose up, rubble and debris falling around them, the Beast's roars mingling with the crashes of its limbs as it scaled the walls of the skyscrapers. But they didn't have long to contemplate it because at that point the Beast's huge foot rose up after the rest of its body and descended on them, giving them time for one final scream before they were all stomped flat. The Zillo Beast didn't even notice and the Rodian gasped as the foot crashed to the ground inches in front of him, before lifting away again and taking most of the walkway with it.

The Beast bellowed as it climbed higher, its tail lashing backwards and forwards and ploughing into the sides of the buildings, its huge spikes digging scrapes in the concrete and tearing huge rents in the walls. Each footstep was enough to crush an entire pub, and it did just that several times, killing the rowdy, drunken occupants and unwittingly doing many people a favour in the process.

Lights flashed all around it, and the Beast smacked a hovering advertisement aside with its enormous head, pummelling the side of a building in the process. Its five limbs gripped the buildings as it climbed and even after it had passed the cascade of debris and rubble it knocked loose constantly still presented a hazard to the people beneath it and many fell to the onslaught of falling concrete.

The Zillo Beast came to a relative large, flat area that served as an outdoor eating area for one of the slightly more refined places down here and it clambered up onto it, crushing several tables into splinters and mangled metal, causing the guests that were there to flee in fear as it clambered its way upwards, rearing up to grab the side of the building with all three hands and haul itself up more, ripping apart huge segments of the wall as it went. For such large structures, these big towers made by the little people were so fragile.

The Zillo Beast's ascent was diagonal and it shouldered its way up the sides of the buildings. From the moment it entered the city it had been surrounded by the screams of what sounded like hundreds of little people that were crawling all over the place and fleeing at the mere sight of him. The Zillo Beast ignored them. They were of no consequence and if they got in its way then whatever happened to them was their own fault for not getting out of the way in time.

Clambering onto the roof of a smaller building, the Beast quickly scrambled down it a little way, reaching across the gap to the taller building on the other side and grabbing onto the concrete, before its legs followed its body to the other side and it began to climb again. The Beast's tail slammed through the entire top three floors of the building behind it, destroying a large and illegal company that produced millions of death sticks and sending the building crashing down to the ground where it shattered into rubble far below.

There always seemed to be more climbing to do, but the Beast pressed on, leaving destruction and chaos in its wake. The little creatures were cast aside as unimportant. There was only one of the little creatures that it was looking for, and it knew that he was not in this area. As it climbed on, it found its path blocked by an enormous landing platform. However, it didn't even stop to assess the situation and threw its shoulders into the concrete slab sticking out from the building it was climbing. The entire structure splintered into pieces from the blow and the speeder and several humanoids that had been standing on it were cast down into the depths, the people screaming all the way.

Eventually, the Beast made it out into the lighter and more brightly coloured area that was above the Coruscant Underworld. The Beast stood momentarily on the roof of a larger building and looked up, rearing onto its hind legs for a better view. The place was crawling with many, many different flickering lights all over the place that almost confused the Beast. But it couldn't afford to be distracted.

It had to find the pale man and make him pay! And to do that, it was going to need to get up high! The buildings above it were still so large that it could barely see the tops of them, but they would be the perfect vantage points once it reached the top. With a roar, the Zillo Beast surged into the main body of Coruscant's capital.

The screams continued as the Beast climbed higher, as the myriad of small creatures saw him and appeared to nearly leap out of their skins with fright, turning and running around in circles, some so stricken in panic that they actually ran closer to him than away. They came in so many colours and shapes too, and the Zillo Beast charged straight past them, splintering everything in its path.

There were a large number of bridges that crossed across the span the Zillo Beast was using to get up towards higher ground, with lots of little creatures fleeing off them as quickly as they could. The Zillo Beast loomed over the first one it encountered and bathed it in the deep shadow its bulk created, even though it was night, before making the mistake of putting its foot on it to try and support its weight. The bridge split in half under the Beast's foot, flinging an Ithorian that had not been quick enough into the air like he'd been sprung from a catapult.

The Zillo Beast fell quite a distance from the mis-step, its fingers and toes on all five limbs and the spikes on its tail plunging into the concrete around it as it slipped down, ripping enormous tears out of the buildings on either side of it until it managed to arrest its fall, tearing many of the rooms inside them apart by breaking through the floors and ceilings that came with the skyscrapers. The Beast snorted, irritated that it had lost ground, even if it was just slightly, and began to climb again, putting on speed this time, so it snaked its way back upwards, tail thrashing and bellowing in fury until it reached the spot where the bridge had collapsed beneath it.

The Beast looked up and growled when it saw the large expanse of other bridges criss-crossing the various streets above it. If they weren't going to be useful for putting its feet on, then they were just another obstacle to get through. Roaring, the Beast motored forwards, swinging its third arm up ahead of it and grabbing the next bridge it came to, and ripping it out of its foundations with a single wrench, tossing it aside like a toothpick before continuing upwards and clambering over another, only to destroy it with its tail afterwards.

Powering through another bridge and rounding a corner, the Zillo Beast suddenly stopped, clinging to the buildings on either side of it as what looked like a small creature, only made of metal on another hovering device, this one long and thin, had pulled to a stop in front of its face. There was a flashing red light on the thing that metal man was riding and the being raised a metallic hand and said, "Halt."

The Zillo Beast roared in irritation and flicked its head, bashing the metal thing that was not alive out of the way, where it went soaring into a building with another explosion. The Zillo beast sniffed and continued its climb, breaking its way through two more bridges and tearing up the buildings around it into so many pieces that the bits that fell to the ground were practically gravel. It was very high up now, so much so that it could no longer see the ground.

The Beast growled as it rounded another corner, looking up in order to find the tallest building it could in the district, but suddenly the moment it went around the corner it was bombarded by little hovering objects that motored into it, exploding against its chest. The Beast didn't feel the blows beyond faint nudges and the explosions were no problem against its thick armour but it was irritating and there were more of them surging towards him.

The Beast opened its mouth and sent a bellowing warning and a display of gaping teeth at the things which were trying to ram into it. Many of them started swerving out of the way now, but a good many continued to crash against its chest. The Zillo Beast, irritated and thinking that it was under attack, (although in fact the only thing it had done was accidentally walk into the middle of one of the speeder lanes) lashed out with one hand and knocked several of the things in front of him aside. Those that didn't explode on contact did so when they crashed into the side of buildings. Fires were beginning to spring up around it, but fire did not bother the Beast. It barely tickled.

The flying objects seemed to get the message and started trying to stop, starting to crash into one another instead as those behind kept going. The Zillo Beast growled, having no time to stop and mess around with these little hovering devices and contemptuously climbed higher, it's legs and tail knocking several more of the things aside before it got clear of them again.

The Beast was quite literally leaving a trail of destruction through the city. As it rounded another corner and sent more rubble tumbling down and more of the little creatures ran from its feet, it encountered a gap in the buildings that was two wide for even its huge bulk to reach across and continue its spider-like ascent. Undeterred, the Beast, merely stepped back for a second and then surged into the air in an enormous leap that carried it clear across the gap, powered by the coiled, spring-like muscles in its legs. It crashed on all fives on the vertical wall of the next build, sending explosions of rubble out all around it that spilled down towards the ground below.

Not stopping for a second once it was sure that it had stopped itself from falling, the Zillo Beast clambered around the building and back into another narrow alleyway. As it did, its head bumped into another very large landing platform that covered about half the street. Immediately, the Zillo Beast grabbed the landing platform in one hand and pulled it off the building. Holding the huge slab of concrete and metal in one hand, the Zillo Beast finished clambering into the street before throwing the landing platform back behind it. The large structure sailed across the gap between the buildings that the Zillo Beast had crossed and collided with the side of a building in another explosion of debris. The landing platform split in two at the impact and the two pieces joined the avalanche of bits that fell towards the ground.

The Beast continued to raise itself, and it as it did, it found itself amongst a sudden and dazzling display of lights as advertisements and signs blazed all around it, the light so bright in the darkness that for a moment the Zillo Beast paused and blinked to restore its vision a couple of times, allowing the people below a few extra seconds to scramble out of the way of the giant reptile. Unbeknownst to the Beast, it had entered the Uscru District of Coruscant, which was the planet's main entertainment centre, and the flashing lights were coming from theatres and restaurants and clubs (better clubs than those near the bottom though).

But none of this meant anything to Beast. After it had restored its vision, it pressed forwards, ploughing through the buildings all around it and its tail dragging across the thick platform it had clambered onto which could support its weight and colliding with buildings on either side of it. It threw several vendor stalls into the buildings on either side of the street, smashed through an elevated tain line and a bunch of the strange metal creatures ran around the corner and stopped in front of it, pointing blasters up at it, before getting crushed beneath the Zillo Beast's huge foot.

As it passed by one particular building, the Beast suddenly got and urge to rear around and strike at it with one enormous swing, its big hand plunging through the wall and taking out several small rooms on the inside. Fortunately the place was mostly empty and no-one was injured by the strike, but the Beast had unknowingly destroyed Palpatine's private booth at the Galaxies Opera House.

As the Zillo Beast clambered its way around another corner, kicking through a bridge and almost not noticing it and sending more of the tiny organisms screaming – the place was infested with them – suddenly it was confronted by a pair of metallic white hovering objects, similar to the ones he had seen back on his home world. They promptly started firing large blue lasers at the Zillo Beast from their noses. The lasers impacted against the Beast's huge forehead and ricocheted off the armour completely harmlessly. The Zillo Beast shook his head and roared angrily at the hovering things that were firing at it.

But then, it paused before it could charge and noticed something else, hovering in the street beyond the two white things that drew the Beast's attention. The Beast's blood boiled with rage!

Him!

Granted, the Beast knew it wasn't really him. It was too large and there was only a portion of him visible, but it recognised the features of the pale man with the wrinkly face, hanging in the middle of the air.

What the Beast was seeing was a holoscreen that was displaying a speech that Palpatine had been saying beforehand to the general public. But the Zillo Beast didn't know that much, and although it was aware that this was not the real thing, the rage in its stomach propelled it forwards anyway. It charged towards the holoscreen, causing the white floating things to back away, although they continued firing.

But they underestimated the speed of the Beast and with a swing of one arm, the first hovering white thing exploded in a burst of flame. The Zillo Beast then whirled about, grabbing the sides of the buildings until it was back to front to bring its tail crashing into the other one as it tried to turn away, causing another similar explosion. The Beast turned itself back around and threw itself forwards, thundering across the huge gap beneath it as the flaming wreckage of the gunships fell into the chasm. It ploughed through another bridge, sending a couple of small things screaming downwards and slammed its hands into the walls, knocking over several more small creatures, crushing others and ripping apart a restaurant before plunging its head through the holoscreen and the image of Palpatine's face.

The image of the pale man shattered in a spray of deadly shards of glass, which bounced harmlessly on the scales of the Zillo Beast and fell to either side of it. The Zillo Beast turned around to ensure that it was completely gone and to its immense satisfaction, it was. That had felt amazingly good, and the Zillo Beast was now more eager than ever to finish off the real thing. Grabbing the hovering cylinder that had been holding the holoscreen up with its back arm and tossing it down for good measure, the Zillo Beast turned to look up.

The building it was standing by seemed to be tall enough.

Pulling itself upwards, vertically this time, the Beast continued upwards, ripping the walls of the buildings around it into wreckage as it ascended. Ignoring the screaming, the Beast was gratified when it cleared the roof of the tower on its right and finally found itself in mostly open air again. But it continued to climb upwards, scaling the corner of the building that had previously been on its left. It's two side arms gripped the walls with each step on either side of the building's corner, while the third arm on its back alternated between the two to help balance the side to side motion of its serpentine, twisting body, while its tail continued to lash from side to side.

It roared, and as it did, the glass in front it shattered from the mere sound. Intrigued, the Beast momentarily paused and gazed in through the gap in the building inside with one huge, green eye. Inside, temporarily frozen in disbelief, it could see five flesh creatures sitting around a large raised slab. The Beast screeched and watched as they screamed and abruptly dashed for the other side of the room, before ignoring them and carrying on.

The building it had decided to climb was a good one. It was extremely tall, and despite the sheer size of the creature doing the climbing, it still took the Zillo Beast at least a minute and a half to scale the surface of the thing. A minute and half of sending wreckage falling down below it. The people down below that weren't in the way looked up in shock, watching the creature's ascent, and all wondering where in the galaxy it had come from.

But eventually, the creature did reach the top, and when it finally clambered over the lip of the building, it managed to get a virtually unobstructed view of the entire area around it. There were more buildings and as far as it could see in every direction. But it had learnt from the incident at the window that the little creatures could get inside the big buildings. But it was looking for one man amongst billions. Where could that one man be? Where would it hide? Which of the buildings would it be in?

The green eyes settled on a large building in the distance. Beyond the skyscraper it was standing on, most of the buildings between it and the large building it could see ahead of it were comparatively small compared to the ones that were now behind him. The building that the Zillo Beast had set its eyes one was the widest one he'd seen yet – an enormous structure with a dome like roof that practically spelt out the word 'grandeur.'

The Beast's eyes narrowed.

There!

The pale man was in there! It was the perfect place for a man with such delusions as to think it was the master of the Zillo Beast. It was one of the largest and proudest of the structures the Zillo Beast could see all around it, but there was something else. Something tugging at the Beast's consciousness that was compelling it to go towards that particular building.

It wasn't just guessing that the pale man was in there. It _knew_ the pale man was in there. How it knew, even it didn't know. But that was where it had to go.

Stepping towards the edge of the building, the Zillo Beast raised itself as tall as it could and let out the most deafening bellow that it had in a good long time. Its eyes blazed like green fire and all nine of its fingers were flexing and ready for action. Its teeth were bared. It knew the pale man couldn't see it, but it was declaring to him that the Zillo Beast was coming to get him.

Then it dropped back onto all fives and clambered over the edge of the building, climbing down the other side head-first as effortlessly and easily as it had when climbing upwards.

The Zillo Beast scaled the downside of the massive tower at slightly greater speed than it had going up. Now it had a destination in mind, it was more than eager to get there. The big domed building it could still see now as it clambered down from the big tower was not going to protect the pale man that had ordered its death in any way. The Zillo Beast would dismantle it piece by piece until it found the man if necessary. And it would like to see anybody try to stop it.

As it got closer to the ground, it could hear the screaming starting up again, as the people down below came within earshot of it. As usual it ignored them and continued on its manic descent. It was practically running vertically downwards now, but as it approached the ground at high speed it knew that the collision it would result in if it did not slow down would be painful, even for it. So it quickly turned around so that it was facing head up and dug its flattened fingers into the concrete, sliding down the tower, the debris it was throwing up producing a veritable rock slide behind it as it skimmed down, practically obliterating the building in front of it.

The sliding worked to arrest its speed, and when it neared the ground it jumped, sailing downwards the rest of the way to land with an almighty crash on four of its five limbs, the concrete cracking under its colossal weight.

A very high pitched wail reached the Zillo Beast earholes, causing it to momentarily get distracted and look downwards. There, by its foot, a tiny little creature was lying in the street, far smaller than the other flesh creatures that the Beast had had a look at. It was a juvenile of one of the many species and it appeared to have tan coloured skin – the same colour as a lot of its armour and had what looked liked two tails sticking out the back of its head. How odd. The Beast had almost crushed it in its final jump.

Then, another yelling noise reached the ears of the Zillo Beast and, to its surprise, an adult flesh creature of the same kind – taller and with a similar coloured skin and a bit more of that material stuff that the flesh creatures wore – ran right over to where the smaller version of its kind was and skidded off its feet towards the child, scooping the small one up in its arms. Then, the adult turned around and started beating on the Zillo Beast's enormous three-finger, armoured hand with one fist. The Zillo Beast didn't even feel the blows, but it saw them, and it was amazed. Surely the adult flesh creature didn't think it could harm it like that?

It stepped back, the pale man momentarily forgotten and watched as the adult tan-coloured creature cradled the small one and put herself protectively between it and the Beast. Something about that touched the Beast. The adult was putting the little one's life before its own. Nothing had ever done that for the Beast – little Zillos were eaten by the adults if they didn't get out the way quickly enough.

Then, the Zillo Beast looked upwards towards the cascade of building debris that it had ripped loose from the building that was plummeting towards them.

* * *

The Twi'lek woman held her young son close, knowing that running would be futile but her motherly instinct trying to protect her child all the same. She tried to soothe it as it cried into her clothing and glanced nervously back at the huge, unknown lizard creature that had almost crushed her precious son. It was staring at her, and the poor woman was sure that it was planning to eat her.

The thought of going on after her son had been eaten by the creature was too much to bare. She shielded her son's eyes and braced herself for the inevitable lunge of the beast.

But suddenly, the woman realised that the she was being bathed in shadow, and she looked up. She gasped fearfully – her attention had been so focused on the Beast that she hadn't noticed the huge avalanche of rubble descending towards her and her child. It was massive – a small mountain of debris rushing down to the ground, and it was sure to crush both of them, regardless of whether she ran or not.

She flinched and shut her eyes, holding her child close as she prepared for the end. She heard and felt the rush of air as the rocks fell towards them, or perhaps it was the wings of Death himself, coming to claim his most recent victims.

She heard the rocks slamming downwards.

But to her great surprise, death didn't come. Nothing landed on her at all. She remained hunched with her eyes shut and her child close until the sound of falling rocks had ceased completely, but there was no impact of any kind – not even a speck of dust landed on either her or her young son.

Cautiously, the tan-skinned Twi'lek woman opened her eyes fractionally. She could see piles of building debris nearby but still nowhere near her. And she was still bathed in shadow. Slowly, unsurely, both mother and child looked upwards.

The Zillo Beast was standing over the both of them. The rush of air that the mother had felt had been it surging forward to put itself between the doomed pair and the falling debris which it itself had knocked loose. The two of them were kneeling between its massive arms, and the Beast's head was inclined, upside-down and staring at them both. The mother stared into the big green eyes of the Beast and saw no malice or hunger. Only concern.

She felt gratitude rushing out of her and smiled up at the Beast. The Zillo Beast seemed to nod slightly, and then exhaled sharply. Satisfied that its work was done and the mother and child were safe, the Beast shrugged off the layer of rocks on its back and then continued on its journey. Mother and child stared after it for a few moments until it disappeared from sight behind another building. Then the mother hugged her son fiercely, elated they were both still alive. And what a story they had now.

* * *

As the Zillo Beast kept moving, a single thought was roaming through its head. Why? Why had it done that? Why had it thrown itself in front of a rockslide to save two of those little flesh creatures. It didn't even know what species they were, and the Beast had never shown any mercy anyway, not even its own kind. It was a predator, not a saviour.

After a few moments, a potential answer occurred to it. Perhaps it had been because the Renamon creature from before had shown it compassion as well. The tan-skinned small creature and its protectiveness of the juvenile might have reminded the Beast about how the Renamon had given it hope. And in that, it had acted before it had even thought about it and saved their lives. It hadn't wanted someone who was like the Renamon to die when he could have stopped it.

The concept was as alien as the environment, and the Zillo Beast was concerned that something might even be wrong with it. It had saved the lives of two things that should just be prey. And it had _liked_ doing it.

For now, it purged the thought from its mind and its eyes narrowed as it advanced towards the Senate Building. Right now, the pale man was still out there and he still needed to pay. It would think about the strange behaviour it had exhibited later. Letting loose another loud roar, the Beast thundered towards the Senate Building.

* * *

Anakin was still in Palpatine's office, standing with Padmé and the Chancellor. Mas Amedda had departed some time ago, leaving only the three of them and the two droids standing there. An order had been given for all members of the Republic Executive Building to evacuate to the lower levels of the building just in case the Beast started to head in their direction.

As he watched the plume of smoke and destruction that followed in the wake of the Zillo Beast as it meandered its way through the main city, Anakin had one thought plaguing his mind. The Digimon. He was sure that the Digimon had not been behind the release of the Beast, not even partially. Even if they had wanted it to live, they wouldn't have unleashed this great threat upon the city.

What he was thinking about was what lengths they might have to go to in order to stop the rampage on the native of Malastare. Would the Digimon finally reveal themselves to the galaxy? He hoped that they wouldn't – after all they still remained a trump card thanks to the secret they'd been keeping, even after all these months. He had long since lost any doubts about not telling the Senate. But he was standing next to two of the people that he trusted most in the universe – even if his faith in Palpatine had been shaken over this past day.

Would he finally be able to tell them everything?

It would be a relief, he had to say. He hadn't even been able to tell Padmé about other things such as his connection to Ahsoka and Aayla's minds because that might lead to questions he wouldn't be able to think of answers to quickly enough. But still, he didn't want to lose the best advantage they had against the Separatists.

But if they couldn't incapacitate the Beast, it might be that the Digimon, in their glorious Mega forms might be the only way to stop it.

A cry from Padmé interrupted Anakin from his thoughts. "It's coming this way," she gasped, pointing out the window. Anakin shook himself for not paying attention to where the Beast was going, and glanced out the window. He stared in shock as he saw the line of destruction wasn't just heading in their general direction – the Beast was making a beeline straight for the Senate Building, and at high speed too.

_We could really use some support right now, guys,_ he murmured in his mind. To his dismay, the others were still too far away to hear him.

* * *

Like everyone else, Senator Chuchi had received the word to retreat to the lower levels of the building. The little Pantoran was weaving her way through the people who were milling about down there and wondering what in the galaxy was going on. None of them had been told exactly why they all had to come down here, just that they needed to do it as quickly as possible.

Narrowly avoiding getting squashed against the wall by the fat Senator Orn Free Taa, who was worriedly coming up with wild theories as to why they were down here to anyone who would listen, Chuchi looked around for some faces that might know what was really going on. The Senate Building was a big place, so while there were a lot of Senators down here it was still relatively easy to get around. However, finding somebody could still be a tricky job.

Eventually, someone found her.

"Senator Chuchi!" a voice hailed her from off to her left. Chuchi turned around to see Bail Organa hurrying towards her. Chuchi grinned – if anybody knew what was happening it was likely the it would be Senator Organa.

"Senator Organa," nodded Chuchi. "Sorry to ask you this, but-"

"No, I'm sorry but I don't know what's going on," Bail interrupted. Chuchi frowned – Bail hardly ever cut someone off in mid-sentence because he was usually too polite. But there was an urgent look of the face of the Senator of Alderaan, so Chuchi subsides and listened as Bail said, "Listen, have you seen Senator Amidala? I can't find her anywhere and I've been looking for her for some time. I can't even find that protocol droid of hers."

Concern flashed through Chuchi as she instinctively glanced around her. None of Padmé's famous hairstyles jumped out at her, so it seemed safe to assume that Senator Organa was right and she wasn't here. Chuchi frowned and said, "I haven't seen her, but I did run into General Anakin Skywalker not long ago, and he said he had some private business with her. But that was almost an hour and a half ago, I think."

"Well, I'm concerned," Bail said. "I haven't the faintest idea what's happening and Padmé's missing. And you know her – when she doesn't show up where she's supposed to be..."

"She's in trouble," nodded Chuchi, noting the other famous trait of Padmé's. The Pantoran turned around and glanced at the stairs that would take her back up into the upper levels. Was it possible that Padmé was still up there somewhere? Had she somehow missed the call to come down to the lower levels?

Concern nibbled at Chuchi's stomach and she bit her lip thoughtfully. What could she do about it? They couldn't just leave her up there, could they? She'd didn't have a clue what was happening. It could be dangerous up there?

Almost of their own accord, the words of Anakin Skywalker sprang into Chuchi's mind. _"__In some ways, you're braver than I am Chuchi. Come on, Chuchi – you're very brave. You held your ground in front of Thi-Sen when it looked like he was going to stab you with a spear._"

Anakin had believed she was brave. Could she be brave enough to go out into the unknown to help a friend?

Chuchi's yellow eyes narrowed and filled with determination. She turned back to look at Senator Organa, but Bail was already gone – she could see him halfway across the room continuing his search for Padmé. Having no time to go and get him, Chuchi hesitated for only a moment before she turned around and hurried through the crowd until she reached the stairs. She glanced around, making sure nobody was looking before slipping up the stairs, until finally she broke into a run, heading back up to the upper levels in search of Padmé.

_What have you gotten yourself into this time, Padmé?_ She thought to herself as she ran.

* * *

It didn't take the gunships long to reach the Science and Technical Centre where the Zillo Beast had been imprisoned. A phalanx of them led the way through the city, the smoke billowing upwards from the Zillo Beast's trail of destruction as they flew in the opposite direction. Trailing behind the gunships were the other kind of LAAT – the ones with metallic clamps that were used to lift up large vehicles.

The occupants of the gunships stared through the blast doors in silence when they reached the Centre. The Digimon, Jedi and clones filling the gunships looked down at the twisted remains of the doors the Zillo Beast had broken through. The strength of the Beast was incredible if it could bust through doors that thick with barely any room to manoeuvre.

As the gunships with the metallic clamps swooped downwards to scoop up as many intact stun tanks as they could and the other gunships whirled around to follow the trail of the Zillo Beast, Renamon sighed and glanced at Aayla. "Come on," she said. "Let's get this done."

* * *

I hope you all enjoyed the senseless destruction that the Zillo Beast wrought upon Coruscant, and the scene with the Twi'lek mother and child. There actually was a purpose to that other than the fact that I quite liked the idea. It was meant to demonstrate that despite everything it is doing, the Zillo Beast is not a mindless animal devoid of emotion. It is an intelligent, semi-sentient creature, capable of feeling emotions as well as any of us. It just tends to listen more to its rage and instincts because its spent its whole life being hunted and used. But thanks to Renamon, it listened to its compassionate side in that instance. Will it do it again?

Just as a bit of trivia, the Twi'lek mother and child I used here were the same ones that were threatened by Cassie Cryar on the train when she was in possession of Ahsoka's lightsaber. Since the events of Lightsaber Lost never happened in this story, I thought I'd put them in here just because I can.

And while I hope that you're all eager to learn what happens next to the Beast, to Chuchi, to the Digimon, to Anakin and to Palpatine, you'll have to wait until Chapter 116 because our scheduled Impmon chapter is next. It's less exciting, but still significant to the plot.

See you soon. And please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

The twins and their companions in the group have made it to the Prairie level and are continuing on the same level. Impmon himself is on the same level and is in search of something quite different – the Angel's Temple. The next chapter will be divided half and half between them.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 115 : Out on the Prairie**


	115. Out on the Prairie

This chapter is much later in the day than the last few due to a few things coming up that I hadn't planned on. I started later on than before because I had to go to Morrisons for some more food and then I was unexpectedly invited out by my friends. I thought it wouldn't take as long as it did, but it did, and here I am now, still finishing up, and it's gone one o'clock in the morning here in the UK. Hope tiredness doesn't affect the end of the chapter.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 115:- Out on the Prairie**

* * *

Wizardmon's teleportation spell had worked well. Impmon found himself wishing that he had met the magical man some time before – it would have saved a lot of travelling from place to place. The entire week it spent getting to the castle of the Sovereigns in his previous trip to the Digital World would have taken about as much time as it would take to snap your fingers.

As before, the spell has let Impmon feeling extremely woozy and he collapsed to his hands and knees, taking deep and steadying breaths to try and clear his head and stop the colours swimming before his eyes. If anything this trip seemed to have been more disorientating than the previous one, perhaps because they had gone a greater distance this time.

"It's be a while before I get used to that," Impmon murmured, shaking his head vigorously as slowly the head-rush that was preventing him from seeing anything in front of him cleared away. When he looked up, he grinned upon finding himself on the Prairie level. It looked much the same as it had in the vision of his past that Wizardmon had shown him, the rolling green hills and valleys stretching out in front of him like some enormous lawn. The grass seemed to be of varying lengths – some of its was so short it almost didn't exist and occasionally there would be patches of incredibly high grass that would come up to the chest of a grown man.

The lack of places to hide meant it would be difficult for any enemy seeking to attack them to launch an ambush, as the SkullScorpiomon had when they were still on the Desert level. However, that wasn't a lot of consolation, because Impmon remembered how the purple lightning stuff had zapped Zanbamon into existence right beside them in the Forest level. Someone could still take them by surprise that way.

_Hopefully that transportation has thrown GranDracmon off the scent for a bit,_ Impmon thought to himself. _It may not take him long to track me down though. I need to find that Temple as quickly as I can, before things get too out of hand._

He turned around and glanced at the others, who were all also getting to their feet or else hovering in the air. _Or we'll all pay the price,_ he added bitterly.

"Well," he said. "We're here guys. The Temple's out there somewhere and we've got to find it."

"Give me a moment," Lilamon yawned, stretching herself out as far as she could. "I landed funny after that transportation spell thingie."

"You landed on me," Calumon pointed out, rubbing his face.

"I know," said Lilamon, winking at him. "That's why I landed funny. I'm not sure my back is supposed to bend that way."

"Yeah, but you still landed on me," Calumon complained.

"Oh, lighten up," Lilamon giggled. "You know I didn't mean to. Besides, you're not hurt at all, are you?" she added smugly, folding her arms.

Calumon frowned and said, "No, I'm not in pain even one bit," he said, utterly confused. "Shouldn't I have felt all squished after you landed on me? You're much bigger than I am."

"That may be," Diatrymon said. "But you're forgetting that Lilamon is also incredibly light. If I had landed on you then you probably would have been killed. And if Wingdramon had landed on you, you definitely would be."

"Nice way of consoling the little guy," Wingdramon observed dryly. He outstretched his wings and rose higher into the air, his long neck turning like the tube on a periscope as he scanned the surroundings himself for any potential threats. Impmon watched him go up and was about to call up to him when he heard Calumon ask, "So, how light are you, Lilamon?"

Lilamon laughed. "So now you're asking a girl how much she weighs? Isn't that supposed to be a big no-no?"

"Why would it be?" Calumon asked, cocking his head to one side. "It's just a question, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I know," shrugged Lilamon. "Besides, I know I'm not fat anyway so you needn't worry – so you don't need to worry. I'm not offended because I'm not insecure. But anyway, to answer that question, check this out." Lilamon floated over to Calumon and lifted a foot, placing it on top of Calumon's head and then gracefully lifted the other foot off the ground sticking it out behind her and balancing on top of Calumon, leaning forwards and with her arms outstretched like wings in a ballerina pose. Calumon didn't each flinch, thus proving that Lilamon was ridiculously light.

The petals on her foot had enveloped Calumon's head though, so now he couldn't see anything. "Cool," Calumon said around the petals that were hanging in front of his mouth. "Night-vision."

Impmon blinked. "Night-vision? How does that give you night-vision?"

"It makes everything go all dark even though it's actually still day," Calumon said. "Night-vision."

Impmon palmed his face for what felt like the thirtieth time since yesterday morning. Lilamon giggled as she continued to balance and struck another pose, before Diatrymon stepped up behind her and nudged her in the back with his beak. "Quit showing off," the bird chuckled.

Lilamon shrugged and hopped off Calumon's head. "Well, they asked," she said.

"Hey Calumon," said Diatrymon. "You wanna let me try that?"

Calumon eyed the huge talons on Diatrymon's foot and promptly stepped behind Lilamon's leg. Diatrymon chuckled raucously, but said, "Don't worry. I wasn't serious. I'd mash you flat if I tried that."

"I don't wanna be a pancake," Calumon shuddered.

Impmon snorted and then turned to look upwards, to where Wingdramon was hovering up ahead. "Hey, Scaleface," he called up. "What can you see up there? Any sign of enemies?"

"None so far," Wingdramon called back. "And as to what I can see – I can see lots and lots of green grass in every direction I look in."

"Well, that's helpful," Impmon rolled its eyes. "It might have escaped your notice, Sherlock, but we can all see that from down here?"

"Sherlock?" Diatrymon blinked. "I thought that he was Scaleface. Are you giving him another nickname now?"

"Nah, Sherlock was a sarcastic comment," Impmon shrugged. "Apparently he was some human detective guy... though I never read those books."

"What's a detective?" asked Calumon.

Impmon, who really didn't want to go into the whole thing about what detectives were supposed to do to find criminals and other such things, simplified things greatly by saying, "They find things, Calumon. Like you do when Goggles and Pineapple-head hide the cream-puffs from you and make you look for them."

"Oh," Calumon said. "I don't like it when they do that. Particularly the ones where they leave clues for me. I can't think when I'm hungry."

"You can barely think ever," Impmon murmured. Lilamon swatted him. "Hey! You know it was just a joke."

"You need to work on that mouth of yours," Lilamon grinned. "Jokes are supposed to make people go hearty-har-har."

Impmon raised an eyebrow. "Right. Anyway, are you sure that you can't see anything else up there, Wingdramon."

"I never said that that was _all_ that I could see," Wingdramon smirked down at them. "You just didn't give me the opportunity to finish. Anyway, to answer your question, I think I can see a village of some kind over there," he pointed with a claw in the westernmost direction. "I can't make out anything beyond faint blobs of buildings, but it's definitely a civilisation."

"Great," Impmon nodded. "Come on, gang. Let's get going. We'll ask about the Temple while we're there."

"Hold on a moment, Impmon," Diatrymon placed a huge set of blade-like talons in front of Impmon, blocking his path before he could proceed any further. "I think I should probably remind you of this before we get too much further, but not all of us are actually here."

"Huh?" Impmon looked around at the group in confusion. He knew that _he_ was here, and so was everyone else too. There was Wingdramon, coming down and hovering closer to them again, there was Calumon looking all cream-puffy, there was Lilamon floating nearby, there was Diatrymon blocking his way and... and... and...

"HOLY CRAP!" Impmon shouted.

"What?" Lilamon frowned. "Holy what?"

"Never mind that now," Impmon said, pulling on his ear projections sticking out the back of his head. "Behemoth! We left him at the bottom of Column Mountain when we went to see Wizardmon and we forgot to tell Wizardmon about him. He's probably still circling the place right now, wondering when we're going to come down!"

"You left your living motorbike behind?" Lilamon asked. "Oooh, I don't think he's going to be very happy with you when he learns you've gone."

"He's going to be real pissed at me!" Impmon moaned, covering his eyes with his hands and slumping backwards. "I can't believe I was so stupid as to forget about him."

"Hey," Wingdramon said, "We all make mistakes from time to time. None of us remembered to remind you about him either, remember?"

"He's right," nodded Diatrymon. "You'll just have to find some alternative means of transportation if we want to go fast. I'm sure that Wingdramon would be only too kind to volunteer."

"I'm just an object these days, aren't I?" Wingdramon chuckled. "First I was a sunshade, now I an aerial Trailmon."

"Nah, you need wheels to be a Trailmon," said Lilamon.

Impmon sighed. He knew that his loyal motorbike would probably realise that it had not been deliberately abandoned in the desert. There was no way that Impmon knew that would let him get back to his trusty steed, who had been by side and helping him to fight off GranDracmon's forces and protect the twins ever since it had mysteriously appeared on the driveway of the Terada household after the Ogudomon incident.

Impmon wondered what Behemoth would do without Impmon nearby. He hoped that the motorcycle's days of terrorizing villages wouldn't return in the absence of his master, but the fact that Behemoth couldn't speak beyond revving noises, it was difficult to put a label on its personalities.

There was no other option for it. They would just have to carry on without Behemoth. The motorbike knew the importance of the mission. Maybe it would even try to find its own way to the Prairie level and meet up with them somewhere.

Impmon sighed and said, "Alright then. Let's head for that village and ask for details on the Temple. You reckon you could let me and Calumon have a ride, Wingdramon?"

"Sure," Wingdramon replied. "Hope on between my wings. And try not to pull too hard on scales."

Lilamon gave Impmon a boost by tossing him up into the air, where he landed a little unceremoniously on Wingdramon's back. Then, after Calumon hopped up as well, Wingdramon lifted up into the air, without flapping his wings (which was just as well because if he did flap them he would probably unseat both his much smaller passengers with the air generated by the first flap) and began to soar off in the direction of the village.

Below them, Lilamon jumped on Diatrymon's back, planting her feet on it as if he was a surfboard and pointed ahead with a cry of, "Mush!"

"Why must you say that every time you ride me?" asked Diatrymon.

"Because it's fun," Lilamon replied. Then she paused and added, "Though I'm not sure why I chose that word as a go signal. It was probably because it sounds funny."

"Whatever," Diatrymon muttered and broke into his full sprint, dashing along the ground in Wingdramon's wake, as well as his shadow.

* * *

At the speed they were travelling in, it didn't take them long to reach the village. It was a relatively simple place, constructed in what looked like pebbledash walls with thatched roofs, like something a little bit out of medieval times. Though the occupants of the village didn't look all that medieval at all.

As Wingdramon swooped to a stop on the outskirts of the settlement, allowing Impmon and Calumon to dismount, while Diatrymon and Lilamon pulled up behind them, they could see that the occupants mostly consisted of a bunch of, appropriately, Prairiemon. There was also a couple of Pandamon, and a small number of random other Digimon dotted about the place.

"You reckon these guys know where the Temple is?" asked Lilamon.

"Let's go and find out," said Impmon, walking towards the village. None of the buildings were large and Wingdramon was bigger than any one of them, and the approach of the strange Digimon caused the various occupants of the village to stop and look around, some with interest, and others were staring at Wingdramon with a little fear.

Impmon stopped in front of the staring faces and waved a little. "Uh..." he said, slowly. "Hi. Um... how's it going?"

"You could be a bit more articulate, you know," Lilamon giggled. "I don't think they're going to bite... are you?" she looked up a bit quizzically.

The Prairiemon stared at her for a few moments. There was only a little movement, but, slowly, they returned to the things they had previously been doing when they were sure that the newcomers were not going to attack them. Impmon was about to yell at them for not welcoming them to the village, when another Digimon stepped out of the crowd and strode towards them.

It was a Deputymon, A Digimon that was practically a large pistol with legs, arms, a small black head above the gun with large orange eyes and cowboy attire, complete with hat and boots and ammunition belt. The Deputymon saluted the group and said, "Howdy, folks, and welcome to our little village. Normally I would say that I hope you stay for a while but unfortunately your big friend here won't be able to fit inside any of our humble abodes."

"That's alright," said Impmon. "We ain't planning on staying anyway. We're just passing through, but we're trying to find one place in particular."

"Oh?" Deputymon asked curiously. "What kinda place are you folks looking for then? Maybe I can help point the way."

"Well," said Impmon. "Have you heard of the Temple of the Angels?"

"Have I heard of it?" Deputymon laughed. "Is my body a giant gun? Of course I've heard of it. Everyone on the Prairie Level knows about the Temple. We never miss a service whenever it comes our way."

"Well, that's what we're trying to find," said Impmon. "But we were told it moves around all the time."

"That it do," Deputymon nodded. "We never know when it'll pop up somewhere near us, but we always make sure we go when it does, and it never stays for more than a day. If you're looking for that place, you're going to have your work cut out for you, or you're going to have to strike lucky. From what I know, the place randomly moves around the whole Prairie level."

"Yeah," sighed Impmon. "I was afraid of that."

Seeing the frustration beginning to cross Impmon's face, Lilamon quickly asked, "Well, there must be some kind of pattern to its movements, surely? Roughly how often does it appear in this village?"

"Seriously, missie," Deputymon said. "It really is random. On time it didn't appear anywhere near us for eight whole months, and then it disappeared again and reappeared only three weeks later. And then it appeared again the following day because it only crossed to the other side of the village."

"Ah," she said. "Well, never mind."

"But it's really important that we get there," Calumon piped up from next to Deputymon's boot. "We've gotta get there if we want to find the angel that Impmon says he saw in his dreams."

"What?" Deputymon asked sharply, glancing at the little purple Rookie. "You're saying one of the great angels appeared to you in your dreams? That hardly ever happens, ever. Are you serious?"

"Uh... yeah, I am," said Impmon cautiously. "It was Ophanimon. She's appeared to me a couple of times now and spoke to me in my sleep. She showed me a couple of visions of some friends of mine who are missing at the moment. She hasn't appeared to me for some time, but still... Yeah, I've seen her."

Deputymon stared at him for a couple of seconds, then said, "Well, the only thing I know is that when the Temple moves, it never goes further than ten miles from its previous location, so I suppose that's something. Tell you what. You're still going to have trouble finding that Temple no matter what happens, but I know someone who might be able to help you. If an Angel appears to you, you've been singled out for some reason. We cannot ignore this."

Deputymon turned and led them into the village. Wingdramon was forced to hover above the buildings as they progressed through it, casting the various citizens in shadow wherever he passed. Deputymon led them towards what looked the centre of the town. Up ahead they could see something like a fountain, and that was where the Deputymon was leading them.

As they walked, Lilamon floated past a green dustbin that was standing innocently on the corner of a street. The moment she did, a Garbagemon instantly popped out and cried, "BWAHAHAHA! Surprise, fairy gi-GWAAGH!"

Everyone else stared at the Garbagemon, which was now lying stretched out on the floor, its trash can overturned and its body smoking slightly as it groaned in stupor. Lilamon had whirled around and blasted it with a single Marvel Shot from one hand, and now the Garbagemon would think twice before playing an ambush joke like that again.

Deputymon whistled. "She's a faster gunslinger than me," he said, in admiration. "Come on then," he added and turned around, leading them on towards the fountain. The fountain looked completely out of place with the rest of the medieval-like set, because it appeared to be so modern. It resembled some kind of pool surrounded by ceramic-like material and at the centre was a statue of a Dolphmon squirting water into the air.

"That's statue's not going to spring to life, is it?" Impmon asked. "Only I've learned to expect just about anything when I go on these crazy trips."

"No," Deputymon chuckled. "Whatever gave you that idea? As if a Dolphmon could get all the way out here anyway. No, there is something else here that I think will be of more use to you than the statue. And that is this." He stood to one side and indicated the stick of wood that was jutting up out of the ground beside the fountain.

Impmon stared at it.

"That's supposed to help me?" he asked. "It looks like a stick to me?"

"Of course it's a stick," Deputymon sighed theatrically. "But it also represents the way that we in the Prairie level have formed our social structure. You see, there are many different levels, but on this level we pride ourselves on staying in touch with our neighbours, and not just our close neighbours either. The whole Prairie level has one big social network."

"And the stick helps you?" asked Impmon.

"Forget about the fact it's a stick," Deputymon said. "It's what we use the stick for the helps us to maintain the communication between what happens around the rest of the Prairie level."

"What are you... oh," Impmon said, when something small and pink fluttered downwards from the sky and alighted on top of the stick, which Impmon realised had actually been some kind of bird perch. The small Digimon that had appeared there was a Biyomon, and the little Rookie Digimon smiled at everyone present."

"Wow," she said. "What a strange collection of new Digimon. I haven't heard anything about these guys on the chain. Wait until the others hear about this."

"I don't get it," Calumon offered.

"It's quite simple," said Deputymon. "The Prairie level is absolutely chock full of Biyomon, flying all across the skies. They don't like to live in towns and villages like we do and prefer the company of the open air to walls all around them."

"That's right," nodded Biyomon. "Not to mention the inside of buildings gets all full of dust and stuff which gets all in my feathers and I have to spend hours preening to get it out."

"Yes, but besides that," Deputymon went on. "They can still see the benefit that town life brings – we have medical supplies and we help to look after one another. So, because they were torn between their desire to be free and the desire to live in towns, we came to a compromise and made a deal with all the Biyomon on this level."

"And that is?" asked Lilamon.

"To act as our news crew," said Deputymon. "Another trait of Biyomon is that they also love to gossip. In fact, they can't get enough of it. Because of that, something could happen at any point in the Prairie level and within about a day or so roughly all the Biyomon know about it."

"Ah, I see," said Wingdramon. "So you're saying that we can use the gossip chain to our advantage."

"Exactly," said Deputymon. "The deal we struck with the Biyomon was that if they ever required anything of us townspeople, we would do we can to provide it for them, so they can have the advantages of living in communities and the freedom of the open skies at the same time. In return, the Biyomon pass any news they here onto us if we ask for it."

"We weren't about to complain," said Biyomon. "It's a win-win situation for us Biyomon. The only thing they were asking of us was something that we like to do anyway."

Deputymon nodded. "We can even carry messages across the whole level thanks to the Biyomon. Since you guys are looking for the Temple, you can always ask a Biyomon when you see one and she will tell you where it was last spotted to her knowledge. Since it never moves far from where it was the day before, if you move fast enough you might be able to find it. Every day, find a new Biyomon and ask her. If the answer you heard yesterday hasn't changed, keep heading in the same direction you were going in before until you find a Biyomon that does."

"Brilliant," grinned Impmon. "We could get there much quickly if we did that."

"You'd have to be fast movers," Deputymon reminded them.

"Oh trust us," said Diatrymon. "When we want to run, we run."

"Good to hear," said Deputymon. Then he turned to the Biyomon and said, "Spread the word. Five Digimon searching for the Temple. One of them has been visited by Ophanimon in his dream. It's very important we get them there quickly."

"Really?" Biyomon asked. "Oh wow, I get to start the gossip about this? Somebody pinch me! Ow!"

"You asked," Lilamon giggled.

* * *

Ai and Mako were grateful to get out of the Desert level. The sand had been a major irritant to them ever since they had been there. Whenever the wind had blown even slightly, the sand had gotten everywhere, inside their clothing, in their hair and smeared across their faces. And the lack of water really had not helped matters.

So it was with a great amount of relief that they finally found themselves facing a Data Stream with a great amount of satisfaction, staring it down as it approached towards them and the group of individuals that had decided to come into the group that they were in. As well as Jeri and Leomon offering to go with them to the Prairie Level, four of the Devas had decided to go with them too.

The other two groups had consisted of Takato and Kazu in one, with Kenta and Ryo in the other in terms of the Tamers. Kenta had been more than slightly thrilled at the prospect of travelling with his hero, but he didn't quite realise that Takato and Ryo had conversed beforehand and decided it would be a good idea to split him and Kazu up. Kenta had been picked by Ryo because he was the one who was less likely to turn into a fanboy.

The Devas had divided themselves, after a great deal of arguments, into groups of four or three. If Antylamon had still been among their number, there would have been three groups of four, but one group had to remain short one member. This group of three had been the one to go to the Forest level, the smallest of the three that they were going to search.

The four that had been picked to proceed to the Prairie Level had been the ones that could cover great distances at speed. That included Majiramon and Mihiramon, and both of them could fly at fast speeds and that skill would be virtually useless underwater in the ocean level or above the trees that they couldn't see past in the forest level, so the tiger and the dragon were going to the Prairie level.

The other two included the Dog Deva, Caturamon, who was capable of running extremely far and wide. The final member had been Kumbhiramon, who despite his size was actually incredibly fast on his own, and although he tired out quite quickly, that didn't matter because he could just hitch a ride on somebody else.

So the group of three humans and five Digimon entered the Data Stream. Caturamon had assured the humans that this one would lead them to the correct level – the Devas knew these sort of things and it helped them get around the Digital World very quickly. The usual sucking, vacuum-like sensation surrounded the group and they were whisked away and out of the sand.

When Ai and Mako's feet touched down, they found themselves standing in the huge meadow-like hills of the Prairie level.

"Oh wow," they heard Jeri say behind them. "This place is beautiful. Look at all those flowers over there. Why couldn't we have come here during our last visit?"

"Bad luck, perhaps?" asked Leomon.

"At least we're out of that desert," said Ai, moving her hand upwards to run her hand through her hair. When she did, she was surprised to find no sand falling out of it. She glanced down at herself, finding herself completely devoid of the stuff. "Hey, where'd all the sand go?"

"It was assimilated by the Data Stream," said Caturamon. "A welcome relief if I do say so myself. The sand of the Desert level is almost too much even for me. It makes my fur itch like fire."

"And it makes my moustache weigh me down when I'm flying," agreed Majiramon.

"You think you guys have it badly?" Mihiramon scoffed. "Remember, I have both fur _and_ feathers on my body. I had a lot more to endure than the two of you did, particularly you with your scaly skin, Majiramon."

"Ha, you guys should wear armour like I do," Kumbhiramon said, mockingly. "I had most of my body protected the whole time."

"We can discuss the way we all hate the Desert Level later on," said Leomon. "Right now we must concentrate on trying to find Impmon. This level is a large one so we had better get a move on."

"Oh," Jeri said. "I just had a thought. How will we meet up with the others again when one of us has found Impmon? If one of us does find Impmon, that is."

"Not to worry," said Mihiramon stepping over to her and towering over her. "We Devas agreed that if we found Impmon, or if we sweeping across the whole level and found nothing, we would return to the Sovereigns level via Data Stream. If the others are not there by the time we get back there then it will probably mean they did not find Impmon and have moved on to another region."

"Let's hope that Cyberdramon and Indramon don't tear each other apart before then," said Leomon.

"Oh, you don't want to mess with that dragon," Majiramon chuckled from above. "I should know. And I gave Indramon a good talking to. I think he'll behave – he won't like the consequences if he doesn't."

"That's a relief," nodded Jeri. "Come on, Leomon. Let's get going."

"Whenever you're ready, Jeri," said Leomon.

Jeri quickly pressed her D-Arc to her chest and said, "Biomerge Activate!"

"**LEOMON BIOMERGE TO... SABERLEOMON!"** came the cry that tore from the lion's mouth as he and his tamer erupted into light and merged into one being. Of the group of Devas, Mihiramon and Caturamon had seen a biomerged form before, but the other two had not and their mouths dropped open as they beheld one being where there had previously only been one.

"It's quite something isn't it?" Mihiramon said.

"At least I'm not on the receiving end of an attack from one of them this time," remarked Caturamon.

"Wow," Kumbhiramon breathed. "Such power! And I thought I was strong."

"Yes, well," SaberLeomon said in its duel voice. "Let's see if you can keep up. Come along twins. Pick your mount."

"We'll go with Mihiramon this time," said Ai quickly. "We'd like to fly up in the air again but we haven't flown with him yet."

"I'm flattered," the Tiger Deva said as he hunkered down to the ground to allow the twins to scramble on board, with a little assistance from Majiramon's tail. "Which way should we start with, kids?"

Mako held the D-Arc this time and he pointed in the direction the arrow was indicating. "It says that if he is on this level then he's over that way."

"You got it!" Mihiramon cried as he threw himself into the air alongside Majiramon. SaberLeomon, Caturamon and Kumbhiramon began their headlong run across the ground. Wordlessly, the group spread out as wide as they could, keeping each other within earshot, but only at the very limit. They did this so they could scour as much of the landscape as possible. Mihiramon flew down the middle, his two little mounts pointing the way.

The search of the Prairie Level had begun. It was a large level, so even with an arrow telling them where to go it might take them several days to scour it. But if Impmon was here, they'd find him.

* * *

The day that the Tamers began their search of the Prairie Level was the day after Impmon and his little group of friends and allies and talking cream-puffs had learned about the Biyomon that flew everywhere across the level, exchanging gossip and also being part of a news line in the process. After the Deputymon from the village had explained to the Biyomon about the need to find the Temple, the others had asked where the Temple had been last sighted.

The Biyomon had immediately pointed with one clawed wing in a western direction. "I heard earlier today that it was beside a village many miles away from here in that direction, maybe about two-hundred and fifty or so. If you keep heading that way for now then I'm pretty sure you can follow its progress once you find another Biyomon to tell you tomorrow."

They had made good progress after that. Wingdramon and Diatrymon had been carrying the others as they ran or flew at high speed. But there was a slight setback. Diatrymon could run at incredibly high speed but he could only sustain that fast pace for a certain amount of time. He could run at forty miles an hour, but it would take him roughly half that amount of time before he stopped for a break. And his breaks usually lasted roughly an hour or so.

Nevertheless, they still made good headway. With the day fading away relatively quickly, they had been able to cover three of these great runs by Diatrymon, meaning they were able to cover sixty miles or so with what available day they had left. The whole time that they were running, the landscape remained almost completely the same, rolling hills and green meadows and lush grasses everywhere they went. Still, it was a marked improvement from the desert so none of them were about to complain, least of all Lilamon.

"At least I'm not wilting anymore," she had said, sighing theatrically.

But eventually they had had to concede defeat when the night-time had washed over them. They were still roughly about one-hundred and ninety miles short of the mark that the Biyomon had given them. That still seemed like an incredibly long distance and Impmon was impatient, knowing that he was so close to finally finding the Temple but still being way too far away for his liking. He wondered how much faster he could go if only he had remembered to bring Behemoth with him from the Desert level.

He wondered what the Demonic Motorcycle was doing now.

Lilamon had pointed out to him, "Don't worry about it. After all, there's a fifty percent chance that it'll be closer to us tomorrow than it was today."

Impmon had chuckled and they prepared themselves for rest. Calumon had volunteered to do the guard duty, but Wingdramon had gently turned down the offer and taken the first watch instead, claiming that Calumon was a growing child and needed his rest. Calumon had complained that Jeri's stepmum always said that to her son, but did indeed get some sleep.

One other thing that the others had indeed noticed about the Prairie Level was that it was indeed absolutely crawling, or flapping, with Biyomon. One turned up roughly every two to five minutes or so when they were running, and several of them would wave at them as they passed if they were currently alighted on the ground. It seemed that news of their presence was spreading even faster than they were.

The news line seemed to be very efficient indeed.

* * *

The group arose the following morning once more and after the relatively arduous task of convincing Calumon that they did _not_ need to have breakfast, they set off again, running and flying in the same direction as yesterday once more.

They kept their eyes out of any Biyomon, but it seemed that the birds didn't get themselves up that early in the morning, because there weren't any about now.

"Can you see anything?" asked Impmon, to Wingdramon, who was still carrying him. "Any flashes of pink anywhere?"

"No, I do not," said Wingdramon. "Give it time, Impmon. I doubt the Biyomon would know the new location of the Temple so early in the morning anyway. We'll wait a couple of hours before we find one to ask it about the Temple, alright?"

"Relax, Impmon!" Lilamon called up from where she was Ancient-Bird-surfing. "We'll get there soon. I'd say it's only a couple of days away now. The journey's nearly over."

Impmon sighed and put his impatience in check. It was not an easy thing for him to do, to be honest. He just wanted it all to be over and done with now. He'd spent a long time searching for this Temple and he was more than ready to finally set his eyes on the real Ophanimon.

He hoped that the pace they were setting would be enough to get them there before GranDracmon struck them once again. So far, they had not been attacked, but they had no idea how long that would last. It was only a matter of time really unless they got to the Temple.

After a couple of hours, the Biyomon began to some back in force once more. Impmon asked that they speak to one, but Wingdramon maintained that they should at least give it another hour or so. They knew roughly which direction that they needed to go in anyway.

After that hour had passed and they were out on the move once more, Impmon said, "You reckon we should try and find a Biyomon to talk to now?"

Wingdramon paused and said, "Yeah, I'd say now is probably about right. Let's see if they have any new news for us."

"About time," Impmon said. "We could have just asked one earlier and then asked the next one if that one hadn't provided the answer, you know."

"I'm aware of that," Wingdramon said. "But if they didn't know the answers you would have become more and more frustrated," he turned his head back around and grinned at Impmon. "More than you are now, anyway."

"Alright, Scaleface," Impmon conceded, chuckling. "You don't have to go all wise on me."

"Just making a point," Wingdramon said. "I know that you're impatient for news, Impmon, but..."

"Scaleface! Look out!" Impmon cried, pointing ahead of him urgently. Wingdramon's head whipped back around to find that he was bearing down on a Biyomon at high speed and the Biyomon was facing the other way, unaware of his approach. Wingdramon immediately tilted to prevent himself from colliding with the little bird. His wing whooshed over her, sending her tumbling through the air, caught up in the slipstream and spiralling towards the ground.

Wingdramon turned around quickly, and Diatrymon skidding to a halt below, ripping up the turf in his talons as he did do. To the dragon's relief, the bird was able to right herself and only hit the ground lightly, falling onto her face.

"Well, there's our Biyomon," the dragon observed. "Not quite the meeting I was hoping for though."

"And you're the one who's always telling me to watch where I'm going," Lilamon scoffed as Wingdramon lowered himself towards the ground.

"That's different," Wingdramon shook his head. "Back in the forest level you were always banging into trees."

"Come on," said Impmon. "Let's go talk to her." He hopped off Wingdramon and the group approached the Biyomon.

Up ahead, the pink bird had staggered to her feet and were clutching her head in one wing, probably trying to get rid of the dizziness. She tottered slightly from left to right a couple of times before she finally seemed to get a hold of herself. She shook her head sharply, and then turned around, a little nervously.

Upon seeing the large dragon creature that had knocked her out of the sky advancing towards her, she took a fearful step backwards. She knew who the big dragon was – the news had spread quickly enough so that she had learned there was a Wingdramon flying across the plains, but in her nervousness she jumped to conclusions, thinking that Wingdramon was coming after her to try and load her data.

The fact that all his companions were advancing along with him wasn't helping.

"Hey!" Impmon called, waving to her. "We wanna ask you a quick qu..." he stopped talking when the Biyomon squawked in alarm and backpedalled quickly, turning around and dashing across the ground for several metres before darting behind a clump of the very tall grass that occasionally dotted the Prairie level.

"...estion," Impmon finished. Then she frowned and said, "What did I do?"

"I dunno," said Calumon. "Why'd she run like that?"

Impmon's eyes widened and he said, "Do you think... she's learned about my past and _why_ we're trying to find the Temple."

"Oh come on," Lilamon shook her head. "Get a grip, Impy. We didn't tell anyone that and I doubt anyone else has. Besides, not everything is about this whole Demon Lord thing. She's just spooked because a certain someone knocked her out of the air, because he wasn't watching where he was going."

"I apologise," said Wingdramon.

"Why are you telling me?" Lilamon asked. "You didn't knock me out of the air. Look, I'll go over there and calm her down, let her know the situation and everything. Then we can get answers from her, alright?"

"What makes you think she'll listen to you?" asked Impmon.

"If nothing else works," Lilamon said. "I'll give her the Face."

"Go do your thing, Lilamon," Diatrymon chuckled.

"Oh, I intend to," Lilamon said, and she hovered slowly over to the thick grass clump the Biyomon was peering around in the most non-threatening posture she knew – on her back with her hands behind her head like she was lying on a beach or something. Impmon snorted as he watched Lilamon slip over towards where the Biyomon was attempting to hide.

"She certainly does have a way with Digimon," Impmon said. "A Garbagemon jumps out at her and she shoots it in the face, but then when a Biyomon needs calming down, she knows exactly how to do it."

"That's our Lilamon," said Diatrymon approvingly. "She knows what she's doing. She managed to convince you to let us join your little adventure after all, didn't she?"

"That she did," Impmon said. "Despite the fact I didn't want any company at..."

Lilamon's sudden scream cut went right through everyone as sharply as a dagger. Practically before Impmon knew what he was doing, he had transformed into the intimidating shape of Beelzemon Blast Mode and was rushing forwards to help the Ultimate level Fairy Digimon. Three small Digimon had appeared out of seemingly nowhere and were swarming around Lilamon, while she held up her hands and tried to keep them away.

Beelzemon roared as he slammed Berenjena into one of the three and knocked it flying with the harsh blow, where it slammed painfully to the floor. Instantly whipping around to grab another of the three Digimon in his hand, his fingers easily enclosing around the torso of Lilamon's small assailant, he tossed it into the air and delivered a terrific punch to its flailing form, sending it crashing into the other one he had already knocked away. As he did so, his tail lashed out and slammed into the side of the head of the third one, knocking it to the ground as well.

Beelzemon roared and pointed Berenjena at the three Digimon, and as the huge cannon began to crackle with pink energy, Beelzemon hollered, "Here's a message for GranDracmon. He can chase after me all he wants but absolutely nobody hurts my friends." He fired the shot.

But, the moment before he did, someone cried, "Beelzemon! Stop!" and a pair of petalled hands grabbed him by the upper arm and jerked his cannon away, so the shot went wide and threw up a huge column of earth nearby, missing its intended target. Beelzemon stared at Lilamon in disbelief and Lilamon looked him in the eyes plaintively and said, "Stop, Beelzemon! Look before you start attacking things! Do they look like GranDracmon's minions to you?"

Beelzemon froze. He realised that he didn't have a clue what kind of Digimon he had just attacked – he had just attacked them. Slowly, afraid of what he might see, he turned around slowly and glanced at the three Digimon on the ground. They were small and insect-like, covered in light yellow armour with black stripes and purple flecks, with little segmented wings sticking out of their backs and looks of terror in their wide eyes.

"They're just Honeybeemon," Lilamon said, soothingly. "They came out of the grass for me because I have a large flower on my back and they're unable to resist flowers. They didn't mean me any harm."

Beelzemon was mortified at what he had almost done. He stared from the cannon on his arm to the Honeybeemon, to the huge crater in the ground that he had created with his blast. The looks in the Honeybeemon's eyes were the same as those of all the innocent Digimon that he had murdered when he was a member of the Demon Lords. And after all the stuff he'd seen himself do in his sleep, to see someone looking at him like that now, when he was awake, was almost more than he could handle.

"Sorry," he mumbled, and pulled himself free of Lilamon's grip, walking over towards a nearby hill, where he stared at the horizon. What was wrong with him? Why had he done that?

Behind him, Lilamon's eyes remained focused on his back, worry etched on her face. As Diatrymon went and explained the situation to the three Honeybeemon and Wingdramon began to apologise to the petrified Biyomon and get the information they needed about the Temple, Lilamon felt her heart going out to the poor Digimon.

She knew what was wrong with him. The continuous stress from everything he had been going through had stretched him to what was practically the breaking point. He was jumping to conclusions to quickly and had automatically assumed the Honeybeemon were enemies and that the Biyomon was scared of him. Her attempts to keep him amused and happy on their travels seemed to have paid off, but they could only hold back the stress for so long.

If she had not stepped in and Beelzemon had killed the Honeybeemon, he would have passed the point of no return and gone into a state of depression that only a miracle could awaken him from. Lilamon sighed and floated over to Beelzemon, moving around him and giving him a warm, reassuring hug.

She hoped that they reached the Temple soon. If they didn't then Beelzemon might succumb to the burden on his shoulders at last.

But Lilamon allowed herself as slight smile as she felt Beelzemon hug her back. As long as he had the state of mind to do that, there was hope for him.

* * *

The information from the terrified Biyomon had allowed Impmon and his travelling companions to learn that the Temple had moved six miles further north than its previous location. Altering their course into a slightly northward but still predominantly western direction, the group had continued throughout the rest of the day.

As they did, Lilamon kept glancing up towards Wingdramon up ahead, or more precisely, to one of the two passengers that the dragon was carrying. Throughout the rest of the day after the incident with the Honeybeemon, Impmon had remained extremely quiet and subdued, hesitant to speak to anyone for any reason and not even laughing at the witty remarks of Lilamon and the ridiculousness of his travelling companion, Calumon, which continued throughout the rest of the day.

They covered many more miles that day, dashing across the turf of the Prairie level for all that they were worth. Despite Diatrymon's frequent rest stops they made extremely good progress, but eventually they were forced to stop. They set up a camp as night washed in. Lilamon collected together several twigs from a nearby tree, a rarity on the Prairie Level in comparison to the grass but there were still dotted here and there. Stepping back, she looked to Impmon expectantly. The Rookie didn't notice and just stared out down at the ground in front of him, using one of the thinner twigs to draw meaningless patterns in the soil.

"Uh, Impmon," Lilamon prompted him. "Don't you want to light the fire for us?"

Impmon didn't look up, although he did lift one hand and throw a glob of fire from it on to the twigs, setting them alight quickly. Lilamon's face fell and she sighed. Impmon didn't appear to notice, and made no comment when Diatrymon offered to take the first watch.

It wasn't long after night fell that tiredness overtook Impmon and he fell asleep beside the fire. Calumon was curled nearby, also asleep and snoring quite fitfully. Lilamon poked the fire a couple of times with a stick, gently reaching over to close Calumon's mouth and prevent the snoring. But she didn't go to sleep.

The fairy Digimon looked up, brushing aside the petal of the upside-down flower on her head as she did so. Wingdramon was still hovering in the air and it looked like he was curling himself upwards to go to sleep himself, but she quickly stopped him from doing so with a quick "Psst. Wingdramon. Don't fall asleep yet. I want to talk to you?"

Wingdramon yawned, a great gaping yawn as his pointed maw opened wide, before they clacked shut a couple of times and he looked down at her. "What about? We should be resting right now."

"I know," said Lilamon. "But it's important. You too, Diatrymon."

"I'm listening," the bird said, although he continued scanning the horizon for potential dangers. "Go on."

"Well," Lilamon sighed. "I'm worried about Impmon."

"That's it?" Diatrymon asked. "In case you didn't realise, we're all worried about Impmon."

"Yeah, I know that," Lilamon said quietly. "But I mean I'm more worried about him right now than I was before. Before he was a little more serious and reserved than I remember him being the first time we met, but now, after that incident with the Honeybeemon earlier today, he's just different."

"I noticed too," Wingdramon nodded. "He's unresponsive and not really paying attention to his surroundings. He's withdrawn into his mind and has started brooding, I believe."

"I thought that as well," Lilamon nodded, placing her fire prodding stick on the ground. "The fact that he nearly killed those innocent Digimon has really shaken him up. I think it was a reminder of his olden days and when he saw it happening right in front of him instead of in a dream or flashback or vision or whatever, it might have really hit home exactly what he's running away from. He's becoming confused. I think he's wondering if he's slowly turning into the monster he once was despite his best efforts not to, although we know that's rubbish because he thought those Honeybeemon were attacking me."

"And that's not the only thing," agreed Wingdramon. "The other affects all this fleeing for his life is having on him – making him jump to conclusions and think that everything is a potential enemy – it's not healthy for the mind. He's started to act on instinct, and while that is good in many ways, you _can_ have too much of some good things."

"Well at least he didn't kill those Honeybeemon," observed Diatrymon.

"Thank goodness for that," said Lilamon. "If he had then I would think that he was beyond hope. All the running away is affecting his mind. It's not healthy to be wondering when you're about to get attacked again at every single moment of the day and being on edge throughout that whole time. That's what led to him attacking the Honeybeemon. We need to help him."

"What do you suggest?" asked Diatrymon.

"We need to get him into that Temple," said Lilamon. "And quickly. As quickly as we can. As soon as he is in an environment that he knows the forces of GranDracmon cannot follow him into that will relieve a massive weight from his shoulders. When he _knows_ that he's safe, then hopefully we can break him out of this state."

"But we're already doing everything we can," Diatrymon said. "We've covered a lot of ground. We'll be there in a maximum of two days or so."

"That's not good enough," declared Lilamon, getting to her feet. "We need to get him into that Temple as soon as possible. I say that we stop the camping at night and press on right now. And also, no offense Diatrymon but we're your frequent rest stops are getting in the way. Wingdramon, is there some way that you could carry all of us?"

"I wouldn't be able to fly as fast," Wingdramon said. "Diatrymon isn't exactly a lightweight with all that metal and having someone dangling from my hands significantly increases the drag. But I suppose we wouldn't need to rest as much. And we know that you weight almost nothing as well, Lilamon."

"Then I say that we just go now and all of us take to the air," said Lilamon.

Wingdramon and Diatrymon glanced at one another. "Travelling long without a break is not going to be easy, Lilamon," Diatrymon said.

"Maybe not," Lilamon said. "But you know as well as I do that we're not safe here. We're not safe anywhere. Except. That. Temple."

Wingdramon glanced over at Diatrymon again and said, "Well, you up for a lift?"

"I hate flying," Diatrymon moaned, stepping over to Wingdramon slowly and ducking his head as he made his way under the dragon's huge hands and stood so he would be facing forwards when the dragon picked him. Lilamon smiled thankfully and moved over to where the others were. She gently scooped Calumon up into her arms like the small child he was and slowly hovered over to Wingdramon, depositing the Catalyst in the crook of the dragon's neck.

She moved back over to Impmon and took a moment to look down at his sleeping form. She allowed a brief smile to flit across her face. In sleep, Impmon looked so much more peaceful than he did when he was awake. Even so, he still looked a little highly strung, as if the slightest nudge could cause him to wake up with a fireball ready in his hand.

She couldn't bear to wake him up, so she reached around to the large pink flower on her back and stuck one petal-like finger inside for a moment, withdrawing it again coated with her special pollen. She carefully sprinkled a small amount over Impmon's face. In large quantities her pollen paralysed the heart and body of the Digimon it encountered, but in little, regulated amounts, it helped to induce a slightly deeper sleep in Impmon.

She carefully picked him up and carried him over to Wingdramon as well. She settled him down beside Calumon and then sat on Wingdramon's back herself, a careful hand placed on both her charges to ensure that neither of them somehow fell off. The pollen would keep Impmon asleep for a while, although he could still be woken if the stimulus was strong enough.

"Okay," she whispered, so as not to wake either of them. "Let's get moving."

"This is going to be a long night," said Wingdramon, as he grabbed Diatrymon by the base of his wings and lifted him into the air, blowing out the fire in the process, before continuing to fly away at high altitude. Their speed was notably slower than it had been when Diatrymon had been running along the ground, but it wasn't too long before it became obvious that it was paying off. Half an hour of flying later and Wingdramon was still flying.

"I thought you could go faster than this," Lilamon said. "I thought you could move at really high speeds if you wanted to."

"Not with passengers, I can't," Wingdramon. "I don't have seatbelts. If I went too fast you guys could be blown off almost instantly."

Diatrymon looked down at the ground swaying underneath him, his scaly feet swinging back and forth. The flight itself was in silence, so Diatrymon felt random thoughts popping into his head, such as the fact that if one of his toes fell off they could kill someone. But it was so dark out that beyond his toes he could barely see anything. Above him, Lilamon was faintly glowing with her bioluminescent light, but that did little more than light up the immediate area.

Diatrymon didn't like it when he couldn't see the ground below. For a Bird Digimon that was somewhat embarrassing, even if Diatrymon couldn't actually fly himself. Diatrymon was not _afraid_ of heights, but he was slightly uncomfortable at the prospect of plunging to the ground when his wings would be of little use.

He stared downwards, searching for any signs of the ground with his eyes. And then, he noticed something up ahead of them. His eyes narrowed as he beheld what appeared to be an orangey glow on the ground in front of the group. If they kept up their current path, they would fly directly over the glow, which was quite obviously another campfire of some kind.

"Hey, look there!" he called. "Another campsite. Someone else who doesn't normally live on the Prairie Level is down there."

Wingdramon looked down and Lilamon peered over her larger friend's shoulders. "So there is," said Wingdramon.

"Does it matter?" asked Lilamon. "Shouldn't we keep flying."

"It's unusual," said Wingdramon. "It would be better if we at least checked out who it was first. I'll descend down behind that hill on the other side of the campfire, where we can't be seen by the people around it."

Wingdramon quickly lowered himself down towards the ground, until Diatrymon's feet once again touched down. Wingdramon released the Ancient Terror Bird Digimon, who flexed his slightly cramped wing muscles a couple of times. Lilamo peered down from behind the snoozing Impmon and Calumon and said, "Well, shouldn't we find out who's there?"

"I'll have a look," Diatrymon whispered. The Champion Level Digimon turned around and quietly began to walk towards the campsite. He knew how to walk incredibly quietly in soft turf like this. He pointed his claws downwards so they sunk into the earth like blades instead of clacking against it and rustling against one another. He kept his wings folded to his sides as he slowly stalked up the hill.

Quietly, Diatrymon peered over the lip of the hill, his large head the only thing sticking up over the top thanks to his long neck and glanced down at the fire.

The camp was surrounding by a long and serpentine shape of some kind, like some kind of dark, scaly bulk belonging to a Digimon that Diatrymon could not distinguish in the dim lighting. But there was also a couple of other large lumps that were blatantly large Digimon of some kind.

But there were three beings in particular that caught Diatrymon's attention. On the opposite side of the fire, leaning against a large log and illuminated by the glowing tongues of flame were three humans. Diatrymon stared at them in disbelief. The middle one he didn't know – he'd never seen her before. However, he had seen the two that were leaning against her on either side.

Ai and Mako.

Diatrymon's head rose higher and craned over the hill to ensure that his eyes were not fooling him. But they weren't. There they were, clear as day. The Tamers of the Digimon who was lying right behind him on top of Wingdramon. The Tamers that Digimon had abandoned in order to protect them. They were there, right in front of him.

"What in the Digital World," breathed Diatrymon.

A sudden shifting noise off to the right caused Diatrymon's attention to turn over in that direction. He quickly stepped back as a quiet, four legged figure slowly stepped into view and walked past him hiding place. He passed close enough for Diatrymon to make out who it was, and Diatrymon's eyes widened at the sight. He had never seen Caturamon with his own eyes before, but he knew who it was.

Caturamon was obviously doing a round of guard duty to make sure that nothing attacked them. About a minute later, another small figure scuttled past the spot where Diatrymon was crouching – the Mouse Deva Kumbhiramon. Diatrymon glanced back at the others. Perhaps the other three forms down there were other Devas as well, although one of them was probably the partner of the girl that Ai and Mako were leaning against.

Breathing in shock, Diatrymon turned and inched back down towards where the others were waiting for him.

"Well?" asked Lilamon.

"Wake Impmon up," Diatrymon replied.

"What? Why?" Lilamon hissed sharply. "He's resting."

"Trust me," Diatrymon gave her a meaningful look. "He's going to want to hear about this one."

Lilamon frowned but then gently shook Impmon awake. The pollen caused Impmon to wake up a little slowly and drowsily, and he looked up blearily, green eyes blinking. "Wha- what's going on?" he asked.

"Impmon," said Diatrymon. "What I'm about to say will probably shock you quite a lot. You'll probably yell, so could you cover his mouth as well, Lilamon?"

Lilamon raised an eyebrow but did as she was bid and placed a petalled hand firmly over Impmon's mouth. Impmon looked bemused and glanced at Diatrymon questioningly.

"It might interest you to know," said Diatrymon. "That your two Tamers, Ai and Mako, are in the Digital World, and are lying asleep beside a campfire on the other side of the hill behind me.

Impmon was instantly fully awake, his eyes shooting open as he cried, "Mmmphf!" against Lilamon's hand. If it hadn't been muffled, everyone was pretty sure he would have shouted, "WHAT!"

* * *

And there's your cliffhanger for you. To find out what Impmon does with this information, you'll have to wait until chapter 120. Hopefully that chapter should be nice and exciting. Impmon's been seriously affected by all this. Originally I was just going to have them get attacked by GranDracmon again, but I wanted a bit of variation.

And next, it's back to Coruscant for some more Zillo destruction and chaos.

* * *

Next time...

Now that the Zillo Beast knows where to look, it is eager to fulfil its retribution. As it makes the final approach to the Senate, the Digimon and the Jedi are in pursuit. But can they get there in time to stop it from committing serious damage?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 116 : Senate Under Siege**


	116. Senate Under Siege

Well, here we are again. I don't think I've ever updated so many chapters so quickly as I have over the last few days. But I am enjoying every moment of it. This is one of my favourite arcs so far and if you ask me, it is likely to stay that way throughout the rest of the story. Look out for this chapter, because it's definitely interesting.

So, read on for some more Zillo Beast action.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 116:- Senate Under Siege**

* * *

The LAAT gunship engines roared as the large, white vessels whooshed across the Coruscant sky, flying through a large corridor in the buildings of the city to ensure they didn't have to keep bobbing and weaving between the structures. Time was of the essence at the moment. They had no idea how far into the city the Zillo Beast had gotten, but it was clear that it had gone a long way.

They could see that just by looking out of the window. The damage to the city was not a lot in terms of the whole area, as most of it had been spared from the Zillo Beast's wrath. But of those areas that the Zillo Beast had walked through, there was practically nothing left. Most of the buildings had missing walls, the bridges that crossed the chasms had been completely turned to rubble and were no longer anywhere in sight and there were fires burning everywhere.

The Jedi stared out at the destruction and the desperate acts of the police droids to restore order and put out the fires. Sorrow festered in their hearts. All those lives ruined or destroyed thanks to the creature's rampage – it was a crippling loss for the Republic.

But they also knew that the Zillo Beast wasn't the real culprit behind all this. It might have escaped on its own, but it was the fault of one man that it was here in the first place, or that it had in fact managed to break itself free at all. Chancellor Palpatine had ignored all cautionary advice, even from his most trusted allies and friends. And now, the citizens of Coruscant were paying the price.

The Digimon were feeling similarly. They and their Tamers were uncomfortably reminded of how Ogudomon had appeared in Tokyo and trashed the entire city, turning it to rubble completely. But this was even worse. Coruscant might still have been standing but when Ogudomon had attacked Tokyo, they had had enough warning to evacuate the whole city. Here, no-one had had any warning at all and many hundreds of people had died here today, whereas Ogudomon had not managed to kill a single person.

Ironic really. The one who had not intended to come to the city was doing more damage than the one who had come to deliberately wreck it.

Henry had tried to turn Suzie away, but Suzie had insisted on looking at the scene of devastation, a look of bitter sadness on her young face. They felt sorry for the people, but they were in quite a quandary because they also felt sorry for the Zillo Beast. How in the world were they going to solve this situation?

A silent conversation was going on in the minds of those who shared the link. _It's just such a waste of life,_ Aayla was saying. _Palpatine may have claimed to be bringing the Beast here to help save lives but all he's done is destroy more lives than probably would have saved anyway. Coruscant has not been attacked in over one-thousand years, and now that it finally has, it wasn't even the doing of the Separatists._

_We've seen many giant monsters appearing in the city,_ Renamon agreed. _Huge Digimon bent on destruction and chaos. But we always managed to put a stop to them before they could do too much damage. We've never seen anything like this before either._

_It's quite harrowing actually,_ said Terriermon. _I don't usually feel powerless, but this is one situation where I feel that way._

_What exactly are we going to do when we find the Zillo Beast? _Asked Henry. _Are we just going to fire the stun tank lasers at it and hope for the best?_

_We'll probably have to do a lot of improvisation,_ Ahsoka answered. _It all depends on where the Beast is where we find it, how easy it is to take down, who else is in the area at the time. It's going to be a tough opponent to take down._

_It shouldn't even _be_ our opponent,_ Lopmon sighed. _It shouldn't even be here. I'm going to find it difficult enough to forgive Palpatine for this as it is, but if we are forced to kill it then I will never let it go._

_None of us will,_ said Rika. _I know that you Jedi aren't supposed to carry grudges or anything, but I hope you don't mind if we hold one._

_Go ahead,_ Aayla replied. _Even we might find it difficult to forgive something like this. We will eventually, but I must admit my trust in the Chancellor has been shaken._

_I never did like that man,_ Terriermon said. _I always found his smile slightly disturbing._

Just then, another voice broke into their thoughts as they finally entered the range that their mind links could reach with Anakin. _Guys! _He shouted. _I seriously hope that you getting here quickly because we've got trouble. The Zillo Beast is heading straight for the Senate Building as we speak. It's running straight at us. We could really use some help over here._

Aayla and Renamon glanced at each other. Aayla noticed that in the other gunship, Mace Windu and Obi-Wan were displaying a hologram of the Chancellor, who was presumably telling them the same thing.

_That's not good,_ Aayla said. _That's practically the worst place in the city that it could head to._

_And it's worse, _Anakin said. _There was supposed to be a meeting tonight so the Building is jam-packed full of Senators. They've all retreated to the bottom of the facility, but everyone in this building could be in danger. Get here quickly, please!_

_We're on our way, Anakin,_ said Renamon.

_What? You too? _Anakin asked. _You can't reveal yourselves to the..._

_If we must then we must, _Renamon declared, cutting him off. _How close is the Beast to the Senate Building._

_Getting very close now. I'd say it'll be here in about a minute or so._

_Great,_ muttered Ahsoka. _Better and better. We won't be able to get there that quickly. We're flying as fast as we can._

_Maybe you can't, _Terriermon piped up. _But I could._

_Are you crazy, Terriermon? _Henry balked. _You want to become Rapidmon and go on ahead?_

_Yep._

_But Terriermon, you know that Rapidmon is not going to do any good against the Zillo Beast,_ objected Aayla. _You're Tri Beam will have no effect on it, and its impervious to missiles thanks to its armour._

_That may be,_ said Terriermon. _But at least I can keep it distracted until you guys get there. And I could move fast enough to avoid being seen by people in the Senate Building if I need to._

Aayla paused, but only momentarily. She glanced across at Mace and Obi-Wan in the other gunship. Technically, they were in charge, but since she was the one the Digimon answered to she supposed it couldn't hurt to agree. _Alright,_ she said. _Do it. Stay out of sight if you can, and we'll catch up as quickly as possible._

_On it,_ nodded Terriermon, heading for the gunship door. _Henry._

_Yeah, I got it,_ Henry sighed. _Just be careful, Terriermon_

_I'll do my best,_ Terriermon nodded. _Momentai, Henry. I'll be okay. Do it now!_ He added as he suddenly leapt out of the gunship. Henry hurriedly brought the blue card up to the green rimmed D-Arc in his hand and said, "Digi-modify! Matrix Digivolution activate!"

The explosion of light that came with the Digivolution was brief.

And rather like over Naboo, nobody heard Terriermon call out the Digivolution as it took place. Henry and Rika looked out the gunship, as Terriermon had fallen behind while he digivolved, but when the light faded, they saw absolutely nothing in its place. At the exact same second they felt a rush of wind surging past them as Rapidmon exploded into action so quickly they didn't even see him swoop past.

_Hurry, Rapidmon,_ thought Renamon. _And be careful._

* * *

Rapidmon didn't respond, because he was too busy focusing on veering in and around the buildings around him, all the while not dropping his ridiculously high speed. The citizens of Coruscant never knew what swooped so close to them they could reach out and touch it, but all they felt was a sudden wind gust, which wasn't that unusual in the higher places of Coruscant because the wind was often funnelled between the skyscrapers.

Rapidmon still didn't know Coruscant very well due to his limited trips into it and the fact that it was a confusing mass of buildings and lights anyway. But it was still easy for him to know where he was going by following both the path of mayhem the Zillo Beast had made and homing in on Anakin's mental signal, since the Chosen One was in the building the Zillo Beast was heading for. His brain was having to work at high speed to interpret what he was seeing in front of him at the fast pace he was setting and respond accordingly, but Rapidmon was designed for this and he executed it with flawless precision.

It took Rapidmon exactly eleven seconds to whirl his way from the gunships through the maze of buildings and into the Senate District. He didn't even pause as he saw the Senate Building up ahead, huge and resplendent against the other buildings surrounding it. He whooshed towards it and, sure enough, there was the Zillo Beast charging towards it. The huge, reptilian creature, free from the shackles and blazing with anger, looked even more magnificent than it had when Rapidmon had last seen it. It was running across the tops of the buildings, tail lashing around behind it, motoring towards the building at speed.

And now, Rapidmon whooshed around towards it and thought, _Sorry, Big Guy. No hard feelings, I hope,_ before slamming his foot into the side of the Zillo Beast's head at very high speed.

The blow didn't damage the Zillo Beast in the slightest. However, it did have some effect, as the Zillo Beast was caught completely off guard by the sudden powerful attack and its head snapped to the side, halting its charge and shaking its head in confusion. The moment after his kick was complete, Rapidmon whooshed away once more, in an effort to remain unseen. However, Rapidmon had been more damaged in that attack than the Zillo Beast. It had been like kicking a mountain.

_Yowch!_ Rapidmon thought, rotating his aching foot. _That's gonna hurt in the morning._

But he couldn't afford to let himself get distracted. He whirled around for another pass at the Zillo Beast and saw that it was now standing on its hind legs, searching around for its unknown assailant in anger. Rapidmon's eyes widened as it turned towards him while he rushed in again – somehow it knew he was there. But Rapidmon was too fast for the Zillo Beast to do anything about it, as he slammed his boot into the Zillo Beast's nose and bounced of it's again. The Zillo Beast recoiled slightly from the blow, but was once again, otherwise unharmed. It roared in irritation as Rapidmon swooped away again.

Rapidmon repeated this process three more times, each time leaving his feet feeling more and more abused. The Zillo Beast was more than a mountain, it was like pummelling at solid Chrome-Digizoid. And the Zillo Beast always seemed to know where he was despite the fact he was moving too fast for _anything_ to see. It couldn't really do much about it but that was still interesting to say the least.

After the fifth time Rapidmon smacked into the head of the Zillo Beast, he saw it turning back towards the Senate Building, looking up at it and preparing to charge again. Determined to keep the Zillo Beast's attention on him, Rapidmon switched tactics. Instead of constantly flying away and coming around for another pass, Rapidmon flew in close and kicked the Beast heavily in the chest, darting off to the side a second later to slam into the palm of the Beast's hands, reversing direction in mid-air and crashing into the side of the head, before diving beneath the mouth and coming up to slam into the other side of the head for good measure, then whisking down to pummel the Zillo Beast's foot, swooping between its legs and slam his body into the back of the Zillo Beast's knee. This hit and run approach seemed to serve him well, although he was thankful for the armour protecting a lot of his body, because even without it he was beginning to smart all over.

The constant smacks against it from the irritating little attacker gained the Zillo Beast's attention again. Roaring furiously and unsure of what was going on, the Beast began flailing on the spot, swinging its huge arms, stomping its massive feet and lashing its enormous tail, spinning in a circle to try and hit the pesky little creature. It's feet created cracks in the roof of the building it was standing on, its teeth gnashed in frustration as it thrashed about, forcing Rapidmon to dodge around its flailing limbs as he kept up his own assault. The Zillo Beast had almost become like a human trying to swat a stupidly fast fly.

Rapidmon ducked and wove around the forest of swinging limbs around it. It was actually trickier than he had expected. It was like trying to move around through the constantly moving threads of a giant spider web as the Zillo Beast's five limbs and tail and head thrashed all over the place. At one point, Rapidmon sailed right between the Zillo Beast's open jaws, clearing them just as they slammed shut behind him.

But the Zillo Beast's flailing was just completely random. Somehow, inexplicably, the limbs were following Rapidmon around the Beast's body. Of course they couldn't keep up with Rapidmon's speed, but they always changed direction if they fell behind and came for him again.

_Come on, guys,_ Rapidmon said as he drove himself into the bottom of the Beast's lower jaw, pushing the head upwards before streaking away as the Beast's right arm lashed towards him. _I could use a little help. Jeez, this guy is tough. I don't know how much more of this I can take._ He ignored his aching limbs and zipped under the Zillo Beast's armpit to kick it in the side.

* * *

"What in the galaxy is it doing?" Padmé frowned in confusion, as she and the other occupants of Palpatine's office stared out of the window. They had been watching the Zillo Beast's approach with apprehension, but then, suddenly, it had stopped in the middle of its charge and appeared to have gone berserk, flailing on the spot as if it suddenly gone completely mad.

"I am not sure, my lady," said C-3PO, "but if I may offer my opinion, I would say that the creature appears to be slightly unhinged."

_Or just really angry,_ thought Anakin.

Unlike the others, he knew exactly what was going on, but that was only due to his internal conversation with the others. Rapidmon was too far away for him to sense without their mind link and he could only just barely follow his movements as it was. The Digimon was moving way too fast for them to see.

He hoped that Rapidmon could keep this up for a little longer. The gunship were not far away now – it would only take them a couple more minutes before they reached the Senate Building themselves. And then they might finally be able to put a stop of the Beast.

* * *

"Padmé!" Chuchi shouted as she hurried through the Senate Building in search of her comrade and friend. "Padmé, where are you? Are you there?" The little Pantoran was frustrated by the lack of answer around her, worry nibbling at her gut at the thought of her friend in danger. Especially since she had no idea what that danger might be.

This was one of those times where Chuchi was glad that she didn't normally wear shoes with high heels. The boots she wore were much more practical and they were helping her to move through the deserted corridors of the Senate Building quickly and efficiently. It was actually slightly bizarre to walk through the place and find it empty – it was never empty. But it was now, except for little Chuchi.

Where could Padmé have hidden herself? Why would she not come down to the lower levels with the others? Chuchi knew that Padmé wouldn't have left the building before the vote tonight for any reason, not even if there had been a threat to her life – she was known for boldly defying those kind of threats. Especially since the vote was one she had been working tirelessly to win for months. So that meant that she was definitely here somewhere, but where.

Chuchi hoped that she hadn't somehow managed to miss Padmé and that she was downstairs now with the others, while she was up here and putting herself in danger for no reason. But at the moment she could see no danger, so she supposed that she was okay for the moment.

Padmé's office had been notably empty. So where would the Senator from Naboo be now. Was she still with General Skywalker? If there was, there might be less to worry about, unless something like a bunch of Bounty Hunters had invaded and caught them both... again. It was plausible, but somehow she doubted that was the case

But then, as Chuchi rounded another corner and lifted a hand to open another door, she paused as a faint sound registered in her ears. A sort of high-pitched and angry sounding screaming noise that was definitely not something a humanoid could produce, and it seemed to be combined with a sort of growling roar. Chuchi frowned and glanced across to her left, where she had heard the sound coming from.

"What was that?" she murmured to herself, and she found herself hurrying down the corridor to investigate quickly. She crossed through several more corridors, until she heard the noise again. There was definitely a slightly angry edge to the bizarre noise, but Chuchi had never heard anything like it in her entire life.

But then, she came to a large window, and out of the corner of her eye she saw it. She faltered in surprise and stared out of the window in complete shock and disbelief. Outside, there was a giant lizard-like creature, tall as a Republic cruiser – possibly even taller – with three arms and a long tail and glowing green eyes that were easily visible in the darkness, even from this distance.

"What in the galaxy?" she breathed, staring out at the creature outside, which was thrashing about on the spot, twisting and turning and slamming its huge limbs into the roof of the building that it was standing on. It crossed the roofs of several more buildings in this manner, its head moving about in great circles as if trying to follow something through the air, although Chuchi couldn't see anything.

Chuchi found herself riveted to the spot as she stared out at the strange creature and its equally strange behaviour. She didn't even think of running. She just stared in both wonder and incredulity.

* * *

Rapidmon was aching like hell now, and the Zillo Beast didn't appear to be any worse for wear. The shuddering roar of the creature stung Rapidmon's sensitive ears and distorted his radar-like sense of direction, making him have to rely on instinct alone to dodge the thrashing arms and legs and tail of the Beast. He ploughed into the side of its neck and dodged aside as the tail lashed up and almost slammed into him, the spikes bouncing off the Beast's hide as easily as Rapidmon himself did.

Rapidmon considered just starting to use his missiles instead of his body, but that would be a bad idea. Anyone watching from the Senate building, and he knew of at least two who were, would see the missiles and start asking questions. He had to keep going. The gunships were nearly there anyway.

Rapidmon grunted as he zoomed down and swooped beneath the blow of the Zillo Beast's enormous right arm, changing direction abruptly and thudding into the Beast's chest, rebounding off it with a groan of pain at the impact and forcing himself to spiral over the thrash of the other arm. Rapidmon quickly swooped upwards, and twisted, ready to come down and deliver another kick to the back of the Beast's head between its spikes.

But he'd forgotten that the Beast had a third arm and suddenly, completely by chance, the Beast finally managed to hit its attacker. The huge hand slammed into Rapidmon's back from above and Rapidmon screamed in pain at the tremendous impact, which sent him plummeting towards the ground at immense speed, all attempts at flying abandoned as he just dropped.

But the Zillo Beast wasn't done with him yet and roaring angrily, its tail suddenly slammed into Rapidmon with a brutal force, swiping him from the side like the universe's largest club. The tail struck Rapidmon across the upper body and head, knocking him unconscious instantly and also sending him flying away like he was a ping pong ball smacked by the racquet. And he sailed right towards the Senate Building.

* * *

Chuchi had successfully abandoned staring at the strange lizard outside. Now that she knew what the danger was, she was more determined than ever to find Padmé quickly before the Beast decided to turn on the Senate Building itself. The thought of having Padmé swallowed by that monster was simply too much. The Pantoran was running now, dashing through the Building and calling for her friend.

"Padmé!" she yelled, her voice echoing as she listened desperately for an answer. "Padmé, where are you? Answer me! Please let me know where you are!"

After another resounding silence, Chuchi clenched her teeth and shouted, "If you get yourself killed, Senator Amidala, the Moon Goddess help me, I will..."

But Chuchi never got to declare what the Moon Goddess would help her to do because at that moment everything went to hell. She had no warning whatsoever as beside her the wall exploded into rubble as something very large crashed into the other side at high speed. Chuchi screamed as the wall exploded inwards at her, the blast throwing her to the ground.

The back of Chuchi's head slammed painfully into the wall as a shower of concrete chunks, bits of metal, and one large Digital creature came sailing through into the corridor. The impact caused Chuchi to black out instantly, slumping to the floor as the rubble collapsed around her, burying the Senator from Pantora in huge pieces of the wall.

When the dust settled, all that could be seen were huge slabs of what had previously been the wall lying across the corridor. Chuchi had completely disappeared under the debris, and there was no sign of any other forms of life either.

* * *

"NO! Rapidmon!" Renamon shouted from the gunship as she felt her mate getting slammed by the Beast and lost her contact with him instantly. She dashed to the edge of the gunship and leaned out dangerously staring ahead of them, fearful for her mate's safety and wondering where he was now.

She felt Ahsoka and Barriss grab her by the shoulders and haul her backwards and into the body of the gunship again. "Renamon! Calm down!" Ahsoka cried. "He's still alive for now! You can still feel his presence somewhere, can't you?"

"Yes, but how much longer will he stay that way!" Renamon shouted desperately. "We need to hurry!"

"We're already going at full speed," Barriss said. "But we're nearly there now so try and stay calm! You won't help him if you fall to your death."

Renamon growled but knew that Barriss was right and tried to relax herself. She turned to look at the stricken faces of everyone else as they all wondered what had happened to Rapidmon now. Suzie had her knuckles stuffed in her mouth and Henry was gripping his D-Arc like a lifeline. Aayla glanced at Renamon and pulsed a feeling of reassurance at her, which helped Renamon relax a little more. They were right – Rapidmon was still alive. When she stopped feeling his life signal, then she would panic.

"We're making our final approach now," said the pilot over the coms. "We're beginning our descent now."

* * *

The Zillo Beast couldn't help but feel a little smug. It didn't know what had just been attacking it, but it had not been able to do any damage to it. But it had been an extreme pain in the neck, and it had taken the Zillo Beast some time to take it out of the equation. But then it fell back to being angry – the strange and extremely fast assailant had distracted it from its original goal – to find the pale man.

Well, there would be no more distractions. The Zillo Beast turned to look at the domed building again. The pale man was still in there – it could tell. Growling at the fact that man must surely know that it was here by now but still had refused to run, the Zillo Beast gave off a mighty roar, hunkering down on all fives for a second.

Then, it threw itself forwards using all five limbs at once, creating an explosive turn of speed that picked up from where it had left off almost instantly. Dashing across the rooftops at a fast tilt, the Zillo Beast let loose another roar, warning the pale man that he had better start running, as he was going to need a _very_ long headstart.

Roughly ten seconds of its mad dash later, and the Zillo Beast reached the final building before domed building. Not pausing in its stride even for a moment, it threw itself upwards, catapulting itself into the air on its long limbs, which acted like coiled springs to send it flying several hundred metres across the gap.

With a decisive thud, the Zillo Beast finally reached the building, letting off a metallic clang as he landed on the sloping wall. The impact was so great that it could be felt several floors down, where the Senators were all crowded together and wondering what was happening. Screams echoed through the rooms and many of them fell to the ground as they lost their footing. Many of the less brave members were starting to panic slightly.

Since the entire structure was essentially one big dome, the wall was mostly one big slope from the ground to the pinnacle of the building. The Zillo Beast took a moment to ensure that it had a grip on the metal surface, growling as it splayed its fingers to give it a purchase. Its armoured fingers helped it by creating friction against the slippery metal.

Once it had ensured that it had got a grip, the Zillo Beast growled and turned to look upwards. The pale man was up there, near the top of the building and therefore it was there that the Beast would go. Growling in anticipation, the Beast began to clamber up the sloping metallic wall and towards the place where it knew the pale man was waiting. Its teeth bared in hunger as it made the final approach to its target.

* * *

Anakin was utterly mortified. Rapidmon's presence had blacked out from his mind and while he could still feel a slight tingle that indicated the Digimon was still alive, that tingle was so faint that Anakin had no idea what conditioned the Ultimate level cyborg rabbit was in. He could be dying right now for all he knew.

He dearly hoped that the extreme stubbornness that the Chancellor had exhibited when it came to the Zillo Beast would not be the death of one of his closest friends. Rapidmon's defeat had happened so quickly that he hadn't seen it happen, and he hoped that the others had not spotted the Digimon as it had been defeated. The Zillo Beast did seem to draw the eye more.

But, right now, he had more important things to worry about, such as the fact that while Rapidmon had valiantly managed to hold the Zillo Beast off for some time, the Beast was now back on course and was scaling the wall towards them. He wasn't sure why it was coming their way, but whatever the reason, it seemed that there was little that could stop the thing.

He turned to the others and said, "I think that it might be a good idea if we got out of this room. We probably should have done some time ago. Padmé, you should have gone to the underground shelters."

"I am going to see this through to the end," Padmé claimed, flinching slightly as the room began to shake slightly with each pounding step the Zillo Beast took.

"But it would have been safer if you had," Anakin insisted.

"I agree, my lady," C-3PO said. "Perhaps it would be a good idea if we got a move on. I'm afraid if we stay here we will be entombed for sure."

Artoo suddenly whistled shrilly and turned around, rolling towards the doors at the side of the room which lead to the elevator and standing beside it, shaking from foot to foot agitatedly. The others watched him momentarily before suddenly they were cast in the darkness as the huge form of the Zillo Beast appeared outside the window. They turned, staring at its huge bulk in shock as the footsteps stopped, with it standing right over them.

Then, the creature's head dropped into view and its huge, green eye peered in through the glass, illuminating everyone in the room in the light it gave off as the rest of its blotted out the Coruscant skyline. The huge eye regarded each of them in turn, starting with C-3PO who whimpered and stepped back, and would have wet himself if he were capable of doing that, then sweeping over Padmé, hovering momentarily on Anakin, before fixing on Palpatine.

The moment the Zillo Beast's eye settled on the Chancellor, it narrowed instantly and glared at him with an expression of pure and utter hatred. For Padmé, this was the first time she had seen the Beast up close and despite the fact that her heart was beating nineteen to the dozen and she was absolutely terrified, she couldn't help but admire it, and the brute power and strength its scaly form displayed.

Palpatine, who now sounded a little nervous himself, staring into the Beast's eye with his own wide ones, said, "Yes. I think I agree. It's time to leave."

The sentence was punctuated when the Zillo Beast opened its mouth and roared at the window, displaying its double tongue and rows and rows of teeth surrounding the blackness of its throat. Its mouth almost covered the entire window, and that, almost more than Palpatine's words, spurred everyone into action. Artoo was still standing by the lift and Palpatine ran over, quickly pushing a red button on the side before dashing into the elevator beyond it.

As Anakin quickly ferried Padmé, half leading and half pushing her into the lift and Artoo rolled into it after them, C-3PO followed onwards as fast as he could, his stick-like gait not helping him move quickly and his arms up in the air as if he was displaying surrender to the Beast. He almost didn't make it to the lift in time, because the Zillo Beast's huge fingers plunged through the window and slammed Palpatine's desk into splinters, knocking over everything in its path.

The tip of one of these fingers caught C-3PO in the back. If it had been clawed that would have been the end of the droid there and then, but fortunately for him the finger had a flat tip, so he was propelled forwards into the lift, flying into the opposite wall with a metallic thud, where Anakin had to catch him before he fell to the floor.

"Oh, what did I do to deserve this?" C-3PO wailed. "Curse my stiff legs."

Palpatine quickly hit the button and the lift doors shut, while the Zillo Beast's huge hand continued to grope around, smashing everything inside what had previously been Palpatine's office, destroying walls and sending everything flying. As the lift began to move away, the Zillo Beast roared in impatience and gripped the ceiling in its huge fingers, the glass shards still in the window ineffective against its armour.

With a terrific wrench, the Zillo Beast tore the ceiling of Palpatine's office open and loomed over the room, glaring down at the trashed contents. On seeing it devoid of its prey, the Zillo Beast roared in frustration and slammed its hand down, smashing the floor in and completely obliterating the room and anything still left in it. The sturdy structure of the building was no match for its incredible strength.

The Zillo Beast looked up at the rest of the building, trying to discern which direction the pale man had gone. Growling in anger, it decided to follow its instincts and, withdrawing its hand from the wreckage that had previously been the room of the most influential man in the Republic, the Beast growled and stalked across the roof.

* * *

The gunships finally reached the landing site and settled down on the ground in front of the Senate Building. Those that were carrying the stun tanks quickly deposited them on the ground, before flying off and letting the clones manning the tanks start to prepare them for action.

During their final approach to the Senate, the gunships had been joined by another that had slipped in from the side to join the formation. This gunship contained Master Yoda, who quickly stepped out of the ship the moment it settled on the ground and walked forwards to where the others were landing, walking relatively quickly despite the fact he was still using his gimmer stick.

Renamon had piled out of the gunship before it had even touched the ground, and the others were not far behind her. Chewbacca's head swung around and the Wookiee pointed upwards, crying, "Rawwwerrgh!" As the other assorted beings looked up, following the Wookiee's paw, they saw the large shape of the Zillo Beast, climbing further up the Senate Building, silhouetted against the night sky, and leaving behind a large pile of wreckage in a certain section of the building.

"That's the Chancellor's office!" Obi-Wan said in alarm. "Of all the places on the building it wrecked it went for that one?" He turned quickly to the others and said, "Anakin – are he and the others alright?"

"They're fine, Master Kenobi," said Aayla. "They were able to escape into an elevator moments before the Beast destroyed the room. They're heading deeper into the building right now. He's with the Chancellor, Senator Amidala and two droids, Artoo and Threepio."

"Well, at least we know that we may have had a chance to get here in time," said Mace. He activated his comlink and said, "All tanks acquire solution and prepare to fire on my order."

Yoda stepped over to the others and said, "Tell me, where is young Terriermon? With you, should he not be?"

"That is a question I would like to know the answer to as well," said Renamon.

"He want on ahead, Master Yoda," Suzie explained, her voice filled with worry. "He became Rapidmon and went ahead to try and distract the Zillo Beast with his super speed. But he got whacked and now we don't know where he is."

"Hmm," Yoda mused, turning his eyes up to the building. "Find him, we will," he said. "Hardy, you Digimon are, so I am sure that is okay."

"Well, he's alive," said Lopmon. "But that's all that we know for sure."

"Fire!" Mace suddenly shouted from nearby. The tanks standing behind them, raised their giant cannons like guns on their backs, aiming them up at the retreating form of the Zillo Beast, before unleashing large, blue beams of laser right up towards it. The continuous beams pierced the night sky, lighting up the Zillo Beast as they struck it in the sides. The Zillo Beast seemed to notice and turned around, roaring in defiance at the tanks.

Then, it turned around and quickly ran on, slipping out of the way of the beams of the stun tanks, which struggled to follow it. The Beast ignored them and disappeared over the top of the Senate Building, moving to the other side where the tanks couldn't hit it.

"We need to get closer," said Obi-Wan. "We won't be able to hit it from here and we have a greater chance of slowing it down at a closer range."

Yoda, who was more focused on the location of Rapidmon at the moment, scanned the building with his eyes. It didn't take him long to spot a large, gaping hole about halfway up the side of the building (which might have been large but in terms of the building in question it was still small and therefore easy to miss to the untrained eye) and pointed at it.

"There," he said, calmly. "Find him in there, you will."

There were audible sighs of relief from all around them and Renamon said, "Thank you, Master Yoda." She turned round to Rika and said, "I'm going to go and get him. Wait here until I get back. I won't be long."

"Don't be long, Renamon," Rika insisted. Renamon nodded and turned around. But before she could even take a step, something happened which caught their attention again.

"Wait! What's it doing now?" Rex cried. The others looked back up to see that the Zillo Beast had moved back into view. It was right at the centre of the Senate Building and was staring intently at the spot in front of it for some reason.

"Probably not something good," observed Rika dryly.

* * *

The elevator had led the little group consisting of the three humans and the two droids to a corridor that Palpatine hurriedly ushered them all down. The Chancellor took the lead as they hurried down the corridor, with Anakin helping C-3PO to hurry along by levitating him in the air in front of them as they did.

Wherever they went, they heard the sounds of crashing and thudding coming from above them and nearby as the Zillo Beast stomped across the roof, accompanied by its angry roars. Padmé and Anakin glanced at one another with grim expressions. Both of them were wondering what they might be doing now if the Zillo Beast had been released on another planet instead of being brought here, as was the original plan.

Over the muffled sound of another angry outburst from the enormous reptile somewhere nearby, Anakin called out, "I don't recall ever coming down this corridor before, Chancellor."

"You wouldn't have," Palpatine said back as they moved along. "It's a special emergency escape route that was constructed when I became Chancellor just in case attacks on the Senate Building occurred, although they probably weren't imagining them under circumstances such as this. I did not think it was necessary, but my security staff insisted. And it looks like I now owe them my life."

Another roar permeated through the thick metal above their heads as they filed into a small hangar, which contained a small transport ship in the centre of it. They were met by a Senate Guard with a distinctive plume of black feathers on the top of his helmet, who saluted them and quickly lowered the ramp from the side of the vessel.

"Come along, my dear," Palpatine said, gesturing the Padmé should be the first to walk up the ramp. Padmé didn't hesitate and quickly walked up the slightly steep ramp. The interior of the ship was just a couple of rows of seats in the front half with monitors in the back half to check on the engines and other flight controls. Padmé sat down on one of the seats, and Palpatine, Anakin and Threepio filed into the ship after her. Palpatine sat at the front, and the Senate Guard sat in the pilot seat when he climbed in after Artoo and shut the door.

As they did so, Palpatine received a call on his little holocommunicator. As the pilot prepped the ship for flight, he answered it, displaying a hologram of Doctor Boll. The fish-like woman looked up and said, "Chancellor Palpatine. I think we have enough toxin now. We have incorporated it into bombs that can be fired from the gunships. It should be enough to stop the Zillo Beast and finish it off for good."

Palpatine nodded and said, "I have dispatched some guards over to you. They should be with you soon. Hand the gas over to them straight away."

Doctor Boll nodded and her hologram vanished. Padmé immediately voiced her opinion and said, "Do you really have to kill it now, Chancellor? The Jedi can stun it again and recapture it surely?"

"Perhaps," said Palpatine. "But the gas bombs will be much quicker and more efficient. We must prevent that Beast from claiming anymore lives."

Anakin had to resist the urge to snort at Palpatine's words. It was Palpatine's fault the Beast was here, but he was forced to concede that he might have a point. The decision was not going to be an easy one to make, but the gas bombs might just be their only hope now.

As the floor beneath the shuttle began to rise and the ceiling began to open up to allow the ship into open air where it could take off and escape to safety, Anakin suddenly glanced at the others and asked, "Is it me, or has the Zillo Beast stopped making noise."

They paused for a moment and listened. "You're right," Padmé breathed hopefully. "Maybe the Jedi already managed to stun the creature with their canNAAHH!" Padmé let loose an involuntary scream of terror as suddenly the huge fingers of the Zillo Beast enclosed around the ship before it had even taken off, lifting it into the air. The Senate Guard quickly turned on the engines, but the Zillo Beast effortlessly held the ship in place.

"Oh no!" Threepio cried. "It has us in its grasp! It's going to swallow us whole for sure! And then I'll get digested alive, in a slow demise that will ruin my finish. So much for looking presentable."

"How did it know where we were?" Padmé asked.

"I don't know," Palpatine said. "But right now we have more immediate concerns." He leaned back in his seat as the huge eye of the Beast appeared at the window and glared in at him. "Like what he'll do next for instance."

* * *

It had him! It had the pale man in his grasp. He had tried to escape in one of his little floating things but the Zillo Beast was not about to let the man escape that easily. He could see the pale man now, shrinking back in his chair as it peered in through the glass. Now he was afraid. There was no smug arrogance from him now. The Zillo Beast took a moment to savour the fear of the pale man, now that their roles had been completely reversed.

The only thing was, what would it do next?

It was an odd question. It had the pale man it had been hunting for, so the logical thing would be to exact its vengeance and crush the metal thing into scrap and kill the man right there. The Zillo Beast felt its fingers tighten slightly, but then it paused. Something was stopping it from doing that.

The ship itself would have been no trouble to squash, but the Zillo Beast was suddenly having second thoughts.

Not about killing the pale man – oh no. He had to die. But there were other people in there as well. The Beast could see them through the window. It recognised one of them as one of the men from Malastare that had fled from it before, but there was also a female in there that it didn't recognise, and one of the blue-clad men from before. There were a couple of the metal things in there too, but they didn't matter because they weren't alive.

But the Zillo Beast was hesitant to kill anyone else. Its quarrel was with the pale man, not the others. Normally it wouldn't have a problem with collateral damage, but it was thinking back to the tan-skinned mother and child from before, the ones that it had saved from the falling rubble. If it could spare the life of those two, why couldn't it spare the life of these other people too?

It was still an odd concept, but the Beast resolved to figure it out later on. It didn't want to kill anyone but the pale man now. And these other people weren't attacking it. So, now the Zillo Beast inspected the small ship, trying to figure out how to fish the pale man out without harming the other occupants.

And the blue beams constantly firing at it didn't help.

* * *

"Hold your fire," barked Yoda immediately, holding up a three fingered hand. Mace hesitated only for a second, before repeating the order into his comlink. Abruptly, the stun tanks stopped firing their lasers and powered down. Up ahead, the Zillo Beast stood tall on the top of the building and appeared to be examining something in its hands.

"What's it doing?" asked Obi-Wan.

"Nothing good," Ahsoka said. "It's got hold of Master Skywalker and the others! They tried to escape the building in a little ship but the Beast grabbed them before they even got started!"

"Yes," nodded Yoda. "A good position, this is not. Think of something, we must. If stun the Beast, we do, then their lives shall be at risk if it falls."

"Their lives are at risk, right now," Ahsoka said urgently. "What are we going to do, Master?"

Yoda sighed, unsure. And when Master Yoda was unsure, things were definitely far from good.

* * *

_Why doesn't it just crush us?_ Anakin thought to himself, as the ship rocked back and forth in the grip of the Zillo Beast. _Why is not doing anything? Ugh, if only we could talk to the thing then we might be able to get some answers from it. I knows its intelligent._

Anakin turned his thoughts to the more immediate problem of what they were going to do to get out of this mess. The first thing that came to his mind was insanely dangerous, but also the only thing that he could think of at the moment. And since he had no idea how long it would take before the Zillo Beast finally did something, he quickly got up and declared:- "I've got an idea! But its risky!"

He didn't wait for a response and darted to the middle of the ship, moving around Artoo and nudging him into the front half with the other passengers. However, behind him he heard Padmé say, "Considering the circumstances, I'll take the risk."

_Of course you would,_ Anakin half-smiled as he brought out his lightsaber. _Your bravery is one of the many things that attracted me to you._

_Don't start thinking about why you like your wife, right now Anakin,_ he heard Aayla's voice in his head. _Whatever you're planning to do up there just do it. None of us down here have a clue about what to do._

_Well, Aayla,_ Anakin chuckled, plunging his lightsaber through the roof of the ship and beginning to move it across the hull. _Prepare for a Skywalker surprise._

There was a pause before he heard Ahsoka say, _Master, you are officially insane._

_Nah, not insane,_ Anakin laughed. _Just very, very reckless._

_No, I think insane fits it better._

_Keep it down Snips. Let me concentrate._

_On slicing a ship in half? You could do that in your sleep. In fact, I'm surprised you haven't._

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Anakin heard Palpatine say behind him.

Anakin ignored him and kept cutting through the shuttle.

* * *

"Well," said Ahsoka, turning to the others. "The good news is that my Master has a plan."

"And let me guess," Obi-Wan held up a hand to quiet her. "The bad news is that Anakin's plans is another one of the hair-brained schemes that he always comes up with?"

"That about sums it up, yes," nodded Ahsoka.

"Well, it certainly looks that way, sir," said Rex, holding up a set of macrobinoculars to his eyes. "He seems to be using his lightsaber to slice through the ship halfway along its length. If he keeps going the way that he is now, the front half of the ship will separate from the back half."

"Has he gone insane?" asked Mace. "The ship will have no power without the back end. It'll drop like a stone."

"Then I guess we'll just have to make sure we can catch it," said Obi-Wan. "Nothing to worry about. This usually happens when Anakin gets an idea. It's almost always slightly suicidal."

"And quite often it seems to involve obeying gravity," added Rex.

"Look like the Zillo Beast is getting irritated," Lopmon observed, pointing upwards. It was indeed true. The Beast appeared to be attempting to shake the vessel in one hand, although whether this was to find out what it did or stop Anakin from escaping or whatever reason was unclear.

"Come now," Yoda said. "Volunteers come with me. Distract the Beast, we must, if Skywalker hopes to accomplish his goal."

Aayla followed him immediately, "I'll come too, Master," she said. "Renamon, do you want to hop along for the ride?"

"What? No," Renamon said. "I need to go and find Terriermon. In fact, why am I still here? I should have gone by now."

"Don't worry, Renamon," said Lopmon, stepping in front of the tall fox. "I can go and find Terriermon. Right now, you can help the others with the Beast. You can help distract it and hide at the same time with your perception filter."

Renamon hesitated for a moment, but before she could agree or decline, Lopmon said, "We don't have time to argue. I'll go get Terriermon right now. Ahsoka, Barriss, you wanna come with me?"

"Alright," nodded Barriss. "We'll help you find your brother."

"Don't worry, Renamon," said Ahsoka, placing a hand on Renamon's shoulder. "We got this. We'll have Terriermon back here before you get back."

"Come on, guys," said Lopmon. "Let's go. Chewbacca, do you feel up to joining to others in distracting that Beast."

Chewbacca thumped his chest and declared, "Rooohu oarawh oaoohuwhao oowh scwo."

"I know I can," Lopmon smiled. "See you guys later. Come on you two." She darted forwards and took to the air, flying low to the ground and towards the hole that Yoda had pointed out to them earlier. Barriss and Ahsoka both followed on behind her, using the Force to increase the length of their strides. Renamon stared after them, but only briefly. Then she was running to, as she, along with Chewbacca, ran towards the gunship that Yoda and Aayla were entering. Both of them jumped in with them as the great, white vessel lifted off from the ground and whooshed over towards the Zillo Beast perched high on the Senate Building.

"Cloak yourself, Renamon," said Aayla. "We don't want the Chancellor or Padmé to get even a glimpse of you while we're up there."

Renamon nodded and rose the filter, turning herself invisible on the spot.

The Zillo Beast looked up as the gunship approached them and whooshed past its head in a drone of engines. Its head swung around to follow its progress and clutched the ship it was holding protectively against its chest, growling a warning at them. But the gunship swung around again, ignoring the warning and, as it passed over it again, Yoda and Aayla both extended their lightsabers, Aayla's blue and Yoda's green not only contrasting with each other, but matching their skins too.

The four of them, two with lightsabers, two furry and one invisible, leapt out of the gunship and landed on the Zillo Beast's back. The Zillo Beast roared in irritation and bucked itself, but all four of them were sure-footed enough to stay on it with ease.

"Distract it, we must!" Yoda called. "Go!"

And with that, the group of four promptly separated and dashed across the Beast's body in various directions, seeking to provide an adequate distraction while Anakin finished cutting through the ship.

* * *

Pain.

Darkness and pain.

Those were the two things that first registered when Senator Chuchi was pulled out of the inky blackness of unconsciousness and back into the real world. Her eyes remained shut and the Pantoran woman groaned pitifully as she slowly began to maintain coherent thought again. It took her a few seconds to remember what had happened, but when she did she was less than pleased.

The wall had exploded in at her for no apparent reason. What had that been about?

Chuchi took in a deep breath and immediately she started coughing as she inhaled a large amount of dust. Her chest juddered up and down violently as she hacked and coughed, trying to get rid of the foul little particles that were attempting to clog up her throat. Almost, of its own accord, her hand moved backwards the touch the back of her head from where she had slammed it against the wall.

She was unsurprised to find herself wincing in pain at even the slightest pressure from her fingertips. She gritted her teeth as her head throbbed, the tender skin beneath her purple hair refusing to be touched without sending spasms of pain to the receptors in her brain. She couldn't tell because she was wearing gloves but she wouldn't be surprised if there was blood on her scalp.

Maybe staying down in the lower levels would have been a better idea.

Chuchi's eyes cracked open as she continued coughing – whenever she took a breath more dust clogged her lungs. When her yellow eyes did inch open, at first the only thing she could see was more darkness. But, as she let her vision adjust to the low light, still coughing, she began to see what the problem was and she immediately froze, beyond more spasming coughs, wracking her ribcage.

She was lying against the wall, backed up against it and above her was an enormous slab of metal and concrete that was lying propped up against the wall. Chuchi's heart started hammering at the thought of how close she had come to getting crushed by the debris from when the wall had been busted down, presumably by the giant lizard creature she had seen before. The thick slab above her was only about half a metre from her face. That had been far too close for comfort.

Chuchi struggled to control her breathing, trying to prevent herself from inhaling too much to stop the dust which had been kicked up by the shower of debris into the corridor from getting into her system. She needed to get out from under the slab somehow.

Looking slowly over her shoulder, Chuchi could see a faint light emanating from near her head. The end of the slab near her feet was completely sealed off with more bits of rubble, but maybe if Chuchi could go the other way...

She slowly began to inch backwards towards the faint glimmer of light, keeping her eye on the slab above her nervously in case it decided to come down the rest of the way and flatten her. Holding her breath now, she crawled backwards on her elbows, doing her best to ignore the throbbing pain in the back of her head. She made a scraping sound as she moved across the floor do to all the smaller pieces of rubble that were sliding along underneath her.

The Pantoran reached the gap in the rock pile and turned her head to look at the space. Even with her petite frame, it would still be too small for her to crawl through on her own. She was going to have to shift a couple of the boulders out the way, in the hope that that would create a hole big enough for her.

Carefully, her movements limited by her surroundings, Chuchi slowly reached up and gripped one of the boulders and quickly pushed at it. With a little effort, Chuchi was able to get it to roll out of the way, but the moment it left its original position, there was an audible groan from the slab above and it slipped down about twenty centimetres.

Chuchi gasped and shut her eyes, but the slab fell no further.

Breathing lightly as possible and heart pounding, Chuchi glanced back and saw that she needed to shift another piece of rubble to squeeze herself out. Biting her lip fearfully, Chuchi slowly reached up and gave it a slight nudge. The slab groaned again and sank a bit more. Chuchi gritted her teeth, wondering how she was going to get out of this one.

Then, she had an idea. She backed up a little more, as far as she could, until her shoulders were resting against the piece of rubble that she had to move. She looked up at the slab, gulping slightly as she tensed herself to move, and then hurriedly backed out from under it, pushing the boulder along behind her as she scrambled out from under the slab. As it move the slab immediately started falling down towards her and landed with a loud, grating thud on the ground inches from her foot.

Chuchi immediately started breathing heavily, trying to pull oxygen back into her lungs as she stared at the pile of debris in front of her that she could have been buried under, a thick mess of lumps of concrete and metal sheets that came close to entombing her. She shut her eyes and her hand came up to press against her heart, feeling it pummelling against the skin under her finger. That had been far, far too close.

"Ugh," said a muffled voice. "What hit me?"

Chuchi's eyes snapped open in alarm and she glanced around her, searching for the owner of the slightly high voice. So far as she could see there was nothing except the rubble in front of her – nothing that could speak. Had she imagine it.

Suddenly the pile of loose bits of rubble she was sitting next to shifted slightly. Chuchi stared at it with a mixture of fascination and apprehension as it slowly began to rose upwards. One of the larger boulders on top was pushed aside and a small, white creature rose up from the smaller pieces of gravelly debris. Chuchi stared at it in amazement – it was a small mammal of some kind, with a small body and limbs, a large head with a horn in the centre of its forehead and absolutely enormous ears with three fingers on the end. The ends of its hands and feet were green, as were the tips of its ears and a couple of stripes on each one.

Chuchi didn't move a muscle as the creature groaned, rubbing its head. Its back was to her so it seemed that it didn't know she was there. But then it said, very audibly, "Ow! That hurt!"

Chuchi let out a small, involuntary gasp at the sound of the creature speaking. Immediately the creature stopped moving, standing as still a statue for a couple of seconds. Then, ever so slowly, it rotated on the spot, turning around until it's large black eyes met with Chuchi's own.

Chuchi stared at it.

Terriermon stared back.

The two of them held one another's gaze for a few moments. Chuchi had never seen a creature anything like this one before, but in a way she supposed it was kind of cute, especially the look of stunned shock that was currently on its face.

Terriermon, on the other hand, knew exactly who he was looking at, having seen her around a couple of times before at various events, such as after they had found Aayla Master, Quinlan.

Of the two of them, it was Terriermon that spoke first:-

"Oh, bollocks."

* * *

Now there is a cliffhanger for you. Finally a member of the Senate has set eyes on one of the three Digimon and actually noticed it. I did say quite some time ago that Senator Chuchi was going to be very important in the story later on. And this is why – she's the first member of the Senate to learn the Digimon exist.

Things are going to get quite interesting from now on.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

Terriermon initiates the first discussion between a Digimon and a member of the Galactic Senate. However, the Zillo Beast is still a looming threat. Can they come up with a plan to stop its rampage and yet ensure it stays alive or will they be forced to kill it?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 117 : The Pantoran, the Jedi and the Bunnies**


	117. The Pantoran, the Jedi and the Bunnies

Here's the next chapter. Not much to say except I enjoyed writing it and it was intended to be a mix of slightly slower explanation scenes involving the five beings mentioned in the title of the chapter, couple with a bunch of awesomeness from all the other characters. In this one, we get to see Yoda unleashing a bit of ninja-ness, which I've been deliberately holding off until I felt my writing had improved enough so that when I wrote it I would do it justice. It's not a lot, but we'll definitely see more in the future.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 117:- The Pantoran, the Jedi and the Bunnies**

* * *

Chuchi blinked in surprise at the bad language that the strange creature before her had just used. Of all the things she had expected it to say, that had not been one of them. For some reason, the little creature looked extremely on edge as he stared back at her, fidgeting uncomfortably as if unsure about what he should do next.

"Right," Terriermon said, holding up a finger. "That was probably not the best way to introduce yourself to a member of the Senate, was it? Um... oh dear, this really is not good." He glanced across at the pile of rubble next to him and then to Chuchi, who was lying amongst the rubble and covered in dust and filth. Terriermon could put two and two together easily enough.

"Oh Fanglongmon," he said. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

Chuchi finally found her voice again as she frowned in confusion. "Hurt me? What do you mean?"

"When I got busted through that wall," Terriermon explained, pointing at the gaping hole in the opposite wall that led out into the open air. "I got flung at it and I must have gone straight through it and caused this. Are you hurt?"

"You caused this?" Chuchi asked in incredulity, glancing at the enormous hole to the tiny bunny, who didn't look capable of making such a big mess.

"Not by choice," said Terriermon. "I really don't have a lot of time to explain, but are you hurt?"

Chuchi hesitated for a moment and then said, quietly, "Well, the back of my head is throbbing – I think I smacked it against the wall."

"Oh damn," muttered Terriermon. "Sorry about that. Really, I am. I hope that you don't hold grudges."

"Grudges?" Chuchi asked, blinking and shaking her head, trying to rally her thoughts away from this confusing conversation. "Look, can we just slow down for a second and go back to the beginning? Excuse my ignorance, but what exactly are you?"

"Of course I'll excuse your ignorance," Terriermon murmured. "You're not supposed to know about me. But you do now – jeez, this is awkward."

"What?" Chuchi frowned. "What are you talking about? Who are you? What are you? How in the galaxy did you create that hole in the wall?"

"Uh," Terriermon said. "I don't suppose it would work if I went – 'You didn't see anything,'" he waved his hands before his face in a ridiculous way and ducked slowly out of sight behind a piece of rubble as he did, before popping up again and asking, "Would it?"

Chuchi stared at the little bunny thing with a blank stare. "No," she said, after a moment and in a slightly deadpan voice.

"Oh, well," Terriermon shrugged. "You can't blame me for trying. Well, since I suppose I've gotten us into this mess I should try and rectify the situation as best I can. The thing is, Senator... uh..." he trailed off, unsure where he was supposed to begin.

"Yes?" Chuchi asked in an attempt to prompt him.

"You are the first member of the Galactic Senate to ever see one of my kind," said Terriermon, truthfully. "But we've been around for quite some time, helping to protect you. You may not know who I am, but I know exactly who you are, Senator Chuchi."

Chuchi gasped and moved backwards a little bit. "How do you know my name?" she breathed.

"Relax, I'm not a mind-reader," said Terriermon. "Well... I am, but only with minds that I have established a link to and you are not one of them. The thing is, Senator, you might not have seen me but I've occasionally been there in the corner, hiding from view as my friends – Aayla, Anakin and Ahsoka, take the spotlight."

Chuchi paused and stared at Terriermon, with new interest. "You know Ahsoka?" she asked.

Terriermon grinned, glad he had said the right thing. He remembered that Chuchi and Ahsoka were good friends already, so by putting in the fact that he too was a good friend of Ahsoka, he had hoped to calm the nervous Senator. "You bet I do," he said. "She's practically a member of the family. We've been fighting side by side for months now on the front lines in the war against the Separatists."

"What?" Chuchi blinked. "You've been helping against the Separatists? You've been fighting alongside the A-Team?"

"That I have been," nodded Terriermon.

"But..." Chuchi was still confused. "If that's the case, then why haven't I seen you on any of the holonet news reports or even heard of you at all."

"Because you're not supposed to have," Terriermon explained. "My and a couple of others like me, my brethren, are supposed to be a secret against as many people as we can. Not even Chancellor Palpatine knows we exist, but we've been helping to defend the Republic for some time. The reason we've been hiding is to prevent us from being found out by spies – I'm sure you know how many Senate members are corrupt – so that we can take the Separatists by surprise wherever we strike."

"How can I possibly know whether you're telling the truth or not?" Chuchi asked, eyes narrowed suspiciously. "It's not like the Jedi to keep a secret from the Senate. And how do I know you're not just saying that you know the A-Team?"

"You don't," shrugged Terriermon. "I left my automatic lie detector back home. But come on – don't I have a trustworthy face?"

"If there's one thing you learn from being a Senator," Chuchi replied. "It's that even the most trustworthy looking faces can be facades."

"Ah..." said Terriermon. "Well, here's another point for you. Haven't there been many instances where the A-Team, or at least a member of them, have accomplished nearly impossible-sounding feats?"

Chuchi paused to briefly consider. Indeed they had. All those stories about them riding Acklay and getting past the Geonosian defences without losing a single clone or Aayla and her Master taking on an entire base full of Dark Jedi by themselves. They were tall tales, but the results had always confirmed that most of them were true.

"Yes," she said, slowly.

"They had help," said Terriermon. "They had help from me, my mate and my sister. I'm putting a lot of trust in you, telling you all this Chuchi, and I hope that you can understand that this puts me in a very awkward position. Now, to answer your questions from before – my name is Terriermon, and I am a Digimon." He stepped forwards and held one of his ears out towards Chuchi.

Chuchi stared at it for a moment, but then took it and hesitantly shook it. Terriermon grinned reassuringly at her, and Chuchi found her defences were melting away slightly. The little guy did indeed have a trustworthy face and for some reason, Chuchi found herself wanting to believe that he was telling the truth.

However, she could hardly just believe him on the spot. You didn't get anywhere as a Senator if you did that – Chuchi was going to need proof that the bunny creature was telling the truth before she made her final decision.

But still, she found that she quite liked the little creature... Digimon as he had described himself. Despite the rude word he had used earlier, he seemed to be rather charismatic. Chuchi liked that – it was a nice change of pace from the dull life of being a Senator.

"And just what is a Digimon?" asked Chuchi. "I've never heard of you."

Terriermon exhaled slowly and said, "Well, I really don't have a lot of time on my hands to be honest, and explaining the concept of Digimon and everything that we can do will take some time. But I kinda have a problem – you're not supposed to know about me. I mean, I'm sure you can be trusted but still... you know many of your colleagues aren't. How long would it be before the Separatists learned we existed?"

Chuchi didn't really have an answer to that. She had no doubt that any number of the Senators would tell the Separatists instantly if what Terriermon was saying was true. But she really didn't know what to say at the moment.

"Well," said Terriermon, shrugging his shoulders. "It seems that you're going to have to come with me. I can't let you tell anyone else about me just yet."

Chuchi raised an eyebrow. "You're kidnapping me?" she asked.

"What?" Terriermon suddenly looked incredulous. "No! Well, I could and I will if you want me to, but I was thinking more along the lines of hoping that you follow me and I'll take you to safety with the Jedi, so that they can explain this whole thing once the situation at hand is over. Then they can decide what to do – I don't have a say in what you do after all, do I. But if you want to go with the kidnapping option, I can do that to. It might be quicker."

Chuchi stared at him, completely unsure about what to make of what he had just said. But Terriermon grinned at her lopsidedly to show that he was joking and Chuchi snorted, covering her mouth with her hand and chuckling slightly.

"Are you always this silly?" she asked.

"Most of the time," nodded Terriermon. Then he turned serious and said, "But the thing is – you are in danger here. It would be better if you came with me, because I can take you to both safety and answers."

Chuchi paused to consider his words, but before she could come to a decision of any kind, she heard a voice from outside - a female voice shouting, "Terriermon!"

Both Terriermon and Chuchi turned around as a brown bunny the same shape and stature as the white one swooped in through the gaping hole in the wall and settled on a piece of rubble nearby. Chuchi blinked at the sight of another of the strange creatures, but the creature had frozen when she spotted who was sitting next to Terriermon.

"Ah," said the brown one, staring at Chuchi. "What have you done this time, Terriermon?"

"Hey, this time it wasn't my fault," objected Terriermon. "It wasn't even my idea. Er... Chuchi, this is my twin sister, Lopmon."

"I see the family resemblance," Chuchi said, a little faintly. "Uh, nice to meet you."

"I would have preferred it if we met under quite different circumstances but I suppose it is nice to finally speak to you," said Lopmon. "We have seen you before but we've never had the chance to say hello because of the whole... you know..."

"Secret thing?" Terriermon prompted.

"Yes. That," nodded Lopmon.

"Are you guys alright in there?" called another voice and suddenly two taller figures jumped it through the gap in the wall and flipped over to land on their feet. It had taken Ahsoka and Barriss several Force jumps to reach this height and the slippery wall they'd had to do it on had made the climb tricky, but they'd managed to get here quickly enough.

"What are you two just standing around... here... for," Ahsoka trailed off as she looked from Lopmon and Terriermon up to Chuchi and slowly subsided into silence. "Ah," she said. "Not good."

"Agreed," said Barriss. "And right after I joined the team as well. What are we supposed to do now?"

"You're the Jedi Knight here," Ahsoka said, wryly. "You tell me?"

"Ahsoka," Chuchi said, finally scrambling to her feet, and still covered in dust. "Is it true?"

"Is what true?" the Togruta Padawan asked, although she had a feeling that she knew the answer already.

"This... Digimon, Terriermon," Chuchi glanced down at him, "claims that he's been fighting against the Separatists alongside you and the rest of your team for months now, and that nobody in the Senate besides me knows that they even exist. Is that true?"

"Oh, that," said Ahsoka, uncomfortably fidgeting with one lekku. "Well... kinda."

Chuchi gasped and looked from the two bunnies to the two Jedi and back several times, her yellow eyes wide with shock. Finally, she looked back up at Ahsoka and said, "Seriously?"

"Yeah," nodded Ahsoka, slowly. "Chuchi, I know how weird and outrageous this might sound but you have to trust me on this – we did it only for the good of the Republic. I wanted to tell you, during that time that we infiltrated the Trade Federation ship above your moon of Pantora, but I promised the Jedi Council that I wouldn't tell anyone. But, yes, Terriermon and Lopmon and the other Digimon out there, Renamon, are my friends, and..."

Terriermon cleared his throat loudly and gave Ahsoka a pointed expression.

"Oh Momentai," Ahsoka said to him.

"Hey! Stop using my word!" Terriermon griped.

"Your word?" Chuchi frowned. "But... I thought Momentai was..."

"Momentai is a long story in and of itself," said Ahsoka. "But, as Terriermon wants me to say – yes, they are more than my friends. They're my family."

"How long have you..." Chuchi began.

"Senator," said Barriss, interrupting her. "I'm sorry to cut you off, but I'm afraid we don't have time for this. There is a very dangerous animal on the loose outside and as long as we stand here, we are all in danger. Might I suggest you save your questions until after we contain the Zillo Beast?"

"The giant lizard?" asked Chuchi, her mind jolting as she remembered that little detail. "Okay... but I have to find Padmé. I came up here looking for her and..."

"Padmé's fine," lied Ahsoka. "Or at least she will be... hopefully. Look, Barriss is right. We have to go."

Chuchi paused and then said, "Alright, what's the plan?"

"We'll head out that way," Barriss pointed the hole in the wall. "It is, after all, the closest exit."

"That way?" Chuchi balked, staring at it. "It's a long way down from here, and I can't do the huge jumps that you Jedi can."

"Not to worry," Terriermon said brightly. "Loppy and I will take you."

"You will?" Chuchi blinked. "Uh... can you...?"

"Take your weight," Terriermon asked. "Easily. Oh, by the way, Barriss, you might want to take a look at the back of Chuchi's head."

"Oh?" Barriss asked, quickly walking over to the Senator. Chuchi allowed her to inspect her injured scalp, and Barriss quickly held a hand over it and used the Force to soothe the pain and heal the wound. Chuchi's head slowly stopped pounding and she sighed in relief, glancing thankfully at both Terriermon and Barriss.

"Come on then," Ahsoka said, before jumping out the hole. Barriss walked over and followed her, while Chuchi stepped over to the lip of the hole and glanced nervously down the sloping wall. But the Pantoran Senator suddenly felt her hands being seized by a pair of airborne bunny Digimon and she was dragged out into open air. She yelped slightly as her feet lost contact with the ground, expecting to go plummeting to her doom.

But, to her great surprise, she found herself being carried effortlessly by her upraised hands by both the bunnies, as they glided down after the descending Jedi.

Of course, she didn't know what a Modify Card was though so the bunnies decided not to confuse her more than she already was by explaining that they weren't normally this strong and that they had received a special upgrade to give them that strength.

"This is amazing," Chuchi breathed as she sailed downwards gently towards the ground below. Ahsoka looked up at her from where she was sliding down the dome of the building.

"That, Chuchi," she grinned. "Is just the beginning."

Suddenly, a loud roar cut through the air behind them. Chuchi turned around to see the huge creature standing on top of the dome. It appeared to be clutching something in two of its hands and there were two small flashing lights darting across its back, one green and one blue.

* * *

Aayla dashed across the creature's third arm, the one that had smashed into Rapidmon before hand, using her momentum to hold her course as she ran up the thick limb towards the hand at the end. The Beast turned around to look at her and roared defiantly, swinging its arm violently in an attempt to dislodge her. But Aayla swiftly dropped into a low crouch and held on to an armoured ridge with one hand, the other twirling her lightsaber to create a flashing of blue light which caught the Beast's attention, before continuing on her way.

The blue skinned Twi'lek reached the Beasts's huge hand and dashed along one of its fingers as it tried to close around her. Without thinking she leapt right off it and, tucking her knees into her chest, she somersaulted several times and landed smoothly at the base of the creature's tail. The Beast shook itself in irritation, but Aayla held her balance with ease, her skill with athleticism really coming into their own. She dashed back up its body, flipping over several small spikes on its back and bouncing onto its side, sliding down until she was standing on one of the ridges.

She could sense Renamon not far away, even though she couldn't actually see the yellow fox. Renamon was running across the Beast's thrashing tail, her paws gripping the scaly armour with each step before throwing herself forwards again, dashing across the moving surface with ease. Aayla ran across the creature's flank, leaping right over Renamon as they switched places, the Twi'lek sliding down the creature's tail and the fox dashing up towards its head.

Renamon leapt off its back and grabbed onto its third arm, pulling itself onto it and dashing down the join where it was attached between its shoulder blades. The fox then backflipped over and doubled back on herself, dashing under the creature's arm again and running back the way she'd come. There was little structure to the way, she was running, she was just trying to keep the Beast's attention. She saw Aayla dashing back towards her and the two traded a high-five as they ran past each other again.

Chewbacca wasn't far away either. The Wookiee didn't usually run on all fours, but he was making an exception this time as he clambered up the creature's left arm with all the skill of a champion climber. The Beast's armour wasn't like slippery metal – it was as easy to grip as the bark of the wroshyr trees back home, which meant Chewbacca was practically in his element here. The Wookiee roared and ran across the creature's shoulder and took the daring route up its neck. The Beast sensed that was something there and immediately started shaking its head angrily, but Chewbacca held on grimly and growled, refusing to be shaken off.

Dashing up the neck as its head was swinging from side to side would be a very bad idea, but Chewbacca continued to clamber up its easily enough, gripping the ridged armour firmly before making a move and staying low to help him stay on. It wasn't long before the Wookiee was perched on the Zillo Beast's head. Bellowing triumphantly, Chewbacca gripped one of the spikes on the side of the Beast's head and leaned over daringly, batting at the creature's huge eye with his furry fist. The Beast shut its eyelid and roared angrily, continuing its efforts to shake the Wookiee off, but Chewbacca was like a furry limpet.

Aayla glanced up as him as she flipped over to the creature's shoulder, wondering if he would be alright. But then, a small weight landed on _her_ shoulder, and she looked up to see that Master Yoda was there suddenly.

"Up for a challenge, are you, Knight Secura?" Yoda asked her brightly.

Aayla grinned and said, "Always, Master."

"Follow me," Yoda grinned and leapt off her shoulder to dash up the Beast's thrashing neck. Actually it was more like a series of ninja like somersaults and bounces that made it look like Yoda was practically everywhere at once. Aayla followed on, leaping from side to side, but always making she had at least one limb on the Beast's back, flipping onto her hand from time to time. The Beast was craning its head around, trying to scrape Chewbacca off against its side, but Yoda and Aayla were there quickly, leaping off the Beast's neck and landing with their feet against the side of the Beast's face, rebounding off it quickly, to land on its shoulder again.

The sight of two of the little creature's doing that caused the Beast to falter slightly in surprise. It didn't know which way to turn next – it seemed like there were far more than four creature crawling on it considering how fast they moved. And it only had one limb to spare, as it was refusing to let go of the ship in its hands with the other two.

Yoda nodded to Aayla, who nodded back, and then the little green creature was off, bounding across the surface of the Beast with inhumane speed. Aayla chuckled as the crotchety old green thing became a living pinball. Yoda rebounded off the side of the creatures third arm and flipped onto its back, dashing towards the Beast's tail in a series of acrobatic leaps and bounds. He flipped over a spike, landed on top of another for a moment gripped it easily, then cartwheeled off the top and dived, rolling between two more spikes and then sliding down a portion of the Beast's tail, before doing a flat-out run right to the tip of it.

The Beast swung its tail, trying to send Yoda of it, but it was a futile thing to try, as Yoda simply used the momentum to power his own jump and he went sailing upwards and through the air, spinning in circles and twirling his smaller, green lightsaber, sailing right between two of the Beast's fingers on its back arm and landing on the back of its hand, then ran back down its arm, and leapt over Aayla, who was still watching him, traversed the Beast's left arm towards the ship it was holding, jumped across to the Beast's _other_ arm in front of its chest and ran back up to its shoulders.

There was many reasons Yoda was the Grand Master of the Jedi Order. Asides from his wisdom, patience and skill with a blade, this was one of them.

Aayla glanced to the side as she felt Renamon flip up from the Beast's side and land beside her. "Looks like Anakin's almost done," the fox observed as the two of them took off towards the Beast's head together to aid Chewbacca, who was still beating at the creature's eye and bashing one of its nostrils as well, resisting the Beast's best efforts to throw him off.

"Then we better be ready to get down from here," Aayla replied, as they ran towards the head. Renamon took the lead and hovered over Chewbacca to make sure the brave Wookiee didn't fall, while Aayla moved over to the other side of the Beast's head and flipped over the side, hanging on with one hand until she was hanging right in front of the Beast's eye.

"Hello there," she said. The Zillo Beast blinked in confusion, but Aayla didn't give it time to recuperate and pushed off from the head, sailing down to land on the Beast's elbow, and then dashing back up the arm.

* * *

Cutting through the ship had not been easy. Anakin had had to withdraw his lightsaber several times and make a fresh cut when his lightsaber hit the fingers of the Beast, which of course it couldn't cut through. But the ship was now only hanging on by its floor, and Anakin was cutting through it.

"I hope you know what you're doing," Palpatine called from the front.

Artoo turned his head around and twittered and beeped a few times. Anakin rolled his eyes – he understood enough astromech language to know that his supposedly faithful droid had just said, "Of course he doesn't."

"Well," said Anakin. "If I don't, then we're all in trouble. Hang on! We're going for a ride!" And with that, he cut through the last of the ship, effectively sawing it in half down the middle. The front half of the ship, which contained all the passengers collapsed off the back half clutched in the Beast's fingers and dropped downwards.

Anakin only just managed to get inside the falling half of the vessel, and behind him, he suddenly heard a furiously angry roar. Turning to glance over his shoulder, he saw that the Beast was looking furious at the escape attempt and lunged forward with one its hand in a snake-like jab. But it wasn't quick enough and only succeeded in bashing the bottom of the ship, and knocking it away even further.

However, this did have the added effect of knocking Anakin completely off balance and sending him tripping over Artoo and careening to the front of the ship, where he slammed quite painfully into the controls. Artoo squealed as he fell onto his front and began to slide towards the fore of the ship too, but that was about the moment the ship clanged against the domed roof of the Senate Building and began to slide down it in a shower of grating sparks.

The impact knocked Padmé, Artoo and Threepio backwards and out of their seats if they had them. All three went tumbling out of the back of the ship that Anakin had created and the ship slid away without them. They, in turn, began to slide uncontrollably down the building as well, slipping down the metallic surface.

And, up ahead, one of the few ledges on the building loomed before the three of them. If they kept going, they would go straight over the edge and drop a good distance to their demise. Padme gasped and turned onto her stomach, gripping at the metal and trying to arrest her fall, but while she did manage to slow herself down, she doubted it would be enough.

"Padmé!" shouted Anakin from within the ship and quickly tried to rush out of the ship and get to her, but at that moment the ship, which had previously been sliding down on its bottom, tipped over onto its side and threw Anakin against the wall, where he was pressed into it by the momentum of the ship sliding downwards, helpless to control where he was going.

And then, just when he managed to get off the wall and was about to make a break for it, the ship s_lowed down_, causing him to fall onto his front and slide back towards the front. Below, Obi-Wan and Mace Windu had grabbed the ship and were trying to arrest its fall before it tilted off the edge of the ledge itself. They put as much effort they could into the Force, fingers outstretched on both hands and faces screwed up in concentration as they desperately tried to slow the ship down.

* * *

From on top of the Zillo Beast, Chewbacca looked up and saw what was happening below. The shower of sparks from the ship was easily noticeable against the night sky and he could tell that Anakin was in there. He watched with slight relief as the ship slowly began to slow down, and halted just before it reached the edge of the enormous ledge.

But he could see a more immediate problem – two droids and a woman that he didn't know were sliding down the side of the building as well, heading straight for the same ledge as the ship. As he watched, the astromech droid fired a cable from its back that stuck to the metallic structure and arrested its fall, and the protocol droid managed to grab onto him before he passed, stopping the descent of both of them, but the woman was still heading towards the edge.

Without thinking, the Wookiee reacted. Swinging down from the Zillo Beast's head, he landed on its arm with a heavy thud, and he quickly swung himself off that too and landed on the metal beside the Beast, sliding down after the woman, who he assumed must be Padmé Amidala. As he slid towards them, he noticed her reach the edge and finally managed to stop herself as her legs slipped over the edge, leaving her dangling by her arms, which was not a good place to be dangling on a metallic slope.

* * *

The half of the ship which Obi-Wan and Mace had managed to stop was now being levitated slowly down off the edge of the slope and down onto the wide, flat ledge immediately below it by the same two Jedi. Obviously from their position they had not seen what had happened to Padmé. Anakin quickly moved to the ship and looked up, desperately searching the ledge for any sign of his wife.

Sure enough, he spotted her legs appear over the side, but she managed to stop herself from falling completely. But it was only a matter of time before she did. Anakin leapt out of the ship to the landing platform below, dashing across to where Padmé would fall so he could catch her with the Force.

But he wasn't fast enough and, in horror, he watched as Padmé lost her grip on the metal and began to fall.

"NO!" Anakin shouted, heart pounding in his chest as the thought of losing Padmé flashed through his mind and anger at the thought instantly welled up inside him.

But the moment of horror was suddenly replaced by a mixture of relief and confusion, because before Padmé had fallen two feet, a huge furry arm lashed out from above the ledge and grabbed her own arm, jerking her to a halt and leaving her hanging off the ledge. Anakin faltered in surprise, and then felt a grin of relief spread across his face as the triumphant call of a Wookiee rang out from above.

"Great catch, Chewbacca!" he yelled up to him.

"Scro akanworachurcwo!" came the reply. Chewbacca had extended his claws, which Wookiees were capable of sheathing, and stabbed them into the metal of the rooftop to stop himself from falling, like a makeshift pickaxe before grabbing the falling Senator.

Padmé glanced up at the Wookiee in shock. "Where did you come from?" she asked.

Chewbacca chuckled gruffly – it seemed Anakin hadn't found time to mention Chewbacca to Padmé yet. He shrugged and said, "Ooac, rooohu orwhoooh. Rarcoohuwhwa," before easily hauling Padmé back up onto the ledge.

* * *

The Zillo Beast was furious! It had had just about enough interference from all these other little flesh creatures. They were trying to get in the way of it getting its vengeance on the pale man and what was worse, they were actually succeeding. It could still feel at least three of the little creatures bouncing around on top of its back. They weren't doing much damage but they were certainly very distracting.

If they were going to get in its way, then it might just have to kill them too. Nothing was going to stop it from going after the pale man. Nothing!

But... wait. Perhaps this was a good thing. The flesh creatures had solved the problem for him of getting the pale man out of the floating thing, because there he was right now clambering out of the half of the floating thing that had fallen away. And this time there would be nowhere for him to run!

Ignoring the little creatures still jumping about on its back and head, the Zillo Beast powered downwards and made its way head-first towards where the pale man was waiting, looking up at him with fear in his eyes. At last he knew to fear the Zillo Beast. Contemptuously throwing the half of the floating object that it still had, the Zillo Beast moved to the edge of the ledge the ship had been levitated off and peered down it. Snarling in triumph, it raised its hand and prepared to bring it slamming down on the pale man.

But, right at that moment, one of the little things that were not alive – the smaller white and blue, soared in front of its, with little streams of fire coming out of the side of its legs and landed in front of the pale man. The Zillo Beast brought its hand slamming downwards, but the pale man had climbed aboard the small thing that was not alive, which had whisked him out of the way of the blow.

That left the man clad in blue armour stuff standing there on his own. The man screamed, holding his arms up in a vain defence and ready to die.

But the Zillo Beast pulled its blow before crushing the man, hurriedly stopping itself before lifting its arm away again. This man was very brave – leaving itself behind in order to protect the pale man. Perhaps, for doing that, it didn't deserve to live either, but the Zillo Beast merely snorted at it, before turning to follow the pale man again. The thing that was not alive had taken it to the man from Malastare, who was slowly levitating the woman from within the ship and a large, furry flesh creature down to where they were standing.

But the Beast didn't have time to worry about how the man was doing that. It quickly clambered down to the ledge beneath the one it was standing on in a single easy step with each limb and moved towards the pale man and his companions at high speed. The lot of them quickly turned and ran the other way, but the Zillo Beast chased after them, gaining rapidly.

* * *

Senator Chuchi had been set down on the roof of one of the nearby buildings at her insistence. The young Pantoran had wanted to see what was happening and had requested the bunnies to put her down gently. The bunnies had done just that and now Chuchi, Ahsoka, Barriss, Terriermon and Lopmon were all standing on the roof of a building and watching the drama unfold.

Barriss had leant Chuchi a couple of macrobinoculars she had hanging from her waist and as the Pantoran looked through them at what was happening, the others took turns explaining exactly what the Zillo Beast was and why it was here.

"That's awful," Chuchi had said when they were finished. "I would never have thought the Chancellor was capable of something like that. He's always seemed to be a force for good and gave off the impression that he cared for all forms of life and not just humanoids or the people that he leads."

"I've stopped trying to figure that man out," Terriermon said bitterly. "And I don't like standing here, feeling this powerless. I wish I could go over there and do something."

"So, why don't you?" Chuchi glanced down at him, watching as the Zillo Beast pursued the Chancellor and the others across the ledge about a quarter of the way up the side of the building.

"Because both the Chancellor and Padmé are over there," Lopmon said. "We're not supposed to show ourselves unless there really is no hope left."

"Doesn't look like there's a lot of hope left to me," Chuchi said, her heart pounding as suddenly saw Padmé's droid, C-3PO slide over the edge of the ledge from where he had been clinging to the cable that R2-D2 had left hanging there and fall to the ground right in front of the Zillo Beast with a thud. The Zillo Beast's foot immediately stomped over him and for a moment, Chuchi thought the protocol droid had been crushed. But when the foot lifted again, it revealed that he was still okay – the Zillo Beast's toes had landed on either side of him instead of on top of him. "He's going to get them!"

The Beast reared up and prepared to snap at the heels of the little group, when suddenly a bunch of large blue lasers crashed into the side of its head and distracted it, causing it to look up and roar as it was surrounded by four gunships. Chuchi sighed in relief – that had been a near miss.

But... as she watched, she began to notice some strange behaviour coming from the Beast. Despite the fact that it was being attacked by four swarming gunships, it seemed to be doing its best to ignore them. The gunships formed a barrier in front of it, preventing it from going any further and pulsing blue lasers at it, but it seemed to be trying to get past them, swinging at them in attempts to get them to scatter as. One of the gunships was slammed by its huge hand and the others quickly moved away as the fourth one exploded, and the Zillo Beast pushed by them and began relentlessly pursuing the group fleeing from it again.

"Hold on a second," she said, glancing at the Jedi standing on either side of her. "Didn't you say that you thought the Zillo Beast was intelligent?"

"Yes," nodded Barriss. "We don't know how intelligent, but we know that it certainly has some."

"Then, there might have been a reason it chose to target the Senate Building," said Chuchi, passing the macrobinoculars to Barriss. "Maybe, it knew that Chancellor Palpatine had ordered it to be killed and when it broke free it wanted revenge and came after him."

Lopmon frowned. "You think so? The Chancellor was stupid enough to order it to be killed in front of it when he didn't know how intelligent it was?"

"Either very stupid or very confident that he could hold it," said Terriermon.

"Just look," Chuchi indicated the scene ahead. "Those gunships keep holding it at bay but it keeps trying to get past them and get towards the group fleeing from it. And who's in that group."

"The Chancellor," breathed Barriss. "You're right, Senator. It all makes sense. I never thought that Palpatine would have ordered the death of the Beast in front of it, but it all fits. It wants vengeance."

"It really _is_ intelligent," Ahsoka's eyes widened at the prospect. "That's why it came straight across Coruscant and right to the Senate Building straight away. That why of all the rooms it deliberately wrecked, it trashed Palpatine's office. That's why it grabbed the ship that the Chancellor was trying to escape in."

"And that's why its chasing after him now," Lopmon nodded. "It all makes sense! I cannot believe that we didn't realise that sooner. It's just so obvious."

"When has the situation ever been obvious with us?" asked Terriermon. "I think this is the first time – we probably just overlooked it. But that doesn't really help us right now, does it? If you ask me it serves the Chancellor right."

"We can't let it eat him," Lopmon reprimanded him. "Not if we can help it."

"I know," said Terriermon. "I'm just saying. It still doesn't solve our problem."

"Actually," said Barruss, tapping her chin with her finger. "I think it actually might."

Everyone turned to glance at the recently Knighted Mirialan. "You have an idea?" asked Terriermon. "Because right now, any idea is welcome."

"I think I might just have a plan," a slow smile was crossing over Barriss' face. "One that can solve all of our problems at once."

"That must be quite a plan," Terriermon noted. "Well? Don't just stand there smirking, Offee. Tell us what you have in mind."

"Okay," Barriss said, turning so that she could address everyone directly. "We know that the Zillo Beast is after the Chancellor. So, the answer is simple – we have to use the Chancellor as bait to get the desired outcome. We can..."

"Wait," Chuchi interrupted. "You want to use the most powerful man in the Republic as bait? Isn't that very risky?"

"I don't mean we're going to dangle him in front of the Beast or anything like that," Barriss shook her head. "What we'd have to do would be to load him onto another ship – a gunship perhaps – and make sure that the Zillo Beast knows that he is on that ship. Then, we can instruct the pilot to fly away and the Zillo Beast will follow that ship in whichever direction it goes, right?"

"Yeah," nodded Ahsoka. "You could get the Zillo Beast to move in any direction you wanted that way, I suppose."

"That's right," nodded Barriss. "So, all we have to do, is get the pilot to fly out over The Works. Then we'd have the perfect staging area for the plan."

What Barriss had in mind began to dawn on everyone else – even the two Digimon, who had been on Coruscant long enough to learn about The Works. It was quite close to the Senate District, and, in times gone by, it had been one of the planet's largest industrial areas. However, the whole place had been abandoned by all the people who ran the various companies that manufactured products there, leaving the factories behind in favour of cheap labour and newer facilities on other planets.

Now, the whole place was more or less completely and utterly deserted. It had been abandoned centuries ago, but many of the facilities were still running because they were self-powered and they produced large amounts of toxic waste and eerie mechanical sounds at all times of the day, making it a dangerous place to live and most of the Republic populace avoided it. Even those that did go in there, like smugglers and gangsters and other people of that ilk, kept to the edges of the place. In short, it was the perfect staging area for pulling off the final confrontation between the forces of the Republic and the invading Zillo Beast.

"That's genius, Barriss!" Ahsoka cried, a grin appearing on her face. "If we lure the Zillo Beast into the Works, then there will be practically nobody there to see how we deal with it."

"And the Chancellor won't see it either," said Lopmon, "because he'll be in a ship heading towards the other side of it – for his own safety, of course. Or at least that's what he'd be told."

"And then, with minimal risk of us being spotted by anyone," Terriermon smirk was beginning to grow. "Lopmon and I can call on the big guns. We can call in MegaGargomon and Cherubimon to come and deal with the Beast!"

"Who and who?" Chuchi asked incoherently. "I thought you said there were only three Digimon."

"We don't really have time to explain it to you," said Lopmon. "Let's just say that we can change our form and when we do we also change our names for some reason."

Chuchi blinked at this new piece of information. But instead of questioning it, she simply said, "But how are you planning on bringing the Beast to a stop? You said yourself that its indestructible. It'll be practically impossible to kill."

"Ah, but we don't want to kill it," Barriss pointed out. "We want to stun it and ensure that its taken off the planet, remember? Therefore, if MegaGargomon and Cherubimon can hold the Zillo Beast down for long enough and stop it from escaping, our stun tanks will be able to take care of the rest and knock it out."

"And while that's happening," Ahsoka nodded. "We Jedi can secure the area to ensure that no stray riff-raff do spot the Digimon when they attack."

"It's a solid gold plan," Terriermon said. "I like it! Let's do it!"

"I'm not sure I like this," Chuchi sighed. "I'm not sure I like the idea of helping along with a plan like this without consulting the Chancellor first..."

"Chuchi," Terriermon interrupted. "You don't know the whole story yet. There is a lot more to what's going on than the stuff we've had time to tell you, but trust me when I say that we have some very, very good reasons for hiding from the Senate."

"He's right," nodded Ahsoka. "I promise that when this whole thing is over, we'll tell you absolutely everything and you can make your decision then, but right now we really need your help. We need you not to breathe a word of this to anyone. Can you do it? For us?"

Chuchi glanced to the four faces surrounding her, staring briefly at each one in turn, before sighing and saying, "Alright. For now, I won't offer any more complaints. But I'm going to have to hold you to your word, Ahsoka. I am seriously confused right now and I could do with some explanations."

"And you'll get them," Lopmon nodded. "Now, come on. We need to head back to the gunships so we can get in position."

"Aren't you going to call General Skywalker and the others, to let them know the plan?" asked Chuchi.

"Already have," said Ahsoka, tapping the side of her head. "Telepathic link."

"I did say that I had one," Terriermon chuckled.

Chuchi blustered slightly as the bunnies scooped her into the air again, and Barriss and Ahsoka quickly headed back towards where Mace and Obi-Wan were waiting (having been informed of Barriss' idea via the Tamers, who were still standing with them).

Chuchi threw a glance back at the Zillo Beast, wondering what had happened in the few minutes they had spent talking and coming up with the plan to finally put a stop to it that would work for almost everyone.

She was surprised to find that somehow, since she had last looked at the Beast, it was now surrounded by a large blanket of green gas.

* * *

A few minutes earlier...

Aayla came to a stop at the base of the Beast's neck and held onto its scales as the Beast pursued the group fleeing from it angrily. The gunships swarming around it had good aim, but she still found herself having to dodge aside from blue lasers from time to time and of course the pilots couldn't even see Renamon, so the fox was dodging them even more often. Aayla felt Renamon land next to her and the two of them exchanged a glance as the Zillo Beast thrashed at the gunships in front of them.

"That droid of Senator Amidala's is okay," said Renamon. "The gold one, C-3PO. I had a look and it seems he narrowly escaped being trodden on. He's sitting on the floor now, probably wondering what he's supposed to be doing next."

"Yes, but I'm not sure our presence here is affecting the Beast anymore," said Aayla. "It's like he's tuned us out or something." Both of them grabbed hold as the Zillo Beast lurched forward and destroyed one of the four gunships in front on it, causing the others to back away, and it shouldered on past them and continued to chase the others.

"Agreed," nodded Yoda, as he somersaulted in next to them. "Done our work, we have. Time to leave, it is."

The Zillo Beast's head was lowering towards the ground as it pursued the others, only to be brought up short by the gunships once more. Seizing the opportunity while the head was close to the ground, Yoda and Aayla quickly rushed forwards, with Renamon not far behind. The Jedi Master and Knight somersaulted off the end of the Zillo Beast's head and landed on the ground, immediately running off after the others, adding speed to their legs so they could catch up.

Renamon paused before she jumped off the Zillo Beast's head and, although she knew it couldn't hear her, she thought to the Beast, _I made a promise to you. A promise that I would get you off the planet alive. And as long as there is breath in either of our bodies, I am going to stand by that promise. If only we had any ideas..._

_Renamon! _Called Anakin from where the others were running ahead, and Aayla and Yoda had caught up with the others. _Get out of there quickly! The Chancellor's just ordered the gunships heading towards us to fire the gas bombs they've made. They'll kill the Beast._

Renamon hesitated, still perched at the back of the Zillo Beast's head. She gritted her teeth and glanced upwards, seeing four more gunships heading towards them, the first one which sent a couple of bright flares into the air, which caught the attention of the Zillo Beast. It turned its head around and roared defiantly at the gunships, but suddenly the lot of them let rip with a bunch of missiles that exploded in the Zillo Beast's open mouth. Even that impact didn't damage the Beast, but the explosion was accompanied by an expulsion of green gas that quickly engulfed the Beast's head.

The Beast flinched backwards and shook its head, trying to clear its nostrils, green gas visible spurting out of the slits right in front of Renamon. The fox gritted her teeth as the Zillo Beast almost instantly seemed to grow slightly lethargic. Another round of flares from the gunships caused the Beast to look up and roar again, eliciting a repeat performance until the entire front half of the Zillo Beast was engulfed in the green gas.

Renamon was now put in an agony of concern. She desperately didn't want to abandon the Beast or try and find some way to save it but she simply didn't know what to do next. Nobody had a clue about how they could possibly fulfil Renamon's promise to the Beast. Perhaps there was no way they could do it.

Could she abandon the Beast to its fate? It staggered as more missiles impacted around it and the gas grew in quantity, cutting through its senses and dulling them, filling its mouth and entering its lungs. It wouldn't be long before it succumbed. It seemed to have completely forgotten about pursuing its prey and was just stumbling about now, slowly falling for the effects of the gas.

Renamon felt tears of anger and sadness spring unbidden to her blue eyes. It couldn't end like this! She watched as the gunships came around for another pass. The Zillo Beast reared up and groaned, before slumping downwards, stumbling about on the spot as it began to lose its vision and its legs started to wobble underneath it. In half a minute, the Zillo Beast would be dead, and Renamon didn't have a clue what to do.

And... right at that point, the information from Terriermon's mind rushed into their own about Barriss' plan. Renamon instantly was back into the action. There was a way! There was still a chance to put things right! But only if the Zillo Beast lived through this and right now it appeared to be on the verge of collapse.

Renamon didn't have any abilities that were useful against gas.

But she knew how she could get some.

_Rika!_ She shouted in her mind. _I need a wind card! Now!_

_Already on it, Renamon,_ there was a smug tone in Rika's voice. Watching through her Tamer's eyes, Renamon saw her lift up a card and smirk triumphantly at it, and then swipe it through the slot in her D-Arc, with a shout of "Digi-modify! Dorulumon's Dorulu Tornado Activate!"

Renamon suppressed the urge to cry out, "Yes!" as her bush-like tail suddenly morphed into a long, thin lion-like one, except with a drill at the end instead of the little brush. Sending the drill spinning with a thought, Renamon said, quietly, "Dorulu Tornado!" and curled her tail above her head like a scorpion.

Instantly the drill sent a spinning wind out of it that whipped through the gas and carried it away quickly. Renamon smirked as she watched the gas dissipate in front of her and swung her tail to the side, getting rid of as much of the cloud as possible of either side of her, blowing away the green gas from around the Zillo Beast's head.

She wasn't using the attack at full power though. If she did that, the tornado would be easily seen. However, it seemed that the level she was using it at wasn't enough to disperse all the cloud at once. And then the gunships sent of another round of torpedoes that instantly replaced the gas that she had just gotten rid of. Growling, she swung her tail back and forth trying to blow the gas away again quickly.

It seemed to be working, to a degree. The Beast was standing up straighter and wasn't stumbling about, but it wasn't moving much either. It seemed that Renamon and the gas were reaching a sort of impasse – the gas replenishing itself as quickly as Renamon's drill could blow it away. The Beast was on the verge of life and death and Renamon was its only hope of survival now.

_I really hope you know what you're doing, Renamon,_ Aayla said.

_Don't worry, _said the fox, as she swung her tail back to blow away more gas as it encroached on the Zillo Beast. _We have a plan now, remember. But I need more that this wind I have right now, or we won't be able to pull it off._

* * *

Rika was standing beside Obi-Wan, Mace, Henry and Suzie in one of the many gunships that were flying about the area. The redheaded girl was watching the Zillo Beast's sluggishness and lethargic state brought on by the gas surrounding it with anxiety, as well as worry that Renamon newly acquired attack wasn't going to do the job. The Zillo Beast was shaking itself, as if it were trying to wake itself up, but it wasn't quite working. Then, the gas-bombing gunships flew overhead again and delivered another round of toxic gas that engulfed the Beast's head again, although Renamon's attack was quick to blow it away.

But how much more of this could the Beast take? Would Renamon's attack be able to hold it off for much longer?

Rika's eyes narrowed, as she withdrew a second card from her deck. _Alright,_ she thought. _If its more you need, then its more you get._

She was about to swipe the card when suddenly Henry grabbed her wrist to stop her. "Are you sure that's a good idea?" he asked. "We've never tried give a Digimon two new attacks at the same time. We don't know if it'll have a side effect on Renamon or not."

"If we don't do something then it'll all be over," Rika objected. "We have to do this, Henry. If there's a way to save the Beast, then we need to go with it."

"I agree," nodded Obi-Wan. "I don't particularly like the idea of duping the Chancellor any more than necessary, but if we must do it to protect the creature then we must. If there is any way for us to fulfil our roles as protectors of life, then we must do it."

_I can handle it, Henry,_ Renamon said. _Do it, Rika._

Rika nodded and swiped the card, "Digi-Modify! Gaogamon's Spiral Blow Activate!"

* * *

Renamon's eyes shot open as she felt a surge of power within her, doubling the strength she had received from the last card. Quickly, she launched the Spiral Blow attack, whipping a similar gust of wind from her open mouth. _Now this is more like it!_ She cried in her mind, and she turned side on, rotating both her head and her tail back and forth, repelling the gas from the head of the Zillo Beast twice as quickly. Most of the Beast's torso was still concealed inside the cloud, but Renamon was keeping the head as clear as possible.

And, gradually, a slow change came over the Beast. Its movements began to gain energy again and it seemed to straighten out, shaking its head and expelling more of the gas from its system with deep breaths. Its angry snarl returned to its face instead of the look of distress that had been in place before. It shook itself, pulling the strength back into its muscles. The process was slow, but the Beast was steadily recovering thanks to the efforts of the Digimon that it didn't even realise was there.

_Renamon,_ said Aayla. _The gas cloud over here has engulfed us. Our view of the Beast is obscured. _

_And the gas bomb gunships have passed the other way,_ Rika added. _It's now or never_.

Renamon growled. _Right!_ She cried, and suddenly, she increased the strength of the Spiral Blow and the Dorulu Tornado, creating two large tornados from either end of her body. The huge wind gusts immediately obliterated the rest of the gas cloud around the Zillo Beast's head and neck area. The Zillo Beast rose itself up, towering above what remained of the cloud and with one last deep coughing exhale, the last of the gas was spurted from its mouth and blown away by the attacks.

The Beast was safe.

Renamon quickly stopped her two attacks, feeling quite drained from the effort of doing both of them at once and slumped against the head of the Zillo Beast, breathing heavily. The Zillo Beast was breathing heavily itself, but it was also growling now and turned back to where it knew the Chancellor to be.

_Well,_ said Renamon. _Now he's pissed._

* * *

The group that had previously been fleeing stopped when the gas cloud reached them. Anakin, Yoda and Aayla raised their hands and kept the gas from rolling over them, ensuring that it passed over them in waves instead. The thick cloud in front of them stopped them from seeing what was happening to the Beast, but they could all hear the mournful keels and wails peeling from it as it was succumbing to death.

Padmé sighed and stared at the floor. "It's such a waste," she murmured to herself. "Such a waste that the Beast had to be destroyed because of the mistakes we made in bringing it here."

"There, there, my child," Palpatine patted her shoulder comfortingly. "Try not to think of this too negatively. At least this whole, quite frankly terrifying, experience is finally put behind us. The Beast can now rest in peace, along with the rest of its kin."

Both of them missed the slight smirk that passed between Anakin and Aayla before the concentrated on the task at hand and used the Force to disperse the gas cloud around them. When they did, they put on appropriate faces of shock and stepped back when they saw what was in front of them.

"Are you sure about that, Chancellor?" asked Anakin, as the Zillo Beast reared up and delivered an eardrum-shattering roar to the heavens, throwing its arms out wide and declaring its victory over the suffocating green gas that could only affect it and nothing else. Then it turned around and glared right at Palpatine once again, its teeth bared in a feral snarl. Anakin and Aayla both checked its line of sight, confirming Chuchi's observation that it was only interested in the Chancellor.

"Impossible!" the Chancellor cried. He brought up his handheld communicator and cried into it, "Quickly, fire more gas bombs!"

"We're all out, sir," the voice of a clone responded. "Doctor Boll said that should have been more than enough."

"Then how did it survive it?" Palpatine cried.

"Never mind that now, Chancellor," Aayla shouted, turning around and ushering him and Padmé in the other direction. "Run!"

The group began to hurry away once more as the Zillo Beast set off in pursuit again. Anakin activated his comlink and called into it, "Mace! We need a gunship down here now to evac the Chancellor and Senator Amidala. Tell the pilot to head to the Fobosi District."

* * *

"On it, Skywalker," Mace called into his gunship. As he directed a gunship to do just that, the one that he was in quickly swooped low over the Zillo Beast's head. This allowed Renamon to take a running jump and land in it, staggering due to tiredness but being caught by Obi-Wan. As the gunship veered around, another gunship rose up to fly alongside them. This one contained Ahsoka, Barriss, Chuchi and the bunnies, who waved across to them.

"Let's hope this plan of yours works, Knight Offee," Obi-Wan called across to the other gunship.

"I hope so too," nodded Barriss.

Renamon lowered her perception filter so the others could see her again. Ahsoka and Barriss both quickly grabbed Chuchi by the arms as the Pantoran started backwards at the sudden appearance of the third Digimon. Renamon winked at her and said, "Don't worry, Chuchi. We'll explain everything soon enough."

The Pantoran shook her head and said, "I seriously hope so. I'm not sure how much more of this my brain can take."

"Hopefully, a lot more," said Terriermon, watching as Anakin pushed Padme and Chancellor Palpatine into a gunship down below, before he, Aayla, Yoda, Chewbacca and Artoo hurried into another one. "Because this ride is about to get much wilder."

* * *

And, back on the walkway, watching as the Zillo Beast retreated away from him, C-3PO stiffly clambered to his feet and put his golden hands on his hips. "And they left me behind and forgot about me," he said. "Tch, typical."

* * *

So, there you have it. I had a plan all along – you just didn't know what it was. And no, I didn't make The Works up, you can look it up on Wookieepedia. It even made an appearance at the end of Attack of the Clones.

You might have noticed a couple of differences about the Zillo Beast in this chapter from the original series. This is because, while I enjoyed the episode, I think they downplayed the Beast a bit too much when it reached the Senate Building. When it was thundering through Coruscant it was moving super fast like the epic monster it is, but then when it reaches the Senate Building it suddenly starts going really slowly. I mean seriously, if Threepio can run away from it then something's wrong there. So I made it faster in my version, which is why Threepio did not get to run away with the others and almost got stomped on – a Godzilla 1998 movie tribute right there. Hope you don't mind the slight differences.

There wasn't as much of Chuchi in this chapter as I would have liked considering she is now privy to the Secret of the 327th, at least partially. But don't worry. The conversation she needs to sort things out will come soon, when the crisis of the Zillo Beast is over. But how will it end? Find out tomorrow. See ya. Hope you enjoyed the awesomeness it was intended to be.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

They have an idea – now they just need to put it into practice. The next chapter involves a nice big "monster mash" as one of my regular reviewers put it. MegaGargomon and Cherubimon versus the Zillo Beast. How will they fare against its invulnerable armour?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 118 : Brawl of the Giants**


	118. Brawl of the Giants

Just couldn't stop writing this chapter. I took almost no breaks from it whatsoever – just wrote and wrote and wrote until it was finished. Chapters I have been looking forward to for a long time seem to have that effect on me. Well, go ahead and read it. I hope that you all like it – really, really hope. I'll be anxiously awaiting your reviews.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 118:- Brawl of the Giants**

* * *

"Hurry!" Anakin cried as the gunship landed in front of them on the ledge. The Zillo Beast was right behind them, bearing down on them with each humongous stride. The blast doors of the white vessel opened and Anakin quickly ushered Chancellor Palpatine inside. The Chancellor needed no second bidding and stepped aboard, but Padmé Amidala was a bit more reluctant to leave.

"Wait, what about you, Anakin?" Padmé turned around and looked at her secret husband plaintively. "Aren't you coming with us?"

"No," Anakin shook his head. "I'm gonna be needed here to help stop that Zillo Beast. We're probably going to need all the Jedi we can get, and I hate to say it but it looks like we might have to find a way to kill it," he lied. "But you're in danger here – you need to get to safety."

"But I don't like the idea of leaving everyone else in danger..." Padmé protested, but the shaking roar of the Zillo Beast jarred her back to reality. The huge reptile had once again found its way blocked by a bunch of gunships, but this time it wasn't even bothering to try and shoo them out of its way. It lunged forwards, charging through the ships which were forced to scatter before it could annihilate them on the spot.

"You have to go," Anakin said. "We'll hold it off."

"...Just... be careful, okay?" Padmé pleaded. "You're one of my best friends, Anakin. I'd hate to lose you."

"Don't worry, Senator," said Aayla. "I'll look after him for you."

Padmé chuckled as she entered the gunship. "Thanks, Aayla. I'll feel a lot better if there's someone responsible looking out for him."

"I resent that," Anakin said. "Now go! Hurry!"

"Good luck, Anakin," said Palpatine as the ship rose into the air. As it did, Anakin and Aayla both deliberately stepped to either side, ensuring the Chancellor was visible to the Zillo Beast and turning back to see the Beast's reaction. The Beast growled angrily upon seeing the man it was trying to get its vengeance of getting in another flying vessel and threw itself forwards in a fluid, pounding run as the blast doors of Palpatine's gunship closed and it rose into the air.

"I think it would be best if we didn't hang around," Aayla observed and she, Anakin, Chewbacca and Yoda and Artoo quickly hurried into another gunship nearby, which swiftly took off as well as the Zillo Beast bore down on them. As it lifted into the air, the Zillo Beast further proved that Senator Chuchi's observation had been completely accurate by completely ignoring and charging past the gunship the Jedi were in and taking an enormous swing at the one the Chancellor was in.

The gunship managed to put on enough speed to evade the blow of the Beast. The Beast's fingers breezed past its aft and the Beast cried out in frustration as it watched the gunship its prey was in flying off over the Senate district. Not pausing for an instant, it set off in pursuit, springing off the side of the Senate Building and onto the roof of one of the smaller buildings around it, clambering onto another and dashing madly after the gunship as it flew away.

"Well, looks like the plan's working so far," said Anakin. "It's definitely only interested in only one man on this entire planet. And considering what that man tried to do, I'm not entirely surprised."

"Me neither," said Aayla. "But we best get ready for what's coming next. It sounds as though it's going to be quite explosive."

And, the gunship they were standing in joined the phalanx of others that were setting off in pursuit of the Zillo Beast. They kept the Beast in sight, the huge creature running just ahead of them and ignoring the droning sounds the engines made behind it. But they didn't shoot at it. This time, they _wanted_ the Beast to follow the Chancellor.

Things were moving quickly now. The gunships with the magnetic clamps returned and scooped up the stun tanks that had been left by the Senate Building and made to follow the Beast. And Mace Windu had also contacted a couple of police forces to send droids ahead to evacuate the areas that the Zillo Beast would need to go through before it reached its target destination.

The Works.

Fortunately, that place wasn't far away.

* * *

Smoke rose from the various old and worn buildings that littered the area like clutter. Fumes filled the air as the Works continued to slowly churn out mechanical noises and the machinery kept chugging on, despite the fact that nobody was there to run it. The entire place stank of stale air, noxious gases and other unpleasant aromas. A large portion of the metallic buildings were being corroded away by rust and looked on the verge of collapse. The pipelines that ran between the buildings were empty and falling apart, as was pretty much the rest of the place.

It didn't look like anyone with a sane mind would come here. Most people with sane minds didn't – they stayed in the city where there was at least a lot of order despite the dangerous criminals and thugs that ran amuck in some areas. Occasional loud bangs occurred when a machine shuddered and boomed as if it were about to break down at any moment. This was definitely not a holiday destination.

And yet, it was soon to be the staging ground of the final battle against the Zillo Beast.

A single, solitary gunship whooshed over the Works, containing Chancellor Palpatine and Senator Amidala, who were both supposedly heading for the Fobosi District on the other side of the Works where they might be able to find shelter from the Beast's rampage until the Jedi contained it. But in reality, that was just a bonus.

The Zillo Beast roared as it jumped across another large gap and ploughed through a disused factory, tossing the machinery skyward with the sound of screeching metal, before swiping aside another, knocking it decisively out of the way and causing the wall to crumble and the whole structure to fall in on itself as its huge foot followed on an crushed the rest of it into pulp. It was becoming more and more irritated. The Beast had kept up its mad dash, determined to keep the flying gunship in sight but despite its best efforts the gunship was pulling away.

It wasn't long before the little white ship was lost to the Zillo Beast altogether.

But that didn't stop it. It was going to follow that ship to the ends of the world if it needed to. It would find the pale man again and this time, it would not hesitate to kill him. There would be no escape for the pale man. An angry Zillo Beast was a deadly foe.

Kicking its way through another tall factory and knocking over a huge fuel tower, which was thankfully long since empty, the Zillo Beast continued to make its way into the Works in the same direction that the gunship had taken. It's pace slackened a little bit now that it had lost sight of its prey, but other than that it's headlong rush was just as enthusiastic as ever. Winding its way through a pair of factories, the Zillo Beast stepped over several large pipes with one enormous stride and walked right through a thick cloud of smoke. That kind of gas didn't affect it as the Malastare fuel did though, so it didn't slow down at all.

The other gunships were still not far behind it, flying forward at roughly the same pace that the Beast was travelling so that they could tail it without disturbing it from its current path too much. The Beast was heading deeper and deeper into the vast network of disused factories and Mace Windu was relaying instructions to the others via his comlink.

"We wait just a little more," he was saying. "We want it to be as far from the populated areas of Coruscant as possible before we initiate our phase of the plan. And we don't want it to get too close to the other side of the Works either. Give it a couple more minutes before we make our move."

Despite the fact that Terriermon and Lopmon were in different gunships to their two Tamers, the two of them were flying adjacent to one another, close enough for them to shout to one another so they could hold a conversation that was privy to those without a mental link to everyone – most specifically the Pantoran Senator that was flying along with them.

"You guys feeling ready for this?" Terriermon was shouting over to them.

"More than ready!" declared Henry. "We don't usually get to be MegaGargomon nearly as much as we used to. Apart from the time. I don't think we've biomerged since Shili."

"And Lopmon and me haven't biomerged since Geonosis," added Suzie. "That's even longer."

"Well, Renamon and I got to biomerge on Naboo," said Rika. "But it looks like the two of you get to enter the spotlight this time. The two of us will be protecting the others while you guys take on the creature."

"Sorry to interrupt," Chuchi called out. "But nobody has explained to me what this biomerging actually is. I'm feeling a bit lost at the moment."

"Don't worry, Chuchi," Ahsoka said. "I still haven't gotten used to the idea of biomerging. It's just so... weird and wacky, that if we told you what it was you either wouldn't have a clue what we were on about or you simply wouldn't believe us. You'll have to see it firsthand."

Chuchi opened her mouth to respond, but then she heard a tremendous roar from the Zillo Beast and saw it completely pulverise another factory, barging straight through it and sending it flying in many different directions with a vicious swing of all three arms. It didn't even pause as it tore the entire building to shreds in a single blow. Granted the building was rusting away anyway but it was still remarkably impressive.

Chuchi looked down at the two little rabbit-like creatures that were standing on either side of her feet. The two of them only came up to her knees, but they were both staring at the Zillo Beast with looks of determination. She could see Terriermon's fists clenching and unclenching as he prepared for combat and Lopmon's ears were twitching in readiness. They were actually thinking of going out there to fight the Beast.

"You really think that you'll be able to take on this creature?" asked Chuchi, glancing up at the Beast again as it moved into an area of smaller factories which it could crush just by stepping on them. "It looks to me as if nothing in this universe could take it on."

"Well, then," said Terriermon. "I suppose it's a good thing that we're from another universe instead, isn't it?"

Chuchi blinked. "Sorry."

"Stop it, Terriermon," Lopmon reprimanded him. "Stop confusing her by plying her with little bits of information and not the whole story." She looked up at Chuchi and smiled apologetically. "It's best not to try and puzzle it out too much. You'll get the whole thing eventually. But, as to whether we can take that Zillo Beast on... who can say? We'll have to try it and see how it turns out."

"Would you say this is far enough, Master Windu?" asked Anakin from his gunship.

Mace Windu held up a hand and waited for a couple of seconds, then nodded and said, "Okay, this is far enough. Whenever you are ready."

"Would you care to start things off, Terriermon?" asked Lopmon politely.

"Would I ever," Terriermon said, spreading his ears and leaping out of the gunship for the second time that day. He swooped over to where Henry was waiting, and landed on his shoulder. The clone piloting their gunship put on speed, accelerating away from the others until it overtook the Zillo Beast, which looked up and growled warningly at them, baring its enormous fangs in a clear threat display.

Chuchi, who had no idea what was going on, almost had a heart attack when she saw Henry leap out of the gunship and go plummeting towards the ground below. But before she could cry out, she saw Henry press something against his chest and shout something indistinguishable, before suddenly he and Terriermon were engulfed in a ludicrously bright and rapidly expanding light.

And thus, Chuchi became the first Senator to behold a digivolution. And luckily for her, she saw one of the most dramatic ones there was.

Terriermon's shout was easily discernable – she heard him cry:-

"**TERRIERMON BIOMERGE TO... MEGAGARGOMON!"**

And with a thud, the enormous form of MegaGargomon landed on Coruscant ground for the first time, flattening a pair of smaller factories under his enormous feet. He took up a battle stance as the Zillo Beast paused in its stride and stared in disbelief at the enormous thing that had suddenly blocked its way. It was just as stunned as Chuchi, who was holding a hand over her heart and blinking several times, to make sure that what she was seeing was real.

"Don't worry, Chuchi," Ahsoka patted the stunned Pantoran reassuringly on the back. "You'll get used to it eventually."

Chuchi just stared incoherently.

* * *

MegaGargomon and the Zillo Beast squared off against one another for a moment, both of them sizing one another up, looking each other up and down as if probing for weaknesses. When the Zillo Beast reared up to its full height it was taller that MegaGargomon, but when it stood in its usual posture of slightly bent over they were both roughly the same height. The Zillo Beast's dark brown scales contrasted against MegaGargomon's bright green armour. It also had more limbs, whereas MegaGargomon had a few other weapons up his sleeves.

"Remember, Terriermon," Henry said from within the great walking armoury. "Even in this form, I doubt our missiles will have that much of an effect on this creature, even if we did want to kill. We're going to have to fight in a slightly more physical manner."

"It's like Ogudomon all over again isn't it," said Terriermon dryly. "Except this guy isn't as large as that guy and isn't actually evil. But still, both of them were immune to our attacks and had to resort to trying other things."

"Yes, but the difference is we did want to kill Ogudomon," Henry nodded. "But we only want to stop this guy."

"And we will," Terriermon declared. "Once Cherubimon joins us, we'll have all the opportunity we need. Now, what do you say we get this started?"

MegaGargomon took up a martial arts stance that Henry had learnt and looked the Zillo Beast right in the eye. "Are you up for a second round, Mister Zillo," Terriermon called out to it. "I think you'll find that this time I am more built for withstanding your attacks. Now, bring it!"

The Zillo Beast growled at the challenge. It didn't know what this creature in front of it was, but it could tell two things about it.

Firstly, despite the fact that it looked much like one of the metal things that moved around but were not alive, even if it was a giant one, the Zillo Beast knew that this adversary was a living being. It _was_ alive. It didn't know how this could be, but it did know that much.

And secondly, it was in his way.

It was just another obstacle between it and its revenge, and obstacles had to be removed by force. So the Zillo Beast responded to Terriermon's challenge with a will and threw itself forwards, charging right at the giant, metallic organism.

"Here it comes!" shouted Henry as he braced to the impact.

It was like a pair of mountains slamming into one another. The Zillo Beast slammed into MegaGargomon with the strength of a falling skyscraper. Even MegaGargomon was caught off guard by the power of the strike and was pushed backwards, his claw-like toes digging into the concrete ground and creating huge grooves it as the Zillo Beast powered forwards. MegaGargomon grabbed hold of the Beast around its shoulders to keep himself from tipping backwards, flattening factories behind him as he was pushed up against.

Eventually the Zillo Beast came to a stop and furiously wrenched itself out of MegaGargomon's grip and backed off a couple of steps, roaring in anger before leaping forward a second time, rearing up so it was taller than its adversary. MegaGargomon quickly lashed out with one hand and grabbed the Zillo Beast by the neck, halting its advance, then brought his other fist slamming upwards into the side of the Zillo Beast's head in a sledgehammer like blow.

The Zillo Beast tipped to the side, thrown off course by the strike, but it moved with and brought its tail slamming into MegaGargomon's hip. MegaGargomon cried out as the spikes dug under his armour, and grabbed it, pulling the tail free, but the rest of the Zillo Beast had whirled its way round again and rammed its shoulder into MegaGargomon's chest.

MegaGargomon stumbled backwards and the Zillo Beast quickly pressed its attack, driving home its powerful bulk to push the giant cyborg back even further. MegaGargomon's eyes were screwed up with the effort of not falling over and, digging his toes in once more, he stopped the Beast's advance, but this he attacked straight away instead of waiting for the Beast to make another move. Grabbing the Zillo Beast around the neck in one arm, MegaGargomon pushed backwards, driving the Zillo Beast back the way it had come. The giant mecha brought his other fist up into the Beast's gut, eliciting a grunt of surprise from the creature, and quickly released it, pushing it backwards and following up with another blow to the side of the Beast's head.

As the Beast backed off the recuperate, MegaGargomon spun around with a speed that didn't look right for such a bulky machine, Henry's skill at martial arts moving him with the grace his ungainly form lacked, and lifted his foot, driving it with a sledgehammer kick into the Zillo Beast's chest. The Zillo Beast was completely knocked backwards and crashed onto its side, ploughing through a couple of factories as it rolled over a few times thanks to the crushing blow.

"Yeah!" MegaGargomon cried. "That's how we do things d..." He paused as the Zillo Beast rolled back onto its feet before it had even stopped moving and slid to a halt, glaring angrily at MegaGargomon. "Uh, never mind," he said as the Beast charged for him once more. MegaGargomon stepped back, expecting the Beast to try and shoulder him once more, but suddenly the Beast pushed off the ground and literally pounced on MegaGargomon. The Mega Digimon cried out in shock as the Beast came from slightly above, crashing into MegaGargomon's chest and shoulders and carrying him to the ground.

MegaGargomon crashed onto his back, destroying a hamlet's worth of small buildings in the process. The Zillo Beast landed on top of him and growled, thinking MegaGargomon had been defeated and carrying on it way, continuing its pursuit of the gunship.

It was therefore very surprised when a green metallic hand grabbed it by its tail beneath the huge spikes on it and hauled it backwards. The Zillo Beast crashed onto its front and scrabbled at the buildings, which crumbled beneath its grip, as MegaGargomon heaved himself onto his front, and pushed himself up to his feet, pulling the Zillo Beast backwards by its tail.

"Here's some news for you," MegaGargomon said. "My armour may not be indestructible like yours is, but it's still pretty damn tough!" MegaGargomon moved forward and grabbed the Zillo Beast by both its back legs, turning around and hauling the Zillo Beast right into the air and over himself, tossing it back towards the ground where it landed on its back with a colossal, earth-shattering thud. MegaGargomon was on it in an instant, pressing his knee into the Zillo Beast's gut and pinning its body and arms to the ground.

"That martial arts stuff of yours really gives us a helping hand sometimes, Henry," Terriermon observed.

"Well, that's why I learnt it," said Henry. "I thought it might be useful one day."

Suddenly the Zillo Beast's back arm lashed upwards and its huge hand grabbed MegaGargomon by the head. "AGH! But it didn't prepare me for three-armed opponents!" Henry cried as the Zillo Beast hauled MegaGargomon off it by his head, ripping itself free and bringing MegaGargomon crashing to the ground once again right next to it. The Zillo Beast rolled over and reared upwards, roaring angrily as it brought its two side arms crashing down, slamming into MegaGargomon's chest and eliciting a cry of pain from the floored Mega. The Zillo Beast pounded on the giant mecha several more times, denting MegaGargomon's chest with its furious blows.

But MegaGargomon's fist lashed out and he finally used one of his attacks. **"POWER PUMMEL!"** he yelled, the immense attack crashing into the base of the Beast's neck. With a strangled cry, the Zillo Beast jerked backwards, almost lifted off its feet by the mighty blow, collapsing onto its side again and throwing up a huge dust cloud.

MegaGargomon clambered to his feet, but the Zillo Beast did the same thing a mere second later. The two squared off against each other again, both of them now more wary of going after the other than previously. The Zillo's Beast's bright green eyes narrowed as MegaGargomon stood firm, his chest dented but still very much in the fight.

Quite abruptly, the Beast turned around and began to walk off to try and find the Chancellor again.

"Hey! Stop doing that!" MegaGargomon shouted after it. The jets on his back lifted upwards and with an explosion of rocket fuel he was propelled into the air and soared towards the Zillo Beast. At the noise of the jets, the Zillo Beast turned around in alarm, just in time to see MegaGargomon collide with it in a ram of his own, the blow of which carried the Beast to the ground again. It roared angrily and twisted its body violently, and the two giant creatures rolled over each other a couple of times before they both scrambled to their feet.

The Zillo Beast lunged for MegaGargomon's head with its huge teeth, but MegaGargomon stepped backwards and to the side, causing the teeth to slam beside his face with a sharp clacking sound. MegaGargomon quickly punched the Beast to drive it away, but the Beast only stepped back slightly. MegaGargomon brought is other first forward, but the Zillo Beast's hand lashed out and grabbed him by his wrist gauntlet, wrenching the mecha forward and allowing the Beast to slam into his front again, knocking him backwards once more.

* * *

"Seems like they're both putting the pounding on one another down there," said Ahsoka from the gunship as they watched the brawl unfolding between metal and scales. "Neither one of them is really gaining any ground."

Barriss glanced over at Chuchi, who was staring with wide-eyed amazement at the scene before her. "Are you okay, Senator?" asked the Mirialan.

Chuchi didn't respond. She had long since gone beyond words as she watched the Zillo Beast bring one of its huge forearms pelting into the side of MegaGargomon's head, knocking him askew and forcing MegaGargomon to twist in a circle to remain on his feet, and the green mecha quickly responded by charging in a backhanding the side of the Zillo Beast's neck. The sight of the fight going on in front of her would have been overwhelming if she'd seen the less powerful things the Digimon could do first. But the poor Pantoran had literally been thrown in at the deep end.

She wasn't the only one either. Barriss could see Chewbacca staring at MegaGargomon with a similar expression. He knew all about digivolution but this was the first time he had actually seen one. He was almost as lost as Chuchi.

Lopmon spread her ears and said, "I think it's about time we joined the battle. We want to get this over with as quickly as possible." She took to the air and swooped over to where Suzie was waiting in her own gunship. As soon as Lopmon landed on her shoulder, Suzie didn't even hesitate to leap right out of the gunship, all traces of the girl who was nervous about doing so over Geonosis now gone.

"Biomerge activate!" Suzie cried.

As Tamer and Digimon digivolved together, the gunships above them moved aside, giving their massive forms plenty of room as they expanded into one giant being.

"**LOPMON BIOMERGE TO... CHERUBIMON!"**

Barriss heard Chewbacca's growling cry of astonishment as he watched the one he had sworn to protect turn into something that dwarfed the largest building in his home-city. She chuckled.

* * *

MegaGargomon had the Zillo Beast by the neck in one hand, clutching at the base of its head. The Zillo Beast was trying to muscle forwards, but wasn't really getting anywhere, as its opponent weighed about the same as it did. It was also lashing out with all three of its enormous hands trying to knock MegaGargomon off kilter with the crushing blows. MegaGargomon was using his other arm to try and fend off the blows, but some still slipped past his guard and bashed into him, bringing out slightly pained grunts each time.

The Zillo Beast lurched backwards, pulling its neck out of MegaGargomon's grip, and was about to charge forward again when suddenly it was engulfed in a pair of massive, pink arms that pinned all three of its arms to its sides. Squawking in alarm, the Beast looked over its shoulder at Cherubimon, who smiled broadly at it.

"We've come to give you a hand, brother," the angel Digimon said.

"Well, we could use one," MegaGargomon agreed. "This guy is not someone you trifle with lightly."

"We'll keep that in mind," Cherubimon nodded. Her smile suddenly turned to a grimace as the Zillo Beast began thrashing about of the spot, bucking and writhing and twisting its serpentine body like... well, a snake. The creature was surprisingly difficult to hold on to and Cherubimon quickly tightened her grip. The spines on the Beast's back cut into her front, but she ignored it – it would heal.

But, despite her efforts, the creature managed to slip one arm free, and that arm immediately lashed backwards and struck the side of Cherubimon's head. The angel cried out and her grip slackened, allowing the Zillo Beast to twist around in her grip and push her off with its feet. As Cherubimon backed away, the Beast charged forwards and rammed into her instead.

But Cherubimon had the advantage over her brother when it came to this – she hovered through the air instead of standing on the floor. The Zillo Beast seemed quite surprised when its ram drove her backwards without resistance but didn't tip her onto her back. Cherubimon's hand lashed out and grabbed the Zillo Beast by one leg, yanking the limb from underneath it and sending the Beasts slammed onto its side.

The cloud of dust that kicked up blocked her vision slightly, but Cherubimon reached down and grabbed the Beast by the head in both hands, forcing it downwards and trying to pin it to the ground. The rest of the Beast immediately went berserk, the hand on its back lashing out and clouting Cherubimon across the face, and one of its other arms crashing into her elbow with a blow that caused her arm to buckle. But it was the tail that was the clincher – it lashed forward and ripped four parallel gashes in Cherubimon's stomach.

Cherubimon gasped and released her grip. The Zillo Beast scrambled to its feet and lunged at her before she could recover her senses, grabbing by one shoulder and under her arm, while its jaws fastened around Cherubimon's large ear. Cherubimon shrieked in pain as the sharp teeth gripped her skin, threatening to tear her ear off entirely.

The Zillo Beast seemed to sense weakness and brought its tail lashing forwards again. But Cherubimon was by no means out yet. Her hand grabbed the tail before it could do much more damage, her huge fist enclosing around the spikes and ignoring the pricks they made. And then, her other hand lashed out towards the Zillo Beast's head, her finger slamming into the Zillo Beast's only noticeable weakness.

Its eye.

The Zillo Beast lit out a shriek of its own as it felt real pain, it's eye poked by Cherubimon's massive finger. It released its grip on Cherubimon's ear and Cherubimon's fist that was holding its tail lashed forward and struck the Beast on the chin, which had the combined effect of dragging it forwards and throwing it backwards at the same time, sending it rolling into another large factory and disappearing into its as it crashed through the wall.

"Cherubimon, are you okay?" asked MegaGargomon, hurrying over to his sister.

"I'm fine," Cherubimon replied, the injuries to her ear, stomach and hand healing over immediately. "I may not have armour but I have other skills that keep me from extensive damage."

MegaGargomon turned at the sound of whirring engines and saw that the gunships carrying their stun tanks had set the machines down and that they were slowly advancing through the thin streets between the factories. A small figure detached itself from the gunships and flew to hover over the tanks – it was Sakuyamon, readying herself just in case the fight got too close to the others and they needed protecting.

"Sis," MegaGargomon said, turning to the hovering, pink angel beside him. "If we want to get this done quickly, we're going to have to work together. That beast is no easy foe, so this is going to be difficult."

Cherubimon glanced at him with a smirk and rose her fist into the air. "Let's finish this guy off, bro," she said.

MegaGargomon's eyes lit up – those were the same words that Cherubimon had used right before they defeated Ogudomon. He chuckled and rose his own fist into the air and added the words that he had used immediately afterwards. "Time for a combo, sis."

As they bumped fists, the roof of the nearby factory exploded open as the Zillo Beast seemed to have recovered itself. The factory was torn to pieces from within by the thrashing limbs. The Zillo Beast turned to glare at its two adversaries. Its eye was half-closed but it didn't seem that Cherubimon had done any permanent harm to it. It growled as it stood amongst the wreckage of what had once been a building but was now just a pile of wreckage, before thundering forwards, each step leaving a reverberating footstep.

Wordlessly, MegaGargomon and Cherubimon both rushed forward to meet him.

* * *

Nearby, a homeless Gran suddenly snorted awake, his three eyes opening blearily at the sound of crashing and banging getting closer to it. He blinked incoherently and sat up, clutching his head with one hand. The packet of death sticks in his other hand told his story – he had filched it from someone in the populated areas of Coruscant and quickly returned to the place where he stayed in the Works. He was a squatter here, but this place was better than nothing.

The crashing and pounding seemed to grow louder in his ears as he clenched his teeth together and got to his feet, unsteadily swaying drunkenly on the spot, head pounding from the massive overdose. He shook his head, but that just made his head pound all the more and he groaned angrily. He felt like his head was going to split open.

Another loud crashing bag from somewhere pounded on his head and he growled, stepping slowly and unsteadily from around the alleyway he had slept in for the night and shouting, doing his best to ignore the pain in his head as he did, "Hey! Would you keep it down! I'm trying to... to...to..." His three eyes opened wide as he stared in disbelief.

There appeared to be some kind of giant lizard creature, an enormous green droid and an oddly luminescent giant pink thing fighting with one another several hundred yards away from where he now stood. The Gran stared, slack-jawed, the packet of death sticks falling to the road.

"What the..." he gasped, watching as the lizard started to pound on the droid and the pink thing came at it from beyond. "What the... I'm getting out of here..." He turned around to run, but abruptly found himself face to face with a bearded human.

Obi-Wan smirked at him and said, "You have woken up from a drug-induced daze and have started having a major hallucination," said Obi-Wan, waving his hand in front him slightly.

"I have woken up from a drug-induced daze and have started having a major hallucination," the Gran replied blearily, a blank expression crossing his face.

"You are going to ignore the giant creatures and swear off death sticks for the rest of your life," Obi-Wan declared, waving his hand again.

"I am going to ignore the giant creatures and swear off death sticks for the rest of my life," the Gran agreed.

"You are going to go back to sleep now," Obi-Wan finished.

"I am going to go back to sleep now," the Gran repeated and immediately curled up on the spot, doing just that. Obi-Wan smirked down at him. Death sticks were hallucinogenic drugs and the more times you had them the more powerful the hallucinations got. And this guy had been an addict for a while, so it was the perfect excuse. Obi-Wan had even done this guy a favour. Maybe now he would get some decent work and not waste all his money on drugs.

Obi-Wan looked up at the gunships. While Barriss, Ahsoka and Chuchi were still watching the fight, his gunship and Anakin's had started sweeping around the battlezone, scanning for any potential life-forms that might spot the fight with their minds. So far, the death stick addicted Gran had been the only one they had found. It seemed that Barriss' plan was paying off after all.

Obi-Wan then turned around and jumped back up onto the roof of a building with the aid of the Force, and leapt back into the gunship where Mace was waiting to continue the search.

* * *

The Beast motored towards MegaGargomon first, thrusting itself forwards with each step and leaping towards the green mecha. MegaGargomon, not about to fall for that again, stopped and grabbed the Zillo Beast by the neck in both arms, the two of them pushing against the other briefly before MegaGargomon flung the Beast to one side, sending it rolling over once before it was back on its feet quickly and lunged forward once more, lashing out with both the arms on its side at once, like it was going to slam MegaGargomon in both sides of his head.

MegaGargomon's hands shot out and grabbed both the Zillo Beast's wrists with them, raising one of his legs to prepare a kick to the chest. But things went downhill there, as the Beast's third arm grabbed the leg that was still on the ground and yanked it from under MegaGargomon, sending him crashing painfully onto his back with suck force he created a massive MegaGargomon shaped dent in the ground. The Beast reared over him, raising a foot to stamp on his face.

But Cherubimon quickly took hold of that and pulled hard, delivering a harsh uppercut to the bottom of the Beast's chin at the same time and sending the Beast crashing onto its back once more. Unable to use her lightning attacks for fear of harming her brother (plus, who knew what lightning would do in a place like this anyway), Cherubimon scooped up the and empty fuel tower and brought it slamming down onto the Beast. The Beast roared in irritation and the tower slammed over its head, knocking it aside.

But then its tail lashed up and curled around one of Cherubimon's legs. Startled, the angel looked down, and the Zillo Beast took the opportunity to lash upwards and grab her by the upper arms and head all at once, yanking her down to the ground and sending her crashing onto her front, while the Beast itself reared up lashed its tail towards Cherubimon's chest. The angel brought up her arm to block and took the spiked attack, and the Beast followed by lunging downwards, teeth aiming for Cherubimon's face.

Cherubimon grabbed the Zillo Beast's sides in her hands and pushed against it, but the Beast's strength seemed to outweigh her own and the teeth slowly descended towards the rabbit-Mega's head. But it was at that point that MegaGargomon, back on his feet, grabbed the Zillo Beast around the chest in one arm and brought the other hand over the Beast's mouth, slamming it shut and holding the jaws together between his fingers. The Zillo Beast struggled to free itself its tail pounding against MegaGargomon's back, but the Mega mecha held firm.

Cherubimon was instantly up and quickly grabbed at the Zillo Beast's legs, seeking to immobilize the bottom half while her brother took the front half. But, as she reached it and secured her arms around it, the Beast twisted itself loose by striking the back of MegaGargomon's knee with its huge tail. The Mega's leg buckled under the impact and he lost his grip, causing the Beast to turn around and slam the side of its head into MegaGargomon's own. As MegaGargomon shied away, the Beast twisted around and dived on Cherubimon.

The two rolled over each other, crashing into something solid as they did so – Sakuyamon had raised a shield to prevent the two of them from crushing the stun tanks nearby. Cherubimon quickly pushed herself into the air again, but the Zillo Beast followed her up and sank its teeth into her upper arm. Suppressing the cry of shock, Cherubimon grabbed the Zillo Beast's back arm with her other one and yanked it away. As the Beast swung around, its teeth coming out of Cherubimon's arm, it staggered and tried to keep its balance, but MegaGargomon's fist suddenly pounded it in the head, in the direction that it was careening, and causing it to fall to the ground again.

MegaGargomon dashed in once again, but the Beast was still not out of the fight and rose up, dodging the upcoming punch and causing MegaGargomon to run past, whereupon it immediately leapt on his back and locked its arms around him, trying to carry him to the ground. MegaGargomon fell to his knee and hand, but fell no further and quickly reached behind himself to try and pry the Beast off. The Beast's mouth immediately closed around his hand and tried to bite into it.

"Your mistake!" MegaGargomon cried, and his hand closed around the Beast's tongue. As the Beast almost seemed to gasp, he let off some missiles from his wrist gauntlet and fingertips right into the Beast's mouth. Caught off guard by the explosions, the Beast reared backwards and roared in shock, although it was still uninjured – except for a slight charring on its tongue, which MegaGargomon had let go. MegaGargomon rolled onto his back and kicked upwards, nailing the Beast in the chin and throwing it away.

Right into Cherubimon. The angel's arms engulfed the Beast once more and heaved it upwards, deliberately flipping backwards and carrying it over her body to crash into the floor on the other side. The Beast roared and got up again, swiping at Cherubimon's chest with its huge hands. Cherubimon took the blow and was pushed backwards several dozen metres, but even then she was still able to reach out and deliver a returning punch to the Beast's stomach.

She immediately winced as her fingers impacted on the Beast's hard armour. "Maybe I should save the punching to my brother," she said. The Beast leapt on top of her and carried her to the floor, jaws slamming into the ground in the crook of her arm. Cherubimon immediately closed that crook and pulled it into a headlock, before pushing her other arm against its stomach and pushing the Beast off her to roll away.

The Beast scrambled up and saw MegaGargomon racing towards it again with huge, stomping footsteps. The Beast rose up and charged in to meet him, so it looked like the two were going to collider once more. But suddenly, the Beast rolled aside and grabbed MegaGargomon's arm with two of its own and swung hard, sending the off-balance mecha crashing into its sister so they both went down in a heap. The Zillo Beast roared in triumph and bore down on them, leaping for Cherubimon with jaws wide.

But Cherubimon's fist suddenly filled its mouth, almost completely, and the Beast's teeth clamped down on her hand. Cherubimon grimaced at the pain but flung her arm to one side before the Zillo Beast could release its grip, flinging it away and into another factory wall. The Zillo Beast scrambled up quickly, to find MegaGargomon was on his feet once more and launching another Power Pummel right at it. The blow crashed into the Beast's chest and slammed it further through the wall.

But the Beast lashed out again at the same time with its tail, the spikes cutting long scratches up MegaGargomon's chest. MegaGargomon winced and stepped back, allowing the Beast to scramble up and lung for him once more. And this time it latched its teeth into an area of MegaGargomon that was no armoured – his arm just beneath his shoulder cannon.

MegaGargomon gasped in silent pain but the Beast gave him no chance to recuperate, driving him backwards and then throwing him onto his back again with a burst of movement from his shoulders. The cloud of dust that MegaGargomon threw up was vast, and Cherubimon burst through it in an attempt to avenge the injury to her brother, hands reaching for the Beast's neck. The Zillo Beast growled and with lightning-fast reactions, it ducked under her arms and threw itself against her torso, driving her backwards instead, and then reared up to bring both arms smashing down into her.

Cherubimon crashed to the ground besides MegaGargomon. The Zillo Beast reared upwards to its full height and gave a roar of victory. Then it blinked. It had been so caught up the fight that it had completely forgotten about trying to find the pale man. Ugh! These creatures were distracting it from its original goal. The pale man had to die!

The Beast turned around and its eyes locked on the direction that the Chancellor's gunship had long since disappeared into. Growling it began to move off, but a voice behind it halted in its tracks:-

"Leaving so soon?" asked MegaGargomon. The Zillo Beast whirled around just in time to see both the mecha and the angel thundering towards him, fists reared backwards to deliver a double punch to the Beast's flank. The blow from both fists at once tipped the Beast onto its side and sent it rolling.

Both MegaGargomon and Cherubimon were looking worse for wear by now. On Cherubimon, the only sign of its was the fact that she was smeared with dirt. The was more obvious on MegaGargomon thanks to the dents and scratches in his armour, but the two of them still looked ready for more.

Unfortunately, so did the Zillo Beast. The creature got to its feet again and gave another shrieking roar at the two of them.

"Man, this guy doesn't know when to quit, does he?" Terriermon griped. "If I get any scarring on my Rookie form after this, I'm go to be so irritated."

"We need to try and find a way of pinning it to the ground," Lopmon said. "Those tanks back there need an opportunity and the only way they're going to get it is if we can hold it down. Trying to beat the Beast physically like this isn't working."

"But whenever we try and hold it, it manages to break free," said Suzie."It's like try to hold onto an eel with teeth, three arms and super strength."

"Nevertheless," said Henry. "There is one thing that we have that the Zillo Beast doesn't that we might be able to use to our advantage." He quickly told the others his idea via his mind.

"Oh, this is going to smart," said Terriermon.

"Well, do we have any better options?" asked Lopmon. "Let's go for it."

MegaGargomon nodded and quickly made his way off to the side, leaving Cherubimon by herself. The giant angel held out her arms invitingly to the Beast, as if trying to encourage it to come over and give her a hug. The Beast roared and charged towards her, lowering itself for the final attack as it slammed into her once more.

Cherubimon acted quickly and reached downwards, wrapping her huge arms around the creature's three limbs and pinning its neck against her flank. As before the Beast immediately started tossing and turning, and the angel was hard pressed to keep her grip on it for longer than five seconds or so.

But help was at hand, as MegaGargomon came in from behind the creature and wrapped his own arms around the creature's back half, trapping the Beast's legs and pressing the long tail against his chest where it wouldn't be able to thrash around. The Beast's struggles notably decreased as more of its body was secured, but it was still thrashing about extremely violently and trying to free itself.

And then, MegaGargomon activated the jets on his back. Slowly and almost gracefully, brother and sister working together in perfect unison, MegaGargomon and Cherubimon began to rise into the air, dragging the Zillo Beast along with them and lifting its enormous bulk between the two of them. The Beast squawked in alarm as it felt itself leaving the ground and its struggles increased further as it desperately tried to free itself, but MegaGargomon and Cherubimon held firm.

Higher and higher they rose into the air, until they were past the tallest of the factories and they were still rising. The Beast seemed to realise what was about to happen and its struggling ceased as it watched the ground get further and further away beneath it. Its eyes seemed to widen as it realised what its two attackers were going to do it.

And then, once the two of them had judged that they had reached a suitable height, they let go of their huge burden.

With a wailing screech of anger, the Zillo Beast plunged towards the ground of The Works, dropping through the air for several hundred yards and flailing helplessly all the way down, until it impacted on the ground below it with a colossal crash that threw up so much dust and debris that it looked like a miniature volcano had gone off and the Beast was completely obscured from view.

MegaGargomon and Cherubimon quickly descended towards it, the jets on MegaGargomon's back clearing away the cloud of ash and dust quickly enough until the Zillo Beast was revealed. It was still very much alive, it's eyes were open, and in terms of injury it still appeared to be relatively undamaged by the fall, but the hard blow to the ground had been enough to temporarily stun the Beast. It flopped against the ground dizzy and dazed, and allowed MegaGargomon to land right next to it.

"Quick," said MegaGargomon. "Before it regains its senses." The two of them crouched down and put pressure on crucial points on the Zillo Beast – MegaGargomon trapping its neck and all three of its arms against the ground while Cherubimon hurriedly pinned its tail and legs before it could decide to come back into the action. MegaGargomon looked up and nodded to Sakuyamon, who nodded back and lowered her shield.

The tanks, operated by members of the 501st under Rex's command, immediately rolled forwards and carefully surrounded the Zillo Beast, aiming their cannons with great care so that when they activated their blue lasers, they would strike against the flanks of the Beast and not against the Digimon.

The Zillo Beast slowly seemed to regain its senses from the fall and immediately began to buck and squirm slightly underneath the grip of the two Mega level Digimon. But its struggles weren't quite as strong as before, perhaps due to the stunning lasers now being fired at it. It growled and gnashed its teeth, but found, to its immense frustration that it was unable to make any headway against the carefully placed pressure from MegaGargomon and Cherubimon.

* * *

From nearby, Sakuyamon watched with a slight smile on her face. It seemed that things might finally be looking up. It was sad to see the Beast being laid low and drugged once more, but it looked like she might actually be able to fulfil her promise after all. She might actually be able to get the Zillo Beast off the planet alive. It was nothing short of a miracle.

Despite everything that had happened today, maybe things could finally be put to rest.

Sakuyamon looked round as the sound of gunships greeted her ears. The passenger-carrying vessels landed on the ground behind her and the numerous people that they contained stepped outside and into the filthiness of The Works.

For one of the few times that either half of Sakuyamon could remember, Mace Windu actually had a genuine smile on his face. He walked up to where Sakuyamon, who was twice as tall as him, was standing and looked at the tanks beginning to subdue the Beast into a deep sleep once more. "At last," he said. "Thing seem to be finally going our way."

"Yes," nodded Yoda, who was perched evenly on Anakin's shoulder, and the Chosen One wasn't entirely sure what to make of that fact. "Commended you are to be, Knight Offee," he turned around and smiled at Barriss. "For coming up with this idea while stumped, the rest of us were."

"Thank you, Master," said Barriss. "But if it hadn't been for Senator Chuchi spotting the simple fact that the Beast merely wanted revenge on the Chancellor, I would not have been able to come up with it."

"Modest as ever," said Anakin.

"Yes," said Obi-Wan. "But unfortunately, that highlights the difficult situation that we are in. What are we supposed to do now about our young friend from Pantora?"

Chuchi didn't seem to hear him. She was just staring up at the three enormous creatures that lay before the little group, unable to take her eyes away from the scene for several seconds. Even lying down, the Zillo Beast was still far, far taller than any of them were, even Sakuyamon. And the enormous shapes of MegaGargomon and Cherubimon loomed over everyone even though they were both in kneeling positions to hold the Beast down.

She thought that she might finally understand what Terriermon had meant when he said that he had accidentally caused the hole in the wall that almost killed her and led her to discovering the secret of a lifetime.

In some ways, the Senator from Pantora felt privileged that of all the members of the Senate, she was the first to find out about all this. But the rest of her still didn't have a clue what to make of it all.

When she took her eyes off the scene and the Beast's increasingly sluggish thrashes as the tanks focused their lasers on it, it was only to look up at Sakuyamon. She could faintly hear voices in the distance, such as Ahsoka saying, "I'll explain the whole situation to her. She was my first friend in the Senate and I was the first Jedi she met. She trusts me," and Aayla adding, "I agree. I think it would be best if we, the ones who are most directly involved in all of this, did the explaining," and a faint growling from the Wookiee which meant nothing to her, but she wasn't really listening to any of them.

Sakuyamon noticed that she was being stared at and looked down at the person next to her. A reassuring smile graced the shaman Mega's face. Chuchi smiled back, although hers was a little halting and unsure of itself.

"You..." Chuchi said slowly and carefully. "You are a Digimon as well."

Sakuyamon chuckled. "Yes," she said. And Chuchi definitely noticed the double voice in which she replied.

"And..." Chuchi added. "Before you... took on this shape... you were both a human and a Digimon." She was just trying to make sure she had got this right – it sounded so implausible and yet when the Digimon had changed shape – digivolved as they put it – all three of the Human children she had seen before had disappeared.

"It's a difficult concept to grasp," said the Rika half of Sakuyamon. "We Tamers had seen, heard of and done some really, really weird things ever since we met our Digimon partners, but even we were completely shocked when we learned we could do this. Well, except Takato. He took in his stride."

Sakuyamon continued speaking, but her voice abruptly switched to that of Renamon's, "Yes, but the thing about Takato is that he seems to remain completely unphased by bizarre things and is left completely stunned by everyday things."

"True," Rika chuckled. "But hey... he wouldn't be a Gogglehead if that wasn't the case."

"There is that," Renamon agreed. Chuchi was looking a little weirded out by the voice transitions coming from one mouth. Renamon seemed to notice this and said, "You needn't worry, Chuchi. It's not like we become violent schizophrenics when we're like this. Yes, we have two personalities in one body but our hearts and minds merge as one. We are in perfect synchrony, although one of us can take over or relinquish control if we so wish."

"It's just... amazing," Chuchi said.

"Yes, we get that a lot," said Rika.

"You'll get the full briefing later on," Renamon agreed.

Chuchi nodded and turned back to look at the Zillo Beast. She blinked and said, "Um... I forget your name... Miss Digimon... The Zillo Beast appears to be staring at you."

Sakuyamon looked up at the Beast before her. Sure enough, the creature's enormous green eyes were fixed on her. They were half-closed as it began to shut down into its sleep-like trance, but nevertheless what coherence they had left in them was all pointed straight at the Mega shaman.

Sakuyamon was a strong empath, and should she so choose, she was able to identify exactly what emotion a person or an animal was feeling just by using the power of her mind. Curiosity got the better of both halves of her and they expanded their consciousness, touching the mind of the Zillo Beast with her own.

And, as she did, she began to pick up quite a few emotions all at once. Besides a slight anger that the Beast was being robbed of its vengeance, she was also picking up some feelings of confusion as it stared at her. And there was something else there too.

There was recognition.

_It knows us?_ Rika asked from within Sakuyamon. _But how can it possibly know us?_

_It's not sure if it does or not,_ Renamon replied quietly. _But... I don't... wait a second. It was able to recognise Palpatine's face. It tracked the man across the entire city somehow and instantly recognised his face and tried to attack him. Could it... could it be that it recognises voices as well. It heard me speaking to it when I went to see it at the lab, and it heard me speaking out of sync with you just now._

_It knows you,_ breathed Rika. _And it's anger isn't directed at you either. It remembers you... fondly._

_Well, so would I if I was locked in a room and being tested on and only one being appeared to offer me comfort,_ said Renamon. _I'd remember that person very fondly indeed. But... maybe... if it recognises me_...

"Rex," she said out loud, turning to the clone captain who was standing nearby. Her loud and authority-filled voice immediately drew the clone's attention, as well as the attention of everyone else. "Order your men to stop firing the lasers."

"What?" Rex asked, blinking beneath its helmet.

"Why?" asked Anakin. "We've got it pinned down. We can get it off the planet alive now with those tanks."

"I know that," said Renamon from Sakuyamon. "But I want to try something. Please, Rex. Do it."

Rex hesitated and turned to Anakin for confirmation, since technically Anakin was the first person here that he answered to. Anakin looked at Sakuyamon for a moment, and then nodded in confirmation. Rex barked the order into his comlink and the stun tanks stopped firing at the Beast. It was still awake, but only just now.

_I hope you know what you're doing, Rena_, said Terriermon.

_You know I know what I'm doing,_ Renamon replied. As the Beast began to recover from the effects of the stun tanks, Sakuyamon de-digivolved in front of him, splitting into Rika and Renamon. On sight of the yellow fox, the Beast's head rose into the air slightly, blinking in amazement. It stared at Renamon and its mouth opened, letting off a low whining sound that almost sounded like a question. Its head even cocked slightly, before it placed its chin back on the ground.

Slowly, Renamon walked away from everyone else and headed towards the head of the Beast. The huge jaws remained shut in front of her, but while Renamon was still cautious and slow, her movements were defined and bold, in order to indicate that she trusted the Beast. And the Beast seemed to notice it. As it slowly came to its senses it let Renamon approach.

MegaGargomon and Cherubimon continued to hold it down, but they probably didn't need to. Renamon walked right up to the side of the Beast's head and looked it in one of its huge, glowing green eyes. The pupil shrank to focus on her properly, just as it had when it was secured in the Science and Technical Centre.

"Hello again," she said, smiling warmly at it. "You remember me, don't you? I'm Renamon."

The Beast's mouth slowly opened and let out a low groaning noise that might have been an attempt at an answer. Renamon smiled and slowly walked up closer to the Zillo Beast, which looked like it was coming to completely once more. It was noticeably not struggling against MegaGargomon or Cherubimon anymore.

Renamon placed her paw beside the Beast's eye, just as she had done to the Beast before. "You won't hurt me, will you?" she asked it. The Beast growled, but it wasn't a threatening growl. If anything, it was almost like a purr.

"Do you remember what I said to you back in that lab?" asked Renamon. "I promised you that I would find a way to get you off this planet alive and healthy. And unless it is absolutely necessary, I don't break my promises."

The Beast keened slightly. Renamon wasn't sure if that was a thank you or some other noise completely but she was sure now that she was not about to become Zillo fodder. She glanced up at MegaGargomon and said, "Let him up a little bit."

MegaGargomon nodded and took his enormous knee off the Zillo Beast's neck. Renamon moved around until she was in front of the Beast as its head rose into the air and looked down at her from above. Renamon was standing right beneath its jaws and if it wanted to the Beast could have lunged down and swallowed her whole. But it didn't do that.

Instead, the Beast slowly lowered its head towards Renamon until its snout was only inches away from her. Renamon reached up and slowly ran a paw along it, and the Beast's low purring growling emanated across the area again.

"Renamon," Mace called from where the rest of the group are standing. "What are you trying to achieve here exactly?"

Renamon turned around completely, relaxed as anything as she stood with the Beast's head looming over her. This was the ultimate sign of trust for an intelligent animal like the Beast – you did not turn your back on them unless you were intending to run away, unless you were very stupid. And Renamon made no move to do that and the Beast knew that she wasn't stupid. So, she simultaneously sealed the bond between herself and the creature and answered Mace's question.

"It's entirely possible, Master Windu," Renamon said. "That we might not need those stun tanks after all."

* * *

I really, really hope that that monster mash didn't disappoint anyone, as it was tricky to write but I myself am immensely pleased with the final result. Lots of bashing and crashing against each other and a couple of little tricks thrown in to spice things up

I have enjoyed this arc hugely and now only one chapter remains on the Star Wars side. Let's see what it entails.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review. Hopefully a good one.

* * *

Next time...

Will Renamon be able to convince the Zillo Beast to come with them willingly? Will they be able to get if off the planet safely? Where will they send it if they do? And most importantly, what with Senator Chuchi's reaction be when she learns everything else?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 119 : Chuchi and the Beast**


	119. Chuchi and the Beast

The final chapter of the arc is here. Please read on and tell me what you think. I anxiously await your reviews. I've almost reached 1000 now, and I am understandably eager to reach that number. Anyway, let's move it people. There's no action in this chapter, unlike that action-packed prequel, but I still like this chapter.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 119:- Chuchi and the Beast**

* * *

The Zillo Beast was confused. Everything had been moving at a breakneck pace for it ever since it had managed to escape from the clutches of the pale man. But during that time it had encountered many things that if had never seen before. He'd been driven by an almost insane desire for vengeance against the man who had tried to have him killed, but right now, that was one of the last things on its mind.

It was being held to the ground by the two enormous creatures that it had just battled tooth and tail against, but it didn't really register their presence anymore. Even if they got off it then it wouldn't have flown into another rampage. The strange Renamon creature from before was standing right in front of its teeth and seemed to be perfectly relaxed in its presence.

But the Zillo Beast just couldn't understand why. Before it had gone into its hibernation state beneath the ground, everything always ran away from it. Even smaller Zillo Beasts had fled when there had been some around. Nothing could bear to see him coming and stay put. Nothing except this Renamon creature anyway. And the several other assorted companions that the furry, yellow being had.

Why were they so unafraid? Why did they trust it so much?

And even more confusing, it seemed that most of them were actually trying to help it, make it feel better. What was that about? Nothing ever tried to help giant predators like him. Not that it had ever really needed much help before today but still... it was so oddly bizarre.

Renamon turned back around and smiled reassuringly up at the Zillo Beast. The Beast stared back at her for a moment, and then Renamon said, "I'm going to ask my two big friends back there, MegaGargomon and Cherubimon, to let you up now. If you do, you won't attempt to attack any of us again, will you?"

The Zillo Beast's eyes narrowed. He never understood the actual words of what these people were saying but somehow he always seemed to know exactly what they were attempting to tell it. The Beast opened its mouth and quietly let off a low whining keen. Renamon seemed to nod and looked up towards the two things that were holding him down.

Slowly, the Zillo Beast felt the pressure that they were putting on it lessen and then disappear entirely, leaving it free to stand up again. The Zillo Beast craned its neck around and looked over its shoulder at the two of them. Both were hovering at either side of it, ready to jump on it again should it go berserk, but at the moment, the Beast had absolutely no intention of doing that.

As the Beast slowly and carefully rose up to its feet once more, and all the little creatures on ground level followed its progress with their eyes, the Beast still couldn't shake the feeling that this was almost unnatural. In its mind, it had always thought that absolutely anything that attacked it was an enemy, and therefore it had to be removed. But this was different. The two huge creatures that had attacked it were working with Renamon, and Renamon wanted to help it.

Did that mean they wanted to help it too?

And if they did, why had they attacked it at all?

The Zillo Beast rose itself up, so that it was once again slightly taller than the two creatures on either side of it. It glanced from one to the other warily, wondering if they were going to suddenly attack it again. But nothing happened. They even stepped back a little to give it some more space.

How peculiar.

The Beast looked down again and saw Renamon standing by its foot. She was in roughly the same spot that the tan-creature mother and child had been in when the Beast had saved their lives. That thought alone set it thinking anew. It had almost reacted instinctively when it had done that. Perhaps the fact that Renamon wanted to help it had made it pause and want to help others in turn.

It had saved the mother and child. It had deliberately not crushed the ship the pale man was in because there were others inside. It had pulled its blow so it didn't crush the guy who had been helping the pale man. Was it acting in the same way that these guys were?

The Beast leaned down and brought its head close to Renamon. Renamon smiled up at it and said, "Listen carefully. All of us here – every last one of us," she pointed at herself, the crowd of people nearby and MegaGargomon and Cherubimon. "Want to help you. We realise that might sound strange considering how we were trying to subdue you, but we only have your best interests at heart. The man you were trying to kill, Chancellor Palpatine, his view on wanting to kill you is not shared by any of us."

The Zillo Beast cocked its head to the side questioningly and lowered its head even further.

"Palpatine is supposedly a leader," said Renamon. "But we don't have to agree with him. The only thing we want is to get you off this planet and back into the wild, where you belong. Do you not want that?"

The Zillo Beast inclined its head slightly and eyes seemed to light up a little, answering Renamon's question for her.

"If you stay on this planet," Renamon explained. "They will never stop trying to kill you. There are too many people here and you do present a danger. You killed a lot of people today, all in your single-minded pursuit of one man? Was that really worth it? We know that you are not some mindless animal with no ability to think for yourself. We know you're intelligent. And we also that you are better than this."

The Zillo Beast looked up and back towards the distant city. It was hard to see from so far away, but the fires that it had created as it had rampaged through the area were still clearly visible. The Zillo Beast cast its mind back to all the people that it had crushed under its enormous feet. They had been no different to the mother and child it had saved.

It had let primal instinct drive it, and now, hundreds of others had paid the price. Killing for food was a necessity for it – it had to eat to stay alive – but they had not been food. They had just been in the way.

The Zillo Beast let out a low moan of frustration and disappointment in itself. Then it looked down at Renamon again. The fox was still standing beside its foot.

"Regardless of everything that you've done, we understand your position," she said. "Desire for vengeance is natural, but there is a limit to what you should do to get it. But that's beside the point. The point is, we are willing to overlook it. We still want to help you. But you have to let us help you. You have the let us take you off this planet. And we need to do it now, before Chancellor Palpatine comes back and tries to stop us."

The Beast growled and turned back, facing the direction that the Chancellor's gunship had disappeared into. Its mouth curled into a snarl, clearly displaying its reluctance to let the man go unpunished.

"Easy," Renamon said. "Put aside your thirst for vengeance – it'll only bring you grief."

The Zillo Beast turned around again and gave Renamon a look of incredulity. It gnashed its teeth and let out a low rumbling sound of complaint. Renamon sighed and said, "I agree with you – Palpatine should not be allowed to get away with this. And I know you want to make him pay... but sometimes we don't always get what we want. Please – don't do this. Don't make us have to fight you again. We don't want to."

The Zillo Beast looked at MegaGargomon questioningly, but MegaGargomon's face remained impassive as ever. So the Beast swung around to look at Cherubimon instead. The huge angelic creature smiled at it and gave it a nod. The Beast looked unsure of itself now, its fingers curling and uncurling with indecision. Its anger at the pale man – Palpatine – was still in place, but all these people wanted to help it. What should it do?

"Listen to her," piped up another voice, which caught the attention of not only the Zillo Beast, but practically everyone else as well. Renamon turned around in surprise, to see Senator Chuchi walking slowly towards where she was standing. The Pantoran looked nervous at the prospect of approaching the creature she had seen chasing after her friends before, but she was bravely doing it anyway.

The Zillo Beast watched her approach, lowering its head down towards her. Chuchi hesitated at the sight of the Beast approaching, but Renamon put a comforting paw on her shoulder. Chuchi glanced at the fox, who smiled and nodded. Chuchi smiled back – she barely knew Renamon but she liked her already. Then, she turned and looked up at the Beast.

"This is Chuchi," Renamon said to the inquisitive creature. "She works in a similar line of work to Palpatine but she doesn't agree with what he did to you anymore than we do."

"No, I do not," Chuchi said firmly. "His imprisonment and attempt at killing you is... utterly diabolical. I would have thought that he would be beyond that, but it seems that I was wrong. Nevertheless, I implore you not to kill the Chancellor. Vengeance is not the answer to your problem, Master Zillo."

The Zillo Beast paused for a moment, seeming to consider her words. Renamon promptly asked, "And what would you suggest the Zillo Beast should do, Senator?"

Chuchi's yellow eyes locked the bright green ones of the Beast. Chuchi physically forced herself not to quail as the giant orbs glared down at her, displaying the same bravery she had when she had faced Thi-Sen to offer peace to him and his people. The Zillo Beast was displaying less threatening behaviour, but it was terrifying in and of itself, so Chuchi standing her ground was an admirable feat.

"I would suggest that the Beast should help not only itself, but its entire species. The longer you remain on this planet, the more likely it is that the Chancellor will manage to find some way to kill you. And that would be a disaster not only for yourself, because you would lose your life, but it would affect your entire species. You are the last Zillo Beast known throughout the entire galaxy. As long as you survive, so does your species. Your mighty race lives now solely in you. Therefore, is it not important to preserve the life of your kind for as long as possible?"

The Beast let off a low moan. Chuchi wasn't sure whether that meant yes or no, or if it was another question, but the Beast's decision remained ambiguous. Chuchi stepped forward even further, boldly shrugging off Renamon's comforting paw and placed her hands over her heart. "I implore you," she said, gazing into the Beast's eye. Let us help you. We are the only ones who can. We can provide you a way of this planet, and a new home for you, where you will be free from all those you seek to destroy the dynasty you represent."

The Beast stared at Chuchi a little more.

Chuchi spread her arms out, in a gesture that indicated openness and honesty and asked the final question. "Will you come with us?"

There was nothing from the Zillo Beast for a couple of seconds. And then, ever so slowly, it closed its eyes and nodded once.

Chuchi's face split into a grin and Renamon stepped up beside her again. "Well done," she said. "To both of you. You certainly have a way with words, Senator. And you, mighty Zillo Beast, you have proven yourself to be more than just an animal. You do have a conscience. Your anger just suppressed it."

"Yeah," said MegaGargomon in Terriermon's voice, causing the Zillo Beast to swing up and look at him "And hey, I hope there's no hard feelings for pounding on you like that. It was the only way we could get you to listen to reason after all."

"We don't like to fight unless we have to," added Cherubimon. "I hope that you don't hold it against us."

And, slowly, the two giant Megas de-digivolved, warping and shrinking and splitting into their component parts until there were two Tamers and two small Digimon where two larger ones had previously been. The lot of them grouped together with Renamon and Chuchi. The Pantoran Senator had a look of extreme relief on her face, thankful that she had been able to help to allay the situation and thankful that she had not become a Zillo Beast snap.

She faltered slightly when the Zillo Beast's head lowered towards her and instinctively tried to step back, but Renamon's gentle paw on her back stopped her from doing so. As the Zillo Beast's head approached, Renamon carefully took hold of the back of Chuchi's hand with her own and moved it upwards and outwards slowly, until Chuchi's hand was resting on the Beast's nose. Then, Renamon stepped back, and Chuchi was slowly running her hand across the scales of the creature. The Zillo Beast's purring noise returned and Chuchi found a smile of both exhilaration and wonder coursing through her as she laid her hand on the largest life form this galaxy had ever seen. And it was letting her.

The rest of the group of humanoids approached from behind towards the Zillo Beast. Henry found himself in Rika's arms, as the redhead hugged him, relieved that he was okay. Mace addressed the others by saying, "Excellent work Renamon, Senator Chuchi. And you as well Henry, Suzie, Terriermon and Lopmon. I have to say, I am most impressed with what we accomplished her today."

"Yes," nodded Yoda. "New in the Senate, you may be, young Chuchi. But, truly, a skilled negotiator, you are."

Chuchi smiled shyly, not taking her hand of the Zillo Beast's nose. It wasn't often you got a compliment like that from the Grand Master of the Jedi Order.

"This didn't turn out at all like I expected," Obi-Wan said. "I was expecting for us to have no choice but to kill the creature, but it seems that I was wrong, and for that I am thankful."

"Yeah, uh..." Anakin raised a hand. "I hate to be a pain and put a downer on all of this but... how exactly are we going to get the Zillo Beast away from here and not upset the people. A lot of them are going to want to see the Beast die now, especially the Chancellor. We don't want to upset them, do we?"

"I wouldn't worry about that," smiled Aayla. "Mainly because you'll be the one to confront him, but also because I have an idea."

* * *

The all-clear signal had been given. The situation had been contained, and, unsure what sight would await them when they got back, Chancellor Palpatine and Senator Amidala stood in their gunship as it flew back over the Works and towards the Senate Building once more. Both of them appeared to have worried expressions on their faces, wondering what had become of the Jedi, an of the Beast itself.

After the long flight across The Works, their gunship finally began to settle down in front of the Senate Building that they had fled from before. The blast doors opened the moment the gunship was back on the ground, allowing the man and the woman out and onto the concrete outside the main front doors.

Palpatine looked up at the hole in the wall that had once been where his office had stood and sighed. He was going to have to come up with some kind of temporary headquarters while his office was fixed up. It wouldn't take long to restore it to the immaculate state that it had once been in – his cleaning droids were very efficient and this wasn't the first time a portion of his office had been wrecked, but still, it was inconvenient.

"Oh no," Palpatine heard Padmé mutter beside him as the Senator from Naboo walked around the gunship and put a hand to her mouth at the sight before her. Palpatine turned around and strode towards her, robes billowing and rounded the gunship himself, staring at what Padmé was seeing.

A large _Acclamator_-class cruiser was hovering just above the street that led up to the main doors, with its ramp down and descended towards the ground. A large number of people, such as citizens and businessmen and more than a few Senators, were clustered around the edges of the street and, floating on a hoverpad that had reached the bottom of the ramp and was beginning to ascend up it, was the prone form of the Zillo Beast.

It was quite clearly dead.

When it had been being unloaded from the ship and into the Science and Technical Centre, it had been asleep, and that had been easy to see because of its obvious large breaths and the fact that it had shifted about occasionally. But this time, the Beast was completely and utterly limp. Its mouth was hanging open and its tongue was lolling out of it. Its eyes were shut and it was completely slumped against the hoverpad. Its tail was hanging off the side of the large device and was being dragged along the ground behind it as it slowly entered the ship.

"Your Excellency," said a voice from behind them and the two of them turned around to see Anakin Skywalker walking towards them. There were several other Jedi not that far away, but it was Anakin that walked over to see them.

"Oh, thanks goodness, you guys are okay," said Padmé. "Where are the rest of your team?"

"They went back to the Jedi Temple already," said Anakin. "They wanted to avoid the press. As Jedi, this is hardly our proudest moment – forced to defeat the last of a great species. They wanted to meditate on the day."

"But however did you manage to kill it?" asked Palpatine. "The gas bombs that we used did not work and no weapon could have penetrated through the Beast's skin so how did you do it."

"We didn't," Anakin said. "You did, Chancellor. The poison gas that you used worked after all – it just took the Zillo Beast a lot longer to succumb to it than we thought. We continued to try and stun it after you disappeared but we didn't have enough tanks with us and it was just too difficult. But then, the Beast started to stagger on its own and eventually it collapsed. The gas got into its lungs and so, the Zillo Beast died."

"What a horrible way for it to go," Padmé sighed, looking sadly at the ground and unable to watch as the Zillo Beast began to disappear into the darkness of the interior of the enormous cruiser. "And it's such a shame. If we hadn't brought it here then this wouldn't have had to happen."

"Yes," nodded Anakin. "The Zillo Beast paid with its life for our mistakes. I doesn't get much more tragic than that."

"But, Anakin, what are you doing with it?" asked Palpatine. "Why is it being loaded onto that cruiser?"

"Because we're taking its body away," said Anakin. "It deserves a good resting place, so we're taking the body to Boz Pity. It's body can whether out the planet there for as long as possible until it finally decays and is lost to us."

Palpatine looked alarmed. "But, Anakin... what about the special clone armour that we were going to produce?"

Anakin's face took on a darker expression and said, a little menacingly, "What about it?"

"We still have yet to take a sample of the creature's armour," Palpatine explained. "We cannot hope to replicate the Beast's defences for our troops without that, and now that the Beast is dead we can..."

"Let me just stop you there, Chancellor," Anakin held up a hand and spoke with a voice that radiated forced calm. "That Beast didn't deserve to die. Not for any reason. Don't you see it, your Excellency? I told you that the Zillo Beast was intelligent, and it appears that I was right. It tracked its way across Coruscant, killing hundreds upon thousands of people, just so that it could find and get to you. It wanted revenge against you, and because of what you did, more lives have been lost than the clone armour would have even saved considering the late stage of the war."

Palpatine stared at Anakin in shock for a moment. Anakin turned to look at him and said, "It wasn't just some animal, Chancellor. It was sentient. Even in death it doesn't deserve to be experimented on. Would you sanction a humanoid to be treated in such a manner after its death unless they given permission for their bodies to be used like that?"

"Of course not," Palpatine said quickly.

"Well, the Zillo Beast is no different," Anakin said. "I'm sorry for disagreeing with you like this Chancellor, but I know that you're a good man. Surely you wouldn't do this to an intelligent creature. And if you would..." he shrugged. "Then I guess that you are not the man that I thought you were."

Anakin stared at the Chancellor, daring him to say he disagreed. Palpatine stared back for a moment, and then sighed and said, "I suppose you are right Anakin. Really, I must apologise for my actions. If I had been aware of the Beast's intelligence, I would not have had it brought here. And now, the citizens have paid the price for my poor decision. I shall have to begin attempting to rectify my mistake in any way that I can."

Anakin nodded. "I knew that you would see like that when you heard all the facts," he said.

Palpatine sighed. "It's just a shame that I saw those facts too late. The death of a species now rests on my conscience as well as all the other deaths that this war has caused. Can you ever forgive me, Anakin?"

"I can, Chancellor," nodded Anakin. "But others might not be so willing. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go and see that the Beast gets laid to rest." He turned and walked to a gunship standing nearby, leaving Palpatine and Padmé standing before the Senate Building alone.

What Anakin had neglected to mention, although he now mulled over it as he headed towards his ride, was that while he could forgive the Chancellor for such a foul thing, it would take a long time for him to trust him the way that he used to. He still thought of him as a good man, but this whole dilemma had brought out a side of him that Anakin had never seen before. And he didn't like it.

He put it down to the war building up a great deal of stress on the Chancellor's shoulders. Hopefully the side of him that Anakin had witnessed would disappear back into his old self when the war was over. But, as Terriermon had said, 'Trust is a double-edged sword, or indeed a lightsaber. If you are not careful with it, it can easily turn back and harm you later.'

But, yes, his faith in the Chancellor had been shaken up.

Before he stepped into the gunship, he glanced at the cruiser. The Zillo Beast had vanished into its interior and the ramp was ascending upwards now. Anakin let a smirk cross his face that nobody else knew was there before stepping into the gunship. As it took off, he thought, _You know, I think I'm getting better with words. Pretty soon I won't need other people giving me pointers in my head._

* * *

_I only had to do that a couple of times,_ Aayla chuckled. _You looked like you were doing quite well at that on your own. And congratulations on pulling off your portion of the plan without a hitch._

The Twi'lek was standing in the hold, next to the enormous corpse of the Beast. All three Digimon, all three Tamers, Ahsoka, Barriss, Chewbacca and Senator Chuchi were standing with her. Renamon and Chuchi were standing right beside the Beast's limp head, gazing up at it sadly. They had been in the hold already when the ship came down, staying out of sight of the public eye as the Beast was loaded into the ship.

_I'll be right there,_ said Anakin. _With the speed of a gunship._

"Well," said Ahsoka, as the ship beneath them began to rise into the air to begin its long flight. "The people can't actually see us anymore."

"I know," Renamon chuckled and tapped her fist lightly against the Beast's armoured eyelid a couple of times. "You can stop the act now. Nobody's staring at you anymore."

The Zillo Beast's huge eye cracked open, the green light illuminating the hold and turning the top half of Renamon's body into a silhouette for a few moments. Then, the Beast rose its head and looked around, examining its new surroundings.

"Who would have thought that such a great creature could be such a good actor," Suzie giggled. "He's even better at lying down that I am. Not even my impression of Terriermon is better than his impression of being dead."

"Yes, but that's not hard, since your impression of Terriermon basically consists of lying on your front," chuckled Lopmon. The two of them would often joke about the appalling impression that Suzie had given when she had first met Antylamon and explained what she was doing there.

"Plus," added Henry. "It's a reptile. Reptiles are masters of lying still and doing nothing for hours on end. But the lolling tongue was a nice effect though."

"So?" asked Barriss. "Do we have any idea where we're really taking the Beast? We need to find a suitable planet for it that relatively uninhabited and has a plentiful source of prey for it. Boz Pity has the space needed but it has nothing the Zillo Beast could call food, so that's out."

"I thought Felucia," said Ahsoka. "But now that I think about it that wouldn't really do either. Such a big creature's going to need open spaces to roam in. If we took it to Felucia it would flatten an acre of plant life with each step, so that's not a good idea."

"Scro acooscwo acrahowo rhahrr akrcworo," said Chewbacca. "Rhhuao aooooo scrawhro wwoorcwocao. Ufahananoo whooao rarhanwo aooo scoohowo."

"No," Lopmon agreed, pleased that she was picking Shyriiwook up so quickly. "But we also need to think about many other things, like temperature, so we can't go dumping it on an ice planet or something. Does anyone have any suggestions?"

"Well, I'm afraid my knowledge of the planets in this galaxy is fairly limited," said Rika. "So, I look to you guys to make the decision."

Aayla was looking thoughtful, her brows pulling together in a frown as she considered the possibility of one planet in particular that she knew quite well. Barriss spotted her contemplation and said, "I've seen that look before, Aayla. You reckon that you have an idea."

"It's possible," said Aayla. "And I can't find many flaws with it – it's a planet with wide open spaces, lots of prey animals, warm days and nights that are ideal for a reptile. And it has very few colonists, and those that do live there are not part of the Republic or the Separatists – they live their own lives. But I wouldn't want to bring harm on them by adding an indestructible carnivore to their midst."

"Not to worry," said Renamon. "I'm sure we can introduce our big friend to them and he'll agree not to eat them. After all, you do owe us all for this," she added up to the Zillo Beast, who looked down at her and rumbled quietly. "You reckon you can stop yourself from eating a small group of people that live on our de

stination if you are provided with a perfect new home?"

The Zillo Beast nodded its head once, but that was enough. Renamon could tell that the Beast trusted her and also everyone else as a result. They were helping it, so it would do everything that it could in turn to help them."

"Then it's settled," grinned Aayla.

_I'm on board, guys,_ Anakin's voice came across their mind link. _We can go wherever we're going now._

"Right," Aayla activated her comlink and said, "Rex, we've decided where we're going. Set a course for Maridun, as quickly as you can. We want to get our new friend on its new planet as quickly as possible."

Rex chuckled at the mention of the planet, but said, "Yes, sir. I'm on it."

"Maridun?" Ahsoka laughed, trying to keep herself from snorting out loud and holding a hand over her mouth to help her with that difficult task. "You want to introduce the Zillo Beast to the Lurmen? They'll all have heart attacks and die on the spot at the sight of him.

"Then, we'll break their new neighbour to them gently," Aayla smiled. "Besides, I have a feeling that once they get over their initial shock, the Lurmen will welcome the Zillo Beast with open arms." She turned to look up at the Zillo Beast and walked over to it, addressing it directly for the second time (the first had been when she explained the plan of playing dead to it).

"It may take us a while to reach your new home. I'm sorry we couldn't find more spacious quarters for you while you wait," she indicated the ceiling, which the Zillo Beast was only just able to keep from touching. "We didn't exactly have any ships designed for carrying your kind around in. But when you reach your new home, it'll all be worth it."

The Beast nodded and reached down, allowing the Twi'lek to pat its nose. Terriermon and Lopmon quickly leapt onto it, sitting side by side just above each nostril.

The Zillo Beast's huge eye rolled upwards and tried to look at them, but it didn't seem to be able to. Everyone chuckled at the sight of the two rabbit-like Digimon perched on top of the mountain of scales that was the Zillo Beast.

Chuchi smiled at the scene and then turned around and said, "As you say, Master Secura, it..."

"Please, there's no need for formality," said Aayla. "You can refer to all of us by our first names. That's what we usually answer to, after all."

"Alright," nodded Chuchi. "Well, as you say, Aayla, it is going to take us a while to reach our destination. And I think that now is as good a time as any for me to learn to full truth behind everything that I've learnt today. I am still very much in the dark and I would like to know what I have been missing for the last few months."

There were glances amongst everyone else there. Then Ahsoka nodded and said, "I'll do it. You guys carrying on making our lizard friend comfortable. We'll head over here and have a private conversation. And when I say private, I mean private, Terriermon," she added, fixing the bunny with a hard glare. "No eavesdropping or attempting to peek inside my mind."

"Momentai," Terriermon grinned. "I wouldn't dare to go against your will, Mighty Tano, Hero of Shili."

"Oh, shut it," Ahsoka chuckled and indicated to Chuchi that she should follow her. The Pantoran followed the Togruta some distance away from the others and the enormous company they kept, until they were sitting in a corner of the hold. Chuchi perched herself on a crate and Ahsoka inclined against another one. Her blue eyes looked up into Chuchi's earnest yellow ones.

There was a slightly awkward silence as Ahsoka tried to think of the best words to begin with. In the end, she settled for, "Well, what do you want to know?"

"Everything," said Chuchi. "What exactly are the Digimon? Where did they come from? How did you meet them? What exactly have they been doing to help you throughout the course of this war? I am bursting full of questions and I'm relying on you to provide the answers for me, Ahsoka."

"Well, I'll certainly do my best," said Ahsoka. "Barriss is a better storyteller than I am, but I owe it to you to tell you, since I'm your oldest friend out of everyone here. Well, where to start. The Digimon didn't come into my life specifically until the occupation of Ryloth. When I met them they had already been integrated into the Republic forces, but in order to tell the real story, I have to start from when Aayla first met the Digimon, during the second invasion of Christophsis."

"They've really been fighting beside you for that long?" Chuchi breathed in amazement. There were so many major skirmishes going on throughout the war, but Christophsis had been one that stood out for everyone during both invasions, because that planet was on a major hyperspace lane called the Corellian Run, so if the Separatists had gotten a foothold there it would have been possible to head to Coruscant quickly and efficiently to strike at it.

"Yeah," nodded Ahsoka. "You see, it's like this... the Digimon are not from our universe. They are from a completely alternate dimension and they wound up in ours through no fault of their own. Apparently some evil Digimon called Parallelmon deposited them here as a means to escape after they put him through a severe beating."

"There are more like them?" asked Chuchi.

"Oh, yes," nodded Chuchi. "Actually there are four Digimon in this universe instead of three, although one of them is still unhatched from its egg. But I'll get to him later. It's important that I get this in the right order. You see, Digimon _are_ life-forms, but that might be a bit hard to believe, because they're made up of computer data..."

And Chuchi listened with an expression of wonder on her face as Ahsoka told her everything that she knew about the Digimon, recounting many details about their physiology and structure, the relationships between the group and how they had had a profound impact on herself and her fellow Jedi, as well as the effects of the universe as a whole. Ahsoka told her of the various attacks that the Digimon were capable of doing and the many forms that they could take, each of which was useful for different tasks. Needless to say, Chuchi had been seriously thrown in at the wrong end of the pool when she saw the biomerging, which Ahsoka hadn't seen for months after she had first met the Digimon.

Ahsoka explained to her the role of the Tamers, and how the Human children helped their Digimon by giving them special upgrades via cards that allowed the Digimon to temporarily gain new abilities, such as the strength the bunnies had used to carry her down from the Senate Building. She went into great detail about how they refused to let the children anywhere near the front lines unless they were merging with the Digimon – she had a feeling that the Senator would get angry at the thought of putting kids in harm's way. And quite rightly so.

Then Ahsoka began to go into the more intricate detail about the roles in the war that the Digimon had played. She recounted how Renamon had allowed them to retake Christophsis with ease, how the three of them had been a massive help in recapturing the capital city of Lessu on Ryloth by trashing the droids and flying them across the bridge. Ahsoka told Chuchi about the role that Rapidmon had played in defending the Naboo system from total annihilation from Kul Teska's weapon.

She spoke of the Battle of Felucia, and how Antylamon had rescued Bly from certain death by a Sarlacc and how Taomon had placed a spell on a bunch of Acklay to make them... well, a little bit like the Zillo Beast actually, in terms of intelligence.

She spoke of several of the other minor skirmishes that the Digimon had played a part in. But there was one in particular that was of significant interest to Chuchi.

"You'll like this one," Ahsoka added, with a slight smirk. "Renamon was there during the invasion of Orto Plutonia."

"What?" Chuchi sat up, startled and her eyes widening as she remembered that nerve-wracking day, when the Separatists had landed on the planet that her moon orbited in order to launch an attack on their system from an unexpected angle.

"Yes, she was there," Ahsoka nodded. "She battled side by side with Jedi Master Shaak Ti and the leader of your neighbours, Thi-Sen. She was responsible for the destruction of hundreds of droids on that day, and she was the one that destroyed every single one of the ships that the droids had landed on the planet in, so stopping them from getting off the planet to invade your world or escape to cause more havoc."

Chuchi glanced over at Renamon, who was amusing the Zillo Beast by standing on one paw, while that paw was, in turn, placed on Aayla's hand, which was stretched upwards. Terriermon and Lopmon were also balanced on either of Renamon's feet, swaying in the air. "I never would have guessed," she breathed.

"Well, that was kind of the point," chuckled Ahsoka. "They deliberately didn't reveal themselves to you."

"But, I would have liked to have thanked them," said Chuchi. "I remember I gave a little thank you speech to each and every clone that survived that battle. I even paid a visit to those injured in the conflict. And I had no idea that I had missed two people from the list of people that deserved the credit."

Ahsoka hid a smile at the mention of the things that Chuchi had done in the aftermath of the Battle of Orto Plutonia. They were extremely fortunate that someone like Chuchi had been the one to discover the Digimon. The Force forbid Senator Lott Dod learning of their existence.

"Well, you can thank them later," said Ahsoka. "Right now, there's more of the story to tell."

Chuchi turned back around and continued to listen as Ahsoka outlined the Second Battle of Geonosis and the massive role the three Mega forms of the Digimon had played in defending the gunships as they descended to the surface of the planet, as well as the disturbing account of the incident in the catacombs. She went on to talk about how Aayla had been the first to develop a link to their minds. And then, she moved on after that to explain about how the Digimon had aided in protecting her own planet from the Separatists and the deadly virus that had been unleashed on it.

Chuchi listened attentively to the part about going to find Quinlan Vos, as this had been the part she thought she had been familiar with. The fact that the three Digimon had been there made the story much more believable in her ears than it had the first time that she had heard it. She blinked in confusion when she mentioned that the Digimon had been hiding nearby when a red-skinned Aayla had appeared to speak with her afterwards. When Chuchi has used the word "Momentai" in that instance, she had thought she had heard a faint scuffling noise, but had put it down to a random noise from a nearby worker. Now, Ahsoka informed her that that had in fact been Terriermon being hushed by his mate and sister.

And Chuchi continued to listen right the way through the tales regarding the skirmishes on Naboo and Mygeeto respectively, and how the Digimon had fought off and defeated the one who had landed them in their universe on Naboo, then how Aayla had battled against another Digimon on Mygeeto, and how they had received a Digi-Egg from that incident.

Ahsoka finished up with the story of how Barriss and Chewbacca had been added to the group and then said, "Then, a few days later and also the day before today, we heard about the Zillo Beast and the rest you know about.

Ahsoka's mouth was slightly dry now that she'd done so much talking and Chuchi was sitting there, suitably stunned at everything that the Digimon had accomplished since they got here. It explained a large number of things that had previously meant no sense, but if Ahsoka had told her that before she'd witnessed just what the Digimon were capable of doing, she would never have believed it.

"Well," she said, after a while. "That's...certainly a lot to take in."

"Sorry for the information overload," said Ahsoka. "But you did ask for it."

"I know I did," nodded Chuchi. "But... I still don't fully understand why you felt the need not to tell the Senate about it."

"Well, think about it," said Ahsoka. "If some of the more unscrupulous members of the Senate were to inform the Separatists about all this, they could prepare weapons against it. Think about Geonosis. Would we have been able to pull off such a spectacular victory against those bugfaces if they had designed special weapons to counteract the Digimon and their abilities? We might have won anyway, but it would have been a lot more difficult. And every edge we have against the Separatists is useful."

"I see," said Chuchi. She paused and said, "So... if I were to guess – you want me to swear not to tell anybody either."

"That's about the shape of things, yeah," nodded Ahsoka. "Think about how much the Digimon have done for us because the enemy is clueless as to their entire existence. You want the war to end quickly, don't you?"

"Of course I do," nodded Chuchi. "But if there's one thing I've noticed about every single one of your tales, it's that all of them involve extreme violence. I understand that violence is often unavoidable, especially during this time of war, but I would much rather pursue peaceful options. Would it not be a good idea to actually let the Separatists know that we have such powerful allies? Then they might think twice about their campaign against the Republic."

"Sorry if I sound a bit... condescending," Ahsoka said. "But I think that's just you being a bit naive, Chuchi. The Separatist movement is being lead by the Sith, and while cowards like Bute Gunray back down if they knew something like MegaGargomon existed, the Sith would not."

Chuchi sighed and said, "I suppose... you're right. But nevertheless, is it not better to go for a peaceful resolution to things. I thought that's what the Jedi preferred."

"It is," said Ahsoka. "But right now, the Separatists still aren't ready to begin peace negotiations are they? We all want a peaceful end to the war, Chuchi, but right now that option just doesn't seem to be open to us. We still try and ensure that minimal actual living people die during our fights, regardless of the side that person is on. When the chances of peace with negotiations is presented to us, we Jedi will grab it with both hands. But until that time, the Digimon are our greatest advantage against them."

Chuchi paused before saying, "I suppose that's true too. Padmé often talks about peace talks but for some reason her voice on that particular matter never gets displayed for longer than a few hours at a time before the subject is suddenly changed to something else. There are many Senators that don't seem to want to end peacefully."

"I'm not surprised," murmured Ahsoka. There was silence for a few more moments, and then the Togruta asked inquisitively. "So... do you think... maybe you can make sure the Secret of the 327th stays as secret as possible?"

"I..." Chuchi hesitated again. "I'm... not sure I can..."

Ahsoka frowned. "Why not? You understand the importance of the secret, don't you?"

"Well, yes, I do," said Chuchi. "And I appreciate all the hard work they've been putting into the war effort, especially considering the astonishing lack of credit they've been getting for it. Really, I do. It's just..." she trailed off.

"Just what?" Ahsoka prompted.

"It's just that, I'm different to you," Chuchi said abruptly, looking Ahsoka in the eye, a rather pained expression on her face. "It's easy for you Jedi to keep a secret from the Senate. You're separate from it, and you have the same amount of influence that it does – you can do things without their authority and as long as they are in the interest of the Republic, you can be forgiven.

"Me, on the other hand..." Chuchi waved a hand in the air extravagantly to emphasise her point. "I _am_ a member of the Senate. If _I_ keep a secret this big from everyone else I could get in very big trouble later on. Quite a number of my colleagues would be furious at me for not telling them.

Some might even declare it treason. I could lose my position in the Senate." She focused hard on Ahsoka, so she could clearly get her next point across. "And I don't want that to happen. I don't want to let the people of Pantora down. Can you understand that, Ahsoka?"

The Togruta nodded. "I wouldn't expect anything less from a Senator who was doing their job properly," she replied. "But I do promise you that you would have the full support of the Jedi Order if the secret came to light in another way."

"It's not just that either," Chuchi said. "If I keep this secret, then I will be constantly reminded of it whenever I walk through my workplace. Whenever I sit in congress and listen to the other Senators speaking, I would be thinking of the fact that I know something that none of them do, and I'm not sure I'd be able to handle that kind of constant pressure on my mind. Being a Senator is stressful enough as it is."

Ahsoka paused. Chuchi looked so lost at the moment, torn between an agony of indecision. The poor Pantoran was struggling in front of Ahsoka's eyes. Ahsoka could sense Chuchi's swelter of emotions. There was a part of Chuchi that wanted to help them and wanted to help keep the Digimon secret. And there was a part of her that was afraid of doing so.

"I do understand how the Digimon are affecting things for the better," Chuchi said. "Really. But... bearing this secret into the heart of the Senate Building every day throughout the rest of the war will be a heavy burden on my shoulders."

"I can understand," said Ahsoka, nodding. "And I cannot force you to keep the secret a secret, Chuchi..."

"I want to help," Chuchi said earnestly. "I do."

"Just listen for a moment, Senator," Ahsoka said, lowering her voice slightly. "I'm about to give you another detail I omitted before, which is another important reason why the Digimon have been kept as far away from the Senate as possible. Shortly after we met the Digimon for the first time, the Jedi discovered the existence of a second Sith Lord."

Chuchi's eyes almost bugged out of their sockets. "What?" she yelped. "You mean that Count Dooku isn't the only one out there somewhere?"

"I'm not sure that 'out there' is really the right phrase," Ahsoka shook her head. "More like 'in there.' Yes, we discovered, with the help of the Digimon, that there was a secret second Sith Lord – Count Dooku's master in fact. Dooku isn't even the leader of the war. Someone else is. We're not even sure about how many Separatists are aware of this, but we discovered that Darth Sidious, the person hidden from all of our senses, is someone amongst the Senate."

"No!" Chuchi cried. "No, that can't be right! Some of the Senate members are corrupt, yes, but a Sith Lord? That's not possible."

"That's what I thought," said Ahsoka. "At first, anyway. But all that stuff you just mentioned about the talks that would instate peace disappearing off the floor almost before they're brought up? I'm willing to bet that this Darth Sidious is behind that. We don't have a clue who he is. It could be anyone, and who knows how many Senators he has under his control? Even you could have been influenced by him at some point and not realised it."

"But..." protested Chuchi. "A second Sith? In the Senate? Are you absolutely sure?"

"Completely," nodded Ahsoka. "The Sith are masters of deception and Sidious is duping us all. We haven't been able to mention this to the Senate properly either, because it was Terriermon that discovered his existence when he overheard a conversation between Ventress, Grievous and Dooku. But that is yet another reason why we keep the Digimon a secret from the Senate. Darth Sidious might decide they are too dangerous and try to eliminate them, or worse still, blackmail them into working against us somehow."

Chuchi stared at Ahsoka with blatant shock registering on her face at the enormity of what Ahsoka was saying. There were many Senators she had not spoken to directly, but the knowledge that she might spoken directly to a Sith Lord and not realised it was disturbing to say the least.

But Ahsoka's words were ringing in her ears now. Duping us all? Trying to eliminate the Digimon? Was the whole war nothing but some big game to this Sidious man? Was all the fighting even necessary?

She turned around and looked at the Digimon – Terriermon and Lopmon were now skipping round and round Barriss, trying to grab her cape from the ground, while Renamon watched from beside the head of the Zillo Beast, laughing along with Aayla, Chewbacca and the Tamers, and also Anakin, who had appeared in the hold a while ago. They seemed so innocent and happy. Yet when she looked at them, two thoughts simultaneously ran through the Pantoran's mind.

The first thought was that she couldn't bear to think of this little family unit in the clutches of the Sith.

And the second one was that this group were the best chance that they had for exposing and finally taking down the Sith Lord that had been deceiving them all.

And if she told the Senate, the first thought would almost certainly come to pass, while the second probably never would.

That thought was the final thing that Chuchi needed to overcome her nervousness at the prospect of keeping such a secret. She had wanted to help out in any way she could anyway, but this new piece of information pushed aside her doubts and intensified her resolve. Her yellow eyes narrowed, turning harder than diamonds, or even Zillo Beast scales. Then she got to her feet and said, "Follow me," to Ahsoka, before striding purposefully over to the rest of them.

Wordlessly, the Padawan grinned, realising what was about to happen, and followed the Pantoran over to the others. They stopped their activities as she approached and stared at her as she approached, waiting for her verdict with bated breath. Chuchi stared at them for a moment, before declaring:-

"Upon hearing the information that Ahsoka could give me about you Digimon and you Tamers and everything you have been through, I have decided to refrain from mentioning the Secret of the 327th to any of my colleagues or peers. Your existence is safe with me, and if there is any way that I can help you with any of your missions or assignments in the future, then don't hesitate to ask. I will do what I can to help."

"Attagirl!" Terriermon cheered and bounced over to her, hopping quickly onto her shoulder. "We knew you wouldn't let us down."

"What led you to that decision, Chuchi?" asked Anakin.

"This war needs to end," Chuchi said, "And this mysterious Darth Sidious needs to be removed from his office. And as far as I can see, all of you guys and everything you have been working towards are our best chance of that. And, also..." she paused and flashed a grin at them. "I've stumbled onto something big here. It is my duty to not only the Republic, but to myself as a person, to help all of you. You can count on me."

"You know," said Aayla. "Somehow, I knew you were go to say that. Welcome aboard, Chuchi. You might not be coming with us on missions, but I daresay we can add you to our growing family group."

"Let's teach her one of our songs!" Terriermon cried.

"Oh dear," sighed Renamon.

"And while we're at it, we need to get Anakin involved in this too," the bunny added.

"Stay away!" Anakin cried. Terriermon laughed.

Chuchi grinned. Somehow, she knew she had made the right choice.

* * *

Carrying a large basket of Jurcian fruit in his arms, Wag Too placed it in the middle of the space between the pods that made up his home village. The Lurmen were gathering supplies while the stocks lasted – it wouldn't be very long before the trees stopped producing the fruits that they ate in such copious amounts. There were dozens of large baskets filled to the brim with all different kinds of multi-coloured fruits.

Wag Too wiped his brow from the effort of carrying such a large burden and turned to survey the rest of the Lurmen wandering around and carrying out various tasks throughout the village. They looked for all the world like the most peaceful village that had ever existed in this universe and apart from the brief spat against the Separatists seeking to annihilate them with the first Defoliator cannon, the Lurmen prided themselves on being just that.

As he and his friend Tub deposited their fruit baskets down, Wag Too's father, Tee Watt Kaa, shuffled over to them with his slow, hobbling gait. "Is this the last of it, Wag Too?" he asked, gesturing to the various fruit baskets.

"Almost, Father," said Wag Too. "There's a couple more baskets to come in, but apart from that it's all here."

"Hmm," said Tee Watt Kaa, slowly. "There doesn't appear to be as much of it as there was during the last harvest. Are the Amani behind this?"

"I believe so, Father," nodded the younger Lurmen. They had recently been having a few problems with the planet's previous colonists, the war-like Amani race that had established themselves only a few months before the Lurmen themselves had arrived. Tee Watt Kaa had set up the beginnings of the village a good distance away from where the Amani tribes made their homes in the hopes of avoiding them.

But it seemed that the Amani were sending out regular patrols in attempts to expand their territories. The Lurmen were growing increasingly on edge. They didn't know if the Amani knew that they were here, but they were beginning to get dangerously close. The fact that the Amani had gotten close enough to take fruit from the Lurmen's trees was a terrible sign. Fortunately, there had been no Lurmen there at the time. If there had been, that Lurmen would have been killed on the spot. Amani were like that.

"Father, I really think that we should consider moving away," Wag Too said. "We tried talking with the Amani when we first arrived but that didn't work and we were driven off. And even if we fought against them..."

"...I will not condone any more fighting from our village," Tee Watt Kaa said, firmly.

"Yes, I know, Father," Wag Too nodded. "I'm just saying, even if we did, we'd be no match for the Amani anyway. Why don't we just pack up and try to move somewhere else."

"I'm full of indecision right now," Tee Watt Kaa sighed. "On the one hand, we will probably all be in trouble if we stay, but on the other, we've worked so hard on our homes that I am reluctant to..." He paused and glanced upwards at something he had seen out the corner of his eye. "Oh no," he moaned, pressing his fingers over his eyes.

Wag Too turned to look and saw an enormous triangular ship descending down towards them. "Hey, it's the Republic," Wag Too said brightly "I wonder what they're doing here."

"Maybe they can help us," said Tub, enthusiastically. "Maybe they know some things about the Amani that can help us live peacefully alongside them."

"Yes, or maybe they will simply seek to destroy them," muttered Tee Watt Kaa, darkly. Wag Too rolled his eyes. Sometimes, he thought his father took his pacifist ideals way too seriously.

It wasn't long before a gunship was seen descending downwards from the ship, to land in front of the little village of giant tree pods. The Lurmen quickly gathered around – they were on friendly terms with the Republic so they had little to fear from them. Behind the gunship, the cruiser began to turn side on.

The blast doors of the gunship slid open and several very familiar faces stepped out. Wag Too brightened at the sight of all three Jedi that had helped against the Separatists, as well as a few others they didn't know.

"Hello there, guys," said Anakin, as he stepped out the ship. "It's been a while."

"Indeed, it has, Master Jedi," nodded Tee Watt Kaa. "And I'll have you know that we have been enjoying peace ever since you left. What reason do you have for coming to visit us this time? It had better not be about your wretched war."

"Relax, Tee Watt Kaa," Ahsoka smiled. "We're not here to fight anyone this time, and as far as we know, the Separatists have no interest in this planet. But we're here to offer you something instead."

Aayla clapped Chuchi on the shoulder and guided her forward. "Everybody," she announced. "This is Senator Chuchi of Pantora. She would like to speak with you."

"Oh really?" asked Tee Watt Kaa. "And what does the member of the Senate have to say for herself."

Chuchi stepped forward and said, "I am not here to ask you to join in the war. Nor am I here to persuade you to let us use your planet as a staging post. However, a situation has cropped up recently, and we would like to offer you a compromise. We will leave you alone and in peace, but we wish to offer you some form of protection."

"We do not need..." Tee Watt Kaa protested.

"Yes, we do, Father," Wag Too said. "We have been having some problems recently." He quickly explained the problem of the native Amani advancing on them.

Aayla nodded and said, "Looks like we came at the right time then."

"Indeed," said Chuchi. "Now, I would like to offer all of you a new neighbour. One who will be able to protect you with his mere presence alone. If you choose to accept him, then your village will be safe from all known threats. Namely because nobody would dare to attack a village under his protection."

"And what kind of neighbour would this be?" asked Tee Watt Kaa. "We don't have any pods to spare you know."

Chuchi chuckled and said, "Pods will not be required." She pointed a finger, and immediately the clone piloting the gunship took off and moved aside, revealing what had been hidden behind it. The Lurmen gaped in astonishment as they beheld the cruiser some distance away, with its ramp down. And walking down that ramp was the huge form of the Zillo Beast, stepping down onto Maridun soil with its enormous strides.

The Lurmen immediately started to gain the beginning of panic, but Aayla's clear voice cut across them and said, "There is no need to worry. That creature is not some mere animal like the Fwits and the other native carnivores on this planet. He is intelligent, and he will not even consider you as a prey source."

The Lurmen remained frozen in place, watching with wide eyes as the Zillo Beast approached them. As the Beast got closer, a pair of shapes detached themselves from the top of its head and glided down towards the others. Terriermon and Lopmon came to rest in front of the Lurmen and grinned at them – the Lurmen remembered them from their stay alright. And, as the Beast got closer, Renamon was visible, waving from the top of its head, so as to demonstrate that the Zillo Beast was not a threat to them.

The Zillo Beast towered over the village, the Lurmen staring up at it with enormous eyes. It looked down at them curiously, and many of them shuffled backwards from its gaze.

"Everyone," said Chuchi. "I would like you to meet your new neighbour..."

"...Godzillo," finished Terriermon.

Godzillo introduced himself with an earth-shaking roar. He had a name. He had a bunch of people trying to help him. He had a home.

He had a future.

* * *

And this ends one of my favourite arcs of the whole story. Only 100 more chapters to go and I'll have finally finished this massive project. This has been one wild ride so far and I promise you all that its not going to get any less wild anytime soon. Things are going to really start livening up now. While the arc system will still remain, now the story begins to turn into something more like one continuous story.

But as to what happens in the next arc, you'll have to wait and see.

Many of you were surprised at the fact that Chuchi learned of the secret before Padmé. I did say that she would be important and this is why. There are several reasons for my choice of her – firstly, I don't think she gets enough screen-time. Secondly, the point of the story is to bring in the less used characters alongside the main ones. That's why Aayla has such a prominent part in it too. Plus, you could also say it's a tribute to Jennifer Hale, the voice actress who does both Aayla and Chuchi. Aayla is the first Jedi to meet the Digimon, so Chuchi is the first Senator.

Nobody lynch me for my choice of name for the Beast. I like Godzilla, the Zillo Beast was a tribute to Godzilla, and I am adding my own slight tribute to it with its new name. Godzillo it will remain. Also, did anyone notice that after I gave the Beast a name, I started calling it He instead of It?

* * *

Next time...

Impmon has run into his Tamers once again – and he and his new friends are observing them as they sleep. What will Impmon do next? Will he go and rejoin them, or will he attempt to escape from them somehow?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 120 : Thief in the Night**


	120. Thief in the Night

Was that quick enough for everyone? Read on for our next Impmon chapter. What does he do now that his Tamers are so close to him? Who can say? Only me, because I wrote the thing, but I hope you enjoy the chapter.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 120:- Thief in the Night**

* * *

Ai and Mako continued their peaceful rest, sleeping on either side of their good friend, Jeri Katou. They looked for all the Digital World that they didn't have any cares or worries at all when they were sleeping. This wasn't true, of course – they had many more worries than any children their age really should, but at least in sleep they could escape those realities.

The search for Impmon had been fruitless as of yet. There had been no sign of the elusive purple imp in any direction that they went. They knew that they had not expected it to be easy but the fact that they were still searching depressed them both. It had taken a whole for Jeri to coax the two of them into getting some rest.

Eventually, they had. Now they were sleeping beside the vaguely burning embers of their previous campfire, using Jeri as a pillow and slightly like a mattress as well. Leomon, Mihiramon and Majiramon were all also taking their well-deserved breaks for the day. Leomon was leaning against the side of a hill, propped up as much as he could and he appeared to be only slightly dozing, while the dragon and tiger Devas snoozed fitfully.

And, Caturamon and Kumbhiramon were the ones patrolling around the area to warn the others in case of any potential attack.

But none of them were aware of the fact that their quarry, the one they had been searching so hard for, was less than a stone's throw away, on the other side of the large hill that they had made their camp next to. Impmon was flattened against the ground, pressed against it as low as he could go to avoid detection as he stared down at the campsite and the pair of Tamers he had left behind in order to protect them.

Seeing them here now was making Impmon's heart pang with longing. If he had had his choice then he would still be living with the two Teradalets that he defended with his life, and seeing them now was a painful reminder of what he could have been doing right now if it had not been for GranDracmon and all his bloody grand plans. He would be on his windowsill back home and snoring in front of the bright moon, and the only thing that he would have to worry about would be when the others who had been lost thanks to Parallelmon would be back.

The fact that the two of them were asleep actually didn't help matters. Impmon felt his heart wrench at the sight of them sleeping. It was an uncomfortable reminder of another kind, about how he had abandoned the two of them in their sleep so he could slip away unnoticed. He could just picture the both of their faces when they woke up in the morning and discovered that their partner had broken his promise and left them behind once again.

And here they were, sleeping once again when he set eyes on them again.

Impmon's natural instinct was to get up and go over and hug them, maybe even make them jump as they woke up from their slumber with a loud noise or something – as he often used to do anyway in the mornings (and occasionally in the middle of the night just to liven things up). But he didn't move. Because, along with the sense that was drawing him towards his partners, there was also the other argument, which was repelling him. And that was accompanied by a rather large amount of irritation.

"What the hell are they doing here?" he hissed quietly to his companions. Lilamon was lying next to him in the grass and also pressed to the ground, while Calumon was on his other side. Behind him, Diatrymon and Wingdramon were both crouching out of sight. Even Wingdramon had actually landed on the ground to make sure that he wasn't spotted until Impmon decided what they would do next?

"Isn't it obvious?" asked Lilamon. "They came here to look for you?"

"Yeah, I got that, Petal-head," Impmon said. "I meant why the hell did they do it? What possessed them to leave the Human World and come after me? It's so much more dangerous for them in this world than it is in the Human World at the moment – even more than it would be anyway."

"Well, that's another blindingly obvious answer," Lilamon replied evenly. "They care about you, Impmon. They've obviously come here to look for you because they want to know that you're okay and help you against GranDracmon."

"I think it's really nice," said Calumon. "It's like how you guys all came looking for me when I got caught. It made me feel all warm and tingly inside because I knew I've got friends. Don't you feel all warm and tingly that they came after you, Impmon?"

Impmon paused for a moment. Truth be told, there was a part of him that felt affection for the twins and their stubborn refusal to let him try and handle things on his own. It's what made them Ai and Mako. And it was also like the fact that Lilamon and her friends had insisted that they come with him, but there was a difference in that – Lilamon and her group were not defenceless. And Calumon was only because Impmon had been unable to shake him.

"Perhaps," said Impmon. "And I guess you're right, Lilamon. But don't they see? I _left_ because I care about them and then they completely negate what I was trying to do by coming after me because _they_ care about me."

"It's an endless cycle," said Wingdramon quietly. "No matter how often you run away, they're always going to want you back and they will come and find you if it doesn't look like you're going to come back."

Impmon groaned. "I can't believe I thought that they would actually stay behind."

"Maybe they thought you'd got got," said Calumon.

"No, I doubt it," Impmon shook his head. "I made it very clear to both their parents as to why I was going. They wouldn't have let their twins think that I had been caught by GranDracmon."

"Yes, but after you left they had no way of knowing whether you had or hadn't," pointed out Lilamon. "I think it's great that the little guys would throw themselves into a dangerous wilderness to try and find you. That takes a lot of commitment and shows that they really care about you a lot."

Impmon sighed. "I know that..." he said. "But still..."

"They even managed to get the Sovereigns to help them to find you," Lilamon added. "There are four of the Devas down there. Maybe your other friends are out looking for you somewhere else with the other Devas walking around with them."

"You think everyone is here, looking for me?" asked Impmon. "Well, that's just fantastic."

"The most important question right now," said Wingdramon. "Is what do you plan to do now that you know where they are and that you're so close?"

Impmon growled slightly and placed his hand on his forehead. He'd been hoping that he wouldn't have to go through a moment like he had when he had been deciding whether or not to abandon the twins in order to protect them. And yet, here he was now, forced to make the exact same decision. The familiar feeling of agony welled up inside him as he waged war with himself regarding the two options for the second time in his life.

Impmon clenched his fists and had to restrain himself from bashing them into the ground in frustration. He loved his Tamers dearly but why did they have to put him through his paces so much? He always had to choose whether he would stay or whether he would leave. The first time he had chosen to leave had been easy – he had wanted nothing to do with them ever again because of all their fighting.

The second time had been difficult. He had not wanted to leave them alone, but he had chosen to do it anyway to keep them safe.

The third time was agony. After going through so much without them by his side, Impmon desperately wanted to rejoin them again. But, they had had several close calls before now where Ai and Mako would be in terrible danger if it had happened. The incident with the SkullScorpiomon could very well have been a disaster if either of the twins had been there at the time.

Impmon looked across at his Tamers again and sighed. He still didn't like the option, but there was only one path that he could take in his mind. He had left to protect them before, and the situation had not changed. So he would leave to protect them now.

"We have to go," he said, turning back to the others. "We have to leave now. Let's slip away into the night before they wake up or discover that we're here."

"You're really gonna leave them again?" asked Calumon. "Even though they did all this searching and searching for you?"

"Look, Calumon," Impmon said, as patiently as he could. "It was their decision to come after me. I think it was a foolish decision, but I had no part in it. But it was my decision to leave them in the first place and the reasons why I chose to leave haven't changed at all, and until we get information from the angels on if there is a way to stop GranDracmon, that situation is not going to change."

"That is true," said Lilamon. "But you're not talking about abandoning your Tamers in the Human World any more. They're in the Digital World now, where there are dangerous monsters roaming about the place. Are you sure it's a good idea to leave them behind."

"There aren't that many dangerous monsters anymore," Impmon pointed out. "Since I got here, the only things I've been attacked by are GranDracmon's forces, not random Digimon. The dangerous kind are all but gone now. Besides, if they did run into one of those Digimon, they've got plenty of protection without me. Jeri, Leomon and those Devas should be enough to take on most randomers, don't you think?"

"Well, we don't know them that well, so it's hard to comment," Diatrymon said. "But I suppose yes, they probably would be."

"Me, on the other hand," Impmon said. "We know that _I_ attract trouble. We've been attacked three times since we came together as a group. Three. And each time, the attack got harder to deal with than before. If I go back to the Tamers, they'll certainly get into trouble. But look at them now. It doesn't look like they've been attacked recently, does it?"

"No," Lilamon shook her head. "They probably wouldn't be resting quite so peacefully if they had."

"So, that's it then?" asked Calumon. "We just find these guys and then we just leave them?"

"That's pretty much the shape of things, yeah," nodded Impmon. "Now come on. We need to go before we're spotted."

"Impmon," Lilamon stopped him by placing a petalled hand gently on his back for a moment. Her black eyes linked with Impmon's green ones and said, "Wait. Before you go... are you absolutely, one-hundred percent, totally sure that this is what you want to do?"

Impmon hesitated, but only for a moment, before nodding his head and saying, "Yes." Then he frowned and asked "Why?"

"It's just that we're all so worried about you," she said. "And don't go all defensive and trying to act tough, because it's not going to help. We know that you're in a fragile state thanks to all the pressure that's been put on you, and so do you so don't deny it. We don't want to add this to your list of stressing things if it doesn't have to be."

Impmon paused and then, the ghost of a smile appeared on his face. "Thanks Lilamon. Thanks, all of you. I appreciate having such good friends who are looking out for me. But yes, I am totally sure about this. It will be much less stressing for me if I don't have to constantly worry about watching my Tamers because the next attack could come at any moment. They're safer without me. In fact, I think we've been here for too long anyway. We need to go."

Lilamon smiled back, a little sadly. "In that case, I guess we should get going," she said. "We've got a way of taking down that Demon Digimon to find."

"You betcha," Impmon nodded, aiming a playful punch at Lilamon's shoulder. Lilamon caught it, but smiled anyway. It seemed that her display of friendship had had the desired effect, Impmon was, at least slightly, back to his old self. And as long as he was like that, there was still hope.

"Okay," said Calumon. "Well, if we're going to go, I'm at least going to go over and say goodbye to Jeri." He got to his feet and started to trundle down the hill.

"What?" Impmon yelped quietly and quickly dashed after him, leaping on top of his back and pinning him to the ground. "Are you mad, Calumon. If you go over and say goodbye then that means they'll know we're here and will try to... stop... us..." Impmon stopped. He had looked up at the campsite to make sure that nobody had woken up. From this angle, the humans were lit up a little better, and Impmon spotted a detail that he had previously missed.

Ai appeared to be clutching something in both hands.

Her D-Arc.

Impmon's Digital blood ran cold. Of course! That was how they had managed to get so close to him. They had been using the tracking function on the white and purple rimmed device to follow his signal across the Digital World. He didn't understand all the details of how the tracking function worked but he knew that as long as they were in the same world and level as their partner, Ai and Mako would practically be able to follow him anywhere as long as they had that.

Impmon quickly dragged Calumon back up the hill and hid behind it before Kumbhiramon or Caturamon could spot him. He sat down, passing the squirming Calumon to Lilamon and thought for a moment. Their D-Arc was the only link they had left to their partner really, and he had never considered taking it away from them before.

He was put in an agony of concern now. Again. Without their D-Arc, they wouldn't be able to find him and he was sure that that would send them into a wave of depression. It might even make them think that their partner didn't really want them anymore.

However, they would be alive, and depressed was better than death.

Impmon's green eyes looked up and met each of the others in turn. "Change of plans, guys," he said. "We're still leaving, but there's something that we have to do before we go."

* * *

Guard duty was always boring, but you never saw Caturamon complaining about it. The Dog Deva was adamant that they all had to make sacrifices if they needed to do so in order to fulfil the commands of the Sovereigns. And since the Sovereigns had ordered them to make sure the Tamers stayed safe, that was what they were doing.

Caturamon continued to stalk round and round the campsite, eyes peeled and ears pricked for any kind of signal that might give away the presence of an enemy. If anyone came after the humans, they were going to have to get through him first.

Suddenly, something drew Caturamon's attention. The Dog Deva blinked as he caught sight of something in the corner of his eye and turned to look around at it, hackles rising in case it turned out to be some sort of threat. He focused on what appeared to be a figure of some kind, standing at the top of the hill and looking down at him.

The figure appeared to be... glowing slightly?

Caturamon's eyes widened as the figure slowly began to descend down the hill towards him. Its legs didn't move – it was gliding just above the ground and hovering its way down the hill, arms at its side and its faint, bioluminescent light emanating from all across its body. Caturamon stepped backwards, preparing to sound the alarm, but he could see no threatening behaviour from the stranger yet, so he held his tongue.

As the figure continued to approach slowly and mystically, Caturamon distinguished that it was a Lilamon. That was odd – what was a Lilamon doing so far from the Forest Zone. Fairy Digimon like her rarely left their woody homes and yet here she was on the Prairie Level. However, the strange circumstances surrounding the Lilamon's presence meant little really. She wasn't going to attack them.

Caturamon knew that it was there was no such thing as an evil fairy Digimon. It might be in their data structure or something but none of them could carry out evil deeds. The phrase 'even if they wanted to' didn't even apply, as they would never want to anyway.

And so, the Dog Deva relaxed and watched as the Lilamon approached him, wondering what she wanted. The Lilamon seemed to smile at him as she got closer and closer, until she stopped in front of him and inclined her head respectfully to the Deva Digimon.

"Hello there," Lilamon said. "A pleasure to meet you, my lord. I trust I find you well."

"As well as can be, considering the circumstances," said Caturamon. "What can I do for you?"

"Oh, nothing much," said Lilamon. "I guess you could say the curiosity got the better of me. What are several Devas doing out here and with a bunch of what appears to be humans, no less," she pointed her petalled hand towards the camp-fire, gesturing at the three sleeping Tamers that were lying against the log and each other.

Caturamon turned around to look and said, "Well, I suppose it is a curiosity isn't it. But I'm not sure I would be allowed to tell you, to be honest. There's something very important going on right now and... ack..." Caturamon suddenly felt his muscles tightening underneath him and beginning to seize up. The Dog stiffly and slowly turned its neck around to see that Lilamon had turned her back on him and was unleashing a potent Un Deux Pollen from her back-flower.

Caturamon went as stiff as a board, the muscles all across his body becoming paralyzed by the pollen. Lilamon carefully regulated it so that it wouldn't be enough to paralyse his heart and potentially kill him, but she let off enough so Caturamon collapsed onto his side, frozen. Even his mouth was clamped shut, preventing him from crying out to warn the others.

"Sorry," said Lilamon. "But I kinda had to do that for a friend. Don't take it personally." And with that, she extinguished her light and floated away.

* * *

Kumbhiramon scuttled across the other side of the camp-site, trying to spot any signs of danger just as Caturamon was. However, the Rat Deva had to walk with an odd gait. The armour around his body was so bulky that he was unable to turn his head from side to side, so if he wanted to look back and forth, he needed to use only his eyes. Therefore, to keep his eyes on his surroundings, he was having to scuttle sideways around the camp, like some kind of weird, armoured, furry crab.

So far there had been nothing. Unlike Caturamon, Kumbhiramon was not known for his patience, and the little guy always got restless whenever it was his turn to do guard duty. Still, he knew it was his turn so he didn't complain, albeit with some reluctance.

"Hello," said a voice, and Kumbhiramon jumped in surprise as a little white Digimon began to hop over to him from nearby. "How are you?" asked the Digimon, landing in front of the Rat Deva.

"Huh?" Kumbhiramon asked, slightly incoherently. "What the... Who are you supposed to be?" He spread his legs in a slightly threatening stance which just looked silly on a body like his.

"I'm Calumon," the Digimon said proudly. "Wanna play with me?"

"Calumon?" Kumbhiramon blinked. "Wait a second. I remember you. I saw you when I went to the Human World. And your name. You're the Catalyst, aren't you? The little Digimon, Calumon, who used to be the only way that any Digimon in our whole world could digivolve."

"Yep," nodded Calumon. "That's me. But all that stuff's boring and I have heard it all before anyway. I wanna play. Do you wanna play with me? You like a fun guy to play tag with?"

"Tag?" Kumbhiramon blinked. "Uh, I'm not sure I should do any playing of any sort re...oof," Kumbhiramon broke off in surprise as a large foot descended on his back and pinned him to the ground. A foot that seemed to be comprised of huge, bladed talons. It was heavy, and his legs collapsed beneath him, but thanks to his armour, the blades didn't do any damage,

He had no idea who his attacker was, but he was just about to yell at it to get it to get off, when suddenly Calumon was covering his mouth with his little hands. "Ssh," Calumon said. "Quiet mousey."

Kumbhiramon's short fuse quickly ran out and he began mewling, bucking and writhing as much as he could under the foot of his attacker and around Calumon's hands. However, physical strength was certainly not one of his strengths, but that didn't stop him from trying. He couldn't believe that he had been so easily taken in – Calumon had distracted him and allowed the other one to sneak up behind him.

But there was no yield in the heavy foot on his back.

Just when Kumbhiramon remembered that he could generate clones of himself to attack the person who was pinning the main version of him down, another being appeared. It was Lilamon, and she had a large amount of her special pollen in her petals. She quickly cast it upon the Deva Digimon, who stiffened as it sprinkled over him.

Lilamon whisked Calumon out of the way and Diatrymon lifted his foot. Kumbhiramon was already asleep, his high-strung metabolism helping the pollen to take effect much more quickly than it normally would have.

"This is quite fun, actually," Lilamon giggled as she looked down at the sleeping Deva. "I feel like a cross between some mystical creature and a secret agent."

"Yeah, but the game is always over too quickly," pouted Calumon.

"Come on," whispered Diatrymon. "Let's get ready."

The other two nodded and the three of them quickly headed off to get in position. As they reached the crest of the hill that the two paralysed or sleeping guards were no longer patrolling, they turned back and glanced down at the campsite and the six sleeping figures inside it. And, as they did, they saw a small, dark shape slipping in amongst their midst.

"Good luck, Impmon," Lilamon said quietly. "And try not to do anything you'll regret. Emotionally or otherwise."

* * *

The fact that the form of Majiramon was so incredibly large didn't help matters much. Impmon was slowly and silently making his way into the campsite as the others watched from above. His small form was placing each foot down with the utmost care, carefully leaning into each step to ensure that he didn't make any noise. His teeth were clenched in concentration as he tried to move about without being seen.

Being quiet really was not one of Impmon's strong points. Usually he would deliberately make as much noise as possible. But Impmon was quite surprised at how difficult he found it to move slowly. He wanted to get to where his Tamers were sleeping, nab that D-Arc and get out there as quickly as he could. Ever nerve inside him was preparing for an explosion of speed that he couldn't do for fear of waking somebody up.

Impmon resisted the urge to swallow nervously and he stepped on his toes alongside Majiramon. He had to get past the long, serpentine body of the Dragon Deva if he wanted to get to his Tamers, and he found himself wondering why he had not chosen to come into the camp from the other side. Oh well, it couldn't be helped now.

Impmon step, step, stepped slowly up, past Majiramon's enormous arms that were resting on the floor, tucked up against his body, and past the long, winding neck of the Deva. He began to move extra slowly when he reached Majiramon's head, placing the ends of his feet down almost silently and his arms outstretched to keep himself balanced at the low pace that he was setting.

As he drew level with Majiramon's eye, the dragon Deva snorted for a moment. Impmon immediately froze and glanced up at the clenched eyelid of the larger Digimon, but apart from a faint sniffing noise, Majiramon remained asleep. Impmon had to suppress a sigh of relief. He had been half-expecting Majiramon's eye to snap open and spot him stood right in front of it. But nothing like that happened.

Impmon continued to traverse around Majiramon's head, stepping as carefully as he could up to his nose before turning with intent to walk past his nose. As he lifted his foot to move past, he glanced down at where he was going to put it and went still as a statue, one foot in the air and arms outstretched. That had been too close.

It seemed that Majiramon slept with his moustache trailing out across the floor in front of him. Impmon had almost put his foot on one of the long, silvery strands of hair hanging from above the dragon's mouth. He was fairly certain that that would have woken him up.

Impmon gulped in apprehension as he moved his foot outwards extremely carefully and slowly placed it on the ground again on the other side of Majiramon's long strand of moustache hair. He froze for a moment, wondering if the dragon would wake up, and was understandably quite relieved when he didn't. Impmon slowly lifted the other foot and placed it on the other side of the moustache hair as well.

But that was just one cleared. Impmon had to do the same to the other half of the moustache now.

Impmon glanced upwards at Majiramon's enormous nostrils, hoping that he didn't do something like snore fire while he was standing in front of him like dragons sometimes did. He carefully began to step over the other side of the moustache and managed to place one foot safely on the other side without the dragon waking up. However, when he began to lift his other foot, the dragon began to move, his head shifting to the side and the hair trailing after it, threatening to catch Impmon's raised foot and trip him.

Impmon quickly hopped over it before that could happen, but he still managed to lose his balance slightly. He stumbled backwards and collapsed onto his backside, hoping that the sound of Majiramon moving in her sleep would be enough to cover that up. Fortunately, it seemed that it was, because nobody else woke up.

Impmon let out a very quiet sigh of relief and slowly got to his feet, wiping his forehead to free it from the stickiness of sweat. Then, he turned around to see where he had to go next.

As he did, there was a faint crackling noise as he stepped on a twig that had been dropped before it reached the fire. He stopped moving again, glancing around to see if anyone heard the noise. He heard Mihiramon snorted and the tiger Deva's eyes opened slightly. Impmon quickly ran and jumped over the tiger Deva's huge tail, placing himself as low to the ground as possible behind Mihiramon and trying not to breathe.

Impmon had not been in Mihiramon's line of sight when the tiger woke up again, and the Deva in question raised his head slightly, blinking his eyes a couple of times. Impmon was practically curled into a ball at the base of the winged tigers tail, but Mihiramon didn't see him. Nor did he see anything out of the ordinary.

Mihiramon let out a huge yawn, his mouth opening about as wide as looked scientifically possible, before he lowered his head and placed it back on his front paws. It wasn't long before the tiger Deva was snoozing fitfully once more. If Impmon had been in the mood, he would have made a joke about catnaps, but right now he was slumped against the floor and quietly trying to get his breath back. That had been too close once again.

He really wasn't built for all of this sneaking around.

It took the little Rookie a couple of minutes before he felt up to moving from his spot behind the sleeping Mihiramon. Carefully stepping around the enormous, segmented Samurai Tiger Tail, Impmon continued to creep deeper into the campsite. One of Mihiramon's wings ruffled, but he gave no indication that he had actually heard Impmon.

Impmon was now forced to move even more quietly and slowly than he had been before as he got closer to the camp-fire. There were a couple of times when he almost stepped on another stray twig, but he managed to avoid any more of the woody triplines, or at least they might as well have been. They were practically Impmon-traps, and Impmon was having to use all the caution that he could muster to avoid them.

As Impmon stepped past Leomon, he paused for a moment and looked up at the humanoid, leonine warrior. He wondered briefly why Leomon was not de-digivolving down to his Elecmon form that he took most of the time while they were in the Human World. It was odd to see him sleeping as a Leomon. Occasionally he would pop over to the Katou household on his late night meanderings to check in on Jeri's welfare and he was always an Elecmon then.

He supposed that it had something to do with the fact that they were in the Digital World now. Leomon probably wanted to be in a form that would be more useful if they were suddenly attacked and there was no time for a digivolution. When it came to combat like that, Leomon was the champ.

Impmon felt a rush of gratitude towards the big lion. When he had been killed by Impmon's own hand, or at least Beelzemon's, Beelzemon had then attempted to look after Leomon's Tamer while he was not around to do so. He hadn't actually succeeded in doing that with the D-Reaper, but he had certainly tried his hardest. And he had continued to look after her until the Leomon returned when he reached the Human World again.

And now, Leomon was returning the favour by looking after Impmon's Tamers while Impmon was away. Lesser Digimon might turn a blind eye, thinking it to be some sort of retribution for the fact that Impmon had killed them, but Leomon wasn't like that. His sense of honour was far too great and he held no grudge against Impmon whatsoever anyway.

Leomon was sleeping almost upright though. The base of his back was propped up against the hillside, but his shoulders and everything else were simply up in the air, on their own, and his arms were wrapped around his legs to keep himself in a relatively upright crouch. It seemed that he was alert, even while sleeping, so Impmon decided that it probably wouldn't be a good idea to get too close to the sleeping lion if he wanted to remain undetected, which he did.

So, Impmon quietly walked the other way and began to tiptoe the long way around the camp fire, dodging twigs with his feet as he placed them carefully on the grass. And this was only half of the ordeal – he was going to have to sneak _out_ of the campsite again after this was all over. Ugh, he couldn't sneak around in the open to save his life. Give him a bush to hide in and he could sneak up on people when they were distracted by one another, hence why he was so good at scaring couples in the park.

But this was a whole other ball game.

However, eventually, Impmon managed to reach his Tamers and Jeri, who were still seemingly dead to the world and off in dreamland. Impmon stood with his back to what remained of the fire and observed them for a few seconds.

He couldn't believe that he was this close to them. That sense of wanting to be with them and protect them returned again with an enormous force, but Impmon hastily shoved it aside, trying to squash it down. He didn't have time for that sort of thing. He didn't have time to start wondering if he was making the correct decision by doing this. He knew that he had to this – both to protect them from harm and to give him peace of mind that they were safe.

And they couldn't be allowed to follow him.

But Impmon's gut still refused to stop panging and threatening to bring up another surge of grief. He wondered what the two of them were dreaming about and the more he thought about it, the more he was sure that he was probably doing something in their dream – probably playing with them in the park or totally kicking ass as Beelzemon, or driving them around on Behemoth in the city or something.

All the things that he used to do.

All the things that he wanted to do.

And also, all the things that he couldn't do.

Impmon suppressed a sigh. This was getting him nowhere. He had to get this done and over with. Slowly and carefully, he reached forwards. His gloved hands inched towards Ai's, where she was clutching the D-Arc like it was the most precious thing in the universe. He bit his lip as he did so and then, his fingertips brushed against the back of her hands.

There was no reaction from the little girl – she could sleep like a log. But Impmon was getting angry with himself. The closer he got to his Tamers, the farther away he needed to get. He was so close and yet so far. He shook his head and concentrated on the task at hand. Slowly gripping Ai's hand with one of his own, Impmon carefully and slowly began to prize her hand away from the small device in her hands. Ai sniffed and moved slightly in her sleep, causing Impmon to freeze with Ai's hand hovering just above the D-Arc, but the girl didn't wake.

Impmon's eyes were screwed up as he slowly moved Ai's hand away from the D-Arc nestled in her other one and placed it carefully down beside her side. As soon as he let go, he drew back like it was a live cobra. The more he stayed here the harder it would be to leave. He needed to go. Now.

So, he slowly lifted the D-Arc from Ai's other palm, hoping against hope that Ai would remain asleep. And, to his great relief, she did. Then, Impmon was holding the D-Arc in both of his gloved hands.

He began to doubt that he should take the thing, but he knew that if he didn't want Ai and Mako to continue to follow him, then he had no choice. But, as he cradled the precious device in both hands, Impmon silently thought, _I promise you both that this is for your own good as much as mine. One day, I will find a way to come back, and when I do, I will bring this back to you and hopefully I will never, ever have to leave you again. And I pray that that day comes quickly._

Mako moved in his sleep slightly, and Impmon, before he could stop himself, placed a comforting hand on Mako's shoulder. Mako seemed to relax slightly in his sleep and yawned a little, before settling back down to rest. Impmon shut his eyes and withdrew his hands. _Alright,_ he thought. _I've done what I have to do. Now I can get out of here._

He turned to walk away.

And he put his foot right on the hot embers of the fire.

Impmon's hand flew to his mouth to stifle the quiet yelp that had reflexively come out of his mouth at the pain in his foot, his other hand flying to his foot and clutching it tightly. He desperately hoped that he had not succeeded in waking anybody up with that noise.

But, as he heard a muffled groan behind him, he knew that he had. His head rotated on the spot, and he found himself looking into Jeri's bleary, brown eyes. The older Tamer appeared to have stirred at the noise Impmon had accidentally made.

Jeri stared at Impmon for a few seconds with her sleepy expression. "Impmon?" she asked, sleepily. Then, her eyes flew open and she cried, "Impmon! You're here!"

Impmon swore in his mind as Jeri's shout immediately woke up the rest of the campsite. Ai and Mako stirred. Leomon's eyes opened. Mihiramon and Majiramon lifted their heads to see what all the commotion was about. Impmon, on the other hand, he did the first thing which came to mind.

He bolted.

He dashed past the fire as quickly as he could, breaking twigs beneath his feet as he did so, not that they mattered anymore. He could hear the rumbling as everyone behind him scrambled to their feet.

Impmon dashed across the ground, running past Majiramon's tail and up the hill as fast as he could, dodging around the snoozing Kumbhiramon who looked like he was just beginning to stir from Lilamon's special pollen. He heard the sounds of confusion behind him turning to realisation and felt eyes turning towards him as he dashed up the hill, the D-Arc clutched firmly in one hand.

And then, the sound that he had least wanted to here:-

"Impmon!" Ai cried.

"Impmon!" Mako echoed. "Where are you going!"

"Come back!" Ai wailed.

Impmon felt his eyes moistening up as tears of frustration and bitter sadness threatening to well up and spill out. But he didn't turn around. He forced himself not to look at the faces of the two Tamers he was abandoning for the fourth time, and the third time by choice.

"Impmon! Don't leave us!" Mako shouted.

"I'll get him," Leomon assured them and ran off after Impmon. The lion's long strides were much better for covering distance than Impmon's much shorter legs could manage and made short work of the hill that Impmon was running to the top of. Impmon was already panting for breath by the time he reached the top, and he turned around to see Leomon rushing up towards him, already halfway up the hill and gained rapidly.

Impmon gritted his teeth – he couldn't let the lion Digimon catch him. Despising every moment of doing it, he formed a Bada Boom fireball and hurled it at the oncoming lion. Leomon blanched and stopped, not because he feared the attack itself, but out of shocked amazement that Impmon had actually thrown an attack at him. Leomon dodged to one side to avoid the shot and stared at the wild-eyed Impmon.

"Impmon," he said, holding his arms out, "Please, listen to what I have to..."

"No!" Impmon shouted, cutting him off. "Stay away! Keep back! You can't come with me!"

"Impmon, please!" Leomon said. "You do not have to..."

"Tell Ai and Mako to stay away from me," Impmon shouted, although his heart panged as he knew that Ai and Mako had probably heard that shout. "It's not safe for them as long as they're anywhere near me. Keep away from me."

"Impmon..." Leomon started again.

"And now would be a really, really good time, you know!" Impmon shouted to everyone nearby as a whole. Leomon faltered, frowning in confusion at those words, but that confusion turned to shock as a pounding sound reached his ears and shortly afterwards, Diatrymon exploded into view over the lip of the hill, his huge toothy beak lashing down and grabbing Impmon back the back of the bandana around his neck. Impmon hacked as he was tossed upwards and winced as he landed on the bird's armoured back with a painful crash.

"Hold on tight, Impmon!" Diatrymon shouted and turned around to thunder across the prairie. The Ancient Bird Digimon's feet slammed the ground like a hammer with each step and propelled himself forward like a hunter as he put on a mighty turn of speed, rushing away at over sixty miles an hour.

* * *

"Impmon! No!" Ai cried, not bothering to stop herself from crying.

"Who was that?" asked Jeri, staring at where Diatrymon had disappeared.

"I think it was the bird that help us last time..." Mako said.

"Never mind who it was," Caturamon cried. Freed from the effects of Lilamon's pollen, the Dog Deva landed next to the Tamers and said, "Hop on, quick! We have to go after him."

The twins needed no second bidding, and as they clambered onto the Dog's back, Jeri quickly ran towards where Leomon was standing, pulling her own D-Arc off her belt as she did so. "Leomon, hurry!" she cried. "We need to biomerge so we can keep up with him!"

"Alright," Leomon nodded. And as Jeri cried out the magic words, they disappeared in a flash of light.

* * *

Diatrymon thundered across the ground, tearing up the track in front of him, quite literally. He had lowered his neck so it was parallel with his back in order to reduce drag as much as possible and he dashed in a straight line across the plain. On his back, Impmon fought back the sadness that threatened to envelop him at the thought of him abandoning his Tamers again, this time in front of them.

But, it was necessary.

Impmon turned around at the sounds of footsteps coming from behind and balked at what he saw. Everyone from the campsite was dashing after them in pursuit and they were beginning to catch up. SaberLeomon and Caturamon were running side by side, their paws pounding hard on the ground, while Mihiramon and Majiramon soared overheard, the tiger flapping hard to keep up the pace. Impmon could see Ai and Mako on Caturamon's back, and Kumbhiramon on Mihiramon's.

"Faster, Diatrymon!" cried Impmon. "They're gaining on us!"

"Alright then!" The Ancient Bird squawked. "But I am taking a long rest after this." Diatrymon suddenly threw himself into an even greater speed, the ground flying up from his talons so far out behind him that it threatened to collide with the faces of their ground pursuers. Diatrymon shrieked as he started to pull away, his wings spreading out and flapping upwards and backwards and adding to his speed in a bizarre air-like form of breast-stroke.

"Wait!" Impmon heard one of the pursuers shout, but he quickly tuned it out. He had decided to flee, and flee he was going to.

Diatrymon's eyes narrowed as he beheld a couple of large hills in front of him, one slightly before the other but both appearing to be side by side from the front. The Ancient Bird added to the thrusts of his legs, haring towards the hills with all the speed that he could muster. But Caturamon and SaberLeomon were fast runners as well, and while they seemed to be pulling away slightly, they weren't gaining a lot of ground.

"Hang on tight!" Diatrymon shouted as he shot between the two hills like he had been fired from a cannon. As soon as he was concealed slightly behind the first hill, he changed direction almost instantly, his claws sinking into the ground and bringing him instantly to a standstill, wheeling around in the same instance and dashing off to what had previously been his left. Impmon only just managed to grab the Champion Digimon's neck in time to stop himself from being thrown off, but he was on, when suddenly Diatrymon changed direction again and began dashing up the hill he had just run past.

The pursuing Digimon rushed past the gap in the hills as well. It took them several moments to realise that they had lost sight of their quarry, but when they did, they skidded to a halt and looked around in confusion. "Where did they go?" cried Mako. "Where are they?"

Majiramon's snake-like head was the first to spot them. "There they are!" he cried, pointing up the hill behind them. Diatrymon had almost reached the top now and had gained a lot of valuable ground on the others.

The others quickly whirled around and set off after Diatrymon once more. They were convinced that he was going to disappear over the other side of the hill once he and his passenger had reached the top, but then he suddenly surprised everyone, including Impmon, by changing direction again and rushing right towards the gap between the two, steep hills.

"What are you doing?" Impmon shouted. "We're getting closer to them again."

"Trust me!" Diatrymon shrieked. "There is a plan."

Impmon blinked and glanced at the steep edge of the hill that they were currently heading towards at high speed. "Oh, you're kidding!" he cried.

"Nope," Diatrymon yelled and increased his speed still further, practically flying towards the edge of the hill before, reaching the edge, hunkering down and springing upwards with as much power as he could, wings outstretched as he sailed into the air in between the two hilltops. Impmon clung to the back of his metal-encased neck, gripping the D-Arc tightly and trying to make sure he stayed on.

The pursuing Digimon look on in astonishment as the flightless bird Digimon leapt into the air, expecting him to go plummeting to the ground some distance below in a collision that would probably both him and his passenger. Ai and Mako were about to cry out for Impmon, but then they faltered as Diatrymon twisted his body in mid-air, so that he was facing the little group.

And then, something massive loomed out the darkness behind the falling bird and Wingdramon whooshed overhead, grabbed Diatrymon by the base of his outstretched wings in his front claws and swooping straight across and directly at both the flying Devas.

Majiramon and Mihiramon were forced to roll to one side to avoid getting slammed into by Wingdramon's enormous wings, and the cobalt-blue dragon swept past them at high speed, Diatrymon and Impmon dangling from his arms. Kumbhiramon had to scrabble to stay on Mihiramon's back, a couple of obscenities flowing from the rat's little mouth. Wingdramon carried on an whooshed away into the night.

"Hey! That's Wingdramon!" cried Ai from below. "He's here as well?"

"Look at him go!" Caturamon breathed. "I can't run that fast! There's no way I can keep up with that speed."

"You have to!" Ai and Mako cried at the same time.

"We have to follow him!" Jeri cried from SaberLeomon.

"We'll stay with him!" Majiramon cried, undulating overhead as fast as he could, while Mihiramon powered his wings alongside him. "You follow on and meet us later!" The winged tiger, the rat on its back and the darker-coloured dragon whooshed off in pursuit of the lighter-coloured and slightly smaller dragon.

* * *

Impmon struggled to get his breath back – the wind had been completely knocked out of him when they had been grabbed in Wingdramon's claws and whisked away. He still had the D-Arc clutched in one of his hands though, and he held onto it.

"A bit of warning next time, okay guys!" he shouted up at the dragon that was carrying them both.

"Sorry!" Wingdramon called back down. "We had to come up with something on the spot! And there wasn't time to say anything!"

"Cheer up, Impmon," said Calumon's voice. "We're getting away! This is like the most awesomest game of tag ever!" Impmon looked up to see that for some reason, Calumon was attached to Wingdramon's arm, wrapped in a little cocoon of faintly glowing ribbon-like pink beams that clearly had come from Lilamon. The fairy in question was sitting on Wingdramon's back, only she was facing the wrong way so she could look behind her and she appeared to have secured herself there by wrapping more of them around her legs and Wingdramon's torso, pinning her into her seat.

"Guys!" she cried from up above. "The two flying Devas are still on our tails. They could be a problem unless we can go any faster."

"I'm already going as quickly as I can when I'm weighed down with passengers!" Wingdramon cried. "If I go much faster then Impmon will get blown off."

Lilamon looked down at Impmon, leaning as far out to the side as the ribbons-like tendrils covered her legs allowed. "You don't mind if I shoot at them do you? Your Tamers aren't with them – they're still on the ground. And I'll be firing warning shots only."

"Go ahead!" Impmon cried. "Try not to hit them though!"

"If they have any sense, I won't," Lilamon cried and raised her hands. **"MARVEL SHOT!" **she cried, and she began to shoot streams of bright, iridescent energy spheres from between her petals that shot towards the two flying Devas following them

* * *

"Incoming!" Kumbhiramon cried, from Mihiramon's back as the energy spheres lanced towards them. Mihiramon and Majiramon quickly separated, causing the Marvel Shots to zing past them like brightly coloured bullets. Wingdramon dived lower to the ground and swept along it so low that his tail almost scraped against it, and then swooped off to the side to curl around another hill. Majiramon and Mihiramon tried to follow him downwards, but Lilamon's bright energy spheres lanced up at them again and forced them to dodge around them.

"Jeez, they must really not want us to catch up to them!" Mihiramon observed as he spurred his wings to propel him upwards as a bunch of Marvel Shots sailed beneath him.

"We can't lose them!" Majiramon cried. "We need to tell Impmon what he needs to know about GranDracmon."

Mihiramon nodded and swooped downwards, trying to gain some ground of the fleeing Wingdramon. "Hold up!" he shouted over to them. "We need to..." He stopped talking abruptly as a single, surprisingly accurate Marvel Shot lanced towards his head. The tiger was forced to tuck in his wings and barrel-roll over to avoid getting hit.

Unfortunately, Kumbhiramon lost his grip and went plummeting down towards the ground with a wail. "Oops. Sorry!" Mihiramon shouted after him, but kept flying, knowing the Rat Deva wouldn't be very hurt from the fall.

* * *

"Whoa! Watch it!" Diatrymon cried as he pulled his feet up to stop them from hitting a large rock that loomed ahead of them. "You're getting too close to the ground, Wingdramon! Get much lower and my toes will start leaving grooves in it!"

"Sorry!" Wingdramon cried. "Lilamon! Let them get a little bit closer for a moment! I'm going to try something that should let us gain some ground on them!"

"Okay!" nodded Lilamon, closing her petals and ceasing her Marvel Shot attacks. Wingdramon rose off the ground and little a slowed down slightly, glancing over his shoulder to see the tiger and his fellow dragon Digimon swooping down towards them. When he judged that the distance between them had closed enough, he suddenly changed direction and swooped vertically straight upwards. Mihiramon and Majiramon struggled to stop, but they overshot before they could do so.

Both turned to look up at where Wingdramon was flying upwards, Diatrymon and Impmon practically pressed against his belly, before the dragon suddenly flipped over back onto his front and whooshed off to the east flapping his wings once to steady himself before going back to his weird looking gliding.

"Yeah!" whooped Lilamon. "When it comes to flying, nobody can top Wingdramon!"

"I think I'm going to hurl!" Impmon cried.

"Not on me, you're not!" cried Diatrymon. "Hold it in! Hold it in!"

Calumon was just laughing in exhilaration at the flight. Wingdramon kept his course straight and flew like an arrow across the Prairie level. However, Impmon noticed something and said, "Wait! Wingdramon! You're going the wrong way! The Temple is in the other direction!"

"I know, Impmon!" Wingdramon called down. "That's why I'm heading this way! You don't want them to follow us, so I'm heading the wrong way on purpose so they'll probably head this way when we lose them! We can double back later!"

"Haven't we lost them yet?" Impmon shouted.

"I'm afraid not!" Lilamon cried! "They're still coming, but there quite some distance further away now! Move your tail, Wingdramon!"

"I'm going, I'm going!" Wingdramon cried.

"No, I meant move your tail. It's in my way!"

"Oh," Wingdramon said, a little sheepishly and dropped his tail downwards, giving Lilamon a clear shot at the pursuing tiger and dragon some distance away. She unleashed a bunch of Marvel Shots at them, the attack lighting up the darkness like a firework display. Majiramon swooped underneath one round of shots from Lilamon, while Lilamon quickly altered her aim and let some loose at the distance speck of Mihiramon. The tiger Deva ducked down too, but the spheres followed him so he quickly rolled upwards and over the top of it again.

"This doesn't appear to be working," Lilamon shouted. "These two know how to fly as well. They've probably been in quite a few battles in the air. My warning shots aren't going to work on them."

"Then we'll just have to outrun them!" Impmon shouted.

"I can't go any faster than this at the moment," Wingdramon shouted. "But maybe if you were lashed to me like Lilamon and Calumon are, I might able to go faster!"

"Alright then!" Impmon cried. "Let's do that then!"

"But I can't do it from up here," Lilamon protested. "You'll have to climb up here, if you want me to do that." She let off a barrage of more spheres that forced Majiramon to roll to the left to avoid them. The dragon Deva lost a little bit of ground though as he did so. Lilamon turned her attention back to Mihiramon, seeking to drive him backwards as well.

Impmon look up at the climb up Wingdramon's arm that would lead to his back. He briefly considered digivolving into Beelzemon Blast Mode and just flying up, but he knew that he wouldn't' have a hope in hell of keeping pace with Wingdramon if he did that.

He glanced at the D-Arc in his hand. He doubted that he would be able to make the climb with only one hand. He glanced around for a safe place to put it, and quickly found the only option available to him. He clambered up Diatrymon's neck and perched precariously on his head, before saying, "Hi Ironbeak! Open wide."

Diatrymon opened his mouth to say, "What?" But as he did, Impmon leaned down and shoved the D-Arc between Diatrymon's mandibles and then clamped his beak shut. "Don't you dare drop or swallow that!" he cried. "Or you'll answer to me!"

"Omm, cmm nnn!" Diatrymon protested, but Impmon was able to decipher what he said. But the little Rookie quickly changed position and, ignoring the wind whooshing all around him, he clambered back down Diatrymon's neck and hauled himself over onto one wing, grabbing the smooth scales on Wingdramon's arm. The little imp began to climb, pulling himself hand over hand slowly and arduously up the front of the dragon's arm.

Calumon provided a momentary convenient footrest as Impmon planted his foot on the top of the little In-Training's head. "Ow! Hey!" Calumon protested as Impmon put his weight on top of him for a moment.

"Sorry, Cream Puff," cried Impmon, and continued to climb upwards. The wing buffeted him and made it difficult for him to keep his grip, but Impmon was not about to compromise their escape by getting blown off if her could help it. He scooted over to the side of Wingdramon's arm and gripped the skin flap coming out of the back of it, using it as a slightly stretching handhold.

Impmon eventually managed to reach Wingdramon's shoulder, where he braced himself against the wind by planting his foot at the base of Wingdramon's wing and grunt in exertion. He looked upwards – he still needed to climb to the top of the large, skin encircled lance sticking out the dragon's back and pointing above his head.

But, fortunately, he would not need to. Lilamon reached downwards, leaning backwards as far as she could go with her legs pinned to Wingdramon's flank. Impmon reached up and, after a couple of seconds, Lilamon's petals closed around Impmon's gloved hand and held firm. The Ultimate level fairy pulled him up and set him on the huge lance in front of her.

"What now?" Impmon shouted as he pressed his belly against it to shelter from the strong wind.

"Hold still," Lilamon said, pointing her petal-fingers at him. **"LILA SHOWER!"** The pink ribbon-like beams lanced from her petal-tips and wrapped themselves around Impmon, pinning him to Wingdramon's back. Then, Lilamon leaned backwards so she was on her back and wrapped more around her own body to secure herself in a lying down position.

"Now, Wingdramon!" she shouted.

"Hope you're ready for this!" he shouted, and suddenly his speed notably increased. Lilamon, Calumon and Impmon found the breath leaving their bodies at the sensation of moving at such speeds – Wingdramon was putting the fastest rollercoasters to shame here. Diatrymon kept his mouth clenched shut, but his eyes were also screwed shut and it looked like he was trying not to be sick himself. He'd lose the D-Arc if he was. Plus, nobody likes anonymous sick falling out of the air.

Wingdramon shot away across the Prairie level, and it wasn't long before Majiramon and Mihiramon lost him completely. The two of them came to a stop, hovering and both of them breathing relatively hard as they stared at the spot where their quarry had disappeared.

"Whoa," panted Mihiramon. "Who was that guy?"

"I have no idea," Majiramon replied. "But he sure as heck was fast. I've never seen anything move that fast through the air before." (He had never seen an aeroplane move though, and while Wingdramon could outstrip aeroplanes with ease, he wasn't going that fast because if he did, the air pressure would probably kill his passengers).

There was a pause, as the two Devas collected their thoughts. Then, Mihiramon frowned and said, "The twins are not going to be happy with this."

"No," Majiramon agreed. "Not only did we not catch up with their partner, but we lost the best lead we had to finding him again. This night could have gone a whole lot better."

* * *

Wingdramon kept flying at that speed for a good five minutes before he winged his way around and took off to the side, where he flew for another minute before he finally decided to slow down and settle down on the ground far below him. As Diatrymon's feet touched the ground, the Ancient Bird Digimon collapsed onto his front.

Gasping for breath, Lilamon raised a hand and snapped her petals. Instantly, the Lila Shower ribbons fizzled out of existence, causing Calumon to drop to the ground in a heap, while Lilamon and Impmon just slumped on Wingdramon's back for some time, gasping for air.

"Wow," Lilamon inhaled forcefully. "You... weren't kidding when... you said that... you could... move... fast."

Wingdramon smiled wryly and said, "Well, it worked anyway. We managed to escape from the others. Are you happy now, Impmon?"

Impmon gasped and slid numbly down Wingdramon's body, falling to the ground and crawling over to Diatrymon. The Bird Digimon had deposited the D-Arc on the ground and Impmon scooped it up and held it in his hand. "Not happy," he said. "But... relieved... to know that my Tamers... will be safer without this..." He turned to look at the others and said, "Thanks. All of you. I... couldn't have done it without your help."

"Even me?" Calumon sucked in air deeply.

"Yeah, even you," Impmon replied. Then, he turned and looked back in the direction they had come:-

"I'm sorry, Ai. I'm sorry, Mako. One day, you'll understand that this is for the best. Maybe not today... but one day."

* * *

Well, that might not be what many of you were hoping for. I'm sure that a some of you will have wanted Impmon to go straight back to his Tamers, but that's not going to happen anytime soon. They still have an important role to play in the future, but Impmon was not about to just abandon his theory of protecting them by staying away. Sorry. Anyway, I hope the chapter was fun.

Prepare for the first installation of the next arc tomorrow. Things will really start to roll now. And I know I say that in every arc, but trust me on this one. Every arc from now on is going to have a pretty major development to the story.

Prepare for some returning characters, including one which I loved writing when I wrote him before, and was annoyed that I chose to keep him out of the story in my plan until now. But he's back, so I'm all good now.

* * *

Next time...

This chapter will be a first amongst all the chapters I have done so far, as it will only feature a couple of events from the point of view of the bad guys instead of the good guys. We'll see how Darth Sidious has been viewing the last few months, and the beginnings of an evil plan against one particular member of our group of heroes.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 121 : An InSidious Plot**


	121. An InSidious Plot

Bloody hell, last night was eventful. The end of the year is approaching so it was decided that I would go out with the other people on my course for an evening out. I don't drink and I intended to get back by half eleven so that I could get a decent night's sleep in order to keep the calibre of the chapters up. Instead, I ended up having to act as a crutch when my friend had too much to drink and lost control of his stomach, and had to sleep over at a friend's house because he couldn't make the walk back to campus, which meant I was up until three in the morning.

I hope this chapter isn't dulled thanks to lack of sleep. Anyway, prepare for the first chapter faced entirely on the baddies.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 121:- An InSidious Plot**

* * *

What had once been the site of a furious brawl between the forces of the Republic and the ferocious creature known as the Zillo Beast now lay in ruins and chaos – more so than it had been before the fight was taken to the area. The Works was well known for lying in a shambles of crumbling buildings, but even so, the amount of destruction the confrontation had wrought was absolutely phenomenal.

Apparently, as far as everyone was aware, the Zillo Beast had panicked when it had realised that it was slowly choking to death and had gone into a frenzy of motions, destroying things left, right and centre, busting down buildings and pounding in the ground and knocking over empty fuel towers as it went into its death throes, before it had collapsed to the ground with an almighty thud.

The battle site had been some distance away from one of the tallest towers in the Works, so far away that the battlezone couldn't even be seen if you stood at the top of that tower. But Darth Sidious had seen the ridiculous amount of destruction that the incident had caused when he flew over the area and now, as he stood at the top of the tower, he stared outwards in the direction that the brawl had taken place in. He had not been here when it happened, he had been in hiding like the rest of the Senate.

Sidious prided himself on his skills as a Sith Lord – he was a smooth manipulator, who knew exactly how to influence other people, even the Jedi, into getting the things that he wanted. His influence in the Senate was extremely high, much higher than many people would have thought possible. He had a say in just about every debate and he almost always wound up the result that he wanted, which would benefit his master plan.

And what was his master plan?

To wipe out the entire Jedi order from the face of existence. To have the Sith dominate the galaxy once and for all. To rule, unchallenged and strong, and to create a universe that suited his every need, so that he could command all with an iron fist.

But such a feat was always going to be a difficult task for Sith Lords, regardless of what method they used to do so. For a start, it was a rule that there were only to be a maximum of two Sith Lords at a time – the Master and the apprentice. Sidious agreed with this rule. As long as it meant that he was the master, then he would have much less to fear from other members of the Sith. All Sith were selfish and thought only about their own power, and if there were too many of them they would constantly be at war with one another.

Sidious didn't doubt that he own apprentice, Darth Tyranus, otherwise known as Count Dooku, was trying to find some way of overthrowing him as well. Just as he had done with his own master. But Sidious would never allow that to happen. His senses were highly attuned and if he caught the faintest whiff of treachery from Dooku, things were not going to go well for the old man. Sidious' prowess with the Dark Side of the Force was much stronger than Dooku's.

And, by far the biggest obstacle in his grand design of taking over the galaxy was the Jedi Order.

Anger twisted in his gut when Sidious thought of the Jedi. They were the exact opposite of the Sith, and they stood for everything that the Sith stood against. All that rubbish about compassion and selflessness made Sidious feel nauseous. Those kind of traits never got you anywhere – wasting your emotions on others was never wise, for they never repaid you back for your efforts. Sidious knew this. And they got you killed too. Hundreds of Jedi had been gunned down since the war started but the only two Sith Lords around were still very much alive.

His hatred for the Jedi festered inside him, his terrible anger at the thought of so many Jedi still out there to destroy fuelling the fire and making him strong.

But he had plans for the Jedi Order. And this war was the key to everything.

The grand plan had always been complex, but once it had gotten started it would be so simple to execute. The war was not only designed to have the Jedi killed off, but it was also designed to spread them thinly across the galaxy, make them more and more isolated and therefore more and more vulnerable. The idea was that they would also start to stop listening to their morals and go to greater and greater lengths to achieve victory as the Separatists marched their way across the Galaxy. And, not only that, but they would start to rely more and more on the faithful clone troopers that they had at their backs.

But to start a war, the Republic would have needed an army. And that is why Count Dooku and Darth Sidious had worked together to order the creation of the clone army from the Kaminoans and then carefully cover all their tracks until the right time, when the army was ready and the Jedi would have had no choice but to use their aid in order to win the war against the Separatists. And that had worked almost better than Sidious had hoped. The clone army had been fully brought into the Republic to combat the droids. And thus, the war had been born, all thanks to his designs.

Sidious sneered at the thought of the clones. The Jedi worked so hard to ensure that as many of them as possible survived to tell the tale after each and every battle they went into. They claimed that the clones were people and should be treated as such. But Sidious didn't give a damn about how many clones died in the conflict as long as enough survived to carry out his final plan. The fact that several Senate members continued to try and stop the production of clones was extremely irritating, and sooner or later, Sidious would find a way to ensure that their efforts were in vain.

But the clones were proving to be valuable to him. They were better than droids in many ways because they did have emotions. That meant that the Jedi were far more likely to start trusting them. And they appeared to be doing just that. Many of them were even becoming good friends with the soldiers around them. And that would be their downfall.

And then there was the one other thing that Sidious desired most of all. Anakin Skywalker. The Chosen One himself. He was well aware of the prophecy that stated Anakin would be the one to destroy the Sith and "bring balance to the Force." That was just a Jedi view though. The Force would only be brought into balance when all of them were eliminated and the Dark Side of the Force was all that remained in the universe.

Ever since Sidious had met Anakin, he had known that he would be the one that he wanted as his apprentice when he finally took over the galaxy. The Force within Anakin was incredibly strong, especially for such a young Jedi. With Anakin by his side, Sidious would be able to accomplish just about anything. And the fact that the Chosen One himself would turn on the Galaxy would cow the people into submission even faster than they otherwise would.

It was perfect. Flawless.

Count Dooku was of little consequence. Once the war was over and he had fulfilled his usefulness, Sidious was planning to dispose of him anyway. Once the Jedi had been successfully eliminated, all of those people in the Separatists that were helping him to fulfil his grand plan could be gotten rid of.

The money grabbing worms like San Hill and Nute Gunray would have no place under his rule. They would die, preferably at the hands of his new apprentice in Skywalker.

The Jedi butcher, General Grievous, would no longer be needed either. With no Jedi to kill, he would be no longer be required. Sometimes Sidious toyed with the idea of keeping him around to spread his terror, but the droid was too wild and unpredictable. He would have to go too.

And Count Dooku, his assassin, Asajj Ventress, and everyone else like them, could all be disposed of as well. Not that Dooku knew that this was what Sidious was planning to do. He knew that Sidious wanted Anakin on the side of the Dark Side, but he was unaware that Sidious was planning for Anakin to usurp his position as the one apprentice of the Sith Lord Master.

Ever since he had met Anakin, he had made efforts to get close to him, and through his subtle influences and careful choices of words, Sidious had been helping to mould Anakin into the person that he had been when the Clone Wars started – a skilled, yet arrogant young man. Arrogance was perfect for manipulation. Sidious was planning to build on any frustration that Anakin revealed to him when it came to the Jedi order, and arrogant powerful Jedi were often easily frustrated by what the council members did and the way things went too slowly for their likely. That was how he had managed to convert Dooku and a bunch of others.

And when the time was right, Sidious wanted to turn Anakin on the rest of the order, once it was weak enough and susceptible to attack, making him believe that they were corrupt and wanted more power, when in reality that was what applied to Sidious himself. Then, Anakin would help him to destroy him, and would be quickly consumed by darkness until it filled him up from within and he never questioned what Sidious asked of him again.

Whenever Sidious thought of that future which he envisioned for the galaxy, he always felt a thrill running through him at the mere thought of everything he was planning. He had the plan, and the Jedi didn't have a clue who he was, so it should have been relatively easy.

But, things were not working out the way that he wanted it to. The Clone Wars had started an then, for a few months, everything seemed to be going along first rate, moving in the pattern of senseless bloodshed and violence that Sidious wanted to begin the demise of the Jedi.

But, half a year ago, his master plan had started to slip. At first there were only mild things which went wrong, that could easily be covered up or really didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Even the fact that the Jedi had somehow managed to discover his existence was not a real threat to him. They could do nothing but keep a closer eye on the Senate, and as long as he was careful, he could still avoid detection.

But then things had started to spiral out of his control, each passing month creating more and more problems for him, until it looked like Sidious' greatest fear could be realised. Failure. Sidious hated the word failure and feared more than anything that his master plan to eliminate the Jedi wouldn't work out. And, to his anger and great dismay, it seemed to be a very real possibility now.

First off, Republic victories seemed to start getting easier. The resourcefulness that the Jedi seemed to exhibit was surprising, even to him and his foresight. Nothing had warned him about this. Less clones were dying and more droids were being wrecked in many of the bouts across the galaxy. Even when Sidious leaked information that a certain area was about to be attacked by the Republic, allowing the Separatists to shore up their defences against the Jedi, they still seemed to be able to overcome it in many instances with a surprising lack of casualties.

The Separatists were being pushed back more and more these days. They had almost completely been purged from the Mid Rim now, and while there were still many places in the Outer Rim where they remained strong, it was far, far less than Sidious would have wanted. The Jedi were supposed to be stretched thin and dying off, but that just didn't seem to be happening at the moment. They were surviving their battles and succeeding in their skirmished far more than Sidious had foreseen they would.

But, while the situation with the failing Separatists was a serious threat to what Sidious had in mind, it was by no means the biggest part. The biggest, and also the most personal, part of his plan to put himself in power just wasn't happening. Anakin Skywalker had been succumbing to his moulding with ease over the years, but now a visible change was being wrought in the young Jedi Knight.

For months now, Anakin had been growing increasingly distant from Sidious. Sidious had, at first, put that down to the stresses of war, confident in the fact that Anakin would still come to confide in him as a person. But then, he slowly began to realise that it was more than that. Anakin had often skipped out on his invitations to visit, even though Sidious knew that he wasn't doing anything in particular. He had been spending time in the Jedi Temple instead, and Sidious didn't have a clue why.

But there was more still. Anakin's personality was changing too, slowly at first but then more and more as the months went by. His frustrations against the Jedi slowly began to disappear. He became friendlier and slightly more open with everyone else. And the arrogance which had made him so easy to manipulate had all but cleared up completely. This was not the way things were supposed to be going. Anakin was supposed to be becoming even more arrogant as the war went by, as he pulled off more and more spectacular victories.

But it just wasn't happening. Even the second assault on Geonosis, in which they didn't even lose one trooper, had no marked effect on him – at least not in the way that Sidious would have hoped. Such a spectacular victory should have gone right to Anakin's head, but it didn't. It seemed to have the opposite effect, making him more humble than before.

Before, every chance he got, he would speak to the Holonet news about the great feats that he had pulled off in skirmishes, even as a Padawan.

Now, nothing seemed to show but humility, and he avoided the Holonet news as much as possible.

That wasn't like the Anakin of old at all.

Sidious knew that he was losing his grip on the young man. The proverbial fingers that he had wrapped around Anakin were slowly and unwillingly beginning to loosen. Now, he was holding on with only the tips of his fingernails and it seemed that it wouldn't be long before they lost their grip too. Particularly after that incident with the Zillo Beast. The old Anakin wouldn't have hesitated to put the fate of the war before the fate of the Beast. But the new Anakin had done the opposite.

And that wasn't the only sign either. After the Battle of Mygeeto, Sidious had been able to get Anakin alone for a small one on one talk that sounded like a pleasant catch-up, but had really been a way for him to determine exactly how much Anakin had changed. During the ensuing conversation, Sidious had been able to slip in a mention of the death of Anakin's mother at the hands of the Sand People, and had carefully examined Anakin's body language and sensed his emotions as he did.

Before, whenever he brought up that subject, Anakin's face would immediately darken and turn into a hate-filled glare at the thought. But this time, Sidious had been shocked to see that, apart for a dull thud of sadness at the fact and cloud of anger that was quickly suppressed, Anakin's only reaction was to wince slightly. It was as if Anakin had somehow come to terms with his loss, or something had happened to him that made it easier for him to bear.

It was then that Sidious had realised just how far out of his grasp Anakin had now gotten. And he was fairly certain that he knew the cause of Anakin's change in his behaviour. When Anakin had gotten a Padawan in the form of Ahsoka, he had changed a little, but not an awful lot, since Ahsoka was brash and almost as cocky as Anakin was himself to begin with, maybe even more so considering she was perhaps the youngest ever Padawan.

But it was the youngest ever Jedi Knight that was the main cause in this decrease in Anakin's traits that Sidious wanted, and the increase in those he didn't.

Aayla Secura.

Sidious felt anger boiling inside him as he thought of the skilled Twi'lek Jedi. Despite the fact that Aayla was an exceptional Jedi in terms of Force prowess and lightsaber skill for one so young, there wasn't a trace of arrogance in her anywhere. And Sidious knew from his memories of the events of the Clone Wars that the changes he was seeing in Anakin had started when Aayla had been partnered with Anakin and Ahsoka after the incident on Behpour.

It was then that everything had started going downhill for him.

Sidious had no idea how the Twi'lek woman was doing it, but it frustrated him no end. Anakin had surprised him by giving her most of the credit after Behpour, where he normally loved to grab the spotlight. But Sidious had thought little of it, only to realise later that he was wrong. Somehow, Aayla was having a profound effect on the man he hoped to be his future apprentice.

Perhaps some of her personality traits were rubbing off on him, but both Anakin and Ahsoka had started to become more and more like normal, selfless Jedi than their previous selves. Sidious had not minded Anakin having a Padawan because of the fact that Ahsoka was as bull-headed as her Master. But she had been the first to change after Aayla had been paired with them to form the A-Team, and slowly Anakin had started to do it too.

Sidious felt many theories circulating through him as to whole Aayla was so single-handedly ruining his plans and probably not even realising it. After they had learned he had existed, Anakin had also learned of the fact that Sidious was seeking to turn him to the Dark Side. Perhaps Aayla had been keeping a close eye on him to ensure that didn't happen.

But that didn't explain why the arrogance was disappearing too. Sidious had a different theory for this one. He was starting to think that having a Jedi of the same calibre constantly fighting by his side was causing Anakin to realise that he wasn't quite as unique as he had once believed. It was possible that it had been Aayla coming up with many of the strategies that they were using to defeat the Separatists, so Anakin's previous egotism at his brilliance on the battlefield would have been voided by that.

And it wasn't just that either. When Anakin had been working on his own, with only Ahsoka, they had won a good deal of their skirmishes, but they had still lost several. Nowhere near as many as they were winning, but still a good many. And then Aayla had entered the picture and the so called A-Team had been created. Sidious hated that nickname that had been given to the three of them – because the A-Team had been taking the galaxy by storm. It was ridiculous – the fact that they had yet to lose a single one of their battles that they fought side by side. Nobody was that perfect, not even himself. There were many instances where the Republic had succeeded where they weren't meant to beforehand. But now, the A-Team were sweeping across the galaxy and demolishing the Separatists everywhere they landed.

While they were by no means the only thing stopping the Separatists, as there were many, many other groups of Jedi and clones fighting on other planets, they were still the main driving force. So Sidious could blame Aayla for that part of his plan going wrong as well. The fact that two Jedi Knights, who had not been Knights for very long, and a Jedi Padawan, were the main force behind his plan falling down around him, was just irritating.

And now Barriss Offee had entered the picture. What effect would the Mirialan have on Anakin as well? Would she have the same effect as Aayla and even enhance it still further. Sidious had no way of knowing. He had done some research discretely into Aayla though, and the discovery of how much they had been friends as Padawans, along with Barriss, was unsettling. It might explain why Anakin was spending less time coming to visit him – he was spending his time hanging around with the others instead.

Sidious' hood always masked his face everywhere he went, but you could tell from the visible portion of his features that he had a furious look on his features. As he strode further into the complex that he used as his secret base in the Works, there was one thought running through his mind:-

He needed to salvage his plan to the best of his ability. He needed to try and find a way of luring Anakin back into his grip so that he could continue his manipulations of the young man. And right now, the first step in doing that was to get rid of the biggest obstacle that had been blocking his path to victory.

Aayla Secura had to die!

It was the best way to begin. If he started making efforts to get Anakin back while Aayla was still around, the Twi'lek could easily pull him back again just as quickly. And considering the rate at which the Separatists were being captured and losing the war, it was important to get Aayla eliminated as quickly as possible. But how was Sidious supposed to do this? He had to do it in such a way that it couldn't be connected all the way back to him.

And, as his ingenious brain began to come up with a potential way for him to accomplish what he wanted more than anything – the death of a certain Rutian Twi'lek, who was currently at the top of his hit-list.

Stepping up to a large console in the larger chamber that constituted the hangar, training area and communications area, Sidious pushed a button to contact Count Dooku.

* * *

Deep in the Outer Rim territories, in the D'Astan sector of the Galaxy, there was a large planet that orbited one sun at a slow and steady speed. It was a lush planet on the surface, dominated by several different biomes and terrain types. The most prominent of these was a thick rainforest that covered a large portion of the land, and where there were not trees, there was either a vast open savannah, or there were deep blue oceans. The planet was definitely a warm one, but also one of civilisation.

There were a large number of cities dominating the surface of this particular planet. The capital of Carannia was the largest by far, and it was well-known for vast-open air markets. The cities might have been large but they were relatively thinly spread and it took aircraft to reach them quickly as there were very few trails that ran across the surface of the planet, leaving the wildlife undisturbed.

It's humanoid inhabitants included humans, which were just about everywhere across the galaxy anyway, Twi'leks who could also hold claim to that title (and very, very few of the Twi'leks on this planet were slaves), and Chiss, basic humanoids that were similar to Duros, with blue skin and red eyes, except they had more human-like features and also were known for having long white hair.

This was the planet Serenno, a famous planet that was governed by an aristocracy, although the system here was vastly different to the ones on planets such as Naboo, which were ruled over by a single queen.

This planet was ruled by six Great Houses that governed what happened on their soil. And each Great House was owned and led by a Count.

And, not surprisingly, this was the planet where the most famous of all the Counts was born. Dooku had been born into a life of wealth and luxury when he had been brought into the galaxy well over seventy years ago. The man had been taken away and trained as a Jedi, leaving behind his title and claim to being a Count. But, after he had abandoned the Jedi Order and joined the Dark Side, Dooku had returned to lay claim to his title, and henceforth, he had been Count Dooku of Serenno.

And now, Serenno was one of the key worlds that were still under the thumbs of the Confederacy of Independent Systems. It lay deep within the Outer Rim, so it was not an easy planet to get to. Not to mention all the surrounding planets were also members of the Separatist alliance, whether willingly or not, and they had strong defences and fleets that would make it difficult for a large fleet to get through to attack the planet directly.

As a result, Serenno was still a stronghold for the Separatist Alliance. Count Dooku, despite being only one of six, was definitely the one who had the most say in what happened on Serenno. The rest of the Six Families feared him and allowed him to get away with whatever he wanted. And they were unable to call from assistance from the Republic. All they could do was wait in fear until they were rescued from the clutches of their fellow Count.

Fortunately for them, Dooku tended to leave them well alone. As long as there was no uprising against him, the rest of Serenno was pretty much allowed to live life as usual. Dooku himself concentrated on other things that were of far more importance to him, such as winning the war, which it seemed was not going all that well for him at the moment.

The old man was as irritated by the success of the Jedi as his Master, Darth Sidious. He had spent a very large portion of the funds and wealth that his family had possessed in order to keep the war going and provide the Separatists with the means to assault another system or two. And while there was still a great amount of wealth surging into the main part of the Count's wealth, there was only so much that the Count could do on his own. War cost a lot of money.

Dooku spent most of his time in his large palace these days. It was a large structure of grey stone and concrete, built on the edge of a large cliff that overlooked the rainforest. It had large grounds consisting of several towers and large rectangular patches of foliage, three on either side of the long aisle that led up to the main building itself – a large and oddly shaped structure that was ovular and jutted up the edge of the cliff. There were several landings in it, and many antennae sticking out the roof to receive signals quickly.

Dooku's main room inside the complex was a large conference-like room. The end wall contained a large circular window that led out to the drop over the cliff below. Placed before the window was the chair that Dooku usually used, and before that was the long, slightly semi-circular console table with various controls. The rest of the space was empty and would normally be filled with chairs that the citizens of Serenno could come and sit in to listen to their Count addressing them. But these had all been cleared away. Dooku had little need of them.

Dooku spent most of his time in this room, meditating and doing his best to govern the war effort. It was becoming more difficult with each passing day. Even several Senators that had joined with the Separatists were now leaving them and rejoining with the Republic. But, he would often give and receive transmissions from the large holocommunicator set in the console chamber.

Right now, Dooku was standing and gazing out of the window towards the rainforest, as he often did when he was brooding. His palace was largely empty, the staff replaced with service droids to carry out the menial tasks like cooking and cleaning. Dooku couldn't afford to waste time with wages and other such things.

Dooku was patiently waiting for a couple of reports to come in regarding the war against the Republic. The results of those two reports would determine what he would do next, and as a strategist, it was important to think carefully before planning his next move.

As he stared out of the window, his eye caught movement on the horizon. He looked up and spotted a large ship flying towards his castle at high speed. A ship that looked absolutely nothing like a ship, but more like some kind of flying squid. It was even painted orange. A long, pointed front like a nose and four tentacle-like, undulating and pulsing up and down behind it. It was a very familiar ship indeed and it was called the _Trident._

Dooku felt a smile cross his face as the ship flew over the fortress and he listened to the sounds of its engines as it prepared to land and the sounds of four tentacle-like legs touching down on the ground behind him – he didn't even turn around from the window.

It was about time. One of this agents had arrived.

And then he spotted something else moving through the air towards his fortress. Another ship, this one smaller than the previous one and much simpler in design. This ship was a Bellbullab-22 starfighter that he had personally given to one of his most powerful members of the army, and it had been dubbed _The Soulless One._

Both of them had arrived at almost the same time. Well, this should prove interesting.

* * *

After the _Trident_ settled onto the ground and the end of the aisle that lead up to Dooku's main fortress, it stood there for several moments like some giant, marine invertebrate that ,looked quite out of place in a jungle planet like Serenno. But, as it continued to stand there, the doors between its tour tentacles, with were folded slightly like the legs of a beetle and propping the body upright in the air, slid open.

A second after that, a single, lone figure dropped out of the doors and landed smoothly on the ground beneath the ship, before rising up and standing upright, cold blue eyes staring upwards at the castle that loomed ahead. That was her destination. It was a woman of a slender build, characterized by her skintight clothing of purple around the chest and pelvic areas and the bands of lilac coloured material that were wrapped around her stomach and each of her four limbs.

She was mainly characterized by the pair of curved lightsaber hilts that hung from her waist, and the grey-skinned, bald head decorated with various purple tattoo designs around the back and on her chin.

It was Asajj Ventress.

The Dark Jedi was the last of her brethren after the rest of them had been taken out by Quinlan Vos and Aayla Secura on the planet Boz Pity which they had made their base on. Ventress' face still darkened whenever that incident was brought up – it had left a huge stain on her reputation. Not only had she been unable to defeat Aayla when she didn't even have a lightsaber on her and was wearing a slave outfit, somehow Aayla had managed to acquire her lightsaber and then attach a boulder to Ventress' ankle and push her off a cliff.

Ventress still had absolutely no idea how Aayla had managed to do all of that, but it had automatically put the Twi'lek Jedi Knight second from the top of people that she thought needed to die. Ahsoka Tano still held precedence at the very top of the list, but this was mainly because of the even more humiliating way that Ahsoka had managed to overpower her despite the fact that Ventress had held all the cards. Not to mention the punishment she had received for that incident.

The Rattataki woman immediately started to walk up the aisle and between the neatly arranged yet still unkempt gardens on the grounds of the estate. There was an arrogant stride in her step now. Ever since the embarrassment of Sernpidal and Boz Pity, Ventress had been more eager than ever to please Count Dooku and redeem herself in his eyes. And she had a feeling that the Count would actually be pleased to hear what she had to say this time.

Up ahead, she could see the large assortment of blocky, pointed pillars that rested in their little niches on the ground. Dooku had mercilessly drilled her with Force techniques by telling her to lift all of them with her mind when she had trained here. It had been like going through hell under the Count's cruel tutelage, but Ventress maintained that it had all been worth it in the end.

But, before she got too far, a noise interrupted her thoughts – the sounds of a starfighter's engines. She looked upwards, seeking out the source of the disturbance and her face, which had previously been a little smug, twisted into the familiar snarl of anger at the sight of _The Soulless_ _One_, swooping low over the castle.

_Ugh,_ she thought, as she turned to watch the smaller starfighter whooshing over her head and coming to a mid-air halt right beside her own, much larger space vessel. _Why did _he_ have to show up here now? Now of all times._

_The Soulless One _slowly lowered itself to the ground and came to rest on it with decidedly less sound than Ventress' _Trident_ had made when it thunked heavily onto the ground with its four legs. The little starfighter's cockpit instantly withdrew and a pair of plated, duranium alloy hands grabbed onto the sides of the vessel, and pushed upwards, lifting the person in the starfighter out of the ship.

The person switched one hand over to the same side as the other and flipped out of the ship, his shoulders rotating completely around so that he landed on his feet with his hands still in the same position as before, and then he let go of the starfighter. Ventress watched sourly as the person walked stiffly towards her, placing his alloy hands behind his back. The alloy, robotic-like body, broad shoulder guards and chest, taloned feet and skull-like mask covering his face, through which two, yellow, slitted reptilian eyes glared out was all that anyone would need to identify the being.

"Good morning, General," Ventress sneered with false sweetness. "How was your latest mission?"

"I believe that I should be the one asking you that, assassin," General Grievous growled as he approached the shorter and thinner person. "Or do you not hold that title anymore? After all, when was the last time you successfully dispatched a victim that you were order to kill. Or any life-form in fact?"

"Your childish attempts to goad me will not work, Grievous," Ventress sniffed, although she had actually been enraged by the former Kaleesh's comment. The enmity between Ventress and Grievous had increased even further than it had when they had worked together over Sernpidal over the capture of Ahsoka Tano. Especially since Grievous never stopped reminding her of the punishment she had suffered after that incident.

"I'll have you know that I accomplished my mission with a success," Ventress said, smugly.

"Is that so?" Grievous sneered back as he pulled to a halt beside his supposed colleague. "I am genuinely surprised to hear it, assassin. But then again, it probably wasn't much of an assignment if even the likes of you could pull it off."

"And what would you know?" Ventress scowled. "You're just a scrap of bolts that carries out what we want."

"I do not answer to you, Sithling," Grievous chuckled. "I only answer to two people and unfortunately for you, you are not one of them. Or had you forgotten the fact that I outrank you?"

"We'll see for how much longer," Ventress snarled.

"Bah!" Grievous stood taller and towered over Ventress. "You've got a lot of work to do if you think that you can challenge my leadership over the droid army. You got to saw me in action for four whole months while you were my prisoner. I wouldn't think so highly of myself were I in your position."

"That was in the past, Grievous," Ventress snarled, her hands automatically going towards her lightsabers, an action with was not lost on Grievous, who deliberately moved his hands into the folds of his cloak, warningly, causing Ventress to scowl and move her hands back to fold across her chest. "Once Count Dooku hears of my recent victory, it will not take me long to reach my previous level of favour with him again."

"And then you think you could challenge me? I could take you on with four arms behind my back and wielding only an ordinary sword in my foot."

"Care to test that?" Ventress leered. "I would be more than willing to see if you really are that good, Grievous."

Grievous snorted and turned away, stepping towards the castle, this feet leaving the distinctive clicks of each step as his talons clacked against the stone-work. "Where are you going?" Ventress demanded angrily, hurrying to catch up.

"In case it had slipped your mind, Padawan," Grievous replied shortly, further angering Ventress with the name that she most hated to be called, "We are not supposed to be engrossing in idle chatter. We are supposed to be reporting our mission progress to the Count. And that is what I intend to do."

"I thought I told you not to call me a Padawan," Ventress growled.

"And I thought I told you that you have no authority over me," Grievous retorted, his voice rasping dangerously low. "So I can call you whatever I choose. Besides, until you have proven yourself above the level of a Padawan in front of me then that is all you will be in my view."

Ventress snorted and made to stride alongside the General the was her superior. "Fine, General," she said, sneering the last word as much as she could. "We'll do things your way. But you never answered my question – how did your own mission go?"

"That is none of your concern, Sithling," Grievous replied, without turning around to acknowledge her.

Ventress' fists clenched but she made no move against the cyborg General. Grievous knew exactly how to get under her skin – he had had four whole months to practice after all. It was irritating how he not only always one in their physical duels that they used to do before the Count, but he also won against her in their verbal sparring matches as well. He would mainly do this by constantly pointing out that he was her superior, which irritated Ventress because she considered herself higher than Grievous. After all, he was not force-sensitive and she was.

And she also knew that if Grievous so chose to, he could order her to shut up and she would have to comply. But he never did that. He seemed to enjoy besting her in matches of any kind. And Ventress simply loathed him for it.

But Grievous didn't care. He had no friends, and had no need for any as far as he was concerned. Friends just got in the way and made you upset when he lost them. He had learned that one the hard way in the past, before his reconstruction as a cyborg. He didn't need any now, so he didn't even try to make them.

Perhaps because of this, Grievous seemed to have a habit of making enemies within the Separatist cause. Asides from Ventress, there was the fact that Nute Gunray also hated the cyborg, but Grievous knew easily enough that that was because Gunray was terrified of him. And rightly so. If ever he was given the order, Grievous would love the opportunity to cut Gunray down.

The former Kaleesh and the Rattataki walked through the main doors of the complex and stepped over to where the lift that would take them to the top was waiting patiently for them. Grievous' long, black cloak streaming out behind him provided a stark contrast to Ventress, who wasn't wearing the robe she usually wore on her lower half, which implied she had come straight from the mission to speak with Dooku.

Grievous noticed this and sneered internally. The fact that Ventress was so keen to report good news to the Count disgusted him. He held respect for Dooku, but he wouldn't hesitate to get angry at him if he felt he had been wronged or given an unfair request. Ventress, on the other hand, never got angry at the Count. She just got angry at everyone else.

They both entered the lift and it whooshed its way upwards with only a slight whirring noise accompanying them. The area around them was dark and foreboding, the kind of thing that you might expect from the lair of a Sith Lord. After roughly about ten seconds or so, the lift camp to a stop and the doors slid open, allowing them to step into the room that Dooku was standing in, waiting for them.

The elderly man still hadn't turned around from where he had been staring out of the window when the ships came to the ground. Now, as Ventress and Grievous approached, he turned around with a neutral expression on his face, watching as they walked towards him and listening to the noise Grievous' feet made. Even that noise seemed to irritate Ventress, whose eye twitched every time Grievous took a step forwards.

"Before you start," Dooku said in his deep, distinctive voice. "Might a suggest that you calm yourself down, Ventress. Delving into your anger is good, but do not let it overrule what your head is telling you to do. Too much rage can be a downfall, even for ones such as we."

"Yes, my lord," Ventress nodded instantly, and both she and Grievous bowed to the elderly gentleman, the former going noticeably lower than the latter.

"I do hope you have good news to report," Dooku said, stepping over from the window and moving the chair behind the console to one side that he could stand there instead, as he often did when talking to subordinates. "Both of you. Or else there may be consequences for the both of you."

"Then I need not worry about anything, Count," Grievous replied evenly. "I am pleased to report that the Republic base on the moon of Parein II 4 has been completely crushed." His fingers snapped shut into a fist like some kind of steel trap as he spoke those words. "There was a Jedi there, defending the base alongside the clone troopers stationed there. Master Sannen, I believe."

"And what has become of him?" asked Dooku. "Did you dispatch him?"

Grievous reached into his cloak and produced a lightsaber hilt from the dark folds. "This is his lightsaber," he chuckled. "He wasn't going to need it again so I thought that I would take it on and put it to use instead. He couldn't exactly complain, mainly because his throat was crushed." He laughed for a second, and then was forced to clear his throat to prevent himself from coughing.

"I see," Count Dooku nodded in satisfaction. "Excellent work, General. I take it that you enjoyed my little gift for you then?"

"Indeed, Count," nodded Grievous. "That wheel bike is a splendid new toy to add to my list. I cannot wait to use it on the battlefield once more. Ploughing through the clone forces and flattening them beneath my vehicle was so very satisfying."

"Very good," nodded Dooku. "And you Ventress. What have you to report to me? I do hope for your sake that you have not successfully botched up another mission."

"No, my lord," Ventress smirked, struggling to keep the glee out of her voice. "I am very pleased to report to you that the Ukio system is now under Separatist control. I led our droid forces against the Republic clones that were stationed there and managed to pull off a victory. I will admit that it was not an easy battle, but that was because it was well-defended."

"This is indeed good news, Ventress," nodded Dooku curtly. "I trust that you have started setting up the defences on the planet of our own, so that we may repel the attack from the Republic when they launch the inevitable counter-movement?"

"Yes, my lord," nodded Ventress. "I have several proton cannons being deployed down there as we speak, and a large number of destroyer droids stationed on planet at key places, and more defences are on their way. I have not failed you, Master."

"No," Dooku said. "Indeed, you have not. This time."

Grievous suppressed a laugh at the ominous way that Dooku said 'This time.' Ventress' eye twitched again, but she said, "I shall see to it that I do not fail you again, Master. I will never rest until I accomplish the tasks that you set before me."

"See to it that you do," Dooku nodded. "You have begun the climb up the ladder again, Ventress. The ladder of my approval. As the last of my Dark Acolytes, it is up to you to carry out the tasks that the others would have had to do were they still around. Do you think yourself up to the task?"

"Absolutely, Master," nodded Ventress.

"Good," Dooku replied. "Your success his heartening Ventress. Perhaps you are not a lost cause after all. But there is no more room for error in the future, understood?"

Ventress' teeth clenched, but she nodded and said, "Yes, Master. Crystal clear."

Dooku nodded. Hopefully the pressure would start forcing Ventress to greater lengths to get the results that the Separatists needed. And if not, she could always be replaced with someone else once Dooku managed to convert another Jedi to the Dark Side. Ventress wasn't aware of the fact that Dooku had been hoping that Ventress would be his trump card in taking down Sidious at last, which was why the Count was giving her such a hard time about improving.

"What are your next orders, my lord?" asked Grievous. "I am already eager for another mission, to make the Republic pay and regain the ground we have been losing."

"Patience, Grievous," Dooku reprimanded him. "We must proceed carefully. Whether we like it or not, the Republic has us at a disadvantage. We will need more than a few strategical attacks if we wish to gain more territories quickly..."

Just as Dooku finished his sentence, the button on the console in front of him that indicated an incoming transmission from his Master began to flash ominously. Dooku glanced down at it and stared at it for a few moments – perhaps his Master was calling to check on his progress. But Dooku got the feeling that there was something else. Usually when his Master contacted him, it meant that he wanted something doing. Dooku was usually the one that contacted him instead.

"What is it, Master?" asked Ventress, noticing Dooku staring at his console for a moment. Dooku did not respond, and simply reached forward and pushed the button. As the hologram was activated, he knelt down at the exact same time and got onto one knee in a respectful position. Sure enough, the hologram that appeared on the console above him was the dark robed and hooded figure of Darth Sidious.

Even though Sidious couldn't actually see them since he was facing the other way, Ventress and Grievous both immediately bowed down as well. Grievous placed one foot backwards and one hand at where his stomach would be if he still had a stomach, with the other one behind his back and lowered his head respectfully.

But the cyborg General had to stop himself from laughing as Ventress immediately dropped even lower than Dooku. She also got on one knee, but she practically pressed herself against the floor, staring at it through closed eyelids and her nose almost level with her knee. Clearly Ventress didn't dare to show any kind of disrespect in front of Sidious and equally clearly she didn't hold as much importance as Grievous if she was required to do that. Grievous' eye smirked at another little victory over his least favourite ally.

"My Master," Dooku lowered his head to look at the floor himself, although unlike Ventress he maintained an upright posture.

"Lord Tyranus," Sidious said in his slightly croaky and decidedly malice-filled voice. "I have something that I wish for you to take care of."

Dooku nodded curtly. He had guessed as much, and Darth Sidious always got straight to the point when he made his transmissions.

"And what would that be, Master?" asked Dooku. "Bear in mind before we continue that I am also in the presence of General Grievous and Asajj Ventress. They are here to report in on our progress."

"Is that so?" asked Sidious, his hologram turning around to survey the other two, who maintained their drastically different bowing positions. Grievous lowered his head for a few moments, and then looked back up to stare under the hood of the Sith Lord. The cyborg still had no idea who Lord Sidious actually was, or where he called from. Since he was in charge, that didn't really matter much, but whenever Grievous found himself in his holographic presence, he could not shake that curiosity that never got sated.

"This is even better than I had been hoping for," Sidious said. "What is the progress you have just been informed of?" he added, turning back around to Dooku.

"It seems that the Ukio system and the moon of Parein II 4 are now both under our control, my Lord," Dooku said. "I was just beginning to think of our next strategy against the Republic when you called in."

"Very well," Sidious nodded. "Any victory is a good one and I will expect at least three more systems back under our control by the end of the week. However, before that, I have something else to ask, and also a job that I can use all three of you on."

Ventress looked up for a moment and glance at Grievous, who glanced back, in a rare moment of union between the two as they both silently wondered what Sidious might be thinking. If he wanted all three of them to carry out the mission then he must want it done very badly indeed. Usually, he didn't ask Dooku to go on missions anyway. But now both of them were feeling a ripple of anticipation, wondering what he wished them to do.

"Indeed, my lord?" asked Dooku.

"Indeed," Sidious replied. "Now, I will ask the question first. How goes the status of our two newest listening posts?"

Dooku's expression did not change, although he knew what Lord Sidious was referring to. While Po Nudo, who had been in charge of creating this sort of place, had been captured above Kashyyyk, that listening post he was creating there had not been the only one under construction. A couple more had been created by him and his workmen, but had been unfinished when his capture had taken place.

"They are nearing completion, my lord," said Dooku. "Progress is slower without Po Nudo supervising, but there are still plenty of his staff members left. I would estimate that they would both be fully functional within the next week or so."

"But I don't," said Sidious. "I do not believe that they are necessary any longer. At least, not as listening posts. I have a far more useful role for them to play in mind."

"And what would that be, my lord?" asked Dooku.

"In a couple of days time," Sidious replied. "I shall see to it that the Jedi learn of the existence of the listening posts. Naturally, this will prompt them to launch attacks in an attempt to take them out. And among their number will be one particular Jedi that I want you to destroy at all costs."

Dooku didn't respond. He just waited patiently for Darth Sidious to make the final request. The hooded Sith Lord allowed himself an evil smile for a moment before stating:-

"Aayla Secura."

Dooku's eyes widened in surprise. It wasn't often that Sidious requested a particular Jedi to be killed and he had been expecting someone from the Jedi High Council, like Master Windu, Koon or Mundi, or even Master Yoda himself, but not the Twi'lek member of the A-Team. He was more than a little surprised at Darth Sidious' request. He wanted them to take down Knight Secura? Specifically?

A single thought ran through Dooku's mind. Why?

Ventress' eyes, on the other hand, suddenly lit up at the prospect of what their Master was asking them to do. He was giving them the opportunity to specifically kill one of the people that were highest on the list of people Ventress wanted dead. That kind of opportunity did not happen very often – usually you had to run into them accidentally depending on which mission you were both assigned to.

Ventress certainly wasn't going to protest against this golden opportunity.

Grievous, on the other hand, was just as confused as Dooku. He knew that the Twi'lek was an irritant to them considering she was part of the A-Team, and he had gone up against her in combat twice before, beating her the first time and, admittedly, struggling against her the second time, although she had been paired with Skywalker then.

He knew that the Twi'lek was exceptionally skilled with the blade and a very good Jedi.

But surely they didn't need all three of them together to take her out did they? Grievous was pretty sure that he could do it by himself.

Still, he voiced no objection. He saw this as an opportunity to add the lightsaber of one of the famous A-Team to his ever-growing collection.

Dooku, on the other hand, did. "Knight Secura, my lord?" he asked. "Companion of Knight Skywalker and Padawan Tano?"

"And more recently, Knight Offee, yes," nodded Sidious. "You did indeed hear me right, Lord Tyranus. I want that Twi'lek taken out of the game before two Coruscant rotations have passed and I want the three of you to carry that task out."

"Forgive me if I sound impertinent, my lord," Dooku requested. "But is using the three of us together really necessary? I am sure that Secura would be no match for me in a one on one fight. Would it not be better if I took her on alone, leaving Ventress and Grievous free to pursue other goals?"

"Are you questioning my judgement?" Sidious hissed in a low and very dangerous sounding voice.

"No, my lord," Dooku immediately said. "I merely wish to clarify the reasoning behind your request. I will, of course, carry it out if that is what you desire."

"Very well," Sidious said. "The reason I am tasking all three of you with this is because I want Knight Secura dead, and I want to take absolutely no precautions. I have observed her over the course of the war and it seems that she is a very good lightsaber dueller, certainly a match for Ventress and possibly even a match for Grievous. Or even yourself, Tyranus," he added. "And she is constantly improving as well. Not to mention she might be able to escape if there were just one of you. It may seem like drastic overkill in your eyes, but not in mine. I want all three of you there, and I don't expect Secura to walk away from that fight."

"I see, my lord," Dooku nodded. "It shall be as you wish. But, if I may ask one more question, why is it that you are so fervent to see one particular Jedi Knight die?"

"Secura has been a thorn in all of our sides for months now," replied Sidious, with a hint of impatience at the question present in his voice. "She has been present at many of the Separatist's most critical losses, and she is responsible for the capture of more of the members of the Separatist Council than any other Jedi. I'm sure you can understand that I want her gone, can you not?"

"Ah, so you wish vengeance, my lord?" asked Dooku.

"Indeed," said Sidious, "And I also wish to finally extract the thorn she represents. I have foreseen that the longer she remains alive, the more ground we will lose. She may even be our biggest threat, possibly even greater than Skywalker himself. Therefore, she must go."

"I see," Dooku nodded. "In that case, I have no more questions. It shall be so."

"Excellent," said Dooku. "I will arrange for the A-Team and their newly acquired comrade to be split up across the two listening posts. I am willing to guess that Skywalker and Tano will head for one, while Secura and Offee will head for the other. Once I know which one Secura will be heading for, you must get there before she does and set a trap."

"Yes, my lord," nodded Dooku.

"And I should warn all three of you," Sidious added with a faint hiss. "If you fail in killing a single Twi'lek Jedi when all of you are present, I shall be very, very displeased. And, for your sakes, you better see to it that that does not happen."

"Understood," said Dooku. "We shall set out immediately." He bowed again and the hologram of Sidious vanished.

Ventress got to her feet, a smirk plastered over her face. "It seems I came to report in at the exact right time," she said, her fingers curling in anticipation. "Oh, I shall enjoy this upcoming mission immensely."

"If you ask me, I think Lord Sidious is being overly cautious," Grievous growled. "Any one of us could take Secura down alone, except of course for Ventress." He ignored the Rattataki's feral growl. "Even if what he says about her is true, it's still too much. How could one, single Twi'lek be our greatest threat?"

Dooku had placed a finger and thumb on his beard and was carefully running over his Master's orders in his head. Often, Darth Sidious would mention foreseeing something and quite often they turned out to be correct. But still, he felt that Grievous' question was valid. Why waste all three of them on one Jedi, or even two if Offee was going to be there as well.

But he was forced to conclude that Sidious might actually have a point. Before he had left the Jedi Order, Secura had been apprenticed to Quinlan Vos for a couple of years. Dooku had even spoken with her once or twice when he was on the Council. He could remember sensing that the Force was very strong with her.

And Sidious' points about how Secura was always there when their biggest setbacks occurred was quite correct. The fact that she seemed to have single-handedly found and infiltrated the base of his Dark Acolytes, turned his top assassin back to the light side, and fought off or killed all of them despite being outnumbered was more than enough proof of that.

And of the Separatist leaders that Secura had helped in apprehending, only Po Nudo was exempt. Wat Tambor, Shu Mai, Poggle the Lesser, Passel Argente and Tikkes had all been apprehended when Aayla had been there.

But he also had reason the suspect that this might have something to do with Sidious' plans for Skywalker.

But still, he had been given an order. And he never backed down from a direct order.

"Do not question Lord Sidious' judgement, Grievous," Dooku turned to him and Ventress. "If he believes that she is our greatest threat, then we must fulfil his desires. We must ensure that when Aayla Secura leaves Coruscant, the A-Team will return with only two members."

* * *

Am I mean or what? But it makes sense if you think about it. Since Darth Sidious doesn't have a clue that the Digimon exist, he naturally thinks that Aayla is the only one to blame for the way he is losing his influence over Anakin. However, that is not to say that Aayla has been playing no part in it. She's done several things to wrench Anakin away from him, such as stop his and provide him with an example of how a Jedi with attachments should behave, not to mention always being there to support him when others are in danger or his emotions run riot nd she always has pl. I'd say that she's done just as much as the Digimon. She's a good influence on him.

But now, Sidious wants her out of the picture. Do you reckon that Ventress, Grievous and Dooku will succeed?

And yes, Grievous is back after a very long absence. Writing Grievous is fun, as he is my all time favourite Star Wars baddie. He's just badass.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

Darth Sidious' plan begins to be put into motion. As the main group of heroes relax after the incident with Godzillo, they are called upon to be briefed for a new mission to the two listening posts. What they don't know is that there is more to it there seems. But you do, don't you?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 122 : Lead to the Viceroy**


	122. Lead to the Viceroy

And here's the next installation. That last chapter was very dark, but I am pleased with the reception it got, most of you are now quite worried about what will become of Aayla. Well, I am afraid that this chapter doesn't give you many more clues about her eventual fate, but still I hope you enjoy it. It starts off where Chapter 119 ended pretty much, so as to give an indication that the story arcs are merging more closely together than before.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 122:- Lead to the Viceroy**

* * *

Godzillo had appeared to approve of his newfound home. When the Jedi and all their assorted friends had introduced the giant Zillo Beast to Maridun, he had seemed quite pleased with the vast open spaces that he could roam around on to his heart's content. The trees there were few and far between, and those that were around were utterly huge, much like the Zillo Beast himself. They would be great places for it to get at least a part of itself out of the sun if it so chose to.

The Jedi, the Digimon and Chuchi had stayed for some time, to make sure that Godzillo got settled in to his new climate, which was probably a lot more productive for it than the comparatively barren planet of Malastare that it used to live on.

The Lurmen that lived there had been understandably anxious about having such a giant creature living right next to them for a multitude of reasons, and not just because it was a carnivore either. There was also the fact that it could flatten their entire village in about four steps if it didn't look where it was going.

Chuchi had spent a considerable amount of time talking with Tee Watt Kaa about what to do about the Beast. The Jedi had stepped back and let the Senator do her job negotiating with them. Technically it was their job too, but since this was Chuchi's first task as a trusted member of the group of people that knew the Digimon existed, they wanted her to feel useful.

Chuchi had explained to Tee Watt Kaa the benefits of having such a big neighbour in great length and detail. She really did have a flair for words, as she explained the fact that the Beast would not only keep the Amani away, but also the myriad of other predators like the Mastiff Phalones and the Fwits that also occasionally attacked the little prosimian humanoids. And then there was the possibility of another Separatist invasion to the planet anyway, which they might do to set up a base there that they thought the Republic would not detect, and that could threaten the Lurmen.

If that happened, Godzillo would be all over them and the Separatists would be destroyed before they even set a foothold.

The extreme pacifist in Tee Watt Kaa was adamant that violence was not the answer to all problems and that the Zillo Beast, or Godzillo as he was now called, would just bring more death if the Separatists attacked. Chuchi had patiently explained that sometimes they had to make sacrifices in order to protect themselves and their families, and, occasionally deaths were unavoidable, but since the Separatist armies were mostly droids anyway, deaths would be kept to a minimum.

Tee Watt Kaa was still stubbornly talking about peace and how much they coveted it. Chuchi's next words had been, "Consider it like this then. I understand that you don't want Republic assistance, but at the same time the Republic cannot fulfil its duty to protect the innocent if we leave you unguarded. So, consider this a compromise. The Republic can protect you by providing you with a guardian in the form of Godzillo, instead of setting up a base of operations and garrisoning it with troopers. It has every advantage. Godzillo cannot be picked up by scanners so the Separatists will be less likely to land here if he's here instead of a base and if they do land here you still have nothing to fear."

The Lurmen leader had fallen silent after that – it seemed that he was intrigued by the idea, and would indeed much prefer it if the Republic stayed away from them. Do to his indecision, Wag Too had abruptly taken over and said that he thanked them for the generous gift, but they were still unsure how to respond to the Beast's presence.

Chuchi has smiled at him and turned to Terriermon and Lopmon, asking if they wanted to give the Lurmen that were brave enough a ride on top of Godzillo's head. The bunnies had been more than up to the task, but as they turned to go, Tub had suddenly called out, "Hey, Terriermon. Think fast," and lobbed something at him.

Terriermon had turned around and grabbed the object that Tub had thrown. He glared at the grinning Lurmen and then looked down at the object he'd caught.

"GAH! LEAVE ME ALONE!" he had shouted, dropping the Jurcian fruit and diving behind Lopmon, quivering.

Lopmon had rolled her eyes as everyone else broke into laughs (except Chuchi, who stared in bemusement and Godzillo), and then grabbed Terriermon by the horn on his forehead and dragged him over to the Beast, the white sibling protesting all the way.

Some of the braver Lurmen, including Wag Too and Tub rode around with the three Digimon on top the Beast's head for almost half an hour, immensely enjoying the ride. Once they got back, and had been ensured that the Zillo Beast would never attack their village, they had finally accepted the presence of the giant creature.

Once Godzillo had made his first kill, a Corinathoth that had gotten way too close to it and was no match for the Beast's explosive bursts of speed, the Republic forces had decided to leave. Chuchi assured the Lurmen that the Zillo Beast wouldn't destroy the balance of nature, since reptiles didn't eat much anyway and the Beast was likely to take predator as much as prey. They had also provided Wag Too with a long range communicator that contained the contact details of any one of the A-Team and Senator Chuchi, asking them to use it if something bad happened to them or the Beast. Then they had turned and headed back to the cruiser.

As they left, Godzillo had let off a loud roar of farewell, watching them go until they were out of sight. Since the others had all personally said goodbye to the great Beast, he felt he should return the favour.

"I think we're leaving him in good hands," Anakin had said. "His own."

"Let's just hope that the Republic doesn't decide to set up a base there after all," said Ahsoka. "We'd probably all get in trouble if the Chancellor found out that the Beast wasn't actually dead after all."

"It probably won't happen," said Barriss. "The Republic is only interested in bases near where the Separatists are right now, since building them elsewhere would be a waste of time. And the Separatists aren't close enough to Maridun for that."

"And we'll make sure it stays that way," agreed Terriermon.

And then they had jumped to lightspeed and headed back to Coruscant.

* * *

When they got back to the city planet, they had had to drop Senator Chuchi off before returning to the Jedi Temple, but they could hardly set her down via a gunship right at the Senate Building – that would have brought up suspicion straight away. So they had set her down some distance away and Aayla and Renamon had accompanied the Senator as she walked on foot through the alleyways of the Senate District, although since both of them were invisible, it had looked like Chuchi was on her own.

It was a bizarre sensation – walking along with two companions that you knew were there, and not being able to see either of them. Now Chuchi really understood how the Jedi had managed to keep the secret for so long. It was an impressive feat and obviously one that they took very seriously.

When Chuchi had gotten closer to the Senate, Aayla and Renamon had pulled to a stop and watched as the young Pantoran walked towards a huddle of Senators that were talking nearby, including Padmé, Bail Organa, Mon Mothma, Onaconda Farr and a couple of others that neither of them knew by name.

"Chuchi," Bail was the first to spot her and hailed her with a look of relief. "Thank goodness you're alright. We were all worried about you."

"What happened, Senator?" asked Mon Mothma. "Bail said that he couldn't find you in the lower levels of the Senate Building when he went looking for you again? Where did you go?"

"Oh, I just went looking for Padmé," said Chuchi. "I was worried about her, and thought she might be in trouble. It may have been foolish of me but I don't care. I wanted to help my friend."

Padmé smiled warmly at her and said, "Thank you, Chuchi. What did you see?"

"Oh, not a lot," lied Chuchi. "I heard some kind of growling and roaring noise and a couple of seconds later something smashed into the wall next to me and I was knocked out. I woke up some time later and went to get my head treated – it hurt quite badly you see."

"Well, what you did was reckless," said Padmé. "But very, very brave. Thank you."

"Didn't exactly do much good though," Chuchi chuckled, lying once again – her decision had done a whole lot more good than she thought it would have when she had first done it. "I suppose I have a long way to go before I become as much of an adventurer as you Padmé. But hopefully trouble won't find me quite as often."

Padmé chuckled. "Come on then. Let's go inside. I'll explain exactly what happened to you when we're in a more private place."

"Yes, I'd very much like to know what happened. Some people were talking about some kind of creature," Chuchi nodded, following the others as they turned around. As the Senators walked away, Chuchi glanced over her shoulder and winked at the place where she hoped Renamon and Aayla were standing. She saw a ripple of yellow fur, there and then gone just as suddenly, which might have been the equivalent of a wink back that they could do when invisible.

Chuchi smiled and walked back into the Senate Building. It wasn't going to be easy, keeping the existence of the Digimon a secret. But she was going to do her very best not to let them down.

Behind her, Aayla and Renamon turned to go and find a speeder that would take them back to the Temple.

* * *

But all that had been yesterday. Today, there was a slight bit of excitement going on in the halls of the Jedi Temple for the younger generation of younglings. Two younglings, both roughly around eight or nine years old were quickly running through the halls of the Jedi Temple towards one of the larger training rooms. One was a young female Togruta known as Ashla. The other was a male Whiphid called Jempa.

"Hurry!" Ashla was saying to her fellow youngling classmate. "We don't want to miss it!"

"I know, I know," Jempa said. "I'm hurrying. I'm going." The two of them rushed down the corridor until they could see the doors to the training room up ahead, which was wide open and inside, the sound of clashing lightsabers slamming together roughly three to four times a second could be heard.

And what were the two younglings so eager to go and see?

They were a member of the Bear Clan, the nickname given to a particular class of younglings that were instructed in how to use their lightsabers by Master Yoda. But out of all the years they had trained under Yoda, they had never seen him lift a lightsaber against another being. They'd seen many practice lightsaber bouts, but none that featured Yoda.

Which was why they were so excited when they had learned that Yoda had offered to have a practice bout with one of the Jedi Knights.

As they rushed into the room, filled with other younglings and with a couple of older Jedi watching too, they watched in awe as the furious combat unfolded before them.

Yoda somersaulted sideways several times, his practice blade whirring around him like a living thing and his Jedi robes flapping wildly as he flipped and span around almost on the spot. His opponent, Aayla Secura, wielded her blue practice blade deftly and blocked several blows, spinning about on the spot herself as she did so and flicking her blade low to catch five strikes from the dimunitive Jedi Master. Yoda span to a halt and leapt right over Aayla, rolling in mid-air and lashing at her several times from above, while Aayla did the opposite and dropped to the ground, holding herself up with one hand and bringing her lightsaber up to catch the blows.

As Yoda landed, Aayla kicked her legs into the air so she was upside down and thrust off the ground with her hand, taking her turn to jump over Yoda and lash down at him. Yoda swung aside and Aayla's blade hit the floor next to him. Yoda quickly dashed forwards and aimed his next strikes at Aayla's ankles as the Twi'lek touched down. But it seemed that Aayla was nimble enough to bounce into the air again and avoid the blow.

Swinging around to face one another, they both ran at each other and quickly traded fiercely volleys of blows, lightsabers sweeping up and down and clashing together and bouncing off one another in a frenzy of motion that was almost impossible to follow. Their bodies weren't staying still either. Yoda span into the air and struck at Aayla's neck, but the Twi'lek blocked and threw two blows as he came down. Yoda turned them aside with ease and bounced up again almost before he touched the ground, spinning about and sweeping at Aayla's knees. Aayla leapt backwards, turning one blow aside, and then another.

Yoda quickly reversed his trajectory and went back the other way, bouncing around like a cork from a bottle, and aiming several blows at Aayla, raining them down on her. The Twi'lek bounced with the Grand Master and followed his progress, deflecting several of the blows and retaliating with a few of her own, but Yoda's blade always found hers and easily pushed it aside. Nevertheless, Aayla persevered and continued her barrage of blows and reposts and blocks.

It was almost like a dance, they way the two of them were moving with and around one another trading and blocking each other's blades. Yoda's old hobbling self was long gone – he was like a little ninja, going up against a graceful dancer. It might the both of them formidable opponents and they were certainly entertaining their audience with their clash.

Yoda blocked a downward blow from Aayla and span to one side, blocking Aayla's follow-up slash as he did so. Aayla swept her blade up and around again to slash at the Grand Master once more, but Yoda's blade was there to stop her again, so she altered her swing and swept low for his midsection. Yoda somersaulted right over her blade and swept for her back as her momentum carried her around, but Aayla's blade whooshed up behind her and took the attack. Aayla span around, crouching low to the ground and lashing out before her. Yoda caught her blade with his own and flipped over it while their lightsabers were still locked, pushing Aayla to one side.

But, as Yoda came flying towards Aayla's exposed stomach, Aayla pushed off from the ground with one foot and one hand and span over Yoda again, causing the Grand Master to flip out of way, in case she threw a strike down at him. Yoda reversed directions and took a spinning leap at her as she hit the ground with one foot, then a second, whirled around to face him. Aayla stepped back as the first of Yoda's swinging strikes passed by her face and twirled her blade up to catch the next one as Yoda sailed over her shoulder, flicking her wrist to catch the third strike that Yoda initiated before passing over as well.

As Yoda landed, Aayla brought her blade sailing down to swing at him from ground level, but Yoda blocked and darted forward, forcing Aayla step back and deflect two more attacks, and then Yoda was off the ground again and Aayla brought her blade up to defend her chest from the next strike. Yoda used her blade as a step, pushing himself further into the air using his own blade against hers like a spring and vaulting over her shoulder. Aayla swerved to the side and lashed her blade out to follow him, placing her hand on the ground and using it as a pivot to sweep around and flip back onto her feet. Only she was forced to backflip out of the way as Yoda dashed forwards again.

Yoda kept coming after she'd landed and lashed towards her legs. Aayla blocked the attack but Yoda kept running, dashing right between Aayla's legs and spinning around in the same motion in what would hamstring her if he was using a real blade. But Aayla's reaction was fast and she pushed herself upwards, cartwheeling to the side and spinning to lash at Yoda once more. Yoda blocked and dodged around himself to swing at her knee but Aayla blocked that too and locked the blade in position.

Yoda chuckled as the two of them took a momentary pause. Then he pushed backwards and flipped away, landing on the wall and pushing off it to sail at Aayla's face. Aayla ducked beneath him so he sailed overhead and once again blocked the lightsaber strike he threw at her back without looking, before spinning about again and weaving her blade in a complex pattern before her in preparation for the next bout of blows.

But they didn't come.

Yoda merely nodded and switched off his practice lightsaber. There were audible complaints that the duel was over from the younglings crowded around the room, but Yoda merely chuckled and ignored them summoning his gimmer stick and putting his weight on it once again. "Enough, that is, Knight Secura."

Aayla nodded wordlessly and deactivated her own blade. She was breathing a little laboriously – that battle had been quite some workout and had gone on for almost five minutes of nonstop twisting, turning, striking and blocking. Yoda didn't appear to be that tired, but he wasn't the Grand Master for nothing. However, Aayla certainly wasn't completely out of breath either – merely breathing quite hard.

"A most excellent display of lightsaber skill, that was, young Aayla," Yoda said as he walked back towards the others, Aayla falling in step alongside him. "Your athletic skill, not many Jedi have."

"Thank you, Master Yoda," said Aayla. "But I still have quite a way to go."

"Perhaps not," Yoda replied evenly. "More skilled than you give yourself credit for, you are. Your timing, perfect it was. Your balance, flawless as well. Your movements and quick reactions, supple and swift." He chuckled as he retrieved his real lightsaber and deposited the fake one. "Daresay, I do, that all that dancing you do has improved your technique."

"Well, it certainly does help, I suppose," nodded Aayla.

"Perhaps dance classes, we should start," Yoda joked with a laugh.

Aayla suppressed a snort of amusement, and added, "Well, if you do, we'll force Anakin to attend."

"You most certainly will not," Anakin replied as he, Ahsoka and Barriss walked over from where they had been watching.

"Aw come on, Master," Ahsoka nudged him. "You're the only member of the group that doesn't."

"That isn't true and you know it," Anakin replied. "Anyway, that was great work, Aayla. I have to say that I was very impressed by that."

"Indeed," nodded Barriss. "Five minutes of duelling against Master Yoda and not a burn mark to show for it anywhere. There are many Jedi Masters that can't do that."

Aayla flushed at the praise and subsided into humble silence. Yoda tapped her foot with his gimmer stick and said, "Right, they are, young Secura. When climbing the Zillo Beast, observed, I did, that you were more nimble than I remembered you being during the last bout. Today, proven right I was. Congratulations are in order."

Aayla said nothing, but her flush remained in place. She didn't quite know how to respond to that, so she decided not to say anything. Anakin noticed and lightly punched her on the shoulder and said, "Come on, Aayla. You got to have a practice duel with Master Yoda and you managed to hold your own until he called a stop. That is a privilege if anything."

"I realise that," nodded Aayla. "But I don't like judging my own skill, lest I start to get a little big-headed."

Anakin smiled wryly, remembering how he had once commented that he thought that he was a match for Yoda as a swordsman. He now realised that while he had skills, and an abundance of them, he wasn't quite that close yet. He remembered the time when he too judged his own skill. He seemed to be doing that a bit less and less now.

"Perhaps," Yoda said, lifting a clawed finger and pointing it at Aayla, "Ready you are, to become a Jedi Master."

Aayla's eyes widened so much that it almost defied the laws of physics and her heart skipped several beats before it realised that it would die if it didn't start beating again. "A... A Jedi Master?" Aayla asked. "You... you cannot be serious Master."

"Very serious, I am, Knight Secura," Yoda nodded. "Fought well, you have and ready, I believe you may be."

"But... I don't think I am," Aayla shook her head. "I... I can't seriously be promoted to a Jedi Master now." Her shock and denial was well founded. While she had been the youngest ever recorded Jedi Knight (though there may have been younger ones before the records started), that record had only beaten the previous one by a couple of months or so. But becoming a Jedi Master at the age of twenty-three? That beat the previous record by several years – almost four in fact. She just didn't believe that she was that good.

"Questioning my judgement on this matter, are you?" Yoda asked, raising an eyebrow slightly, but his smile still on his face to show that he was just joking.

"Well..." Aayla said. "To be honest, yes Master. I do not believe I am ready yet."

Yoda sighed slightly and said, "Very well. Hold off on any decisions, we will. But... consider it strongly, you should. Trust in my own judgement, I do, and ready, I believe you are. You just need to admit it to yourself."

"Yeah!" piped up a voice from nearby, and the older Jedi turned around to find one of the younglings, a Kajain'sa'Nikto male called Chian looking up at Aayla with awe on his face.

"You were so awesome out there when you were duelling, Master Secura," he said. "When I become a Jedi Knight, I wanna be just like you."

Aayla smiled warmly at him and chuckled, saying, "What? You want to be a Twi'lek? And a girl?"

Chian immediately flushed as the other younglings giggled behind him. Aayla then stepped towards him and said, "Don't worry, I'm just joking. But now, you're going to train hard, aren't you?"

"Oh yes," Chian nodded, brightening immediately. "I'm going to be really skilled, like you."

"Ah, but remember that a Jedi is humble," said Aayla. "We don't become skilled just for the sake of being skilled. We become skilled so that we can use our abilities to protect others, isn't that right?"

"That's right," chorused several of the younglings. Aayla nodded and stood up.

"Remind me again why you don't have a Padawan and why I was the one that got stuck with one," Anakin said.

"Watch it, Buster," Ahsoka growled warningly. Anakin laughed and wrapped an arm around his Padawan's neck and pulled her into his side like a small child. As Ahsoka struggled indignantly, Anakin, Barriss and Aayla all snickered.

"Listen to Aayla, you should, younglings," said Yoda, stepping forward to address his students and leaning on his stick as he looked up at them, for even they were taller than him. "Hard work, it is, to become a fully fledge Jedi Guardian like she, as I am sure that Skywalker will testify."

"Oh definitely," said Anakin, nodding. "You gotta practice with your lightsaber a lot. I should know because I didn't train as much as I probably could have and I ended up losing several lightsabers before I managed to get one that seems to want to stay with me," he pulled his own lightsaber off his belt and activating the blue blade. He struck a stance and said, "Anyone think they're tough enough to take me on?"

The younglings quailed and tried to hide behind one another, until they noticed the grin on Anakin's face. Barriss glanced questioningly at Aayla and the Twi'lek gave her a nod and a smirk, prompting the Mirialan to raise a hand and swat Anakin in the back of the head.

"Ow!" Anakin complained, looking indignantly at Barriss. "Don't start doing that as well."

"Why not?" Barriss asked with a giggle. "Everyone else does." This produced a peal of giggles from the crowd of younglings crowded around them.

"I wish you guys wouldn't encourage others to do that sort of thing," Anakin griped, sheathing his own lightsaber and putting it back on his belt. It's very annoying."

"But you're just so... swattable," Ahsoka grinned.

"I'm not an insect," Anakin grumbled.

"Come along, younglings," said Yoda, gesturing to the special domed helmets that were lying in a box beside the doors. "Why don't you demonstrate the kind of skills that you have been practicing to our guests, as a way of thanking Knight Secura for the show from before, hmm?"

"Okay, Master Yoda," the children all chorused together and eagerly rushed forwards to the box and began to pick out an identical helmet each and tuck them under one arm. Then they hurried over to the box of shorter practice lightsabers – practice shotos – and taking one out each as well.

"I still need to get me one of those," Ahsoka thought as she watched the younglings activate the blades. "You said that I should try that out, didn't you, Master?"

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "We'll organise a practice session later on." He chuckled when he saw the younglings check the colour of their blades that appeared – green or blue – and watched as many of them traded blades to get their preferred colour. "You remember doing that, Barriss?"

"Yes," Barriss sniggered. "I remember I used to get very upset when I didn't get a blue blade for some reason, although looking back, I cannot actually remember why. I don't mind green as a colour."

"Yeah, I remember that," said Anakin. "I preferred blue as well."

"I didn't really mind what colour I went with," said Aayla. "Although I do remember once asking for a purple blade so that I would feel like Master Windu."

Ahsoka put a hand over her mouth at this piece of information. "Did they actually give you one? I bet they didn't."

"Actually they did," Aayla raised her eyebrows. Ahsoka blinked and Aayla grinned at her and added, "Apparently it's the only one that they had and they don't use it very often. Master Yoda was kind enough to give it to me for the day. I remember trying to keep it after the session was over."

"Why didn't I ask for a purple blade?" Ahsoka shook her head. "I bet you were the envy of the class that day."

"Well to be fair, they couldn't actually see me wielding it," said Aayla. "And I never asked for it again, but I felt slightly special on that day."

"Maybe that's why you're getting the offer of being a Master younger than ever before," said Anakin, who found that he didn't feel jealous of Aayla at all, which surprised him slightly – he was sure that he would have been a few months ago. "The luck of the purple lightsaber."

Aayla chuckled and said, "There's no..."

"...such thing as luck," Barriss and Ahsoka both said at the same time. They both high-fived one another without looking after that.

They spent the next half an hour or so watching the younglings practicing their techniques with a blade by putting on the helmets which covered their eyes and deflecting the pretend lasers that were flung at them by the little practice probes that hovered in the air in front of him. The four Jedi looked on fondly as the sight brought up memories and began to recount other little tales from their childhoods with regards to their training.

Apparently Anakin had once tried to see how effective a practice lightsaber was by attempting to cut off Oppo Rancisis' huge beard. It hadn't worked, and Master Rancisis had been quite annoyed at the attempt on his beard, which he had worked quite hard on.

Barriss, on the other hand had once lost her grip on her lightsaber when she tried a wild block when they got onto the more advanced lessons on deflecting the lasers. The practice blade had gone flying out of her hand and sailed across the room to bonk a Jedi Master entering the room in the head. That Jedi Master would later go on to be Barriss' Master – that was how she had met Luminara Unduli.

And as for Ahsoka, she had once gotten so absorbed in what she had been doing that she had started to pretend she was facing a real adversary and was being shot at with real lasers. She had gotten a bit too carried away with the daydream and had jumped forward and kicked the practice probe shooting at her, where it had zinged across the room and smashed against the wall. She had been very embarrassed afterwards.

* * *

Eventually, Yoda tapped his gimmer stick on the ground to signify the end of the lesson and the younglings took their helmets off and placed them and their practice blades back in their respective boxes.

"Come along," Yoda said, "To the dining hall, we should go. Up for a snack, I am."

As the younglings followed Yoda out and the older Jedi walked on behind, Ahsoka still trying to pull herself free of Anakin's grip, Aayla felt a consciousness nudging at her mind. She knew who it was and deliberately ignored it for a few seconds just to irritate him, but then she relented as he became more insistent and said, _Yes, Terriermon. What is it?_

_That youngling was right, you know,_ the bunny said. _That little guy. That was an awesome battle – we were watching the whole thing, by sharing Anakin and Ahsoka's eyes. Why did you turn down the offer to be a Jedi Master?_

_As I told Master Yoda, I genuinely don't believe I am ready for the responsibility,_ Aayla responded evenly.

_Why not? How bad can it be? You're already a General in the Clone Wars and a figurehead for the Republic because you're part of the A-Team. Surely being a Jedi Master isn't that much to add to that list?_

_It might not seem like it to you. But to be a Jedi Master at my age? It's never been done before and I am concerned that it is too early for me._

_You shouldn't doubt yourself,_ Renamon's voice broke through next. _Personally I think that you are more than ready. I'm not an expert when it comes to the Jedi customs but I can tell that much._

_Sometimes, you take your modesty a little too far, Aayla,_ Rika agreed. _Maybe we should contact Quinlan Vos and ask him what he thinks._

Aayla shook her head, her lekku waving behind her as she did. _Alright,_ she said. _I will think about it. I still don't think I am ready, but I will make my decision soon, I promise._

_It better be soon,_ Terriermon chuckled. _I'd grab the opportunity with both hands if I was you._

_Yes, well you aren't,_ Aayla replied. _But, Momentai. I'll consider it._

_If you weren't going to the dining hall where they have a plentiful supply of Jurcian fruit, I would start making loud retorts,_ Terriermon sniffed.

Aayla chuckled and said, _So, what are you guys doing over there in my room? I do hope that it's still in one piece and that the next person to walk in the room does not get violently pranked. Especially since it's likely the next person to walk in will be me._

_Don't worry,_ Henry said. _We've got it all under control. At the moment, Chewbacca is inspecting WereGarurumon's Digi-Egg and holding it up to his ear. I think he keeps saying that he's sure he can hear something moving about inside._

_What do you think will become of him when he hatches anyway?_ Asked Aayla. _Because quite frankly, I am completely stumped as to what to do with him?_

_We don't have a clue,_ said Lopmon. _But, to be honest, it's not very likely that he'll be helpful on the battlefield. He cannot digivolve without a Tamer to help him and the thing he will emerge from the egg as is small, red, squishy and is only capable of spitting harmless bubbles as an attack._

_So, we're going to have a little Digimon toddler on our hands?_ Aayla asked. _Oh dear. I'm not sure that I can take another Terriermon-like being._

_Oi,_ Terriermon said. _Watch what you say about me, Soon-to-be-Jedi-Master-Tailhead. Or I can come up with some great pranks specifically for you. Would you like that?_

_Do you want me to slip bits of Jurcian fruit in your dessert? _Aayla asked sweetly.

_Never mind. Forget I said anything._

_I hold the perfect trump card over you._ Aayla chuckled. _You wouldn't dare to deliberately prank me anymore than you would to Renamon or Master Windu._

_Yeah, whatever,_ Terriermon replied. _Can you hurry up with the food – I'm starving over here. Oh, and the decision about saying yes to being a Jedi Master, hurry up with that to._

_Stop trying to use peer pressure, Terriermon,_ Renamon said. _We will support any decision Aayla's makes, won't we?_

_As long as it's yes,_ nodded Terriermon. Then, he yelped, which Aayla assumed that Renamon had grabbed him and was holding him up by his ears again. She chuckled and broke contact, focusing her attention more on what was going on around her instead of in her room.

They had almost reached the dining hall when suddenly Mace Windu appeared at the other end of the corridor and walked quickly towards them. The little group stopped and watched his approach for a few moments, and the slightly ominous look on the Council member's face was enough to prompt Anakin into finally letting go of Ahsoka and murmuring, "I've got a bad feeling about this already."

Yoda seemed to be of a similar mind, as the little Jedi stepped over to meet with Mace and said, "A problem, is there, Master Windu?"

"I'm not entirely sure yet, Master Yoda," said Mace. "But we've been contacted by Chancellor Palpatine. Apparently he has just received some urgent intelligence and he wants to speak with any Jedi that there are that can be ready to leave on a mission right away."

"Hmm," Yoda sighed. "An urgent transmission? Good, this cannot be. Younglings," he turned around and motioned into the dining hall to the kids behind him. "Go and enjoy your lunch, you should. Urgent business, the rest of us have."

The younglings nodded silently and filed into the mess hall. Yoda looked to the others and said, "Sounds like another mission, you may have. Feel up to it, do you, so soon after the incident with the Zillo Beast?"

"Godzillo," corrected Ahsoka. "Terriermon gave him the name – something to do with a made up monster from their universe that had a similar design to him. But, I suppose I feel up to a bit of droid scrapping."

"That's assuming that there is droids," shrugged Anakin. "But there probably is. Alright then. Let's go and get briefed so we can get this over with."

"Get this over with?" asked Aayla, as the Jedi started to move off into towards the communication centre. "I thought you liked these kind of missions, Anakin."

"Well, I do, in a way," Anakin replied. "But I think I'm starting to prefer just hanging around with all you guys. Is that weird?"

"No, Anakin," Aayla shook her head. "It's not weird at all. I am of the exact same mind."

Aayla then made contact with the Digimon in her mind and said, _Guys, we need to head for the communications centre. Now._

_And we've got ourselves a new opportunity to get ourselves killed, have we? _Henry sighed. _Is it me or do those seem to be coming more frequently the closer we come to actually winning the war?_

_That's because the Seppies are probably pushing back at us with just about everything they have now,_ murmured Rika. _Alright then. We'll be right there. _

Aayla nodded and mentally signed out as the Digimon, Tamers and their large Wookiee companion started to head towards the door of Aayla's chambers.

* * *

It didn't take them long to reach the communications centre, and when the Jedi arrived, they found the Digimon and the Tamers were already waiting for them. A large portion of the Jedi order still didn't know that they even existed, but the Digimon had become versed enough in their way around the Jedi Temple to know all the best ways of getting there without being spotted and, in the grand scheme of things, most of the Temple was empty these days anyway, because everyone was out on missions.

Chewbacca still had hold of the Digi-Egg that had belonged to the werewolf they met on Mygeeto in his paws. This was because they would be taking it with them if they went on a mission, which seemed likely at the moment. They wouldn't take it with them if they were required to leave the cruiser, but they had decided that they didn't want to risk it hatching in Aayla's room when they were halfway across the galaxy, lest the new hatchling did something stupid.

"I wonder what kind of joyful expedition we are expected to go on next," murmured Lopmon.

"Don't worry, Lopmon," Suzie said. "We can handle it."

Lopmon smiled at Suzie's lack of nervousness and then turned to Chewbacca and said, "You go in with them, Chewie. You need to keep up the pretense that you owe your life debt to Barriss and not me."

Chewbacca nodded and passed the Digi-Egg to Renamon, who cradled it protectively in her large paws, with a delicacy that they didn't usually use – more often they were used for busting droids in. Then, as the Jedi filed past the Digimon and the Tamers and entered the room, Chewbacca followed them. Barriss smiled at him as they gathered around the console in the room and the Wookiee took up his position behind her like some kind of guard.

It felt a bit odd to be guarded by something when there was no danger, but Barriss pushed that aside and focused on the holocommunicator. As the doors slid shut, concealing the Digimon and the Tamers from view, Mace activated it and the hologram of Chancellor Palpatine appeared to the side of the console to complete the circle around it.

"Ah, I see that you came as quickly as you could," he said. "I am most thankful for your haste, Master Jedi."

"Is the situation serious, Chancellor?" asked Anakin. "Has another system been invaded?"

"Well, I've been told that the Ukio system has been invaded but I believe Master Piell is going to attempt to liberate that planet," said Chancellor. "But no, the situation is not serious in terms of danger, but it is still quite urgent. I have received some new intelligence that indicates a couple of Separatist facilities are nearing construction."

"Go on," said Mace.

"One of my spies within the Confederacy reported back to me about an hour ago," said Palpatine. "He was able to discover something quite interesting. It seems that, even though we managed to bring in Po Nudo, at your hands, I believe Knight Offee," he turned and offered a warm smile and a nod to Barriss, who nodded slightly back but made no comment. "His work has not been completely eradicated from the galaxy," the Chancellor finished.

"How do you mean, Chancellor?" asked Mace.

"Hold on while I transmit the hologram," said Palpatine, and his blue, crackling form leaned over and appeared to push at a few invisible buttons before another hologram cropped up in the middle of the holotable – depicting a large round sphere construction with several aerials sticking out the top and a good deal on antennae sticking out the bottom.

"That's a Separatist listening post," said Ahsoka – it looked pretty similar to the one they had discovered over one of the moons of Ruusan called Skytop Station.

"Indeed, Padawan Tano," said the Chancellor. "My spy was able to determine that Po Nudo was creating three of these before he was captured. One of them we already knew about and it has already been taken care of – by your people, noble Wookiee," he added to Chewbacca. Chewbacca growled appreciatively and raised a furry fist.

"But it seems that the one over Kashyyyk was not the only one that Po Nudo was building," said Palpatine. "My spy was able to uncover the fact that there are two more out there, and he managed to acquire the plans for them that you see before you. Apparently without their foreman there to oversee them, the construction of these stations slowed, but they did not stop. They will probably come online within a week or so."

"I see," said Mace. "Then they might be able to intercept some of our transmissions and learn something about our next moves. Then they could shore up their defences against us."

Anakin and Aayla exchanged brief glances, as did Ahsoka and Barriss. If the Separatists started to intercept some of their calls, that wasn't the only thing that they might learn about. It was quite possible that someone might unwittingly reveal the existence of the Digimon by merely mentioning it over what they was a secure line that was secretly being tapped into. It seemed to be fortunate that they were discovered before they were completed, and also oddly appropriate if they were the ones who were called on to destroy it.

"What are the locations of these Separatist posts?" asked Yoda. "Organise a mission to destroy them immediately, we will."

"Well, Master Jedi," Palpatine said, changing the hologram until it was of a specific section of the galaxy, where two planets were flashing red. Apparently they are in the atmosphere above these two planets."

"That one there is Yavin Prime," observed Anakin. "Gas planet, not much life down there except a couple of gasbag creatures. That's a good place to set up a base if you don't want anybody to find you."

"And that other one is Rhen Var," Aayla nodded. "Ice world, also not much life there although still significantly more than Yavin. That's another good place to stay hidden. It's fortunate that your spy was able to locate these places, Chancellor. It might have taken us some time to find them on our own."

"Indeed, Knight Secura," nodded Palpatine. "I take it that you and the rest of the A-Team will be the ones heading to these stations to take them out?"

"Very probably," said Aayla.

"And Barriss of course," nodded Anakin. "You know, I think we need a new name to encompass our newest members, since it's unfortunate that Barriss' first name doesn't start with A."

"And nor does my second, unfortunately," Barriss chuckled. "Sorry about that."

"It's not your fault," Anakin shook his head. "We'll come up with a name at some point."

At that point, Terriermon from out in the hallway, where the Digimon were listening in on the conversation, inserted a name into Ahsoka's head, causing the Togruta to blurt out, almost before she realised what was happening – "Team ABC."

Anakin, who had been about to voice a question to the Chancellor, faltered and turned to stare at his Padawan, as did pretty much everyone else. "Team ABC?" he asked.

"Yeah," Ahsoka nodded, listening to Terriermon's reasoning and explaining quickly. "We've got two new members right, Barriss and Chewbacca. Neither of their names begin with A, but their first names to begin with the next two consecutive letters of the alphabet. And since Team ABC sounds better than The ABC Team, I thought we'd go with that."

Barriss and Chewbacca both glanced at each other, before Chewbacca laughed and Barriss tried to suppress her own laughter. Both of them were fairly sure that they knew who had really come up with a name like that, but of course they couldn't comment. Well, Chewbacca might have been able to, but since he didn't know if Palpatine spoke Shyriiwook or not, he kept quiet.

Barriss turned back to the others and said, "Well, I suppose that the both of us will be proud to join the newly formed Team ABC."

"And we're glad to have you on board," said Aayla, patting Barriss' shoulder as both she and Anakin struggled to keep straight faces and didn't quite succeed.

"It's settled then," nodded Anakin.

"Perhaps we should focus on more important issues than your new team name," said Mace Windu. "Such as the fact that there are two newly discovered listening posts nearing completion."

_Nothing is more important than a good team name!_ Terriermon yelled defiantly. _NOTHING!_

_Stop trying to make us laugh! _Anakin shouted back, trying to turn his expression back into a serious one and saying, "Yes, Master Windu. It's important that we take out these Separatist posts as quickly as we can. Both of them are quite close to one another in the galaxy, but they are both next to different major hyperspace lanes, so they could pick up our transmissions with relative ease if they come online. We'll head out immediately and blast them with everything we have."

"Oh but, no, Anakin," said Palpatine quickly. "There is another piece of information that should prove quite interesting that I have yet to mention. My spy in the Confederacy was not only able to acquire the plans of the facilities, but he also learned some news. Apparently, in the absence of Po Nudo to act as foreman for the construction and to include his funds, the Viceroy of the Trade Federation was called forward to take his place."

"Nute Gunray?" asked Anakin sharply, the slimy double-dealing Nemoidian that was behind the Naboo Blockade that had caused him to meet with Padmé and Qui-Gon flashing through his mind.

"Indeed," nodded Palpatine. "It sounds like the sort of thing that he would do, does it not. He might feel that the listening posts on such remote planets would be a way of helping the Separatists that is likely to keep him away from the front lines."

"True," nodded Anakin. "His cowardice shines through again."

"'All I know is, I never risk my own skin if I don't have to,'" quoted Ahsoka. "That's what he said when we had him as our prisoner after the incident on Rodia. "He's such a little... wuss."

"Well, you can't expect everyone to be a brave one," said Aayla. "And his actions to gain more money have made him quite a few enemies, even within his own ranks. So, he's funding the completion of the listening posts? Does that mean what I think it does?"

"Probably," said Palpatine. "My spy confirmed that Gunray would be visiting one of the two listening posts tomorrow to check on its progress. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to tell me which one, so it could be either."

"Then that means that we might be able to capture him," said Barriss, a bit of excitement appearing on her face. It was unfortunate that Nute Gunray had managed to evade being brought to Coruscant, since the Trade Federation supplied a large portion of funds to the Separatists, along with San Hill and the Banking Clan.

"If we can find and bring Gunray in," said Anakin, eagerly, "then that will be another huge milestone to finally finishing the Separatists off for good."

"Precisely, Anakin," said Palpatine. "But it's unfortunate that we cannot determine which of the two he will be at tomorrow."

"And it also means that we cannot simply blow the place up from orbit," said Mace. "If we want to capture Gunray alive, then we'll have to do it the hard way and infiltrate the listening post to try and get to him from within. That will be significantly more challenging."

"But it's nothing that we haven't done before, Master," said Anakin. "We've been on more than a few infiltration raids. This one will just have a bigger prize at the end."

"Which one do we hit first?" asked Ahsoka, looking up at the glowing images of Yavin Prime and Rhen Var.

"Neither," Aayla said. "If we hit one after the other then there is a fifty percent change that the first one that we attack will not be the one that Gunray is visiting. If it isn't the one that Gunray is in, then Gunray will get warning that we're onto the existence of the posts and it'll give him plenty of time to escape from the other one before we can arrive."

"There's only one real option," said Anakin. "Team ABC will have to split up and take both of them at the same time. That way, Gunray will have nowhere to run except out into space, where our cruisers will be waiting for him with tractor beams. We'll have him cornered."

"Are you sure that splitting up is wise?" asked Palpatine. "It reduces your chances of apprehending the Viceroy, doesn't it? And we cannot afford to let him slip through our fingers again."

"It'll be alright, Chancellor," Anakin replied. "We'll take a few clones with us as well, and we know what we're doing. Trust me, Nute Gunray will be in our hands before the day is up."

"Of course," nodded Palpatine. "I suppose it was foolish of me to doubt you. So, what is the plan?"

Anakin took charge and indicated the planet on the left, saying, "Ahsoka and I will head to Yavin Prime and board the listening post there. We've got special suits that will help us to cope with the unfriendly gases of that planet, which we haven't used for a while anyway. Aayla and Barriss, how do you feel about heading to Rhen Var?"

"I have no objection," said the Twi'lek with a smile. "I'm used to heading to colder climates anyway."

"I prefer it when it's warmer, but I suppose I don't mind going," said Barriss. "If we can capture Gunray, then I'm all for it."

"Excellent," said Palpatine. "It is decided then. When do you head out?"

"First thing in the morning," said Anakin. "It may take us a while to get there but we don't want to risk Gunray leaving before we arrive either, so we'll set off early."

"You are proving more and more why you are a General in the army, Anakin," said Palpatine. "Your strategic thinking seems to know no bounds. I wish you well with your missions. The sooner we have Gunray in our custody, the happier I will be."

"Us too, Chancellor," nodded Anakin. "We will take care of it."

"Please, report back to me as soon as you have him," said Palpatine. "So that I can give the good news to the Senate." Then he bowed and vanished.

A couple of seconds after he did, the door opened and the six who had been waiting outside, or seven if you counted the Digi-Egg, walked into the room.

"So," said Rika. "Nute Gunray. We'll finally get to see this guy who everybody keeps talking about – every time with distaste. I get the feeling that he's not very popular."

"That would be putting it mildly," said Mace. "Viceroy Gunray is loathed by the majority of the Galaxy. His money-grabbing schemes and efforts to squeeze all the profits that he can out of his business, no matter how unprincipled that method may be, have caused him to be one of the most disliked people in all the galaxy."

"I read the guy's biography," said Henry. "When I had some spare time on my hands. I didn't like what I was reading. He sounds like a slimy piece of work, if you ask me. I don't have much experience with people like him though."

"Oh, he's definitely a slimy piece of work," said Ahsoka. "He thinks very highly of himself and will do anything to get want he wants, but is cowardly and nobody likes him."

"He's the Makuramon of this universe," Terriermon quipped. Rika, Suzie and Renamon sniggered, Henry felt a smile appearing on his face and Lopmon attempted to look annoyed at him for insulting a fellow Deva but eventually devolved into sniggers herself, for that had been a very adequate description of the monkey that she remembered.

"I hope that he's on the station on Yavin Prime when we head out tomorrow," said Ahsoka. "I kinda feel like I should be one of the ones to apprehend him, because I was there when Ventress managed to break him out of our custody. He won't get away from me again if he is there."

"He better watch out," Anakin chuckled. "Little Snips is on his scent like a nexu." He then turned to the Digimon and said, "Now that the Chancellor isn't here, where are the rest of you guys planning on going? You gonna come to Yavin Prime with us, or are you going to Rhen Var with Aayla and Barriss."

"We'll probably head for Rhen Var," said Lopmon, indicating herself, Suzie and Chewbacca. "We should probably stick with Barriss."

"I'll feel all the better with you watching my back," Barriss replied.

"I think that we'll all head for Rhen Var," said Terriermon. "You two reckon that you can handle Yavin Prime on your own?"

"Pretty sure, yes," nodded Ahsoka. "It's probably a good idea if you go to Rhen Var anyway. We don't exactly have any air suits that fit you guys, so you probably won't be able to deal with the poisonous atmosphere or the very heavy gravity. I don't think that Terriermon and Lopmon would even be able to fly properly."

"Good point, Snips," said Anakin.

"You must be extra careful on these two separate assignments," said Mace. "We don't know if the information about Gunray being there is valid or not. However, if he is there, we must get to him. It is essential to the ending of the war that Gunray be placed in our custody."

"With you, may the Force be," said Yoda, somberly.

"Thank you, Master Yoda," said Aayla. "Come on, Anakin. We'd better galvanise a few clones to come with us on these missions. I daresay a few of them will be eager at the thought of capturing Gunray."

Anakin nodded and they began to head out, the Chosen One contacting Captain Rex as he went. As Aayla made to make her own contact with Commander Bly, Yoda stopped her before she reached the door with, "Knight Secura." Aayla turned around to look at the Jedi Master, who smiled warmly at her and said, "Remember my proposition. Please, consider it, you must."

Aayla paused for a moment and then nodded, "Yes, Master Yoda. I will consider it." Then, she turned and followed the others out.

* * *

A ship flew out over the Works once more, slowly making its way towards the tall tower that it had made its way towards before. Darth Sidious was taking a risk, heading back to his hidden outpost for the second time in such short notice. People might start to notice his absence if he was gone from the Senate for too long. However, if his plan was to work, he would need to inform his operatives of the development concerning the Jedi.

The ship slowly pulled in to the tower through the main hangar doors and the ramp of the ship slowly descended. Darth Sidious never rushed anywhere, even when the situation was urgent, and he slowly walked down the ramp, his cloak trailing behind him like some kind of wraith and his hood obscuring the top half of his face again. How he saw out of it was a mystery.

The Dark Lord of the Sith could feel the edges of his mouth twitching into a evil smirk. His plan to lure the Jedi out to the listening posts was working perfectly, and the plan to split them up had worked well too. Palpatine had delivered the message as required and the Jedi had responded exactly as required. Now he knew that his target was heading for the post above Rhen Var.

True, Barriss Offee was going to be there as well, but as far as Sidious was concerned, the Mirialan was little threat to his plan. After all, with all three operatives there, neither Jedi would stand a chance. Plus, Offee wasn't as much of a fighter as the other two as far as he knew. Her talents were more for healing, and in the middle of a lightsaber duel, that talent wouldn't help her a lot. He didn't know how skilled she was with a blade, but she had only just been Knighted. She wouldn't have the skills of his operatives.

He had done his part. Now the rest was up to the others.

Sidious strode over to the console that he had called from before and slowly reached up to push the button again with one finger, calling his apprentice from across the galaxy. A few moments later, and the answering hologram of the old man appeared, kneeling down like before.

"My Master," Dooku replied evenly. "I take it that you have news of where Knight Secura is heading?"

"Indeed I do, Lord Tyranus," Sidious sneered. "Everything is transpiring exactly as I predicted it would. Skywalker and Tano are heading for one, while Secura and Offee are heading for the other. And the latter two have chosen to go to the station in the atmosphere of Rhen Var. They believe that Viceroy Gunray will be there waiting to be captured. However, they will get a nasty surprise when they encounter you there instead."

"As you wish, Master," said Dooku. "I shall have that listening post garrisoned with droids immediately to take out any clone troopers that accompany the Jedi. Neither of them will escape alive."

"Offee is of no consequence," Sidious shook his head. "I want your main focus to be on Secura. It doesn't matter if the other one gets away with her life but if Secura is not dead by the time I receive another transmission from you, I shall be most angry."

"Understood, Master. We shall set out for the Rhen Var station. When can we expect our guests?"

"They leave early tomorrow morning," said Sidious. "That should give you plenty of time to prepare the trap."

"Yes, Master," said Dooku. "We will set out straight away. Ventress, Grievous and I shall work together to utterly destroy the Twi'lek Jedi Knight, Secura. She will no longer present a hazard to any of our plans."

"And with her out of the picture, we may finally be able to get back on track," said Sidious. "Imagine the reaction of the Republic when they learn one of the Team ABC is dead. There will be mass despair. More than enough to give us an advantage at last."

Dooku frowned. "Team... ABC?" he asked, confused.

Sidious sniffed and said, "A new name they came up with recently to encompass Offee and the Wookiee that now tags along with her. You can expect him at Rhen Var as well. But a Wookiee will be no match for you either, I should hope."

"I would certainly feel like I had not trained Ventress or Grievous properly if they couldn't take out a Wookiee. He will not be of any consequence either."

"Good," Sidious nodded. "Do not contact me again until Secura is dead. I look forward to your next transmission."

Dooku bowed and his hologram vanished. Now that he had relayed the message, Sidious' smirk really did turn evil. He eagerly awaited the dawn of the next day, because he knew that by the time the sun sank below the horizon once again, his plans would finally be able to get back on track.

Because Aayla Secura would be dead.

* * *

I thought a mostly light-hearted chapter at the beginning combined with some awesomeness from both Yoda and Aayla would be a good way of breaking the slight tension built up by the last chapter, but I couldn't get rid of it completely, which is why I added in that bit at the end. This chapter was interesting to write, and writing Yoda in action is hard. I hope I did him justice.

The younglings are the same ones in Attack of the Clones that Yoda is training when Obi-Wan goes in to ask him about Kamino.

And next time we have some upcoming action.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

As Anakin and Ahsoka go off to assault the listening post over Yavin, the other team members head for Rhen Var. They first have to find the base, and then they have to get aboard. And they are still none the wiser as to what is waiting for them there.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 123 : Taking the Plunge**


	123. Taking the Plunge

A bit later than normal again today due to a late night. I was up watching Kung Fu Panda in preparation for the upcoming sequel, which I am already psyched for. Anyway, this next chapter is another scene-setter but it progresses the plan a little bit more and it's not completely action free. Hope that you enjoy the ride. This'll be the only chapter in the story with three consecutive single digits in the whole number, since the story will end before Chapter 234.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 123:- Taking the Plunge**

* * *

Above the swirling cold atmospheres of Rhen Var, the Separatist listening post hung in the air, impervious to the winds and the snow and ice shards that buffeted against it and tried to knock it out of the sky. The large structure could almost be mistaken for a moon at a distance, except for the antennae that stuck out from the bottom like icicles, which is what they were becoming actually considering their environment.

Po Nudo's Aqualish subordinates that usually manned the post had all been removed. There was no need for them anymore – they would just get in the way of the new and more sinister operation that the listening post had been given to carry out. Now, the whole facility was filled with the marching sounds of the feet of battle droids as they patrolled up and down the corridors with their even paces, blasters held ready for any potential attack.

The droids themselves weren't particularly happy about coming to such a cold place, as the temperatures and the surrounding environment might affect their programming. But none of them dared to question to person who had brought them there – lest he throw them out of a hatch and leave them to freeze in the snow below, provided they didn't smash from the long drop.

General Grievous stalked down one of the corridors, having a little look around the base to pass the time. It was pretty similar to the last one that he had been on, except possibly even larger. The place was a maze of different networks and corridors that let to rooms filled with equipment that hadn't been fully completed yet in many cases.

Grievous wasn't much for waiting around and trying to find out what the Republic was trying to do next. He much preferred to take the action to them first and make a pre-emptive strike to catch them off guard instead of waiting around to find how they were going to run things. But Grievous knew the importance of strategy on a grand scheme of things. He just had to admit that he wasn't much for it. But give him a battle and he'd be there, usually in the thick of the action. He wasn't a Kaleesh warlord for nothing.

As he walked through the station, the ominous sound of his talons hitting the floor echoing with each step he took, he saw a double line of battle droids walked the other way and towards him. He fixed his yellow eyes on them and glared, and he could practically see the droids stand up straighter as they marched past their General. Grievous stopped as they did and carefully watched them as they filed by.

Battle droids disgusted Grievous. They were utterly useless at fending for themselves and had to be told exactly what to do before they could carry it out. And even then they struggled. It took dozens or even hundreds of battle droids to take down a single Jedi and even then they could usually only do it if they had that Jedi surrounded, which rarely happened as Jedi were often not that reckless. Grievous, on the other hand, could take down a Jedi on his own. The sheer ineptitude of the troops that he was being given gave the cyborg a headache, which he liked to take out on incompetent droids at any given excuse, usually by removing their heads.

He turned and marched on, a little bit disappointed that that last batch of droids had given him no excuses to bust one of them in. He was glad that his MagnaGuards at least had some skills of their own and could often hold their own against many Jedi. But, other than destroyer droids, they were about the only thing that could that Grievous had under his command.

As he moved on, Grievous' audioreceptors began to pick up a sound ahead of him. A couple of battle droids that were guarding a nearby entrance were talking with one another. Grievous paused for a moment and listened to their conversation.

"...we doing here, anyway?" one of them was saying. "I thought we were supposed to be out of the front lines and shooting at something."

"I heard that this station was being prepared for an attack," said the other. "Something about the Jedi finding out about it and preparing to launch an assault upon it."

"There are Jedi on their way?" the other asked alarmed.

"Sounds like it," agreed the other. "I didn't hear all of the details, but still, I think that's what is going to happen."

"Then what are we doing standing here?" whined the other. "Have you ever killed a Jedi?"

"No," the other shook its head. "I haven't even seen a Jedi. I came off the assembly line last week."

"Well, I've seen a Jedi. And trust me, we are completely doomed if they come this way. We can't hold our own against a Jedi, not even the really young ones. They'll cut us to scrap in seconds."

Grievous had heard enough, and he smirked under his mask as he started forwards again. The battle droids seemed to pick up the sound of his feet and one of the quickly said, "Quick. It's the General. Look like we're paying attention." They stood up straighter as Grievous approached. The cyborg stopped before them and glared at the two of them.

"Sir, what are your order?" one asked.

"Which one of you came off the assembly line last week?" Grievous growled.

"That would be me, sir," the one on the left raised its two fingered hand. Grievous spun around and struck the one on the right with a heavy blow to the head with his fist, knocking it clean off and sending the droid's body falling to the floor in a sparking heap. The battle droid still standing balked and stepped back, but Grievous turned to him and stabbed a claw towards his chest menacingly.

"If the Jedi come this way, you will stand your ground no matter how doomed you think you are," Grievous growled. "Understood?"

"Yes sir!" the droid saluted.

"Good," Grievous said. "I will assign another droid to replace this one," he added, lifting a foot and stamping on the droid's torso so hard it was flattened into a pancake shape. "But leave his body here, as a reminder of what happens to those who complain about the orders they are given."

"Roger, roger," the battle droid agreed. Grievous' eye twitched and he was tempted to knock this droid's head off as well for the use of that irritating phrase, but he restrained himself (with great difficulty) and marched on, leaving the battle droid staring at its headless companion and quivering slightly.

Grievous turned a corner and started to head up to the main control room. That was where he and his fellow servants of Lord Sidious were planning to set up their ambush. One of the Jedi that was coming here would definitely head in that direction if they believed Nute Gunray was there, because the Nemoidian would want to feel like he was in charge of everything by being in there. They hoped it would be Secura.

And if it wasn't Secura, but Offee that headed up to the control room, they could monitor the security footage to determine exactly where Secura was heading and go there to stop her. It would be a relatively simple plan, but Grievous liked plans to be simple – it meant that you were likely to get to the fighting much quicker than you would with a complex plot.

* * *

As Grievous stepped into the main control room, a large, open space filled with flashing buttons and lights around the walls that controlled what the majority of the station did and all the menial things as well like the heating and coolant systems. The entire right wall was covered in various viewscreens that were monitoring what was going on throughout the station on the little holocams that were dotted in various corridors and were slowly sweeping backwards and forwards the pick up any sign of the intruders.

Dooku was standing before these viewscreens and monitoring them with his hands clasped behind his face and the usual half-scowl but mostly neutral expression on his face as his head moved back and forth like one of the holocams to keep an eye on all the viewscreens. Ventress was there as well, standing close to the corner and with both her red lightsabers in hand. There was a sinister smile on her pale grey face as she practiced a few strokes, eager for the kill that she had been waiting for for so long.

There were a couple of battle droids there as well, but soon there was only one as Grievous grabbed on by its shoulder and said, "You! Head for Corridor 5C and take up the guard post there. One of the other droids there has... had an unfortunate accident."

"Roger, roger," the droid said quickly, fearing what Grievous would do if it didn't comply and hurried out of the room, grabbing a blaster as it did.

"By accident, you mean you deliberately wrecked it just for the pleasure of it, Grievous," Dooku said imperiously without looking around. "I saw the whole thing on the holocam. You really must stop this habit of wrecking our own soldiers."

"Ha!" Grievous laughed. "Those droids are nothing but useless pieces of scrap anyway! It's not like one less is going to make a difference!"

Grievous heard Ventress mutter, "You're one to talk," and growled and didn't comment.

"Nevertheless," Dooku replied. "We are in a difficult position with regards to the war right now, General. Many of our factories have been destroyed and we require all the droids we can muster against the Jedi. You can never be sure when a battle droid will shine through. They have been known to make lucky shots from time to time. Try and curb your rage against them."

"Yes, my lord," Grievous rasped, although he had little intention of actually attempting to do that. Knocking off battle droid heads was one of the things that he did to pass the time.

"I trust that you are prepared for the mission at hand," Dooku announced to both of them.

"Oh, I am more than prepared," sneered Ventress, spinning her lightsaber and whipping them to either side of her in a combat stance to demonstrate her eagerness for battle. "I shall get a good night's sleep tonight, with that impudent Twi'lek's head acting as a new lampshade."

Dooku frowned and said, "Your desire for vengeance is strong, Ventress. But even so, we do not mock the bodies of the fallen in such a way. We are not uncivilised beings who willingly befoul our victims, and I would appreciate it if you remembered that fact."

"Of course, Master," Ventress nodded, albeit with a slight reluctance. "However, I will still enjoy cutting that Twi'lek down. Aayla Secura will not escape me a third time."

"That is what you said about that youngling, Tano," sneered Grievous. "At yet she still managed to do just that. What makes you think that you will have any more luck against Secura?"

Ventress growled and said, "In case you had forgotten, Grievous, Tano escaped _your_ clutches in that instance as well."

"Maybe," chuckled Grievous. "But I was otherwise engaged fighting against the other two Jedi, one of which was Secura, I might add. You, on the other hand, were the one there when she escaped so I say that the blame for that instance rests solely on your shoulders."

"Why you, filthy bucket of...!" Ventress's eyes flashed with hatred.

"Ventress!" Dooku said sharply, without looking. "Control your tongue. Remember what I said about being civilised."

Ventress scowled, irritated that Dooku was lecturing her and not Grievous about this sort of thing. She knew that Dooku was not expecting any form of civilised behaviour from Grievous anyway, but she still couldn't help but feel a little resentful that she was the one getting into trouble while the Droid General was allowed to nitpick at her whenever he wanted.

"Yes, Master," she said, slowly and a little forced. She paused and said, "When can we expect our prey to arrive?"

"Patience," Dooku finally turned around to look at the both of them. "We have not been given an exact ETA. However, we will know when they get here and we will be given plenty of time to prepare."

"Well, she can't get here soon enough for me," Ventress said. "My hands are itching for some action, and I wish to fulfil my vengeance and swing my lightsabers through her body, preferably through the neck. Let's see if she can continue to fight us after that."

"What makes you think that you will be the one to strike the final blow?" asked Grievous. "I don't believe that you will be able to slip one blow past her guard."

"Are you implying that she is better than I am?" Ventress asked with forced calm.

"No, I am inferring it," Grievous laughed. "I am not too proud to admit the skill of an opponent, unlike you Sithling, as you seem to think you are automatically better than anyone. When I last fought Secura, she was almost able to catch me off guard a couple of times. I know I can best her, but she was still not be the easiest of opponents."

"Then I'll just have to prove you wrong," Ventress growled. "You watch, General. I will be the one to finally put an end to the troublesome Twi'lek, and I will do it without breaking a sweat. I am much more prepared for her in this bout."

"Only because you have two more people fighting alongside you," Grievous chuckled. "Both of whom are more skilful, I might add. But, by all means, try your hardest, Padawan. I look forward to seeing Secura kicking your head in. I hope you don't mind if I hang back until that happens."

"That is enough! The both of you!" Dooku said, stepped between the two fearlessly, even though Ventress looked like she was going to lash a lightsaber at Grievous at any second. "I am aware that the enmity between the two of you runs deeply. Especially in you, Ventress. But we are not supposed to be fighting one another on this mission. We all have the same target in mind, so we shall be working together to defeat her, regardless of how you feel about working with the other. Put aside your differences and focus on the objective in hand, both of you."

Grievous and Ventress glared at each other for a moment, before, Ventress sheathed her lightsabers. "As you wish, Master," she complied.

Grievous merely growled and said, "I will not complain about working with her. However, if she attempts to get under my plating, I will retaliate."

"By all means, General," Dooku allowed a smile to grace his mouth. "Insult her all you please. It will make her angrier, and therefore stronger in the battle that is to come."

Ventress' eyes widened. So that was his plan! That was why he was letting Grievous called her what he wished. She scowled, and Grievous laughed and said, "I will take great pleasure in it. What say you, youngling?"

Ventress snarled.

* * *

The space above the atmosphere of Coruscant was almost as bustling and full of spaceships flying to and from the planet as it was in the planet itself. Everything was zipping towards or away from the planet for traversing across it to quickly reach an area on the other side of the planet that would take much longer to get there if they went through the atmosphere.

But the miniature spaceships all parted ways as two large, triangular Republic cruisers rose out of the atmosphere and into the vacuum of space. The spaceships in question had become almost as famous as the people that ran them. One was the _Resolute,_ the flagship of Anakin Skywalker, and a ship that had fought in many, many space battles across the galaxy. The other was the _Intrepid,_ the flagship of the other general of the A-Team, Aayla Secura. This ship had seen about as many battles as its companion, but for some months now they had been appearing together on battlefields.

But this time, the two _Venator_-class cruisers would be going in opposite directions, as they took two different hyperspace lanes to get to their new locations.

On board the _Intrepid_, Aayla walked across the bridge from where she had been standing by the window and watching as they ascended into space. Her constant companions were clustered around the holotable at the other end – three Digimon, three Tamers, one Wookiee, one Mirialan and one clone commander.

Bly saluted Aayla as she approached and said, "Sir, we have done as you asked and the co-ordinates for Rhen Var have been placed in the navicomputer."

Aayla nodded and smiled. "Thank you, Bly," she said. "Hopefully today will be a historic ay in the Clone Wars if we succeed in capturing Viceroy Gunray, don't you agree?"

"Indeed, General," nodded Bly, smiling back. "And this time, he won't be getting away once we have in our custody. I'll personally guard him while he haul his sorry hide back to Coruscant. He won't be getting by me."

"I don't doubt it," said Aayla. "And you are right. We must take all precautions this time. Nute Gunray has been allowed to get away with too much since long before this war began. I don't know how he managed to remain the Viceroy of the Trade Federation after the Blockade of Naboo, even though he had no less than four trials in the Supreme Court."

"It's disgusting," agreed Bly. "But that worm is gonna be ours this time."

"Commander Gree probably won't be very happy," Barriss chuckled. "I remember the incident well. I was back at the Jedi Temple doing some studying for that particular mission but I remember that Commander Gree was sour for a few days afterwards. Especially since he had actually been defeated by letting Gunray sneak up behind him while he faced the traitor Argyus and hit him in the head with a pipe. He said he thought he would never live down the shame."

"Yeah, I felt sorry for the guy," nodded Bly. "But that Nemoidian isn't getting out of his cell when I'm there. I'll have only my most trusted of clones there – no Senate Guards or other unreliable people."

"Someone's very serious today," Terriermon said cheerfully.

"Got to get in the right mindset for the mission," Bly replied. "You'll have a much greater chance of succeeding in it if you gear yourself up for it beforehand and focus on the objective, I find."

"Maybe you should start doing that, Terriermon," Henry said. "Instead of wondering how many droids you're going to wreck."

"Oh, I do that too," said Bly, chuckling slightly.

"Well, just remember that we've got your back, Bly," said Terriermon. "You can count on us."

"I know that," the clone nodded. "I've fought alongside you guys enough times to know that without needing to be told. If Gunray is over Rhen Var then that'll mean we've been responsible for capturing almost all of the Separatist Council members. And I hope we're there when we finally find San Hill as well."

"The Republic will thank you for all this, Bly," said Renamon.

Bly nodded respectfully to Renamon. Much like Anakin, any doubts that Bly had had about revealing the presence of the Digimon to the Senate had long since vanished, as it had for most of the other clones that fought beside them. Bly was fiercely loyal to the Republic, and had been very reluctant to keep secrets from the Senate. But then he had seen, over the course of the various missions, that keeping the Digimon a secret really was the best thing for the Republic as a whole, at least until the war finally ended.

Bly liked the way the Digimon got things done with swift and decisive plans – they were like General Secura in that respect. He admired them for their strength, resilience and battle prowess, and he was proud to call them his friends. He had gotten to be better friends with them and Aayla than he had ever originally expected. Not that he was complaining – he enjoyed their company.

Suddenly, a couple of holograms appeared, to reveal Anakin and Ahsoka in ethereal looking blue forms that were being transmitted from the other ship. "Alright there, guys?" Anakin nodded. "Are we all ready to head off?"

"I think so, Anakin," said Aayla. "Our co-ordinates are all set and Bly has assembled the strike team of clones that will be coming with us as we enter that Separatist listening post. We're all ready for the off."

"Same here," said Ahsoka. "Well, I guess this is goodbye for now."

"Indeed," nodded Aayla. "But I expect you both to back at Coruscant with us by late afternoon, and one of us will have Gunray with us."

"And we can all sit down and have a nice big meal to commemorate the occasion," Terriermon declared. "I'm going to eat until I pass out this time, Rena. Don't stop my after the fifteenth gorba melt like you did last time."

"I'll do whatever I please, Terriermon," Renamon smirked down at her mate.

"Hey, Bly," the bunny called. "Why don't you join us? We could have an eating competition."

Bly laughed and said, "I am pretty sure I would lose that, even though your stomach is roughly about a quarter the size of mine."

"Who cares about winning or losing? It's just about having fun," said Terriermon.

"Alright, that's enough for now," chuckled Anakin. "Well, I think that we should be heading off. We'll see you later."

"And if Gunray is over Rhen Var," Ahsoka added, "Let him know that Ahsoka Tano is eager for a reunion."

"Will do, sir," Bly said.

"May the Force be with you," said Barriss.

"And with you too," nodded Anakin. Then, he vanished, as did Ahsoka. Aayla turned around to address the rest of the bridge and said, smiling warmly at the clones around the area, "Alright then everyone. Let's get underway. To Rhen Var, at lightspeed if you would."

"Yes, Aayla," nodded Bly. Aayla blinked and looked at Bly in surprise – Bly might be on friendly terms but he still always called her General. In fact, Aayla had given up on attempts to make him call her by her first name. Bly grinned back, a little mischievously, and Aayla chuckled and gave Bly a nod and a grin of her own.

"Sounds like somebody's broken through another milestone," Terriermon murmured to Renamon.

Aayla heard him and walked over to Bly, saying, "If Gunray's there, he won't know what hit him." Then she raised her hand in a high-five position.

"Amen to that," Bly agreed and slapped the palm of his hand against Aayla's own.

The motion was punctuated by the elongation of the stars outside and the whoosh of engines as the ship jumped to hyperspace and zoomed away from Coruscant at high speed. As it did, the _Resolute_ also jumped to hyperspace down a completely different track.

* * *

The journey to Rhen Var wasn't as long as most of the hyperspace journeys that the Tamers and the Digimon had experienced. This was probably due to the fact that it was sitting right next to one of the largest hyperspace lanes in the galaxy, of which there were about seven. Most of the worlds they had been travelling to had been some distance away down multitudes of smaller hyperspace routes that the spaceships had had to manoeuvre around, which was odd because they never felt the ship turning at any point during the flight.

The group usually passed the time by trying to amuse themselves, but there was little of that this time, not even from Terriermon. They knew that the their mission would be an important one if their target happened to be where they were going, so they were taking some advice from Bly and gearing themselves up, so that they were ready for the inevitable assault on the listening post.

Other than Bly, five other clones would be accompanying them onto the station. There was Lieutenant Galle as well, and he was also more than eager for a chance to nab Gunray and bring the war to a closer end. And then there was also Barr and Inc, who were both highly skilled troopers, and Ridge and Blade, who had been in a lot of tough battles. The idea behind the assault was to have smaller task forces that would be able to move around the station better than if they went in with blazing guns.

Plus, if Gunray was there and he got the impression that there was a massive army out for him, he might be quicker to flee.

Barr and Inc had not spent quite as much time with the Digimon as the other clone and spent some time on the hyperspace journey getting acquainted with Terriermon and Lopmon. Blade got himself into a long conversation with Renamon, the Digimon who had saved his life on the planet Ryloth. Galle spent some of his time conversing with Barriss, trying to get to know the Jedi that was scheduled to be working alongside them a little bit better, while Ridge a rather one way talk with Chewbacca, as the clone didn't understand anything that the Wookiee said in return.

Occasionally Lopmon would turn around and whisper a translation for him though, so he was able to understand the basics of what they were talking.

Aayla and Bly spent a while examining the holographic plans of the station that the Chancellor had provided them with and refining the details of the plan when they entered the station. Bly used to follow the General's orders without offering his own opinion, but as Aayla had gotten more friendly with him, she had started to encourage him to speak his mind and offer his own suggestions. Bly felt that by doing this, he was becoming slightly more of an individual than he had been – which was good. He wanted to learn to be normal as much as the next clone.

Eventually though, a clone called out from one of the consoles and said, "Sir, we're making our final approach to Rhen Var."

"Thank you, Trigger," said Aayla. "And you can call me Aayla when we're not in battle. If Bly can do it, so can the rest of you."

"Um... yes s... Aayla," Trigger said, though he looked a bit disconcerted at calling a Jedi General by their first name only, something which he had never done before. "Anyway, we're pulling out of hyperspace now."

The Digimon looked up as the ship whooshed to almost a stop in front of a giant sphere that was almost completely white. "Yeesh," Terriermon said as he stared at the place. "That planet looks even more inhospitable than Mygeeto did."

"It is," said Aayla. "Which is why there is considerably less life on it. Fortunately, we won't be heading down to the surface, regardless of whether or not the information that the Chancellor gave us is correct."

"What are your orders, Aayla?" asked Bly.

"I'm pretty sure you know the answer to that question, Bly," Aayla chuckled, still amused at the fact that Bly was using her name instead of sir or General.

"Probably," Bly conceded. "I was just checking. Alright guys," he addressed the other clones in the room. "Modulate the scanners for any sign of a Separatist outpost or facility of any kind. Sweep the entire surface of that iceball until we find that listening post."

"Yes, sir," said the clones, flipping switches and doing just that, as a holographic image of the planet appeared on the holotable. A long red line began to flow over the planet's surface to indicate where the scanners were checking for any sign of the Separatists. Everyone crowded around the holotable watched it intently as the ship slowly orbited the planet to try and locate the place.

Eventually, a red flashing blip appeared on the hologram, indicating that something had been spotted. "There," said Barriss, pointing towards it. "Focus our scanners on that spot and bring up the registry of the facility."

The clones nodded and quickly obeyed, and the holographic projection was quickly replaced with another spherical location, this one with many antennae sticking downwards from the bottom and many aerials on the top. It was an exact copy of the listening post hologram that the Chancellor had shown the Jedi in the communications centre of the Temple.

"Well, looks like that spy was right about the post," said Henry.

"Just as well," said Bly. "I don't particularly like spies. I understand their significance and importance but still I don't particularly trust them."

"My Master was an undercover spy in the Separatists for a time," pointed out Aayla.

"Yes," nodded Bly. "And forgive me for saying this, but if you hadn't gone to get him back then things wouldn't have turned out that well for him, would they?"

"True enough," said Aayla. "Though he did still think he was doing the right thing at the time. Anyway, now is not the time for debate. We need to begin our assault on that place. Place the cruiser over the post but out of range of its scanners. Our taskforce will descend down towards it in a gunship. At least for some way. Bly, you and your men prep your jetpacks."

"Yes, General," Bly said, switching back to the formality now that they were preparing for combat. As he and his men left, Rika looked up at Aayla.

"I suppose you want us Tamers to stay in the ship again?" she asked

"I'm afraid so," said Aayla. "Sorry, but there could still be a lot of droids down there."

"I know," said the redhead. "I was just checking. I think I'm getting used to being left behind."

"Don't feel so bad, Rika," said Lopmon. "You got to be on the very front line in our last fight, didn't you? When we took on Godzillo."

"I would like to point out that I wish I could have been there to see that," said Bly. "Rex told me about it."

"Yes, sorry, Bly," Aayla smiled apologetically. "There really wasn't much time to contact you about it. Everything was so hectic."

"I know," said Bly. "I understand. But this time, I'm going to be in the thick of the action."

"And we wouldn't have it any other way!" Terriermon shouted. "To your battlestations!" He leapt off the console and soared towards the door... or tried to, because he was snagged by Renamon immediately afterwards.

"I think you'll find that Aayla and Barriss give the orders around here," chuckled the fox. She turned to the Jedi in question and asked, "What are your orders?"

Barriss and Aayla glanced at one another and both grinned. Barriss pointed at Terriermon and went, "What he said!"

The clones cheered and quickly filed out of the room, heading towards the hangar, followed by the Jedi and the Digimon, as the _Intrepid_ slowly began to move itself so that it was hovering high above the listening post far below it. As Chewbacca made to follow the Jedi, he felt a small hand grabbing at his own and looked down to see Suzie looking up at him plaintively.

"You'll look after Lopmon and the others, won't you?" Suzie asked.

Chewbacca knelt down and ruffled Suzie's hair with a big furry paw. "Rooohu rhwoao," he nodded, and then he rose to his feet and quickly followed the others out of the bridge.

The hangar was bustling with activity as the last minute preparations occurred. The gunship that would take them down was already prepped and waiting for transport. Aayla and Barriss were filling a middle-sized backpack full of small explosive devices, which would come in handy during the mission before them. Once they had done, Aayla lifted the backpack up and passed it to Barriss, and the Mirialan quickly pulled it onto her shoulders and tightened the straps so it would remain secure.

She wasn't the only thing pulling things onto her shoulders either. Bly and Galle were assisting Chewbacca in strapping a jetpack onto the Wookiee's back. The Wookiee had never needed a jetpack before, as he was capable of climbing through the trees to get where he needed to go on his homeworld. But there wasn't going to be any trees where they were going.

The three Digimon were already waiting inside the gunship, and nodded to the others and the clones and everybody else filed inside. Lopmon looked up at her big furry friend and asked, "You feeling up to this, Chewbacca?"

"Akooahwhao scwo ahwh aoacwo rcahrracao waahrcwooaaoahoowh," Chewbacca replied, nodding firmly. "Scwo orahoaor warcooahwa rarccwo."

"Language," Lopmon reprimanded him, though she giggled slightly.

Aayla approached the gunship last and, trundling along beside her, was the familiar bronze-plated astromech droid R4-G9. "Well, I'm glad you're feeling ready for this, Chewie," she said. "But could you do me a favour and take Arfour down with you. We'll probably need him if we want to get to all the places we need to go down there so we'll need someone strong to carry him down."

Chewbacca announced his readiness with a growl of approval and scooped up the alarmed astromech, holding it firmly against his furry chest with one arm. Aayla quickly stepped into the gunship as well and, now that it was full, the blast doors shut and the ship rose into the air, passing out of hangar.

"Does everybody feel prepared for this mission?" asked Barriss, as they moved through the air.

"Yes, sir," said Galle. "We're ready and waiting."

"Good," said Bly. "Because everyone has a different role when they get down there, and we're going to need to carry them out quickly if we want to catch that Nemoidian sleemo."

"Sounds exciting," said Terriermon. "What do we do?"

"I'll explain when we've got a foothold inside," said Aayla. "For now, let's just concentrate on getting down there. The ride is not going to be an easy one."

"Who needs easy?" asked Terriermon. "Bring it on."

"Easy would be preferable in this instance," said Renamon. "But nevertheless, I do agree with you on that point. Bring it on."

* * *

After a minute or so, the blast doors of the ship slid open to reveal that they were in the atmosphere. The first thing that happened was that a sudden, biting and freezing cold wind whooshed into the gunship and knocked just about everybody backwards slightly, causing poor Inc to almost fall out of the gunship, and he probably would have done so if he hadn't been grabbed by Renamon.

The fox hauled him back into the ship and then she and the bunnies perched on either shoulder peered outwards at the white skyline, leaning out to see where they were going. There was nothing ahead of them but more and more cold wilderness, but as they looked downwards, they could see their destination. The listening post was a couple of thousand metres below them still, like a giant dully-coloured bauble hanging in mid-air.

"Ah," said Lopmon. "So we're taking the quick route down. And by that, I mean the _very _quick route down."

"The scenic route," nodded Terriermon. "This is going to be quite an experience."

"Let's go then," said Barriss. "Follow us, boys and girls!" Then, she and Aayla sprang out of the gunship and plunged straight downwards with the way that gravity took them, dropping like stones in head-first vertical swan dives, except with their arms by their sides instead of out before them. The two Jedi sailed downwards quickly until they were almost whipped out of sight by the swirling snow.

"Better not keep them waiting," said Renamon and sprang out the gunship after them, plummeting towards the station with them and sending a quick message to Rika via her mind. The bunnies leapt off her shoulders and soared downwards in a slightly more controlled way but still with a completely vertical trajectory.

Chewbacca watched them go for a moment, before all the clones around him began to jump out the ship and drop downwards as well, only they were doing it feet-first. Chewbacca grimaced, but then leapt out after them. It felt like he had left his stomach behind, and he could hear Arfour squealing over the sound of the wind, but the Wookiee took the challenge with a rumbling roar as he dropped after everyone else.

Aayla and Barriss glanced across at one another as they practically free-fell towards the listening post. They nodded to one another and tucked their legs together, streamlining their bodies so they fell like arrows. Barriss' cloak and Aayla's lekku were streaming out behind them and wildly waving in the wind, but they ignored them as they continued the plunge.

Above them, with regards to Renamon, Rika had swiped a quick Modify Card through the slot in her D-Arc and three pairs of glowing, angelic like wings appeared on the fox's back as the Hyper Wing card took effect. Renamon had selected this card because while the Dragon Wings card was more powerful, it required powered flight to work, which would be a problem in this wind, while the Hyper Wings could just be there to provide flight.

_You look angelic, Renamon,_ Terriermon grinned across at her. _Did I ever tell you that I thought you were an angel?_

_As a matter of fact, you didn't_, Renamon replied, winking at him as they continued the drop. _But that's okay, because I already knew that you thought that anyway._

_Can you two not flirt when we are plummeting downwards towards a place where we will inevitable end up fighting to stop ourselves from being killed,_ Lopmon rolled her eyes.

_Sorry Loppy,_ Terriermon grinned. _But you know, if Impmon was here and he was trying to flirt with you, you wouldn't be complaining._

_Oh shut up,_ Lopmon shook her head as she and her brother spiralled down on either side of Renamon.

As for the clones and Chewbacca... well, they just dropped.

* * *

Dooku's eyes opened slowly from where he had been standing still and meditating on the spot. Ventress was still swinging her lightsabers in preparation for the ambush they were planning to set, while Grievous was impatiently striding backwards and forwards across the room. The droid General's cloak trailed behind him as he did – and the sound of its flapping about, the noise of his feet and the whirring of Ventress' lightsaber blades had been quite distracting for the Count.

But, nevertheless, he had been able to detect what he had been looking for.

"Grievous, Ventress," he said, turning around to face them, and they both stopped what they were doing and turned to look at him. "I can sense the minds of two Force-sensitive individuals rapidly approaching. It seems that our target has arrived."

"It's about time," Ventress said. "I was beginning to think that she didn't have the guts to come out and play."

"She doesn't know we're here, Sithling," Grievous growled, before turning to Dooku and saying, "But will she not sense your presence here as well? That would give away the little surprise we have in store for out tailheaded friend."

"Not to worry, Grievous," Dooku said. "I am shielding my presence from all other Force-sensitive beings and Ventress will be doing the same. Secura will not know that we are here until she sets eyes on us. And by that time, it will be too late."

"I can already smell victory," Ventress sneered.

"Secura will not escape us," Grievous agreed. "We have her right where we want her now."

"Indeed," said Dooku. "And with her out of the way, Lord Sidious' designs will have been fulfilled."

* * *

As Aayla and Barriss drew closer and closer to the top of the facility, their eyes fixed on the roof of the place and widened as they prepare for the inevitable landing. If it weren't for the fact that they were Jedi, such a landing would have been far, far too much for them, but they both had tricks to stop themselves from smacking into things after ridiculously long drops such as the one that they were falling from.

With split second timing and precision, the two Jedi judged the distance had been far enough when they were roughly thirty metres or so from colliding headfirst with the top of the structure and thrust out their hands before them, pressing individual Force bursts against the ground which slowed them down considerably for a split second, during which time they were able to flip back around so they were feet first and then dropped the rest of the way to land smoothly on the top of the listening post, as if they had just jumped from one step to another on a staircase instead of an over two thousand foot drop from a gunship.

Twi'lek and Mirialan nodded to one another and looked up to see how the others were doing.

The Digimon descended towards them first, Renamon with the familiar looking Hyper Wings jutting out of her back. In similar timing strategies as they whooshed towards the surface of the post next to the Jedi, the three Digimon flared their ears or wings respectively and reduced their speed dramatically, before practically floating down the rest of the way, coming to land beside their comrades.

"I'm not built for climates like this," shuddered Terriermon as he and Lopmon both landed and it seemed that he was right. Both the bunnies were clearly not faring as well as they could have been – their huge ears not particularly helping as they gave off a lot of heat, plus they were small and had very little insulation.

Renamon looked down at them and, as her Hyper Wings vanished, she scooped both of them up and enfolded them in her furry arms, pressing them close to her chest. Her tail came up to provide even more insulation. This definitely seemed to help, as the bunnies shivering began to dissipate quickly.

"Of course, I don't need to be built for this," Terriermon chuckled. "I've got my very own personal hot water bottle."

"Except it hugs you instead of the other way around," Renamon smiled. "Other than that, at your surface."

"Well, thanks for sharing, brother," Lopmon said, burying herself in Renamon's fur.

And then came the clones. As they got closer the group, they quickly activated their jetpacks, the bursts of flames erupted from the ends of them slowing them down as smoothly and effectively as the ears and wings of the Digimon had. One by one the six clones dropped down onto the flattened top of the spherical listening post.

"All present and correct, sir," said Bly.

"Not quite," said Barriss, nodding upwards as Chewbacca fell towards them. For someone who had never used a jetpack before, Chewbacca seemed to be able to operate it very well, but then again he was good with machines. He activated it without a problem and slowly floated the rest of the way down, until he landed with a thunk. A large amount of snow had caught in his shaggy fur and Chewbacca looked a little bit like a cross between a Wookiee and a Yeti.

The Wookiee growled softly and placed Arfour on the ground next to him. The astromech, unaffected by the cold, seemed quite at ease with everything and the moment and whistled almost jauntily.

"Glad someone's enjoying themselves," Lopmon shivered.

"Might I suggest we get out of the cold, Generals?" asked Bly. "We didn't bring our snowgear with us and its pretty damn cold."

"Not to worry, Bly," said Aayla, turning to Barriss. "Will you do the honours, or should I?"

"Let's both do it," replied Barriss, activating her blue lightsaber, which was difficult to distinguish against the backdrop. Aayla nodded and activated her own blue blade, before both Jedi upended them and plunged their blades into the roof they were standing on. Both of them moved in opposite directions, carving a semi-circle with their blades from the point where they had plunged their own lightsabers in to the point where the other had plunged their own blade in.

The result was a scarily perfect circle in the metalwork. Aayla and Barriss both caught the metal cutting with the Force before it plummeted downwards and announced their presence with a loud clang. They quickly deactivated their lightsabers and lifted the cutting, floating it to one side before carefully putting it down on the ceiling.

"Well, there's our entrance," said Barriss. "Who's going in first?"

Bly stepped forward, but the furry hand of Chewbacca on his shoulder halted his progress. The turned to look at the Wookiee curiously, and the Wookiee shook his head and pointed to himself with one thumb, hefting the bowcaster that he had brought with him in his other hand to indicate that he wanted to be the one to go in.

"Alright then," nodded Bly. "Let's see what you can do."

"Take out the security holocams that you see in there," said Aayla. "There is still a chance that Gunray could get away, and if he sees the Digimon on the holofeed then the secret will be out."

Chewbacca shed the jetpack on his back and dropped it to the deck, and then he quickly jumped into the corridor and out of the cold wind. He landed with practiced ease and glanced from one end of corridor to another. Sure enough, there was a security holocam on the wall that was ever so slowly turning back to face him.

The Wookiee quickly lifted the bowcaster and fired a single, bright green laser from it, which mashed into the holocam and left it as a spluttering mess. And that appeared to be the only one in that corridor.

Chewbacca called up a growling all-clear through the hole and then stepped back as the others quickly dropped through it one by one and landed, moving out the way themselves. The six clones came first, moving out in a circle and staring in different directions just in case there was any sign of incoming droids. Then Arfour descended down, floating thanks to the Force manipulation from the two Jedi.

As the astromech came down, Barr raised a hand for quiet and listened hard. As Terriermon and Lopmon descended through the hole, the faint but steadily approaching sounds of the feet of droids bashing against the floor with each step they took could be heard.

"So much for getting inside without attracting too much attention," said Barr, as Renamon jumped through the hole, grabbing onto the edge of it and swinging from it to somersault over Arfour's head and land nearby. "What are we supposed to do now, sir?"

"The answer to that question is a simple as they come, Barr," Bly said, lifting his DC-17 pistols. "We wipe 'em out!"

"Yes," said Aayla, as she and Barriss dropped through the hole last. "And we do it quickly!"

The droids rounded the corner then and saw the lot of them standing there in the corridor. "Ah, look!" cried the one at the front. "It's the Republic. They're here."

"Quick! Blast them!" cried another one and the droids quickly spread out and started emptying red lasers in the direction of the group. Barriss and Aayla both somersaulted over Barr and Blade and brought their lightsabers into play, blocking the majority of the shots with whirring, spinning motions. The clone behind them quickly spread out, crouching behind outcroppings in the walls and firing their own lasers at the group of droids. Several of them whooshed through the droid ranks but the majority of them landed a hit.

The droids seemed to focus the main bulk of their firepower on the Jedi, trying to somehow slip past the guard of the two dancing lightsabers that moved in swift, decisive motions to intercept the shots. Aayla deflected two attacks that were aimed at her head, then blocked another that would have struck her hip and spun around to smack another laser back at the droid forces, all in the same second. Barriss twirled her blade in a complete circle blocking no less than three lasers in this one motion and then brought her blade up to defend quickly against two more shots lancing towards her chest.

* * *

"Cacoohuanwa ohwo acwoanak?" asked Chewbacca to the three Digimon, who were still standing behind the Jedi as they and the clones quickly felled the droids.

"Of course," nodded Lopmon, spreading her ears in preparation to take off. "Now let's show them what we can do when we all work together."

"Or, we could do that on the droids that have just rounded the corner in the other direction," Renamon said, as she stared over her shoulder and saw several more battle droids, including about six Supers, round the corner towards them from that end of the corridor instead.

"Either option's good," said Terriermon. "Come on!" He and Lopmon leapt into the air together as the droids began to spread out and ready their blasters again. Renamon leapt into motion right behind them and Chewbacca quickly charged after the fox.

Linking ears, the bunnies whirled into motion with a **"TWIN CYCLONE!"** Before the droids even knew what was going on, they were in their midst – the large tornado that they whipped up crashing right through the middle of the group of droids and sending mechanical limbs flying all over the place as the droids were whirled and slammed to a pulp where they stood.

One of the Supers was also engulfed by the miniature whirlwind, though it was made of tougher stuff. However, it was still sent flying backwards and crashed against the wall so hard that its back was dented and a bunch of circuitry crushed.

A large number of the droids turned around to see what had happened, but an equally large number opened fire at Renamon. The fox flung herself into a sideways spin, allowing lasers to pass above and below her, where they were promptly deflected from behind by the Jedi. In mid-air, Renamon twisted around and crossed her arms, unleashing a potent, **"DIAMOND STORM!"** at the forefront of the droid forces.

The sharp projectiles lashed into the droid ranks and tore through their metal hides, slicing through wires and plating alike until they came out the other side, causing the droids they lashed into to collapse on the spot. Renamon landed in front of the stunned droids and smirked at them. They stepped back in alarm and raised their blasters, but suddenly Renamon backflipped, passing right over Chewbacca as the Wookiee roared and finished his charge.

The droids were unprepared for the attack from the furry humanoid. Chewbacca's fist slammed into a Super Battle Droid and punched right through its reinforced hull, causing it to collapse in a heap and land on the droid behind it. Chewbacca roared again and slammed both fists into the two droids in front of him, sending them flying backwards to knock over several more, then seized another droid by the neck in his woolly paw and hefted it into their air as if it was as light as a piece of tissue paper.

The droid promptly became a flail, taking out a couple more of the other droids before its neck was wrenched from its socket and the body went flying away, leaving Chewbacca holding the head. Undeterred, Chewbacca tossed the head over his shoulder and rammed into the droid ranks shoulder first, bringing both his arms ploughing upwards in a fierce blow that snapped through the legs of the closer droids and caved in the stomachs of the others.

Renamon leapt over him and the two of them fought side by side. Their fighting styles complemented one another perfectly, and the droids fell before their onslaught rapidly. Only one laser managed to hit one of them, nailed Chewbacca in the hip. The Wookiee barely felt in and slammed his paw vertically downwards on the head of the droid responsible, flattening it into his torso. Then, they were rejoined by Terriermon and Lopmon, who were rebounding off the heads of the droids like large squash balls and knocking them off with co-ordinated strikes.

* * *

"I think that those guys have got that side of the corridor covered," said Blade as he pause momentarily to check over his shoulder in case any got past them.

"Come on boys!" cried Bly. "We can't let them have all the fun! Let's go!"

The clones leapt out of hiding and ran forwards towards the last of the droids on their side of the corridor, opening fire with their lasers. Bly's pistols brought down two droids standing next to one another and knocked one leg off the droid behind them, causing it to keel over uselessly. Ridge's laser nailed a droid in the arm and knocked it clean off. The droid looked down at the useless stump and then had its head taken off by the same clone. Inc managed to get close enough to one droid to ram it with his shoulder and knock it to the ground, before finishing it off with a couple of shots from above.

As Blade finished off another battle droid with a blow to the head from his rifle, he looked up and saw, to his alarm, two lasers skimming through the air towards him. He stepped back, but not nearly quickly enough. Fortunately, a blue lightsaber suddenly intercepted the two attacks as Barriss span in front of him and deftly flicked her blade a couple of times.

"How about next time, you warn us before you go charging past us like that?" she asked as she darted forwards and slashed through another battle droids.

"Sorry sirs," said Bly. "Guess we got caught up in the heat of the moment."

Aayla appeared next to him and turned aside three lasers brusquely, pirouetting around to slam away a forth. "If you ask me," she said. "I think you've been hanging around Anakin and Ahsoka too long. Mind you, I can't exactly comment on that, but still. Let's finish these guys off quickly so we can brief everyone on the plan."

"Sir, yes sir," Bly called, blasting another droid in the chest. Aayla charged forwards and span her lightsaber, dashing to the left of two and slicing them in half as she past, spinning low to sweep the legs off another and bringing her leg up on the same spin to kick another in the head, then whirling about to slice another in two down the middle and stab the one behind it.

Barriss was also in the thick of things now, blocking two lasers and leaping into a spin, whirling right between two droids and landing to slice through both with two swift strokes as they tried to turn around. Ducking under another shot from behind her, she swept about and cleaved a droid from hip to armpit and span her blade to the right to take off the necks of two more.

As more and more droids fell to the clones, the corridor rapidly emptied of mechanical beings, until there were only two left. One of them was Arfour, and the other was a single solitary battle droid that was standing where all its brethren had previously surrounded it on the Jedi side of the corridor. It looked from left to right at all the droids sparking on the floor around it, and decided that it was dead.

And it was. A second later it was jerked forwards with a Force pull and its body was impaled by two lightsabers at once, as Aayla and Barriss held their blades close together and summoned the droid to them in a double stab. Sputtering and deactivating, the droid slumped to the floor when the Jedi switched off their lightsabers and turned around to survey the mess.

"Well, that takes care of that bunch," said Bly.

"Yes, but there will be more," said Barriss. "Unfortunately, there _always_ seems to be more."

"But hopefully this battle won't have raised the alarm," said Aayla. "Since Chewbacca took out the security holocam. Now come on guys, get over here so Bly and I can brief you on the plan."

"We're coming," Renamon said, as she and Chewbacca ran back to the others, having successfully destroyed all the droids on their side of the corridor as well, while Terriermon and Lopmon flew. The group crowded together and Bly nudged Arfour slightly with one knee. The astromech took his cue and headed for a scomp link in the wall and plugged himself in, his head rotating behind him and displaying the same holographic map that Aayla and Bly had been looking at, only bigger.

"Okay," said Aayla. "We're right here at the top. And there are several places that we need to secure if we want to accomplish both of our objectives with ease. First off, we need to take the reactor core and set the explosives there so that we can detonate this facility after we've finished what we're doing here. Barriss, you have the bombs."

"Yes," nodded Barriss, hefting the backpack. "They're all in here and waiting to be used."

Aayla nodded and said. "Lieutenant Galle, I am tasking you, Ridge and Blade to go with Barriss to the reactor core and set the charges. It'll probably be defended so be careful. And take Arfour with you to help you break in."

"Got it, General Secura," nodded Galle. "We'll do our task quickly."

"I'm counting on it," Aayla nodded. "And I know you will. But that leaves the other task we have of catching Gunray. My guess is that he will be here in the main control room," she indicated the point on the map roughly in the middle of the station. "However, when he gets wind of our presence, it is unlikely that he will stay there. He'll head straight for the hangar to try and escape when he learns that the Republic is here for him."

"Assuming he _is_ here and not at Yavin," said Renamon.

"Yes, but we do indeed have to assume that," Aayla nodded. "And this is the part where you Digimon come in, and you as well Chewbacca. I want you, Big Guy," she winked at the Wookiee, to take the lead and head straight for the hangar. Take out any holocam that you see so that the Digimon can pass undetected. You guys do that as well," she indicated Barriss and her contingent. "To allay suspicion."

"Got it," nodded Barriss.

"When Chewbacca and the Digimon reach the hangar, you have to secure it," the Twi'lek pressed. "If Gunray manages to get there you should be there to cut off his escape."

"Got it," nodded Terriermon. "Fish-face isn't going anywhere as long as we're on the job."

"Indeed," Renamon nodded. "We won't let you down."

"What about you Aayla?" asked Lopmon.

"Me?" Aayla asked. "Well, Bly, Barr, Inc and myself will head straight for the main control room, where Gunray is most likely to be. If he has left by the time we arrive, which is likely, we will pursue him through the station and towards the hangar. Hopefully we'll be able to get to him before he reaches the hangar and spots you Digimon, but just in case we don't, you need to do your part as well."

"Okay," nodded Lopmon. "Sounds like a plan."

"It _is_ a plan," said Bly. "It's a strategical proposal of what we're about to do – so it's a plan."

"Any now Bly's cracking jokes," Terriermon laughed. "Where will it end?"

"Focus, people," said Renamon. "We need to get moving."

"Agreed," nodded Aayla. "Barriss, when you and your men finish your task, rendezvous with us in the hangar. Then we'll call in the gunships to pick us and our prisoner up and detonate this facility once we're far enough away."

"Got it," nodded Barriss with determination. "We'd better get moving then."

"Yes," nodded Aayla. She passed a little holoprojector to Barriss and Renamon and said, "Here are more maps of the station in case you take a wrong turn. Now, let's go," and they started to move. Aayla and Barriss' routes both started in the same direction, they both ran down one end of the corridor, while the Digimon and Chewbacca took the other end.

"May the Force be with you!" Terriermon shouted.

"Momentai!" Barriss shouted back.

Terriermon turned around to yell at her but Lopmon grabbed his ear with her own and pulled him along. And thus, the large group split into three teams, each heading for a different location.

And one group in particular running right towards danger.

* * *

It's been a couple of arcs since a wrote about a scrap between the Jedi, Digimon and clones against a bunch of droids. I think I had some new ideas because of the break I had. And this time Chewbacca was with them. I hope you liked the way our Wookiee friend put the pounding on the droids, because he'll be doing a lot more smashing in the future.

It seems that so far, the plan of the bad guys is working. Aayla's heading right towards them.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

We'll follow the different paths that everybody takes – what do Barriss and her troops meet on the way to the reactor core? What becomes of Chewie and the Digimon as they go for the hangar? And, most importantly, what awaits Aayla and Bly in the main control room?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 124 : Separation**


	124. Separation

Here I am again. I've complied with all your demands and updated as quickly as I can, even though I was planning to do that anyway. I hope you enjoy this chapter, but then again, I hope that you enjoy all my chapters so perhaps I should come up with something new to say.

Anyway, just to address a little something that was mentioned in a review for the last chapter – there is not, nor will there ever be, a romantic relationship between Aayla and Bly. Aayla's not going to have a relationship with anyone – she's going to uphold that particular part of the Jedi Code. I don't like it when people make Jedi have relationships in the older stories unless their name is Skywalker, because that's pretty much a given. So there will be no romance for Aayla, Ahsoka, Barriss, or any other Jedi except Anakin (not even Obi-Wan, which is why I kinda glossed over Duchess Satine), regardless of what the comics say or the fans want. Bly and Aayla are just becoming very good friends, which is quite important for this arc.

Anyway, now that that is out of the way, read on everybody.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 124:- Separation**

* * *

A couple of battle droids standing guard outside a pair of blast doors that led into another corridor were standing rigidly to attention and not speaking to one another – not even glancing at each other as battle droids sometimes did. They had both heard about the incident upstairs involving one of their comrades that had not been doing its job properly and had no desire whatsoever to meet the same fate.

Their General could be very mean to them when he wanted to be. And he seemed to want to be mean almost all the time so they were deciding not to give him any excuses.

However, it didn't really matter in the end, because the two of them were fated to die there that day anyway. As a holocam up on the wall in front of them slowly rotated round again, a blue laser suddenly shot down the corridor and crashed into it, turning it into a little ball of smoke and bits of charred metal and wiring that fell to the corridor below.

"Huh?" the battle droids turned around and stepped back in fear as they saw three men clad in white armour running towards them, led by a Mirialan in a dark cloak and with a blue lightsaber in her hand.

"Fire!" one yelled.

"Roger, roger!" cried the other and they both started to shoot red lasers at the oncoming party. They only managed to let off three between them, and the Mirialan managed to block all three without breaking her stride, while two of the clones pointed blasters over her shoulder and let rip with them. Both droids were nailed in the chest several times and keeled over, useless (more than before anyway.)

Barriss and the clones ran past the fallen droid, Blade deliberately kicking one of the droid's head off as he ran past it. The little astromech trundling along behind them paused momentarily to look down at it by tilting its whole body. Then, Arfour wheeled on past the head, nudging it with his foot, if you could call it a foot, as he went past.

Barriss paused at the end of the corridor and lifted the holoprojector that Aayla had given her. The clones paused behind her as well, and Barriss brought up the holographic map of the station and flicked a couple of small buttons to zoom in on where she knew they were and where they needed to go.

"Right at this junction," she said, "Then second left and another left after that."

"Copy that," nodded Galle, and Barriss quickly led the way down the corridor to the right. Any holocam that was spotted on the way was quickly picked off with a well placed shot, usually from Galle, who was very accurate with his blaster. They were following Aayla's orders to the letter, knowing that it was essential to keep up the secrecy of their friends from another universe. They were also hoping that if Gunray was there and was seeing this on the holofeed, he would only be able to guess where they were going to go next instead of watching them charge down another corridor.

Barriss' cloak would normally have been rushing out behind her as she ran. But it was pressed against her back now, due to the large backpack full of explosives that was lying against it.

Barriss was feeling a little bit of a rush at the moment. This was the first mission that she had led since she had become a Jedi Knight. The whole thing with the Zillo Beast didn't really count. Yes, it had been her idea to lure it out into the Works to keep the Digimon a secret, but she had not actually led it. She felt a great sense of responsibility right now, and she was determined not to mess this mission up. She wanted to prove that her Master had made the right decision to Knight her.

She wondered what Luminara was doing now, since Barriss was no longer fighting by her side. She hadn't even seen her Master in the flesh since she was still a Padawan. But she couldn't afford to think about that right now. She shoved it aside and focused on the mission in hand.

Following the path that had been given to her by Aayla, Barriss eventually encountered another obstacle – a door that they needed to pass through which was locked so they couldn't open it, and also had a ray shield in front of it, which was irritating because it meant that Barriss couldn't just cut through it with her lightsaber.

"We need to pass through here now," she turned around. "Looks like your up to do your part, Arfour," she looked at the little bronze droid.

Arfour tootled in response and wound his way over to the side of the door. One of the compartments on his chest opened and his little scomp link flipped out and connected with the socket in the wall. The astromech skilfully twiddled and twisted his little arm, testing out a number of combinations and attempting to override the security stopping them from getting through the door.

As he did so, the clones became aware of more stomping feet in the distance that indicated the presence of incoming droids. "Looks like we might be having more company soon, sir," said Galle.

Barriss grimaced. "Yes, I noticed," she nodded. "Try your best, Arfour."

The astromech whistled in the affirmative and continued, although at a slightly faster pace than before. But evidently he wasn't completely quick enough, because more battle droids rounded the corner up ahead a couple of seconds before the ray shield finally dropped.

On sighting the intruders, the droids immediately began to open fire, sending another forest of lasers at them. Grimacing, Barriss leapt before the clones and continued her blocking skills – they didn't have time to get into another dogfight with droids – they needed to act quickly if they were going to pull off the mission. As the clones spread out to return fire on the oncoming droids, Arfour whistled in triumph and the ray shield fizzled out of existence, the door sliding open with a hiss. The astromech quickly rolled through it.

"Lieutenant," Barriss cried as she spun to flick a pair of blades back at the droids. "Get yourself and your men through those doors."

"But what about the droids?" Galle asked, firing a laser into the stomach of a B1.

"They don't matter!" Barriss said. "We need to accomplish our mission as fast as possible, not destroy as many droids as we can! Now go. I'll join you in a second."

"You heard her, lads!" Galle cried and quickly leapt from hiding and belted another droid in the head with his laser before ducking through the door. Ridge and Blade quickly followed, moving sideways to continue firing over Barriss' shoulders until they were through the door as well, leaving the recently knight Mirialan alone in the corridor.

Barriss, quickly flipped her lightsaber to her other hand and continued to use it just as deftly as before, while she unslung the backpack from one shoulder, before passing her blade back to her original hand and slipping the backpack off her other shoulder too. She quickly spun around and tossed the backpack of explosives to Ridge, who caught it delicately, before the Mirialan vaulted through the door herself in a flying forward roll to get out of the way of the droids.

Lasers continued to flash through the corridor even though they were no longer there.

The droids were getting closer, but Arfour was already ready beside the doors, plugging himself into the console on the other side and twiddling around once again. It didn't take him long to input a new combination into the door that only he knew and the doors slid shut again, locking the battle droids back out in the corridor. After a couple of moments, they heard the noises of lasers pounding uselessly on the other side of the door.

"Nicely done, little guy," congratulated Ridge, passing the backpack of explosives back to Barriss as Arfour withdrew from the console. Arfour whistled in response and rocked from foot to foot, pleased with the praise.

"Indeed," nodded Barriss. "But come on. The reactor core is not far now and we should be able to carry out our mission quickly enough." She quickly led the way down the next corridor that they had come to, referring to the map once again for guidance. The clones continue to blast at the holocams as they went along.

* * *

It didn't take them long before they reached their destination, as they encountered no more droids to battle with or escape from. Barriss eventually slowed to a halt next to the large door that led to the room they needed to be in and considered it briefly. Aayla had suspected that it would be heavily guarded, and Barriss knew that she was probably right, so if she cut through it with a lightsaber, she would alert anything on the other side.

"Arfour," she said. "Can you crack to code on this door as well?"

Pleased to be of service once again already, Arfour repeated his performance from last time and began to break the combination on the doors. It took slightly longer to accomplish this time, probably because there was more security on the door that the little astromech had to hack through than last time. Fortunately, there were no signs of droids heading their way to attack them in the corridor as he was doing so.

After another minute or so, Arfour cracked the code on the door and whistled triumphantly as they slid open to reveal a dimly lit room on the other side. Barriss quickly rushed inside, preparing to block any kind of laser fire from the droids inside and took in the room at a glance. It was large and open, and right in the centre was the reactor core itself – a tall pillar-like structure covering in buttons and glowing white panels, that indicated that it was active because they were pulsing with faint light.

The only floor was the walkway that lead to the core itself and the elevated pathway that encircled it to allow people to reach all the controls. Apart from that the whole place basically had no flat surface and there was a significant drop on either side of the walkway.

At first, Barriss appeared to be surprised, as there were no battle droids of any kind that were waiting for them. She pulled up about a third of the way across the platform and glanced around the room as the clones walked in and checked for holocams, demolishing any that they saw. Was there really no security here at all?

Of course there was.

Barriss suddenly tensed and brought her lightsaber to bear as three figures stepped out from behind the reactor core and walked to the end of the walkway to block her path. Tall and grey, with red, glowing photoreceptors in their heads and on their chests, with slender builds, metallic hides and long electrostaffs clutched in their many-fingered hands.

MagnaGuards.

Barriss grimaced and brought her lightsaber down, ready for use, as the MagnaGuards began to step towards her, the phrik energy beginning to crackle at either end of their staffs. Galle stepped forwards and pointed his blaster, but Barriss put an arm in front of him to stop him.

"No," she said, unshouldering the backpack and passing it to him. "They are deadly opponents if you get too close. Hang back and let me engage them. If you see an opening, then shoot, but don't get too close."

"Yes, sir," nodded Galle, and stood back as Barriss span her blade and rushed to meet her three opponents.

The first MagnaGuard twirled its staff and lunged forwards at Barriss with one end. When Barriss blocked it, it lashed out with the other end just as quickly, but Barriss turned that aside too. The MagnaGuard took a spinning leap to slash down with its electrostaff, forcing Barriss to duck beneath it and then block the sweep from the other end. Barriss quickly returned with a slash to the chest, but the MagnaGuard caught it and moved its staff so the other end flew at Barriss' face. Barriss leapt backwards to dodge the blow and threw a Force Burst at her opponent, flinging it backwards and towards the other two.

With inhumane speed, the other two MagnaGuards reeled out of the way and let their comrade fly past. One of them jumped at Barriss and brought its staff crashing to the deck where Barriss would have been if she hadn't span out of the way. The Mirialan threw a strike at the MagnaGuards middle photoreceptor, forcing the droid to step back and catch the attack with one side of its staff. Barriss grimaced and forced the MagnaGuard back, trading three blows with it, before she saw an opening and backflipped out of the way, bringing her lightsaber sweeping up to slice the electrostaff in half. One half went spinning out of sight.

The MagnaGuard suddenly dropped backwards to allow the third to leap over it and spin its staff deftly in one hand, advancing on Barriss with the staff whirled before it in a complex figure of eight spin. Barriss backed off slightly in alarm, wary of getting too close to the droid. She saw the first one coming to join the second behind it and grimaced.

Timing her strike as quickly as she could, Barriss lashed her blade into the spinning midst of the attack and managed to bring the staff to a standstill as she caught it. Wrenching her blade with both hands on the hilt, Barriss was able to disarm the MagnaGuard and send the electrostaff flying away into the darkness. The MagnaGuard looked surprised and glanced down at its empty hands, allowing Barriss to swing in and hack of its arm at the shoulder. It tried to grab her with its remaining hand and succeeded in pulling her hood down, but Barriss jammed her lightsaber through the photoreceptor on its chest, impaling it.

As it died, Barriss withdrew her blade and pushed the MagnaGuard off the edge of the walkway so it wouldn't get in the way. She immediately rolled to one side as she spotted another MagnaGuard already lunging at her. She rolled right off the walkway herself and found herself teetering on the edge of it and flailing to stay balanced.

But a swing from the guard with a full electrostaff remaining changed Barriss' mind and she toppled over the edge, grabbing onto the walkway with the fingers of one hand. The MagnaGuard looked down at her and raised a foot to stamp on her fingers. But it was assuming that Barriss was helpless and, briefly deactivating her lightsaber and hanging it on her belt, Barriss grabbed the walkway with her other hand and flipped herself back onto it, slamming her feet into the MagnaGuards chest and knocking it backwards before she landed.

She brought out her lightsaber and slashed at it, but her blade was caught by the half-electrostaff of the other and locked in position.

She glanced at it and it tried to push her backwards and over the edge again. Barriss grimaced and pushed back, but the MagnaGuard's mechanical strength overrode her own and she found herself teetering on the brink of the precipice again. And then, of course, the other MagnaGuard recovered and launched an attack on her, swinging its electrostaff at her side.

Barriss did the first thing that she could think of – she flipped sideways and broke the lock of her lightsaber with the half electrostaff, swinging towards the reactor core and landing smoothly on the walkway. The MagnaGuard stumbled forwards and almost fell off the edge, and was then blindsided by its own comrade. The blow knocked off a load of its plating and sent it spinning off the edge, to land in a heap on the ground below, very much dead.

* * *

"Doesn't look like the General needs a lot of help," remarked Blade. "She seems to be holding her own quite well."

"Yeah, but keep your blasters handy," said Galle. "But check your fire. We don't want to shoot the reactor core while we're still in here, or we'll all be toast."

"Yeah, extra crispy," Ridge nodded as he watched Barriss take on the final MagnaGuard. Then, a sound began to register in the clone's ears and he paused, frowning beneath his helmet. It sounded like footsteps coming from... below him?

He glanced over the edge of the walkway, just in time to see another MagnaGuard that had magnetised feet climbing towards him – it had been walking upside down on the bottom of the walkway and was now flipping its way over the top right next to him. "Contact!" he yelled and started shooting down at it, but the MagnaGuard was made of tough stuff and took the first two shots without a great deal of damage.

The MagnaGuard quickly reached up and jabbed its electrostaff right into Ridge's chest on full power. The electrocution broiled through the clones body and painfully killed him on the spot, frying his nervous system with an overload on impulses. As he collapsed forwards and tumbled over the edge of the walkway, the MagnaGuard finished the climb and clambered onto the walkway.

"Ridge! No!" shouted Blade, as another of his brothers fell before his eyes and it looked like he would be next as the MagnaGuard lashed at him with the staff. Blade caught the staff with his rifle, but the MagnaGuard's strength carried the clone to the ground and he fell onto his back and the droid raised its staff, ready to stab down at him and kill him as well.

Galle started shooting at the MagnaGuard, and that was enough to distract it for a moment. Blade quickly kicked the droid's feet from under it and knocked it down, scrambling to his feet and throwing a precise shot from his rifle into the MagnaGuard's face, blowing out its circuitry and leaving a gaping hole in its head. The MagnaGuard didn't even slow down and got up, whirring its staff at the two of them as they backed away from it, blasters ready for action.

But suddenly, the MagnaGuard momentarily went rigid as if paralysed. Arfour had managed to catch it in the back of the leg from behind with his electric prod and momentarily short-circuited the metallic being. This gave Galle the opportunity to dash forwards and wrest the MagnaGuard's staff from its hand and jam it right through the droid's chest. It collapsed, dead, but not soon enough for either of the clones' liking.

Both of them glanced over the edge and stared down at Ridge's body. Poor Ridge had been with them through so many trials that it had seemed like he was going to survive the Clone Wars. But now, it seemed that he, like so many others had fallen by the wayside thanks to the Separatists.

"Thanks little guy," Blade sighed to Arfour, who whistled mournfully, over the sounds of clashing as Barriss continued fighting the remaining MagnaGuard.

* * *

Two more battle droids were standing guard beside another door some distance away from the reactor core, both of them occasionally glancing downwards at the flattened and headless body of the other battle droid that was lying uselessly next to where they were standing. Both of them were uncomfortably reminded that that could happen to them at any time if they put so much as a toe out of line. And they didn't even have toes.

A crashing and banging noise from one end of the corridor caught their attention and they both raised their blasters. "What was that?" one asked.

The other was about to say that he didn't know, when suddenly a Super Battle droid was bodily flung into view at the end of the corridor, crashing against the wall and falling on its front. The bulky grey droid attempted to get to its feet, but suddenly a Wookiee dashed into view and grabbed it by its legs. The battle droids watched in amazement as the hairy being grabbed hold of the huge droid and hefted its arms, throwing it right down the corridor with a roar of Shyriiwook.

It was only then that they realised the Super Battle Droid was flying towards them.

"Oh n-," one of them said before the heavier droid crashed into them both and flattened them into pulps, much like their comrade that had been lying next to them while they stood guard. The Super itself did not get up again either and Chewbacca roared in triumph, before unhooking his bowcaster and emptying a shot at the holocam in the corridor.

With any potential watching eyes now gone, the Digimon were able to emerge from around the corner. The group ran down the corridor with the Wookiee in the lead. Renamon had the holographic map in one paw and was carefully glancing at it now and again to find out which direction they needed to go in.

Terriermon paused momentarily as they reached the bodies of the droids. "Nice one, Chewie," he said, staring at the remains of the droid hides before running on. "Taking out four droids just by throwing one? That's pretty cool. You even knocked the head off one of them.

"Scwo aorcro," Chewbacca said, rounding another corner and taking out the next holocam before they all ran on again. "Left at the next turning," said Renamon as they ran, shutting off the hologram for a moment. Chewbacca grunted to show he understood and they continued moving.

As they did, the three Digimon were having an internal conversation with one another, and none of them were particularly liking what they were saying?

_Do you feel it?_ Lopmon was asking, as she shivered slightly. _I don't know why but, I keep getting a funny feeling in my spine. You know, like we do when a Digimon's about to bioemerge. Only it doesn't feel quite the same. It does feel familiar though, but it's so faint that I'm having trouble recognising it._

_Yeah, I'm getting that too,_ agreed Terriermon. _It's really weird, and for some reason the deeper into the station we go the stronger it gets, but that's not saying much because I can still barely feel it._

_It is strange,_ Renamon concurred. _But we've been given our objective for now and it would be best if we carried it out. However, keep an eye on that feeling everyone. If it becomes strong enough to identify, then let everyone else know and we'll be able to react accordingly._

_Okay,_ Lopmon nodded.

* * *

Reaching the hangar was actually relatively easy for the three Digimon. There was minimal security to the place, possibly because everybody needed to go there at some point or other, including all the battle droids. The three Digimon quickly and quietly moved towards the doors, along with Chewbacca and peered through the open space and into the large room beyond.

The enormous hangar doors at the other end were open and it looked like the wind was picking up outside. It seemed like a good thing they had decided to come early or the conditions would have been too much for the jetpacks of the clones. It was practically completely white outside, but the hangar itself remained sound and warm due to the shield that was blocking off the outside world.

The hangar itself had a large number of battle droids dotted about the place, both B1 class and Super. There were a couple of droidekas to boot as well, standing like sentinels on either side of the doors that the Digimon and Chewbacca were peering through. There appeared to be a couple more at the other entrances as well.

Then there were the Vulture Droids. Normally the Digimon encountered them when they were flying through the air, but they could be just as deadly on the ground. They appeared to be standing and waiting for a signal to attack or something because there was a row of them across the wide room. Other than that the place was empty but for a few crates and fuel cells dotted around the place, one empty-looking _Sheathipede_-shuttle and a couple of water containers that special black-painted battle droids were standing beside in case something blew up and caught fire, as was likely to happen when you were surrounded by fuel.

"And we have to secure this room, then do we?" asked Terriermon in a low voice, so that Chewbacca could hear but also so that he wouldn't alert the droidekas standing on either side of the door in front of them, unaware of their presence. "Hate to say it, but I don't think it's going to be that easy to do."

"Especially not with all those cameras dotted around the place," said Renamon, nodding towards what appeared to be two holocams on either side of the room that they could see from the angle they were at. Presumably there were more on the wall that they couldn't see. "We'll be spotted instantly if we walk into this room."

"Does it matter?" asked Terriermon. "Gunray's probably realised that we're onto him by now if he is here. If we catch this room quickly then he won't be able to get away."

"You don't know that," Renamon shook her head. "The map says that there's a smaller hangar somewhere else in the station. Aayla told me that it's probable that Gunray won't go there because he would never demean himself by flying his own aircraft and it doesn't look big enough for shuttles. But we can't take the risk."

"So what are we supposed to do then?" Lopmon asked.

Chewbacca looked over and quietly grumbled, "Scwo rroo. Scwo rrwoao ahwh rawhwa aoraorwo oohuao oarascworcra wwahrccao. Aoacwowh rooohu oaooscwo."

Lopmon looked at him in alarm and said, "Are you crazy, Chewie? You want to go in there by yourself? There are a lot of droids in there – I can't let you do that."

Chewbacca grinned, his furry face crinkling as it did so, and he retorted, "Rooohu scraro acrahowo scro anahwwwo waworhao. Rhhuao rooohu oarawhwhooao raanohraroc oorcwaworc scwo." And then, before the Digimon could protest, the Wookiee got up and rushed into the hangar.

The two droidekas on the door never saw their destruction coming. Neither had their deflector shields up, but with the way Chewbacca decided to attack, it wouldn't have done them any good anyway. The first one was suddenly flattened into the ground as Chewbacca brought both paws pummelling down on its head with a roar. The second droideka heard the commotion, and tried to turn, but before it could set photoreceptors on its assailant, Chewbacca grabbed it by one blaster arm and yanked it off and then gripped it by its thin chest and curved head. The droideka's armour was no match for the Wookiee's strength and Chewbacca roared as he tore the destroyer droid in two.

This action, of course, got the attention of all the other droids in the room, who turned around and stared in bewilderment at the Wookiee. Taking advantage of their surprise while it lasted, Chewbacca tossed both pieces of droideka at the closest two droids and knocked them over, before he unslung his bowcaster and ran across the side of the room, by the wall, a well-place shot knocking out the first of the cameras. A quick glance around the room revealed that he had three more to destroy.

The droids finally got to grips with the fact that they were under attack and started firing at Chewbacca. Their shots pummelled the wall behind Chewbacca and the Wookiee dived behind one of the crates, crouching behind it with his bowcaster at the ready. He growled as he felt the shots slam into the back of the crate, grateful that it wasn't a fuel tank. He looked round and could see one of the holocams within range of him. Quickly, he lifted up his bowcaster and let off another shot, blowing that one to smithereens as well.

Two down. Two to go.

But first he had to do something about the droids shooting at him. The Vulture Droids appeared to have turned around and joined in, lasers flying all around Chewbacca and bashing against the back of his large hiding place. A Wookiee could take a lot of firepower but they still had their limits. What to do? What to do?

Chewbacca peered around the crate, pulling back quickly as a shot skimmed past his head, but in that brief instant, he gained an idea. With a roar that was his version of a battlecry, Chewbacca vaulted over the crate and ran across the room. The droids followed his progress and one of the shots managed to catch him in the arm, but he ignored the smell of burnt fur and kept going.

He threw his fist into one of the black-painted fireman-battle-droids and caved its chest in, then whirled about to knock the others head of. Grabbing the hosepipe jutting out from the large water container (which acted in the same why as a fire hydrant), he turned it on full pressure and leapt out of hiding. A huge blast of water at high pressure spurted out of the end of the hose and Chewbacca swept it back and forth, the water jet slamming into many of the droids and knocking them flying. He got hit twice more, but only once on the skin on his thigh. The other shot bounced off the Wookiee armour slung around his shoulder.

With the majority of the droids in the closest vicinity taken care of, Chewbacca looked up as a Vulture Droid approached him. The Wookiee aimed the water jet as its head, and it had the desired effect – the large droid faltered and stepped backwards, trying to clear its vision. Chewbacca grinned wryly, but then grunted when he felt a shot hit him in the back and he stumbled.

Chewbacca looked over his shoulder and snarled when he saw a Super he had previously missed walking towards him its arm blaster lowered at him. The Wookiee quickly turned the water on it and that sent it flying backwards into the wall.

Gritting his fanged teeth and ignoring the pinprick of pain in his back, Chewbacca quickly switched off the water jet and hurried to where he could get a good shot at another one of the holocams. With a flick, he brought his bowcaster up and slammed another green bolt into it, taking it out as well.

The Wookiee turned around to look at the rest of the room. He could see the other holocam that he needed to destroy, on the other side of the shuttle that was standing in the middle of the room. Then he looked at his adversaries. The Vulture Droids were looming towards him, and there was still a fair number of droids that were still standing, while a lot of them had been smashed by the powerful jet of water from the hose.

Chewbacca growled and quickly plotted a course towards the fourth holocam, wondering for a moment whether he should choose a less risky way to go before he started moving. However, something else made the decision for him – the other two droidekas that had previously been guarding the other door into the hangar rolled around a bunch of crates right next to him and unfurled, raising their deflector shields as they did so.

Chewbacca didn't wait for them to finish unfurling and dashed off into his chosen route, shooting at one of the Vulture droids with his bowcaster. The droid returned fire in the same instance, prompting Chewbacca to dodge to one side as one of his own lasers whisked into the Vulture Droid's nose. The droid's head was knocked askew for a moment by the shot, although it quickly recovered itself. But that instant gave Chewbacca enough time to rush through its long, stick-like legs and dive underneath the shuttle.

The Wookiee quickly scrambled along his elbows and knees under the low ceiling of the shuttle, hearing the sounds of battle droids bending down to peer and perhaps shoot under the shuttle behind him. He quickly rolled out the other side, just in time to see a battle droid step over him and point its blaster at his head.

"Surrend..." the battle droid started, but Chewbacca's furry paw lashed out and grabbed it by one ankle, pulling it onto its back. Chewbacca was upon and upon it in an instant, tearing the droid limb from limb and then picking up the armless body and hurling it at the last holocam. Both droid and holocam fell to the ground in sparking heaps.

"WHOOOOOOOOOHOH!" Chewbacca shouted, just as another Vulture Droid rounded the shuttle and prepared to fire at him. However, before it could do so, a loud yelling noise caught its attention and its head rotated just in time to see Renamon come flying right at it with her paw enshrouded in blue aura. Renamon slammed her fist into the Vulture Droid's head and knocked it clean off.

As it fell in a heap, Renamon landed in front of Chewbacca and nodded warmly. "Not half bad," she chuckled. Chewbacca grinned back.

Then, Renamon was off and leapt on top of the shuttle in one bound, dashing across it to go flying across the room with another huge leap and land on the shoulder of another Vulture Droid. The Droid bucked and turned around, trying futilely to find a spot where its weapons would be able to reach the yellow fox. At the same time, another Vulture Droid turned and let fly at her too. Renamon bounced off her ride just as the lasers from the Vulture crashed into its comrade and it went toppling to the ground.

Renamon landed on the floor and dashed across the room on all fours, slamming another Super Battle Droid out of her way as she went. As she did, she found herself confronted by the two droidekas. Her eyes widened slightly as they unleashed a hailstorm of blaster fire at her, which she promptly dodged by backflipping behind a crate. She stayed crouched there, watching through the eyes of someone else instead of using her own.

The droidekas kept up their fire, too stupid to think of moving around the crate for a better angle, but then they faltered when they heard a voice say, "Hello there," from below. Neither of them could look down properly but they certainly tried. If they had been able to, they would have seen that Terriermon had slipped through the deflector shield of one, while Lopmon had done the same to the other.

Both bunnies suddenly whipped themselves into small whirlwinds, that demolished both the droidekas where they stood, their shields dying and bits of them flew out in all directions as their metallic limbs were buffeted off. Renamon popped up from behind her crate and nodded at the both of them who nodded back.

Suddenly, the fox's senses screamed at her and she turned around in time to see a Super Battle Droid with a missile launcher for an arm levelling its weapon at the bunnies. "LOOK OUT!" she cried, as she dived over the crate and towards the two bunnies just as the Super unleashed it's purple rocket. She scooped up both the bunnies and leapt aside, but the blast behind her still caught her and sent all three of them flying, to land in heaps nearby.

"Ow!" Lopmon complained as she sat up, just in time to see the Super levelling its weapon at her again. Her eyes widened momentarily, but suddenly the Super was slammed by a walking carpet and knocked onto the floor. Chewbacca leapt on top of it and started pummelling it into the ground with both fists – it was a mulch of metallic parts in mere moments.

"Phew," Lopmon sighed. "Thanks Chewie." She grinned. But then she added, "But get out the way before those Vultures fire at you!"

Chewbacca turned around to see the last two remaining droids (there were more hanging from the ceiling but they were deactivated right now), were bearing down towards him and charging up their blaster cannons. Terriermon and Renamon were back on their feet by this time, and the white bunny leapt forward, crying, "Leave this one to us, Bacca. Come on Loppy."

"Right you are, bro," Lopmon nodded and followed her brother. The two bunnies quickly formulated a plan between the two of them via their minds and separated as the Vultures decided to shoot at them first, their blast peppering the ground between them but missing them entirely.

As they moved, the two bunnies burst into light due to the fact they had sent a message to their Tamers requesting a digivolution card. Their shouts meant nothing to the droids, but Chewbacca watched in awe as he saw yet another digivolution.

"**TERRIERMON DIGIVOLVE TO... GARGOMON!"**

"**LOPMON DIGIVOLVE TO... TURUIEMON!"**

The two larger rabbit creatures quickly took up their positions. Turuiemon used her acrobatic skills to backflip several times until she was standing beside a large fuel cell. Grabbing it with both arms, she dashed across the hangar and towards the first Vulture Droid as it turned to face her. Placing the fuel cell down quickly, she ran forward and dashed past the Vulture Droid's legs on its right side, her Chrome-Digizoid switchblade slicing through both of them and causing it to collapse onto its side in a heap.

The other Vulture Droid had turned around to face Gargomon, but before it could let off a shot, Gargomon had come flying towards it, his guns glowing as his slammed one cannon into the droid's underside with a potent Bunny Pummel, denting the large droid's underside.

It also had the added effect of sending the droid stumbling backwards and toppling over, to crash on top of the Vulture Droid that Turuiemon has caused to fall over only moments before, so the two of them were now lying in a heap.

Turuiemon and Gargomon glanced at each other and both nodded at the same time. Turuiemon darted over to the fuel cell that she had picked it up, tossing it into the air and then jumping up to meet it, smacking it towards the pair of Vulture Droids with a mighty roundhouse kick that sent it sailing downwards. Gargomon rotated his cannons and focused on the falling fuel cells, judging its speed and trajectory as quickly as he could.

"**GARGO LASERS!"** he cried and unleashed a hailstorm of green pellets from his cannons that streaked across the room and impacted with the fuel cell moments before it crashed into the Vulture Droids, the top one of which was struggled to get back up. The lasers burnt through the shell and touched the fuel within, resulting in an instant explosion that utterly annihilated both the Vulture Droids lying beneath it and had the added effect of tipping the _Sheathipede_-class shuttle onto its side due to the enormous blast.

Turuiemon landed and the four furry beings shielded their eyes from the blast as the shockwaves swept over them, whipping Chewbacca and Renamon's fur about and sending Turuiemon and Gargomon's ears streaming backwards like banners. And then it stopped and the hangar was empty of everything except the four of them.

"Well," said Gargomon. "That wasn't so bad."

It was at this point that a phalanx of more battle droids began to march into the room from either side of the room.

"Oh, come on!" Gargomon shouted. "Do they ever run out of those guys?"

"Who cares?" Turuiemon extended her switchblades. "We'll just scrap this lot as well!"

With roars of battle loosing from four mouths, they split into two and charged at the new arrivals.

* * *

"Just as predicted," said Dooku, as he stared at the holoscreens that the security system was showing. "They appear to have split into a bunch of groups in order to attack many different places at once."

"But why are they taking out the holocams everywhere they go?" asked Ventress. "It doesn't make any sense."

"Ha! Shows what you know, assassin," Grievous growled. "It is a tactic to keep anyone who might be watching them from being able to predict where they will show up next, and so stop them from predicting a route that they might be taking. By taking out the holocam, you can't tell which direction they'll take afterwards until they pick off or appear in front of the next one."

"Indeed," said Dooku, watching the static on roughly about a third of all of the monitors. "And it would be a clever tactic if it was Viceroy Gunray who they were going up against, as they believe it is. These Jedi are certainly efficient. They are heading for the reactor core, and here at the same time, and they've sent that Wookiee to the hangar to try and cut us off."

"But, Master," Ventress asked, in alarm. "If they're heading for the reactor core, then that means they are planning on blowing the station up, isn't it?"

"Indeed," said Dooku. "But, you forget, Ventress. The Jedi are compassionate. They would not blow up the station unless they knew for certain that all their comrades who join them in the hangar to leave are the only ones still alive. When we take on Secura, the others won't risk fleeing if they don't know what has become of her."

"And once we kill her," Grievous growled. "We can make our way to the hangar ourselves and escape. None of them will be any match for us, not even if you took them on by yourself."

Ventress growled again, but nodded. "Very well," she said. "Besides, I'm sure our MagnaGuards are more that a match for that Jedi brat and her three men anyway."

"You mean _my_ MagnaGuards," Grievous retorted. "I am more important than you, Ventress, so I get bodyguards, whereas you don't."

"Actually, I think you'll find that I don't actually need bodyguards," Ventress replied.

"Hush, both of you," Dooku said. "Our target is closing in on our location. Be ready." His eyes focused on a screen that depicted a Twi'lek with a lightsaber rushing down the hallway with three clones at her back, before one of them fired a blaster bolt at the holocam transmitting the picture and it all turned to static.

* * *

Aayla dashed down another corridor with Bly, Barr and Inc rushing along behind her. Inc seemed to have taken it on as his job to be the one to destroy holocams – he seemed to like it. Every corridor they came to, he would quickly short out the holocam with a shot from his blaster.

Aayla and her group of clones hadn't encountered very many droids yet, and the only ones that they had come across had been ones guarding particular rooms. Aayla had little interest in the equipment that they were guarding, as she knew what their destination was anyway and when they destroyed this place, all the equipment would be wrecked anyway.

"Are we getting close, General?" asked Bly as they hurried down another corridor.

Aayla brought up her holographic map and double-checked it. She nodded and said, "It should only be about five corridors away from us now."

"You reckon Gunray's still there, sir?" asked Barr.

"Probably not," Aayla shook her head. "No, I am willing to bet that he has already long gone. However, I should be able to sense where he's gone and we'll be able to follow him. Hopefully the others will have finished securing the hangar by that time so that we can move on."

As Aayla led them round another couple of turns, they finally ran into trouble. They ran past a corridor that they didn't need to go down and right after they did a large number of battle droids emerged from it and turned towards their retreating backs, slightly startled. It took them a few minutes for what their photoreceptors were seeing to reach their processors, but when it did they raised their blasters and opened fire on them from behind.

Aayla sensed the imminent danger and pulled to a halt, so suddenly that the clones all ran past her before they registered it and stopped themselves. During that time, Aayla had whirled around and was furiously blocked the storm of lasers that were streaming across the corridor towards them.

As the clones reacted instantly and ducked behind semi-cover to return fire, Aayla grimaced while continuing to deflect lasers. "We don't have time for this!" she cried, as she swung her lightsaber in arcs of blue light to keep the red ones at bay and protect her comrades. "If Gunray is here and was still in that room then he will be gone by now – he'll be able to hear this fight from here."

"What are your orders, sir?" asked Bly.

Aayla sighed and turned around, glancing briefly at the clones before she turned back and continued blocking. She called over her shoulder. "Bly, stay here and help me take care of these droids. Barr, Inc, the two of you go on ahead and secure the main control room. It's on the first left from here, then the second right and the second right again. Bly and I will be there shortly."

"Yes, sir!" Barr cried immediately and stood up, darting into the centre of the corridor so that he was shielded by Aayla. Inc promptly did the same thing and the two clones turned around and hurried down the corridor, dashing right past the first right turning and taking the first left, just as Aayla had instructed them to do, and vanishing from sight.

"What do you propose we do, General Secura?" asked Bly, as he shot under the Twi'lek's guard and hit a droid in base of neck so it toppled over and its head popped out of its socket like a cork.

"Well, normally I would suggest we take as much caution as possible," said Aayla. "But since we're in a hurry, I'm going to pull a Skywalker and charge straight in. You ready to back me up, Bly?"

Bly laughed and said, "Ready and waiting, General."

"I thought you'd say that," Aayla nodded with a grin. Then, whirling her blade in a arc of blue light, Aayla surged down the corridor and into the forest of lasers flying towards her.

She brushed aside a storm of lasers as she ran, sweeping them to the side and back at the droids shooting at her as her blade moved in wild patterns through the air. She took a spinning leap into the front lines of the droids, lekku flying out behind her and lightsaber slicing three droids at once in her full three-sixty turn. Aayla span to the left and cut through two more, her blade whirring to slash behind her and take another through the stomach, as she span around again, cleaving another from hip to hip and her foot snapping up to smack another droid in the head.

Bly charged after her and sent his own barrage of blue lasers from his pistols which pummelled into the droids attempting to shoot at Aayla. Several of them fell before his initial onslaught and then he was in front of their ranks. With a swing of one hand, his pistol slammed the head off another droid and he kicked to body in to another. Then he threw his shoulder into another droid and stamped on its head while he offloaded six more lasers into three other droids turning towards him. Then he one blaster around and shot another droid in the face.

The two of them unleashed a barrage of death upon the droid ranks, picking off the droids that the other was missing as if they were reading each other's thoughts. It was a mark of how many times they had fought beside one another, even before the Digimon had arrived. The droids didn't know which way to turn and within half a minute, every single one of them was dead.

As the last droid fell to a shot from Bly, Aayla turned to the clone commander and shared a brief nod with him. But the Twi'lek quickly added, "Come on, Commander. We haven't got any time to waste. Let's go."

"On it, General," Bly cried as Aayla whooshed past him and ran down the passageway that Barr and Inc had taken. The clone commander quickly followed on behind his General, although he was actually hard pressed to keep up with her. When Aayla wanted to move she could run extremely fast, and while Bly had been on many long distance training runs while wearing full armour to build up endurance, he would readily admit that he was no match for a Jedi when it came to speed.

Aayla skidded around the first left turn, her lightsaber sticking out behind her as she ran just as it had been when she had been dashing over the top of the Zillo Beast, in case she tripped and fell over. The Twi'lek glanced over her shoulder to see that Bly was keeping up with her, albeit barely. She briefly considered slowly down slightly, but then, something up ahead caught her attention.

As she turned down the second right corner, she began to catch sounds coming from up ahead. Those sounds... Was that... blaster fire?

Aayla's hazel eyes widened in surprise and she quickly increased her speed even further. Bly cried out as he was suddenly left behind, but Aayla barely heard him as she used the Force to power her strides as pick up her pace. She whirled around the next second right corner and saw, ahead of her, the door that led to the main control room. It was wide open, and she could see movement coming from within.

And she also heard the sound of a clone scream.

Aayla flashed through the door and skidded to a halt, just in time to see Barr get flung against one of the walls, his blaster flying out of his hand, where he was promptly impaled through the chest with a red lightsaber. The clone choked and died instantly, slumping against the wall and slipping to the floor to land in an undignified jumble of limbs a smoking hole left right through his upper torso after the lightsaber was removed.

At roughly the same second, Inc was thrown against the exact opposite wall with such force that the armour on his back cracked. His slumped to the ground, groaning, but he was quickly put out of his misery when a taloned foot slammed against his body and pushed him to the floor, followed by a green lightsaber swinging down and severing the clone's head. The helmet rolled away and came to stop in the corner. Fortunately, poor Inc's head remained inside it.

Aayla felt the usual pang of sadness at the deaths of the two loyal clones, who had served under her almost as long as Commander Bly had himself, but at the moment she was slightly more preoccupied with staring in absolute horror at the perpetrators of their demise.

What were they doing here?

Standing by the body of Barr – a Rattataki woman with a bald head, grey skin and purple tattoos, dressed in skintight purple and lilac clothing that gave her freedom of movement and accentuated her figure (rather like Aayla's own clothing), who turned towards Aayla with a sinister smile on her face, her blue eyes filled with malice and a pair of curved lightsaber hilts in her hands which held long red blades.

Asajj Ventress.

Removing his foot from the headless corpse of Inc – a being that appeared to be almost completely made of alloy, with six, large, metallic talons on each foot, plated legs and arms, the latter of which had a line running down the centre of them, large alloy shoulder guards above his broad chest, which was above an almost ridiculously narrow waist. Perched on a long neck on top was the skull-like mask with the sweeping audio-receptors to one side, the voice modulator extending down from the bottom and the real, yellow, slitted eyes glaring through the holes in it. In his clawed hands were two lightsabers, one of which was blue and the other green.

General Grievous.

And standing between the two, holding no weapons in his hands but still standing tall and looking imperious and intimidating – an old man wearing brown robes, including a long brown cloak that hung from his shoulders to his boots, with a wrinkled but powerful looking face with a long hooked nose and white hair and beard, the latter of which was also pointed, with both hands clasped behind his back, a wry smile on his face which didn't meet his eyes.

Count Dooku.

Aayla's own eyes went wider as she froze on the spot at what she was seeing. Her gaze swiftly moved from Ventress, across Dooku and to Grievous and back again, several times, her brain struggling to agree with her eyes, the two arguing about what should be standing before her and what was standing before her.

Ventress, Grievous and Dooku.

All in one place.

Here.

In front of her.

Not Gunray.

Aayla blinked in shock and surprise, her grip on her lightsaber slacking so much she almost dropped it as she stared at the three. Count Dooku smiled at her and said, "Ah, young Knight Secura. We have been expecting you for some time now. I take it from your expression that you are surprised to see us."

Aayla didn't reply. She blinked her eyes again, just to check that she wasn't seeing things.

Grievous laughed that same rasping laugh that she remembered from last time. "Oh, I need to save the video of this on the holocam just so I can immortalise that look of disbelief."

"I agree, General," Ventress smiled. "You weren't expecting us, were you, you pathetic Twi'lek. And now, you will die at our hands."

She lifted a finger to the little grey wristband covered in buttons that she always wore, just as Aayla heard Commander Bly shouting, "General!" from behind her. The sound of Bly's voice seemed to snap Aayla back to her senses and she turned around to see Bly rushing up the corridor towards her, just as Ventress pushed one of the buttons on her wristband.

The hiss of hydraulics immediately told Aayla what was about to happen and, just as Bly reached the door, she acted.

Bly was about to come charging into the room, but just as his foot reached the threshold of the door, Aayla's hand thrust out in his direction, palm facing him. Bly was completely caught off guard by the Force Push that followed and he was tossed through the air a short way and landed in a heap in the corridor beyond. And it was a good thing Aayla had done that because the thick door had slid rapidly shut and slammed, the clunking sound of a lock moving into place following on with it.

As the door slammed, cutting Bly off from Aayla, the Twi'lek quickly checked the mind link she shared with the Digimon and the Tamers to see if they knew what was going on at her end – they had to specifically look into Aayla's consciousness if they wanted to see what she was doing, as her bond with them wasn't the same as Terriermon's and Renamon's. But it seemed that the Digimon were too preoccupied with fighting droids to check on her, and the Tamers were too preoccupied watching what their Digimon were doing.

Aayla clamped down on her consciousness and sealed her mind off from the others. They couldn't see what was happening to her, or they'd go charging to the rescue. And none of them would stand a chance against them in cramped conditions like these, no matter what form they took. Terriermon's forms could only shoot lasers or were too large. Renamon's forms needed a lot of room to get in their attacks. Only Turuiemon might be able to hold them off for a while, but these weren't like the Dark Acolytes they had fought before. They were masters of the blade. The Digimon would be cut to ribbons.

And she couldn't allow that. She didn't want the Digimon to come charging into a useless rescue.

* * *

Bly looked up in alarm as the door slammed shut a moment after he'd been thrown backwards. If Aayla hadn't Force-pushed him backwards, he would have either been crushed by the sliding door slamming him into the wall, or he would have been locked on the other side of the thing.

But he didn't know what was happening. Why had Aayla pushed him? Why not pull him into the room instead?

He quickly got up and ran to the door, searching for some way to open it again. The console with the button that would normally do the job was gone, ripped free of the wall. So, he resorted to hammering on the door and crying, "General! General Secura! What's going on?"

There was no response – he doubted that Aayla could even heard him through the thick door.

Then, his comlink bleeped and he quickly answered it. "General Secura, is that you? What's going on? Why did you...?"

"Bly, stop," Aayla's voice said. "There is no time. Listen quickly and carefully. Count Dooku, General Grievous and Asajj Ventress are all standing right in front of me."

"What?"

"Bly, listen to me. You have to call of the mission – now! Go to the hangar and meet with the others! Gather them as quickly as you can and get them off the post now! It's too dangerous here!"

"But, sir..."

"That's an order, Bly!" Aayla shouted. "You have to leave me here. I'll hold them off as long as I can, but you must go now! Get everyone out of here! And I mean everyone!"

Bly hesitated for a second as a swelter of thoughts cascaded through his head. He was extremely reluctant to leave Aayla behind – he considered her a trusted colleague, a great General and a good friend. The thought of her fighting alone against the three deadliest opponents that the Separatists had, except perhaps the mysterious Sidious, was almost heart-rending.

But, at the same time... he was a clone. And as a clone, he couldn't disobey a direct order, whether he liked the outcome or not. And besides, it wasn't like he'd be any use against any of them anyway.

"Understood, sir," he sighed. "It... It was an honour to serve alongside you."

"And you as well Bly. Now go! And goodbye."

"Goodbye sir!" Bly said, signing off. Hating every step that he was taking, the clone turned around and ran back the way he'd come, turning around and heading towards the hangar.

* * *

As Aayla signed off her own comlink as well, she lifted her lightsaber and deftly sliced the comlink off her wrist without burning her skin, before stepping on it and breaking it completely to ensure that nobody would get through to her. She kept her mind enclosed by mental walls to keep the Digimon from seeing what was happening. Heroics would be futile now.

She was trapped in a room against three of the deadliest enemies the Separatists had all at once.

She could turn and attempt to slice her way through the door, but she'd never be able to complete the task in time before one of them jumped forward and sliced her across the back.

"Now that the pleasantries and final goodbyes are out of the way," Dooku, who had allowed Aayla to make that final call to heighten the despair that her inevitable death would cause, sneered. "Let's get down to business." His lightsaber floated off his belt and into his hand, the red blade hissing into life as he held it by his side.

"Oh, I am going to enjoy this!" Ventress sneered as she hefted her own blades.

"Prepare to die, Secura!" Grievous span his own blades with his rotating wrists.

Aayla's expression hardened as she took up a stance – one leg bent and the other straight out to one side, holding her lightsaber in both hands, with the hilt to one side and the blade over her head, as she braced herself for what she was sure would be her fiercest and final battle.

"Come and get me," she challenged.

* * *

If that isn't a cliffhanger then I don't know what is. And here's the best part – you have to wait another chapter to find out what happens next because the next chapter is our scheduled Impmon one. And as much as I want to write Chapter 126 next, I'm afraid Chapter 125 comes first.

Aayla's proving how much of a Jedi she is here. She is willing to sacrifice herself to ensure that everyone else gets away, to keep the Digimon safe and alive, as well as Barriss and the remaining clones and Chewie, and also to keep the Secret of the 327th safe. What do you think the Digimon are going to think when they learn this is happening.

This is going to be the biggest lightsaber duel that I've ever written. I look forward to the challenge.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

Impmon and the others are making their final approach to the Temple. But, unfortunately, before they reach it, they are attacked by another one of GranDracmon's agents. And this one is strong – very, very strong. The group will be hard pressed to survive.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 125 : Catalysing Destruction**


	125. Catalysing Destruction

Big news everyone. My stories now have their own page on Tv Tropes. If you want to check it out, you can check out my profile for a link – I have **Bookworm Gal** to thanks for pointing it out to me and I think for creating it in the first place, thought I'm not sure about that last bit.

Anyway, read on for some Impmon stuff, and hopefully some more awesomeness.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 125:- Catalysing Destruction**

* * *

The night before had been strenuous on just about everyone in Impmon's little group of friends. Most of them had been doing something that depleted their energy reserves or made them feel tired. Diatrymon and Wingdramon's all-out rush to escape from those that Impmon called his friends hadn't exactly been easy for either of them. Lilamon's Marvel Shots had required a reasonable amount of energy from her too.

And as for Impmon, while he had done little in terms of physical strain, he had taken quite a bit of emotional damage from last night's escapade. Leaving his Tamers behind again and ensuring that they couldn't follow him any longer had been one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do, but he had done it because not doing it was unthinkable.

And then there was also the extremely high speed that Wingdramon had taken, which, considering the others had experienced it without being enclosed in something else and cut off from the outside air, had taken a heavy toll on them physically. They weren't really designed to move at such speeds like Wingdramon was, and after they managed to get away from the others, everyone had been far too tired to keep moving, other than the dragon.

Wingdramon had spent the rest of the night hovering above everyone else while they slept and watching out for not only signs of approaching GranDracmon forces, but now also for Impmon's Tamers or their companions. Not because they were a threat, but because Impmon was a threat to them, albeit indirectly.

Below him, Lilamon spent the rest of the night slightly curled up, using her hand petals like a cushion for her head. Calumon, on the other hand, was using Lilamon's stomach as a cushion for his own head instead. Nearby, Diatrymon lay hunkered down on his metallic legs and his long neck stretched out across the ground.

Impmon slept too after a while, but he was slightly apart from all the others. Not too far away, but not too close either. Wingdramon was theorizing that Impmon was trying to distance himself slightly so that the others wouldn't be worn down by his own depression. He was trying to be kind, just as he was trying to be kind to his Tamers.

But Wingdramon wondered how long it would take before Impmon decided to try and ditch _them_ as well. Hopefully they would be able to get to the Temple before that happened though. And Wingdramon knew Impmon wouldn't get far now that he had lost his own ride, Behemoth, somewhere out there in the Digital World. He was, almost quite literally, stuck with them for now.

Eventually, morning whooshed over them in a split second, the bright light causing Wingdramon to avert his eyes slightly and snake his head under his own huge wing to shelter it. He looked down at the others and saw that Lilamon was stirring. She always woke up the moment that the light came, no matter how tired she had been before. It might have something to do with the plant in her.

The Fairy yawned and stretched, shifting Calumon off her as she stood up and nodded to Wingdramon. "How's it going?" she asked, automatically floating over to Diatrymon in order to poke him awake, since she didn't have a piece of fruit to throw at him.

"Well, I think we've all been better," said Wingdramon, truthfully, rotating his body around to look at her. "Last night wasn't exactly a calm one was it?"

"No, not really," Lilamon shook her head, jabbing a petal into Diatrymon's side a couple of times as the Ancient Bird groaned awake. "I kinda blame myself a little bit. It was my decision to move on during the night and I asked you guys to do it. Maybe that whole thing wouldn't have happened if I hadn't done that."

"Well, it might not have happened that night," Wingdramon conceded. "But when Impmon learned that his Tamers were looking for him the following day, he would have tried to go through with that anyway, probably when the Tamers were awake to begin with as well. Besides, you couldn't have known."

"Yeah, I know," Lilamon sighed, as Diatrymon sat up and yawned. "But hey, hopefully we'll be able to make it to the Temple today if you move at a fast enough tilt."

"Oh please, Fanglongmon, don't go as fast as you did last night," Diatrymon shook himself as her levered himself onto his feet, not the easiest of tasks for such a bulky bird with no hands to steady himself. "I'm not sure my stomach could take another of those rides."

Wingdramon chuckled dryly. "Not to worry," he said. "I'll go fast, but not that fast. However, we lost quite a bit of ground during last night's chase because we were flying in the wrong direction to escape them. I'm going to have to try and rectify that today. We may reach it by nightfall."

Lilamon paused as she hovered over Impmon. Then, instead of poking him awake like she normally would, she leaned down and gently shifted him by his shoulder. "Come along, Impy. It's time to go."

Impmon, who was clutching the D-Arc in both hands as if it were a lifeline, groaned and sat up, rubbing his eyes slightly with one hand. Then he looked up at Lilamon, who smiled down at him sadly. He half-heartedly attempted a smile back, but he gave up after a couple of seconds and sighed. "Why did my life have to change so badly, Lilamon?" he asked her. "I was a happy Digimon, laughing and pranking people and scaring the bejeezus out of strangers at every possibility, nicking food from the school cafeteria and feeding it to Pineapple-head... and then everything went to hell until now I'm here in the Digital World, Tamerless, and with their own link to me in my hand." He stared at the D-Arc and sighed again. "What kind of partner am I?"

"Now, don't start doing that, Impmon," Lilamon put her petals on her hips and glared down at him sternly, as she took on the role of motherly figure (it was amazing how many roles Lilamon could play). "I think you're a great partner for your Tamers. You said you were doing all this to protect them, and you are. You're making loads of self-sacrifices in order to keep your Tamers alive. You wouldn't be a good partner if you didn't."

"She's right," nodded Diatrymon, stalking over to him. "And remember, we've been over all this before, so going through it again is pointless, isn't it? Besides, we reckon we might be able to reach the Temple today, and as soon as we do, you can ask the Angels for the answers you seek."

"Assuming they let me talk to them," Impmon grumbled.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure that they will," said Wingdramon reassuringly. "Otherwise, Ophanimon would not have bothered to contact you in the first place."

"Yeah, you're right, I suppose," Impmon shrugged and stood up. "But I wish she had visited me again last night like I was hoping she would. I could use some angelic support right now, if only to assure me that I'm doing the right thing."

Lilamon switched from mother mode to little child mode and pouted, "Aaw," she complained. "You don't think I count as angelic reassurance? I'm doing my best here, you know."

Impmon laughed weakly and said, "Ah, don't worry about it, Petal-head. You're all the reassurance I need."

"Yay!" Lilamon cried. "I'm doing a good job! HUG!" she scooped Impmon up in her arms and did just that, in an attempt to make him feel better, as well as remind him that he still had friends.

It seemed to work slightly because Impmon chuckled and said, "Ah, get off me, Petal-head. We need to get going – the sooner we get to that Temple then the happier I'll be. Can somebody wake up the Creampuff so we can get going?" He nodded towards Calumon, who was still snoozing soundly on the ground and completely missing the scene and the fact that Lilamon was refusing to let go of Impmon.

"I'd do it," said Diatrymon. "If it weren't for the fact that if I wasn't very careful, I'd kill the little guy."

Wingdramon brought his huge tail up and delicately tapped Calumon's forehead on the red symbol that was etched there with the very tip. Calumon's eyes snapped open at the touch and he cried, "Buttered toast!"

"And typically, his mind is already on food," Impmon shook his head slightly. "Come on, Calumon. We've got to get going now. The sooner we start moving the sooner we can reach the Temple and get to safety among the angels."

That got Calumon's attention and he immediately leapt to his feet, crying, "Really! We can get to go and see the shiny people by the end of the day?"

"Yep," nodded Lilamon. "They're waiting for us as we speak, Calumon. I bet they'll have a nice big banquet spread out for us when we get there too, with lots of delicious new foods to try out, as well as all our favourites there too, because angels know that sort of thing."

"Ohboyohboyohboyohboyohboy," Calumon jumped up and down, clapping his hands. "I really can't wait. When do we go?"

"Soon as possible," said Impmon, finally scrambling out of Lilamon's arms and hopping to the floor. He gazed out to the horizon and said, "Which way are we supposed to be heading, Scaleface?"

"Well, the Temple will have moved during the night, but it'll still be somewhere in that direction," Wingdramon pointed with one blue claw. "That's the way we need to go."

"Yeah," nodded Impmon, then his face fell again and he murmured, "And that's also the direction that my Tamers are in."

"Hey, don't go down that track again already," Lilamon warned him. "Or I'll be forced to carry you the rest of the way."

"Sorry," Impmon shook his head vigorously, as if he thought that if he did that all thoughts of his Tamers would fall out through his ears. "It's just... it's so hard. I got so close last night – I even touched them both. I've never had to do anything as difficult as this."

"Well, are you going to change your mind and go back to them?" asked Lilamon.

"No!" Impmon said sharply. "No! They must be protected from me..."

"Then quit moping about," Lilamon reprimanded him. "It's not going to do you any good and it'll just drag you down. Sorry if I sound a little bit harsh, but you know I'm just trying to help."

"Yeah, I realise that," nodded Impmon. "And you're right of course. I should just..." He froze. His eyes widened and his pupils dilated in sudden fear, all his muscles seizing up as he felt the bone-chillingly familiar sensation shoot up his back and set all his nerves jangling. "Oh no," he breathed, as he felt his skin crawling and his blood freezing. It was the same sensation as he had felt several times since this so-called adventure began.

Except this time, it was stronger than ever.

On seeing Impmon's reaction, everyone else immediately tensed as well and looked around them. They had learned the signs that Impmon gave off when this happened and they all knew what was about to happen next. They all braced themselves as they did so, searching for any sign of what they least wanted to see.

And then it came.

A bolt of pitch-black lightning seared out of nowhere and slammed into the ground right in the middle of the group. The five of them immediately scattered out of the way as the bolt threw up the ground around them and condensed itself into a small mass before expanding outwards and growing rapidly. Calumon whimpered and dived into a patch of tall grass as all of them could now feel the presence of the Digimon that was rapidly coming into this world right next to them.

And the feeling was bone-chilling.

The blackness took on an unfamiliar shape and then colour began to pool into it as if paint was being poured across the outside from within, until the Digimon completely materialised in front of them. It was huge, not as big as MegaGargomon or Cherubimon but still over a third bigger than Wingdramon. It was covered in armour that made it look like some kind of cyborg, and had draconic features, with a blunt, upward pointing snout above a mouth filled with sharp teeth, a large crest on its head that took the form of a giant V, the points of which stuck out the back of its head like horns. Completely yellow eyes glared out from underneath this crest. The armour covering its shoulders, pelvis, lower arms and upper legs was blue, though each limb had a large yellow stripe painted on it as well.

Its stomach was encrusted with ordinary metal, and it had a long tail sticking out its back end, the tip of which was a curved blade. Its feet had huge claws, three sticking out the front and one behind it, and there also appeared to be large spikes jutting out from either of its knees. It's left hand appeared to be like a normal human one, but its right one was hidden inside a large pointed lance, a little bit like Gallantmon's except with a thinner and more wicked-looking point, and a design that made it look like the lance's tip was coming out of the mouth of a dragon-like creature.

And finally, the image was capped off with huge, sweeping metal ridges extending behind him from either shoulder and above either hip. This ridges acted like the bones of a birds wing, supporting the huge, white feathered appendages that swept out of it back – it had four almost angel-like wings. But there was nothing angelic about the rest of it. All in all, it looked like some kind of demonic Mega Digivolution of Cyberdramon – a cyborg like dragon from hell.

_Looks like GranDracmon has finally caught up with me again,_ Impmon thought, staring up at the new Digimon standing imperiously in the middle of the group and growling down at them all. He clutched the D-Arc he had stolen the previous night in his hand and was glad that his Tamers had not managed to catch up with him before, otherwise they would have come face to face with this guy.

The new Digimon looked down at the others in turn, but his yellow eyes narrowed into slits when he spotted Impmon and stepped towards him, towering over the little Rookie.

Impmon considered fleeing – just trying to get to the Temple as quickly as he could. But one quick glance at the others told him that he couldn't do that. He had to stay and help defend them against this monster. He'd been hoping to avoid another confrontation, but it seemed that he would have no choice but to stand and fight.

As the huge, new Digimon took another step, Impmon shouted up at him, "HEY! BACK OFF, CRAP-FOR-BRAINS! Go and tell your Master that I still haven't changed my mind! I'm still not joining his lunatic asylum and there is nothing that you can do to make me! Now go before I make you!"

The creature bared its teeth, but it was more of a feral grin than a snarl. Then, his fangs parted and he chuckled a rasping, grating laugh while he continued to stare down at Impmon. Then he spoke:-

"Look like you haven't changed much since we last meant, Beelzemon. Although you seem to have shrunk a little bit. Have you not been eating properly?"

Impmon's eyes widened, and he felt the eyes of everyone else widening and staring at him as well. Impmon took several steps backwards and asked, "Hold on a minute? Do I know you?"

"Why Beelzemon," the Digimon sneered. "I'm honest-to-goodness heartbroken. Don't you recognise your old buddy and your best General amongst the Nightmare Soldiers? I knew that you had lost a significant portion of your memory, but last I was aware, you had lost a good deal of your amnesia? You don't recognise me at all?"

Impmon noted that the Digimon certainly didn't sound all that heartbroken, more like he was going to seriously enjoy what he knew was going to be coming soon. Impmon's eyes narrowed and he stared at the new Digimon, trying to discern where he had seen him before, but unable to dredge up any memories of the guy from the flashes that MetalPhantomon had shown to him.

"Not even a hint," the Digimon cackled. "Well, then... I guess I'll have to refresh your memory a little. I am Darkdramon!"

That name punctuated through Impmon's mind and brief flashes of memory flitted through his mind. He saw the Digimon before him impaling a defenceless ShogunGeckomon with the lance on his arm, while he as Beelzemon just stood back and laughed. He saw the two of them fighting back to back against a swarm of dozens of Stingmon and ripping the bug Champions to data together. He saw the new Digimon tearing the roof off a building in a village while he jumped in and murdered the occupants.

The recognition must have shown in the horror on his face. Darkdramon laughed and said, "Ah, now he remembers me. It's been such a very long time, hasn't it, Beelzemon. Or should I demean your previous might by calling you Impmon?"

This was a new experience for Impmon – he had encountered many people who knew about his exploits as a Demon Lord but ever since he had regained some memories he had never met anybody who actually knew him personally. But this Darkdramon seemed to be a Digimon that had known him very well. He might have even been the closest thing that Beelzemon had had to a friend. The memories were vague, so he still didn't know the details.

The thought of fighting alongside this guy made him quail and he fell to his knees slightly. Many times he'd seen his past being played out before him in his mind's eye, but this time a real element of his past had come back to him. He felt sick. He felt weak as everything he had done slammed down on him yet again, only this time from a new angle.

"How the mighty have fallen," Darkdramon sneered as he stepped over to Impmon again, bathing the little Imp in his shadow. "You used to be such a strong Digimon, Beelzemon. Now you're weak. It's such a shame – I think you would have made a great ruler of the Digital World. And now, I'm going to have to take you to meet my new General, GranDracmon. Maybe he'll be able to sort you out and get you back to your former glory."

Meeting an old colleague who seemed to idolise the horrors he had committed just made it worse for Impmon. He was supporting himself by his hands now, shaking his head and murmuring, "No. No. Stop." But Darkdramon didn't appear to be listening as he lowered himself down, stretching out his normal arm in preparation to pick Impmon up.

"I was almost hoping for a challenge," Darkdramon said. "But I suppose you wouldn't provide me with one anyway."

"Then how about us!" shouted a voice. Darkdramon's head turned just in time to Lilamon firing a Lila Shower from her petal-tips, which wrapped around Darkdramon's hand and halted its progress as the Ultimate level fairy strained to keep him at bay. Diatrymon suddenly dashed past him and scooped Impmon up in his beak, getting him out of the way. Then, Wingdramon sailed downwards and sailed towards Darkdramon's chest.

"**EXPLODE SONIC LANCE!"** Wingdramon roared and jammed the tip of the lance on his back into Darkdramon's chest. The explosion that followed caused Darkdramon to grunt and step backwards slightly, as Wingdramon pushed him back. The dragon quickly flew out of the smoke and rejoined the others as Lilamon released her hold on Darkdramon's hand.

Diatrymon deposited Impmon on the ground again and Lilamon bent down and took his shoulders in her petals. "Impmon, snap out of it," she cried. "He's just playing games with your mind. GranDracmon's trying a new tactic to get hold of you by numbing your brain like this. You need to come back to your senses."

"Wha-?" Impmon asked, looking up at her, and Lilamon was shocked at the haunted expression in his eyes. "He knows me..." he murmured.

"He doesn't know squat about you, Impmon," Lilamon pressed. "He knows who you used to be, but he knows nothing about you now. You know you're better than this. Look at all the lengths you've gone to so far to make sure you don't become like him again. Don't let him shock you back into servitude."

"Stand up against him," Wingdramon hovered protectively over the group. "Just like you've fought off all the other agents GranDracmon has sent your way."

"He wants to make you evil again," Diatrymon nodded. "Don't give him want he wants."

"This is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen in my entire life," Darkdramon hacked. "The mighty Demon Lord Beelzemon, even if he is in his Rookie stage, being comforted by a bird, a flower and a lizard." He rose his lance and pointed at them. "If you choose to stand between me and GranDracmon's will, I shall have to eliminate you."

The words of all four Digimon, even if one was his enemy, seemed to jar Impmon back to reality. His grip tightened on his D-Arc and his eyes hardened. He stood up, shrugging Lilamon off and standing in front of the other three. "Then you'll have to eliminate me too," he growled. "Because I fully intend on standing in the way of Uglyface's will." The three Digimon behind him grinned as Beelzemon suddenly took shape, growing out of the glowing shape of Impmon in all his Blast Mode glory.

"I will _always_ stand in the way of that guy's will," Beelzemon growled. "And as long as I have friends to keep me going, you will _never_ break me." He tucked the little D-Arc into a pocket on his leather jacket and readied Berenjena. "And if you threaten them, then you'll have to face me – regardless of whether you were once a friend or not."

"Interesting," Darkdramon sneered. "You're even further gone than I assumed. Although I do like the new Mode Change," he chuckled. "A Beelzemon that can fly. Now that would _really_ strike fear into the hearts of others."

"I'm not going to strike fear into anyone's heart ever again!" Beelzemon cried, "Unless they're like you and are trying to do the fear-striking to others! Now, let's see if the weapon on your arm is any match for mine!" He readied the cannon and screamed, "I'll fight you!"

Lilamon cleared her throat.

Beelzemon glanced at her. Wingdramon helpfully supplied, "I think she's saying that _we'll_ fight him!"

Beelzemon paused for a moment, but eventually nodded and said, "Alright, but be careful, okay."

"Oh, this is painful to watch," Darkdramon growled. "You feel sympathy for them? You think they're your friends. You're a farcry from the Beelzemon I knew, that's for sure."

Beelzemon grinned and said, "Why thank you, Darkdramon. I think that sentence might have been the confidence booster I've had in months."

"Whatever," Darkdramon growled hefting his lance. "Though I should warn you, I still have all the data that I absorbed when we ran amuck in the Digital World, Beelzemon. I have become a very powerful Digimon." He levelled the lance at the group. "And no matter how careful you're so-called friends are, the result will be the same. **GIGASTICK LANCE!" **He surged forwards, the lance tip crackling with dark energy as he speared towards the group.

"Scatter!" yelled Beelzemon, and the group dashed in different directions as the larger Digimon's lance slammed into the ground where they'd been – the dark energy in the lance exploding outwards in a fierce burst and sweeping Lilamon and Diatrymon off their feet, but fortunately both had gotten far enough away that they were able to scramble up with ease.

Beelzemon turned around and unleashed a **"CORONA BLASTER!" **at the back of Darkdramon's head. Darkdramon spun around as the pink energy ball surged towards him and with startling speed he dodged out of the way, leaping into the air so the shot passed beneath him and catching himself with his wings. Beelzemon released three more shots at him, but Darkdramon growled and soared towards the shots, ducking under one, sweeping past the other and swinging his lance at the third.

Beelzemon was shocked to see Darkdramon easily bat his attack to one side. But the smaller Virus type didn't wait around after that, he turned on his heel and soared towards the ground level, with Darkdramon immediately turning downwards in pursuit and diving after him. Beelzemon pulled out a shotgun and unleashed a Double Impact behind him, and heard Darkdramon grunt as the attack landed, but the effect was minimal and he didn't even slow down.

Beelzemon levelled off inches from the ground and shot outwards and out from underneath Darkdramon. This appeared to work as Darkdramon slammed into the ground, though he had enough sense to flip onto his feet first and then immediately ran in pursuit of Beelzemon. As the ex-Demon Lord tried to think of his next move, he felt something whoosh over him in the opposite direction, and suddenly heard a cry of **"WING BLAST!"** behind him. He turned just in time to see Wingdramon appear out of super speed and flap his wings hard.

The resultant shockwave actually had an effect on Darkdramon. Evidently he had not been expecting such a strong attack at close range and at such speed, for when the shockwave produced by Wingdramon's wings slammed to him, he went spinning around and fell to one knee in order to keep himself from falling down completely. Beelzemon took the opportunity and fired another Corona Blaster at his unprotected back. The attack nailed Darkdramon between his four wings and threw him forwards with an angry snarl.

Beelzemon quickly soared closer and pulled back his hand to ready a Darkness Claw. But Darkdramon suddenly spun about and swung his lance – which slammed into Beelzemon's side and sent him plunging towards the ground, where he went rolling away in a tangle of feathers. Darkdramon sneered as he moved over. "Same old Beelzemon," he sneered. "You always did love attacking from behind."

Suddenly, pink energy beams curled around his frame from behind and lashed around him, pulling his arms to his sides. Darkdramon snarled and saw Lilamon pulling backwards on him with both arms raised, trying to keep him away from the dazed Beelzemon. Darkdramon growled and wrenched his body forwards. Lilamon cried out as she was pulled towards the powerful Mega, but suddenly Wingdramon appeared behind her and grabbed her in his claws, pulling backwards and keeping her away from him. Darkdramon felt himself being hauled back and growled, preparing to pull himself forward again.

But then, Diatrymon leapt over the recovering Beelzemon and took a flying leap, slamming himself into Darkdramon's stomach with a Mega Dash Impact. Darkdramon grunted and fell back under the attack from both directions, crashing onto his back.

"Not so tough now are you?" Diatrymon squawked.

Darkdramon suddenly roared and wrenched his arms from his sides with a terrific burst of strength, shredding Lilamon's energy beams and causing her and Wingdramon to fall backwards. Diatrymon backed away as Darkdramon loomed onto his feet and roared. "Co-ordinated attacks will get you nowhere against raw power!" he shouted, whirling around to face Lilamon and Wingdramon and opening his mouth wide.

Dark energy seeped from between the teeth and congealed into a massive ball of pure darkness energy in front of him. Lilamon and Wingdramon's eyes widened as he bellowed, **"DARK ROAR!" **and the huge ball of energy, the size of Wingdramon, thundered towards them. Wingdramon quickly grabbed Lilamon and flared upwards, pulling his tail up just in time to avoid getting smashed by the attack. The ball thundered past them and crashed into the ground, creating an enormous explosion that would have levelled ten blocks in Tokyo. Wingdramon and Lilamon were caught in the blast and sent flying to the ground nearby.

Darkdramon whirled around and faced Diatrymon next. The bird froze in fear as the huge Mega began to build up another of the same attack, unsure if he'd be able to get out of the way or not. But suddenly, a pink energy ball flew over Diatrymon's head and slammed into the Dark Roar as it was building up. The attack detonated and the colossal explosion flung Darkdramon backwards with a cry of pain. Beelzemon moved to hover over Diatrymon and said, "There's more where that came from."

Darkdramon shook his head which looked charred and slightly damaged. Then he smirked and said, "Not bad, not bad. But I'm afraid that you'll have to do better than that if you want to beat me."

"That's just what I had in mind!" Beelzemon replied, drawing a pentagram in the air with his cannon. "Let's see what you do against a **CORONA DESTROYER!"** he added, emptying several blasts into the symbol, which multiplied them and sent an enormous pink beam lancing towards Darkdramon. The Mega's eyes widened in surprise, before he was engulfed by the attack.

"I WILL NEVER BE A PART OF GRANDRACMON'S ARMY!" Beelzemon roared as he continued to fire blasts into the pentagram. "NEVER!"

"Whoo! Go Beelzemon!" cheered Lilamon from the sidelines, as she and Wingdramon joined the other two to watch Darkdramon succumb to the powerful attack.

Only, it didn't quite happen like that. Beelzemon's three eyes widened as he saw the beam suddenly being split into two smaller ones at the end and the divide get closer to his pentagram. Darkdramon was ploughing his way _right through_ the attack, lance-first and surging towards the group. Beelzemon quickly tried to shut off the attack, but he wasn't quick enough and Darkdramon's lance slammed into the pentagram, which exploded in a tumultuous bang of white light and pink energy, as the power Beelzemon was putting into it exploded outwards.

Everyone was sent flying, even Darkdramon was shoved backwards a little big but the crash of bright light. Beelzemon ploughed into the ground so hard he made a furrow in it and he saw all his fighting companions make similar landings. Beelzemon gritted his teeth and got up painfully, as Darkdramon laughed.

"If you still had all the data you absorbed when you were a Demon Lord, that attack would have killed me," Darkdramon sneered. "But even with your Mode Change, you do not have nearly the power that you once had, Beelzemon." He raised a foot as Beelzemon continued to rise and pushed it down on top of the Demon Lord, flattening him against the ground. "And now, I think I'll let you watch as your friends die!"

"Get off him!" cried a voice and Diatrymon appeared above Beelzemon and cried, **"DESTRUCTION ROAR!"** He pulsed his attack upwards at Darkdramon's knee and managed to push the foot back enough for Beelzemon to wrest himself free.

"We aren't done yet!" Lilamon cried, rising up from the ground and unleashing a barrage of Marvel Shots right at Darkdramon, which pummelled against his neck. Darkdramon growled and held up an armoured arm to take the shots, but just as he did a burst of firey soundwaves exploded out of seemingly nowhere as Wingdramon whooshed past and unleashed a Blaze Sonic Breath at him. The attack caught him in the midriff and pushed him back a step.

"Okay, now it's just annoying!" Darkdramon cried, building up for another Dark Roar. Beelzemon quickly fired off another Corona Blaster, but this time Darkdramon saw it coming and slammed it aside with his lance, and unleashed the Dark Roar down towards them. Diatrymon and Lilamon balked as the huge attack surged towards them. Beelzemon growled, glancing at the both of them before leaping forward and rushing towards the attack.

"Beelzemon! No!" he heard one of them shout, but in the rush he couldn't tell which one. But he ignored them and slammed himself into the Dark Roar attack. The explosion felt like it set his whole body on fire and he roared in agony as the blast carried him towards the ground and he slammed down there, crashing head over heels to lie in a smoking heap. He groaned as the vast majority of his power was drained by the huge blow.

Lilamon and Diatrymon watched on in horror as Beelzemon was reduced to the edge of deletion. Darkdramon laughed and cried, "Oh that was too much! You really do care a lot about these guys if you want to try something suicidal like that! Oh well, that makes my job easier. I don't think I'll have a problem taking you back to GranDracmon now."

Lilamon felt herself growling, which she didn't normally do. She whirled around and readied her flower hands. "Oh, you still have a problem!" she shouted. "Namely, us! **MARVEL SHOT!"** She launched her energy spheres at him. They batted against his stomach and halted his progress, but that seemed to be about all.

"Give it up!" Darkdramon crowed. "You cannot hope to..."

"**WING BLAST!"** Wingdramon whooshed past and unleashed another massive shockwave at him with a sweep of his wings. It had the same effect as last time and knocked Darkdramon backwards, giving Diatrymon and Lilamon the opportunity they had been looking for. Diatrymon charged forwards with all speed and slammed into his gut once again with another furious Mega Dash Impact, while Lilamon formed a Lilac Dagger in one petal and drove it into the armour around his neck.

That actually seemed to hurt him and he grunted in pain, before sending Diatrymon flying backwards with a heavy kick and taking a swing at Lilamon. The nimble fairy quickly ducked under the lance and rolled aside as it swung back the other way, until she was out of reach again. But Darkdramon came after her, charging his lance with power once again and crying, **"GIGASTICK LANCE!"**

"**EXPLODE SONIC LANCE!"** Wingdramon quickly swooped out of nowhere and wheeled around the larger lance, slamming his own into Darkdramon's chest. Darkdramon's attack stopped and Wingdramon flew away, as the Mega Level Digimon's teeth bared in anger and annoyance.

A low, feral growl began to emanate from Darkdramon's throat and a second later, he threw back his arms and let out a roar of uncontained fury that echoed through the hills. _**"I'VE HAD ENOUGH!"**_he hollered to the sky and his eyes narrowed into furious slits.

And from there, everything went wrong.

Diatrymon tried to attack again while he was busy shouting, and charged once more, but Darkdramon saw him coming and roared, his teeth twisting into a furious snarl as he lunged downwards with his lance. Diatrymon quickly stopped and jumped backwards so the lance plunged into the ground beneath him and threw up a bunch of soil, but Darkdramon suddenly swung upwards, ripping his lance out of the ground and slamming it into Diatrymon in a shower of dirt.

Diatrymon shrieked in pain and he was catapulted upwards from the blow, and then Darkdramon's fist on his other hand slammed into him, hard. Diatrymon shot towards the ground like a miniature comet and slammed into it so hard he literally almost disappeared into a crater. He appeared to lose consciousness on the spot.

"No! Diatrymon!" Lilamon cried, in shock. She bared her own teeth and turned towards Darkdramon swooping upwards so that she would fly over him and rotating so her back-flower would be to him, when she did. **"UN DEUX POLLEN!" **she cried, and the sprinkling powder surged from her flower and sailed towards Darkdramon with intent to cloak him in it.

Darkdramon was having none of that though. He looked up and roared angrily, stretching his wings out and flapping them with three furious strokes that generated a wind flow. Lilamon's gasped in shock as her own attack was pulsed back at her and she was engulfed in it. Thankfully she was slightly immune to her own pollen, but in quantities this great it was too much for her. Her muscles stopped functioning and she plummeted to the ground.

Darkdramon lashed out with his hand and grabbed her as she fell. Lilamon stared up at him from his giant fist and felt fear creeping into her expression as she lay, powerless, in the sneering Megas fist. Darkdramon sneered at her, but, for the moment he did nothing. He was standing stock-still, and for a second Lilamon thought her attack had actually succeeded, but then she realised that wasn't the case.

He was listening.

Suddenly, Darkdramon's tail lashed out behind him, the bladed tip slicing through the air with one clean stroke. But air wasn't the only thing it sliced through. Lilamon heard a distinctive sound which sounded like a huge sheet of paper being ripped in two, and it was accompanied by a tremendous roar of pain. Wingdramon materialised out of nowhere from where he had been about to attack. One of his wings had completely ripped through by the blade, the skin the usually repelled gravity no shorn in half.

Lilamon's eyes widened in absolutely horror as she watched Wingdramon plummet towards the ground and slam into it not far from Diatrymon. His now useless and tattered wing flopped to his side and the other one was crushed underneath his body. Wingdramon groaned in pain and appeared to be blacking out.

Darkdramon cackled in triumph, the fist that Lilamon was being held in rising into the air in victory. "No-one gets away from me when I decide to kill them!" Darkdramon growled. "I meant to cut his wing off completely, but I guess he dodged me a little before the end." Then he looked down at her and sneered. "So, pretty one, I should take you back to the Dark Ocean with me and make you a slave to GranDracmon since you don't appear to be too damaged yet. However, it just wouldn't feel right."

Lilamon blinked, but then Darkdramon added, "I either kill all of Beelzemon's friends, or none of them. So, care to beg?"

Lilamon grunted and gritted her teeth, but was able to spit out – "Not a chance!"

Darkdramon chuckled menacingly. "Too bad. If you had, I would have granted you a quick death." Then, his grip around Lilamon started to ever so slowly tighten. Lilamon gasped as she felt Darkdramon's fist begin to contract press tighter against her side. He was squeezing her to death. She gritted her teeth as she felt the pain radiating through her body, but that eventually turning into a cry of agony as she felt her data starting to flicker. If Darkdramon tightened his grip much more, she would end up bursting into data.

Darkdramon just sneered and watched as he slowly squeezed the life out of his prey.

"**CORONA BLASTER!"**

Darkdramon looked up in surprise, and saw a pink globe of energy soaring towards him. The attack slamming into his wrist and with a cry of shock, Darkdramon dropped Lilamon. The fairy Digimon, barely conscious dropped like a stone, but Beelzemon flew and grabbed her before swooping out of the way and depositing her near the prone forms of Diatrymon and Wingdramon. Lilamon looked up at him blearily, before slumping to the ground, barely able to stay awake.

Beelzemon was still a wreck. Most of his leather clothing was torn and his wings were missing a large portion of their feathers. Berenjena was almost completely blackened and both of his shotguns were missing. The D-Arc in his pocket was still intact, and Beelzemon hoped it would stay functional, but he didn't have time to check.

"Make that – you'll not be killing any of my friends today!" he shouted up at the large foe.

Darkdramon laughed. "I actually pity you, Beelzemon. You used to be so much better when you didn't give a damn about anybody else. And look at you now."

"I infinitely prefer this version of me, thank you," Beelzemon growled.

"You say that now," Darkdramon laughed. "But when you fly under the banner of GranDracmon, you'll be roaring a different warcry."

"Will I?" Beelzemon asked. "I think you find that'll never happen. I'll kill myself first. But, preferably, I'll kill you instead."

Darkdramon growled. "In that case," he said. "I guess we'll have to continue this fight." He raised his lance and said, "It won't last long."

"I beg to differ," Beelzemon hefted his sparking Berenjena. "We ain't going down that easy."

"Get over here and prove it," Darkdramon shouted. He pointed his lance at Beelzemon and charged with a cry of **"GIGASTICK LANCE!"**

Beelzemon rose to meet him, flapping harder than usual to stay aloft and crying, **"DARKNESS CLAW!"**

The two Viral Megas surged towards each other to begin their final clash, with roars gracing their mouths and eyes narrowed.

* * *

It seemed that everyone had completely forgotten about him. That seemed to happen a lot when it came to battle situations. The others would go charging in and they usually do a lot of beating other people up, but just as often these days they seemed to get beaten up themselves. Their enemies were extremely powerful and all Calumon could do was standing on the sidelines and watch.

Fear rippled through the little Digimon as he cowered in the patch of grass that he had chosen as his hiding place. He knew full well that if Darkdramon aimed one of his Dark Roar attacks anywhere near where he was currently hiding then it was all over. Calumon would never be able to survive such an attack. But he stayed hidden nearby partly because he didn't want to abandon his friends and partly because he was too scared to move anywhere.

Though the way things were going, he might have to drop reason one. His friends, who he had laughed with and played with and watched beating up other giant Digimon were getting royally trounced here. Darkdramon looked a little bit battered, but he was still going extremely strong, and Beelzemon was the only one still fighting against him now. And even Beelzemon was slowing down.

Calumon glanced over at the other three. Lilamon was on her side and appeared to be summoning green light of some kind from the grass surrounding her and into her body. Calumon had seen her do that in the battle against Zanbamon, where she had used her fairy powers to take energy from the trees to heal herself. She seemed to be trying to do that now, but there was so much less vegetation here than in the forest that she wasn't getting much done.

Then she crawled over and tried to heal Diatrymon, who looked like he could splinter into data at any second. She managed to put a little bit of the green, healing light into him, before she collapsed onto her front again, spent of energy once more.

Calumon was powerless to help them.

He glanced over at Beelzemon next, and watch him wildly attempting to dodge the lance swings of the bigger Darkdramon. Darkdramon appeared to be laughing as Beelzemon threw attacks at him. They still appeared to be causing the large Mega pain, but nowhere near enough to damage him unduly. It seemed he was right – the amount of data Darkdramon had collected over the years had powered him up beyond the strength of an ordinary Darkdramon.

Calumon was powerless to help him too.

Calumon whined and covered his eyes with his large ears, unable to watch what was going on anymore. Why had he come on this mission again? All he had done so far was sit on the sidelines in battle and not understand the enormity of what was going on. He was useless – a pathetic little Digimon with no attacks. He hadn't been of any help in anything that the Tamers and their partners did for some time. Not since the D-Reaper, and all he'd been able to do then was talk Jeri out of her depression. He hadn't been any use in the battling.

He hadn't been of any use in the battling since the other Digimon stopped needing him to help them digivolve, when their bond with their Tamers grew strong enough to allow them to do it independently.

Calumon felt miserable. When he made other Digimon digivolve, he had been useful. Now, he was just a loser who couldn't help anyone. Ever since he had given the Digimon back the power to digivolve on their own, he was worthless.

And then, it hit him. His face shot up as a sudden thought filled his head. He had given the Digimon back the power to digivolve, but he hadn't necessarily given up the power completely. He had never tried to use it since, because nobody seemed to need it anymore, so it had kinda slipped to the back of his mind. He didn't know if he had it still or not, but even if you can't see something, it doesn't mean it isn't there. He glanced over again at the two Ultimates and the Champion lying, almost passed out on the ground nearby.

Maybe...

Well, he had to try something. He couldn't be useless unless there was no chance at all that he could help.

He hopped out from his hiding place in the grass and faced the three of them. He remembered what it was like when he had caused all the Digimon in the Digital World to head for the Mega Level, in the Shining Digivolution, and he pictured clearly what he had done. Clasping his hands together and shutting his eyes, Calumon dug deep into himself to search for the power which he remembered possessing, hoping against hope that it was still there somewhere, hidden within him.

Where, oh where could it be?

Calumon felt himself rising into the air as he searched the recesses of his data. No, that wasn't it. Nor that. And he was pretty sure that that was his spleen, whatever that was.

As he searched a strangely familiar warm feeling began to spread through him. A feeling that he hadn't felt for who-knew-how-long. The ends of his toes to the tips of the ears felt all aglow and warm and fuzzy, and he could sense a brightness building up inside him. He opened his eyes, and he realised that he _was_ glowing. That hadn't happened in ages.

Calumon's forehead began to fell tingly, and he could feel the little symbol on his head lighting up. As he felt it begin to warm up, a happy smile, mixed with a look of determination, crossed onto his face.

He wasn't useless.

He was the Catalyst.

And it was time to remind everyone of what had been lying dormant within him for so long, unneeded until now, and waiting for the right moment to rise to the surface once more.

* * *

Things were going badly for Beelzemon. He was pretty sure he would be pull off a better fight if he had been in better condition, but he was already severely weakened and it was showing. He dodged a strike from Darkdramon's lance by spiralling underneath it and flared his wings to stop himself from colliding with Darkdramon's fist. That action alone caused his wings to scream at him at the strain, but he gritted his teeth and pressed on regardless.

"Come back here!" Darkdramon whirled around and slashed at him with his tail and Beelzemon rounded him. Beelzemon rolled, but he felt the tail-blade slice through his jacket. His eyes widened as Ai and Mako's D-Arc went sailing into the air. Hurriedly, he veered around and took off after it; it was his only link to his Tamers and very precious to him. But, as he grabbed it and whirled around, Darkdramon's lance struck.

Beelzemon rolled, but the lance skewed across his side and cut a deep gash in it. Beelzemon roared with pain and collapsed limply to the ground once more. Darkdramon's foot pressed down on him a second time, pinning him there.

"Not to worry, old friend," Darkdramon crowed snidely. "Once you see that the darkness is the best path to take, you will understand that this fight was futile. But first, before I take you back to the Master, I have a little job to finish." He turned to the three stricken and barely alive Digimon lying nearby and opened his jaws, beginning to prepare another Dark Roar.

"No," Beelzemon groaned weakly, staring at his friends in horror as it looked like they were about to be toast.

But, before Darkdramon could build up a lot of power, a high-pitched cry suddenly drew everyone's attention. Darkdramon and Beelzemon both looked around to see Calumon floating not far away, glowing with a fierce white light as his red symbol began to strengthen in power until it was like a blazing torch, despite the fact it was day.

"What the..." Darkdramon said.

Beelzemon's eyes widened. What...? Was he using...?

Suddenly a huge beam of light exploded out of Calumon's forehead and lanced towards the three Digimon lying nearby, expanding rapidly but holding its triangular shape as it went. The light washed over Lilamon, and suddenly the fairy's eyes snapped open. It enveloped Diatrymon and suddenly the bird was awake and his head shot up. It engulfed Wingdramon and the dragon body convulsed and he gasped.

"What's happening?" Darkdramon shouted.

Beelzemon grinned and exclaimed, "Oh, I'll tell you what's happening. You're about to get you arse handed to you!" As he spoke, Lilamon, Wingdramon and Diatrymon all got to their feet, new strength surging within them as they exploded into bright light simultaneously, so bright that Darkdramon roared and shielded his eyes, stepping backwards and off Beelzemon. Beelzemon on the other hand, born the pain of staring at three simultaneous Digivolutions – he wanted to see it happen.

Three shouts cried out from the rapidly expanding light.

"**LILAMON MEGA-DIGIVOLVE TO..."**

"**WINGDRAMON MEGA-DIGIVOLVE TO..."**

"**DIATRYMON WARP-DIGIVOLVE TO..."**

The light slowly faded away, to reveal three new beings standing the places where Impmon's friends had been. Three brand new Mega level Digimon had arrived on the scene.

Hovering above the shoulders of the two larger figures was the Digimon that Lilamon had transformed into. She didn't appear to have gotten any larger, and her form was quite similar, although there were several key differences. She was a little more like a human now, wearing a red full body leotard that had black legs and morphed into high-heels. It was split down the middle so that an arrow-shaped area of skin on her stomach was exposed. She was wearing a long cloak that split into five leaf-like ends, which was green on the outside and white on the inside. The top half of her head was hidden by a large rose and long blond hair spilled out from the back. A long thorny vine was wrapped around both arms and her chest and was being gripped in both hands.

"**ROSEMON."**

Wingdramon's form had shifted into something that resembled some kind of large dragon man. A humanoid figure with shining silver armour covering all of his body in many plated segments, from his metal gauntlets and chest armour, down to his three clawed feet and including his head, which had a large horn poking up from his nose, two smaller ones over each eye and two more sticking out the back of a frill-like neck guard, making him resemble something like a strange Triceratops. His tail was covered in armour as well. His wings had vanished and had been replaced by a long, flowing green cloak, and in his hand was a sword made up of multiple segments, each one in the shape of a claw and attached together at one side only, so the sword would curve whenever he swing it.

"**SLAYERDRAMON!"**

Diatrymon's ground-hugging days appeared to be over. He was easily the largest of the three Digimon, but also appeared to have the simplest design. He looked like an enormous Archaeopteryx and was covered in purple feathers across his body and down his tail and wings, but the feathers on the tips of his wings and sticking out either side of his tail were pink in colour, and there were more feathers on his wings between his purple and pink ones that were turquoise in colour. He also had a bunch of turquoise down around his neck and running down his back to the base of his tail. His feet were grey and had sharp talons, and three fingers stuck out halfway down each wing. His beak was large and pink and he had two long horns sticking backwards out of his head.

"**ORNISMON!"**

The three new Digimon glared at Darkdramon, although with Rosemon it was difficult to tell since her eyes were hidden from view. Beelzemon grinned at the three of them and Calumon sank to the ground, out of breath.

"Hey, guys!" Beelzemon cried. "You feeling better?"

"Better and badder than ever before," Rosemon replied. "So, this is what the Mega level feels like. I always wondered."

"We can admire our new forms later," Slayerdramon growled. "Once we take care of this servant of GranDracmon."

"I'm all for that," Ornismon screeched, spreading his wings. "Let's see you knock me down so easily now I'm in this form."

Darkdramon growled. "It doesn't matter how big you get or how far you digivolve! I am still stronger than you!"

"Are you sure about that?" asked Ornismon, throwing himself into the air with a huge burst of his wings. "Because I can safely tell you know that I'm pretty strong now, and I'm guessing the others are too."

"Don't toy with him!" Beelzemon shouted. "Get him!"

Ornismon chuckled and said, "As you command, your Beelzeness." Then the Mega level Ancient Bird Digimon through himself forwards with powerful bursts of his wings and soared towards Darkdramon. The evil Mega growled and started summoning a Dark Roar attack again, but Ornismon swept round him and into the sky above. Darkdramon growled and followed his progress, leaping into the sky to give chase.

"Bad move," Ornismon called down to him and swerved to the side flapping past him and sweeping around the other Mega, flying in wide circles around him at high speed. As he moved, his wingbeats increased in power and velocity, and with a cry of **"RAGING TEMPEST!"** a furious wind sprang upon from the wingbeats and a small hurricane formed within the circle Ornismon was flying in. Darkdramon cried out as he was buffeted and sent rolling helplessly around by the ridiculously strong winds, tumbling over and over in an undignified jumble of limbs.

Ornismon smirked and soared into the winds, completely unaffected by it and slammed his taloned feet into Darkdramon's wings, snapping the metal that they used for support and sending Darkdramon tumbling towards the ground to land with a colossal thud that created a huge crater.

"Now you know how I felt," Ornismon called down to him.

Darkdramon growled and stood up, his useless wings hanging down his back.

"And how I felt too," Slayerdramon agreed. "But I don't need wings in this form. And guess what, this form may be draconic, but it also specialises in fighting dragons." Slayerdramon rushed forwards in a full on charge, right at Darkdramon. Darkdramon growled and readied his lance, charging to meet him with it thrust before him and glowing with dark energy. But Slayerdramon didn't flinch and prepared his sword, swinging it so it curled through the air on its multiple hinges until it was above his head.

"**GIGASTICK L-"** Darkdramon began.

"**SHORYU SLASH!" **Slayerdramon responded and brought the sword slashing vertically downwards, dodging Darkdramon's attack and striking with his own. Darkdramon howled as the sword trailed down his front, creating huge grooves from the multiple claws and cutting deep through his middle.

The wounds burned with firey pain and Darkdramon staggered backwards. Slayerdramon stepped back to admire his handiwork. His attack had done far more damage to Darkdramon's than any of Beelzemon's due to his special powers at fighting other dragons. Darkdramon wailed, but he remained strong and still in the fight, rearing up once again and preparing to throw a Dark Roar at Slayerdramon.

"I wouldn't," said a voice from one side, and Darkdramon turned around, glaring around his split visor at Rosemon, who was hovering innocently nearby. Rosemon smiled charmingly at him and beckoned with one finger, as if daring him to come closer. Darkdramon rose to the challenge and immediately charged forwards, preparing to strike this Digimon through the heart.

But Rosemon had other plans. Raising the thorny vine in her left hand, Rosemon lashed out with it and cried, **"THORN WHIPPING!"** The vine extended in length and seemed to start crackling with electricity as it snaked its way around Darkdramon and lashed tightly around him, the electricity surging over him and halting his charge.

Darkdramon didn't even appear to be upset with this, because he was staring at Rosemon with a blank and slavish look. That might be because of the side effect of Rosemon's attack – Darkdramon now _was_ Rosemon's slave, body and soul. It was quite similar to Lilamon's beauty slap attack in that way, only more controlling. Of course, Rosemon didn't want a slave and was disgusted at the thought of Darkdramon being one for her, but she put that aside.

Rosemon turned around and called to Beelzemon. "Now, Beelzemon. Call up a pentagram! A really, big one!"

"Huh?" Beelzemon cried. "Why?"

"Just do it," Rosemon said, with a smirk. "I want to try something out."

Beelzemon glance at Slayerdramon and Ornismon, and they both nodded at him with smirks on their own faces. Beelzemon started to get an inkling of what they were thinking and grinned himself. Extending Berenjena, he flew diagonally downwards, drawing a large line as he went. Then he flew diagonally upwards to create a V, then back down the other way at a less steep angle, then straight across, and then back up to his starting point, creating a massive pentagram. The huge symbol expanded into the familiar form he used.

Rosemon relinquished her grip on Darkdramon, and flew to join the others behind the symbol. As Darkdramon blinked and shook his head to try and clear it, the three new Megas unleashed their attacks.

"**COSMIC RAY!"** Ornismon shouted and threw an enormous yellow energy beam from his beak.

"**TENRYU SLASH!"** Slayerdramon cried, raising his sword and forming a huge dragon-shaped energy blast around it, before pointing the sword forward to send the energy dragon shooting ahead.

"**FORBIDDEN TEMPTATION!"** Rosemon cried, as the rose on her head expanded and she spread her arms, throwing a huge blast of red energy from her whole body along with a swirling storm of rose petals.

The three attacks flew into the pentagram and their progress was halted. The Pentagram began to glow brightly with a huge amount of light; red orange and yellow mixing together into a swirling pattern.

Rosemon turned to Beelzemon and said, "Would you like the honours?"

"Would I ever," Beelzemon cried and levelled Berenjena. **"CORONA DESTROYER!"** he shouted and fired straight into the pentagram. A couple of seconds after the correct attack flew into it, a humongous blast of swirling pink, orange, yellow and red surged out of the portal in one massive condensed blast.

Darkdramon regained his senses just in time to turn and see it rushing towards him.

His jaw dropped.

And he was obliterated in a split second of the attack hitting him. His data immediately started to fly away and float into the sky, just as the blast dissipated and the pentagram closed, leaving the four Mega level Digimon floating or standing as they watch the data fly away.

"Well, that wasn't so bad," Ornismon chuckled.

"Speak for yourself," Slayerdramon said. "My wing was killing me back there."

"My whole body was killing me," Rosemon replied. "But, we've survived. And that's all that matters."

"And we've got one little guy to thank for all of this," Beelzemon said, looking down to where Calumon was gazing at the four of them with wonder on his face. The group turned towards him and slowly approached the little Catalyst, who lay back to gaze up at them as they stood before him.

"Thanks Calumon," Beelzemon grinned. "Looks like bringing you along wasn't so bad after all."

"You're the hero of the hour," Rosemon added with a grin, hefting Calumon up onto her shoulder.

"I am?" Calumon asked, looking awed at the prospect.

"Yep," nodded Ornismon. "We may have been the ones that trashed the guy, but we wouldn't have been able to do it if it weren't for you."

"Not to mention you saved us from the brink of death," Slayerdramon agreed. "And gave us these amazing new forms." He looked down at himself, and then glanced over his shoulder. Upon noticing the lack of wings, he sighed and said, "But I will miss soaring through the open air. I guess I'm tied to the ground in this form."

"Quite a turnabout, huh?" Ornismon remarked. "Now you can't fly and I can. Complete role-reversal."

"What do you mean, you'll miss the open air?" Rosemon scoffed. "Are you a Digimon or aren't you?" She suddenly glowed and shrank and within moments she was Lilamon again, perfectly healed and grinning. "We can de-digivolve if we so choose to."

"Ah," said Slayerdramon. "So we can." He reverted back to Wingdramon again and flexed his wings, both of them intact and immediately rose off the ground again. "Ah, now that's much better."

"And the best part is," Lilamon ruffled the top of Calumon's head. "We can change back anytime we want as long as we're near this guy. If another Digimon comes attacking, you'll be ready to help us won't ya, Creampuff?"

"You bet," Calumon cheered. "I'm useful again! Hooray!"

Beelzemon chuckled and looked up at Ornismon. "Aren't you going to de-digivolve?"

"Maybe later," he said. "But I'm guessing we're planning on heading to the Temple now our attacker has gone, and I'd much rather go there on my own instead of dangling from Wingdramon's claws."

Beelzemon chuckled and de-digivolved back to Impmon. "Sounds like a plan," he said. "Let's go. And... guys," he paused as the other four looked at him. "Thanks. For everything."

"No problem," Lilamon winked. "That's what we're here for. HUG!"

"Ack!"

* * *

Now, I really liked this chapter. It was lots of fun to write and we got to see some awesomeness from some new Digimon forms. There are a couple of issues in this chapter that I'll just clarify for now. Firstly, I've seen many stories where Calumon can't make other Digimon digivolve anymore, and others where he can. Let's just say that he can in my story. It never says he gave it up completely, and it never says he didn't either. Secondly, I know only Paildramon has ever called out Mega Digivolve before, but I wanted to give Lilamon and Wingdramon something besides just digivolve to shout since Diatrymon gets to warp-digivolve.

Some of you may be wondering why I chose to have them revert back instead of staying in their Mega forms. Well, the honest answer is that I just prefer their old forms since that's kinda why I picked them in the first place. Plus, if they get too large, they'll start getting inconvenient at later dates.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

The awesomeness continues. Aayla's wild lightsaber fight with three opponents at once begins. Can the Twi'lek keep them at bay for long? What tactics will she employ to try and stay alive? And what are the others doing while the enormous fight is taking place.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 126 : Duel of the Millennium**


	126. Duel of the Millennium

Thanks to **Dakota Lesmercy** for reviewing for the first time. I hope I can expect to see you in future reviews as well. Reviews are what keep me going after all. If I didn't think enough people liked the story and read it a lot I wouldn't have the motivation to do this whole one chapter a day thing I have going on. Unfortunately, after this chapter, I only have four more days to do this mad updating. That'll be enough time to finish the arc, but the chapters will start coming in slower after that again.

Ah well. Here's a chapter I have been planning and waiting to do for a long, long time. Hope you like it. I did.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 126:- Duel of the Millennium**

* * *

Asajj Ventress looked like she was about to respond to Aayla Secura's challenge and leap forward into the attack, but before she had the opportunity to do so, Dooku raised a hand to steady her. Ventress glowered a little at being stopped from carrying out her revenge right away, but she obeyed her Master's will, albeit very reluctantly. She didn't dare to cross Dooku – he could make a very powerful enemy.

Dooku stared at Aayla, the Twi'lek still ready in her favoured combat position. Then he said, "You intrigue me, Knight Secura. We have never met on the battlefield before now, so it was difficult for me to judge what I would see when we finally did. But now, I see you standing before all three of us and I sense no fear from you. None whatsoever in fact."

"What of it?" Aayla asked, glaring at Dooku. "I have no fear of death for myself, so I have no reason to fear any of you."

"Perhaps," Dooku replied. "But I'm sure that my apprentice, Ventress here, had more in mind for you than a quick death."

"That's right," Ventress snarled, glaring at Aayla. "If I get the opportunity, I'm going to cut off both of your lekku first before I kill you, Secura. I have long dreamed of cutting down you and your little posse of friends that call themselves the A-Team. And now I have the opportunity to do that for one of you. You should be very, very afraid."

"Sorry to disappoint you, Ventress, but you still don't scare me," Aayla shook her head. "Pain, I can withstand. Torture, I can tolerate. Death, I have no problem with. The only thing that would cause me to feel fear is what you would do to my friends." She twirled her lightsaber a little to emphasize her next point. "And as long as there is the faintest speck of life in my body, I will not allow you to harm them."

"Ha! You are so misguided, Secura," Grievous growled at her. "I thought friends were supposed to look after one another, and yet that clone that you called friend was only too happy to abandon you, remember? It's obvious that he doesn't care what happens to you."

"Bly left because I gave him a direct order," Aayla replied evenly, refusing to let Grievous bait her. "And even if what you said was true, it wouldn't matter to me anyway. A Jedi is supposed to protect others regardless of how much they like them or not, and that is exactly what I am doing."

"And yet it was all for nothing," Grievous chuckled. "I'll make sure of that. When we're finished with you, I'll be sure to track down your friends and put an end to them as well. They can join you in the Force later on."

Aayla glared at him, but kept her emotions in line. "I will not allow that, Grievous. I will fight you to my last breath if I must."

"How interesting," Dooku smiled menacingly as Aayla spoke. "I can sense something else about you, Secura. It is most strange. I have encountered many Jedi, both from when I was a part of your number and since I joined the Sith, but never have experienced any Jedi with as strong attachments as you."

Aayla gaze switched to the elderly man next and her eyes narrowed slightly. "And?" she asked.

"Well, forgive me if I'm wrong," Dooku queried. "But I thought that attachments were forbidden for anyone who upholds the Jedi Code. And yet here you are, one of the most well-known Jedi amongst the whole Republic with attachments so strong that any Force-sensitive could detect them with ease. Surely the other Jedi know of this too. Have they not tried to stop you?"

"A couple have," nodded Aayla. "But the Jedi Order is changing Dooku. Nothing stays the same as it was forever, not even the Jedi. I haven't heard a protest against anything that I hold dear to me for some months now."

"Yet you still feel the uncertainty and the reluctance to let it lie from a bunch of your fellow Jedi, do you not?" Dooku asked.

Aayla had a feeling she knew where Dooku was leading up to with this, but she slowly answered, "Yes," anyway. "From quite a few of them actually. It is true that a lot of Jedi wish to stay settled in our old ways, but there are others that are willing to accept change."

"May I enquire as to who the people you hold your attachments to are?" Dooku asked.

"My team-mates obviously," Aayla replied, knowing that there was little point in lying to Dooku as he would detect it, but also not embellishing the whole truth. "We are like family, since we've been through so much together."

Grievous hacked. "Family? They're even more of a hindrance than friends, if you want my opinion."

"Grievous," Dooku interrupted warningly. "I am trying to hold a civilised conversation with our adversary here, and I would appreciate it if you didn't interrupt." Grievous growled but subsided, and Dooku turned to look up at Aayla again and said, "Interesting. You hold no shame in your attachments either, as some Jedi might. You openly admit who it is that you fear to lose most. Tell me, Knight Secura – would you not wish to be in an environment where you and your... family... are accepted without question?"

"Let me stop you there, Count," Aayla shook her head. "I can see what you're trying to say, and I can tell you right now that there is no chance of it happening. I'll never join you and your little band of Dark Jedi... or what's left of it anyway."

"Oh?" Dooku asked, raising an eyebrow. "What makes you so sure of that? We could provide you with the acceptance that I know you desire. And we could help to protect your friends."

"There are numerous reasons why I will not even consider your offer, Dooku," Aayla smirked. "First off, I've already had my brush with the Dark Side and once in a lifetime is more than enough for me, thank you very much. Secondly, you may claim to offer me acceptance, but I seriously doubt I would get it, particularly from people like Ventress who would constantly be looking for a way to stab me in the back. Thirdly, my family would probably kill me if I ever thought about going to the Dark Side... metaphorically speaking... even if you had one of them at saber-point."

"I see," Dooku said. "Anything else?"

"Yeah," nodded Aayla. "I shall now reinstate my previous challenge – come and get me." She raised her lightsaber as she spoke.

"Her impudence is aggravating me, Master," growled Ventress. "What are we waiting for?"

"Surely you do not expect to be able to take all of us on?" Grievous growled. "You may have some skill with a blade, but I doubt anyone in the Jedi Order can take us all at once? You can't expect to win."

"You're right," Aayla nodded. "I don't expect to win. I fully expect that I will die here today, in this room, cut down by one of you three. However, that's the difference between the people on my side of the war and yours. My life doesn't matter, even in the slightest." She hefted her lightsaber. "And even if I am to die here today, I will not merely stop fighting. I am a Jedi. And we do not give up easily, even if all hope has fled us."

"So be it," Dooku said, slowly.

"Ventress, you may proceed."

"It's about time," Ventress smiled coldly, and her blades flew up to her sides as she faced Aayla. The Twi'lek glared at her challengingly and Ventress was more than eager to take up the challenge. With a yell of anger and hatred and all the frustration she had felt at Aayla over the last several weeks and months, Ventress surged forward and leapt at her, lightsabers rising above her head to swing down at the Twi'lek.

Aayla's blade slammed into both of Ventress' at once and the duel kicked off. Ventress stepped back and slashed for Aayla's side with her left blade, following up with an identical sweep to Aayla's other side with her other blade straight afterwards. Aayla caught the first blade and shoved it aside, nimbly spinning about to catch the second and then ducking beneath the third blow as Ventress swept back at her, spinning aside and past Ventress as the Rattataki swung both blades after her. Aayla's blue blade impacted against her red ones and for a split second they locked, but both combatants stepped backwards simultaneously.

Aayla spun round to swing upwards from below and Ventress quickly counteracted, stopping Aayla's blade before it hit her in the knee and lashed out with the other blade. Aayla ducked so the blow whooshed over her lekku and Ventress broke the lock with her other blade and slashed with both at once for Aayla while she was near the floor. Aayla sprang upwards so the blade passed beneath her feet and flipped over backwards, landing smoothly as Ventress charged again.

Ventress swung her blades up together, which Aayla stepped back to avoid the blow, but was forced to block as Ventress lashed down with another blade and the two clashed together. Ventress pressed into the lock and attempted to swing her other blade in from the side while Aayla was defenceless, but Aayla saw blade coming and changed the angle of her own blade, so it was pointing almost downwards and caught the new strike without breaking the lock with the other one. Ventress growled in frustration and pushed against Aayla with both blades, but Aayla suddenly whipped her blade into a spin that knocked both of Ventress' sideways and leapt after her.

Ventress hurriedly blocked a downwards slash, and Aayla followed up with two more, pushing Ventress back as she swung from low again and whipped around once that was blocked to sweep in from the side. Ventress grimaced as she was shoved aside and attempted to retaliate with a stab to the chest and a simultaneous swing at the neck. Aayla's blade flew in from the side and swiped the stabbing blade upwards, causing Ventress' slashing blade to be blocked with the other red lightsaber. Aayla quickly followed up with a kick to the midsection, which slammed into Ventress' gut and knocked her backwards.

Seeing that Ventress was getting overwhelmed by Aayla, pretty much as he had predicted would happen in the first place, Grievous finally decided to step in. Moving swiftly forwards towards the confrontation, his blades started spinning in his practically patented buzzsawing motion that he like to open battles with, his two blades whirring around with multi-coloured and almost blinding motion. Aayla, who had been about to pursue Ventress, turned around in alarm as Grievous approached and quickly backward rolled out the way, causing Grievous' blades to slash through the wall multiple times before he turned around to face her.

Aayla grimaced as Grievous went on the offensive, his mechanical strength harder to deal with than Ventress' wild swinging. Grievous sprang at her in a vicious jump, his blades stabbing towards her and forcing Aayla to leapt back again as they stabbed into the floor. Grievous swept them both upwards without withdrawing them from the floor, hoping to catch her off guard, but Aayla was quick enough to catch both of the blades with her own and nimbly step back lashing between the two blades and pushing one aside before lunging at Grievous' body.

Grievous other blade rotated at an angle that would have been impossible for a human and caught her attack, pushing backwards with alloy strength and sending Aayla stumbling backwards. Grievous advanced and lashed at her with first one blade and then the other in two downward sweeps and Aayla was forced to dance out of the way of both, but Grievous' body rotated at the hips and he swung around a second time. Aayla parried the first blade and fell to the side to avoid the next one, which passed over her shoulder harmlessly.

Seeing Aayla on the floor, Grievous pressed home his advantage and attempted to stamp on her, but Aayla quickly rolled out of the way. Grievous slashed down at her again with both blades and Aayla reacted quickly, tucking her legs in and rolling backwards and onto her hands and launching herself upwards from them and springing over Grievous two blades as she did, so they were beneath her back. Aayla landed on the floor and whirled around to turn aside three quick follow-up slashes from the General and lash out with one of her own, but both of Grievous' blades swung around until they were pointing at the floor and caught them.

And then Ventress was back and suddenly Aayla found herself fighting both at the same time. She was driven back towards the wall, blocking two swift slashes from both of Ventress' swords and quickly turning to deflect two more from Grievous. It was rare to see Grievous and Ventress working together on anything, but the pair seemed to be doing a good job at driving Aayla backwards. Grievous lashed out with one blade a second before Ventress slashed down with her own. Aayla rolled out of the way of Grievous' attack and caught Ventress', angled her blade so the one Ventress was holding blocked Grievous' next attack, ducked under another slash from Grievous and stepped back again further towards the wall.

Aayla took a brief glance behind her and saw that it wouldn't be long before she was backed up against the wall completely, and that wouldn't get a good thing in a lightsaber fight. Turning back around she blocked two attack from Grievous, crouched and brought her lightsaber up to stop a downward slash from Ventress and pirouetted aside as the Rattataki slashed at her again. This move brought her closer to Grievous, who buzzsawed at her again, forcing her to turn her blade side on and block them close to the ground before they could slice up and through her.

Ventress saw her opportunity and leapt for Aayla, but she had reckoned without the Twi'lek's flexibility and Aayla's foot lashed out upwards and kicked her in the chest, knocking the wind out of her and driving her backwards. Grievous' blades suddenly powered upwards, pushing Aayla's back up, but Aayla's mind quickly came up with a plan and she allowed the motion, angling her body so that Grievous ended up flinging her into the air. Aayla flipped over and planted her feet on the wall as Grievous and Ventress came for her again, and pushed off it diving straight between the two and into the open again.

She heard both of them attempt to slash upwards at her as she dived past them, but they only ended up clashing blades with each other and allowed Aayla to dive over the locked blades and land in a forward roll, coming to a stop nearby. As Grievous and Ventress started shouting at one another behind her, Aayla whirled about to see herself face to face with Dooku.

_Uh-oh _, she thought.

Dooku gave her a warrior's salute by holding his lightsaber vertically in front of his face, shedding his cloak as he did so. Then, suddenly he leapt into the air and somersaulted forwards to cleave downwards at Aayla. Aayla caught the blow but the force of Dooku's leap still pushed her downwards. Hurriedly she removed her blade and swung around to slash at Dooku's midsection, but the old man easily blocked it and retaliated with a pair of refined sweeps and Aayla's chest. Aayla stepped back and turned them aside, side-stepping Dooku's next swing and hurriedly blocking the next. Dooku shoved her backwards and twirled his blade, stepping forward to engage her again.

Aayla was discovering why Dooku was a master swordsman extremely rapidly, as her slashed at her head multiple times, forcing the Twi'lek to move and hop from side to side as she parried. Aayla quickly span around, blocking a sword-strike behind her back as she did so and rolled backwards to get out of range.

Crouching low to the ground with her lightsaber in the air, Aayla dashed forwards and feinted to the right before striking at he left instead. Dooku appeared to fall for the faint until he spun around and caught Aayla's blade anyway, shoving it towards the ground and trying to pull Aayla down with it. But Aayla wasn't about to let him try that and somersaulted over the top off his blade while they were still locked together instead and withdrew hurriedly.

Dooku stepped forward and through several whirling slashes with his red blade, seeking to overwhelm Aayla, and while the Twi'lek was hard pressed to defend herself against them all, she managed to pull it off, whirling and spinning and catch blades as they cleaved at her body. Dooku still drove her backwards several paces as they headed towards the body of poor Inc, and Aayla noticed this. Perhaps he was trying to make her trip on the clone's body, but Aayla wouldn't let him try.

Aayla backflipped over Inc's body and lashed out with the Force, grabbing Dooku's cloak from the floor and throwing it at the elderly man. Dooku stepped back in alarm as the enfolding fabric whooshed at him and he hurriedly sliced it in half (much to his annoyance as that had been a good cloak), but as he did he saw Aayla had dashed towards him and had launched herself into a spinning whirl of blue lightsaber blade.

Suddenly Dooku found himself on the defensive as Aayla took her turn at pushing him back, making him block a blow from above and another from the right, as she span about to send in another blow from the same direction. She then launched a stab at him, which he sidestepped, but instead of withdrawing her blade to slash again, Aayla followed it past Dooku and span about to cleave upwards at him.

Dooku grimaced as he defended himself and whirled his blade over his head, bringing it slashing down at Aayla from either direction. Aayla blocked the first blow and cartwheeled aside to avoid the next, then swept about and slashed at Dooku's ribs.

As Dooku caught the attack on his own blade and the two pushed against one another, both trying to gain ground and neither really managing it, Aayla saw a shape flying at her through the corner of her eye. Ventress was jumping at her again, lightsabers raised once more – she seemed to like jumping at people to give downward slashes.

But, equally, Aayla liked the idea of using your other opponent's blade to block and she dropped flat on her back. Dooku had not expected this and stumble forwards, Aayla holding his blade up with her own as Ventress' sabers crashed into Dooku's forming a lock with four lightsabers.

Aayla kicked upwards with both of her feet and slammed them into Ventress' stomach, knocking the woman flying backwards. As she fell to the floor, winded, Grievous suddenly dashed right over her and towards the floored Aayla. The Twi'lek quickly flicked her blade up to knock Dooku backwards and catapulted herself to her feet just as Grievous slashed at her with one blade. Aayla blocked the strike and the strike following that, ducking under and spinning beneath his guard. Grievous rotated to keep up with her and attacked her again with a downward sweep, which Aayla caught and then rolled away from, launching a strike at Grievous' face.

As Grievous crossed his blades into an X and blocked the strike, Dooku whooshed in from the side and spun upwards to attack her. Aayla broke the lock with Grievous and swept round to block Dooku, and Grievous immediately retaliated with a double stab at Aayla's stomach. Dooku's blade held Aayla's own so she couldn't block, so she immediately did the first thing which came to mind, she leapt upwards and lashed out with one leg, so Grievous blades passed either side of her other leg only and her kick smacked in the face.

Thanks to the alloy, the blow didn't the General, but it definitely wounded his pride and still sent him reeling. But Aayla was still in the air, pulling her legs up and flipping over Dooku to land behind him. He spun around to slash at her back, but Aayla was already gone as she somersaulted forwards, rebounding off two walls to come to rest not far way. An angry Grievous immediately surged at her, blades whirring in circles and cutting up the floor, but Aayla lashed her blade into the rotating ones and crashed against them both, bringing them to a standstill and then withdrawing.

She dived, past Grievous and sprang off her hands as Ventress slashed at her, somersaulting backwards and slashing down at Dooku, who parried her blade a couple of times before Aayla stepped back and whirled around to face Ventress again, slashing her blade down at her and forcing her to block. Grievous moved in once more, with a scissor blow that Ventress had to step back to avoid, but Aayla managed to escape by catching the bottom blade and pushing it downwards while rolling over it and underneath the top blade.

Dooku stepped in and slashed at the back of her knees, but Aayla swept around to block the strike, and when Ventress charged in again with a double sweeping at hip height, Aayla sprang up, sheathing her lightsaber and grabbing a pipe that ran along the ceiling, tucking her legs in and swinging over Ventress' strike before somersaulting into open space and igniting her blade again, just as Grievous leapt for her and struck at her shoulder, which she dropped past and avoided via a teddy roll.

"Will you stop dancing around you little parasite!" Ventress shouted at her as Aayla landed facing all three of them again. Aayla blinked at the reference, and then realised that Ventress had said more than she knew – she had been utilising the acrobatic dance moves that she had picked up from the sessions back in her room to avoid the slashes and hadn't realised it. It was making her much more agile and she was pulling off completely unexpected stunts to keep her three adversaries on their toes, and constantly surprising them with her moves.

Aayla smirked and said, "Why? I like dancing. It's fun, but it's a shame we can't use music unless we disturb others in the Temple. You should have seen some of Ahsoka's moves. She's got a good many of them."

Ventress' eyes widened at this little revelation – her mortal enemies spent their free time dancing? That was almost insulting to her and with a cry she lashed out with a Force push that sent Aayla flying backwards to crash against the wall, before diving furiously at the impertinent Twi'lek who should have died ages ago, but was stubbornly refusing to be hit.

* * *

Aayla wasn't the only one in the middle of wielding a lightsaber against them enemy forces. Barriss was still battling against the last of the four MagnaGuards that had been hiding in the reactor core. The Mirialan swung her lightsaber outwards and upwards, the blade impacting on the electrostaff that the MagnaGuard was carrying with it. The MagnaGuards lashed out with the other end, but Barriss sidestepping and span around the droid's body whirling it around with her.

The MagnaGuard unleashed a volley of blows at her, lashing out with one side of the staff and then the next in a flurry of seemingly random patterns to try and confuse her. Barriss managed to catch them all quickly and return a few blows of her own. As she ducked under one particular attack, she managed to slice a chunk out of the MagnaGuard's hip, but the droid wasn't unduly affected by this and stabbed at her with the staff. Barriss sidestepped and the electrostaff smacked into the ground.

Barriss noted that she was starting to get too close to the reactor core for her liking. The MagnaGuard's attacks were becoming increasingly unpredictable and while she didn't know what would happen if one of its blows struck the reactor core, she wasn't all that keen to find out. So she stepped back a little more as her mind raced to come up with an idea.

The MagnaGuard's next attack, a upwards sweep at her, gave her the opportunity that she needed. Catching the strike with her lightsaber, she deftly twirled her blade and sent the electrostaff flying out of the MagnaGuard's grip. She quickly caught it as it went sailing and slammed the end into the MagnaGuard's gut, sending it stumbling backwards and clutching its chest.

Barriss grimaced at it as it raised itself and came back for her anyway, despite the fact that it was now weaponless. Barriss quickly span about a lobbed her lightsaber at the droid. The blue weapon span through the air and sliced through the droid's chest, including its photoreceptor. The MagnaGuard quickly fell to the ground in two separate pieces and Barriss recalled her lightsaber with the Force, tossing the electrostaff off the side of the walkway she was standing on.

She glanced across as the two remaining clones that were standing beside the door along with Arfour. Then she glanced down at the body of what had once been Ridge and sighed. It was always a shame when they lost a clone, but she felt personally responsible for it this time, as this had been her first mission as a Knight. She knew that she couldn't have known there was another MagnaGuard hiding nearby and preparing for a surprise attack, but it was still just a shame.

Giving a silent blessing to the deceased clone, she turned and said, "Good work taking out that other MagnaGuard. I'm only sorry I wasn't able to get over to you quickly enough."

"It's alright, General," said Blade, sighing himself. "Ridge was bred for this purpose, although it would have been nice if he survived. But at least we can make sure that he didn't die for nothing, right?"

"Exactly," said Barriss. "Now come on. Let's set those charges."

Galle and Blade nodded and headed over towards where Barriss was standing beside the reactor core, while Arfour stood by the doors and peered around them with the use of his periscope. Galle placed the backpack on the ground and pulled out a bunch of thermal detonators with magnetic clamps and passed several to Blade and many more to Barriss, before pulling out several of his own as the three of them got to work.

As Blade moved around the reactor core on one side and Galle on the other, attaching their charges to points at various heights across the whole reactor core, Barriss slowly used the Force to levitate her own charges up to greater heights that the clones would be unable to reach by themselves. They worked quickly and silently, with Barriss passing the clones more charges when they ran out of the ones they could carry in their hands.

It wasn't long before the entire reactor core tower was covered in the little explosives. Once that was out of the way, Barriss scooped out a few more and started flinging them at the walls around the walkway, where the magnetic clamps glued themselves to the metallic walls until that two had various flashing red lights across its length.

Barriss pulled the detonator from the slot on the backpack and quickly primed the explosives to it, before passing it to Galle and saying, "I'm entrusting this to you, Lieutenant. Push that button and this whole station goes boom. Try not to do it before we're all out of here."

"I have no intention of it, General," said Galle, taking the detonator and carefully attaching it to his belt.

Barriss nodded and said, "Come on. We've completed what we set out to do and now we need to rendezvous with the others at the main hangar." She pulled out her holomap of the station and murmured. "It looks like we have to head right out of here and then another right after that and up the..."

Suddenly, Barriss' comlink bleeped and she glanced down at it in surprise. After a moment's pause, she pressed it and said, "This is Offee. What is it?"

"General," said a clone voice from the other side. "This is Commander Bly. Have you completed your mission in the reactor core?"

"Yes, Commander," said Barriss. "We lost Ridge to a MagnaGuard but we've just finished planting all of the charges and we were about to make our way to the hangar."

"I'd very much appreciate it if you rendezvoused in Corridor 9B instead, General," Bly replied. "There's been a bit of an incident up here and some back-up would be very much appreciated." As he spoke, Barriss was fairly certain that she heard a couple of blaster shots over the comlink, although she wasn't entirely sure if she'd heard it right.

"Okay," nodded Barriss. "We'll meet you guys there and then we'll head for the hangar. Did you find Gunray?"

"No," Bly replied, a little bitterly. "It seems that he wasn't in this one."

Barriss sighed and said, "Well, at least we'll get to take down a listening post anyway. We'll meet you in Corridor 9B."

"I'd quite like it if you hurried, General," said Bly.

Barriss frowned as Bly said 'I' instead of 'We.' Was Aayla not with him? But she quickly put it aside and said, "Understood, Commander. We'll be there shortly." Then she signed off and quickly pull up the map again, tracing her finger along it as she tried to find Corridor 9B. It didn't take her very long to find it – Barriss had a knack for maps, and she scanned the route briefly.

"Come on," she said, and motioned to the two clones and the astromech droid, before running out of the room and dashing off to the left, with her companions in hot pursuit.

* * *

Bly wasn't doing very well at the moment. While he had reluctantly abandoned his General at the fact that she had ordered him to, he was now just one clone in the middle of a listening post that still had numerous battle droids roaming about the place. And while Aayla had told him to head for the hangar, he had no idea where the hangar might be, as she still had the holomap of the place while he didn't.

Plus, he didn't have a link with the Digimon to guide him along like his General did.

However, he had been to many Separatist strongholds before, and he fancied that he might be able to guess which way he was supposed to go, so he had started winding his way through the corridors and trying to find the hangar. As he went, he couldn't help but feel terrible about himself for abandoning Aayla in the lurch like that, even if he had been ordered to do it.

It was a far cry from the old Bly. When Bly had come fresh out of the barracks on Kamino and entered into the world of servitude the Republic, he always put the mission before personal feelings and had no problem with doing it. Now, he felt awful at himself for doing it. Aayla was a good friend, and had saved his life more times than he could count, and yet when she really needed back-up most, he was both powerless to help her and forced to leave her altogether.

Bly couldn't help but feel a bit angry. Angry at himself for following through with an order – that was a new sensation. Usually he had no problem doing what Aayla or any other Jedi told him to do while they were on the battlefield. Now, it just felt so, so wrong. He knew that it was the Digimon that had caused him to change so much that he now felt this way. Yes, he and General Secura had been good friends before they came along, but they'd been even better friends since they started working with the Digimon.

Bly shoved the thoughts of what Aayla was probably doing from his mind – she would be fighting for her life right now, if she hadn't been killed already, and she had ordered him to carry out his mission so now he had to do it. It was difficult without a map, but he thought that he was making progress.

However, even if he had had a map, it wouldn't have done him any good when it came to predicting where the remaining battle droid patrols were – they didn't exactly show up on it. And that was why, when Bly ran around another corner, he found himself face to face with a column of the thin droids and all by himself.

As the droids spotted him and opened fire, Bly had ducked into an alcove and pressed himself against the wall as the lasers went flying past. He quickly leaned out and let off a barrage of lasers that holed three droids and sent them crashing to the ground, but then he was forced to pull back into the alcove as a bunch of lasers thundered past him.

Bly had gritted his teeth and quickly called General Offee and her forces for back-up – he had seen the little sign near the end of the corridor that told him which one he was in so he was able to tell her exactly where he was. Now, he just had to hold out until she got here.

"You wanna know something, clankers," he cried, while still settled in his alcove. "You're keeping me from fulfilling what might very well be General Secura's, my friend's, dying wish. And I am not about to let anyone get in the way of that!" He sprang out of hiding and crouched low to the ground, twirling his blaster pistols and sending a volley of lasers into the droid forces. The front row of droids fell to his attack, before the second row corrected their aim and pointed their blasters at his crouching form.

Bly quickly shot another in the head and commando rolled into an alcove closer to the droids on the opposite side of the corridor to avoid their lasers. He leaned around once more and smacked the head off a droid that got to close and shot down several more quickly before pulling back into his hiding place.

In short order, he leapt out of hiding against and dashed sideways across the corridor, unleashing a barrage of lasers as he went. One of the enemy fire skewed past his hip and almost hit him, but the clone growled and swung into the other alcove, getting low to the ground and leaning around it at about knee-height to shoot at some more before pulling back, standing up and attacking from another angle, before pulling back a second time.

Bly was utterly decimating the droids in his fury, but there were still many of them and more of them were shooting down the corridor now. Bly leapt out to do more damage but was forced to leap back in again when more lasers whooshed down the corridor and towards his chest. He managed to dodge one, but the other slammed into his shoulder. The clone gritted his teeth and bore the pain, leaning out of his alcove again and shooting the droid responsible before pulling back once more.

And that was about the time when he heard the whirring of a lightsaber in his ears. Leaning out from hiding, he saw the flashing of more blue lights as the droids were suddenly attacked from behind. He saw two other clones, Galle and Blade, sending countless bolts into the backs of the droids and catching them completely off guard as Barriss charged full on and slammed into the droids, her lightsaber whirring and spinning in circles as she cut through a significant portion of the, while those on either side of her fell to the clones.

Bly leapt out of hiding and sent more lasers at the droids when they stopped firing and turned around in confusion, trying to identify what the new danger was. It didn't take very long before all of the droids were dead, the last seven or so falling when Barriss lifted her hand and levitated them all into the air before smacking them into the wall and smashing them into scrap.

"Thanks, General Offee," said Bly, walking over to her. "That was a tough group for me to take on."

"My pleasure," said Barriss. "But where are Aayla and the other clones that were with you?"

"We... got separated," said Bly, which was true, but not the whole truth. Bly seemed to have gotten quite good at telling the truth but not the whole truth ever since he had learned there was a Sith Lord somewhere in the Senate. "But she ordered me to head for the hangar and meet up with everybody else there. And then I ran into that lot and was a bit hard-pressed so I called for back-up."

"Okay," said Barriss, nodding. "Well, I'm glad we were able to come and help. We've set the charges in the reactor core, so we can blow this place skyhigh once we depart."

Bly felt a slight pang of guilt at these words. If he was going to carry out his orders and get the others out without taking Aayla with them while completing his mission, that might mean having to blow her up as well, along with the combatants she was fighting! Bly secretly hoped that if it came to that, she would already be dead by the time the station blew up. The thought of being directly responsible for her death would be too much.

But, of course, he would have no way of knowing whether she had been killed by her opponents or the explosion. He would never be able to stop wondering what had happened and how Aayla had really gone out? A blaze of glory, or a blazing inferno.

"Alright," nodded Bly, hiding the guilt in his voice as best he could. "Lead the way, General."

* * *

The hangar was a wreathing mass of battle droids, but most of them were lying on the ground, either smashed, sliced apart or filled with so many holes that half of their bodies had been burnt away. The last few droids in the room were rapidly being dealt with by the four valiant and strong defenders intent on securing the room.

One battle droid found itself being skewered on the end of Turuiemon's switchblade and tossed into the air. Another two quickly succumbed to a burst of green lasers from Gargomon's cannons, which pummelled them so hard that they were flung back into the wall they were standing in front of. Another was dispatched when Chewbacca threw the large body of a Super Battle Droid at it, crushing it beneath their heavier droids form.

The final droid was picked off when it tried to shoot at Renamon. The yellow fox flipped over the first couple of shots, then dropped onto all fours and dashed beneath the next few and grabbed the droid in one hand, bodily flinging it through the shield that prevented the weather from getting in, but didn't stop the droid, which fell to the surface of Rhen Var some distance below.

"I think I won't say anything about victories," said Gargomon. "Just in case I jinx it and more battle droids start walking through those doors."

"Probably a good idea," nodded Turuiemon. "I've scrapped many more droids than I was planning to at the start of the day. More would just be irritating."

"Aoacworo ahrcrcahaoraaowo rawhroohraro," Chewbacca pointed out.

"This is true," nodded Turuiemon. "But more would be _even more_ irritating."

"Aoacahc ahc aorchuwo," echoed Chewbacca.

"Well, looks like the hangar is secure," said Renamon. Then she shivered slightly as a horrible feeling passed up her spine. "So why does that not reassure me?"

"It's that feeling, isn't it?" asked Turuiemon, glancing at the yellow fox. "That feeling that we've been getting for a while now. It's getting stronger and stronger."

"Yeah," nodded Gargomon. "I didn't notice when we were fighting, but it has been building up. And I can feel it growing more and more. It's like a tingling that keeps running up and down by backbone and broiling around in my brain."

"It's unsettling," said Renamon. "I think there's more to this whole thing than we actually know. I'll let Aayla know." The fox delved into her thoughts and attempted to contact Aayla. She felt her mind touch Aayla's own through their psychic link, but to her surprise she could do no more than this. It was like she was encountering a completely solid mental barrier that was keeping her from getting through to Aayla's mind. Aayla didn't seem to even realise what she was attempting to do.

Renamon's eyes opened as she began to get more and more unsettled. "That's odd," she said. "I can't get through."

"Neither can I," Turuiemon observed as she tried to do it herself. "She's blocking us from getting in. She's not unconscious – the signs of life are still there, but she won't let us in for some reason."

"Maybe she's fighting something and doesn't want to get distracted," shrugged Gargomon.

"Yes," Renamon nodded, eyes locking with her now-larger mate. "But that's what worries me. Aayla doesn't lock us out very often, not even in combat situations."

"Rooohu aoacahwhor cooscwoaoacahwhrr huak?" asked Chewbacca, hefting his bowcaster.

"No, Chewie," Turuiemon shook her head. "We don't think something's up. We _know _that something's up."

Just then, there was the sound of footsteps from the corridor, running towards them. The four of them hurriedly got ready for combat, just in case, but they relaxed slightly when they saw Barriss emerging from the corridor. Behind her was Blade, Galle and then something which made the lot of them, particularly the Digimon, tense up once again. Commander Bly. Without Aayla.

Now they were fairly sure that they had been right all along and there was something. And that feeling they were getting was growing still further, changing from faint to mild and it was making their hair stand on end.

"Whoa," Blade said, looking around the room. "You guys really did a number on this place. I'm impressed."

"Try and memorise it," said Galle. "This isn't going to be here for much longer once we blow it up."

"Bly," said Renamon. "Where's Aayla?"

"She'll probably be along soon," said Bly. "We got separated earlier." He activated his comlink and said, "Falcon, this is Commander Bly. We've completed our objectives and are awaiting an evac in the main hangar bay. Come and pick us up, will you?"

"Copy that, sir," said the voice of a clone from the other side.

"Bly," Renamon said, approaching the clone. "Where is Aayla?"

Bly looked surprised and said, "I just said that she..."

"I know what you said," Renamon interrupted. "What I want to know is how did you get separated? Where did you go? Where did Aayla go?"

Bly hesitated for a moment and then said, "Why do you want to know? I'm sure she's fine. You know General Secura, she's been in some tough situations before."

"I never said she was in a tough situation," Renamon raised a brow. "I just asked you what happened. Why is that so hard to answer?"

"Uh..." Bly faltered, glancing around him. Everyone was staring at him now, and the clone commander was hard pressed to come up with an answer. He had been hoping to load the Digimon onto the gunship before they knew what had happened to Aayla and have it take off without her, as Aayla had ordered him to do, because he had no idea what the Digimon would do if they knew what was happening, but they seemed to be onto him somehow.

"Something's wrong, Bly," said Turuiemon. "We can feel it. There's an unpleasant sensation in our bones that is steadily growing, which we have learned that you ignore at your peril, and Aayla is not answering through the mind-link."

Barriss' eyes widened as she quickly pushed on her comlink and said, "Aayla? Aayla, do you read me?"

The static that came out of her comlink in response did not help to ease everybody's nerves.

"General Secura ordered me to get everyone on the gunship," Bly said. "I'm sure she'll be along at some p-"

"Bly!" Gargomon interrupted, an angry look appearing on his face. "I think you know that we can tell that you're hiding something. And trust me when we say that we are not getting on that gunship without Aayla. Now – Where. Is. She?"

"You have to get on the gunship when it arrives," Bly protested. "General Secura gave me explicit orders."

"Why?" Renamon pushed. "Why did she give you...?"

"Because she doesn't think she'll make it out of here alive, okay!" Bly suddenly shouted at them. "The main control room was a trap. Gunray wasn't here and he never was! And now we need to get out here! I don't know how long General Secura can hold the three of them off."

"The three of who off?" Renamon asked, fear gripping her heart at the possibilities, and she could tell that same fear was gripping the heart's of the others too. "Who is she fighting against?"

Bly sighed and, seeing as he had little other option, he finally confessed, "She's in the middle of a battle against Asajj Ventress, General Grievous and Count Dooku all at once."

Everyone else's eyes widened in shock and dread at these words. The three Digimon felt as if their stomachs had dropped out of the listening post and fell to the surface of the planet far below. Now they remembered where they had sensed that feeling before – it had been above the base of the Dark Acolytes on Box Pity. And the feeling was still growing stronger.

* * *

Aayla was still in the middle of her showdown and had not eased up the pressure on her three adversaries for even a moment, knowing that if she did, she was unlikely to last very long. She wondered how much long she could get away with what she was doing right now anyway – but the acrobatic dance moves she'd been practicing were coming in really handy right now.

Aayla blocked a couple of lightsaber strikes at her pelvic area from Ventress, the Rattataki woman snarling as she tried harder than ever to hit Aayla. Spinning around, Ventress slashed at Aayla with both blades in a wild swing at chest height. Aayla responded by backflipping over the strike and landing on her hands, causing Ventress to miss but quickly swing back the other way while she thought Aayla was vulnerable. The Twi'lek proved her by dropping and rolling so the blow passed over them and swinging around on her hands, so her feet crashed into Ventress' legs.

As Ventress yelped and started to topple, Aayla lashed out with the Force with a burst that flung Ventress across the room and sent her shooting right at Dooku. The old man sidestepped as his apprentice flew past, but Aayla switched tactics and stopped Ventress' flightpath, pulling her back the other way to send her crashing into Dooku's back.

The thud of taloned feet landing behind her alerted Aayla to her new attacker and she ducked as two lightsabers scissored over her head. Aayla sprang up and catapulted herself over Grievous, placing on hand on his shoulder for support as she did so and swinging around to hold her lightsaber ready. Grievous attempted to kick behind him, but Aayla danced out of reach, almost literally as she span gracefully away, so Grievous turned and charged her with another full on buzzsaw motion.

Aayla blocked his two initial strikes and jumped over the double swing he whirled about to send at her feet. Grievous whirled his blades and span about himself, maybe attempting to copy Aayla's actions, but Aayla followed him by spinning the other way, while going close to the ground and intercepting his green lightsaber. While hers was caught, he brought his other one swinging upwards to slice her side, but Aayla surprised him again by leaping upwards and planting her feet on his chest, breaking the lightsaber lock and rebounding off _him_ to roll away. That was just undignified for the droid General.

Grievous growled loudly and raised both blades, shooting towards Aayla with another full-blown run. Aayla danced and pirouetted backwards, dodging his strikes or turning them aside, her lekku flying out behind her as she did so and somehow managing to avoid getting lopped off themselves. As Aayla moved, she became aware of Ventress charging in and aiming for the back of her head, possibly to carry out her previous threat of cutting her head tails off. Aayla spun around to block both her blades with her own, throwing her other hand out across her own body and towards Grievous, catching him in a Force push that catapulted him into the far wall.

Ventress snarled and whirled about herself, bringing her two lightsabers down and around to try slash at her. Aayla deduced that she really was trying to copy Aayla's technique, but she didn't have the same grace as her swings were still as wild and angry as ever. Aayla caught her blow and span around Ventress, then jumped over the Rattataki as she swung around to face her and kicked her in the small of the back.

As Ventress stumbled, Aayla quickly backflipped as Dooku jumped in again and slashed down at her. As Aayla dodged his attack, he whirled around to strike again, forcing Aayla to catch his blade and block half a dozen quick fire strikes, turning her blade over her head and spinning and dodging quickly as Dooku really racked up the pressure. Aayla managed to get in a few strikes herself, but Dooku kept pushing her backwards.

The Twi'lek hurriedly attempted a sudden and daring manoeuvre that Dooku probably wouldn't expect. And it seemed to work – she leapt straight up and rebounded off the ceiling to dive straight down at Dooku with a furious full-powered lightsaber swing. Dooku blocked easily enough, but Aayla did what Yoda had done in their practice bout yesterday and put all her weight on hers and Dooku's blades, balancing like that for a split second before spring off it to flip over Dooku. Dooku turned to slash at her, but Aayla was already gone, flipping across the room with several backwards somersaults.

Ventress suddenly dashed over to head Aayla off and lashed at her furiously. Aayla quickly defended herself and let off a slash at Ventress' midsection, forcing her to step backwards. Aayla attacked with two more strikes, before sweeping around to pre-empt the attack that Dooku was about to put on her, then whirl around to block Ventress again. Dooku lunged in and crashed his blade at her back, but Aayla caught the blow over her shoulder and spun around while still in the lock, whirling Dooku around like he was a dance partner to put him between her and Ventress, before releasing her lock and dashing out of the way again.

Only she ran straight into Grievous as he charged towards her. Aayla eyes narrowed as she saw Grievous approach her and increased her speed, while Grievous readied his blades for a scissor swing.

Grievous slashed at the oncoming Twi'lek, but, moments before the lightsabers hit her, Aayla dropped right onto her back and slid across the floor on it, whooshing right through Grievous' legs and flipping back onto her feet on the other side. Grievous growled in confusion and annoyance, before whirling around to see Aayla leap at him with lightsaber raised. Grievous acted on instinct, lifting his foot and grabbing her around the waist between his toes.

Aayla balked slightly as she felt his talons wrap around her midsection. This was all too familiar – that had been how Grievous had managed to defeat her on Hypori. Before Grievous could think to flip backwards and fling her over his head like last time to go crashing hard into something, Aayla brought her lightsaber down at his leg. Grievous saw it coming and had enough sense to toss kick outwards and send Aayla rolling across the room, but she still managed to sever half of his two front talons.

Aayla rolled back onto her feet as quickly as she could and watched as Grievous stared at his toes for a moment. Dooku and Ventress had recuperated and were approaching from behind the cyborg, who looked up at her and glared at her with his yellow eyes.

"I admit, you are proving a more worthy adversary than I had anticipated, Secura," Grievous growled at her.

"Are you complimenting me, Grievous?" Aayla asked, though she was breathing quite hard due to all the effort she'd been putting into what she'd been doing – the amount of flipping and jumping she'd been doing to keep herself from being hit had meant she was using up far more energy in this lightsaber duel than any other she could remember. "Because I never thought the battlefield was the best place to do it. However, I thank you for it anyway."

Grievous growled and said, "I wouldn't if I were you," as his hands reached for his waist and gripped a second pair of lightsabers that had been hanging there all along. "Because the worthy opponents get the special treatment." His arms split down the middle until he had four smaller ones, and the second pair of lightsabers activated and whirled around.

"Ah," said Aayla. "I was hoping you wouldn't do that."

Grievous chuckled and said, "Don't worry. You won't have long to get used to it."

And then the buzzsawing began again, but with four blades at once, Grievous was almost literally a machine of death. Aayla stepped backwards as the cyborg approached her menacingly, his four blades whirring round and round and round, rotating roughly four times a second. Aayla was momentarily stumped as to how to counter-act this, but she quickly focused her mind and jabbed, forward, thrusting her lightsaber into the exact point where all four blades swung past and stopping the attack in its tracks.

Aayla then danced backwards as Grievous attacked with four swinging lightsabers at once. Bringing the top two down and forcing Aayla to block, he thrust forward with the bottom pair and Aayla had to jump out of reach to avoid getting skewered. Grievous lashed out with his right top blade and Aayla parried it, jumped over a swing from his left bottom blade and caught a double swing from the other two. Grievous pushed her back across the room as she wildly fended off his attacks, twisting and whirling in a frenzy of motion.

She blocked an upwards cleave and downward slice at almost the same time and ducked under a scissor blow from Grievous' two top arms, blocking of his bottom arms in the process and backward rolling under his other one. As she rolled back onto her feet, Grievous came for her again and lashed downwards with three blades. Aayla managed to catch all three, but the fourth slid beneath her guard.

Only a quick Force movement saved Aayla's life, as she released her lightsaber with one hand and caught the limb, freezing it in place inches from her stomach. Unfortunately, she was unable to hold up all three of Grievous' other arms with just one hand and they crashed down towards her, forcing her to leap backwards and pause to try and catch her breath.

But Grievous didn't want her to catch her breath and charged forwards again with another four bladed whirling charge. Aayla turned around and leapt for the wall, using her momentum to run across it a short distance towards where the other two were waiting. Ventress slashed at her, but Aayla jumped over her and whirled around, knocking Ventress back with a huge Force push, right at the buzzsawing Grievous.

Grievous stopped his attack just in time for Ventress to crash into his chest and knock them both backwards. Ventress growled and leapt up again quickly as Grievous rolled away slightly. The Rattataki woman glared angrily at the Twi'lek, but right now Aayla had bigger problems. Like the fact that Dooku had just sent a huge blast of Force Lightning directly at her.

Preoccupied by Ventress, Aayla did not react to the new attack in time and it struck her with full-force. She felt a scream tearing itself out of her mouth as she was flung across the room by the crackling bolts of electricity, her lightsaber flying out of her hand, and crashed into the wall, her muscles spasming and her whole body screaming in pain. Her sensitive lekku felt like they were about to explode – Aayla had not felt pain like that since... ever.

Gasping for breath and slumping against the wall, Aayla gritted her teeth as the blast finally let up and she struggled to stand up. Dooku's Sith powers were incredibly strong, and that had been the first thing to properly hit her since the attack began. The tails on her head still felt like they were on fire and it felt like all her muscles were aching instantly.

Aayla's eyes opened and she grunted with pain, to see Dooku striding towards her. Ventress was also running towards her while she was down. This wasn't working. She had managed to avoid getting hit by any of the lightsabers so far, which was an impressive feat in and of itself, but Aayla knew that she wouldn't be able to keep this manic pace up for much longer. She was fast losing energy, and as soon as she ran out, she would be easy prey. And that Force Lightning blast had sapped a lot of her strength as well.

But she was alive. She had done far better than she had thought she would, and as long as she was still alive, there was still hope that she could remain that way. Escape was probably impossible, but she was still managing to hold her own against three opponents.

Maybe she could pull through this after all.

But standard lightsaber techniques and battle prowess alone were not going to be enough to win this fight, not even with all her acrobatic skill, regardless of how much that was helping her right now. If she wanted to come out of this fight alive, she was going to have to be even more unorthodox. She needed to try tactics that other Jedi had not used before.

And a few ideas were already cropping into her brain.

But right now there was the more immediate problem of Ventress leaping towards her to initiate the final blow while she was unarmed and slumped against the wall. Aayla saw the Rattataki fall towards her, lightsabers raised to plunge through her as she thought Aayla lay defenceless.

But a Jedi was never truly defenceless.

Aayla's eyes hardened. It was time to get very serious indeed.

At the last second, Aayla's strength seemed to return to her as she twisted side-on. Ventress' lightsabers passed on either side of her stomach and impaled the wall she was leaning on instead. Before Ventress could react, Aayla grabbed her right arm in both hands and ducked underneath it and out from the wall, twisting it around and over her head to drag Ventress away from the wall. Ventress cried out in surprise as she lost a grip on one lightsaber and found herself dragged away until she was facing Aayla's back. The Twi'lek's fist lashed over her shoulder and the back of her hand slammed into Ventress' nose.

Ventress howled and fell to the ground, clutching her face and rolling on the floor, groaning. Aayla, recovering from the numbing effect of the Force Lightning, dashed into the middle of the room and whirled around to face her next adversary, Count Dooku. The Sith Lord released another Force Lightning Blast with both hands, but Aayla managed to summon her lightsaber with the Force and ignite it just in time to catch the blast and block it.

Dooku kept up a relentless stream of electricity, forcing Aayla backwards as she gripped her lightsaber in both hands and held the attack at bay. Electricity flew all around her as Dooku poured more power into the attack, until she felt her feet sliding backwards across the floor. She gritted her teeth, reminded of the scene on Felucia where she had fended off an Acklay using a similar variant of this. But this time there was nobody there to lob a thermal detonator at her attacker.

And to make matters worse, Grievous was back in the game, charging towards her with the flour bladed windmill of death approach. Aayla's mind raced and she hurriedly did something incredibly reckless and stupid, but it worked – she let go off her lightsaber and dived to one side. The blade flew backwards under the Force Lightning blast and fell to the floor as a hilt, while Aayla, free of the blast, dashed for the wall and rebounded off it again, backflipping over Grievous and cartwheeling away.

Breathing heavily now, Aayla faced Grievous without a weapon in her hand as the cyborg general turned around and advanced again, four lightsabers poised around him and all pointing towards her:- two blue and two green. Aayla glared back at him and another wild and probably very stupid idea occurred to her and she dashed right towards him.

Grievous blinked as the Twi'lek aimed herself at him, no weapons against his four. Thinking that she was intending to slide through his legs again, Grievous brought all four blades down close to his feet. But that had been Aayla's plan and she was also summoning her lightsaber from the floor with the Force. As it sprang into her hand, she changed trajectory, leaping into a whirling spin straight past Grievous' left side. Her blade sliced through his top left arm, the green lightsaber in it being catapulted into the air.

Aayla turned around and grabbed it with the Force, summoning it into her other hand. Her three adversaries regrouped as she faced them with two lightsabers now. "Well, I might have levelled the playing field a bit," she said, twirling both of them skilfully in her hand. Aayla was just as skilled at using Jar'kai – two lightsabers at once – as she was with using just one. Maybe even more so.

She usually preferred using just one, but this time, she could make an exception.

She grinned at Ventress, Dooku and Grievous and said, "Don't get too comfortable. This battle is far from over."

And she decided to make the first strike and leapt into a whirling spin with both blades right at General Grievous.

* * *

That's right. A lightsaber duel from almost the start of the chapter and it's still not over. The result of the battle will be decided by the end of the next chapter, so for those of you who were hoping to see what becomes of Aayla, you still have to wait until tomorrow to find out. But you have to admit, she's not doing so badly for herself at the moment. And she's using several skills and techniques that she learned from hanging around with the Digimon too.

But now the Digimon know what's happening as well.

Note, I have deliberately left the title of the next chapter blank so it gives you no clues as to what happens. I will include it with the actual chapter though.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

Aayla's lightsaber brawl continues, only this time she starts to use slightly more unorthodox methods against her three opponents. But will they work? Plus, now that the Digimon know what's happening, we will see how they respond to it.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 127 : ...**


	127. I am Aayla Secura

And here's the real title for this chapter below. I hope you enjoy this chapter, as it is one of the ones I have been planning ever since the idea of this story came into being, and one of the ones I have been looking forward to the most. It shouldn't disappoint if I've done it right, and if it does... well, this time I'm going to say I don't mind. I like this chapter. And I hope you do too.

Also, if you want, you can see my profile for details on a Challenge which I've set for all writers. I want to see if anyone can write another story which I have the idea for but no time to write because I'm doing this one instead.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 127:- I am Aayla Secura**

* * *

After a couple of moments of silence, Gargomon suddenly shouted, "What are we all doing standing around here and staring at each other! We have to hurry! We need to go and help Aayla quickly!"

"Yes," nodded Turuiemon. "Come on! We need to find the quickest way the main control room! Renamon – do you still have that map?"

"Yes," Renamon said, fishing the small holoprojector from where she had stored it in one of her long purple gloves during the fighting and activated it, bringing up the map of the station. "Which one's the main control room?"

"You can't be serious!" Bly cried, as he moved towards Renamon. "General Secura ordered us all to leave the listening post and complete our mission as quickly as we could. She gave me orders to ensure that all of you got off the station and that none of you tried something like going to save her when it's probably hopeless."

"It is never hopeless, Bly!" Turuiemon glared at him. "We will not give Aayla up for dead until we see her corpse before our very eyes, and stop feeling her life signs through our mental link. And right now, neither of those has happened. Aayla's still alive, but she's probably fighting for her life and maybe even severely wounded."

"And we're going to go and help her," Gargomon added, with an equally angry scowl.

Bly was slightly taken aback by the angry looks the others were giving him at the moment – didn't they understand that he was just trying to ensure that Aayla's last wish did not go unfulfilled. He tried to express that angle a bit more clearly and said, "General Secura wanted you to get out of here, not go charging into a suicide mission against three people like them. And as her Commander, it is my duty to ensure that her wishes are carried out. I can't let you leave."

"You can't let us!" Renamon shouted, eyes blazing as she looked up from the holomap. "You might be a Commander, Bly. But you have no authority over us. We are not your troops – we are your allies. And you should remember that."

"Look, I didn't want to leave General Secura behind either," Bly shouted as Renamon hurried over to Barriss. "But she was cut off from me and facing three people I wouldn't have a hope in hell's chance of standing up to. Plus, she gave me orders..."

"Screw her orders!" Gargomon yelled. "We've been through too much with Aayla to lose her just because she told you to make us leave."

"But..." Bly protested.

"Barriss!" Renamon protested. "Which one of these rooms on the holomap is the main control room?"

Barriss hesitated for a second, before pointing up at one room in particular and saying, "This one. It's quite a few stories above us, so if you want to get there, you'll have to hurry."

"General Offee, you can't let them go, can you?" Bly asked, a little desperately, as he saw the chances of fulfilling his orders slipping away. "It's an impossible task."

"Perhaps," said Barriss. "But nevertheless, they are right. We have no control over what they do ultimately – they only help us and follow out orders if they want to, and most of the time they do. But, in the end, they work for themselves and nobody else. If they want to go help Aayla, I won't stop them. And, in fact, I agree with them. We must do what we can."

"That's right!" nodded Renamon. "Come on guys! This is the quickest way!" She began to dash towards one of the exits with Gargomon, Turuiemon, Chewbacca and Barriss hard on her heels. But she was stopped by a loud cry from the clone behind them.

"Wait!" Bly shouted. "What about the secret? If you go in there and face them now, then there is a good chance that you'll be revealed to the rest of the Galaxy, as well as the Separatists, and you still might not save General Secura. She wouldn't want you to take that risk!"

"Yes, but we do," Turuiemon replied. "And the longer we stay here the more chance there is that she will die! We will fight tooth, claw and with any other assorted weapons we have for our friends, Bly."

"She gave us orders!" Bly cried. "We have to..."

"That's enough!" Renamon whirled around, glaring at the clone with undisguised rage. Bly took several steps back as he looked into Renamon's eyes, which were like ice-cold shards of ice piercing his armour and looking into his soul. Wordlessly, Renamon passed the holomap to Chewbacca and said, "Chewie. Lead the others to the main control room. I'll catch up with you guys, right after I have a little word with our clone commander friend here."

Chewbacca accepted the holomap and nodded, murmuring, "Rooohu oaoohuwhao oowh scwo," before turning and rushing into the corridor. Gargomon and Turuiemon nodded to Renamon, knowing that, of all of them, Renamon was the fastest and would be able to catch up easily, so she could afford to waste a bit of time. Then, they followed Chewbacca away.

Barriss hesitated by the door for a moment as Renamon walked towards Bly. The Mirialan placed a hand on Renamon's shoulder to stop her and gave her a look which clearly said, _Don't do anything you'll regret later._

Renamon sent her a look back which said something like, _I won't hurt him. Much._

Barriss didn't look completely satisfied with the look, but she turned and followed the others anyway, leaving Renamon behind with only Bly and the other two remaining clones – Galle and Blade, both of whom were looking a little unsure of themselves and wondering what they were supposed to do."

"Renamon..." Bly said, plaintively. "I..."

"Shut up," Renamon said, harshly, glaring at the clone commander. "Take off your helmet."

"Huh?" Bly asked, incoherently. "Why?"

"Because I want to look you in the eye properly when I talk to you now," said Renamon, simply. "And I want to see your expression."

Bly hesitated for a second, but then he lifted his hands and pulled the helmet off his head, revealing the very familiar clone facial features – brown eyes, short black hair, rather large nose. There was also the scar over one eyebrow put there by a commando droid before they even met the Digimon. Bly was not quite clean-shaven, nor could he really be considered bearded. He looked into Renamon's eyes with his own, and now that there was not a helmet between those eyes and his, he suddenly felt a lot more vulnerable.

"What is it?" he asked.

"What do you think?" Renamon asked. "I think that you still need to learn a few valuable lessons, Bly. And before I go and help the others with Aayla, I'm hopefully going to be able to teach them to you."

"What do you mean?" asked Bly.

"First off, let me ask you a question," Renamon said. "What is Aayla Secura to you?"

"Pardon?" Bly asked, blinking in surprise. "Er... what do you mean by..."

"I mean," Renamon snapped impatiently. "What do you think of Aayla? When you think of her, what do you view her as? Do you think of her as your General? Do you think of her as just a Jedi? Do you think of her as just a Twi'lek that you happen to have to take orders from?"

"What? No!" Bly cried indignantly. "Of course I don't think that."

"Then what do you think of her?" Renamon asked. "What is your honest-to-goodness opinion of her? How do you view the relationship between you and her? Take me, for instance. I have a deep, deep friendship with Aayla that runs so far down that she's practically a member of my family, like a sister or a cousin. She's very dear to me – as dear as any one of my real family members, and as dear as the other members of the A-Team and those that I call my family but aren't really."

Bly's eyes widened slightly on hearing this. He'd heard them talking about being as close as a family before, but he'd never heard Renamon talk about it with such depth before, or any of them in fact.

"If she dies," Renamon said lowly, "I will not only mourn her, as I should, but I will also try to ensure that she did not die in vain, which is what I know you are trying to do now. But, more importantly, I will also do anything ... _anything_ ... in my power to make sure that it doesn't come to that. Not now, and not ever. And the others feel the same, which is why we are disobeyed Aayla's 'direct orders' and going back to help her."

"I... see..." Bly said, slowly, and a little sadly.

"And now, I shall ask you again," Renamon said. "What... do you... think... of Aayla."

Bly finally said it. "I think of her as more than a General, but a true friend to me and all the rest of my brothers. She helps us when we are in danger, protects us with her own body if she has to, comforts us when we are down, laughs with us and does her best to make us laugh in turn. She never talks down to us or believes she's better than us, like most other people in the Republic. She's not just some Jedi – she's one of the best friends that anyone could hope for. And I'm sure that many of my men will agree."

Bly looked over to Galle and Blade for support. Both of them nodded in agreement.

"She is... a trusted and irreplaceable friend," Bly finished.

"And yet you still feel like you can abandon her just because she told you to?" Renamon asked, still in an icy cold voice, but in a noticeably less angry tone.

"I didn't want to!" Bly protested. "I wanted to bust down that door and do my best to help her. But it's not that simple. I'm a clone. I was bred and raised to serve the Republic and to obey any orders given to me by my superior officers. General Secura... Aayla... is my superior officer, so I must do what she tells me to."

Renamon folded her arms. "Yes, you are a clone trooper. Yes, you were bred to take orders and the fact that you put your life in such danger to serve the Republic is admirable. But I thought that you were more than just a clone, Bly. You are a human being, are you not?"

"Yes," Bly nodded emphatically. "And that's another reason I chose to obey Aayla's orders. It isn't just because she told me to, but because I wanted to ensure that her dying wish was fulfilled. I respect her too much to disobey..."

"Sounds to me like you are just falling back to the 'must obey orders' mindset just because that's easier for you. Listen to me," Renamon said, stepping closer to him. "I promised Blade over here, that I would do my best to help you clone troopers adjust to being more than just soldiers and become more like ordinary people. I have done my best to uphold that promise, but it seems that you still need one final lesson, Bly. It is not who we were born as or raised that defines who we are, it is the choices that we make during our lifetime."

Bly looked at her for a moment and then looked like he was about to say something, but Renamon interrupted:-

"You claim that Aayla is your friend, but you run out on her just because you think that you have no choice since she told you to. That is not what friends do, Bly. Friends look out of one another and help each other, no matter what the circumstances may be. Aayla is my friend, so I'm going to go and help her, whether she wants me to or not. And if you can't do the same, then you are no true friend of Aayla's. You also claim you were doing it to fulfil her dying wish, and while that in itself is very good, you should only do for certain when you _know_ that Aayla is dead."

Bly was stung by Renamon's words, but Renamon wasn't finished. She leaned closer and stabbed one claw at Bly's chest armour, poking him sharply. "And one more thing. You want to be human. It is human nature to help those that they care about. Abandoning that principle, the one thing that makes you a human being above all else, just to follow an order, regardless of the conditions surrounding it..." her eyes narrowed. "That's what battle droids do, not human beings."

That _really_ affected the clone commander, and he stumbled back as if he'd been slapped.

"However," Renamon added afterwards, her face softening a good deal. "If you really are human, then you will have the freedom to choose what to do. You don't _have _to obey orders from anyone. Whether you take that order or not, is your decision, and your decision alone." Renamon gave him one last meaningful look, then she turned around and dashed out of the door after the others, running on all fours to gain speed as she whipped out of sight within a couple of seconds.

Bly stared after her, his mind on fire. That's what battle droids do? That was a low blow, but Bly couldn't help but realise that there was a grain of truth behind it. In fact, there was a sack of grain. Battle droids followed orders without question no matter what the situation, and that was exactly what Bly was doing now, at least to a degree.

All those times where he had claimed that he wasn't just some slave of the Republic, or just laser cannon fodder, like most believed the clones were – had he been wrong? Was he really just a flesh droid after all? Yes, he had emotions but was he really only a man that had to take orders when they were given, even if his friend's life was put in danger because of it?

The thought weighed heavily on him. What should he do now?

He looked up at the roaring noised behind and saw the gunship that he had ordered before slide through the shield of the hangar and land nearby, crushing a bunch of droids beneath its enormous hull and the blast doors sliding open. Bly stared at it for a moment, his feet automatically trying to make him move towards it to carry out Aayla's orders as best he still could.

But he forced them to stay on the ground, his eyes narrowing. No! He had always maintained that her was a human being, but now was the time to prove it. Now was the time where he would prove that he was not some mindless drone. He had a heart, he had emotions. And Renamon was right. Following orders blindly made him just the same as the battle droids. And he didn't even have to.

As a human being – he had a choice.

He just had to make the right one.

"What do we do now, sir?" asked Galle.

Bly looked over at them. He could see Blade staring off in the direction that Renamon had gone and looking like he wanted to follow. Bly's expression hardened and he decisively put his helmet back on his head.

"We are being human," he said. "Come on. Follow me. We need to help our friend."

Bly ran towards the corridor that the others had taken. Blade and Galle both looked at one another for a moment, before Blade cheered and dashed after Bly. Galle turned around and gave a quick message to the gunship pilot to wait there, and then ran off after the others.

* * *

Give Aayla Secura one lightsaber, and she was a difficult opponent for anyone to beat.

Give her two lightsabers and she was even more difficult to get the better of.

As Asajj Ventress found herself blasted into the wall for what was probably the sixth time during the confrontation between her and her associates on one side, and Aayla one the other, she growled in pain, but also in immense anger and frustration. The Twi'lek was just refusing to die, defying all their best efforts to kill her as she span and leapt, dodged and kicked, whipping her lightsaber blades in circles with almost as much skill as Grievous. She was everywhere at once and everyone was struggling to land a hit.

Ventress looked up to see Aayla cross her blades in an X to block Dooku's slash and push the old man backwards, before whirling around and turning aside a strike from Grievous, stepping backwards as the cyborg thundered down several shots at her with his remaining arms and knocking his blades aside quickly. Aayla suddenly dropped and rolled backwards, springing into the air, off the wall and sailing at Grievous, blades ready. Grievous brought up all three blades to blocked, but Aayla sheathed a blade and thrust an arm underneath Grievous' guard to touch his chest.

Grievous was immediately blown backwards like he'd been fired from a cannon at the terrific Force Push and sent hurtling right at Ventress. The Rattataki quickly rolled out of the way as the cyborg impacted with the wall so hard that several of the holoscreens attached to it were smashed and many others fell around him. Then Ventress turned to watch as Aayla moved in to fight against Dooku again.

Dooku whipped his blade up as Aayla spun about to face him, but Aayla caught it with her blue blade and twirled her green one at his head, forcing Dooku to step back and take the hit on his blade quickly. Aayla swung up with both blades at once, pressing Dooku backwards and whirled around to strike with one at head height, with the other following a second later at hip height instead. Her attacks were much more co-ordinated than Ventress' (although she would never admit that). And Dooku was forced to duck and then do a backflip himself in order to avoid hip attack. Aayla pressed the attack and leapt after him, scissoring her blades forward and crashing them on either side of Dooku's.

The two broke off a moment later and Dooku immediately shot a burst of Force Lightning at Aayla, hoping to catch her off guard. Aayla's green lightsaber whooshed up and blocked, absorbing the attack with relative ease, but once again, Dooku kept up the continuous stream so that Aayla wouldn't be able to gain any ground.

But now that Aayla had a second lightsaber, she was able to do just that. She suddenly swung about and thrust her blue blade into the lightning stream at a point closer to Dooku, so it started taking the attack instead of the green one, then Aayla leapt in the opposite direction in another half-turn and lashed her green blade into the stream again, once more at an earlier point. She continued doing this, replacing one lightsaber with another and getting closer to Dooku. Dooku's eyes widened in alarm at this and he broke off the attack. The moment he did, Aayla suddenly leapt forward, knocking Dooku's blade aside with both her own and planting a heavy kick in his chest, sending him rolling.

Ventress stared in undisguised rage, her eyes narrowing into slits. How come she had never thought to do something like that when she was fighting Dooku? She had two lightsabers as well! Ventress' ego refused to believe that Aayla was just simply better than she was with strategy and brain alike, but right now, she was barely thinking about anything. Rage boiled within her like a living thing and with a cry of rage, she sprang across the room at Aayla.

Aayla heard her coming and whirled around, ducking at the same time so Ventress' blades whooshed over her lekku and then rolled aside, springing up close by and launching herself into spinning doubled bladed whirl. Ventress growled as she stepped back and blocked Aayla's blue blade with both her red ones, then saw the green one come crashing down towards her and hurriedly withdrew a blade to counteract that one as well. The two combatants broke apart and Aayla flipped back again.

Ventress pursued her and lashed her blades across her body in opposite directions, seeking to try what Aayla had done before and aim a blow at head and hip respectively, only from opposite directions. She smirked as she did so, thinking that she had Aayla hands down, but she was wrong. Aayla surprised her yet again by suddenly leaping into the air and flipping over, with such timing that the blow Ventress aimed at her head passed over her face, while the blow aimed at the hip passed beneath her back. Then Aayla landed on her hands and lashed out with one foot, kicking Ventress in the ribs and knocking her backwards.

Ventress stumbled backwards and suddenly her rage reached its zenith. She heard Grievous and Dooku advancing towards them from behind, but, forgetting who she was talking to in her anger, she whirled around and yelled, "Stay back! Secura is mine! I will be the one to finish her! Not you! She is mine to kill!"

Dooku stopped for a moment and glowered at his apprentice as he watched her whirl around and assault Aayla again, lashing out with one blade at neck height, which Aayla ducked beneath, then downwards at her while she was lower down, which Aayla caught with her green blade. The Twi'lek reversed her grip on her blue blade so it was pointing behind her and lashed up with it, and Ventress hurriedly blocked with her other blade.

Ventress' main issues had always been her ego. You couldn't have too much ego as a Dark Jedi, because combine too much pride with too much anger and you got such extreme arrogance and petty jealousy that you became like... well, like Ventress. Dooku glowered at the utter disrespect that Ventress had just shown him and then held out his arm, blocking Grievous' way as the cyborg headed towards the conflict.

Grievous faltered and turned to look at Dooku. "Huh? What are you doing?" he asked. "I thought we were supposed to be working together to finish off Secura? Why are you stopping me?"

"We shall work together," Dooku replied. "You and I, General. However, let Ventress wear Secura out first, then we shall attack. I am killing two birds with one stone. We preserve our strength while Secura gets more tired, and Ventress will be taught a lesson for her insubordination at the same time."

Grievous paused and then chuckled, lowering his three blades to watch the two double-lightsaber wielding women dashing and flipping around and slashing at each other. "You always were a smart man, Count. And I shall enjoy watching Ventress get her comeuppance right in front of me."

"Indeed," Dooku agreed. "But prepare yourself. On my signal, we shall attack once again."

Aayla grimaced as she heard those words. So, they were trying to wear her out, were they? She was still able to make out what they were saying despite the clashing lightsabers due to her level head and clear thinking. She doubted the enraged Ventress had heard them at all. She was too busy trying to kill Aayla before they did.

And Aayla had to admit that Dooku's strategy had merit. Jar'kai was a lot more energy demanding than using just one lightsaber, and Aayla's strength was already depleting from having to fend off three such skilled opponents with her flipping and bouncing skills. She wasn't sure how much longer she could keep doing this, and now she was fighting against a furious Ventress, who was blindly slashing at her.

So, she needed to try and come up with a way of beating Ventress while exerting the minimal amount of energy that she could. But, first she needed a break. Ventress was slashing at her almost non-stop in desperation to kill her. She hacked at Aayla's shoulder in a blow that Aayla blocked, and Aayla quickly somersaulted over the top of the blade as Ventress' other one came sweeping in. Ventress howled in rage as Aayla escaped again and lunged after her, plunging one blade down at the Twi'lek, shortly followed by the other.

Aayla quickly caught one blade with one of hers and the other blade with the other. Ventress growled and pushed her blades aside, kicking Aayla in the stomach and knocking her backwards, and jumping after her. Aayla pirouetted out of range and as Ventress kept coming, she managed to catch both of the woman's blades with one of her own.

"You will die, Secura!" Ventress snarled. "Your death will bring despair to the Republic, and I will revel in their sorrow."

Aayla gasped and went, "Look! A pineapple! It's coming to get you!" and pointed over Ventress' shoulder. Ventress automatically looked around, and allowed Aayla to shove her backwards and leap up to deliver a flying kick right into Ventress' stomach. Ventress gasped as her breath left her body and she rolled backwards, while Aayla paused to catch her breath, holding one lightsaber over her head and the other before her stomach.

Ventress sprang upwards and scowled in anger. "How dare you try such a cheap trick on me, Jedi?"

"Ever heard the saying, 'All's fair in love and war?'" asked Aayla. "Well, this is war, so I suppose it was fair." She blinked as she realised that she had just quoted something that Terriermon had just said. And that pineapple quip from before had reminded her of Terriermon as well. And then, the idea came to her head – something which she doubted anyone had tried in a lightsaber duel before, but might work very well against the incensed Ventress.

Ventress roared and lunged again, sweeping both blades in from the sides. Aayla reversed her grip on her blades so they were pointing downwards and brought them up to block both strikes. As she did, she thrust outwards, throwing Ventress' arms wide and then span out of the way of her next strike. As she did, her lekku slapped Ventress across the face, and that only served to make her even angrier than ever.

"That's it!" Ventress screamed. "You will pay for your actions against me and the rest of the Separatist cause, Secura. You have been a thorn in our sides for far, far too long, and after I've finished cutting those head-tails off your head and then severing all your limbs, I am going to carve you a new mouth, right across your stupid throat."

"No!" Aayla suddenly cried, a wild and fearful look crossing her features as she dropped onto her knees and sheathed her lightsabers, appearing to grovel before the suddenly bewildered Ventress. "Have mercy, child of the nether-world!" the Twi'lek bawled.

Ventress blinked in bemusement and was completely unsure how to react to something as strange as this. And her momentary stunned stupor was all the Aayla needed to suddenly flip over and ignite her blades again, pushing Ventress' upwards with one of hers and delivering a hefty double-kick to Ventress' chest. Ventress went sailing backwards and crashed into the wall, knocking more holoscreens of it, and then looking up with incensed wrath at Aayla.

And the Twi'lek was _smirking_ at her. How dare she? She was Ventress! She was to be feared!

"I've had enough of your little games!" Ventress screamed, charging forwards and whipping into a spin, slashing at Aayla four times in quick succession, only to find Aayla's own two blades there to greet hers, while the Twi'lek span out the way and made no attempt to retaliate. "You shall fall upon my swords!" Ventress screeched, crashing her lightsabers down on Aayla, who blocked them in a double lightsaber lock above their heads.

"I smell my fingers after I eat cheese," Aayla replied, grinning at her adversary.

"Huh?" Ventress faltered as she tried to process those ridiculous words, which gave Aayla more than enough time to throw her blades backwards, ducking and kick her legs out from underneath her and then send her flying with a Force push. Ventress rolled, but managed to spring upwards and rebound off the wall, coming at Aayla again.

"I'll cut out that tongue of yours, Secura!" she shouted, slashing diagonally upwards with one blade, which Aayla jumped over, and then slashed diagonally downwards from the same direction with the other blade, which Aayla caught and rolled beneath. Ventress scissored at Aayla's neck, which Aayla dodged by leaning back at an almost impossible angle, and the Twi'lek lashed up with both blades and knocked Ventress' up again as she flipped backwards.

One of Ventress' blades went flying out of her hands and clattered nearby, but Ventress barely noticed and declared, "You cannot win against me, Twi'lek?"

"I can't?" Aayla frowned. "Oh, what a shame. If only I had a sack of potatoes."

Ventress' mind went blank again as she tried to picture how potatoes could possibly help Aayla in any way during this situation, and Aayla took the opportunity to jump forwards and slash her lightsabers with great force at Ventress' midsection. Ventress managed to block the strike, but due to her moment's hesitation, the angle wasn't perfect and the force of Aayla's blow carried her backwards across the room, where she crashed into the corner.

This was utterly ridiculous! Ventress was just about ready to scream. Aayla was somehow managing to distract her attention with ridiculous little phrases that made absolutely no sense whatsoever, and _it was working!_ Ventress snarled and looked up as Aayla charge towards her and battered at her defences with her two blades against Ventress' remaining one, slashing diagonally down with one, from the side with the other and spinning around for a double-downwards slash.

Ventress angrily responded by leaping back onto a console in the wall and jumped over Aayla, but Aayla backflipped the moment Ventress passed over her head and jumped over her as well, so they were in the same position as before. Aayla didn't strike at Ventress' back, but Ventress whirled around and stabbed for Aayla's navel. Aayla caught the blade in between both of her own like a pair of scissors or tweezers and twisted, sending Ventress' second lightsaber spinning across the room.

Ventress cried out in rage and flung out her hand, knocking Aayla backwards with a terrific Force push. Aayla managed to right herself in the air and rebound off the wall, rolling once she hit the floor and leaping up in front of Ventress, twirling her blades.

Ventress thought that Aayla was about to charge her and prepared to summon both her lightsabers back to her, but then Aayla slumped and her arms fell to her sides, a confused look passing over her face. Both her lightsabers deactivated and Aayla looked up at Ventress with a look of bemusement.

"Whoops," she said. "There it goes." She held up a finger for a moment as if considering something, and then her face took on a goofy smile and she said, "Yup. My brain stopped."

Ventress stared at her for a moment, and then fierce anger overtook her – anger that Aayla was turning her revenge into one big joke. The last shred of sense left in Ventress completely left her and she dashed towards Aayla, screeching at the top of her lungs with intent to wring her neck. Aayla's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly as she watched Ventress approach and as the Rattataki pounced, Aayla fell onto her back and kicked upwards, her feet crashing into Ventress' stomach and tossing her right over her head.

Ventress yelped as she sailed across the room and crashed head-first into the wall. The pain was excruciating as she felt like her head had almost been bent out of shape. She yelled and reared backwards, clutching at her head with one hand and whirled around to face Aayla.

Her pupils shrank as she saw that Aayla was already sailing at her and in the middle of a mighty roundhouse kick that slammed into the side of Ventress' head. That was the final blow for Ventress and she was instantly knocked out cold, the blow causing her to spin around and slump face-first against the wall, sliding down it in the bliss of unconsciousness as Aayla made a three point landing next to her, with two legs and one hand on the ground.

The Twi'lek got to her feet and took a moment to look down at the unconscious Ventress. One down. But still two to go, and those two were going to be the more difficult opponents.

There was a clapping sound behind her and Aayla turned around, readying her two lightsabers and igniting them again, to see that Count Dooku was applauding her slowly, a wry smile on his face. "Well," he said, after a moment. "I was expecting you to take Ventress out – she always was far too headstrong."

"But not all that strong in the head," Grievous added, chuckling at his own joke.

"Indeed not," Dooku agreed. "However, I was not expecting you to win so quickly. And with such an... interesting strategy too. Nevertheless it was certainly an effective one against an opponent such as her. I applaud your efforts, Secura. You are not a normal Jedi. That plan was cunning enough for a Sith Lord."

"I prefer to think of it as unorthodox enough for a Skywalker," Aayla shook her head. "But I doubt even Anakin would have thought to try something like that. But that's more because he prefers all-out approaches to subtler ways."

"Well," said Dooku. "Nevertheless, that was quite a sight. Are you sure that you will not reconsider my offer to join the Dark Side? We could certainly use a mind like yours amongst our ranks. You could even replace Ventress as my apprentice – that would grant you a good many things."

"I'm quite sure, thank you very much," Aayla shook her head. "It's nice of you to offer, but I'm afraid I have to decline once more. I'll do everything I can to avoid slipping down the path of darkness and none of your poisonous words will get me to change that."

"Such language," Dooku replied, activating his own lightsaber again. "But if you will not join us, then you will just have to die. I can sense your strength waning. I doubt that you can last much longer against us."

"We have wasted enough time talking," Grievous growled. "Can we not get down to business and try to kill her again? I am getting impatient."

"Yes, indeed, General," Dooku nodded. "Go ahead."

Aayla's eyes narrowed as Grievous instantly darted past Dooku and charged her, talons slamming into the floor so hard it almost buckled, his bottom two arms rotating at the wrist to create another buzzsaw, while the top arm was poised over his head like a snake ready to strike.

Aayla moved away from the motionless form of Ventress and prepared herself for the attack. She ran forward to meet him, spinning like a corkscrew through the air to slash her blue blade between Grievous' spinning ones and halt their progress, while bringing her green one up to block the blue one that lashed down at her. Grievous stepped back and struck with one lower blade from Aayla's knee, which she met with her own blade. She ducked under a swing from the top hand and quickly leapt over the swing from the bottom. Grievous broke the lock and swung around on his hips, whipping into a frenzied spin of lightsabers which Aayla hurriedly rolled out of the way from.

Grievous broke off his swing and whirled to face her, charging and lashing upwards with both bottom blades, slicing through the floor as he did so. Aayla ran towards him in response and Force-jumped over him, the lightsabers following her progress until she was over his head. The top blade moved in to stab her while she was in the air, but she slapped it aside with one blade as she span to a landing. Grievous turned and quickly pounded on her with all three lightsaber, slashing furiously at Aayla a couple of times and getting annoyed when she blocked or spun out of the way.

Grievous then tried something else. Locking lightsabers with Aayla, he suddenly span his wrists when she wasn't expecting it and knocked her lightsabers outwards to expose her front. She managed to retain a hold on them, but as she was vulnerable, Grievous sliced it from both sides and from above all at once.

Aayla responded by dropping to one knee. Her right arm cross over her body and blocked Grievous' right lower blade, while her left arm lashed over her head, angling her blade so it caught both Grievous' other two blades at the same time. Grievous faltered in surprise as she caught his attack, and this time Aayla span when he wasn't expecting it, except she span her whole body and threw Grievous' arms away, lashing out with a Force push that send him crashing into the door.

Aayla quickly spun around as Dooku approached her from behind and blocked Dooku's downward cleave with both her blades. Dooku's face was now twisted into a scowl as they pushed against one another for a few moments. Then Dooku broke the lock and lashed out with frenzied but co-ordinated motion, driving in from one side, and retracting after Aayla's blade glanced against it to slash from the other side instead. Aayla blocked that too and sprang back to avoid another downward slash. Dooku lashed out with two more blows to her abdominal area and Aayla had to strike each one with either blade to stay alive.

Aayla twisted around with her momentum, and Dooku threw a blow at her back. But Aayla had raised a blade there to protect herself instinctively and they clashed together, Aayla's pushing Dooku's away as she completed her spin, lashing out with her other blade as she did so. Dooku ducked under it and stepped back as Aayla continued the spin, whirling into the air to strike at Dooku with both blades from above. Dooku caught both with his own.

Becoming aware of Grievous approaching from behind, Aayla quickly somersaulted over Dooku without breaking the lightsaber lock. Dooku whirled around with her, but Grievous was forced to pull to a stop to prevent himself from crashing into Dooku. Aayla was attempting to use the fact that she had two opponents to her advantage, ensuring only one could attack her at a time.

Dooku threw several more blows at her, a good five to be exact, slashing at her head with a sideways motion that Aayla blocked by raising her hand over her head and pointing her lightsaber down to intercept, then threw two slashes at her navel, which Aayla was able to catch with either of her two lightsabers and then the Twi'lek jumped over the fourth one with another backflip and brought both lightsabers horizontally across her body to block the next attack which would have sliced her right down the middle.

Aayla grimaced as Grievous wheeled around Dooku to strike at her again. Aayla bit her lip as he slashed all three blades inwardly to slice at her while she was locked in combat with Dooku. Aayla quickly, and probably stupidly, broke the lock with Dooku and span _towards_ Grievous, getting past his guard until her back was flat against his front. He was taller than her and looked down at her in bewilderment. She looked up and said, "Hi," before dropping down and backwards rolling through his legs before he knew what was happening, springing to her feet again.

"That is getting quite annoying," Grievous growled as he turned to face her.

"Look! It's the Phantom of the Earwax!" Aayla shouted, pointing. Grievous almost turned to look, but as Aayla lunged at him with a double lightsaber spinning leap, he guarded from her attack by putting his two bottom blades in an upside-down V to catch the strike.

"Nice try," he snarled, shoving her backwards and slashing down with his third blade. Aayla whirled aside from the strike and backed off as Grievous approached. Grievous charged her, windmilling his blades wildly, and Aayla dashed backwards and towards the wall. Grievous followed, and Aayla hurriedly dashed up the wall and flipped over him, spinning to strike away his top blade as she did so.

Grievous had to halt himself to stop from crashing into the wall and Aayla acted quickly, leaping at him and planting a double-kick in the middle of his broad back. Grievous ploughed into the wall and grunted painfully. He wasn't essentially harmed by it, but he was momentarily dazed by the tactic and shook his head, trying to clear it.

Aayla rolled sideways suddenly as Dooku catapulted at her from behind, his lightsaber skimming the air where she had once been. She whirled around and decided to go on the attack this time, pressing Dooku back with a flurry of cleaving strikes – one from either side to start with that Dooku blocked and span out of the way from, and then following up with a spinning double slash that push Dooku backwards several paces. Aayla stepped back and twirled her blades, leaping into another spin, as she slashed at him from behind herself, which he blocked, whirling round to sweep her other blade at him and forcing him to block that too. She followed up with her first blade again, sweeping it low and forcing him to jump over it, then slashing downwards with both, taking advantage of the fact he had to block upwards to kick him in the stomach and send him stumbling backwards.

Dooku grasped his stomach for a couple of seconds, while Aayla struggled to breathe as slowly as possible, the leaping about have severely drained her now. She knew that she only had enough energy reserves to keep going at this pace for a few more minutes before she was depleted and became an easy target. The Twi'lek faced the elderly man as he stood tall once again, recovering his breath quickly and declaring. "Your efforts are valiant, Knight Secura. I shall have to send the footage to the Republic so your titanic battle here can be recorded in the Jedi Archives. But, it ends now."

He attacked.

Aayla was hard pressed to fend off his blows as he whirled and slashed, stabbed and hacked. Aayla responded in kind, blocking with the same amount of frenzied movement that he was using. She dodged a stab and whirled around to block a follow-up slash, attacking with her other lightsaber to make him duck and both of them spinning about at the same time to crash their blades against one another again. Dooku had a smirk on his face now as he pushed Aayla back across the room, the Twi'lek dodging and leaping like a wild thing to avoid his rain of blows.

She heard Grievous getting up from where he was dazed, and the sound distracted her for a split second, but it was more than enough. Dooku made to slash at her from the left and her hands automatically moved both blades to block him, but he suddenly proved that it had been a feint, as he spun his blade and slashed at her leg instead. Aayla's reaction was swift, flipping one blade over so her elbow stuck out to her left and the blade pointed downwards. Dooku's blade crashed against it and was halted, but not quickly enough.

Aayla let out a noise of agony that combined a yelp with a scream as she felt white hot pain sear at her leg, about halfway up her calf. It was like molten lead had just been poured over a strip of her skin, only ever worse and the pain was so intense that it felt like the most potent of acid was starting to eat through her skin. Her leg buckled underneath her and she collapsed onto her back, teeth gritted in absolute agony.

Through the pain, she was able to glance down at her leg. Dooku's lightsaber had cut a large gash in it, deep as two fingers were wide and long as her whole hand. Her block had managed to stop Dooku from slicing her leg off completely, but the searing pain was still blisteringly intense. There was no blood, thankfully, since the lightsaber was so hot the wound was immediately cauterised. While the gash burned like a fiery strip of hell, the rest of her leg felt slightly numb. Aayla knew she wouldn't be capable of putting her weight on it, anytime soon.

Aayla quickly focused her mind and did her best to blot out the pain, although it was still constantly there, as she looked up at Dooku, who loomed over her, now confident in his victory and that sinister smile back in place.

"As I said," he smirked. "It ends now." And he raised his lightsaber above his head, ready to stab down at her and impale her through the chest. Aayla glanced down at her leg quickly and then noticed something. Dooku had made the mistake of placing one of his feet on either side of Aayla's uninjured left leg.

Aayla suddenly kicked sideways and smacked Dooku's ankle out from under him. Dooku cried out as he toppled backwards and crashed onto his back. As he did so, Aayla quickly rolled away, blotting out the pain as best she could (which was no easy task because it felt like white hot needles were stroking her leg) and hurriedly flipped upwards, standing on her hands and still gripping her lightsaber hilts, even though they were deactivated.

"Who needs legs?" she grunted, trying to ignore the pain. "I can still fight. It's not over until I agree that it is."

Dooku scrambled up and observed her. "Impressive," he said. "But you cannot hope to fight me without the support of your legs." He slashed across at her, and was suitably stunned when Aayla suddenly switched to one hand and activated her green blade, holding it up and blocking her attack. It was similar to what Aayla had done against the infected Luminara in the Geonosian Tunnels.

"Can't I?" Aayla asked, her face halfway between a smirk and a grimace of pain.

Dooku glowered and lunged forwards again, making two further slashes which Aayla managed to block while standing on only one hand. As Dooku initiated his third strike, Aayla sprang off her hands somersaulted over him, twisted around in the air and landing on both hands and her good leg, wincing as her right leg screamed at her. Dooku whirled around and slashed at her head, but Aayla caught his blade with one of her own, gritting her teeth and locking lightsabers.

Then, to Dooku's amazement, Aayla began to push herself back onto her feet, ignoring the searing pain in her leg as much as was possible as he pushed her way upwards, startling the Count momentarily. She was putting most of her weight on her uninjured leg, but her injured one was taking a good deal of it too. Aayla's resilience was astonishing.

Before he could react, Aayla had grunted and lashed out with one hand, her fingers stabbing directly between the two tendons on the wrist of Dooku's lightsaber arm and pushing upwards, stretching the nerve directly underneath it. Dooku gasped, his lightsaber falling out of his nerveless hand and skittering across the floor, where Aayla quickly pushed it across the room. Dooku stepped back and tried to recall it with his other hand, the other one still numb and nerveless, but Aayla picked up a few of the smashed holoscreens and flung them at the lightsaber hilt, intercepting its flightpath and burying it underneath them as it came back to Dooku.

Dooku glowered and said, "I will not yield so easily!" and lashed out with a Force Lightning burst. Aayla, still struggling to stay on her feet, crossed both lightsabers into an X to block the attack. Dooku growled at the fact that Aayla was still able to defend herself and switched tactics. This time he lashed out with a move that Aayla couldn't hope to block.

Force choke.

Aayla gasped as suddenly she felt something like an invisible hand grab her by the throat the moment Dooku stopped his Force Lightning attack and clenched his fist before him. Aayla choked and hacked almost silently as she was lifted into the air, one leg kicking while the other hung limply beneath her, her hands coming up and scrabbling at the chokehold that wasn't there as she hung from her neck. Both her lightsabers fell from her hands and clattered to the floor as she scrabbled and kicked helplessly.

Dooku smirked and approached her menacingly, his hand rising and lifting Aayla further into the air, where Aayla could do nothing but hover as she had no purchase on anything to move herself. His fist tightened and Aayla's throat constricted even more, cutting off the last of her air and reducing her voice to nothing, so she merely gasped soundlessly.

Aayla felt panic flitting through her as she struggled and failed to breath, but she hurriedly calmed herself down, knowing that wouldn't get her anywhere. She needed to find a way of breaking loose from Dooku's chokehold, before he finished clenching his hand and snapped her neck completely. Through the daze of choking to death, Aayla suddenly noticed something on the ceiling – one of the pipelines.

With a burst of effort, Aayla's hands shot upwards and grabbed the pipe. Dooku realised too late what was about to happen as Aayla swung backwards and then forwards, bringing her left foot crashing into Dooku's face in a swinging kick that sent him reeling backwards, clutching his hooked nose and caused him to yelp in pain. Aayla gasped as she felt the grip on her throat loosen and sucked in air gratefully.

Aayla regained her senses quickly, still hanging from the bar and her eyes narrowed. She swung backwards once again, then forwards and then back and forth a couple more times before she launched herself into a spinning leap. Dooku regained his composure quickly to see her sailing over his head, and whirled around, expecting her to land on the other side of him and readying a Force Lightning blast.

He was therefore unpleasantly surprised when Aayla crashed on top of him instead, landing smoothly on his shoulders and carrying him straight to the floor. The elderly man didn't have long to work out what was happening though, as his head suddenly smacked hard against the floor, not helped by the Twi'lek adding weight to the fall. His world went dark as he fell into unconsciousness.

Aayla didn't have time to celebrate her victory though as she groaned in pain, hands reaching up to gingerly touch her leg and then immediately wishing she hadn't as she drew back with a yelp of pain. But nevertheless, she rolled off Dooku and slowly pushed herself to her feet again, ignoring the horrible pain that it caused her. She still had one more opponent to face.

As stood up straight, supporting herself as much as possible with one leg only and summoned her lightsabers to her, she found Grievous staring at her in disbelief. She smirked painfully at him. She knew Grievous had been expecting her to best Ventress, but not Dooku as well. Dooku was a master swordsman and had incredible prowess with the Dark Side, and yet he had been bested by a young Twi'lek Jedi with unconventional fighting methods.

Grievous' stunned gaze passed from her to Dooku several times before he shook his head and growled at her. "Your skills are indeed impressive, Secura," he rasped. "Taking out Ventress is one thing, but Dooku is something else entirely. It seems that we severely underestimated you." He twirled his three lightsaber blades – the absence of a fourth one on his right side making him look lopsided.

"But you cannot hope to best me in your condition," he added.

"What makes you say that?" Aayla winced, glancing down at herself. She was breathing so heavily that she could feel her ribs straining as her muscles tried to expand them too far outwards, and she was standing awkwardly as she tried to stay on her good leg.

She gritted her teeth, knowing full well that Grievous was right. If they started going into a fully fledge battle now then Aayla wouldn't be able to survive. She'd lost most of her acrobatic agility now that her leg was hobbled, and her hands alone was not going to do the job against the lightning-fast cyborg. Not to mention he had no nerve pressure points for her to take advantage of. She had learnt the technique she had used to disarm Dooku from young Henry and his martial arts prowess, thought she'd never thought that she would use it in a real-life situation. Nevertheless it had been effective.

Grievous laughed, which became a cough shortly afterwards and then said, "Just look at you Secura. You can barely stand, and you've used up all your energy. You are in a complete and utter terrible state – you wouldn't last five seconds against me. You might as well give up now. No Jedi can stand up against me in that condition."

Aayla's eyes narrowed and she boldly took a couple of steps towards Grievous, gritting her teeth as she put weight on her injured leg, but noticeably not flinching as she stared, unblinkingly, into Grievous' yellow eyes, which widened in surprise.

"You're forgetting something, Grievous," Aayla replied in a low tone. She had decided to try her luck at intimidating the droid General, to possibly make him think twice about attacking her. "I am no ordinary Jedi."

"Is that so?" Grievous growled, stepping towards her a little. "What kind of Jedi are you then?"

Aayla fixed his gaze with her own, staring meaningfully into his eyes as she said:-

"I am Aayla Secura. I have survived a brush with the Dark Side and recovered from losing all of my memories. I have leapt out of moving gunships and crossed chasms without bridges. I have escaped from Separatist facilities that were exploding all around me and come out without suffering a scratch. I have flown through space, blasting apart any droid that I find without prejudice. I have battled rancors, survived an assault from a swarm of Gigantoformicums and scared a bunch of pirates away from a farm by making them believe they were being attacked by a ghost. I have ridden Acklay into battle and even gone so far as to befriend them. I have destroyed Geonosian droid factories from within and faced off against zombies and Jedi infected with mind-controlling parasites. I have stood in the face of giant blasts from defoliator cannons and emerged unscathed. I have passed into the Palace of Jabba the Hutt and come out with my sanity intact. I have infiltrated an entire base of Dooku's Dark Acolytes to convert my Master back from the Dark Side and helped him to fight all of them off. I have assisted in diffusing an anti-matter bomb before it could destroy the whole of Naboo. I have fought off powerful ice monsters and run up and down on the back of the Zillo Beast – the most dangerous creature that has ever been born in this universe. I have defeated Asajj Ventress and Count Dooku, and I shall defeat you in just the same way."

She activated her lightsabers and twirled them, refusing to wince when her leg panged at her and standing tall and as strong as she could, putting on a front against Grievous and hoping that he would take her bluff. Grievous did indeed seem to hesitate for a moment, backing away slightly as he heard of all the things that Aayla had been through, which were certainly no simple tasks to get through in any kind of way.

Grievous glowered for a moment, unsure of whether he should take on the Twi'lek or not. But then, his eyes narrowed and it was his turn to fix Aayla with a glare of his own. "Be that as it may," he said. "All of that is in the past, and this is now. And as far as I can see, you are too weak to stop me from cutting you into pieces."

Aayla braced herself as Grievous suddenly charged right towards her, he lightsabers raised to make the final, killing blow. Her eyes widened as she saw what would inevitably be her death coming if she didn't come up with something in the next few seconds. She had come so far by successfully knocking out the other two.

She was unafraid to die. In fact she was sure that she was going to anyway, as Bly would probably order the station to be blown at any moment. But she was still a Jedi and Jedi did not give up easily, as she had said right before the start of the biggest duel of her life. She couldn't call herself one if she didn't at least try to defend herself against Grievous' oncoming attack.

Aayla's instincts took over. Her mind still fresh with all the images of the events she had recounted to the cyborg General, as well as the memory of blocking Dooku's Force Lightning and the similar event that had taken place on Felucia with the Force-sensitive Acklay, Aayla suddenly raised her hands and a barrage of orange lightning spurted out of her fingertips, as opposed to the white lightning that Dooku had used earlier. It was the Electric Judgement, the technique discovered by Master Plo Koon many years ago. Just as he had let off the attack by instinct, so too did Aayla Secura now.

Grievous' eyes widened as the attack struck him with full force and knocked him backwards, sending him crashing against the wall once again. Aayla immediately relinquished the attack almost as soon as it began. Compared to Dooku's blasts, Aayla's attack had been minute in power, but for Grievous it had been extremely painful. His body might be made of duranium alloy, which didn't conduct electricity as well as most other metal alloy, but metal was still metal and the electricity had coursed through him just as it would a normal human and affected his internal organs.

Grievous fell to the floor, coughing and breathing heavily, as he looked up at Aayla with shock in his eyes. She could use Force Lightning? Grievous had always been led to believe that was a technique that only Dark Side wielders could use, but he saw no anger or hatred on Aayla's face, only determination. That blast had not been very powerful, but if she did it again with more strength behind it then he was in trouble. The synthskin gutsack that held his internal organs would do little to protect him against electric attacks, and thanks to his metal body he was even more susceptible to them than an ordinary human.

Aayla stood strong, poised to let off another strike. That did it for Grievous. He wasn't about to stay here and become fried inside his own cybernetic body. He growled at her and said, "You win this time, Secura. But I will not forget about this." And he scuttled towards the far door on all of his limbs, flipping onto his feet and quickly cutting through it with all three lightsabers before dashing out of the door and disappearing from sight.

Aayla was alone, but for the unconscious bodies of Ventress and Dooku and the dead corpses of poor Barr and Inc.

The Twi'lek slumped slightly, her lightsabers deactivating as she started to gasp for breath. It had worked. She was still alive. She would have to remember to thank Master Plo for discovering Electric Judgement next time she saw him, but Grievous had actually fled for no reason. The attack on him had drained the last of Aayla's strength and it was all that she could do to remain upright.

Aayla felt her vision going fuzzy and the tips of her limbs and lekku going numb, her right leg wobbling as it threatened to collapse beneath her again, the pain in her calf from the deep lightsaber wound dulling slightly but still searing hot. She glanced across at the forms of Ventress and Dooku, swaying slightly on the spot as if drunk as she did.

_Wow,_ she thought. _Did I really do that?_

Yes, she had. She, Aayla Secura, had defeated three of the Separatists key figures all at once. She had been injured and was now exhausted, but she had still done it.

As her vision became more cloudy, she glanced down at the hilt of the green lightsaber she had taken from Grievous. _I don't know who was the original owner of this blade,_ she thought. _But whoever you are, I'm sure you won't mind me using your blade instead of Grievous. I did make good use of it, after all. _

Then, the last of Aayla's strength was finally sapped. Her hazel eyes rolled upwards into her skull and she tipped forwards, crashing onto her stomach and her arms falling limply to her sides. The last thing she remembered was a dull pain in her chest before her whole world was plunged into darkness.

* * *

And there it is. The single longest lightsaber battle I have ever written, or will ever write, had finally come to an end.

Now, before anyone complains about the fact that Aayla was able to win on her own, let me stop you there by saying, that honestly, I don't care. The major point of this whole arc, is to demonstrate that the Digimon are not the only ones changing the future for the better – Aayla and the others are doing numerous things themselves, and now Aayla has managed to accomplish a feat that few others could ever lay claim to. Some of you may have doubts, but it was a struggle for her, and the influences of the Digimon were still there in the fight all along, helping her to pull through. I'm not changing it, no matter how many grievances I get.

So, anyway, yes, Grievous has escaped. I have plans for our cyborg villain in the future. We haven't seen the last of him. And this chapter was not only a big accomplishment for Aayla, but for Bly and the other clones as well. Bly's much less mechanical than ever before and for the first time in his life, he is disobeying a direct order. It took some coaxing and some clever words from Renamon, but he got there in the end.

Hope you liked the way Aayla took on Ventress. Yes, potatoes do exist in the Star Wars universe, by the way.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

The others arrive on the scene and are almost literally stunned by what they find. What is Aayla's condition? Will they be able to help her? And what exactly are they supposed to do next?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 128 : A Hard Won Victory**


	128. A Hard Won Victory

I can tell that everybody really liked the last chapter. Just as it seemed to be one of your favourite chapters, the reviews I got in response to it were my favourite ones throughout the whole story. Thank you very much for all your warm reception, not to mention your congratulations to Aayla herself.

So, here's the next installation, which is significantly less action-packed than the last one but still pretty significant. By the way, before you read on, I should tell you not to expect the next chapter after this until Monday, as I will be going on a weekend trip to the world's largest colony of gannets at Bass Rock for photographing opportunities. I'll be back on Sunday evening, so I can start writing again on Monday. I will then have two days before I go home, just enough time to finish this arc and the next Impmon chapter.

While I'm gone, I'd like it if people could add to my TV tropes page. I like the way **Bookworm Gal** keeps adding things, (thanks) but I'd like to see the page as fleshed out as possible.

Now, read on, to see what happens to Aayla, Dooku and Ventress.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 128:- A Hard Won Victory**

* * *

Why did the Separatists insist on swamping all of their facilities with battle droids? It was seriously irritating, and it was also preventing the Digimon from being where they wanted to be. They were taking out the droids that were blocking their path as quickly as they could, bulling through the ranks of them with everything they had in their arsenal, no longer caring whether they were spotted on the security or not.

But this was the third batch of droids that they'd run into and they still hadn't reached the main control room yet.

Renamon had caught up with the others some time ago, and now the yellow fox was out in front, smashing droids aside with her purple-gloved fists, and kicking her way through their ranks, scooping them up and tossing their measly bodies to one side as she busted through their line. All around her there were the sounds of clashing as a line of different creatures made their way across the corridor, breaking the droids down wherever they went.

Beside Renamon was Barriss, and the Mirialan was tossing and turning about, whipping her blue blade through the droids before her and knocking them aside, cleaving through their blasters before they could let off any shots and somersaulting to slice downwards and through them, accompanied by occasional blasts with the Force when she was able to get enough space to do it. On Renamon's other side was Chewbacca. The Wookiee had long since abandoned finesse, but then again he didn't exactly need it. He was just charging straight through the droid lines shoulder-first, smashing them to the ground before him and crossing over them, smashing them to scrap beneath his colossal weight.

Next to Chewbacca was Turuiemon, who, like Barriss, was taking the leaping approach, dodging and spinning and hacking with her enormous switchblades, accompanied by occasional kicks from her plimsolls and, very occasionally, a flash of white light as she threw a Gauntlet Claw attack through the ranks of the droids, splitting them in half for several metres ahead of her and allowing her to run on quickly. And on the other side of Barriss was Gargomon, the gun-toting bunny alternating between smashing the droids ahead of his with his cannons physically, or smashing the droids ahead of him with his cannons with the use of a barrage of green laser. Either way, the result was the same – lots of smash.

The corridor was only just wide enough for the five of them to fight roughly side by side like this, but the formation they made was formidable and unbreakable. They stormed into a corridor and the battle droids were almost literally mown down before them like grass, as they swept the entire corridor and left battered droids behind them when they passed.

As Renamon's fist lashed out and crushed the head of another battle droid, another droid that was standing just behind it and to one side lifted its blaster in an attempt to shoot her. It wouldn't have worked because Renamon was about to uppercut it so hard that it would have gone flying into the ceiling, but someone else beat her to killing it. A quick blue bolt flashed over Renamon's shoulder and nailed the droid in the neck, causing its head to snap off and go spinning.

Renamon looked around her and felt a grin pass over her face as she watched Bly running down the corridor towards them. Blade and Galle were not far behind him and all three of them had their blasters primed for action.

"Nice of you to join us, Commander," Renamon said as she turned back and kicked a droid's chest in. "How long did it take you to change your mind?"

"Not as long as it probably seemed," Bly said, shooting another droid under Chewbacca's arm. "I made the decision only about five seconds or so after you left the room, but you ran so fast it took us a while to catch up. But... you were right, Renamon. I'm not a battle droid, or some other mindless drone. I am a clone trooper. I have emotions and it's about time I started listening to them instead of just obeying orders because that's easier."

"You da man, Bly!" Gargomon cried as he blasted apart three more droids. "And you guys are as well, Blade and Galle."

"Thanks," Blade laughed. "You da bunny."

"Well done, Commander," Renamon replied to Bly. "And... I apologise if I was a little harsh to you back there."

"No, don't be," Bly replied, ducking low and taking out the leg of a droid by shooting between Barriss and Gargomon. "You were absolutely right, and you were just trying to knock some sense into me. I am glad you didn't try doing that literally though, but you looked like you were tempted to. I hope I am never forced to be in a situation like this again, though. I will admit that."

"We all hope that," Turuiemon replied, shooting off a white energy blade. "But you're proving you're a human, Bly. That is something to be proud of nevertheless."

"How is General Secura?" asked Galle.

"We don't know," Gargomon growled. "We still can't get inside her head, and her energy trace has dropped. We can barely sense her at all now."

"In that case, we have to hurry," Bly said. "And get there quickly."

"What do you think we're doing, Bly?" Renamon asked wryly and she slammed a droid with her fist so hard that it slammed into the one behind it and created a domino effect as the others were also knocked over. Renamon dashed over the fallen droids and crashed her foot into another one in a furious kick. "We're moving as fast as we can."

"Let's just go faster than we can then," Gargomon cried, and with a roar he threw himself into the droid forces. Chewbacca eagerly joined him and the two of them bashed their way through the droids, while Turuiemon and Barriss and the clones mopped up the pieces behind them, and Arfour trundled up faithfully behind the clones.

Renamon leapt over the last of the droids but didn't wait for the others. Spurred on by encouragement from the other two Digimon and the three Tamers in her mind, Renamon went on ahead and dashed down the corridor on all fours. She twisted and turned around the various corridors her body snapping around the corners with the agility of a live cable as she ran.

It didn't take long to find the closest door to the main control room. It was closed, sealing her out of the room with a thick plate of metal, but Renamon wasn't about to let that stop her. Motoring towards the door at incredible speed, she sprang at it, her paws becoming enshrouded in blue aura as she swept through the air and cried, **"POWER PAW!"**

Her fist slammed into the door and the heavy metal buckled under her punch, but it still held firm. Not hesitating even for a second, Renamon drew back and punched it twice more, and the door bent inwards slightly more under her blows but still held. Renamon quickly somersaulted backwards, and sprang for the door again. This time, her hind paws became surrounded with aura as well and she delivered a furious kick to the top of the doorway.

There was the sound of rending metal as the door caved inwards and crashed to the ground, with Renamon standing on it on all fours, surrounded by the sparks crackling from the machinery she had just busted down. Renamon's eyes swept up to take in the scene before her.

She took in it all in one second flat, and what she saw absolutely astounded her.

The room was a complete and utter mess. There were numerous dents in the walls and the consoles that surrounded them. The wall that contained the large array of holoscreens that the security cameras were transmitting to had half of the screens knocked right off the wall and they were scattered at various points around the room, along with various other bits of debris that littered the room at various points.

There were also huge gashes in the floor and the walls, where the metalwork had been completely melted away in thin strips from what had obviously been lightsaber strikes. There were several stab marks in the floor and cleave strokes in the walls and across the floor at various other points. The door on the other side of the room to where Renamon had broken in had a huge circle cut out of it, which was lying in the corridor beyond, while the edges of the hole still looked molten from the lightsabers that had obviously cut through it.

And that wasn't all. There were a couple of clone bodies lying against opposite walls, one with a molten hole in his chest from where he had been stabbed by a lightsaber, and the other with a headless body, the helmet of which was lying in the corner. Renamon quickly averted her eyes from the dead men, who she knew to be Barr and Inc, whom she had fought beside numerous times in the various skirmishes she had been part of.

Another form was slumped against the floor beside the wall not far away – the bald-headed Rattataki woman, Asajj Ventress. She was quite clearly unconscious. Her nose was swollen and there were several ugly looking bruises developing on the side of her head. Then there was Count Dooku, lying on his front off to the other side. He also had what appeared to be a bruise coming on the side of his face, and he was also unconscious.

There was no sign of General Grievous, except for one severed hand that was lying near the opposite wall. It seemed the good General had managed to escape yet again. He seemed to have a habit of running off when things didn't go his way. Of course, Renamon had never met him properly, although he had run straight past her once without realising it, but she knew a lot about the cyborg General.

And there, lying in the middle of the room, on her front and perfectly still, was...

"Aayla!" Renamon cried, dashing over to the Twi'lek's prone form and kneeling beside it, taking her gently by the shoulders and rolling her onto her back slowly, brushing one of her lekku out of her face. Aayla's eyes were shut and her head lolled as Renamon moved it, but Renamon knew that she was alive. She could still sense the fact through their mindlink. But she didn't know how long that might last.

Renamon checked Aayla for injuries and hissed when she spotted the smooth and angry looking gash in Aayla's leg that had obviously been put there by lightsaber. She glanced back at the comatose Twi'lek and saw that her chest was rising and falling slowly. She checked Aayla's pulse and found that her heart was beating nineteen to the dozen and yet she wasn't breathing as heavily as she probably should thanks to the fact that she was unconscious and had just about no energy left.

Renamon looked up as she heard the sound of footsteps and everyone else finally arrived in the room, spotting Renamon kneeling a little helplessly beside Aayla, not knowing what to do. Gargomon blinked and said, "Jeez, they really did a number of this room."

"We can admire the destruction later," Barriss said, as she ran over to Aayla and knelt on Renamon's other side. "How is she?"

"She's still alive," confirmed Renamon. "And apart from that ugly looking gash on her leg she appeared to be relatively free of injury. It looks like she's collapsed of exhaustion after using too much energy during the battle." Renamon looked up at Barriss and said, "You know how to heal people, don't you?"

"I can heal physical wounds," Barriss replied. "Exhaustion is something that we're going to have to help her accomplish on her own – we can't do that bit for her. But I know how we can help. Someone get over here and lift her legs into the air. We need to try and encourage blood flow to her brain.

"Ah waoo ahao," Chewbacca said, quickly crossing over and gently lifting Aayla's legs into the air until Barriss told him to stop when they were roughly diagonal to the ground. The Wookiee held them there without complaint.

"Okay," nodded Barriss, then waved Turuiemon over and said, "We also need to make sure that she can breathe as easily as possible. Can you hold her head for me?"

"Sure," Turuiemon nodded and crouched beside Aayla's head. Barriss directed her until Turuiemon was pressing down on Aayla's forehead slightly to tilt it backwards and using two fingers on her other hand to hold Aayla's chin up. Barriss quickly made sure that Aayla's tongue wasn't getting in the way of her breathing. The others had gathered around by this time and were all watching with concern.

However, they began to relax slightly when they saw Aayla's breathing begin to pick up, until it was no longer as shallow as before and slowly began to return to a normal pace. Barriss and Renamon looked up and grinned at each other, before Barriss said, "Alright. I'll start working on that leg."

"We can put her in the recovery position first," said Gargomon, glowing until he de-digivolved back into Terriermon. "Come on guys. Help me take care of this." Renamon and Turuiemon nodded and together, the three Digimon rolled Aayla onto her left side as gently as they could. They were receiving silent instructions from Henry, who, practical as ever, knew a little bit about first aid, just in case.

Renamon carefully took Aayla's right arm and placed it across her chest, while Terriermon lifted her head to allow Renamon to place Aayla's right hand underneath it like a makeshift pillow, so she could lean her cheek on the back of her hand, while Turuiemon moved her other arm out the way and gently pulled her right leg up, avoiding touching the raw looking lightsaber cut, and placed it so that it was at a right angle to Aayla's hip.

As Terriermon held Aayla's head in his ears to make sure that she could still breathe properly, Barriss held her hands over the lightsaber cut. Repairing those kinds of wounds was not easy, even for experienced Jedi healers, like Barriss. She had to concentrate hard to ensure that Aayla's nerves grew back in the right way and that her blood vessels that had been sliced through connected properly before. Plus she had to regrow a large portion of the Twi'lek's skin as she gently set to work. The wound began to heal over ever so slowly, and Barriss maintained her concentration through the whole time.

Aayla still didn't stir, but her body appeared to be settling down. Renamon checked her pulse again and felt it returning to a more leisurely pace, as Aayla slowly began to recover.

"Will she be alright, do you think?" asked Bly, with concern.

Terriermon momentarily glanced up at him and grinned. "Momentai, Bly. Aayla's tough – I'm sure she'll be fine. She's not going to let a little collapse of exhaustion get between her and those she cares about."

Bly nodded, relieved and then chuckled, "You can say that again. She sure is tough. Look at what she did to the room."

Now everyone except Barriss really took the chance to glance around the room properly and examine the damage done to it, and all the wreckage that was scattered around the place. "Looks like there was a real clash of the titans in here," Terriermon observed from where he was trying to hold Aayla's airway open without putting too much pressure on her lekku.

"Yeah," agreed Blade. "I almost wish I was here to watch. There must have been a titanic lightsaber duel in here, the likes of which no clone has ever seen before."

"You can say that again," Galle agreed. "It's unbelievable. Somehow she managed to top Count Dooku himself, his top assassin and his best General all in one go. Though it looks like Grievous managed to get away before General Secura's strength gave out. But still... I'm just blown away. How did she manage to do something like this by herself?"

"We may never know," Bly shook his head. "She won't brag about the events that she went through in this room when she comes around. But it must have been a real sight. One thing's for sure, Aayla's gained more respect from me than ever before with this little stunt. And to think she ordered me to leave because she didn't think she'd be able to win."

"And yet she won anyway," agreed Galle. "Absolutely phenomenal. And now I'm getting frustrated because I can't work out how she managed it. I know she's good with a blade and all, but is she really that good."

Renamon picked up a pair of lightsabers from the floor and said, "Both of these were in her hands," she said. "She must have somehow managed to acquire a second lightsaber to use in the fight." She activated the unfamiliar hilt and saw a green blade spurt out of the end. "I'd guess she stole this from Grievous, considering one of his hands is lying nearby."

"Alright, so she used two blades," said Blade. "I like that – I don't think I've ever seen her using two at once. But would that have been enough?"

"Why don't we all stop second guessing and just look it up," Terriermon replied, nodding towards the ceiling, where there was an undamaged holocam recording every move that they were making. "You reckon we can delve back into the data that thing recorded and pull up the battle."

"Good idea," nodded Bly, turning around. "Arfour, get to it little guy."

Arfour whistled and rolled around Aayla and Dooku to find a scomp link in the wall nearby and plug himself in. As he rootled around for the data, trying to find the right holocam, the others watched him with anticipation. He whistled excitedly when he found the right one and quickly scanned through the data that it had recorded, converting it into a holographic form before turning his head around and displaying what he had found.

The others watched in awe for a couple of minutes as they saw a holographic version of the Twi'lek they were tending to battling it out against her three opponents, deftly swinging and hacking with her lightsaber to start off with and then grabbing hold of another from Grievous, just as Renamon had predicted. The whirl of limbs and blades as the four combatants slashed and hacked and span and dodged and kicked was almost impossible to keep track of, but somehow, Aayla was able to hold them off.

However, they didn't get to watch the whole hologram and see the end of the fight, because Renamon's ear suddenly twitched at a vague noise behind her. She had heard Asajj Ventress grunt and groan slightly – it seemed that the Rattataki was slowly coming out of unconsciousness!

Quick as a flash, Renamon whirled around and dashed across the room, bringing her fist back and bringing it crashing into Ventress' head. Ventress collapsed into unconsciousness again with only a grunt, never knowing what it was that smacked into her as she hadn't had the opportunity to become anything more than slightly coherent.

"Oh, I can't tell you how good that felt," Renamon said, clenching her fist.

"Heh," Terriermon chuckled and looked to Turuiemon. "Now only you have to do that, sis, and then all three of us will have punched Ventress in the head at some point."

"I'll keep that in mind," Turuiemon chuckled.

"Yeah, but now we have a problem," Bly said. "We have Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress unconscious before us, but we don't have the facilities to keep them contained. And we have to capture them this time. We can't pass up this opportunity to bring them into custody. Imagine just how quickly we could turn the tide of the war with these two in a cell on Coruscant. All the remaining Separatists would lose their confidence. It would fall to Grievous to lead them and then, once we take care of him, we only need to find this mysterious Sidious guy and the whole war would be up."

"Yes," nodded Renamon. "But we also need to get Aayla to a medical bay to recover as quickly as we can. How goes that healing, Barriss?"

Barriss held up one hand for a moment of silence as she finished attaching the last of Aayla's nerve endings until her blue skin was now completely intact once more. Barriss slumped a little – that had not been easy to accomplish alone, but she ran a finger along Aayla's skin between the rip in her leggings to check the firmness of her skin. It was as good as new.

Barriss was quite pleased with herself, but she put that aside. She was the leader now, since Aayla was indisposed, so she needed to take charge. She said, "She's fine, but we're going to need to move her gently. Would it be possible to get a stretcher from the ship above – we need to ensure she lies flat so the blood flow to the brain is not restricted."

"We don't need a stretcher," Terriermon said, "We've got Renamon."

Renamon smirked and said, "Indeed. I'll be more than happy to bear Aayla, as long as Rika pulls out a card or two to help me along." Apparently the redhead in the ship above took that as her cue, and Renamon burst into light as she digivolved on the spot:-

"**RENAMON DIGIVOLVE TO... KYUBIMON!"**

The now quadrupedal fox creature presented her back to the others and said, "Here. I'll carry her, but I will need someone to steady her."

Barriss nodded and said, "Alright. Here's the plan. Kyubimon, you take Aayla on your back. Chewbacca, Turuiemon, the two of you can hold Aayla steady and ensure that she stays flat and doesn't fall off. Terriermon, I want you to climb on as well, and keep supporting her head. You're doing a great job of that, by the way."

"Thanks," Terriermon grinned. "Only the best service for the intrepid heroine of the _Intrepid_. And I seriously mean that – Aayla trumped all of us in terms of heroics today. We're not going to let anyone forget what she accomplished here today, ever."

"She probably won't like that," Barriss chuckled.

"Well, tough," Terriermon said, looking down into Aayla's face. "You're getting the credit you deserve this time, whether you want it or not."

Aayla didn't respond, but that was to be expected as she was still unconscious.

"And what about these two, sir?" asked Bly, indicating Dooku and Ventress. "We can't just leave them here to escape again."

"No, you're right," nodded Barriss. "We can't. But we don't have the equipment to contain them either. However, I do have an idea. Commander, I want you to go back with the Digimon and Chewbacca and when you reach the _Intrepid,_ send a call to Anakin and Ahsoka while these guys take Aayla to the medical bay. Let them know what's happened and ask them to get here as quickly as they can and bring a couple of containment fields with them."

"Got it," nodded Bly.

"In the meantime," Barriss replied. "I will stay here and monitor their life-signs through the Force. Galle, Blade – you two stay here as well and set your blasters to stun. If I sense one of them beginning to wake up, I'll let you know and you two can deal with it quickly before they wake up enough to defend themselves. We must keep them out until we can get the right equipment to contain them here."

"Yes, sir," Blade and Galle saluted at the same time.

"Good plan, Barriss," replied Kyubimon.

"Thank you," nodded the Mirialan, with a slight smile. "Now come on. Let's get you loaded up."

Carefully as they could, Chewbacca and Turuiemon gently lifted Aayla into the air, with the help of Force levitation from Barriss in an attempt to keep her as still as possible. Terriermon quickly leapt up and continued what he was doing with supporting the Twi'lek's head on Kyubimon's back. As Chewbacca and Turuiemon steadied Aayla's torso, a couple of Kyubimon's prehensile tails snaked upwards and wrapped around Aayla's legs to keep them as close to the recovery position as you could lie in when you're on the back of a fox.

Bly slowly lead the way out of the room, taking the holomap from Barriss, while the others followed on in a slow and steady procession. Bly and Chewbacca were primed and ready, just in case they ran into any more droids, as there were sure to be more knocking about the place, stomping stupidly and relatively pointlessly through the corridors.

Barriss and the two clones watched the group go. As they did, Blade turned to Galle and said, "Don't you fell a little... rebellious, at the moment, Lieutenant?"

"What do mean?" asked Galle, a little guardedly.

"We actually disobeyed a direct order today," Blade said. "That's something I would never have dreamed of doing a couple of months ago. And not only that, but it paid off too – we got General Secura out alive, and we should have two of the Republic's most dangerous enemies under lock and key by the end of the day."

"Yeah, I suppose you're right," nodded Galle. "I certainly feel strange. And... a little good about myself, I suppose. I mean, we disobeyed an order, but we helped a friend and the Republic in the same move by doing it. Not that I hope we have to make a habit our of doing it."

"Oh no," Blade shook his head. "But at least we know we _can_ now, right?"

"Indeed, you do," said Barriss. "Renamon was right. You are indeed people, just as we Jedi knew you were all along. Let's just try to ensure we're never forced into a position where you have to disobey someone like that again."

"Agreed," the two clones nodded.

"Now," Barriss sat on the floor and shut her eyes. "We have a job to do." And she focused her senses and listened to the brainwaves of the two unconscious enemies on either side of her, while Galle and Blade set their blasters to the right setting and waited.

* * *

Fury boiled through General Grievous as he ran. How could this have happened? How could he, Grievous, along with Dooku and even Ventress, fail to best one single Twi'lek Jedi, who wasn't even a Master yet. Grievous had encountered many Twi'lek throughout his career as Supreme Commander of the Droid Armies, but they had all been slaves of the Trade Federation or the Banking Clan, who cowered at the sight of him, or were forced to serve other people when he was nearby.

But Aayla was in a different league. She was strong, she was athletic and she was incredibly skilled.

But that didn't stop Grievous from being angry.

Nevertheless, as he fled to escape the listening post before it was blown up by the Republic forces, he felt something else stirring in what was left of his organs. Respect. He could feel a deep respect for Aayla as well as anger – the kind of respect that he only previously held for two other people, Count Dooku and Darth Sidious. He had never thought he would ever feel respect like this for a Jedi, but if anybody had earned it, it was Secura.

Going toe to toe with him, Dooku and Ventress simultaneously and winning was something that he had never thought anyone could do. He remembered his misgivings back on Serenno, and the belief that Darth Sidious was being overly cautious when he had set all three of them on Aayla at once. And it had turned out that he had not been cautious enough.

What a surprise.

A small part of Grievous wondered if he would ever encounter Aayla again in the future, and if he did, it also wondered what he would do. He would probably try and fight against her again, and this time he would be more prepared for her tricks and her acrobatic moves. Her dancing – he still struggled with the concept of Jedi doing something like that in their spare time. To him, Jedi had always just been beings that needed eradicating, like vermin, ever since Dooku had told him of how the Jedi had attempted to kill him when he was still organic.

(He still didn't know that it had been Dooku himself that planted that bomb that blew up his shuttle and caused him to need his cybernetic body)

But now, the thought of holding such a deep respect for one Jedi disturbed Grievous a little. It was an unwelcome new sensation, and one that he couldn't quite shake. He'd never respected the Jedi – none of them. Not even the important ones like Yoda or Mace Windu. But now, thanks to Aayla's extraordinary feat today, he did indeed respect her as much as Dooku. Maybe even more so, since she had beaten him and everything.

Grievous growled and resolved to work out his emotions and his new but completely well-founded respect for Aayla later. At the moment his steaming anger pushed everything else to the back of his mind, as he ran towards the smaller of the two hangars that the base held.

As he rounded a corner, his eyes narrowed as he spotted a column of battle droids marching towards him while he ran. At least he now had something to take his anger out on. He growled as he dashed towards them.

One of the droids signalled a halt and saluted, but before he could say more than, "Gener-AAH!" Grievous had whipped out his bottom two lightsabers and whirled them into the familiar buzzsawing motion that he liked to use against Jedi. The cyborg ran down the middle of the double line, hacking every single droid in front of him to scrap. They were useless now anyway, since the Jedi pretty much had control of the entire station and were set on blowing it up anyone, and Grievous couldn't take the droids with him, even if he wanted to, which he didn't.

And so he just charged straight through them, like a demon amid a hell of sparks as he sliced them all to bits.

Sheathing his lightsabers and not looking back at the hundreds of pieces of droid that clattered to the floor behind him, Grievous ran on until he reached the hangar. It was a small room, although it was a hell of a lot cleaner than the other hangar at the moment, capable of fitting in nothing more than perhaps two or three starfighters. And right in the middle of the room was Grievous' own ship – _The Soulless_ _One_.

Grievous immediately ran over and grab the sides, rotating at the shoulder so he flipped himself into the seat and retracted the cockpit. Turning on the engines and lifting into the air, Grievous rotated around until he was facing the outside world and slid through the shields into the atmosphere of Rhen Var.

Grievous looked up, ignoring the snow that tried and failed to land on his fighter. He knew that there would likely be a Republic cruiser up there waiting for anything that tried to escape straight up, so going that way was pointless. With that in mind, he flew low across the ground for some distance, flying away from the listening post for many, many miles before he turned and headed up and out of the atmosphere.

As Grievous programmed his navicomputer, his mind mulled over the day. With the loss of Dooku, the Separatists had been severely crippled today. However, as long as Grievous was there to carry out the will of Darth Sidious, it would remain. And Grievous would not withdraw yet. He would fight until the war was well and truly over. There would be no surrender for him.

Then, he engaged his hyperdrive and whooshed away from Rhen Var.

* * *

Needless to say, the mission to the Yavin system had not been quite as eventful as the one to Rhen Var. It had been relatively straightforward enough – Anakin, Ahsoka and the clones had dropped from a gunship in the same way that Aayla and her troops had, except they were wearing pressure suits to deal with the adverse conditions of the planet.

For the clones, this looked just like their usual armour, and Anakin had a special suit that looked identical to the clothing he usually wore, with the exception of the duraglass dome he had to wear over his head so that he could breathe properly. For Ahsoka though, it was slightly different, she was wearing a special pressure suit, red in colour, that was a close fit around her whole body beneath her head, which was covered with a dome of her own.

Then, they had carried out their mission with straightforward easiness and now surprises. Ahsoka had lead a bunch of clones down to the reactor core to plant the charges. Rex had lead a bunch more to the main hangar to secure it before anyone could escape, and Anakin had lead the way to the main control room to secure that too.

However, it had turned out that Gunray wasn't at the listening post that they had been sent to. That meant he was probably at the other one. Though Anakin and Ahsoka had been disappointed at not capturing him and hoped that Aayla and Barriss would have more luck, they didn't complain and quickly left the listening post. As they flew away, Ahsoka hit the trigger, which resulted in an enormous explosion behind them as the listening posts slowly began to tear itself apart.

"Well," said Ahsoka, as she and Anakin strode through the corridors of the _Resolute_, heading for the bridge. "Just another day of blowing up random Separatist facilities."

"Not quite," chuckled Anakin. "You got to wear your pressure suit this time, Snips."

"Yes," nodded Ahsoka, looking down at the red material that encased her whole body. "It feels really weird though. Usually I can feel breezes blowing across my back. I kinda feel like... I don't know... a mummy or something in this."

Anakin chuckled at the reference. Many cultures mummified their dead in the Galaxy, but it had been the Tamers that introduced them to the idea of mummies getting up and walking around, which confused them because why would mummified dead be any different than other corpses. Henry had started to go into this whole complex system of Egyptian Gods, but Terriermon had interrupted, claiming the only one they needed to know about was Anubis anyway. "Though I like Sobek," he had added. "Anyone with a crocodile's head is cool."

"So that makes Leviamon cool?" Lopmon had asked.

"Well, except him," Terriermon had added.

Anakin and Ahsoka chuckled as they both remembered that conversation, and then they walked into the bridge if the _Resolute_, where Admiral Yularen was waiting for them with his hands behind his back.

"General Skywalker," Yularen nodded. "I commend you for your performance out there today. No unnecessary risks or unorthodox procedures. It's rather uncharacteristic of you."

"Well, nothing cropped up that required me to do either of those things, Admiral," Anakin shrugged. "It was just a pretty straight-forward mission."

"It's a shame Gunray wasn't there," Ahsoka replied. "I would have liked to have been the one to help catch him since her got away from me before."

"Well, never mind, Snips," Anakin wrapped an arm round her shoulders. "There's always San Hill. You can help be there to catch him. However, I'd quite like to known if Gunray was caught or not. Admiral, has there been any word from the others over Rhen Var?"

"Nothing as of yet, General Skywalker," Yularen shook his head. "We made contact with the _Intrepid_ about five minutes ago and they said that they hadn't gotten round to destroying the listening post yet, and they were unsure what was going on down there."

"Really?" Anakin frowned. "That's odd. Rhen Var's closer to Coruscant than Yavin so they must have arrived before us. I wonder what's taking them so long."

"Maybe they've run into Gunray and he attempted to give them the slip," shrugged Ahsoka.

"Maybe," said Anakin. "We'll have to wait until they contact us to know for sure."

Just then, the communicator on the holotable started bleeping. "Well, speak of the devil," said Ahsoka, grinning eagerly as she glanced to the holotable.

"I wasn't talking about Darth Sidious," Anakin snorted, as he stepped over himself, and pressed the button, while he, Ahsoka and Yularen all gathered around the holotable.

They were rather surprised when, instead of Aayla or Barriss appearing on the table in holographic form, the shape of a clone that they only recognised as Commander Bly from his armour design and the helmet tucked under one arm appeared instead. Bly saluted and said, "General Skywalker, Admiral Yularen, Commander Tano. It's good to see you answer so quickly."

"Commander Bly," Anakin nodded. "How goes things at your side of the skirmish?"

"Well, things have... certainly been interesting," Bly replied, with a slightly chuckle, causing Anakin and Ahsoka to glance at one another in confusion.

"Interesting... how?" Anakin asked.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you, General Skywalker," Bly said. "But there is quite an important situation going on over here. General Offee ordered me to ask you to get here as quickly as you can, and bring a ship containing at least two containment fields with you."

"Containment fields?" asked Ahsoka. "We don't need containment fields to hold Gunray or his aide, do we?"

"We didn't capture Gunray," Bly shook his head. "He wasn't here, and he probably never was."

Ahsoka sighed and said, "Oh, come on. Another false lead. Is it me, or are the spies we keeping sending into the Separatist ranks becoming more and more unreliable."

"I don't know, Snips," Anakin shook his head. "But the result was the same, no Gunray."

"But we did catch someone," said Yularen. "You would not be asking us to fetch containment fields if we did not catch somebody. But who did you manage to catch that requires such measures? We don't usually use containment fields for transporting prisoners."

"Yeah, that's right," Anakin said. "Who did you end up catching?"

"Well, it may not have been Gunray, sirs," Bly added, with a definite smirk on his face now. "But if you want my opinion, the people we nabbed are even better than that money-grabbing worm."

"Don't beat around the bush, Commander," Anakin folded his arms and frowned. "Come on – who did you catch?"

"Well," said Bly. "One of them is Asajj Ventress."

"What?" Ahsoka cried sharply, as she, Anakin and Yularen started at this piece of news. "That bogwitch was there? And you managed to catch her?"

"Yes, sir," said Bly. "She was in the main control room. General Secura took her on in a lightsaber duel and was able to knock her unconscious, so now we've got a little Dark Jedi to transport back to Coruscant."

"Well, that's great news," Ahsoka said. "With Dooku's last Dark Acolyte out of the way, he's going to be under even more pressure than before."

"Indeed," said Bly. "More than you know in fact. Largely because Count Dooku _is_ the other person we managed to acquire."

"WHAT!" Anakin and Ahsoka shouted at the same time, looking completely stunned, eyes wide and mouths hanging open as they stared at Bly with incredulity.

"Wait," Anakin held up a hand. "Someone managed to beat Count Dooku as well? Who? How? Tell me, Commander."

"General Secura, sir," Bly smirked. "She fought both Asajj Ventress and Count Dooku and was able to best them both through a series on unorthodox methods. But that's not the best part. There's also the fact that she took both of them on, _at the same time, _and still won."

Anakin and Ahsoka just stared at Bly in single-minded stupor, before Ahsoka said, "At the same time? She beat them... at the same time?"

"Both of them?" Anakin said, slowly. "Ventress and Dooku. She took on both of them and won?"

"Yes, sir," nodded Bly, then added in an off-hand tone. "General Grievous was there as well, but he managed to escape."

Ahsoka's head banged down on the holotable and her muffled voice muttered, "I think I'm going to faint."

"All three of them?" Anakin cried incredulously. "Seriously?"

"Yep," said Bly, a hint of pride in his voice. "But, like I said, Grievous managed to escape again. But still, Dooku and Ventress at the same time is quite a feat. We've got them being monitored at the moment and we're zapping them with stun blasts whenever they start to wake up to keep them down, but we need those containment fields for proper transport."

"Alright," Anakin said, slowly. "We're on our way. This better not be a joke."

"The whole scene was recorded on holocam, sir," said Bly. "Arfour's making a copy of it as we speak. You can watch it yourself later."

Anakin hesitated, and then he said, "She really took them all on by herself? Without the help of the Digimon or anything?"

"Yes, sir," Bly nodded again. "It looks like quite a battle from the footage."

"Wait," Ahsoka said quickly, her head snapping up from the table "What's her condition? Is she okay?"

"She'll be alright," replied Bly. "Dooku managed to cut her leg a bit with one blade and she collapsed of exhaustion at the end of the fight, but she's been taken to the medical bay and General Offee healed her wound."

"Phew, good," Ahsoka smiled. "For a moment there I was really worried that your face was about to fall and you were going to say she got killed in the battle or something."

Anakin shook his head and said, "I have to see this for myself. We'll be there, post-haste. Admiral, what's the closest Republic base that we can head to in order to pick up a pair of containment field?"

"There's one on Botajef, sir," said Yularen, who looked a little bit shocked himself. "It's en route as well, so we'll make a quick stop there."

"Perfect," Anakin said, turning back to Bly. "We're on our way. Keep those two out of it until we get there."

"Roger that, sir," nodded Bly, saluting, before his hologram disappeared.

"Can you believe it, Master?" Ahsoka turned to look at him with wide eyes. "Can you believe what Aayla did? She took on _all three of them?_ _AT ONCE!_"

"I know," Anakin nodded. "It's... it's beyond belief... but... at the same time... it's gotta be true. Aayla wouldn't joke about something like this. And nor would Commander Bly. I know they were telling the truth. She did it. She really did it."

"Isn't it great, Master!" Ahsoka grinned. "I can't wait to see that footage – maybe I can pick up some tips from it. That must have been the... the... the most epic lightsaber duel of all time."

Anakin turned and grinned at her. "I know. And you know what else, Snips?"

"What?" Ahsoka asked.

"If Aayla still refuses to become a Jedi Master after this," he laughed out loud. "I'm going to scream at her."

"You and me both," Ahsoka grinned and suddenly grabbed Anakin in a hug, which he warmly returned. "This has got to be the best day the Republic has had since the war began."

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "But enough hanging around. I want to get those two properly contained before we celebrate too much. Plus, I want to go and congratulate Aayla in person. And watch that footage."

"What do you think of the whole thing, Master?" Ahsoka asked.

"Think?" Anakin replied. "I think it's bloody brilliant!"

"You're not jealous, Master?" asked Ahsoka, retracting from the hug and looking up at him.

"No," Anakin shook his head. "Should I be?"

"Well, it's just... you know... Count Dooku cut your arm off," Ahsoka tapped Anakin's right hand, which pinged slightly due to the metallic replacement. "I thought that you wanted to be the one to finally bring him to justice."

"Yeah, I did," nodded Anakin. "But in the end, that's just not how it happened. Besides, Jedi don't carry grudges, remember."

"If I recall, you used to," Ahsoka pointed out.

"Kicked the habit," Anakin chuckled. "What about you? Ventress tortured you, but Aayla was the one to take her down as well? Aren't you jealous."

"You know, I get the feeling I should be," Ahsoka said, "But for some reason, I'm not. Maybe what Aayla did is just so... awesome... that there's no room for jealousy amongst all the awe."

"Maybe," Anakin said. "But I think you're just growing up, Snips."

"You and me both," Ahsoka repeated, grinning cheekily at Anakin. Anakin punched her shoulder lightly. She chuckled and said, "Although, I don't think I'm above a little taunting."

"Oh, me neither," Anakin grinned back. "When we have Dooku and Ventress secure, we should make them watch the footage of the battle."

"Again, and again, and again," agreed Ahsoka. "Just to remind them of how epically they lost."

"While we sit to one side and throw remarks at them, and pretend we're watching a holodrama," Anakin chuckled, lifting his hand, which Ahsoka promptly high-fived. Then, the stars outside seemed to elongate and the ship jumped to hyperspace again.

* * *

While Bly hurried away to make his call to the others, the medical bay on the _Intrepid_ already had three Tamers sitting in it, impatiently waiting for the others to arrive. Rika was sitting on one of the beds and rocking back and forth slightly as she waited. Henry was slowly pacing up and down, and Suzie was watching his progress while sitting on one of the little stools that would allow someone to sit by the bed of someone recovering.

"I cannot believe what just happened today," Henry was saying. "The thought of Aayla taking on three opponents like that without any back-up of any kind... it's just mind-boggling."

"I know," Rika nodded. "But she did it nevertheless. It's just amazing."

"Do you think she's gonna be alright?" Suzie asked. "I mean, I was always told that when someone collapses, it's not a good thing."

"It isn't, you're right," said Henry, smiling reassuringly. "But Aayla only collapsed because she used up too much energy in the battle, and who can blame her considering the opponents she was going up again. It's just a one-off, she'll recover quickly enough. If she collapsed for no visible reason whatsoever in the middle of the day or something, then I would be worried."

"Oh, good," Suzie sighed, smiling back. "I can't stand the thought of losing her."

Rika chuckled and said, "Come on, Suzie. Aayla's too awesome to die."

"Yeah, I know," Suzie nodded emphatically. "She's so cool. I'm glad she was the first Jedi to meet with Renamon when we came here."

"Aren't we all?" asked Henry.

The door suddenly swung open to reveal the pointed face of Kyubimon on the other side. The fox slipped through the door, Terriermon balancing on her neck fur and supporting Aayla's head, while Chewbacca and Turuiemon followed on to steady the Twi'lek. The three Tamers immediately headed over as Kyubimon drew up by one of the beds and crouched down, allowing Turuiemon and Chewbacca to gently move Aayla onto the bed.

"How is she?" asked Rika, as Terriermon carefully placed Aayla's head on the pillow.

"She's okay," said Turuiemon. "She's been through a lot today. She's probably going to be pretty lethargic after she wakes up though. She used up so much energy during that battle that if she were a Digimon, she would have ended up de-digivolving to a smaller level."

"DemiAaylamon," chuckled Terriermon, as he perched himself on the pillow. There of chuckles at these words, and Turuiemon sprang into the air, de-digivolving to Lopmon as she did so and sailing over to land on the other side of Aayla's head. Kyubimon reared onto her hind legs and did the same thing, returning to her Rookie form of Renamon.

"She should be up soon," said Renamon. "Although I'll feel better if one of those med droids is inspecting her." She walked over to the other side of the room to activate one of them.

"Still, she deserves a good rest," said Lopmon. "Especially after all that leaping about and duelling she did earlier."

"I told her that she should take up dancing, did I not," Terriermon grinned. "And it turned out I was right all along."

"I still can't get over the fact that she did it all on her own," Henry said, truthfully. "That would be like... Gargomon fighting off Pajiramon, Majiramon and Sandiramon all at once."

"Are you comparing my fellow Devas to those three?" Lopmon asked, eye twitching slightly. "I'll have you know that those three are nothing like the opponents that Aayla faced off against today."

"And give Aayla more credit, Henry," Terriermon laughed. "I'd say it would be like Rapidmon taking on those three at least."

"No, I was just saying that it's phenomenal, and wouldn't see possible," Henry said. "I wasn't trying to cause offense Lopmon."

"And I was just joking," Lopmon replied. "But I suppose, in a way, you're right. She did do that by herself."

"Yes, and you know what," Renamon said, as she returned and ushered Rika and Suzie out of the way so the medical droid could get through to examine the patient. "She shouldn't have had to do that. I know that the fact that she did is amazing, but why did she block us out of her mind like that? Why didn't she call for help? We could have helped her."

"She just wanted to help us, Renamon," said Lopmon. "She wanted to make sure that we stayed alive."

"Yes, but we wanted to make sure that _she_ stayed alive," Renamon protested. "I don't like the idea of her trying to sacrifice herself to save us, since we're supposed to be a team. I'm sure you'd all agree with me when I say that we love her too much to lose her."

"Yeah, I agree with that," Suzie said.

"Yes, but don't you see, Renamon," Henry said. "That argument works both ways. She didn't like the idea of _you _sacrificing yourselves to save her. She loves _us_ too much to think of the idea of us dying. You can circulate that argument around forever, but you won't get anywhere, because both of you are arguing over essentially the same reasons."

"He's right," Rika nodded. "She wanted to protect you guys, just as you wanted to protect her."

Renamon sighed. "Yes, I know," she said. "I suppose I just don't like the idea of being powerless to help my friends. Even thought Aayla defeated her opponents, we came so close to losing her today."

"Everybody's had their own fair share of trouble since we came together as a group," observed Lopmon. "Now, I suppose it was just Aayla's turn. And she did the right thing by trying to protect us, while we did the right thing in turn by going back anyway. None of us did the wrong thing."

"No, not even Bly," agreed Terriermon. "How about that, eh? We managed to get a clone to disobey an order. That's gotta be an achievement, hasn't it?"

"Yeah, but why did you have to?" asked Suzie. "Why did he leave her alone anyway, even if she did order him?"

"Don't judge Bly too harshly," Renamon said. "He's known nothing but following orders ever since he was brought into existence. And he hasn't had much experience outside of combat. He may be a grown man, Suzie, but he's only one year older than you are, and he's spent the equivalent of your whole lifetime so far on Kamino, doing nothing but obeying orders. We're just introducing him to a new way of thinking, and Bly's been coming along in leaps and bounds ever since we met. Today... today, I think he made the final step to becoming a human."

"True," nodded Terriermon. "I think Bly's a hero almost as much as Aayla today, although for different reasons. Now all we have to do is teach him how to act in everyday environments and he'll be all set for a life after the war."

Following this, the group lapsed into silence, and the only noise was the mechanical creaking of the medical droid as it examined the prone form of the Twi'lek. Aayla was still out of it, but now it looked more like she was in a deep sleep than pure unconsciousness. And that was something. But then again, it had been roughly only fifteen to twenty minutes since she had dropped. Hopefully she wouldn't take long to come round.

* * *

The Yavin system and the Rhen Var system were quite close by. After they stopped off to quickly pick up a prisoner transport ship that had containment fields and transfer it to the hangar, Anakin and Ahsoka quickly made to join the others.

When they arrived at the Rhen Var system, within a surprisingly short space of time, considering the fact that hyperspace travel always seemed to take quite a while in the grand scheme of things, both Anakin and Ahsoka badly wished to go and check in on Aayla on the _Intrepid._ However, they knew they had a more important job on hand at the moment.

They each took a set of four containment cuffs and descended towards the listening post still floating down below them. As the gunship pulled into the hangar, they exited quickly and rushed down the corridors towards the main control room, which they knew the location of since the plan for this listening post was the same as the one they had blown up above Yavin.

When they arrived there, they were just as stunned by the utter mess that the room was in as the others had been, but, even though they both believed the story that Bly had told them, the sight of a stunned Ventress and Dooku lying helplessly on the floor on either side of the room, still surprised both of them. Ahsoka had never met Dooku in person, as she had arrived at the Jedi Temple at roughly about the same time as Dooku left it, and she shuddered at the sight of the man, who still looked vaguely evil, even though he was out of it.

Barriss opened one eye as they entered – the Mirialan was sitting in the middle of the room and she smiled up at the two, noting their stunned expressions. "Impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I must admit I am looking forward to seeing the battle being replayed. Arfour had managed to store it all on his hard-drive," she indicated the bronze astromech standing nearby, who whistled dutifully.

"This place is a wreck," Anakin observed. "And all those lightsaber marks... If anyone ever writes a biography for Aayla, as I am sure someone probably will one day now that she's done this, they should include a picture of what the room was like before the battle and another one of it after the fight."

"We can talk about that later, Master," Ahsoka said. "How many times have you had to stun them, Barriss?"

"Not many," Barriss replied. "Dooku started to wake up once, and Ventress came to a couple of times, although the first of those times she was knocked out by Renamon instead of us. But still, it would be best if we got them secured quickly."

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "Get to it, Snips. You take Ventress. I've got the old man."

"On it, Skyguy," Ahsoka said, darting over to Ventress and taking the four single cuffs and placing them on the ground. Blade hovered over her, ready to stun Ventress again if she started waking up, as Ahsoka took one cuff and snapped it decisively around Ventress' ankle. Then she took another and snapped it around Ventress' other ankle, then she did the same for both wrists, until Ventress looked like she was wearing manacle anklets and bracelets. Meanwhile, Anakin had done the same for Dooku.

"Didn't think I'd be doing this when I got up this morning," Anakin observed. "Come on then. Let's get them in the prison ship." He stood up and levitated Dooku into the air with the Force, as Barriss also climbed to her feet, though she continued to monitor the life-signs of the two captives. Ahsoka followed suit by lifting Ventress, and they, along with Galle and Blade, left the room, with Arfour trundling along behind.

As they walked back to the hangar, Ahsoka hovered Ventress close to the ceiling, so that the Rattataki's head occasionally smacked into it lightly. Anakin turned around and gave her a meaningful look, to which Ahsoka grinned and lowered Ventress a little, but then moved her back up again when Anakin wasn't looking for one last bump before bringing her back down.

As they boarded the gunship with their stunned cargo and left the listening post for good, Galle pulled off the detonator from his belt and said, "Permission to blow the place, sir?" to Barriss.

Barriss held up a hand and silently gave a blessing to Ridge, Barr and Inc, before nodding. Galle hit the button and the entire place began to go up in flames as the little bombs planted in the reactor core did their job.

But they paid little attention to that as they boarded the _Resolute _and quickly transferred the prisoners across the hangar and into the prison ship. Ahsoka took Ventress into one cell and quickly pushed her into the containment field generators on the floor and the ceiling. As soon as she was between them, the cuff on Ventress' wrists and ankles activated and her arms sprang upwards and outwards to about shoulder level and her legs moved together, almost as if she was being crucified without the cross. Ahsoka nodded in satisfaction. That would keep her secure – containment fields would disrupt her connection with the Force as well, so she would be unable to use it to free herself.

Anakin secured Dooku in much the same way, and the three Jedi congregated back outside the ship, assigning Rex and a bunch of other clones to guard the prisoners, and the clones eagerly obliged.

"Wow," Barriss said. "I can't believe we just did that. We placed Ventress and Dooku in cells. We've actually captured them."

"Yep," nodded Anakin. "And it was all made possible by one, single Twi'lek."

"And I say, after this three-way high-five, we go and see her," Ahsoka said, raising her hand. Anakin and Barriss chuckled and rose their hands to meet hers, and then they quickly headed back to the gunship and whooshed out to the _Intrepid._

It didn't take long before they walked in to the medical bay, to find the others crowded around Aayla's bed. The Twi'lek appeared to be sleeping peacefully, and Terriermon and Lopmon seemed to have taken it upon themselves to act like ear-warmers, since they were lying so close on either side of her head. Apparently they'd also decided to cover her with a blanket, so only her head and arms were visible.

"How's the heroine of the year doing?" Anakin asked, the moment he walked in.

"She's alright," said Lopmon, holding up an ear to indicate they should speak quietly. "She hasn't actually woken up yet, but she's gotten a lot better since she collapsed, and the doctor said that the wound on her leg might as well have never happened. That's gotta be a compliment to your healing skill, Barriss."

"Thanks," Barriss said, shyly. "Just doing my bit. It was her that did all the work."

"Yeah," Terriermon chuckled. "Just wait until the Jedi Council hears about this. I wish I could see their faces. Did you guys secure Dooku and Ventress."

"Yep," nodded Ahsoka. "They won't be going anywhere, anytime soon. We've got them this time."

"Thanks to Aayla," nodded Renamon. "The Doctor droid said she'll need to rest for a few days to fully regain her reserves since she lost so much, but with a couple of long sleeps, some protein-rich meals and some vitamins to raise her blood sugar levels, she should be back on her feet soon. She could be back on her feet sooner, but considering the amount of energy she used up, the doctors say they wanted to make sure. We're going to transfer her to a medical station pretty soon."

"Good," nodded Anakin. "Nothing by the best for Aayla."

"That's what I said," Terriermon glared at him. "Are you stealing my other lines as well now?"

"Momentai."

"Oh come on! Will everybody stop d..."

Terriermon stopped talking and blinked, then looked down at Aayla, who had been the one to speak. The Twi'lek's eyes were open and she smiled warmly at everybody, winked at Terriermon and said, "Hey guys."

* * *

Not exactly a cliffhanger, but I thought that would be a good place to end. Hope you liked Anakin and Ahsoka's reactions to what happened. This arc is almost over, and it was the most significant one to date in more ways than one. Dooku and Ventress are captured = important. Grievous is still out there = important. Anakin is still not jealous despite the fact Aayla accomplished this feat instead of him = important. Bly's humanisation = important.

Plus, unlike most other arcs, the results of this one will heavily affect what happens in the next one.

See you Monday.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

The Jedi Council and various members of the Senate are informed of Aayla's actions. How will they react? I'm pretty sure you can guess. Aayla is also transferred to the medical station to begin her recovery. Just a basic ending chapter really. Aayla deserves a good rest.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 129 : Ascension**


	129. Ascension

A thousand pardons for not updating on Monday like I said I would. The camping to see the seabirds left me completely and utterly knackered so I am ashamed to admit that I was a bit too lethargic to write anything on Monday. Nothing of good quality anyway. I put the chapter off until i was more awake so that I could keep it as good as possible. And thank you **Trife** and **g **for being new reviewers. The more the merrier. And since I replied to none of your reviews since you were away, I have decided to reply to all of them here, in order of who reviewed first to last:-

**Bookworm Gal** - Your contributions to the TV Tropes page are most welcome, as was this review. However, I am a little put out that nobody has added anything to the Heartwarming category yet. As author of the story I can't really do that, because I might think something is heartwaming when others didn't, so I'd appreciate your help here.

**Wanderer D **- Yep, that was a little tribute to you. And I like Grievous as well. He is my favourite Star Wars villain, which is partly the reason why I let him escape. His role in the story is still vastly important, much more so that Dooku or Ventress, especially since they are in jail now. As to what Sidious will do, you'll have to wait until the next arc. Or you can guess, because I left a hint at the end of the chapter. As for Bly, well, what do you think he'll do? Thanks.

**Forcystus5 **- Actually, I've done it for 19 days straight instead of 17 but yeah, what can you do? Thank you for your support, and I hope that you'll be looking forward to the next arc. I know I will.

**ECHO230** - I see you noticed the fact that I have never mentioned in the story that Palpatine and Sidious are the same person. I know that anyone who knows Star Wars properly is aware of that fact, but since it is never mentioned in the series or the films, I'm not mentioning it either. Not until the time comes anyway.

**megacoldfusion** - Thanks. You'll see Ventress' reaction to her situation in this chapter actually. And Darth Sidious' reaction will come in Chapter 131.

**Movie-Brat** - Actually, no he won't. This isn't the last we've seen of him in the story though, you're right about that.

**Diao Lover** - A happy ending you say? I wouldn't be so sure about that. Just wait until the next arc. Aayla's troubles are very far from over.

**Geekgirl - **Thanks. Hopefully this chapter will be entertaining as well.

**smileyfox5150** - Excite indeed. He's the most important Separatist character in the future of the story. Though not in the way you might expect.

**g** - Brilliant name by the way. So simple. And you are indeed correct.

Anyway, here it is. The final chapter of the Aayla Secura arc.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 129:- Ascension**

* * *

The Twi'lek smiled gently at the people surrounding her bedside, who were all staring at her with mixed expressions of surprise and relief that she was finally awake again. Aayla felt a bit groggy still, but considering she was considering she was recovering after using just about every ounce of energy she had in her body, that was probably understandable.

"Thank the Force, you're awake," Rika grinned back. "We were so worried about you, Aayla."

"You..." she murmured. "You came back for me."

"Well, what did you honestly expect us to do, you... you stupid Twi'lek?" Renamon glowered down her. "What were you thinking – shutting us out like that and ordering Bly to make sure we all got out of the station before we knew what you were doing?"

"I was just... trying to protect you," Aayla smiled lightly. "Losing all of you... would break my heart. I had to try and make sure that you lived to see another sunrise. And if I had to perish to ensure that that happened, then I would have gladly done it."

"If you weren't lying on what could have been your deathbed," Terriermon shook his head. "I would probably slap you right now. Don't you dare do anything like that to us ever again!"

"Do you know just how horrified we were when we extracted the truth about what you were doing from Commander Bly?" Lopmon demanded. "Do you?"

"Probably about as horrified as I felt at the prospect of the lot of you being cut down by Grievous or Dooku," Aayla replied. "I couldn't let you suffer that fate while I still held the opportunity to prevent it. It would make me fail as not only a Jedi, but as a friend and member of the family."

"But you..."

"We can argue about this round and round and round, but we'd still get nowhere," Anakin interrupted Renamon. "You know that if you had been the one to face off against them, you would have done the same in Aayla's place."

Lopmon sighed. "We all would. Arguing about it with Aayla is as pointless as it was talking about it before. Let's just try and make sure that in the future, none of us are forced into a decision like that again. And, if we are, then please don't exclude us, Aayla."

"I make no promises," Aayla said, coughing slightly. "But I certainly don't intend to do any exercising as vigorous at that again in the near future. But then again, I didn't exactly go looking for it this time around either." She looked up and said, "What happened? Last I remember was passing out and then suddenly I was here and not one with the Force like I should be since you were supposed to blow up the facility."

"We blew up the facility eventually," Barriss replied. "But while you may be a General, we don't always have to do what you tell us to. We all came back for you as quickly as we could and we took care of you. Even Commander Bly and the other clones back with us, and I didn't even have to order him to do it."

"They did?" Aayla blinked in astonishment. "That's... interesting. It's not like Bly to disobey an order of any kind."

"Well, he did this time," said Henry. "And he did it for the same reason as everybody else. You must realise, Aayla, that we will never abandon you, no matter who we have to get through to do it."

Aayla felt her eyes water slightly and a gracious smile crossed her face. "Thank you," she said. "All of you. And I'll have you know that I will never abandon any of you either. No matter who _I_ have to go through to do it."

"You might not have to go through that many people, to be honest, Aayla," Ahsoka grinned. "Once the galaxy hears about what you did down there, the Separatists are going to start fleeing if they hear even the most fleeting rumour that you are on your way. That was amazing, Aayla."

"Indeed," said Barriss. "Truly, you have turned the tide of the war with your actions here today Aayla. Let's see how many of the Separatists are willing to continue to defy the Republic now that their main leader is behind ray shields."

"So you captured Dooku?" Aayla asked.

"And Ventress," nodded Anakin. "Grievous got away, so the war's not over yet, but it shouldn't be much longer now. And you know the best part?" he grinned. "The best part is that this time, you really did do it all by yourself. All those times where you've taken credit for an astonishing feat like cleaning out the Dark Acolytes with your Master when actually the Digimon helped out... they're all in the past. But this time – you can take all the credit for it, and it'll really be yours."

Aayla groaned and said," You know I don't like taking credit for things, Anakin."

"Too bad," Terriermon said from next to her head. "Because you are getting it. If you didn't deserve the title "Heroine With No Fear" before, you definitely do now. We saw the holorecording. You were magnificent out there, Aayla."

Aayla flushed. She opened her mouth to protest, but she was cut off when Lopmon placed on of the fingers on her ears over the Twi'lek's mouth and said, "If you dare try and say anything too modest about this, then I'm going to hit you. Deathbed or not."

"Count me in," Terriermon nodded.

"I think you can probably count all of us in that one," Ahsoka said, socking her palm with her fist.

Aayla chuckled once Lopmon removed her finger and said, "It seems like I'm going to have to take all this. If I don't I'll be subjected to the whims of my bloodthirsty friends. And I'll be honest and say I fear you guys more than I feared Dooku, Ventress or Grievous. Probably because I know the kind of things that Terriermon's scheming mind can cook up."

"I've got some whoppers in store for you this time if you aren't careful," Terriermon grinned. "And even if you threaten me with Jurcian fruit, you won't stop me from carrying them out."

"Wow, it must be serious," Barriss laughed.

"It is," nodded Terriermon. "In fact, I'll go as far as to say that there is only one thing that Aayla has to do to stop me from carrying them out."

"And that is?" the Twi'lek asked.

"Accept Yoda's offer to become a Jedi Master," Terriermon grinned, patting Aayla on top of the head.

Aayla frowned and said, "Do you really..."

"Aayla, come on," Anakin folded his arms. "You can't seriously expect to tell me that you can still think that you aren't ready after what you accomplished today. You did something which Jedi all across the galaxy have been unable to do. People have gone up against either of those three in one-on-one duels and barely come out with their lives intact, or worse perished at their hands. I fought Dooku about a year ago and ended up losing my arm. Yet you fight him along with Grievous and Ventress and come out with only a large gash on your leg, which has already been healed. That's less that Obi-Wan got when he fought Dooku. He got a gash on his leg and his arm. And he still became a Jedi Master shortly after that incident. You've trumped most Jedi in the entire order with this feat. Don't you dare assume you aren't ready."

Aayla stared at Anakin for a few moments and then looked at everyone else crowded around her bed, who were looking at her with earnest expressions. The Twi'lek shut her eyes and chuckled slightly, amused at the stares she was receiving and then said, "Well, I suppose if you all believe so firmly that I should accept the offer, then who am I to refuse? I'll do it."

Terriermon whooped and punched the air with one ear, and Suzie cheered and cried, "Yes! My big sister's going all the way to the top!"

Renamon went over to the Twi'lek's head and said, "Congratulations, Aayla. You're all set to break another galaxy-wide record. You should be proud of yourself."

"But Jedi aren't supposed to be too proud of their own achievements," Aayla pointed out. "We are supposed to be humble."

"That may be," Renamon replied. "But how many of them run around with three human children and three extradimensional beings that they are so close to that they have developed a link to them through the Force? Only three, including you, although hopefully a fourth one is not long in the offing," she glanced and winked at Barriss, who nodded back.

"She has a point Aayla," Ahsoka added. "You aren't an ordinary Jedi. Master Yoda is always saying that."

Aayla stifled a chuckle and said, "Actually I said the same thing to General Grievous after I defeated Dooku when I was trying to intimidate him."

"Well, there you go then," said Lopmon. "You can admit it. You just don't want to."

"And we hear you or even sense that you are having second thoughts..." Terriermon added.

"Then I'm in for a whole lot of trouble," Aayla nodded. "I get it. I get it. Don't worry, I'll accept the offer."

"How much farther are you going to go, Aayla?" Barriss chuckled. "You watch – by the end of the war, Master Yoda is going to name you his successor as Grand Master."

Aayla's face paled at the thought and the room dissolved into giggles at the expression of dread on the Twi'lek's face. "He better not," Aayla murmured. "I don't think that is an offer I would accept, no matter how much you guys asked me to."

"We wouldn't particularly want you to take that offer either," Terriermon grinned. "It would mean you had to spend less time with us."

Aayla sighed in relief. "Well, at least I have your support for that decision. If Master Yoda ever asks me that... well, let's just say I'll take fighting against Ventress, Grievous and Dooku before that any day."

More chuckles ensued from Aayla's words. Then Renamon turned to Chewbacca and said, "Hey, Chewie. Have you still got them?"

Chewbacca looked up and nodded with a gruff grunting noise and lifted his furry paw, stretching across the bed and depositing something in Renamon's own hurry paw. Renamon glanced down at Aayla and held out the two objects in her hand. "Speaking of battling against those three, here's your lightsaber and the spare one that you used against them at the same time."

Aayla lifted her hand and gently took the two weapons from Renamon's paw. She recognised her own hilt easily enough – lightsaber hilts had many different designs, but she stared at the other one for a few moments, contemplating it.

"Ah, so you used Jar'kai," said Ahsoka. "Well that explains at least partially how you were able to survive against them for so long. And it just adds to the awesomeness."

"Thank you," said Aayla, continuing to stare at the lightsaber hilt that would ignite into the green blade she had used in her massive duel. "Well, I don't usually use two lightsabers at once. Using one has always been my preferred style. But... this weapon saved my life and it helped me in one of the greatest accomplishments that I have ever made. Plus, since I took it from Grievous, it must have belonged to another Jedi that he killed."

"What are you saying, Aayla?" asked Henry.

"I'm saying," Aayla turn to smile at the young Tamer. "That I think I'm going to keep this blade. Once I find out who it belonged to then I shall continue to use it in their name. And I think that it would be wrong for me to just deposit this blade off at the Jedi Temple and leave it there after everything that it did for me. Plus, after that bout, I think Jar'kai is my new favourite lightsaber technique anyway. Looks like I'll be fighting with two lightsabers more often now."

"No complaints from us," Terriermon grinned. "It'll just make you look even more badass out on the battlefield."

"And you've definitely proved that you can handle it," Barriss nodded. "I say go for it. That lightsaber can become out new constant companion."

Aayla nodded and her hands moved under the blanket and clipped her original lightsaber to its usual place at her waist. She was going to have to acquire a second one for her new blade, but that could be handled later. Right now, she frowned at Barriss' words and said, "Yes, but here's a question for you. Why did I have to prove that I could handle it?"

Everyone's expression darkened a little at these words and everyone started to glance at one another. "Yeah," said Rika. "That's something I'd quite like to know the answer to as well."

"The information from spies is often misleading," nodded Anakin. "But to mistake Nute Gunray for those three? It just wouldn't happen. Our spy couldn't be that drastically wrong. I wonder which of the Chancellor's spies it was that brought us this information about the listening posts."

"It's possible that Dooku got wind that we knew about them now," said Lopmon. "Maybe he and his followers went there after they learned that the Republic forces would be coming."

"Could be," said Ahsoka. "But I doubt it. If that were the case then they probably would have doubled the security at the station over Yavin as well, but they didn't. It was just the same as always. This was a set-up. I think they deliberately allowed the information to leak to us."

"Agreed," nodded Barriss. "Attacking a station under the belief that Gunray was there while in reality it was those three? It cannot be a coincidence. They knew that we would be going to the Rhen Var station – probably before even we did."

"Do you think that they somehow managed to learn that we exist?" asked Henry. "I find it hard to believe that they just happened to be at the station that the Digimon showed up at. Perhaps they were seeking to try and kill all of our partners."

"You think Chuchi might have ratted us out?" asked Terriermon.

"No!" Ahsoka said firmly. "She wouldn't do that."

"I didn't mean on purpose," Terriermon added quickly. "I'm sure she wouldn't do that either, but do you think it's possible that she made a mistake. After all, this major attack happened right after she learned of our existence. Is that just a coincidence, or did she reveal we exist without realising it."

Aayla shook her head. "I do not believe that Chuchi is to blame, deliberately or otherwise. Not only is she a skilled politician who knows when and how to say things and when not to say things, there are other factors to be considered. Such as the fact that none of them even mentioned you Digimon, or made any attempts to go and find you."

"That's right," nodded Rika. "All three of them focused their attention on Aayla instead."

"But they certainly didn't look surprised to see me," nodded Aayla. "It was almost like they were... waiting for me."

"You think that the confrontation between you and them was not an accident?" asked Henry. "That this whole thing was a trap engineered to try and ensnare Aayla and not the others?"

"It certainly seems that way," Barriss replied sourly. "There must be a reason why they were there, waiting for us, and since it probably wasn't the Digimon then it must have been one of us. And as far as I can tell, they must have been after Aayla."

The mood in the room darkened considerably further and Aayla glanced from one face to another. She noticed that, almost unconsciously, the group around her drew into a tighter circle around her bed, as if they were trying to shield her from threatening things that were out to get her. She was touched, but then she piped up with, "But why would they want me out of the way so badly as to use all three of them at once?"

"Who knows?" Lopmon shrugged. "It could have been any number of reasons. Maybe they thought that you were a big threat to their plans."

"I hope it's not the case," said Anakin. "But this might have something to do with me. I know I had darker tendencies, but those have long been disappearing ever since I was partnered with you guys. And we know the Sith want me on their side, or at least we think that they haven't changed their minds about that. They know I've been slipping away from the Dark Side for some time now and since they don't know about the Digimon..."

"They thought Aayla was solely to blame," concluded Ahsoka.

"If that's the case, Aayla," Renamon said. "You're going to have to be extra careful from now on. Who knows what the Sith will try next to get you out of the picture?"

Aayla nodded wordlessly. Anakin looked shamefaced and said, "Sorry I brought this on you, Aayla..."

"No, don't be," Aayla smiled reassuringly at him. "It might not be the best news ever, but it's still a good sign. If the Sith believe that you have been turned so far from the Dark Side that they need to get rid of me, then it must be a good sign for you, even if it isn't such a great one for me."

"I suppose," Anakin shrugged. "But one thing's for sure, we're not splitting up when we go into battle again. Next time the Sith make an attempt on Aayla's life, I want to be there to fight beside her."

"Ditto," nodded Terriermon.

"I think we can all agree on that one," Lopmon announced. "In a way, the Sith are right to fear you Aayla. You've been doing just as much as the rest of us to throw a spanner in their works, and today you've proven that you are a threat to them with what you did."

"Yes, but we can't assume this is over," Ahsoka agreed. "Dooku might be out of commission now, but Sidious is still out there. And, I'm afraid there is a catch to the awesomeness of Aayla's ordeal today – he's going to want you out of the way more than ever."

"Then I will deal with what he throws at me in the knowledge that you guys have my back," Aayla responded with determination. "I know I can count on your support. Sidious doesn't frighten me."

"His influence in the Senate must be higher than we thought," Anakin murmured. "If they knew which of the two stations you would be at before you arrived. We're going to have to be careful."

"We should probably alert Chuchi," said Terriermon. "She can keep an eye on things for us. It's now more important than ever that we find out exactly who this Darth Sidious guy really is. The war doesn't matter anymore. The other Jedi and the clones are perfectly capable of mopping up the last of the Separatists without our help. We need to focus more on finding this guy somehow. To protect not only Aayla, but everyone in our little group."

"He's right," nodded Ahsoka. "We probably wouldn't be needed for much of the rest of the war anyway. Now that we've caught Dooku thanks to Aayla, the cowardly money-grabbers like Gunray and Hill will lose their confidence, and the Separatist council will probably crumble quite quickly. You've probably almost single-handedly won the war today Aayla. We won't let you get killed for your heroics today. Not in a million years."

There were nods from all around the bed. Aayla's face was grim, but there was the faintest twitches of a smile at the corners of her mouth. The threat to her life was like a cloud seeking to envelop her, but right now she was basked in a ray of sunlight breaking through the centre of the cloud. Her family was here to protect her, and that was all that she needed.

"We'll focus on Darth Sidious more when you've recovered fully, Aayla," Renamon finally supplied. "The doctor droid said that you still require a few days of bed rest before you fully regain your energy. We're going to transport you to the nearest medical facility straight away so that you can get the treatment that you need and deserve."

"Yes," nodded Barriss. "Once there, you will need to take it easy for a bit, and take in lots of protein and replenish your amino acids. Plus, more sleeping would also be a good idea."

"We'll take care of everything else," Rika nodded. "We'll stay with you in the med centre as long as you're in there and help to look after you."

"And then, when you're on your feet again and swinging two lightsabers around with the same gusto as you did earlier today, we'll band together and do everything we can to finally get to the bottom of who this Darth Sidious guy is and then, we'll work together to take him down once and for all."

"There's a medical station not far from here," said Anakin. "It's orbiting the planet Belderone, and it shouldn't take us long to reach the place. I'll head up to the bridge and set us on course for the place to get you into the environment you need, Aayla."

"The environment I need?" Aayla raised an eyebrow. "I can tell you now, that the only environment I need is being right here with all of you."

Anakin chuckled and said, "Be that as it may, you're going to a medical station and that's that. While we're on the way, we'll make a report to the Council and inform them of what's happened today. Then we'll drop you off at the medical station, and Ahsoka and I will head back to Coruscant to drop off our prisoners. But we'll be back as quickly as we can."

"Okay," nodded Aayla. "Thank you, guys. Really, I can't thank you enough. You're all so good to me. I couldn't ask for a better family."

"This is about the time where I'd normally initiate a group hug," said Terriermon. "However, since you're supposed to be getting as much rest as you can, it will have to wait. But, you can expect one the moment you are back on your feet again, Aayla."

"I look forward to it," Aayla chuckled. "In the meantime, I'll use you as a cuddly toy."

"Ack! Not again!" Terriermon cried as Aayla took hold of him and pulled him into a fierce embrace. Laughs pealed from around the room, as Anakin led Barriss and Ahsoka out of the room to go and speak with the Council.

* * *

The Zillo Beast's trashing of Chancellor Palpatine's office a few days ago had meant that the man who led the Republic had had to find new and temporary quarters while his old office was being fixed. The Zillo Beast had done quite a number on it, trashing the room, crushing everything inside and tearing the roof off, but Palpatine had been assured that his new office would be ready within a week.

In the meantime, he had set up a small office inside the small room that was directly beneath the Great Convocation Chamber in the Senate Building, which he would step into so he could get on the podium he stood on and be raised to the very centre of the room. The room was not as large as his old one, but he had himself a desk complete with holocommunicator and there was enough room for several other people to step inside and speak with him.

Currently in there with him was a large number of other people, including Master Yoda and Mace Windu, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Padmé Amidala, Bail Organa, Mon Mothma and young Chuchi. The Senators were currently in the middle of a discussion that had been going on and off for a couple of days now.

"As I have said numerous times, my fellow members of the Senate," Palpatine explained with patience. "I am truly sorry for my recent actions. Had I realised just how intelligent the Zillo Beast was I would never have sanctioned it to come here. Believe me, I wish I could turn back time and reverse the terrible effects that creature had on our beloved capital, but what's done is done."

"That may be," said Bail. "But I still think that your decision to bring the Beast here was rash. Two Senators, Padmé and Chuchi here, nearly lost their lives in the attack. I feel that perhaps the war is making you feel pushed Chancellor. I implore you to discuss some proceedings with the rest of the Senate first."

"Naturally," Palpatine nodded. "The burden of all the deaths I inadvertently caused due to the rampage of the Beast is a burden that will never be lifted from my soldiers. I fear it is a distinct possibility that you are right, Senator Organa. I made the decision in haste, and I assure you, it will not happen again."

"That is good to hear," Mon Mothma agreed. "We must maintain our democracy as best we can, especially now in this time of war. If even you start to fall, Chancellor, then all hope may soon be lost."

"Well, I have no intention of falling anytime soon," Palpatine nodded. Then he turned to the Jedi and said, "Speaking of the war, how goes the most recent skirmishes. Have you received any word from the front lines since we last spoke."

"We have received a report from Master Piell," said Mace Windu. "It seems that the Separatists hold on the Ukio system is strong, and we have sent Jedi Master Rancisis there to help back him up. Hopefully it will be ours again within a few rotations."

"That is indeed excellent news," said Palpatine, smiling warmly. "What about the two listening posts that we discovered above Yavin and Rhen Var. Considering my sources told me that Viceroy Gunray was to be there at one of them, I am naturally eager for news on that front."

"Viceroy Gunray?" asked Padmé, quickly. "Are you certain?"

"Quite certain, my dear," Palpatine said. "My sources have rarely been wrong about such things before. The A-Team, or should I say Team ABC, was dispatched there this morning with orders to find and capture that slippery Nemoidian."

"That would go a long way to ending the war," nodded Padmé, turning to the Jedi. "What is the news about it?"

"Received no word, we have," Yoda shook his head. "Strange, it is. Sure, we were, that they would have accomplished their tasks by now. However, patience we must have. Get in touch, they will, when the time is right."

"I suppose I cannot ask for more than that," sighed Palpatine. "However, I am sure that Anakin and his team-mates will not fail. After all, they have yet to do so for some time now, and adding another Jedi and a Wookiee into the fray will certainly speed things along."

Chuchi hung back while the others did all the talking. She was struggling not to fidget as they spoke about Team ABC, as she was well aware that if they had all gone to these listening posts then so had a certain three human children and a certain three Digital Monsters. She had been right when she had stated that keeping them a secret would be difficult, especially from those she trusted. But Chuchi was adamant that she succeed, especially with the mysterious Darth Sidious somewhere.

Even Senator Organa was a suspect, though Chuchi of course highly doubted that, since he was a strong advocate for peace. Chuchi often considered Senator Deechi. He seemed creepy enough to be one. But she could make no accusations without proof. She kept her eyes open all the same.

"Well, until we receive any word from our brave fighters, I suppose this meeting is adj..." Palpatine faltered when he saw the holocommunicator on his desk beeping. "Ah," he said. "It seems that we may have something right now. Let us have a look." She quickly pushed the button, as Bail and Mon Mothma moved aside to make room for the holograms that joined the circle around the table.

The holograms depicted Anakin, Ahsoka and Barriss. Aayla was nowhere to be seen.

"Ah, Anakin," said Palpatine. "We were just talking about you and your mission to the listening posts. I trust everything went smoothly. Did you succeed in destroying them and capturing Viceroy Gunray?"

Anakin hesitated for a moment and said, "Well, the good news is that both of the Separatist facilities have been completely wiped out. The listening posts above Yavin and Rhen Var are both no more." He paused and said, "The bad news, on the other hand..."

"Hold on for one moment before you continue, Skywalker," Mace held up his hand. "Where is General Secura? She should be here making the report with you, should she not."

"That..." Barriss murmured. "Is actually the bad news, Master. Or part of it anyway."

There were several glances between a couple of the Senators – Chuchi and Padmé glanced at each other fearfully and Mace and Yoda shared a solemn look as well, before Mace slowly and deliberately said, "Go on."

"It seems..." Anakin went on slowly, and everybody around the table couldn't help but notice the depressed looks on all three of the holographic faces. "That your information was partially false, Chancellor. Gunray was not at either of the facilities."

"He wasn't?" Palpatine blinked and then sighed in frustration. "I suppose it was probably too good to be true. The Viceroy is indeed a slippery character. I shall have to have a word with my source about this."

"Yeah, I think you should," Anakin nodded, sourly. "Because your source was even more wrong than you think. There was no-one at the Yavin post, but as for the one at Rhen Var... well, Barriss, you were there. Perhaps you should tell them."

"It was a set up," Barriss replied, her expression turning even more crestfallen. "Gunray wasn't there, but somebody was. And that is why you don't see Aayla standing here with us. Because she found herself..." Barriss paused and gulped. "... in the middle of a battle..." she paused again and shut her eyes, before finally blurting out the last part, "... against Asajj Ventress, General Grievous and Count Dooku all at once."

Shock radiated through the room – everybody knew exactly who those three were. Palpatine gripped his desk hard so his bony knuckles went almost white. Padmé and Chuchi's hands both flew to their mouths in shock and Mon Mothma's own hand went to her heart. Bail's eyes widened and he actually stepped backwards, while Mace and Yoda's eyes both widened for a moment, before Yoda's slowly closed.

"That... that cannot be true," Palpatine breathed. "Surely my information could not have been that out. Are you certain, Knight Offee?"

"Oh yes," nodded Barriss. "It was all three of them alright. Aayla took them all on by herself in order to buy us all enough time to escape from them. She took the ultimate sacrifice to save us all."

"Oh no," breathed Padmé, her eyes closing as he faced her shoes, almost ready to start crying. She had gotten to know Aayla extremely well since she started working with Anakin and she counted the Twi'lek amongst her dearest of friends. Bail wrapped an arm comfortingly around her shoulder.

Chuchi was staring at the holographic Jedi in abject shock. She had not known Aayla personally for very long but she had been an extremely polite and fun-loving person and the two of them had gotten on extremely well. She was bursting to ask about the Digimon too, but she knew she couldn't so she settled for biting her lip and placing her face in her hands.

Palpatine leaned back in his chair and massaged his forehead with his fingertips. "I cannot believe it," he moaned. "I made another mistake. I some of our best fighters into an incredibly dangerous situation and it cost the life of one of the most incredible Jedi the Republic has ever had. How could this have happened?"

"I can't believe she's gone," Padmé sniffed. "She's... she's been there for so long. A part of the A-Team, the unassailable group of Jedi that everyone in the Republic looked up to."

"This is a dark day indeed for the Republic," Mace observed sadly. "We have lost a remarkable Jedi. She will leave a truly remarkable legacy."

There was a moment of silence before Anakin snorted and said, "What _are_ you all talking about?"

Everyone looked up at him in surprise to see that Anakin now had a huge grin plastered over his face, while Ahsoka and Barriss were now both struggling not to laugh. Anakin chuckled and said, "You're all acting as if she lost. Honestly, don't you have more faith in Aayla than that? She is a skilled Jedi, after all."

"Excuse me?" Palpatine frowned in confusion.

"Why are you all mourning for Aayla?" Anakin grinned. "It's not like she needs it."

Mace's solemn face turned into a glower, and he said, "What exactly are you trying to say, Skywalker."

"He's saying that she won!" Ahsoka blurted out, completely ignoring the fact that as a Padawan she wasn't really supposed to talk unless she was spoken to, as she was so eager to tell them. "She took on Asajj Ventress, Count Dooku and General Grievous, all at the same time, and she beat all three of them, hand down."

"She received an injury to her leg in the process and used up most of her energy in the duel," Barriss grinned. "But she defeated all three of them. Unfortunately, Grievous was able to escape, but Dooku and Ventress were both knocked unconscious."

"We have them in custody now," Anakin grinned. "Just waiting for the ferry back to Coruscant."

There was more silence, and then there were a couple of cries of "WHAT?" from Padmé, Chuchi and Mon Mothma.

"Anakin," Palpatine frowned. "If this is some kind of twisted joke then it is not very amusing. I may be no expert in the ways of the Jedi and the Sith, but I doubt even Master Yoda could accomplish a feat such as that. I do not believe that Secura could have pulled off a victory like that alone, regardless of how skilled with a blade she is."

"I have to agree," said Mace. "If this is a joke..."

"A joke, I believe it is not," Yoda said, a smile on his wrinkled face and his large eyes closed. "A change in the Force, I sense. Telling the truth, I believe they are."

"Impossible," Palpatine shook his head. "You must be mistaken, Master. I cannot believe that Aayla managed to defeat three such deadly adversaries at the same time."

"Still don't believe us, huh?" smirked Anakin. "We thought you might have some issues with believing it, so we took the liberty of acquiring the footage of the battle as recorded by a nearby security holocam and converting the whole thing to holographic form. Aayla's astromech now has it stored on his hard-drive."

"Just sit back," Ahsoka grinned, "While we provide you with some butt-kicking from Aayla for your amusement." She turned and added, "Hit it Arfour," to an astromech that was out of sight, before turning back. Suddenly, another hologram appeared in the centre of Palpatine's desk, featuring four small figures approximately eight inches high. Eyes widened as they did indeed behold Aayla Secura, with one lightsaber blade held over her head, facing off against Ventress, Grievous and Dooku. For a moment, the image was paused.

Then, the little recording began to play and everyone clustered around the table to watch, Yoda leaping up onto the side of the desk so that he could see as well, as the battle unfolded, with sound and everything.

As they stared, mesmerised at the whirling and ducking and dodging and spinning clash of blades as the battle unfolded, there were numerous gasps or flinches in the right places where it looked like Aayla was a goner, but the Twi'lek was as nimble as could be and always dodged the attacks. There were numerous moments when one of the combatants would disappear, usually when Force-pushed out of the vision of the holocam, only to reappeared a few moments later. There was one amusing moment where Aayla was force-pushed out of sight and Ventress leapt after her, only to be flung back into camera view to fly across the hologram and disappear on the other side.

Nobody said a word throughout the entire demonstration – breath catching in their throats and eyes slowly widening as they beheld the miniature Aayla holding her own and dancing about to avoid being sliced to pieces. There were no doubts in anybody's mind that this was faked. They couldn't possibly have produced something like this in such a short space of time.

There were gasps at many places, such as when Aayla was hit with Dooku's Force-lightning, or when she slid through Grievous' legs (and when she rolled through them again later), or when Grievous unleashed his second pair of sabers and Aayla acquired her own new one from him later on.

They watched in awe (and a couple of giggles or snickers) as Aayla threw Ventress into a fit of range with her ridiculous choices of words and soundly defeated the Rattataki with a series of fluid motions.

They flinched in horror as they watched Dooku slash Aayla's leg, and stares of astonishment when Aayla kept fighting regardless, followed by another gasp as they saw the old man grab Aayla in a Force-choke, but were stunned when Aayla broke out of it by swinging from the pipe and kicking him in the face, coming to land on him and knock him to the floor moments later and defeat him too.

There were emotional uplifts as they listened to Aayla speaking with Grievous right at the end of the fight, as the Twi'lek attempted to intimidate the cyborg General.

This was followed by a couple of flinches as Grievous charged the Twi'lek, so much so that a couple of them almost turned away, which would have meant they would have missed the explosion of Force Lightning that burst out of Aayla's fingers and crashed into Grievous, sending him flying backwards. Grievous then fled and after a couple of moments, the holographic Aayla crashed onto her stomach and the hologram ended.

There was silence.

Then Chuchi spoke for everyone when she said, "That... was... incredible! She really did it. She actually beat them all."

"Impressive, right?" Anakin grinned. "They didn't even know what hit them a lot of the time. It's a shame that Grievous managed to escape, but we did manage to catch Dooku and Ventress."

"We ordered Anakin and Ahsoka to bring a prison ship with containment fields for them," Barriss supplied. "The clone are watching them, but they aren't going anywhere."

"How is she?" Bail asked. "I saw her collapse at the end there, presumably from exhaustion. Is she okay?"

"She's fine," Ahsoka smiled. "She's in the medical bay, being tended to by the doctor droid and she's already woken up. She just requires a couple of days rest, that's all. We're taking her to the medical station over Belderone. She'll be up on her feet again in no time."

Palpatine was still staring at the spot where the hologram had vanished, his face a mask of shock. He seemed to notice what he was doing and looked up, saying, "Forgive me if I am wrong, but isn't Force Lightning supposed to be a technique that can only be used if you delve into the Dark Side, or so I heard. How was Aayla able to use it against Grievous just then?"

"There are variants, Chancellor," replied Mace. "I am assuming that this was one of them."

"Yep," nodded Anakin. "It was the Electric Judgement – the one that Master Plo Koon discovered many years ago. Aayla told us that she used it instinctively and it certainly seemed to work. She managed to drive Grievous away, so he's still out there. We know that he wasn't caught in the explosion when we blew the place up."

"Nevertheless," Padmé was starting to beam now. "This is absolutely wonderful news. With Dooku in our grasp, as well as Ventress, the end of the war is surely almost upon us. The Separatists may soon open to negotiations with us now that they've lost their leader."

"And their figurehead," agreed Chuchi. "They may start returning to the Republic almost immediately when they hear about this. We should start trying to contact some of them to try and open negotiations."

"I can begin straight away," Padmé nodded. "There are a few Separatists that are old friends of mine. We fell out of contact when they left the Republic but still, I'm sure that they will vote for peace as well."

"This is far from a dark day," Bail agreed. "This is perhaps the best day the Republic has seen for a good long time. And we have one Jedi in particular to thank."

"The Heroine With No Fear strikes again," Ahsoka agreed.

Palpatine's face broke into a smile himself. "Yes, indeed," he said. "Anakin, as soon as Knight Secura is feeling better, you must bring her here. We must congratulate her on her simply stunning victory for the Republic. A victory that I would never have thought possible before today, but now I truly believe that I have seen everything."

"Yes," Yoda nodded, leaning on his gimmer stick. "But in one particular detail, incorrect, you are, Chancellor. When Aayla receives her congratulations, a Knight, she will no longer be. Raise her to the rank of Jedi Master, we must, after her extraordinary prowess in the field today."

"Good to hear you say that Master Yoda," Barriss replied. "We talked it over with her before we made our call to you and she has decided, after a little more urging, to accept the offer to become a Jedi Master."

"Although," Ahsoka added. "She claims that if you make any offers to take a seat on the Jedi Council anytime soon, she'll scream and hide."

Yoda chuckled, and there were numerous other laughs from around the room. The diminutive little creature glanced to the three holographic Jedi and said, "Inform her, that raise her to that rank, we will not. Consent on her part, we would need, for her to take a seat on the Council. But, add this to your report," he smirked, with his eyes twinkling. "Need her permission to grant her position of Jedi Master, we would not anyway. Not after this."

"Agreed," nodded Mace. "I can safely say that Aayla would be promoted to the rank of Master anyway, regardless of her personal feelings on the subject."

"Excellent," Palpatine beamed. "We must come up with an appropriate way to celebrate the Masterhood of young Secura. I believe this breaks the record for youngest Master by a number of years. But first, Anakin, the task now falls to you to ensure that Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress are transported safely to a secure facility here on Coruscant, where we can begin interrogation and ensure that the Separatists cannot free them. If they are allowed to escape again, then young Secura's valiant efforts would be wasted."

"Not wasted, Chancellor," Mace shook his head. "Never wasted. Even if they did escape, such a loss would be a serious blow to their confidence. However, we must indeed take all precautions to ensure that it doesn't happen. Anakin, when do you expect to arrive at Belderone."

"Not long now, Master," said Anakin. "I'd say roughly ten minutes or so. Once we've got Aayla installed there and she's resting peacefully, Ahsoka and I will head back to Coruscant with our charges."

"Is it not more important to transport the prisoners back to Coruscant first?" asked Palpatine.

"Maybe," shrugged Anakin. "But I have to say Chancellor, that to us, Aayla's well-being is our highest priority."

"Very well," nodded the Chancellor. "We must hold a holonet broadcast and get out the message to the people of what has transpired today as quickly as possible. After the recent disaster due to my actions with that Zillo Beast, such a victory will lift the morale of the people no end. And the Separatists will soon learn of it through their own spy network as a result. All the more to end the war quickly."

"We'll be there soon," nodded Anakin. "Dooku and Ventress will be on Coruscant before the day is up. We should be going now. We want to move as quickly as we can."

"Give Aayla our best wishes," Chuchi said, quickly.

"We will," Ahsoka called. "She'll appreciate them." And then the three holograms vanished.

Yoda let out a smile and a chuckle as he glanced up at everyone, his ears perking up along with his head. "Truly wonderful, this day is. Correct, I was, in my judgement concerning Knight Secura's skills."

"Shouldn't that be Master Secura now," Mon Mothma smiled.

"Technically she still needs to go through the ceremony to officially declare her a Jedi Master," replied Mace. "But to all intents and purposes, she is, as of now, an unofficial one."

"Come," Palpatine said, as he rose to his feet. "We must go at once and let the rest of the Republic learn of this. The sooner the word is spread around, the better."

"At last," Padmé smile seemed to be infectious. "It is the beginning of the end. I just know it."

* * *

Ventress snarled and bucked and tossed her shoulders back and forth, but her efforts were to no avail whatsoever. The Rattataki woman had woken up some time ago to find herself in the middle of a cell, with an orange ray shield across the door, a pair of clones standing guard on either side outside, while she herself was locked in a containment field, suspended off the floor in an uncomfortable position, her wrists encased in cuffs that held her arms out to either side at about shoulder height and her legs sticking straight down below her.

"Let me out of here, this instant!" she shouted, flinging her torso around and clenching and unclenching her finger but ultimately failing to move her arms and legs whatsoever. "Do you know who I am and what I can do to you if you do not release me? I promise you that if you don't let me out of this cell right now, I will make your life a very short and painful one!"

"Is that right?" asked a voice as a clone with blue painted armour stepped into view on the other side of the ray shield. "Well forgive me if I sound a little confident, but you aren't getting out of there anytime soon, and I have no intention of letting you out so all your threats are negligible."

"How dare you speak to me in that way!" Ventress growled at the clone. "You are just a measly grunt of the Republic. I am Count Dooku's top assassin. You will show me the respect I deserve."

The clone had the gall to laugh at her words and then said, "I don't show respect to Separatist scum. Not you, not Count Dooku, not anybody. And to think we came here today looking for Gunray. We caught ourselves a much bigger fry, didn't we boys."

The clones standing guard chuckled and the clone speaking with Ventress removed his helmet and tucked it under one arm, smirking at the furious Dark Jedi. "However, I must say it is nice to have our positions reversed, witch. The last time we met, back on Teth, you had the upper-hand. But this time, it is we who have you."

Ventress' eyes widened as she tried to place the clone from the skirmish on Teth that she had ultimately failed. She remembered the way she had grabbed a clone in a Force Choke and then used a Mind Trick on him to get him to contact Anakin. That had to be this clone. He was still alive even after all that time.

This was Skywalker and Tano's clone captain. She didn't know his name, but she felt rage building up inside her – if he was here, then the rest of the A-Team would not be far away.

"Where is Skywalker and Tano?" Ventress growled at him. "Are they too cowardly to show their faces before me?"

"Like heck they are," Rex laughed. "They have more immediate concerns right now, like the health of General Secura. She's resting up right now, but she might pop in to say hello when you both get back to Coruscant later."

Ventress' eyes widened. She didn't actually know how she had wound up inside the prison of a Republic ship, but she had assumed that Aayla Secura had not walked away from her life and had been defeated by Dooku and (though she was reluctant to admit it), Grievous. But this clone was telling her that she was still alive.

"Impossible!" Ventress growled. "You are lying. There is no way that Secura survived our trap."

"The thing about General Secura and the rest of our team," Rex smiled a little scathingly at her, "Is that they... we... often make the impossible possible. You probably thought that you would end up standing next to your Master as ruler of the Galaxy, but in reality, the only thing that you are going to be doing at the end of the war is... pretty much the same thing that you're doing now."

"No!" Ventress shrieked, continuing to buck and writhe as Rex looked on. "I will not be contained. It will get out and murder Secura, Skywalker, Tano, and everyone else who stands in my way. I will not be defeated by the likes of Secura."

"Love to break it to you," Rex smiled. "But you already were. Oh, and just to add insult to injury, I should probably tell you that it was Commander Tano that put those cuffs on you and tossed you in the containment field. So, you've been restrained by her... ooh... twice now?" He and the other clones chuckled.

Ventress' eye twitched with unyielding anger for a few moments before she attempted to lash out with a Force Blast so powerful, she would crush the wall and flatten the clones beneath it. But nothing happened. Her connectivity to the Force was disrupted by the containment field and she resorted to just screaming in rage and shame and humiliation as she tried to get herself loose. She would not be contained by Tano! Not for a second time!

"Wow, someone needs serious anger management," Rex said, impressed by the sheer rage that Ventress was displaying.

"I never thought I would agree with a clone," said a deep voice, that halted Ventress' struggles in their tracks and caused her to go limp with shock. "But I must agree with you on this subject. Ventress, you are giving me a headache with all of your pointless screaming. Please restrain yourself."

"She doesn't need to. Ahsoka Tano did that for her," cracked Rex, and he and the others clones guffawed slightly at Rex's joke. The clone captain high-fived both of them. Everyone in the 501st and the 327th knew what a high-five was since they'd spent so long hanging around with Terriermon. They found it to be an uplifting a jovial way of sharing in triumph.

Ventress meanwhile had slumped completely still in her cuffs. That had been Dooku. Her master, Count Dooku, was in the neighbouring shell. Her skin went from grey to white at this revelation. She had never, ever expected them to be able to capture of even defeat Dooku in combat. He was just... too good for that. It was impossible, and yet she had heard it with her own ears.

Dooku was a prisoner of the Republic, just as she was now.

How? How had that happened? And what had happened to Grievous?

Rex noted the shocked expression on her face and chuckled, saying, "Yeah, General Secura managed to take out Dooku as well as you. Surprised? I have to confess, so were we when we found out."

"Master, is it true?" Ventress called out. "Did Secura really best you as well?"

"Much to my chagrin, I am afraid she did," Dooku replied. "She caught be off guard several times after she continued to fight despite the fact I left a gash on her leg. I severely underestimated her, Ventress. I can now see, at least to a degree, why you hate her so much."

Ventress began to seethe as she visualised her list of people that she wanted to see dead. Aayla Secura was still second on that list, but she had just crept very close to overtaking Ahsoka. However, the fact that Togruta Padawan had turned her into a prisoner _again_ ensured that she stayed on top.

"Too bad that Grievous managed to get away," Rex replied. "But still, nabbing you two was more than enough."

The new knowledge that her most hated enemy within the Separatist walls was still alive and avoided capture sent waves of fresh rage coursing through Ventress and she screamed again, starting to writhe once more.

* * *

The medical station hovering over Belderone was pretty much the same as most of the others, a circular structure with numerous docking ports for medical frigates as well as a couple of smaller hangars for gunships and starfighters, with the long, tapering reactor core down the middle and the roof shaped like the Republic symbol if you looked down on it from above. It was composed of eight large medical bay sections linked together by many thick corridors. The place was run by numerous Kaminoans, as well as more clones that were bred for caring for others instead of for combat or piloting.

Droids were not used here. The majority of the patients were clones and they often preferred to be treated by people that they were familiar with – fellow clones and the Kaminoans that they had grown up with. The medical stations were used by other people in the war as well, but since clones were the usual people that needed treatment, they were usually the only ones that needed catering for.

But this time, there was to be a Jedi coming in.

Aayla had to admit that she felt a bit embarrassed at being towed around on a hover-stretcher and lying still as she was moved out of the gunship that dropped her off in one of the hangars, to be met by some medical clones and a single Kaminoan. She was sure that she could walk on her own, but Renamon insisted that she not get up, so she was being carried around on the stretcher.

As the clones and the Kaminoan led the stretcher through one of the corridors, Aayla used her mind to sense the presences of those around her. She could see the three other Jedi, as well as Chewbacca, but she also knew that there were three invisible Digimon and three invisible human children there as well. The Digimon were determined that they stay hidden – these clones didn't know about them, and neither did the Kaminoans (they knew about the Chrome-Digizoid, but they didn't know where it had come from). And they agreed that with the new threat of Darth Sidious coming after Aayla, their secret should remain even tighter than ever.

Fortunately due to the lack of droids and the more significant lack of security holocams (there were a few, but they were relatively easy to avoid since security was not really needed in medical stations), the Digimon and the Tamers could walk around unseen with ease.

The Kaminoan led them into a private suite. There weren't many of these in the facility – a lot of the clones shared rooms with up to a hundred fellow clones. But Aayla was allowed one of her own considering that she needed privacy a bit more than the clones. Especially since she was the only female patient in the whole facility.

As the Digimon settled not far away and the Tamers huddled around them, the others hovered around Aayla's bed while she was scanned once again by the clones. Then, the Kaminoan turned to them and said, "The diagnosis was indeed correct. Master Secura will not take too long to recover. All she needs is some rest. I will assign her the best meals that she can take to help replenish her lost reserves and if you so wish, we can provide her with the means to have restful sleeps to help her recover faster."

"Thank you," said Anakin. "We appreciate all the help you're giving us. We know that Aayla's in good hands with you."

"Yes," nodded Aayla from the bed. "I thank you as well. When do you estimate that I'll be out of here?"

"Not very long," replied the Kaminoan. "In fact, I'd go as far as to say that you'll be out of here in no time flat. You seem to be a strong individual, Master Secura. The med droid that analysed you may have been mistaken. I estimate that you will be as fit as you were before by this time tomorrow."

"Good news indeed," Barriss nodded.

"Rawhwa shhucao cacooohc acoooh caorcoowhrr Rararoanra ahc," Chewbacca added.

"That too," agreed the Mirialan.

"If you like, we can administer the first course of anaesthetics that will allow you to make a full recovery quickly now," the Kaminoan offered.

"In a moment," replied Aayla. "But first, guys, I think that you had better be going now. I'm secure in the medical station – you need to concentrate on getting the prisoners back to Coruscant post-haste."

"That's the plan," nodded Ahsoka. "But don't worry, Aayla. We'll be back as quickly as we can. Come on, Master. Let's get this over with."

Anakin nodded and replied, "Alright. Don't strain yourself, Aayla?"

"Come on, Anakin," Aayla chuckled. "It's not like I'm going to get up and start dancing. I think I have done enough of that for one day, thank you very much."

Anakin chuckled and quickly made their exit, heading back for the gunship that would take them back to the _Resolute._ Barriss and Chewbacca were left behind, as were the invisible Digimon and Tamers, and the group watched as the Kaminoan wiped a patch on Aayla's arm for a moment and then a clone injected some anaesthetics into the same spot. Aayla didn't flinch. She'd had more than her fair share of injections since she started as a Jedi. Injuries were common, and at least she wasn't about to die, like she had been the first time she'd encountered Grievous. She'd needed to rest in a medical station for two weeks after that incident.

"We'll bring you your meal in a couple of hours," the Kaminoan said, as she and the clones departed from the suite, leaving the others inside the room. Aayla was already beginning to feel drowsy, but she turned around and saw Renamon lowering her perception filter to reveal the other six.

_Guys,_ Aayla murmured sleepily. _Remind me, next time we infiltrate a Separatist facility, to not go charging ahead to the main control room, just in case it turns out that Darth Sidious is waiting for me._

_Oh we'll remind you,_ Terriermon replied. _But we know you won't listen and we'll join you there anyway._

_Anyway,_ Renamon interrupted. _It is good to see that you are on the mend, soon-to-be-Jedi Master._ Her eyes twinkled as she said it.

Aayla chuckled and yawned at the same time. _I always wondered how long it would take for me to ascend to that rank, and what deed would spark it, and whether or not I'd have to take the Master trials like most other Jedi Knights. I never imagined anything quite like what really happened._

_Of course you didn't,_ Lopmon shook her head. _That's your main problem, Aayla. You're better than you think you are. When are you going to acknowledge that?_

_Probably never,_ Aayla shrugged, her eyes drooping. _Anyway, goodnight guys._

_Goodnight Aayla,_ Suzie replied.

_Have a speedy recovery, _added Rika.

And with that, Aayla finally drifted off to sleep again, as her body began to do its work to restore the energy reserves that she had lost in the bout. The Tamers, the Digimon, Barriss and Chewbacca all watched her sleeping with smiles on their faces, hanging over her like guardians. Things were certainly beginning to look up.

But they all knew that Darth Sidious was not going to let this lie. And they were going to ensure that when he struck again, they would be ready to help.

* * *

Another chapter based mostly on conversations, but it was still fun to write, particularly the little semi-prank that the Jedi pulled by making everyone think that Aayla had been killed. It might have been a little mean of them, but it added to the effect.

The only problem is that while this might have been a happy to the arc, all the foreboding warnings I have been putting in are not just to make you think something's going to happen. Darth Sidious is pissed. And this time, Aayla is completely one-hundred percent to blame for his anger. And he wants to make his next move very, very quickly. In the next arc, he will set somebody else upon our favourite Twi'lek. Somebody with a reputation as being the best at what he does.

This arc is not the only one where Aayla must accomplish a task alone. There will be less action in the next one, but hopefully it will be just as exciting.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

Impmon and his gang finally reach their destination – the Temple of the Angel Digimon. But what happens when they are attacked yet again just before they get into it?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 130 : Angels and Demons**


	130. Angels and Demons

EXTREME apologies for my EXTREME tardiness.

The last three weeks have been hell on earth for me when it comes to writing. The first week or so was just due to general laziness considering I was back at home, where writing is harder for me anyway. But then one thing after another just seemed to conspire against me, until I eventually became almost maddened by the fact that I wasn't getting anything done. Hopefully, future chapters will be quicker than this one was, but anyway, I got there in the end.

A long awaited chapter in more than one sense of the words, here we go:-

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 130:- Angels and Demons**

* * *

Impmon was beginning to think that things were looking up for him. His companions had proven to be far more useful to him than he would have ever imagined. He wondered just how far he would have gotten on this little 'adventure' if it weren't for them. To think he had thought Calumon would just be a hindrance to him, but the little white In-training had surprised them all with his powers. The evidence was right above him, in the giant form of Ornismon.

Impmon surmised that he wouldn't have gotten very far. Without them, he might probably still be fruitlessly searching the Forest level for any news of the Angel Digimon, but instead, he was making the final approach to the Temple where, just maybe, he would be granted the audience he sought with Ophanimon, the Digimon who had appeared to him in his visions.

And he might finally be able to get some answers to the myriad of questions that rolled around in his head, such as:-

Why did GranDracmon want him so badly?

Why wasn't he coming out to meet him himself if he wanted him so much?

Why was had Ophanimon decided to appear to him?

And, most importantly, how could he ensure that GranDracmon never managed to get hold of him or take over the Digital World?

Impmon had high hopes that just being in the Celestial Heavens alone would do the job of keeping GranDracmon away from him. But he knew that the whole situation was bigger than just him. He had a whole Digital World to think about. It had effectively become his responsibility, though he was unsure what he could or would do with it. Perhaps there might be a way to seal GranDracmon in his Dark Ocean World, since he doubted that the Great Demon could be killed. He hoped that the Angels could provide an answer. And if they couldn't... maybe their Master could.

It had only just occurred to Impmon, as they made their final approach to the Heavens via information from another gossiping Biyomon, that the Angels probably weren't the only occupants of the Heavens. He'd heard mentions of the fact that the Angels only served one master – Fanglongmon himself. But for some reason it had never really twigged with him that Fanglongmon might actually be there at his final destination until he got close to it. Perhaps his mind had been too focused on Ophanimon and Magnadramon and Seraphimon, but Fanglongmon always went somewhere when he wasn't in the Digital World, and what better place for a God to live than in Heaven?

If Fanglongmon couldn't give him an answer then nobody could. Except perhaps Anubimon, but the God of the Deleted wasn't going to be doing any talking to him anytime soon, or Lopmon and the others would probably be travelling with him as well. But the God of the Living would probably do just fine.

And there was one more tantalising thing that Impmon was bursting to ask the angels – how were the others trapped in another dimension? Suzie's birthday had been almost three months ago, and that had been the last time that he had heard anything about their progress. A lot could happen in three months. And other than the fact that they had found some friends and appeared to have found a niche, Impmon had no clue what they had been doing all this time. And he wanted to find out. Today.

The questions rolled around in his mind as his eyes stared, unfocused, at the back of Wingdramon's head. Impmon was seated on the huge lance on the blue dragon's back once again, although seated might not be the right word considering his legs were secured to the larger Digimon by Lilamon's Lila Shower ribbons and he was lying on his stomach, to allow Wingdramon to travel faster than he normally would.

Lilamon was seated behind him in a similar position, although she had insisted on not lying down all the way so she didn't have to spend the whole journey staring at Impmon's backside, which would be embarrassing for both of them.

Wingdramon kept glancing upwards. For what was probably the first time in his life since he had gained his wings, he was flying in somebody else's shadow for a change. He knew there were larger flying Digimon out there, like Zhuqiaomon for instance, but the dragon had never actually met any of them. But now, his old buddy Diatrymon had digivolved to the Mega Level and he was massive! Ornismon dwarfed the dragon and was flying above him, flapping his immense wings occasionally but most gliding. Calumon was seated behind his head, holding onto the turquoise plumage that ran down the middle of Ornismon's back.

Ornismon's prediction that they would gain ground faster if they utilised his new powers of flight had proven to be accurate. Without Diatrymon dangling from his hands, Wingdramon was able to go faster, and Ornismon was capable of keeping up, though if Wingdramon had wanted to move at full speed he would have been left behind. Wingdramon would also have been at the Temple by now, but Lilamon and Impmon would probably also be dead.

Up until now, the journey had mostly been done in complete silence, each member of the party lost in their own private thoughts. Even Calumon could sense the change in the air as they got closer. But then, Lilamon reached over and tapped Impmon on the shoulder. The Rookie turned around and said, "Yeah, what is it, Petal-head?"

"Just wanted to make sure that you were alright," she said, smiling brightly at him. "Hoping that you were feeling better now that we're getting close. I know things have been hard for you. We all do."

Impmon nodded gratefully. "Thanks," he said. "I'm good. I... yeah, I am feeling a little more optimistic I suppose. But I won't feel much better until I am actually there. Nearly there means that we still aren't safe yet."

"Someone's being a worrywart," chuckled Lilamon. "Though considering all the poo we've been through, I suppose that's understandable. Just try to relax yourself. We'll be there before you can say, 'Lilamon's the greatest.'"

Impmon snorted and shook his head, wondering how long he would have remained sane if Lilamon and Calumon hadn't been there to provide more insane company. "Why would I ever want to say that?" he asked, jokingly. "And poo?"

"You might want to say it because it's true," Lilamon pouted. "And because friends are supposed to give each other compliments. And I said poo because it's a funnier sounding word than crap."

"It's not much of a curse though, is it," Impmon chuckled.

"So what?" Lilamon shrugged. "I've heard you say the words 'Holy crap' before. You do realise that whenever you say that you are effectively calling poo sacred. Holy poo."

Impmon chuckled and said, "How did we get on this topic?"

"I said poo," said Lilamon. "You carried it on. Don't blame me."

Impmon rolled his eyes and said, "And so you want me to say that you're the greatest, so you?"

Lilamon flashed him a grin and said, "Well, you don't have to, but it would be very nice."

"And suppose that I don't," Impmon teased her.

"Then no more hugs for you," Lilamon put her nose in the air.

"Oh, no, please!" Impmon cried out. "Anything but that. I live for hugs."

"Then say it," Lilamon folded her arms and tapped a petal on her forearm expectantly.

Impmon sniggered. Lilamon had been right. The proximity to the Temple was beginning to affect his mood – making it lighter than it had been for a few days, despite the brush with Darkdramon earlier that day which had severely grated on him. Lilamon raised an eyebrow at him and Impmon said, "Alright, alright. Fine. I'll say it. Lilamon's the g-"

"Guys!" Ornismon suddenly shouted down from above with his raucous voice. "There! Dead ahead! I can see a large building right out in the middle of the plain. If that's not the Temple, then I don't know what is."

Impmon blinked and then looked behind him at Lilamon again. The two of them held eye contact for a moment before suddenly they both burst out laughing. "Well, what do you know?" Impmon chuckled between his giggles. "It looks like you were right. We did get there before I could say it."

"Maybe I should take up fortune telling," Lilamon giggled, clutching her stomach with her petals.

"Aaaww, did I miss a joke?" whined Calumon from up above. "I love jokes."

"It was more the usual banter these two share," Wingdramon called up to them, soaring lower to the ground. The dragon couldn't see the Temple yet, but Ornismon definitely had superior eyesight, and Wingdramon's speed increased ever so slightly, as did Ornismon's. Both of them were eager for their journey to finally come to an end. "Nothing special."

"Finally," Impmon breathed, shutting his eyes for a moment and then staring into the distance just as a large lump appeared on the horizon, which was rapidly growing as the two airborne Digimon made their way towards it. "Finally, we're here. I... I was beginning to wonder if we would ever make it but... here we are."

"Indeed," agreed Lilamon, peering over the Rookie's shoulder. "But, um, I think you're forgetting something."

"I am?"

"Yes," nodded Lilamon. "You still haven't said it. You got cut off."

Impmon laughed and said, "Alright, fine. Lilamon's the greatest. There, I said it. Happy now?"

"Not half as happy as you'll be when we finally walk through the doors of that place," Lilamon grinned. "But yeah, I'm happy. Now I just need to get Calumon to say it and you'll all have done it."

"Huh?" Impmon asked incoherently.

"She's referring to the fact that both myself and Diat- I mean, Ornismon, have been coerced into saying those same words in the past," Wingdramon remarked. Lilamon stuck her tongue out at the back of his head cheekily. "And put that back in your mouth before I am forced to clonk you over the head," he added, causing Lilamon to withdraw her tongue very quickly. Wingdramon looked over his shoulder and winked at them both, and they both winked back before all three turned their attention back to the rapidly approaching building.

"Wow," they heard Ornismon murmur from above them as they got closer. The bird had the best vision, so the details of the place could be seen by him first, and as they got nearer, what the giant Mega was seeing became discernable to everyone else too. The sight took their breath away, and, almost comically, all five sets of eyes seemed to widen as they looked at it, and continue widening the longer they stared.

The building was a stunning display of architecture. For a start, it was absolutely massive, big enough to be a cathedral or a palace, let alone a Temple. As they swept down towards it, even Ornismon began to feel a little bit dwarfed by the massive structure. And it was a display of colours that looked like they should probably clash with one another but somehow worked beautifully.

The roof was composed of immense tiles of a glittering blue substance, almost like jade, which glinted in the bright non-sunlight of the Digital World, sending sparkles of reflecting light back up into the sky and in numerous other directions as well. Impmon wondered if it even was reflections, or that the tiles were not just glittering on their own, as the light seemed to move, as if they had minds of their own and did so at impossible angles, making it look like the ground around the entire temple was also sparkling.

The walls looked to be made of bronzish-brown or perhaps copper, which also shone, gleaming in the day. Massive pillars composed a large portion of the structure, one at each of its four corners and many others along its length at regular intervals. The pillars were the same colour as the roof, except for the numerous sculptures and carvings which decorated their lengths – little cherubs and angels and fairies that almost seemed to move as if they were alive, dancing across the pillars and the walls.

The building was longer than it was wide, giving it an oblong shape. At one end, there was a great pair of double doors, which appeared to be made of some metal that Impmon thought was probably Chrome-Digizoid. It was, but it had the colour of platinum. There was a large carving on the door, that depicted the four Sovereigns, stationed at the four points of the compass that they ruled – Ebonwumon above, Zhuqiaomon below, Azulongmon on the right and Baihumon on the left, and in the centre, a large flame which was actually flickering even though it wasn't even real fire.

Above the door and below the ceiling was another carving, which depicted a Digimon that Impmon had seen once in a flashback – his purifier, Magnadramon. The draconic angel was also moving, flying slowly round and round in one great big circle.

One the roof above the door and the Magnadramon carving was a statue, or rather three statues melded into one. Impmon gasped as he laid eyes on it. The middle of the three was a Digimon he had never seen before in real life but could only be Seraphimon, standing tall with his arms folded over his chest like some giant sentinel. One the left was Ophanimon herself, holding her large javelin in both hands and in a combat stance which seemed to radiate calm and grace. But on the other side...

"Cherubimon," breathed Impmon.

It was indeed the Mega Form of Lopmon and Suzie combined. The statue probably wasn't to scale, as Cherubimon was huge but the statue version of her was about the same size as the other two. The detail on her was astonishing. She appeared to be facing the other way, but looking over her shoulder and giving a thumbs up. Impmon bit his lip as he looked on Cherubimon's statue, and forced himself to look away. He'd find out what had happened to Lopmon soon.

But, dominating the entire structure was another statue, perched on the roof and rearing up on its hind legs. Fangs bared, tail lashed out behind it, claws brandished and armour gleaming, it was a replica of the great Fanglongmon himself, looking down on everyone below. The statue wasn't life-size – Fanglongmon was actually probably larger than the Temple itself. But it was still pretty impressive nonetheless.

Nobody said another word as they settled down a short distance from the doors. Lilamon released the ribbon's pinning her and Impmon to Wingdramon's giant lance and the two hopped down to the ground, Wingdramon continuing to hover above them. Calumon bounced down from the back of Ornismon as the Mega landed with a graceful thud. A flash of light later and the huge bird was back in his Champion form of Diatrymon.

"Suddenly I feel very small," Diatrymon observed as the five of them gazed up at the huge structure, awestruck. "And not just because I've shrunk to a significantly smaller form. But that building is massive."

"And very grandiose," agreed Wingdramon. "Definitely appropriate considering this might just be the gateway to heaven. Look at the base," he nodded to the ground with his head around the corners of the building. Impmon, who had been staring upward for the whole time, hadn't noticed that the area where the building met the ground was blurred, as if the building was being held on a small blanket of mists that was obscuring the bottom. Perhaps this was some form of indication of how the building moved around, other than divine providence.

"It's... so... shiny," Calumon's eyes were as big as saucers. "I like this place. I could live in there and never get bored of staring."

"That would be a first," Impmon murmured.

The little, white In-training Digimon turned to look up at his taller friend. "So... we're here," he pointed out. "We've got to the Temple place that we heard about from Wizardmon. What are we supposed to do now?"

"Well," Wingdramon replied. "I suppose we should probably go up and knock or something."

"Knock on the gate of heaven?" asked Lilamon. "Shouldn't there be some kind of... royal doorbell thingie?"

"How should I know?" Wingdramon shrugged. "This is my first time going anywhere near a place like this. I'm just offering a suggestion."

"Well, one thing is for sure," Impmon replied. "We need to get in there. Maybe we can work out what to do when we're inside? Where is everybody anyway? I thought that there should probably be a load of Digimon here coming to offer their prayers to the Angels and Gods. That's what Deputymon said."

"Yeah," nodded Diatrymon. "But maybe there isn't a town of some kind within easy walking distance."

"Or maybe they're already in session," Lilamon nodded. "Maybe we should go and check."

"But what do I say?" Impmon turned to glance at her. "What am I supposed to say when I get in there? I doubt that Ophanimon or any of the others are going to be waiting on the other side of the doors and welcome me in with open arms. And how do I know that I'll even be able to get inside."

"Huh?" Lilamon raised a brow questioningly.

"That Pumpkinmon I..." Impmon faltered and shut his eyes, clenching his teeth as he remembered the terrible fate he had brought to that poor Digimon, "...met, said that evil Digimon probably couldn't get in there. What if I can't because I've got too many darker tendencies. You saw what I nearly did to those Honeybeemon..."

"Oh, shut up," Lilamon rolled her eyes and reached down, grabbing Impmon by his tail and hovering in the direction of the Temple, jerking Impmon off his feet and dragging him along behind her as she did. "Don't start doing that again," she chuckled, as she Impmon protested loudly and Diatrymon and Wingdramon started guffawing as they followed behind her. "Of course you can get inside. Let's prove it to all of ourselves. Stop worrying about and just get in there."

Just as Impmon was convinced that Lilamon was either going to accidentally pull his tail off or do something silly like pick him up and fling him at the doors of the place, there was a sudden piercing shriek and that all too familiar feeling lanced down Impmon's back. Before he could do more than shout, "Guys, l-!" some sort of large black blur streaked out from the sky above and crashed to a halt directly in front of Lilamon. Lilamon gasped and pulled up, and was immediately slammed in the stomach by some kind of large staff, driving the wind out of her and sending her crashing to one knee, when the other end of the staff whooshed forth and nailed her in the forehead, sending her flying backwards to lie in a limp heap, dazed from the unexpected attack.

During the strikes, Lilamon had accidentally let go of Impmon, and the little Rookie only had the chance to gasp at Lilamon's beating and ignite his hand with fire before he was suddenly seized in a large hand and found himself staring in a bony, leering face that somewhat resembled MetalPhantomon's, except actual bone instead of metal. It had the same yellow, glowing orbs in the eye sockets.

"Gotcha," leered the Digimon.

Other noises prompted Impmon to turn around to stare at his companions. Lilamon was still lying on the floor, rubbing her head and trying to regain her senses, but once he had spotted the Impmon was in trouble, Diatrymon had suddenly charged forwards. He didn't get very far, because another blur whooshed in from the side and slammed Diatrymon broadside. Squawking in surprise, Diatrymon found himself being flipped onto his back and crashing to the ground. The bird kicked up at his assailant, but the blur dodged aside with a single swift movement that Impmon could barely follow, before swiping its staff in and pinning both of Diatrymon's legs to the ground and planting a foot on the underside of Diatrymon's heavy beak, pushing that to the ground as well.

Wingdramon had moved in a similar fashion, lifting himself into the air and preparing to whoosh forwards, when a third black blur intercepted him as well, crashing into the ground before him and bounding up to slam him full in the stomach. Wingdramon coughed at the brutal blow and the attacking Digimon dashed beneath him and grabbed the dragon's large tail, pulling him down to the ground with inhumane strength and slamming him into it. Wingdramon gasped and he threw up dust with the impact, and his attacker suddenly leapt onto his chest, pointing his staff at the Ultimate's face threateningly.

Everyone looked up at their respective attackers, to discover that they were all the same kind of Digimon. Lilamon got up from her position on the floor, readying her Marvel Shot, but was unsure which one to attack first. Calumon's wide eye expression of awe had changed to terror as he gazed upon the three evil Digimon.

"Lord GranDracmon will be most pleased that we got here in time," said the one holding Impmon.

The little Rookie couldn't believe it. They had come so close and it seemed that his moment of hesitation had put them all in danger once again. Cursing himself for an idiot for being right outside the doors and not entering the Temple immediately, he glared at the Digimon gripping him in his huge clawed hands. It was almost literally a human skeleton Digimon. The grinning skull, with leering and glowing eyes was perched on top of a bony neck, which was situated on the thick ribcage. Below that was the pelvis attached to the backbone and the legs, which was the only part of it that had clothing – black trousers with large boots at one end and a long cloth trailing from its waist before and behind it. Long arms splayed out from each shoulder.

However, there were a few key differences. For instance, the teeth in the skull and the fingers at the end of its limbs were all pointed, making the creature more demonic with claws and fangs. It also had a pair of bat-like wings jutting out from behind it, and had a long staff in one hand, with a large yellow jewel at one end and a curved hook at the other. And the bones themselves were the wrong colour. The skull was mostly black, but most of the rest of it was red, and there was a red bat-like symbol on its forehead. Plus, there also appeared to be a few bat-wing-like protrusions jutting out the back of its skull.

SkullSatamon.

Three of them.

This was not good in so many ways.

"I thought GranDracmon had already sent his allotted attack of the day," Impmon growled as he squirmed slightly in the grip of the SkullSatamon holding him in one hand, his eyes roving over the others to ensure that they were alright. None of them appeared to be too injured, but Diatrymon and Wingdramon were pinned down, Lilamon appeared to be still trying to clear her head and Calumon... well, he hadn't really been noticed, but he'd frozen on the spot.

"Darkdramon failed," the SkullSatamon holding him replied. "But of course, our master could hardly let you got strolling into the Temple of the Celestial Heavens now could he? You might have started to learn something that he doesn't want you to hear from them, mightn't you?"

"But not now, huh?" the SkullSatamon holding Diatrymon down added, snickering. "I'm pretty sure you can guess what's going to happen next, little guy, but you're going straight to GranDracmon. And he's very anxious to meet you face to actual face for the first time in many years."

Impmon blinked. He and GranDracmon had met before? But... he had thought that GranDracmon couldn't leave his homeworld, so how had that worked?

He shoved it aside for now as he heard Lilamon, recovered from the blow to her head and stomach, demand, "Let my friends go right now, or I will be forced to make you?"

"Listen to that," the SkullSatamon with Impmon snickered. "The little fairy thinks that she can take us on. That's not going to happen. I still say that Lord GranDracmon should have sent us to capture our..." he chuckled. "Pathethic former master... a long time ago. We've been here half a minute and we've already got them all."

"We're wasting time here," the SkullSatamon from atop Wingdramon growled. "We're supposed to be delivering our target to the Master as quickly as possible. Then we can earn our reward, so let's stop chatting a get back to the Dark Ocean."

"Yeah," nodded the one with Diatrymon. It paused and said, "Uh... how?"

The one with Wingdramon rolled its glowing eye-orbs and murmured. "We get out into the open and then use the power that GranDracmon instilled in us right before we came to this forsaken place to hop back to that dimension, remember."

"Oh yeah," nodded the other one, who clearly wasn't quite as intelligent as the other two.

Impmon gritted his teeth. He still hadn't completely recovered all his strength from the beating he had received at the hands of Darkdramon, and although he knew that these SkullSatamon were not nearly as powerful as his former opponent, they were still pretty strong. But he was damned if he was going to let them take him away to the Dark Ocean without resisting with everything that he had in his arsenal. So, with a growl he cried, "You'll have to take me out first," and digivolving.

The SkullSatamon holding him cried out in pain as his hand was suddenly wrenched open by the rapidly growing Digimon. His stepped back and clutched his wrist as Beelzemon Blast Mode took shape in front of him, though with Berenjena noticeably missing from his right arm. But the reason for this was quickly revealed as Beelzemon lashed his fist backwards over his shoulder, his metal encrusted knuckled slamming into the SkullSatamon's face. Unprepared for the over-the-shoulder blow, the Demon Digimon yelped and backed up slightly, but the hard bone had resisted the punch to a degree.

Beelzemon whirled around, Berenjena taking its usual place on his arm, before launching himself in for the attack.

The two SkullSatamon looming over the others had little time to react to the plight of their comrade because they promptly found themselves under attack as well. Momentarily distracted by the digivolution, the SkullSatamon standing on Wingdramon's chest didn't spot the huge tail rising towards him in time and was startled when it suddenly whipped around his ribcage and he was bodily flung into the air. Wingdramon awkwardly rolled onto his front, flaring his wings and rising up from the ground to fly straight at the skeleton. SkullSatamon managed to recover itself enough to zip out of the way quickly, and Wingdramon swooped after him.

The chase was on.

* * *

With only one target left now thanks to the quick actions of Impmon and Wingdramon, Lilamon whirled around and pointed both flower-hands at the remaining evil Digimon and let fly with a Lila Shower which wrapped around the staff holding Diatrymon's legs down and the foot pressed into the bottom of his beak and yanked. The SkullSatamon was pulled off the Champion Digimon and growled, lashing to try and free itself of the pink ribbons. Lilamon winked at it and unleashed a barrage of Marvel Shots _without _releasing the Lila Showers. The energy spheres whooshed through the middle of the ribbons and crashed into the SkullSatamon.

Howling in rage and slight pain, the SkullSatamon was thrown backwards. It prepared its staff for an attack when it was suddenly slammed in the back by Diatrymon, who had flipped back onto his feet automatically and charged. SkullSatamon was thrown to the floor and Diatrymon immediately stamped a foot on the back of its ribcage and pushed down.

A normal humanoid's bones would have been crushed by the stamp, but the SkullSatamon merely howled in pain for a moment before lashing out with the hooked end of its staff, which snagged Diatrymon's neck and pulled him over with a squawk of pain. Lilamon quickly unleashed another Marvel Shot barrage as it got up, but the SkullSatamon dodged by leaping into the air and whooshing into the air momentarily.

Lilamon hurried over and helped Diatrymon up. "You okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," nodded the bird. "Just a little irritated. I'm going to take that staff in my beak and snap it like a twig."

"Good luck with that," sneered the SkullSatamon. "Since you want to make this difficult, I suppose I shouldn't disappoint you. **SKULL HAMMER!"** He roared as he whooshed down at blurring speed and lashed out with his staff with inhumane strength. Both Lilamon and Diatrymon had already had enough of being whacked by the staffs of these beings so they quickly leapt to either side, as he slammed it into the ground between them.

Diatrymon whirled around and let off a **"DESTRUCTION ROAR!"** at the creature. Lilamon did much the same thing with another **"MARVEL SHOT!"** One blur later and the SkullSatamon had flipped aside. The two attacks kept going and Lilamon and Diatrymon were forced to dodge the attack of the other quickly. Lilamon dropped onto her back as the shockwaves of Diatrymon's roar passed over her, while Diatrymon sprang up, allowing the Marvel Shot to pass beneath him.

"Sorry!" cried Lilamon, as she got up.

"Me too," Diatrymon cried. "He's fast, I'll give him that. We need to double-team him properly."

SkullSatamon blurred in and slammed his staff into his neck, eliciting a strangled squawk as his air supply was cut off and he was bowled backwards. SkullSatamon turned and leered at Lilamon before charging and swinging its staff again. Lilamon hurriedly formed a pair of Lilac Daggers and lashed up, catching the staff with one of them and halting its progress while lashing out with the other and stabbing it into its ribcage.

This had not been a good decision. SkullSatamon grunted as a section of its ribs disintegrated but other than that the attack had little effect, since there was nothing in there. Lilamon only just had time to figure this out before SkullSatamon broke the lock with her other dagger and twirled its staff, so it crashed into the back of her head and knocked her flat.

Lilamon rolled onto her back as SkullSatamon loomed over her and raised his staff to strike down at her with the viciously curved hook at one end. Now was the sort of time where Lilamon regretted not having feet that could give decent kicks. She rolled aside as the hook slashed into the ground to the side of her, barely missing nicking her arm. SkullSatamon leered as he raised his staff again.

Only for him to be slammed into by Diatrymon, as the bird Digimon screeched and charged in with a flying Mega Dash Impact that crashed into SkullSatamon and sent them both rolling away, allowing Lilamon to scramble to her feet. Diatrymon and SkullSatamon rolled over and over, metal clashing against bone as they scrabbled against one another. But, in the end, the Ultimate won out and clobbered Diatrymon in the face with a Skull Hammer.

Lilamon hurriedly responded with a flurry of Marvel Shots, which zoomed across the gap between them and lanced at SkullSatamon. The Demonic Digimon saw them coming and leapt into the air, zigging upwards in a flurry of movements that Lilamon tried to follow with her arms, keeping up a continuous stream of Marvel Shots as she followed SkullSatamon across the sky. But he was too fast and easily avoided her shots.

The Ultimate whirled around and shot straight for her, dodging aside as iridescent energy spheres continued to lance at him. Lilamon gritted her teeth as she tried to correct her aim, with SkullSatamon getting nearer with each passing second, but he just kept up the dodging. Finally, once Lilamon had judged he had got far too close for comfort, she whirled around and unleashed a cloud of Un Deux Pollen from her back flower.

SkullSatamon ploughed into the cloud of pollen and gasped, faltering in surprise as the twinkling silver dust floated all around him and settled on him, giving him a slightly ethereal look. But other than that, nothing seemed to happen. He looked questioningly at Lilamon and asked, "What exactly was that meant to do?"

Lilamon's eyes widened. Her attack had no effect. You couldn't paralyse a skeleton – it had no nerves. SkullSatamon leered and readied his staff...

...which was the point that Diatrymon slammed him from the side with another Destruction Roar.

"Gah!" SkullSatamon growled in annoyance as he tumbled several metres and flipped back onto his feet by digging his staff in the ground to halt his progress. "You're getting annoying," he growled at the bird.

"I am?" Diatrymon asked. "Huh, fancy that. Usually, that's Lilamon's talent."

"Hey," protested the fairy.

SkullSatamon snarled and leapt forward again, the jewel on his staff glowing as he prepared to unleash another attack.

* * *

He wasn't the only SkullSatamon giving their combatant a hard time.

"Will you stop moving!" Beelzemon shouted in irritation as he let fly with another barrage from his shotguns. The SkullSatamon that he was facing gave out a barefaced laugh in response as he dodged the bullets streaking towards him easily enough, zipping out of the way at speed so high that he barely became traceable. Beelzemon whirled around as SkullSatamon zipped around him and attempted to gun him down, but the minion of GranDracmon remained elusive.

"You've gotten slower," SkullSatamon chuckled. "I remember when I used to be in awe of you. But that time has long gone. I'm winning this match."

"Is that right?" Beelzemon asked, growling. "You can't kill me. GranDracmon needs me alive, remember."

"That may be," SkullSatamon laughed. "But I don't have to kill you. I'll just paralyse you instead." He leapt into the air and levelled the jewelled end of his staff at the former Demon Lord and cried out, **"NAIL BONE!"** A flash of light later and there was a large beam of yellow light rushing towards Beelzemon.

Beelzemon knew what would happen if that light hit him – his data would be corrupted until he couldn't move, in which case he would be powerless to act against the minion of GranDracmon. Flaring his wings, Beelzemon rushed into the air, flicking his tail out of the way of the beam as it crashed into the ground where he had been.

"You can't run," SkullSatamon called as he zipped in and bashed Beelzemon in the face with his staff, causing him to cry out and grab at his nose with his hand. SkullSatamon quickly levelled his staff and prepared another attack, but Beelzemon reacted swiftly and swept upwards with Berenjena, knocking the staff aside and sending the energy beam shooting into the air. Taking advantage of SkullSatamon's temporary moment of being off-balance, Beelzemon smashed his fist into SkullSatamon's face and brought his arm-cannon to bear.

"**CORONA BLASTER!"** he shouted and let off a large shot of pink energy. SkullSatamon hissed and rolled aside as the attack swept past him, and was forced to dodge back the way he had come to avoid another shot. Beelzemon pressed the advantage that he now had and powered after SkullSatamon, bringing his claws back for another attack.

SkullSatamon responded by folding his wings and dropping down to the ground below once more. Beelzemon scowled and dived in pursuit, charging up another attack as he went. SkullSatamon saw it coming as Beelzemon let off another shot and dodged, causing the attack to power into the ground with a loud explosion. Beelzemon flapped to a halt before he crashed into the ground and faced off against SkullSatamon, the two staring each other down.

"Enough wasting time," SkullSatamon leered. "You can't escape GranDracmon."

"I can if I get in there," Beelzemon replied, indicating the huge Temple behind SkullSatamon.

"Ah yes," SkullSatamon replied, moving a little so he was directly between Beelzemon and the massive platinum-resembling doors. "But how are you going to get past me?"

Beelzemon growled and unleashed another shot with his cannon. SkullSatamon moved minutely to one side, allowing the pink energy blast to sail past him and grinned sadistically, somehow managing to move the bone of his face to change his expression. "You'll have to do better than- AARGH!"

SkullSatamon obviously had not been counting on the energy blast from Beelzemon's attack to ricochet off the Chrome-Digizoid doors and coming streaking right back at him from behind. Unfortunately, the attack only hit him in the back of the legs, but it left heavy burn-marks on the bone and blistered the clothing on them.

"You were saying," Beelzemon replied.

SkullSatamon growled and launched another Nail Bone at him.

* * *

While the two SkullSatamon continued to battle against their adversaries near the Temple, the third SkullSatamon was fighting some distance away, higher up in the air and attempting to fight against Wingdramon.

However, unlike the other two, who were giving their opponents hard times, this one was beginning to regret its decision. When it came to aerial battles, Wingdramon was a serious force to be reckoned and, for the first time in its existence, SkullSatamon found itself facing an opponent that was even faster than it was. By quite some distance.

SkullSatamon shot across the sky and banked hard left, almost at a right-angle, in a desperate attempt to throw off its pursuer. But Wingdramon swept around in pursuit just as quickly, despite his much larger bulk and streaked after the bony Digimon. SkullSatamon yelped as Wingdramon's heavy wing ploughed into his midriff and sent him tumbling through the air, out of control for several moments.

And, just as he managed to right himself, Wingdramon had already swept around for another pass and SkullSatamon was clouted across the skull by his enormous tail and sent spinning upwards.

Wingdramon veered up after him and grabbed the demon in his taloned claws. SkullSatamon was delivered a punch from and enormous fist before he was crushed to Wingdramon's chest. The blue dragon swivelled in the air and dived vertically downwards at incredible speed, SkullSatamon screaming silently as he whooshed towards the ground, spiralling downwards to disorientate his captive. Wingdramon threw SkullSatamon away as they neared the ground and grabbed him once again, this time in his tail.

At the last second, Wingdramon veered upwards and lashed down with his tail, sending SkullSatamon ploughing into the ground, hard. SkullSatamon ended up with a mouthful of earth, but before he could spit it out, Wingdramon was climbing into the sky once again and threw SkullSatamon into the air.

SkullSatamon whirled about and launched a Nail Bone, but his opponent was already gone. Spitting out the mouthful of earth, he quickly searched for the dragon, but his opponent was nowhere to be seen. He quickly shot off towards the Temple, when a flash of blue shot over him and there was a burst of air as Wingdramon let off a Wing Blast to knock SkullSatamon silly.

Wingdramon whooshed around and glared at SkullSatamon as the Demon Digimon got himself back under control. "Are you about ready to give up yet?" he asked.

"Lord GranDracmon would punish me severely if I did not carry out his wishes," SkullSatamon leered back. "I will take anything that you can give me over what he can."

"So be it," Wingdramon replied. "I thought you might say that, but I just had to give you one more opportunity."

"You're soft," SkullSatamon declared recklessly. "You don't have the guts to finish me! **NAIL BONE!"** he launched off his yellow energy beam from his staff right at Wingdramon. Wingdramon's eyes narrowed as it ploughed towards him, but with a single flap of his gravity-repelling wings, he veered upwards and the shot passed beneath him easily.

"We shall see," Wingdramon replied, and then he vanished in a blur of speed. SkullSatamon quickly looked around for him again, and saw a flash of blue coming in from one side, so he immediately let off a Nail Bone at it. The attack went straight through the blue flash – it wasn't Wingdramon at all, but his Blaze Sonic Breath attack, which washed over SkullSatamon. The Demon shrieked in pain, and then the real Wingdramon whooshed in, his heavy tail slamming into the arm bearing the staff and snapping the bony appendage clean off.

SkullSatamon watched in horror as his arm, and the staff that it had been holding, disintegrated into data. Through the blistering pain of the fires that had engulfed him, the Digimon turned to flee, but his eye-orbs widened as he came face to face with Wingdramon again, charging towards him, with the lance of his back glowing a bright blue, almost white.

"**EXPLODE SONIC LANCE!"** he roared.

SkullSatamon didn't even have time to cry out before the lance was rammed through his ribcage at such speed that the sonic pulses created a large explosion, which left Wingdramon unharmed but tore SkullSatamon apart from within. His bones scattered across a wide area, before disintegrating into data.

Wingdramon took a moment to observe his victory, before turning and whooshing back to the others. Battling in the air was Wingdramon's speciality.

* * *

The two other brawls were still going on, and at the moment it looked like neither side was really winning. The fight between Lilamon and Diatrymon looked to be about even. SkullSatamon was obviously the stronger of the sides, but Lilamon and Diatrymon made up for it with their cohesiveness in working together to catch him off guard before he could land crippling attacks. But, equally, neither of them really had any attacks that would be crippling to the skeleton.

Lilamon ducked underneath a Skull Hammer and quickly let off a barrage of Marvel Shots into SkullSatamon's ribs to push him backwards. SkullSatamon growled and responded with a Nail Bone, which Lilamon rolled aside from, and then Diatrymon charged in from practically the same direction and took a flying leap. SkullSatamon raised his staff to block, but the bird's heavy weight carried him to the floor before he managed to push him away. He swung his staff to unleash another Nail Bone, when Lila Shower ribbons wrapped around his staff and tugged it out of his hand.

Nonplussed, SkullSatamon turned and stared at Lilamon, who was holding his staff triumphantly. "Aha!" she cried. "Now you're unarmed. Right, how does this thing work?"

SkullSatamon growled and prepared to make a run at her, but he was slammed in the back by Diatrymon and knocked forwards instead. Lilamon swung the staff and clouted SkullSatamon across the head with it. SkullSatamon cried out at the impact, but managed to grab the staff and the two briefly began to tug of war with it as they tried to wrest it out of the grasp of the other.

As for the other match, it looked like Beelzemon was getting the upper hand. SkullSatamon backed away as the former Demon Lord approached. As well as his charred legs, the skeletal Digimon also had a large tear in one wing now, from where Beelzemon had managed to get in a lucky Darkness Claw strike. Hobbled on the ground and the air, SkullSatamon was now considerably slower than before, but still fast enough to avoid the majority of Beelzemon's attacks.

Still the Ultimate was being forced backwards, and he was desperately trying to find an avenue to escape or turn the tables back in his direction.

And that was when he spotted Calumon.

Up until this point, Calumon had been riveted by the action and had not really thought about doing much about it, since the situation didn't appear to be quite as dire at the one against Darkdramon earlier that day. However, as he watched, the little Catalyst had decided that he might as well be helpful again and was beginning to focus his powers, prepared to launch a digivolution beam at Lilamon to cause her to change to Rosemon and hopefully gain an advantage over SkullSatamon.

The glint from the shining red symbol caught SkullSatamon's attention and, as Beelzemon levelled Berenjena at him for what could be the final blow, SkullSatamon growled and lunged for Calumon. Calumon cried out in terror as he was seized in SkullSatamon's bony hand, which had the added effect of cutting off his concentration and stopping him from carrying out the digivolution.

"YAAARGH!" Calumon screamed, staring up at SkullSatamon with saucer-like eyes. "No! Put me down! I didn't do anything to you! Please don't kill me! I'm just a little useless Digimon!"

SkullSatamon ignored him and tightened his grip with his fist, also levelled the jewel on his staff at him for good measure. "Watch it, Beelzemon," he leered threateningly. "Don't make any rash moves, or the little one gets it!"

Beelzemon faltered, eyes widened. He was threatening Calumon? That was low, but he knew that he probably shouldn't be surprised. And what was worse, he knew that SkullSatamon would have no qualms with carrying out his threat.

"Put the little guy down, Bonehead!" he growled. "He's not part of this."

"Oh, but he is," SkullSatamon sneered. "He's your friend. And you can't attack me without fear of me hurting him. And if you don't do what I say, he's going to be toast. And you wouldn't want that, would you."

The altercation had caught the attention of the other group. Lilamon's grip on the staff of her opponent had unconsciously relaxed and the other SkullSatamon took advantage of this and yanked it out of her grasp, before flooring her with a blow to the neck and levelled the staff at her head.

"Nice call," the SkullSatamon complimented the other one. "That goes for this one too. Do as we say or they die."

"You think that you can make me go with you like this?" Beelzemon growled.

"We don't think it," the SkullSatamon holding Calumon replied. "We know it. You've become soft with all your attachments to your friends. You wouldn't dare let them get hurt, would you? You'd never be able to get that off your conscience."

Beelzemon fingers clenched into a trembling fist, but he knew that SkullSatamon was right. Calumon had fallen silent, and was looking at Beelzemon with wide, frightened eyes, which kept flicking fearfully over to the glowing jewel pointed at him.

Lilamon proved herself to be far from helpless through. Without warning, she suddenly lashed upwards with a Lilac Dagger and brought the small energy blade crashing into the jewel on her captor's staff. Without a loud crashing noise, the jewel shattered. SkullSatamon backed up in shock, allowing Lilamon to flip onto her feet, and the Viral Ultimate was ploughed into by Diatrymon and sent sprawling. However, he quickly leapt up and stood close to the other one that was still holding Calumon hostage.

Lilamon, Diatrymon and Beelzemon all prepared their attacks, but the SkullSatamon holding Calumon jabbed his staff closer to Calumon warningly. "Last chance, Beelzemon," it growled. "Hurry it up, or this one won't live another minute. Make your decision. Your life, or his."

"And what's to stop you from killing him the moment I am in GranDracmon's company?" Beelzemon asked.

"Don't I have an honest face," SkullSatamon leered. "You'll just have to trust me."

"Trust you?" Lilamon scowled. "Not likely."

But Beelzemon knew he was beaten. There was no way any of them could get in an attack without damaging Calumon. If it looked like they were about to prepare an attack, he could kill the Catalyst without any hesitation. Of their attacks, only his Double Impact might be fast enough, but he would have to pull out a shotgun to do it. Beelzemon could see Wingdramon hovering nearby, but the dragon couldn't pull off an attack either – all his attacks were too broad and would kill Calumon.

Beelzemon sighed and slumped in defeat. _Sorry guys,_ he thought. _Sorry, Ai and Mako. Sorry Jeri. Sorry Lilamon, Wingdramon, Diatrymon. Sorry Lopmon. Sorry Ophanimon. Looks like it's the end of the line for me. And when I was so close too._

"Alright," he said, causing his arm-cannon to disappear with a thought. "Fine. You win."

"Beelzemon, you can't..." Diatrymon protested.

"What would you have me do?" Beelzemon asked. "Sacrifice Calumon for the greater good? I can't do that. I... I could never consider myself a good Digimon if I did that?"

"But, if you go with them, you won't be a good Digimon," pointed out Lilamon. "GranDracmon will warp you into a monster."

"If I don't do this," Beelzemon said. "I'll already be a monster, no matter what changes GranDracmon does."

"So, do we have a deal?" SkullSatamon asked.

"Yeah," Beelzemon nodded. "As long as you don't harm Calumon, I'll come with y..."

There was a crash from right behind Beelzemon, which caused him to wheel around in surprise, along with everybody else, staring in astonishments as the huge Chrome-Digizoid doors of the Temple were suddenly thrown open. The only thing visible on the other side was a searing white light that poured out of the doors and washed over everyone present. There were numerous yelps as arms and wings came up to shield eyes from the intense glare.

As the light washed over the group, most of the Digimon present began to feel a strange, tingling and warm sensation rapidly filling up inside them, as if they were being filled up by warm custard. It was a heavenly sensation, quite literally.

The only exceptions to the bizarre feelings were the two SkullSatamon, who suddenly yelped as they felt themselves begin to seize up. They two began to feel something warm spreading through their beings, but to them it felt more than warm – it was blazing hot, like lava was beginning to boil through them instead of custard.

Before anyone could react to this sudden development, something zipped out of the intense light and sliced through the air, flashing over Beelzemon's shoulder, between his head and one of his wings and slamming into the head of the SkullSatamon that was holding Calumon. It was an arrow – an arrow that appeared to be composed of pure light, and it pierced the skull of the evil Digimon, right between and slightly above the eye sockets. The shot was so forceful that the arrow came out the other side some way and became lodged in the skull.

SkullSatamon only had a moment to blink dully before he screamed and was consumed in a blazing light that disintegrated him into data in moments. As his particles floated away and Calumon fell to the ground, the other SkullSatamon had a moment to stare through the pain at the data of its partner in disbelief, before a voice could be heard emanating from the doors.

"How dare you!" cried the voice – definitely female in origin, which seemed to exude power. "How dare you come here to this sacred ground and threaten violence and death on some of the most innocent of souls and purest of hearts throughout the Digital World. How dare you bring your evil and slaughtering ways to the gates of the Temple of the Angels! How dare you think that you can disgrace such a place and such people and think that you can get away with it. The Heavens are not pleased with you SkullSatamon. There is only one judgement that we can give to you."

A hovering figure emerged from the blazing light. It wasn't Ophanimon or Magnadramon, but it was a familiar figure nevertheless. With her head half covered by a helmet, long golden hair streaming out behind her, her golden breastplate, elegant, white clothing, long glove on one hand with long feathers that resembled a bow at the wrist, and an enormous, pink scarf-like garment wrapped around both her arms with the middle floating over her head of its own accord, the form of an Angewomon was unmistakable.

The SkullSatamon didn't much fancy his chances against the enemy now. He was surrounded by enemy Digimon, one of which was a Holy Type of his level. He immediately turned to flee, but he moved far slower than usual, the light pouring from within the Temple slowing him down. The Angewomon seemed to frown at him as he tried to escape and brought her hands together in front of her.

"**HEAVENS CHARM!"** she shouted and her hands seemed to glow with bright, pink energy. She threw them out to the sides to create a horizontal line of it, which then surged towards SkullSatamon, growing a vertical line down its centre as it did to form a cross. The light nailed SkullSatamon in the back and he screamed as the agonising Holy energy seared through him and disintegrated him on the spot.

His data floated away. The pink light died down and the light from within the Temple faded away, leaving the Angewomon hovering before the doors.

The angelic Digimon turned and smiled warmly at the others, and as she did, they felt that warm feeling coursing through them once more.

"Funny," said Calumon. "I was half expecting him to shout, 'I'm melting.'"

Beelzemon barely heard him. He was staring at the Angewomon in awe, as were the others. The angel smiled and spread her arms invitingly, saying, "Welcome to the Temple of the Celestial Heavens. You are certainly more welcome here than your pursuers. I am Angewomon, servant of Lady Magnadramon, and I will be your guide."

Beelzemon pointed a finger at her and said, "I think I know who you are. During my... most recent trip to the past, I heard a Pumpkinmon telling the past version of me as story about a LadyDevimon who begged for purification after her husband was killed and pledged her service to Magnadramon after she was purified into an Angewomon."

Angewomon didn't seem phased by the reference to her past, but she just said, "Yes, that is me. I am not particularly proud of my actions back when I was a Fallen Angel Digimon, but I do not focus on them. The past should stay in the past. It doesn't matter what you've done before in your life. It's what you do here and now that decides who you are. I believe that you, Beelzemon, are in need of this important, lesson. Am I right?"

Beelzemon didn't answer. He couldn't believe what was happening. He had done it. He had actually found an angel Digimon. And this Angewomon wasn't looking down on him due to his dark past. She had one of her own.

There was something about this Angewomon that drew Beelzemon's attention. He wasn't entirely sure, but he had a peculiar feeling that he and this Angewomon were... almost kindred spirits. Both of them had done things that they regret, but both of them had been purified by Magnadramon, and both now led good lives. Granted, Beelzemon hadn't had the best of starts to his new life, and he had purified in a rather different way, but still... if anyone could understand how he must be feeling right now, he was willing to bet that this Angewomon had a good idea.

The thought was mind-boggling.

And then Lilamon came a ruined the moment, probably deliberately, by saying, "Is there any particular reason why you waited until that point in the battle to make your appearance?"

Lilamon received a couple of glares from her fellow team-mates, but the Angewomon merely chuckled and said, "I would have thought that would be obvious. You all looked to be doing quite well on your own up until that point. But, more importantly, we angel Digimon do not merely show ourselves to just anyone. You have to prove that you are pure of heart and noble of spirit first, or at least that you wish to be. Beelzemon proved that just now, and, in doing so, opened the path for me to descend and offer my assistance."

"Oh, well," Lilamon grinned. "If you put it that way."

Realising there was no need for him to stay in his current form any longer, Beelzemon shrank back down into Impmon. "I can't believe that this is happening," he murmured. "I'm actually here. I've actually done it."

"Yes, you have," Angewomon smiled warmly, hovering towards him on her eight shining wings. "You have been through many trials and tribulations to get here, Impmon. But, with the assistance of those closest to you, you have found your way to us. We have been watching you, praying that you would make it to us. I understand that you have many questions that you wish to ask."

"Yeah, I do," nodded Impmon quickly. "Like... can angels pray?"

Angewomon chuckled and said, "Of course we can. We can pray to higher angels, or to Fanglongmon himself. But, all your other questions will be answered in due course. I'm sure that you are anxious to meet the Digimon that you have come here searching for. Lady Ophanimon is anxious to meet you in person at last. There is much to be discussed."

"So..." Impmon murmured. "I can go into the Temple?"

"More than that," Angewomon smiled. "You will be allowed access to the Celestial Heavens themselves. There is much for you to see, which we can best show you from up there. You have proven yourself worthy of ascending to the Heavens."

Impmon was speechless.

But he was also overjoyed. To have come so far and struggled through so much, this was the news he had been most wanting to hear. He was actually having to fight the urge to burst into tears, but he settled for just saying, "You mean it?"

"Of course," replied Angewomon. "You are strong in character and in emotion. You have proven to us many times over that you are worthy to speak with us. You have every right. Lady Ophanimon had long since granted you her favour."

The angel Digimon then looked up and glanced over at the others. "As for the rest of you," she said. "You are all perfectly able to accompany your friend up into the Heavens?"

"Whoa, really?" Diatrymon blinked. "Us?"

"Of course," Angewomon replied, warmly. "You too have all proven your love and compassion. Lesser beings would have long since abandoned Impmon to his fate, regardless of friendship, due to fear for their own well-being. But you... you have all stuck with him no matter what has happened along the way, or how many times you have come close to death. You have fought beside him and helped him in his most critical hours of need, both physically and emotionally. Plus," she added with a slight twitch of her jaw that indicated a smirk of amusement. "You've been through so much together than not even Lord Fanglongmon would dare to break you up at the final hurdle."

"We thank you from the bottom of our Digi-Cores," Wingdramon said, inclining his head in a bow, which Diatrymon promptly copied. "You do us a great honour."

"No, I don't," Angewomon chuckled. "You have done yourselves great honours. I have done nothing, beyond helping you in the final battle just now."

"I can honestly say," Diatrymon remarked. "That when I first emerged from my Digi-Egg, I never could have imagined what I one day I might be given the chance to go to the Celestial Heavens."

"We can never know exactly what our destinies will be," Angewomon replied. "It is what you do with your life that controls who you are. And that, Impmon," she turned towards him. "Is quite significant for you."

"Huh?" asked Impmon.

"While you are up with the angels," Angewomon told him. "You will learn many things. Some of them will be a relief to you. Others will not be such an easy burden to bear. Others will bring you joy. But the situation is more complex than you might think. Are you sure that you are ready for it?"

"Definitely," Impmon replied. "I don't think I've ever been more ready for anything."

"We're really going up to heaven?" asked Calumon.

"Indeed," Angewomon smiled. She gestured to the doors and said, "If you would like to step inside."

Impmon immediately made for the doors, followed by the others. Impmon was the first to step over the threshold of the Temple. Calumon hopped in after him. But, as Lilamon made towards the door, she momentarily stopped beside Angewomon, as Diatrymon and Wingdramon moved passed her.

The Fairy Digimon looked up at the Angel and said, "So, I did a good job then? All my cheerful chattering and playful comments to try and keep Impmon's spirits up. Did I make much of a difference?"

Angewomon beamed at her and said, "You, Lilamon. You were about the biggest help he had. Today, all of the Digital World thanks you."

Angewomon put and arm around the Fairy's shoulder and guided her into the Temple.

* * *

Yeah, I decided to make something of that little story that the Pumpkinmon told many chapters ago, with the appearance of Angewomon here. I'm still debating whether or not I should use her anymore later on in the story, because Impmon still has quite a road ahead of him. Do you think that she should have a large role in the future or not?

Once again, sorry for the lateness but hey, I got there in the end.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

As we've established, Darth Sidious is now more angry than ever at Aayla Secura. As word of the capture of Dooku and Ventress, as well as Aayla's promotion to Master rank, spreads across the Galaxy, he devises another plan to get Aayla out of the picture as quickly as possible.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 131 : The Second InSidious Plot**


	131. The Second InSidious Plot

Hello again. Many combinations of things led to this chapter being so long in the waiting, not least because I'm attempting to get my driver's licence before I go back to university in September and my mum is making me do a lot of revision for it. Plus, there have been other factors, like new awesome movies and many newly acquired DVDs through Amazon. Btw, **Papercut**, while I appreciate the worry, I am fine and would like to see you actually telling me what you thought of the chapter instead of asking me if I'm alright.

Anyway, keep ready everyone. A new arc begins.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 131:- The Second InSidious Plot**

* * *

In what seemed like practically no time flat, the entire galaxy was abuzz and awash with people telling each other about the incredible act that had occurred over the planet of Rhen Var. People of all races and species were whispering, shouting and speaking Aayla's name with reverence within a few hours of the news reaching the Senate. It was almost impossible how the word got out so quickly, but soon, most of the galaxy was aware of one practically inescapable fact.

The war was almost over.

Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress had both been forced into submission at the same time, while General Grievous had been forced away, probably to go into hiding for a little while. With the Sith Lord that everyone thought was running the show behind ray shields, excitement began to build up. Coruscant was quickly full of people out in the streets, parties beginning to break out everywhere as the Republic celebrated its greatest victory.

And none of it would have been possible were it not for one single Twi'lek, who up until recently had had a low profile amongst the order but had been growing in popularity and fame for some months until she committed one thing that would ensure she would _never_ be forgotten. By anyone.

Nobody was quite sure how the word spread so quickly, but within a matter of hours, the Holonet Broadcast had a blazing new headlines that everyone intended to read, determined to sort out the truth from the rumours – as with any enormous stories there were enormous rumours. Some people had started saying that Aayla had lost both a leg and an arm but kept fighting and others were saying that she had used the Force to manipulate General Grievous and force him to turn on his comrades. Still others were saying that Aayla hadn't even lifted a lightsaber blade and had defeated them all anyway.

While these were all fanciful tales and not close to the truth, the truth still left a large number of people flabbergasted:-

* * *

**Holonet Broadcast**

**Citizens of the Republic – today is a grand day for our cause. For over a year we have lived in constant fear of death and destruction at the hands of the Separatist army, as they vie with our brave soldiers for control over the entire Galaxy. We have heard tales of the slaughter on many of our allied planets and the weapons that the enemy scientists have been developing.**

**But we have long since fought them, with the Jedi leading the charge and our Grand Army backing them all the way.**

**We have made many leaps forward in our battles, capturing various important members of the Separatist Council and ensuring that they do not escape. But today was our biggest leap forward. Several opportunities to capture the infamous Count Dooku and his Dark Apprentice, Asajj Ventress, have been presented to us in the past, yet always they have eluded us.**

**But no more.**

**Today, over Rhen Var in a Separatist listening post recently discovered there, Count Dooku and Ventress met their downfall at the hands of our very own Aayla Secura, the Twi'lek Jedi Knight and long standing member of the A-Team. In an astonishing feat of swordsmanship and athletic skill, Aayla was able to not only defend herself from both of them at once, but she was able to defeat them and knock them unconscious, allowing them both to be taken into custody.**

**And to make such an incredible task even more amazing, she was also fighting the terrifying cyborg General Grievous as well. Sadly, she was unable to ensure the capture of her third assailant, but she was able to drive him away. According to sources, Aayla emerged from the battle mostly unscathed, aside from a single lightsaber cut on her right leg, which was quickly healed over by new team-mate, Barriss Offee. She also collapsed of exhaustion after the bout, but she was swiftly rushed to medical by her team-mates and will make a full recovery shortly.**

**You might wonder why Aayla was forced to commit such an act on her own. Her team-mates, Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano were off destroyed a second listening post over Yavin Prime, while Offee was planting bombs in the reactor core many floors down. Aayla had been investigating a report that Viceroy Gunray of the Trade Federation might have been there. What she encountered was a lot worse. The result, on the other hand, was far, far better.**

**This, of course, had tremendous consequences for us. With Dooku in custody, it should only be a matter of time before the Separatists either surrender or are swiftly rounded up. Our long time of suffering and bloodshed is reaching its final stage. Members of the Senate have expressed that they hope for the war to be over in a matter of weeks. Supreme Chancellor Palpatine has declared that with the information that Dooku can provide us, the Separatists should be cleaned up soon.**

**Aayla Secura herself is set to be promoted to the rank of Jedi Master as soon as she recovers. At the age of twenty-three, this will make her the youngest Jedi Master on record by almost four years, a considerable stretch. Many have expressed the opinion that Aayla should have been promoted some time ago, and Grand Master Yoda has stated that the Jedi Order felt the same way, but only refrained from doing so at the insistence of Aayla herself, who believed she was not ready.**

**What's more, the entire duel was caught on holocam by the security feed of the listening post it was staged on. Senator Organa of Alderaan has stated that the holovideo will be made public after Aayla's ascension to the rank of Master.**

**Finally, everything is drawing to a close.**

* * *

The various reactions to this broadcast, sent across the stars to anyone who possessed the technology. On Kashyyyk, Seripas was the first to read the article over the Holonet connection of the four Bounty Hunters that lived there. The little creature's eyes slowly seemed to expand inside his head the further he read through it and he quickly leapt for the others to read it to, babbling so much that he became practically unintelligible. It took two minutes to calm him down and understand what he was trying to say before Sugi, Embo and Rumi also read the article.

All three were similarly stunned. Even Embo momentarily lost his cool and stared with arms slack and wide eyes.

On Ryloth, Cham Syndulla the former Twi'lek freedom fighter also stared in disbelief at the words that were scrawled out in front of him. His mouth hung open slightly, and when he finished the article, he slowly shut it, along with his eyes and shook his head with a chuckle, feeling privileged that he had met the Twi'lek who had done all of this for the Republic.

On Coruscant, Orn Free Taa bragged about it to anyone who would listen.

On Tatooine, Jabba the Hutt received the word from one of his own Bounty Hunters. After the initial stunned silence filled the room, during which the Twi'lek who had been dancing for him stopped and stared along with everyone else, Jabba suddenly burst into jubilant laughter. He was immensely pleased that the lying, cheating, Sith poodoo that had orchestrated the kidnapping of his son was finally about to pay the price and was locked behind ray shields like his traitorous uncle, Ziro.

All the Twi'lek slaves on the other hand, felt glimmers of hope stirring in them once more. It had been a while since Aayla had visited them and spread the hope of eventual freedom from once single slave and through the rest via word of mouth. With the war drawing to a close, they hoped Aayla would have time to honour that promise.

On Kamino, the clone armies that were garrisoned around there were beginning to celebrate themselves. There was a lot of laughter and bumping fists as the clones all began to look forward to a time where they didn't have to face a battle droid ever again. Shaak Ti looked up at the rain-strewn sky in wonderment, and sighed, relieved that all the killing might finally be brought to an end, and that the majority of the clones that graduated under her tutelage would not perish as they had before.

On Naboo, there was a frenzied party going on in the city of Otah Gunga as the Gungans received the news. There was lots of cheering and leaping about, ears flapping in celebration, and then everything was promptly ruined when Jar Jar Binks slipped and skidded several metres on his back, knocking over various Gungans like dominoes.

In a Separatist stronghold, General Grievous promptly crushed the holonet projector and howled in boiling fury when he learned that Aayla had collapsed shortly after he had exited the room. _That_ stung. And behind him, San Hill, Nute Gunray and Gunray's aide known as Rune Haako, stepped back from the cyborg General a little fearfully and then began frantically whispering amongst one another as they.

In the Jedi Temple, the rest of the Council was promptly informed. Despite the fact that they were supposed to be calming and serene Jedi Masters for the majority of the time, there was more than a few cases of excitement. Kit Fisto punched the air with a cry of victory, Adi Gallia slumped back in her chair and laughed in a mixture of relief and genuine happiness and Plo Koon, while smiling beneath his face-mask in some obscure way, tapped at his chin with one clawed finger thoughtfully and wondered what to make of the fact that Aayla had used the Electric Judgement that he had discovered.

In the Senate Building, large numbers of Senators were meeting with one another and having celebratory drinks and there was more than one case of hugging, while others, like Lot Dod and Burtoni, paced their offices in worriment, since the end of the war would mean a loss of income for them.

* * *

And, on the distant planet of Dantooine, where a long and drawn out battle for supremacy had finally seemed to come to an end, a certain Kiffar Jedi Master strode into the base camp that the Republic forces had created, flanked by a couple of the clone troopers. Quinlan Vos had initially not trusted the clone troopers very much, believing them to be too close to the Senate. But, since he had become privy to the secret of the Digimon, and the fact that the clones seemed to be willing to keep that secret, he had decided to give them and a chance and found that he quite liked their demeanour. It reminded him of him in many ways.

Quinlan was speaking as he went, "...Now that the capital is freed, all we have to do is mop up the last of the Seppie forces on this planet and we'll finally be able to get ourselves out of this place. And I don't know about you, but I am all for a brief period of relaxation and this whole bloody affair."

"Likewise, sir," said one of the clones, who happened to be Commander Deviss, also of the 327th, who had been working alongside Vos for some time now while Bly continued to work with Aayla. "Thanks again for cutting down that commando droid that was about to take my head off."

"Think nothing of it," Quinlan shrugged. "Least I could do. Hey, Sky, anything to report?"

The clone trooper, Sky, saluted the Kiffar and said, "Actually, yes sir. We received a transmission while you were away battling those clankers. It was Master Yoda, sir. He wishes to speak with you as soon as you have the time."

Vos raised an eyebrow. "Really?" he asked. "I wonder what the little guy wants. I am really hoping that this doesn't interfere with the downtime I had planned. Ah well, let's go see what the old man wants to see me for." He chuckled and stepped over to the console set up in the middle of the campsite and hit a few buttons, making a call to the Jedi Temple.

Sure enough, a few moments later, the diminutive form of Master Yoda appeared before him. The little gremlin creature smiled at him and said, "Master Vos, glad to hear from you so quickly, I am."

"Called up as soon as I was given the message, Master," Vos nodded. "I believe I have kept people waiting too many times in the past. Anyway, what's the situation? Is there another planet that desperately needs our help? We aren't quite done here on Dantooine, but I daresay that I could spare a few troops."

Yoda raised a three-fingered hand to call Vos to a halt. "Relax, Master Quinlan. An emergency, this is not. Merely thought, I did, that you should hear the news that I learned a few hours ago as quickly as possible. Because, concerns your Padawan, Aayla Secura, it does."

Vos momentarily panicked as all sorts of wild images of what might have been done to Aayla flashed through his head, but he quickly banished them. If something bad had become of the young Twi'lek, Yoda would be talking with a much graver tone, and he wouldn't be smiling either. Vos folded his arms and chuckled, saying, "Alright then. What's the girl gone and done this time. Has she crept into another Separatist stronghold and liberated all the slaves again?"

"Half correct, you are," Yoda chuckled. "Sneak into another stronghold, she did. But far greater, were her results. When heard the news, I did, scarcely able to believe it myself, I was. Absolutely astounding it is. Absolutely astounding."

"Aaw, now I just want to know even more," Quinlan replied. "Are you gonna tell me or not, Master."

Yoda smiled vaguely and said, "Want to sit down first, do you?"

Vos scowled and said, "I'm sure I can take it."

"Sure, are you?" Yoda grinned cheekily.

"Sure, I'm sure," nodded Vos. "Momentai, Master Yoda."

Chuckling at the use of the word, Yoda paused for a dramatic effect and then said, "Able to fight against and defeat Count Dooku, Asajj Ventress and General Grievous simultaneously, she was."

There were several moments of silence, while Vos stared blankly, eyes wide in disbelief, before he suddenly had to put his hands on the console to support himself before he was forced to sit down. "Come again?" he asked.

Slowly, and in his way of backwards speaking, Yoda revealed the tale to Vos, including many details of the fight itself, such as how Aayla was able to best Dooku's Force choke and how she spurred Asajj Ventress into a fit of rage. Vos listened in amazement as the entire tale was slowly revealed to him and as it was, he found himself relying more and more on the support of his arms as well as his legs.

Yoda had been right. It was absolutely astounding. The Twi'lek girl who he had raised to the position of Jedi Knight had done all that? On her own?

It barely seemed possible.

And yet, he knew that Master Yoda would never pull a joke about this sort of thing.

When Yoda had finished the dramatic recounting, Quinlan pushed himself up from the console to stand firmly on both of his feet again and shook his head in wonderment, his long dreadlocked hair flapping slightly as a result. "Unbelievable," he murmured. "If I had known that this is what that little Twi'lek girl would amount to when I saved her from that Wampa all those years ago... I don't know what I would have done. She's done so much. I am unimaginably proud of her."

"As well you should be," Yoda nodded firmly. "Pleased to hear, you will be, that Aayla has accepted the invitation to become a Jedi Master."

"And about time too," Quinlan grinned. "She should probably have gotten it months ago."

"Agreed," Yoda nodded. "But reached Masterhood eventually, she has. And now, excuse me, you must. Arrived, have the two captives that Aayla was able to take and interrogate them, we must."

"Hell yeah," nodded Quinlan. "You better get cracking, Master. Let's exploit the deed of my former Padawan as much as possible."

"Intend to do exactly that, we do," Yoda nodded. "May the Force be with you."

Quinlan repeated the phrase in turn and Yoda's hologram disappeared, leading the Kiffar to mull over, once again, the time he had spent training Aayla Secura. She had always excelled at... well, pretty much everything, but never could he have imagined something on this scale.

He smirked to himself. Just what other remarkable things would young Aayla be doing before the war came to an end, and even after it was over? There was a whole universe of possibilities out there. And Aayla would be able to grab it by the horns.

* * *

Aayla herself was fast asleep still, having been injected with anaesthetic to calm her down and put her into a restful and relaxing sleep as quickly as possible. She lay with her head lolled to one side and with the white blanket of the medical station pulled up to her neck, courtesy of both the bunny Digimon who were, once again, seated on either side of her head.

Everyone else hovered nearby, watching Aayla sleep and many of them replaying the scenes they had witnessed from the holovideo of the massive brawl that had taken place a short while ago. Most of them sat in silent contemplation. Some of them were feeling a little guilty that they had been unable to provide a hand, but all were feeling pride at the Twi'lek's achievement.

The only one in the room who was talking was Barriss, and that was because she was addressing the small hologram on the communicator in her hand. And the hologram itself depicted the young Senator of Pantora, Riyo Chuchi. Chuchi had been present when Anakin, Barriss and Ahsoka had made their report on the incident to the leading members of the Senate and the Jedi Council, but she had not hesitated to call up at the earliest opportunity.

After Chuchi had agreed to keep the Digimon a secret, all four of the Jedi had provided her with their contact details in case she ever needed to get in touch with them and Chuchi had given them hers in turn. Chuchi had wanted to check not only on Aayla, but also on the Digimon, as she had been unable to ask about them without giving them away before.

"No, I assure you, Senator," Barriss replied to the little hologram. "Aayla is on the road to a very rapid recovery indeed. She's a strong Jedi, as you've probably realised by the events that led her to be in a medical station in the first place. She'll pull through quickly enough."

"That is a relief," nodded Chuchi. "And the Digimon?"

"All present and correct," Barriss nodded. "None of us ran into General Grievous after he fled the scene and we managed to take out the battle droids right across the facility. We lost three clones in the field, and they shall not be forgotten, but everyone else was able to get out alive and well."

"Well, that does put my mind at ease," Chuchi nodded. "This whole secret thing is going to be a lot harder than even I realised when I took it up. I was bursting to ask how everyone was right in front of the others and it was difficult to restrain myself from doing so. But I did because... in the end..." she sighed. "Any one of them could be a viable suspect. Loathe as I am to say it. I'm pretty sure that this Darth Sidious was not in the room at the time, but then again, I can't know that for sure."

"Yes, about that," Renamon turned her head and slipped into the holographic Chuchi's field of view. "We believe that this was more than a coincidence that Aayla just happened to run into those three."

Chuchi frowned. "More than a coincidence?" she repeated. "You think that it was a deliberate trap?"

"Indeed we do," nodded Renamon. "Probably engineered by Sidious. We've had some time to think about it and we've arrived at the conclusion that he has every reason to want Aayla dead. We know he wants Anakin to turn to the Dark Side, and we aren't letting that happen. But he doesn't know about we Digimon."

"And you think he blames Aayla for being the main hindrance in his plans?" Chuchi breathed.

"In some ways, she is," replied Renamon. "But yes."

"Well," Chuchi smiled slightly. "At least she was able to stave of this attempt on her life."

"Yes, but we can't assume that it will be the last," replied Barriss.

"Yes, I know," Chuchi sighed. "I'll keep an eye on things over here in the Senate Building but I can't guarantee anything. The sad thing about politicians is that they are generally very good at keeping secrets that they don't want to be found – and the more successful they are they better they get at this. Just because I know I'm looking for a Sith Lord doesn't mean I'm going to find one easily. But I'll certainly try my hardest, for all our sakes."

"Thank you," nodded Barriss.

"It's a shame really," Chuchi said, glancing off to her right. "A few corridors away, the others in the group of my friends in the Senate are celebrating what they believe to be a major turning point in the war. But they don't really know that it isn't quite as major as they believe, considering there is a second Sith Lord still waiting out there."

"Yes," Renamon agreed. "However, they are right in that it _is_ a major turning point."

"Oh, I'm not denying that," Chuchi said. "One Sith Lord down, one more to go. And because the Dark Acolytes were destroyed recently, once again by Aayla, although she had you guys there, he doesn't exactly have any back-up Dark Jedi to make into the next Sith Lord to replace Dooku yet. But Sidious is still out there, and I swear to you, I will help in any way that I can to bring him to justice."

"We wouldn't expect anything less from someone like you, Chuchi," Barriss replied.

"Thank you, Barriss," Chuchi smiled. "I'd better go now. I excused myself from the party to make this call and they might start wondering where I am if I don't get back soon. Send Aayla my regards when she wakes up."

"Will do," nodded Renamon. "Bye."

"Goodbye," Chuchi nodded. "I hope to see you soon, preferably in person." And then her hologram disappeared.

Renamon and Barriss looked up to find everyone else in the room, with the exception of the sleeping Aayla, watching them.

"I hope she's careful," said Henry. "If Darth Sidious finds out that she's looking to uncover him then she could be in danger. Who knows what that guy is capable of doing when angered?"

"None of us," Barriss agreed sombrely. "There haven't been any reports of him taking to the field so we don't even know how powerful this person is. But if someone like Count Dooku is willing to call him a Master, then he must be pretty powerful."

"And the bad guy generally doesn't mind flaunting his power," Rika said, bitterly. "We know that from experience."

"All too well," agreed Lopmon.

"Momentai," Terriermon piped up. "You heard what she said. Good politicians are good at hiding things. I'm sure Chuchi will be subtle in her approach to things, even if she's not entirely sure what she's looking for at the moment."

"And when Aayla recovers," Renamon nodded. "We'll help her in any way that we can."

There was a general nodding from around the room, punctuated only by a slight sigh from Aayla in her slumber. Then, they lapsed into silence once more as they slowly orbited the planet of Belderone down below.

* * *

Anakin and Ahsoka, on the other hand, were doing quite a bit more than that. After communicating with the Head members of the Senate, the two of them had contacted the Jedi Council again to discuss the situation with the prisoners and what to do with them. It had been generally agreed that the imprisoned Count and his assassin apprentice would be held in the Jedi Temple like the various Separatist Council Members were. That would stop Senate Members from being able to visit them, and technically, since the two of them were Force-sensitive, they were under Jedi jurisdiction anyway. However, unlike the rest of the prisoners, they would be taken to maximum security cells of their own, instead of putting them in the detention level.

Ahsoka wasn't usually the type of person to take pleasure out of the discomfort of others. But, even she had to admit, that she found herself slightly amused as she strode through the corridor to the cell, slightly in front of and to the left of a struggling Asajj Ventress. The Rattataki woman was letting out a stream of obscenities and other various curses at the Togruta that had her imprisoned and Ahsoka was studiously ignoring her colourful threats.

Ventress and Dooku had been placed in special containment fields that would allow prisoners to be transported, so both of them were essentially hovering across the corridor with their arms raised and legs together.

In a bizarre twist, during Ventress' rant, Dooku and Anakin shared a glance with one another as if they were silently saying, _I wish she would shut up,_ to the other. But then it went back to silence between them.

It wasn't long before they arrived at the cell in which Dooku was planning to be imprisoned in. Dooku smiled almost warmly, although it didn't take a trained eye to spot the smirk in it, at the Jedi waiting for him there. "Ah, Masters Windu and Yoda," he said. "A pleasure to see the two of you in person again. It has indeed been a while since we spoke face to face."

"Not since the first Behpour, I believe, Count," said Mace. "For me, at least. You have been an elusive adversary over the course of the war. Usually you stick to the shadows, unlike your former days as a Jedi when you might have been found on the front lines."

"My days as a Jedi made me a blinkered man, blindly following the whims of the Jedi Council," Dooku sniffed. "I was little more than a common eopie in that respect. But since I joined with the Dark Side, my sight has finally been cleared and I see the Jedi Order for what it really is – corrupt."

"Hmm," Yoda sighed, closing his eyes. "Blinkered, is your vision now, my fallen apprentice. Merely choosing to believe it is not, you are. Distorted and twisted, your mind is now. Consumed by the Dark Side, you have become."

"I think that happened a long time ago," Ahsoka murmured quietly. Dooku heard her though and turned to her.

"I must say," he spoke to her. "That it is a pleasure to finally meet with Skywalker's Padawan face to face. I have heard much about your skills, young one. Mostly due to the rantings of my own apprentice. It is a pity that I have not been able to test your combat skills myself, as I have long been curious as to how capable you are, considering how my apprentice hates you so."

"With every fibre of my being," Ventress growled.

Ahsoka fought the urge to gulp at the prospect of facing Dooku in battle. A couple of months ago, she might have made some sort of childish and petulant remark designed to make herself sound tough. Now, she just said, "Well, Aayla got to you first. And as far as I can see, you won't be going anywhere for some time."

"Indeed not," Mace nodded. "Skywalker, Tano, if you would please escort Ventress to her own cell. Master Yoda and I wish to have a little talk with the Count."

"If you believe that an interrogation will do you any good then you are sadly mistaken, Master Jedi," Dooku said, calmly. "I will hold my tongue, regardless of any attempts you make to get me to use it. I know that you are too soft to try torture methods."

"You're right, Count," Anakin said. "We're not like you in that regard. Masters, should we try to interrogate Ventress while we're over there."

"If you wish," Yoda replied. "See what you can do."

Anakin and Ahsoka bowed respectfully to Yoda and then let the hovering Ventress away, the Rattataki woman screaming at the top of her lungs that she would never talk no matter what they did to her and other such stereotypical threats, insults and promises. Yoda and Mace, meanwhile turned around and headed into the cell, which comprised of a large, cylindrical room with only thick sliding blast doors as a way in, no lighting bar very dim red lights and no other features of any kind.

As Dooku was positioned in the centre of the room, Mace slowly began to walk around him and said, "Now, if you would be so kind, Dooku, there are many questions that we would like you to answer, such as where might General Grievous have run off to, where are the remaining leaders of the Separatist Council, as well as a number of your strongest hidden bases."

"And, most importantly," Yoda added, "Wish to know, we do, the identity of your Master, Darth Sidious."

Dooku smirked. "Information that would get you a long way were I to impart it to you," he said. "Quick and concise questions. But I'm afraid that I will have to hold my silence on those matters."

"We expected you to say that," said Mace. "But there is no gain for you if you do not start talking, Count. You realise that your Master will not forgive you easily for allowing yourself to be bested by one Jedi, no matter how good that Jedi may be."

"I am sure that my Master already knows of my capture," Dooku replied. "And he knows just as well as you do of the critical information I could provide. He will not allow me to languish here for long."

"The case, that may be," Yoda said, hobbling over to stand in front of him and look up at the much taller being. "But many other factors to take into consideration, there are, Dooku."

"And what might those be?" Dooku asked, looking down at the small green Jedi, who was leaning on his gimmer stick with both hands.

"Lost, the Separatist cause is," Yoda informed him. "Driven back across the Galaxy, you are being. The public figurehead for the Separatists you are. How many Senators will defer back to the Republic when they hear of your capture?" He paused for a moment and then added. "However, not beyond redemption, you are. Many crimes, have you committed, but none so terrible that you cannot be forgiven. Help us to end the war, and go a long way to clearing your name, it would."

"An interesting proposal," Dooku said, smirk still in place. "One that, under different circumstances, I might just take. However, I will tell you this much. You are very, very deluded if you believe that the fighting is anywhere close to ending. You know excruciatingly little of my Master, but he is far more powerful than you believe. He has his ways of getting what he wants. And I shall not divulge anymore until you can prove me wrong."

Mace and Yoda glanced at each other. That did not exactly bode well.

* * *

Ahsoka was beginning to become more than a little disturbed by the colourful threats that were pouring out of Ventress' mouth. The thoughts that were springing into the bald woman's head about what she would do to Ahsoka when she got free were actually making her feel a little bit sick to her stomach. Not for the first time, she wondered if Ventress was completely insane.

She realised that, in all likeliness, she probably was.

Ahsoka couldn't help but wonder where he mortal enemy had gone wrong. It was clear that she was incredibly steeped in the Dark Side, so much so that she might never be able to recover from it, but there must have been a point where Ventress had been a good Jedi, much like Dooku himself had once been. What had happened to warp her so? When had it happened? How had she first met Dooku? There were so many unknowns when it came to Asajj Ventress, and Ahsoka knew she might never find out what those unknowns really were.

Anakin and Ahsoka placed her in a cell that was completely identical to the one that Dooku was being placed in.

"You should be honoured, Ventress," said Anakin, as he positioned the hovering containment field in the centre of the room. "We don't often have to use these cells. I can't remember a time when they were ever used since I first came to the Temple, many years ago. You're obviously being treated as quite a major threat."

"I am a major threat, Skywalker," Ventress growled. "In case you had forgotten, I am not to be taken lightly. You should know. Count Dooku is not the only one to cut through your flesh with the blade of a lightsaber."

Anakin's fingers unconsciously came up to brush the scar over his right eye, which Ventress had put there with her own lightsaber in a frantic duel on one of the moons on the planet he had just liberated. "Yeah?" he asked. "Well, I've improved quite a lot since then."

"As have I," Ventress growled. "And I assure you, that when I escape this place I will be coming for all of you."

"Forgive me if I'm wrong," said Ahsoka. "But how exactly are you planning to break out? You didn't exactly do very much during your extended time as a prisoner of General Grievous."

"Who, might we point out, is still out there while you aren't," Anakin added. He and Ahsoka bumped fists with one another as Ventress ground her teeth angrily.

"That overgrown pile of tin can't possibly hope to lead the Separatist armies," Ventress growled.

"We are so glad that you feel that way," Anakin replied, stepping closer to her and smiling with false warmth into her scowling face. "Because that means you know just as much as we do that the war will be over soon. So, why don't you start doing some talking? Who knows, we might go easy on you if you tell us what we want to know."

Ventress' pale blue eyes widened as she realised she had blundered into a word trap that Anakin probably hadn't even been making. She remembered that this was supposed to be an interrogation, so insulting Grievous probably wasn't going to help her in this case.

"You can start by telling us who Darth Sidious is," Ahsoka said, stepping up beside her Master. "And everything that you know about him."

And for a couple of moments, both Anakin and Ahsoka saw undisguised fear appearing in Ventress' eyes at the prospect of revealing any information about Sidious. Ahsoka was reminded of the moment when she had first revealed to Ventress that they knew that Sidious even existed over Sernpidal so long ago. Apparently Ventress held Sidious in very high regard. For all her boasting, she wasn't actually scared of the Jedi when she faced them in combat.

Sidious was apparently a whole new ball game.

Ventress shook her head sharply. "Not a chance. You will learn nothing from my on the ways of my Master's Master."

"Does that make him your GrandMaster?" Ahsoka asked.

"Ooh, good one," Anakin said, as Ahsoka had used essentially two different puns in the same word with that sentence. They bumped fists again and then he said, "Look, Ventress. I don't know a lot about this Sidious guy, but I'm pretty sure that he's going to be a powerful adversary. I get that much. However, and I can't believe that I'm actually saying this, we can protect you from him if you're scared for your own safety."

"You don't know him," Ventress said, in a more subdued tone than before. "You do not know of the things that he is capable of. I know for a fact that there is a lot more to him than you have ever even considered and if I reveal anything to you about him then I might as well line up for an execution."

"Is that right?" asked Anakin. "Well, think of it this way. He's probably going to be pretty angry at you anyway. He might even kill you if he does get you out of here. Maybe, if you tell us more about what we're up against then we can shore up our defences."

Ahsoka had to admire the path that Anakin was taking. He was attempting to play on the one thing that all Dark Jedi and Sith Lords had in common – their cowardice. It was part of the reason that while the Jedi vastly outnumbered the Sith, the Sith still proved to be such difficult opponents. They always took precautions to ensure their own safety, whereas a Jedi wouldn't hesitate to go charging into danger if it meant that they could save a life.

To her surprise, she wasn't getting irritated at the fact that Ventress wasn't talking. She remembered how she had snapped very quickly and threatened to kill Nute Gunray when they had him cornered if he didn't start talking. And yet, she hadn't even thought of doing that sort of thing now, and neither had her Master, who she was pretty sure would have snapped faster.

Also to her surprise, Ventress looked like she might be on the verge of revealing something important, before she suddenly spurted out, "Nice try, Skywalker. But you cannot resist Sidious' will. Nobody can."

"Really?" Ahsoka raised a brow. "Aayla did. She fought off all of you lot, didn't she? And that was on his orders, wasn't it?"

Ventress' scowl returned and she growled, "That was through trickery and nothing else."

"No, it was through skill and ingenuity," Anakin shook his head. "But let's get back to the point. Darth Sidious is not invincible, whoever he is. He can be defeated and we will beat him eventually. You'll be saving yourself a lot of anguish in the long run if you just go ahead and tell us what you know."

Ventress sneered. "You have no power over me, Skywalker," she said. "And you have no means of stopping Lord Sidious. Even if you did find out his identity, you have no idea of the scale of his plans."

"You could enlighten us," Anakin pointed out.

"Aw, go on, Ventress," Ahsoka gave her a winning grin. "Can't you do it for me as an early birthday present? I turn fifteen next week."

Ventress stared at her for a moments, and then her face twisted into a snarl again and she started bucking once more, determined to break loose even thought it just wasn't going to happen. Anakin and Ahsoka glanced at once another and the former said, "I don't think we're getting anything out of this one anytime soon."

"Mores the pity," the latter agreed.

* * *

Of course, Ventress wasn't the only one of Coruscant to be feeling a boiling and ever-rising surge of anger building inside them. Darth Sidious was absolutely livid – far angrier than he could remember being for a good long time. He simply couldn't believe what was happening. He had expected to sleep easy when night came around in the knowledge that the biggest pestilence towards his entire plans (that he knew of) would be dead.

Instead, she had completely turned the tables on him in one fell swoop, securing the capture of his current apprentice, as well as Ventress. And she had done it all without any help whatsoever – not for a clone or another Jedi or even that Wookiee that tagged along with them now. She had single-handedly thwarted a plan which even he considered to be mild overkill.

Sidious was back in his hidden facility in the Works. His gnarled fists were clenched so tightly that his fingernails were threatening to break the skin of the palms of his hands and his fists were also shaking as he tried to bottle up his rising rage. How could this have happened? How could such a plan that he was so sure would work – almost more sure than any other plan he had ever made – gone so wrong?

He had expected the very worst news to be that Aayla had managed to escape from them. That he could probably live with as he would be able to find another opportunity to take her out of the picture. But instead she had blown it out of all proportion. With Count Dooku now in Republic custody, all the things being spoken of on the Holonet could indeed come true. The Senators and Council members of the Separatist Alliance that had yet to be rounded up would indeed start to quail and return.

General Grievous would be forced to lead what remained and while the cyborg was great with ferocity and ruthlessness, he wasn't all that great with overall strategic thinking and useless when it came to politics, meaning Sidious would have to make all the decisions from now on. To do that he would have to be more careful to ensure he wasn't discovered. Powerful as he was there were too many Jedi still alive. He couldn't take them all if they learned who he was.

Sidious had no doubt that Dooku and Ventress would not do any talking anytime soon. It would have been better for his plans if Aayla had flat out killed them, but she had managed to maximise the failure of the plot by ensuring that they were taken alive. It was almost as if she was secretly thumbing her nose at him, and ensuring that anything that could possibly go wrong for him went wrong. He had underestimated her, and it had cost him deeply.

But while Dooku held him in too much respect to reveal his secrets and Ventress feared him too much, one of them was bound to crack eventually. And they knew just about every part of his plans, with the exception of the fact that he had been planning to get rid of both of them when it reached the final stage. It might be a week, a month or even half a year away, but one of them would eventually crack. And that would not be the ideal time limit for him to correct the huge, gaping holes now in his plan, courtesy of that irritating Twi'lek.

And the absolute worst part of this whole situation was that whenever he went out in public, he had to be singing on about how great Aayla was and how she was an example to everyone and generally praising just about everything about her that he could think of. It made him feel ill to be talking constantly about the person he hated most in the entire universe as if she was some kind of saint and having to make it sound genuine. It was quite frankly disgusting.

He would have to orchestrate some kind of plan quickly if he wanted to spring Dooku and Ventress from their prison. Fear gripped at his stomach as he began to reveal the full extent of what Aayla had done. It wouldn't be long before the war ended at this rate and if they didn't crack either of the two prisoners that they had currently, they might be able to find someone like Nute Gunray, who would break incredibly quickly. He would have to somehow get Dooku and Ventress out of jail before the Separatists were lost completely, (which he couldn't do personally because he nobody was allowed to visit them, since it was Jedi business), find a way of ensuring the remaining Separatists stayed true to their course without getting caught and bolster what forces the Separatists had left.

That might mean he would have to delve quite deeply into his expenses, but that he could probably handle.

Sidious' mouth twisted into a grimace as she slowly paced backwards and forwards, his large hood concealing the upper part of his face. His fists remained clenched as his mind, normally so quick when it came to these sort of situations, searched desperately for an answer to all of his problems.

He briefly toyed with the idea of going ahead an issuing the Order.

But he decided against it quite quickly. After Aayla's heroic actions and with the entire populace of the Republic praising her and her colleagues and the rest of the Jedi Order, then doing that so quickly afterwards would raise a lot of awkward questions that he would find very difficult to answer afterwards and it would take a lot of strenuous effort to ensure that he remained in control, rather than the smooth transaction that he had been planning. No, things were not so desperate as to accelerate his plans that far. He would be able to wait for a little longer.

He would have to contact Grievous somehow. He didn't know which base the droid General might have gone and hidden himself in, but he had to check. Grievous was probably his best hope right now. If he could somehow keep the terror of the Separatists high despite this enormous setback then that might give him opportunities to try something else. Maybe he could find a way to have Grievous attack the Jedi Temple without warning and have him liberate the captured duo instead.

But for the moment, the droid General had gone to ground. It might take Sidious a while to find him and he didn't exactly have a lot of time.

Sidious had to fight the urge to sit down in an undignified huff, for there was yet another thing weighing on his mind. He had known that Anakin was practically out of his grasp, but the way that Anakin had looked so... proud and delighted and almost giddy with excitement when he had reported Aayla's victory over his three most deadly members of the Separatist Alliance, made him realise that he had been even further out of his reach than he had thought.

Sidious growled. Aayla was taking everything from him. And worse still, she might even know that Sidious was on the hunt for her now. She and the other Jedi she hung out with were bright enough to figure out that the fact that Aayla had run across all three of them at once probably wasn't a coincidence. And it wouldn't take them long to figure out who might be behind it, even without interrogating Dooku.

His plans to retake control of his gradually disintegrating plot would need to coincide with another event – the final death of that Twi'lek. Never before had Sidious wanted anybody dead as much as this. Sidious despised everyone in the Jedi Order, with the exception of Anakin and even that was beginning to change slightly. He wanted Master Windu, Master Yoda, Plo Koon, Shaak Ti, Ki-Adi-Mundi, all of them dead.

But right at the top of his list was Aayla.

But having her taken out of the picture wasn't going to be easy. After the ordeal she had just been through, the forces of the Light were going to be careful when it concerned her. He knew that they taken Aayla to Belderone and the medical station that orbited above it, and there were numerous parts of his mind screaming at him to have the medical station attacked as quickly as possible and to have her killed while she was weakened.

But there were an equal number of reasons why this was impractical. For a start, Belderone was quite a well fortified Republic planet, and even though medical stations themselves were often vulnerable targets, if he sent in a Separatists fleet to take it out, it wouldn't be long before Republic forces arrived. They were probably there already, surrounding the medical station to protect the precious patient that it contained. So a full scale assault would be risky and would probably accomplish nothing. Plus, a quick attack on the very station where Aayla was would definitely raise questions.

To his knowledge, none of the Senators were aware of the presence of a Sith Lord in their midst. Not even Separatist advocates like Lot Dod were aware that he was actually among them. And while Senators like Lot Dod were likely to draw far more suspicion than himself if an attach happened, it would still be too risky. An all-out attack was out of the question.

So, what could he do?

He briefly considered paying a personal visit to the place and putting an end to the Twi'lek's life himself, just like he so wished to do, but that would just be foolish, even if he went in his main guise amongst the Senate and made it look like an accident. Once again, there would be too many questions. And if he went as Sidious, everyone was sure to learn of his presence amongst the Senate, even if not who he was.

But the urge to act now, while Aayla was vulnerable and recovering in bed from the severe depletion of energy that she had used up was too great. He had to do something. He needed a method of having Aayla picked off that would not only be done with complete stealth and precision that it could not be traced back to his guise in the Senate in any way. He also need to encompass for the fact that the medical station might have a full escort by now and that while Aayla was down for the count for the moment, there was still Barriss Offee and her Wookiee friend to deal with too.

How to go about that?

And then the answer came to him.

It was so simple. What he needed. What he really, really needed at the moment, was someone who was a master of infiltration, murder and stealth. Someone who could appear, make a kill and disappear back into the shadows just as quickly as he had come, leaving no trace of his presence and no leads to follow him. Someone who also didn't mind going up against Jedi and who knew how to deal with them.

This was going to require quite a lot of money being emptied from his accounts, but in the end, it would all be worth it. He could figure out his plans for the rest of the galaxy in a moment. It would only take one call via holocommunicator for him to set his next plot against Aayla to be set into motion, and he needed to do it soon before Aayla moved locations and became harder to get to.

Darth Sidious's face had changed back into that of a slight smirk at the prospect of what he was planning as he slowly stepped over to the console nearby. As he had done the previous day when he had called Count Dooku on Serenno, he pushed a few buttons with his long fingers and stared a little eagerly at the holotransmitter.

He _would_ have Aayla killed today. No matter how much she resisted.

* * *

The asteroids spun lazily through the Rogue Antar system, just as they always did. Not many ships liked to come to this part of space, as it was practically littered with the floating rocks, and contained numerous mynock ready to feast on the power cables of most ships and space stations. The war hadn't really affected this place as a result and it was therefore neutral space.

But there was one place that the pestilent mynocks had learnt to stay away from. Floating along with the asteroids, and surrounded by powerful repellents to keep them away, was Black Stall Station. It was small, and relatively undistinguished - a miniature space station with a shape similar to a cross, with docking clamps at the tips of two of them, while the other two made up part of the large, single central room.

Moving slowly through the floating rocks and ensuring that it didn't hit any of them with its practically lazy movements, but with deflector shields raised to maximum just in case of a rogue rock, which could sometimes happen was a modified Telgorn dropship, which was about the same size as a minibus and was quite featureless, except for the huge docking clamps at the back. There were no windows other than the cockpit. It was called the _Sleight of Hand_.

Both the station and the ship would have provided a tasty morsel to any mynock, but it was the owner of both that they had learnt to avoid.

The ship moved towards the station and, upon reaching it, rotated slowly to one side, so the large circular docking clamp that was attached to one end would be aligned with the similarly shaped and sized docking station on the side of the space station. There was a whirring of hissing machinery as the docking clamp eased out and latched onto the docking stations, sealing the ship with the hovering abode with a clunking sound and forming an airtight link between the two.

The inside of the central room was mostly dark and there was little sign of movement, except for a small being that was slowly moving about the place to ensure that it was kept tidy. The little mechanical droid sighed in resentment as he wielded the duster in one small, three-digit hand, his yellow photoreceptors staring blankly with the usual fixed expression of a droid but somehow managing to display his irritation. It was bad enough that his master made him do things akin to a butler droid, but a maid droid was a bit much wasn't it?

He was techno service droid, and yet his master had him performing the menial tasks when there weren't any missions that he was needed on. He couldn't be bothered to get other droids so the jobs were just loaded onto him. It really wasn't fair.

"Honestly," he murmured to himself. "Instructing me to dust the place like some kind of skivvy. All he does when he's off duty is just lounge around in his chair and count his credits, while I meanwhile have to go and clean the place, prepare the food and serve it to him and clean the place again and then go out to get more food and... ugh... when was the last time he used me in some form of mission? I..."

The droid stopped when he heard the sound of the docking clamp from the ship outside joining with the station. He immediately buttoned his nonexistent lip and moved out into the light in the centre of the room. In terms of height he would come up to about a human knee. His limbs were slender, with three fingered hands and round circular feet without toes. His waist was also rounded and attached to it was a thin, cuboid shaped torso. His head was by far the biggest part of him and was about the same size again as the rest of his body. It was bulky and cube shaped atop his neck, except for the extension at the top of the back on his head, with no visible mouth and round, yellow photoreceptors at the front.

He had shut up for a good reason. The sound had indicated that his Master was returning and he did not want to be caught badmouthing him in front of him. He could complain and get away with his life but letting his Master here him insulting him would be a very bad idea.

The circular door to the room opened to reveal another figure stepping in. In the darkness of the room, one of the only visible things about the dark shape were his large eyes, red and ovular in shape, with no pupils or irises. The rest of his was mostly in shadow, making it difficult to distinguish anything else about him except for the fact that he was wearing a large, wide-brimmed hat on top of his head.

"Good afternoon, Master," the techno-service droids said politely and a little sycophantically. "How was your latest assignment?"

The figure sniffed and waved a hand, causing the lights around the room to glow and slowly raise in intensity until the rest of him could be seen.

He wore a long tunic made of Nashta hide, to help him conceal himself in the shadows due to its dark colour and also allow him to take physical blows a little easier but move about quickly, durasteel boots with jetpack thrusters that would allow him to move at high speed through the air when he activated them, wrist gauntlets imbued with several control devices for more technical aspects of missions and also for launching off a large array of weapons concealed within them, LL-30 blaster pistols holstered at the waist, which he could draw out and point within a split second, before his target realised what was happening, cybernetic breathing tubes embedded in his cheekbones that enabled him to walk in all environments without the need for oxygen masks. Numerous ammunition canisters lined his waist.

His canines were long and pointed like small fangs. The only visible parts of his skin were his face and his fingers due to the fact he was wearing fingerless gloves. His skin was blue, but of a darker shade to Aayla's. He had no nose, or indeed visible nostrils, and his face was rather gaunt, but the blood-red eyes gave the impression that this person could and would kill without a moment's hesitation.

"No challenge at all, Todo," Cad Bane said, as he pushed a few buttons on a side-panel in the wall without looking to disable the security, which responded to life-forms and shot lasers and turrets all around the room if he took a step further forward. "The jobs are coming more easily these days. The last five missions weren't even remotely interesting. I just go to the hideout of some junkie who didn't pay somebody, shoot them and collect my prize."

"Well, that's not so bad, is it?" the techno-service droid known as Todo 360 replied as Bane strolled past him. "I mean, I least you're still getting lots of credits, right?"

"Oh yes," Bane said in his low voice that seemed to vibrate from the back of his throat. "The credits are being raked in," he replied, placing himself in the chair at one side of the room and lifting his legs so they were placed casually on the table and pulling his hat over his eyes. "But the missions themselves are just uninteresting. Nobody's called me out for a thrilling job for some time. What happened to the days when I was asked to gather a team to spring a Hutt from jail on Coruscant?"

"I'm sure things will turn up soon, Bane," Todo replied as he stepped over to him. "Have you heard the news?"

"News?" Bane asked, lifting his hat and staring balefully down at the droid. "What news?"

"It was on a holonet transmission while you were out," Todo replied, placing his duster down and looking up at Bane's face. "Apparently, the Sith Lord Count Dooku and his best agent, Asajj Ventress have been captured by the Republic forces."

Bane raised a brow in mild interest. Most affairs of the war didn't concern him unless he could make a profit out of it somehow, but this was quite a large event. "Is that so?" Bane asked. "What happened?"

"Well, it's quite astounding really," Todo replied. "I believe that they, along with General Grievous tried to attack one particular Jedi at the same time, and ended up getting utterly beaten by that Jedi and that Jedi alone. I heard that Grievous got away, but that the other two had been captured."

Bane snorted. "One Jedi?" He mused, placing a finger on his chin. "Must have been a tough customer. Which one was it?"

"Well, if my memory banks are correct," Todo said, "It was the A-Team member, Aayla Secura."

Bane immediately sat up and stared at Todo with much more fixed interest. "Secura?" he asked, a slow grin forming over his face. Secura was a name that he had been monitoring for some time now, waiting for the opportune moment to use a little piece of information that he had learned some time ago on the inhospitable planet, Behpour. "Well," he said. "This should prove very interesting."

Just then, the holocommunicator on his desk started beeping. Bane glanced across at it, and activated it after a couple of seconds. A figure that he had not seen for some time appeared in front of him and Bane could not help grinning as he beheld the dark cloak and the hooded, half-concealed face.

"Cad Bane," Darth Sidious uttered. "I have need of your services."

* * *

And there it is, ladies and gentlemen. The second attempt of Aayla Secura's life is being put into motion almost as quickly as the first ended. Sidious is certainly not messing about, and things are going to become very tense soon. Hope you don't mind the long absence too much. I think the fact that I reached an arc end with the last chapter left me with less motivation than usual, because although I left it on a cliffhanger, I can't continue that cliffhanger for a few chapters. Hopefully, I'll pick up the pace now.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

Sidious outlines what he wants Bane to do, and the Bounty Hunter sees an opportunity that he has been waiting a long time for. He begins his task of getting aboard the medical station with ruthless efficiency.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 132 : Bane's New Bounty**


	132. Bane's New Bounty

Here I am at last. It's taken me so long to do this chapter, but you'll be pleased to know that this is not due to laziness, at least not entirely. I've been devoting a hell of a lot of time to studying for my driving test. I took the theory test a short while ago and passed it with full marks, so I haven't been neglecting this story for nothing. I'm determined to pass the practical before I go back, so you might have to excuse some more slowness in future, especially now that things are getting tense again already, particularly after this chapter.

Now, let me know what you think.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 132:- Bane's New Bounty**

* * *

Bane's dealings with Darth Sidious were usually few and far between. Sidious obviously preferred to rely on his own forces amongst the Separatists to get things done. But whenever Bane had been contacted by Sidious in the past, the job that had been presented to him had always been one that required a good deal of his skills as a Bounty Hunter and they always, _always_ paid well.

And, of course, there was nothing more important than good pay if you lived by Bane's way of life.

Despite the fact that Sidious had asked Bane to carry out a specific task over half a dozen times since they had first made contact with one another, Bane still had very little knowledge about his client. Apart from his name, his position amongst the Separatists and the fact that he had a lot of money at his disposal, Bane knew nothing about Sidious. There wasn't anything remotely suspicious about this though. Many of his clients preferred to keep their identities concealed for their own safety. And, to be honest, Bane didn't really care. As long as he was getting paid, it didn't matter who was doing the paying.

And now, as Bane looked at the hooded visage of the mysterious Sith Lord, he felt a ripple of anticipation course through him. Perhaps Sidious would provide the thrilling assignment that he had been waiting for.

And, considering what he had just learnt from his (techno-service) butler droid, Todo 360, Bane had a feeling he knew what he might be doing next.

"Of course you need my assistance," Bane smirked as he reclined back in his chair slightly, not bothering to show any deference to Sidious, for although he was a powerful man, Bane was not his subject and Sidious knew better than to expect him to act like one. Nor was the Duros afraid of him. "You never call just to have cosy catch-ups," he chuckled. "Or to invite me over for tea and biscuits."

Sidious bristled slightly, and Bane raised his brow at the sever-so slight movement. Usually Sidious just bore his remarks without the trace of annoyance, as he knew Bane to be a valuable asset. Obviously this time he was severely ticked off about something.

And Bane had a strong feeling he knew what that was.

"Yes," hissed Sidious. "That may be the case. But my previous jobs for you have been about assisting me in progressing the warfront in some way. This time, however, it is much more personal."

Bane chuckled. "You sound annoyed," he observed. "Let me guess. That Secura Jedi has really gotten under your skin with this latest stunt."

Sidious hissed again. "So..." he growled. "You have heard the latest news then."

"Not really," Bane shrugged. "I just returned from another assignment and was informed about your little situation from my droid. How did that work out for you, hm? One Jedi against three of your finest and she still came out victorious. That must have been quite a shock."

"It is unwise to test me, Bane," the edge in Sidious' voice seemed to increase slightly after that. Bane smirked again, the fact that he could so easily needle a man who had remained passive and neutral at all times during previous conversations amused him. He wondered how much longer he could keep doing this before Sidious snapped completely, but he decided against it. It would mean he didn't get paid.

Bane sat forward slightly and placed his hands on the desk, his fingers interlacing as he took on a more serious demeanours. "My apologies, your Mightyness," he added, a little over-sycophantically and with a quirk in his jaw. "What is it that you want me to do this time. I'm assuming you want Secura to... meet with an accident, shall we say?"

Sidious' jaw clenched as Bane mentioned the name of the Twi'lek. "My plans have reached a major setback thanks to that Jedi," he growled. "My most trusted commanders have failed me and the populace of the Republic are beginning to treat her like some kind of messiah, who will lead them to freedom. She cannot be allowed to continue interfering with my desires."

"So, to sum up," Bane replied. "You want me to put a blaster bolt through her brain."

"Secura deserves a long, slow death," Sidious answered. "But a blaster bolt will do just as well. Aayla Secura must not exist for very much longer. Eliminate her. I don't care how you do it. All I care is that it is done and done quickly. Use whatever tactics you deem fit, any weapons you desire, any methods that will let you get the job done. Just do it."

"Well, someone's in a hurry," Bane chuckled. "But, of course, your wish is my command." He used a finger to lift the front of his wide hat brim to stare approximately in the place where Sidious' eyes would be and added, "For a price."

"Yes, I am aware that you will want paying," Sidious waved a hand impatiently. "And you will indeed get your reward, as soon as I have evidence to show that you have disposed of that Twi'lek."

"Ah," Bane lifted a finger and leaned back in his chair again. "But you see, Secura is not exactly your average run-of-the-mill Jedi, is she. Not only is she powerful enough to put down three of your best in one go, but she has numerous powerful friends and a lot of protection, and probably many adoring fans. Of course, all that means there will be great risk to my own personal safety," he smirked.

Sidious grunted. Both of them knew that Bane wasn't actually scared of the idea of going on the job – he was just laying on reasons to extract more money from the Sith Lord.

"You will receive any amount that you desire," Sidious replied testily. "Name your price and I will pay it."

"I want four million credits," Bane replied without hesitation. "Secura is partnered up with three other Jedi, and there is a chance I may need to get by any or all of them to get to her. One million for the chance of running into each of them. And I wish to see the money at the usual place within three days after I confirm Secura's demise."

"As you wish," Sidious said. Bane raised a brow again. Obviously Sidious wanted Aayla dead very much if he was willing to pay that much without trying to lower the price even a smidgeon.

"Oh, and you should also know that that amount may rise after the mission, depending on what I have to go through on it," he added.

"Very well," Sidious said quickly.

Bane smirked, his fangs glinting in the pale light that the hologram was giving off as he wondered how much he might be able to wrangle off Sidious after the mission was complete. Because Bane was deliberately omitting one particular detail, which he had a strong feeling would crop up on the mission ahead.

It had been over half a year since Bane had visited the planet Behpour in order to exact his revenge on the Skakoan mercenary, Kul Teska, who had stolen a valuable artefact from him, although Bane had stolen it from him first. He had been expecting to have to take out Teska himself, but he had been surprised to find that the Jedi were already there and taking his opponent on.

He had actually assisted the Jedi a little on that day, by shooting at Teska as he was bearing down on them.

Not because he felt he needed to, but because it served his own interests. His interference had allowed the Jedi to temporarily gain the upper hand over Teska and even allowed Aayla to cut off the Skakoan's arm. Oh, how satisfying that had been.

But Bane had watched from the shadows as Teska regained his advantage – facing off against three Jedi until it became a stalemate, thanks to his ability to hover and his multitude of weaponry. Bane had been just about ready to step in a second time to finish the irritating being off, when something else had happened. Something which had, for perhaps the first time in his life, left Bane speechless.

A strange, cyborg-rabbit like creature had appeared out of literally nowhere and attacked Teska. The new creature had outclassed him in every way, and it seemed like the Jedi knew the newcomer. In a matter of a minute or so, Teska had been reduced to a pile of scrap by the cyborg bunny thing, which had moved so fast that Bane couldn't even see it half the time.

Bane had also seen an odd four-legged fox creature with nine tails and a humanoid-sized rabbit with blades attached to the backs of her gloves standing with the Jedi as they observed Teska getting trashed. The Duros, hidden to all in the shadows, had quietly observed the group with fascination. They seemed perfectly at ease around one another, which meant that they had been acquainted with one another for a while. And yet, Bane hadn't heard a thing about these new creatures.

How strange.

As usual, while he fled the Separatist base that was about to explode due to an overloading weapon, Bane's thoughts had been on how he might be able to extract a profit from all of this. If something like this had been completely lost on him then that meant it had to have been some kind of secret. Bane always kept up with the news, looking for new job opportunities, and these creatures had completely slipped his notice. That meant there might be some potential credits to the right people if he were to reveal the existence of these creatures working alongside the Jedi.

And indeed, when Bane had returned to Black Stall Station and gone over the holonet broadcast about the incident on Behpour, he noticed that there was absolutely no mention of any of the creatures throughout the whole thing. The article had lavished praise on the three Jedi instead, mostly Aayla, and had expressed how the three of them were to be set to working together in the future. There wasn't a trace of the creatures anywhere.

If Bane hadn't seen the fox and the smaller bunny shrink into smaller forms before they all climbed aboard the larger bunny to fly out of the place, he wouldn't have had a clue how they could get away with keeping this secret.

There were any number of people who might pay for this information. The Separatists for one, and possibly Crime Lords like the Hutts who might be planning to cross the Jedi in the future in order to fulfil their schemes.

But Bane had kept his mouth shut all these months instead.

The main reason for this was that while he knew that the creatures existed, he didn't actually have any proof when it came to telling someone else. He had not had a holocam with him at the time, and all the security cameras on the station had been blown up in the colossal explosion. Plus, Bane had been a bit more preoccupied with escaping with his life rather than acquiring that proof before it was wiped out.

Bane had scanned the holonet news into the past for several months, particularly with events concerning Aayla, Anakin or Ahsoka, but he hadn't found even the slightest indication that there might be these strange creatures at work. And he kept an eye on the broadcasts ever since. And while the enormous feats that the group kept committing made perfect sense to Bane while they bamboozled everyone else, there was still no evidence of the creatures having been involved. Not even a whisper.

The Jedi were doing a very good job of concealing their existence.

And so, Bane had been waiting for the right moment – a chance where he might finally be able to get the proof that he needed. And if he wanted the money, he would have to get proof. He could hardly just go up to Jabba the Hutt and tell him the Jedi were being helped by some giant cyborg rabbit or a talking fox or a creature that could change shape into a larger form. For one thing, the tale was, to be frank, extremely far-fetched. Bane knew that unless somebody saw these things for themselves in some way then nobody would believe what he was saying.

And that simply wasn't an option. If people thought Bane was starting to invent stories in order to get more money, then they might consider him to be an unreliable Bounty Hunter to hire, for fear of getting ripped off. Or worse, they might believe that Bane was starting to lose his edge and was trying to come up with some other way to keep the credits coming in. People would start to lose faith in him, his reputation would diminish and he would start to receive less clients. Other Bounty Hunters would take his place as the best, at least in the view of the people.

And if there was one thing that Bane would never do, even for money, it was compromise his reputation at the most ruthless Bounty Hunter in the galaxy.

And so, Bane had waited. Patience was a virtue amongst the best Bounty Hunters, and one of the reasons why people like Greedo never climbed the ladder. Bane had kept an eye on the progress of the A-Team over the next half a year, observing holonet broadcasts, looking for any hint or suspicion of the creatures. But there was nothing. Even if the great feats like Geonosis and Boz Pity, where it seemed impossible that the Jedi could do it alone, the creatures failed to even be alluded to. For all Bane knew, Behpour might have been a one-off.

But he had never given up.

And while he couldn't prove to Sidious that these creatures had anything to do with Aayla's victory over Dooku, Ventress and Grievous (especially since he didn't even know whether the creatures had been involved or not), the job assignment that Sidious had just given him might just be the key to getting the proof he required.

"You got yourself a deal," Bane said. "But I'm gonna need some information first. For a start, where am I going to be able to find Secura? You seem to know a lot about the warfront. Where will she be heading next?"

"She will not be heading anywhere for a couple of days," Sidious rasped, a leer of anticipation in his voice now. "While she was able to survive the attack by my subordinates largely unscathed, she had used up the majority of her energy and is recovering from her ordeal in the medical station orbiting the planet Belderone. That is where you will find her."

Bane snorted. "You're telling me that she won't even put up a fight? Well, that's not exactly a thrilling option."

"That may be," said Sidious. "But nevertheless, I will pay you handsomely. The Republic must know that the Jedi, especially Secura, are not invincible. Murdering her in her sleep will suit my needs just fine. I trust that you will be able to infiltrate the medical station."

"Oh, that won't be a problem," smirked Bane.

"Providing that you give me one additional piece of information. Where is the nearest battlezone to Belderone that resulted in a victory for the Republic recently? I have a plan for how to slip aboard that medical station undetected."

"Very well," Sidious nodded. "According to my sources, the Republic are on the verge of taking over the planet Jomark. If you make for that planet as quickly as possible then you should be able to get there on the brink of victory. Shall I provide you with any other equipment for you task?"

"No, Sith Lord," Bane shook his head. "I prefer to rely on my own methods and equipment. I know I can get the job done with what I have and I don't need anything more. Now, I suppose I should bid you good day. When next you hear from me, I guarantee that Secura will no longer be breathing."

Sidious chuckled malevolently. "I do hope that you don't disappoint me, Bane. I have suffered too many disappointments recently and I would hate to see my top Bounty Hunter on the receiving end of my anger."

"Threatening remarks will not make me do my job any better," Bane replied evenly. "I never commit anything less than one-hundred percent to the task in hand if I get paid handsomely. Just don't forget that and you have one dead Twi'lek. Good bye." Bane reached over with a long finger and hit a button which cancelled the hologram of Sidious.

"Well," he murmured, more to himself than anyone else. "This one should prove to be most interesting."

"But he said that the Jedi would recovering in a medical station," Todo 360 pointed out from where he was hovering nearby. "Does that not make this similar to the other most recent missions you've had, Bane? You know, go in, shoot them, get out."

"Ah, that may be true," said Bane. "But it won't be entirely like that, Todo. You see, Sidious is right. Secura is vulnerable and that means that she's likely to be protected by concerned friends, if you catch my drift."

"You mean those creatures you told me about from Behpour?" asked Todo. "I still say that you'd been inhaling too many noxious fumes from that planet. Who know what a planet as hostile as that can do to you organics?"

"I might have agreed with you, had it not been so vivid," Bane replied. "But I know it was real Todo. And it would be wise if you remembered who you were speaking to before you accused me of making it up."

Todo cringed backwards slightly as Bane got up and walked over to a panel in the wall, to replenish some of his weapons supplies. "Sorry, master," the droid replied as his followed his progress. "Alright, if these creatures really exist and are being kept a secret from everyone, even the Republic, like you believe, then do you really think that they'd be hanging around Secura's bedside in the middle of a Republic medical station. Wouldn't that risk exposing themselves?"

"True enough," Bane agreed. "But you forget, people of that ilk have soft hearts and they might take many risks to ensure that a friend of theirs was safe. Besides, the Jedi have don e a good job of concealing them so far. There must be a reason for that."

"Alright," said Todo. "Then you think you might have to go through them to get to Secura?"

"Possibly," Bane said. "But I'd rather not."

"Really?" Todo's photoreceptors switched off and back on, his equivalent of blinking in surprise. "But I thought that you wanted a thrill."

"I do," said Bane. "But I don't just need proof that these things exist. I need information. Who they are, what they are, where they came from, strengths, weaknesses, abilities and all sorts of things like that. I have no idea what I'm going up against, Todo, and it pays to be cautious. And the more I know about the creatures, the more money I can make from giving people the information."

"Right," Todo said slowly, wondering where Bane was going with this.

Bane turned around and smirked at his techno-service droid. "Which brings me back to my earlier point – Secura is vulnerable."

It took Todo's processor a couple more seconds to come to a realisation, before the droid said, "You're going to kidnap and interrogate her first, aren't you?"

"There, you see," Bane nodded, "There is a reason I keep you around."

"Besides keeping your quarters in order, you mean," Todo muttered.

"What was that?" Bane raised a brow, although he knew exactly what Todo had said.

"Nothing," Todo lied hastily. Bane smirked but decided to let his faithful droid off the hook this time. The droid turned back up to look at him and said, "So, do you really think that that is a good idea. Darth Sidious only wants you to kill her, not capture her."

"Oh, I will kill her," Bane replied. "That is, after all, my mandate. However, you always have to look for opportunities in my line of work, Todo. And I happen to have stumbled onto a pretty major one. Besides, Sidious doesn't care how I get the job done as long as I do it, and when I'm done extracting every piece of information I can from Secura, he'll be grateful for the added information. And you know what that means, right?"

"More pay," nodded Todo. "But even so, are you sure it's wise. I mean, sneaking into a medical station to kill someone is one thing, but smuggling one of the patients out is going to be a whole different kettle of gooberfish. And how do you plan on doing that without alerting these creatures if they are there. Plus, when everyone learns that Secura's gone missing they'll tear the galaxy apart to try and find her. And, how are you going to get her to tell you anything – she must be pretty tough..."

"Todo, just shut up," Bane turned his back and selected a few fresh rounds of ammunition. "I am aware that there are many variables I have to overcome, but you needn't worry. I know what I'm doing, and I'm going to prepare myself for anything considering how little I know of these creatures. Besides, I have a plan."

"Oh, alright," Todo shrugged. "If you say so, Bane. I suppose I'd better prepare the station for our new guest while you going and... pick her up, shall we say."

As Todo turned around to get busy, Bane turned as well, storing his ammunition belt with the fresh supplies and smirking at his droids retreating back. "I'm afraid that that will have to wait, Todo. You're coming with me."

"What?" Todo sounded alarmed, looking round. "But... but Bane, not that I'm afraid or anything but this is going to be quite a potentially dangerous mission and... well, we'll be going up against a member of the A-Team and three creatures that don't match any results on the holonet and other Jedi besides and who knows what else."

"Can it, Todo," Bane strode over to him and gave the droid a none-too-gentle kick with his boot in the direction of the door, causing the droid to stumble in that direction. "You're coming and that's that. You have a part in my plan and as long as you do what I say, you'll come out alright. Probably."

"Oh dear," Todo whined to himself and he stepped towards the ship in front of his master. "I have a bad feeling about this."

* * *

The Jomark system had seen better days. It was a thriving world filled with indigenous people that, before the war, had lived in peace and harmony, without much interference from the outside world. Nevertheless, the planet had remained a part of the Republic, and, naturally, this had drawn the eventual attention of the Separatists.

As usual, the droid armies had left devastation in their wake, marching across the surface of the world as they began the subjugation of the people who lived there. Many cities were now half-ruined and the war had stripped many of their homes and livelihoods. But, as usual, the Republic had responded in taking back the planet as quickly as they can.

The war on Jomark had been raging for several months now, as the Separatists had managed to gain quite a foothold there and it was one of the unfortunately many places that the A-Team had yet to visit. A number of Jedi had been called in to take the field, during the months that the battle raged and more than a few had fallen in the ravaging combat.

One of the Jedi that was still alive was Stass Allie. She was a Korun human female, much like Master Adi Gallia of the Jedi Council. She even had a similar Tholoth headdress adorning her head and had been Adi Gallia's Padawan before she had been knighted a little while before the war. And now, she stood on the surface of Jabiim from roughly about a quarter of the way up one of the tall buildings of the capital and stared around her at the carnage wrought by the Separatists.

It wasn't often that a victory felt hollow, but unfortunately, this was one of them. The hollow ones were usually on the heavily populated worlds. The Republic had arrived too late for a very large portion of the people that lived here. Throughout the streets, Stass could see the bodies of humans, Rodians, Twi'leks and many other assorted species that had been living here in peace before they heard the pounding of mechanical feet hitting their roads. The droids hadn't even bothered to clear the dead away, and now they just lay there in the roads, waiting for someone who cared to give them a decent send-off.

Stass was glad that the war was coming to an end if it meant all this carnage would be coming to an end.

The battle had not been easy on the clones either. The droid fortifications had been strong indeed – stronger than usual in fact. Dozens of white-clad soldiers were lying amongst the slain of the locals, surrounded by piles of sparking droids that they had died fighting to secure the freedom of the locals. The survivors were still numerous, but far less than Stass would have liked.

For now, the dead clones were being ignored. They would be gathered up and given a respectful rest soon enough, but right now the clones were more concerned with the members of their army that were still alive, but wouldn't be if they didn't do something quickly. Hover-stretchers were being ushered about the place by the stronger clones and Stass shuddered as there were cries of pain and agony issuing from below as the injured clones were moved onto them and taken towards the gunships to head up into space.

One particular screaming noise drew Stass' attention, and she spotted another Jedi, Luminara Unduli, attending to a particularly nasty blaster wound on one poor clone that had somehow been shot through the foot. Her hand was hovering over the burnt hole and giving off the blue light of Jedi healing as she knitted the skin back together.

Stass was grateful to have Luminara around, since her skill with healing was well-renowned, but Luminara could only be in one place at a time and unfortunately there were so many clones that needed attention. Stass spotted a couple of clones nearby attempting to lift a third onto a hoverstretcher without moving him around too much, as the clone had taken a shot to the abdomen. Stass quickly descended from the building with a quick leap, landing nearby and extending a hand, using the Force to help lift the clone onto the stretcher and settle him down carefully.

"Thanks, General," said one of the other two clones, a veteran of Stass' army known as Sil.

Stass nodded to him, and said,"Get him to medical as quickly as possible. He needs urgent treatment for that wound."

"Right away, sir," nodded the clone and turned to leave. Stass watched them go for a few moments and then turned to walk over to Luminara, who was busy fixing a more minor wound to the side on another clone.

"Well," she observed as she stepped closer to the Mirialan. "Hopefully this planet won't see any more death for quite a while now that this is finally over."

"Indeed," said Luminara, straightening up and helping the formerly injured clone to his feet. "But nevertheless, it would have been better for all if we had not been required to come here. This planet is just one of many that have been ravaged by the Separatists. We can only hope that the resolution of this battle brings us one step closer to the end of the war."

"Yes, but hoe many more steps must we take before we finally get there?" Stass wondered aloud. "And how much more devastation like on this scale must we go through during those steps."

"Those are questions that I cannot answer," Luminara said, allowing the clone to walk away and help another trooper. "However, I must confess, I wish that Barriss had been here."

"Your Padawan?" Stass asked. "Why?"

"Well, not only would she have been a great help to reduce clone deaths, but I could use an extra pair of hands at this healing. Plus, she would have brought some extra help with her, if you know what I mean."

"You mean the A-Team," nodded Stass. Luminara, her back turned slightly to Stass, smiled mysteriously, knowing that Stass had no idea of the existence of the Digimon. "Yeah, they would have been a great help. I wonder what they were doing while we were stuck in this mess."

"We'll have to check the Holonet news," Luminara chuckled. "Whatever it is, it'll probably be on there somewhere."

Stass chuckled slightly as well. "But that will have to wait, right. We've got more troopers to fix up right now, haven't we."

Luminara nodded and hurried over to another clone, groaning in the street nearby. Stass hurried after her and after a quick examination, both of them confirmed that the clone had a dislocated shoulder. Stass braced him for the painful but necessary fix-up, and Luminara expertly pushed the arm back into the right place with a horrible clicking noise that caused the clone to yelp in agony.

All around them, other clones were being picked up and placed on stretchers and wheeled towards the waiting gunships that would take them back up to the fleet waiting for them above. There were a number of large cruisers with large medical bays, but even so, there were so many injured clones in this bout that the medical facilities that they had were not going to be enough. Commander Gree had therefore ordered in a couple of medical ships to the area. The ships would have the facilities to keep to more seriously injured clones stable while they headed for a nearby medical station for the full treatment.

* * *

The clone, Sil, was walking along with the clone that Stass had helped to lift onto the stretcher.

They were heading for a gunship that would take them up to the cruiser and from there to the medical ship. He walked in sombre silence, as did his companion, noting, as they went, everything around them, much like the Jedi had been doing. Sil paused briefly as he came to the body of a clone that had been the unfortunate victim of a droideka. There were numerous blaster holes punched in his chest, signs of the droideka's relentless firing.

The droideka itself was lying nearby, sliced into many fragments by a lightsaber blade. But the Jedi had arrived too late to help this particular clone.

It was times like this when Sil wondered if there really was no more to his life than fighting, putting his life on the line and eventually dying in combat. He could find little cause for celebration at a time like this, when his brothers lay dead all around him. He wasn't even sure who it was beneath the helmet of the deceased clone, and he wasn't sure he wanted to find out.

Sure, the Jedi didn't treat them like cannon fodder. But was that all they were really? It certainly seemed that way as he turned around and glanced back across the battlefield. There were piles of rubble everywhere, and numerous clones were sifting through them, trying to find the buried bodies of their companions. And while the sparking bodies of droids made him feel slightly better, the bodies of his brothers merely slammed the situation back down on him a moment later.

Sil wondered if these clones had died for no reason. He didn't know the full reason why the Separatists had invaded this planet, but whatever it had been, they had certainly put a dent in their forces.

Sil turned back around and headed off after his companion and their stretcher-borne brother, who had gotten several paces again during his silent musing. As he walked a little faster to catch up, something suddenly caught Sil's eye as he passed a nearby side-street. A brief flash of orange drew his eyes towards the street, causing him to pause and stare down it in bewilderment.

That was odd. If he hadn't known better, he would have said he had just spotted a flame, for a brief moment.

He continued staring for a few moments, searching the dark depths for any sign of anything else, and then he removed his helmet for a better look. His eyes narrowed as they squinted down the passage, searching for anything else out of the ordinary.

Then, for the briefest of moments, Sil thought he spotted a shadow of something slipping out from hiding and disappearing into the depths of the street. Sil blinked, wondering if somehow it had been a trick of the light, but he knew otherwise really. There was something in that alleyway. And since the civilians had cleared out of the area a while, that meant something that shouldn't be there.

Sil turned back to his companion, to see that he had already gotten some way ahead. Sil shrugged and donned his helmet again, hefting his blaster as he carefully made his way into the side-street with it raised. As silently as his armour would allow, Sil crept around a couple of crates and stepped over what appeared to be the busted remains of an astromech droid. The dark seemed to press in on him and Sil wondered for a moment whether he should have requested back-up. But he was confident that he could handle whatever it was.

As he stepped deeper into the alleyway, he could see almost nothing ahead of him except more crates. He didn't have a night-vision mode on his helmet – he hadn't thought that he would need one in this planet. But the darkness and the silence was almost eerie. The narrow space seemed to cut off the majority of the sound behind him – he could only just hear the activity of other clones bustling around.

Sil paused in his advance and held his breath, without realising he was doing the latter, and he listened for anything else out of the ordinary. But he could hear nothing.

Sil stayed there for about half a minute, listening for nothing, before he finally decided that he had not seen anything. With a shrug he holstered his blaster again and turned around to head back to where the others were still busy. He was totally unaware of the dark figure that silently emerged from between two crates practically next to where Sil had been standing. The figure raised a fist and hit a button on his wrist-gauntlet, causing a small hatch to open and, suddenly, a pair of bolas were launched right at Sil.

Sil heard the whirling noise as the bolas sailed through the air and quickly spun about, but was only able to get a glimpse of the dark figure with the wide-brimmed hat before the bolas slammed around his ankles and pulled them together with a jerking movement, the heavy balls clacking together and the ropes they were attached to wound around themselves. Having his feet suddenly pulled together jerked Sil off balance and his collapsed onto his back before he had the chance to unholster his blaster again.

Even as he crashed to the floor, the dark figure was upon him. A heavy boot planted itself on Sil's chest to keep him from rising and another one trapped his wrist to the ground, preventing his from wielding his partially unholstered blaster. Before Sil knew what was going on, the figure reached down and plucked his helmet from his head, revealing his face. Sil found himself looking up into the face of one of the Republic's most wanted criminals.

Cad Bane.

"Nice of you to drop by for a visit," Bane sneered at him. "But I'm afraid I'll have to cut it short. Now hard feelings."

Before Sil could cry out, Bane had whipped a blaster pistol from seemingly nowhere and fired it, punching a hole in the middle of Sil's forehead and killing him instantly. Bane wasted absolutely no time. Once Sil was dead, Bane immediately went about removing the clone's armour. He had done something like this once before, and had found the technique quite effective. He saw no reason not to use the same technique twice – as long as it got him results.

Bane knew he didn't have a lot of time before someone noticed that Sil wasn't there, so he worked quickly. He removed the bulky parts of his clothing that he knew would not fit under the armour of the clone, such as his hat, his nashta-hide tunic, his cheek-pipes and his wrist-gauntlets. Arranging them in a pile, with the hat perched on top, Bane began to pull on Sil's armour, leaving the clone only in the grey clothing that he had worn underneath it.

It didn't take long for Bane to complete his disguise – clone armour was designed to be easy to get in and out of, just in case there was some form of emergency that they had been unprepared for. Before long, Bane stood, clad in white and black, and with only his head showing his true identity.

Bane picked up the helmet, which he had removed before killing Sil to ensure that his armour didn't have any suspicious-looking wounds. A blaster hole in the middle of a helmet of a clone that appeared to be fine would not be the way to go.

Tucking the helmet under one arm, Bane picked up his hat and temporarily placed it back on his head, before picking up everything else and slinging them over his shoulder, before stepping towards the street where the other clones were still moving about. He moved with a purpose, striding outwards with the confidence that a clone would probably portray wherever they walked.

This was going so easily thus far. He'd managed to lure the clone into the street by firing a very small burst out of the flamethrower installed in his right wrist-gauntlet. And now it was time to see whether the other clones would be just as easy to work with. He also knew that there were Jedi out there, and he decided to avoid them if at all possible. Exactly how Jedi senses worked was a mystery to a lot of people, but Bane knew that many of them had the ability to detect deception. And while he was confident he could handle himself, it was important to maintain his cover for the time being.

Flipping his hat off and donning the helmet, certain that he looked completely ridiculous in the white clone armour, Bane stepped out into the main road. The clones paid him absolutely no mind. Why should they? He resembled just another clone as long as he didn't take off his helmet. But Bane knew that he had to dispose of the items he had where he could get them back later.

He nudged a crate sitting next to him, seemingly innocently. After a couple of seconds, the lid slowly lifted upwards and a pair of yellow photoreceptors peered out from beneath it. "Oh, thank goodness," Todo muttered. "I was beginning to wonder if you'd forgotten what crate you'd left me in, or that some real clone would come and take me away."

"Quiet, Todo," Bane murmured from under his helmet and quietly slipped his tunic to the little droid. Todo's small metallic hands grabbed the tunic and pulled it inside the crate, while Bane deposited his wrist-gauntlets and cheek-pipes in through the gap as well. Then, Bane handed over his hat and said, "Don't sit on that hat, Todo, or you will regret it."

"How much longer am I going to have to stay in here, exactly?" asked the techno-service droid. "It's quite dark and it's uncomfortable, sitting on all these medical supplies."

"You'll manage, I'm sure," Bane replied. "Because if you give me away, I'll personally blow your processor out."

"What if the clones find me without it being my fault?"

"They won't," Bane answered. "Now shut up." He then pushed the lid shut, pushing Todo down back into the crate as he did so. The disguised Bane then reached down and picked the crate up, carrying it towards one of the gunships waiting nearby. There were other clones, real clones, carrying out similar tasks with other crates, so Bane didn't look out of the ordinary. It looked like they were planning on leaving the planet as quickly as possible.

Bane smirked beneath his helmet as he stepped aboard a gunship and placed the crate containing the hidden Todo 360 on the ground next to him. The clones in the gunship with him made no move to speak to him. It seemed that they were all feeling rather sombre after the hard-won victory. Plus, one of the clones was on a stretcher, breathing heavily and with a horrible-looking dent in the armour on his legs, implying something heavy had landed on him.

Before long, the blast doors of the gunship closed and the white vessel lifted off the ground. Bane made no moves, did absolutely nothing to attract attention his way, even for a second. Even in disguise, it was best if he could avoid attracting too much attention. Particularly since someone might ask him to take off his helmet, or even speak to them. Bane could do a passable imitation of a clone's voice, but the less he said, the better.

But the clones seemed more concerned with their wounded comrade than him and so it wasn't long before they pulled into the hangar of one of the large cruisers of the Republic fleet. Bane smirked again as the gunship touched down and the clones ushered out the moment the blast doors opened, taking the hovering stretcher with them.

Bane picked up the crate again and followed them out, tailing them as they made their way out of the hangar, carrying the crate with him. Once again, he didn't look out of place – there was a lot of equipment being moved about in preparation for moving off. But Bane needed to get aboard one of the medical frigates and he didn't actually know which direction he needed to head for.

The best way to find out, would be to follow the wounded clone.

He tailed the stretcher at a distance throughout a couple of passages, before they appeared to reach the medical bay. Bane paused as the clones appeared to have a small discussion with the medical droid at the door.

"Got another one for you, Doc," said one of the clones. "Some quite extensive damage to the legs. Said a chunk of building got blasted from above him and he wasn't able to dive out the way in time. Got any spare places for him?"

"I'm afraid not," said the doctor droid, shaking its head. "All our beds have been taken and we have only the space for the more urgent cases in here. While I sympathise with your brother, considering the pain he must be in, I am afraid that if you want more immediate treatment, you'll have to take the medical ship. It leaves in approximately ten minutes, and it'll take you to a medical station, where your comrade can be treated in good time."

"Thanks, Doc," said the clone. "But could you at least anaesthetise him before we go?"

"Of course," nodded the droid and reached down to the clone's exposed neck, pushing the needle built into his hand in and applying the drug to the clone to ensure he fell asleep.

"Hmm, they're polite to their droids," Bane heard Todo say through the crate. He abruptly tipped the crate slightly, causing a quiet rumble and a muffled yelp from within as Todo and the other contents rolled about.

"Cheers, Doc," the clone replied and they took off again, wheeling the groggy clone down more corridors. Bane stepped out from around the corner and followed them again. They traversed several more corridors, with Bane hanging back enough so it didn't seem suspicious before they came to an airlock, which now had a extended corridor attached to it from the smaller medical ship on the other side.

Bane met no resistance as he strode onto the medical ship. He carried the crate through the corridor and into past a couple of clones tending to some injured ones. The ship was small and easy to navigate, so it wasn't long before Bane found himself in the cargo hold – the largest room in the ship and stacked with crates of medical supplies. It was currently empty, exactly as Bane had predicted.

Bane set the crate down and then concealed himself behind a large pile of crates, just in case someone else walked in.

"Todo, we're in," Bane murmured, as he pulled the helmet off his head.

"About time," Todo murmured as he lifted the lid of the crate and clambered out. "I was about to have a panic attack in there. What exactly were you planning on doing if you were discovered?"

"I would have pulled off a quick and easy escape, Todo," Bane growled, "like I always do. Now, pass me my coat."

Todo sighed and hefted the cloak out of the crate, passing it to the menacing Duros. In very little time, Bane had redressed himself back into his usual attire – he wanted to spend as little time as possible in the armour of the clone trooper – as he had little access to his large variety of weaponry in that thing. As he placed his cheek-pipes back over his face and clamped on the wrist-gauntlets once again, he rose up and peered around the side of the crate stack he was concealed behind.

There was no sign of anyone entering the cargo hold.

"So, what's the next step of this brilliant plan of yours?" Todo asked, as the little droid struggled to heft the bulky clone armour into the crate where he had previously been hiding.

"We wait," Bane replied. "We can't let anyone have an inkling that we're here until the ship gets underway. Only when the ship is in hyperspace and totally defenceless do we make our move."

"Ah, we wait for the opportune moment," said Todo.

"Yes," nodded Bane. "And when the moment comes, we take control of the bridge first. That way, no-one will be able to call for assistance if the ship's crew finds out what's going on."

"Do we even have to take control of the ship?" Todo asked. "It's going where we want to go anyway."

"That may be," Bane replied. "But even when we get there, we'll still need it to get _off_ the station... with our prize."

"Fair enough," Todo shrugged, seeing the logic in this.

"Now, come on," Bane waved a hand. "Into the ventilation system." Hitting a button on his wrist gauntlet, the rocket-thrusters attached to his boots flared into life and he lifted into the air and towards the ceiling. Todo's rounded feet also began to spout flames as he followed his master upwards. The two levitated towards the large grill in the ceiling, which Bane quickly removed, allowing his droid to zip into the large vent before he hovered in himself.

Replacing the grill so as not to arouse suspicion, Bane turned and silently crept down the vent tube, knees bent to an almost awkward angle and body angled downwards to stop his hat from brushing the ceiling. Todo followed, and the two of them crept through the unsuspecting ship like a pair of nexu on the prowl.

Todo peered through one of the grills they passed and paused when he spotted a clone walking in the hallway directly beneath him. If Todo needed to breathe, he would have been holding it, but the clone gave no indication that he knew they were there. He merely turned into a nearby doorway, which slid shut behind him and concealed him from view.

"Phew, this is nerve-wracking," Todo murmured.

"Quiet," Bane growled.

* * *

A minute or so later, they heard the distinct noise of the hatch connecting the medical ship to Republic cruiser retracting back into the airlock. Bane and Todo both froze as they felt the ship beginning to turn through space. A leer was in place on Bane's face as the next phase of his plan went off without a hitch. Sure enough, a few moments later, they heard the noise of the ship's hyperdrive activating and thrusting the medical frigate into hyperspace.

"Excellent," Bane muttered.

"Do we act now?" Todo asked.

"Jabiim is not far from Belderone," Bane answered. "We'll have to act quickly. Now, when we get to the bridge, leave the people and the rest of the ship to me. I want you to hack into the computer and bring up the plans for the medical station that we'll be heading for. I want to know exactly the places that I should check when we finally reach the station _before_ we get there."

"Alright," nodded Todo. "I can do that."

"Good. Now, lets go."

It only took another minute or so of stealth before Bane judged that they were outside the bridge. He didn't know the exact plans of the ship, but he knew the bridge was right at the fore of the ship, and so they had headed in that direction. Coming across another grill, Bane slid it aside and dropped to the floor below. Despite his heavy boots, Bane landed with barely a sound. He had had a lot of practice when it came to things like this.

Todo hovered out of the vents and slid the grating back to its original position before he joined his master on the floor. Bane's smirk grew wider as he turned to find himself confronted with a large, white door at the end of the corridor. A few strides later and Bane was standing in front of it, and his hand raised to the panel beside it. His long, blue finger pushed down on the red button and the door slid aside, to reveal a small room, just big enough for a couple of seats in front of the controls and a small space behind the seats. The windows in front of the seats were displaying the purplish blur of hyperspace.

Bane's sense of direction had steered him directly to the right place.

A pair of clones were sitting in the two available seats. The pilot remained focused on what he was doing but the co-pilot looked around to see who had entered the room.

He barely had time to cry, "What...!" before Bane's pistols were in his hands and a couple of blaster bolts slewed across the room and slammed into him, one going through the back of his chair to smash him between the shoulder-blades. As the clone slumped, dead, the pilot jerked around in surprise, but he didn't get a chance to say anything, before another bolt took him in the chest, right over the heart.

Bane strode over to the seats between the two dead clones and pushed the dead co-pilot off the controls.

"Here's the terminal," he said, indicating it to Todo. "Now, get to work. I have a few more clones to visit."

Todo clambered aboard the pilot's seat and stood over the controls, his hands beginning to move over the buttons as he began to hack into the computer – his programming as a techno-service droid allowing him to act quickly. "I'll have it done in plenty of time," he said, without looking up.

Bane nodded and turned to stride out of the bridge. Shutting the door behind him, he detached a device from his belt and placed it on the door – it stuck magnetically. It was a special locking device that would seal the door until he returned, and would only respond to his genetic code. If some clones got past him, they wouldn't be able to get into the bridge and send off a signal. Of course, there were other ways to get one out, but they would take longer, and Bane wasn't planning to give them the time they needed to execute it.

Bane didn't rush. He strode through the corridors with a purpose, determined to take in every detail and go through the ship like a fine comb, eliminating anything he came across. His first encounter was with a pair of clones up ahead that were striding through the corridor, presumably patrolling. Neither of them had time to do much more than blink, before Bane's blasts took them both out simultaneously. Bane strode past them, not bothering to dispose of the bodies.

It only took about five minutes or so for Bane to wipe out the entire ship. He came to the small mess-hall, where about four clones were eating something which looked completely unappetizing. None of them noticed Bane was there until the Duros dived into the room, rolling on his shoulders and somehow having his hat remain on his head as he rolled to a crouching stop and took out two of the clones with a couple of blasts.

The other two clones reacted with speed, whipping out their blasters and firing on the Duros, but Bane had already stood and planted a foot on the rim of a table, pressing down to tip it onto its side and form a barrier. The moment the clones ceased fire for a split second, Bane somersaulted over the table and let off another couple of shots that sent them out of the action too.

Without a moment's hesitation, Bane turned around and simply walked out of the door.

He encountered a couple more clones in the hallways, and they met ends as abruptly as the others. But it was when Bane reached the relatively large sickbay that his ruthlessness really became apparent. He could hear the sounds of the groaning injured before he reached the place and he knew that that room was likely to be the busiest, even if many of the clones in that room wouldn't be able to fight back.

He briefly debated with himself how to proceed with it as he strode the last few steps. A thermal detonator would take them all out, but using an explosive device inside such a small vessel, or indeed any space-going vessel, could be disastrous. But Bane did have another kind of grenade at his disposal and he planned on using it now. Pulling it out of his pocket, he stepped in front of the doorway.

A number of clones started when they spotted him. Bane smirked and said, "You might as well stop trying to help your friends. Your efforts would be wasted anyway." As clones began to dive for blasters, Bane flipped a switch on the grenade and tossed it into the room, before he stepped back and pushed the button to close to door. Then, he calmly raised his blaster and fired off a shot at the console, blasting the lock to smithereens and sealing the clones in. He tipped his hat to the door and strode off again, ignoring the hacking and choking noises that began to emanate from the crowded medical bay.

The room was now filling up with a thick concentration of toxic gas. The grenade was designed to release large quantities that could fill up a small space and kill everything within the clone within roughly two minutes, and then release a second, special gas to inhibit the toxic one and stop its advance, meaning that it wouldn't spread into the vent system and get around the rest of the ship. Not that it would have bothered Bane, really considering he still had his cheek-pipes to give him fresh air. But, suffice to say, the clones in there were all doomed.

Bane felt no remorse for them. He held no remorse for anyone, having purged it from himself at the earliest opportunity. If you held remorse when you did what Bane did then the moment's hesitation that it could give you might be the moment that costs you the mission. Yes, he was ruthless, but Bane no longer cared. He was a Bounty Hunter with no loyalties. He couldn't afford to care.

A number of other clones were met and disposed of in similar ways. The rest of the clones occupying the corridors were shot down instantly. Bane took no prisoners, no mercy. The blaster bolts flew almost before he had a chance to think about pulling the trigger. He acted on instinct now, and he often found his sharply-honed instincts were the best things to rely on. They got the job done even faster than he did.

The last couple of victims that he added to his list were a pair of clones that emerged from a corner that Bane was approaching. Bane's blaster whipped up as it usually did and took out one of the clones, but the other one was obviously more experienced, and the moment he heard the sound of a blaster being fired, he dropped into a crouch and Bane's attack only grazed his shoulder. The clone sprang up and pulled out his blaster, firing on Bane almost as quickly as Bane himself.

But Bane was still fast. The Duros dived aside as the blaster bolt streaked past him and suddenly he was up again. The clone fired off a couple more shots, but Bane ducked under the first and rolled aside as the other zipped past before lunging forward. The clone stumbled backwards as Bane grabbed his own blaster and used it to bash the clone in the face. Off-balance, the clone had no defence as Bane's sweep-kick took his legs out from underneath him, the Duros wrenching the clones blaster from his hands as he fell and flipping it around, firing a shot from it before the clone even hit the ground.

"Nice effort," Bane commended him, tossing the blaster on the corpse. "But not good enough."

* * *

Once satisfied that there were no other clones on board, Bane returned to the bridge, to find his lock had not been tampered with. Pushing it and causing it to fall from the door and back into his palm, Bane stowed it away again for future use before opening to door and stepping back inside.

"Did you have a good time?" asked Todo, turning around to look at him.

"It was more interesting than my last few encounters," Bane replied. "But still not much of a challenge. I hope, for your sake, that you have some information for me."

"Yeah, I've got something," Todo hit a button, pulling up a holomap of the medical station. "It seems that all Republic medical stations have the same layout, so it wasn't that difficult really. The main spire in the middle is the reactor core, but I'm assuming you don't really need to know about that."

"While it would be amusing to blow the place up, I am not here to do that," Bane answered. "Where are the most likely places that Secura would be?"

"Well, I've narrowed it down to four possible locations," said Todo, pushing another button and causing some red blips to appear on the map – four of them. "Most of the medical bays are large and communal for the clones, but these four places are more private ones – designed to hold only one patient. Presumably they're for more special cases, and, if I were to guess, I'd say it's likely that Secura's in one of those."

"Good work," Bane commended him, stepping over to examine the map. "What's our ETA?"

"About three minutes," said Todo.

Bane leered. "Excellent. Now, I'm going to infiltrate the station to find Secura, but it won't be long before they realise that something is up, and I'll need time to find the right one."

"What do you want me to do?" asked Todo.

"Find a way to give me that time," Bane sneered. "Your job is to draw their attention away from me."

"Oh dear," Todo moaned. "Why do I not like this idea?"

"Shut up, and get ready," Bane answered as he sat in the pilot seat and prepared for docking. "Oh, and sabotage the communications. We want them to think there's a problem with it if they try to find out who we are."

"Alright," sighed Todo, and carried out the order.

* * *

See you soon, I hope. But then again, I've said that before, haven't I?

The introduction of Stass Allie then didn't have any real purpose to be honest, but she will be returning later on in the story for a relatively minor role, so I just thought I'd slip her in there. I hope that Bane's ruthlessness came across well in the chapter, as I was trying to establish that despite the fact he is not as powerful as Dooku, Ventress or Grievous, he is still a severe threat. And now, he's approaching his target. Both Clone Wars episodes, Cargo of Doom and Brain Invaders, didn't make it into the story, but I liked both and so I made allusions to them in this chapter with Bane's actions.

Thanks for reading and please leave a review.

* * *

Next time...

Now that they finally reach the medical station, Bane puts the next phase of his plan into motion. He has to find a way to outfox the Digimon, as well as Barriss and get to Aayla. Will he be able to do it? What do you think?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 133 : Stealth Tactics**


	133. Stealth Tactics

A quicker update than all the other ones I've been doing over the course of the holiday so far. I'm quite pleased with this chapter, as, while there is not much action in it, I'd say there's a fair bit of awesome. But that's just my opinion, and I hope you feel the same way. To those of you who have been anxiously waiting to see what happens to Aayla, keep on reading. I hope you like it and please leave a review at the end.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 133:- Stealth Tactics**

* * *

Aayla Secura's recovery was moving along about as fast as the medical station's staff had predicted. The bed-rest, sedation and the fact that Aayla was as strong as she was all combined together to bring Aayla's strength back from it's almost non-existant state a few hours prior to almost fully back already. In fact, Aayla was sure that she would be able to get out of bed and move around without any serious repercussions already.

However, the medical staff had insisted that she remained in bed for a little while longer as a precaution. They wanted to be absolutely sure that Aayla was ready to leave before they discharged her. They couldn't be blamed really; they were just doing their job after all. It might reflect quite badly on them if they discharged a patient who collapsed again a couple of hours later because they hadn't been thorough.

Barriss had said it would be a good idea to keep lying down for a while longer as well, to ensure that the leg that had been wounded by Dooku's lightsaber healed completely as well. It was likely to be a little bit sore in the area where the cut had been made and Barriss knew the more rest it got, the better.

Sadly that meant that dancing was probably going to be off limits to Aayla for a couple of days. But she didn't mind too much.

Currently, the room that Aayla and the others were in was devoid of medical staff, who had left to allow them some privacy but instructed Barriss to call on them in the unlikely event that they were needed. This meant the Digimon didn't have to hide under Renamon's perception filter, and were sitting around the place. Aayla was awake after her sedation period, and the whole group were currently engrossed in a game.

"I spy with my little eye," Suzie began, looking around the room and tapping her chin in a slight impression of Henry as she surveyed everything and tried to pick something to name. "Something beginning with..." she faltered for a moment, then leaned close to Henry and whispered, "What's that thing called?"

Henry followed the direction of her finger and replied, "Bacta tank," seeing as it was pointing at the large and conspicuous object for extreme emergencies.

"B," Suzie declared, looking very pleased with herself.

Everyone else was struggling not to laugh. They had all heard Suzie's whisper, which had been quite loud and there were few other noises around to drown it out, and they had all seen Suzie's less than subtle pointing finger and what Henry had looked at in order to answer. However, they decided to humour the little girl and began looking around the room.

"Bed?" suggested Aayla, patting the object she was currently lying on.

"Nope," Suzie grinned.

"Blanket," Terriermon put in, patting the object that _he_ was currently lying, which also happened to be covering Aayla's stomach. Lopmon was sitting to his immediate left, also on Aayla's stomach.

"Nah-ah," Suzie giggled, pleased that they hadn't got it yet.

"It's not me, is it?" Barriss chuckled.

"Eeehh," Suzie made the noise of a buzzer going off to indicate that she was incorrect.

"It's not a colour, is it?" Rika smiled. "Because you know Blue doesn't count."

"Not a colour," Suzie declared with a smile.

"Rhanrawawo," Chewbacca growled.

"No, no, no," Suzie snickered.

"Bacta," chuckled Lopmon.

"Ooh, that was so close," Suzie pointed at her partner. "Just a bit more to that and you'll have got it."

"Bacta tank," Henry said.

"Henry!" Suzie glowered at her brother, while everyone else dissolved into various laughter. "You already knew what it was! You can't do that. "You've ruined the game. I'll have to spy with my little eye... something... beginning with...N."

"Nose," Renamon put in even as the word N was coming out of Suzie's mouth.

Suzie pouted. "How did you get that?"

Renamon shrugged her shoulders. "Just lucky, I guess."

"Hey guys," Terriermon interrupted the game for a moment. "What do you reckon is happening to Ventress and Dooku, right now?"

"Well, if I were to hazard a guess," said Barriss. "I would say that they were being held in maximum-security cells in the Jedi Temple and are probably being interrogated to find out what they know about Darth Sidious. And they probably aren't talking."

"Hmmph," Rika frowned. "I wonder how fast Ventress' tongue would loosen up if someone put an electrostaff to her stomach."

"Well, we'll never know the answer to that question," Aayla replied. "After all, that isn't the sort of thing we do, and we certainly won't be stopping to her level to get the answers we want."

"Depends on where you're standing, Aayla," said Renamon. "While she does deserve, you are right in that doing what the bitch would do is not a good thing. However, I personally am quite desperate for answers considering the person we're after has decided to try and remove you from the picture and Ventress would know how to get to him."

"That doesn't mean we'll resort to it," said Aayla.

"I know," Renamon smiled wanly. "But we just want to ensure your safety, Aayla."

Aayla smiled gratefully. "And that means the galaxy to me, guys," she replied. "Truly it does. But I assure you, we will find a way to take this Sidious down and we will do it together and without compromising our morals. You'll see."

"Sidious' mask will be off by the end of the week," Terriermon grinned. "And we'll be there when it is."

"That's the spirit," Aayla grinned. "Now, is it my turn to spy something yet?"

Before anything else could be said, Chewbacca, who was standing by the door, turned around and said, "Cooscwooowhwo oaooscwoc. Acahwawo rqhuahoaor."

Knowing that the Wookiee had heard somebody approaching from the outside, Renamon quickly grabbed Terriermon and Lopmon from the bed and hurried over to the corner where the three Tamers were already sitting, throwing up the perception filter as she did so. Chewbacca moved away from the door to stand in front of them and physically screen them with his giant, woolly form as the door slid open to reveal the Kaminoan from before, as well as a medical droid, which moved into the room jerkily while the Kaminoan strode forward.

"How are we feeling then?" the Kaminoan asked.

"Much better thanks," replied Aayla. "Barriss seems to think it'll be alright for me to leave soon."

The Mirialan nodded. "I reckon about an hour's more rest should be more the sufficient. Would you agree with me, miss?"

"Indeed I would, young Jedi," the kindly long-necked humanoid replied. "And an hour more you shall indeed have. If you don't mind, I'd like to apply a little more sedation for that hour's rest. Not the full deep-sleep type like before, but enough to just help you with relax and ease any tension in your muscles. Is that alright?"

"That's fine," Aayla smiled. "Who am I to argue with two kind doctors?"

The Kaminoan chuckled and allowed the medical droid to step forward and ready the needle. "You are very kind yourself, Miss Secura."

"Just Aayla please," Aayla replied, not even flinching as the medical droid applied the sedative.

"Of course," the Kaminoan replied. "I'll be back in a while. Have a pleasant rest and you'll be out of here before you know it." As she and the medical droid turned away, Aayla felt a slight numbness overcome her as she settled down into what was more a deep doze than anything else, completely unaware of the fact that she would be receiving another surprise visitor shortly.

* * *

As the medical frigate he was riding in came out of hyperspace, Bane stepped over to the large duraglass cockpit window and peered out, getting a good look at their new surroundings. The planet Belderone stretched out below them, but Bane ignored the planet, more concerned with what was hovering above it.

He saw the medical station, floating serenely and completely without any defences from an attack. It looked exactly like the hologram that Todo had shown him, only much larger and in colour. Bane sneered at the thought of being able to infiltrate this place so easily. If he had been in charge of the Republic he probably would have put more defences on the place. Didn't they know they were at war?

What did surprise him was the presence of a large Republic cruiser hanging in space a short distance away from the medical station. He hadn't been expecting one to be there, but now that he thought about it, it did make sense. The cruiser was probably the _Intrepid,_ the cruiser that belonged to Aayla Secura herself. After all, Secura was only meant to be in the medical station for a short-term period, so it was likely that the cruiser was just waiting for her to come back to it before they went back to Coruscant for a hero's welcome.

Bane chuckled at the thought. He knew that he was going to throw a scupper into that plan.

Still, the presence of a cruiser made it all the more necessary not to appear suspicious in any way, since the cruiser actually would be able to shoot the ship to bits if they suspected that someone other than the clone pilots were steering the ship. Bane turned to his droid and said, "Alright Todo. This is where the real fun begins. Head for one of the docking ports on the station. Go slow and steady, just a like a medical ship with injured passengers would do."

"I've got this, Bane," Todo replied, his little hands steering the ship to guide slowly forwards, towards one of the large gaps in the side of the medical station. He moved in a linear line, reducing his speed slightly as the ship headed for the station. Bane kept an eye on the cruiser, alert for any sign of fire, but there was nothing. The clones aboard the cruiser weren't expecting an innocent-looking medical ship to pose any kind of threat.

It seemed that the medical ship had been expected, because a pair of small ships detached from the bulk of the medical station and moved towards the ship that they were flying in. Bane cautiously ducked behind the chair slightly and hauled the dead clone slumped on the seat to a sitting position as they approached, knowing that they would only get a fleeting glimpse through the window if they got one at all and wishing to ensure that he wasn't in plain sight.

The little ships were known as tugs and it seemed like the people piloting them didn't get a look through the window, or at least saw nothing they thought as suspicious, because they carried out their job as per usual, drawing up on either side of the ship and switching on miniature tractor beams, which would serve to both slow the ship down to ensure that it didn't slam into the medical station at high speed, and to help the large, unwieldy ship to move into one of the docking ports.

"The time is almost upon us, Todo," Bane turned to look at his droid. "Are you ready to play your part."

"Not really," Todo replied, assisting the tugs in slowing down the ship. "But I suppose I don't have a choice. I wish I could say that I'll come back and haunt you if something goes wrong..."

"Just shut up and concentrate on the steering, Todo," Bane answered evenly, stepping towards the door to the cockpit. He slid it open and stepped outside. The ship was designed so that the nose of the ship had two airlocks, one on either side, to allow easy access since only to nose of the long ship would be able to fit into the docking port. "Join me when you're done," Bane instructed his droid as he stepped into the corridor and headed for one of the airlocks.

Once he reached it, he waited patiently for the docking sequence to begin. Almost unconsciously, his hand reached down to the holster at his side and his fingers closed slowly around the blaster pistol handle. His other hand held the hologram of the medical station that Todo had downloaded to his holoprojector. His red eyes scanned the map slowly, trying to take in as much detail as possible before he entered the station. Everything on this mission would depend upon speed, so the less time he spent staring at the map while in there the better. He methodically scanned the place, committing as much of the layout to memory as he could.

He looked up after a minute or so, when he heard the distinct sound of the engines slowly shutting down as the ship come to a stop, as well as the clunking sound that indicated that the ship was entering the docking port. Bane tensed as he prepared himself for the inevitable. It was only a matter of time before someone set off the alarm, regardless of how sneaky he was. People would find the ship if the bodies were discovered then the alert would be put on instantly.

There was another clunking noise as the airlock was connecting to the station. Bane stowed away the holoprojector and wrapped his other hand around his other pistol as the door slid open. A pair of medical clones were on the other side of the airlock and faltered in surprise when they spotted who was on the other side to greet them.

Neither of them got the chance to do anything about it though. In a flash, Bane whipped out his pistols, shot them both through the stomach simultaneously, stowed his pistols again and grabbed them both by the shirts as they were falling. Bane hauled them inside the medical ship and dumped them in the corridor as Todo rounded the corridor.

"Well, here we are," Todo supplied a little reluctantly, as Bane hit the switch to shut the airlock and withdrew another magnetic lock from his coat and attached it to the door, sealing it until he decided that he wanted it opened again.

"We must be quick," said Bane, striding back through the ship and towards the airlock on the other side of the medical ship. It only took a moment to get there, and they encountered no more medical clones on this one, which either meant there hadn't been any or that they had already entered the ship. Whatever the case, it didn't matter. Bane stepped into the medical station and shut the other airlock, sealing it with another magnetic lock, this time from the outside. If any clones had gotten into the ship, they would be unable to get out until he opened the doors again, due to the fact the clamps were keyed into his genetic fingerprint anyway. And they couldn't call out because Todo had sabotaged the communications.

While ensuring that no-one else could get into the ship wasn't a long-term solution to the alarm being set off, it would buy them more time than if they went in and found the bodies. Plus it ensured that he had a way of escaping later on.

"Alright, Todo," Bane turned to his little droid and said, "Get going. If I don't get the result I want, then I'll ensure that you get a third eye in the middle of your head, courtesy of a red blaster bolt."

"Oh, alright, I'm going," Todo said. "Though I think that I should point out that I was not built for causing distractions. I am a techno-service droid, not a decoy droid. Is there some other way we can go about this?"

"You could always provide a distraction using technology," Bane sneered at him. "I could jam you into the electrical grid in many different places throughout the station and then carry out my task while they try and get the power back up and running and figure out what happened to shut it off in the first place."

"Okay, okay, I get the hint," Todo replied. "I'm off." He activated the little rocket boosters in his feet and zipped off down the corridor at speed, turning the corner and slipping out of Bane's sight. Bane listened to him go for a while before he looked up, deciding to go about with his own part of the task, the more important one.

Bane was certainly no stranger to the ventilation system. It was usually his main way of getting about the place if he wanted to remain undetected. And, sure enough, the vent was just above him in the ceiling – a relatively large pipework that connected practically the whole of the station to supply fresh air to it.

As he had done on the medical ship, Bane hovered up to the ceiling and lifted the ventilation grate upwards and to the side, allowing himself to slip into the pipeline before he closed it behind him. But here, he encountered his first problem. Unlike the vent on the medical ship, this one wasn't as big. It would allow him shuffle forwards, partially on his hands and knees and partially even lower than that, but it certainly wouldn't allow him to do things like turn around. He'd have to head in the right direction unless he wanted to crawl backwards the whole time. The vent only just had enough room for his large hat.

Bane pulled the holoprojector out again and inspected the map, choosing a direction to head in. From what he could see, the closest of the four places that Todo had picked out was a few corridors away from where he was now. Stowing the map away once he had committed the turnings to memory (which, considering Bane did this sort of thing often, took almost no time at all), he began to inch forwards as fast as he could manage while making as little noise as possible. Finding the right balance between the two was not easy, but Bane was a professional.

Moving along on his elbows and the sides of his knees, Bane traversed the vents with relative ease. He had a bit of trouble when he came to the corners, but he knew the right way to twist his body to ensure that he could squeeze around the bend and continue on his way quickly. The stuffy atmosphere of the pipe created by his presence there did little to effect him thanks to the breathing tubes on his cheeks.

It wasn't long before Bane arrived at the location that he had picked out from the map, and the Duros Bounty Hunter carefully approached the grate that would allow him to look into the room. Before he got there, he reached back, pressing himself to the side of the vent so that he could pull one of his blasters out and hold it ready. If the Jedi was in the room and sensed his presence, he would need it to hold them at bay long enough to slip out the pipe and escape through the door.

Bane reached the grate and peered through into the room below. It was small and brightly lit, with a bacta tank in the corner, a bed beside one wall and several small tables of medical equipment waiting to be used but other than that, the room appeared to be empty. Bane sniffed, or would have if he had a nose, and pulled out the map again to quickly plot the route to the next possible site where the Twi'lek was waiting.

* * *

"Ugh, why do I always get stuck with jobs like this?" Todo muttered to himself as he moved down the corridor of the station, hovering through the air as his rocket-boosted feet propelled him forwards. "Why am I always the spare part in the plan. I mean, really. I'm supposed to help Bane with the technical aspect, but no, I appear to be more of a lackey to draw people to the right place or away from the right place. I bet the next time Bane takes me on a mission, I'll be thrown into a nest of gundarks just to keep them away. If he ever needs to head for Vanqor then I'm staying behind."

Todo cut off his tirade as he heard somebody approaching and he quickly ducked into a side corridor and settled on the ground quietly. He watched as a pair of medical clones walked past, talking to one another about the feat that the very Jedi Todo and Bane had come to nab had done earlier. Todo curiously listened in for a couple of moments,

"I heard that she was still fighting even after she received a lightsaber cut on her leg. Apparently she managed to kick one of them in the face by swinging from the ceiling by her hands."

"Well, I heard the she managed to blast lightning out of her fingers."

"You sure? I thought that was a Sith thing."

"So did I, but apparently some Jedi can do it too."

"Lightning?" Todo murmured, groaning as he just imagined himself being fried by the bursts of electricity shooting from the Twi'lek's fingers. "I wonder if Bane's idea of kidnapping this woman was a good idea. I reckon, I'm going to stay out of the way of her."

Todo stepped out and progressed a little further before he began to go about his job. He came across one of the few security holocams that the place had and carefully approached it so that he was out of its line of sight. Carefully calculating the distance, Todo strode past the camera in a way that would mean that he would not be seen, but that his shadow was – he wanted the people watching the screens to know someone was there, but not who.

"Okay," he murmured. "Here goes nothing."

He then proceeded to advance around the corridors and cause some slight wanton mayhem. He came across a couple of crates of medical supplies in the corridor and tipped them over, creating a loud noise that was sure to attract attention. He zipped around corners and, whenever he came across another security holocam, proceeded to carry out the same trick with his shadow. He kicked a couple of doors when he passed them to draw attention, trying to get people to know that there was someone there, but not make the distraction too obvious.

When he came across a Kaminoan, he did the most reckless thing that he was planning to do to alert people; he attacked him. The long necked being had his back to the small droid, when he slewed down the corridor and slammed onto the back of the Kaminoans head. Considering the length of his neck, the sudden jerking of his head caused the Kaminoan to overbalance completely and fall to the ground.

As the Kaminoan lay, groaning slightly and trying to reach up to rub the back of his head, Todo quickly veered up and over him, zipping around another corner just as the Kaminoan raised his head, his black and white eyes bleary. The long-necked humanoid spotted a flash of something disappearing around the corner, but he was too dazed to make out what it was.

After a couple of seconds spent recovering himself, the Kaminoan quickly got to his feet and hurried to the end of the corridor to look around the corner. Upon seeing the corridor empty, but knowing he had seen something, he quickly ran off to warn somebody about it. And that had been exactly what Todo had been intending when he had done it.

Todo himself spent the next minute or so slipping through more corridors until he came to the place he was looking for – the cargo hold. As he pushed open the door and soared into the room filled with crates, he quickly moved deep into the room and hid behind several of the large boxes close to the wall. If a droid could be breathing heavily then he probably would be doing just that right about now.

"Oh, this is circuit-racking," Todo shook his head, lifting his hand to his forehead as if massaging his temple, even though that wouldn't do him any good as a droid. "I'm going to get diced to pieces, I just know it." He clenched his fists slightly and then murmured, "Well, might as well not delay the inevitable. Let's get this over with."

Todo turned to the wall and activated the fusion cutter built into his arm and began to slice away a section of the wall. The wall wasn't very thick, unlike some of the more heavily secured areas that Todo and Bane had infiltrated and it only took a couple of minutes before he pulled a section of the metal wall to one side to expose the wiring underneath.

"Right," Todo murmured, pretending to crack his knuckles. "Let's see what I can do."

And with that, he began to fiddle with the wiring, cutting various sections and re-arranging a few others, in an attempt to cause fritzes in the power throughout the entire complex. While that might add a benefit of distracting the doctors to help patients who required power to work, the main purpose in doing this was to get more attention. In a place as heavily reliant on power as this, the source of the problem would be indentified in moments. And people would head straight for him to find out what was happening.

* * *

The occupants of Aayla Secura's room looked up in alarm when the lights suddenly went out. Suzie yelped slightly at the sudden change in light, but the lights were off only for a moment before they spurred into life again and shone down on everyone again. Most of them frowned at the lights thoughtfully, except for Aayla who, sedated as she was, was only barely aware of what had happened.

"That's odd," murmured Barriss.

"What is?" asked Rika. "That was just a glitch in the power, right?"

"Well, yes, probably," said Barriss. "But glitches in the power in a medical station could be disastrous. Many of the patients would die if they didn't have the power needed to work the machinery that keeps them alive, so the Republic go to great lengths to ensure that power glitches don't happen." She frowned again. "Of course some of them do happen occasionally, but still... it's a rare event."

"You think something could be wrong?" asked Henry.

"I wouldn't say yes for certain," said Barriss. "But it shouldn't be taken lightly."

"Cooscwooowhwo oaooscahwhrr rarrraahwh," Chewbacca alerted them, stepping in front of the group of Digimon and Tamers once more as the door slid open to reveal the same Kaminoan as before standing in the doorway.

"Is everything alright in here?" she asked.

"Yes, but the lights went out for a moment," replied Barriss. "Why? What's going on?"

"We're not sure," the Kaminoan looked remarkably agitated. "But I was hoping that you might be able to help us, Master Jedi. We've had a couple of strange reports – the people in the holocam security room said they think they've spotted some strange shadows flitting past the holocam. Plus, a pile of crate were knocked over and nobody picked them up again and one of my colleagues was apparently hit in the head from behind by something heavy."

"An intruder?" Barriss asked, with one raised eyebrow. "You think there might be one?"

"We're not sure," said the Kaminoan. "But we suspect there might be. One of our medical ships came in recently, and the clones that were sent up to help with the unloading haven't reported back. We sent more people up to investigate but apparently they can't get through the doors. So, we believe that an intruder is the most likely option."

Unknown to the Kaminoan, a furious conversation was going on within the minds of the six coherent people in the room who shared a mental link. _An intruder,_ Renamon was saying. _In the exact medical station where Aayla happens to be, in the exact moment after she vanquishes Dooku and Ventress, who appears to be putting out the power for some reason. Is anyone else thinking the same thing as me?_

_That this can't be a coincidence,_ Lopmon thought. _Yes, I think that is pretty much on all of our minds._

_Is it possible that Darth Sidious was able to organise a second attack on Aayla so quickly?_ Henry asked.

_Maybe,_ Terriermon nodded. _But even if it's not Darth Sidious' doing, which I doubt, Aayla is still quite vulnerable at the moment, particularly since she's been sedated by the doctor. Whoever it is could be here for any number of reasons, but Aayla is definitely at the top of the list of possibles._

_So, what do we do?_ Asked Suzie.

_Ssh, someone else is coming,_ Rika said, as the sound of heavy footsteps began to approach from the outside corridor.

"Ma'am, ma'am," came a voice the clearly belonged to a clone, as another member of the medical staff rounded the corner, panting slightly (clearly these clones were not as much in shape as the ones that fought out in the field). "We've tracked down the source of the disturbance. There's somebody in the cargo hold messing with the circuitry." As if to prove his point, the lights in the corridor flashed off and back on again for a moment.

"Thank you, Shift," the Kaminoan turned back to Barriss and said. "Please, we have very little security here and the clones that are on their feet have not had training with the use of a firearm, or at least not much. Could I please ask you to check the cargo hold for the intruder. We would be eternally grateful."

Barriss hesitated for a moment. Like the others, she had had the same thought about the intruder in relation to Aayla and was reluctant to leave the Twi'lek's side. But, similarly, if whoever was tampering with the mainframe was allowed to go unchecked for too long then many clones might perish if she were to hesitate.

So, after glancing back at Aayla for a moment, she cast a significant look at Chewbacca, and glanced slightly at the corner where she knew the others to be hiding. "Chewie, stay here please, while I go and check out this situation. I won't be long."

Chewbacca grunted in the affirmative and Barriss quickly rushed out of the door, plucking her lightsaber from her waist as she ran.

Barriss had only run a few metres when she sensed another presence dart out of the door behind her, leaping over the medical clone as it went, while the clone and the Kaminoan also exited the room. Turning her head, she saw nobody else, but she knew who it was. In no time at all, an invisible Renamon had caught up with the Mirialan and was now running alongside her.

Regretting once again that she still hadn't formed a mental link with the Digimon, Barriss whispered as quietly as she could while still making herself heard as they ran. "Renamon, what are you doing? I asked you to look after Aayla. There is the possibility of more than one intruder in the facility."

"I know," Renamon replied from off to Barriss' left. "But I thought this would be better. Terriermon, Lopmon and Chewbacca can look after Aayla, and the Tamers will be there to provide a boost to the former two if anything happens. We thought it would be a good idea if one of us came with you to provide an instant mental link between the two groups, and since I'm the one with the perception filter, we thought it should be me."

"Fair enough," Barriss conceded. "Clever thinking. Maybe if I'd spent more time with you guys, I might have thought of that myself."

Renamon smiled invisibly, as they ran down a corridor and, after taking a moment to leap under a holocam to ensure she wasn't spotted, she replied, "Don't worry about it, Barriss. You'll only be classified as the new one for a short time. And you are a valuable member already."

"Thank you," Barriss nodded. "What happens if someone walks in while you aren't there to hide them?"

"The bunnies are hiding under the bed, the Tamers behind the bacta tank, and Chewbacca is going to stand by the door and deny anyone access to the room, like any over-concerned Wookiee would. But, anyway, who do you think it might be doing this?"

"I'm not sure," Barriss replied, as they turned a corridor. "If it is who we suspect that is behind this affair, then he still has a large number of people willing to do his bidding."

"Then you agree that it must be about Aayla?"

"Not necessarily. But very probably."

From thereon in, they ran in silence. It didn't take them very long to reach the cargo hold – Barriss seemed to know her way around the place, implying that she had spent a good deal of time in medical stations in the past, and considering healing was her best art, she had. The young Mirialan and the invisible Digimon pulled to a halt by the door and, after a pause, Barriss pushed the button to open it.

As the doors slid open, Renamon immediately bounded on top of a large pile of crates, dropping her perception filter as she did so, in an attempt to get a good view of the room, while Barriss halted in front of the doors and stretched out with her mind, trying to sense anything out of the ordinary. And she could definitely tell that there was something in the room. She just didn't know what.

Both of them also heard sounds, that were suspiciously like scrabbling and sparking wires, come to an abrupt halt a moment after they entered the room. Renamon and Barriss exchanged a quick glance from their respective heights, and the former's eyes quickly moved back up, scouring the dark recesses of the room – the lights had gone off a while ago – for any sign of the intruder that they now knew was in here.

Barriss ignited her lightsaber and nodded to Renamon, who nodded back and silently leapt down from the pile of crates, landing on all fours like a cat on the other side of the crates. The two of them began to step slowly through the room, placing their feet on the ground as silently as possible, as their eyes swept through the darkness, searching for the intruder.

Barriss, her face bathed in the light of her blade, walked slowly through an alleyway of crates and turned around a corner, her mind searching the recesses of the room. It didn't take her long to locate the place where somebody had obviously been fiddling with the wall – a section of it had been cut away and the wires were sparking and practically useless. She bent down to examine it for a moment, but there was nothing to indicate where whoever had done this had gone.

After a moment, the young Knight followed Renamon's previous example and leapt onto a pile of crates, continuing to search the room from an angle where she would see if someone made a break for it. It also served to draw attention away from Renamon, who was moving even more silently on all fours, creeping around corners and springing out of hiding into more empty areas. Still no sign of the intruder.

Hardly daring to breathe, Renamon continued to stalk forward, like a panther on the prowl.

And, nearby, struggling to keep his knees from knocking, Todo 360 peered out of his hiding spot, staring at the light emanating from Barriss' lightsaber and completely unaware of the fact that Renamon was getting closer to him.

* * *

Cad Bane was getting annoyed at crawling around on his elbows. He'd managed to find the second of the places that Todo had pointed out, but that one had been empty as well, so that had meant more winding routes throughout the vents as he navigated his way to the third potential spot. It didn't help when he had to stop a couple of times as he heard the voices of clones through the pipe beneath him.

But he didn't complain, not even a mumble. He needed to be as stealthy as he possibly could, and he had almost reached the third potential place, the third private room.

Wriggling his way around the corner, Bane, blaster in hand, carefully and silently slid towards the grate that he could see up ahead. He could see light emanating upwards from it, bathing the top of the vent in speckles of light from below. Suppressing the momentary excitement he felt and settling for a sneer, Bane reached the vent and looked down into the room below him.

"Bingo," he murmured, so quietly that he barely heard it himself.

He had found the right room. There was the Twi'lek that he had seen at Behpour with the creatures, lying on a bed and beneath the blanket almost directly beneath him. She appeared to be only semi-coherent, perhaps dozing, which implied that she had been drugged, probably to increase the speed of her recovery.

"A sedated target?" he murmured to himself. "Oh, Secura, you're making this far too easy for me."

Having said that, he quickly glanced around the rest of the room. He could see a large Wookiee standing beside the door, but he couldn't see any sign of those strange beings that he longed to find evidence for. But, he wasn't about to assume that they weren't there. Making assumptions was not a mistake that Bounty Hunters made if they wanted to keep the pay coming in.

With that thought in mind, Bane slowly reached into his tunic and produced a small device from within. It resembled a small octagon with a large red button in the centre and several small hatches of the underside. Bane brought it forward, placing his pistol down quietly, and placed the device on the grate.

"Nighty-night," he muttered, and he pushed the button and firmly closed his mouth at the same time. With a tiny whirring noise, the hatches on the underside of the octagon slid open and there was a very faint hissing noise from within it. Nothing else appeared to happen, but Bane was well aware of what was happening.

This was a device of his own making, that utilised his favourite technique of exploiting the ventilation system if he wished to acquire a live captive. Like the detonator he had used on the medical ship, this device emitted a special type of gas, though this kind was designed to knock people unconscious instead of killing them. The hatches were on the underside so that the gas would fall through grate it was placed on instead of heading throughout the vent system, and Bane himself was safe from its effects as long as he used the air from his breathing tubes.

Bane watched the occupants of the room a best he could from his vantage point up above, waiting for the gas to do its work.

* * *

_Do you hear something?_ Lopmon asked with her mind, glancing at her brother. The two bunnies were crouched underneath Aayla's bed, staring out from beneath it for any sign of a potential threat, and watching Chewbacca's feet moving around from beside the door.

_I'm not sure,_ Terriermon cocked an ear slightly, eyes narrowing as he carefully listened. _It sounds like a faint hissing noise or something, but I thought I was imagining it for a moment. I can barely hear it._

_Well, regardless,_ Lopmon frowned. _In my experience, hissing noises are generally not good things to be hearing._

Terriermon glanced at her. _You think something's up._

_I don't know,_ Lopmon replied. After a moment of silence, during which they both listened for the elusive noise, Lopmon suddenly felt her eyelids begin to droop slightly, and she felt a yawn beginning to build up in her chest, which she promptly let out. "'Scuse me," she murmured, putting a hand over her mouth as she let out the breath. She shook her head in an attempt to clear it but it didn't seem to work.

_You okay, Loppy?_ Asked Terriermon, and a moment later he also felt himself begin to yawn and he released another one with great gusto. _Oog, I knew yawns were contagious but that was fast._

_Heh,_ Lopmon murmured, somehow feeling like she could have put more effort into that laugh but unable to do it for some reason. A sudden wave of tiredness had overcome her. She glanced at Terriermon, and noticed that he was also beginning to shake his head slightly, as if he was trying to stay awake. Both of them yawned again.

"Fanglongmon, I'm sleepy," murmured Terriermon, completely forgetting to talk with his mind. Lopmon reached a hand up to rub her eyes but found that even that took some effort. Why did she feel so tired all of a sudden? And why did Terriermon seem to be affected at the exact same time?

They both heard a grunting noise then, following by a snort. They both looked up at Chewbacca's legs from beneath the bed and saw the Wookiee throw one leg out to the side, as if he had suddenly lost his balance. More snorting noises followed, as if Chewbacca was starting to try and clear his own head. And they both heard a distinct yawn from behind the bacta tank that belonged to Suzie.

It clicked in their minds at the exact same moment and they blearily looked at each other.

"Hissing noise," yawned Lopmon.

"Sudden tiredness," moaned Terriermon.

"Gas?" Lopmon asked.

"Gas," Terriermon confirmed.

"Crap," both of them said at the same time, before they both slumped against one another and were sent to the world of unconsciousness.

* * *

Todo cringed as he watched the Jedi high above on the crates get closer and closer to him. He pressed himself into the side of the crate that he was hiding behind and was seriously considering turning off his photoreceptors. He would be blind if he did that, but at least nobody would be able to make out the faint glow they gave off. Then again, did he really want to hear his demise coming and not see it.

As Todo had a mild, mechanical panic attack, wondering what to do, a sudden sound from much closer than the Jedi almost fried his circuits with fear. He turned and saw that something had straightened up only about a metre away from his hiding place. He was stunned as, for an instant, he spied what appeared to be some kind of bipedal, yellow fox creature, just as Bane had described, before the creature leapt almost straight over him and onto the crates above, then taking another huge leap and coming to land exactly where Barriss was standing.

"Barriss," he heard the creature cry with a female voice, and watched her grip the young Jedi by the arms. "Something's happening back in Aayla's room. Everyone's falling unconscious."

"What?" Todo heard Barriss gasp. "What... unconscious?"

"I'm losing their mental signals," the fox cried as she leapt down from the crates and sprang towards the doors. "Some kind of knock-out gas is filling up the room. I've already lost most of them. Hurry! We need to go back."

Barriss hesitated only for a fraction of a second, deliberating whether to go and help or find the intruder in her. Almost immediately, she decided that whoever was attacking Aayla's room was more important and she bounded after the fox like creature, as they both hared out of the door. Todo peered over the crates and watch them leave. As he was a droid, he missed the fact that the fox creature lifted a perception filter before she ran out, but suddenly, he was alone in the room again, stunned at his narrow escape.

He took a few seconds to catch his figurative breath before he murmured to himself. "Bane was right. There really are creatures working with the Jedi. And mental signals? They have some kind of telepathic link?" He paused to consider that for a moment, and then said, "Well, at least it wasn't my fault that they ran back."

Then, he lifted off on his foot-jets and soared out of the door, heading back towards the medical ship.

* * *

As the smallest, Terriermon and Lopmon were the first to succumb to the effects of the colourless and odourless knockout gas that was slowly filling the room. As second smallest, Suzie fell asleep next, and Aayla, who was, of course, already marginally sedated, followed on after that. When Suzie fell asleep, Henry was barely coherent enough to shake her and try to wake her off, before he and Rika also fell under its spell and slumped against the wall behind the bacta tank.

But, up above, Bane didn't spot all of this. His eyes were fixed on Aayla until he was sure that she was unconscious, and then his eyes flicked to Chewbacca, the most dangerous person in the room for him. He watched with a certain satisfaction as the Wookiee stumbled and seemed to totter about on the spot in an attempt to stay on his feet. He gave off several monstrous yawns, exposing his fangs for the world to see. After about a minute of this, which actually surprised Bane – most people succumbed much faster than the Wookiee – he finally fell to his knees.

Bane watched for another minute as Chewbacca slumped against the wall head pressed against it and his arms lifting up as if he were about to bang on it to try and gain attention, but before he could do that, he finally fell under the effects of the gas and crashed onto his side, rolling onto his front and staying there, dead to the world.

Bane smirked and carefully pushed the button on his knockout-gas container, stopping the flow of gas as he did so, before he placed it back in his tunic and lifted the grate from the floor of the vent. Clambering over it until his feet were over the hole, he eased himself backwards and dropped to the floor of the room. Stepping up to the side of Aayla's bed, he leered down at the unconscious Twi'lek, unaware of the fact that there were a pair of bunnies hiding beneath the bed.

Unphased by the remnants of the gas, he said, "Good afternoon, Secura. A pleasure to make your acquaintance at last."

Aayla, predictably, did not respond.

Now that Bane had his target, unconscious and unable to stop him from doing anything, he now had another problem. He'd been originally planning to take her back through the ventilation system, but it was smaller than he had anticipated and getting her back through there would be a nightmare, particularly when it came to the corners. He was going to have to transport her another way instead. The long way.

Bane reached down and grabbed the blanket pulling it backwards to uncover the (fully-clothed) Twi'lek. He then began to slip an arm under her waist and was about to hoist her into a fireman's carry over one shoulder, when a sudden sound behind him caused him to turn around. His red eyes widened in surprise and shock when he saw that Chewbacca was still awake. The Wookiee was tough – he hadn't fully succumbed to the gas and now that it was dispersing, he was beginning to recover.

Chewbacca had lurched to his feet and, spotting the stranger trying to take Aayla, he had immediately charged. But, while still up, he was still extremely groggy from the gas and his charge was more of a stumble and a wild swing. Bane was easily able to dart backwards and avoid the blow.

Chewbacca swung again, but Bane ducked under the next blow and as Chewbacca's arm hammered down to where he was crouched, he turned the crouch into a forward roll that carried him past the Wookiee. As he reached for his blaster, Chewbacca roared and lurched around, trying to swing his arm again, but this time he ended up tripping over his own feet. Surprisingly, this had the desired effect and Bane was caught off guard as Chewbacca stumbled into him. The Wookiee recovered quickly and grabbed him, pulling him into a bear-hug and beginning to squeeze.

Bane grunted as the Wookiee's vast strength began to press down on him, and the more the Wookiee woke the stronger he would get. Bane gritted his fangs and, wrenching his arm free, he grabbed the Wookiee around the upper arm in one hand. Wrenching the other arm free, he pushed a button on the wrist-com of that with one finger and he was abruptly released as huge amounts of electricity began to surge through Chewbacca's body.

Chewbacca howled in pain as the electricity coursed through him and he dropped to the floor again, barely conscious. Normally, he could take more electricity than that but the gas had already weakened him. Bane sneered and delivered a vicious kick to Chewbacca's head. Finally, the Wookiee fell, and this time, he really was unconscious.

Bane cursed. Underestimating the Wookiee's strength had cost him valuable time, and he was certain that Chewbacca's loud roars had caught the attention of someone. He had no time to waste if he wanted to get away from here in time, so he spent no more time hanging around. Pulling out a pistol just in case, Bane stepped back over to Aayla and grabbed her round the waist in one arm, hoisting her limp form onto his shoulder.

He then headed for the door, opened it and stepped outside. Had he had more time he might have spotted the two bunnies beneath the bed or seen the three children behind the bacta tank. But, in his hurry, he didn't see them.

Bane had carried captives before, and was able to move quite quickly while hauling someone over his shoulder. However, even though he quickly made his way down the corridor, he wasn't fast enough to escape unnoticed. He'd only gotten a few metres from the entrance to Aayla's room before someone rounded the corner, the female Kaminoan that had been looking after Aayla and had heard the sounds of an angry Wookiee and come to investigate.

The Kaminoan skidded to a halt and her eyes widened at the sight of someone making off with one of her patients. "What... who..." was all she had time for before Bane shot her in the hip. The Kaminoan gasped and fell to the ground, clutching the small burn hole in her hip and her teeth gritted in pain. Bane stepped past her, not bothering to finish her off and quickly hurried down the corridor once more, pulling out the holomap of the station and plotting the fastest course back to the medical ship he had locked down.

* * *

Roughly about half a minute after Bane had gone, Renamon and Barriss reappeared at the opposite end of the corridor, one invisible and the other not. At the sight of the injured Kaminoan doctor, Barriss gasped and hurried over to her, while Renamon immediately burst into the room containing her family.

The fox had to prevent herself from screaming in rage at the sight of the empty bed where Aayla should be, and it was a very difficult task. The secret of the 327th was practically the last thing on her mind right now with her friend in danger. However, she quickly hurried to the bed and checked underneath it. Lopmon and Terriermon were still there and they appeared to be alright, breathing properly and slumped against one another. Briefly pausing to check Chewbacca and ensure that he was alright as well, she leapt over the empty bed and checked behind the bacta tank. All the Tamers were there and unharmed, except for the fact that they were unconscious. Whoever had taken Aayla either had not seen them or had no interest in them.

Rage boiled inside the fox and, now that she was sure that everyone else was alright, she turned towards the door, her eyes narrowed as thoughts of what might be happening to Aayla filled her head. She hurried back into the corridor and saw Barriss kneeling over the barely-conscious Kaminoan and healing the wound in her hip from what had obviously been a blaster bolt.

Barriss turned as she sensed Renamon appear and, once done with the Kaminoan, hurried over to her. "It was Bane," she murmured as quietly as she could. "Cad Bane the Bounty Hunter. The Duros. And we know that he often works for Darth Sidious, don't we?"

"Yeah," Renamon hissed back, grimly. "What about Aayla?"

"She thinks that Aayla was still alive," Barriss nodded to the panting Kaminoan, "but if Bane has her in his grasp, who knows how long that's going to last. We need to find her."

"Oh, I'm going to," Renamon growled. "You stay here and make sure that everyone here stays alright. I'm going after Aayla."

"How?" Barriss asked. "Can you sense her?"

"No, I think she's out-cold," Renamon answered. "But I can smell something, and while my nose might not be as good as Guilmon's, the scent is quite strong. I'm going. Look after everyone."

And before Barriss could stop her, Renamon dashed past the Kaminoan and, after a couple of seconds, was gone.

Barriss turned to look at the Kaminoan again. Despite everything, she still had to think of the secret, so she couldn't risk putting the Kaminoan in the private room lest she saw the others now that they didn't have Renamon's perception filter to hide beneath. So, after quickly shutting the door and hoping that nobody else would wander, she moved over to the Kaminoan and helped her up, providing support as they moved towards a more communal area.

As she did, she couldn't help but sniff the air in an attempt to catch the scent that Renamon had caught. She couldn't smell anything too out of the ordinary at first, but then she caught a whiff of something that was so faint that you might not have noticed it if you weren't looking for a smell in the first place.

"Nashta hide," she murmured. She knew that was the material that Bane used for his cape, even thought she had personally never met him. Renamon was homing in on the smell of the tunic that the Bounty Hunter wore.

And, as Barriss assisted the Kaminoan, she also reminded herself that she needed to get someone to fix the interference in the cargo hold. And as she thought of that distraction, she sighed at the thought of how easily Bane had accomplished what he'd set out to do. He really was the top Bounty Hunter in the galaxy.

Barriss couldn't help but wonder if Renamon would be prepared when she met him. Especially since she didn't have Rika for back-up.

* * *

Bane hurried through the corridors, blaster gripped firmly and steadily in one hand, while the other arm was wrapped around Aayla's upper legs, holding her steadily over his shoulder. He knew that if he ran into trouble that he wouldn't be able to dodge very easily without dropping his burden but, equally, he was in a medical station and he had encountered very little resistance so far.

Now that he'd been spotted, Bane had little reason to be very cautious. Whenever he reached any of the few security holocams, he made no attempt to avoid them – he merely blasted them before he reached them. He encountered very little else in his run back to the medical frigate – only a couple more medical clones, who were promptly gunned down, as well as a medical droid, who got offlined before he could process what was going on with a single blaster bolt to the brain.

As Bane passed by another corner, a sound from within the corridor it lead to automatically made him whirl about and point his blaster, the unconscious Jedi flapping against his back. He found his blaster pointed at his own droid. Todo attempted to backpedal and hurriedly brought himself to a hovering stop in the air, waving his arms wildly.

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Bane, it's just me! Todo 360."

"I can see that," Bane lowered his blaster and continued to run. Todo quickly accelerated on his rockets and whooshed down the corridor alongside his master. "I see you survived. Did the Jedi find you?"

"No, but it was a close thing," Todo said. "Um, Bane. I probably shouldn't bring this up considering we're about to leave now, but... they were here. The creatures. I saw them, or at least one of them anyway."

Bane momentarily pulled to a halt and glanced at Todo, the droid going several feet further before he realised the Bane had stopped and whirled around to face him. "What?" Bane asked. "You saw one of the creatures I described in here?"

"Yes, but only for a moment," nodded Todo. "It was the yellow fox-thing, in its two legged form. It came within a metre of my hiding place but then it turned around. Bane, we need to go. We're probably already being followed. They knew about the knock-out gas the moment it began to work."

"What do you mean?" Bane asked, as he began to run once more, Todo turning around and keeping pace with him.

"The fox mentioned something about mental links," said Todo. "I think that the creatures have some sort of telepathic connection with one another. I think the bunnies were probably in the room with Secura and as soon as they were knocked out, the fox suddenly knew what was happening and ran out the room, calling the Jedi to follow her. It was the only thing that allowed me to get away."

"Interesting," Bane murmured, unconsciously increasing his speed. "Well, that's another thing we can ask our little sleeping beauty here about."

"Providing we get away with our lives," Todo replied. "That thing looked tough, Bane. And it was very fast. Just as fast as a Jedi."

"In that case," Bane awkwardly lifted a wrist-com up and pushed a button on it with the hand holding Aayla's legs. The rockets on his boots flared into life and he lifted from the ground and swept down the corridor at even greater speed, Todo accelerating to catch up. Bane didn't usually do this indoors due to the lack of space, but if what Todo said was true, then he needed all the speed he could get.

After only half a minute of whooshing through the middle of the corridors, vertically and horizontally, Bane rounded the corner that lead to their ride out of this place. At the end of the corridor, there were a bunch of clones in medical uniform attempting to prize open the doors of airlock and get into the medical ship, but the lock that Bane had place on it held firm.

One of them turned around at the sound of the Bane hurtling towards them. His eyes widened. "Look!" he cried, "It's..." He got no further because a blaster bolt slammed into his chest and sent him sprawling. The other clones turned around and stared at them in shock, but Bane merely glowered and let off a barrage of blasts from the single pistol he was able to hold onto. There had been five clones beside the doors, but in no time flat, there were none. No living ones anyway.

Bane settled on the ground and deactivated his boots, before hurrying forward, towards the doors. Todo turned to look behind him and the empty corridor.

The little droid started, because the corridor wasn't empty for long.

"Bane," he warned, causing his master to turn around. Bane's eyes widened in surprise. Now, that was some speed. Even with the extra piled on by his rocket boots, the being before them had still managed to catch up with them, dashing on all fours at blinding speed like some furry, yellow comet.

As the creature pulled to a stop and reared up onto its back legs, Bane couldn't help but leer. After months of not seeing hide nor hair of this creature, here she was. The same one he had seen back Behpour, down to the purple symbols adorning her legs.

Blue eyes met red ones, and the blue eyes narrowed.

"Going somewhere?" Renamon growled.

* * *

And that's that. Things are heating up quite quickly aren't they. But of course, that's to be expected when you put Bane and Digimon in the same story. I feel excited about writing the next chapter already. I'll start first thing in the morning.

Just so you know, I am planning to go abroad for about a week come the 13th June. As I won't have my laptop with me during that time, I won't be able to write of this during that time. However, I am going to attempt to squeeze two more chapters in before that date comes. That should give you the next, hectic Star Wars chapter and one Impmon chapter to read before we move on to the second half of the arc after the holiday. And before you ask, I'm heading to the Azores.

See you soon. I'm going to try and write a quarter of a chapter a day, so I should get the next one up by Thursday. If I stick to that, I might even be able to do three chapters before I leave. But we'll see, right.

* * *

Next time...

The time had come for a one-on-one meeting and resultant showdown between a Digimon and a major Clone Wars antagonist. I hope you enjoy it when I finally get down to putting the next chapter up.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 134 : Duros vs Kitsune**


	134. Duros vs Kitsune

Here I am folks. I stuck to my schedule and here I am once more with the next chapter. Every chapter brings me closer and closer to the end of this crossover epic, but there's still some way to go. And plenty of trials for our heroes to come as well, one of which will now be occurring in this chapter. I hope you enjoy the fight and the drama that fills up this chapter.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 134:- Duros vs Kitsune**

* * *

The underlying fury that was clearly evident in Renamon's tone, coupled with the fact that a lot of her fur was standing on end and her hackles were raised, made her an extremely intimidating looking figure. The fox had dropped her perception filter deliberately – she wanted the person attempting to kidnap Aayla to see what they had stirred up with their actions.

It had the desired effect on Todo. The little droid dropped to the ground and slowly stepped behind Bane, concealing himself from the angry Digimon as slowly as he dared, attempting not to draw attention to himself.

Bane, on the other hand, was remarkably unphased. He had encountered many angry people on his travels and various missions and, while few of them looked as menacing as Renamon looked when she put effort into it, Bane was used to being on the receiving end of death glares. The fact that Renamon's tail was swishing backwards and forwards, as if she was ready to pounce at any moment, was a little unsettling, even for him, but no sign appeared on his face.

He merely lifted the hand that wasn't gripping Aayla's legs and tipped his hat downwards. "Good afternoon, madam," he said, with faux politeness. "Have you lost something? May I be of assistance?"

Renamon bristled and felt a growl beginning to build up within her. Her claws flexed slightly, something which didn't go unnoticed by Bane. Renamon restrained herself from lunging at Bane, which could possibly hurt Aayla, and settled for saying, "That's my friend you have there. Put her down. Now."

"Your friend?" Bane smirked, glancing over his shoulder at the face of the unconscious Twi'lek. "Is that a fact? You needn't worry about her. We're just transporting her to a better facility, where she can be tended to by experts. Only the best for the Heroine With No Fear, right?"

"Put. Her. Down," Renamon growled, her blue on black eyes narrowing even further than before. "You have made me angry enough as it is, and believe you me, an angry Digimon is a deadly foe. You would be making a very wise decision if listened to my advice and put Aayla down."

Bane felt the corner of his mouth turn upwards a little further as his smirk widened. He now had a name for the creature before him. She had claimed that she was a Digimon. He had never heard of them, of course, but at least now he had something else to refer to her as, instead of just 'the creature.' He wondered what the two bunny like things were, and simultaneously wondered where they were.

"While I usually wouldn't dare to go against the wishes of such a charming young woman," Bane answered. "I'm afraid that Master Secura has an appointment and it would be a dreadful shame if she were to miss it."

"She's not going anywhere," Renamon snarled. "And neither are you."

"You're certainly a confident creature," Bane observed. "A Digimon, I believe you said. Might I ask what your name is?"

"I don't think that matters in the grand scheme of things," Renamon took a couple of warning steps forwards, closing the gap between the two to just twelve feet. She noticed Bane's hand tighten around his blaster and she, in turn, clenched her fists and began to prepare a Power Paw in case he tried something.

"Someone's cranky," Bane laughed. "But I suppose we should dispense with the idle chatter and get down to business. Will your two bunny friends be joining us?"

Bane couldn't help but chuckle as Renamon's eyes widened in genuine shock, her angry expression changing to one of bewilderment, a rare expression to appear on her face anyway. She recovered herself quickly though and growled, "How do you know about them?"

"I have eyes," Bane grinned. "They haven't failed me in the past. May I say that, while it has been many months since I last saw you, you appear to be doing extremely well for yourself. You look just as healthy as you did on the planet Behpour, when I saw you watching one of your bunny friends trashing Kul Teska."

"You were there?" Renamon breathed. "You've known about us all this time?"

"Indeed," Bane replied. "It's been extremely irritating, searching through holonet broadcasts in search of references to the three of you and finding nothing. But now, here you are again. My droid was convinced I was imagining things, but I knew better."

"Don't bring me into this," Todo hissed from his hiding place. Renamon's gaze flicked down to the spot where he was concealed for a moment before focusing on Bane again.

"Well, if you were indeed there," she said, "Then you should remember just how easily my... friend took out that Skakoan mercenary." She glossed over the fact that Terriermon was her mate, wishing to divulge as little information as possible. "You should know that we have great strength and many unique abilities. Think very carefully before you decide to tangle with me."

"Oh, I did think carefully," Bane chuckled. "I have no idea what you are fully capable of and I'll be the first to admit it. That's why I sent Todo to cause a distraction while I nabbed my target, just in case you were there. But I admit, I did not anticipate a mental link. I take it your bunny friends were in the room when I used the knock-out gas. Had that Wookiee not compromised the mission for me, I might have found them."

"Well, your plan didn't work," Renamon stepped forward again. "I found you before you could get away. And your refusal to co-operate in making me angry." To demonstrate this statement, the blue aura that came with a Power Paw flared into life on her fists. Bane had the grace to look startled as what appeared to be something almost like blue fire flared around her paws, without causing her any visible harm. He had to admit, he was impressed. He had a flamethrower built into one of his wrist-coms, but he couldn't do anything like that with it.

"Now, I will not ask you again," Renamon said, her voice dangerously quiet. "Put Aayla down, and I might be gentle. If you don't do as I ask, I will have to introduce your face to my fists."

"Then it seems we've reached an impasse," Bane answered. "Our interests contradict each other. My client wishes to see Aayla Secura dead, so there is quite literally nothing stopping me from putting a blaster bolt through her brain right now." To prove his point, he hauled Aayla off his shoulder until she was in a vague sitting position in front of him and pressed the blaster against her headdress.

Renamon faltered, a look of anguish appearing on her face at the sight of Aayla in mortal peril. Bane sneered. Hostage situations were so easy in his opinion. This was one of the reasons why he held no attachments to anyone or anything. If someone was holding Todo at blasterpoint, he couldn't care less.

Renamon's eyes flicked back up to Bane's. "I take it that the client you are referring to is Darth Sidious?"

Bane blinked, which was enough to confirm Renamon's suspicions. But the Duros recovered quickly and said, "Well, I probably shouldn't expose any of my clients private details, but indeed, that is who I am working for. I'm surprised you know of him."

"We know many things," Renamon responded.

"Just as you do, it seems," she added, one question in particular bouncing around in her mind – had he told Sidious of the existence of the Digimon. If he had... well, it could be disastrous for all of them.

She knew that Bane didn't know a lot about the Digimon, though, only that they existed and of a couple of their forms and powers. Therefore, if Sidious knew, he wouldn't know much either. However, even a small amount of knowledge could dramatically change the outcome of future events.

"Yes, but unfortunately, I don't know nearly as much as I would like," Bane replied. "I thought that perhaps Secura would be able to enlighten me as to a few... details regarding you and your friends. I thought we could head back to my place and discuss it over a drink." He chuckled again, then pressed the blaster against Aayla's head all the more firmly. "And now, I must be on my way. Make a move, and I'll blow her brains out."

"Then you won't have the information you seek," Renamon pointed out.

"True," said Bane, "but I can live with that. And besides, I managed to extract a large amount of credits from my employer so I won't come out of this whole situation empty-handed even if I do just kill her, my dear."

"Is that right?" Renamon growled. "And did it occur to you that if you kill Aayla then there is absolutely nothing to stop me from smearing you across the wall?"

"Colourful," Bane almost laughed. "But, while I'm sure that will provide you with immense satisfaction, if you could do it, that wouldn't bring your friend back to life. And you'd even be helping my employer – he could keep his money even though I did the job I was sent out to do. However, for the moment, I wasn't Secura alive as well, so if you don't mind, we'll be on our way."

Renamon's claws were almost cutting into her palms with frustration as Bane began to back towards the airlock that would lead him to the medical ship that would get him away from this place. Renamon was seriously beginning to regret running off on her own. She had no back-up, and everyone that she shared a mind link with was either unconscious or out of range back on Coruscant. If she could communicate with someone, they might be able to get a message out to the cruiser waiting for them to return and get it ready to block the medical ship's retreat. But poor Barriss probably had no idea what was happening.

She needed Barriss right now. She'd be able to get a signal out, but right now, she wasn't here. Renamon quickly decided to do her best to stall for time, and, dispelling the blue aura around her paws, she crossed them in front of her. Bane promptly stopped dragging Aayla backwards towards the sealed airlock and blinked as the corridor all around and behind Renamon suddenly filled up from floor to ceiling with large, jagged shards of diamonds that were conjured from nowhere.

"What are you doing?" Bane growled, warningly jamming the end of the pistol against the side of Aayla's head. "I am not prone to bluffing, Digimon."

"Neither am I, Bane," Renamon warned the Duros. "My Diamond Storm is lethal and is also lightning-fast. Take another step backwards and you'll find yourself riddled with so many gashes you'll look like you got in a fight with an angry cheese grater."

"Oh really?" Bane asked, though he noticeably remained where he was. "And you might hit your friend doing that."

"I have very good aim," the fox growled. "And she'll take a lot less damage than you."

"And you think your... diamond attack... will reach me before I can pull the trigger, do you?"

Renamon's eyes narrowed, and a split second later, widened considerably. One single diamond suddenly lashed out from the waiting Storm behind her and lanced down the corridor so fast that Bane's eye couldn't track it. It clipped the brim of his hat and shot down the rest of the corridor to slam into the thick airlock almost before Bane knew what was happening.

"I'm pretty sure of it," Renamon bluffed, deciding not to tell him that sending off a whole swarm of diamonds would require more energy and probably be slower than a single one.

Now Bane really did hesitate. His conniving mind, which was always on the move, was trying to thick of ways out of this predicament, with both his skin intact and the target he had come for with him naturally. But this Digimon was a force to be reckoned with. Bane hated to admit it, but he was pretty sure that he had underestimated the Digimon's resourcefulness. And that was a rare event for him.

"Perhaps we should listen to her, Master," Todo murmured nervously from his hiding place. Bane glanced down at him and growled for a split second, during which Renamon tensed and prepared to unleash her attack. Bane met her eyes with his own and they stared at each other, daring one another to try something. Both were on a knife edge and Todo was quivering behind Bane's legs.

Eventually, Bane seemed to relent and removed the pistol from Aayla's head. Renamon was both surprised and suspicious, but only the latter showed on her face as she carefully watched Bane discard his blaster by tossing it over his shoulder, where it clattered to a stand-still in the corridor. Bane then plucked out his other pistol from its holster and tossed that away as well.

"Alright then," Bane said, a smirk still on his face, as he let go of Aayla, the unconscious Jedi falling to the floor. Bane stepped over her still form and faced Renamon directly. "What do you say we try and finish this... honourably."

Renamon resisted the urge to snort, doubting that Bane knew anything whatsoever about honour. But she continued to watch suspiciously as Bane opened his wrist-com and detached a few things from within, like a pair of bolas, several darts and what appeared to be a small net, casting them aside as well. He then reached into a hidden pockets and pulled out a few grenades and a small, spare blaster and dumped them on the floor too.

"How about we settle this with a little sparring match," he grinned. "You and me. I use none of my weapons and you use none of your little attacks or abilities. We fight hand to hand. If I win, I get the Twi'lek. If you win, you can take me in and I'll even tell you everything I know about Darth Sidious."

Renamon raised an eyebrow suspiciously. She didn't trust this Bounty Hunter at all, and she had no reason to. "How is the winner declared?"

"First to knock the other one out," Bane leered. "That way, I won't be able to resist capture, and you can't stop me from taking Secura."

"What's the stop me from simply firing my attack at you and killing you on the spot?" Renamon pointed out.

"Ooh, I'm sure you wouldn't do that," Bane sneered, spreading his arms out. "Would you really strike down an unarmed man? That would practically be murder. In fact, it would be murder plain and simple. Would you really do that?"

"If it were to protect my family, I might," Renamon snarled.

Bane didn't even blink at the mention of Renamon and Aayla being family. He merely said, "Well, do you think your... family... would approve of that?"

Renamon resisted the urge to growl, but she was forced to concede Bane's point. She knew that the Jedi would never even think of trying to kill him when he had no weapons on his person. Not to mention the children. Renamon knew that Bane was absolutely right, they wouldn't approve at all. Besides, Renamon hadn't killed anybody in cold blood since the time, so long ago, when she killed every other Digimon she met in an attempt to get stronger. She wasn't about to start again now.

"Damn you," she murmured. Bane heard the exclamation and grinned, watching as Renamon slowly uncrossed her arms, the diamonds the packed the corridor disappearing one after the other, until they'd gone altogether. Renamon sighed and said, "Alright, we'll do it your way." She spread her legs and got into a fighting stance. "I hope you don't mind if I don't pull any of my punches," she added, a slight quirk appearing in her jaw.

"Go right ahead," Bane answered. "I won't hold back either. But remember my terms – no powers. Just our own skills."

"I've got plenty of those, believe me," Renamon said. "You can make the first move."

"Ladies first," Bane smirked.

"Alright," Renamon said quickly and she exploded into action, catapulting herself off the floor and closing the distance between herself and Bane by dashing on all fours with incredible speed. Bane knew she would be fast, but the sheer speed at which she moved almost caught him off guard. Renamon sprang into the air and came down to pounce on him, so Bane immediately evaded by diving into a forward roll and passing beneath the fox.

Renamon crashed to the floor behind him as Bane whirled around to throw a punch at her. But Renamon was just as fast and did the same thing, spinning like a top and coming up with a sweeping blow to block Bane's strike. Her wrist impacted on Bane's wristcom, but the heavy thud on metal didn't phase her. Sweeping her arm, she knocked Bane's punch aside and used her other arm to deliver a hammer blow to Bane's stomach.

Bane gasped and reeled backwards, falling onto his back and rolling to put some distance between himself and Renamon. His nashta hide outfit wasn't the toughest material around but it did well when it came to absorbing shock – a large reason why Bane wore the thing. But that had hurt. Clearly the creature had strength in abundance.

Renamon didn't pause and leapt forwards again. Bane straightened up and ducked under the blow aimed at his head, rolling aside and sending a blow at Renamon's own face. Renamon caught his blow on her wrist again and made to respond with a second stomach blow. But Bane was prepared this time and his other arm swung across himself to knock her wrist aside. Renamon's body moved with her arm as it shot past Bane's side, causing her to stumble slightly. Bane tried to punch her in the back of the head as she exposed it to him, but Renamon recovered remarkably quickly and spun about to grab Bane's fist in her paw.

Bane gasped as he Renamon's position changed. For a brief instant, she had her back to him, with her arms crossed before her, her left hand grabbing his right one and her right arm still blocking his left from before. Renamon suddenly grabbed Bane's other wrist and straightened, hauling Bane into the air and heaving him over her shoulders to crash to the ground in front of her.

Bane wasted little time and spun about on the floor, sweeping a leg to try and take her ankles out from under her. Renamon saw it coming and backflipped, coming to a standstill as Bane leapt to his feet. Bane leered. The last two attacks had been more to test Renamon's abilities than anything, and he was now pretty sure that he had a good idea of what she could do. Renamon charged in again and threw a punch that Bane dodged, following up with a blow from her other fist that Bane brought both hands up to block. Bane gripped her wrist and twisted, expertly moving the momentarily surprised Digimon's arm into a half-nelson, pinning her arm to her back.

He prepared for the retaliatory blow from her other arm, but it didn't come. Renamon's tail lashed around Bane's legs and pulled them together, startling him and causing him to lose his balance. As he toppled backwards, he dragged Renamon with him, but Renamon twisted out of the hold in mid-fall and wrenched herself free, standing over him.

She smirked down at the Bounty Hunter on the floor. "You never said I couldn't use my tail," she said.

Bane smirked back, "You're right of course," he replied. "I'll have to remember that." Suddenly he was on his feet again and went on the offensive. Renamon dropped to all fours to avoid a expertly handled roundhouse kick that would have caught her in the nose and lunged for Bane's other leg. Bane seemed to have expected this though and he sprang off from the ground and rolled over Renamon, coming to land still facing her and throwing a blow at her back. Renamon turned and caught it again, but was forced to step back from another blow to her waist. Bane pushed her backwards for a few moments, throwing a couple of blows at her chest that she turned aside and striking out at her head, forcing her to duck.

As his fist lashed over her head, his body followed it and swept around, and as he span, he brought up a leg and managed to land a blow to Renamon's hip. Renamon gasped at the heavy blow and fell to one knee. Bane quickly lashed a fist at her face, forcing her to lean back to avoid it. Her hand lashed out and grabbed his wrist, pulling it further downwards, and bringing up her elbow as she did, causing Bane's face to hammer into it.

If Bane had a nose, it would have been broken by that blow.

Bane cried out from the pain, but he ignored it as best he could. As Renamon rose to her feet, Bane dropped further down and threw himself at her. Renamon had evidently not been expecting this and they both went down, rolling over and over one another for a moment and both of them landing blows on the other as they tumbled several metres. Bane took advantage of the situation and grabbed Renamon by the shoulder, refusing to let go.

Because of this, when they both tried to rise, Bane was forcibly able to twist Renamon around so her back was to him and deliver a kick to the small of her back just above her tail. Renamon crashed to the ground again and Bane followed up with a heavy kick to her side. Renamon grunted in pain as she rolled about a metre or so and glared up at her adversary.

"I never attacked you when you were on the ground," she growled.

"That's your problem," Bane smirked. "I never said that you couldn't."

Renamon's eyes narrowed further, and watched as Bane moved to kick her again. She rolled before the leg hit her and sprang to her feet, grabbing his ankle in one paw as she moved and hauling it to one side. Bane's eyes widened as he was bodily flung into the corridor's wall. He managed to stay upright, but Renamon suddenly backflipped into the air, planted her feet on the opposite wall and sprang off it, right at Bane with fist raised back.

Bane dived aside at the last second, causing Renamon's fist to slam into the wall so hard the metal dented a significant amount. Bane had to admit that he was very glad his face had not been there when Renamon had struck. But Bane couldn't afford to stand still for long because Renamon had already flipped off the wall and landed, looking none the worse for wear. She lunged again, forcing Bane to quickly block two thankfully less powerful blows, duck under a swipe at his head and quickly jump over Renamon's leg as it lashed out at his own.

Bane darted backwards as Renamon brought forth a swinging uppercut with intent to slam it into Bane's chin. Bane quickly slammed his arm into Renamon's elbow to knock her arm up further and out of the way, allowing him to lash out with his other fist and catch Renamon in the throat. Renamon's eyes widened at the impact, but the blow was cushioned by her mane of white fur and therefore considerably less powerful than it could have been.

Nevertheless she still staggered backwards, giving Bane the opportunity to leap into action again. He followed up with an uppercut of his own, and this one managed to hit its target, crashing into Renamon's chin. Renamon grunted in pain but followed the momentum the blow caused into a flying backflip so she landed on her feet, skidding backwards several metres. Dashing forwards on all fours, Renamon charged Bane.

The Duros braced himself to dodge, but Renamon suddenly changed direction and shot straight past him, leaving him a moment of bewilderment before she spun around and slammed her foot between his shoulder-blades, knocking him onto his front. Bane looked over his shoulder at the glowering Digimon that towered over him and the Duros quickly flipped onto his back and lashed up with both feet, trying to slam them into Renamon's knees. However, Renamon had been expecting this and jumped back, allowing Bane to scramble to his feet again.

"You're certainly a skilled warrior," Bane observed dryly, ignoring the bruises on his back.

"I have been training," Renamon replied, in a tone that indicated that that was all she was planning to say. Bane made no further comment either and he braced himself, waiting for Renamon to make the next move.

It only took a moment for the fox to leap into motion and she somersaulted forwards, her fist lashing out at Bane's head. With a deft motion Bane whipped off the hat that had somehow managed to stay on his head throughout all this and swept it through the air. The material enveloped Renamon's fist and Bane abruptly pulled it to one side. Startled by this unexpected move, Renamon lurched sideways and Bane acted quickly, striking Renamon beneath the arm with a painful punch and then aiming to kick her in the back of the knee.

But before he could do the second attack, Renamon's other arm lashed out and wrapped around Bane's neck from behind. Bane squawked as Renamon spun around, dragging him into the air again and tossing him down the corridor. Bane rolled several metres and quickly pushed himself up to see Renamon already coming for him again. Having learned that Renamon was most dangerous when in mid-charge and had built up momentum, Bane rolled aside, but was not fast enough to stop the fox from clipping his hip.

Renamon spun about with startling speed and slammed a fist into Bane's shoulder, knocking him off balance and spinning him around slightly. Bane staggered and tried to wheel around for a counter-strike but Renamon's fist cannoned into his face to moment he did and knocked him to his knees. The Duros struggled to get up and staggered into the wall, dazed from the hard blow. Renamon seized his nashta hide tunic and spun him around by it, sending him crashing into another wall.

Bane pushed himself upright once more. He was certain that in this contest so far, he had been on the receiving end of blows more often than the Digimon that he was fighting. She was strong, even without changing shape as he had seen back on Behpour. But he was Cad Bane. He still had a few tricks left up his sleeve. And the fight hadn't been entirely one way either. The fox had taken many blows herself too.

Bane heard Renamon coming again and whirled around to duck beneath her blow, stepping to the side slightly and being forced to catch her follow-up with both hands. He was backed against the wall and had little room to move, so he quickly lifted a foot and stamped down on the fox's toes. It was cheap and he knew it, but he didn't care as long as it got the job done.

Yelping at the pain caused by Bane's heavy boot, Renamon stepped backwards for a moment, allowing the Duros a little breathing room as she examined her toes. She looked up and glared at him. "I should warn you," she said. "I am not above kicking you in the groin if you start to descend into tactics like that."

Bane almost winced at the prospect of a powerful blow like hers landing in that particular spot. "I'll keep that in mind," he said. "Let's continue." Without waiting for Renamon to move this time, Bane sprang into the air and used the considerable skill he himself had to lash out at her head with his foot. Renamon backward rolled to avoid it and sprang upwards with a jump of her own, intending to pounce down on him. Which had been exactly what Bane had wanted. Deftly, the Duros spun onto his back and slid underneath Renamon, lashing up with a foot as she came down. His boot slammed into her furry navel and drove the wind out of her. Renamon gasped and ended the pounce with a roll, coming to a stop on one knee and clutching her stomach.

Bane bore down on her from behind and grabbed her by the tail while she was winded, making it Renamon's turn to be hauled off her feet. The fox had to grit her teeth to ensure that she didn't scream as her tail was yanked backwards and she was sent rolling into a wall. Bane made to stamp on her while she was down, but both her paws lashed out and grabbed his boot. Her blue eyes blazed.

"Nobody," she snarled. "Touches. The tail!" She powered upwards, still holding Bane's foot and slamming him into the opposite wall. Bane swung a fist, which Renamon turned aside and lashed out with her own. Bane dodged the hammer blow, and then the second and leapt aside and into the corridor, but Renamon was on him in a moment and rammed him, slamming him to the floor and flipping over him, before whirling around and springing over him again with intend to piledrive him into the floor. Bane managed to avoid the blow with a well-timed roll, but Renamon remained unphased by slamming into the floor and was up instantly.

She aimed a kick at him, forcing Bane to block with his own leg, but continued to press him backwards, coming into her own as the heat of battle settled on her. Bane aimed a punch at her, but she grabbed his wrist with her opposite arm. Bane quickly lashed out with his other hand to the same result. Renamon pulled, crossing Bane's arms in front of him painfully, and then driving her knee into his stomach.

And Bane struggled for breath, he began to wonder if he'd made the right choice by doing this.

* * *

As the furious fistfight between the two none-humans raged on, neither side willing to give an inch, Todo 360 simply stood and watched in absolute amazement. He hadn't seen Bane go all out like this for a very long time, but it was the speed and flexibility of the fox that really impressed him. Both sides were damaging the other, but Todo couldn't help but think that if they were fighting in a more open space than the cramped corridor, thus giving the fox more space to move, she would be winning this contest hands down.

But, given the current conditions, Bane was giving as good as he got.

Still, the little droid had no idea how long that would last. Both combatants were throwing fierce punches and kicks, so the droid was sure that it was only a matter of time before one of them triumphed.

Plus, he also knew that if things didn't go Bane's way, the Duros was not above cheating if it meant he got his pay.

Resigned to the fact that they would very probably be on the run again soon, Todo glanced over to the unconscious Aayla, who was lying next to him, dead to the world and completely oblivious to the brawl going on nearby. Despite Todo's nerves at the situation, he was a faithful droid, so, while he wasn't able to do much to help Bane in this situation, he would do the best that he could.

While the fox was looking the other way, Todo walked over to Aayla and gripped one of her wrists in both of his little hands and then began to attempt to drag the Twi'lek towards the airlock which they were going to attempt to make their escape through. It was a difficult task for him – his stick-thin arms and legs meant that he wasn't really designed for moving anything bigger than his own body size. Nevertheless, he persevered and slowly dragged Aayla across the corridor until she was lying beside the airlock.

Todo looked up at the magnetic lock that Bane had placed on it. He knew that he couldn't open it, even with his skills at hacking. Bane had specifically designed it so it would only respond to him so until the Duros won the fight, assuming that he did win the fight, he wouldn't be able to get inside the ship. Still, when Bane decided to make a break for it, the distance he would have to drag Aayla had been minimized.

Todo turned to watch again and cringed when he saw the fox finally succeed in knocking Bane's hat off with a blow that, if Bane had been a millisecond slower, would have slammed between his eyes.

Todo hoped that it wouldn't be much longer before they left.

* * *

Digimon recover quickly.

Unless the Digimon in question was so severely wounded that they were within an inch of deletion, it took a surprisingly small amount of time for them to get back on their feet after something brought them down. And this was true of all Digimon, including Terriermon and Lopmon.

And that was why, despite being the first to succumb to the effects of Cad Bane's knockout gas, the two bunnies were also the first to stir.

Terriermon gritted his teeth as the first thing he became aware of was a splitting headache. He small hand automatically reached up to massage his forehead, but the moment his fingers touched his head the aching seemed to intensify. He groaned audibly and resisted the urge to just fall back and go to sleep, as he still felt extremely sluggish for some reason.

He slowly opened his eyes, but the bright light only served to make things worse. Nevertheless, he kept them open and blearily surveyed his surroundings. He was still in the room that Aayla had been using as her quarters, but he had been moved from under the bed to on it. Something told him that there was something wrong with that. Shouldn't there be someone else on the bed? He spotted Lopmon lying next to him, his sibling also beginning to stir, but that wasn't what was trying to pierce through the post-drug haze.

The door was shut and the only person standing was Barriss, who was bent over and appeared to be examining Henry, who appeared to be out cold. However, at the sound of Terriermon's stirring, she turned around and quickly crossed over to him.

"Thank the Force you're okay," she said to him. "Do you feel any pain?"

"Ugh... head," Terriermon groaned, pushing himself into a sitting position by extending his ears backwards like supports. "Wazzgoinon?" he asked blearily. "Was lookin' out fr Aayla n then..."

Suddenly the images that were raging through his aching mind came through to the front. He'd been aware of them the whole time, but just hadn't registered them until now. He could vaguely see, through Renamon's eyes, that she was in the middle of a fist-fight with someone. Someone blue, but a darker blue than Aayla. He couldn't see the image nearly as clearly as normal thanks to the after-effects of the gas, but as shock permeated through him and he remembered what had happened, he became more coherent.

"Renamon!" He blurted out, ignoring the pain in his head. "Aayla! Something's going on?"

"What?" Barriss leaned over him. "Quick, tell me what's happening."

"Renamon... she... she's fighting against someone, but I don't know who it is. And... and Aayla, where is she? She's been captured by someone."

"It's Cad Bane the Bounty Hunter," Barriss said. "I was about to go and try and help Renamon once I found that everyone was okay."

"Well, we're fine," Terriermon lied. "Let's go. We've gotta help."

Barriss nodded. "I know, but I'm not sure where she is. Do you think you can lead me there?"

"No problem," Terriermon attempted to push himself to his feet but stumbled backwards. Barriss quickly caught him with one hand and helped him up. Barriss bit her lip, she could clearly see that Terriermon was going to struggle to remain on her shoulder as she ran if she put him there so she quickly did the first thing that she came to mind. She pulled off her hood.

It had seemed so long ago since Terriermon had pulled it off and buried himself in it, forcing Renamon to help Barriss extricate him. But now, Barriss quickly lifted him up and enfolded him in the material herself. It was a ridiculous way of carrying him, but it would ensure he stayed with her and also stayed out of sight. "Hold on," she said, tucking Terriermon's ears into the hood and she felt the bunny grip the material. "Lopmon, can you look after the others for me?"

"Sure," moaned the brown bunny, also in a drug-infused state. "Just go. Help Renamon."

Barriss nodded and leapt over the prone form of Chewbacca, opening the door and dashing outside. She paused only to shut the door again, before she dashed down the corridor she had sensed Renamon take earlier. "Give me directions, Terriermon," she said, trusting that Terriermon would be awake enough to follow his mate's mental signature, just like Lopmon had been able to do in the Geonosian tunnels many weeks before.

As she ran, she pressed the comlink on her wrist and said, "Commander Bly, come in."

"Left," Terriermon mumbled, even though he couldn't see his surroundings. Barriss didn't hesitate and dashed down the left-hand corridor.

* * *

As Bane swerved backwards to avoid a sweeping blow to the face and threw himself into a backward roll as Renamon's other fist came forward with intend to pulverise his chest, the Duros was beginning to think that the fight had gone on for long enough. He was starting to regret his decision – this ordeal was going to leave him with a very large number of bruises when it was all over. Quite frankly Bane was amazed that he hadn't broken any bones.

Renamon sprang off from the floor, barrel-rolling in the air and bringing her foot lashing downwards, forcing Bane to duck and roll beneath her again if he wanted to avoid the attack. He turned around and quickly threw a punch at Renamon's back, just as Renamon whirled around to meet him. This caused Bane's attack to slam into her chest instead, eliciting a grunt of pain from the fox, but the pain was promptly ignored as Renamon spun Bane about by grabbing his wrist and heaving, and then swept his legs out from underneath it.

Bane was more prepared for it this time and was able to land in position that meant rolling back onto his feet took only half a second and blocking Renamon's next blow with difficulty. He hurriedly turned aside the next strike by slamming the palm of his hand into the side of Renamon's fist to redirect the attack, but Renamon was raining blows on him now. Bane was being forced back down the corridor now, hurriedly blocking and dodging a myriad of attacks. Renamon's fists flew at his abdomen five times in a row, and Bane was able to block three and dodge the other two. But when Renamon's next sweep kick came, it caught him right in the hip and caused him to crash into the wall.

This creature had not been exaggerating when it had said that it had been training. Bane could take on Jedi that weren't as good as this. Of course, he normally had most of his gadgets on hand to help deal with those, but he had cast most of them off when he started to fight this creature, in the hope that it would prevent her from unleashing a flurry of diamonds at him.

As he dodged Renamon's punch and slammed his fist into her shoulder and followed with a boot to her side, causing the fox to stumble momentarily, Bane thought that it might be time for him to leave. He needed to end the fight quickly, but he didn't have most of his gadgets.

The key words being 'most of'.

Renamon turned slowly around to face him again, crouching down low in a position that clearly indicated she was getting ready to spring forwards again. "Do you think that you can keep this up much longer?" she asked, her claws twitching. Bane was pleased to note that she had refrained from using those claws so far in this fight. They looked like they could cause some quite serious damage.

"I'm game for as long as you are," Bane replied smoothly. "I have to admit I did not expect you to be this skilled at fighting, but don't think that that is going to stop me."

"Have it your way then," Renamon growled, and immediately hurtled forwards once more. Bane's mind, so quick and full of ideas and plans, began racing as the fox closed the distance between them and leapt into the air, spinning into a punch at his head, which Bane only just managed to duck as Renamon sailed over his head and landed still facing him. Bane noticed that the creature seemed to be rather fond of going for the head when it came to her blows. Perhaps it was some instinctual thing to aim for the weak spot, or perhaps she just really, really wanted to hurt him.

Either way, Bane thought that he saw an opportunity. He tried to keep the smirk off his face as he backed off, waiting for the just the right moment to pull off what he needed.

Renamon was attacking with blinding speed now, jabbing twice at Bane's chest and coming in with a crushing right hook. Bane blocked the first two with his hands, the powerful blows leaving them stinging and then ducked under the hook, which left him open to Renamon's sweep kick that caught him in the side. Bane grunted as he stumbled, and he knew that fatigue was beginning to take its toll on him. Renamon was clearly landing more blows on him than he was on her now. Just what was it that kept this creature going?

Bane jumped back as Renamon span about to lash another fist at him with a full power swing that slugged past his chest. Bane tried to strike while she was at a disadvantage and let off a double punch, but Renamon's arm clubbed into both of his and knocked them upwards before she leapt into the air and slammed both feet into his chest with a furious double kick.

Bane flew so far down the corridor from the force of that attack that he crashed into the far wall. He managed to remain standing, but only just and he required the support of the wall. He looked up and saw Renamon charging afterwards, jumping into the air as she did so.

There! She was preparing another aerial roundhouse kick.

Bane quickly summoned all the powers of concentration and timing that he had left after his fistfight and waiting for the last second before he ducked beneath the kick, pushed off from the wall and span around. As Renamon's kick slammed into the wall, Bane's hand lashed up and grabbed the part of Renamon that Bane had identified to be her weak spot.

Her tail.

As Bane's hand grabbed the bushy tail, he pulled backwards as he had before, pulling Renamon off her feet. But, this time, his other hand came up and pushed a button on his large wrist-com. As Renamon struggled to get up, Bane's device activated and suddenly a scream was ripped from Renamon's throat as electricity coursed through her body. Bane leered as the fox collapsed to the floor, writhing and yelling in pain as the electricity crackled across her fur and lanced through her body.

"You...!" Renamon gasped and snarled as she forced her head round to glare at Bane, even as the electricity continued to crackle around her. "You... said... no...devices!" She was able to do little else as the electricity was paralysing her muscles, not to mention causing her extreme pain.

"I'm Cad Bane," the Duros replied. "I don't play by the rules."

With that, he cranked the electric attack up to full power. Renamon screamed again and, after several agonising, writhing seconds, she finally blacked out.

Bane released the fox's tail, stopping the attack. He looked down at her prone form for a moment, savouring his victory. It hadn't been a fair victory, but Bane didn't care. Any victory was a victory to him.

He was contemplating what to do next. He already had a prisoner in the form of the Jedi, Aayla, but the only reason that he wanted her as a prisoner was to learn more about these Digimon, when his real mandate was to kill her. Now, he had an extra unconscious person before, and this one actually was one of the creatures.

Bane glanced down that corridor to where Todo and the out-cold Twi'lek were waiting by the airlock. What was to stop him from taking the fox captive instead and killing Aayla now? If he took the fox, he would have proof as well as information.

But, just as he was about to decide to take Renamon and kill Aayla, he heard something that sounded suspiciously like footsteps, coming closer, the quick pounding noise indicating that the person was running. Bane glanced down the corridor in the direction of the noise, wondering if perhaps he had lingered too long.

And then, Renamon's paw lashed out and grabbed his ankle. Bane started in disbelief and stared down at the fox-like Digimon. She had only lost consciousness for a few seconds under the assault and was now struggling back up, slowly pushing herself onto her knees and weakly trying to pull Bane's foot from underneath it. Bane felt her grip tightening – she was weak but she was recovering her strength, and while slow the rate of recovery was much faster than a normal humanoid.

Bane could see the anger in Renamon's eyes, and this combined with the fact that someone else was getting closer, made his mind up for him. He'd settle for nabbing Aayla. This Digimon was going to be a very dangerous hostage.

Wrenching his foot free before Renamon could get too tight a hold, Bane ran down the corridor towards the airlock where Todo and their hostage were waiting. He paused only for a moment to gather up his various items that he cast aside before (and his hat), and then he was running again. Glancing over his shoulder as he ran, Bane saw Renamon redouble her efforts to get back up again, pushing herself onto her hands. Bane piled on more speed and practically skidded to a halt beside Todo.

"Hurry! She's getting up!" Todo wailed as Renamon pushed herself onto all four paws.

"I can see that, Todo," Bane growled as he jammed his thumb against the magnetic lock, which automatically caused the airlock to unseal itself with a dull thunk and then dropped into Bane's waiting palm. Bane heaved the airlock open as Renamon wobbled slightly before she started down the corridor on all fours, slowly at first, but increasing her speed rapidly. Bane couldn't help but feel intense admiration for how fast the Digimon was recovering.

But he couldn't afford to dwell on it. He quickly seized Aayla beneath her arms and unceremoniously hauled her into the ship, dumping her on the floor in the corridor as Todo zipped in behind him. Renamon was halfway down the corridor and getting faster as Bane grabbed the airlock and began to pull it closed.

"Release. My. FRIEND!" Renamon practically screamed as her speed doubled and she flew forwards.

Bane reacted instinctively, knowing that there was no way he'd close the airlock before she reached it. Shouting, "Todo, get to the bridge and get us out of here," his right hand flew to his left wristcom and pushed a button. A split second later, the flamethrower built into it activated and jettisoned a deluge of searing fire into the corridor.

The animalistic side of Renamon immediately caused her to skid to a halt and back up from the torrent of flames that whooshed at her. She backpedalled instinctively, moving out of range of the attack, and by that point it was too late. Bane had pulled the airlock closed and there was another thunk as it was sealed from the inside.

Renamon screamed in rage and flew forwards, throwing a fist at the heavy circular door. Her blow created a tiny dent in the heavy door. It could have been bigger had she been on full strength but she was still running on the reserves from Bane's electrical assault. She threw several similar heavy blows against the door, desperately trying to cave it and get to Aayla, but it was having no effect at all.

It was at this point that Barriss rounded the corner, Terriermon's head poking out of the hood bouncing against her shoulder blades. The Mirialan barely faltered in her stride as she dashed down the corridor and joined Renamon beside the door.

"That filthy, cheating scumbag," Renamon was snarling as she continued to slam her fists against the door. "When I get my paws on him, I'm going to make him eat his own flamethrower."

"Renamon, stop," Barriss said, grabbing Renamon's shoulders and trying to haul the fox back. "Stand aside. Let me have a go at the airlock." Renamon barely seemed to hear the young Knight and wrenched herself out of her grip to thump her fist into the wall again. "Renamon!" Barriss cried, activating her lightsaber. "Get out of my way. Let me cut through it."

Renamon growled and threw another useless punch against the door, her blows getting weaker as she ran down her energy reserves. Barriss gritted her teeth, but Terriermon was the one who resolved the situation. He disentangled himself from the hood and leapt onto Renamon's shoulder, wrapping a large ear around her eyes and crying, "Rena! Calm down!" both physically and mentally.

Renamon faltered as the dual command got through her blind anger, the loss of sight helping to distract her attention away from her rage. She paused, gasping for breath, and Terriermon continued, "Let Barriss cut through the airlock. Getting angry is not going to help in this situation."

Renamon almost slumped, and Terriermon could feel Renamon's fury at the dishonourable way that Bane had triumphed over her ebbing away. The fox sighed and followed Terriermon's advice, stepping back and allowing Barriss through. The Mirialan nodded and twirled her lightsaber into a forward stabbing position at shoulder height and prepared to plunge it into the door.

But, just as her mind began to tell her muscles to move, Barriss' ears registered something that made her stop before her blade penetrated the door. She faltered and listened, a frown appearing on her face as a noise that sounded oddly like groaning metal permeated through the corridor. She glanced across at the two Digimon, who both had heard the noise as well.

Barriss glanced back at the door, and then at the locking system on the wall. It was offline, which, considering the door still wouldn't open clearly meant that Bane had sealed the door from the inside using a device of his own. The groaning metal noise grew louder and Barriss looked up just in time to see a section of the wall up near the top of the corridor buckle.

"Oh crap!" Barriss cried and whirled around, grabbing a startled Renamon around the waist in one arm and dashing back down the corridor, dragging the confused fox with her. A moment later, the entire section of the corridor they were standing in was ripped away from the rest of the station. Bane had decided to steer the ship away without unlocking the airlocks, and since the corridor that lead to those airlocks was an extension from the station and therefore weaker than the ship itself, they were being torn off as the ship moved away.

Barriss shoved Renamon and Terriermon past the extendable section of the corridor and dived past it herself and slammed the button to close the blast doors with her fist. Because with the corridor being torn away, they were suddenly becoming exposed to the vacuum of space and the intense suction began immediately. As the blast doors began to close, Renamon and Barriss grabbed the wall to stop themselves being dragged out into space. Terriermon was not so lucky and was immediately plucked into the air and thrown towards the new exit.

_Terriermon!_ Renamon shouted in her mind, robbed of her voice by the intense suction.

As Terriermon whooshed past, Barriss' hand lashed out and she called on the Force, grabbing the tumbling bunny with it just after he shot past the closing blast doors. Barriss gritted her teeth and hauled, pulling Terriermon back through the doors, the bunny's ears clearing it moments before the door slammed shut and all three dropped to the floor, gasping for breath.

"Thanks," gasped Terriermon, putting a hand to his chest and struggling to draw in huge breaths.

"Don't mention it," Barriss grunted, slumping by the wall and trying to pull herself back onto her feet. "Bane must really want to get away to pull something like that."

"Well, what do we do now?" Terriermon asked urgently. "He's getting away and he's still got Aayla."

"I know," Barriss nodded, activating her comlink. "Bly, are you there?"

"I'm reading you, General Offee," the clone's voice came out from the other side. "Did you catch the Bounty Hunter?"

"No, we didn't," Barriss responded. "He's on board the medical ship currently leaving the station and so is Aayla. Do not fire on the ship. Try and block its escape route and, if you can, grab it with a tractor beam. Board it as quickly as you can and check your fire at all times. We have to get Aayla back alive."

"Copy that," Bly said, and signed off. Barriss glanced at Renamon and Terriermon, who were getting to their feet. Both of them looked exceptionally shaky, due to a combination of their encounter with space vacuum and electricity or knockout gas respectively.

"Stay here," Barriss instructed them. "Hide under the perception filter. I'll try and see what's happening."

And Barriss quickly ran off to find the nearest window, praying to the Force that everything would work out alright.

* * *

"Well, this appears to be going well," Bane said from the cockpit of the medical ship, rubbing his arm from where a particularly hard blow from Renamon had landed which was causing his whole appendage to tingle slightly, even now. "I wonder if the fox survived my little exit strategy. I hope so, I'd quite like to meet her again one day."

Todo was sitting in the pilot seat and steering the ship as it slowly began to turn around in space, the remains of the two airlock corridors hanging from either side of the front of the ship. "I can't see her, Bane," he replied. "It looks like she managed to get back into the corridor and seal it before she was sucked out into space."

"Good," Bane smirked. "I'm sure our little friend here will be delighted to hear that when she decides to wake up." He ran the back of a finger down Aayla's lekku, the unconscious Jedi sitting slumped in the co-pilot seat. The dead clone that had previously been in it had been knocked to the floor to make way for the prisoner, and Bane had supplied her with a small dose of extra knockout gas to ensure that she stayed out until he wanted her to wake up. Aayla didn't have the faintest idea what was happening to her. She was out like light.

As the medical ship rolled around in space to face away from the medical station and make ready to jump to hyperspace, Bane couldn't help but chuckle. This was usually about the point where lasers started flying at them, but there was none of that this time. The medical station had no weapons to fire, and even if they did they wouldn't risk harming the captive if they could help it.

But Bane was jarred from these thoughts when Todo suddenly cried, "Bane, that cruiser is heading right for us."

Bane cursed and leaned forward to look out of the window, spotting the _Intrepid_ gliding slowly towards them like some huge triangular Behemoth. Bane wondered for a brief instant if they had decided that protecting the secret of the creatures was more important than Aayla's life, but quickly knocked that thought from his head. They would never resort to that – it wasn't in their natures. And he also could see that the _Intrepid_ was in range of them but wasn't firing. Plus, it was heading for them at an angle.

"It's not heading right for us, Todo," he said. "It's trying to cut us off and block our escape."

"Well, what should we do?" Todo asked.

"Activate the hyperdrive now," Bane instructed. "We cannot let them cut us off or they'll board us, and I'd rather avoid having to battle my way through an entire contingent of clones."

"But Bane, we aren't in position to jump to our designated co-ordinates. We need to turn another 75.6 degrees and..."

"Does it look like I care, Todo?" Bane growled. "We can stop and correct our course later on. Program the navicomputer to the nearest place in our direct line of sight now, or I'll stuff your head with explosives and use it as a grenade." He glanced back up at the huge spaceship that was gliding towards them. It would draw up in front of them in a few moments, and it was likely to have a tractor beam if it got close enough.

"Hurry," he gripped the backseat, his breath bated. But, as Todo's hands flew over the controls, Bane could help but feel exhilarated. It might have started out like his other recent missions, but now it had definitely become the thrill that Bane had been seeking. This was the secondary reason he undertook such difficult jobs, the first being the high pay. The suspense and the exhilaration of the game of cat and mouse.

The cruiser's nose was almost level with the front of the medical ship when Todo shouted, "Okay, I've got it!" and engaged the hyperdrive. As Bane saw the stars outside seem to lengthen, the third reason he chose missions like this presented itself – the self-satisfaction that came when you pulled off a victory against all the odds.

"Nothing personal," Bane smirked as the ship shot into hyperspace, slewing past the nose of the cruiser and whooshing away from the medical station too fast for the eye to track. "It is just business after all. And now to get you," he smirked down at the limp Aayla, "To your new home."

Aayla made no move to indicate that she had heard him.

* * *

Barriss' breath caught in her throat, when she saw the ship vanish. She was standing beside one of the medical station's few windows and staring out into space. Her eyes were wide and she was shaking her head, murmuring "No," in shock and denial.

Bane couldn't have gotten away with Aayla. He just couldn't have. This couldn't be happening. It couldn't be real.

But it was real, and she knew it really. She shut her eyes and pressed her forehead against the duraglass, unable to say or think anything, except for _I'm sorry, Aayla. I'm so, so sorry._

She didn't look up when she heard footsteps walking slowly towards her. She could tell that it was Renamon, recovering from her ordeal, and probably with Terriermon on her shoulder. Barriss waited for her to say something, and didn't look up until the fox uttered a single word:-

"Well?"

Barriss opened her eyes and looked at them. They weren't under the perception filter and thus risking discovery, but right now neither of them cared. And, frankly, neither did Barriss. The Mirialan felt a single tear fall down her cheek as she slowly shook her head, feeling like dirt just for the mere motion of her head.

Terriermon had a similar reaction to Barriss and went numb with shock. Renamon cried out and punched the wall hard, tears of both anger and sadness beginning to form in her eyes, something which never happened to the stoic fox. Barriss stepped over to them and pulled them both into a hug, which they slowly returned.

But even that gesture felt feeble.

Aayla Secura, the Heroine With No Fear, was gone.

* * *

Am I evil? Tell me I'm evil. I already know the answer. And, much like the last arc, you have to wait a chapter to find out what happens to our favourite Twi'lek due to the fact that the next chapter is the next Impmon one. I hope you're all concerned for Aayla's well-being, because Bane certainly is not going to be the best of hosts for her.

I'll see you all soon hopefully. Possibly Monday.

Thanks for reading and please review. But don't lynch me for the cliffhanger. Please.

* * *

Next time...

Impmon has finally arrived at his destination and, for the first time, he and his friends will be able to meet the great angels face to face. They have a lot of information to give to him and there is some startling news for the group.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 135 : The Celestial Heavens**


	135. The Celestial Heavens

What's this? I'm updating a day early? What's the world coming to? I must be trying to make up for some of the time I lost with all my laziness and my driving theory stuff during the first half of my holiday. As of this chapter, I have written the same number of chapters in this summer holiday as I did in the last one, and there will be more before the holiday is out. Soon, I'll be heading to Carlisle, where I will have more writing opportunity time on my hands.

Hope you like this dialogue based Impmon chapter. Lots of explanations here.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 135:- The Celestial Heavens**

* * *

Impmon received only the briefest of glimpses of the inside of the Temple when he stepped across the threshold, his companions following on after him. The little Rookie couldn't help but be in awe at the huge columns that held up the roof, the mosaics and patterns covering the floor, walls and ceiling, not to mention the golden statue of the three Great Angels and Fanglongmon at the end of the room where everyone could see them. The statue was even more impressive than the ones outside, due to the fact that they were all striking epic poses. Cherubimon was in the middle, lightning bolts crackling around her, while Ophanimon and Seraphimon stood on either side with their weapons held high, and Fanglongmon towered over all three, roaring to the sky.

But Impmon didn't have much of a chance to explore the surroundings because the moment Angewomon shut the door, everyone was suddenly enveloped in a searing white light. Or at least, it should have been searing. Impmon blinked. Everything had turned so bright that he felt that his eyes should have been burned right out of his head, and yet he felt no pain.

He also couldn't see anything else. Turning around he found he was still able to see the others, but their surroundings were completely white. They didn't even have shadows anymore. It was as if all forms of darkness had been purged from around them. Impmon felt elation creeping through him, first in a trickle and then in a flood.

It had been a long time since he'd felt so... so... pure. He felt... right again. The incredibly strong sensations of self-doubt and despair and fear at who he was that had been building up in him for weeks all just seemed to melt away in an instant.

Impmon was pretty sure he had a big, goofy-looking grin on his face. Especially when Lilamon glanced at him and snickered, holding a petalled hand up in a vain attempt to hide it. But Impmon didn't care.

Impmon also became aware of a vague sense of motion. It was only the vaguest of sensations, but it felt like they were slowly rising upwards. Impmon wondered if something like a huge pillar of light had erupted from the top of the Temple that lit up the whole Prairie Level and that they were travelling up it, but he didn't say anything. Sometimes it was best not to question what was going on and just go with what you knew.

And what he knew was that he was finally going to the Celestial Heavens.

"This is surreal," he heard Diatrymon murmur. "This is utterly and completely insane. We're going to heaven! How many Digimon have ever been to heaven?"

"A fair few," Angewomon replied for him. "Occasionally something will happen that will result in somebody getting a trip to the Heavens but they are usually few and far between. Never before have we had such a large group all ascending to the Heavens for the first time."

"Oooh, this is so exciting!" Calumon was shivering in anticipation and skipping round and round Lilamon. "This is so, so exciting. I can't wait to see what Heaven looks like. I saw a film once where it was a huge golden gate on a cloud, and inside it was absolutely full of acorns, including one humongous one that was as big as all the others put together. There were even some singing dodos."

"Singing what?" Wingdramon blinked. "That doesn't even sound like a word."

"I doubt it'll be anything like the heaven from Ice Age 2, Calumon," Impmon answered.

"Aaw," Calumon's ears dropped. "But I like acorns."

Angewomon smiled at him and said, "If you like you can suggest them to Lady Ophanimon. She's always making modifications. She takes great pride in how the place turned out."

"Okay, I'll do that," Calumon brightened up. "How long until we get there?"

"Are my ears deceiving me, or did Calumon just ask a valid question?" Lilamon gasped theatrically, causing chuckles from around the... light pillar... thingie. Impmon wondered what would happen if he walked too far. Perhaps he'd fall back to the Digital World. He decided to stay put.

"Not long," answered Angewomon. "But I should warn you, the Heavens are quite large."

"Large?" Impmon laughed. "We can take large any day. But guys, do you realise what's going on? We've done it. We've actually done it! We've arrived at last after so long searching for the place! And not one of GranDracmon's forces can touch us here. We're free!"

The look of pure delight on Impmon's face was infectious and pretty soon, everybody was grinning and laughing and Lilamon grabbed everyone and pulled them into a group hug, even Angewomon. The angel did not resist, although she quickly folded her wings before Lilamon crushed her against Wingdramon's neck.

Impmon turned to look at the angel once they had extricated themselves from Lilamon's enthusiastic hug. The purple Rookie hesitated for a moment, before asking, "I hope you don't mind me mentioning this, but do you ever still dwell on your past? I mean, do you have nightmares about the things you used to do, or... episodes where you can't help but think about it?"

Angewomon was silent for a few moments before saying, "Why do you ask?"

Impmon hesitated, but then said, "Partly out of concern for you, partly out of concern for myself and... partly because I feel like... I have a connection to you, since our stories are slightly similar."

"Careful," Angewomon smiled. "If your friend Lilamon hears you talking about connections, she's going to get the wrong impression."

Impmon flushed and Angewomon chuckled at his facial expression. "It's not like that," he murmured. "I have eyes for someone else." He blinked. Why had he just said that? What had possessed him to reveal he had a crush in front of Angewomon?

But it was Angewomon's answer of, "Oh, I'm well aware of that," that really threw him.

"What?" he started. "You do? How?"

"You'll have to talk to Lady Ophanimon about that," Angewomon responded evenly. "But, to answer your question, yes, sometimes I still do reminisce, although I suppose that's not exactly the right word, about what I used to do. My actions were pretty horrific, as I'm sure you, of all people, can imagine."

"Does it hurt?" Impmon swallowed.

"Oh yes," nodded Angewomon. "But there is little I can do to change it, and I try not to dwell on what I did. I look to the future, not the past. I always decide to leave the past where it belongs, before I get too overwhelmed. It never goes away, but as long as I stay in the knowledge that what I do now is good and firmly situate myself in that, it is easy to bear."

Impmon sighed. "I hope that happens for me too. But sometimes I wish that I could forget everything I've seen thanks to MetalPhantomon's meddling with my mind."

"If you so desire, there are several Digimon in the Heavens that could do just that for you," Angewomon replied.

"What?" Impmon asked. "Really? That would be..." He paused. "Wait, why didn't you do that then?"

"Because forgetting what I did doesn't change the fact that I did it," Angewomon answered. "And, in my view, forgetting my sinful actions would be just like running away. For the sake of the Digimon I harmed or killed, I decided to keep the memories, so that they will always be remembered by someone. It's unfair to them if they died due to senseless murder, only to be forgotten. It is the very least I could do for them."

Impmon paused, frowning momentarily. He'd never thought of it that way before – he'd only seen it as senseless violence weighing down on his soul that he just wanted to get rid of. But Angewomon had a valid point. Someone ought to remember the suffering that his victims had had to go through before the end. He remembered the terrified Mikemon and the Ryudamon he had pretended to duel, and the Lopmon that had fell trying to protect an innocent Poyomon, which had also been killed.

Somebody should remember them, and it might as well be him, even if it did mean he had to bear a heavy burden.

Impmon's fists clenched. He wouldn't forget them. He would bear that burden for them, no matter how heavily it weighed upon his shoulders.

"I'm glad to see that you've taken that on board," Angewomon nodded warmly. "I can see the resolve in your eyes. However, always remember, you aren't alone in this. You are neither the soul perpetrator of your actions, nor are you the only one striving to make up for them with you. Never forget that, Impmon."

Impmon looked up at her. It was a little odd to be staring into the face of a smiling person when he couldn't see their eyes, but he supposed it didn't matter.

"And there is something else as well," Angewomon added. "Something that might actually lift your spirits a little bit when you hear it."

"What?" Impmon asked, his curiosity rising instantly.

"Ah, you'll have to speak to Ophanimon and Seraphimon about that," Angewomon smirked, causing Impmon to sag at the unexpected anticlimax. The angel Digimon chuckled, and then added, "Speaking of which, here we are."

"Huh?" Impmon asked, but a moment later, the rising sensation came to a halt and Impmon suddenly felt something under his feet again. The others seemed to notice the change in movement as well because they halted in what they were doing and looked up eagerly, anticipating what would come when the light dimmed.

And dim it did, the bright light fading away until everybody could see their surroundings once more. They were no longer in the Temple, but none of them had expected to be. And now, their breath was taken away at what they saw stretched out before them. They were standing on higher ground, looking down at the most incredible thing that Impmon had ever seen.

The Celestial Heavens wasn't merely clouds and a gate. There weren't even any acorns. There appeared to be solid ground beneath them again – paved roads that went through small gardens filled with lush flowers and foliage of all kinds. But it was more the architecture of the place that grabbed people's attention. There was an astounding number of buildings packed closely together but somehow the space didn't feel crowded. Great golden pillars supported the various buildings. There were a few bandstands, an amphitheatre, as well as some kind of large stadium. The buildings came in all colours, including lurid ones like pink which would normally look ridiculous on a building but here worked extremely well.

There were more statues around the place, filling up almost every place that wasn't full of building, garden or pathway, and the few spaces left were filled up with fountains spraying curtains of water into the air.

In the distance, at the other side of what appeared to be some kind of sprawling city, a metropolis of near-perfection, there were several enormous castles, with great spires reaching out into the sky as if to cleave it in two pieces. By far the largest was directly opposite to where the new arrivals now stood, it was a colossal building almost the size of the city that it was sitting beside. It closely resembled one of the castles of the Sovereigns, with jagged golden segments joining together into one great spire. There were four smaller castles around the edges of the city as well, but they were no less impressive.

"Holy guacamole," Lilamon breathed. And she'd never heard of guacamole.

"Astounding," Wingdramon's eyes were like saucers, a comical look on his pointed dragon face.

"Whoa," Diatrymon murmured, unable to come up with anything more coherent than that.

Impmon was unable to say anything at all. He was speechless. He'd been trying to picture what he would see when he finally arrived here, but nothing his imagination had come up with could have compared with the majesty and splendour that was stretched out in front of him. It was, quite honestly, indescribable.

"Look at all the angel Digimon," Calumon pointed excitedly, bouncing up and down on his toes, looking so giddy that Impmon would have said he was having the sugar rush of the century if he'd been able to find his voice. And indeed, Calumon was right. There were angelic Digimon all over the place. Impmon caught a glimpse of several Pucchiemon performing in the amphitheatre and many more playing various string instruments on one of the bandstands. Several Unimon and Pegasusmon swooped low over the buildings. Impmon spotted a Silphymon having a conversation with a couple of Piximon, and a pair of Nefertimon keeping a close eye on several Tokomon playing in one of the gardens.

Impmon finally found his voice. "Ab...solutely...awesome," he gasped, his voice so quiet that even he barely heard it. "It's fantastic here."

"We're glad that you think so, Impmon," said a voice from above. "How are you? It certainly has been a while."

Impmon immediately looked up, as did all the others, and gasped as a large Digimon descended from the sky – a Digimon that resembled a cross between a Chinese-style dragon and a cat, with mountain-goat horns and pink fur.

Angewomon placed a hand over her breastplate and knelt before the Digimon, who alighted on the ground beside them. "Everyone," she said. "I would like to introduce, my mistress and the Digimon in charge of the gateway to the heavens, the Lady Magnadramon."

The enormous cat-dragon smiled down at them with her feline face. Lilamon glanced at the others and murmured, "Should we kneel? I think we should kneel?"

"Well, if Lilamon thinks we should," chuckled Diatrymon. "She's never knelt to anyone in her life." But, even as he spoke, he bent one knee and awkwardly bowed. Impmon and Lilamon followed his example, and even Wingdramon alighted on the ground to show the proper deference with a bow of his own.

Only Calumon didn't bow, and that was because he was too star-struck to realise what everyone else was doing. "Woooowwwww," he beamed. "You are sooo cool."

"Thank you," chuckled Magnadramon. "And please arise, all of you. I thank you for your courtesy, but there is really little need for it here. You are not our subjects, you are our guests. And I would like to welcome you to the Celestial Heavens. We have watched your journey to get here from afar and we are all pleased to finally see you here. And you, Impmon," she turned her sharp eyes (which reminded Impmon a lot of Renamon) onto him. "It is a pleasure to see you again. Even if we didn't end our last meeting on such good terms."

Impmon flushed, the image of him stabbing this mighty beast with his claws flashing through his mind. "Yeah, um, about that..."

"Apologies are not necessary either," Magnadramon interrupted him.

"Yes, they are," Impmon said, instantly. "I... I was a monster. I killed you in cold blood, all to make me stronger. I have to apologise. In fact, I have to do more than apologise – an apology wouldn't be enough..."

"Wouldn't it?" Magnadramon asked, her eyes twinkling. "Perhaps... But there is a lot more to your story than you are even aware of Impmon. A whole lot more, I can assure you."

"More?" Impmon blinked. "More to my story?"

"Oh yes," Magnadramon's eyes seemed to twinkle slightly, an amused curve to her feline jaws. "Tell me this, when that MetalPhantomon was delving into your mind to unearth all of those memories, did he ever show you a vision of what you were like _before_ you went on your rampages and killing sprees?"

Impmon's eyes widened slightly as he realised the validity of that question. How could he not have thought of that? He knew that couldn't have been born as a Beelzemon – it must have taken him some time to reach the Mega level, or at least had some sort of intervention by another Digimon to give him the power boost he needed like Zhuqiaomon had. Impmon had always been so absorbed in what he saw, he had never thought about what happened beforehand.

And now, he was certainly eager to find out.

"What happened?" he asked quickly. "Tell me, please."

"All will become clear to you, Impmon," Magnadramon said kindly. "However, before you begin to gain the answers you seek, I would like to take you to meet my sister, Ophanimon, and her husband, Seraphimon. They are waiting for us at the entrance to the palace of Fanglongmon." She flicked her huge tail in the direction of the biggest of the five palaces and then lowered herself to the ground, presenting her shoulder to the group. "If you'd all like to step on board."

"Oh wow," Lilamon gushed. "We're actually going to be given a ride by an angel."

"I thought I was your steed," chuckled Wingdramon as he rose into the air still further.

"You can still carry your friend, if you wish," Magnadramon winked at him as Calumon and Lilamon clambered up onto her elongated shoulder and then nodded to Diatrymon. The bird raised his head in alarm, and then sighed, spreading his wings out.

"I was rather hoping we wouldn't have to do any more carrying," he murmured.

"Don't worry," said Wingdramon, as he gripped the bird's shoulders again. "It's not far. We'll be there in a minute or so."

Impmon was now the only non-flyer who was not on or being held by their transportation. Hesitantly, Impmon walked over to stand in front of Magnadramon and looked up into the golden cat-like eyes of the draconic angel. "Yes?" Magnadramon looked down at him. "What is it?"

"Uh," Impmon rubbed the back of his head awkwardly and said, "I hope you don't mind this... but... well..." He stepped forwards and, as best he could hugged the humongous Digimon. His arms didn't even get round half of her, it was almost as if he were hugging a furry wall. He murmured into her fur, "I wanted to thank you so much for purifying me like you did."

Magnadramon looked a little bemused at Impmon's choice of action, but then smiled and said, "That's very nice of you, but really, thanks are no more necessary than apologies. Do you know why I chose to purify you instead of any of the other six Demon Lords you ran with?"

Impmon pulled back and looked up at her in confusion again. "No, actually. I don't. Why did you do that?"

"Again, you will find our soon enough," said Magnadramon. "By the end of this day, you will know everything that you desire. Now, climb aboard. The others are waiting."

"I will see you soon, hopefully," said Angewomon, as Lilamon helped to pull Impmon up onto Magnadramon's shoulders. "I must stay here and continue to monitor the Temple below. I wish you well."

"Bye, bye!" Calumon waved, as Magnadramon pushed herself into the air.

"Thanks for the help against the Skelemons," Lilamon called.

Angewomon waved as she watched Magnadramon whoosh into the distance, closely following by Wingdramon and his dangling passenger. She smiled to herself as she imagined several of Impmon's facial expressions when he discovered the rest of the story and had his questions answered for him. He was in for a true voyage of discovery.

* * *

Wingdramon had been right in his prediction. It only took a minute for Magnadramon to cross the huge, sprawling city that covered the heavens. Impmon couldn't see beyond the palaces – it was almost like a wall of bright light like some kind of barrier, presumably to keep everything evil out of the heavens. The group find it hard to regain their breath too, because it kept being taken away by what they were seeing below them. The angel's world truly was a paradise.

There was only one thing that surprised Impmon when he looked over Magnadramon's side. He was amazed to see what appeared to be an Andromon walking through the street far below, flanked by a couple of Mekanorimon. And further on, he also spotted a couple of what appeared to be Monitamon. They were not angel Digimon, so Impmon wandered what they were doing there.

When he pointed this out to Lilamon and Calumon, the former suggested, "Maybe they're like us, and they pulled off some sort of deed that allowed them to visit the heavens, and they just decided to stay."

"A good guess," Magnadramon said as she moved. "It's wrong though. You'll find out the answer to that at the same time as everything else. Here we come. The palace gates are just ahead."

And, as Magnadramon began to make her way downwards, towards the palace itself, Impmon almost gasped. There she was. Impmon could see her standing outside the huge gates and staring up at them – the Digimon that had appeared in his visions of his friends trapped in an alternate dimension. Her blue armour and dress, as well as the helmet covering her eyes and the large, double-ended javelin that she held by her side made her easily identifiable.

"Is that her?" asked Calumon.

"Yep," nodded Impmon, feeling bubbly inside at the prospect of finally finding the people he was seeking. "That's Ophanimon."

"Then I suppose that makes the one standing next to her Seraphimon," Lilamon breathed, staring at the taller blue-armoured angel with the eight bronze wings sweeping out behind him and the Crest of Hope emblazoned on the helmet which covered his entire face, instead of just the top half. "Wow. Looks like you've got some serious competition for your dream girl, Impmon."

"Oh, leave me alone, Petal-head," Impmon griped at her. "It's not like that and you know it."

"I know," Lilamon snickered. "But it's so fun to needle you now that you aren't all depressed anymore."

"Needle, needle, needle," Calumon giggled, poking Impmon repeatedly in the back of the head as he did. Impmon swatted his hand away and glared over his shoulder at the laughing Catalyst. Then, he looked up at the fairy sitting behind both of them and said, "Well, could you not call her that in front of the two of them. Seraphimon might decide to turn me into a Gekomon or something."

"He isn't a magician," Magnadramon chuckled. "He can't do that. However, getting on his bad side might be something to be avoided. He is just and fair and rarely loses his temper, but when he does he really goes all out."

"Nice to know," Impmon muttered dryly. "Let's go and meet them."

As Magnadramon alighted and allowed her passengers off, and Wingdramon placed Diatrymon on the floor beside them and hovered over the group, Ophanimon smiled and was the first to speak, "Thank you, Magnadramon, for bringing them here. And to you, weary travellers, welcome to the Heavens. I hope that you will find the rest and freedom from your troubles that you have been seeking since you began your quest."

"Does this place have food?" Calumon asked. "I'm hungry."

Seraphimon spoke next, his voice a strong baritone that exuded power with each syllable, leaving none of them in any doubt that they were standing in the presence of someone who could smite them to ashes if he so desired, probably with a wave of his hand. "We do indeed have food here. Any food you could desire, in fact. While we do not need it, we do often enjoy various Earth cuisines, which we can replicate easily."

"Really," asked Calumon. "What about..."

"Cream puffs?" all seven of the others asked at the same time.

"How'd you know is was going to say that?" asked Calumon, pouting slightly.

"That's elementary, young one," Lilamon winked at him.

"And yes, we do indeed have that," Seraphimon responded smoothly. "We even have acorns, if you so desire."

"Yes!" Calumon cheered, and then turned to Impmon and smugly said, "I told you."

"Eesh," Impmon rolled his eyes slightly and decided to ignore the little In-trraining.

"I hope that you are all well," Ophanimon stated, as she surveyed the group. "The trials that you have been through on your journeys may have finished off lesser people, but you all managed to persevere. The feats that you have accomplished together are phenomenal, and I would like to take this opportunity to say – well done. All of you."

"We thank you, my lady," Wingdramon inclined his head. "From the bottom of our Digi-cores, for the kindness that you have shown to all of us."

"Kindness?" Ophanimon chuckled. "We have only allowed you to enter our world. We have yet to do anything other than that yet."

"Nevertheless, that is a great kindness. Not to mention a huge honour," the dragon replied. "I could not think of a greater privilege than the one which I am experiencing now."

Seraphimon observed the group for a moment, looking over Lilamon, Wingdramon and Diatrymon individually. All three of them felt as if they were being examined on the molecular level, as if Seraphimon was visually observing every inch of them, and not just their physical side either – their mental and spiritual sides too. After a moment, the angel turned to Impmon and said, "Truly, you choose your companions well, Impmon."

"Er..." Impmon answered. "Well, I didn't really choose them actually. They just, sort of, followed me."

"But you did not try and get rid of them or leave them behind," Seraphimon answered. "Therefore, you chose them. And they have all played their parts. Strong and wise, Wingdramon. Sturdy and faithful, Diatrymon. And brave but silly, Lilamon. Had not these three been at your side, there is a high likelihood that you would have failed your quest. Therefore I reiterate – you chose your companions well."

"Nice to hear our efforts are not for nothing," Diatrymon grinned.

"I'm not that silly, am I?" Lilamon asked.

"Yes," everyone answered. Even Calumon.

"Poo, to all of you," Lilamon sniffed, causing some more chuckles.

"Now then," Ophanimon said. "I know for a fact that you are bursting with questions, young Impmon. You have, after all, been searching for answers for a very long time. Where would you like to begin?"

Excitement started to blaze through Impmon at the thought of finally finding the answers to the questions that plagued him and piled on top of him, as if seeking to bury him under their weight. And it didn't help that Magnadramon had just added even more questions to that list. "Where do I begin?" he announced, frowning as he tried to pick one question from the multitude, failed, and asked several at once instead, "What's the rest of my story that Magnadramon mentioned? How are my friends trapped in an alternate reality? Why did you contact me to show me how they were doing? What does GranDracmon want with me and how do we stop him?"

Ophanimon held up a hand to halt Impmon's stream of questions. "It will help to answer most of those questions if we step inside," she said. "There are things that you will be able to see that will help you to understand what we are saying. Come. Let's go in."

As if the doors had been waiting for her to announce this, they slowly began to grind open behind her and Seraphimon, the gigantic bronze coloured doors sliding slowly into the walls on either side of them, much like the doors on an ordinary Sovereign's castle. There was some slight apprehension in the air from the travellers but, as Ophanimon and Seraphimon turned to float through the doors while they were still opening, and Magnadramon flew over their heads to follow them, the five of them followed the three powerful Megas into the castle.

The doors began to grind closed behind them almost instantly as they did, but for some reason it didn't seem all that menacing. They moved down the entrance hall, which resembled the inside of the Temple down in the Digital World below, with huge golden pillars embedded in the walls and various patterns decorated across the walls, some resembling various angel Digimon, and others depicting the Sovereigns and many others besides.

When they came to the other side and the door rose from the floor into the ceiling, allowing them to step into the room beyond, all five of the travelling companions froze.

"Oh... my... God," Diatrymon gasped.

"Literally," Lilamon added, too stunned to say anything else.

The room beyond was absolutely huge, like one huge dome from floor to ceiling, with more ornate decorations all over the place, but it wasn't the room that had stunned everyone. It had been over a year since Impmon had last seen him, but he had forgotten the sheer majesty and overwhelming sense of power and strength that seemed to ooze from the colossal bulk of the Digimon God, Fanglongmon. Now, he felt it coming back in full force. Fanglongmon was right in front of him.

Even though the God was fast asleep, he still exuded so much power that Impmon had to physically stop himself from taking a step back. The great, bronze dragon was curled up in a sleeping position, his tail wrapped around his head, the huge, jagged spikes that covered his body, much like the outside of his fortress, were rising up and down with every great breath that he took. Only the head and neck were not part of the ball, and the head was facing them, each exhalation almost knocking the Digimon that had entered the room off their feet. The twelve Digi-cores that Fanglongmon possessed were slowly orbiting his massive back spikes, and all eight of the great dragon's eyes were shut, his expression indicating that he was probably in a deep, dreamless sleep.

"Fanglongmon," whispered Wingdramon, his voice almost drowned out by the God's breathing. Impmon could tell the dragon was almost speechless – he was observing not only the God of all Digimon, but the most powerful dragon Digimon of all time. Even if he digivolved up into Slayerdramon, who had a massive advantage over other dragons, Wingdramon doubted he would leave a mark on the mighty beast before him.

Calumon went rolling over several feet thanks to one great breath and came to a halt on his rump. "He's huge!" the Catalyst observed – he had not been present when Fanglongmon had made his trip into the human world. "I know you said he was big, but he's absolutely huge!"

"Colossal. Ginormous. Fricking immense," Lilamon nodded in agreement. "I can't believe I am actually standing in front of the God of all Digimon. This is... utterly mind-blowing. Even for me."

"Should we wake him up?" Impmon asked. "Maybe he can answer some questions for me."

"No, Impmon," Magnadramon replied. "You need not worry. My Lord Fanglongmon will not be able to answer any questions which the three of us can't. We are remarkably well informed."

"And, in any case, you cannot waken him," Seraphimon responded. "At least, not yet. Our Lord Fanglongmon is in a deep state of torpor – just as he was some time ago while Ogudomon was rampaging through your world. He will not wake up again until the fulfilment of the next great prophecy."

Impmon frowned. "What so that's it? That's his life? We beat up Ogudomon so that he would rise again, only for him to go straight back to sleep again afterwards? How does that work? It thought he was supposed to watch over all of us."

"And he does," Ophanimon assured him. "Through us. But to answer your question as to why Our Lord Fanglongmon spends most of his time asleep, it is because he is evil."

"What?" shouted Impmon in alarm. There were startled expressions all around and a couple of them backed away from the slumbering dragon. "What do you mean he's evil?"

"I mean exactly what I said," Ophanimon replied.

"But... he can't be evil. He restored Tokyo for us after we beat Ogudomon. Why would an evil person do that?"

"Because he is good too," answered Magnadramon. "Our Lord Fanglongmon has equal amounts of good and evil, equals amounts of light and dark, inside him. He is not one or the other – he is both. While he is awake, there is a never-ending war going on inside of him as one side fights for supremacy over the other. His light side is naturally stronger, as light is always able to repel the dark, but the dark always does creep back in the end. That is why Fanglongmon created many powerful minions to look after the Digital World for him while he slumbers. He only awakes at key events brought about by prophecy, to either lend aid or to repair the damage caused, while his good side is still in control of his body. Then he puts himself back to sleep before his evil side can gain strength, in order to suppress it again."

Impmon stared at the cat-dragon thing. "Well... that's a complicated lifestyle."

"But it does makes sense," Wingdramon murmured. "As long as there is such a thing as free will, there will never be such a thing as a world without evil. The world will always have both, so our Lord and Master does as well. And his good half recognises this is the best way to stop his evil side from taking over."

"Can you imagine an evil Fanglongmon," Lilamon shuddered. "I think I'd ask GranKuwagamon to send me to another universe and quickly. I'd rather take my chances there."

Impmon shuddered as well. Fanglongmon had so much power that he'd been able to restore the entire city of Tokyo in the blink of an eye. He could quite easily do the opposite if his evil side gained supremacy. Suddenly, he didn't resent Fanglongmon for being unable to deal with people like GranDracmon anymore.

And speaking of that...

"Alright," he looked up at the three angels. "Perhaps you guys can tell me the answers to my questions now?"

"Of course," nodded Ophanimon. "The best way to answer just about all of your questions is to delve deeper into your past than MetalPhantomon did, back before the days that the Demon Lords cut their bloody swathe across the Digital World. There is something you have to see. Through there." She pointed with her javelin to a door on the left of the room. She and Seraphimon led the way as they made their way past the slumbering Fanglongmon. The door rose before they reached it, allowing the whole group to pass beneath it and into another room. It was rather smaller than Fanglongmon's sleeping chamber, but it too had something in the centre of it, which took the breath from everyone once again.

"No... freaking... way," Impmon's eyes bulged almost out of his sockets.

It was another statue, but not a statue that any of them had been expecting. It depicted four figures standing together, all in battle poses. The large, life-size form of Cherubimon carved in marble with Lightning Spear raised was the most obvious choice of the four for a statue in the Palace of the Digimon God. The other three, not so much.

Well, the figure of Sakuyamon could probably have been anticipated as well since she was a holy Digimon, but never would Impmon have ever guessed there would be statues of MegaGargomon and _Beelzemon_ as well.

"It's the Prophecy Trio," Lilamon cried, clapping her petalled hands together in delight. "So cool! And there's you, standing with them Impmon."

"Are you sure?" Diatrymon asked, staring at the marble representation of Beelzemon. "That doesn't look like the Beelzemon we know."

And indeed it didn't. Impmon stared at the likeness of his own Mega Form. The head was similar to his own, as well as the spiked boots, but practically everything else about him was different. Where his usual form was covered with his leather jacket, this Beelzemon appeared to be covered in metallic armour. Not to mention, this Beelzemon appeared to be in Blast Mode, but the wings were larger and the cannon on his arm appeared to be bulkier and more powerful, the mouth of which was open to the air instead of being contained within a pair of jaws or whatever the things at the end of Berenjena were.

Impmon was still stupefied as to what a Beelzemon statue was doing here, let alone the alterations from the form he knew. Nevertheless, his eyes roamed over the other three statues. They all looked exactly as he remember them to be. So why was his so different?

As if he had read his mind, Seraphimon said, "The answer to many of your questions will be explained when you know why we have this statue here. You see, while we angels govern things from the heavens, we, like Anubimon, are not allowed to do much interfering with the affairs of the Digital World unless it somehow involves us explicitly. There are laws created by Fanglongmon that meant that we could not help when the D-Reaper attacked or when Ogudomon showed up, or during GranDracmon's recent attacks, despite the fact we would dearly want to."

"And it's not just us bound by that," Ophanimon went on. "None of us in the heavens are allowed to descend to help except during extreme circumstances, such as the one going on right outside our doors with those three SkullSatamon that Angewomon helped you out with."

"However," Magnadramon said. "After Lord Fanglongmon shaped the Digital World into what we knew before the D-Reaper attacked, and created the Sovereigns to put them in charge of the Digital World, he made one decree that a few of his subordinates would be allowed to descend to the world below to provide assistance from heaven when they would be required. They would be reborn as Digi-Eggs and live like mortals with no knowledge of their previous roles as members of the heavens, but during periods of strife, they would rise up to protect the inhabitants of the Digital and Human World alike."

"And this statue," Ophanimon raised a hand to indicate the giant forms and the two smaller ones at their feet, "was erected to honour the four who volunteered their services for that task."

Impmon almost lost control of his legs, his eyes feeling like they were going to shoot out of his head and splat against the chest of his marble counterpart.

"Volunteered for that task?" he gasped weakly. "Provide assistance from heaven? You mean... I..."

"Yes," Ophanimon smiled. "You used to live here, a long time ago when the Digital World was just coming into its own after the True Enemy vanished for the first time. That statue represents what you looked like back then. Before you decided to go down to the Digital World and live a new life, you were one of Fanglongmon's strongest warriors. You had abundant strength, and that winged form wasn't even your Mode Change. That was just you."

"Wow. This is surreal," Diatrymon murmured to Lilamon, who nodded.

"I was... a warrior of heaven?" Impmon blustered. "But... how... what... seriously?"

"Oh yes," nodded Magnadramon. "You were a good friend of ours too."

"But... then..." Impmon frowned. "No, that can't be right. If I was a warrior of heaven, how did I end up becoming one of the Seven Demon Lords? It doesn't make sense."

"Yes, it does, I'm afraid," Seraphimon said sadly. "Remember, when you descended from heaven, you reverted to a Digi-Egg and forgot all about your existence up here. You were reverted to a Baby Digimon to begin your new life down there. And, like most Baby Digimon, how you turned out depends on how you were raised." It was difficult to tell thanks to the fact his face was completely concealed, but Impmon got the impression that he was frowning. "Your Digi-Egg was found by Lucemon, who had been cast down from heaven for his evil. He sensed your great potential and took you in, raising you into the monster you became. You won't remember that now, but you only became a Demon Lord because it was all you knew."

Impmon's face was ashen. "I... see..." he murmured.

"Well, that doesn't seem fair," Lilamon bristled. "Couldn't you guys have done anything to intervene?"

"We did the only thing we could," responded Ophanimon. "We did eventually sort him out, but it took a lot of debating to find a way to do it without interfering directly with the world below. If we wanted to do something about Beelzemon, we would need him to come to us first. So, during Anubimon's visit, which he does roughly once every ten years or so, we struck a deal with him, to return Magnadramon to us with her memories intact when she purified Beelzemon from within, and to resurrect the Pumpkinmon that we asked to inform Beelzemon of our Temple with his own self intact."

"That meeting with the Pumpkinmon wasn't an accident?" asked Diatrymon.

"No," said Magnadramon. "He was a devout supporter of ours, and when he learned that Beelzemon was one of our own that had been a victim of circumstance and that we made a deal with Anubimon to secure his life, he was more than willing to help us. We are sorry, Impmon. But we did the best we could under the circumstances."

Impmon was silent for a few moments, staring at the statue of himself. "It's alright," he said after a moment. "I appreciate all the help you gave me. I really do. I still wish it hadn't happened." He turned around and smiled. "But at least now I know that if it hadn't been for that bastard Lucemon, I probably would have turned out to be a nice guy."

"Language," reprimanded Seraphimon. "You are satisfied then?"

"Oh more than satisfied," Impmon's face split into a beam. "I always wondered, ever since I got the visions, why I was so evil – why I had been born like that. But it turns out I wasn't born like that. It doesn't mean that what I did wasn't horrific, but at least I now know that it wasn't entirely my fault." He glowered and added, "But I still hope that Lucemon suffered an excruciating death all the same."

"Oh he did," answered Seraphimon. "Zhuqiaomon and Azulongmon hit him with attacks at the same time, leaving him on the brink of deletion, and then Baihumon tore him apart."

"How pleasant," Wingdramon murmured.

"In a roundabout way, you helped with their final downfall, Impmon," Magnadramon answered. "While my data purified you, it also read your most recent memories, leading to me knowing where the Demon Lords would strike next. When Anubimon reconfigured me a couple of hours later, I was able to contact the Sovereigns and let them know the location and set a trap."

"Awesome!" Impmon grinned. Then he frowned and said, "Then how come I ended up starting out evil a second time."

"If you recall," Ophanimon said. "You weren't. You were a good guy to begin with. You only went bad after you started to resent humans and all Digimon connected to them and through resentfulness that they could digivolve and you couldn't. And even then you weren't truly evil – just very, very selfish. If you were truly evil, you would not have attempted to help Jeri from the D-Reaper, even though she did spare your life. That's why you gained more features of your former self when you became a fully-fledged good Digimon and gained a Blast Mode." She indicated the winged Beelzemon.

"But I still don't look like him completely," observed Impmon.

"No, but that's merely because of the past. Unfortunately it still does leave a stain," Magnadramon added sadly.

"Right," Impmon nodded, thinking about this for a moment, and wondering if there was anything he could do to change his appearance back to what it had been when he had been one of Fanglongmon's warriors. The thought of that alone still made him giddy, and more anxious than ever to do good in his life.

A question from Calumon brought Impmon out of his thoughts. "Well, if that Beelzemon is the Beelzemon that Impmon becomes but a bit different, then what about the other guys in that statue? Are they...?"

"Your friends; Terriermon, Renamon and Lopmon?" asked Ophanimon. "Indeed they are. There is a reason why Cherubimon is not with us right now, despite the fact she is one of the three great angels. Despite everything that all of you went through, with Impmon's days as a Demon Lord, Lopmon's time as a Deva and Terriermon and Renamon's time fending for themselves out in the Digital World, you still all ended up together as Digimon with Tamers. There is a reason for that. The fates of all four of you are inexorably linked. In fact, Impmon, I believe it was you who made sure of that."

"I did?" Impmon blinked. "How?"

"That is one question we will not answer," Seraphimon spoke up. "You will need to find that out for yourself."

Impmon frowned. "Oh come on. That line's overused in the movies anyway."

"That may be," Seraphimon folded his arms, "but that is still the case."

"Fine," sighed Impmon, looking back up at the statues. "So all of us knew each other when we lived here?"

"Indeed you did," said Magnadramon. "We were all good friends. Although I can safely say that we were as surprised as anyone when Renamon and Terriermon got together. None of us saw that coming."

Impmon chuckled. "I don't think anyone did. Least of all themselves. But wait, I can understand Cherubimon being here, and Sakuyamon since she's a shaman of God and all, but why is MegaGargomon here? He's not exactly angelic."

"No, but he is the brother of Cherubimon," pointed out Magnadramon. "Who is. But that's the only reason why he lived here. And that is the answer to why you saw those various non-angel Digimon outside, Impmon."

"The Andromon, Mekanorimon and Monitamon, yeah," nodded Impmon.

"Well, they may not be angelic," Magnadramon went on, "but they are important citizens of the heavens. When Fanglongmon shaped this place, he thought that it would be very important for us to always remember that, while we are still heavenly Digimon, our species as a whole and the world we live in were not created by divine providence. It was shaped by it, but not created. It was the humans and their technology that created Digimon. Fanglongmon allows Digimon like them to live here to remind us that we are the product of science. It brings us together – heavens and science combined."

Impmon nodded. It made sense. The Andromon and Mekanorimon were robots, while the Monitamon had heads like television sets, just like the kinds of things humans could and would build.

"Cherubimon and MegaGargomon were a great example of the two opposing forces being combined. Brother and sister, one machine and one angel. MegaGargomon was allocated to be one of two Digimon on the technical side that watched over the heavens due to his connection with Cherubimon. When he left for the world below, the other one took over as sole leader and has been ever since."

Impmon's mind was still reeling as he tried to process that all four of them were connected through the heavens. Maybe the feelings that he felt towards Lopmon weren't quite as absurd as he had often considered them to be. Especially if Renamon and Terriermon were connected in the same way. And the others didn't even know about it.

He heard Diatrymon ask, "Who was the one who lead alongside MegaGargomon?"

"You can't miss him," chuckled Ophanimon. "Much like MegaGargomon himself, he is a little on the large side. You'll probably meet him soon enough."

"Well, all this certainly explains a lot," Wingdramon said. "Such as why Impmon was purified, and why Ophanimon picked him to talk to out of all the other Tamer Digimon. However, there are still some other questions to be answered, like how the rest of the group of four are fairing in their alternate dimension, and, perhaps more urgently, why GranDracmon is so insistent on getting hold of Impmon."

"Actually, I believe that your friends, the Tamers, already know the answer to that second question," said Seraphimon, causing Impmon to look up so sharply that his neck clicked, and the fist that was still gripping the purple D-Arc tightening slightly at the mention of his Tamers. "They went to visit the Sovereigns before they went looking for Impmon, and requested both information and assistance."

"As to the first question," Ophanimon added. "We must head somewhere else to answer that question. Come. We will tell you the answer to the latter question on the way."

The three angels turned around and headed back into Fanglongmon's main chamber, with the five curious and mind-blown Digimon followed on. As the group made their way around the prone, slumbering form of Fanglongmon to the other side of the chamber, the angels began to fill the others in on what the Sovereigns had told the Tamers – about how Beelzemon had the ability to travel to the Dark Ocean at will due to his days as a Demon Lord, and how GranDracmon needed that if he wanted to mount a full-scale invasion considering he was too weak to do it himself, since he could only transport small numbers at a time through to either world.

"So, he wants me to become his General, because according to him, I'm the only one who can actually provide him with a way into the Digital World, other than Anubimon or perhaps Fanglongmon himself, is that right?" Impmon frowned.

"That's about the size of it, yes," Ophanimon nodded.

"But, I don't get it," the Rookie frowned. "How can I still have the ability to do that after Magnadramon purified me? I'm not a Demon Lord anymore. I thought I was a warrior of heaven."

"No," Magnadramon shook her head. "You _were_ a warrior of heaven. When you went down to the Digital World, you left a lot of your power provided by the heavens behind. And, if I were to be brutally honest, you are still a Demon Lord. I only purified your spirit, making you good again, but all the abilities that you had thanks to being a Demon Lord still remain. Like I said, past actions leave a stain."

"Well, can't you get rid of them?" asked Impmon hopefully. "So that GranDracmon has no hope of using me for his own purpose."

"It is not in our power," the cat-dragon-angel replied sadly. "Changing the spirit and the soul is one thing, but re-writing the Digital Code is another thing entirely. We cannot do that to you. It's just like digivolving – the only people have the ability to access the Catalyst and change the Digital Code so much that you change shape is the Digimon in question, the Tamer that Digimon belongs to if it has one, and Calumon here. But, of course, Calumon can only do digivolution and not other processes."

"Then... maybe my tamers could do something about it," Impmon wondered.

"Only if they have the right cards," said Ophanimon. "I don't think they have one for a situation like this."

"Damn," Impmon growled. "Why are these things never simple? So, if I want to get rid of this ability of mine, I have to figure out a way to do it myself, right?"

"Indeed," nodded Seraphimon. "You learn fast."

"Don't worry, Impmon," Lilamon placed a hand on his shoulder. "We'll try and help you figure out a way for you to get rid of that ability."

"Well," Magnadramon snaked around as they came to another pair of doors throughout the vast complex, to look at the Digimon behind her. "We're here." Ophanimon and Seraphimon stepped over to the doors and, placing a hand on either one, pushed them slowly open, to reveal a small room on the other side. It was quite small, and contained nothing except what appeared to be a large mirror, roughly about as tall as Seraphimon and Ophanimon themselves, and a similar width too.

"What is this thing for?" asked Impmon. "This a private room for sprucing or something?"

"No," Ophanimon said, blandly. "This is the mirror which we use to keep an eye on everything. It's special, imbued with our heavenly powers so that if we want to see something, all we have to do is focus on what we want to see and then touch the glass. The mirror will then show us what we want to see in extremely vivid detail. I used this mirror to show you the brief flashes of your friends. Our friends."

"You can see into other universes with it?" Impmon gasped.

"Indeed," nodded Ophanimon. "The mirror allows us to transfer our spirit to any point throughout the omniverse, so we can keep an eye on things without interfering with what's going on with our presence. Solid matter cannot pass through it at all though, so while we can see what is happening to our friends, we cannot tell them that we are there, or touch them. They cannot see us, hear us or even sense us. It's the perfect device for watching, but useless for actually doing something."

"Then..." Impmon murmured, resisting the urge to stretch out a hand towards the mirror. "You... can show me what is happening to the others right now?"

"Indeed," said Seraphimon.

"Well, then you gotta do it!" Calumon suddenly shouted. "I'm dying to see Terriermon and Renamon and Lopmon and the others again. I wanna see! I wanna see!"

"We all want to see," Diatrymon responded. "I would like to see them for myself."

"Are they alright?" asked Impmon nervously.

"We don't know," Magnadramon answered. "We haven't checked for a while. A lot can happen in a short space of time. Especially when it comes to those three."

"True," murmured Impmon. "Please... can you?"

"That is why we're here," said Ophanimon, squaring up to the mirror. "Please, clear your minds of everything possible. It will help to ensure that we do not get sidetracked from where we want to go."

Impmon quickly emptied his mind of everything but his six trapped friends, which wasn't that hard to do, to be honest. He was so anxious to find out how they were faring that he was thinking of practically nothing else anyway. Ophanimon stood before the mirror for several moments, before Impmon felt a strange tingling feeling at the back of his mind. It reminded him of when MetalPhantomon had been about to make an uninvited entrance into his mind, but this sensation felt warmer and filled with strong emotions, like love and kindness. He presumed this was Ophanimon latching onto his consciousness.

Ophanimon slowly reached up and touched the mirror.

Instantly, everything around them melted. The room and the mirror vanished in a bright light similar to the one that had brought them to the heavens in the first place, although not as intense. Impmon was practically hopping from foot to foot as he anxiously awaited to see his friends again. He felt a 'hand' on his shoulder and turned around to see Lilamon staring kindly at him and nodding reassuringly. Then Impmon turned around as the light dimmed and new scene swam into view.

* * *

The first thing Impmon heard was an alarming crashing sound.

The first thing he saw was Renamon, standing with her fists pressed against a slightly vibrating and dented metal table, which implied that she had had just slammed both her fists into it angrily. Impmon stared at her as she opened her mouth and, for the first time in months, the sound of the fox's voice filled his ears.

"We can't just stand around here and do nothing!" Renamon growled. "We have to go after that bloody pirate as fast as we can. We can't leave Aayla in his clutches – it's not right."

"Renamon, I'm with you," said another female voice, which belonged to a person Impmon had never seen before – a human sized and shaped being with a cape and hood, olive coloured skin and black diamonds tattooed horizontally across her face. "But we have no idea where to start looking. Nobody can track a ship once its gone through hyperspace unless we put a tracking beacon on it first, which we were unable to do. And nobody knows where Bane's hideout is."

"Then we start looking for her the traditional way," Renamon answered. "Tear the galaxy to pieces until we eventually find her."

Impmon could feel the tense atmosphere and he glanced around, taking in his surroundings. They appeared to be in a small room of some kind, so small most of the Digimon that had transported with him didn't fit in it. Wingdramon appeared to be only a head and neck that had come through the wall. The rest of him was probably outside.

Impmon was delighted to see all six of the missing Tamers and Digimon were in the room, which looked like some kind of hospital room. As well as them was a brown-furred bear-like man-thing, who was holding his head and leaning against the wall.

But it was fairly obvious that something was wrong.

"Renamon, we're in no condition to do anything right now," Lopmon groaned, rubbing her forehead and tottering on the spot. "We're still recovering from the effects of the knockout gas, and you and Chewbacca were both hit with a burst of electricity by that guy. Terriermon was almost sucked into the vacuum of space."

Impmon blanched at these words.

"What's happening?" Lilamon asked, a frown on her face. Her words were completely ignored by the Tamers, their partners and the two strangers.

"I don't know," Diatrymon muttered. "It's confusing. But still, we are looking at the Prophecy Trio."

"Yeah, but they don't look very happy," Lilamon mumbled.

Calumon hopped up onto the bed next to Terriermon and tried to put a hand on his ear, but it passed straight through it. Terriermon, who was standing next to a half-asleep Suzie, with Henry on the other side of the bed looking groggy but also watching his sister, didn't notice.

"I can't accept that we just stand by and do nothing," Renamon said. "I just can't."

"Renamon, Barriss is right," Rika retched slightly, holding her stomach and leaning against the wall. "We don't have a clue where to start, and the galaxy is a huge place. And Lopmon's right too. Only Barriss can stand on her feet properly. Even you're leaning on that table." She was right. Renamon was supporting herself with her front paws and breathing heavily, her fur on end and slightly blackened on her front.

"What's going on?" Impmon asked the angels, hoping for a better understanding of the situation.

"It would appear," Ophanimon said, as the debate continued with the others. "That their friend, Aayla Secura, has been kidnapped by someone."

"I like Aayla," Magnadramon says. "She's nice. I hope she's okay."

"Can't you do something then?" Impmon asked, vaguely remembering Aayla to be the blue-skinned woman with the tails coming out the back of her head.

"We could find her," said Seraphimon. "But we wouldn't be able to do any more than that. We couldn't even tell them where to look."

Impmon growled in frustration, but looked up as Lopmon began to speak again. "Our Aayla is a tough girl. I'm sure she'll be alright for a little while. In the meantime, we should probably focus our efforts on trying to find out where Bane is."

"She's right," Henry said, looking up momentarily from the groggy Suzie. "There must be somebody who knows where he lives, or at least has a vague idea. Maybe we can call at Jabba's Palace again and ask some of the Bounty Hunters there."

"Oh, I don't want to go back there," Terriermon shuddered. "But if it helps Aayla, I'll do it."

"Then what are we... agh!" Renamon had taken a step towards the door, but stumbled as soon as she took her weight off the table. The furry bear-man-thing caught her and held her upright with a huge, hairy arm, while the other one propped himself up against the wall.

"Rooohu ahwh whoo oaoowhwaahaoahoowh," he said.

"Chewbacca's right, Rena," nodded Terriermon, causing Impmon to blink, because Terriermon seemed to understand what sounded to be nothing but a random growling noise to him. "You're in no condition yet. We need to wait and finish recovering first. We'll do no good to Aayla if we end up collapsing and revealing we exist to the universe."

* * *

"I think that's enough for now," said Ophanimon and the scene began to vanish again. Impmon cast a quick look at Lopmon again, before suddenly they were back in the mirror room. Impmon gasped and almost fell to his knees, but Lilamon caught him and held him upright.

"They're in trouble," Impmon murmured. "One of their friends have been taken, they were attacked and I'm powerless to help them. I hate feeling like this."

"We are sorry, Impmon," Magnadramon sighed. "We obviously picked a bad time to go scrying. But there is nothing we can do to help your friends. They will have to sort out their own problems. Right now, we must focus on you."

"Magnadramon is right," said Seraphimon. "There is one more thing that we must show you. And this one is perhaps the most important of all."

"More important?" Impmon asked incredulously. "What could be more important than everything you've told me already?"

"A potential answer," Ophanimon replied. "The next great prophecy is already in motion, Impmon. And, as far as we can figure out, this one all revolves around you."

* * *

Semi-cliffhangar here. You can find out the rest of what happens in five chapters or so. Aside from the trip to the Azores next week, it shouldn't take too long for me to get that up, especially if I keep going at this pace.

Hope you liked my description of the heavens. I'm planning on introducing an old minor character in the next Impmon chapter, as well as the person who used to lead alongside MegaGargomon – he is a Digimon that was introduced to the franchise in Digimon Xros Wars that I have taken a liking to. See if you can guess who it is.

The Beelzemon statue is also based on the model of Beelzemon introduced in Xros Wars. That Beelzemon was a warrior of a Digimon Goddess, so I thought it appropriate that our Beelzemon should be a former warrior of a God as well. Also, Bookworm Gal, you may or may not have noticed it, but there were a couple of references as to a future and past event in this chapter that you might know about. Did you spot them?

Please leave a review and see you soon.

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Next time...

Aayla finally wakes up and discovers the predicament she is in, in about the worst possible way. Things are going to be tough for her, because Bane wants to hear what she knows, and is prepared to do just about anything to get it.

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Coming up:- **Chapter 136 : Prisoner**


	136. Prisoner

I liked the way that everyone wished me a happy holiday despite the fact that I'm not leaving until Saturday afternoon. That's still a couple of days away – there might even be time for me to churn out another chapter after this one before I go. I am risking a lot – I'm writing this story while my mum is in the house now. It might be an effort to make up for lost time, I suppose, but I want to try and get this arc finished before I go back to uni. That way I will have accomplished what I wanted to do anyway. And if I can write more, then whoop.

This chapter isn't a particularly pleasant one, but we get to see more of Aayla's strength, less physical this time though. Enjoy.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 136:- Prisoner**

* * *

The world appeared to be a bleary and dark place, that seemed to be swaying about of its own accord and was moving in and out of focus when Aayla finally began to regain her senses. Her eyes opened a crack to peer at her surroundings, but she immediately closed them again, feeling slightly ill as what appeared to be a ceiling looked like it was rippling, as if it was a pong that someone had just dropped a pebble in instead of a solid surface.

Aayla's stomach felt tight and decidedly empty, as she hadn't had much to eat for who knew how long. She had been given some sustenance at the medical station, but the food that they had there passed out of the stomach quite quickly as it was supposed to be easy to digest even for people with damaged digestive organs. Fortunately, it was also synthesised so that every single part of it could be absorbed, leading to no waste products either. Still, Aayla felt she could do with something more.

Her tongue felt very dry as well, and she was sure she could taste something quite vile, but at the moment she was too disorientated to figure out what it was.

And not to mention, her head was pounding away as if she had suddenly decided to develop a second heart in the middle of her brain, which was causing her what could be described as one of the worst headaches that she'd had in a long time. Not since she'd been drugged by her former uncle had she received anything like this.

Needless to say, Aayla was feeling quite ill. Her eyes twitched for a moment, and after a couple of minutes of her head lolling about as she tried to regain some senses, she finally decided to try opening her eyes a second time.

This time things were moving about less and she could see things more in focus, but the world was still bleary and it took Aayla several moments to work out the various aspects of her surroundings. The last thing she remembered was being sent to sleep in the brightly lit, small room of the medical station, which had bright white walls and was filled with her allies.

And yet now, she could see that her surroundings were quite different. The room was roughly the same size as the one in the medical station, but the walls were certainly not white. They appeared to be some sort of dull grey, as was the ceiling and the floor, creating a monotone environment. It was also quite dark, and Aayla found herself having to squint her eyes even further than usual thanks to her blurry vision to see around her.

Other than what appeared to be a computer terminal on one wall, with several wires trailing from it across the floor to who-knew-where, the room appeared to be pretty drab and featureless. Certainly not the friendly environment that you might expect from something like a medical station.

Aayla knew she was no longer in said medical station. So where was she now? And how in the name of the Force had she ended up here? She couldn't remember anything.

And where were her friends?

She stretched out with her mind, trying to locate the mental signatures of the Digimon or the Tamers, wincing as doing this seemed to intensify the pounding inside her head, but diligently doing it anyway. To her concern and slight dismay, she was unable to pick up any traces of them anywhere, which meant she was either out of range, they were sealing themselves off deliberately, or they were dead.

Worry clenched Aayla's heart into a tight ball as she shook her head to try and clear it a little further, trying to regain her senses enough to get up and try and find some answers.

And it was about this point that she finally noticed that even if she could be coherent enough to go searching, she wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.

Aayla was seated in a metal chair that was attached to the floor in the middle of the room that she had woken up in, and it looked like she'd be staying there for the foreseeable future because she was extremely securely bound. Her legs were practically welded together by tight leather straps that seemed to encase them in a tight cocoon – her ankles, thighs, knees, calves and hips all with a tight strap pinning them together. The straps continued right up her body, including her waist and chest, pinning her arms to her back and keeping them there. Her wrists were locked in a pair of binders at the small of her back, and if that weren't bad enough, both her arms were encased in a single leather sleeve from shoulders to fists, tightly pulled them together, until her elbows touched behind her back. All the bonds around her body appeared to be connected to one another, the bands connected by a longer one running down her front and another down her back, so she was effectively in a single leather body-harness that left her completely helpless. The sleeve binding her arms appeared to be lashed to the back of the chair at the wrists and below the shoulders to keep her upright, and the straps around her ankles were attached to the base of the chair.

And, to add insult to injury, there was large rubber ball in her mouth, which explained the foul taste that she had recognised earlier when she had been less alert. It was connected to a strap which went around her face and connected at the nape of her neck.

Shocked by the realisation that she was stringently bound and gagged, Aayla was immediately awake completely, practically surging out of her drug-induced haze and began squirming instantly, lashing her body around in an attempt to find so purchase and get loose. But she knew practically before she started that there was no hope of getting out that way. She was practically locked in the position she'd been given by whoever had done this and though she could move around a little, pulling any of her body parts apart was a futile exercise.

Forcing herself to calm down, Aayla took a few moments of heavily breathing through her nose, before she attempted to use the Force. She was pretty sure that wouldn't work either, but she had to try. She focused on the sleeve binding her arms together and tried to loosed it with her mind.

As she'd expected, the moment she tried this, the binders around her wrists and beneath the leather sleeve suddenly caused a jarring electric shock that disrupted her concentration and ended the attempt at freeing herself almost before it started. But Aayla was shocked, literally, when the electricity seemed to react with the leather around her and the shock seemed to spread across them and impact her entire body with the same amount of voltage as her wrists. Aayla's eyes bulged at the unexpected whole body jolt and she yelped, the sound muffled by the ball in her mouth.

_Whoever did this certainly knew what they were doing_, she thought ruefully, as she attempted to clear her freshly-pounding head, her body tingling unpleasantly from the shock. _They must have had experience with prisoners before. Maybe even Jedi prisoners like me._

When she received no response to her thoughts from her friends, her heart sank. It had been a long time since none of them had been in range of her thoughts. And she had no idea what had happened to them.

But right now she had something more immediate to focus on, like getting out of the clutches of whoever it was that had nabbed her. If the person had gone to this much trouble to ensure that Aayla didn't go anywhere, then either they thought of her as incredibly dangerous or they really didn't want to let her go. Aayla suspected it might be a bit of both, and her mind began to scroll through possibilities as to the identity of her kidnapper.

Slavers was the first thing that immediately came to mind. After all, they were always on the lookout for Twi'lek slaves and having a Jedi as a slave would be a bonus in her case. One of them might have learnt of her location and taken the opportunity.

But Aayla doubted that slavers could get past the Digimon. They could be intelligent, but when they attacked somewhere, they were rarely subtle about it.

The next possibility that occurred to her was someone under the employ of Darth Sidious. But if that was the case, why did they want her alive?

Before she could think of any more ideas, however, the door in front of her slid open. Aayla immediately looked up, and her eyes widened with surprise at the side of the man before her. Though he was mostly in shadow, the visible red eyes and the wide-brimmed hat made him instantly recognisable.

"I see you're recovering nice and quickly, Secura," Bane said as he strode into the room and stood before her, smirking down at her helplessness. "Are you settling in well?"

Aayla felt an impulse to just glare at him, but she knew that wouldn't help. Due to her experiences in going undercover, she knew how people like Bane worked. The best way to deal with them, she knew, was to give them nothing to go on. So, all she did in response to his probing taunt was to stare at him blankly.

But why would Bane want her?

"You're probably wondering what you're doing here," Bane said, stepping over to the computer terminal and leaning against the wall next to it, observing the captive Twi'lek. A little techno-service droid followed him in and perched beside the controls on said terminal. "Simply put, I have a few questions and I want you to provide me with the answers, so you can expect the usual interrogation scenario." He smirked. "Ever been in one of those?"

Again, Aayla blankly stared at him, knowing full well that an attempt to answer with a rubber ball jammed in her mouth would be futile.

"Ooh, the silent treatment," Bane observed dryly. "Well, I think by the time I'm done with you we'll have changed that. How do you like your restraints? I'm assuming you've tried to use the Force to free yourself, so you'll have experienced the whole body electric shock treatment. Ingenious isn't it? Leather normally insulates electricity, but that body harness is designed so that there are thin wires running throughout the whole system that are attached to the binders and the under-surface of the straps contain multiple metal pads that touch your skin or your clothing and are connected to the wires. So, effectively you're secured in an electric web."

"Secura is secured," the droid chuckled to itself. Bane cast a scathing glare at it, and the droid flinched and said, "Right, right, you do the jokes."

"Just do your job, Todo," Bane replied, and then walked over to stand next to Aayla's chair. Aayla didn't bother following his progress. She just stared at the door. Bane knelt down next to her and whispered into her ear, "Now, I'm going to remove your gag. And when I do, I want you to tell me all about your friends, the Digimon."

_That_ caught Aayla by surprise. Bane stepped back quickly as Aayla mewled through her gag and immediately began bucking as she furiously twisted in her leather bonds, trying to break free from the harness securing her arms. Bane was impressed by how much energy Aayla seemed to have considering she'd just woke up from a drug-infused state, and quickly turned to Todo. "Low power for a second," he instructed, and the droid nodded and twisted a dial on the terminal.

Immediately as he did, another slightly more powerful electric shock zapped through Aayla's whole body and her struggles abruptly ceased and she collapsed against the back of the chair, squashing her arms slightly as she did so. Bane took advantage of her momentary lapse in movement to reach back and loosed her gag, plucking it from her mouth and leaving it to hang around her neck. As he did, he said, "Oh, did I mention that the computer terminal is also linked to your binders, and I can shock you for as long as I want and as powerfully as I want with the turn of a dial?"

Aayla could see where this was going, but as she quickly recovered her breath from the powerful jolt through her body, she turned to look at the Duros Bounty Hunter. Finding her voice, she asked him, "How do you know about the Digimon?"

"Well, aside from the fact that I saw them with my own eyes on Behpour many months ago, I confronted one of your friends – the yellow fox one – when I tried to make off with you earlier today. She put up quite a fight, let me tell you."

"What did you do to her?" Aayla asked, suppressing a growl at the back of her throat.

"As far as I know, she's fine," Bane replied. "I was going to take her hostage instead of you but she recovered from my electric attack surprisingly quickly. My mandate was just to kill you, but I figured gaining a little extra information wouldn't hurt before that happened."

Aayla's eyes narrowed slightly. "If your mandate was to kill me, then why did you not just do it?"

"Because," Bane replied, leaning next to her and leering into her face, quite some way into her personal space. "I know the Digimon exist, but I know next to nothing about them. And, near as I can tell, I am one of very few people who even know that much. If I'm going to make myself some money off selling information about that, I need to know what I'm talking about. And I want you to tell me, Secura."

"I see," Aayla said, a small smirk appearing on her face. "Well, that was your first mistake, Bane."

Bane raised a brow. "What was?"

"Telling me your mandate was to kill me," Aayla said simply. "Now I know that in the unlikely event that you get the information you seek out of me, I will be killed straight away. If you had promised to let me go instead, the chances of me telling you would have been higher, if only imperceptibly."

"Oh, I assure you," Bane replied with a smirk of his own, "If you don't talk now, I will eventually have to talking because you _want_ me to kill you. It would mean an end to the pain." He clicked his fingers and Todo quickly turned the dial again. Aayla yelped again as another powerful jolt swept through her, but nothing else happened as Todo had switched the dial back to zero again almost instantly.

"Alright then," Bane chuckled, moving over to lean against the wall once more. "Start talking. I want to know everything that you know about your Digimon friends. Who are they? What are their names? Where did they come from? How long have they been fighting with you? I want to know all about their abilities, powers and the different forms they can take. And I want to know if they have any potential weakness."

Aayla stared at him evenly and replied, "You might not understand this concept, Bane, but they are my friends, my family. And I will do whatever it takes to protect them regardless of the circumstances. And, considering the fact I'm not going to be able to arrest you to keep you silent," she pulled on the leather straps around her legs and absolutely nothing happened. "Then the best I can do is tell you nothing. Therefore, that is what I will do."

She settled back against her arms and the back of the chair and stared at him, unmoving. She knew what was coming next and relaxed her muscles, knowing that keeping them tense would only make things more painful in the long run.

"I figured you'd start off like that," Bane said. "You have spirit, Twi'lek. But all spirits have a breaking point. Todo, low power for ten seconds."

"Yes, Bane," said the droid, and cranked the dial around about a quarter of the way. Aayla was immediately racked with electricity that spasmed throughout her body and made her muscles seize up. Her eyes reflexively screwed shut and her teeth gritted under the onslaught, but after her initial yell of pain and the squirming in her bonds, she made no more move.

After ten painful seconds, the torture ceased and Aayla slumped against the chair back, breathing slightly deeply and shaking her head dazedly. Then she looked up at Bane and smiled at him with a faux-cheerfulness.

"What I want to know is, who hired you for the initial task of killing me?" she completely ignored Bane's previous questions. "If I had to guess, I would say it was Darth Sidious, since we already guessed that he tried to have me wiped out earlier with his three superior officers. I understand that you work for the Separatists sometimes so it's a viable conclusion. Am I right?"

Bane frowned. "Who my employer might be is no business of yours, Secura."

"Your lack of response tells me I'm right," Aayla grinned.

Bane grunted, wondering if he was being a bit too lenient since Aayla didn't seem to be taking this as seriously as he would have liked. "Max power, three seconds," he instructed and immediately Todo twisted the dial all the way around.

This time Aayla screamed as small electric jolts seemed to crackle over her skin as she was assailed with an incredibly powerful burst of electricity. She bucked in her straps and flailed around as best she could in the room the body harness allowed her, but the ordeal was over quickly and she collapsed against the chair back once more.

After about five seconds of struggling to get her breath back, Aayla gasped out truthfully, "Dooku's Force lightning was more intense than that."

"Was it now?" Bane grunted. "Todo, medium power for twenty seconds. Let's see if our bold little Jedi can stand up to this treatment for a longer period of time.

Immediately as the dial was twisted once more, Aayla bucked and twisted as a fresh wave of electrical power burst through the entire length of her body, except for her head, although that too was being affected although less violently. She managed to keep quiet for a few seconds, but eventually the sheer amount of electricity coursing through her drew another scream from her mouth.

Bane watched impassively from beside the computer terminal that Todo was operating. He was usually a patient person, but even he had to suppress a touch of annoyance that Aayla wasn't breaking quickly, even though he hadn't expected her to. He'd been so long without the answers he sought that the idea of him being on the brink was irritating enough. And the only thing standing in the way was this Jedi's resilience.

After twenty pain filled seconds, Aayla's torment was over once again. This time she didn't slump against the back of the chair, but she was only able to keep herself upright for a few seconds and she had to slowly lower herself back against the chair. Her breathing was ragged now and her heart pounding from the extra stimulation it had received. Her neurones felt like they had just been dumped on a dying fire.

"The sooner you see sense and start talking, the sooner your torment can come to an end," Bane reminded her. "That was just the tip of the iceberg. And don't think for one moment that you'll die during the torture. Todo is monitoring your life-signs, and I've told him that if you die before I get what I want, I will personally rip apart."

"I think he meant it too," Todo added helpfully.

Aayla looked Bane square in the eye and said, "You've probably heard this before, but I will be found eventually. My friends will come for me."

"I have indeed heard that before," Bane smirked. "And let me tell you, never has that promise come true before now. What makes you think your case will be different?"

"I will tell you this about my friends," Aayla smiled. "They are extremely resourceful. But you're probably already aware of that, and that's all you'll get from me."

"Really?" Bane asked menacingly. "Same again, Todo."

Abruptly, a new twenty seconds of electrical pain was sprung on Aayla. Her body convulsed and she couldn't help but let out another yell of pain as she tugged at the bonds trapping her body, as if trying to burst them with mere strength alone. The strap around her ankles was yanked on so hard looked like it should snap into several pieces, but it held firm. The material was tough and Aayla remained fixed in the chair. Her upper body thrashed from side to side, her wrists the only part of her above the waist to stay put as they were anchored to the chair. She couldn't even pull her elbows apart, even a fraction.

Aayla was gasping again when the pain finally ended. She knew the painful episode had been the same length as the previous one, but this one had seemed longer. She knew that that wasn't a good sign, but there was little she could do about it. Her body might weaken, but her spirit never would.

She looked up at Bane and cheekily asked, "Can I have a drink of water please?"

Bane glowered and said, "Of course not. There'll be no food or drink for you ever again, my dear. Only torture and death. It's up to you how quickly the death part comes."

"You won't get anything out of me," Aayla replied squarely. "I will die of thirst before that happens."

"We can inject water and nourishment into your blood stream to keep you alive if necessary," Bane answered. "Not enough to give you fresh energy of course, but enough to keep you alive. I will get that information, even if I have to wait weeks."

"Then what will you tell Sidious?" Aayla asked. "He wants me dead now. You're going against his wishes as it is."

"I will tell him that I am trying to extract information that could be valuable to him out of you," Bane replied.

"Ah," Aayla smiled, winking. "So it _is_ Sidious. I thought it would be."

Bane blinked at this unexpected and unusual blunder from him. The Jedi was obviously good with words. Normally he would never fall for something like that. Although, needless to say, Bane was annoyed that Aayla had got something out of him before he something out of her. She was supposed to be the one being interrogated.

"Considering the position that you are currently in, are you certain that it's a good idea to try and taunt me?" Bane asked. "Especially since I have the power to send you into a world of pain with the turn of a dial."

Aayla raised her eyebrows and murmured. "I think by this point I am aware of that."

Inside her mind, she was thinking, _Wow, I have got to thank Terriermon for his inspirations on talking down to the bad guys._

Bane was getting quite irritated by this point, naturally, so he immediately turned to Todo and said, "Alright then, if she wants to play, then play we will. Only she's not going to like it so much. Start the cycle, Todo. I want to see her screaming."

And scream Aayla did, as more unwanted cried were torn from her open mouth as Todo cranked up the electricity to its highest setting. Aayla's thrashing, also involuntary, increased to the point where it looked like she would go flying across the room if she did somehow manage to yank herself out of the chair she was strapped into. Todo carefully monitored her life-signs as he did so, and when he noticed Aayla's heart was beginning to go much too fast, he cranked the power down to low once more, but not completely off.

Aayla shuddered and continued to spasm as the voltage juddered into her body, but compared to what had just happened this was almost a welcome relief. Bane and Todo stared at her, not making any more movements or attempts to speak to her and the droid continued to monitor her bodily functions. Then, just as Aayla was beginning to adjust to the electricity setting, Todo suddenly cranked it up to maximum power once again.

This cycle repeated itself three times, before Bane signalled Todo to turn it off. Aayla slumped in her bonds, knowing full well what strategy Bane had been attempting to pull off with that. By setting it incredibly high, but switching it back to low regularly, it not only ensured maximum pain was delivered periodically, but the constant changes in frequency also meant that Aayla's body didn't get enough time to adjust to a particular setting, which would make it easier to bear.

Bane certainly knew how to torture somebody.

Bane pushed off the wall and stepped closer to Aayla. Electric shocks had always been his favourite form of torture, due to its ability to cause intense pain but not get too messy. Bane leaned in close to Aayla and slowly whispered to the gasping Twi'lek. "Are you ready to tell me what I want to hear yet?"

Aayla looked up at him, her eyes slightly bleary from the post-torture daze. "I..." she gasped, sucking in great lungfuls of air to try and regain her breath. "I... will... tell you..." she paused again, taking several more breaths, before her eyes suddenly hardened and she added, "Nothing!" before she boldly slammed her forehead into Bane's jaw. Ordinarily a blow like that would have hurt a great deal, but Aayla's head was already pounding so much that she barely felt the difference.

Bane reeled back from the blow, his long-fingered hand flying to his jaw and his eyes narrowing almost to slits as he glared at the defiant Jedi, who stared back up at him with a neutral expression. Bane massaged his jaw for a moment, which was not broken but probably would have been were Aayla at full strength, and said, "For that, Secura, you've earned yourself a little extra trip into the land of pain, and this time your stay will be prolonged."

He suddenly lashed out towards her and before Aayla could react, he had grabbed the gag still dangling around her throat and jammed the rubber ball back behind her teeth, tightening the buckle at the nape of her neck. Aayla yelled in protest, but the only sound which escaped was a pathetic mewl. She clenched her fists inside the leather sleeve holding her arms together. If he was gagging her again, then that meant he wouldn't be interested in answers for a while.

And she was proven to be right yet again when Todo cranked up the power. The cycle of very powerful electric blasts, followed by less powerful ones and then back up to higher power began once again, but this time it was different – the settings were almost random and that was even worse, as she had no idea what she would be in store for after the phase she was going through ended.

And yet Aayla knew that succumbing to the pain would be a very bad idea. She had resolved herself long ago that she would never spill the beans to Bane on her friends, but that meant that she was going to languish in pain for some time. As Bane and Todo watched her convulse and writhe, Aayla forced herself to focus on something other than the intense pain. She thought of her friends, the Digimon, the Tamers, the other Jedi and Chewbacca, focusing on the friendship, respect and love that every member of the group held for the others.

Bane frowned slightly as he noted a decrease in the expected behaviour from Secura. This tactic was supposed to ensure that the torture was unending and the victim could build no resistance, and yet, after a while, Secura's convulsions seemed to be subsiding. The muffled screams that were being forced past the spherical gag began to lessen as well, and after a few minutes, Aayla was totally silent. She was still writhing and squirming in her body harness to no avail, but still the lack of screaming was far from good. Aayla was supposed to be in so much agony that she couldn't help it.

Bane pushed Todo unceremoniously aside before turning it down to a low setting and then, almost immediately cranking it up to the max, hoping that Aayla would be caught off guard by the rapid shifts. To his annoyance, and slight astonishment, Aayla's only change in behaviour was to open her eyes and stare at him with a neutral expression.

Bane gritted his fangs and switched the dial to several other settings, but all Aayla did was stare at him, her teeth clamped around the rubber ball plugging her mouth, leaning against her bound elbows and settling her feet on the ground. Not even a grunt emerged from her forcibly opened lips.

Bane had encountered people who were tough to crack, but this was a first for him. No wonder Sidious wanted Aayla out of the way. She was something special.

* * *

After about twenty minutes of almost non-stop electrocution on various levels, Bane finally stopped and walked over to Aayla, pulling the ball from her mouth again. "Ready to talk yet?" he asked, voice dripping with implied threat.

Aayla's eyes fixed on his own and said, "What do you think, Bounty Hunter? It's not going to happen."

Bane growled and rammed the gag back into Aayla's unresisting mouth, before cranking up the power once more. Aayla's focus quickly shifted back to the bonds she held with her friends as the torture started up again, and this time, right from the start, her screams remained non-existent. The foci of her thoughts was something so powerful and intense, that the bonds she shared with her friends were helping her even when she was alone.

Meanwhile, Bane glared at her from across the room, frustrated by her continued lack of reaction to his efforts. If she didn't start caving into the pain soon, he was going to have to try some more radical ideas.

* * *

As Aayla was forcibly subjected to electrical torture by the greedy Bounty Hunter, the Twi'lek's friends were at a loss as to where to start looking for their missing companion. They simply didn't know where to begin. They had thought about going back to Jabba's place to find someone who might know where to find Bane, but they had ruled that out. A Bounty Hunter that had been at large for as long as Bane wouldn't trust anyone with the whereabouts of his base. Even money drop-offs would probably be at prearranged spots rather than his actual place, to stop double-dealers from trying to sneak back and reclaim their money, or prevent other Bounty Hunters from trying to take out the competition. It was likely that only Bane and his droid knew where the Bounty Hunter lived.

The only real thing that the group had been able to do was to head back to the _Intrepid_, which they had done as soon as everyone was well enough to walk again. The dejected party had moved off to the hangar to get picked up by the clones waiting for them, the Digimon and the Tamers hidden beneath Renamon's perception filter at Barriss' insistence.

They had decided immediately that until they were absolutely sure that there was nothing they could do, the majority of the populace and nobody from the Senate should be informed of Aayla's capture. The last thing they wanted was Sidious knowing that his desired deeds had been carried out if he did not already know it.

But, Barriss had sent a call to Anakin and Ahsoka, who were still in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Understandably, the duo had been shocked by the news of Aayla's capture, but after they had extracted the story out of the others, Anakin had promised that they would look into all the information the Jedi archives held about Bane, in the hope that they could get some answers before he revealed the existence of the Digimon, or worse, killed Aayla.

So now, the _Intrepid_ continued to hang like a slumbering beast in the space above Belderone and close to the medical station where this whole situation had begun. Nobody knew where to start, and everyone was racking their brains for any detail they might have overlooked that might give them a clue as to where to start.

But they were coming up with nothing.

Commander Bly was profusely apologising to the others. "I cannot begin to describe how ashamed I feel," the clone was saying. "If I had just been a little bit quicker then perhaps I could have prevented this. I could have blocked off that Bounty Hunter if we'd managed to get the ship in front of him in time, but instead we managed to let him get away with the General."

Renamon looked at Bly's ashen face, and the faces of all the other various clones around the bridge of the cruiser. All of them were wearing similar expressions, which looked eerie considering their faces were exactly the same. But Renamon could only smile sadly, knowing that all of them felt guilty for this and knowing that every single one of them cared deeply for their General, who had probably saved their lives several times with her quick thinking and skills in space and on the ground.

And Renamon knew how they felt. She herself was feeling guilty for allowing Bane to get away. She knew that Bane couldn't be trusted and had been on guard for a trick at all times, and yet when the trick had come she had still fallen for it. And then she had shied away from the flamethrower, despite the fact that she had been torched by far worse in the past.

But the fox said to the clones what she knew was true about herself, "You are not to blame for this. None of you," she glanced over at the rest of the crew members. "It is never the fault of somebody who tried their absolute hardest to protect those in need. The only ones to blame for this mess are Bane himself and his droid, as well as whoever hired them in the first place. And I guarantee you, I will tear them limb from limb when we get hold of them."

"And we won't stop you," Bly declared. "We might even help out a little."

"Good," nodded Renamon. "Just make sure that you don't blame yourselves for something that isn't your fault."

Barriss looked up at the fox on hearing those words. She knew that she spoke the truth, but deep down, she felt that she was also to blame for this catastrophe, much like the clones did. She glanced to the others. Suzie looked ill with fear and worry and Henry was vainly trying to comfort her, while Terriermon was attempting to cheer her up, but even his efforts weren't working. Rika was leaning against the holotable, looking about ready to punch something, and Chewbacca was pacing back and forth, fists clenched and teeth snarling furiously. Even the clones were staying out of his way.

But poor Barriss – she was feeling disconsolate. She glanced down at her own feet and her hand absently slid under her hood, brushing her hair where her Padawan braid had once hung.

"Barriss?" asked a voice, and the Mirialan glanced up slightly to see Lopmon – sweet and kind Lopmon – staring at her with concern. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," Barriss lied. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Lopmon raised a brow and said, "I don't need a mental link with you to tell that you are lying. What's wrong?"

Barriss stared into her round, black eyes before sighing and saying, "It's just, I can't help but wonder if the Council made the right decision to promote me to the rank of Knight. I mean, I was promoted after being forced to lead a group of younglings out of danger, as well as you and Chewbacca, but if I had done my previous task of looking after you on Kashyyyk properly, I wouldn't have even been in that situation. And since I've become I Knight I've been in all the wrong places. I wasn't there to help Aayla against Dooku, Ventress and Grievous and I wasn't there to help Renamon against Bane."

Lopmon looked sympathetic. "Come on, Barriss," she said comfortingly. "Sure, you've had a little bad luck..."

"There is no such thing as luck," Barriss murmured. "Whether that be the good or bad kind."

"Right, well, you mustn't think like that, Barriss. Don't let this situation get you into a funk – I know what it's like to blame myself for something I didn't do. I wasn't able to stop myself from getting captured by those Trandoshans any more than you were, remember? And besides, look at all the good stuff you've done since you were Knighted. You came up with a plan that saved the last of a species from certain death, you took out a bunch of MagnaGuards and was able to blow up a Separatist station, and you saved Renamon and Terriermon from an agonizing death in the vacuum of space. You were only in the wrong places because you were either following orders, like planting explosives, or doing what was right and helping us when we were down. Do not think that you aren't good enough, Barriss. You are more than good enough. Everyone here would say the same."

Barriss sighed and a faint smile crossed her face. "You're right, of course, Lopmon," she said. "When are you ever wrong?"

"Many times," Lopmon said. "But I did have long since learned that dwelling on past mistakes is never going to do you any good. I believe Jedi think the same thing, right?"

"Of course," chuckled Barriss. "I'm sorry. I suppose it's just that everything's been so intense lately."

"That it has," Lopmon nodded, clambering up to perch on Barriss' shoulder. "That it has."

"Now, let's stop blaming ourselves and come up with a way of getting Aayla back," Barriss stood up and addressed the whole ship.

"And make Bane wish he'd remained ignorant of us like the rest of the Galaxy if he harms her in any way," agreed Lopmon.

* * *

Back on Coruscant, deep within the Jedi Temple and in the largest library that that existed in the entire galaxy, Ahsoka Tano had to resist the urge to growl in frustration as she sat at one of the desks and browse through one of the archive computers. "I can't believe this, Master," she murmured. "I just can't believe it. Both times Aayla finds herself in trouble today and we're nowhere near either of them. Why does all this sort of thing happen when we aren't around?"

"I don't know, Ahsoka," Anakin looked up from his own monitor. "But we have more important things to focus on, such as what we're going to do to get Aayla back. Have you found any information on Bane in there?"

Ahsoka sighed and shook her head. "Nothing solid. The only things I've been able to find about him are the previous crimes he's committed that we know about, which don't really help us right now, and what appear to be nothing more than wild rumours. There are potential reports that say he might have base on Coruscant, or that he lives in the palace of the Hutts on Nal Hutta but there's really no evidence to back them up."

"That's pretty much what I've drawn up as well," Anakin sat back, running a hand through his hair in annoyance. "Bane certainly knows how to cover his tracks well. He's as good at keeping secrets as we are."

"Well, that really doesn't help us right now," Ahsoka sighed, flipping through various screens.

"But there might be something that does," Anakin said, as he flipped to a screen that contained the profile of another little Bounty Hunter – the Patrolian known as Robonino. "It might be the case that people who have worked with Bane before might have more of a clue about where he is. Like those Bounty Hunters who raided the Senate with him."

Ahsoka perked up. "Good idea," she nodded, getting to her feet and moving over to stand next to Anakin. "What have we got on that front?"

"Well, there's this guy," Anakin nodded to Robonino, "But his whereabouts are also unknown – he's probably lying low in some cave deep underwater or something, so our chances of finding him quickly are minimal. Then there's this guy," he pulled up an image of Shahan Alama the Weequay. "According to this, he usually lives with Hondo Ohnaka and his pirates of Florrum, so that might be a good place to start."

"Yeah, but Hondo's not exactly going to be that receptive to us, is he?" Ahsoka murmured dryly.

"No, but we can deal with that," Anakin insisted. Ahsoka frowned at the tone of his voice, which she noticed had been getting progressively lower and more like a growl over the last few minutes. She glanced down at her Master, and saw that the hand that wasn't using the controls on the computer was gripping the side of the table so hard it looked like he was about to tear a chunk right off it.

"Um... well..." she started haltingly, keeping one eye on him. "Are there any other options that we could go for?"

"Not really," Anakin's jaw tightened. "The only other option is her," he pulled up and image of the near-human Bounty Hunter Aurra Sing. "But I have no idea where we might find her either. So it seems that Alama is our best bet. We should probably get underway if we're going to question him. We want to get to Aayla quickly."

"Wait," Ahsoka said, frowning. "Bane works for the Separatists quite a lot, doesn't he? There are a few reports of him appearing to eliminate some high priority targets of theirs. He's almost more of their assassin than Ventress is... was," she added.

"Yeah, that's right," Anakin nodded stiffly. "What of it?"

"Well, don't we have several Separatist prisoners in the Temple?" Ahsoka pointed out. "One of them must have had contact with Bane at some point. Maybe they had some information we can use first."

Anakin didn't move for a couple of moments, and then he wordlessly stood up, pushing the chair out from behind him so suddenly that Ahsoka stumbled backwards a couple of paces. Ahsoka watched her Master with surprise and anxiety when he dashed out of the library.

Something was wrong. Ahsoka knew it. After a couple of seconds, Ahsoka sprinted after him.

* * *

Yoda and Mace Windu had temporarily given up on questioning Count Dooku. The Sith from Serenno had been left in his little high-priority cell, languishing in the suspension field that held him in the middle of the place. The old man could hardly say that he was enjoying his stay in the Jedi Temple, but at least he was happy that Ventress' loud screaming of rage, which could be heard through several walls, had finally subsided.

But he was surprised when the door suddenly slid open and Anakin stood framed in the doorway. He looked up with a slight patronising smile, but then his eyes widened slightly when he saw Anakin's expression and posture. All his muscles were tensed and his face was a mask of lividness.

"Is something the matter, young Skywalker?" he asked, not a little warily. "You do appear to be awfully tense."

Anakin walked into the room and said, "No playing games here, Count. I came for information and you're going to give it to me. What do you know of Cad Bane? You must have had dealings with him in the past – so tell me everything?"

"Bane?" Dooku asked, surprised. "The Bounty Hunter? I assure you, Skywalker, he and I rarely crossed paths with one another, and when we did, the meetings were usually brief."

"That doesn't answer my question," growled Anakin. "What do you know about him? Most importantly, where could I find him?"

Dooku laughed. "Find him? Why? What has he done?"

"Tell me, Count!" Anakin roared.

"Oh, young Jedi," Dooku shook his head. "You assume too much. You believe I know much about Cad Bane. I rarely rely on Bounty Hunters – I prefer to work with my own troops and Generals than to rely on people as fickle and money-grabbing as their sort."

"Not the right answer, Count," Anakin fist clenched and rose in front of him. "I know he's worked for the Separatists, so tell me what I want to know."

Dooku stared at Anakin's fist and was surprised when his air supply was suddenly cut off. It had been a long time since he had been subjected to a Force-choke, but he knew what it was even before it happened. The old man gasped, or at least he attempted to, but found he could do little more than hack and squirm slightly as Anakin leered into his face.

"Tell me what I want to know," Anakin growled. "Now."

Dooku was about to blurt out that he really did not know where Bane resided, when a scream from the doorway gave him the relief he needed.

"MASTER!" Ahsoka's voice shrieked, fear and shock permeating through the room at the sound of her voice. Anakin whirled around, releasing Dooku from the choke-hold, which caused the man to sag and gasp for breath, as he stared at Ahsoka.

What he saw made his heart rend. Ahsoka was looking at him with not only shock, but also fear, and above all, betrayal. Ahsoka just couldn't believe what she had seen her Master trying to do – attempting to extract information from somebody else through pain.

Taking the Sith approach to things.

"Ahsoka, I..." Anakin began, but Ahsoka just turned around and ran out of the room and down the corridor. Anakin cursed under his breath and followed, pausing only to shut the door of Dooku's room and seal the man in again, before rushing off after his Padawan.

* * *

It took some time before the Chosen One caught up with his distraught Padawan, as her light build and small size gave her great speed. But his longer strides helped as well, and he piled on extra speed until he finally managed to stop her with a hand to the shoulder, pulling her to an abrupt halt. "Ahsoka, wait," he said. "Just listen to me."

"Listen to what, Master?" Ahsoka looked up at him, her eyes wet and threatening to spill tears down her cheeks. "Listen to why you were attempting to get information by taking the way of the Dark Side? You were Force-choking him!"

"I know, I know, and I'm sorry," Anakin replied, his expression pained. "Really, I am but... I'm just worried about Aayla."

"So am I," Ahsoka cried. "But you don't see me going up to people and using the Force to seal their airways. That is not the Jedi way, Master."

"I know it isn't," Anakin said softly, turning away slightly and running a hand over his face. "I... I don't know what came over me. I was just... so frustrated that I hadn't been there to stop that... I acted without thinking. I'm sorry."

Ahsoka stared at the back of his head before leaning against the wall and shutting her eyes, sighing slightly. "Well," she said after a moment. "I suppose you wouldn't be Anakin if you didn't make rash decisions." She looked at him again and said, "But seriously, what were you thinking?"

"I... I wasn't," Anakin sighed.

"That's not a good thing, Master," Ahsoka replied. "I know you're worried about Aayla, but using the Force like that will only lead you to trouble. Don't you remember that Sidious wants you to go Dark? You'd just be playing right into his hands. We're pretty sure that he's behind Aayla's abduction, but if you delve into the Dark Side while we try and find her, you'd just be letting him kill two nerfs with one stone."

"I know," Anakin turned around to face his Padawan again. "Believe me, I know."

"And besides," Ahsoka added. "If you were the one who had been caught, would you want any of us to use the Dark Side to try and find you?"

No," sighed Anakin. "You know I wouldn't. To see any of you fall to the Dark Side... well, I have to say it would break my heart."

"And the same could be said the other way," Ahsoka smiled sadly. "We will find Aayla, Master. But we can't use methods like that."

Anakin shook his head sadly. "It's almost funny," he murmured. "I thought I was past urges like that. It's been so long since I was tempted to use violence to get information that I needed from the enemy or delved into my anger to aid me in what I was doing. I... I lost control. Do you forgive me, Snips?"

"Of course, Master," Ahsoka smiled. "And you _are_ better now. We've all noticed it. I suppose we just need to... trim the last little bits of darkness away from you. And then, when we finally find out who Darth Sidious is, you will face off against him... and you will beat him. You won't give in to temptation, you won't succumb to his dark weavings. You will stand tall, as the Chosen One, who destroyed the enemy of the Galaxy. I have faith in you, Master. But you have to have faith in yourself, and the resolve to ensure that faith is justified."

Anakin chuckled. "Listen to you, Snips. When did you start spouting so many little pearls of wisdom?"

Ahsoka smiled. "I have my moments. Much like Terriermon."

Anakin nodded and said, "Well, you're right. I'm going to try harder than ever to purge the darkness from me. And remember, I never could have done it if it weren't for all of you – it was you who stopped me from going too far just now after all. But, when I do face Sidious, I want all of you to be there with me. So, let's go and find Aayla."

"Right you are, Master," Ahsoka grinned, cheerfulness restored as she saw the determination burning in Anakin's eyes. "But first," she spread her arms. "Hug?"

As Anakin chuckled and embraced his Padawan, his thoughts turned to the mysterious Darth Sidious. Whoever the man was, Anakin was getting fed up with his mind games. He would find the hidden Sith Lord, and when he did, he would show him that as long as he stood with his friends, we would never turn Dark. Never.

His resolve harder than it had ever been before thanks to this one moment of weakness, Anakin turned and walked with his Padawan, as the two of them headed off to try and speak with the other Separatist leaders on the detention level. They would find Aayla, but he wouldn't go Dark to do it.

* * *

Cad Bane was becoming increasingly frustrated by Aayla's lack of reaction to the torture. He had tried leaving the electric currents off for twenty minutes or so, in the hope that when he started again, Aayla's pain threshold will have decreased again thanks to her rest, but when he started up the power once more, there were still no sounds beneath the gag held in Aayla's mouth. The Twi'lek didn't even open her eyes, and although she couldn't help spasming thanks to the currents affecting her muscles, she looked for all the world like she was asleep.

Aayla opened her eyes as Bane approached her again after about an hour of trying to get her to scream once more. During all the time she'd been there, she still hadn't been able to shift the bindings encasing her entire body whatsoever. Her legs were as stringently tied together as they had been when she'd first woken up, and her arms felt like they'd been glued together from the elbows down. She hadn't been able to expel the gag forcing her mouth open either.

Bane was speaking to her now, even as electric shocks continued to wrack her form, on a medium setting at the moment. "Alright," the Duros sniffed. "I admit that you have been a much tougher nut to crack than I thought."

Aayla snorted and tried to say something like "Did you think I'd be easy to break just because I'm a Twi'lek?" It came out like muffled garbage though.

"But I have to warn you," Bane sneered, kneeling down in front of her pinioned form. "That if you don't start talking, I'm going to get nasty. You see, if you don't tell me what I want, then I don't get paid. And not getting paid can make me rather angry."

Aayla's only response was to stare at him for a few moments, and then she attempted to indicate her gag with her shoulders, which was difficult considering her wrists were pinned in one spot. But Bane seemed to get the message, and signalled to Todo to stop the voltage. As the little robot twisted the dial down and Aayla stopped convulsing, Bane reached behind Aayla's head and loosed the gag, plucking the ball out of her mouth again.

"Something you want to say?" Bane asked.

"Just this," Aayla said, her voice slightly strained but other than that it was still strong. "You're meddling with something that you don't understand. You want to know about the Digimon?" She looked him in the eye and said, "You should first ask yourself what you think you're in for if and when they get their hands on you. I don't know what exactly you saw on Behpour, or what happened at the medical station, but whatever it was, that was only a fraction of what they're capable of. By kidnapping me, you've risked more than you know."

Bane seemed to pause for a few seconds, as if he was seriously considering her words. The Duros could tell by Aayla's tone that she was deadly serious. Not for the first time, he wondered if going after these strange creatures was the best of ideas. The way that the cyborg bunny had utterly annihilated Teska had intimidated even him.

But, after a moment, his mind focused on the one thing that mattered above everything else, at least for him. The money. The credits always came first, his personal safety came second. Regardless of the circumstances.

Aayla carefully watched him as he thought. She could practically see the wheels turning in his head. But, after a moment, like she'd predicted, he merely returned the stare and said, "Is that all you have to say? Do you not wish to enlighten me as to just what I have stirred up with this?"

"If I did, you would definitely see that you made a mistake in abducting me," Aayla admitted. "But I'm afraid I have to decline."

"Very well," Bane said, forcing the rubber ball back into Aayla's mouth and ensuring that it stayed there. "I was rather hoping that we could forego this part, but since you seem to be tougher than I anticipated, I'll have to move this up a step." He walked slowly around Aayla's chair in an attempt to intimidate her, while the bound and gagged Twi'lek followed his progress with her head to the best of her ability. "You see, I have handled prisoners before, and I've learned what buttons to press for many particular species, including your kind. I have been putting off doing this with you, though, because usually when I do this to a Twi'lek I break them very swiftly, but it takes a long time before they have recovered enough to give me the information I'm after."

Aayla's eyes widened and she knew exactly what Bane was planning to do. She swiftly hurled her focus back to the bonds of friendship she had with the others, and, a split second later, Bane's hand lashed out, seized her left lekku and pulled, hard.

Even with her focus firmly planted elsewhere, Aayla still managed to let out an ear-splitting yelp of pain that even the gag could do little to stop. If you've ever had your hair pulled, you will know that it hurts a lot, but with Twi'lek lekku it was many, many times worse. The head-tails were attached to the scalp much more firmly than hair, and while hair has no nerves in it, a Twi'lek's lekku was so full of them that they were easily the most sensitive part of her body by far.

It would have been bad enough if Bane had just grabbed it, but this was a real torment.

Bane chuckled as involuntary tears of pain immediately sprang into Aayla's wide eyes. The Twi'lek practically collapsed against her arms bound behind her, and would probably have slipped to the side if Bane hadn't caught her to ensure that she stayed upright and kept her sitting up.

"You see," the Duros said. "I told you things would get nasty if you didn't pay attention to my demands. Now, are you willing to loosen your tongue a little more if I take that ball out of your mouth again?"

Aayla screwed her eyes shut for a moment and then turned her hard eyes on Bane. She mumbled something practically unintelligible but to Bane it sounded suspiciously like, "Yr cn gmm t hll."

"Alright then," Bane said. "I'll take that as a no. Well, I think it's safe to say that you asked for this. Todo, bring me the leads."

"At once, Bane," Todo agreed, hopping down from the terminal and picking some leads off the floor, before walking over to Bane. Aayla got a good look at them, and they reminded her of the kind of leads people used to link patients up to machines in hospitals. She watched with slight trepidation as Bane snatched the leads from Todo and began to fiddle with the binders around her wrists. He appeared to be attaching one ends of the leads to them, and then he pulled them up and systematically attached the other ends to various points on her head-tails.

Aayla knew what was coming next and immediately transcended her mind, determined to make the most of what strength her friends could offer her while they weren't there. She attempted to shake her head, hoping the lekku leads would become dislodged but there was no such luck. And so, she shut her eyes and waited for the inevitable pain.

And then it came, slamming into her with full force. It felt like her head was catching fire and systematically frying her nerves from the inside and out. Aayla couldn't help but scream, her teeth clenching on the rubber ball in her mouth so hard she was sure teeth marks would be left in it permanently. She thrashed and bucked as her lekku exploded with pain, cries being torn unbidden from the throat as the most sensitive area of her body was lanced with electric volts. The rest of her body was being zapped as well, but all Aayla could really feel was the assault on her lekku.

Still her leather bonds didn't give an inch. In fact, she was pretty sure they tightened, cementing her body together even tighter than before. But she barely noticed, so absorbed was she in the pain in her head.

Bane watched her impassively from the wall. He had instructed Todo to give her enough power so that she would receive the maximum pain allowed without having her nerves completely fried. A Twi'lek's lekku were connected to their brains, and the last thing he wanted was to damage them too much if he wanted to get information out of her. And yet the effect it had on her was massive.

Aayla was in another world, filled with wracking pain. Her cries filled the room until it seemed like she would go deaf from her own screaming. But, even through the haze of pain that had suddenly become her life, a part of Aayla's brain that was not consumed with agony was still focused on her friends. What little thought processes she had left were filled with thoughts of what might happen to all of them if Sidious were to learn of them, which he surely would if Bane extracted the information from her.

Through the blanket of anguish, Aayla's eyes snapped open, a resolve as bright as Anakin's burning in them as she glared at Bane. She would _not_ betray them to him, no matter how bad the pain got.

And, with force, she choked back the screaming. The abyss of pain was still there, never wavering in strength, but once more, she was able to stop herself from screaming, her determination not to let Bane get the better of her flooding through her body. All the trials that she and the others had gone through to forge the friendship they had today would not be broken by her! She would tell Bane NOTHING! Not now! Not ever!

Of course, Bane had no idea what was going on in her mind, but he was left surprised once again when Aayla managed to stop screaming, despite the fact she was clearly still in agony, and returned to staring at him defiantly. Just how strong was this Jedi? Where did she get such tremendous tenacity from?

"Bane, if we keep going like this, her lekku nerves will shut down in a few moments," Todo informed him.

"Turn it off," he said immediately. As Todo complied, the pain ended and Aayla collapsed, barely conscious but still gazing at Bane with all the fire her eyes could muster. The meaning was clear, _You won't break me._

"Alright," Bane said. "We'll leave you to recover from that ordeal for about half an hour. When we get back, if you still don't want to talk then we will repeat that process. Be warned, I won't stop until I get what I need."

Bane then stood and left the room, Todo following on his heels. As Aayla watched the door slide shut behind them, she snorted through her nose and then immediately turned her mind to her predicament. Forcing herself to think, she began to systematically test the bonds around her body.

There had to be a way out of here.

And no matter how much Bane tortured her or how long she had to endure, she would find a way out.

* * *

Aayla has always been characterised as a strong and resilient Jedi, who has been through tough times. I hope that you all enjoyed her resilience to the torture, even if you probably didn't enjoy the torture itself. Don't worry, I didn't enjoy putting Aayla in such pain either, but let's face it, Bane was hardly going to go easy on his captive.

A little interesting moment for Anakin and Barriss as well. Barriss has some slight self-confidence issues at the moment, but that can be easily cast away. More worrying is the fact that Anakin still hasn't lost the potential for going dark, even if it is now a very low risk. Can he resist future temptations, or will Darth Sidious get what he wants?

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Aayla begins to put a plan into motion and, needless to say, Bane is caught off guard by her actions. What will Aayla do to ensure that her plan works? What does the plan even involve? And how will Bane respond to it?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 137 : Solution**


	137. Solution

Quite a few negative reactions to what Bane was doing in the last chapter, but considering the nature of his actions this is hardly surprising. It's nice to see that you've all grown to care for Aayla as a character, which means I have hopefully been doing my job right. However, in this particular chapter, we're going to see once again why Aayla is a Jedi and not some random person, who immediately thinks of revenge.

Enjoy the little twist I have in store here.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 137:- Solution**

* * *

Despite the rigorous torture that Aayla had been put through and the terrible abuse to her lekku, which still felt like they were burning fifteen minutes after the torture had ended, the Twi'lek was still strong. It had taken her a full five minutes to completely wake up and regain her strength from the horrific electrocution, but that was faster than most Twi'lek would have been able to by some way.

She found that the cuffs binding her wrists only seemed to respond when she tried to use the Force to manipulate something outside her own body. She took advantage of this, and was able to meditate for several minutes to help soothe the burning in her lekku. Now it only felt as though they had been pull from a few smouldering embers a few minutes ago, which was a significant improvement from what had felt like an inferno beforehand.

And yet, as she stared at the door that her captors had disappeared through, she knew that the torture was most definitely not at an end if she didn't come up with some way of getting out of this mess in the next fifteen minutes. She had systematically tested all of her bonds, attempting to pull her legs apart or slip her arms out from the harness that bound them together behind her back, in the hope that her frenzied bucking induced by the electricity had given her some slack somewhere.

It hadn't. She felt more immobile than ever. These straps were certainly efficient for containing a dangerous captive like a Jedi. She very much doubted that she would be getting free on her own. If she wanted to get out of her body-harness, someone else would have to let her out.

There was a very good reason that the chair she was held in was in such a blank room. There was nothing she could use to cut the leather holding her in place. Even the metal chair she was tied to only had rounded corners and nothing seriously pointed. And even if it had, it would still have taken several hours at least to free enough of herself to stand even the faintest chance of escape. Bane was not going to leave her alone for that long.

It seemed there was little the captive Jedi could do. She groaned in frustration, the sound muffled by the ball strapped in her open mouth. On the subject of that, the muscles in her jaw were beginning to ache slightly from being forced open for so long. Worse still was the pain in her arms from her complaining muscles in her upper arms. Her elbows weren't meant to be pinned together like this for so long. Aayla was athletic and flexible, so maintaining the position was not painful, but it was going to get very old quite quickly.

Just another thing to add to her discomfort.

So, Aayla surmised, she was well and truly captured. Bound, gagged and with nowhere to run and no way of defending herself. Even if she could get out the chair, the cuffs around her wrists would stop her from using the Force, and now that her lekku were linked to them by the leads Bane had attached, any attempt to use the Force would send more volts into her head-tails and probably disable her on the spot for several moments. Bane had turned a Jedi's greatest advantage against her.

And of course, she didn't have her lightsabers. Bane had probably left them behind, and if he had them then he had probably locked them away where they could pose no threat. And while she was certainly able to defend herself without sword or the Force against many opponents, Bane had so many tricks up his sleeve that martial arts alone was not going to be enough.

So, she couldn't escape herself, and the only chances of rescue would be if her friends managed to place a tracking beacon on Bane's ship, if they found someone else who knew where Bane lived, or if they passed within a few miles of this location by chance. They would have been here by now if the first option had been implemented, the second one was unlikely, and the third even less so.

So, she'd have to rely on herself. But, once again, she had nothing to go on.

Except she still had one thing to her advantage. The one thing that Bane couldn't stop, no matter how many restraints he put on her. She still had her mind. And there was a chance that she might be able to think of a way out of her current situation. So, she quickly set her mind at work.

She turned her thoughts to her captor. What did she know about Bane? Well, she knew that he was often hired by the lowlifes of the galaxy, or the greedy and the vengeful like the Hutts, although in Aayla's view they were also lowlifes, and the evil like Darth Sidious, his current employer. All of these people only had two things in common, they were eager to get their way by any means necessary, and they were all very wealthy, or at least prepared to pay a lot of money.

Aayla also knew that Bane would go to any lengths to carry out what his employer wanted as long as he got paid enough for his trouble. He was extremely bold, and not afraid to let everybody know exactly who had done the deeds that he had committed. Other Bounty Hunters might be more discreet, but Bane had a fierce reputation, and he was constantly on the lookout to bolster or at least maintain that reputation.

But that didn't particularly help her in her current situation. She had to think of ways to get Bane to let her go, and that wasn't going to happen anytime soon unless she gave him something he couldn't refuse. But she didn't have anything that he particularly wanted. Near as she could figure, he only wanted three things:- money, which Aayla didn't have as the Jedi did not get paid for their duties and were supplied everything they needed by the Republic; something to boost his reputation with, which she could only give him with her death which wasn't particularly helpful; and, of course, the information he was trying to extract in the first place.

And Aayla was still unprepared to divulge that information.

Aayla's thoughts turned to what might happen if she did get out of here. Bane might not know a lot about the Digimon but he knew enough to cause danger. There was little to stop him from informing Sidious of their existence, unless she could somehow take him out, which seemed unlikely right now.

She gritted her teeth, or would have if there hadn't been a rubber ball wedging them apart, so she bit into that instead, and snorted in irritation. Darth Sidious was the ultimate enemy, the perpetually hidden. If they only knew who he might be, then they might be able to take him out before he did something to the Digimon even if he did get Bane's information. Then she wouldn't have this problem.

But, unfortunately, Sidious seemed to be as elusive as ever. They had Dooku and Ventress in custody, but Aayla was willing to bet neither of them would do any talking any time soon, especially since the Jedi didn't use techniques like what Bane was attempting on her. And even though they had an eye in the Senate now in the form of Chuchi, the poor young woman didn't have a clue what to look for. None of them did really – they hadn't the faintest idea who Sidious might be, except that he was a Senate member.

Aayla's mind began to wander, mulling over everything that had just come into her mind and trying to find some answer to any of the problems facing her. The more immediate problem was Bane, of course, but she couldn't help but dwell on his mysterious employer either. If only they'd captured Gunray at some point – his tongue would probably be looser than Dooku's or Ventress'.

And then, just like that, all her thoughts seemed to combine and Aayla sat up in her seat, her eyes widening and a muffled sound escaping her lips that might have been a cry of triumph, but was difficult to distinguish. There might just be a way out of this situation that would benefit not just her, but almost everyone that she knew. She couldn't believe that she hadn't thought of this already – it all seemed so simple.

But then again, this kind of idea was hardly the usual form of Jedi thinking.

But, of course, Aayla was far from a usual Jedi. Living with the Digimon and working with their extraordinary talents for so long had given Aayla the ability to think outside the box that only Anakin could best, but he'd always been like that. Aayla had hope, although she knew it was certainly a frail one. She had to hope that Bane was nothing like Sugi and her gang of Bounty Hunters.

But she knew that Bane wasn't like them at all. Sugi and her group would never try and do this sort of thing. And they cared for a lot more than Bane did. And Bane had one weakness that Aayla could exploit. Or rather, she couldn't, but somebody else that she knew could.

She prayed to the Force that it would work, and then settled back on her bound elbows, ignoring the stinging in her muscles and re-focusing on soothing her lekku, just in case her idea didn't work and Bane started up the torture again. All she could do besides that was wait for her captor to return for another dose of attempting to interrogate the bound Jedi.

* * *

It took another ten minutes before Aayla's half an hour of relief was up. Parched, hungry and aching, but still filled with resolve, Aayla looked up as Bane stepped into the room once more, his droid toddling behind him and automatically walking towards the console that would allow him to begin the interrogation once more.

"Good evening, Secura," Bane addressed her pleasantly, which gave Aayla the impression that he'd managed to vent some of his frustration at her defiance during the time-out. "You really seem to like that chair. You haven't left it for several hours now."

_Oh, ha ha,_ Aayla rolled her eyes, deliberately doing it so that the Duros could see her reaction and hoping he'd be more likely to listen to her when he saw her spirit was far from broken.

"Before we renew our little game," Bane said, "Perhaps you might like a quick question and answer session first. Have you decided to start telling me what I want to hear? I warn you though, that the intense pain that you felt during your last session will be re-experienced as many times as is necessary. Do you really want to go through that?"

Aayla stared at him for a few seconds and then, since she was unable to respond with words, she shook her head, her still tingling lekku waving back and forth as she did and the leads attached to them moving with them.

Bane looked slightly taken aback, but recovered quickly and said, "Does that mean you are ready to talk?"

Aayla nodded slowly and emphatically. She noticed Bane's leer increase slightly in anticipation as he signalled for Todo to stand down, before he approached Aayla. "Excellent," he said, as he reached behind Aayla's head and undid the strap on Aayla's gag. "A wise decision," he added as he plucked the ball from Aayla's mouth and held the gag by the straps in one hand as he stared down at her. "Now, let's begin with the names of your three Digimon friends."

Aayla took a couple of moments to work her jaw, slowly moving her muscles in exaggerated motions to stop them from aching as much, before she looked at Bane and pointed out, her voice still surprisingly strong, "I said that I wanted to talk. I didn't say what I wanted to talk about. And I still have no interest in talking about my friends in front of you, Bane."

Bane blinked for a moment, then growled and was about to thrust the gag back into Aayla's mouth, but the Twi'lek cleared her throat and said, "However!" quite loudly, which worked and made Bane falter with the gag raised. "I still think that you would like to hear what I do have to say."

Bane lowered his hand and scrutinised Aayla slightly, before saying, "I highly doubt that."

"Believe me," Aayla said pointedly. "I have an idea which may be mutually beneficial to the both of us."

Bane scoffed, but his curiosity had been roused by Aayla's words, so he stepped back slightly and folded his arms. "Alright then, Jedi. Start talking. But if I don't like what I'm hearing, you will be gagged again and the torture will commence once more."

"I'm aware of that," Aayla nodded. "But, the least you can do is hear me out, considering you're planning on killing me when you get the information you seek anyway."

"I believe I said, 'start talking,'" Bane pointed out.

"Alright," Aayla put on a winning smile and said, "I know your employer is Darth Sidious thanks to what I've gleaned from our previous discussions, and I am also pretty sure that he is willing to pay you a lot of money to have me out of the way, since I know he's a high-ranking Senate member and he wants me out of the way dearly. Am I right about that?"

"I am not going to discuss details of my client with you, Secura," Bane growled.

"Are you sure?" Aayla winked. "What if I were to offer you triple of whatever he is paying you?"

Aayla almost chuckled at the floored expression on Bane's face when he heard these words. The Bounty Hunter actually took a step back and stared at the Jedi in disbelief, as if she had suddenly mutated into something incredibly deadly. Todo sounded equally stunned when he asked, "Did I just hear that right? A Jedi, offering to pay Bane shedloads of credits? My audioreceptors must be malfunctioning."

Aayla waited patiently for Bane to convince himself that what she had just said was not a product of his imagination, and that was difficult for the Bounty Hunter. Bane was no stranger to double-dealing. There had been many an occasion where he had been paid by his previous victim to turn on his former employer, though he usually hadn't given the victim the chance to make the offer. But what had stunned him so much about this case was that Bane was being asked by a Jedi.

This went against everything that Bane knew about the Jedi. He'd always understood them to be ridiculously proud beings that held themselves higher than the rest of the galaxy and would never stoop to working with people like him. He'd never heard of a Jedi seeking to hire a Bounty Hunter for any reason. He'd had Jedi at his mercy before, and they had never, _ever_ offered to pay him money to get him to stop before.

And yet Aayla was doing it right now, and she sounded completely sincere – Bane was good at detecting when someone was lying.

As usual, Bane's shrewd mind instantly began to analyse Aayla's offer. She hadn't given him much to go on, so he couldn't really be sure. However, the promise of more money had instantly grabbed his attention. And Aayla had offered to _treble_ whatever he would have received from Sidious. Considering that Bane was planning to charge Sidious four million credits, but was going to add an extra million for his confrontation with Renamon, and another five million for the information about the Digimon when he prized it out of Aayla, that meant a _lot_ of money.

But he couldn't afford to let himself be lulled into some sort of trap. He liked money, but he wasn't about to rush blindly into a potential ambush of some kind just to get it.

"This is an interesting development," the Duros observed. "And highly unexpected. I have never known a Jedi to take the coward's way out when it came to escaping from pain. I thought that you are your lot were above that, Secura. Or was I wrong?"

"I admit that under ordinary circumstances, most Jedi would never think of attempting to exploit the services of a Bounty Hunter such as yourself," Aayla agreed. "Not least because you and most members of your profession are frowned upon by the majority of the galaxy. No offence."

"Oh, I long accepted that," Bane snickered.

"But, I can tell you now that this is not just me taking the coward's way out. These circumstances are far from ordinary, and I believe that the... duties that I could assign to you in exchange for this money could be mutually beneficial."

Bane's eyes narrowed suspiciously, searching the Twi'lek's face for any hint of a lie. There was nothing like that though. And Bane knew that she wasn't attempting to put him under some kind of mind trick. He was immune to those, and besides, she would be shocked by the binders capturing her wrists if she tried that.

But what she said implied that she had much more on her mind besides simply letting her go. Bane wondered if leaving her to her own devices for half an hour had been the best idea after all. But then again, if she was willing to pile on an undetermined amount of money, she must be pretty serious about it.

"Mutually beneficial?" Bane asked, a slight smirk appearing on his features. "And how do I know that I can trust a person such as you? I've never worked for a Jedi before. Largely because I've never been asked."

"But you would..." Aayla replied. "You'd take on any job for anyone as long as you got a nice amount of credits out of it, wouldn't you?" Aayla pointed out. Bane chuckled, but made no further comment, so Aayla continued with, "And besides, you must know that Jedi do not go for the deceptive approach. Our word is our bond. It is the Sith that double-deal, and ironically they are the ones you work for. You can trust me when I say that... well, that you can trust me."

Bane eyed his prisoner for a few moments, still wary for any form of deceit. But he found, to his surprise, that he believed her. Bane knew little of honesty of course, but if anyone was honest, he was pretty sure that someone would be Aayla. However, he still needed more information before he made up his mind.

And Aayla was watching him almost as shrewdly. She could clearly see that he was tempted and she had already prepared for his questions and her appropriate responses. So far, she appeared to be pushing the right buttons.

"Well," he said, after a moment. "That's a pretty big offer that you've given me there, Secura. And you don't even know how much I have been charging my employer. You don't even know for sure if my employer is who you think it is. You sure that you would be able to treble anything that I throw at you?"

"Absolutely," said Aayla.

"Alright," Bane said. "Well, first things first, what are the conditions? What would I be required to do to earn this vast some of money that you so generously offer me."

"A valid question," Aayla replied, reclining back on her bound arms. "Well, for a start, you would have to release me and allow me to return to my friends with no more additional torture involved. Secondly, you would have to swear that you will not breathe a word of the existence of the Digimon to anybody, especially Darth Sidious or anybody in contact with him. And thirdly, and perhaps most importantly..." she fixed his eyes with her own and said, "I want you to help us to track him down. I want you to help us reveal his identity."

There was silence between them for about ten seconds, broken only by the sound of Todo falling off the computer terminal in disbelief. Now Bane was beginning to understand, and he had to admit that Aayla had a cunning mind. Her proposal in trying to hire her captor with a single job seemed to take care of just about all her closest problems.

But still, he was wary. He was always wary of new customers, and he rarely had deals as big as this one.

"What makes you think you need me to expose Sidious?" Bane asked. "Surely you Jedi could do it yourselves, could you not?"

"Possibly," conceded Aayla. "But not for some time and not until after many, many more deaths had occurred, and death is something that we prefer to avoid. You, on the other hand, have had direct contact with the Sith Lord in question, have you not? He has spoken to you directly to give you your jobs. You know of his existence, and through that direct contact, you might even be able to track him down the next time he calls you, which I assume he will soon to find out whether I am dead or not. Right now, you are the best lead we have, and we Jedi wish to end the war as quickly as we can."

That explanation certainly fit in with Bane's view of the Jedi, even if Aayla's method of trying to hire his services didn't. He could tell she probably wouldn't have thought of this if he hadn't come to capture her first.

"You ask a lot," he responded after a few more moments. "I have never face off against a Sith Lord before, but from what I have heard they are extremely dangerous people."

"I am not asking you to fight him," Aayla pointed out. "Merely to discover his identity and let us know. I know that you like to accomplish your tasks using stealth, so I am sure you are more than capable of discovering who he is without revealing that you are onto him."

"And what makes you think you even need me for that?" Bane asked. "I heard you captured Dooku and Ventress earlier today. Couldn't they provide the answer instead?"

"Yes, but they won't," Aayla replied. "Through fear, respect or the belief that they'll be rescued from us, they will keep quiet. But you... I have a hunch that you would take on Masters Yoda and Windu at the same time if someone offered you a big enough salary."

"Oh, how well you know me," Bane leered. "And we only met a short time ago too."

"Your reputation does proceed you," Aayla nodded. "So, do we have a deal?"

"Not so fast, Jedi," Bane shook his head. "I have a few more questions for you first."

"Does that mean you're considering it?" asked Aayla.

Bane ignored her and proceeded with his next question. "How exactly do you plan on paying me, Jedi? I know for a fact that you do not demand payment for the services that you do for the Republic. I seriously doubt that you have the money that you are offering me at your disposal, even if you used all the money everyone in the Jedi Order had."

"Well, I won't be able to answer that question fully until you tell me exactly how much I've promised to pay you?" Aayla pointed out.

"If you really want to know," Bane leered. "You just offered to pay me thirty million credits. I believe that's the biggest salary that anyone has offered me for any job."

Aayla swiftly his her surprise before it could show up on her face and she merely raised an eyebrow and asked, "Sidious offered you ten million credits just to kill me?"

"No, but I was planning to charge extra for the Digimon information," Bane pointed out. "Which I would be obliged to keep to myself if I went with your proposal. Now, how do you plan on paying thirty million credits, Secura?"

"Easy," Aayla responded smoothly. "I have a friend amongst the Senate. She is the only one of them, as far as I am aware, that knows of the existence of the Digimon and of Darth Sidious, and she is just as anxious as the Jedi Order to expose the Sith Lord and bring him to justice. I'm sure that she would be willing to pay."

"Is that so?" asked Bane. "Which one?"

"I think I will keep that little detail to myself until I know whether or not we have a deal," Aayla said primly. "Just in case you decide to kill me and go after her for the information instead."

Bane chuckled and said, "Very wise. But aren't you forgetting something? In order for the Senator to pay me, you will need to get in contact with her? What's to stop her from bringing an armed force with her when she comes to pay me?"

"Nothing," said Aayla. "But I doubt she would."

"Doubt is not a word I like to hear from potential employers," Bane folded his arms and glared at her.

"I guessed that," Aayla replied. "But you can always arrange the rendezvous point for us to meet and for you to get your money to be a point in deep space, where you would be able to escape to hyperspace quickly if she tried to extract me from your grasp by force."

Bane raised a brow and said, "You're really serious about this, aren't you?"

"Absolutely," Aayla nodded firmly. "The sooner we deal with the threat of the Sith, the better, and if we have to use tactics and opportunities that we might not normally use then so be it. There are limits of course, but hiring a Bounty Hunter, particularly one as skilful and well-connected with our enemy as you, is not one of those limits."

Aayla could see that Bane was beginning to succumb to the allure of the credits, along with her sound arguments. Such a large sum of money was almost too tempting for someone like him. So, she decided to go the extra mile and sweeten the deal. "I'll also speak with the rest of the Jedi Order and request that they give you a full pardon until the end of the war, and I'll also talk to my Digimon friends and convince them not to grind you into a pulp the next time you meet with one another, which is likely to be quite soon."

Bane scrutinised Aayla for one last time, staring her in the eyes for a few seconds and carefully analysing all the details that Aayla had given him. Perhaps... he could work with this. Such a large amount of money, from people that he knew would not attempt to double-cross him like most of his employers could, and with a full pardon until his job was over. It sounded like possibly the best deal that he'd ever gotten. He might even be able to claim the money that Sidious had promised him before they managed to act on him if he was lucky enough, which would boost the amount offered to him even further.

"Just three things before I give you my answer," Bane replied. "Firstly, until I receive the money for my services, you will remain restrained as I see fit. And if you make any attempts to escape, from me or even from your bindings, the deal is off."

"Done," Aayla nodded.

"Second, when you contact your friend in the Senate, I will be watching from the sidelines with this in my hand," he pulled a pistol from his holster and waved it under Aayla's nose. "If you try and double-cross me, I'll put a bolt through your head and go after your friend from the Senate instead."

"Well, since I don't plan on double-crossing you, I suppose that is fair enough as well," Aayla agreed. "If it'll make you feel more secure."

"And thirdly," Bane replied. "If Sidious is not to expect anything, I will have to tell him that you are dead. That means that you'll have to go to ground for a while with your war effort. Can you do that?"

"Of course," Aayla nodded. "If that's what it takes for you to fulfil your assignment, then I will do it."

There was a silence for a few more seconds. Then...

"Alright then, Secura," Bane smirked, holstering his pistol and stowing the gag in one of his pockets. "You've got yourself a deal. If your Senator friend provides me with the money you promised, then I'll let you go and carry out my new assignment."

"That's nice to hear," Aayla replied, smiling at him. If Bane was disturbed by how friendly she was being considering he had been torturing her beforehand, he didn't show it.

"Shall we shake on it?" Bane smirked and held out his hand.

"Hilarious," Aayla rolled her eyes and tugged on her secured wrists. "Now, I'd quite like to get started as soon as possible, so I can return to my friends and stop them worrying and to get this underway. If you allow me access to a holoprojector, I can contact my friend from the Senate."

"Alright," Bane withdrew his hand. "I'm going to release you from the chair. But your wrists are going to be staying behind your back, and remember, if you try anything it's all over."

"I understand," Aayla nodded. "You needn't worry. I happen to quite like this plan and I am not about to compromise it by doing something rash. That is Anakin's forte, not mine."

The Twi'lek waited patiently as Bane stepped behind her and began to undo her bonds quickly and efficiently. It was a welcome relief when the leads were removed from her lekku and an even more welcome relief when the leather sleeve binding her elbows together was removed. She rolled her shoulders and waggled her elbows back and forth in an attempt to restore the circulation.

Eventually Bane had removed the harness and pulled Aayla onto her feet. She still felt slightly numb and unsteady, and the fact that her wrists were locked together behind her back didn't really help with her balance. She glanced at Todo, who was watching silently from nearby. The door was wide open. She could have bolted through it at any time.

But she didn't. She had a potential way to end the war here. She was going to see this through.

Bane stepped up next to her and gripped her upper arm. The two of them were about the same height, Aayla noticed.

"Alright then," Bane said. "We're going for a ride. We'll use my ship to transmit the signal, just in case some tries to track it from the other end after you make the call. Is that alright?" he smirked.

"Fine," Aayla agreed immediately. "But first, I'll reiterate my question from before. Can I have a drink please?"

* * *

There hadn't been many moments recently when Senator Riyo Chuchi could claim that she was in a really good mood. But this moment was probably one of them. She had just returned to her office after the big party to celebrate the capture of Dooku and Ventress had been completed. Evening was beginning to come down on Coruscant, and the formal party had been going on for several hours now. There had been a great deal of exquisite food and fine wine, all of which had been tested for poison beforehand, lest someone tried to pull a stunt like Lolo Purs the Rodian had several weeks ago.

Upon hearing that Aayla was on the road to recovery, as well as the fact that the Digimon were all fine, Chuchi had allowed herself to mostly relax and to enjoy the pleasant atmosphere that the others had been enjoying. She had stood around and spoken with various other Senators, sharing idle gossip, which was something that she actually hadn't done for some time. A lot of her conversations with other Senators usually involved business only.

But tonight was a night for celebration instead.

And yet, despite the fact that she had mostly enjoyed herself, she had also kept a careful eye on the party guests, especially the males, as they were pretty sure that the elusive Darth Sidious was male as well.

As she carefully observed the other Senators while continuing to enjoy herself, Chuchi couldn't help but feel slightly like she was betraying them herself in some odd way. She considered just about all of them to be friends of some level, some not close friends but others very much so, but still all friends. She couldn't help but feel that by watching them, she was doubting their trustworthiness, despite the fact that a lot of them had done little to nothing to damage her trust.

But she knew she had to if she wanted to find Sidious. She kept a close eye out for anyone who might be showing signs of anger, disappointment or irritation amongst what was supposed to be a purely festive atmosphere, since she was sure Sidious wouldn't be too happy to hear that his apprentice had finally been caught by the Republic.

However, as always, she found nothing. If Sidious was in the room, he was keeping up his act to perfection. And that actually creeped Chuchi out quite a bit. For all she knew, she could be standing next to one of the most dangerous men in the galaxy, and she would have no idea. She knew she wasn't in danger – he would hardly reveal himself right now in the middle of a party, but still, it was a creepy thought.

When the festivities finally came to an end and people start to depart for the evening, Senator Organa decided it would be a good idea to call it a night, as there was likely to be a session of congress in the morning to decide on how the Republic should follow up on this great development. Chuchi agreed wholeheartedly to this, as she was intending to do some more scrutinising at the next meeting and watch those who looked disgruntled at the news, and many of the Senators who had not been invited to the party probably would. She could do with a good night's rest, to be as alert as possible.

So, she had returned to her office to close it down and to pick up a few things before she made to depart the Senate Building at head home.

Just as she was about to leave, she stopped by her window and looked out across the Coruscant skyline, towards the Jedi Temple looming up in the distance. Somewhere in that great building, two of the Republic's greatest enemies were now languishing in prison cells, thanks to the brave efforts of one particular Jedi.

Chuchi smiled. She was glad that Aayla was being promoted to the rank of Master. She deserved it, considering how much she had done for the Republic in recent months.

With Aayla on her mind, she turned towards the door, and, as she was about to switch the lights off and head out, there was a sudden flashing from the holoprojector built into her desk, along with a faint whirring sound to alert Chuchi to it. The Pantoran looked around and frowned at it. Someone was trying to contact her, but why would they do such a thing at a time where she would normally have gone home by now?

She spent another couple of minutes frowning at the flashing light before she finally stepped away from the doors, shutting it behind her and then walked over to her desk to stand before her chair. Her hand reached up and she slowly pushed the flashing button, then looked to the projector to see who was calling.

When the holographic figure came up, she was surprised, and genuinely delighted. "Aayla," she beamed at the figure, who was standing up straight with her hands behind her back. "Wow, you're up on your feet again quickly, aren't you? I guess Barriss was right when she said that you'd recover quickly. How do you feel?"

"I'll be honest and say that I've felt better, Chuchi," Aayla smiled wryly. "I still feel like my lekku have been set on fire, but otherwise I'm fine."

"That's good to hear," Chuchi smiled. "For a minute there, you had us wor..."

"Chuchi," Aayla interjected. "I'm sorry to interrupt, but this is actually not a social call. It's quite an urgent one. I'm glad I was able to catch you before you left the Senate Building – but I called this one instead of your personal holocommunicator in the hopes that you would be alone when you got the message. So, first, are you alone?"

Chuchi frowned, worry beginning to gnaw at her gut already at Aayla's words and tone, but she said. "Yes, I'm alone. The party to celebrate your victory earlier today was just breaking up and I was about to leave for the night. Why? What is going on?"

"I see my friends haven't got in contact with you during the last couple of hours," Aayla observed. "They must be trying to keep a low profile on my disappearance until they can figure out where I am."

"Your... disappearance?" Chuchi blinked. "I don't follow. Aayla, what's going on?"

"Before I tell you," Aayla said, "You have to promise me that you won't do anything rash like attempt to call the police droids. There is something I have to tell you first, and it has to be for your ears and your ears alone."

Chuchi paused for a moment, before she said, "Alright, but you're beginning to scare me, Aayla. What's been going on?"

Aayla's holographic projection looked Chuchi in the eye for a few moments, and then she simply turned around so her back was to Chuchi. Chuchi blinked again at the lack of words, and then gasped when she spotted what Aayla wanted her to see – the Twi'lek's wrists were tightly locked in a pair of binders that secured them at the small of her back. The holographic Aayla tugged on them for emphasis, to demonstrate that she wasn't getting out of them anytime soon.

"By the Moon Goddess," Chuchi breathed, her yellow eyes wide as Aayla turned back around. "Aayla, what's going on? Why are your hands tied behind you like that?"

"Simply put," Aayla sighed. "I was kidnapped about two and a half hours ago, by the Bounty Hunter, Cad Bane."

Predictably, Chuchi gasped and her hand flew to her mouth as she stared at Aayla in disbelief. "Cad Bane!" she breathed. "Are you alright? Did he hurt you?"

Chuchi knew all about Cad Bane and the work that he did for his own gain. She had, after all, been held hostage by him before, along with many other Senators when he had broken into the Senate Building and held several of them captive until the Republic had released Ziro the Hutt from prison around half a year ago. And then he had blown up the room they were standing in after he had left. If it hadn't been for Anakin Skywalker cutting through the floor and allowing them to drop into the room below moments before, she and many other Senators would not be there today.

Therefore, she was understandably anxious when she heard how Aayla had been caught by the Duros as well.

"As I said earlier, I am perfectly fine," Aayla said, calmly. "I mean, yes, he subjected me to some pretty intense torture but..."

"Torture!" Chuchi yelped, taking a step back in horror. "How can you be okay after torture! What did he do to you! How long f..."

"Please, Chuchi, keep your voice down," Aayla motioned for quiet as best she could with her arms bound behind her. "Nobody else is supposed to know I'm talking to you, remember."

"But... how can you be so calm?" Chuchi went on. "He tortured you, Aayla. He mustn't be allowed to..."

"I should also point out," Aayla cleared her throat. "That he is currently standing right next to me with a pistol in his hand. And if he thinks you're making any attempt to track us down then he'll very probably kill me."

_That_ shut Chuchi up quite quickly. The last thing she wanted to do was be responsible for Aayla's death, and she didn't particularly want to see it happen right in front of her either. She was pretty sure she'd never be able to forgive herself if that happened. She quickly glanced up at the door, and waited for a few seconds before she quietly said, "Sorry, Aayla. It looks like nobody heard me. Keep going. What does Bane want with you and why is he letting you contact me if he doesn't want to be found?"

"What he wants from me now and what he wanted from me when he kidnapped me are two different things, Chuchi," the Twi'lek responded. "It seems that Darth Sidious was, as we predicted, pretty livid when he heard of what I had done to his subordinates, so his next step in trying to kill me was to hire Bane and send him to do the job while I was still vulnerable in the medical station."

Chuchi frowned. "Then there's a good chance that whoever Sidious is, he wasn't at the party I just attended," she said. "Most of the people who went there were there practically from the time the news reached us of what you did until about half an hour ago. They wouldn't have had time to organise something like that."

"Exactly," Aayla nodded. "But I'm also here to tell you that you needn't worry about trying to find Darth Sidious anymore. I now have a potential alternative. Now, I'm going to tell you what's happening and I want you to listen carefully, as I doubt my... host... will want me to tell it a second time."

Chuchi nodded, a frown of concentration appearing on her face. "Okay," she said. "Go ahead."

And so, Aayla quickly outlined the events of the last few hours. How she had been in a sedated state when Bane had arrived to kidnap her, distracting her friends in the process and then knocking out the others with a gas along with her before he took her. She went to tell her about how he had fought against Renamon just before he escaped. Chuchi's eyes widened at this particular news.

"So, he knows about... the Digimon?" she asked quietly.

"Indeed," Aayla nodded. "Actually he's known about them for almost as long as I have, ever since the Behpour incident. But he hasn't said anything because he's had no proof or potential information. And that's why he kidnapped me instead of just killing me like Sidious asked him to."

She went on to explain how Bane had taken her prisoner in an attempt to try and get the information he desired out of her so he could use it to gain some money from it. The Twi'lek didn't go into too much detail about how much Bane had done to try and get the information out of her – she only mentioned that she was subjected to a large amount of electricity. Chuchi winced nevertheless – she'd never experience it before but her imagination was quite active at this point.

"I had no intention of letting him know anything about the Digimon anytime soon," Aayla went on. "No matter what he did to me. However, I was pretty sure that Bane was working for Sidious, so during one of the periods where he allowed me to rest, I came up with another idea, which leads me to why I am currently talking to you. Simply stated, I need your help Chuchi."

Chuchi's eyes widened as Aayla outlined her plan to hire Bane's services to turn on Sidious and attempt to expose his true identity, thus allowing the Jedi to come up with a plan to finally stop him and end the conflict. As Chuchi listened to Aayla's words, mixed emotions started to well up inside her.

The first was misgiving, which was understandable considering who they were talking about hiring. Chuchi didn't trust most Bounty Hunters. In fact, since she hadn't had the pleasure of meeting Sugi and her gang yet, she didn't trust any of them, because the ones that made the news were generally the ones like Bane who were willing to work for whoever paid them the most, which was usually crime lords and other such people. She wasn't entirely sure about Aayla's proposed idea, simply because they were thinking of working with Bane.

But, on the other hand, she began to feel a small pulse of excitement, which started to build up as Aayla kept talking. If the Twi'lek's idea worked, if Bane didn't betray them and they did find out who Sidious was, that would be the answer to all her problems and the majority of the problems facing the Republic. The war could be over, the Digimon could be exposed into a world of peace and finally take the credit they deserved, and things could begin to go back to normal. At last.

"And that's why I need your help, Chuchi," Aayla finished. "I'm afraid I'm going to be asking a lot of you, but I'm going to need somebody to pay Bane for his services. I'm sorry to volunteer you for this task, but considering the delicateness of the situation since the Digimon are involved in this, you were the only one I could go to to give a full explanation."

Chuchi digested the news for a few moments, and then said, "Aayla, are you sure this is wise? Working with Bane could backfire on us tremendously, especially since according to you he's more than willing to turn on Sidious. What's to stop him from turning on us as well and revealing everything?"

"Wise? Perhaps not entirely," Aayla admitted. "And I'm aware it is a risky proposition, but I believe it is a risk worth taking. It's either this, or he tortures me for weeks until I either break or die, and we find ourselves no closer to Sidious than before."

"Good point," conceded Chuchi. "And perhaps the last thing we need is having the greatest hero in the whole Republic killed and the Republic's greatest weapon against the Separatists to be exposed. Still, this is Bane we're talking about."

"I'm hoping," Aayla admitted. "That he will consent to allowing one of the Digimon go with him when he begins the hunt for Sidious," she glanced pointedly off to the side, where Chuchi assumed Bane would be standing. "He might find their help extremely valuable."

Chuchi said nothing, so Aayla turned back to look at her and said, "Listen, Chuchi. I know I am asking what is very probably too much from you again, but I need your help. I need someone to pay Bane the money that I promised him, and I can't ask anyone else considering the delicacy of the situation. It's a lot to ask, but if everything works out then one day, the whole of the Republic may be thanking you for your services."

Chuchi glanced down at her hands for a moment, rubbing them against one another as she nervously considered what Aayla was asking her to do. She knew that if it didn't work and the other Senators found out that Chuchi had paid off a Bounty Hunter like Bane, she could very well lose her position, and despite all the hardships of being a Senator, she quite liked serving the people.

And yet, at the same time, Chuchi knew that she could not turn it down and remain with a clear conscience. Not only would her doing so automatically subject Aayla to more torture and an inevitable death, but the fate of the whole Republic could rest on her actions. That was a lot of pressure on the young Pantoran, and she couldn't help but wonder if she would have become a Senator at all if she'd known what kind of decisions she would have to make.

But she hadn't been put under such intense pressure before. And it scared her, the thought of her actions having such a profound effect on the whole Republic. Her self-confidence dipped slightly, and she shifted uncomfortably at the thought of being such a big influence on future events. What if she called it wrong, or she made the right decision but made a mistake along the way? She knew that she couldn't turn to the other Senators for help considering the fact that the Digimon would be closely linked to this, and she couldn't tell them the whole story about why they were hiring Bane anyway, because they didn't know about Sidious.

If she went through with this, she was going to have to do it alone. And again, that just made her more nervous.

But, then she looked up into Aayla's earnest face, and stared at her expression. Aayla was making herself easily readable – she was clearly saying _I have faith in you_ without words. She remembered Anakin's words again from a few days ago before the whole ordeal with the Zillo Beast started, and how the Chosen One had told her she was brave. Perhaps it was time to prove that he was right.

Chuchi swallowed and nodded, committing herself to the cause. Dashing aside her doubts, she said, "Alright, Aayla. I'll do it, but I really, _really_ hope this works. For all our sakes."

"You and me both, Senator," Aayla agreed.

"What are the terms that Bane has set?" Chuchi asked. "I'll do my best to ensure a smooth transaction."

"I'm sorry to say this, Chuchi, but when you come to deliver the money, you must be alone. You mustn't have any form of guard, entourage, droid helper or back-up of any kind. Bane wants to ensure that we do not try and arrest him. And he also says he'll kill me if you don't comply."

"You have my word as a Pantoran, Bane," Chuchi said, as she knew that Bane would hear her even if she couldn't see him. "My race have long memories, and recently Aayla provided some very valuable assistance to the people of Pantora by helping to catch a criminal responsible for the kidnapping of the Chairman's daughters. I have no intention of doing anything that will risk her safety."

"Thank you, Chuchi," smiled Aayla, rolling her bound wrists as best she could. "That means a lot. When you've gathered the money, we'll give you a set of co-ordinates to fly to. It'll be somewhere in deep space, where Bane can easily escape to hyperspace if he feels he's being tricked. He wants you to use a small ship with a standard airlock, as that will be able to connect with his own to complete the transaction, and still allow him to jump to hyperspace if things go wrong even though the two are connected."

"Alright," nodded Chuchi. "I am not a master of space-travel by any means, but I'm pretty sure that I can manage that. How much is he charging, Aayla?"

"That," Aayla said, "Is the difficult part. In order to get him to listen, I offered him treble whatever his current employer was paying him, and I'm afraid that that amounts to thirty million credits."

Chuchi's large eyes widened considerably and she gasped. "Thirty million?" she cried, hurriedly suppressing her voice and glancing at the door again and hoping that no-one came through it. When no-one did, Chuchi turned back to Aayla and said, "Aayla, I know that I earn a very high amount of credits due to being a Senator, and I rarely spend it on things like outfits like other Senators, but I don't have that much. For a start, I haven't been a Senator for very long, and the Republic has been in a lot of financial difficulties since shortly after I became a Senator. Plus, I'm not a particularly high ranking member of the Senate as it is. If I was to scrape my savings and use every credit that I don't need, the most I could manage would be twelve million. And only five million of that would come from being a Senator – the rest came from being part of an already wealthy Pantoran family."

"That's what I thought," sighed Aayla. "It was a rash promise to make but I'm afraid we're going to have to stick with it if we want to pull off the deal. That's why I said it would be the hard part. You might not have enough money, Senator," Aayla smiled and gave Chuchi an expression that conveyed absolute trust. "But I believe in you. I believe that you will be able to find a way to get your hands on the other eighteen million somehow. And most likely through completely legal means as well."

Chuchi bit her lip. She was touched that Aayla had so much faith in her, but right now she didn't have a lot of faith in herself. This situation was extremely complicated already. Now, it had become moreso. If Chuchi started going around asking other Senators for large sums of money, they were going to notice quite quickly that she was extracting a very large sum from them and many of them would demand to know what for. And if Chuchi told them only that it was to pay a Bounty Hunter to release Aayla, most of them would suggest that she just sent a convoy of clones to the rescue instead of 'wasting' a lot of money.

Chuchi would never consider freeing a friend a waste of money, but a good many Senators were concerned about finance more than anything else. It was one of the main reasons why the Trade Federation and the Banking Clan had so much clout even when they were members of the Separatists – few dared to accuse them just in case they cut off their assets or something.

Doing something illegal like robbing a bank was of course, totally out of the question. Technically turning to a Bounty Hunter was pushing the law as it was, but such a heavily wanted one like Bane was definitely illegal. Chuchi didn't want to break any more laws than necessary. Going to the Chancellor for money would be a bad idea for that self-same reason. Palpatine was monitoring income and expenditure for the Republic very seriously these days. Asking for such a ridiculously big sum as eighteen-million from him was totally out of the question.

So, what did that leave her? The Senate couldn't help, the Jedi couldn't help, and she refused to think of turning to the black market or other nefarious methods. So, that left her with her own people – the Pantorans.

Pantora was quite a wealthy system in the grand scheme of things, which was one of the reasons why people listened to Chuchi as much as they did and why she was rising through the levels of Senate influence slightly faster than other new Senators. The moon of Pantora acted as protectorate to many other systems as well, many of them uninhabited but exploited by other systems for their natural resources, which gave the Pantorans quite a large amount of income as it was, which was one of the reasons why a lot of Pantorans were quite... well, snobbish.

Once again, she thanked the Moon Goddess that Chairman Papanoida wasn't like that.

As her thoughts switched to the Chairman, a thought began to build in her head. During meetings with the Chairman and when some new major development involving the A-Team had come up, Papanoida had often expressed his extreme gratitude to Aayla that she had managed to apprehend Greedo before he bolted, thus ensuring that the kidnapper of his two daughters received the justice that was due to him instead of getting away.

Perhaps Papanoida once the answer. Once Chuchi told him that Aayla had been kidnapped and was being held for ransom, he would probably be more than happy to help her out by offering to pay a large sum of money, even as much as eighteen million credits, since he had a very large amount of credits at his disposal. His two daughters might even chip in themselves. Heck, even his son might offer to contribute. The Papanoida's had a lot of money between them. They might just be the way out if Chuchi could convince them.

But still, even they might begin to question why so much was required of them. Thirty million was too much for a ransom demand. Nevertheless, the Chairman and his family might be the only hope they had of recovering Aayla and beginning the hunt for Sidious.

"Alright, I have an idea," Chuchi looked to the hologram again. "It might work, if I have bit of luck on my side."

Aayla paused, obviously listening to someone, presumably Bane, relaying instructions. Then she said, "Bane doesn't want to give you the co-ordinates until you claim to have all the money on you. He wants to know how long it will take you to acquire it?"

After some quick mental calculations, Chuchi said, "Alright, give me five hours, and then contact me on my handheld communicator. Hopefully I should have it by that time. How does that sound?"

"That sounds fine," Aayla said, nodding to the Pantoran and smiling. "You'd better get going, Chuchi. I know that you won't let me down."

"Quite a lot of pressure to place on a single Senator," Chuchi breathed, her heart pounding faster than normal. "Please, Mister Bane. I beg that you don't harm Aayla any more than you already have while I get your money. I'll be as quick as I can, and I... I have faith that it will work." Aayla smiled again and winked holographically.

"Alright then," the Twi'lek said. "We'll contact you again in five hours. May the Force be with you, Chuchi."

"Thank you, Aayla," the Pantoran nodded. "But I have a feeling you'll be needing it more than me, right now."

"Perhaps," Aayla chuckled. "But nevertheless, just do your best. See you soon."

"We hope," Chuchi laughed weakly. Aayla's hologram gave her another encouraging smile before it bleeped out of existence. The moment it did, Chuchi sat down in the chair that had been behind her all this time and took several moments to breathe slowly in and out in an attempt to calm herself down as the full enormity of what she had to do settled down on her. This had been the first time someone's life had been placed in her hands directly, and it was understandably nerve-wracking.

But Chuchi squashed her fears and filled herself with as much determination as possible. Failure was not an option. Too much depended on what she had to do now, and she had to act quickly. She wondered if the rest of the A-Team or the Digimon knew about Aayla's offer, but she knew she couldn't contact them. They might insist on coming, which could put Aayla's life in jeopardy.

She remembered something that Terriermon had said when recounting one of their adventures in the Digital World to her one the flight from Maridun after they'd dropped off the Zillo Beast. _Time to put my game-face on,_ she repeated in her mind, and then stood up and strode out of the door with intent to find a ship.

* * *

After the hologram was killed on the other side of the channel, Aayla turned around to survey her fellow passengers. Bane was standing off to one side with his pistol out and a smirk on his face, while Todo was examining more computers. They were on board Bane's ship, the _Sleight of Hand,_ and they looked to be staying there for the foreseeable future.

"So, that was your Senate friend," Bane smirked. "I recognise her from when we raided the Senate Building. She certainly seems to be faithful to you and your friends."

"She is," nodded Aayla. "Chuchi is a great person – friendly and caring, and also fair and patient. She is a very good Senator, and if she thinks she can get the money I promised you, then I see no reason to doubt her."

"I'll take your word for it," Bane chuckled and then said, "Todo, what's the status."

"Well, unless she had some extremely sophisticated technology that I couldn't detect, which is unlikely, she didn't track our call."

"Well, that's a point in her favour then," Bane said. "Nevertheless, steer us five parsecs away from this spot, just in case she does try and send some troops here."

"And what exactly do you want me to do for the next five hours?" Aayla asked, tugging on her wrist-bindings out of habit, as Todo began to engage the hyperdrive.

"I want you to take a seat," Bane smirked, indicating the co-pilot seat of the ship and pulling a coil of rope out of a drawer.

Aayla rolled her eyes and said, "Is that really necessary?" she asked, but she sat down in the chair anyway.

"Call it a test of your trustworthiness," Bane said, as he approached her. "Resist, and I'll be less inclined to trust you."

Aayla sighed, and as Todo engaged the hyperdrive and Bane knelt down and began to tie her ankles together again, Aayla looked out of the window in the direction that she knew Coruscant to be thanks to the constellations around her.

_You can do it, Chuchi,_ she thought, as Bane finished binding her ankles and moved up to start on her knees. _I know you can._

* * *

More of a dialogue-driven chapter than the last one, but that's alright isn't it? I told you all that Chuchi would have quite a significant role to play in future events, and this is one of the biggest parts for her. And we also get to see more of Aayla's mind, and an opportunity to see Bane in action again in the future. Everything I've read about Bane always says that he is loyal only to the credits and not the person giving them to him. Therefore, I saw a potential opportunity for the Jedi just like Aayla did.

Do you reckon Bane will agree to work with the protagonists, or will he turn his back on them like he appears to be doing to Sidious?

This will be my last update before I leave, as I am going tomorrow afternoon. I get back on the 20th, and I fully intend to start writing again immediately. My mind will be buzzing with this story when it's not preoccupied looking for whales. I hope you can all wait.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The young Senator from Pantora begins to do all that she can to gather the money Bane demands to release Aayla and assist them in their search for Sidious. This is her first solo mission, and she is determined to ensure that she doesn't let Aayla, or the Galaxy as a whole, down.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 138 : Chuchi's Mission**


	138. Chuchi's Mission

Well, I had a lovely time in the Azores, and thanks to everybody who wished me well on my trip. I saw many whales and dolphins, and got numerous decent pictures of them. And I'm only slightly sunburnt. Anyway, I hope that you've all fared well over the last week and a half, and I'm sorry this update is slightly later than I would have intended, but I was quite busy. Anyway, this whole chapter focuses on our Pantoran Senator. No action once again, but then again, a story can't be nothing but action, or it wouldn't go anywhere, would it?

Enjoy the read.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 138:- Chuchi's Mission**

* * *

Chuchi's request to be given five hours before Aayla and Bane attempted to call again was still a little bit of a squeeze. Pantora was not exactly close to Coruscant in terms of a Galaxy-wide scale. It was located about on the edge of the Mid Rim, and the edge nearer to the Outer Rim, which meant that it certainly wasn't very far away either like many other planets, but it was still quite a distance.

Therefore, that meant that by the time the young Pantoran had found herself a small ship with a standard airlock, which had been Bane's specification for the kind of ship she was to arrive in when they met up later, and steered it solo out of the Coruscant atmosphere and then travelled through hyperspace all the way from the Republic capital to her home moon, she had used up roughly about four of those hours.

As Chuchi pulled out of hyperspace above her moon, she couldn't help but notice the oddity of how one hour could seem so unbearably long in certain situations and so excruciatingly short in many others. For instance, an hour in many of the Senate congress meetings that she had been in recently had been long, boring and seemingly never-ending (although it didn't help that there would probably be another three to four hours added to the end of that). But now, Chuchi was beginning to wish that she had asked for six hours, or at least five and a half.

One hour to come up with eighteen million credits, possibly more, was an almost ridiculously big ask.

Nevertheless, Chuchi knew that she had to try and she had to do it quickly. But first, she couldn't help but take a couple of minutes to look fondly at the moon on which she had been born and raised by her family.

Pantora was somewhere between a medium and a large moon in terms of size, and from space, most of it was something like a khaki green colour. Pantora's climate was something like sub-arctic, which meant it wasn't warm enough for large forests but wasn't so cold as to create a snow moon like the nearby planet of Orto Plutonia. Most of the time, Pantora could be considered chilly, but during some months of the year a very large portion of it did indeed freeze over. That was why many Pantorans wore gowns that were made of thick material. Pantorans were more adapted to colder temperatures than many other humanoids.

As Chuchi surveyed her moon while she drifted towards it in the little ship, she gave off a sigh. She never thought that she would try an exploit the wealth of her position and her connections to the Chairman in any way, but now she'd effectively had it dumped on her. It wasn't Aayla's fault though – she was just doing what she could for the Republic and Chuchi was with her every step of the way. Still, she couldn't help but feel slightly awkward by this whole thing.

Dashing those thoughts and steering in the direction of the Chairman's large palace, Chuchi slowly reached over to the holocommunicator on the dashboard as the ship slowly entered Pantora's atmosphere. Her fingers hovered over the buttons for a few moments, before she keyed in to the scramble-set for the Chairman's office. Knowing him, he was likely to be in a meeting of some sort with other Pantoran dignitaries, so that was the most likely place he would be.

It didn't take long before Chuchi got a response. The familiar robed and bearded figure of Chairman Papanoida appeared in holographic form next to her. He was seated in a chair, which meant that Chuchi had probably been right in her assumption that he was meeting fellow Pantorans.

Papanoida seemed pleasantly surprised to see her. "Senator Chuchi," he acknowledged brightly, and in a tone of voice that made Chuchi wonder if he was grateful for the distraction from whatever he'd been doing beforehand. "What an unexpected pleasure. I thought that your next visit to our moon wouldn't be occurring for another month or so, considering the number of congress sessions the Senate seems to be having these days."

"A pleasure to see you again, Chairman," Chuchi nodded back, steering her ship lower. "And you're right – I wasn't going to head back to Pantoran soil for some time until my schedule abruptly changed earlier."

"I see," said Papanoida. "Forgive me if I'm wrong, but is it not night on Coruscant right now. I would have thought you would have been asleep by now, and it's getting quite late here as it is. Why did you choose to make the journey here now before waiting for the morning?"

"Well," Chuchi sighed. "I'm afraid that a pretty urgent situation has cropped up that demands haste. Simply stated, I didn't have time to wait until morning like most other people would. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'll be skipping tomorrow's congress session, and that's a very important one, considering the latest development regarding the Separatists."

"Yes, I heard," Papanoida nodded. "Our old friend Aayla taking on those three simultaneously and winning. Such an extraordinary feat."

"Indeed," nodded Chuchi. "And while we're on that subject, Aayla is actually the reason that I am here."

"Oh?" Papanoida frowned. "How so?"

"I can't really say much over a holotransmission," Chuchi said. "If it's not too much trouble, Chairman, I would like to arrange a meeting. A private one, between you and me, and possibly the rest of your family, only. And preferably it should start the moment I get to your palace."

Papanoida regarded Chuchi thoughtfully for a few moments and said, "I should point out that I am actually in the middle of a meeting right now. You are already interrupting something."

"I assumed so," Chuchi said. "And I apologise profusely. And I know that people say that these sort of things cannot wait all the time, but I really mean it. I do not have a lot of time – only about an hour or so. It is unbelievably urgent and once you hear what I have to say, you will understand what I am talking about."

Papanoida's sharp eyes regarded Chuchi for a couple more moments and Chuchi stared back, her face a picture of anxiousness and worry. She was half afraid Papanoida would insist to talk to her after he concluded what he was currently doing, as his predecessor, Chairman Cho, would have done. In fact, Cho probably wouldn't have let Chuchi get this far.

But Chuchi knew Papanoida better than that. He was fair, and understanding, and Chuchi was rewarded for her faith when Papanoida nodded and said, "Very well, if it really is as urgent as you say, then I shall conclude what I am currently doing." There was a faint sound that was probably a protest from some other Pantoran, at which Papanoida looked up and said, "She said that she only had an hour. Surely you can wait that long before we resume." After a pause, he looked back and said, "When will you get here?"

"About two minutes, Chairman," Chuchi nodded, her heart rate slowing slightly as she exhaled a breath she didn't know she'd been holding in relief. "And thank you. You have no idea how grateful I am for this."

"Well, perhaps you can fill me in on that when you arrive," Papanoida chuckled. "You said my family should be present?"

"It's not a necessity, but I think they would want to and should hear what I have to say."

"Very well," nodded Papanoida. "When you get here, land on the southern-most landing platform. I will have some-one lead you up to my office."

"Thank you, Chairman," Chuchi said. "We must be quick. I'll see you soon."

The moment the Chairman's hologram fizzled out, Chuchi accelerated, pushing her vessel through the air faster. She was close by to the palace, but right now every spare second that they had counted if she wanted to meet the deadline that she'd given herself.

* * *

It wasn't long before the Chairman's palace came into view. Most Pantoran settlements were quite isolated and the Chairman's place was no exception – it stood alone beside a mountain; a tall, coppery-red structure with numerous tall spires and many visible balconies and small statues of the various deities that most Pantorans worshipped. Chuchi herself hadn't been entirely sure about Gods and Goddesses, right up until the point where she'd been told about Fanglongmon by the Digimon. Now, she didn't know what to think.

But right now, she had more important things to focus on. She steered her ship to the landing platform that Papanoida had instructed her to head for and Chuchi slowly eased the ship down onto the concrete surface. Landing had never been her strong suit. Being a Senator and all, she would normally have a pilot of some kind to do the job for her, but Chuchi surprised herself with how smooth the landing was. Maybe the drastic situation had improved her focus or something.

Chuchi quickly stood up and hit the button that lowered the ramp, walking down it briskly and turning towards the large doors at the end of the landing platform that led into the palace. She was glad to see that there was already someone there to meet her, just as the Chairman had promised. She still didn't know her way around the large palace, because Papanoida had not been Chairman for long and Chuchi had been on Coruscant for most of his reign so far.

The person there to meet her was a young Pantoran girl, perhaps a couple of years younger than Chuchi herself. She was wearing the long, red robes of the Chairman's personal assistant, and as Chuchi approached, she curtsied.

"Good evening, Senator," she said, a slightly bashful smile on her face that indicated she was new at this. "It's a pleasure to see you again."

Chuchi blinked, as she couldn't remember ever meeting the Chairman's assistant before. But she took a second to study that shy girl's face and then she remembered. "Oh, I know you," she smiled pleasantly. "You're the Pantoran that Aayla and her master rescued from the Dark Acolytes on Boz Pity."

"Yes, ma'am," the girl nodded, pleased to be recognised. "That is me. Would you like to come inside?"

"Yes," nodded Chuchi. "I need to see the Chairman and I would appreciate it if we could go quickly."

"Alright," nodded the girl, and she turned around, leading Chuchi briskly into the palace and through the nearest corridor. Chuchi had to walk quickly to keep up with her, and fell in alongside her. But, just because the situation was an urgent one didn't mean they couldn't talk while they walked.

"Sorry, but I don't think I ever did catch your name," Chuchi told the girl. "What was it?"

"It's Mertiri, ma'am," the girl smiled.

"Mertiri," Chuchi bounced the word of her tongue and then added, "A pretty name. How have you been, Mertiri? Last I heard, the Chairman was going to take you home to try and find your family. Did it work?"

Mertiri's face fell, and Chuchi immediately regretted asking the question. "No, we didn't," she sighed. "We had no luck finding my parents. Apparently my mother was killed during a raid on a passenger ship by pirates – the same raid that ended up with me being taken into slavery, which I was so young I barely remembered. My father was devastated by our loss and tried to track down the pirates responsible. He was never heard from again."

Chuchi looked sympathetically at the young servant. She put a comforting hand on her shoulder and said, "I'm sorry."

Mertiri smiled gratefully and said, "Thank you, but it's okay really. I barely remember either of them anyway, though it would have been nice to know them. But after we discovered that, as well as the fact that I had no other living relatives, the Chairman took me in and allowed me to stay in his palace as his assistant. So, yes, I'm still a servant, but my life is far, far better than my days as a slave. The Papanoidas don't beat me if I make a mistake, for one thing. And I get an actual bed to sleep on. I'm still knew at this whole assistant thing, but I think I'm catching on quickly. I'm even enjoying it, though anything is better than scrubbing pans under the watchful eye of Asajj Ventress."

Chuchi chuckled and said, "Good point. I bet you were somewhat elated when you heard how Ventress has been put away."

"I won't deny it," Mertiri grinned. "And it was thanks to the self-same Jedi who rescued me in the first place that she's in prison now. I owe Aayla a lot, though I'll probably never get the chance to repay that debt."

Chuchi frowned thoughtfully for a moment, and then came to a quick decision. "Perhaps," she said. "Look, Mertiri. You probably know that I asked the meeting between me and the Chairman to have nobody else present but his family, but why don't you stay as well. I have a feeling that you might want to hear what I have to say."

Mertiri looked at her quizzically, but then said, "Oh, okay. But, I've never been present at private meetings before. You sure he won't mind?"

"Of course he won't," Chuchi said encouragingly. "Especially not if I want you there."

Mertiri nodded and the next ten seconds were passed in silence, before the young former slave arrived at a pair of double doors, which she promptly opened with the push of a button and said, "Here we are," as the doors slid apart. Chuchi nodded. She remembered this part of the palace – it was the room she remembered most. Beyond the doors was a reasonably large room with a window stretching across the back wall with a desk in front of it, like a smaller version of the Chancellor's office on Coruscant (before it had been annihilated by the Zillo Beast.)

The white-bearded form of the Chairman was standing by this desk, murmuring quietly with his two daughters. Chi Eekway was wearing the long robe that covered her hair and fell down to her feet – Chuchi often wondered how she could wear that without it constantly falling off. Che Emanwe was more normally dressed, with her hair pulled up in a bun. On the other side of the desk, beside the chair where the Chairman normally sat, was his son Ion, standing formally to attention like some kind of guard. He was even wearing the formal robes of a Pantoran guard. Chuchi had to stop herself from chuckling, wondering if those robes made Ion feel important or something. But she said nothing – Ion was a nice person and very dedicated to his father.

All four of the Papanoidas looked up when they saw them enter. The Chairman smiled and said, "Ah, there you are, Senator. Prompt as you stated over the hologram. A pleasure to see you in person again."

"Likewise, Chairman," Chuchi nodded, stepping over to him and bowing her head in a sign of respect. Papanoida did the same in return, as did his two daughters.

Chi Eekway smiled at Chuchi – she had become good friends with the Senator since she and Ahsoka had rescued her from the clutches of the Trade Federation. "How are you, Senator?" she asked.

"Not great, to be honest," Chuchi sighed. "But I'm afraid there is little time for pleasantries. Can we get down to business straight away, please?"

"Of course," nodded the Chairman, stepping over to his desk and seating himself in the chair, while his two daughters moved closer to the edge of the table. Papanoida turned to Mertiri, who was stood obediently by Chuchi, and said, "Mertiri, if you would please excuse..."

"Oh no, Chairman," Chuchi interrupted. "I told Mertiri that she could stay and hear this as well, if she wanted to. She might find what I have to say interesting as well. After all, it does involve Aayla."

Mertiri glanced sharply towards Chuchi, a gesture which the Senator definitely noticed. It seemed that she had not been told what the meeting was about – probably because the Chairman had wanted to ensure it stayed private as per Chuchi's wishes. Chuchi caught a flash of concern in Mertiri's eyes before she turned back to gauge the Chairman's reaction.

Papanoida merely nodded. "Very well," he said. "Then proceed, Senator."

"Thank you," Chuchi nodded. She vaguely noted that she was standing in the centre of the room, with all eyes upon her, and this was a little nerve-wracking. She was used to being the centre of attention – she'd stood up and given speeches in front of the whole Senate after all, albeit not many. But none of them had been while she was holding such a massive secret as that of the Digimon. She couldn't help but feel slightly like this was an interrogation, even though the Papanoidas were doing nothing to make it seem that way.

Chuchi quietly cleared her throat and cast about for the right words before she launched into the story with, "As you know, earlier today, our good and loyal friend Aayla vanquished three of the Separatist's most dangerous members, incapacitating two of them and driving the other away. After that, she collapsed from overexertion and was rushed to a medical station, where she began to recover extraordinarily quickly."

"Indeed," said Ion. "And I must say, I am looking forward to that holovideo becoming public. I would quite like to see exactly what happened in that battle."

"It is quite something," Chuchi agreed. "I was there when the footage was unveiled to the Chancellor, so I've already seen it. I'm certain you will enjoy it, Ion. But, anyway, that's the part that everybody does know. What you don't know is what happened afterwards, and that's why I'm here."

Chuchi paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts and then, she said, "The medical station that Aayla was taken to was very promptly attacked shortly after the information of Aayla's battle became public. It was assaulted by a Bounty Hunter."

The general reaction from around the room was one of shock and horror. Chuchi almost smiled, knowing that she was pushing the right buttons – the Papanoida's owed a lot to that Twi'lek. And Mertiri owed her even more. Mertiri looked like someone had just told her that she was about to be sold into slavery again.

"Is Aayla alright?" Che Emanwe breathed, obviously nervous about the answer Chuchi might give her.

"The answer to that question," Chuchi stated blandly. "Might depend on the outcome of this meeting."

That through the Papanoida family for a loop. All three of the children gave nervous glances to one another. Only the Chairman's face remained inscrutable, studying the Senator with interest, before he said, "Go on."

"At present, Aayla is, mostly, unharmed," Chuchi replied. "However, she is not in the medical station any longer. The Bounty Hunter's main objective was to kidnap her, and unfortunately he succeeded. Nobody knows where Aayla is now, and nobody has heard from her since her abduction."

After a pause, Chuchi added, "Except me."

The Papanoidas stared at her for a moment, wordlessly instructing her to continue. Chuchi obliged by saying, "Aayla got in contact with me about four hours ago, right before I left Coruscant. It seems that the Bounty Hunter is currently holding her for ransom, and the only way to get her back is to pay him off. And unfortunately, he has demanded a very large sum of money."

"Pay him off?" Ion asked incredulously. "We don't need to pay him off, surely. Would it not be possible to track him down, like we did Greedo, and rescue Aayla in that way. We didn't bow to what the Trade Federation wanted when my sisters were abducted. We can do the same thing here."

"I'm afraid we can't," Chuchi shook her head. "To be blunt, Greedo was an amateur when it came to being a Bounty Hunter. But this particular Bounty Hunter is much more experienced. We're dealing with Cad Bane himself here. You've all heard the stories of his crimes. He is merciless. If we even attempt a rescue mission in any way but the way he wants it, he'll kill Aayla instantly. And I know it. He effectively told me that himself."

There was brief silence as the Papanoidas digested this until Ion asked, "Well, how much is he charging then?"

Chuchi sighed and added, quietly, "Thirty million credits."

"Thirty million!" Ion shouted. "That's far too much for one ransom. Even Bane must know that most people would be unwilling to pay such a large sum."

"Even to save the life of Aayla Secura, the woman who just took down Count Dooku and his cronies?" pointed out Chuchi. "He's picked a good target for such a large demand. The Republic should be jumping at the chance just so that she can return to them alive."

"And that is what puzzles me," replied the Chairman, who was closely analysing Chuchi even now. "There are several points of your story, Chuchi, that I would like to call up. For a start, why was it that Aayla got in contact with you, and not the Supreme Chancellor? He is perhaps the wealthiest man in Republic right now, and I was led to believe that he was on good terms with Aayla. So why not him?"

Chuchi restrained herself from swallowing, which would surely display her nervousness. This was the part that she'd been dreading. The part where she had to carefully avoid telling Papanoida about the Digimon, or about Darth Sidious, while still trying to convince him that only he and his family could provide the money that Aayla needed. The situation was delicate, and Chuchi was determined to see it through without breaking it.

She sighed and said, "That's the... difficult part. I need you to understand something, Chairman. There is a reason that Aayla chose me to speak to about this ransom. But, I'm afraid that I cannot actually tell you what it is."

Papanoida frowned and said, "I'm not sure I understand, Senator. Perhaps you could enlighten me."

"I'll do my best," Chuchi promised. "But I'm afraid you won't find out a lot of information that you might wish to. You see, there are many reasons why Bane is demanding such a high ransom. The situation is much, much more complex than it appears. The fact that Aayla is involved automatically makes it that way. I'm afraid that I cannot entrust you with the details, but I can give you a basic outline."

Chuchi paused, took a deep breath and carefully picked her words. "Aayla and her fellow comrades, the A-Team and their newest recruits in the form of Barriss Offee, have several secrets surrounding them. Secrets which are known to only a select few, but which are phenomenally important to the success of Aayla's group of friends throughout the war. Aayla contacted me because I am one of the few who knows those secrets. Perhaps the only one in the entire Senate who does. She and her friends entrusted me with this secret when I found out by accident. And that secret had almost _everything_ to do with Aayla's abduction."

"I think I understand," Papanoida said, slowly. "But you should know you have heightened my curiosity. You cannot divulge this secret to me?"

Chuchi shook her head. "I could but I won't. It would probably make things much, much easier if I were to tell you but I cannot say anything. And not just for Aayla and the others, but for myself as well. You know I have always valued myself as a trustworthy and honest Senator, Chairman, and when I promised to tell anyone of Aayla's secrets, it was definitely the single largest promise I've ever made. Ever. By quite some distance. If I break this promise, then every other promise I've ever made, throughout my career and my life in general would be meaningless. If I could break this one, I could break anyone of them. Do you understand that?"

Papanoida laced his fingers together and rested his bearded chin on them. "I suppose so," he nodded. "If you put it in those words. Alright then, I will not pry if you do not want to tell, but you should know this is highly suspicious behaviour, Chuchi."

"I understand that, Chairman, and I apologise," Chuchi nodded. "But I will not compromise my honour as a Senator, a Pantoran or a person unless I absolutely have to."

"Very well," nodded Papanoida. "So, what exactly does this secret have to do with Aayla's abduction?"

"The Bounty Hunter in question has managed to discover this secret for himself," replied Chuchi. "He knows what I know about Aayla and her friends. That's part of the reason why his ransom demand is so high. I'm not just trying to get Aayla back. I'm also trying to buy his silence. If Aayla's secrets were to be revealed to certain people, there could be disastrous consequences for her, for her friends and perhaps even for the Galaxy in general."

Papanoida raised an eyebrow. "It's that serious, is it?"

"Yes, Chairman. It is," nodded Chuchi firmly. "And I'm sorry I cannot inform you further, but that is why Aayla contacted me out of all the other members of the Senate. I am the one who knows that secret, and the fewer who know of it, the better."

Papanoida nodded, but Ion frowned. "Just to clarify," he said. "How do we know that this secret is even a good thing? It could be anything for all we know – it could be something like Aayla and her friends are delving into the Dark Side, and discovering powers greater than Dooku's own."

Chuchi bristled. "Aayla would never do that."

"Perhaps," said Papanoida. "But Ion has a point. We only have your word for it, Senator. How can we know if this secret would be better off kept under wraps for sure."

Chuchi's next words stuck in her throat and she sputtered into silence. Truthfully, she had no answer to that. She was asking a hell of a lot from the Papanoidas and she knew it. She was effectively asking them to put her faith in her, based on almost no evidence or with anything solid to support it. It was a big ask, and poor Chuchi didn't know how to respond to Papanoida's point. How could she explain that the Digimon were good things without giving him any information about them.

But the Senator was promptly rescued from an entirely unexpected angle.

"It's not bad," murmured Mertiri, in a voice so quiet that everyone in the room barely heard her, despite the silence. Nevertheless, everyone turned to her in surprise and Mertiri looked slightly nervous to have all the attention suddenly, but she swallowed her fear and said, "It is not a bad secret. Not at all. It's a true wonder – a most phenomenal, incredible and amazing secret. It's, quite honestly, the most extraordinary thing I have ever seen, and I'm quite sure I will never see anything quite like it ever again."

"Hold on," Chi Eekway frowned. "You know what Senator Chuchi is talking about?"

"I do indeed," Mertiri nodded, stepping forward until she was between Chuchi and Papanoida. "It's almost miraculous, this secret that Chuchi is referring to. If you won't take her word alone, then please take mine as well. I'm quite positive that if it were not for this secret, I would probably still be a slave right now." Then, the young assistant turned around so that she was facing Chuchi and Chuchi alone, before mouthing one word at the startled Senator:-

'Digimon.'

Chuchi blinked in surprise and sputtered, "You know about..." Then she paused, and immediately had to stop herself from smacking herself in the forehead. Of course Mertiri knew about the Digimon. Ahsoka had told her of how the Digimon had been present during the fight against the Dark Acolytes – Mertiri's former masters. She remembered Ahsoka's descriptions of how Terriermon had destroyed the base's hangar, how Lopmon had taken on a powerful lightsaber wielder and won, and how Renamon had helped Aayla tie a boulder to an unsuspecting Ventress and push her off a cliff with it. And Mertiri had been there. She might not know as much about them as Chuchi herself, but she knew enough.

"Alright," Papanoida said. "If you are indeed aware of this secret, then do you agree with Chuchi's view that it should be contained, Mertiri?"

"Yes," Mertiri said firmly. "Absolutely. I would hate to see it exposed to the wrong people, particularly the Separatists. This secret helped secure my freedom. It is a force for good, and I'm sure it will continue to serve the Republic well."

Chuchi found her voice again and quickly supported Mertiri's claim. "She's right," she nodded. "I've seen it in action myself. I've seen what it is capable of doing, and I know firsthand how dumbfounding it can be once unveiled. That's part of the reason why the A-Team have been sweeping the Galaxy. The Separatists just aren't ready for what they have up their sleeves. But if they learnt of it, if they prepared against it, then the consequences may be too ghastly to discuss."

Chairman Papanoida carefully observed the earnest expressions on both Chuchi and Mertiri's faces for several moments. Chuchi prayed that the unexpected back-up from his own assistant, a person who had no more previous knowledge of what Chuchi was about to do than he himself, would be enough to convince him.

And it was.

"Very well," he said, and Chuchi had to resist the urge to punch the air or hug Mertiri. "Then I have no further questions about this secret. I will let it lie. However, I would still like to know exactly what it is that you expect from us, Senator. What role do you want us to play in the freedom of Aayla and of the... continuation of this secret."

Chuchi smiled gratefully and said, "It's quite awkward, but also quite simple, Chairman. I need the money. And a lot of it. I intend to throw every credit I can spare into the ransom demand amount if it will help Aayla and her friends. But that only amounts to twelve million, meaning I'm eighteen million short. I beg of you – I will get down on my knees and further if necessary, but if you could provide me with the remainder of bane's demand then I, Aayla, the rest of the A-Team and indeed, the whole Galaxy will thank you in the long run. Hopefully, this conflict with the Separatists will not last much longer and when it's finally over then we can tell you the full extent of the secret, but until then, it must remain under wraps. Please, can you help me?"

"Of course I could provide the money," Papanoida nodded. "Being Chairman of a wealthy moon like Pantora does have its privileges after all. But still, I cannot fathom why you would think that you needed all of it from me. Why did you not go to other Senate members to help? I realise that the secrets you tell me of might have something to do with this, but I'd like to hear your excuse."

Chuchi faltered again, unsure how to put this in words. However, she eventually said, "I suppose you could say that it is all a question of trust, Chairman. I have long known that there are many members of the Senate who you can trust with your life, and that there are many other members that wouldn't hesitate to let you die if it benefitted them in any way possible. And, until recently, I thought I knew who these people were. I'm fairly certain I still do, but there is a risk element."

"I don't follow," Papanoida said again.

"Well, let's put it this way," Chuchi said. "There is a reason why Aayla had to fight against Count Dooku and his cronies earlier today, Chairman. And it was _not_ a coincidence that they were there either."

"Wait," Ion frowned. "You think that they were there deliberately to kill her?"

"I know it," Chuchi nodded firmly. "Barriss told me so herself. Somebody wants Aayla out of the way very badly indeed."

"And you think the Senate is to blame?" Che Emanwe asked.

"No, not the Senate," Chuchi replied. "But one specific member of the Senate. I have reason to believe, according to what Aayla and her friends have told me, that there is a member of the Senate who had a very large amount of influence amongst both the Republic and the Separatists. This person is playing both sides of the war for his own gain, and I'm afraid Aayla's been getting in the way of his plans." She sighed. "The worst part of it is that I have no idea who this person is. And neither do the Jedi – and they've known he existed for months but have found no clues as to who it might be, which obviously means that this person is very good at maintaining a facade and covering his tracks."

The Papanoidas were silent for a while, and then the Chairman voiced, "Well, that's quite unnerving news."

Chuchi chuckled weakly. "You don't have to walk through the Senate Building every day, sir. It's almost hell, looking on faces that I used to think were one-hundred percent trustworthy, and knowing that there is a chance, however slim, that it's all just a cover. I have no idea what this person's aim in doing all of this is either, which means it could be anyone. That's why I came to you instead. I know you can be trusted, Chairman. I know that you cannot be this mysterious double-dealer. But anyone else in the Senate is fair game. And even those who I am still sure are not, like Senator Amidala – they might accidentally let this person know about what's going on."

"I can't imagine what you must be going through," Chi Eekway threw in sympathetically.

"It's not easy," Chuchi sighed. "And in some obscure way, I've become a spy for the Jedi inside the Senate, watching other Senators carefully for any sign of suspicious behaviour. But I still haven't seen anything other than what I was already observing. _That_ really is unnerving."

Chuchi paused to collect herself, and then looked up and fixed the Chairman's eye with her own. "But right now, there is the more immediate problem of Aayla. I'll worry about this double-dealing traitor when this crisis is over. But right now, I need your help Chairman. I need eighteen million credits to give to Bane, and I need it quickly – I've only got about three-quarters of an hour before he calls me again." Acting out what she had said before, Chuchi knelt down and said, "I beg you to help me, Chairman. As I said, it's all a matter of trust. Do you trust me enough, despite the limited information you have, to help me?"

Papanoida stared at her for a moment, and then chuckled, and said, "Really, Chuchi, you don't need to get on your knees. Please, stand up." Chuchi hurriedly did so, and Papanoida added, "And to answer your trust question – I think you are the bravest, the most loyal and the most trustworthy Senator that ever stood up for our moon. The people of Pantora truly chose well this time."

Chuchi flushed, her blue skin going purple and the yellow curved stripes on her cheeks going a slight greenish colour in response. She was touched at Papanoida's extreme words of confidence, and the Chairman still wasn't finished.

"To go to such lengths to serve the Republic, defend the secrets of your friends and unmask the traitor, all by yourself – well, let's just say that I am now more convinced than ever that you are trustworthy, even with the vague answers and the hedging that I've received since this meeting began."

"Thank you, Chairman," Chuchi mumbled, her cheeks still full of blood. She had to resist the urge to fidget as the praise was lavished on her. She'd compliments before, but so many great ones altogether was rare.

"And so, the answer is yes," Papanoida nodded. "I will provide all the money that you require. Even if I hadn't been given all this information, I would have, if I'm honest. Aayla ensured that the kidnappers of my daughters did not walk away with his freedom. Though I cannot do the same thing in her place with Bane, I will help her in any way that I can. If you wish, I could provide you with all thirty-million of the credits."

"No," Chuchi's eyes widened and she shook her head firmly. "No, I intend to contribute as much as I can to this. I _will _pay the twelve million I have at my disposal." She paused, then added. "Although, I might pushed for time if I went back to my estate to claim it – it's not exactly near here. Would it be possible for me to take all thirty million from here and then pay you back the twelve million when I return?"

"Of course," nodded Papanoida. "Take all the credits you need. We must help Aayla."

Chuchi's face split into what might possibly be the largest smile ever to appear on her face. Just like that, it felt like a humongous weight had been lifted from her shoulders. She beamed at the Chairman and said, "Thank you. I can't thank you enough. I... I don't know what I would have done if somehow I had failed to save her. Or even if I saved her and spilled her secrets to everyone in the process."

"If this secret is as big as you say," Papanoida said, "Then I'll bet that she's glad that it fell into the hands of such a dedicated and faithful woman as you, Chuchi. And let me tell you, I may not be your parent, but I am very proud of you."

Chuchi flushed again. Chairman Cho had never complimented her in the slightest – he had been more frigid than Orto Plutonia. Hearing praise from her friends was one thing, but from the man who was effectively her primary boss, it was another thing entirely. Despite everything that was going on with Aayla, Chuchi was almost squirming with happiness, mixed in with a great deal of embarrassment of course.

And while the praise ended there, the surprises didn't.

"Father," Chi Eekway suddenly piped up. "If you think that I am about to stand here and not pay any money towards the freedom of our friend and ally, then you're sadly mistaken. I must insist that I play my part too."

"I agree," Che Emanwe nodded. "I want to help too. Aayla put my captors in jail, and I have a couple of million to spare. It might not be much compared to thirty million but still, I wish to use it."

Papanoida smiled and said, "That's my girls." He turned towards his son and said, "What about you, Ion? What is your view on all this."

Ion sighed. "Although I am loathe to bow to the whims of a Bounty Hunter, especially considering our bad experience with them in the past, I will play my part too. It's the least we can do, and I respect that Bane is in a completely different league to Greedo. I have four million left over myself – because I don't spend it on clothes."

"Hey!" Chi and Che both objected suddenly. Ion sniggered slightly, and even Chuchi chuckled.

"He has a point, girls," the Senator piped up. "I don't spend my money on clothes either." She indicated the blue garments and boots that she was wearing now. "These are the only things I need."

"And the headdress?" Che pointedly asked, indicating the golden adornment holding Chuchi's long purple hair up near her head.

"I treated myself to that," Chuchi admitted. "But I only have a couple of these. And I could live without them if I wanted to, quite easily." She chuckled to herself, noting how nice it was to briefly discuss something so trivial as clothing after the serious discussion of the secret and Aayla's kidnapping. Chuchi felt incredibly proud of herself, her self-confidence soaring. She'd managed to answer all of the Chairman's doubts without letting the secret out, and except for a little help from Mertiri, she'd done it by herself.

Aayla had had faith in her. She was glad that it had paid off.

Now, she just had to get the money to Bane and get him to release his prisoner. And then, the sooner he tracked down Sidious, which was the one detail she had omitted, the better. She hadn't told the Chairman about that part because she wasn't sure how he'd take it. She trusted Aayla's judgement, but other people might not see it that way and Chuchi was taking no chances.

The Chairman stood and said, "Then, we shall adjourn to the vaults. Let us dredge up the credits that this Bounty Hunter demands. Mertiri, can you please call on some of the staff? We may need help to move all of those credits."

Chuchi nodded. "We need to load them onto my ship. Bane instructed me to bring the money to him alone, and I intend to do it."

"Alone?" Ion asked. "No guard at all?"

"Isn't that dangerous?" Chi Eekway asked nervously.

"Perhaps," Chuchi said. "But I doubt Bane will do anything to compromise such a large amount of money unless he feels betrayed. I'm sure he'll co-operate."

Papanoida stared at her for a moment, then said, "Did I mention brave in that compliment list earlier?"

"Actually, yes Father, you did," Ion chuckled.

"Ah. Well, here's more proof of that trait then," Papanoida nodded. "Now, let's go."

Mertiri nodded and hurried out of the room to do her job, while Papanoida stepped around his desk and strode across the room, his children behind him. Chuchi fell in step beside Papanoida as they walked out the office and briskly began to head downwards towards the vaults at the base of the castle. The Pantoran Senator smiled to herself.

They were going to do it. They were going to make it.

* * *

It took a surprisingly small amount of time to get the large amount of money. Credits weren't very large and they could some in a large variety of amounts. They basically consisted of small rectangular pieces of metal, which could be could be gold, silver, bronze, or copper or some other type of metal to indicate its worth. And the Papanoida's had a large amount of platinum credits – each one of those amounting to something around five-thousand.

The majority of Pantorans kept their credits with them instead of storing them in banks like many other systems did. The crime rate was very low on Pantora, as people who committed those crimes were always dealt with very severely indeed when caught. Not to mention the Banking Clan was hardly to be trusted these days considering their alliance with the Separatists. So, the Papanoidas had their money in secure vaults at the bottom of the palace.

Mertiri brought a bunch of other staff down with her, both male and female Pantorans, carrying with them hovercarts that would allow them to take several cases of credits at a time with relative ease. When Papanoida opened the vaults, Chuchi could see that the money was already neatly packed in cases – each one containing four-hundred platinum credits and therefore amounting to two million credits per case.

They were still quite heavy though, and a couple of heavy-lifting droids were called in to help pluck the fifteen cases needed and place them on the hovercarts. Ion, Chi and Che directed them towards their own stashes, and ensured that they took everything they had promised. The girls provided two million each, and Ion provided four, which meant that if Chuchi kept her promise to repay the Chairman, which she intended to do, then he was effectively paying ten million credits.

That meant that Chuchi was paying the most with twelve million. Papanoida offered again to pay more than that, but Chuchi was adamant that she do all she could. Aayla had come to her for help after all – she wouldn't feel right if she didn't use everything she could.

It took about five minutes to transport the hovercarts from the bottom of the palace right up to the landing platform where Chuchi had landed her ship, but that was more because the palace was such a huge building than they were difficult to move. Eventually, they came up to the landing platform and Chuchi watched with some satisfaction as the money which would do so much in one go – save Aayla, keep the Digimon safe and hopefully expose Sidious – was loaded onto her ship. She directed the servants with words of encouragement, helping to place them in the back of the ship, next to the airlock.

Eventually the fifteen cases were all neatly stacked. Chuchi was allowed to keep the hovercarts to help in transportation at the other side, where she would have no droids or servants to help her move them around.

Just as the last servant, Mertiri herself, was about to walk back out of the ship, Chuchi laid a hand on her shoulder to stop her. "Thank you for your help back there," the Senator said, smiling. "It was very much appreciated, and I'm sure Aayla will be just as grateful for your contribution to all of this."

"She freed me," Mertiri said. "I felt obliged to do what I could to help free her in turn. I know I didn't do half as much as she did, but I had to do something."

"I understand," Chuchi agreed. "And thank you for not telling anybody about the Digimon either," she added with her voice slightly lowered just in case someone was listening.

"Well, like you, I promised not to mention them," Mertiri smiled. Then she chuckled and said, "You have no idea how relieved I was when you didn't look confused when I mouthed the word Digimon at you. I was slightly concerned that maybe you and I were thinking about different secrets."

Chuchi laughed. "Well, not in this case. But, then again, is there a bigger secret than those three?"

"Not that I could think of," Mertiri shook her head. "Speaking of which, how are they? I'm assuming you've seen them since I did on Boz Pity."

"You found out about them before I did," replied Chuchi. "Truth be told, I only found out about them a few days ago, when the Zillo Beast attacked the Senate Building. I could hardly believe my eyes. Terriermon, Lopmon and their Tamers took on that practically invulnerable creature by themselves and they were able to subdue it. As far as I know, they're all fine. I'll let them know how you're doing when I see them again."

Mertiri nodded gratefully. "Thank you," she said.

She and Chuchi then descended down the ramp, where Chuchi met up with the Papanoidas once more. The Chairman stood forward and said, "Well, Senator. Since you are obviously keen to see this through on your own..."

"I am," Chuchi nodded. "I won't risk Aayla's life in any way. Please, don't follow me. I'd hate to think everything was going to be fine and then have something happen to mess things up."

"Not to worry," Papanoida responded. "We will make no moves against the Bounty Hunter. I just wanted to wish you luck. Be careful with that man. Bounty Hunters can't be trusted too far, or it could come back and bite you later on."

_Good,_ Chuchi thought. _That is, after all, exactly what we're trying to make him do to Sidious._

"Don't worry," Chuchi nodded. "I'll be alright. And thank you again."

"It was our pleasure," said Papanoida.

With that, Chuchi made some quick goodbyes, bowing to the Chairman, shaking Ion's hand firmly and giving both Chi Eekway and Che Emanwe a quick hug, and then giving one to Mertiri for good measure, Chuchi turned around and walked back up into her ship. Pulling up the ramp and settling herself into the pilot seat, she took a moment to gather herself, looking over her shoulder through the open cockpit door, as if to make sure that the crates of thirty million credits were really there.

Fortunately, they were.

So Chuchi turned around and started up the engine, gently lifting the ship off the landing platform and rising steadily through and out of the atmosphere, leaving the Papanoida's behind and staring after her ship until it had disappeared from their vision.

As soon as Chuchi was in space once more, she let go of the controls and sat back in her chair, waiting. She had no idea where to go from this point on – she needed to tell Bane she had the money before he would give her the co-ordinates, after all. And she didn't have his contact details, so she needed to wait for him to contact her.

* * *

Chuchi's nerves picked up again as the minutes ticked by. She didn't know exactly how much time she had left, so she couldn't be sure if the deadline had been passed or not. And if it had, then had Bane decided that the plan Aayla had in mind for him was too risky after all? Aayla might already be dead and she would never know it. She quickly forced that from her mind and thought about the Digimon instead, trying to keep her mind off Aayla and Bane.

Sure enough though, after about seven and a half minutes of waiting, the holocommunicator that she carried in her pocket began beeping. Chuchi quickly pulled it out and, hoping that it wasn't just some random person calling to see how she was, she opened the channel and the communicator displayed a small hologram floating above her palm.

It wasn't Aayla. This time, Bane had decided to show himself to her instead.

"Good evening, Senator," the Duros, lifted his hand and pulled his wide-brimmed hat down slightly. "A pleasure to see you again."

"Likewise," Chuchi said, and she meant it, which surprised her. She never thought she'd be happy to see him. Particularly after what happened at the Senate Building several months ago.

Speaking of that incident, Bane immediately brought it up. "Haven't seen you since I took over the east wing of the Senate Building. Must have been, ooh, half a year or so ago. How've you been keeping?"

"Surprisingly well," Chuchi replied. "But I'm not here to exchange pleasantries with you, Bane. I never thought I would say this to you, but this is a business call."

"Indeed," chuckled Bane, pulling out a holographic pistol and twirling it casually. "I hope you have the money that you promised me. Thirty million, wasn't it? And if I remember correctly, you still needed another eighteen million five hours ago. How'd that work out for you?"

"You needn't worry, Bounty Hunter," Chuchi said in a rather polite tone. She figured that it would be best to be polite to him, considering he held Aayla's life in his hands. She wasn't going to take any chances. "I've done exactly as you said. I am currently sitting in a small ship with a standard airlock. I am alone, with not even a droid to keep me company, and I currently have fifteen cases in the back, each filled with two million credits. That makes thirty million."

"Yes, I can do the math," nodded Bane. "But this is excellent news, assuming you're telling the truth of course," he added, cocking his pistol in a definitive warning that clearly indicated it would be used if she wasn't. Chuchi pointedly didn't look at the weapon and focused on Bane's face instead.

"Where's Aayla?" she asked. "Is she unharmed, like you yourself promised?"

"I made no promises," Bane pointed out, chuckling snidely. "You begged me not to hurt her, but I never replied. Nevertheless, I have carried out my own side of the deal to your satisfaction. Secura is fine."

"Where is she?" asked Chuchi again.

"She's... languishing," Bane sneered.

"Let me see her," Chuchi said, plaintively. "Let me know that she's alright."

"I think you can wait for that," Bane said. "I haven't asked you for proof of the thirty million credits."

"No, but I'm a much more honest person than you are," Chuchi said, then wished she hadn't, just in case Bane got angry with her. She was slightly relieved when Bane merely chuckled instead.

"True enough," the Duros conceded. "Alright, here she is." His hologram reached forward and the hand vanished, which presumably meant he was taking hold of a holocam of some kind. He briefly rotated it and for a moment the holocommunicator showed nothing. But then, a second later, another hologram appeared.

It was indeed Aayla, and she was bound to a chair and gagged.

"Aayla!" Chuchi cried, but the holographic form of her friend was only on for a split second, not enough time for Chuchi to discern much detail. She hadn't seen any movement from her friend, but she hadn't seen any sign of further injury either. Bane's hologram reappeared.

"Satisfied?" he asked.

"Not really, no," Chuchi frowned. "I won't be until she's been released from your clutches. Was it really necessary to tie her up like that?"

"No," Bane conceded. "But I thought it would be a good test of trust. She's been a remarkably good girl too. She hasn't even squirmed once throughout all five hours that she's been like that."

Chuchi bit her lip to stop herself from exclaiming angrily that her friend had been bound and gagged for that long, but she said, "Alright then, Bane. I trust you... enough. Now, I'll need the co-ordinates if you're going to want the money I've gone to great pains to collect for you."

"I know," Bane nodded, and then said, "Alright then, here they are:- 7980051, dash, 2GB49. Do I have to repeat that?"

"No, I got it," Chuchi said, hurriedly programming the co-ordinates into the navicomputer on the dashboard in front of her. Having an astromech do it would have been easier, but of course Chuchi wasn't allowed to have one on board. "G... B... 4... 9," she finished, and nodded. "Alright, I'll meet you there. It should take me about another hour for this ship to get there."

"Good," Bane chuckled. "I think Secura's arms are starting to ache from being in the same position for so long. And remember..."

"Yes, I know," Chuchi sighed. "Any back-up of any kind means that Aayla gets killed. I suppose that's another reason you bound her like that – so she would have no chance of resisting if things went awry."

"It's a benefit," Bane sneered. "But I wouldn't have had a problem dispatching her regardless, and Secura is wise enough to know that. I just hope, for her sake, that you are too. Now, I'll see you soon. I can't wait to see you in the flesh again."

Chuchi didn't respond. With Bane's ominous warning hanging over her, the hologram vanished. Chuchi glanced over her shoulder once more to check again that the money he desired was still there, before she turned around and gripped the ship controls, turning it around until she was facing the right direction. She quickly keyed a few more settings into the navicomputer to ensure she didn't collide with a star or something on the way – another job an astromech could have accomplished in a second – before she slowly pulled down the lever that activated the hyperdrive.

The stars blurred and the ship shot forwards and across space.

Nobody followed it.

* * *

Chuchi spent the hour that she had until she reached the rendezvous point nervously fidgeting in the co-pilot seat. This was another example of how the same amount of time could seem so much longer or shorter depending on the situation. The last hour with the Papanoidas had flashed by, but now this one was moving slower than a Hutt with indigestion.

Chuchi also realised just how tired she was right now. It had been late enough as it was on Coruscant when she'd received Aayla's call, but now, after another five-and-some-amount-of-time hours later, it would be very early morning. Chuchi vaguely thought that she would be very lucky indeed to get back to Coruscant for the congress session later. And even then, she'd probably fall asleep in it.

She wondered if the Sith Lord, Darth Sidious would notice her absence. It wasn't likely – she wasn't an important Senator, and many Senators skipped out on sessions if they had important errands to run. Perhaps she and Aayla could convince Papanoida to fabricate a story to explain her absence if necessary. He could say he needed her assistance in dealing with a particularly frustrated Pantoran dignitary or something.

Chuchi was also vaguely aware that she actually was a very important Senator now, even if it had nothing to do with rank. The thought was slightly harrowing.

Regardless of her nervousness, she did eventually doze off in the pilot seat, though her sleep was far from restful, and tormented with images of a bound and gagged Aayla being electrocuted. Not the most pleasant of images.

The sound of the hyperdrive disengaging was enough to wake her from her unrestful slumber, right at the moment that her ship pulled out of hyperspace. She quickly glanced across at the navicomputer, and confirmed that she had arrived.

Her yellow eyes slowly moved towards the window and scanned the dark recesses of space for Bane's ship. But there was nothing. The space was empty of everything but the twinkle of distant stars.

Chuchi frowned nervously. Had she got it wrong? Had she put the wrong co-ordinates in or something, because she had thought that Bane would already be there when she arrived. Momentary fear gripped her as she once again wondered if he had suddenly changed his mind.

It was a nerve-wracking ten seconds or so, before suddenly something whooshed out of existence right in front of her, so quickly that it was almost like it had teleported there. Chuchi caught her breath and sighed in relief slightly, as she beheld the _Sleight of Hand._ Bane's ship. It certainly didn't look like much – just an old cargo freighter with no windows bar the one at the cockpit and no visible weaponry. But Chuchi had no doubt that that was just a disguise designed to allow Bane to slip by people's defences.

Chuchi stepped away from the controls and watched as the larger ship moved slowly towards her own – a large hulk or metal that moved so slowly that it looked like it was stalking her. Chuchi assumed that Bane was doing something like scanning the ship for life forms or droids, trying to find out whether her word had been accurate.

Eventually the ship drew alongside her own, and Chuchi watched with bated breath as the majority of it disappeared from view. After a few moments, she heard the sound in the back of the airlock connecting with something from the outside, indicating that Bane had locked the two ships together. The Pantoran swallowed. There was no going back now, even if she had wanted to. The ships were locked together and Bane's ship was the larger and more powerful one.

He had her just as much as he had Aayla.

Chuchi slowly stepped towards the door and left the cockpit, squeezing through a gap between two of the hovercarts until she was standing in front of the airlock. She gathered herself as she stared at the circular door, and then she slowly lifted a finger and pushed the button next to it.

The large door rolled aside, to reveal a dark corridor on the other side. And, standing on the other side of it, was the Bounty Hunter himself, bathed in shadow, leaning against the wall with one shoulder and with a pistol held loosely in one hand. The most distinctive part of him were his red eyes, which seemed to glow faintly in the darkness. Then, the Duros stepped from the wall and into Chuchi's ship. He was much taller than her and looked down at her with a leer, but Chuchi held her ground and boldly glared back up at him.

"Hello, Senator," he greeted her politely, thought Chuchi could still hear the smirk. "Welcome to my ship."

"I can't say I'm too pleased to be here," Chuchi answered stiffly, refusing to be intimidated.

Bane chuckled. "Don't worry, I'm not hurt by your bluntness. Please, step inside. We have much to do."

* * *

How'd you all find that. Chuchi isn't an action hero like Aayla, or Anakin, but she's a hero in other ways, isn't she. And besides, Star Wars can't all be about kicking people's asses into submission can it. The more subtle approach is used a lot as well. And Chuchi certainly knows how to take that approach.

Hope you liked it. That bit with Mertiri was a last minute addition. I wasn't planning to use her again, but I thought, hey, why not. Hope you liked her contribution.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Make or break time. Bane scrutinises the deal that he is going to strike with the Jedi, while the Digimon continue to come up with nothing in their search for Aayla. But when they receive word of her whereabouts, how will they take this new development?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 139 : A New Ally**


	139. A New Ally

Heya, everybody. I'm back with the final instalment of the Star Wars part of this arc. I aim to get the next chapter up before September begins. And after that, I only have five more chapters until I complete two-thirds of my story, and eight more arcs. Because while things might seem to be progressing quickly, they are still a long way from finished.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 139:- A New Ally**

* * *

Senator Chuchi was determined to show no signs of fear to Bane, so even though her natural instincts were screaming at her to stay put, she ignored them and entered Bane's ship, stepping past the Bounty Hunter and striding purposefully into the _Sleight_ _of Hand_, through the small corridor that connected it to her own ship via the airlock. She resisted the urge to glance over her shoulder and make sure Bane wasn't planning to shoot her in the back, as he had done to Senator Philo right before her eyes many months before.

But she wasn't like Senator Philo. She wasn't about to disobey the person who clearly had all the power and intended on using it if she misbehaved. But she wouldn't stoop so low as to show fear. She needed to be bold, for her own sake as well as Aayla's.

The interior of Bane's ship was very different to its dull, beaten-up exterior. It was bristling with various controls over all four walls of the main room, which were presumably there to carry out many different functions like fire concealed weapons or hack into holographic wavelengths and a hundred other tasks that might be useful to a Bounty Hunter. The door to the cockpit was open, and Chuchi briefly wondered who was controlling the ship – probably a droid of some kind.

But her attention was immediately drawn to the middle of the room, where Aayla was seated. The Twi'lek was looking at her with what was probably a smile, but the rubber ball jammed in her mouth made it difficult to be sure. She appeared to be lashed to the chair she was sitting in so tightly that she could barely twist, her legs bound together, her torso secured to the back of the chair at the waist, chest and midsection to ensure that she stayed upright. Her wrists were still clamped in the special binders designed to nullify Force powers, and her elbows were secured together again. The ties around her ankles had been secured to the wrist binders under the chair, so if she pulled on one she pulled on the other at the same time. Even her head movement was limited, because Bane appeared to have carefully bound both her lekku together and attached them to her elbow ties. Aayla was effectively a bound and gagged statue.

"Aayla!" Chuchi cried and ignored everything else and rushed over to the Twi'lek's side, her hands automatically reaching behind her head and trying to unbuckle the gag. "Are you alright? Are you hurt?"

Chuchi immediately retracted when Aayla gave off a muffled yelp. Chuchi's attempts to reach under her lekku had pulled them upwards, which resulted in her elbows being pulled up as well, which resulted in her hands being pulled up and then her feet. "Sorry," Chuchi gasped. "Oh, I'm sorry. That didn't hurt you too much, did it?"

Aayla shook her head to the best of her ability. Even then, her head only moved a few centimetres to either side at best, but Chuchi got the message. Chuchi carefully took in Aayla's restraints. The knots looked complicated and would take forever to untie. The Pantoran suppressed a growl of annoyance and turned back towards the airlock, where Bane was watching the both of them with slight amusement. "You're telling me that Aayla's been like this for six whole hours?" Chuchi demanded.

"Yep," nodded Bane, stepping into the room and heading towards them. "I'm almost impressed. She hasn't voiced a single complaint throughout that whole period."

"Maybe that's because she can't," Chuchi said icily, indicating the gag. "I demand that you release her right now."

"Do you now?" Bane sneered, propping an elbow on the chair beside Aayla's head. "That's funny. I thought I was the one in charge of this situation."

"Maybe, but Aayla's the one paying you for a new assignment," Chuchi pointed out. "The least you could do is treat her with some respect."

"I have," Bane claimed. "I don't usually go to so much trouble to secure a prisoner. And she was very co-operative, which scored her several points. Regardless, I am still cautious about new employers. I have confidence that Secura will not try to cross me, but I'm just making sure of it. She's made no attempt to escape or even loosen her bonds. I fully believe she was telling the truth about our deal now."

"Then why don't you let her go?" Chuchi pressed. "I've brought you the money as promised so please release her."

"I will," Bane replied. "Once I have ensured you really have brought me thirty million. Belief and reality are two different things, Senator – and I still don't know whether _you_ are trustworthy or not. I've learned to be extra careful when my employers are politicians," he leered. "So, I'm going to go and count out that money, and until I have confirmed you brought me the amount I charged, Secura is staying this way. I'm sure she has no objections."

Chuchi glanced at Aayla, and the Twi'lek shook her head minutely again, then gave her a plaintive look which clearly said, _Please just go with his wishes. There is a lot riding on this bargain, and like it or not, we need him._

Chuchi swallowed and sighed. "It's going to take you a while to count out that money, Bane. There's a lot of it."

"Good," Bane nodded. "I like a lot. And I'll start counting soon, right after I ensure that you won't try anything either."

Chuchi's eyes almost bugged out of her head. "Excuse me?" she balked. "You want to tie me up as well?"

"Naturally," Bane nodded. "There's a hundred and one buttons that would be disastrous to press in the wrong circumstances. And I'll be frank and say that I trust you less that Secura here."

"But..." Chuchi breathed, fear creeping through her brain at the prospect of being helpless in front of this dangerous man. This was more than she had been expecting and she wasn't afraid to admit that the thought scared her. However, she looked across at the stringently bound Aayla once again and, after a moment, resolution filled her. If Aayla could hold up to something like this for six hours then Chuchi could do so for some time as well.

"Alright, fine," Chuchi sighed. "Let's get it over with."

"You needn't worry," Bane replied, fishing a rope of a hidden drawer. "You won't be such a tightly wrapped parcel as your Jedi friend. I just need to ensure you won't be moving. Now, have a seat."

Chuchi blinked and glanced around the room. "But Aayla's sitting in the only chair in the room."

"I know," Bane replied.

"You want me to sit on the floor?" Chuchi asked.

"No," Bane answered, and then pointed at Aayla. It took Chuchi a couple of moments to comprehend, but then she sighed and stepped over to her Twi'lek friend. Sending her an apologetic glance, Chuchi lowered herself onto the Jedi's lap and settled there, her back resting gently against Aayla's stomach.

"Excellent," Bane said, stepping over to the pair. "Now, this won't take long." He firmly grasped Chuchi's left wrist and pulled it behind both Aayla and the chair, then stepped around and did the same with her other wrist and began tying them together. It was awkward and slightly uncomfortable, but Chuchi bore it without complaint. When Bane stepped away, Chuchi twisted in her new bonds and found no slack at all. Aayla's legs shifted slightly under her and the Twi'lek grunted as she moved, reaching up with her own bound hands until they met Chuchi's and gave them a comforting squeeze.

Bane took a couple more minutes to bind the Pantoran, separating her legs over either side of the chair and securing them to the back of it. Chuchi made no move to try and stop him, Aayla's hand still clasping hers reassuringly. Chuchi envied Aayla is some way thanks to this situation – the Twi'lek had been subjected to hours of this and was still remarkably calm. That calm helped to soothe Chuchi. Even when she was totally helpless, Aayla had the ability to reassure her now fellow captive. It was almost uncanny.

"Alright then," said Bane, straightening up to observe the bound Pantoran sitting in the lap of the Twi'lek. "I think that should do the job. Now, I don't particularly feel the need to gag you too Senator, so as long as you keep your voice down and don't distract me from what I'm doing, that pretty mouth can remain with nothing in it except your tongue."

"And what about Aayla?" Chuchi asked, doing her best to indicate the Twi'lek she was sitting on with her head. "Can you not at least ungag her?"

Bane sighed theatrically and said, "Alright, alright. You drive a hard bargain, Senator, but I suppose I could give our Twi'lek friend's jaws a rest for a while. But if you two are planning to talk while I'm counting my money..."

"Keep it down?" Chuchi asked. "Yes, I heard you the first time."

"You sure?" Bane folded his arms. "Interrupting and answering back like that makes me wonder if you want to be gagged."

"I didn't want to be bound," Chuchi pointed out. "Please, just ungag my friend. I want to talk to her."

Bane stared at her for a moment, but then complied. As she stepped behind the chair both girls were seated in and careful reached between Aayla's lekku to fiddle with the buckle of the leather strap at the nape of Aayla's neck, he called into the cockpit. "Todo! Any sign of company."

"Nothing whatsoever, Bane," a voice Chuchi didn't recognise replied. "The scanners are indicating that we're completely alone. Seems like the Senator kept her promise on that score after all."

"Indeed," Bane said, reaching around and plucking the rubber ball from Aayla's mouth, Chuchi leaning forward to allow him easier access. "We'll soon see if she kept all of her promises. Keep monitoring the surroundings and if anything shows up then I want to jump to hyperspace immediately. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," Todo replied. "The navicomputer's already been programmed and the hyperdrive is set to activate the moment I pull this lever. We could be out of here in a moment's notice if need be."

"Good," Bane nodded. "Now, I may be a while with the counting. You girls have fun catching up." With that, he stepped back towards the airlock and disappeared from view, entering the ship that Chuchi had used for transportation. After that, there was mostly silence, except for faint sounds of cases being opened and some clinking noises as Bane rifled through the metal credits that Chuchi had brought him.

Chuchi tried to look over her shoulder at Aayla's face, but she considering she was bound into the Twi'lek's lap in a way that put their heads in close proximity to each other's anyway, she found that the best she could do was peer out the corner of one eye, which made her oddly dizzy. So she settled for speaking to the wall in front of her when she said, "Are you alright, Aayla?"

She heard a sound which could have been Aayla attempting to lick her lips, which were presumably quite dry if they'd been forced to hold a rubber ball for six hours. "I'm fine, Chuchi," she replied, clearing her throat quietly. "Bane was true to his word when he said he made no attempt to harm me. Though I can safely say that it would be quite nice to move."

"That man is..." Chuchi growled quietly. "Is..."

"Ruthless? Thorough? Cautious?" Aayla asked, quietly. "Try not to hold too much against him. This is new territory for him and he wants to make sure that it'll work for him. I think he still suspects a trick of some kind from someone so I can't really blame him too much. He's probably never been offered such a large sum of money from anyone. Probably not even close to that much. He's more used to dealing with people that will try and lower the price at every opportunity, so he's naturally suspicious by this new development."

"I suppose so," Chuchi sighed. "But six hours...? That's too much."

"I'm a Jedi," Aayla responded. "I spent most of those six hours meditating, so I barely noticed if I'm honest with you. It would have been more problematic were I none Force-sensitive. But what about you? How did you get ahold of the money you needed?"

"Chairman Papanoida," Chuchi answered. "He and his family were more than happy to supply the rest of Bane's demand. They wanted to repay you for helping ensure that Greedo went to prison."

"I see," Aayla said. "Good thinking, Chuchi. Did you get any problems obtaining it?"

"A little," Chuchi confessed. "They wanted to know why Bane was charging so much, and why he wanted me to do it. I explained there were extenuating circumstances, but I told them nothing concrete. I had some unexpected help actually, from the Pantoran girl who rescued from the Dark Acolytes on Boz Pity. She's the Chairman's personal assistant now, and she was just as anxious as they were. She told them nothing about the Digimon either."

Aayla smiled and gave Chuchi's hand another squeeze as well as she could with both her and Chuchi's wrists tied as they were. "Well, Chuchi," she said. "While I didn't doubt you for a moment, it is good to know that my faith was not displaced. I knew you could do it."

"Thank you, Aayla," Chuchi said, relaxing slightly in her bonds and leaning back against Aayla's front, squeezing Aayla's hand back with her own. "Do you think it'll all be worth it? Do you think that our efforts will pay off?"

"Oh yes," Aayla nodded. "I don't pretend to know exactly what the Force intends for the Galaxy, but I believe that the future will set straight? And though I wouldn't have tried this if Bane hadn't captured me, I've had time to mull it over and, well, perhaps this is our best option. Sidious has been covering his tracks long enough. He knows how to hide from everything a Jedi would normally try to do to find him. Perhaps this is the best way to track him down. He won't be anticipating this."

"True enough," Chuchi smiled. She twisted slightly in Aayla's lap, pushing her bound wrists down further to give her hands a better purchase on Aayla's own. "I just hope we haven't made a mistake."

Aayla smiled and said "Ssh," soothingly. "Everything will be fine. Just try and relax. Clear your mind of everything and focus on your breathing only. It'll help to keep you calm until Bane finishes scrutinising the cases you brought with you."

Chuchi nodded and reclined further against Aayla, leaning against her friend in their involuntary position. She shut her eyes and harmonised her breathing with Aayla's own, and found that the Twi'lek was right. It did indeed help to keep her calm. She wasn't sure how long she spent sitting like that, straddling Aayla's legs with her own and giving her an enforced backwards hug, but it didn't really matter. She felt her bravery returning to her, despite their helplessness.

"I'll tell you one thing, Chuchi," Aayla said, after a long silence.

"What?" Chuchi asked, opening one yellow eye.

"You've got quite a lot of guts to make all those decisions alone," Aayla smiled. "If you ask me, perhaps the Force made you the first Senator to discover the Digimon for this very purpose. After all, nothing happens by accident."

That comment really perked Chuchi up and she grinned, before shutting her eye again and returning to the meditation. "Thanks, Aayla," she said.

"Momentai, Chuchi," Aayla chuckled. "Momentai."

"Shall I tell Terriermon you said that?"

"Only if you want him to maul me."

* * *

As the girls sat together and languished, Bane was busy with the cases on the other side of the airlock, clicking them open and examining their contents carefully, counting out the number of small pieces of metal with precision that indicated he'd done this many times before. Considering the number individual credits each one represented – five hundred, it actually took a surprisingly short amount of time to count them all out. He'd reached two million on the first box quickly enough, and then it was a simple matter of ensuring that the all the other boxes contained the same number of credits as the first.

True enough, after half an hour or so, Bane had confirmed that every single box contained two million credits. That, alone, had been roughly about the largest sum of money that he'd earned on missions before, except for a select few which reached in the area of five million. But now he had _fifteen_ of these boxes.

Thirty million credits.

Bane could still hardly believe it was happening.

Bane produced a small scanner from his pocket and scanned the contents of each case to ensure that all the credits in them were indeed made of platinum. If they weren't then he would have much less than thirty-million, but the little handheld device told him that each and every one of them was indeed a genuine piece of platinum.

Bane took for a moment to observe all fifteen crates. He hadn't expected this. He truly had been expecting the Senator to try and pull something – try and pay less money than had been agreed upon. People like Gunray, whom he usually worked with, would do that without a second thought if they thought they could get away with it. And she'd brought no back-up of any kind, just as promised. So, either Chuchi had been sure that Bane could not be fooled or she was just as trustworthy as Aayla. And she certainly cared a lot about Aayla. These people were a completely different type to what Bane was used to.

But, perhaps he could work with this.

For a sum of money this large, he might be tempted to try and bring down Coruscant single-handedly. But all he had to do was release some prisoners, keep his mouth shut and locate a mysterious Sith Lord. A small smirk crept onto Bane's face, which grew steadily wider. This would be a cakewalk.

He'd known from the moment that he'd seen the Digimon that they would bring him vast amounts of money if he exploited them the right way.

But he'd never expected it to be in this way.

Still, he wasn't complaining. Credits were credits and at the end of the day, they were all that mattered to him.

Bane grasped the nearest hovercart and pulled it through the airlock corridor, into the room where the two bound women waited for him. Both of them looked up at him, but Bane said nothing to them and went out to bring in the next cart. Chuchi and Aayla watched him work in silence, until he had brought all fifteen cases into his own ship. Then, Bane turned around and tipped his hat to the two of them. "Alright ladies," he said. "I think you'll be very pleased to hear that I am at your service. Until the task you've set me is complete, I am at your disposal."

"This is fantastic news, Bane," Aayla smiled. "Although, I think that you know what we would both like you to do for us first."

"Right away, ma'am," Bane chuckled and stepped over to them, pulling a knife out of a hidden slot in one of the walls. Chuchi fought the urge to flinch as he used it deftly, shearing through the ropes that pinned her wrists together. Her gloves had helped to keep her circulation going, so she only needed to rub them a little while Bane sliced through her leg bonds. As the bits of rope fell to the floor, Chuchi quickly got off Aayla and stepped to one side, allowing Bane to get to work on freeing the Twi'lek as well.

It took a minute before all of Aayla's rope bonds had been cut, and the Twi'lek was finally able to stand up again. She arched her back slightly, pleased to be able to move it once more, and then she turned to her former captor and said, "And the binders?" before turning around and presenting her still-secured wrists to him.

Bane regarded her for a few moments, as if assessing whether she might try something if he removed the device that was disrupting her connection with the Force. But it seemed that he had no doubts anymore, so he quickly stepped behind the Jedi. Chuchi didn't see how he did it, but a few moments later, Bane was tossing the opened binders over his shoulder and Aayla's hands were up in the air as the Twi'lek stretched out as much as she could.

"I must admit," she said, through gritted teeth. "It does feel good to do that. I've been locked in those things for almost half a day."

"Maybe you can keep them as a souvenir," Bane suggested.

"They might have been attached to me, but I'm not that attached to them," Aayla quipped, before stepping over to Chuchi and standing beside her.

There was a slight awkward moment as the three humanoids drank in their situation. A Senator, a Jedi and Bounty Hunter, standing together and not trying to kill one another. Aayla was aware that under normal circumstances she should be trying to apprehend Bane, but she was making no attempt to, which was, in a way, just plain weird. But it was a weird she could accept. Bane had committed so many crimes against the Republic she held so dear, but he wasn't its enemy. Not really. There was no real malice in his actions. Oh, he probably enjoyed it, but it was the people who were hiring him that were the real enemy. Bane was just a form of middle man. And now, they were one step closer to tracking down the Republic's very biggest foe.

"How do you wish to proceed with this?" Bane asked.

"We need to contact my friends first," Aayla said. "They'll probably be worried sick, assuming that Chuchi didn't contact them about the situation."

Chuchi shook her head. "I told no-one but the people I acquired the credits from. I didn't want to leave anything to chance."

"And after that?" Bane queried.

"We'll have to speak to the Jedi Council," Aayla said. "To let them know the plan and to get you your pardon. They're not going to like this at all, but I believe that Master Yoda will understand." She chuckled, then added, "He told me many months ago that I had skills at making allies and friends. I never thought that skill would lead to this."

"I think 'friends' might be pushing it a little," Chuchi chuckled.

"As do I," Bane nodded. "I'm not the friend type. I'm doing this for the money. Now, let's go contact your Digimon allies."

_Not the friend type, huh?_ Aayla thought, as she followed Bane into the cockpit. _You might be able to learn a thing or two from us, Bane. Those who have true friends and those who have true strength. You just don't know it. Yet._

* * *

After Anakin's little spat with Count Dooku, during which he had revealed that he had still not completely purged himself of the Dark Side, but was willing to accept that what he had done was so incredibly wrong, he and Ahsoka had returned to the library and had gone through several more archives about Bane and anybody who might know where to find him. They were aware that they were short of time, and so they had set to it with a will.

Meanwhile, across the galaxy near Belderone, the Digimon, Barriss and the clones that manned the _Intrepid_ had been waiting on the word of their allies in the Temple, before they decided what they were about to do. Every second made them itch – they longed to be doing something about getting Aayla back, but the only thing they were really able to do was wait until Anakin and Ahsoka provided them with the best option. And considering how slippery Bane could be, that would not be easy.

After Renamon's anger at Bane slowly ebbed away, new emotions began to creep to the forefront as well, now that there was room for it. Renamon's thoughts turned from smouldering anger to intense guilt – more so than Barriss before the Mirialan had been counselled by Lopmon. She felt most responsible for allowing Bane to escape, having fallen for his trick with the electrocution. She sat down on the floor, legs crossed and spent some time slowly and sadly grooming the fur on her tail, smoothing it down from where Bane's attack had caused it to stand on end.

Naturally, Terriermon noticed this behaviour first and almost before it happened. While Renamon leaned against a wall, the white bunny stepped over to her and murmured, "It wasn't your fault, you know."

Renamon's only response was a slight growl, that indicated that she thought it was perfectly well her fault. Terriermon sighed and placed a small hand on the side of Renamon's leg. "Hey," he said consolingly. "It's not your fault he cheated. I mean, what do you expect from a guy like him?"

As soon as Terriermon said it, he knew he'd said the wrong thing. Renamon flared up and said, "Exactly. I should have seen it coming. I've seen his type before, and I should have been more prepared for the trickery when it happened. In fact, I _was _on guard for tricks like that. But I fell for it all the same. How can it not be my fault?"

"Okay, that was a poor choice of words on my part," Terriermon said. "But listen, you had no idea what he was about to do. How could you know that his cheat would take on that form? It's just like fighting a new Digimon back home – you don't know what attacks he had in his arsenal."

"I know that," Renamon sighed, "But I gave him the opportunity to do it. I relied more on my fighting style at the start of the battle, but as the fight went on, I became more wild with my attacks. I ended up just trying to use moves that would deal maximum damage instead of being cautious. If I hadn't done that jump kick I might not have left myself vulnerable."

"And do you think either Lopmon or I would have done differently?" Terriermon asked sternly. "Come on, Rena. He was trying to kidnap Aayla. We'd all be mad. We all would have made a similar mistake – I know it. Yes, I know that you made a mistake, but that still doesn't mean you're to blame, does it?"

"He's right," said a voice, and the other two looked up to see Rika standing over them. "He's the one who pushed the switch. He's the one we blame."

Renamon stared into her Tamer's lavender eyes for a few moments, then turned to glance at her mate's black ones. Then, she shut her eyes and said. "I still can't exempt myself. I went too far. I lost my head. Therefore, I am just as much to blame as..."

Her eyes shot open, and Rika's fist fell back to her side. Renamon blinked. Rika had just punched her in the arm, quite hard. She'd _never_ been punched by Rika before. She'd seen Takato and Ryo and even Henry get the fist treatment when Rika got annoyed at them, but she'd never been the victim of it before. It had been quite a hard blow too, for a human. Renamon was quite glad that Rika had avoided the face, probably because of Renamon's privilege of being her partner.

"So you made a mistake," Rika declared. "You're not perfect. Nobody is. I don't think even Fanglongmon or Anubimon are perfect. Just get up and learn from it in the future. Takato did, didn't he? He screwed up Guilmon so badly he turned him into a monster, and then he turned it right around and discovered biomerging. You have to learn from it too."

"Rika's right," nodded Terriermon. "I'm sure Aayla would tell you the same thing. And we've now learned that giving into your anger in battle is a bad idea, which is probably one of the reasons the Jedi don't do it. Now, what do you say in future battles we remember to fight like Aayla did against Dooku, Ventress and Grievous – with our heads at all times, and stop playing this blame game?"

Renamon's mouth twitched and she chuckled slightly. "You're both right, of course," she said. "You're always right, Rika. And Terriermon, this is one of those rare occasions..."

"Hey!" Terriermon griped.

"Momentai," Renamon said, to snickers from Rika.

"Hey! Mmphg!" Terriermon griped again, but then was promptly pulled towards Renamon, who locked her lips with his. Rika chuckled and, for once, didn't look away, as her partner and Henry's kissed for several moments before they pulled apart and grinned at each other.

"You wanna kiss Rika now?" Terriermon asked, and was promptly on the receiving end of a double-swat from two females and was almost knocked unconscious.

Renamon looked up at her Tamer and said, "Nice right hook by the way."

"Thanks," Rika chuckled. "You didn't even flinch though."

"Well, I am quite a sturdy Digimon," Renamon pointed out.

Nearby, Henry and Suzie were watching the three of them. "Isn't it nice how Rika shows she cares by punching people?" Henry asked his sister. "Good thing I know Tai Chi. Usually I can block her blows when she tries it on me."

"I remember Takato tried to get you to teach him how to do it," Suzie giggled.

"Yeah," Henry chuckled. "He was worse than Calumon at balancing on one leg. He had no hope."

Suzie snorted at the memory, and then glanced at the holotable nearby. Barriss, Bly and Lopmon were in the middle of a quiet discussion, with Chewbacca standing by and listening in, but the absence of Aayla made her face fall. "Do you think we'll see her again, Henry?"

Henry's natural reaction was to instantly tell Suzie that they definitely would. But he knew that Suzie was growing up now – everyone around here did, and he knew that she had reached the point where offering false hope was just patronising, so he told her the truth. "I honestly don't know, Suzie. But, I have feeling we will. I am fairly certain that Aayla is still alive. It's just a question of finding Bane now."

"But Henry," Suzie shuddered. "I've seen what that guy can do. He shot a guy right in front of me, and he said he was going to shoot me too if I didn't get out of his way. He's a scary man."

"Yeah," Henry nodded. "That may be. But he just wanted to kill the man you were protecting. He must have a different agenda this time."

"How'd you know that?" Suzie asked.

"Well, if he just wanted her to die, he would have shot her in the bed of the medical station instead of going to all that extra trouble of transporting her away while still alive. He wants Aayla for some other reason, and while that's still bad news, it means that Aayla is probably still alive. There is hope yet."

Suzie sighed. "I hope you're right, big brother."

Henry chuckled, but then he added quietly, "So do I, Suzie. So do I."

* * *

Eventually, they had received word from Anakin and Ahsoka back on Coruscant. The Chosen One and his Togruta Padawan had told them that they hadn't been able to find any hint about where Bane might be located right now – the closest thing they'd gotten was an outpost somewhere that had been long abandoned after people had tried to search for him there several months ago. So, they'd tried looking at Bane's known associates, and the best lead was Shahan Alama, the Weequay that had helped him to raid the Senate Building, and who was a known underling of infamous pirate, Hondo Ohnaka.

At the mention of the pirate that they had encountered back on Felucia, Terriermon had been eager to get going. "Maybe we can work with that. We might be able to use that Mental Illusion Card to summon Ghostfreak and scare any information of the guy. I'm sure he still remembers that particular mission gone bad."

And so, they had quickly set off for Florrum, where they knew Hondo and his men had set up one of their primary bases. Normally, after learning where pirates and brigands like Hondo had set up their headquarters, the Jedi would have raided it to try and bring them in before they went about causing disorder, doing their job as peacekeepers. But the war had taken their attention away from it, so Hondo and his men had been allowed to almost flourish.

So, everyone was preparing to freak the living daylights out of a bunch of Weequay with a fictional ghost in order to get their information, but they never got to that point. They'd pulled into orbit over the prairie planet and were readying a few gunships to head down, when Barriss suddenly got a call on her holocommunicator.

The Mirialan frowned, wondering if perhaps Anakin and Ahsoka were contacting her again with some more information. Any of that would be welcome at this point – it had been over eight hours since Aayla's disappearance and the hyperspace journey to Florrum, which was deep in the Outer Rim, had taken up a considerable amount of that time. Each hour that passed seemed to weigh on Barriss and the others. It was bizarre how much could change in the course of a single day.

So, as the Digimon and the Tamers helped the clones to prep the gunships, as the clones were going to set up a perimeter around the pirate base before the Digimon went in as a ghostly illusion, Barriss turned and answered the call.

She was mildly surprised to see Senator Chuchi on the other side. It would be very, very early morning on Coruscant by now, so by all rights the Pantoran should be in bed. She certainly looked quite tired, but there was quite a large grin on her face, which heightened Barriss' curiosity instantly.

"Hello, Barriss," Chuchi nodded. "How are things going at your end?"

"Er... well..." Barriss murmured, not quite sure what to say. She settled for starting with. "Senator... not to be rude or anything, but now's not the best time for you to call. There's been... a situation and things are a bit hectic right now, so perhaps if I could call you..."

Chuchi interrupted by clearing her throat and then said, "On the contrary, I believe that now is the perfect time to call. I'm here to put you out of your anxiety. And I've got someone here who wants to say hello." The holographic Chuchi winked at Barriss, then stepped to one side and allowed another figure to enter the hologram.

Barriss gasped.

"Hello, Barriss," Aayla chuckled. "Did you miss me?"

"Aayla!" Barriss shouted so loudly it was almost a squeal, which was a very un-Barriss-like sound to make in any circumstance. Regardless it got the attention of the entire hangar and all activity stopped to stare at the Mirialan, but she didn't particularly care. "How... What... where... but... you're alright."

"Yes, I am," Aayla nodded. "Thanks to Chuchi here."

"But..." Barriss started again, but before she could say any more she was almost sent flying when all three Digimon crashed into her back, eager to see their friend alright and examine her for any damage. The Tamers weren't far behind.

"Aayla!" Terriermon grinned. "I knew that you'd be alright. I just knew it."

"But that didn't stop us from being worried sick," Lopmon agreed. "Where are you? Are you hurt? Where's Bane?"

"I'm fine," Aayla chuckled. "Really. You have no reason to be concerned, guys. I'm very well. In fact, I'm surprisingly well considering everything that's been going on. I've spent practically the last six hours resting after all."

"What happened, Aayla?" Henry asked. "How did you escape from Bane?"

"And why is Chuchi with you?" Renamon added. "Where are you?"

"Well," Aayla smiled wryly. "Those are the questions, aren't they? And the answers are slightly unusual. To answer the last question, I'm not entirely sure where I am. I'm on a ship, somewhere in the middle of space. We'll send you to co-ordinates in a few moments. To answer the question before that, Chuchi is here because she just went on a heroic quest to get me out of Bane's clutches, all by herself. And to answer the first question – I did not escape from Bane. He let me go."

"Where is he now?" Renamon asked, suppressing a snarl that was building up in the back of her throat, aware of what Terriermon and Rika had told her earlier about keeping her anger in check. "If that man hurt you in any way, Aayla..."

"You will do nothing," Aayla gave Renamon a pointed look, which caused the fox to clam up in confusion. "I heard that you had quite a fight with Bane on the medical station, and I'm aware that he won out with his... less than fair methods... but right now I'm asking you to put that aside Renamon. The situation has changed again. Drastically."

"Details would be nice," Rika chipped in.

Chuchi added her own contribution next by saying, "It's actually pretty similar to what happened earlier today, only it's possibly on an even grander scale. Darth Sidious sends his best minions after Aayla, and she thwarts him by beating them all hands down. Darth Sidious responds by sending a Bounty Hunter after Aayla instead, and Aayla thwarts him again... by striking a deal with the Bounty Hunter and turning him on his employer."

There was silence on the other end. Eyes flicked between Chuchi and Aayla like a miniature tennis rally, as each tried to gauge whether or not the Pantoran was joking. It was Barriss that spoke first, when she said, "Pardon? You're telling us that Aayla bought Bane off?"

The small holocommunicator suddenly started to display a third hologram, which pretty much answered Barriss' question. "Does that surprise you, young Jedi?" Bane asked as he appeared, folding his arms and regarding the Mirialan as if he were a teacher and she a schoolgirl. "Perhaps you thought that your dear friend was above that?"

Barriss felt Renamon's paw tighten on her shoulder, but before the fox could say anything, Aayla turned to the Duros and said, "Bane, need I remind you that by agreeing to work for us, you agreed to work for them to. And they're my family. I'd appreciate it if you showed them some respect."

"Well, that wasn't part of the deal but I suppose I can go with it," Bane chuckled.

"Er, with respect, Aayla," Rika put in, giving a glare almost as intense as that of her partner's in Bane's direction. "Have you lost it? Trying to _hire_ this guy?"

"Rika has a point," agreed Henry. "He's a turncoat and a criminal."

"Which is exactly what we need given the state of things," Aayla said. "Look, we'll talk about this in more length when you get here. We're going to give you the co-ordinates to where we are right now. But before I do, I want all of you to promise that no matter what feelings you might have on this matter, you restrain yourselves from attacking our new ally."

"But Aayla..." Terriermon protested.

"Swear it," Aayla said, sternly, folding her arms. "Chuchi and I went to great lengths to close this deal, and I would rather that you guys didn't mess it up."

The Digimon, the Tamers and Barriss all exchanged uneasy looks. None of them were quite sure of what to make of this new development. All of them had automatically pegged Bane as an enemy when he'd kidnapped Aayla, and the moment Aayla had returned, she had effectively turned that on its head. It was a lot to process.

But, eventually, Renamon spoke for them all when she said. "We swear it. But I hope you don't mind if I refrain from thinking of him as an ally just yet."

Aayla chuckled. "Understandable, I suppose. Alright, Bane, give them the co-ordinates."

As soon as Bane relayed them to Barriss, the Mirialan brightened and said, "That's not too far from here actually. We'll be with you soon, Aayla. And, just for the record, it's a relief to see that you're alright."

Aayla smiled. "Thanks guys. Now, let's get going. I'll explain the situation on the way."

And so, as the small group headed back towards the bridge of the cruiser, Aayla and Chuchi began to fill them in on Aayla's intentions for her former captor, and why she had decided to forge an alliance which would probably send a large portion of the Republic into uproar if they ever found out about it.

The more Aayla spoke, the more the group began to lean towards her way of thinking. Of course their misgivings remained, as they had all just been fooled and bested by Bane many hours beforehand and they didn't trust him. They all knew full well that he could just as easily turn on them if Sidious got wind of this and offered an even bigger salary.

But still, the possibilities that might be brought about by Aayla's actions were definitely intriguing. Having Sidious exposed was probably the one thing that all of them wanted more than anything else right now, expect perhaps to punch him in the face. And Aayla had picked a strategy that gave them everything they needed – including keeping the Secret of the 327th where it should be – hidden away.

When they were in hyperspace and heading fast towards the location of Bane's ship, Lopmon said, "Well, Aayla. Between all of us, we have come up with some unorthodox, reckless and often ridiculously mad plans before, but I think that this one really takes the cake. Congratulations. Anakin's going to have to come up with something huge to trump this one."

"Why thank you, Lopmon," Aayla chuckled. "I do try."

"You are aware that the Jedi Council are not going to be happy about this, right?" Barriss asked. "In fact, I think that the majority of them will think you've totally lost it. Perhaps Master Yoda and Master Fisto, and possibly Master Shaak Ti and Plo Koon might agree with you, but everyone else is going to protest quite heavily. Especially when you tell them you promised him a pardon."

"Yes, but that does only hold to the end of the war," Aayla pointed out. "And, I'll be blunt and say that if the plan works, the end of the war might not be long away."

"It's nice to be wanted," Bane said dryly.

Terriermon snorted. "Pun intended?" he asked. Bane looked at him blankly, and Terriermon pointed out – "Wanted. You're Wanted for crimes against the Republic."

Bane stared at him for a few more seconds, before something resembling a smirk appeared on his face. "You're a weird one," he observed.

"Yeah, I get that a lot," Terriermon replied.

"Regardless," Aayla said. "Chuchi and I will deal with the Jedi Council."

"Yes," nodded Chuchi. "I'm sure they'll come around to our way of thinking, albeit grudgingly. Especially when we inform them of the alternative."

"And besides, after months of squat when it comes to Sidious, they're just as desperate to find him as we are," Aayla agreed. "Plus, as Lopmon says, we've come up with mad schemes before. I think they'll go with it as long as a certain condition is met, but we'll discuss that when you get here and we can talk face to face."

"We should be there shortly," Barriss said.

Aayla nodded. "We only have a couple of small ships, so prepare to open the hangar doors when we arrive. We'll board the ship and meet you in the hangar. And tell the clones that attempting to shoot at Bane is expressly forbidden."

"Just a little bit?" asked Commander Bly from nearby.

"No Bly," Aayla chuckled. "No punching, no kicking, no attacks, whether from Modify Cards or otherwise, of any sort."

"Well, I suppose we can manage," Renamon folded her arms. "Maybe."

"By the way, Aayla, Chuchi," Terriermon said from Barriss' shoulder. "I hope you both know what you're in for when you get back here."

Aayla grinned, while Chuchi blinked in confusion. "I look forward to it," the former said.

"Er, what?" the latter asked. And that was the point where the hologram vanished.

* * *

True to form, they eventually arrived at the spot where the _Sleight of Hand_, and the small ship attached to it that Chuchi had come it, were hanging in space. The _Intrepid_ cruised slowly towards them, bathing the two of them in its shadow as the large blast doors on the side slid slowly open. The small attached vessels steered in towards them, separating as they did so and slipping through the shields to land on the floor of the hangar smoothly.

The ramp to both ships descended at roughly the same time, and Aayla walked out of Bane's ship, while Chuchi stepped out of her own. As soon as Aayla's feet touched the metal of her own flagship again, she was immediately assailed by a bunch of people who scooped her into a hug. Aayla chuckled as she fought to keep her balance and returned it with gusto, glad to see all of her friends once again after so many hours apart. Aayla was fully recovered and glad to be back.

Chuchi felt a small smile appearing on her face as she took in the endearing scene. At which point, she yelped as the group detached itself from Aayla and swamped _her_ as well. This was Chuchi's first experience with one of Terriermon's initiated group hugs, and her sense of balance wasn't quite as good as Aayla's. She toppled onto her backside and the others fell on top of her, all of them laughing as they did so.

"Wow, guys," Chuchi said, from the bottom of what had effectively become a dogpile. "You really have unique ways of showing that you care."

Renamon chuckled and stood up, pushing the others off Chuchi and helping her to her feet. "Well, you deserve it, Chuchi. We all thank you from the bottom of our hearts for helping Aayla the way you did."

"Yeah," Terriermon hopped up onto her head. "Aayla might be the hero everyone knows about, but you know what, you both should get equal honours for your deeds today."

Chuchi flushed. "If someone had told me just last week that I would save a Jedi, strike a deal with a dangerous Bounty Hunter and gain the eternal gratitude of a bunch of beings from another universe all in the same night, I probably would have thought they needed sanctioning."

"And not just because that person would be claiming to know the future in way too much detail," Barriss snorted.

"Regardless," Aayla said. "Terriermon is right. We've got another silent hero in our mix. Though I promise you, Chuchi, people will know what you did. One day."

"I can wait," Chuchi said. "The spotlight doesn't always agree with me."

Lopmon shook her head. "You and Aayla are so alike, it's scary. It's almost like you're one person speaking out of two different mouths."

"Now there's a scary thought," Aayla chuckled.

There was the sounds of a throat being cleared from the top of the ramp coming down from the _Sleight of Hand._ The small group turned their heads towards the sound to see Bane framed in the doorway, watching the proceedings with a slight curl to his jaw.

"Forgive me," Bane said, without sounding like he really wanted forgiveness. "But I don't really go in for the mushy stuff like this."

There were the sounds of blaster rifles being cocked from all around the hangar, as several of the clones reacted almost instinctively to seeing a dangerous criminal. Many of them raised their firearms and pointed them at the Duros, who didn't bat an eyelid. Nobody actually pulled the trigger, but it was clear to see that they were tempted.

"Stand down, men," Aayla said, holding up and arm to steady them. "Anyone who lets off a shot unless instructed to is liable to be court-marshalled. Bane is, for the foreseeable future, our ally, and I will not have our allies being shot."

The clones obeyed, albeit somewhat reluctantly. Commander Bly walked over. "Good to see you back, General. And in one piece too. We were all getting pretty worried."

"Thank you, Bly," Aayla smiled. "I appreciate your concern." She paused for a moment and then added, "And, I never did get to thank you for it but, I appreciate that you and your fellow clones came back for me on that listening post. And though I should probably be angry that you disobeyed my orders – the fact that you did actually makes it a more touching gesture. Thank you, Bly."

Bly looked extremely awkward, and it was plain to see that he was out of his comfort zone by quite some distance. "There's... no need for thanks, General. I was just doing my duty."

Aayla raised an eyebrow. "I thought doing that would mean that you would do what I told you to do."

"Not my duty to the Republic," Bly shook his head. "My duty as a human being... and... and a friend."

Aayla smiled. "To coin a phrase, or rather, an Earth-ism – you da man, Bly."

Terriermon fell off Chuchi's shoulder with laughter. Renamon sighed and picked him up again and Aayla noted that she was still keeping one eye on Bane at all times. The other eye was regarding the elbow of her sleeveless arm. Aayla glanced down at it and could see the faint traces of rope burn against her blue skin.

_Say nothing,_ Aayla told her in her mind. Renamon frowned, but did as she was told. The Twi'lek turned back to Bane as the Duros strode down the ramp. "Forgive us for that little piece of extra mushy stuff, Bane," she said. "Welcome to the _Intrepid._"

"The blasters pointed in my general direction aren't doing a good job of making me feel welcome," replied the Bounty Hunter. "But I suppose I'll let it slide, considering I am now thirty-million credits richer than I was before I abducted you and began this whole thing. Now, I believe that you wanted me to discuss things with your friends here." He turned to the Digimon and tipped his hat. "A pleasure to see all three of you in person again. I see you've recovered slightly, Foxy."

Renamon glared, but said nothing, her natural mistrust of him overpowered by her faith in Aayla's decisions.

"As for you, bunny," Bane indicated Terriermon next, who had a carefully neutral expression now. "I guess I owe you thanks for destroying Teska way back on Behpour. I saw you in action. Quite the show. I don't usually look forward to working with others, but this time I think I'll make an exception."

"Yeah," Terriermon said, guardedly. "And always remember, there's still plenty of what happened to Teska left over and more if you try something."

Bane chuckled. "I'll behave," he promised. He then regarded Lopmon for a few moments, but he'd only glimpsed her in passing and so had nothing to say to her. His gaze then shifted to the Tamers. He was about to ask what the three of them were doing here, and if they were Padawans or something, but then his eyes fixed on Suzie, who looked like she wanted to hide but was boldly standing in front of Henry and Rika.

"Hold on," he muttered. "I know you. You're the little girl that got in my way on Makem Te, when I was trying to claim a Bounty. What are you doing here?"

Suzie scowled at him and said, "I help the Republic. I told you that ages ago, but you didn't believe me. My partner is Lopmon, and she could kick your ass if she wanted to."

"Well, you're as mouthy as I remember," Bane observed. "Which one of you is Lopmon?"

"That would be me," the brown bunny in question said, stepping up beside her partner. "Look, Mister Bane. I'm going to be up front about all of this. I don't know if we can trust you or not anymore than Renamon or Terriermon here, and trust me, I know _exactly_ what they are thinking. But, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt – anything to help us track down Sidious once and for all. But, I should point out, if you EVER point a blaster at my partner again, or any other member of my family, I'll make you wish I had been nearby on Makem Te when you threatened Suzie the first time."

"I'm sensing a lot of hostility," Bane said, after a few moments. "And I'm still not feeling all that welcome."

"There could be a reason for that," Bly said. "Sir, are you sure that letting this sleemo in on what we're planning to do is a good idea? I don't trust him."

"I don't expect anyone to completely trust him," Aayla said. "It's a wise way to think, especially considering how we've turned him against one employer already. Even _I_ am willing to concede that this could be turned around quite easily if things go wrong. But, I believe that, while Bane here may use underhanded techniques to get what he wants, he _is_ fair when it comes to money. Provided Sidious doesn't offer him a higher amount than what we've given him already, I think he'll carry out the tasks we've set him to the letter."

"Got that right," Bane sneered. "I didn't build up such a reputation for bailing out on deals, clone. I admit I am unfair, I am underhanded, I am a right greedy bastard, but I always complete my part of the deal. You can count on it. I _will_ find out who Sidious is, and I won't breathe a word of you Digimon to anyone."

"Point for you, Bane," Renamon murmured.

"Yeah, but still," Rika muttered. "If he just goes off to do his own thing then we won't know if he turns on us until it's too late, will we? That's how we're trying to catch Sidious out. I do not want to be caught in the same trap."

"Yes, well, I'm glad you pointed that out actually, Rika," said Aayla. "And you should remember something. We have something that Sidious doesn't have. We have such strong bonds that we have forged links between our minds. We are all connected and able to share information with the click of our fingers as long as we're close enough to one another." She paused, and said, "However, the distance rule doesn't apply to two of us."

Terriermon and Renamon glanced at each other. They both thought they knew where this was heading.

"Bane," Aayla said. "I have another request to make of you. I would like it if you allowed yourself to be accompanied by one Digimon. You may find their help invaluable, and they will help _us_ feel more secure because Terriermon and Renamon share a mind link so strong that they know what the other one is doing at all times." Aayla turned to the others and said, "Either one of you feeling up to it?"

Terriermon and Renamon both regarded Bane for a moment, before the latter said, "I'll do it. I'm more adept at stealth missions than Terriermon anyway."

"I'm not arguing," Terriermon agreed. "And I take it that you want me to stay with you so that we can provide an instant message system, Aayla."

The Twi'lek nodded. "If possible. I'll be required to lie low for a while to ensure Sidious doesn't suspect anything. He'll have to believe I'm dead. You sure you can cope with that, Terriermon?"

"Ordinarily, probably not," Terriermon confessed. "But these are some quite extreme circumstances, aren't they? I'll manage."

Aayla smiled, then said, "How about it Bane? You willing to take Renamon on board?"

"Why not," Bane folded his arms. "I'm sure I can get used to her company. Who knows, we might even hit it off."

"Not likely," Renamon growled.

"What about me?" Rika asked. "Should I not go with Renamon? She _is_ my partner."

"It _will_ be dangerous," Aayla pointed out. "We don't have a clue how powerful Sidious might be."

"All the more reason for me to go," Rika said. "Renamon might need my power if..."

"I don't think so," Bane's voice lowered to a semi-dangerous one. "I will not have an adolescent and untrained girl traipsing around after me. The fox I can handle, but the girl is not coming with me."

"I didn't think I would be saying this so soon, or at all, but I agree with Bane," Renamon said. "I'm sorry, Rika, but this isn't a power mission. It's a stealth one, and it'll be easier to pull off if you weren't there. Besides, we might need to make a quick getaway if things don't go as planned."

Rika's fists clenched, but she understood Renamon's logic and said, "Fine, but if you get hurt while I'm not there, then I won't spare your face this time."

Renamon smirked. "I'm counting on it."

"Well then," Bane said, stepping towards Renamon. "It looks like you and I will be working together this time, Foxy. I'm sure I can make great use of your skills."

"I'll thank you not to think of me as your subordinate," Renamon fixed her eyes with his. "I'm a colleague. I don't take orders from you. The only one who I'll obey is Aayla. And you'd do well to remember that she will know what's happening almost the moment I know as long as she sticks near Terriermon."

"And I plan of sticking to her like a limpet," Terriermon added. "Literally if need be."

"Oh, I am aware of that... Renamon," Bane replied. "But since we're going to be working with me, you're going to have to keep up. You reckon you can do that?" He stuck out one long-fingered, bony hand to the fox, who regarded it suspiciously. That had been the hand that grabbed her tail before she got electrocuted.

Nevertheless, she sniffed and said, "I could ask you the same question," and she grabbed Bane's hand with her paw and shook it, both of them gripping a bit harder than necessary and neither of them flinching.

But, both of them were surprised when another furry paw suddenly descended on both their hands. They both looked up to see Chewbacca, who had been standing nearby but silent throughout the entire conversation. The Wookiee growled and then said, "Ah rroo aooooo. Scwo ohrawhao aooo acwoanak."

Lopmon raised her brows. "Really, Chewie? You want to go with them?"

Chewbacca nodded firmly and locked eyes with Renamon. The fox stared back. She internally confessed that she hadn't really thought about what Chewbacca might be feeling about this whole situation. She'd been more absorbed in her own anger and self-pity at the time, but she remembered that Bane had electrocuted the Wookiee into unconsciousness as well as herself, though he had put up less of a fight due to being mostly drugged.

Renamon felt a new kinship with Chewbacca at the moment. Perhaps Chewie was also feeling guilty about letting Bane get away. Perhaps he thought by going with her, he could somehow atone for that and help keep an eye on the double-dealing Duros. Perhaps he wanted to do it because he wanted to be involved in any good repercussion of his own failure. Whatever the reason, Renamon felt grateful towards him. Chewbacca had even greater strength than she did in her present form. Having him along would definitely make her feel better.

"Well, while I didn't see this coming, I have no objection to it," Aayla smiled. "How about you Bane? Could you consent to have a Wookiee along for the ride?"

Bane seemed to remember the close encounter he'd had with said Wookiee earlier on, as it took him almost no time to reply. "I don't see why not, as long as he doesn't give us away."

"You needn't worry about that," Barriss assured him. "For such a large being, Chewbacca is surprisingly swift and stealthy. And nimble – he was able to run around on top of a rampaging Zillo Beast. And you might be able to use his strength as well, _and_ he's good with machines."

Rika nodded in agreement. Having Chewbacca going with Renamon definitely made her feel better. The Wookiee was almost a perfect candidate for this. Bane seemed to think so to, because he said, "Welcome aboard then. But nobody else. Having two extra passengers is usually more than I take anyway. Speaking of which, Todo – get out here!"

The face of Todo 360 peered around the doorframe of Bane's ship. "Oh goodie," he said dryly. "We get to work with two beings who could crush me to a pulp. I'm so excited."

"Momentai, little guy," Terriermon said, soaring over to the droid and settling next to him. "Just don't tick either of them off and you'll be fine. And both of them are surprisingly hard to tick off. Of course, when you do tick them off, they go all out, but still..."

"Fantastic," murmured Todo. Then he paused and said, "What's Momentai?"

"On second thoughts," Terriermon murmured. "Renamon, if he uses that word again, can you crush him?"

"Momentai," Renamon said.

"I think you can take that as a no," Lopmon observed.

As conversation began to bloom, Chuchi carefully regarded the new trio – Cad Bane, Renamon and Chewbacca. There was definitely still a tense atmosphere between them, but Chuchi could help but smile. She might not like Bane, but she to admit that he combined with the other two was a formidable team. Sidious wasn't going to like this at all. And she was glad she had got to play a part in this.

Her and Aayla's gamble had paid off so far.

Could it go the rest of the way?

* * *

Well, there you have it. The cycle is complete, and Bane's found himself on the opposite side of the board game. I can assure you though, he's not going to be getting involved in group hugs instantly because he's working with them. The next arc is set to remain fraught with tension, and not least because there will be two storylines going on. The hunt for Sidious will only take up half of the next arc, but while Aayla might have to lay low, she's not going to be idle. She and the others will have their own job to do, and we get to see Anakin and Ahsoka in action once again. They were mostly absent from the last two arcs, but now they'll be back with a vengeance.

Plus, an old character will be reintroduced in the next arc. An old young character. And by the way, **Forcystus5**, while we're on that subject – you were absolutely and one-hundred percent right.

Speaking of characters, a new one will be introduced in the next chapter, which is an Impmon one. His role in this story will be minor, but I am planning to use him in future ones.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Quite a biggie coming up for Impmon. He's long wondered what will become of him thanks to all these trials, and now the angels have informed him of the next prophecy, which revolves around him. Impmon gets a vague peek into the future, but will he like what he sees?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 140 : The Hall of Prophecy**


	140. The Hall of Prophecy

Hello everybody. Sorry that this chapter took longer than I was expecting, but I had a sudden trip to London to see my relatives sprung upon me that I was meant to be told about several days before I was, so I couldn't do any writing for a while. And then I fell ill, which didn't help, but I carried on writing regardless, so I hope the chapter isn't affected. Anyway, for anybody that watches Xros Wars, a surprise character from the series will be cropping up in this chapter. Not the exact same Digimon of course, but the same species. Hope you enjoy.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 140:- The Hall of Prophecy**

* * *

After Ophanimon dropped the figurative bombshell about the fact that the next Great Prophecy was in motion, Impmon was, quite understandably, left completely dumbfounded. His innards felt like they were slowly freezing over and his brain seemed to have stopped functioning. His mind had still been on the vision of his friends that he'd seen in the mirror, but it was now wrenched back to his own situation. Quite harshly too.

He was dimly aware of Lilamon saying, "You probably could have broken that to him a little more gently than that, you know?"

"True enough," said Seraphimon. "But we felt that it would be better for him to gain all the information we have as quickly as possible, instead of stringing it out. And he deserves a right to know after all that he's been through."

Impmon still felt like he'd been suddenly paralysed. A great prophecy? About him? Wow. Just... wow. Prophecies were like the ultimate promise – the word of Fanglongmon himself, the future etched in stone. And they were always on a truly massive scale. The last prophecy that Impmon had heard about had been the only thing that had saved the Human World from Ogudomon, once the damn thing had been figured out.

And now, there was one about him.

It was almost unbelievable. More so than finding out that you used to be a warrior of heaven, even if the only thing you could remember was that you used to run around and cause senseless death and destruction just because you liked it.

He couldn't be entirely sure what he was supposed to think at this point in time, and his mind began to conjure possible futures for him already. To his knowledge, he'd never been included in something as mind-bogglingly huge as a prophecy before. He felt equal amounts of anxiety and excitement begin to creep into him, once the feeling of shock began to ebb.

On one level, Impmon was desperate to get a look at this prophecy. Perhaps it could tell him what it was that he needed to do to put an end to all the madness and the suffering and the evil that GranDracmon was spreading everywhere he went, and perhaps find a way to solve his many other problems as well. How could he _not _take a look at what his future might entail when so much seemed to hinge of his actions. Ophanimon had even said that the prophecy revolved around him. This was a huge deal.

But on another level, perhaps the higher level, Impmon was very, _very_ apprehensive about taking a glimpse into his future. He'd always thought of a prophecy as being a definitive. Whatever it said _would_ happen in the future, regardless of whatever anyone did to stop it. And that scared him. A lot. What if he enquired about said prophecy and he discovered that it involved something that he definitely did not want to hear? Would there be a way around it? Would he be able to stop it? Would he live in fear for some time to come, wondering if what he had heard would come to pass and when? Not great options for any reason.

His mind drifted to the last prophecy he had seen take place – the only one that he knew about. That had been a very short poem-like piece that had confused everybody, even the smarter people, for some time, until they gained a few extra facts that made them able to make sense of it all. Impmon would be the first to admit that he'd never been great with words or riddles or puzzles. Perhaps this new prophecy would be something similar, and if he read it, he might end up bashing his head against walls for hours trying to figure out what the hell it meant.

Or, it might be crystal clear and show Impmon the way.

There were so many questions. Many of them made Impmon want to see it more, and many of them had the opposite effect. Impmon's mind was a whirl of two emotions conflicting with each other. Should he, or should he not? Did he _really_ want to know what the future entailed. He always wanted to know how a movie ended in advance, but this was different. This was life. This was _him._ Somehow he thought that a couple of spoilers on his life wouldn't be so satisfying. Especially since movies normally ended quite well, whereas life was not like that.

And then there was the part of Impmon's brain that was still reeling with that feeling of awe, which seemed to be compelling him to look. And, in the end, Impmon felt he had to obey that feeling. Something as large as a prophecy about him – he couldn't just walk away from it. The agony of not knowing might well kill him. Figuratively. Maybe.

"Did you hear that, Impmon?" Diatrymon asked, jolting the Rookie partially out of his internal argument. "A Prophecy about you? And a Great Prophecy no less. They might have to start referring to you as part of the Prophecy Quartet, once the current Trio finally return from wherever they were taken."

Impmon made a vague attempt at a smile, but it was difficult to summon one. His heart wasn't really in it. The overwhelming elation he had been feeling upon arriving in the Heavens, and learning that he had actually used to live here, had all vanished now, and been replaced by a gnawing sensation in his gut. "Yeah, it's cool, alright."

"It's certainly amazing," Wingdramon said from where he was hovering, his wing-tips brushing either side of the large corridor outside the window. "I always heard it was a great honour to be included or mentioned in a prophecy. And who knows? Perhaps this Prophecy would provide you with what you need."

"Maybe," Impmon shrugged. "I'll be honest and say I don't have a lot of confidence in it. The last Prophecy was... a piece of crap, really. Uh, no offense," he added hastily, wondering if he'd incurred the wrath of the three large angel Digimon standing by him.

"None taken," Magnadramon replied. "To be frank, we all thought it could have been better too. Especially when we learnt what in the name of Fanglongmon it meant."

"You didn't know?" Calumon frowned. "But I thought that you angels knew everything."

"Oh no," Ophanimon shook her head. "Not everything, not by a long way. The future is as shrouded to us as it is to everybody else. Only Fanglongmon and Anubimon know the full extent of what might be, and even they don't know exactly what will happen. That's why prophecies are usually so vague – there are infinite numbers of possibilities as to who the future will unfold, and, the gods know what all those possibilities are, but not which one will be the one that happens. Usually, only the most definite parts are included in the prophecy, such as who will be involved and the ultimate ending and everything else is left blank."

"And even those definite parts are usually vague," Seraphimon agreed. "Nobody is ever mentioned by name in a Prophecy, though sometimes it's quite obvious who is being spoken about."

"And sometimes it isn't," Magnadramon added sourly. "The last one only indicated that three beings would be needed to stop Ogudomon. It never said who they would be. In fact, this one says something pretty similar close to the end..."

"Please, sister," Ophanimon raised a hand. "Let us not get ahead of ourselves. Let us first ask, would you like to see the prophecy, Impmon. You might find it... most enlightening."

The small purple Rookie immediately constructed a mask and grinned brightly, pounding his chest with one fist, just above the yellow, grinning face painted on his torso, and said, "Hell yes. I came all this way to find some answers and I sure as heck am going to get them. So, what is it?"

"Follow us," Magnadramon wheeled around in the air, her serpentine body twisting in the giant corridor with ease. "We shall take you to the Hall of Prophecy, where you can read it for yourself."

Impmon quickly hurried along after the three angels, and missed the look of concern that flashed between all of the others. All four of them had seen how Impmon had seemed hesitant before he suddenly claimed he wanted to know as if there was never any doubt. Impmon wasn't fooling any of them, not even Calumon.

"I hope this Prophecy has some good news," Lilamon murmured as they followed the group through the corridor. "Like perhaps, that Impmon will be reinstated as a warrior of heaven or something. And his Tamers can come and live with him."

"Somehow I highly doubt that'll be the case," Wingdramon replied quietly. "And I think he knows that too."

"We can't be sure," Diatrymon whispered. "We don't know anything about it. Let's just try and keep out hopes up."

"Yes, for his sake," Lilamon responded. "That poor guy's had enough suffering. He doesn't need any more."

* * *

The group quickly made their way through the temple of Fanglongmon. The majority of the corridors they passed through were absolutely humongous, although there were not actually that many of them that were large enough for something the size of the Draconic God to pass through. Maybe that was because Fanglongmon spent the majority of his time sleeping, in order to keep his evil side in check, so he had little need for access to every part of his Temple. Still, the corridors were massive, too massive just for use by the angels. Impmon wondered what else traversed these brightly lit halls.

Eventually, the three angels led the five adventurers to a grand-looking door at the end of one of the bigger corridors. Compared to the rest of the Temple, the door was not ornate and brightly lit or covered in carvings or sculptures. It appeared to be bathed in shadow, and there appeared to be mist coming from somewhere, creating a blanket-like underlayer. The door itself was stone, and pitch-black, something like obsidian.

"Well, this isn't the most pleasant-looking of places," Impmon observed. "You sure we haven't accidentally strayed into a hell-like area?"

"No," Seraphimon turned to face them. "The darkness is symbolic, like pretty much everything else around here. This is the Hall of Prophecy, which contains every prophecy ever made. The darkness represents the dark recesses of the future, hidden to all but a select few. There are very few places where the citizens of the Celestial Heavens are prohibited from entering. This is one of them. You are about to see something that few have ever set eyes on."

"I'm not entirely sure I want to," Calumon muttered, his ears retracting as he hid partially behind one of Diatrymon's metallic legs.

"It won't harm you," Ophanimon ensured them. "Come, the answers you seek reside within this room."

Ophanimon raised a hand to touch the door, which seemed to melt out of existence at her touch, despite it apparently being made of rock. She hovered inside, followed by the other three angels. Impmon began to feel slightly nervous, and he glanced to the others, who were all waiting on his word. "Ladies first?" he offered, gesturing for Lilamon to go forward.

To his surprise, Lilamon did so, and as she hovered over him, she began to glow, activating her bioluminescent fairy light and illuminating the dark room within, joining her bright aura with the faint light being given off by all three angels. The others followed her inside, and beheld a large room with seemingly nothing inside it except some sort of pedestal right in the centre. It was dark and they could see little, but the light from the three angels suddenly intensified, causing Lilamon to do the same.

It was then that they spotted that all of the walls were made of stone, much like the door. And Impmon's stomach almost dropped to his feet when he saw that there were numerous words etched into the walls all around the room, structured in verse and at seemingly random heights and lengths. This was almost what he'd been afraid of. The fact that the words here were literally carved in stone seemed to heighten the metaphorical sense of the phrase as well.

Apart from the pedestal and the words all over the walls, there was nothing else in the room.

No, wait, there was.

A figure stepped out of the corner. A figure that Impmon had seen only once before, a long time ago and on a laptop screen that had been connected to Lopmon at the time. "Hey, I know you," he cried, pointing at the Digimon, who seemed to be some kind of bird-man warrior, with a visor over his eyes beneath a hawk-like helm, an armoured chest, a shield shaped like a broad feather strapped to one arm, with a golden hawk perched on his other one. "You're that messenger guy – Valkyrimon, isn't it? The one who delivered the last prophecy to the Sovereigns."

The Mega Digimon nodded. "Das ist korrekt," he replied, in a rather heavy German accent. "Ich bin sehr pleased to make your bekannte once again, Impmon."

"My what?" Impmon frowned, his attention taken away from the prophecies inscribed all over the walls to the newcomer and his strange accent, mixed in with seemingly random words in the German language.

Valkyrimon sighed. "Your bekannte. It means, in Englisch, your acquaintance. Please accept my Entshulidigung. Often, Ich forget that not everybody Ich meet does not understand the language in which Ich would naturally sprechen."

"I'm going to hazard a guess and say that you asked us to accept your apologies?" Impmon asked.

"Ja," nodded Valkyrimon. "Du bist korrekt once again."

"Well, you might want to try and do a better job of remembering that little fact, Hawkman," Impmon reprimanded him. "If it hadn't been for the Braniac kid, Henry, following some wild hunch and discovering that you spoke like that, we probably never have figured out the last prophecy. Power of dry, drei, whatever," he snorted.

Valkyrimon made no move to indicate annoyance, but he might have rolled his eyes. Since they were shielded by a visor, it was difficult to be sure. "Ich do get a lot of belästigung for that last prophecy. The numbers really do catch me out almost every time. Sie sind so inconsequential, Ich do not really think of them."

"Nice to know," Impmon murmured. "Anyway, what are you doing in here then?"

"Waiting for du, of course," Valkyrimon responded. "Ich was informed about zwei Stunde ago that you were on your way. As Ich bin the one who schrieben the prophecies, Ich should be the one who shows them to du. Do you not agree?"

"You write the prophecies?" Diatrymon asked, taking a wild guess as to what "schrieben" meant. "I thought it was Fanglongmon that did that."

Valkyrimon shook his head. "Nein," he said.

"Nine?" Lilamon asked. "Yes, there are nine of us here. Well done."

Valkyrimon looked slightly annoyed, while the three angel Digimon standing around him seemed to chuckle quietly at Lilamon's misunderstanding. "Not nine. Nein. Ich bin saying 'no.'" If Ich wanted to use the word for the number, Ich would sprechen the word 'neun.'"

"But they sound almost exactly the same," Lilamon blinked.

Valkyrimon was almost fuming after that sentence, and even Seraphimon had to mouth a hand to his helmet in an attempt to disguise his mirth. "Zäh!" he cried. "Du better get used to it, weil that is what Ich say. Now, do you want to hear the Prophecy, or not?"

"It's not going to be a long-string of words where you will need to translate every other word, is it?" Impmon asked. "Because that would be rather anti-climatic."

"Nein," Valkyrimon said again, and Lilamon had to restrain herself from saying something about his choice of words again. "I was most sorgfältig when it came to this particular prophecy. Mein Lord Fanglongmon shows me images that help me to understand how to schrieben it. I created it free of words in a language, du might not understand. Of course, the meaning is still unclear. Even Ich do not understand what it means. Not fully, anyway."

"Alright then," Impmon replied. "So, where is this little verse then? Let's get a glimpse at it?"

"It is not klein," Valkyrimon responded. "For a prophecy, it is sehr läng. Ich am actually rather proud of it, so Ich would appreciate it if you respected that, while Lesen."

"Lesen?" Wingdramon asked.

"Reading," Magnadramon murmured to him, and the dragon nodded in understanding.

Meanwhile, Valkyrimon had turned around and had passed his hand slowly over the pedestal. Now that Impmon could see it more clearly, it was carved to resemble a hand reaching up from the ground, palm upwards. As Valkyrimon passed his hand over the other one, a nearby set of words on the wall glowed slightly, before they appeared over the hand, hovering in the air like some kind of holograph. The piece was only four lines long and read:-

"The power of drei,  
Shall come on by,  
All acht must die,  
And his rise will be nigh."

"Hate to break it to you, Hawkman," Impmon said, "But that's not..."

"I am aware of that," Valkyrimon said. "This is the last great prophecy, the one du and deine Freunden experienced against Ogudomon some time ago. Needless to say, Ich did not get a lot to go on for this ein."

"Well, at least the whole three-drei thing is clearer when its written down," Impmon murmured.

"That is past," Valkyrimon growled. "In this room, we are more besorgt with present and future."

"Alright, alright, sorry," Impmon raised his hands. "Go on."

"When Mein Lord Fanglongmon returned from setting the Menschlich World right, he gave me the next set of images needed to fill out the next prophecy. Ich could see more this time, but still only schnell snatches that somehow make sense when given by Fanglongmon. And this," he waved his hand through the hovering letters and dissipated them. "Is what Ich produced."

A nearby and much larger stretch of writing glowed and replaced the previous prophecy. It was indeed much longer and the large words stretched from floor to ceiling of the enormous room. It also seemed to slant slightly, to make the words nearer the roof easier to read that it would otherwise have been.

Impmon almost looked away, as suddenly his future was played out before him for everyone in the room to see. His gaze drifted from the angels, who appeared to be staring at it gravely, to Valkyrimon, who was watching him, to the others, who were all staring up at the letters. Slowly, unsurely, Impmon dragged his eyes upwards and read the first line. His reading skills were still not the best, but he slowly began to put the words together into something he understood. It was nerve-wracking, and slightly painstaking as he slowly read each line and took it in, absorbing as much information as he could and his brain popping up with possible explanations after almost each word.

The prophecy was eight stanzas long, and this was what it read:-

When the Seven Lords are bested,  
Until only one remains,  
Sole survivor sorely tested,  
Strives to wash off evil stains.

His friends from him shall be taken,  
Whisked off to another world,  
Then his homeland shall be shaken,  
Buried memories unfurled.

He shall flee to save the young ones,  
Guided by the magic man,  
Till his love replaces his guns,  
And he goes where few mon can.

Scale and feather, crystal, flower,  
All shall aid him on his quest,  
Loyal to the darkest hour,  
Fighting through the Demon's Nest.

Through the forest, through the desert,  
Searching for the land above,  
Ascension rewards his effort,  
Decisions follow based on love.

Unable to stop his capture,  
Away from him his spirit torn,  
Friends too late to end his torture,  
Demon's evil is reborn.

Fire and lightning, plant and iron,  
Fight the pitch-black Digi-core,  
Ally upon ally will turn,  
Following the call to war.

Only three can end the evil,  
One of God and one of Fate,  
Struck a deal is with the jackal,  
Once abolished is the hate.

Once Impmon had reached the end of the eight stanzas, he began to feel something strange stirring within him, as if his feet were filling up with some sort of shadow or ink or some other dark substance which began to rise slowly up his body. This was exactly what he had been hoping not to see, and yet there it was, written out in front of him like some giant and irreversible fact.

There were several lines in particular that were making him feel this strange way, as if his very being was tainted with something so foul that he could not wash it away. Had coming to the Celestial Havens not been enough? Had they gone through everything they had been through for nothing?

He could feel the eyes of the others upon him, and he was sure they were thinking the same way. Impmon stared at the ground, waiting for them to back away from him in disgust or fear, and was rather surprised when they did neither. He guessed that they were all simply in shock, and he couldn't blame them.

One particular line kept blaring in his mind – Demon's evil is reborn. Demon's evil is reborn. Demon's evil is reborn. Over and over like some kind of haunting chant or funeral dirge. Had it all really come to this? Everything he'd done, everything he'd sacrificed, just thrown away.

He heard Lilamon speaking, and fixed dully on her. He could hear that the fairy was trying to be cheerful, and that surprised him. She should be terrified of him, and instead she was trying to make him feel better? What was she playing at?

"Well," Lilamon said with forced brightness. "At least we've got some answers now. And the first half of all that has already come to pass. Look at all of that stuff. The angels were right – it does talk about you doesn't it? You're the sole survivor of the Seven Lords, just like it says in the first verse. And you have been trying to make up for your past so it seems to know that you're a good guy."

She trailed off slightly, before subsiding into an uneasy silence. Impmon forced himself to look at the others, and he could see Wingdramon and Diatrymon sharing glances with one another. They were blaming him, he knew it. They were just too polite to do anything about it. Or scared. Or perhaps just annoyed that he had taken them on a quest that seemed to be a complete and utter waste of time.

Impmon slowly turned and walked towards the space where the door had been, walking under Wingdramon as he did so. The dragon moved aside and followed him with his eyes. Nobody spoke until Impmon reached the door, at which point, Wingdramon asked, "Where are you going?"

Impmon stopped just as he raised his foot to step over the threshold of the door and back into the corridor. He was silent for a couple of moments, before he slowly stated, "I, uh... I... I need to be alone for a while. Please don't follow me. I just... need some time to... mull things over."

With that, he stepped over the threshold, and moved away down the corridor. His gait was shuffling and half-bent, as if he had completely lost the will to live, and that concerned all four of his companions. The eight beings left in the Hall of Prophecy watched Impmon leaving until the little Rookie was just a purple dot at the end of the corridor, before he turned and trudged out of sight into a side-passage.

"Shouldn't we follow him?" asked Diatrymon. "Make sure he, you know, doesn't hurt himself or something? He looks pretty low, and I'm afraid that I can't blame him."

"It would be best if we were to leave him be," Magnadramon said, causing everyone to glance around at the three angels. Seraphimon's expression was unknown, obviously, since his helmet obscured his face, but Ophanimon seemed slightly downcast as well, her face below her half-face-helmet frowning sadly. Magnadramon was more easy to read, and she did indeed look quite dejected.

"But Diatrymon is right," Wingdramon protested. "He could hurt himself quite easily, accidentally or deliberately. He wasn't even looking where he was going for one thing. Should we not keep an eye on him?"

"If he wants time alone, we should give it to him," Seraphimon said, in a blunt but solemn tone of voice. "We all knew that his reaction would probably be something like this when we offered to show him the prophecy in the first place."

"Then why did you show it to him at all?" Lilamon asked.

"Because he has the right to know," Seraphimon said. "We did debate it amongst ourselves considerably. Foreknowledge of a prophecy before the events happen can be dangerous, as your actions might make things worse by trying to alter it. But, we decided eventually, that it was for the best. We felt that Impmon had to see it."

"When he's had a chance to think things through," Ophanimon put in. "We shall go to him and remind him that prophecies often have double meanings. The flashes that Fanglongmon shows to Valkyrimon are not enough to paint a very accurate picture. The lines that Impmon finds so heartbreaking might have a different meaning to what we all think of at the first glance."

"Why does Fanglongmon give you only something as vague as that then?" asked Lilamon.

"Who can say?" Seraphimon responded. "Perhaps he knows what the outcome will be if he gives something more concrete, which might be even worse than what happens if he doesn't. Perhaps he knows what Impmon will decide to do now that he knows what he does. Fanglongmon's mind is a mystery to us all, but so far it has not lead us wrong. We can only hope that things will turn out alright."

"Indeed," Wingdramon nodded. "Because it sounds like Impmon's going to be forced back into..."

"We all know what it sounds like, Wingdramon," Lilamon interjected forcefully, as if hearing Wingdramon say it would make it seem more real.

"Um, I don't," Calumon piped up. "I can't read. What does it say?"

The others hesitated for a moment, wondering who should be the one to read it out to the little Catalyst. Eventually, Wingdramon sighed and read through the poem. Calumon's eyes grew wide and he seemed to get smaller, huddling in on himself. "Oh, I hope that doesn't happen," he murmured. "Beelzemon was scary enough when we saw him in that flashback thingie. I hope it doesn't become real."

"None of us do," Magnadramon added. "Impmon may not remember it, but he holds a special place in all of our hearts since he used to be a part of _our_ family. We hate to see him like this, but we can only do so much to help him. For now, we must hope whatever Fanglongmon thought would happen will indeed happen."

There was a pause before Calumon suddenly said, "Well, at least it seems to end well," as perkily as he could. But none of the others agreed. Considering it sounded like Beelzemon would turn evil again despite all their efforts to keep that from happening, that ending could mean multiple things, but the most prominent sounding explanation was that someone would have to kill Beelzemon, and that would be far from a happy ending. And Anubimon might not be able to give him a third chance if he went bad again.

"Well," Wingdramon said after a while. "Let's go over what we know so far. As Lilamon said, its obvious that the first stanza indicates that Beelzemon will be the last Demon Lord and that he will try to atone for his sins. What else do we know."

"'His friends from him shall be taken,'" recited Diatrymon. "That's gotta be the Prophecy Trio, right. Somehow, Fanglongmon knew that all this would start after Parallelmon took them away."

"Then GranDracmon attacked him with both brute force and with that hollow-eyed scumbag, MetalPhantomon," continued Lilamon. "That explains the next two lines as well. I'd imagine his home was severely shaken indeed by GranDracmon's forces."

"Then he abandoned the twins to protect them," Diatrymon went on. "Just as it says in the third verse. And the magic man has got to be Wizardmon, hasn't it? He's the one who showed us where we needed to go."

"But I certainly don't understand the next two lines," Wingdramon added. "At what point has his love replaced his guns? The line after that might mean here, but somehow I don't think so."

"Prophecies are not always in the richtig order," Valkyrimon suddenly stated. "It's best to annehmen that those two lines refer to something that happens in the future, perhaps after he finally stops weglaufen, or when he faces down GranDracmon. Ich could, of course, be unrecht. It could be a metaphor for something else. It's beste not to take prophecies too literally."

"Right," Lilamon sighed. "More complications. Just what we needed. But, I do like the next line best. That's got to mean us, hasn't it? I'm the flower, Wingdramon's the scale, and Diatrymon's the feather, which means Calumon must be the crystal," she indicated the red symbol on Calumon's forehead. "Somehow, Fanglongmon knew we would help him."

"Yes," Wingdramon nodded solemnly. "It's a privilege to be recognised by Our Lord."

"It's downright weird, is what it is," Diatrymon muttered. "But, I don't think we've got as far as battling through the Demon's Nest yet, have we?"

"I don't think so," Wingdramon agreed.

"I look forward to it," Lilamon sighed. "Sounds fun. Anyway, the next verse is the cut-off point, isn't it? It looks like it describes out search for the heavens, and the fact that we get here, but then what decisions follow? Whose decisions, what will they be, and why. That line could apply to any of us."

"And the last bits," Wingdramon nodded solemnly. "It hardly bares thinking about. I just hope it's not as literal as it sounds. Could GranDracmon really still be able to capture Impmon? Even here?"

"We don't know for sure," Ophanimon responded. "If Fanglongmon were awake it would be a definite no, but sadly, that is not the case. We don't know the full extent of GranDracmon's capabilities, or those of his minions. The last three verses leave us as lost as you, I'm afraid."

They stared at the words for a few moments more, before Lilamon could take it no more and swept a petalled hand through them, dispersing them into the air. But the words were still in her head, practically burnt into her memory.

_Poor Impmon,_ she thought. _He does not deserve this._

* * *

Impmon wondered what he would have made of his present attitude had he had the chance to look into the future about a year ago. He was pretty sure that that he would have been shocked and slightly dismayed, as well as rather incredulous. There had been a time where he'd been as difficult to put down as Terriermon. But when he got depressed, he really went all out. There was almost no middle ground for him. Either he was a jolly, sarcy prankster, or he was just a lump of data that felt sorry for itself.

He wished dearly that he could revert to the former of those two options, but after what he'd just heard, he doubted he'd ever be that person ever again.

He didn't pay much attention to where he was going. He paused only for a moment when he passed the mirror that had allowed him to see his friends and looked at it. He dearly wished they were with him now, but the prophecy had said they would be taken, and they had been. It had always been meant to happen. He sighed and walked on.

The awe-inspiring shape of Fanglongmon sleeping in the entrance hall of the Temple was only spared a brief glance out of the corner of his eye as he walked right by it. He stepped slowly out through the great Temple doors and out into the grand city beyond. The ancient architecture, which had so mesmerised him before and reminded him of stuff from Greek or Roman pictures he had seen, wasn't even looked at.

Beforehand, he had been given a ride over the buildings by Magnadramon. Now, he was wondering through the streets. The buildings towered above him. Music played from somewhere nearby – possibly a Pucchiemon orchestra. The patterns and colours seemed to change as he walked through the city, but despite the myriad of different forms it took, it all seemed to flow. And yet, Impmon didn't even look at it, so deep into his funk he had fallen.

The other Digimon around him stared at the stranger in their midst as he shuffled past them, staring at his own two feet and not looking up for any reason, even when he almost walked into things. They made no move to stop him though – they merely watched curiously, wondering what he was up to. Impmon ignored the angelic Digimon all around him, and the few technologically based ones as well. He walked right through the legs of a Pegasusmon and didn't notice.

His mind was too fixed on one daunting and inescapable fact.

He didn't know how long he walked for, or how far he travelled, but as he moved, he walked in silence. He walked right through an amphitheatre, interrupting a scene in some sort of play, in which a Nefertimon and a Gargoylemon appeared to be in the middle of an argument. He walked between the two, and all activity paused to watch him go. What reason could he have to be depressed in the Celestial Heavens?

The residents made no move to stop him though. They weren't sure whether that would constitute interfering with affairs in the world below. Strangers were rare here, and they all recognised someone from below when they saw one.

Eventually, Impmon found himself on the outskirts of the city, standing in front of one of the huge, bright walls that ringed everything in. He finally stopped at this point, and looked up at it. Even at such close range, his eyes didn't hurt, despite the fact his senses were telling him they should. But the amazement of this fact was lost on him, and the only thing Impmon could think about was if there might be something sinister on the other side of this light wall, clawing its way inside to try and reach him.

He dimly remembered Magnadramon's explanation of why Fanglongmon spent so much of his time asleep, due to his good and evil side._ "Light is always able to repel the dark," _she had said. _"But the dark always does creep back in the end."_

Could that be what was going on here? The light walls were holding GranDracmon back for now, but eventually he would sneak his way inside? It was a disturbing thought. _Unable to stop his capture,_ the prophecy had said. GranDracmon _was_ going to get him eventually. For how long could Impmon stay free?

Impmon sighed and turned away from the wall. He dimly noticed a large gold statue nearby of some random Digimon, reared up on back legs and with large forearms and a very big head staring straight ahead. Impmon didn't bother taking in which Digimon it was, but he decided he wanted a place to sit in solitude, so he automatically started moving forwards. He reached the statue and began to clamber his way up the side, hauling himself up hand over hand until he was standing on the spacious head.

Then he sat, and stared blankly over the city and the palaces beyond, following the statue's peripheral vision with his own eyes. It all looked so peaceful and majestic here. And here he was, a little ball of evil just waiting to be exploited and grown until he was the merciless killing machine he had once been.

_Demon's evil is reborn. Demon's evil is reborn. Demon's evil is reborn._

The phrase was still rolling round and round in his head, and Impmon found himself clutching it with one hand. The other hand was still holding Ai and Mako's purple-rimmed D-Arc, and now he took the opportunity to stare at it and remember times gone by, where he could go the park with the twins and play tag with them, and Guilmon and the others. Often Suzie would hang around with them, and that meant Lopmon would be there as well. But all of that had now gone as quickly as a chocolate bar put in front of Terriermon.

Impmon found his voice again, and he murmured, "I'm sorry, guys," to the D-Arc in his hand. It was hardly Ai and Mako themselves, but it was the best he could do. "I abandoned you again for nothing. Everything I've been attempting to do since I left you guys again has all been a waste of time. All my attempts to keep GranDracmon away from me are fruitless. All I've done is drag my friends through trials they didn't have to go through, caused you to go on a wild goose chase to find me and delayed the inevitable. It's only a matter of time now. I wish I could spend that time with you."

The D-Arc, of course, made no reply. Impmon sighed and said, "I'm not worthy to be your partner. I'm a Demon Lord, and that's all that I will ever be."

He wished that he'd never made the decision to descend from the heavens as the angels had said that he had. He'd only brought pain and suffering to everyone he came across. That's all he was really. A brat who had anger issues, a ruthless Demon with no morals and a lust for data, and a failure who killed the partner of a young girl and then couldn't save her when she needed him. He'd tried to atone for killing Leomon then, and he'd failed. He'd tried to atone for all his other sins over the last few months, and he was destined to fail again.

It was the story of his life.

His grip on the D-Arc slackened and the small white device fell from his grasp and thudded onto the head of the golden statue with a loud thunk. The flat head meant that it stayed there next to him, but Impmon couldn't look at it. He just buried his face in his hands again.

He was also, understandably, completely caught off guard when there was a rumbling sound and the entire golden statue that he was sitting on shifted slightly. Impmon threw his hands out and steadied himself, alarm spreading through him immediately as everything beneath him began to move. The D-Arc that he had dropped began to slide towards the edge as the head tilted slightly, and Impmon immediately made a grab for it, seizing it in one hand just as it fell over the side.

From this new angle, he could see the side of the statue's head. A large, red eye rolled upwards to look at him, and a deep voice that seemed to echo in a strange way said, "Hello, stranger. You know, I don't particularly mind being used as some kind of seat, but next time I feel it would be polite to ask."

Impmon pulled himself back up and then quickly leapt off the end of the huge statue. He plummeted some distance, but the Rookie was good at jumping and he hit the ground smoothly enough, rolling to minimise the shock of impact, and then he turned around to look at what he had previously thought to be a statue, but he now realised was just a very big Digimon.

Like the wall behind it, the giant Digimon seemed to emanate a golden glow that made it shine like it had been thoroughly waxed for several days. It had an unusual shape to it – it's large forelimbs, which were currently being held in the air, were bulky and cuboid in appearance. The feet on the floor looked the same way, and a long tail seemed to stretch out behind the body. The body itself was thicker than the trunk of a sequoia tree. But it was its head that really made it look strange. The jaws were huge, making up about two thirds of the whole head. It resembled something like a giant alligator or crocodile, and it was currently looking down at him, its red eyes fixed on his comparatively much smaller form.

_Okay,_ Impmon thought. _A huge golden alligator that lives in the Heavens. I can honestly say that I did not see that coming._

"This is funny," the huge alligator Digimon said. His mouth didn't open when he spoke, and that might have been why his voice had an echo – his mouth was so cavernous that it produced its own acoustics. "I get the strangest feeling that we have met before, and yet I do not recognise your form. What is your name, small one?"

"Uh..." Impmon said, falteringly. "Impmon. My name is Impmon."

The red eyes seemed to twinkle more than the towering body, which was about two-thirds as tall as MegaGargomon. Throw in the tail and he was longer than Terriermon's Mega Form was tall. "Ah, yes," the alligator nodded in confirmation. "The Rookie form of one-time warrior of Heaven, Beelzemon. I've been hearing many things about you recently. I believe you've been through some tough trials recently."

"Yeah, you could say that," Impmon sighed. Then he frowned and said, "Why am I telling you that, anyway? Who are you? I don't remember coming across any Digimon that looks like you."

"Well, I am not surprised," the alligator said. "As I am currently the only one of my kind in existence, and your memories of your time in the Heavens have been wiped. But believe me, I know who you are. I used to be the joint leader of the technological Digimon that live in the Heavens, with your friend MegaGargomon, until he left for the world below and I became the sole leader."

"Wait, you're technological?" Impmon frowned, taking in the glowing body again. "You look more like some kind of God Digimon to me."

The alligator chuckled. "That would be because I am both, young one. Allow me to demonstrate." And, suddenly, he lowered himself down onto all fours and moved forwards. As he got off the pedestal on which he had been standing, his golden glow immediately vanished, and his body turned blue in various places, while every part of him that was covered in armour turned brown. His features became easier to pick out – his form seemed to be made mostly of angles and straight lines instead of curves and bends that most Digimon had, including large ridges down his tail. It was now obviously that he was a technological Digimon, and a very powerful one too. Impmon had been unable to see his back before, but now he could see that it was equipped with a pair of enormous missile launchers, and his tail also seemed to have a thick, hooked weapon at the tip. His feet seemed to be made up to three large toes at the front, while the rest of them were comprised of the tracks of a tank. Even on all fours, he still loomed over Impmon like a mighty Leviathan.

"Ah," said Impmon. "Yeah, now I can see the difference."

The alligator chuckled, which sounded odd thanks to the slight echoes that came with it. "Indeed," he said. "I am both a holy and a scientific Digimon."

"Why were you gold when on that pedestal?" Impmon asked. "Does it have some kind of weird power."

"No, nothing like that. I merely turn into my more divine state when I am in slumber or meditation. This is my natural form. You wanted to know who I am, Impmon. Well, I am known as the Guardian of Strong Love by many people, but you can call me Deckerdramon."

"Deckerdramon," Impmon said, slowly. "I'm still not remembering you at all."

"I did not expect you to," Deckerdramon answered. "However, now that we have been introduced to one another, I feel obliged to ask why you decided to use me as a seat. I would have thought a simple chair in one of the palaces would have made a better substitute than me."

Impmon's attention from the damning words of the prophecy had been taken away with the discovery that his seat was alive. Now it all came back to him, and he looked down at the D-Arc in his hand once more and felt his grip tighten around it. He was struggling to keep his eyes from watering, but the sheer sense of doom and dread that was enveloping him made that impossible, so he just tried to hide it from Deckerdramon.

It didn't work.

"I do not need to use my senses to detect that you are upset," the huge alligator said. "If you wish, you can tell me what it is that is bothering you and I will do my best to help."

"You needn't bother," Impmon sighed, turning away from Deckerdramon's enormous form. "Nobody can help me. And I know people might say that a lot but this time I have proof of it. Nobody can stop what is to come, no matter how hard they try."

Deckerdramon was silent for a few seconds, before he said, "I am guessing that this has something to do with the Great Prophecy."

"You know?" Impmon asked, blinking.

"Not entirely," Deckerdramon responded. "I merely know that there is one and that it revolves around Beelzemon, or in this case, yourself. I do not know what it entails. However, I have seen many other people fall into a state like your own when they believe something is going to happen in the future. And very often, the situation is different to what they imagine. Now, tell me what you know, and I shall give you some of my own advice. It may help to ease your pain."

"I don't really want to talk about it," Impmon sighed.

Deckerdramon's eyes narrowed slightly and he said, "Bottling up your problems within yourself will only make things worse. I can feel your emotions skyrocketing, and I wish to know why. Please, tell me everything."

Impmon sighed, but he found himself talking slowly and so quietly that he wondered if Deckerdramon could even hear him, but the alligator-like Digimon made no request for him to speak up, nor did he interrupt for clarification on any point. He merely stared down at the little Rookie throughout the whole conversation, as Impmon slowly and haltingly spoke of everything that had happened to him since his nightmare/flashbacks had began, right up until he learnt of the prophecy within Fanglongmon's palace.

"And, that's when I when wandering through the city until I came across you," he finished. "That's the story of Impmon. So, what pearls of wisdom do you have to offer me?"

Deckerdramon didn't respond for several moments, and then he moved, rolling forward on his wheeltrack feet until he was beside Impmon and staring out across the Heavens the stretched out in front of him. "Do you know why I spend the majority of my time up here, Impmon?" he asked. "Instead of going down and mingling with the other residents of the Heavens?"

Impmon frowned and turned to look at the Heavens, taking in once again the beauty and grandness that seemed to practically hurl itself in his face. He could see the indistinct shapes of the various Digimon from this point, as he and Deckerdramon were standing on a rise that overlooked the heavens, allowing them to see just about all of it. "The view?" he guessed, wondering what Deckerdramon was going on about.

"The view is a perk," Deckerdramon said. "Guess again."

"Because you're too big to fit through the streets?" Impmon supplied.

"The streets are wider than they look," Deckerdramon responded. "No, I spend the majority of my time up here because of the feelings it gives me. Can you sense it?"

Impmon blinked and tried to focus on his senses, but he wasn't particularly feeling anything other than what he normally would, except for the tainted sensation that was still sweeping through him like an electric current. "Uh... no," he said. "Sense what?"

"I am not surprised that you cannot sense it," Deckerdramon replied. "There are very few who can. But you see, I have an extremely strong empathic power – I can detect the emotions of others with ease. And one of the emotions I am able to sense most strongly is love, since I am, after all, the Guardian of Strong Love. Up here, where I can see almost the whole of the Heavens, I can sense all the love of the Digimon down there. And there is a lot of that. The Heavens is a close-knit community, and everyone feels Strong Love for everyone else. Arguments are rare, fights are non-existent. If ever there was a perfect world, this would be the closest thing to it."

"O...kay..." Impmon murmured slowly, completely confused. "But, what does that have to do with me?"

"Everything," Deckerdramon looked down at him by rolling one huge eye until it focused on him. "That was just a little context to help you understand what I am about to say next. The love I feel within you is bigger, stronger and more prominent than almost any other being that I have come across. You represent everything that I am the Guardian of, yet the darkness inside of you is hiding it from your own self."

"Love?" Impmon murmured, bemused. "Stronger in me than in... No, there's got to be a glitch in your being, Gator. I can't possibly have that much love."

"No?" Deckerdramon asked. "What makes you say that?"

"Well, look at all the stuff I did when I was a Demon Lord, and all the stuff I might do in the future. You can hardly say someone with strong love would do those things, can you?"

"I can," Deckerdramon said evenly. "In fact, I know it. Tell me, Impmon. How would you define strong love? What is it that you think I am talking about?"

Impmon paused and his brain seemed to stop. What exactly was love? There were so many possible explanations for it, but Impmon had never really given it a lot of thought before. He'd mulled it over a couple times when he was trying to distinguish what his feelings for Lopmon were, but detail had always eluded him.

"I'm... not sure," he said. "Some kind of very strong attraction to another person?"

Deckerdramon snorted, and smoke spurted out of some small exhaust pipes on his lower jaw. "That is a very narrow view of love, Impmon. In some ways it is correct, but strong love is so much more than that."

"Then how would you define it?" asked Impmon, with a slight challenging tone. He was slightly annoyed that his potential explanation had been dismissed so quickly.

Deckerdramon shut his eyes and said, "Let us go over some examples of where your strong love has been most prominent. You seem to be under the impression that abandoning your two Tamers was a terrible mistake, but do you remember for what reason you did it?"

"Of course," Impmon bristled. "I wanted to protect them from GranDracmon. I thought that if they stayed close to me then there was a chance of them getting hurt. But all it did was break their hearts."

"That is not the point," Deckerdramon responded. "The outcome of your actions is not important in this topic, but the motivation certainly is. Say again, why did you leave them behind."

"Because I cared too much about them to see them get hurt," Impmon snapped.

"Exactly," Deckerdramon said, his eyes opening and revolving down to look at his student once again. "And can you remember how you felt yourself when you were doing it?"

"I felt absolutely devastated," Impmon sighed.

"Yet, you did it anyway," Deckerdramon pointed out. "That is an example of strong love. A Digimon with less strong love than yourself might have stayed with their Tamers and try to protect them because they wouldn't want to put themselves through such heartbreak. There is an element to all of us that allows us to be selfish, yet you ignored your own feelings because your mind was set solely on their safety. Doing something for those you care about despite your own personal feelings is an example of strong love."

Impmon's eyes narrowed slightly as he thought this through, and he realised that Deckerdramon was right. It had been difficult for him after he'd done the deed but while he was deciding to do it he had not thought about himself once.

"Well, that may be," he said. "But that still doesn't explain how a person with this strong love that you claim I have could pull off the atrocities of my Demon Lord days. Surely I wouldn't have been able to do something like that if I had love greater than an angel."

Deckerdramon chuckled dryly. "Oh, I assure you Impmon, even angel Digimon are far from perfect. We all have the ability to go bad, given the right circumstances. You, who were raised by the other Demon Lords, were effectively brought into doing that kind of thing. It was all you knew, and the strong love I sense in you now was long since buried by the other Demon Lords by that stage. The other Demon Lords are truly the evil ones. For instance, were you aware that Lilithmon used to be an Ophanimon?"

"Say what!" Impmon shouted. "She used to be... you're pulling my leg."

"I assure you, I am not," Deckerdramon responded sadly. "It was dark times when the majority of the Demon Lords were created. Daemon is the same actually – he used to be a Seraphimon before everything went horribly wrong and the two of them steeped into darkness. I strongly suspect that Lucemon had something to do with it all. He used to be a part of the heavens too. He seemed like the least likely candidate to turn evil for anyone, yet he did. Of all the Demon Lords, you were the exception. The others fell into darkness of their own free will, delving into things that ensured they crossed the point of no return. It's possible that if Lucemon had got hold of the Digi-Eggs of Cherubimon, MegaGargomon or Sakuyamon, they might have turned out the same way you did."

"No," Impmon cried. "They wouldn't. It's not possible."

"It is," Deckerdramon said gravely. "After all, that's what happened with you. You were a victim of circumstance. My point in explaining all of this to you is that nobody is perfect. Under the right circumstances, anyone can go bad, and I dread to think what you went through under the tutelage of the other Demon Lords. That does not change the fact that you have the strongest love I felt for a long time."

Impmon said nothing, but he had to admit to himself that Deckerdramon's words were helping. He still felt tainted and evil, but the feeling had subsided somewhat now. He had been forced into becoming a Demon Lord, and from the sound of the prophecy, it sounded like he would be forced into it again. It wasn't much of a comfort but it was better than nothing.

"If you want another example of how you contain strong love," Deckerdramon spoke into the silence. "Should I remind you of how you threw yourself in front of a very powerful attack from your former ally, Darkdramon, to save your friends from taking it, even though you knew that it was likely you'd take horrendous damage? What was going through your head when you did that?"

Impmon went blank for a moment, as he tried to remember that particular moment. Everything had been happening so fast during the fight with Darkdramon and he'd been so full of conflicting emotions at the time that it took him a while to remember. Eventually he said, "Well, to be honest, I didn't really think anything. I just... sort of... acted before I had a chance to consider what I was doing."

Deckerdramon chuckled. "And you don't call that strong love? You disregarded your own personal safety in an instant to save a bunch of Digimon you'd only really known for about a couple of weeks. Could there be any other explanation for it, Impmon? Love is one of the most powerful forces in the universe, if not _the_ most powerful, and without it we are nothing. We would be a shell. You, on the other hand, have it in abundance."

Impmon perked up slightly at this thought. "Yeah," he murmured. "Yeah, I guess what you're saying does have some merit to it."

"Of course it does," Deckerdramon replied. "I am the Guardian of Strong Love. I know what I am talking about. Love is not mutually exclusive to one individual. Everyone you care for, everything you hold dear, is an example of it. And you have so much that is dear to you. And you know it now. Your friends and travelling companions have been the main force giving you strength throughout your journey, have they not? They have been your main driving force, and that's because you love them. You share a connection with them. They are true friends. And there is little else you need in life than that."

Impmon swallowed as he thought of another line of the prophecy. Lilamon, Calumon, Wingdramon and Diatrymon had all been described as _loyal to the darkest hour._ Deckerdramon was right in everything that he said. It seemed that he could read Impmon like a book, and if what he said was true then perhaps things were not totally hopeless for him after all. And the prophecy had even said that he had love – _'Til his love replaces his guns._ He wasn't sure what that line meant, but it seemed to confirm what Deckerdramon was talking about.

He felt a lot better. His depression was vanishing a great deal, and his spirits were rising.

Still, the prophecy's final three verses continued to nag at him.

"Alright," he said. "I guess what you say does kinda make sense..."

"If you had my senses of this kind of thing, you would know that I was telling the truth," Deckerdramon said. "You've always had strong love – I could sense it in you when you were a warrior of heaven. But it seems to have multiplied since then."

"Okay," nodded Impmon. "But that doesn't change the fact that something terrible is going to happen soon, does it? I mean, the prophecy says that I'm going to be made evil again. And the last bit says that I'm going to die."

"Does it?" Deckerdramon asked. "You can never be too careful when it comes to prophecies. Quite often they say things that are designed to mislead you. Sometimes I wonder if Valkyrimon gets his kicks out of that sort of thing. You can't know for sure until you receive more information."

"But still," Impmon bit his lip. _"Unable to stop his capture. _That's kind of an obvious line, isn't it? It means that GranDracmon is going to get me, whether I want him to or not."

Deckerdramon made no comment, which made it obvious to Impmon that he struggled to come up with any other explanation than that too. Impmon also wanted to say that the _Demon's evil is reborn,_ line could only apply to him, as there were no other Demon Lords left for that line to apply to. But he merely said, "Is it possible for GranDracmon to get into the Heavens?"

Deckerdramon heaved a great sigh, shutting his eyes and responding with, "It's possible. It might take him a long time to penetrate these walls, but the Heavens are not unbreachable. I believe Lucemon was planning to attack this place before he went after the Sovereigns, but he never got the opportunity before his death. However, we are by no means defenceless." The huge missile launchers on his back lifted into the air on mechanical struts and the fronts slid aside, revealing many huge missile sockets that reminded Impmon of MegaGargomon's giant shoulder cannons, except without the smiley faces. "They also call me the bane of all flying Digimon. And while I have never had the opportunity to use my Deckerdrauncher in battle before, I will use it if need be. The Heavens may not be allowed to interfere with the world below, but if the world below attacks us, then it becomes our business, and we can retaliate with everything we have."

_But it won't be enough,_ Impmon thought. _They'll get me anyway._

"What do you think I should do?" Impmon asked plaintively.

"That is not my place to say," Deckerdramon replied, folding his Deckerdrauncher back onto his back and closing the hatches. "It is your life and, more importantly, your love that we are talking about here. It is nobody's right to decide what you should do except yourself. I may be able to provide advice, but ultimately, the decision is yours."

Impmon's fists closed around the D-Arc again. Deckerdramon claimed that he had strong love. The last line of the fifth stanza had said, _Decisions follow based on love._ Impmon needed to decide what he would do next, but everything was now so complicated. There seemed to be more at stake than he'd thought.

He didn't know what to do.

* * *

Well, how was that everybody? Yes, I decided to include Deckerdramon, an iconic Digimon from the Xros Wars series, on a whim, to teach Impmon more about himself than he realised. Much like how Deckerdramon helps out one of the humans in that series, so this one is helping Impmon now. Writing Deckerdramon's speeches about love was hard, but I persevered and am quite happy with the result.

As for the prophecy, well, I suppose that means the rest of the Impmon storyline cannot be changed now that I've laid out the future in front of everyone. I hope you're all eagerly waiting to find out what the heck it was going on about, because there's a lot to come for Impmon still. And for the others as well.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

In which the Council finally learns about Aayla's newest bargain, Bane and his new "recruits" take their leave to begin their newest quest, and an old friend reminisces on the past, only to have their life suddenly take a turn for the worse. Again.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 141 : A Harsh Reality**


	141. A Harsh Reality

The delay in this particular chapter was neither due to laziness, nor to unscheduled events at the last one was. This time, I spent several of the days after posting my last chapter carefully planning out the next three arcs. After all, this is the effective tipping point, and one of the most crucial periods of the entire story. I wanted to make sure I got the details right instead of blundering in and hoping for the best. So, now I have a more visualised plan than before, and I'm quite looking forward to the ride.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 141:- A Harsh Reality**

* * *

While major developments between the Jedi and the Sith were taking place, with Aayla and Chuchi hiring the services of Cad Bane to track down the elusive Darth Sidious and partnering him with Chewbacca the Wookiee and Renamon the Digimon, elsewhere in the Galaxy things were going at a much slower pace.

It had been a hectic week for the majority of the Republic-aligned worlds, even if they were only hearing about it on the Holonet news. First the Zillo Beast busted up a large portion of Coruscant, then Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress had been captured. But news of all of this didn't reach many of the inhabitants of most outlying worlds of the galaxy, including one particular desert planet that was located right on the edge of the galaxy, and could be found within close proximity of Geonosis and Tatooine.

The sun blazed down on the dry, baking planet. Half a year ago, it was a planet that had seen some pretty radical events that would be the start of an incredible journey for several people and the beginnings of change wrought throughout the entire galaxy. It was a planet where three humans from another dimension had suddenly been dumped, and where three Digital close friends of theirs had been on their first mission together as members of the Republic Army. It was the planet where Aayla Secura herself had been born.

Ryloth.

Even after all the months that had occurred since the Clone Wars had brought the fight to the atmosphere of the Twi'lek people, the planet still hadn't fully recovered from the terrible damage that had been wrought upon it by Wat Tambor and the Techno Union. Villages that had been ruthlessly bombed by the greedy Skakoan were still being rebuilt, as the Twi'leks didn't have access to expensive machinery or droids to help them, so they were forced to do the job with their bare hands. It was hard work, but the men and women who worked forced themselves to persevere.

Most of the treasures and wealth that Wat Tambor had attempted to take away with him had been returned to its rightful place. Cham Syndulla, the former freedom fighter, now spent the majority of his time overseeing the restoration of his beloved planet, the rebels that comprised his force helping out the locals where they could. They went from place to place, helping the sick and the hungry to the best of their ability, while the fat Senator Orn Free Taa enjoyed his various commodities and privileges in the comfort of Coruscant and did little to help.

One of the villages in particular seemed to be recovering quite nicely now, so much so that things had almost settled back to normal. Nabat had been quite an influential place during the war, because it had been the location that the Republic forces had chosen to land, and the place where the Digimon had been re-united with their Tamers. The damage caused by TX-20 and his droids had been mostly restored. The homes of the Twi'leks that lived there had been rebuilt, the dead droids and Gutkurr long since disposed of and the deceased Twi'leks put to rest.

But while the physical damage had gone, the emotional damage still lingered in quite a few of the individuals, including a little teal-skinned Twi'lek girl that had turned ten a couple of weeks ago, making her a couple of months younger than Suzie Wong. Her name was Numa, and she had played an instrumental role in the liberation of her home, leading the Jedi known as Obi-Wan Kenobi and a couple of clones through the tunnel systems so that they could liberate the prisoners from behind while the other clones and the Digimon drew the fire of the droids.

Still, the little girl never thought of herself as important. She didn't have many fond memories of that time. She had spent most of the time absolutely terrified by everything. She wasn't sure how she might have coped if her new friend Suzie Wong had not been there at the time. Perhaps she would have found a way to do so, but she wasn't sure.

Not for the first time, Numa wondered how Suzie was. The little girl was currently sitting on the flat roof of one of the stone buildings in the large canyon that made up Nabat, her arms wrapped around her legs and her chin resting on her knees, thinking about the past. She did this quite often, and most of the time when she did she felt conflicting amounts of happiness and sadness. The excitement that had intruded upon her life had brought her adventure and many, many new friends, but it had also taken so much from her.

Numa sighed as her thoughts wondered over Suzie, who had stood by her and comforted her, brave in the face of danger while Numa had wanted to do nothing but break down. The Twi'lek girl had considered the human something like a sister, even calling _her_ Numa, which did mean 'sister' in Twi'leki. It would have been nice to know how she and her friends, her extraordinarily weird and wonderful friends were getting on, but Numa hadn't heard anything from them since they had departed Nabat to continue the war elsewhere on her planet. It saddened her. She had hoped that they might return someday to see her, but so far they hadn't. And Numa was beginning to think that they never would.

As her thoughts turned to Suzie's companions, Numa felt that same ripple of excitement whoosh up her spine and down her lekku. She could still see, plain as day, the point where three of the creatures Suzie knew changed shape, taking on bigger and more powerful forms and blasting the droids holding her community captive to bits. Numa still felt excited at the memory, as if it were playing out before her once again. Sometimes she wished that something like that would happen again. The adventure part had even been fun once she got past her fear, and she'd been helped along by those two clones that she called her brothers – Waxer and Boil. She wondered how they were doing too. She knew they were fighting in battles right across the galaxy. Were they even still alive?

...Still alive.

And then, predictably, Numa's mind turned to her parents, and that immediately put a downer on things. Her expression faltered and seemed to droop, and she dropped her chin from her knees and placed her forehead on them instead. She didn't cry – she had managed to stop crying whenever she thought of her parents, but she still grieved for them. The sight of her parents, dead and with large smoking holes blasted in them being dragged out of what used to be her house by those battle droids had forever been branded into her memory.

The loss was understandably traumatic for little Numa, even after all these years. Other than her uncle, Nilim Bril, and her friend, Lubo, her parents had been about the only thing she'd ever really had in her former life. Numa and her family had never been wealthy or which much money at all – nobody in Nabat had a lot of that – so they had survived in any way they could and that had brought them together. They relied upon each other, and then they had suddenly been torn apart.

It made Numa's heart ache. She still had her uncle and Lubo, as they had survived the occupation by the droids as she had, but it still felt like there was a large hole in her life. Nilim did a good job as a surrogate father, but the hole produced by the death of her real father wasn't completely filled. And she didn't have a secondary mother figure at all. The closest she had ever come to that had been when that Twi'lek Jedi had been around, but she had left as quickly as Suzie.

Numa lifted her head up and glanced down at a small object lying beside her. It was the small, pink Tooka doll that she owned, which had been about the only thing from her house that had not been plundered or wrecked by the droids. She reached down with a small hand and picked it up, holding it in front of her face and staring into its beady eyes sadly. This thing had been a present from her mother when she was five. She had always treasured it, as it had been one of the few presents that her parents had been able to get for her, but now it was more important than ever. It was one of the last links she had to her parents and also a reminder. A reminder of the events that had been so terrible, and then so wonderful. It was as if the Tooka doll had seen as much as she had.

Numa pulled the doll close, wrapping her arms around it and pulling it protectively against her chest. She rocked backwards and forwards slightly on the spot, determined not to cry, as she remembered some of the good times she'd had with her parents.

"Numa!" a faint voice began calling in the distance. "Numa!" The girl in question opened her eyes and leaned forward, peering over the side of the roof she was sitting on. Sure enough, there was her uncle, making his way through the canyon and manoeuvring around other villagers going about various tasks.

The girl took a last look at the Tooka doll, before she placed it under one arm and got to her feet, scurrying to the side of the roof by the canyon wall and quickly scrambling down the cliff wall, using various ledges and rock outcroppings that made the climb easy, even for a small girl like her. She dropped to the ground between the house she'd been seated on and the neighbouring one, and hurried out into the main street.

When her blue skinned uncle spotted his teal skinned niece, he smiled and knelt down as she approached. "Hyfan noon suul?" he chided. "Ju sam gurny frasen." (A/N: As before, translations are at the end)

"Poa, Ikut," Numa replied, smiling slightly in response. "Ju sam pryf burnon oi stolp. Suul ken, ji kalan acer bolo oi sugi ard."

Nilim shook his head and chuckled. "Suul eper ji bernan oi lot di stolpes, tyro," he said amiably. Then he stood up and said, "Koomey nes, res time hef terna."

"Yay!" Numa cheered, and hurried after Nilim as he made his way back down the street. "Jus grawsen."

"Di kury suul non. Suulan huiono si raveno."

"Polis koil treq?"

"Re treqe suul non sulla grawsen."

Numa giggled and stuck her tongue out at him petulantly. Nilim rolled his eyes and patted the base of her lekku in a fatherly way. The two of them headed down the street, nodding to and greeting various passersby. Numa tried to look externally cheerful but really her mind was still occupied. She wondered if her father's brother had any immediate plans to marry anyone. It would be nice to have some form of mother figure back in her life. And she felt slightly guilty about that in itself. Nothing could replace her real mother. But it seemed like her uncle was set to remain a bachelor for some time to come anyway.

They made their way back home and entered the little stone house that they occupied. It consisted of two rooms only, and both of them were about as featureless as the other. One of them contained a slab in the floor that was the entrance to the tunnel system and a small stone cupboard that contained things like blankets, while the other had a stove, also made of rock, and they could only cook things by fire.

Not the best of lives, but they seemed to get on just fine.

As Nilim proceded to attempt to light a fire in the stove, he looked over to Numa and said, "Suul thurck suul gif her hed gur we liquwe hef ace, sugi ei?"

Numa nodded. Going to get the water was effectively her job in the household, as she still wasn't old enough to operate the stove. She watched her uncle pull out a couple of chunks of meat from something like a stone bucket next to the stove, before turning out and heading down the street quickly.

The little girl never complained about the life they led, but sometimes she couldn't help but think of how it might be better. She knew full well that they lived in poverty. Most of Ryloth did, and the Separatist invasion had not helped very much, or at all, in fact. The people of Ryloth relied on each other for survival. Most of the supplies were brought in via cart roughly every week or so, and sometimes there was less than they would have liked on the carts. Sometimes the carts were waylaid by predators and never arrived. There was that downside to Nabat being so isolated. Other villages might be closer together, but they had less protection from the outside world than they did.

This was the life Numa led, and the only one that she knew, so she was used to it. Nilim Bril did the best he could for her. He was one of the people who took regular sentry duty on the huge wall that protected the canyon, and would help to haul the supplies up and distribute it to the people.

And while Numa was used to her life like this, it did mean that there wasn't a whole lot to do here, and that let her mind wander quite a lot. Numa would get lost in her imagination, as she did now while she headed to the water supply, which had to be topped up each week with liquid taken from moisture farms. As she picked up a bucket and placed it beneath the pump and reached up to pull down on it, she found herself imagining the others from the Nabat invasion once again.

There was Aayla, who had become something of a role model for Numa in the brief period that she had known her. The adult Twi'lek was bold, brave, calm and friendly, and amazing on the battlefield. Not to mention she was very beautiful. Numa had liked her on the stop and hoped that when she grew older, she would be like Aayla in some of those aspects.

Then there were the Digimon. She could still remember their names – Terriermon had made her laugh even if she didn't have a clue what he was saying. Lopmon had been a sweet and caring companion, and Renamon had made her feel safe just by standing nearby. Suzie, Henry and Rika had all been fun, and Numa had enjoyed getting to know them, as they were the first humans she'd met. And then there was Waxer and Boil, and the other Jedi, Obi-Wan, who had all been initially scary, but Numa had felt just as safe with them as she did with Renamon.

"Ju eohp ju yolo prud oom aki," she mumbled to herself. "Ju shaw oolor ed yoshon."

"Yam, Numa," a voiced hailed her from nearby. Numa looked up, and realised she had drifted off and was in danger of overfilling the bucket. Releasing the pump, she turned to see that her friend Lubo was waving to her from nearby. "Suul yuson ji muj dob afopo?" she asked.

"Yoshon," Numa grinned and nodded. "Ju ulner terna instanb, ger jus prud suul afopo."

Lubo nodded and turned away. Numa's gaze went up instead and fixed on the blue sky high above her. Somewhere out there were the friends she'd had so briefly. She hadn't forgotten them, and never would. She could only hope that they hadn't forgotten her either.

* * *

Since Barriss and the others had neglected to let Anakin and Ahsoka know that Aayla had got in contact with them again before they met up and spoke to Bane – it slipped the minds of all of them as they were too focused on just getting Aayla back – the Chosen One and his Togruta Padawan were in the middle of reporting the incident of Aayla's kidnapping to the Council, unaware that the Twi'lek had, in a sense, been rescued.

"The last we heard, Barriss and the others were on their way to Florrum to investigate a potential lead, Masters," Anakin was saying, while Ahsoka held her silence like she was technically supposed to. "Ahsoka and I did some research into some of Bane's former work-partners and we though the best bet would be someone known to live on that planet. We can... only hope that they come up with something because I don't know what else we can do. Bane covers his tracks too well."

The Council was, naturally, disturbed by this information. Several of them exchanged glances with one another. Most of the forms seated in the chairs around Anakin and Ahsoka were holographic, as the majority of the council were out hammering the remaining Separatist forces. Only Yoda and Obi-Wan were there in the flesh, as Mace Windu had been called away earlier that day to help somewhere in the Outer Rim.

The holographic Mace had a grave expression, as he looked to Yoda for guidance. Yoda's eyes were shut. It seemed like he was communing with the Force, perhaps trying to use it to see a sliver of Aayla's fate, but for the moment, he was silent.

Obi-Wan sighed. "Anakin," he said. "You should have reported this to us as soon as you were made aware of the situation. We could have been of some assistance."

"I know, Master," Anakin agreed. "And I'm sorry. I... think I probably could have used it, but my natural reaction was to set to work on finding Aayla immediately instead of coming to tell you first. We needed all the time we could spare."

Obi-Wan was surprised at how guilty Anakin sounded, and frowned, wondering if there was more to it than Anakin was saying. He knew his former Padawan very well after all, and while Anakin still disobeyed the Council a lot he was rarely this sorry for it. He looked to Ahsoka, hoping for another clue there, but the Togruta girl was only watching her Master sympathetically.

Ahsoka herself knew very well why Anakin looked so guilty – he was thinking about the way he had tried to extract information on Bane from Dooku. She hadn't told anybody, and had no plans to except Aayla and the others when they were found. She wondered if Aayla would slap him again, and figured she probably would – twice since her disappearance had been the main cause of his anger. She stifled a giggle at the thought, because she knew that her Master was feeling contaminated at the moment. Anakin had delved into the Dark Side, something he hadn't done for a while, and he was now feeling disgusted with himself.

Anakin saw her staring at her through the corner of his eyes and turned, offering her a weak smile. Ahsoka gave him one back, trying to put as much sympathy, resolution and comradeship into one look as she could.

_We'll get through it, Master,_ she said in his mind. _I promise we will. All of us together will help you down the right path. Let's just focus on finding Aayla for the moment._

Anakin made no response, but Ahsoka could tell her words were appreciated, which gladdened her.

"This is grave news indeed," Master Plo suddenly spoke up from the hologram in his chair. "To have Aayla, who accomplished so much on one minute snatched from us so quickly after she completes it. It does not bode well."

"I agree with Master Plo," Mace nodded. "Something tells me that this is not mere coincidence that these two events happened so close together."

"We suspected pretty much the same thing, Masters," Anakin agreed. "We've theorised that Darth Sidious thinks that Aayla is the root of most of his problems and wants to eliminate her. We don't know how he moved so quickly, but he wants Aayla gone."

"That's what concerns me," Mace said. "If it were as simple as wanting Aayla dead, why did he not just kill her on the spot?"

"A valid question," Ki-Adi-Mundi agreed. "It would certainly be much less hassle. Perhaps, after Darth Sidious heard about what Aayla did to his apprentice and his fellow Separatists, he changed his mind. Perhaps he wants Aayla to replace Count Dooku."

Ahsoka spoke out of turn and vehemently said, "Aayla would never do that."

"Perhaps, Little 'Soka," Plo uttered heavily. "But that might not stop Sidious from trying."

"I don't think Darth Sidious _does_ want Aayla alive," Anakin said. "But I think Bane does. You see, it was found that Bane has known about..."

He didn't get a chance to complete his sentence because it was about that time that the holotransmitter beside Mace's chair suddenly began flashing, indicating an incoming message. Everyone in the room stared at it, wondering what it could be about. Before anyone could ask whether or not they should answer it, Yoda opened his eyes, a benign smile gracing his green, wrinkled face, before he stood up on his chair and tapped the transmitter with his gimmer stick, before sitting down again.

A holographic figure suddenly appeared beside Anakin and Ahsoka. A holographic figure of a familiar Twi'lek.

"Hello everyone," Aayla smiled. "What were we talking about?"

"Aayla!" Anakin and Ahsoka both predictably cried. The hologram flinched and said, "Whoa, not so loud you two. Don't yell in my ear."

"But..." Ahsoka blustered. "But... how..."

"You're supposed to be kidnapped by a Bounty Hunter," Anakin objected.

Aayla frowned. "You don't want me around? Anakin, I thought we were friends. Why would you say something like that?"

"Huh? What? I... buh..." Anakin stammered.

Obi-Wan chuckled at his former-Padawan's stunned face and turned to the hologram. "Now really, Aayla, you shouldn't tease him like that. The poor soul looks like his relay neurones are about to go into meltdown."

"You can't talk Obi-Wan," Aayla grinned at him. "Considering the number of times over the years that he almost made _your_ relay neurones go into meltdown, you cannot honestly tell me that you're not enjoying this."

"Perhaps a little," Obi-Wan chuckled. "But on a more serious note, Anakin has a point. He was just telling us that you have been kidnapped and yet here you are. Has there been a slip up in communications, perhaps."

"Oh no," Aayla shook her head. "No, the kidnapping was genuine. Cad Bane really did abduct me from the medical station above Belderone. But I'm afraid my story might differ slightly from Anakin's because after that things really began to go haywire. Nevertheless, I hope you will be gratified to know that I am safely back on the _Intrepid_ and none the worse for wear."

"That is good news," Obi-Wan said. "You had us worried for about five minutes there, considering that's how long ago Anakin decided to let us know of your disappearance. Apparently he was more fixated on finding you than telling us."

"Aaw," Aayla grinned. "Thanks Anakin. But I'm alright. Momentai."

Nobody said anything for a moment, but nobody heard the sound of annoyance that was almost definitely made by Terriermon. Except Aayla, that is, as the hologram looked over her shoulder and said, "I can always ask a certain someone to restrain you, you know," before she turned around and her face grew more serious.

"Okay," she said. "I'm done with teasing for a while. I am pretty sure some of you will have questions for me, and I will do my best to answer them."

"Well, for a start," Mace began. "You can tell us how you managed to escape from Bane's grasp so quickly."

"Escape isn't the word that I would use, Master," Aayla said. "I would say that I was more... rescued, thanks to the brave actions of one single person..."

And Aayla went on to tell them everything. The Council listened with intent to Aayla's story, and never interrupted once. It was as if each of them were analysing the story and trying to come up with the clearest possible picture in their minds. Aayla glossed over the torture slightly, merely mentioning that there was some, and then explained how she had managed to negotiate her release with Chuchi's help. She omitted the part where she made a deal with Bane to track Sidious down, waiting to gauge their reactions to what Aayla had already done and come up with the best way of breaking it to them.

"I do not approve of dealing with a criminal like Bane," Mace said immediately, which is about what Aayla assumed he might say. "But, considering he knows about the Digimon, there is merit to your actions, Aayla."

"Indeed," said Ki-Adi-Mundi. "It is true that the Digimon have been our biggest asset so far throughout this entire war, and hopefully they shall continue to serve us well. Considering the lengths that Sidious seems to have gone through to eliminate Aayla here, who is to say what he might try to get rid of them were he to learn of them."

"Agreed," Obi-Wan said, "But I assume that you also did not manage to get Bane into custody, Aayla."

"You... could say that," Aayla said, wondering when would be the best time to bring the rest of the topic up.

"A shame," Obi-Wan murmured. "He has a lot to answer for. But, I suppose it might be a good thing. People might start asking questions if you brought him in a mere half a day after you caught Dooku and Ventress. Nevertheless, Chuchi must be congratulated. It must have taken her a great amount of courage to do what she did. We'll have to thank her personally for assisting a member of our Order in such a bold way."

"Chuchi is standing right next to me actually," Aayla said. "She says that she appreciates the thanks, and she appears to be blushing slightly. She's also muttering something about how it was the least she could do."

Obi-Wan chuckled. "Yes, that sounds about right."

"Senator Chuchi's actions are indeed commendable," Mace spoke up. "But now, the most important thing is to ensure that they were not in vain. Once Sidious learns that you are still alive and that his Bounty Hunter failed him, as he will do soon enough, it is safe to assume he will be furious. He will make another attempt on your life, Aayla, and probably will continue to do so until he is caught and placed in custody. The Separatist movement cannot truly be considered over until that happens."

Aayla decided this would be the best time to introduce the second half of her story, but she was suddenly beaten to it by Yoda, had had actually said nothing up until this point. As Aayla opened her mouth to speak, Yoda said, "More to Aayla's story than she has said, there is." He looked up at her with his yellow eyes and went, "Sense, I do, that only part of it, we have heard. Am I right?"

"As always, Master Yoda, yes," Aayla said, slightly hesitantly now that she had been put on the spot like that. "You see, I had a similar thought to you, Master Windu, when I was Bane's prisoner, and... well, negotiating my release and Bane's silence was not the only thing Chuchi and I paid him to do. We... also hired his services into helping us track down Darth Sidious. I believe it may be our best chance of finding him quickly."

Now, everyone was staring at Aayla like she had well and truly gone insane. Aayla had expected that, and braced herself for someone to shout at her, and, sure enough, it was Mace that began it. "Knight Secura, what were you thinking?" the Korun man exclaimed. "It is quite plain to see that that man cannot be trusted. And, he is guilty of more crimes against the Republic than most other Bounty Hunters put together. What possessed you to try and take him on board as an agent of the Jedi?"

"I agree," Ki-Adi-Mundi declared. "Bane is a Bounty Hunter with no morals at all. He is almost as far from being a Jedi as it is possible to get. He stands for everything that we fight against and yet you have the audacity to ask for his assistance. And out of the authority of the Council, no less."

Aayla said nothing, and was vaguely surprised, but heartened, when Plo Koon suddenly came to her defence. "It would be wise to hold on the accusations until we know the full extent of what Aayla was thinking before we jump to conclusions," the Kel Dor said lowly. "There is much at stake when it comes to Darth Sidious. Perhaps Aayla is onto something."

"I am not so sure this is a good idea," Obi-Wan sighed. "But I agree with Master Plo. Aayla, what do you have to say for yourself?"

Aayla looked at Yoda, hoping to hear something from him, but the Grand Master merely nodded encouragingly at her and indicated that she should keep talking. Aayla turned to Anakin and Ahsoka as well, and the rest of the A-Team were watching her carefully. Their expressions were relatively clear, even thought Aayla couldn't hear their thoughts from such a distance. They were hesitant, as Barriss and the Digimon had initially been, but willing to hear her out.

"As you said, Master Windu," Aayla said. "Sidious must be found as quickly as possible. The sooner we find him, the sooner this whole thing can be cleared up. Even Grievous, Gunray and Hill answer to Sidious, which makes him the key to everything. If he were caught, _they_ might simply go into hiding. If he were caught, this war could end.

"I am aware that Dooku and Ventress are in cells in the Jedi Temple, but I was pretty sure that neither of them have said anything about Sidious' identity. Am I right on that?"

"Yeah," nodded Anakin, and that guilty expression returned to his face. He quickly tried to hide it, but Aayla knew Anakin well enough and spotted it before he could. "We tried to interrogate them, but it didn't work. Ventress just thrashed and yelled threats at us and Dooku..." he paused. "Well, he just remained tight-lipped, even when... er... Master Yoda offered him redemption."

"We tried," Ahsoka sighed. "But it didn't work."

"That's what I thought," Aayla said. "But when I learned that Bane was working for Sidious, I saw an opportunity. It may well not be the answer, but we know that Bane is willing work to work for whoever pays him the most, regardless of the job at hand. He has no loyalty to Sidious as Dooku and Ventress do, nor does he fear him. He is, in a sense, the perfect candidate, in my opinion."

The Jedi Council regarded each other with uncertain looks. They were all forced to admit that Aayla's logic was sound, but still none of them were keen to think of Bane as a potential ally.

"And what's to stop him from turning on you like he turns on Sidious?" Mace queried.

"To be honest," Aayla said. "I'm not sure Sidious would want to hire Bane again, even if it didn't work. Once he learns that Bane would be willing to turn on him for the right price, he might not be so willing to employ his service. And anyway, we've all discussed it at length over here, and we've decided that Bane will not be hunting for Sidious alone. Renamon and Chewbacca had both deigned to accompany him, both to assist him with the task and keep an eye on him. Renamon's perception filter may prove invaluable and will hide her from Sidious's eyes if they get in close proximity to him. And Chewbacca is no lightweight. I think they could handle Bane if he went rogue. However, I highly doubt that he will."

"Your mind and that Bounty Hunter's are very different, Secura," Mace reminded her. "There is no guarantee that you know exactly how he will handle things."

"I know that, Master," Aayla said. "But I put my trust in him all the same."

"Are you sure putting Renamon anywhere near somewhere where Darth Sidious is likely to be is a good idea?" Shaak Ti suddenly decided to join the conversation. "One of the reasons you paid Bane is to keep the Digimon a secret. And even if Sidious cannot see Renamon, he may still be able to sense her presence and possibly get her to reveal herself. We have little idea what we're up against."

"True," Aayla said. "But Sidious has no idea what he's up against at all. Renamon might have an edge if the worst comes to worst, but our plan is not to kill Sidious anyway – merely unmask him. Renamon will not be foolish enough to stay and fight."

Aayla's sound arguments caused murmurings amongst the rest of the Council, as they pondered her decision. Aayla could tell that they understood what she had been thinking, but their natural mistrust of somebody who had committed as many crimes as Bane was filling them with doubt, which Aayla could totally understand. She had gone through the same thought processes before she had come to her decision after all.

She finished her tale with, "Chuchi agrees with me on this one, and I already have the support of the rest of the team over on this end. The only other condition that I gave Bane is that I promised him a full pardon, but only until the war ends. After that, he'll be on the run again. And he assures me that he approves of that."

"I... am still not sure," Ki-Adi-Mundi sighed. "This is simply not something which the Jedi Order would ordinarily condone."

"Well, for what it's worth, Aayla," Ahsoka piped up. "You have our support as well, right Skyguy."

"Oh yeah," Anakin nodded. "The sooner that sneaky sleemo is caught the happier I'll be. I would sleep much easier, I can tell you that. And if Bane helps us to get closer to that, then so be it, I say."

"Of course, that doesn't mean we won't enjoy the manhunt for him after the war is over," Ahsoka chuckled. Aayla snorted and rolled her eyes. Ahsoka winked at her, and Aayla winked back, glad that the rest of the A-Team had been so quick to back her up.

"I am still not sure..." Mace began, but suddenly the person to his immediate right cut him off.

"Agree, with Aayla, I do," Yoda said, his eyes shut again and sitting hunched over. The whole audience turned to look at the Jedi Master, and he sat up as much as his small back would allow and continued without opening his eyes. "A long history of doing the right thing at the right time, Aayla has. Right to fear her, Sidious is. Captured two of his subjects, defeated another and turned another against him, she has, all in the space of a day." He opened his eyes. "Unusual, her methods may be, but finding allies, she is truly skilled at. Brought us the Digimon, she did, and now, brought us the answer, she has."

"Are you sure, Master Yoda?" Obi-Wan asked.

Yoda nodded. "Noticed a pattern, I have. Before the Digimon arrived, several steps ahead of us, Dooku and Sidious always seemed to be. Since they arrived, for us, the same could be said. Using highly unpredictable techniques, the best way to defeating the Sith is. Outwit them, we must. Surprise them, we must. Living proof of that, the Digimon are."

Yoda tapped his gimmer stick with his clawed fingers several times, before he continued. "To have a Jedi hire the services of one of his own Bounty Hunters against him, Sidious would not suspect. Seen through all our traditional Jedi techniques, he has. But left him in the dust, the A-Team always has. Confused him and surprised him, their choices have, their victories have, their allies have. If play by Jedi tradition, we do, fail we will. Come to see that, I have. Show us that, the A-Team do. Hold attachments they do, and yet more successful than any group of Jedi in history, they are."

He smiled at Aayla. "Soon-to-be-Master Secura. Have my support in this venture, you do."

Aayla felt herself inhale with relief that Yoda had been so easy to convince. His words carried much more weight than hers did, and he understood her point of view exactly. He understood what was needed to beat the Sith, and he was willing to accept and even endorse the changes in the Jedi Order that Aayla thought were needed.

The others were less keen to break the tradition, but they all grudgingly agreed that Yoda and Aayla's words were extremely valid. They made sense, even if they didn't like it. And Yoda had long made it plain that he trusted Aayla's judgement more than almost any other Jedi.

"All those in favour," Mace Windu, said, looking across the circle of Jedi Masters.

"Aye," Yoda said.

"Aye," Ki-Adi-Mundi agreed.

"Aye," Obi-Wan echoed.

"Aye," Shaak Ti put in.

And so it continued around the circle, with every single Jedi Master in the room giving Aayla's plan to go-ahead signal. Finally Kit Fisto, then Plo Koon said "Aye." Then Mace turned to look at Aayla, staring at her evenly for a few seconds, before he finally said:-

"Aye."

"Aye," Ahsoka added, causing Mace to glare at her. The Togruta quickly looked at the floor, but was struggling to hide her giggles. Aayla glanced at her friend in bemusement. Ahsoka had not been giggly like this for a while – as she was maturing extremely quickly. She caught Anakin's eye and he lightly cuffed Ahsoka's montrals in amusement, much like Ahsoka would often swat him playfully in the back of the head. Aayla chuckled, and put Ahsoka's behaviour down to giddy excitement that Sidious might soon be caught.

"Knight Secura," Mace said. "You will inform Bane that the terms which you have set him are supported by the Jedi Council. However, if he breaks his own word and turns against you in turn, the pardon we have temporarily given him will be off."

"Thank you, Master," Aayla said. "He is standing nearby, so he heard you say that. I should also mention that Sidious will need to think I am dead until Bane's mission is complete, so if I am sent on any missions it must be discrete and without the knowing of the Senate."

"Very well," Mace nodded. "How long does Bane estimate it will take before he can find Sidious' identity?"

Aayla glanced off to the side again, staring through Anakin's forehead in an unnerving way that indicated that she was talking to somebody on the other end of the line. It took a few moments, but eventually she said, "He says that the answer to that question depends on many factors, such as when Darth Sidious next attempts to get in contact with him, but he estimates that he should have the job done within a couple of days at the most, but that that is not a guarantee."

Mace raised an eyebrow, obviously impressed despite himself. If Bane could indeed unveil the Sith Lord, whom the Jedi had been striving to find clues for for months, in such a short space of time, then it would definitely be worth it. Of course, Bane did have the advantage of being in contact with the elusive man, but still... Aayla and Yoda's judgement might just be right after all.

"Alright," he said. "When does he intend to start?"

"Straight away, Master," Aayla answered immediately. "We've paid him the money in advance and he says he's keen to earn it."

"Very well," Mace said. "In that case, return to Coruscant as quickly as young can, Aayla. Be discrete and head back to the Jedi Temple. You may have a couple of days of rest if you so desire, particularly after your... ordeal."

"Thank you, Master," Aayla said. "I'll drop Senator Chuchi off at Pantora on the way first. She wishes to speak to the Chairman to help them come up with a cover story to explain why she missed the congress session this morning if she get's asked by anyone. But I will return straight after."

Mace nodded, then said, "Well, good work, Aayla. It's good to see your safe."

"Thank you, Masters," Aayla bowed. "See you soon."

* * *

As Aayla deactivated the transmission, she turned to face the rest of the bridge she was standing on and said, "Well, I think that went well."

"Went well?" Terriermon asked. "That went way better than I thought it was going to. I thought Mace was going to rail at you for about five hours straight before he let you get another word in."

"Terriermon, even for hyperbole that is a bit much," Henry said. "He's not that bad."

"Henry, how many times must I say it," Terriermon turned to his partner. "Use words that your little sister can understand when you are talking."

"She understood me just fine," Henry said.

"Suzie, what does hyperbole mean?" Terriermon asked.

"Deliberate exaggeration," Suzie replied immediately.

Terriermon blinked and then glared at Henry. "You told her that with your mind."

"No, I didn't," Henry objected.

"He's right," Rika said. "I did. Momentai."

Terriermon fumed, but a low chuckling noise from behind him drew his attention, as well as the attention of everyone else on the bridge. Bane was leaning in the corner some distance away, flanked by Chewbacca and rather reluctant looking Renamon – the team that had been selected to find out Darth Sidious' real identity.

"And to think that this is the group that has been giving the Separatists so much trouble," Bane murmured, though everybody heard him quite clearly. "If they could see you now, Count Dooku would probably be so embarrassed he wouldn't show his face for a year."

Renamon's eyes narrowed and she looked ready to object, but Terriermon cut across her and said, "That's the beauty of it, isn't it? The big bad Sith Lord trumped by a group of happy-go-lucky idiots. It doesn't get much better than that."

Bane stared at Terriermon quizzically. Terriermon stared back, a grin pasted over his face, but he was actually speaking to Renamon in his head. _You can't let him get to you, Rena. You guys are going to be working together after all._

_I know,_ Renamon sighed. _But for some reason his comments seem to flare me up quicker than I normally would. Perhaps it's because he bested me by cheating and my pride is trying to compensate._

_You don't want to listen to your pride,_ Lopmon said. _That's what Lucemon did, after all._

_Just do what I do,_ Terriermon said. _Turn any snarky comment that he makes about us into something that you yourself might find humorous and let him know it. He might get the picture and stop making them eventually. He probably makes the comments because it irritates you._

_His social skills are deplorable,_ Lopmon agreed.

Renamon nodded and said, _Well, considering it looks like you're in for a couple of days of rest, perhaps you can help me out with that when you keep an eye on things._

_Will do, _Terriermon winked.

During the latter half of that conversation, Senator Chuchi had started speaking. The Pantoran Senator was saying, "Just remember to stay safe, you guys. Don't go taking any unnecessary risks trying to find out who this guy is on the first attempt. If it doesn't go right the first time then you can always try again. The most important thing is ensuring that your own lives stay intact."

"Chuchi's right," nodded Barriss. "Besides, if Sidious learns we're onto him before you succeed in unmasking him, then it'll make things harder on the second attempt. Try extra hard to make sure that you don't get spotted or sensed by him in any way."

Renamon pulled out of the mental conversation in time to say, "Don't worry, guys. We'll do what we have to do. No stunts, no recklessness, no nothing until we get what we came for. You can count on me and Chewie, and we'll try and make sure this guy stays in line."

Chewie nodded in agreement and hammered his chest, while Bane chuckled and said, "Ooh yeah. I'm really feeling the love here."

Terriermon gave Renamon a thumbs up, and Renamon winked back, before turning to Bane and saying, "So, Cap'n. When do we head out and where are we going?"

Bane pushed off from the wall and said, "I suppose it wouldn't hurt to head out now. We should make it back to my headquarters soon enough. After that, we'll have to wait around for Sidious to call me before we can make our move. Todo, are you ready for this?"

"Bane," Todo 360 did an impression of Chewbacca and pounded a tiny fist to his metal chest. "I was _made_ for this kind of thing. Literally. Even though I don't like the idea of who we're going up against."

"You didn't like the idea of going up against these guys, but we came out of it with a nice profit. Now, come on you two. Let's go earn my pay."

Bane strolled towards the door and Todo followed him without another word. Renamon stopped to give Terriermon and Rika a quick hug, with a kiss for the former thrown in, before following after him, while Chewbacca glanced to Lopmon, who nodded and waved, before following on as well.

"Sir," Bly said, after the four of them had gone. "What's our next move? If the Sith Lord gets word that our flagship is anywhere near Coruscant then he might start to get suspicious. He needs to think you're dead, after all."

"Good point, Bly," Aayla said, holding a hand to her chin and she quickly formulated a plan. "Chart a course for Pantora. We'll get off there with Senator Chuchi, and then you can head for Ord Mantell to await further instructions." Aayla turned to Chuchi and smiled. "I hope you don't mind give us a lift back to the capital."

"Not at all," the Pantoran nodded.

"Thank you," Aayla said. "You can drop us off somewhere close to the Temple and Anakin can pick us up in a speeder. Program the navicomputer. We'll jump to hyperspace as soon as Bane's ship leaves out hangar."

"Gotcha, General," Bly said, turning to give the clones some more orders. As they did, Aayla turned around and stared at the door that Bane, Todo, Renamon and Chewbacca had walked out from.

"May the Force be with you guys," she murmured. "All of you."

* * *

After a long game of tag with Lubo and a couple of the other Twi'lek children that resided in Nabat, during which they ran around, screaming their heads off and getting beneath the feet of all the adults, coupled with a couple of games of hide and seek which Numa won outright as she knew the place extremely well, even if the tunnels beneath the place were off-limits as hiding spots, Numa had returned home.

The little Twi'lek girl was tired from all the exercise that she had received that day and her uncle had noticed it. After supplying her with a small amount of supper, he had insisted that she go to bed. Numa had protested, claiming that she wasn't tired (though the huge yawn she gave while saying it said otherwise). Eventually though, Nilim had got her to bed. As Numa rested her head on the surprisingly comfortable boulder that served as her pillow, the Tooka doll tucked under the blanket with her, she stared out through the window.

It was still light outside, because Ryloth had a bizarre system where half the planet spent half the year in darkness while the other spent half the year in light. It wouldn't be long now before darkness settled on Nabat for roughly six months, perhaps a week or so. Numa was keen on enjoying the sunshine while it lasted, even if it did blaze down on her like it was trying to cook her. Even so, the dark half of the year was usually her favourite, because she could get a lot more playing done without dropping from exhaustion in the intense heat.

She was alone in the house. Nilim had gone down to his regular shift at the enormous wall at the end of the canyon, leaving the child behind. That might seem like a dangerous thing to do, but Nabat was considered to be one of the safer places in the area – everyone knew one another and the walls of the canyon protected them from most outside threats. The invasion of the droids had come as a real shock.

Slowly, Numa closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, looking forward to a bright and early day tomorrow where she could play with her friends again.

A few hours passed where Numa did nothing but slumber peacefully, before everything suddenly went horribly wrong.

The little Twi'lek was suddenly jolted awake as a loud, high-pitched scream rent the air from outside. She sat up, grabbing the Tooka doll and holding it close, eyes widening with shock and fear as she listened. Emanating through the window were numerous sounds that she didn't like to hear – yells, screams, cries of anger, and, perhaps worst of all, sinister guffawing.

But it was the sudden sound of blasters being let off that really got to her.

Numa leapt up and hurried into the corner, pressing herself against it briefly as she listened to sounds from the outside. The screams continued and there were several more blaster shots, coupled with what sounded like wails of despair from several of the other inhabitants. Numa's heart was pounding away nineteen to the dozen. Could the Separatists be invading Ryloth a second time? Were there more droids out there.

She could only hear the commotion outside and she was dreading what she would see. But morbid curiosity and a desire to know one through, and she crept over to the window, standing up on her tiptoes and peering out through the large hole carved in the rock.

Outside was chaos. There were Twi'leks everywhere, scrambling and dashing around like mad people, but most of them all heading in the same direction – towards the back of the canyon. Numa could see smoke billowing out from several of the houses further down the street, sweeping upwards into the sky as if it were trying to cloak the sun. Shrieks and wails and other noises of distress filled her ears and Numa just wanted to clamp her hands over them to drown them out.

But the scariest part was the strange men. She could see figures at the back of the fleeing crowd – hooded and cloaked humanoid figures that were wielding the blasters. Several of them were letting off shots into the air, presumably to scare the Twi'leks that were fleeing from their advancing line, but to Numa's horror, many of them did find a mark. Some of the braver men Twi'leks charged the ominous figures, armed with brooms or other makeshift weapons. None of them got far – the men took out the would-be attackers with precise shots and caused them to collapse to the ground, dead. And Numa knew several of them.

Numa dropped out of sight as the attacking people advanced. Everyone in the city was rushing around in panic, and Numa wasn't that far from following their example, but she was trying to force herself to remain calm, trying to think like Aayla or Suzie would have. Unless they were attacked themselves, the invaders were not attacking the locals – they were driving them in one direction. The locals were being herded.

Numa gasped, heart hammering, and her mind flashed to her uncle. He was guarding the wall, which the invaders had already walked past. Fear gripped her heart as she thought of what might have happened to him. She had to know. She didn't want to lose him too.

She glanced to the door, but the screams and chaos that had become outside immediately told her not to head that way. So she hurried towards the slab in the ground that lead to the tunnels. Maybe she could escape through them and avoid the invaders as she had avoided the droids with Suzie.

But, before she reached it, the slab was suddenly lifted from belief and another hooded figure emerged. Numa screamed and skidded to a halt right before him, and she could tell it was a human, but she didn't hang around to gain any more details. The man made a lunge at her, trying to grab her in one arm, but Numa rolled out of the way and dashed out of the door and into the chaos outside.

Immediately, everything became one-hundred times worse. Peering out of the window had given her only a vague sense of the terror that was rife in the canyon that was supposed to be a haven, but had now become a trap. Numa was almost bowled over right away as an adult woman Twi'lek almost crashed into her. Screams filled her ears, and smoke stung her eyes. She tried to push her way through the crowd that was racing pas her, but she was pushed back by a bunch of legs and carried backwards, before she managed to get back out into the open again.

Dodging fleeing friends, Numa hurried in the wrong direction. There were ways out of the canyon in almost all directions, and many of the other Twi'leks were trying to flee into them. Numa probably would have done the same, but her head was being ruled by her heart. She had to find her uncle. She had to know if he was safe.

Ducking past a hurrying local and weaving between a couple more, Numa sought out a way to get to the great wall. The invaders were blocking off the canyon in several rows and advancing forwards. Numa dived behind a barrel, narrowly avoiding getting run over by another pair of Twi'leks and watched the strange men.

Several of them split off and went into the houses whenever they came across one, and behind them, Numa could see several emerging from houses, dragging locals that had been attempting to hide outside. She saw one of them haul a screaming, kicking, female Lethan Twi'lek out of her house and press some kind of cloth over her face, whereupon the Twi'lek's movements would become more sluggish and her efforts more feeble.

It was then that Numa knew immediately who these people were, and her heart felt like it had frozen over. This was a Twi'lek's absolute worst fear – a fear that so many poor, unfortunate souls were put through each and every year. So far, Nabat had been spared this kind of thing, but it seemed that the luck of the canyon had run out.

Slavers!

Now it all made sense, even to the young Numa, as she had been brought up in the knowledge that Twi'leks, particularly the girls, were the most valued species throughout the entire slave trade. Numa had had nightmares about slavers, but this was different. Now they were here. They were being methodical, pitiless and brutal, shooting the males and grabbing the females and knocking them unconscious. They were herding the townsfolk, luring them into traps where they could grab the live captives they required, cutting off escape through the tunnels.

Numa found herself struggling to breathe as she almost hyperventilated. She couldn't become a slave! She just couldn't! It wasn't fair. She had to get away!

But she still needed to find her uncle first!

What should she do?

In the end, she didn't get to answer her own question because her mind was made up for her. A large figure suddenly stepped out of the house that Numa had been hiding next to and grabbed her little form in one arm, hauling her into the air. Numa shrieked and struggled for all she was worth, but she was no match for the man's greater strength. As she kicked and furiously thrashed in his grip, she saw his hand reaching up to cover her mouth and cut off her cries, and she quickly let instinct take over.

Before his hand could get a grip on her face, she bit it. Hard. The man yelled and released his grip, clutching his hand and checking it for injuries. Numa dropped to the ground and sprawled there, but she was quickly up and away before he had a chance to recover, dashing back into the throng of fleeing Twi'leks. Ducking and weaving throughout the many-coloured legs all around her, Numa hurried along, with no clear plan in mind. All that she knew was that she had to find her uncle.

She screamed suddenly as a male right next to her who looked ready to try his luck at charging the slavers was shot in the chest and tumbled backwards, almost landing on top of her. Numa fell onto her backside, a choked cry escaping her form as she looked at the dead Twi'lek. She backed away slightly, until she was pressed against the wall, and suddenly the main line of men was upon her.

"Well, well," said one of them, pausing to look down at her. "What have we got here? A little, lost girlie?"

"Don't stand there, just grab her," another one cried. Numa didn't understand what they were talking about and she couldn't make out what species they were under their hoods, but she definitely knew what was happening. The man nearest to her stepped towards her, but Numa quickly sprang to her feet and dodged past him at high speed, which clearly startled him. And suddenly, she was surrounded by the slavers, who were turning towards her.

Numa just ran. Pausing the plan out a route between them would only get her caught. They turned and lunged for her, but she was too quick and zipped past them, dodging around their legs. One attempted to dive at her and squash her beneath him, but she jumped backwards and he ended up crashing into another one of them and bringing him down. Not for nothing was Numa one of the best of her generation at the game tag. She played it often enough with her friends – she was very good at dodging.

Still, there were too many of them, and they quickly pressed in on her. Numa hesitated for a fraction of a second and during that second one of them was almost able to grab her arm. Numa jumped backwards and almost immediately ran into another one. Desperately, Numa lashed out with a fist, not expecting to do a lot of damage to the much bigger humanoid. However, she caught him right in the groin, and the man doubled over and collapsed, groaning in pain. Numa blinked, but then leapt over the man and his startled companions and suddenly she was out of the main throng, fleeing down the street and towards the wall where she knew her uncle would be.

Behind her, she heard somebody shout the words, "Everyone, get back into line and continue with main task. You two, after that troublesome little one. If she escapes then the boss will have your hides, you hear me?"

Numa glanced over her shoulder at the words, and saw two men dashing after her, their cloaks billowing out behind them. Numa might be a good dodger, but their longer legs made them faster. Heart hammering, Numa piled on speed and hurtled down the street, passing several other slavers that were busy securing the captives they had made so far, and the corpses of many dead Twi'leks – most of them males. She heard the voice of a female Twi'lek crying, "Lono, Numa! Lon-!" Before her voice was cut off by something.

Numa felt tears of fear and denial coursing down her cheeks as she ran. This couldn't be happening. It just couldn't be! Why did this have to happen so quickly after the droids had invaded? Why did it have to happen at all?

She could hear the men gaining on her, so she quickly dashed to the side and hauled a slab the opened into the tunnels aside, leaping into them moments before one of them grabbed her. Now in darkness, she hurried along the tunnels, turning sharply several times in the hope that she would lose her pursuers. She paused briefly, listening, and let out a brief sigh of relief when she didn't hear any sounds of pursuit. Then, she hurried off down the tunnel again.

After several more corridors, she clambered back up to the surface. She struggled to lift the heavy lid above her, gritting her teeth as she pushed her way upwards with one shoulder. Slowly, the slab was pushed aside slightly, allowing Numa to squeeze through the gap she had created. She was exactly where she knew she'd be – right next to the towering wall that sealed the canyon and its inhabitants away from the predators of the outside world.

Numa looked around, but could see no signs of her uncle. She hurried up to the stone stairwell that led up the wall, and began the arduous climb upwards. It was a long staircase that went backwards and forwards right up the enormous structure and at the speed Numa was going she ran out of breath very quickly, but she pressed on regardless.

All the while, she dreaded what she might find.

And, when she reached the top, her worst fear was realised. She froze in horror, still as a statue and eyes wide as they fell upon the prone form of Nilim Bril. The blue-skinned man might have been asleep, but the burnt hole right in the middle of his chest said otherwise. Numa's insides went numb, as did her legs, and she slumped to her knees, shaking her head in denial and tears pouring freely down her cheeks.

"Schoy," she murmured. "Schoy. Schoy!" She broke down and buried her face in her hands. She'd lost her mother and father many months ago. Now, her uncle, her only remaining family, was dead too. And this time, there was no Suzie to comfort her. Numa was alone. She was hollow, empty and alone.

Until a large hand grabbed her from behind and hauled her into the air.

* * *

Twi'leki translations (haven't had these for a while, have we?)

Hyfan noon suul – Where were you?

Ju sam gurny frasen – I was getting worried.

Poa, Ikut – Sorry, uncle

Ju sam pryf burnon oi stolp. Suul ken, ji kalan acer bolo oi sugi ard – I was just taking a walk. You know, to clear my head a little bit

Suul eper ji bernan oi lot di stolpes, tyro – You seem to take a lot of walks, kid

Koomey nes, res time hef terna – Come on, it's time for dinner

Jus grawsen – I'm hungry.

Di kury suul non. Suulan huiono si raveno – Of course you are. Your appetite is voracious.

Polis koil treq – What's that mean

Re treqe suul non sulla grawsen – It means you are always hungry

Suul thurck suul gif her hed gur we liquwe hef ace, sugi ei – You reckon you can go and get the water for me, little one

Ju eohp ju yolo prud oom aki – I wish I could see them again

Ju shaw oolor ed yoshon – I hope they're all okay

Suul yuson ji muj dob afopo – You want to play tag later

Yoshon – Okay

Ju ulner terna instanb, ger jus prud suul afopo – I have tea now, but I'll see you later

Lono – Run

Schoy - No

* * *

Yes, I know. I like to put my characters through some tough crap. And I really do go into this whole Twi'lek slave thing quite a lot, but since one of my main characters IS a Twi'lek, I figured this would be a major plotline at some point. And we've seen slaves numerous times throughout the story, but apart from the Dark Acolytes saga, we've seen the characters doing little _about_ the slave trade.

This new arc gives the main characters the opportunity to finally get a crack at some of the bastards that are enslaving all these Star Wars people. And yes, Numa will be a major character for quite a while to come now.

Hope you all enjoyed that. Four more chapters until two-thirds of this story have been written.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Still another chapter to wait before we get to the details of how Bane, Renamon and Chewbacca go about their task. The next chapter consists of Numa being terrified as she is taken prisoner, and the repercussions of the attack reaching Coruscant, where another Twi'lek heard the news and doesn't like it.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 142 : Scum of the Galaxy**


	142. Scum of the Galaxy

So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, SO, SO, SO, SO, SOOOO sorry for the long update time, but it wasn't my fault. I had just moved into the building I would be living in for the majority of my year at uni, but there was no internet there and there wouldn't be for a couple of weeks, which really, _really_ stuck in my craw. However, I didn't let that get in my way, and I spent a lot of time writing even though I wasn't posting. So now, it's time for a MASS UPDATE! Hope you enjoy these chapters, and the twoshot for Forcystus5 that I finally got round to doing. By the way, I suggest that you read that twoshot first, as the events in it occur before this arc, so reading them afterwards might not have the same impact. It's good to be back, let me tell you. However, I have not actually got the internet back yet, but I was able to use the broadband at my university to post this. That means that posting may be intermittent until the internet is back, but I will continue writing regardless.

Enjoy the mass update everyone and _please,_ review each chapter instead of reviewing them all as one block. I'd prefer it that way – more reviews for the effort I put into doing this, if you follow me.

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**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 142:- Scum of the Galaxy**

* * *

In retrospect, Numa wished she had done more to try and escape her captor. Even if it made no difference at all, she should have been struggling, punching, kicking and screaming for all she was worth, desperately trying to get away. But she didn't do that. Her body was practically shutting down due to the shock of her uncle's death, and everything that was happening on the outside seemed to be a blur and only vaguely real.

As before with her parents, the sight of her uncle lying dead was practically hovering at the back of her eyes and the fore of her brain, taunting her. The one piece of family she had left on this planet had been reduced to a corpse and Numa hadn't even had the chance to say goodbye. Again. She had said goodnight when he had put her to bed, but that wasn't the same. It was also the exact same last word she had said to both her parents. It was as if the story was replaying itself and Numa was reduced to a limp, grief-stricken form, as she found herself unable to focus on anything else.

She was only vaguely aware of her surroundings – little pieces managed to filter past the image of her dead uncle, but they made little sense to her. The slaver that had slung her over his shoulder was large and treaded heavily, but Numa had no idea what species he was. She was slightly aware of numerous colours all over the place, and considering just about everything else here was the colour of sand, that meant it had to be other Twi'leks. And then she was plunged into darkness, which meant her captor was taking her through a tunnel of some kind.

But the only thing Numa could think was _Gone._ All her family, picked off one by one. She'd had so little to begin with as well. Twi'lek families were rarely large, and more mouths to feed meant that more credits would be required to do so, and the majority of the populace didn't have enough to spare. Her mother had never had any siblings, and her uncle had never married so she never had an aunt or any cousins to play with. None that she knew of anyway. And she was sure that she knew of all the family she had.

Which now consisted of zero members.

Numa cried. She made no attempt to hide it. She didn't sob though. In fact, she did practically nothing but stare directly ahead as water spilled down her face. She was barely breathing. She was just far too stunned to comprehend doing anything else.

"Riun," she murmured to herself. "Ed riune. Oolor ed ruine."

Why did they have to go? Why did people have to leave her? They always left her. Mum and Dad had left. Uncle had left. All the others had left practically the day after she'd met them. For the first time in her life though, Numa was truly alone.

Eventually, the poor girl was jarred back to reality when the darkness of the tunnel she was being carried through suddenly ended and was replaced by blinding light. She lifted an arm to shield her eyes, but the only thing she saw was a large cliff right in front of her, that her captor had emerged in front of. Numa lifted herself up on his shoulder and had a look around.

She saw, predictably, a lot of sand. But she also saw trees in the distance, which bathed a large portion of the landscape in shadow. She also saw what appeared to be mountains in the distance and a pair of large can-cell dragonflies swooping low over the trees.

Fear gripped Numa. She was _outside_ the canyon. In all the years that she had spent in Nabat, she had only left the safety of the canyon walls once, and that was to see her friends off after the invasion of the droids. During that time, she'd felt safe, as she had been surrounded by men in white armour, wielding guns that could hold threats at bay.

But this was different. There was none of that this time. She was outside, and the atmosphere was a hostile one. Numa was terrified. Up until the invasion of the droids half a year ago, Nabat had been a safe haven where the only bad things that happened were accidents. Going outside unsupervised was forbidden, as the woods were full of predatory Gutkurr. And now Numa was here, and while her captor looked strong, she was pretty sure he wouldn't mind throwing her to the predators if it meant saving his own life.

Now, Numa finally began to struggle, in a desperate attempt to get away from the person holding her and hide somewhere. But, as she did, the large man's grip tightened and he said, in Basic. "Now, now, none of that girlie. No squirming, or you may find yourself struggling to get your breath back."

Numa didn't understand the words but she understood it was a threat, and she immediately stopped struggling. She slumped against the guy's shoulder and shut her eyes, not wishing to see the scary and dangerous outside world. But that just made things worse, and she quickly opened them again.

A few minutes later, where the familiar canyon wall she had seen so many times from the other side was quite some distance away, her captor lifted her off his shoulder and deposited her on the ground, holding a heavy hand around the back of her neck in case she tried anything. Numa cringed at what she saw. There were a huge number of hooded figures all over the place. Some were carrying the unconscious forms of adult female Twi'leks and placing them on the ground where a bunch of others were lying, while several more were busy chaining them up. Numa watched, terrified, as a metal collar was fitted around the throat of each captive. The collar had a long chain on it, like some form of leash, and the other end of this leash was connected to a pair of binders locking the wrists of the Twi'lek in front behind her back. Then the Twi'lek behind would have her own wrists bound behind her, and would have the leash of the Twi'lek behind _her_ connected to them.

They were building a slave line. It was a cruel and yet clever way of keeping the captives secured. Several of the Twi'leks at the front of the line were already awake, but there was a minimal amount of struggling against their chains. If one person pulled too hard on their wrist bonds, they jerked the captive behind them forward by their neck. The conscious Twi'leks were huddled together, and trying to find some slack, but, of course, there was none.

As woman after woman was hooked up to the line (and Numa noticed that there were no men on the line _at all_), one of the hooded figures seemed to notice the one holding Numa and walked over. Numa's captor stiffened, and it was obvious that this new hooded figure was the leader of the slavers.

"Well," the man said in Basic. "What have we here? Tryo, why did you bring me one as small as this? You know full well that Twi'lek adults are the ones that people want to buy. A child wouldn't make much of a dancer."

"I know, sir," said the taller being. Numa looked up to see Tryo take off his hood, revealing that he was, in fact, a Klatooinian, which were generally very large and ugly species. "But I have worked with slavers a couple of times before, and I know for a fact that the children are actually just as highly prized as the adults."

"Oh?" the leader asked. "How so?"

"Conditioning," the Klatooinian sneered. "The older Twi'leks are likely to put up more of a fight and their wills remain stronger when they're in captivity. When you catch them young, like this one here, their spirits are much easier to break, and they become used to a life of servitude because they grow up in it. It makes them much more... submissive, when they get older, if you follow me."

"Is that so?" the leader said with interest, and knelt down to study Numa more closely. Poor Numa didn't have much of an idea as to what was going on but there was something creepy about this hooded figure. She actually found herself shrinking closer to the Klatooinian, perhaps seeking some form of protection, but the Klatooinian was in no mood to protect the small and shoved her forwards again.

The leader lowered his hood slowly, and Numa gasped at what she saw underneath. He was a _Twi'lek._ A male Twi'lek, with greenish-grey skin, who was leering down at her thoughtfully. Of the numerous shocks that had occurred today, this was one of the largest. Numa felt anger inside her small frame and sudden desire to hit this person where it hurt most. Even her ten-year-old self was revolted at the actions of this man. He was capturing and planning to sell members of _his own_ species.

But Numa didn't act on her anger. She was too scared too, particularly with the Klatooinian looming over her as well.

"Well, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to keep this little one on board for a while," the male Twi'lek said. "I wonder who might take her off our hands though. She seems like a little bindle of trouble. But, I suppose there's only one way to find out is there. Link her up to the line."

"Uh, we can't, sir," said one of the other hooded slavers from nearby. "The manacles we have on the line are designed to fit round the wrists of adult Twi'leks." He gestured to the long line of chained females. "None of them will fit around the wrists of the girl. She could slip out of them quite easily."

The male Twi'lek paused briefly and murmured, "Alright then. Fine."

"We could always shoot her," offered another one. "Save us the hassle of..."

"No," the male shook his firmly. "It might be bothersome. But we're keeping this little one with us. I'd quite like to see how selling her pans out, and if Tryo's idea will be worth it for us." He knelt down again and grabbed Numa by the upper arm. Numa struggled and tried to pull out of his grip but it was much too firm. The leader dragged Numa over to the slave line, towards the end where most of the captives were awake. Numa watched with a sense of finality as the last of the prisoners had her hands shackled behind her and her neck linked to the wrists of the one in front. They were all well and truly caught.

It had all happened so quickly too and the results had been devastating. There were over fifty Twi'lek prisoners acquired from this one attack. Numa wondered miserably how many of these captives had lost loved ones in the attack on Nabat as well, and she assumed that it would be a fair few of them. At least she wasn't entirely alone in her misery.

She wasn't sure what to think of the fact that Lubo and her other friends were not in the line. That could mean that they had managed to escape through a tunnel system, or it could mean that they were dead. And Numa had no way of knowing which was the case.

As the male Twi'lek approached the line, the females shrank back from him, but many of them ha eyes that were blazing with anger. They just had no way of acting upon it, chained together and surrounded as they were. The male singled out one of the group – a female Twi'lek with snow-white skin and glared pointedly at her. "Suul!" he exclaimed in Twi'leki. "Koomey baneer."

The woman glared at him, but did as he instructed, shuffling through the sand on her knees until she was away from the other prisoners and the chain leashes on her neck and wrists were taut. The male sneered at her and said, "Non suul funorla suulan bror liho nan graw?"

The woman looked him in the eye and said, "Her ji furner."

The man laughed and said, "Drews, holker, Ju klio fross ji lubinaw suul. Suul pryf vresaq o purcos." With those words said he hefted the arm gripping Numa and sent the little girl stumbling into the older woman. She immediately grabbed her around the waist in a tight embrace and stared fearfully over her shoulder at the male.

"Lood urva gor," the man said. "Gar si fo suulan crulofy, hed goh suul solo gor ony sa suulan sercalo, suul burfon zwor lik whippo, compryva?"

The woman cringed and sank lower, huddling as close to Numa as she could, trying to give the young one as much comfort as possible without the use of her hands. "Drass," she said to the male. "Gar burfon dren kerlam ace."

The male nodded, then said in Basic to the slavers, "Make sure this section of the line is the most guarded. We don't want the little one attempting to slip away. And if she does, you'll all pay the price."

"Yes, sir," nodded several of the other slavers, before taking up positions on either side of the line, blasters ready. Numa, unable to look at them, buried her face in the rough fabric of the white-skinned woman's dress and finally began sobbing as everything crashed down on her. Her uncle was gone, her village ransacked and she was a prisoner.

The woman made soothing, shushing noises and attempted to calm the little girl, moving one of her lekku over her shoulder to try and caress Numa's own head-tails with it in a comforting manner. The lack of the use of her arms made things difficult, but Numa seemed to appreciate the effort and her sobs subsided slightly. The woman slowly backed in with the rest of the line, and Numa refused to let go as she did.

"Don, don, zen ei," the woman nodded. "Res wernofe. Alleser si herfo ji lik yoshon."

"Schoy, re willna," Numa sniffed, her voice muffled, until she looked up into the eyes of her newly designated protector. "Acer nomina si norkr, hed top non ed caponers. Top burfon asta lik blior ji gur crixa. Topee ed nooks ji trysta slecksa."

"Schoy, schoy," the woman said. "Jus sol alleser burfon trik ony. Topl gur crixa. Suulo prud. Topl lik drass – ed sa pon." But even to her the words sounded hollow. The slavers had known exactly where and when to strike in order to collect the prisoners. The male Twi'lek had probably played an instrumental part in the attack, guiding the other slavers through the tunnels and directing the assault. So many dead and so many more taken prisoner all in the space of about twenty minutes. These slavers were a force to be reckoned with. She shared a glance with her immediate neighbours, who had their wrists and neck bound to her neck and wrists respectively. The three of them huddled protectively around Numa, trying to shield her from the glares of the slavers.

* * *

Eventually, when all the slaves were awake and struggles to escape the chains had ceased, the leader of the slavers shouted, "Come on then, you lazy wenches. Up on your feet and get moving. We've got ourselves a long walk before we get back to the main camp, and the sooner you get started the sooner you can rest again. Now move."

There was a great deal of awkward shuffling as over fifty closely-chained Twi'leks struggled to their feet. Numa stuck as close as she could to her protector as, slowly but surely, the slave line began to walk.

* * *

It was some hours before word of the attack on Nabat reached the ears of anybody who could do anything about it. Ryloth had never been great when it came to communications. So far on the Outer Rim, its connections with many other worlds were not particularly good, and even on the planet itself it was hard for word to get about quickly, no matter how urgent the situation. Nabat didn't even have a communications link to other areas of the planet, which, in the long run, didn't help it.

This lack of communication was one of the many reasons that the slave trade could flourish on this desert world so easily.

Having taken up residence in the capital city of Lessu, which he had wrested from the clutches of Wat Tambor alongside the Jedi and the Digimon, Cham Syndulla was currently wondering what the heck Senator Orn Free Taa was doing with his time off-planet. If he had become Senator, as he had tried to be, one of the first things he would have discussed with the Senate was reinforcing his planet to prevent slavers from capturing its citizens so easily. But Orn Free Taa didn't seem that bothered. Hell, he usually had one or two female Twi'leks clinging to his arms at most times himself. Not for the first time, Cham wondered if the fat Twi'lek's election had been rigged.

The orange-brown skinned man was rubbing his forehead, having just received word from his good friend, Gobi Glie, of the attack on Nabat. Apparently, one of the citizens that had escaped had made a daring trek across the desert to the nearest other settlement which had a holotransmitter. And it had taken him four and half hours to do it.

"This cannot be allowed to go on, Gobi," Cham said, sitting at his table and sighing in anger and annoyance. He might not be Ryloth's Senator, but now that he was head of one of this planet's two capitals he should be able to do something without consulting the Senate. "We need to figure out a way of shutting down this whole business as quickly as possible. Nabat is the third city to be hit this week."

Gobi nodded. "And every time, sir, a very large portion of the citizens are taken. And they are always the women. The men are just killed on sight."

Cham swore in Twi'leki, pounding the table with his fist, disgust roiling through him at the thought of what those women might have to go through. The luckiest of them would become dancers in some seedy bar somewhere. Others would be forced to dance for Hutts or other gangsters and others... well, he didn't even want to go there. It made him sick to his stomach.

"Alright," he sighed. "How many were taken this time, Gobi?"

"It's difficult to say, Cham," Gobi replied. "Not all the citizens of the area are accounted for, but the man who let us know what had happened estimates that at least fifty women were taken, possibly more."

"Fifty!" Cham exclaimed in alarm, forcing down a furious growl. "That's the largest number so far. The other two were only in the twenties, and I thought _that_ number was large."

"I know, sir," Gobi nodded. "Nabat is a closed off area though. It was more difficult for the locals to get away. More of them were caught as usual. The man also thinks that about thirty men were killed in the assault."

"And I assume that when we get there, the result will be the same," Cham said. "The slavers and their captives will be long gone and there will be no evidence left behind that they were ever there besides the missing and the dead. That's what happened with the last two attacks. We don't even know what they did next. They might have gone away on foot and covered their tracks or they might have flown away in a starship. Whoever these people are, they certainly know what they're doing."

"I know," Gobi sighed. "Its almost unnerving. The people are growing restless with anxiety, wondering if they might be next."

"This is far worse than normal," Cham agreed. The slave trade had been going on across the Galaxy for centuries. Twi'leks lived on many planets besides Ryloth of course, but as Ryloth was populated almost solely by them since they were indigenous here, it was the primary target. But never before had Cham encountered anything on this scale. Usually, slave traders might sneak into a town or a city on the side of the planet where it was night and kidnap one or two Twi'leks from their homes or from the streets maximum, and they would disappear without most of the population knowing they were there. But these large-scale attacks and captures were new.

You might think that such a large operation would be easy to find, but so far Cham and his followers had come up with nothing when they had attempted search parties. Even the blurrgs they roe on had not been picking up any scents. It was as if the slavers knew exactly how to avoid being located. The precise and startlingly swift attacks on the cities were similar. Either these people were experts in general, or they knew the area very well. And it is actually surprisingly easy to hide in a desert, as Cham could testify, as he had done the same when the Separatists invaded.

Cham sat in silence for a few moments, staring at the wall of his 'office.' He didn't like the word, but right now it certainly felt like one. He glanced at the blaster hanging on the wall nearby, which he had not used since the droid armies had been driven from his planet's surface.

"Cham?" Gobi asked, quietly. "What do you want us to do?"

Cham's frown turned to one of determination. "The same as last time. We head for the attack area and look for clues. Only this time, we're going to be bringing some help with us. How goes the progress of the war?"

"A report came over the holonet a few hours ago," Gobi said. "Ever since Aayla Secura took care of Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress like that, the Galactic Senate think that the war should be over within a week minimum and a month maximum, in favour of the Republic."

"Then it is almost over," Cham said. "Perhaps, now that things look to be settling back to normal soon, the Jedi may have a few of their number to spare. Normally I would prefer taking care of our problems under our own steam, but I cannot deny that we need help this time. Those slavers must be stopped, and stopped soon, or else who knows how many other cities will fall victim to them, and how many more will die or be taken captive?"

Gobi brightened considerably. "That could work," he agreed. "The Jedi might have an idea about how to go about this. And they may be anxious to return to their role as peacekeepers rather than generals."

"My thoughts exactly," Cham said. "I don't trust the Senate any more than I did beforehand, but the Jedi Order is another matter entirely. Let us contact the Jedi Council and ask for any Jedi that they can spare. If anyone can track down these slavers, it's them. And then," he stepped over to the wall and pulled the blaster from the bolts holding it there, and turned to face Gobi. "We take back all the people that they stole from us. And I want to make sure that the Galaxy knows, once and for all, that Ryloth is not a treasure trove of any kind. People will only take from us what they're given if I have anything to say about it."

* * *

Aayla's journey back to the Jedi Temple had been one of the most complicated that she'd ever made. First, the _Intrepid_ had dropped her and the others off at Pantora, before proceeding on its own way. They had descended to the moon in the small ship Chuchi had used to transport the money to Bane, as the Duros had helpfully detached it from his own ship before he left with Renamon and Chewbacca. Then, Aayla, Barriss and Chuchi had had a brief meeting with the Chairman, thanking him, his family and the former slave girl Mertiri, for their assistance. The two Digimon and the three Tamers had remained in the ship, since they no longer had the advantage of Renamon's perception filter to hide them.

However, that didn't stop Terriermon from sticking his head out and waving to Mertiri when nobody else was looking. Mertiri had blanched at the sight of him, then struggled very hard to maintain her composure, because Lopmon had emerged as well, grabbed her brother by the ears and dragged him out of sight, after giving the Pantoran girl a wave of her own.

Chuchi had then taken them the rest of the way to Coruscant, before dropping them off on a large, empty landing pad. Thanking the Senator again for her efforts, they said their goodbyes. Chuchi asked them to keep her updated on the search for Sidious whenever possible, and then flew off to 500 Republica – the building where most Senators lived while they stayed on Coruscant.

Then Anakin and Ahsoka had arrived by speeder, to take them the rest of the way from the Temple. It was a bizarre trip. Anakin was deliberately steering them away from the other speeders. Having anyone spot and recognise Aayla might be a potential disaster, since Darth Sidious was supposed to think she was dead. Not to mention the no-longer-hidden Digimon she was riding with.

But they had got there in the end, and now, the not-quite-complete team were walking through the corridors of the Temple alongside Yoda and Mace Windu, though the latter was only there via a life-size hologram that Yoda was floating along.

"I'm telling you, Aayla," Anakin was saying. "You gave us a real scare this time. Promise me that you will wait a few years before you allow yourself to be taken prisoner again. Once was enough."

"Thank you for your concern, Anakin," Aayla chuckled. "I promise I'll do my best."

"Eh, you'd be fine," Terriermon chuckled from his perch on Aayla's shoulder. "She handled this kidnapping like a real pro. I knew she'd be fine. I wasn't even worried."

"Yes, you were, Terriermon," Henry reprimanded his partner. "And don't you dare try to deny it."

"Momentai, Henry," Terriermon snorted. "Our Aayla's a Jedi Master now. She handled Dooku and Ventress. I knew she could take a measly kidnapping."

"You really aren't helping," Lopmon swatted him lightly. "We were all worried about you, Aayla, and don't let this moron tell you any differently."

"Of course I was worried," Terriermon muttered. "I'm just try to relax the atmosphere a little bit."

"And it is much appreciated," Aayla smiled at him, "but technically, I am not a Jedi Master yet. I still have to go through the official ceremony, just as Barriss went through the one to become a Knight recently."

"Yes, I get promoted to Knight, and then you go and steal my thunder by becoming a Master less than a week later," chuckled Barriss. "Hope you don't mind if a sulk in the corner."

Aayla laughed, as did most of the others. Ahsoka turned to Barriss and said, "Don't worry, Barriss. I'll go and become a Knight in a few days time to steal her thunder as well, if you like."

Barriss snorted. "Thank you," she said. "But who would steal our thunder after that?"

"Nobody," Ahsoka grinned. "That's the point."

"Suzie and I could always become Cherubimon and apply thunder instead," Lopmon offered.

"Er, I think I'll pass," Ahsoka murmured.

"Or maybe Aayla could apply thunder herself with that Electric Judgement thingie," Suzie put in, glancing up at Aayla. "Could you go and show us what it looks like, Aayla?"

There were murmurs of agreement from Terriermon, Rika, Ahsoka and Anakin, but Aayla merely shook her head. "I don't think so," she said. "While I now know I have the capacity to do it, I daren't use it again right now. It was purely instinctual the first time, but it won't be if I try it now. It may not involve the Dark Side, but it is still Force Lightning, and therefore very dangerous, to myself and others. I'd quite like to speak with Plo Koon and ask for his guidance before I try that again. Perhaps he can instruct me in its usage."

"A wise decision," Mace said. "Master Plo is the authority on the Electric Judgement, since he discovered it. Anyway, moving back to the topic of being a Jedi Master, it is within our power to do the ascension ceremony now, Aayla. You do deserve it after all you've been doing recently."

"Thank you, Master," Aayla said. "But I have to decline."

"You're not changing your mind are you?" Terriermon asked, savagely. "Because remember what I said would happen if you did."

"Oh, believe me, I remember," Aayla chuckled. "No, I am not backing down. I have gotten used to the idea, but when the ascension ceremony takes place, I want all of my friends and family to be there, and that includes Renamon and Chewbacca. It wouldn't feel right if I became a Master and they weren't there to see it."

"That's sweet," Ahsoka smiled. "You hear that, Master? You better let us be there when you get promoted."

"Yes, ma'am," Anakin responded. "And the same applies to you as well, Snips."

Aayla could still sense the slight tension within Anakin and had done ever since he had appeared to pick them up. She had resolved to ask him about it later, when they could talk in privacy, and she knew the others could sense something was off through their mind link as well. Only poor Barriss was left in the dark.

"Speaking of Renamon and Chewbacca," Yoda put in as he stepped slowly down the hall at the front of the group. "Look into their progress, can you, Terriermon?

"I don't need to look, Master Yoda," Terriermon replied. "It's playing out across the middle of my mind. It's not particularly interesting at the moment. They're just sitting in Bane's hideout right now and waiting for Sidious to call them. Bane says that Sidious is always the one to contact him and not the other way around."

"His hideout?" Mace asked, slowly. "And, just for future reference, of course, where might that be?"

"No idea," Terriermon said cheerfully. "Bane is remaining tight-lipped about that. All I know is that they're in that direction," he pointed off into the corner. "I could probably point out their location on a map though."

"Master," Aayla chided. "I promised Bane a full pardon. That means that we don't do _anything_ that would help to take him into custody until the war is over. Even if he does deserve to go behind ray shields, I promised him. I must insist that we don't try and exploit this link to locate him. It's unfair."

Mace sighed. "You're right of course. But all promises are nullified at the earliest opportunity. That Bounty Hunter _will_ be going to jail when the war's over."

"I'm sure Bane already knows you're thinking that way," Anakin said. "He'll be planning to scarper the moment his mission's complete, I'm sure."

"Probably," nodded Mace. "But we should still be ready for him, just in case."

"Ah, there you are," said a voice from up ahead. Obi-Wan had rounded the corner and was hurrying towards them. "Aayla, good to see you in person once again."

"Thank you, Master Kenobi," Aayla nodded.

"I wish I had more time to exchange pleasantries, but something's come up," Obi-Wan turned to the other Council members and said, "We've received a call. Apparently a situation has cropped up in the Outer Rim. A situation that doesn't involve the Separatists. But it does sound quite serious all the same, and we've been asked for help."

"Who is the call from?" asked Mace. "Which system?"

"It's from Cham Syndulla," Obi-Wan said. "From Ryloth."

"What?" Aayla asked suddenly, her focus immediately narrowed on Obi-Wan at the mention of her home planet. "Ryloth? What happened?"

"Perhaps it would be better if I let Cham do the talking," Obi-Wan replied. "He is waiting for us – I said I would find you as quickly as I could so that he could ask you for help."

"There seems to be very little chance for rest these days," remarked Mace. "But let's go see what Syndulla has to say."

"Only bad news, we will find, I sense," Yoda mused as they set off again at a faster tilt, the three Jedi Masters quickly heading back to the Council chambers. Aayla didn't hesitate before following on after them, Terriermon and Lopmon riding on her shoulders. The others merely shared quick looks before they moved on.

When they reached the chambers, Mace turned to Aayla as Yoda and Obi-Wan stepped inside. "I think it would be better if you were to remain outside, Aayla. I know that you are concerned about your homeworld, but we must exercise a degree of caution, as we are still attempting to track down Sidious and you are supposed to be in hiding. We will see what this is all about."

Aayla bit her lip, her natural concern for her planet and her people objecting with Mace's words, but the Twi'lek simply nodded and stepped backwards with a sigh. Mace seemed to understand the stress she was feeling and said, "Besides, somebody needs to keep Terriermon out of trouble now that Renamon isn't here."

"Oh, ha ha," Terriermon laughed sarcastically. "You're hilarious." Then he remembered that Mace scared him and he prepared to jump behind Aayla. But then...

"Momentai," said Mace, before he turned and holographically strode into the Council chamber. Terriermon was left frozen in his seat on Aayla's shoulder, eyes bugged and ears falling slack as if her had forgotten how to use them. Lopmon was desperately trying and failing to conceal her mirth, so she resorted to wrapping her own ears round her face and howling into them. They made quite effective mufflers.

"Did he just..." Terriermon blustered. "Did Mace... Did Master Windu... what?"

Anakin chuckled. "He really got you there, didn't he?" He then turned to Aayla and said, "We'll see what this is all about. You can look through our eyes and see for yourself if you want."

Aayla nodded in thanks, as Anakin, Ahsoka and Barriss stepped in after the Jedi Masters, and the doors slid shut behind them. Aayla was left outside with the Digimon, where Terriermon still seemed to be struggling to comprehend the fact that Mace had used his word. Aayla chuckled as he blustered but right now she had other thoughts – most prominently her home planet.

"Not involving the Separatists," she heard Henry murmur. "I wonder what that means?"

"It would be just our luck to have some new malevolent force rise up to take over the universe just as the last one is about to vanish, wouldn't it?" sighed Rika.

"Ssh," Suzie hissed. "I'm trying to listen."

"Did Mace just..." Terriermon burbled.

"Yes, Terriermon," Lopmon snickered. "Yes, he did."

"Terriermon, you can have a brain malfunction later," Aayla patted his back as best she could. "But right now, Ryloth is in some sort of trouble." She focused on one mind – Ahsoka's – before she found herself suddenly looking at the familiar holographic figure of Cham Syndulla, as sharply as if she were looking through her own eyes. She _had_ to thank the Digimon again for introducing this extraordinary mind-web to them.

"...third time this week," Cham was saying. "As I was telling Master Kenobi here. It cannot go on. The people that have heard of this are getting anxious, and those that haven't heard of this are going on with life, blissfully ignorant and becoming the best targets. It's been going on for too long as it is, but this really takes things up another notch."

"I understand your concerns, Cham," said Mace, which caused Aayla outside to frown in annoyance, as she didn't know what Cham had been talking about. "But right now, our forces are stretched thin. The Separatists might be few and far between now, but they are still stretched across a large period of the Outer Rim. Most of the Jedi are out finishing up with them, and those that aren't are dealing with a serious situation here on Coruscant."

"Master Jedi," Cham said, with what sounded like slightly forced respectfulness to all present. "I get that the war has created numerous problems for the Jedi Order, but you surely cannot ignore this. This is a serious development. Do you want to know how many were taken in the last attack? Over fifty... that we know of. There may be more. It's a very serious situation."

"Both are valid points," Obi-Wan said. "But the situation or Coruscant is more urgent than we are allowed to disclose, General Syndulla. However, we may be able to send help within a couple of rotations."

"And what might happen during that time, Master Jedi?" Cham asked. "Almost one-hundred women have been kidnapped from our cities and half as many men are lying dead in them. If these slavers aren't stopped as soon as possible then more will be added to that list."

Aayla felt her insides practically freeze over. As a Twi'lek woman, she knew full well the terror of slavery. She'd seen it at Jabba's Palace, which is one of the worst places for a Twi'lek to be a slave in. She'd encountered it several times in the last few months as they took out Separatist compounds. She remembered the terror she had felt as a child when she had learned that her own uncle was going to sell her into slavery, before Quinlan Vos had rescued her from that life.

But this was off the scale. One hundred new Twi'lek slaves in one week? That was the most terrifying figure she'd ever heard before.

The familiar surge of anger she always felt at the terrible treatment her race suffered at the hands of the unscrupulous washed through her, and as usual she squashed it down, but that didn't stop her fist from clenching at the thought. She could just picture the scene of one-hundred woman in chains and the thought sickened her.

She remembered the silent promise she'd made on Tatooine some time ago. The silent promise to that poor dancer in Jabba's Palace, that she would be back and would rescue them all. It was a promise that she fully intended to keep, but until the war was over and their alliance with Jabba held, she could do nothing.

But the same could not be said for these slavers.

Aayla's focus moved back into Ahsoka's mind again, just in time to hear Mace say. "You have our condolences, Cham. But I'm afraid we simply can't..."

"Master," interrupted Anakin. "You can't expect us to say 'no,' can you? The Twi'lek people need our help. All those women will be heading to places worse where their whole lives will be focused on pleasing other people. That's not a life that anyone deserves."

Aayla could sense Anakin felt almost as strongly about this as she did. Anakin had, of course, been a slave himself, so that was perfectly understandable. But both of them knew that if any of those Twi'leks made it into a life like Anakin's had been, they would very lucky.

"We must look to the Republic as whole before any system that belongs to it in particular," Mace pointed out. "And right now, the most important thing is what we are attempting right now. We may need to act as soon as possible once we receive news from our operatives."

"I don't believe this," Cham exclaimed. "You won't help?"

"We would like to," Mace said. "But you don't understand the severity of the situation." And, in all fairness, Cham didn't. The locating of Darth Sidious was extremely important, and would affect the lives of everyone, including the Twi'lek people, drastically once it happened. "It shouldn't take too long for our current situation to be dealt with, and until it is, we'll just have to..."

"Do both," Aayla interrupted as the doors slid open and she let herself in. The people in the room stepped aside to give her spaces as the Tamers, and Lopmon followed her in, a still-recovering Terriermon trailing after them. "Master Windu. I understand your point of view, but equally, I understand Cham's. But I agree with Anakin. We cannot allow this. We can't call ourselves Jedi if we don't even attempt to do anything about this."

"But, Aayla," Obi-Wan put in. "You know the importance of..."

"Yes, I do," Aayla stopped him. "Believe me, I do. Just as much as everyone else in this room does. But, if you allow me to voice my opinion, I think that you are being overly cautious. I see no reason why we can't do both."

"Have something in mind, do you?" Yoda asked. He had the same placid look on his face as always, like he'd been expecting Aayla to say this, which would probably be why he had not said anything to Cham about the situation.

"I see no reason why I cannot go and offer my assistance," Aayla pointed out. "All I'm supposed to be doing right now is hiding in the Temple and letting our target think I'm dead."

"What?" Cham asked, but he was ignored for his trouble.

"But this is even better for that. Ryloth is on the Outer Rim, almost beyond the reach of the Senate. And the Separatists are nowhere near that sector anymore. I can still be of use and the chances of me being discovered by someone who could tell the enemy about me are nil. Particularly if we make this a covert mission."

"But what about when our target has been found?" asked Mace. "What if you are still on Ryloth when that happens?"

"What of it?" Aayla asked. "I'm not even needed for that. You only need Terriermon. He can tell you the moment when our target is..."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa... whoa!" Terriermon waved his ears, suddenly back to his senses. "There is no chance in hell that you are leaving me behind. If you're going on a mission to Ryloth then you can bet I'll be right there with you, and the rest of us will be too. You aren't going off to be the solo hero _again_, Aayla."

There were murmurs of assent from the others and Aayla found a grin gracing her face. "Alright then," she said. "All it would take would be one call via holocommunicator to pass the identity of our target to you, Master. Then you can do whatever you think is best with the information. We aren't actually doing anything beyond waiting for word from Renamon right now. We can do this as well. That's the beauty of their mental link – it's permanent and unaffected by distance."

The Jedi Masters were silent for a moment, before Yoda hummed and said, "Valid points, Aayla makes. Afford to become obsessed with our quarry and neglect those in need, we cannot. And keep them out of the target's reach, it will. Send them on the mission, we should."

"Wait," Barriss suddenly interjected. "Aayla, are you sure about this? Shouldn't you be resting after your, you know, ordeal?"

"Resting?" Aayla asked. "I spent the last several hours resting Barriss. I may have been tied to a chair for the majority of that time, but the result is the same."

"Sorry?" poor Cham blinked, totally lost now.

Mace sighed and his hologram said, "I suppose I was a thinking a little bit obsessively."

"As was I," Obi-Wan agreed. He turned to Cham and said, "I apologise. We have been searching for one person for many, many months now, and are finally on the verge of finding him. I suppose you could say it clouded our judgement a little bit."

"Thanks, I think," Cham frowned. "Then, does this mean that we can expect your assistance in this matter."

"It does," nodded Anakin. "And you've got the A-Team itself on the case, General, plus there new and trusty sidekick, Barriss Offee."

"I am not a sidekick," Barriss growled playfully and whacked Anakin in the head. "And I'll thank you to remember that."

"We'll bring the Digimon we can spare with us too," Ahsoka nodded. "Renamon won't be coming with us, but Terriermon and Lopmon are more than ready, right guys?"

"Absolutely," Lopmon nodded, hopping into Cham's view. "I've been repulsed by the oppression to Twi'leks ever since I arrived in this dimension. It'll be good to finally do something about it."

"Yeah, it sounds fun," Terriermon agreed. "We get to bust some more heads."

"For once, I agree," Henry put in. "I've found it just as nauseating as everyone else here. You can count on us, Cham."

"Ryloth means almost as much to us as it does to Aayla," Rika added. "It was the planet we Tamers first arrived on, after all."

"And where we made most of the friends we have today," Suzie cheered.

"Wonderful," Cham grinned. "It'll be good to have you guys along. The power you brought to the liberation of my planet from the Separatists was most appreciated."

"Cham, Cham, Cham," Aayla shook her head. "What you saw was only the beginning. The Digimon are capable of much, much more than that. Maybe you'll get to see it soon. But, for now, let's just say that we're on our way. Where shall we meet you?"

"I'll send you the co-ordinates of the most recent attack," said Cham. "We were planning to start from there, and search for potential clues to where the slavers may have taken their captives. We could definitely use your assistance there."

"Alright then," Aayla nodded, and turned to the others. "You guys ready?"

"More than," Ahsoka gave her a thumbs up.

"Oh, we're ready," Terriermon nodded.

"Then let's get to it," Aayla smiled. "We'll pile on all speed, Cham. We should be there in a few hours if we take the Corellian Run."

"Thank you," Cham said. "It is much appreciated. And I take it you don't want me to tell anybody from the Senate what you are doing, just like last time?"

"Perfect, that would be," Yoda nodded. "Now, get going you must."

"On our way!" Terriermon cried, and leapt onto Anakin's head and yelled "HYAH! MUSH!"

"Or not," Anakin said slowly, but the group quickly filed out of the room, as Obi-Wan sent the co-ordinates that Cham had sent through the link up to the _Resolute, _which would be the ship that they would be taking to go to Ryloth.

* * *

Their departure from Coruscant was as covert as possible. When Rex was contacted with the details, he nodded and had his men geared up and ready to leave as quickly as they could manage. When Bly was contacted from Ord Mantell, he made a brief joke about how General Secura could find new missions for them without trying, which did indeed seem to be the case, he agreed to get a squad together and meet them over Ryloth.

It wasn't until the hyperspace ride to Ryloth that Aayla finally got the chance to confront Anakin and ask him about what was preying on his mind. Up until that point she had been staring out the window, mulling over the unknown fate of all those poor Twi'leks that had wound up in every member of their species' worst nightmare.

Then Anakin had stepped up beside her and said, "Don't worry, Aayla. We'll get 'em back. Even if we have to trek across the planet to do it."

"It's likely that the slavers and the captives have already left the planet," Aayla mused. "But I remain hopeful." She paused and then said, "So, what's with you?"

"Hm?" Anakin asked. "What? What are you talking about?"

"I know you well enough to be able to tell when something is bothering you, Anakin," the Twi'lek replied evenly. "And I've been able to sense it for some time. What's wrong?"

Anakin hesitated, and it took a little encouraging on Aayla's part, but eventually, she was able to drag the story out of the Chosen One. The story of how, in a fit of anger at her disappearance, he had turned to Count Dooku for answers and how, when the Count had refused to co-operate, Anakin had grabbed him in a Force choke and might have done some serious damage to the old man if Ahsoka had not intervened and stopped him.

"I see," Aayla said slowly. "Well, I can see how that might upset you."

"I don't think I'd use the word 'upset,' myself," Anakin muttered.

"No, neither would I," Aayla agreed. "I can sense that you are angry, but you are angry at yourself."

"Wouldn't you be?" Anakin asked. "I thought that I'd been doing so well in staying clear from the Dark Side and not letting the temptation to use it get to me. I thought that I'd been steering away from it all. But then you got kidnapped and it all went wrong. I mean, while you were calmly negotiating a deal with Cad Bane, I was using the Force to choke a helpless prisoner. What does that say about me, Aayla?"

"Well," Aayla responded brightly. "It shows that we still have a little pruning to do to get the last of that darkness out of your system. But it also shows that you are a passionate, devoted man who cares deeply for his friends and would do anything for them."

Anakin blinked. "Er..." he managed.

Aayla chuckled. "Try not to focus on the negative aspects of it. The main point is that you _didn't_ go too far."

"But I would have..."

"If Ahsoka hadn't stopped you, I know," Aayla nodded. "That's what she's there for. That's what we're all here for. Besides, you _have_ been steering away from the Dark Side. Isn't that very fact the reason why Darth Sidious is so belligerent in hunting me down? Because he thinks I'm the main reason for him losing his grip on you? Think of this as just a one-off. Besides, all Jedi are capable of delving into the Dark Side depending on the situation. Not even the Council Members are exempt. It's not as if you are a special case in that regard."

Anakin stared at Aayla for several seconds before he shook his head and chuckle, "Another classic pep talk from the Heroine With No Fear."

Aayla grimaced. "I wish you'd stop using that title."

"Tough," Anakin grinned. "Alright, Aayla. I guess you have a point. I just need to catch myself next time instead of relying on Ahsoka to do it for me. I can do that if I try."

"Good boy," Aayla chuckled. Anakin frowned at her and she laughed, then turned serious and said, "But of course, you gave into your dark urges. You know what this means, don't you?"

Anakin blinked, and then sighed and actually presented his cheek to her, expecting her to slap him for a third time. Aayla resisted the urge to chuckle, and then caught him off guard by hugging him instead. Anakin blinked again, but then returned it, and they broke apart a moment later.

"No slap?" Anakin asked.

"No," Aayla rolled her eyes. "The slap is for when I catch you in the middle of doing it. The hug is to make you feel better afterwards. You just happened to luck out and skip over the former."

"Only because you were tied to a chair at the other end of the galaxy," Anakin snorted. "There'd be no stopping you otherwise."

"Just as there'll be no stopping us this time, when we begin the search for these slavers," Aayla's eyes took on a look of steely determination. "Right?"

"Right," nodded Anakin, mirroring her expression with his own. The two of them firmly grabbed the hand of the other and shook it, hard. Both had experienced slavery first-hand. And they were both going to do their best to make sure the prisoners of Ryloth never got far enough to suffer from it too.

* * *

The prisoners in question were nearing the end of their long march after several hours of hiking. All of them were looking worse for wear now, as they had been made to shuffle across the baking Ryloth sands, chained together and with no form of protection from the sun. Only once through the hike had their captors bothered to give them a drink of water, and even then, each captive had only been given a sip.

Numa had long since reached the end of her rope. She wasn't chained into the line like the others, but she was being made to walk long and hard all the same. The young girl didn't have the strength of the adults and had been unable to go any further some time ago. The white-skinned female had begged her captors to help, and now she was being forced to carry Numa awkwardly on her back, her shackled arms supporting Numa's legs in a rough piggyback. It made things harder for her, but she bore it without complaint. Better that she suffer slightly more than give the slavers an excuse to harm the child.

At the end of the line, several of the captors had taken branches from the forest trees and were sweeping it across their path to blot out the footprints the others were leaving in the sand, and leaving no trace that anybody had passed through in that direction at all. It was methodical and done under the direction of Tryo the Klatooinian. He evidently seemed to be the main brain behind the operation, but the male Twi'lek was the leader overall, as he knew all the best ways of invading the native areas with high results and swift withdrawals.

The male Twi'lek himself was at the front of the line, holding the chain of the first captive woman in his fist and pulling her, and therefore the rest of the line, in the direction he wanted them the move.

Numa looked up blearily as they entered the shade after several hours. Twi'leks had built up a natural resistance to the ultra-violet rays in the sun since they spent half the year bathed in it, but a number of hours had taken a toll on her little body. She was exhausted, but now that the sun was no longer blaring down on her, she looked up.

They appeared to have entered a range of large mountains, and they were walking through a canyon that was even narrower than the one that had made up Nabat. Numa was still scared – the mountains loomed up much higher than the walls of Nabat had, and she wondered what could be lurking behind the many, many boulders. But she couldn't help but feel slightly safer.

But, in fact, this canyon was bad news for her.

Numa didn't know it, but the slavers had chosen their designated camp extremely well. The canyon twisted around quite early on and moved off to the side, so if someone were to look at the mountain range from the front of it at a distance, they might not even realise there was a canyon there at all. And, at the end of the canyon, there was a large area of flat land completely surrounded by towering mountains on all sides, arranged in such a way that you could only spot it from the air if you flew directly over it. Looking from any other direction would result in it being screened from view by the mountains, and its size meant that flying over it was unlikely.

In short, the perfect area for hoarding something. And in this case, that something happened to be slaves.

Numa's eyes widened as the line of chained and bedraggled women was led into the depression in the mountains. There, in the middle, were almost fifty _more_ captive females, bringing the total to almost one-hundred. The lot of them had been chained together as well, which made escape implausible. If one fell in an escape attempt, they all probably would.

Numa's stomach clenched with fear as she beheld these other slaves. They were all just as ragged as the newcomers, perhaps even more so. They were definitely all in a sorry state, and most of them looked like they had eaten properly for several days. Numa noted that she was still the only child amongst all the captives. The thought wasn't very encouraging.

Behind the huddled group of shackled Twi'leks was a large ship. It was a dark and menacing hulk, square-shaped and blocky, but somehow managing to look imposing despite its lack of features that might give that impression. It was very large as well, obviously able to carry a lot of passengers, which was not encouraging either. The ramp was down and there was a large Nikto, standing at the bottom of it and staring impassively at the line of newcomers.

The male Twi'lek leading the line walked over to the other prisoners and grabbed one by the shoulder, hauling her to her feet. He quickly attached the neck-chain of the one he was already holding to the binders pinning the other one's hands behind her back, and just like that the two slave lines were linked into one very long one.

"Get these ladies huddled in with their new neighbours," he ordered. "I have some business to attend to."

As the other slavers began to jostle the newer captives to the ground with the others, Numa watched the male Twi'lek walk over towards the Nikto. She watched with morbid fascination as the two of them spoke with one another, not bothering to lower their voices as they knew the majority of their audience would not be able to understand them. And indeed, Numa had no idea what they were saying, but she listened all the same.

"Quite a haul this time, Zamit," the male Twi'lek said to the Nikto. "We got ourselves fifty-three on this particular raid. Add that to the forty-five that we already had and that brings us to the nice round total of ninety-eight. Not bad, right?"

"You're still short," the Nikto, Zamit, said in his gruff voice. "As I recall, you said that you would bring in over two-hundred slaves within two weeks. Your first week is almost over, and you still don't have half the number you promised."

"Well, yeah," the male Twi'lek said, and Numa could hear that he sounded a little nervous. "But I'm only out by two, aren't I? That's not much. I'll get the rest of them next week, don't worry."

"Oh, I'm not worried, Gravick," Zamit chuckled and leered down at the shorter being. "After all, I'm not the one who opened their big mouth and made such a boast in front of the Hutt Council. You know Gardulla takes these sort of promises very seriously."

"I'll do it," the Twi'lek, now dubbed Gravick, said with conviction. "I maybe newer at being a slaver than most people, but as far as I'm concerned, I'm doing far better than them already. How many of them can say that they've got this many captives in such a short space of time."

"It would be wise not to take such a nonchalant approach to this," Zamit chuckled. "The Hutt Council seemed rather eager to see the results of your bragging. You wouldn't want to see the results of what will happen if you return one day late or one prisoner short."

"It will all work out," Gravick shrugged. "With Tryo by my side, this will be easy enough. I might only have ninety-seven if he hadn't grabbed that little one over there." He pointed to where Numa was huddling as close to her designated guardian as possible. The Nikto leered at her over the heads of the other captives and Numa cringed back.

"Yes, the Council should be pleased with that one," he said. "The younger you take them, the quicker they learn their place."

Numa got the majority of that message from the mere tone of Zamit's voice.

* * *

"This place looks like very familiar," Suzie frowned as she stared out of the gunship at the trees that were whooshing past outside. The trees still didn't look real – more like a child's drawing of a palm tree with stick like leaves and a trunk that was too thick, but Aayla had insisted that they were supposed to look like that.

"All Ryloth's forests look alike, kid," Commander Bly, who had joined them recently, said. "They haven't got much diversity in the plant life here."

"Oh, okay," nodded the young girl. "Are we nearly there yet?"

"Actually, yes," Aayla nodded. She, Bly, the three Tamers and two Digimon were standing together in one gunship, while the rest of the group was piled in the other. A third gunship full of other clones was also flying down with them. "We're coming up on the spot that Cham picked out for us. And, while Bly does have a point about Ryloth's forests, Suzie, this place probably should look quite familiar."

"Huh?" Suzie blinked.

"Whoa, wait," Terriermon said, as he also stared at the passing scenery. "You mean this is the place where..."

"I'm afraid so," said Aayla. "I do not think we're going to like what we find down there."

Terriermon and Lopmon exchanged dark looks. "Well, at least nothing's shooting at us this time," the latter murmured.

Before Suzie could ask what they were talking about, the gunship landed on the ground, flanked by the other two. The various passengers piled out of it, and they found themselves face to face with the familiar fat shapes of blurrgs, the beasts that the native Twi'leks often used as transportation. They all remembered how deceptively fast the fat creatures were.

One of them approached, and on his back was Cham Syndulla himself. "Master Jedi," he said. "It is a pleasure to see you all again in person. And hello to you, Master Offee. Welcome to Ryloth."

"Thank you," Barriss nodded. "I wish I could have come to visit under other circumstances."

"Don't we all," Cham said, wryly. He then turned to the others and said, "I wish I could say 'Good morning,' to you, Digimon and Tamers, but I'm sad to say that it really isn't a good one. Still, it's nice to see you've all survived the last several months of bloodshed."

"It's certainly been eventful," Henry agreed.

"So I gathered," Cham nodded. "But pleasantries aside, we have a large number of missing Twi'leks to find. Come on. Let me take you to the city."

Suzie frowned and glanced around her at the trees as the group followed the blurrgs and their riders through the forest. She couldn't escape the vague feeling that she'd been here before.

Then the trees ended and she saw the huge wall set between the cliffs before her and she suddenly realised where she was.

"Oh God," she whispered. "Oh Fanglongmon. This place – this is where Numa lives, isn't it?"

* * *

Okay then. Now that the sub-story going on on Ryloth has been fully introduced, I can go about talking about what Bane and his new reluctant comrades are up to. Should be fun to write. It certainly won't be very action-packed to begin with, but we'll see once again why Bane is so good at what he does. The rest of this arc will be divided roughly evenly between the two storylines. I hope you all enjoy the ride.

* * *

Twi'leki translations

Riun. Ed riun. Oolor ed riun – Gone. All gone

Koomey baneer – Come forward

Non suul funorla suulan bror liho nan graw – Are you enjoying your new life so far

Her ji furner – Go to hell

Drews, holker, Ju klio fross ji lubinaw suul. Suul pryf vresaq o purcos – Well, regardless, I would like to congratulate you. You just became a mother

Lood urva gor – Watch over her

Gar si fo suulan crulofy, hed goh suul solo gor ony sa suulan sercalo, suul burfon zwor lik whippo, compryva – She is in your custody, and if you let her out of your company, you will both be punished, understand

Drass. Gar burfon dren kerlam ace – Fine. She will stay with me

Don, don, zen ei. Res wernofe. Alleser si herfo ji lik yoshon – There, there, young one. It's alright. Everything is going to be okay

Schoy, re willna. Acer nomina si norkr, hed top non ed caponers. Top burfon asta lik blior ji gur crixa. Topee ed nooks ji trysta slecksa – No, it won't. My family is dead, and we are all prisoners. We will never be able to get away. We're all doomed to become slaves

Jus sol alleser burfon trik ony. Topl gur crixa. Suulo prud. Topl lik drass – ed sa pon – I'm sure everything will work out. We'll get away. You'll see. We'll be fine – all of us

* * *

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Next chapter focuses entirely on what Bane, Renamon and Chewbacca are going to be doing. The alliance between them is still an uneasy one, but they know that working together is their best option. Darth Sidious has to be found, and soon.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 143 : How To Find a Sith Lord**


	143. How To Find A Sith Lord

Hullo again, everybody. And now we have ourselves a much anticipated chapter – the hunt for Darth Sidious finally begins in earnest. We've been building and building up to this bit, and now we have the first instalment of this section of the story. I hope you like the journey ahead, not to mention the points of view of the characters involved.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 143:- How To Find A Sith Lord**

* * *

Renamon wasn't entirely sure what she was supposed to be doing. She was currently leaning in the corner of the main room at Bane's hideout, which he had referred to as Black Stall Station. She had no idea where in the Galaxy she was, as per Bane's plan. The lack of windows on his ship and in his base meant she couldn't see outside and identify her location via the stars, which she had learned how to do for many sectors of space in this dimension.

On the one hand, she was watching what Terriermon and the others were doing and regularly supplying Chewbacca with updates as to their progress – the Wookiee was sitting against the wall nearby and he still looked huge despite this. What the others were doing seemed to be infinitely more interesting than what was going on here right now.

And what was going on here right now was that Renamon was keeping her eyes firmly fixed on Bane as the Duros Bounty Hunter leaned back in his chair, with his feet on his desk. Renamon still did not trust the guy, nor did she ever think that she would completely. Nevertheless, she had good reason not to, since they were trying to catch a man he had betrayed just yesterday.

And that seemed to be the extent of their progress so far. They had yet to do anything in particular in locating Darth Sidious.

"We need to wait for him to contact us first," Bane had said earlier. "I never attempt to contact him. For one thing, I don't know how as he's never supplied me with the details and the scramble-set to call him, and up until now I have never had the need for them. Once he does call though, Todo should be able to break through any encryption and track the signal to its source."

"And then we can go to the source and find him?" Renamon had asked.

"That's the idea," Bane had smirked.

"Ohacraao ahww acwo whooao aoacworcwo?" Chewbacca had broken in.

"Good point, Chewie," nodded Renamon, her Shyriiwook improved enough so that she no longer needed a translation from the mind of Lopmon. "If he isn't at the location that Todo takes us to, what then?"

"We'll just have to wait for him," Bane had replied. "He'll be back eventually. If he is indeed a member of the Senate, I assume it will be somewhere out of the way, where he can sneak off to conduct his business with the Separatists without being seen. He'll need to return at some point to try and pull the Separatists out of their imminent defeat. And we'll be waiting."

Renamon grudgingly had to admit that Bane had already given this quite a bit of thought. He seemed to be taking this assignment quite seriously. But that was the extent of her knowledge. Renamon had usually been told that she was hard to read at most times. Only Terriermon could understand her perfectly at all times, and Rika wasn't far behind. But Bane was incredibly difficult to read, even to her. He seemed fairly nonchalant, despite the long wait they'd had so far, but Renamon had no clue if his casual attitude was what he was really feeling or not.

It was quite frustrating, and she wondered if that was what others felt like when they tried to speak with her.

It was because of this that Renamon was still watching him like a hawk, despite their supposed allegiance. She had no idea what Bane would try next, but the fact that Bane had captured Aayla to try and learn more about _her_ and her fellow Digimon made her all the more wary. She wondered what Bane would do when Sidious finally contacted him. Would he stick to the plan and keeping him talking while Todo tracked him down? Or would he go completely against that plan and lash out at Renamon with some hidden gizmo and attempt to expose her to the Sith Lord right then.

For that reason, she was remaining on the balls of her feet, ready to move at a moment's notice. She could tell Chewbacca was similarly tense, even if he was sitting down. A Wookiee's pounce could be quick, regardless of his position before it.

"You seem a little tense... Renamon," Bane observed as he peered at her from beneath the brim of his hat. "Something on your mind?"

"It's none of your concern," Renamon replied smoothly, her blue eyes matching his red ones with ease. Neither of them broke eye contact with one another, but Bane chuckled.

"There's no need to be so frosty," he said, amused. "It may not be necessary to be a close friend to work with me, but it helps if you are not antagonistic."

"You have close friends?" Renamon raised a brow.

Bane actually laughed. "No, none," he grinned, his fangs clearly prominent in his low-hung mouth. "I have little time for them."

"Time is seemingly all we have right now," Renamon pointed out. "I'm sure you might have one or two if you put some effort in, especially if half your life revolves around waiting for calls from employers as yours seems to."

"Perhaps," Bane murmured. "But I was under the impression that friendship requires a degree of socialism, which I have absolutely no interest in."

"Obviously," Renamon snorted. She wondered vaguely if his attitude was similar to hers when she had first met Rika. She'd had no interest in friendship either to begin with, though that had changed when she felt herself growing attached to Rika, then to the others. Would she have become someone like Bane if that hadn't happened. And what had happened to Bane to make him like this?

"As for time," Bane said. "We could always do something to pass it. For instance, you could always tell me a little bit more about yourself and your fellow Digimon in the form of those bunny things. That should be enough to keep us entertained for a while."

Renamon's eyes narrowed. "That," she said. "Is not going to happen."

Bane smirked. "Don't you trust me?"

"No," Renamon said bluntly. "And until you stop asking me questions about myself, Terriermon and Lopmon you aren't going to get even a small amount of it. And you've done little to gain my trust since we met."

"I returned Secura to you safely," pointed out Bane.

"Yes," said Renamon. "And through that process, you got closer to us. I won't pretend I know what you're thinking, Bane. And it's because I don't know what you're thinking that I will be keeping a watch on you as much as I can."

Bane stared at her for a moment, and she stared back, their staring contest remaining unbroken from the moment it had started several minutes before. Eventually though, Bane broke eye-contact, but only because he seemed to have gotten bored with the eye-to-eye confrontation and leaned back in his chair. "Well, if you don't wish to tell me about yourselves, then perhaps we could talk about something else instead."

"You could start by telling me what you know about Darth Sidious," Renamon pointed out. "Like, what dealings have you had with him in the past?"

"Well, I suppose I could mention a thing or two," shrugged Bane. "It is rare that the Sith Lord contacts me for my assistance. In fact, he has only done it a couple of times in the past. There was one time when he asked me to steal the plans for a Republic invasion of one of his Separatist strongholds, so he could better prepare his defences for it. I believe it was Mygeeto."

Renamon bristled. "So that's why it was so well prepared there? That was you?"

"Could be," Bane chuckled.

"Not that it made a real difference to the Separatist defence, as it turns out."

"A lot of clones died on that day, Bane," Renamon folded her arms and glared at him. "That is difference enough in my opinion."

"Either way, I got my money," Bane said. "So it's not like I care about the eventual result."

"Of course not," Renamon shook her head. "I can see that you really are a hopeless case, Bane. I'm not going to even bother trying to sway your way of thinking."

Bane leered. "That's good, because it would be a shame to waste your efforts."

"However," Renamon said. "I will say this. Little Suzie believes that you could redeem yourself for your past actions if you tried hard enough."

"Little Suzie?" Bane asked. "You mean that little girl that hangs around with the brown rabbit creature."

"That brown rabbit creature has a name," Renamon said pointedly. "And it's Lopmon. And yes, that is indeed little Suzie. The girl you ran into on Makem Te and who tried to stop you from killing that Rodian. She was mortified when you shot him right in front of her. She was disconsolate for several hours according to Lopmon. But Aayla convinced her that you were not all bad, and I think both of them believe it. Maybe there is an unselfish part of you somewhere, and I'm pretty sure it's buried quite deeply. I wonder if it can be found."

Bane was silent for a few seconds, as if he were pondering Renamon's words, but eventually he said, "I suggest that you do not attempt to find it. I hold the view that a compassionate side gets in the way of missions. And I'd say this mission is a fairly important one, wouldn't you?"

Renamon smiled, wondering if she'd rattled him a little bit, which was a small victory over the normally guarded Bounty Hunter. "Very well then," she said. "And speaking of this mission, is there anything you know about Darth Sidious that you haven't already shared with us?"

"Very little," Bane confessed. "In fact, nothing really, except perhaps what his hologram looks like. I never see his face, as he always keeps his hood up and his eyes bathed in shadow, but the identity of the client is never really an issue..."

"As long as he pays well," Renamon interrupted. "Right?"

"Correct," Bane chuckled.

Chewbacca folded his arms and stood up, gesturing towards the communication equipment that Bane and the thus-far-silent Todo were sitting next to and growled, "Rrooao rawhro rcwooaoorcwaahwhrrc ooww aoacwo rrhuro ahwh aoacworcwo?"

Bane stared at him, and then looked to Renamon for an explanation. "My understanding of the Wookiee's growls are non-existent? What exactly did the big guy say?"

Renamon smirked. "He wants to know if you have any recordings of past conversations with Darth Sidious stored away in that device that we can have a look at." Chewbacca nodded.

Another slight leer graced Bane's face. "Well, of course. I keep recordings of everything that comes through my holotransmitter. Sometimes job offers are complicated and I need to go over them again. And even if not, they can provide excellent blackmail material later on if I so need it."

"Uh-huh," Renamon said, suddenly a lot more interested. She stepped out of the corner and strode over to stand behind Chewbacca, who was a lot taller than she was. "May we have a look then?"

Bane shrugged. "Why not? Todo, display the last call made to us by our new target."

"Alright, Bane," Todo nodded, and turned to the console, flipping a couple of switches and pushing a button. A moment later, and a hologram appeared above the main transmitter. Two holograms actually. One of them depicted Bane reclining on his chair in a pose pretty similar to the one he was doing now. The other depicted a man in long, dark cloak that completely concealed most of his features. He wasn't showing skin of any kind except for that of his lower face, which had a large, hooked nose and a clean-shaven chin, but that was about all the detail they could make out. Currently the hologram was paused, allowing Chewbacca and Renamon to scrutinise it.

"Well," Renamon said, with a slight feeling of relief. "It's certainly not someone like Organa. And it's definitely a man, so that eliminates a lot of our quarry. Still, I don't have a clue who that might be."

"You want me to play the recording?" Bane asked.

Renamon nodded wordlessly and Bane flipped a switch. Immediately Sidious began talking. His voice was practically the definition of creepy. It was low and slightly raspy, as if he had something partially stuck in his throat. Renamon wondered if this was his natural voice or whether he was deliberately making it like this to further conceal his identity.

"So...You have heard the latest news then," he sneered.

"Not really," the holographic Bane responded "I just returned from another assignment and was informed about your little situation from my droid. How did that work out for you, hm? One Jedi against three of your finest and she still came out victorious. That must have been quite a shock."

"It is unwise to test me, Bane."

"My apologies, your Mightyness. What is it that you want me to do this time. I'm assuming you want Secura to... meet with an accident, shall we say?"

"My plans have reached a major setback thanks to that Jedi. My most trusted commanders have failed me and the populace of the Republic are beginning to treat her like some kind of messiah, who will lead them to freedom. She cannot be allowed to continue interfering with my desires."

"So, to sum up –You want me to put a blaster bolt through her brain."

"Secura deserves a long, slow death. But a blaster bolt will do just as well. Aayla Secura must not exist for very much longer. Eliminate her. I don't care how you do it. All I care is that it is done and done quickly. Use whatever tactics you deem fit, any weapons you desire, any methods that will let you get the job done. Just do it."

"Stop it," Renamon suddenly declared. Bane was not surprised by the venom in Renamon's voice but he quickly did just that and paused the image. Renamon was seething, and she found her anger was much more directed at Sidious than at Bane himself. Bane's tone of voice had been slightly sycophantic, but merely professional. Sidious, on the other hand, had had pure hatred in his voice, and the amount of pleasure he seemed to take in the idea of having Aayla killed made Renamon's data boil.

"Can we not trace him back to where this call came from using this recording?" she said through gritted teeth. "The sooner this guy is brought to justice the happier I'll be."

"It might be possible," Bane admitted. "But it would be far more difficult. Darth Sidious has gone to great lengths to protect himself, and the encryption would be much harder to get past on an old hologram. Todo would have a much easier time of it, if we were to give it a try when the line is actually open."

"Erm, Bane," Todo said. "Speaking of a live call," he pointed towards the holotransmitter, which had a flashing button on it. "We've got an incoming call."

"Sidious?" Renamon tensed immediately.

"Most likely," Bane said. "Get out of sight. Todo, be ready."

Renamon and Chewbacca quickly ducked out of sight. Chewbacca pushed himself against the wall and slightly behind the holotransmitter, out of view of anyone being displayed on the hologram. Renamon quickly dived behind a crate and peered out from the other side, watching as Bane lifted a finger and pushed the flashing button.

This was it! Time for Sidious.

And she wasn't disappointed.

The hologram of the recording vanished and the holotransmitter was immediately filled with a larger hologram of the same hooded figure as before. It was definitely Sidious. The hood was pulled low over his face, casting the top half in deep shadow. Renamon's eyes searched the depths of the hood for any familiar features, anything she could use to identify the Senate members. She didn't fancy her chances really. Her contact with most Senators had been severely limited by the fact that she was supposed to stay hidden from them. She had only spoken to Chuchi, and of the other Senate members, she had only seen a few up close.

Nevertheless, there was an uncomfortable sensation running up and down Renamon's spine. A tingle that put her on edge and the feeling right at the back of her mind that she had seen this guy before. But she couldn't place him. None of the Senators she had seen looked like this guy.

"Good morning, Lord Sidious," Bane smirked to the hologram, staring rigidly at him but maintaining a relaxed posture. He lifted the brim of his hat slightly to afford himself a better view, as he stared at the hologram. "I trust that you are well."

"I am not calling to exchange pleasantries, Bane," the hooded and cloaked figure growled in that same creepy voice. A voice that made even Renamon's hair stand on end. She actually felt her tail fluffing out behind her. "I am still waiting for evidence that you have completed or even made an attempt to go about the task I set you. Do you not wish for the credits you asked for?"

Though Darth Sidious was seemingly oblivious to it, next to his hologram, Todo 360 was hurriedly flipping switches, twisting dials and pushing buttons. The techno-service droid was practically in a frenzy of motion, and Renamon knew why. He was trying to break through the encryption that was masking the location of the caller, and presumably he was being met by a very large number of firewalls and other protections that were stopping him from cracking the code and getting the required information. Renamon had no idea how he knew what he was doing, as he seemed to be doing everything without looking, but whatever he was doing he seemed to be good at it.

"Of course I do," Bane replied smoothly. "You know full well that I never back down from an assignment once it has been set to me, no matter what I have to go through to do it. However, you needn't worry about that. I had already completed what I set out to do within a few hours of your call. Getting through the defences was no problem. I disguised myself as a clone trooper and snuck aboard a medical ship heading towards the Belderone medical station, and, after killing everyone in the ship at the time, I boarded the medical station itself. The Jedi were no problem. However, I did have a small confrontation with..."

The moment those words left his mouth, Renamon had tensed and was primed for action, ready to pummel Bane into oblivion if he attempted to give her away, and she could see that Chewbacca was doing the same thing.

But Bane merely said, "...That Wookiee friend of theirs. He proved to be stronger than I expected and he almost got the better of me. For that reason, I would quite like to up my charge to five million if that is no trouble."

"Your money will be despatched only if you have accomplished your mission," Sidious replied. "I have made enquiries as to the help of Secura and thus far the Jedi Order has been extraordinarily vague about the subject. So, I want the answer from you, Bane. Is Aayla Secura dead?"

Renamon felt her muscles tense again, as she had no idea what Bane was about to say next. Would he stick to the plan, or would he make a move against them in an attempt to raise more credits for himself. After all, Aayla and Chuchi had paid him in advance, but Sidious had yet to do so. Bane could quite easily take the money that Chuchi and Aayla had provided and then gain more for Sidious without earning the previous thirty-million.

But Bane merely smirked and said, "Oh yes, she is definitely dead. I doubt that any of the Jedi Order would be able to pull off a stunt like I pulled. I filled the room with knock-out gas from the vent system and, when she was helplessly unconscious, I put a hole right between her eyes with my pistol. She never even knew that she had been killed."

Sidious hissed slightly, as if he were not pleased with this answer. "I would have preferred it if she had," he said. "After everything she has done to ruin my plans I had hoped you would make her end as drawn out as possible. I would have hoped that she died in fear."

"Well, I am sorry to disappoint you," Bane said, though he didn't sound sorry at all. "But, in the end, what does in matter? After all, I did the job that I set out to do. One of your greatest enemies has been completely eradicated. Is that not the ultimate point to all of this?"

Sidious didn't say anything for a couple of seconds, but then, he began to chuckle quietly. Renamon felt her eyes narrowing greatly as she felt anger surge up inside her, while Sidious continued to laugh out loud. This man was the epitome of everything Renamon hated. He was a vile, despicable man whose cruelty knew no limits and who manipulated other people to get what he wanted. She found herself wishing the hologram were solid, so that she could leap out of hiding and slam her fist into his face.

Sidious' chuckling increased to something more like a full-blown laugh. It took him a moment to regain his composure, before he asked, "Right between the eyes, you say?"

"Indeed," Bane said. "Blew a hole right through her and the pillow her head was resting on. I'd like to see the Heroine With No Fear recover from that one. I assure you, Lord Sidious, the A-Team is now short one member."

"The Jedi must be remaining tight-lipped about it for that very reason," Sidious sneered. "This is exactly what I was hoping for. It may not have been the best of circumstances – as I would have preferred it if my own apprentice and his comrades could have taken her out, but this is the next best option. Now the Republic will know that the little group of Jedi that have defied me for so long are not invincible. Perhaps this plays into my desires even better than I had intended. To have her killed after such a feat as the one she just accomplished... well, that may shatter the confidence of the Republic citizens. Perhaps the Separatists will be able to regain a foothold on the Galaxy after this."

"Perhaps indeed," Bane said vaguely. Sidious was speaking more to himself than Bane right now and the Duros knew it. He took the opportunity to glance across at Todo and see how the droid was getting on. Renamon did the same thing, and she didn't particularly like what she saw.

Bane had already delivered the news, but Todo was showing no signs of slacking when it came to the frenzied button pushing and switch-flipping. If it were possible for a droid to sweat, Renamon was pretty sure that the entire room would stink by this time, and there would be a large puddle beneath it. The expressionless face somehow managed to look stressed, despite the lack of mouth.

Renamon quietly shifted position behind the crate, leaping silently and with all the grace of a cat right over the crate and landing on all fours on the other side. She slipped across the room on all fours, creeping stealthily behind the hologram of Sidious so that she would be out of his view, before popping up beside the console and whispering so quietly that she barely heard herself, "How's it getting on?"

Evidently Todo's audio receptors were well tuned because he heard her and replied equally quietly and without easing up on his actions at all. "Not good. I've never encountered an encryption as difficult to break as this one, and I've broken through dozens of very high-security ones in the past. I need another minute or so to break through."

Renamon's eye narrowed in frustration. There was no guarantee that Sidious would stay on the line for much longer, and she knew that if the signal was cut off then Todo would be unable to complete to process. She cast Bane a significant look, trying to say, "Keep him talking for as long as possible without the use of words." Bane caught the glance and evidently seemed to understand, because he spoke up to the still quietly-snickering Sith Lord.

"Of course, there is now the final bargain to be made," he said. "And that is with regards to my price. How soon can I expect it to be delivered? I do not like to be kept waiting any more than you seem to, so the sooner the better."

Sidious waved this off as if it were little concern. "Yes, yes," he said. "You have done a commendable job, Bounty Hunter. One of my biggest problems has gone, which is something I would pay any number of credits to have happen. I believe you wished for your fee to be four million credits, did you not?"

Todo was still furiously working at the console. Even Renamon was impressed at the speed the little droid was moving his limbs. He seemed to be able to reach all the buttons necessary despite his tiny limbs and he had almost gone into a frenzy. Renamon didn't have a clue what he was doing, but she wondered if she might have finally found someone who could give Terriermon a challenge on his video games.

"Yes, four million was indeed what I said," Bane kept on talking. "But I also believe I said that that amount may be subject to rise depending on what happens on the actual mission."

"I was expecting you to ask for a raise," Sidious said. "And you have done me a great service today, Bane. Name your price."

"Well, I..." Bane started.

Suddenly, there was movement to the side and Bane stopped talking in surprise, his attention caught by Chewbacca. The Wookiee had suddenly stepped out from his hiding position, though he was still not within Sidious' line of vision. The Wookiee was now towering over Todo 360, watching as the little droids hit and switched and twisted and pressed different panels and controls on the console, desperately trying to trace the signal of Darth Sidious' call. Renamon glanced up at him and could see understanding in his small eyes. She had no clue what Todo was doing, but Chewbacca did.

Suddenly the Wookiee was leaning over Todo and was hurriedly doing the same as the droid. Todo faltered in surprise for a moment when he found he had a helper, but he quickly identified that Chewbacca was doing all the right things and returned to the task with renewed vigour.

_Of course,_ Renamon thought. _Chewbacca is skilled with machines as well. He knows what to do too. If he and Todo work together they can get the job done twice as quickly._

"Bane?" Sidious asked. "Is there a problem?"

Bane's attention quickly switched back to the holographic Sith Lord. "No," he said. "It's just my droid. He knocked over one of my ammunitions containers again. I think I'll be having him scrapped. Anyway, as I was saying, that Wookiee that hangs around with them almost took my head off. Caught me by surprise – he took longer to succumb to the effects of the knock-out gas than I presumed. To that effect, and the fact that I had to slip by several other Jedi and a myriad of clones to silence Secura, I'm would like to raise my previous sum by another million." He sneered and added, "I'm assuming that five million credits will not be too much of a strain to your purse, will it?"

"You shall have it," Sidious declared, a sick, twisted grin adorning the visible section of his face. Secura is dead. I am almost happy."

"The Force forbid," Bane chuckled. "And I am assuming that the money will be sent to the usual rendezvous point, will it?"

"As with all out previous partnerships," confirmed Sidious.

"And how soon can I expect it to arrive?"

"It shall be dispatched immediately," Sidious' hand suddenly emerged from within the folds of his cloak. Renamon stared at it, and saw that it was slightly gnarled and very bony. Sidious did nothing with it except to gesture at Bane and say, "I anticipated a rise of another million, and I have had it prepared for you since I gave you the job. It should reach the rendezvous point within the hour, as per usual."

"Wonderful," Bane grinned. He didn't need to look out of the corner of his eyes to know that Chewbacca and Todo were still working, so the Bounty Hunter hurriedly added, "Before you leave, do you have any other jobs you wish for me to carry out? Any other members of the A-Team you wish to be eliminated?"

"Not at present," Sidious shook his head. "I have plans for the rest of that team. Hopefully with the death of Secura, things will start to move back into my favour. However, I may call on you again sometime in the future, and I assure you, you will be paid well."

"Alright," Bane said. "And perhaps when you take over the galaxy or whatever it is that you wish to do, you could mention that you hired me for the job. It never hurts for my reputation to be bolstered further, if you follow me."

Suddenly, there was a little beeping noise from the console that Chewbacca and Todo were leaning over and the Wookiee stepped back, looking pleased with himself. Todo looked about ready to flop down on the machinery and Renamon wondered if his innards were going to start sparking, but the little droid gave the fox a weak thumbs up.

Renamon could barely restrain a grin. The two of them had done it! They'd broken through.

Renamon turned and gave Bane a nod, just as Sidious said, "You needn't worry about your reputation. Once news of Secura's death spreads out, everyone will know that you were the perpetrators. I should warn you that the Republic will be out for your blood."

"You mean more than usual," Bane sneered. "I have gotten used to it by now. Well, as usual a pleasure doing business with you, Your Mightyness. And the next time you need a job doing, don't hesitate to let me know, and make sure that you bring a lot of money with you."

"Indeed," Sidious said. "I may soon have a few more targets for you, Bounty Hunter."

And, without saying farewell or a goodbye of any sort, Sidious' hologram vanished. Renamon felt herself relaxing slightly as the creepy looking man vanished from view. Even as nothing more than an image, Sidious had given off an almost overwhelming sense of evil. Renamon vaguely wondered what it would be like when she finally saw this man with her own eyes. She also wondered how powerful he was – the Jedi should have been able to detect such evil in an instant if they were within a mile radius. Sidious' skills at lurking in the shadows were almost unmatched.

And now Renamon thought she understood another of Aayla's reasons for hiring Bane. The Bounty Hunter was one of very few who could match that skill.

Bane stood up from his chair and stepped over to Todo. He gave Renamon a brief nod, and then addressed his droid. "So, you got through the encryption then?"

"Yes," nodded Todo, turning his enormous head around and fixing his bright, yellow photoreceptors on him. "And I have to say that was the most difficult security system I've had to crack in my entire activation. This guy must be taking all precautions to make sure that he's not found out."

"Not surprising," Bane agreed. "Especially since he's supposedly spending a lot of time so close to the Senate and the Jedi. I have to admit, he's got quite a nerve. I'm impressed."

Renamon raised a brow. "Oh, are you?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," Bane nodded, a smirk appearing once more. "He's already proving to be a worthy adversary and we haven't even left yet. This should prove to be quite the interesting experience. I'm looking forward to it."

"What about us?" Renamon indicated herself and Chewbacca. "Would you think of us as worthy adversaries?"

Bane snorted, somehow managing it despite the fact that he didn't have a nose. "Perhaps in the field of combat," he conceded. "But I have yet to see your skills at stealth and concealment. I'll withhold my judgement on that score until we get underway."

Renamon hid a smirk. She still didn't trust or particularly fear Bane, but she did still want to impress him for some reason. Perhaps it was the fact he cheated to beat her still ringing around in her head – she wanted Bane to know that he had gotten lucky that one time.

"So, what have you got for us, Todo?" asked Bane.

"Well, we had to break through exactly thirty different firewalls and encryption codes before we were able to trace the call but eventually we got a lock. By the way, thanks for the assistance, Master Wookie."

"Whoo akrcoorhanwosc," Chewbacca exclaimed.

"Ha. Your droid is more polite than you are, Bane," Renamon observed. "By quite some distance."

"I'll have to program that out of him," Bane muttered. Renamon smirked. Bane seemed to enjoy showing disrespect to everyone and everything. Perhaps it was another form of setting himself apart from everyone else.

"Now, stop wasting time, Todo," Bane glared at his techno-service droid. "I'm not interested in the technical details – I just want to know where the signal originated from. That will be our first lead towards finding the Sith Lord."

"First?" Renamon asked, bemused. As far as she knew it was the _only_ lead.

But before she could enquire further, Todo flipped a switch and another hologram appeared – this time an image of a planet was displayed, and it was a planet that they all knew very well.

"Coruscant," Renamon nodded. "Just as we thought. The main enemy has been hiding under all our noses, and we didn't even realise it for most of the time. This Darth Sidious is certainly a slippery one. He has the whole galaxy fooled."

"Not for much longer he won't," Bane sneered. "You can count on that. We're going to throw his hood off and the Jedi will know the identity of their nemesis at last. Where on the planet, Todo? We need something more accurate than this."

"Yes, I was just getting to that," Todo agreed. He flipped another switch and a bleeping red dot appeared on the map, not far from the Senate District. "This is the location of Darth Sidious when he placed the call." He pushed another button and the hologram abruptly zoomed in, until the transmitter was displaying a large map of an area of Coruscant that Renamon knew.

Her eyes widened slightly in surprise. "I know that place," she said. "That is The Works."

And she found no shred of doubt within her whatsoever. She remembered the confrontation she'd had with the Zillo Beast – Godzillo – a mere few days ago, when MegaGargomon and Cherubimon had grappled and brawled with the giant lizard creature in the large and abandoned industrial area of the planet. The Jedi themselves had said that the Works was a good place to go if you didn't want to be found, hence why there was a load of smugglers, drunks and thieves that lived on the outskirts.

She remembered the chill she had had up her spine when she had been Sakuyamon, standing and watching the battle between the three giants, ready to raise a shield and protect the others if things got out of hand. She had put it down to the fact she was in an area that scumbags liked to frequent, but now she realised it might be something more. She might have been picking up the faint taint of the Sith Lord on the area.

She had noticed the Jedi had all felt slightly uncomfortable too, once the situation with Godzillo had passed. She remembered seeing Ahsoka shiver, Anakin grimace and Barriss flinching on occasion. Aayla had looked over her shoulder on more than one occasion. Renamon wondered if they had even realised they were doing it. The adrenaline from the Zillo Beast's attack might have overwhelmed the majority of their senses.

"Yes," Todo nodded, pointing at the red dot. "A tall and abandoned building about halfway across the place."

Renamon and Chewbacca exchanged a glance. Both of them were thinking the same thing – the fight with Godzillo might have taken place within sight of the Sith Lord's hideout and they never realised it.

Determination surged up within the Rookie Digimon. "Alright," she said. "Then it's our job to go there and find ourselves the second Sith Lord. Then, the war can finally come to an end."

"Now, wait a moment," Bane held up hand. "We can't go yet. There is something else we need to take care of first."

"What?" Renamon asked, folding her arms.

"Well, for a start, I need to collect my pay," Bane chuckled.

Renamon growled. "We have more important things to do than pick up more money for you, Bane. Or was thirty million not enough for you?"

"You can never have too many credits," Bane answered matter-of-factly. "But be that as it may, that is not the reason why we need to. Not the main reason anyway. When Sidious has delivered my pay before, he sends a ship piloted by a droid to a rendezvous location we agreed upon. If he learns that I have not picked up my pay from the droid before we track him down, he may know something is up. After all," he chuckled. "I like getting my money quickly. Not doing so would go against my character."

Renamon grunted, but was forced to concede that Bane had a point. "Alright, fine," she said. "We'll get you another five million, but after that, we go after Sidious."

"Someone's in a mood," Bane chuckled. "Calm down, Rena," he added with a sneer. "This little side-mission might prove more beneficial than you think. It is possible to mislead someone attempting to track you and make them think the signal is coming from somewhere else. If we collect my pay, I have a plan for how we can... double-check that the location Todo found is accurate."

Renamon frowned, but she merely said, "Very well then. We should get underway quickly. But just so that you understand, Bane, you are getting dangerously close to crossing a line. Never call me 'Rena' again. That right is reserved only for one person and it is not you."

Bane looked surprised at the reaction is word had caused, but he shrugged and said, "As you wish, your ladyship."

Renamon nodded then added in her mind, _You don't have to beat the crap out of him now, Terriermon._

_Maybe,_ came the reply. _But if he starts saying Momentai then he's going down._

* * *

About an hour later, and the group of four were currently at some other random place across space. It was another small space station, which consisted of little more than a hangar large enough for two small ships and a bunch of escape pods and a small reactor to keep the place powered up. Apparently Bane had a large number of places like this dotted around the galaxy, which he would use as places to collect his money just as he was doing now. He never let anyone come to his main base, not even co-workers, until Renamon and Chewbacca had set foot in it.

Bane's ship was sitting demurely like a large brick on one side of the hangar, while the other side was still waiting for its occupant. Bane had given the others a quick game-plan and they were currently waiting to carry out the tasks that they had been set. Bane was standing in full view where anyone could see him, while the others were crouching in the shadows by Bane's ship.

The irony of the fact that she was taking orders from this Bounty Hunter, who she had battled against just the other day, was not lost on Renamon. But she bore the situation without complaint.

Bane had folded his arms and was waiting patiently. And, sure enough, after roughly about ten minutes of utter silence, a vessel appeared on the other side of the shield holding the vacuum of space at bay. Bane smirked and glanced into the shadows where he knew the others to be hiding and then stepped forward as the ship slipped inside the station and landed with a soft thump.

The ramp descended after a few moments and a droid rolled down it. Quite literally rolled, as it appeared to have a large wheel to move it around instead of feet like protocol droids did. It was the same height as a protocol droid, but it differed in many ways. For instance, it appeared to have a larger, more bulbous head, with large white photoreceptors similar to those on Todo. It had pincer like hands too, one of which was gripping a bunch of hovercarts towing crates down the ramp.

"It's about time," Bane addressed the tall, thin droid. "I was beginning to think that you had lost your way."

"I have made this journey before," the droid replied, in an electronic but feminine sounding voice. "And I have delivered the money you so desired as per usual. Here it is. All five million of it."

She passed the hovercarts to Bane, and the Duros opened one to scrutinise the money inside it. "You know the drill," he said over his shoulder to the droid. "I'm going to have to make sure that I have what was promised me. And you're going to wait there until I have done so, understood?"

"Yes, Bane," the droid responded. "But, as usual, you will find that my Master has kept his word."

"I'll be the judge of that," Bane growled began to count out the money. He didn't look behind him, but already he knew that the others were already moving.

Renamon had Todo sitting awkwardly on her shoulders, gripping her ears with his little metal hands as if they were the reins on a pony. The fox had silently leapt up on top of Bane's ship right from the floor and was creeping along the top on all fours, Todo perched on her shoulders precariously. Silent as a moth, Renamon sprang over the gap between the two ships and landed equally quietly on top of the other one.

Renamon glanced to the droid that was standing behind Bane as he counted the money. The droid didn't turn around, evidently not detecting the faint sound of the tiny flame searing through the metal of her ship. Renamon smirked.

_How's that for stealth, Bane,_ she thought. Then she wondered if she might be overdoing it slightly. It wasn't a competition, after all.

She could see Chewbacca standing nearby. The Wookiee was crouched low and bathed in the shadow of the _Sleight of Hand._ It was quite amazing how such a large humanoid creature could look so inconspicuous if he tried to. Chewbacca was watching the droid extremely carefully, but then he slowly got up when he was sure that it was looking the other way and loped across the room. Perhaps his thick fur was muffling his footsteps, but he made almost as much silence as Renamon as he crept across the other ship as well.

He looked up at Renamon, who nodded, before the Wookiee loped up the ramp and vanished into the enemy ship.

"Hold on," she whispered to Todo, and felt the droid grip her ears tighter. She then vaulted off the side of the ship and landed on all fours with nary a sound, before stepping over to the ramp, then scooping Todo off and placing him on said ramp. She nodded to him, and Todo followed Chewbacca into the ship. Then, Renamon melded into the shadows and continued to watch the droid warily.

Meanwhile, inside the ship that the droid had come in, Chewbacca had stepped over to the controls on the cockpit and was carefully checking the machinery, flipping buttons to pull up a holographic screen with Aurebesh, the written equivalent of Basic, scrawled all over it. Chewbacca flipped through various panels, checking things as quickly but thoroughly as he could.

Todo, on the other hand, was not far away, but he was crouched on the floor a little way off and was examining a little nook in the wall. This would be an ideal spot. Todo ignited a fusion cutter built into his hand and began to cut into the thick metal of the vessel.

The work with the fusion cutter was slow, as the metal of the ship was extremely thick and Todo's little flame wasn't exactly very large. But, then again, Todo didn't need to do a lot. The droid slowly worked the flame in a small square shape, not bigger than a clenched fist, and then slowly peeled it off the wall. Nodding in satisfaction, he moved back over to the lip of the ramp and waved to Renamon. The fox spotted him and slowly peeled back one of her long, purple gloves, revealing the white fur beneath. She extracted a small metal device from between the material and her arm and tossed it to Todo. The droid caught it and nodded, before moving back to the hole he had cut.

Priming the device until a flashing light came on, he pushed it inside the hole and magnetically clamped it to the inside of the ship. Then he lifted the panel he had taken off and placed it where it had been before, holding it steady with one hand before he activated a soldering iron in his other hand and began to meld the metal back into place. He worked quickly, and with such expertise that when he had finished, it barely looked like the wall had been touched at all. However, there was still a slight sign, so Todo moved a fuel cell placed nearby slightly so it was in front of it, screening it from view. The spot had been inconspicuous anyway, but now it was doubly concealed.

Todo looked up at Chewbacca. The Wookiee stepped back at roughly the same moment and deactivated the controls, so it would seem like nobody had been there. He then turned back around.

"Anything?" Todo whispered.

Chewbacca shook his head.

"Ah well, it was worth a try. Let's go."

Chewbacca grunted quietly in assent and scooped up the droid, stepping up to the lip of the ramp again. Renamon spotted them and checked that the droid still hadn't turned around before she nodded. The coast was clear.

Quickly and quietly, Chewbacca slipped down the ramp and the three of them hurried across the room once more, staying out of the visual range of the droid, until they were once more standing in the shadow of Bane's own vessel. Todo leaned around the ship and flashed Bane a quick message using some kind of bizarre hand-signals. Renamon didn't see Bane turn to look at them, but he apparently got the message, as he said, "It seems like everything is in order," and shut the last crate, which he had been scrutinising, and turned to the droid.

"Go and tell your master that it was a pleasure doing business with him," Bane said. He chuckled and said, "This is perhaps the most profitable venture I have ever had. By quite some distance too."

"Very well," said the droid. Rather like Sidious, it didn't make any attempt at a goodbye. It just turned around and rolled to the ramp and then went straight up it. Apparently it didn't see anything out of the ordinary, because it merely lifted off the ground and steered the ship backwards and out into space, where it hung for a couple of moments before it whooshed off so fast that its progress was impossible to track.

Todo emerged from the shadow, and Renamon and Chewbacca followed him out into the open. "Well, I'd say that went quite well," the techno-service droid said brightly.

"Perhaps," Bane said. "You, Chewbacca, wasn't it – what did you find in there?"

Chewbacca grimaced and said, "Shhucao anahorwo ohwo aoacoohurracao. raanan rcwooaoorcwac ohworcwo ohahakwowa oaanworawh. Cahwaahoohuc ohrac howorcro oararcwowwhuan."

"He said that it was exactly as you predicted," Renamon said. "It seems that the droid wiped the navigation record just before it touched down, so it was impossible to trace where it had just flown in from."

"I told you that would be the case," Bane chuckled. "That's what I do whenever I head out on missions. Don't want anybody to find out where I'm hiding, and neither does Sidious."

Renamon smiled wryly. "Well, I suppose I should hand it to you. You do know your way around in this business."

"Thank you," Bane leered. "But I would only really need to wipe the records if I were caught, and the chances of that happening are slim. Anyhow, if that were to happen then when I escaped, which I would, I would also check the ship for any tracking beacons. Inside and out. But I doubt Sidious would do the same – he doesn't travel to many places after all. Todo, was it in place?"

"Yes," nodded Todo. "Primed and concealed inside one of the walls, and panel hidden from all eyes. Sidious would have to do a very thorough search to pick that up."

"Good," nodded Bane, and pulled a holotransmitter from his waist and activated it. A small map of the galaxy appeared above the palm of his hand and travelling across it at a steady speed was the red dot that indicated the position of the tracking beacon.

"So, we'll be able to track the ship all the way back to its source?" Renamon asked.

"As long as the tracking beacon stays active, it should be no problem," Bane nodded. "Well, I suppose we shouldn't keep our Sith Lord pal waiting, should we? Shall we head towards Coruscant?"

"With all speed," Renamon nodded, hiding the excitement that was rising inside her. Thus far, Aayla's plan seemed to be working to perfection. Bane had already gotten them much closer to Sidious in just over an hour than the Jedi had been able to get with almost half a year of looking for the guy. And it looked like they were going to get a whole lot further before the day was out as well.

_I'll say this for you, Aayla,_ Renamon thought. _This plan might be crazy, insane and incredibly dangerous, but it just might work._

Across the galaxy, Aayla picked up the message via Terriermon and replied, _Thank you. You think you can stomach working with Bane after all?_

_Perhaps,_ Renamon mused. _He's gotten us this far. I think I'll be able to put up with him until we finally find out who this manipulative man is. Who knows, I may even start to not hate him._

_Whoa, don't get carried away,_ Terriermon laughed, and Renamon knew from his tone that he was kidding.

But, as Renamon started to head back into Bane's ship, the Duros stopped her by clearing his throat. When she turned to look at him, the Duros smirked and gestured to his crates. "Are you not going to help me bring these into my ship."

Renamon glowered. _On second thoughts..._ she added.

* * *

Once Renamon had placed Bane's newest load of credits with the rest of them which was still stored in the back of the _Sleight of Hand,_ bringing Bane's grand total on this venture up to thirty-five million – an amount that anyone would be impressed by – they finally got underway. Renamon wondered how many more credits Bane had stashed away somewhere in his various bases across the Galaxy, and she wondered what he did with it all. But she didn't ask. She wasn't sure she wanted to know, since most of those credits would be ill-gotten. The credits he had here might the only ones he had gotten by working for what was right.

The hyperspace journey was long and uncomfortable, and took place at roughly the same time as the hyperspace journey that the others were making to Ryloth. Renamon and Chewbacca conversed quietly, the former still occasionally finding herself struggling to comprehend the latter at times. Todo steered the ship, and Bane just sat in the pilot seat, despite the fact he wasn't the pilot, and sat in silence.

When Renamon did glance at him, he was sitting with his arms folded and staring rigidly straight ahead. The casual attitude that she had seen inside his base when talking to Sidious was not there. Perhaps this was his business face. He knew he was walking into dangerous territory now, and he was already completely focused on the objective.

_At least he's taking this seriously,_ Renamon thought. _Or is he trying to think of ways to hand me over to Sidious and get more money out of this?_

Only once did Bane turn to look at Renamon, and the fox noticed it, but she was looking the other way and didn't show any sign that she knew that she was being watched. Bane himself was now wondering just what she might be able to do to help out later on. Much like how Renamon was grudgingly impressed by how smoothly Bane was making this manhunt go, Bane was also grudgingly impressed by Renamon. Her stealth had been second-to-none – he had not heard a thing when she'd moved leapt between the two ships.

He was beginning to get an inkling as to how the Jedi had managed to keep the Digimon a secret for such a long time.

Bane didn't usually delve into the world of his own imagination, but now he found himself picturing scenarios in previous Republic skirmishes where the fox might have played a part to ensure victory. The bunnies were there too, and occasionally he would imagine Terriermon becoming the large cyborg he had seen on Behpour – Rapidmon.

But Bane got that sense that there was a lot more to the Digimon than what he had seen so far, just as Aayla had hinted when she had been his prisoner. Perhaps they were one enemy that he really didn't want to make.

Eventually, Renamon and Chewbacca stopped talking to each other as well, and they began taking on an attitude similar to Bane's; gearing themselves up for what lay ahead. They knew that they had to be ready for anything. But as they knew very well, 'anything' covered a _lot_ of potential dangers.

After what seemed like an age, during which Renamon felt increasingly on edge, though as usual she hid it behind a mask of calm, Todo eventually broke the long silence by saying, "We're coming up on the capital, Bane. How shall we proceed?"

"Is the tracking beacon still active?" Bane asked.

"According to our scanners, yes," nodded the droid. "The ship has just entered the atmosphere ahead. It's heading in the rough direction of the signal transmitted by Sidious to your base."

"Hmm," Bane said. "Alright then. Set a course down to the planet, Todo. We don't want to get too close to the Works just yet. If Darth Sidious is still there, he'll see us coming several miles away since ships don't generally fly over that area. Land on the outskirts somewhere. We'll approach on foot," he glanced over to Renamon and Chewbacca and said, "I hope you don't mind getting your feet dirty."

"You needn't worry about us, Bane," Renamon smiled pleasantly. "Both of us have had a little excursion into the Works before. We can handle it again."

"I've never been there," Bane said. "But I hear that the edges are full of brigands."

"You'll fit right in then," Renamon smirked.

Bane smirked back. "Perhaps. But I'm more concerned about you than myself."

"You're concerned?" Renamon asked, slightly sweetly. "Why Bane, I didn't know you cared."

"You know what I meant," Bane said, a slight growl in his voice.

"Oh, Momentai," Renamon said, and she greatly enjoyed the look of confusion that flitted over the Duros' face. "We'll be fine. Perhaps you might even get to see more ways in which we have been aiding the Republic undercover all this time. You did want some answers, didn't you?"

"Mm-hm," Bane nodded. "I wonder what other tricks you have up those glove sleeves of yours." Then he turned back to Todo as they pulled out of hyperspace and above the familiar sprawling city planet that was the capital of the Galaxy. "Head down there nice and slowly, Todo. No need to draw attention to ourselves."

"Fly casual?" Todo asked.

Bane nodded. "Fly casual," he agreed.

Chewbacca sneezed.

"Ssh," Bane hushed him and focused out of the window. Renamon stepped up beside him, maintaining a significant gap between the two of them while she followed his gaze. Bane's ship moved slowly down towards the surface, brushing gently into the atmosphere. As the sprawling city landscape began to stretch out below them in all directions, Renamon was not surprised to find that nobody stopped them. Coruscant was such a large planet, with so many people going back and forth all the time that attempting to control who entered and exited was almost pointless. Which was why Coruscant was practically as much of a haven from scumbags as Tatooine, despite it being so heavily populated.

Plus, Bane's ship looked like nothing more than a harmless old freighter anyway. It was is inconspicuous as the _Twilight_ had been when the search for Quinlan Vos had began.

Renamon vaguely wondered how the repairs to the _Twilight_ were going after its crash-landing on Naboo.

But she cast those thoughts aside as she surveyed the familiar area. As they headed towards the Works, they flew right past the Senate District. Renamon stared across at the enormous dome of the Senate Building, and wondered if their quarry was in there right now. Or if perhaps Chuchi was there, wondering how they were getting on.

Further in the distance was the silhouette of the Jedi Temple, taller than the surrounding buildings by an incredible stretch. Renamon knew that in that building, Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi were waiting for her report too, anxiously passing the time until they finally learned of the identity of the mysterious Sith Lord that Obi-Wan himself had been told of by Dooku himself a long time ago. Speaking of Dooku, he would be in there too, stewing in the cell next to that of Asajj Ventress.

Renamon hoped their master would join them there soon.

Her attention was drawn away as they cleared the last of the buildings and, stretching out ahead of them was the familiar shape of the Works – the smoke plumes rising into the air and the numerous abandoned factories sitting there and looking old, desolate and weather-worn, which indeed they were. Renamon even saw the path of destruction caused by Godzillo several days before as he had chased the Chancellor across the barren buildings. She knew Bane spotted it too, but the Duros made no comment.

Todo picked out one of the factories on the outskirts that seemed to be in good enough shape to support the weight of the ship and settled gingerly on the roof. Fortunately, it held, and the droid turned to the others and said, "Right, I think that was a success."

"Let's step outside," Bane declared. "Bring the tracking equipment, Todo." Then, he strode out of the cockpit, descended the ramp and walked out. Renamon followed and almost gagged. She'd forgotten how foul the air of the Works was. She could only hope the smoke being spewed out of the surrounding buildings wasn't toxic. But it hadn't killed her before, so she saw little need to worry.

As Chewbacca stepped out too, and Todo hovered down on his rocket-feet, carrying something that resembled a large sensor of some kind, Bane walked over to the edge of the roof and stared out across the landscape, fishing a pair of macrobinoculars from within his nashta-hide tunic and putting them up to his eyes.

Renamon and Chewbacca watched as Todo flew over to him and said, "Look, Bane. It appears that you were right," and passed him the sensor. Bane took one glance at it and smirked.

Renamon stepped over and asked, "What is it?"

"I told you it would be worth double-checking," Bane told her and passed her the sensor. Renamon looked at the little screen, which seemed to be depicting two red dots in very close proximity to one another over a map of some kind. "These dots indicate the tracking beacon on the ship and the place where Sidious' signal originated from?" she asked.

"Indeed," Bane said. "They both came from the same building. Seems our Sith Lord friend thought that he was safe behind his firewalls. But it appears he was wrong."

"Ohacworcwo ahc ahao aoacwowh?" Chewbacca roared. "Ohacworcwo ohwo acrahowo aooo rroo?"

"He wants to know where the dots are leading us to," Renamon clarified.

Bane nodded to Todo, who took the sensor from Renamon's paws and fiddled with it for a few moments. It bleeped at him, and the droid looked up and pointed out into the Works. "That direction," he said. "About five-hundred klicks."

"That's several kilometres, isn't it?" Renamon asked, as Bane put his macrobinoculars back to his eyes.

"I'm afraid so," nodded Todo. "We'll have a bit of hiking to do."

"Rhrcahwhrr ahao oowh," Chewbacca pounded his chest.

"What he said," Renamon nodded.

"Don't look now," Bane smirked, "but I think we may have just found a potential candidate for our Sith Lord's secret headquarters."

"Where?" Renamon asked. Bane merely passed her the macrobinoculars and pointed. As Renamon lifted them up to her eyes, she zoomed in across the Works, looking for whatever Bane had seen.

And, sure enough, in the distance amongst the factories, so far away that you could barely see it even with the macrobinoculars, Renamon could see a tall building rising high above all the other buildings around it. It was nondescript in itself, except for the fact that it was tall and thin, but Renamon immediately knew that that was where they needed to go. Her built in danger sense might not have been as finely tuned to evil as say, Cyberdramon, or even that of a Jedi, but that building sent alarm bells ringing.

They'd found Darth Sidious' secret outpost.

* * *

Some of you might think that they accomplished that a little bit too quickly, but let's not forget that Bane has an overwhelming advantage in finding Sidious than the Jedi. According to the expanded universe, the Jedi first became aware that Sidious might really exist when Anakin and Obi-Wan come across a holochair holding a recorded conversation between Sidious and Gunray, and they had to follow a series of clues to find out where the chair had come from before they came across the Works as an answer, because they couldn't trace the signal. But Bane has the signal, so he doesn't need to do that. He can lead them straight to the source. And now, he has.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Next chapter contains a little of both story plots, though the majority focuses on the events taking place on Ryloth. As Bane and the others move in on The Works, the others search Nabat for any clues as to where the slavers went. Meanwhile, the Twi'lek prisoners have more on their minds than demurely sitting there.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 144 : Unbroken Spirit**


	144. Unbroken Spirit

Hello again, and I'm starting to get settled into my new place at this point. Sky is up and running and the broadband should be in place at the allotted time. Meanwhile, here is the next instalment of the arc. Just a warning, there is a large section of this chapter that includes Twi'leks speaking where I did not bother to change it into their own language. And that was simply because there was so much of it that it would have taken forever. So Numa and the others do _not_ speak Basic in chapter. You're just reading what they're saying so you don't have to read complete lots of stuff you don't understand and have to keep referring to the bottom to understand it.

Enjoy the chapter.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 144:- Unbroken Spirit**

* * *

The atmosphere at the slave camp on Ryloth was still pretty much the same as it had been when Numa had arrived there. The little teal-skinned girl was currently huddled in the middle of the large group of chained adults of her own kind, trying to stay out of the sight of all the slavers that surrounded the ragged bunch. Fear was forever gnawing at her, as she pondered what her fate might be, and what the fate of all the other Twi'leks here might be.

The white-skinned female, who Numa had discovered was called Hyoll, was still doing her best to soothe Numa, and having her hands bound behind her certainly wasn't helping on that score. Every now and then, Hyoll would look up and glare accusingly at many of the slavers around them, but they didn't seem to notice.

She wasn't the only one either. Many of the other slaves were still looking defiant and angry at their current treatment. They were still tugging on their binders to the best of their ability and trying not to choke the person behind them by pulling too hard at the same time. However, equally, there were a very large number of the captives that were cowering and trying to make themselves look inconspicuous. Many of them were in tears, as they were pretty sure they knew what was going to become of them.

Numa huddled herself closer to Hyoll and gripped the adult's upper arm in her small hands. Her designated protector reached around as best she could and took one of Numa's hands in her bound ones.

"Don't worry about a thing," the woman whispered in Twi'leki. "I guarantee that there will be people looking for us as we speak. I'm sure that they will get here at some point."

"You really think so?" Numa asked, also in Twi'leki, looking up at Hyoll with large, hopeful eyes.

"Oh yes," nodded Hyoll, smiling at her comfortingly. But, inside, she felt rather guilty with herself for providing a false hope to the little girl. Numa might not recognise the main problems, but Hyoll was aware of how well-placed the slave camp was and how difficult it would be for anybody to find. Even the slavers must have been extremely lucky to find a place like this. Or perhaps that despicable male Twi'lek, Gravick.

Hyoll looked up and watched the man in question. He definitely seemed like a slimeball of major proportions and he brought shame to his entire species. Currently, he was standing with Tryo the Klatooinian and a couple of others, staring at a holographic image of what was clearly another Twi'lek village and definitely their next target. The Nikto lurked nearby, watching their progress. Hyoll could tell that he was a dangerous one, and getting him angry might not be a good idea.

"How long do you think it will take them to get here?" Numa asked quietly.

"I don't know," Hyoll confessed. "But hopefully it won't be long. It looks like they're planning to add more additions to our group soon."

"There's almost one-hundred of us here anyway," seethed the Twi'lek whose wrists were chained to Hyoll's neck – a tall one with bright pink skin who was flexing her arms and still trying to pull her hands out of the manacles that bound them. "Isn't that enough for them? Must they really go out and capture more of us. It's disgusting."

"It's the way things are," sighed the Twi'lek whose neck was chained to Hyoll's wrists – a Lethan with deep red skin. "We've always lived with that perpetual fear at the back of our minds that we were going to be taken by the slave trade one day. It seems that day has finally come."

"Now, now," Hyoll turned around and cast her neighbour a pointed look. "That attitude is not going to get us anywhere. We need to try and stay positive about all this."

"Positive?" snorted the red Twi'lek. "Where is there anything positive about this situation, Hyoll?"

"Come on, Talee," Hyoll chided her. "Giving up now? Where's your spirit? We haven't even left the planet yet, and it looks like we won't be for a few days if they intend to add more to our numbers first. There is still a chance for us to escape."

"You have a plan?" the pink one asked, sceptically.

Hyoll sighed. "No, I don't. But that doesn't mean we should give up straight away, does it, Milyl?"

Milyl laughed harshly. "Give up? Oh, I have no intention of giving up hope until I'm locked in some dark, dank dungeon somewhere."

"That's the spirit," Hyoll nodded. "You should take Milyl's attitude, Talee. It might do you some good if you did. It might lift your spirits. Sinking into a depression is not going to do any of us, any favours, least of all little Numa here."

She gave Numa a kindly smile, and Numa attempted to smile back, but her heart wasn't really in it. Her mind was still dwelling on the image of her now deceased uncle and the quick and efficient way that the slavers had taken the village's inhabitants. Plus, she wanted to know if Lubo and the others were okay, and she had no way of knowing.

Talee, meanwhile, was still talking. "That may be," she was saying, "but I fail to see how we can get away from this unless we're rescued. We can hardly run when we're all chained together like this and I'm pretty sure none of us has access to a key to unlock these manacles. If we tried to escape, they'd catch us immediately."

"Have you tried?" Hyoll asked pointedly. "No. I say that anything is possible if you have the right mindset and a good plan. There is a chance that we can get away from this."

"Uh, actually I agree with Talee," Milyl stated quietly. "I still hold out the hope of being rescued, but I can't see us escaping ourselves. We're all in this together – all chained up. We'd all have to work together perfectly if we wanted to go anywhere quickly, and if one of us were to fall, it would doom the entire escape attempt. We'd all start toppling over, and then we'd start choking as we pull on each other's chains."

"And we've only got one avenue of escape," Talee agreed, indicating the canyon they had walked through to get to this valley. "Unless we want to try climbing those mountains, and they look too steep to attempt even if our hands were free."

Hyoll gritted her teeth, but was forced to concede that her fellow captives had a point. The chances of them getting away seemed remarkably dim at best. She sighed and looked up. She wasn't entirely surprised to find that their conversation had picked up an audience. Most of the other slaves were now listening in, the quiet voices reaching the ears of all of them easily enough due to the still air of the valley.

Hyoll picked a brown-skinned Twi'lek nearby that she didn't recognise and asked, "How long have you been here?" as quietly as she could.

"Four days," the woman replied, her eyes showing the truth of her words. She was obviously very tired and hope seemed to be slowly abandoning her. Hyoll winced. Four days of sitting on the ground with her hands chained behind her and her neck attached to the wrists of another woman was nerve-wrenching. And Hyoll knew that if they did not get away, this would only be the start of their suffering. More and worse punishments would lie in wait for them. They might spend days languishing in dungeons somewhere, or they might be forced to dance until their feet bled to satisfy a cruel tyrant or a crowd of drunken scumbags.

The white-skinned woman stared down at her feet for a moment, shaking her head and causing her lekku to wave and the chain attached to her neck to clink. Thinking about the future wouldn't do. She needed to think about the here and now. She wracked her brain for any possibility of an escape, but Milyl's words were still fresh in her brain. Many of the Twi'leks might be too scared to even attempt to flee. There were over ninety of them – and not all of them might be brave enough to try and escape.

It seemed hopeless. Were they really all destined to become slaves to the rich?

Hyoll glanced down at the charge she had been landed with. She hadn't known Numa all that well when they'd both lived in Nabat – she'd merely occasionally watched her and her friends playing and reminiscing about the days when she herself was that small. However, looking at her now, bedraggled and miserable but still with a tiny flicker of hope in her eyes, Hyoll felt a surge of compassion.

She knew how little Numa had assisted the Republic in freeing herself and her fellow villagers. She remembered how this young girl had led a Jedi and a few clones through the tunnels beneath their settlement to allow them to slip past the droids. Numa had been so brave. But she was still a child, and slavery was no place for a child that had only just reached double-digits in standard years.

Hyoll found her eyes trailing down to Numa's wrists and then up to her neck. More to the point, the manacle-free wrists and neck. Her eyes narrowed as she felt determination stab into her like a knife. Her own chances of escape might seem to be almost nil thanks to the chains, but Numa was still free. The slavers didn't have any that fit her. There was still a chance that the child might be able to get away, even if none of the others did.

"Talee," Hyoll looked over her shoulder at the Lethan woman behind her. "You... may have a point. Escape for all us does indeed seem... non-existent. But that's no reason to give up. As long as we are still of Ryloth sand, we have some hope, whether it be for ourselves or not. We have to try something."

"Are you crazy?" a nearby woman with green skin hissed. "We'll all get in trouble. We'll never get away."

Hyoll rounded on the woman and glared at her. "Look at you," she hissed back at her. "You've got all the mannerisms of a slave already. You cannot take this lying down. We may have our bodies chained," she jerked her wrist manacles for emphasis, "But we still have our spirits. If that breaks, then we really do have nothing."

"They won't break me easily," Milyl agreed. "But my point still stands. Escape just isn't going to happen."

"Perhaps not for us," admitted Hyoll. "We may need to be rescued. But we have to try something. Look at little Numa here." She gestured as best she could to the girl still clinging to her arm and hand. "She has no chains. If there is a chance that any of us can get away, then it's her."

Numa shifted uncomfortably as she felt almost one-hundred pairs of eyes falling on her. It seemed that the whole slave line was listening now, and most of them were now looking at the little girl in their centre. The poor girl fought the urge to shrink back out of their gazes – these were friendly eyes, after all.

"She's so small," whispered one of the other slaves. "She'll never make it out there – we're a long way from anywhere where she might be safe, even if she did escape."

"She'd have a far better chance out there than she would here," Hyoll pointed out. "If she stays here then there's only one outcome for her. But if she gets away, she has a chance at a life. It may be denied to us now, but as soon-to-be-slaves, it's our duty to protect anyone we can from suffering the same fate. We must try and help Numa escape."

"But if we try anything, they'll probably punish us," whimpered another prisoner. "Some of those guards have whips, and I don't think they'd hesitate to use them on us."

"Yeah, and they all have blasters too," another put in. "What if they shoot at us if we try something? Some of us could die."

"Not likely," Milyl muttered. "They'd probably set for stun so they could keep their prisoner count intact. And in any case, death might actually be the better option. Anyway, I think Hyoll is right. We've got to help the child, even if we do nothing else."

"Look at her," Hyoll declared as quietly as she could. "Just look at her. She's so young, but does that matter to the slavers? No, it doesn't. Not at all. But it matters to us. If we don't at least try to help her escape, then that makes us little better than them. Worrying about ourselves when there's a child's life at stake would only be selfish. Can you two look at her and tell me, looking me in the eye as you do so, that you would leave her here to stop yourselves from getting punished."

The two Twi'leks who had protested looked uncomfortable, but they followed what Hyoll said and stared at Numa. Numa was struggling to take everything in through the blur of fear and sadness that had been trying to engulf her, but that flicker of hope from earlier was growing slightly. She stared plaintively back at the other Twi'leks – all of them.

The first of the two sighed and shook her head. "You're right," she said. "I can't sit back and let a child get taken to the Hutt Council."

The second nodded in agreement. "We have to try something. They may bring back other kids on their future missions, but if just one gets away, I'd feel much better."

"That's the spirit," Hyoll felt a smile gracing her face. "What about the rest of you? Will you do what you can to help Numa escape?"

Numa's eyes widened as just about the whole crowd made slight nodding motions and murmurs of assent, chains clinking as they did so. Talee offered the young one a friendly smile and said, "You hear that, Numa. We'll get you out of here."

"But... what about you?" Numa asked, looking round at the crowd. "You can't stay here?"

"We have little choice," Hyoll said, shifting her arms and the manacles moving with them. "But if you can get away, that's all that matters. Who knows, perhaps you can even get some help and bring it back here. You've got your whole life ahead of you, Numa. We'll make sure that life is not spent taking orders from a Hutt."

Numa felt a surge of gratitude to all of them. She might not have her true family anymore, but she still had people looking out for her, preparing to risk everything to help her get away from these foul men.

"Thank you," she said. "I'll... I'll do my best."

Hyoll smiled. Truth be told, she wasn't sure Numa would make it out there. The forests of Ryloth near this area had lots of hungry predators, and it was certainly no place for a little girl to be wandering alone. But anything was better than being shipped off to Nal Hutta or wherever else they were bound for. Even a Gutkurr-infested desert.

"Alright," Hyoll said. "We need a plan, and we need one fast. We'll probably all have to work together on this one. We can't wait for cover of darkness – it's not due in this sector for another two weeks."

"You heard her," Milyl nodded, a grin on her deep-pink face. "Time to get our brains wracking."

* * *

As before when the Tamers had found themselves on Ryloth, the entry to Nabat consisted of clambering up a rope ladder which was flung over the wall by somebody on the other side. Henry remembered the arduous climb from last time, when his shoulder had been injured from the crash-landing Parallelmon had provided him with. This time the assent was much easier, though it was still quite awkward.

Aayla was the first to head up the ladder. The Jedi shot upwards as if she'd been climbing ladders like this every day for years and vaulted over the wall, landing on the top and looking out across Nabat. As before, it seemed remarkably desolate. There _were_ still Twi'leks there this time, out and about, but they were all very sombre and many of them were standing in corners trying to avoid eye contact with anybody. No doubt the experience had left them all traumatized.

Those that were moving around seemed to be disposing of the dead. Aayla's heart went out to these people, who had all been through so much and had their lives seemingly snatched away from them all twice now. It was unfair. What had once been a safe haven had become a trap. Twice.

She noticed that all the bodies were men, just as Cham had predicted. It didn't surprise Aayla at all. She glanced sadly at the body of a male Twi'lek with bluish skin, a slightly lighter shade than her own, as two other men lifted it up and began to place him in a body-bag.

Suddenly, her eyes widened and she stepped over to them. "Nari," she said, stepping over to them and holding up a hand to stop them, as she got a good look at the dead man. It was a face she had only seen once, but Aayla's memory was good. The Jedi shut her eyes and sighed. How had it come to this?

"Is that who I think it is?" a voice asked darkly from next to her. Aayla could see that Terriermon had landed on the wall beside her, having no need to use the ladder. Lopmon alighted next to him and the three of them stared at the body with mixed amounts of sadness and bitterness.

"I think so," Aayla nodded. "It's Numa's uncle. Nilim Bril, I believe his name was."

"So, he's dead," Terriermon murmured. "The poor guy. Henry says he was the first person that they even met in this whole universe."

"We can't let Suzie see this," Lopmon looked up at Aayla. "It'll sadden her too much."

"We have to tell her," pointed out the Jedi.

"I know," Lopmon agreed. "But we mustn't let her see his body. Particularly not with that blaster mark on his chest. Let her only memories of him be from when he was alive."

Aayla nodded and indicated to the other Twi'leks that they could continue with what they were doing. As they zipped up the boy bag and bore the dead man away, Aayla stepped back over to the ladder. Ahsoka was already close to the top and flipped herself onto the wall a moment later.

"Wow," she said, as she got sight of the place. "Those slavers sure did a number on this place."

"Yes. It's unusual," Aayla agreed. "I've never heard of a slaver attack on this scale before. And this isn't the only place to have been hit either. Come on, Ahsoka, let's steady the ladder."

The Togruta nodded and the two of them used the Force to hold the ladder still while several of the others began to climb up. Anakin and Barriss got up with little trouble, and would have done without assistance from above, but the Tamers were glad for the extra insurance. Rika still lost her footing on the thin rungs at one point, but Barriss was quick enough to lash out with a hand and steady her until she completed the climb.

Cham and his men left their blurrgs behind as they climbed upwards as well. Once everyone was on the top, the former freedom fighter turned to the Jedi and said, "Thank you for the assistance. How do you think we should proceed."

"Well, if you want my opinion," Anakin spoke up. "I think the first thing we should do is to find out how the slavers got in and how they got their captives out. That might give us some clues as to where to start looking for a trail."

Cham nodded and the group made their way down the other side of the wall via the steps carved in the stone and found themselves amongst the Twi'leks that seemed to have survived the slavers onslaught. Men and women clustered around the group, while numerous children hung back, afraid of these strangers.

Lopmon spotted Suzie searching the crowd for something, and she knew exactly who it was she was seeking. As Aayla and Cham began to question some of the Twi'leks in their native language, with the other Jedi and the clones hovering nearby, she turned to her brother and said, "Terriermon, let's scout out the area. See if we can spot anything unusual from the air."

"Huh?" Terriermon asked, but caught Lopmon's meaning after a moment. "Oh, yeah. Good idea. Stay with the others you guys. We'll be right back."

With flaps of their large ears, both the bunnies were airborne. Having spent the majority of their time indoors recently, it felt good to stretch their ears out once more, but they suppressed the joy and focused their eyes down below, their ears finding thermals that provided them with lift to ascend higher.

But they didn't spot what they were looking for. There was no sign of Suzie's little teal-skinned friend.

"Come on, Numa," breathed Lopmon. "Where are you?"

"She might be inside," Terriermon pointed out. "Somewhere where we can't see them from the air."

"Good point," Lopmon agreed. As Terriermon flew on to search from up above, Lopmon folded her ears and swooped lower until she was within the canyon walls once more. She started flitting from building to building, alighting on the stone windowsills and glancing inside. Most of the simple, blocky houses were empty and dark, the occupants either outside, dead or captured. There were a few that had people inside, and they looked up, startle, when Lopmon appeared in the window. The Digimon would excuse herself and then move on.

Eventually, Lopmon came across a small building that had a cluster of children inside it, with one woman looking after them all. The children in question looked up at her fearfully, but they relaxed when they saw the small and harmless looking creature.

"Sorry," Lopmon mumbled, knowing the majority of them wouldn't know what that word meant, but saying it anyway. It only took a glance for her to see that Numa wasn't there amongst them though. She sighed through teeth in frustration, and was about to turn and fly off to the next building when:-

"Lopmon?"

She froze and turned back towards the group. One of them, another little girl with green skin, had stepped forward. "Non suul Lopmon?" she asked.

"Lopmon," agreed the Digimon, nodding her head emphatically and frowning in bemusement. "Yes, that's me. Er... hello."

She wasn't quite sure what to do next, but the little girl seemed to be trying to smile. She then said, "Numa roil ji spor groiger suul o lot."

Lopmon's interest was immediately grabbed. "Numa?" she asked. "You know Numa. Where is she? Do you know?"

The little girl looked blank, not understanding anything except the word Numa. Lopmon bit her lip and sent a message to Aayla with her mind. _Hey, Aayla. I'm going to need your help with some translation._

A few moments later, and Lopmon haltingly repeated her earlier sentence in a different language. "Suul ken Numa? Hyfan si gar? Yers suul ken?"

The little girl, who happened to be Lubo, gave Lopmon an expression that gave her a partial answer. It was not good news.

"Numa lods riun swelten. Top ulner trin lokie gor absta rehenster. Vreo top noon bushta."

Through the mindlink, Lopmon could sense the trepidation from Aayla as she supplied the translation – Numa was missing and had been since the slavers had arrived. Lopmon's worst fears were confirmed. A wave of pity welled up within her. She hadn't known Numa for long, but she provided her Tamer with friendship and company when the others couldn't. That induced a fair amount of compassion in the bunny.

"Oh, Numa," she murmured. "What have you gotten yourself into?"

* * *

Terriermon grimaced as well, as he picked up the message from Lopmon. Suzie was not going to be pleased with this, when she found out the truth. They were keeping the information concealed from her mind for the moment – and nobody wanted the job of having to tell the little girl the bad news. Not until they had more to go on anyway.

_I'll take a flight around the valley,_ Terriermon said. _See if I can find anything like a trail from the sky._

_Cham says that they usually leave little to no trace of a trail anywhere,_ Anakin replied. _You're going to have to fly low if you want to spot anything._

_Keep an eye out for Gutkurr,_ Aayla supplied. _Apparently there are quite a few of them in this area, and they can be quite fast._

_Yes, I remember that fact all too well,_ Terriermon nodded, then with a flap of his ears he swooped low over the clifftop and plunged down onto the other side. His eyes began to scan the ground below for any sign that might indicate that slavers had been there. Terriermon had absolutely no idea what he was looking for, but he had to try.

As he winged his way around the canyon, he was unsurprised to find himself not spotting anything except the desert and the stick-like trees that grew in the forest all around it. Even swooping low over the trees yielded no results. It just seemed like a lot of sand and dirt and wood. He didn't encounter any predators either, which he was thankful for, but he quickly became frustrated at the lack of results.

It was far worse than one of those video games he sometimes played back home, where you could only advance if you figured out what to do.

After many minutes of fruitless looking, Terriermon winged his way higher into the sky once more, preparing to head back into the canyon and get back to the others, when he suddenly spotted something that he hadn't noticed before. He frowned and descended downwards, circling his find as he did so.

_That's interesting,_ he thought.

* * *

"So, what's the word?" Barriss asked when Aayla and Cham had finished conversing with the various Twi'leks to extract the full story of what had happened. "Do we have anything to go on?"

"Not a lot," Cham sighed. "According to these people, they attacked during a period of time where most of them were asleep and began to kill the men and kidnap the women. Apparently there was a lot of chaos, but these people managed to get away by heading for the tunnels at the back of the town that lead into the mountains behind the canyon.

"Why didn't they do that when the Separatists attacked half a year ago?" asked Anakin.

"I asked them that question," Aayla put in. "Apparently the Separatists used Vulture Droids in their attack, which were able to fly to the back of the canyon and cut off the escape route. But in this attack, the slavers all came from one side of the canyon and swept across it, which meant some of them could get away."

"Did they try escaping through the tunnels?" Henry asked. "Like Suzie did the first time."

"That's the strange part," Cham wrinkled his nose. "The slavers were already in the tunnel systems and were coming up inside people's houses while others entered through the doors, so they advanced across the town both above and below ground. Most of the people who escaped lived at the back of the canyon and were forewarned of the danger, but those nearer to the wall were not so lucky."

"Permission to speak, General?" asked Bly.

"Of course, Bly," nodded Aayla. "What are you thinking?"

"I want to know how they got into this place," the clone said. "When we attacked to retake it from the droids, we had to scale over the wall. When the droids attacked, they did it from the air, which is why they could cut off the escape routes. But if the slavers can't have used air transport, or they could have covered both ends of the canyon too. And if they attacked the wall and climbed over that, the locals would have been more forewarned."

"Good observation," Cham conceded. "The tunnels at the back end at the other side of this mountain range. And there are no other entrances to the town other than over the wall, yet it was the side with the wall that the slavers advanced from."

"No other entrances?" asked a voice, as Lopmon landed nearby. "Are you sure about that?"

Cham frowned and hurriedly consulted with one of the locals, before saying, "Yes. They say that there are none."

"Yes, there are," Lopmon said. "It may not have been there until a few days ago, but there's one now. Terriermon found it." She looked up and, as if answering a call, her brother soared into view and alighted beside her on the roof of a building.

"She's right," nodded Terriermon. "There a tunnel just on the other side of that wall behind me. It looks like it's been hastily dug and while I'm no expert on tunnels, it seems like a relatively new one to me. The slavers must have dug their way inside, come up by the wall and then advanced across the town."

"Well, that explains a lot," Anakin growled. "But even so, it must have seemed like a long shot to try that approach."

"Indeed," nodded Aayla. "Every tunnel system in unique to the settlement in question. It would be practically impossible for anyone unfamiliar with their layouts to predict when they would find their way into them."

"Where is the tunnel?" Cham asked. "We didn't spot anything when we searched around the canyon."

"Not surprised," Terriermon said. "It's hidden in a large cranny in the side of the canyon wall and concealed by a bunch of shrubbery. I only saw it because I was in the air. But it's directly on the other side of the wall. I can take you to it, if you like."

"Why don't you head to the other side and try and guide us with your voice," Cham suggested. "We'll find a local who knows the tunnels and ask for guidance through them. We'll follow your voice until we find the new entrance."

"Let's try and find Numa," Suzie said immediately. "She knows her way around the tunnels. She can take us."

The little girl looked eager to try and find her friend, but she noticed the Jedi and the Digimon begin to exchange uncomfortable glances. Her expression slipped slowly into one of agitation as she asked, "What is it? What's wrong?"

"Suzie..." Lopmon sighed, and paused. She was unable to look her Tamer in the eye, and she quickly blurted out the next bit. "Numa's gone. She's been taken by the slavers."

Suzie almost literally froze, as her blood seemed to turn to ice at these condemning words. She quickly looked around at the others, hoping one of them would reveal it was a bad joke, but none of them did.

"No," Suzie breathed.

"Sorry, Suzie," Lopmon said. "Her uncle was killed in the attack and she's been missing since the attack. There's only one explanation – the slavers have taken her."

There was precisely three seconds of silence, before Suzie shouted, "Well what are we standing around for? We have to rescue her!"

"And we will," Lopmon nodded firmly. "I promise you Suzie, that we are not going to rest until we get Numa back, safe and sound."

"The situation hasn't changed," Anakin added. "We were going to invest all the resources we had into finding these captives anyway. It just so happens that some of us know one of their number now. Let's get going. Hopefully the tunnel will give us the general direction which the slavers took when they left the area."

As Terriermon and Lopmon flew off to head for the other side of the tunnel, Suzie turned to Rika and Henry. Both the other Tamers were looking as sombre as her. Both of them had a lot to thank Numa for as well. She had provided them with shelter, as had her family. Nilim Bril had helped to treat Henry's injury.

Rika caught Suzie looking at her. She looked down at her and then said, "You know what, Suzie?"

"What?"

"When we find the scumbags who took Numa and all these other Twi'leks," Rika clenched her fist and socked into the palm of the other hand. "They've got a whole load of pain coming their way. I may just knock their teeth out."

Henry said nothing, but he made no gesture to show that his disapproved of Rika's words. Suzie nodded and turned to follow the others. A sick feeling was building inside her. The first real friend she'd made since the attack by Parallelmon was in trouble. Suzie was going to bring her back, even if she had to go to hell to do it.

* * *

On Coruscant, things were moving at a relatively slow pace. Renamon was forcing herself to ignore what she had learned of Numa's predicament, as she had bigger concerns right now. Namely, she was creeping through the Works with a Wookiee, a droid and one of the most wanted Bounty Hunters in the Republic. Currently he had a pardon, but the majority of the Republic didn't know that.

They were making a beeline straight towards the tall building in the distance that Bane and Todo had tracked Darth Sidious to. There was a thin smog all around them which was making breathing a little difficult for Renamon when she was on the ground, so she had taken to the buildings, moving along the roof and then leaping between the gaps. Bane seemed to be having no problems, thanks to the air supply that his cheek implants were giving him. Todo, of course, did not need to breath, and Chewbacca was so tall that his head cleared the majority of the filthy cloud.

The pace was relatively swift, and the buildings was looming large in the distance with every passing moment. It was still several kilometres away and shrouded by the smog, but they were getting closer gradually.

Renamon vaulted to the lip of one of the building roofs and called down, "Is there a plan for what we do when we actually get there?"

"Not much of one," Bane called back up. "There's little point in making a plan unless you know the schematics for the building in question. We'll scan the building for any security measures when we get there and decide how to proceed after that."

"Improvisation?" Renamon asked. "I'll be honest and say that that doesn't sound like the best idea when going up against a Sith Lord."

"Your friend, Secura, managed it against Count Dooku," Bane smirked. "You needn't worry, foxy. We've got a handle on things, and Todo and I have crept into buildings like this many times before. We know what we're doing."

"Actually, I think Renamon may have a point," Todo said. "We should take a life-form scan of the building before we enter. If there's anyone in there, I say we wait until there isn't. That way we can scout out the building while its empty and get to grips with it, then lie in wait for the target when he comes back."

"Good idea," Renamon nodded. "And a sensible suggestion."

"Thank you," Todo's voice contained the happy smile his face was unable to portray. Renamon smirked. She might not get along with Bane, but his droid was certainly pleasurable company.

"Very well," Bane nodded. "Setting up an ambush is another one of our specialities. Darth Sidious won't suspect a thing until it's too late."

"This is just a fact-finding mission," Renamon pointed out. "It would be better if he didn't suspect anything at any point."

"If worst comes to worst, Renamon," Bane stated. "Then I always ensure to plan out a..."

Suddenly Bane was cut off when Chewbacca hurried forward and placed a large, furry paw on his shoulder. Bane almost went into action, but stopped himself when he caught sight of the Wookiee's face. The hairy humanoid motioned for quiet, growling softly and cocking his head as if he were listening.

Todo and Renamon noticed the strange behaviour. The former alighted on the ground and the latter crouched low on the building above. Bane shrugged off the Wookiee's hand and the four of them stood stock-still, listening.

"I don't hear anything," Todo said after a moment, right before a figure leapt out of the smoke, yelling loudly and brandishing a knife in Bane's direction.

The Duros moved with impressive speed. In a flash, his blaster pistols were in his hands and he'd let off a shot that took the attacker straight in the forehead and knocked him over backwards. But he wasn't the only one. Other figures started to emerge from the thick gas and screamed loud warcries as they waved more knives. Evidently the group had stumbled into one of the gangs that frequented the outskirts of the Works.

Nobody said a word. Nobody gave a signal. All four of them immediately went into action.

Bane's finger flew to a button on his wrist-com and a moment later he was in the air, propelled upwards by his rocket boots. His sharp eyes immediately picked out those with blasters who might be able to shoot him out of the air and those people were immediately gunned down, the Bounty Hunter only letting off one shot towards each many he aimed at but felling him just the same. One of the attackers flipped his knife and flung it at the airborne defendant, but Bane saw it coming and rolled aside, allowing it to scythe harmlessly past. Flicking his hand, a dart shot out his wrist-com and struck the man in the chest, causing him to topple over and start spasming as a deadly poison quickly took effect.

More attackers surged in around some of the other buildings and rushed Chewbacca. The Wookiee let out a defiant roar in their direction, which created such an imposing image that most of them faltered right there. Before they could think to attack again, Chewbacca was amongst them. His huge arm clubbed two men aside as if they were toothpicks, sending them crashing into a wall so hard they went through it. Grabbing another man and tossing him over his shoulder and high into the air in one hand, Chewbacca pounced and landed full-force on three more, bearing them to the ground and slamming his fist into them as he did so, before seizing two of the dead men and hurling them into the others.

One man who had snuck up behind the Wookiee jumped up onto his shoulders and raised a knife preparing to stab it down into the top of his furry head. But then, he found his own shoulder being grabbed, as Todo latched onto the man and pulled at his hair and ears, causing him to lose his grip and fall to the floor. Chewbacca grabbed another man and hauled him into the air, bringing him down on his former attacker like a club and killing them both.

Bane suddenly landed next to Chewbacca and took out another man that was surging towards him, firing off a shot directly under Chewbacca's arm to catch him in the chest. The Bounty Hunter whirled around, tunic lashing out behind him and sent four more stumbling to the ground with holes in their abdomens, then sent his bolas lashing out towards the group, the cord wrapping around the necks of two of the attackers and throwing them both backwards. One man managed to get close enough to make a swing at Bane with a knife, but Bane ducked with such well practiced precision that even his large hat emerged completely unscathed, before he grabbed the man by the wrist, twisting it until he dropped the knife and then grabbed his neck in his arm and pulled hard.

A green shot lanced past his shoulder, but it was only Chewbacca, who had unslung his bowcaster and fired off such a powerful shot that it passed right through two men and smacked into a third. The men behind the three faltered and backed away slightly, slightly more wary about facing the Duros and the Wookiee now.

Apparently none of them had noticed the silent figure crouching on the roof above them.

Renamon finally made her move – she had been watching the battle below for the best opportunity. Now that the men were all grouped in one place, it was an opportune moment to strike. She dashed swiftly across a couple of rooftops and over a gap until she was level with Bane and Chewbacca. Just as the two of the ground let off more shots at the men and they began to charge once more, Renamon sprang into the air, twisting around until she was facing the men and then crossing her arms before her.

Everyone suddenly became aware of her presence when she yelled, **"DIAMOND STORM!"** and threw her arms out wide. What followed was a hail of razor-sharp shards that lanced downwards and into the throng of brigands. There were cries of alarm and pain as the attack fell upon them wounding many of them and killing even more right on the spot. The men pulled to a halt again as Renamon landed smoothly on all fours in front of Bane and Chewbacca.

"Sorry boys," she said. "You picked the wrong bypassers to try and rob." And she surged forward into the group.

It was all over in a matter of moments. Bane watched with what he could not deny as admiration, as Renamon sprang towards the would-be attackers. A heavy punch to the chest of the first unlucky soul threw backwards through the crowd, knocking over to others in the process. Renamon flipped over and brought both feet slamming into another, catching herself on her hands and flipping onto her front. A heavy sweep kick sent one man flying into the air with his feet up, giving Renamon enough time to grab two others and bash their hands together before she seized the ankle of the man still in the air, slammed him into the ground and threw him upwards again, leaping up to follow him and planting a furious kick on his side, sending the body slamming into two more and through the side of another wall.

The group now consisted merely of six men. One of them followed the example of another of his comrades and threw his knife at the airborne fox. Renamon's pupils narrowed as she focused on the whirling blade slicing the air in her direction. Time seemed to slow down as she followed its progress and then lashed out at it. Even though she was moving through the air at high speed and the knife was going even faster, the fox's timing was perfect. She _grabbed_ the knife by the blade in her paw, plucking it out of the air with the sharp blade completely failing to scratch her thanks to her angle and timing. She whirled around and threw it back, where it embedded in the man's chest and knocked him to the floor.

The remaining five men looked undecided about what to do, but Renamon didn't give them the chance to come to a decision. She surrounded her paw with a blue aura and fell upon them. **"POWER PAW!"** she cried, and slammed it into the ground in the middle of the group, causing all five of them to go flying into walls. Only one of them remained conscious and that man groaned slightly, before a sudden shot from Bane put him out of his misery.

Renamon turned as the Duros and the others approached her. Bane ignored her and turned to his droid. "Todo," he said. "How many survivors?"

"Only two, Bane," the droid reported, a finger to the side of his head as if checking his scanners. He pointed out the two men who were still breathing to Bane and the Duros quickly let off a shot at both of them, ending their lives for good.

"Hey!" Renamon seized him by the wrist gauntlet and glared at him. "There was no need for that! They were already unconscious."

"Excuse me," Bane folded his arms, "But I am supposed to be ensuring that you remain a secret and those two men had seen you. That was the quickest and easiest solution. Besides, we have another job to be doing right now."

Renamon bit back a response, knowing full well that Bane was right, but that didn't mean she had to agree with his methods. She released his wrists and the Bounty Hunter said, "Come on, we're behind schedule. We've got a Sith Lord hideout to explore."

Bane started off towards the tower again, followed by Todo, as if nothing had happened at all. Chewbacca and Renamon shared a glanced before the Wookiee shrugged and mumbled, "Ohacraao waahwa ohwo wokakwooaao?" Then the two of them turned round and followed him.

After a couple of moments, Bane said, "It's rare for me to congratulate anybody, but... I suppose the two of you deserve it. That was some nice fighting back there."

"Impressed now, Bounty Hunter?" Renamon asked.

"A little," Bane said, vaguely. "You were quick, precise and gave no chance for retaliation. Just the way I like to do things."

Renamon frowned. She wasn't entirely wanted Bane's approval for her prowess in battle now, especially if it was like what he would do. But she had to admit that she had been impressed with his abilities too. His was as quick as any clone trooper she had ever seen, perhaps even faster and his aim with his pistols had been extraordinary. Her dislike of Bane still remained in place, but it was now matched by respect for him, albeit a grudging one.

And Renamon wasn't sure, but she was beginning to think that Bane felt the same way.

It took them another forty minutes or so to get close to the tall building that they believed the Sith Lord resided it. As it loomed larger, their actions became more stealthy. They moved quickly and quietly between the buildings and slipped across the gaps as fast as possible. They had no idea if anybody was watching, or even if anyone in the building could see down here, but they were not willing to risk it.

Eventually, Bane called a halt and murmured, "Alright, Todo, scan the building. What are the security measures installed in the place and, more importantly, is anyone home?"

"Not that I can see, Bane," Todo said, doing as Bane requested. "There are no life forms being registered within that tower. Looks like Sidious has gone back to being a Senate member for the time being."

"And this is definitely the right place?" Bane questioned.

"Yes," Todo nodded. "The signals from both our tracking attempts lead to this point. As for security, there is surprisingly little.

My sensors are indicating that there are life-form scanners around every potential entrance, as well as metal detectors, which may alert somebody to an intrusion. Unless we were to make a forced entrance, we'd need to find a way to get passed those."

"Metal detectors?" Bane asked. "Well, that means you can't slip through the scanners and turn them off on the inside like we usually do. We'll need a new alternative."

"Leave it to me," Renamon smirked, and stepped around the building they were hiding behind. "I'll go in there and turn them off myself. We'll be inside within a couple of minutes."

"What are you going to do?" Bane asked.

"Walk in through the door," Renamon replied. "We Digimon do have one thing going for us when it comes to sneaking into enemy strongholds – we don't show up on life-form scanners."

"You don't?" Bane asked, genuinely thrown of kilter at this. "That's not possible."

"No, Bane, she's right," Todo exclaimed. "I'm scanning the four of us right now and I'm only detecting two life-forms. Renamon isn't showing up on my scanners."

Bane looked at Renamon with new interest. "How is that possible?" he asked, scowling in confusion as he tried to work it out.

Renamon laughed. "Perhaps you'd figure it out if you learned what the word 'Digimon' stood for. I'll let you know when you guys can get in as well." Then she whirled around with a swish of her tail and raced off towards the building.

* * *

Things had quietened down at the slave camp. Several of the slavers had now taken off their hoods to reveal several Weequay, a couple more Nikto (though none as imposing as Zamit looked), and several more species besides, including a few Zabrak, a Gran and many Humans. The majority of them were resting, reclining against walls of the valley to get out of the sun and drinking from flasks. Some of them were even sleeping, having spent the better part of the 'night' out catching slaves.

The remainder were slowly walking in circles around the slaves bunched together in the centre of the valley, acting as guards. Four of them were patrolling round the slaves, and a further two were stationed beside the canyon that lead into the valley, watching out for anybody who might be coming towards them.

Gravick the traitorous Twi'lek had gone inside the ship, presumably to get some rest himself. Zamit was visible on the ramp, apparently dozing, and Tryo was seated on a rock not far away, munching on something indistinguishable.

The slaves were mostly quiet, except for some whispering in the middle of the group that those on the outskirts were struggling to hear.

"Now is as good a time as any," Milyl murmured in Twi'leki. "Most of our captors are resting. They might not respond as quickly as they could otherwise if we tried out the escape attempt now. It would give us more time."

"Agreed," Hyoll muttered. "Alright everyone, do you remember the plan. We're going to need an extraordinary degree of synchronisation for this to work. And everyone needs to be sure to keep their footing. That is more of an issue than speed – we don't exactly have to get far."

"Are you sure about this?" Numa whispered. "I don't want anyone to get hurt, trying to help me get away."

"It's not optional," Hyoll nodded firmly at her charge. "You're getting out of here and that's that. Right, guys."

Milyl and Talee nodded and there was murmured assent from the crowd. Numa subsided. They were all going to try so hard for her, so the least she could do was make sure that the attempt was not in vain. She was, of course, completely and utterly terrified, but she was going to do this for them if nothing else.

"Is everyone in position?" Hyoll whispered.

Talee rose a little and got a good view of everyone in the circle, then she nodded and settled back down to reply, "Yep, looks like it. But we're going to have to move fast."

"Yeah," Hyoll agreed. "Everyone ready to get to their feet?"

There was some shuffling as a few of them shifted position, until they were all kneeling and ready to push themselves up with their feet, since their hands would be of little use to them in this escape attempt.

Hyoll watched the guards circling around them, who were seemingly oblivious to what was going on. Perhaps they assumed the slaves were too downtrodden to try anything. Well, they'd show them that they were wrong.

Hyoll gave the signal.

* * *

The four guards didn't know what hit them. One moment everything was all quiet, and the next, the slave line suddenly moved in front of all four of them. Three of four Twi'leks surged out of the circle, darting right in front of the guards and crouching low, so barely before the guards registered someone had run past them they suddenly found their feet being halted by the chains securing the Twi'leks together and fell to the floor.

The slave line began rising to their feet quickly, all of them popping up as quickly as they could. The captives that had tripped their captors quickly began stamping on them before they could get up, knocking them out-cold before they could get up. Then the captives, all linked together but moving as quickly as they could, ran for the canyon.

The alarm went up throughout the campsite amongst the other slavers, but it took longer than it would have were they all alert, as per the slave's plan. Several of them more active ones leapt to their feet, grabbing blasters and running in pursuit of the escaping women. The dozing ones took slightly longer, up to seven seconds before they realised what was happening and rushed to help. And the sleeping ones took even longer than that.

Zamit the Nikto, seated on the ramp of his ship, did nothing to help. He snapped out of his doze quickly enough, but the Nikto just chuckled as he watched the slaves rush for the exit and the slavers hurry in pursuit as quickly as they could. "Well," he murmured. "This should prove to be quite interesting."

The two guards stationed beside the gorge were understandably alarmed when the cries of anxiety from the other slavers caused them to turn around and they saw a horde of almost a hundred angry-looking female Twi'leks rushing towards them. The lack of arms didn't matter much in such numbers. The two guards were quickly overwhelmed, shouldered to the ground and trampled on. One Twi'lek lost her balance slightly when she stepped on the guard, but she quickly caught herself and ran on.

They were now into the gorge, with its huge towering walls, and the whole area littered with large boulders that had probably once been part of those walls. The Twi'leks manoeuvred around them as quickly as they could. The chains that encumbered them in one way were helping them in another – they weren't long enough to trail along the floor to snag at their feet, nor were they long enough to catch on the rocks. Nevertheless, the run was still awkward for all of them.

The slavers running in pursuit of them had only one goal in mind – catching them. As Hyoll had predicted, the tiredness most of them had felt, followed by the sudden adrenaline that the escape attempt was causing, had clouded their judgement. They were acting on instinct alone and weren't bothering to use their brains. If they had, one of them might have thought to sent a stun blast into the back of the group, which would have brought the whole escape attempt to its knees.

Eventually, Gravick got the message that something was wrong and emerged from the ship. He gasped to see that the slaves he had gone to great trouble to acquire were running away, and they'd gotten a surprising distance too.

His eyes narrowed. Their still had more spirit than he'd thought. But they would not escape him!

Gravick ran down the ramp, right past the chuckling Zamit, and signalled to Tryo and a couple of another of the slavers that was till nearby. "Come on you two. We'll stop them easily enough! With me, on the speeder bikes!"

The Chathorian and the Human in question followed to the Twi'lek to a few of the bikes that were hovering serenely beside the wall not far away. Leaping astride the large machine, Gravick jumpstarted it and was soon shooting away after the escaping slaves and pursuing slavers, zipping into the canyon with the other two hot on his heels.

One of the slavers at the front of the running group seemed to finally come to his senses and levelled his blaster at the backs of the running fugitives. "Stop, or I'll shoot!" he cried in Basic. The Twi'leks probably didn't understand what he just said, but the crowd seemed to falter for a moment as the back-runners glanced over their shoulders. There were cries of alarm from within the group at the sight of blasters being brandished and, even more worryingly, speeder bikes whooshing towards them and gaining on them rapidly.

But they didn't stop. The crowd just kept on running after that one moment of hesitation, going all out this time as they ran for their freedom. The slavers on foot were surprised to find that their quarry was getting away. It seemed that desperation to escape was spurring them to much greater efforts than they might normally be able to achieve.

But no amount of adrenaline can make a Twi'lek runner faster than a speeder bike moving at full tilt. The hovering vehicles zipped over the large boulders and wove around the slavers still in pursuit. The wide canyon provided them with the space to shook straight past the escaping slaves. Tryo and the human braked and swerved, pulling to a halt so that they blocked the path in front of the slaves, forcing them to halt quickly to stop themselves from crashing into the bikes. Quite a few of them stumbled in the sudden stop and fell heavily, their bound hands ensuring that they couldn't stop themselves, which resulting in many others being jerked downwards as well.

As those still standing helped those who had fallen up as best they could, Gravick turned his speeder around and pulled out a blaster, levelling it at the crowd, which were promptly hemmed in by the other slavers as they caught up and surrounded the group.

"O bribo fetlogr," Gravick laughed. "Ju tyg griger sandiala koil suul tug juon graw. Suulo lik klinser ji cu sed reint top gur bol, Ju gif yalat suul sa koil."

"Suul non o savego," cried one of the Twi'leks at the front. "Kugon yolo suul yers juon ji pon? Ji suulan lond crid?"

Gravick laughed and replied in the same language. "Yersan re hool fross Ju arlen? Cu sleck greel drand bevry drews. Hed goh Ju ulner ji plost urva acer lond crid ji gur koil credil, ber nan lik re."

There were numerous insults thrown at him in the Twi'lek's native tongue, but Gravick merely rolled his eyes and cocked his blaster, prompting many of the other slavers to do the same. The slaves looked cowed by this and huddled together, probably feeling safer with each others company, even though it wouldn't make any difference.

"Doon si poli suul non herfo ji yers," Gravick glared at them. "Suul non herfo ji mol taran hed stolp bol foji cu vedey. Suul burfon trin wringo, suul burfon trin enoon. Suul burfon clep stolp. Ju burfon ber klins suul ji cu sed, hed goh suul zreo ols treelo rakata ren kayda, suul burfon ed lik niol. Si koil kalan?"

There was murmurs of tired assent from the crowd, and slowly, resignedly, they all turned around and began to walk towards the valley they had just run from. Gravick smirked triumphantly as he and the other slavers moved with the crowd, keeping a close eye on them to ensure they didn't try anything, blasters cocked and ready as a clear warning to the once-again prisoners.

But, in the middle of the group, and concealed from the eyes of all the slavers, Hyoll was smirking, as were Talee and Milyl on either side of her. Hyoll glanced to the side as they passed a large pile of boulders – the pile of boulders that the slaves had hesitated next to during their run. The hesitation had been to allow Numa to slip through the crowd and dive behind the boulders, unseen by the slavers.

The teal-skinned girl was still there, crouched out of sight and peering through a small gap as the slaves were led back past her hiding place. She swallowed nervously. So far, the attempt to get her out of here was working, but as Hyoll had explained to her, it would not be long before Gravick realised that she was missing. She needed to act quickly.

Once they had all gone past her hiding place and she was sure nobody was looking, the little girl quietly made her way to another pile of boulders nearby, hurriedly scrambling over and around the debris at the edge of the canyon, trying to keep it between her and the slavers for as long as she could. And if there was one thing that Numa was skilled at, it was sneaking – she played hide and seek enough to perfect that skill.

She reached a bend in the canyon and took one last opportunity to look back at the slave camp she'd escaped from. She couldn't see what was happening to the others now, but she knew that she couldn't hang around. She rounded the corner and broke into a run, dashing down the canyon as quickly as her small legs could carry her, which was actually quite fast – she played tag a lot as well.

Even when her breathing became ragged and fast and deep, she didn't stop running. Hyoll had insisted that she needed to at least get out of the canyon before she stopped for a rest, just in case the slavers came after her. And so she ran, listening out for sounds of pursuit behind her and her feet hitting the ground like pistons.

It took a full seven minutes of running before the exit of the canyon came within sight. Numa's spirits lifted and she piled on more speed. Soon enough, she was clear of the mountains and dashing across the sands towards the nearby forest, where she would be able to hide.

She wondered if the slavers were on her trail yet! The thought spurred her on faster. She stumbled, but picked herself up again instantly. She couldn't let the others down, not after what they did for her. She had to get away.

And so, Numa ran like she'd never run before.

* * *

And, back in the valley, Gravick was personally driving a spike into the wall of the canyon. The chain of the Twi'lek at the very front of the slave line was now attached to that spike. Gravick took great pleasure at every strike and then he stepped back to admire his handiwork. There would be no more escape attempts from these slaves – they wouldn't have the strength nor the ability to pull that spike out of the wall. Especially since all of them had their hands chained behind them.

"Ha," Gravick said, tossing his mallet over his shoulder. "That was entertaining, but it looks like I pulled through. One escape attempt crushed and all the captives still here?"

"All the captives?" the deep voice of Zamit chuckled. Gravick turned to him, and the Nikto had a highly amused look on his face. "It might interest you to know that your slave count is now to ninety-seven."

"What?" Gravick blinked.

"The little girl," Zamit indicated the slave line. "She's not there anymore."

Gravick whirled around and scanned the line, but he found to his shock that Zamit was right. The little girl, the only one not manacled to the line, was gone! With a cry of rage, Gravick pointed to five slavers and yelled "You lot! Into the canyon! Find that girl – she can't have gotten far!" Then, as the slaves sprang to do his bidding, he advanced towards Hyoll. "I warned you that you would be punished if you let her out of your company."

"Shast re," Hyoll laughed in defiance. Regardless of what happened to her, she could bear it in the knowledge that she had achieved her goal. Numa had got away. And that was all that mattered.

* * *

Well, how about them apples for you. We got to see a little action from everybody here, didn't we. Some of them have a lead now, some of them are already following up on that lead and now little Numa has escaped from the clutched of the slavers thanks to the bold efforts of her comrades.

But, my god the Twi'lek language I am inventing is getting complicated. These chapters are taking even longer to write than normal because I have to double-check each and every word that the Twi'leks are saying. I can tell you I'll be glad when I don't have to write conversations between Twi'leks that can't speak Basic. It's very complicated. Nevertheless, I am still enjoying the writing.

* * *

Twi'leki translations

Nari - Wait

Numa roil ji spor groiger suul o lot – Numa used to talk about you a lot

Numa lods riun swelten. Top ulner trin lokie gor absta rehenster. Vreo top noon bushta – Numa has gone missing. We have not seen her since yesterday. Before we were attacked

O bribo fetlogr. Ju tyg griger sandiala koil suul tug juon graw. Suulo lik klinser ji cu sed reint top gur bol, Ju gif yalat suul sa koil - A valiant effort. I am genuinely impressed that you got this far. You'll be chained to the wall when we get back, I can assure you of that.

Suul non o savego. Kugon yolo suul yers juon ji pon? Ji suulan lond crid? - You are a monster. How could you do this to us? To your own kind?

Yersan re hool fross Ju arlen? Cu sleck greel drand bevry drews. Hed goh Ju ulner ji plost urva acer lond crid ji gur koil credil, ber nan lik re – Does it look like I care? The slave trade pays extremely well. And if I have to hand over my own kind to get that money, then so be it.

Doon si poli suul non herfo ji yers – Here is what you are going to do.

Suul non herfo ji mol taran hed stolp bol foji cu vedey. Suul burfon trin wringo, suul burfon trin enoon. Suul burfon clep stolp. Ju burfon ber klins suul ji cu sed, hed goh suul zreo ols treelo rakata ren kayda, suul burfon ed lik niol. Si koil kalan? – You are going to turn around and walk back into the valley. You will not struggle, you will not speak. You will just walk. I will then chain you to the wall, and if you make any further attempts at escape, you will all be flogged. Is that clear?

Shast re – Bring it

* * *

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The next stage of Impmon's story begins. After his talk with Deckerdramon, Impmon is trying to decide what he should do next, since the prophecy seems to be spelling out a horrible future for him. Patterns often tend to repeat themselves where Impmon is concerned.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 145 : Decisions Based On Love**


	145. Decisions Based On Love

Back again. Boy, I'm really loving this mass-update stuff. Maybe I should do this more often. That way I may get a huge swamp of reviews coming in instead of about seven or eight on the day and then nothing afterwards. Heh, I wonder if I'm mean enough to do this more often or not. I suppose we'll find out when I finally get round to posting these things, won't we. Hope you guys are anxious to hear from Impmon, because here he is, with a few other familiar faces thrown in.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 145:- Decisions Based On Love**

* * *

Deckerdramon took Impmon back to the main palace of Fanglongmon after he spoke to the little Rookie. The huge alligator-like deity commanded a presence wherever he went. Everyone got out of his way, though Impmon wasn't sure if that was due entirely to respect, or also to the fact that they didn't want to be crushed underneath the huge Mega's tank tracks.

The others had been waiting for him at the entrance and Lilamon had promptly scolded him for "running off like that." Impmon could tell that she was trying to lift his mood be being amusing and, to a degree, it worked. He chuckled weakly and merely apologised. He called Lilamon "Mother" in the process, and the fairy Digimon seemed to take this to heart and took his hand, walking him back into the palace like he was a naughty toddler or something.

Somehow withstanding the mighty breathes being given off by the sleeping Fanglongmon behind them, the three Angel Digimon thanked Deckerdramon, and the great crocodilian rolled away, but not before giving Impmon a few last words – "Think on what I told you, Impmon. It is very important indeed."

When he'd gone, Diatrymon looked down at him and asked, "What did he tell you?"

Impmon said nothing, so the bird concluded that he needed some time to think about it first, and didn't pry.

Ophanimon had hovered forwards slightly. "I believe that after everything that you've been through over the last few days, you must all be very weary. I can tell that you are all tired, even if you are trying not to show it. Come. We will guide you to a room where you will be able to sleep and relax in the knowledge that you are safety. Nobody will disturb you, I promise."

"Yeah, I pooped," Calumon said, yawning hugely as if suddenly Ophanimon had suddenly reminded him that he was tired and he'd completely forgotten about it beforehand. "I think I could sleep for a whole year."

"If that is what you wish," chuckled Magnadramon. "You can go ahead and do just that if you want."

"But think of all the days you would miss Calumon," Impmon said sardonically. "All those days you would spend sleeping when you could be playing tag and eating cream-puffs."

"Eep," Calumon cried. "Alright, not a year. A week then. Maybe."

There was more chuckling and the three angels lead them through a few more corridors until they came to a room large enough for all of them to settle down in, though Wingdramon had to fold his wings against his sides and walk through the door. To Impmon's surprise, the dragon didn't lift into the air immediately once he was through like he usually would. He kept his wings folded against his side and lay down on his stomach. He looked strange without his wings out, which lead Impmon to believe he was more tired than he was letting on.

He felt a pang of guilt for that.

The angels had then left them alone as the group of five settled down for the rest that they deserved, having spent many night only catching fitful amounts of sleep while one of them always had to stay on guard duty. They'd all be so highly strung that they had little opportunity for proper sleep. Now, they settled down almost within seconds and four of them were asleep within minutes.

But sleep continued to elude Impmon. He lay awake, feeling slightly uncomfortable because Lilamon had a petalled hand resting on his stomach, while he was leaning against her leg. It wasn't the closeness that made him uncomfortable – it was the fact that Lilamon was still trying so hard to protect him. She might seem like a childish and playful person who took little seriously at first glance, but she had a very big heart indeed.

Impmon mulled over his experiences with the group, and found that Lilamon had been the motherly presence – always looking out for him and comforting him when he needed it most and providing him with laughter to keep his spirits up. Perhaps he had been more accurate than he thought when he called her "mother" earlier. She certainly seemed to act like one when she wasn't acting like a six-year-old. Impmon knew that she had been a big factor in the fact he's gotten this far.

He turned and glanced at Calumon, who was snoozing next to him so peacefully he looked like a small, baby ghost. Calumon had been there for Impmon too, from the very beginning. Like Lilamon, he had provided an abundance of amusement that Impmon figured had probably kept him going. Plus, he was so small and defenceless that Impmon felt responsible for the little guy. The others could look after themselves in a pinch, but Calumon wouldn't have lasted a moment if he'd gone unprotected. Impmon thought that responsibility might have been another factor to help him rise to the challenge.

Impmon then glanced at Wingdramon, curled in a surprisingly cat-like position with his long neck and longer tail intertwining around one another. The dragon had been the more fatherly figure of the group. In many ways, Wingdramon had led them across the Digital World when Impmon didn't know which way to turn. While the others were good at giving comforting words, Wingdramon had been there to give advice. He had helped them figure out the best solutions to problems and assisted Impmon in snapping out of funks with well placed words. Plus, he had provided transportation.

Finally he looked over Diatrymon, who was resting on his legs with his head placed under one wing, a position which Impmon couldn't think of as comfortable in any way. The Ancient Bird had acted like the boisterous cousin or perhaps brother, charging into things rashly and throwing himself into danger despite his lower level. While the others had been comforting and advisory, Diatrymon had been the inspiring one. The one who made comments that invigorated Impmon and motivated him to fight harder against the enemy.

Every one of them had played a part in getting him this far. Every one of them had done something for him. Impmon noted that he'd given family-like attributes to all of them and he realised that in some way, they were a small family. Just as Lopmon and the others had found a group of friends so close they could be called a family in their new dimension, Impmon had found one of his own on his travels.

But a family needs all of its members to play their parts, and what exactly had Impmon done for any of them? Yes, he had protected them all from dangerous enemies, but they had done the same for him several times as well. And they wouldn't have even been in that danger if it were not for him. All he'd done was require them constantly to keep him moving forward and he'd been unable to contribute anything to them. He'd been more like a burden, but they'd born that burden without complaint.

Impmon sighed, in a motion that made Lilamon's hand rise and fall with the movement of his stomach. Perhaps he wouldn't have gotten past even Zanbamon if it had not been for them.

His thoughts turned to what Deckerdramon had said about strong love – the surge to protect them no matter what danger it put him personally in and how they always had their best interests at heart. They had thrown themselves into danger at the first thought that he might be in trouble. They had given little thought to what might happen to themselves in the process – as if they had acted on instinct. Maybe it was possible that they felt the same strong love that Deckerdramon claimed that Impmon had. The only problem was, they shouldn't have felt the need to.

He growled quietly. He was always dragging everybody back. First he was evil, then he was a failure, now he was a target.

They didn't deserve this. His companions went through it all for him, but they didn't deserve to. They would be better off without him. Calumon could still be enjoying playing tag in the park with Guilmon or scarfing down cream puffs every other minute. Lilamon could still be living in her beautiful glade in the Forest Level. Wingdramon could still be roaming the skies at his leisure and Diatrymon could still be enjoying his meanderings through the trees back home. But they'd all chosen to follow him and help him anyway.

Perhaps it was time that Impmon did something for them in return for once.

Impmon frowned. Deckerdramon had told him that the Heavens were not unbreachable, and the Prophecy certainly seemed to say that as well. Impmon wouldn't be able to avoid his capture – those were its exact words. That bit couldn't possibly mean anything else, even if Deckerdramon was right and the prophecy had a double-meaning for every other line. The fight would come to the Heavens eventually, and when it did the beautiful architecture and the peaceful lives of the locals might be ruined completely. Several of them could die, many more would be wounded.

There were children here too. Could Impmon really let them go through with that.

There were so many factors that he had to think about, but he could already feel the potential solution to all of this creeping into his mind. The same solution that had led him onto this long trip into the Digital World in the first place. The reason why he had abandoned the Human World in favour of all the danger and the despair it had brought with it.

He had left Ai and Mako behind to protect them, and Impmon still believed he had made the right choice by doing that. He hated to imagine what might have happened to them if GranDracmon had unleashed Zanbamon, the SkullScorpiomon or – worst of all – Darkdramon, onto the Human World. It might have been even worse than the attack by Megidramon, and that had been a very bad blow on the city.

GranDracmon had done exactly as he had predicted. He had followed him and left the Humans alone. Perhaps it was time to do the same thing now.

Perhaps it was time to leave the group behind and go it alone once more.

He looked over the others sleeping peacefully again and smiled wearily. They'd done their part. They'd gotten him this far to the Heavens, they'd ensured that he learned of the Prophecy and of his former life in the Heavens, but Impmon couldn't, wouldn't, involve them in it any further. The longer they stayed with him the more involved they became. The more danger they were in. Each of GranDracmon's attempts had been steadily more dangerous, and they had been more close calls than the others. Impmon dreaded to think of what he might send against the Heavens. Some uber-powerful Digimon that could lay waste to half a mile with a single blast, probably.

Could he leave them alone like this?

They would be safe here. The Heavens were difficult to breach, as the angels had said, and if Impmon left then GranDracmon would lose interest in trying. He would focus his efforts back on Impmon solely. The community that he had witnessed could be saved from any harm that his presence would cause. And his fellow companions could stay here, safe from every danger at last.

But it seemed that luxury would be denied Impmon anywhere he went.

Of course, there was no guarantee that they would stay here. Just as Ai and Mako had attempted to follow him, they might well do the same thing. But as long as they didn't find him, that would be alright. Impmon looked at the D-Arc resting on the floor beside him. They had no means of tracking him, and if he took the first data stream he found, he might be able to get away from them quickly. Even Wingdramon might not be able to find him then.

And neither would GranDracmon. It had taken him a couple of days to catch up with them on the Prairie Level after Wizardmon has transported them. Hopefully he might be taken a significant distance away to throw GranDracmon off for a while.

And then the words of the prophecy echoed in his mind again. _Unable to stop his capture,_ it had said. No matter how far Impmon went, he would be unable to stop this. But he still had to try. As long as he wasn't with the others when GranDracmon caught up with him and they couldn't be hurt, he could endure it.

It would be hard. Going alone when his friends had helped him so much on the journey here. But, maybe Impmon could hold out for a while, if he focused on one objective and ran. Impmon had never, ever been one to back down from a potential fight before, regardless of how stacked against him the odds might be. But maybe now was the time for flight instead of fight. If GranDracmon were to send someone against him, he would not fight them. He was run. He would hide. It might seem like the cowards way out and eventually even with this, it seemed that GranDracmon would get him.

But, not engaging GranDracmon's forces could mean that Impmon could delay his capture, if not stopping it entirely. And who knew, that might be able to provide valuable time for someone else to figure out what the heck the rest of the prophecy meant and possibly come up with solutions to everything that Impmon was fretting about.

Impmon took one last look around at his comrades. Could he leave them now? Could he really abandon them and go on the run once more?

Resolution clobbered him over the head. Yes, he could and he would. Deckerdramon had claimed that strong love meant doing things for the benefit of others regardless of what happened to yourself. They had done it for him so far and now it was his turn. He would protect them, even if it was in a way that they would object to.

Impmon had to leave to protect them, like he'd left his Tamers. Yes, his Tamers were currently wandering the Digital World in search of him, but he couldn't go back to them either. Maybe they might even find their way here and be safe like the others.

Impmon felt that he had to do this.

Now, all Impmon had to do was sneak away, and that might be difficult considering the position he was in. His eyes moved down to his stomach, where Lilamon's hand was still resting in some sort of strange semi-hug. For once, Lilamon's big heart was hindering him in what he wanted to do. He felt a rush of affection for the fairy Digimon again. So very protective.

Barely breathing, Impmon made his move in attempting to get away. His gloved hands rose up and ever-so-gently he placed them on the underside of Lilamon's arm, so lightly he barely even felt it. Then, slowly, slowly, slowly, he inched the arm upwards. Lilamon grunted in her sleep slightly, and Impmon froze, but the fairy did not wake up. Perhaps she was deeply absorbed in sleep, trying to catch up on lost hours, like the others.

This might be Impmon's best and only chance to escape.

So why was he hesitating?

He had frozen with Lilamon's arm still in his hands, hovering above him. Something was nagging at him, telling him that what he was doing was a mistake. But how could it be a mistake? He was ensuring that they were safe while he took on the danger – and that's what friends were supposed to do, wasn't it? That's what Deckerdramon had meant, right?

He gritted his teeth and suppressed a growl of frustration. If he hesitated too much now, he might not be able to go through with it later on. And he _had_ to leave, for their sake. He had to leave now before things got too complicated in his head.

Ever so slowly, Impmon began to lower Lilamon's hand to the ground, so that it was resting beside him and not on top of him. Lilamon didn't wake up – she seemed to be out like her own phosphorescent glow. Impmon shifted his grip on her arm and placed it on the ground, before gingerly letting go of it hand retracting his hands. When the fairy still didn't wake up, he placed his hands on the ground and pushed himself upwards, his back breaking contact with her leg until he was on his feet.

It was at this point that Calumon appeared to roll and fall onto his side right where Impmon had been lying. Impmon froze, staring at the Catalyst for a moment and wondering if he would realise that he'd fallen from his sitting position. But it seemed that Calumon's earlier prediction of being so pooped he could sleep for a week was accurate. He continued to sniffle and snore, unaware of the fact he was almost lying on his own head now.

Impmon breathed a slight sigh of relief, before he stepped around Lilamon's hand carefully and picked up the purple D-Arc. He stared at it for a moment, wondering if perhaps he should take it with him. It was his last memento of his Tamers, so it definitely held some emotional value. And, in a way, it had now become a memento of the others too, as they had helped him to steal it from his own Tamers, despite their misgivings.

He would keep it. He would ensure it stayed safe. Besides, if they woke up and found it still here they might be able to find his Tamers and start following him once again. Impmon didn't want anyone following him – it was bad enough that GranDracmon was doing it already.

Impmon padded towards the door, which had been left slightly ajar by the angels that had led them here since of any of them, only Lilamon had the ability to open the door if it were shut. He rested his hand on the wood and moved the large structure – which looked like it should weigh a ton, but didn't – aside, allowing him access to the hallway.

Before he stepped out into it though, he turned and looked at his peacefully sleeping friends one last time. A prolonged goodbye wouldn't help in this instance, and it would make it harder to leave than it already was. So he simply murmured, "Thanks guys. Thank you for everything." Then he turned back to the corridor.

Impmon peered out of the room and saw that there was nobody about. He wanted to try and avoid being spotted by anybody else, including the three great angels and their numerous companions. If he managed to slip out undetected, it would be a lot less hassle for everybody. And he had no idea what the angels would do if they found out he was trying to leave. Their views on the future seemed to be a mystery to him.

He tried to stick to the shadows as he advanced quickly down the corridor, D-Arc clutched firmly in one hand. The only problem was there were not very many shadows. Most of the palace was very brightly lit, which was odd because there didn't appear to be any sources for that light to come from. It was just a bright place.

That meant that Impmon had to be quick and silent, to try and not attract attention to himself.

He slipped through the corridors without incident, dashing along them as quietly as he could and pressing himself against the wall whenever he came to one, peering around it to ensure that there was nobody there before he moved off again. He didn't exactly know the interior of this place, and for a moment he wondered if he was going to get hopelessly lost. But, sure enough, he eventually found his way into the room where the statue of the modified Beelzemon as well as the three members of the Prophecy Trio stood.

He took a moment to gaze at the marble statue of his likeness, with its metallic armour instead of leather jacket, larger wings and more powerful looking cannon. Impmon found himself feeling slightly wistful that he didn't look exactly like that anymore when he ascended to Mega Form. I mean, his current Mega Form look was just as cool as this one, but he couldn't help but think that this one looked much more like a warrior of heaven than his did. Even though those days were long behind him, his Mega Form's current look still gave off the mad biker Demon Lord impression. If only he'd grown into that guy instead of the murderer he'd become instead. Everything would be so much less complicated.

He forced himself not to look at the statues of the others. He was finding himself without friends at every turn, and looking at the ones that had been taken from him first would just hurt. He turned his back on statues and headed into the giant room with the sleeping Fanglongmon.

The enormous dragon was still radiating power, and Impmon was getting the strangest sense that the God was watching him, despite the fact that all eight of his eyes were closed and his face was looking the other way. Impmon stepped round until he was standing in front of the God and looked over at him. "Got any helpful advice for me before I leave?" he asked.

Fanglongmon made no move whatsoever.

"Yeah, I thought not," Impmon grimaced. "Ah well, I better get going. Let the others know I'll miss them, alright." Knowing he wouldn't get an answer from the slumbering Divine Dragon, he turned and ran out of the room.

It seemed that night had fallen on the Celestial Heavens. Even this place seemed to have a night-time it seemed. It probably had something symbolic to do with Fanglongmon's evil side or something, but Impmon didn't really care right now. What mattered was that it was relatively dark and all the angels seemed to have cleared the streets, which couldn't be better. He would be able to slip away quietly.

The bright walls of the heavens still shone all around him, looking like they should be illuminated the entire place, but there was nothing like that. Those walls were an enigma, and Impmon decided not to try and figure them out. He just ran out into the streets. Here, it was much easier to stick to the shadows and Impmon moved through them quickly and quietly, hopping between the buildings, slipping past the bandstands and sneaking around the edge of the giant coliseum in the middle of the city.

Only once did he encounter any form of life on his way to the entrance, and that was a large Mekanorimon that was plodding through the streets, staring straight ahead of it and not looking around at all (rather like the battle droids of another dimension). Impmon merely stayed in the shadows until the robot had walked right past him and then dashed across the street and continued on his way.

It wasn't long before Impmon reached the rise, directly at the other end of the city from the palace, where they had first ascended to the Heavens in the company of Angewomon. There was a large flight of stone steps that led up to the place where they'd emerged, which was like some sort of large landing pad. Impmon had ridden on Magnadramon to get off it. Now he need to climb back up. It did seem like a long climb, but the steps were an appropriate size for him, so it might not be too difficult.

Impmon began to clamber up the steps towards the landing pad-like structure at the top. As he climbed, he vaguely wondered how the heck he was going to get down. He had no idea how to operate the thing. Hopefully there would be some kind of control mechanism or something that embraced the technological side, because if divine providence alone was the only thing that could get him out of here then his plan to slip out undetected was pretty much over.

What Impmon didn't realise was that it was over already.

"Where are you going, Impmon?" a voice asked from behind him, breaking the silence so suddenly that Impmon almost had a coronary. The Rookie wheeled around, losing his balance as he did so and falling comically onto the step that he had been about to climb onto. His green eyes bugged wide as he beheld the speaker.

How, _how, HOW,_ had Deckerdramon managed to get so close without Impmon hearing him. The giant alligator deity was one of the last things Impmon would have listed if he had to rank everything he knew by stealth from top to bottom, and yet the huge Digimon was completely filling the alleyway behind him. He had been right. The streets were wider than they looked, but even so, Deckerdramon was blocking off the whole street.

"What the... Damn it, mon!" Impmon hissed. "Don't do that! You almost gave me a heart attack!"

"My apologies," Deckerdramon echoed. "But you must forgive my curiosity. My sensors detected that someone had left the palace of Fanglongmon and I wished to know who it was, so I followed you here. And here I find sneaking off towards the exit of the heavens. Without all of the friends that came with you, I notice. Why is that?"

Impmon sighed. "Great," he muttered. "This is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping to avoid. I'm not looking for an interrogation session right now, Deckerdramon. I just want to take my leave before my friends wake up and notice that I am gone, okay? I need to be on my way."

Before he could turn around to keep walking, Deckerdramon interrupted by saying, "Will they not be saddened by your departure? When I escorted you back to the Temple, I could sense the similar strong love that they all felt towards you. The lot of you have truly gotten close. Why do you leave them now?"

Impmon fumbled over his next words. "I... I admit that I'd be upset myself if they were not saddened that I left, but... it's necessary. I need to go. You told me yourself just yesterday that GranDracmon will probably find his way into this place sooner or later. I must leave before that happens and this place is wrecked by his forces."

"Did I not also say that the enemy will have a hard time against us?" Deckerdramon enquired. "I was not lying when I set that. Few of the Digimon here are incapable of defending themselves."

"What does that matter?" Impmon asked. "The result will be the same. There will be death. There will be carnage. It follows me around like a plague, and anyone who spends too much time with me suffers at its hand, whether that be the bad guy or the good guy. At least this way, the Heavens remain unscarred and my friends..." He clenched his fist. "My friends will be safe. And that's all that matters."

There was an uncomfortable silence between the tiny Rookie and the giant Mega. Then Deckerdramon shut his eyes and said, "Your strong love is at its peak, Impmon. I sense it strongly – the attachment you hold to your friends and how seeing them harmed any more than they already have been would break you. You are overflowing with strong love."

"So you agree that this is the right course of action?" Impmon asked, turning back and staring at him. Slightly imploringly, he noticed, as if he wanted the opinion of someone else before he did anything rash.

"What I think is irrelevant," Deckerdramon said, opening his eyes once more and the huge red orbs fixing on Impmon. "It is you and your own thoughts and feelings that are important now. However, I will say this. I think that my words yesterday may have gotten through to you in some fashion, but I don't believe that you have fully taken in the message I was trying to give you. Not yet, anyway."

"Message?" Impmon frowned. "No, I got the message – strong love is doing everything in your power to ensure that those you care about don't get hurt, doing everything you can to protect them. That's what you said, isn't it?"

"It is," confirmed Deckerdramon. "But I feel that while you may think you have grasped the concept, your actions say otherwise. And there was another thing I was trying to express to you when I said those words."

"Okay," Impmon frowned. "What is it?"

"Merely telling you would not suffice," Deckerdramon said sadly. "It is something you must figure out for yourself."

"Oh really," Impmon snapped, suddenly quite angry. "Well thank you very much, Mister Croc, for giving one of the most cheesy lines of all time to work with. Can you tell me exactly _why_ I must 'figure it out for myself.' Exactly _why_ can you not just tell me and save everyone a lot of trouble in the process?"

"Because it is not as simple as that," Deckerdramon responded. "Merely having someone else give you all the answers will not have the same impact as when you discover it for yourself. If I were to tell you, then you might understand what I am saying, but you would not believe it with all your soul. There would always be a part of you that wonders whether or not I am right. But if you discover it for yourself, then you will understand it completely. And that is important. I'm sorry, but that is the way that it is."

"...Oh," Impmon said after a while, suddenly feeling quite guilty, because what Deckerdramon said actually made sense. He remembered getting angry at the movies when people said things like that, because he'd never been able to fathom why they insisted that self-realisation was necessary. But Deckerdramon was making sense.

"Sorry," he murmured after a while. "I shouldn't have yelled."

"It is understandable that you should feel frustrated," Deckerdramon responded good-naturedly. "After all you've been through, you must want the answers now, as soon as possible. Unfortunately, it is not so simple as that. It never is."

"Then you believe that I shouldn't go?" Impmon asked. "That I shouldn't abandon the others to try and keep them safe."

"It is not my place to say," Deckerdramon replied. "I merely say that I don't think you fully understand my words yet. But in terms of your current course of action, I believe that you should follow your head and your heart. Listening to one more than the other is a mistake. But that is the extent of my advice for now. You must make the rest of your decisions on your own?"

"But what if both my heart and my head are making the wrong decision?" Impmon fretted.

"We all make mistakes," Deckerdramon said solemnly. "It's a part of who we are. It's a part of life. Certainly, nobody is perfect. But it part of life that we carry through with those mistakes. Because mistakes teach us things. We learn more from mistakes than we do from getting things right."

"But I can't afford to make mistakes," Impmon pointed out. "This prophecy is hanging on my shoulders and if I make mistakes it could change everything. If I do the wrong thing now, it could make everything a gazillion times worse."

Please, Deckerdramon. You have to give me some kind of idea of what to do."

"I have nothing to say," Deckerdramon replied. "I can no more tell the future than you can. I have no idea what repercussions this action of yours could have. I have no idea what would happen if you stay."

"Yeah, but even so, shouldn't you be trying to make me stay or something?" Impmon asked.

"I could," the alligator replied. "But I won't. This is your path, Impmon, and you must walk it and face the consequences. The only question I ask is – do you believe that you are doing the right thing?"

Impmon didn't say anything for a long while, as he slowly contemplated everything he'd already been over once more, before he finally said, "Yeah. Yeah, I do. So many people have gotten hurt because of me in the past. If I can do anything to make sure that more people don't suffer for as long as I can, then I'll do it." He shrugged and exhaled heavily. "After all, how can I have a happy ending? I simply can't think of any other potential meaning to that prophecy. It seems... it is my fate be a pawn of evil."

For some reason, Deckerdramon seemed to find this sentence slightly amusing. Impmon frowned in confusion as the thick, armour-plated body of the technological crocodilian almost seemed to vibrate as chuckles ran through his giant form. "How is that funny?" he asked, slightly accusingly.

"Fate can be a very fickle thing, Impmon," Deckerdramon said. "But you, of all Digimon, should know that it is not immutable. Even the word of a prophecy does not decide your eventual fate. Only you can do that. You especially have a certain control over fate."

"I do?" Impmon blinked. "What do you mean?"

"Ah, that is another thing I cannot say," Deckerdramon shook his gargantuan head. "But remember my words, Impmon. You may one day understand what I was talking about. Fate is in the hands of the one in question. It is altered by their choices. Nothing is set in stone."

"He's right, you know," said a female voice from behind Impmon, giving him a second near-heart attack. "After all, am I not the living proof of that?"

"Jeez, Angewomon!" Impmon whirled around again to find the tall angelic Digimon standing right next to him. How she had got there was a mystery. "What is it with you heavenly people and scaring the bejeezus out of me?"

"We like to make mysterious entrances," Angewomon smiled. "Adds to our divine effect, don't you think."

"Or alternatively it makes you more like something that should appear on Halloween," muttered Impmon. "Anyway, hello again. How long have you been there?"

"Hello to you too," Angewomon replied. "And I've been here a few minutes. I am the gatekeeper to the heavens after all, and this conversation was almost literally taking place on my doorstep so I could hardly fail to notice it. But I thought that I should add my own contribution, if you wouldn't mind."

"Alright," Impmon said, now curious. "What did you want to say?"

"I simply wanted to remind you of my own story," Angewomon replied, settling down and folded her legs in a semi-lotus, her wings stretching out behind her. "Deckerdramon is right – it is our choices that define who we are. I was a fallen angel Digimon once. I was a LadyDevimon, and I made all the wrong choices. I chose to go on a sadistic rampage instead of staying with the light. In some ways, I was more evil than you ever were. You raised into your Demon Lord life. I wasn't. I chose it.

"But even then, I was not beyond redemption, was I? I had a husband in the form of a Devimon, and when he died it felt like an arrow to the heart. I had thought myself an icy Digimon devoid of emotion, but it turns out that I cared for him after all. From that moment on, I began to make the right choices. I took control of my own fate and I changed it completely the other way around. At first it seemed like my fate was to be an eternally hated and feared Digimon, but when I learned of the heavens, I knew I could change that. And I did. Which is why I sit before you now, a purified Digimon and a warrior of the Light.

"The same holds true for yourself. You were once a member of the most hated and feared Digimon in existence, but you are turning yourself around now. You haven't fully made it yet – I can sense that. But you will make it one day. I know you will."

The kinship that Impmon had felt with Angewomon returned. Against all the odds, she had turned her life around. Did that mean that he could do the same, despite this prophecy that was threatening to crush him?

As if sensing his train of thought, Angewomon said, "The prophecy doesn't matter. It merely gives a vague outline of the future. It could mean anything."

"But how..." Impmon said. One of the lines goes _'Ally upon ally will turn.'_ That's got to mean that I attempt to attack my friends in future doesn't it?"

"Not necessarily," Deckerdramon's echo-filled voice said from the bottom of the steps. "There are two sides to this fight. It could mean that someone among GranDracmon's forces will betray him. It could even mean that someone you know turns on you. But it never actually mentions you specifically does it? It could well mean you, but fretting over it will not help, as it could refer to practically anybody involved in the conflict."

"He's right," nodded Angewomon. "And that is not the only line which that could apply to either."

"What, like _'Demon's evil is reborn'?_" Impmon quoted again. "What exactly can that one mean other than me?"

"A host of things," Angewomon supplied. "It could be talking about GranDracmon finding another way to attack the Digital World. It might even be referring to something we haven't heard of before. You just never know."

"And the line about the capture?" Impmon asked.

"That one, we don't know," confessed Angewomon. "I'm afraid that one does sound like it will be you. We could be wrong. But, nevertheless, you are focusing too much on that prophecy. Focus on our words instead."

"Or better yet, focus on both equally," Deckerdramon said. "Fate is decided by the choices we make, and the consequences that surround us. The prophecy is there – the word of Fanglongmon, and it cannot be denied, but the meaning may change."

Impmon was silent for a moment, before he said, "Thanks guys. You've given me a lot to think about. But, I won't change my mind. You say choices matter, and my choice is to leave here and go on the run to protect the others. _'Decisions follow based on love.' _That's what the prophecy said. And this is my decision. I'll go and fend for myself in the Digital World below. I'll keep running, and I won't stop until I'm caught."

"If that is the case," Angewomon said. "We will not stop you. After all, this is your prophecy and your decision. It's a shame though. It would have been nicer if you'd spent a little more time in the Celestial Heavens. I could have got to know you a little better."

"I know," Impmon nodded. "And I'm sorry. But I have to leave now before my friends wake up. Because they might try and stop me, even if you don't."

"While we're on that subject," Deckerdramon put in. "Is there anything you want us to tell them when they find out that you've gone?"

"Yeah," Impmon nodded. "Just tell them that it was a really hard decision, but I had their best interests at heart when I did it, okay?"

"I can do that," nodded Deckerdramon. "Farewell then, Impmon. I wish you fortune in your endeavour."

"Yeah, so do I," Impmon mumbled. "Hope the Celestial Heavens remained untouched by evil when I go. Now, how do I get out of here?"

"Ascend to the top of the stair," Angewomon got to her feet and gestured with her feathered glove. "I'll help you to get back to the Digital World."

"Alright," Impmon agreed. "Goodbye Deckerdramon. Thanks for the cryptic advice and everything. I'll be sure to think it over while I'm running for my life and everything."

"Indeed," Deckerdramon said. "Let us hope that you don't have to do that too often."

Impmon turned back around and moved up the stairs towards the rise once more. Angewomon hovered right behind him, keeping pace with ease, her wings outstretched and her heavenly glow bathing Impmon in light, despite the darkness around them. Deckerdramon watched them go and heaved a great sigh that Impmon practically felt from all the way at the top of the stairs.

"Think carefully, Impmon," the alligator said. "One day you will understand, and when that day comes, I am sure that things will turn out alright."

Impmon moved out onto the landing platform-like structure and turned around, looking past Angewomon's booted feet and glancing out across the city once again. It looked so different in the dark than it did during the daytime, but it still held that vibrant, colourful and wonderful feeling that Impmon had first gotten when he had arrived in this exact spot. Now he was making his exit, and his friends would not be going with him.

"What will happen if you run into your Tamers again while you're down there?" Angewomon asked.

"Avoid them," Impmon mumbled. "I'll be avoiding everyone as soon as I get down there, whether I know them or not. Perhaps I can head back to the Forest Level and hide there in the trees. Then again, that didn't exactly work out well for me the first time. Is there anywhere in the Digital World that I can hide from GranDracmon?"

"I'll be blunt and say – I don't know," Angewomon said. "Perhaps a mountainous region would prove more fruitful. But I am not exactly an expert at hiding away, so my advice might not be the best there is. Most importantly, are you ready for this, Impmon? Your friends have been supporting you before – now you'll be without them."

"Yeah, I'm ready," Impmon murmured. "I think I'll try and track down Behemoth while I'm out there. I wonder what the heck he's been doing with all the free time he suddenly has. Wonder if he's looking for me."

"In that case," Angewomon nodded. "I'll show you out. Do you want to descend back towards the Digital World on your own, or do you wish for me to accompany you?"

"Er, no offense, but I'd like to go alone," Impmon murmured. "Sooner I say goodbye to everyone the better. So, I guess this is goodbye."

"Yes," nodded Angewomon. "Perhaps we shall see each other again once this is all over." A wry smile graced her face and she said, "We can regale each other with stories of all the atrocities we committed in our past lives."

Impmon chuckled. "Yeah. Rather not."

"Me neither," Angewomon chuckled as well. She spread her arms and said, "Do I get a hug though?"

"Oh, fine," Impmon rolled his eyes and allowed Angewomon to pick him up and pull him into a quick embrace before she placed him down on the ground again.

The angel smiled at him and said, "Alright then. Move into the centre of the platform and I'll send you on your way."

Impmon nodded and stepped backwards, holding his D-Arc protectively to his chest as Angewomon rose higher into the air, her eight wings fanning out behind her and her arms spread to either side. As Impmon watched her, her angelic glow began to increase in intensity and she rose her arms slowly until they were pointed straight up. The entire platform seemed to start glowing, the glow brightening quickly until it was the same intensity as Angewomon and getting brighter. Angewomon nodded and Impmon gave one last wave, before he was engulfed in the same pillar of light that he had used to come up here and Angewomon, the Heavens and everything else were screened from his view once more.

The weird sensation of motion from last time started up again, only this time it felt like he was moving downwards. He vaguely wondered if his friends trapped in another dimension did anything like this – like if they got beamed down from the spaceships or something. (Hey, the little guy doesn't have a clue really, does he?)

He spent the whole trip down staring at his D-Arc, each passing second increasing the overwhelming sense of finality. He was alone, and it as long as GranDracmon was pursuing him, it would have to stay that way. Behemoth was the one exception. If he could find the motorbike it would help him in his plan of constantly escaping. The bike didn't get tired, didn't need fuel and if worst came to worst, would follow any order to leave him behind without question.

He'd take the nearest Data Stream and fly around until he found his bike. Then he would have to wing it from there – no pun intended.

Soon enough, the motion stopped and the light died. Impmon found himself once in the great Temple of the Heavens down on the surface. Ignoring the statues staring at him, Impmon made straight for the door and immediately pushed his way outside. He wasn't surprised to find himself in a completely different location to the place where the Temple had been the day before. After all, it transported itself to a new location every day.

He was back on the Prairie Level and back in an area where GranDracmon would be able to hunt him down once more.

For that reason, there was no time to waste. Impmon felt a rush of energy as he was engulfed in white light.

"**IMPMON WARP-DIGIVOLVE TO... BEELZEMON BLAST MODE!"**

The former Demon Lord flew out of the light before it had dissipated, his wings stretched out and flapping hard as he gain more purchase in the air and lifted higher and higher, leaving the Temple behind as he did so. As he flew higher, he felt his three eyes trailing down to look at himself. The leather jacket, which he'd always considered to be an extremely cool accessory (which it was), now seemed to weigh on him. He couldn't help but picture himself in armour. Not as much as Gallantmon – something more like what Justimon had when Ryo and Cyberdramon biomerged.

"I gotta admit," he murmured to himself. "Armour might not be such a bad idea. Might provide a little better protection."

He shook his head and propelled himself forward with a huge flap of his wings, moving so quickly forward that a few of his feathers drifted out behind him.

He was a fugitive once more. And he didn't like it.

* * *

Back up in the Heavens, Angewomon floated back down the steps to where Deckerdramon was still standing, slighting on the ground next to the techno-alligator's enormous foot. She looked up into one large red eye and said, "What do you think? Will he be alright?"

Deckerdramon's eye rotated down to look at her. "I have faith in him," he said. "His heart is in the right place and he cares deeply for so many people. So very deeply. Perhaps his past mistakes are even responsible for that in some bizarre way – he feels protective of all of them because he tries to atone for them."

"Then you believe that everything will be alright for him?" the angel pressed.

"That, I cannot say for sure," Deckerdramon replied. "I have given him all the advice I can, and I believe that he really will find out one day what I was trying to press on him. As for this situation that he is currently in, only he can do anything about that. However, I believe that he just might do it."

"I hope so," Angewomon agreed sadly. "I hope so. Come on. We should head for the Great Palace of Fanglongmon and be ready to tell his friends when they wake up. They aren't going to like it. Not one little bit."

"No, they are not," Deckerdramon agreed. "And I am pretty sure that I can predict exactly what they will do when they discover the truth as well." He sighed and said, "This is the part I hate."

"What part?" Angewomon asked.

"Figuring out a way of turning around in this streets," Deckerdramon shut his eyes. "Could you please make sure there is nobody behind me when I go backwards around the corner?"

Angewomon stifled a laugh, and rose into the air to direct the much larger Digimon as he rolled backwards on his tank tracks.

* * *

Beelzemon had flown across the Prairie Level for over half an hour before he found what he was looking for. His speed was no match for Wingdramon's and he knew it. If the dragon had been the one on the run from GranDracmon, the great, evil git would never be able to catch up with him unless he had an evil Wingdramon with him somehow. Beelzemon was not so lucky, but he could still go pretty fast when he wanted to. He hoped that would be enough, but he knew that if he had Behemoth, things would go faster.

Beelzemon cursed the fact that he'd forgotten the bike on the Desert Level. He missed the silent presence (except for the occasional rumble of the engine) that his mount created when they settled down for camp, and the roar as he rode the bike like a madman across the Digital World, swerving round anything too slow to get out of the way. There was no doubt that his motorbike was still completely mad, but at least it was loyal.

Just like his friends...

_Stop that,_ he chided himself, smacking himself in his helmeted forehead and temporarily covering his middle eye. _Not going to help. Don't think about them yet. Wait a few... years._

Beelzemon gritted his teeth and forced his thoughts to turn back to Behemoth. He vaguely thought of something which had forever been a mystery to him – where the heck had the bike come from in the first place? He wasn't a Digimon, so it was unlikely he had evolved from any creation made by the Monster Makers back in college. Nor had he been constructed by humans directly like Grani had been.

He was pretty sure that Behemoth had _not_ been a part of his life when he had been a warrior of the Celestial Heavens. Having Behemoth shooting madly through the streets of the heavens where all those angel Digimon lived would have been absolute chaos, and the angels would not have created the machine for Beelzemon's use and ensured that it did that. Which could only mean that Behemoth had first come into existence during Beelzemon's time as a Demon Lord. If that were true, and Beelzemon could see no other explanation, then Behemoth was one of the few things that he could be thankful to the other Demon Lords for.

He wondered who had constructed the bike in the first place. Perhaps he had done it himself, which might explain why the bike was so unquestioningly loyal to him. And it went with the biker image that his current Mega Form gave off. Though he had to admit, he had little clue right now how to put a bike together. Maybe he'd had help doing it.

So, that was the game plan. Find his bike, and attempt to avoid the very large number of people looking for him at all costs.

And that was why, after that half an hour and when he saw a pink Data Stream zig-zagging across the plain in front of him a short distance away, he made for it with all speed, hoping to hop aboard and be taken somewhere far away from this place.

Flying into a Data Stream from a fair distance up was an unusual sensation. The ride through it didn't seem to be as much of a helter-skelter ride as it did whenever he entered one from the ground level, though it still felt like he was being shaken about like a chew toy being held in the mouth a very enthusiastic dog. Soon enough though, Beelzemon was deposited somewhere else and he dropped from the sky, forcing him to spread his wings and flap hard to right himself and stay airborne.

"Ugh, how many more of them am I going to have to take before this is all over?" muttered Beelzemon, shaking his head to clear it. Then he looked around at his surroundings and groaned. "Oh, come on!" he cried. "Was another level too much to ask?"

He was still flying above the Prairie Level, the rolling green grasses stretching out before him in all directions with nobody in sight but a couple of startled Biyomon which quickly flew away. The main problem with the Prairie Level was that except for a few buildings and towns dotted in various locations, it all looked exactly the same, so Impmon didn't have a clue where in the Digital World he was now. And the other problem with it was that there was almost no cover from your enemies, unless you went into the town, which Impmon wasn't going to do.

He turned around to try and use the Data Stream again to see if it would take him somewhere else, but, to his annoyance, it had dissipated as soon as it had ejected him into the air. "Gah, I hate public transport," Beelzemon muttered angrily, and then spread his wings and continued to fly, hoping against hope that he wouldn't run into his Tamers and their companions.

He wondered what they'd been doing since he had gotten away with the D-Arc, now that they had no clue where to find him.

But that was just as painful as thinking about those who he had left behind in the Heavens, so he deliberately tried to think of nothing but the rise and fall of his wingbeats. Every now and then, his thoughts turned towards what GranDracmon himself might be doing. How did he know where to send his minions? Was he watching him right now, or had he temporarily lost him after he went through the Data Stream? Was he even aware that he had left the Heavens in the first place?

Beelzemon veered around a town, ensuring to keep away as far as he could without losing sight of it as he did so and kept flying. But, annoyingly, he found no other Data Streams to take him anywhere, throughout the next few hours of search. Nor did he find anything that might resemble adequate shelter.

In the end, Beelzemon eventually decided to settle beside a tall patch of grass and attempt to get some rest. He did not de-digivolve. If he was attacked then he wanted to be ready instantly, which was also why he kept his cannon cocked and primed even as he dozed off at last. Before he did so though, he could not help glancing around him at the noticeably empty spots where his friends should be.

He grunted. "It's for their own good," he murmured, as all three eyes shut. "It's for their own good."

* * *

Predictably, none of the other saw it that way when they finally woke up several hours after Impmon's departure. Lilamon was the first to stir, since she had been doing a lot less of the tiring stuff than Wingdramon and Diatrymon, who had been doing a lot of hard flying and running over the last few days while Lilamon had ridden on the former instead. The fairy's eyelids twitched and she yawned widely, opening her eyes a fraction and glancing down at her side.

She chuckled tiredly when she saw that Calumon had somehow managed to wind up sleeping on his head, his small body propped up against her leg and his feet sticking upwards into the air. Just what kind of dreams did you have to have to shift position so much that you ended up in a position like that?

She then glanced down to where Impmon was.

Or where he had been, at any rate.

She blinked. He wasn't there. Huh? What? He wasn't there? He wasn't there!

Lilamon suddenly flew awake and leapt upwards, waking Calumon up as he rolled onto his front when her leg moved away from him. Lilamon barely noticed, as she looked quickly all around the room. "Impmon! Impmon, where are you? Impmon!"

"Ugh, what is it?" Diatrymon asked blearily as he woke up, his head still tucked underneath his wing. "What's going on? I was sleeping."

"Forget sleep," Lilamon cried. "Impmon's not here. He's gone missing?"

Diatrymon's head snapped out of hiding, his eyes wide. "What! How? When? Why?"

"I don't know," Lilamon muttered. "He's not in the room. Wingdramon! Wingdramon, wake up! We've got a little situation here and no time for you to catch up on your sleep."

The large dragon's eye suddenly opened wide. "What's with the racket, Lilamon?" he asked.

"Take a look around," the fairy gestured around the room. "Do you not see that we are currently missing a member of our party again?"

Wingdramon raised his head and looked around. It took him only a split second to notice that Impmon was not there, and when he did, his eyes widened slightly. "Oh dear," he murmured. "Impmon was definitely here when I fell asleep. This cannot be good."

"Yeah," Diatrymon agreed. "He was here when I fell asleep too. And then he's not here when we all wake up. No way I can look at this situation describes it as good."

"What are we still doing in this room?" Lilamon asked, grabbing the still dazed Calumon and plonking him on her shoulder. "Come on. We have to go and find him." She moved over to the doors and threw them out wide as possible and then rose into the air and whooshed around the corner and into the corridor. Diatrymon rose to his feet and followed quickly, his huge talons making clinking noises on the floor as he went. Wingdramon then made the awkward crawl through the smallish door, flattening his wings against his side as he did so. The moment he was out in the wide corridor though, his wings snapped open and lifted him into the air, and he shot off after the others, catching up with them quickly.

It didn't take them very long to find their way out of the palace and onto the enormous threshold that led up to the doors, hurrying past the sleeping Fanglongmon as they did so and pushing to doors open until they were outside again. However, most of the Heavens were still obscured from their vision, because there was, currently, a very large metallic alligator standing there and waiting for them. The same one that had brought Impmon back yesterday after he'd left in a funk.

The familiar figure of Angewomon was sitting perched on the armoured Mega's shoulder. The angel offered the anxious travellers a wave with her gloved hand and a half-smile. "Good morning," she said to them. "I trust you slept well. Yet you seem to be somewhat distressed."

"There's a good reason for that," Lilamon replied.

"Impmon's gone," Calumon whined. "Just vanished into thin air while we were all sleeping. What if GranDracmon somehow managed to get him."

"_Unable to stop his capture,"_ quoted Diatrymon. "The prophecy said that. I just didn't think that it would happen this quickly. Damn it, why didn't one of us stay on guard duty."

"We thought there would be no need to," Wingdramon murmured. He was quiet, but the others could hear him. "However, I do not believe that Impmon was taken by GranDracmon. I believe that something else is going on here, which is why the two of you are here, right?"

"You are quite correct," Deckerdramon replied. "Impmon is, as far as we know, completely fine. We both saw him last night, in the town."

"You mean he's still here?" Lilamon's grin returned, as relief passed through her like a wave. "Oh, I'm going to either choke him to death by hugging him too hard or I'm going to beat the crap out of him for scaring us like that. Where is he?"

"That," Angewomon sighed. "Is the problem. He is no longer in the Heavens."

Silence.

"What?" Calumon asked, eyes wide, after a moment. "He isn't?"

"We are sorry to be the bearers of bad news," Deckerdramon went on. "But he left the Heavens several hours ago and headed back for the Digital World. He claimed that he did not want strife to fall upon the Heavens when GranDracmon breached it to try and find him, so he headed back to the Digital World to go back on the run."

"Alone?" Lilamon breathed.

"I'm afraid so," Angewomon grimaced. "He wanted you to know that it was a very difficult decision for him to leave you lot behind, but he wanted to protect you as well, just as he did with his Tamers. I'm so sorry."

"_Decisions follow based on love,"_ Wingdramon recited. "That was the next line. It seems that this is what that line meant."

"Yeah, but the capture bit is next, isn't it?" Diatrymon breathed.

"Uh-huh," Wingdramon nodded. "It is indeed."

"While I am flattered that Impmon cares about us so much that he wants to keep us safe," Lilamon glowered, "I hope you all don't mind when I say – THAT IDIOT! When's he going to learn that we want to be there for him no matter what the situation?"

"He already knows that," Deckerdramon replied. "Which is why he left without telling you as he did."

"I'm surprised I didn't see this coming to be honest," Wingdramon muttered. "It was so obvious that this was going to happen?"

"Well, is it not obvious what we're going to do next?" Lilamon demanded, turning to face the other two. "I'm going back down there too, and I am going to find that little imp and teach him that we have no intention of abandoning him. I trust that you guys are with me."

"I'm there," nodded Diatrymon.

"No encouragement needed for me," Wingdramon agreed. "We are after all – '_loyal to the darkest hour'_"

"Okay, stop quoting that, it's getting scary," Lilamon replied. She glanced at her shoulder and said, "You coming, Calumon."

"Yep," nodded Calumon. "I liked it here though. It was nice."

"Exactly as I predicted," Deckerdramon laughed, a twinkle in his huge red eyes. "It was fairly obvious to anyone that you would take that option, even if they couldn't sense the strong love you share with him as I can. It seems Impmon will now have three separate parties trying to track him down."

"Let's just hope we do before that idiot gets caught by GranDracmon," Lilamon growled. "Angewomon, can you show us the way out?"

Angewomon beamed. "It would be my pleasure," she said. "Follow me to the other end of the city and I'll drop you off in the Digital World once more."

As Angewomon led the travellers away, Wingdramon glanced over his shoulder to Deckerdramon and called, "Thank you for the message. And thank the angels for their hospitality for us, please." Then he turned around and soared after the others.

* * *

Yes, Impmon is an idiot in many ways for doing this, but as we know his intense guilt is what is driving him to seek solitude like this, even if it has been lessened by the words of Angewomon and Deckerdramon. I really liked writing that conversation, as it was almost like a crossover in and of itself – three Digimon, one from Season 1, one from Season 3 and one from Season 6 – my three favourite seasons – all together in one place and talking. Heh, it was great. But sadly, that's the last we'll be seeing of Deckerdramon and Angewomon for a while now that they've left the heavens once more.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The search for the slavers begins in earnest now that Terriermon has discovered a general direction to search in, so the Republic forces fan out across the desert in search of clues. Meanwhile, Numa is doing something similar to Impmon – moving across a wide expanse and trying to avoid her pursuers, some of which are not the slavers.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 146 : Big Twi'lek, Little Twi'lek**


	146. Big Twi'lek, Little Twi'lek

Here it comes. What happens to Numa now that she's gotten away. Hope you all like this chapter as it is one that I've been looking forward to writing for some time. Although, come to think of it, I've been looking forward to writing most of these chapters for a long time so that sentence is now almost pointless. And don't worry about the Coruscant story. It might be very important, but to be blunt, there's less happening there at the moment than here. But there are still a full two chapter to cover it.

Read on and enjoy.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 146:- Big Twi'lek, Little Twi'lek**

* * *

His blurrg restless underneath him, Cham Syndulla pulled to a halt in the forest close to Nabat and sighed. The search wasn't getting them any significant results so far. He'd hoped the presence of the Jedi would further help things along. He was no expert on them and he'd hoped they'd be getting further than this but as of yet nothing had been happening much. Nevertheless the Jedi and the clone troops they had brought with them seemed to be absolutely determined to track them down.

Cham couldn't help but notice the difference between the clones from the last time they had visited Coruscant. Back then, their actions to protect the locals had been more about following orders than genuine concern. Their Jedi Generals said that the locals could not be sacrificed, so they weren't. There'd always been an air of professionalism about them. But Aayla's group, the 327th, were different now. The few of them had descended to the ground to search for the slavers seemed to be genuinely concerned about the slaves and angry at the slavers for their actions, much like the surviving Twi'leks. They had become more like normal people in that regard.

The 501st, which had come down with Anakin and Ahsoka, were the same. But Cham hadn't really met them last time so he could not draw a comparison. But it was safe to assume that they had been similar before too.

Perhaps the Jedi and the Digimon had opened up a few mental doors for the men, who Cham had disapproved of when he first encountered them.

But, anyway, back to the search. Terriermon and Lopmon had successfully shown them the entrance to the new tunnel, and they had followed its course along and determined the general direction which the slavers would have taken if they'd gone overland. When Cham had asked how they knew they hadn't gone by air, Anakin had said, "We would see something if they'd done that. There would be in imprint in the sand from something very heavy, which nobody would be able to cover up because they'd all have to leave in the ship. They must have walked and covered their trail – even if it was to walk to a ship that they left some distance away to stop it from being spotted. I guarantee you they went by foot at least part of the way."

And so, the group had spread out and begun to search for any hint of passing slavers and their captives. Anakin had spoken to Admiral Yularen, who was patiently waiting above the surface for them, and the man had sent down several speeder bikes and AT-RT walkers, which the Jedi and the clones were riding respectively, while the native Twi'lek searchers rode on their blurrgs.

The three Tamers had vehemently ignored all cautionary advice that they should stay behind and they had insisted that they go with the Jedi on their speeder bikes. They had claimed that with a friend like Numa in danger as she was, they were not going to sit idly by. They would take part in the search whether or not the others liked the idea.

So now, Barriss had taken custody of Suzie, who was riding in front of the Mirialan. Henry was riding with Anakin and Rika with Ahsoka. The four Jedi and their three passengers were zipping ahead of the main group, sweeping through the trees and leaving trails in the sand behind them as they did so. They were trying to scan the area for anything with their senses, both to find the slavers and warn the other search parties about approaching predators.

Cham looked upwards at Commander Bly, who had dismounted his AT-RT and had climbed up a large rise on foot, which cleared the treetops and allowed him to see some distance through a pair of macrobinoculars. The clone was currently scanning the area for anything suspicious.

"You see anything?" Cham called up to him.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," Bly called back down. "These damn slavers sure do know how to hide. It's almost like they've scuttled down into holes or are hiding under the rocks like the bugs they are."

Cham was pleased to note the genuine anger that he could hear in the clone's voice. "Well, what can you see?" he asked.

"Just desert, trees, those mountains in the distance and a couple of can-cell flying over the forest," the clone sighed in frustration – they'd been at this for almost two hours and still nobody had reported anything. "How these people have managed to conceal the trail of over fifty people through the sand – it's almost scary."

"Sadly, it's easier than you might think," Cham grumbled. "Sand can be moulded into almost any shape. Concealing a footprint through the loose desert sand is remarkably simple."

"Oh, now I can see Lopmon," Bly said. "Wonder how she and Terriermon are getting on."

* * *

He had a point. Lopmon and Terriermon were searching from the skies, drifting around like small buzzards looking for a rabbit, or perhaps that was the other way round in the Digital World. Right now both of them were wishing they had buzzard eyes, and sadly it seemed that nobody had thought to invent a Modify Card that improved vision. They'd been hoping that they'd gain a different scope from the air, just as they had with that hidden tunnel, but so far they'd found squat, and the further away they got from Nabat, the less hopeful they became.

Lopmon sighed internally. _I wish Waxer and Boil were here,_ she remarked. _If they learned that Numa was in trouble, the two of them might tear apart this entire forest trying to track her down._

_Yeah, I miss them,_ Suzie mumbled. _It's been ages since we went on a mission with either of those two._

_Not since Mygeeto, you mean,_ Henry pointed out.

_That still seems like so long ago now,_ Suzie sighed.

Ahsoka seemed to decide to change the subject because she called up, _You guys see anything from up there yet._

_Nope,_ Terriermon groaned. _Just trees, trees, trees and some mountains. And I've had more than one of those giant dragonfly things almost crash into me, and still we have absolutely nothing to show for it. Henry, if we don't find anything that might give us a hint of where they might have gone soon then I'm going Rapidmon. Maybe then I could scout the planet in an hour or so and finally find them._

_That's not a bad idea actually,_ mused Henry.

_Hold a lid on the digivolving for a while, _Aayla interrupted. _Even that wouldn't unduly help us unless the slavers are out in the open somewhere, which is very unlikely. And an impatient Rapidmon is perhaps the last thing we need right now._

_Oh, I don't know,_ Anakin responded. _I could think of many worse things than that that we might need to deal with._

_Like an impatient Rika,_ the girl in question griped. _If we don't find anything soon, I'm going to scream._

_She's already crushing my stomach,_ complained Ahsoka.

* * *

Poor Barriss was, of course, exempt from this conversation because she did not have the connection to the others minds that everybody else did. The Mirialan was being filled in by Suzie, though the amount of information she received from the little girl was a bit hit and miss because both were focusing on searching for clues.

Then, suddenly, Barriss spotted something slightly interesting, and braked the bike harshly, doing it one handed so she could throw the other hand around Suzie and stop her from flying several-hundred feet over the handlebars.

"What? What is it?" Suzie asked aloud.

"Hold on," Barriss said, and she hopped off the speeder bike, and ran over to a tree that they had shot passed a moment ago, bending down to examine the trunk. Suzie clambered off the bike and followed her.

"Look at this," Barriss waved Suzie over. The little girl came to crouch beside the Jedi Knight, who was pulling a piece of fabric off a sharp projection on the trunk that was relatively close to the base of the tree. "Someone's been through here recently," Barriss murmured, holding up the dull brown fabric. "They must have snagged the hem of their clothing on this little projection and ripped it off. And look at this," Barriss traced her hand on a large scrape on the trunk above where the fabric had been, where the bark seemed to have been scuffed. "This is fresh – there's been no growth on it – no lichen or moss or anything. I'm willing to bet that this was caused by a chain. Perhaps the owner of this cloth stumbled and dragged it across the tree."

The Mirialan turned to Suzie and said, "And why would somebody have a chain?"

"If they were being held prisoner," Suzie gasped.

"Indeed," Barriss nodded. "I think we may have finally found something." She stood up, still holding the fabric. "And since Nabat is that way," she indicated, "we must assume they are travelling in the opposite direction. Towards the mountains."

_Guys! Did you hear that? _Suzie cried. _Barriss found something._

_Yeah, we heard,_ Anakin replied. _I've already contacted Rex and Aayla is speaking with Bly. We'll fan out in a line and head for the mountains. If we don't pick up more clues, we should still be heading in the right direction._

_Tell Barriss we say 'Well done.'_ Aayla agreed.

_Terriermon and I will scout ahead,_ Lopmon called from the air. _We'll take an aerial standpoint of the mountains._

Suzie relayed the message and Barriss grabbed her and hopped them both astride the bike once more and shot of to rendezvous with the others. At last, they had something to go on.

* * *

While a new sense of hope was filling the searchers, hope was fading slightly in the mind of a certain little Twi'lek girl. Numa had managed to cross the desert expanse and reach the trees, but as she reached the tree-line she had glanced over her shoulder and saw, in the distance, that there were people starting to exit the canyon. The slavers were onto her escape. She had ducked into the trees and kept moving, but eventually she had had to stop for a rest, leaning against a tree-trunk and panting heavily.

She'd never run so far and fast in her life before – but she had made it. She had escaped.

And she suddenly realised that she had no idea where to go from here. She didn't know which direction any civilisation was in, not even Nabat because she'd fallen into a fitful doze on board Hyoll's back, when the stress of the capture and the tiredness of all the walking had overwhelmed her. Where was she supposed to go now?

She was lost, and she knew it. Now, after she'd caught her breath, she was wondering through the trees of the forest, staring around her in perpetual fear. She'd thought she'd better keep moving just in case the slavers were still looking for him, but the area she was in now looked pretty similar to the area she'd been in when she'd started off – dark, sandy and full of trees.

Numa shivered, wrapping her arms around herself, more for the feeble comfort they provided than for any degree of warmth. The light from the normally blazing sun was about the welcome thing in this forest at the moment. But it was only filtering through the canopy in certain places here, and it provided little warmth or comfort, but did illuminate the area in a strange, slightly haunting manner. For Numa, who had either lived in lots of shade or lots of sun, this effect was eerie and it scared her.

Then again, there seemed to be a lot of that going around lately.

At one point she thought that she heard a twig snapping in the distance behind her. She quickly jumped behind one of the thin tree-trunks and peered around the edge of it for a full ten minutes before she felt safe enough to venture back out and start walking once again.

How had it come to this again? This was just like back at Nabat all those months ago, when she was hiding in back-alleys with Suzie, petrified at the mere thought of emerging lest they run into the robots, the droids, that had been everywhere. Only this time, she was alone. No brave Suzie to hold her hand. And now there was no Hyoll or Talee or Milyl or any of the others to comfort her either. For the first time in her life, Numa was well and truly alone.

And it weighed on her like a ton of bricks.

Numa didn't know how far she walked, murmuring to herself in Twi'leki in an unconscious attempt to comfort herself, to hear somebody's voice even it was only her. It could have been miles or it could have been a couple-of-hundred yards but everything around her still looked the same. She was wondering aimlessly now. She had no destination in mind. She was hungry, having only been given half a ration bar by the slavers. She was thirsty, having had no chance to quench her thirst after the effort of the escape. She was alone. She was scared. She was doomed.

Eventually, she found herself incapable of taking it anymore. She stopped walking and sat down, resting her back against a tree-trunk and pulling her knees up to hug them, curling into a ball as much as possible. It symbolised just how small she felt – small, defenceless and utterly vulnerable.

"Gine ace," she whispered, as she felt her eyes welling up. "Gine hew juon ulner ji peasd ji ace? Ji pon? Top hew dana slets. Top asta queel bostor. Top hewn folio juon." Tears began to run freely down her teeth. "Jus herfo ji morf," she sniffled. "Morf. Fross acer querpol. Fross acer ikut."

She broke down, burying her face in the hem of her plain, brown dress and gradually staining it with her tears, hugging her own legs due to the need to hold onto something. She wished that Suzie would come back, that her brothers would return, that she could see a familiar face somewhere in all this mess. But there was nothing.

She didn't care anymore. If the slavers came by while she was like this, she knew that she wouldn't be able to get away. She might even let them take her. She wanted to be comforted by someone, even if she had to be taken into slavery for that to happen.

"Jus poa," she sniffled quietly to herself. "Ju yuson ji her home." She sat there and wept, heartbroken and miserable. A little girl alone in a deep forest and miles from anywhere, with no food or water. How could she survive this? The other slaves had risked themselves for nothing.

And it was the thought of the other slaves risking themselves like that that got through to her. She lifted her tear-stained face off her legs and pictured the scene once more – the chained Twi'leks fleeing their captors so that she could dive behind a pile of boulders while they kept running to draw the attention of the slavers away from her. They had risked their very lives to get her out, and when they succeeded, all Numa could do was sit down and cry.

She bit her lip and sniffed hard, forcing the flow of tears to stop. She knew that the chances of finding civilisation, finding a village in such an isolated area, was slim to none, but she had to try harder. And not just for her sake. She needed to survive so their actions would not have been in vain. Otherwise, it would be just unfair. To them.

Numa clambered to her feet once more and walked further into the forest, further away from the mountains. Her hands were now at her sides, curled into little fists. She didn't look at all intimidating but the attempt seemed to make her feel better. It was as if she was defying the darkness and everything in it. Nevertheless, she still walked in a side-to-side fashion as she moved from one patch of light to another.

In retrospect, it might have been better if she decided to remain in the shadows, but Numa hadn't exactly had any experience at this sort of thing.

Which was why, she suddenly broke off her walking and stood stock-still when she heard the snuffling noises.

She'd travelled quite some distance – roughly about three miles since she broke down. Three miles of solitary walking and not having a clue where she was going. The silence had been thick, as if it had been trying to smother her, and she started muttering in Twi'leki again to try and keep it at bay as best she could. But then, when the sound other than her voice and the faint trudging of her feet on the ground broke that silence, she suddenly wished it would go back to being silent.

The young girl froze, and instinctually lowered herself to the ground in a crouching position in an attempt to make herself look smaller. Her eyes swept through the tree-line but she could see nothing except trees, darkness and patches of light, as per usual. But she could definitely hear something. A faint sniffing noise that sounded like it was coming from very wide nostrils. And it was getting closer.

It was also behind her.

Numa slowly turned her body until she was looking behind her, though her legs didn't move from where they were, ready to flee at a moment's notice. Her eyes were wide, her heart hammering but she could still see nothing unusual. Was the sniffing sound just a trick of the imagination or something? Because if it was, it was doing a good job at scaring her.

Numa's eyes darted back and forth, searching but not seeing. That is, until she saw something like a blotch of shadow move slowly. Her eyes snapped to the shape and watched as if made painfully slow progress towards her. Numa could make out no details, but then the thing moved out into a patch of light nearby, and Numa's worst fears were confirmed in an instant.

Brown carapace riddled with spikes. Long flexible arms with sharp claws and even longer legs with even bigger claws. Bulky body but lithe limbs for running and an absolutely enormous head with a gaping maw filled with teeth, several of which were large and prominent at the front. Completely red eyes and wide nostrils adorned the head, and a very small tail went past the hind limbs. It was like a large bug, but also like a reptile.

A Gutkurr.

The same type of creature the Separatists had unleashed on the Republic from Nabat. Heck, this one might even be a survivor of that very incident just as Numa was. But Numa felt no kinship with it. All she felt was fear.

It did not help when a second Gutkurr stepped up behind the other one and Numa was sure she could see a third behind them. Who knew how many more were waiting in the shadows – Gutkurr travelled in very large groups. Numa did not want to stick around to count them. She was horribly exposed as it was in this patch of light and only now did she realise that fact.

It didn't appear that the Gutkurr had noticed her yet, but when they did she knew that she was going to be in serious trouble. If they had caught her scent then she had to get out of there and quickly. Numa began to slowly inch to the side keeping a close eye on the large predators in an attempt to get behind a tree and hide before hurrying deeper into the forest.

The plan seemed to work up until the running stage, where her foot caught on a root and she went tumbling several feet through the sand.

The head of the two Gutkurr snapped around in her direction. Numa's lekku whirled as she looked behind her and back at them, noticing that their eyes were now fixed on her. And sure enough, a third Gutkurr emerged from the darkness and also stared at her.

Numa did not wait to find out if there were any more. She scrambled to her feet and ran. She didn't need to turn around to know that the Gutkurr gave chase the moment she did. She could already hear their pounding feet racing towards her and drawing closer by the moment.

She knew she'd never outrun them. The fittest of adult Twi'leks didn't have a hope in hell of outrunning a Gutkurr. A tired child had far less than that. The huge carnivores took a total of five seconds before they were upon her. The first one sprang towards her, mouth agape to deliver the killing blow. Numa turned and saw the jaws that would end her life if she did not get out of the way approaching. She put on more speed, but it was no use.

Then, as the Gutkurr was in mid-leap, Numa spotted something which energised her. It was a desperate hope, but it was the only one that she had. She suddenly dived to one side and rolled. It was painful as she landed awkwardly on one shoulder, but it was not as painful as it would have been had she not moved and she did manage to get to her feet. The Gutkurr's teeth snapped shut with a loud clank, like two pieces of wood being bashed together and the predator stumbled, falling onto its side.

Numa dashed off to the side as the other two Gutkurr collided with the first one, both having built up too much momentum to slow down almost instantly, which would have been necessary to prevent a crash. Numa heard snapping and growling behind her as the three fought to disentangle themselves, and she heard more noises from the side. One glance proved her theory – at least ten more of the predators were surging towards her through the trees. Numa piled on the speed and reached her destination.

It seemed as though one of the larger trees in the forest had fallen slightly, not falling all the way because it had been caught by the other trees. Several roots on one side of the tree had been pulled up, leaving a small space between the bottom of the trunk and the ground. Numa ducked underneath the thick, dangling roots and wedged herself underneath the gap, breathing fast but still alive.

But her troubles were far from over. She whimpered and pressed herself as deep into the crevice under the tree as she could as a huge clawed foot appeared in her vision and more appeared nearby. The group of Gutkurr were surrounding the tree, growling in apprehension of a kill but seemingly unsure of how to get it. The huge ugly face of one of them appeared right in front of Numa, it's eyes hungry and its jaws slavering slightly as it stared through the gap at her.

Numa yelped as the Gutkurr pressed its snout forwards towards the gap she was hiding in, hoping to snag her with its teeth and pull her out into the open. It was with no small sense of relief that the teeth clacked shut about a foot from her and not on her. The thick roots were impeding the Gutkurr's progress and the gap between them and the ground was too small for its very large head. It couldn't reach her.

Numa's breathing didn't lessen for several more moments. She continued to suck in as much air as her lungs could hold and force it out again, as the first Gutkurr was shouldered aside by another one, which knelt down to try its luck, thrusting its head into the gap under the tree but making no more headway than the first, the teeth getting within a foot from her stomach, but the mouth unable to open and chomp down on her even if it could reach all the way.

It seemed that Numa was safe for the time being. She began to ease slightly as four more Gutkurr each attempted to reach her, and when none of them succeeded, squabbles began to break out amongst the group. Numa sighed in relief. She hoped that it wouldn't be long before they lost entrance and moved off.

Just then, one of the Gutkurr sprang forward and slammed its snout against the roots with incredible force, bending them backwards and snapping several off at the base. Numa screamed and shrank back as the Gutkurr gnashed its teeth at her, but was still unable to completely reach her. The young Twi'lek girl pressed herself so hard against the bottom of the tree that she was practically squashing her lekku.

The Gutkurr were re-energised by the progress their comrade had made and the lot of them seemed to be building themselves up into some kind of frenzy at the promise of food, even if the meal itself would only be enough for one of them. They were voracious carnivores and were full of determination. As the attacking one continued to try and squeeze its head under the roots to grab the cowering Numa, several others began lashing at the sand around the tree with their claws, in what appeared to be feeble attempts at digging to increase the space. Others began to butt themselves against the leaning tree, possibly trying to uproot it completely and expose their potential prey.

Numa whimpered and resisted the urge to curl into a ball as the Gutkurr forced its teeth an inch closer to her stomach. So it appeared that she was done for after all.

"Poa," she apologised quietly and stared in terror at the Gutkurr's huge fangs. She was like a deer in headlights, transfixed but horrified at the same time. When death came, she would definitely see it coming.

* * *

Terriermon swept his ears downwards to provide himself with more lift, then returned to the steady glide he had been maintaining. He was heading towards the mountains with as much speed as he could muster, while in the forest below and behind, the others were regrouping and organising themselves to fan out and search the forest for any further clues on their way to catch up with the airborne bunny and his sister.

Terriermon could see Lopmon flying some distance away. She was so far off that she looked no bigger than a pinhead, but Terriermon could still feel her presence with his mind, and the presence of the others as well, a few miles behind, like tingles in his brain. His link with Renamon and whatever she was doing had taken a seat on the backburner for the time being, though he was still aware of what was happening vaguely. Only if Renamon broke through to him would he start paying attention. For now, he had to focus.

The trees made things extremely difficult to see down to the ground. The canopy was mostly very thick, so the airborne search approach that the Digimon were taking was futile here. Hopefully that would change once they reached the mountains, where there was less cover for things up there. Then again, they did look like remarkably steep mountains.

Terriermon was still several miles from the mountains when he heard something. His hypersensitive ears were able to pick it up even though he was several hundred metres up. There was very little wind to block out the sound as well. It sounded like a frenzied amount and growling and snarling, coming from somewhere below the treetops.

Terriermon listened for a moment to the rapacious sound. It definitely brought back memories of Nabat, when he and his brethren and newly acquired friends had faced off against those Gutkurr. He knew that what he was hearing now was the same animal. _Yeesh,_ he thought. _Something's got them pretty riled up. I would not like to be on th..._

Another sound suddenly shook him out of this train of thought and snapped him to a new one. A short, sharp and high-pitched scream, coming from below where the Gutkurr where.

"What the..." Terriermon said aloud, and stopped dead in mid-air, spreading his wings as wide as they could and floating downwards as a result. It took him less than a second to pinpoint where the snarling was coming from and he folded his ears, dropping like a stone and shooting towards the ground. He aimed himself for a small gap in the trees and the moment he passed beneath the canopy, his ears snapped open again and he levelled out, whooshing past the tree-trunks for about a hundred yards before he came upon the sight.

He landed on a branch nearby to quickly examine it.

A host of about sixteen Gutkurr, larger even than the group that had attacked them in Nabat, had surrounded a partially fallen tree. They appeared to be trying to get at something wedged in the gap between the bottom of the tree and the ground. Some were digging, others attempting to knock the tree down and one was trying furiously to force its snout into the narrow gap.

Its head suddenly sank in a few more inches and the scream echoed out from beneath it again. Definitely a humanoid scream. Terriermon was already in motion the moment it reached his ears.

_Oh, this is a bad idea,_ he thought to himself, as he sprang off the branch and shot straight for the Gutkurr trying to push under the tree. Shooting over several of its comrades like a small, white meteor, he whipped himself into a Terrier Tornado and blindsided the Gutkurr in question. Caught off guard by the powerful ram to its side, the Gutkurr was thrown off balance, its head wrenched out of the gap as it rolled away, colliding with another one of its kind, so they both went down in a heap.

Terriermon landed where the Gutkurr had been standing, back to the tree, and suddenly all activity ceased as the Gutkurr turned around to stare at him.

"Crap," Terriermon muttered, and sprang into the air as one of them lunged for him, its jaws clashing behind his feet. Terriermon powered his ears as it lunged for him again and dropped back to the ground, allowing it to skid past him and topple over in the process. Another sprang at him, but the Digimon leapt up again. This time, he landed on the head of the Gutkurr and quickly ran down its back towards the rear end, but another Gutkurr leapt for him, so he leapt high again, resulting in a collision as the second Gutkurr slammed into the first.

Terriermon wheeled around to avoid the teeth of another and powered between two more. Both of them pounced at him as he swept past and ended up bonking heads, and the other one, which had surged after him, slammed into both of them. The Gutkurr appeared to be unused to prey that move like this. They were more suited to food that ran away, not which stayed close like this.

As Terriermon tumbled to the ground behind the tree again, he finally got the brief lull he needed to peer under the tree and see who the heck he was attempting to rescue.

What he saw was a shock to his system.

He was staring into the terrified eyes of a young, teal-skinned Twi'lek girl. And a very familiar one.

"Numa," breathed Terriermon.

He was so shocked that he almost didn't react in time when another Gutkurr sprang at him.

He dashed forward slightly and took to the air as the Gutkurr crashed to the ground beneath him and rose into the air, over the heads of the snarling predators. He began to fly in circles around the clearing, out of reach of the Gutkurr but still tantalisingly close, in an attempt to keep their attention focused on him and not the Twi'lek girl under the tree. The predators took the bait and began springing upwards and snapping at him as he passed. Terriermon balked when he realised they could jump higher than he'd thought and he had to roll aside to avoid being chomped three times before he rose higher.

And all the while he was screaming in his head, _Guys! Guys! I found Numa, but she's being attacked by a large group of Gutkurr! Get over here now – I can't hold them all off on my own._

* * *

When the remainder of the group got the message, they were just finishing the organisation of the line through the forest. The group was advancing slowly towards the mountains, spread out across a range of roughly about a mile between them, which meant that each of them could see another of them in the distance on either side.

The Jedi were no longer riding their speeder bikes – they were walking beside them instead, searching for clues more thoroughly than before now that Barriss had discovered the first one they'd had for a while. The Tamers were still with them, beside them as they walked, while the clones and the other Twi'leks were still on their mounts and steering them slowly ahead.

Thus far, they had not found anything else.

And then they got Terriermon's message.

There was almost instant pandemonium amongst the line and it broke up quickly. Anakin was the quickest to react, and before Henry could think to say anything, the Jedi was already astride the speeder bike once more and shooting into the distance, homing in on Terriermon's mental signature at ridiculously high speed, dodging trees with all the skills of a champion podracer, which was no surprise since he had won one of those races as a kid.

Ahsoka wasn't far behind him and Rika found herself abandoned in the dirt as well, the Togruta hurling a hasty apology over her shoulder. Barriss was completely caught off guard when Suzie started screaming for what seemed to be no reason. The Mirialan tried to calm her down and get some sense out of her, but Suzie had become hysterical and shrill, so the meaning was still lost on her.

Fortunately, Aayla had the presence of mind to think of this, and called in on the comlink. "Barriss," she said. "Terriermon's found one of the slaves, and it's our young friend Numa, but she's being attacked by large predators. Hold on, I'll come over and lead you to the action."

"Okay," Barriss nodded.

"Let me come with you!" Suzie shouted. "If Numa is in trouble then..."

"We'll protect her," Barriss said. "It's dangerous over there right now, but you can still be useful." She spoke over the comlink herself and said, "Commander Bly, Captain Rex, mark my position and come and pick Suzie up. A new situation has arisen and she and the other Tamers should be able to lead you straight to it. We Jedi will go on ahead. Catch up to us when you can."

"Acknowledged, General," cried the two clones. A moment later, Aayla appeared out of the tree line on her speeder bike and veered around to shoot off into the forest ahead. Barriss leapt aboard her own bike and shot off after her.

* * *

Back at the tree, Numa was staring out through the gap in disbelief, as she watched the Gutkurr lunging upwards and snapping at the white rabbit that was flying round their heads. She knew that rabbit and she had seen the spark of recognition in his own eyes when he'd seen her. It was Terriermon!

Did that mean that the others were not far away either?

Terriermon was doing a good job at distracting the Gutkurr's attention, but still Numa didn't feel brave enough to try and head outside. And that turned out to be a wise decision, because a previously dazed Gutkurr was now standing up and seemed to be more interested in her. Once more, it stalked over and began to try and force its head underneath the tree and get to her. Numa quailed and whimpered, and got ready to scream for help.

Right before she did, the Gutkurr was suddenly sent sprawling again by another miniature whirlwind, but this one was a brownish colour. Numa's eyes widened even further as the small windstorm ceased and Lopmon was standing in front of her. If Lopmon was here too, then Suzie...

"Numa," Lopmon cried, breaking off Numa's train of thought. "Don't worry, we'll get you out of there!"

Numa had no idea what she had said, but she didn't worry about that right now. She watched in a mix of excitement and fear and Lopmon turned around. Some of the Gutkurr were starting to notice her and were turning and hissing, preparing to pounce, but Lopmon made no move. She just stuck one ear straight up into the air.

A moment later, Terriermon shot down and grabbed the extended ear with his own, and both of them simultaneously cried, **"TWIN CYCLONE!" **They span themselves madly into a much larger tornado, whirling around on the spot and kicking up the sand around them, which led to it swirling around them in a small sandstorm. Numa shielded her eyes and the Gutkurr backed away, wary of approaching this strange new development.

It looked like a stand-off. The bunnies kept spinning to shield Numa from the carnivores, but none of the large group looked like backing down either.

It continued like this for about half a minute before one of them stepped forward. The others backed away still further in case something happened, while the braver one prepared to leap into the tornado and grab a snack.

It was at this point that Anakin reached the scene. Taking in the scene in an instant, he braked his speeder bike and twisted it side-on to the Gutkurr and then leapt off it while it was still moving. The vehicle was the next thing to slam a Gutkurr in the side, the heavy metal object taking its legs out from underneath it and sending it tumbling. Anakin dashed before the group and activated his lightsaber, holding the blue blade steadily before him as he glared challengingly at the throng of Gutkurr.

Terriermon and Lopmon ceased their spinning and grinned up at Anakin. "Well timed, Skyguy," Lopmon congratulated him. "You really got here fast."

"I used to prodrace," Anakin explained. "Now, you guys get Numa out of there and to somewhere safe. I'll take my turn at distracting these guys." The two Digimon nodded and retreated towards the tree as two Gutkurr suddenly pounced for Anakin, teeth gnashing. Anakin span aside to avoid both lunges and swept his blade upwards and through the neck of one of them, killing it instantly, then lashed his hand out at the other and sent if flying with a Force push. Three other Gutkurr had to leap out of the way of their flying comrade.

Without looking, Anakin backflipped straight over the Gutkurr that had tried to take him from behind, whirled around to confront another that snapped at him and lashed out with his blade, causing it to shriek as the tip slashed through its face beneath the eye. It backed off, shaking its head furiously.

Another Gutkurr made for Anakin's side, but Anakin rolled out the way, whirling around and grabbing it with the Force, hauling it into the air and crashing it into another, then he sprang onto the back of another and plunged his lightsaber right down and through it. It dropped to the floor, and Anakin withdrew his lightsaber and leapt onto another, dashing across it back and bounding to another, rebounding right off its flank and lashing out at another as he flew over it, resulting in a beheading. He landed between a pair of others, but before they even thought about lunging he threw his hands out and sent them both rolling backwards like droidekas.

The man twirled his lightsaber and turned to face the rest of the Gutkurr, challenging them to come and take him on. Several of them stalked around him, trying to flank him and preparing to spring. Anakin bent his knees in readiness and sure enough, one came flying at him from a diagonal angle. Anakin flipped sideways to avoid it, and another charged him with head lowered, seeking to ram him with it. Anakin met its charge and levelled his lightsaber, driving it through the beast's head. The beasts momentum carried him backwards, but he flipped onto its back and sprang off it and back into the throng.

Numa watched the strange man with a sense of awe. He was using a laser sword just like Aayla and that nice man, Obi-Wan, had used and he was very good with it. But the young girl was distracted from this by the bunnies, who crowded round her hidey-hole while the predators were occupied.

"Numa, come on," Lopmon was ushering, beckoning with her hand and reaching an ear into the hole. "Come out. We'll get you to safety. Trust us."

"Loppy, watch out!" Terriermon cried, grabbing his sister and throwing them both into the hole just as one of the predators snapped at them. The bunnies squirmed round in the tight space and peppered the face of the Gutkurr with a Bunny Blast and a Blazing Ice, forcing it to retreat in bewilderment, where it was jerked into the air by a Force pull from Anakin. The bunnies then turned to Numa, who was still deathly afraid.

"Come on," Lopmon urged, taking Numa's small hand in her own. "Let's go. It's not safe here."

Numa bit her lip. She could tell the others were trying to get her outside, but her mortal fear of the Gutkurr was screaming at her to stay in the hole. However, the earnest look in Lopmon's eyes, and the determination in Terriermon's gradually overrode that instinct. Lopmon tugged on Numa's hand and Numa inched out of the whole. Terriermon took her other hand to help guide her and then the three of them were outside once more.

"Up and away," Terriermon declared, as wrapped an arm around Numa's. Lopmon did the same and the two spread their ears, co-operating to lift the weight into the air. Numa was startled when her feet left the ground, but she didn't squirm. She couldn't believe it. She was actually flying! Her heart rate picked up again. Her body had never been filled with so much adrenaline.

But two of the Gutkurr had noticed the escape attempt and ran to intercept them. Anakin noticed and picked up one of their comrades with his mind and hurled it at the pair of them. One went down, but the other one had enough sense to dodge out of the way. The bunnies gained more altitude, but it wasn't enough. The Gutkurr lunged, mouth agape.

Numa screamed.

A speeder bike burst out of the forest and its rider sprang off it without bringing it to a stop and flew straight at the leaping Gutkurr. It was Ahsoka. Her foot slewed through the air and connected with the Gutkurr's chin, snapping its jaw shut and eliciting a surprised grunt as it toppled backwards. Ahsoka made a three-point landing and thrust her hand out, sending the Gutkurr rolling the other way.

"Thanks, Ahsoka!" called Lopmon. "That was a close one."

"Don't worry," Ahsoka called, activating her green blade. "I've got your back. Get the girl to safety."

"We're going," Terriermon nodded as the bunnies climbed higher. One of the Gutkurr nearby stood up and shook itself, before turning towards them with a snarl. The bunnies and Numa were too high, so now it focused on Ahsoka, holding her blade ready for action. Claws primed, the Gutkurr charged, ready to swipe them right at its new prey. This turned out to be a bad idea. Ahsoka rolled backwards to avoid the slash and swung her blade before she was even back on her feet, severing the Gutkurr's claws. The Beast howled, and Ahsoka quickly finished it off with a slash to the side.

The other nearby Gutkurr suddenly sprang over its fallen comrade and fell at Ahsoka with hind claws raised and teeth bared. Ahsoka jumped towards the carcass and the Gutkurr landed behind her. It whirled around to face her, but Ahsoka backflipped over the dead one and dashed towards the trees. The Gutkurr pursued and another one came in from the side to join it. Ahsoka slid to a halt by a tree and severed its trunk with a sweep of her blade. The tree tipped over and landed on one of her attackers, pinning it to the ground. Ahsoka then whirled to face the other one and jumped over it, lashing out a hand backwards to grab it with the Force and hurling it over her own head to crash into the others.

Ahsoka ran after it and belted another in the head with her boot that had been about to charge at Anakin. The Gutkurr backed off as Master and Padawan stood back to back for a moment, blades held high.

"Well, this sure brings back memories," Ahsoka said. "Been a while since we did something like this, hasn't it?"

"We try not to make a habit of it," Anakin chuckled.

"We try not to make a habit of many things," Ahsoka pointed out. "And yet, somehow, we still end up doing them."

"True enough," Anakin murmured. "Incoming." The two separated, flipping into the air as three Gutkurr charged them and all ended up banging their heads together.

* * *

Numa meanwhile, was sitting precariously on a branch of one of the trees, a bunny perched to either side of her and ensuring that she had a good grip on the trunk. "Suul sodig ace," Numa's face was splitting into a grin. "Arni. Drida non cu liolese?"

"Sorry, but I still don't understand that," Terriermon said apologetically. "We'll talk when we've dealt with the creatures."

"Stay here," nodded Lopmon. "Don't move. We'll be right back. You ready to take them on once more, brother."

"Gutkurr have never experienced any Digimon above the Rookie level," Terriermon nodded. "Shall we rectify that?"

"I think we shall," Lopmon nodded. They dived off the branch and pelted towards the Gutkurr. There were still eleven of them trying to attack the Jedi. Four were dead and the other was trapped beneath a tree. Numa watched with amazement and nostalgia as she beheld digivolution once again, which meant, somewhere nearby, the Tamers had slashed their cards.

"**TERRIERMON DIGIVOLVE TO... GARGOMON!"**

"**LOPMON DIGIVOLVE TO... TURUIEMON!"**

The newer, larger bunnies dropped from the air side by side, both landing full force on the backs of a pair of Gutkurr, knocking them flat. Gargomon, as the heavier of the two, caused a cry of pain from his landing pad. The Champion Digimon leapt off it and it attempted to scramble to its feet, but Gargomon didn't give it the opportunity, throwing a well-placed Bunny Pummel at its head and knocking it unconscious with his blow. He then whirled around and started to empty his cannons at a nearby group of three.

The lasers didn't do as much damage as he would have liked due to the armour of the creatures, but he did drive them backwards under the barrage. One he wasn't shooting at charged in from the side, but Gargomon sprang backwards and slammed a cannon into its chest, letting off another round of shots at point-blank range that punctured through the exoskeleton and dropped it instantly. He then whipped round and fired upon the other three once more.

When Turuiemon sprang off her own Gutkurr, she was met almost instantly by another which attempted to chomp down on one of her long ears. Turuiemon's foot lashed out and connected with its nose, knocking it off kilter, before she rained down punches and kicks at it with a Lightning Kung-Fu attack. The Gutkurr stumbled backwards, stunned, and Turuiemon extended one switch-blade and slammed the flat of it into the side of its head, knocking it out. She whipped around to find that the one she'd landed on was back on its feet and after her, mouth agape. Instinct kicked in and her switchblade plunged into its open mouth, point first. The Gutkurr died and tipped over without a sound.

Turuiemon's large ears detected another Gutkurr moving in behind her. She froze in position, standing over the body of the other unfortunate one, until she heard the scrape of talons indicating a lunge. As soon as she did, she flipped backwards and landed astride the Gutkurr's shoulders. The animal promptly bucked and reared and careened all over the place, and Turuiemon grabbed a couple of spikes on its back to stay on board and leaned heavily to the side. Her extra weight threw the Gutkurr off balance and as it toppled, Turuiemon sprang off and kicked it into another.

She turned around and saw Gargomon slam another upside the head with his cannon, while Anakin and Ahsoka slammed another into a tree with a double Force push that caused the Gutkurr to ram the tree so hard the trunk snapped.

The four of them regrouped together. There were now six Gutkurr standing before them out of the original sixteen, and they were standing warily a short distance away. They had seen what had happened to their comrades and were intelligent enough to realise that this was a precarious situation for them.

"What do we do now, Master?" Ahsoka asked, ready to spring at a moment's notice.

"We mustn't kill any more of them than necessary," Anakin replied. "We had to kill the others in self-defence, but they seem more cautious now. Perhaps we can warn the rest of them away. Make them think we're not worth the effort."

"Stand ready," Gargomon said, cocking his cannons and pointing them threateningly. "Act aggressive but don't attack. They understand that sort of thing." Anakin nodded and began twirling his lightsaber, displaying his incredible skill as he whirled it around his body. Ahsoka promptly copied him and Turuiemon extended her blades, scraping them against each other to create sparks and a loud, harsh noise.

It seemed to be doing the job. The six Gutkurr before them were backing away, looking slightly nervous at the prospect of going up against such clear threat displays.

The only problem was there were actually seven Gutkurr still alive and conscious. The other one had been temporarily dizzy from the previous attack and was now clambering to its feet nearby. Its large eyes took in the scene and the same thought processes were running through its brain as the others – stay away from them. But its nose was also detecting a scent – the same scent it had been following before this lot showed up.

Its head turned and saw the small one up a tree nearby. It slowly began to stalk towards her.

* * *

Numa was enthralled at the spectacle. This bunch had dealt with Ryloth's deadliest predators with what seemed to be ease. The forms of Gargomon and Turuiemon made her wriggle in anticipation, remembering how they had taken the droid forces apart several months ago.

Maybe they could help her. Maybe they wouldn't have to leave the other Twi'leks as prisoners of those slavers.

Suddenly a growling noise caught her attention. Her head whipped around to see the seventh Gutkurr charging out of the trees towards her. As it raced forward, a scream tore itself out of Numa's mouth. The others whipped around at the noise, but before they could make any motion, the Gutkurr had slammed itself into the tree-trunk. The whole structure shook and Numa lost her grip on the tree and fell. She grabbed the branch desperately and held on with the tips of her fingers, her legs swinging wildly beneath her.

Anakin started forward, but all four of them were suddenly forced to defend themselves from the other six Gutkurr, which saw an opening when they turned around and charged. They quickly repelled the attack with laser-fire and swift kicks and punches, but when they turned around again they were too late. Numa had lost her grip. She fell, straight towards the open mouth of the Gutkurr.

Time slowed. Turuiemon started forward, knowing she'd never get there in time but doing it all the same. The Gutkurr leapt upwards with mouth agape, determined to snap his jaws shut around Numa's body and finally get the meal it had been trying for. The others could only watch in horror as Numa descended towards her death.

A shape lanced out of the shadows nearby and an empty speeder bike zoomed past the Gutkurr. The occupant of the bike was already in the air. Aayla twisted in mid-air, as she flew over the Gutkurr and Numa, snapping her hand out and grabbing the back of the girl's dress right as her feet went between the Gutkurr's jaws. Numa was yanked back up as Aayla pulled her into her arms, the jaws of the predator snapping shut inches from her toes.

Aayla landed awkwardly on her shoulder and the two Twi'leks rolled several metres, the smaller one pressed protectively against the chest of the bigger one. They came to a stop on their sides. Aayla looked up to see the Gutkurr already bearing down on them again, but before it could reach them another speeder bike roared between them and Barriss backflipped off it, landing in front of the Gutkurr and hurling it backwards with a thrust of her hand and mind. The Gutkurr crashed into a tree with a horrible crunch and fell still, out cold.

That seemed to do it for the remaining six and they quickly beat it back into the forest, turning around and dashing off in a cloud of dust and sand. In a mere three seconds, the only Gutkurr left were unconscious or dead.

Aayla nodded to Barriss as she sat up. "Thanks," she said. Barriss merely nodded and gave her a thumbs up. Aayla then looked down at the bundle in her arms, who looked back up at her in disbelief. Once she got over the fact that she was still alive, Numa's face practically began to shine with joy.

"Yami, sugi ei," Aayla said. "Rezerla ace?"

"Aayla!" Numa cried and wrapped her arms around the Jedi's neck. Aayla chuckled and returned the hug, getting to her feet as she did so, and smiled over Numa's shoulder at the others as they approached.

"Typical Aayla," Anakin chuckled. "Always trying to steal the spotlight."

"Oh, don't complain," Aayla laughed. "You got to do most of the action this time. All I can think of is, thank the Force I got there at the exact right moment."

"Yeah. _That_ was too close," Gargomon replied, as he and his sister glowed and reverted to their usual forms. "Next time, one of us stays behind to guard the small one."

"Agreed," Lopmon nodded, then she and Terriermon both hopped up onto Aayla's shoulders. Numa released her hold around the older Twi'lek's neck and beamed at both of them. "You alright there, Numa?" Lopmon smiled back. "You really had us scared this time."

"Lopmon! Terriermon!" Numa laughed and gave each of the bunnies a quick hug of their own. One which actually rivalled one of Suzie's practically patented bonecrushers, something which neither bunny had previously thought possible. "Jus nan gliro ji prud suul," Numa cried. "Res woki tosta."

"Trin yalm," Aayla chuckled. "Ger o gaxi clomd lunalaquee."

"What? Don't we get hugs?" Ahsoka asked, with a snort. Numa turned around to look at her, a questioning look on her face. The three others were complete newcomers to her, but she was already looking at them with the same amount of reverence as Aayla and the bunnies.

"Lobo nan furd bispan, Numa," Aayla told the little bundle in her arms. "Juon boda doon si Anakin," she indicated the Chosen One.

"O bror nerra?" asked Numa.

Aayla laughed. "Ka, Ju ristot so si," she replied. "Hed lobo nan suulan bror numas, Ahsoka hed Barriss. Moe yami."

"Yami," Numa said obediently and waved to the three of them, who waved back.

"Ahsoka yusona o mijjaq," Aayla whispered to her.

"Okay," Numa said, and Aayla put her back on the ground. The girl hurried over to Ahsoka and threw her arms around the Togruta's waist. Ahsoka stepped backwards in surprise, and then looked up at Aayla, who winked. Ahsoka rolled her eyes and returned the hug. When Numa let go, she moved over to Barriss and hugged her next, and the Mirialan was more prepared than Ahsoka had been.

The tall figure of Anakin seemed to unnerve her a little, but she still hugged his leg. Anakin would have looked extremely awkward had this happened a few months ago, but he'd been hanging around Suzie long enough to get used to it and patted Numa's lekku, since hugging that this angle would be impractical.

Numa turned back to Aayla, and the Twi'lek knelt down to speak with her. "Numa," she said. "Jus poa goiger suulan ikut. Hed poli peasdu ji Nabat."

Numa momentarily looked like she'd been hit in the face, then her eyes fell to the floor and she mumbled, "Suul ken groiger koil?"

"Ka," nodded Aayla. "Koil si gine top vron bol. Top wolpit groiger herf busht hed vron ba shenabin ba shofesta. Ju ken re reyb queel, Numa, ger suul ulner ji ala ace fiste poli peasdu bol don fo ba worl reesha ba suul gif. Don non merp peeloo raso fo crell, groiger ji trysta slecksa. Si koil trin cu ullt?"

Numa nodded. "Ka," she sniffed. "Ool sortolsi ace ji katdan fisse cu daw yart, ger ber Ju tug boi. Don's nan vreelo sa oom."

"Drews ber, top reyb beran oom," Aayla declared. Numa looked up at her and saw the hard look in Aayla's eyes, the fire of courage and determination. "Ju dami ji ol juon sa suul, ger suul reyb ala pon ed suul ken. Loto liole Twi'leks arrlib nes suul instanb. Zonbi Numa. Spor ji pon. Poli peasdu rehenster?"

The others stepped back to watch as the two Twi'leks started to converse in their the Twi'lek's natural tongue. Through their ears, the only things they could pick up sounded like complete gobbledygook, but Aayla was allowing them all access to her mind, so they could see the translation into Basic, so they could all still follow to progress of the conversation. Numa spoke haltingly, stumbling over her words in a clear display of her reluctance to talk about her kidnapping and the death of her uncle and the treatment of the slaves, but gradually the whole story came out.

When Numa stopped talking a couple of minutes later and Aayla straightened up, the group exchanged glances.

"So," Anakin said. "The leader of the group is a Twi'lek himself. That explains how the attacks were so precise despite the victim count being so high. He must have had knowledge of the areas that they attacked that other slavers would not possess."

"Yes," Aayla agreed, her stomach clenching at the thought of one of her own kind enslaving others of her own kind. "He must be brought to justice. Though it sounds like there might be a second leader in this," she added, referring to Zamit the Nikto. Numa had not known his name or species, but the way he carried himself had suggested authority of some kind. "We'll have to capture them both if we can."

"And fast too," Barriss agreed. "It sounds like they are already planning out another attack and who knows how long it will take them to implement it. They've already got close to a hundred slaves as it is. It's going to be difficult to attack that base and protect them all as we do so."

"The mountains were a good choice," Anakin nodded. "Few people fly over those peaks, so it would have to be extreme luck to spot the campsite. We need to find this canyon."

"Numa can take us there no problem," Terriermon shrugged. "That's not the hard part, is it?"

"Yeah, the hard part will be stopping the slavers, freeing and protecting the slaves and capturing the leaders all at once," Ahsoka nodded. "She said that they have some kind of ship there, so they could take off at any moment if we attacked the base. And with that guy who knows the Twi'lek villages, they could try again. And we might not be lucky enough to have a prisoner escape from them that time."

"Good point, Ahsoka," nodded Anakin. "We need to find a way to cripple that ship at the same time as freeing the slaves."

"Perhaps Terriermon and I can scout out the area," Lopmon suggested. "If we get the lay of the land first then perhaps..."

A snarling sound cut her off. The group turned around to see that one of the three unconscious Gutkurr, the one trapped under the tree by Ahsoka, was beginning to stir. There were snuffling sounds from the other two as well. The group stepped back and Numa quickly darted behind Anakin, peering around his legs at the large predators, as they clambered to their feet.

"We don't have to fight them again, do we?" asked Ahsoka, as they turned to face the group.

"No," Anakin shook his head. "I have a feeling they'll get the idea that trifling with us is not a good idea in about two seconds."

The sound of heavy footsteps reached the ears of everyone and a few moments later, a large number of AT-RT walkers manned by clones, and several blurrgs ridden by the Twi'lek searchers moved out of the trees behind them. The Gutkurr looked intimidated by the large group and ran away. Aayla and Barriss combined their powers to lift the tree from the pinned one so it could scramble up and follow the others.

"Alright sirs," Rex called from his walker. "Looks like you had one hell of a fight over here."

"Indeed we did, Rex," nodded Anakin. "But we're all unharmed thankfully. Cham, we know where the slave camp is now. One of the prisoners escaped. She can lead us straight back to it, can't you, Numa?" he stepped aside to allow everyone to see the girl hiding behind his legs. Numa looked at the crowd staring at her nervously, scanning the crowd for any sign of her clone brothers, Waxer and Boil.

She didn't find them. But she did spot Suzie clambering down from Commander Bly's walker and the running towards her.

"Numa!" Suzie cried.

"Suzie!" Numa cried back. The two ran towards each other and embraced each other. The majority of the crowd smiled at the touching scene as the two friends, kept lightyears apart for the last half a year, were finally reunited. Henry and Rika weren't far away, and moved towards the two, smiling in relief at the sight of the girl. Numa smiled when she saw them and seemed unable to decide which one to hug first. For the present though, that didn't matter because Suzie still hadn't let go.

"You've gotta love things like this, right?" Terriermon said from Aayla's shoulder. "You get all the battling and the fighting and death thrown at you all the time, but then there are the little moments like this in between that really get to you, don't they?"

"I'm happy for Numa," Lopmon said. "But what'll become of her after we've freed the other slaves and have to leave the planet. Her uncle is dead now. She has no family left."

"We'll worry about that closer to the time," Anakin said. "Right now, we need to come up with one heck of a plan. Thankfully, that happens to be our speciality."

"Who's up for a suicide mission?" Ahsoka said, dryly. Barriss snorted.

"Well, while the whole plan still needs to be figured out," Aayla murmured. "I believe I have an idea about how to protect the slaves while we're implementing it. But, it does involve me breaking my promise to you, Anakin."

"Promise?" Anakin blinked. "Which promise?"

Aayla glanced wryly at him and said, "The one where I promised to try and not get captured again for a while."

* * *

Twi'leki translations

Gine ace – Why me

Gine hew juon ulner ji peasd ji ace? Ji pon? Top hew dana slets. Top asta queel bostor. Top hewn folio juon – Why did this have to happen to me? To us? We did nothing wrong. We never hurt anybody. We didn't deserve this

Jus herfo ji morf. Morf. Fross acer querpol. Fross acer ikut - I'm going to die. Die. Like my parents. Like my uncle

Jus poa. Ju yuson ji her home – I'm sorry. I want to go home

Suul sodig ace – You saved me

Arni. Drida non cu liolese? – Thank you. Where are the others?

Yami, sugi ei. Rezerla ace? – Hello, little one. Remember me?

Jus nan gliro ji prud suul. Res woki tosta – I'm so happy to see you. It's been ages.

Trin yalm. Ger o gaxi clomd lunalaquee – Not quite. But a long time nevertheless.

Lobo nan furd bispan, Numa. Juon boda doon si Anakin – These are our friends, Numa. This guy here is Anakin

O bror nerra? – A new brother

Ka, Ju ristot so si. Hed lobo nan suulan bror numas, Ahsoka hed Barriss. Moe yami – Yes, I suppose he is. And these are your new sisters, Ahsoka and Barriss. Say hello.

Ahsoka yusona o mijjaq – Ahsoka wants a hug.

Jus poa goiger suulan ikut. Hed poli peasdu ji Nabat – I'm sorry about your uncle. And what happened at Nabat.

Suul ken groiger koil? – You know about that.

Koil si gine top vron bol. Top wolpit groiger herf busht hed vron ba shenabin ba shofesta. Ju ken re reyb queel, Numa, ger suul ulner ji ala ace fiste poli peasdu bol don fo ba worl reesha ba suul gif. Don non merp peeloo raso fo crell, groiger ji trysta slecksa. Si koil trin cu ullt? - That is why we came back. We heard about an attack and came as quickly as possible. I know it must hurt, Numa, but you have to tell me exactly what happened back there in as much detail as you can. There are more people still in danger, about to become slaves. Is that not the case?

Ool sortolsi ace ji katdan fisse cu daw yart, ger ber Ju tug boi. Don's nan vreelo sa oom - They helped me to escape from the bad men, but then I got lost. There's so many of them

Drews ber, top reyb beran oom - Well then, we must free them

Ju dami ji ol juon sa suul, ger suul reyb ala pon ed suul ken. Loto liole Twi'leks arrlib nes suul instanb. Zonbi Numa. Spor ji pon. Poli peasdu rehenster? - I hate to ask this of you, but you must tell us all you know. Those other Twi'leks depend on you now. Please Numa. Talk to us. What happened yesterday?

* * *

More action from Anakin and Ahsoka this time. I felt they deserved it more since the last few arcs didn't contain any from either of them. They'll be getting more action scenes in future too, but they got to fight the Gutkurr this time. And now that Numa has been reunited with the others, the next chapter featuring Ryloth all set to be very action-packed. Hope you like it when it comes.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Focusing on the group on Coruscant searching for the mysterious Sith Lord. They're closing the trap around him now that they have found his base. They explore the area while the Sith Lord is not present and begin to gain a few more clues and insights as to how he's been operating in secret for so long.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 147 : Lair of Sidious**


	147. Lair of Sidious

Hello again, and here I am with the latest instalment of what is happening on the city planet of Coruscant. The hunt for Darth Sidious that I'm writing here is loosely based on the Star Wars book, _Labyrinth of Evil,_ written by James Luceno. I'm usually not a fan of Star Wars literature that can be bought in the stores, because it doesn't delve enough into action and tries to be too technical, in my opinion, but I read this one through to try and pick up the best hints of how they went about this. What happens in this chapter is not exactly the same, but it's pretty similar. Read on and enjoy.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 147:- Lair of Sidious**

* * *

The tall building in the centre of the Works had once been a large factory, taller than many of the surrounding buildings by some distance but the majority of it seemed to be similarly run down. As Renamon stood before it, staring upwards, it occurred to her that the easiest way in might be from the top. It seemed that nobody had used the entrances closer to the ground for many years, despite the fact that had life-form scanners and metal detectors adorning them. Evidently someone, and Renamon knew who (partially), didn't want to take any chances of an unwanted intruder going undetected.

But it seemed that Darth Sidious was as unprepared for a Digimon as the rest of the Galaxy.

Renamon couldn't help but smirk to herself. All that time ago, when they had first stood before the Jedi Council and introduced themselves, Kit Fisto's little idea not to introduce them to the Senate had seemed quite a small deal – something to give the Republic a slight edge in the fight against the Separatists. The repercussions of that little suggestion, on the other hand, had gone completely off the scale. Were it not for that little suggestion, the Jedi might still not even know of Darth Sidious' existence. Now, one of the Digimon was about to just walk into the base of the Sith Lord, unimpeded by any security measures.

Still, it never hurt to make sure. This was Sidious they were dealing with. He seemed to be quite unpredictable, and they had no way of knowing for sure that he did not know of the Digimon on some level.

Renamon stepped up to the door and pushed against it. She was surprised to find it was unlocked. Then again, there were many broken windows on the ground level so locking the front door might seem pointless. Especially since Sidious would know of most intruders thanks to his scanners.

She pushed the door open and looked inside into the dark interior, filled with broken down machinery and covered in dust. She fought the urge to sneeze as her sharp eyes adjusted to the darkness quickly and she saw a glowing panel nearby. She'd seen one of these before and knew how they worked. She stepped over to it, noting that she didn't trigger any alarms as she crossed the threshold, and then flipped a couple of switches and pushed the largest button.

There was a whirring noise as many small machines appeared to shut down. Renamon nodded. The scanners were now off. She stepped back to the door and raised a paw as a signal.

* * *

Not far away, Bane, Todo and Chewbacca saw her. The Bounty Hunter turned to the droid and said, "Well? Did she do it, as she says she did?"

"Yes," nodded Todo. "My scans now indicate that everything has been deactivated."

"And she triggered no silent alarm when she walked in?" Bane asked.

"Not a one," Todo replied. "That was surprisingly easy."

"Indeed," Bane looked up and stepped out of hiding. "I was hoping for a little more than that, but I suppose beggars can't be choosers."

"In what sense are you a beggar?" asked Todo. "You've made more money on this mission than almost any ten others you've done combined."

"Shut up, Todo," Bane growled. "Anyway, fancy Digimon not showing up on life-form scanners. That is most interesting."

Chewbacca laughed in a growling fashion and said, "Hu. Rooohu caoahanan waoowhao orwhoooh crqhuraao rarhoohuao aoacwosc."

"I don't have a clue what you said, furball," Bane said without looking over his shoulder. Chewbacca growled and fought the urge to punch him. They might still need Bane yet even though he'd already got them to the Sith Lord's lair.

"Don't take it personally," Todo murmured to him. "He's contemptuous with everyone."

Chewbacca grunted in acknowledgement, but still look annoyed.

In short order, they arrived at the doors. Renamon was no longer there and when Bane stepped inside and peered into the gloom, he saw the fox at the end of the corridor, looking around the corner and crouched close to the ground. Bane strode down the corridor to join her, his boots clunking on the metallic floor. Chewbacca and Todo followed and Renamon turned around as they approached.

"This place is filthy," Renamon muttered, brushing some dust that had already accumulated in her leg fur away. "It doesn't seem like anybody has been using this place for years."

"That may be, but this is definitely the right place," Bane replied. "The signals both lead to this very structure. It's likely that Sidious only uses this building for short periods and for similar things, like when he wishes to send messages to the Separatists or people like myself. After all, he doesn't need it for scheming. He can do that no matter whose company he is in."

"So that means he only uses a small part of the building," Renamon murmured.

"We only need to find that bit to find most of the clues we need," agreed Bane. "And it will most likely be easy to find. It should be the only part of the building that is still intact and fully operational. Todo, scan the building again. Modulate for any droid signals this time. We don't want to run into anything that might still be able to set off the alarm."

"I'm getting nothing, Bane," Todo replied. "Not even the tall droid that he uses to deliver the money to us. It's likely that he deactivates them when they're not in use." Todo shuddered. "I'm glad you don't do that with me."

"Make many more sideways comments and I might start considering it," Bane replied shortly. He then moved out into the corridor and strode through the dust, the others following behind him. "Even so," Bane said. "It would be a good idea to check out the whole building even after we find the right place. It's likely Sidious has several different methods for getting here. If we don't find who he is from the equipment he has here, then we must prepare for his inevitable arrival, no matter what method he uses."

"Then how do you suggest we go about this?" Renamon asked.

"Head for the centre of the factory, of course," Bane replied, with a grin that bared his fangs. "Because the centre of the factory contains the one thing that allows instant access to the whole building."

Renamon frowned in confusion, looking to Chewbacca to see if he had an explanation. The Wookiee glanced down at her and said, "Scro rrhuwocc, aoacwo cworchoahoawo woanwohoraaooorc."

"A service elevator?" repeated Renamon.

"Yes," Bane nodded. "Factories like this had a lot of heavy machinery that might need to be moved about. And that thing right up ahead would be how they got them up and down."

He was pointing to a pair of thick blast doors at the end of the dusty corridor ahead, with a pair of glowing controls beside them. Most of the other doors were operating by wall controls too, but the majority of them had long since fallen into disrepair. But this one appeared to be still active.

Renamon overtook Bane and bounded over to it, examining it carefully. The glow was faint and the controls were covered in a layer of dust almost as thick as everything else, but it was obviously still operational.

Even so...

"Are we sure it's safe?" Renamon asked. "This lift has got to be extremely old, doesn't it? As old as the rest of this dump?"

"It may be old," Todo moved over to the door and examined the controls with his scanners. "But it's in extremely good shape – much better than the rest of the building. Most of this place looks broken almost beyond repair but the elevator is in great condition. It appears to be used regularly, and often too."

"What level is it on right now, Todo?" Bane asked the droid, his eyes fixed on the doors before him.

"Right at the bottom, actually," Todo said. "And I don't mean this level. It appears that this building has several sub-basements and the elevator connects to those as well. The elevator is currently at the very bottom one of those."

"Interesting," Bane murmured. "We'll have to check that out later as well. For now, we'll head upwards. We need to find the room which Sidious broadcasts from whenever he wants to call someone." His finger had lifted and he had already pushed the button on the shaft controls. A loud whirring noise began to emanate from behind the doors, the machinery grinding as the lift was pulled upwards from the sub-basement.

The thick blast doors opened after several moments of this, to reveal the little room beyond that formed the elevator. Bane immediately stepped inside and Todo followed. Renamon stepped inside more warily and Chewbacca had to stoop slightly to get in. Clearly the lift had not been designed for large Wookiees.

"We'll start from the top and head down," Bane said, hitting one of the buttons of the wall. As the doors shut and the lift began to move slowly upwards, he explained his reasoning. "He'll probably want a place that overlooks the area quite a lot and somewhere with easy access to ships from any visitors like Dooku. That will most likely be somewhere near the top."

Renamon glanced around her at the bare walls. Unlike the rest of the building, the lift was relatively free of dust, and its condition appeared to be just as Todo had said. But Renamon couldn't help but be on edge. The sense of evil she'd been picking up ever since she saw the building seemed to be especially strong here, as if the walls of the lift were compressing as much of it into the small space as possible. It took conscious effort for her tail to not fluff up.

Nobody spoke as the lift moved up. It took a minute or two before it reached the summit, and the doors slid open again. One look outside the doors told them that this was not the right place – the building appeared to be just as old and in disrepair as the ground floor up here.

"Going down," Bane murmured and flipped a switch. The doors rolled shut and the lift moved down one level before the doors opened again. Again, the level which they were looking at seemed to have been completely unused for several years, with much more dust and rust everywhere. Renamon wondered if Sidious ever thought that his base might collapse on him at any moment. But it didn't seem that it would. Even if the inside was is disrepair, all the structural supports seemed to be well-maintained.

This process continued for several more floors, each one appearing to be just as poorly-kept as the rest of the building. However, about seven floors down from the top, the doors opened again and this time the scene was quite different. The walls appeared new and dust free. The floor was like smooth marble or some other kind of stone, and it was also devoid of dust. The door had opened into a corridor which was obviously very well-kept. It seemed to be used quite often.

"This is the spot," Bane leered and he boldly walked out of the lift and towards the other end of the corridor. Every nerve in Renamon's body was screaming at her to either turn around or go forward with all caution possible, but she ignoring them and followed Bane. The Bounty Hunter seemed to know what he was doing. If he could afford to be confident then so could she.

But she still let him go first, just in case.

Bane reached the end of the corridor and stood, staring into the room beyond it. He folded his arms triumphantly and said, "Well, well. Looks like we've found us the place where Sidious was standing several hours ago to ask if Secura was dead. Look."

Renamon and Chewbacca moved over beside him. The room beyond was extremely large, with a big opening at one end that was clearly a hangar door, just as Bane has said. Medium-sized ships like shuttles could quite easily make their way into this room and there was a large expanse of floor for them to land on. As if to prove it, there was already a large ship settled in the middle of the floor and Renamon felt a thrill of excitement when she saw it was the same ship that had delivered Bane's money to him earlier – more proof that they were in the right location. The floor seemed to be almost polished – it was so shiny. Though that could have just been them comparing it to the rest of the old building.

There were a few other corridors branching off from the main room, like the one they were standing in. And at the other end of the room from the hangar door was a large communications console, complete with large holotransmitter and many pads covered in buttons that could display various images for the recipient of his calls.

Renamon found herself already moving towards the console, determined to try and find out more about Sidious, when Chewbacca murmured, "Dusty," behind her. Renamon glanced back to find the Wookiee was staring at the floor and shaking his feet. The group had left a trail of dust down the corridor from their trek on the ground floor.

Renamon immediately began brushing down her feet as Todo said, "The Wookiee has a point. Sidious might notice this if he were to come back anytime soon."

"Then clean it up," Bane instructed. "We've got more important things to focus on."

The Duros strode towards the console, and Renamon faintly heard Todo muttering, "Oh sure. He gets me back to doing housework at the first opportunity. If only I wasn't so loyal." Renamon chuckled and then followed Bane as Todo attempted to figure out how to clean up the dust. Chewbacca was hot on her heels.

Bane leaned over the communications console and placed a hand on it, humming thoughtfully. "Recently used," he said. "Within a few hours I'd say. That puts around the same time as Sidious' call."

"Do you think this thing will contain anything that might help us to track him down further?" Renamon asked.

"We won't know until we have a look," Bane said.

"Raananoooh scwo," Chewbacca lowed and shouldered past Bane to stand before the console. The Wookiee seemed to know his way around, because he only had to push a few buttons before the holotrasmitter began to display the recorded conversation that Bane and Sidious had been having earlier that self-same day. But, even from this side, Sidious' face was as hidden beneath that dark hood as it had always been.

"That hood's going to make things difficult," Renamon sighed. "What's the betting that he takes that hood off at any point during his transmissions?"

"Not high, if you ask me," Bane shook his head. "He wouldn't want to risk an interception by the Republic. Even people who might know his true identity like Dooku probably don't see his face when he calls them up. Still, it never hurts to check, does it? What else have you got for us, Wookiee?"

Chewbacca flipped another switch and the hologram began to show the same recording Bane had showed them earlier at his own hideout. Renamon reflected how odd it was that in the space of one day, she had visited the secret base of two of the most wanted people in the entire Republic.

Chewbacca pushed another button and a brand new recording began to display itself. It still featured Darth Sidious' mysterious cloaked figure of course, but the other one contained the bearded visage of Count Dooku.

Dooku bowed low and said. "My Master. I take it that you have news of where Knight Secura is heading?"

"Indeed I do, Lord Tyranus. Everything is transpiring exactly as I predicted it would. Skywalker and Tano are heading for one, while Secura and Offee are heading for the other. And the latter two have chosen to go to the station in the atmosphere of Rhen Var. They believe that Viceroy Gunray will be there waiting to be captured. However, they will get a nasty surprise when they encounter you there instead."

"As you wish, Master. I shall have that listening post garrisoned with droids immediately to take out any clone troopers that accompany the Jedi. Neither of them will escape alive."

"Offee is of no consequence. I want your main focus to be on Secura. It doesn't matter if the other one gets away with her life but if Secura is not dead by the time I receive another transmission from you, I shall be m..."

Renamon slammed a paw down on the button that paused the recording. Bane and Chewbacca looked at her quizzically, and the fox said, "Sorry, but I can't listen to that any more than I have to. Every time I hear that guy plotting to kill Aayla it sickens me to my stomach and I get an urge to destroy the holotransmitter."

"Well, that would be a bit of a giveaway that we were here," Bane chuckled. "You might want to store than anger just in case we run into the real deal. Nevertheless, we are wasting time here. There's something else that we have to investigate first, before Sidious decides he needs to come back for some reason. You, Wookiee," Chewbacca turned and glared at him. "Chewbacca, whatever, keep monitoring this thing and see if you can come up with anything else. Renamon, you and I will head off. We need to check out the sub-basements."

Bane strode off back to the elevator as his word was a final one and there was no arguing. Renamon scowled at Bane's pretentious attitude, but she knew he was right. If Darth Sidious used the sub-basements for something then it would be a good idea to give them a good scouting out and see if they could find any more clues. It would be better if they could unmask Sidious without getting too close to him if possible.

Chewbacca glanced warily at Bane's retreating back and said, "Rooohu churcwo rooohu ohrawhao aooo rroo raanoowhwo?"

"Don't worry, Chewbacca," Renamon replied quietly. "I still don't completely trust the guy, but I get the feeling that Aayla was right. I don't think he'll betray us – he's gotten us this far without trying anything after all. Nevertheless, I'll keep an eye on him. He won't get me a second time. You stay here and see what you can find."

The Wookiee nodded reluctantly and turned back to the console. Renamon bounded after Bane before she had to hear Sidious continuing to plot the assassination of her Twi'lek friend. She caught up quickly as Bane strode past Todo, who was doing his best to clear away the dust trail that they had left when they entered this room in the first place. Renamon spared the droid a sympathetic glance and Todo noticed and gave her a weary shrug in response, before going back to what he was doing.

Bane and Renamon entered the lift again and after Bane pushed the button, the doors closed and the lift began to move slowing back downwards. There was a momentary silence between the two, Renamon watching Bane carefully out of the corner of her eye. After a few moments, Bane murmured, "You've spent a lot of time with the Jedi Order over the last few months, have you not?"

"Yes," Renamon replied, a little warily. "Why?"

"I was just wondering what they might do with the information we provide them," Bane said. "How would they respond when they finally find out who Darth Sidious is?"

"Hard to say," Renamon shrugged. "It probably depends on who it is. But if I know the Jedi at all, they'll probably send some of the more powerful members of the Jedi Council to try and arrest him."

"Hmph," Bane snorted. "It would be a much easier and quicker job to just catch him off-guard and wipe him out. Leaving enemies alive is a mistake. They can come back and attempt to get you again later on if you do that?"

"Perhaps," Renamon said. "But it also demonstrates that you have mercy and a good heart to not kill your enemy even if they deserve it for everything they've done. Aayla could have struck Ventress or Dooku down when she had the chance but she didn't. But, of course, you wouldn't know much about mercy, would you? I saw that from the way you gunned down those men back there."

"I am practical in that way. But, you're right, I don't use mercy. And neither does Darth Sidious," Bane pointed out. "With enemies like that, the best plan is to eradicate them. But the Jedi Order won't do that. Are they too weak?"

"Weak?" Renamon raised a brow. "No. They are not weak. If you ask me, keeping your enemy alive takes more strength than simply killing him. They would be unwilling to sacrifice their morals despite the horrendous danger this may cause. If worst comes to worst, then they'll kill him out of self-defence, but only as a last resort. Only if things get so bad that there is little alternative. Killing them would be easy. Showing mercy would be right."

Bane fell silent and made no further comment, but Renamon could tell he was contemplating her words. How he would take them was a mystery to her. She sniffed, deciding not to try and figure Bane out too much and allowed her own thoughts to drift to their current situation.

Something about what Darth Sidious had said up in the room above was currently niggling at her brain. She frowned as she tried to pinpoint what it was, but she got the feeling it was fairly important. Then she remembered that Sidious had referred to Count Dooku as 'Lord Tyranus.' Renamon frowned. She'd never heard of Count Dooku using that name, but there was something about the name Tyranus that sounded familiar. But she couldn't place where she'd heard it before.

But, before she could think further on it, the lift came to a stop and the doors opened. Renamon peered into the darkness and saw a bunch of large crates dotted around the place, as well as large support columns that went into the ground to keep the tall building up above balance. This place was almost as dusty and dirty as everything else, but Renamon could still feel that horrible, malignant sense of evil around this place. It almost stank of it as much as the lift.

Renamon sprang through the open doors and came to rest on one of the nearby crates, her eyes slowly adjusting to the darkness. She could see little more than what she could already see. The whole place was filled with crates, and there were a few doors set in the walls the presumably lead to other sub-basements, probably similar to this one.

Bane had stepped out of the lift behind her and walked a short distance until he stopped behind her and knelt down towards the ground. He pushed a button on his wrist-com and a small light flicked on in one of them, in a bright beam like that of a torch. The Duros aimed it at the floor, and a slow smirk spread over his features as he did so.

"Well now," he smirked. "Will you have a look at this? Looks like I was right."

Renamon peered over the edge of the crate and her eyes focused on the light patch illuminated on the ground. She fought a sharp intake of breath when she realised that the ground was earthy and appeared to be made of soil. Apparently nobody had thought to put any flooring down here. Why bother, it was just a basement that was fairly deep underground.

And in the soil, clearly visible in the light Bane was providing, were a large number of footprints. And the footprints seemed to be going in both directions – towards and away from the lift. There were many sets of tracks, but they all appeared to be made by the same shoes.

"Sidious," Renamon breathed. "It's got to be his tracks."

"Exactly," Bane stood up and moved the torch-beam, following the line of footprints away from the elevator with it. "The real question is, where are they going? What does Sidious have down here that warrants so many frequent trips?"

"One way to find out," Renamon said, leaping to another crate that overlooked the line of footprints further into the room. Bane activated the rockets on his boots and hovered into the air, aiming his light down at the floor and hovering through the room as he tracked the progress of the footsteps. Renamon bounced lithely from crate to crate, both of them staying off the ground to ensure that their own footprints were not added to the mix.

The footprints lead to one of the doors, which Bane quickly opened with a push to the console. He hovered through into the other room and Renamon sprang towards the door, planting her feet on the side of it and rebounding off into the room beyond to land on another crate. She clambered over several more as the two of them carefully followed the trail. There were no branching trails – all the footprints were following the same trackway, implying that Sidious walked this way with a purpose.

And then they came across the answer. At first the footprints seemed to be heading towards the wall at the other end of the room, but as they got closer, Renamon realised that they weren't. There was no door, but set in the wall beyond was an enormous hole that lead off into the darkness and the footprints led into said hole. Except it wasn't a hole – it was a tunnel. They stopped by the entrance and Bane shone his light into the dark, but it only reached a short way before it stopped permeating the darkness. The tunnel was long, foreboding and very, very dark.

"Well then," Bane said, settling down on another crate. "This must be how Sidious usually gets too and from this place without being spotted by the population."

"A tunnel?" Renamon asked. "A tunnel running right underneath the Works and, presumably, the Senate District? How long would it have taken him to make this?"

"Oh, he wouldn't have," Bane shook his head. "I personally have never used them before, but its well known in the criminal underworld that Coruscant is practically perforated with lots of tunnels, almost all of them joined together to create a large maze-like structure. This could potentially lead to a huge number of places on this planet depending on how far you travel and which turns you take while you're doing it."

"And Sidious has learned of these tunnels then?" Renamon mused.

"Evidently," Bane nodded. "It makes sense. He may occasionally fly over here, but this must be the way he normally sneaks away. Simpler than flying in a ship where anyone can see you." He chuckled. "I'm beginning to admire this guy more and more. He has a great talent for getting the job done without raising any suspicion whatsoever or leaving many traces behind. He's not as good as myself, of course, but he's still pretty good."

"We're not here to admire him, we're here to expose him," Renamon said warningly. "And now that we've found his entrance, we're still no closer to finding out his identity."

"Actually, we could be," Bane smirked. "The real question is, whereabouts is his other exit? If we could find that, then maybe we'd be getting closer to tracking him down."

"It probably comes up somewhere in the Senate District," Renamon shrugged. "Like perhaps beneath the Senate Building itself or under that building where most of the Senators live – 500 Republica." She sighed and said, "Alright, I admit it's clever. He could simply slip down into the basement, don his disguise and then head over here. He is one sneaky devil."

"But you see, this is where he's made a potential mistake," Bane replied. "Getting so closely involved in the Senate and giving himself an alias like this could be his undoing. Because, if he wants to maintain appearances, he'll have to shed his disguise before he ascends out of the tunnels. And that would mean having to take that cloak off."

_Oh, he's good,_ Renamon thought to herself. But she was not planning on letting Bane know she'd thought that, so she said, "So, if we can find the other end of his route through the tunnels and stay out of sight there... then we might be able to find out his identity if the machines here don't yield any more results."

"Exactly," Bane said, nodding slowly. "Are you up for a little tunnel exploration?"

Renamon's eyes narrowed in determination and she said, "Yes. If it means we can get a look under that hood then I'd go to Anubimon's realm if I have to. Should we call the others to bring them down here?"

"No," Bane said. "You're going to have to go in alone."

Renamon blinked. "Alone?" she asked warily. "Why alone?"

Bane smirked. "Scared?" he asked.

"Scared, no," Renamon glowered. "Unsure whether I should go somewhere where I cannot keep an eye on you, yes."

"Don't you trust me yet?" Bane asked, and he appeared to be trying to look hurt, but he wasn't doing a brilliant job.

"I think the day I trust you completely is the day that Orto Plutonia becomes a boiling desert," Renamon replied dryly. "You might have gotten us this far, Bane, but perhaps you are just waiting for the right opportunity to make you move, which could be during the point where I'm off getting lost in these tunnels. Didn't you say they were a maze-like structure?"

"Yes, and that's my point," Bane said. "You'll need someone to guide you through the in the right direction to the Senate District. Its several kilometres away from here, and I highly doubt that Sidious walks all the way from there to here every time he wishes to send out a message. His trail will probably disappear soon, and when it does, we'll have to guess where we're going. Unless I stay here and guide you through to the right location."

Renamon's suspicious glare remained in place. "Anything else?" she asked.

"As a matter of fact, yes," Bane nodded. "I..." Renamon blinked as she saw Bane looking slightly uncomfortable about what he was going to say next. "I... hate to say it but... you're skills at remaining unseen are even better than mine, thanks to that little perception filter of yours. If any of us have a chance of sneaking into a place where a Sith Lord could be found, then it's you. And, as I often think, the less people there are doing one task, the better."

The confession almost sent Renamon reeling. She could hear respect in Bane's voice now, instead of the usual contempt. He was still far from anything that could even be remotely called a friend, but she could tell that he respected her quite highly now. She wasn't sure what the turning point had been, but it was very obvious now. And she respected him too. She'd seen his prowess in battle and his skills at his chosen profession. Somehow they had achieved a level of mutual respect, even if they were a long distance from trust and friendship.

For the first time, Renamon really began to believe that Bane would not betray them. Perhaps Aayla was right after all, and Bane's declaration that he always carried out the task (unless bribed) was accurate.

Renamon frowned, but eventually she said, "Alright then Bane. I'm going to go out on a limb here and trust you. I'll head into the tunnels and have a scout around. But I should warn you..."

"...that if I betray that trust and you survive, I'll feel the full force of the Jedi order and everything you Digimon can throw at me, which is supposed a whole lot more than I can imagine," Bane recited. "Yes, I got the message. And I have to say, that after I saw some of your skills against those thieves back there, I am a lot more wary about going after any of you guys again. I hadn't seen anything like that since... well, since your friend attacked Teska."

Renamon smirked. "Well, I glad that you understand now. How are you going to guide me?"

"Take this," Bane reached into his pocket and pulled out a small handheld communicator. "I'll head back upstairs and Todo and I will monitor your progress. There's a tracking device built into it. If we lay it over a holographic map of the area, which Todo should be able to produce, we can lead you towards the Senate District. Then it'll be up to you. We'll join you when we can."

"I thought you didn't like putting your trust in other people," Renamon said, examining the communicator.

"Most of the people I work with are like me," Bane pointed out, chuckling at the irony. "I don't trust them anymore than you trust me. And none of them have your abilities, anyway. I believe that it'll be fine. Now, you better get going. I'll go back up now."

"Wish me luck," Renamon smirked. Before Bane could say anything else, she sprang off the crate and into the tunnel. The communicator clutched in her paw, she shot into the darkness, sticking to the wall as much as she could. She stopped when she lost sight of Bane's light behind her and then settled close to the ground, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom. Renamon could see well in darkness. She only needed the smallest amount of light and she could see just as easily as if it was day.

She remembered the old days when she and Terriermon fought alongside Guilmon when the Devas invaded. Between them, their main sense were extremely acute. She had the best eyes, Guilmon the best nose and Terriermon the best ears. Right now, the only light she had in here was the faint, red bleeping being given off by the communicator in her hand, but it was enough.

When her eyes did adjust, she found that she could still the footprints in the dirt in the middle of the tunnel. Sticking close to the wall still, she followed the line of footprints slowly, keeping an eye out for any deviations into other tunnels. She was determined to follow the trail until its end, but she didn't want to add to it with her own tracks. Ignoring her disgust, she started trailing her tail along the ground behind her, wiping out her own tracks just in case Sidious did walk past here.

There were tunnels all over the place. Several of them branched off into nowhere. One of them had a dead end after only about three feet into it. The tunnel she was following curved and bent around only fractionally – it was mostly a straight line. All the others seemed to bend in all directions from what she could see down them.

She followed the tunnel for about two-hundred yards or so before she suddenly came to something unexpected. The tunnel suddenly narrowed by an enormous amount, until it was only about two feet wide. Renamon blinked, placing a hand on the wall and staring down at the ground. Sure enough the footprints led right through the narrow gap. Did that mean Sidious had to squeeze his way through this every time he came over here? It looked very undignified, but evidently the ideal hideout was enough of a lure for him to quash that.

Renamon stepped into the middle of the corridor and threw herself at the thin gap in the tunnel walls. She twisted side-on as she did, slipping straight through the gap. As she had thought, the tunnel widened after a few feet and she rolled into the wider tunnel on the other side. She crouched down and examined the floor, but the footprint trail ended a few feet away from the thin gap. It seemed that it the gap was the reason why the trail had led this far – a vehicle didn't have a hope of fitting through it. But it seemed like that ended here. From now, Renamon would have to be guided to know she was going the right way.

She lifted the communicator to her mouth and said, "Bane, you there?"

"Reading you loud and clear," came the reply. "What's happening?"

"The footprint trail has ended," Renamon informed him. "Looks like you were right. Sidious got on a vehicle as soon as he could. I'm going to follow the tunnel on its current course until you tell me to do otherwise."

"Good," Bane answered. "I'm heading back up to the others as we speak. We'll set up a map system to guide you through."

Renamon nodded and lowered the communicator, then dashed off into the tunnel system as fast as she could. She might not know if she was going the right way, but she knew she had a lot of distance to cover and she had to do it quickly. There was so much at stake and they were so close. She had no intention of failing.

* * *

Chewbacca was beginning to really understand why Renamon was getting so angry at Sidious all the time. He might not have known everyone for that long compared to her, but the close family atmosphere of the group had really gotten to him. He felt like he was a part of the group already, and it hadn't even been a week. And now, standing her and going over the recordings of one of the most dangerous men in the Galaxy, he was beginning to consider smashing the transmitter as well.

He sat there listening to all the plotting and the scheming between Count Dooku and Darth Sidious. Occasionally Sidious would have conversation with Nute Gunray or General Grievous, and once or twice he would contact somebody else, but Dooku was the main recipient of his calls. Chewbacca heard all the plotting that they'd been doing, including the discussion between them about the construction of the listening posts in Kashyyyk's atmosphere, and those of Yavin and Rhen Var.

The Wookiee felt himself snarling. One main culprit for the invasion of his world was still uncaught. He was more than happy to help out until they did catch him.

Sadly, none of the holograms featured any mention as to the secret identity of the Sith. Never once did he take off his hood either. He remained a mystery, with that creepy voice and the hidden eyes.

Who was he?

Eventually, Chewbacca gave up with the recordings and began going through the files of the console – it was more than just a communication device. It contained a number of files that included construction plans for various bases and schematics for several new weapons. Chewbacca scanned through them. They kept talking about plans for the individual state of the war, but never did they give any indication as to Sidious' identity. Nor did they give any indication as to his plans for the whole galaxy. They knew his motives would be to wipe out all Jedi, but it didn't say how he planned to do that either.

Evidently his personal plans were kept close to his chest and within his mind. It was only the plans for the rest of the Separatists that he wrote down.

A door to one of the side-rooms opened and Todo walked out, brushing dust of his small metallic hands. "Well," he said. "That solves the mystery of where that droid that delivered the credits has gone – it's in there, deactivated with a bunch of others as well. How's it going over there?"

Chewbacca shook his head and stepped backwards from the main control console. The thing didn't seem to be yielding up any more results than what it had already given, which seemed to lead to about nothing. The only thing that Chewbacca had found was that the Separatists had set up a secret base on Hoth, which they should probably check out at a later date. But apart from that, zilch.

The Wookiee turned to look back towards the lift, watching it apprehensively. He didn't like the idea of Renamon being alone with Bane. Not because she couldn't handle herself, but because Bane did not play fair. Chewbacca had met people like Bane in the past. You usually had to tread around them very carefully.

"I wouldn't worry too much about your friend," Todo said, stepping over to the console and hovering up on his rocket-feet to take a good look at it. "He may be a money-grabber, but the only way he'd turn on you now is if Darth Sidious spoke to him and offered him more than thirty million. But the chances of that happening are small – Bane always focussed solely on the mission instead of trying to get more from the target. It was only because he was torturing your friend Aayla that she was able to put in the offer. He wouldn't have considered it otherwise. And I guarantee you that he's not thinking of turning your friend over."

Chewbacca studied the droid for a moment. While Bane might be one thing, his droid seemed to be honest enough. Chewbacca was more likely to trust his word than Bane's.

Todo suddenly hummed as he inspected something on the console dashboard. "Oh, that's interesting," he said.

Before he could go any further, the door to the lift opened and Bane walked out of it. He was noticeably alone. Chewbacca reacted immediately and got to his feet, but the Duros merely gestured to him and said, "Calm down, Wookiee. Your friend, Renamon, is fine. We found an entrance to a large tunnel system in the basements, which is how Sidious gets to this place most of the time. She's gone to explore them a little bit." He raised a wrist to his mouth and spoke into a com on his wrist. "Renamon, come in. What's happening now?"

"Nothing much," Renamon's voice responded, and Chewbacca relaxed visibly when he heard the voice. "This tunnel looks as desolate as it did two minutes ago. How's that map thing coming along?"

"We're just about to implement it," Bane turned and said, "Todo, I need you to bring up a map of the area, and track the communicator I gave to Renamon. We need to try and guide her to the Senate District."

"Okay, but before I do that..." Todo began.

"I want it done now, Todo," Bane glared at him.

Todo hesitated, but said, "Actually I really think that you'll want to see this, Bane. It could be quite important."

Bane stared at him for a moment and then sighed, "Fine, what is it?"

"I found a file on this thing that was password-encrypted," Todo turned back to the console. "Nothing too complicated though – I was able to bypass it easily enough. It was hidden behind a firewall that might escape the notice of most analysts, but I found it quickly enough. Anyway, this is what it is. I think I stumbled onto something pretty big."

A new hologram was suddenly displayed in the transmitter. Bane, Chewbacca and Todo stared up at it, and the two pairs of eyes that could widen did so at the sight of it. It depicted a large sphere, glowing red, and filled with channels and rivets, as well as something that resembled a conical indentation on one section of the top half.

Bane started at it for a few seconds, and a feeling of foreboding settled over even him. After a moment, he murmured, "Well, that's big."

"Huge, actually," Todo said. "I've never seen anything on this scale before."

Chewbacca grunted in agreement. He could feel his fur puffing up already.

"What?" Renamon's voice broke through the com on Bane's wrist. "What's going on back there?"

"Todo appears to have found the plans to a space station," Bane replied. "A very, very large one at that. The whole galaxy would know if something on this scale was being built, so I can only assume it hasn't been built yet."

"Probably not," agreed Todo. "Look at this." He flipped another button and a series of Aurebesh words appeared right underneath the hologram being depicted, announcing to everyone who could read what this thing was.

Bane read it aloud:- "The Death Star. The Galactic Empire's Greatest Weapon."

"Death Star sounds appropriate," Todo agreed. "It's not as big as a star, but these readings say it will be the size of a small moon. This thing will take years and years to build."

"But the name itself is not the real deal," Bane went on. "It's the next bit. The Galactic Empire's Greatest Weapon. What Galactic Empire? There's never been an empire the comprises the whole galaxy. Not even during the old Sith Wars generations ago. There's only ever been the Republic. So if someone's calling this Death Star, which hasn't been built yet, the weapon of the Galactic Empire... then I think that we've just gotten a glimpse of Darth Sidious' plan."

"He's going to turn the Republic into an Empire?" Renamon sounded alarmed. "But Empire's greatly oppress millions of people, don't they? There's no democracy, and almost no government. Sidious is planning to take almost total control of absolutely everything."

"That's about the size of things," Bane said. "Sidious has some pretty big plans. It's not just the elimination of the Jedi he wants – he wants to rule the whole Galaxy."

"But how is he planning to turn the Republic into an Empire?" Renamon asked. "One Senator couldn't do all that, could they?"

"Sidious must have a higher position in the Senate than we thought," Bane replied. "It wouldn't be like him to make plans unless he was sure he could put them in motion with success. Of course, the war isn't going his way right now, but if he pulls things out of the fire, then everything the Jedi stand for will die with them. This guy is very, _very_ ambitious."

The growl in Renamon's next words was easily discernable. "We have to find this guy!" she said. "Every single new thing that we learn about him just adds to the list of reasons why he must be taken down. I always thought that he just wanted to be leader of the Republic. Creating an Empire is a whole different situation. Get up that map and tell me where to start looking."

"Todo, do it," nodded Bane. Todo quickly did as he was instructed and pulled up a large map of the surface of Coruscant, featuring a large section of the Works and the Senate District nearby. There were two flashing indicators on it, both in the Works. Bane knew that one of them would be where they were right now, the console Todo was using pulling up its own location. Todo had also tuned in the frequency of Renamon's communicator, which was being indicated by the other dot.

"Good," said Bane. "Now, we need to direct Renamon through the tunnel system towards the Senate District to the best of our ability. Renamon, report in whenever you reach a new turn in the tunnel ahead."

"Got it," Renamon nodded. "I'm following the course of the main tunnel for the moment. Am I heading in the right direction?"

"Yes," Bane nodded. "It looks like you'll be heading slap-bang into the Senate District if you continue on your current path. Your Wookiee friend and I will guide you. When you reach the area, you're going to have to search for more clues, so we can try and determine where he goes down. You better get a move on."

"Just watch me," Renamon said. "I'm a fast runner."

As the com crackled out and the dot on the hologram began to move at a slightly faster tilt. Bane watched it for a few moments, and then turned to his droid. "Todo, go back to the ship and await my signal. When Renamon finds what we're looking for, I'll call you in, and we can go over-ground to catch up with her in the ship."

"You want me to go out there on my own?" Todo looked alarmed. "But there might be more thieves or brigands out there, or even rogue droids. You know I'm not much of a fighter, Bane."

"Todo, you can fly," Bane stated stiffly. "Just go over the buildings and do what I tell you."

"Oh. Right," Todo said slowly. "You sure you won't need me for anything else?"

"Our Wookiee accomplice here seems to be good with machines too," Bane said. "He can cover for you while you're gone. Now get moving. And return the elevator shaft to the bottom floor after you've used it. If Sidious returns and finds the lift isn't waiting for him, then he'll know something's up."

Todo sighed. "Alright. I'm on my way," he said, as he turned around and headed for the lift. Chewbacca watched him go momentarily and then turned around to watch the little dot that indicated where Renamon was on the map, steadily heading towards the distant Senate District at a speed that implied she was pelting along at quite high speed.

They were dividing their forces. It was when things like that happened where things went wrong in the Wookiee's experience. He suppressed a concerned growl, and followed Renamon's progress.

* * *

Down in the maze below, Renamon continued to run at high speed, curling around the corners so fast she was almost running up the walls. She would have been going even faster were she on all fours, but she had to hold the communicator in one paw to ensure that it didn't get damaged. Her tail streamed out behind her as she ran along.

It had been quite a while since Renamon had been required to do a sustained run like this and despite the situation that was surrounding it, she was finding herself immensely enjoying the experience. She was fit enough so that even after a couple of miles of the long run, she was still full of energy and was only panting slightly. A Hyperspeed card would have gotten her there faster, but the D-Arc wouldn't work with that function since Rika at the other end of the Galaxy.

Renamon seemed to require very little guidance, as the tunnel seemed to run relatively straight and true towards the distant Senate District, apart from its meanderings round curves and corners. There were a couple of moments where the Digimon found herself at a loss as to how to proceed, usually when a fork in the trail occurred ahead of her and her tunnel opened up into two. However, Bane seemed to be a good guide and the tunnels he suggested kept her on course.

Apart from her paw-falls, total silence reigned in the tunnel, except for one moment where Renamon heard another sound which brought her to a halt and caused her to instinctively crouch down the ground. Her ears pricked, and she wished she had Terriermon's hearing, as she listened carefully for any repetition of the noise. Sure enough, she heard again – a groaning sound, coupled with a few loud shouts in a language that Renamon couldn't place.

However, it still sounded like it was relatively far away, so Renamon proceeded down the tunnel anyway and, sure enough, the sound faded. Nevertheless, Renamon tried to make her paw-falls softer, so as to draw as little attention as possible, just in case there were many other people down here. Because Renamon was willing to bet that not many of them would be friendly.

It did not help when she came across a human skeleton. She paused next to it and stared down at it, the body slumped at an unusual angle. The man had obviously died convulsing wildly, his arms and legs were at ridiculous angles and his mouth was open in a silent, never-ending scream. Renamon felt her stomach curl. It resembled the victim of a Sith Lightning attack. She moved on quickly.

Eventually, after about twenty minutes or so, Bane's voice broke through the communicator. "The holomap is saying that you've just reached the edge of the Senate District," he said. "You still following the same tunnel?"

"Yes," nodded Renamon, pausing in her run to speak. "And it looks to be holding its course for the majority of the journey."

"Well," Bane's voice came through. "It should be no surprise to you when you find out what direction you're heading in. If I calibrate the average trajectory that you've been taking so far and then we assume that the rest of the tunnel will continue in the same or a similar fashion then it should lead you directly to 500 Republica."

Renamon shuddered. She knew Senator Chuchi lived in that building. The idea of sleeping in the same building as a Sith Lord as sneaky and evil as this one was a sickening thought. She wondered how Chuchi got to sleep at night, and then realised that she probably didn't. She couldn't not feel sorry for her.

"Alright," Renamon said. "I'll head there, then. Anything I should know."

"The building's roughly about another kilometre and a half away from your current position," Bane replied. "I've heard that its one of the most heavily protected buildings in the entire Galaxy, so be careful as you approach. Attacking from the air is virtually impossible, and there are bound to be a few guards of some kind patrolling around, possibly even in the basements.

"Well, if they aren't droids, they'll never see me c..." Renamon suddenly stopped and looked up sharply, staring into the tunnel ahead and her ears pricking. She shut her eyes and focused on her hearing. Bane tried to contact her but she said, "Shh," and kept listening.

A faint sound that was gradually getting louder was registering in her ears. The sound of an engine and the whoosh of some kind of fast moving vehicle that was coming from directly ahead. In the tunnel she was in.

Renamon's eyes snapped open and her heart started to pound. She located a side-tunnel in the wall about three metres ahead and flew towards it, diving into it and dashing down it for about twenty metres before she turned around and crouched low to the ground, throwing up her perception filter for good measure. A light was beginning to fill the tunnel ahead of her, a light which resembled a head-beam from an oncoming speeder. Renamon backed off even further as the light intensified.

Then, the vehicle shot past the entrance to her tunnel and whooshed off down the course that she had just taken to get here. Renamon only caught a glimpse but she saw that it was a speeder bike of some description, and that the figure riding it had a very large billowing black cloak that made him practically invisible in the darkness. He may or may not have had a hood – Renamon had not had enough time to check.

Yet Renamon knew, without a doubt, that she had just seen the second and more powerful of the two Sith. She had just laid eyes on the real Darth Sidious, but it had been such a brief glimpse that she had been unable to make anything out.

She quickly ran back to the entrance of the tunnel and peered round the corner in the direction the bike had taken. However, Darth Sidious was already out of sight, and the noise of his speeder was beginning to fade into the distance.

It didn't take a genius to figure out where he was going.

Renamon quickly activated the communicator and said, "Bane, you have a problem. Darth Sidious is heading your way. He just shot right past me and he's heading down the tunnel I've taken. He must be going to send out another message to somebody."

"Oh, things just got more interesting," Bane replied. "Did you get a look at his face?"

"No, he went by too quickly," Renamon replied. "But you have to get out of there before he arrives, otherwise you could both be in very big trouble. We don't want to alert him to our presence unless it's necessary, and he's heading your way very fast. What do we do now?"

There was a slight, but still quite agonising, pause from the other side. Then Bane said, "This couldn't be going better. This is a golden opportunity for us. Carry on down that tunnel and try and find the place where Sidious began his journey, and be sure to avoid any guards he might have in that area. Your Wookiee friend and I will hide here and observe what he's doing. We'll report to you when he starts to head back your way. Meanwhile, you can pick out a good hiding spot. When he sheds his costume, you're going to be there, waiting for him."

"What if he senses your presence while he's there?" Renamon asked.

"We will not do anything to draw attention to ourselves, but if he does sense us then I'll be able to hold him off. I have a few special tricks in store for any occasion where I might have to go up against a Sith Lord, just in case. Now get moving."

"Don't get yourself or Chewbacca killed, Bane," Renamon scowled. "I might have to have a few words with you if you do." She signed off and lowered the communicator. She glanced down at the floor and she noticed that the passing speeder had created a small disturbance in the ground below her feet, and a large amount of small dirt and dust particles were drifting about the tunnel as a result of the vehicles high-speed passage.

Renamon took one last look over her shoulder, in the direction her quarry had taken. She'd come so close to him it was almost scary. She had felt the intense wave of evil, stronger than ever in his presence. She hoped that Bane and Chewbacca would be alright anywhere near him, but for the moment she had to focus on her own objective.

She hurried off down the tunnel before the signs of the passing of the speeder could vanish completely. She was going all out now, pounding down the tunnels and no longer bothering to try and keep herself quite, though she was still like a leopard in the night. She had to find the correct location before Sidious returned and since Sidious was heading the other way, the others in her group would no longer be able to guide her. She was on her own in the maze, and she prayed to Fanglongmon, Anubimon, or anyone who might be listening, that she found the correct path.

* * *

At the other end of the communicator link, Chewbacca was busy with the console, making frantic adjustments to wipe its memory banks so that Sidious wouldn't suspect that it had been used in his absence, getting rid of the Coruscant map that they had generated and re-encrypting the plans for the Death Star. As an added precaution, he turned the life-form and metal detectors surrounding the building back on, just in case Sidious decided to double-check the security. This had one unfortunate side-effect though – there would be no leaving the facility unless they could turn them off again. They would be stuck inside until Sidious left.

He then quickly began to power down the console, until it was offline once more. Hopefully the Wookiee had done a good enough job at it, so that Sidious wouldn't pick up on anything. And now, they had to make sure that they themselves were not found.

"Ohacraao ohwo waoo whoooh?" Chewbacca turned to ask Bane, ignoring the fact that Bane didn't speak his language.

"Pick a hiding place, Wookiee," Bane replied shortly, taking a guess as to his words. "And then stay in it until the situation passes."

Bane suddenly activated his rockets and soared upwards. Chewbacca watched his progress as the Durous ascended towards the ceiling. He found a small niche on top of one of the horizontal supports near the ceiling and stood on top of it, lying down to press himself against the wall. The hiding place was efficient and it completely sealed him from view from all other areas of the room. Bane took off his hat for good measure, just in case he needed to have a look over the side.

Chewbacca quickly looked around. There was no way that he was going to be able to share Bane's hiding place – for a start it didn't look big enough for him even if it wasn't already occupied. He'd have to find another place to hide. His eyes fell on the shuttle that was parked in the large space that made up the hangar. Its ramp was still down, and it could make an ideal hiding spot. Chewbacca made towards it with all speed and hurried up the ramp, through the ship and into the cockpit. He crouched down beneath the window, out of sight, but he, like Bane was ready to peer out at what was happening if he needed to.

Bane, meanwhile, was speaking into his com quietly. "Todo," he said. "A situation has arisen over here and Darth Sidious is on his way to our location. Do not do anything until I give you the word. Have you reached the ship yet?"

"Yes," came the reply. "It's intact and all the money crates you left inside it are still here. There was the carcass of a Quarren that evidently chose the wrong ship to try and break into outside though."

"Good," Bane nodded. He pulled a small, portable holocam from within his coat and placed it on the ledge beside him, easing the lens around until it was pointing towards the console and then zooming in on it. "I'm making a recording of what happens and transmitting the data to the ship. Make sure that it is operating and saved once this is over."

"Okay," Todo said. "Try not to..."

Bane cut off the link and strained his ears. He had just heard a faint noise – the noise of the elevator rising up the shaft on its old but still very functional hydraulics. Bane pushed himself further against the wall, slipping into the shadows like a wraith. Only his head peered over the edge towards where the elevator corridor was. The slow, whirring sound of the doors opening and the clunking as the lift came to a stop told him everything that he needed to know.

"Showtime," he murmured to himself as a shadow fell across the floor of the corridor and began to grow larger as the target approached. Bane drew his head back, and he and Chewbacca listened so hard it hurt as Darth Sidious stalked into the room.

* * *

And while I hate to leave it on that note (I lie), I am afraid that it must now come to a stop until Chapter 149. I'm sure that you're all anxious to know what happens next and I must say that I'm looking forward to writing it in a couple of days, but since this is a mass update, you get to read it all in one go. Should I do more of these mass updates, or just continue posting chapters the moment I finish them when I get internet back? Hmm.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The slavers camp has now become a target. A swift plan has been drawn out by the searchers and now it is time to bring the slavers to justice for what they have done and free the prisoners they've taken. Lots and lots of action ahead.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 148 : The Wrong Career**


	148. The Wrong Career

Time for another jam packed action filled chapter, but this is not like the usual kind, in that the spotlight in this battle sequence does not actually belong to the Jedi, but to practically everybody else. I hope you enjoy the big fight scene coming up as we bring the Ryloth side of this particular arc to a close. As before, repercussions will continue in the next arc since its becoming more like one long story. Anyway, it's FIGHTING TIME!

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 148:- The Wrong Career**

* * *

Tryo the Klatooinian grunted in annoyance and he peered around another tree and was unsurprised to find no little Twi'lek girl hiding behind it. The slaver looked out across the forest and could vaguely see a few humans and Weequay in the distance, fellow slavers, all of them combing the forest for any sign of the escaped prisoner.

They'd been doing this for over two hours now and it was getting tiresome. The little girl had probably been snatched by predators or something by now, and they'd seen almost no sign of her passing at all – the trail she left had been negligible and then had been lost in the thinner sand around the tree-line. But they had spread out to try and find her and had gotten a couple of miles into the forest. Still, they had found nothing.

Tryo saw little reason why they should be out here. After all, the odds of the small girl reaching someone who might be able to help them were almost completely negligible in his opinion. Still, Gravick would be furious if they returned from the search without her or without at least being extremely thorough. Zamit would just stare coldly. And so the slavers continued to search for their missing captive.

"You guys found anything yet?" Tryo called over to the others.

"Nothing," one of the humans shook his head. "This is ridiculous. Can't we go back yet? It's just one little girl – what does it matter if she got away."

"You try telling that you Gravick," said one of the Weequay. "But, even so. What if we come up against one of those big insect-things they have in this region? We could be reduced to mince-meat in moments. Let's just turn around and head back before we all become meals."

"No backtalk," Tryo rounded on them. "We're here to find the escapee, regardless of any danger we may be facing. We'll head into the forest a further mile before we turn around. If we haven't found her by then, she's either gone another way or she's already been eaten. She won't have gotten too far, and if she's going other ways then she won't encounter another village for miles and miles."

"I thought I heard some growling noises earlier," one of the humans said, nervously, glancing over his shoulder. "Can't we just _say_ that we went into the forest? Gravick hasn't got a lie detector. I'm sure it'll be fine."

"Try that and I'll shoot you myself," Tryo growled, turning back to look into the forest. "We've gotta..."

He stopped. His eyes narrowed as he squinted into the gloom. He thought he had seen a shape in the darkness – a tall, humanoid shape that had slipped quietly between two trees and it appeared to be carrying something in its arms. Tryo strained his eyes in search of the figure again, and sure enough, he saw it moving between two more trees in distance, trying to slip away unnoticed. It moved through a patch of light, and Tryo briefly saw a patch of blue skin.

"Hey! There's someone over here!" Tryo cried, hefting his blaster and running towards the figure. He saw it turn in alarm and then, knowing it had been spotted, turned and fled into the woods. Tryo heard the shouts of the others as they took to the chase as well and he hurtled in pursuit of the newcomer. He was gaining fast. It appeared that the person was encumbered by whatever it was carrying.

Suddenly, the figure tripped, dropping its burden and sprawling on the floor. Tryo closed the gap between them and loomed over the figure. Now he was close, he could see that it was an adult, female Twi'lek with cerulean blue skin, dressed in a plain, brown dress that left the sides of her legs bare. Her feet and lekku were bare, and as she rolled onto her back and looked up at Tryo with fear in her eyes, she hurriedly tried to grab the bundle it had been carrying and pulled it close to her. To Tryo's surprise, it turned out to be the little Twi'lek girl who they had been searching for all along. He leered and the girl whimpered and huddled close to the adult.

"Well, well, well," Tryo lowered his blaster as the other slavers arrived and quickly grouped around the duo. "Isn't this a stroke of luck? Not only have we found out little escaped captive, but we've got ourselves a brand new one. That brings us up to ninety-nine, boys. Gravick will be pleased with that."

"This one's a pretty one," leered one of the Weequay, causing the adult to flinch backwards at his tone. "Someone will pay a very handsome price for this one."

"Yeah," nodded Tryo. "Take her."

Two humans fell upon the Twi'lek, who screamed and kicked and yelled in Twi'leki as they grabbed her by the upper arms and hauled her to her feet. One of the Weequay produced a pair of manacles from his belt and, as the humans pulled her hands together behind her back, the Weequay quickly captured her wrists with them and pinned them there. Another Weequay produced a neck collar and chain leash and approached the new captive. She attempted to step backwards, but the others held her in place as the collar was fitted around her throat.

The Weequay holding the chain jerked her forward on it cruelly. The little girl screamed and attempted push him away, but Tryo grabbed her in one hand and lifted her up to his face. "Nice escape attempt, little one. But I'm afraid this time there won't be any hope for you. And as for you," he addressed the newcomer, placing a finger under her chin and lifting her head so their eyes met. "You're heading to a life of slavery with your new friend. Isn't that nice?"

The Twi'lek's eyes held defiance. Tryo grinned and released her chin, dumping the girl at the feet of the adult and turning around. "Come on then," he said. "Let's get them back to camp and introduce our newest captive to the rest of her brethren."

As they moved off, Numa stuck as close to her protector as she could. Aayla, for that was who is was, grimaced as the Weequay brutally pulled her along by her neck so hard that she kept stumbling, but she made no complaint. She bore it, knowing that she was being taken straight into the enemy camp, just as they had planned. Numa herself had been brought along to end the search quickly, and Aayla smiled down at her reassuringly as they walked back towards the mountains, letting her know that everything was going to be fine.

Aayla's garb had been acquired from Nabat. One of Cham's men had been dispatched back to the city to ask for a spare outfit from one of the local women that Aayla could use as a disguise, as she'd be recognised right away if she continued to wear her usual Twi'lek clothing. After she'd changed, the others had started to get into position, ready for their part in the plan that the Jedi and Cham Syndulla had hastily constructed.

Of course, in order to appear as a slave, Aayla had had to go in without either of lightsabers. She glanced around in all directions. There was no sign of any of the others – they would be waiting for her word to begin their parts of the plan, via mental signal.

However, when Aayla glanced upwards, she smiled. She could dimly make out two small shapes high in the sky, so high up that they might have been mistaken for large birds because the only thing that could be seen was a vague silhouette. But Aayla knew that they were not birds, and she also knew what those figures were carrying.

Terriermon and Lopmon watched the procession from high above and each of them was clutching a lightsaber hilt in their small hands.

_There she goes again,_ Terriermon chuckled. _Danger-prone Aayla got captured again. Surprise, surprise._

_Oh, shut up,_ Aayla chuckled in her head. _I've only been captured for real twice, once by uncle and once by Bane. Every other time has just been going undercover, like now._

_You sure you want to do this, Aayla?_ Anakin asked. _We don't know what these slavers will do to their so-called charges._

_It's a bit late for backing out now,_ Aayla replied. _I'm already in chains._

_Like that means anything,_ scoffed Ahsoka. _You could take them with your hands bound behind you and you feet shackled. It just so happens that only one of those two conditions is actually the case, so you'd have it down easy._

_Thank you, Ahsoka,_ Aayla replied. _But we need somebody on the inside and it'll be easiest if it was me. I can get in there and protect the slaves while you guys take on the slavers. You guys in position?_

_Ready and waiting,_ Ahsoka replied. _Bariss and I are ready and the clones are fully geared up. We'll get underway the moment you give the say-so._

_Good,_ nodded Aayla. _Rika, Henry, how about you guys?_

_Everything's good over here,_ confirmed Henry. _Just waiting for the signal._

_Alright,_ said Aayla. _Numa and I are going in. Terriermon, Lopmon, stay close, okay?_

_You got it,_ they both said simultaneously and swooped lower, keeping a close eye on the slavers and their prisoners. Terriermon only needed a few moments of watching the Weequay pulling Aayla along by the neck harshly before he made a mental note of the clothes he was wearing so he could pick him out later. They were showing no respect for Aayla whatsoever, and poor Numa was all but clinging to the Jedi's leg.

Aayla bore the vicious treatment and the abuse to her neck as they headed towards the mountains. It took them quite a while to emerge from the trees. Up ahead she could see the canyon that Numa had pointed out to her earlier, and they were heading ride towards it. It took several more minutes of stumbling with shackled arms before they reached the entrance to it and stepped between its towering walls. Just as Numa had told her, it curved inwards after a short way, hiding the majority of it from view.

Aayla stumbled along, murmuring reassurances to Numa in the only language the girl understood every so often. Numa seemed to be doing better than before. She wasn't as scared as Aayla has expected, and the Jedi wondered if that was because she was with her or just because she knew there was a plan. Either way, Aayla was not going to let Numa, or any other member of her brethren down.

* * *

A lot more stumbling later and they emerged into the valley that Numa had described, with the tall peaks interlocking all around it to screen it from view from almost all angles. Aayla took a momentary glance over her shoulder as she was pulled into the camp by her collar. She couldn't see anything, but she could sense the presences of Terriermon and Lopmon, following them along the top of the canyon and concealing themselves behind boulders as they went.

As Aayla stepped into the camp, the bunnies took to the air. They took advantage of the distraction that Aayla's presence was causing and swooped overhead, sticking close to the cliff wall as they did so, until they settled onto the cliff wall right above the huddled group of slaves that were already there. They both felt their hands tightening on the lightsaber hilts when they saw how all the women had been chained together so cruelly. These people truly were the lowest of the low. Far worse than people like Bane (though, then again, he might do this sort of thing too if someone paid him too).

Aayla's gaze fixed on the only male Twi'lek present and glowered at the traitorous man as he walked over to them with curiosity. "What is this?" he asked. "You found another one when you went out to find the girl. I did a full head-count. There were no other slaves that escaped."

"No, it's a new one, sir," Tryo said. "She was trying to run away with the girl, but we caught them all the same. Don't know where she came from, but she's a pretty one, so we took her too."

"An added bonus," Gravick smirked in Aayla's face. Aayla avoided eye contact, acting demurely just in case he recognised her face, but he didn't seem to make the connection. "Chain her up with the others. And keep an eye on that girl – it'll be on your heads if she escapes again."

Aayla acted the part to perfection, struggling and resisting all the way as she was dragged over to the other slaves, attempting to escape as any non-Force-sensitive Twi'lek could. However, she was inexorably dragged over, and the Weequay grabbed the bound wrists of one of the slaves and pulled them backwards, ignoring the cry of pain from the poor woman as he connected her manacles to Aayla's leash. Aayla was then forced to her knees and pushed unceremoniously onto her side. The slavers merely laughed and pushed Numa closer to her, then returned to guard-duty, surrounding the slave group and keeping a close watch on all of them.

Aayla struggled upwards onto her knees and Numa helped her up as best she could, wrapping her arms around her waist. Aayla avoided eye contact with the guards and looked over at the other slaves, who were watching her sadly. Her eyes flicked to Gravick, but he had turned the other way, so she spoke in a loud whisper to her fellow captives. "Hyoll. Piki ei sa suul si Hyoll?"

The Twi'leks exchanged looks and awkwardly shuffled around until Aayla's eyes settled on a Twi'lek with snow white skin not far away. She was currently leaning over and breathing through gritted teeth, being tended to by a Lethan and a bright pink woman on either side of her as best as they could. Aayla flinched at what she saw – the back of Hyoll's dress had been ripped open and there were several nasty cuts criss-crossing her back, the red scabs beginning to form sticking out against her skin colour. Hyoll had paid for her leadership with a whipping, and a very nasty one too.

Numa hurried into the crowd, weaving between the other Twi'leks as best she could until she was standing beside her friend. Hyoll was obviously in pain, but she still looked down at her and smiled grimly. "Yami don, sugi Numa," she grunted. "Hools fross furd rakat hewn trik ony. Jus poa, ger top deeso."

"Suulan queel," Numa whimpered.

"Top ed nen, eyan ei," sighed the pink one, Milyl, and she held out her arm to reveal a gash made by a switch. The Lethan, Talee, did the same thing, and a number of the others did too.

"Top uln re rollo," Talee sighed. "Bres Hyoll tug cu worg sa re pleg hofe cuilor."

"Hools fross suulo lik dreegit pon fo o liho sa wencike bideck ed, eh, Numa," Milyl muttered bitterly.

"Epsi top zeek ulner deeso rendil," Talee agreed sadly.

Numa shook her head emphatically and said, "Schoy, schoy. Topee ed herfo ji lik yoshon. Ju shouhst sortol kerlam ace. Topee herfo ji gur apinet. Ed sa pon."

Her words caused muttering amongst the slaves and Hyoll's grimace of pain was now combined in a frown of confusion. "Sortol?" she asked. "Poli sortol? Kugon uika suul ulner locan sortol nan shenabi?"

"Koild Aayla," Numa pointed at the Twi'lek in question. "o Jedi, hed vifes herfo ji sortol pon ony. Don's lots sa liolese tabada jii."

"Aayla?" Milyl asked, in shock. "_Cu_ Aayla?"

"Aayla Secura?" Talee's shock was equal to her friends.

"Koild ace," Aayla nodded. "Gohs niva. Ju swar suul koil suul non ed gurny ony sa doon. Rester." She glanced upwards and saw Terriermon and Lopmon peering over a projection on the cliff up above them. They waved, indicating that they were ready.

"Kugon yers top gur ony?" one of the slaves asks. "Suulan fo klins, clep fross top non."

"Ju gohs ulner clomd ji wonea," Aayla said. "Clep rezerla, reint pliw bernan ffo, dren silo. Topl plactis suul." She then shut her eyes, which was more for effect than anything else as it demonstrated to all the other Twi'lek prisoners that she was doing some Jedi thing that required concentration. It had the desired effect and they didn't make any moves or attempts to interrupt her, as Aayla began to communicate with the others once more.

_Alright, guys, remember the plan,_ Aayla said. _I'm in position. You guys can get going now?_

* * *

_Got it,_ came the response from Anakin, and he turned to look towards the others. He was currently standing in the middle of a gunship that was on the ground, surrounded by a large number of clones. Three others were resting next to his own ship, with Ahsoka and Barriss standing in one nearby along with Captain Rex and another 501st veteran – Denal. Anakin was with Commander Bly and several other clones, and the other gunships were jampacked with them as well.

"Pilots," Anakin called into his comlink. "It's time for lift-off. Remember, you need to follow my directions to the enemy campsite. Then we'll have to move quickly if we want to end up with minimal casualties."

"Roger that, sir," said the pilot of Anakin's own gunship, and they began to lift off from the ground, the engines kicking into life and powering them upwards, sand whirling around them until they were high above the ground. Anakin shielded his eyes from the coarse desert ground until the cloud dispersed, as the blast doors to the gunships had remained open. The clones were holding onto the railings hanging from the ceiling for support.

"Bear forty-two degrees west, Hawk," Anakin addressed the pilot. "Then hold your course. Do not stray from the flightpath, even by one degree, or we might miss it."

"Are you sure, sir," Hawk replied. "It looks like a just a large number of closely grouped mountains in that direction."

"That's the point," Anakin said. "The valley the slavers have concealed themselves in is extremely well hidden. Trust me, it's there. But the opening to it is quite small and if we fly over it too far in any other direction we'll miss it. Aayla and the Digimon's mental signature is definitely coming from that direction."

"Alright, sir," Hawk said. "Speeding towards them."

"And when we get there," Bly said. "Those slavers are going to get quite a shock."

"Just the way I like them," Anakin nodded with a smirk. "Other than behind ray shields that is. Ahsoka, Barriss, are you guys ready for your part of the mission?"

"Definitely," Barriss called back through the comlink. "We're all set and waiting. They won't escape with the four of us on the job, you mark my words."

"Good. I'll contact the others, and let them know that the attack is about to begin."

"Already taken care of, Master," Ahsoka sent back quickly. "Rika's currently taking the lead – she says that she's 'determined to take these guys down a peg.' I'm not sure what Syndulla is making of Rika ordering his men around but he doesn't seem to be complaining."

"Great job, Snips," Anakin smiled. He turned to the rest of the group in his own gunship and shouted over the roar of the engines. "Are you guys all ready for this? Remember to check your aim. There's a chance that some of the prisoners may panic and flee when we release them. I want no dead Twi'leks today, unless one of you hits that traitorous male. Understood?"

"Sir, yes sir!" cried the clones.

"Just leave it to us, General," Blade replied. "We'll be sending a very clear message to those money-grabbing scum-buckets. And that message will be that they chose the wrong career."

Anakin nodded. The clones would be instrumental to this plan, as Ahsoka and Barriss would have their own job while he, Aayla and the Digimon were to focus on protecting the slaves. Anakin was pleased to note how determined his and Aayla's men were to bring the men to justice. More so than he'd anticipated. Those who were still in space had seemed disappointed that they couldn't get in on the action.

Perhaps they were feeling empathy to Aayla, since it were her species being abused here. But Anakin got the feeling it ran deeper than that. They were doing it simply because it was the right thing to do.

_Aayla,_ he called. _We're almost in the mountains. Now would be a good time to make you're move._

* * *

_Got it,_ Aayla nodded, and looked up towards where the bunnies were hiding up ahead. Lopmon was the first to move. The bunny silently lifted off from the ledge and shot straight downwards, landing quietly on another ledge closer to the slaves. Tossing the lightsaber into one ear, Lopmon pulled her ears back slowly and then flung the lightsaber hilt into the air. Aayla's eyes followed its progress carefully, and then she suddenly sprang to her feet and whirled around, the hem of her native Twi'lek dress whipping around her legs as she did so.

The lightsaber hilt changed course and rocketed into her hand right as the slavers guarding the slaves looked startled and one said, "Oi, get back down you, or I'll..."

He stopped talking when Aayla's blade – her original, blue one – sprang into life behind her back. Despite the fact she wasn't looking at what she was doing, Aayla deftly moved the blade and sliced through the manacles holding her wrists together. As the two halves clattered to the ground, Aayla's arms lashed out to the front. One hand twirled the lightsaber and the blade melted clean through the chain leas attached to her neck-collar and severed it close to her head.

"A Jedi?" yelled one of the slavers as they all stepped backwards in fear.

Terriermon tossed the second lightsaber hilt into the air. Without looking, Aayla's spare hand lashed out and summoned it into her palm, her thumb flying to the button and causing her new, green blade to burst out of the end.

"A Jedi?" Aayla asked, raising a brow at the nervous slavers. "Haven't you been keeping up with the Holonet news? I'm Aayla Secura, new and improved."

The slavers backed away even further at this new declaration. The whole camp now had their attention fixed on what was going on over by the slaves. Gravick felt his stomach drop into the planet's core as he realised that he'd been rumbled, and one of the most well-known Jedi in the Galaxy was standing before him.

"Shoot her!" he cried, in a panic. "Take her out now, before she can report our position!"

"Gur runby!" Aayla shouted, and all the slaves promptly fell to the ground as the slavers that were quicker on the uptake began to fire on the Jedi. Aayla crossed her blades as the lasers lanced towards her and suddenly she was in motion. The two blades whirled and span, cleaving the air as Aayla moved to and fro like a snake charmer, deflecting the bolts in all directions but behind her with quick, fluid motions. She might not have had as much practice with two blades, but her skill with them was undiminished.

The slavers came together, regrouping in an attempt to concentrate her fire on the Jedi, sending dozens of bolts blasting towards her midsection. Despite the fact that Aayla's feet did not move from her current spot, the Jedi blocked them, sending many of the lasers skewing back to crash into their slaver casters, causing them to drop their weapons and fall to the floor, gasping in pain or, in one case, dead.

Aayla would normally have been dodging about, but she was determined to ensure that none of the bolts got past her, where they could potentially injure the slaves.

Gravick seemed to notice this when he calmed down enough to realise that the Jedi was not actually attacking anybody and was focusing purely on defence. "No, you fools!" he shouted. "Don't group together like that. Spread out. Someone grab one of the slaves and hold them at blaster-point. A Jedi won't risk the life of an innocent."

The slavers quickly obeyed the commands of their leader, fanning out as quickly as they could. One of the humans ran around to the side and started towards the slaves some distance away from Aayla. The Twi'lek turned to face him, but was forced to block more fire coming in from the other slavers. Her feet began to move, as she dodged left and right, intercepting the dozens of bolts flying from all directions with well-timed and precise sweeps of her blade.

The human thought he was in the clear, and made a grab for one of the slaves.

He was taken completely off guard when a small brown tornado slammed into his chest and bowled him so far that he skidded to a halt about halfway across the valley. A large proportion of all activity ceased as most of the slavers turned to face Lopmon in surprise, as the bunny whirled to a halt. She sarcastically saluted the men all around her and said, "Hello there. Did anyone ever tell you that you're all lower than the Gutkurr dung I scraped off my shoes?"

Aayla laughed. "You don't have any shoes."

"I do now," Lopmon grinned, and suddenly burst into bright light as the digivolution process began:-

"**LOPMON DIGIVOLVE TO... TURUIEMON!"**

The bunny dashed out of the light and leapt into a flying kick that slammed a Weequay backwards into one of this companions and sent them both rolling. Turuiemon hit the ground with her shoulder and rolled, springing up to apply a punch straight to the nose of one of the humans and knock him over, sweep the feet out from one of the other Weequay and sink both her fists into the guts of two more, almost all in one movement. Aayla took advantage of the slavers stunned amazement and let off a terrific Force-burst that sent the others flying backwards several feet.

Turuiemon flipped over to Aayla and extended her switch-blades, the two double-bladed females standing back to back. "Phew, that felt good," the bunny observed. "Shame we couldn't do this at Jabba's Palace."

"Well, you can look forward to the time we raid that place after the war like I do," Aayla smirked.

"Get them!" Gravick was practically hopping from foot to foot. "It's just one more creature. Take them out. They're just standing down."

"Sorry to make a liar out of you!" Turuiemon called out, "but it's actually more than one creature. I believe you haven't met my brother."

Terriermon launched himself from the cliff-top and yelled, "Coming down! Ready or nooooooottt!" And he too burst into light as he fell towards the flabbergasted slavers.

"**TERRIERMON DIGIVOLVE TO... GARGOMON!"**

Gargomon aimed one cannon down at the bunch of disgusting men and rained down green bullets at them with a cry of exhilaration. It was a pose reminiscent of when he had attacked Pajiramon when the sheep Deva had been their enemy. His laser stormed amongst the slavers and wounded many of them and felled two more, before Gargomon abruptly landed with a thump in front of Aayla and Turuiemon, landing on one knee with cannons pointing forwards, apparently unfazed by the long fall.

"Bet you guys are wishing you stayed in school now, right?" Gargomon smirked.

"College dropouts," Turuiemon laughed. "The lot of them."

"They're mocking us!" Tryo the Klatooinian snarled. "Whatever they are, they're mocking us. Kill them! Let's take these things down, whatever they are!"

But, as they raised their blasters and began to pour off more shots at the grinning Gargomon, the Champion Digimon crossed his cannons in front of him and cried, **"BARRIER!"** It was an attack that was not part of his normal range, and had been given to him via a Cutemon Modify Card from Henry, but a large green shield began to grow in front of him, blocking the shots of the slavers as the shield absorbed them.

"A deflector shield?" Tryo gasped in surprise.

Turuiemon stepped up beside her brother and also cried, **"BARRIER!"** as the same Modify Card had been swept through two D-Arcs. Brother and sister combined their powers to produce a shield that went right around themselves, Aayla, Numa and all the captives, meeting with the cave wall to provide an impenetrable shield, except for the large hole they deliberately left in the top.

"Renamon would be so proud of us," Gargomon smirked.

One of the slavers boldly stepped forward and tried to step through the shield, but this one was not like those on a droideka and he was instantly repelled. More of the slavers began to waste ammo by pouring more lasers at the glowing, green shield, but it easily held firm. Ignoring the sounds of blasters being fired, Aayla turned around and sheathed her green lightsaber. "Alright then," she said. "Who wants me to free them first?" She helped the Twi'lek she had been chained to earlier get to her feet and gently cut through the binders on her wrists. As the prisoner began to rub, them, Aayla carefully burnt through the collar round her neck, and it fell to the floor, useless.

As an afterthought, she also slashed through the collar round her own neck, the blade getting within a millimetre of her skin but Aayla's expert precision ensured it didn't make contact.

"They're freeing our prisoners!" Gravick yelled. "Somebody do something useful?"

"Might I suggest someone get some grenades and throw them through the hole in the top of that shield?" Zamit suggested dryly.

"But that will kill our captives too!" Gravick complained.

"You want to deal with a Jedi when she goes on the attack?" Zamit asked.

Aayla turned around after freeing the second slave and said, "Right now, you've got bigger problems than me. Namely, them." She pointed upwards. The slavers followed her gaze and were stunned beyond belief when three gunships suddenly hove into view above them and lowered into the valley.

How had they found them? The geography was supposed to conceal the valley and none of their current opponents had tracking devices on them?

The slavers desperately turned to fire up at the gunships, as a figure sprang out of one of them while they were still high up, a blue lightsaber activating in his hand as he plummeted. Anakin span and slashed his blade through the blaster of a slaver as he landed and Force-pushed the man into the barrier being made by the Digimon. He dashed into the group, which parted before him. Anakin deflected several shots without looking as he ran, but he made no more attempts at attack. Instead, he sprang into the air and jumped right over the green barrier and through the gap in the top, rebounding of the cliff wall and coming to a rolling stop beside Aayla. The two Digimon inserted more power and sealed off the hole.

"Alright, Aayla," Anakin smirked, as he turned to help her in freeing the slaves. "Things are going well."

"So far," agreed Aayla, slicing through the binders on her fifth now-not-captive. "I hope the clones have fun."

Anakin freed his first Twi'lek with deft cuts, his blade weaving around her wrists and neck so fast that she flinched, but he didn't do her any damage at all and her shackles fell to the floor with a clunk. Aayla freed another one in the same way, and the two of them turned to watch momentarily as a large number of clones leapt out of the still very much airborne gunships.

"Let's take the fight to them, men!" they heard Bly roar as the clones fell towards the ground.

Attached to the waist of each clone was a cable to slowed their progress as they got close to the ground, allowing them to land smoothly on the floor of the valley as if they'd merely stepped out of the ship while it was on the ground. A couple of the more quick-witted slavers had started to fire at the clones while they were still in the air, but their shots went embarrassingly wide. When the clones landed on the ground, they shed their cables and drew their weapons. Above them, the three gunships rose back into their air, their job done, and flew away.

"Shoot them! Shoot them all!" Gravick cried as he bravely dived behind a boulder. Zamit the Nikto retreated into the shadow of his ship to watch as the slavers sent more blaster bolts landing at the clones. The clones responded by immediately scattering and taking up positions around the valley. A few of them turned around to face the slavers that were still behind them, and quickly gunned them down with flashing blue lasers.

A laser storm began between the two factions. Several of the clones crouched down and raised their blasters, letting off more shots that felled many of the slavers, and more clones stood right behind their crouching comrades to provide them with support. The moved in sync, spreading out across the valley and boxing the majority of the slavers between them and the shield wall the Digimon were holding up, showing adept military discipline and tactics.

The slavers had no such tactics. They were just a ragtag bunch of people who had been in this job for the money and they just mindlessly kept letting off lasers at their enemy forces instead of trying anything to provide them with an advantage. And for that reason, the lot of them were starting to get picked off one by one.

Bly stood in the middle of the line of clones, his two pistols in his hands as he advanced forwards towards the slavers in a menacing manner, with no cover or support from his brothers but with the same cool confidence he used on the battlefield. He shifted to left to dodge an incoming laser that whisked over his shoulder, twirling his blaster to send two shots back at the culprit that nailed him in the chest.

Two more slavers watched him gun down their fellow and ran forwards, trying to catch him off guard with a shooting charge. Their shots flashed around Bly but failed to hit him and the clone sent off a flurry of his own at them in return. One was hit in the stomach by the blue bolt and keeled over slightly, teeth gritted with pain, and was abruptly finished off by a second shot from another clone. The other slaver met his end when he got too close to Bly. The clone commander ducked beneath his shots and rammed his shoulder into the slaver's chest throwing him backwards slightly, and Bly quickly pointed on pistol and shot him in the chest at point-blank range.

Bly continued to step forwards, wounding several more slavers with shots to their arms or abdomens and killing more with more accurate shots. But then the clone found himself under attack from someone more powerful – the hulking form of Tryo the Klatooinian. This slaver was like a small troll, and he certainly had the strength of one. With a roar he dashed towards the clone commander. Bly could hardly fail to miss such a large target and three shots embedded themselves in Tryo's torso, but he kept coming all the same.

Bly stepped back but Tryo was upon him, ramming Bly and carrying him to the ground. He raised an arm to punch Bly in the helmet, but Bly was faster and he rammed his blaster into the Klatooinian's nose, and the cracking sound the blow made was quite distinctive. Bly then brought his knee up and slammed it into his intestines. Tryo grunted and rolled off him and Bly quickly pulled himself to his feet and darted backwards. Tryo clambered slowly up and pulled a knife out from his pocket, but he never got a chance to use it. The clones ganged up on him and he found himself riddled by a flurry of shots in all directions. He fell down, dead, the knife falling harmlessly to the ground. Bly stamped on it and snapped the blade from the hilt contemptuously.

The slavers were beginning to get worried now, as more and more of them were shot down by the precise shots from the clones. Over a third of their number had already fallen, including the largest of them. Some of them lost their nerve and attempted to flee, trying to dodge through the clone lines and get away through the valley. Several of them were caught, clones leapt from their positions to intercept them and quickly knocked them unconscious with blows to the head (they weren't do bothered if they did permanent damage).

Several of them did manage to slip through the clone lines and made for the canyon, but the clones did not bother turning around to shoot upon them or follow them. They just let them go. The slavers in question began to count their lucky stars and hurried away with all speed.

The clones weren't having it all their own way though. Several of them had been hit in the arm or leg. One of them had been taken in the chest by a shot from one of the Weequay. He was still alive but he was struggling to breathe and slumped against the rock he had been crouching behind. His partner, Conor, had clambered up onto the rock and was boldly sending rounds of laser fire at the remaining slavers in plain sight. He hit one in the shoulder and dropped him and caught another one in the side, and then one of the humans ran past him, shooting lasers at him as he went.

Conor leapt behind the boulder and allowed it to take the shots, leaning around it to shoot more at the human. This one proved to be more agile that the others, though, and he rolled, blue laser fire streaming all around him as he moved. He whipped around and smirked, letting off a laser at the now exposed Conor.

Conor hurriedly let off a shot in return, which crashed into the slaver's own laser and the two cancelled each other out with a flash. The slaver looked startled at this development, and suddenly Bly had leapt over the rock and shot him several times in the chest. As the human keeled over, a nearby Rodian attempted to hit the Commander in the back. Conor spotted him and cried, "Behind you, sir!" Bly was already moving at the first syllable and dropped to the ground, the slaver's shot passing over him. Bly spun about and fired off a single shot in return, which hit the Rodian between its protuberant eyes.

"Thanks, Conor," Bly said, running back over to the boulder. "Nice catch."

Conor nodded and said, "Think this fight is nearly over?"

"Still got quite a few of those scumbags to get through," Bly murmured. Under his helmet, a decidedly evil smirk crossed his face. "Let's scatter them." He leapt up and, shooting a human's blaster out of his hand and allowing him to be finished off by two of his brothers, Bly shouted. "Your shield still holding strong you two?"

"Easy as cookies," Gargomon cried.

"Pie," Turuiemon corrected.

"Cookies are easier," countered Gargomon.

"Come on then, men!" Bly shouted, pulling a thermal detonator off his belt and priming it. "Let's send them packing!"

There was a roar of approval from the clones and they sprang out their hiding places. Several more pulled detonators from their waists and flipped them on.

The eyes of the slavers widened as at least then of the little bombs were tossed into their midst by the clones, who backed away and continued to shoot at them. The men all immediately scattered, just as Bly had said, panic overriding their senses as they desperately tried to get away from the bombs. Many of them made it, but the force of the explosions when they went off sent them sprawling. Many of them didn't get far enough and were knocked unconscious or killed in the blasts. Some ran away from one bomb, only to be caught in the explosion of another. Sand was thrown up all around them as the bombs went off.

Most of the slavers knew then that they were beaten. The clones were too good. They has been in so many battles together that they could practically read each other's thoughts, and their discipline was exquisite, whereas the slavers had never been in anything more than pub brawls where everything was a free for all.

Still, several of them got up and continued to blindly shoot. Blade dived aside as several shots sailed through the spots where he'd been and he hefted his rifle around and shot clean through one of the slavers, his bolt fizzling out as it hit the shield being held up by the Digimon. The slaver collapsed and the other one which had been standing right next to him quailed as he did so.

Half the slavers broke away from the group and started following their previous comrades in a mad dash for the canyon and what they hoped to be safety. The other half began to try and copy the clones and started crouching behind boulder, ducking behind them when they saw shots coming their way. The clones advanced forwards as best they could, maintaining their cover until lasers were flying between the boulders, in a situation that had become something like trench warfare.

Two more of the slavers fell to shots from the clones, and the rest of them responded by being more cautious, keeping the clones from getting much closer by shooting around the boulder and barely emerging from behind them themselves. One of the 501st, Sergeant Boomer, responded to this in turn by hefting a very large Z-6 Rotary Blaster Cannon from his back and placing a foot on one of the smaller boulders for support, he began to rain shots down on the remaining slavers that were still in the action. The men cowered behind their cover as the blaster bolts poured into what they were hiding behind, sending chunks of it flying all over the place.

* * *

Gravick the male Twi'lek was still hiding behind the boulder that he had jumped behind at the start of the fight. He was the definition of a coward. He felt more than happy to mercilessly whip a helpless Twi'lek but against trained soldiers like this he was no better than a gnat. He watched in horror as everything fell apart. What little men he had left were stuck behind cover. The rest were deserting him, racing for safety in the canyon and hoping to get out of the mountains and hide.

Behind the men still fighting, the two strange creatures were diligently supporting the shield, while the two Jedi continued to swiftly but carefully cut the bonds from all the slaves he'd so painstakingly captured. Everything was falling down around him – there was no way he'd recover from this. The only thing he could to was try and escape.

The clones were between him and the ship, so the lekku-headed lowlife quietly slipped towards the entrance of the canyon, where the rest of his men were heading. His mind briefly wondered why the clones were not bothering to prevent the slavers that were trying to get through there from doing so, but his panic was overwhelming his senses and he just ran.

The sounds of blaster fire began to recede into the distance behind him, muffled by the walls of the canyon. Gravick looked around and saw that nobody was following him. He had to resist the urge to laugh out loud. Perhaps all was not last after all. He'd be able to get away. He'd start again. He would never give up and next time he would kidnap twice as many slaves. That would show the Jedi that they couldn't mess with...

He rounded the corner of the canyon.

And found himself staring down the barrel of an enormous cannon mounted on the back of an AT-TE walker that almost completely blocked the way.

And crowded in front of the walker were a bunch of very angry looking Twi'leks, both male and female, riding on blurrgs that somehow managed to look equally angry. Gravick paled as a figure he recognised as Cham Syndulla rode forwards a few steps and pointed a blaster at him. Several more Twi'leks levelled their own weapons at him, most of them men. The women that followed Syndulla were securing the slavers that had attempted to escape in the same way, shoving them to the ground and surrounding them with weapons drawn. All of them seemed to think that this was an appropriate role-reversal.

"Well, well, here he is," Cham scowled angrily at Gravick, who raised his hands. "The traitor to his own species shows his face."

"Mercy," whimpered Gravick, his face pale. "They made me do it, I swear."

"Yeah right," said a voice off to his left. Gravick turned and only had a brief moment to wonder where the human girl had come from before Rika delivered a cracking blow to the adult man's jaw. For a young girl she packed a hell of a punch and Gravick went down in a heap, stunned and dizzy. Rika rubbed her knuckles, but she had a big smirk on her face now.

"Nice punch," Henry smiled from nearby. Suzie suppressed a snicker. The three Tamers had been the ones that lead Cham and his forces here, following the route that Terriermon and Lopmon had mentally shown them as soon as Aayla, Numa and their captors were out of sight. Not one of the slavers was going to escape on their watch.

"You have no idea how satisfying that was," Rika snorted, aiming a kick at the dazed man's ribs for good measure. As he groaned and rolled over, Rika turned to the women holding the former captors captive. "He's all yours, ladies," she said. The women responded to that with smirks and several of them hurried over, grabbing Gravick by his shirt and dragging him over to the others, tossing him into the dirt with all the contempt they could muster.

Nobody objected. Not even Henry. That man deserved everything he was getting.

"Remind me not to get you angry," Cham chuckled, nodding to Rika.

The Tamer folded her arms and shrugged. "Just don't go doing anything villainous and we'll get along fine."

"Like how you and Ryo get along fine?" Henry asked pointedly.

"Shut up, Brainiac," Rika sniffed. Henry chuckled.

* * *

"Looks like everything's going exactly as planned," Aayla said, as she deftly freed the seventy-fifth slave with her lightsaber. "Only the final stage of the plan has yet to be set in motion."

"Yeah," Anakin nodded, casting a glance behind him into the shadow of the ship that was still on the ground nearby. "Wonder what's taking him so long." He shrugged and turned back to free another Twi'lek. The slaves were standing up now and were getting in a line, presenting their bound wrists to the Jedi to allow them to cut them free. Nobody flinched as the blades zinged to within a centimetre of their skin anymore – they knew that they'd be fine.

Aayla had started at the back of the line, while Anakin had started from the front, clashing through the chain that was attached to the spike in the wall. Only those in the middle of the line were still in chains.

Among that number was Hyoll, Talee and Milyl.

Numa was standing beside the three of them and watching with a satisfied smile as Aayla and Anakin freed the other Twi'leks one by one. She couldn't help but feel proud of herself and rightly so. She'd found the help they needed and led them right back to the camp before the slavers could recapture her or find a new hiding place, or worse, leave the planet with all the others.

As she watched Anakin slice through the manacles on a tan-skinned woman, she became aware of a grunting sound behind her. Numa turned around to see that Hyoll was stuggling to support herself, leaning on her side against the cliff wall. Talee and Milyl were doing their best to help but there was little they could do. Hyoll slumped down further and Numa got a good look at her exposed back. The lash marks were ugly and vicious-looking, and it seemed that they were worse than they'd thought before.

"Hyoll!" Numa hurried over to her and grabbed her arm, trying to help keep her upright. "Sortol! Hyoll's fo raite! Sortol gor!"

Anakin responded to Numa's cries of distress and noticed Hyoll's poor condition. He quickly finished cutting the collar off another one of the slaves and dashed over to the Twi'lek's side, Milyl and Talee moving aside to let him through. Anakin had a look at the marks in the prisoner's skin and growled to himself. Treatment like this made his blood boil – he'd seen it happen enough on Tatooine.

Aayla sensed Anakin's rising emotions and turned around. "Control yourself, Anakin," she warned him. "Suppress your emotions."

"Yeah, I know, I'm on it," Anakin nodded, already in the process of doing just that. Aayla smiled – it seemed she hadn't really needed to warn him. She sliced through the binders on another and said, "See what you can do for her. I'll keep helping these ones."

"I've never been that good at healing stuff," Anakin said. "Can't we just wait for Barriss?"

"It's more serious than it looks," replied Aayla. "Some of those wounds may get infected. Do your best, Anakin."

"Erm, okay," Anakin nodded and turned back to the panting, grimacing Hyoll. He let out a breath to calm himself and started calling on the Force, using his concern for the Twi'leks well-being and his determination to succeed to give him extra strength as he held a hand over the wounds. His hand exuded a faint, blue glow and the wounds on the prisoner's back began to ease closed slightly. Talee and Milyl watched in fascination as the worst of the damage slowly fixed itself.

The glow on Anakin's hand faded after a while. The cuts were still there, but they were much less open and sore, and definitely a lot better than before. "Barriss is better at this," Anakin murmured. "Still, it's not a bad job."

"It's a better job than you think, Anakin," Aayla smiled, as she helped Talee to her feet and carefully cut through her binders. "Don't you remember – using the Force to heal requires someone to be extremely well-steeped in the Light Side of it, as it requires complete selflessness and the desire to protect others. For a first real attempt, that is not a bad effort. Is that not the proof you're after that you are steering further away from Sidious."

Anakin blinked. "That's right," he said. "I completely forgot about that." He stood up and embraced Aayla, who looked startled but quickly returned it. Anakin was practically laughing as relief washed over him.

"Hate to break up the moment," Gargomon called, "And by the way, congratulations Anakin, but our shield won't last much longer. The power of the Modify Card is fading. You need to finish freeing the rest of the slaves."

"On it," Anakin nodded, helping Hyoll up and cutting through her binders as Aayla bent to help Milyl. "You okay?"

"Arni, Jedi," Hyoll nodded. "Jus yoshon."

"Hey guys," Turuiemon said. "Looks like that Nikto finally decided to get out of here." Aayla and Anakin followed Turuiemon's gaze to the ship and saw that it was beginning to lift off from the ground, the sand swirling all around it and blanketing the remaining slavers and the clones. The helmeted clones were fine but the slavers were incapacitated.

"Just as we knew he would," Anakin nodded. He delved into his mind and mentally cried, _Ahsoka, go!_

* * *

_About time,_ Ahsoka replied, then cried. "Full speed towards the action, pilot!"

"Yes, sir," the clone responded and the fourth and final gunship whooshed over the mountains it had been hovering next to, waiting for the right moment to get in on the action. Normally with a large ship the simplest solution would be to blow it up and stop anyone on it from leaving. But the group had decided against that because the ship was in such an enclosed space that an explosion could be devastating.

"It's about time it was our turn," Denal huffed, hands tightening on his blaster rifle.

"You guys remember the plan?" Barriss asked.

"Yep," Rex nodded. "Just give us the word, General."

"Wait... wait..." Ahsoka held out a hand to steady them. Then, the gunship flew over the valley and the slowly rising ship. "Now!" She activated her lightsaber, as did Barriss and the two of them sprang out of the gunship, side by side. Rex and Denal weren't far behind them, the jetpacks fitted to their backs activating to slow their descent.

The two young Jedi landed on the top of the ship and their lightsabers plunged into the metal side by side. When Rex and Denal landed beside them, they had already traced half a circle each, their blades meeting up to make one complete one between them. Withdrawing their blades, Ahsoka jumped onto the round cutting and the last of it gave way, dropping down into the ship beneath her and landing in a corridor. Barriss and the two clones quickly followed her in, and the four of them hurried down the dark corridor towards the front of the ship.

* * *

Zamit the Nikto was standing in the corner of the cockpit as a pair of hulking Weequay manned the controls, and another pair of them stood beside the door, and another two guarded the outside. The mostly silent Nikto had been reluctant to leave right off the bat, and had waited to observe the battle before he did so. If the slavers had somehow won but he had left anyway then the Hutt Council would not take too kindly to him denying them their large batch of slaves unless necessary.

But it had long since become clear that the slavers were going to lose. But the Nikto had allowed himself to linger, watching the battle with fascination, until he remembered he needed to get out of there too. That's when he and his crew had pulled out of there and now they were slowly rising towards freedom.

"Hmph. Gravick was a fool," muttered the Nikto. "I knew that he wouldn't be able to deliver what he promised."

"Rising above the mountains, sir," said one of the Weequay. "We'll be clear to head up to space in a moment."

The Nikto nodded but made no further comment.

Suddenly there were yells of alarm from outside the door and Zamit was startled to hear blaster-fire coming from outside. It sounded like two well-placed shots, followed by two thumps as the bodies of the guards he had placed outside crashed into the wall. The others turned around in equal alarm, right at the moment the doors opened. Barriss sprang through it, grabbing the side of the doorframe as she passed and swinging from it to slam both feet into the chest of one of the guards and knock him out. The other guard aimed a blaster at her back, and was promptly jerked through the door as if pulled by strings and there was a distinctive thwack that sounded like a boot connecting with a face.

Ahsoka leapt through the door a moment later, followed by Rex and Denal. The clones swiftly took out the two Weequay manning the ships with another round of just one shot each. Ahsoka pushed one Weequay off the chair and sat in his place as Barriss activated her blade and pointed it warningly right at the Nikto.

Zamit's normally imposing demeanour was shattered as the blue blade's tip hovered underneath his chin.

"It should hardly be a surprise to you," Barriss said, "When you hear that I am placing you under arrest. You're going to get quite a sentence when we return to Coruscant, I can assure you of that."

"Or," Rex added, "You could try and escape now, but if you do that, then your sentence will be carried out here and now, and it will be a very harsh one indeed." He cocked one pistol.

"I'd pick the Senate," Denal murmured. "They'll go easy on you. We won't."

"Alright, alright," the Nikto sighed. "Fine. You win."

"Denal, secure the prisoners," Barriss turned to the clone, who saluted. The Mirialan then turned back to Ahsoka, to find the Togruta was slowly steering the ship back down into the valley with great skill. As the cliff walls began to rise around them again, Ahsoka turned back and grinned, still steering the ship despite the fact that she wasn't looking at what she was doing.

"You better head to the back, Barriss," she nodded. "Unveil the little surprise."

"You can handle the prisoners on your own?" Barriss asked.

"No sweat," Ahsoka nodded.

"Alright," Barriss nodded. "Captain, Denal, with me."

"Right behind you, sir," Rex called as Barriss ran back out of the room. Zamit glowered at Ahsoka, a pair of binders around his own wrists now. Ahsoka glanced back at him and smirked, "Hey," she said. "You should have thought about this before you went into this line of work."

* * *

Down below, the slavers still remaining and all of the clones looked up as the ship descended back towards them. "Zamit's coming back for us!" one of the slavers yelled. "Quick! Let's go!"

Almost as one, the remaining slavers dashed towards the ship as it touched down and the ramp lowered, as if to accept them. But, as we know, the slavers were dead wrong in their assumption that this was a getaway. And the first one to the foot of the ramp found that out the hard way when a storm of blue lasers from within greeted him and brought him down. The others faltered, as Barriss sprang down and swung from the bottom of the ship and landed right in front of the group, pulsing them backwards with a Force push. The closest ones fell onto their backs, while those still further away opened fire.

As Barriss began to parry their shots and send them ricocheting upwards, Rex and Denal leapt out of the ship too and sent off more shots at the slavers, each one felling another two where they stood. This left a total of ten left still conscious, and they found themselves backed against the green shield wall the Digimon had erected.

That situation promptly changed though, as Aayla freed the last of the slaves with her blade.

"Let's mop up the scraps, shall we?" she nodded.

"Way ahead of you," Anakin said, turning to charge right at the shield wall, which fizzled into nothingness as Gargomon and Turuiemon dropped it. Aayla was right behind the three of them as they dashed towards the backs of the slavers, who were completely not expecting another attack from this angle. Anakin rammed one in the back with his shoulder and pinned him to the ground beneath one foot. Gargomon ran past another and batted him in the face with a cannon as he did so, knocking him flat on his back. Aayla dived straight over another, landing on her hands and lashing out with both feet to kick him in the chest. Turuiemon grabbed another by the back of his leggings and, after giving him a particularly nasty wedgie, threw him to the ground.

"You ready to surrender yet?" asked Anakin to those still standing.

He got his answer with one of them shakily pointed a blaster at his face. Anakin could see the blaster shaking and rattling in the man's grip. Evidently he was either terrified of them or terrified of giving up.

However, Anakin made no move to intercept him. He just blocked the laser aimed at his face and kept the other one pinned to the ground under his foot. A moment later, the slaver learned why Anakin was making no move towards him when a chain suddenly fell over his head and jerked around his neck, pulling him backwards with a wretching sound. The chain was in the hands of a very angry looking Milyl.

"Hoiseeta clomd," she hissed, and released her grip with the chain, stepped around the man and punched him in the eye. The other slavers stared in disbelief as the pink former-slave slammed one of their own into the ground, and then suddenly they found themselves swamped by more angry women that had previously been their captives.

Talee had picked up a fallen blaster and leapt on one of the slaver's back, driving him to the ground where she started beating him over the head with said blaster. Several of the other slaves came forward and swarmed the remaining four. Three of them went down under piles of screaming women, who proceeded to punch the living daylights out of them. For people that had been starved for up to four days, they seemed to suddenly have an extraordinary amount of strength.

The final slaver backed away as more of the slaves approached him, several of them holding lengths of chain like weapons. He quickly pointed his blaster at them, causing them to freeze in fear, but just as his finger tightened on the trigger, a blue lightsaber slewed in from the side and sliced it in half. Barriss smirked as she recalled the blade to her hand with the Force.

And then the last one got taken out by the most unlikely, but probably the most appropriate, of opponents when little Numa ran out of the crowd and aimed a kick at the back of the man's knee. The impact caused the leg to buckled and the man went down, where the other Twi'leks immediately fell on him and began to beat him black and blue as well.

"Don't you think we should stop them, General?" asked Bly, though he sounded reluctant.

"Eh, give them five minutes," shrugged Anakin. He nodded to Ahsoka as the Padawan headed down the ramp, pushing Zamit before her and levitating the two unconscious Weequay guards behind her with the Force. Ahsoka responded with a thumbs up, and the floating guards dropped to the ground with a thud. Ahsoka didn't bother looking back.

The clones parted as Cham Syndulla and the other Twi'lek fighters moved forward from out of the chasm. Their leader gave everyone present a grateful smile and said, "Master Jedi. Brave Clones. Extradimensional beings, human or otherwise. Little Numa," he offered the young girl a personal smile. "On behalf of the people of Ryloth, we thank you for what you have done this day. The single greatest slave heist in our recent history has been dealt with before a single one of the victims could be shipped away."

"We were glad to," Aayla smiled as the clones gathered the remaining slavers up from the angry slaves. She nodded to the Tamers and said, "Well done, you guys. And I agree with Henry, Rika. Nice punch."

Rika smirked at the male Twi'lek nearby nursing his broken nose. "I should have gone for a kick in the groin," she shrugged.

"By the way," said Gargomon, as he glowed and shrank back to Terriermon alongside his sister. "Can you explain to me why you felt the need to give one of them a wedgie?"

"I picked it up from your mind," Lopmon laughed. "You were going to do it before you realised that you didn't have hands."

"It was my idea!"

"Momentai."

"That's my idea too!"

"Hey, Barriss," Anakin called, waving the Mirialan over. The young Knight curiously followed the other young Knight towards Hyoll, who had been strong enough to join in with the other Twi'leks during the beating of the slavers and was responsible for giving one of the humans a lump the size of an egg. "You want to help heal this Twi'lek up? I did the best I could at short notice, but could you do the rest."

"Sure," nodded Barriss, walking around and examining the marks on Hyoll's back, passing her hand over them and quickly healing them over. "Not a bad job, Anakin. We'll make a healer out of you yet."

Anakin shrugged. "I'll never compare to you."

Barriss flushed. "And I'll never compare to you in swordplay but I still try."

Hyoll looked up into Anakin's face with large eyes. Anakin noticed her staring and stared back, looking slightly uncomfortable. Eventually, Hyoll murmured, "Arni hef burnon cu raite crixa. Kugon gif Ju keer suul acer arna?"

"Er..." Anakin faltered, not quite sure what she'd just said.

"She wants to know how she can thank you for taking most of the pain away," Aayla whispered to him.

"Oh, uh..." Anakin said. "Really, miss. I was happy to do it. You don't need to do anything."

Hyoll continued to stare at him for a few moments, causing him to fidget slightly. Then she moved quickly, startling everyone present when she grabbed Anakin's by the front, pulled him forward, leaned in and planted a quick peck on his lips with her own. Then she stepped back, looking embarrassed, while Anakin froze on the spot and appeared to be completely stunned.

Naturally Ahsoka burst into loud laughter, and the glade was filled with the chuckling of all the clones. Barriss and Aayla tried to disguise their laughs, but without much success. Aayla moved over to nudge Anakin and murmured, "Please, Anakin, you're a married man. What would Padmé say?"

Anakin's face coloured rapidly and the laughter intensified. But as he tried to hide behind Aayla to conceal himself in embarrassment, he noticed something bizarre. Terriermon, of all people, was not among the people laughing. Anakin quickly searched for him and found him and Lopmon standing on a boulder nearby, looks of intense concentration on their faces. The three Tamers were nearby, with similar expressions.

"Terriermon?" he called. "What is it? What's wrong?"

The bunny looked up at him. "It's Renamon," he said. "She's closing in on the target."

* * *

Daw. I just had to add in that little scene at the end. It's so fun making Anakin get all embarrassed like that, plus that scene was a little request from a friend of mine. In case anyone didn't notice, the name's Hyoll, Talee and Milyl are anagrams of the names Holly, Teale and Milly, who are fellow coursemates who requested to have characters dedicated to them. They asked at the right time too, because of this arc and the female prisoners. It's easier to fit the names of friends in if their boys because I can just name a clone after them.

And now, after that delightful cliffhanger, on to the final Clone Wars chapter of this arc, which you don't even have to wait for because of this glorious mass update.

* * *

Twi'leki translations

Hyoll. Piki ei sa suul si Hyoll? – Hyoll. Which one of you is Hyoll?

Yami don, sugi Numa. Hools fross furd rakat hewn trik ony. Jus poa, ger top deeso – Hey there, little Numa. Looks like our attempt didn't work out. I'm sorry, but we tried

Suulan queel – You're hurt

Top ed nen, eyan ei – We all were, young one

Top uln re rollo. Bres Hyoll tug cu worg sa re pleg hofe cuilor – We had it easy. Poor Hyoll got the worst of it by some distance

Hools fross suulo lik dreegit pon fo o liho sa wencike bideck ed, eh, Numa – Looks like you'll be joining us in a life of servitude after all, eh, Numa

Epsi top zeek ulner deeso rendil – Maybe we should have tried harder

Schoy, schoy. Topee ed herfo ji lik yoshon. Ju shouhst sortol kerlam ace. Topee herfo ji gur apinet. Ed sa pon – No, no. We're all going to be okay. I brought help with me. We're going to get rescued. All of us

Sortol? Poli sortol? Kugon uika suul ulner locan sortol nan shenabi? – Help? What help? How could you have found help so quickly?

Koild Aayla. Vifes o Jedi, hed vifes herfo ji sortol pon ony. Don's lots sa liolese tabada jii – That's Aayla. She's a Jedi, and she's going to help us out. There's lots of others nearby too

_Cu _Aayla – _The_ Aayla

Koild ace. Gohs niva. Ju swar suul koil suul non ed gurny ony sa doon. Rester – That's me. Don't worry. I promise you that you are all getting out of here. Today

Kugon yers top gur ony? Suulan fo klins, clep fross top non – How do we get out? You're in chains, just like we are

Ju gohs ulner clomd ji wonea. Clep rezerla, reint pliw bernan ffo, dren silo. Topl plactis suul – I don't have time to explain. Just remember, when things take off, get down

Ger runby – Get down!

Sortol! Hyoll's fo raite! Sortol gor! – Help! Hyoll's in pain! Help her!

Arni, Jedi. Jus yoshon – Thank you, Jedi. I'm okay.

Hoiseeta clomd – Payback time

Arni hef burnon cu raite crixa. Kugon gif Ju keer suul acer arna? – Thank you for taking the pain away. How can I show you my thanks?

* * *

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Renamon makes her way towards 500 Republica, while Bane and Chewbacca listen in on Sidious' conversation with his contact. The group have split up and are vulnerable, but can they pull off their task. Will they finally discover the identity of the Sith Lord?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 149 : The Face of Evil**


	149. The Face of Evil

And now it is time for the moment of truth. You've all been waiting for this. Throughout this mass update I've been steadily building and building up to this chapter, and now the time has come. I hope you all enjoy more evil, more dialogue from some of my favourite characters, and a brief interlude from some other characters that are nearby, but have little to do with the actual plot. For now. The title is dramatic enough. I hope the chapter lives up to it.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 149:- The Face of Evil**

* * *

As Darth Sidious stepped along the tunnel that he been riding his speeder through a few moments before, his mind was meticulously going over his next move. Things had been spiralling out of his control long enough and it was high time that things started to go the way he wanted them to once more. Now that he had received the confirmation that Aayla was dead from the Bounty Hunter, Cad Bane, things might finally seem to be settling back into place.

He had tried to question various members of the Jedi Council that he came across as to Aayla's recovery, but they had remained tight-lipped for the moment, stating merely that several complications had arisen that they were looking into but they weren't entirely sure when they might be resolved. Sidious had been able to sense that they were hiding something, which further exercised Bane's words.

Secura was dead, and the Jedi were determined to try and find out how that had happened before they let the Galaxy as a whole hear the news. But Sidious knew that they never would – he had covered his tracks far too carefully. They would eventually have to reveal it to everyone when people started to notice a lack of Aayla's presence. Sidious gave it three days maximum before the news broke out and billions of people would be emotionally crushed by it.

He had to repress a croaking snicker. Already things were beginning to look up. He had attempted to contact Anakin several times, but the so-called Chosen One had not been responding. And since Sidious knew that he was not on a mission against the Separatists right now – it would have been reported to the Senate if he was – that had to mean that he was not answering deliberately.

Perhaps he was grief-stricken by the loss of his close friend, which is exactly what Sidious wanted. The more anger and sadness that built up inside Anakin the better. He had a long road ahead until Anakin reached the level of darkness that he wished once more, but he had to start somewhere and the surest way to do that would be to eliminate his friends, one by one, building up as much pain and anguish as possible.

His Padawan and Master would be next to go, if Sidious had any say in the matter. Then that new Jedi, Barriss Offee, could be killed off for good measure, as he was bound to have started building some form of attachment to her already. Anakin was just like that. And that's what had made him one of the perfect choices for a future apprentice.

Padmé Amidala was another matter. Sidious still needed some kind of leverage to lure Anakin to the Dark Side. He had yet to figure out exactly how he was going to do that but Padmé would be a much easier bargaining chip then any of the Jedi. Yes, she would be kept alive for now. She was more useful to him that way.

That was the way Sidious viewed the universe. Everyone was determined only by how useful they were to him and not for any other trait, regardless of how noteworthy it might be.

Sidious entered the sub-basements of his secret base in the middle of the Works – the perfect hiding place if you wanted something big to go unnoticed (even a giant machine and an angelic rabbit fighting against a huge reptile, but even Sidious didn't know about that one). He followed the trail that he had walked numerous times towards the elevator shaft, not even looking at where he put his feet. He was still thinking to himself, trying to determine what his next move should be. He needed to drag the war on until Anakin was back under his thumb again if his plans were to work to his satisfaction.

He needed to come up with a way of allowing the Separatists to make a full comeback, and become as much of a threat as they had been in months past before the A-Team had trampled all over his plans. The elimination of one of their members would be a start, and the fact they had gained a newer one shortly beforehand should only be a minor inconvenience.

For a start, he would need to figure out a way of getting Dooku out of the prisons in the Jedi Temple. His influence was necessary, as he needed an agent that could do everything that he could not if he wanted to maintain his cover. General Grievous was all he had now on that score, and while the General was a great person for inspiring fear and crushing systems, as he had proven so many times throughout the war, he needed someone to handle the politics as well. And Grievous had about as much skill for politics as a Colo Claw Fish.

Sidious entered the elevator, which was calmly waiting where Sidious had left it and ascended upwards slowly towards the room near the top of the building where he would send out his next message. He had realised that he needed to have a word with Grievous. The leader of the droid army would need as much guidance as possible with how to proceed until Dooku was released, and unless Sidious gave him instructions, he would probably do something rash, like try and invade a world that Sidious did not want taking or even try and attack Coruscant. Grievous didn't know Sidious' true identity. He might even attempt to come and kill _him_, thinking it would help with the war and not realising he was also attacking Dooku's master.

As the elevator doors slowly opened once more and Sidious stepped out into the pristine corridor beyond, he briefly wondered what to do about Asajj Ventress. That woman had failed them so many times now that he was beginning to consider just having her killed. But, in the end, he decided to make up his mind as to what to do with her after he freed her and Dooku from the Temple.

He finally moved out into a substantial amount of light, but his hood was already up and concealing his face, hiding him from the world (though he really considered what he looked like with his hood down as the mask). He crossed over to the console, ignoring his surroundings, and began to power it up. Behind him, a shadow moved up in the rafters and a face peered over a horizontal beam embedded in the wall at him.

Cad Bane leered as he finally set eyes on Darth Sidious in person for the first time. Several times this man had contacted him via hologram, but never had Bane gotten anywhere close to him (to his knowledge). And now, there he was, powering up the console that he and the Wookiee had been using only moments before. Bane's eyes flicked down to the cockpit window and saw the Wookiee in question peering through towards him, ready to duck down at a moment's notice.

Bane didn't move a muscle more, lying on the beam as if he were a statue. He had long since perfected the art of freezing to not draw attention to himself, but a Sith Lord was something new. Bane had no idea how finally attuned Sidious' senses were, but he was determined to do nothing that would reveal himself. He wiped his mind clear of emotion and stared at the Sith Lord below him.

It would be so easy to lash out there, soar down on his boots and whip the man's hood off right then and there. But Bane knew the mission was supposed to be covert, so he held his ground and waited. Besides, he already had another agent in the field who had the job of finding out who the man was.

Speaking of said agent, Bane wondered if she had arrived at the other end of the tunnel yet.

* * *

The answer to Bane's thoughts was, no. Renamon had not yet reached the spot where it was thought that Sidious entered the tunnels, but she knew that she was getting closer. She could almost smell it over the stench of earth all around her. She had no idea what was going on back in the Works, and she knew Sidious might be back very quickly, but she was going slowly now all the same. She wanted to be careful where she put her feet now.

The faint glow being given off by her communicators was only just illuminating the passage ahead, but as Renamon continued to creep forwards, she came across something which captured her interest. Actually, she almost walked straight past it, spotting it out of the corner of her eye at the last second. She turned her head and found herself staring into a large alcove in the wall. It had clearly been man-made, as it had metal walls, ceiling and floor, and a pair of doors that were currently wide open and displaying the interior to the Digimon.

Nevertheless, the metal floor was smeared with earthy footprints, and Renamon noted that this alcove was just the right size for a speeder. This could be where Sidious parked his ride through the tunnels when he reached this end of them.

Renamon's eyes trailed back down to the floor of the tunnel and, sure enough, she saw something which made her leer in triumph. There was another footprint trail, leading from the alcove and into the distance in the direction that Renamon had been walking. The fox bent down to examine them, holding the communicator close for better light.

"Same size and shape as the ones back in the Works," she observed quietly to herself. Her smirk grew larger. "I've got you now, Darth Sidious. Whoever you are, I've as good as found you." She looked up. The tunnel ahead still looked as dark and foreboding as ever, but Renamon didn't care. A surge of triumph was building inside her, and she started forwards into the murk once more. She went slowly, despite the new discovery. Bane had warned her that Sidious was likely to have guards at the other side of the tunnel.

Renamon disappeared under her perception filter. To a casual observer, though there were none of those down here, it would have looked like she just melted into the shadows and vanished. She crouched low as she moved forward, listening intently for any sounds from up ahead.

And, indeed, she heard something. Normal humanoid ears might not have picked it up, but Renamon could hear something very, _very_ faintly in the distance. It sounded like... clicking? Renamon frowned and crept forwards once more, slower than ever. Eventually, she reached a corner and cautiously peered around it, and she saw exactly what she was looking for.

The tunnel was at an end. Just like in the building under the Works, it suddenly opened up into a larger room beyond, thought the light from Renamon's communicator did not allow her to see that much detail of the room. She could, however, see a large crate not that far into it, and she could also see that the room had its own illumination, albeit a faint one.

Renamon's eyes narrowed and she covered the communicator's light with a paw, masking it from view. This cut off a lot of her vision, but she'd already memorised the way to the crate and she slipped silently around the corner and practically slithered down the tunnel as quietly as a wisp of smoke rising through the air. She reached the crate and crouched herself behind it. Taking a couple of moments to listen, trying to discover whether anyone might have heard her, but there was nothing to indicate that.

However, the noises she had heard in the tunnel had grown louder, and Renamon could now here some shuffling noises as well. Renamon, very slowly and very cautiously, peered over the top of the crate and into the sub-basement.

The basement itself looked very similar to the one under the Works, and it appeared to be largely unused, much like the rest of the building. It had probably been used as a storage facility before 500 Republica became the place where the Senators lived. But Renamon's keen eyes detected movements in the shadows all around the area, and she now understood why she'd heard those clicking sounds.

Geonosians.

Lots of them.

Thankfully, these ones were regular Geonosians instead of dead bodies re-animated by small brain controlling parasites, but still, Renamon felt her tail curling. It made perfect sense that Sidious had chosen Geonosians to be his guards. They were extremely loyal to the Separatist cause, and they had much more experience than many other people, including battle droids, at being underground. Renamon watched them carefully. Some of them were perched on crates and quietly keeping in communication with clicking and gurgling noises which Renamon remembered all too well. Others were hanging from the ceiling beams by their feet, their wings fluttering slightly. More were standing beside the door at the other end of the room that lead into another basement. And all of them were holding their patented sonic cannons.

The Geonosians were built for stealth down here. If they thought they heard an intruder, they could easily conceal themselves in the shadows and then launch a surprise attack. Renamon had seen what those sonic cannons were capable of. Anyone who wondered in here without knowing what to expect wouldn't know what hit them before they were blasted.

But Renamon did know what to expect, and she felt another smirk crossing her face. She had been worried that there might be battle droids down here. While she could take them out with ease, she wanted to go undetected all together, and a droid would be harder to sneak past. But Geonosians were living creatures. They would not be able to see through her perception filter.

But still, she had to be careful. Insects were very sensitive to vibration, so Renamon assumed Geonosians were the same. Therefore, when she crept around the crate and entered the room, she placed each foot down on the ground with the utmost care. She slunk around another crate, going on all fours now and the communicator clutched in a fist, meaning she was walking on her knuckles with one hand. She held everything as still as possible, including her tail, as she crept towards the door at the other side.

Even when she was in the middle of the room and stepped out in what would have been plain sight were it not for her perception filter, the Geonosians made no more moves. A couple of them were peering down the tunnel she had just come from, but none of them were even looking at her. The clicking sounds they made were more discernable from here.

Renamon kept moving and crept past another crate, right at the moment one of the Geonosians buzzed out of the darkness and landed on it, it's curling toes landing within an inch of Renamon's left ear. Renamon froze, staring up at the tall insectoid standing right over her out of the corner of her eye, holding her breath for fear that it would detect her. If it did, she would be forced to fight, and Sidious would definitely know someone had been here when he got back if that happened.

But the Geonosian made no further indication it knew she was there. It seemed it had just hopped onto that crate by coincidence. Renamon suppressed the sight of relief and kept moving forward, passing right beneath the Geonosian's protruding nose. She slipped quietly under one that was sleeping, upside-down from a ceiling beam, and then suddenly surged forwards and whooshed between the two Geonosians guarding the door, rolling behind a crate on the other side and looking back to gauge their reactions.

The two bugs looked momentarily confused, but they seemed to put it down to a breeze made by the fluttering of the other's wings, so they returned to what they were doing.

Renamon turned and made her way carefully through the second sub-basement, which was just as filled with Geonosians as the last one, and the result of her journey through this sub-basement was pretty similar. She was able to avoid detection from the insects easily enough, though the slow progress across the floor seemed to be painstakingly long. Eventually she followed the trail of human footprints in the ground and reached another door and, after getting through it, saw what she was looking for. The footprints led right to the doors of another elevator shaft.

There were even more Geonosians in this sub-basement than the last one, so Renamon acted as quickly as she could, searching for an ideal spot to hide and wait. A nearby mound of crates stood out in her vision and she crossed over to it, curving slowly around a pair of the bugs standing on the ground. She reached the base of the mound and began to climb up it, her fur muffling the sounds of her footfalls even quieter than they already were.

Once she reached the top of the crate pile, she turned around and her eyes focused on a rafter beam, on which a couple of Geonosians were crouched. She paused for a moment, wondering if she should take the risk, but eventually she went for it. She pushed off from the wall with one foot and sailed across the gap, landing squarely on the beam with all four paws, her tail curling around them to muffle the sound. The Geonosians nearby looked up, cocking their heads, but apparently decided it was nothing.

Renamon sighed silently, and crept along the beam until she had an unobstructed view of the elevator and the space in front of it. She settled down on the beam, flat on her stomach, and waited, breathing shallowly and keeping an eye out for the bugs. She prayed that one of them did not get too close. If they accidentally tried to perch where she was lying, she would be discovered instantly.

But for now, they were unaware.

Renamon just hoped it would stay that way.

* * *

High above the crouching fox, Bail Organa poured another drink for Onaconda Farr. The Rodian Senator examined glass carefully for a moment and then looked up and said, "You sure that this stuff has been tested for poison?" He had a smile on his green face, but he was only half-joking. "There aren't any Jedi here to intervene if something goes wrong this time."

"You needn't worry, Senator," Bail laughed, patting the Rodian on the shoulder a couple of times and taking a sip from his own glass. "It's all been very closely monitored. There aren't any harmful chemicals in these. Except the alcohol, of course."

Onaconda chuckled and took a sip of his own. "My thanks, Bail. You must forgive me. I still get a little twitchy when it comes to these sort of things even now. To think what might have happened had Aayla Secura not been there... well, it makes me shudder," he said, doing just that. "I knew right from that moment that there was something special about that Jedi, and it seems like I was proved to be right. Now the whole Galaxy owes her, not just myself."

"I still can't believe it might finally be close to an end," Padmé Amidala sighed, a smile appearing on her face as she looked wistfully upwards, her mind filled with thoughts of peace and happiness. The Republic she wanted. The Republic that she remembered. "It seems that this war, and all the debates and arguments and bills that resulted from it, have become such an integral part of our lives that suddenly not having them anymore almost seems weird."

"But it _is_ a relief," Mon Mothma observed.

"Oh, definitely," Padmé nodded, taking another sip. "Everything seems to be looking up. I know that Dooku and Ventress haven't been imprisoned for long but I'm already seeing the repercussions. Did you know that, just this morning, I was contacted by my old friend Mina Bonteri?"

"Senator Bonteri?" Bail asked curiously. "Wasn't she one of the first to leave the Republic at the beginning of the war?"

"Indeed," nodded Padmé. "She was one of those who left because they thought that the Republic was corrupt, and not because of the money opportunities or the offers of protection. I heard that she was always pushing for peaceful resolutions, but they never seemed to get through. Nevertheless, the fact that we were on opposites sides meant we naturally fell out of contact, but she told contacted me this morning. She said that the Separatist Senate held a congress this morning, and this time the majority of them appeared to be listening to her. Without Count Dooku there, presiding them over them, they were very open to peace talks."

"Well, this is fantastic news," Senator Farr smiled. "Hopefully, it will only be a couple of days before they contact the Senate directly. That means the war will be over sooner than we thought. With their leaders taken out, there's nothing to stop the Republic Senate from disagreeing to these peace talks."

"Don't forget General Grievous," Bail reminded them. "He's still out there. Even though the war might just about be over, there's still going to be a manhunt and many clones still bearing arms all over the place until he and the other main members of the Separatist Council are finally rooted out."

"Yes, but the fighting will be limited," Mon Mothma pointed out. "They'll be more like wanted criminals than major enemies. Even Grievous can do nothing without the necessary forces and Dooku by his side. And when the Separatist Senators side with us again, he'll have almost the whole Galaxy after him. I even heard the rest of the Techno Union is thinking of returning to the Republic."

"Well, I'll believe that one when I see it," Padmé chuckled. "What do you think, Chuchi?"

Silence.

"Chuchi?" Padmé asked and turned around. It took her a second to locate the Pantoran Senator, but she spotted her beside the wall, sitting in a chair and staring at her knees with vacant eyes. Her glass of non-alcoholic drink was still clutched in her hand, completely untouched. She didn't seem to be aware of her surroundings at all.

"Er... Chuchi," Padmé asked, cautiously approaching the Pantoran. She frowned with concern. Chuchi had seemed a little distracted when she had arrived back on Coruscant that morning, claiming that she had had to help Papanoida deal with a very officious Pantoran dignitary. She had seemed to be with them some of the time, but other times her mind seemed to be elsewhere. Right now, she was practically in the Outer Rim.

"Chuchi," Padmé placed a hand on her shoulder.

Chuchi jumped and slopped some of her drink on the floor. She looked embarrassed and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry, Padmé," she murmured, brushing a strand of lilac hair out of her face.

"Are you okay?" Padmé asked kindly.

"Yeah," nodded Chuchi. "I... guess I've had a few things on my mind lately."

"Trouble on Pantora?" Padmé questioned.

"You... could say that," nodded Chuchi. "We... recently had to spend a lot of money to appease a particularly demanding person. And I'm still not entirely sure that the situation is over. It's quite complicated."

"Anything that we can do to help?"

"No," Chuchi shook her head. "It's my problem, and hopefully it won't be much of a problem for much longer? I'm expecting a call at some point in the future and I'm hoping that the situation will have resolved itself by then."

"Well," Padmé smiled. "If there's anything you need, then don't hesitate to ask. Threepio, can you get a cleaner droid in here to sort out this spill before it stains the floor?"

"Yes, mistress," nodded the droid and turned around to do just that.

Chuchi quickly picked up the bottle and refilled her almost-empty glass and held it up. "Anyway," she said, getting to her feet. "Sorry to zone out like that, but I did partially take in what was being said. To a time of peace," she held her glass up.

"To a time of peace," agreed the other four as they clinked glasses and drank. As Chuchi downed her small glass, her mind began to wander again almost immediately. Worry was continuing to whittle away at her whenever she wasn't distracted by something else. She knew that Renamon and Bane would have already gotten underway in the search for Sidious but she had no idea how far along they'd gotten. She didn't know if they'd been caught, if they were on the way or even if they'd gotten a lead yet.

But she couldn't help but dwell on it. She was effectively a co-conspirator in this plan to unveil the Sith Lord, but she was one of the few who had no clue as to how it was getting on. Aayla and the others had their mind-link, but Chuchi did not and never would, as she was not Force-sensitive. And they couldn't call her regularly to update her on their progress. That would be too dangerous for them and for Chuchi herself.

So the poor Pantoran was forced to wait for news that may or may not come for quite a while, but she desperately hoped for something soon. The longer she was forced to wait the more anxious she was becoming. She knew full-well that the Sith Lord could be in the building she was standing in right now.

She shook her head and forced herself to join in the conversation once more, unaware of the fact that, almost a mile down (500 Republica was _very_ tall), Renamon was perched on a rafter beam, surrounded by Geonosians and waiting for Sidious to return. But the fox in question, as well as all the others, were never far from Chuchi's thoughts.

* * *

Chewbacca felt his fist tightening as he watched the man before him pushing a few buttons on the console. The man trying to hurt his friends, who had brought the war to his home planet, was standing right there, on the other side of this window. Chewbacca's instincts were yelling at him to leap out and confront the man, but he kept himself hidden. This guy was dangerous. Only a fool would attack him without a plan or some kind of skill that they could use to counter him. Chewbacca had neither, so he just waited.

Both he and Bane watched as Sidious stepped backwards, presumably waiting for a call to be answered. His hands disappeared into the folds of his cloak and his hood, if anything, seemed to droop lower over his eyes. How the heck could he even see anything?

A moment later and a hologram appeared in the transmitter, the very same one where they had uncovered plans for something called The Death Star not too long ago. It depicted a cyborg with a skull-like mask and bulky chest that Chewbacca had never met in person, but he knew right away who he was looking at. The one member of a group of three who had attacked Aayla that had managed to get away.

General Grievous' hologram folded a metallic arm across his waist and the other over his back and bowed. Evidently he respected this man a great deal and apparently it took a lot to gain respect from this guy. He even cast his eyes downwards as he said, "Yes, Lord Sidious," in that rasping but still strong voice of his.

"General Grievous," Sidious croaked. "It seems as though the skills of some of my underlings are not quite as good as I had been led to believe. I do not need to listen to rumours to know of how you, Dooku and Ventress were bested by Aayla Secura not so long ago. The very Jedi which I had sent you to kill in the first place. I am sure you can understand that I am most disappointed with the result of that fight."

Grievous growled, his eyes narrowing in indignation and looking up at the hooded man. "I assure you, my Lord, I will be more prepared for anything Secura has to offer if we meet in the field again. She took us all by surprise with sneaky and wild tactics."

"And I suppose you also got overconfident with yourself," Sidious replied sourly. "I did warn you all not to underestimate her, yet you all did exactly that. Despite your superior numbers, you still fell to her. You even ran away, against my express orders. Have you nothing to say on that?"

"I have an explanation for that behaviour," Grievous responded. "I was wary after the defeat of my comrades, and I knew you would still need someone to command the Separatist Armies. I thought it the most practical approach. It was a tactical retreat."

"Yes," Sidious mused. "Well, while your behaviour might have been questionable, the outcome is exactly what I need. You are quite right. The Separatist cause has reached the point of no return. If we are forced back any further than we currently are then everything is as good as over for us. We must therefore take some big steps to ensure our presence remains a threat, and convince the Senators we still have under out thumb to remain there."

"As you wish, my Lord," Grievous growled. "How would you like us to proceed?"

"For a start," Sidious replied. "Where are Nute Gunray and San Hill?"

Grevious' eyes narrowed at the mention of the former of those two people, but he said, "They are with me. I am currently at our secret base in Sector Twenty-Nine. Gunray is in a state of panic. He believes that we cannot win the war without Count Dooku to lead us." The cyborg clenched his fists and said, "But I will prove him wrong, my Lord. Just give me my orders and I can guarantee maximum effectiveness."

"I am afraid that Gunray has a point, General," Sidious shook his head. "The warfront itself should remain intact in your hands, and if you are incapable of living up to that expectation, then I may begin looking for a new leader for the droid armies." Sidious let the threat hang for a few moments before he went on. "However, this war requires delicacy on many details, which the Count has served me well on up to this point."

"Very well," Grievous growled. "But how do we proceed without him?"

"For now, General, you must lie low," Sidious replied. "By all means, send out battle droids to attack any systems that you see fit, but you yourself must remain hidden. A disappearance of the enemy leader will unnerve the Republic. They know that you haven't been captured, and they will assume that you are waiting for the perfect moment to strike a key system. What you will really be doing is protecting Gunray and Hill. Make sure that they are not found by Republic Forces, and if they are then you must take them out quickly!"

"Is it really necessary for me to protect that Nemoidian slime?" Grievous asked bitterly. "He is a coward and has provided almost no benefit to us as far as I am aware."

"I am not surprised," Sidious said sharply. "Your attention to this kind of detail is sorely lacking, General. However, Gunray is currently our biggest asset. Now that a large proportion of San Hill's funds have dried up with the taking of Mygeeto, Gunray is the one we must rely on to supply us with the fundings necessary for maintaining our attack until we can regain more Senators to supply it for us. Protect him at all costs."

Grievous growled. "Fine, I will do as you ask."

"My use of the word 'Protect,' does of course have a double-meaning," Sidious suddenly leered. "It is entirely possible that Gunray will attempt to leave our cause when he finds out that his expense accounts are the most relied upon. You must therefore prevent him from doing so. Your guard duty consists of keeping him in, as well as keeping the Republic out."

Grievous seemed to perk up at this news and he chuckled, "That, I can work with."

"Just ensure no harm comes to him," Sidious added. "But threaten him all you like if you want to. Now, I require data on the state of affairs so far. How many droid factories do we have left that are still operational?"

"Two, my Lord," Grievous responded. "Both of them are large and operating at peak efficiency, and as far as we know, the Republic has not gained knowledge of their whereabouts yet?"

"Very well," Sidious nodded. "Do not send any droids out to battle for a few days, General. Let their numbers build up once more. The Republic forces are strong in the majority of the Outer Rim now, and the more droids we have before we start destroying them once more then the better chance we have of making a comeback. Send fleets to reinforce the bases that we do have left – we must protect them at all costs."

"And when the time comes to strike?" Grievous asked. "When we have built up our forces once more, where do we begin to initiate our comeback?"

"As of yet, I am undecided," Sidious replied. "I shall contact you in a few days time with the targets I have picked out. In the meantime, we must focus on a way of freeing the Lord Tyranus from the clutches of the Jedi."

"I could send a few assassin droids to sneak into the Temple and do something about that," Grievous suggested.

"No," Sidious shook his head. "I have a better idea. I will ask the Bounty Hunter, Cad Bane, to do the job for me."

Chewbacca looked alarmed when he heard those words, and his eyes flicked up to the spot where he knew Bane to be hiding. The Wookiee's paws clenched on the pilot seat of the shuttle he was hiding in, wondering if the Duros would suddenly be allured by the prospect of getting his hands on more money, break cover and turn his back on the mission that Aayla and Chuchi had set him on. Indeed, he saw the Duros' head move slightly, as if he had taken a greater interest in what he was hearing.

But other than that, Bane made no moves at all, for which Chewbacca was grateful. Perhaps Bane thought that revealing that he'd turned his back on Sidious at all was a bad idea, or maybe he was committed to the cause that he was being paid for, like Todo had suggested he was. Either way, the Bounty Hunter did not compromise the mission.

Chewbacca heard Grievous snort with derision. "Bah!" he said. "Why should we rely on Bounty Hunters like him? I have never trusted their sort – always looking to extract more money out of you. How would he be better than a group of assassin droids to free Count Dooku?"

"Simple, really," Sidious smirked. "Bane has already proven to me numerous times that he is a master of stealth and deception. If there is anyone who can navigate their way through the Jedi Temple, filled with powerful beings such as Master Yoda or Windu, then it is him. A few million credits is all that will be required to get Lord Tyranus out of jail. But considering how essential he is to our cause right now, that price is almost nothing, and definitely worth paying."

"And what of Ventress?" asked Grievous. "Must I suffer the delights of her presence once more?"

Sidious scowled. "I may add a little extra in for Bane if he takes her out while she's helpless. That woman has outlived her usefulness if you ask me. However, on the other hand, we may need all the assets we can get to reinstate ourselves as a threat to the Republic, so no, I will spare her. She may still be of some value."

Grievous let out a cross between a sigh and snarl of annoyance. "Wonderful," he rasped. "I look forward to plying her with snide comments."

"You will do no more harm to Ventress then you do to Gunray, understand?" Sidious said, pointedly.

"Yes, my Lord," Grievous bowed again. "Is that everything?"

"I believe it is," nodded the Sith Lord. "I wish to time my strike back at the Galaxy carefully. One catastrophic day for the Republic may be enough to put the Separatist cause back into control, as long as it is done right. Many variables weigh on this. I will contact you in a few days time, and you must be prepared to initiate your strikes the moment I tell you the locations. If all goes to plan, then on one day in the not too distant future, several key systems will be battered by your forces, Tyranus and Ventress will be released from the Jedi by Bane, and the Republic population will learn of the death of Aayla Secura. All three at once will be a meteoric blow to our enemies."

Grievous looked up sharply at a few particular words. "The death of Aayla Secura?" he asked quickly. "You have a plan to eliminate her?"

"I already had one plan," Sidious pointed out. "And that didn't work as you can attest to, can you not, General?"

"She surprised me!" Grievous almost roared in indignation. "If I had known she could fire Lightning from her fingers then I would have been able to counter that."

"I do not believe that even she knew she could do that," Sidious shook his head. "But that is not important. What is done is done, and what is done is that Aayla Secura is now dead under my orders. Your battle against her may have ended badly for us, but it was enough to hospitalise her for a day. And during that time, while she was vulnerable, Bane was able to slip into the medical station and dispatch her."

Grievous' eyes widened in surprise through his face-mask. "So, she is gone..."

"I was informed that she now has a blaster-hole right through the middle of her head," leered Sidious. "She is indeed dead. And oh, how satisfying those words are."

Chewbacca growled quietly, and had to restrain himself from running out there and beating the crap out of this evil man.

Grievous, on the other hand, seemed disappointed rather than pleased with this news. "She was killed off while lying in a bed?" he asked. "By a common Bounty Hunter? Where is the dignity in that? Where is the honour, the glory?"

Sidious appeared to frown under his hood. "You seem disappointed," he observed. "Do you have a problem with my methods, Grievous?"

"Not at all, my Lord," Grievous shook his head. "It is indeed good news to hear that the blasted A-Team is short one member. But still, I would have preferred a re-match with her, in which I would be more prepared and be able to best her. She might have been an enemy but her fighting style was unique and impressive. She was a true warrior, and..." he paused for a moment, almost embarrassed, and then he said, "She earned my respect on that day. She deserved more than that."

"She deserved everything she got," Sidious spat, suddenly looking extremely angry. "She has been a thorn in all our sides for far too long, and now she has gone. I was hoping that she would suffer more for her meddling than she actually did. What difference does it make to you whether she died in battle or not? The eventual result was the same – she is no longer a problem."

"I know what it is like to be denied the death of a warrior," Grievous replied. "And Secura was one of the best I have ever faced."

Sidious appeared to scowl beneath his hood. "Getting sentimental are we, Grievous? You know full well that there is no use for that in my forces. Perhaps I am making a mistake putting my faith in you."

"Of course not, Lord Sidious," Grievous' eyes narrowed. "I do share your joy at the death of Secura. After, she is a Jedi, and we both agree that the less Jedi there are the better. I was merely hoping for a chance to kill her myself, but it seems that will be denied to me."

"Very well," Sidious said. "I actually share that sentiment in a way. If I had had an opportunity to have Secura killed at my own hand without risking exposure then I would have done so in an instant as well. But we cannot afford to dwell on the past, and that is the only place where Secura can be found now. We must focus on the future, and bringing the war back to the Galaxy with a Force. And the best way to go about doing that would be to eliminate the rest of the A-Team."

"I look forward to it," Grievous chuckled raspily.

"I maintain that Skywalker would be a useful ally," Sidious said. "And I fully intend on luring him to my cause as I have all along. However, the others are fair game. Tano and Offee should be killed in front of Skywalker if that is all possible. Kenobi must die as well. I happen to know that you have a history with that man." Sidious chuckled. "I am assuming you would like the pleasure of hunting him down."

"Indeed, my Lord," Grievous nodded. "Kenobi has evaded my sword for too long. I look forward to the day I can finally gut him."

"And you shall have it," Sidious said. "Soon. We must eliminate key Jedi as fast as we can. If all goes to plan then we should be bearing down on the Republic as we were half a year ago within a month. We still have many allies on our side. We only need to exploit them correctly. And I have full confidence that we shall succeed. My plans have been majorly set back, but we will not fail. We cannot fail. I have foreseen a future where everything I desire comes true, and I will do whatever it takes to ensure that future becomes a reality."

"The Republic will be crushed beneath our fists," Grievous agreed. "Their leaders will be butchered and their clone armies slaughtered and burned. Nobody will be able to stand against us when we rise to power once more. I assure you, the Republic will be caught flat-footed by our strikes. Our victory will be final."

"I see I have inspired you, General," Sidious said. "Now it is up to you. I will manage things here on Coruscant. The Senate will act accordingly. It is up to you to ensure my desires are fulfilled out in the field until Lord Tyranus is freed. Now go, and do not fail me."

"Yes, my lord," Grievous bowed again, his cloak swishing out behind him. The hologram faded away and Sidious stepped back from the console.

From up in his hiding spot, Bane could see the smirk of satisfaction on the man's twisted face. Bane frowned. The longer that he observed this man, the more he began to feel that little twitch of recognition that Renamon had felt when she'd seen his hologram at Black Stall Station. But for some reason, he just could not place the man. But even he could feel slightly repulsed by him. This man was pure evil, and Bane knew it.

Bane flicked off the button on his little holocam and stopped the recording. He'd seen everything he needed to, and it seemed that Sidious would not be taking his hood off anytime soon. Not until he was back under 500 Republica once more.

"He is a fool," Sidious muttered, the noise only just reaching Bane's straining ears. He frowned and peered at Sidious, as the Sith Lord began to push buttons again. "Once I have Skywalker on my side, as my apprentice, everyone else is expendable. He is all I will need to rule this Galaxy."

Bane raised a brow. It seemed that Sidious' game stretched even further than they'd suspected. If that sentence was anything to go by then the Separatists were being played just as much as the Republic. The fact that they had discovered he was planning to create an Empire seemed to support that. Most Separatists had joined that cause, because they thought the Republic was corrupt. Most of the Republic thought the Separatists were corrupt. As it turned out, both were right and both were wrong.

Even Count Dooku seemed to be a pawn in something he didn't understand. Bane had to resist a chuckle. Did Sidious consider nobody a true ally?

Sidious stepped back again, and Bane wondered who he was calling. There were several moments with no answer, and then several more. It occurred to Bane that Sidious might just be trying to contact _him,_ at Black Stall Station. He chuckled at the dramatic irony. Sidious was trying to call somebody who was in fact, above him and watching him from behind. At least it seemed that Sidious didn't know he was there.

When there was no reply, Sidious grunted in annoyance and ended the call, knowing that Bane would have answered by then if he'd been there. Calling on a Bounty Hunter if you wanted a job done quickly was often not the best solution, as they worked for many people besides yourself. He had considered himself fortunate that Bane had been there when he had asked him to assassinate Aayla.

He would have to return tomorrow and try again. He still had a few days to get hold of him, and that would be enough. So, he turned around and headed back towards the elevator, disappearing into the shadows of the corridor and still a complete mystery to the two people who had been watching him through that entire conversation.

As the elevator rolled shut and began to descend, Bane grabbed his hat and rolled off the beam, plummeting to the ground. In mid-fall, he activated his boots and lowered himself slowly to the floor, landing smoothly close to the shuttle. Chewbacca quickly stood up in the cockpit of the shuttle and hurried out again, hurrying over to Bane.

"Rooohu rrooahwhrr aooo ohrarcwh Rcwowhrascoowh?" he asked.

"Talking to me is a waste of time because I still don't understand you," Bane said. "But that conversation was most illuminating, even if it still didn't tell us who this guy is." He lifted his communicator to his mouth and said, murmured, "Renamon, you there?"

It took a few moments before there was a response, but Renamon's whisper eventually broke through, so quietly that Bane and Chewbacca were barely able to hear it. "Yes, I am here, but keep your voice down and be quick. I'm surrounded by Geonosians that don't know I'm here and I would quite like to keep it that way."

"Alright," Bane nodded. "Sidious is heading your way. He just had a conversation with the droid general – Grievous – about his plans for the rest of the Galaxy. Are you in position?"

"Yes," Renamon whispered. "I've found the place. Why do you think I'm surrounded by giant bugs who work for the Sith?"

"Heh," Bane nodded. "Alright then. Listen carefully. There is a holocam built into the communicator I gave to you. Just push the green button and point and everything you point it at will be filmed. Once you find out Sidious' identity, you need to get out of there and back into the tunnel. I'll follow Sidious and meet you there."

"Fine," Renamon replied, and the comlink went dead as she signed off. Bane turned to Chewbacca and said, "As for you, big man, you've got your own job." He activated his comlink again and said, "Todo, come in."

"I'm here, Bane. Is it time?" came the reply of the droid.

"Yes," nodded Bane. "Head for the Sith's lair and pick up the Wookiee, then I want the two of you to follow my signal and go overground. We'll head out of the tunnels and we need you to pick us up when we've got what we came for."

"Alright," Todo said. "I'm on my way," the droid signed out quickly. Bane turned to the Wookiee and said, "Here's what I want you to do – I want you to use the scanners on the ship to take a reading on the tunnels underneath the surface. Identify the nearest exit from the tunnels to 500 Republica, or if there isn't one close by then identify the nearest place where we blast our way out."

Chewbacca gave Bane a quizzical look. The Duros caught it and said, "It never hurts to retreat as quickly as possible just in case things go wrong. Just try not to get caught by the police droids around the Senate District. And there is something else as well." He passed the holocam to the large being and said, "Take this and download the software into a holotransmitter. When Renamon brings back their other holocam, we'll need to download that one in as well. It'll be all the proof we need just in case the Jedi Council has any more doubts."

Chewbacca nodded. He knew that he'd never be able to keep up with Bane as the Duros made his way through the tunnels, so this was the best alternative. Bane whooshed towards the elevator and, after he judged a significant amount of time had elapsed, hit the button to call the lift back up. Chewbacca moved over to the console that Sidious had just left behind and turned off the life form scanners once again. Then, he hurried over to the elevator and joined Bane next to it as the doors slid open again.

After a quick trip down, Chewbacca got off at the ground floor and moved over to the front door they had stepped through before as Bane continued his journey down. The Wookiee stepped outside and out into the smoky outside world of the Works once more. He looked up and, sure enough, the _Sleight of Hand_ eventually hove into view after a few minutes.

The huge, hulking ship slowed to a halt, hovering for a moment above Chewbacca and then lowering its ramp. Chewbacca hopped on board and clambered up the ramp and into the main bulk of the ship. The ramp slid shut behind him as he made his way into the cockpit and found Todo waiting for him.

"I'm assuming that Bane told you what he wants us to do next," Todo turned to look at him. "Because I don't have a clue."

Chewbacca nodded and held up the holocam, and stepped over to the controls.

* * *

Bane leapt out of the elevator and into the dark sub-basement once again. His tunic spread out behind him as he hurried through the room, dashing around the crates and following the trail that Sidious had left behind. Once he reached the tunnel that Renamon had entered some time ago, he paused for a moment to make sure nobody was there, before he activated his torch and followed on, cautiously. Sidious would be in no hurry, so Bane didn't want to go too fast just in case he ran into him.

Eventually, Bane came across the narrow section of the tunnel that Renamon had encountered earlier. He grunted as he examined it briefly, before he took his hat off and skilfully tossed it through the gap. Then he turned side-on and squeezed through the narrow space, emerging from the other side and into the open tunnel. His torch-light illuminated more that what Renamon had had and he could already see the tunnel was empty. Sidious had already taken his speeder and gone.

Now Bane had some catching up to do.

First though, he picked up his hat and placed it back on its head where it belonged.

He pushed a button of his wrist-com and a little circular screen flashed, a narrow strip of light pointing ahead into the tunnel. This was the tracking beacon. He would need to use it to follow the signal from Renamon's communicator and navigate his own way through the tunnels where Renamon had a guide and he didn't.

Bane darted forwards and burst into action, leaping into the air activating his rocket boots. The thrusters ignited and the light that the flames generated ended up illuminating much more of the tunnel than Bane's torch. It also hurled him forwards at an incredible rate, causing the tunnel walls to shoot past as if they were moving quickly in the opposite direction as well.

Bane was forced to curl and wind his way around the corners, his hat brim billowing with his cloak and threatening to blow off but, as usual, it didn't. The Bounty Hunter took the twists and turns of the tunnel in his stride, navigating their course as if he were a formula one driver going around corners at an insanely fast pace. He knew that he wasn't going as fast as a speeder could, but Sidious probably wasn't going as fast as a speeder could through these tunnels either so Bane wasn't too worried about that.

He came to one of the forks in the trail, but he had already chosen the path to go before he reached them, his tracking device guiding him the right way.

This was as good a chance as they were ever going to get to revealing the identity of the Sith Lord. Renamon might have only one shot at this.

* * *

The fox in question was still lying flat against the rafter beam in the sub-basement beneath 500 Republica. She hadn't budged an inch except to tilt her head and hold her communicator up when Bane had contacted her. She already had identified the lens for the holocam on the little device and was holding it ready in one paw, finger poised over the green button that Bane had told her to push.

One of the Geonosians had gotten uncomfortably close to her, and Renamon had had to resist the urge to kick it in the ankle and knock it off its perch. It was currently making small pacing motions across the rafter beam she was lying on, its feet landing only a metre or so away from her tail. Renamon was keeping an eye on him. If he started making longer strides then she might be forced to move it to avoid having it stepped on by the unsuspecting guard. His sonic cannon was being hefted in its long fingers and its eyes stared right through her whenever he turned to face her.

Several other Geonosians were still wandering around nearby. Renamon was getting sick of listening to their clicks and gurgles. It brought back memories of those disgusting zombies. But she bore it, because she had to. Too much depended on her now.

Her ears pricked as she heard a faint sound growing louder. She tensed immediately. It was definitely the sound of the speeder in the distance, getting closer. The Geonosians evidently heard it too because they all turned and immediately tensed, fixing their eyes on the door. Renamon thought she detected a certain amount of reverence in their eyes, as if they were waiting to lay eyes on a God.

Or a Devil.

The sound of the speeder abruptly halted, and for a while there was silence. The Geonosians were making no noise whatsoever now, and they were frozen still, almost like statues. Renamon suddenly wished they'd start making their clicks again. The sudden silence was unnerving, even for her.

Then another sound eventually reached her ears after the long silence – the sounds of soft footfalls as someone made their way through the adjoin room, heading right towards Renamon's location. The Geonosian gurgling started up again, but this time is seemed to have more of a purpose. It was more discernable, more forceful, and the majority of them seemed to be making the exact same noises, as if they were quietly cheering the person that was heading their way.

Renamon's hair began to stand on end again. She knew what was coming and she hurriedly turned the holocam-slash-communicator-slash-tracking beacon towards the door that she had entered the room from. Quite unintentionally her heart began to beat faster. It was rare for Renamon to get nervous about anything, but suddenly she found herself feeling almost scared.

Why?

The moment the man stepped into the room, Renamon remembered why. It was almost as if she had to resist the urge to crawl into the corner and hide, covering herself with her tail in a vain attempt to shield herself. Even the mighty Renamon felt like a little kit when she looked upon the cloaked figure. Others might have been more resilient, but a Digimon's capacity to sense evil seemed to heighten the effect that the cloaked figure already had.

She quickly suppressed her emotions, lest he were to detect something, and focused solely on pointing the holocam at him and following his progress. The Geonosians all around him bowed as he past, crouching over the weapons and fanning their wings out in poses that made them look ridiculous. If Renamon had been paying attention, she would have found it funny, but her focus was entirely on this one man.

Here he was, at last. Darth Sidious. She had finally found him.

And for reasons we well know, she was beginning to wish she hadn't. She'd never felt like this before, not even when she'd gone up against Ogudomon, and that Digimon had really given her the creeps. Perhaps it was because she was on her own.

Suddenly she felt a warm and soothing presence in her mind that helped to calm her. Words were not necessary, but she knew exactly what was happening. Terriermon was pressing his consciousness against her own from the other side of the Galaxy, and he wasn't the only one. Though his signal was the strongest, Renamon could feel the presence of everyone else too. Everyone she cared about in this universe who had a link to her mind – Rika and Lopmon, Henry and Suzie, Aayla, Anakin and Ahsoka.

They weren't hear in body, but they were there in spirit and that was enough for the fox. She felt the tingle at the back of her eyes, stronger than usual, which indicated that all of them were looking through her eyes, seeing what she was seeing. The moment Renamon discovered the identity of Sidious, they all would.

Renamon was comforted by this and was able to pull herself together and focus on Sidious again.

Sidious walked over to the elevator, and, for a moment, Renamon was concerned that he might just pass right into it without shedding his disguise. But, at the last moment, he turned to one of the Geonosians standing in the shadow beside the door and said, in that voice which sent an unpleasant shiver down Renamon's neck. "I trust that you have nothing to report."

The Geonosian stepped forward nervously, ruffling its wings in agitation. Sidious made no attempt to allay its fears as the bug burbled out some string of mumblings and clicks and trilling noises, and Renamon had no idea what the heck it was saying, but she trusted that it meant something like, "No, sir. Quiet as a tomb."

At least she hoped so.

Sure enough, Sidious nodded and said, "Good. I shall be going up now, but I should be back sometime tomorrow. Maintain your stations, and remember what happened to your previous comrades who decided to slack off in their duties."

The Geonosian backed off, bowing nervously and burbling a hasty reply. Sidious ignored him as he reached upwards, his gnarled hands heading for his hood.

_Oh Fanglongmon,_ Renamon thought. _This is it._

And it was.

Sidious pulled his hood down and revealed his face.

It felt like a the foot of an AT-AT walker had suddenly slammed down with full force into Renamon's stomach as the breath left her body completely. Her eyes widened and she almost dropped the camcorder and, for the first time in her life, her jaw genuinely dropped open.

It couldn't be! It just couldn't!

Yet, it was.

Standing before her beside the elevator and shedding the rest of his cloak to reveal the ceremonial robes beneath, was Chancellor Palpatine.

Renamon could only stare, but inside her mind, a raging torrent of different emotions had suddenly swirled up all over the place. The first was disbelief. Of all the Senate Members that could have been Darth Sidious, the Chancellor would probably have been close to the bottom of the list. Not because of his personality but simply because the idea that the Sith Lord that was the leader of the Separatists also being the man who was in charge of the other side of the war seemed like such a ridiculous idea that it hadn't even been worth considering.

The second was anger at herself. It was so _obvious!_ All the signs had been there. The holograms of Darth Sidious might have hid his hair, eyes and forehead, but it still plainly showed the hooked nose and the prominent chin of the Chancellor. Renamon had not spent a great deal of time around the Chancellor, but she knew his face. She knew what he looked like. Yet once again the idea of him being the Sith Lord had seemed so ridiculous that she just hadn't made the connection.

And the man had always given her the creeps slightly before, and the same could be said of Terriermon and Lopmon. But all three of them had just thought it was because he was a smarmy politician, but none of the other politicians they'd seen, not even the other smarmy ones like Senator Burtoni of Kamino, had given them that sensation.

The third was a boiling anger at him! This man was the leader of both sides of the war! What was this to him? Was it all just a game? He was manipulating an entire galaxy in an effort to get the result he wanted, as if he was attempting to play both sides on a game of chess where the outcome would be both the kings checkmating one another. Everyone she knew seemed to be just a piece to his plan, a pawn for his use. All the Jedi, all the clones, all the Senators, all the Separatists – every single one of them was like this man's toy.

Everything was falling into place now. Chuchi's words of peace talks dropping before they'd almost begun, the Chancellor directing them to the listening posts where Gunray was supposed to be but where a trap had been set for Aayla. So many people were struggling to defy his will, on both sides, not realising they were fighting against their leader the whole time.

Renamon's paw tightened around the ceiling rafter.

And that's when things went wrong. Darth Sidious – Chancellor Palpatine, leader of both sides – stopped just before he stepped into the lift, freezing on the spot. His eyes narrowed and Renamon felt her heart skip a beat. Only now did she remember she was supposed to be suppressing her emotions.

She hurriedly tried to put a lid on them, hoping Palpatine hadn't picked up on them too much.

But when Palpatine whirled around to face her, those hopes were dashed. His eyes fixed right on her face and his hand rose in her direction, fingers splayed out before him. He couldn't see her, but he knew she was there. Before Renamon could do more than think, _Oh s*t,_ the Sith Lord had already launched a bolt of Sith Lightning right at her.

* * *

And just when we get to one of the most dramatic unveilings of the entire story, I go and leave you on a cliffhangar, right at the point where the mass update ended. I am just that evil, am I not? Anyway, this is the end of the arc. The resolution to the slavers has been met, but the situation with Sidious is only just beginning. They may now know who he is, but things are about to get a whole lot more complicated. The next arc promises a _lot_ of action and violence, and a whole lot of characterisation as well for several particular people.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Beelzemon's on the run once more, determined to stay several steps ahead of GranDracmon for as long as he can. But it appears that GranDracmon has gotten tired with the amount of delays Beelzemon is causing and has sent some of his most dangerous, deadly and mindlessly loyal servants after the missing Demon Lord. Can Beelzemon keep this new threat at bay?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 150 : The Arkadimon Army**


	150. The Arkadimon Army

Hello everybody. It seems that I am doing a miniature mass update this time, as I still don't have any internet in the house, and am having to rely on the internet at the uni. Naturally, since it was the weekend, I was unable to go in and post anything, so I am posting it now. I hope you like what you read, because things are getting really, _really_ wild in both dimensions. You can expect a Star Wars arc filled with action shortly, and a lot more violence in this chapter as well. Read on, and enjoy.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 150:- The Arkadimon Army**

* * *

The peaceful air of the Prairie Level was abruptly shattered extremely violently, causing several innocent Biyomon and Honeybeemon to scatter in panic as a sudden loud noise crashed over their eardrums. A large demonic entity surged right through their midst, sending them darting up into the air with hearts pounding, their so-called attacker roaring and throwing up chunks of earth as it past. The entity swerved to avoid a Biyomon that was slow on the uptake and showered it with soil, staining its pink feathers. And then it was going, roaring across the Digital World at high speed.

The Honeybeemon and Biyomon continued to panic for several minutes before they realised that the sound of the roaring had long since disappeared and that they were all still alive.

The entity was some distance away by that point, whooshing up the side of one of the many hills that dotted the Prairie Level. It shot up the side so quickly that when it cleared the top it went sailing straight into the air, engine revving in what seemed to be exhilaration at this feat of aerodynamics. When it came crashing back down to the turf below, its back wheel landed on the ground and it wheelied forward for several metres, tossing soil up behind it until its front wheel dropped to the ground as well and it was racing on again, crashing through a clump of tall grass.

In case you hadn't worked it out yet, the entity was Behemoth – the maniacal motorcycle that belonged to Beelzemon.

Behemoth had been left behind on the Desert Level when Impmon and his other travelling companions had been whisked off to the Prairie Level by a magical Digimon – Wizardmon – before they got the chance to tell the mon that they had another member, who was waiting for them at the bottom of the mountain, because he couldn't climb it and refused to be carried by Wingdramon. Behemoth had not found out that his master had gone until the next day, and had spent practically the entire night constantly circling the mountain and throwing up sand everywhere as it scoured the area for enemies that would never come.

It wasn't until a very happy Gryphonmon having a one way conversation with his magically silenced and naturally enraged tail decided to go have a look around his territory the following day that he spotted Behemoth and remembered the motorbike had been left behind. He'd been a bit preoccupied at the time, but now he remembered, the Mega level had quickly descended to the bottom of the mountain and informed the bike of the disappearance of its master.

When Behemoth had heard the news, it had been somewhat dismayed. As much as a sentient motorbike could feel dismayed, that is. Gryphonmon had quickly explained that the bike had no been left there deliberately, but Behemoth was extremely annoyed, and with good reason. It had been created to serve Beelzemon, unquestioningly following his lead no matter what his master wanted to do. Good or evil didn't matter to Behemoth. All that mattered was that he protect and serve his one master and suddenly that master was gone.

Behemoth could still remember how it had been created. It had been built by several small Digimon in a cave deep within the Dark Ocean, using pieces of technology that had been constructed based on things in the human world, but the bike had been given its own demonic twist. And then it had been the Demon Lord of Greed, Barbamon, who had infused the bike with its sentience and unquestioning loyalty to the Demon Lord of Gluttony at Beelzemon's request.

Beelzemon had, at the time, been reluctant to trust anyone completely. Even the other Demon Lords and some of his closer allies like Darkdramon had been taken with a pinch of salt. Behemoth had always been the only one that Beelzemon had put complete faith in. That had changed when he'd become a good guy, of course, but Behemoth had faithfully stayed by him, and when Impmon had gone on the run, Behemoth had been the only one he'd been planning to take with him. There was a slight connection between ride and Master that would never completely go away unless one of them was destroyed forever.

Gryphonmon had somehow managed to noticed that Behemoth was agitated at being left behind, which was understandable. Behemoth didn't want Beelzemon to become a bad guy and a part of GranDracmon's army any more than Beelzemon himself, _because_ Beelzemon didn't want that himself. Behemoth's duty was to protect, and stuck on the Desert Level, it couldn't do that. So when Gryphonmon had noticed the agitation (Behemoth had been running itself repeatedly into the mountain), he had called Wizardmon down, and the Magic Man had offered to transport Behemoth to the same spot which he had transported Impmon and the others two.

Behemoth had readily agreed, doing a circuit of Wizardmon. The wizard had then used his teleportation skills and Behemoth had ended up here on the grassy plains. There was no sign of Impmon or the others though – nothing was being picked up on the bike's scanners that looked even remotely familiar. Then again, they had had some time to pick a direction and move in it.

And therein lay Behemoth's next problem. He had no way of knowing what direction they'd taken. Diatrymon had left tracks in the ground, but since Behemoth didn't have eyes, he couldn't actually see them, so he had had to pick a direction at random and then just go with it. So, that was exactly what he had done. Unfortunately for him, he had gone in almost completely the wrong direction.

And, ever since then, he had been frantically scouring the Digital World for its master of his friends without success, rushing hither and thither in an attempt to track them down. However, he had, naturally, come up with nothing.

You couldn't exactly say that Behemoth had positive emotions, or really many emotions at all. It was mostly driven by an unending desire to fulfil its original function and serve Beelzemon. However, ever since it had been deposited in the Human World by Fanglongmon after the Ogudomon Debacle, and spent a lot of time with the Tamers and the others, silently observing and listening to them, the bike had gained a little something.

You could say it was a semi-conscious. Nothing really pronounced but it was able to feel concern now. It felt concerned for the well-being of Impmon. Before it had just been mindlessly serving its Master, but that was no longer the entire case, although it was a powerful driving force for it. And, not only did it feel concern for its Master, but it felt concern for the others as well. Lilamon, Diatrymon, Wingdramon and Calumon could not be called friends. The bike had no friends, but it did not want to see them get hurt either.

And so it was searching. Searching and never stopping to rest.

It had to admit to itself that this was kind of fun. It was just like the old times when he had been able to terrorize a village of Chuchidarumon while waiting for the inevitable return of its Master. The sand it had collected in the Desert Level had been almost completely replaced by mud and grass-stains and it hadn't been given the chance to go on an all-out mad rush that lasted for days like this since who knew when.

Of course, it wanted the search for his master to be over as quickly as possible, but, while the situation lasted, there was no reason why it couldn't enjoy itself. Hence the mad bowling right through the crowds of innocent bystanders.

Hey, it was a demonic motorcycle. It had to get its kicks somehow. And usually that came with scaring the crap out of anyone it came across. It wasn't allowed to possess anyone anymore (Master's orders), but Impmon had always approved of the scaring, so Behemoth did nothing to quell his impact on others.

* * *

Beelzemon had eventually managed to get some sleep, but it had not been an easy thing. He had retained his Mega Form throughout the night, not ready to be caught off guard if there was an attack and not be able to defend himself against a powerful opponent from right off the bat. He knew another attack would come eventually, so it seemed like Impmon would not be seen for a while.

Ever sound during the night seemed to make Beelzemon twitched. Every shadow caught his attention and made him tense for an attack. The Demon Lord was forcing himself to remain calm. One downside of being on his own like this was that he no longer had somebody to keep a lookout for him at night. He would be vulnerable whenever he needed to recharge, but since he had not slept properly for several days, the need to recharge now was strong.

Beelzemon had eventually managed to nod off but, in the process, he managed to keep his middle eye open throughout the middle of the night, something which he'd never even tried before. It made little difference in the grand scheme of things, because his brain didn't really process what his eye was seeing, but it would have to do.

He only managed to get himself to sleep when he had convinced himself that, if an attack came, he would know about it before the evil Digimon in question materialised. Each and every time an attack from one of GranDracmon's forces had taken place, Beelzemon had felt the strange sensation of evil running up his back. He eventually managed to convince himself that he would be woken up by that sensation if something happened. In actual fact, he had absolutely no idea if that was true or not, but still, it was a fair enough assumption.

And so, he had managed to snatch a couple of hours of sleep before day broke out with the usual instant change. Unfortunately, the light of day washing over his face had been enough to permeate to his brain through his open eye and he had woken up instantly, leaping to his feet and cannon priming itself, his natural assumption being that the light was an energy blast being thrown at him.

When he realised what had happened, he had to resist slumping down in relief and exhaustion. He clutched his helmet with his hand and murmured, "Steady on, Beelzemon. If you keep jumping at absolutely everything out here, you ain't going to last two days of being on the run on your own."

On your own.

Beelzemon felt the urge to just sink down to the ground and wallow in self-pity. He resisted it, but it was a difficult thing. Impmon had never really felt alone for a very, very long time. Not since he had been a little Rookie Digimon determined to digivolve and prove he was strong but actually not being able to do anything of the sort, sitting in a sewer and waiting for something to happen, had he felt like this.

When he'd been a renegade, he'd never been bothered by this fact, and every other time in his memory where he had been bothered about being alone, he'd always had someone or something. If nothing else he would have Behemoth forever by his side, but now his bike was gone as well and who knew that the bike was doing now.

But this time was worse than his time in the sewer. Back then, he had had no friends and had not really wanted any. Now, he felt like he was in desperate need of them, but he had none. None near him anyway. He'd left them all behind to keep them safe.

"I wish Lilamon was here," he muttered. "She would know what to say to cheer me u- No! No, stop thinking about her. Stop thinking about all of them. It's not going to help."

And indeed it didn't. The moment he had thought about Lilamon and the others, a near overwhelming sense of loneliness and longing had welled up inside him. He'd only been away from them for about half a day and now he missed them terribly. He missed everyone – Ai and Mako, Calumon and Lilamon, Terriermon and Lopmon, Renamon, Wingdramon, Diatrymon, Guilmon. Heck, he even missed Kazu and Kenta. But none of them were here with him now.

Beelzemon shook his head and tried not to think too hard about any of them. It was impossible to purge him from his mind completely though. They would always be there, nagging away at him, demanding him why he had left them. Impmon immediately found himself wondering what the others would make of his disappearance. He had no doubt they would take it about as well as Ai and Mako had. If he ran into them again, would they reject him? Would they feel betrayed and abandoned?

Probabaly yes to the latter, but no to the former. Deckerdramon had claimed they held the same strong love for him as he did for them. Of course, Beelzemon still needed to figure out the full meaning behind the crocodile's words, apparently but still, it felt like he had left a piece of his soul behind when he had left them.

"Damn it!" he yelled, realising his thoughts had turned to the wrong topic again. He pounded the side of his helmet to try and beat the thoughts out of his brain and he realised he needed to get moving and try and keep his mind focused on other things instead. So, he quickly dashed forward several metres and sprang into the air with a burst of his wings, spreading them wide and powering them until he was high above the grassy areas.

He turned his thoughts to where he might be able to hide from GranDracmon as he soared across the Prairie Level. Was it possible that he could hide at the bottom of the Ocean Level? Doubtful. GranDracmon was bound to have several water-based minions. He lived in an Ocean realm of his own, after all. The Prairie Level was definitely a no-go. There was nowhere to hide out here. The Desert Level was similarly open, although there were many rocks out there he could hide in. And the Forest Zone had done little to protect him before, so that wasn't a good idea.

Angewomon had suggested that he head for the mountains, and Beelzemon found that he agreed with her logic. A mountain would be a good place to hide if you didn't want to be found. Beelzemon might be able to take cover in a cave or something, and if he ever were attacked by an enemy Digimon, it should be a relatively simple matter of eluding them. You could hide yourself away in crevices or fly around the peaks until you lost sight of your opponent, in the dangerous life-or-death version of hide-and-seek.

Beelzemon considered himself to be quite accomplished at that particular game. He could always play it with GranDracmon.

The only problem was that he had no idea where to find a mountain range. Even though he'd spent a large amount of time in the Digital World after the whole D-Reaper thing, he and the others had mostly stuck to the Desert Level, attempting to stay together and avoid Data Streams, which could take them who knew where. But, right now, a Data Stream was exactly what Beelzemon needed, and hopefully the next one he found would take him somewhere more productive than the level that he was already on.

He wondered if he was being pursued yet, and he had a bizarre mix of he hoped so and he really hoped that he wasn't thrown in together there. He was hoping that he wasn't because that obviously meant he wouldn't be attacked for a while, but at the same time, the whole point of leaving the Heavens had been to take GranDracmon's attention away from it.

And, as the Heavens entered his brain, so did the others. Had they left the Heavens yet? Were they trying to find him? What had the Angels made of his disappearance? Had they been expecting it or not? Beelzemon had not had the chance to say goodbye to any of them.

"Gah! Stop thinking about them!" Beelzemon cried. "You're avoiding their company, so don't wish you still had it!"

He forced his whole attention onto the landscape as he tried to spot a Data Stream somewhere on the rolling plains. He didn't see anything for a while, and his mind turned to another topic in short order, after he spotted a Biyomon in the distance and swerved to avoid her, giving the bird as wide a berth as possible and hoping that he had not been noticed. The Biyomon gossip chain could lead the others straight towards him if they utilised it, as they probably would. But it wasn't just that. He had no idea when the next attack was coming, and he wanted to ensure that an innocent Biyomon did not get caught up in it.

Because there was more at stake than just himself and his friends was there not? Beelzemon was doing this not just to protect them, but to protect everyone. Everyone in the Human World, everyone in the Heavens, everyone who could be under threat by GranDracmon. It was such a large figurative weight to carry, but Beelzemon did the best that he could. When he found a place to hide in the mountains, Beelzemon would be well and truly (hopefully) alone. He had to avoid contact with absolutely everyone, no matter whether he knew them or not.

* * *

Onward he flew for several more hours. He wondered whether the Prairie Level was the least popular place in the Digital World for Data Streams, because there seemed to be almost none, where as there were loads on the Desert Level. Perhaps it had something to do with the proximity to the earth, hanging high above, but he just couldn't find any here without some serious looking.

And, eventually, after some very long hours of fruitless searching, the inevitable happened. All of Beelzemon's muscles stiffed, including those in his long, prehensile tail, as he suddenly got that same and horribly familiar sensation, like someone had tossed ice-cold water down his back, running between his outstretched wings. He knew exactly what was coming next and immediately began to fly faster, determined to live up to his plan of flight and not fight.

But as he went, he felt a terrible presence suddenly pressing on him as if it was attempting to consume him or crush his mind, causing him to pull to a halt and clutch his head in pain. He could tell right away that it was GranDracmon himself. The freakish, centaur-like Demon Digimon still couldn't come through to this world on his own, but it seemed that he could send mental waves or something because Beelzemon could feel the incredibly strong sensation of evil that could only be GranDracmon forcing him to curl up into a ball in mid-air.

There were no words, but Beelzemon seemed to know exactly what GranDracmon was attempting to tell him. Something like:-

_I've had enough of this little game. This time – You. Are. Mine._

Beelzemon's eyes widened and he hurriedly flapped his wings, moving again as he desperately tried to get away, knowing that GranDracmon was about to throw something really, _really_ big at him. It seemed that GranDracmon had lost patience and was going to go all out with this next one. Beelzemon had to get away quickly.

Unfortunately, he had not anticipated one thing. He practically smelt the charge in the air as the black lightning bolt that the Dark Digimon always used to cross from the Dark Ocean lanced out of nowhere and struck Beelzemon's right wing. Beelzemon cried out in pain as the wing buckled and the smell of charred feathers filled the air as the lightning bolt travelled on down and hit the ground below. And Beelzemon looked to be going the same way, plummeting towards the ground and flapping his one outstretched wing in a desperate attempt to stay aloft as he tumbled over and over, while try to yank his numbed wing back into a flying position at the same time.

Eventually, Beelzemon managed to snap his wing back into the correct position just in time for him to level himself off slightly before he ploughed into the ground, making his impact slightly less jarring. But, when he did hit, he ended up rolling over and over for several dozen metres, grunting in pain as he rolled over his wings and cannon, before he came to a stop in a little furrow, slightly dazed from the long drop but still relatively unharmed.

He scrambled to his feet quickly and examined the damage to his wings. Nothing too serious and many of his feathers were missing, but he was definitely still airworthy. He prepared to flap them and get back aloft, but before he did so, he could not help but look over to where the lightning bolt had hit the ground, wondering what GranDracmon had sent against him this time.

When he saw what his newest opponent was, both his arms went slack and Berenjena clunked to the ground. Beelzemon stared in disbelief, his eyes practically bugging out of his skull. What the hell were they supposed to be and why the hell did GranDracmon possibly think they were a threat?

Beelzemon didn't know a lot of GranDracmon's ability to send minions from the Dark Ocean, but it seemed like the more powerful a Digimon was, the less he could send through at once. He'd never faced more than one Mega or more than six Ultimates at a time. This time, he was standing in front of well over one-hundred Digimon.

But they were all Rookies.

They looked intimidating for Rookies, Beelzemon had to admit. Apart from their bright pink skin, that is. They had a humanoid build and came up to Beelzemon's waist, but they had large, red, two-pronged sickles at the end of their arms instead of hands, and big red claws instead of feet, and their head were pointed and had practically no face, though they did have spikes jutting out the back, along with more on their backs.

But still, Beelzemon could take on a Rookie like them easily, couldn't he?

Flight completely forgotten, Beelzemon turned fully around to the army and cried, "Hey! Who the heck are you guys?"

Silence. The huge number of Rookie Level Digimon did not respond to his question. They just stared at him blankly for several moments as if sizing him up. Their expressions didn't change, their muscles didn't twitch. It was as if they were robots waiting for someone else to pick up the controls and get them moving.

"I asked you who you were," Beelzemon growled, standing ready for battle in the hope of intimidating them. It didn't work. They did not change pose, expression or anything else.

_Okay,_ Beelzemon thought. _I admit, this is a little intimidating, but still, they're just Rookies._

"Tell, me, your, NAMES!" Beelzemon yelled at the Rookies.

Still none of them moved, but apparently all of them whispered one word at the same time. It was so faint that Beelzemon barely heard it, but somehow he knew that all of them said the one word at the exact same moment – just one single word of introduction.

"Arkadimon."

Beelzemon actually had to resist the urge to shiver. For some reason, that name had sent something down his spine. He shook himself. If GranDracmon was trying to get to him through intimidation with these bunch of Rookie level Digimon then it most certainly was not going to work. Beelzemon would not allow it. He growled, clenched his fist and raised Berenjena, ready for battle.

If GranDracmon was desperate enough to try using Rookies, Beelzemon would give him a show and crush them if they attacked.

"Alright then, Arkadimon punks," he growled, pointing Berenjena at the crowd of Rookies. "I don't know why GranDracmon decided it would be a good idea to send you guys against me, but before we get started, I'm going to warn you of something. I am Beelzemon, and I used to be one of the Seven Demon Lords. I'm a Mega Level Digimon. You are Rookies. Do we really need to do the math here?"

The Arkadimon made no response. They just stood there and continued to stare. Evidently that was everything Beelzemon was going to get out of them, so he merely growled and said, "Alright then. Come and get me, if you dare!"

They did dare. The Arkadimon made no sound, but they surged into action, dashing towards Beelzemon on their clawed like hunting raptor-like dinosaurs, leaping forward like champion sprinters with their sickle-claws ready for action. Beelzemon spotted tactics being implemented quite quickly Those in the middle of the throng went slower than those at the edges, until the Arkadimon were coming at three directions at once in a pincer movement.

Beelzemon did not move until they were almost on him before he spread his wings and shot right up into the air, at the exact moment that the front-runners of the army sprang at him. They ended up colliding with one another instead and the fell to the floor in little jumbles, while the back-runners quickly pulled to a halt to avoid getting caught in a pile-up.

From up above, Beelzemon readied his cannon, but those Arkadimon nearest to him immediately leapt up at him from below. They couldn't fly, but they could jump surprisingly high and Beelzemon was forced to roll out of the way to avoid some of them hitting him. Of course, the pain they would have caused was minimal since they were Rookies, but still it never hurt to be careful.

More and more leapt up towards him and Beelzemon promptly went on a rampage of sorts. He swung his cannon out and batted four out of the air like baseballs and he whirled around to punch another in the face. His tail lashed out behind him and clouted another three in the stomachs, before whipping back the other way to crash into another two, while Berenjena thundered down, cracking over the skull of another and slamming a couple more to the side. Beelzemon grabbed the next on to fly at him by the leg and promptly used him as a flail, swatting aside several more Rookies as they came flying up at him.

As Berenjena took out several more of them, one of them slipped past his guard and slashed his wing with the sickle-like claw. Beelzemon was able to avoid the majority of the blow and the wing swung back to smack the Arkadimon aside, but Beelzemon knew that things were not going to get much better unless he did some killing. The Arkadimon he'd knocked back down were getting up and they were all leaping at him from below, like tuna going after a shoal of sardines.

Beelzemon clouted several more with his makeshift flail and cannon, flipping over and bringing his tail thudding down on two more, before he suddenly folded his wings and dropped like stone, spinning around on the spot and madly swatting the Arkadimon aside all around him with all three appendages, sending them crashing into their buddies on the ground. Beelzemon grinned as he wrought a beating upon the evil, silent Rookies.

Those he missed changed direction in mid-air and began to fall towards Beelzemon from above instead. But, just before he hit the ground, Beelzemon flared his wings out, slamming several Arkadimon aside with them and catch himself before he hit the turf, powering his way back upwards. The furiously flapping wings battered the Arkadimon forced above and one that was unlucky enough to fall towards Beelzemon's face found itself battered by Berenjena instead.

Beelzemon motored away for several dozen metres before he whirled around, hovering in front of the army of Rookies, most of which were already getting to their feet. The Arkadimon in his hand, which had long since lost consciousness, rejoined his comrades as Beelzemon tossed him into the throng and then lowered his cannon in their direction.

"Maybe you guys will take _this_ seriously, huh?" he grinned savagely as he prepared his attack. **"CORONA BLASTER!"**

As the Arkadimon surged towards him like a small, pink tidal wave, Beelzemon released his own pink wave in their direction. The energy blast from his cannon devastated the group of Rookies in about two seconds flat. Beelzemon fired at one end of the throng and swept his cannon across to the other end in one continuous beam that instantly vaporised all the Arkadimon it engulfed. Many from behind ran into the beam and got disintegrated as well, but many at the back were able to stop themselves in time.

Beelzemon closed the jaws on Berenjena and took a look at the destruction he had just caused. It was pretty much as he had thought. The ground was charred, blackened and broken from the powerful beam, and smoke was rising into the air, along with the data of all the Arkadimon that he had just slaughtered. Beelzemon could see that about half their number were still alive, and he flapped towards the smoke, his wings clearing the air as he emerged from said smoke like... a Demon from hell, really.

There were fifty-five Arkadimon left. Just under half. Beelzemon cocked his cannon and said, "You see that? You still think you can take me on. Because let me tell you, this cannon doesn't run out of ammunition. I got plenty more where that came from. You still want a piece of me?"

The Arkadimon did not respond. They merely stared at him. Beelzemon was beginning to get annoyed at their lack of words or sounds of any kind, and was about to say so, when he noticed something odd. The data of the Arkadimon was not floating away anymore. It was zooming past him and down towards the other Arkadimon. Beelzemon shielded his eyes slightly as they widened in surprise, watching the Arkadimon absorb their former comrades, glowing slightly as they did. Then, he shielded his eyes properly as they all suddenly burst into white light and began to expand and grow.

They were digivolving. Every one of them was digivolving to the Champion Level.

It was several moments before Beelzemon could look again without hurting his eyes. Their new forms looked... disturbing. They were still humanoid, and they now had the same peach-colour of human skin, but their arms were freakishly long and had three fingers, tipped with red claws. Numerous red thorns adorned their arms and legs and they had tiny feathery wings on their shoulders that looked like something that belonged on a chicken. And a chicken of regular size at that. Their heads were still largely faceless, without nose or mouth and with tiny red eyes.

"Oh-kaay," Beelzemon said slowly. "Was not expecting that to happen." He readied himself for more battle. Champion level Digimon could be tough, like Diatrymon was, but they were still no match for an experience Mega like Beelzemon. Especially those who were newly digivolved like these guys were.

"Alright then," Beelzemon declared, lowering himself towards the ground and folding his wings close to his body, ready for the next attack. "You appear to have a couple of tricks up your sleeves. Let's test out your new abilities shall we?"

The Arkadimon (for their name had not changed with the digivolution as it did with most Digimon), seemed more than willing to take Beelzemon up on his challenge and several of them charged towards Mega, ready for combat. The first of them to get there lashed out with its freakishly long arms, and succeeded in hitting air as Beelzemon ducked beneath it. It lashed out with its other arm, but Beelzemon grabbed it by the wrist, kneed it in the gut and tossed it into two others, before whirling on the others.

One of them took another swipe at him, but Beelzemon jumped backwards and pulled out his shotgun, nailing him in the face with a bullet and causing him to burst into data. Beelzemon whipped around as three more surged towards him and levelled his cannon, sweeping a Corona Blaster across the lot of them and causing them to fall apart as well. Another four dashed in from behind him, and Beelzemon heard them coming, waiting for them to make their move. One of them lunged for him and stabbed at him with its claws. Beelzemon whirled around and slammed the claws aside with his shotgun, before holstering it and stabbing the Arkadimon through the chest with his Darkness Claw, so hard it came out the other side and hit the one directly behind it as well.

As they disintegrated, Beelzemon slammed another one in the head with his cannon and sent it stumbling into another one. His tail lashed out behind him and wrapped around the neck of one sneaking up on him, jerking it to the ground, then grabbing another in the face with his free hand and slamming that into the ground too. Beelzemon then flung himself into the air, dragging the one locked in his tail into the air by its neck and tossing it against the other three. One Corona Blaster later and they were finished.

Beelzemon rose higher as the other Champions approached. He was surprised when they started to beat their tiny, ridiculous-looking wings and actually rose off the ground. Clearly they were ungainly in the air but still they were coming towards him at a surprising speed. Beelzemon flew backwards with mighty sweeps of his wings and sent blasts from his cannon into the stomachs of two more and sent a bullet skimming into the stomach of a third.

One of them got quite close, but Beelzemon easily rolled aside from its swipe and swooped lower, turning around to blast it with his cannon, before whipping around to stab another in the stomach with his Darkness Claw. He pushed the body off his hand and let it drop to the floor, but the body never reached it, splintering into data particles before it even got there. Beelzemon whirled around as more Champion level Arkadimon flapped towards him, but he surged forward to meet them and swept through the middle of them, clouting one across the head with Berenjena and grabbing another by the wrist in his tail and slamming it into another.

Then, he was hit. One of the Arkadimon that had climbed higher dropped down on him from above. Beelzemon spotted him coming and veered to try and avoid him, but the Arkadimon crashed into him, locking its arms around him and crushing one wing painfully against Beelzemon's back. Beelzemon grunted as he tried to maintain control with the other wing, but he once again found himself spiralling out of control.

Not only that, but one of the Arkadimon's thorny projections had stabbed into Beelzemon's side. Beelzemon bore the pain with a grimace but something else was happening. Beelzemon was alarmed to realise that his strength was slowly draining away, as if the Arkadimon was sapping it from him like a mosquito lapping up his blood. Beelzemon roared into the Arkadimon's face, defiant to the last, and furious twisted his wrist until his shotgun was pressed against the Arkadimon's stomach. He let off a shot that blew the enemy backwards and extended his wing, ignoring the vaporising enemy as he climbed higher into the sky.

But the other Arkadimon had managed to close in during the attack by the other one and suddenly, Beelzemon found himself seized by both his wings in the claws of two of them. He yelled and struggled, bringing up his weapons, but another two grabbed him by the arms. All four of them pulled, spreading Beelzemon out as if he was on a crucifix and pinioning him in mid-air, using their own wings to keep him aloft.

Beelzemon watched as another Arkadimon zoomed towards him from the front, thorny claws ready to pierce his front and sap out his strength.

Beelzemon's eyes narrowed and he waited for the right moment, before he suddenly wrenched his left arm and wing in front of him with a furious burst of strength, hauling the Arkadimon gripping them into the path of their comrade. The charging Arkadimon ploughed into the one holding his wing full of and its claws impaled it, killing his own comrade. Beelzemon's tail lashed out to clout the one holding his arm and cause it to lose its grip, then he rolled in the air, throwing the other two off him and shoving them into the others to create a bunch in mid-air. Berenjena was fired and all four of them were consumed in the blast.

Beelzemon turned around to see more of them coming right at him. He roared in defiance and emptied his shotgun into their forces and fired Berenjena alongside it for good measure. The cannon blasts burst the enemies to pieces the moment it hit, and the bullets knocked them backwards almost invisibly, as they were so small and fast that the Arkadimon never saw them coming. He felled another nine in this manner before one that had gotten behind him grabbed him and attempted to hold onto him. Beelzemon automatically somersaulted and threw him off, throwing his shotgun into the air and stabbing him with a Darkness Claw, then catching the shotgun and shooting three more out of the air.

Two more fell to Berenjena before Beelzemon whirled around and glared at the group. "Any more for any more?" he asked the remaining nineteen champions. They seemed to back away, their expressions not changing, but they seemed to be slightly nervous of the fact that Beelzemon had just obliterated the majority of their forces with ease.

But then, Beelzemon noticed that the data of the fallen was once again flowing towards the remaining Arkadimon. His eyes widened. "Uh-oh," he thought, knowing exactly what was going to happen next. Only now did he remember that he was supposed to be running away and not fighting.

As the Arkadimon burst into bright light again, Beelzemon whipped around and rose into the air with tremendous flaps of his wings, powering himself upwards as he desperately sought to escape from the Ultimate level Arkadimon that were forming behind him, not waiting to see what he was going up against. Rookies and young Champions were easy enough for Beelzemon, but an Ultimate was another matter. One on one, things might be relatively simple, but nineteen Ultimates was more than Beelzemon could handle, and he knew it.

It was several seconds before he heard the flapping of wings that indicated a pursuit. He dared to glance over his shoulder and balked at what he saw. Ultimate level Arkadimon looked a whole lot more formidable than the Champions. They had dark green legs and torsos, with paler green, muscle shoulders and tan coloured arms with four huge, red claws on each hand and foot. Their wings had grown into much larger appendages with blood-red feathers and they finally had mouths, filled with sharp teeth, under a helmeted head with red eyes that peered through the gaps and fixed on Beelzemon.

Nineteen Ultimates versus one Mega. Even a newly Digivolved Ultimates could provide a serious challenge in those numbers. Beelzemon did _not _want to test out the strength of these Ultimates and he hurried forward once again, determined to get away.

The Arkadimon determinedly followed him, sweeping their own wings through the air as quickly as they could. Beelzemon glanced over his shoulder again and noted that he was not gaining any ground on the Arkadimon. They were not catching up on him either though – they seemed to be evenly matched in terms of speed. Beelzemon suddenly wished that Wingdramon was here. The dragon would be able to leave these guys eating his tailwind if he was here.

"Oh FANGLONGMON! STOP THINKING ABOUT THEM!" Beelzemon roared to himself. He had to find his own way of escaping from these Arkadimon. Making a split second decision, he hurriedly folded his wings and aimed himself downwards, and within moments he was surging towards the ground. Tucking in his arms, he plummeted down like a black tornado, the wind roaring around him and whipping his feathers and hair around as he shot towards the ground, gravity giving him a speed boost on incredible proportions.

Beelzemon could hear the Ultimates following on behind him, but he forced himself not to look around. He snapped his wings out again as he neared the ground, levelling off at the last moment, swooping over the turf as low as he dared, his wingtips brushing the ground with each powerful stroke of his wings. He glanced over his shoulder and couldn't help but leer when he saw several of the Arkadimon fail to do the same and plough into the ground at high speed. The others levelled off some distance higher and Beelzemon was pleased to note that he had gained some ground.

However, he still needed more, so he tucked in one wing and rolled, extending it again when his back was the ground. He gripped Berenjena with his arm and fired off a large shot at the clustered group, sweeping it from one side to the other like he had done with the Rookies. The effect was nowhere near as great, but it worked to a degree. The Arkadimon scattered as the blast shot by them, and three of them were not fast enough and were hit, knocking them backwards slightly.

The rest of them quickly corrected their course and flapped hard to catch up with Beelzemon. The Mega fired off a second shot, but wheeled around again quickly and put more power into his own strokes. He was getting away. He was slowly gaining ground on the enemy.

"Ha!" he cried out loud. "This was a good strategy, GranDracmon, but you're going to have to think of something better if you want me as a minion!"

A red energy blast suddenly shot past Beelzemon and slammed into the ground right next to him throwing up a shower of earth that pummelled the underside of Beelzemon's wing. Beelzemon's flight faltered as his wing was jerked upwards at the wrong time and he almost crashed, but he was able to rectify himself and rise slightly higher, glancing back over his shoulder. The closer Arkadimon were charging up more beams in their claws and suddenly a flurry of them were launched down at Beelzemon.

The Mega's eyes widened as he dodged around, flaring his wings and rolling aside as the large red blasts lanced down and into the ground all around him, throwing up more explosions of earth and debris each time one of them hit. Beelzemon narrowly avoided getting struck in the head and one of the lasers clipped his wing, while another crashed between his side and his arm, and several more peppered the ground all around him.

The explosions kept throwing Beelzemon off his flightpath, and, while he was able to avoid getting hit with a full-on shot with some serious dodging, he was slowed down by the barrage, and the Arkadimon were beginning to get closer to him again. Beelzemon growled. He had to get away from the ground now. As long as the Arkadimon were trying this, they'd be able to catch up to him if he didn't move.

Beelzemon abruptly turned around and slammed his feet into the ground, skidding to a halt and hurling a massive beam from Berenjena and sweeping it across the Ultimate level Digimon's group, back and forth several times. The Ultimates were unprepared for this barrage and were forced backwards, scattering and dodging as they tried to avoid the powerful beam, but most of them were slammed by the blast and knocked flying, crashing into the ground or one another.

Beelzemon took advantage of the confusion and launched himself into the air again, thundering upwards until he was flying high above the Arkadimon. He watched as they seemed to sort themselves out, recovering from their temporary incapacitation and were making ready to follow him. He turned back around and flapped hard, heading for the distance with all speed while the Arkadimon were still distant dots far below him.

He had not counted on the fact that he had only been shooting at eighteen. The nineteenth Arkadimon was still high in the air, having not followed him when he dived down earlier, just in case Beelzemon tried climbing higher. The Arkadimon surged in from the side and before Beelzemon could react after he spotted it out the corner of his eye, the Arkadimon had grabbed him in another embrace and this time, both of Beelzemon's wings were caught in the strike and crushed against his sides.

Beelzemon yelled in pain as the Arkadimon powered towards the ground at high speed, folding its wings as it shot vertically straight downwards from the incredible height to maximise its speed. Beelzemon struggled furiously in its grip, but it was like iron and was absolutely refusing to come away, even in the slightest. Beelzemon could practically feel the ground thundering towards him as the Arkadimon made his way right towards it like a kamikaze bomber. They were going to crash, and the Arkadimon didn't seem to care about its own well-being. It stared silently into Beelzemon's eyes with its own, a cruel growl on its face.

"Get... off!" Beelzemon snarled and stabbed his fingers into the Arkadimon's stomach, claws first. The Arkadimon winced and its grip slackened, allowing Beelzemon to push himself away and kick the Arkadimon in the chest, the spikes on his boots causing extra damage as the Arkadimon fell back. But, this time, Beelzemon had been too slow and he slammed into the ground with the force of a two runaway juggernauts crashing into one another hang-on.

"GAAAAAHHHH!" Beelzemon bellowed as his wings were crushed underneath him and he hit the ground so hard he created a massive crater that was several feet deep. He lay there for several moments, momentarily blacked out, but as he regained his sight, he could not help but wince in agony. The Arkadimon began to crowd around as Beelzemon pushed himself slowly and painfully to his feet, swaying on the spot like drunkard as he tried to concentrate on something other than the ruins of his left wing.

He glanced at it through one eye and immediately wished he hadn't. His wing was in tatters, missing half its feather and hanging loosely by his side as it were attached to his shoulder by a couple of pieces of string. The ground was littered with black feathers. His right wing was not much better. It was not broken, but every time it twitched, Beelzemon felt a spasm of pain running through him. He resisted the urge to fall on one knee as he desperately tried to steady himself.

The Arkadimon were staring at him, still without saying anything. They were so quiet, they were like ghosts or wraiths. Beelzemon hadn't even felt a cry of pain from any of them throughout the whole showdown. Several of them were looking slightly battered, but none of them appeared to be too worse for wear.

Beelzemon growled. They were just standing and watching him. Did they just expect him to surrender because his wing was broken? Did they honestly think that he was just going to give up. He raised his cannon, trying not to move his wings as he shouted, "Alright! It appears I didn't know what I was getting myself into when I started this, but this fight is not over yet! Do you think that after everything I've done, everything I've been through and everything I've sacrificed that I am going to go out in any way other than fighting? If you want to take me to your Master, you're going to have to do it by force."

He fired a Corona Blaster that nailed one in the head and knocked him backwards several feet. Beelzemon pulled out his shotgun and cried, "Who would like a piece of me, because I guarantee you, I have a lot left to give!"

The Arkadimon regarded him slightly for a few moments before there was some movement among their ranks. Five of them stepped away from the others and the remaining fourteen stepped in the other direction, resulting in two very different sized groups.

Beelzemon blinked. Were they dividing themselves into groups of who was going to take him on and who were going to stand on the sidelines? And which one was which?

He was, in a sense, right. The five Arkadimon in their own little group gathered the red energy blasts in their claws and fired. But not at Beelzemon. They turned around and let off their shots at the other Arkadimon, who did absolutely nothing to stop it. Beelzemon watch in horror and the attacking Arkadimon concentrated their firepower and their fellows burst into data.

"Oh, crud!" Beelzemon muttered, knowing full well what was going to happen next. And happen it did. The Arkadimon remaining out of the one-hundred and twenty that had started out, absorbed the data of their fellow Ultimates and promptly began glowing, rising and expanding as they grew larger and more terrifying than ever before. Beelzemon watched, unable to do much more than that, as the digivolution completed itself, and he found himself standing in front of five enemy Megas.

They were now three times the size of Beelzemon, and covered in thick armour, rather like Parallelmon, except that there were bone-grey and had dark eye-like patterns on the arm armour, and their own armour seemed to be thicker and cover more of their bodies. Their heads were still extremely small, set in the middle of very thick shoulders, and with their beady little red eyes staring at Beelzemon with an intensity that sent a chill down his spine. They had five claws now, on their hands and feet, and they had four huge wings sprouting from their wings. Bat-like ones with purple skin flaps and enormous claws on the joints.

Beelzemon growled. It seemed that GranDracmon's choice of enemy was not such a bad one after all. This had almost definitely been the big mon's plan all along, and now Beelzemon was facing several very, very powerful Digimon on the same level as himself. More than he had ever, to his knowledge, faced in the past. And one of his wings were broken. He was in serious trouble and he knew it.

Beelzemon began to trace Berenjena through the air and said, "Alright, I admit it. You guys seemed to have this all figured out, but no matter how many times you digivolve, I'm still fighting. Now, eat my **CORONA DESTROYER!"**

Pouring several blasts into the pentagram he had drawn while he was talking, Beelzemon sent the tumultuous energy beam launching at the Arkadimon directly ahead of him. The Mega was smashed in the upper body and sent flying backwards, crashing into the floor, his armour smoking. Before Beelzemon could turn the attack on the others, they leapt into their and with mighty strokes of their newly acquired wings, they landed all around him, surrounding him. Beelzemon growled, but the first Arkadimon charged him and aimed a slash with its claws, forcing Beelzemon to roll through his pentagram to avoid it. The symbol dissipated as he did so.

Beelzemon leapt back to avoid the foot of another and ducked under a swift claw slash that almost took his head clean off, but suddenly he was slammed from behind by another claw and sent rolling. He almost shrieked in agony as he rolled onto his already injured wings, but scrambled to his feet as another Mega bore down on him with both clawed hands ready. Beelzemon let off a shot from Berenjena right into his face, sending him stumbling backwards. Another dashed towards him from the side, and Beelzemon quickly fired off a round from his shotgun.

It had no effect at all, the bullets being halted by the Arkadimon's new and improved armour. Beelzemon attempted to back away but he was slammed by a tremendous backhand that threw him into the air and sent him skidding across the ground on his back. He hollered in pain as his wings scraped across the ground, and then his head cracked against the leg of the Arkadimon he had shot, which was still lying on the ground. Dazed, Beelzemon looked up blearily as the other Arkadimon moved slowly towards him, flexing their claws.

Beelzemon scrambled to his feet as quickly as he could, but fell to one knee, clutching his stomach. It seemed that a claw had pierced through his leather jacket and struck him there, and Beelzemon found himself wishing he had the armour of his past counterpart once again. Beelzemon shut his eyes and tried to concentrate of pulling his wings back into his shoulders. They were becoming much more of a hindrance than a help now.

But, before Beelzemon could do that, the Arkadimon on the floor suddenly sprang up and slammed several claws into Beelzemon's back, knocking him forwards and towards the others. As the Arkadimon got to its feet, the others moved in to attack. One of them tried to grab Beelzemon with its hand, but Beelzemon was aware enough to stab his fingers into the palm of the giant hand and cause it to recoil. Another tried to stamp on him, but Beelzemon leapt forward to avoid the blow and shot at him with the gun. It had no more effect than last time, so he tried the cannon, which sent the Arkadimon reeling, but as he whipped back around to counter the ones behind him, he was forced to jump aside as a set of claws crashed into the ground next to him. The owner's other hand swept down and Beelzemon ducked, allowing the claws to scythe over his head, then the other hand came back from the other direction, lower. Beelzemon dodged between the Arkadimon's legs, but the Arkadimon span around and slammed both fists towards him.

Beelzemon was knocked backwards several metres by the blow hitting the ground right next to him, even though it didn't hit him. But then, before the Arkadimon could make a move, the one with the smoking armour leapt over the top of it, wings outstretched and its arm morphed into a giant spear which it lanced down towards Beelzemon with intent to impale him, it seemed. Beelzemon rolled over, but the tip of the spear still hit him in the wing and elicited a howl of anguish as several more feathers were ripped out.

As the Arkadimon loomed over Beelzemon, preparing to grab him, Beelzemon fired a shot from Berenjena at the Arkadimon's shin. It recoiled from the shot and backed away, and Beelzemon scrambled to his feet once more, three eyes narrowed in pain and anger as he desperately tried to keep going. He fired another shot straight towards the Arkadimon's face, bringing the cannon to bear at the other Arkadimon as they attempted to surround him.

"You... Will... NOT... TAKE... ME... EASILY!" Beelzemon roared, defiant to the last, as the Arkadimon seemed to be practically immune to his blasts now, thanks to their thick armour. But, as it turned out, the Arkadimon would have an easier job of it than Beelzemon would have liked. Though he saw nothing, he suddenly felt an enormous portion of his remaining energy draining away, as if somebody had pulled a plug on it and it had promptly drained from his body. Beelzemon gasped and fell to his knees, and to his horror, Berenjena vanished from his arm. His wings also retracted back into his back and he felt the tingle of his eyes as they turned from green to red.

His energy had been depleted so much he was unable to hold onto his Blast Mode, reducing him to the Beelzemon he had been before he had unlocked it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Beelzemon saw the Arkadimon with the damaged armour suddenly get better. The deep rivets and cracks that the Corona Destroyer had caused healed over as if it were a living thing on fast-forward. It seemed that the Arkadimon had used some kind of attack that had no visible outlet, but that had drained a vast portion of Beelzemon's energy and the Arkadimon was now using it to restore its own.

The Dot Matrix. That was the name of the attack, which had been as silent as its user.

"Oh, now that's not fair," Beelzemon moaned, trying to shake off the dizziness that was filling his head thanks to the lost energy. "You can't just use an attack that's invisible like that. It's not... right."

The Arkadimon made no response, of course, but it suddenly launched itself into the air and shot towards Beelzemon. The viral Mega scrambled up and prepared to dive – it was unimpaired by its damaged wings now, even if it didn't have its beloved cannon with it any more. But it was still too slow and the Arkadimon's wing slammed right into him, the claw on the joint viciously raking his side and tossing him into the air.

He landed heavily and rolled, pushing himself onto his feet as quickly as possible, only to be met by a strong blow tom another Arkadimon, which clouted him in the head with the flat of the spear that its arm had morphed into. Beelzemon was stunned by the attack and fell onto his side, clutching his helmet and trying to stop the ringing in his ears, and a set of claws fell all around him and pinned him to the ground, trapping him within them like he was sealed in a cage.

Beelzemon growled and stabbed his own claws into the top of the cage, causing it to retract enough for him to roll over and pull out his shotgun, firing a bullet directly into the hand that was holding him down. Still, the Arkadimon didn't screech or make any noise at all, even as it recoiled in pain and appeared to clutch its own hand. Beelzemon pushed himself up and dodged a swinging hand, then another, pulling out his second shotgun in the process and emptying it at the Arkadimon looming over him, aiming the shots at the unarmoured areas like the upper arms and the neck. One of them stepped off, apparently wounded, by the shots, but another swept its claws in from the side.

The claws narrowly missed Beelzemon as he darted backwards and then jumped forwards and stabbed his claws into the chest of the Arkadimon, seeking to pry open the armour and get at something underneath that might actually cause some damage, but the Arkadimon was having none of it. A fist slammed into Beelzemon's back and sandwiched him between the Arkadimon's chest armour and the claws. Beelzemon cried out in pain and dropped towards the ground, just in time to get kicked by a heavy foot.

He rolled away and was swept into the air by another claw, and as he flew upwards, he was slammed by the wing of the Arkadimon that was in the air, circling the battle, and Beelzemon was sent crashing towards the ground again, slamming another, smaller crater into the ground. He pushed himself up unsteadily on his hands.

He couldn't take much more of this. And he knew it.

* * *

Behemoth suddenly pulled to a stop and whirled around in a tight circle. It had picked up something vaguely familiar on its scanners and had turned in the direction that they were indicating. It tuned them in to focus in the direction that its headlight was pointing and effectively "stared" out across the landscape in front of it.

Behemoth couldn't see like the others did, as it had no eyes. it found his way around through a mixture of radar to help it know what was in its surroundings, and a number of heat-seekers that helped it to detect most kind of life-forms with ease, and also helped it know if it was a bad idea to head into a certain area. It quickly tuned those heat-seekers and it thought it could sense something like explosions in the distance.

Explosions usually meant a fight. And Behemoth had noticed one thing around here – fights were a rarity and never violent enough for explosions. But if there were explosions then there was a good chance that its master was involved.

Revving the engine and the tyres screeching as they accelerated the bike forwards, Behemoth plunged towards the disturbance in the difference, piling on all the speed possible until he was going faster than any man-made motorcycle could possibly hope to travel. On its radar, it could detect five large being surrounding a smaller one up ahead and there did indeed seem to be a battle going on.

And Behemoth knew who the smaller one was.

* * *

Beelzemon was tossed back into the air by another set of claws. He was barely conscious now, and when he found himself grabbed in a giant, clawed hand and snatched out of the air, he knew it was all over. The fingers closed around him, pinning his arms to his sides and they encased his body tightly. Beelzemon blearily opened his eyes and stared hazily at the Arkadimon that had him in its grip. He had long since lost track of which Arkadimon was which. Not that it mattered. They were all beating the stuffing out of him.

Beelzemon cleared his head as quickly as he could and immediately began struggling in the Arkadimon's grip, lashing from left to right and backwards and forwards and making about as much headway as he would have if he were still Impmon, as in, none at all. He gritted his teeth, pugnaciously thrashing his body with all the energy he could muster, but it just wasn't happening. He was stuck. The Arkadimon had him.

He was beaten. Just like the Prophecy had said he would.

_Unable to stop his capture._

That had been the line. And now, that seemed to be the exact case. He had lost. After everything, all the adventures he had and the number of times he had abandoned his friends in his attempts to protect them, and he had let them down. He had let them all down. GranDracmon's minions had finally found him on his own, with no friends to back him up and they had finally got to him. They had finally managed to overpower him, and now the great Beelzemon was struggling in the grip of a fellow Mega-level, his struggles becoming increasingly feeble.

Beelzemon sagged as the Arkadimon all gathered around one another. It seemed that his time was up. GranDracmon would finally get his hands on his elusive prey, and the torture would follow as GranDracmon did everything in his power to turn Impmon into the rampaging and mad Demon Lord he had once been. And Beelzemon would turn on his friends without a second thought if that happened.

But, as his thoughts turned to his friends, something else occurred to him that relit the fire in his heart. No. He had not let them down yet! The whole point of leaving them behind was so that they weren't around to be hurt when this inevitable moment happened, and that was exactly what had happened. The others would have been killed by the Arkadimon if they had still been there, but thanks to Beelzemon's actions, they were safe.

And GranDracmon was not about to break him without a fight! Not by a long chalk!

Beelzemon's struggles began again in earnest as the Arkadimon began to darken in colour, turning into that same pitch-black energy that they were when they had crossed the barrier from the Dark Ocean to the Digital World. His efforts were still futile, but suddenly saw something which caught him by surprise.

It was Behemoth, and the bike was speeding towards them, determined to help in any way it could.

Beelzemon's eyes narrowed. Behemoth would never get here in time, and even if it did, it wouldn't be able to do anything. But Beelzemon felt his arm moving almost of its own accord. With a terrific wrench using the last of his strength, Beelzemon pulled his arm free, roaring with defiance and he plunged his hand into his jacket and pulled out the D-Arc, flinging it into the air a split second before the Arkadimon, and their prisoner, vanished in a crackle of black energy.

Behemoth pulled to a halt moments later, its tyres skidding on the grass until it came to a stop right beside the D-Arc that had clattered to the ground. Behemoth "stared" in mechanical disbelief. It couldn't be! This could not be happening!

But Behemoth knew it was true.

GranDracmon had finally succeeded. Beelzemon was gone.

* * *

And just after I leave you with the epic cliffhanger from the last chapter, I go ahead and leave you with this cliffhanger right after it. Honestly, I didn't plan out the story so that these two cliffhangers occurred one after the other deliberately. It just... happened. But I am quite pleased with the result. Oh, and you should also know that I wrote this chapter twice, because I accidentally deleted the first version somehow right after I had finished it. However, I think that second one was better anyway.

The little bit where Beelzemon was grabbed by the Champions but managed to get them to slam into one another and wrest them off was a tribute to a scene from The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole. I love that film.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

It's time to face the music. As those on Ryloth struggle with the concept that Darth Sidious and Chancellor Palpatine are one in the same, Renamon must attempt to escape from the Sith and his Geonosian guards. And with Bane speeding towards the action, things are about to get rough.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 151 : Deception**


	151. Deception

And now a new arc begins. And this in arc that focuses entirely on the repercussions of what happened at the end of the last arc. Just because Sidious has now been discovered does not mean that everything is nearly over. There's a whole lot of story left and things are about heat up until things are more dangerous for the Jedi and the Digimon than ever before. It is time to see what happens now that Sidious' identity had been revealed over two years earlier than he was in the canon timeline.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 151:- Deception**

* * *

The sun was still blazing down on the mountains of Ryloth as the clone troopers moved about the valley where the slave camp had been situated. Some of them were planting explosive devices on the ship that the slavers had been using, which they were planning to detonate once everybody had left the valley, and blow the ship to scrap, wiping it off the face of the Galaxy like the abomination it was. Some others were moving the speeder bikes up the ramp and into the ship, so that they would go up in smoke along with it.

The slavers that had survived the attack from the clones, which, it had to be said, were a minority, were all gathered up in the centre of the canyon and forced to sit, with their own hands cuffed behind them instead. The former slaves had been more than happy to stand guard over the wretched people. Cham Syndulla and his men had provided them with blasters, and the slavers had resolved not to try anything. They had no doubt their angry former captives _would_ use them if need be.

Gravick was having the worst time of it. Milyl was standing behind him and every time she thought he was sitting up too much, she would place a foot on his back and force him back down to the ground. Nobody complained about her treatment of the man. He deserved a whole lot worse than that, and he had been doing something pretty similar not too long ago.

The rest of the clones and Cham's forces were tending to the weaker slaves. Several of the rescued women had been there for almost five days on minimal food and water, meaning that they were exceptionally weak. The clones were unable to provide them with much more than ration bars from their own packs, which were not very tasty to eat. However, they were very nutritious, and were designed so you only had to have a small amount to keep up your strength.

That meant the former slaves should be back on their feet in no time.

Captain Rex was guiding the AT-TE walker that had been used in the attack to block off the canyon into the main valley, instructing several clones and Twi'leks to move rocks out of the way as the tank crawled forward into the open space, where it would be able to be picked up by the gunships from above much more easily than in the canyon.

Once the clone saw that his work was done, he turned around to survey the rest of the camp. Things seemed to be going quite smoothly. Everyone was recovering, and soon they would be able to leave the canyon behind and wipe all evidence of the slave camp off the map. Rex's eyes wondered over the thin and bedraggled former slaves and he felt a twinge in his gut. He used to think that the Kaminoans were brutal when it came to training to clones for combat, but the brutality with them had been necessary. These slavers had just been cruel to their so-called charges.

Cham Syndulla was in the thick of things, helping Talee and a few other Twi'leks to treat the numerous cuts and bruises that just about all the slaves had picked up during the last few days. Cham seemed to lead by example, a trait which Rex quite liked, as he often liked to lead in the same way.

Rex spotted Bly not far away, guiding several gunships down towards the surface so that they would be ready to leave at a moment's notice. Normally they would be able to take their time after a mission but the Jedi had insisted that they might need to move quite quickly relatively soon and Rex could not help but agree, if what they were saying was true.

Rex's eyes flicked towards the Jedi themselves. The four of them, along with both Digimon and all three Tamers were perched on rocks at the edge of the valley and most of them appeared to be staring into nothingness. But Rex knew what they were actually doing. Most of their gazes were directed towards Terriermon, and the bunny was staring up into the sky, a blank expression on his normally cheerful face. The mind link that the lot of them shared was absolutely incredible and right now, it was being used to its full capacity. All seven of the others capable of doing so had linked up their minds with Terriermon and, through him, they were able to see through the eyes of Renamon, who was all the way across the other side of the Galaxy.

Rex knew it sounded absolutely mad, but he had long since come to terms with the craziness that surrounded the Digimon.

Barriss Offee was sitting to one side, watching the others carefully. She did not possess the ability to look through Terriermon's mind like the others did, so Ahsoka was sitting beside the Mirialan and was quietly murmuring the details of what was going on at the other side to her fellow Jedi every now and again.

The young Twi'lek girl, Numa, was looking a little lost. She was sitting next to Suzie, but, for once, the little human girl seemed to be completely absorbed in what she was doing and it was almost as though she didn't even acknowledge the fact that Numa was there. Aayla was sitting, cross-legged, behind the two girls and every now and then she would reassuringly stroke Numa's lekku. The teal-skinned girl had no idea what was happening, but she understood that it was serious, so she did not make any sound.

Rex caught Commander Bly's eye, as the superior clone strolled over to him. Bly nodded, and the two of them removed their helmets and strolled over to the Jedi. Both of them were just as anxious to learn the identity of Darth Sidious as the Jedi were themselves. Though neither of them really liked to admit it, since they were bred for this purpose and all that, they were both quite keen to see the war finally come to an end.

What they would do with themselves when the time came, they had absolutely no idea, but they would deal with it then. The number of clone brothers that they had lost throughout the course of this war was uncountable, and they would prefer it if they did not have to lose many more. Once Darth Sidious was exposed, then maybe that could finally happen.

"How's it going, sirs?" asked Bly, when he reached the group. "Is Renamon getting close?"

There was no response from the group for a moment. It seemed that the majority of them were too absorbed in what they were seeing to notice that Bly had spoken. Barriss, on the other hand, turned to him and nodded when she realised that nobody else was going to answer him. "Things are getting pretty tense, right now, Bly. Renamon is currently alone, perched on a ceiling rafter in a sub-basement beneath 500 Republica and completely surrounded by Geonosians."

"Ordinary ones, I hope," muttered Bly.

"Thankfully yes," Barriss shuddered. "But they've found the lair of Darth Sidious and apparently he's heading back towards the sub-basement from that base as we speak. We're hoping he'll have to shed his disguise before he moves into the building above once more."

"So, it definitely is a member of the Senate," Rex sighed. "I was kinda hoping that we were wrong on that score."

"Actually, so was I," Barriss nodded. "But it seems that that is indeed the case."

"What about the Bounty Hunter, and the Wookiee?" Rex added. "Where are they?"

"We're not sure," Barriss shook her head. "The last Renamon knew of their location, they were hiding in Sidious' lair. Bane was the one who called her to let her know that Sidious was on his way back, but other than that, I don't know. But Bane hasn't turned on them yet. And if he's gotten them this far, it's doubtful that he will."

"Then it looks like General Secura's gamble has paid off after all," Bly nodded with satisfaction. "Never had any doubts."

Rex coughed loudly, and the noise that came out of his mouth sounded suspiciously like "Liar." Bly elbowed him in the gut, and the two clones chuckled. Barriss smiled at the pair and was about to say something else, when suddenly Ahsoka's hand was resting on her shoulder. The Togruta's eyes were wide, as she stared at the ground as if was the most interesting thing she'd ever seen.

"There he is," she whispered. "He's just come into sight. Renamon's watching him walk across the room right now."

"How far away is she?" Barriss murmured, and the two clones leaned forward so that they could hear what was being said as well.

"Not very far," Ahsoka replied quietly. "Looks like she's within about twenty, twenty-five feet of him. Ugh, we can't see who he is though. He's got a hood that's concealing practically his entire face. Come on. Take it off. Take it off."

"What's going on now, Commander?" Rex asked, as Bly turned around and waved some of the other clones over. The white-clad men began to hurry over to the Jedi, gathering around and removing their helmets, straining their ears to catch Ahsoka's barely audible words. Ahsoka was practically breathing them and nothing more.

"He's... he's talking to one of the Geonosians. Something about their guard duty." She waved her hand in a circle, as if she were trying to make something she had no control over go faster. "Go on. Take off the hood. Don't get into that elevator without taking it off. Come on, please."

The clones and Barriss, and little Numa could feel the tenseness in the air. Every one of the people sharing the mind-link had practically seized up, their grips on one another's hands or shoulders tightening and their eyelids slowly closing, until the only thing they could see was what was going on at Renamon's side of things. The clones found themselves tensing as a result, their hands gripping their blasters tighter instinctively, even though there was nothing to shoot at.

They all knew what was coming. They had all been updated as to the situation with Darth Sidious and each and every one of them was eager to find out who the mysterious master of Dooku really was. Who was the real enemy of the Republic, hiding right within its borders and central government? Who was the one that they would have to defeat to end the war?

Bly and Rex were practically down on their knees, leaning in and straining their ears for the update. Who would it be? Which of the Senators? They had to know.

Nothing could have prepared them for what happened next.

There was an enormous collective gasp as every single pair of eyes shot open, so wide that it seemed to defy the laws of nature. Shock radiated throughout the entire group, in such a powerful wave that the clones all felt something, like a thud in their chests as their stomachs dropped down the ground. They didn't even know the answer to their question yet, but as they saw the expressions of horror that crossed the faces of the three Jedi, they found themselves taking several steps back and raising their blasters for defence against something at the other end of the Galaxy.

Whatever Renamon had discovered, it was something big.

"No," Anakin breathed, his voice dripping with dismay as he stared through eyes that were not his own. "No. No! Nononononono! It can't be!" His grip on the hands of Aayla and Ahsoka seemed to tighten by some margin as he gripped the two of them like they were life-lines. Anakin looked faint, like he was about to keel over and faint on the spot, his face radiating his horror across the entire valley.

"It's not possible," Ahsoka agreed, her arms slack and her jaw hanging open. "How... how can that be?"

"It's him," Rika muttered in disbelief. "It's definitely him. But... why? Why is he...? What...?"

It seemed that none of them could come up with anything coherent to say. Terriermon and Lopmon glanced at one another, each one with exactly the same expression of revulsion and disbelief on their similar faces. Henry was sitting with his back to a rock and looking absolutely stunned, and Suzie was clutching his arm as if she would fall into an abyss if she didn't. Aayla had her head turned away from the clones and towards the ground, so they couldn't see what she looked like, but they imagined it was something similar to the others.

"What?" Barriss asked, feeling lost and suddenly extremely anxious. "What is it? Who is it? Do you know?"

"This can't be right," Anakin growled, his expression of shock being replaced by one of denial, and slight anger, as if the anger was bubbling underneath the denial but could explode upwards in a volcanic eruption at the slightest notice. "That's got to be a mistake. A trick. Renamon can't really be seeing that."

"No," Terriermon shook his head quietly. "That is not the case. And I can tell that you know that is not the case, Anakin. It's real. What Renamon is seeing is not a trick. It is definitely the real thing."

"But I don't understand," Lopmon murmured. "How can it be him?"

"I don't know," Henry said. "Of all the things I had been expecting, he was not the one I had in mind."

"Who?" Bly agreed, practically teetering on his toes at the suspense filling the air, as they left him, the clones and Barriss hanging on the edge. "Who is it? What's going on over there?"

Aayla finally looked up at Bly, and when the clone saw her expression, he actually took a step back. Among the clones, Bly had known Aayla personally for longer than any of the others, but he had never seen her look like this. There was a haunted look in her eyes, and it was like they had become deep pits of despair that pierced into his soul and began to make him feel the same way. Bly was now one-hundred percent sure, just from that look, that he did not want to know the answer.

Yet he got it.

"It's Palpatine," Aayla whispered. "Darth Sidious is really the Supreme Chancellor himself."

The shock that suddenly filled Barriss and all the clones practically had a sound, a dull thud that was like a distant sledgehammer falling and crushing a bunch of spirits. The clone brethren staggered backwards as if they had been physically struck with the sledgehammer. Barriss almost fell off the rock she was sitting on. Numa looked from person to person, confused and wondering what the heck was going on but knowing that it was something terrible.

Terriermon could feel a growl building up inside him as Renamon's anger mixed with his own. "We should have let Godzillo eat him," he practically snarled.

Lopmon nodded. "To think we were protecting the enemy like that. Godzillo might have even known he was a bad guy and not just been out for revenge. We should have listened to his instincts."

Bly felt disbelief surging through him. He agreed wholeheartedly with Anakin's previous statement. There had to be some kind of trick that meant Renamon was seeing things. There was no possible way that Palpatine, the man who had brought them to Kamino and sent them to the front lines of the war, was also the one they were trying so hard to find and defeat. It just couldn't be possible. Bly's disbelief was couple with denial.

But, at the same time, there was an element of reality. Anakin had been by far the worst affected. His head was now buried in his hands and his body was wracking slightly. Bly was stunned to realise that Anakin was practically sobbing. He had never seen Anakin cry before. It had to be very serious if it could make Anakin go like this.

Aayla and Ahsoka wrapped their own arms around him from either side, trying to comfort him and share in his sorrow. Anakin did nothing to throw them off, but he was shaking his head, denial still running through him.

The Chosen One looked like a broken child, being held in the arms of his loving family. It was a pitiful sight, that someone as strong as Anakin had been reduced to this in a mere moment. Bly felt a fluttering of doubt inside him. If Anakin had gone like this it must be pretty serious. Was it possible? Was it really possible that Palpatine and Sidious were one in the same?

"S*t!" yelled Terriermon suddenly, forgetting the fact that there were children present.

Anakin's head snapped up the moment Terriermon yelled that word. "He shot Sith Lightning," he breathed in absolute horror. "Oh God. He shot Sith Lightning."

"I'm sorry, Anakin," Aayla said. "Truly, I am, but it's real. Sidious is Palpatine." _Now, GET OUT OF THERE, RENAMON!_

* * *

Renamon did not need to be told twice. Or even once for that matter. The moment Palpatine's fingers began to crackle, the fox was already in motion, rolling off the rafter as the lightning streaked out of Palpatine's fingertips and struck the ceiling and the beam she was on. In a bizarre twist, the Geonosians that were still on the beam were fried as the electricity shot along the metal conductor and fell to the ground in heaps. Renamon landed in a crouch on the ground and bounded into motion, diving aside as Chancellor Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious, fired a second blast right at her.

The electricity crackled by her tail and shattered a crate that she had just passed by. Renamon dashed across the room, leaping onto another crate and bounding from one to another, crossing the room at breakneck speed and heading for the door. Two Geonosians were in her way, but Renamon rammed into one with her shoulder and slammed the other in the stomach with her fist, knocking them both of their perches and sending them to the ground, winded.

Behind her, she could hear the sound of more electricity streaming right towards her, sizzling through the air with intent to fry her body. Palpatine still could not see her, and Renamon knew it as she still had her perception filter up. The Sith Chancellor did not know who it was that had managed to infiltrate the basement underneath 500 Republica, but he knew where she was thanks to his Sith senses, and he was able to fire off another blast of lightning in her exact direction.

Renamon acted quickly as the lightning caught up with her and sprang upwards grabbing hold of another ceiling rafter with one paw and swinging from it like Tarzan, lifting up her tail as the crackling blast passed beneath it and struck the wall beyond. Renamon landed on the ground and kicked a nearby Geonosian aside. The bugs didn't seem to have a clue what was going on and were milling all over the place, blocking her path.

As Palpatine fired another Sith Lightning blast, Renamon grabbed one of the unfortunate bugs and hurled it at the attack, which struck it full on. The Geonosian let out a huge gurgling shriek and was carried across the room, knocking several other Geonosians aside until it crashed into the wall. Some of them appeared to have noticed that their fellow had been thrown, because they aimed their sonic cannons in the place where Renamon had been. They struck nothing but dirt though because Renamon had somersaulted over a pile of crates and dashed towards the door.

Behind her, she heard Palpatine screaming, "There's someone there! Someone invisible! Get him! Get him! Find him and kill him before he can get away!"

_Excuse me? Him?_ Renamon thought. She smirked under her invisible barrier. Palpatine did not have a clue who she was. There was still a chance she could get away without revealing her identity and exposing the secret of the Digimon, and that fact spurred her on all the harder. She had to escape and get back to the others, no matter what.

The two Geonosians guarding the door had whirled around at the commotion and were pointing their sonic cannons into the room, stalk-eyes squinting for any sign of an enemy or a threat. Renamon dived from the top of a bunch of crates and grabbed them both by their necks, bashing them into one another and tossing them aside before diving through the door, narrowly avoiding another burst of Sith Lightning. Unfortunately, that stunt had alerted the other Geonosians to her presence and they collectively rushed for the door, chirping and gurgling as they dashed into the adjoining sub-basement that Renamon was dashing across.

They fired their sonic cannons into the room, but they could not see anything to shoot at and many of their shots went wide. Renamon was forced to flip over a lucky one though. She landed on the edge of a crate, tipping it over as she sprung off it. Immediately all the Geonosians turned and fired on the crate, blowing it to pieces as Renamon curved through the air. She landed full-force on another Geonosian and rolled off it, punching another in the chest and sending it flying across the room and sweeping the legs out from under another as she made for the door, green sonic blasts flying all around her.

The Geonosians guarding the doors to the third sub-basement were waving their blasters from side to side, desperately looking for a target. Renamon sprang out into the middle of them and dashed right towards them. The two of them seemed to hear her coming and let off several sonic blasts in her direction, but Renamon leapt into the air and barrel-rolled right between the two of them and into the third sub-basement. They felt her whoosh past and turned to shoot...

...and they ended up shooting one another.

Renamon hurried into the third sub-basement and leapt for a ceiling beam as the Geonosians within fired on the door. Behind her, Renamon could vaguely make out the sounds of Palpatine yelling instructions to the bugs as they swarmed through the door and after her, wings flapping as they got into the air to increase their speed. Renamon swung from the beam, her foot pounding one Geonosian in the face and sending it toppling backwards and landed with roll, ducking around a pillar and dashing between two large crates, just as two sonic blasts pulverised the ground right behind her.

The Geonosians still couldn't see her, but they could hear her now. They knew roughly where she was and they were determined to get her, presumably before Palpatine got them.

Renamon catapulted over several more shots and dropped to the ground nearby as silently as she could, stepping away from the nearby Geonosians. The cannon-fire ceased as the Geonosians strained whatever they used to hear with, listening for their invisible target. Renamon crouched beside a crate and took a glance at the entrance to the tunnel in the wall. It wasn't far, but there were two Geonosians guarding it and on the alert for anything. She'd have to get past them first, and if took them out, the other Geonosians would know where she'd gone.

But the sound of Palpatine's enraged voice echoing in the adjoining sub-basement and the sounds of human feet rushing towards her made up her mind for her. She had to get away and quickly. So, she slotted her fingers beneath the crate and tossed it straight up into the air. Before the Geonosians could react, she leapt after it and delivered a mighty kick that sent it catapulting across the room and slamming into the Geonosians guards, knocking the out as it crashed into both at the same time.

The Geonosians fired at the place where the crate had been, but Renamon was not there. She was rebounding off a pillar and springing through the air, twisting her body lithely so the cannon blasts sailed past her. One Geonosian was too close to her landing place, and she her feet slammed into the ground, she grabbed his cannon, wrenched it out of his surprised grip and smashed him in the head with it.

She dashed the final length, leaping over a crate in a terrific bound slamming another Geonosian in the gut with the cannon that she was still carrying. Then, she turned around and hurled it into the ranks of the Geonosian right behind her, pointing their own weapons in her direction. The cannon struck another in the face and brought it down and Renamon backflipped to avoid the shots of the others.

One of the guards was stumbling to its feet, but Renamon shot past him and gave him a thump between his wings to knock him back down to the ground and suddenly she was away, dashing into the tunnel at top speed. One look over her shoulder told her that the Geonosians were in hot pursuit, firing blinding into the tunnel as they took to the wing and buzzed after her like a swarm of giant bees.

She could still hear Palpatine yelled, "Stop him! Stop him or none of you will see your next meal!"

Renamon smirked. The Chancellor sounded hysterical, and with good reason. Renamon had seen him. She knew who he was, and Palpatine was desperate to silence her before she could tell anybody. But of course, he didn't know that the revelation of his identity had gotten out the moment she had seen it with her own eyes.

Nevertheless, she would give him something else to get hysterical about and she piled on more speed, dashing down the tunnel and dodging the shots of the Geonosians behind her, the holocam clutched in her paw. She reached the first corner and rounded it so fast that she ran right up the wall, her momentum carrying her forward as she darted back down to the floor around the bend and tore down the corridor like a yellow, but invisible comet.

She needed to find Bane and the others and let them know what was going on, and she needed to do it quickly. But first, she had to lose her pursuers.

Without the boost of a Modify Card, Renamon was unable to go much faster than this. The Geonosians were close behind her, firing off their cannons whenever they rounded the corner and forcing her roll and dodge from the flurry of shots every time. The enclosed space ensured that she had little room for manoeuvrability and her speed was impeded as a result of the constant darting from side to side. She probably would have lost the Geonosians some time ago, otherwise.

And she was still going much faster than your average human could run, or even an abnormally fast one. Renamon sprang into the air and allowed two shots to sail beneath her belly, landing and dodging to the side as several more streaked past and diving into a roll that allowed one to shoot right over her shoulders. She rolled back onto her feet and hared around another corner, providing herself with a brief time of simply running and increasing the distance before the Geonosians rounded the corner behind her and she was forced to dodge again.

* * *

Up ahead, Bane was still surging towards the action, his rocket boots illuminating the tunnel around him as he whipped around the corners at high velocity. His eyes narrowed as he became aware of a sound in the distance. It took him no time at all to identify the noise – it was definitely the sonic cannon of a Geonosian. There were bugs up ahead, and somebody was under attack.

And Bane was pretty sure that he knew who it was. He threw his feet out behind him to try and increase his speed by becoming more streamlined as he whooshed towards the fighting.

* * *

It was when Renamon finally found a long stretch of tunnel without a corner for quite some distance that she finally made her move. She had to get the Geonosians off her back, and there was only one way to do that quickly without ducking into a side-tunnel and possibly getting hopelessly lost. So, as the Geonosians behind her rounded the corner, she sprang into the air, rotating on the spot until she was facing them and crossing her arms.

_Gotcha,_ she thought as sonic cannon blasts streamed all around her and she threw her arms out wide.

The Geonosians never knew what hit them. One moment they were firing blindly down an invisible corridor and hoping against hope that they were still on the trail of their invisible target when a flurry of razor-sharp diamonds shot out of thin air directly in front of them. They squealed as the barrage nailed them and sliced through their exoskeletons, dropping them instantly. The hailstorm kept up, peppering every Geonosian that rounded the corner until there were no more left.

Renamon landed and crossed her arms once more. She'd created a massive pile of bodies with just one move. It seemed that every Geonosian that had been pursuing her was dead. But, her keen ears could detect human footsteps still coming her way. Palpatine was still to come, and it would not be long before he got here.

Renamon turned around to run, knowing a Sith Lord was beyond her capabilities as a Rookie, when she suddenly saw Bane rounded the corner, surging towards her on his rocket boots. She dropped her perception filter and the Duros started as she appeared before him. He shot past her a few feet but pulled himself to a stop, taking in the Geonosian bodies with a glance and turning to Renamon.

"So, you couldn't save a piece of the action for me?" he asked, with a smirk.

"There's no time for action, Bane," Renamon chided him, grabbing him by the arm and trying to pull him back down the tunnel. "We have to go. I found out who Darth Sidious is – it's Chancellor Palpatine. But he sensed me and now he's after me. I can hear him coming, right now. We have to leave before he arrives and finds his Geonosian guards are dead."

Bane looked momentarily shocked as everyone else when he learned of Sidious' true identity, but unlike the others he recovered almost instantly and shook his head. "Did he see you?" he asked. "Does he know it was you?"

"No, he didn't," Renamon shook her head. "Now are you coming or not. He'll be here in moments."

"Go," Bane said, pushing Renamon's arm off his own and pulling his blaster pistols out. He tossed Renamon a comlink and said, "Talk to your Wookiee friend through that and he should be able to guide you to surface. I'll hold off His Excellency while you get away."

Renamon blinked, momentarily astounded, and stared at Bane incredulously. "You what?" she asked. "You're going to stay here and fight? Why? He's a Sith Lord, Bane. He's going to be a dangerous opponent."

"I know that," Bane nodded.

"Then what is it?" Renamon asked.

"I made a deal with your friend Aayla," Bane answered. "I assured her that I would protect you to the best of my ability, and that's exactly what I intend to do. I also promised to make sure you were not discovered, and that's exactly what I intend to do. He knows someone was there, but not who it was. If I stay, I can make him think it was me and you can get away quickly. Now go, before he gets here!"

Renamon didn't move for a moment, still amazed at Bane's words. The Duros was putting his life on the line for Renamon, and even though you might think it had nothing to do with earning his pay, Renamon could tell that was not the only thing. He didn't have to go to all these lengths to ensure that the Secret of the 327th remained secret. They could just have left it as a mystery spy. But Bane was going the extra mile to make certain that Renamon and the other Digimon remained unknown to the Sith.

And he was doing it out of respect. Renamon had done the nigh-impossible and won Cad Bane's respect. Her own respect for him shot right up. He might be a murdering scumbag who cared for little but money, but even he had his limits in that category, and he was showing them now.

Renamon's eyes narrowed and she nodded. "Alright then," she said. "If you're sure..."

"Perfectly," Bane nodded. "Now go. Get out of here. He's coming."

"You make sure you get out of here in one piece yourself," Renamon said as she started to back down the corridor.

"Oh? Does that mean you care now?" Bane asked with a smirk.

"You're my ally, Bane," Renamon replied. "And I look out for my allies." Bane blinked, but Renamon turned around at that point, melting into the shadows as her perception filter activated again, and she dashed off down the corridor, a communicator in each hand. Bane stared down the empty-looking tunnel for several moments before he shrugged and strode over towards the dead Geonosians, twirling his blasters in preparation.

Sure enough, a dark robed figure (he had put the cloak back on after Renamon had escaped) rounded the corner, and was illuminated in Bane's torchlight. The Duros leered as he beheld the Supreme Chancellor. The same man who he had spoken to when he had raided the Senate Building several months ago, and had warned him that he would "end up paying for this outrage." Bane now realised that that had been for show, and it had been after that that Bane had started receiving calls from Darth Sidious, asking for jobs to be done.

The man was crafty, but Bane had his fair share of expertise as well.

Palpatine stopped and stared in slight disbelief at all the dead Geonosians on the floor. Then, he looked up, glaring through the light Bane was shining at him. Bane lowered the light, allowing the Sith Lord to see who was standing before him properly. Palpatine's eyes widened as he saw the Duros standing in front of him.

"Good afternoon, Chancellor," Bane crowed smugly, sweeping his hat off and giving an exaggerated bow. As he placed the hat back on his head, he added, "Or should I call you Darth Sidious? Which one would you prefer? I suppose it must be Chancellor though, since you don't have your hood up and all that."

"You," Palpatine growled, his voice dropping into the creepy back-of-the-throat lower voice that he used as Darth Sidious. "Bane. What are you doing here?

"Why am I doing anywhere?" Bane asked, twirling his pistols. "Carrying out a job for someone. And what are you doing here, so far from the Senate Guards you are supposed to have around you at all times. What would the Senators think if they could see you skulking around down her, putting on cloaks and speaking to the opposition in the war. I'd imagine that they wouldn't take that very well."

Palpatine's answering glare seemed to be trying to penetrate through Bane and either freeze his soul or incinerate it – Bane couldn't tell which, but the Duros held the gaze with no change to his smug facial expression. Palpatine spoke again after a few moments. "You infiltrated my defences," he growled. "You were hiding in the sub-basements and waiting for me to return."

"Correct," Bane nodded. "How do you like my new cloaking device? It was developed by my droid and this was a test run for it, really, but as far as I could work out it seemed to go pretty well. I'll need to come up with something that can tune out a Sith Lord's senses though. Hmm, that might take a bit of time and effort."

"Do you have any idea who you are standing in front of, Bane?" Palpatine asked, stepping forward and treading on the corpses of the Geonosians as if they were doormats. "You have the audacity to stand there and mock me, when you have no idea of what I am capable of. You may have faced off against Jedi, Bane. But I assure you, the Dark Side, provides a whole host of new abilities and strength that the Light Side could never produce. Now, if you want to be spared a slow and painful death, I would advise you to tell me who it was that hired you to track me down."

"Oh, very good," Bane chuckled. "Very intimidating. Much better than a Jedi's interrogation methods. But I'm afraid I can't tell you that. Customer confidentiality and all that. I was kind enough to not reveal _your_ identity to anybody that you asked me to eliminate, after all, and you are not a special case, your Excellency."

Bane stepped backwards slightly when a lightsaber hilt suddenly sprang out of Palpatine's cloak sleeve and into his hand, a concealed weapon, much like many of his own special tricks. He wondered if the Chancellor carried that blade on him even when dealing with Jedi, but he didn't have time to think about it, because a long, red blade ignited from the tip, illuminating the tunnel as if emergency lighting had come on.

"Do you enjoy life, Bane?" Palpatine asked, stepping closer to the Bounty Hunter.

"I enjoy credits more," Bane leered, refusing to back away as he holstered one pistol and slowly, almost imperceptibly, pulled another out of a hidden holster inside his tunic. "But life is good sometimes. Why?"

"Because, while you might have had experience facing off against merciful Jedi, I am a Sith Lord, and I have no such ideals. If you wish to live on, tell me who hired you."

Bane laughed. "Ha! You don't fool me for one moment, Sidious. You might think I don't know what I'm getting myself into, but I know you have no intention of sparing me regardless of whether I tell you what you want to know or not. I've seen you," he leered. "I know who you are. I could tell _anyone,_ and we can't have that, can we?"

Palpatine scowled. Bane seemed to know his stuff. Palpatine had, at first, considered just giving Bane more money for his silence, but he had decided against it quickly. Bane had been a seemingly faithful employee until now, but someone had offered him money and he had immediately turned on Sidious. There was absolutely no guarantee that Bane would not do the same thing a second time, even if he was bought off. And the second time, he wouldn't need to go searching. He could just tell them right then and there."

Sidious needed to maintain his cover now more than ever, and since buying Bane off was out of the question, that meant elimination was necessary.

"Very well," Palpatine sneered. The look of the usually serene politician's face looked just plain weird, as Palpatine never looked at anyone like that in public, but somehow it fit as well, as if that sneer belonged on that face. "Then I shall extract the information from you by force. And that is a skill I happen to be quite good in."

Palpatine suddenly leapt into the air, a loud, deep screaming noise ripping from his mouth as he corkscrewed through the air and towards Bane. At the noise, Bane felt his body seizing up as if he was suddenly becoming paralysed and his muscles were refusing to respond properly. Palpatine was using some kind of skill with the Force. It was known as Force-Scream, and could be used to incapacitate the unready and end a fight before it even began.

And the Chancellor Sith Lord was spinning towards Bane with a read blade flashing down towards his shoulder.

Not eager to lose an arm, Bane suddenly wrenched himself and at the last minute, he threw himself backwards, his muscles beginning to move properly again as he shook off the effects of the Force technique right at the last moment. The lightsaber cleaved the air where he'd been and he hit the floor with his shoulder, rolling into a crouching position further down the tunnel. As Sidious raised his blade and prepared another attacking, Bane lifted the pistol he had withdrawn from inside his jacket and let off a single shot from it.

It went off with a bang that was much louder than any ordinary blaster pistol.

Naturally, Darth Sidious immediately moved to block the shot, the red lightsaber blade slamming into the red blaster bolt in a collision that created a large flash of red light. Both of them shielded their eyes from the intense glare, and the blaster bolt did not get deflected by the blade. It seemed to be absorbed by it and, suddenly and with a sputtering noise, Palpatine's blade went out.

Palpatine looked down at his lightsaber hilt, momentarily surprised, and Bane took advantage of the lapse and lashed out with his hand, pushing a button that caused a rope to lash out from his wrist-com and wrap around the lightsaber hilt. Bane yanked and pulled the hilt out of Palpatine's hand, then immediately fired his other pistol at the man, sending lasers shooting across the tunnel towards him.

Palpatine avoided the shots, leaping into the air and twisting in a tight circle as the shots passed by on either side, but he landed nearby and whipped around to stare at Bane incredulously, as Bane tossed the lightsaber down the tunnel, where it clattered into the darkness behind him.

"What..." Palpatine hissed. "What did you do?"

Bane sneered and held up the blaster he had pulled from within his coat. The barrel of the gun had been almost completely shredded and was bent backwards like a banana skin or a cheesestring. "Cortosis shot," Bane sneered, tossing the useless blaster over his shoulder to join the lightsaber hilt somewhere in the shadows. "Murder on the blaster that uses it, of course, but enough to short out a lightsaber for a few seconds, giving me just enough time to disarm you. You see, your Mightyness, you might be a powerful Sith, but that doesn't meant I didn't come prepared."

"So I see," Palpatine sniffed disdainfully. "But a Sith Lord is never truly unarmed, Bane." He raised his fingers and an evil sneer crossed his wrinkled face. "You should know that." And with a jerk of his fingers, Sith Lightning was pulsing down the tunnel, lighting up the area with its crackling form and zapping right towards Bane.

Bane rolled aside as the blast whooshed past him and immediately charged closer to Palpatine. The Sith Lord laughed, seeming to enjoy himself as he let off another blast with one hand, which Bane jumped to avoid, and then a blast which the other hand that Bane rolled underneath. Bane leapt up and readied his blaster, but Sidious had already let off another burst of Force-lightning. Bane hurriedly pressed another button on his wrist-com and something long and thin emerged from a socket on the bulky device.

Bane immediately lifted up his hand before him and the Lightning crashed into him. Palpatine let out a sinister laugh of delight as the Lightning finally struck its target. He poured more power into the blast, intensifying the lightning attack until it was crackling right across the tunnel from wall to wall, clods of earth flying out of the sides as electric volts crashed into them and knocked bits of them loose.

Palpatine cackled and eventually, after about half a minute or so, he relented his attack, lowering his hand and expecting to see a charred corpse on the floor that had been his former opponent. As the light of the lightning died away, what he saw instead was a flurry of red lasers shooting towards him. His eyes widened in alarm and he ducked and dodged, the lasers putting holes in his long cloak but just missing hitting any skin.

Palpatine looked around in disbelief, to see Bane not only still standing, but looking none the worse for wear. Bane twirled his blaster pistol and let off another round, which crashed into the ceiling and knocked several chunks loose, falling on top of Palpatine. The Chancellor sprang aside as the majority crashed down behind him and let off another round of lightning at Bane, carefully watching to see what would happen.

Bane raised his fist before him again and caught the attack. Sidious' eyes widened as he saw that Bane appeared to be _absorbing_ the lightning. The long, thin thing that had extended from his wrist-com was a lightning rod, drawing the lightning in and striking the small device, the power dissipating down into the rod and therefore into the wrist-com.

Bane sneered as he lowered his hand. "Sith-lightning is practically what you guys are most famous for," he chuckled. "If I came prepared to handle a Sith Lord, don't you think that would have been the first thing that I thought of? And here's the best part." He pointed his fist at Palpatine and pushed a button and sudden huge bolt of lightning shot out of the bottom of the com and lanced towards Palpatine.

The Sith Lord raised his hands and blocked the blast, using the Force to hold the lightning at bay, taking it up into his own hand and then hurling it back the moment Bane stopped. Bane merely absorbed it with the lightning-rod again and sent the blast right back, which was grabbed by Sidious and sent back, over and over again until it seemed like the lightning blasts between them were pretty much constant, both of them gritting their teeth as they tried to overpower one another with their lightning blasts.

Eventually Bane broke the lock between them by sending off a round of lasers instead of lightning bolts. Unable to block these without his lightsaber, Palpatine ducked and dodged as the lasers lanced down the tunnel towards him, and the moment Bane hesitated for a moment he whirled around yanked the blaster out of Bane's hand with the Force. Bane lost his grip and the weapon went flying into Palpatine's hand and was turned on its master. Bane avoided the shots the Palpatine sent his way by back-flipping and let off the electric blast that his Lightning Rod had stored.

The blaster was knocked from Sidious' hands and the Sith Lord only just managed to block the attack and reabsorb it into his fingers. Bane whipped his hands and let off a couple of poison darts in the Sith Lord's direction, but Palpatine was able to catch them with the Force and hurl them back at him. Bane whipped out his final blaster and shot the darts out the air with amazing precision then darted backwards, rolling to avoid another Sith lightning blast.

Palpatine rushed forward, determined to push the attack and retrieve his lightsaber if possible, but Bane was not planning to have that and he leapt right back into the fray, levelling his pistol and letting off a round of five shots towards Palpatine's face. Or he would have if Palpatine had not jerked his hand to one side with the Force and caused the shots to go wide. Bane growled and responded to this with a blast from his flamethrower. Palpatine halted with his charge as the flames roared down the tunnel and leapt backwards, the flames catching his cloak and leaving the ends smouldering, but otherwise missing him and fizzling out before it could reach him.

Palpatine lashed out with his hand and began to initiate a Force-choke instead, hoping that would be enough to incapacitate Bane for a while. Bane was lifted into the air and he kicked, his hands flying to his throat as he made retching noises. Palpatine chuckled and began to advance, but suddenly Bane said, "Not," and fired another round from his blaster. Palpatine dived aside and pressed himself against the wall, dropping Bane to the ground again.

Bane sneered. The breathing apparatus built into his cheeks and gripping the back of his head were specially designed to ensure that he couldn't be Force-choked. When it came to fighting Force-users, Bane was one of the most well-prepared men in the Galaxy.

"Let's continue," Bane said, readying his pistol and lightning rod as he activated his rocket boots and hurled himself towards Palpatine/Sidious. It was time to up the fight up a notch instead of just trading surprises. Palpatine raised his hands and prepared himself for the assault as Bane shot right for him.

* * *

Anakin Skywalker was disconsolate. If somebody had merely told him that the Chancellor, his long-time friend ever since they had met on Naboo when he was a child, was the Sith Lord that they had been searching for, he would have probably snapped at them, losing control of his temper at the accusations being presented to him. But he had seen it with his own eyes. Well, with his own mind and through the eyes of Renamon, and he knew that what he had seen before in was very, very real.

Everything was beginning to come into place and nothing that Anakin was realising made him feel happier in any way. His whole friendship with the Chancellor, one of the men who he had felt he could trust beyond almost anyone else in the Republic, had been a lie. It seemed the Palpatine had been manipulating his life ever since they had met, trying to build Anakin into the person that he had wanted, easily influenced by darker urges.

Since the Digimon had arrived, Anakin had spent less time with the Chancellor and more time with them, and it seemed to have made a massive difference. But Anakin's life was not the only thing the Sith Lord had been manipulating. He was the leader of both sides of the war, creating countless battle situations that need not exist just to create the chaos he desired. His actions had killed hundreds of Jedi and thousands of clones and millions of innocent people. He had always been claiming to have everyone's best interests at heart, but it was all a charade.

The mild-manner Chancellor was a front. And the pure evil of Darth Sidious lay beneath.

What was worse was that Anakin should have seen it. The Force with him was incredibly strong. He should have been able to sense that underlying evil throughout the many hours he had spent talking to this man. But every time he had given them information about something (to lure them into traps), congratulated them on their victories (despite the fact he probably hadn't wanted them) and given him advice (trying to sway him to his way of thinking), Anakin hadn't picked up anything malicious.

Was it because he just didn't suspect Palpatine? Or because Palpatine was just so good at deception? He couldn't tell. The only time the Sith Lord had let his guard slip slightly was during the incident with the Zillo Beast, but while Anakin's trust in him had been shaken by that time, it had not been broken.

But now, it was.

Anakin began to feel the anger that had previously been bubbling beneath the shock and despair immediately beginning to rise to the surface, as his fists clenched and his teeth gritted together, his eyes snapping open into furious glares. His fists began to shake with anger. Everything he knew about the man was a lie? He was evil, not to be trusted, just like Obi-Wan had constantly warned him. He should have listened to his Master.

And Terriermon was right. They should have let Godzillo eat him.

On some level, he knew that he should be suppressing his anger. Anger was exactly what Palpatine had wanted from him. He had attempted to eliminate Ahsoka and Aayla twice and Barriss once, and presumably one of the main reasons for that was to get Anakin riled, make him furious with the Sith. But Palpatine had probably been planning to one day reveal himself as Sidious, knowing full well that it would fill Anakin with uncontrollable rage, and somehow use that to turn him to the Dark Side.

But he just couldn't help himself. The betrayal was too much – everything too big. The Force effectively began to leak out of him and a nearby boulder actually splinted down the middle.

Through the haze of his terrible anger, he felt Aayla's arms tightening around him, trying to hold him like a child and comfort him as best she could. "Anakin, don't," she whispered in his ear. "That's what he wants and you know it. Don't give in to him."

"He must pay for this," Anakin growled. "Whatever it takes, he must pay for everything he's done to me, to you guys, to the whole Galaxy. He must be brought down."

"You're absolutely right," Aayla said. "He must. He has to be brought to justice for the crimes he has committed, but do _not_ fall to the Dark Side to do it, Anakin. Do not let him win. Any victory we can gain over him is precious now, no matter how big or small. Control yourself. You have risen through so much, left the Dark Side behind and won so many victories with the rest of us since we joined forces. Don't stop now. Don't lose, Anakin. Stay strong and focus on what he does not want you to be."

"Aayla," Anakin murmured, his fists were still shaking. Aayla had been a real help, anchoring him to the side of the light, and her words had a large effect, allowing him to subdue the majority of the anger. But it was still there, and he knew Aayla could sense it.

He felt Ahsoka resting a head on his shoulder. "Remember your promise to me, Master," she murmured. "You said you would try harder than ever to ensure you stayed away from the Dark Side. Please don't break that promise just because of this discovery. Stay with us."

"Ahsoka," Anakin glanced at his Padawan, and felt more of his anger subside.

"If what you say is true, then we must not fail," Barriss agreed. "Between us, we have taken care of almost all the Dark Jedi in the Galaxy. Now there is only one left. Do not allow your anger to create a second, Anakin."

"We _will_ take Sidious down somehow," Terriermon turned around. "Momentai, Anakin, we'll find a way."

"But we will do it following the path of the light," Lopmon agreed. "That's the path we've always used before, and it will serve us well now."

"You cannot sink to his level and use your darker urges to gain victory," Henry granted.

"It could turn you into the very thing that you are fighting to destroy," Rika added.

"You can't do that," Suzie whimpered. "Don't go bad, Anakin. We've got to stick together."

"Guys," Anakin said, and their words penetrated through the haze of anger that Aayla had not broken through on her own and he pressed down on it with a metaphorical dustbin lid. The fury in his eyes was slowly replaced by determination, and he climbed to his feet, the others climbing up with him. "You're right. We can't just sit here and we won't. We must act, but I will not allow Sidious to manipulate me anymore. He's done so all my life, but it ends today. Let's go and tell the Council what we've found out, right now."

"Excuse me, sirs," said Bly. "But, are you absolutely sure that Darth Sidious is the Chancellor. I can't believe that. It isn't possible," he shook his head with vigour. "The man that we have been fighting to serve cannot be the man that we're fighting as well. It doesn't make sense."

"It does, Bly," Aayla said, sadly. "It makes too much sense."

"But, the Chancellor is trying to free the Galaxy from the Separatists," Bly protested. "How can he be their leader as well? What does he hope to gain?"

"An Empire," Anakin said, bitterly. "He doesn't want to heal the Republic. He wants the Separatists to destroy so much of it that it allows him to take full control of it and turn it into an Empire. Renamon and the others found that out earlier."

"No, that cannot be right," Bly protested. The clone was understandably dubious and desperate for an alternative answer. He had been bred almost specifically for this very war, as had his entire brethren. If what the Jedi were saying was true... then what did that make him? What did that make any of the clones? Who were they? Why had they really been brought into existence?

"I... am not sure what to think," Rex murmured. "Renamon's intelligence has always given us the correct results before, right, Commander. Much moreso than the Chancellor himself."

"True," nodded Bly, reluctantly.

"But, it's just so... ridiculous," Rex murmured. "Are you sure, sirs? Are you one-hundred and ten percent sure that the Chancellor and Sidious are the same person?"

"Believe me, Rex," Anakin sighed. "I wish it were almost any other person, but I know what Renamon saw is right."

"I think..." Bly murmured. "That I would like some proof of my own really. I trust your word, Generals. I trust what you say and I would stake my life that you believe that is the case, but... is there any way that you can prove it to us."

"Yes," said Aayla. "But first, we have to get going, and quickly. We must get back to the cruisers and send a message to Master Yoda immediately. Cham," she called over to where the male Twi'lek was standing some distance away, oblivious to revelation that was going on behind him. The male Twi'lek turned around and regarded the group.

"Yes?" he asked. "What is it, Master Jedi?"

"Something has come up," Aayla replied. "Which means that we have to leave immediately. There is no time for further celebration. We're sorry we have to leave without warning like this, but we must go. Bly, pass him the detonator for the explosives on the ship and let's get underway."

"Yes, sir," nodded Bly and hurried over to do just that. Cham looked at it and then back up to the Jedi in bemusement.

"Well, sorry you have to leave so quickly but thank you once again," he said.

"And one more thing," Aayla said. "Those slavers have seen the Digimon. And I cannot tell you why, but it has just become more important than ever that the Digimon are kept a secret. Please keep them under your authority for now. We'll contact you when you can send them to a Coruscant prison. Can you do that for us?"

"Absolutely," Cham confirmed. The Jedi nodded and began to make their way towards the gunships waiting for them, the clones, Digimon and Tamers hard on their heels. But an abrupt cry of distress sounded behind them and they turned to see that Numa, who everyone had forgotten about in the revelation that Renamon had found, was running after them.

Suzie pulled to a halt and said, "Numa, where are you going?"

Numa skidded to a stop next to her friend and said, "Bernan ace kerlam suul. Zonbi! Ju ulner schoy nomina bogos. Suul guys non ed Ju ulner."

Aayla grimaced. "She wants to come with us," she explained. "She doesn't want to be left alone on the planet without a family."

"What?" Suzie gasped. "But... Numa, it's dangerous. You have to go with them," she pointed at the other Twi'leks behind them.

Numa shook her head vigorously. "Ju yuson ji her kerlam suul!" she insisted, a pleading look in her eyes. The Jedi glanced at one another in temporary indecision.

"We don't have time to stand around and convince a little girl that she has to stay here," Anakin replied. "Let's take her with us, at least for now. We can figure out what to do with her later on."

"Agreed," nodded Aayla. "Koomey nes ber, Numa. Dese re."

The lot of them turned and dashed into the gunships, Suzie taking Numa's hand and guiding her into the large white vessel. The moment that Anakin gave the signal, the blast doors shut and the gunships lifted off into the air and began to head back towards the cruisers waiting for them above with all speed.

Bly and Rex kept glancing at each other, not sure what to think. They were both seriously conflicted. On the one hand, they knew the Jedi would not joke about something as serious as this, but on the other hand... what they were saying just didn't bare thinking about.

Ahsoka spotted their edginess and said, "You do trust us, don't you?"

"Yes, sir," nodded Rex immediately. "Your every word, but... well..."

"I know. I probably wouldn't have believe it either," Ahsoka said. "Would a little proof put all your minds at ease?"

There was a large round of nodding from all the clones surrounding the Togruta. Ahsoka nodded and linked up her mind with Terriermon, so that she could contact Renamon.

* * *

The fox in question was still running down the tunnel when she felt Ahsoka's presence entering her mind. _Renamon,_ she said. _You recorded everything you saw down there, right?_

_Yes,_ she stopped running to focus on her reply. _I got the whole thing. Why?_

_It's just that the clones over here would like some proof that what we're telling them is true. We'll concentrate on informing the Jedi Council, but do you think you could send the recording to my holocommunicator._

_Sure,_ nodded Renamon. _But first I need to get out of this tunnel. Give me a few minutes._ Then, she held up her communicator and said, "Chewie, are you there?"

"Rowoc, ah rasc," came the reply. "Ohacraao acraakakwowh?"

"Things are getting a little tense down here and I need a way out of the tunnels. Where are you?"

"Wwanroahwhrr rarhoohowo," Chewbacca said. "Ohwo wwoohuwhwa akanraoawo ohacworcwo aoacwo rrrcoohuwhwa rarhoohowo aohuwhwhwoan ahc aoacahwh. Rooohu rhrcworaor oohuao aoacworcwo."

"Good," nodded Renamon. "How do I get to you?"

"Wwooananoooh aorcraoaorahwhrr wawohoahoawo oowh oaooscanahwhor," Chewbacca replied. Renamon lowered the communicator and saw that it had a circular panel on it, with a flashing red light pointing towards the tunnel ahead of her, indicating where she needed to go. She nodded and said, "I'm on my way." And she threw herself forwards once more and hurtled off down the tunnel, her eyes constantly flicking down to follow the tracking beacon.

The line suddenly moved to the right and Renamon immediately darted down the next tunnel she found, heading into the dark recesses of the maze. She followed the tracking function down a couple more corridors until the red line stopped and the whole circle started flashing, which indicated that she was directly below where she needed to be. There was no sign of an entrance to the tunnel, but that didn't matter.

Chewbacca had said that he and Todo had scanned the tunnels, looking for the closest place to 500 Republica to find a section of tunnel that was very close to the surface. Renamon looked up at the ceiling. She didn't know how thick it was, but it was thinner here than anywhere else. Her paw cloaked itself in blue aura and she lunged upwards, slamming her fist into the ceiling. Earth showered on top of her, as she dropped back down, a sizeable dent in the soil above her, but she had not yet broken through, so she did it again.

Chewbacca had done the job well. It only took three earth-shaking Power Paws before she burst through a concrete surface and sailed out of the tunnel system and into open air. She flipped and landed beside the large hole she had created. 500 Republica loomed above her in the distance, but Bane's ship was standing right next to her, tucked out of sight from the main building behind another smaller one in what appeared to be a large back-alley.

Chewbacca was waiting for her, and he hurried down the ramp to greet her. "Rooohu ooorraro?" he asked.

"I'm fine," she said. "But listen, there's little time to explain. I found out who Sidious is, and it's Chancellor Palpatine himself."

Chewbacca stepped backwards, looking stunned? "Achuac?" he grunted in disbelief.

"I know it sounds crazy, Chewie, but you've got to trust me on this," Renamon responded. "Now look, there isn't much time. I need to go and convert the footage I made into a holovideo as evidence of what I found. Do you reckon you can make sure that Bane gets back her when he makes his escape?"

Chewbacca faltered, unsure what to make of what Renamon was saying but, after a moment, he nodded. "Thanks," Renamon said, as she bounded up the ramp and into the ship. Chewbacca turned around and stepped over to the tunnel entrance Renamon had made and, after a couple of moments, jumped into it.

* * *

And there you have it. So far, the secret of the Digimon is still being retained, thanks to a little deception from Bane and the invisible Renamon. I hope you liked the little game between Sidious and Bane as they tried to outwit and surprise one another with their assortment of gadgets and Force powers, hurling different kinds of attack at one another. And btw, cortosis shots are not made up by me. You just don't see them often because they are very hard to come by apparently. But Bane used one in the Clone Wars webcomic to capture Bolla Ropal, so he used another one now.

But the fight to escape from Sidious and take action against him is not yet over. What will be the outcome of the fight between Bane and Sidious? You don't have to wait to find out, just carry on with the next chapter. Chop, chop. :p

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Twi'leki translations

Bernan ace kerlam suul. Zonbi! Ju ulner schoy nomina bogos. Suul guys non ed Ju ulner – Take me with you. Please! I have no family anymore. You guys are all I have

Ju yuson ji her kerlam suul – I want to go with you

Koomey nes ber, Numa. Dese re – Come on then, Numa. Keep up

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Please leave a review and see you soon.

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Next time...

As Bane and Sidious continue their battle beneath Coruscant, Renamon and Todo have to supply the evidence of Darth Sidious' identity to convince those who don't believe it easily, like the clones. And things are about to get a whole lot worse for the Galaxy.

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Coming up:- **Chapter 152 : One Off the Devil**


	152. One Off the Devil

Hello, everybody. Hope you are looking forward to some more action from Bane and Sidious, because they are continuing to duke it out in this chapter. Things are moving very fast now – everyone is doing different things at different ends of the Galaxy, but I hope that this chapter will leave everyone on tenterhooks. Then again, I think the last chapter of my last mass update (which was significantly larger than this one) left everyone on tenterhooks too, so I apologise for my evilness in advance.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 152:- One Off the Devil**

* * *

Palpatine growled as Bane rushed towards him, propelling himself through the air on his rocket boots and his remaining pistol outstretched, ready to shoot the Sith Lord down. Palpatine zapped off a round of Lightning, but, just as he had suspected, Bane blocked it with his lightning rod and absorbed the power, but he was forced to stop his headlong charge. This gave Palpatine the opportunity to grab the airborne Bounty Hunter with the Force and wrench him to the side, slamming him into the wall of the tunnel.

Bane grunted as he crashed into the earthen wall and tumbled to the floor, where Palpatine sent another blast of Force-lightning at his prone form with intent to finish him off. Bane looked up, red eyes narrowing as he beheld an electric death approaching him and swiftly countered by firing off the electricity stored by the lightning rod. The two blasts crashed into one another in the middle and seemed to strain against one another, lightning charging the air all around them and filling the tunnel with flashing sparks.

But Bane only had a limited supply of the power, so the lock was quickly broken. However, it was enough for him to clamber to his feet and the moment he ran out of power he leapt into the air and sailed backwards on his rocket boots, rolling aside as the electric attack flashed past him and vaporised the tunnel wall nearby. Even as it was still going, Bane was firing off more rounds from his pistol.

Even without his lightsaber, Sidious, Palpatine, whichever, was proving difficult to hit. Bane tightened his grip on the trigger as Sidious dodged the shots, his eyes narrowing as he sort to focus and improve his aim. Palpatine tried to pull the blaster out of Bane's hand with the Force, but Bane managed to hold onto it this time and was jerked forwards instead. Seeing the Bounty Hunter come flying towards him, Palpatine reversed the direction and pushed Bane across the tunnel instead. As the Duros flew backwards, he managed to send off the bolas he had stored in his wrist-gauntlet.

As Bane crashed to the ground and tumbled backwards, Palpatine too stepped back as the rope connected iron balls lashed through the air towards him, but he caught it easily enough with the Force, flipping it around and throwing it back, and sending off another blast of lightning after it. Bane rolled back onto his feet, to find his own bolas flying towards him. He quickly whipped off his hat and flung it like a Frisbee, so it intercepted the bolas and wrapped around it instead, dropping harmlessly to the ground, but the lightning was still surging towards him. Bane was only just able to catch and absorb it, but he was promptly hit by another intense Force push by the Sith Lord and thrown down the tunnel.

Palpatine hurried forwards, sighting his fallen lightsaber handle and grabbing it with the Force, pulling it back towards his hand. Bane looked up and spotted the new development and lashed out with the rope again, grabbing the lightsaber out of the air and hauling it back towards him. Palpatine hissed in irritation as Bane caught the hilt in his hand and examined it. He sneered and looked back up at the Chancellor, before storing it in his coat. "You want this back, you'll have to come and get it."

As he spoke, his hand reached down and grabbed the pistol that had been knocked out of his hand earlier. His other hand already had the other one in his grip, so he was fully prepared and moment later, leaping into a roll and falling into a crouch, letting off a volley of shots from both pistols with them. Palpatine growled and grabbed a large part of the walls with the Force, wrenching earth out from the sides and intercepting the shots with them as he blocked off the tunnel. Then, the Sith Lord hurled the soil down the tunnel, where it crashed into Bane and sent him rolling back to hit the corner of the tunnel with a painful crunch.

Palpatine chuckled lowly as he advanced towards the dazed Bounty Hunter that was scrambling to his feet, using the wall for support and clutching his head. "I am beginning to think that you are running out of tricks, Bounty Hunter," he leered at the Duros. "Are you willing to tell me who your employer is yet?"

Bane looked up and smirked, then held up his hand, which appeared to be holding a small metal device with a large red button situated on the top, underneath Bane's thumb. "Am I really?" he asked, raising a brow.

Palpatine started, recognising it to be a detonator of some kind. Only now did he become aware of the faint bleeping sound from nearby and his gaze lashed down to see a detpack on the floor by his feet, half buried in the soil that he had thrown at Bane. When Bane had planted it, he had no idea, but that didn't matter right now. He leapt backwards with an enormous Force-jump just as Bane slammed his thumb down and the detpack exploded with a tumultuous blast. Palpatine managed to avoid getting killed, but the shockwave of the blast still carried him to the floor and sent him rolling in an undignified jumble, as soil cascaded from the ceiling and walls to partially block off the tunnel between them.

Bane chuckled and decided it was about time to beat a retreat. The Bounty Hunter ran over and retrieved his hat and bolas before he began to make his way back down the tunnel at a run, unwinding the bolas and placing the hat back on his head.

But, behind him, he heard a shriek of rage from Palpatine that seemed to come from the depths of hell itself. He glanced over his shoulder and the earthen barrier shattered in a huge burst of the Force as the Chancellor whooshed down the tunnel and right towards him. Bane's eyes widened in alarm – the man seemed to be hovering above the ground and pushing himself through the air with the Force as if he were a human speeder.

Bane activated his jets and tried to hare out of there, but he was not fast enough. Palptine caught up with him before he could reach maximum speed and grabbed him around the leg, slamming him to the ground and bearing down on top of him. Bane lashed upwards with a kick that caused Palpatine to bark in pain, but the Sith Lord did not back off and his gnarled fist slammed with full force into Bane's face.

Bane rolled over and over, wrenching his leg out of Palpatine's grip and scrambling to his feet, but Palpatine was faster and rose as well, grabbing Bane with the Force and slamming him into the wall of the tunnel again. Before Bane could register the pain of the slam, he was suddenly sent slamming into the opposite wall, and then back again, several times until Sidious hurled him down the tunnel and the Bounty Hunter came rolling to a stop.

Wincing painfully, Bane tried to get up and retaliate with his flamethrower, sending a blast of orange flame down the tunnel as he pushed himself back onto his feet. But Palpatine was beginning to show his true power now. Bane's tricks were less of a surprise to him now and he was beginning to overpower the Bounty Hunter. He raised his hands and the flames washed to either side of him in torrents as he stepped menacingly close to Bane.

Bane growled as he stumbled to his feet fully and sent off a quick shot right at Palpatine with one pistol, but the Chancellor was ready for that too and stepped aside, lashing out with his hand and grabbing the blaster with the Force, wrenching it out of Bane's grip and sending it crashing into the other hand to knock the other blaster to the floor as well.

Palpatine then grabbed Bane in a Force choke and slammed him against the wall once more, using one hand to pin the Duros in place, while the other hand was used to send another Force-lightning blast at him. Bane lashed up with his fist to defend himself with the lightning rod... or at least, he tried to, but his arm was pinned against the wall as if it had been nailed there. Bane gritted his fangs and roared as the electricity slammed into him.

Bane knew how painful electricity could be. He used it himself a lot after all, both as a torture device and as a weapon if he got close enough to somebody to use it. But even he was unprepared for how much this hurt. Palpatine's Force-lightning was extremely strong and seemed to shoot straight through him and to his back, up each of his limbs and two his head, zapping every single part of his body with equal force. _And_ the effect was being lessened by the nashta-hide that Bane wore, so to someone else it would be ever more painful. A holler of pain was extracted from his mouth as his head as thrown back against the wall. Then, the blast relented.

Palpatine stepped closer towards Bane, one hand still outstretched to pin him to the wall. "Now then," he said. "You have an impressive arsenal against Force-wielders, Bane, but you are no match for me. Nobody is a match for me. Now, I would like to know the identity of your contractor. Who hired you to track me down?"

"What's the matter, Sidious?" Bane sneered, clearing his head of the painful burst of electricity. "Afraid that you might have some traitor in your midst trying to get at you?"

"Tell me... now," Palpatine growled. "And I will make your passing a quick and relatively painless one."

"Ha! I know all the old threats, you Worshipfulness. After all, I myself have used them enough times. But I still am not going to tell you anything. You'll have to figure it out for yourself, if you can. My mouth is sealed."

Palpatine blasted Bane with his lightning mercilessly again and then floated him away from the wall and slammed it into him again, then blasted him again. "Speak, and your suffering will come to an end," the man growled. "I am dialling down the power of my lightning strikes, you know. I could quite easily use more power. Do you wish for that to happen?"

"Hm," Bane snorted. "A very tempting argument. Pity it won't work."

Sidious snarled and, predictable, blasted Bane again, which the Bounty Hunter was more prepared for this time. What the both of them were unaware of as they played their little game of Questions and No Answers, was that they had an observer. Not far away down the main tunnel, a large, furry figure was peering around the corner at what was going on.

Chewbacca had originally been intending to move only a few corridors away from the area where Renamon had busted out from the surface and wait for Bane. But the Wookiee had heard the sounds of battle coming from up ahead getting closer, and had eventually decided to go further and check it out. Now, he was watching Bane getting blasted repeatedly by undeniably painful Force-lightning, but the Bounty Hunter still wasn't giving up the identity of his employer. Chewbacca felt his own respect for Bane rising. He had been sure that Bane would turn on them the moment it was most convenient for him, but he wasn't. And unless Sidious offered him a sum of money greater than thirty million, that did not look set to change.

Bane was a lowlife. But he was not a coward.

Chewbacca felt an urge to go out there and do something to help him, but the Wookiee didn't dare. Not because he was scared of Sidious, but because Sidious was Palpatine and Palpatine was aware of the fact that Chewbacca ran with the Jedi now. If he went out there to help, then Bane's silence would be for nothing, so he held his position, trying to come up with an idea.

Unfortunately, Palpatine seemed to be twigging. He had paused for a moment, frowning. "Hold on a moment," he rasped. "It cannot be a coincidence that you come after me like this only a few hours after I call you to ask whether Secura was dead." He blasted Bane with his lightning again and yelled, "You broke through my defences and tracked my call to the Works, didn't you?"

Bane stayed silent, but Palpatine was still going. "And it also can't be a coincidence that you do that right after I send you on a mission to eliminate one of my mortal enemies, who happens to know of my existence as Sidious, but not my identity. And you Bounty Hunters do sometimes have a habit of turning on their employers if offered something big by the previous target. But, if that is the case, then that means..." Suddenly his expression turned furious as he let out a howl of rage that could compete with a tarentatek in the Shadowlands of Kashyyyk and let loose and extremely powerful blast at Bane. "It was Secura!" he raged, as the volts coursed through the Bounty Hunter. "Secura turned you against me before you had the chance to kill her! Didn't she? SHE'S BEHIND THIS! **THAT BLASTED TWI'LEK IS STILL ALIVE, ISN'T SHE?"**

Bane couldn't reply even if he wanted to, because he was too busy howling in agony as the electricity zapped through his body. Chewbacca's eyes narrowed and his hands tightened around his bowcaster. Palpatine had figured it out on his own. He knew that Bane's presence here was Aayla's doing. His own contribution now would not be giving them away.

With a roar, Chewbacca rounded the corridor and let off a couple of powerful green lasers from his bowcaster at the Sith Lord. Palpatine was startled, sensing the bolts shooting towards him as well as seeing them out the corner of his eye and leapt backwards, the shots crashing into the wall instead, and the lightning stream stopping and causing Bane to fall onto his hands and knees, gasping for breath.

Chewbacca ran over to him and stood in front of the downed Bounty Hunter, a furious snarl in place on his furry face. Palpatine was obviously surprised by his presence, but was still quick-minded enough to dodge several of the shots that Chewbacca sent his way. He jumped backwards and ducked away as Chewbacca advanced towards him, roaring in defiance and anger as he blasted on and on, determined to shoot him down.

Palpatine tried to pull the bowcaster from Chewbacca's hands, but the heavy Wookiee's grip was like durasteel and didn't yield for a moment. So, as Palpatine ducked under another shot from the Wookiee, he sent another blast of Force lightning at him instead. The electricity slammed into the weapon and knocked it right of Chewbacca's hands and into the darkness of the tunnel. Chewbacca stepped backwards, growling, and Palpatine cackled.

"Ah, the Wookiee," he said. "I knew it. That meddling Jedi managed to survive, didn't she? And she sent you to accompany this Bounty Hunter as he tried to track me down, did she?"

Chewbacca only growled in response. Palpatine's expression hardened and he said, "Well, you may not have been the one I was hoping to kill soon, but since you have a supposed life-debt to one of the Jedi, I guess you will be a start." His fingers jabbed out and huge torrent of lightning coursed through the air and slammed into Chewbacca's front. The Wookiee howled as the volts crackled over his body, causing parts of his fur to stand up. It felt as if every single hair on his body had an individual shock running up and down it and it wasn't long before Chewbacca was forced to his knees under the barrage.

Palpatine merely laughed and poured in more power, causing Chewbacca to fall to his hands as well, his bellowing cries of agony echoing throughout the tunnels.

But, even as Palpatine continued to pour electric power over the Wookiee, Chewbacca felt another sensation deep within his gut and he could tell immediately that it was some sort of resolve. Ever since he had met up with the Digimon and their Jedi friends, it had seemed that the one thing that was constantly defeating him was electricity. For instance, he had been captured by the Trandoshans through use of an electro-net.

When he had been imprisoned in the cage by Garnac the Trandoshan, he had been almost knocked out by an electric blast that ran through the cage bars and fried him, which had resulted in Lopmon having to save his life and obligating him with a life debt in the first place (though, of course, he didn't regret making that life debt – he'd had many adventures in a very short span of time). But the point was that it had gotten the better of him.

Then again, just the other day, when he had confronted Bane himself during the abduction of Aayla, he had been blearily from the effects of the knockout gas that Bane had used but it had been an electrical zap from Bane's gauntlet which put him out of commission and meant that Bane had been allowed to get away with Aayla.

And now, here he was, attempting to protect Bane in a complete role reversal of the events of the past couple of days, and he was being zapped by electricity once again, straight out of the fingers of the most evil man in the entire Galaxy.

That feeling in his gut seemed to expand as he recalled each experience where electricity had been his downfall, and he clenched his teeth, feeling his roar of pain slipping away and being replaced be a roar of anger, denial and determination. He was not about to let it get the better of him again. Not this time!

Digging his claws into the ground, Chewbacca pushed himself upwards, his new-found tenacity filling him up from within and seeming to block out the pain of Palpatine's attack, rather like what Aayla had been doing when she had been in Bane's clutches. And he abruptly used the purchase his claws had in the ground to hurl himself upwards and forwards, rising to his feet and bellowing a terrific Wookiee warcry and he charged straight for Palpatine, bulling through the lightning that was still crackling right at him.

The brief look on Palpatine's face was absolutely priceless, as it took on a completely gobsmacked look at the sight of the Wookiee coming at him, a furious snarl on his face and withstanding the Sith Lightning, even though it was still obviously doing him incredible pain. Palpatine abruptly tried to increase the power of his attack, but the Wookiee only stumbled for a moment before it kept on coming.

Palpatine's reactions were too slow. Just as he was about to relinquish his attack and jump back, Chewbacca's enormous fist swung right for his chest, in a blow that would cave the man's chest in if it connected properly. Palpatine might be a Sith, but he was still human and therefore subject to the same rules regarding punches as everyone else. He had just enough time to stop the attack and use the Force to slow down Chewbacca's fist, reducing the power of the strike, but he was not fast enough to stop it connecting altogether. And the blow still sent him flying back down the corridor, crashing to the ground and sliding and tumbling for many more metres until he crashed into a wall.

Chewbacca wobbled slightly, his energy drained from the electric attack, but managed to stay on his feet. A smug look crossed his furry face and he bellowed in triumph, pounding his chest like a silverback gorilla. In his book, that was a little triumph over his self-invented feud with electricity, but it was more than that. That had felt good. He had just slammed a powerful Sith Lord with his fist and thrown him back over a hundred metres or so.

Wouldn't you feel decidedly smug after that?

But then, he took a step back as Palpatine clambered to his feet at the end of the tunnel, nursing his chest with one hand, but still very capable of being dangerous and now he was absolutely livid. His grey eyes bored into Chewbacca, and a cry of fury ripped from his mouth as he launched himself down the tunnel towards Chewbacca in another full-on hovering charge.

Chewbacca heard a voice murmur, "Get down," from right behind him.

Chewbacca obeyed instantly and dropped low onto his hands and knees again, just in time for a recovered Bane to go shooting over his head on his rocket boots and come to a stop in front, floating in the tunnel and letting off an enormous blast with his flamethrower. This time, Sidious was not ready for it and he quickly backpedalled, as the huge torrent of flame washed through the tunnel like an impenetrable and hungry wall of orange. Bane laughed as he poured more juice into the attack and pulsed a blazing inferno down the tunnel.

Though Sidious was able to escape from the main blast, he was forced to retreat around the corner, with the flames following him the whole way. As Bane continued to blast the flames, he turned to Chewbacca and said, "I think we've overstayed our welcome. Time we weren't here. Let's get going." He extinguished the flame and pulled out a pair of large thermal detonators from within his coat and lobbed them down the tunnel with all his strength.

Then, he turned around and said, "Lead the way, Chewbacca."

Chewbacca took a moment, but then he smirked and nodded, grunting. Then, he turned around and hurried back down the tunnel, his memory kicking in as he remembered which way to go. He turned into a side-tunnel and Bane swooped after him, drawing level with the Wookiee as he moved through the air on his rocket boots.

"And, by the way, thanks for the save back there," he added, somewhat reluctantly. Chewbacca blinked, but then let off a growling chuckle. It seemed that he too had won the respect of Bane. He held up a furry fist, and Bane smirked and bumped it with his own.

As Bane flew on, he began to think of what he had gotten himself into, and that this group of friends was extremely special. It was incredibly hard for anyone to earn his admiration, and yet since he had become acquainted with this group, three of their number had done so – one Jedi, one Digimon and the Wookiee. If the others were anything like those three, then he had really found a group of extraordinary beings.

He was beginning to want to learn more about this lot for reasons other than a potential profit.

* * *

As soon as the flames extinguished themselves, Palpatine turned around and began to head back into the tunnel he had just fled down, knowing that Bane and the Wookiee were likely to be trying to escape and he was determined not to let that happen. But, just as he rounded the corner, he was forced to jump backwards again as a pair of primed thermal detonators rolled to a stop by the corner and exploded, creating another shower of earth that fell from the ceiling and walls and blocked off the majority of the tunnel, showering the Sith Lord in earth.

Palpatine's eyes blazed in fury and he practically blew the earthen wall away with an enormous burst of the Force, his intense anger fuelling the blast into something that would have might have sent anything in its path flying into a wall so hard they would die instantly.

But, as he hurried round the corner and back to the spot where the battle had taken place, there was nobody there. His opponents had disappeared into the tunnels, taking the secret of his identity with them.

An unearthly scream of absolute and utter rage was torn out of Palpatine's mouth, which seemed to echo right throughout the tunnel system, startling the few people who lived in these wretched holes. Lightning spurted almost involuntarily out of his fingers and slammed into the walls, crackling across the soil.

* * *

And several tunnels away, Bane looked over his shoulder and chuckled. "I think we made him mad," he observed. Chewbacca grunted and darted into another side-tunnel, the Duros swooping along behind him.

* * *

While the drama was going on in the tunnels down below, something less exciting but equally important was going on in the old freighter known as the _Sleight of Hand._ The moment that Renamon had run up the ramp and entered the cockpit, Todo 360 the techno-service droid had turned around from the pilot seat and regarded the Digimon.

"Good to see you made it out of there in one piece, Renamon," the droid observed.

"Oh, stop it," Renamon murmured dryly. "Carry on like that and you'll make me start thinking that you aren't anything remotely like your Master."

Todo chuckled. "Well, that would probably be because I'm not. Anyway, what's the situation? Did you find out who the Sith Lord Sidious is in the end?"

"Yep," nodded Renamon, hurrying over to the seat and saying, "But I definitely did not like the answer. It was Chancellor Palpatine."

Todo's photoreceptors blinked and he almost fell out of his seat. "What?" he cried. "Chancellor Palpatine? As in _the_ Chancellor Palpatine, whose always making speeches on the holonet about how he's doing everything he can to bring the war to a quicker end and how the Jedi are doing such a good job and how it won't be long before the Separatists are no more?"

"Yes," nodded Renamon. "That Chancellor Palpatine."

"And he's also Darth Sidious? The man who was banging on about how he was so delighted that Aayla Secura was finally dead and how he was going to get back on track with conquering the Galaxy and how the Jedi Order would soon be brought to knees because his plans could finally get going again and is planning to turn the Republic into an Empire and build a giant space station called the Death Star?"

"Yes, that Darth Sidious?" Renamon said quickly. "Look, I don't mean to snap at you Todo, but this is a serious situation." She held up the holocam and said, "I got a holorecording on this thing of Darth Sidious taking his hood and showing who he really is? Do you think that you can take the recording off this device and convert it into a broadcastable form?"

"Can I?" Todo chuckled. "I am a techno-service droid. My talents in this field are almost as good as an astromech. Pass it here and it'll be done in a few moments."

Renamon dropped the large device into the droids small hands and watched for a while as Todo pulled a lead out of from under the control console in front of him and plugged it right into the holocam/communicator. As he started to quickly fiddle with it, Renamon looked out of the cockpit window. Though she couldn't see a lot of it from above the buildings on either side of the back-alley where the ship had been parked, she could still make out the top of 500 Republica, the building which she had been directly under when Darth Sidious had taken off the hood and she had made the holorecording that Todo was downloading.

It was likely that Senator Chuchi was somewhere in that building. She was now the only one who had been a part of the initial planning of the mission to find Sidious who did not actually know what the result of it was. Renamon was going to have to find a way of revealing the answer to her quickly. It wasn't fair if she was left in the dark while everyone else was told about it.

But right now, she had something else to worry about. Namely getting the holographic proof of what she had recorded.

"That should just about do it," Todo murmured, turning around to look at her. "Let's see what you got." He flipped a switch and a hologram appeared above the transmitter. Both the droid and the Digimon leaned in almost involuntarily as they watched the hooded form of Darth Sidious hove into view and converse with a Geonosian, before he suddenly stepped forward and took his hood off. There was no mistaking the face. It was indeed Palpatine. It looked like Renamon had managed to record the incident just right.

Renamon found that she was gripping the back of the seat so hard her claws were sinking into it as she watched that moment replaying itself over again. She felt a smirk crossing her face and she nodded. "Perfect. Quick. We need to send this video to Ryloth. The comlink of Ahsoka Tano. Can we do that in this ship?"

"Not a problem," Todo nodded. "I'll fire up the long-range transmitter. Have we got a couple of doubters over there?"

"I wouldn't say they were doubters," replied Renamon. "More... reluctants. Let's just say that they would prefer to see the physical proof right in front of them."

"Then perhaps I can play the end of the video that Bane captured first and then yours," Todo replied. "It shows Sidious talking to General Grievous about how he's going to bring down the Republic, so they'll know that its definitely the right man."

"Nice," nodded Renamon. "Do it. And then I need to send a message to a friend of mine."

"All over it," Todo said, fiddling with the buttons as he put together and merged the short videos together. Renamon leaned over and entered the scramble-set for Ahsoka's comlink, which she pulled right out of Ahsoka's mind because the Padawan was still watching what they were doing through Terriermon. And then, Todo hit the send button.

"Done," the droid nodded.

"Good," nodded Renamon. "Now, can you contact Senator Chuchi for me?"

"Sure," nodded Todo. "Give me the details and I'll plug you in straight away."

"How did a helpful droid like you get mixed up with a guy like Bane, anyway?" asked Renamon.

Todo shrugged. "Bad luck, I guess," he answered, as he made the call.

* * *

Across the Galaxy, the gunships were still flying towards the cruisers, which were, after all, quite some distance away from the main sight of the former slave camp. The clones in the gunship with Ahsoka were wobbling back and forth on the balls of their feet and not just because of the vibrating ship. All of them were anxious to get the promised video and see it for themselves, as they would know, once and for all, if what their Digimon ally had seen was true.

Eventually, Ahsoka's comlink bleeped. All activity immediately ceased as every clone turned to face the Togruta, apprehension and impatience on their faces, as those that had not taken their helmets off yet did so now, as if they thought the helmet might obscure the image, or perhaps because they wanted to see it with their eyes only.

Ahsoka slowly held up the disc-like communicator and sighed, "Here's your proof," and hit the button. The clones beheld a man in a dark cloak and hood that obscured just about all of his features speaking with the well-known figure of General Grievous.

The hooded figure was in the middle of speaking:- "We must eliminate key Jedi as fast as we can. If all goes to plan then we should be bearing down on the Republic as we were half a year ago within a month. We still have many allies on our side. We only need to exploit them correctly. And I have full confidence that we shall succeed. My plans have been majorly set back, but we will not fail. We cannot fail. I have foreseen a future where everything I desire comes true, and I will do whatever it takes to ensure that future becomes a reality."

"The Republic will be crushed beneath our fists," Grievous agreed. "Their leaders will be butchered and their clone armies slaughtered and burned. Nobody will be able to stand against us when we rise to power once more. I assure you, the Republic will be caught flat-footed by our strikes. Our victory will be final."

"I see I have inspired you, General. Now it is up to you. I will manage things here on Coruscant. The Senate will act accordingly. It is up to you to ensure my desires are fulfilled out in the field until Lord Tyranus is freed. Now go, and do not fail me."

"Yes, my lord," Grievous bowed and the hologram of both of them faded.

"So that was Sidious?" Bly asked. "That's the guy that they were looking for?"

"Uh-huh," nodded Ahsoka.

Bly and Rex shared a look, their stomachs clenching. Due to the fact that they already had a suspect in mind for his identity, they could quite plainly see the slight resemblance the visible parts of Sidious had to Palpatine and how the voice was slightly similar, if altered a bit. Their skin was beginning to crawl, as the evidence of what they had been denying was beginning to build up against them.

And then the hologram re-appeared and it featured the same hooded man speaking to a Geonosian.

"I trust you have nothing to report," the man said.

The Geonosian said something in its own gurgling language that the clones could not make out.

"Good. I shall be going up now, but I should be back sometime tomorrow. Maintain your stations, and remember what happened to your previous comrades who decided to slack off in their duties."

And the moment of truth came as the Geonosian backed away and Sidious pulled back his hood, revealing his identity. The thud of shock and dismay that rippled through the clones was similar to what had happened to Renamon, though not quite as profound, as they had already had an inkling as to the identity of the Sith. But to see it displayed before them and watch the Chancellor that they had come to serve and fight for speaking with Geonosians and General Grievous about overthrowing the Republic was an incredible blow for all of them.

It was hard to maintain their balance as their legs felt weak. Every clone face contained a look of consternation. One of them was staring at his blaster, thinking about how many battle droids he had shot down at the order of that man, when the battle droids in question had also been ordered to be _built_ by the man.

What was the point to the whole war? What was the point of anything? Their existence? It just didn't make any sense – had their whole fight been for nothing? Everything they had believed in and fought for been a sham? They and the Jedi had been forced to fight in a pointless charade as far as they could see now.

Rex's mind had wondered to the events on the planet Saleucami, where he had met a clone that had deserted from the army, known as Cut Lawquane, and had been doing everything that it was forbidden for a clone to do, such as marrying a fine, Twi'lek woman and becoming the stepfather for her two young children and running a farm with his new family. Cut had claimed that he had left because his whole team had been killed off and he "was just another expendable clone, waiting for my chance to be slaughtered in a war that made no sense to me."

Rex had respected Cut's view as his own, even though he had not agreed with it at the time. He, in turn, had claimed "I'm part of the most pivotal moment in the history of the Republic. If we fail, then our children and their children could be forced to live under an evil I can't well imagine."

And that still seemed to be the case. But the same would hold true if they won as well.

"I'm sorry," Ahsoka murmured. "Really I am."

"Not your fault, Commander," said Bly. "We just... need some time to think about this."

Ahsoka nodded and turned around, staring into the corner as the clones began to question almost everything they knew. She felt sorry for them. It seemed that they had all been used in some way, but the clones seemed to be the main victim of this. She didn't speak for a while, allowing them to gather their thoughts. It was the least she could do for the poor souls.

* * *

Talk had turned from the potential end to the war up in 500 Republica and now the gathered Senators were speaking about more casual things. Padmé was currently in the middle of recounting a story from her childhood – something about getting herself lost in the swamplands but managing to get a ride back to the city of Theed on a kaadu or something like that. Chuchi tried to look like she was interested, but in reality she was only half-listening. As usual.

It was so hard not to fidget. She was just desperate for news. There had to be some soon, right?

Despite her anxiousness, the bleeping of her comlink still managed to make her jump with excitement and relief, though thankfully this time there was nothing in her glass to spill over the floor. Padmé broke off her story and turned to look at her.

"You think that's your call for the problem on Pantora?" Padmé asked.

"I hope so," Chuchi nodded, getting to her feet. "I really hope so. Um, if you don't mind, I'd like to take this call in private. It's a... delicate situation."

"Of course," Padmé nodded. "Use the kitchen. We will not interrupt," she gestured towards the door at the end of the room.

"Thank you," nodded Chuchi and hurried through said door, shutting it behind her slowly. She stepped back a little, as if afraid that someone might barge through it and cry "AHA!" or something, but when nothing happened after a couple of seconds, she activated the button.

The holographic form of Bane's droid, Todo 360, appeared there. It bowed and said, "Good afternoon, Senator. I hope you are well, and I also hope that you are alone."

"I am both, for now," Chuchi nodded. "What's the word?"

"Mistress Renamon would like to speak with you," Todo gestured, and the hologram was abruptly replaced by the tall fox. Renamon smiled wryly and nodded.

"Hey, Chuchi. It's good to see you. Things are getting very, _very_ complicated down here, Senator."

"Complicated?" Chuchi frowned. "Then, does that mean that you're getting closer to discovering Sidious' true identity."

"No, it doesn't," Renamon shook her head. "It means that we've already found it."

Chuchi blinked and her face split into a grin. "You have? Oh wow. That's wonderful news. That's... that's..." Chuchi stopped, noticing the Renamon's face was growing more solemn as hers grew more excited. She felt her own face slipping into a similar expression as she said, "That's... not good, is it? The answer is not good?"

"I don't think it could have been more worse, Chuchi," Renamon shook her head.

"Then, what's the answer?" the Pantoran asked.

Renamon shook her head and said, "I'd like to tell you about it in person, if that's all the same to you. Do you think that you can tell us where we need to go to come and meet you? It's very important."

Chuchi bit her lip, but she nodded and said, "Very well. You can come to the landing pad outside my apartment in 500 Republica. It's the three-hundred-and-twenty-seventh up from the bottom on the north side."

Renamon chuckled. "Oh, how appropriate. 327. We'll see you there soon." And her hologram vanished.

Chuchi quickly tucked her communicator away and left the room. The other Senators looked up at her as she walked back into the main area. Bail smiled at her and said, "Everything alright?"

"I'm... not sure," Chuchi said. "I have to be somewhere for a while – something's come up. Thank you for inviting me over, Padmé, and thank you for the drinks. It was much appreciated."

"Anytime, Chuchi," Senator Amidala nodded. "Just don't overdo yourself. You should spend some time relaxing considering the nature of the war and all."

"I know," nodded Chuchi. "And as soon as the immediate situation is over you can be sure that I will be happy as an eopie that smells its feed coming. I just need to take care of one thing. See you soon." And she quickly left the apartment.

Mon Mothma frowned. "I think that whatever Chuchi is doing is more serious than she's letting on. She looked positively frightful just now, though she was doing a good job of hiding it."

"Yes, I noticed it too," Padmé nodded. "Unfortunately, unless she opens up to us there is little we can do to help her." She sighed. "But I do worry about her sometimes. She's so new to the job, yet recently she seems to have had some sort of massive weight on her shoulders. I don't want to pry, but whatever is going on, I want to help as well."

"Well, hopefully the situation will be resolved after she's done with whatever she's doing," Bail nodded. "Let us try not to worry too much. I am sure Chuchi would tell us if it was serious."

Padmé wasn't so sure. After all, she had a massive secret of her own, and she had learned how to recognise the signs and hide them. She could tell that Chuchi was carrying a secret of her own. But, again, she did not want to go putting her nose where it didn't belong unless she knew the situation was serious.

* * *

As Renamon signed off the call from Chuchi, she heard a noise behind her. She turned around and darted to the end of the ramp and to the small hole she had blown in the ground to escape from the tunnels. Bane was standing at the edge of the hole, having levitated out of it on his rocket boots, and Chewbacca was currently scrambling his way out. Evidently the Wookiee had jumped and managed to latch his claws on the edge of the hole and was hauling himself up and over the edge.

"So, you made it out," Renamon observed, nodding to Bane.

"Close thing," Bane shrugged. "That man is definitely a powerful one. The Jedi who you said after him will have to be good if they want to take him down."

"Well, it's a good thing the order still has plenty of those left, doesn't it?" Renamon nodded. "Chewie, are you okay? You look a little frazzled."

Chewbacca brushed off his fur and grunted, "Yeah, I'm good."

"Your friend was quite impressive," Bane said. "Took on a full Force-lightning blast and still managed to run through it and whack Sidious a good one. He's still alive, but that must have left a stain on his pride."

Renamon looked alarmed. "He saw you?" she asked Chewbacca. "But... then that means..."

"He worked it out," Bane said. "I told him nothing, but he guessed that Secura was behind the fact that I was there. That was when you friend made his appearance."

"Oh, this is not good," Renamon shook her head. _Did you guys get that?_

_Yep, _nodded Terriermon. _Don't worry. We're entering the cruisers now. We'll make the call to Master Yoda and he can get moving straight away._

_We must be fast,_ Renamon agreed. _He knows the Jedi are onto him._ Then she spoke aloud, "I need to visit Senator Chuchi's apartment up there," she pointed to 500 Republica. "You reckon you can get me there?"

"No problem," Bane nodded. "We'll take a speeder. It'll be less noticeable than my ship?"

"You have a speeder on you?" Renamon asked.

"No, but I know where to steal one," Bane smirked.

Renamon sighed. "If the situation wasn't urgent I would have to say no, but I'm afraid it is. Alright then. Let's move."

* * *

Down in the tunnels below, Palpatine stepped across the earthen ground and picked up his lightsaber, which Bane had apparently dropped during his electrocution by the powerful Sith Lord. Inside, the Chancellor was absolutely seething. Everything he had been working towards throughout the war had been diminishing over the last few months, but he had finally thought that he was about to get back on track when suddenly this happened.

Cad Bane the Bounty Hunter had sided with the Jedi and revealed him. Even now, the Jedi could be learning of his true identity and everything was going to fall apart.

This was not how it was supposed to go! The war was supposed to go on for much longer than this and more Jedi were supposed to die, and yet it just wasn't happening. Everything had been steadily going more and more wrong for him, but of everything that had happened over the last few days, this was, truly the most disastrous of them all for him. Worse than the capture of Dooku and Ventress by miles.

And, once again, that same bloody woman was to blame. That one Twi'lek Jedi who had been screwing up everything for him had evaded the second attempt on her life as well as the first and had turned one of his most useful (occasional) minions against him, and now Bane had discovered his existence. Even before the appearance of the Wookiee, Palpatine had known that it was true and that Aayla was still alive. The moment he came to that conclusion he had sensed that it was true. The impact that one woman was leaving on him and his cause was devastating. It seemed that every situation he threw at her, she caught and threw right back, each throw more deadly than the last.

Palpatine clenched his fists, his gnarled hands curling into tight balls. He had known that the woman was resourceful, but this was really just taking the biscuit. In less than a week, she had taken out his best minions, avoided death from his best mercenary and somehow managed to accomplish what the Jedi had been trying and failing to do for months and expose him. He had never thought that the Jedi would even consider trying to use a Bounty Hunter to get to him, but by sending Bane to get Aayla, he had almost brought this upon himself, just like a blaster bolt being shot at a Jedi only to repelled back with a lightsaber blade.

How could it have gone so wrong so quickly?

Then there was Bane himself. Grievous' words about Bounty Hunters constantly trying to get more money seemed to be entirely accurate. It looked like Bane had turned against him with almost no second thoughts, and somehow, with incredible speed, had tracked him right down to the basement of 500 Republica and, through the use of some kind of cloaking device, had managed to spy on him without his Geonosians spotting him.

And he had seen the whole thing.

It seemed as though he had been absolutely right about Bane's prowess as a Bounty Hunter and at finding out information concealed from others. But it seemed that the Jedi had recognised that potential as well. Palpatine hated to consider it like this, but he had been caught out in the same way that the rest of his minions had – Aayla had fought against them, both on the field and off, by using tactics that they would never expect and catching them completely by surprise.

In a bizarre twist, Aayla had done what her own Master, Quinlan Vos had been attempting to do for months when he had been a Dark Acolyte, and she had done it just like that.

Oh, if only he had known what a hindrance she would be to him when she had first come to his attention for joining up with Anakin and Ahsoka. He would have tried so hard to get her out of the way early on and then this wouldn't have happened. At the time he had actually been somewhat happy. Putting someone else in close proximity to Anakin was sure to mean that he would develop yet another strong attachment, which Palpatine felt he could sever when the time was right.

But this was ridiculous. He was losing absolutely everything.

What would the Jedi do when they learned of this? Well, the moment Master Yoda and the other members of the Jedi Council found out about it, there was bound to be a confrontation. Yoda and Mace Windu were likely to send some of the most powerful members of the whole Jedi Order after him, in an attempt to arrest him and bring him to what they called justice. He growled. Justice would only be served when all the Jedi were wiped from the Galaxy. Until then, there was no justice whatsoever.

Palpatine was confident he could manage the majority of the Jedi Order if it came to a fight. His techniques with the Dark Side of the Force were strong. Bane had been able to counter many of them, but the Jedi would have no such defences. They would have to rely only on their skills with the Force and a lightsaber, and Palpatine was a Master of both. He could bulldoze his way through almost any of the Jedi Order.

But there were some exceptions. For instance, Master Windu was an incredibly powerful swordsman and that made him dangerous, and then there was his blade style, which was practically unique, developed by him personally, and Palpatine had no experience with it. However, Mace was currently off-world, fighting what was left of the Separatists in the Outer Rim, but it would only be a matter of hours before he was called back.

Then there was Master Yoda. He too was an amazing Jedi with a sword despite his advanced years, and his small size would make him incredibly hard to hit. He had an enormous amount of experience on his shoulders and had mastered Force techniques that most other members of the Order had not even begun to practice. He took would be a very difficult opponent.

If he had to face the two of them together, which might be a possibility, Palpatine was not sure he could best them both.

And then there was Anakin Skywalker himself. The Chosen One, who was supposedly destined to defeat him. Palpatine had tried so hard to ensure that wouldn't happen by drawing him closer to his side, but if he learned of Palpatine's true colours now then that chance would be pretty much lost. It was too early. Palpatine had been planning to reveal himself at a time in the future where Anakin was spiritually weakened and frustrated at the order, which would make him more susceptible to becoming a Sith.

Right now, Anakin was neither, and while the Chosen One, he had his team-mates to help rein him in. Anakin might come for him soon enough himself, and where he went, his team would follow. Barriss the healer, Ahsoka the prodigy and Aayla, the Heroine With No Fear and the Twi'lek that had ruined it all. Palpatine was sure he could take Barriss and Ahsoka, but the other two he was not so certain about. Aayla had her ridiculously unpredictable style and Anakin had a prophecy on his side. Much like Mace and Yoda, both of them together would be catastrophic.

And if he were brought to his knees, then everything would truly fall apart beyond recovery. The Senate and the people would know about him and instantly he would be hated by everyone on both sides of the war. He would be replaced as Supreme Chancellor, immediately sentenced to a life in prison and probably entombed in a cell somewhere to ensure that he never escaped. Possibly, in the Citadel itself, the famous prison designed to hold Jedi who lost their way. The Citadel was still in Separatist hands right now, which was why Dooku and Ventress were being held in the Jedi Temple itself instead, but how long would that last when the Separatists defected back to the Republic.

But, while Palpatine considered the possibilities of what was coming next, his mind was also still thinking about what he could do to avoid the situation. What could he do that would ensure that he retained his grip on the Republic and kept all the Jedi at bay? How could he stop them from coming for him and ensuring that he was taken in.

There might still be a potential way out of this situation after all. He still had one trump card left against the Jedi. A trump card that neither they, nor the card itself, were expecting to happen. One of Palpatine's major parts to his plans for the Galaxy was to wipe out the Jedi Order, and despite the fact that the Separatist cause had all but dried up, that part of Palpatine's plan was still intact.

Granted it was much earlier than he had been intending. But, then again, he had been planning for the Separatists to be defeated eventually anyway, and he had wanted the destruction of the Jedi to coincide with the destruction of the Separatists. One of those was already happening now, so why not bring the other one into play.

There was only one thing wrong with that idea. If he pulled it now, it would mean that he would lose the very last chance he had of luring Anakin to be his apprentice. He would have to ensure that Anakin fell as well as the rest of the Order. But, then again, Anakin seemed to have been lost to him for a while. Extenuating circumstances were forcing Palpatine's hand now, and losing Anakin for good might be the price, but it would have to happen. As far as he could see, this was the only way now.

If he pulled his trump card, he would stay in power and he could still win back control of the situation.

If he did not pull the card, all could be lost.

That thought settled in Palpatine's mind and he immediately turned around and headed back towards the sub-basement of 500 Republica. He was not going to fail! He was not going to let his greatest fear become reality, so he would not hesitate to use his final secret weapon, even if Anakin had to be a victim of that weapon as well.

And he knew exactly which Jedi he would start with. The one who had caused all of his suffering recently. The one who had stuck her lightsaber into his plans and torn them apart. The one who had forced his hand into acting early.

Aayla Secura.

Palpatine now felt a slight snicker creeping up and out of his throat. Aayla might have ruined things by exposing him, but now it was he, Palpatine, who would be able to throw what Aayla had done back in her face. He could turn her decision to use the Bounty Hunter Cad Bane into as much of a mistake as it was a success. He could take this failure on his part and throw it back into the face of the whole order.

Granted, it wouldn't be as finely done as Aayla's were. His method of solving his problem was an act of desperation whereas Aayla's was merely taking advantage of a situation whenever it rose up and presented itself to her. But it would be satisfying nonetheless.

And so, he walked past the bodies of the Geonosians that Bane had killed (or so he thought), hurried back to the sub-basement, shed his long cloak once more and stepped into the elevator that would take him up to his private suite and to a communication device which he needed to use quickly.

* * *

The gunships pulled into the hangar of the _Resolute, _which was beside the _Intrepid,_ the two huge cruisers hovering just beyond the atmosphere of the sub-desert planet below. Hurriedly the occupants of those gunships piled out, with the Jedi and the Digimon taking the lead while the clones and the Tamers followed on behind.

The little Twi'lek girl, Numa, looked scared by her new surroundings. This was unlike anything that she had experienced before. She either had open spaces or stone walls all around her, not all this shiny metal with crates piled high all over the place and dozens of white-clad soldiers running from place to place. This was certainly the first time that she had been in space. It took her several moments before she would step out of the gunship that had taken her to this place.

Suzie was the first to notice, and she turned around and said, "Don't worry about it, Numa. It's okay. These guys are all friends. They won't hurt you."

Numa shrank back a little as more of the clones turned to stare at her, but, at Suzie's coaxing and also because she noticed that Aayla and the others were leaving her behind, she carefully stepped out and hurried to keep up with Suzie and the others. "Nerras?" she asked, looking around her at the other clones.

Suzie recognised that word to mean 'brothers' and she guessed that Numa was looking for Waxer and Boil. But of course, those two served under Obi-Wan and so they weren't here right now. Suzie knew telling Numa that though would be a waste of time, as Numa barely understood a word of what Suzie said anyway. So she just grabbed Numa's hand and moved on, determined not to miss anything. Not when the situation was so tense.

_Things are not going well,_ Terriermon said into everyone's mind. _Apparently Bane confronted Sidious to allow Renamon to get away. He managed to escape from him and they've left the tunnels behind but not before Sidious guessed that Aayla was still alive and that she's the one who turned Bane on him in the first place._

_How do we know that Bounty Hunter didn't tell him himself?_ Asked Anakin.

_Apparently Chewbacca overheard most of the conversation,_ Terriermon replied. _Bane never said a word, but it wasn't that hard for Sidious to figure it out considering how quickly Bane got there after his mission to kill Aayla ended._

_Well, at least we now know that wherever the Chancellor is right now, he's going to be pretty pissed off,_ Rika surmised.

_Yeah,_ murmured Anakin. _Yeah, he... he will be._

_Focus, Master,_ Ahsoka said. _We'll have time to sort out our emotions later, right. The important thing right now is letting the Jedi Council know what Renamon found as quickly as possible._

_Agreed,_ Aayla nodded. _I don't like the fact the Chancellor is out secret enemy but we must bring him down. The Chancellor knows that his cover has been blown now and he might try and run. The sooner the Council acts, the better._

As they moved towards the bridge, the platoon of clones that were following behind were mostly silent. All of them knew why they were hurrying – the Jedi were about to send word out that Chancellor Palpatine was an enemy and that he needed to be arrested as soon as possible. And while none of them could deny the fact that Palpatine was an enemy after what they had seen (the broadcasted recording had been sent to the other communicators so all the clones had seen it), all of them were struggling with what to do next.

Should they be helping the Jedi to bring down Sidious? Or should they be stopping the Jedi from bringing down Palpatine? Everything they had done so far now seemed completely irrelevant, as they had been working for and against the same person ever since the first battle of Geonosis. How were they supposed to decide what to do now?

But they followed on for now, desperately wracking their brains for a solution.

As Anakin, Ahsoka and the clones burst onto the bridge of their ship, Admiral Yularen turned around to greet them. "General Skywalker," he nodded. "Good to see you in one piece. Everything has been quiet up here, for a change, though since there are no Separatists here that is to be expected."

"Thanks, Admiral, but I'm afraid there's no time to pleasantries," Anakin said, a bitter tone in his voice. He might be suppressing his anger, but bitterness was not something that needed to be pushed down. "This is an emergency. We must make a call to the Jedi Council immediately."

"Oh?" Yularen asked. "Then I take it that Darth Sidious has been found?"

"Yeah. It's..." Anakin faltered. He didn't want to say it. He didn't want to believe it, yet he did. But he didn't want to say it either, as if it coming out of its mouth would make it one-hundred percent real with no turning back. "It's..."

"Yes?" Yularen asked.

"It's..." Anakin bit his tongue, and he felt Ahsoka's hand on his shoulder, steadying him.

_Go on, Anakin,_ he heard Lopmon say in his head. _The faster you come to terms with it the better._

"It's Chancellor Palpatine," Anakin blurted out. "He's the one we've been fighting against all this time."

"What?" Yularen barked in disbelief. "No! Impossible! That is completely and utterly ridiculous!" Yularen's own disbelief was well-founded. Unlike the clones, he was man who had come to serve the Chancellor by volunteering for the job instead of being bred for it, so naturally he had a lot of faith in the Chancellor as well. "I don't know what kind of sick joke this is, General Skywalker, but you cannot expect me to believe that..."

"Admiral," Rex suddenly interrupted, and everyone turned around to face the clone, who screwed up his face as if he had just taken a disgusting pill. "It's... true, sir."

"Every word," Bly nodded, who looked as though he'd just sat in a pile of bantha dung.

Yularen looked from one clone officer to another, eyes wide with disbelief. While Anakin was more likely to joke about this sort of thing (in his view), he knew the clones never would. Their ingrained loyalty to the Chancellor and the Republic would never allow it. Yularen turned around desperately to the other Jedi and the Digimon, but Aayla just nodded sadly, while Terriermon, who was the most likely of the lot to try and pull a joke like this, was wearing a scowl, which would never appear on his face unless something was up.

"No! It can't be right!" Yularen shook his head.

"Admiral, just replay the last thing that was sent to this holocommunicator," Ahsoka passed him the small metallic disk. "It will tell you everything you need to know."

"Meanwhile, we can send another message to the Jedi Council," said Barriss.

"And hope that we get there quickly enough to stop Palpatine from bolting," nodded Henry.

Anakin sighed and said, "Artoo? You there, buddy?"

The astromech rolled over from where he had been patiently waiting for them to arrive and tootled in greeting. Anakin nodded and said, "Program the communicator. Send a call to the Jedi Council and do it as quickly as you can."

Artoo twittered and rolled over to do as he was told, but a sudden noise caused him to stop and revolve his head around. Everyone else's turned to follow the noise as well, and found that it was a bleeping that was coming from Commander Bly's own communicator.

"What the..." Bly murmured, pulling it off his belt and holding it. "Who'd be calling me at a time like this?"

For some reason, everyone felt drawn to watch, though they didn't understand why, as Bly activated the call. When Chancellor Palpatine appeared there, everyone immediately tensed, and Terriermon and Lopmon hid behind Anakin just in case he happened to turn around.

But the Chancellor seemed to be fixed on Bly as he said, "Commander Bly. I have a special task for you, and I want you to carry it out to immediate effect."

His eyes narrowed and he said three words which punched into Bly like a rampaging reek:-

"Execute Order Sixty-six."

* * *

And, now I leave you on that delightful little cliffhanger. Palpatine's plan is simple – try to eliminate the Jedi Order before they manage to come after him. Those three words that I just wrote are the main reason why Revenge of the Sith is my least favourite of the six Star Wars films. It's a good film, but so many characters that I like perished, including Aayla herself, thanks to those words. And now, they have finally been included in my story.

What happens next? Any guesses.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

It's decision time for Rex and Bly. Order 66 has been give. They must do some soul-searching and decide whether to follow their programming and obey the Chancellor, or obey their morals and do not. And what will the other clones across the Galaxy make of this decision?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 153 : Tools of War**


	153. Tools of War

I won't bore you with a long foreword. After the epic cliffhanger of last time, you must all want to know what happens next, so I'll just let you get on with it. Enjoy. Mwahahaha! *cough*

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 153:- Tools of War**

* * *

Commander Bly had not had an easy life. No clone had. The only thing they had known during the time when they were not at war, was preparing for the war, and then they had been fighting in it ever since. Endless training drills in all sorts of combat right from an early age of four years, when they were finally looking like eight year olds. Simulations depicting huge and chaotic battles, preparing them for the harsh reality of war right from the start. No wading in at the shallows for them. They had been thrown right in at the deep end.

They had built up friendships with their brothers through their combat performance on the field and practiced marching together through the halls of Kamino, watching as more clones were produced, which looked like exact replicas of their own younger selves. And then, finally, they had been introduced to the front lines where it was no longer a simulation.

It was just as gruelling as the practices of Kamino, but if you died then this time you died for real.

But one of the main thing that hadn't gotten Bly and all the other clones through the harsh upbringing to become brilliant soldiers, pilots or tacticians was their belief. Their belief that they were important, that they would one day be a part of something much bigger than themselves, that the Galaxy would one day need them because there was nobody else that they could turn to.

When they had been introduced to the warfront, they had been eager for the start, determined to prove themselves to the Republic they had been programmed to serve, determined not to let them down, determined to make every inspection, drill and training exercise the Kaminoans had thrown at them worth it. Every second had meant everything to them. They might be specially grown soldiers but they still had feelings, and they strove for more than just victory. It was almost like they were trying to prove they had a right to exist, that life had been granted to them for a purpose.

And that purpose had, in their view, been to serve the Republic and its leader with unfailing loyalty and to protect its people from the evil forces of the droid armies that sought to overwhelm them and bring them to their knees.

And through it all had been their grand, upstanding leader, who had used the emergency powers granted to him by the Senate to bring them away from the atmosphere of Kamino and spread them across the Galaxy. He has always been all smiles, always congratulating their brave troops, making inspiring speeches to the populace about their performance in the field. Each and every one of them had looked up to him.

Only to have all that shattered in an instant, when they had received a message from their Digimon ally on Coruscant, shortly followed by a transmission from the same Digimon providing terrible proof – that Chancellor Palpatine was, in fact, the enemy. Yet, at the same time, he was not the enemy. He was still their leader, and the clones were supposed to obey him.

And that was why, when Palpatine called Bly a few minutes later and said those three words, those words that Bly had never expected to hear, but where now pounding on his eardrums like a beating, evil heart:-

"Execute Order Sixty-six."

Bly froze, staring at the hologram in his hand in disbelief. Around him, every other clone tensed up as well. All of them knew what that was. Since they were young, each and every clone had a series of one-hundred-and-fifty special contingency orders drilled into their memory. Order 66 was nothing special. It hadn't ever had any more significance than any of the other orders. One of the orders would instruct them to kill all Senators. Another would instruct them to all return to Kamino. Another would instruct them to kill _themselves._

But Order 66 meant they had to kill all Jedi. It branded the Jedi as traitors to Republic that they served, and meant that the ultimate punishment had to be ensued immediately. They had to be wiped from the face of the Galaxy. If a clone even saw a Jedi, then he would have to shoot and wipe whoever the individual was out.

Bly felt numb. He couldn't breathe. He almost fumbled and dropped the communicator in disbelief. Palpatine was asking _him_ and his men to kill Aayla Secura, and any other Jedi that were currently in the room. Right now there were four, and Palpatine was expecting them to raise their blasters and gun them down without mercy.

Bly felt the words, "It will be done, my Lord," being dragged from his mouth before he had thought about it, and he signed off, the hologram of Palpatine disappearing from view immediately. Bly looked up and around the room, his eyes wide with horror. The clones around him were all watching him with expressions of trepidation. Evidently they were all waiting on him, as their superior, to make the first move.

But each and every clone face indicated extreme reluctance. Some of them were looking at their blasters as if it was a live explosive, and a few of them even dropped their weapons as if they had transformed into venomous serpents. And Bly knew his own face reflected that self-same expression. It probably looked exactly the same. After all, they all shared the same face.

The Jedi and the Digimon, on the other hand, looked bemused. Aayla Secura raised an eyebrow and said, "Bly. What was he talking about? What is Order 66?"

Bly found his eyes locking with Aayla's. It had been only a day after the Battle of Geonosis that he met Aayla, and they had been firm friends ever since. But that friendship had grown much more open ever since the Digimon arrived. Bly felt that he could talk to Aayla if any problems came up with his own life. He felt that he could trust her with anything. Not just his life, but his soul, his name, his secrets. Not that he had many of those.

The instinctual need to obey orders made his grip tighten on his blaster before he had even thought about it, but he caught himself before he raised it to point it at her. What was he doing? Shooting Aayla down, as well as the other Jedi, was unthinkable. It would be even worse than lifting his weapon and gunning down one of his own men.

And yet, the Supreme Chancellor, the one man he was supposed to obey without question had ordered him to do it. The Chancellor's authority extended beyond everything else when it came to the clones. Beyond the Jedi, beyond any Senator. The Chancellor always got the last word. Bly had a feeling that if Palpatine had ordered them to tell them about any secrets he and the rest of the 327th had, Palpatine would know about the Digimon by now.

That had been the loophole. Palpatine had never asked, so Bly had never needed to tell him. But if he had, Bly probably would have told him with almost no hesitation.

And now he had new orders and his fingers were tightening on his blaster again.

He lifted his hand and smacked himself in the head for a moment, clutching his temple in the palm of his hand. _Slow down, Bly,_ he said to himself. _Think about this for a moment. Think about what you just learned._

Bly had just learned that Palpatine was the enemy as well. And while he was supposed to obey Palpatine without question, Palpatine was also Sidious. And Sidious was the enemy. Which instinct was he supposed to follow? Which one was he supposed to consider Palpatine as? The leader or the enemy? Which was he?

How could Bly decide?

The holovideo that Ahsoka had shown to him, Rex and the other clones was still so fresh in his memory. The one that featured both his leader and enemy in the same body, talking to General Grievous about the downfall of the Republic. And yet, Bly knew that he didn't want that. He wanted the Republic to become an Empire. And, forgive him if he was wrong, but didn't an Empire involve ruling everybody with an iron fist?

Which was pretty much what the Separatists did for most of the time?

Bly wondered what he would have done if he hadn't learned of Palpatine's other identity. Would he have just tried to gun the Jedi down without a second thought? He didn't think so – his experiences with them had lead to a better relationship with them than that, hadn't it? Yet sometimes he just couldn't be sure.

Suddenly, his eyes widened and he smacked himself in the head again. What was he thinking? How could he even for a moment consider shooting Aayla and the others? That would be a violation of everything he had come to know and believe about comradeship ever since the Digimon had been brought into his life. It might mean disobeying orders, but, then again, he had disobeyed orders before, had he not?

Bly immediately felt much better as he recalled the incident a couple of days ago when he had gone back to help Aayla, the Digimon, Barriss and Chewbacca by his side, fighting through corridors filled with droids to aid the Twi'lek Jedi, despite the fact that Aayla had expressly forbidden Bly from doing that and instructed him to evacuate the listening post and blow it up immediately, regardless of whether she was still inside.

And the reason he had done it was still vivid in his mind. He had helped Aayla because she was a friend. A dear friend, who did everything she could to make the clones feel more at ease around her and treated them like people instead of weapons. So what if he had to disobey the Chancellor? He was just at a higher level of authority, but if he could disobey Aayla, then he could disobey him too. And he would be disobeying this order for the exact same reason as the last one.

Renamon's words rang true in his memory:-

"_You want to be human. It is human nature to help those that they care about. Abandoning that principle, the one thing that makes you a human being above all else, just to follow an order, regardless of the conditions surrounding it... that's what battle droids do, not human beings."_

Those words held true in this situation as well. In fact, it might even be _more_ relevant in this situation than the last. And it was important to remember what the holovideo had shown him. The Chancellor was an enemy and that mattered more than the fact that he was their leader. It didn't matter how superior a clone was, he could be court-marshalled if he aided the enemy, just like Slick back on Christophsis. And the Chancellor was the same.

Right as he had this thought though, and was about to announce to the men his decision, something else which he remembered from the holovideo suddenly hit him like a crash-landing cruiser. He had not really noticed it before, but now that the enemy had issued an order to kill the Jedi, he suddenly recalled one tiny detail he had overlooked before, but which suddenly filled him with a horrible realisation.

Sidious had made a passing mention as to freeing a man called "Tyranus." Bly did not know who that man was, but he assumed that it must be Count Dooku, since he was the most high-priority Separatist prisoner that had been taken thus far. But even that wasn't important. What was important was that Tyranus was an enemy and worked for Sidious.

The creation of the clone army had always been a mystery. The Kaminoans had believed that a Jedi had commissioned their creation, but the Jedi Order had firmly stated that none of them had, to their knowledge, made any such request. The clones had worried about that for a few days, but the endless demands of battle had forced it from their minds. But Bly remembered one detail now about their template, Jango Fett.

Jango had always been mysterious about himself, but occasionally he would take part in the training, helping the clones to be the best that they could be. Bly remembered overhearing a clone asking the Bounty Hunter who had hired him to do this cloning job more than once, and Jango had always used the same words:-

"_I was recruited by a man called Tyranus on one of the moons of Bogden."_

Bly's heart stopped, and his eyes widened at this new horror. Assuming that Tyranus was who he thought he was, that meant that Count Dooku himself had been the one to seek out Jango and send him to Kamino to begin creation of the Clone Army. If Dooku had done it, it had to be under the command of Sidious. But, again, the clone army had done nothing but fight to try and bring down Dooku and the Sith.

But it seemed that they existed at all was _because_ of Dooku and the Sith.

A sudden surge of anger enveloped Commander Bly, near-unbridled fury at the Chancellor and his Sith Apprentice. He had thought that the war itself was the pointless affair ever since he had learned of Palpatine's true colours, but it ran so much deeper than that. The people they fought against were the ones that had ordered their creation. Why? Why would the Sith have created a mighty army like them and then make them fight the droid armies that they already possessed. Why? Why would they do that?

Unless...

It was as if a cold, clammy hand had grabbed hold of Commander Bly's heart and was slowly beginning to squeeze it, the anger in his eyes suddenly replaced by fear. Everything he had fought for and believed, or what was left of it, seemed to vaporise on the spot. The moment the thought passed through his head, he knew that it was true. The clones had not been created to win against the droids. They had not been created to keep the Republic safe. They had not been created to help the Jedi bring down the Sith Lords.

They had been created specifically for this purpose. Palpatine had been planning to issue Order 66 before any clone had even been born. He had been planning to turn them on the Jedi right from the start.

It was the perfect trap as far as Bly could see. It made a horrible amount of sense. From what Bly knew of the abilities of the Jedi, it was incredibly hard to assassinate just one of them, as they might sense the malice from an assassin long before they got close enough to do any damage. But the clones were different. The Jedi considered them friends, allowed them to remain close, turned their backs on the clones to lead them into battle. And that was exactly what Palpatine wanted, because the moment he gave the order, the clones would already be in position. And there would be no malice for the Jedi to sense because the clones would not have any. They would just be following orders like a battle droid, and even they wouldn't know that they were going to be ordered to kill the Jedi until the time they were given the instruction.

So the Jedi would be left completely open and taken completely unaware as the clones shot them in the back.

The clones had been bred specifically to be the exterminators of all the Jedi Order.

It made so much sense it was terrifying. Everything was falling into place around Bly now. Palpatine had gained such a high position in the Senate just to get this done. This plan, this conspiracy, might even go back as far as the first Naboo Blockade, which had allowed Palpatine to be put in power after the previous Chancellor was evicted due to a Vote of No Confidence.

Even things that had puzzled the Jedi so much were making sense now, such as why the Chancellor had been so insistent of extracting the armour of the Zillo Beast even though the war seemed to be drawing to a close. Palpatine had not been looking to give the clones further advantage over the Separatists. He had been looking to give them an armour that was immune to lightsabers for when he gave this one order.

Order 66.

All this time, when the clones had considered themselves to be people, they really had been tools of war the whole time. The only thing was, they were not the tools of the Republic as the people believed. They were tools of the Sith, and the Empire that had yet to be brought into effect.

But while the Sith might think of them as tools, the Jedi considered them as people. And Bly knew exactly which point of view he wanted to side with.

He was dimly aware of Admiral Yularen murmuring "Impossible!" as he finished watching the holovideo that Ahsoka had given him. "It... it cannot be." But, right now, Admiral Yularen's opinion was not important. Bly turned to look at Rex. The clone captain appeared to be wearing the exact same expression as Bly himself. Horrible realisation, and an underlayer of insubordination and rebelliousness. He was ready to do the same as Bly.

"I take it you've worked out everything as well, right?" Rex asked.

"The whole thing about Tyranus?" Bly asked. Rex nodded. "Yeah, I figured that out."

"We've been played," Rex said through gritted teeth. "So many of our brothers created and lost all at the whim of one man."

"I know," Bly nodded. "Are you up for a little payback?"

"Am I ever?" Rex said, a savage grin appearing on his face.

"What are we going to do, sirs?" Denal asked, looking from one to the other.

"Commander, Aayla asked you a question," Anakin added. "What is Order 66? What does that mean and why did the Chancellor give you the instruction?"

Bly suddenly whirled around and hurled his communicator into the air, drawing his blaster pistol and shooting it to smithereens before it got further than two meters away from him. "To answer both those questions," he growled. "We, men, are going to stand up for our rights as clones. We are going to be people, and show, once again, that we are superior to droids not just because of our prowess in fighting. We will not be following Order 66."

There was a rousing cheer from every single clone in the room. Apparently all of them had been thinking along the same lines, but that was hardly surprising. After all, they were pretty much all the same man. Blasters were thrown down to the floor, along with helmets and kicked into corners. Fists were socked into palms while others pumped the air.

The 501st and the 327th were going rogue.

"And as for Order 66, General," Bly turned around. "It's a secret instruction drilled into the mind of every single clone. There are hundreds of different orders, but this one in particular is different because it instructs us to kill all Jedi on sight."

"What?" a number of voices echoed throughout the room.

"Don't worry, sirs," Rex smirked. "We are not about to obey a Sith Lord just because he told us to, regardless of who he is. But I'm afraid this..." he paused as his own communicator bleeped. Rex reached down, knowing what was going to happen and activated the call. As expected, Chancellor Palpatine was standing there.

"Captain Rex, it is time," Palpatine growled, a coldness in his eyes that Rex could easily identify. "Execute Order 66."

"It will be done, my lord," Rex nodded, and the hologram vanished. "Not," he added. "As I was saying, a more immediate situation has cropped up than the Chancellor. We need to get a message out quickly to our clone brethren and warn them of what's coming."

"Exactly," said Bly. "If we don't act now, hundreds of Jedi might die. Today."

"Then..." Aayla's eyes were like saucers. "The creation of the Clone Army... everything... it was all..."

"Sidious," Bly nodded. "It looks like it."

"That manipulative bastard!" Terriermon growled. "He's got traps and schemes within schemes everywhere! Where will it end?"

"He's been planning this for years," Henry breathed. "Like one big strategy game only you can control both sides. That man is rotten from the inside out."

"Sirs, I'm afraid there's no time," Bly snapped. "We have to warn our brethren, but you have to warn the Jedi as well. There's no way that we can alert all of our clone brothers before its too late, but there must be some way you can get the message out to the Jedi Order quickly, right?"

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "Yeah, there might be a way. There are facilities at the Jedi Temple which allow us to send coded transmissions to every Jedi throughout the Galaxy in times of emergency. If the Chancellor is turning the clones on all of us... I'd say this counts."

"Quick!" Barriss cried. "We can head for the _Intrepid _and send a message to Master Yoda and the Council. They can act from there."

"Let's hurry!" Ahsoka shouted, and the Jedi immediately dashed for the door, the Tamers and the Digimon with them, and Numa tagging along behind, not having a clue what was going on. As she reached the door, Aayla paused momentarily and turned around to give the room in general a broad smile.

"I'm proud of you guys," she said. "All of you. Now get to it. Spread the word amongst the clones."

"You got it, Aayla," Bly nodded. "You get the word out to the Jedi." Aayla nodded and fled the room with the others, the desperation of the situation adding speed to her flight. After she had gone, the rebelling clones gathered around their leaders, eager to see what would happen next.

"My point earlier still stands," Bly said. "We don't have the facilities to spread the word to every clone at once. How are we going to decide which of our brothers to contact first – which of the ones we have to warn about the incoming Order and the reality behind it."

Rex hesitated for a moment, but then his head turned around and his eyes fixed on the door that the others had just exited from. "The Digimon!" he cried.

"What?" Bly blinked.

"The Digimon!" repeated Rex. "We'll send out a message to our brothers that know about the existence of the Digimon. Compared to the majority of the army, that isn't much, but if we manage to turn all of them against Sidious as well..."

"Then we can retain the secret of the Digimon, and prepare for the inevitable counter-attack, keeping our advantage!" Bly finished. "Great idea, Rex! Okay! Artoo," he turned to the astromech droid that was still there. "You know what you're doing?"

The astromech bleeped and plugged into the console, which Bly took to mean 'Yes, he did.'

As the droid twiddled and began to send out various transmissions across the Galaxy, Rex turned and said, "Are you alright with this, Admiral? We are disobeying the man we serve here."

Yularen still seemed to be reeling from the shock and waved his hand dismissively. "Do... do whatever you like," he murmured. "I think I need to sit down."

As he turned around to do just that, Artoo whistled as his calls connected, and Bly and Rex turned to the console. Holographic images began to appear all around the holotable as the familiar armoured forms of many clone commanders hove into view. There was Cody, Gree, Ponds, Wolffe, Deviss, Monnk, Jet, Ember, the two ARC troopers known as Echo and Fives, and Adi Gallia's Commander, a clone known as Bolt.

"You alright, Commander, Captain?" asked Cody. "How goes things?"

"Is there a particular reason you've called all of us at once?" Wolffe added.

"Oh yes," nodded Bly. "And I want all of you to listen carefully. We don't have much time."

* * *

The wind blew through Senator Chuchi's hair as she stood out on the landing platform outside her apartment on 500 Republica. It wasn't a very large landing platform – and was only big enough for about two small starships at a stretch, but every apartment had one so that visitors could come straight to them instead of having to use one of the larger landing platforms and still be several hundred floors away from the person they were trying to visit.

Up here it was usually quite windy, and Chuchi's clothes were blowing about her as well her hair. Her yellow eyes were scouring the Coruscant skyline in an attempt to spot someone heading her way. She was incredibly anxious for news, not more so than ever. She had heard the gravity in Renamon's voice when the fox had spoken to her and she knew without having to be told that she was not going to like what she heard when she heard it.

Not at all.

It was not long before she spotted a speeder heading her way - a speeder that appeared to be being steered by a small droid, which she recognised to be Bane's. Chuchi's heart skipped into her mouth as she saw the news approaching and stepped back, allowing the speeder to settle down onto the landing platform beside her.

Before it had even done that though, Chuchi felt something she couldn't see grab hold of her wrist. She jumped in surprise, even though she knew that it was just Renamon. Apparently, the fox had leapt out of the speeder while it was still in the air and landed on the platform. "Come on," Chuchi heard Renamon's voice. "Inside, quickly. We don't want anyone to see us if necessary."

"Okay," Chuchi yelped as she felt herself being pulled inside at the wrist like she was a child being pulled along by another, faster child. The speeder behind her landed and Chewbacca and Todo jumped out and hurried after them. The former held the door open and Bane jumped out of the speeder from where he had been crouched in hiding and zipped through the door on his rocket boots, and Chewbacca followed him in and shut the door.

Renamon shimmered into view as the perception filter lifted and she turned to Chuchi. The Pantoran looked at her with a mixed amount of anxiousness and eagerness, as if she wasn't sure which of the two emotions she was supposed to be feeling right now.

"Well?" she asked quickly. "Who is it? You found out who Sidious is so who is it?"

"Chuchi," Renamon said, taking the Senator by her shoulders to steady her and fixing her eyes with hers, blue on yellow. Something about Renamon's intense gaze captured Chuchi's eyes and they locked together, Renamon's next words penetrating deep into her mind. "I'm afraid that I cannot stay long because things have just gotten very, _very_ complicated indeed. So I want you to listen very carefully, and I swear to you that what I am about to reveal is one-hundred percent true. Understand?"

"Uh-huh?" nodded Chuchi. "But Renamon, you're starting to scare me."

"Good," Bane said from behind them. "Because it's quite a scary truth."

"Not helping, Bane," Renamon said without looking at him. She released Chuchi's shoulders and said, "I'm afraid that the answer is Chancellor Palpatine. He's the Sith Lord, and the one that Jedi have been trying to find for months. The control that the Sith had over the Senate is far greater than any of us ever suspected. It extends all the way to the top."

Chuchi quite literally lost her balance and sat down on her sofa, hard. "Ch... Chancellor Palpatine?" she asked, her blue eyes wide. "Are you sure? Really? No, wait... what?"

"I'm sorry, Chuchi," Renamon murmured. "Really, I am. But I cannot leave you with any doubts. Todo."

The droid hovered forward, a holocommunicator clutched in his tiny hands and played the recording which the clones and Admiral Yularen had seen over Ryloth. As Chuchi watched, she felt an almost uncontrollable urge to try and shrink into the cushions or curl into a ball. It could not be true – it was just so wrong – and yet the proof was being played right before her. Holograms could be faked, but she knew they had not had the time to come up with something like this since she had last set eyes on them.

Once the recording had finished, Chuchi felt like she was about to burst into tears in despair. "No," she breathed. "How can it be? How can he really be the second Sith Lord?"

"It was difficult for us as well," Renamon said. "We only just got away with our lives, any of us. Fortunately, he still does not know I exist, and we intend to keep it that way for as long as possible. Are you okay, Chuchi?"

"Yeah," Chuchi lied, nodding weakly. "Yeah, I'm okay. I'm fine. You... you're going to tell the Jedi Order about this right? The Council have the power to arrest the Chancellor. He..." she gulped. "He cannot be allowed to get away with this. By the Moon Goddess, I can't believe I'm saying this. Are you s... of course you're sure." He clutched her forehead in her hands. "I can't believe it. The Chancellor. The Separatists were right – the Republic _is_ corrupt."

"No," Renamon growled. "No, it is not. It is only partially corrupt and it will never be completely corrupt as long as Senators like you remain in it to stand up for what is right. What the Republic _is _is being manipulated. And we will do our best to bring the Chancellor to justice, but I'm afraid is still more complicated?"

"More?" Chuchi's eyes bugged. "How can it be any more complicated than this?"

"It appears that the Sith were responsible for the creation of the clone army," Renamon announced. "And this whole war was more about getting the Jedi to work with the clones than anything else. The Chancellor knows his cover is blown. He knows the Jedi will be onto him shortly. Which is why he's ordering the clone leaders, one by one, to kill the Jedi."

"What?" Chuchi shouted, springing to her feet. "He's... but... we've got to stop him."

"We can't," Renamon shook her head. "He's too strong for us, and there isn't time to call in those more powerful than us. Some of the clones are going AWOL, now that they know that the person giving them the order is the leader of the opposition as well, but I'm afraid it's too late to stop the majority from turning on the Jedi. But..." Renamon took Chuchi's shoulders again. "We have a plan."

"Well thank goodness someone does," Chuchi muttered. "What's happening?"

"We're going to send out a transmission from the Jedi Temple to all Jedi across the Galaxy," Renamon said. "Informing them of what the clones are about to do before it happens and telling them to run. The Jedi cannot stop the clone army by themselves – they're too many in number. But they, along with we Digimon, will escape and go into hiding for now. We'll be able to plan our next move after that and figure out a way to bring down Palpatine. But..." she paused. "We'll need someone on the inside, Chuchi. And I'm sorry, but I think you know who that needs to be."

Chuchi sighed, and a tear really did roll down her cheek. "Me, right?"

"I'm sorry," Renamon said. "But Palpatine will act against us, and we need to counter him and do it fast before he can fully establish the Empire he's planning."

"Empire?" Chuchi cried in alarm.

"Chuchi," Renamon interrupted. "Can you do this? For us? We need you now, Chuchi. More than ever, we need you. You think you can keep us up to date on the Chancellor's decisions?"

Chuchi hesitated, but only for a moment, before her eyes hardened until they resembled flecks of gold. She had long since decided she would do all she could to help bring Sidious down. The fact that he was the Chancellor of the Republic made no difference. He was corrupting and manipulating everyone she knew, and destroying her beloved Republic from within. She would do whatever it took to help the Jedi, even if she had to be a spy in the ranks of the Senators.

She could not, and would not, let them down.

She took Renamon's paw of her shoulder and gripped it firmly. "You can count on me," she said.

Renamon nodded and smirked. "I had a feeling you'd say that."

* * *

Master Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi were the only ones in the Jedi Council chamber. The two of them were, like Chuchi, staring out at the Coruscant skyline, watching the hundreds upon hundreds of speeders outside flashing past at incredible speed in their well-established lanes.

"I wonder how the others are getting on," Obi-Wan murmured, his hand in its usual place on his beard. "It's been a few hours since we've heard from any of them. Perhaps the slavers are proving more difficult to round up than they were expecting."

"No," Yoda shook his head, his eyes closing. "Sensing something I am. Clear your mind, Obi-Wan, and sense it, you will too."

Obi-Wan frowned and closed his eyes, empting his mind and tuning his senses in with the Force, as he had done so many times in the past whenever he had decided to meditate to calm himself, usually from something that Anakin had done which had upset him or caused him concern. Like normal he felt the Force flowing through him, but he was also able to sense something which made his eyes shoot open.

"Master Yoda," he said, in alarm. "That is one of the largest disturbances in the Force I have ever sensed. By a considerable margin."

"Yes," nodded Yoda. "The same for me, it is." Obi-Wan blinked. After all, Yoda had lived for more than eight-and-a-half centuries, and had felt just about every disturbance the Force had to throw at them.

"Well, what does it mean?" the man asked the diminutive, green creature.

"Changing, the future is," Yoda murmured slowly. "Taken place, a radical development has." His eyes opened. "Unsure of the nature of that change, I am, but believe, I do, that on the horizon, something big lies."

"Something big?" Obi-Wan asked. "Then, do you think it possible that Renamon and the others had succeeded in tracking down Sidious?"

"Hmm," Yoda murmured. "Ask your Padawan, you should." As if he had timed it, the communicator nearby started bleeping. Obi-Wan looked over at it to see that the button was flashing red, which meant that the call was of the highest priority. Most of the calls since the war had started had been of the highest priority, but for some reason, Obi-Wan could tell that this was far more serious than anything they had had so far."

The Jedi Master hurried over to the communicator, and Yoda turned around to limp over as well, as his fellow Council member pushed the button to activate the call. Immediately, the life-size forms of all four Jedi that had gone to Ryloth, along with Terriermon and Lopmon perched on the shoulders of Aayla and Barriss respectively, appeared in the middle of room.

"Anakin, everyone," Obi-Wan nodded in greeting. "Have you..."

"Yes," Anakin interrupted, startling his former Master. Only now did Obi-Wan notice the real sense of urgency that was being displayed on all their faces. "Yes, we have heard from Renamon, Master and yes, we do know who Darth Sidious is. And... I really hate to say it, but it's Chancellor Palpatine."

Obi-Wan blinked and cried, "Excuse me?" while Yoda just shut his eyes and sighed, as if he had been preparing himself for an answer like this, which he probably had. Obi-Wan's eyes flicked down to the Grand Master for a moment, before they turned back to the others and said, "Are you sure?"

"Master, would I tell you this sort of thing if I was not sure?" asked Anakin, pointedly, a scowl on his face, at which point Aayla and Ahsoka both put their hands on his shoulders to try and steady him. Anakin shook his head and said, "The Chancellor has always been my friend... or so I thought. Don't you think that I would have done everything in my power to check on the story if there was even the smallest amount of doubt that it could be wrong. It's not wrong, believe me."

"We saw it through Renamon's eyes," nodded Ahsoka. "The whole thing. Sidious is definitely the Chancellor."

"And it gets worse," Aayla gritted her teeth. "The Chancellor knows we're onto him. He doesn't know of the Digimon but he was able to sense Renamon while she was invisible. Bane confronted him and was able to convince Palpatine that it was him using a cloaking device, but they still only just managed to get away."

Obi-Wan shook himself out of his stupor instantly, putting aside the fact that it was the Chancellor in light of the situation. "Then we must act quickly. We need to come up with a plan of..."

"Too late, it is," Yoda sighed. "Sense that more to tell us, you have."

"Oh yeah," nodded Terriermon. "Things are getting really, really bad, really, really fast. Because his Royal Assness knows that we're onto him, he's started ordering the clone troopers to kill the Jedi off, one by one across the Galaxy."

Obi-Wan's eyes flew open and Yoda suddenly clutched his chest, leaning on his gimmer stick for support. Everyone looked at him in alarm, and the Jedi Master looked up at them with large, pain-filled eyes. "Telling the truth, they are," he groaned. "Already begun, it has. Sense it, I can."

"Well then, how do we proceed?" asked Obi-Wan. "What do we do? And are you alright yourselves?"

"Yes," Lopmon assured them. "Bly and Rex already received the order, but they already knew about Palpatine's true agenda beforehand, and they've figured out a couple of things about themselves. They're rebelling against the Republic, and are trying to convince others to do the same, but we do not have long."

"Indeed not," Yoda shook his head, pushing himself back up. "Flee, we must. The upper hand, the Chancellor has, in this conflict. A match for the clones alone, we are not. Warn the rest of our Order, we must, and hurry before occur, many more deaths do." He clutched his chest again and screwed his eyes shut.

"We've got to act now," Anakin said. "Our one chance is to use the Jedi transmitter codes in the East Tower, Masters. We need to send out a call to all the Jedi across the Galaxy to get away from their clones before they turn on them and go into hiding. We'll figure out a way of getting to the Chancellor another time. For now, we have to focus on survival."

"I'll go right now," Obi-Wan said, and without another word, he dashed out of the room in a terrific Force-run that caused him to surge around the corners like a bearded Varactyl.

Yoda was left standing there, his eyes screwed shut, but he turned to the holographic images before him. "You okay, Master Yoda?" Lopmon asked with concern.

"How bad is it?" asked Ahsoka nervously. "Beginning, the deaths are already," Yoda murmured. "But, hopefully, nipped this in the bud, you have." He looked up and offered them a vague smile. "Done well, you have. All of you. A mark, you are leaving, if your clones are willing to take matters into their own hands and disobey the Chancellor. Hopefully, follow their example, more will. But for now, focus on escaping, we must."

"What do you want us to do, Master?"

"Monitor Jedi distress beacons, you must," Yoda instructed. "Have trouble escaping, some may have and be prepared to help them as soon as possible, you should. Meanwhile, prepare for the Temple for assault, I must. If seeking to wipe us out, the Chancellor is, then attack the Temple, he will."

"You got it," nodded Terriermon. "Renamon says that she's on her way to the Temple. She and Chewbacca will be there to help you as soon as they can get there. They've told Senator Chuchi about what they've found, and the Senator has agreed to keep in contact with us and let us know what's happening while we're in hiding."

"A brave woman, she is," nodded Yoda. "But resourceful. Now, go we must. May the Force be with us all."

"Now, more than ever," murmured Barriss, as the holograms vanished. Yoda's gimmer stick disappeared into his sleeve and he zipped out of the room even faster than Obi-Wan.

There was much to prepare for.

* * *

As all this was going on, Commander Bly and Captain Rex had begun their conference call to the various clone leaders that they had the capacity to contact using the holotable. Even with Artoo using the transmitter facilities to the maximum, this was all they could fit in around the table. It was fortunate that the Digimon had not gone to work with any more clone trooper officers, otherwise there might not have been able to speak to them all.

"I'm afraid you might have to make it quick, Bly," said Ponds. "Master Windu and I are sort of in the middle of something right now. There is an imminent Seppie attack at our location and I need to prepare the rest of the men."

"Forget the Seppies," Bly said. "This is much more important."

"More important than the clankers?" Jet raised a brow. "I find that hard to believe. After all, fighting those droids is what we were bred for."

"Was it?" Bly asked. "Was it really? What if that was not the reason that we were bred. What if there was something bigger, something which we were not told about, but that would one day affect the Galaxy in a way far greater than any of us ever imagined?"

Monnk frowned. "Sorry, Bly. But I'm not entirely following you. What are you talking about?"

"What our fellow brother is trying to say is that there has been a situation," Rex stepped in. "We've recently learned a couple of things which we feel the rest of you need to know as well, and quickly before you do something that you will regret later on. Some of you may or may not know this, but the Jedi have been trying to locate a second Sith Lord, one even more powerful than Dooku, who has been manipulating the Republic by hiding amongst the members of the Senate."

Most of the clones did not look all that surprised, most notably Ponds, Cody and Deviss, but there were a few expressions of mild shock from clones such as Bolt, Ember and Monnk.

"Yeah, I heard about that," Gree nodded. "General Unduli mentioned it in passing once. What about it?"

"We know who it is," Bly put in. "One of our... special friends, and I think you all know who I'm referring to, went on a little fact-finding mission to discover the identity of the Sith Lord, and she found that he was in fact..."

"Hold on," interrupted Ponds, lifting up a handheld communicator which he had unclipped from his belt and which had started beeping. Bly and Rex glanced at one another sharply, both of them knowing exactly what was coming next. Ponds hit the switch and a small hologram of the Chancellor appeared in his palm.

"Commander Ponds," he croaked. "A serious development has occurred back here on Coruscant. Execute Order Sixty-six."

There was a collective ripple of shock that spread throughout the ranks of all the clones that appeared in holographic form aboard the _Resolute._ Bly and Rex were gripping the holotable so hard that their knuckles were probably going white, as they watched Ponds instinctively nod and say, "It will be done, my lord," after he had taken a moment to recover himself.

When the Chancellor's hologram was gone, Bly interrupted and finished his previous sentence. "Him!" he cried, as Ponds' hand was already going for his blaster. "Our Digimon ally discovered that the second Sith Lord was actually him! Chancellor Palpatine is the leader of the Separatists as well as the Republic."

Naturally, the look on the faces of the other clone leaders was one of incredulity and revulsion, mixed with disbelief and shock. "What?"

"No!"

"You're joking!"

"That's not funny, Commander!"

"What kind of prank is this?"

"You could be court-marshalled for an accusation like that."

"Guys, it's the truth," Rex insisted. "Do you really think that we would even consider calling the Chancellor, who we are all supposed to serve, an enemy of the Republic unless it was a deadly serious situation. Ponds, aren't you wondering why you were just told to kill off your Jedi leader? Why did the Chancellor suddenly call you out of the blue and do that?"

"I don't know," shrugged Ponds. "What does that matter?"

"What does that matter?" Rex cried.

Bly shouted at the exact same moment, "Everything! The Chancellor suddenly orders the extermination of the Jedi Order right after the Jedi and their Digimon reveal the identity of the Second Sith Lord to be his own. Does that not strike you as suspicious?"

There were glances of uncertainty among the clones. Bly and Rex knew that none of them were, as of yet, convinced, but none of them could deny that the words of their fellow clones made sense. None of them had every thought they would see the day where Order 66 was initiated, but now it seemed that it was here.

Wolffe folded his arms. "You gotta admit, Bly, no matter how much of a coincidence this may be, your idea is still pretty far-fetched."

"It's not an idea, it's the truth," Rex shook his head. "You have to listen to us! Chancellor Palpatine is Darth Sidious! He wants you to kill the Jedi because that's what he's been working towards all along, and he's doing it now because his identity has been discovered."

"Rex is right. Almost everything we've fought for and believed in has turned out to be false," Bly agreed. "Have we not firmly believed that were fighting to defeat the Separatists and stop the oppression caused by the Sith Lords. How can we claim to be doing that, when we serve the Sith so mindlessly. We have always obeyed because of his position, but now that we know who he truly is, what are we to do?"

"But we _don't _know who he is," Bolt pointed out. "We only have the word of the two of you, and in the meantime, we're being given orders that we should be carrying out."

"No! No, no, no, no!" Bly shook his head. "Quite acting like a battle droid for a moment and think about this."

The battle droid comment had a pretty similar effect on all of them as it had on Bly himself when Renamon had used it against him a few days ago. The clones balked and many of them suddenly looked quite ashamed of themselves, biting their lips or fidgeting with their blasters. Finally, one of the two ARC troopers present – Fives, said, "Well, I'm not sure I would want to follow the orders of a Sith Lord, even if he were the leader of the Republic."

"Me neither," supplied Echo. Rex felt a grin threatening to spread over his face. ARC Troopers like them were naturally more independent than the average clone and perhaps more so than the rest of the clones present. But then, Echo said, "Still, it would be nice if we could have some proof other than your words. Do you happen to have any on y..."

Another bleeping noise interrupted the conversation and this time it was coming from Commander Jet. By this point, most of them had guessed what was about to happen, and, sure enough, Jet lifting his communicator and answered, to reveal it was the Chancellor, saying those exact same words – "Execute Order 66."

Bly and Rex grimaced. From the sound of things, Palpatine was taking more and more pleasure in those words every time he spoke them. Jet immediately said, "It will be done, my Lord," before he signed off.

Only now, Jet seemed to be looking extremely uncomfortable with what he had just been asked to do. A quick glance at Ponds showed the same thing, and all the other clones appeared to be unsure as to how to proceed with this either. The implication that they might have been following the orders of a Sith Lord all this time was definitely getting to them.

Bly and Rex knew that they had to hammer home the message right now while that doubt remained.

Surprisingly, so did somebody else.

"The Captain and the Commander are right," Admiral Yularen suddenly stepped forward, and he filled up the last remaining place on the table, his eyes roaming over each clone present. "The news I have received today has, well and truly, shocked me to the core. It is a truth that I half-wished had never been unveiled to me. Like all of you, I have sworn an oath to serve the Republic and its leader, but it light of what I know now... I may just break that vow."

Rex and Bly both grinned. Perhaps the clones might listen to a more senior man like Yularen. A couple of them appeared to be surprised, but Commander Gree cynically asked, "And what made you come to believe their word. Do you have the proof or not?"

"If you were to truly focus on what is being told to you and unravel the mystery for yourselves, you would not need the proof," Yularen responded. "But since you insist upon it." He raised the communicator that Ahsoka had given him and played the message.

The clone watched it with riveted attention, increasingly appalled expressions appearing on their faces as they watched the hooded figure speaking to General Grievous about the fall of the Republic. There was only one interruption, when Palpatine suddenly called on Commander Wolffe and gave him the order to kill all the Jedi as well, but that only served to help with the clones' conviction and let them realise that this hologram might not be fake, for the man was speaking in the same croaking tone that the hooded man was using.

And when the hooded man took off the hood and revealed his face, none of them were surprised. The air was filled with dismay as the words of their clone brothers were played out in front of them, purging the doubt that each of them held in their heart's. There was absolutely no denying that what they were seeing was true. And none of them liked it one bit.

As Yularen lowered the hologram, he said, "I am aware of the distress that these recordings have put you under, but it is necessary if you are to come to the right decision. I have served the Chancellor faithfully for many years now, far longer than any of you, and now I have learned this. Never once did I suspect his true intentions. But now I know who I have been helping, I cannot remain in his service and keep a clear conscience. What about the rest of you?"

Of all of the clones present via hologram, Commander Cody had been the one to spend most time with Bly, Rex, the A-Team and, most notably, the Digimon. Others like Monnk and Bolt had only been on one mission with them maximum, so they had not had the opportunity to be changed as much by them. But Cody was nodding and said, "The Admiral's right. If and when I receive the orders to kill the Jedi, which I am pretty sure I will, I will sure as heck not be following them. You can count on that. I will not gun down anyone on the orders of a Sith Lord, let alone people I happen to like."

"Good man, Cody," Rex grinned. Cody smirked and nodded.

"Commander Bly," said Deviss, the other commander of the 327th. "Are you certain that this is the path the 327th should be taking? Are you absolutely sure that this is for the best."

"You won't find any doubts from me, Deviss," Bly shook his head. "Besides, Rex and I have already received Order 66 personally, and our Jedi Generals are still very much alive. We have long surmised that Sidious has been trying to kill General Secura. She won't finally succumb to his will at our hand, thank you very much."

"Then, the rest of our Star Corps will stand behind you," Deviss nodded. "I'm with you too."

"Great!" nodded Bly. "Well done, Deviss."

"Hold on!" Ember suddenly cried. "Are we just going to start deserting one by one? What happened to our principles? We swore an oath to serve the Republic and its leader and if we break that now then what are we?"

"What are we?" Bly turned around to glare at Ember. "I'll tell you what we are – we are pawns in a game that we never understood until now. This whole thing stretches back to way beyond the start of the war. For instance, I'm sure you all know that our template, Jango Fett, was recruited for the job of being our template by a man called Tyranus? Well, you all saw the holovideo. Sidious mentioned something to Grievous about freeing Tyranus, and we know now that he was referring to Count Dooku. The Sith have been controlling us since before we were born."

Another ripple of alarm spread through the clone ranks and there was a lot of muttering and expressions of the same shock that had been on the faces of Bly and Rex themselves.

"That's right," Bly pressed, now that he had the advantage. "The Sith Lords were behind our very creation, but we were all led to believe that we would be doing some good to the Galaxy when we finally set out into the field. Thousands of us have fought and died in a war where one man was controlling both sides and if that was not bad enough, that was not even the real reason why were created. The real reason was because of an enormous, elaborate plot to..."

Another comlink bleeped. This time, it was Commander Bolt, and once again, the dreaded words from the Chancellor went ringing across the room:- "Execute Order 66."

And once again, the clone replied:- "It will be done, my lord." But as Bolt put the communicator down, his attention immediately turned back to Bly before he even seemed to consider going for his blaster to find his Jedi General. This was surely a good sign, if Bolt, a clone who had had almost no time to be changed by the Digimon, was reacting in this way. Perhaps Adi Gallia had been affected by the Digimon instead and that had changed her relationship with her Commander.

So Bly finished his sentence, "To do that. We were just brought into the Galaxy to be Jedi exterminators. The Chancellor was always intending to use our oaths to the Republic and our loyalty to him against the Jedi, in an attack from behind that they would never see coming. All he has ever done is consider us tools to do a job for him. A job that the Sith Lords have been striving and failing to do for millennia. Ask yourselves, do you really want to be the ones who help them succeed?"

There was more murmuring and Bly could tell his words were definitely having an impact on the majority. Echo and Fives both looked sick, but there was the same conviction in their eyes now as with Cody and Deviss. Commanders Gree, Ponds and Wolffe were not far behind, and Commanders Jet and Ember seemed to be not far behind them either. Monnk and Bolt were currently bringing up the rear, but Bly could tell that they were having doubts now as well.

"But," Bly added, now on a roll that just seemed to keep going. "Look at the ones that we have been asked to kill just now? The Jedi. Have they ever treated us like tools? Have they ever thrown wave after wave of us at the front lines while they stayed safe at the back? Have they ever done anything less than all they can to keep us safe? No, they have not. Everywhere we've been, our Generals have always been at the front of a charge, throwing themselves into danger and protecting us with their lightsabers, seeing we get medical help as soon as possible and each time one of our brothers is lost, no matter how well they knew them, they have felt sorrow. You can see it in their eyes."

Rex was standing there, looking extremely impressed, as Bly continued in his speech. He could feel his own conviction to turn against the Chancellor strengthening, and Rex had been unaware that it could get any stronger. The other clones were beginning to look more convinced now as well. Some of them were even nodded.

Each of them was remembering a time when their Jedi General had saved their own life, just as Bly had said, as well as times when the Jedi had shared in their sorrow after they had lost a brother, even if it was just one. Cody was remembering the dismay on Obi-Wan's face in the Geonosian tunnels when Rizer had been lost to the zombies, and the other clones were thinking along similar lines.

"Through every battle and every threat, we have always faced down the Separatists together. We have long claimed that we are people and not weapons, and the Jedi have always agreed with that view. They have always treated us like the living beings we are, and not some worthless droid. But the Chancellor ordered our very existence to be weapons and has never considered us anything else as far as I can see, from where he hangs at the back and manipulates everything. So, I say that we act like people and not droids. We be like the Jedi – our true comrades, and we fight for what is right, not for what our so-called superior tells us to do.

"And what I just said does not just apply to the Jedi. The Digimon too have been fighting with us for months now. This isn't even their universe, but when I met Renamon on Christophsis with you, Cody, did she not join the fight instantly without any questions asked?"

"That she did," nodded Cody. "She threw herself into the action almost straight away and fought alongside us to bring down the droid armies despite the fact that she barely knew us."

"Exactly," nodded Bly. "And threw the months that we have shared with the Digimon, they have been trying to help us become more like normal people. I say that becoming normal may be many things, but a good place to begin would be to act like them and throw ourselves into a new fight, just because it's the right thing to do."

Suddenly, Chancellor Palpatine called Commander Gree and said, "Execute Order 66."

"It will be done, my lord," Gree said immediately and signed off. He then looked up at the other clones and slowly began to smirk. "Oh, I apologise, Chancellor. I may go renegade before I get a chance to do that."

"That's the stuff!" Bly grinned. "And if any of you still have any doubts, think about it this way. We pledged ourselves the Chancellor, yes. But our oath extends not just to him, but to the Republic as a whole. But the Chancellor does not want a Republic. He wants an Empire, and the Republic will be extinguished when he does that. That was not a part of our oath. The Jedi and the Digimon, on the other hand – they _do_ fight for the Republic. They _would_ see peace restored in a way that ensured that everyone lived free lives and the Republic could prosper and grow. By siding with them, our oath would only partially be broken. We would still be fighting for the Republic, but this time, we would be fully against the Sith instead of just weapons for their personal use."

He slammed his blaster pistols down on the table and yelled, "I have been fighting to prove I am a person! I claim my humanity now! I side with the Jedi against the Chancellor. And now I ask the rest of you – are... you... with me?"

There was a resounding cheer as each and every holographic clone, and Rex (just because he was so inspired) yelled loudly and punched the air with their fists, grins of determination and delight adorning their faces, blasters raised. Bly felt his self-esteem and his resolve growing ever stronger. Palpatine had made a grave mistake calling him first to start Order 66. Most of the clones present were the commanders of powerful members of the Council. No matter how many Jedi died today, the most powerful would survive.

They still had hope.

"I can't believe we're doing this," Cody chuckled. "We're turning on the Chancellor."

"We're doing more than that," Rex grinned. "We are finally taking control of our own lives, and it's about bloody time we did, don't you think?"

"Too right."

"You said it."

And other assorted noises of confirmation.

"What about the rest of our brothers?" asked Wolffe suddenly. "How do we get the message out to them?"

"I don't think we can," Bly shook his head. "It's too late. We would not nearly be fast enough. It's taken me several minutes to convince all of you that we need to turn on the Chancellor, while he only has to give them the word and they'll shoot down the Jedi. There is a plan though – the Jedi across the Galaxy are about to receive a distress call from the Jedi Temple warning them about Order 66. You guys will have to let your Generals know that they are turning on the Chancellor and disobeying that order before they try and run for it."

"We'll have to go into hiding," said Ponds, getting in on the plan. "AWOL, all of us. For now, our mission is to protect the Jedi and ensure that as many of them stay alive as possible. We can figure out what to do about the rest of our brothers soon, but now is not the time, right?"

"No," Bly shook his head. "Quick then, go and let your Jedi Generals know. Cody, Echo, Fives, you three stay here for a moment. There's a couple more things that we need to go over."

The rest of the clones nodded and, their faces full of conviction, they turned and left, their holograms vanishing. Cody turned to Bly and said, "I take it you want to know where I currently am right now, right?"

"Yep," nodded Bly. "Last I heard, you were still in the barracks on Coruscant."

"I am," nodded Cody. "I'm currently nowhere near a Jedi right now, but I was planning to martial all of my men and prepare to leave the planet as quickly as possible. General Kenobi is still in the Temple as far as I'm aware."

"That's my point," said Rex. "There are still many Jedi left in the Temple, including lots and lots of the younger ones. You can bet your life that the Chancellor will attempt to attack it. You reckon you guys can lend support to the Jedi?"

"You mean, fight against other clones?" Cody asked, shocked.

Bly sighed, and put a finger to his forehead. "Only if necessary. If you can't convince them of the truth, then it may be that fighting them is our only option, at least for now. I mean, protecting the Jedi is our top priority right now, and if our brothers don't understand why... then there's little we can do? Right?" he asked, hoping Cody would have another solution, but it appeared that he didn't.

"Actually Commander Ember is nearby with me," said Cody. "He and I will be ready to help the Jedi here. We'll get ready now," and with that he turned and left.

Bly then turned to Echo and Fives. "Guys," he said. "Are the two of you still on Kamino?"

"Yes," nodded Fives. "We got back from an assignment a few days ago."

"Are there any Jedi on planet?" Bly asked.

"Just Master Shaak Ti," said Echo, "She's been overseeing the clone training as per usual."

"Then it's your job to protect her from the other clones," Bly said. "Master Ti is in one of the most dangerous places in the Galaxy right now. See if you can get her off planet as fast as possible. But there is one other thing. If all the clones under the command of those we just spoke with revolt as well, that should mean all those who know of the Digimon should revolt too, and we can continue to keep their secret. Except for four specific clones."

"The Delta Squad," nodded Echo.

"Yeah," said Bly. "You know where they are?"

"Not really," Fives said. "I think they're out of contact, but we'll try and get a message to them."

"Good lads," nodded Rex. "I knew we were making the right decision to make you ARC troopers."

"Thank you, sir," nodded Fives. "We'll go right now."

And the two of them left.

Bly and Rex could almost feel the same disturbance in the Force that Yoda had sensed. Something big was starting – a clone revolution on a massive scale. If all went well, thousands of clones would soon be against Chancellor Palpatine.

But there were hundreds of thousands more out there. Would it be enough?

* * *

An almost entirely dialogue and thought-driven chapter there, but I think you all agree that it was necessary. Things are going quickly but the good news is that many of the Jedi will not be perishing at the hands of their own clones. As for which Jedi will survive and how, that will be covered soon enough. The second half of this arc is going to be full of absolute chaos, let me tell you that for nothing.

I hope you enjoyed the clone's eventual decision and Bly's big speech. I still feel sorry for Chuchi, forced to remain in Palpatine's shadow, but we'll see what happens to her soon enough. But just because Bly has managed to turn many of the clones that had contact with the Digimon does not mean that it'll all be over soon. There's a whole lot of story left to go.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The events of Order 66 continues, and the word begins to spread throughout the Galaxy, as clone turns on Jedi in the majority of cases. As the Chancellor prepares an attack on the Temple, while the Jedi prepare to defend it, something happens that completely catches those above Ryloth, particularly the Tamers, off guard.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 154 : Birth Amongst Death**


	154. Birth Amongst Death

And we get through some more chaos brought on by the fall of Order 66 in this chapter. Essentially, this whole arc is just going to be one big mass of chaos from this point on, as I do my best to cover the events of this particular part on a Galaxy-wide scale, going into depth on many of the characters from the series we have come to know and love.

We'll hear from some of them in this arc. And someone else as well. Hence the title.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 154:- Birth Amongst Death**

* * *

Deep in the East Tower of the Jedi Temple, there was a room that appeared to be mostly dark, but was filled with numerous small corridors. These corridors were emitting several small green lights at various regular intervals, in a way that was eerily similar to the holocron chamber not far away. But this was not a holocron chamber, this was the room that came just off the communications centre.

This was where the Jedi transmitter codes were. Every single piece of information about the war was relayed here, everything about the troopers and the knowledge that the Jedi had about current affairs. At the moment, it was filled with nothing but stuff about the war, but, even here, you would not find any information about the Digimon. They had been carefully omitted from just about anything.

And it was this room that Obi-Wan Kenobi ran to after the shocking revelation that he had received in the Council chambers, that Palpatine was the Sith that he had been discretely looking for ever since his existence had been discovered months ago.

Obi-Wan was not surprised that he had made little headway with his search now that he had the result. He had been keeping a close eye on the Senators and trying to figure them out, watching for suspicious activity, but he had never seen anything. But even he had assumed that Chancellor Palpatine being a Sith Lord was completely and utterly ridiculous. He would have thought it far more likely that it was a Senator who spent little time around the Jedi. He had thought that it would be someone hidden in the shadows, which was why he had not been detected.

They had spent so much time around the Chancellor that he had naturally assumed that if it was him, they would have been able to sense it. But apparently he was wrong. The Sith Lord was much, much more skilled in the art of staying hidden than they had ever assumed. None of them, not even Master Yoda, had detected a whiff of suspicious activity or senses from him. Even the incident with the Zillo Beast had brought up limited questions.

But Obi-Wan had something more important to think about for the time being. Thanks to the actions of the clones that fought under the command of Anakin and Aayla, they had been warned of an attack on the entire Jedi Order. Via other clones. It had already begun, and Obi-Wan needed to get the message out, and fast.

He hurried over to one of the walls and slipped his fingers into a little cut-out, pulling hard to open up a section of the wall. Inside, there was a lot of wiring, but there was also a small computer interface, complete with a little screen and a panel that would allow him to type in a coded message that only the Jedi would be able to pick up and read. Unlike what the Chancellor was doing with the clones though, this could transmit the order right across the Galaxy to every Jedi simultaneously. From here, he would be able to warn pretty much the whole order.

"Alright," murmured Obi-Wan, waving his hand over a Force-panel, which would enable him to access the interface and would take a considerable amount of time for any none-Force user to hack into. But Obi-Wan was granted access almost immediately. "Let's do this." He quickly typed out a quick message, his fingers flying over the buttons as the Aurebesh letters appeared on the screen before him.

It simply read:-

_Ultimate emergency! Supreme Chancellor is Sith Lord known as Darth Sidious. He is ordering the clones to kill us all. Run! Hide until we can find a way to contact you. Just get away from the clones!_

Obi-Wan paused only for a moment to go over his message before he took a deep breath and hit the button. There was a faint bleeping noise coming from the terminal now and Obi-Wan knew that his message was being transmitted along every known frequency that linked up with a communication device that belonged to a Jedi. Hopefully they would be able to receive and read the message before the clones acted.

He quickly shut the panel after deactivating it and hurried out the room. Now that that job was done, there were other things that needed to be attended to. Namely, the impending assault on the Temple itself.

* * *

In the Outer Rim, Mace Windu was standing on the planet of Telon and staring out across its surface at an approaching droid army. The army, or what was left of it, was not a lot in comparison to the usual size of a droid army. They had already taken a serious pummelling at the hands of him, Commander Ponds and his men, but there were still some left to be dealt with and until they were, they could not return to Coruscant.

Mace was not the type to get anxious but he was now. Not because of the droids approaching but because he knew that the Sith Lord on Coruscant was being tracked down, and he had yet to hear anything from the Jedi Council. He hoped that it would not be long before it happened.

"Wipeout," he said, turning towards a clone who saluted him from nearby. "The droids are inbound. Where is Commander Ponds?"

"Uh, he received a call from a few other clone commanders, sir," Wipeout told him. "We said it shouldn't take too long but apparently it was urgent. It came in on the highest emergency frequency, sir."

Mace frowned. "How odd?" he murmured. "Do you know what it is about?"

"No, sir," Wipeout replied. "I do not."

Mace hummed in thought, wondering what could be so important that Ponds' attention had to be taken away right before a droid attack. This was unusual, especially if the call was coming from other clone officers and not Jedi or someone important in the Senate. "Well, find him and tell him that we do not have long to wait. The droids will be on us shortly."

"Yes, sir," Wipeout saluted again and prepared to hurry off, just when Mace Windu felt his comlink bleeping. Frowning, and wondering whether or not they had any news for him, Mace unclipped the small device and held it up, expecting to see the face of Master Yoda or perhaps Obi-Wan telling him of the latest development on Coruscant, regarding Sidious.

What he saw instead was a series of words written in Aurebesh. Mace blinked in surprise, but then when he read the message, those eyes widened in sudden horror.

_Ultimate emergency! Supreme Chancellor is Sith Lord known as Darth Sidious. He is ordering the clones to kill us all. Run! Hide until we can find a way to contact you. Just get away from the clones!_

Mace froze for a moment as he digested this news in an instant. It seemed impossible, but this was a Jedi emergency code that was being used – he could tell from the fact that words were being used instead of the person themselves. This message must be being broadcasted across the whole Galaxy to try and catch the Jedi Order. And the likelihood of it being a joke was low. Not even Skywalker or Tano at the height of their former prank war would have dared to do this. Even Terriermon wouldn't think about it.

Well, he might.

But he would never actually do it.

Mace's hand went straight to his lightsaber and, right at the same moment, he heard someone say, "General," behind him, and he turned his head to see Commander Ponds approaching.

"Yes, Commander," Mace said suspiciously, hand resting on his blade, but out of Ponds' vision. However, what Ponds said next completely caught him by surprise.

"Have you received the message from the Jedi Temple yet? The one about Chancellor Palpatine being the Sith Lord?"

Mace whirled around in surprise, his lightsaber hilt in his hands, just waiting for him to ignite it. "How did you know about that?" he asked.

"Whoa! Easy, General," Ponds raised his hands. "Look, no weapons. See." He gestured down to his gun holsters and Mace could see that they were indeed empty. Ponds even did a little circuit to show Mace that he had no weapons of any kind. He'd even taken away any detonators or other explosive devices that he had on him before.

Nevertheless, Mace was still suspicious. "I asked you a question, Commander. How did you know that I just got a message from the Jedi Temple? And how did you know what it contained?"

"I just got off a call from Commander Bly and Captain Rex, sir," explained Ponds. "You know, the main officers that serve under Generals Skywalker and Secura. Apparently they both got the message to initiate Order 66, the command to terminate all Jedi first. But they got the message about the Chancellor being a Sith Lord first, and so they've turned against him and are disobeying the order. And right now," Ponds removed his helmet. "So are we."

Mace raised an eyebrow. "You're intentionally disobeyed a direct order from the Chancellor himself?" he asked. "Forgive my suspicions, Commander, but I thought that you clones were required to obey any and all instructions given to you by him."

"You could say we're almost hardwired for it, sir," Ponds nodded. "But we aren't droids, we're people. And we're standing up for what we believe it right. But that doesn't mean we have a lot of time." Ponds abruptly turned around and addressed the assembling clones in a loud voice. "Alright men, listen up!" he barked. "Something's come up, and we're about to be doing something that none of us thought we would ever be doing!"

And the clones listened with disbelief as Commander Ponds quickly outlined everything that Commander Bly had informed him about the Chancellor and every single wrong that he had committed against the clone army before it even existed. What he was saying was news to Mace as well, and while the Jedi Master did not put down his lightsaber hilt, he stared up at Commander Ponds in disbelief as the clone officer openly announced his rebellion from the Chancellor, why and then he started convincing the other clones to follow him.

* * *

And the case of Commander Ponds was not the only one. Across the Outer Rim, in many other skirmishes, other Jedi Generals were listening and watching in amazement as their clone commanders turned their backs on them and addressed the troopers that they led.

On Drongar, Commander Deviss was announcing to the rest of the 327th, about the discovery made by the people who worked in their very own ranks – the Digimon, and the decision made by Commander Bly to take matters into their own hands at last, while Aayla's Master, Quinlan Vos, stood by and watched, a growing sense of pride filling him at the achievements of his former Padawan and her friends. "It's time we took control of our own destinies for good!" Deviss yelled. "Bly and the rest of our corps are doing so, and we will follow them!"

And Deviss was not the only one. Almost right next to him was Commander Bolt, who was standing up for Adi Gallia in the same way. The Korun woman was feeling almost completely lost amongst this whole thing, but she understood enough to know that something very big was happening as the clones were speaking.

* * *

On Kessel, Luminara Unduli was having to actively stop herself from gawping as Commander Gree began to lavish praise on her and the rest of the Jedi and completely rail against Chancellor Palpatine and everything he stood for. Luminara remembered the time where Gree had been seething for days after Viceroy Gunray had escaped his clutches thanks to the traitorous Senate Guard, Captain Argyus, and now he was doing something similar, but still in the name of the Jedi.

* * *

On Tund, Plo Koon was feeling a touch of admiration at the actions of Little 'Soka and her friends, knowing that they were the reason that the usually cynical Commander Wolffe has suddenly started announcing to his men, the Wolfpack, that their former alpha male had been secretly planning to use them as their weapons and that from now on the pack would run with the Jedi. (Yes, he was actually using those words) Plo was chuckling at the massive effect the Digimon were having on the clones.

* * *

On Gamor, Ki-Adi-Mundi was watching as Commanders Jet and Monnk began to elaborate on how Dooku was Tyranus and how Palpatine was Sidious, and how they had been brought into the universe to be nothing but exterminators for the Sith Lords. The Cerean was not entirely sure what he was supposed to be making of this, but since his men were apparently saving his life from themselves, he just left them to it and marvelled at how quickly after the discovery of Sidious that the word was being spread among clone and Jedi.

* * *

Kit Fisto was standing on the surface of Toola and was watching with his eyes even wider than normal as Commander Monnk addressed his own men, who were just as capable of fighting on land or underwater, talking about how Kit had been with them through all environments, while Palpatine had not been there at any time and that now her expected the clones to turn on the Jedi just like that.

* * *

And on Coruscant, Commanders Cody and Ember had gathered their own troopers together and were giving the self-same inspiring speech and were gearing up their men for a potential rescue mission that would defy the Chancellor but would aid the Republic, and, after all, the Republic as a whole was more important than the will on the man running it.

* * *

Even Commander Bly and Captain Rex were hurrying around, delivering the word to the hundreds of troopers that they had in their service that had not been present at the unveiling of Sidious.

* * *

Not every trooper was entirely happy with what they were hearing. In fact, the majority of them weren't. Most of them were wanting proof of their own, and still more believed that they should follow the orders of the Chancellor despite what the Jedi had done for them, and they voiced it. But the clone commanders had only to drop a few key words into their narrative and everything changed.

"Digimon" was one.

"A-Team" was another.

To a clone, they had all seen what the Digimon were capable of, and the majority of them owed their lives to the guys. And all of them held the A-Team and the Digimon in extremely high regard, and that was mostly enough to convince them that they were doing the right thing. Various members of both groups had put their lives on the line to find out this information, and they all knew that they had been trying to help the clones in any way they could, even off the battlefield when most others couldn't give a damn.

There was still a lot of reluctance and even more apprehension at the thought of turning against the Senate, or at least its leader.

And yet, when each clone leader raised a fist and cried something along the lines of "Are you with me?" There was a loud, resounding cheer from every single clone in the audience.

Commander Ponds turned back to Mace after the rest of his division had nodded. "So, now that we all know what's going on, sir. What's the plan?"

Mace had every right to keep an eye on Ponds for a while, especially after a couple of other clones handed the weapons he used back to him. Mace jerked his head over his shoulder and said, "First, we take out what's left of the droids, then we'll head up into space as quickly as we can. We may be able to pick up a distress call from some other Jedi that are in need of rescuing nearby."

"Roger that, sir," Ponds nodded. "Scrap those droids!" he yelled, and the clones charged past Mace and began to fight the droids for the last time, and this time, they felt more united and more filled with purpose than ever.

* * *

But, on Kamino, things were very different. Shaak Ti was standing in what had been informally made into her chambers when she had arrived on Kamino to help the natives with the training of the clone troopers for the front lines. She was meditating, as she did every day after a long period of time watching the drills and the practice runs as clone units sought to best the training simulations.

Sometimes, Shaak Ti wondered how much longer she would be required to stay on Kamino. Not because she didn't like it here. In fact, she rather enjoyed watching the young and brash copies of Jango Fett become full-fledged soldiers under the tutelage of the Kaminoans and a couple of Bounty Hunters that had been specially hired to help them raise the troopers so the Kaminoans could focus on making more.

But she wondered because she knew, as did everyone else, that the war would soon be drawing to an end. How much longer would the production of clone troopers even be necessary, and what of those that had just been made right now, this very day? Would they spend the next ten years training for a war that didn't exist anymore? Or if the Kaminoans stopped the training, what would become of them then?

Shaak Ti worried for the clones a lot. She could sense their own anxiety growing as they asked themselves the very same question each time a new report came in from the front lines. The looks on the faces of the younger cadets were almost heart-rending.

However, none of them knew how soon the war with the Separatists would be coming to an end. It would arrive sooner than they thought. But Shaak Ti began to get an inkling when she received a personal call on her communicator. Her grey eyes opened and she looked down towards her belt, brushing one of her extremely long lekku aside as she pulled the small device away and activated the message.

She blinked when she saw it was comprised of words and a sudden sense of anxiety gripped her. She knew exactly the same as Mace Windu did – that this kind of message would be going out to the whole order, and it would be very important indeed if that was happening.

And when she read the same words that Mace Windu had read, that anxiety turned to dread. She smothered it quickly, as fear was not something a Jedi was supposed to feel either, but she had every right to feel terrified. After all, she was slap-bang in the middle of the largest concentration of clones in the Galaxy, and they were suddenly turning on the Jedi? That could not be good.

She needed to get off the planet and quickly. She didn't have her own personal shuttle, as she would usually leave the planet with a clone escort and go from place to place via cruiser or gunship if there was somewhere that she needed to be. She needed to find and steal a shuttle of her own.

But, just as she was about to make for the door, she heard a knocking sound behind her and she whirled around, black-and-white striped lekku swinging out like knotted ropes as her eyes fixed on the door. She pulled her lightsaber off and gripped it loosely in one hand and said, "Come in," readying herself for an attack.

The door slid open and revealed Echo and Fives, the ARC troopers. Shaak Ti smiled as they entered because they did not immediately point blasters at her. She wondered if they had heard the news yet, and she did nothing to give away her anxiety. She had always liked these two, ever since they had struggled to get through training as members of the Domino Squad. That had been why she asked them to accompany her to Shili above all the other ARC troopers Kamino had, when she had been called on that mission.

"Good afternoon, the both of you," Shaak Ti nodded and smiled. "What can I do for the pair of you?"

"Actually, it's more a question of what we can do for you, General Ti," Echo said, a grave tone in his voice that immediately put Shaak Ti on the alert. "We heard there was something pretty major going on in the Republic. Something to do with the Chancellor, and the Sith."

"The Sith?" Shaak Ti blinked. "Why, what makes you say that?"

"It's alright, General," Fives smiled encouragingly. "We have no intention of carrying out the mass order to exterminate the Jedi, so you can put your lightsaber back on your belt." Shaak Ti stepped back, balking, but after a moment, she frowned in confusion. Fives continued with his explanation. "We got a call from the clones who run with the A-Team. They tipped us off that the Digimon had found out the identity of the Sith Lord, and what he's been doing with the clones all this time."

"We know now that the reason for all this," Echo gestured around at everything around them. "Is the work of the Sith, so that we would one day be the killers of the Jedi. But we're not going to go through with that. You won our respect far more than the Chancellor has."

"And we want to finally take charge of ourselves," Fives agreed.

Shaak Ti stared at them. Everything she had seen on Kamino indicated the clone's ultimate loyalty was to the Chancellor, but Echo and Fives were something different. They were siding with her, and she could sense they were telling the truth – after all, she was quite close to these two and knew them well. It took her a couple of seconds to recover before she nodded and said, "Thank you. Both of you."

"Well, don't thank us yet," Echo said, stepping forward. "We're the only ones on this planet who share that view, and it probably won't be long before more clones learn about Order 66 and come after you. We need to get to away quickly, but first, we need to contact the Delta Squad and let them know what's going on?"

"Do you know where they are?" asked Fives.

"Yes," nodded Shaak Ti, her expression slipping into one of seriousness and immediately beginning to adapt to the situation, just as she had taught the clones themselves to do on many occasions. "They're out of contact, but I know where they are. They're somewhere in the Vaynai system, investigating a few reports of alleged Separatist activity there."

"We need to reach them," Fives said. "We're trying to get all the clones who know about the Digimon to revolt, but we can't do that unless we let the Delta Squad know what's happening."

"We can leave a message. They'll pick it up eventually, and probably before they get in contact with anyone else, including the Chancellor," Shaak Ti turned around and walked over to a console set into the room. "Hold on," she murmured and quickly put a message into the screen, similar to the one that Obi-Wan had sent out to the Jedi, briefly summarising the recent events regarding the Chancellor and the Digimon and quickly sending it off.

She nodded with satisfaction. As soon as the Delta Squad returned to an area where they could check for incoming messages, they would probably be able to pick that up. Shaak Ti had also asked them to get in contact with her the moment they did so to give them the full details.

The Jedi Master turned around and addressed her helpers. "Well, how do we plan on getting out of here? If we run, then the rest of the clones will assume that something is going on, assuming they don't already know about this Order 66 thing. If we go slowly, we might not be quick enough to get to a landing platform and find a shuttle.

"We've thought about that, sir," nodded Echo, and Fives pulled a pair of binders from his belt. "We can pretend that the Chancellor ordered us to take you prisoner, so we can move quickly, and if someone comes looking for you to kill you, we can tell them the orders were changed. We should be able to get away before they find out the truth."

Shaak Ti smiled. "A brilliant idea," she said, stepping over to Fives and allowing the ARC trooper to cuff her hands behind her back.

"Now, shall we get going?" she asked. Echo and Fives nodded to one another and stepped to either side of the Togruta Jedi Master, taking a firm grip on each of her forearms in one hand while the other held their blasters, just as if they were marching a dangerous prisoner and ensuring that she didn't try to escape. Nevertheless, all three of them were feeling a certain anxiousness as they existed the room.

Fives had a grip on Shaak Ti's lightsaber, just in case things went badly.

"Which shuttle are we going for?" Shaak Ti murmured as she was led through the facility on Kamino.

"There should be one on the east landing platform not too far away from here," Echo responded. "We'll head for that one. If it's not there then we'll have to make it up as we go along."

Shaak Ti nodded and stood tall and regally, like a prisoner who still had dignity instead on being slumped over. The procession was drawing a large amount of attention, it had to be said. The numerous clones that strolled through their familiar corridors, overlooking the birthing jars for hundreds more clones, stopped to watch in surprise as the two ARC troopers marched the cuffed Jedi right past them.

No comments were made though. Being an ARC trooper did have its advantage, and one of them was that your position did usually slightly intimidate the other troopers.

A couple of Kaminoans spotted the procession too, but the long-necked beings evidently decided that it was none of their business, presumably because they were busy with other things. Either way, Echo and Fives were able to march the unprotesting Jedi Master through a large portion of the facility, past the DNA room and several training simulation areas, through the blank, white corridors, and overlooking rooms where hundreds of the troopers were taking their lunch.

The plan seemed to be working.

However, it didn't last the whole way. It wasn't long before all three of them heard a voice behind them that was crying, "Wait! Halt you two!" Echo and Fives resisted the temptation to freeze in fear at the prospect of being caught, and turned around. It was not a clone that was approaching them – it was the Bounty Hunter, Bric, who had been a harsh officer in the training of the Domino Squad. The brain-alien had a look of disapproval on his face as he folded his arms and growled, "And just where do the two of you think you're going with General Ti?"

"We've received orders from Chancellor Palpatine, sir," Echo lied. "Apparently Master Ti is a potential suspect in something that's happened on Coruscant. We... haven't been given all the details but when we spoke with the General about it, she came willingly. We're going to transport her back to Coruscant."

"And how come I was not notified of this?" Bric asked questioningly. "Doesn't anybody think that it might be my business to know if one of my fellow officers is being taken away for questioning."

"Sorry, sir," Fives said. "It's all been happening a bit quickly, sir. Apparently whatever the situation is, it's quite an urgent one. We thought that we should act as quickly as possible."

"Bric," Shaak Ti smiled at the Bounty Hunter. "You needn't worry. I should be back on Kamino soon enough. I know that I have done nothing, so I am sure that, whatever's happening, I will be released quickly enough."

Bric snorted. "Fine," he murmured. "And I suppose that I'll have to be the one to notify El-les about all this. Well, try and get back soon, General Shaak Ti. Wouldn't want you the miss too much of the training. Especially with that new batch. Remind me of what these two used to be like, those ones." He nodded towards Echo and Fives.

Shaak Ti chuckled. "No, indeed not," she said. "But I'm sure you can manage without me for a few days."

"Excuse me, sir, but we really should be getting a move on," said Echo.

"Of course," nodded Shaak Ti. "Let's..."

"Hey! What's going on?" cried another voice and this one definitely belonged to another clone. Bric stepped aside and allowed another ARC trooper, known as Commander Fort to step forwards, with four additional troopers standing just behind him. "Echo, Fives," Fort nodded to his fellow ARCs, and then said, "Why are you holding the Jedi captive like that? Don't you know our new orders?"

"New orders?" asked Fives. "You mean Order 66?"

"Of course," nodded Fort. Bric frowned in confusion.

"Yeah, we received new orders since then," Fives went on. "Apparently General Ti is wanted alive back on Coruscant for some reason. Don't really understand the full details but it must be important."

Fort frowned. "I haven't heard anything about this. Wait here. I'll have to check." He pulled a communicator from his waist and was about to call someone when Echo and Fives acted, knowing that the jig was up. It had worked on Bric, but it seemed that Commander Fort was not going to buy it.

Echo slowly reached behind Shaak Ti's back and undid the binders, while Fives quickly passed her her lightsaber. Then, the three of them leapt into action and turned around, dashing down the corridor and towards the landing platform at the other end.

"Wh... Hey! Stop!" cried Fort and immediately made to follow, but Fives whirled around and levelled his blaster. Instinct seemed to kick in for both ARC troopers. Commander Fort ducked and dived aside as Fives released a flurry of blue bolts in their general direction. Fives was extremely reluctant to shoot a fellow clone unless it was completely necessary, so he was aiming his shots slightly wide as he ran backwards, trying to keep them pinned down.

Echo increased his speed and hurried to unlock the door ahead of them, as Fort growled and, seeing that the Jedi was escaping, pulled out his own weapon and let off a couple of shots that zipped past Fives and aimed for the back of Shaak Ti's head. But the effort was doomed to failure. If they had tried to shoot her in the back if Shaak Ti had not been forewarned that they might try, it could have worked. She would have been caught off guard. But Jedi instincts were fully in tune now and she whirled around, blue lightsaber springing to life in her hands.

She parried one shot and slammed the other with her blade so it zipped back the way it had come, narrowly avoiding clipping Fives' elbow and forcing Fort to roll backwards to avoid having his own foot hit by the bolt. The other clones were letting off shots now, while Bric was screaming for an explanation. Fives ducked behind Shaak Ti as the two of them stepped backwards, one defending with her blade and the other keeping the other clones pinned down with laser fire.

"Hurry, General," Echo shouted as the door behind them opened. Fives turned around and dived through the door and Shaak Ti stood framed in it against the pouring deluge of rain outside, parrying a couple more shots. Echo leapt out and let off a barrage of his own lasers at the other clones, forcing them to duck down again to avoid being hit, before he ducked behind Shaak Ti and through the door as well.

Shaak Ti took advantage of the momentary lapse in laser fire caused by Echo and seized a section of the roof with the Force, and pulled downwards, causing one end to loosen its and swing downwards to crash into the floor and create a makeshift wall. Then she backflipped through the door and Echo quickly sabotaged the controls, causing the door to shut and lock.

"The alarm will have gone off after that," Fives sighed. "We should move before someone starts manning the turrets."

"Yes," nodded Shaak Ti, her robes already sopping from the sheets of rain and her lekku dripping water onto the platform like leaves. "And thank you. Both of you."

"Our pleasure, General," Echo nodded as the three of them turned and hurried into the shuttle that was indeed waiting for them. Dashing up the ramp and shutting the door, it wasn't long before they were in the air and shooting up and away. Echo programmed the navicomputer on the way up so that they moment they were clear of the atmosphere, they immediately leapt to hyperspace and safety.

* * *

However, across the Galaxy, not all the Jedi were going to be as fortunate as Shaak Ti. When Jedi Master Halsey slashed through another battle droid on the field, the Roonian looked up and surveyed the battlefield. The clone troopers were slowly advancing across the field on the planet Vohai, dodging from tree to tree as they poured lasers into the droid forces, which were beginning to back away from their continued march.

Blue lasers flew around Halsey as he wielded his green lightsaber with abandon, slicing through a couple more droids and bounding forward to stab his lightsaber into a Super Battle Droid and then lash out with the Force to shove the useless body into the droid ranks and bowl several more down, bringing his lightsaber up to defend himself in an instant and whirling it into yet another Super and carve it up from the hip to the top of its head.

Nearby, a young grey Nautolan known as Knox, who was Halsey's Padawan, blocked a couple more shots of the droids and saw a group of incoming droidekas rounding a corner around the trees. Cleaving two more droids in two with his blade, Knox turned around and cried to the troopers, "We need a missile launcher over here! Someone fire quickly."

"Roger that, sir," said a clone, hefting a missile launcher onto his shoulder and carefully aiming as Knox turned to behead another droid.

Right at that moment, Halsey received a sudden communication on his comlink. He frowned and back-flipped behind a tree to quickly answer it and was surprised to see words instead. But when he read them, his naturally protuberant eyes widened in shock.

"What?" he gasped and right at that moment he heard a missile launcher going off. His head whipped around just in time to see the unsuspecting Knox get the ground beneath his feet obliterated as he was flung into the air by the blast, his lightsaber flying out of his hand and his body crashing into a couple of droids and carrying them to the floor. Knox was quite clearly dead, curls of smoke coming off his lower body.

"NO!" yelled Halsey and dashed to the body of his Padawan, crouching over him in disbelief. He grabbed him and shook his shoulder, despite the clear fact that the he was dead. Laser fire slewed over his head, and his Padawan did not wake up. Halsey slumped and his grip on his lightsaber tightened as he looked up towards the clone forces that were beginning to aim their blasters at him.

"Sorry sir," said one of the clones, Commander Trauma. "It's nothing personal."

Halsey didn't stand a chance. With a storm of lasers from one side from the clones and the droids sending off another laser storm from the other, he was completely surrounded. He did well, lasting almost ten whole seconds before he was finally brought down. A droid shot caught him in the back and he was promptly bombarded by the clones from the front. His body fell to the floor and the droids and clones kept fighting as if nothing had happened, the lasers streaming over the bodies of the two Jedi, the battle itself still undecided.

* * *

Jedi Master Bref Camon the Sullustan was currently standing on the bridge of his cruiser, overlooking the planet that they had just managed to take from a Separatist attack. He nodded with satisfaction as he remembered the fight. It had been brutal, but he had managed to keep clone casualties to a minimum and, as far as he was concerned, that was always a plus.

"How soon will it be before we have fully packed up, Commander?" he asked over his shoulder. "We should probably make back for Coruscant with all speed."

"Yes, sir," nodded Commander Run. "We should be done in about ten minutes or so. We're just bringing the last of the tanks up from the surface of the planet now, and some of the boys were wounded quite badly. The ships bringing them up dare not go too quickly just in case their condition gets worse as a result."

"Very good, Commander," nodded Master Camon. "The fewer lives we lose, the better, correct?"

"Indeed, sir," nodded the Commander.

Bref Camon strode towards the front of the bridge, his hands clasped behind his back as he watched the last of the ships coming up from the surface. Soon, all of this would be unnecessary. Soon, all the Separatist allies would be no more and the Jedi could finally go back to being the peacekeepers that they so longed to be. Soon...

His communicator abruptly started bleeping, and he dutifully picked it up and began to read the message. However, he had only managed to read the first two sentences before a bunch of lasers suddenly slammed into his back and he keeled over, crashing against the controls and sliding to the floor.

Commander Run stepped over and nudged the body of the Sullustan with his foot, just to make sure he was dead. He nodded when he saw that was indeed the case and said, "Mission accomplished."

* * *

The Whipid Jedi Master known as K'kruhk, who had been the one to find Quinlan Vos after he had burst in to murder a Senator he believed to be Sidious, dispatched another droid with a quick thrust of his lightsaber. The battle seemed to be going pretty well, and the droids were being mopped up pretty quickly, the stragglers being kicked over by the clones and finished off as they lay on the ground.

Nearby, was an Ithorian Jedi called Master Ise. You might think that the forward pointing head of an Ithorian coupled with the long fingers would make wielding a lightsaber difficult, but Ise seemed to be having little trouble as he leapt forward to impale the last Super Battle Droid and kick its sparking body over, slice a piece off and levitate it into the air, before throwing it at a further bunch of B1s.

"It seems that our job is almost done," K'kruhk nodded as he walked over to Ise.

"Indeed," rumbled the Ithorian. "Now, we just need to take out the main base," the two of them looked up to observe the small Separatist stronghold that they were standing in front of. It had taken them a surprisingly long amount of time to reach this place, as the droid numbers had been thick on the ground, but they were finally here.

Just as the Ithorian called, "Alright then tanks. We need a way in and quickly. Blast a hole in the wall," both the communicators for the two Jedi bleeped at the same time. They both frowned and answered, staring at the text which appeared before them. It only took them a couple of seconds to read it before both of them looked at one another sharply and glanced back at the clones, just in time to see the AT-TE levelling its cannon at them.

Both of them threw a Force-push at the ground and sprang into the air just in time to avoid the blast that slammed into the ground around them. One of the clones turned around to fire at K'Kruhk as he fell towards him, but the Jedi Master roared and stabbed his lightsaber into the clone's chest, just before he could. The Whipid leapt behind a tree and turned to find out what had happened to his fellow Jedi.

Ise had not been so lucky. K'Kruhk watched in horror as the Ithorian landed and found himself surrounded by the clone forces, which poured laser fire right at him. The Jedi valiantly held them off for a few seconds before the AT-TE's cannon had rotated around and let off another blast that consumed the Jedi Master and completely vaporised his bodily form.

"No!" K'kruhk cried in disbelief, as he watched their loyal troops kill the other Jedi without a moment's hesitation. But the clones were turning on him now, and K'Kruhk couldn't afford to hang around. He turned and dashed away, blocking the shots of two clones who stood in his path and lopping their heads off as the Whipid fled into the trees where the tanks would be unable to follow.

* * *

As the Chancellor, also known as Darth Sidious, signed off from a call to yet another clone Commander, ordering him to execute the specific order that would enable him to take care of the Jedi General that he had served so faithfully, he couldn't help but feel a certain sense of satisfaction. We had gone about calling up the clones of some of the most important and more powerful Council members first as soon as he had ordered Commander Bly and Captain Rex to do so. That way the more powerful members of the Jedi Order would be eliminated quickly.

The less consequential members of the order would be taken care of in due course.

Palpatine shut his eyes and allowed himself a brief moment of leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes. He could feel the balance of power shifting back into his favour already. He could feel various members of the Jedi Order dying. He could feel the fear and the grief that was spreading to all corners of the Galaxy.

There were still many hundreds of Jedi who he had to order killed, but these members of the order were the less powerful and therefore the least important. What matter more importantly right now was the fact that a couple of powerful Jedi Masters were still on Coruscant, in the Jedi Temple not far away. They were a major threat still, not least because they were so close to his current position.

Master Yoda was no fool, and the Chancellor knew it. He would have preferred it if Master Yoda had been out in the field when he had finally given the Order, but circumstances had driven his hand. Yoda was well in tune with the Force. He would surely be able to sense the deaths of many of the Jedi that were falling at the hands of the clones. He might not know how or why it was happening, but he would know it was.

It was imperative that he be eliminated quickly. He might even know about Palpatine's real identity by now. Bane might have got in contact with him.

The Jedi Temple had to be taken care of.

If things had gone his way, he would have sent Anakin, his new Sith apprentice, to lead the march on the Temple and to take the Jedi off guard – not mention have his extreme lightsaber skills to aid the clones to take out the Jedi that would no doubt be filling the Temple's halls. And he would send only the clone elite to do the job, preferably Anakin's own men to go with him.

But, again, that could no longer happen, so he had to settle for the alternative. He pushed another button on his console and began to send out another transmission. When the clone at the other end answered, he bowed his head in respect once he saw who was calling. "Chancellor," he said. "What can I do for you?"

"Commander Fox," Palpatine greeted him. "I'm afraid that this is not a routine call. I have discovered an alarming plot to overthrow the Republic, and as head of the clone security here on Coruscant, it is your duty to destroy this attempt to de-rail me before it can come to pass. Do you understand me?"

"Of course, sir," Fox saluted immediately. "Just point me in the right direction and the culprit will be apprehended immediately."

"No," Palpatine shook his head. "He will not. Largely because I am not talking about a he. I have discovered that it is the Jedi Order who are plotting against me. They are plotting to destroy me and take control of the Senate and, as a result the whole Republic."

"The Jedi Order?" asked Fox, in alarm. "Are you sure, sir. That sounds... just plain weird."

"I'm quite sure, thank you, Commander," nodded the Chancellor. "I have been keeping a close eye on the Jedi recently and have managed to uncover their plans for the future. Therefore, I am initiating Order Sixty-six. All the Jedi are henceforth enemies of the Republic and must be eliminated. Listen to me carefully, Commander. You are to gather as many troops as you can in short notice and you are to march on the Jedi Temple immediately. You are to enter and you are to execute every single Jedi inside that building. They must all be destroyed before they can take control of the Republic."

This was all complete rubbish of course, but Commander Fox didn't know that.

Nevertheless, the clone looked puzzled. "All of them, sir?" he asked. "Even the younglings and the Padawans? They are young, sir. Surely they cannot be a part of this consp..."

"All of them, Commander," hissed Palpatine. "Among the Jedi Order there are no innocents. The older Jedi Masters have been poisoning the minds of their younger and impressionable students against the Republic. Even if we kill of the older ones, their plans will live on in the younglings and they will one day rise again. We must eliminate them _all_ and quickly. It is up to you."

"Of course, my lord," Fox nodded. "Please accept my apologies for my hesitation. It will be done. I will gather the whole Coruscant clone security force and gather up a few Star Corps that are still on planet. We'll be able to swarm the Temple with those numbers. The Jedi will be taken care of quickly."

"Good," nodded Palpatine. "However, if possible, I would like you to secure the cells of Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress. Keep them detained, but do not kill either of them. I wish to have a word with the both of them before we decide what we are to do with either of them."

"Yes, sir," Fox nodded again. "What of the other Separatist prisoners there though. There are many high-security prisoners that the Jedi insisted must be kept within the walls of their Temple instead of putting them in the prison." Commander Fox would know that, since he was the head of the prison as well.

"Do what you will with them," Palpatine waved a hand. "They are not important. Feel free to kill them too, or take them alive if you wish. What matters most is that the Jedi are killed and Dooku and his apprentice are brought to me."

"Yes, my lord," Fox bowed. "I'll set out immediately. We'll arrive at the Temple shortly and storm it. The Jedi will not be a threat for much longer."

"See to it," Palpatine pressed his fingers together and tried to suppress a leer. Only when Fox had vanished did he smirk in glee and anticipation. He looked out of his window and could see the Jedi Temple in the distance. He couldn't wait for the attack to begin. Large explosions were guaranteed, and it would not be long before huge plumes of smoke were rising from the building.

But for now, he turned back to console to call another clone officer and tell him to murder the Jedi he was with.

* * *

It might have been traitorous – in fact he was pretty sure it _was_ – but when Commander Fox signed off the call, he couldn't help but frown in confusion. Something was nagging away at the corner of his brain. From his position as the head of clone security, he had played a part in the killing of the Zillo Beast recently. He had not been involved personally, but it had been some of his men that had launched a volley of gas bombs in an attempt to kill the giant lizard.

Of course, that hadn't worked, but Fox had heard that his men had watched the Jedi go to extraordinary lengths to protect the Chancellor, some of them even bounding around _on top_ of the creature.

If the Jedi were planning to overthrow Palpatine and take control, why would they have done that? The Zillo Beast would have done the job for them by killing the Chancellor, and they couldn't be held to blame for that. And if there was really a plot, they wouldn't have just thought it up within a few day, would they?

It didn't make sense.

Nevertheless, it was not Fox's place to ask questions. He had to act. So he turned around to carry out his new assignment.

* * *

"Can you feel it?" Anakin asked, his hand plastered over his face as if it had been welded there. The other occupants of the bridge of the _Intrepid_ turned to look at him questioningly. When Anakin noticed this, he supplied, "I've never felt such a great upheaval in the Force before. It's like its trying to unload the information of what's happening right across the Galaxy to me in one go."

"Sorry, we can't really help you there," Terriermon shrugged. "Force disturbances are not our speciality."

"I can feel it," Aayla nodded, her eyes shutting for a moment. "I can sense a great deal of mixed emotions, swirling like it's in a great maelstrom of energy. There's so much pain and loss, and yet so much determination and strength at the same time."

"It's like the Light and Dark Sides of the Force themselves are duelling with one another as we speak," Anakin agreed. "And both of them are scoring huge impacts upon the other. Only time will tell which side will come out as the eventual winner."

"But the Light Side is doing well, right?" asked Rika. "I mean, we got the message out there about Sidious turning the clones on everyone so there should be a lot of people being forewarned about it, shouldn't there?"

"There are," agreed Barriss, her own eyes shut as she communed with the Force as well. "I sense it too. But I can also sense death." Her eyes opened and she regarded the Tamers sadly. "No matter how quickly we could have moved, it would not be fast enough to stop everyone from dying. The Jedi Order may survive at this rate, but who knows how many members it will lose."

Suzie whimpered. "Has anyone we know died yet?" she asked.

"We don't know," Aayla shook her head, a grimace of pain on her face. "We can't sense who is dying, just that there is death. Many Jedi are already down as a result of this one order, this one scheme engineered by Darth Sidious. Who knows how many more will fall before the chaos dies down?"

"How are we going to pick up the pieces from this?" Lopmon sighed. "Even if almost all the Jedi Order survives, they'll be scattered throughout the Galaxy. Most of them will have to go into hiding and won't know who to trust. Yet the Sith will remain strong."

"We'll have to take the fight to him," Terriermon declared. "We have to bring him down?"

"How?" asked Henry. "The Chancellor is a member of the Senate and if we were to go in, guns blazing in our Mega Forms or even our Ultimate forms, how many innocent Senators or citizens would die? And we'd have to get close first, which might be next to impossible, and then we have to beat the guy. We need a plan to win."

"Henry's right," nodded Ahsoka. "But plans seem to be a little short on the ground right now."

"We'll worry about how we dethrone the Ch... Sidious," Anakin shook his head, as if mentioning Palpatine as "The Chancellor" was too painful, "later. For now, we have to focus on getting as many Jedi out of this mess as possible."

"Are you sure you're okay, Master?" Ahsoka asked, worriedly. You didn't have to be very observant to notice Anakin's emotional turmoil.

"Yeah, Snips," nodded Anakin. "Yeah, I'm okay. Just... I'll be fine. Eventually."

"Well, if you need anything..." Lopmon murmured.

"I said 'I'm fine,'" Anakin looked up. It wasn't a snap. It was more of a statement. "It's just so hard to turn the Chancellor into an enemy in my mind since he's been there for so long. I know he is. Believe me, I do and I also know that we have to find a way of taking him down, no questions asked. I get that. But it's like my brain is having a fight with itself."

"It's a complete reversal of everything you know," Aayla nodded. "And you've only seen the real evidence so far through the eyes of another being. It's completely understandable that you should feel this way, Anakin. But, if it helps, remember the strange attitude that the Chancellor took in regards to the Zillo Beast. You said yourself that that shook you faith in him."

Anakin frowned and nodded, fixating on when the Chancellor had snapped at him and completely ignored all his advice, that cold look of anger in his eyes that Anakin realised now looked very befitting for a Sith Lord. "Actually, that does help," he said. "Thanks Aayla."

"You're welcome."

"How come you always give the best advice?" Terriermon enquired of the Twi'lek.

Aayla shrugged. "Because I've been through similar emotional struggles, like with my uncle?"

"Ah. Good point," nodded Terriermon. "We getting any distress calls yet?"

"Not yet," Barriss shook her head. "But we must assume they are imminent. The hyperdrive is already primed and waiting, just in case."

"Who's nearby?" asked Anakin. "Maybe we should try heading for them, just in case."

Ahsoka was already checking the computer. "I think Stass Allie is nearby in the *** system. Other than that, there isn't really anybody near us in Galaxy-wide terms."

"Stass may need our help at some point," Anakin nodded. "Lock on the co-ordinates in the navicomputer, Ahsoka."

"On it, Skyguy," Ahsoka nodded. Anakin smiled. Oh, how he used to hate that nickname. Now, he secretly hoped that Ahsoka would never stop using it. Lowering the formality helped him feel closer to his friends than ever before. And if ever there was a time he needed friends, it was now.

_Padmé,_ he thought, turning to glance in the direction that he knew Coruscant resided in. _If anything happens to you while we're in hiding... please, just don't do anything rash._ He hated it when he couldn't be there for Padmé, but it looked like he was about to be staying away from her for longer than ever. He would have to. Going to see her before the Sith Lord looming over her was dealt with would be incredibly dangerous for both of them.

But throughout all this anxiousness, there was one person who was standing to one side, feeling decidedly left out and upset that she didn't understand what was going on. Numa knew from bitter experience that the expressions on the faces of her friends meant something _terrible_ was happening, and that was leaving Numa's mind to wonder. Aayla was the only one present who spoke Numa's language and the Jedi seemed too preoccupied with what was happening to fill Numa in.

Numa had been initially excited about all this, but now she was just scared again. She had hoped that she would find the family atmosphere that she had been craving for since the death of her parents and uncle and she could indeed feel it, but at the moment the young girl was not being included in it, and probably wouldn't until the situation resolved itself, whatever it was.

It almost seemed that Numa had been forgotten. She knew that it was silly to think like that because of the current emergency, but she couldn't help but feel upset by this idea.

She shook herself, determined not to feel sad because of something that wasn't the case and turned to have a look around at this strange, alien world of metal. There were several men in grey suits nearby that appeared to be staring at a bunch of buttons that made absolutely no sense to Numa. All of the men had the same face as the other clones, but none of them were Waxer or Boil. Numa was surrounded by strangers, even if they did have familiar faces.

Through the window, she could see the planet that she had grown up on. It did not look particularly exciting. It resembled something like a big ball of sand from up here. But still, it was pretty exciting to be seeing it from this high up. Surprisingly, the height did not seem to bother Numa.

Still, she was in space! How amazing was that? She had never thought she would leave the city, and yet she was here, outside her own planet's atmosphere. It was unbelievable.

She padded around the company assembled around the holotable to get a better view of the planet below, but then she spotted something else which grabbed her attention and made her frown in confusion. She was not terribly well-versed in this kind of thing, having avoided most of Ryloth's animals since they were dangerous, but unless she was very much mistaken, she was staring at a giant egg.

It was indeed the case. A large white egg covered with blue equilateral triangles, all of which were at completely random angles, was perched on a small shelf by the wall, not far away from where the others were standing. It was nestled on a couple of cushions, which had been brought in from the Jedi Temple to hold it in place, and was propped upright by the two.

Numa almost felt herself drawn to the egg and slowly she stepped towards it, wondering what the egg might possibly belong to. She had seen Gutkurr eggs a couple of times – they were a highly prized delicacy among the Twi'lek population but were extremely difficult to get hold of because most people who tried got torn to bits. But they hadn't been as large as this egg, nor did they have the pretty patterns on the shells.

Numa found that the shelf the egg was sitting on was just level with her chin. When she reached it, she placed her hands on the shelf and pulled herself up slightly so that she could see well over the top of the thing and stared at the egg. It was certainly a weird thing to keep. Why would the her friends have put it on a shelf like this?

They couldn't be planning to eat it. Could they?

That thought reminded Numa that she was hungry, but for now she pushed that thought aside and carefully reached up with a finger, moving it slowly towards the egg. She hesitated before touching it, but then she slowly poked the thing, withdrawing her hand quickly. The egg barely moved and the surface had felt firm but smooth under her finger.

She reached up and poked it again a couple more times, just to see if anything would happen, but nothing did. The little Twi'lek girl had found herself completely fascinated by this strange object and she hesitantly placed her hand on it, stroking its surface under her palm. It was so smooth, even smoother than skin. It was a bizarre sensation for Numa. Smooth things were hard to come by on a planet where pretty much everything was covered in sand. Yet the egg was absolutely immaculate.

Numa glanced over her shoulder at the others, wondering what they would make of her touching it and hoping that she wouldn't get into trouble. But they still seemed to be absorbed in what they were doing and hadn't noticed her behaviour.

The little girl pulled herself onto the shelf, hauling herself over the edge as steadily as she could, and sat next to the egg on one of the cushions. Hesitantly, she reached down and placed both hands on the egg and lifted it off the cushion. The egg was almost as large as her whole torso in terms of height and width, but it was surprisingly light for something of its size. Numa lifted it up and down for a few moments, expecting it to be heavier than it was.

Eventually she pulled it into her lap and stared at it. She was practically captivated by the pretty blue patterns all over it. Where she came from, everything was pretty much the same colour except for the leaves of the trees and the Twi'leks themselves, and they all came in one colour. There was nothing with the little triangles that were adorning this egg. They looked like they had been painted on, and yet when Numa tried to scratch it off, she found that it was completely and utterly natural.

How weird.

She giggled as she carefully played with the egg, hugging it for a moment and then lifting it up again to see if it had gotten any heavier. Then she set it down in her lap again.

CRACK!

Numa balked and lifted it again, wondering if she had broken the shell when she put it down, but the bottom of the shell was intact. When she put it back down though, she found that there _was_ a crack, about half-way down its length and right in front of her eyes. Numa stared at it with fascination and suddenly the fracture widened with another, louder:-

CRACK!

This time, the rest of the people around the holotable seemed to hear the noise, because they all stopped talking and listened in bemusement. "Did you hear that?" Lopmon asked. "Or was it just Terriermon and me."

"No, I heard something," Suzie agreed.

"Me too," nodded Ahsoka. "Some kind of loud..."

CRACK!

"That," Ahsoka finished. This time though, they had all pinpointed the location of the noise and the whole group turned around to stare at Numa with surprise and, when they saw what she was holding a mix of apprehension and anticipation. Numa flushed guiltily, as if she had been caught in the act of something naughty, and by now, the break in the shell had gone just over half-way round the entire egg.

Nobody needed to guess what was happening.

CRACK!

With a final, loud, snapping noise, the rest of the centre of the egg split, until there was a jagged line running right around its middle. Numa could only stare at the thing in her lap, while everyone else watched with wide eyes as the top half of the egg seemed to jerk a couple of times, as if someone or something on the inside was nudging it. And, as we all know, that was exactly what was happening.

There a POP noise like a cork shooting out of a bottle as the top half of the egg suddenly went zinging into the air. Anakin, who was closest, snapped out his hand and caught the fractured eggshell without looking, but everyone's attention, even the piloting clones, was on the little creature that was peering out of the top of the egg and blinking at all and sundry.

For over a week, Aayla had been dutifully taking the egg from her chambers every time she needed to go on a mission and putting it here on the bridge of the cruiser and then taking it back to her room when the mission had been completed. And now, it seemed her patience had been rewarded.

WereGarurumon, who had fought and died on Mygeeto against the vampiric IceMyotismon, had hatched.

Only he wasn't quite the same.

"Doesn't look much like a werewolf to me," observed Ahsoka dryly.

And indeed he didn't. Numa was staring at the little Digimon in amazement. It was small and red and that was about its most distinguishing feature. Its eyes were large and immediately made you think 'Awww' but other than that it was basically a blob. It had no limbs of any kind, and the only projection it had from the ball that was its body were three knobbly extensions on the top of its head.

The creature blinked and stared at Numa.

Numa blinked and stared back.

Then, a small mouth of the creature opened and it said, "Hello. I'm Punimon. What's your name?"

Numa just stared for a moment, not entirely sure what to say next, since she didn't speak the same language. Aayla took the liberty of stepping forward and clearing her throat. Punimon turned his attention to the larger Twi'lek as Aayla said. "This is Numa, Punimon. Welcome back. It's good to see you."

"Oh, hello again," said Punimon, brightly. "I remember you. Where am I? What's going on?"

"Well, I'll say this for nothing," Terriermon murmured as he stepped over to the Galaxy's newest Digimon. "You sure have ridiculously bad timing, Punimon. Of all the times you could have hatched, it just had to be now."

* * *

Several of you have been touching on a particular subject with regards to WereGarurumon in your reviews, and I don't want to spoil it for those who haven't guessed, (thought I'm pretty sure they'll have guessed it by now after reading this chapter), you are all right. That is indeed what is going to happen. However, for now, he is in the defenceless little body of a Punimon and is not going to be of much use to anybody for a while. And no **zigmas, **I did not forget about him. He's just been an egg, which is not a particularly interesting thing to right about. From the moment I made him become an egg, I was planning to make him hatch here on Chapter 154.

Anyway, there was a few deaths from Order 66 in this chapter yes. But hey, now matter how fast the Digimon act, they cannot save everyone. Order 66 is going to have a massive impact on the Galaxy no matter where it strikes. However, most of the other Jedi (around 85 to 0%) _have _been getting the message in time, and they will have the chance to escape that most of those in this chapter did not have. In the second half of the arc, we will be hearing from some of the other Council members as they learn of their new enemy. Will they escape? If they do, how?

You'll see soon enough.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Impmon chapter, but without Impmon or Beelzemon actually in it. Many of you will be wondering what the Tamers have been doing since we last saw them, and the answer is, not much. We'll hear from them, and Lilamon and company, in the next chapter, as they search for a Digimon who they will not be able to find.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 155 : Failure**


	155. Failure

I know, I know. Most of you will be wanting to know what's happening in the Star Wars universe and a lot of you care more about what's going on there than whatever is happening back home. I know for a fact several of you skip these chapters and read them later on. But these chapters are necessary.

A couple of people though, seem to be under the impression that more Digimon will be appearing in the Star Wars universe to help the Jedi and their fellows against the Sith. **Everwolf**, for instance, seems to think that Beelzemon should be going up against Darth Sidious at some point. As I told you before when you requested that several months ago, **Everwolf, **THAT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! Sorry, for the literary yelling, but the first time I told you that didn't seem to be enough. Beelzemon currently has enough on his plate.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 155:- Failure**

* * *

While Impmon had been in the Heavens learning of the Prophecy that seemed to mark out his fate and getting advice of angelic women and enormous metallic alligators and running away from his friends again in order to protect them, his two Tamers, Ai and Mako, were having a much less interesting time.

But right now, both of them were direly hoping that something would happen soon. Preferably something that would reunite them with their partner.

Ever since Impmon had crept into the camp and stolen the D-Arc that they were using to track his movements, the two Tamers had been absolutely miserable. They had been so close to getting Impmon back – they had seen him standing right in front of them, holding the D-Arc, for crying out loud. But, with the aid of some Digimon friends he appeared to have picked up on his travels, he had managed to keep them all at bay long enough for them to make a getaway.

And now, they had absolutely no way of knowing where he was. The Digital World was a massive place and without a D-Arc to guide them and even with all twelve Devas helping them to search (and as we know, not all of them were trying as hard as they probably could), it would be next to hopeless. Especially since it seemed Impmon was determined not to be found.

The two Tamers had felt like sinking into a hole or something. The moment they had climbed down from Caturamon after the ill-attempted chase, they had sunk down on a rock and begun to cry. Neither of them attempted to hide it, not even when the other Devas returned from flying with no Impmon in tow. In fact, that just made them cry harder, burying their faces in their sleeves.

Jeri had been quick to comfort them, as she de-digivolved from SaberLeomon and hurried over, Elecmon not far behind. She had embraced both of the little ones and said, "Shh, it's okay. It's going to be alright. There's no need to cry. Impmon wouldn't want you to do that."

"But why does he keep leaving us?" Ai murmured. "Why is he doing it again and trying to make sure we can't follow him?"

"Ai, you already know the answer to that question," Jeri said. "He just wants to protect you. He's trying to do the right thing, trying to help you. Don't start thinking there might be any other reason, because there _isn't_," she said forcefully. "You might say that Impmon is being more protective than ever by not being there in this way."

"But we don't want him to be gone," Mako whimpered. "We want him to be here, with us. So we can face down that big guy who wants to take him away and stop him together."

"Yeah," Ai sniffed. "Doesn't he get that?"

"Of course he does," Elecmon interjected. "That's why he keeps slipping away like that, because he _doesn't_ want you in the firing line. You both want two different things, but you both want to protect one another by doing them. You guys really have something special going on here in that way. Don't take it any other way."

Ai and Mako both sniffed and hugged Jeri from either side, as the Tamer sent her partner a grateful look. In truth, she too was feeling miserable at the prospect of having to locate Impmon without the D-Arc. Finding Calumon had been hard enough the first time, and the little guy had wanted to be found. Impmon didn't. That was going to make things difficult.

The four Devas stood around awkwardly, none of them particularly sure what they should be doing next. None of them had had to deal with upset human children before, so they were a bit nonplussed, but as Jeri seemed to be handling the situation they sat back and let her do the talking.

Eventually, Kumbhiramon chipped in with, "So, what is our next move? Impmon's gone, but we still have to try and find him, don't we?"

"Of course we do," nodded Caturamon. "Sovereigns orders. If we don't find him then GranDracmon may be able to use him."

"We're going to have trouble catching him even if we find him again," rumbled Majiramon. "I've roamed far and wide over the skies of the Digital World and I have never seen a Digimon as fast as that dragon. There's no way I can keep up with him."

"Who were they, anyway?" Mihiramon frowned. "Those Digimon helping Impmon out like that."

"They were Lilamon, Wingdramon and Diatrymon," Ai looked up. "I remember them from before. They're the ones who helped us to find GranDracmon last time."

"Why are they helping Impmon, though?" asked Kumbhiramon. "Don't they understand the situation?"

"They probably do," nodded Mihiramon. "Maybe Impmon talked them into doing it, or maybe they were doing it to make him feel more at ease, or it could be any number of reasons. Whatever the case, we should keep an eye out for any of them as well. As for our next move... I don't know."

"Well, at least we know that they're on this level for now," said Majiramon. "Without the D-Arc, we need to give this place a proper scouring." He lifted into the air, his draconic boy undulating as he sped towards the sky. He called down, "I'll get in contact with the others and ask the Sovereigns to bring them here. It may take me a couple of days to find them so you guys should continue the search. Your friends went that way," he pointed in the direction that Wingdramon had carried them off, and then he span about and shot off into the sky.

"Well, you heard him," Caturamon nodded. "I say that we all get some rest and resume our search in the morning. It's been a pretty hectic night so far."

Jeri nodded and was eventually able to coax Ai and Mako back to sleep, before she nodded off herself.

* * *

The next couple of days had pretty much consisted only of the small group wandering across the Digital World and staring out at the landscape, looking for someone who wasn't there. Mihiramon had swooped across the sky, keeping a close eye on things from above. As he said, there were few places to hide on the Prairie Level. If Impmon or his companions were anywhere within his visual range, it was likely he would spot them pretty quickly.

But he never did. As per Wingdramon's initial plan, they were all heading in the wrong direction.

Majiramon returned after a couple of days, swooping down from the heavens once more and settling on the ground beside the Tamers, looming above them with his long, serpentine shape. He looked down at them and said, "Your friends are on their way."

And indeed they were. A few minutes later, a Data Stream shot down from the sky and crashed into the ground beside Ai and Mako, causing them to leap back in fear of being swept away. Almost at the same moment, a second Data Stream speared the ground right next to the first one. But instead of roaming across the Digital World as they usually would, the two of them fizzled out of existence almost immediately, but dark shapes materialised at the bottom and quickly solidified into more distinct and familiar people.

Just like that, the whole group was reunited, with all the Tamers, partnered Digimon and Devas in one spot.

"Hey, Jeri!" Takato cried, a big grin on his face. "How've you –WAAGH!" The Goggleheaded boy got little further before he was suddenly tackled by Jeri in a flying hug that he had not been expecting at all, which was why he collapsed to the ground.

Guilmon laughed and said, "Oopsie-daisy. Takato go belly-up."

"Thanks Guilmon," groaned Takato as he returned the hug from Jeri, who was now very, very red in the face.

"Only here to help," Guilmon grinned.

"Would you two lovebirds go and find somewhere private to do stuff like that?" Kazu asked from nearby. "We're not in school. You don't have to show off to the other kids."

"We don't show off to the other kids in school, Kazu?" Jeri glowered, as she helped Takato to his feet.

Kazu shrugged. "I probably would, if I had a girlfriend."

"But you don't," Kenta jibed. "And it looks set to stay that way, if you ask me."

"Oh you can talk," Kazu rounded on him.

"Enough, you two," Ryo said, standing between them, and the two immediately shut up. "Listen, the important thing is that we're all together again, but the even more important thing is that we didn't find Impmon down in the Forest level. You guys have any luck on the ocean level?"

Takato shook his head. "It's a big place, so we could have missed something. Then again, this whole Digital World is a big place so we can all say that really. Guilmon wasn't able to pick up any scents though."

"My nose tickled when I tried to use it under the water," Guilmon observed, placing a large clawed hand over his nostrils.

"At this rate we'll never find the little guy," Kenta grumbled. "I was hoping that this whole rescue operation wouldn't take that long and we could convince Impmon to come back with us and wait for the next large Digimon that GranDracmon sent after him just like we usually do. But we just haven't seen him."

"Actually..." Jeri frowned, looking towards the ground. "We did."

"Huh?" Guilmon looked over. "You guys found him?" he asked the twins, but this only made them glance at each other and begin to look downtrodden again. Guilmon's ears drooped when he noticed their reaction, and he wondered if he had said something wrong or crossed a line of some kind that had hadn't been aware of.

Jeri came to their defence and said, "No, we didn't. He found us. We had set up camp for the night not long after we separated and were trying to get to sleep when suddenly we were all woken up by a loud noise, to discover that Impmon was standing right in front of us. He had Ai and Mako's D-Arc in his hands. I think he was trying to steal it to make sure we couldn't follow him. But it worked. We chased him, but he managed to get away."

"He what?" Kazu moaned. "Aw man. You mean to tell me we lost our trump card?"

"No, they lost a Digivice, Kazu," Guardromon replied. "I think they still have all of their Modify Cards."

"Would you stop interjecting and waffling about things that you don't understand?" asked Kazu.

"Okay," nodded his partner.

"That is most unfortunate," Pajiramon murmured. "The D-Arc was our biggest advantage when it came to finding Impmon. Everything seems to have become far more difficult now."

"How did he manage to get away from you?" asked Ryo. "Did he use Behemoth? I don't know how fast that bike can go, but I thought that SaberLeomon was faster, or at least able to keep pace with it."

"No," Elecmon shook his head. "Actually, his bike was nowhere to be seen, bizarrely. He managed to escape from the initial camp with the aim of a Diatrymon."

Ryo's eyes widened. "A Diatrymon? As in..."

"The same one you guys met when you were looking for GranKuwagamon months ago?" Jeri asked. "Yeah. That one. We assume it was that one anyway, because he was with a Wingdramon and a Lilamon."

"That Wingdramon was too fast for us," Majiramon shook his head sadly. "Once the group had gotten airborne, a long game of chase began, with me and Mihiramon in pursuit. We _would _have caught up had that Lilamon not been shooting at us to keep us away. But then the Wingdramon increased his speed and he was gone in a heartbeat. There was nothing we could do." The dragon looked down and said, "I take it you haven't had any luck with finding him again."

"No," Jeri and Elecmon shook their heads simultaneously.

"If he's got a Wingdramon helping him that makes things far more difficult than ever," Sandiramon sighed. "They are masters of the winds and one of the fastest Digimon in existence. Impmon and his friends could be at the other end of the Digital World by now if they're riding on one of those."

"Great. Fantastic. More incredibly wonderful news," Kazu murmured sarcastically. "Why exactly are the Sovereigns not out here helping us? Are they too lazy to get their asses over here and look for Impmon with us?"

"How dare you speak of the Sovereigns in that way!" Indramon shouted, though it seemed to come out something like a whinny, which lessened the effect. "Take that back, Human, before I..."

"Show a little self-control, would you, Indramon!" Mihiramon snapped at the horse and the Deva in question found himself on the receiving end of many glares from the other Devas. He subsided, and Kazu smirked, but then the eyes of the Devas turned to him, with equal intensity in their glares. "Nevertheless, that was extremely rude," Mihiramon growled. "You would be wise to curb your tongue when it comes to the Sovereigns."

"Sorry," murmured Kazu weakly, as the Ultimates all glared at him.

"Anyway," Majiramon said. "I actually have a message from the Sovereigns that they gave to me when I asked them to send those Data Streams. What they are doing right now, Human, is preparing for the eventual assault on GranDracmon and the Dark Ocean, massing together as many powerful Digimon as they can. Apparently one which they called on was Gryphonmon, and he told them that he had run into Impmon shortly after we began our search for him. He said that Impmon and his friends were planning on trying to find the Celestial Heavens."

"Heavens?" Kenta asked. "The Digital World has a Heaven?"

"Of course it does," Kumbhiramon cackled. "Where else would you expect the Digimon God, Fanglongmon, and his angelic subjects to reside than a Heaven."

"Oh. Good point," said Kenta. MarineAngemon giggled.

"So, we have a destination in mind now," Ryo grinned. "If we find the Heavens then perhaps we can meet up with Impmon there, or perhaps wait for him if he hasn't shown up yet. Where can we get there."

"Finding the entrance is simple enough," Caturamon replied. "It's marked out by a Temple that moves around each day, but its always somewhere here on the Prairie Level. If we find the Temple, then we've found the entrance to the Heavens."

"However," added Sinduramon, ruffling his feathers. "Getting in will be an entirely different matter. Nobody, not even we, can get into the Heavens if you feel like it. You have to be accepted by the angels who live there. If they don't think that we need or deserve to get into the Heavens, but Impmon does, then we won't ever find him if he's already there."

"But he'll be safe from GranDracmon there, right?" asked Takato.

"That's the theory," nodded Majiramon. "But the Sovereigns told me that it might indeed be possible for GranDracmon to break inside if he were to exert enough power on the defences. He is a pretty strong Digimon, after all. Then the Heavens could be attacked."

"Well then," said Ryo. "We better try and find it and hope that he hasn't got there yet? Where do we go?"

"You can usually find the Temple by asking the local Biyomon. They almost always know where it is," said Vajramon. "First we'll have to find one of them. That shouldn't be too hard though. They live all over the place here."

"You hear that, guys?" asked Jeri, smiling down at the twins. "We might be on our way to finding Impmon after all."

"Yeah, but what if the angels don't let us in?" asked Ai quietly.

"Oh, I'm sure they will," Jeri grinned. Then she added, "I hope," quietly to herself.

Takato noticed and said, "Ah don't worry. I'm sure they will too. After all, why would they keep any of us out. Except perhaps Cyberdramon." The dragon in question growled and Takato yelped and hurried further away. Jeri giggled as the group set out to find a Biyomon.

* * *

The Tamers and the Devas were not the only ones out on a search. The wind was rippling through Lilamon's ivy-like hair and the petals perched on top of it as she screwed up her eyes and tried to peer over Wingdramon's scaly shoulder at the Digital World around her. Ever since the four other members of Impmon's former party had learned of the disappearance on Impmon, they had quickly headed for the gate and, with a little assistance from Angewomon, had descended back to the Digital World below.

Just before they left, Angewomon gave them some advice, which had taken root in Lilamon's memory. The angel woman had said, "Deckerdramon and I were able to impart some knowledge to Impmon just before he left. Some wisdom regarding the lot of you. Impmon does not fully understand what we were trying to tell him and if he is to finally get it, he will need you guys to help him unlock it."

"What do you mean?" Diatrymon asked. "What did you tell him?"

"Impmon knows," Angewomon replied. "Ask him when you find him." And then the angel had summoned the gate and the lot of them had disappeared in a flash of bright light. The moment they had found themselves back in the Temple, they had quickly rushed through the doors and headed for the outside world, only to be faced by a great expanse of grass.

"Which way are we supposed to go?" Calumon asked. "Impmon could have gone in any direction."

"He'll probably have become Beelzemon and taken to the skies," Wingdramon sighed and shook his head. "Finding him will not be easy."

"Don't say that, Wingdramon," Lilamon turned to look at the large, blue dragon hovering above her. "You're perhaps the most accomplished aerial Digimon there is. If there is anyone in this world who can find Impmon without using some kind of magical means of detection, it has got to be us with you on our side. Now, let's pick a direction and get on with it."

"What if he didn't go that way?" asked Diatrymon.

"That's irrelevant," Wingdramon replied. "He'll probably have taken the first Data Stream he found and what's worse, he'll probably had started avoiding the Biyomon so any way of using them to find him is practically nulled. We'll just have to hope for the best."

"We'll have better results if we search from the skies," Lilamon observed.

"Does that mean we'll be flying around again?" Calumon asked.

"Oh, wonderful," Diatrymon shook his vicious-looking head. "Just what I wanted to hear. Right. Let's get it over with."

And that was why the bird found himself dangling in Wingdramon's firm grip once again, his wings pinned to his sides as the dragon held him near the shoulders in his clawed, scaly hands. Diatrymon tried to ignore the overwhelming sense of nausea that was coming from being airborne for so long. His species of bird was not meant to fly. But he eyesight was still keen and he training it on the ground and the sky in search of their missing friend.

Calumon was finding it difficult to do any searching. He was perched on Wingdramon's head and the majority of his concentration was occupied in attempting to keep himself there, and not get blown away. Lilamon had a petalled hand ready just in case he lost his grip, but she was only half-paying attention.

"You know what?" she shouted over the rushing wind. "If we ever find Impmon again, I may just end up killing him before GranDracmon gets a chance to use him for whatever he wants."

"What?" Calumon cried, shocked. "You're going to kill Impmon! Why?"

"Not literally," Lilamon shook her head. "No way would I ever do that. It just meant that I'm going to beat him half to death once every day until he realises that we're here to stay and that if we're going to keep following him no matter where he goes."

Diatrymon nodded. "Yeah, same goes for me too. And probably for those Tamers of his, wherever they are right now. Why did we help Impmon to steal that little Digivice thingie from them in the first place?"

"We tried to dissuade him from it," Wingdramon recalled. "But as I remember it, the only reason I agreed to help him do that was because it looked like he was going to go into cardiac arrest if we didn't."

"That look in his eyes," agreed Lilamon. "It was heartbreaking." She sighed. "But now, I think I can truly appreciate just what those two poor kids were feeling." She shook her head. "I should have put my foot down and made him go back to them. Well, as hard as a foot like mine can be put down." She wiggled the petals that made up her feet.

"What exactly were we supposed to do, Lilamon?" asked Wingdramon, momentarily glancing over his shoulder at her and causing Calumon to go for a little ride. "The fact that he ran away from _us_ as well, despite the fact that we've been with him through so much already, shows that he's fixated on protecting everyone by being absent from our lives. The same held true with his Tamers. Even if we'd made him go back to them, you know he would have run away from them again at the earliest opportunity. What could we have done? Mount a constant watch over him to try and keep him prisoner?"

Lilamon sighed. "Yeah, I know. You're right, as always. We did the best option to keep _him _happy. But still, I feel so sorry for those poor kids. And now I know that _we_ contributed to that sorry, even if it made Impmon feel better."

"Talk about a lose-lose situation, huh?" Diatrymon murmured. "Either way, one of us would have been unhappy. And if we had returned him to the Tamers, he probably would have left us behind when he ran away from them again. And then what would have happened when that Darkdramon showed up?"

"We took the lesser of two evils," Wingdramon agreed. "If you could call it that."

"Yes, I know that," Lilamon said again. "You guys have made your point. But I swear that when this is all over, I am going to do everything I can to make it up to Ai and Mako. Those two kids are so sweet. Remember how they used to be filled with awe at pretty much everything we did the first time around?"

"Yeah, Ai and Mako are loads of fun," Calumon agreed from the front. "They're getting better and better at the games we play each time we play them. You guys should play with us too. You'd like it."

"Amusing as that may sound, Calumon, I think that I could outspeed everyone when it comes to the game of tag," Wingdramon pointed out.

"And if I tag a human, it's very likely that I'll accidentally kill them," agreed Diatrymon, flexing his talon-like feet.

"Why are we talking about tag right now?" asked Lilamon. "We're supposed to be focusing on finding Impmon."

"Yes, we know," Diatrymon agreed, scouring the sky for any sign of black dot in the distance that might be Beelzemon. "We're doing the best we can."

"I could go much faster if I wasn't carrying you," Wingdramon pointed out. "Perhaps it would be better if I went to find him myself."

"If we don't find anything soon, then you can do that," Lilamon nodded. She supposed it was a bit selfish that she wanted to be there when they finally found Impmon again, but she couldn't help it. They had been through most of this journey together and she wanted to be re-united with him at the same time. But she couldn't deny that time was of the essence as well, so they needed to find him pronto.

She sighed. _Oh, Impmon. If anything's happened to you... I will probably never forgive you for running away from us._ She paused and thought, _Oh who am I kidding? Of course I could. Just please, _please_ be alright. I don't think I'd ever forgive myself for letting your Tamers down if we fail to protect you. We have to deliver you back to them one day._

* * *

There was only one being in the entire Digital World that had known what had become of Impmon though, and that being was the motorcycle, known as Behemoth. And that was the reason it was not searching right now. There was no point. Its master had gone where it could not follow on its own, and there seemed little chance that its master would be getting away from the forces of his enemies.

Behemoth had not moved for a long time. In fact, it had remained absolutely still in the place where it had pulled to a stop after its radar had detected that Beelzemon and his Arkadimon attackers had vanished. There had been no Data Stream. There was no doubt about what had happened to them all. All Behemoth could really do was sit there, its wheels parked in the dirt and its headlight pointing at nothing in particular.

Emotions were almost non-existent with the bike, but right now it was definitely feeling a sense of failure. It had been so close to its master and shooting at top speed towards the action, but it had been unable to fulfil its duty and defend Beelzemon with everything it had. It hadn't been able to land even one hit on the enemy before Beelzemon had been snatched off the Dark Ocean.

There was a certain sense of uselessness about the bike now. What was it supposed to be doing? Its master was gone. It had no purpose anymore. The last time it had had no purpose had been when Beelzemon had been reduced to a Digi-egg and purified by Magnadramon, and it had spent its time since them terrorizing a village, but it could hardly do that now. Especially since its master wouldn't approve of that sort of behaviour anymore.

Even now, its loyalty to Beelzemon was affecting Behemoth's actions.

So, what was it really supposed to do? Try to entertain itself by racing around the Digital World with no clear purpose in mind? For some reason that just didn't sound like something Behemoth wanted to do with its... well, not life. Existence, perhaps. Ever since Beelzemon had joined up with the Tamers and had been helping to protect the Human World, Behemoth had felt it had a purpose beyond simply aiding its master. It had only been about mindless destruction before, which Beelzemon had only been doing for his personal gain, but when he went good, he had been fighting for the good of everyone else. And, as a result, so had Behemoth, in a way.

The conflicting thought processes about its next course of action had left Behemoth stumped. All it could do was sit there and stew in the light, not having a clue where to go, what to do or anything.

But there was one thing that Behemoth was loyally doing by standing here. Its front wheel was still parked right next to the D-Arc that Beelzemon had thrown in his last moments before his capture. Why Beelzemon had thrown it, Behemoth had no clue. Perhaps it had been a last quick thing to express continuing defiance before he was taken away. But whatever the case, it was currently lying on the floor, not in the Dark Ocean. That had to be a plus, right?

Behemoth was dutifully guarding the little device. It could hardly pick it up, as it had no hands or limbs of any kind, but obviously the D-Arc was precious to Beelzemon if he had felt the need to ensure that it did not get taken to the land of evil. Therefore, Behemoth was obligated to ensure that nothing happened to the D-Arc as long as it could do something about it.

If it had to sit there until the end of time to try and protect the little device then it would. Currently, this was the one thing that it could still do for its master. Therefore, it would do it without question.

That was why Behemoth was tuning its scanners into the surrounding area, trying to locate anyone who might want to take the D-Arc away for any reason. Other than a couple of Biyomon though, there was practically nothing.

It stood there for hours, like some bizarre metallic statue in the middle of nowhere that had no clear purpose, before finally it spotted something that peaked its mechanical interest. It radar was picking up something heading its way at high speed through the air, some distance up. Behemoth finally moved, turning its headlight towards the blip on its radar and tuning in its heat-signatures and data trackers. Sure enough, there was a large, winged Digimon heading its way.

But its data tracker was picking up four separate Digimon, two of which were roughly the size of an adult human, give or take a metre or so in the case of one of them, and the other of which was tiny.

Behemoth had the ability to read the digital signature of a Digimon and commit them to its hard-drive or whatever it used for a memory. And that was why the moment it tuned into these four Digimon, Behemoth knew exactly who they were. It felt a thrill of excitement. Maybe they would know what the heck it was supposed to do next. Maybe they could even help it figure out a way to get its Master back.

It revved its engine and sped away, leaving the D-Arc lying on the ground.

* * *

It was Diatrymon who first spotted the incoming shape. As he combed the landscape down below with his eyes, he noticed a dark shape suddenly zoom over a hilltop not far away, heading right in their direction. Diatrymon frowned as he peered down at it. The little shape was even correcting its course so that it continued to come straight for them as they threatened to fly straight past it.

It took several moments of staring before Diatrymon recognised the shape and his eyes widened in surprise, right at the point where a distant roaring sound like an angry racing car reached his ears. "Guys!" he cried suddenly. "Look! Down there! Isn't that Impmon's motorbike that we left behind on the Desert Level?"

Wingdramon, Lilamon and Calumon all looked down and Calumon gasped when he saw the bike barrelling towards them from far below. "Hey! You're right. That's Behemoth! Yay! Yayyay! Behemoth's here. We've got someone else on our team again!"

"I wondered what happened to him," murmured Wingdramon. "He must have been looking for us the whole time we were gone as well."

"Shame Impmon's not with him," Lilamon sighed. "That would have made things easier."

"Yeah," agreed the dragon. "Still, somebody else to help with the search can only be a good thing, right?"

"Let's go lower," said Diatrymon. "We should tell him about what's been going on?"

Wingdramon nodded and began to go into a gentle diving, swooping downwards on a path that would ensure they reached the ground at around the time that Behemoth reached them. The motorbike was really piling on a lot of speed, and the group guessed that it must be glad to see them again after so long of being on its own.

But then, Behemoth began to behave oddly. Before they could intercept the bike, it suddenly veered around, sending up a wave of earth and doubled back on itself. Wingdramon brought himself to a halt and frowned in confusion, and Behemoth suddenly whirled around again and came back, but turned around again at the same spot and shot off the way it had come again.

"What's he doing?" asked Calumon. "Is he trying to make himself dizzy?" It certainly seemed to be that way, as Behemoth was coming towards them again. But then, the bike stopped and revved its engine as if it were trying to get their attention and turned back the way it had come, revving its engine again.

"I think he wants us to follow him," Lilamon breathed. "Maybe he knows where Impmon is."

"Well, what are we waiting for?" asked Diatrymon. Wingdramon nodded and swooped lower, sailing just over the ground and towards Behemoth's back wheel. As soon as the bike sensed that they were heading towards it, it kicked into life again and hared across the plain, the blue dragon and his passengers hard on its aft.

The motorbike did not have far to take them. As Wingdramon followed the demonic being, the bike weaved around a couple of hills and zipped across a large amount of flat grasslands, crushing the grass beneath its wheels as it moved. None of those in pursuit dared to say anything. All of them were unconsciously bating their breath, all apprehensive about where Behemoth was leading them and what they would find when they got there.

Eventually, the bike pulled ahead slightly and came to a halt by veering around and skidding to a stop, its headlight now facing the rest of the ground. Wingdramon flared his gravity-repelling wings and came to a halt himself not far away.

They all stared at the area for a moment before Diatrymon simply summed everything up with the word, "Whoa."

That was quite an accurate word to use. There was no sign of any other life around here but it was quite plain to see that there had been a struggle here of some kind. Aside from the skid-marks created by Behemoth, the ground was littered with craters of many sizes and a couple of furrows and several large, clawed footprints that implied that something heavy had stamped there. The other holes looked like they had been made by bodies crashing into the ground, such as a large hole nearby that was practically several feet deep and appeared to be Beelzemon-sized.

The rest of the area was littered with soil and chunks of earth that had clearly been thrown up by enormous cannon-blasts, possibly from something like Berenjena or whoever had been on the other side of the attack. The whole area was pockmarked with the holes created by what had obviously been quite a large battle. The participants themselves were nowhere in sight, but they had left a massive mess behind them.

Wingdramon placed Diatrymon on the ground and Lilamon hopped off his back and hovered just above the ground, as the four of them stared at the destruction. "This is quite recent," Wingdramon observed. "This couldn't have happened too long ago."

"You don't think..." Calumon murmured fearfully. "You don't think it could have been Impmon that was here, could you?"

"It... might not have been," Lilamon whispered, thought she quite clearly didn't believe it. She was grabbing at the coat-tails of a faint hope that Impmon might be okay. "This could have been anything. Impmon could be right at the other end of the Digital World and..."

"Lilamon," interrupted Diatrymon. "I think you'll find that denying it is pointless. Look at this." The others looked, to see that Diatrymon was focused on something on the ground between his feet. As they others saw what he was looking at their stomachs dropped. Large black feathers were littering the ground near one of the larger craters. Feathers which would look quite at home on the wing of a Beelzemon.

"Oh no," Lilamon cried, resisting the urge to cover her eyes and deny everything. "No, it can't be."

"It gets worse," Wingdramon added, after a moment. "Look at that, over there. By Behemoth's wheel."

They looked and they saw, and Lilamon had to almost physically fight herself as she almost broke down right there. Behemoth was standing faithfully over the purple-rimmed D-Arc that Impmon had stolen from his Tamers. Lilamon knew what had happened right there. Impmon would never part with his D-Arc unless something terrible had happened. It was the last link he had to his Tamers and was unbelievably precious to him.

"_Unable to stop his capture,_" Diatrymon sighed. "Looks like we were too late."

Lilamon hovered over to Behemoth, who rolled backwards slightly and allowed her to pick up the little device in her petals. He held it up to her face and sniffed, trying to stop herself from crying. She knew that crying would not doing Impmon any good whatsoever, but the sense of failure was almost overwhelming. She turned back to look at the others and noted that they were similarly downcast. Calumon flat out _was_ crying. They had failed. Impmon had finally been taken.

They could hardly be held accountable for his disappearance. After all, it had been Impmon who had left them behind. But they still couldn't help but feel personally responsible for all this. They had done so well in protecting him up until that point, but when the final strike had fallen, they had not been there to help.

"Who could have done this?" asked Diatrymon, his talons flexing and digging into the ground. "What could have happened? Do we know for sure that he's been taken?"

"He must have been," Lilamon murmured, clutching the D-Arc to her chest and feeling her eyes threatening to water even more. "He must have been."

Suddenly something bumped her in the back of her leg and she stumbled slightly. Startled, she turned around to see that it was Behemoth. The motorcycle reversed a few feet, then veered around so it was side on to the fairy Digimon, presenting its seat to her. When Lilamon merely stared blankly, it revved its engine again.

"Er..." Lilamon murmured, staring at the bike. "You... you want me to get on?"

Behemoth made a noise with its engine that somehow managed to sound like a sigh of exasperation. It span its back wheel and sent earth clods flying in response and Lilamon took that to mean yes. "Er... okay," she said, glancing back towards the others who were all watching her with bemusement.

Confused and slightly nervous, Lilamon carefully hovered over the bike and lifted one leg over the top of it, straddling it and settling down on its seat, sitting properly and not hovering. Behemoth revved its engine again, and Lilamon, not quite sure what she was supposed to be doing or what Behemoth was trying to do here, carefully placed the D-Arc on the seat in front of her and reached forward, grasping a handlebar in each of her petalled hands.

There was a second where Lilamon just sat there, her grief at the loss of Impmon momentarily replaced by confusion.

And then she suddenly felt a presence lance into her mind and she cried out, trying to pull away from the handlebars, only to find that she couldn't remove them. It was as if they'd been tied there. But before she could do anything more than cry out, she felt the presence in her head envelope her entire mind, and spread throughout her body, taking control of her muscles. Her legs anchored around the bike even though she had not intended for them to do so and her grip on the handlebars tightened despite her attempt to pull away.

The last thing she saw was Diatrymon and Wingdramon backing away in shock, before her eyes suddenly turned bright red and she lost sight of the world around her. Everything went black, and it felt as if she were in a land that was entirely dark and had nothing else in it, her own mind lost somewhere in the smothering presence of another consciousness, pressing down on her.

What little part of her that was left was shocked. Behemoth had taken control of her body! It was possessing her! But why?

A moment later she got her answer, as a disembodied, mechanical voice suddenly permeated into her brain, going right past her ears and directly into her mind. _Yes,_ said the voice. _My Master is gone. Taken away to the Dark Ocean._

_What the..._ Lilamon gasped internally. Externally it was as if she had fused with Behemoth and become a statue, but inside her mind she was picturing herself in a sea of blackness with the voice coming out of nowhere. _Behemoth? Are you talking to me?_

_Yes,_ said the voice again. _This is the only way I can communicate with those other than my Master. But that is currently irrelevant. What is important is that my Master is gone. I saw it. He was being attacked by six Mega-level Arkadimon._

Lilamon's blood ran cold...er. She had heard of Arkadimon. They had supposedly been an incredibly powerful member of the Demon Lord's army in the olden days, and also one of the most common, capable of digivolving much faster than most other Digimon. A Demon Lord only had to feed a Rookie the data of a few enemy Digimon before he had a full-blown Mega at his side. That name inspired a great amount of fear into all the occupants of the Digital World.

_Are you sure?_ She asked. _I mean, there's no possible way you could have been mistaken?_

_None,_ Behemoth's voice replied. _He was taken before my very radar. Last thing he did was to thrown the D-Arc before he was taken away. I do not know what I am supposed to do now._

_Me neither,_ Lilamon sighed. _Me neither. I suppose we should head out and try to find Ai and Mako. They deserve to know what has become of their partner. Though I dread to think what they'll make of us now, since we're alright and the one they came looking for is... _she paused. _Beyond their reach._

Behemoth said nothing, so, after a few moments, Lilamon asked. _Did he go out valiantly?_

_Of course,_ the bike responded. _To the very end. But it seems that everything he fought for was for nought. Looks like the Digital World may see war again in the near-future, just as GranDracmon wanted._

_Oh, I wouldn't say that,_ Lilamon replied. _There _is_ hope yet. While we were in the Heavens, we learned of a Prophecy. We don't know what it means, but there's a chance that it means things can turn out okay if we just get things right. _She paused for a moment and then said, _Then again, the rest of the stanza after his capture was not exactly encouraging._

_What did it say?_ Behemoth queried.

_Unable to stop his capture,  
Away from him his spirit torn,  
Friends too late to end his torture,  
Demon's evil is reborn._

_You are right,_ Behemoth agreed. _That does not sound particularly encouraging._

_But there is something in it,_ Lilamon perked up. _Its says his friends are too late to end his torture. It doesn't say that they are unable. It says they are too late. Maybe that means... that we do get there eventually – that there _is_ a way. Maybe there is a way that we can get to Dark Ocean. And if Beelzemon really does become evil once more... maybe we can snap him out of it somehow._

_You are, of course, aware, that if I am ordered to attack you then I must do so without question,_ Behemoth replied. _It is in my programming to obey Beelzemon's every order, regardless of what it is for._

_I know,_ said Lilamon. _But where there's a chance, there's hope. Come on, you can unpossess me now. We'll tell the others and then try and find those Tamers._

Behemoth made no further reply, but Lilamon felt that dark presence receding from her being and suddenly she felt her body under her control again and she could see everything around her instead of pitch blackness. As he eyes faded from glowing red to their normal colour, her hands recoiled away from the handlebars on instinct. She shivered and couldn't help brushing herself down.

"Wow, Behemoth," she murmured. "I know that that was kinda necessary, but getting possessed by you feels really creepy. I hope I never have to do that again."

Behemoth rumbled, and Lilamon swung a leg over until she was perched side-saddle and looked up at the others, who were looking concerned. "You alright?" asked Diatrymon.

"Yeah," nodded Lilamon. "I was just talking with Behemoth. Listen, we need to find those kids and... tell them the bad news." She looked down at the D-Arc in her hand and her petals tightened around it with determination. "There might be a way. There has to be a way in which we can get to the Dark Ocean. We just have to find it." She looked up. "Wingdramon. Go. You have to find those kids."

Wingdramon nodded solemnly and said, "Alright. I'll go." He gently shook Calumon off his head, and rose into the air, shooting away at incredible speed that made him almost invisible as he began to search the plains for any Tamer activity.

"You really think we can get Impmon back?" Calumon asked hopefully. "The prophecy said that he'll become evil again."

"You can't think like that," Lilamon shook her head. "Remember what Ophanimon said – prophecies often have double meanings. Nothing is certain, even now. It says we will be "too late" to end his torture. Perhaps that means there is a way to get there after all."

"Yeah, that's right," nodded Diatrymon. "We can't give up hope yet."

"No, we can't," agreed Lilamon, and that tear finally rolled down her cheek. "For Impmon's sake."

* * *

"Hey guys," Takato cried, as the Tamers continued to come up with absolutely no results whatsoever. "I just got a message from Yamaki on the communicator he gave us."

"You did?" Jeri turned around to stare at him. "You mean it works properly."

"Mostly," Takato nodded. "Much better than the last one. I mean, there was a time when I tried to use it and it didn't work, but I think that was because an electricity pylon nearby interfering with it." He frowned and added, "What an electricity pylon was doing at the bottom of the ocean, I have no idea."

"Never mind that, what does it say?" asked Ryo.

"Well, other than the fact that he's asking for another update on our progress," Takato went on. "It says that they've almost finished that portal machine they've been working on for all this time. There's a lot of technical stuff here, you know – things about finding the correct algorithms for the dimensional wavelengths, whatever that means – but they estimate that they will be up and running within a few days at most."

"A few days," Jeri beamed. "But that's great news."

"Yeah," nodded Guilmon. "It means we can get all the others who were lost in that other dimension thanks to Parallelmon back after all."

"You mean Antylamon and her fellow allies?" rumbled the giant form of Vikaralamon nearby. "They will soon be back in this version of reality?"

"Hopefully," nodded Ryo, a grin pasted over his face. "We need to sort out this whole mess with Impmon of course, but as soon as its sorted out, maybe we can head to the other dimension and get them back or something."

"That's if the HYPNOS team remembered to put in a button or a gizmo or whatever that allows you to come back," Kazu added.

"I'm sure they have, Kazu," Guardromon stated helpfully. "After all, they've been working on that machine for several months now. Surely they have had time to think of just about every technical detail that will be needed."

"I can just imagine the faces of Mrs. Wong and Mrs. Nonaka when they heard the news," Elecmon chuckled. "I bet they were absolutely delighted."

"Well, wouldn't you be?" Jeri agreed. "I'm practically over the moon right now, myself?"

"Moon? What is a moon?" asked Sinduramon.

"That big white orb in the sky in the Human World that can usually only be seen at night," Takato supplied.

"Oh, is that what it was called," the rooster shook his wattled head. "You know, I never did figure out what that thing was. It looked like some kind of ball of cheese. But why would you want to be over that thing. It looked pretty high up and you can't fly."

"It's just a phrase," Jeri supplied. "It means that I am really happy."

"Well, in that case, I suppose I am over this moon as well," Pajiramon chuckled. "It will be good to have them back. Perhaps they'll even be able to help us against GranDracmon and his army when we find your Impmon friend."

"There is that," nodded Ryo. "I wonder what the Princess would say when she got back and found herself in the middle of a massive battle again. Something along the lines of she can't leave us alone for a few months before it all goes to pot."

"Yeah, she'd say that alright," Kenta nodded. "Right after she punched you in the face."

"I'd like to see her try," Ryo chuckled.

"So would we," MarineAngemon giggled. "Funny."

"You humans are so confusing sometimes," Vajramon murmured. "Is there some kind of weird antagonism between you two. Because I must admit it would be funny if I punched Indramon in the face."

"Stow it, Ox-boy," Indramon neighed in complaint.

"Eh, it's a long story," Ryo shrugged. "I beat her in a game once and she's never let go of that fact. But right now, that's doesn't matter. What matters is finding Impmon, so everyone keep your eyes open. You never know what you might sOOF!" Ryo had suddenly walked slap-bang into his own partner. Cyberdramon had stopped and Ryo had collided with his back and fallen over, rubbing his nose.

Makuramon immediately burst into laughter, as did a number of the Tamers, in a rare moment of unity between the monkey and the humans. "Oh, I bet that Rika girl would have paid good money to see that," he cackled.

"You have no idea," Kazu said. "She would pay by the truckload for any chance to see Ryo humiliated."

"Sounds like my kind of human," Makuramon sniggered.

"I thought you didn't have any 'kind of human,' Makuramon," Caturamon said pointedly.

Makuramon blinked and then went, "MA-CAAAAA! What I am saying? You're right of course. I have no tolerance of humans of any kind. No. None at all. No way."

"You just keep telling yourself that," Sandiramon hissed as he slid past the monkey. "I'm sure there's a human you would approve of somewhere. Perhaps even these two, Kazu and Kenta."

"Actually I think that might accurate," Jeri murmured to Takato, who sniggered under his breath.

As Makuramon continued to vehemently deny that he could ever like humans in any way, which nobody really believed after that last sentence (maybe even Makuramon was beginning to warm to the humans at his own incredibly slow pace), Ryo got to his feet and glanced at Cyberdramon, who had not moved of acknowledged the fact that he had been bumped into. "You okay there, buddy?" Ryo asked him. "Sense something."

"Yes," Cyberdramon growled, staring up towards the sky. "And I see something too. I sense and see an incoming Digimon." He pointed upwards with a claw and Ryo, as well as a number of the others who were listening in, followed its direction and saw a distant shape high above them that was growing steadily larger as it came towards them.

"An enemy?" asked Ryo, his hand drifting towards his D-Arc, just in case.

"No," Cyberdramon snarled, sounding a little downhearted. "Not an enemy. Wingdramon."

Ryo blinked and looked up again. Sure enough, the distant shape lowering itself from the sky had the huge wingspan of the blue dragon Digimon and what appeared to be a similar silhouette. He was coming towards them at a sure and steady pace. But Wingdramon was supposedly travelling with Impmon. Ryo felt some hope stirring within him.

"Are the others with him?" he asked.

"No," Cyberdramon shook his head. "He is alone."

"Well, it's a start," Ryo nodded and then called, "Hey, Ai. Mako. Look over there. Is that not a Wingdramon I spy?"

The twins, who had been watching Makuramon make a fool of himself, turned around quickly and followed Ryo's point to the dragon coming their way. "That's him!" cried Ai. "That's Wingdramon alright. Maybe he's come to take us to Impmon."

"Guys, we've got a lead," Ryo called out. "Let's ask our dragon friend about Impmon's whereabouts."

"If he runs, we'll never be able to catch him," Mihiramon stepped forward until he was level with the Legendary Tamer. "If he has no passengers then he'll be able to go very fast indeed. Ultra-sonic speed, which none of us can hope to match."

"Well, hopefully he won't run," Ryo nodded. "Let's see what he has to say."

But, as it turned out, Wingdramon had nothing to say. The dragon stopped when he was still several hundred metres higher than the head of Majiramon, who was, by far, the tallest one there. Wingdramon didn't quite know what to say at this point, so he opted for the approach that Behemoth had taken earlier and said nothing. He just lifted a massive claw and pointed in the direction he had come, before turning around and slowly (for him) flying back, hoping that they would follow.

Fortunately, thanks to the pointing claw, Wingdramon was able to get his message across much more easily than Behemoth had been. "He wants us to follow him," Takato cottoned on almost immediately. "Come on. Let's go." He began to run after Wingdramon about as fast as a human child who ate a lot of bread could, completely forgetting that he had a flight capable Digimon who could go much faster.

The others, on the other hand, did not forget. Ryo clambered on Cyberdramon, while Mihiramon allowed Kazu and Kenta on his back and Majiramon lifted Jeri, Elecmon and the twins into his massive hands. As the airborne Devas, Cyberdramon and Guardromon took to the sky, the land-based Devas ran forward. Pajiramon scooped up Takato and dumped him on her back, while Vajramon grabbed Guilmon and tucked him under one shoulder, to loud complaints from the dinosaur. The faster members of the party hurried off after the flying dragon, while the slower Devas, like Vikaralamon, or the ones who didn't really care, like Indramon, were left in the dust.

"Hey! Wingdramon!" shouted Ryo from Cyberdramon's shoulders. "What's the word? Where are you taking us?"

For a moment, Ryo wondered if Wingdramon had even heard him, but then he got a reply, which went, "The word... is not a good one. You'll see soon enough."

Ryo bit his lip and glanced towards the twins. It looked like they hadn't heard, and they were looking extremely excited at the prospect of seeing Impmon again. Ryo wondered if that excitement would soon be crushed when they arrived at Wingdramon's choice of location.

And it seemed that Ryo was right.

* * *

It took surprisingly little time to get to the place where the battle had been, and everyone could tell that there had been some kind of enormous fight there, just as Wingdramon and his friends had been able to. The dragon lowered himself down and the group following him spotted Lilamon and Diatrymon looking up at them, with Calumon at their feet. Behemoth was standing serenely behind them, which belied his true nature as a demonic vehicle. But there was no sign of Impmon.

Fear gripped the hearts of all the new observers and they braced themselves for the worst.

And they got it.

The moment Majiramon placed the people he was carrying back on the ground, the two twins rushed towards the small group standing in the middle of the battlefield debris. The others were not far behind, all wishing to hear the news the moment it was told by one of them.

"Where's Impmon?" cried Mako. "Wasn't he with you guys? You guys were with him a few days ago?"

"Yeah, and Behemoth's here. Is Impmon okay?" Ai agreed, desperate for news.

If it hadn't been obvious enough already that something was terribly wrong, it became more obvious when Calumon lowered his head and huddled closer to Lilamon's leg not wanting to look either of the Tamers in the eye. Calumon only ever got like this when things were very serious. Usually at all other times he was an incorrigibly cheerful person at all times. Jeri's hand automatically went the her mouth, as if preparing the gasp of shock she was going to likely give in advance.

Lilamon looked similarly downcast, and Diatrymon was shuffling on the spot, ripping up chunks of earth and crushing them in his claws as he was fiddling with a pen or something else that would express the nervousness of a normal person. Wingdramon loomed over everyone, but even the dragon seemed unwilling to look at anyone.

Eventually, Behemoth rolled forward slightly and nudged Lilamon in the legs with his headlight. Lilamon stepped forwards on her petal-tips and slowly walked towards Ai and Mako. The two twins were holding their breath, eyes wide in fear as the fairy approached, hoping against hope that she wasn't going to say what they thought she was going to.

But Lilamon appeared to be clutching something in the petals on both her hands. Eventually, she reached the twins and knelt down, her deep, painfully sad eyes meeting theirs', one by one.

Then, she opened her hands and said, "I believe this belongs to you."

Ai and Mako stared almost incoherently at the D-Arc that Lilamon was presenting to them. It felt like dull thuds had gone off in their chests, as the reality of the situation came to them. They figured the same as Lilamon and Behemoth. Impmon had gone to great lengths to steal this device. There was no way he would leave it behind unless something terrible had happened.

Despondently, they both reached out at the same time and took hold of the D-Arc, the tips of their small fingers brushing Lilamon's hands. They both took it out of her grip and the fairy settled on her knees in front of them, forcing herself to look at their reaction. It was about as she had predicted. Both of them looked like they've been stabbed through the heart and their eyes were welling up, as they both looked into her eyes imploringly, begging her to give them good news.

"Where is he?" Mako asked.

But Lilamon had nothing they wanted to hear.

"He's gone," she sniffed, feeling herself beginning to tear up again. "GranDracmon finally got him. He was taken away to the Dark Ocean."

Ai and Mako both looked momentarily shell-shocked, but they could both see the pain on Lilamon's face as clearly as she could see theirs. They stared at one another for a moment before both the twins flung themselves into her arms and hugged her fiercely, tears pouring down their faces at the terrible news. Lilamon's own eyes were leaking now as she wrapped an arm around each of them and pulled them close, trying to protect them as best she could, but knowing that her efforts would do little to help.

"We're sorry," Diatrymon grated, stepping over to them and standing beside Lilamon. "We did the best we could to look after him, and we managed to get a long way. But we couldn't stop it, in the end."

"Because we weren't even there," Wingdramon agreed. "We should have seen it coming after Impmon insisted we help him stay clear of you, but he eventually ran away from us too. We didn't find him in time."

"We're sorry for everything," Lilamon sighed. "Can you forgive us?"

Ai and Mako didn't respond. They were too busy crying their eyes out. Calumon hopped over to them and whimpered, "Oh, don't cry. Crying is not nice. It makes everyone all sad. Look, now I'm crying too." And indeed he was.

Lilamon could see they were not going to get anything out of the twins for a while, but she heard footsteps approaching and saw it was Jeri, with Elecmon by her feet. She recognised the girl as being one of those who were present when Impmon had stolen the D-Arc, so she started looking to her for forgiveness instead.

"You were acting in Impmon's best interests when you helped him to escape from us, weren't you?" Jeri asked.

"Oh yes," sniffed Lilamon. "Yes, we were. We tried to talk him out of it, but it did no good. He was so terrified, so scared that you guys would get into trouble around here. It would only be a matter of time before he tried to escape again. We partook in it only to make him feel better."

"Then," Jeri sighed. "I suppose there's no need for you to seek forgiveness. You were just looking out for him."

"I'm not sure I would have done it," Kazu pointed out. "I mean, come on. They're his Tamers, for crying out loud."

"Don't you think we know that," Diatrymon asked, a little snappily. "But you didn't see him. You couldn't see what he'd been like for the past couple of days. He was becoming more and more insecure and frantic and worried about everything. We thought that reuniting with the Tamers he was dead-set on leaving to protect them would only make things worse for him. It would just add another worry to his mind. We did it to take a load of his shoulders."

"I still feel so guilty though," Lilamon pulled the twins closer to her. "I guess I feel slightly responsible for you guys now. I'm sorry we couldn't protect him."

"You should listen to Jeri," Takato said. "You don't need to feel guilty as long as you were doing the right thing for Impmon."

"That's right," said Ryo. "What we really need to be thinking about now is what to do next. With Impmon gone, we can't tell him why GranDracmon wants him so badly."

"He knows," Wingdramon supplied. "We managed to reach the Celestial Heavens and we had a talk with the Great Angels. They told us of Beelzemon's ability to move to and from the Dark Ocean."

"Maybe Beelzemon can use it to get back here then," Kenta suggested.

"No," Vajramon shook his head. "GranDracmon will take precautions to ensure that can't happen. Your friend will not be returning that way." The ox turned to the others and said, "Did you learn anything else from the angels? We don't usually get information from them, but its always valuable when we do."

"They told us the prophecy that is in the middle of being fulfilled," Diatrymon replied. That caught everyone's attention immediately, even the crying twins, who looked up.

"Prophecy?" asked Takato. "Another one? Great," he rolled his eyes. "Why is their always a prophecy?"

"Because that's the way thing work," Pajiramon replied. "Would you care to share what you learned with us?"

Wingdramon nodded and recited the whole thing, word for word. Everyone listened carefully, eyes widening in all the right places, and when the dragon had finished, there was a lot of sideways glances.

"Oh, I do not like that ending," Kenta murmured. "I do not like those last three verses at all?"

"But those are the only ones left," said Ryo, licking his teeth as his mind moved into a deep-thought-mode. "I hate to say it, but it sounds like Impmon's going to have a _very _rough-time of it in the future."

"What are we supposed to do about it, though?" asked Mihiramon. "If there was any way of us getting to the Dark Ocean, we would have tried it already. We would have taken the fight to GranDracmon long ago and wiped him out. But the Dark Ocean is an alternate dimension and only a few Digimon have the ability to go there on their own. And as far as I can tell, they're all currently in it or dead."

"There must be a way," Lilamon interjected. "The prophecy says that we are too late, which means that we must get there at some point."

"It also says that you four," Sandiramon indicated the newcomers of the group with his tail, "Are loyal to the darkest hour and battle your way through the Demon's Nest. Have you done that yet?"

"No," Wingdramon shook his head. "We haven't. And the Demon's Nest has got to be GranDracmon's stronghold, doesn't it? Lilamon is right. That has to mean that we get there, somehow."

"But how?" Pajiramon murmured. "How can we go about this?"

"The machine!" shouted Takato suddenly. "The portal that Yamaki and HYPNOS are working on. That thing creates gates to other dimensions. If we can use that to open one to the Dark Ocean, then we can all head there within a few days at most."

"And then we could rescue Impmon!" Jeri cried. "That's great! You hear that Ai, Mako. There is a way after all!"

"It may be our only way!" Ryo agreed. "We need to get back to the Human World, quickly. The sooner we get there for the completion, the better."

"And this time," Lilamon nodded, stepping back from the twins. "We'll be there to help you. We're going to prove our loyalty to Impmon." She looked down at the twins. "What do you two say? Are you up for working with the four of us on this little rescue mission?"

"We'll get Impmon back?" Ai asked.

Lilamon wiped her own eyes, then brushed her petals on the faces of the twins to wipe theirs. "I would like to see anything try and stop us," she grinned. She held out a petalled hand, and Ai and Mako both nodded and placed their hands on the top of hers. Calumon hopped over and did the same thing, and suddenly Wingdramon's huge, clawed hand descended on them and practically smothered everyone else's hand. Diatrymon lifted a clawed foot and gently placed it on top of Wingdramon's hand, the tough scales offering protection from the sharp blades.

Impmon's four family members had become six. Together, they _would_ get Impmon back.

* * *

A rather more opportunistic end to this particular chapter than the last Impmon one, but at least they have a potential way of ensuring that everything turns out alright. But, of course, nothing is certain, and we have no idea what's happening to poor Impmon himself after he was taken by the Arkadimon. However, you'll find out the answer to that in the next Impmon chapter.

Sorry if I laid on the explanations of why Lilamon and the others helped Impmon to steal the D-Arc a little thick. It was a necessary chapter to keep the story plot going, and I suppose you could say I was trying to ensure none of you resented them too much for it. But everything they said is absolutely true.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

Next time...

* * *

As per the Chancellor's instructions, Commander Fox begins to march on the Jedi Temple with a huge company of clones, unaware of the fact that the Jedi are preparing for their inevitable attack, and that a Digimon, a Wookiee and a Bounty Hunter are waiting for them there as well. How will the Jedi go about repelling the assault on their home? The next chapter will feature Jedi with minor roles in the series, and even a few that only feature as cameo shots.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 156 : Temple Invasion**


	156. Temple Invasion

Not much to say here except read on. I hope that I have the internet back soon, but even if I do get it up within a few days, I am seriously considering updating only on Mondays, because I rather like these mini mass-updates. It may mean that you have to wait longer after the cliffhangars that I seem to love giving you, but it gives you all a lot more stuff to read when I finally do update.

Read on and enjoy.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 156:- Temple Invasion**

* * *

After Renamon had delivered the message to Chuchi about the Chancellor's identity and the whole thing about Order 66 coming down and the clones beginning to turn on the Jedi, the fox and her entourage, if you could call them that, had left pretty quickly. Renamon had said that she was needed at the Temple, which would probably be undergoing attack pretty soon, so she and Chewbacca were going to help out.

What Bane and Todo would do next, Chuchi had no idea. Perhaps the Bounty Hunter would consider his job done as soon as he dropped them off at the Temple, take the pay he had and just leave and let the Galaxy sort out its own problems.

Right now though, Chuchi had more to worry about than what Cad Bane would be doing with his time. Namely the fact that her view of the whole Republic, which she had always been proud to be a part of and considered a powerful force for good, had been completely turned upside down, as had the celebratory mood she had felt at the capture of Dooku and Ventress. Everything was going topsy-turvy and Chuchi felt completely and utterly powerless to intervene.

She was just a Pantoran woman, only a year or so out of her teens, who was a part of something much bigger than her. Right now, across the Galaxy, Jedi were fleeing as the troops which supported them turned on them in a flash, running and hiding as they were forced to back away from their own clone soldiers, who were, in turn, acting as the puppets for a Sith Lord. The whole Republic was being changed in a single afternoon, and Chuchi felt slightly to blame.

After all, she had been part of this conspiracy to unearth Darth Sidious. So the repercussions of that were partially her own fault.

She knew she shouldn't be thinking like that. She knew she should be thinking positive, so she forced her mind to dwell on the good things. If she hadn't acted, Aayla would be either be dead or still be in the middle of vigorous torture from the Bounty Hunter. And by exposing Sidious before he initiated Order 66, they had been able to get the word out beforehand, and the Jedi Order was able to prepare or at least react to something which would have otherwise completely taken them by surprise.

That was good, right?

Chuchi dreaded to think what would have happened if Sidious' plan had worked to its full capacity. The plan was so eloquent and complex, and yet scarily simple at the same time. The Jedi Order would have been caught flat-footed by it if it had occurred in the future.

But Chuchi herself could do nothing. She felt so powerless, as a Galaxy-wide turnaround was happening and all she could do was sit on her sofa and brood. She could hardly march into the Chancellor's office and demand that he stopped. That would be a guaranteed way of getting herself killed. And she couldn't help the Jedi either. She couldn't reason with the clones – their loyalty to the Chancellor was too late. She couldn't fight them either – she'd never hefted a weapon of any kind in her entire life.

Yet the feeling of responsibility was still there.

After exposing Sidious, Renamon had come straight to her to tell her and ask her to continue aiding them in any way they could, even after all the Jedi were driven from the Republic as they were sure to be soon enough. She could have gone straight to the Temple to help, but Renamon had felt the need to warn and ask for help first. She considered Chuchi a very important ally, and considering they had met for the first time less than a week ago, this was saying something.

Chuchi had agreed. How could she not? She had dedicated herself to serving the people and the Republic, which is something that the Sith Chancellor would never do once he fully gained control. But the enormity of her task was beginning to crash down on her. She had, effectively, become the new Sidious. _She_ would now be the one who was sneaking around and sending out messages to her secret allies and trying to make sure nobody else in the entire Republic found out about it.

The only difference was that she had no Sith powers, or Jedi powers, and no practice at this sort of thing. How would she ever be able to go along with something like this without getting caught? How would she ever be able to...

There was a knock on her door and, for the third time that night, Chuchi jumped violently. She sat up and stared at the door with wide eyes, her mind leaping to the conclusion that Palpatine knew about her agreement with the Jedi already and was here to kill her or arrest her or something. She quickly pushed that aside, knowing that shouldn't be possible, and called out, "Who is it?"

"It's Padmé," came the reply. "May I come in?"

"Sure," Chuchi nodded, trying to force the stress from her face. Sure enough, Padmé quickly entered the room and smiled at the Pantoran warmly.

"I just wanted to make sure you were okay," the Senator from Naboo told the one from Pantora.

"I'm fine," nodded Chuchi. "A little tired, but I'm okay so far."

"What about that message you got?" Padmé asked. "Has the situation causing you grief been resolved?"

Chuchi smiled thinly. "Well, I suppose you could say that it has, but... well, you know how it is. One problem always seems to replace another. I've still got a whole host of other things to worry about." _And these things are even more serious than the last one,_ she added quietly in her mind.

"It seems to me, Senator," Padmé said. "That you're going through some difficulties that are stressing you out. Trust me. We all go through something like this when we start serving the people. Trust me, when I first became the Queen of Naboo, I found the job so much more demanding than I ever assumed it would be. Nobody ever realises how much responsibility they're given when they step up to the plate in the way we have. I almost broke down a couple of times, let me tell you."

"Really?" Chuchi asked curiously.

"Oh yes," nodded Padmé. "The point is, I know that you're feeling a lot of pressure right now. The end of the war is not going to be a smooth transition for any of us, despite how well things seem to be going. I just want to help you if you need any."

Chuchi smiled gratefully, but inside she felt nothing but pity. Poor Padmé had absolutely no idea what was going on. The Senator had been through so much and fought so many battles, but she still didn't have a clue that she was being manipulated by Palpatine, just as everyone else was. Even the first invasion of Naboo, when she had been Queen, had been a part of this whole plot to destroy the Jedi, as it had allowed Palpatine to be put in power. Padmé herself had decided to initiate the Vote of No Confidence that had put the previous Chancellor out of power.

If she learned of it all, she would be shocked to the core. Her own trusted Senator had been manipulating her even then.

Thank goodness the current Naboo Senator was not a corrupt official.

Chuchi felt the urge to tell her, to let her know everything, to have someone amongst the Senate that she could confide with and get help from. Because she knew that once the Jedi and the Digimon were forced off planet, she would be alone in enemy territory and if she was caught, there would be no back-up for her.

But she couldn't. This was her responsibility. Getting Padmé involved now would be selfish. If Chuchi failed and went down, she would not drag Senator Amidala down with her.

"It's alright," she lied. "The main problem has been resolved. It's just the little bits and pieces I have to pick up."

"Good," nodded Padme. "You sure that there isn't anything I can help with?"

"You needn't concern yourself, Padme," Chuchi waved it off. "The Chairman of Pantora and I have things under control now. It should not be long before everything quietens down and goes back to normal. Now, I hope you don't mind, but the last couple of days have not really granted me the opportunity for a lot of sleep. I am quite tired and I was thinking of turning in early."

"Of course," nodded Padme. "I won't keep you up. Goodnight, Chuchi."

"Technically it's still mid-afternoon," Chuchi chuckled. "But thank you, Padme. I do truly appreciate the support."

"Anytime," nodded Padme and turned to leave. As the door shut behind her, Chuchi sighed and regarded her gloved hands.

"I could do with support now more than ever," she murmured, as she got up and moved over towards the balcony that stood by her landing platform, stepping out into the surprisingly clear Coruscant air and moving across to stand by the railing, resting her hands on it and staring up at the stars, knowing that out there, thousands of Jedi would now be running for their lives.

The sprawling metropolis before her simply had no idea what a massive upheaval they were about to have thrust upon them. How many would believe the Jedi were traitors? How many would suspect there was something strange going on in the Senate? How many of them would even care as long as the war was drawing to a close?

Suddenly, something caught Chuchi's attention and the Pantoran noticed a large number of Republic gunships flying over the buildings not too far away. That in itself was not an unusual sight. What was unusual was that there were so many. Gunships usually patrolled in small groups, but there were dozens and dozens of them this time, all heading in the same direction.

Chuchi did not have to follow their flightpath to know that they were making a beeline for the Jedi Temple.

The invasion was beginning, just as Renamon had predicted it would. Chuchi's heart was practically in her mouth it was pumping so hard. The clones were about to fulfil the desires of the Sith and try to wipe out the Jedi still on the planet.

As Chuchi watched them flying towards the Temple, her hand drifted down to her communicator and plucked it from her side, lifting it up. She had to warn Renamon. They knew the attack would be coming soon, but if Chuchi could play even a small part by telling them it was coming now, then she would at least feel better herself, and hopefully the Jedi would be better prepared.

* * *

Despite the fact that the war was drawing to a close, the number of Jedi in the Temple was surprisingly slim. There were still only about three dozen fully-fledged Knights and Masters, several Padawans and a lot of younglings. Right now, all of them were gathered in the vast main entrance hall of the Temple, and standing up at the front was Master Yoda, with Obi-Wan off to his right and a little behind.

Yoda had just delivered the shocking truth to the Jedi before him.

"But how is that possible," a Mon Calamari Jedi called Eekar Oki was saying aloud. "How can the Chancellor be Darth Sidious? Surely we would have been able to sense it if he were?"

"Skilled in deception, the Chancellor is," Yoda leaned on his stick and addressed the crowd. "Eluded us for a long time, he has. Too long. But exposed now, he is. And only a short amount of time, we have, before the clone army arrives to try and destroy us."

"But the clones have served us so faithfully," cried Eekar. "Would they really turn on us at the word of the Chancellor?"

"You know they would," Obi-Wan sighed. "The majority of them, anyway. Some of them are indeed going renegade, but the vast majority are with the Chancellor. There are many Jedi who have already perished at their hands. We must ensure that we do not become among that number."

"If that is the case," a green-skinned female Twi'lek called Finn Ertay declared. "We must defend the Temple. We have to push them back and protect the younglings."

There was a smattering of approval from the other Jedi, but Yoda shook his head and said. "Too late, it is. Full advantage, the Chancellor has. Vastly outnumber us, the clones do, and many more can be called back to Coruscant to add to the reinforcements. Hold out for only so long, we can, before brought down, we are. Retreat, we must, and head for the Outer Rim."

"Are you sure that is our only option, Master Yoda?" the librarian, Jocasta Nu, asked. "There must be another way."

"No. Master Yoda is right," Obi-Wan said. "Staying here is suicide. We have almost the entire Grand Army of the Republic against us now. The Jedi Order is not mighty enough to take them on, let alone the numbers we have here. But, if we escape, we will survive."

"And take the time to plan our comeback and how to stop the Chancellor, we can," agreed Yoda.

The Jedi quickly bowed to the wisdom of the Council Members, but then Finn Ertay voiced the question that was on all their minds. "How did we come by this information, anyway? How did we find out Sidious' identity?"

Obi-Wan was about to reply, when the answer to Finn's question decided to pick that moment to burst into the room. "Master Kenobi, Master Yoda," Renamon cried as she dashed out of a corridor nearby on all fours and catapulted herself onto the steps that the Council Members were standing on.

The Jedi massed before them stepped back in shock at the sight of this creature and many of them automatically reached for their lightsabers. Yoda held up a hand to steady them, and as if by magic they were stilled. "At ease be, my friends," he said. "A friend, she is."

"This is Renamon," Obi-Wan said. "She is a Digimon, and has been helping the Jedi Order in secret for several months now. We kept the information concealed to allow minimal leakout chance. She and her allies have been secretly fighting alongside the A-Team for several months now, and it was she, combined with some ingenuity from Aayla Secura, that uncovered Sidious' mask."

As if to prove Obi-Wan's story, Chewbacca chose that moment to appear, and hurried out of the same corridor to join up with Renamon. The Jedi stared at the Digimon in wonder, but Renamon had little time for holding still and letting them. She turned to Yoda and said, "I just received word from Senator Chuchi. The clone army is on its way. They'll be here in a matter of minutes."

"How are we going to get away?" asked Eekar. "Shuttles are almost defenceless compared to gunships."

"Actually," said Renamon. "I've received word from Terriermon that Commander Cody is amongst the clones who have decided to stay with the Jedi. He is sending a cruiser up into space as we speak. If you can get to that cruiser and board there, you should be safe."

Obi-Wan blinked and felt a surge of gratitude to the clone. "Good man, that Cody," he smiled. "A good man."

"Move quickly, we must," Yoda said. "Younglings," he turned to the smaller Jedi, most of whom were looking quite terrified. "Be calm, you must. Evacuate you, we will. Volunteers, we will need, to take them to the shuttles and protect them from the clones."

"I will be their guide," said an elderly voice, and the hunched form of Tera Sinube stepped forward. "I fear I would not be much good in a battle anymore," he said, leaning on his staff. "But I can certainly help guide these younglings to the escape pods." He turned to look at the crowd of children and said, "Normally I would be averse to haste, but I would say that this is a situation that calls for it if ever there was one. Come younglings. Follow me to the shuttles. We will get you out of here."

"I shall go with you," Jocasta Nu declared, and about seven other Jedi volunteered for the task and crowded around the younglings. As they moved off into the corridors of the Temple, Yoda turned back to the crowd.

"Buy time, the rest of us will," he said. "Hold the clones back, we must, and give the younglings a chance to escape."

"What about the prisoners, Master Yoda?" asked Renamon. "The Separatist leaders? Many of them have seen me or my fellow Digimon, and it would be best if we could stay secret."

"Good point," Yoda hummed. "Best, it would be, if we were to take them with us. Secure them, we can, and keep the Digimon safe as well, we can. Take care of that, can you, Renamon?"

The fox nodded and said, "You've got it. Don't worry. I know the way to the detention level. Chewie, you can come with me and help me out, right?"

The Wookiee nodded and hefted his bowcaster. But there was another voice from the crowd that drew Renamon's attention, as someone cried. "We'll assist you with that too, Renamon." The Digimon turned around to see a young, human girl shoulder her way to the front of the crowd, flanked by a male green-skinned Twi'lek and a Cerean boy of the same age, all of whom were looking significantly healthier than the last time Renamon had seen them. Three younglings that seemed to have defied the order to go with Master Sinube.

"Kalifa," she blinked. "Jinx. O-Mer," she grinned and nodded. "Alright, if you guys feel up to it. Ready to work with them again, Chewbacca?"

"Churcwo," Chewbacca nodded, sending them a furry-faced grin of his own.

Renamon was about to head off and go for the prison level, when Obi-Wan suddenly caught her arm and whispered, "Wait. Where's Bane? Why is he not here with you?"

"I don't know," Renamon shrugged. "He dropped Chewie and me off in one of the hangars but there wasn't really the time to discuss what to do next since I just got that call from Chuchi. He'll probably be around here somewhere though."

"I don't like it," Obi-Wan shook his head. "Having a Bounty Hunter like him running loose in the Temple. Anything could happen. But, I suppose, right now we have bigger concerns. Go."

Renamon nodded, and sprang down the corridor, with Chewbacca and the three younglings hard on her heels. Yoda turned back to the crowd and said, "Everyone else, to positions we must go. Hurry! Nearly upon us, the clone army is."

* * *

And indeed he was right. The majority of the gunships had landed at the foot of the Temple and the clones had been disgorged onto the bottom of the steps. Quickly forming themselves into ranks, the troopers were making their way up the stone staircase that lead to the main doors, their feet pounding the ground in unison in a way that somehow made them far more intimidating than any battle droid army could.

Commander Fox was at their head, leading the group. The head of security had rounded up several more clones brigades and a couple of other commanders that spent most of their time on Coruscant – Commanders Thire and Stone, as they marched on the Temple with one, single, ominous purpose. The wipe out the Jedi Order within.

As he marched, Commander Fox still couldn't shake the feeling that they were doing something wrong here, but he could not for the life of him figure out what he was supposed to do about it. He'd seen, firsthand, the dedication that the Jedi put into the safety of the Republic, so why was the Chancellor suddenly declaring them traitors and trying to have them wiped out. It didn't make sense. At all.

Nevertheless, the Commander was not supposed to question direct orders from the Chancellor. He was supposed to carry them out. The Jedi Temple loomed overhead, like a giant monolith that rose above everything else. Once the attack began, practically everyone in sight of the Temple on Coruscant would be able to see it, and would wonder what was going on.

Behind them, gunships hovered patiently, waiting for the clones to reach the front door before they launched an attack of their own – the plan being to punch through several levels of the Jedi Temple at the same time to try and come at the Jedi within from several angles, and swarm most of the Temple at the same time.

Commander Fox placed his helmet firmly on, as did his flanking Commanders, when they finally reached the top of the stairs and marched straight towards the doors.

Fox knew there was something off almost immediately. There was usually a gatekeeper of some kind to greet people who came to the door, but there was no sign of him now. Fox had a feeling that the Jedi already knew that they were about to be attacked. How they knew, he had no idea. The Chancellor had only said he had uncovered a plot against him, not how.

But if the Jedi had an inkling about what was going to happen, things were about to get wild.

But, there was only one way to find out.

Fox sighed, and raised his hand then decisively lowered it in the direction of the doors, a clear signal to charge. And charge the clones did. With the Commanders in the lead, the clone forces suddenly broke their marching stride and made for the doors. Several clones threw thermal detonators at the large structure, which attached to the doors and caused an explosion with threw them open with enormous bangs and plumes of smoke, just in time for the clones to charge through them and into the Temple's main hall...

Where they found a large number of Jedi waiting for them. Lightsabers flashed into life all across the room as about twenty Jedi faced off against the charging clones, with Master Yoda at their head, each one with a grim look of fortitude on their faces.

The clone's military training kicked in, overriding their fear of their opponents, whom they had all seen in action. They hardly broke their stride as they filled the room, sending a wave of blue lasers pulsing towards the Jedi like a swarm of angry wasps. The lightsabers of the Jedi immediately sprang into motion and began to parry the shots, dancing wildly around and catching the lasers to send them ricocheting around the room and pepper the walls.

Fox pulled to a halt and crouched down, aiming his rifle at the Mon Calamari Jedi Eekar Oki and letting off several shots at him. The Jedi Knight appeared to be a skilled swordsman, and his blue lightsaber whirled around to catch the shots of Fox and several more clones that were aiming their weapons at him. The lasers went flying back to hit one clone in the arm and another in the knee, but other than that, the Mon Calamari was doing little to go on the offensive. He just stood there and defended alongside his fellow Jedi.

Finn Ertay was making similar defensive motions. She didn't take a single step forward or try and engage the clones directly in any way. She just span and dodged and twirled her own green lightsaber blade and sending the blue lasers being sent her way up towards the ceiling with every interception. She didn't take a step backwards either, but when one clone did begin to get a little close to her, she threw out her hand to Force-push him backwards several feet before she went back on the defensive.

In fact, almost none of the Jedi were taking a single step in any direction. They were tuning in with the Force and holding their position with steadfastness, refusing to give an inch or advance. The clone's charge was effectively halted as they faced off against their opponents, dropping down and firing their weapons at the Jedi line, but nothing they did seemed to be punching through. The line of Jedi spanned the entire room, and none of the clones particularly wanted to get too close to the beings before them. Those lightsabers could be deadly efficient and they all knew it.

Only Master Yoda was in the middle of moving, but he was not moving forwards and backwards either, only from left to right. The small, green Grand Master had become something like a living pinball, bouncing and flipping backwards and forwards across the line, stopping now and then to whirl on the spot and spring about, his green shoto flashing in all directions to help a beleaguered Jedi until the Jedi in question got back under control, before he was off again, to assist another of his brethren.

This was not the way things were supposed to be going. There were hundreds of clones outside that currently couldn't even get through the doors because they were blocked by their fellows, who were trying to gun down the insurgent Jedi standing in their way. Commander Thire seemed to be noticing this as well, because he cried, "Clear the path! Use the grenades!"

A number of the clones promptly primed their thermal detonators and flung them at the line of Jedi, the little bombs rolling to the feet of the line. But even presented with this new dilemma, the Jedi were not moving away. Instead, Master Yoda responded by backflipping behind the line and sheathing his blade, calling on the Force with a wave of one clawed hand. Abruptly, all the grenades lifted into the air and were flung towards the ceiling, where they exploded and took out large chunks of the top of the hall, which promptly fell to the battlefield below.

The clones dodged backwards as bits of metal crashed to the ground where they had been and large piles of broken segments of ceiling littered the hall between the two factions. Commander Stone ran forward until he was perched behind one of these and turned to fire on the Jedi from over the top of it. More clones ran forwards into similar positions, allowing the clones behind to squeeze inside and add their own laser-fire to the battle.

Commander Fox, on the other hand, was watching the battle carefully. As of yet, none of the clones had been killed. There were a couple of cases of injury, but the majority of their deflected shots were being directed up or to the sides, as had the grenades just now. The Jedi were simply defending and not attacking in any way.

Aside from the fact that traitors to the Republic should be fighting and killing and trying to escape, which further confused Fox, the clone commander could see what they were doing. For some reason, these Jedi were stalling the clones and trying to buy time for something. Probably for others among their number to escape, as well as stopping them from bringing their full forces into the Temple.

Not to mention holding a line formation like this made it easier for the Jedi to defend themselves. If they charged to engage the clones with their blades, it would be far easier for the clones to surround them and blast them down – they could kill a Jedi in a matter of seconds that way, but they couldn't do that at the moment with the Jedi forming their practically impenetrable wall.

Commander Fox quickly crouched down and called in on his comlink. "Gunships!" he cried. "Begin the assault. We're caught in a stand-off in the main entrance hall. We need more men in the Temple as soon as possible."

* * *

"Copy that, Commander," said one of the pilots of the gunships outside as he winged his craft upwards and towards a section of wall a few floors up from the main entrance and hit the button before him. Green cannon-blasts burst out of the guns at the fore of the ship and collided with tumultuous explosions and eruptions of concrete and metal, huge segments of the wall were torn away and fell down the side of the Temple to litter the ground below.

The gunship pilot quickly steered his ship around until his craft was side on to the walls and opened the blast doors. The clones inside quickly fired cable from their rifles that pierced through the walls and stuck there, before using them to aid their jumps as they leapt from the gunships and in through the hole, into the Temple corridor that was beyond it.

"Come on!" cried one. "We have to get to the entrance hall..."

He faltered when suddenly three Jedi rounded the corner nearby and stood, blocking their way. At their head was Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the Human Council member levelled his blade in their direction. "I don't think so," he said, and he ran forward, his flanking Jedi moving with him. The clones quickly opened fire, but Kenobi's blade moved like lightning to block their shots and with a Force push he sent several of the clones sprawling. The other Jedi followed his example and their Force pushes knocked several clones back out of the holes they had just jumped through and they fell to the ground far below.

As the Jedi with him incapacitated the remaining clones, Obi-Wan slid to a halt by the wall and saw the gunship outside, which was turning around and preparing to blast him. Obi-Wan sheathed his blade and grabbed it with the Force, wresting control from the pilot and turning the ship around, sending it spiralling towards the ground as its engines no longer controlled it.

Across the Temple, skirmishes like this were erupting all over the place, as gunship crewmen leapt into the Temple and started running down the corridor where they would, sooner or later, run into a small group of Jedi and engage them in battle. Some of the less experienced Jedi succeeded in holding the clones back, while others did slightly better and were able to push them away.

* * *

But it was not all one-sided. The clones were doing their fair share of damage as well. As one group of three Jedi took on a bunch of clones in one of the corridors, they were able to force the clones back several steps and prevent them from getting further into the Temple. But their efforts were immediately crushed when a second group of clones appeared behind them and opened fire, one of them hefting a Z-6 rotary blaster cannon. The three Jedi were quickly mown down and the two groups of clones united and dashed deeper into the Temple.

Another group of Jedi engaging the clones in the corridors were swiftly silenced as well. Their blades hummed as they deflected the shots of the clones, forcing them to take cover from their own laser fire, but then the wall beside them was promptly blown in by a gunship from outside and the blast wiped out two of the Jedi before they could do more than blink. The third was thrown against the wall and banged her head against it, momentarily dazed, and the clones took advantage of her incapacitation and finished her before moving on.

* * *

Smoke was beginning to rise from the Temple as the clones pressed their attack and eventually, they were beginning to get a slight upper hand in the fight. In the main entrance hall, a clone wielding a rocket launcher had finally managed to squeeze into the room. Under the direction of Thire, he promptly moved forwards and let off a huge blast in the direction of the Jedi line.

Finally, the line broke. Finn Ertay was forced to leap out of the way as the blast almost consumed her and she was sent rolling. The Quarren she had been standing next to was blasted backwards and slain on the spot, while the Bith on his other side cried out as he suffered severe burns and fell, mortally wounded.

Finn looked up in alarm as several of the clones pointed their rifles at her while she was on the ground and let fly. But suddenly, Yoda was there before her, deflecting the shots that were about to crash into her and sending a burst of ceiling debris flying with the Force to knock the clones backwards, allowing the green-skinned Twi'lek enough time to clamber to her feet and get back in the action.

"How much longer can we keep this up?" she asked loudly, parrying some more lasers as the Jedi tried to fill in the gap made by the Bith and the Quarren.

"Hold them off as long as we can, we must," Yoda replied, swatting a shot from a clone back at him to hit him in the thigh and cause him to stumble and fall, clutching his leg. "Wait for the message from Sinube, we will. Until then, hold the line we shall."

Finn nodded and ducked down, hurling a piece of broken pillar at a pair of clones and bowling them into their comrades.

Eekar Oki the Mon Calamari saw that the clone with the rocket launcher was preparing to launch another blast at their line. Already, the Jedi had been forced backwards slightly by his initial attack. They had to hold on for a while longer, so he ducked down and grabbed the rocket launcher with the Force, wrenching it from the clone's grip and batting him over the head with it, before tossing it over his shoulder. In doing so, he only just managed to avoid getting shot in the chest, and hurriedly batted away two more shots with his blade, as he got back to his feet.

Yoda span around and took up position in the middle of the line, before running forward to leap on top of another pile of debris. Recognising the leader of the Order, the majority of the clones turned to fire on him, and Yoda went physically insane, spinning and whirling until his blade seemed to be forming something like a protective circle around his small body, it was moving so fast, batting the lasers aside.

Finn Ertay saw the opening this caused and moved forwards, the rest of the line following her example as they advanced towards Yoda's position. The clones quickly returned to their previous positions and fired on the line as a whole, but the Jedi were now much closer and they stepped backwards hurriedly, determined to stay out of range of their blades.

Yoda span from his debris pile and landed on another one. The clone crouched behind it looked up at him with alarm, and Yoda looked down to see it was Commander Thire. Jedi and clone stared at one another for a moment, both remembering the time on Rugosa when they had aided each other in taking out a full droid battalion to try and convince the Toydarian King to join the Republic.

Thire had given Yoda a lot of respect during that mission, and he was reminded of that as he saw Yoda standing above him.

Yoda blocked four more shots and said, "Come to wipe the Order, have you, Thire? Hm?"

"I... I'm sorry, General," Thire said, lifting his blaster. "I have no choice."

"Deceiving you, the Chancellor is," Yoda stated. "Always a choice, you have. The real enemy, we are not."

He did not get a chance to say any more than that before another rocket-launcher wielding clone aimed a blast at him and he was forced to leap out of the way. But, as Yoda leapt to rejoin the Jedi line as it was forced backwards, he felt satisfied. Thire had heard his words. Maybe... just maybe... he had managed to plant a little seed of doubt in the Commander that might last after the Jedi were gone.

And it looked like that time would be soon because the line was beginning to be pushed back. A Rodian Jedi had finally let a blaster bolt slip through his guard and had quickly fallen to the bolts, and several others were beginning to flag slightly. Yoda frowned. They would not be able to last much longer. Especially since more rocket-launcher clones were moving into the room now.

* * *

Outside, one of the gunships was winging its way up to the west tower, which was some way away from most of the actual fighting, but this was not a mission to join in the fight. This was a special assignment given to them by Commander Fox at the orders of the Chancellor, and they were determined to make the best of it.

As with the walls down below, the gunship fired on the walls and allowed the clones to cable their way in. As they landed, their leader, Captain Drak, looked up and quickly scanned the corridor they were standing in with his eyes. On seeing it clear of Jedi, he got up from his crouching position and darted off down the corridor, the group of nine clones he had behind him hard on his heels.

It didn't take them long before they came to an enormously-thick metal set of blast doors situated at the end of the corridor. He placed a hand on the doors for a moment and nodded, knowing that he had found the right place. He quickly turned around and swiftly gave signals to the rest of his men to get to work. Two of them stepped forward and began to try to hack through the locking mechanism, which consisted of a panel that could usually only be unlocked with the Force. Two more hurried a nearby and similar set of blast doors and began to do the same, while the remaining five hurried into several of the nearby corridors and take small devices out from their backpacks and began fixing them to the walls.

Drak watched for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of explosions and fighting so fierce that the whole Temple occasionally seemed to rock coming from far down below, as the clones around him continued with their jobs. "Hurry," he murmured to them. "We may not have a lot of time."

"Everything's set, Captain," said one of the clones as he ran out of the corridor. "It's all in place."

"Same thing over here," called another clone.

"Here too," added another.

"What about you two?" asked Drak to those nearest to him. "You finished hacking through that thing yet?"

"It's not easy, Captain," said one of them. "The Jedi really know what they're doing here. But just give us a few more seconds and we can break through. Just need to cut this... wire... here... and then add a little... electrical...charge right here..."

There was a click as the Force-panel whirred and the doors slid open. The clones all looked inside and their eyes settled on the woman in the middle of the cylindrical room, whose wrists and ankles were locked in cuffs that were reacting to the suspension field around her, holding her arms out and at head-height and her ankles together as she hovered above the ground.

Asajj Ventress looked up and blinked in surprise when she saw the clones. That surprise turned into a growl as she said, "What are you doing here? What's going on out there?"

Captain Drak ignored her and turned to the other two clones nearby just in time to see them open their door as well. The room that their door led into was similar, except its occupant was an elderly man with a white beard, who gazed at the clone imperiously and said, "Who are you? And why are you here, unlocking my cell. I thought that only Jedi were allowed access to these halls."

"There's been a regime change," Drak said the man, Count Dooku. "The Jedi are being declared traitors, but the Chancellor wishes to have a word with you in person before he decides on your fate. You and your little apprentice here?"

"Regime change?" Dooku asked. "Jedi traitors?" He had to resist smirking in triumph and also in staring in surprise. That could only mean one thing. His Master had initiated Order 66 well ahead of schedule. Something had forced his hand, and Dooku had no idea what that might be, but regardless this was glorious news. Soon the Jedi Order would be out of commission and he would be free. This was not the way he had envisioned Sidious rescuing him, but it would certainly do.

"What's happening?" Ventress yelled. "I demand that somebody tell me what's going on!"

"Stop, clones!" cried a voice. Drak turned around and saw a bunch of five Jedi running towards them, lightsabers drawn and determined to stop them from freeing the prisoners, hurtling down the corridor at incredible speed. But they were doomed. Drak carefully judged the distance and, when he thought they were close enough, his thumb slammed down on a little button in his hand. The detpacks that the clones had been planting on the walls of the corridors went off and all five Jedi were consumed in the blasts, the corridors collapsing in on their bodies.

Ventress blinked at the sight, but smirked and said, "Oh, that was good."

Drak activated his comlink and said, "Prisoners secured, Commander."

* * *

"Acknowledged," Commander Fox replied and then he stood up and cried, "Push forward, brothers! Force them back! Move it!"

Two more Jedi had fallen in the line, which was now being pushed back across the room. The Bith had succumbed to is injuries and died quickly, and a human was no dead as a result of another rocket blaster. In comparison, some of the clones were now dead as well, mostly from ricocheted blaster shots and one from getting way too close to the Jedi line.

Yoda frowned as he ushered the Jedi line back across the room, spinning about and pulsing the blaster bolts of the clones back at them. He hoped that Master Sinube and Renamon had managed to do what that had set out to do soon. It wouldn't be long before they would have to beat a retreat.

* * *

"What is going on up there?" cried Wat Tambor as he covered his head with his large hands. The Skakoan former leader of the Techno Union was cowering in his cell on the detention level, which was down several floors from the main entrance. He and the other Separatist leaders that were being held down here were panicking, wondering what was happening as explosions and the distant sounds of blaster-fire could be heard from above.

"It sounds like an attack of some kind," Tikkes the Quarren cried from another cell.

"Maybe the Separatists have finally gotten around to attacking Coruscant," Passel Argente cried excitedly. "Maybe we're finally going to be rescued!"

"Gratikitooogarigata," Poggle the Lesser's wings flapped as the Geonosian Archduke tried to peer around the ray shield blocking the entrance to his door and see what was going on in the corridor beyond.

But, suddenly, the ray shield vanished and Poggle fell out into the corridor, along with Shu Mai the Gossam and General Loathsom, the Kerkoidien that had been the leader on the Second Battle of Christophsis many months ago. The other Separatist leaders stepped cautiously out of their cells, wondering what they would see greeting them.

Most of them yelped and ducked right back into the little rooms when they saw a huge Wookiee levelling a giant bowcaster at them. Po Nudo the Aqualish found himself staring down the barrel of said weapon, and was painfully reminded of the ill-fated attempt to build a listening post above Kashyyyk's forests. Chewbacca seemed to be remembering that as well, because he was growling in anger.

"What the..." Loathsom backed away as he stared up at the giant, furry humanoid. "What's going on?"

"Who are you?" Passel cried, peering around his cell door in terror. "I demand to know who you are and what's going on up there."

"Quite frankly, that is none of your business," said a voice as Jinx the Twi'lek stepped around Chewbacca to face the group. "Now, you are going to listen carefully to what we say. You guys are going to come with us, quietly. And we're going to take you to a hangar."

"There, you will board a shuttle, and we're going to be taking you somewhere else," Kalifa added, as she and O-Mer stepped forward around Chewbacca's other side.

"And you won't try and escape," finished O-Mer. "Because if you do, you'll only be making things hard on yourself."

"How dare you order us around, child?" cried Tikkes, pointing a tentacle-like finger at the younglings. "You have no right to speak to us like that!"

"Listen to this, Squid-face," Kalifa growled as she stepped past Po Nudo and shoved a finger close to the Quarren's eye. "You may no longer be in a cell, but you're still a prisoner. Now, get moving! You're just being taken to another place to continue your imprisonment."

"What is going on up there?" Wat Tambor cried. "Why is there fighting going on up there?"

"Not that its any of your business," said O-Mer. "But as it happens there's been a massive upheaval in the Republic and we'll leave it at that."

"Now," said Kalifa. "Let's move it! Head for the hangar quickly, but don't try and make a break for it or..."

Shu Mai did exactly that and ran down the corridor, dodging past Poggle and Passel and hurrying down the corridor. Kalifa sighed and waited a couple of seconds, watching as the Gossam tried to run away. Right at that point, Shu Mai suddenly hacked as she was lifted into the air by the back of her robes and was suspended in the air, her legs kicking and squirming.

"Hey! What are you doing?" Loathsom cried. "Put her down. That is not the way to treat a prisoner."

"Treatment?" Kalifa asked. "I'm not doing anything."

Poggle cried out in Geonosian and lifted into the air, his wings blurring as he tried to shoot past Shu Mai and flit around the corner, but before he even drew level with the struggling Gossam he suddenly lurched backwards and fell to the floor, as if he had been punched in the face. And it turned out that he had, because the air shimmered beside Shu Mai and a yellow fox faded into view, clutching the former Presidente of the Commerce Guild by the back of her neck robes.

"Oh, I cannot deny that that felt good," she smirked, looking down at the terrified Poggle. "Hello there, Bugface. Long time, no see."

"You!" Loathsom cried. "It's you! From Christophsis!"

"Surprised to see me again?" Renamon asked, tossing the Gossam to the floor beside the Geonosian. "I was around when most of you were taken into custody, after all. Loathsom, it was me who helped Aayla take out your forces. Tambor, I was the one to blocked your escape at Lessu. Shu Mai, I was the one who tamed the Acklay that attacked your base. Poggle, as you know I helped to take out your Weapons factory. Passel, you poisoned me with your virus and my mate and his sister did not take that very well. Tikkes, I was on the surface dealing with a bigger threat than you when you attacked Naboo. And Nudo... well, I had nothing to do with your arrest, but he did." She pointed at Chewbacca, who grunted.

"Now," Renamon glowered at the group. "I suggest you do what these younglings tell you. I'm sure Loathsom, Poggle and Tambor will be more than capable of telling you what I can do."

"I think we should listen to her," Tambor said meekly. "I do not want to get on the wrong side of her."

"Me neither," Loathsom agreed.

"Good," Renamon nodded. "Now, let's move and quickly. And if any of you run for it again, I will chase you down and cave your heads in. Excuse my harshness, but right now I cannot afford to be lenient. Now, let's go."

"Get moving," Jinx agreed, placing a hand on Tikkes' back and pushing him forward. O-Mer had to step into Passel's cell and pull the terrified Separatist leader out and shove him into line. Kalifa and Renamon bumped fists and the Digimon vanished beneath her perception filter, so the Separatists would not know where she was, and that would deliberately scare them. Kalifa took the lead, while O-Mer and Jinx took up positions on the line to keep an eye on the group, while Chewbacca menaced them from the back with his bowcaster.

The line started moving, slowly. "Move faster!" Kalifa cried. "Hurry! The Temple is being attacked, you know. You want to get caught in the middle of a fire-fight?"

_That_ got the Separatists moving and they hurried forward, trying to keep their heads down and glancing nervously around at the sound of every explosion from above. Passel Argente was crouched extremely low, looking around and trying to locate Renamon, remembering what that rabbit-like Digimon, Turuiemon, had been capable of back of Shili. But he couldn't see her, so his eyes fixed on the next corridor along from him, his legs tensing as he prepared to jump down it and make a bid for freedom. Prison life did not agree with him. If he could just...

"You thinking of going somewhere?" Renamon asked, materialising next to him. Passel jumped and fell back into line. Chewbacca chuckled, and Renamon gave him a thumbs up before she vanished again.

* * *

The younglings that filled the Temple – there was almost a large crowd of the young children of all ages, the youngest being about three or four – crowded close to Tera Sinube and Jocasta Nu as the two elderly Jedi led them through the Temple at a reasonably fast pace, almost a jog. The elderly Sinube could no longer move all that quickly, but they were almost at the hangars now, where they were planning to board one of the shuttles and escape.

There were other Jedi with them. Two of them were out in front with lightsabers drawn, guarding the group from the front as they made their way through the corridors, and there were three more at the back. These Jedi were going to be the escort for the shuttle too, getting into their starfighters to guard them from the gunships as they headed up to the cruiser which was waiting for them above.

The younglings quailed, jumped and whimpered at ever explosions and loud noise that sounded behind them, knowing full well that people would be dying back there as they tried to buy the others enough time to get the younglings away and stop the clones from swarming throughout the Temple, cutting off escape routes everywhere they went.

"There, there, young ones," Sinube said in his slightly hoarse voice, his beaked mouth offering them a reassuring smile. "Everything's going to be alright now. You're in good hands with us, I assure you. Master Yoda will hold the clones back long enough, don't worry."

"Oh, to think it would come to this though," Jocasta shook her head sadly. "It beggars belief to think that the Republic would turn on us like this after everything the Jedi Order has done for them since before the Old Republic."

"Yes," nodded Sinube. "In all my long years, I never would have seen this coming. There I was, thinking that the war was almost over, but it seems that now the _real_ fight begins."

"Master Sinube," a young Whipid tugged on the older Jedi's robes. "Are we ever going to come back here?"

"Of course, young one," Sinube nodded. "Thanks to the efforts of various members of the Jedi Order and... someone rather unexpected allies... we were forewarned of all this before it happened. If we escape today, we can come back another day, fully prepared for all of this. We will not abandon the Republic, and one day, we will walk these halls once more."

"Yes," said Jocasta. "Though I was surprised as the next person when I saw that creature. To think that she and, apparently, others like her have been roaming through this Temple for months while we had no idea is simply astounding."

"Oh," said another youngling – the little Togruta, Ashla. "Now I get why Ahsoka was always getting those massive helpings in the mess hall and then not eating any of it there."

"Come along, children," Jocasta stopped and ushered them along a little more, keeping an eye on them as they filed past. "Only a few more corridors to go and then you'll be safe."

The children picked up their speed, grouping as close together as they could instinctively for protection. But, as the group rounded another corner, they found themselves confronted with a large group of clones, who spotted them and quickly levelled their weapons, opening fire. The younglings shrieked and dropped down, as the Jedi at the front hurriedly started to bat away the laser fire with their blades, stepping backwards as the clones advanced forwards slightly, determined to put an end to the Jedi, regardless of whether they were younglings or not.

After all, Order 66 told them that _all_ the Jedi had to perish. No matter how young they were.

One of the clones had a rotary blaster cannon with him and brought the huge weapon to bear, sending off a small river of blue lasers in the direction of the Jedi. The two wielding lightsabers struggled to hold them back and several of the shots slipped past them. Sinube got to his knees shielding several younglings with his own body as one of the lasers burnt through his cloak and narrowly missed his shoulder.

The elderly Jedi gritted his beak, but he was feeling the heat of battle, and a fire in him that had not burned for many years. For what felt like the first time in over a decade, he stood up and unscrewed a section on the top of his staff, revealing it to be a hidden lightsaber hilt, which he ignited into a blade that was almost completely white. He stood forwards with the other two Jedi and began to help block the blows as well, batting them back up the corridor, and forcing the clone to stop his laser stream and get down to the ground to try again from another angle.

But Sinube lowered himself down too and began to deflect the shots all the same.

Another stand-off situation seemed to be occurring, but the younglings were backing away, most of them barely ignoring their instincts to run. Jocasta Nu was trying desperately to keep them calm and also try and move forwards to give her fellow Jedi aid.

But, just as a laser shot past Sinube and almost burnt through the bun on top of her head, somebody else beat her to the punch.

The clone at the back of the group didn't know what hit him. He had just moved past a corridor to join the others when a red laser shot out of the corridor and punched through his helmet, dropping him like a stone. The other clones around him started in surprise and turned to point their blasters down the corridor, but they were quickly taken out by red lasers too, which crashed into their chests and sent them sprawling against the wall and slumping to the floor. Five clones fell in about three seconds, and the clones close to the front of the group turned around in alarm.

"Who's there!" cried one of them. "What's going ACK!" He got no further because a pair of bolas wrapped around his neck and cut off his air. As he stumbled backwards, the remaining clones, including the one with the cannon, were all consumed in a huge blast of fire that surged out of the corridor and washed over them all, bathing the corridor in which they stood with a raging inferno and charbroiling them inside their own armour.

The Jedi shielded themselves with their arms and the younglings screamed, but the torrent of flames didn't reach them before it fizzled out. As the flames died and the bodies of the clones fell to the floor, Sinube looked up and saw a figure stepping out of the smoke ahead. A figure with a wide-brimmed hat.

He did not need to be an expert on the criminal underworld to know who this person was.

"Cad Bane," he gasped, holding his lightsaber up as the Duros inspected the bodies of the clones. "What are you doing here?"

"More to the point," the Bounty Hunter turned to smirk at the group of Jedi, "Why are the lot of you just standing there? Shouldn't you be getting to the hangar like you're supposed to so you can get out of this building?"

"I asked you a question, Bounty Hunter," Sinube glowered. "Why are you here?"

"Well, since it seems you are insistent on wasting time, I'll tell you that I came in with Renamon and Chewbacca," Bane brushed some ash off his tunic as Todo rounded the corner behind him. "I am the one responsible for getting her in the right place so she could discover that your precious Chancellor is actually a Sith Lord. I some weird way, I guess the whole Jedi Order owes me right about now."

Sinube was about to say, "Why should we believe that?" when a female voice from another corridor ahead called out, "Owes you. Bane, we gave you thirty-million credits to do the job and you still think the Jedi Order owes you for what you did?"

"You know what I mean," Bane said, as Kalifa rounded the corner up ahead and the speaker, Renamon, materialised next to her.

"Yes, I do," Renamon replied, stepping over to him as Kalifa began to usher the terrified Separatist leaders around thee corner and towards the hangar doors. "I suppose we all owe you for trying to keep the secret of me and my fellows safe from discovery. So, I see you stuck around. Is there any particular reason why?"

"Believe me, I've asked the same question," Todo muttered. "Usually after a mission he just leaves as quickly as he can."

"Quiet, Todo," Bane said almost automatically, then he said, "What? You expect me to leave just when things are getting really interesting? I'm standing in the middle of the Jedi Temple as the entire Republic turns itself upside down and the clone army turns on the Jedi. I want to see how this plays out – how my help affects the Galaxy as a whole. Because I think this is by far the biggest repercussion of anything I've ever done."

"Right," Renamon said, still slightly dubiously. "And the reason you took out these clones for the Jedi is because...?"

"I didn't think everyone else would take it very well if I didn't lend a pistol, did I?" Bane smirked.

Renamon still felt as though Bane was not telling the whole truth, but for now, that would have to wait. She turned to Master Sinube and the other Jedi in front of the staring younglings and said, "It's alright, Master Jedi. Bane is with me, though I still don't quite know how that came about. He's telling the truth – he was a big help in revealing the identity of the Sith Lord. You needn't worry about him – he knows that if he turns on us, I will not be happy. And I'm not sure he wants that, because I can be pretty destructive if I'm angry."

"Oh, well, I suppose," Sinube said, sheathing his lightsaber and screwing the hilt back into his staff. "If he really is with you... well, as you say we have bigger concerns. Come along younglings. Into the hangar." He quickly led them forwards, just as Chewbacca shoved a protesting Wat Tambor into the hangar and practically threw Po Nudo in after him.

Renamon bounded into the room and found that Jinx and O-Mer were using the Force to hold Poggle back, as the Geonosian had apparently tried to fly out through the open hangar doors and to freedom. Renamon bounded over and catapulted over him, whipping around to deliver a vicious punch to his gut, which caused him to drop to the ground and gasp in pain.

"You never were much of a one for learning when to stop, were you, Poggle?" Renamon cried as Jinx and O-Mer levitated him into the shuttle where the others were currently being pushed aboard. Kalifa was already at the controls and Chewbacca was pushing his way through to join her, lest one of the Separatists tried to take control of the ship.

As Sinube and Jocasta ushered the younglings aboard another ship and Bane and Todo moved over to their own, Renamon glanced back towards the door, wondering how Yoda and Obi-Wan were getting along. She hoped that Dooku and Ventress were on their way too, but she couldn't wait for the Jedi to bring them. It was time to call in a little something, now that the Separatist leaders were taken care of and the younglings were temporarily safe.

She upended her arm and a communicator slid out of her glove and landed in her palm. And, as most people do with communicators, she used it to make a call.

* * *

The line of Jedi in the main hall had finally broken. A few more Jedi had perished and, as a result, the line was no longer as dense as it was before, and the Jedi were unable to cover one another from the multitude of clone shots which were still streaming at them as more and more of the Kaminoan-bred soldiers poured in through the doors. Not to mention the constant parrying had drained the energy reserves from the less physically fit Jedi and they were unable to keep up the furious swinging and twirling.

Eekar had taken a shot to his shoulder, but was still going strong, albeit slower. Finn Ertay was standing over a wounded human and was diligently defending him with her own blade. Yoda was still bounding around like a mad thing to assist wherever he could, but, as more rocket launchers and blaster cannons began to get passed into the room, he knew that some of his fellow Jedi would not be able to last longer.

He closed his eyes and sensed through the Force that Renamon and Master Sinube had completed their tasks, but it seemed that Dooku and Ventress had been taken by the clones. He sighed, even as he continued to spin and deflect things with his eyes shut. That was problematic. With the Sith Lord and his apprentice in the possession of the Clone Army and about to be brought to Palpatine, it wouldn't be long before the two of them were free once more. That was a blow and would make things more difficult, but there was no time to try and reclaim them as prisoners. They had to leave before they were overwhelmed.

Much like Sidious, they would deal with Ventress and Dooku another time. They had been bested once, and while they were both likely to be more careful next time they crossed blades with somebody, they could be dealt with again. How, Yoda didn't know, but they would come up with that plan when they were all safe.

"Retreat!" Yoda suddenly shouted. "Fall back, we must. Into the Temple, we must go."

His call ran out across the room and the Jedi line completely broke. Eekar turned and lead most of the Jedi still standing – a round twenty of them, and hurried off into the corridors behind the main hall. Finn was forced to turn her back on the clones as she assisted the wounded human towards the escape, and the clones promptly took advantage of this and fired on their exposed backs. Yoda bounded over and landed on Finn's back between her lekku, gripping one shoulder in his hand and using the other to defend her from the shots.

As Finn and the Human hurried after the remaining Jedi and into the corridors, the clones behind them swarmed forwards with cries of victory, pursuing them without delay. But Yoda had no intention of letting them follow closely and hopped off Finn's back and into the mouth of the corridor. Lifting his hands, he reached out to the ceiling with the Force and huge rents and tears immediately appeared above him. Pulling his hands downwards and leaping back as he did so, Yoda brought the ceiling crashing down between him and the clones sealing off the entrance way with a huge mound of concrete and plaster.

The small Jedi Master turned to run, knowing that blockade would not hold the clones back for long. He pulled a small communicator from his robes and said, "All Jedi, calling the retreat, I am. Make for the hangars, we must. Overrunning us, the clones are, so escape, we must."

* * *

"Copy that, Master Yoda," Obi-Wan nodded from the corridor that he was currently in, and he turned to the two Jedi that were still with him. "Well, we've done our bit. Let's get out of here so we can live to fight another day."

The two Jedi nodded and Obi-Wan hurried forwards, leading them through the corridors and towards the distant hangar where he knew Renamon and the others would be waiting for them. But, as they ran, it became clear that things still weren't over, particularly when they came across the bodies of three other Jedi that had obviously been shot in the back by clone troopers.

Obi-Wan halted and stared at the bodies, filled with remorse, but a sudden surge of lasers forced him to start parrying again. A small band of clones were rushing towards him, and suddenly, there were more rushing from another direction.

_Blast it,_ Obi-Wan thought. It seemed that despite their best efforts, the Jedi Temple was still full of clones. This was still going to be far from easy.

* * *

Hope you all preferred this to the scene of slaughter that took place during the Revenge of the Sith. Because I know I did. I still can't watch that scene. But, even now, it still isn't over. There are more tales to be told about various other Jedi scattered across the Galaxy. The only question now is, how many of them will get out of the jams that they are in with their lives intact and how.

Just for the record, Eekar Oki and Finn Ertay are _not_ my own inventions. The two of them are Jedi that have had a couple of cameo shots in two or three episodes of the Clone Wars but neither of them have ever said anything, so I thought I would introduce them here and give them a bigger role than Dave Filoni has so far.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

As the Jedi struggle to escape from the Temple, various other Jedi across the Galaxy are having problems of their own with their clone forces. We will hear tales from them as they try and get away, and we will see who Renamon called at the end of this last chapter.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 157 : Galaxy In Turmoil Part 1**


	157. Galaxy in Turmoil Part 1

Hello everyone. Not a lot to say, except I hope you're psyched for some action because there is still a hell of a lot of it. We're going to be hearing from some more familiar faces in this chapter, and I hope that you recognise some of them. It's difficult to write this Galaxy-wide event, let me tell you, but I'm pretty sure I'm doing a good job. Let me know if I'm right.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 157:- Galaxy in Turmoil Part 1**

* * *

As Obi-Wan ran through the laser storm coming at him from the clones in the tunnel, his lightsaber alive in his hand as it twirled and span within a hairsbreadth of his own body to keep the blaster bolts away from him, he had a moment to reflect on how obscure this was. He was actually attacking a bunch of clones, which was something that he never thought he would be doing.

If only the rest of the clone army had had time to become more like Bly and Rex, under the influence of the Digimon. But the fact that there were so many clones, coupled with the added bit about the Digimon staying hidden away as much as possible, had meant that that could not happen.

With a pang of sympathy for the clones, who were, after all, only doing their duty (or so they thought), Obi-Wan fell upon them and slashed through the chest of one of them, causing him to fall and die in two pieces. The others quickly increased their fire, but Obi-Wan took out two more with deft strokes of his blade, just as another one hefted the rocket launcher he was carrying and fired it at almost point-blank range at the Jedi Master's chest.

Obi-Wan rolled aside, the missile passing beneath his arm as it streaked down the corridor to where the other two Jedi with him were fighting against the other clones coming from another direction. At Obi-Wan's cry of warning, one of them managed to get out of the way in time, but the other one was flung against the wall by the explosion and knocked unconscious.

Obi-Wan gritted his teeth and sent the rocket-launcher clone flying back into his comrades with a burst of the Force from his hand, and dashed back to help his fellow Jedi protect their fallen comrade, when the sound of a gunship's engine could be heard outside. Obi-Wan looked through the window to his left and saw one rising into view, turning around and aiming its cannons at the section of the wall where the pilot knew Obi-Wan to be.

The Jedi Master's eyes widened and he prepared to dive aside, when suddenly there were shots and huge green lasers lanced out of nowhere and struck the gunship from above, blowing out a large portion of its roof and causing it to go spiralling out of control. Obi-Wan blinked, just as a section of the wall between him and the other clones was caved in with another explosion of concrete. As Obi-Wan shielded his eyes from the dust and the clones backed away, the roar of another gunship appearing outside could be heard, and there were distinct clone voices coming from outside.

Cables were fired into the wall and suddenly there were more clones pulling themselves into the corridor. Obi-Wan lowered his arm and prepared for a fight, when he noticed these clones had yellow paint on various parts of their armour, instead of the red ones that the security clones doing the attacking were wearing.

And, at their head, was Commander Cody.

"Go, go, go!" yelled Cody, and his fellow clones immediately turned to fire on their _own brothers. _The shocked security clones quickly went down under a storm of lasers, and another explosion nearby caused more clones to enter the building. Obi-Wan quickly lifted the unconscious Jedi with the Force and he and the other one got out of the way as the new arrivals hurled a couple of grenades as the bewildered attacking clones.

As the explosions the grenades caused blew the attackers to kingdom come, Cody ran over to Obi-Wan and threw him a salute. "Good to see you, General!" he said. "Still in one piece then?"

"Cody?" Obi-Wan blinked in surprise. He had heard that Cody and his men were turning against the Chancellor from Renamon, but he never imagined Cody would do something like this. He and his men had just killed _other_ clones. That _never_ happened. "What are you...?" he blustered.

"There's little time to explain, sir," Cody said. "Suffice to say, when we heard about how the Chancellor's been manipulating us, we all decided unanimously to do whatever it takes to help bring him down, or anything else that would defy his wishes. Right now, that means helping you Jedi to get out of here."

"He's right," said another clone, which turned out to be Waxer. "We're here to help get as many Jedi to safety as we can and escort you up to the cruiser waiting above the atmosphere."

"Better get moving, sir," said Boil. "We'll handle our brothers. Right now, we need to get out of here."

Obi-Wan snapped to his senses and nodded, "Cody," he said. "All of you. I appreciate this. I know this must be difficult for you."

"Very," nodded Cody sourly. "But we feel we're doing the right thing. Now go."

"Alright," nodded Obi-Wan as his fellow Jedi hefted the unconscious one onto his shoulders. "Let's go."

"Waxer, Boil, go with the General. Escort him to the hangars," Cody said.

"Yes, sir!" nodded both of them and they ran along with Obi-Wan, as Cody and the rest of the men prepared to jump into the gunship once more.

* * *

All across the Temple, similar skirmishes were taking place. New gunships were flying out of nowhere and blowing holes in the walls to allow the new clone reinforcements entrance to assist the Jedi. The tide began to turn almost instantly, as the clones already attacking the Temple were all completely caught off guard by the unexpected attack from their brothers, but before they could do anything about it, they were gunned down swiftly.

The forces of Commander Cody and Commander Ember swarmed into the Temple in all directions, taking out the small parties of security clones that dotted around the place and assisting the remaining groups of Jedi, providing covering fire as they escaped into the main corridors. Shouts of alarm rang throughout the palace, and the Jedi were left stunned as more clones continued to join their side.

Ember himself lead a charge from one of his gunships, directing the assault with blast doors wide open. Several gunships were grouping around the various hangars, waiting for the Jedi to emerge from them in their shuttles to try and blast them out the sky before they could escape. They were completely unprepared for the attack from behind and several of them went spiralling down to crash and burn against the walls in explosions of wreckage before the pilots of the others could even react.

The pilots of the attacking ships, had their thumbs firmly pressed on the triggers to spurt green lasers out of their front cannons, while secondary pilots targeted the gunships that were trying to fly out of the way and launched missiles at them. As the security clones tried to steer away up and turn around to retaliate, the missiles followed their progress and slammed into their undersides, tearing the gunships apart amidships and hurling the various halves in many directions, some colliding with one another as they fell.

And if that weren't bad enough, the new arrivals had attached the extra pod guns to their sides, with a clone sitting in a spherical pod attached to the base of the ship that could rotate around and aim huge laser beams at the enemy ships. The clones showed no mercy to their brothers. They could not afford to – not if they wanted to give the Jedi the best chance of escape.

It pained the heart of every clone who took part in the conflict, but they did it because not doing it was not an option, and they took comfort in the fact that if there was a heaven, their brothers would understand why they had turned on their own when they finally learned the truth about what was going on.

The gunships of the security clones were decimated, even before some of Cody's men turned up to add to the ambush. The clones still outside the Temple near the ground were sent fleeing as the debris from their comrades ships fell to the ground around them. They looked up in disbelief, just in time to see a phalanx of Y-wing bombers descending from above towards them.

They hurriedly fled in terror as the ships lanced overhead dropping their explosive cargo down on those below and striking the Temple walls above the doors in huge explosions. Rubble cascaded down the side of the Temple and covered the large doors with debris, burying several clones that had not gotten out of the way quickly enough and sealing the majority of the clones outside before they could get into the building.

That ought to stop more from getting inside. There were already too many.

* * *

Standing invisibly at the main entrance to the hangars was Renamon, watching grimly as the gunships outside tore the other ones apart. She sighed and wondered how everything could have gone downhill so quickly. The clones were not supposed to be fighting their own. They shouldn't be fighting the Jedi either. It was the Chancellor they should be focused on.

Renamon wondered if there was an Order that would make them turn on Palpatine. But even if there was, they wouldn't listen to anyone who implemented it, except the Chancellor himself, and she knew that that would never happen.

Renamon gave Commander Ember a quick wave, dropping her perception filter for a moment so that he could see her. The clone commander that had fought with her on Orto Plutonia waved back, and then his gunships steered itself around, facing away from the Temple and hovering in front of the hangar doors, preparing itself for any more potential reinforcements from the security clones.

Just then, the door opened behind Renamon and several Jedi spilled into the room, some of them supporting wounded ones. Renamon's eyes widened as they came in. It seemed that just over half the Jedi that had been holding back the line had survived, where the others had perished.

"Hurry," cried Eekar Oki as he moved into the room. "Everyone load the wounded onto the shuttles and get into a starfighter. We need to get out of here as quickly as we can."

Renamon bounded over to them and said, "He's right, but we have to be careful. Remember, not all of the clones are against us, so if you fire on a gunship you'll have to check your aim. We do not want to be shooting down an ally."

"You seem to be very in control of this situation, madam," Eekar observed, as he passed his fellow Jedi onto another, where he was assisted into a nearby shuttle. "You say that you've been working alongside the A-Team?"

"Indeed," nodded Renamon. "For just over six months now."

"Well, now I can see the reason they've been so successful," Eekar nodded.

"A big reason perhaps," Renamon said. "But, I assure you, it is not the only one."

The last of the Jedi from the main hall were filtering in now, Yoda nipping into the room before Finn Ertay and the stumbling Jedi that she was supporting. "Renamon," Yoda nodded. "Completed your mission, you have. Congratulations."

"Yes, Master Yoda," nodded Renamon. "But, I'm afraid that the Jedi that were sent to bring Dooku and Ventress here have not returned yet."

Yoda sighed. "Too late, it is," he shook his head. "Sense that dead they are. Fallen into the hands of the enemy clones, Dooku and Ventress have."

"What?" Renamon cried. "But they'll be brought straight to Palpatine, and you know that he won't kill them. We need to go and bring them back into our custody."

"No time, there is," Yoda said. "Fear, I do, that lost to us, they are. Release them, Palpatine will, and think of a way to take them down along with the Chancellor, we must. For now, too far away, they are."

Renamon's expression turned pained as she looked towards the door, her hind paws itching to catapult her out of it and charge down the corridor until she reached the cells where they were being held, batter all the clones around them aside and bring the two Dark Side-users back to the hangar. But she knew Master Yoda was right. They were all the way in another tower and it would take too long to get there.

She sighed and closed her eyes. "And after all the effort that Aayla put into battling them, only for them to be released again within a few days while we are the ones driven away. That just isn't fair."

"A wasted effort, it was not," Yoda replied. "Led to Darth Sidious sending Bane after her, Aayla's efforts did. And through that, able to track down Sidious, we were, through yet another ingenious and selfless act of hers. And perhaps more. An icon for the people, she and the others are. Perhaps some doubt, there will be, that they were trying to overthrow the Republic, when the Chancellor spreads the word."

"True enough," nodded Renamon. "Aayla's battle with those two and Grievous have still left a mark on the Galaxy even if they are released."

"I must confess," Finn Ertay remarked. "I wish I had her skills with a blade."

"Don't we all?" Eekar chuckled.

Just then, Obi-Wan and two other Jedi entered the room, flanked by a couple of clones. Eekar and Finn immediately activated their lightsabers at the sight of the clones running in, but Renamon placed a steadying paw on either of their shoulders and said, "It's alright. That's Waxer and Boil. They're on our side."

The two Jedi relaxed slightly when the clones did not start shooting, and began to usher more Jedi into the room. Obi-Wan ran over and said, "Well, this is the last of us. We're all set for the evacuation, Master Yoda."

Bane poked his head around the door of his ship. "It would be preferable if we could leave before the Clone Army recovers from its surprise enough to launch a counter-attack against us."

"Oh, so he is still here," Obi-Wan shook his head. "Wonderful."

"Nice to see you too," Bane smirked.

"The prisoners are secured, Master," called O-Mer from one of the nearby shuttles.

"And the younglings are settled in," Sinube cried from another. "And I believe the last of the wounded have been loaded aboard. We are good to go."

"Good," said Obi-Wan. "Finn, Eekar, with me into the starfighters. We'll help the gunships to provide an escort for the shuttles. Renamon, where are you going?"

"I'll ride with the prisoners," said Renamon. "I think my presence would encourage them not to try anything. I think they're all scared of me. And rightly so, I might add. Waxer, Boil, you can come with me."

"You got it," nodded Waxer.

"Ride with the younglings, I shall," Yoda said, as he hurried towards the ship where Sinube was waiting. As Obi-Wan, Eekar and Finn dashed towards nearby starfighters, Renamon turned to look at the doors.

_Don't get comfortable with your freedom Dooku, Ventress,_ her eyes narrowed. _You will _not_ be experiencing it for very long. Not if we have anything to say about it._ And with that said, she hurried into the shuttle where the Separatist leaders were sitting in rows on either side. All of them cowered when she entered and Jinx closed the doors.

"Try anything, and I'll throw you out of the ship," Renamon glowered intimidatingly at them. "Chewie. We're moving off."

"Grraa," called Chewbacca from the front as he started up the controls. The ships all across the hangar were doing the same thing and lifting into the air slowly, the starfighters zipping out of the doors to join the gunships outside and the shuttles filing out one after the other, Bane's ship somewhere in the middle, until the phalanx of five ships was out in the open and surrounded by gunships.

Just like that, the Jedi Temple was completely empty of all Jedi for what was probably the first time in millennia. Right at the moment the last shuttle exited the hangar, the doors at the other side were blown in and clones swarmed into the room, pouring lasers futilely at the backs of the retreating ships. But it was no use. They pulled to a stop when they saw that their targets were out of their range.

Ember nodded when he saw the shuttles emerge and said, "Pilot, let's go!"

"Yes, sir!" cried the pilot, and the gunships began to rise, forming a wall around the shuttles as they whooshed up through Coruscant's atmosphere.

As Yoda sat on the floor with the younglings that were hurriedly being shushed and calmed by Jocasta and Sinube, he slowly closed his eyes in meditation, extending his focus to the far reaches of the Galaxy, in an attempt to help gauge what might be happening to several of his other friends as they were thrown into the middle of this nightmare.

* * *

The Lannik Jedi Council member Even Piell, who was only about a head taller than Yoda himself, was standing on the bridge of his own cruiser, which (fortunately for him) was still on the ground, when he received the message from the Jedi Temple.

Master Piell was often considered a slightly grouchy and constantly serious member of the Jedi Council, who was occasionally prone to crack a joke, but only on rare occasions. Thus far throughout the war, he had not had the privilege of working alongside the A-Team and their Digimon partners since they had been made into a team. But, unlike many other Jedi, this was not because he had not had the opportunity. No – it was because of his Captain, a non-clone who went by the name of Tarkin.

Tarkin was a man who was extremely loyal to the Chancellor, and all the Jedi Council, including Master Piell, could tell that there was no way in hell that Tarkin would ever keep a secret like the Digimon from the Head of the Republic. He was a smarmy man who was constantly looking for friends in high places if it meant he might one day receive a promotion, and he thought little of the Jedi and their methods on the field of battle.

For that reason, the Digimon had been kept far away from the man, and it was just as well, because the predictions of the Jedi Council had been entirely accurate.

As Master Piell strode across the bridge, where they had just landed on the planet Thila with instructions to eliminate a small Separatist stronghold which was little more than a staging area, Master Piell said, "Tarkin, see to it that the men are unloaded on the double. I want this to be a tight mission, so we can all return to Coruscant for supper. The quicker we get this done the better."

"Of course, General," nodded Tarkin, in that oily voice of his. "I must admit, I am almost disappointed that this war is almost over. I was rather enjoying giving the Separatists their just desserts."

"Yes," Piell nodded, though he didn't agree with his Captain in the slightest. "Well, fortunately, peace should soon break out. There's..." he paused when he received the call on his communicator and pulled it up, activating it and his one remaining the eye (the other was scarred and permanently shut) scanned the Aurebesh words quickly and efficiently, widening in shock as he did so.

"General?" Tarkin asked him. "Is something wrong?"

Piell's large ears practically pricked as he heard the sounds of rifles being cocked behind him – his eyes narrowing as he practically felt the fingers of the clones retracting over the triggers. As the clones pulled said triggers, he was already in motion, leaping up onto the holotable and his green lightsaber bursting into life in his hands. The clones whirled around to fire on the small Jedi Master, but Piell's lightsaber span, catching six shots practically in the blink of an eye and sending them flying back. Four of them struck their original casters in the chests and dropped them, another had his blaster knocked out of his hands.

Only one clone managed to roll out of the way and continue firing, but Piell backflipped off the table and took cover behind it.

"Trooper," called Tarkin. "What is the meaning of this? Why have you started firing on our General?"

"Sorry, Captain Tarkin," the clone said. "But the Chancellor just relayed a message to us. Apparently, all Jedi have just been classed as traitors to the Republic and are to be eliminated on sight."

"Oh? Is that so?" Tarkin asked, that unctuous look creeping over his face again as he picked up a blaster from nearby. "Well, I suppose we better follow through with it then."

"Why am I not surprised to hear that, Tarkin?" Piell growled from behind the holotable.

"No offense, General," Tarkin smiled. "But I'm afraid the Chancellor outranks you, and his word is the law."

Piell whirled around as more clones entered the bridge from behind him, blasters primed. The Lannik whirled into motion instantly and leapt for them as they pointed their blasters at him. Slicing through the blaster of the first, the small Jedi Master took a flying leap over him and kicked him in the back, sending him stumbling forwards and directly into the shots of Tarkin and the other clones. Piell then flew straight between the clones still in front of him, his lightsaber swinging as he diced four of them in an instant and shot through the door just as it closed, rolling to a stop in the corridor.

As always, there was the pang of having to kill men who he had previously fought beside, but now was not the time for sentimentality. For now, Master Piell had to survive. He dashed down the corridor, and, just as he reached the end, the doors opened behind him and Tarkin and the clones opened fire. Piell whipped around to dodge the shots with a spinning leap and send two more flying back with swift strokes of his blade. Tarkin was quick enough to dodge and let the clone behind him get hit, but he was quickly on his feet again and in pursuit of the Jedi Master.

Piell was faster though, and hurtled through the corridors of his ship, dodging past clones before they even realised that he was there, and barrelling around corners in enormous flips, his long, black ponytail streaming out behind him. A couple of clones spotted him on one particularly long corridor and began to fire on him, but Piell sprang up instantly, bouncing from one wall to the other like a pinball and the bolts slewing past him as he approached without touching the floor.

He flung his lightsaber at the pair, and the green blade span across the gap and impaled the first man in the chest, killing him with a gurgling, choking noise and causing him to collapse, but Master Piell's lightsaber was already flying back into his hand before he had fallen and was snagged in the Lannik's fingers, just in time for him to bounce the rest of the way from the wall, twisting around the shots of the remaining clone and lashing out with his blade to behead the unfortunate man.

The Lannik paused momentarily, his large ears and senses telling him that there were others approaching from many directions, so he didn't have much time. Thinking quickly, he charged down another corridor, only being forced to take out one more clone with a Force-push that slammed him against the wall and knocked him out, until he encountered a wall which he knew to be at the edge of the ship. On the other side of this wall was the outside.

Piell stabbed his lightsaber into the wall and hurriedly pulled it around in a small circle that would allow someone of his short stature to fit through easily, completing it just as several more clones rounded the corners and began to fire on him. He quickly slammed his feet into the sliced segment and knocked it out into open air, riding it down several dozen metres before leaping off it and flipping down several times before he landed on the ground below.

He turned briefly to look back up at the hole he had cut in the wall high above and saw one clone on his hands and knees leaning through it and trying to lift his blaster and aim at him without falling out. Piell smirked, but turned and darted away before someone began to man the turrets that covered the exterior of the ship, racing into the trees they had landed in and pulling out his communicator as he did so.

If he was going to find out what the heck was going on, he was going to need someone to pick him up.

* * *

Like Jedi Master Halsey and his Padawan Knox, the single non-fully-humanoid member of the Jedi Council was in the middle of a battle against the droid armies with the clones at his back when he received the message warning of the attack on the Jedi by the Chancellor via the clones. Oppo Rancisis was an extremely skilled saber-user and was a deadly opponent for just about anyone, and not just because of his skill with the weapon itself.

Practically the whole bottom part of Master Rancisis' body could be turned into a weapon if need be, because from the waist down he was an absolutely massive, yellow snake, with glistening scales and powerful coils, which went completely at odds with the long and ridiculous-looking beard that covered practically his whole face and extended down to almost waist-length.

When he got the message, he whipped his upper body around on his snake lower half and stared at the clones, trying to pick up any sign of motion that might indicate an attack. At first, there was nothing, but then, sure enough, the blaster turned and the clones began to pick a new target – him.

Rancisis balked at the prospect of facing off against both sides at once, but rather than go defensive and coil up, the large Jedi Master immediately went on the offensive. "You shall not take me," he shouted in a voice that contained only the slightest trace of a hiss (though it was definitely there), and suddenly his whole body whipped into a frenzy of motion.

The nearest clones were bowled into their comrades as they were struck in the torso by his powerful coils, while droids on the other side of the line had their heads caved in by his tail in almost the same moment. Rancisis' upper body descended on the droids and his blade snapped and lashed out around him like a snake striking into its victims, stabbing through three of them in less than a second and decapitating two more. His coils followed his body and slammed into the droid forces, sweeping through their legs and snapping them off as his humanoid part whirled around to face the clones, parrying their shots with his blade, even as his body continued.

As was as if his two separate parts were acting independently but in co-ordination as well. As the droids were mown down, Rancisis bunched himself together and suddenly lashed out, his upper body covering the distance between the droids and the clones in a split second. The first clone had his body cut in half at the waist and a bunch of others received swift slashes to their sides that sent them crashing the ground, howling in pain. Behind him, Rancisis' tail was bludgeoning the droids like an enormous flail before the majority of it changed direction and slammed down into the forces of the clones instead.

Rancisis spun around himself and threw his upper body into the midst of the clones, his long arms catching several of them and throwing them onto their and his coils following his body to bunch beneath him and slam several other clones over. For a split second, Rancisis wasn't moving at all except to wildly twirl his lightsaber to block the shots around him and somehow succeed in not cutting off his beard, before his tail and his head suddenly lanced in opposite directions, his blade lashing out to sweep through three more clones while his tail slammed down into their ranks and sent them bowling over like skittles.

The droids took advantage of the Jedi and the clones attacking each other and closed the distance between the two factions, but that just gave Rancisis more of a chance to attack both sides. His coils snapped out and encircled a bunch of droids, wrapping them up and crushing them in an instant, and Rancisis practically threw his body around and hurled the junk into the clone ranks and knocked them over. His body had a mind of its own, lashing out into the droids with his blade, his tail sending clones flying and the body in between whipping through both sides and sending everyone flying in all directions.

Rancisis had the Force on his side too, and with a wave of his hand, droids and clones suddenly flew forwards and crashed into one another, destroying the heads of the droids and dazing the clones. But a warning caused Rancisis to whip around and he saw an AT-TE levelling its cannon at him. Rancisis swiftly coiled his body and sprang, wrapping his scaly half around the large tank and slicing through the cannon with his blade, before stabbing it through the duraglass at the front and killing the clone inside.

But even Rancisis knew he couldn't keep this up for too long, and there were so many clones and droids on both sides. As the tank fell with him still coiled around it, he looked up at the sound of incoming gunships, cursing as he hurriedly continued to block the shots from clone and droid alike. He did _not _need reinforcements for the clones.

Fortunately, the reinforcements were for him.

The gunships whooshed overhead and a pair of figures leapt out to join him on the tank. "Nice day for a fight," cried Quinlan Vos as the Kiffar leapt up beside Rancisis and began to assist him in blocking the lasers.

"What's going on?" Rancisis enquired. "How... why do you still have gunships?"

"We have little time to explain," Adi Gallia cried as she leapt onto what was left of the tank's cannon. "Let's just get in the gunships and get out of here, fast."

The gunships in question were currently pouring huge green bolts into both sides below, though it was safe to say they focused more on the droids than the clones. Several of them hovered above, their cannons rotating downwards and causing the clones to balk in horror and wonder if they should take cover. When the blast doors opened and more clones from within started firing on their brothers from within, they immediately broke off the fight and began scrounging for cover, many of them falling to the blue laser storm from their fellow clones above.

Two of the gunships descended to the ground, crushing a substantial number of droids beneath them and the blast doors opened on the side of the clones, to reveal one full of men and one with nobody in it at all.

"Come on, Generals!" Commander Deviss waved them over as he stepped out of the gunship and began firing lasers into the ranks of his brethren, shooting one in the hip and two in the chest before they understood what was going on. "We have to get out of here?"

"Couldn't agree more, Commander," Quinlan cried as he and Adi bounded off the tank and into the midst of the enemy clones, the two of them charging through their ranks with lightsabers weaving around themselves in a frenzy of green and blue motion respectively. Quinlan downed seven clones with swift strikes to their midsections and threw aside several more with the Force. Adi cut through a further eight, taking a Force jump over many more and blasting a bunch of droids moving around the gunships back into their fellows.

Hard on their heels (though he himself had none), Rancisis literally ploughed his way through the clones that had once been a part of his regiment, knocked many flat as he slithered rapidly right over them and slamming others into the air on either side thanks to his twisting body.

As the clones under the command of Deviss and Bolt retreated into their gunship, and Quinlan and Adi jumped in after them. Rancisis needed the empty gunship to himself, since he was so large and he literally dived in, his snake body falling in after him to land in a messy heap around him. The blast doors shut just as his tail slipped through the gap and both gunships rose into the air, turning and shooting away and to safety with their fellows beside them.

"Oh yes!" Quinlan nodded, with a smirk. "Result! High-fives!" He held up his hand to Adi, who raised an eyebrow at him quizzically. "Terriermon taught it to me," the Kiffar explained. "Go on. Indulge me."

Adi rolled her eyes, but slapped his palm with her own all the same.

* * *

But while Adi Gallia was rescuing Oppo Rancisis, on the other side of the Galaxy, her former Padawan Stass Allie was not having such an easy time of things.

When she received the message about Darth Sidious and the clone attack, she was on the bridge of her cruiser just like Master Piell had been, except for one quite large detail – she was up in space and not on the ground as the Lannik member of the Council had been. Sadly, that meant that she did not have the option of cutting her way out and escaping. If she did that, then she was be sucked into the vacuum of space and killed.

Stass was above the Orvan system, after having just taken the planet from the last of the Separatists. She was rather satisfied with how quick the mission had been – the Separatists were thin on the ground these days. They were still present on many, many worlds, but the numbers of droids on each one seemed to be going down with each raid, and that could only be a good thing.

"Do you have any idea when we will be clear to jump to hyperspace, Commander?" the Korun woman asked the clone standing beside her.

"It should only be a matter of time, General," the clone responded. "I think that ten standard minutes ought to do the trick. Then we can all head back to Coruscant."

"Good," nodded Stass, a satisfied smile on her face. It had been over a month since she had last set foot on Coruscant, having been called from one mission to another almost constantly.

Little did she know, that it would be a while before she got the opportunity to do so again yet. But she began to get an inkling when the message being broadcast to all the Jedi reached her communicator. When she held it up and read the message, her heart practically stopped. If what she was reading was true, then she was in practically the worst place to be right now – in the middle of space.

She glanced towards her Commander and the other clones, but it seemed that they had not received the message to kill the Jedi yet because they were making no move towards her. She bit her lip. She could not take control of the bridge of the cruiser and pilot it herself – it took several people to steer one of these things. Her only chance of getting away would be if she could make it to the escape pods and jettison out into space.

But the pods were some distance away.

Still, she had to try.

Her Commander was startled when she suddenly whirled around and dashed towards the doors, opening them swiftly and jumping out into the corridor. "Sir..." he cried. "Where are you..." But Stass was gone. And it was at that moment that he himself received the message from Palpatine:-

"Execute Order Sixty-six."

"It will be done, my lord," he said automatically, and he swiftly tapped his helmet, activating its built-in comlink to swiftly relay the instruction to every clone on the entire vessel.

Meanwhile, Stass was running down the corridor, her lightsaber hilt in her hand and ready for anything, biting her lip in anxiety as she rushed towards the escape pods and praying to the Force that she made it in time. Unfortunately, it seemed that her prayers were to remain unanswered because a bunch of clones appeared at the end of the corridor she was running towards, spotted her and pointed their blasters.

"Damn it," Stass murmured as her lightsaber flashed into her hand and quickly parried the shots that lanced in her direction, ducking into another corridor as soon as possible and hurrying along it, dashing around another corner as she tried an alternative route to the escape pods. A couple more clones whipped around as they heard her approaching behind them, but Stass quickly waved her hand and sent them crashing against the wall, knocking them out for a while and hurrying on past their inert forms. She was as reluctant as the next Jedi to hurt her own troops, but she understood that she might need to if things didn't go well.

And it seemed that things were not going to go well, because another group of clones rounded another corridor corner the moment she reached it. Stass reacted instinctively and cut through two of them before she almost collided with them, bringing them down and bulling through the others to continue her way down the corridor, swinging her lightsaber up behind her to deflect the bolts of the others as they fired at her back. She took a flying leap, twisting around in mid-air as she did so and sending the bodies of the two she had killed catapulting into the others. She backflipped back onto her feet before she'd even touched the ground and continued on her way, blocking a couple more shots as the clones behind her recovered.

Thanks to her knowledge of the ship's layout, she managed to reach the escape pods without much further incident. There were a couple of clones standing beside them as if guarding them and they turned around to shoot at her as well.

Stass pulled to a halt and caught their lasers with her blue blade, twirling it around as she pushed forward and repelled the shots in all direction. As one clone ducked, Stass grabbed him with the Force and twisted him around, causing him to accidentally shoot his own fellow clone, and Stass hurriedly leapt forward and swiped her blade through him too before he could realise what happened.

She quickly stepped up to the nearest escape pod door and her hand reached for the controls. It was fortunate the she looked out of the window before she touched it though, because what she saw made her stop short and gasp in horror.

The escape pods were all floating outside, detached from the ship. Stass was too late. The clones had cut off her escape by jettisoning all the escape pods before she reached them. She knew now that there was no way out. She had a starfighter, but she wouldn't have been able to use that unless she could get someone to open the hangar doors and in any case, the clones had probably blown it up by now.

She was trapped out in space, in a ship where everybody on it was under orders to kill her. Orders that they fully intended to carry out.

More clones rounding the corner caused her head to swing around, the tendrils from her Tholoth headdress flapping wildly. She brought up her blade to defend herself from the shots instantaneously and backed away down the corridor, the clones in hot pursuit. The moment Stass reached a corner she dived into it and ran, pelting through the ship, round corners willy-nilly, with no particular destination in mind.

She forced herself to calm down and think. There was no way she would be able to escape by herself now. The only way she would be able to survive was to hide somewhere and hope that some help came for her. As far as she was aware, there was nobody nearby, but things could change very quickly with the state of the war. She paused momentarily to consider her next move, but during the brief instance a clone rounded a nearby corner and shot at her.

Stass almost didn't react in time and the bolt narrowly missed her head. She whirled around and sent the next shot shooting back the way it had come. Not bothering to see whether it hit or not, she dived down another corridor and zig-zagged quickly through the ship until she reached one of the cargo bays. Two clones were there to meet her on the inside, but Stass was prepared for this and with a wave of her hand one of the large piles of crates toppled over and cascaded over the clones bludgeoning them into unconsciousness.

Stass leapt on top of the pile and hurriedly made her way to a nearby vent shaft, pulling the grate off with the Force and leaping inside. As she replaced the grate and began crawling, she pulled out her communicator again. She needed help.

* * *

The Zabrak Jedi General known as Eeth Koth, was striding across the rocky surface of the planet Kessel, which was a mountainous planet surrounded by a multitude of asteroids that were heavily mined for the minerals and other assorted valuable items that they contained, with his clone forces behind him. Like Master Piell, he had been given orders to eliminate a small but rapidly growing droid encampment on the planet that was seeking to take over the mines and bring the Republic's income of valuable ores to a halt, which could actually be quite important.

If the Separatists succeeded, then they might have a greater chance of getting back on top on Galaxy-wide terms.

But Eeth was not planning on letting that happen. The problem was that the encampment was situated so deep in mountainous terrain that gunships couldn't land there or even get close, so they were having to approach on foot.

"I estimate we only have about two-hundred klicks to go before we get there, Captain," the Zabrak said to the man on his immediate right. "Remember, the droids have managed to dig themselves in deep here and it may be a while before reinforcements can arrive, so take every precaution. The fewer men we lose the better."

"Got it, sir," nodded the Captain, readying his blaster.

And then, of course, Eeth got the message on his communicator. He blinked and answered it, and it was a very good thing that he was a quick reader because the moment he did so, the sound of his Captain priming the blaster in his hands did not sound quite so ordinary any more. It sounded a lot more malicious.

Eeth's eyes flicked down to see the Captain almost casually pointing said blaster as his side, where it would be able to get under his guard. He saw the Captain's finger tightening on the trigger.

Eeth abruptly dived forward as the laser blasted through the air where he'd been and connected with the thigh of another clone, causing him to cry out and stumble and bringing to whole line to a halt. Eeth spun around, his green lightsaber springing into life in his hand and slashing through the Captain's blaster, before pointing it at his face.

"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded, seeking to see if the message he had received held the whole truth. "Why did you just attempt to shoot me?"

"It was not my idea, sir," the Captain said. "We take our orders from the highest authority. And, unfortunately," he raised his hands and Eeth suddenly found a small field's worth of blasters being pointed in his direction, "We've just received some instructions from a higher authority than yourself."

Eeth blanched as a storm of bolts blasted in his direction as practically all the clones let off a shot simultaneously. Only a quick roll behind a boulder saved the Jedi Master's life, and the boulder itself was promptly pulverised by the lasers. Eeth took a moment to take stock of his situation. He needed to escape, but the clones were cutting off practically the whole road with their ranks. He would have to escape by going up and over.

Eeth stood and dashed out from behind the boulder at high speed, the clones following his progress with their blasters and firing non-stop. Lasers flashed all around the Zabrak as he dashed up large piles of rocks until he was high above the clones, his blade twisting in his hand to reflect dozens of them back into the air. He catapulted himself up onto a pile of boulders high above the canyon and looked down to see another set of clones aiming missile launchers at him.

Eeth's eyes widened as the large explosive devices were launched at him and he tensed his legs, falling into a crouch position and spring up with an almighty Force jump that carried him straight over the canyon. The rocks he had been standing on were pulverised as Eeth flew over the heads of the clones. Several of them tried to shoot up at him as he passed, but Eeth twisted to avoid the shots and turned aside a few more.

He landed smoothly on a pile of boulders high up on the other side of the canyon and began moving again almost instantly, the clones turning and trying to follow as he dodged from rock to rock, almost never in one place for more than a moment. But with several hundred clones firing at him, Eeth was hard-pressed to avoid being hit.

Hating himself for doing it, Eeth hurriedly used the Force to send a cascade of boulders slamming down the canyon wall and towards the densely packed clones. The attempted to scatter but many of them were crushed underneath the huge rocks. But it gave Eeth some time to run as the clone forces reeled from the blow and struggled to see through the dust cloud that had been kicked up by the rockslide.

Eeth eventually made it past the clones and landed back in the road, turning and dashing off down it and back the way he had come, using the Force to increase his speed. But, several of the clones had brought speeders with them and, once they had sorted themselves out and turned their machines around, they were after the Jedi Master, gaining on him rapidly and letting off large blasts from the guns fitted to the bikes.

Eeth desperately turned them aside, dodging and weaving, but the speeders were catching up fast.

Then, suddenly, more lasers flashed past him, but from the other side and slammed into the front of one of the speeder bikes, knocking its engine off and sending it careening into several others, in an tumultuous crash that forced many of the others to pull to a swift halt to avoid injury. Eeth's neck almost pulled a muscle as he twisted his head around and was shocked to see Luminara Unduli, who was supposed to be attacking another droid base several miles away, pull to a halt right next to him on her own speeder.

"Get on!" she cried. "Hurry! We must get out of here!"

Eeth needed no second urging and leapt astride the bike behind the Mirialan. Luminara slammed down on the handlebars and the two of them whipped around and shot down the canyon at incredible speed. But the other clones that avoided the crash were quickly after them, lasers flashing once more as they attempted to blow the two Jedi Masters sky-high.

"Do you have any idea what's really happening?" Eeth cried as Luminara steered the back in wild dodging motions as lasers flashed past them. "The Chancellor a Sith? When did we find that out?"

"Earlier today apparently," Luminara called back. "But that's not important right now. Just hold on tight!" Eeth promptly did as was told as Luminara increased the speed, and they zipped through the rocks so quickly it was a surprise that the turf behind them was not catching fire. The clones behind them increased their speed as well, hurrying to catch up on the dodging speeder ahead of them before their targets could escape. Eeth turned around to try and block off some of the shots awkwardly with his lightsaber, watching as the clones began to catch up with them again.

But then, Luminara and Eeth were at the edges of the mountain-range and they whooshed out on the flatlands.

And, waiting above them, were gunships, cannons already levelled towards the canyon below. Green lasers lanced down from the white vessels and pummelled the sides and floor of the canyon right behind the Jedi. The clones on the bikes pulled to a halt just as the rocks tumbled down before them and sealed them in the canyon.

"What the..." Eeth breathed as one of the gunships hovered lower and the blast doors opened to reveal Commander Gree ushering them inside.

"Hurry, Generals!" Gree cried. "Before they raise the alarm!"

Luminara brought the speeder to a halt and leapt off it in the same motion, flying into the gunship where she was caught by her men. As Eeth followed on and the gunship lifted off the moment he was in, he turned to Luminara and gasped, "How come your clones are still obeying you when mine aren't?"

"That..." said Luminara. "Is a very good question."

* * *

Seasee Tiin the Iktotchi was also a member of the Jedi Council. He was a high-ranking member, who had never taken a Padawan learner, but was one of the most accomplished pilots among the whole Jedi Order. Perhaps not as good as Anakin and a couple of others, but he was definitely up there amongst the top five. Though he had crash-landed less times than Anakin had so that said something for him.

Right now, he was leading the space campaign above the planet Toola, while Kit Fisto was supposed to be leading the ground assault below. Toola was one of the few remaining worlds that was still quite heavily populated by the Separatists and Seasee had quite a few any ships to get through. Vulture droids were swarming everywhere around his ship as he whirled and span through their ranks, blasting with incredible accuracy right into their midsections, despite the absurd speed they were flying at.

As he rolled his ship around to avoid a mid-air collision with one of the Vultures, he called into his comlink, "All wings, line up behind me. Phalanx formation. We're going to punch our way through these fighters and clear the way for our bombers. Their cruisers are the key to this, after all."

"Copy that, sir," came the reply from a nearby clone as the ARC-170 fighters that they were piloting lined up behind Seasee in a giant V. "Let's give it to 'em."

Blue lasers flashed through space, the ships constantly tilting and rolling over to dodge the shots from the enemy fighters. Several _Hyena_-bombers zoomed out of nowhere, attempting to slip past Saesee's defences, but the Iktotchi spotted them and directed several of his fighters to peel off and dispatch them with ease, the majority remaining in the V and punching through the droid forces. An ARC-170 collided with a Tri Droid almost next to Seasee and the Jedi watched bitterly as the two ships exploded, but, as he turned around to blast several more Tri-droids to oblivion, his communicator suddenly bleeped.

He blinked. That was odd. During space battles he programmed his personal communicator so that only emergency calls would be able to punch through. He quickly peeled off, stating, "Keep going with the attack. I apparently have an emergency call," and he shot high above the battle before he dared to unclip the communicator and answer it.

He read the message.

He started in surprise and suddenly he was analysing the situation he was in. If what was said here was true, then he could not go back to his ship or he would be immediately fired upon. But if he wanted to jump to lightspeed, he would need a special hyperspace ring from the cruiser to do so.

He glanced out of the duraglass and towards the action below, and, to his shock, he saw that several of the ARC-170 fighters had peeled off from the main battle and were heading towards him. Saesee's eyes narrowed and he gripped the controls tightly. He would have time to worry about getting away from the system later. Right now, he needed to get away from his own men.

Saesee rolled over right as the ARC-170 fighters began to unleash a barrage of lasers at him, and shot away and straight up. The fighters were in hot pursuit, blasting constantly, and forcing the Jedi to roll over and over to avoid getting hit in the thrusters and have his ship torn apart. The astromech seated in the slot before the cockpit squealed in alarm at the sudden turn of events.

Saesee switched direction and barrelled through space to the right, but the 170s managed to turn around and follow him, so Saesee aimed himself down and back towards the main action, bracing himself as he zeroed in on the thickest part of the battles, where Vulture droids and more 170s were duking it out in a frenzy of motion. Whipping his ship into a corkscrew, Saesee plunged through the middle of the action, the sides of his starfighter narrowly missing scraping against a Vulture droid.

The pursuing 170s were either forced to pull up or tried to plunge through. Those that did the latter collided with enemy ships and both sides were forced to veer away at the sudden mass of explosions that rocked around them. Saesee frowned in disbelief at what he had just done, but he would have to worry about that another time. He sharply steered his ship back up into a climb, just as his pursuers that survived began to regroup and aim towards him again. The Jedi pilot slammed down on the trigger button and a sudden swarm of blue lasers burst out of his ship and swept across the fighters, blasting several to pieces and critically damaging others, sending them spinning into their comrades.

Saesee winged away before the other fighters could figure out what had happened and briefly circled one of the Separatist frigates, avoiding the blasts from the auto-turret guns with ease as they tried in vain to hit him. The Jedi Master wracked his brains, wondering what he was supposed to do now. ARC-170s were heading towards the ships at high speed still, and now they had more than one target in mind.

Suddenly a voice broke through his comlink and a voice in a Jamaican-like accent said, "Master Tiin. Are you still with us?"

"Kit?" Saesee responded. "Yes, I am still here, though I am not sure what I am going to next." He veered the ship around and dodged behind the engines of the frigate with some more of his own fighters on his tail. "My own troops have turned against me. I can't head back to my own ship. What about you?"

"My men and I are heading towards you at full speed, Master Tiin," Kit replied. Saesee blinked and chanced a look down at the planet below. Indeed, a large Republic cruiser was rising out of the atmosphere from below and there was a small Jedi starfighter whooshing up ahead of it, flanked by more ARC-170s. Kit grinned as he and his men joined the battle, their lasers pulsing upwards and flashing around Saesee's ship to batter the clones in pursuit of the Jedi.

The Nautolan pulled up alongside the Iktotchi and the two of them flew side-by-side for a moment. Kit offered Saesee a thumbs up and said, "Good to see we got here in time."

"But, I don't understand," Saesee said. "The message said that the Chancellor was ordering the clones to attack us all. Yet your men are still following your instructions."

"My men managed to learn of Palpatine's real identity before they learned of the order to kill us," Kit replied. "Naturally, they were all extremely vexed by this news. But we can discuss that later. For now, let's get you into the ship."

"Right," nodded Saesee as he, Kit and the clones under the Nautolan's command whooshed down towards the cruiser that was rising up from above. The auto-turrets on said cruiser aimed themselves upwards and fired on the underbelly of the Separatist frigate, blowing huge factures in it and tearing the ship apart in moments – the shields had been concentrated on the front and top of the ship. Evidently the droids had not been expecting an attack from below.

As Vulture droid and ARC-170 alike veered out of the way to avoid colliding with the rapidly-rising cruiser, Kit and Saesee quickly swooped into the open hangar doors, followed by the ARC-170s that were on their side and landed in the hangar. The heavy blast doors shut behind them to prevent more from entering and the ship powered its way through the debris of the frigate, leaving both sides unsure what to make of this new development.

Kit leapt out of his starfighter and said into his wristcom. "Is the navicomputer ready?"

"Primed and locked onto neutral space, General," a clone voice commanded.

"Good," nodded Kit. "Now let's make our escape while we can. Master Yoda will contact us when this situation calms down."

With that, the cruiser zipped into hyperspace and left the battle over Toola far behind.

* * *

The gunship guard around the shuttles containing the Jedi that had escaped from the Temple ploughed up through the Coruscant air, rising almost vertically upwards and surrounding the shuttles from all sides and from below, forming something like a wall in all directions but from above, where the Jedi in their starfighters were circling, waiting for the inevitable attack.

The younglings inside one of the shuttles were covering practically the whole floor and all of the seats, and were huddling together out of fear, fists clenched and eyes screwed up, waiting for the sound of laser fire outside, many of them looking to Master Yoda for guidance. But Yoda made no move except to sit on the floor and calmly meditate, which did indeed have some effect on the children. If Yoda was calm, then they had no reason to fear, right?

Right?

In the other shuttle, Renamon paced up between the Separatist leaders towards the cockpit, where Chewbacca had squeezed his mighty frame into the seat and was steering them upwards, with Kalifa acting as co-pilot. She stood between them and peered out of the window as best she could. She could not see any attacking forces either, but she knew that they were coming, sure enough.

Obi-Wan, who was outside in his starfighter, could see it. The Commanders that had initially attacked them Temple had been shocked by the actions of their fellow clones and it had taken them several moments to recover, but it seemed that they had now. What gunships Commander Cody and Ember's men had not yet shot down were rising towards them, and Obi-Wan could see more of them coming in from the Senate District, which meant one of them had called for reinforcements.

"Here they come, people," Obi-Wan said grimly into his comlink. All speed up ahead. We do not want to get intercepted or blocked off. Keep them behind us at all times."

"We read you, General," said a clone voice. "We won't let them get close – you have my word on that."

Obi-Wan watched bleakly as the gunships down below began to pulse green lasers upwards towards what they might consider to be the clone traitors. And in a sense, they were, but not in the way the attacking clones expecting. The main guns on the defending ships were not able to retaliate as they were pointing the other way, but the beam cannons attached to either side were able to rotate around and open fire, blasting huge green beams down below and into the rows of ships.

A couple of gunships were blasted in the cockpit by those beams and were blasted apart, the wreckage crashing down towards the Coruscant buildings below, and Obi-Wan hoped the people had the sense and awareness to get out of the way in time. Another beam caught the wing of a third gunship and sent it spiralling downwards to collide with the top of one of the larger skyscrapers and set fire to the top floor. As the others continued to shoot upwards, the defending ships grouped closer together, flying in a tight formation that blocked off the shuttles from attack.

But that didn't help them. One of the gunships was caught in the back and managed to escape with only a slight fracture, but another was hit in the underside and was blown apart, the clones within it, who had been risking their lives to help the Jedi Order, now lost those lives and fell to the ground, tumbling through the air until they were lost to sight.

The shuttle with the Separatist leaders was left exposed thanks to this, but before any lasers could shoot through the gap and take it out, Chewbacca was able to rotate one of the guns on the top of the ship around and blasted a few rounds out through the gap and slam into the nose of another gunship and knock it tumbling, but he was forced to stop when the gunships beneath him filled in the gap once more.

"We're going to die!" screamed Passel Argente, as the ship rocked violently. "We're going to die here, trapped in this ship!"

"Will you shut up?" Waxer shoved his blaster close to Passel's face. "We're not going to be doing any dying today, but if you don't shut up then you might be."

"Waxer," Renamon chided with a slight chuckle. "Remember, the Jedi would not approve of that. But I'm sure our esteemed Passel remembered what Turuiemon said about we Digimon not having to answer to the Jedi. _We_ can do what we like."

"You wouldn't dare..." Passel gasped.

"I believe you said the exact same thing to Turuiemon," Renamon interrupted. "And believe you me, I have no patience for a man who poisoned the water supply of an innocent village and almost got _me_ killed as a result. Maybe we could organise a pit stop to Felucia and feed you to some Acklay friends of mine." She spotted Shu Mai blanch at that memory and smirk. Waxer and Boil chuckled.

Outside, a couple of the attacking gunships had let off a pair of missiles at the fleeing lot, and Obi-Wan saw the giant rockets approaching and cried, "Eekar, Finn, with me!" With a wrench of the controls, he piloted the his starfighter downwards and beneath the shuttles, followed by the Mon Calamari and the Twi'lek. The three lined up and unleashed hurried blasts from their laser cannons, using the Force to guide their aim, and the Force did not guide them wrong. The green blasts lanced downwards and struck the missiles head-on, exploding them long before they reached their targets and forcing the following gunships to veer around to avoid the smoke of their own ammunition.

Obi-Wan and the other two peeled off and shot back up to the top as the gunships and the shuttle finally reached the edge of the atmosphere and punched through into outer space. Obi-Wan smiled as he saw the cruiser that the gunships were guiding the shuttles towards. It was his own flagship, the _Negotiator._

Shame that at the moment it was not going to be able to live up to its name. Right now, they needed to get away. Negotiating with the clones was almost out the question.

Inside his own gunship, Commander Cody called up to the clones on the bridge, "We're almost with you, boys! I hope you have the navicomputer programmed."

"Yes, sir," came the reply. "We're good to go the moment you're inside and landed. We've chartered a course out into empty Wild Space for the time being."

"Good," nodded Cody. "We'll get other co-ordinates once the Jedi have had time to recuperate and plan out our next move against the Chancellor. Any sign of incoming ships?"

"A couple more cruisers inbound, sir. You better hurry."

Cody signed off as his gunship lead the way, flanked by that of Commander Ember's. The two of them whooshed up towards the doors in the side of the cruiser and flew through the gap, quickly moving to the back and making way for the others. The gunships and shuttles peeled off and entered the ship as quickly as they could through many of the open doors. Even Cad Bane steered his way inside. The moment the last shuttle slipped inside, the doors began to land.

Obi-Wan jumped out of his starfighter just as Cody stepped from his gunship up ahead and Renamon bounded out of their shuttle. "We're all here," the fox nodded.

"Anytime, Cody," agreed Obi-Wan.

"Now!" Cody shouted into his comlink. A moment later, the ship was gone in the blink of an eye, jumping into the tunnel of hyperspace. Renamon had to resist the urge to punch the air. This might not be the Jedi Order's proudest moment, but the important thing was that they had survived.

"Phew," Boil said, leaning against the door of the shuttle. We cut it pretty fine a couple of times there."

"But we made it out alright," nodded Waxer.

Renamon smirked at the two. "Would this be a good time to tell the two of you that Numa the little Twi'lek girl is currently standing on the bridge of the _Intrepid_ next to Aayla and Suzie?"

"What?" they both cried.

* * *

Not a lot to say this time except that I loved this chapter simply because of all the juicy action. I was hesitant to include Oppo Rancisis much in the story because he hasn't appeared in The Clone Wars series yet and because I wasn't sure how to make someone with a body like his do the fighting, but I actually think I enjoyed writing him the most because his style was so unique. Of course, I prefer writing for Aayla and the others more. But Rancisis is pretty damn cool, even if his beard is stupid.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

There's more, you say? Heck yes. Stass Allie is still in dire need of rescue and there are a few more Jedi out there who have yet to be picked up from their various locations. We find out what happens with Stass, Piell and K'kruhk, and the A-Team will finally be getting in on the action in defying Order 66.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 158 : Galaxy in Turmoil Part 2**


	158. Galaxy in Turmoil Part 2

I hope that the first section of this particular chapter clears up a little something for one particular reviewer, mentioning no names of course, who complained about the fact that Punimon still remembered who Aayla and the others are when he hatched at the end of Chapter 154. Other than the fact it's a random thing, there is a reason why Punimon still remembers things. You just need to remember the circumstances behind his reformation into an egg.

Anyway, read on and enjoy.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 158:- Galaxy in Turmoil Part 2**

* * *

The group of individuals that were still standing on the bridge of the _Intrepid_ did not really have the time to associate the newly hatched Punimon with his surroundings. The small, Baby level Digimon was the lowest level that any of the Jedi had set eyes on, as the others had never gone below In-Training. But the Jedi were still on the alert for any distress calls from their fellow comrades, who might not have been so lucky as to which clones they had serving under them.

The three Tamers had taken to updating Punimon on all the things that he had not had the time to learn during his brief period of being unfrozen, thanks to IceMyotismon using his temporary weakness to his advantage in a move that was completely and totally unfair.

"Incredible," murmured Punimon, in a voice that sounded a little too elegant for a baby Digimon, but then again he had not always been at this level. "So, this really is a parallel universe, just as I suspected it might be. Amazing."

"Yeah, it is pretty cool," said Suzie. "They have all kinds of stuff here, like all these machines and stuff. We're even in space right now."

"Space?" Punimon asked. "What is space?"

"Well, to put it in relatively simple terms," Henry said. "It's the gap between the planets of this dimension. The people here can travel to numerous other worlds that are all in the same dimension by travelling through space."

"Fascinating," Punimon said. "And these... Jedi? They're the ones who wield the laser swords, like the one I used to stab IceMyotismon, right?"

"Yeah, that's right," nodded Rika. "Though technically they call them lightsabers. And the Jedi Order are like protectors of the Galaxy."

_We were,_ Anakin pointed out in her head. _Before this whole mess we're in right now._

_Good point,_ nodded Rika sadly. _I'll get to that in a minute._

"I have a question for you, Punimon," Henry said, sitting down beside Numa, who was still staring at the creature in her lap in absolute amazement. "How come you can still remember who you are? Renamon told us that most of the time a Digimon forgets who they are when they are reborn, except for special cases like Tamed Digimon or those that are granted their memories by the Sovereigns."

Punimon frowned. "You know, I have absolutely no idea," he said. "The moment I knew I was dying, I was expecting to find myself waking up and not remembering who I was at all, so I contented myself in the knowledge that I had succeeded in ridding the universe, regardless of which universe, of IceMyotismon and his evil once and for all. And then I wake up here, in this form. And I remember everything. I couldn't tell you if I tried."

"That's odd," Henry murmured. "I wonder what could have caused it."

"Well," Rika supplied. "We know that WereGarurumon's reformation into a Digi-Egg was not an ordinary circumstance, was it? He was supposed to go to Anubimon's realm first, but he just reformed on the floor right in front of us there and then. Maybe whatever the heck happened to cause that also ensured that he kept his memories."

"Could be," Henry nodded. "Could indeed be. I guess we'll have to go with that theory for now, though I can't for the life of me figure out how what happened either."

Punimon winced. "I kinda find this talk about my rebirth a bit morbid, even if it is strange."

"You're right," nodded Henry. "Sorry."

"Well, anyway," said Suzie, gesturing to the Twi'lek girl she was sitting next to. "Like Aayla said, this is Numa. She's just joined our little group and this is the first time she's seen a Digimon hatch."

Punimon looked up and nodded to Numa, which made his whole body move so it looked like a bow as well. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, young one." He then giggled and said, "Hehehehe, young one. Look at me, acting as if I'm still an Ultimate level Digimon. Technically, I'm a young one too. Anyway, nice to meet you."

Numa merely stared blankly at him, so Suzie chipped in and said, "Er, she doesn't speak the same language as we do, but she's still a very nice person."

"Oh, okay," said Punimon. "Um, what exactly is she? She doesn't look like a human and she can't be a Digimon."

"That's because she's neither," said Suzie. "She's a Twi'lek, just like Aayla over there is, and Ahsoka is a Togruta and Barriss is a Mirialan."

"Er, which of those two is which?" Punimon asked. "And can I get out of this eggshell now?"

Ahsoka glanced over at the little group and said, "You know, if we succeed in keeping the Digimon secret throughout all this then having a fourth one fighting beside us should definitely help us along, shouldn't it?"

"Yeah, that is true," nodded Barriss. "Even if he did hatch at an inconvenient time, he could still be a real help once he digivolves. That's if he wants to help us out."

"I'm sure he will," Aayla nodded. "He has a noble heart, just like the rest of the Digimon we know."

"And throwing four monsters at the Chancellor," Anakin murmured. "Well, I suppose that would ruin his day, wouldn't it?" he chuckled. The other three Jedi gave him encouraging smiles, glad to see that Anakin was beginning to accept this horrible turnout, even if he still didn't like it.

"I hate to put a downer on that thought," Lopmon sighed. "But I don't think that Punimon will be of any help to us anytime soon. You remember what we told IceMyotismon back on Mygeeto, Ahsoka? When he was going on about becoming stronger."

Ahsoka paused and said, "Oh yeah. You said that digivolution laws are different in this universe because the Catalyst isn't present or something like that. You said that you Digimon who have Tamers don't need the Catalyst to Digivolve, which is why you can reach your higher forms, but that Digimon without Tamers wouldn't be able to do it."

"Yeah, and that still holds true," nodded Terriermon. "Our new friend will be stuck in that form until we can figure out a way to get him back home or unless he miraculously finds a Tamer, which I don't see happening any time soon."

"Well, it was a nice thought," Aayla shrugged. "From what I saw, he was very powerful as WereGarurumon. That sort of strength could prove invaluable, especially during times like this."

"Well, is it not possible that we could find him a Tamer?" asked Barriss.

"You can't just pick someone at random," Terriermon shook his head. "It just doesn't work like that. The heart of Tamer and Digimon has to be in sync for that to happen. But it's much, _much_ easier for a Digimon to form a Tamers bond with a kid."

Lopmon frowned and focused on the one child here who did not have a Digimon. "You know, Numa's a kid. And she was holding his egg when he hatched, almost like her presence triggered it. You think there's a possibility that the two of them could become partners?"

"Hey, good point," nodded Ahsoka. "I could see that."

"So could I," agreed Terriermon. "But that doesn't work either. It doesn't just happen. Even if they become the best of friends, Numa won't become a Tamer unless we have a Digi-Gnome to grant her wish to become one. And last time I checked, there _are_ no Digi-Gnomes in this universe – they only exist in ours."

"Oh yeah," Lopmon nodded and sighed. "Never mind then. I guess it'll still be the three of us."

Terriermon grinned and clenched his fist. "Momentai. That's more than enough, right?"

"Oh definitely," nodded Lopmon. "I am beginning to think that it won't be long now before Palpatine does learn of our existence, but he won't like what he sees. Or the circumstance with which we unveil ourselves."

"We'll do our best to make sure that that's what happens," Aayla laughed.

Anakin smiled faintly, but then a sudden flashing on the holotable caught his eye and he said, "Guys, we have an incoming transmission." Everyone quickly focused as Anakin pushed the button and a hologram appeared in front of them. As they had predicted, it featured a human woman wearing a Tholoth headdress just like that of Adi Gallia. This woman looked like a younger version of the Jedi Master.

"Hello?" the woman said, quietly. "Hello? Who's that? Who's out there?"

"Stass Allie," Anakin observed, stepping into the hologram's field of vision. "This is Anakin Skywalker, and I've got Ahsoka, Aayla and Barriss with me. What's your situation?"

"Oh thank the Force," Stass replied. "I didn't realise that there was anyone close to me but it's a good thing there is. Have you managed to escape from your clone troopers?"

"I a manner of speaking," Anakin replied. "What's happening?"

"I'm trapped on my cruiser," Stass replied. "We were in space when I received the message from the Jedi Temple and the clones started attacking. They've locked down the hangar and jettisoned all the escape pods, and the place is crawling with them. I'm hiding in the vents for the moment but it probably won't be long before they find me. Is there any chance you can help me, or get someone else who can?"

"Don't worry, Stass," Anakin replied quickly. "We're above the Ryloth system, so we'll be with you quickly. Make your way towards the hangar. We'll come and help you get away."

"Thank you," nodded Stass. "Is there a plan?"

"Not really," Anakin shook his head. "But I'll come up with something. Now hurry, before your men find you?"

Stass nodded and signed out. Aayla hurriedly called on her comlink and said, "Commander Bly, we've received a distress call from a fellow Jedi. We need to head to the Orvan system right away. Program the hyperdrive. We don't have a lot of time."

"At once, General," Bly said and the two cruisers slowly turned around.

Anakin turned to the others and said, "Well, now would be a good time for a plan," just as the cruisers jumped to hyperspace.

* * *

Stass was left crawling through the vents as quickly and quietly as she could manage, hardly daring to breathe whenever she passed over one of the grates that lead to the corridors below. More than once she had to stop and withdraw slightly as she spotted clones below her, walking slowly through the corridors and with blasters raised, scouring the ship for any sign of her. It would not be long before they thought to check the vents. Stass hoped that Anakin and the others would get here soon.

Still, of all the Jedi that could have been nearby, Stass was probably lucky that it was that lot. There might be hope for her yet if they could keep up their streak of being undefeated.

Eventually though, she reached the part of the vents where she would be as close to the main hangar as possible. It was here that she froze, hunched over in a corner in a very uncomfortable position. She would be able to make a quick break for the hangar when the others arrived but until she heard the evidence of an attack, she would stay here, undetected.

She could hear the voices of a couple of clones nearby out in the corridor. "Any sign of her?" one asked.

"Nothing so far," said another. "But we've covered over two-thirds of the ship. There are not many more places left in which she can hide. And when we find her, we'll be sure to carry out the Chancellor's orders."

"Did you ever imagine we would be told to carry out Order 66?" the first clone asked.

"Nope," thee other clone replied. "Came as a complete surprise. But it's not our job to question the Chancellor. We just follow orders."

Abruptly the entire ship suddenly juddered and almost through Stass off balance and made the clones cry out in surprise. Then it juddered again and again and the distant sound to auto-turrets being fired could be heard. The ship was under attack, and to Stass' amazement it sounded like it was coming from another cruiser. Perhaps two.

Was that her reinforcements?

She had to assume so. She lifted the grate with the Force and rolled out of the vent, landing directly on one of the clones and pushing him to the floor beneath her weight, then leaping off him to plant a kick straight into the chest of the other one. Before either of them could get up, Stass dashed the remaining distance and burst into the large hangar. As she had predicted, her starfighter was now a smouldering pile of wreckage and the thick blast doors were closed shut.

Stass hoped that Anakin and the others would be able to find a way to get through those doors.

But for the moment, she had bigger concerns, like the fact that the clones in the hangar had spotted her and had started shooting. Stass leapt on top of one of the shuttles and activated her blade, whirling it around to block more shots and praying that the others acted quickly.

* * *

Stass' assumption was correct. The _Intrepid_ and the _Resolute_ had suddenly pulled out of hyperspace on either side of Stass' cruiser and had immediately started pouring lasers into the enemy ship, catching the people inside it completely by surprise. It took them a couple of minutes before they came to terms with the fact they were being attacked by other Republic ships and by the time they began desperately firing back, the cruisers had already torn many huge rents throughout the ship and the shields were almost completely down.

Which was part of the hastily constructed plan the others had come up with.

Form out of the two cruisers, a bunch of starfighters emerged from the hangars, led by three Jedi starfighters. Barriss confessed that she did not have the piloting skills that the others had either, but she was still very good. Alongside was Aayla and Terriermon in their own small, triangular vessels and the clones followed on after them.

And, out of the _Resolute_ and piloted by Captain Rex, came the battered but still recognisable ship, the _Twilight._ It might have crash-landed on Naboo and been almost completely wrecked, but Anakin had spent a very large portion of his free time organising the rebuilding of his favourite ship and now here it was once more. It was not completely finished, but it was still faster and sturdier than ever before.

Anakin and Ahsoka's starfighters were in the other ship, so the two of them could not join in the assault. Instead, they were co-ordinating the attack from the bridge of the _Intrepid_ and watched as their starfighters began to pepper the cruiser in the middle with their laser-fire. Anakin tuned in his comlink and said, "Remember, you guys have got to get this right first time. If we get it wrong..."

"We could inadvertently end up killing Stass," Terriermon replied. "Momentai, Anakin. We know, and we'll get it right. Though I have to say I think this is the most mad plan we've ever come up with."

"Sure you're up for it, Terriermon?" Ahsoka asked.

"I'm game."

"I should tell you that I am opposed to this," Henry said, practically gnawing his lip with agitation. "I do not like this plan at all."

"Sorry Henry, but we don't have a lot of options, and Terriermon volunteered," Anakin replied. "I have faith that he'll be fine."

"Me too," nodded Lopmon. "But that doesn't stop me from being nervous. This is a big ask for anyone."

"I know," Anakin nodded, priming his comlink again. "Stass, we're here for you. Are you in position?"

"Yeah, I'm in the hangar!" the voice at the other end cried, and the sound of a whirring lightsaber and firing blasters was accompanying it. "And I'm surrounded now. I could use a little help and quickly."

"We're almost in position," Anakin replied, watching as the _Twilight_ swung around the bridge of the enemy cruiser and swept past the auto-turret guns. "Give us a few more seconds. And head towards the middle of the hangar if you can."

"The middle?" Stass asked. "What kind of crazy plan have you come up with this time?"

"You'll see," Anakin said, and turned to watch their mad scheme unfold.

Aayla piloted her ship forward and said, "All wings, line up behind Barriss and eye. Concentrate your fire on the cannons around the hangar doors. We need to give Terriermon cover for when he makes his move."

"Copy that, General Secura," said one of the clones. Barriss and Aayla took point in their starships, with the ARC-170 fighters lining up behind them. On either side of the hangar doors were a pair of particularly large guns that were blazing large blue bolts out at the newcomers. With the Jedi whirling to avoid them, they let off a barrage of lasers at one cannon each, the clones behind them adding to the bombardment with their own laser cannons until it was like school of bright blue fish shooting through space. The guns around the hangar were pounded almost flat by the barrage and were almost completely wrecked.

Aayla and Barriss led the fighters away, veering to either side to regroup and continue pounding at the ship with their guns elsewhere. Terriermon was hanging back and out of the main conflict, the little seat restraint built in for someone of his stature unclipped and the small controller that had been specially designed for him clutched in his ears.

He was watching the _Twilight_, as the old, rebuilt spice freighter got closer.

"We're ready, Terriermon," Rex called through the comlink. "You better get moving. I really hope this works."

"You think I don't?" Terriermon chuckled dryly. "I never thought I'd be doing something like this."

"You'll be fine, Terriermon," Aayla assured him. "We'll see to it. Er, nevertheless, may the Force be with you."

"Yeah, I kinda hope so to," Terriermon nodded. "Momentai everyone. I got this." He stood up and looked through the cockpit glass towards the hangar door, his view unobstructed by an astromech because his ship didn't actually _have_ an astromech in its socket. Not this time.

Terriermon focused on the centre of the blast doors and pushed down on the left thumbstick, motoring his ship forward and high speed and straight towards the hangar doors, set in a collision course that he was not intending to pull out of. One of his hands patted the seat of his ship and he said, "Thanks, girl. You've served me well over the last few months, but now its time for your final voyage. Here we GOOO!" he cried as he accelerated harder still and his ship shot forward, the _Twilight_ moving into position behind him.

There was a breath as every clone, Jedi and Tamer watched with wide eyes and bated breath, hearts beating fast as Terriermon bulldozed straight for the blast doors. Terriermon's focus was at its peak. Never before had he concentrated so much effort into his timing, not even on his beloved video games back home.

But when he judged the distance was right, he shouted, _NOW HENRY!_

And Henry responded immediately, not bothering to cry out as he swiftly swiped the blue card his was holding through the slot on his D-Arc.

At the same moment, Terriermon sprang out of his seat and expanded, growing way too big for his cockpit in a split second. Terriermon's ship was torn apart from within and the momentum of its head-on charge combined with being catapulted out from the shattered cockpit threw the newly forming Rapidmon right out into space.

It was bitingly cold. In fact Rapidmon could not remember a time when he had ever been colder. He couldn't breathe either – there was absolutely no oxygen anywhere around him. No sound came out of Rapidmon as he continued the full-on charge that his starfighter had started and shot towards the blast doors, raising his arm-cannons as he did so and sending off a quick flurry of Rapid Fire attacks ahead of him, with a Miracle Missile accompaniment around the sides.

The veritable swarm of missiles shot ahead of him and slammed into the blast doors with a massive explosion, tearing the metal and almost completely blowing a hole straight through, but the Tri Beam that Rapidmon sent after it finished the job and huge, gaping hole was smashed into the middle of the hangar doors. And the shields designed to stop the vacuum of space from sucking anyone out were noticeably _not_ up.

Stass balked in surprise, as did all the clones when the hole was blown right in the middle of the blast door. A split second later, something large and green barrelled its way inside, but at the exact same moment a huge suction filled the hangar and everything not nailed down was immediately scooped up and shot towards and through the hole. Including Stass.

But she had done as instructed and was in the middle of the hangar and Rapidmon's lightning fast reflexes honed in on her and, while his momentum still carried him against the vacuum, he grabbed her in his embrace, carefully avoiding her lightsaber and held the stunned Jedi close to him. It was at that point that the vacuum won out and Rapidmon was carried back out into space with Stass in his grip and propelled back out of the cruiser.

As Stass struggled in vain for breathe, Rapidmon aimed himself at a new target – the _Twilight._ Fortunately, it had got into position, its back was turned to them and the hatch at the back was open while Aayla, Barriss and the other clones protected it with covering fire. While the unfortunate clones from the hangar went floating away in random directions, Rapidmon and his bundle were thrust towards the _Twilight._

With near-perfect timing, Rapidmon de-digivolved right before they crashed through the shield and both he, as Terriermon, and Stass went tumbling into the bay at the back of the ship and rolled to a stop at the far wall, both of them gasping for breath as a couple of clones ran over to prop them both up and held up large oxygen masks to help them get their breath back.

"They're in!" cried Aayla, as the shield behind the blast doors on the cruiser they were attacking went up again and any clone that had been fortunate enough to grab something or be some distance from the hole were saved. "Let's go! Let's get out of here!"

"By the Force, that was terrifying," Barriss breathed as they escorted the _Twilight_ back towards the hangar.

_Terriermon, are you okay?_ Henry and Lopmon both asked immediately.

_Say something,_ Suzie cried.

_I'm here,_ Terriermon replied, shaking his head and sucking in the life-giving oxygen. _But I do not ever want to do that ever again ever, you hear me, Anakin._

_I completely agree,_ Anakin assured him. _Still, great job. You really are the master gamer after all, aren't you?_

_Yeah, I guess I am,_ Terriermon grinned. He pushed away the oxygen mask and got to his feet, saying, "I'm fine now. Thank you, before he looked over to Stass Allie. The poor Jedi's lightsaber hilt was lying limply in her hand as she continued to suck oxygen through the mask the clone was holding to her face, looking at the white-clad man helping her out in bewilderment.

Then he gaze turned to Terriermon and she pulled the mask way from her face to stare. Terriermon waved at her and grinned cheekily. Stass blinked and said, "Does anybody want to tell me what the heck is going on here?"

"Momentai," Terriermon said. "I'm friends with Anakin and Aayla, and I just got you out of that ship in one piece. My name's Terriermon," he extended an ear and Stass looked at it as if it was the weirdest thing she had ever seen in her entire life.

"That doesn't really answer my question," she said. "Not completely, anyway."

"You'll find out soon enough," Terriermon said. "Welcome to the ranks of the people who know about the Secret of the 327th, Stass Allie."

The _Twilight_ and its escort then entered the hangar and the _Resolute _and the _Intrepid_ sent off one final salvo of lasers that tore Stass' ship apart, leaving nothing but wreckage behind, and then they quickly jumped to hyperspace and left the scene behind.

* * *

The clones under the command of Captain Tarkin had spread out through the woodland once they had finally managed to get off their cruiser and were now in small groups, sweeping through the trees like systematic clockwork and trying to locate the missing Master Piell, who had, so far managed to remain unseen.

The Lannik Jedi Master slowly moved aside a piece of foliage and peered down at the clones that were passing underneath him. He was up a tree and concealed amongst the canopy, his small size easily enabling him to remain hidden even while standing on a branch where a normal person would be in plain sight. He grunted and moved the plant matter back to its original position, stepping deeper into the tree branches and nimbly limping through the gaps between several more trees with barely a rustle, but he only managed to get a few trees away before he encountered another group of clones.

He hid from them as well instead of fighting them though.

Piell wondered how things could turn around so fast. How many Jedi across the whole Galaxy were doing something similar to him now – hiding away from their own troops. He had no way of knowing, stuck here in this forest. If Palpatine had managed to broadcast the message to all the clones simultaneously, which was unlikely considering the Senate did not possess that kind of technology (there was no reason for them to need to after all, since they were not supposed to take part in war-like affairs), then hundreds of Jedi might be doing the same as him.

However, if the Chancellor had had to give the order to the clone leaders one by one, which seemed more likely, then most of the Jedi would have gotten far more warning than Master Piell did and plenty of opportunity to escape. It was likely that the Chancellor had targeted the more powerful and influential members of the Order, like the Council, first and left the more minor ones for later.

There might be hope for the Jedi Order yet.

But it seemed there wasn't a whole lot for Master Piell. He still needed to get out of here, and he did not possess his own starfighter like other Jedi did. People his size really didn't work with them and it took a lot of modifications to make one that would allow them to sit comfortably and still reach all the controls.

(Terriermon was a special case – he had those modifications done and he had his own controller)

In any case, even if he had a starfighter, he couldn't have gone back for it. He had sent out a distress call on the Jedi wavelength, but he had not received any reply. And he was the only Jedi on this planet that he knew of, so it seemed that he was on his own for the time being.

Until then, he would have to survive.

And that promptly became far more difficult.

"Hey, I think I see something," said one of the clones from down below. Piell started and peered through the leaves to see the clone was looking right in his direction, a special visor lowered over his helmet. Piell cursed – they had pulled out the thermal imaging detectors and he would be showing up as red to that clone despite the colder tree branches all around him. He sprung off his branch just as a volley of lasers crashed into the trunk behind him and snapped the branch from the tree, sending it spinning to the ground.

Piell landed on a sturdier branch and dashed along it, the clones' shots passing right behind him as he flung himself into the air and swung from another branch to propel himself into another tree. The clones were right behind him, firing their blasters into the foliage and the Lannik's green lightsaber sprang to life and snapped around a couple of times, cutting through some of the smaller branches of the tree and slamming the blue bolts back out of the tree leaves, catching some of the clones off guard and dropping them where they stood.

One clone remained and Piell flung a branch at him as he backflipped into another tree and hared off into the branches, knowing full well that the clones throughout the forest would be converging on his area at the sound of shots being let off.

Sure enough, more came dashing in from up ahead and Piell cartwheeled to the side to avoid their shots. His blade cut through a vine and he used it to swing downwards and kick another clone in the chest with both feet, landing on top of him and tossing the others in his company to the ground with a burst of the Force to either side of him before he dashed along the ground and through the trees once more.

The clones scrambled up quickly and were in hot pursuit, but the Jedi Master swung his blade through the trunk of a large, dead tree near the roots, severely weakening its structure and a nudge with the Force caused it to topple towards the clones, who leapt back to avoid being crushed beneath it. Piell turned and ran on, dashing across the forest floor with his blade at his side, until he reached a small clearing.

He skidded to a halt in the centre as he found his way practically blocked by clones. He turned around, only to find more clones hurrying towards him from behind. Accompanying them was Captain Tarkin himself, who smirked at the small Jedi Master he had served for many months.

"A nice little game of hide-and-seek, General," Tarkin said, his slimy voice unchanged. "But in the end, it seems the Jedi Order is no match for the Grand Army of the Republic."

"We shall see about that, Tarkin," Piell snarled and readied himself for the attack, as the clones raised their blasters and prepared to shoot.

It was at that point that the treetops began rustling and the reason for this soon became apparent as a gunship suddenly appeared overhead. Tarkin looked up in confusion, having not expected any form of air support. He hadn't ordered for any, after all.

He was therefore very surprised when the blast doors on either side opened and clones inside began to pour lasers down on the other clones instead of the Jedi. And, with his clawed hand against the door, Plo Koon looked down at the scene below.

"I think you've overstayed your welcome, Master Piell," he called down from above. "You must jump, quickly!"

Even Piell didn't need telling twice and he sprang directly upwards with a huge Force-jump. Tarkin cried out and attempted to shoot the flying Jedi, but was forced to duck behind a tree to avoid being hit in the face from a couple of shots from Commander Wolffe. Plo extended his hand and caught the smaller Jedi Council Member with the Force, levitating him carefully into the gunship with the rest of them.

As Master Piell landed Plo turned back out and extended both hands to the scene below, where the clones were taking cover from the shots of the other clones and flexed his claws, wrenching his hands closer towards him. As the gunship began to fly away, several more trees suddenly toppled over and crashed to the ground, eliciting cries from below as several of the clones dived to avoid the falling towers of wood.

And then they were out of there, high above the forest and towards the cruiser waiting for them in the air.

Piell grinned and said, "Looks like my distress beacon reached somebody after all. You certainly took your time, Master Plo."

"It was a little weak," nodded Plo. "But we managed to pick it up faintly and it took us a few minutes to hone onto your location. It's a good thing we arrived when we did."

"Indeed," nodded Piell. "But I believe that an explanation is due."

"And you'll get one, Master Piell," said Plo. "But first, we must head up into orbit and attempt to contact Master Yoda. And hope that he has a solution to this mess."

* * *

Even Piell was not the only one who had been running through woodland to escape his clone pursuers. K'kruhk was still running as well. After he had seen the death of the Ithorian Jedi, Ise, at the hands of a large AT-TE tanks, the Whipid had barely stopped for even a second as he bounded through the trees. He had no clear destination in mind, no real thought put into where he might be going to.

He just had to escape.

Hundreds of Jedi across the Galaxy were doing the same as him right now, running and trying to find a place, somewhere to get away from the clone troopers. Those on more populated planets could find and steal a ship and get off the planet. Others were trying to find places to hide, deep within the mountains or snowdrifts or sand-dunes or lakes or a myriad of different environments. The entire Jedi Order was now on the run.

Roughly eighty-five percent of them were still alive, thanks to the quick actions of the Digimon, and the various Jedi Council members involved. But, scattered across the universe as they were and with the majority of them without any form of transportation, the best they could do was survive. Provided they stayed away from other beings that might do them harm, that would not really be a problem for them. They knew how to get by in all surroundings.

Most of the clones had now received the order to kill the Jedi, and the reason why their Generals had suddenly taken off like that was explained and the majority of them were trying to find them. But most of the Jedi had a very long head-start by that point, and the clones would not be able to find them.

That meant that most of the Jedi Order had been spared and the clones would be forced to leave before they had found their targets.

But K'kruhk was one of the unfortunate ones who had only just learned about the state of things when his own troops received the order as well. It was that which meant that the clones would probably be somewhere not far behind and so K'kruhk was not planning on stopping anytime soon. His long pointed face was creased into a frown of concentration as he focused on the pounding of his feet and increased his speed, using the Force to guide and increase his strides.

It was after some time that K'kruhk finally pulled to a halt, and that was only because he thought he heard something up ahead. He skidded to a halt, his claws digging into the ground and he crouched low, rolling behind a fallen tree as he heard and sensed another presence approaching from the direction he had been running. He lowered himself behind the thick, fallen trunk, listening to the footsteps getting closer.

When he judged the distance was close enough, he sprang onto the trunk and activated his green lightsaber, holding it defensively in front of him and prepared for anything. The figure skidded to a halt himself and a blue lightsaber sprang to life in his hands. It took the two figures a couple of seconds to recognise each other.

"Oh, it's you," said K'kruhk, in his gravelly tone, sheathing his lightsaber. "Good to see that you managed to get away from your troops."

"Likewise," said the other Jedi, sheathing his own blade. Just as Stass Allie looked like a younger version of Adi Gallia, this Jedi looked like a younger version of Eeth Koth – a Zabrak with brownish skin and numerous small horns adorning his head. His name was Agen Kolar, and he was under consideration to be one of the next Council members should something happen to one of its current members. "I was hoping that I wasn't the only one."

"Ise didn't make it," K'kruhk growled. "I saw him blown to smithereens right in front of me by one of the AT-TE walkers. We were caught out almost immediately. He never got the chance to get away."

Kolar placed a hand over his heart and said, "He is one with the Force now, then. And as tragic as his passing is, the real concern is the circumstances that caused it. Our own troops have no turned on us and there seems to be little we can do to stop them. We are vastly outnumbered by them and without back-up."

"Can we call for help?" asked K'kruhk. "There may be someone else out there who might be able to pick us up."

"I've already tried," Kolar lifted his communicator. "I wasn't able to raise anyone on the com-channel. I did send out a distress beacon as well though. Hopefully someone will pick it up, though I wouldn't get my hopes up. This crisis is Galaxy-wide, and that means _all_ the Jedi will be against their own clones unless I'm very much mistaken."

"How can it all turn around so fast?" K'kruhk shook his head. "One minute we go from being the protectors of the Republic and one of the main driving forces behind the retreat of the Separatists and suddenly almost the whole Galaxy thinks we are enemies. We caused the Republic to span most of the Galaxy, and now most of the Republic will want our hides."

"I am not sure all is lost yet," Kolar shook his head. "There should be a number of planets nearby that might offer us sanctuary. The only question is which one?"

"Actually there is a second question," K'kruhk muttered. "How do we get to it?"

"Hm. Good point," nodded Kolar. "I suppose we could try and find a..."

Suddenly K'kruhk made a shushing noise and said, "Quiet. I think I hear something. Coming from over there." He pointed in the direction that he himself had come and the two Jedi stared into the trees. Despite the fact this was a forest, it was quite a sparse one and the trees were widely spaced with almost no undergrowth whatsoever. Sound was not masked by these trees very well and the every-increasing noise of heavy feet pounding the ground was very much in evidence.

It wouldn't have made a whole lot of difference if there had been undergrowth, but the fact that there wasn't did help the AT-RT walkers that came pelting out of the trees and straight towards the Jedi.

"They found us," K'kruhk cried as their lightsabers sprang to life in their hands.

"Target sighted!" cried the lead clone at almost the same time. "And we appear to have picked up another one."

The walkers weaved between the trees at high speed and shot large laser bolts straight towards the Jedi as they threw themselves forward with each, pounding step. K'kruhk leapt off the fallen tree as he and Kolar leapt into the defence, parrying the shots quickly and stepping further away into the trees as they did so, but the walkers gained ground on them extremely quickly.

The two-legged vehicles fanned out and started coming from all angles, flashing off lasers quickly before running on again to avoid the returning fire from the Jedi's lightsabers and to try and attack from many angles at once to catch the Jedi off guard.

It wasn't long before the Jedi were defending on all fronts, practically back to back with one another as they fought to keep the blue lasers from the walker's nose cannons from hitting them or the other one. Kolar gritted his teeth as he brought his blade up again to repel another shot, but the walker was long gone before it ricocheted back to where it had been. He tried another angle and launched a shot on an interception path with another walker, but the clone manning it was observant enough to see it and the walker dodged nimbly despite its huge size.

K'kruhk roared – he had a habit of doing that in battle situations – and attempted to fling the fallen tree at a couple of walkers with the Force. But with an amazing display of agility, the two walkers sprang right over the trunk, landing on the ground with heavy thuds and sending off more bolts before they were moving again.

"Now what do we do?" K'kruhk asked as he blocked off some more shots, the walkers getting closer to the two Jedi with each round they made. They both knew that it would not be too long before the rest of the clone army homed in on their location and then they would be in serious trouble.

"We'll have to make a break for it," Kolar replied, swatting aside a laser that would have hit him in the face. "Head into the jungle and try to make sure we stay ahead of these walkers. We have to get away from here."

"But there's almost no cover in this forest," K'kruhk observed.

"We'll have to make do," Kolar replied. "Follow me! Come on!" Suddenly the Zabrak span his lightsaber and charged forwards, the Whipid wheeling around and closely following on behind him. One of the walkers stepped back to fire on the two Jedi as they charged right for it, but as the Jedi continued to deflect the lasers, the clone manning it attempted to jump over them instead. But this time, the Jedi outmatched the machine and leapt after it, their blades slicing through the ankle joint on one leg of the walker each.

As the walker fell to the ground and collapsed in a heap due to its lack of feet, tossing the rider across the ground, the two Jedi hared off into the trees at top speed. The walkers that remained swiftly dashed into pursuit, their feet pounding the earth and drowning out the sounds of the Jedi's own footsteps, pouring more lasers towards the Jedi's retreating backs.

K'kruhk abruptly stopped and turned around to defend from some of the shots and Kolar was not far ahead. He also turned and crouched behind cover, grabbing one of the walkers with the Force and, with a burst of effort, tossing it to the side where it crashed into another walker and sent the two tumbling into wreckage.

K'kruhk ran backwards, his senses telling him where not to run as he dodged around trees and Kolar was forced to leap aside as another walker pounded towards him with intent to flatten him. K'kruhk quickly saw an opening and took it, leaping up and rebounding off a tree, roaring as he sailed through the air with blade raised and plunged it into the clone manning the walker that had attempted to crush Kolar. The clone died immediately, and K'kruhk kicked his body off and took the controls, turning the vehicle around and opening fire on the other walkers.

Kolar brightened as he saw what K'kruhk had done and jumped forward himself as the other walkers scattered to avoid the shots from the Jedi. Leaping into the path of one of the careening walkers, he neatly plucked the clone out of his seat with the Force and sent him flying back through the forest. Kolar leapt into the seat and steered the walker away into the woods. K'kruhk blew holes in the area around the feet of the other walkers, forcing the clones to make them skitter backwards, before he turned and followed Kolar into the woods.

The clones quickly pursued, but the Jedi had managed to gain a slight lead on them with their bold moves. But still, their escape was far from certain. They would have to think of something else now.

* * *

The two of them were quite unaware of something else that was happening nearby. A pair of Republic cruisers were descending into the atmosphere of the planet some distance away, and a bunch of gunships were flying from the hangars of both of them and dropping until they were just above the canopy. Inside one of them was Mace Windu, and the Council member pulled out his communicator and contacted the General of the other cruiser.

When he saw who it was, he said, "Ah, Master Mundi. I take it that you are here for the same reason I am."

"If you mean here as in 'here on this planet,' then I assume the answer is yes," Ki-Adi-Mundi replied. "I picked up a distress beacon from one of our Jedi here and immediately came to help. If you mean here as in 'still alive'... well, I assume the answer is still yes. Because apparently the Commander and Captain that serve under the A-Team managed to alert my men to the fact that the Chancellor is a Sith."

"I still haven't quite got over that," muttered Ponds from next to Mace.

"That is indeed the case for both of those answers," Mace nodded. "Intelligence reports that there were three Jedi in this vicinity. Hopefully whoever sent the distress beacon is still alive and knows of the whereabouts of the others. We're going to need all the Jedi we can get."

"You know that once the clones report back to the Chancellor that we are on to the fact he's having us killed off it will be harder to pull off rescue missions," Ki-Adi-Mundi replied. "The Jedi Order will have to disappear. There are too many of us to find individually while we're being hunted."

"I know," agreed Mace. "That's why we need to rescue as many Jedi as we can while we still have the opportunity. Now, let's see which of our fellow Jedi are still alive down there."

"Understood," Ki-Adi-Mundi nodded and signed off. Mace ordered that the blast doors be opened and he stared out at the forest below, searching for any sign of clone or Jedi down below.

"Sir," came the voice of the clone in the cockpit. "Our scanners indicate that the Jedi distress beacon is coming from up ahead. And we're also picking up explosions and laser-fire. It looks like there's a fight going on down there."

Mace nodded. "Then we'll have to be quick. Commander Ponds, are the cables ready?"

"And waiting, sir," Ponds nodded.

"Good," nodded Mace. "Be ready to deploy on my mark," he added, grabbing the end of the nearest cable.

It was not long before they arrived at the scene of the conflict, and through the sparse vegetation, they could see the two Jedi fleeing on their walkers, closely followed by about a dozen more, manned by clones, who were shooting at them. Ki-Adi-Mundi quickly directed his own gunships forward and before the clones on the walkers below knew what was happening, they were under attack.

Three of them went down instantly to the laser-storm, and the others dashed out of the way, the gunships winging after them and firing around their feet to keep them away. Kolar and K'kruhk pulled to a halt and stared in amazement as the gunships attacked the other clones and they watched as one pulled into a hover overhead and a figure leapt out of it, trailing a cable. Two more cables were flung out after him as well.

Mace jerked to halt roughly level with the heads of the two other Jedi and said, "Hurry, get on. You can ask your questions later."

The two Jedi did not need to be told twice. They sprang onto the seats of their walkers and leapt for the cables, grabbing onto one of them each and holding on tight. Mace signalled up to the clones in the ship and Commander Ponds nodded and gave the order for the gunship to lift off again, with the Jedi hanging underneath it by the cables. The three Jedi began climbing up, and the clones hauled the cables in at the same time, so it wasn't long at all before the three Jedi were in with the others.

"Where is Ise?" Mace asked K'kruhk. The Whipid looked up at him with an empty expression, which told Mace his answer before he received a slow shake of the head as well. Mace sighed, an took a moment to honour the deceased Ithorian, and then he said, "Pilot, let's get out of here before reinforcements arrive."

"Yes, sir," said the pilot, and the blast doors quickly closed and the gunships headed back for the cruisers, while the remaining clones on walkers below stared in disbelief at the retreating ships.

"What the heck just happened?" one of them asked.

"I don't know," said another. "But we have to report this to command right away."

* * *

The Jedi Temple, which was now devoid of all Jedi for the first time in a very, very long time, was still sending up huge plumes of smoke into the air after the attacks from the gunships, the clones and the Y-wing bombers had caused the enormous explosions all throughout the massive structure. It was still standing, tall and proud, and it would take a hell of a lot to bring the entire building down, but for now it was still quite a sorry sight.

People across Coruscant were pointing and staring at the Temple in horror, as they began to get an inkling that something was wrong, but they had no idea what. The building that was home to the guardians of the Galaxy was severely damaged. That could only mean that it had been attacked, and that terrified the populace as most of them had no idea who had done it and even less knew why.

At the base of the Temple, after they had finally broken through the rubble that had blocked the doors and therefore shut them inside, the three Commanders that had attacked the Temple looked up at the damage they had done. All three of them could feel a slight sense of guilt. After all, as part of the clone security force here of Coruscant, they had all seen this massive building on the horizon day in and day out and yet the state it was in now was thanks to them.

Stone turned to the other two and said, "Do we know how many men we lost yet?"

"Not yet," Thire replied. "The body count is still coming in for both clone and Jedi, but it seems to me that we did not sustain many more losses than the Jedi themselves."

"Does that strike anyone else as slightly weird?" Fox asked, bluntly. "I mean, we might not have seen as much of the Jedi in action as other clones but we've seen enough. They are extremely good fighters – every last one of them. More than a match for just about any clone one on one. And yet we didn't lose that many of our own forces."

"And a lot of the forces we did lose were thanks to the attacks by those renegade clones," agreed Thire. "In comparison, the Jedi barely killed any of us. You're right, that it odd. Especially since they were obviously somehow informed of our arrival before it even happened. They could have decimated our initial forces. I once saw Master Yoda take on almost an entire droid battalion, including several tanks, by himself. He didn't do that here and, much as I hate to say it, we're not _that_ much better than droids. He could have done the same to us if he wanted to."

"Their approach was purely defensive," nodded Fox. "A couple of us got too close or were hit by our own bolts that they knocked back at us, but that's about it really."

"That _is_ strange," muttered Stone. "You would think that traitors to the Republic would be more offensive, so they could take out as many of us as possible, but they seemed more focused on escaping. Still, there is a possibility that we've got the wrong angle on this and they're more cowardly than we thought."

"No, that doesn't sound right," Thire shook his head. "They are compassionate – I saw that with Master Yoda, but never cowardly. They were just stalling us so that their weaker members could get away. That's the virtue of a Jedi if ever I saw them. Master Yoda even stopped briefly to speak with me during that fight."

"Oh?" Fox asked. "What did he say?"

"Not a lot," Thire shrugged. "Our brothers started firing at him and drew him back, but from what I got, he said that the Chancellor was deceiving us and that the Jedi were not the real enemy. But I can't figure out what he meant. I mean, the Chancellor cannot be an enemy of the Republic, can he? That's just inconceivable."

"Sounds to me like he was just saying that to try and get you to stop," Stone mused.

"Could be," Fox murmured. "But, then again, the idea of the _Jedi_ being enemies of the Republic struck me as ridiculous when I heard it from the Chancellor as well. And I maintain that they weren't showing very traitor-like behaviour during that fight. Ugh, I think my head is starting to ache. I'm so confused."

"We'll figure this out at another time," Thire murmured. "What was far more alarming was the fact that such a large number of our own clone brothers suddenly came to assist the Jedi like that. We didn't call on anymore reinforcements, so they must have found out about the attack on the Temple through some other way, and they were turning their backs on the Chancellor. How could they even think of something like that?"

"I don't know," Stone replied. "Maybe the Jedi corrupted them or something during the course of the war. They've had plenty of opportunity to do it."

"No, that still doesn't seem right," Fox shook his head. "I still don't think the Jedi would do something like that. I think it's more likely that those clones knew something that we didn't."

"You mean, about the Chancellor?" asked Thire.

"Not necessarily," Fox replied. "But maybe."

The three of them stood in silence for a moment before Thire shook himself and said, "This line of thinking is getting us nowhere. It's not our place to question the Chancellor on matters like this. It's our place to believe and obey him without question. He said the Jedi are traitors, and I see no reason why he should lie about that sort of thing."

"You're right," Fox nodded, shaking himself. "Let's see to the men and make our report. He's not going to be happy when he learns that most of the Jedi in here got away."

"At least we managed to secure the prisoners," Stone pointed out.

"Only Dooku and Ventress," Fox countered. "And while they _were_ the main priority ones, I know for a fact that there were several other prisoners somewhere in this Temple. It seems the Jedi must have taken them with them, but why in the world would they do that?"

"Maybe they were secret conspirators," suggested Thire. "And that's why they insisted on keeping them imprisoned here in the Temple instead of among the rest of the prisoners we're in charge of."

But all of them knew that did not sound right. But none of them said a word more as they turned around to wrap things up here at the Temple.

* * *

Among the several thousand pairs of eyes that were staring at the smoking Temple, one belonged to Senator Chuchi. The Pantoran had been practically glued to the spot ever since she had managed to warn Renamon of the imminent attack. She had watched with a rising sense of horror and anxiety as the smoke had risen higher into the air and grown thicker in quantity.

Even at this distance she had been able to make out the small forms of the gunships moving around the Temple and what looked like large explosions in the walls, although in actual fact they looked quite small from this angle. But she was too far away to tell if the Jedi had managed to get away safely and she had received no correspondence from Renamon or anybody else that might have indicated that they had.

Her hands were gripping the railings of the balcony as if she were hanging from them over the drop, and she was having to stop herself from doing something stupid like pulling off her gloves to bite her nails, or even worse, go charging up to the Chancellor's room to demand that he stop this right now. That would not go down very well.

Asides from the worry about her friends here, there was the horror as she imagined the scenarios panning out right across the Galaxy. Who had survived? Who had perished? Were her other friends alright? It was almost too much.

Yet she knew that she was going to have to get used to it. After all, she was stuck here for the time being, in the middle of what had essentially become something of an enemy camp. Though perhaps 'become' was the wrong word to use. More like it had been the enemy camp all along and Chuchi had never known she was in it.

It suddenly made her victory over the Trade Federation after they had kidnapped the Chairman's daughters seem insignificant. Even if they had been forced to join the Separatists after all, they still would have been serving under the same person at the end of the day.

Eventually, she decided that she simply couldn't watch the smoking Temple anymore and she turned to head back inside and settled herself on the sofa, feeling quite at a loss as to what to do now. She had the contact details of every one of the team she had worked with to try and find Darth Sidious, but she was hesitant to try and call them. They might be in the middle of something important, after all.

Just as she thought that, she jumped as her communicator started beeping. Turning away from the door just in case someone barged in, she shielded the hologram from view as she activated it. To her relief, she saw that it was Renamon, and the fox seemed to be in good health after all.

"Renamon," Chuchi smiled. "Oh thank goodness. I was really beginning to worry. What happened? Did you manage to escape the Temple?"

"Yes, we did," Renamon nodded. "And we'd like to thank you for the warning. It gave the Jedi who were doubting the words of Master Yoda about the Chancellor a small kick in the rear and got them going. But most of the Jedi were able to get out of the Temple with their lives. All the younglings survived, and Chewie and I are fine as well."

"And Bane?" asked Chuchi. "Is he still with you?"

Renamon looked up at something that Chuchi couldn't see and then said, "Well, he says 'For now.' I guess that means I'll have the pleasure of his company for a while longer. And before you ask, yes, that was slightly sarcastic. And also, yes, the others are all fine. They just rescued another Jedi who was in trouble and they've retreated into hyperspace. So have we. But, Master Yoda would like to talk with you personally."

Chuchi blinked and watched as the hologram switched from Renamon to the small Jedi, who nodded at her and said, "Senator Chuchi, glad to see you, I am."

"I could say the same," Chuchi smiled. "At least the majority of the Jedi were able to escape from this mess. I can't help but feel slightly responsible since I helped to unearth Darth Sidious' real identity."

"Nothing to feel guilty about, you have," Yoda shook his head. "Attacked us when we were more vulnerable, he would have, if we had not caught him out earlier. In the long run, helped to save the Jedi order, you may have, Senator."

"Well, I can safely say that I did not see myself doing something like that when I first took this post," Chuchi muttered.

Yoda chuckled. "Always the way, that is."

"True," nodded Chuchi.

"Wanted to thank you in person, I do," Yoda said. "And informed me, Renamon has, that relay information about the Chancellor's decisions to us, you intend to."

"I was planning on it, yes," Chuchi supplied.

"Hmm," Yoda mused. "Most brave you are, young Senator. A heavy burden to carry, you have chosen. If intending to follow through with it, you are, then unnecessary risks, you must not take."

"I understand, Master Yoda. I have absolutely no intention of getting myself caught. I confess, I'm not sure where to begin, but if I know the Chancellor or the Republic at all, I am willing to bet that he will be calling an emergency congress session shortly to inform the Senators of what's been going on. Maybe I can give you all a call afterwards and let you know of what he said and any other new developments."

"A start, that would be," nodded Yoda. "Plan a counter-attack, we must. But first..."

There was an abrupt knock at Chuchi's door, that caused Chuchi to swing around and cut Yoda off. Heart instantly starting to hammer, she turned back and whispered, "Someone's here. Let me call you back," before cutting off the call and calling, "Come in."

The door opened to reveal Senator Organa and Padmé standing on the other side. Bail had a grave look on his face, as if he were completely unsure what to make of what was going on but knew that he wouldn't like it, but it was Padmé's face that drew Chuchi's attention. The poor Senator looked absolutely despondent, and there was a mixture of mild panic thrown in.

Chuchi guessed that that expression had something to do with Anakin. She did not know of the husband-wife relationship they had, as that had been one thing Ahsoka had neglected to mention to her when she had told her about the Digimon and their adventures over the last few months, but she did know they were very close friends. If Chuchi knew Padmé at all, she would probably have been spending the last half hour desperately trying to make contact with him because, as far as she was aware, he was _in _the Jedi Temple.

But Anakin had, of course, not answered, as he had been in the middle of rescuing another Jedi at the other side of the Galaxy, but Padmé wouldn't know that. And Chuchi couldn't tell her either, as that would lead to questions about how she knew when Padmé didn't.

"Hello again, you two," Chuchi smiled falsely. "What can I do for you?"

"Sorry, Senator," Bail sighed. "I hope I wasn't interrupting anything, but I'm afraid that the Chancellor has called an emergency session of congress. I'm sure you must have noticed what's going on outside."

"If you mean the Temple, then yes," nodded Chuchi. "It's difficult not to notice. Do either of you know what's happening?"

"No," Padmé shook her head. "We wish we did, and hopefully we'll find out at this congress session." Chuchi could see the pleading hope in her eyes, hope that what she had just said would be the case, and that the news itself would be good.

"Alright," nodded Chuchi. "I'll be there shortly."

Bail nodded and guided Padmé away, presumably to hurry and tell more Senators about the emergency meeting. Chuchi exhaled in relief and hit a button on her communicator, pulling up the hologram of Master Yoda again.

"It's just as I said," she murmured quietly. "The congress session has been called, and I'll have to attend. I'll let you know about what happens as soon as I can."

"Careful, you must be," Yoda said. "Draw attention to yourself, you must not."

"I think this time my aversion to the spotlight might just help me along," Chuchi said wryly.

Abruptly the hologram switched back to Renamon and the fox said, "Just see to it that you keep yourself out of trouble, Chuchi. I'll be very, very angry if I hear you've got yourself arrested or killed."

"Yes, ma'am," replied Chuchi. "Look, I better get going. It's going to be interesting hearing the Chancellor's spin on these events. I'm pretty sure I can imagine the cover story that he'll be coming up with here."

"One more thing before you go, Chuchi," Renamon replied. "Unfortunately, the clones that attacked the Temple were able to secure Dooku and Ventress. It probably won't be long before the Chancellor does something regarding those two – he'll probably release them or something. Keep an ear out for any news about the two of them as well, and let us know what you can, alright?"

Chuchi bit her lip at this disastrous news and said, "Alright. I'll do my bit. Wish me luck."

"I'll wish the Force is with you instead," Renamon replied. Chuchi nodded and deactivated the call. She took a moment to regain her composure and then she got up and strode out of the door with intent to head for the Senate Building.

* * *

Lots and lots of chaos and madness over the last few chapters, but I think that covers the majority of the important Jedi. Of course, there are many, many more in the story, but I'm afraid the majority of their roles from now on will be hiding in isolation while those with clones on their side mentioned in these last few chapters take the spotlight. A couple of people suggested particular Jedi for me to use in the story, but the likelihood is that they will not be appearing, mostly because I've already planned out the story and their appearance now would not really affect the outcome very much. Plus, I've only got so much writing time left to give many characters some spotlight.

And yes, I know that I've still got over sixty chapters to go, but considering the number of characters and small sub-stories I have left and all the plans I've made, the majority of the suggestions made to me still do not have much room. Everyone's going to be very, very busy from here on out.

And that whole Punimon thing – he was resurrected because a Digi-Gnome granted a wish from Suzie that it didn't have to end like this, which meant that not only did it reform WereGarurumon on the spot, but it also retained his memories for him.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

As Chuchi, Padmé and all the other Senators attend the emergency congress session, most of them are in for a shock as Palpatine finally delivers the news to them. Some are in denial, some fully support him, but one little Pantoran is filled with grim defiance at his words, and prepares to do her job as a spy for the Jedi inside the Senate.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 159 : The Empire Is Born**


	159. The Empire is Born

Hello everybody. After the action-packed last few chapters, this one might seem a little slow, but, as I have said before, you can't have action all the time or the story wouldn't go anywhere. But this chapter is an extremely important one, and one that I'm sure many of you have been waiting for for quite some time. Now, I won't keep you anymore. Go and read you awesome people, you.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 159:- The Empire is Born**

* * *

The mighty halls of the Senate Building were practically jam-packed with Senators when Chuchi finally arrived there, and there were more streaming in, each trying to bustle their way through the crowds of other people to reach the entrance to their own podiums that would allow them to hear what the Chancellor had to say.

There was so much chatter and anxious muttering, each and every Senator formulating his or her own theories as to who was behind the attack at the Jedi Temple and what might be going on, none of which came anywhere close to the truth. Well, perhaps a little close in some cases. As Chuchi pushed her way through the corridor awkwardly, she overheard such things as the Jedi were trying to pull off a stunt that went wrong, to a gas leak that has caused the explosions, or perhaps that Count Dooku had broken out of prison and exacted his retribution on them, or a few clones that had gone renegade and attacked the Jedi for no reason.

Ironically, that one was the closest to the truth. Many clones _had_ gone renegade. Just not in the way that the other Senators seemed to be expecting.

Chuchi tried to keep a low profile, which wasn't all that difficult. All she had to do was keep her head down and weave her way through the crowd. Nobody spared her a second glance. Why would they? She was just a Senator that had recently gotten the job and was a bit shy. But Chuchi's shyness was beginning to evaporate now, and was being replaced by nervousness, mixed with defiance.

She looked for familiar faces in the crowd, but saw very few. She saw the Kaminoan Senator, Halle Burtoni, towering over a bunch on others not far away. She was pretty sure that she saw Mon Mothma at one point, but she was lost to sight pretty quickly. And of course, there was Senator Orn Free Taa in the middle of things, practically barrelling his way through the crowd with his belly, following a rather flustered looking Kinn Robb and loudly exclaiming that "that monster from before" which Chuchi thought to be the Zillo Beast, had escaped death and somehow returned to Coruscant to attack the Jedi.

As if Godzillo would do that, even if he had escaped death. Which he had.

But Chuchi eventually ran into Padmé, who appeared to be heading the other way. She almost literally bumped into the Naboo Senator and the Pantoran had to hold out her arms to steady Padmé as she stepped backwards in surprise.

"Whoa, Padmé," Chuchi said. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," Padmé nodded immediately, and Chuchi thought she might have answered a little bit too fast. It was almost a bizarre role-reversal from before. Padmé was now the one who was being distracted by worry, while Chuchi was the more level-headed of the two, and Chuchi knew it. Padmé went on to say, "Just a bit distracted by all this. Trying to work out in my head what in the world might be going on to cause something like this."

"Any theories of your own?" Chuchi asked. "I've heard a couple of wild ones since I've come in here?"

"I don't know," Padmé shook her head. "I don't have a clue. Oh God, I hope they're alright in there. I have so many friends among the Jedi Order, I... I... how could this have happened?"

"I don't know," Chuchi lied. "I'm afraid I can't help you there, but I'm sure everything's alright. The Jedi are tough. Things will be alright – you'll see."

Padmé cleared her throat, and Chuchi thought she could detect only the slightest catch in her voice as she replied with, "You're right, of course, Senator. The Jedi are indeed very strong. I know that well enough since I've seen them in action enough times. Yes, yes, I'm sure he's fine."

Chuchi raised a brow at the use of the word 'he' instead of 'they.' It was a slip-up that Padmé seemed to be unaware of making, but the observant Pantoran caught it sure enough. Even she, on the limited amount of knowledge she had on the subject, could tell that Padmé had probably been referring to Anakin. After all, just about every time she had gotten into trouble, Anakin had been involved. She knew they were close.

She also knew that Anakin was fine, but she still couldn't tell Padmé that. So, instead, she said, "Yes, I'm sure they are to. But we better get to our places and hear what our esteemed overlord has to say about it."

"Esteemed overlord?" Padmé chuckled. "You make him sound like a dictator."

"Just a little joke," Chuchi smiled. "See you later maybe?"

"Sure," nodded Padmé, and the two of them quickly separated and crossed each other to head in opposite directions. But, just before she got too far, Chuchi turned back around and watched Padmé disappear into the crowd. It seemed that she wasn't the only one keeping secrets, but she wasn't about to go poking her nose in where it didn't belong. So, once she lost sight of Padmé, she turned around and kept walking.

* * *

A good amount of pushing and squeezing between the milling Senators later and Chuchi found herself at the familiar entrance to her podium and walked inside. Occasionally she would be accompanied by a couple of Pantoran bodyguards, but she had not brought any back with her from Pantora last time so she was alone now. She supposed it was just paranoia, but she didn't particularly like the idea of exposing her back to the corridor. She couldn't help but imagine Palpatine stepping onto her podium and blasting her from behind.

She knew it wouldn't happen, but she wished she had the bodyguards now all the same, even if their presence would be absolutely no help whatsoever against a Sith Lord.

She stepped up to the end of the podium and saw the large numbers of Senators filling that sleek, black podium right across the absolutely enormous room. Row upon row and column upon column of them, from floor to ceiling and all the way around the room, each one filling up with a Senator from a certain system. Even in this mighty room, every planet or moon throughout the Galaxy was not being represented. There were just too many. But there were over a thousand podiums in this room alone.

Chuchi always felt very small when she came into this room, but now she felt smaller than ever. She was alone amongst an enormous number of Senators, none of which knew about the existence of the Digimon except her, none of which knew what had happened at the Jedi Temple except her, and none of which she could turn to for help. She couldn't ever remember feeling so lonely.

The room was filled with so much hubbub and noise that Chuchi could barely hear her own voice as she muttered, "Oh, I really hope the Force is looking out for me, just as Renamon willed it to be."

The commotion around the walls suddenly died down though when the hatch in the middle of the floor in the centre of the room opened and another podium began to rise out of the floor. Chuchi had to fight the urge to physically wilt when she saw the person standing on it. Even when she had been new, the Chancellor had never scared her. He had always seemed to have such a warm and welcoming personality – he had welcomed her personally into the ranks of the Republic on the first day.

But now, she could no longer see that open demeanour, even thought it still seemed to be in plain. Her mind was practically screaming, _EVIL!_ She mentally hit herself over the head with a hammer to get herself to shut up, but there was little she could do to stop the goosebumps cropping up on her arms. She swallowed and tried to force herself to calm down. If she was going to be a spy for the Jedi then she couldn't let the Sith Lord know she was onto him.

And Sith Lords could sense emotion, couldn't they.

Of course, Chuchi had no intention of going anywhere near him ever again if she could help it, but still she wouldn't risk it.

Standing beside the Chancellor was Mas Amedda, and Chuchi wondered how much of this situation that guy knew. Probably some, if not a lot, since he spent a lot of time with the Chancellor. Chuchi might have to keep an eye on him as well.

Mas banged his staff against the floor of the podium and cried, "Order! We shall have order!" and the last of the murmuring died away as each and every Senator fixed their eyes on the Chancellor, resplendent in his bright red robes, as the aging man got to his feet and stared out across the room. Chuchi was glad that she was not directly in his field of vision as the man began to speak, because a small shudder passed right through her before she could stop herself, but she quickly stamped down on that as well and returned to a normal-looking state.

"Honoured Senators of the Republic," Palpatine addressed the room. "I am sure that you are all aware of at least part of the reason why I have called this emergency session. Many of you will have seen firsthand the fact that the Jedi Temple has been attacked. All of you are no doubt wondering how this could be. Coruscant has, after all, not been attacked in over one-thousand years and there isn't a Separatist ship in sight.

"But I bring you grave news indeed. For months, we were all led to believe that the Jedi were leading us to a time where the Republic could prosper, to a time where we would be free of the oppression of the Separatists. There was nothing that seemed to go against that thought, as we have all heard the reports of some of their heroic deeds from the front line, particularly the celebrated A-Team."

Chuchi almost growled under her breath, which was very out of character for her. _You aren't fit to talk about them,_ she thought, but she said nothing and allowed the Chancellor to continue.

"Allegations were occasionally made against the Jedi," the Chancellor announced. "Some people claimed that they were using the war as a means to gain more power and respect from the people, but, as you know, I have always been a strong advocate of theirs, determined to crush these so-called rumours before they even arose. But..." he sighed. "It seems that in doing so, I made a grave mistake."

The Senate was hushed, everyone, even Chuchi, listening with bated breath and silently urging the Chancellor to keep speaking. And then the Chancellor delivered the words that Chuchi had been fairly certain were coming.

"It has come to my attention that everything we had been led to believe about the Jedi is actually false. They were not fighting the Separatists to free us all. They were secretly plotting to overthrow the Republic. It seems that this had been their plan all along. They were waiting until the very moment when they would be most held in awe and respect before they attempted to strike at an unsuspecting Galaxy. They planned to start by killing me. Yes, an attempt was made on my life just earlier today. The Jedi Order collaborated with the Bounty Hunter, Cad Bane, in an attempt to assassinate me."

There were many, many reactions to this news. Some of the Senators looked slightly triumphant, as if they had known this was coming, while others sat there in stunned silence and many more immediately started asking questions, a tumult of voices rising throughout the room as every person tried to make their voice heard over the cacophony of the others.

But Chuchi almost scoffed. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. The Chancellor was effectively swapping the stories around. He was claiming that the Jedi had been planning to do the things _he_ had been planning to do, and they had tried the things that _he_ had tried. He was the one who had made an assassination attempt by hiring Bane and had been long since been planning out the downfall of the Republic. And now he was declaring the Jedi were responsible for that.

"Order!" Mas Amedda yelled into the speaker in front of him. "Please allow the Chancellor to finish!"

As the noise died down again, Palpatine nodded and said, "Thank you, Mister Speaker. To continue, my guards were fortunately able to prevent Cad Bane from achieving his goal, and we were able to extract the information regarding who hired him. It seems that the whole Jedi Order was in on it. We peeled back the layers of this conspiracy to find that it went right up to the top, to the Jedi Council itself. We discovered that they were plotting to put us all under their thumb."

He sighed theatrically and said, "I wish I could say that I saw this coming, but I'm afraid I did not. The Jedi had me fooled. They had us all fooled. Even the so-called A-Team is not innocent in all of this. In fact, I believe it was one of their own number, specifically that Twi'lek, Aayla Secura, who came up with the idea to hire Bane in the first place, a move that we might never expect from the Jedi."

Chuchi had to admit that Palpatine was good at this. It was scary, how he could combine the fact with the fiction and produce the cover story which seemed entirely plausible. Most of the Senators were staring at him with wide-eyes and shocked expressions, and she was attempting to copy them and act surprised by all of this.

"Fortunately," the Chancellor declared. "Thanks to our investigations, we were able to nip the uprising in the bud before the Jedi returned to Coruscant to try and kill us all and seize control. I have henceforth declared that all Jedi are traitors to the Republic and are to be eliminated on sight. Our brave clone soldiers lead the charge. It was they who attacked the Jedi Temple, with intent to wipe out the insurgent Jedi that were still here on Coruscant before they could get wind that we had discovered their plot. The story is the same across the entire Galaxy. Even as I speak, the last of the Jedi menace are probably being exterminated right now.

"You need not worry," the Chancellor stood upright. "We thought that the war was truly coming to an end when Count Dooku and his apprentice were caught, but, in truth, we were deluded. Now, however, I would like to assure each and every one of you that change really is on the horizon. We were able to catch our second, and perhaps our greater, threat before it even happened. The Jedi Order is no more. The Republic is safe. The clones can manage the last of the droids by themselves. It is now, truly only a matter of time."

Palpatine stepped back slightly, indicating that his speech was over, and he was leaving the entire Senate reeling with the news he delivered. Chuchi looked from left to right as each Senator around her stepped back or grabbed the railings for support, their faces covered with shock as what they thought was a horrible realisation settled over them.

Even with Chuchi's aversion to being the centre of attention, she still had to resist the temptation to float her podium out into the middle of the room and scream at everyone, to declare that Palpatine's words were false and that he was the real threat. Maybe even to scream at the majority of the Senators to be so idiotic as to believe that the Jedi Order would even think about doing what the Chancellor claimed.

But she couldn't. She knew the Jedi better than most of the people here. The majority of the Senators had little to no contact with the Jedi at all, only seeing them standing tall and making statements to the holonet. In other words, most of them were as deluded as the average person when it came to the Jedi. Chuchi wondered if she would have believed the Chancellor if she hadn't gotten to know them as well as she had.

She would probably never know. She liked to think that she wouldn't believe him, but she had to confess that she didn't know for sure.

And now that the terrible news had been given, the Pantoran found her gaze being dragged across the room towards the podium where she knew another certain Senator who knew the Jedi very well would be standing.

Padmé had practically gone catatonic as the words of the Chancellor slammed her over the head like a blow from a very angry Acklay. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. It just could not be true. The Chancellor's words simply could not be correct. There was no way that the Jedi, not any of the ones she knew, would ever turn against the Republic. Anakin most definitely would never do that... would he?

No! No, he wouldn't. Padmé had not seen him as much as she would have liked over the last few months, but she had seen the way he behaved. She had loved him from the moment he walked back into her life after over ten years apart, but she had been there when he had gotten back from slaughtering those Tusken Raiders and the rage that even she, a non-Force-sensitive, had been able to feel coming off him in waves, and still she loved him. But every time she met him, she saw less and less of the arrogant child that he had been and more of the kind, compassionate man that... well, to be honest, that most girls would want in their life.

Whatever Aayla and Ahsoka had been doing to make him like this had certainly had an effect.

Anakin would never, _ever_ go against the Republic. Padmé was shaking her head in denial. None of them would. She'd known Obi-Wan for years. He never would either. Master Yoda or Master Windu – it was simply out of the question. Aayla and Ahsoka, who she had only met properly just over half a year ago, the notion of them doing anything to bring down the Republic was completely and utterly absurd. And while she didn't know Barriss, she highly doubted the Mirialan would have anything to do with it either.

None of them could truly have sent Cad Bane to assassinate the Chancellor. Therefore, he must be lying, or at least thinking he was telling the truth and making the most horrendous mistake of his entire career. None of them had the darker side that Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress had. Padmé's mind was already trying to come up with alternative solutions, including the obvious ones like Cad Bane simply lying, to others like someone disguising themselves as Aayla or another A-Team member to fool the Chancellor, because there was no way what he said was true.

Was there?

Padmé felt ashamed of it later, but she did allow herself one brief moment to wonder if the Chancellor's words were accurate. She trusted the man with her life, and had done ever since she had been the Queen and he the Senator, but some of his recent actions had completely left her not knowing where to stand. That whole thing with the Zillo Beast had been a sudden and spontaneous decision that he had made without discussing it with the Senate and that had had disastrous consequences. Now, he had done something similar, acting without consulting any other member of the Senate and sending the clones after the Jedi.

It was all too much. How could he be doing something like this? It just didn't make _any_ sense to her whatsoever.

But while one half of her brain was struggling to come to terms with what the Chancellor was saying – either he was the liar or the Jedi were so which should she trust – the other half was immediately consumed with terror at the prospect of what might have happened to Anakin. Has anyone managed to escape the Jedi Temple? Had they evaded the clones?

She desperately hoped so.

Padmé had no knowledge of the trip to Ryloth to track down a bunch of slave traders, so she thought that Anakin and the rest of his team were still in the Temple. A horrible image cropped up in her mind, a scene in one of the large halls of the Temple, small fires flickering everywhere and Jedi lying dead upon the ground as Anakin, Ahsoka, Aayla and Barriss stood in a square with their backs to one another in the middle of the room, surrounded by clones that were moving in from all directions of the room and massing around them and constantly firing the laser until the four of them were finally brought down together, the last Jedi standing in the whole Temple, and ruthlessly gunned down where they lay.

She almost cried out and buried her head in her hands, trying to shake the image out but try as she might, it wouldn't go away. Tears were springing into her eyes at the prospect of what could have happened to her husband and his team. She was quite unaware of the sympathetic pair of yellow eyes looking at her from across the room.

The story was similar throughout practically the entire room. The Senators seemed to be left in the dust at Palpatine's words. Just the other day, almost all of them had been celebrating Aayla's triumph over Dooku, Ventress and Grievous and they had all suddenly been informed that she hired Cad Bane to try and kill the Chancellor. Almost every one of them felt as though they had been clubbed over the head, but more than a few of them were having the same doubts that Padmé was having.

Prime among these was Onaconda Farr, the Rodian. He still vividly remembered the moment where Aayla had snatched the glass full of poisoned wine from out of his hand right before he was about drink from it and saved his life from his own aid, Lolo Purrs. Why would she have done that if she was planning to overthrow the Republic and eventually kill all the Senators anyway. She could have just stood by and let him die – it would have been one less to deal with later on. Yet she hadn't. She'd saved him anyway.

He too, believed that there must be some mistake or Palpatine might not be telling the truth, but, like Padmé, he couldn't work out which. The Chancellor was just so easy to trust, but then again, so were the Jedi.

What was going on?

Bail Organa was also having doubts, but with a couple of other reasons. He had noticed that the Chancellor had been quite vague about how he had discovered this so-called plot against him and the rest of the Republic. Other than Cad Bane's word, which almost definitely could not be trusted in his view, the only thing that the Chancellor said was that they had "investigated." What exactly did that entail? What had they investigated and how? What evidence had they uncovered that had led them to this supposed revelation that the Jedi were evil.

He couldn't make heads or tails of it either.

Chuchi was subtly glancing towards each of them and she could see the puzzlement on all their faces. None of them were making the connection. None of them were guessing that Palpatine was really in league with the enemy. She could see the wheels turning in their heads, as they tried to work it out, but they weren't hitting the nail on the head. Bail was regarding the Chancellor with a vague suspicion, but Chuchi could tell that he was just wondering if the Chancellor's position and power had made him paranoid and caused him to jump to conclusions.

She never would have guessed Palpatine was a Sith. None of the Jedi Order, not even the wisest, had guessed it either. So, it seemed that the Senators were finding the idea too inconceivable to consider as well. Chuchi remembered what Ahsoka had said about all the Senators being under Sidious' influence, and she could see that playing out before her. They just didn't suspect him.

It was a rare moment when the entire Senate was quite literally speechless as to what they were hearing, and Palpatine seemed to be giving them a few moments to adjust to the idea of the Jedi being traitors. But just when quite voices began to crop up all across the room as Senators turned to those in the podiums nearby and started discussing this new development, he spoke up again.

"Please, Members of the Senate, I ask that you allow me to continue to speak. For I have had a while to think over this treachery by the Jedi and I have come to a decision which I believe will benefit us all."

The muttering died down once more and the Chancellor nodded and said, "This plot within the ranks of the Republic will have left you all reeling. I can tell that much without even looking. I myself was astonished and did not know what to do next for quite some time. But while the attempt on my life may have taken me by surprise, it made me realise that we have become too lenient. We have not been keeping a close enough eye on what goes on right beneath our noses. The Separatists were the first. They broke away from and us and we were at war almost before we could comprehend it.

"Now the Jedi have done the same thing. Had we kept a closer watch on them, not allowed them the privacy of their Temple where they could plot in complete secrecy, then things might have turned out very differently.

"Upon realising this fact, I began to think on how we might be able to solve this problem and sure enough, I found a way. We must be more vigilant. We must protect the citizens, as we have been striving to do for months, but we must take a different approach. I have never been so sure of anything in my life – my resolve is at its peak, and I tell you now, I will do whatever it takes to ensure that nothing like this ever happens again, as long as I am in command!"

There was a smattering of applause at these words, but the majority of the Senators were waiting for what he would say next, wondering where this was going. Chuchi though, having been informed by Renamon of what they had found at the secret base in the Works, knew exactly where this was going.

She closed her eyes, but somehow that made the words all the worse when she heard them.

"Henceforth, I declare that the Galactic Republic is to be changed. From now, we shall be more forceful, more practical in our way to things. This Republic may have stood for thousands of years, but the attacks coming from within have forced my hand, and I shall turn it into the first Galactic Empire! We will stamp our authority on the Galaxy and ensure that nobody can rise up against anymore. We will establish a new regime and start a brand new era. And that era shall be one of order and peace, which, after all, is what we all desire."

Chuchi opened her eyes again as she watched the Senators drink in his words and then there followed more applause, which grew louder and stronger as many of them looked upon the Chancellor as if he was a gift from the heavens. It looked like most of the Senators were agreeing with him whole-heartedly. Chuchi wondered if they were even considering the implications of what was being said, but it looked like Chancellor had them all twisted around his little finger.

Then again, he wasn't a Chancellor any more. One small speech out of his mouth and the agreement of the majority of the Senators had turned the serene looking man with a huge amount of underlying evil into an Emperor. And that meant that he now had more power than ever before. He was more dangerous to the Jedi than ever.

Chuchi's eyes sought out Padme again, to see how she was taking this. As it turned out, not well. Padme's grief and fear had momentarily been cast aside as she stared at the Chancellor, Emperor, as if he had gone completely mad. Chuchi knew what she was thinking. The Republic gave each and every Senator the right to speak up and voice their concerns for their own systems and for the Galaxy as a whole. It was a democracy, a system that Padme loved dearly and that had, like the Emperor had said, worked for thousands of years.

All of that had just been swept away right before their eyes.

The Senators would now have very little say in what went on across the Galaxy. They would be able to plead their cases to the new Emperor, and the debating might continue, but the voting system no longer existed. Palpatine would be the one to make all the eventual decisions, and he would go with the ones he liked. And Chuchi knew that, as a Sith Lord, his best interests were for himself and gaining more power and subjugating the entire Galaxy. Nothing that she or Padme would want.

The former Chancellor's emergency powers, granted to him by the rest of the Senate, had meant that he could make snap decisions in a crisis, but it had to be considered a crisis by the Senate as well. Now, the Emperor could do whatever he wanted to do.

And first and foremost among that would be eliminating the last of the Jedi Order.

Then again, the Chancellor seemed to have been taking things into his own hands more and more without using the democracy system, even when the situation had not been declared a crisis. Chuchi remembered his words just before he declared that the clones would be brought from Kamino and made into the Grand Army of the Republic. _"I love democracy. I love the Republic. The power you give me I will lay down when this crisis has abated."_

It had all been a lie. And Chuchi had believed him. They all had. He was right about one thing – they _did_ need to be more vigilant to threats within their own ranks. But this was not the way to do it.

"Oh, Anakin," Padme muttered. "Where are you? We need the Jedi now more than ever."

It seemed to her that Chuchi had been more accurate than she assumed when she called Palpatine an 'overlord.'

"And as my first act with my new status as your Emperor," Palpatine declared, spreading his arms out wide like some sort of messiah. "I will re-declare that all Jedi are traitors to this Empire. If anyone knows about the location of any surviving Jedi, then I am to be informed immediately and I will send clone troopers to deal with the traitor. And I warn you all now, anyone found to be collaborating with or hiding the Jedi will be considered a traitor as well, and is liable to face the same punishment. Death. And that may sound harsh, but I believe that a harsh sentence will lessen the chances of betrayal."

Inside her head, Chuchi was practically screaming, _No chance! I'm going to do whatever it takes to bring you down and aid the Jedi! That may mean I become a traitor to this so-called Empire, but I will do it anyway. Because you are the traitor here really, the traitor to the Republic. I will never acknowledge this Empire – I will always serve the Republic even if it has been replaced! And I'll do everything in power to bring it back again._ She turned to glance at Padme again and thought, _Don't worry, Padme. Everything will turn out fine. I'll make sure of it._

Chuchi had never felt this way before. Not even when she had been filled with the fire to get Aayla out of the clutches of Cad Bane. Her fists were clenched at her sides as if she was ready to punch something. The bonfire of resolution inside her was growing into an inferno.

Heh, look at that. She was defying an Emperor. This was a far-cry from the days where she submitted to the Chairman of her own planet.

* * *

The newly dubbed Emperor was quick to dismiss the Senate after the congress session was over. Just before he did, he announced that he was going to be issuing a reward notice, where people would receive a large amount of money for any information about the whereabouts of any remaining Jedi, and an even higher reward if they could dispatch the Jedi themselves. Then he told them all to go back to their residences and stated that he was allowing them time to adjust to the new regime before it got fully started.

But Chuchi knew better. She had a feeling that while they sat and stewed, Palpatine would be in his office, eagerly waiting for the reports from the clones that would tell him whether or not the Jedi had been eradicated. She, of course, knew that the majority of them had not been, but for the moment, Palpatine did not actually know that. And now, she needed to go and inform the Jedi that they had been right.

It wasn't difficult for her to act as shocked about all this as the other Senators. In truth, even though she knew it was coming, she was still slightly stunned by hearing it firsthand. She caught a speeder back to 500 Republica with some of the others and wondered back towards her own chambers.

Once inside, she was all business though, and she stepped over towards her personal bedroom, shutting the door behind her just in case somebody tried to enter the apartment, and she pulled out her communicator to call the others. However, her thumb froze over the button and she frowned, a sudden thought catching her.

Presumably, it would not be long before the Emperor learned that the Jedi were still alive. And he knew that there was several Senators who were close to them or might have thoughts of rebelling against an Empire, particularly the crowd that she herself hung around with. It was entirely possible that he might start monitoring communications to and from the building to try and catch people who might know the whereabouts of the Jedi.

She'd been safe before, because he'd been in the middle of ordering the extermination of the Jedi. But how long would that last. She would have to find a way of sending out a call somewhere that couldn't be monitored by the Emperor or his guards. They couldn't do that out in the streets of Coruscant, of course, but there was no privacy out there. Anyone could be hiding in the shadows and listening in on your calls. And even the police droids could not be trusted, as they too would soon be on the lookout for people collaborating with the Jedi as part of their security list.

So, where could she go that might ensure she was not overheard?

It took her a minute or two to come up with an answer, and when she did, she almost chuckled at the irony of it all. She quickly turned and headed out of her room and back into the corridor and headed for the elevator.

Thankfully, it was empty. Most of the Senators wanted some alone time to consider their new situation, whether they were pondering how they could stop it, how it might benefit the Galaxy, or how it might benefit themselves personally, she knew that every one of them would be trying to get something out of this arrangement. So, Chuchi stepped into the elevator and, after a moment's hesitation, hit her chosen button.

The lift descended down the long, long fall through the building. Chuchi sincerely hoped that nobody would come in, and was very relieved when they didn't. But, eventually, the doors opened again, to darkness.

Chuchi stepped into the black room and soil crunched underneath her feet. She allowed her eyes to adjust to the light and balked when she saw the corpses of several Geonosians nearby, who looked like they had been fried by electricity and collapsed to the floor, spasming. Chuchi quickly looked away and stepped further into the sub-basement, through the doors and into another one, and then into another, before she was at the entrance of a large tunnel. Ignoring another dead Geonosian, she stepped past its crushed form and entered the tunnel.

There were no guards. No live ones anyway. They'd all been killed by Renamon, Sidious or each other during the attack earlier. And, fortunately, there were no zombie ones either.

She didn't go too far into the tunnel system. For one thing, she didn't have a speeder and so it would take her a while to get anywhere. For another it was dark and she did _not_ want to risk getting lost down here. But, once she was sure she was out of range of any sensors within 500 Republica, she pulled out her communicator once more.

She took a brief moment to feel proud of herself for using the way that the Sith Lord had evaded the Jedi for so long against him with the resistance that she was attempting here. She highly doubted that Sidious would need to use these tunnels much anymore. Now that he was in full control and the majority of his minions were on planet now, he wouldn't need to send messages to the far-flung reaches of the Galaxy in secret. He could just talk to most of his people face to face now that he'd driven the Jedi away and gotten the approval for him to become an Emperor.

So now, Chuchi would be the one to use these tunnels. And she would use them for good.

The signal down here wasn't very strong, but it was enough. Chuchi could make do with it easily enough, as she made a call to the communicator she had given to Renamon. She hoped she wasn't far away. She could receive long-distance transmissions but her little handheld communicator couldn't make them.

Fortunately, the yellow fox appeared before her in blue holographic form and nodded to her. "Hello again, Senator," she said. "I hope that everything's alright, although I am one-hundred percent sure it is not."

"And you would be on-hundred percent correct," Chuchi said grimly.

"Hold on a moment before you continue," Renamon said. "Master Yoda and Obi-Wan are with me at the moment, but we'll re-transmit this message to our friends so they can hear it as well."

Chuchi nodded and waited for a moment, as did Renamon, apparently watching someone else doing the re-transmitting, and then the fox nodded, giving Chuchi the go ahead, so the Pantoran quickly related. "It's just as you discovered in the Works, Renamon. The Chancellor isn't a Chancellor anymore. He has branded all the Jedi traitors that are to be executed on sight as we knew, but he's also declared that he will be taking control and turning the Republic into an Empire."

Renamon sighed and said, "Well that puts most of what we've been fighting for over the last few months completely out of the airlock. Anything else?"

"Yes," nodded Chuchi. "He's issuing a reward for information, capture or killing of any of the Jedi across. So the Jedi won't just have to go avoiding the clone army. They'll have to be avoiding everyone."

"Well, hopefully those with any sense will be doing that anyway," Renamon murmured. "If they know the Chancellor... Emperor... is a Sith, then hopefully they'll have gone to ground until they get a message from the Jedi Order." She paused, listening to someone else, and then said, "Master Yoda says that it might be possible for the clones to send out another message via the Jedi Temple that might lure any Jedi that escaped back to the Temple for slaughter. Hopefully they'll be smart enough to ignore the message, but there is always the possibility."

"What happens when all this is over?" Chuchi asked. "How will you draw the hundreds of Jedi out of hiding?"

"We don't know," Renamon shrugged. "We may have to do it individually. Maybe the word will get around when we defeat the Emperor. But first we have to cross _that_ particular bridge, and that will not be easy."

"Is there a plan?" Chuchi asked.

"As of yet, no," Renamon replied. "We've been a bit preoccupied with getting away with our lives. But, as far as we know, the fact that we Digimon can remain a secret is just about ensured. Almost all the clones that know we exist are, to our knowledge, with us against the Chancellor, except for some others which are currently out of contact. Maybe we can use that to our advantage."

Chuchi smiled and said, "You know, I think that says something about you Digimon. If all the clones that met you were willing to turn against their leader like that... well, it can't simply be a coincidence. You must really leave an impression wherever you go."

Renamon smirked. "Did we leave an impression on you then?"

"I'm helping you against the most evil man in the Galaxy instead of hiding in my chambers, aren't I?" Chuchi winked.

"True," nodded Renamon. "Speaking of which, you should probably sign off before someone notices you're gone. We won't try and contact you just in case you're in the wrong company, so if you have something to tell us or want an update, you'll have to contact us."

"Got it," nodded Chuchi. "Oh, and one more thing. Senator Amidala is very, very upset about all this. She doesn't know if her Jedi friends are even alive or not."

"Well, hopefully it won't be long before we're able to make a massive comeback and bring the Republic back, hopefully before the Empire can be fully established," the fox replied. "And then Padmé will know we're alive. All the same, see if you can look after her, alright?"

"Will do," nodded Chuchi. "Alright, I'm off. See you, and look after yourselves. All of you."

"We intend to," nodded Renamon. "And the same holds true for you."

Her hologram vanished and Chuchi turned around to head back the way that she had come.

* * *

In hyperspace not too far away from Coruscant and heading into the wilder regions, Renamon lowered the small device in her paw and looked around at the people around the holotable. Standing on either side of her was Yoda and Obi-Wan, and the holographic appearances of all three members of the A-Team, Barriss and Stass Allie were all also standing around the table. Terriermon was perched on Stass' head and the woman was still looking utterly fascinated to learn of the fact that these creatures existed.

Around the bridge and trying not to get in the way of the clones were various other members of the Jedi Order, including a bunch of younglings, the smallest of which were attempting to approach Chewbacca but skittering away whenever he looked at them, and with Cad Bane leaning in the corner like a wraith, Todo standing at his feet and probably feeling a bit awkward to still be here.

Renamon couldn't remember a time where she'd seen a bridge that was this crowded. But right now, she had other concerns, namely the things that Chuchi had told them, which they had all heard.

Anakin was utterly grim-faced, even though he was happy to see that his master had survived. Renamon had a vague idea of what he might be going through. Every new thing he heard about the Chancellor was just another thud at his emotions, but it was all weighing up. Anakin needed some time to cool down, but it was difficult for him, because everything was moving so quickly with newer developments springing up all the time.

"Most unfortunate, this is," Yoda sighed. "Difficult, it will be, to confront the Emperor now."

"It will be difficult enough to return to Coruscant," Obi-Wan agreed. "Palpatine will be sure to lock the place down the moment he learns that many of us are still alive. He'll be expecting us to try and attack him, and before long, he'll have the full might of the whole Republic Army on his side."

"It's not a Republic Army anymore," Aayla murmured. "The clones we have on our side are all that's left of the Grand Army of the Republic. The rest is now an Imperial force, thanks to this new decree."

"Things have gone downhill so fast," Barriss sighed. "It was only this very morning that we set out from Coruscant to deal with a bunch of slavers, and now we're facing a Galactic-wide Empire and an Emperor who is also a Sith Lord."

"It barely bares thinking about," nodded Ahsoka quietly.

"What are we supposed to do next anyway?" Lopmon asked from her perch on Anakin's shoulder. "I mean, should we try and head back to Coruscant and strike against Palpatine while he's vulnerable and before he can call back all the clones."

"No," Yoda shook his head. "Had the Emperor succeeded in wiping out most of us then suggest such a quick plan, I would. But see to the younglings and other vulnerable people we have with us first, we must. Take them with us in the attack, we cannot, or put them in danger, we will."

"But we can't let him build up to full strength," Anakin growled with a fist clenched. "We've got to take him out... before... before he can do any more damage."

"Anakin," Aayla turned to face him. "Be honest – do you really think that you're in the right state of mind to go up against a long-time friend who you just found out has been manipulating your entire life?"

Anakin paused, and it was clear that he was still angry about all this. So he sighed and said, "No, you're right. I'd get carried away and do something I might regret."

"The time will come when we get to strike back at the Emperor," agreed Renamon. "But it isn't now. If we just go rushing in blindly, he'll have the upper hand. He does, after all, already have a very large number of clones at his disposal on the planet as it is. We're definitely going to need to plan our way out of this one. And thus far, our plans have always worked."

"Yeah, no matter how mad they are," Ahsoka agreed. "Cheer up, Skyguy. We'll get him one day. And soon."

Anakin nodded, and Obi-Wan marvelled at how well the others were handling his anger and making him see for himself that it would get him nowhere. For all his teachings, Obi-Wan was finding that he might be able to learn a thing or two from them. Anakin had always been prone to impulsive behaviour, and yet he was ignoring it when his friends pointed it out to him.

"Well," he said. "The important thing is that we're all still here, thanks to the efforts of Aayla, Chuchi, Renamon, Chewbacca and... I suppose..." he coughed and quietly mumbled, "Bane."

"Oh, you're most welcome, Master Jedi," came the immediate reply from the corner.

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes and shook his head before ploughing on. "Palpatine might have the upper hand but his plans have gone awry once more. His plan to lure Anakin to the Dark Side has thus far failed, and I can see for myself that Anakin means to keep it that way. His plan to wipe out the Jedi has also failed thanks to the actions of our own brave soldiers. It may have gotten many of us, but we still live on, and where there is life, there is also hope. Hope that we can continue our jobs as Jedi and, hopefully, ensure the threat of the Sith disappears from the Galaxy forever this time."

"For now, focus, we should, on regrouping and forming a base somewhere," Yoda tapped the floor with his stick. "If united we are, a better chance we have of coming up with a strategy to best the Emperor and a greater threat we will be to him. Organise a rendezvous point we should, and meet up with the allies we have. Build up our forces."

"There is one thing we should do before that, Master Yoda," Obi-Wan pointed out. "And that's to find a safe place for our younglings."

"Yes, I agree," Jocasta Nu said from nearby. "If we do go on the offensive then we can't take them with us. None of them have any lightsabers to defend themselves with and the majority of them have had little to no training in how to defend themselves. The older ones have, but even they might struggle against the clones."

"I think we could handle ourselves pretty well," pointed out Kalifa, indicating herself and the other two younglings that had been captured by the Trandoshan hunters. "After all, if you can take on a Trandoshan, you can take on a clone."

"Yes, but be that as it may, young one," Sinube stepped forward. "The fact remains that you still do not have lightsabers. We must find a place where you can live in safety until the crisis is past and we can return to the Temple. Or where, if the worst comes to the worst, you can live the rest of your lives."

"Oh, don't talk like that, Master Sinube," chided Jocasta. "I'm sure we'll emerge victorious eventually." But even she did not so too sure of herself.

"They have a point, Masters," said Barriss. "We've picked up a young one over here that we might want to do something with as well. She doesn't belong on the front line any more than our younglings do."

"Sorry, can I just interrupt here," Stass raised a hand. "What makes the human children qualify to run around with you lot while the little Twi'lek girl doesn't?"

"Well," Terriermon sat up proudly and tapped himself. "They have a special bond with a Digimon, which allows them to combine with us into a big, kick-ass all-powerful Digital creature that can take on whole armies. Numa on the other hand, can't do that."

"What?" Stass asked, with confusion. Evidently she hadn't had the whole concept of biomerging explained to her yet.

"Did you say Numa?" asked Boil, as he and Waxer immediately stepped forward. "Is she there?"

"I had a feeling that you two would be interested the moment you heard that name?" Aayla allowed a moment out of the serious moment. Her hologram momentarily vanished and when it returned that there was a small Twi'lek girl in her arms, and in the arms of the Twi'lek was a small blob-like creature.

"Look who is, Numa," Aayla pointed towards Waxer and Boil. "You recognise these two?"

Numa blinked and cried, "Nerra! Nerra!" Her holographic hand reached out towards them and evidently, on the other side, she was trying to touch their holograms. Her hand was going right through them, and that was actually the case on both sides of the call.

"Hey, kid," Waxer grinned at the sight of her. "How've you been?"

"Well, other than the fact she was caught by slavers a while ago and lost her uncle, she's been fine," Lopmon replied. "She doesn't have anywhere to go now so we brought her with us for the time being. But Barriss is right. If she were a Tamer she could stay with us, but we can't risk her life when she's not. Technically she's still just a civilian."

"True enough," nodded Renamon. "It wouldn't be fair to drag her into battle situations if she couldn't be of any help."

"By the way," Boil looked up at Aayla. "I hope you pounded the scumbags who took this kid prisoner into the dirt."

"Oh, we did," Ahsoka nodded. "Every one of us took part in it somehow, but I think it was Rika who took the prize. She punched one of them – their leader, actually – right in the face. Wish I could have seen it with my own eyes."

"Heh, that kid's alright," Boil nodded. "And I have to agree. We can't put the kid in harm's way."

"Excuse the interruption," Obi-Wan interrupted. "But what is that in her arms?"

"That has a name," said Lopmon. "You remember how we suddenly encountered a Digimon on Mygeeto, and we had to hunt it down before it hurt somebody or gave away the fact that we exist, and we discovered there was a good Digimon who died and was reformatted into a Digi-Egg during the main attack?"

"Uh-huh," nodded Obi-Wan, frowning at the small Digimon who was peering at them. "You're telling me that the egg hatched and this guy is what came out."

"Yeah, that's right," nodded Renamon, placing a paw on Obi-Wan's shoulder. "I'd like you all to meet the former WereGarurumon. Right now, his name is Punimon."

"An adequate name," Bane murmured.

"I'm still not above punching the daylights out of you," Renamon threw over her shoulder. "Or I could get Chewbacca to do it. You saw what he did to Sidious."

"Yeah, nice job of that by the way," Terriermon addressed the Wookiee, who grinned and gave a triumphant roar that made some of the younger younglings hide behind Tera Sinube.

"You're seriously telling me that you guys hatch from eggs," Bane asked. "Is there anything about the lot of you Digimon that _isn't_ weird."

"No," Terriermon shook his head. "Deal with it."

"We're very unique creatures, Bane," nodded Lopmon. "Surely you should know that by now."

"Oh, I do," Bane snorted. "I do."

"Well, in any case, welcome to our Galaxy, Punimon," Obi-Wan continued. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance at last."

"Er... I'm currently finding all this a bit weird," Punimon replied from Numa's arms. "People talking to one another over a distance that would take light hundreds of years to travel, non-Digimon who can move things with their minds and travelling between worlds in giant ships... most of it is going right over my body."

"I don't know," Ahsoka shrugged. "Sounds like you've got a pretty good grasp of it to me."

"Anyway, back on topic," Aayla said. "Any idea about where we could take Numa and the younglings while we try and take the fight to Palpatine?"

There was a moment of silence as everyone tried to come up with something, but then the hologram of Captain Rex stepped into view and he cleared his throat to gain their attention. "Erm, actually, sirs, I may have an idea," he said. "The younglings I'm not sure about, but I may have an idea about what to do with Numa."

"Well, let's hear it, Rex," Anakin gestured for him to continue.

Rex paused for a moment, and then said, "Excuse my hesitation, but... if I tell you about this, I'll be breaking a promise I made some time ago."

"Promise?" Renamon frowned. "What promise?"

"Well, you remember when Master Eeth Koth was captured by General Grievous and we were directed to the planet Saleucami to try and catch him, where I was injured by a couple of commando droids and had to spend the night recovering on a farm?"

"Yes, I remember it well," Obi-Wan said. "I fact I believe you had to help the man who owned it to defend the farm from a group of commando droids despite the fact you could barely move one arm."

"Well," Rex murmured. "There was one detail that I didn't tell you, General Kenobi. And that was that the owner of the farm... was in fact a clone that deserted from the army right after the First Battle of Geonosis."

Silence.

"Say what?" Barriss asked. "A clone deserter? Really?"

"Yes, sir," nodded Rex. "His name was Cut Lawquane, and he found quite a life for himself outside the army. Thinking about him was one of the main things that helped me to defy the Chancellor and help you Jedi – you know, a sort of 'if he can do it so can I' thing. Anyway, he married a lovely Twi'lek woman there and became the stepfather to her two children. He's... quite the family man," he chuckled.

Renamon smiled. "You see, Rex. It is perfectly possible for a clone such as yourself to become a normal man."

"I know that now," Rex nodded. "And once this war's over, I intend to become something like Cut. In any case, I'm sure if we paid him a visit, he would be able to take in Numa and he and his wife, Suu, would raise her as their own. She'd have other children to play with as well. As for the younglings, well, them I'm not sure about."

"I suppose we should be annoyed that you kept this from us, Rex," Anakin observed. "But since you have been keeping an even bigger secret from the Senate for months and have also just sided with us against the command of the Ch... Emperor," he bit his tongue as if he were choking on the word. "I suppose we can let it slide."

"Much appreciated, sir," Rex nodded, a slight smile on his face.

"Well, regardless, it sounds ideal, if this Cut Lawquane is willing to take Numa in," Lopmon said.

"Oh, I'm sure he will be," Rex said. "He was very insistent that they always help anyone they could, teaching it to his children and everything. He took me in even though I could have very easily turned him in. I'm sure a little Twi'lek girl with no family left would make him and his family jump at the opportunity to help her."

"Well, I guess we should head for Saleucami then," Aayla nodded. "But that doesn't solve the problem with the younglings."

"No," Yoda said. "But head for Saleucami as well, we shall. A brief stopping off point, we can make it, to unite our forces once more."

"Alright then," grinned Terriermon. "It's a plan. Looking forward to seeing you again in person soon, Renamon."

Renamon chuckled and said, "It hasn't been that long since we parted. But I suppose I can say the same."

"I know you can," Terriermon grinned. "We don't need this hologram to communicate after all."

"True," Renamon chuckled. "See you soon."

As the holograms vanished, Obi-Wan ordered the clones to pull the cruiser out of hyperspace and began to reset the co-ordinates for the Techno Union-owned farming planet known as Saleucami.

* * *

Palpatine was sitting in his office, feeling quite content with himself. He had very nearly completely lost his composure and panicked when his cover had been blown by Bane, but it seemed that he had managed to turn everything around in a heartbeat. Already, there were reports coming in from the Outer Rim of clones that had succeeded in killing the Jedi Generals that they had served under for so long.

Now, there were only a few more reports he wanted to really here, and that was from the forces that had attacked the Jedi Temple, and from Commander Bly and Captain Rex. The sooner he knew that Aayla Secura and her allies had been taken care of, the better.

Yes, it was a blow that Anakin had not become his apprentice. In fact, it was a _serious_ blow. He had been after a younger and much more powerful apprentice that would be totally obedient to him through an ingrained sense of loyalty since they had known each other since he was a child and he had grown up thinking of him as a friend.

But it looked like that opportunity was behind him. Strangely enough, Palpatine thought he should be angrier about that, but at the moment he was feeling quite happy, because while he didn't have the prize apprentice he had been hoping for, Order 66 would have rid him of the Chosen One that was supposedly destined to defeat him.

Unless fate decided to try and make a second Chosen One, which was very unlikely, it would seem that Palpatine now had little to fear if the prophecy was to be believed. And despite all this, he had gained so much in the course of a single afternoon. He was now the Emperor of an all-new Empire, just as he had been hoping for, and it would not be long before all the worlds throughout the Galaxy learned to fear and respect him and his army.

Was he planning on dissolving the clone army just as he promised when he brought them into existence?

Heck, no.

Eventually, Palpatine received another call and when he answered it, he saw that it was Commander Fox reporting. He leaned back on his desk and placed his fingers together, smiling slightly sinisterly at the clone. "Ah, Commander," he said. "I trust you have some good news to report?"

"Uh... yes and no, sir," Fox responded, which immediately made Palpatine frown and lean forward. "The, er, good news is that the Jedi Temple has been successfully emptied of Jedi. The... the bad news is that most of them managed to escape."

"What?" Palpatine sat forward even further, his hands gripping the arms of his chair and his nose almost passing through Commander Fox's hologram. "What do you mean, escape? How could they have gotten away from your forces?"

"We were taken by surprise, sir," Fox said quickly, his hologram actually stepping backwards. "Somehow the Jedi knew that we were coming before we even arrived and were fully prepared to fight us. We managed to kill many of their number, and we did secure those prisoners that you asked us to, but most of the Jedi were able to get to the shuttles and escape?"

"Did you not co-ordinate your ships to block off the exits to the hangars?" Palpatine was practically yelling.

"Yes, sir," Fox nodded. "That's the most disturbing part. They were attacked from behind... by other clones, sir?"

Palpatine froze in position. "Other... clones...?" he asked slowly, his voice dropping into the low, growling voice of Darth Sidious. "You were attacked by... other...clones..."

"Yes, sir," nodded Fox. "I don't know why or how, but they struck us from behind and before we knew what was happening, they were providing a vanguard for the Jedi as they escaped. They were able to get in a cruiser and jump to hyperspace before we could stop them. And it seems they took most of the Separatist prisoners with them, though we do have Dooku and Ventress in custody."

Palpatine's face was practically twitching with barely-contained wrath, as he slowly and icily said, "Very well, Commander. Good work. Bring the prisoners to me – I wish to speak with both of them."

"Yes, sir," nodded Fox and signed off.

The moment he did so, Palpatine stood up with a soul-piercing scream of livid fury and a burst of the Force shot out all around him, slamming cabinets and wardrobes and his chair into the walls all around him. His hands were curled like claws before him as he screeched at the ceiling in rage. How could this have happened? How could some clones have turned against him? They were hardwired to obey the highest authority – they were supposed to be no better than droids in that regard.

So why had some of them sided with the Jedi.

And then a horrible thought struck Palpatine and he froze on the spot. If some clones here on Coruscant had turned against him... was it possible that several others had turned against him as well?

His desk had survived his Force onslaught because it was attached to the floor, so he quickly called the communicator of a certain clone Commander at the other side of the Galaxy, eyes wide with apprehension.

Eventually, the clone answered, and Palpatine said, "Commander Bly, please report on your progress? Is Aayla Secura dead yet?"

The clone stared at him for a few moments, then pulled off his helmet and tucked it under his arm, smiling wryly at the Emperor. Then he said, "Why don't you ask her yourself?" His arm made a motion that indicated he was about to throw something and suddenly he vanished, indicating he had thrown the communicator.

A moment later, his hologram was replaced by the one person that Palpatine least wanted to see in the whole universe.

"You!" he growled. "You're behind this, aren't you? I just know it."

Aayla smirked at him. "You might say that," she said vaguely. "You've been trying very hard to kill me recently, Palpatine, but you're going to have to try a little harder. See you later. Oh, and by the way, congratulations on your new status as Emperor. Let's see how long you can hold onto it."

Suddenly, she cut off the communication, and several service droids many corridors away started in shock and almost malfunctioned at the incredibly loud howl of rage that followed.

* * *

Bwahahaha! I'm so mean to Palpatine, but then again he deserves everything that I'm giving him and more. He's probably very close to the end of his rope right now, because this makes three attempts of Aayla's life he's made in about as many days and each and every time, Aayla has managed to turn things against him. Of course, this time it was more of a stalemate, because Palpatine seems to have an overwhelming advantage in this new war against the Jedi. But, to paraphrase Aayla, let's see how long that lasts.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Beelzemon is in quite a bit of trouble. He's finally been caught and taken to the Dark Ocean and as his companions grieve for him and attempt to come up with a rescue plan, Beelzemon finally meets GranDracmon face to face. But it seems the plans of the Master of the Dark Ocean is not as simple as Beelzemon previously believed.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 160 : The Draining Chamber**


	160. The Draining Chamber

Good news everyone. I finally know when I'm going to get my own internet at the house that I'm renting in Carlisle. It's scheduled to arrive on Wednesday, so from that day on, I will not need to use the Uni's internet to upload new chapters whenever I go in. I'll be able to load a chapter the moment I finish it once again. And while I have enjoyed these mass updates, I'm sure you would all prefer it if I took that approach instead.

Until then, keep reading. I eagerly await your views.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 160:- The Draining Chamber**

* * *

The ocean was supposed to be a sight of beauty. Of lapping waves, brushing against a pristine looking golden, sandy beach while the sun caused the crashing water to sparkle and the ripples created lovely patterns on the surface, stretching all the way out to the horizon, with white surf being thrown up into the air with each wave and small bubbles forming in the water as it ran up the sand to soak your feet. Occasionally you might see boats or islands out there, and underneath the water was a world of beauty too, as all manners of coloured fish dart to and fro and the corals practically shine in the sunlight piercing through the surface.

But that lovely image was most certainly _not_ the case here.

The Dark Ocean was exactly as it sounded. Everything around seemed to be a monochrome colour. The sand was not golden, but a dull grey coloured, and at one end was a small forest of trees with dead-looking rotting leaves that didn't fall off the branches and with bark of an even darker grey than the sand, giving any casual observers an enormous feeling of foreboding at the mere sight of the forest.

The water was pitch-black, as the name suggested, and it certainly didn't behave like normal water. Instead of flowing up and down the dull grey beach quickly and frequently, it seemed to slurp up the beach and retracted slowly like ooze instead of water. It was almost like one massive oil slick that covered the entire water and penetrated from the top right down to the bottom. It looked so thick and gelatinous that one step into it was likely to dissolve your foot and who knew what other horrors lay down there, lying in wait. Certainly something worse than a shark.

It was the definition of an unwelcome landscape. Every rock was grey or black and covered in ooze-like water that dripped off them in huge clumps to stain the sand... if you could call it sand. It frankly looked a little more like ash than sand, and considering everything else, it wouldn't be surprising if it _was ash._

There were fires burning here and there on the breach, large poles sticking out of the ground with blazing tips like a medieval torch. But they were not making a lot of difference to the light and even the licking tongues of fire were dull white or grey, giving off a dull ghost-light. There was no moon or stars in the sky – it was as if the whole place was covered in a layer of cloud of perhaps thick fog so dense that nothing could be seen through it. Not the faintest hint of a blue sky anywhere.

Ethereal shapes seemed to move around the place, like the restless spirits of victimised creatures that had no chance of escaping this place, no sound coming out of them except for the slight hiss they created as they passed. There were a few buildings around here as well, but they were mostly wooden wrecks at the highest point of the beach that you should only enter if you were insane, or actively _looking_ to walk into a house that could collapse on you at any moment.

The darkness extended into the distance, forming something like a wall around the entire perimeter. Could you walk beyond the darkness? Who knows?

Not to mention the entire place was absolutely _crawling_ with Dark looking Digimon. Devimon were swooping low through the air on their tattered wings, with a smattering of LadyDevimon accompanying them here and there. Groups of SkullSatamon milled about, their staffs embedded in the ash as they sniggered to one another. A couple of SkullGreymon plodded along the sand and forced everyone to get out of their way. Swarms of Rookie level Arkadimon dashed all over the place, and there were even more of their In-training Forms, which looked like small spider-slash-beetle like creatures with small claws on each foot. There were hundreds of Dark Digimon of all shapes and sizes standing on the sand and there were even some in the water, like a couple of MarineDevimon and a Dragomon that waded through the sludge-like water, surrounded by an escort of Scubamon.

If there was a place that was the complete opposite to the Celestial Heavens, this was probably it. It was likely that even Anubimon's realm, which few had ever set eyes on ever, looked like this. (After all, Anubimon was a nice guy, even if he was God of the Deleted). There was no friendliness here, no joy, no innocence of any kind.

There was just malice. And plenty of it.

There were even a few statues dotted about the place, but they were in about as much disrepair as the buildings. There was a statue of six of the Seven Demon Lords hovering over plinths and surrounded by a haunting, purplish light – about the only colour in the whole region apart from the Digimon themselves. There was a Lucemon Chaos Mode without a head, which was being used as a ball by a couple of In-training, Arkadimon. There was a Lilithmon missing both arms, a Daemon with a face that had been pulverised by some kind of attack, a large Leviamon with his jaws broken off, and his tail embedded in the wall not far away, a Barbamon whose staff had been thrust through his stone chest, and a Belphemon whose horns had disintegrated and whose wings were floating in the ocean.

There was even an Ogudomon, but only the eight huge legs of that huge statue were still standing. The body was lying over several trees that had been flattened when it had been tossed away, probably by some angry row between a bunch of Dark Digimon.

There was a plinth for a Seventh Demon Lord, but it was noticeably empty.

And, towering over everything, was the castle. It was a truly enormous structure, easily as large as Fanglongmon's own Palace, with doors that towered high above almost everything else. Huge, dark spires reached up as if seeking to pierce the fog up above. Several sturdy looking bridges spanned the gaps between the towers. There were few windows and those that were around were small and insignificant looking.

The walls were made of stone that was as black as the ocean and the rooftops were covered in a dark substance that looked like black snow. It was certainly cold enough for snow – it was almost freezing here, or that could just have been the chill running up everybody's spines, even those of the residents. The doors were a dark wood that looked sturdy and strong, and there was no symmetry to the structure whatsoever. Everything was jagged and spiky, including the battlements and there were even spikes jutting out of places that served no purpose whatsoever except to look intimidating.

Unlike everything else though, the castle looked like it was in good condition, even if the effect was menacing. In fact, that might be the reason for its good condition. All of the Digimon milling about in the sands and the water were giving the castle a wide berth. Even the ground that the castle was situated on was higher than the rest of it the area, raising the tower higher into the air than its own structure allowed.

There was even a flag flying at the top, but how it was flapping around like that was a mystery because the air around here was completely and utterly still except for sudden gusts that seemed to slide over the skin like it was trying to get under it. The flag, like everything else was black, but for a pair of pair of red eyes that glared out at everything else and partially closed fist in the middle, with sharp claws very much in evidence, as if they were giving out a clear threat display to anything that looked upon the castle.

This was the lair of GranDracmon, creator and master of the Dark Ocean and Supreme Overlord of everything in this entire dimension.

And GranDracmon himself was in the main entrance hall of this giant structure.

The Demonic Digimon was actually not as large as you might think. He was certainly nowhere near as large as the giant image of him that had appeared in the Human World some time ago to finally deliver the message of his identity to Impmon, and of his demands – trying to get him to willing rejoin the ranks of the Nightmare Soldiers that were standing outside, waiting for their instructions. Instead, his torso was about the same size as a human, albeit quite a tall one, and his bottom half was about the size of a horse. In other words, he was pretty much the right size for a regular centaur.

Of course, GranDracmon was far from centaur, as there was almost nothing horse-like about his lower body. No hooves, just huge paws with enormous white claws that seemed to gleam like deadly knives. The fur over his body was red and he had large spikes jutting out of the backs of all four legs and a long, yellow horse-like tail swishing out of his hindquarters. Perhaps the most alarming thing about his appearance was the shoulders of his animal body, which had a pair of huge, shark-like jaws that were constantly snapping and hissing as if they had minds of their own.

His human half, or rather, his human-ish half, was also red, with a collar that seemed to be composed of two large, blue bat wings. Not to mention he had proper wings sticking out of his shoulders, also bat-like in appearance. A couple of belts were wrapped around his waist and he had a large, blue helmet-mask over the top half of his face, concealing most of it from view, with two large devil-like horns sticking out of the top. The bottom half of his face had grey skin, and he had long, golden hair draped down his back that was oddly reminiscent of a holy Digimon like an Angemon.

But it didn't really make him look any friendlier. It was almost a cruel mockery of the heavens with hair like that.

GranDracmon's arms were folded and he was slowly moving backwards and forwards across the courtyard, his huge paws crashing to the floor like giant hammers and his claws skating across the stone floor of the courtyard, slicing small grooves in it with each step. His tail flicked behind him and his wings flexed and curled, his shark-like shoulders gnashing their teeth.

GranDracmon was seriously growing impatient. His main target, Beelzemon, had been eluding him for too long. He had been attempting for quite some time to get him to willing join their ranks, although perhaps willing wasn't quite the right word. GranDracmon's voice, after all, had the power to compel most weaker-willed Digimon to do whatever he wanted them to. He had known that Impmon was not weak-willed though, so he had sent in MetalPhantomon wear him down and break his spirit with the visions that he saw every time he went to sleep.

He had even eventually commanded MetalPhantomon to allow himself to be sensed, so Impmon would know he was being haunted. That had been a ploy to make him twitchy, to make him nervous and edgy and afraid of his own shadow, which would have made him easier to break. And when GranDracmon judged that Impmon had been pushed far enough, he had made his appearance and asked Impmon to join his forces as his main General, confident that Impmon's will would crumble thanks to MetalPhantomon's administrations and the power of his voice.

He had been surprised when Impmon had still resisted the temptation. Obviously the bond between the Digimon and the humans was stronger than he supposed, or perhaps it had been Impmon himself that was stronger-willed than anticipated. Either way, it seemed that almost everything he had been trying to do with Impmon over the last few months had been a waste of time.

However, MetalPhantomon had been able to unearth the intervention from the angel Digimon Magnadramon, that explained why GranDracmon's Eye of the Gorgon attack, which was supposed to enslave any Digimon it hit to the darkness within themselves, did not work on Impmon. He had tried it, though Impmon wouldn't remember it as MetalPhantomon had wiped his memory. Magnadramon must have placed an angelic safeguard within Impmon that prevented him from being susceptible to the attack.

With Plan A effectively tossed out of all consideration, GranDracmon had resorted to Plan B – trying to convince Impmon to join him by force, and threats to his friends, making Impmon come to him to try and protect them.

He had not expected Impmon to run away from them instead.

He could have sent forces to attack the Tamers while Impmon was away, but that would merely have been a waste of energy, as Impmon would have no knowledge of the attack until long after it had happened. So, GranDracmon had finally realised that Impmon could not be forced into his service, and he was beginning to get impatient to begin his assault on the Digital World and regain the supremacy that he had commanded in the days of old.

But, to do that, he needed someone who could transport many, many troops into the Digital World, and the only ones he knew of that could do that were the Demon Lords. That was why he needed Beelzemon so badly. Without Beelzemon, the plan to attack and take the Digital World would fall apart before any of them had taken the first step to trying it. They might be able to make hit and run missions with fewer numbers, but the Sovereigns would eventually catch up with them and put a stop to them. None of the servants he had were a match for them.

Only he was strong enough to take the Sovereigns on. All four of them at once would be a challenge, probably a very close match, but GranDracmon was certainly extremely powerful and might just be able to do that, as long as he was surrounded by the life-giving darkness which he so needed.

For that reason, GranDracmon was planning on using an alternative approach to his plan. After all, every army leader worth his salt had a secret weapon of some kind, and GranDracmon certainly had his, but for it to work, he would still need Beelzemon.

He paused and stopped, staring over at a small artefact in the corner of the courtyard. It appeared to be some kind of fountain filled with inky black, oozy water directly from the ocean. Much like the mirror in the Heavens that allowed the angels to watch over the Digital World, this fountain allowed him to look at things in the Digital World. It had been created by Lucemon, based on that very mirror, and had been initially used by the Demon Lords to plan out their next attacks. But, after their downfall, GranDracmon had taken possession of it.

He had had an understanding with the Demon Lords when they had used his Dark Ocean as a gateway. He would allow them to use his dimension as long as they did not bother him. And the Demon Lords had _not _been crazy enough to try and take on GranDracmon. They had known his power well enough not to risk it.

Anyway, he was considering using the fountain to check on the progress of his Arkadimon that he had sent off a while ago and see if they had managed to catch their quarry yet, or whether Beelzemon had somehow managed to best them. It seemed unlikely that that might happen, but, then again, he had thought Darkdramon would be enough and his plans had been foiled by Impmon's companions with that particular attack.

But when he discovered that Impmon was alone once more, he had been quick to respond, halting his dark probes from their attack on the walls of the Heavens and redirecting some of his Arkadimon to go after him.

He decided not to for a while longer. His power to transfer Digimon to the Digital World was not instantaneous after all. It took a while for them to move between. He would have to be patient.

Sure enough, his patience did not go unrewarded.

After a few minutes more of continuing his patience, something in the distance beyond the castle walls caught his attention. A flash of dark purplish light, if you could call it light, that was clearly visible against the greyish fog-filled sky, and glowed briefly before it died down. GranDracmon felt a sinister smile of triumph creeping over his face. He knew that there was only one thing that could cause a light like that and that was his power to transfer another Digimon to the Digital World or back.

Rather like Magnadramon's little safeguard in Impmon that prevented his Eye of the Gorgon from working, GranDracmon was able to temporarily grant his minions the ability to make one trip back into the Dark Ocean after he sent them on their way. It didn't last for very long though and would fade away after a couple of hours, but that was usually all the time that was needed.

Because either they would capture Beelzemon, or they would die at his hand.

This was the first time since MetalPhantomon that any of the minions he sent out had returned. It looked like his newest plan to corner the elusive Demon Lord had finally produced something. Most of the Arkadimon would have perished but some would have returned, at higher levels, having successfully overwhelmed their quarry now that he was finally on his own.

Nevertheless, GranDracmon didn't move. He stopped pacing and stood tall in the middle of the stone courtyard, his shark-jaws gnashing in anticipation and his tail flicking with increased alacrity. He waited for the messenger he knew would come and, sure enough, a Vilemon suddenly flew over the walls and landed some distance away, dropping into a bow and declaring, "My Lord, GranDracmon. The Arkadimon that you sent out have returned."

"And?" GranDracmon said, in his deep, _deep_ voice that almost reeked of evil. "Do they have what I desire?"

"Yes, my Lord," Vilemon cried, eager to please the mighty Demon Digimon. "There are six of them, all at the Mega level, and they come bearing a prisoner. It's definitely Beelzemon, sir. He still seems to have some spare energy left, sir. He's really kicking up a storm out there."

"I see," GranDracmon replied. "MetalPhantomon?"

As if he had been there the whole time, the metallic ghoul-like creature, with crackling electricity for arms, a long cloak and good, no legs, red dots in the middle of his eye sockets and a huge scythe that also crackling with pink electricity, faded into view next to GranDracmon.

"Yes, my Lord?" he asked in his gravelly voice.

"Go and subdue the prisoner," GranDracmon. "I want him to be ready when I arrive."

MetalPhantomon nodded and vanished, and GranDracmon turned towards the doors the lead out towards the ocean, the Vilemon bowing ridiculously next to him and hoping that he had done a good job and GranDracmon would not crush him into a pulp. But it seemed that he had, because GranDracmon merely strode right past him, not even bothering to look at him.

Shark-jaws snapping, GranDracmon approached the doors. The enormous portcullis that blocked them off rose into the air automatically with a loud sound of a clinking chain that didn't exist, and the doors creaked open of their own accord at the same time. GranDracmon stepped out of the castle and his feet crunched onto the ashy sand that made up the beach of his Dark Ocean.

His head turned and he saw a large crowd on Nightmare Soldiers up ahead, gathering around a bunch of Mega-level Arkadimon that were making their way towards the castle, the crowd parting to let them through. MetalPhantomon was hovering above them, leading GranDracmon to assume that he had already done his job, so he turned around and strode towards the Arkadimon, his hands clasped calmly behind his back as if he had known that this outcome was inevitable all along, his huge claws crunching into the sand with each mighty step.

The Digimon around him crowded out of the way of him as well, none of them daring to go anywhere near him. It took a lot to rile GranDracmon, as he had a calm head on his shoulders, but they all knew that he could obliterate them before they could bat an eyelid so none of them wanted to do anything to risk it even in the slightest.

The Arkadimon silently approached and GranDracmon stopped before them, allowing them to make the final approach. As they did so, they folded their wings behind their back and when they stopped, they all fell to one knee, arms folding in front of them as they silently paid tribute to their incredibly strong ruler.

GranDracmon offered no congratulations. He merely said, "Well? Where is he?"

Several of the Arkadimon stood, and allowed the one at the back to step forward and to the front. There, clutched in his hand, was the limp form of Beelzemon. His wings and cannon were not present, which lead GranDracmon to believe that one of them had used their Dot Matrix attack to drain his energy away. His arms were hanging over the clawed hand and his head lolled to one side. Beelzemon was a sorry sight, his leather jacket burnt and frayed in a dozen places, his clothing torn and a there was a large crack in his helmet, running from his middle eye across to the right and sweeping round to the back.

His eyes were shut and he was twitching, his teeth clenched and presumably lost in a horrible nightmare. MetalPhantomon had done his job well, putting the Demon Lord to sleep before he could injure himself further or de-digivolve back to Impmon, which was exactly what GranDracmon did not want. He needed him to remain in his Mega Form if his plan was to work.

For the time being anyway.

"Well then," he said, after examining the catch. "If it isn't our old friend, Beelzemon, everyone."

There was a smattering of sniggers throughout the audience – all of them knew about Beelzemon's backstory and how he had been reduced to a spineless, human-lover. Many of them had served directly under him in some of their skirmishes against the Digital World, and even if he hadn't been a human lover, they would have found it amusing to see the once mighty Demon Lord, in a deep sleep and beaten to within an inch of deletion.

Why?

Because they were evil. That's all there was to it.

"Drop him," GranDracmon instructed and the Arkadimon obediently, tossed the Demon Lord into the air. He fell and hit the sand like a sack full of bricks, lying face-down in the grey stuff. GranDracmon stepped over to him and loomed above him, smirking down on the comatose former Demon Lord.

"It's a shame really, Beelzemon, that you have forced my hand in this way," GranDracmon addressed the Mega before him. He knew that Beelzemon couldn't hear him, but his words were more for the benefit of the crowd than the victim. "I was hoping that you would wish to regain the glory of you former days, and once again wield the respect that you once commanded amongst all these people here. But all that we can see now is a useless lump of former Demon Lord that, frankly, brings shame upon all our names."

There was a small amount of jeering from the audience, but even they were the ones at the far back. None of them anywhere near GranDracmon wanted to risk cutting him off in the middle of speaking.

GranDracmon glanced down at what might look like nothing more than a small, brown lump from a distance that was right beside his front claw. "Look upon him," he told the lump. "Look upon the great Beelzemon. Tell me, do you want to be like him?"

There was a pause and a small, whispering noise came from the lump. "No," it murmured, so quietly that almost nobody heard it.

"I should think not," GranDracmon chuckled. "But now, it is time to execute my plan."

His head turned around and focused on a pair of Devimon, who immediately stepped backwards and bowed low. "You two – grab the prisoner and follow me. We must take him into the castle. And feel free to be as unceremonious with him as you please."

The two Devimon leered and said, "Yes, sir!" and "It will be our pleasure, sir." They hurried forwards, their wings flapping eagerly, and they grabbed hold of Beelzemon's limp arms with their huge hands, claws fastening around his wrists. Only one of Beelzemon's shotguns remained on his person – the other had been crushed in the Arkadimon attack. A Vilemon quickly ran over and pulled it out of the holster, thus rendering the sleeping Mega fully disarmed.

GranDracmon nodded and turned around to stride back towards the castle, his hands still clasped calmly behind his back. The Devimon and the Vilemon followed on behind and Beelzemon was dragged across the sand on his front, his face ploughing through they ashy substance and the spikes on his boots leaving long gouge-marks behind them. There was not small amount of snickering and jeering from the crowd, as they clustered around behind the Demon Lord. Some of the braver ones followed and aimed a couple of kicks at his side while he was helpless.

GranDracmon did nothing to stop them.

MetalPhantomon floated overhead, ready to put Beelzemon into another deep sleep should he begin to stir, the metallic ghost grinning sickly down at the scene before him. Quite frankly, it was a horrible sight – for anyone to endure treatment like this was just wrong. But these were Digimon without morals of any kind. And they were loving every second of Beelzemon's humiliation, simply because they could.

One of the few things that did not take part in all of this was the small, brown lump from before. Small red eyes peered out from near the top of the tiny creature watching the procession from the exact same spot it had been before with what looked like mild interest. But other than that, it made practically no move whatsoever, except to yawn slightly.

As GranDracmon strode towards the castle gates that were still wide open and waiting for him to return, he could feel a small smile of excitement and triumph appearing under his helmet, and his shark-shoulders appeared to be almost snickering as they gnashed their teeth and their long tongues flicked in and out like those of some incredibly bizarre serpent. It had been a long process of failures in his attempts to catch Beelzemon, but he had long since known that the outcome would be inevitable. Beelzemon had finally succumbed and soon, very soon, the Digital World would practically be his for the taking.

The Human World would be next. And once he had assimilated enough power, he would even break through the barriers around the Celestial Heavens and take them as well. He would save that for last, as he knew that even he was not nearly strong enough to take on Fanglongmon. Not yet anyway. If he attacked now and the Dragon One awoke, his whole plan would be in ruins. But one day... one day he _would_ attack the Heavens.

And who knows. He might even discover a way of breaking into Anubimon's realm and, if so, he would take that to and designate one of his own minions to rule over it. From that moment on, the evil Digimon who were deleted would not be condemned to oblivion but be reborn on the spot. His army would reign supreme and there would be nothing that anyone could do about it. Not the Tamers, the Sovereigns, the Angels, not even the Gods.

And all of his visions would not be possible without Beelzemon.

GranDracmon crossed the threshold of his castle, with the Devimon, the Vilemon and MetalPhantomon right behind him, the former two continuing to drag Beelzemon over the cold, stone of the castle courtyard, the metal on his boots and helmet scraping across the stone with an unpleasant screeching noise, which was ignored by all present. The crowd of Digimon had fallen back when they got close to the castle, knowing that they were not supposed to enter it without permission.

The portcullis and the doors slowly and ominously ground shut behind the small group, sealing off the world outside. Beelzemon didn't know it, since he was in a deep sleep filled with nightmarish visions, but he was now in the enemies stronghold – the demon's nest. Everything around them screamed evil, as if the walls themselves were undergoing torture thanks to the spikes jutting out of them in seemingly random places.

"Follow me," GranDracmon said over his shoulder and exited the main courtyard through another door which ground open to accept him and led him into a reasonably large hall lined with ghostly torches.

He walked through this hall, the procession following on behind him. Even the torches seemed to be watching what was going on beneath them, their dancing flames wafting in GranDracmon's direction. It was as if all the evil was drawn to his very presence, the darkness concentrating itself around him and not just to form a wispy shadow in the grey light.

GranDracmon turned and reached a flight of stairs at the end of the corridor and began to ascend, each clawed foot pounding down against the stone with every step, his bat-wings folding against his back to keep them from scraping against the ceiling. The Devimon watched him walk upwards for a moment, and then released Beelzemon's arms, walking back to grab him by the ankles instead and twisted him around pulling him up the stairs head-down.

Every step caused Beelzemon's head to smack into the next step, which was just an added cruelty to him and the main reason why the Devimon had chosen to take him up this way. MetalPhantomon readied himself, just in case the rough treatment caused Beelzemon to wake up, but the Mega level former Demon Lord remained asleep. He barely even grunted whenever his head clunked against the steps which seemed to disappoint the Devimon slightly.

The Vilemon toting the shotgun was examining it as they walked trying to hold it properly, though he was quite small and holding the gun required the use of both hands for him. He was trying to imagine himself as a mighty Digimon that could ruthlessly shoot down any other, but the effect wasn't as great as he might hope for. He didn't dare pull the trigger though, just in case it fired and he hit something he wasn't supposed to.

GranDracmon led the group through a few more corridors and over one of the large stone bridges that connected some of his towers together, where the Devimon could see over the main castle walls and saw the crowd of Digimon still outside, watching them. Eventually though, GranDracmon stepped into the tower ahead and strode towards another set of doors that creaked open to reveal a small room behind.

It was a strange-looking room, about the right size for a cell, but against the opposite wall there was a large cylinder of what appeared to be some form of glass, with four thick pieces of metal sticking out of the sides, two from the top and pointing horizontally down, and two from the bottom and pointing horizontally up. The glass cylinder had what appeared to be numerous flexibly pipes protruding from the top and leading towards a pair of large metal tanks in the corners of the room on either side of the glass cylinder.

The Devimon stared at this room in confusion, but GranDracmon strode in and turned around, saying, "Bring him in."

The Devimon obeyed immediately and dragged the comatose Digimon into the middle of the floor, dropping his ankles and bowing low, stepping away from Beelzemon's body. GranDracmon spared them no second glance and turned to MetalPhantomon. "You know what must be done?" he asked.

"Yes, my lord," MetalPhantomon replied, the crackling blades on his scythe vanishing into the staff, which he propped against the wall.

"Good," GranDracmon nodded. "In that case – install him."

* * *

Beelzemon was lost in a swirling vortex of pain and mental torment. A subconscious part of him knew that what was happening to him must have something to do with MetalPhantomon, as he had not felt like this since the last time the evil ghost-like Digimon had plagued his mind. But he wasn't entirely sure which one was worse – the full blown visions that he had received before, or the dozens of mental images that he was receiving at the moment.

He was locked in a furious battle with what appeared to be a small army of MetalTyrannomon, dashing his way through them and delivering gut-busting punches and kicks to all and sundry, jamming his guns into weak points in their armour and blowing them to data. And then, suddenly, he was somewhere completely different, with Daemon standing in front of him and two of them looking like they were about to go into a full-blown fight, until Lucemon appeared and ordered them apart.

And then he was standing in a forest and savagely beating a cowering Shawjamon to death with its own staff and laughing maniacally the whole time. The moment he stabbed the staff into the Shawjamon's chest, he was somewhere else, duelling furiously against what appeared to be an angry QueenChessmon. A nearby KingChessmon was trying to run away, but Beelzemon quickly shot him in the back before he could get far and blew him to data. The QueenChessmon roared in anger and tried to strike him, but Beelzemon delivered a powerful punch to her face and followed up with another bullet shot.

Then he appeared to be swinging a terrified Patamon around by its ears as he rained bullet down onto a bunch of other smaller Digimon that were fleeing in terror all around him. A furious Musyamon charged him with sword raised high, but Beelzemon caught the blow on his gun and flung the Patamon into his face, delivering a shot that killed them both.

And then he was astride Behemoth, chasing after a fleeing Digimon in the sky that he couldn't quite make out and shooting bullets up at it pretty much non-stop as he pulled closer to it. Before he could make out what it was, he was suddenly somewhere else clinging onto the huge red back of Leviamon as the massive crocodilian powered through the waters of the ocean level, allowing Beelzemon to leap off and stab an Octomon with his claws, grabbing it by its tentacle and flinging it into a Mantaraymon just before the Octomon disintegrated and then shooting the Mantaraymon.

The swelter of non-stop images were providing more of a global view than ever before of just how widespread Beelzemon's destruction had been and the tiny, tiny bit of him that was still conscious in there was screaming for it to stop, screaming with every fibre of his soul for the images to just to get them to go away.

Suddenly, he saw himself in the middle of a duel with a Craniamon, battering against the Knights defences with his claws and gun bullets. The Craniamon still seemed to be holding firm thanks to his heavy shield and thick armour, but suddenly he was attacked from behind – chains glowing with a ghostly light wrapped around him and stretched him out, and Belphemon was suddenly there, tearing into him from behind. Beelzemon leapt forward and the two Demon Lords dispatched the Knight in absolutely no time flat.

* * *

And then, suddenly, the images stopped, and Beelzemon was left in a world of bleary blackness. He could tell that he was beginning to wake up and he was slumping over, his limbs aching and his tail hanging limply behind him.

His teeth seemed to clench together of their own accord and his three eyelids twitched, grunts of pain escaping from his mouth as the battering that he had received from the six Arkadimon began to register to him again. Everything hurt right across his body. He was pretty sure that part of his broken helmet was digging into his head and his leather jacket, which he had so loved before, was now in tatters. His arms felt like they were about to be pulled out by the sockets, his tail felt like it had been bent at a horribly unpleasant angle. Even his hair seemed to hurt.

The only consolation he could make out so far was that he was not in Blast Mode. The last thing he needed right now was a huge pair of wings sticking out behind him and adding to the pain, as they had been during the battle against the Arkadimon.

Beelzemon vaguely wondered if he would ever fly again.

After a few minutes of pain, where he tried to identify most of the damaged areas of his body, he finally thought to open his middle eye and have a look around. He was expecting it to be dark, and he was not wrong. After all, he _was_ in the Dark Ocean now.

That thought alone produced an overwhelming sense of finality. After so long striving to stay away from this place, the fact that he was here now was... just completely soul-crushing.

With a large amount of despair pressing in on his mind, he took a look around. He could see the stone walls all around him, lit only by strange firey torches in nooks on the wall which were giving off a greyish light instead of the usual orangey-glow. There was a large wooden door in front of him, which was shut, and probably locked. And that was mostly it, except he seemed to be looking at it through a sheet of glass.

His other two eyes opened up next to continue looking around, his neck hurting as he rotated his head. He was inside a glass cylinder, and his arms were locked up to the elbow in huge metal tubes, like cuffs or gauntlets that trapped his hands and raised his arms up his head like a Y. His legs were trapped in similar ones that spread them apart in an upside down Y and were attached to the floor at either side of the cylinder, just as the ones securing his arms were attached to the roof of the glass box around him. It was like a small pod or something, sealing him inside entirely

The room around his was empty but for what appeared to be a pair of tanks, one on either side of his prison, for that was what the cylinder was right now. He could see numerous leads and pipes coming out of the tops of the tanks that ran up to the top of his little glass prison. His neck clicked as he tried to move his head up and look at them, but he couldn't make out what they could be for.

But he wasn't sure he wanted to find out.

There was nobody else in the room. Beelzemon hissed through his teeth at the pain wracking his body. If he really was in the Dark Ocean, then that meant that GranDracmon had ordered that he be placed in this little chamber like this. The supreme overlord of the Dark Ocean was not here to greet him, but it would not be long before he was.

Despite everything, including the crushing reality that he was now in the clutches of the enemy, just as the prophecy had predicted, Beelzemon still would not give up that easily. If GranDracmon thought he was just going to hang here in this little glass chamber then he would be sadly mistaken. The prophecy might suggest that Beelzemon was not going to be _able_ to escape either, but he wasn't about to let that put him off.

After all, the angels and Deckerdramon had all told him that the prophecies had double-meanings.

But it wasn't just that. Beelzemon had given up so much and abandoned his friends to try and protect them. He was not about to stop trying to do just that just because he was imprisoned. They would still be out there somewhere, still looking for him, still trying. So Beelzemon would do the same.

And so he began to try and get out of his current predicament. Ignoring the stabbing pains in his limbs as he did so, he began to tug on the large metal restraints encasing his entire lower arms, trying to use the strength he had left to wrench his arms out of the metal, bending it out of shape as he pulled himself free. With most metals, Beelzemon would have the strength to do that even battered as he was, but his efforts had no effect at all on these things.

He growled and focused on his right arm leaning to the left as far as he could and attempting to pull the arm out that way, but the metal had too tight a grip on his elbow. It wasn't letting him slide his arm out and his arm inside could barely move. It couldn't even flex and his fingers were immobilised as well, making his claws, which could tear through just about anything if he wanted them to, completely useless.

He tried to bring his tail up and wrap it around the metal to gain some better purchase, but after the effort caused a spasm of pain to erupt up it and through his body from the horrible angle it had been bent at, Beelzemon decided against it.

He tried to free his left arm next, but he was about as successful with that arm as the other one. He couldn't make any headway whatsoever with either of them, not even when he leaned forward to try and tear the metal apart from within. That just ended up bending his arms at unnatural angles and he moved back into position, gasping for breath.

He was gasping already?

"Jeez, I really had a number pulled on me," Beelzemon muttered to himself. "If Ai and Mako could see me right now, they probably wouldn't even recognise me." That was definitely exaggeration, but Beelzemon confessed he would probably barely recognise himself if he looked in a mirror right now. He was surprised there weren't little bits of data peeling off him and floating away.

He looked towards the door, but nobody came through it. "What's going on?" he murmured, just because the sound of a voice, even if it was just his own, made him feel slightly better. "Aren't I supposed to be undergoing some kind of torture where GranDracmon tried to break my spirit, or tear it away, or whatever the prophecy said? Why's he left me in this bloody thing?"

He paused, then added, "Maybe he's waiting for me to regain some strength before the torture begins." He gritted his teeth. "I've really gotta get out of this dump."

He resumed trying to free his arms, but after a few minutes of no more success than before, he began to work on his legs, but that seemed to be just as much of a useless gesture as the arms. They too were completely encased up to the knee. It was as if these gauntlet-restraint things had been made just for him. He was practically immobilised from his middle-joints out.

A yell of frustration escaped him when found that nothing was happening and he slumped back into his former position, head sagging in front of his as if he didn't even have the strength to hold it up. His fangs ground against one another as, in a burst of anger, he bashed his head against one arm restraint, and immediately wished he hadn't because it made the crack in his helmet push more uncomfortably against the top of his head.

In the end, he gave it up as a bad job. He wasn't going anywhere in this condition. If he were at full strength, he might be able to do something about it, but he wasn't and he doubted that GranDracmon or anyone who worked for him were planning on letting him get back to full strength anytime soon.

He began to consider the other option which had been tickling at the back of his mind – de-digivolving back to Impmon. He had been hesitant to try this, because he was not convinced he would have the strength to become Beelzemon again if he dead. Then again, being Beelzemon in this condition wasn't going to help him very much. But, if he went Impmon, he would be able to run and hide in the shadows until he built up more strength.

That would have to do, so he focused on shrinking back down into his Rookie form.

He was, therefore, very surprised when nothing happened whatsoever. His eyes snapped open in shock as he jerked on the gauntlet-restraints and let loose a cry of frustration, and squeezed eyes shut again, his body trembling as he tried to muster all his strength into de-digivolving, which was something he had never had to do before. And still nothing happened. He was still Beelzemon.

"What the heck...!" he growled, as his eyes opened once more. "What in the name of Anubimon is going on?"

As an experiment, he tried to go higher and achieve his Blast Mode, even if it would mean have two, large, pain-filled wings. But nothing happened there either. His wings remained non-existent and Berenjena did not appear on his arm and tear the gauntlet apart from within.

He was stuck as a regular Beelzemon.

Something mildly akin to panic was setting in now. He had absolutely no idea what was happening, but he couldn't shrink his way out of this predicament, or gain more power. His only other option would be to use the power he was supposed to possess and transmit himself out of the Dark Ocean and back to the Digital World. But he had no idea how to do that, and he was beginning to think that GranDracmon would have done something to make sure that that wouldn't work anyway. After all, he seemed to have done something to block a change of form for him.

He was well and truly contained, and the former Demon Lord began to settle for thrashing as much as he could, screams of rage rolling out from behind his fangs as he desperately tried to free himself, but still nothing happened, except he ran out of energy and slumped forward again, gasping for breath.

When the door in front of him opened, his head snapped up and all three eyes narrowed as he beheld the figure standing on the other side. His teeth were bared in a primal snarl. The last time he had seen this Digimon had been in the Human World, in a large projection that was trying to make him turn evil once more.

"You!" Beelzemon growled. "If it isn't the bastard behind just about all of my recent suffering lately."

"Hello to you too, Beelzemon," chuckled GranDracmon as he stepped through the door and stopped just in front of the glass that separated him from Beelzemon. Despite the fact there was glass between them, they still seemed to be hearing each other fine. "I hope things aren't too comfortable for you in there, or it would go against the design features I tried to produce."

Beelzemon yelled and, without thinking, attempted to lunge forward and break through the glass and throttle this guy, but the restraints held and he just ended up being jerked backwards almost before he'd even got moving.

"What's the matter?" Beelzemon scowled. "Afraid to fight me face to face are you? You've gotta keep me in this bloody contraption of yours? Let me out of here so I can bash your face against the wall so hard that nobody will be able to recognise it ever again."

"I see that even if you are supposed to be a 'good guy' now," GranDracmon sneered. "You still have the same old temper that I remember. And no, I am not planning on letting you out of here anytime soon. It's a remarkable device, don't you think? And I'm not just talking about the restraints that are keeping you hanging there like that? Excuse me, while I turn it on."

"Turn it on?" Beelzemon blinked, as GranDracmon stepped over to one of the tanks.

"What...?"

GranDracmon placed one of his hands on top of the tank and twisted a large dial that Beelzemon had not seen before that was next to the tubes in the middle. Beelzemon felt the change almost immediately and cried out, jerking in his bonds as the glass contained all around him was suddenly filled with some kind of ethereal greenish glow. A hatch opened up in the top of the container, and Beelzemon could vaguely see that it lead into the tubes secured to the top of the container.

"What the..." he grunted, his eyes screwing shut. "What are you... gah!" he cried out suddenly as he felt a sudden pain in his shoulder. The greenish glow was beginning to gather around him, almost as if it was trying to settle on his form. Some of it was being drawn up and into the tubes as it did so, running along them and being deposited into one of the two tanks on either side of the container.

"What's... happen...ing..." Beelzemon grunted as he felt more pains throughout the rest of his body beginning to spring up and then vanish again. He didn't have the faintest idea what was happening, but it hurt and there was something else going on as well. Beelzemon began to feel a little bit more of his strength beginning to ebb as if it was being sucked out of his body.

"Enjoying yourself in there?" GranDracmon chuckled. "I should hope that you're not, but then again, I'm not entirely sure what you're feeling right now, Beelzemon. You're the first one to feel the effects of this little device that we had specially made for you. I went to great length to have this built, you know, just in case you decided to try and escape from my clutches. It took me a long time to find and abduct that Wisemon, but eventually we succeeded and we forced him to build this just for you. He's not around anymore, otherwise he might be able to tell you a great deal of technical information about it."

Beelzemon grunted in pain as more pains sprang up across his body and he felt another iota of his strength wane as more of the greenish glow began to slowly enter the tubes above him and make its way into either of the two tanks.

But he managed to open his middle eye and glare and GranDracmon. "So, you going to tell me what it does, or what?" he asked, through clenched teeth. "'Cause if this is your form of torture then it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be."

"Your facial expression says otherwise," GranDracmon observed.

"No, it doesn't," Beelzemon shook his head. "I was expecting to be completely wracked by it, but this... it's just pinpricks. Annoying pinpricks, but pinpricks all the same."

"This isn't a torture device, Beelzemon," GranDracmon shook his head. "No, it's much more than that It's a..."

"Wait, let me guess!" Beelzemon's eye narrowed. "It's some kind of slave-conditioning machine thingie, isn't it? Whatever the heck you're doing to me, you're trying to turn me into your mindless little minion that will do whatever you want me to. That's what it is, isn't it." He offered GranDracmon a savage, pain-filled grin. "Well, I hate to tell you this, but IT WON'T WORK."

"Of course it won't," GranDracmon said, catching Beelzemon off-guard. "Because that's not what it does. For someone who has been on both sides of the war – from an ultimate evil to a pathetic human-lover – you are very naive, Beelzemon. I was expecting a bit more from you?"

"So, it's not a slave conditioner?" asked Beelzemon, gritting his teeth as he felt a spasming pain in his tail. "Then what the heck is it? What are you doing to me?"

"Why don't you have a look over your and see for yourself," GranDracmon said, indicating the floor of the cylindrical prison. Beelzemon grunted and slowly and painfully turned his head to do just that. To his absolute horror, he saw that the tip of his tail was missing and small particles of data were beginning to peel themselves away from what had become the new tip and were slowly rising into the air behind him to be sucked into the tubes along with the greenish-glow, which Beelzemon now assumed was somehow eating away at him.

"What the hell?" Beelzemon gasped, his head snapping back around to fix GranDracmon with another stare. "What are you doing? You're disintegrating me? I thought that you needed me to be your main General and transport troops to and from the Dark Ocean."

"I do indeed need that," GranDracmon nodded. "However, that person does not necessarily have to be you."

"Huh?" Beelzemon blinked and cried out as another small segment of his tail was vaporised and pulled into the tubing. "What... I don't understand."

"Then allow me to enlighten you, Beelzemon," GranDracmon smirked. "It will pass the time a little at any rate. You see, I need exactly what you have just said, but I have long since known that you would not be an adequate candidate for either of those things. I am not one to dismiss the power of the bonds that you share with your so-called partners from the Human World. Take my Eye of the Gorgon attack, for instance. It is supposed to enslave people to the darkness within. For some reason, it doesn't work on you, but it worked just fine on your friend, Guilmon. He went on a rampage, did he not? However, his human was able to reverse the effects through the power of the bond he had with Guilmon."

Beelzemon flinched, remembering that particular horrific attack. Thank Fanglongmon that Takato _had _been able to break Guilmon out of it.

"The same thing would hold true for any way of getting you to be my General," GranDracmon explained. "Whether I broke your spirit through torture or found some other way of brainwashing you, you would eventually come up against your humans, and there is every possibility that they could snap you out of it too, and you would return to their side and send my forces back to the Dark Ocean and trap us here once again. No, I need a General that is going to be totally loyal to me with no chance of defecting."

Beelzemon's eye clenched shut again, but there was still a small fire of triumph in his belly if his actions had managed to convince the Demon Digimon in front of him that trying to turn him against the others was futile.

"That's why I had this machine constructed," GranDracmon said. "Specially for you, so that when I finally caught you, I could put you in it and hold you in it and prevent you from having access to the Catalyst. You cannot digivolve or Mode Change further, and you cannot de-digivolve either. And you want to know what that machine is doing? Is it not obvious? It's slowly draining your power and taking your data and storing it in the tanks."

Beelzemon lurched at this, and he ground his fangs once more as more of his tail vanished. "But why?" he asked. "What good will that do you?"

"You are the only one besides me who has the power to move out of this dimension," GranDracmon said. "I need that power if I am going to conquer, so I am extracting it, along with all your other abilities, from you."

"But why?" Beelzemon repeated. "You can't just use that power if it's in a piece of data. It needs to be in my body to work and... oh..." his eyes widened again as he thought he realised the rest of GranDracmon's plan. "You're going to absorb my data yourself, aren't you? You're going to assimilate my power to boost your own capabilities so you can take your armies to the Digital World as you please."

"A valiant effort, Beelzemon," GranDracmon chuckled. "I could practically see your brain working through that crack in your helmet, but I'm afraid you're still not right. Well, not completely."

Beelzemon's frown was mixed in with a grimace of pain. "Then... what the heck is the real deal?" he asked.

"Well, while I probably could enhance my own ability with yours, it still wouldn't make much of a difference at the present time. It's very difficult for me to send minions over right now simply because most of the Digital World is filled with the force of good. That also why I couldn't go and capture you myself, remember. Because I can only exist when surrounded by evil. It is the one flaw in my being which I have never been able to rid myself of. So even if I took you power, my own strength would not increase much itself and I still could only send a few minions out at a time and not go myself."

"So, what's the alternative then?" Beelzemon asked, his tail slowly melting away behind him. He could practically feel every particle of data being torn away from him and every single one of them hurt. He had heard that the disintegration process itself was painless upon deletion, but the machine he was stuck inside was literally ripping him apart piece by piece. "You going to download it into one of your minions?"

"You... might say that," GranDracmon chuckled, and the malevolence in his voice even broke through Beelzemon's shield of defiance and made him flinch. GranDracmon had the smug attitude of somebody who knew more than you did. "But your power is linked to the fact that you used to be a Demon Lord, Beelzemon. It resides only among the Seven Demon Lords and nobody else. While it might be possible for a non-Demon Lord Digimon to learn your power by absorbing your data, I believe that is not the case, as the Demon Lords all gained that power by being the height of evil when this Dark Ocean was created by me."

"So?" Beelzemon asked.

"So," GranDracmon smirked. "I believe the best solution would be to download your data into one of the other six of the Seven Demon Lords. One who would be willing to serve me unconditionally, as long as I supply him with what he wants."

"One of the... are you out of your mind?" Beelzemon scoffed. "Have you not been keeping up with current events? I am the last of the Seven Demon Lords. All the others are dead and deleted, either by the Sovereigns or by my friends, with a bit of effort from me and several others thrown in. You don't _have_ any of the other six Demon Lords at your disposal."

"You are right," GranDracmon nodded. "I do not." He smirked and added, "but we'll see how long that lasts, shall we?"

"Huh?" Beelzemon blinked, then gasped as a few more fragments of his tail peeled away. "What are you planning to do? Invade Anubimon's realm and snatch one of them from his clutches?"

"Don't be ridiculous," GranDracmon shook his head. "Even I cannot make a portal into Anubimon's realm and once he deletes your data there is absolutely no way of recovering it."

"Then what?" Beelzemon asked.

"All in good time, Beelzemon," GranDracmon laughed. "In the meantime, why don't you just relax and enjoy the special treatment which we have supplied for you?"

Beelzemon flinched and tried to pull himself free again and said, "Yeah, I'm really enjoying this disintegration, bub. Very, very relaxing."

"I'm so glad you agree," nodded GranDracmon. "I could, of course, increase the power to the draining chamber, so that you would disintegrate faster and fill up the tanks far quicker, but I have to begin mobilising my troops and I need some more time to prepare my new General in the making. Plus, there is another little added thing that is making me set it to a slower mode."

"You want to make me suffer?" Beelzemon asked grimly.

"Ah, so you get this one," GranDracmon chuckled. "There's a thing. But you're absolutely right. You've caused me a lot of grief over the last few months, Beelzemon. Constantly evading my soldiers, resisting my powers of persuasion, heading up to the Celestial Heavens. Quite frankly it would have taken me a few weeks to break down the barriers of the heavens with the limited power I have of that world over there. The first useful thing you've done for me is leaving that place."

_At least the others are safe_, Beelzemon reminded himself.

"Consider this a small amount of payback. You delayed my plans for as long as you could, so now I am going to slow down the power draining as much as possible to and extend your death. That pain that you must currently be feeling in your tail will be nothing compared to when it finally reaches your body."

"Oh joy," Beelzemon muttered. "I look forward to it."

"Glad to hear it," GranDracmon nodded. "In the meantime, I would like to re-introduce you to an old friend."

The door opened as he said those words, to reveal another figure in the doorway that Beelzemon also recognised immediately. He snarled as the cloaked figure of MetalPhantomon hovered into the room, the red dots of lights in the middle of his eye sockets that formed his eyes leering out towards Beelzemon. Then again, MetalPhantomon could do practically nothing but leer with that skull he had for a head.

"Oh, it's you," Beelzemon growled. "I should have pasted your metal all over the road when I had the chance and used you to give Behemoth a brand new armour coating and cut off your head with your own scythe and mount it on the mantelpiece."

MetalPhantomon said nothing. He merely hovered towards Beelzemon and lifted up the staff on his scythe, the end of which had something akin to a ram's head carved into it. Behind him, GranDracmon spoke up and said, "I intend to leave now. It will take an hour or two before the painful part of this process really begins to kick in, so until that time, I thought it would be prudent to allow my guest a little sleep. Pleasant dreams."

"Why you greasy BASTA..." He got no further because a purplish beam of light shot out of the eyes on the ram's head in front of him permeating through the glass to strike him head on. Beelzemon gritted his teeth, trying to resist, but he found himself being plunged back into the oblivion of his sleep.

Before he dropped off, his mind brought up two things – a good piece of news and a bad piece of news. The good news was that it seemed that he had been mistaken and was _not_ him that was destined to be turned on his friends like he had thought the prophecy meant. That was some small consolation, if nothing else was.

The bad news was that he had been hoping to resist GranDracmon for several more weeks before he finally caved in, perhaps even longer, and therefore delay the invasion to the Digital World for as long as he could. But it seemed that that would no longer be the case. Depending on how long the draining chamber took to finish its job, the Digital World might become under attack from the Nightmare Soldiers once again by the end of the week at the latest.

GranDracmon would soon be ready to begin his assault.

And what would become of him? Would he disintegrate completely and be absorbed into whatever the heck GranDracmon was planning to do? Where would he get another of the Demon Lords from? They were all dead, gone. There was no way to revive them.

Was there?

He didn't know.

But before he could mull it over anymore, he was plunged into darkness as MetalPhantomon's assault upon him took effect and suddenly he could see himself once more, battling alongside the other Demon Lords and slaughtering hundreds of Digimon wherever he went, with slashing claws and flying bullets.

MetalPhantomon chuckled as he administered the nightmares, pulling the visions back out from the core of Beelzemon's mind and then he left the former Demon Lord alone. And as he slept, more of his tail slowly vanished and was sucked into the tubes above.

* * *

Well, how many of you saw that coming. Does anybody have any theories as to what GranDracmon might be planning to do with Beelzemon's power and data after he has extracted it from him? I've given you some of the clues, and now the rest will have to be figured out by you until next time. Because we're about to move back into the Star Wars universe for an arc that is far less action-packed than the last one, but which _is_ incredibly important.

Also, I seem to notice that only a couple of you have read the two-shot which I have posted for **Forcystus5**, in the Reviewer Requests story that used to be Every 50. It would be nice if more of you could read it, because it's exciting, and we both put a lot of effort into it.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

I think the majority of you have figured out something that will happen in the future, and it will be happening in the next chapter. Rex takes a small group, including Numa, to the farm on Saleucami to introduce them to Cut Lawquane. But Numa is reluctant to leave. And somebody else also gets a surprise.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 161 : Saleucami Wishes**


	161. Saleucami Wishes

Looks like the last couple of chapters have gone down a storm. Many of you commented on the ending to Chapter 159 and how epic it was that Aayla got the opportunity to taunt Darth Sidious like that. I have to admit, it is probably still one of my favourite moments of the story so far, and it has every right to be. And already the guesses as to what GranDracmon plans to do with Beelzemon's data are rolling in. Hope you like the upcoming chapter. No action and lots of dialogue, but two _hugely_ major developments.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 161:- Saleucami Wishes**

* * *

"You're it, Jek!"

"I am not! You missed me!"

"Nah-ah. I got you fair and square, so that means you're it! I got your arm."

"No, you didn't. You got my shirt! Shirts don't count. You have to actually touch me, Shaeeah."

"I did so touch you."

"Did not."

"Did too."

"Did not."

"Did too."

"Will the two of you please just decide amongst yourselves which of you is it, or better yet, play a different game? Get much more wild and you'll start trampling the crops."

These were the noises that greeted one certain clone as he made his way back to his residence on Saleucami, on the back of one of his eopies, which was loaded with a couple of tanks of fuel for the harvester that he had to go all the way into the town many, many miles away to get, since there were no convenient pitstops around here for them.

The clone's name, which he had given to himself after he had left the army, was Cut Lawquane. He had called himself Cut, because he was trying to cut all ties that he had with the clone army and the Republic and everything to do with his former life before he had come to this planet. He called himself Lawquane, because that was his wife's surname.

Cut smiled to himself as he was greeted on his return home by the usual childish arguments from his two adopted children, a nine year-old Twi'lek girl named Shaeeah who had a bizarre blotchy skin colour of blue mixed with tan, and a seven year old boy called Jek who was tan all over, and the admonishments of their mother and his lovely wife, Suu, who was entirely bright pink.

Life on a farm was a hard one, that much was true, but it was still far easier than anything that Cut had had to endure when he had been growing up on Kamino. All the military training and drills and blasting droids, that was all a thing of the past to him now, and he had absolutely no interest in ever pointing a blaster at anyone ever again if he could help it. He had vowed only ever to do that out of defence to himself and his family, and possibly any friends he made along the way.

Anyway, by contrast to the life under the watchful eyes of the Kaminoans, his life here was great. He had a family, that he loved very dearly. He had good meals just about every day, unlike the slop or the ration bars that he had been given on Kamino (they claimed that raising the clones on field rations made them better prepared for the field itself when they would have nothing else on the menu anyway), and the work tending to the crops and the livestock was much less rigorous than training. He could even do pretty much whatever he wanted during his free time instead of having to retire to the barracks and rest.

Cut Lawquane had _made_ something of his life. He had decided that the war in which he had been bred to fight was pointless and that there was no way an expendable clone like him was going to remain there after the rest of his team had been slaughtered before they'd even made it to the main action. The Kaminoans might tell you that it was a glitch in his programming or something like that, but as Cut always said, "I'm merely exercising my freedom to choose."

He was human, wasn't he? And all humans had a choice. Even clones like him.

There was the one time where his homestead had been attacked by a bunch of commando droids, and he and an injured clone who happened to be on the planet had had to defend the rest of the family. They were both skilled fighters, but it was still a good thing those droids were not at peak efficiency thanks to an escape pod crash they had been involved in just before, or they probably would have been overwhelmed.

But other than that, his life had been one long haul of contentment since he left the army.

He rounded the corner of the tall plants they were growing, his eopie grunting and suddenly the rest of his family was in view. Shaeeah and Jek were dashing about like wild things with no minds, while Suu was on her hands and knees, gloves on her hands as she reached into the crops and pulled out several weeds, depositing them in a bucket next to her boots.

The woman looked up when she heard the eopie and a smile lit up her face. "Oh, children," she said. "Don't look now but your father's home."

That caught the attention of the two kids and they both cried, "Daddy!" simultaneously and ran over. Cut swung himself off the eopie and landed in a crouch with arms out and they both ran into his embrace so hard they almost knocked him over backwards.

Cut laughed and rebalanced himself, before saying, "Hello there you two troublemakers. How are the pair of you? I hope you've been staying out from underneath your mother's feet while I was away."

"Oh, I wish," Suu chuckled, as she stood up and shed her gloves, striding over to the group of them. Suu was by no means a girly woman. She was tough, and while being tough was usually necessary on a farm where you had to get your hands dirty quite often, Suu was even tougher than most. She'd had to be. As a young girl, she had initially been part of a resistance when the Techno Union invaded her planet and had seen her fair share of fighting as well. When the resistance had failed, she had withdrawn and becoming a farmer, marrying a male Twi'lek who gave her the two children she had right now.

And then, he had left her almost completely out of the blue when she had been pregnant with Jek, so Suu had had to be even tougher than ever as she raised the two by herself, balancing the work on the farm with looking after the kids. It had not been easy, but she had managed. When she had met Cut, he had originally been trying to find work and she had decided to hire him as an assistant. She had been reluctant to trust him at first, after the way her former husband had treated her, but when she had seen how well he worked with the kids and willing he was to throw himself into the work, she had opened her heart to him.

And that had eventually become love, which had not been put off even when she found out he was a clone. And so they had married and Cut was showing no signs of walking out on her like her previous husband had.

Shaeeah and Jek were both little bundles of fun, which was quite an achievement on Suu's part since they had grown up with only her and she spent most of her time working on the farm anyway before hiring Cut. Shaeeah grinned up at Cut and said, "Don't worry, Daddy. I was well behaved, but Jek drew all over the kitchen wall again."

"No, I didn't," Jek cried immediately. "That was you."

"No, it was you."

"Yeah... well... you did it too."

"Kids, kids," Cut ruffled their lekku heartily. "As long as you didn't draw on the utensils or touch the blasters I'm content."

"Well, we didn't do that," Shaeeah grinned, looking proud of herself.

"No, we played ball a lot," Jek agreed. "And we did stay out of Mum's way."

"Mostly," Suu rolled her eyes as she stopped in front of them. "Honestly, I don't know why I was cursed with a couple of terrors like you for children. But now that I have you, I don't think I'd want you any other way."

Cut got to his feet and said, "They didn't set off an eopie stampede this time? You know what, dear, I think they're getting better."

"Slowly," Suu agreed. "Very slowly. And I think I have you to partially thank for that." She stepped between her children and wrapped her arms around Cut's neck, pressing her lips to his own in a brief kiss.

Shaeeah and Jek both made loud noises of disgust – they were both still in their "kissing-is-icky" phase. "Mum! Dad!" Jek covered his eyes. "Why do have to do that when we're watching."

Suu withdrew her face from Cut's and smiled down at him. "You should get used to it, Jek. Someday you'll meet a nice girl and you'll find that it's not so bad when you try it yourself."

"No way!" Jek shook his head, his small lekku flapping violently. "Not happening."

"Yeah, not happening," agreed Shaeeah. "No girl would ever want to kiss Jek."

"Oh yeah?" Jek cried.

"Yeah," Shaeeah giggled.

Suu and Cut laughed as they held each other close and watched their children devolve into another argument, which was pretty much a half-hourly occurrence at the latest on this farm. Suu then turned back to her husband and said, "So, how was the trip?"

"Pretty uneventful, as usual," Cut shrugged his shoulders. "I met Old Farmer Gringo on the way into town and he seems to be remarkably happy for some reason, but that was pretty much the highlight."

Suu pulled him closer and placed a chin on his shoulder. "That man is always a laugh, isn't he."

"Yeah," said Cut. "He sends his regards, by the way. Maybe we should send him a bag of fertiliser as thanks, don't you think?" He waited for a moment, but there was no response. "Suu?" he asked, pushing away slightly so he could look her in the face. "Are you alright?"

Suu was still staring over his shoulder at the sky, and when Cut turned around to see what she was looking at, his heart almost stopped. A pair of very large _Venator_-class cruisers were moving into view from behind the cloud cover up ahead and were getting lower all the time, descending like enormous gliding birds until they were right over the farm and the inhabitants. The two children looked up with wide eyes and quickly huddled by their mother and stepfather's legs, trying to make themselves look small.

"Republic cruisers?" Cut breathed as he watched them fly overhead and continue towards the ground nearby. "What are they doing here? The main headquarters of the Techno Union's practically on the other side of the planet. If they were invading they shouldn't be anywhere near here."

Suu looked back at Cut with fear in her eyes. "You don't think..."

"No..." Cut frowned. "They can't be here for me either. They wouldn't send a whole _two cruisers _to get me, and I'm sure Rex wouldn't turn me in. Still, I should probably make myself scarce."

The two cruisers were extending their legs and landing in the far distance, but another roaring sound of an engine greeted the ears of all four of them, and they looked up to see a gunship had split away from the ship and was heading right for them. The eopie almost bolted, but Cut managed to grab hold of its reins and steady it as the gunship turned side on and in a gap between the crops and the farm-house.

"Or I could see what they want," Cut murmured, his heart beating nineteen to the dozen as he turned around to face the ship, Suu stepping up boldly beside him and the children peering out between their legs.

The blast doors slid open on the gunship and the first out was indeed Captain Rex, the very clone who had helped to defend them from the commando droids when they had landed a while ago. His eyes fixed upon Cut and he immediately began to stride towards him and his family.

Behind him came some others and they were a surprise to Cut. One of them was a Rutian Twi'lek woman with cerulean skin, and Cut immediately spotted the lightsabers hanging at her waist, which indicated that she was a Jedi. She was holding the hand of a small Twi'lek girl with teal skin and guiding her slowly forwards. With them was another small girl, a human with brown hair, and with her were two creatures that Cut had never seen before – a small, brown bunny-like thing with enormous ears and a small, red blob, that was bouncing along after them like a ball.

Cut drew his eyes back to the other clone and said, "Rex."

"Cut," nodded Rex, coming to a stop before them. "It's good to see that you're still in good health."

"Likewise," Cut nodded. "Have to admit that there have been a couple of times where I've thought about you and wondered if you were still alive. But you've made it through the rest of the war, so far, I see."

"There have been close moments," confessed Rex.

"I can imagine," Cut said. "So, are you going to tell me what the heck you're doing here now and who all your friends are?"

"Certainly," nodded Rex, stepping aside to allow the farming family and unscreened view of his companions. "This is Jedi General Aayla Secura, one of the three members of the A-Team. Have you heard about them?"

"The A-Team? Really?" Jek suddenly cried out, looking excited and stepping out of hiding. "You're really Aayla?"

"Oh, so you have heard of us," Aayla smiled down at him, who was wearing her ordinary Twi'lek clothing again, having had the time to change back into it now that the situation had died down a little. "What's your name, young man?"

"I'm Jek, and that's my sister Shaeeah," he pointed to himself and the girl standing beside him.

"We've heard all about you," Shaeeah grinned. "We've got a radio in the house and the people talk about you all the time. They say you're evil and must be eradicated, but Daddy says you're not really because just about everything the Techno Union says is the exact opposite to the truth so you must be really good guys who are trying to save the Galaxy and not take it over or anything like that." She was gasping for air by this point.

"All in one breath," chuckled the bunny. "Impressive."

"Well, yes," Rex coughed. "Yes, this is Aayla, and these people with her are our young friend Suzie Wong and her partner, Lopmon, who is a Digimon, as is that little guy, who is called Punimon."

"Hello," Suzie waved, while Lopmon did the same with one ear.

"A pleasure," Punimon bounced up to the front between Suzie and Aayla, causing Shaeeah and Jek to giggle at him.

"And this little one," Rex finished off. "Is Numa."

"So," Suu folded her arms and gave Rex a sharp look. "You brought a couple of Republic cruisers and one of the Republic's most important figures to our home, Captain Rex? Does this mean what I think it does and you've decided to turn my husband in? Because you should know, I'm not going to just let you take him."

"Relax, Suu," Rex shook his head. "I'm not turning Cut in. I _have_ told quite a few people about you, and about what happened during my last visit, but before we go any further, I'll tell you that the Jedi have no interest in dragging Cut back to Coruscant to face trial for deserting the army. Neither do I and neither do any of our fellow clones who know about you, Cut."

"They don't?" Cut blinked, completely nonplussed. "Forgive me if I'm wrong, Rex, but you had to see my family life firsthand before you decided not to report me to anyone, so why would our fellow brothers decide not to right off the bat?"

"Well, for a start, we're not welcome on Coruscant anymore," Aayla said. "But that's only one of several reasons, right now."

"You're not wel... pardon?" Cut asked. "How can you not be welcome? You're a member of the A-Team. We've heard the stories, biased though they may be, about how you've been storming across the Galaxy and taking planets from the Separatist by the dozen. You should be celebrities back on Coruscant."

"We were," Aayla said. "Much to my annoyance, I might add. But there have been... mitigating circumstances recently."

"O...kay," Cut murmured. "I am sensing there's a story behind all this."

"There is," Rex nodded sombrely. "But to tell it in its simplest terms, I will simply say... you were right, Cut. You were right all along."

"About what?" Cut asked.

"About the war," Rex replied. "You told me that the war made no sense to you and that you saw no reason to continue fighting in something where we were just expendable clones. And I remember I told you that I was fighting the war to prevent future generations from being forced to live under tyranny, right?"

"Yeah, I remember our conversations on this subject quite vividly," Cut nodded.

"Well, as I said, you were the one who was right, and not me," Rex sighed. "We learned a couple of things recently. You see, what I didn't tell you when I was here last is that I've long been fighting alongside Lopmon here and a couple of her Digimon allies. They've been a big help in pushing back the Separatists, but... earlier today, actually, they discovered something, on the orders of the Jedi, that told me without a doubt that you were right."

"And what was that?" Cut asked.

"That Chancellor Palpatine is actually a Sith Lord called Darth Sidious," Rex said darkly. "And that he was in control of both sides of the war and was trying to manipulate it in the direction that he wanted."

Even the rock-solid Cut, who was trying to sever all ties with his past life, almost went stumbling as he was hit in the face with that little piece of information. "What?" he choked, as Suu grabbed him and steadied him. "How... how is that possible?"

"It gets worse," Rex murmured. "As you probably know, Count Dooku has long been the public figurehead of the Separatists. Well, Darth Sidious was its real leader, but we discovered that Count Dooku was the man who hired Jango Fett to be our clone template. The Sith Lords are behind our very existence, and not the Jedi Order as we initially believed. We weren't even bred to be an army. Not really. We were just to be expendable tools, just like you said, in some grand Sith plan to exterminate the Jedi Order by having us shoot them in the back when they least expected it."

"Exterminate the... wait..." Cut's eyes widened. "You don't mean to say... no... he didn't."

"Didn't what?" Shaeeah asked, nervously, not entirely sure what was going on.

Cut swallowed and said, "The Chancellor ordered you to execute Order 66, didn't he?"

"Yep," nodded Rex.

"What's Order 66?" Suu asked.

"It's one of a series of orders drilled into our brains during our upbringing," Cut replied. "And we were bred to be loyal to the Chancellor, so if ever he told us to execute one of those orders, we were to do with it without question. Order 66 brands all Jedi as traitors to the Republic and it means they are to be executed on sight."

"No," Suu gasped.

"Yes," sighed Aayla. "Many of our number have died today as a result of that order, right across the Galaxy. But thanks to the quick actions of Rex and some other clones, we were able to warn the majority of the Jedi order in time and they have gone into hiding. Several squads of clones now know the truth about Palpatine and have turned against him, but I'm afraid most of the clone army have become our enemies."

"And it gets worse still," Lopmon spoke up, drawing their attention to her small form. "Palpatine had, just a couple of hours ago, turned the Republic into a Galactic Empire. It won't be long before many planets feel his wrath as he tries to stamp his authority over the Galaxy."

"So, you see, I was wrong," Rex sighed. "We all might have _thought_ we were trying to fight off evil, but in fact we were only helping it. You saw something that none of the rest of us did, Cut."

"That may be," Cut murmured. "But I never thought that things would run _that_ deeply. I just thought the war itself was a pointless affair, not that we were being used as exterminators. This is just as much of a shock to me as it was to you."

"I'm sorry to be the one to bring this news to you, Cut," Rex sighed. "Really, I am. But you should take comfort from the fact that you haven't been fulfilling your programming for over a year now anyway. You aren't a soldier anymore."

"Yeah, I know," Cut sighed. "I know."

Suu could see that her husband was still shocked, and while she herself was feel no small amount of it, she took over and asked, "So, why have you come to Saleucami again? It can't just be to let my husband know that he was more right than he thought before."

"No, indeed it's not," Aayla replied. "We're just going to use the planet to regroup quickly – we should be gone within a few hours at most. We have no intention of draw the Empire's attention to this planet."

"Well, that's good, but why pick Saleucami at all?" Suu asked.

"Because of Numa here," Aayla knelt down and placed a hand on the young girl's shoulder. "She's a little tagalong that we rescued from some slavers on Ryloth. Her whole family was killed by Separatists or slavers and she has nowhere to go, so we took her with us for a bit. But we intend to try and wrest control of the new Empire from Palpatine as soon as possible and that will probably mean a lot of fighting. Suzie here is a partner to the Digimon, and is therefore needed, but Numa has no place on the front line. Rex only broke his promise not to tell anybody about you because he thought that you might be willing to take her in."

"Yeah," nodded Rex. "You're the first people I thought of, and I was sure you could provide the little one with a good life, so what do you think?"

"Does this mean we could have another sister?" asked Shaeeah, beginning to look excited. "Oh, cool. How old are you?" she asked Numa, who just stared at her blankly.

"Um, she doesn't speak Basic," Aayla replied. "She only knows how to speak Twi'leki, which is another reason why we thought you were a good choice, since most of you _are_ Twi'leks."

"Oh, okay," Shaeeah said, then reiterated, "Kugon rist non suul?"

Numa looked pleased to finally hear something she could understand and said, "Fie."

"Aww. Jus bali," Shaeeah pouted. "Ger Jud lik fie fo o beo dronsik. Suulan rista kala Ju tyg. Acer hunib si Shaeeah."

"Hed Jus Jek," Jek nodded. Then he turned up to look at Suu and said, "What do you think, Mum? It might be nice to have someone else to play with, wouldn't it?"

Suu's heart had already gone out to the little girl. She herself had lost her parents to the Techno Union when she'd been sixteen, which had been what had spurred her to join the resistance in the first place. She smiled and said, "Well, I have no objections. When she gets older, it'll be an extra pair of hands around the place. And she might even be able to keep you two in line." She chuckled as her children pouted, and she said, "What do you say, Cut? Should we?"

Cut had shaken himself out of his shock enough to smile and say, "Well, we can hardly turn her away can we? After all, we never turn our backs on those in need and help anyone we can. And if we can take in an grubby injured soldier for one night, we can take in a little girl whose lost her family, can't we, Rex?"

"Hahaha," Rex rolled his eyes.

"So that's a yes then, I presume," Aayla smiled.

"Of course," Suu nodded. "As if we could turn her away. We'll treat her like one of our own."

* * *

Nearby, at the cruisers, which had landed on the most open and flat space they could find that was near to the farm with their three enormous supporting legs resting on the ground, things were moving slowly. Commander Bly and Sergeant Boomer, who was filling in for Rex as the clone Captain was busy at the farm, were busy calling the various detachments of the 501st and the 327th that were in other regions of the Galaxy and informing them to come to Saleucami. All the clones in both legions had worked beside the Digimon at some point, and all of them knew about the fact that the newly declared Emperor was a Sith.

Most of them didn't work alongside Jedi for the majority of the time and took several other missions across the Galaxy, smaller ones that they could execute with efficiency, but now they too were turning against the Empire.

Bly and Rex were both actually quite excited about this. It would be the first time since Kamino that _all_ of the 501st or the 327th would be working together to do anything, or even _be_ together as far as they could remember. The endless demands of battle had meant deployments from both had been sent out across the Galaxy.

The rest of the A-Team and Tamers, as well as Terriermon were talking quietly to one another. They had hardly realised that they were doing it, but they had lapsed into mind-speak and were talking with their brains instead, which was more so Renamon could be included in the conversation than anything else, even though she was still on her way.

_I never thought that things would get this complicated,_ Terriermon was saying. _It isn't usually so bad with us. I mean, when we were saving the Human World and everything, we could just charge in and blow things up and be back in time for the next round of bread from Takato's bakery. Now, we've got all this political complications and stuff that's really doing my head in._

_I know what you mean,_ Rika agreed._ Things were so much simpler when we just let Yamaki handle the authorities for us and get them to stop interfering. We haven't got that option here._

Henry sighed. _War. Corrupt politicians. Evil Sith Lords. I'm genuinely surprised that we've done as well as we can with hiding ourselves from the enemy considering how well-informed Darth Sidious seems to be on most things._

_I reckon you've done pretty well for yourselves,_ Ahsoka chuckled. _You still regret joining the war effort, Henry._

_In some ways, yes,_ Henry replied. _I mean, it's put a lot of us in danger more times than I can count and there've been many instances where my sister has been a situation where her life is in the balance. But... well, I suppose in a bizarre way, this war has brought those of us who came from the Human World, Earth, closer than ever before. Not to mention we've gained so many new friends and done so much good... I know that the war itself is far from a good thing, but you can't deny that good things have come about as a result of it._

_That's... quite a declaration coming from you, Henry,_ Rika smiled at him and placed her hand on his.

_Indeed,_ Renamon agreed from somewhere out in the Galaxy. _And if it wasn't for this Sith scheme of Sidious', the clones like Commander Bly and Captain Rex wouldn't even exist. We'll make Palpatine regret bringing life like them into the universe yet._

_Of course, the benefits of the war are far outweighed by the cons,_ Anakin muttered darkly. _You have to deal with betrayal... on a horrendous scale._

There was a moment of silence after that, none of them quite sure what to say to poor Anakin. They had a vague idea of what he might be feeling, but not a fully sharp one. None of them had experienced anything like this. It would be like Ryo or Takato suddenly proclaiming that they had been evil all along and that they were planning to use a Digimon Army they had been building in secret for years to overwhelm the other Tamers, and that just wasn't going to happen to them.

Anakin had suffered so many blows throughout his life, but this one was probably one of the biggest.

_Nobody's saying that war's a good thing, Master,_ Ahsoka pointed out. _But you have to try and think on the positive side of everything. It might be harder to see, but just about everything does have a brighter side. We're just trying to focus on that part. Makes the darker bits easier to bear._

_Yeah, yeah, I know,_ Anakin nodded. _I suppose... if it hadn't been for this war, I wouldn't have received such a cheeky little Padawan learner. No, wait, that's still a negative point..._

_Hey! _Ahsoka shouted, as she glared at him, and all the others immediately started laughing.

Anakin grinned and winked at Ahsoka and said, _Momentai._

_Hey!_ Terriermon indignantly shouted, and the rest of them all dissolved into giggles again.

Although he was chuckling hard, Anakin was able to say, _Oh relax, the pair of you. I'm just messing with you._ He hooked an arm around Ahsoka's shoulders and pinned her head to his side, ignoring her protests as he rubbed his knuckles up and down between her montrals in a miniature noogie, eliciting sniggers from almost everyone else.

One person who missed out on the joke was Barriss, who still didn't have the mental connection to them that the others had, which was hardly surprising since they had only been a real part of their team for just over a week really. She was busy explaining the full story to the perplexed Stass Allie, but at the sight of them all giggling and having a good time without any words coming out of their mouths, she looked over at them and sighed.

Stass, who had been listening to Barriss going through a vivid description of the attack in the tunnels of Geonosis and what had _really_ happened, blinked when she saw the sigh. "Is something wrong, Barriss?" she asked. "Asides from the whole Jedi being forced on the run thing that we've been placed into, that is?"

"Wrong, no," Barriss shook her head. "Nothing's wrong."

"Then, why did you sigh like that?"

"Well, I suppose it's a little frustrating," Barriss replied reluctantly, "But Master Yoda says that a Jedi must always be patient, and it looks like that is what I will have to be."

"I'm not following you," Stass replied.

"Right, sorry," Barriss shrugged. "Well, you remember what I said about the Digimon having the ability to communicate to one another via their minds in a form of telepathy, and that Renamon and Terriermon have the ability to speak to one another via that method no matter how far apart they are?"

"Yes, I remember that," Stass nodded. "It's such an amazing concept. If only we Jedi could do things like that – it would make things much, much simpler when it came to keeping the peace across the entire Galaxy. I mean, forming a mental link with other people can happen with us, but it's a rare event."

"Yeah," Barriss nodded. "Well, what I hadn't quite got to yet was that Aayla, Ahsoka and Anakin are all also able to connect to the mental link. They can also communicate with them via their minds, which is what they are doing now."

"Really?" Stass asked, her eyes widening in surprise and amazement as she glanced over at the group, watching them all staring at each other and then suddenly laugh for apparently no reason, confirming Barriss' words. "That's incredible. All three of them?"

"Yeah," Barriss said again. "I was just getting to how Aayla managed to break into the mental web after saving me and Lopmon from my Master while she was infected with the brain worm. It wasn't too long after that that the other two managed to gain access to the link as well. Not at the distance that Renamon and Terriermon can go, but still quite a way away."

"Remarkable," Stass shook her head. "How exactly did I go through the last six months without hearing about any of this? It just sounds like something too big to be kept a secret, if you know what I mean."

"Oh, I do," nodded Barriss. "I mean, I hadn't heard anything about them either until the second Battle of Geonosis, even though my own master, Luminara, knew about them quite early on. Your old master, Adi Gallia, she knew about them from almost the very beginning, since she's a member of the Jedi Council and everything. They've been keeping the secret very close to their chests and been very, very thorough in covering their tracks."

Even so, Stass shook her head. "You told me the two bunnies are capable of turning into giant creatures that can shoot missiles and lightning. How do you cover something like that up?"

"By not using those forms very often," Barriss said. Then she looked over at the group again, pausing for a moment as they continued chuckling at what looked like nothing, though she knew it wasn't. She couldn't exactly say that it wasn't fair that they had the mind link and she didn't. After all, it had taken them months, even after embracing and forming attachments to the Digimon and the Tamers, before they were in tune enough to join the mental link, and even that was an incredible feat. Most Jedi mental links took years to form, but they had all done it incredibly quickly.

Still, she couldn't help but feel a bit left out of it all. After all, there had been numerous incidents throughout the last week she'd been with the group where they had only been able to plan out their strategies because they had this mental link, and still keep the Digimon a secret. Like with the Zillo Beast attacking the Senate Building where Anakin had been able to warn them of its approach while standing right next to Palpatine and not alerting him to it.

Which would have been a disaster.

They'd also been able to relay the plan to incapacitate the Beast without having to kill it to Anakin, Aayla and Renamon and they'd been able to implement it without raising Palpatine's suspicions.

Then, of course, there was the incidents from earlier today, when Terriermon had been able to use the mental link to alert everyone to the danger Numa was in from those Gutkurr and then Aayla had been able to use it to guide them to the slavers camp without using a tracking beacon, which would have been difficult to hide considering the garments she was wearing at the time.

Not to mention the time in the Geonosian tunnels where they'd been able to use it to find each other quickly despite the labyrinth of passages all around them.

And through all that time, Barriss had still had to rely on second hand messages. She had had to always be near someone who _did_ have the mental link to relay the instructions given out by the others without the use of communicators, which they did more often now because it was quicker and more reliable anyway.

And right now, they were all talking together with their minds, happy as they could be considering the huge upheaval the Galaxy was presently going through. They probably barely realised that she wasn't being included in the conversation, as they had spent so long with just them being team members and were used to this by now.

Barriss knew that she was being a bit stupid to think like this, but she was starting to feel a little bit like an outsider. She was a late-comer to the group and she feared that was making it more difficult for her to integrate into things. Yes, she'd been useful in the battle situations more than once since joining, but in terms of the social aspect she still felt left out.

And feeling left out was _not_ a great feeling. Especially since she had already started to form the attachments to the Digimon and the Tamers that the other three Jedi had long since gone through, as well as opening up herself to the three Jedi as well, reawakening old bonds with Aayla and Anakin from when they were all Padawans and strengthening them.

She too was a Jedi, so the realisation that she was getting attached to so many people was actually quite a daunting one, even if Master Yoda himself had said that it was alright in this case. But she wanted something to come of it. She knew they weren't making her feel left out intentionally, and they included her in all the spoken conversations they had, but there was always that little niggle at the back of her brain that told her she wasn't a _true_ part of the family yet.

"Are you alright, Barriss?" Stass asked her. "You look a bit upset. Which would be quite understandable considering what's just happened but..."

"No, Stass, I'm okay," Barriss shook her head. "It's just... well..." she turned to look out of the window at the rolling green plains of Saleucami. "I suppose I'm being a bit silly and impatient but... I wish that I could be a part of that mental link that the others all share. But I've still got a few months to wait at best until something like that happens but..."

Suddenly, she stopped as something small and glowing white flitted past the window outside. It was only in her field of vision for a moment, but it was enough to catch Barriss' eye. She blinked in surprise. What the heck had that been? It had looked like a giant, glowing snowflake or something, but the thought of snow on Saleucami at this time of the year, or indeed just about any time of the year, was ridiculous.

"Did you see that?" she asked Stass.

"See what?" Stass turned around to look out of the window.

"I thought I saw something," Barriss frowned. "Small and white just outside the window for a moment."

"I don't see anything," Stass said.

"Neither do I now. It was just there for a moment," she shrugged. "It could have been my imagination I suppose but..."

_...I mean, you would not _believe_ just how childish he is. You think I'm bad? Well, I may be a prankster and all that but Calumon's something like a three-year-old that's constantly high on sugar._

Barriss froze in shock as suddenly she heard Terriermon's voice, in perhaps the oddest way she'd ever heard it before. It wasn't even passing through her ears, it was just echoing around in her brain as if the words had just appeared there by magic.

Then, suddenly, she could hear Henry's voice, _Yeah, that much is true. I have no doubt that he _is_ constantly high on sugar considering the amount of it he eats anyway._

_Sounds like a nightmare child,_ Anakin's voice was next, _But you're saying if he was here, then Punimon might be able to digivolve?_

_Oh yeah, we think so,_ Rika's voice popped in for a visit. _He hadn't used it for a while the last time we checked but he has the power to make other Digimon digivolve like we said, though he can't actually change himself. He could probably ensure that Punimon got to a higher level than Baby._

Barriss' head slowly rotated on its neck until she was staring at the group still around the holotable with wide eyes of disbelief. They were definitely still communicating without the use of their mouths and they had the same glazed over look that anybody had when they were communicating with their minds, as if they were all having some sort of weird daydream.

Which was exactly what Barriss must be having surely, because there was no way that she should be hearing their voices in her head. It was too early. She hadn't had the time to build up the necessary attachment or synchronise her mind with all of theirs.

She couldn't really have just broken into the mind-link herself could she?

_Does he have no attacks of any kind in that form?_ She heard Ahsoka asked.

_Who? Calumon or Punimon?_ Terriermon chuckled.

_Punimon, of course_, Ahsoka insisted. _You all talk about him like he won't really be able to do anything useful like that._

_Well,_ Henry put in. _As you know, attacks get more powerful with each level, and they get more diverse when their form changes as well. Just about every Baby and In-training level Digimon in existence has the same attack, with a couple of added exceptions. It's called Bubble Blow and its pretty much exactly what it sounds like._

_He blows bubbles?_ Anakin asked. _Wow. That's... useful._

_Oh, you never know, _Ahsoka said, and Barriss saw her shrug at exactly the same time, which further made her eyes widen as the evidence that she wasn't imagining this began to build up. _I mean, he's small too. Maybe he could bounce into a tight space and use his Bubbles to soak some machinery or something. Or maybe if we run into a playful nexu, he could blow the bubbles and the nexu would start trying to catch them instead of us._

_Yeah, like that'll happen,_ Anakin chuckled.

_It's not really even a proper attack,_ Terriermon went on. _It doesn't do any damage, it's just supposed to be something that can throw off or distract an attacker and give them a chance of escaping._

_Well then, it looks like you may be right,_ Anakin agreed. _Unless we can figure out a way of getting him to a higher form, we'll still only have you three to help._

Suddenly, Renamon's voice appeared in Barriss' head, which made her reel because Renamon wasn't even there. She must be picking it up from Terriermon, _True enough. And, as we said, without a Digi-Gnome to help us, that avenue is pretty much closed to us._

Alright, that was enough sitting there and staring. It was time for the real test. Barriss swallowed nervously, hoping against hope that this would work and that she wasn't just imagining this, so she focused her mind on the others and thought, _Hello?_

"GAAAH!" Terriermon shouted out loud the moment she did, making everyone in the bridge jump as he toppled off the holotable and out of sight. As everyone else looked around at him to find out what the heck had happened, those around the table immediately turned to look at Barriss with expressions of shock and disbelief.

"Barriss," Ahsoka breathed. "Did you just..."

"Er, I think so," Barriss stammered in shock. They had heard her. They had actually _heard_ her. How? How was this possible that she had broken into the mental link already?

"I'm getting sick and tired of people doing that," Terriermon griped as he hopped back into view. "Jumping into our heads whenever they feel like it like that."

Rika swatted him over the head and looked at Barriss. _Fish-fingers and custard,_ the Mirialan heard her voice utter in her head.

"What?" she blinked. "Fish don't have fingers. And what does custard have to do with anything?"

"Whoa, you actually heard what I said," Rika's eyes widened. "What the heck is going on?"

"I don't know," Barriss shook her head. "One moment I was talking to Stass and then suddenly I could hear all your voices talking in my head. I thought I was imagining it at first but... evidently I wasn't."

"But this is brilliant!" Ahsoka cried, leaping off from her perch and running over to practically tackle Barriss in a big hug. "Barriss broke through our mental link early. She can be a part of our mental conversation now. Isn't that great?"

"You bet it is," Terriermon laughed. "Though I wish she'd announced herself in a way that wouldn't make me jump like that?"

"Anything can make you jump like that. Even pineapples," Henry shook his head, and then her offered Barriss a smile. "Congratulations, Barriss. I wasn't expecting anything like this to happen so soon. Don't get me wrong, this is absolutely fantastic, but how is it possible."

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "The rest of us had to go through many, many more adventures and get closer to the Digimon before this happened. Why has it suddenly happened to Barriss now?"

"Does it matter?" Ahsoka asked, releasing the older Jedi and turning to face the others. "You shouldn't question an unexpected gift. We could call this the Mirialan Miracle. That sounds fitting."

"Hey!" Terriermon shouted. "I was just about to come up with a cool name for this, and you went and took it instead."

_Bite me_, Ahsoka replied.

_Maybe I will,_ Terriermon growled.

_Don't you dare,_ Barriss mock-scowled at him and threw a protective arm in front of Ahsoka. Terriermon grinned at her and everyone chuckled, all marvelling at what was going on. "Even so," Barriss added aloud. "They do have a point, Ahsoka. I'd quite like to know what just happened as well, if only to sate my own curiosity."

_What exactly were you doing?_ Renamon suddenly asked. _You said you were just talking to Stass?_

"Well, yes," Barriss replied, leaving Stass herself, who was looking kind of lost again, bewildered when she answered a question she hadn't even heard. "I was just telling her about the mind-link that you guys have and how useful it's been when I've been around. I could see you were all laughing at something that was going on in your heads and, well, I wished that I could be a part of it, because I felt slightly left out."

"Oh, we didn't mean to, Barriss," Anakin said quickly. "Why didn't you say something if you felt left out?"

"Because I thought I might be being a bit silly since I _know_ you weren't doing it on purpose, and because I thought I'd need to be patient for a few more months before something happened," she explained. "And then I saw something small and white outside the window for a moment and just when I was trying to see it again, suddenly I could hear your conversation."

"Weird," Ahsoka murmured. "Anyone got any explanation?"

"Nope," Anakin shook his head. "I've got nothing."

"Wait a minute," Henry said, and the three Jedi that were part of this conversation noticed that Henry, Rika and Terriermon had all gone wide-eyed. "You wished that you could be a part of our mental link?"

"Yeah," nodded Barriss, frowning. "And it came true. How strange is that?"

"And you saw something small and white outside the window?" Henry ploughed on. "Right after you wished to be a part of our link?"

"Er... yes," nodded Barriss, slowly.

"Was it glowing?" asked Terriermon.

Barriss blinked. "Yes. How did you know that?"

"A guess," Terriermon said. "But a guess based on something that we were just talking about earlier actually."

"But how can that be?" Rika asked them. "How could there be one of those in this universe? It doesn't make any sense, does it?"

"Maybe not," Henry asked. "Is it possible that Parallelmon had something to do with this?"

"What would he attack one of those for?" Terriermon asked. "They wouldn't do him any harm?"

"I don't know," Henry shrugged. "I'm just theorising here, but does anybody else have any better suggestions at the moment."

Rika and Terriermon glanced at one another, and they both said, "Nada," at the same time.

"So, you think you know why I can suddenly speak to your minds?" Barriss asked.

"Possibly," Henry said, looking up at the Mirialan. "First of all, let me offer you my congratulations again, and welcome you fully to the ranks of what appears to be an ever-growing family."

"Thank you," Barriss smiled.

"And secondly," Henry went on. "I think that you gained access to our mental web in the same way that I did when it first started to become established after Renamon and Terriermon became mates."

"O...kay," Barriss murmured. "And how was that?"

"I wished that I took could be a part of it," Henry said. "And then it suddenly happened. And none of us were one-hundred percent sure why, but we guessed that it had something to do with, the Digital World's very own wish granters." He paused and then added:-

"A Digi-Gnome."

* * *

And a Digi-Gnome it was. The small, white fairy-like creature giggled as it flitted across the rolling, green grassland around the farm, doing several circuits of the leg of one of the two cruisers, an expression of joy upon its impish little face. The little being had been through quite a few interesting encounters since it had been unthawed during the battle between WereGarurumon and IceMyotismon on the planet Mygeeto.

First off it had flitted into the doors of a shuttle that was about to take a couple of Banking Clan Muuns away from the planet before the Republic arrived at their location to take over. It had wanted to see what it was like inside, but it had found itself trapped and had stowed away in the vents, keeping itself entertained by racing through the various tunnels that they created.

The shuttle had landed on Cato Nemoidia, the homeworld of the Trade Federation, and the Digi-Gnome had snuck out of the doors once they opened again. It had spent a couple of days on that planet, terrifying a couple of droids by flitting straight in front of their faces and spent one interesting afternoon under Senator Lot Dod's hat, while it was on the Nemoidian's head, and the Senator had been none-the-wiser the whole time.

Once it had escaped from the hat and flicked out the window before the Senator could see it, the Digi-Gnome had decided that it didn't like this place much after all and had decided it wanted to go somewhere else, so it had hopped into another ship. This ship had belonged to one of the last remnants of the Techno Union that was controlled by the Separatists, and the Digi-Gnome had been brought here, to Saleucami, as a result.

It liked this planet much more, with its strange animals that it liked to fly round and round to confuse them with its shining body. And the scenery was much nicer too, with the huge grassy plains and the occasional clump of trees. It reminded him of the Prairie Level back home.

A couple of times over the last few days, it had granted the occasional wish to the locals. Old farmer Gringo's reason for being so happy when Cut Lawquane saw him was because the Digi-Gnome had granted his wish that his land be rid of pests that continued to plague him. There were a couple of other farmers who seemed to have bizarre incidents of good fortune, which had been given to them by the power of the Digi-Gnome.

Now, it had granted its latest wish to a wistful Mirialan known as Barriss Offee.

Job done, the Digi-Gnome swooped around the trees, giggling to itself as it sought out somebody new to play with. In the far distance, it saw a small house and flew over to investigate, zipping in low to the ground and leaving a miniature trail like a comet behind it, grinning all the while. It zipped around the back of the house, through the open front door and shot up the chimney until it was hovering above the roof and covered in ash.

It sneezed and shook itself, trying to get the black stuff off it, and then it spotted the group standing in front of the house. It hovered down to the guttering and watched, listening to the talk that was going on down below.

* * *

Numa was standing in the middle of the group and was looking back towards Aayla with plaintive eyes. "Zonbi," she said. "Solo ace dren kerlam suul. Ju gif ala duspreair si slets hed Ju trink yuson ji sortol suul."

Aayla was kneeling down and murmuring something to the young girl, "Suul gifne, eyan ei. Drida top non herfo, top burfon lik fo respada crell o lot sa cu clomd, hed suul reyb dren hural. Lobo peeloo non tiga col. Ool burfon dese suul hural hed tosp suul o daley bror nomina."

"Ger Ju raso yuson ji sortol," Numa murmured, looking down at the floor sadly. "Ju gohs yuson suul ji lik fo begna."

"Top reyb lik, Numa," Aayla replied. "Cu astir sa cu winiol arrliba roosh pon. Top ulner o vapa ji re, ger re si trin suulan vapa. Suul reyb dren doon."

Numa kept shaking her head, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. Suzie stepped over and tugged on Aayla's leg, asking, "What's she saying?"

"She wants to stay with us," Aayla replied to the Tamer. "She doesn't like the idea of leaving us behind when she knows that we'll be in danger while she's safe here on Saleucami."

Suzie bit her lip and, after a brief pause, she gave a surprisingly mature response, "Can you tell her that I'd love her to stay with us as well, but there's nothing that she can do to help us. The only thing that will wait for her if she comes with us will be lots more fear and death, but that she will be safe here?"

Aayla smiled sadly at Suzie and relayed the message to Numa, as Lopmon took Suzie's hand with her own and murmured, "That was a good answer, Suzie. You know, when we get back home, I think your mother will be proud of how much you've matured since you came here?"

"Really?" Suzie asked.

"Really, really," nodded Lopmon.

Just then, Numa sniffed and said, "Ger res trin fair. Jer woki fo crell vreo hed Ju sortolsi. Polis uturesew juon clomd?"

"Juon clomd, top burfon lik zalines herf ed-ony raw," Aayla replied. "Topl ed lik zalines hef furd lihos. Si koil trink poli suul yuson?"

Numa hesitated, and subsided, still looking upset. Suu stepped up behind her and knelt down next to her, rubbing the top of her lekku in motions that she knew from experience would help her to relax more, and she also spoke in Twi'leki. "Jus sol koil ool burfon koomey bol reint juon si ed urva hed solo suul ken koil oolon drass." She looked up at Aayla and added, "Willna suul?"

"Sa kury," nodded Aayla. "Ger hef instanb, suul reyb dren, drida re si hural."

Numa turned around to look Suu in the face and the mother of two smiled at the poor, young girl who had lost so much. Numa felt her heart pang at the sight of that smile. It reminded her so much of her own mother, inviting strangers who were in trouble into their house even though they knew almost nothing about them. Her mouth twitched slightly in an attempt at a smile and she quickly hugged Suu, who wrapped her arms around the girl to pulled her close, in a way that all caring mothers knew how to do.

Cut stood to one side and smiled at the actions of his wife, glancing across at Rex and blinking when he saw that his fellow clone looked like _he_ was on the verge of tearing up at the touching sight. Cut nudged him in the side with his elbow, and Rex quickly caught himself and shook his head, his tougher facade immediately coming back up. Cut chuckled, and said, "Well, I guess this means that Numa has a future here."

Aayla nodded and stepped back. "We can't thank you enough, Cut," she informed him. "And I promise you that we will do everything in our power to let the rest of your brothers know that they are being used by the Sith. Hopefully, this will all be over soon."

"Thank you, Master Jedi," nodded Cut. "It's almost a shame I left the army before I got to know any of you personally – you seem like my kind of people. Of course, the 'almost' bit still stands."

"Of course," nodded Aayla. "You're a good man, Cut. A credit to all your fellow clones. But I'm afraid that we should be heading back soon. We still need to figure out where our younglings are going to go."

"Younglings?" Cut asked. "You have Jedi younglings with you?"

"Not yet," Aayla shook her head. "But the clone army led a massive attack on the Jedi Temple that would have caught us off guard had we not learned of Order 66 and warned the other Jedi."

"What happened?" Cut asked.

"Many Jedi died, but the majority were able to escape," replied Aayla. "All the younglings were able to get away, as did most of the Order, and now they're heading this way with Master Yoda to rendezvous with us, as we try and figure out what to do next. We want to try and find a safe haven for the younglings, while the more experienced Jedi try to bring down Palpatine."

"How many younglings do you have with you?" Cut asked, as Shaeeah and Jek stepped over to Numa and began to make her feel welcome as well.

"Quite a few," Aayla shrugged. "There were close to a hundred in the Temple the last time I checked. That's less than normal – we could tell there was trouble brewing and decided that to stop recruiting younglings for a while before the war, since we would probably be taken up with something out of our control soon. But it's still quite a lot."

"Well, there's no need to worry about them," Cut said. "They can stay here, with us?"

"What? All of them?" Lopmon asked.

"No, not all at this house," Cut shook his head. "I mean they can all stay on this planet. There are dozens of farms on this sector of the planet and I assure you that any one of us would be more than happy to temporarily take in a couple of young Jedi. Anything to defy the Techno Union."

Aayla smiled. "That's very gracious of you to say so, but are you sure the other famers will agree?"

"Oh, absolutely," Cut nodded. "In fact, I could head out now and begin spreading the word. I can tell you, people will come. And this is a good place to hide something you don't want to be found. We're pretty isolated out here. It would take a while for any message to get out to the outside world, even if there was anyone who would do that, and I can assure you that there is not."

"Well then," Aayla smiled. "It sounds like a plan."

"Well, this is convenient," Lopmon agreed. "To think that a planet like this is actually run by people that we've been fighting against for some time. The locals are so nice."

"Hey, I just had a thought," Suzie said. "Isn't that guy, Wat Tambor, the leader of the Techno Union?"

"He was until we caught him," nodded Aayla.

"Well, he's coming here to this planet as the Jedi's prisoner," Suzie giggled. "It would be like the world's worst welcome-home party ever."

"You're bringing Wat Tambor here under lock and key?" Cut's smile suddenly turned savage. "Oh, please say you'll let me kick him."

"We'll see," Aayla chuckled. "Now come on. We've got to be heading back to the ships and give Master Yoda the news."

"Okay," nodded Suzie. "Just one more thing," she hurried towards Numa and pulled the slightly younger girl into a quick hug. Then she said, "Goodbye, Numa. We'll see you soon. Hopefully." Then she turned around and hurried back to the gunships and tried to control her rising sadness. Lopmon watched her Tamer run past sadly, and then also moved over to give Numa a hug before she followed.

As Aayla and Rex turned around to go back to the gunship, Punimon was left watching the little family by himself. Numa's eyes settled on him and he said, "Well, I guess this is goodbye. Thanks for playing with me on that big ship thing and for holding my egg carefully before I hatched. I think I'm gonna miss you, for some reason. Even though we've only known each other for a couple of hours." He frowned, and added, "How weird is that? Well, see you."

As he turned around to bounced back towards the ship, he hesitated for a moment, a slight sadness creeping into him. For some reason, he found himself wishing that the girl could come along with them. She seemed so sad at the prospect of being left behind, but he knew there was little she could do to help, so what was the hope in wishing?

Still, he was a Digimon that was sworn to protect the innocent in any way he could, and you couldn't get much more innocent than this girl if you looked for it. He was sad to see her so upset.

Numa, meanwhile, was staring at Punimon. She too was wishing – wishing that she could be of some help to the Jedi and her friends so that she wouldn't have to stay behind. Wishing that she had one of those little devices that somehow made Punimon her Digimon partner, because then she could make him grow bigger and she would be useful after all.

Of course, she was happy that she had been given a new family, but she still didn't want to stay behind knowing the others would soon be in danger. She wanted to help them. With all her heart.

The Digi-Gnome watching them from the top of the house could sense their emotions. It hadn't felt anything like this in a long time – two beings, a Digimon and a non-Digimon, whose spirits were in sync and who both wanted to help the other and the friends that they shared. It was almost overwhelming to it and it filled him with joy, desperately making him want to fill them with joy as well.

It could tell that they were wishing with all their hearts that they could be useful.

So it responded the only way it knew high.

Squealing with delight and announcing its presence to everyone, the Digi-Gnome zoomed off the roof and shot in front of Punimon, halting his advance towards the gunships. It then soared back towards Numa and whooshed around her as well, leaving little traces of pixie-like dust behind it and giggling almost insanely as its deep blue eyes focused on the Twi'lek and the Baby Digimon.

"What the..." Rex blinked as he saw the tiny creature.

"It's a fairy!" Shaeeah cried. "I told you they were real, Jek."

"Whoa," Jek blinked.

But Suzie and Lopmon had both gone as stiff as boards. They both knew what this creature was alright, having seen them enough times in the past. Aayla picked up on this and frowned down at the pair of them. "What?" she asked. "What is it?"

"I don't believe it," Lopmon gasped.

"A Digi-Gnome," Suzie declared.

"What?" Aayla asked sharply.

Just then, Punimon was lifted into the air seemingly of his own accord and was deposited right next to Numa. The two tried to follow the progress of the circling Digi-Gnome and gasped when a sudden, bright light appeared right between them at about head height with Numa, a concentrated little ball of brightness that looked like a some kind of giant firefly.

Hesitantly, Numa reached out to touch it and the light vanished the moment it touched her fingers, replaced with a small metallic device which dropped into her open palm. Numa started an almost dropped it, but stared in disbelief when she saw that it was a small computer-like object with a teal-coloured rim that matched her skin colour exactly, and it was something she recognised immediately.

So did all the others standing in the waiting object.

"A D-Arc," breathed Lopmon.

"I did _not_ see this coming," Rex muttered.

"But, if she has a D-Arc and there's a Digi-Gnome present," Aayla said. "Then... does that mean what I think it does?"

"Numa's a Tamer now," Suzie whispered.

"You... you're my... partner?" Punimon asked, staring at the D-Arc with as much disbelief as everybody else. He could scarcely believe it. Here he was, deposited in this strange new world and he suddenly had a Tamer. He'd heard stories of bonding with humans, but Numa wasn't even a human. And yet the Digi-Gnome had granted their wishes to help one another.

The Digi-Gnome giggled and flitted above their heads, pleased with its work.

"Er... would somebody care to explain what in the Galaxy just happened?" Cut asked.

"That," said Aayla, "as she walked back over to them. "Is not important. What is important is what in the name of the Force we do about it."

* * *

Yes, I know. Most of you were anticipating this by now, expecting Numa to become a Tamer to Punimon, and you were all right. She's become the first non-human Tamer there is. Some of you may have wanted a Jedi to become a Tamer, but I still maintain that that would give the Jedi an unfair advantage over the other Tamers, so I picked Numa instead. Hope that satisfies everyone.

And I accelerated Barriss' introduction to the mind-link with the use of the Digi-Gnome. It was, I suppose, I little gift of mine to her, and if she wasn't becoming an integral part of the story before, she definitely is now. Initially, I had no plans to put Barriss in much more than several of the other Jedi, but she seemed well-liked so I thought what the hell.

* * *

Twi'leki translations

Kugon rist non suul? – How old are you?

Fie - Ten

Aww. Jus bali. Ger Jud lik fie fo o beo dronsik. Suulan rista kala Ju tyg. Acer hunib si Shaeeah – Aaw. I'm nine. But I'll be ten in a few months. You're older than I am. My name is Shaeeah

Hed Jus Jek – And I'm Jek

Zonbi. Solo ace dren kerlam suul. Ju gif ala duspreair si slets hed Ju trink yuson ji sortol suul – Please. Let me stay with you. I can tell something is wrong and I really want to help you

Suul gifne, eyan ei. Drida top non herfo, top burfon lik fo respada crell o lot sa cu clomd, hed suul reyb dren hural. Lobo peeloo non tiga col. Ool burfon dese suul hural hed tosp suul o daley bror nomina – You can't, young one. Where we are going, we will be in terrible danger a lot of the time, and you must stay safe. These people are very nice. They will keep you safe and give you a brand new family

Ger Ju raso yuson ji sortol. Ju gohs yuson suul ji lik fo began – But I still want to help. I don't want you to be in trouble

Top reyb lik, Numa. Cu astir sa cu winiol arrliba roosh pon. Top ulner o vapa ji re, ger re si trin suulan vapa. Suul reyb dren doon – We must be, Numa. The fate of the galaxy depends upon us. We have a duty to it, but it is not your duty. You must stay here

Ger res trin fair. Jer woki fo crell vreo hed Ju sortolsi. Polis uturesew juon clomd? – But it's not fair. I've been in danger before and I helped. What's different this time?

Juon clomd, top burfon lik zalines herf ed-ony raw. Topl ed lik zalines hef furd lihos. Si koil trink poli suul yuson? – This time, we will we fighting an all-out war. We'll all be fighting for our lives. Is that really what you want?

Jus sol koil ool burfon koomey bol reint juon si ed urva hed solo suul ken koil oolon drass – I'm sure that they will come back when this is all over and let you know that they're fine

Willna suul? – Won't you?

Sa kury. Ger hef instanb, suul reyb dren, drida re si hural – Of course. But for now, you must stay, where it is safe

* * *

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

While the others puzzle over what to do about this new situation, regarding both Barriss and Numa, the others arrive on Saleucami with the younglings in tow. It's time for the Jedi Council to have another meeting and decide upon their next move, but they have a whole Galaxy against them.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 162 : Enter the Rebellion**


	162. Enter the Rebellion

Sweet, sweet internet! It's good to finally have my own once more, though I should tell you that in a couple of days, I am leaving for London to go to a special event called WildPhoto, which means that I will be unable to do any writing on Friday or Saturday. I will try to catch up with the writing time I missed by doing a little extra roughly every day though, because I now have a deadline. I have planned out a schedule, for how much writing I'm going to do a day for the whole of the rest of the story, and I now know what day I intend to post Chapter 220. It won't tell you when it is, just in case I can't meet it, but don't worry. It's slowly and steadily getting closer.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 162:- Enter the Rebellion**

* * *

"How long do you think it's been hanging around here?" Terriermon asked the room at large. "A genuine Digi-Gnome, here in this universe. Is there anything else that Parallelmon has deposited here for us to deal with? Why doesn't he throw in an Apocalymon while he's at it."

"Oh dear lord, I hope he hasn't," Henry shook his head. "Doesn't bear thinking about."

"Well, anyway," Rika said. "I reckon, in a strange way, we owe Parallelmon a great deal. If he hadn't attacked us, none of this could have happened. We'd probably still be at home, doing some boring-ass assignment for Ms. Asaji."

"True," nodded Henry. "And I suppose we can thank him for this as well. With a Digi-Gnome around, maybe we can figure something out with regards to Punimon after all. You know, find him a Tamer."

"And, thanks to this Digi-Gnome, Barriss here is finally a member of the Noble Nine," Ahsoka said. "Which, as far as I can tell, needs a new name, does it not?"

"Well, it can hardly be a Nine with a tenth member, now can it?" grinned Terriermon. "So I hereby declare that we are now known as Terriermon's Ten Terrific Troopers."

"Somebody hand me a pillow so I can swat him in the face with it," Henry smacked himself in the forehead. Rika promptly smacked _Terriermon_ in the forehead, just under his horn and knocked him off the holotable again, but Anakin caught him with the Force and levitated him back onto the table."

"Can we just with the more simple versions of the alliteration?" Anakin chuckled. "The Terrific Ten will do just fine. Or perhaps the Tenacious Ten. Terrific sounds a bit tacky."

"Which also begins with T, I notice," Ahsoka chuckled.

"I like tenacious," Barriss murmured. "It applies that we are not going to give up no matter what happens, and considering that is exactly what I'm planning to do, even with the whole Republic turned into an Empire and being thrown against us, the name sounds more fitting than Terrific."

"True," nodded Terriermon. "And that's another T right there. Anyway, I suppose the Tenacious Ten we are. I cannot _wait_ to tell the others about this. In fact, where are they? Shouldn't they have been back by now?"

"Maybe Cut wasn't in," shrugged Rika. "And they're waiting for him."

"Well, regardless, come here, Barriss," Ahsoka grinned, and Barriss squawked as Ahsoka grabbed her around the neck with one arm, pulling her hood down and ruffled her short, blue hair with one hand. Barriss quickly squirmed out of Ahsoka's grip and pulled her hood up, glaring at the grinning Padawan.

"You're in a very good mood, Snips," Anakin observed.

"And is there any reason I shouldn't be?" Ahsoka asked. "Yes, we've got an entire Empire to take down that spans the whole Galaxy, but that's just Palpatine's triumph. Our triumph is so much greater. We've managed to mostly foil a plan that he has apparently been putting together for years, got out with our lives and the lives of most of our Jedi friends, and now we've got a brand new member of our mind-link group. How are they not good things?"

"I didn't say they were, Snips," Anakin chuckled. "But you're right nonetheless."

"Great," Terriermon said, stretching out his ears. "But I think somebody should probably take a look outside to see if that Digi-Gnome's still around. They can go and do what they like pretty quickly and you'll never find them. Believe me, we know."

"He's right," nodded Henry. "They're very playful, and will look for the next thing to keep them amused pretty much all the time. If we want some more help than this one, we'll have to go out and find it."

_Guys,_ a sudden voice broke in, and Barriss jumped, still not completely used to voices that were not her own in her head, and also this was the first time she had heard Aayla's voice reach her mind without passing her eardrums. _We've got a little situation over here that you might find interesting._

_Trouble? _Anakin asked, his hand automatically going for his lightsaber.

_Not so much, no,_ Lopmon replied. _But it seems that we have a brand new member in our little group._

_Wait,_ Terriermon frowned. _How did you know that?_

There was a pause. _How did we know what?_ Aayla asked eventually.

_How did you know that we have another member?_

_I don't think they're talking about Barriss, Terriermon,_ Rika told the rabbit.

_Oh, right._

_Barriss? _Aayla asked. _What does Barriss have to do with this? She's been part of our group for over a week._

_Yes, but not part of our mind-link,_ Ahsoka relayed. _But she is now. Say hello, Barriss._

_Hello, Aayla, Lopmon, Suzie. _Barriss sent across with her mind, feeling a slight sense of exhilaration as she did so.

_Whoa!_ Suzie's voice came through. _That is so cool! Barriss has become part of our group already! Awesome._

_Yeah, and you aren't going to believe how it came about, _Terriermon agreed. _It appears that Barriss was given the gift of mind-speak by..._

_...A Digi-Gnome?_ Asked Lopmon, cutting Terriermon off before he could give them the message.

_Yes, a Digi... what? How did you know that?_

_I'm looking at him,_ Lopmon replied. _He's hovering in front of us and doing circuits of Numa and Punimon, looking very, very proud of himself as they examine the D-Arc that he's just given to Numa._

Another pause.

_What?_ Cried several voices at once.

_Yep,_ Suzie cheered. _It's really weird, but it looks like Numa's become Punimon's Tamer, just as we were about to leave. We don't know where the Digi-Gnome came from, but its given us a miracle._

_Correction,_ Anakin said. _It's given us two. Barriss and Numa, both of them having a wish granted on the very same day. This is incredible._

_Yes, it is,_ agreed Aayla. _Barriss, it's nice to finally be able to hear your thoughts. I was wondering how long this would take, but I'm glad to hear that you've managed to get in early on._

_So am I, Aayla,_ Barriss nodded. _I never thought it would be this quick though. Could you bring that Digi-Gnome back with you so I can both thank it and get a good look at it? I only saw a flash of white from before._

_Well, it doesn't seem to be showing any sign of leaving,_ Lopmon observed. _But we don't have a clue what we're supposed to do next. The Digi-Gnome gave her the D-Arc right at the point that we were about to leave her with the Lawquanes, who did, by the way, accept her into the family just as we hoped. But if Numa's a Tamer now, what do we do with her?_

_Yeah,_ agreed Suzie. _Does this mean we can take her with us now, or should we still leave her with these farmers?_

Everyone paused briefly to consider this new option, but it was Renamon who spoke next, talking to everyone through Terriermon's head. _Well, since we were prepared to leave her behind anyway, maybe we should still do that. It would be impolite to ask the Lawquanes to take her in and then take her away again before you've even left. Perhaps you can bring her back to the ship for a bit, where she can receive a few basic Tamer lessons, and then send her back before we leave._

_Good idea,_ said Henry. _And we can leave Punimon with her. He should be safe with them as well._

_Wait a minute,_ Suzie cried. _Numa's one of us now. Henry, I think the Digi-Gnome granted her wish because she wanted to help us fight. We can't leave her behind now. It's not fair._

_Suzie, the chances of Numa becoming a Tamer with a Digimon powerful enough to be of much use quick enough to help us start in the fighting are not very high,_ Henry explained. _It took most of us a long time to reach the Champion level alone, and even longer to gain higher levels, which will probably be necessary soon. Numa's Digimon is still only at the Baby level._

_Well, I'll tell you what I think, _Rika said. _I think we should do as Renamon said and bring Numa here, so we can teach her some of the basics of being a Tamer..._

_...As well as some Basic itself, hopefully,_ Terriermon quipped.

_That too,_ agreed Rika. _But don't interrupt me again or I'll have to punch you. Anyway, we should see how quickly she takes to these lessons and _then _decide what to do. I mean, we still have a couple of hours here, and you can learn a lot in two hours._

_Actually, we may have a little while longer here,_ Aayla observed, looking up at the sky. _It's getting dark outside now. I didn't realise it but I am starting to get quite tired. It's been a very long day for all of us, and it might be a good idea to get some rest._

_True enough,_ Barriss said, grinning like a lunatic at the fact she was taking part in one of their mental conversations. _We may be able to think a bit better after some rest as well._

_Well, in any case, I like Rika's plan,_ said Anakin. _If we can make Numa into another Tamer with a Digimon even as remotely powerful as the ones you other Tamers have quickly then we should consider taking her with us. We'll need every asset that we can get against the Emperor. But if she doesn't take to it quickly, we should leave her here, where she will not be put in danger for now reason._

_It's a plan,_ Henry observed. _You reckon you can convince the Digi-Gnome to come back with you as well?_

_And how are we supposed to do that?_ asked Lopmon.

_You could try asking it nicely,_ Terriermon put in. His sister sighed.

_We'll see what we can do,_ Aayla replied. _I should also mention that we're bringing the Lawquanes back with us anyway. Cut and Suu have something that they'd like to discuss with Master Yoda with regards to the younglings that might help us to get onto resisting the Emperor as quickly as we can._

_Alright,_ nodded Anakin. _We'll be here._

_See you in a bit,_ Barriss put in, and mentally giggled, still exhilarated at what she was doing.

She heard a reply chuckle come from Aayla and said, _See you in a while, Barriss. Congratulations and welcome to our link._

_The Tenacious Ten,_ Terriermon added.

_Oh, is that what we're called now?_ Aayla asked. _Interesting name. Anyway, see you in a bit._

As Aayla, Lopmon and Suzie broke off their connection, Renamon spoke from above. _Guys, we just received word from the pilots that we'll be pulling out of hyperspace above Saleucami in a few minutes. Can you send up a signal so we know where to find you?_

_Done,_ said Anakin, pressing a button on the holotable.

_Thank you,_ Renamon replied. _Chewbacca says he's anxious to see you all._ And with that, she broke off contact with everyone, except of course for Terriermon, who she couldn't break away from. The two of them spent the next few minutes quietly murmuring their love to one another while nobody else was listening.

* * *

As Renamon had stated, a few minutes later saw the _Negotiator_ pull out of hyperspace above the planet. Renamon turned her head down to look at the sphere below. It resembled earth, but with considerably less ocean. In fact there was almost no large bodies of water at all – it was all almost one entire plain with a few patches of forest.

"Hmm," she heard Bane murmur behind her. "It's been a while since I came to this planet. Last time I was here was when that Skakoan Tambor, who you've got in the prison level back there, was asking me to infiltrate a Republic stronghold. Never really been fond of Skakoans."

"I can't imagine why," Renamon said dryly.

"Anyway," Obi-Wan said as he strode around the holotable. "We're picking up the encrypted beacon from the _Intrepid._ It's time that we headed down to the surface." He sighed and said, "I must admit that this planet did nothing for me the last time I was here. All that happened was I nearly got killed in a space battle above it and then Grievous escaped when we went down to the surface."

"Well, hopefully things will be different this time around, Obi-Wan," Renamon nodded. "After all, it's already given us a new member of the mind-link _and_ another Tamer. It doesn't get much better than that."

"Indeed it does not," Obi-Wan chuckled. "Well, we're heading down now. Cody, let's ease her down gently as possible, shall we?"

"You got it, sir," nodded Cody as the ship's nose began to make its way into the atmosphere gently. It always surprised Renamon how smooth their entrances to planet's atmospheres usually were. Unless they were crash-landing, the ship never seemed to go all fiery like it did in the Earth movies. She thought that it probably had something to do with the deflector shields.

Chewbacca looked up from where he was sitting on the floor, surrounded by younglings (one of them was clambering on his shoulders), while Tera Sinube tried to keep them in line, and the Wookiee announced to everyone present, "Coo, ohacraao ohwo waoo ohahaoac aoacwocwo anahaoaoanwo oarcahaoaoworcc?"

"A good question, that is," nodded Yoda, stepped over towards Renamon and leaning on his stick as he looked up at Renamon. "Claim, you do, that some of the locals are willing to help us with them?"

"That's the idea I picked up from the others, yes," nodded Renamon. "Maybe they can take us off our hands temporarily."

"And what if some of us want to stay and fight?" Jinx asked from nearby.

"We won't try and stop you," Obi-Wan glanced over his shoulder at the young Twi'lek. "But I would strongly advise against it."

"You can make up your minds on that score soon enough," Renamon said. "What I want to know is what we're going to do when we get down there. This is only a temporary retreat and there's a bunch of other Jedi out there with clone brigades behind them who are probably not sure what they should be doing right now either."

"Correct, you are, Renamon," Yoda nodded. "Grave, our situation has become. Decide what is best to do, we must, and fast, we must be. Once reach the planet's surface, we do, set up a conference call, we must, with the rest of the Jedi Council."

"Assuming all of them survived, that is," Obi-Wan nodded.

"Well, we should at least send a signal to everybody who we know did survive because their clones turned against the Chancellor," said Renamon. "That includes Quinlan Vos and Luminara, and they aren't part of the Council. Though I hope Shaak Ti is alright. She was in one of the more difficult places to get away from, after all."

"Good point," nodded Obi-Wan. "We'll have to organise a proper rendezvous and choose a place where we can set up a proper camp, somewhere where the Chancellor might not pick us up that quickly and preferably somewhere without too many colonists. Then, of course, we must figure out a plan."

"It'll probably have to be one hell of a plan to get you guys out of this scrape," Bane observed.

"Coming up with 'hell of a plans,' as you put it, is one of the things that our little group does best," Renamon turned to the Bounty Hunter. "Just about anybody here could tell you that."

"Yes, and with Anakin involved, those plans generally tend to be not only outside of the proverbial box but also completely beyond the range of all sanity," Obi-Wan muttered.

"Ahwhcrawhwo akanrawhc rrwoao aoacwo rhwocao rcwochuanaoc," Chewbacca grinned as he stood up, a couple of smaller younglings falling to the ground around him.

"Chewie's right," nodded Renamon. "But, even so, Bane is right too. This one is going to have to a big one."

The bridge fell silent after that as the rest of the ship permeated through the atmosphere, dropping slowly towards the ground and homing in on the signal that Anakin was sending up.

* * *

It took another minute or so before they reached the right location and slowly flew over the tops of the two other cruisers, settling down on the ground to one side of them and bathing a bunch of nearby trees in shadow. The moment it was on the ground, Renamon was already moving, heading out of the bridge and into the corridors beyond, knowing that the enormous ramp would be down by the time she arrived at it.

And indeed she was right. There were already a few clones moving down it, but Renamon bounded down on all fours until she flipped onto the surface of Saleucami and looked towards the other two cruisers. Both of their ramps were also down and there were swarms of 501st and 327th clones milling about underneath it, with no real objective in mind, which, for them, was unusual.

All of these men were brave and loyal soldiers, but they had also proven themselves as people. Renamon didn't know if they would have defied the Chancellor or not when they received the Order if it hadn't been for them and the Jedi helping them to essentially evolve into proper men, even if they had somehow learnt of his identity. But she preferred not to think like that. What mattered right now was that they _had_.

It didn't take long for Renamon to spot the others, even if her eyes hadn't been drawn to one another via Terriermon's mind. A flash of orange hair greeted her as Rika ran from out of the crowd, straight towards her Digimon partner. Renamon beamed at her approach and strode towards her Tamer, doing nothing to stop the hug that Rika gave her the moment they reached one another.

"Hello, Rika," Renamon said.

"Hello yourself, Renamon," Rika said, looking up at her. "It's so good to see that you're okay with my own eyes. Terriermon's mind-link to you just isn't enough. I was so worried the whole time. Next time you go off on a dangerous suicide-like mission like that, I am so going with you."

"Well, hopefully a dangerous mission like that one won't be too far away," Renamon chuckled. "After all, we've got to find a way to get to the very same man if we want to win this."

"I reiterate – I am so going with you," Rika said.

"Oh, I don't doubt it," Renamon smiled. "It won't be a stealth mission this time. Odds are, we'll be able to use all the force we like."

"My kind of mission," said a voice from nearby, and Renamon did not need to look up to know that the others were approaching and that Terriermon had spoken. Rika released her hold on Renamon and stepped back, knowing full well what was coming and deciding to let the two of them just get on with it. Terriermon was sitting on Henry's shoulder, but the moment that Terriermon saw her get clear, he launched himself into the air and ploughed towards Renamon.

Renamon ducked underneath him, lashed up and plucked him out the air and then crushed him to her chest in a fierce embrace. Terriermon yelped, but he grinned and wrapped his ears around her neck.

"Rika has a point, you know," he said as found his face disappearing into Renamon's white mane. "I think that I will so be going with you too. And next time you have to infiltrate the layer of a powerful person with mind powers, just set up a camera and get out of there."

"Will do, sir," Renamon smiled down at her beloved mate.

"Don't sir me," Terriermon grinned. He tightened his hug and said, "Regardless, I think you know full well just how happy I am to see that you're okay."

"Oh, I do," nodded Renamon. "And it just makes me want to do this." She rose Terriermon higher and pressed her lips against his own, the two of them going for a full-frontal kiss right in front of everybody else, not really caring who was watching.

Renamon's ear twitched as she heard a choking noise from the top of the ramp behind her. Apparently Cad Bane had just spotted what they were doing and was sent reeling by what he saw – they had all neglected to mention that the two of them were mates. Renamon smirked and chuckled without breaking the kiss and quickly intensified it, just because of the reaction it would have. Terriermon replied in kind.

Chewbacca, Obi-Wan and Yoda (how the elderly Jedi managed to get from place to place as quickly as everyone else despite the slow pace he walked at was a mystery) arrived at the bottom of the ramp next. Lopmon and the others had got back from the farm by this time, and the brown bunny swooped over to the Wookiee and landed on his shoulder, making herself comfortable and saying, "Nice to see you are still in one piece, Chewie."

"Rroooowa aooo rhwo rhraoaor, Anooakscoowh," Chewbacca replied.

Lopmon chuckled and said, "I hear that you were quite impressive out there today Chewie. How many of us can claim that we sent a Sith Lord flying back across a corridor with only one punch to the chest? Ha, I wish I could have seen that."

"Ahao waahwa wwwowoan akrcwoaoaoro warascwh rroooowa," Chewbacca grinned and flexed his right arm, as if to remind it of the action that it had performed.

"While we're on the subject of reunion," Obi-Wan said, "It's a relief to see you all here, safe and sound, despite the terrible ordeal that you've all been through."

"Most of us weren't the ones in danger, Master," Anakin reminded him. "It's more of a relief to see you are alright after the attack at the Temple. It was mostly Stass here that was in trouble."

"Have you heard of the way the rescued me?" Stass shook her head. "It was probably the most insane and suicidal idea that I've ever heard of in my entire life."

"Coming from Anakin, and the others, that is not unusual," Obi-Wan replied. "The important thing is that we're all still here and many Jedi have survived today despite what's been thrown against us."

"What about my former Master?" Stass asked. "Have you heard from Master Gallia?"

"No, not yet," Obi-Wan shook his head, causing Stass to bite her lip in anxiety.

"She should be fine, General Allie," said Commander Bly, as he stepped over as well. "One of the clone commanders we contacted who said he was going to rebel was hers. Near as we can tell, she's alright, and probably worried about you yourself."

"Well, that first bit is good news," Stass smiled. "But we need to get in contact with them."

"If to assume, I was," Yoda murmured. "Hiding out somewhere, they are, waiting for us to do just that. And do that, we will, soon enough. But first, other matters to attend to, there are. For instance, so I gather, another Tamer we have, hm?"

Numa and Punimon were standing nearby with the Lawquane family (though Cut himself was absent), and Suzie took Numa's hand and guided her forwards until she was in front of them. Numa recognised Obi-Wan from the invasion of the Separatists and waved to him. Obi-Wan chuckled and waved back, kneeling down so he was closer to her height and saying, "It's good to see you again, little one."

Numa smiled, D-Arc still clutched in her hand, and Punimon bounced to a stop next to her. Obi-Wan then looked up and said, "But, forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought we were talking about this sort of thing earlier and that only one of those creatures called Digi-Gnomes could seal a bond between a Digimon and a Tamer."

"Say hello to one," said Aayla, who was holding her hand out, palm up, and the Digi-Gnome was nestled in and bouncing up and down on it playfully.

"That's a Digi-Gnome?" Obi-Wan asked. "Fascinating. I wonder how long its been here?"

"Unfortunately, none of us speak gibberish, so we can't actually understand anything it might be trying to say," Henry said. "But it seems to understand us just fine, though what we're going to do with it is beyond me."

"Master Yoda," said another voice, and the group turned to see Tera Sinube hobbling down the ramp with the younglings in tow; Kalifa, O-Mer and Jinx walking behind them to help him bring the more nervous members of the group of children. Behind them, several other Jedi were heading down the ramp, and most of them were staring at Lopmon, Terriermon and Punimon, fascinated by what they saw.

"I brought the little ones down, just as you asked," Sinube offered, stepping aside to allow them a better view of the children.

"Thank you, Master Sinube," Yoda nodded, turned around and leaning on his stick. "Now, understand, I do, that some help we are to be offered, hm?" he asked, looking up at Suu for clarification and gesturing her to come forward. Suu looked slightly nervous to be surrounded by so many people that she'd heard of but only just met – she was used to isolation out on the farm. But she stepped forward all the same, and her children came along behind her.

"What is your name?" Yoda asked her as she stepped up beside the others.

"I am Suu Lawquane," the pink-skinned Twi'lek replied. "My husband is Cut, and these are my two children."

"Hm," Yoda nodded. "Led to believe, I am, that a clone trooper, your husband, is," Yoda said, stepping over until he was beside Suu's foot. "A deserter of the war, he is, yes?"

"Yes, Master Jedi, but I was told that you and the rest of your order and men would have no problem with that and leave us in peace," Suu added quickly. "That you wouldn't attempt to bring Cut to trial for desertion."

Yoda waved a small hand dismissively. "Correct, you are. Jedi, we are, and strong believers in free will, we have always been. His own path, your husband had forged, and respect him for it, we do. In any case, over, the war that he was supposedly bred for is. And begun, a new war has. One in which no part, he has, if he so chooses."

"Thank you," Suu smiled with relief. "That is good to hear. You Jedi are certainly different from the way the Techno Union paints you out to be, just as Cut always said you were."

"Biased, the Techno Union is," Yoda pointed out. "Scared of us, they are, but a threat, they are no more."

"They still occupy _this_ world," pointed out Suu.

"Yes," nodded Yoda. "But more pressing matters at hand, there are, I'm afraid. Perhaps, when over, this crisis is, return, we can, to rid you of any oppression the Techno Union puts you under."

"Again, thank you," Suu smiled.

Suddenly Jek cut in with, "Are you really the leader of the Jedi?"

"Leader?" Yoda asked, chuckling. "Prefer not to think of myself as a leader, I do. More of a counsellor and guide, I prefer to think of myself as."

"Even so, I'm taller than you," Jek observed.

"Jek!" Suu reprimanded him. "Size means nothing. You should know that by now since you constantly seem to run away from the nunas that live around her because you claim one looked at you funny."

Jek flushed. Shaeeah giggled. Lopmon shot off a round of Blazing Ice shards into the air to prove Suu's point, which startled a very large number of the present company.

Yoda quickly raised his voice and said, "So, where might your husband be, madam?"

"Oh, he's already gone off to the neighbouring farms by eopie," said Suu. "To round some together and bring them over here. You see, we understand that you need to find a place for you younglings to stay while you take care of things across the Galaxy, and we would be more than willing to help out. We're a fairly friendly community around here, and as long as the younglings we take in do a little help around the farm, most of us have the supplies to take in up to five new mouths. After all, we are farmers and can grow our own food, and Saleucami is, if nothing else, a good planet for that."

"Indeed," Yoda nodded. "Most grateful for your assistance, we are. Come, come, younglings," he turned around, "Step forwards."

As Aayla, Obi-Wan and the others continued to try and acquaint themselves with the Digi-Gnome, who was, so far, showing no interest in leaving this bizarre group of people, Master Sinube gestured for the younglings to move forward. The three older ones led the way, and soon they were gathered in front of Suu and Yoda.

Shaeeah and Jek looked delighted – none of them had ever seen such a large gathering of people around their age. Or even such a large gathering of people altogether. They stepped forward and began introducing themselves, Jek seeming particularly interested in befriending the older Twi'lek boy, Jinx.

Just then, a voice cried out, "Suu!" from behind, and the farming Twi'lek turned around to see another Twi'lek woman, with tan-brown skin, moving forward, having just off an eopie and stepping slightly nervously through the crowd of clones and Jedi and other assorted beings, towards them.

"Cyral," Suu smiled and waved her over. She turned back around and said, "This is Cyral, Master Jedi. She's our most immediate neighbour, running the farm just to the north of here."

"I came as soon as Cut gave me the news," Cyral said. "Are these the younglings that he spoke of?"

"Yes," nodded Suu. "Except for these children over here," she indicated the Tamers, including Numa. Suu smiled at her friend and said, "Would you be willing to lend a hand in taking them in for a while?"

Cyral observed the younger beings for a moment and said, "Well, there are a lot of them. We're going to have to spread the message out quite quickly if we're going to get everybody around here to come and pick them all up soon, but yes, I am willing. Cut explained a part of the situation regarding the Jedi, and while I've never been one for politics, I think there is one thing that we both agree on here, Suu."

"Our local motto?" Suu chuckled.

"That's right," nodded Cyral and together they both said:-

"Anything to throw in the face of the Techno Union."

"Good news, this is," Yoda smiled.

* * *

As the proceedings carried on behind them and Yoda began to split the younglings into groups and elect the ones that would go with Cyral, assuring the Twi'lek woman that they would all be well-behaved, Numa was still staring at the D-Arc clutched in her hand. Suzie, Rika and Henry had all got their own out too, and, now that Terriermon and Renamon had finally broken apart, each of them were standing by their respective partners and watching Numa as Punimon sat by her feet.

"How are we supposed to go about this?" Henry was murmuring quietly. "Introducing a person that can't understand most of the words we say into how to become a Tamer?"

"Well, it might be a bit long-winded, but we need Aayla for this," Rika replied, who was rifling through her pack of cards and selecting some of the more basic ones that she was planning on giving to Numa to start her off, since Numa didn't have access to the stores of Tokyo to get her any more. "She can act as translator."

"True, but still there's so much to tell," Henry replied. "It was easier for us. We grew up watching the television series and most of us already knew the card game."

"I didn't," Suzie piped up.

"No, but you learned surprisingly quickly," Lopmon pointed out.

"I'm sure that Numa will too," Renamon said. "The Digi-Gnome wouldn't have granted her wish and made her a Tamer if she was unwilling to be one. They don't work like that." She glanced over to where the Digi-Gnome was doing circuits of Ahsoka, and the Padawan was trying to follow its progress without much success. "Even if they do seem to be a bit happy-go-lucky most of the time."

"Er, don't look now," Terriermon chuckled, "But it looks like young Numa's going to have a bit more company that she's been waiting to see. Waxer, Boil! Over here!" Terriermon waved to the two clones, who were just getting off the ramp at that point. The bunny was quite pleased with his ability to pick out individual clones despite the fact that they all looked alike. It was all about picking out the individual markings that they had on their armour. Some were subtle, but it was almost like a zebra. No two clones were exactly alike with their armour, even it was just picking out dirt smudges.

The two clones waved back and headed over to the group. Numa had looked up at the sound of the names being called and followed the gazes of the others. She lit up like a small Christmas tree when she saw the two clones. "Nerra?" she asked.

"Yes, Numa," Lopmon nodded. "Nerra."

"Good to see you in the flesh, kid," Waxer said as Numa ran over and hugged his leg. "And I here that you've gotten yourself a special new friend."

Punimon nodded his whole body, looking up at the clones that loomed over him. "Hello," he said.

"So," Boil said, observing the tiny Digimon with a critical eye. "Numa gets herself a Digimon partner, which is, I think, something that none of us saw coming when we first met her, and here he is. Forgive me for saying so, but, aren't you a little on the... limbless side."

"To be fair on him, he is two levels below us," Renamon said. "His own Rookie form can be a tough customer, assuming that it is who I think it's going to be, and his higher forms are likely to be just as strong as our own."

"What are the odds of him getting to those levels any time soon?" Waxer said, as Numa let go of his leg and hugged Boil's.

"Well, we're not sure," shrugged Lopmon. "I mean, he has a slight advantage of having memories of the times when he was in those forms before – he's spent a fair amount of time in both his Champion and his Ultimate forms in the past which may help to speed things along, but we're not sure, and it doesn't change the fact that Numa herself is new to this."

"Yeah, Renamon and me started from scratch in that regard, really," Terriermon nodded. "Lopmon got given a boost by one of the Digimon Sovereigns and was elevated up to Ultimate pretty much straight away, but we don't have handy Zhuqiaomon lying around right now, which is a shame because if we did, Palpatine would be a pile of ash on the floor right now."

"So would about half of the Senate Building," Rika murmured.

"As long as it was otherwise empty, that would be alright," shrugged Terriermon.

Punimon sighed. "I think I need a bit more time to adjust to all of this, to be honest," he said. "I mean, come on. I just hatched a few hours ago and I've somehow already managed to acquire a partner and you're all talking about some war I've never heard of before as if you expect me to join it."

There was a bit of silence after that statement, in which all three Tamers and other Digimon felt no small amount of guilt. They hadn't really been taking Punimon's opinion into account. They'd just been acting as if his participation in future fighting was a given.

"Sorry," said Henry. "If you don't want to do any fighting then..."

"Oh, don't get me wrong," Punimon interrupted quickly. "I have always stuck by a sacred oath I made when I was a Gabumon, to do whatever it takes to protect anybody who needs it. It was after my village was slaughtered by a couple of the Demon Lords close to the end of their reign and the elder AncientGarurumon was murdered right before my eyes by... Barbamon, I think. Right after that, I was buried under a falling building at the time, which was why I escaped notice, but when I woke up and dug myself out and saw my whole village was gone, I vowed then that I would never stand by and watch again. So, of course, if there is an evil out there, I will do what I can to defeat it. It's just..." he attempted to look down at himself, but couldn't really because he had no neck or anything except head. "...I'm not sure how I can be much help."

The three other Digimon glanced at each other and decided _not_ to mention they were friends with one of the Demon Lords, just in case Beelzemon had been a part of that attack, but Renamon said, "Then we'll have to see what we can do to accelerate your growth, Punimon."

"And, if it's any consolation," Terriermon added. "The three of us combined our strengths to take out Barbamon, although he was DNA Digivolved with Leviamon at the time. He's long since been deleted."

"That's great," Punimon beamed. "Thank you. Thank you all."

* * *

Nearby, Commander Bly and a couple of other clones, along with the combined efforts of R2-D2 and R4-G9 were setting up a makeshift base holotable in the middle of the ground between the cruisers. These things were relatively simple to construct and the crates with their component parts had been brought down from both the _Intrepid_ and the _Resolute_ and the two astromechs were using their skills with machines to, effectively, merge the two together.

This created a much larger holotable, which looked a bit primitive in design due to its more rushed construction, but it would allow them to send out a few more broadcasts than they would ordinarily have been able to. The fused design made it more into a holo-figure-of-eight than a proper table.

Eventually, Artoo rotated his head and bleeped a couple of times to indicate that they were finished with what they were doing. Bly nodded and turned to the others, calling out with, "Table's up and running, Generals."

"Thank you, Bly," Aayla called back, the Twi'lek with her arms raised and stretched out as the Digi-Gnome zoomed round and round them and her torso in seemingly random patterns. "Would somebody mind distracting the little guy's attention?"

"Numa and I can play with him for a while," Suzie offered.

"Ooh, and us," Shaeeah volunteered quickly. She and Jek hurried forwards and, when Numa caught on that they were playing a game, she joined in quickly, eager to release some of the stress that had been accumulating in her recently. The air was filled with the giggling of young children as the Digi-Gnome recognised the game and charged after them, zipping around in between them.

Henry chuckled and turned to his partner. "We'll keep an eye on them. You guys go and join in the conference call. We'll be watching through the mind-link."

"Can do," nodded Terriermon, swooping over to prop himself on Anakin's head, while Lopmon landed on Chewbacca's shoulder again. Renamon stepped over between Barriss and Ahsoka as they, Aayla, Anakin, Stass, Obi-Wan and Yoda all began to crowd around one of the tables.

"Time to see who survived this catastrophe, it is," Yoda said solemnly.

"Got it, General," nodded Bly. "Artoo, can you make calls to the frequencies of all the clones that we managed to inform about Order 66 before they implemented it?"

The astromech bleeped in the affirmative and plugged in via his scomp-link. It wasn't long before, one by one, various holograms began to appear around the two fused tables. Each new face intensified the feelings of delight inside the onlookers, because they were all familiar.

First to reply were Mace Windu and Commander Ponds, standing alongside Ki-Adi-Mundi and Commander Jet. "Hey, Mace," Terriermon grinned. "Glad to see that you're still here."

"I am quite happy about it myself," Mace observed, "But I am assuming, in some odd way, I have you to thank for saving my life."

"You have practically everyone here to thank for that," Obi-Wan chuckled. "Not least Commander Ponds there."

I don't think that there's ever been a time where so many different people have contributed to stopping a plot across so many different systems."

"You have a point, Master Kenobi," nodded Ki-Adi-Mundi. "Let us hope that it paid off."

More holograms started to appear, and the people on Saluecami were surprised at the number that showed up. Next to appear was Quinlan Vos, who Aayla was _very_ pleased to see and who shared a nod and wink with his former Padawan, and accompanying him was Adi Gallia and, unexpectedly, Oppo Rancisis.

"Master Gallia," Stass cried, stepping forward. "Oh, thank the Force you're alright."

"Me?" Adi smiled at the sight of her Padawan and let out a breath of relief. "I have the advantage of a clone squadron who had met with the Digimon. I'm the one who's been worrying about you. Thank the Force _you're_ alright."

"It was a close call, Master," Stass nodded. "But I owe my life to this little guy," she patted Terriermon on the back. "He threw himself _into outer space_ to save my life."

"What?" multiple voices cried, and Adi and Oppo Rancisis, who had not worked beside the Jedi much or never done so at all, looked at him with a new interest. Terriermon rubbed the back of his head and murmured, "Well, it was Anakin's idea."

"And don't do it again," Renamon glared at him.

"Yessum," Terriermon muttered.

Suddenly Kit Fisto tuned into the call, and with him was Saesee Tiin. A split second later, Plo Koon appeared and the smaller figure of Even Piell was hovering next to him, his form raised higher than the others so it could be seen above the table.

"Master Plo," Ahsoka smiled. "Good to see you."

"And you, Little 'Soka," Plo nodded. "It takes a burden off my mind, let me tell you."

"I hear that we have you to thank for getting the warning out early," Even Piell put in. "Captain Tarkin turned on me the moment he heard the Chancellor put the clones up to the task."

"No surprises there," Kit grimaced.

Luminara appeared in holographic form at that point, causing Barriss to grin as she beheld her former Master, but they were surprised to see that Eeth Koth was with her, the Zabrak blinking in surprise at the group that was displayed before him. "Is it me, or is most of the Jedi Council here?" he asked.

"Yes," nodded Yoda. "But where is Master Ti? Joined us, she has not."

Renamon and Ahsoka shared a glance of concern, both of them wondering if Echo and Fives had managed to complete their task and get the older Togruta off the planet before the message spread to the majority of the clones. That concern was mirrored on the faces of most of the others as well.

And then, suddenly, she was there, her hologram standing between that of Adi and Eeth. She nodded and smiled at the sight of everyone played out before her. "Greetings everyone," she said. "It is good to see that so many of you are still alive, though it does make the monitor in front of me a little crowded."

"I see you managed to escape from Kamino, Master Ti," Captain Rex acknowledged. "Are Echo and Fives alright?"

"Both of them are fine, and it is thanks to them I am still here," nodded Shaak Ti. "I managed to send a message to the Delta Squad before I left as well. The moment they get back in contact with the rest of us, they should be able to pick it up."

"We also rescued Master Kolar and Master K'kruhk from a nearby planet," said Commander Jet. "The two of them are recovering from mild exhaustion as a result of a prolonged chase, but they should be alright again soon."

"Well, that's something then," Quinlan nodded. "All of the Jedi Council managed to survive this mess. If that isn't good news right now then I'm not entirely sure what is."

"It would have been better if we did not need to be making this call," Saesee shook his head, his horns rigidly moving with his head motions. "But I suppose we must make do with what good news we can at this point."

"Indeed, Master Tiin," nodded Luminara. "Especially since we are probably facing one of the greatest threats the Jedi Order has ever faced. Never before have such a large number of people previously thought to be allies turned against us."

"The clone troopers are your allies, Master Jedi," Bly insisted, resisting the urge to pound his fist against the table. They just don't know it yet. This was not a malicious attack, this was a result of manipulation by one man."

"That may be, Commander," Mace folded his arms. "But that does not mean we can afford to show too much mercy right now. If we are to somehow maintain the Republic and unseat the Sith Lord at its top... we may need to do some things that we will, in future regret. Such as killing more clones."

"More than we've done already," Commander Ponds muttered bitterly. "I myself shot one of my own brothers earlier today. Hit him in the side, right beneath the arm with one of my blaster bolts during the rescue of the two other Jedi." He screwed up his face and said, "That image is going to haunt me for the rest of my life, let me tell you."

"I got one too," Jet grimaced. "In the stomach. I'm not sure if I killed him or not but still... it's just so... wrong. I don't know what to make of this situation at all, Master Jedi."

"Me neither," Rex nodded. "I was spared the torture of having to kill one of my own brothers directly today, and yet I know that, just as Master Windu says, we may have to kill many more if we're to continue this course of aiding the Jedi. And... that scares me. More than you can possibly imagine."

The hearts of all the Jedi and the three Digimon went out to the five clones, as well as all the others that they knew were probably watching this conversation but were not being shown up holographically. Rex was right. None of them really did know how they must be feeling. Many of them had had to face former allies before, that much was true. The Digimon had fought Beelzemon, and seen Guilmon turn into the berserk Megidramon. Barriss and Aayla had had to fight Luminara when she had been infected by a Geonosian worm. Yoda had had to battle his own apprentice, Count Dooku.

But none of them had had to kill opponents who were their friends when they were technically not the real enemy.

The clones that had betrayed Palpatine had done so at a cost. They were probably all at mental war with themselves, fighting between choosing the path that was right and aiding the Jedi, while another part of them was telling them that fighting their own brothers was an abomination. It seemed against nature, even if the clones had not even been created by nature.

They were going to stay with the Jedi, no matter what they had to do, but any enjoyment that they took out of the fighting had long since been lost. Fighting the droids had its amusing times, when the exhilaration of battle kicked in and they could fight with their all their hearts, which the droids themselves could never do.

But they would never get that feeling fighting against the rest of the clones.

But they would never get that feeling fighting against the rest of the clones.

All five clones that were part of the broadcast were looking thoroughly depressed, and Aayla was the first to react and placed a comforting hand on the shoulder of Bly. "Listen, Bly," she said. "I don't want you to feel obligated to fight your brothers on our behalf. Fighting against them in future may be an inevitability, but you need not take part in the fighting if you do not wish to. After all, you are not our tools. You have the right to choose."

"No, General Secura," Bly shook his head and looked across at the Twi'lek that he had served so faithfully that he had defied orders from Palpatine himself to ensure she lived. "I won't be backing down, no matter what the others do. It's a horrible reality, but it is one that I will cope with, in order to fulfil what I know is right. Even if it means doing what I never thought I would do."

"I concur with Commander Bly, Generals," Cody piped up. "Besides, we cannot allow the Emperor to get away with what he's been doing to us for all these years. I'm sure our other brothers will applaud our actions if they knew the truth."

"Can we not convince them of the truth somehow?" asked Terriermon. "Turn the rest of the army against Palpatine somehow?"

"Doubtful," Anakin muttered bitterly. "If I know Sith tactics at all, now that he knows that some clones have betrayed him, he will take all precautions to ensure that no others do. He'll start subtle, spreading rumours amongst the clones and false information as to why we've suddenly been made traitors. Even the recording that Bane and Renamon got for us would do no good now."

"Indeed," said Obi-Wan. "Holograms can be faked. The only reason it worked to convince the clones so far is because there would have been no time to fabricate such a hologram between the time it took for the first clones to receive Order 66 and the message that was sent out to the rest of them. It's not the case anymore. It might work on some clones, but the majority are now more under the thumb of Palpatine than they ever were before."

"Oh. Okay," Lopmon sighed, her ears sagging slightly. "Sorry guys. I wish there was more we could have done."

"No matter how much we would have got away with today, we would always be wishing there was more that we could have done," Aayla pointed out. "Jedi and clone alike have suffered today, despite our best efforts."

"I feel it is partially my fault," Renamon supplied. "If I had remembered to keep my emotions in check, Palpatine would not have sensed my presence, and I could have slipped away to inform the Council in secret."

"You are not to blame to that, Renamon," Barriss said firmly. "I think _every _person at this holotable will agree that we had the exact same reaction you did when we learned the truth – shock the likes of which we have never experienced before. Any one of us would have been discovered were we in your position."

Luminara smiled as her former Padawan looked slightly embarrassed at the little speech she had just delivered in front of the Council, but she nodded and said, "Barriss is absolutely right. It is a blessing that we know who Palpatine really is at all, and a blessing you provided us with, Renamon. Do not be too quick to lay blame at your own feet."

"What they said," Terriermon grinned, to deliberately lighten the mood. "Momentai, Renamon. You know that _we_ all went catatonic the moment we saw him lower his hood through your mind. You probably had the mildest reaction, because you were still aware enough able to get yourself away at all."

Renamon smiled and placed a paw on her mate's head. "Thank you, Terriermon. And thanks to the two of you, Barriss, Luminara."

"It's Mirialan day, isn't it," grinned Terriermon. "First Barriss breaks into our mind-link. Now this."

"Now you're going too far with the attitude," Renamon chuckled.

"Sorry?" Luminara stared at her Padawan with wide eyes. "Barriss broke into the mind-link that you guys share already?"

"Er, yes," nodded Barriss. "I had a bit of help from an unexpected visitor from the Digimon's world. It's a small creature called a Digi-Gnome that grants wishes that we ran into here on Saleucami, and we're not too sure how it got here."

"A wish-granter, huh?" Piell said, then added dryly, "I don't suppose it would grant a wish that would cause Palpatine to accidentally kill himself and rid the Galaxy of our problem, would it?"

"No," Lopmon shook her head. "The Ancient Ones are not like that. They aren't malicious enough. They'll grant wishes to give us boosts and advantages, like Barriss' new mind-link capabilities, but they won't ever actively cause harm to some-one."

"Too bad," Piell shrugged. "It would have taken a load off our shoulders."

"On that subject," Oppo spoke up, his torso rising higher as his snake-like body uncoiled. "What are we supposed to do next? The Chancellor holds all of the cards in this situation, and even with the clones we have who have turned against him, we are still far, _far_ outnumbered by his forces."

"Emperor, he is now, Master Rancisis," Yoda informed the amassed Jedi. "Declared the Republic a Galactic Empire, he has, giving himself brand new powers in the process."

"How do you know that?" Adi frowned in confusion.

"Through a combination of some intel that was found during the hunt for Sidious and a contact that we have in the Senate even now," Ahsoka replied. "Senator Chuchi got in contact with us earlier to tell us of the Republic's diminishment."

"If only I had actually managed to find him when I was working for the Sith. Then none of this would have happened," Quinlan griped.

"Master," Aayla frowned at him warningly. "Let's not delve back into that territory, thank you very much."

Quinlan chuckled and said, "I sometimes forget that I have such a bossy Padawan." Aayla pouted and Quinlan laughed.

"Quite frankly I'm surprised that even you have the room for humour in this situation, Master Vos," Obi-Wan said. "Let's throw in the fact that the clones managed to secure Dooku and Ventress before we could. It won't be long before they become problems for us once again. And let's not forget that General Grievous is still out there somewhere. Even the Separatist threat is not completely over."

"Problem after problem after problem, it seems," Kit's face contorted into a rare grimace. "It seems that he has just about every advantage in this situation. I wonder how much of an asset even you Digimon can be in this situation. We can hardly go charging towards Coruscant and attack him head on with all our strength. Who knows how many innocents we would slay in the process?"

"And with his the majority of the clone army at his disposal, things are looking grim indeed for us," Shaak Ti sighed, her eyes closing at the thought of all the clones that she had helped to train turning against the Jedi at a word from one man. "Quite frankly, it's a miracle that _I'm_ still alive."

"And he's got some of his best allies from the Separatists to aid him," Eeth Koth muttered. "Even if we do have a spy inside the Senate, or what remains of it in this new Empire, how can we defeat an adversary like Palpatine now?"

Silence fell over the table, as every Jedi and clone were lost in their own thoughts, their minds plagued by thoughts of all the terrible things that were occurring across the Galaxy as they spoke. It weighed down on practically all their minds, the enormity of the task ahead seeking to overwhelm them. There was simply so much that had been thrown against them now, and absolutely none of them had any idea what they were supposed to do next.

The situation seemed absolutely hopeless.

And then, there was a quiet voice that, considering the silence that had settled over the table, was easily audible to everyone there. "No situation is ever truly hopeless," Renamon murmured. The assorted Jedi and clones turned to look at her, to find her with her eyes shut and a paw clenched on the table.

"We've been spots just as tight, if not tighter, than this one before, where just about everything we seemed to try did not work. In fact, we've faced down no less than two enemies in the past in which it seemed there was no chance of victory." He eyes opened and she fixed everyone present with her piercing eyes. "But we've still come out victorious."

"She's right," Terriermon nodded. "The first time was when we faced the D-Reaper, a huge gelatinous computer program that had been granted life and thought that humans and Digimon had become too advanced and had to be deleted. It seemed to adapt and evolve to counter everything that we threw at it, kidnapping our friend and almost killing all of us at least once, even in our Mega Forms."

"The second time was Ogudomon," Lopmon added. "He destroyed our entire home city because none of our attacks had any effect on him whatsoever thanks to a special ability he had that made him invulnerable to most. He almost killed us as well, as he advanced across the land, forcing us to hold him back as well as we can, even when we had over ten Megas fighting against him all at once."

"And do you know what we did?" Renamon asked. "We won through a combination of strength, strategy, ingenuity and a well-executed plan, both times. No matter how difficult things got, even after the city we lived in was annihilated practically twice, we never gave up. And it's the same thing here. Yes, Palpatine has an overwhelming advantage, but there is always a way to prevail."

"Always a way around the strongest defences," Terriermon agreed.

"Always a way to take the bad guy down several pegs," Lopmon nodded firmly.

"Guys," Aayla murmured, a slow smile appearing on her face.

"It doesn't matter how hard things get," the brown bunny kept going. "I can speak for all three of us when I say that we will keep fighting. We will find a way to unseat this Sith Lord and make sure he gets his just desserts."

"Even if we have to find a way of sneaking through all of his defences on Coruscant and battling him face to face in our Rookie forms," Terriermon added.

"That might sound hopeless to you all," Renamon finished. "But that's not going to stop us, and we hope that it will not stop any of you either. The three of us will fight on in the name of the Republic that we have now lost, but also in the name of all of you. We will ensure that you Jedi are restored to your rightful place as peacekeepers rather than war generals. And we will fight for you clones, so that you can all have the freedom that you deserve."

"Anyone going to join us?" Terriermon slipped in.

"Asides from you Chewie," Lopmon chuckled, knowing just what the Wookiee was about to say.

The Wookiee said it anyway, "Ah akhuwhoaacwowa aoacraao rrhuro oowhoawo. Whwokao aoahscwo ah oarahowo acahc acworawa ahwh."

Lopmon nodded and said, "That's a vote of confidence and a half, Chewie. Nice to hear it, and I share the sentiment, believe me."

"Well, that's one," Terriermon said, turning to the rest of the table. "Anyone else?"

"I don't think you need the mind-link to know our answer, you three," Aayla smiled, her fist closing decisively in front on her and a smirk of determination settling over her features. "We started down this path of foiling Sidious together and I say we finish it together."

"Couldn't agree more," Anakin declared, his anger over Palpatine's betrayal momentarily replaced with a righteous fortitude. "It's time we showed that... monster... what the consequences of too much meddling with all our lives are."

"As you say yourself, it's time to bring home the bacon," Ahsoka nodded with a grin.

_What's bacon?_ Asked Barriss.

_I don't know,_ Ahsoka replied.

Barriss turned to look at the others and said, "Well, I may be a newcomer to this party but you can bet your life that I won't be backing out. I'm with you all the way. I've quite literally come too far to back out now, even if I wanted to."

"That's how we do things," Terriermon laughed. "We draw people without even meaning to. Guess it's our Digital charm." Lopmon hit him.

"Anyone else," the brown bunny asked, as her smarting brother rubbed his head ruefully.

"Just as I said earlier," Bly said. "I'm prepared to do whatever it takes to teach this guy not to take people's lives and deaths into his own hands, no matter who we have to go through to do it."

"Yeah," nodded Rex. "We're the Galaxy's last hope right now, sad as that may seem."

The other three clones nodded in agreement.

"Well," Obi-Wan shrugged. "I suppose if we're casting in votes then I might as well throw my own in. I've had the privilege of watching you Digimon fight multiple times in the past. I believe that you are right and that there is a way. We just have to find it."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Master," Anakin nodded.

"Always here to help," Obi-Wan nodded.

"Well, if former Masters are speaking up next then I suppose it's my turn," Quinlan smirked. "If you think I would ever abandon my Padawan after everything she's done for me then you guys don't know me at all. I am ready for round two with my old Sith Lord buddies."

"I told you not to go there," Aayla scowled. "But thank you, Master."

Quinlan winked. "You know I only said that to lift your spirits, right?"

"Nice job," Aayla rolled her eyes.

"I have never been so proud of my own former Padawan," Luminara smiled. "I thought that it had reached its peak when you reached the rank of Knight, Barriss. But you have successfully left that moment in the dust today. I will help fight for what you believe in."

"And it is much appreciated, Master," Barriss smiled at the older Mirialan, who smiled back.

"I have only known you guys for a couple of hours," Stass Allie smiled. "But if one of you can throw yourself into space to save the life of a person you don't even know... well, I think you're capable of just about anything. I'll help you."

"As will I," Adi Gallia nodded.

"I think that it's fairly obvious that all of us are going to cast in our vote to follow the Digimon against the Chancellor," Kit's grin was firmly back in place by this point. "You guys truly are a wonder, and quite frankly, I don't know where the Galaxy would be without you right now. Probably still in the middle of a vast war against the Separatists. In any case, I believe if anyone can help us pull out of this, it's you guys."

"It's thanks to you, Kit," Lopmon chuckled. "It was your idea to keep us a secret, and look how well that turned out."

"I'm humbled by your words," Kit laughed. "You share the credit with everyone you can, don't you?"

"Yep," nodded Terriermon.

All around the table, the rest of the Jedi Council were displaying similar expressions and body language, all of which indicated defiance and grit. Yoda felt himself smiling. It had been a long time since he'd seen most of these people so fired up, becoming a Council member required you to have a level head at almost all times. But seeing them all fired up at once? That was a true sight to see.

Just as Kit Fisto had said, the Digimon were wonders.

"Then, declare, I do," Yoda said. "That the official start of a Galactic Rebellion, we are. His new Empire, Palpatine, may have. But get things all his own way, he will not. Fight, we will, to restore things to what they once were. What say you?"

Everyone around the table, even Mace Windu, gave a resounding cheer, which was echoed by all the clones listening in on the conversation, and all the surrounding Jedi too. The Tenacious Ten all felt grins spreading over their faces.

_Look out, Palpatine,_ Terriermon declared in all their minds. _We're coming to get you._

* * *

There you go. It might not be a rebellion on Galactic-wide terms (yet), but that should be a satisfactory ending to the chapter. Things are progressing slowly in this arc, and there will be just about no action for the rest of it, but hopefully, each chapter ahead will be building up the intense excitement that _I_ am certainly feeling right now, and I hope that all of you are feeling it too.

Things are going to be blown out of all proportion soon. Can't wait for the boom.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

As most of the others rest for a while to recover from the ordeals of the day, and the Tamers and Aayla set about trying to teach Numa how to be a Tamer, a few old friends return to the story and find out about what's going on, and Anakin begins to try and settle his emotions on all this once and for all.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 163 : The Chosen One**


	163. The Chosen One

I know you guys were all fired up from the last chapter if the reviews were anything to go by, but not every character in this story is quite as ready for the action as you might be. This chapter covers the one remaining person that is still having doubts about not only what they have to do, but himself as well. And it doesn't take a genius to work out which character that is considering the title of this chapter.

Hope you enjoy the final chapter of soul-searching, and the return of some old friends. It's the next chapter that they start actually doing things.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 163:- The Chosen One**

* * *

"Ho, man! I just can't get over what happened back there! I mean, I haven't created an explosion like that since... since... since I don't know when. I think just about every droid in that place was vaporised in the exact same instant. Ha! I was just so..."

"You know, you can stop talking now, Scorch," Sev growled slightly as he continued to meticulously scrub his sniper rifle, which had seen a fair bit of action over the last couple of days. He lifted it before his eyes and inspected it, adding as he did so, "You've been banging on about that explosion you made back there for over an hour now. Just give it a rest, will you?"

Scorch chuckled and said, "Heh, banging on. Good on, Sev. Was the pun intended."

"Happy accident," Sev murmured dryly, priming his rifle and looking through the sights just to see if he could still see through it to perfection.

"Put that down, RC-1207" barked Fixer, who was standing nearby, as the four clones stood in the cockpit of their very own ship. "You know you shouldn't be handling a weapon like that in such close proximity to everyone else. You can make sure that your weapon is still top-notch when we get back to Kamino."

"Ah, relax, Fixer," Sev murmured. "You know as well as everyone else here that I do _not_ make mistakes with this rifle," he chuckled, darkly, and added, "And many, many people have found that out the hard way."

"Mostly droids, I hope," Scorch chuckled. "Coupled with the occasional Geonosian."

"Heh. This weapon has a special place in its safety just for Geonosians," Sev added. "As in, it loves to mow them down."

"Stop encouraging him, RC-1262," Fixer folded his arms and glowered at Scorch. "We've just returned from a fairly difficult mission. This is not the time to be talking about bloodshed and death. I vote that we all try and relax for a little while before we get called out on our next assignment."

"Ha, what are the chances of that happening any time soon?" Scorch shrugged his shoulders. "The missions have been thinner and thinner on the ground. Quite frankly, I'm surprised they had the room for a toughie like that. Not that it stopped me for blowing them to the other side of the universe!" he added with an insane grin.

"There he goes again," Sev rolled his eyes. "Anyone seen my life. I might need to shut him up the hard way."

"You don't have the guts," Scorch snorted.

"You won't have any guts by the time I'm finished with you," Sev growled.

Scorch waved it away, knowing full well that Sev didn't mean it, and he was quite correct. They were just arguing the only way they knew how – violently. And they were doing it for the hell of it and no other reason. Scorch held up his fists as if he were about to go into a boxing match and Sev rose up, chuckling as he readied his own fists. Fixer sighed, wondering why these two didn't take things as seriously as he did.

But before anything could kick off, not that it really would have done, the leader of the four, known as Boss, spoke up from the pilot seat. (They never trusted Scorch with the controls just in case he decided to crash the ship to see how big a bang it made) "Stow it boys. We've just got in range of the rest of the Galaxy's communications grid and we've received a message. It's from General Shaak Ti and apparently its of the highest possible priority."

Those words stopped all activity, and the four clone that made up the Delta Squad crowded around the pilot seat. "What's it say?" Sev asked. "Anything interesting?"

"Well, I'd hope it was interesting considering its highest priority," Scorch nudged his fellow clone. "Oh, I hope that it's another mission. I gotta go and blow something else up while I'm in a good mood."

"Are you incapable of thinking of anything that doesn't involve an explosion of some sort for more than five minutes?" Sev demanded.

"Cut the arguing, you two," Fixer cleared his throat. "Let's see what the General has to say for herself."

Boss opened up the message and the other three members of the Squad leaned around the chair, their eyes scanning the message with varying degrees of excitement. But, the further they read, the more they felt themselves stiffening up, as if their muscles were slowly paralysing them with each word they went on.

"You what?" Sev breathed.

"You've got to be kidding me," Scorch muttered.

"I... did not see this coming," Fixer agreed wholeheartedly.

Boss said nothing, but he could feel his fingers clenching over the arms of his chair as he re-read the message again, scanning it for any sign of a typographical error or perhaps some hint that it might be a joke. Because what General Shaak Ti was implying was just... insane. It was absolutely insane.

Simply put, the message read:-

_Delta Squad. No time to get in contact properly. Chancellor Palpatine is a Sith Lord, and is turning clones against the Jedi because he knows we have found him out. If you find this soon, I beg you not to follow through with his demands and get in contact with me and join our new fight. Must run before I am found. General Ti._

There followed the scramble-set for the comlink that they should call if they were to call Shaak Ti, wherever she was now, assuming that she was still alive. The four clones read the message several more times before they all stood back and looked at one another, their bulky armour suddenly seeming very heavy as the enormity of their newest situation seemed to fall over them.

"You've got to be kidding me," Scorch said again. "There's no way. Chancellor Palpatine a Sith Lord. I thought that we were fighting against the Sith Lords, not working for them."

"It is inconceivable," Fixer shook his head. "How can this be right? The Chancellor simply cannot be a Sith Lord. It's just... just... wrong. How can he... Ugh, my head."

"Are we sure that this is not some weird joke?" Sev asked, his rifle propped up on the ground. "Because if it is a joke, I sure as hell ain't getting it. Or perhaps a mistake and she meant to write about someone else."

"Yeah, because a lot of words are similar to Chancellor Palpatine," Scorch shook his head. "Unless the General suffered some massive amount of brain degradation right before she wrote that, there's no way that could have been an accident."

"But the Chancellor..." Sev shook his head. He grunted and said, "Can't say I ever liked the man very much. He was always a bit soft and whiny to me but a Sith Lord? That's practically like going beyond the borders of all sense and entering the realm of complete and utter insanity. It's got to be some twisted joke of some kind."

"What makes you say that, Sev?" Boss asked quietly his eyes still fixed on the message in front of him.

"Because we've been going on all these missions on the order of that guy," Sev cried. "And you're telling me right now that he's a Sith Lord, who are the leaders of the enemy and the guys responsible for the deaths of so many other clones across the Galaxy. It just isn't right? Must be a joke."

"Have you ever known General Shaak Ti to make jokes like that?" Fixer pointed out. "I've heard her make jokes a couple of times, but there's no way that she would ever joke about something like this, not a billion years. She would have known it would have this affect on us, and it goes against her entire character. No, she was deadly serious."

"But is it possible that she herself was mistaken then?" Scorch asked. "I mean, where was the information? How did she get it, second-hand? Could someone else be trying to turn the Jedi against the Republic or something?"

"It would have to be a pretty elaborate plot for that, boys," Boss said, from where he had been silently reading the message over and over again. "I think that General Shaak Ti, might be telling the truth, or at least what she thinks is the truth, but first, we must find out if she is right or not."

"What do we do, sir?" asked Fixer.

"I suggest that we return to Kamino first," Boss replied. "We don't tell anyone that we received this transmission from the General and then ask around to see what's going on. We can decide what to do about this when we see the state of our home planet. We can also determine if Shaak Ti is even still alive, because if what she sent is indeed true... then she may not have gotten off the planet with her life."

Sev and Scorch shared a dark look with one another. The four of them quite liked General Shaak Ti. She was the Jedi that they had the most contact with and they had all seen her efforts to ensure that each and every clone got through their training, taking her time with individuals that were slower than the others instead of just sending them to maintenance like the Kaminoans probably would.

If she had died... well, none of them would be happy about it. Clone commandos like them were naturally more independent than the average trooper. And if what Shaak Ti was saying was true and the Chancellor had ordered the extermination of the Jedi and Shaak Ti had become one of the victims, they would be furious.

* * *

Silence reigned over the ship for the rest of the hyperspace journey as all four of the clones brooded on what they had heard and could think of nothing but what they would find when they returned home. Even Scorch was now totally serious, his casual, joking persona wiped off the map for now.

When they finally arrived above Kamino and descended into the atmosphere, the pouring rain that almost always fell on this planet beat against their ship, clouding the windscreen. But they had little trouble guiding the ship down to Tipoca City, where the main clone breeding and training area was located. Boss touched the ship down on one of the outer landing platforms and stood up to address the others.

"Remember, lads," he said. "Act casual. We can't let them think that we know anything whatsoever about any of this. We've been out of contact, and they must think we haven't had any since. Let's just treat this as if we were returning from a perfectly ordinary mission."

"You got it, Boss," nodded Sev, as the clones turned to exit their ship. The rain made pattering noises against their armour as they stepped out into the open. Sev attempted to cover himself with one hand to prevent the blood-like red whatever-it-was that covered his helmet and torso armour from washing off as much as he could, until they finally stepped through the sliding doors and into the interior of the city.

"Nobody here to greet us?" Fixer asked. "Well, that makes a change. Usually there's always some her to debrief us."

"Let's head to the main command centre," Boss suggested. "Hopefully we can find out what the heck's going on."

The four clones strolled down the corridors, watching through the duraglass windows at the area all around. The whole place was awash with activity, as it normally was, but it seemed to be a little different than normal. The clones were more rushed as if something big had just happened. Cadets were being rushed back to the barracks and several clones were holding whispered conversations that the Delta Squad couldn't catch. Usually nobody bothered whispering on Kamino.

Sev, who was the most enemy-conscious of the group, actually felt his hands tightening on his sniper rifle. He did not like this one bit. It almost seemed like they were walking right into a danger zone. There was something about the atmosphere that he simply didn't like.

"Steady, RC-1207," Fixer reprimanded him. "Hold your nerve."

Sev muttered but relaxed his grip on his sniper rifle, very reluctantly.

* * *

Nobody bothered to say anything to the Delta Squad until they reached the main command centre. There, they found Commander Fort, standing with the Prime Minister – a tall Kaminoan with a high collar and a crest that ran from the top of his head to the nape of his neck whose name was Lama Su – and a female Twi'lek that was his aide, known as Taun We.

"Are you absolutely certain that there was no mistake here?" Lama Su asked. "This sounds extremely fishy to me."

"Completely and totally, sir," nodded Fort. "They definitely fired on us, and probably would have killed us had we not been able to get out of the way in time."

"I am not referring to the actions of the two ARC troopers," Lama Su shook his head. "I am referring to this statement from the Chancellor with regards to the Jedi. How is it possible that Order 66 could have been implemented? I was led to believe that the Jedi were on the verge of leading our armies to victory?"

The Delta Squad all shared brief looks of astonishment. There was the proof they were after. Shaak Ti had indeed been targeted and, apparently, so had the rest of the Jedi.

"I don't pretend to understand it, either, sir," Fort shrugged. "But the order came in clear and, as you know, we have to follow orders from the Chancellor."

Lamu Su sighed. "You are quite right, of course. Following the programming that we cloned you with. I must admit, I am surprised by all this though. It is something I never expected to actually happen. We merely implemented the order as a failsafe, corresponding to the wishes of Master Sifo-Dyas."

"Excuse me, Prime Minister," Taun We interrupted. "But we do have new company."

"What?" Lama Su turned around and spotted the Delta Squad were there for the first time. He smiled lankily and said, "Ah, the Delta Squad. I see you have returned. I trust that your mission was a success then."

"As much of a success as we could have hoped for, Prime Minister," Boss declared as they all stood to attention. "Scorch was particularly satisfied with the explosion he was able to create that spelled an end to the outpost we took out."

"Glad to hear it," Taun We nodded. "But I'm afraid a full debriefing will have to wait. We are currently dealing with an urgent situation that has sprung up across the Galaxy as of today."

"We figured that something was wrong from what we gleaned off the conversation when we entered the room. What's all this about Order 66 being implemented?"

"It's a confusing set of circumstances that we are seeking to find the answers to," Lama Su replied. "Simply put, for some unknown reason the Supreme Chancellor has initiated the Order, so the troopers have now turned on the entire Jedi Order."

"That's right," nodded Fort. "I received the orders to go and dispatch General Shaak Ti myself. But when I did, I found that she wasn't in her quarters. I don't know how, but she somehow managed to get wind of what we were about to do and escaped the planet."

"Oh?" Fixer asked. "Didn't you manage to catch her?"

"We did find her before she left the planet," Fort nodded. "But she had some help getting away. You won't believe it, but a couple of the ARC troopers – those newer ones, Echo and Fives, turned on us and helped Shaak Ti to get away."

"No," Sev breathed. "They disobeyed a direct order from the Chancellor?"

"Indeed," nodded Fort. "We don't know why, or how this could have occurred, but we're looking into that too."

"It appears the two of them may have been slightly deficient," Lama Su murmured. "In any case, I must ask the four of you to retire to your quarters for the time being, while we try and work out what happened. You will be debriefed later."

"Thank you, Prime Minister," Boss nodded and the four of them turned around and quickly left, the doors sliding gracefully shut behind them.

It was a minute or so before any of them said anything else as they moved towards their quarters, until Scorch turned to the others and said, "Well, what exactly are we supposed to do next? The message was accurate on just about every level that we've heard here. The only difference is that they don't know anything about this whole... Sith thing."

"Keep your voice down, Scorch?" Sev hissed. "You want the whole city to hear you talking about Palpatine in that way. That could be looked on as treason, you know."

"But what if he is a Sith?" Scorch asked. "I can't take orders from a Sith Lord. It's not right. We were bred to fight them, not aid them."

"And what do you suggest we do?" Sev asked. "Toddle over to Coruscant and ask him politely if he would mind telling us if he was ordering the attack on the Jedi because he was a Sith Lord? Yeah, that'll work real well for us."

"I'm just saying," Scorch insisted.

"It does fit in a little bit," Fixer added. "Almost too well actually. I mean, I can't think of any other reason why he would go ahead and do something like this right now unless he was a Sith Lord. Especially if he somehow found out that they knew about his identity. RC-1262 has a point, sir," he said to Boss. "What exactly are we going to do next?"

"Well, I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to make a call," Boss said. The other three members of the squad did not need to ask who the recipient was going to be. They quickly hurried into step behind Boss, ready to listen in and contribute to the conversation that would follow.

Boss stepped into a small room with four barrack bunks built into the wall – the Delta Squad had the privilege of a personal barracks while the majority of the rest of the army had to sleep in more communal areas. None of the members of the squad had really seen a point to having their own room, but now it provided the perfect place to stay out of sight.

Sev stood be the door to keep watch and listened outside, while Boss stepped up to the computer monitor and put in the details that had been give to them in the message, before he stood back and was flanked by the other two clones.

It did not take long for them to get an answer, in the form of Shaak Ti herself. The older Togruta smiled when she saw who it was and said, "Ah, good evening, you lot. I trust I find you well."

"Us?" Scorch blurted out. "Never mind us, how about you? We heard how you got chased off the planet after we received your message, General Ti. You had us worried for several moments there."

"Touched as I am by your concern, Scorch, I am perfectly fine," Shaak Ti placed her fingers together grimly. "The same cannot be said for the rest of the Galaxy. I trust from the fact that you called me that you want to know why the Chancellor has decided to throw the Galaxy into turmoil by ordering the clones to attack the Jedi like this."

"Very much so, sir," Fixer agreed. "This has left the lot of us befuddled, I can tell you."

"Simply put," Shaak Ti said. "It was the Digimon. Through a combination of them and some ingenuity from Aayla Secura and a couple of others, we were able to track down the mysterious second Sith Lord we've been looking for and found it to be the Chancellor. However, he found out that we were onto him and quickly tried to have us killed off before we could do anything about it. It's only thanks the miracle of the Digimon's mind-links that we were able to get away with our lives, as the Jedi Council was informed pretty much straight after the discovery was made."

"So, he's definitely a Sith?" Boss asked. "I mean, there's no way that there's been some kind of colossal mix-up."

"I almost wish that it were," Shaak Ti murmured. "A mix-up can be sorted out with a couple of calls. This situation can't."

The Delta Squad turned to look at one another for a moment, each clone taking a moment to regard each of the other clones before they turned back towards Shaak Ti, before Boss, said, "Okay, how can we help then?"

Shaak Ti blinked in surprise. "Pardon?" she asked. "You'd be willing to turn on the Chancellor and help us just like that? Several of the other clones needed proof first."

"General Ti," Fixer said. "We've known you for longer than most, and we know full well that you would never talk like this unless you were absolutely sure that what you were saying was true. And, thus far, we have always found your judgement to be accurate."

"Yeah, and besides," Scorch added. "I can't think of any other reason for why all this is happening. Even if the fact that the Chancellor is a Sith Lord sends my view of the universe down the toilet. But your story all seems to fit."

"We've seen the Digimon in action too," added Sev. "And we trust them. I felt a kind of kinship with that Lopmon while we were on Shili. If they say that the Chancellor is a Sith, I will believe them and so will the rest of us."

"So, you can bet on your life that we will not be taking any orders from the leader of the Separatists we've all been trying so hard to wipe out," Boss finished. "We are on stand by and waiting for your orders, General Ti."

Shaak Ti smiled at them and chuckled, shaking her head in bemusement. "I knew that you clone commandos were more independent than most, but I never thought that you would go so far as to turn against the Chancellor that quickly, based on my word alone. However, I thank you all for your bravery and loyalty, as well as your sense of justice. But Boss, I might just have to bet on my life. I am putting a lot of trust in you by giving you the details to contact me. Because I know full well that you could use it to track me down."

"Not a chance of that, General," Boss shook his head. "So, what _are_ we supposed to do about all this? Is there a plan as to how to take back the Galaxy from the clutches of the Sith?"

"Not yet, there isn't," Shaak Ti shook her head. "We're all trying to come up with something tangible, but the fact remains that Palpatine, who is an Emperor now, by the way, has the overwhelming advantage. We won't give up, but still, it is a difficult proposition. If you want to help, I suggest that, for now, you remain on Kamino and try not to draw attention to yourselves. I'll send you a message to your private terminal if we come up with something."

"You got it, sir," nodded Boss. "The Delta Squad is at your disposal."

"Thank you all," nodded Shaak Ti. "And one last thing. The continued secrecy of the Digimon is more important than ever before. We've managed to contain their secrecy for now, so it is of paramount importance that you do not breathe a word of their existence to anyone."

"Haven't done it yet," Scorch chuckled. "No plans of starting now."

"Good," nodded Shaak Ti. "I hope to see you soon."

"Just before you go, sir," Sev spoke up. "Are Echo and Fives still with you?"

"Yes, they are," nodded Shaak Ti. "In fact they're both right behind me."

"Well, you two," Sev said. "I know you can hear this, so I'll say – good men. Nice work getting the General out of danger."

Shaak Ti smiled. "They send their thanks and regards," she finished, before she vanished, leaving the Data Squad to impatiently wait for their next instructions.

* * *

The general consensus after Master Yoda had declared that they would now form a rebellion against the Empire was that everybody should get some sleep and they should decide what to do next in the morning. It had been a long day, filled with angst and confusion and stress for just about everyone considering the massive betrayals and soul-searching that people had had to do, and many of their number were running on empty. Yoda's idea had been warmly accepted across the Galaxy and the Jedi had been finding good, safe places to stay and recharge.

However, on Saleucami, even though the sun had long since gone down, not everybody had followed the advice of Master Yoda. The Tamers and the Digimon, all four of each, were still up, and they had Aayla sitting beside them, acting something like a protocol droid, in that they were currently trying to teach Numa some of the basics of... well, Basic, for a start.

Which, was not going to be easy, and certainly wouldn't be happening straight away. Nevertheless, they were making some progress, in that Numa now knew approximately six words of Basic that she had not known earlier that day. One of these examples, was 'Card' which had been somewhat of a necessity considering what they were about to do. A couple of the others were 'Hello,' 'Yes,' 'No,' 'Okay,' and 'Hungry.' That last one had been a request from Numa herself, as she had actually been starving, having not received a proper meal for quite a while.

But Basic lessons would have to wait for the moment. Right now, they had to work on Numa's skills as a Tamer, to see if there might be a chance of her providing some valuable assistance in the future, which it seemed both she and Punimon were prepared to do.

If they could.

The translation process was making this a bit long-winded, but the Tamers were doing their best.

"So, as you can see, there's a little slot on the side of your D-Arc right here," Henry was saying, tapping his finger against the carved groove down the side of his own, green-rimmed D-Arc. Aayla provided a quick translation and Numa looked at her own little device and ran her finger down it.

She looked up and added, "Yes."

"Well, in order to use a Modify Card," Henry went on, indicating the small pile of them that Numa had laid in front of her – each one of them had contributed some of the less powerful cards in their decks, because they might need the more powerful ones in an emergency themselves, and they weren't sure how much extra added power Punimon could take. "You need to take it and slide the correct edge through the slot, and it inputs and little data packet that can be transmitted to your Digimon, altering their..."

Rika cleared her throat and interrupted. "Let's try to keep this a little simpler for our beginner, here, shall we?" she asked a little pointedly.

"Yeah, come on, Henry," Terriermon scoffed. "Numa's barely seen a computer in her entire life before today. She's not going to understand all this stuff about computer data and transmissions or things like that."

"Yeah, yeah, I see your point," Henry nodded.

"What do you want me to tell her instead?" Aayla asked.

"Just tell her that you need to swipe the correct edge of the card through the slot and suddenly Punimon might gain another power," Rika replied.

Aayla nodded and turned to Numa, who was now looking quite lost after that little exchange. As she provided Numa with the details of the card, Punimon looked down at the small objects in question, sitting next to him. "And these things will really give me abilities that I would not normally possess?"

"Absolutely," Lopmon nodded. "It can be very useful in battle situations. I believe Renamon used a card that gave her a fire attack to knock IceMyotismon away from you when he was about to kill you."

"And that's just one example," Renamon agreed, as Numa gave her reply back to Aayla. "We have healing cards, cards which give power or strength boosts, cards that enable us to grow wings. As long as we possess the right cards, there's practically no limit to what we can do."

"Being bonded to a Tamer certainly seems to have advantages then," Punimon observed.

"Oh yeah," nodded Terriermon. "We've saved the world a couple of times when the Sovereigns themselves could do next to nothing."

"Okay, now you're just being silly," Punimon chuckled.

Before Terriermon could protests, Aayla looked up and said, "Numa said – 'you mean I can make him get bigger, like you guys can with your own partners?"

"Well, yeah," nodded Henry. "But many other things besides. Watch."

Aayla quickly relayed the message and he picked up a Modify Card from out of his own deck and got to his feet. Terriermon stood to attention in front of him, as the Tamer slashed a card through the slot and said, more quietly than normal because there were people trying to sleep, "Digi-modify! Strength activate!"

"Oh I like this one," Terriermon grinned as he felt himself being infused with the power. He quickly bounded over to a nearby boulder that must have been about forty times his size. Even with the upgrade card, it required a little effort, but he was able to squeeze himself under the boulder and lift into the air and above his head. Numa and Punimon watched with awe, as Terriermon held it up with his _ears._ He waved and then folded his arms, looking pleased with himself.

"Garay!" Numa clapped her hands together, her eyes practically shining.

"And that's not all," Rika nodded, picking out a card of her own and doing the same thing. "Digi-modify! Snimon's Twin Sickle's Activate!"

Renamon smirked as her arms promptly morphed into the huge blades of the Mantis Digimon. Numa gasped and almost fell backwards at the rather scary-looking sight, but Renamon merely nodded towards Terriermon, suddenly extended his ears and flung the huge boulder skywards. Renamon's eyes narrowed as she took aim and swiped the scythes through the air, shooting pink energy blades out of them which slammed into the boulder, slicing through it and obliterating it into dust.

As the pieces rained to the ground, and Renamon's arms morphed back into their regular shapes, Numa leapt up and cried, "Gif Ju dees ei instanb. Zonbi!"

"I think you can guess that she wants a turn," Aayla chuckled.

"Ooh, try this one," Suzie quickly supplied, moving forward to pick up an ordinary digivolution card out of Numa's small collection. She then stepped back and told Numa what she had to say, and Numa turned towards Punimon. The air was tense and charged as Tamer and Digimon stared at one another, wondering what would happen when Numa made her move.

More slowly then the others, Numa slipped the card through the slot and repeated Suzie's words, "Digi-modify! Digivolution activate!"

For one tense moment, nothing happened, and then, suddenly Punimon exploded into light and, regardless of other people sleeping in the cruisers around them cried, **"PUNIMON DIGIVOLVE TO... TSUNOMON!"**

The change that followed was not exactly vast, but what replaced him was a large legless Digimon, with a cream face, while the rest of him was covered in short, brown hair and there was a large blade sticking up from the top of his head. He bounced for a moment, as if testing his new body.

"Huh," he said. "Last time I hatched, it took me several weeks before I got to the In-training level. He smiled at Numa and said, "I guess this whole partnership thing is a good thing after all."

The Digi-Gnome, which was still awake as well, giggled as it circled around the new Digimon and observed him while floating upside-down. Aayla turned to the others and said, "Well, it looks like we may just have a fellow Tamer amongst our ranks sooner than we thought."

"Don't count on it just yet," Renamon shook her head. "It takes more than knowledge or strength to enable most digivolutions. Getting to the In-training level is easy, and Rookie level probably won't be a whole lot tougher, but from then on, things get more difficult."

"Just getting to the Champion Level was difficult enough for us," nodded Rika. "I thought it was based only on power when I first started, but I realised later that it also required the Tamer and Digimon to truly care about one another as well. Their bond will probably need to grow more before we'll be seeing any of the Garurumon Digivolution line."

"It might end up being an instinctual thing, like mine when I digivolved for the first time," Terriermon shrugged. "But, me and Henry did still care for one another so that still applies really."

"And let's not forget to mention that she'll need to learn the secrets of the blue card before he can get back to the Ultimate level," nodded Lopmon. "And as for biomerging – that is probably still quite a long way off regardless. Tamer and Digimon heart have to be truly in sync, not to mention the situation has to be right to unlock it."

"It usually works best when the two people are in danger," Suzie shuddered at the memory of her own first biomerging.

"Or when they're facing overwhelmed odds," Henry added.

"I hear that," nodded Rika.

"Well," Aayla shrugged. "Let's keep going with the lesson then, and see if we can make any more progress. What's next?"

"Well, next we need to teach Numa what all her different cards actually do and how to use them responsibly. You can't just pile on upgrade after upgrade after upgrade. They have to be used responsibly."

"And there's only really so much we can teach her just sitting here," Renamon agreed. "The real teacher, above everything else, is experience. Numa will have to learn most of it for herself."

Aayla nodded and said, "Well, let's keep at it then."

"Yes," Numa said. Everybody blinked and turned to look at her, and she giggled.

* * *

But, while the majority of the rest of the three cruisers were sound asleep by this point, there was one other person who was still wide awake and was showing no signs whatsoever of nodding off anytime soon. And that person was Anakin.

The young Jedi Knight was seated on an outcrop of boulders not far away from the place where the Digimon and Tamers were working with Numa and Tsunomon. They were unaware of his presence though, as Anakin had not done anything to announce himself, not even through his mind-link. For the moment, he wanted a small bit of privacy, and he watched the proceedings from the top of the boulders with mild interest.

But the rest of him was, obviously, consumed by thoughts of what was going on with regards to the Emperor and the former Republic and everything else that had happened in the last twenty-four standard hours. Now that the immediate crisis had died down and it seemed the Jedi had, for the most part, gotten away with their lives, everything was being given a chance to cool down, and Anakin could focus more on things than he had when he had also been rushing around trying to rescue Stass Allie or worrying about his Master or other Jedi besides.

His immediate anger on the situation had died down considerably, thanks to Aayla and Ahsoka and all the others who had helped to calm him and keep it suppressed. It was still there, in a seething mass beneath everything else, and Anakin doubted that it would every truly go away, but he was not about to give up and let it consume him, as he had when his mother had died. Even though he had hated Tusken Raiders at that time _and_ still did, he still felt guilty for the slaughter he had committed on them, as well as guilty for not reaching his mother in time.

He did _not_ want to go through that again.

But with this enormous treachery from Palpatine, which had taken up practically his whole life since he had joined the Jedi Order, Anakin really didn't know what to make of himself anymore. It seemed that the whole time that Palpatine had been trying to get close to him, he had really been thinking of Anakin in a similar way to the clones – just a tool to help him gain more power. That seemed to be the way that Palpatine viewed just about everyone. You were either a tool, or you were an enemy. And when you had outlived your usefulness in the first category, you joined the second.

Anakin grimaced and looked up at the sky, the two moons of this planet glowing faintly above him. Anakin wondered faintly what he would have become by this point had it not been for the others. The rest of his team, the rest of the Tenacious Ten and their numerous allies, all helping him along his way. They seemed to have made it their duty to help him through all this, but while it might be a problem for all of them, in the end, it was mainly his.

As a Padawan, he'd always considered himself to be extremely strong, and supremely undefeatable, and the arrogance of that had gone to his head. But with this latest development, Anakin was now thinking of himself as the complete opposite. He might be strong with the Force, or with a lightsaber, but he was weak-willed.

He could now see why the majority of attachments for a Jedi were a bad idea. Most of them would lead to pain, suffering and loss. In fact, just about all of them, including the ones he had been told by Master Yoda he could have would do that. And that kind of pain would unleash primal urges that were dangerous enough in normal hands, let alone a Force-sensitive's.

While he had no regrets about the attachments themselves still, and probably never would, he knew now that he should have tried harder to deal with them in an appropriate manner. Would his mother have wanted him to slaughter a whole tribe on his behalf? Would his friends want him to choke the life out of a man like Count Dooku to rescue them? No, they would not. But Anakin had done the first one anyone and probably would have done the second had Ahsoka not intervened.

He sighed and resorted to holding the top of his head with his hands, screwing up his face in agitation. He knew that attachments had their pros as well, such as the fact that if the feeling was mutual, the people you cared about could turn you into much better people than you already were, just as his friends now had done, but it seemed that whenever something bad occurred revolving around his attachments, almost everything that they had taught him and worked towards went out the window, unless they could remind him of what he was doing before he did something else he might regret.

They were the strong ones, not him. They were the ones who had prevailed over the darkness within themselves, whereas he still got thrown back to it all the time. Was he really such a hopeless case?

Then again, he had managed to heal Hyoll slightly before, which Aayla had said was something that required intense care for others, so he had much good in him as well. He had always had good, but the underlayer of darkness was still there, waiting to leap out and take control when he was weaker.

That had been what Palpatine had been going for all along. That was the man that Palpatine had been shaping him into, and Anakin knew that now. But that realisation did nothing to help him, it just made things worse. How could he fight against someone who had betrayed him like this, but, in doing so, maintain a control on himself.

More to the point right now though, why. Why had Palpatine been doing this to him? Why had he been trying to warp him and twist him into Sith material, something which Anakin had vowed never to go near, while _it_ seemed to have other plans for him.

The answer seemed fairly obvious to Anakin. It was because he had been a latecomer to the order, easily influenced and filled with strong attachments, and he had been powerful, which practically made him the perfect candidate for the stealthy politicians to snatch from the order and somehow turn him against them.

Anakin again felt that boiling anger beneath him, but he shook himself and crushed it down with hammer blow. By the Force, what was wrong with him? Why couldn't he just accept that Palpatine was behind all this and just move on? Forget about the anger and just continue as if nothing untoward had happened?

His mind was filled with thoughts of revenge, and he knew it shouldn't be. So why couldn't he just cast them away and be a proper Jedi?

Anakin had never felt more like a failure than he had right now, because he knew that if he gave in to the Dark Side, he would be betraying everyone, his team, the Jedi, the clones that had followed the Jedi, his wife, his deceased mother and Master Qui-Gon. But he still felt the urges to get back at Palpatine and slay him, pound him into the ground and choke him to death.

Why could he not just stop those thoughts? Why?

He shook himself and shut his eyes, his teeth bared as he struggled with his thoughts. In retrospect, the Digimon, Aayla and the others had done a whole lot for him to even make him like this. In the past, he probably would have just charged towards his fighter and headed for Coruscant right away, his reckless mind spurring him towards his vengeance. The fact that he was still hear and still trying to keep his temper in check was their doing.

Suddenly, he was broken out of those thoughts when a voice sounded from the bottom of the rock pile. "Can't sleep, Anakin?"

Anakin looked around sharply, and saw, to his surprise that Obi-Wan was standing there, looking up at him with concern on his face. He had thought that Obi-Wan had long since gone to bed, but evidently not, as he was here now. His former master stared at him, waiting patiently for an answer.

"Oh, hello, Master," Anakin murmured, not meeting his eyes. "Why are you still up?"

"To be honest, I was worried about you, Anakin," Obi-Wan replied as he walked further up the pile of rocks until he was about half-way up. "I do not need a special mind-link with you to sense your emotions on all of this. I can tell you feel confused and haunted by the past right now. I just wanted to make sure you were alright, but evidently, you aren't."

Anakin looked down at his own boots. "You shouldn't worry about me, Obi-Wan. I'll be fine."

"Anakin, need I remind you that I was your Master when you were a Padawan?" Obi-Wan folded his arms. "It is my duty to worry about you if there is anything whatsoever to worry about. Now, why don't you tell me exactly why you're still out here when you should be getting some sleep after a long day? A day which I must assume was even longer for you than the majority of the others."

"You wouldn't understand, Master," Anakin shook his head.

"Perhaps not on a personal level," Obi-Wan replied smoothly. "But I will understand enough. Don't bottle up your thoughts, Anakin. You can share them with me."

Anakin sighed and said, "It's just that I don't fully understand it, that's all."

"Understand what?" asked Obi-Wan.

"Why I can't just be a regular, ordinary Jedi like everybody else," Anakin said ruefully. "Why I can't seem to control my own emotions no matter how far away from the Dark Side I seem to be getting. It always seems to come back and haunt me. I just can't understand myself, or why Palpatine was so obsessed with trying to lure me to the Dark Side. My choose me as a potential future apprentice?"

"Well, if it helps, I think that by unleashing Order 66 on you, he has given that option up for lost," Obi-Wan pointed out. "Captain Rex received the order just as Commander Bly did, which meant that he was targeting both you and Ahsoka with that particular call. He's not looking for you to be his apprentice anymore."

"Yeah, but when he finds out I'm still alive, which he probably has since he knows full-well that Aayla is still alive, what's to stop him for coming after me again?" Anakin asked.

"Probably a fair amount of his support," Obi-Wan pointed out. "Last I heard, he had declared that all of us were equally involved in trying to overthrow the Republic. If he suddenly declares that one of you was actually innocent, people will start to question him."

"He could always say that I merely had a change of heart," Anakin countered.

"He could," agreed Obi-Wan. "But he hasn't told the Senate that he's a Sith Lord yet, has he? If he were suddenly to forgive one Jedi, even if they had apparently changed their mind about this so-called conspiracy, the people will wonder why. And perhaps the most fathomable reason would be that he's sparing you because he was supposedly quite close to you." Obi-Wan chuckled and said, "In a way, your closeness to Palpatine gives you an advantage in this situation."

"What?" Anakin asked.

"Think about it, Anakin," Obi-Wan said. "If the people started to think that he was sparing supposed traitors just because he liked them, they might rebel against him. They might not consider him to be the just Emperor that they want. Yes, he may have an Empire now, but he still needs to enforce it. He still needs to subjugate most of the Galaxy and push them under his control through fear before he can start doing things like that. And that is still quite a way off, since he does have a whole Galaxy to control."

"Hey, yeah. You're right," Anakin brightened. "He can't go trying to recruit me now without looking bad." He chuckled and said, "You always did have a firmer grasp on the political standpoint than I did, Obi-Wan. Thanks."

"My pleasure," Obi-Wan nodded.

"Even so," Anakin sighed. "You were right all along. I should never have trusted Palpatine. You warned me against him and I should have listened to you. I'm sorry, Master."

"Anakin, I would say that we were both wrong and both right on that particular score," Obi-Wan folded his arms. "If you recall, I told you that you shouldn't trust Palpatine because he was a politician, not because he was evil. But, through the course of this war, I have had a chance to work more closely with some Senators and other politicians, and I have to say that my attitude towards them has changed. Most of them indeed cannot be trusted fully, but some, Padmé and Chuchi being the most prime of examples, can indeed."

"Well, that's good to hear," Anakin said. "But still, you were right about him."

"I confess I always did find your friendship with him a little strange since he was a Chancellor," Obi-Wan said. "Such a powerful man... I figured that he must have some motive for getting close to you, but I assumed it was just to use you as a mascot for the Republic or something. I never imagined anything on this scale." He thumbed his beard thoughtfully, then chuckled and said, "Although, I think it's safe to say that you lot made yourselves mascots for the Republic with minimal help from Palpatine."

"Not jealous, are you, Master?" Anakin smirked.

"No, I think you will find that I am not," Obi-Wan said wryly. "I quite enjoy staying out of the public eye, thank you very much. And I would find it a little disturbing to go around Coruscant and see posters of myself on practically every street corner. Then again, it's disturbing enough seeing my own Padawan's face in that situation. Do you have any idea how long it took me to adjust to it?"

"Uh. No," Anakin shook his head. But the light-hearted moment faded away momentarily, and he looked up at the sky once again and said, "Still, it doesn't change the fact that my friendship with him was nothing but a lie. I can remember... so many times... when I've been having a conversation with Palpatine and... now... when I look back on those conversations they have all been twisted and warped out of all proportion. Now, it seems like every word that came out the man's mouth had a sinister undertone, like each and every word was a snare trying to pull me closer into his web of deceit."

"Well, I hate to say it Anakin," Obi-Wan murmured. "But that seems to be a pretty accurate analogy to me. That sounds just like what Palpatine has been doing since... before I even met him. He certainly has built himself an elaborate plan, and so cunningly laid out. I fear if it hadn't been for the interference of the Digimon, we would have walked right into it."

"Really, Master?" Anakin looked down at him with a pained expression. "You really think I would have turned to the Dark Side?"

Obi-Wan grimaced. "You know I didn't mean it like that, Anakin. But it is entirely possible. After all, no Jedi is perfect, no matter how much the Galaxy seems to think we are. Or they did, at any rate. And even you admit that you were far worse than you are now before the Digimon came along and you were partnered with them and Aayla."

"Yeah, I know," Anakin muttered. "I don't like to admit it, but it's true."

"I confess that I feel partly responsible for that," Obi-Wan took his turn to look at the floor. "I fear that Aayla and the others have done you far more good than I ever did throughout all the years that I was your Master."

"No!" Anakin actually stood up here, startling Obi-Wan. "Don't say that, Master. You were not to blame for what I was like. I have only myself to blame. You tried harder than anyone else to help me find balance, and you did help me most of the time. There are only two people to blame for what I was like, and that is Palpatine and myself. It was my insolence and rebellious attitude that made me ignore the words of wisdom you tried to pound into my head. You are one of the best Masters amongst the Order."

Obi-Wan smiled, touched by his former Padawan's words. "You are too kind, Anakin," he said.

"No," Anakin shook his head. "I am merely stating a fact, Master. And for what it's worth, I think that the Digimon had more of an effect on me than you did mostly because I kept skiving off meetings with Palpatine to stay with them and... well, see what weird thing they do next. Initially, anyway, but that's what led to the bond we share today. And the fact we actually found out I was being targeted helped to smooth me over."

"Well, if that is indeed the case, then I suppose I can tell you that you've done me proud, Anakin," Obi-Wan chuckled. "And that, aside from your occasional... alright, frequent... disinclination to follow my orders, you were the best student I could have hoped for."

Anakin smiled. After a few moments, he chuckled and said, "You know, I missed this, Master. We haven't had the opportunity to have our usual chats recently, have we? Since I've been constantly shipped off to some distant region of the Galaxy with the rest of my team."

"You can say that again," Obi-Wan nodded. "I do not resent them, but it did feel like, in some ways, I had lost a brother."

"Same here," Anakin nodded. "Took me a while to adjust to missions where you weren't present."

Sadly, the moment was not to last, and Anakin's face turned bitter again after a little silence and he returned to staring at the moons. "But, I still don't understand why Palpatine really chose me to be his new target. I know I'm strong and all, but, he's been trying to get close to me my whole life, ever since we met on Naboo and before I had any Jedi powers at all. Why did he choose me?"

"Well, I would have thought the answer to that was obvious, Anakin," Obi-Wan smirked. "Really, are your deductive skills not what they used to be?"

Anakin turned around and mock-glared at his master with one eye. "Alright then, since you're the expert on the mind of the enemy, why don't you enlighten me?"

"Oh, I don't pretend to know Darth Sidious' mind," Obi-Wan shook his head. "I can just see a couple of facts that really should be painted above your head in huge letters."

"Well, I can't," Anakin folded his arms impatiently. "So, why don't you tell me?"

"Alright then. If you insist on not looking harder at the situation," Obi-Wan chuckled. "I'll begin with the less important of my two explanations. First off, he met you right after he had gained the power he sought through the Trade Federation's blockade of Naboo, his seat as Supreme Chancellor in the Galactic Senate. Perhaps the fact that the two events were so closely interlinked made him see it as some sort of sign, and he selected the first appropriate young Jedi for his schemes that he could."

Anakin briefly considered this and said, "Well, I guess that makes sense. What's the other reason?"

"The more important, and yet the even simpler one," Obi-Wan chuckled. "He fears you."

Anakin paused, blinked and shook his head quickly, as if there was an irritating buzzing noise in his ears. He looked at Obi-Wan again and said, "Uh, what?"

"He fears you," Obi-Wan stated again. "He has long been planning his rule on the entire Galaxy and had just implemented the first stage, when suddenly, you walked right into the equation out of seemingly nowhere. A boy with a midi-chlorian count that was even higher than the Grand Master of the Jedi Order. A boy whose levels were off the charts," Obi-Wan smirked, as he continued. "I am guessing that he made the same guess as Master Qui-Gon had, and believed that the Chosen One, the one long-prophesised to kill the Sith and finally bring balance to the Force."

Anakin blinked, but made no move to say anything, so Obi-Wan continued. "Your sudden appearance probably sent alarm bells ringing off in his head. He was probably considering how to have you removed from the picture – find some way to assassinate you or something, just make sure that you did not reach adulthood. But then he thinks to himself, what if he isn't the Chosen One? There's no proof that he actually is. So he probably decided to keep you close to him to keep an eye on you, at first."

"And when I grew older, what then?" Anakin asked.

"Well, if you recall, at that time he had just lost his own current apprentice, when I cut Darth Maul in half on Naboo right after he was declared Chancellor. That had probably not been a part of his calculations either. Perhaps Maul was supposed to be his own apprentice throughout the rest of his time as Chancellor. But then, as he kept you close to him and watch your powers growing by the day, maybe he realised then, that you might serve him better. But, at the same time, he feared you, so he began manipulating your life to try and make you the kind of person who would never think of turning against him when the time came, hoping that you would form a strong attachment to him that would prevent you from killing him when you learned the truth at last. Because, he would have been pretty sure by then that you really are the Chosen One, and he would have been terrified that you might escape his grasp. And so he modified his plan to include you as well and took on Dooku as a substitute."

Anakin wrinkled his nose. He felt the bile rising inside him again, as Obi-Wan spoke of the man who he thought of as a friend for so long in this manner. Not directed at Obi-Wan himself, of course. But, strangely, it seemed to be weaker than before all the same. Apparently this talk with Obi-Wan had done Anakin some good. The furious anger at Palpatine was wearing off slightly, as Obi-Wan described some of his thought processes.

Which was odd, because they probably should have been getting stronger, though the thought of Palpatine fearing him did indeed feel slightly gratifying at this point.

Maybe it was the fact that they had gone over the reasons why Anakin had been drifting away from the Dark Side. The fact that they had both clearly structured how the Digimon had had that effect on him seemed to intensify his resolve and was helping him to dial down his emotions.

Still, he shut his eyes and said, "You know, I'm not sure I ever really believed it myself."

Obi-Wan frowned. "Believed what?"

"That I was the Chosen One," Anakin turned back around. "In fact, I'm still not entirely sure. The Chosen One is a myth, someone mentioned in a prophecy that was spoken decades ago, but had not yet come into being. It just didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Part of the reason I was so excited to meet the Digimon was because they had been involved in prophecies before. I had hoped that they would be able to clear up a few things for me, but they were just as clueless as I was."

He turned back to Obi-Wan and said, "How can we be sure that I am the Chosen One, after all?"

Obi-Wan was about to say something, but suddenly his eyes widened and he found himself staring over Anakin's shoulder. Anakin froze, wondering if he had spotted something that was about to attack him or something, but he himself stiffened when he heard someone say, in an voice filled with echoes, "There is only one true way to find that out, Anakin."

Anakin whipped around, knowing what he would see when he did, but it didn't make it any less shocking when he saw it for himself. The faintly glowing ethereal shape of Qui-Gon Jinn was standing on the rocks next to him, with his back turned and staring across the Saluecami horizon.

"Master..." Obi-Wan breathed. "So... so it was true. What they said was true."

Qui-Gon looked over his shoulder and smiled at Obi-Wan. "It is good to see you again, Obi-Wan. You have grown into the fully-fledged Jedi Master that I hoped you would be. I am proud of your progress. However, you must excuse me for a moment while I speak with Anakin."

"Of... of course," Obi-Wan nodded and stepped back, too stunned to do much else. Qui-Gon turned all the way around and looked Anakin in the eye.

Anakin stared back, still surprised to see Qui-Gon, even if he had seen him since his death once before on Coruscant, even if only briefly. He murmured "Master," and bowed in respect.

"Anakin, you do not bow to me," Qui-Gon replied. "You bow to no-one. You are the one who is destined to bring balance to the Force. The universe will, if anything, one day bow to you."

"Master," Anakin looked up again. "How do you know that? How can you be so sure that I am the Chosen One? You always believed so firmly in me, defying the Council to see that I would be trained, but why? Why were you so insistent? Please, tell me?"

Qui-Gon smiled serenely and said, "From the moment I met you," he said. "I saw not only great power. I felt not only great waves of the Force flowing through you. I saw a miracle. A child born purely of the Force, who had the reflexes of a fully-fledged Jedi pilot at the mere age of eight, who was already so in tune with the Force and didn't even know it. A child, who would one day grow into a man, and that man would be the Chosen One. And I see him before me now, standing tall and proud, just as he should be. There was little doubt in my mind when I met you. Now there is none. You _are_ the Chosen One."

Anakin said nothing, struggling to digest Qui-Gon's words. Qui-Gon smiled and said, "If you like further proof, I am a part of the Living Force now. I know more about the ways in which it flows than any Jedi does when they're alive. I can feel its every flow and eddy, and it runs through you like your practically an essential conduit for it. You have grown strong with the Force, and it is acknowledging that fact. I can _feel_ that you are the Chosen One. But, then again, I do not have to feel it to know it."

"What do you mean?" Anakin choked out.

"Look inside yourself, Anakin," Qui-Gon replied. "Did I not once tell you that nothing happens by accident? You were a child on a planet that was so secluded and far from the Republic that the Jedi had no control over it. I only met you through unforeseen circumstances forcing us to land there, but I ended up walking past all of the junk dealing stores in Mos Espa, right to the one where you were. The Force was guiding me back then. And now, the Force is guiding you too. As Master Yoda believes, it brought your Digimon friends to you."

"What?" Anakin asked. Qui-Gon merely took a moment to glance down to the bottom of the pile of boulders. Anakin followed his gaze and he saw that Aayla was standing down there and looking up at him, as were all four Digimon and all four Tamers and, surprisingly, Ahsoka and Barriss. When they had got here, Anakin had no clue, but all of them were closely watching the conversation, with smiles on their faces.

"The Force flows through all universes, Anakin," Qui-Gon responded. "It manifests itself into many different forms, but it is all interlinked. The events of one universe can have an effect on another, and nobody would ever realise it. It was no accident that the Digimon were brought to Aayla, or that she was brought to you and your Padawan, or that Barriss joined your party later on. You will need all of them if you are to complete your destiny, Anakin."

Anakin paused and said, "I really am the Chosen One then?"

"If you truly look inside yourself," Qui-Gon smiled. "You would know that already."

Anakin looked back down at the encouraging smiles of all his companions and felt a slow grin spreading over his face, as Master Qui-Gon's words sank in. "Then what must we do next?"

"Think on everything you have done since you met the Digimon, Anakin," Qui-Gon replied. "The answer will come you. And now, I believe that you, Obi-Wan, have a few things to say to me. And since I am here, I may as well listen to them."

As Qui-Gon moved over to Obi-Wan and began to speak quietly with his near-overwhelmed former Padawan, Anakin stepped down the boulder pile until he was standing in front of all the others. He smiled at them, and simply said, "Hey, guys."

"Hey, Master," nodded Ahsoka. "You believe in yourself now?"

"Hell yeah," nodded Anakin. "If what Master Qui-Gon says is true, and I really am the Chosen One..." he smirked and said, "Then I guess I really can keep my anger in check if I want to."

"We told you that you could," Aayla observed, smiling.

"Now that those inspiring words are out of the way," Terriermon stepped forward. "I think it's about time we started coming up with a plan."

"He's right," nodded Renamon. "You heard what he said. All of us will have to work together to bring down Palpatine. We've always come up with the plans that work before. Let's come up with a whopper this time."

"We're with you, Anakin," Henry said.

"All the way," added Barriss.

Anakin grinned. "Alright. Let's knuckle down to it, and this time, we'll make sure that our new plan really is a doozy. Palpatine will never know what hits him."

"You bet your ass he won't," Terriermon cheered. "But first... **GROUP HUG!"**

"Ack!" Anakin cried, as he was promptly swamped.

* * *

I kinda felt bad for Obi-Wan. He gets quite a lot of bad press from people that I've seen for failing to ensure that his Padawan did not fall to the Dark Side, which is something that I have never understood at all. It's like they're looking for the easiest person to blame, but it was never really his fault. It was mostly Palpatine's. But, in my story, his own participation in Anakin's turnabout has been fairly limited, and so I sought to change that in the final chapter that covers Anakin's struggle with the Dark Side.

Yes, folks. Anakin's not going to be having any more doubts about himself or bursts of uncontrollable anger anymore. He is firmly set into the light now. Aayla and the Digimon brought him away from the Dark Side, but Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon finished the job, which is just plain right in my opinion since they were Anakin's masters in the past. I hope that satisfies everyone, because it certainly satisfies me. Obi-Wan's roll in the story is going to be slightly more pronounced from now on.

And the return of the Delta Squad should excite some people. Again, I am sorry for any inaccuracies, but I still have never played Republic Commando, so I'm just going by what I know. Still, I hope you liked their presentation.

Qui-Gon has appeared in a major role for the last time, though. There is little else that he can do now.

I leave for London in a few hours, but I aim to update again by Monday at latest.

* * *

Twi'leki translations

Garay - Cool

Gif Ju dees ei instanb. Zonbi – Can I try one now. Please

* * *

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The Tenacious Ten do indeed come up with a _doozy_. The preparation and execution of this plan will cover the next few arcs, but that certainly doesn't mean they will be boring. There is a lot of action on the way still, and lots of character moments for just about everyone. Next time, they begin to put the plan into motion.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 164 : Emissaries**


	164. Emissaries

Hello, everybody. Let me start off by saying that I am immensely pleased that I didn't fail to meet my deadline, despite the fact I got no sleep _at all_ on Thursday night. I can_not_ sleep on coaches. I even took an inflatable pillow to try and help but it didn't work. As a result, I spent the whole of Friday trying not to fall asleep during the long hours of WildPhotos talks. Nevertheless, I enjoyed myself immensely, and I've managed to stay on target the moment I got back, even though I slept in. Enjoy this next chapter. It involves a lot of hyperspace.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 164:- Emissaries**

* * *

The following morning saw the sun rising over Saleucami as it always did, but there was something about the air that seemed slightly different on this particular day. Nobody could have truly explained what was different about it, but it was almost like they felt that change was upon them, even if nothing looked physically different.

As the majority of the clones stirred and roused themselves, preparing for their first full day as enemies of Chancellor Palpatine, their Commanders were already outside. Bly, Rex, Cody and Ember were all greeting the leaders of the various smaller detachments of the 327th and the 501st which had arrived during the night. More were still to come, but they guessed that it would not be long before they were all re-united.

The Jedi were already beginning to gather around the modified holotable that the astromechs and the clones had set up but yesterday, all of them fully awake despite the limited amount of sleep that most of them had had throughout the night. Anakin himself had in fact managed to get some sleep after a while, but only after he and the rest of his team had gone over several ideas for how to go about bringing Palpatine to justice, and overcoming the various challenges that would lie ahead for that.

In the end, they had all decided to go to bed when they saw that little Numa and the newly digivolved Tsunomon had both already nodded off. Numa had her new Digimon in her arms like a small cuddly toy, and the blade sticking out of Tsunomon's head was resting against Numa's cheek in a position that was, quite frankly, terrifying. Aayla had used the Force to move Tsunomon into a better position without waking him up, before the Tenacious Ten had all fallen asleep where they sat, leaning against the rocks.

Anakin remembered the feeling of contentment he had felt, surrounded by the majority of his family. If Padmé had been there, it would have been a perfect moment.

But now, with the sun up and the Jedi gathering for another conference call, the various members of the Tenacious Ten exchanged glances. They had all managed to agree on a plan the last night. It would need some fine tooth-combing, but they had done what Qui-Gon had said and mulled over their past adventures, and how they might be able to help them.

Eventually, when Yoda hobbled his way towards the table, he tapped his stick on the ground and said, "Gathered, we are. Initiate the call, if you will, Knight Allie. See who survived the night, we will."

"Oh, that's just morbid thinking," Obi-Wan shook his head, as Stass leaned over and activated the controls.

One by one, the holograms appeared once more, though nobody greeted one another this time. They were all too busy waiting until everyone was present with a slight agitation, and there was a good reason for it. After all, the majority of the Galaxy would now be hunting down the Jedi – their lives would constantly be in peril from this moment on.

However, after Saesee Tiin's hologram appeared, that meant that everyone was there. There were sounds of relief from around the table, before Yoda said, "A pleasure, it is, to see us all here. A night of rest, we have had, and time to think, some of us may have had." His yellow eyes rotated towards the Tenacious Ten, as if he knew what they had been doing last night, before he asked. "Come up with a plan, did any of you?"

"I am afraid to say that I came up empty, Master Yoda," Mace Windu informed them. "Quite frankly, this is perhaps one of the most difficult things that we have had to face in the history of the Jedi Order, and... well, I'm at a loss."

"It would help if we knew more about what was going on at Coruscant," Plo Koon observed. "What news of our spy, Little 'Soka?"

"We haven't received any further communication from Senator Chuchi yet, Master Plo," Ahsoka shook her head. "She'll get in contact with us when something new develops, I'm sure. In the meantime though, we might have a little something."

"A little something?" Oppo Rancisis asked. "You might have to be a bit more specific, Padawan?"

"With regards to the state of the Galaxy, Master Rancisis," Barriss replied. "We all gave it much thought last night and, well... we may have come up with a plan on what we have to do next."

"It's not a perfect plan, mind you," Renamon raised a paw. "I don't think it would be possible to come up with a perfect plan even if we knew all the variables, but, if it works, we might just see Palpatine off his thrown far sooner than he might expect."

"And it is open to altercation if new things crop up during our preparations," said Henry.

"I had a feeling you guys would come up with something," Obi-Wan smiled. He himself was feeling quite content considering the talk he had had with Anakin last night, and the communication with his former Master. Qui-Gon had left him with one final message before he had vanished into thin air:-

"Believe in them, Obi-Wan. Believe in them. No matter what decisions they make."

It may have sounded slightly ominous, but Obi-Wan did not need to be told who Qui-Gon had been referring to.

Luminara gave a wry half-smile and said imploringly to Barriss, "This isn't going to be one of those mad schemes that Skywalker and the Digimon usually come up with, is it? I'm not quite sure I could take one of those on the scale that we're talking about."

"No," Barriss shook her head.

"Well, that's a relief," Ki-Adi-Mundi chuckled.

"Well, maybe a little," Barriss held two fingers close together and smirked.

"I think she means maybe a lot," Terriermon added. "But it is, actually surprisingly simple, and I think that it's got a good chance of working once we've got a few of the details sorted out. It's not completely filled up yet, but its a start."

"Well, it's got my vote," Quinlan raised his hand as if he were in congress. "I mean, anything's better than sitting around trying to come up with something for days on end while Palpatine expands his power all the time. Besides, Aayla's with them. How insane can it be?"

"This from the man who was rescued from falling to the Dark Side because his own Padawan crept into the base of the Dark Acolytes, dressed as a slave-girl and completely and utterly unarmed?" asked Eeth Koth.

"Exactly," nodded Quinlan with an insane grin. "I say go for it."

"You would, Master," Aayla laughed. "You would."

"Agree with Quinlan, I do," Yoda nodded. "Defer to the expertise of the Digimon and the Jedi that know them best, I will."

"Very well," nodded Mace. "Alright then, Skywalker, Secura. Let's here the plan from the two of you."

Aayla and Anakin nodded to one another, before Anakin said, "Well, first we need to expand our numbers," and he began keying in several additional holograms into the holotable, pulling up images of various planets as he and Aayla outlined the basic plan to the attentive Jedi Masters and clones crowded around the table. Nobody interrupted. Nobody spoke. They all just listened as the two eldest Jedi of the Tenacious Ten gave them the details.

* * *

When they had finished, Saesee Tiin murmured, "Well, some parts of that plan were definitely to my liking."

"And I'm guessing that the parts that weren't," Kit went on, "Are the parts that were incredibly dangerous and insane, right?"

"Something like that," nodded Saesee.

"I won't say it's our only hope, Masters, because it probably isn't," said Lopmon. "But it's the best plan that we came up with, and we spent several hours thinking on various schemes for our next move. And, if it works, we can nip the Empire in the bud. Just as Palpatine struck fast before we could strike at him, we can do the same and hit him hard before he can overwhelm the Galaxy with his Empire."

"Would it not be better to wait a while and gather our strength?" asked Oppo after a moment. "This sounds a little rushed to me."

"Actually, Master Rancisis, I agree with them," Plo stepped in. "We may be able to gather our numbers and find more surviving Jedi if we waited longer, but Palpatine is, at present, far stronger than we are and while we gather, so would he. The longer we wait, the more of a threat he becomes. I suggest that we move forward with their plan. It might just give us a chance."

"I agree," Adi Gallia nodded. "The chances are that he knows we eluded him by now. He will be accelerating his own plans in an attempt to catch us and we must do the same. This plan may be slightly... or rather, very... aggressive, but I believe it has a chance of working."

"I have see what happens when a combination of strength and strategy, like this plan, is put into effect by this group," Ki-Adi-Mundi chipped in. "I have seen what happens when the Digimon use their power alone to bring down the enemy defences. This plan is hardly in keeping with our Jedi way as peacekeepers, but if it is indeed our best shot..."

"Change, the Jedi Order must," Yoda murmured. "Too lenient, we have become. Too disinclined to protest against the Chancellor, we were. But now, agree, I do. Strike hard and fast, we must, if we are to prevent a Galaxy-wide age of suffering and death. My vote, this plan has." He looked up at the group and said, "Knew that you would find a way, I did. And this plan, simple yet brilliant, it is."

"It's not totally refined though, Master," pointed out Anakin. "For instance, if it is to work, we're going to need to find a large defensible structure like a city or something like that, only where there are no people to get in the way. It also needs to be in the right location if the second stage of the plan is to be carried out quickly."

"Well, there are many abandoned cities and monasteries and other such places throughout the Galaxy," Mace observed. "Where do you propose to begin the plan?"

"We don't know, Master," Anakin shook his head. "We were still figuring that out."

"Hmm," Yoda shut his eyes, and seemed to commune with the Force, drawing all eyes towards him. After a pause, he said, "Perhaps a solution to this problem, I have." He opened his eyes and said, "Close to Coruscant, we must be, yes?"

"Yes, master," nodded Aayla. "Close enough for a fast hyperspace journey at any rate. We considered some planets of major hyperspace lanes, but all the ones we came up with would still take several hours to reach the capital."

"Then perhaps use a different planet, we should," Yoda nodded. "To Tython, we must go."

"Tython," breathed Anakin, feeling an urge to smack himself in the forehead. "Of course."

"Well, this is going to be an interesting turnabout," Obi-Wan observed.

"What's Tython?" asked Lopmon, looking around at the sea of faces that were all wearing slightly wry expressions. "Is it important?"

"Not now, it isn't," Barriss replied. "But in terms of history, its a monumental planet. It's where the Jedi Order was founded thousands of years ago."

"Whoa," blinked Terriermon. "That's big. That's enormous."

"Indeed," nodded Stass. "The first beings who discovered their Force-sensitivity lived on that planet, and they became the Jedi Order as they began to explore further across the Galaxy. The planet itself is practically slap-bang in the middle of the Deep Core, where almost no sentient life-forms live, but in Galaxy-wide terms it is really close to Coruscant. There's almost nothing there but forest and a tiny amount of settlers, but perhaps the most important part for this plan is that there is a large, abandoned Jedi Temple on the surface of that world."

"But that's perfect," Henry said. "Provided we have the right numbers, that should make the plan work to a tee. And if there's almost nobody there, it may take a while before word of our presence their reaches the Empire."

"During which time we can go about fulfilling the rest of the preparations necessary for our plan to work," nodded Renamon. "This is good."

"So, does this mean the plan is a go-ahead?" asked Ahsoka.

"As long as it receives approval from all of us, it does, Padawan Tano," Mace put in. "We have already received the opinions of some of us, and I will say that I believe this plan to be our best shot. What say the rest of you?"

"It makes sense for the Jedi Order to use our homeworld to make a comeback at the Galaxy," nodded Luminara. "I say that we do this as well."

One by one, various members of the Jedi Order gave their assent, until the holotable was surrounded with approval. Every single member gave their vote in the affirmative, though it was unclear which of them actually liked the plan and which of them merely thought it was their best hope.

Before anyone could say anything else, though, Aayla turned to her left and said, "What about you, Commander Bly? What do you have to say on this matter?"

"Me, sir?" Bly looked startled.

"Yes, you," nodded Aayla. "And the rest of your brothers. This is a rebellion that you all chose to join instead of merely being bred for it. Therefore, your opinion counts as much as ours as far as I can see."

The clones were all touched by her words, but Bly merely nodded firmly and said, "We'll follow you and fight for you anywhere, General Secura. It doesn't matter what hellholes we have to crawl through, we will fight alongside the Jedi until our last breaths. Each and every last one of us."

There was resounding agreement from all the clones, and Aayla smiled at them, before turning back to the table. The Twi'lek was receiving congratulatory wavelengths from the rest of her mind-link for making the clones feel better about their decision in any way that she could and get them involved more in the proceedings.

"It is decided then," Shaak Ti nodded. "I should mention that I received a message from the Delta Squad last night. Apparently they've returned from their mission and have decided to join our cause as well."

"Well, that just works out extremely well indeed," Anakin grinned.

"Indeed," nodded Mace. "Well, if this is indeed our plan for striking back against the Empire, then we should put it into effect immediately. I shall head for Tython immediately and I am sure that the majority of you will do the same. We will rendezvous together at the Temple there. It will be our last stronghold. For if this goes wrong..." he sighed and said, "There may be no hope for the Galaxy."

"And yet, if we don't do it," Kit agreed. "The exact same thing could be said."

"You know what you have to do then, Kit?" asked Renamon.

"Oh, I am fully prepared to play my part," nodded Kit, his grin springing back into place. "I must say, I actually feel privileged to be a reasonably large part of the first stage. I will do my best not to let you guys down."

"The trick will be if _they_ think the same way," Anakin nodded. He turned to Obi-Wan and said, "Master, would you care to join Ahsoka and I on our little part to play in all of this."

"You mean the most insanely dangerous part of the whole thing?" Obi-Wan asked. "Sure. Why not? After all, since Aayla, Barriss and the Digimon are going to be occupied elsewhere, somebody needs to watch your backs and make sure you stay out of trouble."

"I would have thought you realised by now that trouble follows us regardless of whether you're there or not, Master Kenobi," Ahsoka chuckled.

"Yes, well," nodded Obi-Wan. "I shall put faith in your plan and go along with it all the same."

"Thanks, Master," nodded Anakin. "Master Ti, where shall we rendezvous with you?"

"I am currently quite close to the Rishi system," Shaak Ti replied. "I suggest that we rendezvous there. If we really are going to go through with this, that is."

"We are," nodded Anakin.

"I should point out that is potentially the most dangerous time of all to be doing this," Shaak Ti replied.

"That'll just make things more entertaining," Anakin replied.

Barriss turned to Lopmon and Suzie and said, "Are you two feeling up to a little trip into familiar territory then?"

"Yeah, I'm game," nodded Suzie. "After all, we're not exactly going to be going very far away from where we land this time, are we?"

"We weren't planning on doing that last time," Lopmon murmured. "Nevertheless, we are ready for this. And what about you Chewbacca. You will be probably be quite an influential part of this section of the plan."

"Ah ohahanan waoo scro wahuaoro," Chewbacca replied solemnly.

Lopmon smiled and said, "Thank you."

"And you four are coming with me," Aayla observed, looking to Renamon, Terriermon and their Tamers. "This is probably going to be quite a tough one."

"Don't worry about us," Rika smirked. "This will _really_ be a kick in the teeth for Palpatine. And if I can't deliver that kick in person, then this will do just fine."

"Things are going to get interesting _very_ quickly at this rate," Henry pointed out.

"Momentai, Henry," Terriermon grinned. "It's going to be exciting as well. Besides, you like interesting. You wouldn't spend all hours absorbed in books if you didn't."

"Interesting can have multiple meanings," Henry murmured.

"And are you ready for this, Bly?" Aayla asked.

"Well, its been a while since I last saw them," Bly shrugged. "We'll be right with you, General. Though there are a couple of moments on that planet that I would rather forget about."

"Wait a minute," Suzie piped up. "What are we going to do with Numa?" A large number of faces turned to the little Twi'lek girl standing nearby with her new partner, Tsunomon, trying to talk with Waxer and Boil. "Can she come with us?"

"I don't think that would be a good idea, Suzie," Renamon shook her head. "Considering the plan we've chosen, we're not going to have the time to train her up or give her the experience needed for Tsunomon to reach the higher levels. We should leave her here, where she'll be safer."

"But she was given the D-Arc because she wanted to help," Suzie protested.

"Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that she can yet," Lopmon placed an ear on her partner's shoulder. "She'll be fine here. She'll have plenty of company with Tsunomon around, and the Digi-Gnome can stay as well. A battlefield is no place for one of them either, after all."

Suzie bit her lip, but nodded, knowing full well they were right. If everything went according to plan, they would be in for the fight of their lives within a couple of days at most. There was no way they knew of that would allow Numa to become a strong battler in that time.

"Then, go you must," Yoda indicated the skies above. "Everyone without a job, to Tython, they must go. Join them, I will, once disposed of the rest of the younglings, we have. The rest of you, carry out your missions, you must."

"Alright," nodded Anakin. "Barriss, Suzie, Lopmon, you guys take the _Resolute_. Boomer, you go with them and help them out. Ahsoka, Obi-Wan and I will take the _Twilight_ for our little mission. We're going to need a lot more stealth than a cruiser allows."

"Gotcha, General," nodded Sergeant Boomer.

"We'll try not to scratch the paint," Barriss chuckled.

"You better not," Anakin glared at her, "or Admiral Yularen will have your hides."

"Cody," Obi-Wan turned to his own commander. "Pick someone to take charge of the 212th and go with Master Yoda to Tython. You and Rex can come with us. We may need your help on this mission."

"Copy that, sir," Cody nodded, as he and Rex saluted and turned to carry out orders.

"May the Force be with you all," Mace said, and the sentiment was echoed by a large majority of the holographic Jedi. A few moments later, they vanished, and this area of Saleucami became a bustle of activity as everyone moved to get going.

For better or for worse, Galaxy-wide developments were about to be set rolling, and when it began to move, it was really going to snowball.

* * *

It was not long later before the _Intrepid_ was cruising through hyperspace, marking the beginning of the Tenacious Ten splitting up once again, this time more so than ever. There was a lot of Galaxy to cover, so the various members of the group were moving in different directions right across the Galaxy.

Aayla's flagship contained Aayla herself, naturally. The Twi'lek was standing in the middle of the bridge, surveying the clones faithfully working at their stations to steer the vast ship through the hyperspace lanes and into the far Outer Rim practically at the other side of the Galaxy to Saleucami. They had a lot of ground to cover, but the clones were setting to it with a will.

Aayla had a sad smile on her face, wondering, like everyone else, how things could have turned around so quickly. She had been hoping that when the war with the Separatists ended, she could go back to being a regular Jedi, albeit still one with attachments. But it seemed that future was denied to all of them for the foreseeable future. They had just switched opponents. The majority of the Separatists had been picked off. Now, it was a matter of facing off against the Empire.

The clones that were working around her deserved better than this. They were all so loyal to both her and the Jedi as a whole, taking themselves out of the Grand Army of the Republic just to continue to help her. Like it or not, Aayla was still their General, and as their General, she was going to do everything she could to see them through the difficult times that lay ahead. And every clone that she lost in any upcoming battles, she would remember.

She turned around and addressed her Commander. "Bly, have you sent out the word yet?"

"Yes, General Secura," nodded the clone. "Deviss and I have been working together to redirect any remaining 327th clones towards Tython. We've sent them the co-ordinates that Master Yoda gave us as well. Hopefully, they'll arrive there before we do."

"Good," nodded Aayla solemnly.

Bly caught her expression and said, "Something on your mind, General?"

"Isn't there something on all our minds right now, Bly?" asked the Twi'lek. She sighed and said, "There's definitely something on mine. I cannot help but think that I may be sending countless clones under my command to death with this move." She shook her head and said, "The plan we've constructed may be elaborate, but it will also involve a lot of fighting. Clones are going to die. On both sides of the conflict. I still wonder if I have any right to decide the fate of hundreds of men like this."

Bly looked sympathetic, but he was quick to stop Aayla's thought processes in her tracks by saying, "Don't think like that... Aayla. You've never treated us like war tools before, so don't think that you're doing so now. This is the reality of war after all. We all know the risks. We all know there's a chance that we might not make it out of this situation alive, but we're all still prepared to go through with it, for what we believe in and for all of you."

Aayla smiled, but she still said, "I understand that you feel that way, Bly. But are you sure the rest of the men feel the same way?"

"Let's ask them," Bly shrugged, and turned to the nearest clone. "Hey, Rich. What do you make of all this? You prepared to do what you have to do to win this fight, even if death may be waiting to snatch you up?"

"Yes, sir," nodded Rich, with determination. "There are so many factors that are making me strive for victory against the Empire that I won't even bother trying to list them. I will follow General Secura's commands."

"Good man," nodded Bly. "And you, Max?"

"I may be more of a field medic that a proper soldier," Max nodded. "But I too am aware of the risks involved and I will gladly put my life on the line to bring about the Galaxy that General Secura believes in."

"You see, Aayla," Bly gestured. "Every clone here feels the same way. I know you're trying to think of our best interests and all, but this is still a war situation. We need the General and the Friend in equal amounts right now. Stop worrying about sending us off to war. We're all going willingly."

Aayla felt the majority of her doubts easing away at the words of her men, and her face was set in a smirk of determination. "Yes, sir, Commander Bly, sir," she saluted, which caused the clones to break into laughter which Bly stepped back in surprise and blinked in confusion. Aayla then placed her hands on her hips and said, "In that case, Bly, I guess it's time I went into a General-like mode. Ensure that all the shields are recycled and re-set all cannons to a full charge. We're just one cruiser, and I remember correctly, we are likely to find ourselves up against a _lot_ of firepower out there."

"Indeed, sir," Bly nodded. "But if _I_ remember correctly, the _Intrepid_ is a tough old bird. She'll pull us through this if nothing else does."

"She may need to," Aayla nodded. "I'll be leaving you in charge up in space while the rest of us head down towards the planet's surface, Bly. You reckon to can handle it?"

"Do can-cell have wings?" Bly asked in response, to a resounding cheer from the clones.

"Well, I'm glad that we're forming a good determined atmosphere in here," said Renamon, as the yellow fox stepped into the bridge with her mate on her shoulder, and both their Tamers walking behind her. "Because we may need the have an atmosphere like this for the majority of the next couple of days."

"Assuming that the plan works that is," Henry put in.

"Oh, lighten up, Henry," Rika nudged him. "Of course it will work. Have any of our plans gone wrong before?"

"Most of our plans were not on such a large scale as this," Henry shrugged. "There are so many variables involved and I'm afraid that if one goes wrong, then the whole thing will collapse."

"This isn't a Jenga tower we're talking about here, Henry," Terriermon replied. "If something goes wrong, then we'll deal with it and find a way to make it work. Hey, I wonder if we can somehow construct a Jenga Tower to pass the time with."

"Terriermon, we can no more do that than you can play a game of Twister," Renamon shook her head, and turned to the smiling Aayla. "I trust that you're ready for what lies ahead, Aayla."

"I'll do my part," nodded the Twi'lek, glancing out at the blue blur of hyperspace that was outside the window. "Though I do agree with Henry to an extent. This is not exactly going to be easy?"

"When is it ever?" Terriermon asked, hopping from Renamon's shoulder to Aayla's. "Momentai, Aayla. I'm more worried about how things are going to get weird soon, rather than the fact they'll get difficult. Has anyone ever done what we're about to attempt to do?"

"Well, I can safely say no," chuckled Aayla. "But, then again, we've been doing a lot of things that nobody else has ever attempted before since we met, haven't we?"

"Oh we've been doing it long before we met you, Aayla," Terriermon laughed. "Though, considering you were new to doing the sort of thing we do when we first me you, you've come a long way. You've been a great apprentice, our young Padawan."

"Excuse me?" Aayla folded her arms and glanced at the bunny on her shoulder. "Your Padawan? Me? That doesn't make sense on so many levels."

"I can always break into the stash of Jurcian fruit, General Secura?" Bly chuckled.

"A stash!" Terriermon yelped and dived behind Renamon. "You've got a stash of them on board? What the hell did you do that for?"

"To terrify you, of course," Aayla laughed. "It was Henry's idea. The Lurmen were generous enough to provide us with a few crates after we left Maridun. In fact, I believe you actually spent the ride back up to the cruiser sitting on top of those crates, Terriermon."

"You what?" Terriermon shouted. "Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Because nobody wanted to have a freaking out Terriermon in a small, enclosed space in the middle of a flying vehicle," Rika chuckled.

"Ugh, I've been infected," Terriermon murmured, brushing himself down. "I can feel it creeping slowly up my abdomen. I was right – I knew it. Pineapples and all assorted fruits that look or taste like them are evil beyond belief."

Renamon rolled her eyes, as the clones chuckled at the antics of her mate. She then stepped forwards a little, until she was standing beside one of the windows. She was silent for a while, staring out at the blue lights beyond. Then she vaguely murmured, "I'm sure that everything will turn out alright, Aayla. I know that you still have concerns but I'm pretty sure that, as long as we all work together like the family we have been building ourselves into since we met, everything will turn out more than fine, in the end."

Aayla chuckled and said, "You sound fairly confident, Renamon. Over-confidence can be dangerous."

"I wouldn't say I'm _over_-confident," Renamon replied, turning to face the rest of the bridge. "Just... confident. After all, look at what we've got. Palpatine may have a couple of Sith at his disposal as well as a massive army, while we have a few Jedi and a comparative handful of clones working with us, we've got so many other things with us as well. It's just like Qui-Gon told Anakin last night. The Force is guiding us, and it has been since the very beginning. We've also got the ancient prophecy that says that Anakin _will_ bring balance to the Force and destroy the Sith somehow. Then there's our prophecy too. It may be a little vague so far, and it may not necessarily say that we will win, but it was made by Fanglongmon himself, who told us that we would one day have many more adventures ahead. And I believe the Digimon God is watching out for us somehow, even if he is in another universe. Like Anubimon, he may be watching our progress. Perhaps Anubimon himself is guiding us. We have so many things working for us, I believe that everything will turn out fine."

Aayla nodded, and stepped towards the fox. "Inspiring as your words are, Renamon, I feel pretty confident about all this too without the need for them. I believe that we can pull through this too, even without the Force, the Prophecy, or any divine beings watching over us. I believe we can win this in the same way that we've been winning every battle that we've ever fought."

"And how would that be?" asked Henry.

Aayla turned to address the whole bridge as she declared. "But trusting each other and using the strength of each of us and the strength of the bonds we share to spur us forward. As long as we fight together, we can never go wrong."

"Palpatine wouldn't understand that," laughed Terriermon. "He wouldn't get it at all."

"No, he wouldn't," agreed Aayla. "But we don't care what he thinks, do we?"

"Not even when hell freezes over," Terriermon quipped. "Now, how about we focus on getting the aid of some big friends of ours?"

"We're with you on that," nodded Rika. "Full speed ahead."

"To Felucia," nodded Aayla, as the group turned to watch the hyperspace lane around them whoosh by.

* * *

As the _Intrepid_ cruised through hyperspace at high speed, the _Resolute_ was still on the ground at Saleucami, making the final preparations to leave. The reason for its slightly delayed departure was Numa, and the little Twi'lek girl was very clearly _not_ happy with the verdict of the Jedi. She had been hoping that she would be useful now that she had become a Tamer, as Aayla had explained, but she was still being left behind anyway. How exactly was this fair?

Suzie had volunteered to be the one to tell her that she wouldn't be coming along, because she had felt that she owed it to Numa since she had known her longest and best. Thus, with a little translation help from Suu Lawquane, who had arrived back from the farm to speak with Yoda and see them off, she did just that.

Numa had burst into tears again and done everything she could, pleading and promising that she would get better fast, that she could be just as good as Suzie was soon, so that she wouldn't have to be left behind while they all threw themselves against practically the rest of the Galaxy. But Suzie had steadily been denying her requests, while Suu tried hard to help convince the distraught little girl to stay.

Nearby, Lopmon and Tsunomon were standing and watching the whole thing. If you added in the horn on top of Tsunomon's head, the two Digimon were the same height. The In-Training in question sighed and said, "Well, I guess this is going to be goodbye then. Funny really. Yesterday I thought that we would be going with you for sure."

"So did we, actually," Lopmon replied. "But things changed quickly. For the plan we've constructed, absolutely everything depends upon speed. It'll be a couple of days at most before we make our move and that's just not enough time. Numa's not going to be ready by then, and that means that you aren't either, I'm afraid. I'm sorry."

"You needn't be," Tsunomon shook his body. "I owe a lot to you and your family. It was thanks to you that I was able to survive long enough to put an end to my enemy, IceMyotismon. And it is thanks to you that I got myself a partner, and that I am already out of the Baby Level. I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Although thinking about it, that's not exactly very far, is it?" he tried to look down at himself. "It's still weird not to have any limbs."

"I'm not surprised," chuckled Lopmon. "Anyway, we promise that when this is all over, we'll return and help train Numa further in the ways of being a Tamer, and you in how to best work with your new partner. We had to work everything out through trial and error, but you have the advantage of having us around to help you. In the meantime, it's up to you to protect Numa from everything, including herself. As her partner, it's going to be your job to be there for her whenever she needs a... a friend." She had been about to say 'a hand to hold' but stopped herself, considering Tsunomon's lack of that particular body part.

"I'll do my best," Tsunomon replied. "But this is still going to be a difficult adjustment. After the destruction of my village I always relied solely on myself. I was... a lone wolf, so to speak. I didn't really get attached to anyone."

Lopmon laughed and said, "Trust me, Tsunomon, if you want your new partnership to be successful, you're going to have to change that. The bond between human... er, Twi'lek, whatever... and Digimon is what gives us our strength. With it, you will, eventually, be able to go even further than you've ever gone before. The Mega level is the ultimate achievement for Tamer and Digimon. Do you think you'll be up to the task?"

"I will certainly try to be a good partner," nodded Tsunomon. "And you needn't feel sorry about leaving me behind. I understand perfectly. From what I saw in that battle before, this kind of thing is way out of my league for now."

Lopmon sighed. "Perhaps if we had been faster in finding you on Mygeeto or if Numa and yourself had been quicker to unite, things would have been different."

"What are you going to do about him?" Tsunomon asked, looking up at the Digi-Gnome that was flitting about just over people's heads, watching the upset Numa with an out-of-place expression of sadness.

"He'll stay here with you," Lopmon said. "He seems to have developed a liking for you and Numa. He can help keep Numa's mind of things for a while. It can never hurt to have a little help."

Tsunomon nodded. "Then I guess this is goodbye."

"For now," nodded Lopmon. "But we will be back soon. Until then, look after Numa. We all have a soft spot for that girl. Goodbye, Tsunomon."

"Goodbye, Lopmon," the In-Training responded and bounced over to her partner. It seemed that Numa had finally given up on trying to convince Suzie to allow her to come, and had allowed herself to be accepted in the warm embrace of Suu. Tsunomon hopped over to her and Numa held out her arms and allowed him to jump into them and join the hug. Lopmon gave Tsunomon a thumbs up as she approached Suzie and Tsunomon winked back, keeping his horn away from Numa as best he could.

Lopmon took Suzie's hand in her own. "Come on, Suzie. Staying here's not worth it. The longer it takes to leave, the harder it's going to be."

"Yeah, I know," Suzie sniffled as she turned away, tears running down her face just as they were down Numa's. "I still don't like leaving her behind though, even if it is important."

"One day, Numa will be ready to face a life like ours, Suzie," Lopmon said as they stepped towards the _Resolute_. "But she's been thrown in at the deep end right now. If everything goes well, it should only be a couple of days before we come back and the danger has passed."

Suzie nodded and said nothing more. Lopmon lead her towards the ramp. All the clones and Barriss were already on board the ship, but Chewbacca was waiting patiently for them at the bottom of the ramp. The huge Wookiee knelt down beside the pair and placed a comforting paw the size of a dinner plate on Suzie's shoulder that practically covered her upper arm in fur, before he hefted her up onto one shoulder, while Lopmon bounced up onto the other herself.

"Ahao rhwo ooorraro, Chuufahwo," the Wookiee said. "Ohwo akoohuwhwa anooaoc ooww cwoakakahwoc wwoorc acworc. Scraorwo rooohu wwwowoan rhwoaoaoworc."

"Yeah, I couldn't agree more, Chewie," Lopmon smiled. "You hear that, Suzie? We're going to smash Palpatine so hard that this time he won't be able to fight back, and we're going to do it for Numa."

Suzie smiled and said, "Yeah. It's kinda Palpatine's fault that her parents are dead, isn't it. Everything that's happens is his fault really, so we can make him pay."

"Indeed," Lopmon nodded. "That's the spirit. Also, think about where we're heading? We've got quite a few old friends to greet when we arrive, right? Things are going to get interesting and this time, we'll be staying together."

"I wonder if they've heard about what's happened to the Jedi yet," Suzie mumbled.

"I imagine the majority of the Galaxy is still finding out about this supposed treachery of theirs," nodded Lopmon. "Everyone's going to be _very_ confused for a while. But let's not worry about that right now. Let's worry more and what we're setting out to do. What about you Chewie? You excited?"

"Rasc ah wohoworc. Rrooahwhrr acooscwo coo coooowh. Oarawh scwowoao huak ohahaoac ohahwwwo," Chewbacca nodded, a toothy grin spreading across his furry features.

"Didn't think you'd be doing it so soon, huh?" Lopmon chuckled. "Well, no worries. Remember that you've got your part to play and everything. They might listen to you more than us."

Chewbacca nodded as they ascended towards the top of the ramp. He was glad that his services had been useful so far – he'd been concerned when he saw Lopmon transforming into that huge angel creature that the life debt he owed her would not be needed. But while he had not really needed to defend her, he had certainly been very useful so far. And that was good enough for him, especially since it seemed he would get to be useful again now.

Once they reached the top of the massive ramp that descended down from the _Resolute_, Lopmon looked upwards to where she knew the bridge would be and said, _Barriss, we're in. We can get going now._

_You got it,_ Barriss replied. Lopmon could see in her mind that she turned and gave the order for lift-off to Admiral Yularen, and behind them, the ramp slowly began to grind upwards and seal off the outside once more, as the ship began to rise slowly into the air. But Lopmon could also feel a large amount of satisfaction coming from Barriss. This was slightly unusual – normally the mind-link took a couple of days to advance to that kind of level, but Barriss seemed to have gotten there faster. She put that down the Digi-Gnome as well.

_You seem awfully happy about something,_ Lopmon chuckled, as she, her Tamer and her sworn protector began to head up to the bridge themselves.

_Oh, it's nothing really,_ Barriss said. _It's just that, even though what just happened was comparatively minor compared to most instructions given through the mind-link, it was extremely satisfying to put it to use for the first time like that._

Lopmon laughed, _Well, you better get used to it, Barriss. If you ask me, the real secret weapon that we've always had is not we Digimon in and of ourselves, but the mental bonds we share with one another, that allow us to know exactly what's going on in a completely different location. We've always used it to constantly take the enemy by surprise, and now you are part of that crew._

_I don't usually look forward to battle situations,_ Barriss replied. _But I think this time is an exception. I want to see how it works for myself. Still, there is a small part of me that wishes that I could have done it without the interference of a Digi-Gnome._

_I'd ignore that part if I were you,_ Lopmon replied. _The end result is the same anyway._

_True_, nodded Barriss. _I saw what happened with Numa. I'm sorry._

_So am I,_ Lopmon sighed. _Throwing a fourth Digimon into the mix could have really sped things up, but at least the Digi-Gnome's contributions weren't all for nothing thanks to what it did for you. We're speeding you now._

_Yes, I know,_ chuckled Barriss. _See you in a minute._

* * *

As Barriss looked outside the window while the ship rose out of the atmosphere and turned towards the co-ordinates that had been put into the navicomputer, the Mirialan noticed Admiral Yularen's expression out of the corner of her eye. The moustached man looked like he was trying to maintain a mask of indifference, but he was still looking decidedly uncomfortable.

Barriss felt sorry for him. She didn't know him nearly as well as any of the others, but she knew that something like this Republic turned Empire upheaval with its Sith Lord ruler must be affecting him just as much as the clones. After all, he too had pledged his life into serving the Chancellor, though he had done it specifically because he thought he had been doing good, not because he was bred for it.

"Are you okay, Admiral?" Barriss asked. "You look a little flustered."

Yularen coughed and said, "Oh, well, it's nothing really, Master Jedi. I guess you could say that I'm... still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I am actually about to defy the Ch...Emperor, that I have so proudly served for so long."

"Don't feel bad, Admiral," Barriss said. "We're all going through the same thing on some level. In some ways, I envy the Digimon and their alienation from the man. They were shocked, but they've all already adjusted to the fact their opponents have changed, while we're still stuck in disbelief."

"Indeed," Yularen murmured. "And to think I once admired the man. I... believed that he stood for justice and all that's good. No, in fact I still admire him. There's a small part of me that still insisting that there must be a mistake. Do you understand my angle, Master Jedi?"

"Oh, definitely," Barriss nodded, just as the hyperdrive activated and they shot out into the far reaches of space, towards a planet that was closer than Aayla's destination but was still some distance away. "I remember how he always used to intimidate me when I was younger. I was never entirely sure why, because he seemed friendly enough. I always put it down to his position of power amongst the Senate."

"But you're saying it could have been more than that."

"It's possible," nodded Barriss. "Now, I'm just not sure what to think."

Yularen sighed and leaned slightly against the holotable. Barriss looked across at him and said, "You know the part that you have to play in the campaign that's going to follow, right, Admiral."

"Yes, General Offee," Yularen nodded. "But I'm sure you can understand that I am far from anxious to do such a thing. Nevertheless, my pledge to serve ultimately was to serve the Republic and not the Chancellor. Now, the Republic is gone, and the Chancellor is now Emperor. I will do what I can to bring the Republic back."

Barriss focused on the man for a moment. Technically, his pledge _had_ been to the Chancellor as much as the Republic. She could tell that he was just saying that to make him feel better about himself, giving his mind an excuse to fall back on. Barriss would do nothing to try and make him feel differently. If he was willing to twist his own perception of his pledge to the Republic into a form that would better allow him to work with the Jedi, then Barriss would let him. They were likely to need the Admiral in the near future.

"You've made the call then?" she asked.

"Yes, General," nodded Yularen, knowing what she meant without the need for any clarification. "What we need will be arriving on Tython with another smaller detachment of the 501st."

"They had it then," Barriss smiled. "That's a relief. Our plan hinges quite heavily upon it. Don't worry, Admiral. We'll get that Sith Lord out of power and put someone respectable and honest who you can serve with pride in his place if its the very last thing we do."

Barriss turned around, but she didn't fail to here Yularen murmur. "Let's hope that that isn't the case."

He was right to be anxious. Even with the plan they had constructed, things were going to be on a knife edge. If it didn't work, the resistance effort could be utterly annihilated in practically one hammer blow. But, if they planned it out right, it should be able to work just fine. There were still a few details to go over, but a big boost to their efforts would be the reward if this particular trip through hyperspace pulled through.

Lopmon and the others chose that moment to enter the bridge. Suzie grinned at Yularen and said, "It'll be okay, Admiral. We're going to be getting some big, woolly friends pretty soon, and they'll be a really big help if they're anything like Chewbacca here."

Yularen chuckled and said, "Well, from the things I've heard, the Wookiee people are all strong. There are many stories that have been circulated about their inhumane strength. And from what I've seen from our own ally, they are not lies."

"Oh, I can assure you they aren't," Barriss chuckled. "Ready to go home, Chewie?"

"Acwoanan roworaac," Chewbacca nodded, staring out through the hyperspace tunnel that would lead them back to Kashyyyk, the home of his infamous species.

* * *

Meanwhile, across the Galaxy and not far away from the planet Toola where they had originally been working, Jedi Master Saesee Tiin flew out into space once more, his small fighter rising out of the hangar of Kit Fisto's own cruiser, as the Iktotchi had been forced to abandon his own when the clones had turned on him. Saesee was leaving the cruiser because he was planning on heading to Tython straight away, but Kit needed to be somewhere else for the time being, and he would probably need the cruiser.

Saesee adjusted his flightpath and spoke into the comlink, saying, "I suppose I should wish you good hunting, Master Fisto."

Kit's chuckling voice replied with, "Oh, I am sure that I will need it where I'm going. It is much appreciated, Master Tiin. Let's hope I can punch something into their...bizarre... heads."

"Indeed," Saesee nodded. "I am going to need a hyperspace ring though, if I am to head straight to Tython from here?"

"You have to co-ordinates that Master Yoda sent us?" Kit asked.

"Yes," nodded Saesee. "They're right here in the navicomputer."

"Good," nodded Kit. "Alright then, I'm sending out one of the hyperspace rings now." Saesee peered out of the side of his cockpit and down below to the huge doors that ran down the centre of the top of the ship. At one end, a large circular structure was rising out from within and hovering just above the cruiser. It literally looked like a metallic circle with a couple of engines on either side and a large beam running right through the middle, spanning the diameter.

"My thanks, Master Fisto," Saesee observed as he steered his ship down towards it and eased its nose into the docking clamp in the middle of diameter bar, which shut and secured the ship in place. As Saesee began to program his hyperdrive, he said, "I guess I'll see you on Tython, provided nothing happens."

"I doubt that anything much will be happening, Master Tiin," Kit chuckled. "I'm sure that when they learn of the trouble that the Emperor had brought to their shores on numerous occasions, they'll be more than willing to aid us. I just have to convince them to join us in our fight off their own planet."

"And maybe override a small amount of fear," Saesee added.

"Yes, that too," nodded Kit. "Safe journey."

"You as well," Saesee replied, before he engaged the hyperdrive. From the bridge, the Nautolan watched the ship of the Iktotchi vanish as it whooshed away too fast for the eye to track. He smiled wryly, his mind dwelling on the fact that they were all now wanted fugitives. Things were certainly going to be interesting from now on. Discretion was going to be called for on this next mission.

Unfortunately, the people he was going to meet were not very good at discretion. In fact, they possessed almost none of it.

Nevertheless, it was likely that their help would be needed if they were to pull through in the fight against Palpatine.

"Commander Monnk," Kit turned around and addressed the clone commander standing beside him. "There is no point in waiting any longer. We might as well begin the journey now."

"Yes, sir," nodded Monnk, indicating the troops around them to jump to hyperspace.

As they did so, Kit toyed with his lightsaber momentarily, before saying, "Are the troopers preparing themselves, Commander?"

"Yes, sir," nodded Monnk. "They're gearing up and will be ready to move out the moment we arrive. I fully intend to join them in a moment and suit up myself. After all, we do need to move quickly, don't we?"

"Indeed we do," nodded Kit. "But before you go, I would just like to thank you for your continued service, even if it means defying the former Republic. It does actually mean quite a lot, and not just to me, but to every Jedi still living."

"I have fought beside you both on the surface and under it, Master Fisto," Monnk nodded modestly. "I've travelled alongside you through all terrains and battles droids and Quarren and many other things besides. The Emperor cannot claim any of that. My allegiance is to the Jedi now."

"And it is much appreciated," nodded Kit. "But I will not detain you any longer. Go and suit up. We will need to be ready when we finally arrive on Naboo. I want us to be on a gunship, down by the surface and leaping into the lake within five minutes of leaving hyperspace. Right now, practically every second we can spare counts against the Emperor."

"Roger that, sir," nodded Monnk and turned to prepare his SCUBA gear, which he had actually not worn since the last time he was on Naboo. Kit turned back around and interlocked his fingers, his numerous head-tentacles flicking slightly in anticipation of what was to come. He hoped things would run smoothly, but where the Gungans were involved, things hardly ever did.

* * *

Across the Galaxy once again, and there was another ship already in hyperspace. In fact, there were millions upon millions of ships currently travelling through hyperspace across the whole Galaxy, but one small ship in particular was heading towards one of the most important missions of all, and that ship was the _Twilight._

Obi-Wan was sitting in the co-pilot seat, monitoring the equipment before him with shrewd observatory eyes. "The navicomputer indicates that it will not be too much longer before we arrive," he said. "We should probably be ready for when we do rendezvous with Master Ti." He sighed and then added, "Can somebody tell me why I suddenly feel an overwhelming sense of impending doom?"

"Maybe because we're about to walk into very dangerous territory, General Kenobi?" Cody suggested. He and Rex were standing by the back of the cockpit, and between them was Artoo, the little astromech adding his own services into the steering of the ship and ready for if there was a problem that required urgent attention.

"Ah, yes," nodded Obi-Wan. "Thank you for reminding me, Cody. I really hope that this little endeavour of ours works."

"Don't we all, Master Obi-Wan?" Ahsoka asked. "After all, it might just give us the slight edge that we're hoping for."

"Yes," Obi-Wan agreed. "Assuming we all survive long enough to open our mouths and plead our case."

"You think we won't, Master?" asked Anakin, the confirmed Chosen One kneeling through a large hole in the wall thanks to the panel he had removed and fiddling with some of the wiring inside.

"Well, that kind of depends what situation befalls us Anakin," Obi-Wan said. "For instance, I should probably tell you that I am extremely uncomfortable with you fiddling with the wires like that _while_ the ship is in flight. Even the most skilful of mechanics can make mistakes."

"Don't worry, Master," Anakin chuckled. "I've got this."

"What exactly are you doing down there anyway?" Obi-Wan enquired.

"He's just continuing the repair work on the ship, Master," Ahsoka said. "Ensuring the plasma conduit links up with the main engines for peak efficiency."

"What?" Obi-Wan asked sharply. "You mean this ship hasn't even been fully finished with its repairs yet?"

"Hey, it crash-landed not too long ago, Master," Anakin withdrew his head from the wall and gave Obi-Wan a look. "It only survived at all because of Terriermon and Aayla stopping its progress before it smashed into the ground. Besides, it was mostly only the outer plating that was damaged in the fall. Most of the wiring was intact, though it was severed in many places. I'm just adding the finishing touches now."

"Honestly, Anakin," Obi-Wan muttered. "Using a ship that still unfinished? If Master Qui-Gon had not told me that I should put my faith in every decision you make until this crisis, I probably would pull us over right now until you've finished the ship."

"And what would you tell Master Ti if we were late?" asked Anakin.

"That I was more interested in making sure I lived long enough to make myself useful than sticking to a schedule," Obi-Wan retorted.

"Ah, relax, Master Kenobi," Ahsoka chuckled. "I'm sure my Master knows what he's doing. You do, right?" she added a moment later.

"Hey, if Master Qui-Gon said I can be trusted," Anakin shrugged, putting his arm back into the hole and winking at Ahsoka. "Then I'm sure I can be trusted. Artoo, can you come over here and give me a hand with this?"

Artoo twiddled as he rolled over to Anakin and pulled a little mechanical arm out of his front to hand Anakin one of the many tools he carried within his body. Ahsoka turned back to Obi-Wan and said, "Well, I'm sure that Artoo can be trusted to make sure he doesn't make a mistake at any rate."

"Yes, I must admit I do feel a lot better with Artoo on the case," Obi-Wan smirked.

"I heard that!" Anakin's voice echoed within the hole as Artoo's head span round in circles and gave off a giggling victory-bleeping noise.

"Momentai, Skyguy," Ahsoka snorted. "Hey, that rhymed."

"It does have a ring to it," agreed Obi-Wan. "But the navicomputer is indicating that we don't have much longer to go now. Cody, Rex, I hope that the two of you are fully prepared."

"I wouldn't say we are, General Kenobi," Cody shook his head. "I don't think that we'll ever be fully prepared for what's going on and what lies ahead for us." He chuckled dryly and said, "You know, I just had a thought. It seems that Sergeant Slick was not quite as wrong as we believed he was. He was still wrong of course, but even so... it's disturbing to know that a traitor like him did have an inkling of the actual truth."

Obi-Wan grimaced at the thought of the clone that served under Commander Cody that had betrayed them on Christophsis, selling out vital information on their plans and their intel with Asajj Ventress so the Dark Jedi could gain an advantage on the planet. It had been why things had been so bad when Renamon arrived on planet while Aayla was defending it. Slick had claimed that he hated the Jedi because the Jedi kept him and his brothers enslaved. In reality, they were a little like slaves, but it had not been the Jedi that were to blame for that after all.

"I know what you mean, Commander," Rex nodded. "When we fought against Slick like that, absolutely everything that we were doing felt utterly wrong right down to the core, but things are about to get even worse than that ever was. We're heading right towards the one place I always thought of as a safe haven for us clones, and now I am actually dreading setting foot on the planet."

"You know, if it makes you feel uncomfortable, Rex, we won't make you go down there," Ahsoka said kindly.

Rex snorted and said," Yeah, right. Like I'm staying behind. If we're going to be stirring up some sort of clone rebellion on our very own home planet of Kamino, then I am sure as heck going to be involved in that."

"Things are going to be very tough down there," nodded Cody. "But we'll hold out. If we can save more of our brothers from fighting on the wrong side of the looming conflict, it's good enough for us."

Obi-Wan and Ahsoka gave their respective clone leaders a nod and a smile. Then, there was a loud clunking noise and a yelp from Anakin as Artoo tried to pass him another tool that bonked him on the head. The two clones and the other two Jedi tried not to burst out laughing, but they all failed quite spectacularly.

Artoo rocked from side to side to join in the momentarily merry mood. Anakin withdrew his head and gave his astromech a slight glare, rubbing his head ruefully. But it was impossible to _get_ mad at R2-D2, let alone stay mad.

* * *

It wasn't long before the _Twilight_ was pulling down on the Rishi moon. There was ice everywhere – the moon froze for over half the year, whereas the rest of the time it was just a barren expanse of rock and meteor craters. Through the window of the cockpit, they could see the battered and charred remains of a long-destroyed Republic outpost and a small, intact shuttle standing right next to it.

The _Twilight_ pulled down and alighted on the ground next to the other shuttle. When the ramp was down and they stepped outside, the air seemed to claw at their skin and try and freeze it solid. For Ahsoka, who was showing quite a lot of her orange skin, it was absolutely freezing, and the Padawan quickly darted back into the ship and found a Jedi robe to done and wrap herself in an attempt to shield herself from the cold. It didn't do a whole lot of good, but it was better than nothing.

Shaak Ti was standing nearby her fingertips pressed against each other and her eyes shut as she meditated on her feet. She opened her eyes when she saw them approach and said, "Welcome to Rishi," slightly dryly. "We hope you enjoy your stay on this remote little crater."

"Good to see you in flesh again, Master Ti," Obi-Wan nodded. "We were extremely worried about you when the order came down."

"I could say the same of all of you," nodded Shaak Ti. "I take it that we still mean to go through with the plan."

"Yep," nodded Anakin. "Pretty much."

"I feel inclined to point out that with Kamino on such a high level of alertness, this is a ridiculously dangerous mission. Getting down to the surface will be difficult enough considering the large number of cruisers hanging around in the atmosphere to protect the planet and sneaking about down below were there are thousands of clones will be extremely difficult indeed. And it would be incredibly easy to get cornered down there, considering the only civilisation is on large platforms above the sea."

"That's all true, but we still have to do it," nodded Anakin. "The more allies we can get right now the better."

"This plan our ours is definitely going to climax with a bang if everything goes to plan," Ahsoka murmured. "Hey, that _almost_ rhymed."

"But it didn't entirely," Anakin put in. "But you're right. That is sorta the point of it all though, isn't it."

"Well, I suppose we should get going," Obi-Wan nodded. He paused for a moment, as Rex and Cody walked straight past them. The four Jedi turned to watch as the Commander and the Captain walked towards two other clones standing nearby, the ARC troopers, Echo and Fives.

"Of all the places in the Galaxy where we could rendezvous with the two of you, this has to be one of the most ironic," Rex said, as they joined the clones in staring at the destroyed Republic outpost they were standing beside.

"Indeed, Captain," nodded Echo, his hand tracing the black hand-print that had been placed on the right side of his chest armour. "This is the place where we first met, isn't it?"

"And the place where the rest of our squad lost their lives," nodded Fives bitterly. "First Droidbait, then Cutup, and then Hevy." He sighed. "The first two died before they even got to shoot down their first real droid. And then Hevy sacrificed himself to destroy the outpost and stop the all-clear signal. And now, we find out that the Separatists we were fighting against and that caused our brother's deaths were being led by the same man we were fighting for."

"It's almost as though they all died for nothing at all," Echo agreed.

"Not quite," Cody shook his head. "They died to ensure Kamino survived. And now, we will honour their memories by ensuring that the planet _they_ tried to save no longer continues to serve that traitorous Emperor. Hevy, Cutup and Droidbait and just three more that we fight for in this new conflict."

Shaak Ti smiled and said, "I agree completely. And now that we're all fired up, let me contact the Delta Squad and let them know we're coming."

* * *

Even _more_ character speeches being given to one another in this chapter, but, let's face it, they're going to need a lot of those considering the massive traitorous things that they've discovered about their so called leaders. But this chapter quite nicely sets up most of the second half of the arc. You now know where everybody is heading, so we'll be seeing what happens on Tython, Felucia, Kashyyyk, Naboo and Kamino, as well as a large amount from Coruscant and we find out what the Emperor and Chuci have been doing with their time.

And is this the end of Numa's role in the story? What do you think?

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Impmon chapter, but another one without Impmon actually in it. As the Devas return to the Sovereigns to give them news, the Tamers and their Digimon return to their world without Impmon, but with his long-time companions in tow. Watch as Lilamon, Wingdramon and Diatrymon go to the human world for the first time, and how the plan to rescue Impmon advances.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 165 : The Human World**


	165. The Human World

Hello, everybody. I'm back once more to give you a chapter which is both serious and, hopefully, comical, as it's been a while since we had a lot of comedy. Not really a whole lot to say, but I hope you enjoy the humour, the family moments and everything else that will come with this chapter, as we explore how Digimon new to the Human World might not quite understand everything they see around them.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 165:- The Human World**

* * *

The atmosphere amongst the group in the Digital World was still a solemn one, even if they had been fired up about the potential rescue of Impmon from the clutches of GranDracmon. It was understandable though. Each of them felt that in some way they had failed, even if the prophecy had declared that they would. Lilamon and the rest of her group felt they had failed the most, as they had been the ones with Impmon and they felt like they had done the Tamers a slight wrong, despite every logical argument they came up with that told them they hadn't.

But now, for the first time, all of Impmon's close friends that were still in this universe were united as one, and that seemed to add a slight taste of spice into the air. Each and every one of them was thinking the same thing – GranDracmon was going to have some serious surprises ahead if he believed that they were going to sit back and do nothing.

Most of the Devas had returned to the Sovereigns to give them the news, but a few of them, namely the air-worthy ones, were still there, providing the Tamers and their allies with lifts towards the Desert Level of the Digital World. They certainly made from an odd procession. Mihiramon was out in front, the tiger Deva carrying Jeri and Elecmon on his back. Behind him were the three draconic Digimon. There was Majiramon, who was carry Kazu, Kenta and MarineAngemon on his back and an increasingly dizzy Guardromon in his claws. There was Cyberdramon, who was carrying Ryo, of course. And then there was Wingdramon, who was holding Diatrymon underneath him as usual, while Lilamon and Calumon sat astride the lance on his back, the fairy Digimon making sure that Ai and Mako, who were with them, did not fall off. And then there was WarGrowlmon, who brought up the rear. The dinosaur had Takato on his shoulder and Behemoth tucked under one arm.

And the motorbike was decidedly unhappy with this particular arrangement.

Ai and Mako had forgiven Lilamon, Wingdramon, Calumon and Diatrymon for trying to do what they thought was best for Impmon even if they hadn't liked it. Calumon had wanted to be very sure, and had pestered the twins for about ten minutes until they had told him he was forgiven a couple of hundred times. Poor Calumon had been very anxious about being forgiven, as he maintained a good friendship with the twins and didn't want it to go away.

Still, the twins had wanted the group to tell them what they had been through in every detail since Impmon had left them behind, and Lilamon was quietly recounting the trip. Everyone else around them were listening in with morbid interest, the flying Digimon doing their best to be quiet as they moved. Even WarGrowlmon was doing his best to dial down the volume of his jets.

"Calumon really came into his own at that point," Lilamon said, a small smile on her faces as she reminisced on the majority of the adventure they'd had. "We were on the verge of defeat, and I know I was certainly in no shape to even stand, but suddenly he sent out this burst of light at us that caused us all to evolve into our Mega forms. I think what happened next was the best bit of the whole adventure. Beelzemon made a massive Corona Destroyer symbol and we all poured our attacks into it and it gushed out the most massive blast I've ever seen. Darkdramon was vaporised pretty much on the spot."

"That does sound epic," nodded Mako. "Wish I could have seen it."

"Yeah, me too," Ai nodded.

Lilamon winced. She knew they weren't really doing it, but those words felt like a slight dig at her. And those sort of things always would until they managed to get Impmon back. She could tell by what she could see of Wingdramon's face that he felt the same way, and she presumed Diatrymon did too.

Lilamon went on to tell them exactly what had happened in the Heavens, including the whole bit about Impmon walking out after he learned of the Prophecy and what she knew about his talk with the might Deckerdramon. She finished at the point when they woke up to find Impmon had gone. There was no need to tell anymore.

"You are most fortunate," Majiramon looked across at them. "To have seen the Heavens with your own eyes. Not many ever get the chance to do that. I've been a Deva for most of my life and I've never had the opportunity to go up there myself."

"Indeed," Mihiramon agreed. "You needn't worry about whether you were doing the right thing or not. If the angels let you into the Heavens, that is good enough for me. It shows they approve of your actions."

"Well, that's some small comfort, at least," Wingdramon murmured. "And I don't suppose our presence would have done a lot of good against a bunch of Arkadimon. I have heard stories about that Digimon. Next to the Demon Lords themselves, it was always the stories about them that terrified the children when I was small."

"Things are certainly going to be tough for us," Ryo agreed. "Even if we do somehow make it to the Dark Ocean."

"You will have the assistance of the Sovereigns this time," the Tiger Deva reminded them all. "They may be gathering forces, but they fully intend on helping you in any way that they can this time around. I believe the fact they were prevented from aiding against Ogudomon really stuck in all their craws. They wish to redeem themselves just as much as you guys seem to. And in both cases, they were not really to blame."

"Yeah," nodded Takato. "Don't feel too bad, you guys. It's not like you screwed up so bad that you caused him to turn evil yourselves, is it?"

"Thank you," Lilamon nodded. "Your support means a great deal to us. I hope that we all become the good friends that Impmon always described you as."

"Yes, but if ever there's some hugely powerful evil guy coming after _you_ to add you to his forces, let us help you out," Jeri supplied with a smirk.

Diatrymon chuckled. "We'll worry about that when the time comes. Right now, we've got an Impmon to worry about."

"Couldn't agree more," Ryo agreed, as they swooped lower. The Desert Level was now sprawling below them, and they began to descend towards the rolling sands and the large rock formations that were scattered across the land below them. The large wings of the various Digimon threw up large swirling vortexes of the rough stuff as they came in towards the ground and the five airborne Digimon landed. Those with passengers in their arms placed them on the ground.

"Whoaoaoaoao," Guardromon stumbled around, his eyes rolling round and round as he tried to get his bearings. "I don't think undulating flight agrees with me. My directional sensors have all gone to pot and there appear to be five Majiramons in front of me."

"Just work it out, Guardromon," Kazu said as Majiramon let him down to the ground. "Get your bearings first."

"Oh, I'd love to," Guardromon murmured as he fell on his huge, metallic backside. "I think I need a lie-down."

As Jeri hopped off Majiramon and landed in the sand, she lifted her foot and tried to brush off a majority of the sand that instantly clogged up the bottom. "No offence to you guys since this is your home and everything, but the next time I see this desert will be too soon in my opinion."

"Oh, we're all well aware of how inhospitable it is," Elecmon nodded, hopping down next to his Tamer. "I won't be sad to see the back of this place for a while either."

Lilamon floated over to them and said, "I agree. This is _not _the place for a flower Digimon. Speaking of which," she clapped her hands and said, "Wingdramon, shade please."

The dragon Digimon rolled his eyes, but he hovered over all the same and held his enormous wing over the top of Lilamon and bathed her in shadow. She grinned and winked at him, and he had to force himself not to clutch his face in one clawed hand.

Kazu snickered and said, "Man, that guy is whipped." Kenta sniggered as well.

"Excuse me?" Diatrymon asked menacingly as he stepped up behind the two of them and stuck his ferocious looking head between the two of them, giving them both the evil eye at the same time. The two of them yelped and dodged away – Diatrymon could be extremely intimidating without even trying. When he tried, he looked like a nightmare creature covered in blades.

"You remind me a little bit of Terriermon," giggled Jeri.

Lilamon raised a brow and said, "You know, Impmon would tell me that quite often. I've really got to find a way of meeting this guy."

"I'm not sure the world is ready for that," Ryo murmured. "Any of them." Cyberdramon was the only one who heard him, but even he chuckled at that statement.

"So, there should be a Data Stream around here that will take us back to the Human World, right?" asked Takato, as WarGrowlmon de-digivolved behind him. "That's how you guys got back to the Human World the last time around, isn't it?"

"Yeah," nodded Ryo. "And the Devas can sense where it is. Is it close?" He enquired of the dragon and the tiger that were standing close by.

"It's dead ahead," nodded Mihiramon. "And on a direct collision course with us. Majiramon and I will have to leave soon to report back to the Sovereigns and let them know that you reached the Human World safely. Hopefully they will have finished marshalling their forces soon and we'll be able to head to the Human World to help you out."

"Are we sure we need the Sovereigns help?" Kenta asked. "I mean, we've managed pretty well against every opponent we've faced before, once we figured out how the heck we were supposed to beat them. Do they need to come this time?"

"GranDracmon is in a different league to anything you may have faced before," Majiramon insisted. "And you are going right into the heart of his territory in his Dark Ocean, where his power is at its strongest. The four Sovereigns combined might not be enough to defeat him while he is there, as he will gain strength and energy from the darkness around him."

"Ah," Kenta nodded. "Okay. Yeah, I guess we need their help."

"Bad Juju," MarineAngemon piped up. Kenta stared at him and resolved to make him stop watching the Ice Age trilogy at the earliest opportunity.

"Ryo," Cyberdramon suddenly growled, catching the attention of everybody. The dragon's large claw rose and pointed across the distant horizon. If they squinted, then they could, sure enough, see the Data Stream that was surging towards them. Unlike most other Data Streams, it wasn't weaving from side to side. It moved swiftly and decisively straight towards them, as it was determined to mow them into the ground. Apart from that though, it looked like any other Data Stream.

"It looks like our ride home is here," nodded Ryo as everyone gathered around to look at it. "We'll be heading back to the Human World very soon, guys."

"Yeah, but Impmon won't be with us like we wanted," Ai murmured.

"Don't worry, kids," Elecmon nodded. "It won't be long before Impmon is safely back in your house, setting fire to your father's underwear again. We'll see to it."

"So will we," nodded Lilamon. "Remember you guys. The last time we saw that Data Stream, we stayed here in the Digital World while you went home. This time, the three of us are coming with you." She lulled for a moment, then said, "You know, it's strange. I always used to daydream about going to the Human World. Every Digimon does at one point. But I never really envisioned it happening like this."

"Me neither," Diatrymon agreed. "It was always some incredible voyage of discovery for me. Not some hurried rescue mission attempt."

"Regardless, it will not be long before we are in the realm of the Humans," Wingdramon said. "I take it that it will not be long before the Sovereigns follow on behind us?"

"They could be here within a couple of days if they needed to be," Majiramon nodded.

"Are we sure it's a good idea to invite them into the Human World?" asked Takato, suddenly. "I mean, if Zhuqiaomon's temper flares, he could torch half of Tokyo with one blast. And even if they were well-behaved, people are going to notice if several huge Digimon appear in their midst, aren't they?"

"Don't know that we've got a lot of choice, Takato," Ryo replied. "If we want their help in getting Impmon back, we need to use the portal machine, and that is in the Human World. They will need to be there as well, if they are to use it."

Takato shrugged. "Just thought I should point it out is all."

"It's getting close, Ryo," Cyberdramon snarled, his claws almost unconsciously flexing as if he were treating the fast oncoming Data Stream as an enemy. Ryo nodded, and Mihiramon and Majiramon suddenly lifted into the air and winged away.

"Farewell, Humans. Farewell fellow Digimon," the tiger roared. "We hope to see you soon."

"And when we do, we shall be ready for battle!" the dragon added.

"See you soon, guys," Kazu called after them.

"Don't forget to write," Kenta threw in.

"Don't forget to... what?" Kazu asked. "Write? What with?"

"Majiramon could use his hands," Kenta said defensively.

"And where would he get a pen big enough to hold or a piece of paper in a world like this?"

"Well, I don't know, do I?" Kenta shrugged.

"Knock it off, you two," Jeri said, calmly, as the pink Data Stream surged right towards them. "It's coming towards us. We should be ready for it when it arrives."

"I don't like it when we get sucked up by Data Streams, Takato," Guilmon murmured. "It makes me feel like everything I just ate is about to come surging back out of my stomach again, and I don't like that."

"Nobody likes that feeling, boy," Takato agreed wholeheartedly.

"It would mean I'd have to eat it all again though," Guilmon perked up. Takato almost fell over and stared at his partner, and wondered if Guilmon had actually ever seen what happens when people threw up. Evidently he hadn't, because Guilmon was looking excited at the prospect.

Lilamon felt something bump against her leg and she looked down to see Behemoth standing beside her. She knelt down and ran a couple of petals along the motorbike's seat. "Don't worry, big guy. We'll get your Master back soon enough." She looked over at the twin Tamers and said, "Your partner will be with us again soon. Count on it. Remember our promise? We're going to work together to bring him back, even if we have to beat GranDracmon's head in personally to do it, right? We've gotta hold out that hope, and make it a reality."

Mako nodded firmly and said, "GranDracmon's going to regret taking our partner from us like this."

"Hell yeah," nodded Diatrymon, his talons stamping down beside the two twins quite viciously. "And this time, we'll make sure that Impmon doesn't try and run away from us again, both because he won't want to and because he won't need to."

"It's time to show GranDracmon that the Digital World will not give up," Wingdramon agreed.

Jeri and Takato looked at each other, and they now understood how Impmon had lasted so long in the company of these three as they watched them firing up Ai and Mako. They could feel their own spirits rising as the close-knit group put the exact right words into the situation. They both agreed with Lilamon – they were sure they would become very good friends before too long.

And if what they had said earlier was to be believed, they were good fighters as well. They might prove invaluable in getting Impmon back.

"Here it comes!" cried Kenta, as the huge energy beam bore down of them. Each of them had been through enough of these things to know full well what it would feel like when it finally washed over them, but that didn't make them any less prepared for it. Every single one of them felt like their stomachs had been grabbed by the hand of some mysterious enemy and thrown out of their bodies and into the air. Even Wingdramon, who hardly every touched down onto the ground, felt like he had suddenly been catapulted straight upwards like a stone from a sling.

* * *

There was no screaming except from Calumon, who was yelling at the top of his tiny lungs, but everyone else was prepared enough to stop themselves from crying out. But that did not make the journey upwards any less chaotic. The group found themselves crashing into one another almost regularly as they were all thrown about like large pinballs. Each of them went spinning in huge circles, and consider what some of the Digimon were like in body build, this was not a good thing.

Lilamon grabbed Ai and Mako in her arms and pulled them close, seizing Behemoth between her legs and planting herself as firmly as she could in his seat at the earliest opportunity. She saw Diatrymon spinning like a top not far away, his talons flailing towards Kazu and Kenta in an extremely alarming way. But, before anyone could have their heads sliced off, Cyberdramon had seized the Ancient Bird in his arms and pulled him close to ensure that he didn't accidently lop off anybody else's body parts.

Wingdramon's huge wings buffeted Elecmon and Guilmon to send them flying, and Guardromon's bulky body slammed into Takato and knocked him forwards, where Jeri caught him. Guardromon hastily tried to apologise, but he was whipped away by the Data Stream and ended up slamming into Cyberdramon's back. The Ultimate turned and pushed him towards Kazu and Kenta. Nearby, MarineAngemon was desperately flitting through the crowds of flailing limbs, and, miraculously managed to avoid getting himself slammed or crushed.

"The ride to the heavens was much gentler!" Lilamon shouted over all the noise of what appeared to be rushing wind and pulsing energy. "I think this is the worst Data Stream I've ever been in!"

"Look out!" Diatrymon cried as he and Cyberdramon careened into the group. As Ai, Mako and Lilamon yelled as they were sent spinning, they suddenly gasped when they came to a complete and utter stop. Everyone was hovering in position, whether they were upside-down or right-side up or at whatever angle they had been in when this happened. In the middle of the group was Ryo, and the Legendary Tamer looked around calmly at the group surrounded by pinkish light.

"Don't worry, this is normal," he said, as everyone began to rotate around until they were all at the same angle and they all, slowly, began to drop drown until they could feel a ground underneath their feet, even though there was no ground to be seen, just pinkish light. But then, the pink light began to fade and was replaced by what appeared to be a dense fog of some kind.

"Wow," said Diatrymon. "Is this the Human World. It's weather doesn't appear to be all that great."

"I varies, to be honest," said Elecmon. "But this is just a Digital Field. The fog should lift soon and we'll be able to see out into the rest of the Human World."

A sudden noise caused Guardromon to turn around as a car suddenly swerved into view through the fog, apparently trying to stop but skidding right towards Kazu and Kenta. The robot quickly moved forward and grabbed the car's bumper, heaving it to a stop as he was pushed back a few feet. He came to a stop right before the cringing pair of Tamers and groaned, "Oh, I hate it when this happens."

"Guardromon, you saved us," Kazu grinned. "Didn't I tell you my partner was awesome..."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Guys! Chill!" Ryo's voice suddenly interrupted him, causing him to whirl around and see Lilamon pointing both her hands at the car with petals splayed and the tips glowing, Wingdramon with his wings flared and his tail snapping out behind him and Diatrymon with his legs stamped apart and claws ready for action.

"But that thing just attacked your friends," Diatrymon protested.

"No, it didn't," Jeri explained quickly. "That's just a car. It's not a living creature. Humans use them as a form of transport to drive around inside because it's faster than walking. The guy driving this car must have been confused by the sudden appearance of the fog."

Lilamon blinked. "So, we're not under attack?"

"No," Takato shook his head. "No, no attacking here."

Wingdramon glanced at Cyberdramon, who he knew to be the most alert to a fight, but the dragon was relaxed, which led the other dragon to believe that they were telling the truth. "That's a relief," he said, as the three Digimon relaxed. "It would have been an unpleasant surprise to be attacked so soon after entering your world."

"I thought it was an evil Digimon," agreed Diatrymon.

"Jeez, if this is the first thing the Human World has to offer then what else is it going to throw at us."

"You'll see soon enough, guys," Guilmon grinned. "Look, the Digital Field is clearing up."

The group watched as the fog began to swirl around them and vanish into thin air. To the Humans and the Tamed Digimon, the sight that greeted them was a familiar one. It seemed that, this time at least, the Data Stream had dropped them off in the middle of a busy street in the middle the city, and there were a large number of cars that had stopped on either side of them when the Digital Field had appeared and were leaning out of their doors or windows and wondering what the heck was going on, trying to see through the clearing fog.

"Home sweet home," observed Jeri, wrapping her arms around Takato's as she looked up at the familiar tall buildings that were looming overhead.

"I really missed this place," agreed Takato.

"Does this mean that we get to eat bread again soon, Takato?" Guilmon asked eagerly.

Takato laughed and said, "I was waiting for that. You managed to last just less than half a minute before you brought up bread there, Guilmon. I actually think that's a record."

"Well, I'm hungry. Can we go eat? Please?" Guilmon gave Takato his best puppy-dog look.

"Yeah, yeah!" Calumon cried. "I haven't had a cream-puff in so long. Pleasepleasepleaseplease!"

Takato laughed and said, "I guess we all do deserve a quick refreshment break. What do you guys say we swing by the bakery – it's not that far from here, and we can all call our parents and Yamaki when we're there to let them know that we're back."

"Sounds good," nodded Ryo. "But first I think we should let our latest guests adjust to their new surroundings."

"Huh?" Takato asked, turning to look at the three newest Digimon to the group. He saw what Ryo meant immediately. All three of them were staring around them with extremely wide eyes, looking absolutely stunned.

"Holy Fanglongmon," Lilamon said.

"This is... this is something else," Diatrymon agreed.

"It's just... so... so different," Wingdramon murmured as he stared up at the huge buildings all around them. "I feel so small at the moment. These things were made by Humans?"

"Every single brick," nodded Jeri. "There's a whole world of us out there, and millions of places like this. This is just a small amount of the Human World. What do you think?"

Lilamon coughed and said, "Well, I think the air is extremely stale here, and I'm not seeing any trees at all, which would suit me a lot better. But still, just... whoa. This is absolutely incredible."

Their eyes roamed around the enormous buildings, examining each window, watching each human staring at them, checking out each car, scraping (and gouging) the road beneath them with their feet. They were blown away.

The Tamers were all quite amused by the Digimon's behaviour. All of them took everything they saw here for granted, but this was a brand new world for these three. Though, if they lived in the Digital World, where the majority of the buildings and settlements were small, comparatively primitive looking villages, they supposed they would have been blown away as well.

Of course, the humans all around them were staring in surprise at the sight of the Tamers that they all knew the faces of by now appearing in the middle of the road with their Digimon partners, but the three newest ones were drawing a lot of attention. Wingdramon and his enormous wingspan in particular were pulling in the eyes, and several of them were backing away at the sight of the enormous dragon. Others seemed to be stepping closer, assuming that the dragon and the others were allies if they were standing with the Tamers.

One person did, of course, jump out of his car and run away screaming. Wingdramon's head followed him and he tensed slightly. "Why's that guy running?" he asked. "Has he spotted danger?"

"No, he's spotted you," replied Ryo. "For all the Digimon incidents that have been going on recently, a lot of people still haven't got used to the presence of creatures like you, or the idea that you might be good guys. He's just seen a dragon and panicked. Cyberdramon still gets that a lot."

"Yes, but Cyberdramon actually _is_ scary," Kenta said. Cyberdramon grunted in acknowledgement.

"Touché," nodded Ryo.

"Ooh, something smells good," Lilamon said, sniffing the air for a moment. Her nose drew her towards a nearby stall, with a man that was selling various donuts standing behind it and staring in their direction, as were all the customers that had previously been waiting in line. Before anyone could stop her, Lilamon drifted over to stall and the line parted in front of her, as she picked up one of the chocolate donuts, sniffed it and bit into it.

She was immediately rewarded with her taste buds exploding and she squealed in delight. "Oh, these are gorgeous," she cried, and grabbed several more in her petals and bit into several more of them. Jeri reached her at that point and grabbed her arm, halting her progress right after she sank her teeth into her fourth donut.

"Lilamon, you can't do that. You have to pay for things here in the human world."

Lilamon swallowed and frowned. "You do? With what?"

"With money," Jeri said quickly and quickly turned to the man and said, "Sorry about her. She's new. How much do four donuts cost?"

Lilamon watched in fascination as Jeri scraped through what was left of her change and found just enough to pay the man. As Lilamon was dragged away, she asked, "You give him pieces of paper and metal for these things? What's the point of that?"

"It's so that he himself can use it to buy what he wants," Jeri replied.

"What kind of system is that?" Lilamon frowned. "Why can't you just take things?"

"It just doesn't work like th..."

"Diatrymon! No!" Ryo's voice suddenly cut her off and the two of them looked up just in time to see Diatrymon accidentally put his head right through a window of a nearby car. The guy inside it yelped and scrambled out the other side as the bird squawked and veered backwards, watching bits of glass falling to the ground in front of him.

"What the heck is this stuff?" he asked. "I was just trying to say hello and have a look inside and this invisible thing smacked me in the beak."

"It's a window," Takato quickly stepped in and explained. "It's supposed to be see-through so that the guy inside can... No, don't do that..."

"Wha-AAGH!" Diatrymon cried as the claws on his talons accidentally ripped into a fire hydrant standing beside the road, and the mid-sized device immediately erupted in a torrent of water that knocked Diatrymon backwards and soaked his feathers. As he sprawled, he put his foot on a manhole cover and his huge talons punched straight through the metal.

"Is there some purpose to these things?" Wingdramon called from nearby, and everyone's heads swivelled around to see that his head was inches from a set of traffic lights leaning out over the road, watching the light slowly go from red to amber to green, despite the fact that nobody in the cars around them were actually moving with their instructions. "It just keeps changing colour. Is it meant to look pretty?"

"No, it's meant to... wait, stop," Kazu blurted out as Wingdramon reached out to put a hand over the green light. He overestimated the strength of the metal and the traffic light crumpled beneath his hand. Alarmed, Wingdramon pulled backwards, but didn't let go of the light quickly enough and yanked it away from the pole and drop it to the floor. The dragon whirled around in surprise and knocked over a large lamp-post with one wing.

"Oops," Wingdramon said. "That was just for show though right?"

"Look, we don't have time to explain every little detail about the human world right now, guys," Ryo said quickly. "Let's just head for the bakery and get something to eat... and keep you three out of trouble."

"Trouble seems to be finding us at the moment," Diatrymon muttered as he tried to get the manhole cover off his talons.

"Don't worry, guys. You'll get used to it," Ai assured.

"Yeah, but we don't have time to do this," Mako pressed. "Aren't we supposed to be trying to call that Yamaki guy?"

Lilamon looked a bit guilty and said, "Sorry. I guess we got carried away with everything. You said something about a bakery. That's a place that sells bread, right? That's what Impmon said anyway."

"Yeah, we'll head there for something to eat, and we can meet my parents," nodded Takato. "And its as good a place as any other for our other parents and Yamaki to meet with us so that we can explain the situation to them."

"Well, let's go then," Wingdramon said, rising above the lamp-posts carefully.

"Something tells me this is going to get interesting really quickly," Kazu murmured to Kenta as Guardromon helped prize the manhole cover off Diatrymon's foot. As the lot of them headed towards the bakery, Takato pulled out the little communication device to let Yamaki know that they were back, but considering the fact that they still had their old HYPNOS software, it was likely that they already did.

"Hey, guys," Lilamon said as she balanced on top of Behemoth and held up her half-eaten donuts. "You have to try this stuff."

"Is it good?" Diatrymon asked.

"Words fail me," Lilamon replied.

"You are aware that you seem to have some kind of brownish stain around your mouth, right?" Wingdramon chuckled. Lilamon blinked and rubbed the chocolate away. As she did, Calumon leapt out of nowhere and grabbed a donut and scoffed it.

"Yummy! Chocolate!" he declared.

"Oh, so _this_ is chocolate," Lilamon marvelled. "You guys said this was a miracle substance or something, didn't you?"

"Hey, let me try some," Diatrymon asked, trying to step past another car and accidentally puncturing its tyre with the tip of his talon. He failed to notice it though as he moved towards Lilamon and grabbed a donut in his jaws and swallowed it. Lilamon tossed one straight up and Wingdramon veered to catch it, the lance on his back gouging a groove in the side of a building.

"It's unbelievable," Diatrymon cried.

"Exquisite," agreed Wingdramon. "No wonder Impmon likes this place so much."

"Wait until you try Takato's parents' bread," Guilmon laughed. "It makes me feel all warm and cosy inside. And maybe they even have some Guilmon bread set aside for me."

"Guilmon bread?" asked Lilamon in bemusement.

"Guilmon bread, Guilmon bread, it's a load shaped like my head," the happy dinosaur Rookie immediately started chanting. Lilamon stared at him for a moment and then lowered herself to where Ai and Mako were sitting on Behemoth and whispered:-

"Why would anyone want to eat food that looks like their own head? That's just weird."

"Guilmon _is_ weird," Mako nodded.

"But he's cute," Ai put in.

Lilamon shrugged and said, "Well, each to his own, I suppose. But if someone made food that looked like _my_ head, I'd probably run the other way."

"Me too," nodded Elecmon from nearby.

Diatrymon squawked as his wing claw accidentally sliced into the side of the trailer of a lorry. It looked like this walk towards the bakery would be one of the most hazardous they had ever made.

* * *

Seeing Digimon at the bakery was no strange sight. In fact, everyone who made regular trips there had long since got used to the presence of at least one of them, but several of them were now beginning to build up outside at this point, staring at the bulk of the huge blue dragon that was standing outside the door and poking his head and neck inside. And they could see through the window that there was clearly no room for anybody else.

The first thing that had happened when they got there was that Takato had been glomped by his mother so hard he almost started choking, while his father stood by with a hand on his son's shoulder, waiting for his turn for a hug. There was a lot of Mie Matsuki's usual rhetoric, such as, "Oh, I missed you so much," and, "I was worried sick," (which might sound like the stuff any good mother would say, but Mie said it almost every time Takato went out anyway), before either of the Matsuki parents took notice of the others filing their way through the door.

When they saw Cyberdramon, they balked, but welcomed him like any other occasional visitor.

When Lilamon walked in, they looked surprised but moved over to introduce themselves to her.

When Diatrymon pushed his way through the door and accidentally left a huge mark in it, they both yelped and stepped backwards slightly, staring at the Ancient Bird in disbelief.

When Wingdramon forced his head inside, Mie fainted.

When she woke up and they began sharing out the large amount of bread that the family made, Takehiro shook his head as he lectured his son, "You really should stop inviting all your friends over here to sample some of our baking, Takato. We have to sell some of this stuff to pay for other things as well, you know, and all your Digimon friends have such big appetites."

"I do not think that feeding the big guts of those two alongside Guilmon and Cyberdramon are going to do us many favours," Mie indicated Diatrymon and Wingdramon.

"At least Terriermon _isn't_ here for the time being as well," Ryo chuckled. "Or there'd be nothing left for any of us between them. And..." he stopped. He was about to mention Impmon and _his_ large appetite, but decided against it, considering the atmosphere was, for the moment, slightly cheery considering the fact that Impmon was in dire straits.

"That's just wrong," Lilamon murmured as she watched Guilmon bite a yeast-filled version of his own nose in half. "I can't take my eyes away from it though."

"It certainly is bizarre," agreed Guardromon from beneath her – Lilamon was sitting on his head – "But we have all gotten used to it, fair maiden, and so too shall you."

"Fair maiden?" Lilamon asked. "Aaw, shucks."

"I wouldn't complement her too much if I were you," Diatrymon chuckled as he snapped up another loaf in one bite. "Goes to her head."

"I resent that," Lilamon sniffed as she bit off another chunk of cream-puff that she'd nicked from Calumon. "Anyway, this stuff is really, really good. My compliments to you guys. Maybe I can give you some fruit in return on day. As soon as I find a tree that will let me use my powers on it."

"You are welcome," Takehiro nodded.

Lilamon smiled and looked down at the twins. The two of them seemed impatient and Lilamon understood how they felt. She might be hiding it, but she was, in fact, quite impatient herself. Where was this Yamaki guy that was supposed to be coming to meet them.

Eventually, Wingdramon looked up and moved back and out of the way, unblocking the door entrance. Apparently someone had tapped on his shoulder, because a moment later, a tall blond-haired man stepped into the room. Behind him were a large number of other adult people – namely, at least one parent from each of the Tamers. Except Ryo's. His were absent. Again.

"Good afternoon, everyone," Yamaki took off his sunglasses and smiled at the group. "It's nice to see you all again. Though I must say, you really should get out of the habit of bringing new friends back with you_ every_ time you go to the Digital World."

"It's just something that we can't help," shrugged Ryo, with a chuckle.

"Kenta!" shouted the mother of said Tamer, Akemi. "Have I not warned you countless times about running off and going on these hare-brained adventures of yours without at least telling me first? I was so worried about you."

"Sorry, Mum," Kenta replied quickly. "But I was afraid you wouldn't let me go, and I kinda had to. One of my friends was in trouble and all. I couldn't just leave him behind."

"I understand that but still, can you at least let me know," Akemi sighed. "Until Yamaki called me, I had no clue where you were."

"KAZU!" bellowed Takako Shioda as she stormed over to her own son and pulled him to his feet. "Do you have any idea what your little stunt did? We've had to hire who knows how many people to fix the hole that your god-damned robot blew in the side of the house and let's not mention all the days you've missed from school! Why do you insist on gallivanting off to other worlds like that when you should be focusing on leading a normal life like the rest of us."

"Oh, come on, Ma," Kazu protested. "I'm a Digimon Tamer for crying out loud! You can't just expect me to sit on the sidelines while all my friends try and protect the world, can you? It's not fair."

"What's not fair is you rushing off like that when I told you to stay in your room. You know my flowers were totally ruined as well!"

"Ma, they were ruined already!"

Lilamon and Diatrymon watched the yelling with frozen curiosity. Guardromon sighed and said, "Well, at least she hasn't started kicking me yet."

The newer Digimon frowned and turned towards the quieter reunions on the other side of the room. Jeri was in the embrace of her father and stepmother, while Elecmon watched from the sidelines and Calumon bounced around with Jeri's much younger stepbrother. There was a fair amount of tears from the Katou family, but they were tears of relief.

Yamaki and Ryo were quietly talking to one another as well, as Ryo's own parents had either neglected to turn up or they were still some distance away, since they lived in a totally different district of the city anyway. Standing outside and visible through the window were the parents of Henry and Suzie – Janyu and Mayumi Wong – as well as Rika's mother and grandmother, and the lot of them were all staring at Wingdramon, who was staring back. Janyu had engaged the dragon in a conversation. Takato and his parents were still standing by the till and watching with happy expressions, while Guilmon and Cyberdramon were still gorging themselves. The large Ultimate dragon looked almost comic, sitting amongst a self-made pile of bread and tearing it apart with his claws before biting into it.

But it was the reunion between the members of the Terada family that really drew their attention. The bird and the fairy watched as Mr and Mrs. Terada pushed their way through the overcrowded small room that made up the bakery and moved towards their children. Ai and Mako sprang up and ran to embrace one parent each, and Lilamon felt a smile light up her face. Diatrymon's beak twitched, which was the best he could hope for really, considering his part bird, part metal face.

Once the hugging had stopped, Mr. Terada said, "Are you two alright? You were hardly ever out of our minds – we hoped that we'd made the right decision by letting you go."

"We're okay, Dad," Mako said. "We're not hurt or anything, but we are a bit tired."

"That's good news, I suppose," Mr. Terada nodded. "But... I take it from the fact that Impmon's bike is outside but Impmon himself is not here that you were unable to bring him back?"

"Yeah," Mako nodded, while Ai looked at the ground, trying to avoid everybody's gaze. "We... didn't get to him in time."

"He was there," Ai murmured. "He walked right into our camp but he still got away. But then that big GranDracmon guy managed to finally track him down and get him. We were too slow to save him. He got taken to the Dark Ocean."

"I... I see," Mrs. Terada – Haruhi – said quietly. "I... don't know what to say. I'm sorry, you two, but I am sure that he will be missed and that he will be alright, somehow. You never know, after all."

Lilamon frowned a little as she stared at Mrs. Terada. From what she could remember from Impmon, Haruhi had not been a big fan of his, believing him to be a terrible influence on her children and a danger to the household in general. Many sane mothers might take the same approach to something like this if they had a potentially dangerous creature living under their roofs, though Haruhi had, apparently, been unnecessarily mean.

But it seemed that she had changed her attitude a little bit since Impmon had left the family. She now seemed to be genuinely quite upset that Impmon had been taken. Perhaps she was wondering if her cold shoulder had contributed to the amount of stress Impmon had felt which had caused him to run away like this and maybe even helped GranDracmon with his desires. She could see the guilt on the woman's face. Evidently, Impmon might have finally got through to her with his absence.

"Missed?" Ai cried. "No, he won't be missed, Mum. Because we're going to go and get him back. We just need to find a way to the Dark Ocean and then we'll go in and batter everything that gets in our way until we find him and bring him back here."

"That's the spirit," Diatrymon muttered under his breath, while Lilamon grinned.

"Yeah, he won't be there for long, because we're gonna rescue him. Somehow," Mako agreed wholeheartedly.

Haruhi looked slightly alarmed and said, "If I remember correctly from what I've seen on that show that you watch and what you have told me, is the Dark Ocean not an alternate universe that's parallel to our own but is also some kind of lair of all evil things. Do you really think that going there is a good idea, you two? Anything could happen to you in a place like that. It's dangerous and I... I don't want to see you hurt."

"But what about Impmon," Ai insisted. "Shouldn't you be worried about him too?"

"Well, I am but..."

"No, if you really were you'd let us go because Impmon is our friend and we can't just leave him there to get all evil again. It's our... our..." he stumbled and said, "What's the word?"

"Duty?" asked Mr. Terada.

"Yeah, that," nodded Mako. "It's our duty."

Haruhi could see that nothing she said was going to make any difference to her two children's mindsets. Any mother could recognise it when their children were not going to change their minds, but Haruhi had never seen this amount of sheer determination in either of her two children. Despite the horrible feeling of resignation and the knowledge that they were planning on stepping into extremely dangerous territory, there was no small amount of pride in her as well.

"You must understand our point of view, kids," Mr. Terada went on. "If you insist on going to this place then it's hardly our position to stop you, as it would be unfair. But as your parents, we have only your best interests at heart and... quite frankly, we love you. We would rather that you stayed alive long enough to die at a ripe old age, but if you go into this Dark Ocean place, without a Digimon partner to protect you, you could be in terrible, terrible danger. And we won't be able to protect you."

"Your father is right," Haruhi nodded. "As parents, we're supposed to be the ones that protect our kids, but in this situation, we can't do anything. Who's going to protect you in ours and Impmon's place?"

Ai and Mako's eyes were shining as they practically felt the love from their parents wash over them. But before they could answer, Diatrymon cleared his throat. Considering his form, this produced a harsh, squawking noise that made both of the Terada parents, as well as a number of others in the room, jump and look over at him.

Both the Terada parents took a step back in alarm when they saw the vicious looking bird standing not six feet from them. They'd been so absorbed in greeting their own children, that they completely missed him.

"Sorry to interrupt," Diatrymon replied. "But I should probably mention that myself and a couple of my other friends are planning to take it upon ourselves to go with and guard your children while they're in the Dark Ocean until we find Impmon and free him somehow."

"Who... who are you?" Haruhi murmured, staring into the sharp and terrifying eyes of the Champion-level Digimon.

"He's Diatrymon," Lilamon replied, making them jump again as they spotted the fairy sitting on the top of Guardromon's head. "And I'm Lilamon, and that big lug out there is Wingdramon. We ran into Impmon shortly after he ran away and have been travelling with him ever since. He got taken after he ran away from us as well and... well, we went through so much together that we can hardly leave him there any more than your children can. The three of us are planning to go to the Dark Ocean too. We may not have Human partners, but we helped Impmon fight off a great many threats – we're not half-bad fighter ourselves."

"We swear to protect your children with our very lives," nodded Diatrymon. "And I know Wingdramon would agree," he jerked his head towards Wingdramon, who was still deep in conversation with Janyu Wong.

The Teradas stared at the two Digimon in front of them for a moment and glanced towards Wingdramon as if sizing them all up. Lilamon might look dainty but she seemed to radiate a certain strength. Wingdramon looked powerful and strong and Diatrymon looked scary. If these were going to be the protectors of their children... they could do a whole lot worse than them.

"You'll look after them?" Mr. Terada asked. "Never let them out of your site."

"We'll shield them with our own bodies if need be," Lilamon said firmly. "We share a common interest – getting Impmon back. And no amount of evil Digimon getting in our way or dimensional barriers we have to pass is going to stop any of us. We will treat Ai and Mako as if they were members of our own family, because, in some odd way, they are."

"Yeah, you said it!" Ai grinned up at Lilamon, who winked and leaned down to give them both a high-five.

Diatrymon chuckled and called out through the door, "Hey, Wingdramon. Could you come in here for a moment?"

Wingdramon broke off his conversation and snaked his large head through the door again, causing several of the parents to stumble backwards fearfully as he towered over everyone in the bakery. "Yes?" he asked.

"We were just telling Ai and Mako's parents here how we were going to guard them when we go to the Dark Ocean," the bird explained. "You wanna add in your own words?"

"Certainly," the dragon nodded. "I understand that you must be worried, but you needn't be. Ai and Mako's safety will be our top priority, alongside getting Impmon back, of course."

"But what happens if something stronger than the three of you comes along?" Haruhi pointed out. "What if you have to fight something like that? You could all die."

"We happen to be quite good judges of the situation," Wingdramon assured them, "and I am perhaps the fastest aerial Digimon alive. If things are going badly and there's a chance we can't win, I'll get them out of danger in a heartbeat."

The Terada parents exchanged a look, but Mr. Terada nodded and Haruhi sighed, saying, "Alright then. In that case, I guess I can't raise many more objections. Just promise us that you will look after them."

"Technically, we already have," Lilamon chuckled. "But we'll go it again now – we swear with every particle of data in us that Ai and Mako will come to no harm as long as we are able to prevent it."

"If nothing else, Impmon himself would probably never forgive us for letting something happen to them," Diatrymon supplied. "But we would still do it regardless of that."

"That promise goes for all three of us," Wingdramon nodded.

"Well then," Haruhi nodded. "You have our blessing, I guess. Go and get Impmon back."

"Excuse me?" Kazu's mother cried from nearby. "You're seriously entrusting the lives of your children to these... monsters? That dragon could swallow them whole just by breathing in if it wanted to."

"Actually, I probably couldn't," Wingdramon retorted smartly. "It's my exhaling that you might need to watch out for, and only if I don't like you."

"They are children, for goodness sake," Mrs. Shioda protested. "You cannot seriously tell me that all of you are considering letting them go after this Imp-person do you?"

"Damn right we are," Takehiro intervened a moment later. "You may not want your son to grow up anytime soon, Mrs. Shioda, but we have all long since accepted that our children are practically mature adults, and that only they have the power to protect us all from certain threats like enemy Digimon. We may not like it, but we accept it, because that's who they are now."

"Agreed," Mrs. Katou stood up for her stepdaughter. "The Digimon themselves have done so much for our children, helping them to grow into better, stronger, more mature people in ways that we ourselves could not have. To have them around might mean they have to fight, but ultimately, it is all about trust, and I trust Jeri and Elecmon."

"Besides, there is a life at stake here," added Mrs. Kitagawa. "Surely you wouldn't want to make the kids stay at home if they're the only ones who can save this guy, do you?"

Mrs. Shioda realized that she was being ganged up on, and blustered, "But... but... he's a child. He's not meant to be on the front lines."

"Nevertheless, we are," Ryo turned around to address her. "Kazu and Guardromon are partners now, Miss. You may not like it, but there's nothing you can do to change it. Sorry, but that's the way it is."

"But..." Mrs. Shioda floundered and seized an new argument when she saw the Wongs and the Nonakas squeezing through the door as Wingdramon tried to make room for them. "But it's thanks to these... these monsters that their own children are missing."

"And it's thanks to Impmon that we know that they found a home in that universe," Rumiko countered.

"And thanks to more of these so-called monsters that we over at the HYPNOS building have almost finished a piece of technology that may allow us to get them back," Janyu nodded. "Which is something that we could not have done possibly millions of years, if ever, without them."

"What does he mean 'so-called monsters,'" Diatrymon murmured to Jeri. "We _are_ monsters. Digital Monsters."

"The word monster has a different sort of meaning in this context," Jeri murmured. "Mrs. Shioda used it to say that you are all savage, mindless beasts."

"Well, that's not very nice," Diatrymon scowled. "Twisting the word 'monster' like that. Makes me sick." Jeri snorted.

"All the other parents have a point, Mrs. Shioda," Yamaki stepped forward. "You have to accept that the Digimon are here to stay, and that the majority of them are friendly. I too once believed they were nothing more than a threat. But that was before these children opened my eyes. And all my attempts to eliminate them ended in failure anyway. You too, must come to terms with the fact that your son is, for the foreseeable future, destined to fight for mankind."

Mrs. Shioda subsided, thoroughly ganged up on by everybody else. Kazu stepped forwards and said, "Hey, Ma. Don't feel so bad. After all, I haven't died yet, have I? What makes you think I will in future?"

Mrs. Shioda sniffed and hugged her son, and Lilamon was unable to resist saying, "Aaaw."

Allowing the small family moment to continue nearby, Yamaki turned to the rest of the room and said, "As for the rest of you, I believe that you were wanting to know more about the status of the dimensional portal that we've been trying to construct over the last few months."

"Yeah, it sure is taking a long time," nodded Takato. "But we kinda need it as soon as possible now. Impmon's in trouble and if we don't get to him soon, the rest of the Digital World may follow, and then our own world."

"So, what's the word?" asked Kenta. "You said it was nearly finished."

"Done," agreed MarineAngemon.

"That was more of the abbreviated version of events to be honest," Janyu sighed. "The machine itself is indeed nearly finished. If we get back soon and hurry to finish construction we may have it done by late tomorrow at the earliest, but more likely we'll have it done as best we can by early morning the next day. Possibly around thirty-six hours from now if we press it."

"Still that long?" asked Takato.

"It's going to require a lot of careful calibration," Janyu explained. "And even with GranKuwagamon helping us to apply his power to the thing, things are not going to be easy. In fact, there are several complications that are still surrounding this whole operation."

"What kind of complications?" Jeri asked, a hint of concern in her voice.

Janyu shook his head and said, "There will be time to fill everyone in on the full details soon enough, and it would be easier to explain if we were actually standing beside the portal and we could show you rather than just telling you. But it is getting late today and I am sure that all of you are very tired. Perhaps it would be better if, for tonight, you all tried to get some rest."

"You can drop by HYPNOS early tomorrow morning," Yamaki agreed. "We'll spend the night fine-tuning some of the smaller issues that we still have with the portal, and then we'll give you the full briefing."

"Are you sure that you'll have it done in time?" Guilmon asked, his mouth full of Guilmon bread ears. "Because the Sovereigns are coming here soon to come through the portal to the Dark Ocean with us, and they'll be bringing some of their friends with them."

"The Sovereigns?" Janyu asked in alarm. "The Sovereigns are coming to our world to use the portal? You failed to mention that."

Everyone turned to look at Takato, whose ears were turning pink – he had, after all, been the one in charge of the communicator that Yamaki had given them. "I forgot," he grinned sheepishly. "Sorry."

"Well, in that case," Janyu muttered. "We really had best be getting back. We're going to have to make some very fast modifications to the portal. It was designed so that people would have to enter the room and use it like that, but there is no chance of any of the Sovereigns fitting inside that room if what I've heard about them is anything to go by."

"Yeah, Azulongmon could probably swallow both the HYPNOS towers and still have room for the Empire State Building _and_ the CN Tower," Ryo said dryly. "And let's not get started on Ebonwumon."

"Right, then we'd better get going if we're going to come up with some modifications needed for the Sovereigns and their allies to use it," Janyu muttered. "It's good to see you're all safe, but, for now, I must leave."

"As must I," nodded Yamaki. "Remember, tomorrow morning at the HYPNOS towers. We shall expect to see you all there, roughly about nine to ten would be the best time. Now, let's get going." Janyu and Yamaki squeezed past Wingdramon again as they left the bakery.

"Well, guys," Ryo turned to everyone. "You heard the man. It's time we got some proper sleep. Cyberdramon, I'm probably going to need a lift again, seeing as how my parents aren't actually here to pick me up."

Cyberdramon looked up, a piece of Guilmon bread hanging from his jaws. Even Guilmon had to admit that particular image was slightly disturbing – his own head dangling from between Cyberdramon the berserker's teeth like that. Reluctantly, the dragon climbed to his feet and grabbed a couple more loaves in his claws for the journey.

"Uh, yeah," Lilamon raised a hand. "Quick question. Um, where are we staying?" She indicated herself, Diatrymon and the large form of Wingdramon. Everyone faltered as they realised that this was an extremely valid question. Lilamon might be able to fit into a house extremely well, but the other two were not designed to live in a human-like environment. There were no doors large enough to let Wingdramon through, and Diatrymon was a walking accident thanks to his sharp blades. He might accidentally shred the house over the course of a day.

"Good... point," Takato said, slowly. "I'm... not sure you guys can remain here. It's going to be tough to get just one more person in, let alone three."

"We don't have the room either," Kenta shook his head.

"Nor do we," Jeri acknowledged.

Kazu and Ryo were quick to say that neither of them had any room for the three new Digimon either. Ai and Mako wondered if they should invite them over to their place or something and Guilmon was about to suggest they move into his old hut, even though that wouldn't be large enough for Wingdramon either, when suddenly, another voice piped up.

"You can come and stay with us." Everyone looked around to see that it was Rumiko Nonaka that had suddenly spoken, and the woman took the floor with all the confidence of a professional model. "I mean, our house won't be big enough to let you stay indoors, but we have a reasonably large garden, which isn't that common in this city, where you can sleep outside without being watched by all the passersby thanks to the wall around it."

"Sounds ideal," Diatrymon nodded. "Thanks. Who are you again?"

"Rumiko," the woman replied. "I'm the mother of Rika, who is the Tamer to Renamon."

"Oh, you mean one of the Prophecy Trio?" Lilamon clapped her hands together in excitement. "We get to stay at one of their houses? Oh, that's so epic, I think I'm going to cry."

"I take it that means we're going," Wingdramon chuckled. "You've got Lilamon excited now. There's no way that she'll stay behind now she's heard that. Thank you for your hospitality, miss. I hope we don't impose."

"Not at all," Seiko smiled. "It'll be nice to actually _have_ a Digimon in the place again." She sighed and said, "Renamon and my grand-daughter have been gone for so long now. We both miss Renamon's presence in the house. I guess you three can fill in for a while."

"Our pleasure," Lilamon smiled. "Come on, let's go."

"You two won't fit in the car," Rumiko told the bird and the dragon. "You'll have to follow on behind us until we get there. You can ride with us if you like, though," she nodded to Lilamon.

"Ooh, nice," Lilamon grinned. "Why are we still here?"

The others waved their goodbyes as Rumiko and Seiko led the three new Digimon out the door. Takato spotted his mother seemingly deep in thought, and he asked, "Hey, what's up, mum?"

"I'm just wondering whether I should get you to pay for the damages to my floor," Mie pointed towards the ceramic tiles of the front room of the bakery, which was now covered in grooves from Diatrymon's talons. Takato balked and rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment and slight fear that his mum really would make him pay for it."

* * *

The group gradually dispersed to get a good night's sleep. Calumon went back with Jeri and Behemoth accompanied Ai and Mako back home to rest in their driveway like old times. But the other three of their little group made a strange procession, with the blue dragon and the armoured bird following a car through the streets at a steady pace.

Lilamon had mixed feelings about the trip back. On the one hand it was comfortable but on the other she did not like the seatbelt at all and was convinced it was trying to constrict her. She was a little relieved when she got out and hovered into the air again when the Nonakas finally arrived home.

The scene before them seemed to be the most peaceful one they'd encountered since coming here, with the large one story house enclosed by the large wall, and the garden consisting of a large patch of grass, a tree and a small pond with a bridge that spanned its length. Diatrymon stalked through the gates behind the car and the other two hovered over the wall and settled down behind it. Even Wingdramon placed his feet on the ground and folded his wings.

"Make yourselves at home," Rumiko offered, as she got out of the car and waited for Seiko to do the same before she locked it. "What do you think? Will this do?"

"Well, it's not my glade back on the Forest Level," Lilamon said truthfully. "But it's nice all the same. Here," she floated over to the tree and settled on one of its larger branches, placing the tips of her petals on her left hand on the trunk of the tree and shutting her eyes. There was a moment of curious staring, before the tree seemed to sprout more leaves before their eyes like its growth had suddenly sped up. The grass became greener and healthier looking and several flowers blossomed where none had been before, both in the tree and on the ground. What's more, several fruit suddenly appeared in the tree.

This last one made Seiko blink. "Hold on. That's not a fruit tree."

"That makes no difference to me," Lilamon chuckled, plucking off a piece of fruit and lobbing it in Rumiko's direction, allowing her to catch it. "Call that a sort of payment, since we don't have any of this money rubbish."

"Thank you," nodded Rumiko. "Do you need any food?"

"No, we pretty much sated our appetites at the bakery, but thank you for offering," Wingdramon replied.

"Well, I guess we'll leave you to rest," Rumiko nodded. "We'll direct you to the HYPNOS towers in the morning." She stepped over to the door and opened it to go inside. Isis the jackal ran out to greet them, took one look at Diatrymon and dashed back inside. Rumiko chuckled and she and Seiko went in to make themselves some food, leaving the three Digimon outside.

"So, this is where the Renamon from the Prophecy Trio lives," Diatrymon observed as he settled down on his legs. "Not half bad. This place sure is weird though. Did you see some of the stuff they had through those window thingies in the buildings we walked past?"

"I sure did," nodded Lilamon. "And you're right. But everyone's been so nice to us so far, except that woman who called us monsters in an not-nice way. I could grow to like this place, I suppose."

"We should concentrate on resting for now," Wingdramon replied as he settled down to the ground. "The more rest we get now, the more invigorated we'll be when the time comes to save Impmon."

Lilamon lay down on the branch and said, "Good point. Don't worry, Impmon. We'll come for you soon enough."

And the three of them settled down to recharge after their long day, knowing that, in the not-too distant future, things were going to start moving at break-neck speed. But for now, they could enjoy the welcome they had received so far.

* * *

I know the situation regarding Impmon is a serious one, but until they get the machine finished, there's really not much they can do about it, and since everything's been moving along at high-speed in the Star Wars universe and its been a while since there was a little silliness, I thought I'd put some in here, with their introduction to the Human World. Hope you enjoyed the accidental chaos they caused.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Coruscant chapter following Chuchi's progress, as well as the progression of the Empire. As Chuchi and the other Senators try and adjust to their new environment, their new Emperor suddenly declares something that throw most of them out of the loop, and we meet with someone who has a personal grudge against a certain Twi'lek.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 166 : Palpatine's Bold Move**


	166. Palpatine's Bold Move

Many of you may be wanting to see what happens with regards to the emissaries that were sent out across the Galaxy, but you're going to have to wait until the next chapter until that happens. This chapter takes place solely on Coruscant, and it has a few surprises along the way, so I hope you'll enjoy it, even if it is not exactly a very cheerful chapter like the last one was.

Go and read on.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 166:- Palpatine's Bold Move**

* * *

It had not been a good night for Senator Chuchi. It had not been a good night for any of the Senators that were in her little clique of friends actually, but they could hardly be blamed. Everything had been completely turned on their heads, as everything they stood for seemed to crumble down around them the moment the Chancellor declared himself Emperor. It was enough to disorientate just about anyone who had spent the last year or so striving to free the Galaxy from oppression through peaceful methods.

In the end though, everything they worked for seemed to have been for nothing, and only Chuchi knew why that was the case.

The Pantoran had not slept. She hadn't been able to – it had eluded her. She had spent long hours lying on her bed in her nightgown and wondering if someone was going to bust down the doors and declare her a traitor to the Republic, because they had inexplicably somehow discovered her allegiance to the Jedi. She had been sure that she'd heard, just on the edge of her hearing, a faint shriek of pure rage somewhere above her last night, which she would have missed had she not been trying to listen out for any potential threat.

She had been able to hazard a guess as to what that scream may have been about. No doubt, Palpatine had discovered that some of the Jedi, or perhaps one in particular, had escaped his trap for them. Chuchi was glad that she hadn't been any closer. The sound had frightened her even at the distance she had been at.

In the end, during the early hours of the morning when she still hadn't fallen asleep, she had finally realised that it wasn't worth it and got up, dressing back into her usual Pantoran outfit and left her apartment. At first she had no particular destination in mind, but then she found her feet moving towards the door of another Senator that she was pretty sure would still be away.

She had knocked and murmured, "Padmé, are you in there?"

There was no response, which caused her to frown and knock harder. This time, the door opened to reveal the golden face of her protocol droid, C-3PO, standing on the other side.

"Oh, hello, Senator," said the droid solemnly. "It is nice to see you, but may I ask why you have chosen to call in at this frightfully late hour?"

"I wanted to see if Padmé was doing okay," Chuchi replied. "I noticed that she was looking particularly upset at the Senate congress earlier, and I couldn't sleep myself, so I assumed that she might still be awake as well. Is she alright?"

Threepio had opened the door further and sighed mechanically. "Well, actually I am most glad you are here, Senator. Please come in. Mistress Padmé has not been doing very well at all. In fact, from pretty much the moment she returned she has been incredibly distraught." He shut the door behind them and led Chuchi forward with his stick-like walk. "I have tried absolutely everything I can think of to try and lift her spirits a little, but it isn't really my strong suit. Perhaps you can be of better use than I."

"Well, I'll do my best," Chuchi nodded, as she moved ahead of Threepio towards the shape of Padmé, which she could see hunched over on the sofa in the middle of sitting room. Chuchi stepped behind the sofa and looked down at her fellow Senator, and was mildly surprised to see that she was crying. She appeared to have something in her hands – a small wooden carving with a string attached that Chuchi had seen her wearing around her neck on many occasions. It was a Japor snippet, which were supposedly supposed to give the wearer good fortune. Tears were splashing onto her sleeves as she stared at the little object.

It seemed that Padmé hadn't even realised she had company, as she jumped when Chuchi said, "You're going to ruin the sleeves of your dress with all that water, Padmé."

"Oh, hello Chuchi," Padmé mumbled sniffing and trying to dry her face and not really doing the best job of it. "Sorry... I... I didn't know you were there."

"It's alright," Chuchi said as she stepped around the sofa and sat down next to the stricken woman. "Just don't try and clean yourself up on my account. Clearly something's upsetting you, and I think I can hazard a guess as to at least part of the reason, considering everything that's been going on."

"Really, it's nothing," Padmé insisted.

Chuchi raised an eyebrow and said, "It doesn't look like nothing to me, Padmé." Padmé hesitated and her eyes met Chuchi's for a moment, the two Senators sharing a brief staring contest, which Chuchi promptly won as she said, "I'm not a fool, Padmé. Nobody cries like that over nothing." She reached out a hand to clutched Padmé's own, ignoring the spattered water over her skin. "You can tell me. Let it out. I'm pretty sure this is not just about the situation with this new Empire. So, what is it?"

Padmé bit her lip in an effort to keep it from trembling and screwed up her face as more tears gushed down her face. She grasped Chuchi's hand like a lifeline and she sniffed and murmured, "It's just that... I had so many friends among the Jedi. So many... really close friends. Closer than really close in many cases, particularly amongst the A-Team and... and... now I don't know whether they're alive or dead and if they are dead then they were killed by the clones and I don't know what I'm supposed to do now and if they are alive I don't know where they are and I have no way of finding out if they're alright and this new Empire will start hunting them down and I don't know what to do about it either and... and... and..."

Chuchi watched sadly as Padmé brought a hand to her mouth, stopping the babble of words that spilled out of her mouth. The Pantoran wondered if coming here was a good idea, as she knew the answers to all the things Padmé wanted to know but she couldn't actually tell her. So Chuchi offered Padmé the best comfort she could, by opening her arms invitingly. Padmé responded and leaned into Chuchi's embrace, placing her head in the crook of Chuchi's neck and her cheek against her collar bone as Chuchi wrapped her arms around her and held her like a broken child.

They stayed in that position for a while, Chuchi placing one hand on the back of Padmé's head and another at the small of her back, while Padmé continued to sob and stare at the small carving in one hand and Threepio hovered anxiously nearby. Chuchi might not be able to say anything, but at least she could tell Padmé that she wasn't alone. Not really.

What happened next though really took Chuchi by surprise.

"You know," Padmé said, "This little thing was given to me by Anakin Skywalker shortly after we first met."

"The Japor snippet?" Chuchi blinked in surprise.

"Yeah," nodded Padmé. "He made it himself, you know. I was in my early teens at the time and he was just a kid. I... cared about him and lot. He was such a sweet boy. I always thought of him as that same kid through all the years since I last saw him when he went off to be a Jedi, but when I saw him again all grown up, my breath was taken away at the change in him."

"You two really have become firm friends, haven't you?" Chuchi smiled. "Considering everything you've been through, it's hardly surprising."

Padmé sniffed and nodded. "And now... I just don't know what's become of him. I'm sure if he were still alive he would have tried to contact me by now or something. He's always been reckless like that. He should have even been here already and tried to take me away from here. But he hasn't... and... I don't know what to make of that."

"I'm sure he's fine," Chuchi said reassuringly. "He's probably worried about you too."

"We can only hope," Padmé sighed. She was silent for a moment, before she suddenly said, "I love him, Chuchi."

Chuchi's eyes flew wide open and her pupils dilated, leaving her yellow irises extremely wide. She didn't say anything for a moment either, until she bluntly uttered, "What?"

"I love him," Padmé blurted out. "I... I'm sorry to spring the news on you like this but... but I had to tell someone. Please, don't tell anyone else, but... oh, who am I kidding? Please, forget I said anything."

"Yeah, I don't think I'll be able to do that," Chuchi replied. "You said you loved Anakin. It's been branded into my brain now."

Padmé grimaced. "Sorry. I don't know what came over me. I've done so well in keeping it a secret ever since I married him a year ago but..."

Chuchi jolted underneath Padmé and stared down at her. "You married him?" she hissed. "Padmé, isn't that against the Jedi Code or something? What possessed you to do something like that?"

"I lost my heart to him, Chuchi," Padmé sighed. "Ever since he walked back into my life after all those years to guard me from the assassination attempts by Jango Fett. I tried to resist it, but I just couldn't, especially when I found out that he loved me too. We married shortly after the first Battle of Geonosis. You're the first person I've told this to and I'm so sorry for offloading the information onto you but..." She looked plaintively up into Chuchi's face and said, "With everything that's been going on... I don't know if he's still alive and... and... I just wanted someone else to know. I'm sorry. It's selfish, I know, but can you please not tell anybody else about this?"

Chuchi was silent for a few moments. She had had no idea, no inkling whatsoever, that Padmé and Anakin were anything more than friends, and to learn something like this was incredibly shocking, but now she was feeling more guilty than ever. This had hit Padmé a whole lot harder than she'd suspected, and she still knew that Anakin was alive while her fellow Senator didn't.

Nevertheless, she was already carrying many, many secrets. What was one more?

"You have my word," Chuchi replied. "I'll tell nobody. And I'm sure your... husband... is out there somewhere thinking about you as we speak."

"I hope so, Chuchi," sniffed Padmé. "I hope so."

* * *

They had remained in each other's arms for the rest of the night. Sleep finally overtook Padmé and her crying subsided as she fell into a comparatively peaceful slumber. But Chuchi remained wide awake, her mind on fire. Padmé and Anakin were married. That was _massive_ news to her. No wonder the older Senator was so upset if she cared that much for him. She wondered if the rest of Anakin's team knew about this and realised that they probably did, what with the mind-link and open relationship they all shared. Ahsoka had not mentioned it to her during the long story, so perhaps they had promised Anakin in turn that they would tell nobody about this either.

What was Chuchi supposed to do now? Now that she knew this little extra piece of information, revealed to her due to a momentary desperation for someone other than her droid to share in her sadness, she couldn't go about pretending she had no idea what had happened to the Jedi and Anakin in particular. It wouldn't be fair. But at the same time, she didn't want to tell Padmé anything lest she did something stupid in her need to see Anakin again.

She resolved to ask the Jedi for approval the next time she called them, which would probably be soon.

When morning dawned, and somewhere across the Galaxy, the Jedi were outlining their plan and preparing to send out the emissaries to various planets, Padmé woke up and extricated herself from Chuchi's comforting hug. The two Senators quietly sat, sipping a hot beverage that Threepio had brought them, when suddenly there was another knock at the door.

"Come in," Padmé said, and the door opened to reveal Bail Organa on the other side.

"Senator Amidala, Senator Chuchi," the man said. "It's good to see you're up. The Chanc... Emperor," he cleared his throat and said the word as if it made a bad taste in his mouth, "Has declared another emergency meeting. We need to head back over to the Senate Building as quickly as possible."

"Another meeting?" Padmé blinked. "So soon?"

"Apparently," nodded Bail. "Come on, we should probably get going."

The Senator of Alderaan left the room quickly, leaving Padmé and Chuchi to look at one another with apprehension. Padmé seemed to be a bit better now – telling Chuchi must have gotten a load of her chest (though Chuchi had not had that in mind when she told Padmé to let it out).

"This cannot be a good thing," she murmured.

"Most definitely," agreed Chuchi. She didn't say anything more, but she had a horrible feeling that she already knew what the meeting was going to be about, and things were about to take an even worse turn for the Galaxy if she was right. Nevertheless, she had to act as bewildered and nervous as Padmé. And the apprehension was not actually all that hard.

The two Senators stood up together and left the apartment, bringing Threepio with them and moving towards the speeder docks that would transport them to the Senate Building. Numerous other sleepy Senators were crammed in with them, several of them mumbling about the inconvenience of the early-morning meeting. Not many of them seemed to be unduly changed by the whole Empire concept. After all, the Emperor had had little time to do anything about it and they had all liked the idea at the time.

Chuchi suspected that Palpatine had cleverly used their dismay at the supposed treachery of the Jedi to make them grab onto him as a source of hope, which is why less of them objected to the Empire than would have done otherwise.

Chuchi was silent for the trip, but her fingers on one hand remained interlaced with Padmé's throughout the trip, to both comfort and support the other Senator. Padmé seemed to appreciate Chuchi's presence, because she did nothing to break away.

* * *

The rest of the journey was uneventful. As they entered the halls of the Senate Building, the two walked side by side until they reached Chuchi's podium. The Pantoran gave the human a brief squeeze on the shoulder, before the human kept walking and the Pantoran stepped into the small podium that she always stood in during the Senate congress sessions and waited for the meeting to begin, a sense of impending doom washing over her.

It wasn't long before the Chancellor's podium rose from out of the floor once again, the Sith Lord standing in the middle with Mas Amedda to one side as per usual. This time there was no need for Amedda to quiet everyone with a call to order, as everyone was fixated on the former Chancellor, waiting for him to deliver whatever news he had that would result in such a meeting so shortly after the first one, since the Empire began.

Chuchi saw Palpatine stare outwards for a moment, apparently enjoying the feeling of reverence that most of them seemed to be feeling for him, before he raised a hand and declared, "Honoured members of the Senate, my friends and colleagues in this terrible time. I hope that you have had a chance to adjust to the idea of our new Empire, as it is scheduled to remain for hundreds, perhaps even thousands of years, in order to create a new Galaxy filled with the order and peace that we have so long wanted."

There was a smattering of applause from the some of the Senators, with the intention of showing that they had indeed adjusted to the idea, but then dead silence fell again, allowing the new Emperor to continue speaking.

"As you are aware, the traitorous acts of the Jedi were discovered recently and we moved to stop them before they could carry out their plan.

But the news that I bring to you now is grave indeed."

The Senators seemed to be hanging on his words right from the start. Even Chuchi found herself being drawn in, but she resisted it quickly, knowing full well what the Emperor was about to say.

"It seems that some of the Jedi managed to get word of our impending attack on them, and have managed to escape from the grip of our clones in a large majority of the cases. The Jedi Order still exists, but they have been forced into hiding, no doubt in order to plot their revenge against us all and find a way to return themselves to the Galaxy and overthrow us after all."

There was a sudden large amount of muttering in the Senate. Chuchi's eyes narrowed slightly, wondering where Palpatine was going with this.

"Most notorious amongst the Jedi that survived are the members of the Council," Palpatine added with distaste. "I am very unhappy to report that all twelve members of the Jedi Council have, according to our intel, survived. What is worse, over half of them have somehow managed to twist the minds of the clone troopers that have been serving them, turning them against us as well. Also among the ranks of the survivors are the famous A-Team. As you know, they have proven themselves to be extremely skilled when it comes to overthrowing planet occupations that were invaded by the Separatists? How long before they try and come here to do the same?"

The hubbub that broke out at what, for the majority of these guillible, manipulated people, seemed to be extremely bad news was lost of Chuchi as her eyes sought out Padmé. The Senator from Naboo seemed to be trying to hide it, but Chuchi could see that her spirits had abruptly soared with this news. Anakin was still alive and still out there somewhere. Chuchi smiled thinly as Padmé finally got the news she wanted, before she turned back to the Sith Lord reigning over the room.

"Settle down, please," Palpatine commanded with such an air of authority that the hubbub died instantly. "As the ruler of this newly formed Empire, I must be the one to deal with this situation. I have already enlisted a reward campaign for anybody that can kill a Jedi and lower the threat level towards the Republic, and the three members of the A-Team, as well as their newly acquired ally, Knight Offee, have the highest prices on their heads. That is not a foolproof solution, I am aware of that, but rest assured that I will do all in my power to ensure that the Jedi are brought to their knees before they can do any damage to our new Empire."

More applause, which Chuchi joined in only to keep up appearances, but she counted how many claps she made throughout the small applause and resolved to wash her hands that many times when she next got the chance. It would make herself feel better.

"On another note," Palpatine smiled. "I have already come up with a solution to increase the security for each and every one of you. I have with me a couple of guests, and I think that you will all be most interested to hear what they have to say." He made a gesture, which someone that nobody could actually see appeared to pick up on because a moment later, a second hatch opened in the floor and a new podium began to rise upwards and hover level with the Emperor's, except this podium had a large ray shield over the top of it, sealing the occupants in.

And through the ray shield, aside from the two Senate Guards, everyone could plainly see Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress. Their wrists were shackled in front of them by a pair of binders each, but other than that they were free to move about the podium.

There were gasps and immediate mutterings from some of the Senators, wondering why the leader of the Separatists (or so they thought) had been brought before them like this and many of them stepping back in fear. Padmé blanched in absolute horror and Chuchi felt as if something was crawling up her spine. It looked like her assumption had been right after all.

"Though the raid on the Jedi Temple was predominantly unsuccessful," Palpatine said, "Our brave soldiers were able to secure these two prisoners. They were brought before me last evening, and I spoke with them both long into the hours of the night. I caution, what I am about to say might seem like a ridiculous proposition, but Count Dooku here has offered to give us his aid against the Jedi Order."

This time there were several shouts of disapproval as Padmé gasped in horror and Chuchi clenched her fists. Bail, Mon Mothma and Onaconda Farr were having similar reactions to Padmé not far away. How could the Emperor even be considering this? Dooku had been their enemy for over a year while the Jedi had always been their allies. What was he playing at, suddenly switching the two around like that because of some conspiracy he had apparently unveiled.

Only Chuchi knew that too.

"Order!" Mas Amedda cried. "We shall have Order. The Emperor has declared that you must all listen to what the Count has to say."

The noise died down again as Dooku stepped forward, so that the microphone built into the podium would project his voice across the room. His eyes, which had been closed, opened now and Chuchi began to feel that sensation of evil that Palpatine was already bathing her in thickening as the second Sith Lord also began to address the Senate.

"Members of the Galactic Senate," Dooku spoke out, confidence in his voice. "I am sure that you must all be befuddled by this new development. Many of you will no doubt be wondering how this may be possible, as I have long been the leader of the Separatists and fighting a war against you for the past year. Alas, I fear I may have caused many of you no small amount of grief, but I believed that it was necessary for my true purpose behind the war to be fulfilled.

"Most members of the Separatists did indeed wish to eliminate the Republic and take over it, whether that be for greater profits on their part and therefore out of greed, or because they believed that the Republic was corrupt. That was why they decided to assist us in fighting this war. But, ultimately, I was the leader of the Separatist Council, and from my point of view, the war served a different purpose. It was never about overthrowing the Republic. It was never about taking control of the Galaxy. The main purpose of it was eliminate the Jedi Order."

There was a bit of quiet whispering amongst some of the Senators, but they allowed Dooku to continue with his narrative without any interruptions.

"You may be aware that I was once a Jedi myself, but when I discovered that the Jedi were in fact the corrupt ones and not the Republic itself, I split away from them, just as the Separatists split away from you. Only, I did it because I had learned of the Jedi's plot to overthrow the Republic and I wanted no part of it. I went to the Chancellor with the news, but I am afraid I was not believed, so I decided to return to my homeworld.

"But I could not turn a blind eye to the actions of the Jedi, and I decided to take things into my own hands. I began to form the Separatist Council, using some of the wealthier members of the Galaxy to gain access to their Battle Droid armies. I knew full well of the power that the Jedi Order had been obtained with their illicit activities. I could not take them on alone, but I believed with the sheer number of battle droids that were supplied to me and the allies we built up would be enough to overwhelm the Jedi.

"I was taken by surprise, as was everyone else, when the clone armies appeared on the scene."

_Liar,_ Chuchi growled inside her head, but she said nothing.

"I had not counted on the Republic raising an army, and suddenly our battle droids were much more hard pressed to fight against the Jedi, and they had to deal with the clones as well. Everything began to move from there, and practically before even _I_ knew what was happening, we were in the middle of this full-scale clone war. I know for a fact that many of your homeworlds were heavily affected by this whole affair, and for that, I profusely apologise. That was not my intention – that was spurred by the greedy money-grabbers that I had brought to give me the Separatist army taking things into their own hands.

"When I was captured, I felt for sure that the Jedi had beaten me, but now, imagine my surprise when I am released from my cell and discover that the Jedi plot had finally been unearthed. I am pleased to see that it failed, but less pleased to hear that the retaliation also, to a large extent, failed away. That is why I have offered to pledge my allegiance to your Emperor, as has my apprentice here, Asajj Ventress. Our goal has only ever been to eliminate the Jedi, which a goal we share with the Empire. Is it not logical therefore that we should join forces now?"

Chuchi, Padmé and several others were dismayed that the majority of the other Senators seemed to be buying the load of crap that Dooku was spouting. Each of them knew for a fact that Dooku had been directly behind some of the more brutal assaults on the Republic. He was the true enemy and not the Jedi. And yet most of the Senate were nodding and looking enthused with this new development – anything to help them get rid of the Jedi.

It was then that Chuchi realised just how weak the Republic had gotten under Palpatine's thumb before it was turned into an Empire. Only a few Senators had the guts to stick to their beliefs and it appeared that she was one of them. This was utterly ridiculous, and yet it was unfolding right before her eyes.

"You have heard Dooku's arguments, Senators," Palpatine declared. "And both he and his apprentice have already pledged their allegiance. Therefore, they shall now be released, and will assist us in bringing the Jedi Order to justice. Guards."

The two Senate Guards in the ray-shielded podium stepped over to Dooku and Ventress and released their shackles, before stepping back into their allotted places. Palpatine pushed a button and the ray-shield vanished. Dooku rose his hands in acknowledgement to the applause that was echoing around the room. Ventress looked like she was vaguely sulking, but waved a little herself with a slightly smug expression.

Chuchi closed her eyes. She had known this was coming, but that didn't make it any better now that it was here.

"Members of the Senate," a sudden voice cried out, causing Chuchi's eyes to fly open and her mind to go, _No, no, no. Don't do anything reckless!_ Because it was Padmé that had suddenly spoken out. Bold, brave and daring Padmé was about to potentially put her life on the line with her next words – she had always been like that. No matter how dangerous the situation, she always voiced her opinion.

"Are you listening to yourselves?" she asked. "Need I remind you all of the enormous amount of suffering this man has caused over the course of the last year? If he was really fighting against the Jedi and not the Republic itself, then why did he allow the slaughter of millions of people each time he invaded a new world. Why did he invade those worlds in the first place – there were no Jedi there until the time they went to liberate that planet. He claims that was the work of his underlings, but if he really is so righteous, then why did he do nothing to stop them. He could have reigned them in, but he did not. How can you even consider changing your opinions of this man based on his word alone."

"I feel I should point out, Senator Amidala," Dooku replied primly, placing a hand before Ventress as the Dark Jedi took and angry step forwards. "That I actually _did_ reign in my underlings. If people like Nute Gunray or General Grievous had had their way, many more millions of people would have been dead by this stage."

"And what about all the other things you've done?" Padmé demanded. "I remember finding you involved in the plot to turn Jabba against the Republic. You allowed Ziro to take me prisoner with intent to sell me, presumably to Gunray."

"Senator Amidala," Palpatine cut across her before she could say anymore. "I am sorry that you feel this way about our newest ally, but the fact remains that that is what he is now. You can complain all you want, but this is no longer a Republic. The Senate has voted for an Empire and an Empire it is. And as your Emperor, my decision is final. What is more, your complaints imply that you may still sympathise with the Jedi. Do you really want to be associated with that?"

There was a fair amount of jeering from around the room as Padmé stood back from her podium, her face filled with anger, but subsiding, knowing that Palpatine was right and there was little she could do. The Senate appeared to be tightly wound around Palpatine's finger – there was no way her words would have any effect now. The poor woman had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to do now.

Chuchi heaved a sigh of relief. She'd almost had a heart attack when Padmé had dared to speak her mind in front of the two Sith Lords and the Dark Jedi. However, it seemed some sense had been nailed into her before she went too far, but she was already on thin ice. She didn't know that Palpatine was also a Sith Lord and couldn't understand this turnaround. If she protested again, how long would it be before Palpatine decided to... make her meet with an accident, so to speak.

It was official. Padmé really was her own biggest hazard, with her reckless and bold mind coupled with her determination to do good. That meant she was more in danger than ever before. Chuchi needed to speak to the Jedi about letting Padmé in on the situation quickly, so she could at least play along like Chuchi was doing. Preferably before the Naboo Senator got herself killed.

* * *

As the congress session drew to a close and the Senators began to depart, with Dooku and Ventress following Palpatine and Mas Amedda back down beneath the main room, there was one other person who did not like the way this was going. Commander Thire had been standing nearby the top of the room, looking down at the proceedings. As one of the main clone guards of the Senate Building, he had supposed to be keeping surveillance and watching for any threats, but the events in the Hall of Congress had drawn him in.

Thire did not like this anymore than Padmé did. He would follow the Chancellor's orders of course, but he really did not like this latest decision. He had come across Ventress on the moon of Rugosa while helping Yoda. She had fought dirty and without honour and was prepared to assassinate anyone at the drop of a pin. He had only seen a holographic form of Dooku, but it had been Dooku that gave Ventress the order to kill the Toydarian king, therefore he must be equally bad.

And the Senator from Naboo had a point. If he had been after the Jedi alone, why would he order the assassination of someone who very clearly wasn't a Jedi. They had not been that desperate for allies – it had been a stage of the war where the Separatists had been doing well.

He remembered Master Yoda's brief words during the attack on the Temple. Could he really have been right after all?

* * *

Some time had passed since the congress session, and the Senators were still getting used to this new development. While Padmé and the rest of the clique gathered in the aforementioned Senator's apartment to discuss what the hell was going on, Chuchi excused herself. She had to be somewhere.

It took a while before she reached the location that she was looking for, and when she got there, she did not like it one bit. After over half an hour of walking nervously through the tunnel systems underneath Coruscant, during which she tried to memorise the route back as that would be more difficult than the route there, and after squeezing through a ridiculously thin part of the tunnel, she finally arrived in the sub-basement of another building.

This was the place where Darth Sidious had been coming to every time he had needed to send a message out the Separatist forces. It seemed that he had not been back here since his message to Grievous, which Chuchi had been shown by Renamon, but now it was the Pantoran's turn to use the hideout in the middle of the Works. And this time, it would be used for good.

That didn't stop the unnatural feeling of evil from seriously creeping her out though.

She had no doubt that the Empire would now be monitoring all communications in and out of the Senate Building and 500 Republica, in order to try and catch anyone who might be aiding the Jedi, and since her hand-held communicator could not send out long-range transmissions, she needed to find one that did. And this was the first thing she had come up with. It was rather ironic actually, Chuchi realised, as she ascended up the lift, which groaned as it moved up the shaft. This place had been used against the Republic by evil. Now it would be used against the Empire by good.

It took her a couple of tries before she found the right floor and walked out into the room with the large console that Darth Sidious had so often been using. She hoped that she wouldn't have to come through here too many more times. The walk itself had been long enough – there was no sign of the speeder that Palpatine had apparently been using which meant it was probably hidden away. And there was the feeling of creepiness.

She tried to ignore it as she keyed in the code that would allow her to link up with the _Intrepid_. If anyone was there at the other side, it would probably be Aayla, and since it was Aayla that had organised the unveiling of Sidious via Cad Bane with her, that was who Chuchi decided to call.

She did not have to wait long for a reply. Aayla's holographic form suddenly appeared in front of her, causing her to smile in relief at the sight of her Twi'lek friend safe and sound. Terriermon was on her shoulder, which made things even better.

"Chuchi," Aayla smiled brightly, though the Pantoran noticed that it did not meet her eyes as fully as it could have – no doubt because Aayla was aware that Chuchi was about to deliver bad news (what other news could there be at this stage?). "How are things progressing back on Coruscant?"

"About as well as we could have hoped for, Aayla," Chuchi replied grimly. "Which is to say, fantastically badly. I see you're still using your own cruiser. Can't the people back on Coruscant use that to trace down where you are or something?"

"Not if we remove the tracking beacon," Aayla chuckled. "Which was one of the first things we did after we got the message out to the other Jedi. We tossed it out into space via an airlock, so it's probably still saying that we're over near Ryloth somewhere."

"Good," Chuchi nodded. "That's a relief. I just came to say that Palpatine has done exactly what you thought he was. There was a congress session this morning in which he formally released Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress, and the two of them seem to have pledged their allegiance to him."

Terriermon snorted. "They had already done that long, _long_ before this Empire arrived."

"Yes, I know that," Chuchi nodded. "But now most of the rest of the Senate believe, probably more than ever, that you guys really are the enemy whereas the Sith have now become our allies. It's just so twisted."

"That's what the Sith do," Aayla said, sadly. "They twist everything around to suit their own purposes. They do not play fair and have no sense of honour. But they are clever – I'll give them that. If we want to beat them we'll have to be cleverer."

"Well, hopefully the plan we came up with will take them off-guard quite easily," Terriermon chuckled. "Again, that is."

"Plan?" Chuchi asked quickly. "You guys have a plan to bring the Republic back?"

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "We're actually putting it into motion right now. We're currently in hyperspace and on our way to pick up some friends of ours that might be able to help us against the Emperor and all his forces. If everything goes according to our designs then we should have the Republic back within a couple of days to a week, maximum."

Chuchi beamed and said, "But that's great news. We can be rid of this Sith tyrant much, much faster than I thought we would."

"Yes, but don't forget there are a huge number of factors that might mean the plan ends in failure," Aayla said. "How about you call us again tomorrow. By that time, we should have gotten the ball rolling and a more accurate measure of whether the plan might work or not. Because you must play your part as well, Chuchi," Aayla gave her a serious look. "You have your own little bit to do if our plan is to succeed. You think you're up for it?"

"I think I long since decided I was up for it," Chuchi chuckled dryly. "And, just for the record, I have faith in all of you. If anyone can pull whatever you're planning to do off, then it'll be you guys."

"Thanks, Chuchi," Terriermon hopped onto Aayla's head. "Everyone else here says the same thing."

"Indeed," nodded Aayla. "Thank you for the update, Chuchi. We're not surprised by the news, and we'll have to find a way of factoring this into our plans, which shouldn't be too difficult. Executing the plan will be the hard part."

"I reiterate, you can do it," Chuchi nodded.

"And I reiterate, thank you," Aayla said. "Was there anything else?"

"Well," Chuchi cleared her throat. "Yes, actually. Is Anakin there?"

"No," Aayla shook her head. "He and Ahsoka have gone elsewhere to carry out another part of the plan. Barriss, Suzie and Lopmon went somewhere else as well."

"Well then, I guess I'll ask you on his behalf," Chuchi said. She hesitated for a moment, then cleared her throat and said, "Um, it's about Senator Amidala. She's, ahem, extremely distressed about this whole thing, naturally, and... well... she... appears to be very worried about all your safety but... er..."

"But Anakin's in particular?" asked Aayla.

"Yes," Chuchi nodded awkwardly. "She, um, actually had a rather, er, surprising revelation which she gave to me last night regarding her and Anakin."

Aayla and Terriermon both glanced at each other, and then they both glanced to the sides where other people were no doubt watching this conversation. Terriermon looked back first and said, "What kind of revelation."

"Well, I can't really tell you," Chuchi said. "Unless you... know about it already. And I'm guessing from those looks that you do."

"If you're referring to the fact that Anakin and Padmé have been married for just over a year now then yeah, we know," Terriermon nodded.

"Oh, good," Chuchi sighed in relief. "I was hoping you would know already. She's only told me about it though, so I'm sure the Sith don't know about it, but... well, I am pretty sure she would like to be a part of this conspiracy to restore the Republic."

"You want to let her in on this?" Aayla asked.

"Well, yeah," Chuchi nodded. "Not only because I feel terrible that I am still technically in contact with you guys when she isn't, but also because she's going to get herself into trouble sooner or later unless something is done. Earlier, during the congress, she actually spoke out against Dooku, but was overruled by Palpatine, naturally. If she does that again, I fear that she may become a target."

"Getting into trouble _is_ one of Padmé's main fortes," Aayla grimaced. She sighed and said, "Well, she's as brave and selfless and ever, and I suppose it wouldn't hurt to have another inside member of the Senate. We know Padmé can be trusted after all, and apart from her little confession to you, she is very good at keeping secrets. We know that from experience."

"So, I can tell her?" Chuchi asked.

"You can bring her to where you are early tomorrow if you like," Aayla nodded. "We should have reunited with Anakin by then, and we can help you with the explanations, as well as showing her that the Digimon are actually real."

Chuchi chuckled and said, "Yeah, I suppose just telling her about you guys wouldn't be enough, would it?"

"Damn straight," Terriermon grinned.

"Is there anyone else I should bring?" Chuchi asked. "I know that Senators Organa, Mothma and Farr are all confused and distressed by this too, though not as much as Padmé. Can I bring them too?"

"Yes, but no more than that," Aayla agreed, knowing that the three of them could be considered trustworthy as well. "We _will_ need some help from inside the Senate for the plan's second stage, and we'll give you the details tomorrow along with the others. Thanks, Chuchi."

"My pleasure," Chuchi nodded. "I should be going now though, before I forget the way back."

"Alright," nodded Aayla. "See you tomorrow."

Chuchi nodded and signed off, sighing in relief as a slight weight was taken off her shoulders. Then she turned and walked back towards the lift with intent to move back to 500 Republica.

* * *

"I just don't understand what Palpatine is thinking," Padmé murmured as she stirred the drink that Threepio had given her. "Turning against the Jedi, siding with Dooku. It doesn't make any sense. I thought that he knew better than that, and I have no idea what's going on now."

"Do you think it's possible that Dooku somehow got to him?" Onaconda asked. "Like, used some kind of Sith technique to bring the Chancellor under his control and make him do all this?"

"I don't think so," Padmé shook her head. "The Jedi took him straight to their prison when they caught him and Palpatine hadn't been anywhere near him between then and _after_ his attack on the Jedi. No, this was Palpatine's own doing. I just can't fathom why."

"There is more to this than meets the eye," Bail agreed. "If we are to discover the true reason for all of this, we might have to look deeper into things."

"But how?" Mon Mothma asked. "We cannot interfere with him or go snooping for answers. This is an Empire now. If we're caught, we could be facing some very serious consequences."

"Well, we have to do something," Padmé declared. "I cannot believe that the Jedi have turned against us. I just cannot. I am close friends with the A-Team, and know for a fact they would not do something like this. We must find out what's really going on."

"That could mean a death sentence, Padmé," Onaconda pointed out. "The Emperor has declared trying to help the Jedi in any way as treason."

"I don't care," Padmé shook her head. "I cannot just sit idly by and watch as everything we worked for crumbles around us at the whim of one man. My mind is made up – I have some investigating to do."

"Bold as ever, Padmé," Chuchi's voice came from the door as it slid open. "But you should probably keep your voice down a little. I could hear you out in the corridor."

"Good point," Padmé lowered her voice, slightly sheepishly. "Where have you been, Chuchi?"

Chuchi said nothing and quietly closed the door behind her. "Listen, guys," she stepped away from the door and strode over to the group. "I... I have a confession to make. I have... not been fully straight with any of you. There's been no trouble on Pantora for a while now. Nothing that involves me anyway. What's really been bothering me lately is... that I know _exactly_ what's going on, and why the Emperor is doing the things he is now."

She was met by four intense stares that left her wanting to squirm.

"You do?" Bail asked. "How? How is it possible that you know and we don't?"

"I can't really say much right now," Chuchi said. "But I will say this – I've been in contact with the Jedi for a little while before this catastrophe happened. I didn't know this would happen, but I've been helping the Jedi with a couple of important tasks recently. And you are perfectly right, Padmé. There _is_ a reason that the Emperor is doing this, but I don't think it would be wise to discuss it here."

"You've been in contact with the Jedi?" Onaconda asked. "Even though the Emperor could have you put to death for it?"

"Especially because of that," Chuchi said firmly. "And if you knew what I did, you would understand. I can't say much now, but I will this. The Jedi, including the A-Team, are fine and are preparing a scheme that will allow them to unseat the Emperor and restore the Republic. I know you have many questions, and you will get your answers, but not today. We need to meet up here early tomorrow morning, and I'll take you to a place where we can talk to the Jedi in private. All your questions will be answered then. You'll learn everything."

There was silence for a moment, but then Padmé said, "If you knew that they were fine, they why didn't you tell m... us... earlier?"

"The Jedi asked me not to," Chuchi replied. "Even Anakin – they didn't want to put you guys in potential danger. But I've just got back from a conversation with Aayla and she says that they'll need our help to fulfil this plan of theirs, so they said I could let you know. I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner, really I am, but I've been under a lot of pressure recently. Everything's happening on a much bigger scale than you can imagine and... well, quite frankly I'm scared. I was terrified that I would be discovered and felt like everyone was depending on me. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't. But now, you will just have to be patient until tomorrow, where all your questions will be answered."

"Why can we not go now?" Padmé asked.

"Aayla told me they're in the middle of something," Chuchi said. "I'm not sure what, but apparently its important. You'll find out tomorrow, but can you forgive me for not telling you sooner?"

Padmé smiled and said, "Of course. It's just such a relief to know that there _is_ an explanation. I can't imagine what you must have been going through, Chuchi. You've been maintaining your cool extremely well."

"Thanks, Padmé," Chuchi smiled. "Hug? It would make me feel better."

As Padmé got up and happily embraced Chuchi, Bail frowned and said, "What kind of things were you helping the Jedi out with?"

"Well I can only really tell you the first one right now," replied Chuchi. "But I helped them to convince the Zillo Beast to stop destroying Coruscant to get at Palpatine and helped them to smuggle it off the planet and find it a place to live?"

"Say what?" Padmé pulled back in surprise. "The Beast is still alive?"

"Oh yes," nodded Chuchi, beaming. "Very much so. It was only playing dead. Pretty convincing, wasn't it? It's on the planet Maridun right now, probably chewing on the local wildlife."

Padmé placed a hand on Chuchi's shoulder and said, "You are a marvel, you know that."

Chuchi flushed and mumbled, "Just wait until you hear what the Jedi say tomorrow. I should warn you that it'll be a shock to your systems."

* * *

Oblivious to the revelations going on many, many floors below him, Emperor Palpatine was seated in his desk chair and staring out at the Coruscant skyline, his hood up and his fingertips placed together, a cruel smirk on his face.

"My plans may have been set back quite some distance," he said, "And the Jedi are still continuing to be a terrible nuisance to me, but everything is slowly falling into place all the same. The majority of the Senators are hanging on my every word, I have my apprentice beside me as I stand here and look over my Empire. It will not be long now before everything starts going my way."

"Indeed, Master," Dooku nodded. "It seems that we may have pulled the fat out the fire so to speak, turning certain defeat into victory. Truly, you are the definition of a cunning Sith Lord."

"I was already aware of that, Dooku," Palpatine said primly. "I do not need you to tell me. However, you should know that I am still extremely disappointed in your spectacular failure to defeat Aayla Secura. You will have to work hard to fully win back my favour, Lord Tyranus. For a single Jedi to best you and your two best swordsman – it defies all logic."

"I maintain that Secura caught us off guard with her unusual tactics, Master," Dooku replied. "It will not happen a second time if we meet again on the battlefield, I can assure you of that."

"And I can assure you that the likelihood of you meeting Secura again will soon be a small one," Palpatine hissed. "Of all the members of the Jedi Order, she has been the most problematic and the greatest hindrance to my plans. I have no doubt that she and the other members of her team will continue to be so in the future. Therefore all of them, but particularly her, must be eliminated quickly."

"Of course, Master," nodded Dooku.

Ventress, who was also standing nearby, pulled off one lightsaber hilt from her waist and ignited the red blade, holding it in front of her and growling. "Allow me to go after her myself, Master," she hissed. "I have a score to settle with her."

"You, Ventress?" Palpatine sneered, not bothering to look at her. "I seem to recall that she has bested you no less than three times in the past, the third time using crudely constructed sentences to throw off your focus. That tactic alone should not have had any effect on a Dark Jedi like yourself. You do not stand a chance against her."

"I will have revenge if you only let me," Ventress promised. "I will find her and gut her like a fish."

"No," Palpatine said. "You Ventress, are in even less disfavour than Dooku. Your own personal failures far outweigh his. I would advise you to start winning my trust again before you attempt such a foolhardy task as to going after Secura."

"Perhaps with the reward system you put in place, someone will bring her dead corpse to us before too long," Dooku suggested.

"Don't be a fool, Dooku," Palpatine snarled. "Secura is too wily for most people who would take up a reward system like that, as are most of her closest allies. I have decided to call in another, more professional Bounty Hunter to do the deed for us. One who is much, much more capable than the majority of the others, or so I am led to believe?"

"Another Bounty Hunter, Master?" Dooku asked uncertainly. "But, is it not true that it was a Bounty Hunter you sent after her after we were... defeated, and that she turned him against you instead?"

Palpatine hissed, but merely said, "That was my own mistake. I put too much trust in Bane and I underestimated Secura's mind. This time, I will take precautions to ensure whatever Secura did to convince Bane to turn on me will either not occur or not work on my new chosen candidate."

"I still say I would do a better job than a Bounty Hunter," Ventress grumbled.

"That remains to be seen, child," Dooku replied.

"Ah, here is a ship incoming," Palpatine nodded towards the speeder that was rapidly approaching 500 Republic. "Perhaps it is the Bounty Hunter."

The three Dark-Side-users, watched as the speeder landed on one of the nearby landing pads and was met by a couple of blue-armoured Senate Guards, as a single figure leapt out of it to meet them. There was a brief moment where they were apparently speaking to one another, before the two Senate Guards turned and led the figure inside.

It wasn't long before the doors opened and the guards stepped into the room and saluted. One of them said, "Emperor, sir, there's a man here who wants to speak to you."

Palpatine turned around on his chair. "Is that so?" he asked, with a contemptuous expression and his hands on the arms of the chair. "I am currently waiting for the arrival of a Bounty Hunter, so he will have to be quick. Send him in now."

The Senate Guards stepped apart, to reveal a large male figure standing behind them, who stepped forward into the room. It certainly wasn't the person that Palpatine had been expecting. It was a Nikto, and an uncommonly large and fearsome looking one. He looked like some kind of giant brute. He was clad in thick armour, had a permanent scowl on his face and two huge metal cutlass-like blades hanging at his sides. One of hands appeared to have been cut off just above the wrist and had been replaced by a shining metallic replacement gauntlet.

"Yes?" Palpatine asked. "What can I do for you?"

The Nikto spoke in a thick, stereotypical thug-like voice, and apparently his Basic wasn't the best because his grammar was absolutely horrible. "You Emperor," he said. "You one who put death sentence on Jedi."

"Yes, that is me," nodded Palpatine. "What are you doing here? I am currently busy with the construction of my new Empire. I'm afraid unless you are here on important business, I will have to ask you to leave."

"I here on personal business," the Nikto replied. "I see you put big, big reward on head of Aayla Secura, yes? One of highest amounts. You want her be dead very bad. I correct?"

Palpatine frowned and studied this Nikto with new interest. "Secura has been an immense pain in my side for quite a while now. She had been doing many things which have cause me to wish her gone more than any other Jedi. Why are you so interested in this? Who are you anyway?"

The Nikto raised his shining metallic hand and clenched it into a fist to pound it against his chest. "My name Bok," he said. "I a Morgukai warrior from Kintan. I hate Twi'lek called Aayla. I want her dead too. She took my hand. Shamed me. I want kill her."

"Oh?" Palpatine asked, placing his fingers together again. He had heard of the Morgukai warriors – they were a secret society of elite warriors of the planet Kintan who, for reasons that nobody quite understood, hated the Jedi with a passion. They were on the decline right now, as fewer Nikto joined the order these days and several of them had been killed by Jedi after they had attempted to engage them in battle. They were skilled warriors, but many of them had tempted to pick on Jedi that were far too strong for them.

But Palpatine had heard of Bok before. When Aayla had started to establish herself as a threat to his designs, he had done his research on her, learning about her past in an attempt to find any potential weaknesses. He knew about her fall to the Dark Side as a Padawan, and had thought about trying to convert her, but it seemed her will was too strong for that.

If he remembered correctly, Bok had been involved in the mission that Aayla had taken to Kintan that had ended in her becoming the youngest ever known Jedi Knight. He and his father, Tsyr, had kidnapped Jedi Master Tholme and Aayla's own cousin, Nat Secura – who was heir to the Secura line since Aayla herself had gone off to be a Jedi. (Aayla's family had been quite powerful even thought Aayla had not really integrated with them). Aayla and Quinlan Vos had been dispatched to Kintan to rescue them. The two Nikto had tried to ambush them a couple of times, but it had not ended well for them. Quinlan had sliced Tsyr's head off and Aayla had supposedly killed Bok, though they had never been sure whether he died or no. Apparently she hadn't though.

After dispatching the two Nikto, Quinlan and Aayla had gone through several more perilous trials before they succeeded in their goal and the both of them had been promoted as a result of the ridiculously dangerous rescue mission.

And now Bok was here, standing before Palpatine and ready to take the opportunity to kill the person who had cut off his hand and almost killed him.

Palpatine smirked. This Bok could become a dangerous potential ally, especially with his intense hatred for the Jedi that _he_ currently hated the most.

"Why have you not attempted to kill her again before now, may I ask?" Palpatine queried. "After all, Secura has been all over the news. Surely you must have heard of some of her exploits with the rest of her team. You must have had plenty of opportunities to try and track her down."

"Yes, but Twi'lek big celebrity then," Bok replied. "Never far from team-mates either. I kill her then, big hunt for me follow. Not now," he added with a smirk. "Now she wanted dead. I volunteer to kill her. She die by my hand. I happy. You happy. And I get reward too and kill other Jedi that get in way."

"A sound argument," Palpatine nodded. "You seem to have thought this through, Bok. And I believe that I can make use of you. I do indeed want Secura out of the way as soon as possible. But, you see, I have already sought out the aid of another to help me to fulfil my goal to be rid of her. Perhaps the two of you might be able to work together to bring her down. Would that be a problem?"

"I no care how she die," Bok shrugged. "Or who I work with, as long as I watch her be alive and then be dead."

"Excellent," nodded Palpatine. "In that case..."

The Senate guards promptly stepped into the room again and said, "Sir, the Bounty Hunter that you contacted is here to see you."

"Ah, right at the correct moment," nodded Palpatine. "Send her in."

The Guard moved aside again and this time a tall thin woman with sickly white skin, a huge red, ponytail full of beads, very long and thin fingers and what appeared to be a small antennae sticking out the top of her head stepped in next. A pair of blaster pistols hung loosely at her sides and large sniper rifle was slung over her shoulder.

"Aurra Sing," Palpatine addressed the newcomer. "Thank you for coming at such short notice."

"Well, I heard that you had a job for me," Aurra chuckled in a sultry voice. "How could I resist an invitation like that from such a... powerful man? I believe that it has something to do with killing of Jedi that has been a pain in the butt for you, right?"

"Indeed," nodded Palpatine. "The target is Aayla Secura, who I am sure you have heard about. I wish for her to be annihilated. I do not care what methods you use, or what you have to do to do it. But if you manage to succeed, there is a total of ten million credits in it for you."

Aurra's eyes practically lit up. "Well, that's an awful lot of credits," she said. "You must _really_ want this Aayla Secura out of the picture. What's she been doing to you? She refuse to come to one of your big Senate parties or something?"

"How dare you speak to him like that!" Ventress snarled, drawing a lightsaber and levelling it at Aurra. Suddenly, Aurra's hand whipped around behind her and to Ventress' surprise, she also had a lightsaber hilt in it, which activated into a shining red blade much like Ventress' own.

"You sure you want to test yourself against me, girlie?" Aurra sneered.

"Who are you calling girlie," Ventress spat, her feet itching to spring and teach this Dark Jedi wannabe how to _really_ use a blade. But before any of them could move, a large blast of Sith Lightning shot across the room between them and effectively stopped the confrontation.

Dooku lowered his fingers. "That is enough," he said. "Pleased, try and maintain the proper decorum, Ventress. Our Master has invited Miss Sing here for a business proposition. One which you were denied, I might add. Hold your tongue and your temper in check."

Ventress scowled and sheathed her blade, muttering, "Yes, Master."

Palpatine continued speaking to Aurra as if nothing had happened as the near-human Bounty Hunter sheathed her own lightsaber. "Secura has been foiling my plans for the Galaxy for some time now and she has, so far, survived three attempts to kill her. Do not underestimate her – she has proven herself to be... resourceful, if nothing else," he added bitterly. "In any case, I think it is about time that she finally stopped interfering. Do you think that you can do it for me?"

"I've handled a few Jedi in my time," Aurra responded nonchalantly. "I know what to do when going up against one of them, and I have a few tricks of my own up my sleeve. Trust me, this Secura will not last long."

"I am afraid I cannot take your word for it," Palpatine responded. "I know you are familiar with Cad Bane, as you worked with him to raid my own Senate several months ago. He was one of the ones I sent up against Aayla, and she actually managed to turn him against me. I am not sure how she did it or what promises she made, but I can tell you now that if Secura gets the opportunity to try and convince you to do the same, I shall throw in an extra five million credits and take you off the Empire's wanted list permanently, no matter what you do in future, if you refuse."

"Don't worry, you Mightyness," Aurra patted her sniper rifle. "I don't plan on giving Secura any time to speak to me, let alone convince her to turn around and go after you instead."

"Excellent," Palpatine sneered. "Will you need an assistant? This Morgukai warrior here, Bok, has also volunteered his services to hunt down and kill Secura. A personal grudge I believe."

"Really?" Aurra asked with interest, sizing Bok up. "Well, I know a thing or two about personal grudges. I might need a little help to pilot my ship – I have a plan to lure Secura into a trap. By all means, come along, Bok."

"I thank you," nodded Bok, drawing a cutlass and tracing a nail down its sharp edge with anticipation.

"However," Aurra turned around. "Before I can go after this Secura, I'm going to need to know where she is. You got any ideas?"

"At the moment, none," Palpatine replied sourly. "But, it is only a matter of time before she or some of her forces are spotted and I have instructed all units to report it to me the moment she is located. When that happens, I will tell the two of you in turn straight away. Then you can go and carry out your task. You may stay here as our honoured guests until that time."

"Sounds good to me," Aurra chuckled.

Palpatine smirked. This time, they _would_ succeed. He was sure of it.

* * *

Well, there you have it. A few potential new allies for the Jedi in that chapter with the other Senators and several more allies for Palpatine – the Jedi are not the only ones doing the recruiting. I do have a question for people though. I am considering adding Durge to the list of people who are recruited by Palpatine to help him fight against the Jedi. But, I'm not sure how to bring him into the story after such a long absence from it. Does anyone have any thoughts?

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Yeah, yeah, I know. Another Part 1, Part 2 thing, only this next one will actually have three parts instead. In the first part, Yoda finishes sorting out the younglings and heads off to Tython, we have a brief catch-up with Numa and we find out what happens with Kit Fisto as he travels to Naboo to meet with the army of underwater beings there. Jar Jar anyone?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 167 : The Rebellion Grows Part 1**


	167. The Rebellion Grows Part 1

Okay, everyone. Here I am with the next instalment. It may not be filled with action, though you can trust me when I say that the action WILL come relatively soon, but I'm here to begin setting the stage for what will be the largest battle I have ever written in my entire life. And when you read this chapter and remember this is only the beginning, I am sure you will understand why. Hope you enjoy it.

I should also clear up a point which I don't think I made when I should have. Some time ago, the Gungans were brought into the Clone Wars series. Some of you may have noticed I have started calling Kit Fisto's clone leader Commander Monnk instead of the Captain Brine I used in the Naboo Arc. If you re-check the Naboo arc, you will notice that Captain Brine no longer exists but Commander Monnk does. You will also notice that Boss Nass has been replaced with Boss Lyonie, the Gungan leader used in the series. So, that said, nobody should be confused by the rest of this chapter. But hey, I did guess right when I said the Tarpals had become a General. I was pretty chuffed about that.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 167:- The Rebellion Grows Part 1**

* * *

While Chuchi spoke with her fellow Senators about her interactions with the Jedi, and many members of the Jedi set out to various different planets across the Galaxy, back on Saleucami, Yoda was just beginning to finish things off. Cut and Suu had done their job well, and a large number of people from various farms across this stretch of Saleucami had gathered beside Obi-Wan's cruiser, still parked on the surface of the planet.

"I'm telling you," one of them muttered, "This is so weird, seeing a large number of people who all look almost exactly like Cut."

Yoda observed from a nearby rock, watching at Suu and the neighbouring Twi'lek, Cyral, started to divide the younglings up into little groups. Not far away stood Tera Sinube and Jocasta Nu, watching as the young ones the two elderly Jedi had been caring for were delegated across to the various farmers all of various species. The younglings weren't entirely sure they liked this idea. Some had wanted to go and help out, like Numa had, but, also like Numa, they had been told that they simply were not prepared for what lay ahead.

"Okay," Cyral nodded. "We've got about ninety-seven little Jedi here and only about twenty-three farmers to go around, including me and you, Suu, so that means," she did some quick mental calculations, which the farmers were good at because they had to know things like how much fertiliser to use for a certain area. "It means that if we give roughly four or five younglings to each one to look after then we've got them all covered. Maybe we could give some of them six at a squeeze."

"Well, Cut and I only have so much room," Suu murmured, "What with Shaeeah, Jek and Numa, as well as her Digimon friend and that Digi-Gnome creature that looks to be hanging around. I think we'll manage three at a push, which means we'll have to delegate someone with a sixth."

"No need to push yourselves, there is," Yoda supplied from the top of the rock. "If unable to take on some of the younglings, you are, then find them alternative accommodation, we can."

"No, it'll be alright, Master Jedi," Cut said as he stepped forward to help his wife and her friend with the children. "We consider it our personal contribution. After all," he shrugged. "The war might not have made sense before, but I when it comes to this Sith Lord, I can certainly see why my brothers are still fighting. If this is what we can do to help, then we'll do it."

"Our gratitude, you have," Yoda nodded.

"Come along, children," Jocasta clapped her hands. "Please stop milling all over the place – you're making me dizzy just watching you. Please let these ladies sort you out into groups. It doesn't matter who is in which group, hopefully you won't be here all that long anyway."

"And if you insist on swapping accommodation, then you can do it later," added Sinube.

"Okay," nodded Suu. "You four, could you go over there with him," she pointed to a Gran standing just behind her. "He'll look after you. And, you five, how about you go and introduce yourselves to her," she ushered them towards another Twi'lek standing not far away.

"I've got a little more room than some of these people," Cyral smiled. "How about you and you, and you three here and you as well. You guys feel up to coming and living with me for a while? I can definitely house you all."

There was a chorus of "Okays," as the group of six younglings she had indicated gathered around the tan-skinned woman. Amongst their number was the Togruta girl Ashla, who tugged on Cyral's trousers and said, "Do you have a bed for each of us and will we get lots of food."

"I'll have to look into arranging some sleeping quarters," Cyral smiled, "But we'll sort something out, won't we? Don't worry, you'll all fit in comfortably."

Kalifa was watching these proceedings with her arms folded, and her two fellow older younglings were standing not far away. The human girl was disgruntled slightly, and she showed it, stepping over towards Master Yoda and saying, "I still don't see why we have to stay behind as well, Master Yoda. We've had experience out in the field as well."

"Yeah," nodded Jinx. "Those Trandoshans we faced off against were far from easy to deal with, even with help from some of the others."

"Been through this, we have," Yoda replied. "Tough, those Trandoshans may have been, but few of them there were. Not so, will that be, in the battles to come. Fighting against potentially thousands, you would be, and if unarmed you are, then in trouble you will be. When forged your own lightsabers, you have, then a help to the Jedi Order you will be. For now, be an example to these other younglings, you must. Make them wish to act like you, you should."

The three of them looked at one another before O-Mer shrugged and said, "Well, I guess he does make sense. Everyone else is much better equipped to handle this than we are. Maybe we should just sit this one out guys. You know, count our blessings and stay alive if we can."

Jinx frowned, but sighed and said, "Fine, we'll do it that way then. But this doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Don't worry," said Cut, stepping up between the young Twi'lek and the Cerean and clapping them both on the shoulder. "You three can move in with Suu and me. We could always use some fine, strong lads and lasses like the three of you seem to be. And you can keep my kids company."

"Oh, alright," Kalifa sighed. "I suppose we could handle living an ordinary life for a few days. After all, we did go through a lot of much rougher living on that island on Wasskah, didn't we?"

"You said it," nodded O-Mer.

"You hear that, Suu?" Cut called over to his wife, who looked up from where she was dividing another small batch of younglings into two groups. "We've got ourselves our extra guests here. And apparently they're used to being starved, so they'll perfectly fine at our place."

"What?" Jinx blanched.

"Cut," Suu frowned and placed her hands on her hips. "Don't mess with them like that. You'll get plenty of food at our place, don't you worry."

"Yeah, I was just kidding," Cut laughed. "Got you, didn't I?"

The three Jedi younglings glanced to one another again and shrugged. It was going to be slightly odd living with this clone who didn't act like a soldier at all, but they would get used to it. Probably. Maybe. Hopefully.

Regardless, the three of them moved away to help Cyral divide up the last of the younglings. Yoda watched them go for a moment. The three of them were headstrong, but seemed to understand that they were out of their league, not unlike a small Twi'lek girl that had recently become a Tamer.

Yoda turned around to see the girl in question sitting on another rock nearby. Numa was staring sadly up towards the sky, with Tsunomon sitting in her lap and the Digi-Gnome floating above her head in pretty similar positions. It was obvious that she was thinking about the friends that had found her and freed her on Ryloth, upset that she had not been allowed to go with them. The teal-rimmed D-Arc was still clutching in one hand and pushed up against her chest like it was the most important thing it the world. As it was practically the only thing she owned, that was hardly surprising.

Yoda sighed through his teeth and turned away. It was never pleasant to leave someone behind, even if it was the right thing to do. The sooner they were on their way, the better.

"Master Yoda," the voice of Eekar Oki the Mon Calamari called down, pulling his gaze upwards to see the Jedi in question, along with Finn Ertay, descending down the ramp. "We've put in the co-ordinates you gave us. Soon as we leave, we can head straight for Tython."

"Excellent news, this is," nodded Yoda. "Believe, I do, that time to go it is." He looked out across the youngling hoard in front of him and saw that Suu and Cyral had done their job. Now the younglings were all surrounding the various farmers, integrating with their soon to be hosts. It was time for them to go. He leapt off the rock, somersaulting several times before he landed on the ground and began to hobble like an old man again. Sometimes everyone thought that the slow hobbling was just for show.

"Come along then, Masters," Yoda nodded to them. Head for Tython we must, and begin preparations to carry out the plan, we should."

"This plan certainly seems to be a little fast for my taste," Sinube said, as he turned towards Yoda. "Are you certain there are no other options."

"Few that are available to us, there are," Yoda nodded. "But for this, my old friend, everything, speed is. Patience, we must also have, but speed as well." He turned back around once he had ascended a short way up the ramp and tapped his stick on the metal, drawing the attention of the crowd. "Younglings," he called out. "Leave now, we must. Behave yourselves, you should, for your new hosts. Remember your training and follow your discipline. Hopefully, return soon, we will. Until then, goodbye."

There was a chorus of goodbyes as the younglings waved them off and the farmers that were taking them in did the same. Cut wrapped an arm around Suu's shoulder as they both added their own contribution, while Kalifa, Jinx and O-Mer gathered around them. Beside them, Cyral was holding hands with Ashla and another youngling, so she couldn't wave, so she shifted a lekku over her shoulder and draped it across her front in a sign of farewell.

"Commander Ember," Yoda turned to the remaining rebelling clone leader. "Hurry, we must. Load the rest of the clones onto the cruiser for me, will you?"

"At once, Master Jedi," nodded Ember. "You heard him lads. Move out! Back to the ship, we've got a journey to make! Double time!"

Cut chuckled and murmured to Suu, "I remember when I had to follow orders like that. Some of the ARC troopers giving them could be terrifying, let me tell you."

* * *

As the clones and the remaining Jedi moved up the ramp, which began to close while they were still on it, Numa switched her gaze towards the cruiser, her sad expression remaining in place. She hated what was going on. She knew that Suzie was right and where they were going was dangerous, but like Kalifa and the others she still unhappy about being left. In fact, she was downright distraught. She might have a new family, one which she had, so far, found to be a great one, but it was as if there was a little something inside her that was spurring her forwards, telling her that she had to do something.

She couldn't explain what it might be though. Maybe it had something to do with being a Tamer and having a Digimon now. A Digimon she could barely talk to, but a Digimon all the same. It was an almost unconscious drive. She was on her feet a moment later, about to run towards the cruiser and try once more to go with them, but then the cruiser's ramp fully closed and it began to rise into the air slowly, watching by all the waving younglings.

Tsunomon was in a similar dilemma, but he was just putting it down to the vow he had made when his village had been destroyed years ago. He sighed and said, "Well, I guess it's official. We really are staying here while everyone else goes off to fight." He grimaced and said, "Ugh, this feels like such a mistake."

Numa sniffed again and mumbled, "Ju dami juon. Ju trala nan roitree."

Tsunomon looked up at her, wishing that she knew what in the omniverse she had just said, but he had absolutely no clue whatsoever. However, it was plain to see that Numa was upset as she watched the cruiser rising higher and the giant legs being retracted into the main body. "Hey, it's alright really. Heh, we probably won't be needed anyway, what with the plan the others came up with. Let's just, you know, make do with what we've got right now."

Numa looked down at him and saw his earnest expression. She didn't understand any of his words, but she understood that he was trying to be comforting and that was good enough for her. "Arni," she smiled. "Suulan o col boda."

Tsunomon smiled, though it was understandably a little strained. For all he knew he could have just have been insulted, though it didn't seem that way. So, the two of them returned to staring up at the cruiser as it began to rise higher and gain speed.

Numa bit her lip as her last avenue of being able to leave the planet and being a help to the Galaxy seem to close in front of her. She wished with all her heart that there was some way that she could still be in that ship, heading to the place where the upcoming battle was supposed to be to help everyone. But it wasn't going to happen. She was stuck here now.

Though she could be far worse off.

However, once again, she had reckoned without the Digi-Gnome. The creature in question stared down at the pair with sad eyes that didn't look right on its usually happy face. This wasn't how things were supposed to be going. He had given the two of them the Tamer and Digimon bond because it had been trying to grant both their wishes to be useful to the Jedi, and yet here they were, being left behind where they could not be useful even if they tried. It seemed that granting their earlier wish had not been enough. It had to do something now.

That was why the Digi-Gnome was still here. It could sense such enormous hopes and dreams and wishes from these two, and the Digi-Gnomes loved people like that. It had developed a liking for these two, as well as all the people who had been there with them because they were all such good people, but these two especially. And it didn't like to see them sad.

So, it decided to granted Numa's wish again. It shut its eyes and trilled slightly, causing both Numa and Tsunomon to look at it curiously and it began to glow brighter.

Suu's eyes were drawn to the light as well, and she turned just in time to balk in alarm a sudden ball of light like a condensed explosion suddenly surrounded all three of them and then shot straight upwards, leaving a bright trail behind like a comet shooting upwards. "Numa!" she cried, but there was nothing she could do to stop it.

* * *

The ball of light shot straight through the bottom of the ship and an empty corridor before it came to a stop in one of the vents of the ship, where it vanished and Numa and Tsunomon fell to the metal with a pair of thuds, the Digi-Gnome trilling as it started circling them again.

"What the-" Tsunomon gasped as he looked around. "Hold on. Are we back in the ship?"

The Digi-Gnome giggled and looked pleased with itself.

"But..." Tsunomon protested. "But we can't be here. We're supposed to be staying behind with the Lawquane family, because we're not going to be a whole lot of help in the..."

Apparently Numa had realised where they are as well, because she suddenly grabbed the Digi-Gnome and Tsunomon and pulled them into hugs, "Arni, Digi-Gnome," she grinned with delight as she squeezed them both.

Tsunomon rolled his eyes and said, "Oh, never mind."

* * *

"They went up to the cruiser," Suu breathed as the large vessel vanished from their sight, leaving the atmosphere and, somewhere above them, jumping to hyperspace. "Numa left with them anyway. The Digi-Gnome transported her up there. It must have fulfilled another wish of hers."

Cut glanced across at his wife and said, "The Jedi didn't give you their contact details, did they?"

"No," Suu shook her head. "You?"

"Nope," Cut said grimly. "Probably wanted us to have limited contact with them just in case by some strange occurrence our houses are investigated. But it means now that we can't tell them they have a couple of extra stowaways."

"Maybe they'll find out and bring her back again," Suu suggested.

But when the cruiser did, in fact, _not_ return, they knew that Numa must be hiding. And they prayed for her safety when she wound up on the battlefield, as was extremely likely considering where she was going.

* * *

Not far away in Galaxy-wide terms, Kit Fisto had pulled out of hyperspace close to the planet of Behpour, where Cad Bane had first spotted the Digimon and allowed the huge progression in the events of the Galaxy that had transpired over the last few days as a result. His cruiser was only here over this planet because there needed to be an element of secrecy. They were heading for Naboo, but the planet below would notice if a huge Republic cruiser appeared above them unscheduled. And while the Senator of the planet could be trusted, the same could not be said for everyone else on it.

After all, Palpatine had come from Naboo himself.

How odd that this humble planet had been the one to sire the evillest man in the known Galaxy.

Kit was now in a gunship that was moving down towards the correct planet, having left Behpour behind in smaller vessels that would be more difficult to detect, especially since they were planning to head out over the swamplands instead of the more heavily populated areas above ground. There were a couple of other gunships alongside Kit's each with several clone troopers fitted out in their SCUBA gear.

Kit himself had abandoned his Jedi robes in favour of a more streamlined set of trousers and no shirt at all, which would make swimming easier. They weren't planning on going into battle, but still, any speed they could get would be nice and wet Jedi robes weren't nice anyway.

As the gunships entered the atmosphere and swooped down over the swamplands, filled with the giant trees that had been the sight of the epic showdown between Parallelmon and the three Digimon that the Republic had long been allied with, the blast doors on either side of the ships opened, as well as the hatch at the back, providing a powerful gust of wind that swept through the vessel.

"Ready troopers," Kit called into his comlink.

"Of course, sir," Commander Monnk replied. "Ready and waiting."

"Good," nodded Kit, his voice raised and his head-tentacles flapping in the wind. "The lake is in sight. Prepare to jump."

The gunships whooshed over the last of the trees and swooped low over the surface water. The moment they did, Kit leapt out into the air and plunged into the refreshingly cool waters of the lake, the sound of the engines instantly being dulled as he was immersed in the clear watery world of Lake Paonga, gooberfish darting out of his way as he sank into their midst. Above and around him, in a long line of splashing bubbles, the clones followed him in, dropping in feet first and flipping through the water backwards until they were on their fronts. Their blasters were holstered to show they were no threat to the locals.

Kit had sunk deeper than the clones and now he righted himself, his tentacles out behind him like live snakes now that he was under the water. He winked at the clones as they swam down towards him and said, "Come on, let's not keeping anybody waiting."

"You do know they aren't expecting us, right sir?" asked Commander Monnk for clarification.

Kit grinned and offered the clone a punch on the thick shoulder armour. "Of course," he said. "But still, they'll probably have noticed something going on up ahead, and I'll wager they may assume its an attack. Let's get down there and prove them wrong." He flipped with all the grace of a dolphin and plunged down into the darker waters down below, the clones quick to follow his lead, kicking their fins out behind them to propel them through the shoals of fish that surrounded them.

As expected, it wasn't long before the great bubble-like domes of Otah Gunga came into sight once they reach the drop-off point, glowing like giant globular anglerfish-lights on the bottom of the enormous lake and spanning an enormous area, stretching off into the deeper, darker recesses of the lake bottom. Kit smirked as he remembered the last time he'd been here. But this time there were no Quarren shooting up to attack them.

However, up ahead, there were several of the residents coming towards them with electropoles clutched in their hands. Gungans, and at their head was the familiar figure of General Tarpals, the one who had led them into the tunnels to help them diffuse the bomb set by the leader of the Quarren Isolation League, Senator Tikkes.

Kit right himself and called a halt by raising a fist. The clones slowed to a stop and began treading-water, kicking lightly to keep themselves from sinking as they watched the Gungans approach. Tarpals looked bemused when he spotted who it was, and Kit raised his hands in a friendly gesture, giving the Gungan his most winning smile. And considering this was Kit Fisto we're talking about, that was quite something.

"Yousa," Tarpals blinked as he and his fellow Gungans pulled to a halt as well, able to speak underwater with as much clarity as Kit himelf. They were both amphibians, after all. "Yousa is being Jedi Master Fisto, yesa? Why yousa here? Is yousa no meant to besa being uppa dere, fighting clankens in bang-bang conflict?"

"General Tarpals," Kit grinned back. "It's good to see you are well and that you remember me. That certainly cuts to the chase. I am afraid that myself and my men are not here on official Republic business, but we have something to say that will definitely be of interest to both you and the Gungan Council. Perhaps you would let us into the city to speak with Boss Lyonie. I am afraid that it is quite urgent."

"Urgent yousa say?" Tarpals responded. "What kinda urgent is disa being? Isa dere a threat to usa Gungans coming disa way once again?"

"You... might say that," Kit nodded. "But I should also add that I bring not only dire news but also a proposition. The whole Gungan race may be interested to here what I have to say, for it affects all of them quite significantly. And you are right. There may be conflict ahead, which is why we must discuss things quickly."

"Berry well," Tarpals nodded. "Mesa isa trusting yousa, as yousa has been friend to de Gungans and big helpen to usens in time of need. Yousa can besa following mesa, and mesa take yousa to de Council."

Kit nodded. "My thanks, General," he declared, as Tarpal and his fellow guards turned around and began to head back towards the city. As they went, Kit shared a look with Commander Monnk. Both of them were wondering the same thing – did the Gungans even know what was going on on Coruscant yet? It didn't seem so, otherwise they would have asked more questions before letting them in. It was possible that communications were slow to get down here, but that didn't seem right. So perhaps the Senator from Naboo had neglected to let the Gungans, or perhaps anyone from her homeworld, know about the Emperor's actions.

That meant, while most of the Galaxy was busy trying to adjust to this new regime and the idea that the Jedi were traitors, the Gungans were still blissfully ignorant of all this. Which, in turn, meant it was going to be Kit's job to break it to them.

This might actually be an advantage to them. The Gungans were more likely to listen to him while they still trusted him.

* * *

Tarpals led them to one of the closest bubble-like domes and slipped through the wall, instantly drying on the other side as the rest of the Gungans and the clones did the same. Kit went last, phasing through the wall and landing neatly on the floor of the city. His tentacles flopped back down behind his head in their usual position and he nodded to Tarpals, who nodded back and led the way, taking them through the cities corridors towards the largest bubble in the complex.

As they past, various Gungans and their faithful kaadu watched them go curiously. Many looked worried and alarmed to see clone soldiers here once again. They had thought any potential threat to them was over, so why were they here now.

Kit felt almost sad that it was he who had to bring the news to the Gungans, but it was necessary, and it would be preferable that he did it before the news reached them some other way that might bend their perception of the truth even more than it currently was.

They arrived in the Council chamber shortly afterwards. The clones stood by the doors, with the Gungan guards, while Tarpals led Kit out towards the podium-like stand in the middle of the room. The walkway around the outside was raised higher, so the Gungan leaders could look down on the people who came to visit them. Most of the Council were seated, but standing in the centre on the largest of the miniature plinths that marked where the Gungan leaders sat was Boss Lyonie, with his ceremonial robes and tall green hat on full display.

And, on his immediate left, was Representative Jar Jar Binks, who beamed at the sight of Kit as he came to a stop and completely interrupted Boss Lyonie before he could start talking by getting to his feet and crying, "Heyo dallee, Master Jedi. Itsa so good to see yousa again. Isa yousa okieday?"

Kit nodded and said, "Representative Binks, I am glad you're here. This may make things a little bit smoother."

"Really?" Jar Jar grinned. "Mesa is lovin it when mesa being useful. Yesa indeedy."

Boss Lyonie, looking like the almost exact copy of Jar Jar except for his garments and much deeper voice, cleared his throat noisily, reminding Jar Jar of the fact that he had spoken first when he shouldn't have. Jar Jar jumped and fell onto his plinth, landing rather painfully on his backside and grinning sheepishly. "Sorry, Boss," he rubbed the back of his large ears. "Mesa being quiet now."

"Good," Boss Lyonie nodded, and then he turned around to look at Kit and said, "Master Jedi, who isa being much helpen to us in de past. Welcome back to Gunga City. What can wesa besa doing for yousa?"

"I have a favour to ask of you, Mighty Boss Lyonie," Kit said. "But before I ask it, there are several things that you and the rest of the Council should know. It's almost as if I have a story to tell you. A true story, and one which heavily involves you and your people. I am sure you would like to learn a truth which has been denied to you for quite a long time, which the Jedi have only just recently discovered ourselves."

The Gungan Council looked at one another in concern and morbid interest, ears flapping and stalk eyes waving slightly. Tarpals cast a sideways frown in Kit's direction, no doubt wondering what the Nautolan was talking about. Boss Lyonie, meanwhile, placed his hand on his protruding chin and settled down onto his own plinth, before saying, "Disa sounden muy interesting. Alright den, tell usens yousa story, Master Jedi."

Kit grinned and nodded. That was one of the things he liked about the Gungans. They may be a powerful civilisation and they certainly weren't simple, but they always got the point quite quickly instead of messing around. So, Kit stepped forward slightly and began to re-explain something the Gungans had thought they had known, emphasising on how they had, in fact, been misled.

"Well, my story begins over ten years ago," Kit said. "It was during a time of potential crisis for the Republic, where it might have been thrown into chaos because Viceroy Gunray of the Trade Federation had suddenly decided to form a blockade around the planet Naboo for reasons which nobody could quite fathom, for Naboo had always been a fair planet that paid off its debts. It wasn't long, however, before the Trade Federation started to invade the planet instead of simply preventing entry and exit. They started on the land and captured the Queen, and then began to attack the people who lived under the water. I am sure you all know what I am talking about here."

There was nodding. The Gungans did not look on that particular memory fondly. Jar Jar spoke up by saying, "Mesa remembers. Mesa was being banished at de time, but mesa isa finding friends among Jedi who isa helping us to unite with de Naboo and free our planet. Wesa being happy allies ever since."

"Indeed, Representative Binks," nodded Kit. "But I am afraid that is only a part of the story. The other part, the part which I am sure you are not aware of, is about _why_ the Trade Federation decided to try and invade this world and subjugate its people."

"Disa all berry interesting," Lyonie interrupted. "But how isa it involving usens now? Disa was all ober ten years ago, and wesa prosperous now."

"Yes, but for how long, Boss Lyonie," Kit said. "For you see, the repercussions of that fateful invasion are, in fact, still happening, though you may not be aware of it. And it is having enormous implications for the entire Galaxy right at this moment. Would you like to know what I am talking about?"

Lyonie paused and then nodded his head, indicating Kit to continue with his narrative.

And continue Kit did. "You should also be aware, that a Sith Lord known as Darth Maul was aiding the Trade Federation in taking control of the planet, and said Sith Lord was behind the death of our very own Qui-Gon Jinn, before he himself was slain by Obi-Wan. However, what you may _not_ know is that Darth Maul had a master. A Sith Lord known as Darth Sidious, who was the real man behind the invasion of the planet, and the real culprit for the death of many of the Naboo and you Gungans by spurring the Trade Federation into action to invade the planet."

Kit's eyes narrowed and said, "And Darth Sidious is still out there, right now, still plotting to take over the entire Galaxy."

There was an outbreak of gasps from the Gungans at this news. "Exqueeze me, Master Jedi," Tarpals raised his voice and stepped up beside Kit earnestly. "Isa yousa saying dat disa is going to besa trying again? Isa our planet ina danger?"

"Not yet, it isn't," Kit shook his head. "But I fear it soon will be, along with every other planet in the Galaxy. The Trade Federation may have been driven out of the planet due to the brave actions of both the Naboo and the Gungan Grand Army, but that doesn't change that terrible truth that, in actual fact, the Sith Lord got exactly what he wanted out of this planet. He used both the Trade Federation and the suffering of your people to get something that he desired. Gunray was a pawn, as were each and every one of you."

There was uproar at these words. Kit had obviously had an effect on them. The Gungans were, after all, a very proud race, which is one of the many reasons why they had not had a friendly relationship with the people on the surface before the events of several years ago that brought them together – as they had believed the Naboo people thought themselves much better. They idea that somebody out there had been using them instantly stirred them into anger.

Boss Lyonie was immediately on his feet. "Whosa is hesa? Where isa disa Sidious? Hesa must be paying for de manipoolashuns of our peoples. Nobody manipoolates usens and gets away wid it."

There was a mass cheer from the assembled Gungans, and it was obvious that their blood was beginning to boil. But Kit knew that telling the Gungans outright who Darth Sidious was, it would be even better if they could figure it out for themselves. It would impact more on their minds that way.

First, he needed to supply them with a couple of clues.

"If you think about it," Kit replied. "The answer is right under your noses. It was under all our noses for over ten years. Who was it who gained power as a result of the happenings on this planet? It certainly wasn't the Viceroy – he was held for trial four times afterwards. It wasn't Queen Amidala – she gained only peace. It wasn't any of you either – you gained a friendship with the Naboo. But who was it who really gained power?"

The Gungans fell into silence as they digested Kit's pointers, trying to unravel them and pick the person Kit was hinting at. And, during Kit's miniature speech, the Nautolan had been directing his gaze towards Jar Jar, who had been the only Gungan on Coruscant at the time, and therefore the one present during the political proceedings.

Not surprisingly, it was Jar Jar who came up with the answer first. The Gungan Senator might have been clumsy and occasionally just plain silly, but he was far from stupid, and he had been paying attention on Coruscant, hovering in the background while the situation on Naboo was discussed by the Queen and...

"Oh no," Jar Jar breathed, his stalk eyes widening as he looked up at Kit's sombre face. "Itsa can't be, can it?"

Kit said nothing, so Tarpals asked, "Whatsa yousa thinking, Jar Jar? Yousa got de answer?"

"Uh-huh," nodded Jar Jar. "Itsa must be de Chancellor. Backa den, hesa was de Senator for Naboo, but hesa was convincing Queen Amidala to maken de Senate evict de current Chancellor, and hesa was de one who taken hesa place. Hesa was telling de Queen dat the Chancellor was under de control of others and everything wasa going too slow, so de Queen did it so dat de people of de planet would besa freed quickfast."

The Gungans around him were looking shocked as they too remembered the things that Senator Amidala had told them when she had made friends with their kind. Kit nodded and said, "Representative Binks is correct. It is my greatest regret to inform each of you that you have been played right from the start. We all have. He used Senator Amidala's compassion for her people and you yourselves to lift himself to the rank of head of the Republic. Even the clone army was created by the Chancellor, who is in fact Darth Sidious, in secret so that they could be his main weapon in destroying the Jedi and taking over the Galaxy."

"He's right," Commander Monnk volunteered, stepping forwards slightly. "We've come to realise only yesterday, and we were no happier about it than you. Everyone that we know and everything that we believed is wrong."

"Disa is mui bombad," Lyonie murmured, just as dismayed as all the other Gungans. But then he perked up and said, "But if de Jedi has found out about disa, den dey must have taken care of de Chancellor, no?"

"Unfortunately, no," Kit shook his head. "The Chancellor got the drop on us before we could act and ordered our own clones to start attacking us. The ones you see before you now are some of a comparatively small minority that managed to learn of the Chancellor's true intentions before they received the Order. Things have gone downhill for the Galaxy extremely rapidly. The Republic has gone, replaced with an Empire that Palpatine, also known as Sidious, sits firmly atop. The Jedi have been designated traitors and we are all on the run."

"Hesa getting away with dis?" Lyonie's eyes narrowed. "Well, disa will not do. Nosa. If disa indeed be de case, den wesa Gungans will immedietly be witdrawing from disa Empire. Wesa no be pawns of dat man anymore."

Several of the Gungans nodded in appreciation, but Kit shook his head. "I'm afraid that won't be an option, Boss Lyonie. Palpatine is a Sith, and one of their main goals is total domination of the Republic. If you do no submit to him, he will invade. He has almost all the clones on his side – a strike force against you would be formidable indeed."

"Den whatsa yousa suggesting, Master Jedi?" Tarpals asked. "Wesa will not be bowing to de will of a Sith Lord."

"No," Kit nodded. "We assumed you would think that. And that brings us neatly onto my proposal. Join forces with us – the Jedi and what clones we have still on our side. We have a plan to unseat the Emperor and bring him to justice for everything he's done, but we will need allies to help us. You Gungans are warriors and have a Grand Army, which is exactly what we need. We are stretching out to many across the Galaxy to come and aid us in this fight. I implore you, will you be among those that finally fight for your true freedom?"

Kit's words seemed to punch through to some of the Gungans. A couple of the Council members had looks of determination on their faces, and General Tarpals had a very tight grip on his electropole that was currently being pushed into the floor. But Boss Lyonie looked hesitant.

"Hmm," he said, massaging his protuberant jaws with a long finger. "Disa a berry intriguing situation wesa gots going on here. On de one hand, wesa cannot be allowing de man who was using our planet and making our people suffer to get what hesa wanted to go unpunished. On de other hand, mesa cannot be making quick decisions dat would be putting de lives of many Gungan atta risk, unless dere was a chance dat wesa could succeed."

"If you join us, Boss Lyonie," Kit promised, "and if the others that we extend the hand of friendship join us as well, the Republic could be restored within a few days."

"Maybe true," Boss Lyonie said. "But disa mui, mui big decision mesa gots to make. Mesa gonna need some thinking time to decide what wesa should be doing."

Kit nodded and was about to stand back and wait, when Jar Jar Binks suddenly got to his feet, a look of righteous anger on his face, which still somehow managed to look comical on his raised eyeballs.

"Whysa yousa thinking, Boss Lyonie?" he demanded. "Disa not de time to besa thinking. Disa be de time for action. Wesa talking about a big bombad Galaxy filled wid evil here, dat de Emperor would be ruling wid an iron fist. And hesa was using usens to be getting what he wanted. If wesa is de good people wesa is always claiming to besa, den wesa gots to help de Jedi. Dey was always de ones dat were good to us and were here on dis planet helping us to get rid of de Trade Federation. Wesa gots to besa helping dem get rid of de Emperor. Itsa de right thing to do."

"Maybe so, Binks," Lyonie nodded. "But yousa gots to remember, dat wesa also talking about taking on disa big Empire. Wesa gots mui big army, dat be true, but wesa not enough to besa taking on all of de clones and de rest of the Galaxy. What if wesa say wesa help, but all de others deysa asking so nosa. And what if dey do say yesa and itsa still not enough."

"Disa nutsen thinking," Jar Jar insisted. "Moments ago, yousa was all fired up to go into bang-bang battle and make lopity-pie out of de lying, manipoolating man, and now yousa hesitating. So whatsa if wesa going to be losing? Wesa still has to try. Wesa cannot sit here and do nutting. Mesa knowing dat Senator Padmé would besa saying de same thing right now. Shesa would say dat wesa been used, so wesa must work to put things right."

Boss Lyonie looked hesitant still, but the other Gungans seemed to be agreeing whole-heartedly with Jar Jar's words. Several more of them had got to their feet and had their long-fingered fists clenched, ready for battle practically on the spot. Kit understood though why Boss Lyonie was being hesitant. The Gungan wanted to be a good leader, and didn't want to see his people unnecessarily hurt, which was exactly the sort of thing that the Jedi liked in a leader.

Nevertheless, Jar Jar was right as well. This _was_ a time for action.

"May mesa be having permission to be spaking, Boss?" Tarpals asked from next to the Nautolan.

Lyonie looked up and said, "Ofa course, General. Whatsa you be having to say about dis?"

"Mesa be agreeing wid Jar Jar, Your Bossness," Tarpals said. "Mesa thinks wesa should be readying de Army now, and going to help de Jedi and Senator Padmé get de Republic back and stop dis nutsen man from doing what hesa likes. Hesa must feel de wrath of de Gungan Grand Army for de suffering hesa brought on our people, for which hesa has not been brought to justice for. Besides, if what Master Fisto isa saying is true, den itsa only a matter of time before wesa gonna have to fight him anyways. Itsa would be best to do it now, before hesa can gain more power and kill more of our allies. Wesa stands a chance if wesa unites now."

"He's right, Boss Lyonie," Commander Monnk agreed. "It'll be like the Separatists all over again, only much, much worse, because this time there won't be anyone around to stop them. World after world will fall to mass attacks from the Empire's army, stranded and with all potential reinforcements being cut off. But if you strike now, you can do a whole lot more damage."

Boss Lyonie appeared to be on the brink of a decision, when Jar Jar said, "Hesa was using usens to start dis, Boss. Letsa be a part of de finishing too."

Boss Lyonie clenched his fists and stood tall and regally. Jar Jar's unquestionable words regading doing the right thing for their friends, combined with the wartime logic from Tarpals and Monnk had gotten through to him. "Yousa all right. Thinking timesa done!" he declared. "General Tarpals!"

"Yesa, Boss!" Tarpals used his electropole to give Boss Lyonie a salute.

"Ready de Gungan Grand Army," Lyonie raised a finger and ordered. "Wesa must be leaving wid de Jedi five minutes ago. Gather de weapons, the provisions, anyting dat yousa going to need. Master Jedi, wheresa we going to be going?"

"To the planet Tython in the middle of the Deep Core," Kit replied. "We've decided that is where the main battleground is going to be. For that reason, anyone that will not be involved in the fighting directly should definitely remain behind, where it is safer, because once the fighting breaks out there will be _no _safe place to hide."

"In dat case, General," nodded Lyonie. "Yousa must be going wid de Jedi at full speed."

"At once, Boss Lyonie," Tarpals nodded, the tentacle-like moustache-thing on his snout bobbing as he stood sharply to attention and saluted again, before turning to hurry out of the room.

Jar Jar moved past several of the other Gungan council members and ended up knocking three of them over by accident, before he said, "Mesa come too, Master Jedi."

"Uh," Kit hesitated. "Are... you sure that is wise, Representative Binks. After all, you're not a proper soldier."

"Maybe not," Jar Jar agreed. "But mesa was a General in de Battle of Grassy Plains ten years ago and mesa been in other battles before, so mesa no stranger to fighting. And mesa has been a member of de Senate for longo time. And mesa was de one who told de Senate to give immediately de emergency powers to de Chancellor, so mesa was used just as much as Padmé. If de Chancellor really is de Sith behind de war, then mesa was big help to him to start it. And hesa also de one who bring de Sickmaker and hesa virus to our planet. Mesa gots to do something now too."

"Very well," nodded Kit. "You can come as well. Commander Monnk," he turned to the clone. "We'll need to leave soon. Call the cruiser and tell them to bring the ship closer to Naboo and send more gunships down to the surface. We're probably going to have to make several trips back to the cruiser before we've transported the whole Gungan army if we're not to alert the Naboo to our presence."

"Yes, sir," nodded Monnk and began to do just that.

"Wesa not telling de Naboo?" Lyonie asked.

"Not yet," Kit shook his head. "We need more time to prepare for the battle, and someone less trustworthy from the Naboo might tip the Chancellor off. It would be appreciated if you could keep this to yourselves for the time being."

Lyonie nodded. "Berry well, wesa is doing dat. Good luck, Master Jedi. General Tarpals and Resempative Binks will not besa letting yousa down."

"I know they won't," nodded Kit, his grin returning with full force. "Thank you for everything, Boss Lyonie."

"Itsa be our pleasure," nodded the Gungan leader.

* * *

It was not long before the Gungan Army was fully assembled. Word seemed to spread through the city at a remarkably fast pace, and soon there were hundreds of Gungans crowding together outside in the lake (there was no room in the city that was big enough to hold all of them), covered in their traditional armour and holding their electropoles and atlatls with energy balls, which probably wouldn't serve them that well against clones. Kit noticed this, and realised that the Gungans would have to be kitted out with blasters when they arrived on Tython. Hopefully the cruisers they had would have enough spares. However, they had also brought many personal energy shields with them, which would be extremely useful on the front lines.

The Gungans were forced to leave their kaadu mounts behind, but Tarpals oversaw several Gungans that brought several enormous shield generators that would normally be mounted on the backs of many giant beasts that they had tamed known as fambaas. When Kit saw them, Tarpals nodded to him and said, "Would dese be of any use to usens in de fight to come?"

Kit chuckled and said, "Any advantage we can get will be worth exploiting General Tarpals. We'll order some tank-lifter gunships down here to transport these up to the cruisers. Thank you for the extra contribution."

"Itsa pleasure," nodded Tarpals.

Jar Jar had shed his sleeves and tie for the occasion and had loaded himself up with more energy balls that he could carry, which he kept dropping and spilling all over the place, causing fellow Gungans to scatter lest the energy balls hit them. The small blue devices were more effective against droids than organics, but they could still burn biological matter and leave a sticky goo after impact, so they might be mildly useful against a clone, but not very, as they would be covered in armour.

Kit helped Jar Jar to balance and walked with him back out into the lake, looking out across the amassed army that was still gathering in front of him, all of them grim and ready to fight. Kit's eyes widened as he saw the sheer number of Gungans that were present when the army finished amassing. There were over two-and-a-half-thousand of them. Compared to the majority of the clone armies, this was still a comparatively small number, but it was certainly something. And with those deflector shields, the Gungans would help the Jedi gain the upper hand in the fight ahead.

"I think you may have underestimated how many trips up to the cruiser we're going to need to get all of these guys up there, General Fisto," Commander Monnk murmured.

Kit chuckled and said, "Well, if that is the case, as it seems to be, then we better not waste any time. Let's move out."

It was like a massive school of strange porpoises as the Jedi, Tarpals and Jar Jar, with the clones at their flanks, led the enormous numbers of Gungans towards the surface.

* * *

The journey to Tython for the _Negotiator_ was a long one, not least because they had to traverse a long distance across the Galaxy to get there. The trip was mostly a silent one. The clones that were still filling the ship were busy at various stations or lounging around, many of them still deep in thought about the terrible revelations they had had about their pasts and their creations.

The Jedi were also silent. The trip was filled with a sombre attitude, with a dash of both apprehension and excitement. There were still roughly about seventy Jedi in the ship, survivors of the Temple massacre. On the bridge, Yoda stood before Sinube, Jocasta, Finn and Eekar, his eyes shut as he communed with the Force, asking for its guidance in the events ahead, and for good reason. No offworlder had set foot on Tython for many decades if not centuries. The Jedi homeworld had remained mostly undisturbed. There had not been much need to us it and, to most, its location was unknown anyway.

Not to Master Yoda though. As Grand Master of the Order of the Jedi, he knew things like this. He had already transmitted the co-ordinates to the other Jedi that he had been in contact with, and allowed the clones to do the same thing with their missing brigades. Even so, despite the fact that Yoda knew where Tython was it would be the first time he ever set eyes on it, let alone foot.

Even for him, with all his eight and half centuries of experience, he found himself quite excited at the prospect. The circumstances that had led to them needing to use Tython were extremely unfortunate, but still that did little to take the edge of the fact that the Jedi Order were effectively going home.

Not far away, lurking in the shadows like he usually did was Cad Bane. The Duros was skulking around and seemed to be taking little interest in the events around him and the steps that the Jedi Order was taking. Yoda wasn't sure what Bane was still doing with them, though he did not have the heart to send the Bounty Hunter away after what he had done for the Order. Still, he did question whether it was a good idea to let a man like Bane anywhere near a secluded planet like Tython. There was little treasure for him to pillage, as Jedi had no use for treasure, but a crafty person like Bane could probably come up with other ideas for it.

Most of the Jedi seemed to have forgotten that Bane was still there, but Yoda remained as observant as always. The Bounty Hunter had long expired in his mandate to Aayla and Chuchi, so there was a slight chance he might try to go renegade himself with all this. Yoda resolved to keep an eye on him, but he doubted that Bane would go to Sidious with this. Sidious would be likely to kill him on the spot or worse, refuse to pay him.

The apprehension was there because they would need to use a hyperspace lane that would literally take them right by Coruscant. There was little need for that apprehension though really, because it would be impossible for them to sense or detect a ship going through hyperspace past the planet. Pulling out above it, yes. Going past it, no.

It was several hours before they finally arrived at the heavily forested planet where the Jedi had first originated from. There was a slight sense of awe as they pulled out of hyperspace and observed the planet below through the windows various portholes and other see-through surfaces throughout the ship, and it was not just shared by the Jedi. The clones were also feeling slightly enthralled by the sight before them, and even Bane stepped out of the shadows momentarily to get a better view.

Physically, the planet looked nothing special. Just a large green sphere hanging in space like every other forest planet out there. However, the planet had a slightly strange feel to it, as if it was so deeply steeped into the Force that even those who normally couldn't sense or commune with it could feel energy flowing through them. Jedi, clone and Bounty Hunter alike, with even Todo thrown in on the side, seemed to share a moment as they gazed on the planet below.

The moment was broken a moment later by Yoda, who cleared his throat and said, "No time to waste, there is. Get down to the Jedi Temple below, we must. Commander Ember, do the honours, would you?"

"With pleasure, General," nodded Ember as he directed the pilots into guiding the ship down into the atmosphere, possibly the first ship that had done so for a very long time indeed. The trees stretched out below them like an unbroken carpet of green for miles and miles, as far as the eye could see in any direction.

That is, until they arrived at the Temple.

Once again, everyone found their breath taken away. If it was at all possible, this Temple was even more impressive than the massive structure that the Jedi had called home on Coruscant. A vast gap in the forest many miles across was the first thing to meet their eyes, as if the forest had not dared to try and encroach on this place, as if it was the holiest of buildings. The Temple stood slap-bang in the middle of the gap, a towering fortress of gold, bronze and copper – metal that glowed in the bright sunlight. The main building was like the largest mansion that any of them had ever seen in their entire lives, stretching high into the sky and towering above everything else. And all around the main building there were many smaller ones. This was more than a Temple, this was practically an abandoned city.

It had everything. Paved streets lined with tall buildings coated in silver or platinum, covered in balconies and all of them different sizes and shapes and designs. Bridges ran between several of the buildings and the trees that did exist behind the massive walls that surrounded the place seemed to be arranged in neat lines and were probably thousands of years old. The metropolis was so vast that there were even open spaces large enough to admit the massive cruiser. This was a city which really looked like it had contained the entire population of the planet.

"Well, I gotta admit," Bane mumbled. "That is something else."

"Never thought we'd be doing this when I recharged last week," Todo agreed.

"In all my long years," Sinube murmured, a smile on his beak-like mouth that seemed to make him look a century younger. "I never thought I would set eyes on this place, and I have never seen anything so spectacular."

"Indeed," Jocasta's eyes were shining like jewels. "It's like a gift from the Force that even despite all the hardships we have faced in the last couple of days, we are here now. The holobooks in my library that described this place – well, they just don't do it the credit it deserves. And the authors probably knew that."

Yoda was also smiling, but he did not need to say anything. The sheer power of the Force flowing through him right now was like nothing he had ever experience before. Yes, this was it. If ever there was a place for the Jedi to fight their final battle, this would be it. And there would be room for the many other allies that the other Jedi were planning on bringing in as well.

"Set the ship down, Commander Ember," Yoda replied. "In that courtyard ahead. Head to the surface, we must, and scope out the place. Much as love, I would, to bask in the sight of our Temple here, forget, we must not, that we are here to fight. Begin preparations, we must. Identify key points to initiate attacks, strongholds to defend from, places to set up heavy machinery and weapons. A battlefield, this place is destined to become. And ready, it must be, for the arrival of that battle."

"Of course, Master Yoda," Finn Ertay nodded as the ship began to descend. "We'll go and spread the word." As the other Jedi left, Yoda followed, deciding to head towards the ramp that would descend the moment they touched down. He felt compelled to step outside the ship as soon as possible and set foot on Tython's ground for the first time.

* * *

It didn't take long to go about it. The ship landed in an enormous courtyard, its nose and engine metres away from the buildings either side. Sure enough, the ramp descended and Jedi and clones slowly began to descend down into the city around the giant Temple, with Yoda at their head. Nobody said a word, letting the atmosphere flow through them as they slowly made their way down.

Yoda paused at the base of the ramp, and everyone behind him stopped. Slowly, the Jedi Master lifted his stick and placed it on the ground first before, moving even more slowly than that, he stepped off the ship's ramp and onto Tython. There was no change in the Force, but the moment itself was extremely satisfying.

Yoda moved away from the ship and allowed many of the other Jedi to take similar breathless moments of stepping onto their home ground before he said, "Organise patrols, we must, to scout out the streets. Unload any tanks or cannons Obi-Wan may have possessed and send all battalions out to set up places to make our stand. For here, on this ground, fight for the Galaxy, we shall."

* * *

While the trip might have been sombre for most of the people on board, it had been decidedly uncomfortable for Numa. The Twi'lek girl who had recently become a Tamer had not left the vents that the Digi-Gnome had transported her into, believing that it would be the best place to hide since they were so small.

That had meant she had spent several hours leaning against the slightly vibrating metal wall, trying not to squash her lekku and constantly shifting position to stop her backside from going numb due to sitting on the hard, flat surface beneath her.

Tsunomon had had it better off, since he could just effectively stand where he was, while the Digi-Gnome floated in the air and raced up and down the vent system from time to time to keep itself entertained. Apart from that though, it was like one big game of hide and seek.

A very _long_ game of hide and seek.

Eventually, Tsunomon looked up slightly, as the minor vibrations going on around them eased into nothingness and the distant roar of the engines died down. "I think we may have landed," he whispered.

Numa glanced across at him, not understanding his words, but getting what he was on about as she also noticed that things had quieted down. From inside the vent she could see no difference, but she had to admit she did feel different. She felt... stronger, more empowered by something, and she had no idea what it was. It was, of course, the planet around her, but she didn't know that. She didn't even understand the significance of this planet.

The young Twi'lek girl moved across the vent system to the grate that they had found right after they had moved in and peered down into the ship below. It looked exactly the same as it did every other time she'd looked through it – like an empty corridor, which it was. The only thing to do next would be to go outside and have a look around.

Although, now it came to it, the floor did look quite a long way down for such a small girl.

"Poli yers top yers instanb?" she asked.

* * *

Cad Bane and Todo were walking through the corridors of the cruiser themselves. They had allowed the Jedi to have their little moments, but now it was time for them to step out onto the planet's surface themselves and have a look around.

"Bane, would you just tell me what you're planning on doing next?" Todo asked. "You're not seriously going to help the Jedi fight this battle are you? That's not like you at all, Bane – you haven't even asked for payment yet and..."

"Quiet, Todo," Bane murmured, stopping and holding out his hand to silence his droid.

"But Bane, I have a right to know. I am your..."

"I said quiet!" Bane hissed, listening. Even in a situation like this, Bane was always alert for sounds that might indicate an ambush, and he had caught a slight echo of whispering voices, coming from up ahead.

"I don't suppose you could levitate us down or something?" one voice asked. It was followed by a faint tittering noise, before the same voice added, "I'll take that as a no then, shall I? Well then, how are we supposed to get out of this thing?"

"Re hools trink elp," said another voice, and Bane frowned when he identified the language as Twi'leki. "Gif top brong? Re gavo queel."

Bane stepped forward stealthily until he was standing not far from a vent grate in the ceiling that the voices were emanating from. He himself was a master of hiding in vents, but he didn't need that skill to know there was someone in there who shouldn't be." He activated his rocket boots and levitated upwards, pushing the grate up and eliciting a startled yelp from the person inside, before pushing his upper body in to get a look at the occupant.

He was mildly surprised to see it was the Twi'lek girl that Digimon had been hanging out with, as well as the fourth Digimon that had hatched from an egg and the shining Gnome thing. Bane raised as brow as Numa backed away, looking a little scared by the man in front of her.

"Well, what do we have here?" he asked. "A trio of little stowaways. You're not supposed to be here, are you?"

"Please, kind sir," Tsunomon said. "We need to get down from here. I don't suppose you could help us, could you?"

"Kind sir?" Bane snorted. "Little Digimon, do you know who you're talking to?"

"Uh, not really, no?" Tsunomon replied. "I haven't really had a chance to get to know most of these people. I only hatched yesterday, you see."

"Yes, I know that," Bane rolled his eyes, though it was difficult to tell since his eyes were all red. He paused for a moment and said, "Fine, I'll get you guys down. People who sneak aboard ships when they aren't supposed to are my kind of people anyway."

As he reached forward and picked up Tsunomon by his horn, dropping back into the corridor to put him on the ground, the Digimon said, "We didn't actually sneak onto the ship really. I think my Tamer wished that she could be going with the Jedi when they left, so that Digi-Gnome granted her wish and transported us aboard."

"That may be," Bane chuckled, as the Digi-Gnome zipped out of the vent and he returned for Numa. "But you stayed hidden when you could have exposed yourselves, so that makes you stowaways." He grabbed Numa a little unceremoniously by the back of her dress and hefted her out of the vent, placing her on the ground and settling down himself. He folded his arms and smirked down at the much shorter trio.

"I guess this means you two have decided to ignore the advice of the other Tamers and Digimon and try and help out in the fighting, right?" the Bounty Hunter asked.

Numa blinked, and tried to come up with an answer, but since she didn't actually know what Bane had said, she tentatively tried... "Yes?"

Bane chortled for a moment and said, "Well, far be it to keep a couple of kids like you from doing something suicidal. Come on, let's get you troublemakers to the Jedi so they can scold you and decide whether or not they should take you back to Saleucami."

"Is it me or are you going soft, Bane?" Todo murmured.

Bane whipped around and levelled his blaster at the droid's head. "Care to repeat that, Todo?"

"Nononono-repeat-what-sir-I-said-nothing!" Todo replied quickly.

"I should think not," Bane replied, as he holstered his weapon and led the group through the corridors and towards the outside. It looked like Numa was here to stay for a little while longer.

* * *

Some of you seemed to be under the impression that I was actually going to make Numa stay behind on Saleucami. To those of you that did, I hope you quite liked this little twist, and I will quote Qui-Gon Jinn and say that "Nothing happens by accident." A major event like Numa becoming a Tamer in my story is not going to come to a dead end. So yes, Numa is now in the place soon set to be a massive battleground with an In-Training Digimon to protect her. Not a lot is it?

I hope you liked the stuff with the Gungans as well. I am aware that there are many Star Wars fans out there who do not like or even loathe Jar Jar Binks. To those of you that do, I myself quite like the guy and I will give you a little SPOILER ALERT to say that I am planning on letting Jar Jar survive this story, so don't get your hopes up.

* * *

Twi'leki Translations

Ju dami juon. Ju trala nan roitree – I hate this. I feel so useless

Arni. Suulan o col boda – Thank you. You're a nice guy

Poli yers top yers instanb? – What do we do now?

Re hools trink elp. Gif top brong? Re gavo queel – It looks really high. Can we jump? It might hurt

* * *

See you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Gathering the allies to fight against the Empire continues. This time, we will focus on what Barriss, Suzie, Lopmon and Chewbacca are doing as they head to the Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk. We will meet Chewbacca's family and more old friends, including a few Bounty Hunters and a giant lizard.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 168 : The Rebellion Grows Part 2**


	168. The Rebellion Grows Part 2

Hey everybody. Sorry this chapter is a little later than I was intending, but I had another very busy Friday, with two very long lectures and then instead of writing, I was consumed with making a long trailer for Digimon Xros Wars on Windows Movie Maker. I would put it on Youtube, but I'm not sure I should due to copyright and everything, but I'm really proud of the thing. Anyway, onto the next chapter. Still not a lot of action, but there will be a small amount in the next chapter, I promise. Not a lot, but some.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 168:- The Rebellion Grows Part 2**

* * *

When the _Resolute_ pulled out of hyperspace above the planet Kashyyyk, Barriss realised the full irony of what she was about to be doing. Not two weeks ago, she had been above this planet herself, going down to negotiate a treaty with the king to support the Republic in its bid to fight off the rest of the Separatists. Now, she was about to go down there again, to convince them to go back on that treaty, abandon the Empire and join the Jedi instead.

There was a good chance that the Wookiees would not be entirely pleased with this idea.

Nevertheless, it was essential that they recruit the big, furry humanoids to their cause. Their insane strength, powerful weapons and headstrong determination could be exactly what the Jedi needed against the Empirical forces in the battle that was ahead.

"You guys ready?" Barriss asked, glancing down to Suzie and Lopmon as they moved towards the hangar, Chewbacca walking right behind them.

"Yep," nodded Lopmon. "And this time, we tell them everything. Including the fact that I am not some weird exotic pet of Suzie's, who is actually not a Jedi youngling. This should definitely be interesting."

"Tell me about it," nodded Barriss. "But the Wookiee King should remember me from our recent treaty. Hopefully what I did before left an impression on him. That was what I was aiming for, after all. Master Yoda says that you never know when you need to extract favours from people, and he was right in this case. And there are a few arguments I might be able to make that might swing this in our favour."

"Waoo whooao ohoorcrcro, Rhrarcrcahcc," Chewbacca nodded. "Scro ohoorcwa oararcrcahwoc rqhuahaowo ra anooao ooww ohwoahrracao ohahaoac aoacwo ohooooorahwowo anworawaworcc rac ohwoanan. Ah rasc churcwo aoacraao ohwo ohahanan rhwo rarhanwo aooo scooaoahhoraaowo aoacwosc ahwhaooo raoaaoahoowh."

"I hope you're right, Chewie," nodded Barriss. "I really do."

Sergeant Boomer saluted them when they entered the hangar. "Sirs," he said. "The gunships fully prepped. Do you require a clone escort down to the surface?"

"Thank you but it probably would be better if you stayed here," Barriss said. "I am sure that Chewbacca will agree with me when I say that many Wookiees are... a bit hot-headed. They might be wary of too many strange people bearing arms entering their city."

Chewbacca nodded in confirmation and grunted.

"Very well," nodded Boomer. "We'll stay up here and monitor things from above. Good luck, General. You too, kid, Lopmon."

"Thanks," nodded Lopmon as the four of them entered the gunship alone and the clone pilot within, Winger, took off and zoomed towards the surface. The journey wasn't long. After all, the humongous wroshyr trees extended extremely high into the air into almost impossible heights. The large, white vessel required a little bit of judgement time before Winger dared to move it through the small gap in the canopy and set down on the surprisingly sturdy wooden platform below.

By that time, they already had a welcoming committee. As soon as Barriss stepped out of the gunship, there were several Wookiees stand up ahead, blocking off the bridge that was the only way off the platform and into the city with their huge, hairy forms. At their head, was the familiar figure of Tarfful, his ferocious face set in an impassive stare, and with many of his fellow Wookiees casually holding their weapons on display.

But they were not the only people there. As Suzie and Lopmon joined Barriss and Chewbacca stepped out behind them, there was a cry of surprise and delight from a Zabrak woman standing alongside the Wookiee leader.

"Suzie," the Zabrak exclaimed.

"Sugi," the human girl exclaimed.

"Wow, those names are alike," Lopmon muttered, but she offered up a grin and said, "Hey, Sugi. How are you doing? And I see you've got the whole crew with you this time."

Sugi chuckled and said, "Yes. Did you know they were very annoyed that you left without saying hello the last time the two of you stopped on this planet, weren't you, guys?"

The Kyuzo standing right behind her lifted his metallic hat with a finger and regarded the duo slightly balefully with his orange eyes. "Chya," he said. "J'ia pelsé c'état drès imlori en eteff."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Lopmon shrugged. "It's just that we were kinda late for rendezvousing with the people on Coruscant to give our report. By just over half a day. They were starting to worry. Anyway, it's good to see you all. Embo, you look as cool as ever. I don't think even Cad Bane can pull of that look as well as you do."

Embo chuckled and said, "L'efer na," in response.

"Excuse me if I sound a little... presumptuous," the squeaky voice of Rumi the Frenk put itself in. "But, why are the lot of you here? The last we heard on the holonet that Seripas here is constantly surfing, all the Jedi had been considering traitors to the Republic and all its allies."

"Do you have any idea what it was like to read that?" Seripas asked from where he was standing on Rumi's barely existent shoulder. "For a moment, I'm sure I had a heart attack. And an even bigger one than I did when I read about how Aayla took on those three Separatist people all at once. What the heck did you do to piss of the Chancellor? Before he became Emperor, that is?"

"That," Barriss replied. "Is a long story."

"Uh, for those of you who haven't met her before, this is Barriss Offee, the newest member of our little group," Lopmon put in. "Barriss, these are the rest of the Bounty Hunters that helped us on Felucia and assisted us in tracking down Quinlan Vos."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Barriss nodded. "And may I offer my personal thanks to your contributions to the rest of my team before I had the pleasure of joining them?"

"You're welcome," Sugi acknowledged. "But correct me if I'm wrong – you're a Jedi, aren't you? What are you doing here? Since you are enemies of this new Empire all of a sudden, which we are still waiting for an explanation about, by the way, these Wookiees should be shooting you down like the Emperor ordered. I think the only reason they haven't is because they know you."

"That, and because they're in the middle of a conversation with Chewbacca," added Suzie, pointing to where Tarfful and Chewbacca were having a growling conversation. Chewbacca was describing a couple of his exploits with this new team, including his encounter with the Zillo Beast on Coruscant and some of the other various amazing things he had seen the Digimon and the Jedi do since he had formed his life-debt to Lopmon.

"Yes, that too," nodded Sugi. She nodded to Barriss and said, "You needn't worry about us shooting you. We're not technically Empire-aligned, being Bounty Hunters and all, so we're exempt from this rule. The Empire _has_ also put out an enormous price reward for any Jedi we can kill, but I think you'll find we're not the kind of people who would take up on an offer like that."

"Glad to hear it," Barriss chuckled.

"Well," Lopmon replied, stepped towards the group with Suzie in tow. "It's kind of a long story, and it's also the reason we're here. Perhaps we could ask you to wait for a while before you hear it. We're planning on telling the Wookiee leaders the same thing, so you can hear it then."

The Bounty Hunters exchanged looks before Seripas replied. "Alright, but seriously, you have to be quick. I've practically been going spare these last several hours, trying to figure out what the heck is going on with this Galaxy."

"Believe me, Seripas," Lopmon said wryly. "We know the full story now, and _we're_ still struggling with the exact same thing. Hey, Chewie," she called over to the Wookiee, who turned around to look at her, while the other Wookiees balked in shock when they heard Lopmon speak – she had remained silent in front of most of them last time, after all.

Among the most shocked was Tarfful, who had had more interaction with Suzie and Lopmon than the others during their time of Kashyyyk last time. He was now looking at Lopmon as if she had grown an extra pair of ears. Lopmon smiled apologetically at him, and then addressed Chewbacca with, "We'd appreciate it if we could get an audience with the kind relatively soon. And that nobody shoots Barriss on the way."

Chewbacca nodded and turned around to give a few explanations to Tarfful, with, "Roworaac, ah orwhoooh. Ahao'c ra anoowhrr caooorcro. Rhhuao rooohu acworarcwa acworc. Aoacahc ahc rqhuahaowo ahscakoorcaorawhao."

Tarfful seemed to glance from Barriss and her companions to Chewbacca a couple of times before he wrinkled his snout and shrugged slightly. Evidently he wanted some explanations as much as the next person, and the Wookiee chieftain didn't seem to be thinking of Barriss as an enemy anyway. None of them did – they weren't even pointing their weapons at her, which was a relief. It seemed that Chewbacca's words carried a fair amount of weight after all.

"You're going all the way to the King with this?" Rumi asked. "Wow. It must be serious."

"Of course it's serious," Lopmon muttered wryly. "It's one of the most serious things that I've ever been involved in, and I've been through some very serious situations in the past, believe you me."

"Thank you, Tarfful," Barriss nodded. "Shall we get going? I don't mean to be rude but the situation calls for urgency and there is a lot that you need to know. Or, to put it another way, there's a lot of things that you have the _right_ to know, which we are here to tell you about."

Tarfful frowned slightly, but cried "Caorawhwa waooohwh ohooooorahwowoc," to his men, and then nodded to Barriss and added, "Ah rcworaananro acooakwo rooohu rrahhowo huc ra rroooowa wowhoohurrac rcworacoowh whooao aooo cacooooao rooohu, scro wwrcahwowhwa."

"So do I," Barriss chuckled. "But I am pretty sure that when you hear the news – the _real_ news that is – not the stuff that you may have heard over holonews or net, you will not think about obeying the Emperor's decree to shoot all Jedi. If you believe me that is."

As Tarfful turned around and led the group towards the enormous building in the distance which housed the Wookiee leaders, Barriss reflected that there might be another reason why the Wookiees had been hesitant to shoot at her. All of them were looking slightly disgruntled by something, and Barriss could probably guess what it was. The Wookiee people were often prized as slaves due to their great strength. They were difficult to capture and contain, but if they were they could do the work of ten men on roughly similar rashions and space to one man. For that reason, Wookiees despised just about anything that they might consider remotely tyrannical and resented the idea of someone lording over them. That had been one of the main reasons why it had been so difficult to convince the Wookiee King to join the Republic. Barriss had had to assure him that that would not be the case here.

She had been lying, but at the time, she had not known it.

Not to mention they were an honourable race and would never attack a friend or colleague unless they had done something extremely bad. And the Wookiees had no evidence that she or the other Jedi _had_ done anything bad.

And now the Wookiees were angry with the Emperor already for suddenly springing this Empire on the Galaxy.

It was a good start. And Barriss was eager to rectify her unintentional mistake in getting the Wookiees to ally themselves to a Sith without realising it.

As they crossed a couple more bridges and platforms, with the Wookiees at the head and the Bounty Hunters bringing up the rear, with the newer arrivals in the middle, Lopmon noticed that Suzie was looking around her and staring into the surrounding trees (she was perched on her head, so it was actually very easy to notice). Glancing down at her Tamer's face, she could see her eyes straining as she peered into the gloom.

She grinned. "Looking for something, Suzie?" she asked. "Or perhaps, someone?"

Suzie's eyes flicked up and grinned at her partner. "I promised her that I would come back one day. I just hope that she hasn't gone away."

"I'm sure she won't have," Lopmon smiled. "After all, you two became friends very quickly, didn't you?"

Barriss glanced down at them and said, "Are you talking about who I think you are?"

"Depends," Lopmon said. "You'll need to clarify."

Before Barriss could say anything, a hugely high-pitched and shrill, hooting, whistling, screaming call erupted out of the darkness not far away. The entire processions stopped, some of them jumping at the unexpected noise, and Suzie's face split into a grin as she saw a huge shadow amongst the trees, surging towards them through the massive branches. A split second later and the shape sprang and sailed over the gap and out into the sunlight, revealing it to be a ten-metre long lizard with blue feathers round its head and running down its back, jaws that looked like a mix between a normal lizard's and a parrot beak and shining green scales.

A moment later, the massive lizard crashed to the platform right in front of Suzie, shaking the whole structure slightly. It stared down at the little girl, big enough to snap her up if it wanted, but Suzie didn't flinch. She had no need to. She was smiling fit to burst and cried, "Hey, Zarza. How've you been?"

Zarza the Varactyl responded with another loud screaming noise and promptly nuzzled Suzie with her beak, causing the kid to giggle as she was almost knocked over.

"I swear that thing goes out of its way to frighten the living daylights out of everyone," Seripas muttered as he got back to his feet, having jumped so violently that he had fallen over, and the Varactyl's landing had made him fall over again in the middle of getting up.

"Nah," Sugi chuckled. "It's just doing what they all do. Though I daresay it has a good time doing it."

"A norte dépsene," Embo shook his head.

Barriss felt a smile creeping onto her own face as she watched the humungous animal treat the little girl like a long-lost child or something, even though they hadn't been apart for two weeks. She hadn't had a lot of time to observe the Varactyl, but she knew that the lizards were very loyal to the people that cared about them, and the strongest bond they formed was usually the one with the person who tamed it. Suzie, on the other hand, had not tamed it – she had just approached it. Zarza had initially just been curious, but she'd grown fond of the little girl very quickly.

"I know, I know," Suzie giggled as she hugged Zarza's snout. "I'm back way earlier than I thought I'd be, but I missed you too. I'm so happy to see you again."

Lopmon bounced of Suzie's head and up onto Zarza's, nestling between the crown of feathers at the back of her head. Zarza's orange eye rolled back to try and look at her new passenger, and Lopmon chuckled and said, "Don't worry, I've been taking good care of this little girl, and I thank you again for doing the same thing in my place when I could not be there for her."

Zarza hooted in response and bobbed her head slightly, causing Lopmon to go up and down with her. Lopmon chuckled and said, "It's funny, isn't it – how Suzie can end up worming her way into your heart even when you're trying not to let her. You and I both suffered the same fate, right?" Zarza clacked her beak in acknowledgement.

"It's like a big, weird family reunion," Suzie smiled.

"That's because you consider just about every friend we make a part of the family, Suzie," Lopmon laughed. "If you spent three days in this city, everyone in the place would find themselves supposedly related to one another via you before they knew what was happening."

There was a round of amused chuckling from the Wookiees. Tarfful nodded appreciatively towards Lopmon, and the Digimon noticed and winked back.

Zarza promptly turned side-on and lowered herself on her long stomach, stretching one front leg out to tip her shoulder down towards Suzie. The little girl gladly accepted the invitation and climbed aboard, clambering up Zarza's large leg and hopping onto her back, with a little help from Lopmon pulling his up. It was just like the time when they'd been here a couple of weeks ago, except this time her Digimon partner was with her, and there were no Katarns chasing after her.

Which made it all the better.

Barriss chuckled and, folding her arms, gave Suzie a look of mock exasperation. "Suzie, remember why we're here. Much as I am glad to see you reunited with your friend there, we do have a job to do and news to deliver to the King."

"Yeah, I know," nodded Suzie. "But there's no reason why we can't ride to palace over there, is there? You wanna hop on as well, Barriss?"

Barriss hesitated for a moment, wondering what the Wookiees would make of this sort of thing, but she could see no reason why she shouldn't do it, so she merely shrugged and sprang into the air with a whip of her cloak and landed neatly behind Suzie and astride Zarza's back.

Immediately, the Varactyl span around and plunged off the platform, falling many metres before eventually coming to a stop when she hit one of the tree trunks and gripped it with her sucker-like feet, scrambling upwards and pelting through the foliage and back up towards the platforms, rounding trunks and dashing across branches. Suzie and Lopmon whooped as they went, and it wasn't long before Barriss joined in as well.

Zarza took the longer but faster way towards the wooden fortress up ahead where they were supposed to be going, as if she knew what her riders wanted her to do, which she probably did. As Chewbacca and Tarfful led the other Wookiees and the Bounty Hunters towards the palace via the walkways, they watched the trio on the lizard. What could people like them have done to offend the former Chancellor? They were more anxious for answers than ever before.

Chewbacca turned to Tarfful and murmured, "Aoooanwa rooohu aoacworo ohworcwo raanan rroooowa."

Tarfful nodded and said, "Ohwoanan, ah acooakwo aoacwo orahwhrr aoacahwhorc coo."

"Ah churcwo acwo ohahanan," Chewbacca nodded. "Acwo whooao rroowhwhra anahorwo ohacraao aoacworo aowoanan acahsc aoacoohurrac."

* * *

Zarza was waiting for the others when they arrived by the palace doors, a couple of heavily armoured Wookiees watching her and her former occupants slightly warily. Evidently some of them were still getting used to having the giant lizard about the place. Apparently Zarza still lived in the forest but popped in on occasion to see what was happening. It was fortunate that she'd been here to meet them this time.

"You couldn't walk like everyone else?" asked Sugi, shaking her head at the still mildly flushed Barriss.

"I wasn't expecting quite as wild a ride as that," Barriss murmured. "Anyway, we shouldn't put things off any longer. Tarfful, I would be most appreciative if you could allow inform King Grakchawwaa of our presence."

Tarfful nodded and stepped towards the doors. The Guards opened them to let him through, but when Suzie tried to follow him inside, Barriss laid a finger on her shoulder to stop her and said, "Hold on, Suzie. This is a King that we're going to see. You can't just walk into his presence – you need to be admitted."

"Oh, okay," nodded Suzie, standing back beside Barriss and Chewbacca, Zarza looming up beside them as they waited for Tarfful to return.

It wasn't long before the enormous Wookiee chieftain did reappear, and when he did, he stepped aside and gestured from Barriss to proceed into the fortress. Barriss smiled and said, "Thank you, very much," and did as instructed, stepping into the slightly dark recesses of the wooden palace beyond. Suzie and Lopmon followed her in, but Chewbacca quickly stepped past them and joined Barriss at the front. The four Bounty Hunters stepped in behind them – they were allowed in to observe if they wish since they now effectively lived in the city thanks to the aid they had given the King.

Zarza remained outside. She had no desire of going in there again. Apparently her last entrance had not been well received.

Suzie and Lopmon's breath were taken away as they entered a large room beyond the entrance hall that, in many ways was like the main Congress hall in the Senate Building, in that in the middle of the room sat a throne, on which sat a large Wookiee covered in regal battle armour with golden lining, while on the outside, rows upon rows of giant seats had been carved out of the wood, making the inside of this place look a little bit like an inside wooden version of the Roman Coliseum.

There were Wookiees everywhere, cramming into seats all across the room and looking down on the people who now entered. The growling noises died down as they did. Evidently word had gotten ahead of them and the majority of the city had turned out to find out what the heck was going on.

Barriss turned to Suzie and Lopmon and said, "Wait here, you guys. It would be better if we could save having to explain your presence until _after_ we tell them about the truth." She looked up at the Bounty Hunters standing before them and said, "You guys can keep an eye on them here, right?"

"Choes suer," Embo nodded.

"Thanks," Barriss said. "Chewie? You coming with me?"

Chewbacca grunted in acknowledgement and Barriss nodded and turned to walk towards the Wookiee leader, Chewbacca on her heels. The two of them stopped a reasonable distance from the King, who had a couple of guards flanking him as well, and bowed in respect to him. The King nodded when they looked up again, acknowledging their formal protocol and manners and gesturing for them to speak in the same motion.

And speak Barriss did, "I would say good morning, Mighty King Grakchawwaa, but I'm afraid the answer as to whether it is or not will be determined by our discussion here and now. Nevertheless, it is good to see you are still in the prime of health, though I can see that you are quite eager for some explanations to some of the news you may have heard. The whole Galaxy is probably feeling the same way that you do in that respect."

Grakchawwaa nodded and spoke, his growling Shyriiwook almost as regal as his appearance, though it was difficult to imagine how you could make growling noises sound regal. Yet somehow he pulled it off very well:-

"Akanworachurcwo aooo cwowo rooohu aooooo, shwowaah. rawhwa rowoc, ah howorcro rawhkahoohuc. Aowoanan scwo, ohacraao rhwowowh rrooahwhrr oowh? Ohacro oaacrawhoawoananoorc wawooaahwawo rooohu chuwawawowhanro wohoahan. Rawhwa ohacro acwo scraorwo woscakahrcwo oohuao ooww rhanhuwo anahorwo aoacahc. Scwo howorcro rawhrrrcro. Ohwo raanan howorcro rawhrrrcro. ohwo anahorwo wokakanraahwh whoooh."

"You need translations?" Sugi murmured down to Suzie.

"No, I got this," Suzie shook her head, pleased that she had picked up what seemed to be a ridiculously difficult language to try and decipher so quickly. "He said it was nice to see her too, but he wants to know what's going on, and they're all angry about this Empire thing."

"Very good, Suzie," nodded Lopmon. "Impressive."

"Thanks."

"Now, if only you put so much effort into your Spanish lessons."

"But I don't know any Spanish people."

Barriss cleared her throat and replied to the King with, "Well, to be honest, Great King. This has caught absolutely all of us flat-footed. The whole Galaxy is probably in a state of confusion right now, but the Jedi are in the middle of it, that much is true. And we do know what's going on, but I am afraid the story is going to take a little effort to believe. We're still not sure what to make of all of this ourselves."

"Aoacwowh akrcoooawowowa," nodded Grakchawwaa, indicating to go on.

"Thank you," Barriss nodded. "But before I do, I would like to apologise personally for being the one that dragged the Wookiee people into this mess when we formed the treaty for you to join the Republic. You have my word when I say that I did not foresee this coming, nor did any other member of the Jedi order. I fear that I encouraged you into a situation which I had no knowledge of."

She paused for a moment, but the King's face remained impassive, so she merely said, "And now, to help me explain everything, my friend and yours here, Chewbacca, has decided to do the talking, as he was much more closely involved with the circumstances leading up to the discovery which we are about to reveal to you than I was."

Chewbacca nodded and stepped forward as Barriss moved back, all eyes of the Wookiees around the walls moving to their fellow. Chewbacca was not in the least bit unnerved by all the eyes staring at him. Instead, he raised his arms out to appeal to the whole audience of his people and began to explain everything that had transpired since the attack on Aayla by Dooku and his two followers. They had discussed it at length on the cruiser and decided that would be the best place to start, as the Wookiees were going to have knowledge of that incident already, just as the rest of the Galaxy did.

The Wookiees were deathly silent as they listened to one of their own speaking of the kidnapping by Cad Bane in their own growling tongue, and then went onto to speak of how the Twi'lek had brokered a deal with the Bounty Hunter in exchange for her release and his help in tracking down the Jedi Order's biggest enemy. As he explained, the other four Bounty Hunters in, their own Shyriiwook good enough for them to follow Chewbacca's words.

"That was a risky move by Aayla," Seripas whispered. "I've heard about Bane's reputation. He is not one to be trifled with."

"Good thing we didn't trifle with him then," pointed out Lopmon.

Chewbacca then went on to speak of the event that led up to the discovery of the Sith Lord, talking about how he and a friend of theirs had joined forces with Bane to head to Coruscant and search through the Sith Lord's base. When he got to the crucial moment, the moment where Renamon discovered the identity of the Sith, the Wookiees around the walls were practically on the edges of their seats. Evidently, Chewbacca was a good storyteller.

This was made especially obvious after Chewbacca gave them the crushing news. There was a roar so loud that echoed all around the room as almost every Wookiee sprang to their feet that Suzie almost wet herself. The Wookiees were clearly enraged at the news that Chewbacca had brought them, their faces twisted into snarls and many of them were brandishing their claws, as if imagining the man was in front of them and they were going to slash him to pieces.

Barriss was surprised by this turn of events. She had been expecting a lot more shock and disbelief to come for the Wookiees than this, and for them to be asking many questions before they believed Chewbacca and got angry. But evidently, Chewbacca's word carried a lot more weight than even she had realised. Whatever the outcome might be, the Wookiees clearly believed him.

Perhaps they thought that a member of their own would never make anything like this up, let alone a Wookiee who was well-known even among their kind. Chewbacca had often been considered to be one of the king's greatest warriors, was of noble lineage and was even named after a great Wookiee from times gone by who had forged the sword that hung at the King's waist, which was always worn by the leaders of the Wookiee people.

King Grakchawwaa was on his feet as well, taking several paces away from his throne and roaring, "Ohacrarararararaaoaoaoao! Acoooh oarawh aoacahc rhwo. Rooohu rarcwo craroahwhrr aoacraao aoacwo scrawh ahc wohoahan."

It seemed the Wookiee leader was even more enraged than the Gungan leader. Then again, Wookiees did have short tempers, even at the best of times.

Barriss decided to chip in at that moment and say, "Yes, it's true. It seems that Chancellor Palpatine was in the fact the Sith Lord that we have been looking for all this time. Perhaps the worst thing about it is that we should have seen it coming. The clues were there if you looked hard enough for them, but I'm afraid Palpatine covered his tracks too well."

Grakchawwaa bared his fangs and let off a growl that was echoed by everybody else in the room.

By the doors, the four Bounty Hunters were taking the more usual response to the news of shock and denial. Even Embo looked rattled – the Kyuzo's eyes narrowing in a look of confusion as he said, "Vuos otns sûr de keki. Il na sambla pes josta?"

"Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly, Embo," Sugi looked down at the kid and the Digimon standing in front of them. "Are you sure about this? Is there no chance of you making a..."

"No," Lopmon interrupted. "We've been asked the same question many times already. We made a holorecording and everything. It's definitely him. And besides, look at what he's done since then. He's declared all Jedi, the ultimate enemies of all Sith, as traitors, and made himself an Empire, putting himself in charge of the Galaxy, which is exactly what the Sith have always been trying to do, isn't it?"

"That's true," nodded Seripas. "I don't know that much about Sith, but _everyone_ knows that much about them."

"But how in the Galaxy did he get to become the Chancellor in the first place?" Sugi pressed.

"Through manipulations, war and suffering," replied Suzie. "Like all the bad guys do when they want power."

Lopmon nodded. "It's always the way, isn't it?"

The four Bounty Hunters exchanged looks with one another. There was definitely know way in hell that they would work for a Sith even if they had wanted to hunt down the Jedi, so they had even more incentive not to attack their friends than before. But what in the Galaxy were they supposed to do next.

Barriss was still speaking across the room, taking over from Chewbacca as she continued to story. She had mentioned how Chewbacca had punched Sidious in the chest and nearly succeeded in killing him, to which the Wookiee in question got a round of pounding fists on chests as the Wookiee form of applause, and now Barriss was continuing with the narrative.

"I am sure you agree with us Jedi, in that this is an absolute disaster. Never before have the Jedi been outwitted on such a large scale. We have been used to lure in allies and negotiate treaties with people such as yourselves and countless other systems. We thought that we were doing good – strengthening the Republic and helping to provide people with protection, both from our help to you and possibly your help to us. But, in the end, all we were really doing was adding more people to the building Empire that has currently been created. Once again, I am sorry for bringing this upon you, mighty Wookiees."

Grakchawwaa shook his head. "Ahao whooao rooohurc wwrahuanao," he said. "Ahao whoorhoowaro wwrahuanao rhhuao acahsc. Ohwo raanan akanrarowowa acworcwo. whooaoacahwhrr aooo rhwo coorcrcro rarhoohuao."

Barriss smiled at what had been quite an emotionally uplifting set of words from the King. "Thank you, sir. But you should also have guessed that I am not only here to merely give you the news. If we had wanted to do just that, we could have sent a transmission or even something as simple as a letter considering we're supposed to be on the run. No, the reason that I am here now, risking exposure by being on a Empire-aligned world, which I am guessing no longer applies to this planet now really, is because we are here to seek assistance as well."

The Wookiees shared glances with one another and the King stepped backwards to take his seat back on the throne, his claws resting on the ends of the armrests. He indicated for Barriss to go on.

"Well, we seem to be of the same mind, Your Majesty," Barriss nodded. "This discovery of the Emperor being a Sith changes everything. The Empire might be saying that they're going to bring about an era of order and peace, but you don't need me to tell you that that is effectively bantha poodoo. With a Sith in charge, it will not be long before the Galaxy is suddenly under attack once again, and a new age of terror and despair begins, with the Sith ruling over everything.

"And it will, in reality, be the second attempt the Sith has made on the Galaxy, in some way. It seems quite clear to us now that the Separatists, who were being led by the same man who was leading us, was doomed to failure before it began. Its own leader was planning to bring it down one day. He was deliberately planning to make them lose the war, which means all the violence and the suffering they caused over the last year was pointless. You yourselves have been spared the vast majority of it, but it does not change the fact that the Emperor was ultimately the one behind the building of the listening post in your atmosphere that brought our first meeting about, Great King."

Barriss was on a roll now, and it seemed that she was drawing in her audience about as well as Chewbacca had. "He cannot be allowed to get away with this. We cannot allow the Galaxy to fall into his complete and utter control, as it surely will if he remains at the top of the hierarchy. The Jedi Order lives on for now, but it won't be long before we're hunted down one by one, and once the Emperor marshals his forces, he will begin a campaign, taking one planet at a time right across the Galaxy. He will even dare to challenge your authority, as you have no doubt guessed.

"Yet there is still hope that we can stop this madness before it goes into full swing. The Jedi are preparing a strategy to bring the downfall of the Emperor and restore the Republic to what it once was, before this terrible and pointless war. But, we are going to need allies. The Wookiee people are renowned for their strength, and I have seen enough from Chewbacca to know the stories are true about you. If we are to succeed, we need every ally we can get, and now, I have come before you to rectify what I did when I asked you to join the Republic, in the hope you will join us to restore that Republic, so that the treaty I made with you before can be fulfilled properly."

"Ohacraao ohoohuanwa rhwo whwowowawowa ooww huc ahww craro rowoc?" Grakchawwaa asked.

"Well," Barriss said. "The Jedi are aiming to build a strike force that will be able to give the Grand Army of the Republic, or Empire, a hard time. Your part in the plan is simple – we need you to help us fight. And that might be a big ask, but your help could prove invaluable for us to succeed and get the Emperor out of office as quickly as possible. We're planning on heading to a forest planet in the Deep Core, with an abandoned city we can use as our stronghold."

"Ohacraao ahc aoacwo akanrawh?" Grakchawwaa mused, leaning back in his chair to listen curiously, but his blood still boiling after the news he had received about Palpatine. He had been asking what the Jedi's plan would be, so Barriss quickly outlined it in brief detail, explaining why the Wookiees were needed, and the other components of the Rebellion that they were trying to build up. The Wookiees would only be needed for the first stage. The second stage would be left up to a select few."

Grakchawwaa looked impressed by the idea, but he still wanted a bit more information, so he simply asked, "Ohacraao scraorwo rooohu aoacahwhor ahao ohoorcor? Scrawhro oaanoowhwoc ahwh wowhwoscro rarcscro. Ohwo whooao acrahowo rac scrawhro ohooooorahwowoc."

"Yes, sir," nodded Barriss. "I know that the clone army is big, much bigger than the clone forces which we Jedi still have with us, but do not forget, the main objective is not to attack, it is to defend. We only need to hold out long enough for the second stage of the plan to be put in motion. When that happens, the fighting should hopefully come to a close. And we have a couple of aces in the hole, so to speak."

"Raoawoc ahwh aoacwo acooanwo?" the King asked.

"Indeed, sir," nodded Barriss. "For a start, we're not planning on letting the Empire know that you guys are among our allies. We're planning a way of leaking the information that we Jedi are amassing in a way that will make the Emperor think it was not our doing. But they won't know about you or the others if things go to plan, so that should catch them by surprise. And another thing is... well, maybe I should let Chewbacca take this one. After all, he's formed a life-debt to one of them."

Lopmon blinked, guessing what was about to happen next. Barriss turned towards her and nodded to her and Suzie, ushering them to come forward. The two small ones obliged, Suzie requiring a slight nudge from Seripas before she moved out into the limelight. As they approached, Chewbacca explained about the what the Digimon were, and why they had been so successful in the war against the Separatists. The Wookiee King looked upon Lopmon and Suzie with a fair amount of interest.

After Chewbacca's grunting explanation was passed, the King spoke the words that were on the mind of every other Wookiee in the room.

"Cacoooh huc."

This translated into Basic as :- "Show us."

Chewbacca nodded to Suzie, who carefully selected her card and moved it towards her D-Arc. All eyes were watching her hand movements as she slid the card through the slot and cried, "Digi-modify! Digivolution activate!"

Lopmon spread her ears and surged into the air, figuring that a little showing off right now could hurt as she burst into gold light while shooting straight for the ceiling. Many of the Wookiees shielded their eyes, but the King stuck it out and watched with fascination. The Bounty Hunters had all seen this before, but still, they had seen it few enough times to still find it amazing. Then again, Aayla and Bly still found it amazing, and they'd been seeing it more times than anyone else in this universe.

"**LOPMON DIGIVOLVE TO..."**

Lopmon completed the transformation in mid-air and fell back to the floor, landing neatly behind Suzie and between Barriss and Chewbacca, bending her knees and springing back up to somersault over Suzie's head, lash out with a vicious roundhouse kick that swiped through the air almost too fast to follow and thrust her switchblades forwards in a deliberately dramatic pose.

"**TURUIEMON!"**

The Wookiees were enthralled as they beheld the brand new warrior in front of them. It might not have the build or the muscle that any of them had on them, but they didn't particularly want to go up against this one. They could all tell immediately that she was a skilled fighter, able to use speed and power to overwhelm opponents with ease.

Turuiemon retracted her blades and bowed in respect to the Kind. "Your Mightyness," she said. "I also implore you to consider joining us in our struggle against the Empire and the Sith. Things are getting more desperate than ever. The news may not have gotten here yet, but Sidious has released Dooku and Ventress, and they are still serving him loyally, meaning our most powerful enemies are back in the game and eager for revenge. We need all the help we can get."

"Yeah, can you be nice like Chewbacca and help us out?" Suzie asked, stepping up beside her partner. "Please. I'll buy you some sweets."

Behind them, Tarfful burst into laughter at Suzie's words, and a good many of the other Wookiees did the same thing.

Barriss, on the other hand, was looking to Chewbacca, trying to gauge his reaction to determine what he thought the outcome of all this might be, since the King seemed to be unreadable. But Chewbacca had a look of calm confidence on his own face, which seemed to relax Barriss slightly. If he thought they still had a shot at this... maybe they did.

Tarfful stepped forward once he had stopped laughing and bowed to the King, addressing him next with, "Cahrcwo, ohwo raohraahao rooohurc ohoorcwa. Rhhuao ohwo rarcwo raanan rcworawaro aooo wwahrracao. Shhucao craro ahao rawhwa ohwo'anan rhwo oohuao ooww acworcwo."

Grakchawwaa nodded and he raised his hand, his furry palm extended towards the ceiling. Every Wookiee in the room was staring at that palm, on edge, waiting for the King to make his next gesture. And when the King moved next, it was to suddenly clench his fist and roar. The other Wookiees immediately took up the call around the room and they were on their feet, brandishing the weapons that all of them were carrying and pounding their chests. It looked like the walls were alive, there were so many of them.

Barriss turned to Chewbacca and yelled over the noise, "Is that a good thing!"

Chewbacca laughed and nodded, clenching his own fist. Tarfful turned around and said, "Rowoc. Ahao ahc ra oaraanan aooo rarcscc. Aoacwo ohooooorahwowoc rarcwo rrooahwhrr aooo ohrarc."

"A call to arms?" Barriss felt herself grinning. "You mean, we did it? You guys are really coming with us?"

Tarfful nodded, a wry smirk on his face. Barriss paused and raised an eyebrow, before saying, "Was there even any need to go into all my explanations as to the plan and the chances of success?"

Tarfful chuckled and shook his head. Barriss rolled her eyes and said, "I should have guessed. You guys were ready to take action the moment you learnt you had been double-dealt by the Sith, weren't you?"

Tarfful grinned and nodded, "Acahc scrashwocaoro shhucao ohrawhaowowa aooo rrrahurrwo chuoaoawocc, rhhuao ohwo ohworcwo raanohraroc rrooahwhrr aooo rroo. Ohwo ohahanan whooao rhwo canrahowoc aooo rawhrooowhwo ohacahanwo ohwo acrahowo rhrcworaaoac ahwh oohurc rhoowaahwoc."

"Well, I'm glad to hear it," Barriss nodded. "I'm sure the others will appreciate this. Thanks for letting me practice my negotiation skills though," she smiled.

Tarfful nodded and turned to Turuiemon, looking her up and down for a moment before shaking his head in wonder and saying, "Ohwo rhwocao anworahowo rawhwa anwoao oohuao akwoooakanwo rrwoao rcworawaro," ushering them towards the doors.

"Okay," nodded Barriss. "Come on, you two," she said, as Suzie and Turuiemon followed, the latter shrinking back down into Lopmon on the spot and further amazing Tarfful. The lot of them moved towards the door, along with a crowd of other Wookiees behind them.

The four Bounty Hunters met them there, and joined them in the entrance hall and on the way out, "So then," Sugi replied. "You've managed to stir up an entire civilisation against the Sith Lord the day after he decides to tell everyone you're traitors, when in actual fact, he is the real traitor. I doubt he is going to be pleased with that."

"Good," said Barriss, Lopmon and Suzie at same time.

Embo chuckled and said, "Vuos las gers sunt qoalqoa chues d'eotra, vuos sevaz cale."

"Thank you, Embo," Barriss replied, while Suzie and Lopmon just looked confused, not yet versed enough in the Kyuzo language to understand what Embo had just said. But the Mirialan asked, "What about you guys? What will you do now that you've learned about this? I imagine a fair number of the Wookiee inhabitants are going to be leaving the city with us when we go."

Seripas looked up and said, "Well, take a look at me. I am _not_ exactly a fighter, am I? I've kinda gotten accustomed to that since the situation on Felucia so... well, I certainly won't be of much use on a battlefield."

"Oh, don't say that, Seripas," Lopmon shook her head. "You were of great help on Felucia, and that place was a battleground."

"Well, yeah, I suppose," Seripas shrugged.

"Regardless, fighting in wars is not really our kind of thing," Rumi supplied. "Pirates bands – yes, we'll fight those. Robbers, bandits, rogue Wookiees, all fine. But... well, we haven't really had any practice in war situations. So I don't know how much help we could be."

"Nevertheless," Sugi said. "I know that _I_ will certainly be tagging along. For the time being anyway. I might not get involved in a lot of the fighting, but some situation may arise where I can be useful in another way. And if there's nothing," she shrugged. "Well, I may end up fighting after all. But we'll see right?"

"Bane will probably be there," Suzie pointed out.

Sugi frowned. "He's still there?"

"Uh-huh," Suzie supplied.

"That's not like him," Sugi murmured. "Don't know him personally mind you, but still... Ah, well, never mind. You guys coming along?"

"Hoi," nodded Embo, tipping his hat and looking epically cool in the process.

"Well, why not?" Rumi shrugged.

"In suppose..." Seripas agreed. "Though I am still not sure what use I could be in this situation."

"Well, it's good to have you aboard in any case," Lopmon smiled.

As they exited the building to find Zarza waiting for them, Chewbacca was surprised to find two Wookiees there already waiting for them, but a look of delight crossed his face when he saw them. Tarfful thumped him on the back and gave him a cheerful nod, and Chewbacca immediately moved over to greet the two of them. Suzie and Lopmon looked on curiously, but they both guessed that these people must be Chewbacca's family.

As the Wookiees behind them continued to stream out of the large fortress and move away, presumably to prepare for the coming battle, Tarfful excused himself, claiming that he needed to begin gathering the various Wookiee tribes that lived all throughout the massive forest around them and build up their numbers. Suzie and Lopmon moved over to Chewbacca, who was embracing one of the other Wookiees and smiling at the other.

"You going to introduce us, Chewie?" Suzie asked.

Chewbacca nodded and gestured to what appeared to be an older male and introduced him as his father, Attichitcuk, who nodded in return, and then gestured to the one he'd been hugging – a female, who was his wife, Mallatobuck. Lopmon nodded to the two of them and said, "It's a pleasure to meet you both in person at last. I'm... er... well, I'm not sure sorry is the right word, because I did save his life and he's been helping us a lot after all but... well... sorry I took Chewbacca away, so to speak."

Mallatobuck waved it off and smiled, "Rooohu crahowo acahc anahwwwo. Aoacraao raanan aoacworcwo ahc aooo ahao. Whooao rooohurc wwrahuanao. Rooohu shhucao rroooowa akworccoowh."

Attichitcuk nodded and added, "Raao anworacao acwo caoahanan raanahhowo raao raanan."

"Well, I appreciate it," smiled Lopmon. "Will either of the two of you be coming with us."

Both of them nodded and the Digimon grinned. The Wookiee people were certainly not slouches when it came to fighting. Just about every one of them was fully prepared to do what they had to do to defend the Republic, whether they were in the army or not. Truly, they had themselves some great allies with them.

A shrill call from Zarza drew everyone's attention to the giant lizard. Suzie turned to Barriss and said, "Hey, can we bring her with us? She's an awesome fighter – she took on about four of those big lizard things that were chasing me and won easily. She could be helpful as well."

Zarza turned to Barriss and looked at her expectantly with her large eyes. Barriss chuckled and said, "Well, I suppose so. It might be difficult to get her up onto the cruiser seeing as there's no ships large enough to carry her that will fit through the canopy but I'm sure we'll think of something. Besides, considering where Aayla and the others are going, she might actually fit in nicely."

Zarza reared and let off another bellowing shrieking noise, psyching herself up for the fighting that was to come.

* * *

The location of that battle was already being fitted out for combat. Yoda was watching the area around him from the bottom of the ramp of the cruiser. He had barely moved since he set foot on the planet, watching the clones and his fellow Jedi moving about, turning the Jedi's ancestral home into a battleground.

It was sad to see it like this, gearing up for war. Especially since the Jedi had always been, and would always be as long as they stayed true to themselves, a force for peace rather than war. But, as the saying went, desperate times call for desperate measures. And it really didn't get more desperate than this.

Giant AT-TE tanks were marching down the ramp behind him, passing straight over the top of him as the legs stamped into the ground on either side of him, but Yoda ignored them, concentrating on feeling the flow of the Force and using it to examine every inch of the Jedi Temple-slash-city that they had landed in.

Tank lifters were carry large Heavy Cannons up into the air and placing them on the ceilings of the high buildings or on little outcroppings – anywhere they could find that would be difficult to reach from the ground and might give advantage for an aerial bombardment. Several more clones were organising the set-up of emergency turrets, and other rapid-fire guns, while some others were moving LAAT gunships into the streets and turning them side on to make barriers, the idea being to force any attackers down other streets while still being able to fire at them from the gunship. Some clones had even gone outside and were starting to see if there were any strategic places to lay mines.

Truly, when things broke out here, they would do so in a spectacular fashion. The place was in an amazing state considering nobody had lived her for hundreds of years. But soon, destruction would come knocking at its doors.

Not far away was Numa and Tsunomon, with the Digi-Gnome circling above their heads. When Bane had brought them out of the ship, he had promptly excused himself and gone off into the city to do who knew what. Yoda wasn't too worried about him right now. His ship was the only way he had off this planet and it was currently still in the hangar of the _Negotiator._

Numa was looking a little bit chastened, as Yoda had given both her and Tsunomon a slight dressing down, and she might not understand the words, but she'd been lectured about misbehaviour enough times to know the tone. Yoda had sounded more disappointed than angry, but when Tsunomon had explained that the Digi-Gnome had been the one to bring them here via another wish, Yoda had relented slightly.

He wasn't entirely sure what to do with Numa. They didn't have the time to double back to Saluecami and drop her off again – they needed the cruiser here to unload the gear. As a couple of AT-RTs ran past him to try and find convenient places to leave them where they could launch a swift and precise attack, Yoda thought on his choices with regards to the Twi'lek girl. The safest place for her would be deep within the Temple, possibly in any ventilation system there might be within – or within a vault somewhere. But he had a strong suspicion that Numa would be unwilling to stay in there.

He had a little time to think on things though, so it was best not to dwell on such things.

"General Yoda, sir," Commander Ember approached him. "We're still gearing up and preparing for attack, but our people on the bridge have just reported that they're picking up something heading towards us. Another cruiser's arrived. Two of them, actually."

"Good news, this is," nodded Yoda. "Contact them, you must, and direct them down here."

"Already taken care of, sir," nodded Ember. "We've already made contact and they're heading down as we speak. It's Masters Gallia, Vos and Rancisis, sir."

Yoda nodded, "Thank you, Commander." He looked up and added, "Trust, I do, that help their men to begin unloading some of their own gear, you can, hm?"

"Yes, General," nodded Ember. "We've already got a strategic layout of the city and we've planned out a large portion of where are forces will deployed. We may need to alter it depending on when all our allies get here and what resources they have, but everything will be done as quickly as possible."

Yoda nodded and said, "Good work, Commander. Your loyalty and efficiency, admirable, they are."

Ember saluted and moved away to continue working. Yoda looked up a minute or so later to see one of the massive cruisers flying overhead, coming to land slowly in one of the larger spaces within the city, while the other one landed in another not far away. A few clones quickly moved out the way as the massive ships carefully landed. Yoda knew there were not that many spaces left within the city that would support a cruiser, which meant that other might have to land outside the walls. And the cruisers would definitely have to be moved for when the final battle came, but fortunately, that was easily done.

Yoda still didn't move, and it wasn't that long before Adi Gallia and Oppo Rancisis were moving towards him from one direction, while Quinlan Vos strode in from the other. The Kiffar was staring all around him at the structure and the architecture of the glowing city. "Very nice," he was murmuring under his breath. "Heh, I think I could get used to living in a place like this."

"Master Yoda," Oppo nodded, coming to a stop beside the much smaller Jedi, who had, once upon a time, been his own Master when training as Padawan, just as Dooku had been. Yoda was a master a training Jedi that had unusual body forms, which other Jedi might not be able to work with, as his own Master had also been very snake-like in appearance. As the Thisspiasian came to a stop, his body coiled up behind him. "It's good to see you in the flesh again. And I must admit, you have chosen quite a location for our last stand."

"Yes," nodded Adi Gallia. "The living Force that resides through this place is unlike anything I ever felt before."

"Remind me why we moved to Coruscant again," Quinlan chuckled. "I think it would have been better if we'd just stayed her."

"Moved to Coruscant, we did, to be closer to the Senate. More convenient, we thought it would be," Yoda opened his eyes and chuckled humourlessly. "Ironic it is, that despite our closer proximity to the Senate, see the Sith Lord still lurking under our noses, we did not."

"Indeed," sighed Adi. Then, she frowned when she spotted Numa standing nearby. "Hold on," she said. "What is a Twi'lek child doing here and what...?" Her eyes widened at the sight of the Digi-Gnome and Tsunomon, as well as the D-Arc that Numa was still carrying (she had no pockets to put it in). "Another Tamer? Is this not the Numa girl that the other Tamers spoke of?"

"Yes," nodded Yoda. "She is."

"But I thought she was supposed to be stayed behind on Saleucami," Oppo replied.

"She was," Yoda said. "Stowed away, she did."

Quinlan laughed and said, "Why, you little scamp." He moved over towards Numa and sat down next to her, and said, "Yami don, sugi ei. Jus Quinlan. Kugon non suul?"

Numa looked up, surprised to be being addressed in her own language by a non-Twi'lek but she smiled and said, "Jus drass."

"Suul dalio hef cu rekoomeynee warok?" Quinlan asked. He had, of course, picked up how to speak Twi'leki from his close relationship with his own Padawan, and it had proven invaluable on the several missions he'd been on involving Aayla's estranged family.

"Jud yers acer ard," Numa nodded. "Ju yuson ji sortol."

"Kury suul yers," nodded Quinlan. "Hed o lag sortol suulan lik."

The other three Jedi Master stared as Quinlan and Numa struck up a lengthy conversation. Then, Adi muttered, "I fear that Vos is going to corrupt that child into pulling crazy stunts."

"You should remember who she was hanging around with before," Oppo pointed out. "Vos might be a step down from them."

"Good point," nodded Adi.

* * *

Meanwhile across the Galaxy, another recruiting mission was about to begin. However, this one was going to be a lot more violent than both Kit's and Barriss' had been, and the people who were on it knew that full well. It was because of this that they had planned their attack strategy in advance. It was a simple one yet it was effective, and they had Ahsoka Tano to thank for it. It had been her idea, after all, even if Ahsoka herself was not actually on this mission.

In a nearby monitoring station to a cluster of planets that was situated near the major hyperspace lane known as the Perlemian Trade Route in the Thanium sector, a clone that went by the name of Steel was sitting as his post, like he always did, staring at the pieces of equipment before him, like he always did, and like always, there seemed to be nothing going on. Not that that was anything new really. Since the Separatists were practically gone, there was very little activity in the area. Ships might pass by through the hyperspace lane, but they weren't picked up by the scanners. It was the ones that were coming out of hyperspace that would be picked up.

This was meant to be so that they could respond immediately if a sudden invasion occurred.

But, of course, there hadn't been a sudden invasion for a long time now.

Yet Steel dutifully monitored his station. He was a clone after all. Was that not what he was supposed to do? Even if he didn't get this whole weird thing about the Jedi suddenly being traitors and everything. And he certainly didn't understand how a bunch of clones could have gone renegade and stopped obeying the Emperor in favour of the Jedi.

Yet, it had happened.

Wasn't the Galaxy full of strange things?

And then, suddenly, his life became more interesting. A blip appeared on his monitor, and he frowned and looked it up, zeroing in on its location to discover that a ship had just pulled out of hyperspace above one of the planets that was closest to the hyperspace lane – Felucia. He frowned. He wondered what in the world such a large ship could be doing orbiting Felucia. It was a ridiculous planet choice if you wanted to spend a holiday there. There was no Empirical presence there, and the Separatists that had tried to invade had been utterly annihilated by the A-Team and their supposed Acklay allies.

Which Steel believed to be complete nonsense of course. A tamed Acklay? Yeah, right.

Plus, somebody was supposed to notify him and his fellow clones here in the station if someone was coming, so that they would not catch them by surprise.

"Guys," Steel announced to the ship, attracting the attention of the other clones all around him. "I think we might have something to investigate here."

* * *

At the same moment, while the _Intrepid_ had pulled out of hyperspace above Felucia, the people inside knew that they would have to be quick. Ordinarily in a situation like this, when a Empire ship appeared in a heavily-guarded Empire area completely unannounced, they would be called to ask what the heck they were doing here, in which case they could have made up a story to buy them some time before investigations were made.

Unfortunately, that would not be the case this time, because the tracking beacon they had chucked out of the airlock to stop them from being followed across the Galaxy and hounded by the Empire was also the device that would identify them as an Empirical ship on the scanners. To the people that were no doubt watching the scopes for intruders, the _Intrepid_ would appear as an umarked ship.

Aayla and the others were already in the hangar, standing in a gunship which promptly rose off the ground and zipped out of the doors, which opened right before them and quickly began to head down to the planet's surface below. As Renamon steadied the two Tamers and her mate, Aayla called into her comlink.

"Commander Bly," she said. "Hopefully things will progress quickly down here on the surface, but I'm going to need you to hold things as long as you can up there in space. Deploy the fighters and bombers now – they must be ready for when the Empire forces arrive. And send word to our reinforcements the moment the enemy arrives."

"Yes, sir," nodded Bly. "Good hunting."

As the gunship moved down towards the planet's atmosphere, a large number of Y-wing bombers and ARC-170 fighters moved out of the hangars on both sides of the ship and from the middle. Their job would be the most important, for they would have to keep the other Empire ships off the _Intrepid_'s back for as long as they could.

For the flagship of Aayla Secura was about to be outnumbered by a large amount.

* * *

And, sure enough, it was less than a minute before four Empire cruisers, appeared out of hyperspace nearby. On board the leading ship was another clone commander, one who had served under Jedi Knight Xiaan Amersu, yet another female Twi'lek. His name was Commander Bek, and he had been following said Twi'lek into battle on a planet not that far away from here when she had suddenly cut and run right before he had received the order to kill her.

She had managed to get to her starfighter in time and fly away and escape, but Bek was still in the area. He had just finished eradicating the last of the droids, when he had received a call to investigate something over Felucia. And here he was with a bunch of other cruisers.

He frowned when he saw the cruiser in front of him. "That's odd," he said. "I was expecting some kind of pirate ship or something when those guys at the surveillance station told us that an unidentified ship had appeared here."

"Perhaps they ran out of fuel," suggested one clone.

"No, you're missing my point. Why's it unidentified? It doesn't look too damaged so their tracking beacon should probably be fine and..." Bek paused as he suddenly watch the ship do something peculiar, it started to rotate itself around, flipping itself slowly onto its side and twisting around in space until its underside was exposed to the group of new cruisers. However, right before its top half fully vanished from view, Bek gasped.

He knew this ship.

Every ship had a unique set of symbols or colours somewhere across it that would help you to identify who it belonged to, and this ship was one of the most famous in the entire Galaxy. It was the _Intrepid,_ and if it was doing something unusual like that, then it must be preparing for battle.

"That's the flagship of Aayla Secura!" he suddenly shouted to the rest of the clones. "Battlestations everyone. We need to be ready for anythAARGH!"

There was a sudden cacophony of loud explosions as several Y-wing bombers lanced out of nowhere and unloaded their explosive cargo onto the four cruisers, blowing several massive, gaping holes in them and punching out many of the turrets lining them. Bek was almost knocked off his feet by the rocking of the ship, and he looked outside once again, his battle face coming on immediately as he identified the situation. There were several bombers coming around for another pass, flanked by ARC-170 fighters to act as a vanguard.

Bek immediately leapt forward and cried. "Launch all fighters and bombers – we need to take out that vessel and all of its occupants. It doesn't matter if we are facing off against our own brothers here – they are traitors to our Empire for joining up with the Jedi like they have. Concentrate all turret fire on that cruiser."

"Sir," cried one clone. "The Emperor has declared that anyone who knows anything about the location of any of the A-Team are to inform him immediately."

"Then get to it, soldier," Bek nodded. "Tell him we've found her flagship above Felucia and engaged it in a space battle." As the clone rushed off to obey, Bek turned back to the action, as everything devolved into a massive laser-storm.

* * *

And you might or might not want me to, but I am going to end it there, because as you all know, it is a semi-cliffhanger, since you know that Palpatine has a little something in store for Aayla the moment he learns of her location. I hope you liked all the growlings of the Wookiee people and the reintroduction of Zarza the Varactyl. I just had to bring the loveable lizard back into the story at the first opportunity. And this time, she's going to be hanging around for a while longer.

By the way, **Diao Lover**, I'm assuming you saw me mention Xiaan Amersu, since it was you asked me to slot her in somewhere. I should point out though, that this is _not_ the only part she'll have in my story – though you did catch me with the suggestion at the exact right time actually. Two chapters later and I wouldn't have been able to really put her in properly. I could have just said she was among those at the Temple, but I decided to come up with something slightly different for her instead.

* * *

Twi'leki translations

Yami don, sugi ei. Jus Quinlan. Kugon non suul? – Hello there, little one. I'm Quinlan. How are you?

Jus drass – I'm fine

Suul dalio hef cu rekoomeynee warok? – You excited for the upcoming battle?

Jud yers acer ard. Ju yuson ji sortol – I'll do my bit. I want to help.

Kury suul yers. Hed o lag sortol suulan lik – Course you do. And a big help you'll be.

* * *

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The conclusion to the happenings both above and on Felucia occur on this particular chapter, where Aayla, Renamon and Terriermon head out into the jungle to find some insectoid allies. Meanwhile, Palpatine learns of Aayla's position and decides to move quickly, while above Kamino, the others begin their own stealth campaign to the surface.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 169 : The Rebellion Grows Part 3**


	169. The Rebellion Grows Part 3

Oh God, I'm tired. I really hope that this hasn't affected this chapter very much, but we had a Halloween party a day in advance last night and, although I drank nothing and went to bed at a reasonable time, I'm still absolutely knackered. Nevertheless, I forced myself to churn this out so that I can stay on schedule, so I hope that you like the result. I think **Diao** **Lover** will like this chapter for some reason though.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 169:- The Rebellion Grows Part 3**

* * *

Palpatine was being kept busy. After learning of the Jedi's survival, he was beginning to draw as many forces as could be spared back to Coruscant to help defend it in case of a Jedi attack. He knew that the Jedi would probably have to be suicidal to even attempt a full-out assault on Coruscant at the best of times, but there was always the chance that they might, considering how desperate things had gotten for them.

And he was also attempting to ignore Asajj Ventress, who was fuming in the corner of his office, angry at the fact that she was not being allowed the opportunity to get out there and hunt down her most hated foes. She was saying things like, "Now's the perfect time to do it seeing as they're on the run and I won't have to worry about retribution, but Palpatine was having none of it.

"My Lord," Dooku spoke up from next to the desk. "What exactly are our next moves going to be? Order 66 may have sent the Jedi running, but as we have learned over the course of this war, they are more resourceful than we imagined. How do you plan on purging them from the rest of the Galaxy?"

"For the moment, we must work on our defences," Palpatine replied. "Launching a pre-emptive strike against the Jedi is, for the moment, pointless, as we have no idea where any of them are. But we do know that they are sure to try something in the long run. Their supposed sense of justice will not allow them to go into hiding without at least making one attempt to unseat us, so our defences are critical at this point. Besides, it is only a matter of time. The whole Galaxy has become their enemy. They will be eventually spotted, and when they are, they will be crushed. I will be counting on the two of you to lead in the Jedi Purge I foresee."

"It would be my honour, Master," Dooku nodded.

"The Jedi's fall has been long in the waiting," agreed Ventress from the window, turning around to stride towards the desk with a fist clenched. "It will be more than an honour to wipe them from the Galaxy. It will be a pleasure."

"Providing that you do not fail as abysmally as you did a few days ago against Secura then yes," Palpatine responded unkindly. "It will."

Ventress felt a stab of annoyance at being spoken to like that, but she was _not_ going to flare up at the Emperor. He was way too strong for her and she knew it full well. Still, the idea that that Dark Jedi wannabe Aurra Sing being the one allowed to go after Secura when the time came made her want to throw up. Almost literally. It was simply that ridiculous. She was eager to start using her lightsabers again – the items in question had been recovered from the Jedi Temple vaults and returned to their respective owners. And when she did use them once more, the Jedi would not know what hit them.

Suddenly, Palpatine's communication channel opened and he frowned, not having expected a call, but he answered it all the same. It depicted a clone trooper, who was hunched over as if trying to stay behind cover or preparing to throw himself to the ground at any moment. The hologram was shaking slightly, and the reception could have been better. It looked, for all intents and purposes like this clone was in the middle of some kind of battle.

"Emperor Palpatine," cried the clone. "I have an urgent message from the Thanium sector. The flagship of Jedi General Aayla Secura has been spotted orbiting the planet Felucia."

"What?" Palpatine asked, leaning forward and trying to suppress his glee at this news coming so soon. "Is she onboard?"

"We can't be sure, sir," replied the clone. "We've engaged it in a battle and have it heavily outnumbered, but admittedly it is giving us a hard time, sir. It's turned itself onto its side and exposed its underbelly to us. It doesn't appear to be showing any interest in leaving, but it's definitely hers. Just thought we should let you know, as per your orders sir."

There was an explosion on the other side that sent the clone stumbling. Palpatine nodded and said, "Press your attack. Overwhelm that cruiser. If there is even the slightest chance that Secura is there, you must wipe her out. And even if she is not there, it will be manned with clone traitors to the Empire. Wipe them out!"

"Yes, sir," nodded the clone, as the hologram vanished.

"Do you think they will succeed in killing Secura for us?" asked Ventress.

"Not likely," Palpatine shook his head. "Secura's forces are amongst the best, and she is a skilled space battler herself. Odds are that she'll find a way of escaping, so we must take full advantage of this while we know where she is." He pushed another button and called, "Bounty Hunter Sing, do you read me?"

* * *

Aurra Sing's ship, an old blockade runner that she had stolen from pirates many years ago, was in orbit over Coruscant, fully manned and ready to leave. Aurra had prepared it to leave at a moment's notice, and the Bounty Hunter was quick to push the button when she received the call.

"Yes, your Worshipfulness," Aurra responded. "You have news for me already? That was surprisingly quick."

"Indeed," nodded Palpatine. "But we have just received word that Secura's flagship has been engaged in a space battle above the planet Felucia. What she is doing there I don't know, but you must get there before she can flee."

"Felucia, huh?" Aurra smirked, pulling up another hologram, this one a map of the Galaxy and zeroing in on the planet in question. She scanned it briefly and murmured, "Located by a major hyperspace lane so it won't take me too long to get there. And a lot of planets nearby that might do very well for what I have in mind." She smirked as her gaze narrowed on one particular floating orb not that far away from Felucia and said, "Yes, there will do. Consider it done, Emperor. Secura will fall before the day is out."

"I have heard those words before," Palpatine pointed out. "Make sure that this time they are the truth."

Aurra smirked and nodded, signing out. Nearby, the Morgukai warrior, Bok, grinned and said, "We go kill Secura now then?"

"Yes," nodded Aurra. "But I remind you that you are not to get in the way. Just do your bit and we'll blow Secura to pieces before she realises that she's fallen for our trap."

"No worry," Bok smirked. "I want Secura dead fast. I do as you say."

"Good boy," Aurra sneered, but Bok seemed to miss the barb. Aurra merely programmed the navimcomputer and, moments later they were whooshing down the Perlemian Trade Route, on course to wipe out the insurgent Twi'lek once and for all.

* * *

"But Master," Dooku said. "Why would Secura risk exposure like this? She knew full well that there was a strong Republic presence close to Felucia, so she couldn't have chosen that planet as a potential hiding place. She knew she would have been picked up immediately, I'm sure of it. There must be some other reason for her sudden appearance there."

"There are a few stories circulating about the Twi'leks time on that planet during the war," Ventress pointed out. "When that Gossam Shu Mai was..."

"Yes, I have heard the stories," Palpatine cut her off. "But the Jedi have never confirmed if they were true or not and frankly they are mere nonsense if you want my opinion. As to your question, Count, Secura will indeed have a motive of some kind and while it would be important to figure out what that might be, it will be largely irrelevant soon enough if that Bounty Hunter carries out her task to perfection, as she promised. And this time, there will be no switching sides."

Dooku nodded, but continued to ponder it all the same.

There was something odd about this whole thing. Both he and Sidious knew that. But for the moment, they simply couldn't figure out Aayla's line of thinking. It couldn't have anything to do with the Felcuia's ferocious predators though. As Sidious has said, those rumours were a complete load of trollop.

Right?

* * *

Above Felucia, the battle raged on and was beginning to pick up in intensity. With the bridge positioned away from the four cruisers attacking the heavily shielded underside of the _Intrepid_, Commander Bly couldn't see what was going in the grand scheme of the battle. He was having to rely on the information the scanners were displaying onto the holotable, which gave only a vague picture of the chaos outside. It showed where the cruisers were, but that was about it. And despite the fact that the cruiser was essentially on its side, the gravity generators were directed towards the floor, so Bly was able to stand upright regardless of what angle the ship was at.

The four newly arrived cruisers were pushing back against the _Intrepid_'s defences, but they were having a much tougher time of it than they would have liked. The _Intrepid_ had the upper hand. They had been anticipating a battle the moment they had arrived, and had been preparing for it for several hours, whereas the Empirical cruisers were struggling to get fully into the game.

One of Commander Bek's main hangar doors had been collapsed by the Y-wing bombers, blocking off any exit from the ship from that direction, and the other side of the ship was being covered by ARC-170 fighters, which were hobbling or destroying any ship that tried to leave it, rolling and ducking underneath the shots constantly being fired from the turrets mounted across the surface of the ship. Several of Aayla's fighters were being taken out, but the majority of the losses were on the side of the Empire.

And that wasn't just due to the swift tactics of Aayla's men. It also had something to do with the fact that many of Aayla's men's fighters had a Chrome-Digizoid coating at various points, resulting in lasers bouncing off them and ricocheting back towards the cruisers that fired them.

Several more Y-wings had formed a phalanx and were swooping around the larger vessels, diligently dodging the laser fire sent their way and swooping up like a single unit towards the bridge of the cruiser on the right of the group of four. They were spotted and the clones on board quickly reinforced their shields, but it was not enough to totally block the swift and precise bombardment by the Y-wings. The vessel rocked as the bombs smashed into the shields and punched a hole through the bridge.

The people inside were immediately sucked out into space and went drifting into the battle that was swarming around the cruisers. The cruiser itself began to dip as it lost the people controlling and was caught in Felucia's gravitational pull, falling towards the planet below. But before it could plough into the atmosphere, another round of Y-wings swept around and blew the cruiser to pieces, the shields no longer functioning and, as a result, the ship was torn apart.

The _Intrepid_ itself was doing no firing back at all. It couldn't. It didn't have any guns on the underside, but it did have an incredibly thick metal coating which, combined with the shields diverted to the bottom of the ship, was making it an almost impenetrable walls against the enemy fighters and turrets, the bolts that were getting through to the ship being absorbed by shields or, if it did manage to break through, slamming uselessly into the thick metal.

Some fighters that managed to elude Aayla's forces did manage to sweep around the side of the ship. But before they could turn around to launch an assault on the top of the ship, they were met with a massive spread of concentrated fire from the turrets, not to mention the LAAT gunships that were hovering in wait for them, and sent missiles after them the moment they came in range.

Commander Bek growled at how the one flagship was managing to outdo the three remaining cruisers that he had left just by floating there. "Send more fighters out there," he cried. "All our forces. Converge on that ship. The key to victory here will be if we can somehow get around it and attack the bridge superstructure. We cannot fail our Emperor men. If Aayla Secura is on board that ship, then we must bring it down at all costs."

On the other bridge, meanwhile, Bly was looking pretty confident with the situation. Thus far, they seemed to be lording it over the other cruisers. This was the way the 327th worked. It's General and her allies might be the more powerful individuals, but the 327th were certainly not just added baggage. When they threw their weight around, the enemy definitely felt it, even when the Jedi or the Digimon were not even involved in the fighting, like now.

Even so, it would be nice to get some back-up soon.

And it arrived. Suddenly the scanners bleeped as two more items appeared on its scopes, revealing more cruisers pulling out of hyperspace right next to the _Intrepid_. But Bly was far from worried. He chuckled and said, "Right on time."

When Bek, on the other hand, saw the two more cruisers suddenly appearing out of nowhere, he first felt confusion. When the cruisers abruptly began to fire on his own cruisers, he yelled in shock and anger. What was going on?

The answer – two more of the largest legions of the 327th had just arrived – it was, after all, one of the largest Star Corps in all the Galaxy. Bly had called them in shortly after they had left Saleucami and had reassigned them to a section of dead space in relatively close proximity to Felucia that was just beyond the range of the Empire's scanners, where they had been waiting for the call to battle ever since. Bly called in over the comlink and said, "Good to see you boys. You arrived just at the moment we were hoping for."

"Good to be here, Commander Bly," came the reply from Commander A'den of the 7th Legion, who was one of the most important clones in the whole Star Corps, and second only to Bly himself. "Looks like the General's strategy is working then."

"Our General's strategies always work," Bly chuckled. "She is Aayla Secura, after all. But this particular strategy was coined from Commander Tano of the 501st, and it's serving us well indeed."

"We have any idea how long the General's going to be down there on the planet?" asked Captain Tyto from the other cruiser, leader of the smaller but still very skilled and strong Bacta Company of clones. "It won't be long before those guys get reinforcements of their own."

"I know," Bly said. "But hopefully it will not be long now. In the meantime, let's do our duty to the General and fend these guys off as best we can."

"Shouldn't be too hard," Tyto observed as the Y-wings and ARC-170 fighters of the two newer ships began to pour towards the action as well. You looked like you've got things under control by yourself before we arrived anyway."

"Hah," Bly chuckled. "I'm sure you guys could say the same thing if I was bringing in the reinforcements."

As the number of fighters attacking his remaining cruisers suddenly increased to over double its original size, Commander Bek started backwards as everything began to fall apart around him. He needed reinforcements quickly, and a clone behind him was desperately calling for back-up into the holotable, but Bek was pretty sure it wouldn't come in time.

Was this what the 327th were really capable of. For the first time, Bek realised that the angle he was watching the battle from was the same angle that the countless battle droids the 327th had destroyed would be watching from as well throughout the war. And Bek finally fully understood why, in some cases, the battle droids turned and fled when they learned the 327th were to be their next opponents.

* * *

As Winger made his way down to the planet's surface and skimmed through the clouds and lowered the gunship that he was flying low over the trees of the jungle world, he looked around him at the enormous amounts of giant foliage and pitcher plants all around them. He activated the com and said, "You sure this is the right place? This all looks the same to me."

"Don't worry, Winger," Renamon's voice replied from the interior of the ship – the clone pilot had opened the blast doors already to allow the occupants to look out at the surrounding area. "This is the place. We were here not two weeks ago and I definitely recognise that giant rock formation over there."

"Yep, this is the territory of our large and loud friends," Terriermon nodded. "We'd know it anywhere. Now all we have to do is find them."

"How shall we proceed, General Secura?" asked the clone.

"We'll get off here, Winger," Aayla replied. "Terriermon will search for our allies from the sky. Drop us off at that rock formation over there. What I want you to do is identify a place nearby with a relatively open and flat space. Somewhere that one of our cruisers might be able to land on safely. Do you think you can do that?"

"Of course sir but are you sure this is wise. Going out into Felucia without back-up can be treacherous."

"Trust me, Winger. I think that of all the places to be on this planet, this is one of the safest. The more hostile large animals will have been driven out of this area by now."

"But that doesn't account for the very large amount of small animals and the plants that can also kill you," Winger pointed out.

"We won't be here for that long, and we'll be careful. Don't worry about us, Winger, though your concern is appreciated. Just try and do what you have to do quickly. We can't stay on this planet for very long. We need to be off it pronto."

"Alright, sir," nodded Winger. "Good luck."

He steered his craft over the large rock formation nearby and as he did, the five occupants of the space behind him sprang out of the ship. Renamon and Aayla had Rika and Henry firmly in their grasp respectively as they flipped down and landed smoothly on the rocks. The two Tamers were used to this kind of entry to planets by now, and while it still felt like they had left their stomachs behind, they were actually growing accustomed to the feeling of falling out of a starship.

Terriermon, on the other hand, was up in the air immediately. He waved briefly at Winger before the small Digimon and the large spaceship moved away from each other and swooped off into different directions. Terriermon's eyes promptly became fixed on the ground as he carried himself high above the plant life. He had no interest in being grabbed by a hidden animal, and he didn't trust getting too close to most of the plants either.

On a planet like this, you never knew what the heck it was going to throw at you next anyway. So it was better to be on the safe side.

_It would help if we had Lopmon here with us as well,_ Terriermon reported through his mind-link. _We could probably cover more ground that way._

_Yes, but Lopmon insisted on accompanying Suzie, who in turn insisted on going to Kashyyyk,_ Renamon replied. _We'll have to manage. Can you see anything that might indicate the presence of our friends?_

_Not yet,_ Terriermon replied. _But, hopefully I'll find something relatively soon._

He swooped lower and wheeled from side to side in a large slalom, determined to pick up any key traces of the creatures he was looking for. There probably should have been several trails through the jungle from where they had gone on a stampede less than two weeks ago, but the jungle grew back very quickly. And it was very humid here, even high in the sky where Terriermon was.

He spotted something that looked like a jungle rancor down below, but that definitely wasn't what he was looking for. It was scratching its bottom, and Terriermon couldn't help but laugh at it as it did.

He avoided the Sarlacc pit that he knew to be nearby. He knew that anything with any sense would stay as far away from a Sarlacc as possible if they knew it was there, as the things he was looking for almost certainly did.

Aware that the clock was ticking and a battle was raging up ahead spurred Terriermon to fly faster, flapping his ears hard to power himself into flight and wheel around, his eyes covered the ground below like a laserbeam. Surely when he finally came across them, they would be relatively easy to spot.

And, sure enough, it didn't take long to find them. It was just over five minutes of searching time before Terriermon finally came across what he was looking for. The bush rustled up ahead and a large insectoid leg pushed one of the pitcher plants aside, as an enormous, six-legged Acklay emerged from the dense jungle. Terriermon spotted the creature immediately as it moved into a small clearing with an even smaller body of water and bent down to lap the water up. Long neck with flat head and large crest sticking out the top, six mighty clawed legs with three fingers on each second joint from the torso and three eyes situated above a mouth full of needle-teeth.

Acklay were dangerous predators, but Terriermon was pretty sure that this one could be approached. _Found one, guys,_ he said. _You can get over here anytime you like._

_Already on our way,_ Henry responded, and Terriermon could see them leaping down from the rocks in his mind's-eye, Renamon carrying Rika on her back and Aayla doing the same with Henry. Terriermon chuckled as he sensed Henry's embarrassment at this situation, but he knew full well that Aayla could run much faster than he could himself, so he didn't complain.

Down below the water suddenly surged as a creature that looked like a cross between a manta ray and a crocodile, which Terriermon identified as Felucian ripper, sprang out of the water and snapped at Acklay's head. This ripper, Terriermon decided, must have had a death-wish because you were not very smart if you went picking a fight with an Acklay. The Acklay's head snapped up the moment the ripper moved and the ripper's jaws slammed shut on mid-air. The Acklay's head swung on its neck like a bat and clouted the ripper in the jaws before it slip back into the water, knocking it on the shore, where it was promptly stabbed by a claw and killed.

"Yeesh," Terriermon murmured. "These guys really do keep themselves in good practice." He landed nearby and momentarily watched as the Acklay tore off one of the ripper's fins and ate it, before announcing his presence by clearing his throat.

The Acklay's head snapped up to glare at him, but when it saw who it was, it seemed to rear back in confusion, have not expected to see the creature before him. "Hey there," nodded Terriermon. "Long time no see. Oh wait, I was here recently with Ahsoka and Barriss, wasn't I? Never mind."

The Acklay abruptly shrieked, a loud trilling noise that could chill anyone to the bone before it stepped over to Terriermon and regarded him, before lowering its head in front of the bunny and allowing it to hop on. This was no ordinary Acklay after all. It was one of six that had been enchanted by Taomon into having intelligence, a conscious and the ability to make friends. And Terriermon was one of the few people that could claim to be the friend of an Acklay.

Terriermon patted the Acklay's crest and said, "Have to say, I did not think that I would be seeing you again so soon. Regardless, I see life has been treating you well." The Acklay snorted in response and growled, but Terriermon knew it to be a friendly noise.

As usual, it was not long before the others also arrived at the scene, leaping through the foliage and carefully avoiding touching anything until they sprang into the clearing and skidded to a halt next to the large Acklay, which looked down at them and gave them the closest thing it could to a grin. On its bug-like face, the result was pretty sinister. Its gaze passed from Renamon, who it had also seen recently, to the two Tamers and Aayla. When it saw them, it gave a cry of delight and lowered its head to their level.

Aayla placed her hand on its nose just above its fearsome teeth and massaged the exoskeleton with her fingertips. "Hello again, old friend," she smiled. "It certainly has been a while since I last saw you."

"It would be nice if we knew which of the five non-Force-capable Acklay this was though," Rika muttered.

"You think we should give them all names?" Henry chuckled.

"I think that might be taking things a bit too far," Rika rolled her eyes.

The Acklay withdrew its head and then turned around suddenly, presenting its back to them much like Zarza had done to Suzie on Kashyyyk, but it was also jerking its head in the direction of the trees. Aayla and Renamon glanced at one another and frowned. It appeared to be trying to get them to follow it with a sense of urgency, but they hadn't even asked it for anything yet.

When they were slow to respond, the Acklay stamped its foot on the ground and shrieked, motioning them to move more quickly. Renamon chuckled and said, "Well, someone's in a hurry to be somewhere."

"Maybe he's trying to take us to the others in his pack," shrugged Terriermon.

"Well, in any case, I'm getting on," Rika replied, as she stepped forward and grabbed the Acklay by the neck hauling herself up onto his back until her legs were dangling on either side of it. Henry quickly followed suit and pulled himself on behind Rika and the Acklay bellowed to the sky and charged into the foliage. A moment later and Renamon, Aayla and Terriermon were running or flying after him, keeping peace with the rapid pace of the thundering Acklay.

_Where's he taking us, you reckon?_ Asked Renamon.

_I'm not sure,_ Aayla frowned. _They didn't do anything like this the last time you guys arrived here did they?_

_No, but then again the whole group was together at the time. But they did seem more eager to listen to us. I'm sure he's just leading us to the others._

Aayla nodded, but she wasn't entirely sure. She had been able to sense a slight urgency from the Acklay which she had not been expecting. There was something else about this, but she couldn't put her finger on what it might be.

* * *

It turned out that the Acklay _was_ leading it to the other five, but that was not the only thing. The other five Acklay were crowded around a relatively small form, their legs tucked into their sides and their bellies resting on the floor, but when they saw their fellow carnivore and his passengers approaching, they were instantly alert and clambering to their feet, shrieking greetings to newcomers and all genuinely looking extremely pleased to see them. Somehow.

But what interested Aayla, Renamon and Terriermon more was the farm which they had been brought to. It was definitely the farm that belonged to Cassis and his fellow shell-less tortoise-people – the farm that they had saved from Hondo Ohnaka and his pirate band during their first trip to Felucia. It was rather amusing to see the Acklay bunched around it like watchdogs, but, as Renamon remembered, they had not been guarding it the last time they were here.

So why were they guarding it now?

As the Acklay crowded around, the one carrying Rika and Henry stepped through the and approached the raised pod-like huts that comprised the farm. Various farmers quickly darted out of the way as it passed, with Aayla and Renamon on either side of it. Cassis himself was standing at the entrance to one of the huts, and looked around, starting at their approach.

"My goodness," he said. "If it isn't one of the Jedi who saved our home. And you've brought some of your Digimon friends with you too. What a coincidence."

"Coincidence?" Renamon frowned.

"Yes. It's a pleasure to see you all again, and you've arrived at just the right time," Cassis smiled. "How did you know?"

"Know what?" Aayla blinked. "I'm sorry, but none of us know what you're referring to."

"You don't?" Cassis frowned. "But... you... oh, well never mind. The important thing is that you're here now. Come in quickly."

"Look, Cassis, I'm sorry but we really need to be getting out of here as quickly as possible," Aayla explained. "We came to see our Acklay friends, and why they brought us here is a complete mystery to me but..."

"No, they brought you here for a reason," the little guy piped up. "Quick, come on in. It won't take but a moment."

Aayla frowned, hesitant to do so as they really needed to get off the planet before Empire forces arrived to block off their escape, but a nudge in the back by the Acklay made up her mind and she followed Cassis into the hut. Inside the small room within was a bed. Sitting beside the bed was another farmer, Dilani, and lying on the bed was, to Aayla's surprise, a blue skinned Twi'lek.

A Twi'lek that she knew.

"Xiaan!" she cried.

The Twi'lek's eyes flew open at the sound of her voice and she sat up and stared at the other Twi'lek. "Aayla!" she cried. "What... but..." She tried to get out of the bed, but her leg buckled slightly and her hand flew to her side, gasping in pain. Aayla instantly darted forwards and steadied her, helping her upright. Xiaan looked up at her painfully and said, "What are you doing here? How did you find me?"

"This is a complete accident, I assure you," Aayla said, a smile on her face. "I was here for another reason entirely, but this is a very good accident indeed. What happened? Are you alright?"

Xiaan shook her head and gritted her teeth slightly in pain. Dilani supplied the answer to Aayla's question with, "She said that she was forced to escape from her own clone troopers and managed to escape in her starfighter, but it was damaged during said escape. She crash-landed not far away from here yesterday and your Acklay friends found her. They brought her here and we've been tending to her, but... well, we haven't had long so her injuries haven't had the time to improve very much.

Aayla nodded. Xiaan Amersu had been the Jedi General of Commander Bek up above. She was a young Knight, three years younger than Aayla herself and was just slightly older than Anakin, and had been granted the rank of Knight a few short months ago. She and Aayla had formed a small bond with each other when they were youngling and Padawan respectively. Aayla had seen the youngling was looking anxious about graduating from youngling status to Padawan, and had given her a small red gemstone called a Heart of Fire, which had been given to her in turn by Quinlan Vos for her thirteenth birthday. She had done it to help give Xiaan support and to inspire her and sure enough, Xiaan had been selected by a Jedi Master to become his apprentice a few days later.

The two of them had not seen much of each other since then, and it seemed to be complete luck now that they had been reunited.

"I'm so happy to see you," Xiaan replied, smiling despite the fact she was clearly in pain. "What's going on? Last I heard, Palpatine was a Sith Lord or something and all the clones had turned on us. Why are you here?"

"Xiaan," Aayla took the hand of the younger Twi'lek. "I know you have questions and I will be happy to answer them, but not now."

"But..." Xiaan protested.

"Sorry, Xiaan, but we have to go," Aayla insisted. "There's a battle going on up in space above this planet and we need to leave before any enemy reinforcements arrive. Just come with us and we'll tell you everything that you want to know the moment we get the opportunity." The Twi'lek turned to Cassis and said, "I can't thank you enough for taking care of my fellow Jedi like this, and I'm sorry we can't stay longer. We have to leave. Now."

"Of course," Cassis nodded. "Go on. Hurry."

Aayla slung Xiaan's arm over her shoulder and helped the wounded Jedi to move out of the hut and down the stairs. Xiaan grunted in pain and Aayla could see that she had quite an ugly cut on her side and a severe burn on her leg. A cut was definitely one of the worst things that could happen to you on Felucia. The humid environment brought about infection quickly.

Naturally, when Xiaan saw what was going on outside, she stopped in surprise and stared in front of her uncomprehendingly. She had just spotted the six Acklay standing around the huts. She had seen the Acklay yesterday, of course, and had thought that she was done for when they approached her. But they had only scooped her up on their backs and carried her to this village.

She had been shocked and confused, until she remembered the stories regarding the Acklay of Felucia and her old friend Aayla, and after that she lost the confusion and became doubly shocked, now that she knew the stories to be true after all.

But it wasn't the Acklay that had taken her off guard this time. The black-crested Acklay had lowered its head to the level of a humanoid and Renamon was standing in front of it and speaking to it as if it were a human.

"We might be asking a lot of you here," Renamon said. "But we need every piece of extra help that we can get and we've seen enough evidence from your guys to know that when it comes to creating mass chaos there's practically nothing that can top you guys. As the person who gave you your new lives, I will tell you now that you have a choice in the matter. We won't ask you to come and fight for us if you don't want to."

The Acklay looked up and the six large insect-creatures seemed to be communicating with each other with little grunts and snarls, as well with looks. Xiaan stared and then spotted Terriermon standing nearby. The bunny waved at her, and she hesitantly waved back. Then the little Digimon clapped his ears and said, "Don't mean to rush you guys but we're in a bit of a tight spot here. You reckon you can give us the answer sometime today?"

The lead Acklay shook its neck and head vigorously, letting off a deep growl before it launched its head into the sky and let loose a shriek that sent the smaller residents of the farm scurrying. The older people of the farm also went scurrying when the other five Acklay took up the call and all six reared upwards on their back two legs, their front two legs slashing the air as they crashed back to the ground and all gathered around Renamon.

"Does that make it a yes," asked Renamon.

The Acklay leader nodded its head once. Renamon smiled and placed a paw on its nose. "I thought that you would probably say that," she said. They had guessed that the six Acklay would do it pretty much automatically when asked to do so by the person who had given them the intelligence that they seemed to love. That was why she had been quick to impress upon them that they did have a choice in the matter.

But it seemed the Acklay were with them, making this the easiest negotiation so far, but the most difficult to get to and stage. Terriermon laughed and leapt into the air, slaloming around the necks of the giant carnivores and crying, "Oh yes. When Palpatine gets a load of these guys fighting for us, his jaw is going to hit the floor."

"I hope it doesn't," Aayla said as she moved down the steps. "Our plan relies on him staying behind on Coruscant like he usually does. He won't take to the battlefield unless he's really desperate in my opinion."

"Yeah, but he might be watching the battle, remember," pointed out Terriermon.

"True enough," Aayla agreed.

"What?" Xiaan blustered. "Who... how...? Aayla, what's going on?"

"Who's your friend?" Rika asked from nearby, and Xiaan blinked when she finally spotted the two kids.

"Questions later please, people," Aayla urged as she guided Xiaan towards the Acklay, who seemed to know what she was about to ask of them as the Force-sensitive one knelt down as Aayla approached. Renamon stepped forward and helped the wounded Jedi onto the Acklay's back and as the fox quickly ensured that Xiaan would stay on and instructed her to wrap her arms around the Acklay's neck, while Henry and Rika climbed aboard another pair nearby once more, Aayla activated her comlink.

"Winger," she called. "You reading me?"

"Yes, General," replied the clone. "I found the perfect place for the cruiser to land. You found your Acklay buddies?"

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "Turn on your tracking beacon. Let us find you."

"Copy that," replied Winger. And a moment later, Aayla tuned in her comlink to its tracking function and the little red light began flashing, pointing them towards the north. She looked up and focused in the right direction and then cried, "Alright, people, let's get moving." She bounded up onto an Acklay of her own, and Renamon and Terriermon did the same nearby. Aayla stretched out with her mind and nudged the mind of the Acklay, directing it towards the north.

"Follow me!" she cried to the others as her mount whirled around and charged in the right direction. As the other Acklay wheeled around and Xiaan gripped tightly to the neck of her own, wincing at the uncomfortable ride and the pain that kept lancing through the gash in her side, Aayla called into her comlink and said, "Bly, how are you holding up?"

"Well enough, General Secura," Bly replied. "A'den and Tyto have arrived and we've broken the back of the first wave, but it won't be long before more are on the way."

"Well, our objective is complete," Aayla replied. "We're heading to the rendezvous now. Follow Winger's tracking beacon down to the surface and be ready to lower the ramp, and have A'den and Tyto defend us from above just in case."

"Will do, sir. We're on our way," Bly replied and signed off.

Xiaan winced and bit her lip, her hand pressed over the hastily constructed bandage given to her by the locals which didn't completely cover her wound. She couldn't believe what was going on our how fast things were going. Not five minutes ago she was lying in bed in pain. Now, she was riding on an Acklay behind Aayla and a bunch of creatures that she'd never seen before.

Terriermon seemed to notice her discomfort and leapt of Renamon's shoulder, powering his wings to keep up with the stampeding insect creatures and coming to rest beside the newest Twi'lek that he had met. "Hey there," he said. "You holding up alright?"

"Well, I've been a lot better," the young Knight replied, her eyes screwed up in pain as she peered down at the little bunny.

"Momentai," Terriermon smiled at her. "Aayla's going to take you directly to Barriss Offee. She'll have those wounds fixed up for you in no time."

"Barriss?" Xiaan asked. "She's alive as well. What about the others? Are Anakin and Ahsoka still around? And Master Yoda and the Jedi Council? What's going on?"

"Everything's going to be fine. Everyone you just mentioned is still alive and we've got a plan," Terriermon nodded. "What was your name again, miss?"

"Xiaan," the Twi'lek replied. "Xiaan Amersu.

Terriermon grinned. "Pleased to meet you Xiaan Amersu. I'm Terriermon, the most awesome person you will ever meet."

Xiaan blinked, but then Renamon called over the thundering feet of the Acklay, saying, "Just try to ignore him when he says things like that. He's not _really_ that big-headed. He's just joking."

Terriermon grinned and placed an ear on Xiaan's arm, helping to steady her as her Acklay mount shot through the trees. A minute or so later and the huge shape of the _Intrepid_ could be seen in the sky, descending at a rather fast tilt for such a large cruiser towards a spot directly ahead of where the Acklay were running.

* * *

The group appeared out of the foliage and into the open space that Winger had found just as the feet of the cruiser was touching down. Winger's gunship could already be seen moving into one of the hangars up above and, just as Aayla had ordered, the ramp was already descending even thought the cruiser had not even hit the ground yet.

The Acklay and their riders pulled to a brief halt as they watched what was going on up ahead. It was only a mere few moments after the cruiser's large legs touched the ground that the ramp touched down as well. Aayla looked up at the large piece of metal that would lead them up into the main bulk of the ship and turned to the Acklay all around her.

"Sorry about this," she said. "But odds are for creatures like you, it is not going to be very comfortable in there. Nevertheless, you sure you're ready for this? We're asking you to abandon your territory to come and help us after all. You still want to help us."

The Force-sensitive Acklay, which was the one that Xiaan and Terriermon were riding on, snorted and responded by moving forwards and stepping onto the ramp. Its huge claws were not really built for standing on hard metal, but the Acklay ignored any discomfort it felt and surged right up the ramp as if it had spotted prey at the top. The other Acklay were quick to follow, lurching forwards so quickly that Henry and Rika were almost unseated.

Renamon and Aayla grinned at one another as they went thundering up the ramp and it was only about ten seconds later that the Acklay burst into the main hangar. It was certainly large enough for them – as the roof was high enough to support some smaller frigates. The clones around them all stepped back as they appeared. Most of them had not actually seen the Acklay in action, and were wary. They weren't going to risk ticking them off for any reason.

Bly was standing nearby and chuckled as the sixth Acklay pushed its way inside and the riders began to dismount. "That image was just as terrifying as I remember it. Looks like we've got ourselves quite a big boost to the rebellion effort."

"Yeah," said Terriermon. "How many people do you think are going to see this coming?"

"Not many," Bly nodded.

"We should be swift, Bly," Aayla said, as she ran over. "Well done on carrying out my previous orders as quickly as you did, but we still need to move fast. Pull up the ramp and let's get out of here. The sooner we leave this planet the better."

"Yes, sir," Bly nodded. "And you were right. A'den and Tyto have reported to me that they're already engaging a fresh wave of cruisers up above. It will not be long before more arrive to aid them."

Aayla grimaced. "All the more reason for speed. And also," she turned around to where Renamon was helping Xiaan off the leading Acklay. "By chance we encountered another Jedi down there, who was on the run from her troops. She's injured, and we need to get her some proper medical attention quickly."

"Another Jedi?" Bly asked. "Well, that's a stroke of good fortune. Max, get over here and see to the Jedi." He turned and began to rush back to the bridges, bellowing Aayla's orders into his comlink. Aayla sent a brief message to the Digimon to try and make the Acklay as comfortable as possible before she went to help Max with Xiaan.

"You've got a lot of explaining to do, Aayla," Xiaan said through gritted teeth as Max applied a quick injection of bacta through her neck and then proceeded to help Aayla in taking her to the medical bay.

"And you'll get it when we're safely in hyperspace," Aayla nodded.

Around them, the ship lifted off from the ground, the Acklay trilling with excitement at the prospect of leaving their own soil for the first time. The ship rose through the atmosphere, and towards the other two cruisers waiting up above which were holding the Empire reinforcements at bay, the occupants of the _Intrepid_ were completely unaware that, not too far away, a trap was already being set for their beloved General.

A trap that was to be sprung very, very shortly.

* * *

While the majority of the recruitment missions across the Galaxy seemed to have already ended with a success, in the far Outer Rim, one of them was only just about to get started. The Rishi moon outpost, which had been destroyed long ago, still had the two shuttles parked right next to it. The final group had yet to leave on their own mission, but considering the world they had picked to try and recruit, this was hardly surprising.

You couldn't just wander onto Kamino nowadays. Since the Clone Wars had began so long ago, Kamino had become one of the most well-protected planets in the entire Galaxy. There was a massive blockade of Empirical star cruisers around the planet, each equipped with as many fighters as they could squeeze in, and for a very good reason.

Kamino had been targeted by the Separatists many times. As the homeworld of the clones, it was a critical planet to the success of the former Republic and its destruction could have pretty much sealed the victory for the Separatists, since they could still mass produce their droids, while the clones wouldn't have been getting any reinforcements at all.

The defences around Kamino had been enough to ensure that the Separatists were foiled each time, though their most recent attempt had been quite a close call, since they had managed to attack from under the water and take the clones by surprise. But still, they had failed, and now the defences were doing another job. They were going to make it difficult for any Jedi to get there.

Unless, of course, they had help from the surface. And fortunately, they did.

Shaak Ti was meditating on a rock outside the shuttle, as was Obi-Wan. Anakin and Ahsoka were idly passing the time by playing Rock-paper-scissors with one another, though neither of them was really paying attention to the game and they had long lost count of the scores. The four clones – Rex, Cody, Echo and Fives, were all trying not to look at ruins behind them and were staring up towards the sky.

"Incoming, Generals," Fives eventually said, pointing upwards a shadow came into view. The four Jedi looked up at his words, just in time to see a shuttle of a similar design to Shaak Ti's moving down towards them. As the older Togruta and Obi-Wan got to their feet, the shuttle landed and the small ramp at the front of the ship unfolded and fell to the ground.

Standing at top of it was the bloody-looking figure of Sev. The clone nodded and said, "Hello there, everyone. Hope you didn't get too impatient waiting for us to arrive."

"Hey Sev," Ahsoka waved. "It's been quite a while since I last saw you."

"Ahsoka, isn't it," Sev observed. "Yeah, I remember helping your little tribe on Shili to get rid of that virus thing and cure Renamon. Heh, those were the good times, weren't they? Before everything started to fall apart like now. You might as well come aboard. It's just me and Scorch on board right now. Boss and Fixer are waiting for us back on planet."

As Sev stepped back and allowed the others to board, Anakin extended his hand to Sev.

"Never actually had the pleasure of working with the Delta Squad before today," he said. "I'm Anakin Skywalker."

"Yeah, we know who you are," Sev chuckled as he shook the Chosen One's hand. "There are very few people in this Galaxy that don't after all. The name's Sev. My buddy in the cockpit there is Scorch."

"Oh, so we're buddies now?" Scorch called back. "There's a thing. I was wondering if we'd ever reach that stage."

"He's the clone version of Terriermon, sir," Sev replied, as he stepped up to the cockpit.

"We'd best be heading out at the earliest opportunity," remarked Obi-Wan. "We want to get this over and done with as quickly and possible, after all. What excuse did you give when you left the planet, Sev?"

"We just told them that Scorch was getting slightly reckless so we were just going to take the shuttle out for a quick spin and maybe blow something up with it," Sev shrugged. "And that might sound like the universe's most lame excuse but believe me when I say that it works. Everyone knows about Scorch's love of explosives. We just have to tell them that we succeeded in blowing up a large rock somewhere and they'll let us back in."

"No questions asked?" Obi-Wan blinked.

Shaak Ti chuckled and said, "I had a feeling that they would use this excuse to leave the planet. Believe it or not, Obi-Wan, but sometimes Scorch actually does like to go out and do that just to liven things up for him a little."

"Nothing wrong with a good, honest explosion, General Ti," Scorch appeared at the door of the cockpit and nodded, a grin on his unhelmeted head. "I often say that they're what keep me going."

"More like it's the fact that he's constantly trying to outdo himself that keeps him going," Sev rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Nevertheless, it was the perfect excuse to get away. They should let us back with no problem."

"Well, that's good," Anakin nodded. "And there was me thinking that we'd have to make a very quick getaway and try another day."

"We may have to do that anyway, Master," Ahsoka pointed out. "Getting down to the surface of the planet is only going to be the first step and it certainly won't be the hardest."

"Couldn't agree more, Commander Tano," Echo agreed. "It's not going to be easy moving about Kamino undetected. Just about everyone down there is going to be hostile towards the Jedi in some fashion. Is there a plan behind all this, because I'd sure like to know one."

"Well, the first step is going to be convincing the clones not to shoot at us long enough for us to tell them the story," Shaak Ti said, standing tall with her hands clasped together and her eyes shut. "And to do that, we're going to need help from the highest authority, and that's Lama Su. If we can somehow sneak into Tipoca City and find a way of getting the Prime Minister alone to speak with him one on one, we may be able to convince him to sway his allegiance to us, once he hears about how he and the other Kaminoans were also pawns in Sidious' game."

"Like pretty much everyone else," Cody muttered.

"Indeed, Commander," Obi-Wan nodded. "But the Kaminoans are among the most heavily used. After all, they are the ones who have been spending over ten years now building an army specifically for the purpose of wiping out the Jedi on the will of a Sith Lord. They might have been getting paid extremely well for it, but they're not going to like it anymore than the rest of the Galaxy."

"True enough," nodded Rex. "If I know anything about Kaminoans, they are quite proud. To my knowledge, they've never made a clone army to serve evil for any reason in the past, though this army is the biggest they have ever constructed. Hopefully when the Prime Minister learns that they've all been tricked into making an army for evil instead... Well, you get the picture."

"Let's hope that _he_ gets the picture," Ahsoka agreed. "Any ideas on how we can speak with him?"

"That's going to be the hard part, Snips," Anakin muttered. "Looks like we'll be going in with improvisation."

"Lovely," Ahsoka rolled her eyes. "My favourite kind of battle strategy. So many things could be going wrong with this."

"Maybe," nodded Anakin. "But that's a chance that we're going to have to take."

"Shall we go then?" Scorch asked. "The ship's all ready and..."

"Uh-uh," Sev pushed Scorch aside and sat at the controls. "_I'm_ piloting the ship, Scorch. You might decide to take a detour so that you can blow up some random asteroid somewhere for the heck of it."

"I would not," Scorch objected.

"Yeah, you would, and don't try to deny it. I'm sure that General Ti will back me up in this matter."

"Indeed," Shaak Ti chuckled. "Your pyromaniac tendencies are notorious, Scorch, even if I didn't know you personally."

Scorch humphed and murmured something that sounded suspiciously like "_spoilsports._" Sev ignored him and powered up the vessel. The ramp moved back up once more and the ship was in the air, rising above the Rishi cold surface of the Rishi moon and leaving an eel that had been sneaking up on the ship below ground frustrated as its prey escaped.

One quick jump to hyperspace...

* * *

...and a few minutes later they were there, above Kamino. Obi-Wan was standing near the front of the crowded cockpit, and the Jedi Master looked out across the planet which held so many memories for him, most of them not particularly pleasant ones, unfortunately. He had been the first Jedi to step onto this blue ocean world for about a decade, only to discover the clone army which had apparently been authorised by the Jedi Council, according to the Kaminoans, while the Council themselves had no knowledge of the event.

Even now, more details of Palpatine's master plan were beginning to fall into place. He must have deliberately told Dooku to appease Viceroy Gunray's desire for revenge on Senator Amidala by sending Jango after her, in the hope that the Jedi would follow him here and find Kamino once again, considering someone, and Obi-Wan had to assume it was Dooku, had wiped all traces of the planet from the Jedi archives, coinciding it with the events on Geonosis to bring the war at the exact time that he wanted.

Just how clever was this man anyway?

Well, his plan might be a masterpiece in the making, but if the plan constructed by the others worked out, the final threads of his plan that remained would be torn apart by relatively simple tactics.

Flashes of light emanated from the planet below. Evidence of lightning bolts from the huge storms that almost continuously raged across its surface. But between their small shuttle and the edges of the atmosphere was at least twenty to thirty _Venator_-class cruisers, along with several support frigates. It was a blockade that looked ridiculously hard to get through. After the disaster of the first couple of invasions of Kamino, they had started to take their defence here much more strictly. How the Aqua Droids that had been involved on the third assault had gotten past this blockade was a complete and utter mystery.

"Home sweet home, eh, Rex?" Cody murmured to his fellow clone.

"I don't know about sweet," Rex sighed. "But definitely home. Too bad we have to come here because of the Emperor and everything he's been doing to us clones."

"Yes, well, hopefully our visit will be enough to do something about that," Cody agreed.

"I'm holding her course straight and true," Sev said. "They should get in contact in a moment, so you should probably get out of the way of any transmissional fields, General."

The Jedi nodded as they backed away, very much _not_ wanting to get busted as they were facing off against so many giant ships with only their little group. Sev steered the ship straight towards the middle of the blockade, preparing to fly between two of the cruisers.

Sure enough, a moment later an incoming transmission appeared, which was promptly answered by Sev to reveal another clone. The clone nodded to commando and said, "Hey there, you guys. Did you achieve your objective and vent some of some of Scorch's spleen on some space rocks?"

"Probably not as much of it as Scorch would have wanted to vent," Sev chuckled. "If he had his way, we'd be out there all day if we couldn't just go on another mission."

"Well, that would be a big waste of fuel wouldn't it," the clone responded.

"Not from where I'm standing it wouldn't be," Scorch shook his head and looked annoyed by the verbal probing being directed at him. The clone at the other end of the transmission chuckled and said, "Well, safe landing guys," and he signed off.

"Wow. That was quick," observed Ahsoka.

"Of course it was quick," nodded Sev. "He doesn't actually have any reason to be suspicious of us, since he knows us so well and he thinks that we haven't had any contact with the Jedi for a while, since we've been out of contact with just about everybody for quite a time since before this whole mess." He steered the ship between the vessels and quickly moved past them and down towards the planet.

"Well, that's obstacle one passed without a whole lot of difficulty, I suppose," murmured Anakin. "It's a good thing that you did send out that message to these guys before you fled this system, Master Ti, or our job would have been a hell of a lot harder."

"Indeed," nodded Shaak Ti. "But regardless of who's helping us on the surface, things are going to be tough, so let's not get ahead of ourselves."

Anakin nodded and the group watched as Sev piloted them down towards the capital city. When they arrived there, the sea around the city was actually calm and there was no rain, which was unusual on this planet. Eighty percent of the time you came down to the surface, you would expect it to be raining, no matter where on the planet you actually landed.

"We could have done with a bit of rain actually," Obi-Wan murmured. "It might have made it harder for people to spot us as we move about."

"Yeah, and alternatively it would have made things a hell of a lot more difficult for us to _do_ any moving about," Anakin replied. "I call this more of a lucky break than an inconvenience."

"I suppose," nodded Obi-Wan. "And look, there's the rest of the Delta Squad here to greet us," he added, as Sev settled the shuttle down on one of the outer landing platforms and, through the cockpit window, they could see Boss and Fixer striding towards them.

Ahsoka stared at the superstructure of the giant city, which consisted mainly of massive stilt structures that were extremely wide, and comparatively quite short, making them look like a series of very large flying saucers resting on the stilts than anything else. It was the first time that Ahsoka had ever been to Kamino, and she had to admit, she was impressed. She wondered how the heck they'd managed to build something like this despite the massive storms that ravaged to planet at various times, but they appeared to be the perfect shape to weather such storms.

Ahsoka smiled and piped up with, "Well, here we are, in one of the most dangerous places a Jedi can be right at this moment in the entire universe. Shall we pop out and have a look around?"

"Your wit is duly noted, Ahsoka," Shaak Ti chuckled. "But we should probably try to stay serious here. After all, as you say, things could go wrong very quickly if we don't do things right."

Sev lowered the ramp and Boss and Fixer moved up to the end of it and strode into the ship. The two of them gave the Jedi quick salutes, while Boss said, "Glad you guys made it to the surface, but now that you're here, what do you expect us to do. I do not think that this is a very good idea, sirs. It's almost suicidal."

"That shouldn't be much of a problem for Anakin and Ahsoka here," replied Obi-Wan. "You would not believe the number of suicidal missions which they have managed to walk away from. Though I agree that this one is a particularly nasty one. Nevertheless, if we wish for victory against the Sith Lord who has been manipulating the events of this Galaxy, then we need more help, and the clone army here on Kamino will be one of the largest forces available to us if we can convince them of the truth."

"That may be, sirs," agreed Boss. "But how do you plan on stopping them from shooting long enough to talk?"

"We've already thought about that," Shaak Ti nodded. "And we'll need the help of the four of you for this as well. You must head into the city and try and organise a private meeting with Lama Su. A meeting that we will be able to sneak into so we can talk with him without being interrupted by more clones."

"That's all well and good, but how do we plan on moving through the city?" Fives asked. "This whole place is nothing but walkways on the outside and corridors on the inside – it's a network of thin passages. We'll be spotted immediately."

"Not if we go by the rooftops," said Obi-Wan. "Or possibly beneath the buildings, where there is less surveillance. If we had access to a couple of aiwha's then things would be going smoother," he added, remembering the winged cetacean that he had used during the last battle of Kamino to escape from danger.

"As I said earlier," Anakin replied. "Well have to just improvise, and considering going underneath the facility is practically out of the question, we're going to have to go over. The sooner we get going, the better."

"Sir," said Rex. "The four of us aren't going to be able to go over the top," he indicated himself, Cody, Echo and Fives. "We don't have any jetpacks with us, and we're sure as heck going to need them if we do that."

"And we can't go through the facility ourselves either," Echo added. "They'll know us by now and have us arrested immediately for treason."

"Then the four of you will have to stay here for the time being," Obi-Wan nodded. "Leave the negotiating with the Prime Minister to us. When the time comes, your voices will be heard by the rest of your clone brethren. You should have a much easier time convincing them of the truth than we would considering the Order placed on our heads. Once we've secured ourselves, then the four of you will be able to take part in this recruitment campaign."

"Understood, sir," nodded Cody.

"Well, shall we get going?" Anakin asked.

Fixer sighed and said, "Let's get this done. Come on, you two. Let's go and have a talk with the Prime Minister."

Sev and Scorch overtook the Jedi and, with the rest of their squad, they exited the shuttle and began to walk back towards the city. Anakin and Ahsoka exchanged a look, mentally asking the other if they were ready for this, and both with faces grim-set with determination. Shaak Ti stood at the front of the vessel, holding up her hand to steady them and watching the Delta Squad walking away.

When they reached the doors, she hissed, "Now!" and suddenly pelted out of the ship. Moments later, Obi-Wan, Anakin and Ahsoka followed on, the four Jedi dashing across the landing platform and the walkway which lead inside the complex at high speed, using the Force to aid them in their run before, without breaking their stride, they bent their knees and sprang into the air, the Force pushing them upwards as if they had been catapulted from trebuchets, spinning and flipping, before they came to land on the roof of the nearest Kaminoan dome.

From here on out, their lives would depend on going undetected.

* * *

Not got a lot to say here, because I want to go back to sleep, but I hope you enjoyed the ride. And yes, I know that the arc has come to an end while the mission to Kamino is still in progress, but this particular mission is quite important for the next arc, as is the conclusion to the events near Felucia. Things are about to get very interesting indeed for the A-Team, and I hope you guys are eager to find out what happens.

But before that comes more answers for Beelzemon.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Beelzemon is slowly losing his strength and his power as a Demon Lord as he sits in the Draining Chamber. As he struggles to endure, he suddenly gets a surprise visitor to the room, who has a lot of interest in him. But who is this strange little Digimon and what does he want?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 170 : Phascomon**


	170. Phascomon

Hello everybody. Here I am once more with the latest instalment of Impmon's saga. Hope that you can secure any impatience to find out what's happening in the Star Wars universe for a while longer, because you can all finally get more answers about what GranDracmon is intending to do with Beelzemon.

Be honest though, when you saw the title of this chapter in the previous one, how many of you looked him up and completely spoiled the surprise? Anyway, read on folks.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 170:- Phascomon**

* * *

To his knowledge, Beelzemon had never felt anything as painful as this in his entire life. His fanged teeth were being clenched and gnashed together, anything to stop himself from crying out in pain, which was getting increasingly hard to do. Right now, any little victory he could gain over GranDracmon was something, but it seemed the evil Digimon was chipping away at his resolve just as much as he was chipping away at Beelzemon's body.

And he wasn't even in the same room.

It had been several hours since the Demon Digimon had left him here, stuck in the middle of the glass container with his arms and legs locked in what were essentially very thick metal sleeves that were holding him in an X position, as the machine he was anchored into slowly began to absorb his data and his power. Beelzemon had no idea what would happen to him when the process was finished, but he was _not_ looking forward to it.

Then again, it was all he could do not to start wishing that the moment where it was over would come, such was the agony he was enduring. The prophecy had been right about the torture part. It might not be the classic torture from the movies, like branding or thumbs clamps or even water drops on the head or something like that. It might not even be proper torture considering it wasn't supposed to get any information out of him or sway his allegiance or anything, but it was definitely torture in the sense that it would be a relief when it stopped.

Beelzemon had been holding out the hope that his slow disintegration would help him in some way, perhaps by getting rid of a portion of his arm that would allow him to pull it free of the cuff containing it and use what was left to bust himself loose. But it seemed the GranDracmon had accounted that, because Beelzemon was being dissolved systematically as well as slowly.

His tail was now completely gone, and his body and legs were the next things to be slowly disappearing. It felt like, all across his abdomen and his thighs, someone was digging into him with a scalpel and taking him apart one particle at a time. It probably should even _be_ that pain considering the tiny amounts of him that were being pulled away at any one time, but somehow GranDracmon had found a way of making in painful. His arms and head, for the moment had been left untouched, but Beelzemon wondered how long it would be before his body vanished completely and the machine moved onto them as well.

Quite frankly, he had no clue what to make of all of this. Yes, GranDracmon had revealed to him that he apparently did not Beelzemon anymore, only his data, but that just didn't make any sense to him. Only the Seven Demon Lords had the power to move between the Digital World and the Dark Ocean, or so he had been led to believe by the angels. GranDracmon had enigmatically mentioned something about using another of the Seven, but how could he possibly do that. They were all dead. Their data would have been completely obliterated by Anubimon. There was no chance of any one of them returning from the grave.

Yet GranDracmon had seemed pretty confident in himself. What did it all mean?

Meanwhile, the draining chamber continued its work, pulling Beelzemon apart from the outside in. He certainly looked a sorry state right about now. A large chunk of one of his hips was missing, but the rest of him appeared to be vanishing at rather similar speeds. From the bottom of his ribs down to his knees, his outer layer of skin had all been completely vaporised, as had the leather of his jacket and he was pretty sure that his feet no longer existed either. The machine was eating away at him slowly. Very little remained of his legs by this point, and most of his waist was also gone.

He refused to cry out in pain any more than his already had, which left his lashing his head from left to right with his teeth bared and all three red eyes screwed tightly shut in an attempt to block out the pain. But while Beelzemon was an incredibly powerful Digimon at ordinary times, his already weakened state seemed to be making things even more painful for him, and unlike a certain Twi'lek from another dimension, he did not the same mind skills to help him block out the rest of the pain.

He might have been able to do the same thing Aayla had when being tortured by Cad Bane by focusing on something he cared about like Ai and Mako, but even that option was being denied to him, because once every hour so far, MetalPhantomon would appear in the room and suddenly put him to sleep for ten minutes. And while that blotted out the pain for all the time he was out, it also tortured his mind with yet more images of what he had done in the past, and more horrors to many to list. Then, when he woke up, the pain slammed back into him full-force and his mind was sent reeling, replaying the visions over and over again despite the fact Beelzemon would like nothing better than to forget them all over again.

It seemed that there was no hope for him after all.

GranDracmon had won.

And no amount of resistance on Beelzemon's part was going to stop that. All attempts at struggling to free himself had long since ceased. He barely had the strength to move his head around as he was doing now, meaning that he'd essentially become a limp, useless lump, like a puppet being held up only by its strings and waiting to be taken by the puppeteer and used however the man in charge saw fit. And that seemed to be an accurate analogy in this circumstance. It was as if GranDracmon were the puppeteer, pulling him apart threat by threat and planning to use the result to make a brand new, more useful puppet.

Heck, if a Puppetmon walked into the room at this point, Beelzemon would really go mad. But there would be little he could do about it but scream.

He wondered how long it would be before his legs vanished completely and he was just left hanging by his arms. He was essentially hanging by his arms as it was right now. He opened one eye and glanced to the tank on his right that was slowly filling up with the green energy and bits of yellow data that was supposedly his power and strength. It was almost half-full, and the other tank was the same. It seemed about fifty percent of his destruction was complete.

Beelzemon grunted and winced as another few particles were torn off his leg. He'd been told that natural disintegration was painless, but being ripped to shreds forcibly like this most certainly wasn't. Beelzemon had tried everything. He'd even attempted to reabsorb his own data and perhaps replenish himself through that, but GranDracmon had blocked off that road to recovery as well. The moment Beelzemon had tried, he'd felt an explosive pain in his chest, as if the machine had suddenly decided to start ripping his Digi-core apart, even though there was no way the data from the Digi-core could have escaped his body.

The moment he stopped, it had relented, and he had been left with the usual pain from his gradual absorption. Which was actually a significant improvement, but not enough of one for Beelzemon's liking.

He'd tried many times to de-digivolve to Impmon again, but GranDracmon had been right. That road was blocked to him still, even despite his waning strength. He should have reverted to Impmon long ago considering how weak he felt, but his Mega form was being forcibly sustained, and that just made things even worse.

Beelzemon sagged even further and a portion of his knee floated past him and into the tubes. Was this it then? Was this going to be how the great Beelzemon perished?

In a strange way, in this moment, he was actually feeling envy towards the other six Demon Lords, and Envy was supposed to be Leviamon's trait and not his. But he was envious because, as far as he knew, all six of the others had gone down in the Demon Lord equivalent of blazing glory, battling against very powerful opponents and being beaten in battle. Whereas he, the last of them all, was just hanging here and slowly being broken apart.

If Beelzemon had had to pick any way to die, this would most definitely not be anywhere near the top of his list. Assuming he would die when this was all over that is. He actually had no clue what would happen to him at all.

As he hissed when another chunk of him vanished from his stomach and was sucked away, his middle eye opened when he heard another noise. The door was making a clunking noise, that indicated that it was about to be opened. Beelzemon's eyes fixed on the door with a hate-filled stare, preparing for his next round of mental torment from MetalPhantomon. But then he realised that it was a bit too early from a visit from the ghost. Was it GranDracmon, come to see how he was doing?

His hate-filled glare intensified as the door slowly opened, creaking just as ominously as it did in every horror film Beelzemon had ever watched (when Ai and Mako were asleep of course). But Beelzemon blinked in surprise when the huge, thick door stopped after only opening very slightly. It was just left ajar and nobody appeared to be coming through it all.

Beelzemon grunted and said, "If... nngh... if you're trying to intimidate me or something... ugh... then this is one of the most feeble attempts at it I've ever seen. Get in here where I can see you, you bastard."

"Why would I be trying to scare you?" asked a small, sleepy-sounding voice from the floor. Beelzemon blinked and looked down to discover that something _had_ entered the room, but he had completely failed to notice it. And not just because it was small, only slightly taller than the average Koromon, but also because the newcomer had very dark fur that meant it had slipped into the shadows like a ninja. Even though Beelzemon couldn't imagine anything that looked less like a ninja.

If he could pick an Earth animal that this new creature resembled most, he would have to say a koala. It was small and fuzzy looking, with a round head and large teddy-bear like ears, a big black, round nose that was extended above its eyes, which were half-shut as if the Digimon was going to fall asleep at a moment's notice. It even had two thumbs on each hand, like a koala. But there were other parts of it that were most distinctly not something you would find on a koala. For instance, its fur was dark brown instead of grey and the insides of his round ears were purple. It had two red lines on its face that ran between over the top of its eyes like large scars, and it had a pair of small devil horns on its head. Its tail was long, thin and spaded, just like a devil, it had tiny, red, bat-like wings on its back and its hands were thin, skeletal and hairless, and tipped with sharp-looking red claws.

Despite the devil-like qualities this koala Digimon thing appeared to have, which clearly showed it to probably be a virus type if anything, Beelzemon couldn't imagine a virus type that looked less threatening than this thing. Guilmon looked much scarier than this thing when he was at his sweetest or most child-like moment. For one thing, if you ignored the hands, you could call this Digimon cute. For another thing, it looked as though it was going to fall asleep on the spot and not wake up for several years.

Which only served to complete the question, which Beelzemon voiced next, "Who the hell are you? And what are you doing here?"

The small Digimon regarded Beelzemon with his sleepy-looking eyes. Despite the relative cuteness, Beelzemon had to admit that those eyes unnerved him a little bit, but not because they were scary. More because they made the face look completely and utterly expressionless, as if the Digimon was in the middle of a daydream, despite the fact that it was clearly staring right at him.

The Digimon lifted a clawed hand to his mouth and let off a massive yawn, its mouth opening to a freakishly wide size, and its mouth full of teeth with looked needle-sharp but were also so small that they still looked completely harmless, before he closed his mouth and went back to staring at Beelzemon, who winced as another section of his back vanished and was sucked away.

This went on for a couple of minutes, the new Digimon sitting in the middle of the room and staring at him lethargically while Beelzemon simply stared back. Eventually, Beelzemon snapped and said, "I asked you a question, pipsqueak. What's your name?"

"I heard you the first time," the small Digimon said slowly and slightly dreamily, its eyes and voice never changing as it continued to stare. "I was just seeing how long it would take before you got fed up of me not saying anything."

"Well, congratulations," Beelzemon growled. "You figured it out, ungh..." he clenched his teeth again as another section of his hip vanished.

"I bet that hurts," the small Digimon said, stating the complete obvious.

"You think?" Beelzemon snarled, too filled with pain to try and reign in his words to the little guy, who looked no older than a kid.

"Yeah, I do," the koala replied. "That's why I said it. You're Beelzemon, aren't you?"

"Never mind who I am, squirt!" Beelzemon stared balefully back. "I am the one who asked you who you were. But, yes, I am Beelzemon."

"The last of the Demon Lords, or so GranDracmon says," yawned the koala. "I heard that those guys were really big killers and evil-doers a long time ago, but then most of them died and you went all soft."

Beelzemon stared blankly at the small Digimon. It definitely had the mannerisms of a small child, even though it was almost certainly a bad guy if it hung around with the likes of GranDracmon. There was something about the tiny Digimon thought which Beelzemon couldn't quite place, but which made him uncomfortable, even if you disregarded its consistent stare.

"Are you going to answer my question or not?" Beelzemon asked, still wracked with pain. "You seem to know about me, or at least what GranDeadmon has told you about me, which is going to be... nngh... all that matters to a Digimon like you anyway. So, I'll ask you for the third time. Who the hell are you?"

"Phascomon," the Digimon replied, yawning again. "That's my name. But it's not really very interesting, so I was trying to talk more about you."

Beelzemon frowned. How had a kid like this guy, who was clearly not a very evil person at the moment considering his attitude, get mixed up with someone like GranDracmon. The Demon Lords would never have taken on a Digimon like this as a Nightmare Soldier – it looked like it was going to keel over and start snoring instantaneously, and it was clearly still a relatively young Digimon, so why was it with GranDracmon? The Demon Lords had been vanquished years ago, and their soldiers stuck here since then, and this Digimon was clearly too young to have been among their number at that time anyway.

Was he the kid of a couple of the other Nightmare Soldiers? The idea of a couple of evil Digimon settling down to have a family seemed completely and utterly ridiculous and not even worth comprehending.

Was he a kidnap victim? Had GranDracmon randomly decided to bring him here to the Dark Ocean for some reason? That made little sense either. GranDracmon only seemed to care about Digimon that could be useful to him quickly.

And unless GranDracmon liked unnerving people by having small demon koala's stare at them, Beelzemon couldn't really see how this little guy could be of much use to him.

"Don't you...nn...have someplace to be?" Beelzemon grunted, barely opening his mouth as he spoke and his eyes screwing up in intense agony as more of his legs vanished slightly. Out the corner of his eye, he could see the tanks filling up a little more all around him. He quickly wrenched his gaze away from them and focused all the anger he could towards Phascomon, hoping to intimidate him slightly. He might be just a kid, but he was GranDracmon's minion all the same so Beelzemon didn't care. "Chewing on a piece of eucalyptus perhaps?"

Phascomon yawned cavernously again and smacked his lip, before shaking his head slightly and murmuring, "There's not much to do around here really. I'm actually pretty excited about GranDracmon's big plan. Things might get more interesting for me." He didn't _sound_ very excited, but his voice seemed to be unable to change its tone.

Beelzemon blinked. This little kid, whoever the heck he was supposed to be, had just revealed that he knew all about GranDracmon's plan, which was something that Beelzemon himself was still struggling to figure out. Maybe he could get the kid to start talking where GranDracmon had not. There was little he would be able to do to put a stop to it regardless of what the plan might be, but it might stop Beelzemon's brain from overworking itself trying to figure things out.

"Is that right?" he asked. "Well, nng, I'm kinda new around here, you understand and..."

"Yeah, I know," Phascomon blinked lazily. "I saw you being dragged in by those Arkadimon. You looked like you'd really been beaten up by them. Of course, right now, you look even worse. I know I wouldn't want to be put in that machine. GranDracmon likes to make things painful for people who annoy him."

"That's nice," Beelzemon growled. "But..."

"This one time," Phascomon held up one bony, clawed finger, took a moment to yawn again, and then continued with, "There was this SkullGreymon who accidentally broke the jaws of the big statue of Leviamon outside, so GranDracmon made him eat his own missile and ordered him to detonate because he could still reach it through his ribcage."

Beelzemon wrinkled his nose in disgust at this heinous act against one of his own men, but he knew that he probably would have done something similar when he ran with the Demon Lords, so he was determined not to dwell on it. Instead, he merely said, "Well, that's charming, but I'm not really interested in what GranDracmon's done in the past. It's more what he wants to do in the future that interests me."

"Why?" Phascomon asked dully, cocking its head to one side like a curious dog, as if looking Beelzemon from another angle might give him another perspective. "You going to change sides?"

"Never!" Beelzemon bellowed before he could stop himself.

"Oh, good," Phascomon nodded, his expression still remaining unchanged. "It would be too late for you anyway. GranDracmon says that you can't be trusted anymore because you've gone all soppy and mushy over those humans. And I hear those humans are really weak."

"I reckon some of the weakest of them wouldn't have a problem putting the pounding on you, shrimp," Beelzemon muttered.

"He also says that he used to admire you all those years ago when you were a proper Demon Lord," Phascomon nodded dully, sounding bored with the topic, though he had sounded bored beforehand with everything that he had said. Beelzemon shuddered at the prospect of being admired by someone like GranDracmon and then winced when a portion of his back was vaporised.

But Phascomon wasn't done. He then went on to start saying things like, "He says that you used to be... oh, I can't remember the word his uses... epitome, I think. Yeah, that. He says that you used to be the epitome of everything a Demon Lord should be. Strong, fast, bloodthirsty, ambitious and mad for power. And completely ruthless was another one. He said that you set an example to all of the Nightmare Soliders with your violent techniques and your swift, decisive actions. He actually said that you were their favourite, even more than Lucemon."

Beelzemon snarled. The idea of being the favourite of any Dark Digimon was almost more disturbing than some of the things that he had seen himself do. He attempted to wrench himself loose again, but the most he could manage was a feeble half tug before he sagged and said, "Yeah, that's really flattering, kid. But as I said, I don't care about the past. I want to know what's happening to me now and what GranDracmon's going to do with me."

"Is it important?" Phascomon asked.

"IS IT IMPOAARGH!" Beelzemon cried as a large portion of his stomach abruptly got sucked away. He groaned and said, "It's fairly important to me. Look at me, kid. I'm being completely drained of all my strength and power and my body is being melted away and I want to know why GranDracmon is doing this. He said something about another Demon Lord, but that's impossible. The Demon Lords are all dead."

"You're not," Phascomon said.

"I don't count," Beelzemon rasped. "I renounced my Demon Lord title ages ago. Now, tell me what I want to know. It _is_ important."

Phascomon yawned again and shook his head. "I don't think that would be a good idea really. GranDracmon is always saying that I shouldn't do things without asking him for permission first. I want to be a big, powerful Dark Digimon one day, just like one of the Demon Lords of old times and like you used to be. I want to be someone who GranDracmon thinks he can trust, so that I means I can't tell you what he's going to do."

Beelzemon stared at the little guy. How did someone as young as this Phascomon obviously was have such a twisted mind? Had GranDracmon found him as an egg or something and raised him? He did not seem like the fatherly type. But this kid definitely had big plans for the future, all of them dark, twisted and evil, and that was something that nobody should have at such a young age, regardless of how they were raised.

Beelzemon found himself wondering if he had been the same. The angels had said the Lucemon had found him when _he_ was a Digi-Egg, sent down from the heavens to help the Digital World at his own request, but due to being brought up by Lucemon, he had become the Beelzemon that everybody feared. Had he been as ambitious and evil when he was a Rookie, like this guy had been?

The thought made him feel physically ill. He was actually getting used to the idea of a pure-evil Beelzemon thanks to all the images. But a pure-evil Impmon? Or worse a pure-evil Yaamon. Neither of those options really bore thinking about.

Phascomon had returned to staring at Beelzemon again, as if he was trying to imagine what Beelzemon had been like himself, but was finding it a little bit difficult. "GranDracmon said that you commanded the respect of everyone else. Except probably Daemon because he was stuck up his bottom or something like that. He said that even Lucemon and Lilithmon respected you a great deal when they were alive."

"Well isn't that nice?" Beelzemon grunted. "Guess we were all one big, happy Demon Lord family weren't we? Mummy and Daddy Lilithmon and Lucemon, with Grandad Barbamon, Son Beelzemon, Cousin Daemon and Belphemon and Leviamon as the family pets."

"No, I wouldn't go that far," Phascomon murmured sleepily. "But I wonder if people will show me that much respect one day, when I become a Demon Lord."

Beelzemon's head shot up so hard his neck clicked and he completely forgot to grunt in pain when a large portion of his navel was disintegrated. What had the kid just said? Had he heard Phascomon right?

For the first time, Phascomon showed a slight change in expression and that was only to frown slightly and murmur, "Oh dear. I'm not sure that I was supposed to say that. Am I going to get into trouble now?"

"I wouldn't worry about it too much, Phascomon," came a deep voice from outside the door, which promptly began to swing open fully. Sure enough, on the other side stood GranDracmon, who had a look of satisfaction on his face as he stepped into the room, his huge paws dwarfing the little koala like Digimon completely. "After all, I was planning on letting him know sooner or later. It might as well be now."

Beelzemon growled as he glared at GranDracmon. The great Demon Digimon smirked at his prisoner and folded his arms. "Dear, dear," he shook his head. "You don't look well at all, Beelzemon. You appear to be slowly dissolving away into nothingness. You should probably get that looked at."

"Spare me the humour," Beelzemon glared. "I don't particularly care for it."

"No, I don't imagine you would," GranDracmon laughed as he stepped over Phascomon and towards the draining chamber he had locked Beelzemon inside. The small Rookie Digimon toddled along behind his master to stood beside his giant right paw, waiting for more instructions. GranDracmon didn't even acknowledge his presence and said, "However, there is little that you can do to stop me from making some little jokes of my own. You saw fit to taunt me when you faced off against my minions, after all. I would expect for you to allow me the same courtesy."

Beelzemon said nothing, but grunted as another section of his thigh was torn away from him. GranDracmon's eyes followed the progress of the glowing yellow pieces of data as they disappeared into the tube and ran along its length and into one of the tanks. "I see this machine has been doing its job extremely well," he noted with satisfaction. "It won't be long now Phascomon."

"I'm looking forward to it," Phascomon nodded. "Should be a lot of fun to see what kind of power the Demon Lords had in the olden days."

Beelzemon stared at him for a second. That, more than anything seemed to confirm what he had previously been thinking – Phascomon had definitely mentioned something about him becoming a Demon Lord. But that just sounded completely an utterly ridiculous. There was no way he could be. Could he?

"Just who is that little runt anyway?" Beelzemon asked. "You going to at least tell me that? After all, he suddenly walked in here and started banging on about the olden Demon Lord days and staring at me and everything."

"Oh, I would apologise for his behaviour," GranDracmon chuckled. "But I won't, because I'm not actually sorry about it and I pretty much allow him what he wants to do anyway. I suppose he came in here to sate his own curiosity. I have been feeding him some of the stories about the glorious suffering that you and your comrades inflicted on the Digital World. When he listens to those, the becomes the closest I've ever seen him to being excited."

"They are a lot of fun to listen to," agreed Phascomon. "I actually like the stories about crushing lots of smaller, weaker Digimon better than the ones about taking on the bigger and more powerful Digimon. Sounds like a lot of fun."

"And it will not be long before you too can experience the joys of lording over the weaker Digimon," GranDracmon chuckled. He turned to Beelzemon and said. "I discovered Phascomon as a Digi-Egg not too long ago. It was just before Ogudomon escaped from the prison that the Sovereigns put him in actually. I was scouring the Digital World, looking for you, actually. I'd been following the progress of yourself and your friends for some time by that point. Remember that Setmon that suddenly attacked you and your friends before you were reunited with your humans?"

"That was you?" Beelzemon cried. "You were behind that?" He remembered the incident well enough. The group of them had been walking across the Desert Level, searching for a Digi-Gnome or some other methods of getting back to the Human World as they had always been doing, when suddenly a large Setmon had charged out of nowhere and stormed through the group, throwing attacks at them left right and centre.

The battle had been a bit short lived though. Before many of the other Digimon could do much, Renamon had already given it a hammer kick to the face, which had thrown it towards Guardromon, who had caught it and thrown it in the air. Impmon had quickly digivolved to Beelzemon and he and MarineAngemon had promptly double-teamed it with a Corona Blaster and a Kahuna Waves between them and finished it off.

And now that GranDracmon mentioned it, Impmon had felt a suddenly horrible sensation in his spine shortly before that attack, but he had not been able to work out what the heck it was. Has he had it now, it would have been very familiar.

"Oh yes," nodded GranDracmon. "That was my very first test against you and your defences. It was more to test you and the MarineAngemon than any of the others, but I was surprised that the other members of your group acted just as quickly. I never expected the Setmon to win, but I had not expected him to last such a short amount of time. And, over the next few weeks, I sent a couple more tests your way, if you recall."

"Oh yeah. I recall," Beelzemon growled. He could remember the three other attacks that they had received not long after the incident with the Setmon, including an attack by a pair of Tankmon which Guardromon had promptly outdone, a strike by the sudden appearance from a Gesomon, which had actually struck them as odd since it was in the middle of the desert where squid definitely did not belong, and then by a small swarm of Flymon, which Beelzemon had dealt with personally, while the others had chipped in from time to time with their ranged attacks. "So those were all you?"

"Indeed," nodded GranDracmon. "I was planning on try to convince you to joing me quite soon, as I thought I had managed to gauge the relative power of you and your friends as well as your loyalty to them, and I assumed I would be able to pull it off, but then you vanished. Evidently, you had found your way back to the Human World while I wasn't watching, but before I realised that, I scoured a large portion of the Digital World for you. That was when I found the Digi-Egg at Phascomon here.

"At first I was surprised. I never imagined that another one of his kind would appear in the Digital World, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity, so I snatched up the Digi-Egg and brought him here, where he belongs. And Phascomon has been enjoying the comfort of watching evil Digimon squabble and enjoying the feeling of darkness that this place gives ever since, have you not, Phascomon."

"It makes me feel tingly sometimes," Phascomon said drowsily. "Especially when someone gets killed. That's always fun."

"You are sick, you know that," Beelzemon growled.

"Yes, yes, I know," GranDracmon nodded. "I've always known."

"But bringing up a kid in this kind if environment..."

"You yourself have not been too kind to kids in the past as I recall," GranDracmon noted.

"Yeah, but only because of they way _I_ was raised," Beelzemon pointed out. "Just like the way you're raising this kid."

"I wasn't sure whether I would need to raise him to be honest," GranDracmon chuckled. "I still wanted to go after you instead, but when Ogudomon was released and he in turn released Belphemon back into the world, I cast both you and the Digi-Egg out of mind for a while, thinking that perhaps I could use one of those two Demon Lords instead. But Belphemon met his end quite quickly, and through Ogudomon's attack on your world, I was able to watch you and your friends in battle once again."

"Yeah?" Beelzemon asked. "Well then you must have seen how we kicked the guy's non-existent backside as soon as we figured out how to do it."

"Oh indeed, I was watching," GranDracmon nodded. "And it was a shame to see how such a mighty pair of Demon Lords merging into the form of one being could be so easily show up by others, even if they were quite powerful on their own. His attacks were next to useless, which goes to show you that power is not everything. I know that full well. You also need versatility and, at times, a good strategy. Ogudomon had none of these things, and he lost.

"So, what could I o with the deaths of both Ogudomon and Belphemon?" Well, it seemed that I had little choice but to return to you for help, or at least raise this little guy here. And to put it bluntly, I thought that you would probably be the easier of the two options."

"Puh, yeah right," Beelzemon scoffed. "Like that would ever be the case."

"Yes, I realise that now, but I began raising Phascomon here all the same just in case you were indeed unavailable as an option to be our general."

"Just who is that guy anyway?" Beelzemon looked down at him. "What's so special about a small koala bear like him that made you want to take his Digi-egg and play father, which I notice is not something that you would do to just any Digi-Egg."

"No, indeed not," GranDracmon nodded. "But within little Phascomon, this tiny little Digimon, lies the potential for an extremely formidable and ruthless Demon Lord Digimon."

"There are many Digimon that technically count as Demon Lord Digimon," Beelzemon replied. "But that doesn't change the fact that you're going to need one of the Seven to pull this off."

GranDracmon chuckled. "You seriously mean to tell me that you haven't figured it out yet?" he asked. "You, who we have been plying with memories of everything that you and your fellow Demon Lords did in the good old days? Do you not know who Phascomon really is, or at least, who he will one day become?"

Beelzemon looked from him to Phascomon and back a few time but he could not see anything that looked every remotely Demon Lord-ish about Phascomon. He was a tiny little bear, for Fanglongmon's sake. He barely looked evil, let alone evil enough to be one of the great Seven. "Will you just hurry up and tell me already?" he snarled. "I'm getting annoyed by your constant dancing around the subjaagh!" he trailed off as a very large amount of his leg disintegrated.

"Tell you?" GranDracmon asked. "Ha, I can do more than tell you. I can show you. MetalPhantomon."

"Yes, sir," rasped the voice of the ghost from off to Beelzemon's right. The former Demon Lord's head snapped to face the metallic nightmare-weaver and his last thoughts before being plunged back into the world of his bad visions was, _Crap. When did he get in here?_

And then, suddenly, he was once again sinking into the crushing, black oblivion that was his mind when that metallic Digimon decided to start playing with it.

* * *

A few moments later and he was once again surrounded by screaming Digimon that were trying to flee from him as he fired bullet after bullet at their retreating backs.

"GAHAHAHAHA! WHERE'RE YOU GOING?" he roared with delight as he continued to shoot down all the Digimon in his path. "GET BACK HERE AND GIVE ME A DECENT FIGHT! ANYONE! COME ON, DON'T BE SHY!"

A small DemiDevimon swooped out of nowhere and hovered in front of Beelzemon to say, "Hey, Mister Demon Lord, sir. Can I sign up to be of your..."

"No," Beelzemon replied and mercilessly shot him, blowing him to data and absorbing him into himself as per usual. Only people with a deathwish should ever try and interrupt Beelzemon in the middle of one of his bloody massacres.

The swarms of Digimon in front of him continued to do their best to get out of the way of the Demon Lord coming in behind them, but then, suddenly, before any of them realised it, a huge, dark, winged shape loomed out of the blackness of the night and landed with an enormous crash in front of them, pulling them to a terrified halt as they were boxed in between two Demon Lords. The ethereal, ghostly glow surrounding his torso, couple with the glow red eyes and vicious fangs were more than enough to identify the newcomer.

"**YOU DIE NOW!"** the newer Digimon roared even more loudly than Beelzemon. _**"GIFT OF DARKNESS!"**_ He raised the giant glowing green claws on his hands and slashed them through the air to pound into the ground. The whole area between the newer Digimon and the back of the terrified cluster of Digimon instantly became awash with a raging inferno of green flames that instantly incinerated almost every single one of them and blew them to data.

The only two that managed to escape were a pair of Garbagemon that instantly went hopping away as quickly as the dustbins that they lived inside would allow. The new Digimon spotted and cried, **"RAAGH! YOU WON'T GET AWAY! DDIIIIEEE!" **And a massive blast of white energy burst from his jaws and blasted the Garbagemon to shreds in an instant.

Beelzemon growled as he stepped into the charred ground where the newer Digimon's flames had once been and shouted, "What the hell are you playing at, Belphemon? Those guys were mine to kill, not yours! I was the one that was hunting them, so what made you think that you had the right to butt in and take them instead?"

Belphemon Rage Mode, for that was who it was, finished absorbing the data of all the Digimon he had just casually murdered and bellowed, **"YOU ARE A FOOL, BEELZEMON! WHEN THE HUNT IS ON, ANYONE IS FAIR GAME!"**

"Fine," Beelzemon growled. "Next time you're having fun slaughtering a bunch of innocent Digimon, you better watch your back or I'll be the one to dive in an destroy them instead.

"**IN THAT CASE, I WOULD KILL YOU BECAUSE I WOULD ACCIDENTALLY HIT YOU!"** Belphemon roared. **"I BET ABSORBING YOUR DATA WOULD GIVE ME A REAL BOOST!"**

Beelzemon just growled and pointed a clawed finger at the other Demon Lord and said, "Like hell you could kill me. Mark my words, Belphemon, there will never be a day where someone like you gets to absorb my data!"

* * *

And suddenly, everything was plunged into blackness again and Beelzemon felt himself back in his real body, wracked with pain as more of him was slowly pulled away and his eyes wide and gasping for breath through clenched teeth. Once he had recovered himself, he looked up at the smirking GranDracmon and then down at the tiny Phascomon sitting beside his paw.

"You can_not_ be serious," Beelzemon's eyes widened. "No way can he be... That's not... no..."

"I'm afraid that he is," GranDracmon chuckled. "The little Digimon that you see before you now is how Belphemon started out before he became the powerful Mega you saw just now. And it looks like the promise you made to him will turn out to be false. A day _will_ come when someone like him gets to absorb your data. And that day is not far away. With you death, Belphemon will be reborn."

Beelzemon was stunned beyond belief. He couldn't stop staring at the tiny, harmless looking koala. It was like Guilmon all over again – the mere thought that something so small and actually rather sweet looking if you ignored the parts of him that looked like a miniature devil, could turn into something as monstrous and evil and powerful as Belphemon was just completely and utterly ridiculous.

Yet, now that he thought about it, the answer should have been fairly obvious. He had not had many visions that involved Belphemon – most of them involved him being alone, or with either Leviamon or Lilithmon, the latter constantly following him around and trying to seduce him or something.

All the visions that _had_ involved Belphemon had been with him in that massive, horned form of his Rage Mode, covered in chains, with giant claws and gnashing teeth. Except for one, and that had been the vision he had had of the meeting between all seven of the Demon Lords to discuss their next move. In that form, Belphemon had been in his Sleep Mode. And now that he remembered it, it did indeed look like a giant winged teddy bear.

How could he not have remembered that.

Even so, the idea of this little guy becoming Belphemon one day was just plain ridiculous.

"But Belphemon was destroyed," Beelzemon existed. "There was only ever one of each of the Demon Lords and Belphemon met his end at the hands of the Sovereigns over a year ago."

"Your naivety sometimes surprises me, Beelzemon," GranDracmon chuckled. "Did you really believe that _all_ of the Demon Lords were unique beings? It is true that you are a fallen version of your heavenly self, as I know you discovered during your brief stay in the Celestial Heavens. And it is also true that Lucemon is a unique fallen Angel Digimon, as were Daemon and Lilithmon, who used to be a Seraphimon and an Ophanimon respectively. But that doesn't necessarily hold true for _all _of the Demon Lords. Some of them were _not_ fallen versions of good Digimon. Some of them were just plain evil."

"Like Belphemon?" Beelzemon grunted.

"Exactly like Belphemon, yes," nodded GranDracmon. "You see, as I am sure you are aware, baby Digimon hatch from Digi-Eggs, and the Digimon that is contained within a Digi-Egg that is not brought into existence via birth but is from congealed data packets coming together like they usually do, is completely random. And it seems that, even if Belphemon himself was destroyed, his digivolution line still exists. Imagine my surprise when just before the real Belphemon was brought back into the world, I found a Digi-Egg containing a Digimon that could one day grow up to be a second Belphemon."

"And so you decided to try and raise your very own Demon Lord like a pet, did you?" Beelzemon growled. "In the hope that one day he would become the perfect obedient little General for you."

"Oh, I assure you, Belphemon is far from the perfect General," GranDracmon shrugged. "Of all the Demon Lords, his attribute is most definitely the least useful. He is the lord of Sloth after all, and even when he reaches his final stage of digivolution, he will be likely to spend a lot of time sleeping."

"Sleep sounds quite good right about now actually," Phascomon murmured from the floor, placing a paw in front of his mouth and his eyes drooping down slightly.

"But regardless of that, whenever the original Belphemon was awake, he became a force of destruction that even all the other Demon Lords feared. Even Daemon could occasionally become jealous of Belphemon's destructive capabilities, and Belphemon could have filled in the role of Wrath just as well as Daemon. He is the perfect berserker, and will not stop attacking anything until he is satisfied, or unless specifically instructed to by Lucemon, who was about the only person the original Belphemon respected." He chuckled and added, "Did you know that when the time for an attack came, you other Demon Lords would wake him up and then run away before he could go mad at being disturbed?"

Beelzemon grimaced. He did _not_ remember that little detail, but if it were true then it seemed that GranDracmon had everything he would need with Phascomon, even if he did spend well over half his time asleep. An underlying sense of guilt was already beginning to build up inside Beelzemon. The thought of one of the Seven Great Demon Lords running amuck once more was a horrible one.

He attempted to free himself once more and a slight surge of strength filled him, the strength of desperation, as he tried to break free of the draining chamber and crush Phascomon on the spot. He may be a child, but he had been warped beyond all recognition already and, considering that he was already planning to become the mindlessly destructive Belphemon, Beelzemon thought he would be justified if he could kill the kid. If Phascomon were destroyed, then GranDracmon's plan could finally come to and end.

But even with the fires of desperation in him, Beelzemon's struggles only succeeded in speeding up his disintegration slightly. He gasped and groaned as more of him floated past and he grimaced in pain, shaking his head, before he slumped back down, defeated once again.

GranDracmon's idea seemed to be such a painfully obvious one that he was mentally kicking himself for not thinking of it. The evil git was right – Beelzemon _had_ been hopelessly naive to believe that the Demon Lords were all completely unique Digimon. There was almost no Digimon that was. The only one that Impmon really knew was for sure was Guilmon, since he had been created by Takato. He wouldn't be surprised if there was another Lucemon in the Heavens somewhere, one that had not fallen from grace as the other one had.

And the worst thing about this situation was that GranDracmon had not had to work hard to corrupt Phascomon. He had seen nothing but evil since he awoke.

_At least it won't be me,_ he thought. _At least it won't be me._

And it was because of that thought that something else occurred to him and he frowned. "Hold on a minute," he said. "If you've got the potential to bring another Belphemon into existence, then why do you... argh..." he shuddered, but ploughed on all the same, "...why do you even need my data in the first place. You need your Demon Lord General to be your pathway to and from this place, so why can't you just do that with your new Belphemon? Why don't you just force-feed him the data of your own Digimon until he reaches the Mega Level and you have what you want."

"A good thought," GranDracmon replied. "But, I'm afraid that too should be obvious Beelzemon. You see, as we said in our last little discussion, there is a reason that the Seven Demon Lords had the power to jump to and from this world at will, and that was because they were already stooped deeply in evil, so deeply in evil that it's a wonder that Magnadramon's purification even worked on you, when the Dark Ocean was created by me, that they gained the ability automatically. Asides from myself, the Seven of you were the most evil beings in all of reality, and when I built this Dark Ocean, which was as much a place of pure evil and you were people of pure evil, your data automatically linked you to it and gave you an new ability."

"So?" Beelzemon asked.

"So," GranDracmon responded. "Even though Phascomon here could technically become another Belphemon, he would not _have_ the ability to move between this world and the Digital World like the first Belphemon did. It was not a natural ability of their Digimon type – it came about as a result of their evilness when this place was made. If I wanted to recreate those circumstances, I would have to send Belphemon to the Digital World, which in itself would take up almost all my energy, make him go on several rampages until he was as evil as the last one, then destroy the Dark Ocean and create a new one. And considering I cannot leave this place myself anymore, that would be not be a plausible move."

Beelzemon's eyes widened. "So that's why you need my data," he breathed. "Even though I'm not helping you willingly."

"Indeed," GranDracmon nodded. "You are the only one who has the ability as of now. You are the only one who can supply us with that ability. The only problem is that your title of Demon Lord, even if you refuse to wear it anymore, gets in the way. You are set apart from most other Digimon by it.

As I said before, if I were to just take your data and let any one of my minions absorb it, or even if I absorbed it myself, then there is a strong likelihood that nothing would happen at all – in fact I am almost one-hundred percent sure that your ability would still not be gained – and I am not prepared to take that risk because, as you know, once data has been absorbed, the only person who can remove it is..."

"...Anubimon," Beelzemon interrupted. "Yeah I remember that full well. GAH!" he suddenly cried out, unable to stop himself as his eyes flew open and the last part of his waist that was still attached to his legs disintegrated. With a massive flurry of yellow, his legs completely vaporised now that they were cut off from his body, and swooped past him and into the pipeline, leaving Beelzemon hanging by his arms and his stomach continuing to slowly disappear.

GranDracmon chuckled. "Well, that was a large one, wasn't it? I wouldn't worry too much about that happening again though. I specifically made sure this thing was designed to that it will creep up your body from this point forwards and then take your head and arms last. I'm sure Phascomon here is looking forward to that particular moment."

"Uh-huh," nodded the small koala drearily.

"Why..." Beelzemon grunted as he adjusted to the majority of his weight now being held by his arms, which felt like they were going to be pulled out of their sockets. "Why are you... nngh... doing this to me? Why don't you just stab me and kill me on the spot and let the kid absorb my data right now? Why are you using this bloody thing? Is it just to case me as much pain as you can as I die? Is that it?"

"Well, the added pain is a bit of a perk, I will admit," GranDracmon replied. "But no, that is not really the case here. This machine is doing more than merely draining your power, Beelzemon."

"Yes, I can feel that," Beelzemon growled. "It's taking my body as well."

"That too, but that wasn't actually what I meant," GranDracmon shook his head. "This machine is designed to do a whole lot more than that. It's taking away just about everything, Beelzemon, ripping apart the very essence of everything that this form of yours is. Magnadramon may have purified you, but she cannot change your data. All the evil that was brought into you by Lucemon's upbringing, it still rests within you. You can feel it, can't you? The lure of the Dark Ocean is pulling at even you. It's only this bond you have with your wretched little human children that is preventing it from rising back to the surface."

"Heh," Beelzemon crowed. "How can they be wretched if they can stop me from becoming one of your mindless slaves?"

"It is a minor inconvenience," GranDracmon shrugged. "The point is that when Magnadramon entered your body, all she did was purge the darker parts of you and push it deep into your Digi-core, allowing the you that you used to be in the heavens potential to come forwards. She didn't get rid of it completely, otherwise you would not have been so quick to start down the path of evil a second time. Unfortunately, before you had the opportunity to do much with your second evil life, you caught yourself and returned to the side of good. More's the pity.

"But this machine," he placed his large hand against the glass sealing Beelzemon in. "It is extracting all that evil, all that darkness, from you as well as your power. And it's also extracting the power of the Catalyst that Zhuqiaomon enthused you with which allows you to digivolve at will like you can while other Digimon can't. To help speed up the process of Phascomon's ascension to being a Demon Lord without having to sacrifice too many of my own soldiers, who could be useful later in my campaign.

"So, in essence, this machine is taking everything that is the Beelzemon of old and destroying it," GranDracmon chuckled. "In some weird way, I suppose I am the one to finally purify you completely. It's the green energy you can see along with the bits of your data. If Phascomon absorbs that as well, he will become more powerful than the old Belphemon ever was right from the start."

Beelzemon didn't have a clue what to make of this new revelation. On the one hand, he knew that something like this would probably be coming. After all, the line in the prophecy had said, _Away from him his spirit torn._ But he had assumed that that meant his willpower or his resolve – that kind of spirit. Not his literal spirit, and his power as Beelzemon.

In a sense, GranDracmon was stripping him of his Mega Form and all the darkness within him. He had long wanted all his darkness to finally leave him alone, but he had never thought it would happen, nor did he expect or want it to be done like this – to feed and invigorate a Demon Lord in the making.

Now Beelzemon understood everything. The dogged pursuit, the riddles, the hints dropped to him by various people. He remember how Zanbamon had subtly mentioned that GranDracmon would not need him in the way that he had been expecting, and he had been completely right.

But there was one thing that Beelzemon didn't know.

"What will happen to me?" he asked. "What will the machine do when its finished taking 'the essence of this form,' as you put it?"

"Well, I'm not entirely sure to be honest," GranDracmon shrugged. "But if I were to hazard a guess, when you've lost the final part of your Mega stage, including the power of the Catalyst that Zhuqiaomon put there, the machine will be unable to sustain you in your Mega form any longer and you'll finally revert back to being an Impmon, to prevent any human-loving light from being transferred through the Belphemon as well. A weak, battered, half-dead Impmon who won't be able to digivolve back to Beelzemon on his own at will ever again."

"So, it won't kill me?" Beelzemon asked.

"Probably not," GranDracmon shook his head. "It wasn't designed to kill you, after all. But that's not to say that _I_ won't kill you. Once I have your data, I will have no use for you anymore. As of yet, I have not decided what I'm going to do with your worthless hide when you become an Impmon once more. It might just kill you on the spot. Or..."

"Or you'll let me live for a while so that I can witness the ascension of the new Belphemon when you put my data into him and then watch as he sets out with your Nightmare Soldiers to start wreaking havoc on the Digital World once again so that you can let me feel despair in the knowledge that it was my data that caused this to happen as retribution for how I've been keeping you at bay and foiling your plans for so long and because you're just that plain cruel anyway?" Impmon asked.

GranDracmon chuckled, and he said, "Well, it seems like you are still slightly connected to that evil spark in you after all if you can guess with that much accuracy what I was going to say."

"Not really," Beelzemon growled. "It's just that that's pretty much what every villain ever does ever because they like to prolong the suffering of others."

"You used to do the same thing on occasion," GranDracmon reminded him. "Remember the Mikemon?"

Beelzemon flinched as he remembered that memory. To this day, that remained one of his worst, worse than simply mindlessly killing everyone simply because it had allowed him a look into his own mind and also because he had been twisting and warping the mind of that terrified, trapped Mikemon with fear at his horrible words regarding himself and his other Demon Lords, only for him to snap her neck and absorb her later on. That seemed to be what GranDracmon had in mind for him too, in a way.

"Exactly," GranDracmon nodded. "And, of course, there will be little that you can do to escape this place once your suffering finally comes to an end, since you won't have the power to become Beelzemon and escape. Hmm, that actually sounds quite fitting. I will end up killing you eventually of course, but... yes, I would be cruel to make you wait. Which is exactly why I'll do it."

"Bastard," growled Beelzemon. GranDracmon was completely unphased by the former Demon Lord's words, and he merely turned back around towards the door.

"I'll leave you for a while longer, Beelzemon," he said, with his back turned to the draining chamber. "You can hang there and fall apart for a few more hours before your torment finally comes to an end. In the meantime, I leave you in the capable hands of my little friend Phascomon here. I will be back soon."

The door thudded shut behind GranDracmon as he left the room. Beelzemon sagged in his arm restraints as the disintegration slowly inched up his body one particle at a time, taking out his waist as the pace of a snail. Phascomon was still standing in front of the tank and staring at the disintegrating Digimon within.

MetalPhantomon had left the room at some point, and he had made his exit just as stealthy as his entrance. But Beelzemon didn't really care at the moment. His mind was too full of the things that GranDracmon had said. He didn't have a clue what he was supposed to be doing right now. Or rather, how he was supposed to be feeling, considering he didn't have a whole lot of choice in what he could physically do right now.

_Demon's evil is reborn. Demon's evil is reborn. Demon's evil is reborn._

Just like before back in the heavens, that one line of the prophecy was playing over and over in his mind. But this time it instilled quite a different set of reactions within Beelzemon. He was both filled with happiness and despair. The demon's evil that it was referring to do not actually mean him. Just as Deckerdramon and Angewomon had said about prophecies having double meanings. It was referring to Belphemon.

In some odd way, actually, it was talking about him, since GranDracmon was using the darkness and evil buried deep within him to give rise to the new Demon Lord quickly. But Beelzemon was glad to be rid of the darkness at last, but not like this. Any other way than this. The eventual result would be the same. The darkness in his soul was being used to revive one of the old Demon Lords. It might not be Beelzemon, but that didn't matter. A Demon Lord was a Demon Lord, irrespective of which one it was.

And it wouldn't be long before he was utterly useless to everyone either. No longer able to digivolve. No longer able to fight. Might this be the last the universe ever saw of Beelzemon, hanging by his arms with his legs and tail completely missing as his data was slowly drained away to be stored in a pair of tanks and fed to a small demonic koala?

Not the best way to go.

He looked up slightly to see that Phascomon, the soon to be Demon Lord, was still staring at him. Like that was really a surprise. He looked more sleepy than ever, and had sat down on the stone floor as if he was planning on staying there for quite a long time. Beelzemon wasn't sure how much of the little guy's company he could take, especially since he now knew that behind that unnervingly blank stare, there lurked the potential for the furious, mad eyes of Belphemon.

"You look funny," Phascomon observed. "Just hanging there like that. I wonder if they'll have a statue of you outside like the others, but that will be the pose that they put you in. That would be funny, wouldn't it."

"Hysterical," Beelzemon coughed as he felt some data being peeled away from the bottom of what remained of his body.

Beelzemon was pretty sure that the idea that sprang into his head right there would not work, but he still had to try, so he quickly said, "Look, kid. What's in this for you? I mean, I know that you seem to want all the power and the strength and the respect that being a Demon Lord got the rest of us, but is that really what you want? Really really?"

"I think so," Phascomon frowned. "I mean, I think its funny when other Digimon get hurt by others and I would quite like to make sure that happens myself, but I can't really do anything to most of the Digimon out there in this form. It's quite annoying that I still have to wait actually."

"Listen, Phascomon," Beelzemon said. "The idea of being an all-powerful Demon Lord might seem like a good one to you right now, but it doesn't bring you anything. Not really. If you want to be the strongest, you've got a long way to go to do that, and the power that can be given via the light always trumps that of the dark."

"Really?" Phascomon asked sceptically, one sleepy eyebrow being raised. "You got caught, didn't you?"

"That doesn't mean that the dark side will win," replied Beelzemon quickly and slightly venomously. "Besides, it might seem to be fun to an evil Digimon to go around and make the lives of other Digimon a miserable or painful as they can, but you're always looking for more. It's never enough for you. You can never be fully satisfied if you're an evil Digimon. Even if you eradicate every Digimon in existence, even all your own troops and maybe even GranDracmon himself, it still won't bring you satisfaction and happiness. I know that now. You'll always be wanting to do more killing, but even if you get to the top, there'll eventually be nobody left to kill."

Phascomon frowned. "I don't want that," he confessed.

"But if you go to the side of the light," Beelzemon pressed. "And go down a different path, then you get everything that fills you up with an amazing sense of satisfaction that never stops, unlike the killing which is only temporary. The things like... like love and care and friendship and all these other magnificent things which you almost never find on the side of evil – you can always find them on the good side, and they never really go away. Not really."

"GranDracmon cares about me," Phascomon said.

"No, he doesn't. Not really. He only wants to use you as a tool to get his armies into the Digital World and cause havoc and destruction. If you were to somehow get killed, he would be upset, but only because he would have to start looking for yet another way of getting his armies out of this world, not because you were gone and never coming back."

Phascomon shrugged and murmured, "Sounds fine to me. That's what any evil Digimon in his position would feel."

Beelzemon felt the urge to scream in frustration and he gritted his teeth and said, "Look, kid. As a person who has experienced both the good and the evil side of things, I can tell you right now that the evil side is way, _way_ overrated. You..."

He faltered, and stared at Phascomon when he noticed the tiny little koala had finally gone to sleep. He twitched for a moment but decided against waking him up to try and continue the conversation. If the little guy was anything like Belphemon, it would take a stampede of elephants with foghorns to wake him up now.

Besides, the conversation was pretty much a pointless one anyway. Phascomon was obviously way too far gone, having spent all his life under the shadow of GranDracmon. He'd been warped and twisted into what was, effectively a miniature Belphemon in the making.

Beelzemon felt the guilt setting in again. All his attempts at avoiding becoming a Demon Lord were for nothing. His data was going to be used to bring another one back into existence. "Ai," he murmured. "Mako. Everyone," his mind flashed through the other Tamers and their Digimon, Lilamon and her friends, the great angels and Deckerdramon, and the Prophecy Trio that had been lost to them for so long. "I failed. I'm sorry."

* * *

And there's some more of the prophecy unravelled for you. I discovered many months ago that Belphemon had a digivolution line and I immediately sought to put it in somewhere, but considering I had already killed Belphemon off, I needed an alternative solution. And here it is. Little Phascomon the future Demon Lord. The cute precursor to the raging mad evil of the Demon Lord of Sloth.

Again, I'm sorry for being evil to Beelzemon. I'm sure things will pick up for him soon. I promise.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

As they prepare to leave the Felucia system, Aayla and the others suddenly receive something that they were completely not expecting, and Aurra Sing sets up the trap that she's planned out for our favourite Twi'lek. How will they respond?

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Coming up:- **Chapter 171 : Aurra Sing's Trap**


	171. Aurra Sing's Trap

Well, here I am again with the next instalment. This is an arc that I have _really_ been looking forward to writing for some time. Unlike the last arc, which was a blend of emotion and character development with little action and a lot of setting up, this arc, contains what I think is equal amounts of setting up and action. Lots of fighting in the future. I hope that you are looking forward to the next few Star Wars chapters because I know I certainly am.

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**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 171:- Aurra Sing's Trap**

* * *

Rather like Phascomon, Aurra Sing was a perfect example of how a horrible childhood could lead into a vicious monster, or, in this case, a merciless, cold-blooded Bounty Hunter, who made it a point to get whatever she wanted at any cost and held a deep hatred for all Jedi. Despite the fact that the Jedi were not actually to blame for this really.

Aurra Sing had been born of the planet Nar Shaddaa, which was deep in the middle of Hutt controlled space, which meant that it was one of the most lawless places you could find in the entire Galaxy and was certainly not the right environment for any young child. She had never known her father, and her mother had not exactly been a model parent. Aurra had been forced to grow up in a slum, because just about every credit that her mother managed to scrape up immediately went to buying spice, to which Aurra's mother was addicted. Her mother would often wander the streets, trying to sell her homemade ale to pull in the money, leaving Aurra at home alone.

That's not to say that Aurra's mother did not love her. She would even call her "My Angel." But the fact that she spent most of her time on her own made Aurra wonder if it was all a front and that her mother didn't really want her.

Needless to say, Aurra had not enjoyed her life as a kid very much. Constantly hungry, often being picked on by the other kids because she was a near-human – a hybrid between a human and some other species. She had no idea what species her father was, as her mother wouldn't tell her, so she didn't even know what the other half of her hybrid body was.

When she had been discovered by Jedi Council members Mace Windu and (at the time) Depa Billaba, both Aurra and her mother had been extremely glad when the Jedi discovered her Force-sensitivity and taken her away to be trained as a Jedi, both of them believing that the Jedi could offer her a much better lifestyle. But Aurra had not fit in amongst the Jedi _at all_. On Nar Shaddaa, she had been forced to toughen up and had become extremely aggressive, which the Jedi frowned upon and tried to curb from her, but Aurra refused to bow to their whims, believing them to be soft.

Even a Jedi known as the Dark Woman, (who wasn't technically Dark, but was very mysterious and secretive), who was skilled at taking on and training problem Padawans, had not been able to do anything to stop Aurra from lashing out whenever she got angry, which she did quite often due to her relatively short temper.

It wasn't long into her days as a Padawan learner that Aurra was captured by a bunch of Senex pirates. She didn't know what they had been planning to do with her initially, but when they saw the angry nature of the Jedi Padawan they had decided to try and make her a part of the crew. At first Aurra had been unwilling and resistant, but the pirates had cleverly played on her deep fear of abandonment and betrayal, using the fact that the Jedi had not yet come to get her (they had searched but without success) to their advantage.

It was at this early stage that Aurra began to feel mistrust towards the Jedi Order and this mistrust eventually turned to hatred good enough for any Sith Lord. She had stayed with the pirates for some time, but in reality she had hated them too, because of the fact that they had kidnapped her.

A few years later and she was kidnapped yet again, this time by a Hutt Crime Lord called Wallanooga. When the Hutt had seen the skills and the anger in the young girl, he had lent her off to a group of Anzati, who were skilled assassins of his, for training. And it was there that Aurra had learned many of the skills that now served her well today, such as her abilities with a sniper rifle and her pistols. She had also continued to train with the Force, teaching herself how to use a lightsaber with all the skills of any Jedi Knight, and journeying to the planet Ilum a few years later to finally fashion herself her own red lightsaber.

She might have the blade, but she only used it on opponents that she deemed worthy enough. People from other Bounty Hunters or guards up to Jedi Padawans didn't really count in her opinion, so she preferred to save her lightsaber for the skilled Jedi that she came to face later on in life. She also trained her mind in how to use the telekinetic abilities of all Jedi, which were one of the easiest things to learn.

Other Force techniques eluded her, since she had received no specialist training from Jedi to do such a thing, but her assassin skills more than made up for that.

The Anzati had even installed a bio-computer in her head, which was connected to the antennae that stuck up into the air. It helped her to pick up transmissions with more reliability than a comlink, and also helped her to pick up more sensory data than the average human could, enhancing her senses to an even greater level than her Force sensitivity allowed already. Which was one of the main reasons why, despite her lack of personal training, she was still a deadly opponent to most Jedi.

Once her training with the Anzati had finished, Aurra then proceeded to take on the life of a Bounty Hunter and assassin, relishing the defeat of any Jedi that she came across. She had tracked down the pirates that had kidnapped her from the Jedi Order, killed them all and taken their ship, which was the small cruiser that she used even to this day. Aurra had been behind the deaths of many Jedi including ones like Sharad Hett and Peerce, and even J'Mikel, the former Master of Twi'lek Jedi Xiaan Amersu – the one that had picked her after Aayla had given her the Heart of Fire.

Like General Grievous, she kept the lightsabers of her former victims, but unlike the Kaleesh cyborg, she only ever used her own.

During her many assassinations and jobs ever since she had finished her training she had met up with Jango Fett before his death and made acquaintances with many other Bounty Hunters and pirates alike, including infamous ones like Bossk. She had even struck up a relationship with the Weequay pirate leader, Hondo Ohnaka, which was more about lust that love really, but it suited her just fine.

She had even had a run in with Anakin Skywalker on Tatooine one time before the Clone Wars had started and when Anakin had been a Padawan learner. At the time, Anakin had not known who she was and she had tried to kill him, but when Anakin found out her identity she had been forced to escape quickly.

Cad Bane had been a Bounty Hunter that she admired greatly, but when she had heard from Palpatine that Bane had sided with the Jedi, the one thing Aurra would _never_ do no matter how much money was offered, she had been filled with an unbridled fury. She hoped that she would run into him one day so she could teach him that no self-respecting Bounty Hunter should ever side with a Jedi, but since that option was, for the moment, closed to her, she would settle for murdering the Jedi that had turned Bane around.

And now, she was flying in the cruiser that she had taken from the pirates all those years ago to carry out that task.

"The scanners are indicating that we're almost there," Aurra smirked as she turned to the Morgukai Nikto that had come along for the ride. "Are you ready to play your part?"

"I not do much in this plan," Bok mumbled, slightly disgruntled. "I feel like spare part."

"It's not important how you feel about the mission," Aurra scoffed.

"The result is going to be the same isn't it? You get to play a part in the killing of this Twi'lek that cut off your hand, and it doesn't matter what part you play in it as long as you play some of it."

"I prefer it if me be one to stick blade in her," Bok murmured.

"Yeah? Well, I heard Secura's quite good with a blade herself. Trust me, this is the easiest option. Right, we're almost to Minntooine. I reckon it's time to unveil our little surprise."

* * *

In Galaxy wide terms, not far away from where Aurra and Bok were currently having their conversation, Aayla's flagship was slowly but surely raising itself out of the atmosphere of Felucia. The huge ship now had one of the strangest assortments of passengers that had ever been aboard a Republic cruiser, for the people on board still considered it to be a Republic cruiser and not an Empirical one.

The Acklay were finding to motion beneath their claws slightly unusual as they moved about the hangar and tried to adjust to the sensation of moving when they were actually not moving their own bodies. Meanwhile, Aayla and Max had managed to get Xiaan Amersu, the Knight whose first Master had been killed by Aurra Sing, to the medical bay.

But perhaps the most important thing occurring at this point was happening on the bridge. Commander Bly had rushed back into the room after greeting his General and he was staring out of the window, his eyes screwed up in search of the battle that he knew was going on up ahead. The bizarre transmission from blue skies up to the dark and star filled space was never one that he would get used to, but as everything blackened around the window, he shook his head and focused on the flashes of lasers that were above his head.

This wasn't going to be the easiest of missions. The two cruisers run by A'den and Tyto were side-by side, protecting the flanks of the other one as best they could while the three newest Empirical cruisers that had arrived on the scene pelted them with lasers and were in turn pelted back. The space between the two cruisers was a nonstop brawl between the two opposing sides of starfighters. At this point it was getting difficult to tell which of the starfighters belonged to which side. There were no obvious distinction between them except for the individual markings on the fighters which identified which platoon they were from.

From a distance, it was impossible to make out those markings, so the starfighters appeared to be flying in circles trying to identify an enemy ship before they turned around and started firing on them. And because of this, the battle between the fighters was beginning to look a bit more even. Though, of course, those still on the side of the Jedi had the upper hand due to the metal coating of Chrome-Digizoid on many of their starfighters

The result was a veritable mish-mash of different swirling fighters with lasers flying all over the place. It was the very definition of a mess.

The cruisers were having an easier time of it, as were the Y-wing bombers for the same reason. Their patterns were more distinct, so it was easier for them to see which side the Y-wings were on. At the moment, the Y-wings of the 327th were wreaking wave after wave of destruction on the three cruisers that were trying to oppose them, their highly explosive bombs punching through the shields of the Empire's ships and throwing shrapnel out into space and occasionally, a clone that had been inside the ship.

The Y-wings of the other cruisers were still finding it quite difficult to press an attack, because they were getting picked off by gunner fire from the opposing Y-wings and blasts from the 170 fighters. But some of them were managing to get through and were bombarding the enemy cruisers with ruthless efficiency. Bly watched as a couple of them slammed their cargo into the front of Tyto's ship, taking out a large portion of the metal. One of them was promptly blasted out of the air by one of the auto-turrets, but the other one managed to get away.

"Time to rejoin the fight boys," Bly cried out to the rest of the cruiser. "Concentrate all fire on the bridge of the closest enemy cruiser."

A split second later, as the clone around him responded with modifications to the compute equipment in front of them, all the laser turrets that dotted the surface of the _Intrepid,_ swung upwards and began to pour blue lasers upwards. The ship was at such an angle that the bolts could reach the bridge even though they were still below the cruisers.

The attack from the unexpected direction had its effect. Evidently, the forward shields of the Empirical cruisers had been reinforced, but the shields from the sides and below had been left weaker, because their laser storm abruptly punched straight through and slammed into the bridge, causing the whole structure to explode and taking out everyone inside. The cruiser began to drift to the side at an alarming pace, and the cruiser on its immediate left could not get out of the way in time.

The damaged cruiser crashed into the other one with a huge rending of metal as the nose of one slammed into the hangar of the other and it was not long before the fuel cells they kept within exploded and suddenly both the cruisers were wracked with explosions that began to blow them both up from the inside. The third attacking cruiser quickly steered away, desperate not to get caught up in the explosion themselves as its two comrades were torn apart.

The fighters scattered as the _Intrepid _rose into their midst. Bly hurriedly sent out a call, "All fighters return to the hangar immediately. Our objective is complete. We're getting out of here. Now."

The response was instantaneous. While the pilots of the enemy fighters were momentarily stunned by what had happened to two of their cruisers, the fighters of those still with the Jedi immediately whirled around through space and shot towards their respective cruisers, the huge, heavy doors opening to admit them as they swarmed inside and landed expertly, making room for the others as quickly as they could.

There were obviously less fighters coming in as there were that left the ship not so long ago, but Bly would have time for a headcount later. As the last fighter moved towards the doors, they began to close, the final fighter slipping in expertly just before they had the chance to go too narrow for him to get in without tilting his ship.

Bly called out to A'den and Tyto. "Program your hyperdrives and let's get out of here before that other cruiser recovers and calls for more back-up. The rendezvous location is above the Ruusan system. We're supposed to be meeting with Generals Fisto, Offee, Skywalker, Kenobi and Ti there, as well as Commander Tano, before we make the journey to Tython."

"Copy that, Bly," nodded A'den and, as the final enemy cruiser brought itself back around in an attempt to almost heroically engage the three less heavily damaged cruisers, the three cruisers in question began to bear down on it. The cruiser hurriedly let off storms of lasers in retaliation, which was promptly replied to in kind, blue bolts skimming all over the places as they slammed into the shields and tried to find an area to break through.

The cruisers of the 327th slowly bore straight past the enemy cruiser, completely passing it by. As the cruiser attempt to turn around though, it was too slow to stop them from escaping. With navicomputer co-ordinates locked, all that was left was for them to engage the hyperdrive and with that, they suddenly shot away into hyperspace, leaving the Felucia system and the remaining cruiser, far behind.

Bly folded his arms and nodded with grim satisfaction. As missions went, he had to say that was among the most successful.

It still panged of course. I mean, he and the rest of the forces of the 327th _had_ just destroyed no less than five cruisers, each one filled up with more of their fellow brothers. They were making great sacrifices by helping the Jedi in this way, and the death toll among the clones was going to rise substantially no matter what happened next in terms of the plan.

Still, they had managed to secure themselves six new allies that would definitely give the forces of the Empire something to worry about.

* * *

Speaking of those new allies, the six Acklay were beginning to explore their new surroundings, and that naturally meant that chaos was going to ensue unless someone kept an eye on them. And considering the circumstances, those people were Renamon and Terriermon.

And it was not easy. The six Acklay had all backed into the corners when the ships from the battle had suddenly flown into the hangar they were standing in and landed all around the room, but now that the fighting had stopped, they were wandering out into the room and examining the ships. One poor clone pilot of an ARC-170 fighter got the fright of his life when he popped open his cockpit to get out and suddenly a large Acklay reared up next to his ship and placed its front claws on it, tipping it over slightly as it tried to look inside the cockpit.

The clone yelled and dived back in, sealing it again as the Acklay peered in through the duraglass at the top and experimentally tapped a claw on it.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Terriermon cried as he landed on the wing of the fighter. "You have to be careful with this stuff guys. You might damage them and we need all the fighters we can scrape up. Besides, you're frightening the guy. Let him out."

The Acklay snorted and rolled its head on its long neck and stepped off the fighter, which clanged back into its original position and catapulted Terriermon into the air as the wing he was standing on rose sharply upwards. Terriermon flared his ears and caught himself, chuckling.

Renamon, meanwhile was trying to stop another one from chewing on the engines of one of the Y-wings. "Stop, stop," she cried, bounding over and thumping it on the leg lightly. "Don't do that. That could be dangerous – those things can be extremely volatile. You don't want it to blow up while it's still in your mouth do you?"

The Acklay quickly released the engine and began making hacking motions, as if it tasted bad anyway. Renamon blinked, and then spotted the small hole the Acklay had made in the fuel container with its teeth and hurriedly waved a clone over to patch it up. "Sorry about him," he murmured to the clone. "He's probably just curious."

"No serious damage done, Renamon," observed the clone.

Renamon nodded, but then a muffled squealing noise caught her ears and she whirled around. Her eyes widened and she dashed across the room, shouting, "Hey, put him down! He is not a toy." Because one of the other Acklay had grabbed R4-G9 in his mouth and had lifted him into the air, the astromech droid's head disappearing down the Acklay's gullet.

Terriermon swooped in and pounded the Acklay on the back of the head beneath its massive crest and the creature quickly spat up the inedible droid and sent it flying across the room. Renamon leapt into the air and grabbed him before he could crash-land and placed him down gently, examining the damage from the Acklay's teeth. It was relatively minor but was enough to cause some various parking problems here and there.

Renamon shook her head and muttered, "I probably should have seen his sort of curious behaviour coming. Don't worry Arfour, we'll get you fixed up quickly."

The astromech juddered and span its head a couple of times, letting Renamon know that it never wanted to go through anything like that again.

But Renamon looked up again when Terriermon shouted, "Hoi! Put that down!" and saw that another Acklay had managed to get its head and neck underneath one of the other fighters and was shouldering it upwards. Renamon sighed and sought out the Force-sensitive Acklay.

She spotted it easily enough, standing between two Y-wings and glancing from one to the other. She yelled across to it, "Can you please tell your pack-mates to stop messing about and calm down or something? You're not making the best of impressions on the clones."

The Acklay snorted and let off a short, sharp shriek, which sounded pretty similar to most of the other calls the Acklay made but it seemed to have an effect on the others, because they all immediately stopped what they were doing and moved towards the open space in the middle of the hangar.

As they settled down onto their stomachs to wait out the journey and Renamon took Arfour for some repairs, the clones stood by and stared in disbelief. Conor shook his head and said, "Honestly, if I hadn't seen what these guys were capable of first-hand, I would probably think we were insane for bringing allies like them on board." He paused, then added, "Then again, I think we are anyway."

* * *

"Alright, we're in hyperspace now," Xiaan said to the slightly older Twi'lek as she was lowered onto a bed in the medical bay by Aayla and Max and as a medical droid walked forwards to begin examining her injuries. "The fighting's stopped and there's little to do but wait as per usual. I think it's time that you owed me the explanation you promised."

Aayla chuckled. "I see you're a little impatient right now Xiaan."

"Put yourself in my shoes, Aayla," Xiaan half smirked, half winced as the medical droid examined the hastily bandaged cut on her side. "One moment you're about to fight against a bunch of battle droids, then the next you're suddenly ordered to flee because the Chancellor is a Sith and is turning the clones on you. After crash-landing on a dangerous planet right after my escape, I am suddenly transported to a farm by friendly voracious predators, and then suddenly, out of the blue the next day, one of my fellow Jedi shows up and takes me to the cruiser filled with clones that are _not_ shooting her down, taking the Acklay with her onto the ship, and with her are a couple of small children who I can tell are not Jedi and a couple of weird creatures I've never seen before. Wouldn't you be anxious for an explanation?"

"I suppose I would," Aayla chuckled. "And I suppose I owe it to you."

That much was true. The two of them had never been remarkably close friends, like she had with Anakin and Barriss, but they had been friends nonetheless. Their paths did not cross a lot during their training, but they had always gotten along very well when they had. When she and Quinlan Vos were recovering from their memory loss thanks to Aayla's uncle, Xiaan had given the Heart of Fire Aayla had given her back to Quinlan, insisting that he use his psychometric skills to read the memories on the gem, as it was said a little of the heart and soul of the giver was put into the stone when it was given.

It had helped Quinlan to remember a lot about both himself and Aayla as a result and helped renew that Master and Padawan bond faster than would have normally happened. And it had been that bond that Aayla had utilised to snap Quinlan out of being a minion to the Dark Side.

"Well, where to begin?" Aayla murmured. "I suppose I should start right at the beginning, during the Second Invasion of Christophsis and shortly before I became known as a member of the A-Team. It's a very long story indeed, so I'll give you a very abbreviated version, but it should tell you most of the things you want to know..."

And thus Xiaan became the next person in a growing list of people that learned the full truth behind the existence of the Digimon and the success of the A-Team.

The Twi'lek's eyes gradually widened as Aayla's story unfolded, the amazing stories that were coming out of Aayla's mouth were putting her belief skills to the ultimate test, and for some reason she couldn't help but find herself believing them. Aayla seemed to be sincere enough, despite all the mad stories about her friends changing into enormous cyborg creatures and other things besides.

Even with the short version of things it still took several minutes to fully explain the story, and the result was a stunned young Jedi Knight who stared at the older Jedi in complete shock.

"The Chancellor really went that far back with his manipulations?" she asked.

"Oh yes," nodded Aayla. "It's sad to say that we didn't pick up anything whatsoever suspicious about his actions, but there you have it. I'm sorry that I didn't tell you."

"No, that's alright," Xiaan smiled. "I understand completely. You were doing your duty as a Jedi. Everybody was. What amazes me most is this whole concept of the mind link that you said you guys have. You can really hear each other's thoughts whenever you like?"

"As long as we're within a couple of miles of one another then we can transmit information almost immediately," Aayla nodded. "Except for Renamon and Terriermon. _Their_ mind-link is indefinite."

"That's... just plain weird," Xiaan shook her head. "And now we're going to try and bring down this new Emperor using a mad scheme like the one you guys have cooked up? Is this how things are usually run with you guys and the rest of the A-Team?"

"Oh yes," nodded Aayla. She then looked to the medical droid and enquired, "How is she?"

"She will be fine relatively soon," the medical droid responded. "Though serious, her injuries are only flesh wounds. No major blood vessels or body organs were damaged. It should be only a day or so in a bacta tank before she is up and about."

"We don't have any bacta tanks on board this vessel," Aayla replied. "But we have something better anyway." She smiled down as Xiaan and said, "Barriss will fix you up in practically no time flat, and then, if you want, you can aid us in the fight against the Emperor."

Xiaan nodded. "It would be my honour," she said.

Aayla smiled and then said, "Well, I suppose you must be thinking about how lucky you are that we happened across you like we did, aren't you?"

Xiaan chuckled and coughed slightly as she placed a hand carefully over the wound in her side. "It was certainly a stroke of good fortune," she said. "It's a good thing you came to find those Acklay, otherwise I might still be down there. And those farmers might be well-meaning but they are certainly not healers. I'm not sure how long I would have lasted down there."

Aayla's expression turned serious and she said, "Do you know what happened to any of the other Jedi who were nearby to you when you made your escape?"

Xiaan frowned and shook her head sadly. "I didn't really have a lot of time to think things through to be honest, Aayla," she replied. "No time to contact them and ask how they were either. I just grabbed a starfighter and fled. I'm lucky I managed to get as far away from the battlezone as I did before the damage to my ship finally took its toll. I know that A'Sharad Hett and Pong Krell were somewhere nearby, but other than that I have no clue."

"I see," murmured Aayla. She knew those two Jedi and she hoped they were both still alive. They were both highly capable, but she had to admit the clones under General Krell's command probably would have had a lot of fun hunting him down. He was not well liked by them, because unlike most Jedi he _did_ think of them as little more than tools and he was renowned for having the highest casualty rates of all Jedi Generals.

However, before she could ponder this anymore, her holocommunicator hanging from her waist suddenly started bleeping. She looked down at it and frowned, not having expected a call, but then she realised that it wasn't a call at all. Instead of the red light that would indicate a personal transmission, there was a small green light bleeping on the small device instead.

She frowned and stared at it for a moment, before looking up at Xiaan. The eyes of the two Twi'lek's met and narrowed almost immediately. Both of them had a fair idea that they knew what this was, and before Aayla could really think about what she was doing, she was on her feet and called, "See you soon," before dashing out of the medical bay.

_Guys,_ she called in her mind-link to Renamon, Terriermon, Rika and Henry. _Meet me on the bridge as soon as possible. Something's happening, and we might need to act quickly._

The Digimon and Tamers knew better than to ask questions at that sought of tone in Aayla's thoughts. _Got it,_ Henry sent back. _We'll be there in a minute._

Aayla nodded and called to Commander Bly through her comlink. "Commander, listen to me. Something's happened and I need you to pull the cruiser out of hyperspace, right now."

"But sir," Bly replied. "We're still nowhere near the rendezvous point."

"I know that, Commander," Aayla said. "But it's vital that you stop. I'm receiving a transmission on my holocommunicator and you have to stop us before we pull out of range."

"Sir, yes sir," Bly nodded and signed off. As Aayla kept running, a few moments later came the grinding noises of the engines shutting down slightly and the whoosh as they pulled out of hyperspace, the ship blipping into existence in the middle of nowhere. They had not gone all that far from Felucia by this point, and it probably wouldn't be long before they were picked up by more Empirical monitoring stations and tracked down to this area, so they would have to be quick.

* * *

Aayla ran into the bridge less than a minute later and found Bly anxiously waiting for her. "Sir," he saluted. "I've contacted A'den and Tyto and instructed them to continue on the rendezvous point without us. Do you want me to rescind that order and call them back or not?"

Aayla shook her head. "There will not be any need for that, Bly. Catch," she tossed him her communicator and Bly caught it with practiced ease, lashing out with his hand to grab the small device moments before it hit him in the helmet. "I need you to plug that into the holotable and pull up a map of the Galaxy, then synchronise the two," Aayla responded. "I need to find out where this transmission is coming from and quickly."

"You got it," nodded Bly, bending down to pull out wires required and carry out his task.

The Tamers and Digimon arrived at that point. The two humans were panting slightly but the Digimon seemed to be fine. Terriermon landed in the middle of the holotable while Renamon stepped up beside Aayla. The bunny turned around to look at Aayla and said, "Okay, we're here. What's going on? Is everything alright?"

"I don't know," Aayla replied. "But I intend to find out. I've received a pulse on my communicator that we're trying to trace?"

"You mean a call?" asked Henry. "Someone's trying to get in touch?"

"Yes and no," Aayla said. "Someone is trying to get in touch but it's not a call. If I were to guess correctly, someone's sending out a distress signal, sending out an open broadcast to anyone nearby who might be able to help. And if that transmission was picked up by my communicator, but wasn't picked up by the ships internal servers, then that almost definitely means it's a Jedi distress call."

"So there's a Jedi out there trying to get somebody to come and help them?" Rika asked for clarification.

"Looks like it," nodded Aayla. "We know Masters Krell and Hett were in this area recently, and they might have access to such a distress beacon."

"I can't be sure which, but for the beacon to reach my communicator alone, it must be being transmitted down the special wavelength of all Jedi communicators, much like the message that was sent out to tell us that the Chancellor was turning on us all. That means that whoever this person is will not be picked up by the clones, the majority of which are no longer friendly, but would be picked up by other Jedi."

"So, there's a Jedi out there that needs rescuing," Renamon nodded. "Well, we can hardly ignore something like that. And when we find them, they can be another extra addition to our forces for the final battle."

"Assuming they're still in good enough condition when we find them," agreed Aayla. "There may be many Jedi out there in this vicinity, hiding away from the Empire. Odds are that many of them might be receiving this transmission as well, but not many of them will be able to do anything about it, as they'll probably be stuck on the planet they were on at the time."

"Got it, General," Bly announced as he stood back and displayed the map of the Galaxy. Everyone immediately turned to look at the map and saw a flashing red light near the top that indicated the origin of the signal being transmitted through the communicator. Bly quickly zoomed in on it, and they stared at the cluster of nearby planets.

"There's Felucia," Bly indicated one orb nearby, which means that we're probably somewhere here next to Draukyze. And that planet there," he pointed to the one where the red blip was coming from. "That there is Minntooine."

"How many Tooine planets are there?" Terriermon asked.

"Terriermon," Henry chided.

"What?" Terriermon demanded. "It's like the Devimon Digimon type – there's always another type out there somewhere that you haven't come across yet. Besides, I was just asking."

"And the answer is that there are many, but that's beside the point," Aayla replied.

"How should we proceed, General Secura?" asked Bly. "If there's someone trapped on Minntooine, we should probably act quite quickly."

"Why?" asked Rika. "Is it a dangerous planet like Felucia?"

"Oh no," Aayla shook her head. "Far from it. It is a small area of space that is still Separatist controlled though, so there's a chance that there might be some other forces at work there. But that's not the main reason either. The main reason is that Minntooine is an aquatic planet, with almost no land and next to no life on what land there is there. If there is a Jedi stuck there, then it's likely they are trapped on that land, unless they're an ocean going species like Kit or Eekar. If that's the case, then it might not be long before they starve to death or something."

"Ouch," Terriermon winced. "Then I suppose we better get going pronto."

"But, sir we have a rendezvous," Bly pointed out. "We shouldn't miss it if we have to. The others might get concerned and decide to come looking for us."

Aayla nodded and said, "Well, it shouldn't really be too difficult to go and pick up a single Jedi. Assuming it is a single Jedi," she added thoughtfully, placing a hand on her lekku and fiddling with the tip, as she usually did when she was dwelling on the situation presented to her. "I think its safe to say that it is. As far as I know there was no actual Republic, though it would be Empire now, or Separatist presence on Minntooine."

"I thought that you said it was in the middle of Separatist space," Rika frowned.

"It is," Aayla replied. "But that doesn't mean that there are Separatists on it. I believe there used to be a factory there – an underwater factory run by various members of the Quarren Isolation League, but Master Fisto took that out even before we faced off against the remnants of that league on Naboo. It's probably someone who escaped there like Xiaan escaped to Felucia and cannot leave the planet for some reason. Perhaps their hyperdrive has been damaged."

"Well, is there going to be a plan?" asked Renamon. "We can't just leave a Jedi there if there is one, can we?"

"No, we can't," Aayla shook her head. "But Bly is right as well. We do have a schedule to keep and it would be best if the majority of us didn't miss it, because there's a high probability that some of us might have gotten into trouble on these little ventures, and we might need to mount a rescue operation."

"So, what's the solution?" Terriermon asked."

"I shall go alone," Aayla replied. "While you guys can continue and meet up with the others over Ruusan. I'll join you as quickly as I can for the journey. That way, if a rescue mission _does_ need to be launched, you guys will be able to proceed without me and the majority of our force will still be there to help out."

"Alone, sir?" asked Bly. "In your starfighter? Begging your pardon, General Secura, but that probably won't help this other Jedi very much unless you somehow intend to squeeze both of you into the same cockpit. And you know as well as I do that those things are only made for one average sized humanoid."

"I know that, Bly," nodded Aayla, offering the clone a smile. "That is why I am not intending to take my starfighter. I'll take a Y-wing bomber. I know how to fly those as well, and if there is a Jedi there when I arrive on Minntooine, whoever it is can ride in the gunner's seat. That should solve the problem quite easily."

Bly stood still for a moment before he shook his head and chuckled. "How do you do it, General Secura? You always seem to come up with incredibly simple solutions to things."

"I certainly try," Aayla smiled.

Renamon shook her head. "I don't it when we split up like this," she said. "Especially when one of us has to go all on their own."

"I don't like it either," agreed Aayla. "But one of us has to go and check this out and among us I _am_ the only pilot here capable of using regular controls. And since Terriermon tore apart his starfighter when we rescued Stass Allie, he can't come."

"Actually, I can," Terriermon chuckled. "It's one of the advantages of being a pint-sized powerhouse for most of the time. I can just ride in the cockpit with you, Aayla. And if I do that, then, once again, we have an instant communication between our two forces since Renamon will be staying behind."

Aayla chuckled and turned to Bly. "You see, Commander. It's not just me who comes up with things like this. We all chip in from time to time."

"True, General," Bly chuckled. "True."

"And I suppose that means that I'm going to be left behind again," murmured Henry.

"Hey, don't complain, Henry," Rika nudged him. "Remember how I had to be left behind when Renamon went with Bane to try and find out who Sidious was. At least Terriermon's little mission isn't going to be nearly as dangerous as Renamon's was."

Henry sighed and said, "Yeah, I know. Besides, I wouldn't fit in the cockpit with you guys and if I took up the gunners seat, then I suppose that would ruin the idea." He paused before he reluctantly said, "Alright, fine, I'll stay behind. Just keep me informed on what's going on will you, Renamon."

The fox smiled at the other Tamer and said, "Don't worry, Henry. I'll give you a blow-by-blow narration if it will make you feel better."

"Actually, it would," Henry chuckled. "But I don't think you need to go that far. Terriermon, try to behave while I'm not there, will you?"

"I don't behave while you _are_ here," Terriermon grinned. "What makes you think I will when you're not."

"Because you're going to be in a confined space with Aayla for a large amount of time and if you start misbehaving, she will probably kick your ass later?" Rika suggested.

Terriermon balked and looked up at the Twi'lek in question, who was giving him a severe glare and had placed her hands on her hips in a mock warning. Terriermon knew it was mock, because Aayla would never really kick his ass for anything he was do. Give him a severe talking to perhaps, but never an ass-kicking.

Nevertheless, Terriermon played along and quailed. "No, spare me from the stingy wrath of the Twi'lek warrior."

"I'm not a warrior," Aayla replied immediately. "I am a guardian. However, there is a chance that if you annoy me too much, I will find an adhesive so strong that it will never be broken and then use it to permanently glue a Jurcian fruit to your head."

Terriermon stepped back so quickly that Bly had to catch him before he fell off the table. There were several laughs from the people crowded around the holotable, before Aayla stopped and said, "Don't worry, Terriermon. I wouldn't really do something like that. Welcome aboard," she held out a hand and Terriermon put his own much smaller hand forwards and allowed Aayla to grasp it and hoist him off the table and onto her shoulder.

"We should get going," replied Aayla. "If there really is a Jedi that needs help then the sooner we can rescue whoever it is the less chance there is of a Separatist or Empire force finding them first and killing them before we get there. Commander, jump to hyperspace when we're clear of the cruiser and meet up with the others over Ruusan. Tell them we'll be along shortly."

"Yes, sir," nodded Bly.

"And Terriermon," Renamon put in. "Considering that it's very possible the person that you're setting out to rescue has never seen you before, try not to freak them out too much."

Terriermon winked and Aayla said, "I'll make sure of it." She picked up her communicator and unplugged it from the holotable, as she would need it to trace the distress code to its source, and then hurriedly left the bridge, with Terriermon riding along with her and intending to head back to the hangar.

_Oh, and someone keep Xiaan company for me, would you?_ She called in her mind.

_Will do,_ Rika replied.

"Oh," Terriermon suddenly said. "I just remembered. One of the Acklay did a little bit of damage to Arfour. I'm not sure that he'll be able to accompany us on this little mission thingie."

"That's alright," Aayla replied. "We probably won't need an astromech anyway. Come on. Let's go rescue a Jedi."

* * *

It wasn't long later before the Y-wing that had been the first to be refuelled by the various gonk droids that walked through the hangar filled with fuel moved out into space. The hangar doors closed behind it and the six Acklay within offered farewell screeches to the flying vessel and its occupants. Its two back engines pulsed with energy as it steered away from the floating vessel and inside the cockpit at the front of the vessel, Aayla flicked a couple of switches to fine-tune them and program the navicomputer.

"You know," Terriermon said from her lap as he looked up at her and grinned. "This kinda reminds me of the time all those months ago when I first went out for a ride in a starfighter with Ahsoka. Granted the pilot and the ship type are different this time around but I can't help but feel a slight sense of nostalgia."

Aayla snorted and said, "Yes well, hopefully this time we won't get captured by Separatist forces and you won't get yourself knocked out when the ship suddenly gets caught in a tractor beam."

"Yeah, I'd rather that didn't happen again," Terriermon laughed. "It was kinda unpleasant the first time. On the other hand, we did end up discovering, or re-discovering, the existence of Sidious. And now we're doing this right now because of that little mission."

"I wonder what we would have been doing right now otherwise," Aayla chuckled. "Probably attacking some kind of heavily fortified Separatist stronghold and getting attacked by more droids."

"Good old times, huh?" Terriermon asked.

"I would class those bits as good," Aayla replied, "but I do miss the days when the missions were a lot simpler and we weren't having to fight an enemy who has declared us all traitors to his new Empire, yes." She tuned in her comlink and said, "Alright, Commander. We're about set off."

"Happy hunting, General Secura," Bly replied. "See you soon."

"Hopefully with another Jedi in tow," added Aayla. She turned her head and Terriermon peered over the lip of the cockpit as the _Intrepid_ behind them vanished into hyperspace, taking their fellow Digimon and Jedi, all the clones and the six Acklay with them. Aayla turned back around and finished putting the co-ordinates for Minntooine into her own navicomputer.

Unlike Jedi starfighters, which required special hyperspace rings to give them access to lightspeed, Y-wing bombers had a hyperdrive built into their structure, meaning that they could jump to lightspeed without any extra parts needing to be added, which was useful since they were currently flying without an astromech. Terriermon was silent as Aayla sat back in the controls and decisively pulled on a lever.

The stars around them blurred and lengthened before they had suddenly gone from a complete standstill to shooting through a tunnel of blue light faster than the eye could track.

"I'll never get used to that," Terriermon shook his head. "Whatever technology you guys use to ensure that their no massive recoil when you shoot away at such high speed should be given to the subway trains back home in Tokyo. Those things go at a snail's pace compared to this baby and they're rockier than a mountain hiking trail."

Aayla smiled. "Amusing use of homonyms there."

"Don't get me started on homonyms," Terriermon shook his head. "How long's it going to take before we reach Minntooine."

"It shouldn't take too long," replied Aayla. "Probably only half an hour. It might take a bit longer than that before we actually find the person sending out this distress signal."

Terriermon nodded and stretched out his ears, placing his hands behind his head and leaning back against Aayla's bare stomach. The Twi'lek looked down at him as he nonchalantly assumed the pose of a sunbather and muttered, "So, what exactly are we going to do to pass the time?"

"Do we have to do anything?" Aayla asked.

"Well, you can't just expect me to do nothing, do you?" Terriermon asked.

"We could just talk," Aayla suggested. "After all, we can hardly play tag in the cockpit of a Y-wing."

"How would you know?" Terriermon asked. "You've never tried. Tag," he added, tapping Aayla's stomach with the back of his hand.

Aayla had to resist the urge to laugh at the bunnies little antics but she humoured him and lightly bopped him on the head with one hand and said, "Tag."

"Tag," repeated Terriermon, tapping Aayla's leg with one ear.

"Tag," Aayla threw in, putting the tip of her finger on the tip of Terriermon's horn.

"Tag," Terriermon grinned as he snapped his ear up and touched her hand before she could move it away.

"Tag," Aayla said, without making any movement at all. Terriermon frowned up at her and she grinned and said, "What? You're sitting in my lap. That means I'm touching you. I don't need to do anything else."

Terriermon pouted. "I was going to do that next go."

"Too slow, Terriermon," Aayla grinned. "Momentai."

Terriermon fumed quietly, and his mind began thinking up ways to prank Aayla later, which Aayla rifled through and made her own mental notes to watch out for them. However, the excitement of the last few days coupled with the quiet journey in the Y-wing and Aayla's comfortable lap soon ensuring that Terriermon was sound asleep. Aayla smiled down at him. She could see why Suzie had so adored him when she thought he was just a doll. He looked just like one now while he was sleeping.

Terriermon was a good and loyal friend and Aayla was glad of his company. In many ways, Terriermon was the thing that had brought them all so close together – his joking attitude causing them all to loosen up around one another and feel more comfortable in each other's presence. Because of that, Terriermon was ultimately the one to thank for all the progress they'd made so far. Renamon was a lucky Digimon.

She didn't know what they'd do without him.

She absently scratched him behind his giant ears and wrapped an arm around his stomach to hold him close, the former of which was something he probably wouldn't let her do were he awake, and continued to monitor their journey to the ocean world.

* * *

The Y-wing pulled out of hyperspace about twenty minutes after Terriermon fell asleep. Aayla looked out through the duraglass to behold the blue planet outside. It was a planet she had never set eyes on before or ever really intended to visit. Aquatic worlds were not usually very friendly to people who usually lived on the surface. The sentient locals might be fine, but the environment was usually remarkably hostile.

Minntooine resembled something like a barren, blue desert. It was probably teeming with life under the surface of course, but Aayla had no intention of going that far down to find it.

She nudged Terriermon awake as she directed the bomber down towards the planet. "We're here, Terriermon," she said. "You can wake up now."

"Who says I was sleeping?" Terriermon mumbled as he rubbed his eyes with the back of one hand. "I was just meditating."

"Yeah, right," Aayla chuckled. "The day you choose to meditate when nobody else decided to do it first is the day that Henry will let Suzie go on a rampage with a blaster."

"It could happen," Terriermon retorted.

"Doubtful," Aayla replied.

"Yeah, I know," Terriermon nodded and took his turn to look out at the planet. "Wow," he said. "And I thought that the Earth was a blue planet. I can't see any land down there at all."

"Perhaps not but there is land," Aayla replied. "It's just so small and dotted around that you can't see any of it from this height. Anyway, I would appreciated it if we had some quiet for the moment. I just need to calibrate the sensors to trace the signal from my communicator, and hope that somebody less scrupulous than myself hasn't somehow managed to pick it up already."

Terriermon ducked down as Aayla's arms went over his head to do just that, and he jokingly muttered, "Puh, if you wanted quiet then you shouldn't have woken me up."

"So, you were sleeping," Aayla grinned.

"Touché," Terriermon responded, and then shut up, watching Aayla link up her little device with the console in front of her. She flicked a couple of switches and suddenly a red blip appeared on the main monitor in front of her. She nodded with satisfaction.

"There it is," she said. "Still going strong. Looks like nobody else has managed to pick it up and do anything about it yet. Come on. Let's go rescuing."

Terriermon nodded as Aayla steered the Y-wing into the atmosphere and dipped it lower. It wasn't long before they could see the calm blue ocean stretching out as far as they eye could see in any direction, with the ship swooping relatively low over the waves. Aayla kept her eye on the monitor and then frowned when she noticed another little detail. "That's odd," she murmured.

"What? What is?" Terriermon asked quickly.

Aayla indicated the monitor and said, "The signal is coming from straight ahead of us, so we're going the right way, but it also says that its coming from above us. But that's a little odd. There are no mountains on this planet and any land that is here barely extends above sea-level. Whoever it is must already be in a ship."

Terriermon frowned. "But if they're already in a ship, why are they calling for help."

"I'm not sure," replied Aayla slowly. "Maybe they can't leave the atmosphere due to damage it received. Or its possible that this person might even be a prisoner of someone else but is still somehow managing to send out his broadcasting signal."

"A prisoner, huh?" asked Terriermon. "I bet you're wishing we'd brought an astromech now."

"Maybe a little," Aayla said. "But there's only one way to find put the answer to this puzzle. Let's go and have a look for ourselves."

She accelerated the Y-wing and shot over the sea, leaving a trail behind them thanks to the Y-wing's powerful engines disturbing the surface of the water. She rose the ship higher slightly until it was on an altitude level equal to that of the mysterious distress beacon, and continued on their way.

Eventually, they came across something other than water and sky. Aayla slowed the ship down when they spotted another ship up ahead, and pulled her Y-wing to a crawl as they stared at it. It closely resembled a _Consular_-class Republic cruiser – tiny in terms of cruiser size, with a long thin design and three large engines in a line at the back that would enable it to push itself forwards. It was a classic blockade runner. There was something unusual about it though, and Aayla couldn't place what it was.

"That's the ship?" Terriermon asked. "That's where the distress beacon is coming from?"

"Uh-huh," nodded Aayla. "That's the one."

"Well, I don't know about you but it looks fine to me," Terriermon replied. "It doesn't appear to have any obvious damages to it. What's to stop it from leaving the planet whenever it wants to?"

"I don't know but something's obviously amiss," replied Aayla. "Look at the way it's just drifting through the air slightly. It doesn't appear to have anyone at the controls. It's just hovering. But there is definitely a Jedi distress beacon coming from within there. Perhaps it's the person that's injured instead of the ship being damaged.

"Well, what are we going to do now?" asked Terriermon. "Can we dock with that thing?"

"Not with a Y-wing, we can't," Aayla shook her head. "We'd need a ship with a standard airlock to do that. I'll try and contact them first, and we'll take it from there depending on whether or not I get a coherent answer."

Terriermon nodded and fell silent again as Aayla reached forwards and activated the built-in comlink, as she drew the Y-wing closer to the ship. "Republic blockade runner, this is Jedi General Aayla Secura. I've received your distress beacon and have come to offer my aid. Do you copy?"

There was nothing but static for several moments. Aayla frowned, and steered the Y-wing a little closer before trying again, "Repeat, do you copy? This is Aayla Secura? I everything alright in there?"

Still no reply.

"I don't think that's going to work," Terriermon murmured. "Doesn't appear to be anyone in there."

"Anyone well enough to respond to the signal perhaps," Aayla nodded. "Alright, maybe if I were to jump out and cut my way through I could have a look around. You feel up to making sure the Y-wing doesn't crash into the ocean?"

"Well, it's not the controls I'm used to," Terriermon shrugged. "But perhaps if you link up your mind with mine I can work out what to..."

Suddenly there was a burst of static from the comlink and a voice on the other side weakly said, "You... Secura?"

Aayla quickly made to reply, but her finger halted over the comlink just before she reached it and she frowned. That voice had been one of a rough sounding male, and a voice that Aayla thought she recognised from somewhere, but she had no idea who it might be. She couldn't place the voice. But she was certain that it didn't belong to anybody within the Jedi Order.

Eventually she replied, with, "Yes, this is Aayla Secura. Please identify yourself and state your condition."

There was no reply this time, and Terriermon glanced upwards at the Twi'lek, who looked down at him in turn.

"Something's wrong," Aayla said.

"Sounded like it," Terriermon agreed.

"No, I mean something's wrong with this whole situation," Aayla's eyes narrowed. "The Force is telling me something and I..."

Her eyes shot open and Terriermon yelped as he almost went flying into the wall when Aayla banked left and shot away at high speed, right as several huge red blasts sliced through the air from behind them. The large lasers hit the surface of the ocean and caused several fountains of water to flare upwards as they displaced the water.

Aayla grabbed Terriermon with one hand before he could smack his head and knock himself out like last time and plonked him back into her lap. "Hold on tight!" she cried. "It's a trap!"

Terriermon responded by wrapping his ears tightly around Aayla's stomach in the universe's weirdest seatbelt and pressed himself against her, holding on tightly as Aayla whipped the ship into a spin to avoid two more massive lasers that shot straight past them and then whirled the ship upwards so a third shot passed underneath them. Aayla gritted her teeth and focused, but she was able to get one quick look out of the back of her cockpit at her pursuer.

The ambushing ship was another starfighter, but it was unlike any that Aayla had ever seen before. For example, it was quite tall, but relatively thin with large engines at the back, a cockpit that resembled a duraglass wheel set in the front of the ship and four absolutely massive cannons at the front, two on either side. It was those cannons which were currently doing the attacking and one of them sent off a sudden fourth laser shooting straight towards Aayla.

Before it reached her, Aayla had just enough time to identify the person sitting in the strange starfighter's cockpit.

"Aurra Sing," she breathed, but she was then forced to take a sharp right, the laser beam shooting straight between the two extended engines on the back of the Y-wing as Aayla shot away.

* * *

"Blast!" Aurra cried as Aayla avoided her initial shots. She had been hoping for a nice quick kill and everything had seemed to be going along first rate. The Jedi had come completely on her own (so far as Aurra knew), and without even a vanguard of rebel clones, which was even better than Aurra had been expecting. She had thought she might need to take out several starfighters, instead of just one bomber.

The Jedi had seemed to have fallen for her favourite trick of leaving her cruiser hanging in the air and drifting seemingly aimlessly before she attacked from behind in her personal starfighter. That had been Bok's role in all of this. The Morgukai warrior was at the controls, acting as the bait for Aurra and also listening to the comlink to confirm whether it was the target they were looking for. And indeed it was.

Aurra had picked up the Jedi distress beacon from one of her missions when she had been hunting another Jedi, who had been attempting to use it while she hunted him down. But she had gotten to him first and killed him, shutting off the distress beacon, and she had decided to keep it for future missions. And it had done its job perfectly, luring Aayla to exactly the right spot.

But some last minute warning or something had alerted Aayla to the presence of Aurra right behind her and she had managed to avoid being shot down immediately. And now began a chase which Aurra had been hoping to avoid.

"Get after her!" she shouted to Bok through the comlink as she fired more lasers at the back of the Aayla's ship, frustrated that Aayla's skills as a pilot were leading her to cleanly avoiding her ain with her nimble flying abilities. "We cannot let her escape. She won't fall for the same trick twice."

* * *

"You mean the Bounty Hunter that helped Bane to free Ziro the Hutt by taking the Senate hostage?" cried Terriermon as another massive red bolt slammed through the air overhead and momentarily filled the space directly above their heads with red light. "That Aurra Sing?"

"The one and only," Aayla agreed. "She's a Bounty Hunter who..." she broke off to pull her ship into a brief dive and a rapid climb a moment later to avoid one laser and then a second which tried to follow her trajectory and hit the ocean beneath her, spraying the bottom of the Y-wing with water. "... who hates Jedi with a passion," responded Aayla. "She set a trap for us and I'm afraid that we walked right into it."

"No, she set a trap for you," Terriermon replied agitatedly. "Looks like Palpatine still hasn't finished trying to write you out of his story."

"Is that a surprise?" Aayla asked. "But I have no intention..." she rolled the starfighter as another pair of lasers shot past. "... if getting either myself or you killed today, Terriermon, so hold on tightly. I promise I'll do everything I can to get us out of this." She forced the bomber into a swift loop-da-loop to dodge a couple more powerful blasts from the starfighter.

"Well, you might want to watch out for that cruiser then!" Terriermon shouted, pointing towards the blockade runner which was moving in from the side and suddenly pulsing a large barrage of smaller yet equally deadly lasers right at her.

"Thanks," Aayla replied as she whipped the bomber around and flew directly into the laser storm.

"This was not what I had in mind when I said that!" Terriermon shouted as lasers flashed all around them. Aayla ignored him, all her senses tingling and fine-tuned to the max as she rolled and dodged and span her ship over, under and around the lasers that pulsed towards her, until she was finally level with the cruiser and zoomed straight over the top of it and shot away on the other side.

The tactic worked for a few moments. Aurra, who was still in pursuit, was forced to stop before she crashing into her own blockade runner, but she quickly span her ship beneath it and fired more lasers at the back of the retreating Twi'lek's ship. Aayla sensed their approach rather than saw them and she flipped her ship side on right before impact, causing two lasers to streak by on either side of the ship. Aurra growled, and sent off more, but Aayla was already gone, shooting straight upwards now, with intent to break out of the atmosphere and jump to hyperspace before she was shot down.

But the blockade runner, controlled by Bok, promptly foiled that plan by locking onto Aayla's ship and sending four large missiles suddenly streaking upwards and homing in on Aayla's vessel. Aayla balked when she spotted them on the scopes.

"Damn it," she hissed. "The only missiles I like are the ones thrown by you Terriermon. Hold on tight. This one's going to get rough."

Terriermon didn't question her as Aayla suddenly completely reversed trajectory and dived straight down instead. Aayla knew that the missiles were faster than her Y-wing unless it was in hyperspace and would have reached her before she could leave the atmosphere had she stayed on her current course. As the missiles shot past her but cruved around to dive after her, Aayla aimed her ship down towards Aurra's.

Aurra let off more shots at the approaching Twi'lek, but the Jedi was having none of it. She slammed the ship into a corkscrew and swerved away, causing Aurra's lasers to slam into the missiles following. Three of them were exploded on the spot, but the fourth was merely knocked off course for a moment, forcing Aurra to roll her own ship out of the way, before the missile was streaking after Aayla again.

Aayla frowned in annoyance and pelted towards the surface of the ocean below her. Moments before she slammed into the water, she swerved back upwards, creating a fountain of spray behind the ship, while the missile ploughed straight into the water instead and vanished underneath the surface.

Aayla knew that wouldn't stop it though, so she quickly flipped her ship around to face the missile, in the tactic that Anakin himself had taught her, and when it exploded out and shot towards her again, she was ready for it. She swerved up again and, as she did so, she released one of the bombs contained in the underside of the vessel. Her aim was dead on, and the bomb and missile collided with a tumultuous explosion beneath them."

"Hell yeah!" Terriermon shouted. "Take that!"

"Terriermon, get down!" Aayla shouted, her senses screaming at her too late. Her tactic might have prevented her ship from being blown up, but it had allowed Aurra Sing to close in from above and slam another round of lasers at her. Aayla was able to swerve aside to avoid getting hit outright, but one of the lasers clipped the back of the starfighter between the engines and blew a chunk of it off.

"We're hit!" Aayla shouted, though it really wasn't necessary.

"Badly?" Terriermon asked.

"Oh yes," Aayla nodded. "She's clipped the stabiliser, but worse than that... she's taken out the hyperdrive."

Terriermon's eyes widened. "Then..."

"Yep," nodded Aayla, as she steered the starfighter low over the water, smoke billowing out of the back and with Aurra and the blockade runner in hot pursuit. "We can't jump to hyperspace anymore."

* * *

I think that's the first cliffhanger I've had in quite a while. How are Aayla and Terriermon going to be able to get out of this one when their allies are far away and they cannot escape via lightspeed anymore? Things are going to get tough for them from now on.

Hope you like my representation of Aurra Sing and her little backstory at the beginning there. Most of the villains seem to get a backstory in this story. Except Sidious of course, because he was always enigmatic anyway.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

With allies a long distance away and a ship which is now slightly damaged, Aayla and Terriermon struggle to continue avoiding the shots from Aurra and Bok. Is there a way for them to get out of this situation, or will Palpatine finally succeed in offing one of the A-Team?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 172 : Aayla Secura's Death**


	172. Aayla Secura's Death

I notice that the choice of title for this chapter drew many eyes and a lot of startled comments from people, which was the idea after all. I decided to be lenient and not let you stew for too long so here I am once again with yet another instalment of Secret of the 327th as we find out what terrible fate awaits our Jedi Knight heroine. Please nobody decide to hunt me down and kill me by the time you finish this chapter *runs and hides*.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 172:- Aayla Secura's Death**

* * *

From the moment that Aayla and Terriermon came under attack in the atmosphere of Minntooine, Renamon promptly freaked out. And while seeing Renamon freaking out was an unusual experience in and of itself, it was also an absolutely terrifying experience. Renamon only ever freaked out if there was something seriously wrong.

The yellow fox had only partly been paying attention to what was going on via Terriermon's mind, as there had not been a whole lot going on until he started to get a little weirded out by the silent floating ship above the ocean of the planet. But suddenly the attack started and Renamon, who had been leaning against the wall of the medical bay fairly nonchalantly until that point, suddenly sprang out into the room and cried, "Terriermon! Aayla!"

"What?" Henry looked up sharply from where he and Rika had been standing next to one another and speaking with Xiaan Amersu the wounded Jedi. "What's going on?"

"Have a look and see for yourselves," Renamon responded, opening up her mind to the two of them and turning to Bly as she did so. As the two Tamers had a look at what was going on through Renamon's mind and gasped at the prospect of Aayla and Terriermon being pursued by _another_ infamous Jedi hunter, Renamon dashed out of the room.

"What? What's going on?" Xiaan asked quickly, but she was ignored – Henry and Rika were too focused on what was going on, watching through Renamon's mind as Aayla rolled the ship around to escape the red lasers. They ran for the door and Xiaan sat up and shouted, "What's happening?" after them.

Rika paused by the door long enough to look back in and say, "Aayla and Terriermon are being chased by a Bounty Hunter," before she rushed out after Henry, the two Tamers following the yellow fox Digimon towards the bridge.

* * *

Needless to say, Renamon reached the bridge a _lot_ faster that her Tamers and she sprang into the room and took Commander Bly by surprise. The clone turned around just in time for Renamon to grab him by the shoulder armour, and for a moment the clone thought Renamon had gone mad.

But Renamon merely cried. "Terriermon and Aayla are being attacked by Aurra Sing! The Jedi distress beacon was a trap and now they're trying to escape with their lives! We need to turn around and go and help them now!"

"Whoa, wait, slow down," Bly cried, placing a hand on Renamon's arm. "Aurra Sing. Over Minntooine?"

"Yes," nodded Renamon. "And she's currently got Aayla on the run and is trying to shoot her down. We've got to turn around and go and help them, right now, before it's too late."

Bly nodded and responded immediately, turning around and crying, "Well, you heard her lads! Pull the ship out of hyperspace and bring her around! We've got to get to Minntooine, stat! Someone send a message to the fleet up ahead and let them know what we've run into some trouble."

As the clones hurried to obey, Bly turned back to Renamon and said, "What's the status? Are they going to be able to get away?"

"I'm not sure," Renamon replied. "Everything's going so quickly but its becoming something like an aerial brawl. They haven't been hit yet but they've had a few close calls already."

"As long as they can get out of the atmosphere," Bly said as the cruiser pulled out of hyperspace, "Then they should be able to get away by jumping to lightspeed. You can't track a ship through hyperspace without planting a specific beacon on it."

"Well, they're currently trying to throw off some missiles that had been thrown at them," Renamon responded, as Henry and Rika finally arrived."

"What's happening now?" the former of the two Tamers cried. "Are they okay?"

"For the moment," nodded Renamon. "Aayla's just managed to get Aurra to blow up three of their own missiles and... yes, now she's managed to get the other to plough into the sea."

"That won't stop it," Commander Bly warned.

"No, Aayla seems to know that," agreed Renamon. "She's turned around and... and... yes, she's dropped a bomb on it."

"A bomb?" Bly asked. "Seriously?" He shook his head as the ship began to complete its about face and the clones throughout the room began to reprogram the co-ordinates into the navicomputer, and murmured, "Only someone like General Secura could pull off dropping a bomb onto an incoming missile."

"CRAP!" Renamon shouted, suddenly. "They've been hit! Aurra's managed to hit them."

"Are they alright?" Rika pressed.

"Wait," Renamon held up a paw. Her eyes widened in horrible realisation as she overheard Aayla's next words to Terriermon. "Damage-wise they're both unhurt but the situation just got a lot worse. Aurra's managed to hit the hyperdrive and nick the stabiliser."

Bly cursed in Huttese and his fist pounded the wall. He turned around to roar at the rest of the bridge with, "Get moving boys! Our General and one of the Digimon are in trouble! I want to be out of here and over Minntooine as fast as possible."

"What does that mean?" Rika asked. "I'm not too good with ships, but doesn't that mean that they can't go to hyperspace anymore?"

"Yes, it does," Bly murmured gravely. "It means that they can't escape from the planet. They can still leave it but there won't be any escaping via lightspeed, and without lightspeed they won't be able to get anywhere anytime soon. And with the stabiliser hit as well – it's going to make things a lot more difficult for General Secura to fly that ship."

"She'll pull through," Renamon insisted. "She has to. They can't... they can't die. Not now. Not after everything we've been through."

"We have to help them," Rika insisted.

"I'm afraid we can't," Bly replied solemnly. "We've been going in the other direction ever since we parted ways with Aayla and Terriermon. It's going to take us at least an hour to reach Minntooine and there's no way of making this ship get there any quicker than that, I'm afraid."

"So, they're on their own?" Henry asked, fear clearly evident in his voice.

"Yes," nodded Bly. "They'll have to find their own way of escaping, or at least find a way of keeping out of Aurra Sing's way until we get there and with a damaged stabiliser and no hyperdrive... that's going to be next to impossible unless they land and hide."

"But they can't do that," Henry said, "They're on an ocean planet. There's nothing but sea for miles around, which means they can't land and it also means that they don't have anything to use as cover. They're sitting ducks."

"This really isn't making me feel any better," Rika said through gritted teeth.

Renamon was leaning on the holotable and her claws were digging into it as she stared into her mind's eye. She was breathing heavily, a sure sign if any that she was closer to having a heart attack than she'd ever been before, even when Palpatine fired Force Lightning at her, as she watched Aayla desperately trying to avoid the shots from Aurra and whoever it was that was piloting the blockade runner with a damaged stabiliser, which made her ships movements more erratic and the controls take slightly longer to respond. Not to mention it dropped her speed.

"Don't worry, Renamon," Bly said. "I'm sure they'll think of something. Maybe they can find a storm and get themselves lost in it to throw off their pursuers."

Renamon shook her head. "There's not even any cloud, Bly, let alone a storm. There's absolutely nothing but bare sky and sea in any direction. I don't see how they can possibly get away from this."

Bly desperately tried to come up with something comforting to say, but in truth, he had nothing either. Aurra Sing now had every advantage. Bly was an excellent strategist himself, but based on what he had been told he was forced to agree with Renamon.

Aayla and Terriermon were doomed.

The ship had jumped to hyperspace already by that point.

But the atmosphere within the ship was a morbid one. Each and every one of them was thinking the same thing – they were thinking that the only use they were going to be to Aayla and Terriermon by this point would be to retrieve their bodies. Or Aayla's body in any case. Terriermon would probably head for the realm of Anubimon and might one day be reborn.

Aayla did not have that luxury.

* * *

And she was painfully aware of that as she rolled the ship over to avoid another blast from Aurra's starfighter. The Twi'lek seemed to be just as stuck for a way out of this situation as all the others had been. Her ship was trailing an enormous trail of smoke behind it from the impact of Aurra's strike, but the cloud was not particularly thick enough to hide in and the design of the Y-wing's engines caused the smoke to be blown away from the vessel whenever Aayla veered around to attempt it.

She was an easy target.

"Oh Fanglongmon," Terriermon moaned. "If ever there was a time for some help from you, I think now would be it."

Aayla had to agree, as she veered the ship around, the blast from Aurra's vessel coming within an inch of one of the two back engines. Aayla steered low over the water for a few moments, trying to think of a solution to her problem, but Aurra was already hard on her tail and a blast of four massive lasers slammed downwards and crashed into the surface of the ocean all around her. A blast of water from one of the impacts caught the bottom of Aayla's ship and sent it spinning away and up into the air, which turned out to be their saving grace because it meant they avoided the next laser which would have struck them amidships.

The Twi'lek managed to right the ship just in time to see the larger blockade runner coming towards her and lowering several of its mounted turrets swung around to face her. Aayla slammed on the controls and pushed the ship upwards as quickly as she could just as they began to blast at her. The turrets swivelled upwards to try and follow her flightpath, and Aayla noticed her speed dropping rapidly. She quickly levelled out and flew over the top of the cruiser.

She was in quite a bit of trouble. She couldn't afford to go too fast otherwise she would burn up the stabiliser, which was damaged enough as it was. But she couldn't afford to go too slow either because they were running for their lives.

Aurra's ship was in hot pursuit and blasted more lasers up at her. Aayla flung the ship into a spin and dived down on the other side of the cruiser, putting it between her and Aurra just before Aurra's lasers hit her. Aurra growled in annoyance and twirled over the top of the cruiser to come down on the other side and ready her cannons, only to find Aayla wasn't there, as the Twi'lek was now underneath the vessel and veered upwards and over the top a second time.

Before Aurra could try and follow Aayla beneath the vessel, Aayla unleashed a second bomb from the Y-wing down towards the blockade runner. Aurra's eyes widened as she spotted it on her scopes and the pushed the ship forwards as fast as it would go just as the bomb slammed into larger vessel right next to where she had been and slammed through the shields. The blast knocked Aurra's ship off kilter for a moment.

* * *

From within the blockade runner, Bok cried out as the ship suddenly rocked and he snarled and hurriedly focused all turrets on Aayla once again, but the Twi'lek was keeping closer to the vessel now, looping around the larger ship and trying to stay out of the way of the turrets, like an irritating little fly that suddenly found a much larger animal highly fascinating.

As Aurra righted her ship and turned back around to face her blockade runner, she growled while immediately putting on all speed to try and intercept Aayla. But, at the last second, Aayla was able to roll aside from the massive lasers that Aurra threw at her and returned fire with the two small blasters at the front of the Y-wing, which weren't that great as offensive weapons but did the job of forcing Aurra to turn away as Aayla sung under the blockade runner.

Aurra snarled in frustration as she zoomed after Aayla once more, throwing a few lasers after her but mostly trying to follow her around the blockade runner and get a clear shot. This was taking a lot longer than it should have done. Aurra could tell that she had seriously damaged the ship, but the Twi'lek was rapidly becoming an irritant. There was little chance of her escaping, but the Jedi was such a skilled pilot that she had managed to hold on for several minutes longer than Aurra would have guessed.

"Shoot her!" she screamed into the comlink to Bok. "Shoot her down."

"I try," Bok shouted back. "She like little insect. Never in one place."

Aurra growled again and murmured, "She can't keep going on like this. That ship of hers is going to run out of juice sooner or later."

* * *

And she was right and Aayla knew it. She was watching the monitors as she swept under the ship and hurriedly flipping switches. It was at this point that she really could have done with an astromech unit, which might have been able to do something about the damage to the stabiliser if not the hyperdrive. But, of course, she had left Arfour behind due to him being chewed on by one of the Acklay.

"What's happening now?" Terriermon asked.

"The stabilisers getting worse," Aayla said through gritted teeth. "If I keep going like this it won't be long before it gives out completely and explodes and when that happens this ship is definitely not going to be doing any more flying at any point in the future. We'll be going down."

"Is there any good news," Terriermon asked, as Aayla flew around the back of the ship and ducked underneath it again after a vicious left turn in the hope of throwing Aurra off for a few more seconds.

"No," Aayla shook her head. "None at all. Although, you could still get out of here, Terriermon. If I opened the cockpit and let you out you could just fly away. Odds are they wouldn't even see you."

"Are you crazy?" Terriermon cried, "No way am I leaving you behind."

"Terriermon, you have mate and a Tamer to think about," Aayla said. "They're more important than I am and right now you don't have said Tamer so you can't digivolve and help me out."

"Yeah, but I don't want to... LOOK OUT!" Terriermon cried a moment later. Aayla's head snapped up a moment later to see Aurra's ship swinging under the ship ahead of her and empty more laser blasts in her direction. Aayla pushed the controls to the maximum as veered straight down just in time to avoid the lasers, spinning back up to pass underneath Aurra's ship and come out on the other side of the blockade runner.

Behind her, the stabiliser was beginning to catch fire, and a couple of sparks occurred within the cockpit from the straining machinery, forcing Terriermon to lift his arms up to protect his face. Aayla bit her lip as she desperately tried to come up with a solution to this. Damn that Darth Sidious for repeated sending minions after her like this. It had been a lot simpler when he had thought she was dead.

She swerved up and over the blockade runner, flipping over until she was the right way up and whooshed the Y-wing bomber down towards the engines of the blockade runner. It was at this point that her luck finally began to run out as her ship began to slow down even more as the damage to the stabiliser got worse.

The ship juddered slightly and began to catch fire as Aayla swooped down behind the engines once more, shouting, "Terriermon, you have to leave now while you still have a chance!"

"The only chance I have of leaving is a fat one!" Terriermon shouted back.

"There's no time to argue! Just..." Suddenly Aayla pitched the ship away as the engine of the blockade runner promptly flared up and began to belch out hot gas that made the flames already springing to life on the back of her starfighter sweep into greater size than before. Aayla swerved her ship around, abandoning the cover of the cruiser as she shot out across the ocean, frantically trying to make the ship stay together.

* * *

"I draw her out," Bok cried from within the blockade runner. "You shoot her now!"

"It would be my pleasure," Aurra smirked as she shot out into the open and focused her laser cannons on the Y-wing, which was promptly dropping in speed even more than before. Using her own senses more than the machines, which allowed her to aim more accurately through the smoke of the Y-wing, Aurra's freakishly long thumbs slammed down on the firing mechanism built into the front of her starfighter.

* * *

The lasers pulsed out and shot straight towards Aayla's starfighter. Aayla saw them coming and was able to move the ship out of the way partially, but the stabiliser was failing rapidly and the ship didn't respond nearly as quickly as it would have otherwise. Even Aayla's skills as a pilot were not going to be enough when a critical component of the ship was reaching overloading point.

The lasers slammed into the underside of the Y-wing, skimming across it and slicing out a large chunk from the bottom, with another explosion that partially tore the ship open from below. Aayla and Terriermon were thrown forward by the impact and the former nearly smacked her head on the dashboard, but was able to catch herself right before the moment of impact.

"Oh, great," Terriermon gasped. "She really got us this time!"

"She took out the plasma conduit and shot the rest of the stabiliser to hell," agreed Aayla. "Looks like we're going down!"

The momentum of Aayla's speed and the blast was carrying the Y-wing in a long curving motion, dropping at a steady pace as it continued to shoot forwards. Aayla did not relish their chances at the moment. Though the impact might not kill them due to being water below them instead of land, their two options once they did hit the surface would either be to abandon ship and be completely exposed to anything above, or to stay in the damaged vessel, sink to the bottom and die when either the pressure tore the ship apart and they drowned, or their air ran out.

Not pleasant choices.

She quickly glanced over her shoulder to see that Aurra was still on her tail and was about to fire off another salvo and massive lasers at the doomed Y-wing, which would probably tear them apart before they even hit the surface. Aayla gritted her teeth. Aurra was certainly very persistent and would settle for nothing less than absolute certainty that her victim was dead before she left.

Aayla sat up rigidly as she made up her mind. She was _not _about to let go of any hope while there was still breath in her body, and considering what she had just decided to do, she was going to need a lot of that.

"Terriermon," she shouted. "How long can you hold your breath?"

Terriermon blinked. "Uh... a few minutes because I practiced in the tub but I don't... Oh wait... Oh no..."

"Oh yes..." Aayla cried as she undid her safety belt. "Take a deep breath!" And grabbed the controls in one hand and wrenched them to the right, causing the ship to flip over to one final time while it still had some control systems still function. While it was in mid-flip, she grabbed Terriermon with her arm and pressed him against her chest with an iron grip and simultaneously slammed the duraglass cockpit open.

Aurra fired.

The motion of the Y-wing in mid-flip catapulted Aayla out into the air moments before the red lasers struck the Y-wing and tore it apart from the outside. The blast pushed Aayla through the air and she began to plummet straight down towards the water below. Tightening her grip on Terriermon, with one arm, she immediately tucked in her legs and somersaulted several times to pick up even more momentum before she upended herself and extended one hand out in front of her in a graceful swan dive and inhaled deeply, debris from the shredded Y-wing falling all around her.

"This is insane!" Terriermon shouted as he drew in a deep lungful of air.

Jedi and Digimon fell through the air together, the wind thrashing around them and attempting to make them expel the oxygen in their lungs, but neither of them let the wind win. Aayla's eyes narrowed in concentration and then shut completely moments before impact.

Both of them hit the water with a surprisingly small splash and vanished into the blue depths, falling straight down into clear, salty liquid, Aayla kicking her legs to ensure they sank deeper. Terriermon's cheeks bulged and he dared to open his eyes and found that his eyes did not sting because the salt in the water had not yet been exposed to air. He looked up at Aayla as the Twi'lek looked down at him, her own features remarkably calm considering they had just leapt out of a falling starfighter and placed a finger to her lips, right as the wreckage of the Y-wing crashed into the water with a massive burst of water not far away.

The two of the momentarily watched as the Y-wing, which had been almost completely torn in two by Aurra's final blast, sank straight past them and disappeared into the dark depths far below. If Aayla had been a fraction of a second slower with her judgement on when to jump, they would have still been inside that thing when it blew and would have been killed instantly.

But they were still alive, for the moment.

_You really are mad, you know that,_ Terriermon said with his mind as he tried to still his pounding heart and stop it from demanding more oxygen.

_Sometimes,_ Aayla chuckled. _Sometimes_.

_What are we supposed to do now?_ Terriermon asked. _I'm pretty sure that you can't hold your breath underwater for several hours even if you are a Jedi, and I know well enough that I can't do it, because this isn't the Digital World._

Aayla looked up towards the surface. She could see the dark silhouettes of the two ships up above, framed by the light of the nearby sun. She knew Terriermon was right though. This reprieve was only a temporary one.

* * *

Aurra Sing growled as she pulled her starfighter to a halt and set its engines so that it would hover in the air, before opening up her own cockpit and peered out at the surrounding water all around her. She knew that Aayla was not yet dead – she had seen the Twi'lek leaping out of the Y-wing moments before impact.

She also thought she had seen Aayla clutching something to her chest, but right now that was not particularly important. What matters was that their quarry was not yet dead.

"You get her?" Bok's voice called through the communicator as the small blockade runner pulled over and began to hover beside Aurra's ship.

"No, you dolt," Aurra snapped as she lowered herself beneath the ship so she could get a clearer view of the surroundings. "She jumped out before I could shoot her down. She's under the surface somewhere."

"You mean we lose her?" Bok cried incredulously.

"Of course not," Aurra smirked. "I never lose my prey when they become a target. She won't be able to hold her breath forever. Keep an eye out for her. She's down there somewhere, but she's not a water breather. She'll have to come up sooner or later."

Aurra's hand reached back into her cockpit and withdrew her sniper rifle, which she had tucked into the side and which she almost never went anywhere without and passed it briefly from one hand to the other a few times, a broad and sinister smile on her face. "And when she comes up," she chuckled. "She'll see why I am renowned throughout the Galaxy for my long-range work."

Bok made no comment, but Aurra wouldn't have cared if he had. Instead, she lifted the rifle up and held in the ready position, staring out at the sea around her as she searched for any sign of the Twi'lek she had been ordered to hunt down.

Despite the heavy ripples formed by the crashlanding of the water surface not far away, the sea was still relatively calm. Bits of metal floated on the top of the water and bubbles rippled out across the crash-site, but the rest of the water was still only swelling slightly. Aurra's professional eye scanned the debris for any sign of the Twi'lek attempting to hide in there, and got a closer look by scanning it through the scope of her sniper rifle, but she saw nothing.

She waited.

And waited.

And waited.

She was surprised when after over a minute, there was still no sign of Aayla. She knew the Twi'lek was down there somewhere, and unless she randomly had a breather on her, which was highly unlikely, she would need to come up to the surface at some point. Was she just prolonging the inevitable by not coming up for as long as she could, praying to the Force for a miracle or something?

Well, there wouldn't be any miracles. Aurra would make sure of that.

"You see her?" Bok asked.

"Not... yet..." Aurra murmured slowly as she continued to stare out across the horizon, broadening her field of searching just in case Aayla was trying to swim away under the surface and put as much distance between them as she could. "But... give it a few... more... moments."

Sure enough, a few moments later and Aurra's keen eyes spotted something coming to the surface some distance away. She gripped the controls and slowly steered the ship closer, just in time to see Aayla appear at the surface, gasping for breath. The Jedi took a moment to look up and see Aurra's ship heading towards her at an ominous pace. Her eyes narrowed in defiance as water dripped from her lekku and she immediately turned around and ducked back underneath the surface, kicking her legs as fast as she could as she made to swim rapidly away.

"Heh," Aurra chuckled as she watched the Twi'lek swimming off. "You can't run... or swim... fast enough to escape from me now, Secura. Not when I'm in a starfighter." She steered the ship even closer and hoisted her sniper rifle into the attack position just as Aayla resurfaced and broke into a powerful front crawl, kicking up a lot of spray as she shot through the water as only a person as athletic as her could.

Aurra had to admit she was impressed by the speed of her quarry's swimming. If she were being chased by an amateur then she might even have been able to get away. But she was not dealing with an amateur. She was dealing with Aurra Sing, and Aurra Sing was always on target.

The near-human placed a boot firmly on the front of her starfighter, partially stepping on the front of the cockpit and crouching down to steady herself, as she lifted her sniper rifle and peered through the scope on the top. Her long fingers gently twisted the scope, zooming in on the desperately swimming target down below and creating the ominous clicking noise that signalled that someone was about to die as she got a closer visual look at her target.

Aayla was really going all out now. Aurra could see her snatching brief breaths as quickly as she could and powering her limbs through the water in a desperate final push to get away.

Aurra focused even closer on the back of Aayla's head, right between her lekku.

"Goodbye, Jedi," she sneered and pulled the trigger.

Her aim was straight and true. It only took one laser, but it thundered down faster than any bullet and slammed into the back of Aayla's head, punching through flesh and bone alike and burning a hole into her brain. Aayla's only response to this was for her eyes to widen right at the moment the blaster bolt touched her head, but other than that she didn't have the time to do anything. She didn't have the time to gasp. She didn't have the time to yelp.

She died immediately.

And Aurra saw it all.

The Bounty Hunter watched with intense satisfaction as one of the most famous Jedi in the whole entire Order, veteran of the A-Team, and Jedi general that had overcome countless enemies, including the very best amongst the Separatist forces and had outwitted the attempts for Palpatine, the most powerful Sith in the Galaxy, to kill her no less than three times, finally meet her end. At her hand.

Aurra had to resist the urge to laugh in delight as she watched the Twi'lek's body slump in the water, the hole in the back of her head where Aurra's laser had impacted clearly evident, and a final testament to the fact that nobody escaped Aurra forever. Aurra continued to stare through her scope at the deceased Jedi and watched with satisfaction as her corpse reflexively forced the last of the air in her lungs out, creating a stream on bubbles, beside her head, which was face down in the water.

The result of this was that the body slowly began to sink. Aurra placed down her rifle to watch as the corpse vanished beneath the surface slowly, her head the last thing to completely go under, until it was just a vague shadow beneath the surface and finally it vanished from sight as it disappeared down into the depths.

"My work here is done," Aurra snickered as she sat back in her starfighter and sealed the cockpit once again, before turning around and heading back towards the blockade runner. "One less Jedi to plague the universe," she nodded, as she moved beneath the ship, a pair of heavy blast doors sliding open underneath it and allowing Aurra to align itself and lift up until she was within the ship. The doors closed beneath her and she settled down in the tiny hangar and quickly clambered out of her ship and strode towards the cockpit.

When she got there, she found that Bok was still laughing. The Morgukai Nikto was practically in stitches as he clutched his sides and said, "She dead! She finally dead! Twi'lek who cut off hand finally bite dust!"

"Indeed," Aurra smiled as she sat down in the main pilot's seat and smirked at Bok. "And it's appropriate, don't you think, that she should die here in the middle of the ocean, where nobody knows what's happened to her? It won't be long before her body is resting on the bottom of the sea, where none of the Jedi will find it until long after its decomposed and decayed. There won't be any respectful burial or cremation for her. They'll have to make do with an effigy or something."

Bok smirked nastily and nodded with satisfaction. He paused for a moment and mumbled, "Still, would be nice if we make kill on land. If that happen, I cut off her head and take it for trophy, like her Master cut off head of my Dad."

"By all means, go and retrieve it," Aurra chuckled. "You're right – it is a pity that we didn't get to keep her head – the Emperor might have paid us a little extra money for bringing him home a nice trophy to mount on his wall or mantelpiece or something."

"I be the one to take it," Bok growled. "Not him."

"No-one can take it now," Aurra reminded him, as she grabbed the controls and began to steer the blockade runner up and away, higher and higher into the sky as she leaned back in the chair and smirked to herself, revelling in the satisfaction of killing yet another Jedi. It was a shame that she had not had the opportunity to cross blades with her though – she might have wanted to test her own skills against such a famous Jedi.

She frowned after a moment and said, "It does meant that we don't really have any proof of her death though. With her at the bottom of the ocean like that, we're going to need to get a sub or something to go and find her. And I don't have any sub at my disposal." She paused and briefly wondered what Palpatine's reaction was going to be when they returned without proof that they had done the deed.

But then she shrugged and said, "He's paid me up front anyway," to herself. "And if he wants proof that badly, he can dredge the bottom of Minntooine himself. Now, let's get out of here."

Bok nodded and also leaned back in the chair. He was trying and failing to stop himself from chuckling. For months on end, years in fact, he had been waiting in exile and hiding away, hearing all these stories about how Aayla Secura was gradually becoming more and more famous and she and her fellow Jedi team-mates did more and more impossible things. He was beginning to think that he would never get the opportunity to exact his revenge without some serious ramifications.

But his time had come and he had taken it with both hands.

Granted, he had not been the one to strike the final blow as he would have preferred, and he had not had the opportunity to do it with his bare hands as he had envisioned, but, in the end, what did it matter in the end. Aayla Secura was dead, and really that was all that mattered.

"Emperor going to be very happy to hear this," Bok chuckled.

"Indeed," Aurra nodded. "And it's going to be a serious blow to anybody who thinks that they can stop him from enforcing his new Empire thing. Now, let's head back to Coruscant and deliver the wonderful news to him."

By this point they were in space hovering above the planet and Aurra programmed the navicomputer to take them back to Coruscant. A moment later and they were shooting away, leaving Minntooine far behind.

* * *

Not long after the ship had risen high into the air, leaving the water surface behind and cutting off the view of what was completely below to the people in the cockpit, Terriermon burst to the surface of the water and gasped for breath, hacking and coughing and spitting out dollops of sea water.

He had had plenty of opportunity to practice holding his breath in the bath of Henry and Suzie's house, especially since Suzie insist that they wash when they finally knew they were real (Henry had expressly forbidden her from taking Terriermon into the bathroom with her when she thought he was a doll, which was something the bunny was very grateful for). But this had been on the very edges of his endurance, forced to wait under the surface while Aayla diverted Aurra's attention away.

"Ugh," he murmured, bashing the side of his head to try and get some excess water out of ears. "Let's never do that again."

A split second later and suddenly, the undeniably _alive_ Aayla erupted out of the water next to him with a huge gasp of air, lifting a salty hand to her mouth and coughing several times and lifting a hand to the back of her head, rubbing the spot at the back of her lekku where there was very noticeably _no_ large blaster mark. She shook her head and her lekku flapped from side to side and as she settled back down to tread water, she nodded and said, "I wholeheartedly agree."

"And next time can you give me more a warning as you cook up this kind of crazy stuff?" Terriermon demanded. "Seriously I almost died on the spot when we jumped out of that Y-wing and let's not forget that I had to hold my breath for over three whole minutes there. I don't know how you coped so well down there but I was bursting."

"If I've waited any longer, we would have been blown up by Aurra," Aayla smiled. "This way, both of us managed to get out with our lives intact."

"Yeah, I guess," Terriermon agreed as he clambered up onto Aayla's head and lifted his waterlogged ears into the air, flapping them wildly to try and get some of the excess water out of his fur and ending up slapping himself in the face with them several times due to the added weight making them more floppy and spraying Aayla in the face with the water. Aayla giggled as she was sprayed by Terriermon's actions, relief to find themselves both alive after all that making her feel a little giddy.

Terriermon sat down, perched on top of her head and also giggled, and it wasn't long before the two of them were laughing uproariously as they were both still pounding with adrenaline from the chase and filled with happiness that they were not currently joining with the Force or going to meet Anubimon. Aayla's limbs felt a little light as she waved her arms and kicked her feet to stay at the surface as the two of the giggled for almost a minute, before the noise finally subsided.

Terriermon sat up again and said, "So, what exactly was that that you did? I've never seen you use that technique before, but it certainly was impressive."

"Why, thank you," Aayla chuckled. "And to answer your question, as you know I have trained in any and all skills that will prove effective for infiltration missions. This particular one was a technique called Force Projection. It allows the person to create a perfect illusionary copy of themselves that can lure the attention of others. It's usually useful for making drawing people away by making yourself run down a corridor, so they follow and the real you goes down another route. But in this case it was useful for drawing the fire of a certain Bounty Hunter."

"Well it was bloody realistic," Terriermon griped. "Even though I knew the real you was holding me under the water, it was still difficult not to die of shock when I saw the other you get hit by that blaster bolt and sink past us like that. I almost forgot that the real you was still behind me. How did you get that degree of detail – with the burn mark in the back of the head and everything?"

"A whole lot of practice," replied Aayla. "It's not useful in most situations, because it requires a massive amount of concentration, and unless you're hidden away somewhere while you're doing it then you leave yourself open to attack. But considering I was out of sight down here..."

"...You could do it," Terriermon chuckled and shook his head, his dogged ears hanging on either side of his head like wet towels. "How do you come up with ideas like that – ideas which Renamon would like to point out are completely insane and almost gave her a heart attack as well."

Aayla smiled and said, "Well tell her that we're both unharmed and fine, and... well, I knew the only way to get her to stop was for her to think that she had succeeded. Aurra would not be open to negotiation like Bane would, and there was no way we were going to escape with a busted stabiliser and a ruined plasma conduit, so the best way to get away would be to make her think she'd done the task she was set out to do."

"Well, congratulations," Terriermon laughed. "You are officially the craziest, but also the most quick-thinking of any of the Jedi. I know we've said it before, but I'll say it again. Palpatine has a good reason to fear you."

"The best part is that Palpatine's going to stop hunting for me again when he hears this," Aayla replied.

"Yeah," Terriermon nodded. "Let's just step back and examine this situation here for a moment. You, a single Jedi Knight who will be promoted to the rank of Master the moment the immediate crisis is over have managed to foil the Sith Lord Darth Sidious' attempts to kill you four times, faked your own death _twice_ and have fooled or bested the very best of the people that he has sent against you. The only thing you have to do now is beat him in combat hand to hand."

Aayla shook her head and said, "I think I've leave that one to Anakin. After all, it is his destiny, isn't it."

"True," nodded Terriermon. "I wonder what Aurra Sing will make of this if she ever finds out about this."

"I don't know," Aayla sighed. "I suppose I may have made another mortal enemy today if that happens."

"You do that every other day anyway," Terriermon grinned. "What's one more to add to the list?"

"Depends on whether they catch on or not," Aayla replied. "But hopefully if we can implement our plan and don't encounter any more hitches like this one along the way then we can solve the problems facing the Galaxy and ensure that everyone who considers me a mortal enemy is brought to justice _before_ they find out I'm still alive."

"Yeah, but there is one other thing," Terriermon added. "I think that when the Emperor finally does learn you're still alive, his expression will be even more priceless than when he sees all the forces that we're amassing against him. Anyway, what exactly are we supposed to do now? The others are on their way but it's going to take them a while to get here. Are we just going to float here until they arrive to pick us up?"

"If we have no other alternative," Aayla said, twisting herself around in the water and staring out to the horizon, not seeing land in any direction she turned to. There was nothing but bare blue ocean everywhere she looked and the odds were that there wasn't going to be any land for quite some distance – the water was so deep here that it would probably be several miles before her corpse touched the bottom, although since it was an illusion which had now disappeared, that would never happen.

"Well, I'm not sure I like that idea," Terriermon murmured. He lifted his ears high into the air and held them up in the sunlight, flapping them hard once more in an attempt to dry them off. "Is there anything lurking down there that might want to eat us?"

Aayla glanced down at the water lapping around the bottom of her neck. "Actually, I'm not sure, but there are many planets out there with very big and very dangerous animals lurking in the depths of their oceans. I suppose it would be a good idea to get out of here before something shows up to inspect the commotion. Let's just be glad that we're not on the planet Karkaris. "If we were, we might have a few Karkarodons to deal with before too long."

"Do I want to know what those are?" Terriermon asked.

"A species of sentient fish humanoids that have very large mouths and large teeth that end in very vicious points which can be replaced instantly if lost."

"Humanoid sharks?" Terriermon blinked. "Well, there goes my sense of reality. As soon as my ears dry off then I'm going to go and have a look around from the air. Maybe I can spot something from up there. In the meantime, the others want to talk to you."

"Okay," Aayla smiled and connected her mind with Terriermon's as she continued to breathe deeply to replenish her lost oxygen from her long spell under water – a Jedi's endurance was quite impressive and Aayla had not been exerting much energy down there.

As soon as she delved into Terriermon's brain, she felt the ever present presence of Renamon there, with Rika and Henry on the side. Renamon immediately roared at her the moment Aayla made her presence known with, _Terriermon's right on all account there, Aayla. That was stupid, reckless, brilliant and absolutely ridiculous. Please don't scare us like that again._

_If I can,_ Aayla promised. _Well bring Henry with us next time. I imagine that Aurra and whoever was piloting that blockade runner wouldn't have had such an easy time of it if Rapidmon was on the scene._

_You'd think I would have learned by now,_ Henry sighed. _Bad things happen when we split up like this. I should have insisted on coming along for the ride regardless of whether the result would have been an uncomfortable ride to the rendezvous point._

_I suppose one of us should send a message to Barriss, Suzie and Lopmon and let them know you guys are alright,_ Rika added. _They're already at the rendezvous, and apparently both them and Master Fisto succeeded with their campaigns too. The Gungans and the Wookiees are fighting with us._

Aayla grinned. _That's great news. But what about Anakin and Ahsoka?_

_No word yet apparently,_ Renamon replied. _But considering where they've gone, that's hardly surprising. What do we do if they don't call back?_

_We'll wait until we can join the others before we do anything,_ replied Aayla. _If by that point they still haven't replied, we'll discuss what to do next, but Master Fisto will probably make the final call since he's the most senior Jedi amongst us._

_Anyway,_ Henry said, _That was some really impressive flying there, Aayla. If it hadn't been for those missiles, I'm pretty sure you would have gotten away completely._

_That Aurra was a skilled pilot too,_ Aayla said grimly.

_But you were better,_ Rika insisted. _You outflew her at almost every turn, even with a damaged ship, until the damage increased so much that it wouldn't respond. Great job. I wonder if you could beat Terriermon at his games._

_Nah. Nobody can do that,_ Terriermon replied instantly. He flapped his ears one last time and said, _Alright, I think I'm airworthy again. _"See you soon, Aayla."

"Look after yourself," Aayla replied.

"I could say the same to you," Terriermon grinned. "Although _I_ probably won't have to fake my own death anytime soon. Anyway, I'm off." He spread his ears out and sprang off Aayla's head, powering his wings as hard as he could to gain altitude as he flew higher into the sky, leaving the Twi'lek treading water close to the gradually sinking pieces of metal that had used to be their ship.

Aayla looked over at said ship and thought, _I guess it's a good thing that Arfour got chomped by that Acklay after all._ She chuckled – the mere thought of an Acklay biting you was simply absurd even if you did have a metal body. But Arfour would have perished in that blast if he had come along. Then again, she might have been able to get away completely if he _had_ been there.

She looked up to see that Terriermon had already become a distant speck that was rapidly shrinking even further as he searched for land from up above. Aayla turned away and plunged her head back into the water, watching out for any dangerous predators from below. She had not escaped death from a cold-blooded Bounty Hunter by creating a fake copy of herself with the Force to be snapped up by this planet's version of a Sando Aqua Monster. That would just be wrong.

* * *

Terriermon was finding the flight more laborious than normal. He didn't have a whole lot of experience with flying above large bodies of water, except in brief instances on holiday to visit Takato's cousin Kai when Henry and the others had gone SCUBA diving (he wondered if the specialist equipment designed for him that he wanted had been made yet). But he knew that water did not produce the warm updrafts of air known as thermals that all gliding creatures like him needed to keep themselves aloft without any effort.

The result was that Terriermon had to flap a lot harder to stay in the air than normal and considering he had just spent several lung-bursting minutes underneath the surface of this planet's giant ocean, this was putting a bit more strain on him than normal.

Nevertheless, he was determined to be of some use on this little trip, as his role in their escape from Aurra had been non-existent. That had all been Aayla's doing. It might have been a bloody awesome escape but Terriermon had still felt next to useless there and if he could find some land that would be a plus.

But it appeared that his searching was in vain. There was no sign of land anywhere, and the white bunny was doing incredibly wide circles across the ocean, until he had completely lost sight of Aayla down below, the cerulean skinned Twi'lek vanishing against the blue surface of the ocean. Terriermon was not concerned by this – he could home in on Aayla's mental signature if he needed to. He was more concerned about making sure that Aayla's feet, as well as his own, were put on dry land before too long.

It was a damn good thing they did have the mind-link because if they hadn't, not only was it likely one of them would have died by this point, but he and Aayla might have been stranded in the ocean and drifting around for days on end for the looks of things.

Admittedly, Terriermon's hopes had not been high when he had gone looking for land. He _was_ in the middle of a planetary ocean after all and if there was very little land in a regular ocean without it covering a whole planet, but Terriermon was hoping against hope that he would at least come across an island at some point. That would have been nice.

But it seemed there was nothing. Just endless expanses of ocean for miles around.

Terriermon sighed and decided to head back.

And it was right at that moment that he spotted something at last. He pulled to a halt just as he was turning around and flapped his ears to turn back again, before dropping several hundred metres by folding his ears against himself before snapping them out again to catch himself once more so he could get a better look at what he had just spotted.

It wasn't an island. Whatever it was, it had definitely been constructed by something sentient. It appeared to be a relatively medium sized facility of some kind. Terriermon couldn't really make out a lot of detail about it, but he could see a large expanse of concrete on struts, with a large building that covered the majority of the base, a large power generator on the roof and not many other distinguishing features.

Terriermon had no clue what the place was supposed to be for. Perhaps it was some kind of old facility for drilling like one of those oil rigs that could be found in various places in the oceans on earth, but right now that didn't really matter. What did matter was that Terriermon had found something that he might be able to use to get himself and Aayla out of the water and that was good enough for him.

Terriermon turned around and headed back the way he had come, following the signal from Aayla's mind until he could once again see the Twi'lek floating in the water, with her head immersed under the surface. Terriermon wished she wouldn't do that – it looked like she was dead but for her waving arms keeping her at the surface which was an unpleasant reminder of the death that Aayla had just faked.

Aayla looked up when he approached though, sea water running down her faces in glistening droplets as she wiped her eyes to clear them of the salt that they had just taken on, before she said, "Well, did you find anything?"

"Yep," nodded Terriermon. "Perhaps not the best of things to try, but there is some kind of man-made base structure not far in that direction," he pointed with an ear. "A couple of miles maybe. It's quite small so I almost missed it, but that would be as good a place as any for Bly to come and pick us up."

"Man-made?" Aayla frowned. "Really? That's odd. The only sentient species that were known to frequent this planet were the Quarren under Tikkes when they used this place as a staging ground before Master Fisto took it, and all the factories they built here were underwater. It might be an old facility that they used to transport the things that they made up to the surface to be picked up by the Separatists ages ago."

"Well, whatever the case we can get out of this ocean," Terriermon replied as he landed on her head. "You up for a swim?"

Aayla snorted. "Considering the fact I'm in the middle of an ocean, I think that question is pointless. I have to swim whether I feel up for one or not."

"How fast can you swim?" Terriermon asked.

Aayla shrugged, "A reasonable pace, but a couple of miles will take me a while to get there if I want to conserve energy. But, I suppose we better make a start. Lead the way."

"Okay," nodded Terriermon. "It's this way – follow me." He took off again as Aayla began to follow him with a surprisingly swift breast-stroke, keeping her head above the surface so that she could keep an eye on Terriermon's progress.

Terriermon looked down at her after a couple of minutes of this and he could see she was making good time, but there was a small part of him that was impatient to be getting onto relatively dry ground, so that he could land on something other than Aayla's sopping wet head.

And then he was suddenly struck by another idea. Aayla might be better at coming up with ideas in a crisis, but when it came to ideas that were just plain mad, Terriermon was the king.

"Hey, Aayla," he said. "You wanna try something fun?"

Aayla pulled to a halt in the water and raised an eyebrow. Terriermon grinned.

* * *

While they were still in hyperspace, Aurra Sing and Bok decided to make the call to let Darth Sidious know of the (supposed) success of their mission. They were making their way back to Coruscant with all speed as it was, but neither of them could wait to report their pleasure at the death of Aayla Secura at their hands (or so they believed) to somebody and who better to start with than the guy who had ordered them to do it in the first place.

Palpatine's hologram appeared on the monitor in front of them, blue and crackling, and he offered them a slightly crooked smile when he beheld who it was. "Ah, Aurra, Bok. I trust that you have some good news to report."

"Do we ever," Aurra smirked. "You wanted Secura dead? Well, she's currently as dead as they come. Her body is resting at the bottom of a massive ocean and there's currently a very big hole in the back of her head and allowing her brains to be filled with ocean salt, courtesy of my little sniper rifle."

"I have heard a similar boast before," Palpatine replied sternly. "When Cad Bane reported the supposed death of Secura not long ago, he also claimed to have put a hole in her head. Do you have any proof that you killed her?"

"Not... as such no," Aurra replied. "But I think you'll find that she won't be showing up to cause you any more grief. We watched as I shot her down."

"Proof!" Bok growled. "I not need proof of death, Emperor. I see it with my own eyes. Jedi who take my hand dead as doornail. It shame I could not get head, but I not lie about something like this. No way that Twi'lek sways me against you like she sway other Bounty Hunter. I never stop until she dead and today, me see her perish at last."

Palpatine regarded Bok for a few seconds before Aurra chipped in with, "I concur with this Morgukai. I'm not someone like Bane, Emperor. I may be a Bounty Hunter of a similar calibre, but there's no way I'm going to follow the instructions of a Jedi, no matter how much she offers to pay me. Besides, we're heading your way right now. You can sense for yourself if you think we're lying or not when we finally get there."

Palpatine regarded them both for a few moments, before a thin smile began to spread across his face. "Very good," he said. "Report back to me in person immediately. I would like to receive your eyewitness accounts of what happened. I want to know everything that happened on your hunt and I especially want to hear about her death, an event which I have been striving for for days now. I do not make compliments lightly, but well done."

"That's quite alright, Emperor," Aurra smiled. "Believe us, it was _more_ than a pleasure to serve you. It was a delight."

"Secura finally dead!" Bok laughed uproariously. And as he burst into yet more maniacal laughter, Palpatine's smirk began to grow, but his hologram signed off before either Aurra or Bok could see Palpatine break into laughter too.

* * *

And back on Coruscant, that was exactly what was happening. It wasn't a full blown manic laugh like Bok, but the Emperor was indeed rubbing his hands together with barely disguised glee as he let off a cackle of triumph. He had been beginning to think that the time would never come when he would finally learn Secura was dead and that it would be real. But it seemed that time had finally come.

(Or so he thought)

He had no reason to doubt the two of them. He had chosen Bane the first time because he was the best of the best at the moment, but Aurra was not far out of his league and he had picked her this time instead of other Bounty Hunters of a similar calibre because he knew of Her intense hatred for all Jedi. And having someone who hated Aayla as much as Bok going along for the ride only added to the supposed validity of the report.

"At last," he sneered. "Aayla Secura has finally met her downfall. The day has finally come. Anyone thinking of resisting our new Empire will fall flat on their faces when they learn of this."

Ventress was trying to hide her own mixed feelings of happiness and annoyance. She would enthralled to hear that Secura was no more, but she had been hoping to have a hand in it herself, but that, of course, had been denied to her. Like Bok, Ventress took her personal grudges very seriously indeed.

But Ahsoka Tano was still out there somewhere, and Ventress fully intended to finally have her revenge on the little Padawan if she couldn't have it on Aayla.

"So, she is dead," Dooku said, maintaining his calm and regal posture at all times. "I cannot say that I am not pleased to hear it. Any Jedi that remain out there will almost certainly flee when they hear of this, but the question of what she was doing at Felucia still remains."

"It is unimportant now," Palpatine smirked. "Secura is finally dead. Oh, how I look forward to informing the Galactic Senate when I call our next session of congress tomorrow."

He descended into more cackles of evil glee, unable to stop himself from doing it.

* * *

Meanwhile, on Minntooine, the very much not-dead Jedi in question was currently having the time of her life.

"You should know that this is the weirdest thing I've ever done!" Terriermon shouted as he slammed his ears up and down and tried to avoid the spray that was being kicked up from almost directly beneath him.

"It was your own idea!" Aayla grinned back. "And for the record, this is a lot of fun from where I'm standing, even if it is weird!"

"Alright but next time it's my turn," Terriermon griped, though in reality he was enjoying himself too, because any idea that he came up with he enjoyed no matter how bonkers it was. And what might it be that was so obscurely weird that both of them acknowledged it.

Well, Aayla had a grip on Terriermon's feet in her hands and the Digimon was pulling her through the water with powerful flaps of his ears. But Aayla's statement about her standing was more accurate than you might think, because she was standing up, leaning back and had planted her feet against the surface, and was kicking up a lot of spray as her boots ploughed across the top of the ocean.

To put it bluntly, Aayla was water-skiing without the skies, and Terriermon was acting like the boat and cord that was pulling her forwards. Aayla's superb balance and upper body strength brought about by her athleticism ensured that she didn't need the skis to go through with this plan and the Twi'lek currently had a massive grin on her face as she shot across the surface. If this was a sport that they did on the world Terriermon came from, Aayla could clearly understand the attraction.

And so the Jedi and the Digimon swept towards the weird facility that Terriermon had spotted at a much higher tilt, the bunny guessing that they would be there within about ten minutes at most, but probably a little bit faster than that.

* * *

And at the facility in question, inside the building that Terriermon had spotted, the lights were on and the machines were very much active. Robotic hands manipulated several of the controls as a number of droids monitored the various screens in front of them, diligently carrying out what they were programmed to do without question.

A couple of tall beings stood nearby in the corner partially hidden in the shadows and murmuring q quietly to one another; one of them looking and sounding very annoyed about something or other and the other one, the taller one, responding to the other one with a calm and calculating patience.

A pair of doors to the main control room slid open and the voices of the two beings in the corner dulled as a third being entered the room, cloak billowing behind him and his feet clicking on the floor as he walked up to the droids monitoring the machines.

One of the droids turned around on its swivel chair and said, in the high, reedy voice of all Separatist battle droids, "General, there's still been no contact from Darth Sidious. No encrypted messages or personal calls or anything like that of any kind."

General Grievous growled and placed a clawed hand on the back of the droids chair to stare at the machines himself, his duranium grip almost crushing the metal of the chair as his yellow eyes narrowed, "Rrggh! How long does he expect us to wait like this before we receive our next set of instructions?"

"You should have more patience, Grievous," the tall form of San Hill informed him. "He only gave us the order to lay low for a few days yesterday. I'm sure you'll get your next order against the Republic soon enough."

"It can't come too soon for me, either," Nute Gunray muttered. "The sooner I can leave this wretched place and the company of that miserable droid general the happier I'll be."

Grievous snarled and whipped around to glare at the Viceroy, who immediately tried to hide behind Hill. Grievous cursed his loyalty to Sidious and the fact the Sith Lord had ordered him not to kill Gunray, or the wormy Nemoidian would have been long dead by now. But he agreed with the slimy Trade Federation Separatist in one thing, the sooner they could get out of this secret Separatist base and away from each other the better.

Still, Grievous was really looking for something to vent his spleen on, and with the limited number of battle droids he had here he couldn't afford to smash them like he normally would.

And, although he didn't know it, a certain Twi'lek Jedi that Grievous still hadn't learned was even still alive was not far away, pulled by a creature that Grievous had never even heard of before. And they were heading right towards them.

* * *

Yay! Two cliffhangers in a row. It's been so long in chapter terms since I did one that I think the rest of this arc is going to be overloading with them. But I did say that Grievous still has an important role to play in the story and here he is once more. I hope that you're all looking forward to finding out what happens when Aayla and Terriermon reach the facility where he is. Things are about to get quite hectic.

Or they will, in a couple of chapters time.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

We have a look at what the others on Kamino are getting up to. Anakin, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan and Shaak Ti are attempting to sneak through the clone-infested city to speak to its Prime Minister about the deception of the Sith. Will they succeed in swaying the Kaminoans to their cause, and what will the other clones make of all of this?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 173 : Prime Minister of Kamino**


	173. Prime Minister of Kamino

The reactions to the last chapter were some of my favourites so far. It seems that every single one of you was glad to see that Aayla survived that incident, even thought the title suggested otherwise. But remember everyone, that chapter titles often have double meanings. This one doesn't though – it's pretty straightforward after all.

I tried to make this one a bit different from the other two recruitment chapters that involve people explaining who Darth Sidious is yet again to try and keep things interesting, so I hope that you like the chapter, even though you've all heard some of it before.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 173:- Prime Minister of Kamino**

* * *

"Are we sure that this is going to work?" asked Scorch as the Delta Squad walked through Tipoca City, apparently completely and utterly calm and at ease but in reality all extremely tense, wondering what the hell was going to happen next.

"Of course we're not sure this is going to work," Fixer replied. "We may end up having to flee from our own planet if this goes wrong. And keep your voice down – or the others will hear you."

"Thanks for clearing that up, Fixer," muttered the clone commando as he lowered his voice slightly. They were strolling straight through a corridor, with massive clone pods and growth jars all around them, with several young clone cadets walking past them on their way to target practice. Sev gave them all a glare that clearly meant – don't look at us or you'll be sorry.

That was pretty much what Sev did all the time so it didn't raise any suspicion. If he were to _not_ do it then people might know that something was up.

Sev turned back and murmured to the rest of his team, "I sure hope the Jedi are making good time because there's no way for us to tell if they are still with us or not."

"They'll keep up," Boss replied. "We should just focus on our own jobs and that is to find Lama Su and somehow get him on his own in a place where the Generals can join us."

Sev nodded and fell silent as he and the rest of the Delta Squad quietly made their way forwards, keeping their eyes front like any good soldier did.

* * *

Up above, on the roof of the massive complex, the Jedi were having a much more difficult time of things. They might have earned a reprieve from the planet's near constant rainfall, but there was a reason that the buildings had their dome shape, as it allowed water to run off it smoothly without forming pools somewhere.

But that didn't mean it wasn't still wet. And wet metal was slippery even without it being a slope.

Ahsoka flailed her arms slightly as she struggled not to overbalance and flung her fingers out as far as they could go until she regained her equilibrium. She sighed in relief when she steadied out and she loudly murmured, "You know, maybe it would have been better if Aayla had come here instead of us. She might be able to use her Force-cloak ability to just walk through this place undetected."

"That might be the easy option," agreed Anakin. "But Aayla isn't on familiar terms with the Prime Minister like most of us are, and persuading the Kaminoans to join us will be key before we can even think of recruiting more clones."

"True enough," Ahsoka nodded. "But I've never even met the guy."

"Yes, but I'm not letting you out of my sight, Snips," Anakin chuckled.

Ahsoka snorted. "Yeah, because I would be so much safer away from this planet and out of your sight than on this planet and in it."

Anakin was about to retort when Obi-Wan turned round and said, "Much as I enjoy a bit of friendly verbal sparring from time to time, I hardly think this is the time for it. Come on, let's keep going."

"Sure thing, Master," Anakin patted him on the back as he past, using one of his hands to held steady him on the slippery roof. "Just try and keep up."

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes and turned to Shaak Ti, who was crouching on the flattest part of the roof right at the very top. "Have we fallen behind Master Ti?" he called.

Shaak Ti shook her head but raised an arm to quiet Obi-Wan. "You don't want to make too many loud noises in this place. Not even when you're all the way up here. There may be someone manning a turret that can overhear you." She held up her wrist-com and inspected the tracking beacon before nodding and saying, "They're heading this way. Follow me."

The two Humans and the younger Togruta followed the older Togruta down the other side of the sloping roof, carefully using their hands to try and keep a grip on the surface, despite the fact that their fingers were going numb from the cold water they were sloshing it through. At one point though, Anakin did lose his grip and ended up sliding down the roof, zipping past Shaak Ti as he rolled onto his stomach and tried to regain a grip with his mechanical arm.

Obi-Wan and Shaak Ti immediately reacted and grabbed Anakin with the Force, hauling him to a stop moments before he slid over the edge. Anakin's feet were the only things to drop over the precipice and he quickly hauled them up again and looked over her shoulder at the drop.

"Phew," he said, as Ahsoka slid down in a more controlled manner to join him by the edge. "That was close."

Ahsoka motioned for him to be quiet and pointed down to where they could see a couple of clones about halfway down the building manning standing by a large turret and staring out across the city, ready to man it just in case of a surprise attack. Obi-Wan and Shaak Ti joined them at the edge and peered down. The drop was a long one, but they were going to have to get down it because they could see the Delta Squad below, stepping out of the building and moving across a walkway towards another platform.

And in front of them was a whole criss-crossing wall-less maze of walkways connecting various platforms between two relatively large buildings.

"Great," murmured Ahsoka. "How are we supposed to get down there?"

"Gunship!" Obi-Wan suddenly hissed and pointed upwards to where an LAAT was swooping down out of the sky. On the roof, they could be easily spotted by someone from above if they didn't move quickly.

The four Jedi exchanged glances and quickly jumped over the edge sliding down the side of the building at a fast tilt until they reached the gap in the side which the turret was poking out of and with athletic grace they flipped themselves inside and out of sight of the gunship.

And right next to the pair of clones, who were suddenly startled by their sudden appearance. "Jedi!" cried one of them and they both immediately raised their blasters.

Before they could fire off a shot, Obi-Wan and Shaak Ti exchanged a brief nod and the latter lashed out with her red-skinned hands and grabbed the two clones with the Force, pushing them against the wall and holding them there, pinning their limbs against it.

Obi-Wan walked towards them and raised a hand. They hadn't wanted to do this, but they had found out long ago that most clone troopers were weak-minded enough to be susceptible to a Jedi mind trick, possibly due to the limited mindset of following orders that most of them had. While some like Rex and Bly and other Commanders and troopers of the rebelling legions might have become strong minded enough to shake it off by this point, that was not the case with most clones.

"You did not see any Jedi," Obi-Wan said firmly.

"We did not see any Jedi," the two clones responded like mindless automatons.

"You want to go and get some rest and not mention this to anybody," Obi-Wan added.

"We want to go and get some rest and not mention this to anybody," the clones recited dutifully as Shaak Ti released them. The two of them immediately holstered their weapons and left the small turret's room to carry out what the Jedi had instructed them to do.

"That's not going to look good for us if they remember this afterwards," Anakin murmured.

"Better that we put them under our influence temporarily than kill them or let them raise the alarm," Obi-Wan replied. He stepped up to the gap in the wall and the other three Jedi did the same, staring out at the retreating Delta Squad moving across the walkways to the building on the far side.

"I have to admit that Ahsoka has a point," Obi-Wan acknowledged. "How exactly are we supposed to cross that place without getting spotted? You can see practically everything out there from almost all angles."

"Then we'll have to be quick, quiet and very careful," Anakin replied.

"Forgive me if I'm wrong but subtlety has never really been something that you do, right Skywalker?" Shaak Ti asked.

"Not in most situations, I'll admit," Anakin shrugged. "But this is not most situations."

"Take it as a challenge, Master," Ahsoka smiled. "Let's see how subtle you can be if you put some effort into it."

"Can do, Snips," smiled Anakin. "Let's go." He quickly sprang out of the hole in the wall and slid down the wall once more, before planting his foot against it to kick himself off, catapult himself over the first walkway and land on the dome of one of the large platforms, pressing himself up against the walkway that connected to it and moving into the shadows.

"Reckless as ever," Obi-Wan murmured as he peered around the corners in search of more clones, but it seemed the majority of them were somewhere inside. Nevertheless there were still a few roaming about out there.

Anakin emerged from the shadow and gave Obi-Wan a quick signal, indicating the coast was clear as far as he could see. Obi-Wan quickly scanned the area one last time and nodded, before waving to the others and following Anakin's progress. The two Togruta spared each other a brief look before they followed on, Shaak Ti's much longer lekku streaming out to the side.

Within a couple of seconds they had all joined Anakin by the walkway. Ahsoka poked her head over the domed and, seeing nothing, crawled up onto it and dashed across, keeping as low as she could and pressing herself against some crates and glancing around them. There were a few clones nearby but they had their backs turned, so Ahsoka flipped over the crate pile and slid into the shadows of another walkway and the other three Jedi quickly followed on.

They waited for a few moments in the shadows, watching the clones and it wasn't long before they moved on. Shaak Ti led the way next, sliding down the dome of the walkway and springing off before she reached the drop into the ocean below, catapulting herself through the air to land on all four, like a predator, on the dome of another and secure herself with her iron grip. Sometimes being a natural predator had its advantages. She used the Force to help steady the others as they joined her and the four scrambled onto the next platform and dashed along a walkway, keeping low as they could and ducking out of sight again at the first opportunity.

They continued in this way for several minutes, following the slow moving Delta Squad across the myriad of platforms and hiding behind the various crates and small turrets that were stationed at random places on the edges. At one point, Anakin dashed halfway across a walkway before he dived over the side to roll onto another one below it and spring up once more to catapult himself onto a platform not far away.

The Delta Squad didn't dare look back in case other clones spotted them glancing over their shoulders suspiciously. But the Jedi were keeping on their trail reasonably well.

At one point where Obi-Wan had taken the lead he hurriedly turned around and motioned the others to get down while they were on the dome of one of the platforms, pressing himself as flat as he could go against the adjacent walkway. The others followed suit as a pair of clones walked across the walkway, blasters in hand.

Listening to the clone speaking while they were enemies of the Jedi was one of the creepiest things that any of the Jedi had ever heard, even though the words themselves were far from creepy. One of them was murmuring, "I tell you I'm glad its not raining. Why do we even have to do this guard duty anyway? Isn't the blockade above us doing that for us."

"I dunno," the other clone replied. "But we were bred to follow orders and so we're doing this."

"Even if it means wandering around for no reason?" the first one asked. "Besides, the only people I can think of that might want to attack us here are the Separatists and the Jedi, and I don't think either of them are stupid enough to come anywhere near this planet right now."

Ahsoka shuddered, and abruptly lost her grip on the metal and crashed onto her backside. The noise wasn't a loud one, but all four Jedi noticed that the clones stopped walking when it occurred.

"What was that?" one of them asked.

"I'm not sure," the other one replied, as the two of them looked around. They switched their headbeams on – it might not be raining but it certainly wasn't sunny – and looked around, blasters primed. Ahsoka mouthed _Sorry_ to the other four, who looked up as the headlights began to get closer to the edge.

Sure enough, a few moments later, one clone looked over the edge of the walkway on either side of it.

Neither of them saw anything but the platform.

One of them shrugged and said, "Eh, it was probably another aiwha bumping into one of the support structures again. You'd think those guys would have more of a clue of where they were going considering their whales and all."

"Yeah," chuckled the other clone and the two of them moved on.

And, directly beneath the walkway they had been standing on, the four Jedi were hanging from the pipes that ran along the underside, their feet dangling over the massive drop that led to the sea below. "Well," said Anakin. "That was close."

"Sorry," murmured Ahsoka.

"No harm done, Ahsoka," Shaak Ti said reassuringly. "Let's keep going, before we lose sight of the Delta Squad." The four of them heaved with their arms and flung themselves onto the dome of the platform once more to continue on their way across the gap. Thankfully, they managed to reach the other side without incident and they quickly began to scale the wall and climb onto the roof of the large building before any of them could be spotted.

"Looks like the rain will be coming again soon," Obi-Wan observed as he examined the darkening cloud on the horizon.

"Well, in that case, let's hope we get inside before we're all drenched," remarked Anakin. "Come on, it shouldn't be too far now."

Shaak Ti raised the tracking device and followed its signal across the rooftop. All they had to do now was get as close as they could to it until one of the Squad gave them the signal.

* * *

Lama Su had been the Prime Minister of this planet for a very long, far longer than most other politicians had ever managed on this planet. He was quite a popular Prime Minister amongst the people, as he had brought vast amount of wealth to the planet and had sustained them with little incident until the war broke out, and yet even now he was still quite a popular man. His rank could be distinguished by the tall fin on the top of his head, which most other Kaminoans did not possess, and his peculiar and very massive collar that only the planetary leader was allowed to wear.

Lama Su had been the Prime Minister since before even the Blockade around Naboo over ten years ago. It had been he who had received the request from Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas to begin the construction of the army that he and the rest of the Kaminoans continued to clone and train to this very day. But since Kamino was such an isolated world, Lama Su knew little of the ways that the rest of the Galaxy worked and when he had accepted the request, he had had no clue of how big an impact it would have on just about everybody throughout the entire Republic.

That had not been why he had accepted the request at all.

To all intents and purposes, Lama Su was a good politician, but the needs of his people always outweighed the needs of everyone else. He had accepted the request to build such a large army because on such an isolated world where there was so little in terms of land, cloning was a very important part of Kamino's economy. They had made numerous smaller armies in the past, and made various clones of other people in the past, but this one had really been the big one.

His lack of knowledge about the rest of the Galaxy was something that was shared by all Kaminoans. None of them had been remotely bothered that they stopped receiving customers after the bid to start cloning the Grand Army of the Republic had been made. They were a little known planet as it was, but the majority of their time had been taken up with this new army anyway so other customers would have had to wait anyhow.

He hadn't even been that suspicious of the lack of knowledge that Obi-Wan seemed to have of the clone army when he had arrived on Kamino prior to the start of the Clone Wars. He had been a bit fixed on making sure that Kamino got the payment which they had been working towards for so many years and had assumed that Obi-Wan was either being polite in some bizarre way that he didn't understand or that it was some kind of test to see if they had done their job right.

The clones themselves didn't really matter much to him, or to most other Kaminoans. As far as they were concerned, the clones were merely products. But some of them did have their merits that much was true – Kamino was now one of the most fortified planets in the entire Galaxy and they brought in a lot of money for his people. That was all that was needed from them really. A deficient clone was of little use to them.

Still, Lama Su was a little concerned by the news he had received recently, and was beginning to question a few things in his mind. Hearing the Jedi, who had always been fighting beside their clones soldiers, had suddenly been declared traitors seemed completely implausible to him. He might not know a whole lot about their order, but he had seen enough of their behaviour from Shaak Ti.

If Shaak Ti was a model Jedi, as many people seemed to think she was, they practically leaked compassion. Lama Su had never been able to fathom why she cared for the clones so much, but he had, in a way, admired it, and had become a little more open with the clones himself after watching her. The mere thought of anyone who showed such concern for soldiers who were bred merely for the war which was now in progress seemed ridiculous.

And, as far as Lama Su was aware, the Jedi had been responsible for the creation of the clone army in the first place, to protect the Republic. Why in the Galaxy would they do such a thing if they were planning to overthrow the Republic. It made no sense.

Never before had Lama Su been so concerned about events that were not happening in Kamino's atmosphere, not even throughout the whole war. Not long after this had happened, the Chancellor turned Emperor had got in contact with him to suggest moving the main cloning facilities to places like Coruscant. Lama Su had not liked the idea at all, but the current events had driven it from his mind.

Currently, Lama Su was sitting in his office on one of his large chairs which descended from the ceiling and was pondering the events of the last couple of days, trying to make sense of it all. Across the Galaxy, numerous other beings were doing other things, but Lama Su was more concerned with how this turnaround would affect the Kaminoan people.

There was a knock at the door which caused him to look up, his big black eyes fixing on the strange door at one end of the room. He abruptly straightened himself up into a regal pose and called, "Enter," interlocking his fingers as he did so.

The doors slid open from the middle and outwards in all directions and four clones walked in. "Ah," Lama Su acknowledged them with a nod from his small head. "The Delta Squad. Excellent. I assume that you are here to discuss with me the mission that you have recently returned from. I trust you are well rested after all the effort you must have had to put into it."

"Actually, Prime Minister," Boss cut him off, "We're here for another reason."

"Oh?" Lama Su asked, slightly alarmed by the tone in Boss' voice. "And what might that be?"

"Er... it's actually quite a delicate matter sir," Boss informed him. "It would be... uh... better if we were to do it somewhere more private than this."

"Private?" Lama Su asked. "Why, this is one of the most private places that you can find in this entire city. Nobody would ever dare to come in here without my permission, so if there is something you wish to discuss without being overheard then I would be more than happy to accommodate you in here."

"Uh, well, actually sir," Boss replied. "I'm afraid this room wouldn't really be suitable. Trust me though, it is important. I would not ask that we moved rooms lightly if it were not so."

Lama Su frowned in puzzlement. The Delta Squad were amongst the clones that he had some of the most contact with when they were on planet, and he hadn't seen any of them acting like this before for any reason. Nothing normally broke their stolid exteriors, even if Sev and Scorch did have rather erratic personalities. Lama Su could immediately tell that something was up.

Perhaps the clones knew something that he didn't about Galaxy wide affairs. After all, they had been out of contact for well over a week now, right through to the time leading up to this strange occurrence of the Republic becoming an Empire.

Lama Su decided to humour the clones and got to his feet. He was easily much taller than any clone, but also a lot thinner. "Very well then," he said. "Where would be a more suitable location for this conversation. I trust that is urgent?"

"You probably couldn't get much more urgent actually, Prime Minister," Fixer supplied. "This way will be fine." The Kaminoan strode over towards the clones and left the windowless room that was his office and walked through a few corridors alongside Boss, while the other three brought up the rear.

They traversed several more corridors and walked past many more clones that were going about their various tasks before the Delta Squad led the Prime Minister to their own chambers, which had one big window set in the wall, which overlooked the ocean. It wasn't the best of views, especially since most of the time the ocean was extremely choppy and violent, but it was another one of the Delta Squad's special privileges for being a specialist unit of clone commandos.

Lama Su felt slightly awkward, stepping into the private chambers of a bunch of clones. He rarely paid personal calls into the barracks of most of the troops, let alone the more private areas, and yet here he was right now.

The doors slid shut behind the small group and Sev immediately moved forwards and began to climb that ladder that allowed the clones access to their bunks. Lama Su watched him for a moment as the clone leant over and began to twiddle the lock that would allow him to open the window, before Lama Su turned around to face the others.

"I am not entirely sure why this room is any better than my own personal chambers," Lama Su replied. "But I assume it's because you feel a little more secure discussing business in the place you most call home. Now, what is it that you wished to tell me?"

"Actually, it's not us that will be doing most of the talking, Prime Minister," Boss replied as Sev opened the window and Scorch moved to block off the door. "We are the bearers of bad news, that much is true, but we thought that you might prefer to hear it from someone who was more personally involved in these strange events that have been wracking the Galaxy."

Lama Su raised the Kaminoan equivalent of an eyebrow and he said, "You know about what's happening then? And you have a guest? How did you get a guest on planet without me being notified?"

"Actually, we have more than one guest, sir," Boss replied. "And is was because of those guests that we insisted on coming in here. And there's one of them now," he nodded towards the window, which Sev had pushed outwards until it was at an almost diagonal angle to the wall. Lama Su turned around and stepped back in surprise, when he saw that from seemingly nowhere a pair of red boots had landed on the edge of the window and a young Togruta was peering into the room from above the window and smiling at everyone present.

"Hey guys," she smiled.

Lama Su took another step back as he identified who the Togruta was. Kamino might be a very isolated system in comparison to just about every other planet in the Galaxy but even they had heard about the A-Team and had known of their existence from almost the moment they formed and began tearing their way through the Separatists. Quite frankly, Lama Su had though himself to be quite secure on Kamino, so the prospect of Ahsoka Tano standing in front of him seemed completely ridiculous and more than a little frightening.

As Ahsoka slid into the room, gave Sev a thumbs up and shoved her hand out the window to give a signal to somebody else, Lama Su turned towards the door and was prepared to leave immediately – he did not relish the idea of being in the same room as a Jedi right now, because there was a chance that the Emperor _was_ telling the exact truth and they really did want to overthrow the Republic. But to his shock, Scorch was barring his way.

"Sorry, sir," he replied. "But we must insist that you hear what these Jedi have to say to us. It's quite important."

"They're not here to harm you Prime Minister," Fixer added, as Lama Su turned around and watched in amazement as Anakin Skywalker slid into view and grabbed the edge of the window to fling himself into the room before he even touched the glass. "Just hear them out please."

Lama Su continued to stare as Obi-Wan Kenobi, the very Jedi who had come to inspect the clone army over a year ago, and Shaak Ti, the Jedi who had _fled _from the Kamino system only yesterday with the aid of a couple of deficient ARC troopers, also appeared in the room. He was comforted by the presence of these two more familiar faces, but still he turned to Boss and scrutinised the clone.

The Delta Squad should be fulfilling their programming right now and gunning down all Jedi on sight as the Emperor had ordered, but they weren't doing it, just as Echo and Fives had refused to shoot Shaak Ti. Was it possible that these clones were also going defective?

He snapped himself out of this and draw himself up as tall as he could, which was very tall indeed considering he was a Kaminoan (although it still didn't look that imposing) and said, "What is the meaning of this, Delta Squad? You bring me here to associate with wanted fugitives of this new Empire when barely a day has passed since it _became_ an Empire."

"Lama Su," Shaak Ti stepped forward, causing the Kaminoans head to swing towards her and his large eyes to fix on her own. "You yourself know these four men as well as anyone else, and as well as I myself do. You must surely know that they would not do anything like this unless they truly felt that it was important. And when you have learned what they have learned, you might understand why they have chosen this course of action."

"Prime Minister," Obi-Wan said. "Would you like to have a seat? We are here on important business, and we wish you no harm. I am sure that you are confused about Palpatine's decisions as of late. There isn't a corner of the Galaxy that isn't on some level. We only wish to allay that confusion and provide you with some answers, and perhaps gain your support when you learn of the truth. We ask that you refrain from calling other clones to eradicate us at least until you've heard what we have to say."

"Although it would be preferable if you didn't do it even then," Anakin supplied.

Lama Su examined the Jedi with his shrewd eye. All Kaminoans were relatively good at spotting an act when they saw one, as they were well versed in the art of the critical examination skills necessary for any cloner, as it helped them to search for flaws in their designs. Right now, he could see no deception of any kind, nor any sign that the Jedi might suddenly turn on him if he let his guard down.

In any case, if they had the Delta Squad on their side then they could cut him down right now regardless of whether he was on guard or not.

So, he decided to listen. He didn't believe that the Jedi were an enemy as a whole, let alone any of this lot. So he quickly put on his most regal expression and said, "I would rather stand if it is all the same to you, Master Jedi. And I feel I should point out to you that I am not all that happy to find that you have crept onto my planet uninvited, so I am hoping that whatever explanation you might have to offer me is a good one."

"Well, it should be," Obi-Wan nodded. "Let's shed a little light on the situation here. As you are no doubt aware, Chancellor Palpatine seems to have gone completely mad, by suddenly declaring all Jedi traitors and forming an Empire seemingly out of nowhere. I'm pretty sure that you want an explanation as much as the next person, and we know the reason."

"It was a painful thing to learn," Anakin said, a little bitterly, but without any real anger in his tone. "Trust me on that."

"Well, in that case, tell me," Lama Su replied. "There is no sense in wasting time."

"I'm afraid it's not so simple as that Prime Minister," Obi-Wan replied. "There are many factors involved which we must relay to you if you are to understand the full truth."

Lama Su nodded slightly and interlocked his fingers. "I'm listening," he said. "And please be aware that since Kamino as officially a part of the Republic I should be ordering your execution immediately."

"Oh believe me, we are aware," nodded Shaak Ti.

"Then let's start on the day that we first me, Lama Su," Obi-Wan replied. "As you can probably recall, I came to Kamino over a year ago to discover this magnificent clone army that you had constructed for the Republic, at the request of a member of the Jedi Council, I believe. And yet on that day, were you not aware of the fact that I seemed to know very little of this army?"

"Of course," Lama Su nodded. "I am a very observant person, Master Jedi. But I assumed that you were feigning ignorance, probably so that I would try to sell the attributes of the clones to you with more effectiveness than if I thought you understood everything."

"Well, that was not the case, Prime Minister," Obi-Wan replied. "You must know by now that I genuinely had no idea that this clone army even existed."

"Indeed," Lama Su nodded. "I discussed it at length with Master Yoda, as we tried to figure it out.

We eventually came to the conclusion that Master Sifo-Dyas had a vision, in which he foresaw the Galaxy being plunged into an enormous war. _This_ enormous war, and that he immediately came to us to try and secure protection for the Republic, but did not tell the rest of the Council for fear that they would disapprove but was killed before he got the chance to tell them."

"Yes, well, I have a theory of my own that might explain a few more things," Obi-Wan replied. "You see, you may not be aware of one particular detail – Count Dooku was not the leader of the Separatists. He never was. Approximately half a year ago the Jedi discovered the possibility of second Sith Lords, Dooku's Master. A man named Darth Sidious who was secretly running the war from the shadows and was also likely to be somebody in the Senate."

"The Senate?" Lama Su asked. "That is preposterous surely. I would have thought that you Jedi would be aware of something like that."

"So would we," replied Obi-Wan. "That's why it was such a good hiding place. The Dark Side was clouding our vision, blocking us from seeing the true leader of the Separatists. But the fact remains that Darth Sidious does exist, and we believe that it was he who was responsible for the creation of both the Separatist Droid Army and the Republic Clone Army."

Lama Su blinked, and then smiled. "You surely don't expect me to believe something like that do you, Master Jedi. I know full well that it was Master Sifo-Dyas that ordered the clone army. I met with him in person after all and discussed the terms with him, though I was led to believe the Republic knew he was doing it, I admit."

"Yes, but there is one other thing that you should consider," Obi-Wan went on. "Master Sifo-Dyas was on the Jedi Council at the same time as Count Dooku, and the order was placed shortly after Dooku left the Jedi Order. I believe that Count Dooku was informed of Master Sifo-Dyas' vision and his plan to bring about the clone army, as Master Sifo-Dyas thought that he could trust his old friend. But by that time, Dooku was already falling to the Dark Side, though master Sifo-Dyas probably wasn't aware of that."

Lama Su frowned. He knew that that much was true if his current understanding of the timeline was accurate. Dooku had fallen to the Dark Side around the time that the clone army was ordered. Master Yoda had told him so a long time ago, when he had come to gather as many clones as he could to come and take part in the first assault on Geonosis.

He was beginning to get interested now. "Go on," he said.

Anakin, Ahsoka and Shaak Ti all stood back and watched at this point. All three of them were beginning to think that they were not needed. There was a reason that Obi-Wan was known as the Negotiator, which was why his flagship had been given that name as well, and it seemed that he was currently putting that name to maximum effect.

"My theory is this," Obi-Wan raised a finger. "While Master Sifo-Dyas was here, placing the order for good, Count Dooku would have been informing his new Master, Darth Sidious about what he had learned. Darth Sidious, being a Dark Lord of the Sith who has long been trying to find a way to eradicate the Jedi Order and place the Galaxy under his rule, saw this as a golden opportunity and instructed Dooku to take full advantage of this before the rest of the Jedi Council could learn what Master Sifo-Dyas was doing.

"As you know, Master Sifo-Dyas was killed pretty much straight after he placed the order, and nobody was quite sure what had happened to him except for the fact that he died. Well, I believe that while he was on his way back to Coruscant, he was waylaid by Count Dooku and murdered by his old friend, which is why we heard nothing about this army until it was nearing its completion."

Lama Su frowned. "I fail to see how that alone would have helped the Sith in any way. Especially since he had already placed the order and we had already begun the cloning process."

"Yes, but you still had to find the template for the clones," Obi-Wan pressed on. "And he arrived a few days later in the form of Jango Fett, who claimed that he had been hired by a man called Tyranus, correct?"

"Yes," nodded Lama Su. "What of it?"

"Well, I'm sorry to say it, Prime Minister," Obi-Wan said. "But Darth Tyranus is one of Count Dooku's aliases. He was the one who hired Jango Fett for the job. Right after the murder of Sifo-Dyas, he placed himself in charge of dealings with you and the creation of the clone army."

"He's right, sir," Boss piped up. "The four of us underwent extensive training with Jango Fett and he never once mentioned this Master Sifo-Dyas. He always spoke of Tyranus, and none of us really knew who he was talking about."

"You are standing here," Lama Su demanded, "and telling me that the Sith were the ones who allowed us to continue the production of the clone army even though it has currently been hindering their plans and driving the Separatist droids back wherever they set foot."

"I won't deny that it sounds strange," Shaak Ti decided to speak up. "I myself would be pretty baffled where I in your position, Prime Minister. But the truth is irreversible. The Sith wanted the war, and they wanted the Separatists to lose. You are forgetting one detail that we mentioned earlier – Darth Sidious was a member of the Senate. A member of the Senate with a very high rank, and a lot of power at his disposal. Someone who wanted all the Jedi to die and who wanted to become the ultimate ruler of the Galaxy."

"And in the last day," Anakin said. "Who exactly is it that has ordered the clones to turn on all of the Jedi and has suddenly decided to turn the Republic into an Empire so that he can always make the final decision?"

It hit Lama Su like a thunderbolt and the tall Kaminoan actually lost his composure and staggered backwards a little bit. Boss and Fixer quickly stepped forwards to catch him as the Kaminoan almost fell to the floor.

The Prime Minister was staring at the Jedi as if they had lost their minds, but everything they had said so far made perfect sense. It explained everything, all the little details that had previously been eluding the Kaminoans but had been overlooked since they were not all that important in the grand scheme of things. As long as they got their money and all that...

But now, everything had come together into one terrible truth.

"The Chancellor," Lama Su breathed and he pushed himself back to his feet. "The Chancellor was a Sith Lord the whole time. That is what you are trying to say?"

"As we said, it's a terrible truth," Shaak Ti nodded. "One of them men in the Senate who has the most contact with the Jedi Order and we still didn't detect the fact that he was a Sith Lord. We were fooled, just as you yourself were. I'm afraid that after Sifo-Dyas made his genuine plea for help, the Kaminoans have been used ever since. You were given a set of contingency orders to put into the clones, were you not? A series of one hundred and fifty, I believe, and one of which included the order to kill all Jedi that has just been initiated. I fear that those orders were the most vital part of the Chancellor's plan."

"The Sith's plan," Ahsoka put in, deciding to add her own contribution to this conversation.

"Indeed," nodded Obi-Wan. "He was always planning to use your creations as a terrible force for evil. A force for evil that wouldn't even know they were a force for evil, and so couldn't be picked up on by the Jedi."

"The Sith?" Lama Su breathed. "Unbelievable. If what you are saying is true then everything that has occurred since Sifo-Dyas placed the order for the clone army with us was the design of the Sith."

"Not quite everything," replied Anakin, with a slightly smug undertone. "We weren't supposed to find out about any of this after all. We've been gradually screwing up his plans for the last half a year, and it was only when we found out who he was that he decided to try and spring his trap prematurely."

"Nevertheless, it was still very effective," Shaak Ti added. "We're still paying the price for all of this long planning. But the fact remains that the Kaminoans have been manipulated into providing the Sith with a way of finally achieving one of their goals to rule the Galaxy. Even the clone war itself was mostly pointless."

"That's the way that the Sith work," Ahsoka decided to put in. "We've seen it before. They use people – they stay in the shadows and let others do their dirty work and then let them take the fall if they get caught or something. The Kaminoans are no different from anyone else in that respect. You guys were just useful being to provide the Sith with their army, and the Clone War was more of an excuse to bring the army into effect and let Sidious gain more power as things got worse more than anything else."

Lama Su was quiet as he took this in, his long arm coming up and tapping on his chin with a long, thin finger. His large black eyes were narrowed slightly at the thought of how the Kaminoans had all been played – the people that he was charged with protecting tricked into making an army that could wipe out one of the Galaxy's greatest forces for good from behind.

He definitely did not like the sound of that when it was put that way.

Nevertheless, a small smile appeared on his face a moment later and he said, "Be that as it may, Master Jedi, the end result for we Kaminoans is the same. What matters more than anything to us is that we boost our economy and receive the payments that we need as a result of the clone programme and we have achieved that. We are very isolated out here. The Empire will have difficulty lording it over us."

"What are you saying exactly, Prime Minister?" Obi-Wan enquired.

"I mean to say that we might have been tricked into doing this, but we still got what we wanted when we signed the contract with Master Sifo-Dyas. So I do not fully understand why you have come to tell me this of all people. Surely you are not going from world to world and sneaking onto the planet's surface to tell their leaders about this. Most of them will not believe the word of a Jedi now."

"We know that, Prime Minister," Shaak Ti replied. "And as to why we are here, we have not _only_ come here to inform you of your unknown dealings with the Sith. We have come for another reason as well – the Jedi are attempting to form a rebel alliance to unseat the Sith from his new position of power, and we were hoping that you could help us by pledging the support of the Kaminoans."

Lama Su stared at them for several moments before he broke into laughter. "Oh dear," he said through chuckles. "I don't think I've ever been asked for something so ridiculous throughout my entire life. Forming a rebellion against an Empire that is backed by the army which we ourselves have made – that just wouldn't work, Master Jedi."

"Why not?" Anakin asked, a frown on his face.

"We Kaminoans know more than anyone of the strength of the clone army that this supposed Sith Lord now commands. The Jedi Order would not be enough to stand up to them and even if you were able to gather some military assistance from various planets, there is no way in the Galaxy that you would ever be victorious. It is a lost cause, Master Jedi. I would advise that you merely went into hiding if you were unwilling to turn yourselves in."

"We can't do that, Prime Minister," Obi-Wan replied. "The Jedi Order _has_ survived the blow and as long as that is the case we will not give up hope."

"I fail to see what help we Kaminoans could be to your cause anyway," Lama Su went on. "If you want us to clone you your own army then I'm afraid you are wasting your time. Even with our isolation, we are now a very famous system and very important to the new Emperor. He would notice if we started doing such things. Besides, as long as we serve a client who pays us well, it doesn't really matter to us what the army is for."

"Do you really believe that?" Anakin asked, placing a hand on Ahsoka's shoulder before the brash young Padawan could say something rude. "That's the kind of programming that you tried to put into the clones – do what you're told no matter what it is. But do you really think that yourselves?"

"I've been meaning to bring that up actually," Lama Su turned to look at the Delta Squad. "Is there any particular reason that you have decided to follow the Jedi, despite the intensive training we put you through to always obey your most superior of superiors and the oaths you made to the Republic."

"Oaths don't mean anything when just about everything you've ever known is a lie, Prime Minister," Sev said from the back of the room, the hard bitter edge that he was famous for very evident in his voice and his fist clenched, causing everyone to look at him. "The Sith twisted our purpose from protecting to murdering and tyranny. I've watched hundreds upon thousands of our fellow clones dying on the battlefield at the hands of droids and Geonosians and other Separatist allies but at the end of the day it was not the army grunts that killed them."

He took off his helmet and fixed Lama Su with a sharp glare as he said, "Anyway you look at it, whether it be the Chancellor ordering us to the front lines or the Sith creating the droid armies in the first place, it all boils down the fact that he treated us like nothing but tools. Even you and the rest of the Kaminoans treated us with more respect than he did."

"Sev's right," nodded Scorch. "We've finally decided to take control of our own lives and do some _real_ good in this world, not just following on missions that were arranged by underlings of the person you were actually serving like some game of simulation or something."

"We're taking things into our own hands, Prime Minister," Boss added. "Don't you think that it's time that you did the same?"

Lama Su was surprised at their words. He knew that the clone commandos were bred to be more independent than most troopers but even they shouldn't have had this kind of attitude. What were the other clones that had rebelled been thinking?

For the first real time, Lama Su was beginning to look at the Delta Squad, and indeed all clones, as more than the simple products that he had always thought of them as before.

It was with this in mind that he said, "Suppose that I were to join this little rebellion of yours and that the Kaminoans were to pledge their allegiance to the Jedi against the Sith, as we thought we were doing before. What exactly would be required of us? We are not exactly fighters, Master Jedi. We may have the training programs but that doesn't mean we can fight."

"We don't expect you to," replied Shaak Ti. "All we want from you would be to convince the clones that are currently on the planet to listen to us for long enough for us to relate what we have told you to them, and perhaps help us with the explanations yourself."

"And what makes you think that the clones would we willing to listen to you or me on this matter?" Lama Su asked. "We created them to be totally obedient, and if there are clones out there which have turned against their masters, there must be a reason for that. Right now, the Emperor has gained more power than anyone else in the Galaxy. His authority over the clones extends far beyond my own."

"That may be but we still have to try," Obi-Wan said. "Besides they might be more receptive to you than to us, considering they are supposed to be hunting us down and all."

Lama Su shook his head. "It is a futile gesture, Master Jedi. The fact remains that even with the clones on planet on your side, the majority of the army would still be under the control of the Emperor. How exactly do you plan on earning a victory when he has every advantage."

"There's a plan," Anakin supplied. "And trust me, if there's any chance of fulfilling our aims, this plan is the best one to use. The Tenacious Ten came up with it ourselves, did we not, Ahsoka?"

"Yep," nodded the Padawan.

"Tenacious... Ten?" Lama Su frowned in confusion.

"Not important," Obi-Wan shrugged. "Just as the A-Team is a nickname for Anakin, Ahsoka and Aayla, the Tenacious Ten is a nickname for them and some other friends that they have. The question remains, Prime Minister. Will you aid us in our bid to rid the universe of the Sith, who would oppress each and every world they could get under their thumb, including your own."

"You have the best interests of your people, Lama Su," Shaak Ti replied. "I know that better than any other Jedi. The Sith Lord Emperor will not care that you were the creator of their armies. It won't be long before they're enforcing their will here as well and the clone world of Kamino will probably be forced to continue churning out more and more clones and this time it will not be money that drives them but threats."

"The Sith never show kindness, never show pity," Anakin agreed. "Kamino will be hit just as hard as everywhere else. Unless we take the fight to him. But we need as much firepower as we can muster. Sadly, that may mean turning clones against clones, but if we can take down the Sith then everyone will be free once more."

Lama Su hesitated. Kamino's location as a backwater world beyond the Outer Rim would be working to the Jedi's advantage here. On more heavily populated worlds like Coruscant they could never hope to stir up a rebellion of any kind without being found out, but here on Kamino they could do exactly that. The Kaminoan could feel himself being inspired by the words of the Jedi. It was true that Kamino had gained a lot of significance over the course of the last few months, with people believing in the tall, long-necked race to provide them with the troops they needed for their protection.

Perhaps they could do it again now, but this time it would be for real.

He didn't think that this was a trick. Trickery was not usually the way of the Jedi. Unlike the exploiting ways of the Sith.

But would it work.

Lama Su's nerves were on fire. He might potentially be putting his life on the line here. He might not be going anywhere near the front lines but if he called the clones together and started trying to help the Jedi to get them to rebel and it didn't work then there was every possibility that the clones would turn him in as a traitor to the Empire, as he would surely be if he started helping people who were already classed as traitors.

Then again, wasn't he already a traitor considering he was still here and listening to them instead of sounding the alarm right away.

"Sir," said Boss. "You have to do this. Regardless of whether or not it benefits you or the others and regardless of whether or not you were used by the Sith Lord, it is still the right thing to do. And you know right from wrong, Prime Minister. I know you do."

Lama Su bobbed his head slightly in what looked like a nod, though with a Kaminoan it was difficult to tell if it was a nod or their heads were just bobbing about on their ridiculous necks. But before he could open his mouth to give his reply, the door suddenly opened.

Everyone turned towards it in surprise. Standing on the other side was the Arconan Bounty Hunter known as El-Les, one of the two who was hired to help Shaak Ti with the clone training shortly after the Clone Wars started. He had greenish skin and a head that looked like a something between a T and Y, with a long face and two rectangular projections sticking out at diagonal angles.

At the moment, he was looking down at a datapad in his hand and saying, "Delta Squad, I have a special task for you. Some of the cadets heard that you're back and have requested that you come over and demonstrate that you..." he looked up at this point and spotted the other people in the room. He stepped back in shock at the sight of not only the Prime Minister, but four Jedi, two of which were members of the A-Team, two of which were Council members, and one of those Council members being the one that had fled the planet the day before under fire from clones, according to what he'd been told by his fellow Bounty Hunter, Bric.

"What the..." he cried as he stepped back out into the corridor. "Jedi! Master Ti! What are you doing here...?"

"Ssh, El-Les..." Shaak Ti grabbed him with the Force and pulled him into the room, pressing a hand to his mouth to try and shut him up. "Quiet, please," she hissed. "We're trying to maintain a cover here."

"Scorch," Boss murmured. "Check the corridor."

"Got it," nodded Scorch and quickly stepped outside to see if anyone had heard or seen any sign of the commotion.

Unfortunately, they had. Several clones had not been that far away and had both heard El-les exclaiming the word "Jedi" and had seen him being jerked into the room as though grabbed with telekinetic force. And they were running straight towards Scorch with weapons raised.

And one of them was an ARC trooper that went by the name of Blitz.

"Scorch," Blitz cried as he ran towards him. "What's going on? We heard Jedi and..."

"Oh, nothing, nothing," Scorch said quickly, leaning casually against the wall. "It's just a misunderstanding, I'm sure. There's no Jedi around here."

"But El-Les..." Blitz replied, blinking in confusion.

"Oh, he didn't really see a Jedi," Scorch murmured conversationally. "Uh... keep this between us will you guys but..." he looked around and whispered conspiratorially, "Sev took a picture of picture of General Shaak Ti when she wasn't looking and keeps it next to his bunk."

"I did not!" Sev roared from within the room.

Before Scorch could stop him, Blitz had dashed past him and appeared at the door, just in time to see Sev holding open the window while Anakin was leaning out and trying to figure out a way back up the steep wall that might be considered sane, while all the others in the room whirled around to face the new arrival and the clones that also appeared behind him – Shaak Ti still with a hand over El-Les' mouth.

"Jedi!" shouted Blitz and immediately drew his blaster and shouted "Sound the alarm!" as he whipped off several shots into the room. Shaak Ti was in action immediately, throwing El-Les to the floor behind her to protect him from harm while her blue lightsaber sprang into life in her hands and parried the bolts, knocking them into the walls while Lama Su stepped to the side and tried to cover his face and get low, which didn't really work considering he was so tall.

One of the clones in Blitz' party immediately dashed away to do the job as the others also pulled out their blasters and tried to poke them through the door to get in a shot of their own at the Jedi, but before they could do much more than that, Scorch slammed himself into the back two and brought them to the ground beneath his weight, while Boss and Fixer immediately pile-drove into the rest and shoved them out into the corridor once again, knocking them onto their backs.

As Scorch slammed his blaster into the heads of some of them to knock them out, Blitz scrambled to his feet and stared in disbelief as Boss and Fixer drew their own weapons and pointed them in his direction. "What are you doing?" he shouted.

"Taking a side," Boss replied evenly. "Stand down, Blitz."

"You cannot be serious," Blitz declared.

A blue laser shot out of the room, between Boss and Fixer and hit the wall next to Blitz' head. The ARC trooper started and spotted Sev within the room holding his sniper rifle. "Deadly serious," he replied coldly.

"Wait a moment," Obi-Wan interrupted and pushed his way past the Delta Squad members as a couple more of the enemy clones got to their feet and joined Blitz in training their weapons towards him. Obi-Wan lifted his arms in a friendly gesture and said, "We're not here to harm you, trooper. We just came to deliver a message that I am pretty sure that you will want to hear. Please, stand down and let us talk to you. We have no desire to fight."

Blitz looked hesitant, but did not lower his weapon. He had his orders from the Emperor to kill all the Jedi that he came across on sight, and not to stand around talking to them, but as Scorch got to his feet and readied his own weapon and the other three Jedi joined the small group in the corridor, Blitz couldn't really see an opening.

And it was at that point that a loud blaring alarm began to echo throughout the building, as well as the entire city, as the clone that had run off to set it off completed his mission. Obi-Wan looked up sharply in alarm and Blitz immediately saw the opportunity and let off the shots at almost point-blank range right at Obi-Wan's torso.

But almost point blank was not good enough because Obi-Wan's weapon was in his hands and re-directing the shots towards the floors a split second later. Scorch and Fixer quickly grabbed the two other clones that were still standing and beat them into unconsciousness while Ahsoka catapulted over Obi-Wan's head and delivered a hammer blow with her foot to his chest and sent him crashing into the wall.

Blitz looked up just in time to see Anakin stepping towards him and say, "I'm sorry about this," before he grabbed Blitz' helmet, pulled it off his head and delivered a slam to the side of his face with it before Blitz could break out of the Force-hold that Ahsoka had him in to make sure he couldn't retaliate. Blitz fell unconscious with the rest of his men.

But the alarm was continuing to blare.

"Well, they know something's wrong now," Obi-Wan murmured. "This is exactly the kind of thing that we were hoping to avoid."

"What is going on?" El-Les demanded. "Why are there Jedi here and why are you clones fighting and..."

"Not now, El-Les," Shaak Ti turned to her former-helper. "I'm sorry but not now. There is a more immediately situation at hand which we need to deal with. It won't be long before the entire garrison of clones here begins to come down on us. Everyone here will be on high alert already."

"It kinds ruins the idea of getting the Prime Minister to introduce us," Anakin agreed. "They're going to try and shoot us down before we can explain to them what we're doing like these troopers did."

"We'll have to get to safety now," Obi-Wan insisted. "We need to find a way back to the ship and get away from here as fast as we can. Prime Minister, I am sorry to cut our meeting short but we've got some fleeing for our lives to do. Just please, think on what we said before you make you make your decision. If we survive this mess then we'll try and make contact with you again later."

"I..." Lama Su began

"We've got to go, sir," Fixer declared. "I can hear more clones heading our way already."

"Let's hurry then," Anakin said.

"This way, Generals," Sev waved. "We know this place well enough. We'll lead the way."

The Delta Squad promptly took the lead and the three older Jedi quickly dashed after them. Ahsoka stopped briefly to wave at Lama Su and El-Les and say, "Nice to meet you both," before she suddenly hared down the corridor after the others.

El-Les turned to Lama Su and said, "Can somebody please give me an explanation?"

Lama Su didn't respond, much to El-Les' annoyance. The Kaminoans eyes had narrowed, and his head looked down towards the unconscious but still very much alive clones that were splayed out in front of him.

He still had a bit of thinking to do, but he was pretty sure that he had already made his decision.

* * *

As they fled the scene, Anakin called in on his comlink and shouted, "Rex, we're busted!"

"Yes, General, we guessed as much," Rex replied. "The alarms are going off all across the city. What are we supposed to do now? We can see swarms of clones heading in the direction that you guys took from here. There's no way we'll be able to stop them or hold them all back, sirs."

"Send out a distress signal to the others and let them know that the mission's been compromised," Anakin ordered him. "And then come and pick us up if you can. We need to get away from this place as quickly as we can."

"But sir," Rex replied. "We don't have the allegiance of the clones here yet?"

"And it's very doubtful that we're going to get it now that they've started a Jedi hunt," Anakin pointed out. "Just hurry, or we're going to find ourselves in a whole lot more trouble than we already are."

"Sir, yes sir," replied Rex and signed off.

It was right at that point that more clones rounded the corridor ahead, spotted them and immediately began to run forwards with weapons raised.

The Delta Squad took over and their amazing training immediately put them into high gear. With amazing precision the four of them let off a flurry of shots towards the other clones that were designed to fly so close to them that they would consider the attack real and dive for cover, which was exactly what they did a moment later before they even got the opportunity to let off any shots of their own, diving for the walls.

As the Delta Squad ran past, the clones tried to scramble to their feet and shoot at the Jedi, but they were flung back by a Force push by Obi-Wan and Anakin's lightsaber flashed into life in his hands a sliced through the weapons of several of them as he dashed past. Those that he didn't disarm pushed themselves back up and fired at them from behind, but Ahsoka and Shaak Ti deftly defended the group from the back, blocking over their shoulders and whirling around to face them. As Ahsoka whipped into a mad frenzy of parrying that practically filled the corridor, Shaak Ti hurled them back once more with another Force push and the two Togrutas quickly turned to run again.

The group finally pulled outside when Sev smashed through a window and they sprang out onto the walkway beyond, the Jedi nimbly leaping through after the clones. The eight of them froze in horror as they stared at the walkways and platforms they had snuck across earlier, which was now swarming with hundreds and hundreds of clones that were all heading their way like ants running down the passages of their tunnels.

"Well," said Obi-Wan as he the Jedi all activated their lightsabers. "I'd say things are going to be getting interesting extremely quickly in the not too distant future."

"Interesting is right," Shaak Ti murmured.

Anakin decided to quote the protocol droid that he built as a child:-

"We're doomed."

* * *

Ha. Love it when Threepio says that, but since he's not here, I decided the let the one who knows him best have the line. Anyway, I believe this chapter makes three cliffhangers in a row, does it not. Hmm, I suppose I'm making up for lost time. But I'm afraid you're in for a long wait before you find out what happens next on Kamino. Not only do we have an Impmon chapter between now and then, but the next couple of Star Wars chapters will be more focused on what Aayla and Terriermon are doing.

But hopefully that should be just as exciting. See ya.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

With Renamon and the others still a reasonable way away in hyperspace, Aayla and Terriermon arrive at the strange facility in the middle of the Minntooine ocean, completely unaware that it is a used Separatist base. And it's not long before Grievous notices that he has a surprise guest.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 174 : Grievous Intrigue**


	174. Grievous Intrigue

And after so long without a lightsaber battle, if you don't include the twoshot which I wrote for **Forcystus 5**, it's time for another one to be slotted into the story. I hope that you enjoy this chapter and the subsequent action, as it should be one wild ride. Boy do I like writing about Grievous, and this lightsaber is something special, as its between my favourite Separatist and my favourite Jedi (or indeed member of the Republic), and this time they are the only two participants. Lots of fun.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 174:- Grievous Intrigue**

* * *

Aayla's whooping at the wild water skiing-esque ride that she was getting from Terriermon fell silent the closer they got to the building which was located in the middle of the ocean, possibly hundreds of miles from the nearest actual land. Some might consider it a godsend, but Aayla knew that you should never take anywhere for granted if you didn't know the planet you were on very well.

And Aayla had almost no knowledge of this planet at all. Who knew what a place right in the middle of the ocean could hold? It was miles from nowhere after all. Happening across a place like this was extremely unlikely considering its size, even if you were taking a boat trip across the ocean.

Terriermon finally drew them water-skiing to a halt as they drew closer to the facility and Aayla slowly sank back into the water as her momentum decreased, until she was treading water once again next to the weird facility. It certainly didn't look like much from this angle. It just appeared to be a platform with a small amount of outside space, one large main building that covered most of the surface, and a slightly smaller building that was not connected to the rest of it.

There were no distinguishing marks that told Aayla what this place was for, but it seemed to be deserted at first glance. Aayla briefly plunged her head under the surface of the water again and had a look down. Sure enough, things seemed to coincide with her theory of it being an old place used to bring up manufactured products from the bottom of the ocean to the surface – besides the large struts that descended into the blackness far below there was also a tube made of duraglass that might be used as an elevator system for large objects.

She felt a tapping on her shoulder and looked up to see Terriermon was flapping next to her and tapping her with his hand.

"I thought that I told you not to stick your head underneath and float like that," he lectured her as she wiped her eyes. "It's an uncomfortable reminder of how close you came to becoming a corpse yourself."

Aayla offered him a brief smile as the bunny winged his way up and landed on the top of platform that was still several metres above her head to allow a very thick support for the building that it was holding. "Sorry," she called up to him. "I was just curious."

"You coming up or what?" asked Terriermon.

"Sure," nodded Aayla. "Give me a moment," and she took a breath and expelled it quickly, sinking beneath the surface of the water. Terriermon rolled his eyes as she disappeared from sight. He would have thought that she would have had enough of being underwater for one day.

Aayla dropped down to a depth of about twenty metres with each and then shut her eyes, using the Force to manipulate the water around her and form a current behind her that pushed against her and launched her upwards like a cork from a wine bottle. She exploded out of the sea and flew upwards several metres, flipping over Terriermon and drenching him with sea-spray and leaving him sputtering and she landed neatly behind him.

Terriermon spat out some sea water and said, "Thank you, Aayla," as he took one ear and twisted it in an attempt to wring it out. "I thought I'd swallowed enough of the sea for one day but apparently you thought otherwise."

"Oh, Momentai," Aayla said as she crouched down and dripped onto the platform. The two of them were behind a pile of empty crates that screened the rest of the facility from view and Aayla settled down onto her backside and began shake her lekku one by one with her hands to try and get some of the water off. "Don't tell me that you wouldn't have done the same thing in my position."

"Meh, I suppose I can't and do it truthfully," Terriermon shrugged. "And don't use my word!"

"Are you going to stop me?" Aayla winked at him cheekily as she partially pulled her arm out of her single sleeve and began to wring it out, much like Terriermon had just abandoned doing to his own ears.

Terriermon muttered something about pushing her back in before he stretched out and said, "Well, it's kinda nice to be back on something relatively solid that isn't the top of your head."

"We weren't in the ocean for _that_ long, Terriermon," Aayla pointed out.

"No, but after a stunt like the one you pulled I'm not anxious to go anywhere near a bath anytime soon let alone an ocean," he retorted. "Anyway," Renamon says that the others should be here in about half an hour or so. We won't have a long time to wait before we get picked up and then we can go back to ruining Darth Sidious' life."

"Technically, we're already doing that because I'm still breathing," Aayla pointed out.

"True," Terriermon nodded. "Still, there can never be enough wrecking of that bastard's life if you ask me."

"You may have a point," conceded Aayla as she pulled her arm back into her sleeve and looked down at her sopping wet leggings. She was not about to take _those_ off in front of Terriermon so it looked like she might have to deal with a wet bum for a while until she could get a little more privacy. She pushed herself up into a semi-standing position and placed her hands against the pile of crates, peeking her head around them to look at the facility they had found themselves at.

It didn't look particularly used. In fact it looked like nobody had really been here for several months now. Perhaps when Kit Fisto had raided this planet, he had successfully managed to eliminate all of the Quarren factories beneath the surface and so this place had no longer been needed and fallen into disrepair. The outer side of the building was in a state of disrepair, the sea water creating a large amount of rust on the outer structure of the metal, which any sane factory worker would have had removed as quickly as possible.

Still, Aayla couldn't help but feel that there was something... oddly familiar about this place. It wasn't something that she could see so much as something that she could sense, but whatever it was, it was sending a mild shiver down her spine, and she didn't like it that much.

It made her uneasy.

Terriermon had whipped himself into a Terrier Tornado to dry himself off and it seemed to have the desired effect, spraying the last of the water covering his body all around him and more of it landing on Aayla, but the Twi'lek barely noticed. As Terriermon came to a stop, he smirked at Aayla, and was rather annoyed that she had barely responded to his little attempt at a joke.

But then he noticed how uncomfortable she was looking and said, "Hey, what's up?"

"I'm... not sure," she replied. "It's just... oh, I don't know. Forget it."

"What?" Terriermon asked, as Aayla turned back around and settled into a sitting position with her legs folded in a semi-lotus as she took up a meditation pose. "Come on, you can tell me. What is it?"

"Oh, it's nothing much," Aayla shrugged. "It's just that I can feel something familiar about this place, thought I have no idea what it might be seeing as I've never been here before."

"But you don't like it," Terriermon observed as he walked past her to take his turn at peering around the crates. He could see little out of the ordinary himself, so he turned around and asked, "What kind of familiar? Bad news kind of familiar or familiar as in déjà vu?"

"I don't know," Aayla shrugged. "It's probably just me, but... I can also feel a deep and almost overwhelming sense of hatred coming from somewhere nearby, and I'm not entire sure what it is."

"The Dark Side?" Terriermon asked warily, his ears raising almost involuntarily as he readied himself for a fight even though there were no enemies in sight.

"No, not the Dark Side," Aayla shook her head. "Unless it was deliberately masking itself from me, I would definitely be able to sense the Dark Side, and if it was masking itself from me then I probably wouldn't be feeling anything at all. It's just a faint sense of hatred. _Burning_ hatred," she shuddered.

"Well, this place used to be a Separatist facility," Terriermon pointed out. "Or so we can assume from the old, faded Separatist symbols on the walls of those buildings. Could that have something to do with it?"

"Probably," Aayla nodded. "It is true that a lot of Separatist facilities do leave behind an imprint upon a Jedi's senses, as it was constructed due to the fact the Sith were trying to rule over everything so forget it. It's probably not important. Let's just wait for the others to arrive and we'll go from there."

Terriermon looked towards Aayla, but it was clear to see that she still felt slightly uncomfortable about something and was trying to meditate to force it from her mind. He frowned and looked back towards the main building once again. He couldn't use the Force like Aayla could but he knew enough about it to know that Jedi were good at detecting strong emotions. It didn't look like this place had anything in particular to worry about, but still...

"Look, if it makes you feel any better then how about I go and have a look around?" Terriermon suggested, raising his arms and grinning. "If there's some reason for you to be uncomfortable then I'll find it and let you know. If there isn't then you can just relax and get a load off your mind?"

"You want to go scouting?" Aayla asked.

"Sure, why not?" Terriermon shrugged. "It'll give me something to do over the next half hour or so and keep me from finding a way to plot my revenge for you splashing me like you did earlier."

Aayla smiled and said, "I know full well that no amount of keeping yourself busy could ever keep you from plotting revenge."

"Well, maybe," Terriermon grinned. "But look, I can see a ventilation system over there. I'll go and have a little sneak around in that building over there and have a looksie for any weird goings-on in there. And then I can come back out and tell you that there's no problems whatsoever and it'll make you feel better and when the cruiser comes to pick us up we can get them to blow this place to kingdom come."

He was already moving as he was speaking, preparing to step out from behind the crates and head for the main building, but Aayla reached out and latched onto his ear before he had the opportunity to do so.

"Terriermon, it could be dangerous," she said.

"You said yourself that its probably nothing," Terriermon reminded her.

"Yes, but it doesn't change the fact that I _can_ still sense some kind of deep, deep hatred from somewhere around here, and it may not be the Dark Side but I do sense that it is partially aimed at me. Plus there's the structural integrity of the place to worry about as well."

"Eh, I'll be fine," Terriermon said. "I've been in collapsing buildings before."

"Yes, but you've probably had Henry with or near you at the time so he can make you grow bigger to escape or blow something up," Aayla said.

"Whatever," Terriermon said. "Momentai. I'll be careful. And I'll stick to the vent system. Nobody will even know I'm there. Even thought everyone seems to use the vent system when they want to sneak around. If there's someone in there then I'm hardly going to jump out and scream hello, am I?"

Aayla chuckled. "No, I suppose not," she said.

"I'll be in and out," Terriermon nodded. "See you in a bit."

Before Aayla could stop him he had rolled out from behind the crate and lifted himself into the air and zoomed across the space between Aayla and the main buildings. He veered around the outside of the smaller buildings, over the ocean once more and then back through the gap between the two buildings and swooped low across the wall, until he was standing some way beneath the grate for one the vent openings sticking out of the walls.

He smirked up at it and murmured, "Cake," and then sprang upwards, grabbing the grate in his small hands and moving it out slightly, flapping hard to try and stay aloft before he moved himself into the grate and quickly pulled it back into place behind him.

He turned around and was graced with the dark corridor of most ventilation systems. He rubbed his hands together and breathed out slightly before he slowly and quietly made his way through the tunnel and towards the far end.

* * *

Unbeknownst to him, _inside_ the facility, a couple of battle droids were still monitoring the computer equipment, knowing full well that if they stopped doing their jobs for any reason that wasn't important, General Grievous would probably knock their heads off just for kicks.

One of the battle droids was alternately scanning the computers in search of any incoming transmissions and then glancing briefly across at the surveillance footage before turning back. On one particular instance though, he looked, turned back and then immediately looked again because his photoreceptors had spotted something for a brief instance which had not registered in his processor for several moments.

"Hey, what was that?" he murmured.

"What was what?" asked another droid.

"I'm not sure," the droid replied. "I thought I saw something small and white flash across the screen on one of the outside holocams for a split second before it vanished again. It could just have been dust or something, but I don't know."

"Still, we better report it to the General," said the other droid. "General," he called across the room, to where Grievous was standing in the corner and experimentally twirling one of his lightsaber hilts, testing the new half hand that had been attached after part of his old one had been cut off by Aayla Secura above Rhen Var a few days ago.

"What is it?" Grievous growled, hoping that it might be an incoming transmission from Sidious telling him that he could leave or at least do away with Gunray – he and Hill had left the room a while ago.

"We think we saw something on the security feed, sir, but we're not sure if it was just a blip or whether it was something genuine."

Grievous frowned and stalked forwards to stare at the monitors for a moment. He saw nothing out of the ordinary so he said, "Scan the area for any signs of activity."

"Roger, roger," nodded the droid and began to use a control panel to cause the holocams mounted on the walls to swing around and scan more of the area as Grievous searched the area for any signs of life. It might have just been a bird, but Grievous had long since learned not to take chances.

* * *

Meanwhile, Terriermon was wondering cautiously through the vents and listening out for any signs of life. Whenever he got to a grate he would look through it but he never saw anything except empty corridors or rooms beyond that looked like they hadn't been used in quite a long while.

"Heh, I knew there was nothing to worry about," he murmured quietly to himself as he peered through another grate and spotted a large room that had what appeared to be the top on a large elevator shaft in the middle of a retractable roof that would allow things to be brought up from the ocean bottom and transported up to ships hovering above the complex. He had to admit that this place was pretty cool, even if it had used to be used for evil.

As he moved on, his sensitive hearing suddenly caused his large ears two twitch as he picked up the sounds of voices coming from up ahead. He blinked and frowned – they were faint at the moment, but he could definitely hear them. Two voices.

Terriermon didn't usually make first impressions of people just based on sound, but he did this time. The two voices he could hear made him picture very slimy people.

He lifted his ears and listened, as he inched further down the tunnel and towards the voices.

"I don't understand what he is playing at to be frank," said one of the two voices. "It seems to be pretty clear to me that the war is over and yet here we are, waiting for the order to launch a massive attack on the enemy once again. We have lost. Let us just take what we can and salvage everything instead of just putting more and more of our expenses into a futile gesture."

"If you want my opinion," the slightly more nasal second voice responded, "I have faith in Lord Sidious. I am pretty sure that he has a big plan to pull out fat out of the fire, so to speak. The Republic won't know what hit them when the attack comes, I am sure of it."

Terriermon frowned as he arrived at the grate and peered through into the room beyond. It was a small room and it contained three people, although one of them was just standing subserviently nearby. Two Nemodians and a Muun, if Terriermon could guess their species right.

And his eyes widened when he saw them because he was pretty sure he knew who the two people who were speaking were. He had never seen either of them in person, but he thought he recognised one of the Nemoidians to be Nute Gunray from some holograms that had been shown to him before they raided the Separatist listening post above Rhen Var which was supposed to hold Gunray but did in fact hold three deadly people out to kill Aayla.

And the other speaker, the Muun, had to be San Hill, the leader of the Banking Clan who had managed to elude them on Saleucami. The two most slippery members of the Separatist council and the only two of any importance that were still not held in custody by the Jedi on board the _Negotiator, _which would be on Tython by now.

But what were they doing here?

"With Count Dooku in prison, the droid armies are going to be led by that droid General," Gunray complained. "And I for one do not believe that he can pull such a thing off. He does not have the same subtlety and skill in directing warfare as the Count did."

Terriermon frowned. It seemed that these two hadn't heard that Sidious had declared himself Emperor and freed Count Dooku from prison – they were talking as if he still was. Terriermon wasn't all that surprised to be honest. Palpatine didn't need them anymore and he'd been a bit too preoccupied with trying to wipe out the Jedi to remember to deal with them.

"Be fair to Grievous," San Hill turned towards the shorter being. "He has brought the Separatist cause more victories than any other commander in our armies. And I would prefer it if you didn't talk about my finest creation like that, Gunray, as I have told you before?"

_Say what?_ Terriermon thought. _Finest creation? Grievous? Him? What the heck is he talking about?_

* * *

Aayla, meanwhile had stopped her meditation for a moment. She wasn't looking into Terriermon's mind right now, because she was a little more focused on the smaller building that was adjacent to the larger building, but not connected to it. She could see that the door to it was slightly ajar.

If she had to hazard a guess, she would say that that building served as a hangar for this place. The roof could open up to allow ships to drop inside, where they would be protected from the spray of the sea and wouldn't risk damage due to rust or to salt finding its way into unwanted places.

She could feel her curiosity rising though. The door was slightly open, tempting her to step out and have a look inside, both to try and confirm her theory and to settle, once and for all, whether there was any reason to worry about this place. If there _was_ anyone here, then there would be a ship in there, and if there was a ship in there, she might be able to judge how recently it had been used.

Eventually it got the better of her and she clambered to her feet, peering around the side of the crates. She could see a couple of holocams mounted in a couple of places on the walls, but she had no way of knowing if they were on or if they could even function. Nevertheless, she did _not_ want to take any chances.

She promptly cleared her mind and focused on placing her body out of sight of any prying eyes, raising her Force cloak ability and bending the light waves around her to ensure that she wouldn't be picked up even by the holocams. She slowly stepped out from behind the crates and invisibly walked over the doors of the smaller building.

The doors were not open enough to allow her to get inside, and, after a quick glance around, she placed a hand on the door and eased it open slightly to stick her head inside and have a look around.

* * *

"What was that?" Grievous demanded from within the complex.

"What was what, sir?" asked one of the droids.

"That? The hangar door moved on its own for a moment there," Grievous growled impatiently. They still hadn't seen anything on the holocams and he was beginning to wonder whether he should bash the droid's head in for giving a false alarm when he spotted that.

"I didn't see anything, sir," the battle droid replied.

Grievous snarled at their ineptitude and swung around towards the doors, flinging the chair he had been gripping and the battle droid in it across the room as he whipped his large cloak off his shoulders and grabbed a pair of his lightsabers and rasped, "Useless battle droids! I'm going out there to search for a breach myself."

He pushed the door open and marched out of the room as the battle droid sat up and rubbed its mechanical head, its fellows giving them the best sympathetic looks they could with faces that didn't move.

"Well, at least you still have your head," one of them said. "Unlike poor OM86."

"Yeah, but for how much longer," said the droid as it got to its feet. "It seems to me that the General gets more mad at us with every passing day. If he doesn't get away from here to start killing things soon, we're all done for."

* * *

It took Aayla's eyes a couple of seconds to adjust to the darkness inside the smaller building. The bright sun of Minntooine combined with the cloudless sky had meant that even when she was deep under the water she could still see clearly and now they were plunged into almost complete darkness for a moment she could see nothing for a few moments.

Gradually her eyes began to adjust the gloom and the first thing that she saw was definitely _not_ something that she wanted to see. The silhouette of a _Sheathipede_-class shuttle which was resting on the far side of the hangar began to appear in her vision, which gradually adjusted more to the light to confirm that it really was that kind of ship. That in itself was not particularly good news, as those kinds of shuttles were often used by members of the Separatists.

What was less encouraging was that it still seemed to be in a good state of repair as if it had only been used a few days ago. It certainly wasn't collecting dust like just about every other thing in the room.

As Aayla's eyes began to adjust more to the darkness and she inched to door open a little wider to let in some more light, she became aware of a second, smaller vessel between her and the shuttle. She stared at it for a couple of seconds as it faded into view and what she saw shocked her. It looked like a _Belbullab-22_ starfighter, with several modifications made to it, a small black ship with large thrusters on either side and a very small amount of yellow stripes on various parts of the hull.

Aayla stared at it in bemusement for a couple of seconds before she stepped back in shock, eyes wide as she realised that she knew this ship. She had seen it before in holograms and based on some of Anakin's previous encounters with this particular ship. She even knew the ship's name.

_The Soulless One._

And if she remembered correctly, that ship belonged to...

The doors of the main building slid open and Aayla whirled around to be confronted with a very, _very_ familiar skeletal looking cyborg with metallic duranium body, long arms, taloned feet and a skull-like mask. General Grievous.

Her eyes widened in shock and horror as she realised she was facing the owner of the ship in the hangar, and she also saw that Grievous' yellow, reptilian eyes fixed upon her and bulged in what remained of their sockets, and it was at that moment that Aayla realised that she had lost her concentration on her Force cloak and caused it to drop, which meant that he could very definitely see her.

"You!" both of them cried at the same time, both of them with sounds of shock in their tones but with a great deal of anger thrown in for Grievous. Aayla immediately flipped away from the door and plucked both lightsabers from her waist, holding the hilts ready just in case Grievous decided to charge straight away.

But evidently, for the moment, Grievous was too stunned to do anything as he beheld the Twi'lek in front of him. He didn't have the ability to use expression very much since the only part of his face that moved were his eyes, but the way that they were wide and the fact that his limbs were much more slack than normal clearly indicated his surprise.

Grievous couldn't believe it. He was pretty sure that if he was a complete droid instead of a cyborg, he would have short-circuited at the sight of the Jedi that was standing in front of him. Not only was it a complete mystery to him as to how she got here – incoming ships would have been detected before they got within a couple of miles of the station so she couldn't possibly have flown down (especially since she had no ship with her at the moment), but there was one other detail that accounted for Grievous' surprise.

"Secura!" he gave out his equivalent of a gasp. Then his eyes hardened and he stabbed a claw in her direction and declared, "You're supposed to be dead!"

Aayla blinked, and then realised that Grievous must not be as up to date with Galaxy-wide affairs as everybody else considering the last they had heard from him was that he was supposed to go into hiding until Sidious gave him his next orders. Bane had told them about how Sidious had relayed the fact that Aayla was supposedly dead to Grievous during the message that he and Chewbacca had overheard, and it seemed that Sidious had not been in contact with him since.

Aayla decided to buy time as much as possible and said, "I am? Well, that's news to me I'm afraid. Care to enlighten me?"

Grievous glared at the Twi'lek, looking her up and down as if trying to see if she was real and not some figment of his imagination or really, really weird trick of the light, but once he verified that Aayla was, in fact, there and was also, in fact, solid, his hands, which were already clutching a pair of lightsabers, moved into a battle stance as he activated a green and a blue blade and held them ready.

"I received intelligence that you had been shot in the head on the medical station you were taken to after our little... encounter. A dishonourable death at the hands of a Bounty Hunter. How is it possible that you are here now, on your feet and uninjured, when the Republic is supposed to be mourning your demise?" he rasped, eyes as thin as slits as his mechanical fingers tightened on the lightsaber hilts.

Aayla coughed and said, "Well, I apologise for misleading you, General. It won't happen again, I assure you. But the fact of the matter is that I am very clearly not dead. And your master is most certainly not very pleased with that. The attempt on my life that you, Dooku and Ventress made was only the first. Cad Bane was the second, but... well, I bribed him before he had the chance to kill me. Sorry."

Grievous growled and said, "I knew that we should never have trusted a common Bounty Hunter like this." He chuckled evilly and said, "I'm sure that my Master will be interested to learn you're still alive."

"Yes, I'm sure he would," Aayla replied.

Before she could say anything else, Grievous added, "Too bad I'm going to be the one to kill you now, and then I'll be able to report that you truly are dead. But before I cut your head off, tell me – how did you find this place? This is one of our most secret of bases. Only a few members of the Separatists know about this place and almost all of them are currently in it."

"Oh, I assure you, Grievous, this is a complete accident," Aayla replied. "I came to this planet to investigate a Jedi distress call which turned out to be a fake planted by another Bounty Hunter and my starfighter was shot down a few miles away. When I saw this place I swam over to get out of the water and now..." she shrugged. "Here I am."

"If that is the case," Grievous growled. "I'll have to cut you down before you get the chance to call reinforcements." He took a step forwards.

"Ah, yes," Aayla said, her blue original blade springing into life in her hand. "I thought that you might say that."

"You left a big stain on my pride at our last parting, Secura," Grievous snarled furiously, as he paused in his stride to fix her with a glare that would have blown her several miles away in pieces if looks could kill. "Do you realise how humiliated I was when I found out that you collapsed onto the floor a few seconds after I left the room? This time is going to be different! This time, you die!"

"Careful, Grievous," Aayla said warningly as her green blade ignited with a fizzing noise. "I was able to take you on along with Ventress and Dooku last time."

"You caught me off guard with all your fancy moves last time, Secura," Grievous growled. "This time I am prepared for your fighting style. I shall avenge the Count and restore my honour. Besides, you can't imagine how good it is to actually see you. I was hoping for a rematch, but it was disappointed when I heard that the Bounty Hunter was the one to finally write you off. Ha! This is like a dream come true for me."

Aayla backed away as Grievous began to advance and was uncomfortably aware of the lack of room around her. Grievous seemed to notice her discomfort as his wrists began to spin in their sockets – Aayla noticed that he had got his hand replaced. "No amount of Force lightning is going to help your this time, Secura! And I shall recover that lightsaber you stole from me and take yours as well."

It seemed that a fight was inevitable and Aayla readied her blades, her face taking on a look of determination as she steeled herself for the oncoming duel. But then she realised something. Grievous still didn't know that Darth Sidious and Chancellor Palpatine were one in the same. He didn't have a clue who the Sith Lord that he thought he was serving was using him as much as the rest of the Galaxy. He didn't even know that the majority of the clones had turned on the Jedi at the order of the man in question.

Sensing an opportunity, she cried, "Grievous, wait! There's something that you should..."

Grievous roared and interrupted her before she even got started and charged right at her, blades spinning.

So much for that plan.

Aayla swiftly blocked out everything from her mind and solely focused on what she was doing as Grievous bore down on her, a whirling wall of green and blue slashing through the air in front of him. Aayla quickly took the initiative and the battle began as she leapt forward to stab one blade into the whirling colours in front of her and thrust to the side with it to push one of Grievous' blades away and quickly brought up the other to block as Grievous slashed at her with the other. Grievous stepped back and slashed at her legs with his blue blade, which she jumped over easily enough and then brought both blades slamming in from the same direction, forcing Aayla to parry by holding her blades so they were pointing in opposite directions, tips close to the hilts.

Unlike in the last fight, Grievous wasted almost no time at all before bringing out his secondary weapons. As his two blades locked Aayla's in position his arms split in half and the two newer limbs reache behind him. Knowing full well what was about to happen, Aayla swept one blade up and away, pushing one of Grievous' blades into the other and allowing her to retract her other blade and flip away as a second pair of lightsabers burst into life and stabbed into the ground where she'd been.

Aayla rolled over and flipped back onto her feet as Grievous pulled his blades out of the floor and began to spin them again. Aayla gritted her teeth and attempted to speak to him again, "Grievous, please listen. I know that you..."

"Shut up and fight me, Secura!" Grievous challenged and charged once more. Aayla sighed through gritted teeth and threw herself to the side before Grievous reached her, planting her feet against the crate pile and rebounding off it, causing several crates to topple over the side and into the sea as she sailed over Grievous' head. The cyborg scissored at her with all four blades but Aayla pulled her legs in just before he could slice off her feet and hit the wall of the hangar with her to launch herself back at him again.

Grievous blocked two blades and blocked her attack with one blade and arced a third over his head to catch her second, leaving his fourth blade to stab at her from the side. Aayla fell to the ground and span under it to lash out with her green blade, which was expertly parried, as was the overhead slash from her blue blade that followed. Grievous swiftly rotated on his stomach and threw Aayla away, allowing himself to recuperate from her vicious assault and she flipped backwards once more and landed on her feet.

Grievous growled and decided to do some improvisation of his own and lashed out behind him with one foot, his talons latching onto one of the crates and stabbing into it before he kicked forward to launch the crate at Aayla and charged after it. Aayla swept her blade in an X to slash the crate into four large chunks, grabbed one with the Force and threw it at the charging cyborg, but Grievous slammed it to rubble with his fist and stabbed towards Aayla with three blades. Aayla leapt up as they pierced the wall beneath her and blocked the fourth blade as it swung up at her.

She landed and span around in time to block two blades that cleaved towards her midsection and caught another overhead slash from a third blade, danced back in time to avoid a slash from the fourth and then threw herself into a backwards roll as Grievous launched a massive upwards sweep with all four that cleaved straight through the floor of the platform. Grievous barely paused in his stride and was after her again, pushing her across the platform as quickly as he could manage and towards the main building.

Aayla was promptly whipping up into a frenzy of motion as she blocked madly, parrying a strike for her navel, ducking under a slash for the head, manoeuvring Grievous' blade to the side to block a strike from one of his others, sidestepping a downward stab and catching the subsequent strike with the same blade as well as the one that came from the other side in the same instant, all in the space of about three seconds. With her blades out to the side and locked in place by Grievous' two blades, her body was left wide open to attack from the front.

Grievous pushed his face close to hers and growled, before this bottom and top set of arms seemed to practically switch position, his bottom two blade coming up behind him and over his head to stab down towards Aayla. The Twi'lek's eyes widened and acted quickly, lifting a foot to kick Grievous in the one half-wrist and break the lightsaber lock, allowing herself to parry the two overhead stabs and knock them aside. Before Grievous could retaliate, Aayla planted her foot against his chest and used his body to kick off and flip over backwards until she was right next to the wall of the main building.

"You can't run forever!" Grievous growled at her, crossing his blades in an X in front of him with all the points at the centre and barrelled forwards once more. Aayla's eyes widened as she saw the potentially deadly attack heading right towards her and, thinking quickly, she crouched and extended her legs rapidly to leap into the air, leaving Grievous to slice through large sections of the wall while Aayla backflipped and landed on the roof.

"Grievous, please," Aayla insisted. "I'm trying to tell you something and you... don't appear to be listening," she trailed off as Grievous came for her once more, stepping onto the metallic wall and striding up towards her, his magnetic feet allowing him to almost defy gravity as he advanced once more. Aayla could see the rage in his eyes, and the almost mad bloodlust that appeared to have settled over the cyborg. There wasn't going to be any reasoning with him any time in the near future.

Aayla did not want to let him reach her so she sprang off the roof with intend to land on top of the hangar but Grievous shot off the wall, his legs extending like pistons and sprang up to intercept her, four blades twirling like helicopter rotors, going to fast that they might have kept him aloft if they weighed anything. Aayla pirouetted in the air and counter-struck with a double outward slash to stop the windmilling and flipped over in the air to turn aside a retaliatory strike from two more of Grievous blades.

Using them as a purchase she twisted in mid-air and flipped her body over until she was standing on Grievous' shoulders and then pushed off from him, avoiding the angry slash he sent after her and simultaneously pushing him towards the ground. She turned and blasted him with the Force at the same time, sending him crashing to the platform with the force of a small comet as she landed gracefully on the nearby roof of the hangar.

There was a brief pause, but then Grievous exploded out of the rubble of the crater his body had caused, looking absolutely none the worse for wear and whipping his blades through the air once more to glare at the Twi'lek standing on higher ground. Aayla bit her lip. The cyborg had a hell of a lot of endurance and a very tough body. She briefly glanced at her fingers, wondering if she would be able to conjure Force lightning again but she doubted it. It had been purely instinctual the first time and she had yet to receive any proper training in it from someone who knew what they were doing.

She looked up again to see that Grievous was already moving. He might not be a Jed, but he could still jump very high with his powerful cyborg legs, as he had dashed onto an upended crate and sprang into the air, leaping up so high that he was actually over her head and came down towards her with lightsabers raised.

Aayla dived off the roof just as he crashed into the space next to her and swept through empty air, while the Twi'lek landed on her fingers and flipped back onto her feet, whirling around to find that Grievous had already jumped after her and was powered a taloned foot towards her head. Aayla twisted around and his foot smashed into the platform so hard that it splintered and Aayla quickly ducked under a swing and blocked a further two blades, kicked aside another strike and tried to push Grievous back.

But the cyborg muscled forwards and overpowered her.

Though Aayla was able to push Grievous' blades away she was unable to stop him from lowered his head and ramming her full force in the stomach in a blow that knocked the wind out of her and sent her rolling away across the platform, clutching her stomach and gasping for breath. She looked up just in time to see Grievous stepping towards her, an expression or triumph on his face as he swung all four blades at her.

Only to be slammed in the back by a crate which Aayla had summoned with the Force before he got the chance to slash through her and sent him stumbling forwards. Aayla rolled to avoid being trodden on and ended up on her back between his legs. He looked down at her just in time to see her tuck her legs in and roll aside, her blade slashing for his ankles. He stabbed a pair of lightsabers into the floor just in time to block the blows from her two blades, but it provided her with the time she needed to flip back onto her feet.

Aayla span her own blades in a fairly accurate impression of Grievous' own favourite technique. Grievous responded by doing the same thing and the two of them faced off against one another momentarily, probing for weakness as blue and green blurs flashed all around them, before both of them stepped forwards at the same time to engage the other. Aayla's blue blade countered a strike from one blue and one green one, and her green blade lashed over the top, only to be met by another green blade as he pushed her back and slashed his second blue blade for her neck, which she was able to avoid by leaning backwards, though it narrowly missed nicking her skin and almost lopped off the tip on her lekku.

Aayla moved with the lean and flipped over backwards, jumping behind and pair of crates and pulsing them towards Grievous with the Force. Grievous briefly buzzsawed his blades and tore them to shreds in instants and rampaged forwards towards Aayla. She readied herself to defend, but Grievous caught her off guard by suddenly feinting, planting his foot in front on her and slashing with one blade, while at the same time rotating at the waist so his whole body twisted with his next step and suddenly he was at Aayla's side instead of in front of her and he slashed with all three blades remaining.

Aayla was swift to react but not altogether swift enough. Although she was able to stop the blades from cutting into her, she caught them at an angle that caused a recoil which pushed her backwards slightly. Grievous pressed his attack and hooked one of her lightsabers with his own and flung his arm out, wrenching Aayla's blue blade from her grasp and sending it flinging through the air, off the platform and into the water, where it promptly sank.

Aayla danced out of range as she clasped her remaining blade with two hands and found herself with her back to the edge of the platform, the sea lapping behind her. She had to admit that Grievous did seem to be putting up more of a fight than last time. Perhaps he was just being less overconfident or he really had got a better measure of her fighting style. After all, her match with him had only been a few days ago. He was starting to pull some tricks of his own out of the box.

Perhaps it would be better if Aayla started doing the same.

"It's time to die!" Grievous roared, seeing that Aayla was in the corner and immediately going for her. He was surprised, although on later reflection he really shouldn't have been, when Aayla immediately backflipped off the platform and plunged into the sea, vanishing beneath the surface. Grievous pulled to a halt and stared down into the ocean, trying to spot her silhouette down below.

He growled in frustration. If there was one medium he definitely would not do well in, it would be water. His duranium body was _heavy_, and he was not keen to test whether water would get the better of him. So he searched the depths for his missing target, annoyed with himself.

Meanwhile, beneath the surface, Aayla was powering herself downwards again, using the Force to propel herself deeper. She spotted her beloved lightsaber sinking into the depths below her and quickly summoned it back to her, grabbing it in her free hand and immediately turning back towards the surface. Her eyes narrowed and she called on the Force once more to propel herself upwards with the speed and grace of a mermaid.

She exploded out of the water behind Grievous, causing him to swing around and watch as she shot well above the platform, perhaps thirty metres or so into the air and activated her blades once more once she reached the peak of her height. She reversed trajectory and fell towards him, blades out at her sides as she readied herself for a finishing move.

Grievous was impressed, but he was not about to let that distract him. As Aayla fell, he swept his blades up to meet her as she slashed down as him, the blades clashing against each other and momentarily supporting Aayla upside down, but as he swept up with the other two blades she sprang off him and flipped behind him, lashing out behind her with the Force to send him catapulting across the platform to crash into the hangar doors so hard he knocked them over.

But he was able to stay on his feet, slamming them into the ground and skidding backwards, kicking up sparks and a horrible noise as he pulled to a halt by crashing into his own starfighter. Unphased by this he stepped forwards and sheathed two of his blades, stamping on the end of one of the hangar doors to catapult it into the air and delivering a heavy kick to it that flung it towards Aayla. Aayla responded by jumping _onto _it, tucking in her legs as she jumped up to let it sail underneath her and then planting them down to run across it before flipping down onto the other side and readying herself once more as Grievous came again.

"You don't have to..." Aayla started, but realised it was a pointless gesture before it even began as Grievous renewed his attack. She quickly dashed over to meet him and what followed were the two duellists trading blows with each other with tremendous ferocity, matching each other practically blow for blow, Aayla's dodging skills making up for Grievous' extra pair of limbs, which most other Jedi would be unable to compensate for. They whirled around each other and both sides refused to back away more than a few feet, keeping the battle enclosed to a small area in the middle of the platform.

Grievous' stab passed underneath Aayla's arm, which had swung a blade for his chest, which was blocked from above by another blade, as two more swept low for her legs from the other side, which she was able to jump over as she brought her other blade across the body to block the other one coming from the other side, allowing her to slash her blades with great force as she pulled her arms back to the right side of her body but Grievous caught her blades with his own and stopped her from pushing him back, retaliating in kind to move her back a few steps and twirling a blade above his head to bring it thundering down on her from above, while bringing in a further two from the side and the fourth from below, which forced Aayla to drop to her knee and angle her blades to catch three blades on one of her own and the lowest blade with her other one.

She responded by forcing Grievous' limbs away and then kicking him in the neck, because that would have had a greater effect than going for his rock-solid chest. It didn't hurt Grievous – after all his neck was just as metallic as most of the rest of him, but it put him off balance and forced him back several feet. He growled and swung his arms up and around to bring them crashing down on Aayla, but the Twi'lek caught them and threw them out wide.

Grievous tried to ram her with his shoulder, but Aayla was prepared this time and threw herself at him as well, only slightly higher and twisting so that she teddy rolled over his back and turned around so she was facing him from behind, but his foot lashed out at her and she had to dive aside as the talons tried to grab her and block a backwards slash from one of his other blades, and suddenly Grievous was facing her again because he had rotated on his hips and stabbed at her once more. Aayla leaned to the side and sucked in her stomach to allow the blade to breeze past, brought up her knee to press it against his hand before he could try to slice at her with it and leaned backwards to block another slash from behind that came for her shoulders with both blades.

This weird position made it possible for her to push off Grievous' arm with her knee and roll backwards, which promptly became a necessity because Grievous slashed for her exposed foot. She landed on her feet not far away and to turned to flee across the platform, Grievous in hot pursuit. She skidded to a halt by the main complex and sprang for the wall, dashing across it using her momentum and spring off so she was behind him again and backing away as he swung around to face her once more.

Aayla didn't know how long this was going to last but she knew that if it kept going like this she would tire long before Grievous did. He was doing a lot better at defending against her than last time, even if he wasn't doing much better at hitting her, though he had come close several times.

She stepped back as he did the opposite and fixed her eyes with his. She could see the intense hatred burning inside them. Hatred for all the Jedi, and a hatred that Aayla had never really understood. But now he was using it to full effect, like he had something to prove in this particular match.

Aayla held her blades in front of her, ready for anything, as Grievous springing towards her with his massive cyborg strides. This was not going to be an easy victory for her, but she would see to it that Grievous wouldn't get an easy victory either. She leapt forward to meet him and crashed her blades against his own once more, their eyes boring into one another as their faces came within a few inches, hatred versus determination.

And no small amount of respect in both sets of eyes.

"You are indeed an impressive fighter, Secura," Grievous growled as they pushed against each another. "Another reason why I was hoping to have another match with you. I have never encountered anybody who fights like you do."

"I could say the same to you," Aayla replied, "Though I was rather hoping that we _wouldn't _ever cross blades again."

"Ha!" Grievous barked. "You are a noble warrior, Secura! If we were not on opposite sides, I might admire someone like you even more than Dooku, but as it is, your lightsaber will take pride of place at the top of my collection when I take it from your smoking remains!"

"I'm honoured," Aayla said, dryly. "Which lightsaber has pride of place at the moment?"

Grievous shook himself and didn't answer the question, retracting two of his blades and preparing to strike. Aayla broke the rest of the lock in preparation and the two epic duellists lunged for one another again.

* * *

And where was Terriermon throughout all this?

Well, the little bunny was currently completely oblivious to the fact that Aayla was in the middle of a duel. This was no small surprise really, as Aayla had withdrawn from his consciousness to focus more on fending off Grievous, but Terriermon was also engrossed in listening to the conversation between San Hill and Nute Gunray, who also seemed to be unaware of the battle going on outside.

"All I'm saying is that that droid is not qualified to lead us if you ask me," Gunray was saying. "The number of times he has threatened to kill me and the number of times he has been bested by the Jedi – how is he supposed to be the one who can keep us safe?"

"A wise General is one who knows when to retreat," Hill replied evenly. "It does not make him a coward, but he knows that he is needed to be the main driving force behind the droid armies. That's the reason why he puts his own personal safety above that of the mission so much. He's definitely committed to our cause though. He hates the Jedi with a passion."

Gunray snorted. "Whether or not he's on our side or not is irrelevant. Dooku is no longer here to keep him under control. Who is exactly is going to stop him from turning against me, or even you."

"You _are_ a coward," Hill chuckled. "That much is obvious. And perhaps if you stopped _going out of your way _to insult or belittle him then you wouldn't need to worry so much about him cutting you into pieces. But you needn't worry really. Grievous has received orders from Lord Sidious himself not to harm you and he would not dare go against orders from our illustrious leader. He cares too much about being part of the Sith Lord's grand plan to wipe out the Jedi, such is his burning, never-ending rage towards them." He chuckled nasally and said, "I must say we really engineered him to perfection."

The second Nemoidian in the room, which was actually Gunray's personal aide who went by the name of Ruun Haako, asked, "Engineered him? So, are the rumours true then?"

"Quiet, Haako," Gunray hissed. "Do you want him to hear you?"

"No, no, it's quite alright," San Hill chuckled. "These doors and walls are thick enough. He won't be able to hear anything we say unless he walks into the room. And what rumours might you mean my little friend?"

"Well, not many people are quite sure where Count Dooku got General Grievous from in the first place. All anyone knows for sure is that you had something to do with it, but there were definitely some rumours spoken way out of his presence about it."

"Yes indeed," San Hill chuckled a wide smile on his comparatively thin face as he sat down in a chair and placed his thin hands in his lap. "I've been preparing for this war for years before it happened – anything to help give the Banking Clan more credits, if you know what I mean."

"Oh, yes, I understand completely," Gunray rubbed his hands together. "You can never have enough credits. People call me greedy, but I prefer to think of myself as... an opportunist, who isn't afraid to exploit a new potential business transaction when he sees one."

"The words 'business transaction,' being a little loose considering the fact that this is a war," chuckled San Hill, and Terriermon grimaced in disgust at the greasy scumbuckets that stood before him. He had thought some of the other Separatist leaders were bad, but even Wat Tambor had nothing on these two.

"But yes, I have heard some of these rumours," San Hill chuckled, "and most of them are true. That one about Count Dooku and I engineering that shuttle crash that destroyed Grievous' original body and pinning the blame on the Jedi? That one is one-hundred percent true."

Terriermon's eyes widened in astonishment at what he was hearing. Nute Gunray, on the other hand snorted and said, "It's a shame that you didn't finish him off completely."

"Now, now, Gunray," Hill waved a long finger and smiled. "Let's not forget that Count Dooku and I spent a long time preparing to get the General to join our cause. He already hated the Jedi even before the shuttle crash of course, as his people had been invading a neighbouring planet when the Jedi arrived to help the people they were invading and pushed them back, repelling the invasion and pushing him and his people into massive debt, and Dooku's master ensured that the Republic did not come to their aid. And that's where I came in and I came to aid the starving Kaleesh in exchange for Grievous' service."

"Sounds like a long and complicated process to me," Ruun Haako murmured.

"Oh, it was," Hill chuckled. "Even after the shuttle crash it took a lot of convincing to get Grievous to accept a cyborg body. We even had to add to the severity of his injuries while he was unconscious and he still wouldn't agree. It was only after we promised him the opportunity to kill lots of Jedi, status as the leader of the armies and complete financial support for the Kaleesh before he accepted, and even then he made demands of us. Insisted that we didn't tamper with his mind while we installed him in his body."

"And thus General Grievous was born, right?" Haako pressed.

"Indeed," Hill smirked, seemingly very proud of the way he had manipulated Grievous into serving the Separatist cause. "And when you take the amazing speed and strength granted to him by the Geonosian scientists with his new body, his great skill as a General, Dooku's expert training in lightsaber combat, his four limbs, his massively deep hatred for all things Jedi and the fact that we actually ignored his request and engineered his brain so that he would forget most of his fonder or more painful memories of the past and so that his rage would enhanced far beyond normal and you've got the perfect Jedi killer."

Terriermon felt his fist clenching as he listened to what the despicable Muun was saying. He had thought that Darth Sidious' manipulations of the entire Galaxy was bad, but it seemed like his underlings were little better. Much like Sidious had been attempting to lure Anakin to their side for many years, it appeared the Hill had been doing the same thing to Grievous, only this time it worked.

Terriermon had never, of course, cared for Grievous. He had never met him face to face or spoken to him but he had seen him, whether from a vent or from under Renamon's perception filter as he ran past, and quite frankly if there was anything in the universe that scared the bejesus out of him, other than pineapples, it was Grievous. That guy looked just plain terrifying. And he had visited places that Grievous had attacked to see that there was almost nothing left. The cyborg showed absolutely no mercy.

But Grievous was still a person, and these people had deliberately ruined his life and the life of everyone that Grievous probably held dear, in order to make him forget about the latter and turn him into an almost mindless abomination, and his lack of mercy might have had something to do with the tampering of Dooku and Hill.

It made him want to vomit.

"Does he know about this?" Gunray asked.

"Not at all," Hill smirked. "But he must never find out about it, you understand? You might think that you've found some perfect blackmail material against him Gunray but Grievous is not to be trifled with."

"Are you kidding?" Gunray asked. "Just knowing this is my own little form of victory over him. And I happen to think he's unstable enough as it is. You sure that when you tampered with his brain, you didn't scramble it completely?"

"No, the Geonosians are very precise scientists," Hill nodded. "I oversaw the work myself, though it was he who insisted on the design he has now, especially the face-mask, which resembles the war masks that his species wear anyway. And enhancing his rage did have some unforeseen side effects, like his tendency to bash in the heads of the droids serving under him, but I assure you, he is far from insane. Merely one very, very angry cyborg."

"Pretty much all the time," Gunray snickered. "Where is he anyway? Have we received any further intelligence from Lord Sidious about what we're supposed to be doing?"

Finally Terriermon jolted to his senses. He had been so involved in the conversations and the disgusting acts that the Muun in the room had committed that he had completely forgotten to realise that Grievous must be here in the facility – Gunray had warned Haako to be quiet lest he was overheard by the subject of their conversation after all.

It seemed that they were not out of danger yet.

He immediately made contact with Aayla's mind to warn her, but he found himself repelled as he tried to enter her thoughts. He blinked in surprise and looked through her eyes instead, as that was one of the things that she had not sealed away from him and when he saw the terrifying visage of Grievous raining blows in his direction he almost yelped and gave away his position.

"Damn it," he hissed to himself as he started off back down the vent. This time, Aayla was not going to have to deal with Grievous alone. And this time, Terriermon also had a secret weapon.

* * *

Aayla pushed back the two blades that were threatening to cut her in three pieces at the chest height and spun about to slam the third away, diving to the side and underneath the fourth and flipping on her hands to fly over another strike, whirling about the block a cleave and deflect a stab. She stepped back and attempted to push Grievous back with a Force push, but the General was more prepared for it this time and dug his talons into the platform, as well as his four blades, which meant he only went back a few metres.

Grievous roared and used the purchase to throw himself into a charge. He slashed out with his blades to knock Aayla's aside and threw out his foot, the talons closing around Aayla's stomach like an oversized bird of prey and pushing her to the floor. Aayla gasped as Grievous loomed over her, one foot latched around her midsection as his four blades whirred, ready to strike her down.

He slashed down.

Aayla's hands lashed up and she grabbed Grievous with the Force and with a very great effort his blades stopped before they reached her. Grievous growled and tried to push against Aayla's hold on him and impale her but the Twi'lek refused to back down or let the blades fall any further. As she reignited one of her own blades, Grievous saw she was about to slice off the foot pinning her to the ground and lurched backwards and off her, allowing her to spin onto her feet and activate her second blade and leap towards him.

A couple of seconds of trading blows that were almost too fast for either of them to track, Aayla suddenly dropped down and dived through his legs, leaping up in time to whirl around and jump on his back, bearing him to the ground instead. As he crashed onto his stomach, Aayla quickly rolled off him and ran a few metres before she turned back once more, to see him pushing himself back up, his eyes showing he was absolutely livid.

"You cannot jump around like that forever, Secura!" he growled and readied his blades once more. "Sooner or later, you will fall!"

"Later would be nice," Aayla supplied.

Grievous snarled and began to charge, but suddenly a surprisingly high voice cut through the air around them like a lightsaber and cried, "STOP! Stop this now!"

Grievous pulled to a halt as both combatant glanced off to the side. Grievous' eyes bulged again as he stared in bewilderment. There, standing in the entrance to the ventilation system, was a creature he had never even heard of before – a small, white creature with ludicrously long ears tipped with fingers and a single horn on its head that was standing on its hind legs.

"What the..." he growled.

Aayla immediately took advantage of his lapse in anger and battle and sheathed her blades, shutting her eyes and calling on the Force. Now that she had some more time to focus, she could use the Force to pull off more impressive stunts and, as she raised her arms up to shoulder height, a large amount of the water behind her suddenly erupted into the air like a volcano. Grievous whirled around just in time to see Aayla thrust her hands in his direction and the wall of water behind her suddenly surge towards him like a tidal bore. Make that a pair of tidal bores as it flowed on either side of the Jedi.

Grievous was promptly drenched and pushed back, sinking his claws into the ground to halt his progress as the water slammed into him. As his cyborg circuitry was encased in his body the water didn't effect him, but it did affect his lightsabers. A lightsaber needed a special upgrade for it to work under or covered in water, and it appeared that three of his did not have that and fizzled out, temporarily short-circuiting.

The water torrent stopped, and Grievous looked up in time to see Aayla flying at him with blades raised. He tried to block with his remaining lightsaber, but Aayla easily disarmed him, blocking his blade at the base with her own and them slamming it at the tip in the opposite side with her other blade to send it flying out of his hand.

Aayla pointed her blade at his face and said, "Stand down, Grievous."

"Never!" Grievous roared and prepared to do something stupid like ram her.

"Listen to her, Grievous," came the voice of the strange creature, which had leapt out of the vent and floated on its ears over to them to land on Aayla shoulder. Grievous blinked at the fact that Aayla seemed to know the little guy.

"Believe me," Terriermon added. "I think that you might be _very_ interested to hear what I just learned."

* * *

Oohoohoohooo. I think my spine tingled when I wrote that last line. I sure as hell am looking forward to writing the next Star Wars chapter, and I hope that all of you are as eager for it to come about as I am. As Aayla can attest to, an angry Grievous is definitely a sight to see, even if it is a terrifying one at the same time.

But before that, the next Impmon chapter is in the waiting. Once again, I'd like to thank **Bookworm Gal** for the help she gave me many months ago with regards to some of HYPNOS' technical issues, as I'm sure it will come in handy in the next chapter.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The Tamers and their Digimon, along with Impmon's former companions head for the HYPNOS building as instructed, to finally see the portal machine in all its glory. A lot of technical talk awaits as they explain how it will work, but they discover a terrible truth about the machine which successfully puts a downer on everyone's spirits.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 175 : Complete**


	175. Complete

I see that the ending to the last chapter was quite well received and many of you will anxiously be waiting to hear what happens next, but I'm afraid we have to get through this chapter first.

This is the chapter that I was probably least looking forward to writing throughout the whole story, simply because I'm not very good at inventing technical stuff. I can explain it, which is why I've never had a problem with talking about Star Wars machines, because the information is all already at my fingertips via Wookieepedia or something. Anyway, it took me a while to get into the swing of the chapter, but I eventually got it going and actually I quite enjoyed the result, as there is still quite a lot of emotion in it despite the technical garbage.

Hope you like the result and my apologies for its lateness.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 175:- Complete**

* * *

When Lilamon woke up to feel wood under her back and see leaves over her head, for a moment, she thought that she was back in her glade in the Digital World and everything that had happened since she had left it was just the biggest, craziest, most wackazoid dream she had ever had in her entire life. But when she turned her head to see the walls surrounding the perimeter and the house that was standing nearby, combined with the fact that there was only one tree and she was in it, she realised that was not the case.

Diatrymon was already up. Lilamon could see him standing beside the gates like some weird, feathered sentinel. He had pushed the gates open with his beak and was staring out into the street beyond with fascination.

Lilamon sat up and fell off her branch, twisting in the air to swoop low over the grass and the sleeping form of Wingdramon as she moved over towards the Ancient Bird, twirling up through the air and landing on the wall beside the gates. She had to admit that the landscape beyond was very different from anything she was used to. The paved road, the street lamps, the houses arranged in rows on either side of the road like boxes. A far cry from the endless hills and fields that she was used to.

"How you holding up there, Diatrymon?" she called down.

Diatrymon shook his head and ruffled his feathers before replying with, "To be honest, I don't know. Everything looks so weird and... and... unnatural. Walking through this world is just plain awkward for me – I'm used to my claws sinking into the turf, not skittering against this concrete stuff. I wonder if I'd ever get used to living in a place like this."

"Me neither," agreed Lilamon, looking up above the houses towards the cityscape all around them and the massive towers sprawling as far as she could make out. She wondered how big the Human World was, and how much of it was like this. It was as fascinating as it was scary for her. And the idea that she didn't gave to worry about a Data Stream coming out of nowhere and scooping her up was just plain weird.

She heard a high-pitched scream from down below and she looked to see that a small girl stepping out of the house at the opposite end of the street had spotted Diatrymon and immediately turned and ran back into the house, screeching her head off. Lilamon chuckled. It seems that most humans found most things scary in her view, especially if they weren't human.

An older woman stepped out of the house to have a look and paled when she set eyes on the same, vicious looking bird. Lilamon decided to try and allay the situation by shouting, "Hey, he's fine. He's a vegetarian." This wasn't strictly true but since Digimon didn't need to eat in their own world and there was no meat available to Diatrymon because the only creatures who lived there vaporised into data if killed, the only thing he had ever eaten was fruit, and bread and chocolate since coming here.

Diatrymon turned around and stepped out of sight before he could cause any more alarm and said, "I don't get why everyone here seems to find me so terrifying. I don't do anything to alarm them, do I? It's not like I charge at them screeching."

Lilamon shrugged. "Humans. Can't figure them out, I suppose."

"Yeah," agreed the bird and stepped onto the grass where he felt more comfortable.

It was at this point that Wingdramon woke up and raised his small head, lifting his massive wings into the air and fanning them out as far as they would go, casting a large patch of grass in shadow in the early morning sun. "Good morning," he replied.

"Weird morning more like," Lilamon replied. "Look at the light source here. There's just some kind of weird orange ball on the horizon that's glowing and gradually making everything brighter instead of just going from dark to light instantly. This place is just plain odd. How many more times am I going to see something that's going to completely blow my mind before I run out of things to be surprised by?"

"Probably never," Diatrymon chuckled, as Wingdramon raised himself into the air and hovered up, and over the wall, causing the little girl who had been coaxed out of the house once again by her mother to scream even louder and bolt back in and slam the door. Lilamon giggled, and Wingdramon didn't seem to notice.

The dragon began to do circuits of the house like a giant vulture in an attempt to warm up a bit more and then shook himself before saying, "Well, our first night in the Human World has come and gone. You guys alright?"

"I'm fine," Lilamon nodded.

"Well, I'm not," Diatrymon ruffled himself. "You sleep like a log, Lilamon, but I kept hearing noises of those car things moving around in the distance and occasionally coming closer throughout the whole night. It was quite annoying."

"At least it didn't... what was the word..." Wingdramon frowned as he tried to recall what Impmon had told him. "...rain? Yes, that's it."

"Pfft, rain," Lilamon waved a petalled hand airily. "I'll believe that water falls from the sky when I see it. The Digital World's got some weird stuff in it, granted, but water falling from the sky. Please – that's just too odd. How does it get up there?"

"Don't ask me," Wingdramon chuckled. "How should I know?"

"It does sound pretty random," agreed Diatrymon. "And it makes no sense at all. I'm with Lilamon on that score. And what the heck are those white, fluffy things in the sky anyway? They look like the shed coats of Sheepmon that are just floating around up there."

"And what's the point of all those towers over there?" Lilamon agreed. "Surely one person doesn't need a building that tall to live in do they?"

"So many questions," Wingdramon smiled. "But I think that there's one questions that tops all others right now and that is – how did those guys who said they were working on that portal machine do since we saw them at that bakery place?"

Lilamon and Diatrymon exchanged a look and nodded in agreement. The weirdness of the Human World had managed to partially block Impmon from their immediate thoughts, but he was never really far away from their minds, always hovering in the background like a mischievous little... well, imp. Torturing their imaginations with what kind of torture he might be being put through right now."

"What are the odds that they've finished the thing and we can head to the Dark Ocean and rescue him today?" Diatrymon asked.

"No idea," Lilamon replied. "But whatever the case, I _really_ hope that it's soon. The sooner we rescue Impmon the better." She sighed and murmured, "But whatever the case, we're going to be too late to stop something anyway. The Prophecy said so."

"That may be," Wingdramon replied. "And it mentioned the evil of a demon being reborn. Now, we mustn't jump to conclusions about what that means but whatever the case, I think that we can safely say that we'll all do everything in our power to make things alright again."

"Definitely," Lilamon nodded. "If Impmon goes evil then I'll slap some sense back into him if I have to."

Diatrymon chuckled and said, "I'd love to see that."

"Shut up, you," Lilamon pouted.

Wingdramon lowered himself down and looked towards the house. "It's early morning," he observed. "That means we should be heading to that HYPNOS place relatively soon. Nobody told us where it is last night, did they?"

"Nope," Lilamon shook her head.

"Uh-uh," Diatrymon confirmed.

"Then I guess the people who live here, the Nonakas, will have to show us the way," Wingdramon nodded. "Does anyone know how we go about waking them up?"

Diatrymon stepped towards the house. Lilamon was about to cry out to get him to stop, as they had learned that Diatrymon was a walking disaster when it came to this world.

But she was too late. The Nonaka household was one of those Japanese houses with fusuma doors, meaning they were made of wood and paper to act more like a screen than an actual door, and Diatrymon ended up putting his bladed wing right through as he reached up to tap it experimentally. He squawked and pulled backwards, but the tip of his claw embedded itself in the wood and he ended up yanking the door clean off and sending it crashing to the floor.

Diatrymon looked incredibly embarrassed and turned to look through the gap he had just made to see the Nonakas were already up – with Seiko and Rumiko drinking cups of coffee while Isis munched on some bacon from her bowl. The two women were staring at the Ancient Bird in bemusement before Seiko said, "You know, you only had to knock if you wanted to get our attention."

"Sorry," Diatrymon muttered and tapped the fallen door with his claws. "I didn't mean to do that."

"No matter," sighed Rumiko. "Fusuma doors are relatively cheap and easy to come by around here anyway. I take it that you guys are anxious to get going."

"Pretty much," Wingdramon nodded, dipping his head into view. "It has been eating away at our thoughts for a while."

"You can say that again," Rumiko sighed sadly. "We've been waiting for the machine that might finally bring my daughter back to me for months now." She sniffed and rubbed her eyes as they began to well up and she mumbled, "I miss my baby girl."

Lilamon appeared at the door and looked in as Seiko patted Rumiko's shoulder and murmured, "There, there, dear. I'm sure that it will all be over soon, and it won't be long now before Rika is finally back in our arms."

"I know, mother," Rumiko sighed. "I just... I just miss her so much, that every minute that she's in that alternate dimensions makes my heart ache."

Lilamon frowned and stepped through the door and said, "Your daughter's one of the Tamers of the Prophecy Trio right? The Renamon, I believe."

"Yes, that's the one," Rumiko nodded. "Heh. It seems that just about everybody knows about her these days. She's more famous than I ever was. The number of times I've been asked if I've heard any news about her by people I don't even know..." she trailed off, but Lilamon heard her add, "Not that her father seems to care that she's gone missing."

Seiko winced at those words.

Lilamon placed a petalled hand over the young model's and said, "Well, I'll tell you what. The moment we've finished using that portal to go and get Impmon back, we'll go and get Rika and the others back from whatever universe they've landed themselves in."

Rumiko looked up, her eyes shining slightly. "You will?" she asked. "But you don't even know her."

"So?" Lilamon shrugged. "I barely knew Impmon when I met him again but I helped him. Do you always need to know someone before you go and help them out? If you need a reason then you can consider it repayment for letting us spend the night here. And besides, I knows for a fact that Impmon would say the same thing."

"That's true," Diatrymon agreed. "He always talked about them when we made camp or when we doing just about anything that wasn't running for our lives."

Lilamon nodded. "That's true. Impmon's in more immediate danger than Rika as far as we know so we'll use it to save him first, but right after, you can bet we'll bring your daughter back."

A few moment later and Rumiko nodded, and smiled. "Thank you," she murmured. "That does make me feel better."

Lilamon grinned, and then noticed that her petals were getting hot. She looked down and realised she'd shifted position and the tips of her petals were close to touching the mug that was between Rumiko's arms. Experimentally, she pulled away with one hand and laid one petal on the side of the mug, immediately recoiling with a yowl and shaking it a moment later.

"Agh, that's boiling," she cried. She looked in at the coffee inside and looked up at Rumiko incredulously. "You guys can drink stuff that hot?"

"Yep," Rumiko nodded and picked it up by the handle for a sip. "Let us finish up here and then we'll head straight for the HYPNOS building to find out their report."

Lilamon nodded and turned away, shaking her burning petal as she moved back outside. Wingdramon chuckled as she moved back out into the sunlight and said, "You know, Lilamon, if I had just met you when you gave those words of comfort, I'd be completely fooled into thinking you were mature."

"Bite me," Lilamon poked her tongue out at him.

"Considering the size of his teeth you might want to renege that," Diatrymon snorted.

* * *

About ten minutes later and they were on their way. Wingdramon had learned from the last time to stay up above the buildings when he was on the wing, as he preferred to be, because if you flew through the streets, you collided with wires that humans seemed to like stringing between their buildings, plus less people freaked out if you were a distant shadow in the sky, and he could still keep an eye on the Nonaka car anyway.

Diatrymon did not have that luxury, and he refused to let Wingdramon carry him at a height that would kill him if he were dropped. So he dashed along the side of the road, marking the car as it went through the streets and followed its progress. The bird kept his wings tightly folded at all times and tucked his head as close to his body as his armoured neck would allow to minimise the damage he caused, but he still managed to knock over several litter bins, crack a shop window and step on a dog poop.

Which was far from pleasant.

And what was Lilamon doing? Well, she was currently sitting _on top_ of the Nonakas car, since she thought the inside didn't really agree with her, since the seatbelt pushed her into the seat and crushed the flower on her back. She had hooked her petals over the front and was being given a free ride in the fresh air.

A policeman saw her and was prepared to come over and stop something which was clearly against the rule until he saw that the woman riding on top of the car was a fairy Digimon and not a human. He just faltered and stared at her as she passed, not returning the wave she gave him. Digimon riding on cars were not in his jurisdiction.

Eventually they arrived the at the HYPNOS towers and Wingdramon did a couple of circuits around and between the towers before he moved down to join the others by the doors. As Lilamon hopped off the car and Diatrymon stepped up next to him, another dragon in the form of Cyberdramon pulled in to land nearby, with a certain Tamer on his back.

"Hey, guys," Ryo said as he hopped off. "How was the night?"

"Let's just say it was a new experience and leave it at that," Diatrymon replied.

"Ah. Okay," Ryo nodded. He smiled politely at Rumiko and Seiko as they exited the car and said, "Big day, huh?"

"Hopefully, yes," nodded Seiko.

"Well," Ryo said, "I'm sure they'll have some good news for us. I mean, the guys that work up there haven't let us down before."

"Though they did send us back to the Digital World as a result of beating the D-Reaper," Cyberdramon growled.

"Always picking up on the bad points, aren't you?" Ryo rolled his eyes. "In any case, that probably won't be happening this time."

"The portal machine that your friends have been making is up there then?" Lilamon asked, pointing up towards the massive towers that stretched up to a stupendous height above her head.

"That's the one," Ryo nodded.

"How the heck am I supposed to get up there?" Diatrymon asked. "How the heck do _you_ guys get up there? That looks like a long climb."

"Eh, there's an elevator," Ryo waved a hand.

"A what-now?" Diatrymon blinked.

"Never mind. We'll figure out a way to get you up there, though now I think about it putting you in an elevator might end up damaging it," Ryo mumbled. He then shrugged and said, "Eh, well, you could probably cut your way out if something happened. As for you Wingdramon, you'll probably have to get inside through a window up at the top. There might be one big enough, though it may be a bit of a squeeze."

"I'm beginning to get used to that," Wingdramon chuckled. "I understand that I'm not really built for this world."

"You can say that again," Lilamon snorted as Wingdramon's long trailing tail knocked over another litter bin.

It was at this point that another car pulled up beside them, which all of them knew to mean that some other Tamers had arrived since all the other cars were moving past them as quickly as possible so as to get by the dragon and the ferocious looking bird. Sure enough, Ai and Mako got out the back seats of the car, while both their parents stepped out the front.

"Hey guys," Mako waved over to the group.

"Hey kiddoes," Lilamon greeted. "You guys as up for some good news as we are?"

"Yeah," nodded Ai sadly. "I'm getting more and more worried about Impmon. I want to go and save him right now."

"We all do," nodded Ryo. "Impmon's tough though. I'm sure he'll be able to hold out for a long time but we're not about to abandon him just because there's the wall between two different dimensions separating us from him, right guys?"

There was an affirmative response from all the Digimon present, eve Cyberdramon, though that might have been because he was eager for a good fight rather than out of a lot of concern for Impmon. At least that's what it might be on the surface, but Ryo knew that he did care on a surprisingly high level. Just expect to be mauled if you mentioned it to him.

"Who knew that something like this would happen, huh?" Lilamon observed. "All those months ago when we helped you guys find GranKuwagamon to help with your machine thingie, who would have ever thought that it would end up like this? It's a good thing that Impmon did go on that quest to find a way of crossing to another dimension. He's secured his own rescue by doing that."

"Assuming we can break through GranDracmon's forces, yeah," Ryo nodded. "We are going to be facing some tough competition out there, and they will probably have a lot more numbers on their side than ours."

"We'll handle it," Diatrymon growled.

"We _have_ to handle it," Lilamon agreed.

"We'll get Impmon back even if we have to go through one-hundred Apocalymon," Ai agreed, and Mako cried out with in instant, "Yeah!"

"Oh, jeez, I hope it doesn't come to that," Ryo blanched at the mere thought. "But I agree with the point that you're making."

Wingdramon suddenly looked up at the sound of wings above his head – wings that were flapping so fast that they were creating a buzzing sound that throbbed through the air and made vibrations on his wingtips. He spotted a large, black beetle-Digimon descending towards them and his pointed face immediately began to sport a grin.

"Well, look who it is," he declared, causing everyone else to look up as well.

"Hey, it's GranDad," Lilamon grinned and clapped her hands together in delight as the former resident of the Forest Level touched down next to them, adding another giant and terrifying looking creature to the side of the road which prompted the cars to go even faster, though many of them had seen this particular bug flying around before. "How've you been? It's been ages since we last saw you?"

"Months in fact," Diatrymon nodded. "How's the Human World been treating you? Better than it has us, I hope."

"You mean better than you have it," Seiko chuckled.

GranKuwagamon didn't say anything for several seconds. Apparently his prolonged stay in the Human World, surrounded by people constantly talking and chatting to one another, had done little to make him any more talkative, but then he merely said, in his deep voice, "I have been well. I am enjoying the food here. Have you tried ice cream yet?"

"No, but I intend to at the earliest opportunity," Lilamon immediately declared.

"It's weird isn't it?" Ai murmured to Mako. "How the bug that we went to find to help the others and the guy who has been chasing Impmon around for ages both have names that start with the word Gran. Why do you think that is anyway? Neither of them look like old ladies."

"I don't know," shrugged Mako. "But it can't mean evil otherwise GranKuwagamon wouldn't be helping us."

"Hey, GranDad, could you give us the lowdown of what's happening up there now?" Lilamon enquired of the insect Digimon.

GranKuwagamon shook his head, his massive pincers moving from side to side with the rest of his head like a pair of branches swaying in a violent wind. "No," he said. "It's very complicated. It would probably be better for you to see what they are talking about when they are talking about it."

"Fair enough," Lilamon shrugged.

"How have you been yourselves?" the bug then added and settled back as if that was all the talking he was prepared to do today.

"Oh, other that fighting and running for our lives all the time for the last couple of weeks, we haven't been doing so badly, right?" Diatrymon supplied. "You'll be pleased to know that Lilamon hasn't changed much. She still likes to poke you awake and throw fruit at you at every possible opportunity."

"Why change? It's fun," Lilamon grinned. "But, I think that's enough talking. How about we get up there and have a look around and see this big machine portal whatever thing for ourselves."

"Alright, but if I were you, I wouldn't call it a big machine portal whatever thing in front of Yamaki or the Monster Makers," Ryo chuckled. "They take great pride in their work. "Just call it the portal machine if you have to call it something."

"Okiedokie," Lilamon nodded and held up two petals in a piece sign and winked simultaneously.

Ryo chuckled and turned to GranKuwagamon to ask, "Hey, are the others already up there?"

"Most," GranKuwagamo agreed before he pushed off from the ground and began to flap his four wings at tremendous velocity once again to head up towards the top of the building. Wingdramon followed his progress before stretching his wings and saying, "Well, I guess I'll see you guys up there, assuming I can fit through one of these window thingies."

He then powered upwards and followed the Mega Digimon up towards the distance rooftops of the towers up above.

"Well, follow me," Ryo said as he stepped towards the front doors and everyone quickly followed. He stepped through and held open the doors for the others. That part was no trouble for Diatrymon. If Cyberdramon could fit through the front door easily then he definitely could. The receptionist waved them by as she usually did, but she looked up in amazement as she watched Lilamon and Diatrymon walk past the desk and follow Ryo towards the elevators.

* * *

The ride upwards was one of the weirdest sensations that either of the two Digimon had ever felt. It was like a Data Stream pulling them upwards, except instead of being tossed all over the place like rags the only thing they felt was a slight rumbling sound. There were too many of them to travel up in one go, so the two newer Digimon rode up with the Terada family.

Diatrymon was careful not to touch anything. He didn't want to break anything in a small room like this. He could tell that it was moving and if he broke something then it might stop working.

Sure enough, a few minutes later and the doors slid open once more, and Lilamon and Diatrymon stepped out of the elevator with awe as they beheld a completely different room.

Everything around them seemed so artificial compared to the natural setting of the Digital World, and considering that, in actual fact, both were made by humans, this was saying something. A number of people lined the walls, criss-crossing on various platforms and monitoring pieces of machinery and the ceiling appeared to dome outwards. An old mechanical arm, which had used to be what the people who worked here sat on when they were monitoring the Digital barrier, was folded up and placed against the wall.

The room was open to the air, as a section of the domed roof had been removed and the middle of the room was taken up by what could only be the portal machine. Ai and Mako stared at it – it had changed quite a lot since the last time they had been up here and seen it. The glass corridor that had been built had been removed, and now the main bulk of the machine lay at one end of the room, in a huge jumble of turbines and wires that made no sense to any of them, but probably did to the people who built the thing.

It also appeared to be bolted to the floor.

The generator itself was detached from the rest of the machine and consisted of a pair of devices which, for lack of a better word, looked like giant laser guns or something, and which were pointing towards the wall. They were attached to the main bulk of the portal machine via a series of wires and tubes that were designed to transmit a heck of a lot of power into the generators, which would probably generate the portal needed.

Hopefully.

The people in question, the Monster Makers, were crowded around it, painstakingly making some adjustments to the machinery with pliers and other tiny instruments, all at various levels. Nobody was daring to move faster than a few centimetres a second anywhere near the machine. It seemed that it was a lot more delicate than it looked.

The two Digimon were amazed at the variety of different people around them. They were both pretty sure that if they ran into a member of their type of Digimon, they would look pretty much exactly the same as they did, yet these humans were different. They all had a similar body plan but they came in an unending diversity of forms, with different hair colours, skin colours, heights and breadths and the clothing which they wore was all different too. It was astounding.

The blond haired Yamaki was standing nearby and overseeing everything, his lighter absent-mindedly being flicked in his hand as per usual as he walked around the machine and the people working on it, scrutinising what they were doing. Every now and then he would step forward to quietly ask a question of one of them, and he would receive a quick reply before he nodded in satisfaction and moved away again.

"Whoa," Lilamon murmured. "This is some serious stuff right here."

"And it makes absolutely no sense to me," Diatrymon observed. "Anyone else."

"Whatever it is, this thing is our only hope for getting Impmon back," Mrs. Terada added.

"It doesn't particularly look like much," Ai said.

"Well, it's not what it looks like that matters," the father of the twins pointed out. "It's whether or not it worked that is the key here."

Not far away stood Ryo and Cyberdramon, and the Tamer was talking quietly to Kenta, Takato and Jeri, who had apparently arrived before the others did. Kazu wasn't here, which made him the last to arrive. Ryo turned and waved over the others and they quickly moved over to join him.

"Do we know if it's going to work yet?" Ai asked.

"Well, we asked," Takato murmured. "But they insisted that we wait until everybody had arrived before they started talking about anything technical so that they wouldn't have to explain it again. Suffice to say though, they've been working flat out on this thing for quite some time now. Last time I saw it there was this glass corridor between the main machine bit there and those two generators, so that the portal could be made inside the corridor at one end so people outside would be protected from backlash, and someone could walk in the other end and head through the portal before it shut. But they've changed it now."

"Probably because they heard that the Sovereigns were going to come and help," added Guilmon helpfully.

"They're going to have a problem fitting them into a corridor, that much is true," Ryo chuckled. "They don't even fit in the corridors of their own palaces."

"Well, I hope Kazu hurries up," Mako said. "I want to know when we can go."

Suddenly GranKuwagamon buzzed into the room through the small section of the roof that had been removed, probably for his continued entrance and exit to the building whenever her felt like it. The small amount of sunlight that was filtering through the hole was blocked off a moment later by Wingdramon's massive wingspan. The dragon peered into the room and sighed, before folding his wings tightly against his side and attempting to squeeze himself through the gap.

The lance on his back still ripped a large section of the roof off before he managed it, but the blue winged lizard did manage to get himself through. The chunk of ceiling was batted away by his tail to clatter harmlessly against the wall nearby and the dragon snapped his wings out with a sound like a ship's sail billowing in the wind as he caught himself before he fell on top of the generators.

"Whoo, that was close," he observed as he levitated over to the others and ignored the stares of the people all around them. "I hope I don't have to squeeze my way in too many more times or else I made end up damaging something."

"Or better yet, someone could try and arrange an alternate way for you to get in," Elecmon chuckled. "That piece of wall over there isn't doing anything after all. Is it really needed?"

Wingdramon snorted and hovered over the others, his reptilian gaze passing over the machine. "So this is what we're going to be using, is it?" he asked. "Looks very complex."

"Well, it's taken them several months to build the thing," Kenta supplied. "I would be a bit worried if it weren't complicated."

"True, true," MarineAngemon bobbed his head loyally.

"I see that most of the gang is here," Yamaki said as he walked over to the group. "We're still waiting on Kazu and Guardromon then?"

"Perhaps Guardromon got stuck in the lift again," suggested Takato.

"Oh, I hope not," Yamaki sighed. "It took us two hours to force him out again last time. Anyway, now that the newcomers are all here," he nodded to the three Digimon that had arrived yesterday, "I suppose we could start with some introductions. This ought to be an interesting meeting for you, as these people behind me are the people responsible for creating Digimon in the first place."

"Ooh, really?" Lilamon gasped. "Oh, how cool is that? So they're like our mothers and fathers right?"

Yamaki blinked, though it would take a trained eye to spot it considering he was wearing his sunglasses even now. "Um... yes, if you want to put it that way." He cleared his throat and said, "Anyway, these people are the Monster Makers. You've already met Janyu Wong, father of Henry and Suzie Wong, the Tamers of Terriermon and Lopmon and two of the three missing children."

Janyu looked up and waved. Wingdramon nodded back and said, "I suppose you're just as anxious to see this machine completed as we are, but for another reason."

"Yes, I... suppose you could say that," Janyu murmured quietly, and Wingdramon frowned as he took in the relatively solemn look on the man's face. What could that mean? "My children have been gone for so long now that it almost seems as though they're never coming back," he sighed, and continued to work on the machine behind him.

"Poor guy," Lilamon whispered to Diatrymon, who nodded in response.

One by one the other humans crowded around the machine were introduced to the three new Digimon, along with the code-names that they used among themselves. Shibumi nodded and shook Lilamon's hand, and then looked slightly apprehensive about what to do concerning the other two. Eventually he shook Wingdramon's massive hand as well and gave Diatrymon a light punch on the shoulder as that seemed to be the most appropriate greeting gesture he could manage.

It still hurt his hand though.

Dolphin raised his glasses to them and said, "A pleasure," before returning to his work, as he was one of the brainiest of the group and had been responsible for a lot of the work that had been put into the portal machine.

Daisy seemed particularly interested in Lilamon and observed that it was nice to have another girl Digimon about the place, since the only ones that had been around since the disappearance of Renamon and Lopmon had been male.

Curly seemed more interested in Wingdramon and began to ask him questions about his wings and how they repelled gravity like they did, none of which Wingdramon was really able to answer – his wings repelled gravity and that was all there had ever been to it for him.

And lastly there was Babel, who merely looked towards Diatrymon, whistled and said, "Man, that guy looks badass."

"That's a good thing, right?" Diatrymon turned to ask Cyberdramon. The dragon merely nodded and Diatrymon said, "Yeah, I thought so."

"These people here are the real masterminds behind the portal machine and just about anything to do with Digmon-related problems," Yamaki explained. "Ever since they learned that their old college project had grown into such large proportions they've become fully employed agents of ours trying to help us deal with some of the issues it has raised."

"Large proportions is right," Curly sighed. "Who would have thought that such an innocent little project for college would end up causing children to get whisked to other dimensions or fight among itself from control of the whole world."

"Guess it just goes to show that you should be careful with what you make," Dolphin agreed.

"Well, I wouldn't say that the result of your work is _all_ bad, would you?" Lilamon asked. "I, for one, am pretty glad that you guys made us, although... that really is a weird sounding phrase, isn't it?"

"You're telling us," Daisy chuckled. "We still receive surprises on practically a day to day basis due to our harmless creativity back in the old days. I wonder just how many more surprises we'll be getting before this is all over."

"Probably quite a few," murmured Riley as the red-headed woman walked over laden with a tray of biscuits. She and Tally had been contributing to the work on the machine of course, but though they were smart they did not have the skills of the Monster Makers. They spent a lot of time monitoring the Digital Barrier just in case like old times and also providing GranKuwagamon with the food that he now needed since he was living here because few of the other employs even dared to get close to the vicious looking bug.

"Thanks, Riley," said Jeri, as she took a biscuit. "Hobnob, guys?"

"Pardon?" Lilamon asked. "Is that a rude word? Because it sounds like one."

It was at that point that Kazu finally arrived and Guardromon stepped out of the lift behind his Tamer looking slightly chastened. The others turned around to see what they were doing just in time to hear the robot saying, "I said I was sorry, Kazu."

"Sorry doesn't change the fact that you almost fell on me when the lift started up. Again," Kazu shook his head. "And you still managed to bat me into the wall with one arm. Sometimes, I wonder why I keep you around."

Guardromon gasped... somehow, and said, "Oh, you don't really mean that, do you, Kazu?"

"Of course not," Kazu shook his head quickly. "It's just a phrase that supposed to... uh... convey exasperation," he said. "I don't really want you gone."

He turned around to the others and said, "Are we late?"

"No, not really," Janyu said as he shut a panel of the machine and stood up to wipe the sweat from his brow. "You're just in time. I suppose we should make a start with the explanations then. Just before we begin though, is everything going to be set?"

"Tally's overseeing our proceedings at Shinjuku park," Riley nodded as she tossed several custard creams into the air for Wingdramon to snap up and then yelped and stepped back as Diatrymon took the rest of them in one bite.

"And I've already spoken to the authorities regarding the little side-effect we mentioned," Yamaki nodded. "I'm sure the people will be prepared for it, though many of them may not exactly be happy about it."

"Very well," he said. "Dolphin, you're one of the best with explanations. Would you like to walk everyone through what this machine does and some of the limitations and problems that we'll probably be facing when the time comes?"

Dolphin nodded and stood up, allowing Curly to take his place with some careful wire arrangement as he dusted off his hands and said, "Well, where to begin. As some of you may already know, these generators here are designed to replicate GranKuwagamon's Dimension Scissors attack. We carefully analysed his Digital Structure to find a way of artificially rebuilding it, and while I won't bore you with the incredibly complex details about how we went about it, each of these two generators are designed to act like one of GranKuwagamon's pincers. Each one will shoot a highly condensed beam of energy and when those two beams collide, the portal will be created by cutting through the fabric of space and time."

"So, you've done it then?" Takato asked. "You've managed to get it to work."

"Once," Babel raised a finger without looking up from his work. "And the hole we created was tiny. And let me tell you we had to do a whole lot of calculations to ensure that the hole would close itself again after we've made it, as it does when GranKuwagamon uses it before we even thought of testing it out."

"That much is true," Shibumi agreed. "We wouldn't want to leave a gaping hole in the middle of the Tokyo Metropolitan museum that remains there for all time."

"Yeah, that would be bad," Kazu hissed at the idea.

"But of course, with such a complicated piece of equipment there is always going to be a few problems," Dolphin sighed. "Some of you may know this too, but the energy formed by GranKuwagamon and now by these generators must be of a certain wavelength to cut through the fabric of space and time instead of physical things alone and an incredibly powerful wavelength too. That's one of the main reasons we've been taking so long with this project. Replicating such a thing was not easy power-wise."

"But you managed it eventually," Kenta put in.

"Well, actually no we haven't," Dolphin shook his head. "We'd need too much power for a test run even if the hole we were opening was a mere centimetre wide. But though the wavelength itself is relatively easy to reach, we're going to need a whole lot of power to generate it enough to create a large portal. The bare minimum for a small portal would be blacking out half of Japan. If we're going to create a portal large enough for the Sovereign Digimon and their forces to move through along with you guys..."

"Yowch," Ryo murmured. "That's a lot of power. And you'd need a massive portal, possibly even half a mile high to fit someone like Azulongmon or Ebonwumon through it. How much power are we talking about there?"

"We're not sure," Yamaki replied. "But whatever figure it is, it's going to be enough to wipe out all of Japan's power for approximately an hour and a half or so and we may even need to leech power from other countries across the sea. The authorities were not happy when I informed them of this, and were reluctant to even consider launching this rescue mission. But, I soon took care of their objections."

"How?" asked Takato.

"You didn't blackmail them or something, did you?" Elecmon asked.

"Not really," Yamaki smirked. "I merely pointed out to them that if we don't take the fight to GranDracmon now before he can gain more power then he could end up invading the Human World and there would be almost nothing any of us, including you Tamers, could do to stop him then, and that if we can get Impmon back then perhaps we can stop him from invading entirely."

"Ah, the truth is quite often the best weapon," Ryo nodded.

"And that's the truth of it," Kazu quipped.

"Anyway," Dolphin voiced as he pressed on. "There is one other matter to attend to beside the power levels, which we believe we have sorted out, even if the public and the authorities aren't going to like the result of it – the police forces are already on high alert and waiting for riots to start when the power does go out. The bigger problem is getting to the correct universe. The frequency of the wavelength for picking a certain universe is even smaller and more difficult to get than the wavelength itself.."

"How much smaller?" Takato asked.

"The most miniscule scale possible," Dolphin sighed. "Almost unreadable on our machines even with the highest advancements in our technology so far and that is going to make things just plain awkward. For instance, we have absolutely no way of knowing which frequency will lead to which universe, and that's our biggest problem so far. Good news and bad news kinda thing here?"

"Well, let's start with the good news," Jeri said hopefully.

"Well, the good news is that we are pretty sure that when we try and make that portal it _is_ going to work, and we should have it done within a few more hours."

"Well, that's great!" Lilamon cried. "We're gonna have Impmon back in no time flat."

"Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" Calumon bounced around, he had come with Jeri and the others, and he landed in front of the twins and said, "Isn't that awesome? Impmon's going to be okay after all."

"Uh-huh," the twins nodded enthusiastically.

"And then there's the bad news," Dolphin said, "and that is actually twofold. The smaller amount of bad news is, as I said, that we don't know what frequency to use to get the portal that we create to lead to the Dark Ocean and not some other dimension. The slightest alteration in frequency could mean that we land the Sovereigns and you guys in a completely alternate reality with no way back, and that would be a disaster, and not just because of the principal. You guys are, after all, our only hope in stopping this threat from happening in the first place."

"So, what are you going to do about that?" Wingdramon asked. "Do you have a solution to the problem?"

"We think so," Janyu said as he stood up. "I've seen more of the bond between you Digimon and the Tamers than most people and have observed the work you do closer than the rest of this group and I know for a fact that the D-Arc is linked to your Digimon, is it not? You can transmit signals through your D-Arc to your Digimon, which is what allows you to change their attributes with Modify Cards, make them stronger and even merge with them by combining their data with the data stored in each one of you."

"Thanks to Dobermon, yes," Takato nodded.

"And even now, the D-Arc is telling you the Impmon is still alive, right kids?" Janyu asked of the two twins.

"Yeah," nodded Ai, holding up the small device, which had the locator option up, but the arrow was just spinning in circles instead of pointing somewhere in particular like a compass which was being interfered with by a magnetic field. It wasn't covered in static like Jeri's had been when Leomon had died.

"Well," said Janyu. "I believe, and this is just a theory, mind you, but I think it's one that will work when put into effect, that if we link up Ai and Mako's D-Arc to the machine as a base, then with the right calculations, the machine can lock onto Impmon's faint signal that is still being transmitted out of the D-Arc and we can set the machine to transmit the frequency that will take us to the universe where he is right now. And that's the Dark Ocean, is it not?"

"It certainly is," nodded Diatrymon.

"Well, that sounds good enough for me," grinned Ryo.

"Yeah... very... science-y," Kazu agreed, which everyone, even the people who didn't personally know him, knew meant that he hadn't completely understood what Janyu had just said.

"So, what's the plan for the portal anyway?" asked Ryo. "Since we can't make one in here."

"That's what Tally's doing," Riley supplied. "She's motivating the police force to seal off the Shinjuku Park for the rest of the day, since that's the largest space we have. We're planning to link up the generators to that thing," she pointed to mechanical arm resting against the wall, "to lift it up so that it can shoot the energy beams needed to create the portal out through there," she indicated the gap in the roof, "and fire them towards the park at an angle that will cause the beams to collide over it and create the portal there."

"That should do it," nodded Takato. "Even Ebonwumon might be able to use it if you do that. Though, he'll still probably end up crushing half the park beneath him, and Baihumon won't be much better."

"That's a chance we have to take to save, Impmon," Jeri said firmly.

"Hell, yeah," nodded Lilamon.

"Speaking of Impmon," added Shibumi. "It's imperative that you rescue him for a reason other than it being the right thing to do. Creating the portal is going to be difficult enough, but maintaining the thing for long is going to be completely impossible.

Babel continued with, "We've estimated that, at a stretch, we could probably keep it open for about two minutes, which should hopefully be enough time for all of you to get to the Dark Ocean. Getting you _out_ of the Dark Ocean won't be possible for us, especially since I am assuming Ai and Mako will be taking their D-Arc with them."

"Definitely," nodded Ai.

"That means that, if what we've come to understand about the reason behind Impmon's kidnapping is true, Beelzemon is the only one who will be able to get you out of the Dark Ocean once you've done in there."

"No pressure then," sighed Ryo. "That's going to mean we have a very tight schedule indeed."

"But we should succeed," Diatrymon said, though he didn't sound all that sure. "I mean, the last line of the prophecy about all this was 'Once abolished is the hate.' That's got to mean we do it, right?"

"We can only hope," Elecmon supplied.

"Hold on a second," Guardromon raised a metallic finger and said, "I just thought of something. If you can only hold the portal open for two minutes, but you need Ai and Mako's D-Arc as a base then how are they going to be able to reach the portal with it in time if it's at Shinjuku Park?"

"Whoa, that's a good point," Kazu said. "I'm impressed, Guardromon."

"Why thank you," the robot said.

"To be honest, we're not sure," Daisy said, but before she could go any further, she was interrupted.

"Leave that to me," Wingdramon said. "I'm a very fast flyer. If they unplug the D-Arc and get on my back quickly enough then I should be able to get them to the portal before it shuts, and maybe slip through it. Unless someone with a teleportation ability comes along for the ride."

"I don't think so," Ryo shook his head. "Rika was the only one of us with a card that would allow teleportation and she had it with her when she left I think. That Piedmon card is a very rare one."

"Then it looks like that'll be my job," Wingdramon nodded.

"Trust us, he is uber fast when he wants to be," Lilamon nodded. "If anyone can do it, it's Wingdramon."

"Good to hear," Jeri smiled.

"Well, there are many variables that could go wrong with this plan," Ryo murmured. As the oldest Tamer, he felt that he should probably be taking the lead with this, and none of the other Tamers raised an objection to this, as all of them freely admitted that Ryo probably had the best head for planning, with Jeri in second place since Rika and Henry weren't here. "But I suppose it's the only plan that we've actually got so it will have to do. Let's just hope it works."

"It's got to work," Guilmon voiced. "It's just gotta. We can't fail now. We've saved the world before, right? So we can do it again."

"Maybe," Takato nodded, "But this time we're facing off against an opponent that's incredibly strong _and_ can think and make plans rather than mindlessly attacking like the D-Reaper mostly did. And odds are we're going to be outnumbered, boy."

"So?" Guilmon smirked. "We'll get them, won't we... Takatomon."

Takato blinked, and then smiled. It has been a while since Guilmon had called him that in a regular conversation and it was a sign that the little dinosaur was more than geared up and ready for this. Takato clenched his fist and said, "Yeah, you got it, Guilmon. We're doing this one for Impmon and we can't let him down."

Guilmon smiled and nodded happily.

"You've got spunk, little guy," Lilamon grinned, rubbing Guilmon between his bat-wing-like ears with a petal, to which Guilmon's leg promptly started going up and down like a dogs. Lilamon snickered and kept doing it, causing laughter from the various people around the room at the sight of the little dinosaur behaving like a pet.

But there were a few people that were noticeably not laughing and one of them was Cyberdramon. The dragon wasn't even looking at what the others were doing. His expressionless gaze was still fixed on the Monster Makers, who were also not laughing. The cybernetic killing machine then proceeded to ruin the mood by suddenly saying, "And the rest of the bad news is?"

That immediately stopped the laughter, and they suddenly remembered what Dolphin had said about the bad news being twofold. So far they had only heard one piece of bad news with regards to the difficulty of getting to the right dimension but the second was still a mystery. They all immediately turned to look at the Monster Makers, who had all paused in their work and were looking quite down and, on some level, guilty.

Janyu in particular seemed to be most affected. He had placed his hand against a turbine on the portal machine and was heavily leaning on it, his eyes closed and teeth clenched as if he were struggling with some emotional dilemma. Nearby, Mayumi Wong could also be seen to be acting up, burying her face in her hands as if trying not to burst into tears on the spot.

"What?" Ryo asked. "What is it?"

And Cyberdramon surprised everyone again by taking a wild stab in the dark and saying, "It's about the others, isn't it? The ones trapped in the alternate dimension thanks to Parallelmon."

Ryo and the others looked across at the dragon sharply and back to the Monster Makers with wide eyes. Lilamon's eyes drifted towards Rumiko and Seiko, who were both suddenly looking intensely worried, especially at the reaction of Mayumi to what appeared to be very bad news.

"Please understand that we've done our best so far," Dolphin sighed. "But the fact remains..." he broke off as if wrestling with his conscious before he took a deep breath and continued with, "We always knew that when we finally completed and used this portal... it was going to be a one time thing. We've taken all precautions and calibrated the machine to utilise the energy we're planning on providing it with for as long as possible, but the fact remains that the sheer amount of power we need is going to have another side-effect. There is a massively high probability that the machine will overload and it may even explode."

There was a gasp from many of the onlookers as eyes widened even further as the full implications of what the man was saying sank in.

If they used the machine to rescue Impmon, they wouldn't be able to use it to launch a rescue mission for the people who had been missing for half a year.

Lilamon felt a dull thud in her chest at the thought. She had promised Mrs. Nonaka only that morning that she and the others would help in going to rescue her daughter and the rest of the group, and suddenly that promise was being thrown back in her face as if it were a pointless piece of trash.

"But..." Ryo murmured. "But..." The old feeling of guilt that Ryo had felt at the disappearance of the others was beginning to well up inside him once more, a guilt at the fact that he had been unable to stop their departure despite his partner being able to sense the presence of the Digimon days before he actually struck. "We... we can't just... can we?"

"We will build another one," Janyu said immediately, turning around to look at them and it was clear to see the pain in the man's eyes. "We will not stop until we have gotten them back into this universe unless there is absolutely no hope left. But... well, we may have gotten all the equations and the calibrations already set out so rebuilding it will be far quicker than building it the first time was, but frankly we still have no idea what to use to get the machine to go to the dimension they are stuck in so... it will probably be another half a year before we can try again."

"But they've already been gone half a year," Jeri objected. "We can't just leave them there for _another_ half a year, can we?"

"That..." Shibumi murmured, "is the key question."

The Tamers and their Digimon partners had fallen silent, each one contemplating this new revelation in a mixture of silence and complete and utter horror. They had been waiting for so long for the opportunity to bring their friends back that the idea of the wait only being half over when they thought that it was close to being completed was just plain wrong. It was one of the most horrible experiences any of them had ever felt.

All of them missed the three missing Tamers and their Digimon on some level. Takato missed laughing with Henry at Guilmon's antics, or watching Renamon training or sitting quietly with Rika or Lopmon or running from a giggling Suzie in a game of tag. He even missed getting utterly annihilated by Terriermon in any and all video games that they played together.

Jeri missed the girl talk with Rika, although considering this was Rika any girl talk was kept to a minimum anyway.

Guilmon missed playing with Terriermon and Lopmon while Renamon watched and occasionally joined in.

Even Kazu and Kenta missed Rika to an extent. Of course, they didn't miss her occasional insults or her fiery temper, but they missed her nonetheless.

Ai and Mako definitely missed Suzie, considering she was the youngest Tamer next to them. Even now they still felt a little bit left out compared to all the other Tamers, but Suzie had always been there to level the playing field between them a little since she was about halfway between the two groups in terms of age.

Ryo missed Rika's occasional snide comments and Renamon squaring off against Cyberdramon to try and work out some of the restlessness that constantly burned in the Ultimate.

Elecmon, Guardromon, MarineAngemon, Calumon... all of them missed the missing Tamers. Terribly.

Rumiko promptly burst into tears and nobody was in the least bit surprised. Seiko tried to comfort her daughter but in reality she was having a difficult time in not crying herself. She too missed her granddaughter with a terrible burning, though she was better at keep calm then Rumiko. But, in this instance, it was not by much.

As one of the people who didn't know Rika as the others did, Lilamon was quick to step over and pull Rumiko into a hug.

The young woman immediately returned it, and Lilamon sighed as she allowed the human to cry on her shoulder. This was an altogether new experience for her – comforting a human that was so upset she was in tears, so she was trying to employ the same method that she had used when Beelzemon had accidentally almost killed those innocent Honeybeemon.

The whole group was really feeling the repercussions to this news. Since Suzie's birthday, none of them had seen anything to do with the Prophecy Trio or their Tamers except for Calumon and the three newcomers. Lilamon glanced over towards Wingdramon and Diatrymon as best she could, her eyes asking for help and Diatrymon cleared his throat and said, "If... If it makes anybody feel better, your friends were all fine the last time we checked."

"What?" Takato turned to them. "You've seen them?"

"Yeah," nodded the Ancient Bird. "It was kinda pushed from our minds thanks to this whole thing with Impmon and GranDracmon and the prophecy but the angels showed us a special mirror which allows them to watch affairs in the Digital World below and can even allow them to see into other universes."

"We saw all six of your friends and family members," Wingdramon agreed. "They were all looking in prime condition and..." he faltered for a moment, unsure how to proceed since the conversation they had witness seemed to have something to do with danger and kidnapping, so he merely said, "They certainly seem to be among friends. There was this human-like girl with them but with very pale green skin, like olive, and black dots running across the middle of her face with them and a big, furry man of some kind who looked quite formidable."

"That's true," nodded Lilamon. "I'm sure they're okay."

"But..." Ai and Mako both looked uneasy. The reactions of the parents of the missing children were making them both feel a bit selfish for wanting to go and rescue Impmon when something like that could jeopardise their chances of seeing their children again for much longer than any of them thought.

"Can we really do this?" asked Ai.

"They must be homesick," agreed Mako. "And... and we don't want to make families who have been split up be forced to stay apart."

Many of the Tamers were looking very uncomfortable now, at the prospect of doing such a thing, and the Monster Makers were of little help. They and the HYPNOS staff were all standing about and looking at one another helplessly as Janyu did his best to try and soothe his grieving wife and not really succeeding.

"I want my children back," Mayumi sniffed.

"Rika," Rumiko agreed. "My Rika."

"I... I... I don't..." Jeri began, but she trailed off.

And then the deep voice of GranKuwagamon filled the room as the bug took it upon himself to speak up in light of the new situation. "Grieving is natural," he said. "But I am afraid that there is little alternative."

"Huh?" asked several of the children.

"The Prophecy Trio and their Tamers are not in immediate danger as far as we know," GranKuwagamon stated simply. "And if they are, then they have each other to fight alongside and biomerge with each other so they should be safe from a good deal of threats, plus they have natives of the universe which they have landed in by their side. They will be fine for a few more months if we must leave them there. Impmon, on the other hand, has nobody and is most definitely in danger now."

"Well, that's true," Ryo nodded. Though he still looked uncomfortable.

"Plus, there is an even bigger scale to the events playing out here," GranKuwagamon said. "If we do not stop GranDracmon now, then he will enforce his army and his will on both the Digital and the Human World. If that happens then not only will the missing Tamers end up losing their families, probably before they can reconstruct the machine, but they will never know they have lost said families and they will most likely be trapped in their alternate dimension forever. It is inconvenient that this is the price we must pay, but, in the end, if we do not pay, then everyone will suffer."

"He's right," nodded Yamaki. "We know full well that the missing children and their partners are tough. They will be alright for a while longer. We have a far more immediate concern and frankly it's a remarkable stroke of good fortune that we have the machine which we need with us already. As it was intended to be a rescue device for the others, they are inadvertently helping us even now by being the motivation behind the portal machine's construction."

"We have no choice," Takato agreed. "We have to do this."

There were reluctant but determined nods from the other Tamers. Lilamon looked to Rumiko and said, "I... I'm sorry that my promise turned out to be meaningless."

"It's okay," Rumiko said, trying and failing to wipe away her tears, but succeeding in putting on a brave face. "I understand. There is little alternative, just like GranDracmon says. Besides, I think Rika would probably punch me or ignore me for the rest of the year if I even considered putting getting her back in front of the fate of two worlds."

"Then..." Lilamon murmured.

"I'll survive a few more months," Rumiko said bravely. "Do what you have to do."

"As will I," Mayumi agreed. "My children's absence may be prolonged but... Henry always told me that it was the duty of a Tamer to protect no matter what the situation is. That was his main argument against me for allowing Suzie anywhere near battle situations. They wouldn't look kindly on us either if we went for them instead."

"Besides, Impmon is their friend too," nodded Janyu. "We must rescue him. It's what they would want if they knew what was happening."

There was a general feeling of determination rebuilding in the room as every Tamer and Digimon began to nod their heads in the affirmative, with frowns appearing on their faces. They had a brand new reason to fight now, in the name of those who couldn't be here to help them. They would have to step up and take their place."

"Then we rescue Impmon after all, right?" Calumon asked.

"Yep," nodded Lilamon, clenching her petals like a fist. "And I know that we are hardly substitutes for MegaGargomon, Cherubimon and Sakuyamon but we three shall do our best in their place. We can assure you of that."

"Thanks guys," Ai and Mako said at the same time.

"I'm going too," Calumon declared. "I can be helpful this time. Then maybe you guys can be good substitooties." He looked pleased with himself and was oblivious to the snorts of laughter echoing around him.

"We'll be glad to have you along Calumon," nodded Wingdramon.

"Alright then," Ryo said. "We're heading for the Dark Ocean after all. How long will it take before we can leave?"

"Well, the final calibrations should take about four to five more hours if we work flat out and uninterrupted," Janyu said. "But depending on when your back-up arrives from the Sovereigns, you're departure might..."

"Sir!" cried a random employee on the HYPNOS staff. "There's a bioemergence being picked up on the detector, and it's... it's... it's... whoa, it's gone completely off the charts and from the looks of things, probably three times the height of them."

"Hoo boy," Takato murmured as everyone immediately rushed towards the windows and stared as a massive barrier of fog began to descend slap bang in the middle of Shinjuku park. It formed a cloud so thick and dense that all the trees were immediately hidden from view.

Then, out of the fog, rose the massive shapes.

A huge armoured head emerged as the fog began to lessen, with huge paws underneath it and glowing in a white aura, a tail lashing out behind it like a whip.

A pair of long reptilian necks with comparatively small but still massive heads emerged next, complete with a massive mushroom-like shape directly behind the creature... or perhaps on top of it, all surrounded by green aura.

Huge wings engulfed in a blazing red aura erupted from out of the Digital Field and carried a massive avian form up into the sky, eyes blazing and a huge prominent beak on the front of his face, flames licking around his body.

And a massive set of coils covered in chains and surrounded by a blue aura came last as the most enormous Digimon than any of them had ever seen appeared from within and stretched up into the sky, its armoured head and massive beard rising towards the clouds.

Baihumon.

Ebonwumon.

Zhuqiaomon.

Azulongmon.

For the first time ever, the four Digimon Sovereigns had arrived in the Human World.

"Well, how many of the city's inhabitants do you think are going to panic?" Ryo asked conversationally.

* * *

Well, this certainly has interesting connotations for the next Impmon chapter doesn't it. I must say, I am looking forward to writing about Zhuqiaomon's interactions with the Human World around him. The phoenix has just arrived in the world of those who he was hated more fiercely than any other. It's not a real cliffhanger, since they are good guys and all, but I thought it was a good way to end a chapter.

As I said, I'm not that great at inventing machines. Huge thanks to **Bookworm Gal** again for the advice and ideas she gave me about a year ago now. Phew, now its finally over and the technical bits are mostly out of the way. Soon it will be time for action.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

General Grievous has become the first of the main Separatist combat leaders to set eyes on a Digimon, and the little bunny in question has some very interesting things to say to him. How will the former Kaleesh warlord react when he hears the things that Terriermon has overheard? Not well, probably.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 176 : The Truth Behind the Lies**


	176. The Truth Behind The Lies

And a couple a chapter after Terriermon's cliffhanger, we finally get to see the result. I have been waiting to write this chapter for Fanglongmon-knows-how long. And now the time has finally come. Let's see what all of you make of the emotional rollercoaster that this chapter gives us and a certain cyborg Kaleesh warrior.

Hope you like. Really, _really_ hope you like.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 176:- The Truth Behind the Lies**

* * *

Quite frankly, General Grievous didn't know what to make of this new development. A few moments earlier and he'd been engrossed in one of the maddest and wildest lightsaber duels he had ever had in his life, against an opponent that he had previously thought to be dead, dashing around and swinging all four lightsabers like a madman, determined to finally hit the insurgent Twi'lek with one of them.

And now, he was kneeling on the floor, with Aayla's lightsaber pointed directly at his face, between his eyes to try and stop him from charging at her, he was dripping wet and there was a small, white bunny like creature on Aayla's shoulder that he had never seen before but that Aayla clearly knew well.

And the bunny had just claimed that he had some information that Grievous might find interesting.

Grievous' yellow, slitted eyes shifted from the bunny to Aayla, to find that the Jedi was just as confused and he was by the bunny's words. She glanced across at him momentarily before fixing her attention back on Grievous and murmuring. "Learned, Terriermon?" she asked. "What have you learned?"

"Several pieces of information that might make a certain someone think twice about blindly attacking you, Aayla," Terriermon replied.

"Well, I'm all for that," Aayla replied dryly. "And if there's any information in the Galaxy that can do something like that then it must be very big."

"Oh it is," the bunny, now dubbed Terriermon, replied. "Trust me on that. It's golden Chrome-Digizoid."

Grievous blinked at this bizarre phrase but Aayla merely raised a brow and said, "That good, huh?"

"Hell yeah," nodded Terriermon.

"What the hell is going on?" Grievous growled as he moved backwards and pushed himself to his feet, the three lightsabers still remaining in his hand dripping wet and utterly useless until they dried off, leaving him almost completely unarmed next to the double bladed Jedi. His other lightsabers were stored in his cloak which was still inside and the blaster he occasionally carried with him was not there. "Who is this, Secura? And what in the Galaxy is he supposed to be?"

"A little courtesy would be nice, General," Terriermon replied. He then paused and said, "Oh bloody hell. I'm actually having a semi-conversation with General Grievous. This was not something I ever envisioned myself doing. And if I did, I was hoping Grievous would be on the other side of a ray shield."

"Momentai, Terriermon. You're the one who interrupted the battle," Aayla sniggered.

"Don't use my word!"

"You really think this is the time to flare up about me using your catchphrase, Terriermon?"

"Ah, good point. Never mind."

Aayla chuckled slightly and then focused all her attention on Grievous, who was looking completely and utterly bewildered by the little scene that was playing out in front of him. To her it was a regular occurrence to have a conversation like that, but Grievous had probably never met a Jedi outside of a battle situation and this casual banter seemed to be putting him off a little. Aayla suppressed a smirk at the General's behaviour.

As for Grievous himself, he wasn't finding this situation even slightly amusing. He was confused, bewildered and totally lost. The urge to blindly charge forward and attempt to attack Secura was still very present, but his bloodlust seemed to have ebbed slightly as the heat of battle died down. The lightsaber duel seemed like a distant memory already, as he stared in incredulity at the tiny bunny which had suddenly walked into his life and allowed Aayla to end the battle in her favour.

Now he wouldn't know who would have won in a one on one fight from beginning to end, and that was what he had been most hoping for in this bout, even more than Secura's actual death.

"I'll not ask again," he snarled as his eyes narrowed and he gave Aayla a death glare. "What... the hell... is he?"

"You know he has a name," Terriermon replied before Aayla had the opportunity to say anything. "And he likes it when people speak to him directly if they want to know something about him." He hopped off Aayla's shoulder and spread his ears, taking to the air and flapping hard to pass right by Grievous. The cyborg whirled around to keep track of him and his eyes followed Terriermon as they bunny swooped back around Grievous' body.

He could fly? The little creature could use its ears to fly? What kind of creature used its ears to fly with?

Terriermon landed beside Aayla as the Twi'lek moved her lightsabers away from Grievous and held them at her side loosely, ready for combat once again if it started up again but still relaxed. Terriermon landed by her foot and stepped forward slightly, placing a small hand on his chest and saying, "You're about to become the first Separatist to get a formal introduction from one of us but, here goes. I'm Terriermon. And I'm a Digimon."

"A what?" Grievous rasped.

_I hope you know what you're doing, Terriermon,_ Aayla replied.

_So do I,_ Terriermon confessed. _But I'm pretty sure that I do. Just let me take the floor, okay?_

_If you insist,_ Aayla nodded.

"A Digimon," Terriermon repeated. "A creature composed of computer data with amazing abilities such as the power to change shape, fire energy beams and pellets and a number of other things besides. There are many kind of us, but most of us live in an alternate reality. There are currently three of us in this universe..." he deliberately left out Tsunomon because he was not important to the conversation and if this backfired, he would be safe. "We were tossed here and left by another Digimon and we're trapped here, but we've been helping the Republic and the Jedi to fight against you and your droid armies in secret for months."

"Almost half a year, in face," Aayla supplied.

Grievous stared at the small and frankly quite harmless looking bunny for a few seconds and the earnest expression on his face, but a few seconds later, he burst into laughter. Huge, booming, rasping, incredulous laughter from inside his chest that soon subsided into a fit of coughing as his lungs strained at the pressure he was putting them under.

Once he had recovered, he said, "You can't be serious."

"I'm always serious," Terriermon replied.

This was such a ridiculous statement coming from Terriermon that Aayla couldn't help but snort and raise a hand to her mouth to suppress a fit of laughter from herself too. Terriermon glared at her and said, "Alright, I'm rarely serious but I am this time. You shouldn't underestimate me just because I'm small. I've been there, in hiding and fighting against your droids when you weren't looking whenever the A-Team has gone up against you."

"And you expect me to believe this?" Grievous asked. "This is a load of rubbish."

"He's telling the truth actually," Aayla replied. "Terriermon was on your ship when you kidnapped Ahsoka Tano over Ord Mantell all those months ago. He was in Ahsoka's starfighter when you pulled it in, but was unconscious at the time, so Ahsoka kid him behind some crates before you caught her. When he woke up, it was him that led us right to you over Sernpidal, him that overheard you and your allies talking about Darth Sidious and his plans for Anakin and him that knocked Asajj Ventress out and rescued Ahsoka on the bridge."

Grievous' eyes widened as he turned to stare at the bunny with disbelief. Aayla's words seemed impossible, but that particular mission had been a disaster for the Separatist cause and Aayla had just said that this little creature was responsible for the three things that both he and Ventress had been unable to explain.

Was this little creature really capable of knocking out someone like Ventress?

"**BUNNY BLAST!"** Terriermon suddenly cried and sent a stream of pellets from his mouth at a nearby crate, punching several holes in it and sending it rolling with the force of the blow. Grievous stepped back with wide eyes. He knew that an attack like that would do little to his duranium body but still... he felt a slight respect for the creature rising within him.

Anyone who could utterly humiliate Ventress was a worthy fighter in his book. And both Aayla and Terriermon had apparently done that.

Grievous eyes narrowed even further as he scrutinised the little bunny as he looked up and said, "Beginning to believe me yet? I could also mention the time I helped Aayla to trash the base of the Dark Acolytes and..."

"Don't overdo it Terriermon," Aayla interjected.

"Sorry," Terriermon replied. "But yeah, how about it, Grievous? You believe me yet?"

Grievous' only response for several seconds was a low growling noise before his four arms began to relink into two and once that was done he hung his three lightsabers at his waist once more. He still wasn't sure whether or not to believe this Terriermon creature or Aayla about what they were saying, but it _did_ actually link up if he really was as powerful as he claimed.

It couldn't hurt to learn more. And if what Terriermon had to say did not mean anything to him, then he could use the conversation to buy time to allow his lightsabers to dry out and start functioning again, and then he could kill Aayla and stamp on Terriermon. After all, the Jedi were his sworn enemies and if Terriermon was on their side then that automatically made him a target as well.

And Lord Sidious might be interested to hear his report about these Digimon anyway.

"Very well," he growled. "But I should point out to you that I am not a patient man and Secura I have some unfinished business... Terriermon, was it?"

"That's me," nodded the Digimon.

"Then start talking," the cyborg clenched his sharp, metallic fingers into fists. "And make it fast or I may decide to cut you off, in more ways than one."

"Oh, I highly doubt it," Terriermon grinned disarmingly, which didn't really work on Grievous and the intense glare the General sent his way made him step backwards a little and clear his throat. Grievous internally chuckled, pleased that he intimidated the little bunny as he coughed and said, "Right... information, got it," as Aayla also sheathed her lightsabers but kept them in her hands just in case.

"Well, I was using the ventilation system to give the place a good scouting and I overheard those buddies of yours, San Hill and Nute Gunray, having a discussion about you, Grievous..."

Before he could say anything else, both Aayla and Grievous exclaimed different things at the same time.

"Gunray and Hill are here too?" Aayla gasped.

"Gunray is not my buddie!" Grievous snarled.

The two of them turned to look at each other for a moment and Terriermon cleared his throat. "Yes and got it," he replied to each one in turn, pointing with and ear to indicate who he was answering.

"Anyway, according to them, you came to be a Separatist General because your planet was left in deep debt when the Jedi stopped your people from taking over a neighbouring world and Hill took pity on you and provided your people with funding in exchange for your service, and then you were caught in a shuttle explosion that was supposedly engineered by the Jedi that mutilated your body and you eventually agreed to allow what remained of you to be installed inside that cyborg body so you could have your revenge on the Jedi, on the condition that your mind not be tampered with."

Aayla looked sharply at Grievous when she heard Terriermon narrating the events of Grievous' past and when the shuttle crash was mentioned she saw him screw his eyes tight shut and shudder, his fists clenching even tighter that before, and a low growling noise coming out his voice modulator. Evidently he did not have pleasant memories of that incident, which was hardly surprising.

"Shuttle explosion?" Aayla asked Terriermon. "By the Jedi? We didn..."

"Buhbuhbuh, let me finish talking, Aayla," Terriermon turned to look up at the Twi'lek an earnest look in his eyes that immediately told her that it was important he wasn't interrupted, as there was much more to coming. It made her shut up instantly.

Grievous snarled and fixed Terriermon with a evil eye. "You are merely telling me things that I already know, Digimon! Where is the interesting information you promised."

"Actually," Terriermon replied. "That bit was more for Aayla's benefit so she could follow this conversation and, also I was telling you the version of things that _you_ think happened. But what if I was to tell you that the majority of that is not what you think at all?"

"Huh?" Grievous asked incoherently.

"Allow me to explain with this," Terriermon said. "Did you know that Darth Sidious was a member of the Galactic Senate deliberately steering the Republic to do many things that would cause the war to go on for a long period of time?"

"Yes!" Grievous replied shortly.

"Well, do you know _which _member of the Senate he is?" Terriermon asked.

Grievous' silence gave him his answer, so he immediately said, "It's Chancellor Palpatine."

Aayla winced as Grievous immediately shouted "WHAT!" at the top of his lungs, which made him have another coughing fit for a moment. Aayla lifted a hand to her ear for a moment and Grievous stared incredulously at the small Digimon.

"It's true," Terriermon nodded. "You haven't been keeping up with current events have you? Did you know that the Supreme Chancellor, shortly after his last transmission to you in the guise of Sidious, turned the clone troopers against the Jedi and ordered that they all be hunted down?"

"He's right," Aayla nodded. "We discovered that Sidious and Palpatine were one in the same and he immediately ordered us to be exterminated once he found out. He's been playing both sides of the war."

Grievous was finding this difficult to stomach. Natural disbelief was making him reluctant to acknowledge what they were saying as true and he shook his head as if he was trying to clear it before he glared and said, "I do not believe you. This is a trick!"

"Oh no," Terriermon shook his head. "It was him who ordered the Bounty Hunter to attack us, which is why we're even here now. The Separatist cause was all a lie – he used you all to draw out a war with the intention of destroying the Jedi Order and turning the Republic into an Empire. I'm he's planning to have to eradicated completely once he has dealt with the Jedi Order, which was able to survive thanks to some quick action."

Grievous growled and his hands were already reaching back for his lightsabers when Terriermon ploughed on with, "But among all the Separatists, you were the one he most heavily manipulated, Grievous."

Grievous faltered momentarily. He might hate the Jedi with a passion but he was a warrior, and the idea of being manipulated by anyone was something that he simply could not stomach. He had always maintained that he did not submit to anyone, that he was better that a droid and that he had taken his position as General of the Droid Armies by his choice alone.

He didn't believe Terriermon.

But what if he was right?

His urge to know more overwhelmed him and his lowered his hands again, his glare indicating to Terriermon that he should continue. Terriermon let out the breath he had been holding and went on.

"Sidious has been planning this war for years. He used the war on Naboo to put himself in power. He allowed the creation of the clone army to act as his Jedi exterminators. And shortly after he became the Supreme Chancellor, he began to cast about looking for a leader to carry out his plans and lead the opposing army. And guess who he picked."

Grievous' eyes widened slightly, but Terriermon was not done. "He deliberately made sure that when your people were pushed back by the Jedi and fell into debt that the Republic did not provide you with any aid, thus allowing you to be filled with hate at them, as you used to be one of their warlords. Then he encouraged San Hill, who was going to become a member of the Separatist council for a long time to support your planet. And you know what happened after that?"

Grievous said nothing, but he was now beginning to wonder. How did the little guy know this much? His origins had been kept a mystery to the Jedi for a reason, which had allowed him to make his devastating introduction to the Jedi Order in a fight that had actually allowed him to beat Aayla and a bunch of other Jedi at the same time due to the fact they had no idea what they were up against or what he could do and severely underestimated him.

There could only be one explanation. He really had been listening to San Hill and Nute Gunray speaking about him just now. And sure a story like this couldn't have been concocted on the spot _and_ shared with Aayla in that time, could it?

"Count Dooku and San Hill were the ones who arranged that shuttle explosion that almost killed you. They planted a bomb on your ship and set it to explode and then deliberately saved your life and kept you alive so they could build that cyborg body of yours and plant you in it to become a General. I heard that you were actually reluctant at first and even when they deliberately added more injuries to try and convince you to do it and it still didn't work. And of course, they blamed the Jedi for the explosion."

"He's right," Aayla said. "I know nothing about a crash but I can tell you that the Jedi Order would never authorise an assassination attempt such as that. It's against our Code and everything that we stand for."

"Yep," nodded Terriermon, "and they finally managed to convince you by promising your revenge on the Jedi for something they didn't even do. Did you know that they also tampered with your mind even though you made it one of the conditions that they not do that? They wiped some of your memories and enhanced your rage receptors to make you a weapon for killing as many Jedi as you could before Sidious decided you were no longer needed."

"You are lying!" Grievous bellowed and took a threatening step forward, but this time Terriermon held his ground. The former Kaleesh warlord snarled down at the bunny and at Aayla, but something was stopping him from charging and crushing the life out of both of these two adversaries.

The ever-so faint inkling that Terriermon might be telling the truth was festering in his mind. The words that were spilling out of Terriermon's mind were torturing his brain and making him doubt everything that he knew about the Separatist cause. The things he said were ridiculous and the majority of him was screaming at himself that it must be false, but there was a sliver of his mind that was yelling even louder that it might just be possible.

He had seen this sort of thing before in the past. He had seen Count Dooku using certain officials and dignitaries and other important people to get what he wanted before he quickly disposed of them. He had seen the man making false promises and lies and using deception to meet his own ends right before his very eyes.

Sidious could only be the same.

Was it possible that he had been manipulated in the same way?

He knew San Hill well enough. The Muun was a greedy and officious man who definitely wanted the war to continue due to the money that was being put into his pocket and so Grievous had no trouble believing that he might have had a part in a plot such as this. He had never trusted Hill a great deal, but had gone into his service because he felt a need to protect his people.

And over the course of the war, he had gradually forgotten about his fellow Kaleesh and become more and more intent on killing Jedi.

He blinked and stepped back, a ragged equivalent of a gasp coming out of his voice modulator. He had wives and children back home on Kalee, but he had not thought about any of them for months. He had been do focused on exterminating any Jedi he could and crushing Republic systems that he hadn't given them any thought. He had been dedicating everything to the the Separatists.

He was a like a weapon, obeying the every whim of its master.

Just like Terriermon was saying.

Was it possible? Was what he was saying _really_ possible?

He suddenly clutched his head as he felt a horrific headache coming on as his mind raged against itself and his eyes screwed shut. And then he realised something else. Aayla could easily be taking advantage of his stress and cut him down or incapacitate him, but she was doing nothing.

Could it be?

After several moments of furious internal struggling his eyes snapped open and seemed to stare _through_ Aayla. He had to know. He had to know if it was really true. Terriermon was making all too much sense. He could remember things about his homeworld on Kalee, fighting against the Huk. He remembered a name, _his_ name – Qymaen Jai Sheelal – a name he had not thought about for months.

And he remembered a female.

Ronderu lij Kummar.

The woman he had loved most in the Galaxy. He had not thought about her either. Her memory seemed to have gone to the back of his mind.

Or perhaps it had been suppressed.

That decided it. He instantly whirled around, putting Aayla on alert at the sudden movement, but he stepped away from her and stormed towards the doors of the facility with vicious clicks of his talons. He vowed that if this was a trick then he would come out and tear them to pieces with his bare hands – they weren't going anywhere. But he had to know the truth. The truth that was beginning to make all too much sense.

The doors slid open to admit him as he marched inside and then they slid closed behind him.

Aayla glanced at Terriermon and said, "Well, that was unexpected."

"Yeah," nodded Terriermon. "Imagine that. Grievous actually walked away without trying to kill you and without thinking he was beaten. I must have hit a nerve with those words."

"Several nerves, if I'm not mistaken," Aayla looked up at the doors with a sigh. "Was all that true?"

"Oh yeah, every word," nodded Terriermon. "I really did overhear Hill and Gunray talking about it. I do not relish being either one of them right now."

"Indeed not," Aayla agreed, without taking her eyes away from the doors. For the first time in her life, she was actually feeling pity for Grievous. She had never felt anything more than contempt for him before. To her, he had just been the brutal, murdering butcher who had killed so many of her fellow Jedi, some of them right in front of her. He had almost killed her on numerous occasions, kidnapped Ahsoka, almost killed Anakin and had been responsible for the suffering and death of millions of people throughout the Clone Wars.

And now she was feeling pity towards him.

Just how much weirder was this day going to get?

"You up for following him?" she asked.

"Never thought I'd say it but yes. Let's go follow General Grievous," Terriermon nodded as he hopped onto Aayla's shoulder. The Jedi and the Digimon moved towards the doors and stepped through them and into the corridor. There was no sign of Grievous up ahead, so they tried the first door they came to.

Inside it was a group of four battle droids monitoring stations around the room, including some security feed. They all looked around at her entrance and one cried, "It's the Jedi! Quick, blast her!" before they all automatically went for their blasters.

Aayla used the Force to yank them out of the droids hands and toss them in the corner before she said, "Hold on. We're not here to fight."

"Er... you're not?" asked one of the droids.

"No," Aayla shook her head. "We're just here to talk."

"The room where Hill and Gunray are is over this way," Terriermon said as he hopped down and back into the corridor. "Follow me."

Aayla nodded and the two of them quickly made their way further into the small base.

* * *

Gunray groaned and pounded the arm of the chair he was sitting in with frustration. "Ugh, I hate just sitting here and cowering in the shadows," he exclaimed. "Where are the funds that Sidious promised us? Where is the victory that was guaranteed when we signed the treaty? We have been doing little but giving money to a fruitless cause."

"Patience," Hill chuckled and added, "Do not forget that the Sith are versatile. I am sure that they will eventually figure a way out of this fix."

"Well, it can't come soon enough for my liking," Gunray folded his arms and narrowed his eyes. "I have a good mind to stand up and walk out on this whole business right now."

"And go where exactly?" Hill asked. "The only safe place for us is right here under General Grievous' protection."

Gunray was about to say he would feel safer in the mouth of an Opee Sea Killer when the doors slid open and Grievous himself stood framed in the doorway. The cyborg General had his fists clenched at his sides and he was standing tall like a some terrible hulk, his eyes practically blazing out from the shadow of the dark corridor so fiercely that they almost seemed to glow compared to the rest of his duranium body.

Gunray almost jumped out of his skin at the terrifying visage and had to resist the urge to hide behind Ruun Haako, but San Hill seemed to take it all in his stride. "Ah General," he acknowledged without actually looking. "We were just talking about the Separatist's plans for the future. Any transmission from Sidious yet?"

Grievous didn't answer. He just glared at San Hill with such intensity that he could almost have willed him to disintegrate into ash and be blown away by a non-existent wind. Hill frowned at the lack of answer and turned around to face the General, looking concerned at the expression on Grievous' face.

"Is there a problem, General?" Hill asked. "You look awfully peeved about something."

Grievous took a step inside the room and slowly growled, "Is it true?"

Hill blinked. "Is what true, Grievous? You may have to be a little more specific."

"Don't play games with me, Hill," Grievous snarled. "Any more games that is. Is it true that you took advantage of the suffering of my people to get me to become a General in this army? Is it true that you and Count Dooku were responsible for the shuttle explosion that almost killed me?"

"What?" Hill cried looking alarmed and suddenly very nervous. "Uh... of course not, my good General. What reason would I have to do such a thing? It was the Jedi who were responsible for the shuttle explosion – you know that. Why would I try and kill one of my best agents in such a manner?"

"To deliberately force me to need a cyborg body, perhaps," Grievous snarled as he stepped past an equally nervous pair of Nemoidians and focused an even greater burning ferocity towards the nervously shifting Muun. "And to become a weapon for you and the Count to use against the Jedi. A tool, if you will? Might that be motivation enough for you to deliberately mutilate my body and frame someone else?"

"Uh... where did you hear such things, my good General?" Hill blustered shrinking back from Grievous' burning eyes. "What could possibly make you think of such false allegations?"

"If the allegations are false," Grievous snarled, "then why are you so afraid? What reason would you have to be afraid if you were telling the truth?"

"Well... well, well... uh... er... you're a... a very imposing figure, Grievous and... and don't take this the wrong way but we know that your temper can sometimes get the better of you and..."

"My rage, you mean?" Grievous snarled and took another step closer. "The rage which you artificially enhanced by tampering with my mind even though I explicitly forbade you from doing so? That rage? And suppressing some of my more fond or painful memories? Was that you're doing as well? Did you violate our agreement to turn me into an even more effective weapon?"

Hill gulped and fell out of the chair he was sitting in, scrabbling back as Grievous took another step forward and the Muun started babbling, "Now, now, now, General, wait a moment before you jump to conclusions. I... I, I, I would never do such a thing as you are suggesting. The... the... yes, you are a very effective Jedi Killer but you can't possibly..."

Gunray was beginning to see that this situation was getting way out of hand and immediately tried to head quietly for the door, but Grievous' enhanced audio-receptors picked him up and he swung around to grab Gunray by the robes and fling him back into the room, knocking over Ruun Haako as they both hit the wall. "You're not going anywhere until we've sorted this out!" he roared, then he turned back to Hill.

"Grievous... Grievous, calm down," Hill said as he scrabbled to the back wall and pressed himself up against it as the cyborg advanced still further. "You have my word that I did none of those things which you just said."

"I have seen you give your word to others before," Grievous snarled. "And I know for a fact that your word has little merit behind it. What makes you think I should believe you this time when I have seen you lie to so many others with false promises."

"Well... er... I am your friend, Grievous," Hill tried.

"Wrong!" Grievous shouted. "I have no need for friends! I have never trusted you completely and now I learn this! I also heard that you tried to make my injuries even worse when I was unconscious after the crash in an attempt to make me agree to become this!" He slammed a metal fist into his thick armoured chest. "And it all makes too much sense! What proof can you give me that you did not do any of those things!"

"Just tell me... tell me where you heard such terrible things," Hill tried. "These... these false accusations that..."

"Oh, stop it, Hill!" Gunray babbled in his cowardly panic. "It's obvious that he overheard us talking before. I knew that we shouldn't have be speaking of such things! These walls aren't as thick as you thought!"

Grievous' heart thudded and his fists clenched so fast he almost started cutting grooves in his metal palms with his fingers. He rounded towards Gunray and shouted, "So, it is true then?" he roared.

"Yes, yes! It is true!" Gunray wailed. "He and Dooku _did_ plan to turn you into a weapon against the Jedi and it worked. But I had no part in this plan, Grievous, I swear!"

Grievous had no problem believing that given Gunray's blatant hatred for the General but right now he didn't care. At last he knew the truth behind his position as the Separatist General and he didn't like it. As the full enormity of the betrayal and the lies and the deceit smashed into him he felt his brain being completely overwhelmed by a rage that likes of which he had never felt before.

These people had ruined his life to use him as a tool until they no longer needed him!

And Grievous bowed to no-one.

With a howl of livid rage that almost shook the whole of Minntooine, Grievous rounded on Hill as the Muun tried to scramble desperately for the door, but he was too slow. Grievous' foot lashed out and his talons enclosed around Hill's thin waist and the cyborg swung himself around in a motion like a roundhouse kick, using his foot to fling Hill across the room and slam him into a wall with a gasp and a thud and what sounded suspiciously like a crack.

Grievous stormed over to the fallen Banking Clan Confederate as he tried to get up and seized him by the neck in one metallic hand. Muun's were not known for their sturdiness and it was a miracle that Hill's neck didn't break on the spot as Grievous hoisted him into the air and slammed his back into the wall, the back of his head cracking against it and almost causing him to black out.

Grievous shoved his face close to Hill's, invading his personal space and his burning eyes boring into Hill's terrified ones. "You wanted the rage, Hill!" he bellowed. "You got it!"

With another sweep of his arm, Hill was flung across the room again to crash into the corner, almost unconscious, but awake enough to look up in terror as Grievous advanced on him and yanked two of his lightsabers away from his waist and ignite the blue and green blades, growling in the aforementioned rage as took a moment to stare in satisfaction at the cowering Muun.

Then he raised his blades and slashed down.

Hill howled and shut his eyes.

There was the sound of lightsabers slamming into one another.

Hill cringed, and was surprised to find himself still alive. He opened his eyes again and to the shock of him, Grievous, Gunray and Haako, he saw a Twi'lek standing beside him, holding a blue lightsaber across his body to block Grievous' killing blow. Aayla had appeared at the door just in time to see what Grievous was about to do and Force-jumped into the room to counter the lethal strike.

"Aayla Secura!" Gunray cried. "What... what is she..."

"Get out of my way, Secura!" Grievous roared at the Twi'lek. "This does not concern you!"

"But it does, Grievous," Aayla replied as she forced Grievous to take a step back and stood protectively in front of Hill, one lightsaber drawn. "I cannot allow you to do this. It is against everything the Jedi hold dear to allow the murder of a defenceless person, regardless of what they might have done in the past."

"That piece of filth destroyed everything I have!" Grievous bellowed, with what remained of his blood boiling in what remained of his veins. He took my body, my family, my life! Everything! He cannot be allowed to life another second!" He lunged forward again and attempted to hack his way past Aayla to get at Hill but Aayla drew her second blade and countered his strike again, forced backwards at the ferocity of the strike, but standing her ground.

"Grievous, control yourself!" Aayla shouted. "He wanted the rage flowing inside you! He wanted you to become a monster. Kill him now, and all you do is prove that he accomplished his goal and turned you into a mindless killer. Control your desire for revenge and spare his life now. Be better than what he tried to make you into. That would be a far greater victory than killing him in cold blood."

Aayla and Grievous' eyes strove against one another, brown on yellow, and their lightsabers remained locks, blue on green and green on blue, both mentally and physically trying to force the other to back down. But Aayla's words had successfully managed to permeate through Grievous' rage filled mind and he knew that what she said to be true.

The urge to slaughter Hill where he cowered was still there in spades.

But he managed to suppress it just enough for him to break the lightsaber lock and step back, growling and trembling in anger and hatred as he turned around and, after sheathing his lightsabers, slammed a chair aside, broke a metal table in two with one foot and pounded the wall with his fist so hard he almost went straight through it to get rid of some of his anger, before he planted his fists on the fallen chair, leaning against it and breathing heavily as his mind continued to overflow with anger.

Hill breathed rapidly and deeply relieved to find himself still alive. "Oh, thank you!" he cried. "Thank you, Miss Secura! Thank you, wonderous, merciful Jedi..."

"Shut up!" Aayla rounded on him and send a glare at him that was almost as intense as Grievous' which sent him into a cowering mess once more. "I didn't do it for you! I did it for him and for my honour! You don't have the right to speak at the moment, Hill, so I suggest you button it."

Hill nodded and subsided.

Gunray made a break for the door again, but a small white whirlwind suddenly slammed into his gut and knocked him sprawling into the middle of the room with the wind knocked out of him. He looked up, gasping and stared in bewilderment at the glaring Digimon.

"That goes for you too, sleemo," Terriermon held a finger to his mouth. "You might not have had a part in this but you're guilty for many other crimes, so you don't get to talk either."

"What the hell are..."

"I said, quiet!" Terriermon shouted and shot a single energy pellet from his mouth to his the floor by Gunray's hand, causing him to yelp and withdraw it before he scrambled into another corner and really did hide behind Ruun Haako this time.

"Wow," Aayla observed. "You can be vindictive when you want to be, Terriermon."

"Only to people I don't like," Terriermon grinned. "And these guys qualify for that."

"Agreed," nodded Aayla and sheathed her lightsabers once more. She looked over to the former Kaleesh, who was still leaning against the chair as if it was a life support and struggling to calm himself down. The enormity of everything that he had learned was screaming at him to rage on, but he was desperately trying to suppress the anger – to put one part of his brain Hill had tampered with in check.

Aayla moved over and shut the door to prevent the others from sneaking out, took a moment to realise the irony of the fact she had just shut herself _in_ a room with General Grievous before she turned around and said, "Grievous, are you alright?"

"What does it look like?" Grievous snarled without looking up. "Would you be alright if you found out that half of your life was a lie and that you had been used to carry out the dirty work of greedy cowards?"

"To be frank, I have found out something like that," Aayla reminded him. "Though I confess, it isn't quite as big or personal to me as this is to you. But I do understand partially what you must be thinking. After all, Palpatine's betrayal of the Jedi Order is a little similar. Though, there are others who may understand what you're going through better."

"Nobody could understand this," Grievous raked his claws against the wall in anger.

"Oh really?" Terriermon asked. "Well, what about the clones. Some of them just found out that their _whole_ lives had been lies designed to turn them into tools, only for the other side of the war, so they're not all that different from you, Grievous."

"He's right," nodded Aayla. "I know for a fact that my Commander didn't take the news that Darth Sidious and Palpatine are one in the same very well."

"What?" Gunray and Hill both shouted at the same time.

"We said, zip it!" Terriermon shouted, and it was surprising how such a small creature could make two people cower so easily. Then he turned to Grievous and said, "Momentai, Grievous. Momentai."

"Yeah, Terriermon," Aayla rolled her eyes. "I think this situation is going to require a bit more than 'Take it easy.'"

"Well, it's better than nothing," Terriermon shrugged.

Aayla suppressed a chuckled and said, "Regardless, he is right, Grievous. There are others who have been shaken by this just as much as you yourself. Try to remember that. And..." she paused for a moment and then said, "For what it is worth, I am sorry about what has been done to you. I know that sorry is going to do little in this context regardless of who it comes from, but I truly am sorry. If we had known... then maybe we could have put a stop to it."

Grievous kept his back to Aayla but his eyes had widened when he heard what the Twi'lek had said. His urge to kill her had ebbed almost completely by this point, but, even so, it was still a shock to his system to hear the Jedi he had tried to kill on four separate occasions, including today, apologise of something on this magnitude when she had had nothing to do with it.

Did she feel pity for him?

Grievous' arms tensed and he whirled around to glare at Aayla. "I do not need your pity, Secura!" he roared. "I do not need anybody's pity! If there is one thing that I have learned from this, it's that nobody can be trusted. Everyone wants to use others for something, whether they be droid, clone, Jedi or myself!"

Aayla shook her head. "You're wrong, Grievous. You shouldn't take that approach to life. It will not bring you anything you want. I am sorry to say it, but I'm afraid that you merely fell in with the wrong ground. It is true that the Sith do manipulate. They do use others to accomplish what they want and dispose of them when they're done. They even betray one another all the time. I have no doubt that Count Dooku has always been plotting to overthrow Sidious at some point. But that does not meant that everybody takes that approach to other people?"

"And you Jedi are people who do what they do only to help?" Grievous scoffed.

"Yes," Aayla nodded. "That is exactly what we do. It is one of our great virtues to do anything that we can to help aid the Galaxy."

"Tell that to the Kaleesh," Grievous took a threatening step forwards, to which Aayla refused to back away from. "The shuttle explosion may not have been done by the Jedi after all, but that does not change the fact that you still stopped me and my people from taking over the Huk and forced us into a situation of debt so severe that we needed to be support by that stain on the universe," he jabbed a clawed finger at Hill, who helped and backed further away. "So, in a roundabout way, what happened to me is still the fault of the Jedi."

Aayla and Grievous observed one another for a moment before Aayla sighed and said, "Perhaps. But it was not our intent, Grievous. We never meant to set events in motion that would cause such terrible things to happen to you. We were manipulated as well, by Palpatine."

"You still forced us into debt!" Grievous raged.

"I admit that I know little of the war between the Kaleesh and the Huk," Aayla went on regardless of the interruption. "I was a Padawan at the time, but I do know a little about it if my memory serves me well. The Kaleesh and Huk homeworlds are neighbours are they not, and a long-standing feud has been existing between you for millennia, much like that between Kashyyyk and Trandosha, except your planets are practically beyond the Outer Rim."

"A feud?" Grievous growled. "You would call what the Huk did to us a feud? They oppressed us for generations, abusing my people, killing and maiming us for the fun of it. I was the one Kaleesh who was finally able to unite my people, and we began our campaign to rid ourselves of the oppressors and make them the oppressed instead. I was leading my people to victory – it seemed we were certain to win. And then you Jedi entered the conflict and sided with the Huk and wiped out our takeover."

"I realise that, but..."

"And did we receive any aid whatsoever from you when you had pushed us back to our homeworld and we were starving and dying?" Grievous snarled. "No, we did not! If you claim to be such all-loving, all-caring beings then can you explain that?"

"Yes, actually, I can," Aayla replied. "I understand why you have such a deep-rooted hatred for us, Grievous and again, I am sorry. But there is a reason for what we did."

"Then what is it?" Grievous flexed his claws and snarled.

"Well, for one thing, the Kaleesh and Huk worlds were long out of Republic jurisdiction," Aayla pointed out. "They were outside its borders, and events of that planet were mostly unknown to us. He did not realise about the oppression the Huk had been putting you under. We first heard about the conflict when the Huk called to us for help when they were on the verge of defeat, alerting us to the situation."

"And you helped them," Grievous snarled. "I heard that you chose to aim them because their world was more rich in resources than our own and you wanted to add them to the Republic because they could contribute more to it."

"No," Aayla shook her head firmly. "Never. That might have been the reason most of the Senate allowed us to help the Huk, but we Jedi would never choose sides based on such thing. It is our sacred duty to protect those who are in danger, much like I stopped you from killing Hill just now despite the fact you could say he deserves to die. We were not aware of the Huk's oppression towards you. We thought you were the oppressors and we helped the Huk because they were the ones in trouble."

"You expect me to believe that?" Grievous asked.

"It's the truth," Aayla replied, folding her arms. "If your people had contacted us to ask for help when the Huk were oppressing you then we would have helped you too."

"Then why did you not do just that when we were on the verge of collapse due to the debt you put us in, if you really have that kind of compassion in you?" Grievous demanded.

"That, is the part where I admit we were at fault," Aayla sighed. "We made a mistake. And we now know what that mistake is. Over the course of this war and especially with this new development with Darth Sidious being Palpatine, we have realised that we became too subservient to the Senate, too willing to comply with what they said should happen instead of disobeying them to do what we felt was right by our code?"

Grievous said nothing, but he was actually stunned that Aayla was admitting the faults of her whole order. He had always thought Jedi were way to proud to believe they were ever wrong, yet Aayla was standing in front of him and saying they had been.

"From what I remember," Aayla went on. "The Jedi Council _did_ request that we should got and help the Kaleesh, but they were shot down by the Chancellor without debate. He said something about the Kaleesh not being our responsibility and that you were all barbaric, wild creatures that could fend for yourselves and that you deserved little pity anyway." Aayla sighed. "And instead of helping you anyway, we complied with the wishes of a Sith Lord."

Aayla then fixed Grievous with a stare and said, "Of course, now we know why Palpatine _really_ didn't let us go and help the Kaleesh. He was after you even then. He recognised your skill as a warrior, and on a planet so far away from the Republic he could secretly turn you into the weapon he wanted and we would never be the wiser until it was too late. It worked and... well... here you are."

Grievous could feel himself crushing the back of the chair his fingers were tightening around.

"The Jedi Order is changing, Grievous," replied Aayla. "We were beginning to do things against the will of the Senate and the Chancellor even before it was revealed he was a Sith. Only recently, as a matter of fact, we smuggled a gigantic Zillo Beast, the last of its kind, away from Coruscant to protect it when the Chancellor wanted to kill it to use its impenetrable armour for the clones. I am sorry that this change came too late for the Kaleesh. But, you have my personal promise that when this war is won and if we emerge victorious, the Kaleesh will finally get the support they need from us."

Grievous' eyes went so wide they almost popped out of his face-mask, then they narrowed to slits so fine they were almost shut as he said, "How am I to know that you don't want something from the Kaleesh like everyone else?"

Aayla shrugged. "You can't. I don't expect you to trust me. I am just hoping to give you some comfort in light of this terrible revelation of yours."

"Why?" Grievous suddenly asked. "Why are you doing this? You are a Jedi. I have killed dozens of your brethren and you are trying to comfort me? Why? Where is the logic in that?"

"Does there have to be logic?" Aayla asked. "Right now, I do not see the Jedi killer that has been hunted and feared by millions across the Galaxy. I just see a soul who long ago lost his way due to hatred and manipulations by those who are masters of hatred. I suppose you could say I am... obligated to pity you."

Grievous stared at Aayla in disbelief for several seconds before he said, "I knew that you were a compassionate warrior, Secura, but now I think you're just plain weird."

Aayla chuckled. "Well, I suppose that's one way of putting it. But all my friends are weird in that way. Take Terriermon there. He's the weirdest of the bunch and I think he feels pity for you too."

Grievous turned to look towards the small bunny standing on the broken table, who waved and gave him an encouraging thumbs up, before he turned back to Aayla and said, "You may not know this, Secura, but you have done something that I thought no Jedi would ever do. You have won my respect. And I..." he paused as if struggling to get the next bit out of his voice modulator, before he said, "And I... thank you... for bringing the manipulations to my attention."

"Don't thank me for that," Aayla replied. "I was as clueless as you were. It was Terriermon who overheard your dear friends here talking and decided you might want to know about this."

"Yes, why did _you_ decide to do that, small fry?" Grievous asked Terriermon.

"Through a combination of being a soft-hearted little Digimon and thinking that perhaps it might distract you from attacking and trying to kill Aayla," Terriermon replied. "Besides, I've seen a similar story playing out with the clones. I could hardly not let you know just because you're supposed to be the enemy."

Grievous growled and subsided, staring down at his body. The body of metal that had been built for him after Count Dooku and his minions had deliberately destroyed what had once been his form, just to get him into the thing. He hated his body with all his heart now that he had learned this. Even the Kaleesh battle-mask did little to make him like it any better.

Suddenly he saw a blue hand come into his field of vision and come to rest on his upper arm in a comforting gesture. Grievous convinced and immediately tried to pull away, but something made him stop. The realisation that nobody had laid a hand on him in a friendly way for months and months now. In fact, hardly anyone had ever actually touched him at all. He couldn't feel the hand of course, but he stared at it all the same.

"Do you feel better now, Grievous?" Aayla asked.

Grievous didn't answer. After a couple more seconds of allowing Aayla to touch him, Grievous wrenched away and turned towards the corner. "You should leave," he growled. "Take the shuttle. I have decided to let you go, Secura, which is a decision I have never before made for any Jedi. I suggest you take advantage of it."

"Thank you, Grievous," Aayla nodded. "I don't suppose you'll mind if I take these three scumbags with me. The Jedi Order will be quite happy to have the rest of main members of the Separatist Council in prison."

"Do what you will with them," Grievous snarled.

"This is an outrage!" Gunray shouted. "I demand that..." He yelped as Aayla activated a lightsaber and shut up, so Aayla immediately switched it off without even pointing it at him.

Terriermon was shaking his head and struggling not to chuckle. _Dear Fanglongmon, _he was thinking. _Aayla has a way with words that none of us, not even you, Rena, have and probably ever will. She's amazing._

_Indeed,_ Renamon's voice replied. She had been monitoring everything as per usual and was just as astounded as Terriermon at what they had learned, seen and done here today. _I don't think anyone else in the entire Jedi Order could have done what she just did. She almost made peace with Grievous then._

_Yeah,_ nodded Terriermon. _But what are we going to do now?_

_Well, we've just pulled out of hyperspace,_ Renamon related. _And we're heading into the atmosphere as I speak. We'll be able to pick you up shortly._

_Got it,_ nodded Terriermon and looked up to relay the news. "Aayla, the others are here. We can finally get off this planet."

"Good," nodded Aayla. Grievous looked over in bemusement at the bunny who seemed to have no communication links of any kind on him, so Aayla quickly said, "Telepathy, Grievous." Grievous snorted and then turned back to the corner, not particularly wanting to look at anyone.

"Alright, you three," Aayla pointed towards Hill, Gunray and Haako. "You are coming with me, and there will not be any complaining. You don't exactly have anywhere to run unless you fancy a swim in the ocean and trust me, I'll be faster in water than you. Not, get outside, the lot of you."

Gunray flinched and cowered as Aayla folded her arms and the three Separatists quickly moved past Aayla as the Twi'lek opened the door. She turned back and said, "Goodbye, Grievous. We have a plan to bring down Sidious and Count Dooku for everything they've done to the entire Galaxy. We'll make sure they get their just desserts and you'll be another person whose name we fight in."

And then she followed the main Separatist leaders out into the corridor and towards the front of the facility, which left Terriermon in the room with Grievous. The bunny looked up at the back of the cyborg, who was resting his head against the wall and gouging marks in it with his claws.

"You might not want to stay here," Terriermon replied. "Now that Sidious has become Emperor, he doesn't need you anymore. It's only a matter of time before he remembers you exist and sends clones and perhaps someone like Dooku to try and take you out."

Grievous didn't reply, physically or otherwise, so Terriermon merely said, "See you," and followed Aayla out of the door.

Once the pattering of feet had died away, Grievous slowly took his head away from the wall and delivered a massive punch to it once again to try and vent some more of the rage that was still inside him. He had decided to let Aayla go and allow San Hill to live, but he still felt like going on a destructive rampage and trying to carve up everything in sight. But he was determined not to. As Aayla said, that would be a victory for Hill really.

But even Hill was not totally to blame for this. The real masterminds behind it all were Sidious and Dooku. They were the ones who had instructed Hill to do all that. Dooku was the one who had used Force Lightning to stabilise Grievous' body after the crash and had brought him back to be put into this cyborg body. And Sidious was the one ultimately responsible for the suffering of the Kaleesh, for which he had always totally blamed the Jedi.

Perhaps he had misjudged the Jedi slightly. Maybe even a lot, though he was loathe to admit it. Were they all like Secura? If they were, then they were more remarkable that Grievous had ever realised.

But that wasn't important right now. What was important was that Dooku and Sidious were still walking free. San Hill was being put away, probably for life, but the two Sith Lords were still going unpunished for their crimes against the former warlord. Grievous could feel his fists clenching again at the thought of Dooku standing by Sidious, the two of them lording over everything just as they had always planned, but leaving him in the shadows to scrape out a living, just like he had when they had ruined his life and those of all his people to turn him on the Jedi.

Grievous suddenly snarled and lifting his foot to kick the metal table, or what was left of it, to send it catapulting into the wall. He'd be damned if he was just going to let them get away with this without having some kind of hand in ensuring they were brought to justice.

Secura had said they had a plan.

Grievous stalked towards the door and stormed into the corridor, following Aayla's path and his talons stomping on the ground so hard they practically punctured the floor.

* * *

Gunray, Hill and Haako were amazed to see a massive Republic-cruiser moving into position above them as they exited the old facility, the massive triangular shape bathing everyone in shadow as it lowered itself towards the facility as if it was going to crush it, a large ramp descended from the side as it moved down.

"How is this possible?" asked Gunray. "How did they even know where to look for us?"

"Have you got slime in your ears or something?" Terriermon asked as he swooped over Gunray's head low enough to knock his big ceremonial hat off. "I've have a telepathic link to somebody on that ship. I'm practically a living tracking beacon if I want to be. But then again, I don't really need to be talking to you. Your money-grabbing days are over. From today on the most interesting thing you've have day in and day out will be three walls and a ray shield. And this time, none of you will be making an escape."

"Too right," nodded Aayla. "It's about time the three of you finally got put away. And I must confess that I am glad to be one of the ones responsible for making sure that you are."

"Heh, don't worry though," grinned Terriermon. "You'll soon have plenty of people to talk to like... say... the other members of the Council. I'm sure you'll all have a lot to discuss."

Gunray and Hill glanced at one another. Something like this happening was practically their worst nightmare. No more money. No more servants. No more palaces and wealth and greedy happiness. Even death would probably be better than this.

Not that Hill wasn't amazingly grateful that Aayla had forced Grievous to spare his life.

The cruiser came to a hovering halt as the base of its large ramp came to rest on the platform of the ocean base. From the top of the ramp a few figures appeared and began to hurry down it. The three Separatist blanched in terror as a large yellow fox bounded towards them on all fours with a murderous look in her eyes and sharp claws very much in evidence. They yelped as the fox surged forwards and leapt into a massive pounce right towards them, roaring with anger... and then tucked her legs in and somersaulted over them, landing smoothly with a smirk.

"I just had to do that," she grinned. "The looks of their faces was a priceless one."

"Nice one, Renamon," Terriermon laughed. "We may even have you pull pranks of my calibre next."

"One day maybe," Renamon laughed, and send a death-glare at the three Separatists, who cowered before her.

"General Secura!" Commander Bly called as he came to the base of the ramp with Henry and Rika right behind him. "You have no idea how good it is to see you in one piece."

"Actually I'm pretty sure I am," Aayla chuckled. "Probably about as good as it is for me to feel myself in one piece considering the hectic past couple of hours we've had. Thank you for coming as quickly as you did, Bly. It was most appreciated."

"My pleasure," Bly nodded. "And it's nice to see the last of our slimy Separatist buds finally in custody. Except for..." Bly faltered and then added, "Er... Renamon mentioned General Grievous. He's here?"

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "But we won't be taking him into custody today."

"Why?" Bly asked.

"Trust me, Bly," Aayla said. "Just... not today."

"Er... okay," nodded Bly.

Henry immediately moved over to Terriermon and pointed a finger at the grinning bunny. "Okay, Terriermon. Next time, I'm coming with you whether there's space for me or not. I don't care if it's an uncomfortable squeeze but I am not going to let you go off without me again ever, you understand me?"

"I got it," nodded Terriermon. "To be honest, I'll be glad to have you there. We could have really used Rapidmon against that Bounty Hunter. I'd like to see her try to fend _me_ off in that form."

"Well, regardless," said Rika. "At least you're both okay, even though there were several close calls for both of you."

"I just keep adding and adding to the list of things I never want to do again, don't I?" Terriermon laughed.

Everyone heard this statement and there was an outbreak of chuckling from everyone but the Separatists. Then Renamon turned to them and said, "Right then, let's get these guys into detention cells where they belong and get to the rendezvous with the others."

"Couldn't agree more," Bly said, hefting his blaster warningly. "Alright you three. Let's move it! Get up that ramp and no complaining!"

The two Nemoidians and the Muun hurried to obey, but before they got far the doors behind them slid open and the rasping voice of Grievous bellowed "Secura!" Everyone turned to face him and saw him stalking out towards them, flanked by the four battle droids manning the station. Bly immediately tensed, as did Renamon, but Aayla raised a hand and they both reluctantly stood down.

To his credit, Grievous ignored the newcomers, except to spare Renamon a quick glance before he focused on Aayla and said, "Do you believe that you can truly deal with Darth Sidious now that he has become the Emperor and you Jedi are wanted fugitives?"

Aayla nodded firmly. "Yes," she said. "Yes, we do. We have a plan, which we have carefully gone over several times and believe to be our best option. There are still some blanks to fill in, but we believe with the right co-ordination, that it will work, and Sidious and Dooku and Ventress and all the others will no longer be in power within a few more days at most."

"That sounds quite ambitious to me," Grievous stated.

"Call it whatever you like," Aayla shrugged. "It's not going to stop us from doing it."

"If that is indeed the case," Grievous growled as he took another step forward. "I am coming with you!"

"Say what?" Bly cried, but Grievous ignored him. Henry and Rika both gasped and even Terriermon and Renamon looked shocked. The only one who didn't was Aayla and she offered Grievous a smile instead.

"I was wondering if you would do this," the Twi'lek said. "What makes you want to become our friend, Grievous."

"Ally!" Grievous immediately yelled. "We are not friends, Secura! Nor will we ever be! But you have something which I currently do not have and that is a way of taking down the people that I hate most in this world. With what forces I have remaining, I cannot hope to succeed against them but I will not sit back and let others do it for me. And, as the saying goes – the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

"I thought you said we weren't friends," Terriermon remarked. Grievous snarled and glared at him, and the bunny yelped and hid behind Renamon.

Aayla smiled. She had mentioned that they had a plan to stop Sidious in the faint hope that Grievous would take this course of action and it seemed to have paid off. She didn't particularly _want_ to work with a known Jedi Killer, but the phrase Grievous had used worked both ways in this situation.

And they needed all the help they could get.

This had not been a part of their initial plan, but in Aayla's view it was a more than welcome addition (though she knew the rest of the Order wouldn't be so receptive).

"I'll be up front here, Grievous," Aayla replied. "I won't attempt to hide any real intentions like the Sith do. If you wish to help us fight against the Sith Lords and bring them down, then you will have to listen to us and follow our plan, as it is quite specific. Also, our alliance will have to be immediately terminated when we have accomplished what we set out to do. The fact remains that, despite all the manipulations, you are a murderer and you enjoyed doing it. If you come with us, will you agree to allow yourself to be put in prison yourself once Sidious is dealt with?"

"I do not care what happens to me in the future anymore," Grievous growled. "But, from my perspective, the war has always been about getting revenge. Now I will go after the people who deserve it. After that, I don't care what you do to me. Kill me, if you wish."

Aayla smiled and strode towards Grievous, having sensed that Grievous was telling the truth. "We won't do that," she said. "We would never kill you if you didn't force us to. But, if you agree to work with us and not stab us in the back..." she extended her hand to him. "Then by all means come along."

Grievous stared at her hand for a few seconds, before he looked up and fixed his yellow eyes with her brown ones. Aayla smiled, and Grievous growled and stepped forward, seizing Aayla's hand with his own and firmly shaking it, sealing the deal.

"I think Obi-Wan's going to have a hernia," Terriermon muttered.

"Him and practically everyone else we know," Renamon agreed.

* * *

Much like Cad Bane, Grievous is definitely not going to change instantly from a guy who hates all Jedi to laughing with them at every joke they make, but still, this does have interesting connotations for the future does it not? I hope that you look forward to seeing more of Grievous, because he has a lot more to do before this story is over, I can assure you of that. But there won't be any more surprise allies for the Jedi. Bane and Grievous are the only villains that switch sides.

Nevertheless, I always thought Grievous deserved better, and he always has been my favourite villain ever since I saw him walk into my life on the cinema screen. I'm quite happy with the way this chapter turned out, and I hope you are too.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

On Kamino; Anakin, Obi-Wan, Ahsoka and Shaak Ti struggle to stay alive as hundreds of clones relentless pursue them through the city, trying to kill them under the Emperor's orders. They some clones on their side of course, but how much use are they going to be in this situation?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 177 : Survival of the Fittest**


	177. Survival of the Fittest

Took me a little longer to complete this one than I was originally expecting, but here it is eventually. I hope you guys like the result and I'll try and churn out the next one by Friday, but after that I'm going to be going away for three days to try and film seals at a place called Donna Nook and I won't be taking my laptop with me because I am staying in a hostel, and I don't trust it to keep my stuff safe, and I have no intention of taking my laptop out onto the sea just in case.

Anyway, hope you like.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 177:- Survival of the Fittest**

* * *

Kit Fisto was standing on the bridge of his ship, as he had done for so long over the course of the war, and his eyes searching the remnants of space for any sign of the others arriving.

The Nautolan could see three other ships out there beside his own. One of them was the _Resolute_, which he knew to contain Barriss Offee and Lopmon and Suzie, as well as a very large number of Wookiees which were being crammed into the vessel along with the 501st troopers. The other two were ships that belonged to the 327th, which had gone on ahead when Commander Bly's ship had turned around to assist Aayla over Minntooine.

Kit and Barriss had been alerted to the situation but were powerless to help out. And they had yet to receive any communication from their friends on Kamino. Both were worried. Lopmon couldn't see what Aayla and the others were doing as her mind link didn't stretch that far, and even if it did those on Kamino couldn't be helped by it.

Kit was beginning to debate whether he should try and call one of them to see what they were up to, but so far he had decided against it. Bly had told him they'd probably take an hour or so, and that hour was just reaching its climax, while calling the others could compromise the mission.

Meanwhile, behind him, Jar Jar Binks was struggling with a concept that was slowly being explained to him by Commander Monnk, the clone looking quite reluctant to be the one doing the explaining.

"Tell it to mesa again," Jar Jar requested. "Dosa Digimon beena helping the Republic and wesa no knowing anything about dem the whole time? Howsa can this be?"

"Uh..." Monnk hesitated. "Well, they were actually there on Naboo when the Gungans were attacked by those Quarren, but they were busy stopping an attack elsewhere. But it's true. They really have been there? Some of the stories I've heard though... I'll admit it sounds pretty far-fetched."

"And none of the Senate isa knowing about this?" asked Jar Jar.

"Not until recently," Monnk nodded. "I heard the Senator of the moon of Pantora knows about them now, but I think you're only the second member of the Senate to actually learn they exist."

"Wow," Jar Jar blinked, turning to Tarpals, who was standing nearby and watching his exchange with belief. "Isa yousa believing disa? Because mesa thinking itsa some kind of big pranken," he stage-whispered to Tarpals with a plainly audible voice.

"Yesa, Jar Jar," Tarpals chuckled. "Mesa be believing. Did yousa no see? Dat little girl the Digimon creature wasa standing on wasa the same little girl dat came wid usens into the tunnels dat time. And it was hersa brother dat stopped the bomb dat was going to turn Gunga City into mush."

Jar Jar blinked and said, "Oh yeah! Yousa be right! Oh, mui, mui. Disa is berry, berry big. Howsa dey keeping dis a secret for so longo?"

"Sometimes, I ask that same question, Representative Binks," Kit chuckled, as he turned around to start fiddling with the holotable. "But they've done their part so far and the secrecy has had the desired effect. The Sith still don't know about them, and that is going to be one of our biggest trump cards in the upcoming fight."

He placed a call through to the other ship and soon a hologram of Barriss, Suzie and Lopmon appeared, with Chewbacca standing to one side and Tarfful on the other. The small group all appeared to have worried looks on their faces, even Tarfful who had never actually met any of the others that they were waiting for.

"You getting anything yet, Master Fisto?" Barriss asked.

"Nothing," Kit shook his head. "I would have thought that perhaps we would have head from Commander Bly by now if nothing else but they still haven't called back."

"Do you think it's bad news?" asked Suzie worriedly. "Do you think that someone may have gotten hurt."

"I honestly cannot say, young one," Kit grimaced. "I believe that we must have faith in them, but even so, these are dark times. We can only hope that Aayla and Terriermon somehow managed to find a way of getting away from that Bounty Hunter."

"Surely someone would have got in contact by now if there was bad news, wouldn't they?" Lopmon asked. "I know that Renamon wouldn't keep us in suspense like this unless there was a good reason."

"Scrarorhwo aoacworo wowhoaoohuwhaoworc akrcoorhanwosc ohahaoac oaoosc," suggested Chewbacca.

"Yeah, but what could cause a communication problem?" Lopmon pointed out. "The _Intrepid_ is top of the line. It would have to be interference or something."

"Disa mui bombad," Jar Jar sighed. "Mesa hoping dat Aayla and Ani and Little Snipsy besa okay. Mesa no want dem to die."

"We all feel the same way here, Jar Jar," Barriss nodded.

"Well," said Kit. "If you get anything then be sure to let me know, okay?"

"Alright," nodded Barriss. "We'll keep all channels open just in case and..." she stopped and her eyes widened as she appeared to stare at a spot on the holotable in front of her. "Scratch that! We've got an incoming transmission right now. I'll patch it through to you as well," she said quickly as she bent over the controls and began to do just that and sure enough, a moment later, a hologram appeared in one of the spaces around the table.

The hologram of a grinning Twi'lek.

"Aayla!" cried Suzie at first sight of the Twi'lek. "Oh thank you, thank you, thank you for not dying."

"My pleasure, Suzie," Aayla grinned. "I do try to avoid that happening. Of course, death seems to have it out for me but I've kept away from it so far."

"Do you have any idea how much of a relief it is to see you okay?" Barriss quizzed. "We were all going out of our minds over here. Next time you feel like gallivanting off to investigate a Jedi distress beacon, let somebody else go with you."

"She did have somebody else with her," Terriermon insisted as he suddenly appeared on Aayla's head. "Don't you have more faith in my abilities to keep her safe?"

"Sorry, brother," Lopmon chuckled. "But you're more likely to get Aayla _into_ trouble than keep her out of it."

Terriermon scowled and mumbled, "I hate you."

"No, you don't," Lopmon replied.

"Ah, shut up." Terriermon muttered.

"No, I will not shut up, brother," Lopmon suddenly shouted at him. "I was just as worried about you as I was about Aayla. Do you have any idea how horrible it was not to know if my own brother was still alive or not? AGAIN?"

Terriermon almost fell off Aayla's head and suddenly looked quite shame-faced. "Sorry, Loppy," he mumbled. "Er... I guess I owe you a hug when we get back to the rendezvous point, huh?"

"You owe me several," Lopmon smiled. "Er... sorry for shouting."

"S'okay," Terriermon smiled. "You were worried. I can understand that. I would probably do the same."

"Heh, now I owe you a hug," Lopmon chuckled.

"Aaw," Aayla cooed. "Nothing like the love between siblings."

"Eh, shut up," Terriermon repeated and looked away.

Aayla chuckled and said, "Momentai," and then ignored Terriermon's outbreak of protests as she turned to Kit and Barriss and said, "Well, I suppose I can assume that your little... expeditions... were a success considering I see what appears to be another Wookiee and Jar Jar Binks with you."

"Indeed," nodded Kit. "The Gungan Grand Army has pledged their support to us."

"As have the Wookiee people," Barriss nodded. "This is Tarfful by the way."

"Acoooh waoo rooohu waoo," nodded Tarfful.

"Pleasure to meet you," Aayla nodded back.

"And I am to assume that your own mission was a success even if you did have this little sidetrack, am I right?" Kit asked. "The clones who came through from the rest of your brigade said so."

"Yes, Master Fisto," nodded Aayla. "We currently have six restless Acklay in the hangar. Renamon's currently down there now trying to keep them in line and stop them from chewing things to see if they taste good. Frankly I don't know how we're going to feed them until we can get them back to Felucia. We might have to turn them loose in the jungles of Tython to see if they can find anything to eat themselves."

"Now there's a scary thought," Barriss murmured.

"We even found another Jedi completely by chance," Aayla related. "Xiaan Amersu was on the planet Felucia – she crash-landed after her clones damaged her starfighter. She's with us now and recovering. The med droid says she should be up and about in an hour or so."

"This is good news," Kit grinned. "The more the merrier. It's a shame that the Jedi signal that you followed turned out to be a trap though. It would have been nice if we could have recovered another one of our fellow Jedi."

"Yes," Aayla nodded, and everybody present immediately noticed the fact that she was looking slightly uncomfortable. "Er... well... I'm actually glad that you said that more would be merrier, Master Fisto, because... well, while we didn't find any Jedi on Minntooine... we did find someone else who has agreed to help us fight against the Sith."

"Another ally?" Lopmon raised a brow. "Seriously? You didn't somehow convince the Bounty Hunter chasing you to turn on Sidious _again_, did you?"

"Well... no..." Aayla said. "Not exactly. In fact, not at all. That Bounty Hunter was Aurra Sing. I don't think she would _ever_ fight alongside the Jedi."

"Be honest, Aayla," Terriermon grinned. "Did you ever think that the person you _did_ find would ever choose to fight alongside you."

"No," Aayla said flatly. "Not at all."

"Oh, now you're just getting me curious," Barriss said.

"Me too," nodded Kit. "Though I must admit, you do have an extraordinary talent for finding allies in the most unusual of places, Aayla. First the Digimon, then Bane and now... who exactly?"

"Er..." Aayla said. She seemed quite reluctant to say for some reason and Suzie and Lopmon exchanged glances. Aayla cleared her throat and said, "Well, after I was shot down by Aurra Sing, I use a Force projection to create a fake copy of myself while Terriermon and I hid underwater, which Aurra Sing shot and then she left, as she thought it was the real me. Which means Sidious thinks I'm dead again by now probably. But... after that, we had a slight run-in with..."

She stopped again and bit her lip, as if unsure how she was supposed to proceed. Lopmon looked to Terriermon for an explanation, but her twin sibling seemed to be having as much trouble as Aayla.

Aayla just sighed and said, "Why don't you just come over and introduce yourself?" to someone behind her, waving whoever it was forward. "I don't think they'll believe me otherwise."

There was a moment of silence and then one of the last figures any of them had expected appeared next to Aayla. Suzie and Jar Jar both screamed and ducked out of sight, Barriss leapt back as if she had had and electric shock, Chewbacca and Tarfful both roared in anger and Kit automatically went for his lightsaber, even though there was nothing he could do with it even if he drew it.

"You!" Kit shouted.

"So, we meet again, Nautolan!" Grievous narrowed his eyes at the aquatic Jedi. "I see that you are surprised to see me but is that any way for you to greet an ally?"

Grievous words stunted Kit's action and he just stared in disbelief at what he was seeing. Aayla and Grievous were standing side by side and the latter was not attempting to violently murder to former. That in itself was an utterly bizarre prospect. It was wrong. It was weird. It was practically unnatural.

Kit had more reason than most Jedi to feel repulsed by this. After all, he had watched on a holoscreen via a security holocam as the Kaleesh cyborg engaged his own former Padawan, Nahdar Vebb the Mon Calamari, in a duel with lightsabers, only to bring the young, brash Jedi down with a sneak attack with a blaster, killing him right before Kit's own eyes.

Kit didn't hold grudges of course. No Jedi was supposed to, but even so he felt completely and utterly... well, he couldn't even describe it.

Barriss was having similar problems. One of her hands and gone to her heart and she was breathing deeply already at this new development. "Aayla, are you mad?" she asked. "Did you hit your head against something when you crash-landed on the planet. You decided to enlist the help of somebody like him?"

"And you let him see us?" Lopmon asked. "He knows about us? What we can do? Where we come from and what we've done?"

"Not completely," Aayla answered Lopmon first. "We're planning on updating him fully on that when we're done with this call. And Barriss, I actually didn't ask him to join us. It was his own choice."

"Pardon?" Barriss asked, staring in disbelief, her eyes flicking from Aayla's beautiful face to Grievous' utterly terrifying one. "He... He asked to come with you? Did _he_ hit himself in the head."

"If you have something to ask me, Mirialan," Grievous growled at her. "You can ask it to my face. And Secura is right. I am here by my choice and my choice alone. From now on in my life, the only things I will ever do will be because I choose to. I bow to nobody anymore. You hear me? Nobody!" he slammed his fist into the holotable on the other side of the connection so hard all the holograms on either side of the call flickered and died for a split second.

"Grievous, calm down," Aayla put a hand on his arm. "It's understandable that they should be shocked. They don't know the whole story yet, and when they do, I'm sure that they will understand why you have done this, just as I do."

"Oh, I hope I do," Lopmon nodded. "I really hope I do."

"As do I," Barriss replied, still reeling slightly and placing a finger to her forehead. "This is... wow... this is just plain weird."

"Tell me about it," Aayla chuckled. "I still haven't gotten over it yet?"

"Aayla," Kit suddenly said, looking as stern as he could, which looked completely unnatural on a face which was usually grinning but was effective enough nevertheless. "I know for a fact that I want an explanation for this right now. I know for a fact that you are aware that you are standing next to a man, if you can even call him a man, who has murdered so many Jedi and keeps their lightsabers as trophies. What kind of circumstance would have to arise before you would trust someone like this?"

"Circumstance has little to do with it, Master Fisto," replied Aayla. "But before I tell you, I will say upfront that I currently trust Grievous almost one hundred percent completely. I do not believe he will kill me or even attempt to kill me or any other Jedi. Not now, and probably not ever again. And here's why."

Aayla unfolded everything which Terriermon had managed to learn from Gunray and Hill during their discussion while he was in the vent, explaining about how Grievous had been unwittingly manipulated into serving the Separatists and therefore the Sith and their designs, and explained the long mysterious reasons why he hated the Jedi so much. Everyone in the room was taken aback by what they learned. Grievous had definitely not had an easy life and the Sith had only sought to make it worse.

Aayla moved on to explain how she had managed to reach a mutual state of respect between herself and Grievous, and then mentioned how he had been willing to let her go before turning around and requesting to join them, even agreeing to allow himself to be put in jail afterwards if they let him.

Throughout the whole conversation, Grievous' fists began to get tighter and tighter and there was an increase in trembling as he shook with undisguised rage. A low growl started somewhere in the middle and began to get louder as Aayla got further into the conversation.

When they finished, Barriss and Kit both turned to look at each other, using their expressions to convey the same message – What the hell?

Neither of them had every really thought of Grievous as much more than the monster which the Sith had been seeking to turn him into. And now that they learned this... they couldn't exactly say that they _didn't_ feel sorry for him. Jedi were compassionate by nature, after all, and the realisation the Grievous' situation was practically worse than those of the clones was a shock to them.

Not a surprise though. It was the Sith that they were talking about here after all.

"Well..." Kit said after a moment. "This is awkward."

"That would be putting it mildly," Barriss agreed.

"It definitely sounds accurate though," Lopmon added. "We've seen this sort of thing before, after all."

"Indeed," Aayla nodded. "And that's why I trust Grievous. I understand that we're not going to be giving him hugs at any time in the future and more than likely we will never reach a stage like that. However, we have an enemy in common and now he knows it, don't you Grievous?"

"Indeed I do," Grievous growled, his reptilian eyes glaring at everyone present and daring them to say otherwise. "The Sith must pay for what they did to me, and if I have to throw in my lot with you to do it then I will. I understand that we would have a better shot with a united force and if I can have a hand in the downfall of the Sith..." He clenched his fist and growled. "Then I will do whatever it takes to have my revenge! They used me! They tampered with my mind and turned me into something little better than a droid! I am taking my life back, whether you Jedi like it or not!"

"Well, that is hardly the Jedi approach to things," Kit muttered. "But I can see its validity, I suppose. Still, how do we know that we can trust you, Grievous? As Aayla said, the Geonosian scientists that built your new body meddled with your brain to give you the vicious temper which makes so many fear you. Can you guarantee to us that you will not let it get the better of you and allow it to rule you and try to kill us as well?"

"Give me no reason to be angry with you and I will not get angry," Grievous pointed out.

"Actually, it might be possible for us to correct what the Geonosians did to you, Grievous," replied Barriss. "Cloning a new body for you is out of the question of course, but it might be possible to quell your rage receptors and..."

"No!" Grievous suddenly shouted loudly and glared at Barriss, causing her to take a step back even though he wasn't really there. "There will be no more tampering with my mind! Not for any reason, understand? Besides, the Sith created the rage which fuels me! Now it has been redirected from you Jedi to them, and I will use it to full effect! I will make the Sith regret their decision to ruin my life! You can count on that if nothing else!"

Kit and Barriss absorbed this information in silence. The Mirialan turned to the Nautolan and asked, "Well, what do you make of this?"

"Well," Kit muttered. "I doubt that many of the other Council Members are going to be happy with this. And I most certainly am not that happy about it either. After all, he did kill my Padawan..."

"And you killed my pet!" Grievous pointed out vehemently.

"Perhaps," Kit sighed. "But, in any case, I believe that Aayla has made the right decision, even if it is an utterly insane one. In terms of our situation, we are going to need any and all assets that we can find, and if we can trust a bunch of Acklay to fight on our side... perhaps we can trust Grievous as well." He winced and added, "Though that isn't going to stop me from keeping a close eye on him when I can."

Barriss nodded and said, "Alright. I too trust Aayla's judgement. If this helps us to bring down the Sith and restore peace to the Galaxy and bring the Republic back from this Empire, then I suppose I can work alongside Grievous too."

"I have a feeling that you can already guess my answer," Lopmon nodded.

"Mine too," Suzie added.

Aayla smiled and said, "Thanks, guys."

"Knew we could count on you," Terriermon laughed.

"You mean that is it?" Grievous asked, actually looking surprised. "You are prepared to allow me into your forces that quickly despite the fact that I have killed so many of your order."

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "I had a feeling they would, Grievous. That's the difference between the Jedi and the Sith, Grievous. Having known the Sith for the majority of the war, you will only have seen the betrayal and the mistrust and the constantly enforced hierarchy that they impose on everybody else. They do not trust anybody but themselves.

"That is not the case with Jedi. We trust each other completely, although it does occasionally take a little coaxing from time to time, like now. We trust each other to make the right decisions, to do the right thing and are willing to put our lives in the hands of each other at the drop of pin. The Sith also keep those who are useful to them around, but even if we thought you could provide little to our cause, we would probably still let you."

Grievous stared at all of them for several moments before he suddenly snarled and went, "You lot are all insane!"

"No, not insane," Terriermon chuckled. "Just full of faith."

Grievous growled lowly, almost at a loss with how to adapt to this new situation. Terriermon blinked and murmured, "Well, I definitely know one person who I won't even consider pranking now."

"This certainly makes for things to be interesting," Kit nodded. "Do you reckon that Grievous will be able to find a niche in the plan you guys made?"

"Oh definitely," nodded Barriss. "We left a lot of room for expansion and it is a relatively simple plan after all. And simple is best in situations like this."

"Plus I think Grievous on our side would be more of a surprise to the Sith than almost anything else we throw at them," Aayla laughed. "And the more surprises we have, the better."

"Can I just point something out here?" Terriermon asked.

"Knock yourself out," Aayla supplied.

"Well, not only does this mark the fourth time Aayla has avoided being killed by Sidious' agents on the Dark Lord's orders, but it's also the fourth time she's turned the murder attempt against him and made things worse. First there was the Rhen Var station, which allowed her to capture two of his minions. Then there was Bane, who she managed to turn against him to reveal his identity. Then there was Order 66, and thanks to her bonds with her men they promptly rebelled against him instead. And then there's this one with Aurra Sing, which allowed her to meet with Grievous again and allowed him to join us. Four consecutive murder attempts. Four consecutive screw-ups for Sidious. How much better can it get?"

The others weren't sure, but they could swear that the cheeks of Aayla's hologram went a slightly darker shade as she said, "Well, thank you for summing that up. But really it's not that great."

"Oh really?" Terriermon asked. "Let's ask just about every other person we know and count how many people disagree with you, Aayla."

Aayla was about to reply when suddenly there was a bleeping on the holotable on all three of the Republic cruisers. Everyone looked sharply down at the table and they did not need to make any modifications to know what was going on and what the bleeping meant.

"A distress call," Barriss said, her voice tight and her eyes wide.

"Where from?" asked Lopmon, though she was pretty sure she already knew.

"According to Artoo here," Barriss said. "It's from Kamino. The others are in trouble."

"Shhucao rac ohwo wwworarcwowa," Chewbacca murmured.

"Ani and Obi and Little Snipsy are in trouble?" Jar Jar exclaimed. "Oh no! Wesa gots to be doing something now!"

"Agreed," nodded Aayla. "But this is not going to be easy by any means, I'm sure of that! Hurry! We must set the co-ordinates of the navicomputer to Kamino. I'll meet you guys there and we'll have to figure out a way of punching through that blockade!"

There was no time for explanations or questions. All of them knew that. If those on Kamino were in trouble, then they were in trouble on one of the worst places to be in the whole Galaxy for a Jedi at this point. And even from their current places, it would take some time before they reached Kamino, especially considering the isolation of the planet.

As Aayla signed off and began barking orders to the crew, Commander Bly and his fellow clones hurrying to obey her commands and reset the ship to Kamino, her thoughts turned to the friends she knew to be on the clone's homeworld.

_Hold on guys,_ she begged in her mind. _Just find a way to survive until we get there!_

* * *

It took a lot to make Anakin Skywalker worried.

He had faced countless missions against the Separatist droid armies and faced off against hundreds and hundreds of the mechanical beings at the same time. He had faced Geonosian defensive lines and taken out mighty space blockades with the use of a single ship, and all the while, he had had a calm confidence that they would eventually pull through. Especially since he was usually backed up by the rest of his team and the 501st troopers, and more recently the 327th troopers as well.

Now, that feeling was gone, and replaced one of trepidation. And considering the hundreds of clones that were currently rushing towards their location with weapons primed and ready to gun them down, with only four Jedi and four clone commandos against the whole group, he was right to be worried.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Ahsoka asked. "They're swarming down all the passages. Our route to the ship has been cut off."

"There's only one course of action we can take, I'm afraid," Obi-Wan said grimly. "We'll have to go straight through regardless."

"Are you insane, Master?" Anakin cried.

"There's no time to be asking questions. We must do it while we still can."

"Delta Squad," Shaak Ti suddenly turned to the group of four clones. "Chase us. Before they realise that you're on our side. Make it look like you're trying to kill us as well while you follow us to the ship. That's the easiest way."

"Got it, Master Jedi!" Boss cried, and then immediately shouted, "Hey! Stop right there?"

"That's our cue," Ahsoka muttered as all four Jedi suddenly dashed down the elevated walkway that surrounded the building they had just exited, lightsabers igniting in flares of blue and green as they attempted to add some realism to the act. The Delta Squad dashed after them, pulling out their various blasters and placing carefully aimed shots in front of them, trying to aim so that they would just miss the Jedi.

It didn't always work, but the two Togrutas who were taking up the back were more than capable of blocking them. The Delta Squad were a force to be reckoned with and it they _really_ wanted to the kill the Jedi, they would not be having it so easy.

Whether it was due to the act working or because they had decided to focus all their attention on the Jedi and deal with any enemy or supposedly traitorous clones later, the other clones ignored the Delta Squad and, as those closest got within range, they immediately began to pour lasers off at the Jedi. Anakin took point and dashed into the laser storm, springing up and over and swiping the bolts aside like a whirlwind of flashing blue. He was careful not to harm any clones with them though. That was the last thing they wanted to do right now.

Anakin skidded to a halt in front of the first walkway with clones dashing across it and heading right towards him. He hurriedly lifted up his blade to block more, holding his ground at the end of the walkway. Obi-Wan skidded to a halt behind him and catapulted himself over Anakin's head, swatting aside several bolts as he landed in a crouch before his former Padawan and thrust out with a hand. A large proportion of the clones were flung backwards to collapse against the ground, and the Jedi took the opportunity to dash up and past them.

Some of them rolled over and tried to shoot at them as they past, but Ahsoka was suddenly in their midst and hacking through their weapons with lightning-fast strokes of her blade. One clone managed to get to his feet in time to point his blaster right at the back of her head, but Ahsoka sensed him and ducked beneath the shot, grabbed his arm in her own and hauled him over her body to slam him into the ground. She followed up with a swift kick to the stomach of another before she continued to follow the Jedi Masters, swatting aside a blast from Sev that would have missed her anyway.

Upon the next platform and the other Jedi were finding themselves with clones coming towards them from all directions. They were crowding along the walkways and the front-most of them pulsing lasers towards their targets and forcing their blue blades to work double time to repel them. Anakin and Obi-Wan were momentarily back to back, much like old times, with Shaak Ti dancing to the side and her blade everywhere at once.

"Come on," she cried. "We must take a shortcut!" And she dashed over the side of the platform and planted her feet on the sloping edge, sliding down it as if she were on a snowboard and springing off the edge just before she fell off to sail across a gap between it and another platform. The clones tried to follow her, but she was a master of the sword for a reason and parried their shots even while in mid-air.

She came down in the centre of another platform and used the Force to shove clones outward from the spot she landed on. She turned around to see how the others were getting on, parrying as she did.

She smirked a little and shook her head at the differing ways that they were going about getting around. Desperation was making even Obi-Wan use mad tactics. The Human Master had kicked a large munitions crate high into the air and leapt after it, grabbing it with the Force while in the air and holding it still just long enough to land on it and use at a sort of stepping stone to send him rolling onto a walkway not far away.

Meanwhile, Anakin and Ahsoka were side by side, dashing down the slightly elevated edges of one of the walkways as if they were running across wet balance beams, each of them perfectly steady as they skidded past several clones that tried to blast them as they slipped by. When they reached the next platform they separated and dived behind several crates before they jumped on top of their respective piles and sprung across the platform and over the head of several clones.

Shaak Ti ran to join Obi-Wan as her fellow Council member backflipped over a few more clones to land on a platform slightly up from Shaak Ti's position. Shaak Ti used a terrific Force jump to join him and shoved more clones away and into one another with the Force, then turned around to check on the progress of the Delta Squad.

Understandably, the four clones had dropped back a considerable distance since they did not have the ability to perform such stunts and their jetpacks were not fitted. They were, however, being ignored by their fellow clones, so Shaak Ti could only assume that their act had worked.

Still, it wouldn't do to leave them on the planet. ARC Trooper Blitz and his men knew whose side they were on now, though they were currently unconscious. It wouldn't be long before others knew the same.

"Obi-Wan," Shaak Ti cried as she dashed over and cut through the blaster rifle of another clone and kicked him in the stomach, before twirling around to slash a rotary blaster cannon in half, grab the thicker end with the Force and slam it into the gut of its former wielder to knock him over. "We need to buy some time for our allies to arrive."

"I was afraid you were going to say that," sighed Obi-Wan as he stepped back while more clones pressed the attack. He was extremely thankful all the platforms were at different levels otherwise the clones might be able to shoot at them across the gaps and then they would really have problems. "Alright. Let's give it a shot."

He stepped forward to show that it was not just with a lightsaber that he was a skilled fighter. Sheathing his blade and clipping it to his waist smoothly, he ducked under some lasers from and clone and threw himself into a spinning jump over several more in the same motion, Obi-Wan grabbed a blaster and slammed it into the helmet of the clone holding it to send him staggering.

He then sweep-kicked the feet from under the clone and spun him around to toss him into a pair of others, sprang over the shots of several more to land between two others, his fists lashing out to crack them in the side of the helmets and send them staggering as he disarmed another clone with a wave of his hand and threw the blaster at another, lashing out to the side with one foot to catch another clone in the stomach and somersaulting backwards, grabbing another by the shoulders as he flew overheard and heaving him into the air as he landed behind him.

Shaak Ti was in the thick of things too, having shed her lightsaber in favour of using the Force and her own hand to hand skills like Obi-Wan. Her lekku lashed out to either side as she span between several clones, knocking one into another with a roundhouse kick as she sailed past and lashing out with a hand across her own body to push another away with the Force and bowl him into several others. Lasers flashed towards her but suddenly her lightsaber was in her hands again and she blocked the shots, ducked under a few more and grabbing another by the arm to flip him onto the ground with a flick of her wrist.

The Togruta then darted away and dived past several others, leaping upwards as they continued to pour lasers at her. One of the clones sprang for a turret and tried to wheel it around to face her, but Shaak Ti sprang forward and sliced the turret's gun off, then used the Force to uproot the turret and throw it backwards, sending clones scattering to avoid getting hit by the thing. This gave Shaak Ti the inspiration to backflip behind some crates and send them flying outwards with her mind.

As several clones were bowled over by the flying crates, one of them that avoided getting hit had his blaster knocked out of his hand, but that didn't stop him from charging recklessly and raising his fist. Shaak Ti felt a pang of sadness at the bravery the trooper was showing, something you would never find in a battle droid. This was the sort of thing that she had been training the troopers for.

She lashed out and grabbed his fist in her palm, halting it in its tracks. The clone looked momentarily surprised, before Shaak Ti said, "I'm sorry," and pulled him forwards by the arm, kicked his feet out from underneath him and pushed him backwards, where his head slammed into a crate and he fell unconscious.

Shaak Ti looked up just in time to see more clones levelling blasters at her like an execution squad, while Obi-Wan was at the other end of the platform, fending off many others. But before the clones could let off a shot, Anakin appeared, leaping off a higher platform to land in front of Shaak Ti and blast the troopers back with the Force. His lightsaber ignited and he parried the shots of a couple of snipers from higher up and called, "You alright, Master Ti?"

"Yes, thank you, Skywalker," Shaak Ti nodded as she hurried forwards to join him in blocking. "Where's Ahsoka?"

"Over there," Anakin pointed with a finger and sure enough, Shaak Ti saw Ahsoka flying through the air and rebounding off a large pillar to dive into the thick of the melee next to Obi-Wan. The Master and the young Padawan momentarily lorded it over the clones, Ahsoka's skills at hand to hand combat almost matching Obi-Wan's own, as the Togruta threw herself into the air to slam a clone in the side of the head with her foot, fall to the ground and roll across the platform to fall a couple more before springing up and lifting another into the air with the Force to pull him towards her, then side-step so he collided with another clone that had been about to shoot her in the back.

"Come on!" Anakin cried, his head moving slightly to indicate that the Delta Squad had almost caught up. "We have to keep moving!" He suddenly charged forwards and with a huge surge of the Force he pushed the clones before him down, parting them like a tunnel so he could run between them. Shaak Ti immediately ran after him and Obi-Wan and Ahsoka were quick to follow.

Anakin charged straight up the nearest walkway towards the next platform on a higher level, the clones behind them turning around and the Delta Squad pushing their way through the crowds to try and catch up. Anakin's Force-push was still in effect – he was shoving the clones onto their backs the moment they got within ten metres of him and dashing over them, his feet smacking the walkway between them as if he were dodging mines. Some of them were able to catch themselves and stop being pushed down all the way, but before they got the opportunity to let off a shot, Anakin slammed them with a foot or a mechanical fist to knock them over.

There was one instance where a clone was completely unprepared for Anakin's onslaught and stumbled back so far that he tripped over the edge of the walkway and tipped over the edge, yelling as he plunged towards the sea below. Obi-Wan skidded to a halt, planting his foot on the chest of the clone next to him to stop him from getting up and knocking the blaster out of his grip, while simultaneously thrusting out with one hand to catch the falling clone with the Force.

The clone gasped as he came to a stop in mid-air and yelped as he was yanked back up and placed on the walkway. He stared at Obi-Wan in disbelief and the Jedi Master gave him a nod as he parried several more blue lasers without looking and suddenly he was running on. The clone turned to watch him go, too stunned to remember he was supposed to be shooting at the Jedi.

One thing about the platforms and walkways that made up the bulk of the city was that it was designed to ensure that the average person could only move down certain pathways to reach a specific location, thus making it easier to defend the city from attack. But considering the clones were going up against Jedi this time, _they_ were the ones who were being hindered by the design, as it meant that only so many of them could get close enough to shoot at the Jedi at any one time. And the Jedi used this to full advantage, leaping gaps and spanning chasms and moving all over the place to try and throw the clones off in any way they could.

It was not easy, but so far their endurance was holding out and they were able to avoid getting hit.

At one point they separated into two groups of two. Anakin abruptly found himself facing a row of rotary blaster cannons so he dived off the walkway he was standing on and grabbed another walkway nearby, using it to swing himself onto a lower platform. Obi-Wan quickly followed his former Padawan and bounced off the edge of the walkway, while the two Togrutas sprang upwards in time to avoid the blasts from the rotary cannons and landed behind the clones, flinging their hands out behind them the shove the clones onto their fronts before they could turn around.

Anakin and Obi-Wan briefly ducked and dodged from side to side as clone blasts flew all around them, Anakin moving his head just in time in one case with the bolt almost clipping him in the ear. His lightsaber slammed around a dozen shots skyward and Anakin quickly followed them up, with an almighty Force jump that carried him straight onto another platform. Obi-Wan was quick to follow, dashing to the end of his platform and knocking away a shot with single sweep of his blade before he launched himself into the air as well.

He landed near Ahsoka and Shaak Ti as the pair of Togrutas forged their way through several more clones. One of them whirled around and fired at Ahsoka, forcing the Padawan to turn around to block, and she was almost hit by another and quickly surrounded by more clones. Obi-Wan and Shaak Ti turned to help her, but someone else beat them to it.

"Oh no you don't!" shouted Sev as the clone commando finally caught up and stormed off the walkway and into the thick of the other clones, shoving others aside as he slammed his way into those pointing their weapons at Ahsoka shoulder-first and carrying them to the ground. Several of the other clones stepped back in alarm as the characteristically violent Sev suddenly seemed to turn on them, allowing Ahsoka to wrench their weapons from their grip with the Force as Scorch and Boss also came over the walkway, with Fixer bringing up the rear.

The clones backed away as Scorch crashed full into one of them and began to whack him over the head with his blaster, knocking his helmet off to give him a crack that put him out of commission for a while, and Boss fired several precise shots from his own blaster towards the feet of his fellow clones, causing them to dart out of range. Ahsoka hammered one in the chest with her foot, bowling him towards Fixer, who dodged aside and broadsided him to send him rolling.

Anakin was suddenly in the thick of things again and landed beside Ahsoka to deliver a tremendous Force burst that knocked many of the clones flying but seemed to go around the Delta Squad and Ahsoka. "Cat's out of the back now," Anakin observed as he parried a couple of shots from another platform. "You guys better stick close to us now."

"We can handle ourselves you know, Master Jedi," Sev pointed out.

"Yeah, but the General is right," Fixer added. "We usually kill the opponents and I don't know about you but I'd rather not do that this time. And taking prisoners is out of the question."

"Master, look out!" Ahsoka shouted, darting past Anakin to wear a missile from a launcher was streaking towards the Jedi's back. Ahsoka's hands shot out and redirected the incoming missile until it crashed into one of the support pillars nearby. The platform that it was supporting shook and the clones on it looked alarmed, and Ahsoka and Anakin quickly used the distraction to force their way back towards Obi-Wan and Shaak Ti, the Delta Squad hard on their heels.

"Thanks, Snips," Anakin grinned.

"Not a problem," Ahsoka chuckled as she bounced over Shaak Ti to flip a clone's blaster out of his hand with her elbow and pounce on him to push him down like a panther.

Sev turned about and levelled his sniper rifle at all and sundry as the Jedi pushed their way across the final walkway and towards a main building. The clones backed away from him. They all knew how accurate Sev could be with a sniper rifle and this, combined with the fact they were still reeling from the apparent betrayal, was enough to allow Sev to buy the Jedi time to slip inside, then he turned around and quickly followed, a number of clones hard on his heels.

There was little resistance from clones on the inside of one of main facilities, as most of them had gone outside with the alarms, but that's not to say there wasn't a little. This time it was easier to deal with though – the Jedi could use the Force to send the clones flying into the walls instead of chucking them off and edge.

At one point they ran straight past Drill Sergeant Bric, who stepped out from a corridor and suddenly pressed himself against the wall as Ahsoka, Anakin and Scorch all shot past him. Shaak Ti paused briefly to give the Bounty Hunter a firm pat on the arm before continuing on her way with Obi-Wan and the others.

At another point, they ran straight past some curious clone cadets sticking their heads of a barracks door to see if they could see what was happening, but they automatically fled inside when they saw the Jedi running straight towards them.

The other clones were in hot pursuit behind them and by this time they seemed to have adjusted to the idea of the Delta Squad turning traitor as they were blasting their lasers down the corridor in an attempt to hit the retreating backs of the Jedi. Obi-Wan and Sev brought up the rear, the form spinning his blade to parry the shots while the other moved his rifle to let off some of his own in an attempt to put their pursuers off. But this time, it didn't work.

"Remind me why we parked our ship so far away again!" Ahsoka shouted.

"To try not to draw to much attention to ourselves," Anakin reminded her. "Anyway, come on. We're almost there now."

They stormed out into the open air once more, the clouds before them surging and congealing and looking as though they were going to start pouring down rain at any second. And there, across a single walkway was the ship in which they had arrived.

"Come on! Let's go!" Boss cried as they hurriedly dashed across it, the sounds of other clones storming down the various corridors behind them increasing as they began to slowly catch up and as they congealed together to form one massive mass of white armour behind them, throwing blue lasers at their rear.

Standing by the ship and urging them on was Rex, the clone waving them across quickly with his arm and shouting, "Hurry! Hurry! We've gotta get out of here!" Cody, Echo and Fives could also be seen behind the ramp, yelling encouragement as the group of eight hared down the walkway and the doors behind them slid open to admit more clones, who continued to charge after them.

Cody was carefully watching the Jedi and the Delta Squad, monitoring their progress across the walkway. And when he judged they had gotten far enough, he suddenly shouted, "Now, Fives!" The ARC trooper nodded and lifted the detonator that he had clutched in his hand and slammed his thumb down onto the button at the top.

Obi-Wan stumbled when the entire walkway shook and there were several explosions right behind him, ripping through the metal of the walkway and throwing up chunks of debris and bits of metal and smoke in massive amounts as the explosives which Echo had decided to plant on the walkway went off. The clones in pursuit of the Jedi pulled to a halt and there was hurried yelling to try and get those behind to do the same as a large section to the walkway was ripped free and plunged down towards the water below in massive chunks mixed in with tiny bits.

"Yeah!" cried Fives as he slammed his palm into Echo's and the two ARC troopers surveyed the damage they had caused while the Jedi turned around to do the same. Practically the whole space between Obi-Wan and the clones had collapsed, leaving a massive gap between them that the clones couldn't hope to jump without the help of a jetpack, which none of them appeared to have.

"I had a feeling those explosives would come in useful," Echo grinned.

"Hey, that's no fair!" Scorch cried. "Explosions are what I do! You can't upstage me like that – that's just... just... wrong."

"Oh, get ahold of yourself, Scorch," Sev nudged him. "Just be glad someone had the sense to do something like that."

Scorch snorted and mumbled something which sounded like, "Hmmph. Wasn't a very impressive explosion anyway?"

The clones on the other side were still armed even if they could no longer reach the Jedi. More blue lasers began to flash over the gap and the Jedi joined forces in holding them back with their blades. The clones were frustrated that they could no more than this and it showed as they madly increased their rate of fire to try and compensate, but the Jedi continued to hold them back no problem.

"I think it's about time that we left," Obi-Wan observed. "We're clearly not welcome on this planet anymore."

"Well, how did you ever guess?" Anakin asked, but nodded and broke off the blocking to dash towards the ship, as the Delta Squad followed him. "Rex!" he cried. "Did you manage to send out a distress call to the others?"

"Yes sir," nodded Rex. "I'm pretty sure it got through but I can't be sure. Our transmissions were jammed pretty quickly after the alarm sounded, but I think our signal got the message across before we got cut off."

"Good," nodded Anakin as he blocked some more shots and waved Shaak Ti and Ahsoka into the shuttle. "Because we're going to need help getting past the blockade around the planet. They're almost definitely on the alert for unscheduled ships leaving the planet now."

"I'll start her up," Fixer cried as he moved his way to the cockpit and quickly sat in the pilot seat to take up the controls. As Obi-Wan, Sev and Cody quickly stepped up the ramp and into the ship, Anakin hopped on the ramp and continued to deflect more bolts as he ushered Rex on board, and Boss, Echo and Fives hurried along after them just as the ship began to rise into the air. Anakin grabbed one of the supports of the ramp to steady him as he batted fresh lasers aside, several more hitting the bottom of the shuttle and creating little burn marks across its underside.

"Alright!" Scorch cried. "We're out of here! I thought that we were goners for sure a couple of times there. And seriously I knew you guys were good," he pointed to the Jedi, "But I had no idea that you were that good."

"It's not something that I would want to do very often though, that much is for sure," Obi-Wan brushed off his robes. "Still, we failed in our initial task. We were unable to convince the Prime Minister to join our cause before we were forced to flee and now we've had to fight many of the clones. This could have gone a lot better."

"I wouldn't say it was a total disaster though," Shaak Ti pointed out. "We gave Lama Su a lot to think about. There may be a chance, however slim, that he might pick us to side with after all."

"Yes, but if he does, how is he going to tell us or get to us?" Obi-Wan replied.

"Perhaps he'll merely stop any more clones from leaving the planet," Boss shrugged. "And that's better than nothing, isn't it?"

"I suppose," Obi-Wan sighed.

Down below, Anakin was still on the ramp as the shuttle raised itself above the buildings. The Chosen One grimaced as he watched the platforms and buildings falling down beneath them as the shuttle raised itself higher into the air. The clone down below were still firing fruitlessly up at them with their blasters and trying to hit him but it was no use. Anakin could block their shots all day.

However, there was one thing that the Jedi Knight could not block. As he scoured the city below with his eyes, he spotted something which made his eyes widen in alarm. One of the massive gun turrets mounted in the side of the buildings had been manned and was swivelling around to face them, the huge barrels of its main cannon focusing on the underside of the shuttle.

Just as Fixer was about to put on some speed and get the shuttle away from the area, Anakin darted up the ramp and shouted, "Incoming! Hard left! Hard left!" At the precise same moment, down below, the turret let off a huge blast of green that lanced its way straight upwards towards the unwieldy shuttle, seeking to strike it amidships and tear it apart.

The shuttle lurched as Fixer hauled on the controls and desperately tried to swing the large ship around. He succeeded in avoiding the bulk of the blast, but he was too slow to stop the ship from getting smacked in the back, obliterating several of the engines and taking out one of the wings. The ship lurched and threw everyone into the walls as it tipped out of the air and began to fall downwards.

"Oh, that's not good!" shouted Ahsoka as sparks began to fly all around her from the various overloading bits of the ship.

"Just when it looked smooth sailing," agreed Rex.

"Sirs, we're heading for one of the platforms!" Fixer cried, desperately pulling on the controls as he tried to regain some sense of direction. "Impact in five seconds. I can't stop it! The ships dead!"

"Hang onto something!" Echo shouted as he grabbed the nearest wall and practically pressed his back against it while everyone else did something similar.

"Brace for impact!" Boss shouted, as Fixer abandoned his attempts at getting control and dived out of the plummeting cockpit and into the main bulk of the ship, Shaak Ti and Fives grabbing his arms and hoisting him to the safer area as the ship slammed through the air and towards one of the elevated platforms.

With a horrible crunch and the sound of rending metal the ship slammed into one end of the platform head-first. The cockpit was completely destroyed and Fixer would have been doomed if he had stayed in the tiny room. Everyone was tossed about and slammed into each other as the ship skidded across the small platform, rotating slowly as it did so and sending up massive sparks were it burned through the metal beneath it and its own metal was burnt in turn by the friction.

The ramp snapped off and hurtled into the sea below. The lights exploded and went out. The main body of the ship slid to the end of the platform and slipped slightly over the edge, coming to a stop a hairsbreadth from the right place to tip straight over, teetering on the edge of the platform. Everyone inside was on the floor and groaning, but Anakin pushed himself to his feet, relatively unharmed and cried, "Is everyone okay?"

"You tell me, Master," Ahsoka cried. "I can't see anything."

A blue blade flashed into life inside the ship and Shaak Ti held it up towards the air to illuminate the darkened space inside the cockpit. From the looks of things, all twelve of them appeared to be still alive, but it had been a close thing in many cases. Fixer was staring at the crushed cockpit right in front of his legs and breathing heavily. Obi-Wan appeared to be nursing a bruised head and Echo appeared to have some kind of large cut on his arm where a piece of metal had managed to jab between a the gap in his armour at the elbow joint.

"Looks like everyone's okay," the Togruta master observed.

"At least they didn't appear to hit the fuel reserves," Sev raised his head and shook it to try and clear his vision. "Or the ship would have gone boom by now."

"Well, if there ever was a way to go..." Scorch replied.

"Oh, shut up," Sev growled.

"We have to get out of here," Cody said as he got to his feet. "It won't be long before the other clones get here and then we're going to be in some real trouble."

"You mean we're not in real trouble already, Commander?" Rex asked. "Well, you could have told me."

Ahsoka activated her own blade and stabbed it into the side of the ship, dragging it through the metal to cut a hole in the side and shove it outwards, diving out into the open air and almost falling off the platform – they were that close to edge. She turned around to search the area for more clones and balked at what she saw.

"Uh," she said. "I think it might be a little late for that, Cody."

As Cody and Echo joined her outside, with Boss and Anakin following on, they watched in horror as a swarm of clones appeared to be coming in from all sides, dashing along the walkways in every direction as they attempted to get towards them. And without a ship to get away with there was nowhere for them to run.

As the rest of the group joined them outside, Fives clapped Echo in the back and said, "Well, buddy. Looks like this is it. We'll be seeing Hevy and Cutup and Droidbait real soon, Echo."

"Heh," Echo nodded. "I look forward to it."

"Don't talk like that boys," Boss turned to look at them. "Or your three friends will kick your backsides for the rest of eternity in the afterlife. There's still hope left."

"Yes, but unfortunately most of that hope rests on the others now," Shaak Ti murmured. "And they will have to find some way of breaching the blockade up above. And we're going to have to find a way of staying alive until that point."

Anakin turned around and used the Force to seize what was left of the ship now that everyone had filed out of it and grunted as he slowly pulled it away from the edge with a horrible scraping noise and deposited it in a place where it wasn't going to fall off at any moment. He stamped on a small fire to extinguish it and said, "We're not going anywhere any time soon, so this is as good a place as any for us to make a stand. We can use the ship as shelter."

The other nodded and hurried to join him around the mangled mess as he jumped on top and began to deflect the first of the laser fire. Things were about to get even more ugly and Anakin was beginning to pray to the Force that Rex' message had got through to the rest of the emissary forces at the rendezvous point.

Things deteriorated quickly from that point on. The clones hurried towards them, taking up positions of their own of various higher platforms and levelling their blasters, or streaming down the walkways in their dozens with weapons primed and ready. A constant stream came shooting down towards Anakin, and the Jedi ducked behind a piece of wreckage, which was promptly battered by lasers as he used his blade to deflect some more coming from the other side.

As the clones finally reached the platform the ship had crashed onto, things quickly became a brawl for survival for the twelve beings trapped around the ship. Obi-Wan quickly used the Force to lift some pieces of debris to take the shots from several clones and stop them from hitting Shaak Ti and Sev, before tossing them forward to momentarily flatten the clones as he ducked beneath several more shots from nearby.

Ahsoka bounded up beside her master and took up stock behind him, defending his back from attack and pressing her own up against his. The two of them were in the most prominent position and were therefore taking the most fire, and their lightsabers were kept hard at work to keep them at bay. Sev joined them near the top shortly afterwards and brought out his sniper rifle. He was reluctant to kill any of his brothers, though he knew he would have to do it at some point, so he used his expert skill with the weapon to blast the weapons out of the hands of the other clones one by one.

But those without weapons were promptly replaced by more clones who had.

Fives pushed a ruined piece of ship aside to make cover for the slightly wounded Echo and then immediately stood up and drew his two blaster pistols, trying to pick out a target. As he saw more clones running towards them from one of the three walkways that led to their platform, he quickly offloaded some lasers from his guns that slammed into the ground beside their feet, trying to warn them off. It worked for a moment, but soon the clones were coming again, determined to deal with the traitorous ARC trooper and his Jedi friends.

A grimace spread across Fives' face underneath his helmet and he ducked behind another piece of ship. He sighed, realising this was going to have to be all or nothing, and he sprang from hiding to slam some lasers into the legs of the front-most runners, who yelled and collapsed, partially blocking the way for the others.

Echo leaned out hiding, ignoring the pain in his arm as he brought out his rifle and spotted a clone wielding a rocket launcher not far away, aiming it down at the bulk of the ship. Echo hurriedly placed a shot in that clones direction right as he offloaded a missile. The laser struck said missile shortly after it was fired and the explosion knocked several clones backwards. Echo hoped they survived but he couldn't tell for sure.

Shaak Ti was standing with Fixer and Cody, dancing from side to side to protect the both of them as lasers were sent storming at them from across one of the large gaps. Cody stood bravely next to her and fired his blaster past her, the blue lasers knocking several clones over as they slammed into their arms or shoulders and sent them to the floor, gasping for breath. Shaak Ti spotted a clone with a rotary cannon and quickly yanked it from his grip with the Force and hauled it over the gap.

"Here's a weapon for you Commander," she said.

"Thanks, General," Cody nodded and grabbed it, priming it for use.

"General Ti!" Fixer cried. "The ship's fuel cell is still intact! We have to get rid of it before someone hits it and we all blow up! And I know what to do with it!" He pointed upwards to one of the higher walkways that was currently devoid of clones.

Shaak Ti nodded and understood immediately. "Cody, cover me!" she cried as she used the Force to grab the fuel cell and hoist it from its position. Cody stepped up in front of her and sent a stream on bolts from his blaster cannon lancing before him that sent several other clones scurrying for cover as Shaak Ti hurled the fuel cell high into the air.

"Scorch!" Fixer cried. "You want an explosion! Shoot that thing!"

Scorch turned around and spotted the flying fuel cell. He grinned and cried, "Can do!" and pulsed a blue laser directly up and at it. He hit it dead on just before it crashed into the walkway, ripping through it and causing segments of it to fall downwards and towards many of the other clones, which quickly scattered as the debris rained down around them.

It was at that point that Cody got hit in the stomach by a bolt, grunting and falling to one knee. Shaak Ti quickly grabbed him and pulled him back as Fixer grabbed the cannon and took his place. "Hang on, Cody," she said. "Stay still."

"I can still fight," Cody protested.

"Rest first," Shaak Ti insisted. "We may need you later."

Obi-Wan was standing by the remains of the cockpit with Rex and Boss, the Jedi arcing his blade in wide motions to turn away the lasers as the two clone leaders belched forth more shots from their blasters. Boss dodged to one side as a bolt hit the ship next to his head and took better cover behind Obi-Wan to shoot around him.

Rex spotted another clone wielding a turret nearby and grimaced, knowing he had nothing in his arsenal that would affect one of those. He growled and lifted one of his blasters, muttered an apology under his breath and fired. The shot passed straight over the gap and took out the clone in the turret, slamming him in the crook of his arm and knocking him over.

But another clone just took his place and fired back. Rex swore and grabbed Boss to push him away as Obi-Wan jumped over the blasts.

"Thanks," Boss cried, wheeling about to hurl a detonator across the gap and causing the clone to abandon the turret as it crashed to the ground behind it.

"No problem!" Rex cried. "But I really hope the others get here soon, otherwise we're all going to bite the dust!"

The resisting fighters were pushed deeper and deeper into the wreckage of the ship as more and more lasers began to zip in their direction. They all had a horrible feeling that this wasn't going to end well.

* * *

Half talk, half action. I hope you liked this chapter and if you were expecting someone to die then you may have to wait and see a bit longer, but I should mention I am reluctant to kill any one of these clones, because I like four of them very much and I have a feeling I'd be lynched if I killed off one of the Delta Squad, who I like less because I have never played Republic Commando. Having said that, I haven't had any complaints about them being out of character, so I can only assume I'm doing okay.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The struggle for survival on Kamino continues as the small group desperately tries to fend off the clones advancing on all sides. Meanwhile, the others race towards them through hyperspace. What will happen when they encounter the space blockade? Can they rescue the others in time?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 178 : The United Army**


	178. The United Army

Here is a chapter that I hope was eagerly anticipated. I piled on the writing to get it done before I leave this evening. I've only got a few more hours before I'm bound for Lincolnshire to find Grey Seals. It's the pupping season so I should bring back lots of cute pictures. Sorry for the wait this will cause, but there's little I can do about that at this point.

Anyway, enjoy the awesomeness.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 178:- The United Army**

* * *

The blockade around Kamino was still holding its position above the planet while the massive fire fight was going on down at Tipoca City. They guessed that it was possible that the Jedi had managed to send out a signal to others before they managed to block off the transmissions, so they were ready and waiting for any potential reinforcements.

The blockade was being led by a clone Commander who went by the name of Sol. He stepped up across the bridge of his cruiser, helmet tucked under one arm as he checked in with the clones monitoring the computers in front of him. "Anyone getting anything on the scopes yet?" he asked.

""Nothing as of yet, sir," said one of them. "But we'll let you know if we spot anything. Any word from the surface yet?"

"Not yet," Sol shook his head. "Which probably means that the Jedi that were spotted down there are still being dealt with. They're nothing if not hardy. I still don't understand how they managed to get past our blockade. The only ship that passed us by today was that one which belonged to the Delta Squad, but they couldn't have brought them down, could they?"

"I don't know, sir," another clone replied. "Perhaps they had a stealth ship."

"Even a stealth ship would need a larger ship to bring it here out of hyperspace, and we've seen nothing," Sol shook his head. "No, that can't be it. Anyway, we..."

"Sir!" cried one of the clones suddenly. "Incoming ship. Just the one coming out of hyperspace right in front of us."

"Ready the cannons!" Sol cried immediately, his eyes turning to glare out of the window as a single Republic cruiser shot out of hyperspace in front of them. "And prepare to engage them," he added as an afterthought."

* * *

"I had a feeling we might get here first," Aayla muttered as she stared out at the huge line of ships in front of them. The Kaminoan defences were amongst the strongest she'd ever seen. There was somewhere between twenty and thirty ships out there alone, side by side and above or below each other, forming something like an impenetrable wall that cut them off from the planet below.

"We're outgunned, Secura!" Grievous growled as he stepped up next to her. "Do you have a plan for getting past them?"

"Not an idea," Aayla shook her head. "I can't see how we're going to be able to take them on with one cruiser, I'm afraid. No matter what kind of strategy we use, we're going to be on the losing side this time."

"Well, we have to think of something quickly," Renamon pointed, the fox having come up to the bridge after a mental signal from Terriermon informing her of the situation. "The longer we wait up here the smaller the chances of the others making it out alive."

"If they're not all dead already," Henry added.

"Talk like that and I'll give you a bash about the ears," Terriermon said. "With my own."

"Stay out of range for the moment, Commander Bly," Aayla motioned with one hand, a finger pressed to the side of her head as she tried to come up with something. "Give me a moment to try and think."

"Yes, sir," nodded Bly dutifully.

"Secura, this is suicide!" Grievous snarled. "You would be willing to sacrifice anyone on this ship to save four Jedi and a few clones?"

"No, actually," Aayla turned to look at him. "I would not. Anakin, Ahsoka and the others would not want me to risk the lives of hundreds of clones and many others besides to rescue you them no matter what dire straits they were in. But if there is a way, even a tiny sliver of hope that we can pull this off, then we have to do it."

"Rrgh," Grievous growled. "You better know what you are doing? I have no desire of getting myself killed for your friends."

"You should do," Terriermon replied. "Anakin is the one prophesised to defeat the Sith. Without him, you probably won't get your full revenge on anyone."

"He's right," Aayla nodded. "You have a cunning mind, General. Perhaps you can come up with a way of getting past this blockade. After all, you've done it before, albeit you sacrificed many ships to do it. Perhaps you can do it again with just the one."

Grievous growled under his breath and narrowed his eyes, staring in concentration, as he knew that they were right, though he didn't want to admit it. He began analysing the blockade and probing for weaknesses as he and the Twi'lek Jedi tried to think of something that would allow them to push through to the planet below _without_ getting themselves destroyed in the process.

Right now, that seemed impossible.

* * *

However, there was someone else who might not agree with that viewpoint.

Down on the planet below, inside the largest building in Tipoca City and well away from the massive battle which was taking place outside, Lama Su the Prime Minister strode into the command centre, where he had stood during previous invasion attempts on Kamino alongside Shaak Ti and the other Jedi to monitor the battle.

The room was currently devoid of clones, as they were all outside and trying to shoot down the Jedi, but there were a few other Kaminoans in there. The most notable of these was his personal aid, Taun We, who was standing beside the large holotable in the middle of the room.

"Prime Minister," she nodded as he came inside.

"What is the situation?" Lama Su asked immediately, not bothering to dispense with pleasantries. "I am aware that the Jedi are on the planet and our clones are trying to deal with them, but have any reinforcements arrived to aid them yet."

"Yes, sir," nodded Taun We, displaying a hologram of the planet and the cruisers the surrounded it, about thirty ships pointing away from the planet and one further out and facing it. "Just one cruiser has appeared above so far. At the moment, they appear to be holding position and not attacking, but we aren't sure what they'll do next." She sighed said, "This is such a strange situation. What are we supposed to do, Prime Minister?"

Lama Su didn't reply for a moment, staring at the lone holographic cruiser facing off against impossible odds up above. He knew right away that they weren't going to be able to do much against the blockade with just one ship, and even if a few more reinforcements arrived, nobody was going to force their way down to the planet's surface without major losses on both sides.

He grunted quietly, considering everything that he had learned from the Jedi and the Delta Squad not long before. The clones up there and outside had little idea about why they were being ordered to kill the Jedi. In fact, they had none at all. But Lama Su did know, and what he had learned had actually shocked him even more than he had let on.

The Kaminoans had been played the whole time, and Lama Su could only wonder what kind of prospects they would be facing with this new Empire run by a Sith Lord. He had spent so long believing that he was fighting against the Sith that he knew full well what they were capable of. He'd heard the reports. He'd heard of how they bullied and massacred and bought and bribed systems to come and work with them and be a part of their cause.

Kamino had been spared such a fate so far, or so he had thought. But they had really been giving the Sith more help with their designs than many of the systems which were openly on their side. And now that the Sith had declared themselves as the top, it was only a matter of time before their evil ways came to Kamino's shores.

Lama Su understood the game with Darth Sidious. It was dangerous, completely deceitful and utterly brilliant all at the same time. The Prime Minister did actually feel a slight admiration for the man. But it was mostly smothered under two other emotions.

Righteous anger and determination.

"Prime Minister?" Taun We prompted. "What are we supposed to do? Wait," she added, as the holotable started bleeping and suddenly some extra holograms appeared on it. "Sir, four more cruisers have just come out of hyperspace to join the other one. It looks like the Jedi have even more reinforcements now. What do we do?"

"Put me in contact with Commander Sol," Lama Su replied quickly. "I need to speak with him immediately."

* * *

"Hey guys," Aayla called from the bridge of her ship as Commander Bly activated the comlink channels. "It's good to see you got here so quick."

"Not too bad yourself, Aayla," Barriss nodded. "But now that I'm getting a look out at the blockade facing us, I really don't know what we're supposed to do next. How are we going to get past that thing?"

"Disa mui bombad," Tarpals agreed. "Mesa never been in a space battle before. Disa going to be a berry interesting fight."

"Does there have to be a fight at all?" Lopmon asked. "Is there any way that we can just disable those ships or something?"

"If we had an ion cannon then yes," Kit replied. "Unfortunately, we don't, and it doesn't look like they're going to be letting us pass any time soon. I'm afraid it looks like an attack is our only option right now."

"Rhhuao aoacworcwo rarcwo aooooo scrawhro," Chewbacca complained immediately. "Ohwo'anan rhwo oarchucacwowa aooo akahwooawoc."

"Not necessarily," Terriermon shook his head. "I was hoping that we wouldn't have to do this, but couldn't we use the same technique that we're planning to use in the plan against the Sith? That might give us a slight edge despite the numbers that we have."

"Yes, but it also means that we'll end up destroying countless of innocent clone lives," Aayla sighed. "And I am aware that we're going to have to do that at some point but I do not like the idea of doing it right now any more because of it."

"If you have an edge against them in any form then it makes only logical sense that you employ it to the maximum!" Grievous growled. "And if we're really going to go ahead on the suicidal missions then I suggest you take full advantage of it!"

"May I remind you Grievous that you are not in charge here!" Kit pointed out.

"And despite the fact we're trying to rescue people down there, we're still hoping that the clones of this planet will join our cause as you have," Renamon added.

Grievous growled and clenched his fists, as well as his taloned toes which dug into the floor. He was not used to not being the one with the final say in this sort of situations, but nevertheless he subsided, knowing that he wasn't going to sway someone like the Jedi.

"Nevertheless, perhaps Grievous and Terriermon are right," Renamon turned to Aayla. "This may be the only way that we can save the lives of the others down there quickly. And every second we stand here debating is a second which a stray blaster bolt could end it all for them down there."

"We have to do something," agreed Rika.

Aayla sighed and said, "Alright then. Master Fisto, you're the most senior Jedi here. What do you say?"

"I say let's go for it now while we still have time," Kit said. "And hope that we are not too late."

"Alright then," Aayla nodded. "You guys ready then?"

"Yeah," nodded a lot of people at the same time.

"Then Bly," Aayla gestured towards the waiting ships. "Move all power to the forward shields and let's get moving."

"Yes, General," Bly nodded and slowly the five cruisers began to move towards the vastly better armed opponents which sat there and waited for them to come into range.

* * *

"Sir, they're advancing," one of the clones reported to Commander Sol.

"Yes, I see that," Sol nodded. "It took them long enough if I do say so myself. Alright then, let's get this done. Prepare to fire all cannons on my order. Are the fighters ready?"

"Ready and waiting, sir," nodded one of the clones.

"Tell them to wait for my signal for launch," Sol folded his arms, as ever single clone tensed, ready for the battle that was looming closer with every second.

"Sir," one of the clones around the holotable cried suddenly. "We've got an urgent transmission from the planet below. It's the Prime Minister, sir."

"What? Now?" Sol asked. He grimaced and said, "I can't talk to him now. We've got an incoming battle and I need to divert my whole attention to destroying those traitorous vessels. I don't have the time to discuss something with the Prime Minister."

"But sir," protested the clone. "It's an urgent message. And surely considering the context, you have to answer it."

Sol grunted in exasperation and said, "Fine, but let's be quick. Put him through."

The clone activated the hologram and the tall collared Kaminoan appeared in front of them in hologram form. "Sir," Sol saluted. "We're kinda busy at the moment sir. We've got enemy ships incoming and we need to get focus our attention on them just in case they try to slip past us or something."

"Commander Sol, I am aware of the situation," Lama Su nodded. "And I know who it is that is coming and why they are here? Be that as it may, I am ordering you as your creator to stand down and allow them to pass."

"What?" Commander Sol cried. "But... you can't be serious, sir. They could attack us at any second and the Emperor has ordered us to eradicate any..."

"I know what you have been ordered to do," Lama Su raised a hand to stop his arguments. "And I am also aware that your main authority is to the Emperor, but a new situation has arisen and new intelligence has been gathered. And I think that you will find that you will agree you should stand down when you hear it."

"You mean we have new orders from the Emperor?" Sol asked.

"Yes, you certainly have new orders," Lama Su nodded. "Now, please, let them pass. Allow them onto the surface of the planet to get what they want."

Sol froze in hesitation, looking back out at the ships which were looming ever closer, a grimace one his face. The overwhelming urge to obey his programming was now conflicted. On the one hand, he had heard nothing regarding orders to spare the Jedi from the Emperor, but he was also extremely loyal to the leader of the Kaminoans, who had, of course, created him and all the rest of the clones."

He bit his lip. Surely the Prime Minister of Kamino wouldn't do anything against the Emperor, so there must be a good reason for this sudden turn of events.

"What is your answer, Commander?" Lama Su pressed.

Sol sighed and said, "Alright. Copy that, sir. I'll do as you ask and order the blockade ships to let them pass. But what has prompted this decision?"

"I am afraid I do not have the time to say much," Lama Su replied vaguely. "But you will understand by the end of the day and I am sure that you will agree with my final decision. There is much to be discussed and the Jedi are a key part of it."

"Very well, sir," Sol nodded. "I hope everything works out." Lama Su nodded and his hologram disappeared. Sol added, "Whatever the heck is happening," under his breath, before declaring, "Inform all cruisers that the Jedi are allowed to pass us by."

"Yes, sir," nodded the clones.

* * *

"Prepare for incoming fire," Kit announced to all the cruisers still moving towards the blockade. "We're within range now. They could start firing at any second."

The atmosphere was charged with tense energy as both sides waited for the fighting to begin. Space battles were one of the worst experiences for the Tamers as there was very little that they could contribute to them in most cases, and Suzie was peering out towards the enemy ships with wide eyes, waiting for the first lasers to start streaking towards them.

And then she spotted something else.

"Hey," she said, stepping up for a better view. "Are those ships moving apart?"

"What?" Barriss blinked and narrowed her eyes to get a closer look. Eyes all focused on the middle of the blockade directly in front of them, where, sure enough, they could see the cruisers begin to peel off and move to one side, manoeuvring them up, down and to the side to create a large gap in the blockade.

"They're forming a path," Renamon breathed.

"You can't be serious," Henry's eyes widened. "You mean to say they're going to let us through to the surface without a fight. Don't they know who we are, or do they think we're someone else."

"No idea," Kit replied, a grin on his face once more. "However, I say that we should count our blessings with this and get going. Full steam ahead and through that gap while it's still there."

"I say you should keep an eye out for a trap if you ask me," Grievous growled.

"And we will, Grievous," nodded Aayla. "But Master Fisto is right. We need to move while we have this opportunity. Commander Bly, we need to make sure the gunships are ready to move out when we get down there just in case. Renamon, can you please go and make sure the Acklay don't get in the way and Terriermon, I want you to check on Xiaan and see if she's fit enough to help you."

"On it," the two Digimon and the clone commander nodded as they immediately left the room at high speed to carry out their tasks.

"You certainly don't mess around when it comes to giving orders, Secura," Grievous chuckled dryly. "I thought Jedi were no supposed to be war generals by nature."

"We aren't, Grievous," Aayla replied. "You should take it as a compliment. I've had to adapt fast to deal with _your_ droid armies."

Grievous chuckled slightly malevolently as the cruisers sailed through the gap that had been created for them in the blockade and pushed their way into the atmosphere of Kamino. For several of the clones, they were coming home once more after months away and not a moment too soon.

* * *

Things had gotten even worse down on the surface as the Jedi and the clone commandos, ARC troopers and leaders that we with them were all now struggling to stay alive. Each one of them were veterans of countless battles throughout the clone wars, but they could count how many times they'd been in spots as tight as this one without having to raise any fingers on either hand.

Cody was valiantly doing his best to ignore the wound in his hip and had taken a fresh shot to the shoulder, but he was still fighting on as he leaned out from behind a chunk of broken ship and spurted laser after laser out towards the clones that were attempting to surround them from all sides. Most of the shots went wide, but several of them hit the enemy clone in non-lethal places to momentarily incapacitate them. And then Cody was forced to duck back behind the debris, a hand flying to his hip as he grimaced in pain.

Rex and Echo were standing next to one another with their backs against the dented hull as they blasted outwards with abandon. Echo now had another wound too – he had twisted his ankle when an explosion caused by a thrown detonator had knocked him aside, but he still strove to fight. Rex was, as of yet, un-hit, but a large piece of the armour on his elbow that jutted out from his body had been burned through by a laser too.

"Come on, Echo!" he encouraged as he ducked a laser and fired under his own arm to slam the clone responsible in the leg and bring him down. "We've got to hold out a little longer."

"I've got this, Captain," Echo nodded, grabbing a large chunk of metal and tossing it to bash an oncoming clone in the face before felling him with a shot to the side. "Don't worry about me."

Scorch had somehow managed to commander a rocket launcher from another clone while Fixer stood beside him, still wielding the rotary blaster cannon, the pair of them unleashing a storm of ammunition towards one of the walkways leading to their own platform. Fixer made the clones scatter with a volley from his cannon and then when a small area was devoid of men, Scorch launched a blast at it which took out the gap, which would force the other clones to go back and try another way.

Fives was fighting alongside Obi-Wan now and the Jedi had cut through a large battered section of what had once been the cockpit and was trying to use the Force to push it across the platform and down another of the walkways in an attempt to push the clones back across it. His lightsaber flashed in one hand to parry some shots and Fives stepped past him and tried to force the clones doing the shooting to duck out of sight by blasting a storm of lasers from his twin pistols at roughly head-height, covering the Jedi as he tried to push more of the clones away.

Shaak Ti dashed out into the open once more after she had helped a slightly injured Boss into cover and stood up by Sev, her lightsaber swatting aside bolts before they could slam into the sniper clone's back. Sev nodded in thanks and stood taller, aiming precise shots into places which would make the enemy clones fall to the ground in temporary incapacitation as Shaak Ti took some initiative and flung her lightsaber. The Togruta ducked behind Sev and used the Force to manipulate the spinning blade to scythe through the air close towards clones across one of the gaps.

As the blade sliced past their heads, the clones yelped and ducked out of sight, allowing the blade to whoosh past harmlessly overhead like some kind of hummingbird of death. Boss leaned out from behind cover and replaced the blade with a bunch of lasers to try and keep them there. A few stood up to brave his shots but were quickly forced back into cover again by his good aim, though one of them managed to let off a laser that crashed into the ship by the leader of the Delta Squad's foot.

And Anakin and Ahsoka were in the middle of things, the two of them having abandoned the cover of the ship momentarily to try and take the fight to the clones and push them back a bit more to give the others some much needed relief. So far it appeared to be working. Anakin slashed a rifle in half and kicked the clone it belonged to in the stomach, his lightsaber flashing up behind him to block no less than three shots at his back, before he span about to knock the helmet of one of the clones and bash him in the side of the head with it and spin over the top of him as he was falling to slam his foot down on the pistol of another and knock it out of his grip before he grabbed three more with the Force and tossed them aside.

Ahsoka was all over the place. She leapt across a gap in the fighting, parrying several blasts aimed at Anakin as she went and grabbing one clone by the arm as she landed, kicking another one in the chest to knock him over and then heave the clone she had grabbed into a couple more, bringing her lightsaber over her head to block a couple more shots before spinning around and behind another to blast the ones behind him with the Force, then backflip over his head just as he turned around to sweep his legs out from underneath him and cartwheel to the side as more shots were fired at her.

She was able to find a momentary lull to look around her at the situation and her eyes widened at what she saw. As she furiously went back to blocking, she thought, _Master, we've got trouble._

Anakin finished causing a group of clones to fall like dominoes as he followed Ahsoka's finger with his eyes, looking upwards into the sky and cursing when he saw a group of LAAT gunships were lifting off from a landing platform on the far side of the city. Evidently some of the clones at the back had gotten tired of not being able to get close and decided to try and take them fight to them from another angle as well.

Anakin leapt back and slammed his mechanical fist into the gut of one of the clones, winding him despite the armour and not affecting Anakin in the slightest, then slammed his other fist into the back of the clones neck as he doubled over. "Cover me, Snips!" he shouted as he darted backwards and towards the wreckage of the ship where the others were still fighting. Ahsoka grimaced and leapt into his place to push a clone over with her foot and twirl in several spinning circles to deflect and influx of lasers as Anakin pulled to a halt by the ship.

The Jedi Knight focused on the ship and wrenched several pieces of it away with the Force and hurriedly lifted them into the air, with intent to try and block the way for the gunships with them and stop them obliterating the small force from above. Echo and Rex spotted the situation and darted forwards to stand on either side of the General and keep him safe from any incoming fire as Ahsoka stood in front of him and grimaced as she bounced and leapt around to hold the clones at bay as best she could.

Green lasers spurted out of the gunships and towards them but Anakin brought the sheets of metal together and grunted as they took the shots and stopped the lasers in their tracks, leaving huge burn marks on the other side. Echo leapt forward and slammed his shoulder into a clone that had gotten past Ahsoka and began to batter his head with his blaster. Rex kicked another piece of metal forward to bean another clone in the helmet and dropped another with a shot to the shoulder.

Anakin grimaced as the gunships continued to pound at the shields which he was levitating in the air. One of the gunships attempted to move around the blockage but Anakin diligently moved it along with it to try and keep it blocked off.

The rest of the group continued to madly try and defend as the clones pressed their attack, recognising that they had finally managed to get the determined defenders on this last legs. Obi-Wan sprang backwards, dragging Fives with him as rotary cannon blasts peppered the place where they had been standing. Cody grabbed Shaak Ti's robes and pulled her to the ground just as a missile from a rocket launcher whistled through the spot where she'd been and impacted against the ship to throw Scorch sprawling but unharmed. Fixer grunted his own cannon was blasted out of his hands and he quickly redrew his own ordinary weapon. Sev drew his knife in preparation for if things got ugly close up.

But then disaster finally struck. The gunships launched missiles down at the group, two rockets bursting forth from each one to shoot around the blockage that Anakin was holding up and soar down towards them. Anakin cursed, knowing that if they hit, it would all be over. "Incoming!" he yelled, causing everyone to look up.

Sev immediately shot one with a single blast from his sniper rifle and blasted it to pieces. Obi-Wan grabbed another with the Force and forced it to go careening into another and blowing them both to pieces, but the fourth one slipped through the smoke created by the blasts from the other two and streaked right towards Anakin and Rex.

"Look out, General Skywalker!" Rex shouted and leapt sideways to ram Anakin in the side and send him sprawling, the bits of debris in the air falling as Anakin's concentration broke. Rex fell to the ground in the spot where Anakin had been and looked up as the missile shot down towards him.

Ahsoka gasped and turned around, dashing back and grabbing Rex with the Force to hurl him away and over the debris of the ship, where he collided with Boss and Sev, thus saving him from sacrificing himself, but in doing so she put herself right next to the blast zone. The missile struck the ship and sent up a huge explosion that pushed the nearby Anakin, Echo, Scorch and Fixer over onto their backsides, while everyone else ducked and covered, shielding themselves from the blasts.

But Ahsoka was flung into the air by the blast with a cry of pain and shock. She yelped as she sailed over the heads of some of the clones and collided with the side of the platform, her momentum carrying her over the side where she slid down the sloping edge. She gasped, winded and partially burned from the explosion and had just enough sense to roll over and scrabble at the side with her fingers, trying to regain a grip on it.

But she wasn't quick enough.

She slid off the edge and plummeted, screaming, towards the ocean far below. And it was a very long drop. Even a watery landing wasn't going to do a lot in this situation.

"AHSOKA!" Anakin cried, immediately scrambling to his feet and a burst of the Force throwing several clones away as he scrambled to the side and peered over the edge. There was no sign of his Padawan and he grimaced in shock at what he had just witnessed and he could sense that Ahsoka was no longer beneath the platform. He kept his anger in check where it should be, but that didn't stop him from crying out in pain and shock. He looked up and spotted the gunships tilting their cannons towards him, so he grabbed the gunships with the Force, the pilots in them yelping as they suddenly lost control of their vessels, the Chosen One exerting a whole lot of power into manipulating the ships and moving them down towards the platforms nearby.

Echo, Fives and Rex roared in anger and charged forwards, throwing themselves into the other clones full on, ignoring any injuries they had received as they ran to Anakin and covered him, as the Chosen One dragged the two gunships down and slammed them wing-first into one of the platforms, cutting off their ability to fly. As the fight began again in earnest all around them, Anakin looked back over the edge and stretched out with his mind, trying to sense Ahsoka's presence.

_Snips,_ he cried. _Snips, are you there? SNIPS!_

* * *

The first thing Ahsoka realised was that she wasn't dead. The second thing she realised was that she wasn't wet either, which meant that she hadn't actually hit the water yet. The third thing she realised was that she wasn't going to hit the water because there was a large green arm that had the shape of a bazooka wrapped around her.

She looked up in astonishment at the owner of the arm.

"Hey, Ahsoka!" he laughed. "You miss me?"

"Rapidmon!" Ahsoka gasped as the cyborg bunny sailed low over the water, having swooped out of nowhere to arrest Ahsoka's fall and stop her from dying a horrible death from getting stunned via a massive impact and drowning. "You... you saved me. Thank you! And... when did you get here?"

"Hehe," Rapidmon laughed as they swooped upwards a fair distance from the battle and he hovered with Ahsoka in the crook of his arm. "Just now actually! Good thing we got here when we did, huh? I saw those gunships were about to give you some problems to I had Henry digivolve me to take care of them, but then I saw what happened and went for you instead. Besides," he nodded towards the distance battle where the gunship's wings were being dragged across a platform and scraped off before they were dumped on the platform, "Seems Anakin has things regarding those ships under control now, right?"

"What...? Who else is...?" Ahsoka began before Anakin broke into her mind and cried, _Snips! Snips, are you there? SNIPS!_

_No need to yell, Master,_ Ahsoka laughed joyfully. _I'm fine._

_You're... fine?_ Anakin asked in bewilderment. _What? How...?_

_No need to thank me, Anakin,_ Rapidmon chuckled in his own mind. _Just doing my job as a member of the Ten._

_Terriermon?_ Anakin gasped.

_Rapidmon technically,_ the bunny replied. _And you know what this means don't you? If you would care to look up, you would see your incoming reinforcements. Hope you like the surprises we brought with us._

* * *

Anakin did just that, deflecting several more shots as the clones continued to press their attack to see the dark shapes of five massive cruisers emerging through the darkening clouds above them. He grinned and laughed slightly, and then began to belt out with laughter almost like some kind of lunatic, causing a momentary lull in the fighting as everyone turned around to face him. Even Fives, who was in the middle of a wrestling match with another clone, stopped to look, as did his opponent.

"Hey guys!" Anakin turned to grin at everyone. "Looks like we're gonna be alright after all." He pointed upwards towards the cruisers and heads turned to swivel from all directions, staring in amazement at the huge ships lowering themselves towards the action.

Detaching from the bottom of each of them was a large phalanx of gunships that were heading downwards at high speed towards the action. The clones that had been attempting to shoot down the Jedi and the traitorous clones backed away as the wind generated by the engines of several of them whooshed overhead. One of the gunships pulled to a halt beside the platform the others were standing on and the blast doors opened allowing several clones with blue painted armour to leap out, led by one hefting a Z-6 rotary blaster cannon and roaring at the top of his lungs:-

"Who wants a piece of me then, huh?"

"Hardcase!" Rex laughed. "Good to see you buddy!"

Anakin and Obi-Wan watched with no small amount of amazement and joy as familiar helmets piled out of the gunships. Jesse, Ox, Kix and Boomer and several others besides, all taking up arms and pointing them towards the other clones, causing them to step back, as Hardcase whirled his cannon, ready for a fight as ever no matter who it was with.

Several of the other gunships whooshed overhead, taking up positions all around the clone forces. Some of the braver clones tried to shoot upwards at them, but it had little to no effect on them at all. Another gunships surged over the top of the damaged ship and the survivors clustered around it and a pair of Twi'lek's sprang out, one landing in a crouch nearby with a blue lightsaber in her hand and the other rolling on top of the downed shuttle and a pair of blades springing into life in her hands.

"Aayla! You made it!" Anakin laughed.

"Wouldn't miss it," Aayla grinned. "Looks like I miss quite a party though, but I decided to bring some friends along for the ride if you don't mind."

"Including me," nodded Xiaan Amersu, grinning and the majority of her injuries gone as she gave Shaak Ti and Obi-Wan a thumbs up. "Nice to be here."

Several clones jumped back as a bunch of Wookiees sprang out of one of the gunships and landed with great thuds on one of the platforms beside them, roaring into the air and almost drowning out the noise that the gunships were making and beating their chest and shaking their arms like apes as they levelled weapons at the surprised clones. At their head was Chewbacca, the great Wookiee holding his bowcaster high and letting off a couple of warning shots into the sky, sending several green lasers shooting into the clouds as a result.

Another gunship pulled to a halt not far away, and a young Mirialan jumped out, landing on the side of a sloping walkway and sliding down it as if she was surfing and leaping into a flip as she neared the end, coming to rest between Echo and Fives and a blue lightsaber springing into life in her hands as she did so. "We came as quick as we could," Barriss said as she twirled her blade. "I hope that we didn't stay away too long for your tastes."

"Actually, your timing is perfect, Master Jedi," acknowledged Echo.

"Thanks, we try," nodded Barriss.

Meanwhile several of the clones were being taken by surprise as a gunship swooped low over their heads and a Nautolan sprang out, leading several clones with him. Kit landed in front of the clone forces and gave them a hefty Force push to knock them backwards the clones under his own commands roared and yelled encouragement to one another as they dropped to their knees and levelled their weapons, ready for anything.

There were more clones coming from everywhere, dropping from cables from the higher gunships until there were clones from both factions on just about every single platform, facing off against one another and the newer arrivals ready for a scrap while the ones that had already been part of a scrap looked a little more reluctant to and were taken aback by everything that was going on.

One clone turned around at the sound of footsteps behind him and received a smack in the chest from an electropole, courtesy of General Tarpals, who was leading a squadron of yelling Gungans down on of the walkways to the aid of the renegade clones. Jar Jar Binks ran along at its head with him, tripping and almost fell over the side and probably would have if Tarpals hadn't been so used to this sort of thing happening that his arm had lashed out to grab Jar Jar's own and steady him almost before it happened. The Gungans whooped and hollered as they brandished their electropole and forced the clones to group together as they jabbed them threateningly towards the amassed men.

Clone, Wookiee and Gungan alike were crowding out of the gunships from all sides, and the previous fighters didn't know which way to turn, as new threats were coming from all sides, including from above as the gunship were swivelling around to point their cannons downwards at the enemy clones.

But there were still more surprises in store.

Several of the clones yelped and fell to the ground, as the platform they were standing on shook when a very large Varactyl landed on it right next to them and reared up, hollering its hooting call loudly into the sky and shaking its feathered tail. The clones scrambled backwards and pointed their weapons, only to see a Zabrak and a Kyuzo jumping off the lizard's back and pointing weapons of their own in their direction. Another one turned around to flee to find a safer place to shoot, only to find a Frenk had somehow managed to get there without him noticing and has a sniper rifle in her hands and levelled at his face.

"A wonderful day for a scrap," chuckled Sugi, as she faced off against the clones with a blaster in one hand and her vibrodagger in the other. Embo and Rumi nodded in agreement, as did Seripas, who was standing on top of Zarza's head.

And then everybody was cast in shadow as one of the cruisers – the _Intrepid_ pulled in low over the platforms with its ramp already down, the bottom of it aimed towards one of the few platforms that were still empty. It wasn't empty for long because six cawing, screaming Acklay suddenly piled down the ramp and leapt onto it, slashing their claws towards the clones crowded on the walkways and screeching all the while. One of them sent a bolt of orange lightning into the air to crackle against the side of a building with a furious energy as the mighty beast stalked their way towards the clones.

Commander Bly and Commander Monnk grimaced as they landed in front of their men and pointed their blasters towards the other clones, ready for action at any moment. The forces of the 327th took up the bulk of the reinforcements and there was yelling and loud warcries as the clones attempted to intimidate the others.

Of the allied forces, only Grievous and the Digimon were still nowhere to be seen. The former had been asked politely by Aayla if he would remain on the ship instead of coming down to the surface for the moment. The last thing they needed at this point would be for more questions to be raised, as the Jedi were already being considered traitors for their actions by the clones and having Grievous around would only solidify that belief.

Grievous had agreed, albeit he had been very reluctant and insisted that Aayla was not the boss of him and shouldn't order him around. Aayla had pointed out that she had only asked and not done any ordering at all, to which Grievous had had no reply and only consented to remain on the ship.

And as for the Digimon... well, that was all about to change.

With a whoosh of green, Rapidmon shot upwards through the gap between two of the platforms, laughing uproariously and shouting, "Somebody call for a Padawan?" before releasing Ahsoka. The Togruta sailed downwards and landed with a roll next to Anakin and stood up, a big grin on her face.

"So, what did I miss?" she asked. "Ack!" she added when Anakin suddenly glomped her, pulling her into a hug so fierce that it rivalled one of Suzie's, an action which took her completely off guard. But, after a moment, she grinned and returned it. Anakin then pulled away, looking embarrassed and Ahsoka chuckled.

Rapidmon, meanwhile, landed with a thud next to Aayla on top of one of the fallen gunships nearby, towering over the clones and priming his bazookas with an almost maniacal cry of, "Hey guys! You might want to reconsider five or six times before any of you think of pointing a blaster at me!" He levelled his bazookas towards the clones and they quailed and stepped backwards.

One of the clones that was mounting a turret in one of the larger buildings hurriedly aimed his giant gun and fired a shot towards Rapidmon, and the Digimon promptly whirled around and intercepted it with a missile. And then, out of nowhere, Renamon appeared, dropping her perception filter as she swooped around Rapidmon with the use of her freshly acquired Hyperwing upgrade, Rika and Henry riding on her back.

A moment later and Renamon flashed into light and shouted, **"RENAMON MATRIX-DIGIVOLVE TO... TAOMON!"** before the new fox shaman landed nearby and raised a shield to contain several of the newer arrivals to protect them from any further incoming fire.

Her brush appeared from out of her sleeve and she smirked at the astonished clones. "It may not look like much of a weapon," she called, brandishing said brush. "But trust me when I say that you do not want to mess with this."

And as for Lopmon, she was dropping through the air towards them from one of the cruisers, Suzie clutching her like a lifeline and trying not to scream as they fell further than they'd ever fallen before when they'd jumped out of a ship. Despite this though, Suzie was still able to swipe a blue card in mid-fall and Lopmon promptly began to expand.

"**LOPMON MATRIX-DIGIVOLVE TO... ANTYLAMON!"**

With Suzie now riding on her head and clutching her ears tightly, Antylamon sailed down the last few hundred metres and crash feet-first into one of the platforms, sending clones scattering all around her, though none of them had been crushed under her feet. She bent her knees to absorb the impact of the fall and morphed her blades into axes, clashing them together before her warningly.

"Just so you guys know," she cried as she brandished the axes. "I do know how to use these."

"Now this is definitely something special," Obi-Wan murmured as he stared outwards at what had previously been a battleground.

"I could not agree with you more, General Kenobi," grunted Commander Cody, his hand moving to one of his two wounds. Barriss immediately noticed and moved over to help him, as did Xiaan who helped to support him while Barriss held her hands over the wounded areas.

And the two of them were right. The clones had thought that they were going to be able to pull a victory out of this with relative ease now that they appeared to be wearing down the opposition, but this was something that they had definitely not been expecting. Not only had several cruisers managed to get past the space blockade, with apparently little to no fresh damage to any of them, but they were facing off against an army all of sudden.

And army none of which knew how to react to.

Everywhere they turned there was a different threat. Wookiees stood strong and proud, with specialist weapons designed for their great strength primed and many of them not even baring any weapon but still looking absolutely terrifying. Tarfful was leading a roaring battlecry in Shyriiwook designed to terrify the opposition and it was most definitely working. Elsewhere in many places, Gungans were standing in ranks, with personal deflector shields raised at the front, electropoles behind and several holding atlatls with energy balls fixed to the end ready at the back, with Jar Jar and Tarpals standing ready for a fight and trying to ignore their urge to stare in disbelief at the Digimon.

Despite the fact that their legs were clearly not used to or designed for purposes like this, the Acklay seemed to be having surprisingly little trouble navigating the narrow walkways and were advancing towards the clones side-on like crabs, though this was just as dangerous a position as being at the front as there were three large claws now facing the clones and ready to strike at a moment's noticed. Elsewhere, Zarza had sprang onto the sloping side of another platform and scrambled up and over the edge, lashing her tail threateningly as she dared some of the other clones to try and take her on.

And of course there were the other clones themselves, each of them ready to do whatever it took to assist the Jedi, even if it meant having to take on their own brethren. Hyperactive Hardcase was practically spoiling for a fight even now, and the usually more reserved Kix was standing ready. Others like Blade and Conor were standing rock steady, waiting for any signal to begin the attack.

And finally the three Digimon loomed over everything, whether they were hovering or merely standing, and not one of the clones relished the idea of taking any of them on.

What the heck was any of them supposed to do next? None of them wanted to be the one to fire the first shot and renew this new battle. There might be a lot of them, but there was a lot of the enemy now as well.

"Clones of the Galactic Empire," Aayla suddenly shouted out towards the group, her voice easily carrying across the whole battlefield. "We do not wish to fight you. We do not wish to kill any one of you. We are not the traitors that you believe us to be. None of us are. We are innocent of any crime against the Empire you fight for, just as you are innocent victims of it. Please, do not give us a reason to strike. There will be casualties on both sides and right now, that is something which we would prefer to avoid."

"She is right," Obi-Wan agreed, stepping up beside the Twi'lek. "Even throughout the battle against you so far, we have been attempting to not kill anybody if we can get away with it. It is not our intention to bring harm to Kamino. That is far from the reason why were are even here in the first place. Let us cease this foolish conflict before anyone else gets injured."

"Listen to the Jedi, brothers!" Fives shouted. "We do not fight for them and against you for the fun of it. It will bring us no pleasure to kill any one of you."

"Stand down and let us work things out without having to resort to conflict, brothers!" Echo agreed. "There is much that you do not know."

The clones were beginning to glance at each other in bemusement and confusion. This was not the sort of behaviour that they were expecting from traitors to the Empire. They had just come out of nowhere with a myriad of reinforcements which looked more than capable of giving them a very hard time and probably even winning over them and allowing them to take the city and they were still demanding no violence.

This was bizarre.

And yet they were forced to conclude that the Jedi were right. Despite everything, none of the clones had actually been killed yet. Wounded, yes. Hobbled, yes. But killed. No. Surely there would be many of them dead now they the others had been serious about killing them.

One of the clones knew for a fact that Obi-Wan was telling the truth and that was the clone whose life he had saved earlier by catching him with Anakin accidentally caused him to fall over the edge. This clones was staring at his blaster as if it was about to blow up, while the rest of the were just milling about in confusion.

"What do you say, lads?" Boss cried out to the amassed men. "Are you going to stand down or what?"

More silence.

And then one of the enemy clones raised his blaster and pointed it towards the newcomers. More followed suit, as each on gradually raised their weapons and tensed for combat, ready to die fighting for the Empire that they believed in and the man they served at the very top. The opposite side of the conflict also tensed, ready for anything as the whole atmosphere began to fill with that nervous charge again, ready for the battle to begin.

The Jedi tensed, holding their lightsabers ready. The Gungans reinforced power to their deflector shields and the Wookiee's fists tightened their grip on their weapons. A low growl was building up in the throat of all the Acklay. Zarza's feathers were on edge as the reptoavian prepared for the worst and the three Digimon brandished their own assorted weaponry, making the clones all around them step back in alarm as cannons, brush and axe were thrust in their general direction.

And then, a new voice rang out across the battlefield.

"Troopers, I am ordering you to stand down!" cried the voice, and everyone turned around to see that the Prime Minister was standing not far away, having just exited the main building with Taun We by his side. The Kaminoan was striding towards the site where the two opposing armies were facing off against each other at various points, hands clasped behind his back and head held high...er.

"Sir," one of the opposing clone commanders cried. "I must insist that you get back inside where it's safe, sir."

"Nonsense, Commander Fort," the Kaminoan shook his head. "I think you will fight that as long as none of you start shooting, everything will be perfectly safe out here as well. I wish to have a talk with the Jedi and their renegades about a few things, and in order for me to do that, you will all have to do as I say and stand down."

"But sir," protested Fort. "Our orders came in clear. We are supposed to do whatever we can to eliminate the Jedi and anybody who associates with them. The Emperor will not accept it if we just stand here and let them go by."

"I am aware that your loyalty to the Emperor extends beyond your loyalty to myself, Commander," Lama Su replied coolly. "However, in this instance, I am going to ask you to trust me. I am aware that I have never asked that of any of you in the past, but it seems that our efforts to hone you into beings who will obey any order without question were not as successful as we assumed they would be. The clones that fight alongside the Jedi are surely proof of that if nothing else."

"What are you saying, sir?" Fort enquired.

"I am asking you to grant me this one favour, even if it means that you grant me no others throughout the rest of my life," Lama Su informed him. "I believe that there is much gain for each and every one of you if you allow the Jedi to live and explain a few things to you first. I know that I myself was reluctant to believe it at first, but there is a reason for all of this traitor business. Would you rather not know the full story before you rush and do something wrong?"

Fort grimaced for a moment and turned back to the battlefield, to find that absolutely everyone was staring at him, waiting for him to make the call. Even such beings as the Acklay and Zarza had their eyes fixed upon him, low to the ground and ready for an assault but waiting for his verdict before they did any pouncing.

The clone commander could already feel a headache coming on as he tried to puzzle it out. He was supposed to obey orders and yet the Prime Minister was right. It seemed that it was not a mere fact of their design as he had always thought it to be. The huge numbers of clones that had turned up to fight them and help the Jedi were proof of that. Surely not all of them could be deficient, and the Jedi certainly didn't seem to be the kind of people who could corrupt them or trick them into their service.

Yet he had to obey the Emperor. He had declared that all Jedi were to be shot on sight and his word was the final word, wasn't it? Now more than ever in fact since he had practically promoted himself up from Chancellor with this new move of his.

What was Fort supposed to do?

Then again, Fort realised, there had been plenty of time for the Jedi and their allies to take control of the situation by exploiting the Commander's hesitancy and yet they had done nothing. He knew for a fact that they all had excellent strategic ability. All of the A-Team was here and he had heard of their exploits. And he had seen what Shaak Ti could do first hand. And none of the others had acted either. The Wookiees had not thrown a single punch. The Acklay had not lunged. Even the crazy-looking, green bazooka creature had yet to move.

His visor met that of Boss across several gaps and Boss nodded to him. Fort had to admit that he had a healthy respect for the Delta Squad. Surely they of _all_ clones wouldn't aid the Jedi unless there was a real, genuine reason for it. Even Scorch wouldn't do something like this just for the fun of it, and he did almost _everything_ for the fun of it.

He sighed, hoping he would not regret this before he raised his hand and cried, "All troops. Stand down for now. Let us see what the Jedi have got to say for themselves. If what we hear is not sufficient then we will attack again, but for now, let us see.

There was a moment of nothing happening and then, slowly, the clones began to lower their blasters, each of them coming to similar realisations as Fort. Many of them still looked very reluctant to be disobeying an order like this, but they were doing it anyway, out of a morbid curiosity to find out in many cases.

Hardcase chuckled as he lowered his cannon and muttered to the others, "Looks like there'll be no fighting today, guys."

"That is a _good_ thing, Hardcase," pointed out Kix.

"Let's just wait until the others here what the Jedi told us before we start relaxing too much," Jesse nodded sensibly, lowering his blaster but keeping a steady grip on it all the same. He was not the only clone to do this. All the clones that stood down ensured they were still ready to fire at a moment's notice.

"Good work, Commander Fort," nodded Lama Su. "Now, if you will excuse me, I need to get through to speak with the Jedi. Perhaps you would like to come along yourself."

"Uh, of course, sir," Fort nodded and followed the two Kaminoans as the clones parted ways to let them through, allowing them to head towards the practically torn apart remains of the shuttle and towards the Jedi.

As he went Lama Su couldn't help but ogle at everything all around him. Rapidmon lifted into the air and hovered overhead, giving the Prime Minister a salute with one bazooka and a wink, a grin in place under the facemask. Taomon stowed her brush away in her overlong sleeve and gave him a respectful nod instead. Zarza reared up and hollered into the sky to declare something unintelligible to the group and Antylamon shifted her hands back from their axe form and placed her hands behind her back in a non-threatening posture.

Suzie waved from the top of her head. Taun We waved back, a little uncertainly.

Lama Su gave the Acklay a wide berth though. He was not keen to test out just how restrained those particular animals were by getting close to them, thank you very much. Most of the clones standing next to the towering predators appeared to be feeling the same way at the moment, because they were attempting to inch as far away from their fearsome teeth as they could. But the normally voracious predators kept themselves calm and stepped back to give the clones a bit more space, something which they were all grateful for.

As Lama Su approached the Jedi, Shaak Ti stepped forward to greet him and smiled. "Prime Minister," she placed a hand to her heart and bowed low. "You have my unending gratitude for doing this."

"I am glad to hear it, Master Ti," Lama Su nodded. "I daresay that I am risking my neck quite a lot by doing this, so I should definitely hope that is the case."

"And he has a lot of neck to risk," Rapidmon quipped quietly to Taomon, who managed to cover her snort of laughter by placing a sleeve over her face before Lama Su heard anything.

"Regardless," the Kaminoan nodded as he turned back to survey the united army all around him. "I must say that I am almost literally completely stunned by what I am seeing here. When you said that you were bringing together some people to help you fight against the Sith, I was most definitely not expecting you to come up with all this. Especially considering you were only made into traitors at around mid-yesterday, if I recall."

"We're almost as amazed as you are, Prime Minister," Obi-Wan assured him. "We knew that we were going to try and organise for all of these people to join us when we set out this morning but... to see it firsthand? It is quite a sight."

"This isn't even all the Forces we have," pointed out Kit Fisto as he moved over to join the others. "There are many more Gungans and Wookiees still on the cruisers up there. We didn't have enough gunships to transport them all down to the surface in one go. This is not even half of what we have now."

"You have even more of those things?" Lama Su pointed towards the Acklay.

"Oh no," Aayla shook her head. "Those are the only six we have. The same six that we used to battle against the Separatists on Felucia many months ago."

"So the rumours were true," the Prime Minister's eyes widened. "I have heard of them, of course. Who wasn't these days? But I never took them to be factual. I assumed they were made up by an overenthusiastic clone."

"Like you Hardcase," Jesse murmured to the clone in question, who didn't bother to deny it.

"But regardless of your Acklay friends," the Kaminoan added, "There is one thing that you did neglect to mention in your little report. Exactly what it the Galaxy are these three creatures? I have never heard of their like before, and I am pretty sure that even with our isolation, we should have heard something about things like that."

"Yes, well," Obi-Wan coughed. "We neglected to tell you during our initial report because... well, I guess you can say that they are our secret weapons against the Sith Lords. They have been for several months, and they are responsible for a lot of what you see now and some of our greatest victories against the Separatists. I apologise for not mentioning it, but..."

"I understand, Master Kenobi," Lama Su nodded. "You are in a war situation and withholding some of the most secret of information is common in such affairs. I have come to understand that through this Clone War. But this _is_ quite a secret of yours. However did you manage to keep such creatures a secret for so long."

"With great difficulty," Anakin and Ahsoka murmured at the same time.

"And no small amount of skill on our part," said Rapidmon as he flew to hover over head, his large forming looming over the Kaminoan and causing Fort and several other clones to back away and raise their weapons to chest height just in case he tried something. Rapidmon chuckled and said, "Oh relax, guys. I'm not going to shoot at you unless you guys start shooting at me first, and if this all goes well, you won't want to do that anyway."

Antylamon sailed out of nowhere and her large feet slammed into the edge of the platform and her knees instantly bent and allowed her to fall into a crouching position beside some of the 501st troopers. "You'll have to excuse my brother," she said. "He is not known for his diplomacy, but is known for his complete lack of it at most times. Regardless, he is right. We have no more wish to harm any clones than the Jedi do, which is to say none at all."

"There is much that you will need to understand," Taomon agreed as she levitated over and allowed Henry and Rika to get off her back and move to stand beside Hardcase and Kix (if there was a safe place to stand among clones, the best place was probably behind Hardcase). "And certain circumstances that will have been omitted by the Jedi due to our involvement in them. Now that you know of us, we shall tell you everything."

"I am very pleased to hear it," nodded Lama Su. "It seems the full truth has long eluded our planet and just about everybody on it. But all of that is about to change as far as I can see."

"I can safely say that I am as confused as just about everybody else here," nodded Taun We. "Explanations would most definitely be nice."

"And you shall have them," Lama Su nodded. "We all shall." He looked upwards towards the sky, where distant thunder appeared to be rumbling as the clouds condensed. "It seems we have been spared the usual torrential rain for long enough," he observed. "Please, might we go inside to make our final discussions?"

"It would be greatly appreciated," nodded Obi-Wan. "Thank you Prime Minister."

"The pleasure his all mine, Generals," Lama Su bowed his long neck. "Though your giant friends may have to wait outside."

"Nu-uh," Rapidmon protested and blipped back into his Rookie form with a flash of light, catching himself on his ears to land on Aayla's head. "We're coming too."

Lama Su was taken aback by this new development, and it didn't help when Taomon followed suit and became Renamon. Antylamon deposited Suzie on the floor before she reverted to Lopmon and perched on the shoulder of Echo, who was having his arm treated by Barriss even as they spoke.

Once he had recovered from his temporary bewilderment, the Prime Minister chuckled and said, "Utterly fascinating. I wonder if it would be any trouble to acquire some DNA from you three while we are here."

"That would be difficult," Lopmon smiled. "Seeing as we don't have any. We're Digimon – creatures made entirely of computer data."

"Of... of course you are," Lama Su blinked in confusion. "I..." he cleared his throat. "I should have guessed." He turned around to lead the way and said, "Commander Fort, please ensure that none of the residents end up shooting any of the guests. We just stopped the fighting. We don't want it starting up again."

* * *

So, everything seems to be turning out alright and, miraculously, everybody is still alive. Can it get much better than this? Well, actually, it can and it will in the next chapter, as you will see when I get back from photographing seals and start to write the thing. I'm only going away for a few days, but I've reached such a point in the story that I'm definitely going to miss writing this. A couple more chapters and there will only be four arcs to go.

Grievous was initially going to be with the United Army when they made their appearance, but then I thought that the clones might take that as the reason why the Emperor has decided all Jedi are traitors so I left him behind.

And I love Hardcase. Since the new Umbaran story arc from Season 4, he's become one of my favourite clones. You can expect to see more of him in future.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

As the Kaminoans begin to finalise a deal with the Republic, the clone army of Kamino learn of the lies that is their existence. And Grievous makes his appearance before the rest of the Jedi, only he has a slight suggestion of his own to make. Can he get it in before Obi-Wan has a heart attack?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 179 : A Matter of Programming**


	179. A Matter of Programming

Hullo everybody. Sorry that this chapter took much longer than usual, but considering I left less than an hour after I posted the last one and came back late on Monday, I still made some pretty good time. The Donna Nook trip was epic. There was seal galore there, and I would say its a place that anyone in Britain should visit at least once.

Anyway, here is the final Star Wars instalment of this arc. Lots of nice moments coming up, in my opinion at least.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 179:- A Matter of Programming**

* * *

The discussions with Lama Su did not take as long as either Obi-Wan or Shaak Ti were expecting them to. Lama Su seemed to have pretty much made up his mind about where his allegiances were going to lie, and to the relief of every Jedi present, that allegiance seemed to fall with them over the Empire and the Sith Lord sitting at its head.

Lama Su explained to them as they walked inside that, while he knew little of how things worked throughout the rest of the Galaxy, he knew enough from the reports of the appointed Senator for Kamino, Halle Burtoni, that having such an Empire with such a corrupt and powerful leader could be catastrophic for everybody, including his own people. The Kaminoans, including the Prime Minister had believed that once the war ended they would be given the order to stop producing clones and have to look for some other way to earn income to their planet.

That had not yet happened. The new Emperor had not yet given any such order and while there was technically still a war going on since the Separatist leaders were still (supposedly) out there, the Prime Minister now doubted that they would ever be asked to stop making clones. Rather, the Kaminoans would probably be taken as slaves of the Empire instead and forced to make more clones to earn some meagre aid to keep them alive, rather than keeping it as a business.

And Empire would need a militia to keep it running, so Lama Su had no doubt that they would have to keep up their work with the clones.

But how long would it be before the Emperor tried to impose his new regime and ideas on them. How long would it be before the soldiers that the Kaminoans had painstakingly created turn on them at the order of the man who they had been bred to serve first among all others?

Lama Su was not interested in a fate like that. Not for himself, or for any other Kaminoan.

The main reason he had called the others inside was so that he could gather the other Kaminoans together and the Jedi could help him to inform them of what was going on. He, Obi-Wan and Shaak Ti took the floor as a large number of the long-necked beings gathered in the communication centre. All of them, including Taun We, looked horrified at what they were learning.

"And that is that, it seems," Lama Su said, placing his hands behind his hack and shaking his head. "Tools. For the very beginning. All we were good for was giving the Sith exactly what they wanted, and while that may have given us plenty of the money which we need to survive, we must start looking to the future. I do not believe that this transition from a Republic where the Sith rules in hiding, to an Empire where the Sith rules in the open, will be beneficial for us in any way."

"It could be," one of the Kaminoans murmured. "It could give us even more credibility when people start to see the efficiency of our troopers first-hand."

"But those troopers will be inflicting suffering on millions of people," Shaak Ti pointed out. "Surely that was not on your mind when you created them."

"Well, no," another one shrugged. "But it's still good business to work with such a big Galactic Empire, isn't it?"

"For now, perhaps," Lama Su nodded. "But how long will it be before you're working under the cruel eye of an overseer as a slave to the Sith. We've heard the stories and the mission reports on the cruel things which the Sith can do to their subjects. If we do not act now then we could end bringing suffering to every one of our species."

"Can't we just withdraw?" suggested another one. "Move away from the Empire and refuse to have everything to do with them?"

Lama Su shook his head and murmured, "I would have thought that you would know better than that. Do not be so naive as to think they would leave us alone if we did that. They know where we live, and they would come after us. If we moved, it would only be so long until they found us again. And it's practically impossible for a Kaminoan to disguise itself as any other life-form so going into hiding in plain sight is out of the question."

"But how are we supposed to help fight against an Empire?" asked Taun We. "There is little that we can do ourselves, isn't there?"

"Yes, there is," nodded Lama Su. "That much is true."

"Don't worry, Taun We," Obi-Wan nodded to her reassuringly. "You have already played most of your part by allowing us to come onto your planet and by not turning us over to the Empire. The real trick is going to be convincing the clones out there to join our cause. Perhaps you could assist us in doing that, provide us with weapons and war machines and then allow us to leave peacefully without informing anyone in the Empire, not even your own Senator... and that will be your job done."

"You see," Lama Su nodded, with a slight smile on his face. "That is not so hard, is it? And if you like, you can think of this as an even better attention grabber. We will become known as those who created the troops that freed the Galaxy from the oppression of the Sith, turning the tide of the war in favour of the Jedi. Let us have a show of hands. Who agrees that we should help the Jedi?"

A few Kaminoans glanced at each other nervously, worried what the others might make of their decisions and afraid that if the vote didn't swing the way they wanted, they might get reported to the Emperor and get put away or executed for treason.

Eventually though, Taun We raised her hand into the air, the aide of the Prime Minister naturally bolder than many of the others and a grim look on her usually kind face. She looked utterly ridiculous with her long neck and arm side by side, but she wasn't the only one. After seeing another Kaminoan agree with the Prime Minister, one more raised his hand, then another, then another, until eventually, every single Kaminoan in the room had their hand raised to head-height.

"It's decided then," Lama Su nodded with satisfaction.

"Heh," Anakin murmured quietly to the assorted group members around him. "And here I thought that we have failed to convince him to join us when we were forced to leave earlier."

"Obi-Wan is known as the Negotiator for a reason," pointed out Barriss. "And while negotiation hasn't been an option a whole lot throughout the course of this war, when it is an option, Obi-Wan is usually all over it. Like now."

Aayla chuckled. "I thought that the Kaminoans would be harder to convince than the clones they serve under. Now that we've got one of them swayed, it's time to see if I was right."

"That might not be difficult," Lopmon tapped her on the top of the head from where she was sitting between Ahsoka's montrals and indicated the two clones standing away from the group. As well as the Tenacious Ten, Rex, Cody, Echo, Fives and the Delta Squad, also standing behind the Prime Minister, Obi-Wan and Shaak Ti was Commander Fort and ARC trooper Blitz, who had woken up with a pounding headache a few minutes ago.

Both of them had their helmets off and the both of them were looking absolutely ashen at what they had heard. Fort had already fallen to his knees and was holding his head in his hands as he stared at the blaster he had been using to shoot at the Jedi with, as if it was the most disgusting thing he had seen in his life, his helmet rolling in a circle nearby. Blitz wasn't much better and was leaning against the wall with his eyes screwed shut and, to the surprise of Echo and Fives in particular, what appeared to be a tear rolling down one cheek.

Echo and Fives approached the two immediately and the former asked, "Hey, are you two alright?"

"What do you think, Echo?" Blitz asked him. "Aside from getting bashed in the head, everything I believed in has just been turned on its head if anything that I have learned here today is true. The Supreme Chancellor, now Emperor, had my undying loyalty and he repays us for that with sending thousands of us to our deaths for no reason. Even creating us in the first place just to be weapons. It's like we're just... just..."

"...Droids," suggested Fives, bitterly.

"Yeah," nodded Blitz. "Droids. Doesn't he realise that we think and feel as well?"

"Whether he does or not doesn't matter, Blitz," Fives muttered. "He's a Sith. He would do it anyway. He doesn't care about any one of us, not even when we have an important job to do for him. That's why Echo and I turned against the Empire when we found out. We made our own decision and we chose to do what was right. Not what we were just told to do."

"We couldn't follow orders from that man anymore," Echo agreed. "He's the real traitor. And I wasn't about to turn against the Jedi on the orders of somebody like him."

"But I was," Fort murmured. "I turned against General Ti at a moment's notice."

"You didn't know back then," Echo pointed out.

"I shouldn't have had to," Fort muttered darkly. "I should have gone with my gut. It was telling me that going to kill General Ti was wrong but I followed orders anyway, like a good little soldier boy." He clenched his fists and growled, "Why did he do this to us?"

"Because he can," shrugged Fives. "He doesn't need any reason other than that."

"But you can put things right, Fort. As can you, Blitz," Echo nodded. "Join us. Help us bring down the Empire and restore the Republic which we served so faithfully. Fight for the beings who actually care about us and want to do good. Fight for the Jedi."

"But if we do that," Blitz pointed out. "We'll end up having to fight against our own brothers again. We'll end up having to kill more clones to try and stop him, won't we?"

"There's not much else that we can do," Echo shook his head sadly. "I agree with you, Blitz. No clone should have to go out from being shot down by another clone. It screams wrongness on every level. And we will not shoot them down blindly without giving them the chance to defect to us if we can. But even so... if they don't believe us... if they choose to attack us and find out later that we were telling the truth... well, would you understand? Would you agree that we had done the right thing?"

Fort and Blitz looked at one another for a moment before Fort got to his feet and Blitz pushed himself off the wall. "We already do," Fort nodded. "You guys attacked us, but we know why. And you still did your best not to harm us. That tells me everything I need to know."

"Agreed," nodded Blitz. "I thought you were deficient. But now I see that you were merely... human. And so am I."

"Does this mean you're in?" asked Fives with a grin on his face.

"You bet it does," nodded Fort with a grim nod. "We're with you from this point on, guys. The Emperor is going down if we have anything to say about it."

Echo and Fives both grinned at each other and turned over their shoulders to look at the others. Anakin give them a thumbs up and a wink, while the others gave them smiles. Rex walked over and gave them both a thump on the shoulder.

"Nice work, boys," he said. "Any more clone that we can swing to our cause is another soul spared. And you two," he nodded to Fort and Blitz. "Welcome aboard."

"Indeed," nodded Shaak Ti, walking over to them as well. "I am glad to see that you have the same compassion and spirit as the rest of your brethren. We will need your assistance if we wish to convince the rest of the troopers who are waiting outside for your verdict."

"We're ready to do our part, General," nodded Fort. "I personally will not stop until every clone out there is ready to fight with you."

"Thank you," Shaak Ti smiled. "That is greatly appreciated."

"We'd better get going and tell them," Boss mentioned as he stepped forwards. "I imagine that tensions are beginning to run high out there."

"Indeed," Obi-Wan nodded. "Let's get a move on then."

* * *

With Lama Su at their head, and Fort and Blitz marching on either side of the tall, regal Prime Minister, the group filtered their way back outside. Sure enough, things were beginning to get very uneasy out there. The two opposing factions were keeping wary eyes on one another and the Acklay were beginning to look quite hungry. After all, they had very high metabolisms and therefore needed a lot of food.

It had finally begun to rain as well. It was quite heavy but as of yet it was just sheets. The thunder and lightning had not yet begun and it would probably be a good idea to do this before it did.

Lama Su stepped to the end of the walkway circling the building he had just stepped from and raised his long arms in an appeal to all the clone out there, who all turned to face him when he was spotted. "People of Kamino," he announced. "Clones of all divisions and squads and ranks. I bring to you a message and a warning. A message that I believe will dramatically change your entire outlook on the universe and on yourselves."

"We have been wronged, my brothers!" Blitz agreed, stepping up beside the Prime Minister. The troops paid as much attention to an ARC Trooper as they did to anyone – the ARCs were very highly respected after all. "I have been! You have been! Each and every one of you that I see now has been wronged, and every clone flung into the far reaches of the Galaxy to fight the droids, whether they still be alive or whether they have perished since we started this war, has been wronged!"

"Indeed," Lama Su agreed. "As have your creators. I will be brief with what I have to say, but I must warn you that what I have to say will shock you."

"It was certainly a shock to my system when I learned of it just now," Blitz agreed, motioning for the others to step up beside him. The Jedi entered the pouring rain, ignoring the wetness that suddenly covered their bodies as they stepped up beside the clones and the Prime Minister to form something resembling a united front as the Prime Minister began retelling what he had learned from the Jedi earlier that day.

It had pretty much the effect that they had been expecting. At first it was met with anger and disbelief, and many clones started shouting that they were committing treason by even making such accusations against the Emperor. But Lama Su did not let up in his explanations and ploughed through what he had learned and discovered about the circumstances which led to the creation of the clones and Blitz joined in to relate the things which had happened throughout the course of Order 66 and how this had been the Emperor's plan the whole time.

As more and more of the story unfolded, more of the clones began to get a horrible realisation that they might just be telling the truth. In the thin truce-like situation they were in, they were more inclined to listen than they would be if they were in the middle of an actual battle and several of them began dropping their weapons and helmets in horror and revulsion.

Others were more loyal to the Emperor than that and were less inclined to believe. This began to lead to arguments throughout the forces of the clones that had been attacking the Jedi earlier. Arguments which gradually grew more and more heated and eventually lead to pushing and shoving and shouting between the two opposing sides.

"Listen to them, soldiers!" Bly shouted over the voices as he tried to quell the arguing. "I was once as loyal as you are but you can't let him rule over our lives like this! Not anymore."

"We are men!" Monnk agreed. "We must act like men, not like machines. We must take down the Sith. Is that not what we've been trying to do from the beginning?"

"It doesn't matter if we were created to serve," Boss called out. "We must serve the ones who respect and honour us and who want peace in the Galaxy. Even if he were not a Sith Lord, is a man who suddenly declares war on the Jedi Order for no apparent reason really the kind of people who you want to serve?"

This argument actually won a good deal of them over and the arguing began to quell slightly. As the clones continued to doubt the words of their leaders, the clones who were already fighting alongside the Jedi began to mingle with their brothers, stepping up to speak one on one with their fellow comrades and give them encouragement. Even Hardcase dropped his cannon to his side and stepped up to another clone to place a hand on his shoulder and nod at him, trying to use words to make him change his mind.

Watching it all from above were the Jedi and the Digimon, who all had smiles on their faces. Lopmon turned to look across at the Jedi and said, "You think it will work? You think they'll really fight for us?"

"Yes," nodded Aayla, her eyes shut as she took in a deep breath. "You might not be able to feel it Lopmon, but there is a ripple in the Force. A great change is taking place across the Galaxy. The future is being altered. And right here, on this planet, is the epicentre."

"Yeah, I sense it too," nodded Ahsoka. "This is the start of something big. I think we did it, Master. We brought Kamino to our side."

"Heh," Anakin chuckled. "And it was no easy thing either. Thank the Force none of us got hurt too badly."

"And let's be glad that it all ended before somebody else could get hurt," Barriss nodded, her hand hovering over Ahsoka's stomach and healing a burn that had been inflicted during the rocket explosion that had tossed her over the side. "You guys sure took a beating."

"As did many of the clones on their side," nodded Shaak Ti. "Barriss, I think you might have some work to do. Maybe if you went down there and helped heal some of the injuries we inflicted on the clones here during the fighting, that might help to ease their passage to our side and see for themselves that we are not the evil ones."

"Sure," nodded Barriss, as she finished healing Ahsoka. "I can do that." She quickly strode to one of the walkways and headed down it to start administrating a clone who had a blaster mark on his shoulder courtesy of Cody.

Renamon shook her head and murmured, "How did we get by without that little miracle healer?"

"I don't know," Terriermon agreed. "But I reckon she joined our little group at pretty much exactly the right point."

_Thanks guys,_ Barriss looked up at them and grinned, before turning back to the clones.

Terriermon blinked and then chuckled and said, "I'd almost forgotten she could do that. Things are moving along so quickly now aren't they?"

"Indeed," Obi-Wan nodded. "It won't be long before the real fighting breaks out. Today's bout with the clones was only a practice run for the fight that will soon be breaking out. The disturbance in the Force which we're all feeling will almost certainly be picked up by the Sith. It won't be long now before he steps up his efforts to find us. We need to be completely prepared before that happens."

"There are only a few kinks in the plan which we can smooth out relatively quickly, Master Kenobi," Renamon nodded. "The army we have now is a very large one with all these new reinforcements, but it would still be better if we had more. Any advantage we can get now would be an absolute bonus. And we still need to wait for the next transmission from Chuchi before we can get some more inside help."

"I imagine that Chuchi's call isn't going to be that far away now," Aayla pointed out. "No doubt once Darth Sidious tells everyone that he thinks I'm dead again she'll call pretty quickly to find out if that's true or not."

"Good point," nodded Renamon with a chuckle.

"He thinks you're dead again?" Anakin asked. "Why?"

"Oh, of course," Aayla started. "I haven't told you guys yet, have I?"

"Can I tell the story this time?" Terriermon asked. "I want to be the one who makes their jaws hit the floor this time."

Aayla rolled her eyes and chuckled. "If you must," she shrugged.

"Great!" Terriermon grinned and promptly began to tell the four Jedi and the eight clones who had been dispatched to Kamino originally about how he and Aayla had been side-tracked by a Jedi distress call, only to find it was another Bounty Hunter out to get Aayla and how Aayla had managed to trick said Bounty Hunter into leaving without fulfilling her goal.

"A Force projection?" Shaak Ti raised a brow. "Wow. I am impressed Aayla. Those are not easy to master, particularly when you're under pressure."

"Master Vos taught me well," Aayla smiled modestly. "He deserves the credit."

"He certainly has turned you into an expert when it comes to dealing with Bounty Hunters," Obi-Wan remarked.

"How is it that you somehow manage to outdo us at every turn, Aayla?" Anakin asked, with his arms folded. "I thought what we did here was pretty impressive and you go and do this?"

"Oh it was very impressive Anakin," Aayla said immediately. "And don't ever think otherwise."

"True, but I haven't finished," Terriermon scowled. "The story didn't end there."

"It didn't?" Ahsoka blinked.

"Course not," Terriermon grinned. "It gets even better. We went looking for dry land to wait for the others to arrive to pick us up and we found some kind of old facility in the middle of the ocean and when we went there we ran into a certain someone who decided to join our cause against the Sith. Can you guess who it might be?"

"Er..." Anakin started, turning to look out across the assembled allies as the arguments between the clones continued. "Was it..."

"He's not out there," Terriermon grinned. "He's up in the cruiser. Aayla thought it would be more prudent if he stayed behind for now."

"Prudent?" Obi-Wan asked. "Oh dear. Go on, spill the beans. Which weird ally did you bring to our side this time, Aayla?"

"I'm glad you phrased it like that, Obi-Wan," Aayla smiled as she lifted her communicator and made a call. A few moments later and a hologram appeared that shocked everybody so much that Ahsoka almost fell off the walkway again and had to be grabbed by Renamon. Obi-Wan's lightsaber was in his hand faster than he could think and the clones all immediately tensed on instinct, and then stared in disbelief as Aayla began to strike up a _conversation_ with the guy.

"Hello again, General," Aayla nodded. "How are you holding out up there?"

Grievous growled and said, "Next time you do not leave me behind, Secura! I will not be ordered around like some battle droid! I will go where I choose to go!"

"Be honest, Grievous," Aayla pointed out. "If you had come down here with the rest of us, would you have gone straight into attacking the clones or not? That would have been the last thing we wanted at this point. This situation calls for a bit more delicacy than that."

Grievous grunted and said, "You sound like Count Dooku."

Aayla winced, "That is not my intent, Grievous. I'm sorry. I suppose you're right. From now on, I promise to include you in things a little more."

"I will do things of my own volition from this point on," Grievous snarled. "Whether you want me to or not. I am a General as well, after all."

"Yes, yes, I know," Aayla nodded. "But that won't have to happen, because once everything down here dies down... we intend to start fighting. Which is, I believe, your talent."

"Good to see you recognise that, Secura," the cyborg growled.

Terriermon, from his perch on Aayla's head, was grinning at the looks on the faces of the other Jedi. Even Renamon was trying not to start laughing at the fact that Obi-Wan looked as those he was going to die on the spot at the sight he was seeing before him, and Lopmon and the Tamers weren't much better off.

Grievous noticed Terriermon's reaction and growled at him, startling the bunny out of his thoughts as he demanded, "Is there something funny, Digimon?"

"Well, kinda," Terriermon observed. "The people standing behind you are... shall we say, flabbergasted at your presence, Grievous. We haven't exactly gotten around to telling them the circumstances behind it."

Grievous hologram turned around in Aayla's palm and beheld the Jedi behind him. His eyes narrowed and a raspy chuckle escaped him at the sight of them. "Ah, Kenobi. Skywalker. What a pleasant surprise to see you again. I trust I find you in good health?"

"I guess that's General Grievous' idea of humour," muttered Lopmon to Renamon, who nodded and chuckled.

Obi-Wan looked like he was nowhere near close to recovering and his eyes were as round as melons and almost as large as them as well. Anakin turned slowly to look at Aayla, as did Ahsoka and Shaak Ti and the Chosen One said, "I really hope that you have a good explanation for this, Aayla."

"Why?" Aayla queried. "What would you do if I didn't."

"Nothing drastic. But I would seriously begin to question your sanity. In fact, I am doing that right now."

"Aayla," Shaak Ti agreed. "That monster attacked both you and I on the planet Hypori and he has killed dozens of us and you are seriously telling us that you have formed an alliance with him? He is just as bad as any Sith Lord and has committed crimes that are almost worse in many cases."

"I don't that second point," Aayla replied. "But he's not as bad as you might think. Please allow me to explain."

She and Terriermon both took the floor once again as they explained for the third time, the first being to Grievous himself and the second to the others in orbit, about what they had learned from Grievous' past. Grievous refused to make eye contact with anyone, staring into the middle-distance as he grasped the lightsabers that were still hanging from his waist as if he was about to whip them out and start hacking through everything in sight in his rage.

However, he kept his head, albeit only just.

When Aayla finished, she left a stunned audience in her wake. Anakin and Ahsoka stared at each other for several moments, both mentally asking the other if they were going to believe what Aayla was staying. However, they didn't need a mindlink or the Force to know that what Aayla was saying was true. They could believe that the Sith would do such a thing with ease. After all, they had all seen the sort of betrayal they could pull first hand.

Something Grievous had said several months ago, when he had locked Ahsoka in one of the cells of his flagship, flashed into the Togruta's mind now. She had made a slightly snarky comment about his cough and Grievous had immediately reacted violently and yelled at her that it was the fault of the Jedi that he had it. That comment had made no sense to Ahsoka at the time and she had eventually, but now with this, she finally understood. If fit the story of the shuttle explosion perfectly.

Ahsoka was as surprised as Anakin when she found herself actually feeling sorry for the guy. Anakin himself had been particularly vehement in his perception of Grievous, having been involved on hunts for him in the past. Both he and Ahsoka had crossed blades with the cyborg and both had nearly been killed. But now they were actually feeling sorry for him.

Surprisingly, this time, Obi-Wan Kenobi was going to be a tougher person to sway that Anakin.

"Well, all of that is fascinating, Aayla, but that does not mean that you can trust someone like General Grievous. Look at what he's done to our fellow Jedi throughout the course of the entire war. He has killed hundreds of thousands of people under the orders of the Sith and you believe he would just turn to us even with all this information."

"I do not have to justify myself to you, Kenobi," Grievous snarled, stabbing a holographic finger in the direction of the Jedi Master. "I have no intention of fighting the Jedi now. I even have little interest in taking out the enemy clones. All I want at this time is to exact my vengeance on Count Dooku, Darth Sidious, Asajj Ventress, and anyone who knowingly consorts with the Sith and I do not care how I go about it. I would not care if I had to crawl through all the mud of a Naboo swamp or traipse across the ice of Hoth or even fight alongside you Jedi, but I will be a part of his downfall, or I will die trying. They deserve everything they get for how they manipulated me."

Obi-Wan blinked. He was surprised that he could actually hear a slight amount of passion in Grievous' voice – a steely determination that he had never heard before in the General, even when he had been dead-set on taunting the Jedi. And Obi-Wan had seen plenty of that.

"Heh," Rex murmured to Cody. "Never thought that I would be a kindred spirit to somebody like him."

"Tell me about it," Cody agreed. "He's like a Separatist version of us, except there's only one of him."

The clones knew right then that they would support Aayla in her enterprise, even if it did mean having someone like Grievous as an ally. Nobody deserved to have their lives controlled in the way that both they and Grievous had experienced. Rex and Cody, as well as the other present clones knew better than anyone how Grievous was probably feeling at the moment and what he had gone through to get to this point.

"I... er..." Obi-Wan murmured.

"If it helps, Master Kenobi," Kit Fisto called as he walked over to the group. "I have also given Aayla my support in this endeavour. It may sound insane on the surface but the fact of the matter is that we need as many allies as we can, and right now I can think of few who are more determined to destroy the Sith as Grievous. I am sure he will prove very beneficial to our cause."

"Ha!" Grievous growled. "More so than you think even now, Fisto."

"Yes, but..." Obi-Wan murmured. "Really... Grievous?"

"Yes, I am finding this difficult myself," agreed Shaak Ti.

"Well," Anakin said. "You guys can take your time with deciding, but right now I agree with Aayla. And I can't believe I just said that."

"No, neither can I," Ahsoka nodded. "And I can't believe I am agreeing with you."

"If it helps, we were pretty stunned when Aayla revealed this little titbit of information to us as well," Lopmon said.

"Yes, it does help," Ahsoka nodded.

"Come on, Obi-Wan," Renamon said as she placed a paw on his shoulder. "I know that you became quite personally involved in the hunt for Grievous, but I thought it was the Jedi way not to hold grudges and to give people second chances wherever possible. Besides, Aayla had neglected to mention that Grievous has even agreed to turn himself in once we have dealt with the Sith, have you not, Grievous?"

"As I said," Grievous placed his hands behind his back. "I do not care what I have to do or agree to. As long as I get my vengeance on Sidious, it does not matter to me. Even if it does mean that I will be imprisoned later on."

Shaak Ti sighed and said, "Well, I suppose I cannot argue with Renamon's words, or the General's own admission. I suppose I can stomach this for the good of the Galaxy." She offered Grievous a half-hearted smile and said, "Welcome to the Rebel Alliance, Grievous."

Grievous coughed and gave Shaak Ti a nod, which was about as much of a thank you that the Togruta could hope for.

"Well, this is..." Obi-Wan rubbed the back of his head. "This is... most unexpected. I... uh... am not quite sure what to think about all of this."

"Oh, just agree already, Obi-Wan," Terriermon rolled his eyes. "I mean come on, everyone else here has said yes, haven't they? Jeez."

"Terriermon."

"Momentai, Henry."

"He is right though, Master," Anakin nodded to him. "As long as Grievous holds to his word then I suppose I can work with him until we take down Darth Sidious. I mean, let's face it. The Emperor," his fist clenched but his face remained neutral, "Is the real enemy at the moment, and not just for us, right? He's the one who engineered all of this and Grievous was as much a pawn as we are."

"But in this particular game of chess," Renamon chuckled. "The pawns do not go down that easily. Attempt to sacrifice them this time, and they turn on the person moving them around. Grievous is not exception. He was just on the opposite side. That's not the case now, though? Is it?"

"The white and black sides of the board united," grinned Terriermon.

"Don't start taking this as an invitation to try and be friends," Grievous growled.

"I wouldn't dream of it," Terriermon said immediately.

Obi-Wan sighed and massaged the bridge of his nose, poking his own eyelids with his knuckle and thumb as he did so. "Ugh, I'm getting too old for this," he murmured. "Everything's becoming so complicated these days. But I suppose I am outnumbered." He removed his hand and looked to the General. "Alright, Grievous. I suppose I can deign to work with you. Anakin and the others are right. Sidious is the real threat and if you are willing to help us bring him down... who am I to say no?"

"You wouldn't have had a lot of choice in the matter anyway, Kenobi," Grievous growled. "But at least we are on the same page."

"Yes, well, it would be nice if we could refrain from the scathing comments," Obi-Wan replied evenly. "And as long as you keep to your word to allow yourself to be taken in without a struggle."

"Secura has promised me that the new Republic will offer aid to the Kaleesh people once this is all over," Grievous stated. "I am not going to let them suffer any more than they already have if I have any more say in it."

Shaak Ti chuckled. "Honestly, Aayla, the promises you keep making to these strange allies. Don't get me wrong, it was an admirable promise to make but let's hope you can keep it, right?"

"Indeed," nodded Aayla. "But once we have someone who isn't a Sith leading the Galaxy, I'm pretty sure that the Kaleesh will get everything they need from the Republic. Especially with the Jedi Order backing them."

Grievous turned back around to Aayla and said, "There is something else that I wish to discuss with you as well, Secura."

"Oh yes?" Aayla asked. "And what might that be?"

_Look at them talking to one another so casually,_ Ahsoka shook her head. _It's like they're old buddies or something._

_I wouldn't go that far, Snips,_ Anakin chuckled. _After all, the guy's tried to kill her four different times if her story is anything to go by._

_And you and me at least once each,_ agreed Ahsoka. _I don't know how Aayla does it but she always seems to know exactly what to do to turn the tables on the enemy, doesn't she?_

_She's good,_ Anakin nodded. _After all, she's a member of the Tenacious Ten._

_Does that mean I'm good too?_ Ahsoka asked.

_Eh, one day maybe,_ Anakin joked. Ahsoka kicked him in the shin and he yelped.

As Aayla engrossed Grievous in another discussion, with the three Digimon moving to join in, the other Jedi turned around to see what was going on with the clones and the other allied forces. The situation seemed to have died down a great deal. The arguing was all but gone and even the most loyal troopers of Kamino seemed to have dropped their protests against the accusations made against Darth Sidious.

There were no clear ranks now either. Everyone was mingling with one another. The clones from all platoons were together in several places, and Gungans and Wookiees were dispersed throughout the area. Even the Acklay were now surrounded by a bunch of clones and in front of them was Zarza. Apparently she had jumped over to investigate these other strange animals and she and the Force-sensitive Acklay were currently sniffing each other's faces curiously, while the other Acklay crowded round to get a better look at the Varactyl.

"Look at them," Cody pointed them out. "You'd think they knew each other or something."

"What if they start fighting?" Fixer asked.

"Zarza's a very friendly lizard," Suzie grinned. "She won't start anything. And the Acklay are just as nice to us. Everything will be alright."

"Hey, Blitz is stepping up again," Fives pointed out his fellow ARC trooper as the clone standing beside Lama Su stepped to the edge of the platform and stood precariously on the edge in the thin rain. The clones all turned to look up at him, as did everyone else. Dead silence fell for a moment – even Grievous and Aayla stopped talking – and the only thing that could be heard was the thin pattering of tiny raindrops impacting on the armour of the clones.

"Men of Kamino!" Blitz roared suddenly. "Clones! My brothers! You've had a chance to think about what you've just learned! You've had a chance to realise the full implications of your... our... deceptive lives. You already know my vote. I am casting my lot in with the Jedi. Which of you are prepared to stand up for what is right? Who of you will join me?"

There was a roar as every clone in the area immediately began yelling at the tops of their voices, picking up fallen blasters and thrusting them into the air, yelling in defiance. And they were not the only ones. Blood sent boiling by the sudden rousing cheer, the Wookiees let out a deep-throated roar of their own, while the Gungans whooped and hollered, adding to the din with their more high-pitched voices. The six Acklay and Zarza all followed suit, rearing on their hind legs and swiping the air with their front lives to let out massive shrill calls and hoots that almost drowned on the majority of everything else.

Ahsoka joined in the yelling as well and Anakin turned to look at her with a raised brow. When she noticed, she punched him lightly and said, "Oh come on, Master. Don't tell me you don't want to do it as well."

Anakin sighed, shrugged and began to cheer too. The other Jedi and the remaining clones took up the call and the Digimon were quick to follow, Renamon leaping into the rain and ignoring the fact her fur was getting wet to stand in plain sight while the bunnies circled her with flaps of their ears.

It took almost five minutes for the cacophony to die down. When it did, Lama Su nodded and said, "It is done then. Kamino has joined forces with the Rebellion against the Empire. All of our resources are at your disposal, Master Jedi."

"Thank you, Prime Minister," nodded Shaak Ti. "It would help if all the cruisers needed to transport these troops were prepped as quickly as possible, along with any weapons and other supplies that you can give us. That should be pretty much all from you."

"It shall be done then," Lama Su nodded. "And Master Jedi. Please ensure that the Sith Lord responsible for this manipulation is brought to justice. Before he can begin damaging the universe and the world we live on."

"It would be our pleasure," nodded Shaak Ti.

"And for what is it worth, you have my apologies that our creations were the ones to turn on you."

"That is not necessary. You had no more knowledge of it than us. And now, thanks to your help, we can turn the tables on the Sith Lord. We may not have a force as big as he does, even with all of this, but if we play our cards right, we can still do this."

Lama Su nodded and smiled vaguely.

"Well, Shaak," Aayla said as she stepped forwards and into the foreground, the little hologram of Grievous still in her palm. "There might be a little something we can do to help even the odds between the Empire and the Rebellion a little further."

"There is?" Shaak Ti asked, as Aayla succeeded in capturing everyone's attention again. "What?"

"Grievous has just given me a suggestion," Aayla said. "And it you ask me, it's actually a very good one."

"What is it, General?" Rex asked.

Aayla chuckled. "First I'll say this. It's definitely going to be a weird adjustment, but I am sure that you clones will be able to manage it. Let's continue with getting ready to move out immediately and I'll give you the details as we go."

* * *

The planet Olanet could be found in the far Outer Rim in the Siskeen system. Not as far out from Coruscant as Kamino was but still a pretty far distance. It was a world that consisted mostly of grassy plains, its main economy coming from the nerf herding and meat that the farmers could produce from the little animals.

Nevertheless, since the start of the Clone Wars over a year ago, or even before that time, Olanet had become a planet with a somewhat different purpose. On one section of the planet was a very tall building, entirely made of metal and with several tall spires stretching up towards the sky. It could quite clearly be seen for miles around and the locals did their best to stay as far away from the place as possible, and they had good reason to do so.

Inside the building, there was a constant bustle of activity. The groan of engines was a constant noise throughout the facility, as well as the clunking of various mechanical arms whirring around on their joints and doing the jobs they were designed to do like the lifeless machines that they were, blades chopping and molten metal pouring throughout the main bulk of the facility. It was indeed a din.

But the din didn't really bother the people who were in the facility. After all, they were used to the noise, due to the fact they spent almost all of their time here and had done for a while now. Manning various workstations were a large number of Geonosians. The bugs' clicking was almost as constant as the noise of the machines and their long fingers continued to push buttons on the machines in front of them with diligence determined to keep everything running smoothly.

And what exactly was it that they were working on?

Answer – creating more battle droids.

The facility was a droid factory and it was renowned amongst what remained of the Separatists as the second largest factory that had ever been created or used for their cause, the largest being the original one built on Geonosis before it was taken by the Jedi. The second one built on Geonosis would have been larger than it too, but that particular factory had never been completed thanks to the efforts of the Jedi, clones and Digimon.

Still, this facility was by no means small. B1 battle droids hung from the mechanical arms as they were transported off the assembly line and moved towards the front, where they would be placed down and expected to walk away. Super Battles Droids strode across the ground floor once they had been placed down. Droidekas rolled aside to make more room for their comrades the moment they got in the position to curl up and do so. Even a few commando droids were hanging around the place, though not nearly as many as they were more expensive to build.

The Geonosians were vastly outnumbered by the droids which they were creating. They had long since filled the factory to its peak, as they had been given orders by General Grievous not to send out any more of the droids until he gave the word. The droids they were building were being forced to move outside and organise themselves into ranks to try and make room for the ones still being made inside, as Grievous had explicitly told them not to stop production for anything. As the largest remaining Separatist droid factory, this was the one they were placing most of their hope on to try and retake the Galaxy.

Or so the Geonosians assumed.

But they were suddenly drawn from their work when one of the battle droids stepped forward and said, "Uh, excuse me. The sensors are indicating that there's an incoming starfighter, and that it belongs to General Grievous. What should we do?"

The Geonosians all looked at one another, worry clearly evident on their long, thin faces. What would Grievous be coming to visit them personally for? They had not done anything wrong had they? Perhaps he was just coming to check on their progress and decide where he should start sending the droids at his disposal.

Several of the Geonosians quickly abandoned their posts and moved towards the small hangar built above the main droid foundry, wings fluttering in agitation as the hangar doors slid open and, sure enough, the _Soulless One,_ slid through and landed with a dull thunk on the floor. The Geonosians immediately bowed low as the newcomer, pushed the cockpit open and stepped onto the seat.

It was definitely Grievous. There was nobody you could mistake for him in the entire Galaxy.

One of the Geonosians stepped forward and rattled off a quick series of clicks and jabbers, welcoming Grievous to the facility and asking them what assistance they could be to him.

Grievous stared at him for a few seconds, enjoying the feeling of watching the Geonosians squirming under his gaze. It was taking a lot of self-control for Grievous not to charge and pounce on these Geonosians right now and cut them to ribbons. It was there kind who had been responsible for meddling with his mind after all. True, these particular Geonosians probably had nothing to do with it but still... they were all scumbags in his view now.

But he restrained himself. Just.

"I am taking control of this facility now," Grievous growled, causing the Geonosian to look up in alarm. "You are all being relieved of duty."

The Geonosian made a noise which sounded like the bug version of, "Huh?"

And that's when a white and brown bunny creature leapt out of the cockpit from where they had been hiding and whooped as they span into miniature tornadoes and ploughed into the startled Geonosians, lifting them into the air to slam them into the walls hard enough to knock them all into unconsciousness.

Terriermon and Lopmon whirled to a stop and landed on either side of the ship, as Grievous' taloned feet thudded to the ground between them. The two of them looked up at the cyborg, who looked down at each of them in turn.

"Rrgh," Grievous snorted after a couple of minutes. "Not all that bad, I suppose. Swift and decisive and effective if nothing else. I have yet to see anything that would really make you a very big help to the Jedi as you claim to have been though."

"Oh, don't worry about that, Grievous," Lopmon nodded. "You'll see plenty of that soon enough."

"I should hope so," Grievous growled. "Now, if you can keep up – follow me." He strode across the room with his distinctive tapping footsteps and headed towards the door.

Terriermon turned to look at Lopmon and chuckled for a moment. "Hehe, look at these. We're taking orders from General Grievous. How much weirder is our week going to get?"

"If this plan works... a lot," Lopmon reminded him.

"Good point," Terriermon exhaled as he lifted himself into the air, his sister right behind him, and swooped through the door Grievous had just been through as it closed behind him. The two of them overtook him and continued to hover as best they can near him. Neither of them dared to land on his shoulders as they did with the Jedi. They didn't know how he would take it.

Grievous made his way to the main control room, where the remaining Geonosians turned to face him in surprise. Terriermon and Lopmon leapt into action a second time, ploughing through the room to swiftly knock out every bug in the place before they had a chance to think.

Grievous had no doubt that the loyalty of the Geonosians would never sway from Count Dooku, no matter what side he picked. There wasn't going to be any negotiating with them, which is why Terriermon and Lopmon were taking such harsh action against them.

The battle droid commander that was also in the room jumped in surprise and exclaimed, "What the...? Intruders!" and raised the blaster in its metallic hands to point it towards Terriermon.

"Stay your weapon, droid!" Grievous roared from the door, and the battle droid almost fell over with fright at the loud shout of the cyborg. It's face remained as unchanged as ever, but it quickly scrambled upright and gave a salute to Grievous.

"Yes, sir. Right away, sir," it said. "What's going on, General? Who are these guys?"

"Right now, that is none of your concern," Grievous informed him. "I have instructions to relay to you and I want you to carry them out to the letter, understood?"

"Yes, sir," the droid said quickly. "Ready and waiting."

"Good," Grievous nodded. "Round up some more droids and place these Geonosians and the ones that we left unconscious in the hangar into custody and make sure that they cannot escape. And order all droids to line up in front of the factory. I am going outside to speak with them."

"Roger, roger," nodded the droid. "But I must inform you, sir, that shortly before you got here, we were beginning to detect signs of Republic ships coming out of hyperspace somewhere above us. Should we prepare for an inevitable attack?"

"No," Grievous shook his head.

"No?" the battle droid echoed in surprise.

"You heard me right, droid. Now get going otherwise your head might not remain on for much longer. Do not question my authority."

"Yes, sir," the droid cried immediately and turned around to issue the orders into the microphone so that it would echo throughout the whole factory. Terriermon and Lopmon stood by the window of the control centre and watched as the droids down below, in their hundreds began to march outside in a slow and steady stream of pounding feet.

"Well, it just got weirder," agreed Terriermon. "You were right after all, Loppy."

"Yep," nodded Lopmon. The little bunny turned to Grievous and asked him, "And you definitely think this will work then?"

"Of course it will," Grievous growled. "I have been working alongside these numbskulls for over a year now. I know full well what they are capable and not capable of and they may be incompetent, but their mindlessness has always their biggest asset. This will not take us very long."

"I hope you're right," Terriermon nodded. "I'm hungry."

"You're always hungry," sighed Lopmon. "Anyway, what's our next move supposed to be?"

Grievous turned to the commander droid and said, "When you have finished with your orders, come outside and report back to me."

"Roger, roger," the droid said again as Grievous turned and walked back to the door, the two bunnies landing on the ground behind him and following him on foot.

* * *

It wasn't long before Grievous stepped outside and into the middle of a veritable horde consisting of several thousand droids, possibly as many as ten thousand of the mechanical beings. Terriermon and Lopmon couldn't help by feel a little nervous about walking through the throngs and crowds of them. After all, they had just spent the last half a year or so fighting them.

The only thing stopping the droids from turning around and shooting them down was Grievous.

Fortunately, it seemed that even newly assembled droids like these ones knew not to mess with the Kaleesh cyborg.

It took several minutes before they reached the front of the droid lines and Grievous turned around to survey them with satisfaction. Darth Sidious was going to regret ordering him to continue production of the droid armies and then forgetting to make him stop while he tried to deal with the Jedi that had managed to escape from him.

The droids seemed quite interested in the Digimon, having never seen anything of the like before. Those at the front seemed to be trying to peer around Grievous to get a good look at them without trying to make it look conspicuous. Terriermon grinned and waved at them cheerfully, deliberately ignoring the fact that they were the same kind of droid he'd been smashing to pieces for months. Lopmon rolled her eyes at his antics.

Soon, the droid commander came to join them, with several more dragging the still unconscious Geonosians behind them as prisoners. The droid saluted and said, "What are your next orders, sir? Those Republic warships are heading down into the atmosphere and heading right towards us as we speak."

"When they get down here," Grievous rasped. "You are going to board those vessels."

"Easy, Grievous. That sounds like some kind of attack plan," Lopmon pointed out.

"I was not finished," he growled pointedly and then continued with. "Those vessels are not going to attack us, and I know this for a fact. They are here to pick us up, and we are going to go with them to a planet on the other side of the Galaxy. You are not too shoot any of the clones on board. We are going to help them to take down the Republic, which has now become an Empire."

"Help clones, sir?" the droid asked in shock.

"Yes," Grievous glared into its photoreceptors.

"But haven't we been fighting against them for months and months now?" the droid pointed out.

Grievous finger lashed out and the droid yelped as it hovered in front of its face. "You do not question my orders, droid! If you want an explanation then... let's just say that mitigating circumstances have decided to allow me to side with the Jedi, who have also been declared traitors to the Republic. And you are going to help them and the clones, because I say that you do. You are programmed to obey the highest ranking person amongst the Separatists at all costs. Count Dooku is longer one of us. He has formed his allegiance with the Empire. That means that I am currently the highest ranking member of the Separatist cause and therefore, your loyalty is to me above all others. Is that not correct?"

"Yes, sir," nodded the droid. "It is, sir."

"Good," nodded Grievous. "And considering everything, the Jedi and some renegade clones have chosen to side with us as we fight to take down the Empire. You will not ask questions! You will not shoot any of them down! You will do exactly as I tell you to do! Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir," the droid cried immediately.

"Good," Grievous nodded. "Now, spread the word amongst the army and be prepared to board the ... former... enemy ships when they arrive and lower their ramps."

The droid nodded and placed a hand to its head to activate its internal comlink and relay the message to every single droid in the army at the same time. There was a ripple of mild mechanical shock through the ranks but as the Republic cruisers hove into view above them, each droid automatically stood to attention, preparing to move out at a moment's notice.

"Well, that was quick," Terriermon noted.

"Not surprising," Lopmon replied. "After all, the clones keep claiming that they are people and not droids, and they've been struggling with their emotions and sense of duty and the way they were engineered, and their sense of duty won out. Because they're human, and they've developed since their days on Kamino before the war started. These battle droids are different though. They aren't people. They are robots and have to obey their programming, where the clones can overpower theirs."

"Either way, it's certainly a good way of adding another massive army to our rebellion without having to go through a lot of debate," Terriermon nodded. "One word from Grievous and bam, they're suddenly on our side. This is going to be almost as much of a shock to Sidious as the presence of Grievous himself. Or the presence of Aayla since he thinks she's dead and everything."

Lopmon chuckled and nodded. She too waved at one of the B1 battle droids and it waved back a little tentatively.

Then the two bunnies turned to look up at the approaching Rebellion fleet. It was definitely something to behold.

The Kaminaons had done their job well when they had agreed to help against the Empire. The force of Republic cruisers, which had originally numbered five when they arrived at Kamino, now numbered thirty. They had committed almost all of the ships they had in their blockade to the cause, and every single clone in them had been similarly informed of why they were turning against the Empire.

As before, they had been reluctant to help, but considering they were currently far away from the influence of the Sith, they eventually did so.

The rest of the Grand Army of the Empire was definitely not going to be anywhere near as easy to convince, if they could do it at all. Sidious was gathering them close to him and giving them more direct orders than those given to the clones on Kamino. Just about all of them that could be convinced quickly had been by this point. Even so, the force that they made was one of the most formidable that the Galaxy had ever seen.

The cruisers landed on the ground around them, the less filled ones closer to the facility, while about half of them hovered overhead to watch the proceedings. Grievous turned around when the nearest _Venator_-class cruiser touched down behind him and said, "Our ride is here. Now, move out! Get on those ships and find space!"

There were so many "Roger, roger"s in response that Terriermon and Lopmon had to cover their ears from the din. And then the droids began to march, their feet pounding the ground as they filed in strict ranks past Grievous and the two Digimon, who turned to watch as the nearest cruiser lowered its ramp and placed it on the ground in front of the droids.

The ranks of droids began to peel away to allow them to move into different cruisers which also lowered their ramps. Grievous' eyes narrowed in satisfaction as the first of the battle droids placed their feet on the metal ramp and added to the din of their feet with the clunking of metal on metal.

"I may be an ally of the Jedi," he chuckled slightly maliciously. "But that does not change the fact that I am still the Supreme Commander of the Droid Armies. Count Dooku has made a mistake in placing me in complete control over them and I will exploit it to its maximum with this new move."

"It certainly is going to be something to behold," Lopmon agreed, as she watched several droidekas roll their way up the ramp in front of her. "Droid and clone fighting side by side, even if it is against other clones. It's like the Jedi have finally managed to make peace with the Separatists."

"But not with the Sith," Grievous growled. Clenching his fists, he added, "And we will bring the fight to them soon enough providing your plan against them works."

"You doubt it will?" Terriermon asked.

"I have yet to see a large portion of the things necessary for its success," Grievous pointed out.

"True," nodded the bunny. "But trust me, it will work."

"General," the droid commander stepped up to him again as a large number of Supers filed past on either side. "What shall we do with the Geonosians?"

"Take them onto that cruiser there and hand them to the clones. They must be put in detention cells as soon as possible," Grievous ordered.

"Of course, sir," the battle droid replied. "But I must inform you that before you arrived, they did manage to complete the request that you sent to them."

Grievous turned around to face the droid, a glint in his yellow eye. "Is that so?" he asked.

"Request?" asked Lopmon. "What request?"

"Maybe them," Terriermon pointed. Lopmon looked and her eyes widened when she spotted four MagnaGuards filing through the line behind them. They were amongst the rarest of the droid forces but now that she thought about it, Grievous had not had any around him like he usually did when they met him on Minntooine.

"Oh, I get it," she said. "Barriss destroyed the MagnaGuards you usually have over Rhen Var. These must be your new ones, right?"

"We shall see," Grievous snarled. "I will test them later to see if they have the speed and dexterity that I require. Nevertheless, I believe they may be useful against the Empirical clones in future at any rate."

"Probably," nodded Terriermon as the MagnaGuards pulled to a stop before them. "Hey," he piped up. "Have you ever thought about pretending those electrostaffs of yours are electric guitars? It would be hilarious to see you guys doing that."

The MagnaGuards stared at him impassively, and Lopmon swatted her brother in the head. "Please ignore him, Grievous. He seems to be in a particularly happy mood today."

Grievous' eyes narrowed but he made no further comment as he turned and led the way towards the cruisers, with Lopmon and Terriermon following behind him.

* * *

On board the _Intrepid_, which was one of the ships hovering in the air above the others, as they already had their hands full with the six Acklay and now, Zarza, who had insisted on coming on the same ship as Suzie and wanted to try and get to know the Acklay a bit better, Commander Bly looked out of the window with distaste, watching the scene below gravely.

"General, are you sure that this is a good idea?" he asked. "After all, we have been fighting against these guys since we were commissioned for the war. Is fighting with them really a good plan?"

"It wasn't particularly high up on my list either, Bly," Aayla pointed out. "However, right now, every advantage we can get is a valuable one and something like this will give a huge boost to our forces."

"Yes, but what if Grievous decides that he doesn't want to work with us after all?" Bly asked her. "He's the one in charge of those droids. He could turn them on us at any moment."

"I'm aware of that," Aayla nodded. "But I trust Grievous. His hatred of the Sith and his desire for vengeance will not allow him to even consider turning against us when we are the ones who can provide him with that vengeance. It's certainly not a trust based on friendship, like most of the others we have, but I believe that is a good enough reason to trust him all the same."

"Fair point, General," Bly nodded, and sighed. "Our brothers are not going to be happy when they see us fighting alongside battle droids against them."

"It'll be little different to how they feel about you fighting alongside the Jedi against them," Renamon pointed out. "They still think the Jedi are traitors and they still think you are too. Throwing in battle droids wouldn't be too big of a difference."

Bly bit his lip. "I know you're right. It's just going to be difficult to adjust, that's all. It's like I will have completely switched targets. Droids for clones. My natural instinct would be to shoot a droid pointing a laser at another clone."

"Well," Aayla patted him on the shoulder. "Try not to do that too many times."

Bly chuckled. "I'm afraid I make no promises, General."

* * *

It took almost twenty minutes to load all the battle droids onto the various cruisers, as they were so many of them that they promptly took up the space in one and another one had to swap places with it and allow it to be filled again. The atmosphere in most of the shuttles was uncomfortable now, as clone stood next to droid in a truce that seemed to be uneasy for the clones. The droids had no problem with it. They had been given orders. To them, that was all there was to it, as long as the clones didn't start shooting at them.

Eventually though, it was done and the cruisers began to lift back into hyperspace. The Rebellion was at its peak and, as one, ships full of Jedi, clones, Digimon, Tamers, Gungans, Wookiees, Bounty Hunters, Acklay, droids, a Varactyl and a cyborg Kaleesh, jumped to hyperspace and headed for Tython.

* * *

A small extra little surprise at the end there. I say small. I mean big, of course. Still, I hope that sent the shivers down your spines with that list of people amongst the Rebellion. Be honest, the rebellion that would be formed twenty years later has got practically nothing on what this one does, even if it does have Han Solo and Luke Skywalker in it. And hey, this one has Chewbacca too.

But does this mean that they are finally done recruiting?

Answer – no. There is still one small recruitment to make before they are at full fighting strength. And I am not talking about the other Senators, as they will not be doing any fighting.

Hope you liked the Grievous Arc, as I call it.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

As the Tamers acquaint the Sovereigns with the Human World and meet or re-meet various members of the army which they brought with them to help against the forces of GranDracmon, the Monster Makers work hard to finish the machine. The Dark Ocean awaits.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 180 : Operation: Rescue Impmon**


	180. Operation: Rescue Impmon

No words are needed to describe how epic I feel right now other than three specific ones.

TWO!

MILLION!

WORDS!

I'll let you figure out the rest. I hope you enjoy this chapter, because quite frankly a barrier like this should be a well enjoyed one. I passed the one million mark in Chapter 98 and now, 82 chapters later, here I am with this other great milestone. HAHAHA! I feel fantastic!

Read on, beloved readers. Read on.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 180:- Operation: Rescue Impmon**

* * *

Ryo's casual question at the sight of the Sovereigns was actually quite an important one. Despite the fact that Digimon had become a prominent part of life for many of Tokyo's inhabitants, and many of them saw at least one on almost a daily basis, most of them knew little about the Digital World and the Digimon in general.

Certainly very few of them knew who the giant Digimon who had suddenly appeared in the middle of Shinjuku park, the two airborne ones so large that they could be seen right across the city and beyond, were. The four great Digimon Sovereigns brought a sudden panic to huge numbers of people. The giant fiery phoenix and the massive sparking dragon were not the kind of thing that people wanted to get on the wrong side of. Or any side of in fact. And the two-headed turtle and huge white tiger where not a lot better.

And Zhuqiaomon wasn't really helping.

The Sovereign of the South belched forth a round of laughter that rang out across the city. "Yes, that's right. Flee before us humans! Cower at the might which is displayed before you now. We are the Sovereigns. We could obliterate this city in a split second if it was our desire to do so."

"Zhuqiaomon, please," Azulongmon rumbled. "You are a guest in this world at the moment. Try to act like one and not terrify them out of their minds if it is at all possible."

"Heh," Zhuqiaomon chuckled. "You can hardly blame me, Azulongmon. After all, the only humans I have ever met so far have refused to do anything more than tremble. Watching them running away instead makes for a refreshing change of pace."

"Aye, an' it also reflects badly on us, Mister Sadist McFeatherbag," Ebonwumon looked up at his fellow Sovereign. "We're supposed ter be de Digimon who protect de weaker beings. Can yer not reign it in for de brief time we're 'ere."

"Reit, cool aff, Firebird," his other head dutifully added its own thoughts to the conversation.

Zhuqiaomon ruffled his feathers slightly and his red aura blazed for several seconds, perhaps to burn the excess exhilaration at the fear from the humans out of his system. It wasn't that he didn't like them or hated them the way he used to. He could tolerate them now where he couldn't in the old days. Nevertheless, at the sight of so many humans, it was nice to finally inspire a little fear in them as well as the respect.

He shook himself and said, "So, this is the Human World. It seemed to be awfully crowded if you ask me. And if this is a village then it is ridiculously over the top."

"Says the bird who lives in a giant castle," Baihumon murmured.

"As do you, tiger," Zhuqiaomon reminded him. "At any rate, surely the taller building over there cannot all be castles or do the humans really think that highly of themselves."

"Do not be so quick to judge, Zhuqiaomon," Azulongmon reminded him. "If what I recall from the reports from the Devas is correct, this is actually known as a city and those taller buildings are probably places where lots of humans live or go to work for the day. I do not believe that one single human calls any of those buildings home."

"So they all live on top of each other?" Baihumon asked. "Wow. Zhuqiaomon is right about one thing. This place really is crowded. In fact, I think we may have landed in one of the only large spaces big enough to fit the four of us in."

"An' even that's not really enoof," Ebonwumon lifted one giant foot from where it had crushed several tree into the ground. He sighed sadly. "Oi fale so guilty. 'Ope de forest on our shell doesn't wither cos av dis."

"Agreed," his other head nodded. "An' whit th' heck is thes hin' under uir back fit?" he lifted up said foot to where reveal the mangled remains of a children's playground. Fortunately, thanks to the quick actions of Tally and the HYPNOS team, there had been no children in it, or throughout the park, when the giant turtle had landed there.

"It appears to be several bits of squashed metal," Baihumon told him.

"Whit th' heck is 'at daeing en th' middle ay a boorichie ay trees?" the turtle asked trying to place his foot in a space big enough for it and failing, thus resulting in him knocking over several more trees. In the end, he opted to just staying put for the moment to try and minimize the damage he was causing. It was quite clear that the Human World was not designed for him.

Azulongmon looked out across the world before him in fascination, beholding how vastly different it was from the world he was used to. But what he noticed most of all were the considerable number of people who were still fleeing from him, mixed with a fair number, particularly the smaller ones, who were trying to get closer to him. The huge, draconic Digimon moved higher into the air, his massive, translucent and chain-wrapped body trailing after him as he reared high and boomed out across the city.

"People of the Human World, we come in peace. We are the four Sovereigns of the Digital World, and are the protectors of all who are oppressed and attacked by the forces of evil. You have nothing to fear from any of us. We are here only to help protect this place from a more sinister force which is lurking nearby. We will not be staying long, and we intend to quell this evil before it can attack you. You can no need to fear, so please do not panic needlessly."

"Spoilsport," murmured Zhuqiaomon, as the humans began to do exactly that. It was as if Azulongmon's words were magical. They seemed to roll across the city like some kind of giant ripple that pressed down on everyone and there was such power and trust behind them that even the most panic-filled of people believed his words and stopped running about in mindless fear. The city of Tokyo momentarily came to a standstill, and then everyone went from blind fear to ogling at the magnificent Digimon before them.

"There," Azulongmon said with a nod and what was probably a smile beneath his ridiculously long beard (even Oppo Rancisis would be envious of something like this). "That seems to have done the job."

"You always were a sentimental Sovereign, Azulongmon," Zhuqiaomon noted.

"Yes, as you always were the hothead," commented the Sovereign of the East.

"In more ways than wan," chuckled Ebonwumon.

"In any case, Azulongmon is right," nodded Baihumon. "We cannot afford to make the locals of the Human World fear us. It seems that as times are going by, our worlds are becoming ever and ever more interlinked. Perhaps there may come a time where we have to begin consulting the humans before we do this. This is, after all, their world."

"Personally I hope it doesn't come to that," Zhuqiaomon rumbled. "Not because of any aversion to the humans per se, but because I understand that their ways are far more complicated than ours, and that they squabble amongst themselves even more than we do."

"We may have to deal with that when the time comes," Azulongmon stated. "For now there are more pressing matters at hand. For one, where are the Tamers and for another, how long will it be before we can get underway and this portal machine of theirs starts working?"

"The sooner the better," Baihumon agreed. "Especially with Impmon having been captured."

"Aye," Ebonwumon nodded, with both heads, though only the one with an Irish accent was speaking. "Knowin' Grandracmon, it proobably won't be long before 'e's completed waaat 'e's set oyt ter chucker wi' de fella."

"Well, the first of your questions is about to be answered, Azulongmon," Zhuqiaomon pointed with one wing. "I can see approaching Digimon, several of which I recognise, with Tamers on board. And they should shortly be able to answer the second question for you."

The other three Sovereigns turned around to see several Digimon winging their way towards them from the direction of the HYPNOS towers.

Among them were the familiar shapes of Cyberdramon, WarGrowlmon and GranKuwagamon, but there was also Wingdramon swooping along at the back, with Lilamon floating alongside beside her friend. All in all, they looked like quite a formidable group.

And of course, the Tamers were on their backs, as were most of the other Digimon.

While the special forces were doing a good job of restraining most of the small children from entering the park to get a better look at Azulongmon and the other massive Digimon, the Tamers and their Digital Friends merely flew straight over the top of them and came to a stop beside Guilmon's hut, which had fortunately managed to survive being stomped on by Ebonwumon or Baihumon. This put them roughly in the middle of the four giant Digimon and as they looked up to behold them, they were every bit as spectacular as they remembered.

"This is getting more and more surreal," Takato said, as WarGrowlmon helped him and Jeri and a couple of others to dismount before shrinking back to Rookie form. "Seeing you guys here in our world, in our very own park. It's almost like some weird dream. Anyway, it's nice to see you guys could make it."

"Indeed," Azulongmon nodded. "We were most definitely not going to wait around this time. The last time a threat came to the Human World, we were unable to help. In this instance, we are here early. We will not let you Tamers face GranDracmon alone if we can help it."

"Things will get rough once we enter the Dark Ocean," Zhuqiaomon replied. "The odds are that our help will be needed to tackle some of their forces, regardless of how strong you Tamers are yourselves. And GranDracmon himself will almost definitely be out of your league."

"Then it's a good thing that you're here," Ryo grinned. "Welcome to our world. Though I hope you won't mind too much if I say that I hope you won't be here for very long. I'm not sure the city can accommodate you for very long."

"Not to mention now that they're no longer in the Digital World, it won't be long before they start getting hungry," Jeri murmured.

"Ooh, good point," Guilmon rubbed his stomach. "I'm hungry."

Takato was staring at Ebonwumon's massive bulk and twin heads and swallowed. "I second Ryo's hope. Ebonwumon alone could probably eat every morsel of food that the whole of Japan has and still have the room for everything from China. And the other Sovereigns would still be unaccounted for."

"Yes and also," Kazu cried. "You guys might want to watch where you put your feet. There are lots of kids nearby who want to get close to you."

"You needn't worry, Tamer," Baihumon replied. "We are already doing that."

"Dis really is a bizarre place," Ebonwumon observed, both heads staring out across the park and the city as he towered above the trees.

Meanwhile, there were three Digimon in particular who were in awe of what they were seeing. Standing behind Ai and Mako were the three companions of Impmon – Lilamon, Wingdramon and Diatrymon. None of them had ever actually been in the presence of the Sovereigns, and what they saw was blowing them away. Wingdramon was staring at the mighty Azulongmon with stunned amazement, and no small amount of envy. Diatrymon was regarding Zhuqiaomon with a sense of pure respect.

And Lilamon? Well, she was wondering if Ebonwumon would make a good mobile home or not. But she was still just as amazed as the others.

"Whoa-ho-ho," Diatrymon murmured. "How amazing is this?"

"The Sovereigns," Wingdramon breathed. "The actual Sovereigns."

"And we get to fight with them when we go to the Dark Ocean?" Lilamon beamed. "Epic."

"Are you used to these guys yet?" Ai whispered to Mako.

"No."

"Me neither. They're too big."

"Tamers," Azulongmon looked down at the group. "The Devas have informed us of all current events up to the time that you parted ways yesterday. To the Tamers of Impmon, all four of us offer our deepest sympathies and we apologise for not helping out in the search for him more personally. However, what we were doing during that time was crucial to what we must do now in taking the Dark Ocean."

"GranDracmon is devious," Baihumon agreed. "Even if we had Impmon under out protection, I have no doubt that he would, one day, find a way to get past our guard. However, now we can bring the fight to him. We have assembled our army now."

"The Nightmare Soldiers are going to get a nasty surprise when they behold the forces that we have set against them," Zhuqiaomon added.

"Perhaps yer wud loike ter meet dem," Ebonwumon craned his head around to look at the Tamers, while his other head pointed off into the distance. The Tamers turned to follow his gaze and sure enough, other Digimon were approaching above and through the trees. Many of them were familiar faces.

The huge serpentine body of MetalSeadramon coiled its way over the treetops, his Chrome Digizoid armour gleaming in the bright sunlight. Beside him was the equally massive form of another Digimon, which they had not seen since the fight with Ogudomon. It was Plesiomon, the giant Digimon that took on the form of a white prehistoric sea creature, who could hover over the trees for some reason as well.

Swooping between them was Gryphonmon, his bat wings beating leisurely and what could only be the bird's equivalent of a smile on his beak. It seems that life with a muted tail had really been a plus for him.

Naturally all eleven of the remaining Devas were there too. Some of them looked more than happy to be here, while others, and it should be fairly obvious which ones, were looking extremely disgruntled at the fact they had to step into this world again. Indramon in particular was looking decidedly unhappy, but none of the Tamers cared for his opinion anyway. Especially since the horse didn't seem to care for him own.

There were other faces too, but they appeared to be less familiar ones. For instance, there appeared to be a large, blue armoured canine Digimon with massive claws coming out of his thick arms and a barrel chest that seemed to have the shape that was something akin to that of a wolf snout. Completing the image was the huge cloak flowing out behind him. Takato raised his D-Arc and scanned this Digimon.

"MirageGaogamon," he murmured. "Beast Knight Digimon. Mega Level. Special attacks are Gale Claw, Double Crescent Mirage and Full Moon Blaster. Wow, this guy looks seriously tough."

There was also a Digimon that closely resembled some kind of green dinosaur, one of the raptor family, with jagged scales running down its neck and back, large jaws filled with sharp teeth and massive claws on its feet. One such claw on each foot was so long that it extended well past the Digimon's front and ended in a vicious hook. It was almost like it had an oversized scimitar on each foot.

Jeri scanned this one and reported, "Dinorexmon. Also Mega Level. Attacks include Splatter Hunting and Ogre Flame. Wow, this guy looks like a really, really vicious customer."

"And his claws make mine feel quite inadequate," Diatrymon raised one foot and examined the metal blades that were situated there, comparing them to the claws of the newcomer. He grumbled, but said nothing else.

Kazu, on the other hand, was making gurgling noises of disbelief and pointing a shaking finger at another Digimon. "I... I... I don't believe it," he squeaked, drawing the attention of the others towards the newcomer. The moment that they saw him, they immediately knew why Kazu was acting this way. It was another draconic one, but this one was much more humanoid in appearance. It's body was covered in blue armour, like MirageGaogamon, but on his chest was a giant V of gold. He had wings on his back which looked more like a cloak than something used for flight, and had spikes sticking out the back of his head. Attacked to his wrist was a blue energy sword, much like that one worn by a MagnaAngemon.

"That's..." Kenta breathed. "That's..."

"One of the rarest and most valuable cards that a Digimon card player can possess," Ryo smirked.

"UlforceVeedramon," Takato almost squealed.

The three most avid card players had good reason to go into fanboy mode. Not only was the new Digimon a Royal Knight Digimon, like The biomerged form of Takato and Guilmon, but he was also a final evolution of Veemon – an alternate one to the Imperialdramon that they all knew so well from the show. Anything related to Veemon was definitely going to make them start almost drooling. The only thing that could make them any more like fanboy would be something relating to WarGreymon or MetalGarurumon.

Ryo raised his D-Arc to scan the new Digimon, since the others seemed to be absorbed in soaking in his presence to do it and observed, "UlforceVeedramon. Royal Knight Digimon. Mega Level. Attacks include Ray of Victory, Ulforce Saber, Tensegrity Shield and Dragon Impulse X. Heh, he certainly seems to live up to everybody's expectations."

"Yeah," nodded Jeri, as she scanned the forces that they now had with them. "But we still don't have that many Digimon with us, and we're going to be up against a whole army, aren't we? Do we really think that this will be enough?"

"It's not about the numbers, Jeri," Elecmon stated. "I'm pretty sure we can take them. In this case, we need both strength and strategy. As long as we have both, which we clearly do in this instance, we should be alright."

"I hope so," Jeri sighed. "I really hope so. For Impmon's sake as much as our own."

The group of other Digimon made their way closer. MetalSeadramon was the first to arrive, and the massive serpent reared up to get a good look around. "I see that this place hasn't really changed much since we last came here."

"Actually it has," Plesiomon rasped as he moved closer as well. "The last time we beheld this place it had been utterly destroyed by Ogudomon. Lord Fanglongmon fixed the damage obviously, but it is nice to see that our work to fight off Ogudomon was rewarded with this." His flat eyes looked down at the group of Tamers beneath his huge bulk. "And look who it is," he chuckled dryly. "It has certainly been a long time since I last saw you guys."

"True enough," grinned Ryo, since Takato was still staring elsewhere. "How have you been, Plesiomon?"

"Not too bad," the sea creature Digimon nodded. "Mostly keeping to myself at the bottom of the ocean but that's just how I prefer to spend my time. From what I hear, your own experiences have been far more exciting than anything I have to offer to this conversation. The most interesting thing that happened to me was that a large Octomon who wanted my territory tried to smother me. He didn't last five seconds, of course."

"Of course," Jeri smiled. Her contact with Plesiomon had been limited last time since she had not been a part of the assault against Ogudomon, while her partner had still been a part of Impmon. "But while the things that have been happening to us have been interesting, I would also use the words terrifying and heart-breaking."

"Yes, I gathered," Plesiomon murmured. "Still, we're here to help now. Let's hope that things in the Dark Ocean are a little simpler than taking on Ogudomon."

"Seconded," Guilmon raised a clawed hand. Then he rubbed his stomach and said, "Hmm. Seconds."

"Food?" MetalSeadramon asked. "Yes, there's a good idea. Got any fish."

"Oh dear," Guardromon chuckled.

Gryphonmon landed next to Lilamon and her friends, folding his wings against his back and saying, "Hello again, you three. How have you fared since we last met?"

"Better," Lilamon shrugged. "But hopefully things will be changing around soon."

"It's nice to hear that my help in taking you to meet Wizardmon was used well," Gryphonmon nodded, his magically muted tail screaming silently to try and make its opinion heard while Gryphonmon deliberately wagged it like a dog to making it more dizzy. "You found the Heavens then."

"Yes," nodded Diatrymon. "And we learned of the prophecy and Impmon finally got the answers he was searching for. He didn't like all of them but it was still a lot better than wondering all over the place."

"Indeed," Gryphonmon nodded.

"Oh, oh, hi!" Calumon cried as he bounced over, leading Ai and Mako by the hands. "These guys are Ai and Mako. They're Impmon's Tamers."

"Ah, yes, I remember you guys," Gryphonmon nodded as he stepped around to look at the twins, who had to stop themselves from shrinking back at his piercing gaze. "Don't you worry, kids. Soon, your Impmon will be back where he belongs."

"Thanks," Ai smiled at him.

"Although," Gryphonmon turned around to have a look at the rest of the group, "Would someone care to explain to me why those three appear to be staring at UlforceVeedramon with saliva around their mouths."

"Oh, it's fanboy thing," Jeri swatted Takato in the head.

"Oh?" MetalSeadramon asked. "You mean how they were excited to see me because I was in this television show thing which they liked to watch."

"It's almost exactly like that," Ryo nodded. "The main difference being that he's a digivolution of one of the main guys rather than being a Dark Master."

MetalSeadramon rolled his large eyes and groaned. "Figures," he muttered. Plesiomon chuckled, his voice coming out in little hisses.

The newer arrivals stepped up around the area. "You guys going to introduce us to your new friends?" Jeri asked one of the Devas at random, her choice being Mihiramon.

"Certainly," nodded the tiger. "Well, MirageGaogamon here is, as you know, a new addition to the Sovereigns private army. He and UlforceVeedramon joined us at the same time. The two of them were friends when they were younger and they have very, very similar abilities actually. They both boast very impressive speeds and are experts with both close and ranged combat. They make a very good team when they work beside one another, and they are almost impossible to fight against when they really get going."

MirageGaogamon saluted the Tamers with his massive claws, while UlforceVeedramon held up his sword before his face in a warrior's salute. The former nodded and said, "A pleasure to meet you," in a growling voice that resonated out from the mask covering his face. "I have heard a lot about you. We both have. It will be an honour to fight alongside you and your allies."

"I agree with MirageGaogamon," UlforceVeedramon concurred in a bold and striking voice. "Especially in consideration of everything you've done for both our worlds, it is more than an honour. As Knights, we will commit our very lives to helping you achieve your goal and rescuing your friends."

"Did you guys hear that?" Kazu turned around and grasped Kenta's shoulder. "UlforceVeedramon is honoured to be working with us!"

"It can't get much cooler!" Kenta agreed.

UlforceVeedramon stared at the two gabbling teens for a moment and looked up, his eyes asking for an explanation.

"Don't ask," MetalSeadramon related. "It's best to just ignore them, I believe."

"Yep, that's the way," Ryo nodded. "If it helps I know kinda how awkward you're probably feeling."

"Hey, did you know that when Guilmon and I merge, we become a Royal Knight too?" Takato cried out.

UlforceVeedramon and MirageGaogamon looked down at the small dinosaur and the human and looked them over. "Ah," said the lupine Beast Knight. "So you are the two who can become Gallantmon then. Yes, we have heard of you. Perhaps you could fight alongside us in the upcoming battle."

"Fight with you?" Takato gasped. "Really?"

Jeri sighed and caught him before he fainted.

Guilmon frowned. "I haven't seen Takatomon go all dizzy like this since we learned that Terriermon and Renamon were mates now."

"Next thing we know, Tai and WarGreymon will be coming out of nowhere to offer to fight with us," sighed Jeri as she shook Takato back to clarity.

Ryo chuckled and said, "And what about this other guy?"

"Dinorexmon?" Mihiramon asked. "Well... uh... he kinda joined our forces because he's looking for a good fight."

Ryo blinked. "Did he now?"

"You mean, he's like Cyberdramon?" Elecmon asked.

Cyberdramon growled, regarding the green dinosaur Mega with a new interest.

"Well, not quite," Mihiramon shrugged. "He has similar mannerisms but is... er... a bit less of a berserker on the battlefield."

Dinorexmon chuckled menacingly, his teeth bared and his humongous claws flexing. "The tiger Deva is right," he grinned savagely. "I'm looking forward to the upcoming scrap. And let me tell you, those Nightmare Soldiers are not going to know what hit them when I get my claws into them." His huge claws dipped and tapped the ground a couple of times, demonstrating the amazing control that the dinosaur Digimon had over them.

This slightly chilling display was enough to yank even Kazu and Kenta out of fanboy-dom. They stared at Dinorexmon nervously and Kenta murmured, "Erm, I'm... just going to... move over here now," as he edged away from the dinosaur.

"Scary," MarineAngemon whispered into his Tamers ear.

"Yeah, you said it, little buddy," Kenta nodded.

"Well... this should be interesting if nothing else," Cyberdramon growled.

Dinorexmon looked his eyes onto the facemask of the dragon. "Indeed," he said. "How about a little... friendly competition? How many more of them can I kill than you?"

Cyberdramon growled and brandished his claws, which admittedly didn't look like much next to those on the feet of Dinorexmon. "I hope that you are prepared to lose such a contest."

"Heh, we'll see," Dinorexmon snorted.

"Oh dear," Ryo massaged his forehead. "Guys, if I suddenly lose control of my biomerged form, please get out of the way."

"Noted," Takato nodded.

"Will you remind me why we brought that guy?" Pajiramon asked.

"Because he's efficient at getting the job done," Vajramon replied. "When it comes to dispatching opponents, Dinorexmon is one of the best that there is."

"We'll see about that," Cyberdramon snarled.

"Well," Ryo rolled his eyes. "On that delightfully pleasant note, I should probably tell all of your guys that the Monster Makers and the humans who have been building the portal machine estimate that it should only take them a couple more hours at most before they have it up and running. Once it's done, we'll just have to pray to Fanglongmon that it works."

"It'll work," Lilamon said firmly. "I know it. The prophecy said we'd get there eventually. Even if it was... too late."

"Well," Ryo nodded. "I hope you're right, Lilamon. But that means that we don't have a whole lot of time left on our hands if that is indeed the case. You guys should just stay here until we can leave but as for us... we've got some final preparations to make ourselves."

"And some goodbyes," Takato nodded. He sighed and said, "My parents really don't like this. The Dark Ocean _is_ a world of evil. It's not just a dangerous place like the Digital World is – everything about it could be deadly. They really don't like the idea of me going there?"

"Mine neither," Kenta agreed. He brightened up and say, "But hey, I'll just tell them UlforceVeedramon's on our side. That should do the job."

"Er..." UlforceVeedramon murmured, not sure how to take that.

"Peh," Zhuqiaomon rumbled. "It's like that human doesn't even remember that we Sovereigns are here."

"They certainly have more than a few strange ways, don't they?" Baihumon agreed.

"Come on, guys," Jeri waved to the others as Wingdramon hoisted her and Elecmon onto his back and Ai and Mako were also deposited there by Lilamon. "Let's get ready."

* * *

The atmosphere was slightly solemn when the majority of them returned to the HYPNOS building. Some of them, like Kazu and Takato, had gotten there under their own steam, but for those who hadn't their parents were still waiting for them at the HYPNOS towers.

Now that the initial shock of the presence of the Sovereigns had ebbed a little, there was a down spirit in the air again. Both Mayumi Wong and Rumiko Nonaka were going back to feeling depressed at the thought of not seeing their children for another half a year, or even hearing their voices. Lilamon immediately moved over to comfort them, but the Tamers moved towards their parents instead.

The twins stepped over to their mother and father, who were standing by the window and staring out at the four clearly visible giant Digimon. It took them a couple of seconds to respond to the presence of their children, and when they did, the first thing said was Mrs. Terada murmuring, "I know that you said your friends were big. But I never expected them to be that big?"

"How does that turtle guy even support his own weight?" Mr. Terada agreed.

Ai and Mako looked at each other and then Mako murmured, "Er... so... these guys think that it'll only be a couple of hours before we're on our way there."

There was no reply from either parent for several second before Ai piped up with an added, "Are you... okay with that?"

"Of course not, sweeties," their mother shook her head, a pained expression crossing her face. "If either of you two grow older and have children then you'll understand the protectiveness I'm supposed to feel for you and that I do feel for you. The thought of you going into a world of evil, ruled by such a powerful creature as this GranDracmon guy is... hard to bear."

"But we've got the Sovereigns with us," Ai pointed out. "And all the others. We've got lots of protection."

"That does very little to assuage me," Haruhi sighed, screwing her eyes up.

Mr. Terada placed a comforting hand on her shoulder and turned to the twins, a sad smile on his face. "Don't forget that the two of you are the only ones without an actual partner to speak of, or the ability to merge with him even if he was here to become a powerful entity yourselves. You are going to the be the most vulnerable people there, regardless of how much protection you have."

"But... we have to go..." Mako pleaded.

"Oh," Mr. Terada smiled. "We aren't going to stop you. Or even attempt to stop you. You've made up your mind and you are quite right – you do have a duty to do as Tamers. Neither of us have to like it but... well, we only want what's best for you. And Impmon needs you. He's your partner. We can hardly keep you apart."

"Really?" Ai asked.

"Really," nodded their father.

It took their mother a few moments but she eventually looked up and offered them a weak smile of her own. "When I first had the two of you," she said. "I was looking forward to the challenges of raising you both. And... well, those challenges seemed to be in abundance when you two squabbled all the time. But look at you now. Both of your are only six coming on seven and you are the most mature kids I've ever met." She chuckled slightly and said, "And to think, I believed Impmon was a bad influence. Now, I see that he was one of the best influences you've had in your lives."

Ai and Mako felt tears coming into their own eyes as they stared at their mother. She kneeled down and whispered, "No matter what happens in that Dark Ocean place, I want you to know that I am probably the proudest mother in the world right now."

The twins both burst into tears and ran up to hug their mother, the woman wrapping her arms around her two young children and holding them close. The sight was so emotional that it was actually making Mayumi and Rumiko, and even Lilamon, leak tears of happiness from their eyes from nearby, though the flower fairy wiped them away quickly.

Mr. Terada looked down at his little family. He himself was probably the world's proudest father and he was not just proud of the twins. It seemed their mother had come a long way as well, from hating Impmon's guts to allowing their children to go in search of him, despite the horrendous dangers that were to face them.

When Haruhi, Ai and Mako finally broke apart, Haruhi offered a more confident smile to the two twins. "Well?" she asked. "What are you crying for? You need to get yourselves ready to head out. Don't those Monster Maker guys need your D-Arc?"

Ai nodded with determination and Mako looked equally ready for action as they both turned to hurry towards the Monster Makers from where they were still standing next to the portal machine and making more tiny adjustments. But, before they had got two feet, their father stopped them with a cry of, "Hey, kids."

They turned around to see a proud smile on their father's face. He winked at them and said, "Bring Impmon back, alright? I'd like to have a chat with him again. I miss that."

The twins laughed and then turned to go and hand their D-Arc over to their brainier and older friends by the machine. Lilamon smiled as she watched them go and she floated over to the parents and said, "Remember what we said. About us looking after them. We still intend to hold to that."

"And we appreciate it," nodded Haruhi. "Very much so. Is there a plan, by the way? Or are you just going to go in there and hope for the best?"

"Well, there isn't a whole lot of plan?" Diatrymon offered as he stepped over. "The main idea is to destroy the army that resides in the Dark Ocean and GranDracmon himself, so an all out attack is really the best that we can do. But we do have to rescue Impmon as well."

"With that in mind, it's been decided that after we scout out the area and decide on the most likely location where Impmon might be, some of us, meaning us and Ai and Mako will move away to try and rescue him while the others engage the Nightmare Soldiers. Hopefully we won't meet with a lot of resistance, but, just in case we do, I'll be ready to get the twins out of there if things get nasty."

"Thanks," Haruhi nodded.

"We won't let the twins come to harm," Lilamon agreed. "But we won't leave Impmon behind either. Diatrymon and I will press on regardless of what happens."

"You said it," nodded the Ancient Bird. "Everything better stay out of my way."

"And me! And me!" Calumon bounded over and bounced up and down next to them. "I'm coming too! I'm coming too!"

Lilamon looked down at him and grinned. "'Course you are," she said. "The four of us were the ones Impmon stuck with throughout most of the ordeal. It's only right that we should all be involved in his rescue."

"Yay!" Calumon shouted. "We get to rescue Impmon soon! Hooray!"

"Maybe you should be a bit more quiet though," Mr. Terada shushed Calumon. "Let the Monster Makers concentrate. Then you can rescue Impmon even sooner."

"Oh," Calumon whispered so quietly he could barely be heard. "Sorry."

Nearby, similar family moments were taking place between Kenta and his parents and Jeri and her family. But they were coming to an end as well, as each of the Tamers took up the same grim face.

"This is going to be a big one," Kenta said. "And it's going to be weird going into a full-scale battle like this with Henry and Rika with us, as well as Suzie."

"Yeah," Jeri nodded. "Nevertheless, we have no choice. We must do this."

"It's all or nothing now," Ryo agreed.

"It's time to fight for freedom," Elecmon concurred.

"Justice," MarineAngemon squeaked.

"Victory!" Cyberdramon snarled.

"In what?" Lilamon quipped. "The battle or the competition with Dinorexmon?"

Cyberdramon growled and Lilamon backed off and hid behind Wingdramon as the others let off a couple of much needed chuckles. They were all set to go on the mission. Now, all they had to do was get into position and wait for the Monster Makers to finish their work.

* * *

A couple of hours passed of tense silence, during which time all the Tamers, except Ai and Mako, returned to Shinjuku Park to stand with the Sovereigns and the other Digimon, getting an opportunity to know them a little before they went into fight. Takato and Kazu returned from their homes to do the same thing. Kazu's mother had actually let him go this time. Like Mrs. Terada, she seemed to have come to the realisation that she was going to have to get used to this.

Their Digimon, as well as Diatrymon, went with them, so that they would be ready to leap through the portal the moment it opened. Beelzemon's bike, Behemoth, went with them and spent most of its time revving its engine, impatient to get going.

That left only Wingdramon, Lilamon, Calumon, Ai and Mako out of the whole company preparing to go to the Dark Ocean who remained in the HYPNOS Towers. The five of them were carefully watching the Monster Makers hard at work on the portal device. What they were doing made no sense to any of them – they couldn't understand why the wires had to be in specific places, but after a while they stopped trying to figure it all out and just watched.

The parents of the Tamers who were present stood together nearby to watch as the Monster Makers finished off the machine that would either send their children to another universe or not be able to bring back their own.

Approximately ten minutes or so after the two approximated hours had past and Janyu Wong stepped back, as did all the other Monster Makers, standing in a ring around the machine they had made as if afraid it might break at the slightest touch.

"It's done," Janyu said.

Ai and Mako had to resist the urge not to cheer.

Yamaki stepped forward beside Shibumi. "Done?" he asked. "You are certain?"

"As certain as we can be given the circumstances and the parameters of what we know," the man replied. "After all, we are in unchartered technological territory here. Nobody's ever built anything like this before and we haven't even tested it. However, according to our calculations and all the careful adjustments we've made... it's ready."

"Is the D-Arc hooked up to it?" the leader of HYPNOS asked.

"Yes," Babel nodded. "We've adjusted the setting so it should lock onto Impmon's location and transmit through the dimensional barrier to a location near him."

"Then we can go?" Lilamon asked them. "We can go in and rescue Impmon?"

"Provided our calculations are correct," nodded Dolphin.

"In that case, there is no time to waste," Yamaki said, pulling out his phone. "If we think it's going to work then we must attempt to use it straight away. Riley, have the transmitters been hooked up to the arm yet?"

"Yes, sir," Riley nodded, patting the platform where she usually sat. "It's ready and waiting."

"Alright then," Yamaki nodded. He paused and then murmured, "Let's begin."

He hit speed dial and moments later, Ryo was answering his call. "It's ready," Yamaki said into his phone. "Be ready."

That was all the information that Ryo needed, and the reply came back immediately in the form of, "Got it," before he signed off. Yamaki lowered his phone and placed it back in his pocket, pulling out his lighter to flick it apprehensively as he began to issue orders.

"Power it up," he said. Curly immediately stepped forward and did as she was bid, pushing down on a large lever built into the main structure that immediately began to make the turbines on the main machine whir as they began to rotate, slow and first but slowly gaining speed as they began to produce more power and warm up the machine.

"Raise the arm," Yamaki called next. Riley hit the controls at the base of said arm and the mechanical device began to rise upwards and off the floor, trailing the tubes and wires behind it as it raised the laser-gun-like transmitters into the air until they were pointing right out through the hole in the roof which had been removed to allow it to do just that.

Yamaki took another moment to look out briefly at the city of Tokyo and then he flicked his lighter shut with a decisive snap. "Time to begin powering up. Begin siphoning off more energy from the power grid. Let's hope the people don't mind too much when we cut off the energy supply to their homes."

Several of the technicians surrounding the walls and standing on the platforms began to make adjustments to the settings of the terminals set in front of them. The turbines began to increase in speed, as if they were becoming super-charged or something, until they were a blur that the naked eye couldn't even keep track off. The lights in the room went out, leaving only the light from the windows streaming in, but the machine began to hum even louder.

Outside it was a similar story as lights began to go out all over the city. Television sets stopped working and computers switched off, microwaves stopped functioning and all other forms of electrical equipment were been cut off in a fashion that was almost like a Mexican wave rippling out across the city.

It did indeed annoy a good many of the locals, even though they had known this was coming. But instead, they started scrambling towards the windows, hoping to get a good view of what they knew was about to happen.

In the HYPNOS towers, the machine was _really_ beginning to go crazy now. "We'd better make the portal now, Yamaki," Dolphin said quickly. "Build up too much power before allowing it to be released could cause the machine to overload!"

"Alright," nodded Yamaki. "Do it."

Dolphin stepped forward and carefully made one adjustment to the side of the machine and flipped another lever. The D-Arc attached to a terminal by a series of wire beeped and flashed several times as the machine extracted the signal of Impmon from it. A surge of energy started shooting down the wires connected to the main transmitters which began to hum with vicious energy.

"Come on," Daisy mumbled. "Come on, baby, you can do this."

A second later and with a loud screeching noise the transmitters spat forth a pair of pure white energy beams, similar looking to the X-Scissor Claw attack of GranKuwagamon. Everyone watched with bated breath as the energy beams shot out across the city, over the tops of the nearest skyscrapers and lashing towards the park, the slight angle of the transmitters ensuring that the beams got closer together the further they got.

Azulongmon and Zhuqiaomon backed away, as those in the HYPNOS tower crowded around to watch, hoping against hope that this was going to work. And then, right in centre of the park the two beams slammed into one another with a colossal explosion.

Only there was no smoke or fire. Instead, a sudden blackness burst out from the epicentre and began to congeal slightly and expand outwards and upwards and downwards and in all directions. It was is if the very fabric of the world was being eaten away slightly, and that was almost exactly what was happening.

"It's working," breathed Janyu. "It's actually doing it."

Even the Digimon were left speechless as they watched the tear in space and time get larger and larger, slowly expanding yard after yard as more and more lights in Tokyo went out, the power being transferred from people's homes to the Metropolitan Building and the machine at its very top. The energy beams continued to lance out of the transmitter, focused on the epicentre of the massive rip that was opening up in mid-air.

"I don't believe it," Lilamon whispered as she stared, awestruck.

"The portal is opening," Wingdramon agreed, eyes wide. "It's doing it."

"Watch out Impmon, we're coming for you," Lilamon grinned.

* * *

All of Japan was feeling this at the moment. The power cuts did not stop at Tokyo – it was beginning to move outwards towards the neighbouring cities and towns, slowly sucking all of the power out across the entire country. The Digimon in the park stepped back as the hole in the world grew larger and large until, finally, it stopped growing.

There was no a massive dark hole in the fabric of the world right in the middle of Shinjuku Park, stretching a couple of miles high and about one mile across. Swirling colours could be seen through the gap – purples and dark blues mixed with flashes of red and orange at seemingly random intervals.

Standing before the enormous thing, Ryo was the first to come back to his senses and remember that they were not just supposed to be staring at the thing. They were supposed to be going through it. He bit his lip. They had no clue if this was even the right universe or not, but they were just going to have to risk it, as they could make out no details on the other side.

"Guys!" he shouted. "It seemed to have stabilised. Shall we make a break for it and try our luck?"

Takato shook himself out of his reverie and said, "Ready, Guilmon."

"You betcha," Guilmon nodded, his tail raised and poised for action. Before anyone could stop them, the two of them were already of the move, charging towards the portal with Takato yelling at the top of his lungs. Guilmon wasn't far behind in terms of running or yelling and, side by side, the two of them leapt into the air and plunged through the portal. A splurge of black and they were gone.

The others hesitated for a moment, Jeri's hand flying to her mouth as she watched her boyfriend get sucked away in front of her. They had no way of knowing if Takato was even still alive or not and the sight of him getting whisked out of sight as if he had been sucked into a massive vacuum cleaner was a scary one.

However, there was one other person who had no doubt that everything was fine and that was the one who had helped to create the portal in the first place. A second after Takato and Guilmon vanished, GranKuwagamon lifted himself into the air, wings beating hard, and then he shot forwards and disappeared into the portal as well.

A couple of tense seconds passed, the hole whirling and contorting in front of them, before, suddenly, Azulongmon narrowed all four of his eyes. "What are we waiting for?" he asked. "This may be our only chance."

"Let's get a move on before the portal closes," Baihumon agreed and suddenly the four Sovereigns were in motion. Azulongmon curled his body around the beams creating the portal as his head vanished into the portal, his long, snake-like body trailing in after him with the clanking of chains. Zhuqiaomon tucked his wings into his side and shot forwards like a gannet diving into the ocean to lance beak-first into the portal and vanish. Baihumon growled and pounced forward, bounding over several of the others with an almighty leap and throwing himself in, while Ebonwumon roared with both heads and thundered after the others with a speed that belied his massive frame, making the ground shake beneath him and flattening everything in his way and he entered the portal himself.

It was only then that the last of Azulongmon's tail vanished.

With the four Sovereigns gone, it acted like a spur to get the others into motion. "Come on!" Jeri shouted. "Impmon's waiting!" And she ran forwards with Elecmon right behind her. Ryo grinned and grabbed Cyberdramon by the wing as the dragon sprang after the others. Kazu and Guardromon moved next, with Kenta not far behind, MarineAngemon clutching his hair to get a good view of what they were doing.

Diatrymon promptly overtook them all and leapt into the portal, as did Behemoth, who slewed past them and almost ran Kenta over in its haste to plough through the massive vortex. A moment after the bird and the vehicle vanished from sight, the humans began to follow.

The rest of the Digimon horde wasn't far behind. The eleven Devas took flight or thundered forwards on their feet (unless they didn't have any like Sandiramon) and whooshed towards the portal. MetalSeadramon uncoiled his body and whooshed after them, Gryphonmon beating the air beside him and Plesiomon practically swimming through the air as he made to follow.

The large group of them disappeared one by one, as each Deva plunged through the portal one after another. After the huge form of Vikaralamon disappeared, Makuramon pulled to a halt moments before he entered the vortex and looked hesitant to proceed, scratching himself in agitation.

Caturamon pounced towards him and transformed into a mallet, aiming himself at the monkey, who leapt out of the way with a loud, "MA-CA!" and ended up getting sucked into the portal. Caturamon slammed into the ground and reverted back to dog form, chuckling slightly, before he leapt in after the more cowardly Deva.

As the last of the Devas, Kumbhiramon, vanished, the three newest arrivals to the group began to head forwards as well. Dinorexmon was all up for it now that everyone else had gone in and the powerful dinosaur Mega charged forwards, his claws clacking and slicing the air on either side of him as he rushed forwards and leapt into the swirling vortex, being whisked away as the others were and thirsty for battle.

UlforceVeedramon and MirageGaogamon gave each other a glance before the latter said, "Well, this is going to be our first major battle. You up for it?"

"Heh," UlforceVeedramon smirked. "I would be doing this regardless of whether or not I was up for this. After all, I fight for justice and honour and I could not turn my back on a situation like this. However, yes, I am very much up for it. Time to see what this form is capable of."

"Indeed," MirageGaogamon chuckled. "Let's pay GranDracmon our... respects."

And the two of them dashed forward with billowing motions of their cloaks and swept through the portal.

* * *

Across Japan, everything was beginning to shut down. The power grid was almost burnt out as everything was channelled towards Tokyo at maximum speed to surge into the machine and allow it to keep producing the portal. But now, in said building, the repercussion for all this power was definitely beginning to show.

Sparks were flying out of the portal machine now as the turbines picked up even more speed, scything round and round so fast that you'd have to be an idiot to put your hand anywhere near them. The transmitters were vibrating at such intensity that it was like they could shake themselves loose from the mechanical arm they were attached to at any moment. If some of the wires seemed to have gotten a mind of their own.

Yamaki stepped backwards as the machine threw out a load more sparks in his direction, which he was thankfully able to avoid. "What's the status?" he shouted.

"The machine's overloading, just as we suspected!" Shibumi shouted, backing away from the device as every person in the room. "The sheer amount of power needed to create such a large portal is way too much for it. It could go at any moment."

"Got it!" Yamaki nodded. "All staff, personnel and civilians get out of the room now!"

Through the sparks and the vibrations, the people began to do what they were told, vaulting off their platforms and rushing for the door as the machine began to rock slightly and sparks of electricity began to fly between parts of its sections. Wingdramon backed away slightly, covering his head and sheltering the twins with his wings as things began to get more intense.

Lilamon stood by the window and was squinting towards the park, trying to see what was going on. The portal was beginning to fluctuate slightly, as if it was losing its stability. The power needed to maintain it wasn't going to last for much longer and she knew it, especially considering the special failsafe the Monster Makers had designed to ensure the portal would close once the main energy used to provide it failed.

"Come on, guys," she whispered. "Come on. Get through it."

She strained her eyes, spotting some of the last remaining figures whooshing towards the portal and finally getting through it. She turned around and cried. "They're through! It's now or never!"

"Got it!" Yamaki shouted. "Get going now!"

"Calumon!" Lilamon shouted. "Get on Wingdramon and be quick about it!" As she spoke, she leapt into the air, swooping low over the heads of the twins as she whooshed towards the rattling machinery. Her petals closed around the D-Arc that was still attached to it and yanked it free of the wires.

The moment it did, there was a noticeable change in the way things were going. Robbed of the signal it was being locked onto the machine began to power down, the electricity flow being interrupted as the beams creating the portal began to fail. Lilamon wasted no time and swooped back around without pausing for any time whatsoever. She hooked the twins with one arm and hoisted them into the air, lashing out with Lila Shower tendrils to wrap around the lance on Wingdramon's back.

"Go, Wingdramon! Go!" she shouted as she planted herself down and hooked Calumon in with the twins.

"Good luck, kids!" Mrs. Terada shouted as Wingdramon blasted himself into the air with a pulse of his wings. With the hole in the ceiling he had used to get in before now occupied with the energy beams creating the portal, Wingdramon did the first thing that came to mind – he turned towards the large window and blasted towards it.

"Hold on!" he cried and the twins braced themselves as the dragon smashed his way through the glass, which showered down behind them and towards the street far below, but Wingdramon was moving at such speed he was out of range of any cutting shards almost before they became dangerous. Wingdramon shot towards the park at the highest speed available to him. Any faster and the twins would probably both die.

Before them, the portal was seriously beginning to shake and twist and warp as the beams began to fizzle and eventually, die altogether as the machine powered down. The massive hole in space and time began to close rapidly, shrinking in pretty much the exact reverse of how it had expanded, only at a much higher. Wingdramon's eyes narrowed and clenched his sharp teeth, knowing he was already using all the speed he could in this situation.

The portal was shutting swiftly.

He rushed towards it. Lilamon looked up and tried to see what was going on but they were going so fast that the wind was causing her eyes to strain and she could barely see anything. The D-Arc was clutched in one petalled hand while Ai, Mako and Calumon was all grasped in the same arm, huddled over with their eyes clenched shut to avoid the terrible wind.

_Come on Wingdramon,_ Lilamon thought. _Don't let up._

Wingdramon's eyes narrowed as he aimed himself right at the centre of the portal as it edges continued to shrink inwards quickly. He flared his wings out as wide as they would go and then tucked them into his side, flattening them against his flanks as he effectively went into comet mode.

The edges shrank. Fifty feet. Forty. Thirty.

Wingdramon and his passengers shot through the tiny twenty-five-foot hole that was left plunging into blackness. Wingdramon's long tail shot in after him mere moments before the portal finally shut, leaving nothing but empty air and an equally empty park in the completely powerless city of Tokyo.

* * *

Back at the HYPNOS towers, the machine had survived exploding. Lilamon's timing had ensured it been stopped about a millisecond before it took out the entire top two floors of the building. But, as Yamaki stepped back into the room after it died down, he could tell that the machine was not going to be functioning again anytime soon. Several of the turbines had actually been expelled from the main bulk and were littering the floor, the wires were burnt out and useless, practically the entire thing was blackened and the transmitters had copious amount of smoke coming out of them.

He sighed momentarily as he stepped in amongst the damage. It seemed that they had been right after all. The machine had done its job, transporting the Digimon and the Tamers to another universe. Whether it was indeed the right universe, they had no idea and wouldn't until they came back, if they ever did. This was definitely going to be a nerve-wracking experience.

But more importantly right now, it seemed that they had been right when they had said that they were not going to be able to get Henry, Rika, Suzie or their partners back with this particular device.

"I don't think I'm going to need a damage report on this one," Yamaki murmured. "I can see that for myself. Not as badly damaged as when the Juggernaut program overloaded but still burnt beyond all use. It's definitely going to take us a while to building another one of these. It's going to take a while to clear up the mess the first one made as well."

He turned towards the window, or where the window had been courtesy of Wingdramon smashing his way of it. As more people began to filter into the room again, Yamaki turned to them and asked. "Did anyone see if they made it through or not?"

"I think so," nodded Janyu. "I saw them disappear right at the moment before it finished shutting. It looked like they got there in the nick of time."

"Good," Yamaki nodded. He then turned back to the smashed window and said, "We've done all they can. It's all up to them now. Defeated GranDracmon. Rescuing Impmon. ...And getting back out of that universe."

"Let's pray that they can do it," Shibumi nodded. "Because if they can't..."

He let the sentence drop. Nobody needed him to finish it, after all.

* * *

If Wingdramon and his passengers had been expecting everything to slow down once they got through the portal they were sorely mistaken. If anything, everything began to speed up, or perhaps that was just the sensation of the headlong rush turning into a full-scale tumble making it seem like they were going faster. Lilamon felt tug on her as she lost her grip on Wingdramon's lance, her Lila Shower tendrils detaching themselves and drawn back into her petals.

She yelped as she went whirling and tumbling, bringing up both arms to crush Ai, Mako and Calumon to her chest, holding them protectively as she clenched her teeth, both at the sensation of falling over and over and at the loud screaming noises the three young creatures in her arms were making.

"We're gonna diiiiieeeeeee!" Calumon wailed. "We're gonna diiiiieeeeee! I'm gonna throw up and then I'm gonna diiiiieeeeeeee!"

"Stop quoting from the Griiiiiinch!" shouted Ai, but was reduced to wailing herself as Lilamon span over and over. Colours flashed past them in all directions as they shot past the tunnel – a swirling vortex of purple with other explosions all over the place, like some kind of bizarre fireworks display slash paintball match.

Lilamon looked down in surprise when she felt something curl around her waist and she discovered that it was Wingdramon's tail. The dragon seemed to be having a much easier time of it. Perhaps it had something to do with his gravity-repellent wings, but he quickly reeled Lilamon and the others in.

"We're on our way now!" he shouted over the roaring wind. "It looks like we did it!"

"Let's wait until we get to the other side first!" Lilamon cried. "And we hope that everything worked out alright until that happens. Hope that we don't get whisked off to some other, random dimension."

Wingdramon nodded.

"We're coming, Impmon!" Mako hollered, as a sudden, bright white light began to emerge ahead of them, increasing in intensity with every passing millisecond. Wingdramon aimed himself at it and placed Lilamon and the others on her back once more. A second later and they lashed into the brightness.

* * *

It was immediately replaced by instant darkness. The sudden shift from blinding light to almost blackness almost threw Wingdramon off and even he tumbled for a moment, but his wings kicked into effect a moment later and he caught himself just before he slammed into the ground. He quickly rose up and away from it as Lilamon and her three charges slumped against his giant lance, breathing heavily.

"Heh," said a voice, which caused the dragon to look up and see Diatrymon standing nearby, shaking a bunch of sand out of his feather. "Nice to see that some of us got more of a decent landing than others," he commented dryly, and then, more sincerely, he said, "But good to see that you made it through."

"I take it you ended up ploughing headfirst into the ground," Wingdramon observed, examining the indentation in the sand around Diatrymon's feet that looked about the right size for a crashing object of his stature.

"Most of us did," Diatrymon responded. He chuckled and added, "Even the Sovereigns."

Wingdramon looked around to see that Zhuqiaomon was blazing, his aura glowing a furious red as he flapped his wings and sent up a miniature localised sandstorm. The enormous shape of Ebonwumon was getting back to his feet and mumbling that that could have been more dignified as Baihumon shook himself like a dog. Azulongmon was already up, having a good look at his surroundings.

Lilamon recovered enough to hop off Wingdramon and place the others on the ground, before stepping over to the furiously growling Behemoth, who had landed on his side, and heaving him up onto his wheels. As the bike revved in thanks, Lilamon had a look around. "So, did we make it?" she asked.

"I believe we did," Diatrymon smirked, as Lilamon took in the surroundings. It was definitely dark, and the sand beneath them appeared to be a massive beach that stretched off into the distance in both directions in a line of pale grey that looked more like ash than sand. On one side was a cliff, on top of which was a forest covered with dark grey leave. On their other side was the dark and inky waters of a very, very murky looking sea.

And if that wasn't enough, the ethereal, ghostly shapes all over the place, the horrible draught that deliberately seemed to be trying to chill the back of her neck and the general prickly feeling running up and down her back completed the general perception of the place.

"The Dark Ocean," she breathed.

"In all its splendour," Wingdramon agreed.

All around them, Tamers and other Digimon were getting up from where they had crash-landed. Ryo was pulled to his feet by Cyberdramon and he brushed grey sand from his hair and murmured. "Definitely a very bleak landscape," he said.

"I don't think I would even think of going swimming in _that_ ocean," Plesiomon rasped, as he briefly surrounded himself with water to wash himself off and then sprayed MetalSeadramon with it.

"It reeks of darkness," UlforceVeedramon tensed. "I can practically smell it."

"Indeed," nodded Azulongmon from on high. And look over there my friends. In the distance, I believe I can see our main destination."

"Where?" Takato asked, automatically lifting a hand to shield his eyes and then realising he didn't need to. He looked and, sure enough, he could see a tall shape in the distance with a number of very tall spirals.

"GranDracmon's castle," Baihumon growled. "The time has come at last for us to bring the fight to his shore."

"Suddenly I feel quite nervous," Kenta murmured.

"Spooky," MarineAngemon added for good measure.

"Whatever the case, we have an Impmon to save and an army to destroy," Jeri said grimly. "I say that we get on and do it."

"Definitely," nodded Lilamon. "Impmon needs our support." She turned to Ai and Mako and presented them with their own D-Arc. "You guys ready for what we have to do?"

Ai and Mako stared at the small device grimly for a moment, before they placed their hands over it, Lilamon's and each other's. "Yeah," they said in unison. "We are."

"That's what I thought," Lilamon smirked as Diatrymon, Wingdramon and Calumon crowded around them.

* * *

And in the castle, GranDracmon opened his eyes. He had been in the middle of silent contemplation, but nothing entered or left this realm without him knowing about it. He had felt a strange disturbance. A large number of beings had suddenly entered the Dark Ocean and it had not been under his authorisation or power.

"Interesting," he said, calmly. "It appears we have some uninvited guests. They are more versatile than I imagined." He could sense the raw power from many of the individuals, and he knew right away that many of them were Sovereigns, and the others could only be their followers and perhaps the Tamers as well.

"Well," he smirked. "It seems I shall have to accelerate my plans. Belphemon will rise today."

* * *

I cannot begin to describe how awesome I feel right now, ladies and gentlemen. Not only have I left you with another cliffhanger, and the threshold for a massive battle sequence involving the Sovereigns, which is something I have never written or even seen attempted by most people, but I have also crossed the two millions word boundary and with this chapter done, this story has, officially, only forty more chapters to do.

Ha! Time to get cracking on the next arc. There won't be any action on the Star Wars side, but the fighting is starting in the Dark Ocean a little earlier.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

More of a basic filling in chapter than anything else. As the massive army gathers on Tython, the rest of the Council and Jedi discover Aayla's actions regarding Grievous and the droids, while the other Tamers discover that Numa has not stayed behind on Saleucami like she was supposed to, and Darth Sidious informs the Senate about Aayla's supposed death, shocking a certain Pantoran.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 181 : Revelations**


	181. Revelations

Here I am again with the beginning of my nineteenth story arc. Only four more to go after this and then I can finally start work on the sequel. Heh, I've been looking forward to this section of the story for a long, long, looooonnnngg time. There might be no action in this arc, but there's a lot of awesomeness off a different kind waiting here. And after that... well, it's going to be action, action, action.

Keep reading everybody.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 181:- Revelations**

* * *

The Jedi Temple on Tython was gradually becoming more and more of a war-like zone. Rows of portable turrets were beginning to line the streets. Tanks marched down numerous alleyways to find a suitable position for an upcoming battle. Clones scurried all over the place, weapons primed and ready for anything, even thought the fighting was more likely to be many hours or even a day away.

The main Temple itself was also being geared up for war. The clones were exploring its recesses and corridors, finding their way around in search of suitable places to establish snipers and other various viewpoints which might enable them an advantage of the battle field. Down below, several smaller AT-RT walkers were dashing down the streets, finding good places to hide in preparations for surprise charges against an attacking enemy.

It was a thoroughly depressing experience for Master Yoda, but the small Grand Master bore it all the same. There was little other alternative at this point, and the more time they had to prepare the better off they would be, as long as the Sith didn't have too much time to prepare themselves.

By this point, every Jedi except for those who had gone in search of extra allies had arrived on the planet. While the city was more than big enough to accommodate all of their men, regardless of the high number, it wasn't going to be enough to allow all of their giant cruisers inside. Many of them had been forced to land outside the walls and the main gates were thrown wide open, allowing clones to stream in and out as they liked.

The amount of equipment they had brought with them was extremely formidable. Mace Windu and Commander Ponds, for instance, had managed to keep hold of a very large _Acclamator_-class cruiser, and all of the walkers within were filing down the ramp to head into the city. The other Jedi had all made impressive contributions as well. When things kicked off, as they would do soon, it would be quite something to witness.

As Yoda stepped through the streets, examining some of the things happening around him, the Council Members and some of the other more senior Jedi were walking with him, momentarily doing so in silence as each contemplated their predicament. At the back of the group, Numa was riding on the shoulders of Waxer, while Boil walked alongside and made sure she didn't end up falling off and Tsunomon bounced alongside them.

Eventually, Seasee Tiin spoke up by saying, "The people who formed emissaries to go off and find more help have certainly been gone a long time. Surely, they should have gotten here by now if everything had gone according to plan."

"Yes," Yoda nodded gravely. "Some hours, it has been, before they were scheduled to arrive here. Falling, night is. Dark, it soon will be."

"Do you think they alright?" Adi Gallia queried.

"I am afraid that we cannot really answer that question, Master Gallia," Mace sighed. "They are currently on their own, and we can provide them with little assistance. We can only hope that they check in soon."

"If anything I have heard of their exploits is correct," Even Piell stated, "The A-Team and all of their companions are extraordinarily formidable. I am sure that they will get here eventually and odds are they will all be in one piece unless something truly terrible has occurred. And it would take a lot to bring them all down in such a fashion."

"Correct, Master Piell is, Yoda nodded. "Have faith in them, we must."

"Ha! I always have faith in my Padawan," Quinlan smirked. "I have no doubt that whatever Aayla's been doing since I last saw her, it's probably been something completely and ridiculously insane, but she's dominated the action as usual."

"While that comment may be a little strident, Master Vos," Luminara smiled. "I share your sentiment. They have proven themselves more than reliable. I have a feeling that it will not be long now."

"As do I," Yoda stopped and closed his eyes, causing everyone else to stop and look at him as well. "A change in the Force, I sense," Yoda informed them. "Been sensing it for some hours, I have." He opened his eyes and said, "Believe, I do, that more than we bargained for, we will find, when the others eventually do get here?"

"I have felt something similar, Master Yoda," replied Mace. "But I have also been feeling something a little more sinister. The Sith are gaining strength. They are not trying to hide that fact from us anymore, and it is there as bright as any star. Sidious probably knows we can detect it."

"He is trying to intimidate us," Oppo Rancisis bristled, bunching his coils behind him and flicking his tail. "Trying to make us feel fear at his might and power."

"Indeed," Eeth Koth nodded. "He must be trying to crush all thoughts of rebellion from our mind, try to force us into hiding under the belief that there is nothing that we can do to alleviate the situation in any way."

"It will not work, that is for sure," Adi almost growled. "I, for one, know that united we stand a much better chance of success. We will not go skulking into the shadows as he has been for the last decade or so."

"I agree wholeheartedly," Piell sniffed

"Troopers," Yoda turned to look at Waxer and Boil, who automatically stood to attention and saluted, causing Numa to wobble at the sudden shift in body position from Waxer, though Boil quickly extended a hand and steadied her with it. "Know anything of our status with the defences of the city, do you?"

"Well," said Boil. "Last I heard, sir, we had pretty much the whole place scouted out. All the key locations in the city for our personal use have been picked out and all that's left is to move the equipment, but everything should be just about ready by the time the sun sets."

"Good," nodded Yoda, letting out another sigh. "Gone on for too long, this war has. End it swiftly and decisively, we must."

"All that remains now is for the others to arrive with any reinforcements that they managed to collect, sir," Waxer nodded. "After that, we can adapt our defensive strategy to include those reinforcements."

"Good news, this is," Yoda nodded. "Good news indeed."

"I must admit that I am still not entirely happy with this plan that the A-Team and their company have concocted," Oppo Rancisis voiced. "It seems to be awfully reckless to me, and it will put every one of us here in a lot of danger. Are we sure that it would not be more practical to try a more cautious strategy?"

"Relatively sure, yeah," Quinlan nodded darkly. "Trust me, Master Rancisis. I've worked with the Sith before, and let me tell you when they move, they move quickly. Give this Empire another week and everything will be blown way out of all proportion and with every passing day our chances of taking the Republic back are going to get less and less.

Rancisis didn't say anything in response to that. He merely sighed through his nose and nodded once, looking a little unhappy about the whole thing, which was hardly surprising. None of them were.

"So, what are we going to do about the child?" Jocasta Nu suddenly asked, indicating Numa, who definitely noticed that she was being alluded to, as she blinked and looked up, trying to gauge what people were talking about, even though she had little idea.

"We cannot let her do any fighting, surely," Eeth Koth agreed. "She does not have the experience of the other Tamers, nor the powers. Should we shelter her in the Temple somewhere?"

"And leave her unguarded?" asked Adi.

"Well, it might be better to leave her unguarded than have her with a guard and in the middle of the battle," Piell pointed out.

"To be honest," Mace raised his voice. "I think that we should let the Tamers be the ones to decide what we should do with this young Twi'lek. After all, they know better than any of us what they are capable of and how to do what they do."

"Good idea, Master Windu," Ki-Adi-Mundi nodded his head.

"This is out of our jurisdiction," agreed Plo Koon. "The girl is not exactly a member of our forces. The Tamers will have a more accurate idea about what should be done with a young and new one of their own."

""Just out of curiosity, had anybody seen that little Gnome creature that gave her that little D-Arc device?" Piell asked gruffly.

"I'm sure it's around here somewhere, Master Jedi," Waxer put in. "Last I saw it, it was cartwheeling round and round the cannon of an AT-TE walker. It definitely seems to know how to have a good time."

"It's like a little Terriermon, only without his wisecracking," Boil chuckled.

"Let's be glad of that," Mace said wryly.

Yoda abruptly looked up towards the sky and leaned on his stick, his eyes narrowing as he peered up through the wispy clouds above them. He tapped his stick on the ground a couple of times to gain everyone's attention and said, "Sense, I do, that finally arrived, the others have. Pulled out of hyperspace above us, they have. And also, sense I do, vast numbers of life forms accompanying them."

"But that is excellent news," Ki-Adi voiced. "That must mean that at least some of them were successful with their excursions into the other planets to find us some allies."

"Greet them, we must," Yoda said. "Head for the gates of the city, we shall, and see for ourselves what reinforcements they are bringing with them, we will."

The assembled Jedi nodded and moved off with Master Yoda leading them at his own hobbling pace. Waxer and Boil progressed along at the back as the multitude of Jedi moved down the street, stepping aside to allow a couple of AT-RTs to go past as they moved towards the front of the city that surrounded the Temple.

* * *

Above them, the first of the numerous cruisers were beginning to descend into the atmosphere. Like Yoda and all the other Jedi before them, Aayla shut her eyes the moment she was out of the vacuum of space. It felt like a great surge of the Force had washed over her, soothing her muscles and automatically diminishing just about every residual faint ache she had from her bout with Grievous earlier.

"Wow," Renamon said as they began to move further down. "Did you guys feel that?"

"I did," Suzie piped up.

"Me too," nodded Terriermon.

"I think I felt something," Bly nodded. "What is it – kind of a tingling in the back of my neck."

"It is the Force, Bly," Aayla smiled. "There may be only a select few beings throughout the universe who are capable of harnessing its power, but the Force resides in all life-forms. This place is where the Jedi Order was born. It has the strongest connection to the Force I have ever felt. Every single life-form in our armada is probably feeling that right now."

"Think of the legacy that this planet spawned," Henry murmured as he moved to the window for a better view. "It beats anything that our Human World, Earth, has to offer. The Jedi Order originated from here."

"Welcome home, Aayla," Lopmon grinned.

Aayla chuckled. "Technically my home is Ryloth or Coruscant, but I suppose you're right. This planet is a home to every one of the Jedi whether or not they need it."

"Three different homes at the same time?" Terriermon snorted. "Anyone else feeling envious?"

Aayla laughed and said, "Oh, stop it, Terriermon. Come on, let's get down to the surface. Master Yoda and the others are probably waiting for us."

* * *

The cruisers began to move slowly downwards, extending their legs from their undersides as they spotted the city beneath them and the large patch of clear area around it before the empty space gave way to forest. Seeing that the city was already filled up to its maximum, they guided themselves down towards the space out in front of the main gates. After a couple of minutes of slow and guided descent, they finally touched down.

The newer Jedi arrivals didn't take long to get down to the surface, each of them eager to step out onto the soil of Tython for the first time. Each and every one of them took a moment as they did so to feel the Force washing over them, giving them reassurance that if there was anywhere to make their final stand, this was definitely the place.

Aayla walked over to the others – Anakin, Ahsoka, Barriss, Obi-Wan, Kit and Shaak Ti moving quickly to join her. Xiaan Amersu moved quietly in Aayla's wake, while the Digimon bounded along behind her.

All around them, others were beginning to file down the ramps of the various cruisers – Gungans and Wookiees stepping out of the ships and moving out onto the ground, some of them, or indeed most of them, setting foot on another planet for the very first time. All of them could feel the presence of the Force all around them and it filled them with the confidence they had been looking for, washing away a good majority of their nerves.

"You know," Anakin chuckled as the Jedi joined together. "I could get used to this place."

"As could I," nodded Kit. "It's definitely the right place to take on the Empire. Everything around us seems to be almost flowing like a river. You can just feel the raw energy of the place, can't you?"

"It's amazing," Shaak Ti nodded. "I have never experienced anything like it in all my time serving the Jedi order."

"I could say the same," Obi-Wan nodded. "But I could also say that I believe Master Yoda and the others are waiting for us," he pointed towards the gates of the city to where a small gathering of familiar Jedi could be seen watching them from a distance.

"Then, we better not keep them waiting," Rika chuckled. She started to move towards them and the others made to follow, but they pulled to a sudden halt when a loudly hooting Zarza bounded past them. The Varactyl seemed to be full of beans as she bounded round the legs of ships and chased her tail, gambolling around in actions that were more like a giant puppy than anything else.

"I see Zarza's enjoying the experience," Lopmon chuckled.

"They are too, I think," Suzie pointed towards the ship they had just come down in time to see the Acklay filing down the ramp. The six giant creature were stretching their necks and rolling their heads in actions that suggested they were indeed enjoying the sensation. They came from a planet that was strong in the Force anyway, but this one was even stronger. The Force-sensitive Acklay in particular seemed to be quite happy, its three eyes shut in contentment.

The Jedi couldn't help but smile at what they were seeing, but the group quickly turned around and hurried towards the gates to where the others were waiting.

Yoda stepped forward to greet them. "Fellow Jedi," he acknowledged. "Digimon, Tamers, glad to see you all still alive and apparently unharmed, I am." His gaze shifted to Xiaan and he said, "See that you found an extra member of our order, I do."

"Yes, Master Yoda," nodded Renamon. "A complete coincidence actually. Xiaan here happened to crash on the planet Felucia after she escaped her men. But now, she's more than ready to help, right, Xiaan?"

"Indeed," Xiaan smiled. "Aayla and her Acklay friends saved me and brought me here with them. I am ready to fight to restore the Republic."

"Good news, this is," Yoda nodded. "Every spare blade that we can get, we will need."

"I don't have to look particularly far to see that your emissary missions were a success," Mace acknowledged, glancing over the shoulders of the assembled Jedi towards the forces crowding behind them.

"Not everything was a smooth transition but, yes, indeed we did," Shaak Ti nodded. "We apologise for our tardiness, Masters. Part of the reason why we are so late is because we ran into some trouble on the planet Kamino, as we pretty much expected and a rescue mission had to be launched. However, we were, eventually able to gain the support of the Kaminoans and the clones that were still on and above the planet."

"What's more, the Gungans and the Wookiees have pledged their support, as have some of our large, animal friends," Kit added. As if to support his claim, one of the Acklay was approaching the group from behind, its claws thudding into the ground as it seemed to leer at the assorted Jedi Masters. A couple of them backed away – they had fought around the same Acklay that had attacked Obi-Wan on Geonosis and knew how deadly they could be.

Terriermon bounded onto the Acklay's head and laughed, "What's the matter, guys?" he asked. "Getting the jitters?" The Acklay snapped its jaws in agreement, and caused a couple of the Jedi to flinch.

"That's enough, Terriermon," Henry looked up at him. "Don't worry, guys. They won't hurt you. Renamon's made sure of that."

"Good to hear that," Mace said dryly. "Anyway, I suppose congratulations are in order for your valiant efforts out there. With these forces at our command, we might just stand a chance of victory on the field out there. And now, you Tamers, there is another matter to discuss..."

"Hold on, Master Windu," Plo raised a clawed hand. The Kel Dor appeared to be staring over the shoulders of Obi-Wan and it was difficult to make out any expression of his underneath his face mask, but if they had to take a guess, the others would probably say it was shock. The others turned to face the same direction and suddenly looked very shocked indeed, confirming Plo's own reaction.

Ahsoka and Barriss glanced at each other. Every one of them thought they knew what was being stared at, and a quick glance over their shoulders confirmed it. The battle droid armies had begun their descent down the ramps, marching in strict lines with their blasters held in front of them dutifully, as they split off at the end of the ramps and began to assemble into neat lines. A few droidekas rolled past them and uncurled, looking around them for any threat.

As they had been ordered not to attack anybody on the side of the Jedi, they didn't spot anything.

"What... in the Galaxy... is going on?" Mace asked, and there was a dangerous undertone in his voice at the moment. One which caused even Obi-Wan and Shaak Ti to flinch slightly. Considering the amount of destruction the battle droid armies had been wreaking on the Galaxy, it was completely understandable as to why Mace was acting like this. Several other Jedi, like Even Piell, Oppo Rancisis and Adi Gallia, appeared to be having similar reactions.

"Well," Obi-Wan sighed. "That is an interesting story, Master Windu, but to essentially cut what would be a long and complicated tale short, let's just say that young Aayla decided to make a snap decision at recruitment. Again."

And then the real hammer blow fell.

"Greetings, Jedi!" came a rasping voice from behind them group, as General Grievous strode around the Acklay which had been concealing him from view. "I trust you are prepared for the upcoming conflict."

As expected, the Jedi Master all immediately acted aggressively towards the cyborg General, only this time is was even worse. The introduction of Grievous to the ranks of the Rebel Alliance had been via hologram beforehand. Now, Grievous was actually in front of them in the alloy and what little flesh he had left.

Mace Windu's lightsaber was in his hand immediately, the purple blade humming threateningly as a expression that was as close to hatred as a Jedi could get without falling to the Dark Side appeared on his face. Several other Jedi also activated their lightsabers and took up battle stances. Grievous' response was instinctual and automatic, grasping his own lightsabers and clashing them into a defensive X in front of him, his eyes narrowing as he dared them to come forward and strike.

It was fairly obvious that things were going to devolve into an all out fight very quickly unless something was done, so Aayla reacted quickly and placed a steadying hand on Grievous' arm. "General, wait," she said. "Don't do anything rash. Please, control your mind, otherwise things are not going to work out as we agreed." She said it louder than she ordinarily would have, to make sure the other Jedi could hear her over the sound of their own lightsaber blades.

It had the desired effect. The Jedi paused in their tracks, their eyes wide as they took in Aayla's words. They watched in stunned silence as Grievous glanced across at Aayla and many of them thought that he was going to strike her down on the spot. After all, Aayla was actually daring to put her hand on his arm, which he would surely not let any Jedi get away with.

To their infinite surprise, Grievous sheathed his blades and lowered his arms to his sides. He continued to grip them in his hands and his eyes remained narrowed, but he said, "I suppose fighting might not be the best way of introducing myself."

"Thank you," Aayla smiled. "That's more like it."

Even Yoda, who normally a steadfast Jedi who was not surprised by anything, looked taken aback at this little interaction. He shook that off after a moment and his face returned its usual neutral expression and he stepped forwards slightly, "Aayla," he said. "Speak for all of us, I believe I do, when I say that an explanation would be very, very welcome at this point."

"That sure is an understatement," Luminara murmured quietly.

"Certainly, Master Yoda," Aayla nodded, removing her hand from Grievous' arm. "I will do my best to give you one."

"Is an explanation really necessary?" Ki-Adi-Mundi scowled. "All I see is that one of our own Order has decided to consort with a known Jedi murderer! Working alongside Bane was one thing, but this... creature... is a Separatist!"

"Master Mundi is right," Mace declared. "What possessed you to bring such a monstrosity here, to our ancestral home of Tython, and not only him but all of the armies he commands. Have you actually lost your mind, Knight Secura, by allowing him to this place?"

"Master Windu," Grievous chuckled. "Such a pleasure to meet you face to face at last. But really, is that any way for you to speak to one of your allies?"

"Ally?" Mace roared. "You are not and never will be our ally, General. I don't know why Aayla decided to bring you here, but either you leave right now, or we will make you leave."

"Secura is not allowing me to do anything," Grievous growled. "I am not here at her invitation – I am here because I have some unfinished business to take care of, regarding the Sith, and there is nothing that you or any of your order can do or say that will make me leave."

"You are a killer, Grievous!" Mace growled back, holding his lightsaber before him and ready for combat. "You have desecrated our order numerous times throughout the course of this war and killed dozens of us, and now you have the audacity to come here, to our homeworld? I will not all you to soil this ground with your presence!"

"Are you certain it is I who is the monster here?" Grievous challenged. "I am not the one brandishing weapons and shouting threats."

"Master Windu, please," Aayla voiced. "Please wait before you jump to conclusions. We Jedi are not supposed to dwell on the past. What matters at the moment is that Grievous wants to fight with us and once you understand why, I am sure that..."

"I do not know what game he is playing here, Aayla, but do you seriously, with all of your heart, believe that we can trust him in any way? Think about who you are talking about."

"I am thinking," Aayla said, bluntly. "Very clearly. And from what I am witnessing, right now I trust Grievous with my life more than I would trust you with it."

This statement was probably a little harsh, but it served its purpose. Mace's angry gaze towards Grievous switched to a surprised one at Aayla. The Twi'lek had an insistent look on her face, silently pleading with Mace to wait and hear them out before he made any attempts to do something in haste.

During his moment of hesitation, Terriermon hopped off the Acklay's head and did something extremely daring when he soared down and landed on Grievous' large shoulder guard. The Kaleesh warlord flinching when it spotted him there and was about to shrug him off, but he stopped himself, reluctantly allowing the bunny to stay there. He flinched again when Lopmon suddenly appeared on her other shoulders and Renamon bounded up beside him, the three Digimon joining Aayla in standing next to their former enemy.

Grievous looked extremely uncomfortable with their close proximity to him but he didn't move. And it was only about to get more uncomfortable when Ahsoka moved closer, with Anakin and Barriss not far behind, as well as the three Tamers, until all of the Tenacious Ten were standing around Grievous as if he was one of their own.

"This is hardly necessary," he growled quietly towards them.

"Hey," Anakin whispered to him. "You want to fight with us, don't you? The more people on your side at the moment the better off you're going to be. Just try and play it cool, alright?"

"Besides," Barriss murmured. "Have the Sith ever stood up for you like this?"

"I do not need your support, Jedi," Grievous objected.

"Maybe not, grumpyface," Ahsoka replied. "But you're getting it all the same."

"Get used to it," agreed Terriermon. "We try and treat everybody on our team the same way, regardless of who they are."

Obi-Wan, Shaak Ti and Kit Fisto were all reduced to glancing at one another. The three of them had a lot of reason to object to Grievous' presence as well, considering they had all gone up against him in lightsaber combat at least once and he had killed friends of theirs. Nevertheless, Obi-Wan sighed and moved closer, and the other two were not far behind.

Even the nearest Acklay stepped behind them and lowered its head down towards them to eyeball Windu challengingly, although whether it knew the full significance of what was going on was uncertain.

Mace and the other Jedi were now all looking quite uncertain, but then Master Yoda turned towards them, and regarded each and every one of them solemnly. "Too quick to judge, we must not be. Hear the story out, I believe we should." He turned around and said, "Jedi, we are. Correct, Aayla is. Dwell on the past, we should not. A reason, there must be, for her decision and indeed for Grievous' change of..." he hesitated, then added, "Perhaps not heart, but catch my drift, I believe you can."

"Indeed, Masters," Obi-Wan nodded. "Believe me when I say that there is practically nobody who objected to this transition more than me but, I confess that even I understand the gravity of this situation and... well, I'm surprised to say I sympathise with Grievous a little."

"What is with you Jedi and your unending attempts at sympathy and understanding?" Grievous demanded loudly. "I have no desire for either!"

"What did I just say, Grievous?" Terriermon asked. "I told you that you should get used to it and I meant it."

"He's probably just feeling a little unnerved because the Sith don't do anything like this to anybody ever," Lopmon pointed out. "I'm sure he'll get used to it eventually."

"Hardly," Grievous rasped. "I am hoping that I won't be around you long enough for that, and once we have annihilated the Sith, then I can spend my time in a prison cell with sappy people like you standing up for me."

"Prison cell?" Luminara asked, blinking. "Annihilate the Sith? He really wants to help us take down the Sith?"

"It certainly sounds that way," Plo nodded. "I move that we at least hear them out before we make any more snap judgements against them."

There were a couple more mutters of agreement amongst the assembled Jedi, but most of the others looked reluctant still. However, Mace did sheathe his lightsaber and lowered it loosely to his side, thought he looked rather grim at doing it.

"Alright then," he said. "Let's hear this explanation. I am really hoping that it is a good one, otherwise I am going to continue struggling to fathom your decision to bring Grievous here, Aayla."

"Thank you, Master," Aayla nodded. "Here is the deal. Terriermon and I were..."

"No!" Grievous suddenly snarled, a firm metallic hand closing around Aayla's shoulder. The Twi'lek looked at said hand slightly warily – after all it did have large claws on it, but Grievous stepped out from the group and released her shoulder without doing any damage to her skin before he said, "This time, I shall be the one to tell the story. After all, it is my life that the Sith ruined. The story is my own anyway."

Aayla blinked, but she smiled and gestured for Grievous to continue. "By all means, General."

Grievous nodded to the Twi'lek and turned around to face the others and said, "You know as well as I do that the ways of the Sith are nothing but treachery through and through. However, I was foolish enough to believe that I was too valuable an asset to their army to be betrayed by them. I was not only wrong, but I had been manipulated by the Sith since before I even knew either of them existence. This is the story of how your mortal enemies ruined my life and subsequently traded places with you as_ my_ mortal enemies when I found out about this."

Every word that came out of Grievous' vocal regulator seemed to be painful to him, just as painful as it had been when Aayla had explained it to the others the first couple of times, but the Kaleesh forced it out all the same. He recounted everything that he had once believed, following up each key event in his life with what had actually happened. He was actually a surprisingly good storyteller, explaining every detail with a vivid description, painting a picture of his life since the wars between the Kaleesh and the Huk to the present day, right before the Jedi's very eyes.

Perhaps the rage and anger he was still feeling and the desperate desire for revenge against the Sith was making everything stand out in his mind more clearly, which is why he had this skill. Through it all, Aayla kept a close eye on him, trying to make sure that his rage, artificially enhanced by the Geonosians, did not get the better of him and send him into a similar destructive rampage to the one he had gone through on Minntooine, but it didn't happen.

Grievous might not be the ideal partner or ally, but he had one thing going for him, and that was his ability to adapt extremely quickly to situations. The insatiable need for revenge was ever present but it was not possessing him. Or maybe it was, and his desire for it was what was keeping his anger in check despite the obvious urge to do something violent right there on the spot. He was doing his utmost to convince the Jedi that he had no intention of attacking them when his back was turned.

And it actually seemed to be working too. Some of the Jedi, most noticeably Yoda and Plo, who were among the most understand, as well as Quinlan Vos, who had had a little communication with Grievous when he had worked for the Separatists himself, seemed to be thinking of Grievous along different lines to before. The rest of the Jedi looked more suspicious but Grievous engaged them in his narrative and explained everything concisely, until even some of the most bitter and hardened of their number, like Even Piell, were starting to look uncomfortable.

Grievous finished by clenching his fist so hard that his claws caused a horrible scraping sound against his palm and declaring, "I no longer view you Jedi as my enemy. My eyes have been opened in that sense, and I see clearly how I have been played the whole time. The Sith are the true enemy of not only me, but my people and everything I believed in. I will not rest until they are defeated. If you can count on anything, you can count on that! Quite frankly, I do not care about your objections to my presence here. I am here to stay and if you want to stop me from fighting, you're going to have to slay me right here! Any takers?"

The Jedi began sharing glances with one another, still quite concerned about having such a volatile ally on their side, but none of them had sensed any deception on his part. Still, it was Grievous they were talking about here, and while a Jedi was not supposed to hold a grudge, in a case like this it was extremely difficult not to.

"Masters, if I may offer my own two credits here," Obi-Wan decided to step forward. "As you know Grievous and I have had... a certain history throughout this war. I suppose you could call it... a rivalry of sorts. But aside from Grievous' tale of his dealing with the Sith, which was a large factor in what convinced me to support Aayla's decision, there was one other factor that compelled me."

"And what might that be, Master Kenobi?" Ki-Adi-Mundi asked.

"A message from the Force itself," Obi-Wan replied. "While I was still on Saleucami before we set out to Kamino, Master Qui-Gon appeared before me. He told me that in the future conflict with the Sith, I should listen and support all decisions made by the Aayla and the rest of her team, as they will all play a major part in the liberation of the Galaxy and, to quote his exact words, I should do it 'no matter how insane they were.' At the time I did not know what he meant, but I believe he was hinting Aayla's decision to let Grievous join us."

This did catch the Jedi's attention and there was some assorted muttering between them, but Yoda nodded and shut his eyes. "Agree with this, I do," he nodded. "Sound, has been Aayla's decision making thus far. Trust her judgement in this matter, I do, despite the nature of that matter." And then his face cracked into something more of a grin and he chuckled. "Not to mention, a wonderful irony, it is, to turn one of the Sith's strongest and most efficient weapons against them."

"There is that, Master Yoda," Aayla agreed. "And, as Grievous said, he has agreed to allow himself to be taken into custody once this is all over, as long as we promise to convince the new Republic to give any and all relief support and aid we can to the people of Kalee."

Mace sighed and he raised a hand to his head. "Alright," he said. "Alright then. Fine. Let's say for a moment that we go with this. What exactly is Grievous going to contribute to our plan to stop the Sith?"

"Well, for a start, there are the battle droids he commands," Anakin jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "They may not be as efficient as the clones but he sure brought a lot of them with him, and they're programmed to obey the highest ranking member of the Separatists."

"And since Sidious and Dooku no longer count, that title falls to His Metalness right here," Ahsoka grinned.

"As to the actual plan itself," Renamon added. "We've decided between us that Grievous will play his part with the us." She indicated the rest of the Tenacious Ten. When we initiate stage two, he will be a close part of that."

Mace looked at Grievous for a moment, and the cyborg met his gaze with ease. The two had a brief staring contest that neither of them backed down from, both with eyes narrowed and glaring at each other. Eventually, Mace snorted and murmured. "Fine. Alright. But if there is the slightest hint of treachery at any point..."

"You do not need to finish that sentence, Jedi!" Grievous placed his lightsaber hilts back at his waist. "There will be no treachery. The Sith are the treacherous ones, and from this moment on, I will not be playing a game remotely like theirs."

"It is decided then," Yoda nodded. "Send word to the clones, we must, that they are not to attack Grievous or the battle droids which he brought with him. Allies, they have become, and treat them as allies, we shall, regardless of the pass."

"Very well, Master Yoda," Mace nodded. "Could someone please see to it?"

As Eeth Koth turned around to head back into the city to begin to spread the word, Quinlan chuckled and strode forward, offering his Padawan a big grin. "First me, then Bane, now Grievous. My Padawan certainly has a talent for turning people from one side to another."

"To be honest, Master," Aayla smiled a little shyly. "I'm not sure where it came from, but I'm quite glad I have been using it well."

"Well, I'm proud of you," he placed a hand on her shoulder. "Unimaginably. You've come so far since the day you called out to me with your mind, asking me to save you from that rampaging Wampa."

"Thanks, Master," Aayla smiled.

Grievous chuckled as he observed the interaction and both of them turned to look at him. Grievous explained his actions with, "I believe Ventress wants the same kind of reaction from Dooku that you just gave to Secura, Vos. But she's never going to get it."

"Got that right," Quinlan chuckled back." Speaking of Ventress, you reckon it will be her that you coax to our side next, Aayla?"

"Er... no," Aayla shook her head, eliciting chuckles from all the Tenacious Ten.

Henry then turned to Mace and said, "By the way, Master Windu? What were you going to say to us earlier? Before you noticed the battles droids and spotted, Grievous, you said that there was something that we Tamers should know, but you never got round to telling us what it was."

"Oh yeah," Suzie agreed. "Is it a surprise of some kind?"

"A surprise is right, certainly," Mace nodded. "But probably not an entirely pleasant one. It seems that a certain friend of yours was... reluctant to stay behind when you left her earlier."

"Reluctant to...?" Rika blinked. Then her eyes widened and she said, "Wait a minute. You mean..."

Before she could even confirm what it was that she was thinking, a giggling sound broke through the air and a small, white glowing creature appeared right in front of Grievous' face and looked at him with bright blue eyes. Grievous' body acted on its own and his lightsabers were in his hands before he could blink and he slashed them at the tiny creature, dislodging Terriermon and Lopmon from his shoulders with the sudden movement, but the Digi-Gnome spiralled out of the way and giggled and spiralled out of the way.

It then swooped behind the group of Jedi, as the two clones, Waxer and Boil, stepped forwards. And there, on board Waxer's shoulders was...

"Numa!" all three of the Tamers cried at the same time.

"Hello," Numa beamed, waving at them and using one of the words of Basic which Boil had managed to teach to her during the brief time they had been reunited here on Tython.

"Numa," Suzie cried. "What are you doing here? You were supposed to stay on Saleucami with Cut and Suu Lawquane and that nice family."

"She probably would have," a small voice piped up and Tsunomon bounced into view next to Waxer's foot. "But our little glowing friend there had other ideas. She was going to stay behind – in fact the ship took off a left us there on the planet, but she still desperately wanted to go with them and help you guys. Seems the Digi-Gnome took that a little literally and teleported us onto the vessel before it left the atmosphere. It was only then that Numa decided to stow away."

The Digi-Gnome alighted on Numa's head and waved a wing cheerfully, cocking its head to one side. Henry sighed and said, "Actually, I probably should have seen that coming. They are, after all, wish granters who like to help those who are saddened by something."

"Maybe we should have brought it with us when we left," Rika murmured. "Then Numa would still be there."

"But she's here now," Suzie fretted. "And so's Tsunomon."

"We're not entirely sure what we were going to do with her," Boil shrugged. "I mean, she's in a danger zone at this place, and we're not sure if we should try and getter to a safer planet, hide her or even let her and her partner fight. So we thought we should make it your call, since you'd probably know better."

"We've already been over this, haven't we?" Henry turned to the other two. "We agreed on Saleucami that Numa wouldn't have enough time to adapt to being a Tamer to be useful in an upcoming battle of this magnitude."

"Yeah," Rika admitted. "But that was when we thought we only had the option of taking her or leaving her and we only had a couple of hours to do that, so we picked the safer option. She's here now, even thought we decided to leave her behind. The question now is, is this going to affect our ultimate decision?"

"Hold on one moment," Grievous suddenly growled, turning to glare accusingly at Aayla and Terriermon. "You told me that there were only three Digimon who had been helping you against our forces throughout the war. Is that small creature not a Digimon as well?"

"It is," nodded Aayla. "But Tsunomon there was only born yesterday. Or reborn, anyway. We encountered him during the invasion of Mygeeto a couple of weeks ago and he lost so much energy in a battle with another Digimon that, even though he won and the evil Digimon was killed, he was reduced to the form of an egg, which only hatched recently."

"A baby then?" Grievous asked in confusion.

"Technically, I'm at the In-Training level at the moment, sir," Tsunomon responded. "I was a Punimon at the Baby level."

"What?" Grievous asked, completely bewildered.

"Let's just say that there's a lot about us Digimon that you still have yet to learn, Grievous," Lopmon chuckled.

"Anyway, back to what we were discussing," Henry said. "What should we do now? How much time do we have before we initiate the plan and start the battle?"

"We're not sure," Anakin said. "It all depends on when we receive our next transmission from Senator Chuchi doesn't it? We need to know if there have been any new developments and then get her ready for her part in the plan. Until then we can't really do anything if what we have in mind is going to work."

"That reminds me actually," Renamon said. "We did receive a transmission from Chuchi earlier today. But it was just to tell us pretty much what we expected was going to happen, in that Count Dooku and Ventress pledged their allegiance to the new Empire and that Dooku fed the Senate a pile of rubbish stating that he had always known the Jedi were evil and other such nonsense."

"Exactly what we thought then," Anakin grimaced.

"She also asked if it would be possible to include Padmé and a few other Senators in the plan," Aayla pointed out.

"What?" Anakin asked. "Are you serious? That could be dangerous."

"In the long run, it would probably be safer for Padmé if she knew the truth, actually," Terriermon said to him. "Apparently she had the guts to speak out against Palpatine and Dooku when they started to proclaim the Jedi were evil. Chuchi was worried that unless she knew that there was a plan going on and the real reason behind the change of events she might do something stupid."

"Ah," Anakin murmured. "Well... when you put it that way... she does have a habit of doing reckless stuff."

"Not unlike yourself, Anakin," Obi-Wan chuckled.

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Anakin waved it off. "Well, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to let her know what's happening and that we're all okay and everything."

"Just what we were thinking," Aayla nodded as she turned back to the Tamers. "Chuchi is all set to call us some time tomorrow. Until then, we have no idea when we'll be able to initiate the plan. If all goes well, then we'll only need one more day to prepare and we can begin the day after tomorrow. If not, then we may have to put it off a couple more days."

Henry and Rika exchanged glances again and then looked to Numa, who had very little idea about what was going on, and that was clearly evident on her face. The language barrier between them was becoming a real pain and Henry sighed. He had been taught some Twi'leki by Aayla but not enough to help him in a situation regarding how to be a Tamer.

"Henry, that does give us some time," Suzie tugged on his arm. "That gives us at least one whole day before we have to do anything else with the plan. That might be enough time to get Numa ready, right?"

"Maybe," Henry nodded, placing a hand on his chin. "I mean, in an ideal world I would like at least a week or so. It's not like we're Digi-Destined who can do this sort of thing with just a digivice and a strong trait within us. Being a Tamer is much more of a challenge."

"Yeah, I know," grimaced Rika. "It took me forever how to figure out how to get Renamon to digivolve."

"In any case," Henry supposed, "I believe it might be best if we were to make our eventual decision later. We can keep trying to teach Numa how to strengthen and bond with her Digimon partner. If, by the time we have to start the fighting, we can get something like Garurumon on the scene then maybe Numa can fight with us after all."

"Oh hell yeah," Rika grinned. "A giant wolf Digimon on our side would certainly be another welcome addition, wouldn't it?"

"Yeah, and Numa could ride on his back so he could get her out of danger quickly," Suzie nodded.

"You really think that I'll be able to reach the Champion level that soon after I hatch?" Tsunomon asked incredulously.

"It's possible," Rika replied. "Being a partnered Digimon does have its advantages, right Renamon?"

"Certainly," nodded Renamon. "Once we realised how to bond together, it didn't take that long for us to reach the Mega level itself, a matter of weeks really."

"Wow," Tsunomon chuckled.

"Alright then," Henry said. "So we're decided?"

"I believe so," Rika nodded. "We'll try and help Numa how to figure out how to get better as a Tamer. If she doesn't make enough progress, we hide her somewhere in the Temple. We lock her in a vault if we have to keep her away from the fighting. But if she does, then she and Tsunomon can help in the battle ahead."

"I hope it works," Tsunomon said. "I don't think I'd be much help to you in this form really."

"Oh, you never know," Terriermon chuckled. "Renamon could kick you at the enemy like a football. I bet that spike on your head could do some pretty good damage if it hit right."

This produced a peal of laughter from the group and then Aayla said, "Well, I wish you guys the best of luck. I might be a bit busy trying to sort out the final details with the rest of these guys though, so I might not be able to help out. Hey, Xiaan," she turned to the other Twi'lek who was standing nearby and watched with mild confusion.

"Yes?" Xiaan asked, stepping forward.

"Do you think you could help out the Tamers here by acting as a translator between them and Numa here?" Aayla requested. "Numa's grasp of Basic is limited to a mere few words, so the Tamers will need some help if they are going to teach her a few things."

Xiaan turned and smiled at the children. "It would be my honour," she said.

"Decided, it is then," Yoda said. "However, approaching, night is, and a long day it has been. Rest we should, a prepare for a full day of preparation tomorrow we will."

"Indeed, Master Yoda," nodded Mace. "Let's sort out the new recruits and get them inside the walls of city. Assuming that we can fit them all in."

"The battle droids can remain outside for the time being," Grievous growled. "They hardly need comfort, after all."

Mace spared Grievous a half-glance for a moment and said, "Indeed," before he turned around to head inside.

* * *

The night that followed was a long one for the whole Galaxy. The people on Tython were settling into their new surroundings and trying to find a good place to get comfortable, which wasn't easy for any of them. Despite the assurances of Grievous that neither he nor the battle droids would do any attacking, that didn't stop the majority of the clones from being a little suspicious. Nevertheless, all of them to some degree, empathised with the General, though they tried not to show it to him. After all, they knew better than anyone what he must have realised when he had found out his whole life had been a sham.

On Coruscant though, a few of the Senators were really starting to feel edgy. Chuchi had assured Padmé and the others that they would all find out the truth of what had been happening throughout the Galaxy when tomorrow came around and that had filled them all with a slight adrenaline as well as undying curiosity, and they had spent the rest of the day trying to come up with theories about what Chuchi meant.

Chuchi herself had avoided the others for the rest of the day to prevent any potential badgering, but there hadn't been any.

But then the Emperor had soiled the mood slightly by announcing that tomorrow morning, for the third day in a row, there was going to be a session of congress that was of top priority. Apparently he had some news to deliver and he wished to deliver it in front of the whole Senate. The thoughts of the Senators had turned to darker theories, speculating what news Palpatine would have to deliver. Considering the news he had given in the last couple of days, it could not be good.

Even Chuchi had been thrown by this declaration and worry began to form in her gut. The lack of easy communication between herself and the Jedi meant that practically anything could have happened since her last call, even though that call had only been about half a day ago. Once again, the Pantoran had found herself having a night that was almost completely deprived of any sleep, wondering if all of her friends were alright.

She was going to be glad when this was all over for many reasons, but she had probably just found another one – she could actually get an easy night's rest when it was.

However, on the plus side, she had not seen any sort of suspicion about what she was doing amongst the supporters of the Emperor, like his personal guard or anyone who associated with him. She had even passed Asajj Ventress in the corridor at one point and that had been a terrifying experience when she saw the Rattataki stepping towards her with a sour look on her face. But Ventress had just shouldered past her without sparing her a glance. Apparently the sour look was her usual one, and she had mistaken Chuchi's fear for fear of her presence alone.

Maybe the fact that Chuchi had never openly had much to do with the Jedi other than being a good friend of Ahsoka's was working in her favour. She had developed strong bonds with the others recently, in the middle of an event that had many details concealed from the Chancellor in order to protect the last of a species. She was sure that she would have been regarded with more suspicion by now if people knew about her close affiliation with the A-Team and the rest of the Tenacious Ten.

* * *

She was able to sleep eventually, but she woke up quickly and began to head out towards the Senate Building along with everybody else. It was a journey she had made many times before, but this particular one was one of the longest she had ever experienced.

Once she was on her podium again and staring out into the room where all the other Senators were filing in, she could see quite clearly that Palpatine was already there on his podium in the middle, instead of emerging out of the floor like he usually did to start the session. He was looking extremely smug about something and the look on his face was a very sinister one.

Chuchi couldn't believe that she was actually coming to terms with that look.

What was even worse was that, as well as Mas Amedda, Count Dooku and Ventress were also standing beside him on the podium as if they were old friends and had been from the very beginning. Which was, almost, exactly what they had been, thought the majority of the Senators didn't know it. Dooku had a stern and omnipotent look on his face, but Ventress looked like she was enjoying herself, as if standing on this podium gave her a position of power over the Senators.

And considering her allegiances, it actually did. And she was loving it.

When Palpatine started speaking, there seemed to be little hint of his Sith nature in his voice, although his face clearly showed his delight in what he was about to say. "Members of the Senate," he called. "I am sure that many of you will have had time to adjust to the new regime that this Empire has to offer. Some of you may be taking longer than others," he cast a sideways glance towards Padmé. "But in time, you will all come to understand the benefits of the society that I wish to create. I only wish to steer the Galaxy towards a better tomorrow, and I know many of you share that view."

"Yeah, right," Chuchi muttered quietly so that only she could hear herself. "And I want to be a Sarlacc."

"Today's meeting will not a particularly long one," Palpatine expressed. "In fact, it will be relatively short, as its only purpose is to deliver a piece of news to you that I would like to deliver in person. Many of you will have no doubt spent a while wondering what news it is, but first I shall allay any fears you may have. This news is nothing but good news for the Empire.

"As you are all aware now, the Jedi have shown their true natures and been declared traitors. Their only wish now is to overthrow me and take over."

"Overthrow you, yes," Chuchi chuckled. "Take over, not so much."

"But yesterday afternoon," Palpatine raised his hands, almost theatrically. "We accomplished a great deed. A deed which will go a long way to squashing the evil that is the Jedi once and for all. As you know, we have sent out a reward scheme to anyone who can kill a Jedi, and yesterday, one particular Jedi was killed. A Jedi that you all know of well, as this particular Jedi's name has been spread across the holonet news more and more over the last few months."

Chuchi's eyes widened. She had a horrible feeling that she knew where this was going.

Moments later and she was proved to be right.

"The Twi'lek member of the A-Team," Palpatine sneered. "Aayla Secura is dead!"

This news sparked several cries of "What?" and an immediate outbreak of muttering and questions from the assembled Senators. Aayla was well known to all of them, as she had been involved in the liberation of dozens of systems, many of them systems of the people in the room. She had made frequent visits to the Senate Building with the rest of the A-Team and she had always been polite and willing to stop for a brief conversation if she had the time. She was one of the most well-liked Jedi in the entire order.

And, according to the Emperor, she was now dead.

They all took this in different ways. Some, like Lot Dodd, smirked to themselves at the thought. That Twi'lek had been interrupting many of the schemes of the Trade Federation and significantly lessened his income. The news that she had finally passed away was something that he had been waiting for, for some time.

Most of them looked extremely uncomfortable with this news. Most notable of these was Orn Free Taa.

The large Twi'lek Senator was one of Palpatine's biggest supporters, but she had actually been rather fond of the fact that one of his own kind had such a large influence on events throughout the war. Hearing she was dead now left him a little bit conflicted. He believed the Emperor when he said that the Jedi were traitors, which meant Aayla was a traitor too but even so... she was a member of his own race and planet.

Others, like Padmé, were completely horrified, which was hardly surprising. Padmé had gotten to know Aayla very well indeed ever since the two of them had worked together to stop the weapon of Kul Teska from blowing up the Naboo sun all those months ago on the planet Behpour and hearing such terrible news was absolutely devastating. A strangled gasp was all that escaped her lips as she surged to her feet, eyes wide and clutching the side of her podium, staring at the Emperor in disbelief.

She shook her head minutely, mutely complaining that it couldn't be possible. There was no way that it could be real. There must be some mistake. Aayla was one of the best Jedi she'd ever seen. There was no way that she could be dead... could she?

She bit her lip. She had no way of confirming or denying Palpatine's words. She had no proof. For all she knew, he was actually telling the truth. It certainly seemed that way. He was looking incredibly pleased with himself. Could the death of such an iconic detail be the sort of thing to put a look like that on his face.

Her eyes narrowed slightly and she stepped forward to speak up once more, ready to appeal to the other members of the Senate that Palpatine was talking about the murder of a kind and caring individual with a smile on his face, and plead that they should not stand for it and enquire if this was the kind of system they really wanted. But before she could utterly a single syllable, her eyes, almost of their own accord sought out Chuchi.

The Pantoran seemed to have spotted what Padmé was about to do, and, across the room their eyes met. Even at a distance, Padmé could see no small amount of pain and doubt in Chuchi's own face, but despite her overwhelming desire to ask for proof, Chuchi shook her head slightly. It was a silent communication, a plea to Padmé not to do anything rash or speak out, not to put herself in danger for any reason, even if Aayla really had died.

Padmé screwed up her face and sighed, but she obeyed the younger Senator's request, stepping down and leaning against the railing of her podium as she tried to keep her eyes dry and didn't altogether succeed. She forced herself to remember that Chuchi was going to let them know, today, what was really going on, and answer all of their questions.

When she finally understood everything, then she would act. And if Aayla really had perished, there would be hell to pay.

Palpatine didn't notice the exchange between Padmé and Chuchi, but he did have a look towards Padmé. When he saw her hiding her face and not looking at anybody, instead of speaking up like he had expected, he smiled cruelly. Perhaps he was succeeding in breaking the Senator's spirit. Perhaps he would not have to crush her or remove her from the picture after all.

However, if everything went according to his newer plans went well, he would have lots more crushing news for her in future. If she dared to speak out against him then... well, she would be the first of the people amongst the Empire to meet with an 'accident.' And then, she might provide a very good example to the others that the new regime was definitely here to stay.

* * *

After the congress session was finished, Chuchi intercepted Padmé in the hallway and made a slight show of comforting her over the loss of a dear friend, which nobody was going to question as they all knew of Padmé's close connection with the A-Team. But, in reality, all she did was whisper, "Gather the others, Padmé. Meet me in my chambers. It's time that you know the truth."

"Got it," Padmé whispered back. "I am assuming that I am not going to like it?"

"No," Chuchi said. "You're not. But you deserve to know."

And then she left to get back to said chambers and wait for the others.

As she did, she felt a dull thudding in her chest at the prospect of what Palpatine had said. Could Aayla really be dead? She had told her that she was heading into a dangerous area, but killed? It just seemed so... so... wrong. Would Aayla really have gone through everything throughout the Clone Wars, battling alongside the Digimon and carving a path through thousands of droids, only to fall now when the end was near?

Every fibre of her being was hoping that Palpatine was wrong.

Another thought perked her up slightly. Aayla had faked her own death before, hadn't she? Was it possible that she could have faked it again to throw the ever persistent Sidious off her trail? Yes, yes that was it surely.

But... then again... Palpatine would have considered that as well, wouldn't he? What if he had demanded proof of her death this time around? What if... what if her head was sitting on Palpatine's desk right now?

The thought made her feel terribly sick, and she quickly pushed it from her mind. Don't think like that. Don't think like that. Don't think like that. She had to wait until she spoke to the others and found out the truth from them before she jumped to any conclusions. Palpatine had been wrong before. He could be wrong again, couldn't he?

* * *

It was about half an hour later that she received a knock at her chamber door. She looked up from where she was sitting on the sofa, rubbing her hands together in slight agitation. She looked up and, hesitantly, she called, "Hello? Come in."

The door slid open and Padmé walked in. The other three Senators were behind her – Bail, Mon Mothma and Onaconda. The four of them shared glances for a moment before Padmé turned to speak to the seated Pantoran. "We're all here, Chuchi."

"Yes, I can see that," Chuchi smiled faintly.

"I'll shut the door," Onaconda offered, lifting his hand to do just that."

"No," Chuchi said, getting to her feet. "We won't be discussing it here, and I will not be the one doing the most of the talking. I'm going to take you somewhere a bit more secure before we talk about this. But, before we go, can I just say once more that I am terribly sorry that I kept this from you. It wasn't easy. It will be a relief when I am not the only one amongst the Senate who knows about this."

"And it will probably be a relief when we finally know the truth," Bail said. "Everything seems to have become some sort of helter skelter. I'm losing track of all reality at the moment."

"As am I," Onaconda agreed. "The actions of the Emperor make no sense to me."

"Or me," Mon Mothma agreed. "I've lost sleep trying to figure it out."

"I've lost sleep too," Chuchi nodded. "And the actions of the Emperor make perfect sense to me." She sighed and added, "They make all too much sense. I almost wish that I was like you guys, to be honest, and I was being left in complete confusion."

There was silence as the other Senators drank in those words and felt their stomachs dropping away. "Is it really that bad?" Mon Mothma enquired.

"Oh yes," nodded Chuchi. "It's very, very bad. And I won't waste any more of your time wondering than necessary. Come on, let's go. I'll take you to a place where we can safely contact the Jedi without being overheard by anyone, especially not the people who are in line with the Sith. They'll help explain things to you."

The four other Senators parted ways to let Chuchi through as she led them out into the corridor.

* * *

Alright, **ECHO230**, there was your shouting match between Grievous and Windu. It wasn't very long, but I hope you enjoyed it all the same. I hope you liked the confrontation between Grievous and the other Jedi. But it seems that Grievous is here to stay after all.

This chapter really highlighted to me just how many characters I have to include in the rest of the story. Heh, and there are more to come. Still, I am confident that I can give them all a decent amount of action in the future.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Chuchi takes the other Senators to talk with the Jedi and they finally learn the truth about the whole situation. Naturally, they are met with shock, but there is more. The Jedi want them to help out in the plan, and Chuchi has a little suggestion of her own.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 182 : The Senator's Burden**


	182. The Senator's Burden

Hello everybody. I hope you guys are alright, and I hope that you enjoy this chapter. It might just be another scene where people get shocked about the truth behind everything to some of you, but I try to make each one unique and this one is no different. Heh, it's time for a few more Senators to join the ranks of the secret Rebellion. Read on.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 182:- The Senator's Burden**

* * *

The trip down the elevator was a silent one. Chuchi's hand hovered over the buttons even though she had long since actually keyed in where they needed to go. Behind her, the three Humans and the Rodian exchanged confused glances with one another, mixed with apprehension. They had clearly seen which of the buttons Chuchi had pressed, and all of them were wondering why they were going down to the sub-basements.

A place that none of them had actually been to before.

Nevertheless, they didn't say anything, choosing instead to trust Chuchi, as they had done for many months now.

When the doors slid open, Chuchi moved into the darkness and allowed all of the others to file past her before the elevator doors shut, cutting them off from the light within and plunging them all into darkness. It was going to take a few moments for their eyes to adjust to the very dim lighting, and Chuchi bided her time, waiting in the darkness.

"What's going on, Chuchi?" Padmé asked from out the blackness around her. "Why have you brought us down here of all places."

"Forgive me if I'm wrong, but aren't the sub-basements supposed to be off-limits?" Onaconda queried. "We could all get in very serious trouble if we're spotted down here."

"We won't be, Senator Farr," Chuchi replied softly. "I'm pretty sure that nobody comes down here anymore. And if someone does spot us, we're going to be in a whole lot of trouble for reasons other than merely being off-limits. But this leads to the safest place I know to get in contact with the Jedi and tell you guys what I have been keeping secret all this time."

"Leads somewhere?" Bail asked. "You mean to say that there is a way out of this basement other than the elevator. I was lead to believe that the basements were for storage only, not for emergency exits."

"Emergency exits were the last thing on the mind of the person who created the passage out of here," Chuchi murmured. "You'll see soon enough."

"Excuse me for asking," Mon Mothma wrinkled her nose and waved a hand in front of her face, "But what in the Galaxy is that horrible smell?"

"Yes," Padmé agreed. "I was thinking the same thing."

"Seriously," Chuchi replied. "You do not want to think about it." The smell was, in fact, the decomposing bodies of the Geonosians that Renamon had killed when she made her escape from this basement, several of which had been fried by Palpatine's lightning blasts. Chuchi quickly took Padmé's hand and guided the Senator forwards towards the doors. The other Senators slowly followed as Chuchi led them into another basement.

The procession was a slow one, as each Senator's eyes slowly adjusted more and more to the darkness around them, manoeuvring themselves around the crates as they followed the Pantoran down a route that a certain Sith Lord had taken countless times in the past. Chuchi kept turning back to make sure that all of them were still following on behind her as she eventually led them to the mouth of the great tunnel in the third basement.

"We're supposed to go in there?" Onaconda asked hesitantly.

"Yes," nodded Chuchi.

"Senator, are you sure that it is safe?" Mon Mothma asked. "It doesn't look all that structurally sound to me."

"What I want to know is why is there an entrance to a tunnel here in the first place that we don't know about?" Bail put in. "I have heard rumours about there being a tunnel system running underneath a large portion of Coruscant, but I always took those rumours to be a bit of nonsense, because I assumed the Chancellor would have done something about them if they were real. Surely he should know that this tunnel is here."

"The tunnels are very much real, Senator Organa," Chuchi confirmed. "And I'm about to lead you into them. And don't worry, Senator Mothma. I have made the journey before and it's perfectly safe. Just follow me."

And with that, she stepped into the tunnel and began to stride along it. The other four fidgeted a little nervously, doubts about whether they even wanted to know Chuchi's secret if she was leading them to places like this to tell them about it. But curiosity, not only about the situation with the Galaxy, but in the origins of the tunnel and how Chuchi knew about it when they didn't, overcame their nervousness. Padmé boldly stepped into the tunnel first and the others followed suit, filing after the Pantoran into the dark recesses of Coruscant.

"Stay close and stick to the main tunnel route," Chuchi whispered from the front. "I hear its a maze down here. Take a couple of side-passages and things could get very frightening."

"What is this place?" Mon Mothma shivered. "I don't like this at all. Could we not have used some other method of getting to this location of yours, Chuchi?"

"Not without being very conspicuous," Chuchi pointed out. "And there is another reason I am using this route than mere convenience. I am using it to show you, first-hand, some evidence that what you're going to learn when we reach the other side in unequivocally true."

"Alright then," Mothma nodded. "How long will it be before we reach your destination, Chuchi?"

"About twenty minutes if we keep a good pace," the Pantoran replied, as she continued to lead the way. As she did so, she suddenly realised how calmly she was taking this. She was acting like a leader, guiding a bunch of older and much more experienced Senators forward and giving them assurances and information and answers as if she had been doing this for years. And yet she had only been on the senatorial block for one.

It was a very strange feeling to realise how much... authority and responsibility she had in this situation. She didn't particularly like it, but she surmised that the stuff she had been doing in the last week or so had forced her to grow up and take charge of the situation very quickly. She had had dreams of becoming a respected Senator and having a high influence on Galactic affairs so that she could do good. But this was not the way she had envisioned going about it.

She shook her head and pressed on with slight new confidence and determination, which was a good thing because when they rounded the next corner, they came across Chuchi's least favourite part of the tunnel.

"Ugh," Bail grunted as wave of horrible smell suddenly assailed them. "There's that stench again."

"Yep," Chuchi nodded. "Try not to pay attention to the source when we walk past it."

However, when the Senators saw said source, they could do anything but ignore it. All four of them recoiled in horror, when they saw Chuchi step over the body of the first Geonosian, but then they spotted the couple of dozen others lying in contorted and broken conditions in the middle of the corridor, filled with blaster marks and jagged cuts, as if they had been mown down where they stood.

"What... what... happened here?" Onaconda gasped as he stared in horror at the rotting corpses.

"Chuchi," Padmé swallowed. "Were these guys here the last time you came down?"

"In exactly the same places yes," Chuchi nodded. "I didn't particularly feel like touching them."

"Do you know what happened to them?" Padmé pressed.

"Yes," nodded Chuchi. "There's more information you need before I can give you the whole story but, simply put, this was the site of a stand by one incredibly brave being, who took out all of these bugs who were chasing her at the same time before they could reach her."

"This is repulsive," Mothma covered her nose, looking sick.

"What I want to know is, what are Geonosians doing on this planet and so close to the Senate," Bail agreed, looking very disturbed. "And since this same smell was in the sub-basement I can assume that there were dead Geonosians in there too. Right beneath our feet. What is going on?"

"Trust me, Bail, you will find the answers to all your questions when we reach the other end of the tunnel," Chuchi said plaintively.

"Let's just keep going. Please."

The pleading look in her eyes caused the other Senators to soften slightly. They could quite clearly see that Chuchi was desperate to get this burden off her shoulders alone and get some help whatever was going in and all four of them came to the same conclusion. Each new mystery they came across was not making things clearer, but it was showing them just how much of a dangerous game Chuchi was playing, and that to have come so far with this on her own, she had to be one of the most exceedingly brave people they had ever met.

They did as they were bid, and, holding their hands over their mouths to keep themselves from gagging at the horrible smell of the Geonosians and determined not to look at their bodies, they stepped over the scene of the attack as carefully as possible.

* * *

As with everybody else before them, the four Senators felt a chill riding up their spines when they finally arrived at the location that Chuchi was taking them too. From the moment they entered the sub-basement at the other end of the corridor, they began to feel slightly cold and numb in the fingers, even though it was actually quite warm in the stifling conditions down here.

There was something seriously evil about this place.

Onaconda Farr felt the spines on his head standing up a little straighter than usual as he shivered. "What kind of terrible place is this? I can feel something. And I'm no Jedi so that is saying something."

"Yeah," nodded Chuchi. "This place might be one of the most evil places in the entire Galaxy, but I'm trying to see if I can turn that around and use it for good. It would be the last thing the person who used to frequent this place would have expected, and nobody comes anywhere near here."

"Where are we, anyway?" Padmé asked as they made their way to the elevator.

"The Works," Chuchi replied. "An old and abandoned building out in the middle of nowhere. That's one of the reasons why I insisted on bringing you here underground. A Senatorial Speeder or ship would stick out for miles if it flew over to this place."

"That is true," Bail nodded. "People might get suspicious and try to follow us. Good thinking, Chuchi."

"Thank you," Chuchi smiled as she opened the door to the lift and stepped inside. "Would you like to go up to the most used part of this building, so we can send that communication to the Jedi."

"Of course," Padmé nodded as she hurried into the lift after Chuchi, and the others followed on. As Chuchi keyed the lift shut and it began to rise with its usual ominous creaking, she began to dwell on what she might find when she made the call at last. She had been putting the thought of Aayla's death out of her mind, trying to ignore it until she was met with actual proof instead of the word of a Sith Lord who had thought she had been dead before. But now, with the call pending, it slammed back into her full force.

What if he was right and she really was dead. She had been led to believe that Aayla's group of friends would be instrumental to the plan to take Darth Sidious down. What would become of that plan with one of them gone? How would the rest of their team be feeling about this? Devastated no doubt. And if Aayla really was dead, Chuchi knew she might break down and cry. She and Aayla hadn't even known each other well for a week, but there had been something about the two of them working together to turn Cad Bane against Darth Sidious that forged a kinship between them.

She swallowed and tried to put it out of her mind once more, but she found that she couldn't. It was just too difficult.

Mon Mothma noticed her expression. "What's the matter, Senator?" she asked. "I thought that you would be pleased to finally share this secret with us. You certainly looked it when you came to tell us about it yesterday."

"Yeah, I know," Chuchi nodded. "I'm just thinking about Aayla."

That word immediately put a downer on the mood in the lift, and it had been pretty down already. Onaconda Farr crossed his arms across his chest in the Rodian sign of respect and said, "Indeed. The news of her downfall is one of the most tragic things I have ever heard. That Jedi saved my life. From my own aide. I never got the chance to repay her for her quick actions and kindness."

"She and I worked together to destroy a weapon designed to blow up my planet's sun," Padmé agreed. "She was a... a true Jedi if ever there was one."

"I wish I had the opportunity to work alongside her more closely," Mon Mothma sighed. "I never got the chance to see her in action as you did, Padmé."

"I didn't want to believe it," Bail nodded. "I _can't_ believe it. Wherever the Jedi Order are now, this must have been a crippling blow for them all."

"Well, I _don't_ believe it," Chuchi said, firmly. "I _don't_ that she's dead. She has to be alive. She has to be."

"But Chuchi, you saw the look on the Emperor's face," Padmé bit her lip. "He looked so pleased and sure of himself. He had to be telling the truth."

"I think that he only thought that he was telling the truth," Chuchi insisted. "It wouldn't be the first time that man has thought that Aayla is dead."

"It wouldn't?" Farr blinked his large eyes. "When else has he thought she was dead."

"Perhaps when the rest of her team told us about how she had gone up against Dooku, Ventress and Grievous all at once before they told us that she won," Bail suggested. He grimaced and added, "To think that she survived that only to be taken out by a Bounty Hunter a few days later."

"Actually," Chuchi interrupted. "That wasn't what I was talking about."

"Huh?" Bail asked incoherently.

The lift doors opened and Chuchi stepped out immediately, striding down the corridor beyond and leaving four very confused Senators in her wake. The words of the Senators with regards to Aayla and their condolences had practically driven her mad with worry and she all but ran towards the communication station at one side of the room. She moved in front of it and began to key in the contact details of the _Intrepid_ once again the moment she reached it, determined to finally get some proof.

As she did so, a new thought occurred to her, which made her pause in the button pushing. What about the Digimon? Last she knew, Renamon and Terriermon were both on a small mission with Aayla. Had the Bounty Hunter discovered their existence? Did Sidious now know of the Secret of the 327th at last.

She frowned. She highly doubted it. If he had, surely he would have mentioned something in the congress session about the Jedi consorting with vicious animalistic beings and committing to treason by hiding them from the Senate all this time. Knowing him, he would probably have turned the Digimon into their method of trying to kill him in their supposed plot.

But he had mentioned no such thing.

More determined than ever to find out the truth, she keyed in the rest of the communication details and slammed on a button to start making the call.

By this point, the other Senators had gathered behind her, crowding around to get a good look at what she was doing while simultaneously looking around at the room all around them and trying to suppress the shivers that were rippling through their bodies.

"This place is unnatural," Bail shuddered. "Something feels awfully wrong. What in the Galaxy was this building before you started to use it, Chuchi?"

Chuchi sighed and said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I didn't tell this to you sooner, but... doing so is going to put you in grave danger. I ask you now if you're willing to put your lives on the line by letting me share this secret with you. If you have a problem with it, you should back out now."

The other four Senators looked surprised at Chuchi's words, but felt a slight affection for the Pantoran as well. They had already known that it would be dangerous for them to learn this secret or indeed talking to the Jedi, but Chuchi's tone made them realise that it was perhaps more terrible than they'd even suspected.

And then a voice, making them all jump, said, "If I know any of them, Chuchi, they're not going to be backing down anytime soon."

The Senators whipped back to the communication station, to find that the call had been answered and none of them had noticed. And there, grinning out towards them, was a single Twi'lek Jedi Knight.

"Aayla!" Chuchi cried, a beam of delight splitting across her face. "You... you're alive."

"Yep," nodded Aayla, smiling at the overjoyed Pantoran. "Had a couple of close shaves since we last spoke but I'm still very much alive. I take it by your exclamation that a certain Emperor started bragging to people that he had finally got rid of me."

"You can say that again," Chuchi was laughing now, such was her relief. "He summoned us all the Senate Building for a congress session just so that he could tell us all that you were dead."

Aayla rolled her eyes and said, "Well, to be fair to him, he has wanted me out of the way for some time, hasn't he? Now that he thinks he's finally managed it, I suppose he wanted to shout it out to the whole Galaxy."

Chuchi chuckled and wiped a couple of tears of happiness that had leaked out of her eyes from her face. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Aayla. I'm sorry that I even for a moment believed that he had finally managed to get to you."

"Oh don't be sorry for that," Aayla shook her head. "Never be sorry for your own concern, Chuchi. I find it touching and heart-warming. And he did very, very nearly have me killed. I ended up having to jump out of a Y-wing bomber, while it was in the air, moments before it exploded. Luckily I was over water at the time and not particularly high up either, or things could have gotten a lot messier than they were."

"And the Bounty Hunter did see you jump out?" Chuchi pressed.

"No, she saw me," Aayla shook her head. "But I used the Force to create an illusion of myself which she shot instead. I knew the only way to get her to leave me alone was for her to think she had won, and it worked. Sorry for scaring you like that, though."

"That's fine," Chuchi smiled. "It was necessary to throw him off the scent. Again, that is."

"Indeed," Aayla said. "Terriermon keeps pointing out how priceless his face is going to be when he finds out I escaped his Bounty Hunters again."

"I'll try and film it," Chuchi smiled.

Aayla raised an eyebrow and said, "Actually, Chuchi, you've hit the nail on the head there."

Chuchi blinked. "I have? How?"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa," Bail suddenly interrupted. "Slow down the pair of you. You've completely lost me, and I think I can say the same for the rest of my colleagues here."

"Oh yes," Mon Mothma nodded.

"Oh. Sorry," Chuchi grinned sheepishly. "I suppose I got a little caught up in the moment there. But, isn't this great. Aayla's right here. She's still alive."

"We're not denying that, Chuchi," Padmé smiled. "It is indeed wonderful news. Aayla, you have no idea how good it is to see your face right now. I was certain that I was going to have a heart attack when the Emperor suddenly declared that you had been killed."

"Thank you very much, Padmé," Aayla smiled back. "He sent the Bounty Hunter Aurra Sing after me. He wants me dead more than anybody else in the entire Jedi Order right now, Senator. And he has done for a while now."

"A while?" Onaconda asked. "What do you mean a while? He only announced that you were supposedly traitors and couple of days ago. And by the way, it is truly fantastic to say you alive, young Jedi."

"Thank you, Senator Farr," Aayla smiled. "Staying alive is one of my highest priorities at the moment. I'll try not to get myself killed anytime soon, if that's alright with you?"

"Perfectly," Farr nodded. "I would hate to see the Jedi who saved me from getting poisoned in my own office dead. It would weight very heavily on my soul."

For some reason, Onaconda's words made Aayla look a little uncomfortable, and she and Chuchi glanced towards one another as if they were silently communicating with one another. The other Senator's frowned as they watched Aayla look off to the side and nod towards somebody that they couldn't see, before turning back and addressing the Rodian directly.

"Actually, Senator Farr," she murmured slightly awkwardly. "I am afraid that I cannot claim the credit for saving your life."

"Huh?" Onaconda blinked. "What do you mean? You noticed Lolo's strange behaviour and you pulled the wine glass out of my hand before I could drink from it."

"Well, I certainly did do the latter," Aayla agreed. "But as to the former, I didn't notice anything off about Lolo at all. I was too absorbed in the conversation to notice or sense her suspicious behaviour, so in truth, Senator, you have somebody else to thank for saving your life. Somebody who was in the room at the time, but who you never even saw."

"Excuse me?" Mon Mothma asked. "Another person? What are you talking about Aayla?"

"She's talking about three other people who were in the room actually," Chuchi said helpfully.

"Alright," Bail said slowly. "It would be nice if somebody could start making sense at some point in the future."

"Yes, that would be good," Padmé said. "I'm currently feeling more confused than e...ver..." she trailed off as her eyes widened when a tall holographic figure suddenly stepped up beside Aayla. It was some sort of fox-like creature that stood on its hind legs, bushy tail swishing out behind it and elbow length fingerless gloves adorning its arms.

The four Senators besides Chuchi stared at the newcomer in disbelief.

The newcomer nodded and said, "Good afternoon, Senators."

And, just to make things worse, another smaller figure suddenly flew into view on the transmitter and landed on the shoulder of the fox, waving an oversized ear at them and saying, "You should see the looks on your faces right now."

Aayla looked over at him and said, "Do you really think that is going to help, Terriermon?"

The fox looked across at Aayla and said, "This is Terriermon we're talking about here. Of course it isn't going to help."

"Ah, yes. Good point."

"Momentai," Terriermon grinned. "And I resent that. I only choose not to be helpful when there's something funny going on and this situation isn't overly serious and, right now, I think this situation qualifies. Hey, Lopmon. Why don't you get things over with and reveal yourself as well."

A second later and another small, bunny creature appeared over the transmitter, landing on Aayla's shoulder. "If I must," she said. And then she smiled at the Senators and said, "I can see that all this is a big shock for you and I apologise. But I'm afraid that this particular shock is going to be one of the mildest that we have for you today."

"Tell me about it," Terriermon nodded. "Just ask Chuchi. And we've got a couple of shocks in store for her too in this transmission."

"Lovely," Chuchi smiled. "I look forward to them."

"As well you should," Terriermon laughed. "So, you going to introduce us?"

"I suppose I should," nodded Chuchi, turning to face the others and holding up a hand to indicate the three Digimon. "Everybody, this is Renamon, Terriermon and Lopmon. They are life-forms made of computer data called Digimon, and they've been in our universe for about half a year, helping Aayla and the rest of her team against the Separatists since they arrived here and, more importantly, against the Sith."

"What?" Padmé asked. "They've been here for how long?"

"Helping with the war?" Bail blinked. "What... I don't..."

"This must be a lot to take in for you," Renamon surmised. "But first, may I say that it is nice to finally be able to speak with you. We've all seen you of course, and occasionally we've been in the same room as you, but we've never had the opportunity to speak to you."

"Hold up," Bail held up his hand. "If these three creatures have been helping you out in the war, then why have we not heard anything about this?"

"Because they've been keeping this a secret from us," Chuchi replied. "Only a few out of the majority of the Republic have heard about the Digimon and up until about a week ago nobody in the Senate did. These Digimon were involved in the plan to incapacitate the Zillo Beast and smuggle it off the planet alive, which is how I ended up meeting them, when Terriermon almost killed me."

"By accident," Terriermon cried. "And let me point out that it actually wasn't my fault. I got slammed into a wall by the Zillo Beast, and I did say sorry that I almost crushed you when I smashed through it."

"As usual, we're explaining this all wrong," Lopmon smirked. "Let's back up a little bit first and explain from the beginning. We come from another universe and were landed in your own through an incident that we had no control over, and when we saw the state you guys were in with regards to the war, we pledged our service to the Republic. The suggestion was made by the Jedi Council that we be kept a secret from everyone, including the Senate, so that we could be a secret weapon of the Republic."

"It was a harmless little suggestion at the time," Renamon continued. "And we didn't even think it would last as long as it did. But it turned out to be a major asset to the Jedi and the Republic as a whole though."

"Congratulations, Senators," Aayla smiled. "The total number of Senators who know about the existence of the Digimon has gone up to six."

"Six?" Chuchi asked. "There are only five of us here."

"Yes, I know," nodded Aayla. "But Jar Jar Binks found out yesterday when Master Fisto took a little trip to Naboo. We'll explain why later."

"Ah. Okay," nodded Chuchi. She turned back to the others. "When I saw the Digimon and what they could do, I agreed to keep their existence a secret, in order to speed up the end of the war. And while that seems to have been turned around a little, it has become useful in other ways."

"But..." Mon Mothma protested. "What can they do? How useful have they been? Oh, I feel so lost."

"Let's take them through the walkthrough," Terriermon smiled, and they began to do just that, explaining to the Senators exactly what a Digimon was and why they were here and the kinds of things that they could do and had been doing ever since they had met Aayla. The Senators listened in stunned amazement as they outlined the process of digivolution and the massive powers that it granted them.

"It's quite something," Chuchi offered. "When I first saw Terriermon warp into a giant robot over seven stories tall it was a wonder I didn't faint on the spot."

Once they had done, Aayla finished with, "And it was Renamon who spotted the suspicious behaviour of Lolo Purs when she tried to poison you, Senator Farr. These three were hiding behind her perception filter, and through the mind-link we share, she was able to warn me that something was going on right before you drank from the glass, allowing me to pull it from your grasp. So, if anyone deserves the credit for saving your life it is her. I just couldn't tell you about it earlier without giving her existence away."

Onaconda took a moment to reply and he said, "Well, that throws my entire perception of things out of joint. Nevertheless, if this is true, then you too have my undying gratitude, Miss Renamon."

"Just Renamon please," Renamon smiled. "Calling me Miss makes me sound like some kind of teacher."

"And why her too?" Aayla asked. "Why not just her. She deserves _all_ the credit here."

Renamon rolled her eyes and said, "No I don't Aayla. If I had leapt out hiding and smashed the glass out of his hand, then all the credit would belong to me, but your quick reactions saved his life too. We both had a part to play in it."

"You sure you're not a teacher?" another voice asked, and suddenly there was Ahsoka, smiling holographically at everyone. Moments later and Barriss was there, her hands clasped behind her back but looking happy nonetheless.

"Ahsoka!" Padmé cried. "Oh, it's so good to see you alive."

"Likewise Padmé," smiled Ahsoka. "Especially since I hear you were stupid enough to stand up in front of the Emperor and complain about his new system. Honestly."

"That's our Padme," chuckled Bail.

"To be fair on her, she still doesn't know the whole story," Barriss pointed out. "If she had then she probably wouldn't have been so reckless."

"True," nodded Ahsoka. "But yeah, it's great to see you all."

"Is... Anakin there?" Padmé asked a little hesitantly. Out the corner of her eye, Padmé saw Chuchi glance at her and wink surreptitiously, and she blushed slightly.

Ahsoka seemed to notice and she nodded. "He's not far away and says he'll be along soon. He's currently helping General Grievous to pick out some key places for droidekas to make a stand over here but he'll be here as soon as he's done."

"Oh, okay thWHAT!" Padmé suddenly shouted. "Grievous? Droidekas? HELPING?"

"Well done, Ahsoka," Aayla snorted. "You've successfully given her a heart attack."

"Go ahead and complete the story to put her in a coma," Terriermon laughed. "How about we just tell her that Palpatine is a...mpph ppfff." Renamon's paw had shot up at high speed and clasped itself around Terriermon's face in a grip that was so vice-like it was a wonder that she wasn't actually hurting him.

"Let's walk them through it, shall we?" the fox asked.

"What do you mean, helping General Grievous?" Mon Mothma demanded. "He is the droid General of the Separatists."

Even Chuchi was completely blown away by this little titbit of news. "You've formed an alliance with General Grievous? Aayla, what is going through your head? I thought you were crazy when you told me you were going to make a deal with Cad Bane but now this?"

"Cad Bane?" Bail gasped.

"Technically he's a cyborg, Senator," Barriss said. "And I think that's one of the last points we should be making. Telling you things in chronological order would probably be better, as there are a lot of other things that you guys will need to know before this stuff about Grievous and Bane starts making any sense at all."

"She's right," nodded Lopmon. "And now that you know about us and what we've been doing that is step number one passed. In order to go on with the narrative and start giving you the details you're after, we need to talk about an incident over Ord Mantell many months ago first.

And from there on in, the Senators stopped asking questions and listened with wide eyes as the three Jedi and the three Digimon began to reveal the tale that had been revealed to Chuchi on the cruiser taking the Zillo Beast to Maridun a week or so ago, about how Ahsoka had been abducted by Grievous and Ventress with intent to use her to lure Anakin closer to the Dark Side and about how Terriermon had been an accidental stowaway and, most importantly, how he had overheard the existence of a Sith Lord amongst the Senate.

"No!" Padmé gasped immediately. "Not possible."

"That's pretty much the same reaction that I had as well, Padmé," Chuchi smiled thinly. "But, trust me, it gets worse. Much worse.

"Indeed it does," Renamon nodded. "The next real stage of the story begins much, much later, a few days ago in fact, if we skip over all the various skirmishes against the Separatists which we have been carrying out. You see, right after the Zillo Beast, you probably know about how Aayla had her showdown with Dooku, Grievous and Ventress..."

It was from this point on that things began to get very stressful indeed for the Senators. Hearing that there had been a Sith Lord in their midst was bad enough and all four of them were in early stages of denial, convinced that they would have known if one of their colleagues was actually a Sith Lord but it was with terrible fascination that they heard of how it had been Sidious that deliberately ordered his minions to attack Aayla, in an attempt to get her out of way due to the fact he thought she alone was luring Anakin away from his grasp.

They listened with growing horror as they heard of how this self-same Sith Lord had decided, as an act of revenge against the great act Aayla had performed against him, to send Cad Bane in an attempt to assassinate her, and how Bane had modified the plan to try and get information on the Digimon first.

They listened with mounting trepidation as Aayla outlined how she had managed to sway Bane to work against Sidious instead and it was at that point that Chuchi took over to talk about how she had been away gathering credits to secure Aayla's release and the exposure of the Sith Lord.

They listened with a pit of fear growing in all of their stomachs and Renamon took her turn to speak and started to tell about how she, Bane and Chewbacca had started trying to track Sidious down and the fact that they had found this hideout that the Senator's were currently standing in.

"This is a Sith hideout?" breathed Bail, looking around in fear. "Then what are we doing standing in here?"

"I don't believe Sidious has any need for this place anymore," Chuchi reported bitterly. "Now that he has the Empire that he was after from the very beginning, he doesn't need to secretly send transmissions out from here anymore. He can do whatever he likes."

Padmé looked at Chuchi sharply with those words, her eyes widening slightly and filling with dismay. It was at that point that Chuchi knew Padmé had guessed it. She was an intelligent woman and she had finally managed to put two and two together to come up with four rather than chair.

The other Senators didn't look to be that far behind. Mon Mothma's eyes had also widened. "The tunnel," she whispered. "The Sith has been using that tunnel to sneak out from under our noses all this time to direct the other side of the war."

Chuchi nodded. This had been what she had meant earlier when she spoke about showing them the tunnel in advance. Mon Mothma was now faced with a story that had sufficient enough evidence to make it at least plausible if not necessarily true.

Chuchi turned to looked at Renamon, both of them knowing full well that it was time for the hammer blow to fall and Renamon shut her eyes slightly. She'd told this story many times now, and each time it got more and more unpleasant, especially since she was always the bearer of such terrible news.

Sensing his mate's dislike of this subject, Terriermon quickly took over with, "Renamon followed that tunnel towards the sub-basement of your Senate Apartment Tower thingie – 500 Republica. Sidious passed her unknowingly on the way, so she hid in the sub-basement and waited for him to return so that she could invisibly watch him take off his hood and finally reveal his identity. And... well, he did. And it was not the most pleasant of answers."

Padmé bit her lip and murmured, "It was Palpatine, wasn't it?"

The other three Senators looked at her sharply, startled but not looking particularly surprised, which led Chuchi to believe that they had all had similar thoughts but merely not dared to voice them. Padmé, bold as ever, had spoken the ultimate treason, the impossible truth, and their eyes were drawn slowly towards Terriermon's grimacing face.

Even he looked a little reluctant to go on and Ahsoka quickly said, "Bang on the money, I'm afraid, Padmé."

Padmé could feel her head drooping as if she had lost all will to live and her head was placed in her hands. How? How could this be true? Palpatine was one of her most trusted of friends within the Senate, or so she had thought before he had started making all these snap decisions in the last few days. He was kind and caring, and had been a friend and ally to her since before she was queen.

Except she could already tell that all of that was just a bunch of lies. He had never been her friend. The story that the Jedi and the Digimon had put to her was too sound, too solid. All the evidence was there if you looked for it, and it certainly explained his choices over the last couple of days with regard to the Jedi.

"P...Palpatine?" Mon Mothma mumbled feebly, almost incoherently. "You... are... sure then?"

"Completely," Renamon nodded. "It's a terrible truth, but it is the truth. I was just as shocked as you guys are now, and I barely know the guy."

"But..." Bail protested. "But... but..." However, it seemed that he could find nothing to support his protests with and he subsided into silence as the terrible truth sank in.

Onaconda Farr was a little bit more vocal in his disbelief that the others and he whispered. "Then... the whole war... everything we strove for over the last year... it was all a waste of time? The Separatists occupation of all those systems was authorised by... by Palpatine? Does that mean that... all those peace delegations we tried to enforce disappeared almost before we had proposed them?"

"I'm afraid so," Chuchi nodded. "We were duped from the start. All of us. He's been the leader of both sides of the war, using it as a front for his master plan to place the Galaxy under his rule and wipe out the Jedi. He's managed to do the first of those, but the Jedi Order still remain a problem to him."

"This is all too ridiculous," Mon Mothma protested, but she didn't sound convinced that it was really. "It has to... be a mistake. There's no other explanation."

"Yes there is, Senator," said the voice of a male and there was a grim-faced Anakin standing between Aayla and Barriss. "And that other explanation is that it is true. I considered that man to be one of my best friends, but it was never that way. I wish with all my soul that it was a mistake, and that he really was my friend all these years but that's simply not the case."

"Anakin," Padmé perked up slightly, but she was still wallowing in a pit of despair at this realisation. Still, the arrival of her husband was enough to perk her up significantly.

"Hey, Padmé," Anakin smiled. "It's a great relief to see you safe and sound, and make sure that you stay that way in the future." He wanted to say more than that, but couldn't unless he wanted to give his secret marriage to her away to the Senators who didn't know about it. That was one shocking secret that was not going to be revealed today, thank you very much.

"But he's been the Chancellor for so long," Bail shook his head. "He can't be all bad. He never gave of a hint of it during his time."

"He was bad long before his rise to power," Anakin grimaced. "The occupation of Naboo was his doing to. That was his ploy to get himself into power. The clone troopers were tools created by him to be the perfect Jedi killing weapons. General Grievous and all the Dark Acolytes were his creation too. All those speeches he made about wanting to protect the people of the Republic... was just a load of baloney."

"He caused all the suffering he said he was going to try and stop," Lopmon agreed.

"Millions have died in battle and as a result of the conflict across the Galaxy at his whim," Barriss agreed.

"You can deny it all you want," Aayla sighed. "But in the end, you'll have to face the facts. It is the truth."

The four Senators were silent now, each one lost in a sea of epiphanies where things that had previously not made sense at all suddenly made sense with this new revelation. The release of Dooku and Ventress for one thing. That hadn't been a sudden burst of madness from the man. He had always been their master, and many more stuff throughout the clone wars such as the ambushes in secret locations and countless other things.

Their efforts to find peaceful negotiations were all for nothing. The man in charge had been against them the whole time.

Mon Mothma looked up at Chuchi and said, "Oh, my dear. I am so sorry for you."

"Why?" Chuchi asked.

"For having to bear the burden of being the only one of us to know the full truth of what was going on. It must have been so difficult, so painful and so terrifying for you. At least now I fully understand what's been keeping you distracted over the last couple of days."

"It has not been easy," Chuchi confessed. "And this is why I was saying that if you think you should back out then you should have done so because this is not an easy burden to bear. I know that from experience."

"You've been very brave, Chuchi," Padmé said sadly. "You must be glad to have somebody else understand at last."

"To be honest, I was hoping that I would be gladder," Chuchi grimaced. "Now all I feel I've done if put your lives in danger needlessly. Not to mention I've been the bearer of obvious despair to you."

"We probably would have found out eventually," Onaconda sagged slightly. "And in a much more painful manner as well. At least this way we are spared the revelation via experience."

"Yes, but what are we supposed to do now?" Bail asked. "With this new Empire, we have practically no say in anything anymore. The democracy of the Republic is dead with this new regime. We can't call for a Vote of No Confidence to have the Emperor removed, even if we went public with this information. For a start, nobody would believe us. For another, we would have to explain where we got the information and if they found out we'd communicated with the Jedi, we would be done for."

"And for another," Padmé added. "Palpatine would take us down himself if we tried to do this, regardless of our connection to the Jedi."

"Then... is all lost?" Onaconda asked. "Is this truly all that is left for the Galaxy?"

"No," all three Digimon said firmly, causing the Senators to look up at them in surprise. Lopmon leaned further out off Aayla's shoulder and continued with. "We may not be from this universe, but there's no chance in hell that we're going to sit by and let this happen to so many innocent people. We intend to take down the Emperor, and we intend to do it the hard way."

"You're right that diplomacy isn't going to do anything this time," Anakin agreed. "But Lopmon is right. We haven't given up hope yet, and we're definitely going to bring that man to justice for all his years of evil. There's only one option now, and while you may not like it, Senators, I'm afraid we're going to have to fight."

"Palpatine's got the throne he's been wanting," Barriss nodded. "He's not going to give it up easily and much as we'd love to sit down and talk it out over tea and biscuits, he's not going to let us."

Padmé sighed and said, "Much as I hate to say it, I fear you are right. If he's been shutting down all the peace talks before they happen and trying to prolong the war and if the Sith really are as evil as people say they are... he won't surrender."

"But how?" Bail asked. "How can you bring him down now, Master Jedi. You're exiled from this place, declared as traitors and he has a mighty army of clones to protect him, not to mention he probably has immense power on his own. You cannot win, surely."

"That's funny," Anakin smirked. "I never took you for a pessimist, Senator Organa."

"Under normal circumstances, I would be very optimistic indeed," Bail replied. "But these are hardly ordinary circumstances. Surely there's no chance of winning against him with what you have."

"But that's the thing," Aayla smiled. "You don't know what we have. Right now we have a very large army of our own. Not as large as the Emperor's perhaps, but big enough for our purposes. You see, right after we fled from Order 66, we regrouped as quickly as we could, and we've already started planning out our counter-attack."

"Not only do we have a very large number of renegade clones," Ahsoka put in. "But we also have the Gungan Grand Army, led by Jar Jar and General Tarpals here with us. Chewbacca helped to convince the Wookiee people to come and fight for us so we have several thousand woolly warriors ready for action as well. We also have a Varactyl named Zarza, six voracious and very powerful Acklay and what else... oh yes, over ten thousand battle droids led by their permanently angry warlord, General Grievous, on our side. And a couple of hundred Jedi."

The Senator's all stared at the Togruta Padawan with wide eyes, and searched the faces of the others for signs of a joke or confusion, but there was none. Chuchi shook her head and said, "I know you said you were going to be doing some recruiting to your cause but I never expected something of this magnitude. How did you gather such an army that quickly?"

"It wasn't that difficult," Aayla replied. "We picked out powerful armies who we had assisted in the past and used their gratitude to us to get them to hear us out even though we were supposed to be traitors and then we let their sense of duty and desire to help free the Galaxy take over when we explained to them the same thing that happened to you."

"Are you seriously telling me that General Grievous is on your side now?" Bail nodded.

"Yep," nodded Terriermon. "I overheard Nute Gunray and San Hill talking about how they deliberately destroyed Grievous' body in a shuttle explosion and blamed the Jedi so they could reconstruct him as a cyborg to be a weapon against them, and how they tampered with his mind against his will to make him into the vicious monster we know and fear. Naturally I skipped over to Grievous and told him right away and he didn't take that very well. He's out for revenge now against the Sith now, and he's willing to work with us to get it.

"And before you ask, yes, I am sure he can be trusted," Aayla said.

The Senators looked a little uneasy. After all, they all knew of the atrocities Grievous had committed throughout the war. However, they knew that the others were right in that they needed as many forces as they could do. Battle droids might not be formidable opponents, or indeed very bright, in numbers that strong they were nothing to laugh at. Especially since having them working with the Jedi would be a complete surprise to the Empire.

"You really believe you have a chance of restoring the Republic?" Mon Mothma asked.

"Yes," nodded Renamon. "And if we didn't believe we had a chance, we still wouldn't be sitting back and letting it happen. There's _no _chance of that happening."

"However," Anakin added. "We're going to need more help. And when I say that, I mean from you. If the plan we have is to succeed then we're going to need some assistance from people on the inside."

"What can we do to help?" Padmé asked immediately.

"Whoa, wait, Padme," Bail raised a hand. "Don't you think that we should think this through a little bit first."

"Think this through?" Padme asked incredulously. "Bail, listen to yourself. The Sith have taken over the Galaxy and duped us all into inadvertently doing it in some way. Regardless of any danger, there's no chance of me letting him stay in his new position if there's a chance of getting him out of it."

Bail hesitated, but only for a moment. He then shook himself and said, "My apologies, Padmé," she said. "I'm not sure what came over me. You are, of course, perfectly right. How about you guys? Do you want to back down or will you help as well?"

"I know I'm certainly going to go through with this," Chuchi said firmly. "I started this, and I'm going to finish it, even with the dangers that I may face."

"You can count me in as well," Onaconda Farr nodded. "Ever since I let joined the Separatist Alliance that one time but reverted back to the Republic, I swore to myself that I would always strive to do the right thing. I cannot turn around from this and still claim to be doing that."

"Good man, Senator Farr," Renamon smirked.

"Thank you, M... er, I mean, Renamon," the Rodian nodded.

Mon Mothma sighed and said, "Well, I might finally be going insane, but I suppose I could be of some assistance. What do you guys need doing?"

"That's the spirit, Senators," Terriermon grinned. "We were pretty sure you were all going to say that but it's nice to see that we were right all the same."

"First off," Anakin said. "You guys need to be on your guard at all times, and don't do anything that might tip off absolutely anybody else. Don't even tell Threepio. The less people who know about it the better and five is already a bit of a stretch. Our whole plan hinges on catching the Sith off guard over and over again."

"Got it," nodded Padmé. "What else?"

"For a start, we need a way in," Aayla said. "The plan that we've come up with is a pretty basic one. We won't give away too many of the details, but let's just put it this way. We're going to find a way of leaking the location of the Jedi to Palpatine in a manner that won't make it sound like we did it deliberate, but we don't want him to know anything about the reinforcements that we have. We want them to be a surprise."

Barriss continued. "We've estimated that in his desire to finally get rid of the Jedi, he will send a very large force of clones, possibly even the majority of his army, to where we are to try and take us out. Our united army will engage their forces with everything we have. We won't be on the offense though, we'll be defending the city as best we can and doing our best to keep the clone forces out. We want the battle to be prolonged as much as possible."

Ahsoka took over. "We also guessed that Palpatine would want to watch the battle if he was able, and that's what we're counting on. We want his attention to be focused on us. While the battle is going on, some of us, as in, the lot of us that are here and a couple of others, will sneak away from the main battle and head up into space, where Admiral Yularen and our fleet will be waiting for us close by. We'll jump to hyperspace and catch the ships that remain around Coruscant off guard, engaging them in a full space battle."

"We think that Palpatine's attention will shift to the space battle pretty quickly," Renamon went on. "But the space battle is merely going to be another diversion. While its going on, some of us will sneak down to the planet's surface and surprise him again. First we need to know if his office in the Senate Building has been repaired after damage it took last week."

"Well," Bail said. "Almost. I hear that he's going to be moving back into it tomorrow, if I remember right."

The Jedi and Digimon exchanged looks, a mix of graveness and anticipation. "Then that means we should be all set to move out in two days from now," Anakin nodded. "We need to know where he's going to be at the time we attack and we want him to be in his office. While we sneak down to the planet's surface, some of us intend to distract the Senate Guards, which gives the rest of us another chance to sneak into the main building."

"Boy, we're doing a lot of sneaking," Terriermon sniggered.

"Yes," nodded Anakin. "Yes, we are. Anyway, that's where you guys come in. We can hardly walk into the main doors or indeed any of the main entrances. Even with a distraction, that wouldn't help. We need you guys to give us alternate methods of getting inside the Senate Building, like letting us slip in through a window or something. Since there are five of you, we would split up to avoid drawing attention and meet up inside the building."

"The Senate Building is very well protected," Padmé said warily. "After Bane and his fellow Bounty Hunters broke in, security increased tenfold. It's going to be difficult to smuggle you inside, but we'll come up with something."

"Good," nodded Anakin. "The key to this is being discrete. We might be able to cut our way in with a lightsaber, but we don't want to be spotted until we're in. From there, we aim to take on Sidious and his minions ourselves and free the Republic from their tyranny."

"Alright," Bail nodded. "This plan sounds pretty risky to me, but if it's the only one that we've got I guess we'll have to go with it. I can see several flaws in it though."

"Yes, I reckon we could point out one of them," Lopmon nodded. "But we haven't even covered the main thing that we want you to do to help us. Getting inside is just a stepping stone."

"Then what do you need us to do?" Chuchi asked.

"As you are no doubt aware, merely killing the Emperor isn't going to solve as much as we would like at this early stage," Aayla replied. "And it's highly likely that we will have to end up killing him instead of taking him in. Nevertheless, the Galaxy hasn't had time to adjust to the new Empire, and Sidious hasn't had the chance to do the terrible things that will make people see his true colours, so if we take him down now, all they'll see is traitors carrying out their plan to finally get rid of him."

"Simultaneously, we can hardly sit around and wait for him to be hated enough that people will be glad when he's gone," Renamon agreed. "And that's where you come in. You're Senators. You make speeches to address the general public all the time. Therefore, we need to acquire the equipment necessary for you to make a live broadcast to the whole of Coruscant."

"And then," Anakin said. "When we take on Sidious, we want somebody to film it. Not necessarily you, but somebody. When the population of Coruscant sees their Emperor fighting against a Jedi with a lightsaber and using the Force and his Sith powers to fight against us, then they'll finally see the truth. They'll all know how they've been duped. They'll see that we're not traitors after all."

"And then, if we win, we can go back to being a Republic straight away," Terriermon laughed. "If we lose, the people will still know the truth, and Palpatine's going to have a much harder time keeping his grip on the Galaxy. However, we don't plan on losing, so that's alright."

"If possible," Lopmon added, "We're going to set up a large holotransmitter here as well. If you can send a signal over here to where we are as well and display the hologram, we might be able to make the clones stop fighting once they realise that we were telling the truth about him being a Sith and bring the battle to a non-violent end. Many clones will die, but if we do that, then many more can be saved."

"This... this is an ingenious plan," Mon Mothma said. "If it works then with one fell swoop, we can take back the Galaxy from the Sith and solve all our problems with one go."

"Assuming it works, yes," nodded Aayla. "It is out best chance of getting our Galaxy back."

"It's so dangerous though," Padmé muttered. "Are we sure that there is no better way."

"Not that we've been able to come up with," Anakin shook his head.

"Sidious is going to be a more dangerous opponent to take on than ever," Chuchi said. "And not to mention you're going to have to get through his minions as well. Dooku and Ventress are following him around everywhere he goes."

"We'll deal with them when we come to them," Renamon replied. "Besides, we Digimon are not going to hold back on this particular mission. When we attack, we're really going to go all out this time."

"All out?" Chuchi asked, her eyes widening slightly. "By that, I assume that you mean..."

"Oh yes," nodded Terriermon, a savage looking grin on his face.

"Oh dear," Chuchi said. "Trust me, guys, I have seen what happens when they go all out and it is definitely something to see. It's also something which I am not sure that Coruscant is ready for."

"Coruscant's already seen what we can do," Lopmon smiled. "It's the Sith that we're hoping won't be ready for what we have in mind."

"I... look forward to it," Bail said a little hesitantly.

"Is there anything else which you need from us?" Onaconda Farr asked.

"No, that will be all," Anakin replied. "We don't want to put you in any unnecessary danger when we're not here to get you out of any trouble if we can help it. It's not like we're going to ask you to take out Ventress or anything."

"Good, because I don't think that would be happening even if you did ask," Chuchi chuckled. "That woman scares me."

"Anyway," Terriermon nodded. "Right now we're just setting up the last of the preparations for the battle over here. Our Tamers are currently hanging around with Numa and trying to get to know her a little better to help her become a better Tamer. Grievous is trying to find the best strategies to implement for his battle droid armies, and Chewbacca's currently getting to grips with his battle steed."

"Battle steed?" asked Mon Mothma.

"Yes. Zarza the Varactyl has consented to allow him to ride her into battle," Ahsoka grinned. "She's giving him a workout with the leaping all over the place but he seems to be enjoying himself."

"The only thing we really need to do left is figure out a way to leak the news out to Palpatine eventually," Aayla went on. "That's the part that's still got us a little bit stumped. And then there's the question of if we can bring in any more reinforcements to help us fight against the clone army with us over here. And then we'll be ready as long as you are."

"Well, the jobs you have set us shouldn't be too hard," replied Padmé. "We'll have them done in time. We can guarantee it."

"Yeah," nodded Chuchi. "And as to any potential reinforcements, what about our old friend on Maridun? I'm sure he'd love an opportunity to get back at the Emperor for what he tried to do to him."

All four Jedi and all three Digimon stared at Chuchi for a grand total of about five seconds before Aayla looked towards Anakin and said, "How in the Galaxy did we not think about that."

"I have absolutely no idea," Anakin placed a hand to his forehead. "It's such a simple idea. Scratch that, it's a brilliant idea. Chuchi, you are officially a genius."

"Oh," Chuchi flushed slightly. "I don't know about that."

"Well, I do," Ahsoka grinned. "You go girl."

"Excuse me one moment," Bail interrupted. "But who exactly are you talking about?"

"We're talking about a certain someone who was captured by the Republic on the orders of the Chancellor and brought to Coruscant, just so that he could be killed and have his armour ripped off and examined so that it could be synthesised to make new armour for the clone troopers so that they would be resistant to lightsabers when he eventually ordered them to turn against the Jedi. A being which Padmé and the rest of us tried incredibly hard to save before he went on a destructive rampage with deliberate attempt to kill the Chancellor, before we managed to waylay him and convince him not to do it." He grimaced and said, "Which is a decision that I am currently regretting quite a lot right now."

Padmé's eyes had gone wide. "Are you talking about the Zillo Beast?"

"Oh yes!" Terriermon laughed. "Or, to give him his other name, Godzillo. He's not just some mindless animal. He's like Zarza and the six Acklay we have with us in that he's intelligent and he was quite annoyed when Palpatine tried to take his life to help himself. And Chuchi's right. Imagine what an asset he'd be to our side."

"He'd be an incredible one," replied Aayla. "Not only does the Emperor think that it is dead, much like how he thinks I am dead, but its presence will be just as much of a surprise as Grievous or any one of our other allies. Not to mention it has indestructible armour which the clones won't be prepared for at all, it would be able to cause massive damage to any tanks without receiving a single scratch on its hide. And the only way to kill it that we know off is to surround it with a poison gas made from astronic fuel from Malastare, and I'm willing to bet they won't bring that with them."

"It's brilliant," Renamon smiled. "The Zillo Beast and I have a history. It remembered me when it saw me on its destructive rampage and listened to me when I tried to convince it. I'm sure that it won't be hard to convince him to come and help us out. Especially when he hears how the Emperor is taking down the whole Galaxy."

"You know," Anakin chuckled. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Zillo Beast hadn't actually had some vague inkling inside of it that Palpatine was evil all along. It certainly seemed much smarter than it looks. It was able to track him down all the way across Coruscant somehow."

"Didn't it almost kill us though?" Padmé asked. "Are you sure having it as an ally is a good idea?"

"It's no more insane than Grievous," Lopmon pointed out. "In fact, I would go so far as to say that it's a whole lot less insane that working with Grievous. And it wasn't trying to kill you. It was trying to get at Palpatine but once it got past its initial rage it stopped mindlessly killing other people to try and get to him. Trust us, Chuchi's decision is a good one."

"It's decided then," Aayla smiled. "We're going to make one more recruiting mission before we finish up things here. We'll set out for Maridun within the hour. You guys better get going as well, before somebody misses you. It's still going to take you another twenty minutes or so to get back to the building."

"Yes," nodded Bail. "Good idea."

"It was lovely to finally speak to you," Renamon nodded.

"Likewise it was nice to meet you... for the first time... in a way," Padmé replied. "When this is all over, perhaps we can have a sit-down and get to know one another a little bit better since you won't have to hide away from us anymore."

"Sounds cool," Terriermon nodded. "See you then."

"In the meantime," Anakin said. "Stay safe. All of you." He was looking at Padmé when he said it, and while the other Senators assumed that was because she was the most likely to do something stupid, Chuchi and the others knew better.

"We will," Padmé smiled. "Goodbye."

"I'll call you tomorrow if there's any new updates for you," Chuchi nodded.

The holograms smiled and vanished as Aayla ended the transmission. As Chuchi reached over to start wiping the memory of the call from the databanks just in case, Mon Mothma smiled at her and said, "Wow, Chuchi. I do not know how you coped through all of that pressure."

"With great difficulty," Chuchi replied.

Padmé laid a hand on her shoulder and said, "Well, one thing's for sure, Chuchi. You're one of the bravest people I've ever met in my entire life."

Chuchi turned to smile at her. "Thank you, Padmé. Now, let's go and get about taking back our Republic."

* * *

Well, another long Senatorial chapter, but we broke through several boundaries with this particular chapter. You heard the basic outline of the plan, Padmé and the others finally learn of the existence of the Digimon and we get the idea planted by Chuchi for a brand new ally to add to the awesomeness that is already of Tython. The Zillo Beast is returning to my story with a vengeance.

But not just yet. First, there's something else to get through.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

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Next time...

An evil based chapter. As Palpatine and the others continue to try and assert their control over the Galaxy, a couple of surprises are in store for them, and not the kind of surprise which is going to be beneficial to the alliance. The Jedi are not the only ones who are going to be getting new allies.

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Coming up:- **Chapter 183 : Gathering Darkness**


	183. Gathering Darkness

This was not a particularly easy chapter to write, but as always I really hope that you enjoy it. It's certainly not a very cheerful chapter like the last one, but as the title suggests it is not really supposed to be. Not everything is going to be transpiring the way which the heroes want it to, as the Sith are also hard at work gathering strength.

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**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 183:- Gathering Darkness**

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As Aayla and the others began to prepare for the trip to Maridun, Anakin and Ahsoka currently had something else on their minds. Having outlined the plan to the Senators, the small group had resembled a single, critical part of the plan which they had yet to check up on, so Master and Padawan were taking it upon themselves to go and check up on it before they left to go and find their next ally.

"Padmé certainly seemed to brighten up the moment you walked in view, right, Master?" Ahsoka nudged him slightly and chuckled to herself. "You have that effect on all girls or... what?"

"Shut up, Snips," Anakin rolled his eyes. "Teasing me like that is pointless. You know full well why Padmé was happy to see me, and I have to say the feeling was mutual. When the others told me how she had stood up against Palpatine in front of the rest of the Senate... well, I haven't felt fear like that for a long time."

"Yeah, I know, Master," Ahsoka smiled kindly. "I could sense it coming off you in waves. I think we all did. But it's alright now. You've nipped that particular wave of rebellion before it had a chance to grow and now Padmé knows what's going on. You don't have to hide any secrets from her anymore. Not even the one about the Digimon."

"Yeah," Anakin chuckled. "I have to say I missed the days where I could just sit in Padmé's presence without worrying about anything or keeping anything from her. Heh, I daresay I'm going to receive quite a talking to when this is all over."

"I'm sure she'll understand," Ahsoka pointed out. "She sure didn't seem annoyed when you she met the Digimon and found out they were being kept a secret from her all this time. She's a great woman. I think that if you had to break the Jedi Code and be with her then you picked the right person to do it with."

"I'm sure she'll be happy to hear that you said that," Anakin acknowledged.

Ahsoka's eyes widened. "You mean..."

"Yep," nodded Anakin. "No secrets, remember. You guys know about my relationship with her now anyway, so what's the point of keeping it a secret from Padmé after all of this. We only kept it a secret from her at all just in case the Sith somehow found out about this and somehow used it against us. In any case, while I'll still be keeping this from the Jedi Order for the foreseeable future, I sure as hell won't be keeping it from her."

"That's the spirit, Master," Ahsoka grinned. "Way to go. I'm sure she'd like that."

"As am I," Anakin nodded. "Now hush up before anyone overhears us talking about this."

"Mouth sealed," Ahsoka replied immediately, although a slightly mischievous grin remained on her face. Then she pointed ahead and said, "Look, there he is."

Anakin followed her finger and smiled at what he saw. He quickly walked over, his Padawan in his wake and said, "Hey there, Admiral. It's almost weird to see you on the surface of a planet rather than somewhere in the _Resolute._"

Admiral Yularen turned around and returned the smile, albeit a little thinly. "I do step out of the ship from time to time, General Skywalker."

"I can see that. Now," chuckled Anakin, snorting at the slight scowl Yularen sent towards him. "Anyway, how are you holding up?"

"Well, I've been better," Yularen replied sadly. "This whole situation with the Sith Lord has left me not really knowing where to stand, other than with you, of course, General. But I will certainly be most glad when we finally get this resolved and we have our old Republic back, preferably with a trustworthy person leading it this time."

"I could not agree more, Admiral," Anakin nodded. "Anyway, I'm afraid I can't stay long. We've got some important business to take care of before the day is out but I just came to check up on a small detail regarding our plan to attack Coruscant."

Yularen nodded and said, "I think I know what it is that you are referring to, General Skywalker."

"Barriss told me that some of the men brought it here," Anakin went on. Like the 327th, additional troopers of the 501st had come from across the Galaxy to help in aiding their Jedi Generals against the Sith who had created them. "That is true right?"

"Follow me and you can see it for yourself," Yularen said, as he led them towards another _Venator_-class cruiser not far away. Anakin and Ahsoka hurried along behind him as the grey-uniformed man led them up the ramp and into the main hangar. There was little need for him to say anything. He just gestured to the large object in the very centre of the hangar.

Anakin smiled when he saw it and strode towards the machine. "Oh yes," he nodded. "Here it is." He laid a hand on the metal surface and said, "Last time I piloted this thing was before I even met you, Ahsoka. A couple of days before, in fact."

"It doesn't look very formidable," Ahsoka observed as she looked over the craft. It was a ship, long and quite thin with several small engines at the back and a cockpit that had a nose which sharpened into a point. The whole ship looked a bit cramped, and was only two seats wide across its whole length.

"It's not meant to be," Anakin reminded her. "It's a stealth ship, not a starfighter. It was able to sneak right past the Separatist blockade over Christophsis with no problem whatsoever. We should be able to use it to sneak past the defences around Coruscant as well."

"Yes, it did indeed work well," Yularen smirked. "Until you decided to turn around and attack the command ship with it."

"Why am I not surprised?" Ahsoka chuckled to herself.

"Hey, it worked, didn't it?" Anakin objected. "I did manage to destroy it in the end, even with a small ship like this."

"You did almost get us all killed in that reckless strategy though," Yularen reminded him.

"He almost gets us all killed with _every_ reckless strategy he comes up with," Ahsoka snorted.

"Good point, Padawan Tano," Yularen chuckled.

"Yeah, well, this time I'm not going to be doing anything like that," Anakin replied. "This time I'm going to be going straight past that blockade and right towards the Senate Building, and you, Ahsoka, are coming along for the ride this time, as are the others."

"Most of them anyway," Ahsoka smiled.

"Yes, but I feel I must point out General Skywalker that even with the stealth ship, it's going to be a much riskier run to the surface than it was with Christophsis. You're going to have to navigate your way through a full on space battle, and while nobody will be shooting at you, there is no guarantee that a stray bolt or starfighter could collide with you. And I mean from either side. We won't be able to see you either."

"Don't worry about that," Anakin replied. "I'll get us down there safely."

"We're not going to end up crash-landing again, are we?" Ahsoka asked a little nervously. "Does that ship have an eject button or any escape pods."

"No, it doesn't," Anakin replied. "But when the stakes are most high, that is when I fly my best. Besides, we will still have one edge on our side to make sure we don't get hit."

"True," nodded Ahsoka.

_Guys_, Aayla called through their mindlink. _I've finished speaking with Master Windu, and he's granted us permission to use the _Acclamator_-class cruiser the moment the clones have finished unloading everything on it._

Anakin nodded. Using ordinary cruisers like the _Resolute_ or the _Intrepid_ wasn't going to cut it with their next potential reinforcement. He was too big to fit in either, even in the largest of spaces. It was fortunate that Commander Ponds had been in command of an _Acclamator_ when Order 66 came down, otherwise they would have had to steal another one if they had any hopes of adding this guy to their ranks.

_We're on our way,_ Anakin replied. "Let's go, Snips. Godzillo is waiting."

* * *

On Coruscant, things seemed to be going extremely well for the Sith Lords. Darth Sidious seemed to be almost completely unopposed by the Senate, so it seemed that his plan to take control of the Galaxy was working. Most of the Senators were either too scared to object or really did believe that this new Empire was a good idea. Faced with a so-called betrayal of the Jedi Order, beings they had been sure they could trust completely, most of them seemed to have put their whole trust in the man responsible for getting rid of them.

This was, of course, the complete wrong decision, but for now they didn't know that.

Clones scurried across the surface of Coruscant like little white ants, keeping an eye out for anyone or anything that might be attempting some kind of objection to the new regime. But Darth Sidious had already stopped thinking of them as just clones. Now, he was beginning to think of them as the stormtroopers that he had been planning to turn them into all along.

So what if his plans had been forced to be accelerated a little early? Things still seemed to be going his way at last. The Jedi were in hiding and apart from that one incident over Felucia where Aayla Secura's ship had appeared, he hadn't heard any news about them, which meant they had probably gone to ground.

They would be dealt with eventually once he had finished sorting out various affairs on Coruscant.

Count Dooku was never far away from his Master now, standing behind him and standing tall, looking imperiously down his nose and anyone who even addressed them for any reason. There were a couple of others who weren't far away either. Aurra Sing still hadn't left. She was currently basking the glow of victory of Aayla's apparent death and was hanging about the place, wondering if the opportunity to kill any more Jedi would present itself.

Even Bok was still there. Now that his nemesis had supposedly been destroyed, one might have expected the Morgukai warrior to leave and return hope. But he was of the same mind as Aurra when it came to killing more Jedi. Just because his personal vendetta was over didn't mean that he couldn't take pleasure of out killing any more.

As to Sidious himself, he was currently trying to plan out the immediate future of the Empire, looking for potential allies to bring to his cause against the Galaxy when he moved into the more combat-based stage of his takeover. He was considering the Death Watch from Mandalore, but after their bid to dethrone Duchess Satine, they had gone into hiding, presumably to build up their forces and gain strength.

Sidious and Dooku had not informed the Death Watch of Palpatine's real colours, so even if they heard about this they might not understand that this had been a part of the Sith's plan the whole time, and since even Sidious didn't know where they were, he would have to wait until they came out of hiding before he had a chance to recruit them.

Another option might be the Nightsisters of Dathomir, but they too preferred to keep to themselves and were very unlikely to help the Sith unless there was something big in it for them, and Sidious was currently trying to come up with something that might do to convince them.

One particular member of this little group of evil however, was far from happy. Asajj Ventress had taken to taking vicious strolls through 500 Republica, trying to work off some steam. She was getting more and more impatient after every passing hour and she was trying to suppress it as best she could so as to show Dooku she was in control and could still be useful.

She wanted more action than this. All she had done so far to the Sith cause since this takeover had been to stand behind a desk and listen as Sidious and Dooku talked politics and had been forced to watch as a gloating Aurra Sing made her report about how she had brutally murdered an enemy that she had been dreaming of killing herself.

She wanted to do something. She wanted the Jedi to do something so that she could get out there and prove her use once again, so that Dooku would view her in the same light he once did before her plans began to go wrong, particularly around the A-Team. She might have hated General Grievous all this time, but right now she was most definitely taking the same kind of approach to this situation as he would if her were here.

She growled to herself as she strode down on of the corridors, wheeling around a corner, her fingers clenched into fists which were trembling with pent-up frustration and energy. It had been too long since she'd killed a Jedi for her liking and while they were still out there they still needed to be dealt with. She couldn't understand this slow approach that Dooku and Sidious were taking. Why didn't they just get hunting right now while the Jedi were weak?

What was worse was that she also had to endure Aurra Sing constantly taunting her, trying to goad her into doing something stupid like attacking her. To give Ventress a little credit, she had not yet given in to the urge to shut the near-humans damn mouth by slicing her head off, but as Aurra's taunts became more and more colourful, she was finding it harder and harder.

Nevertheless, she remembered all too vividly the time when she had lost her head when Aayla Secura had started using random sentences in the middle of a lightsaber duel to stir her anger up and make her attack mindlessly and she was ashamed to remember how easily it had worked. She wasn't about to let the person who had finally killed Aayla do the same thing. If she could resist Aurra, it felt like some sort of revenge against Aayla.

As she moved down the corridor once more, a door opened ahead of her and a dark skinned human in a long, purple gown stepped out. It was Kinn Robb, the Senator from Taris, apparently stepping out to go on some kind of walk of her own.

When the Senator spotted the Dark Jedi, she froze on the spot and stared at her with fear in her eyes. Ventress stared back, her pale blue eyes fixing with Kinn's brown ones and kept walking slowly and slightly menacingly forwards.

Kinn immediately backed away towards her still open door, determined to let Ventress pass and not get in her way. But when Ventress drew level with the door, she stopped and stared at the Senator some more.

Kinn fidgeted nervously, tugging on the sleeves of her robe and inching backwards further into the room. Ventress smirked. She loved having this sort of power over other beings. She loved watching the fear festering in their eyes at the mere sight of her.

Coming from her, staring could be extremely unnerving. Particular when her face was also expressing copious amounts of hatred.

Before Kinn could blink, Ventress hand lashed down and pulled a lightsaber from her belt, igniting it and holding it in front of her as if she was going to strike Kinn down at any moment. Kinn yelped and darted back into the room quickly, the door immediately sliding shut behind her and locking with a dull thunk.

Ventress sneered at the closed door, knowing it wouldn't be any defence at all if she really wanted to get in and attack the Senator. But she wasn't about to do that really – that would jeopardise her position by Dooku's side.

She sheathed her blade and moved on. She might not have been able to kill Kinn, but terrifying the living daylights out of her would be more than enough for the time being. And it had actually manage to alleviate some of her frustrations.

She knew it wouldn't be long until they returned but it was definitely something.

As she continued down the corridor, the holocommunicator attached to her waist beside her lightsabers suddenly started beeping. She stopped and stared down at it in bewilderment for a couple of seconds before she pulled it off and stared at it some more.

Who would be contacting her using her own communicator? There were not many people inside the Empire which would count her as a friend. If fact there was almost nobody who would class her as a friend, and she usually only received communications on her personal communicator from a battle droid giving her a report, which wouldn't be happening now, or from Dooku, who was not far away.

Out of curiosity, she answered the call, and when she saw the person doing the calling, her eyes widened considerably.

The being standing in hologram form in the palm of her hand looked like some sort of strange, cybernetic being like a giant android. Weaponry bristled across the entire surface of his body, including his shoulders and back, either built into the armour or strapped to his body to be pulled off and used easily. His armour appeared to be thick and tough and his head was encased in a full helmet and mask that completely hid everything underneath, except for a single glowing light in one of the small eyeholes.

"Ah, Ventress," the being chuckled darkly. "So good to see you again."

"Durge?" Ventress blinked. She stared for a couple more seconds before her facial features relaxed and she said, "I should have known that you were still alive."

"Indeed you should," the figure on the other side of the transmission folded his arms. "Indeed you should. I would have thought you would have had a little more faith in me than to presume I'm dead."

Ventress chuckled and said, "Oh, you have my apologies then, my friend."

Durge was Gen'Dai Bounty Hunter who had lived for hundreds and hundreds of years, just over two thousand in fact. That made him even older than Master Yoda. The Gen'Dai race was not very well known, as they preferred to live on their own planet and never let people go down to the surface without driving them away, regardless of their intent. Durge was the exception – he was more outgoing. And he was a very, very deadly enemy.

The Gen'Dai were practically immortal. They lacked many of the vital body parts that most other organisms had, including bones, lungs and even a heart. They could survive just about anything thrown at them, even being blown up, though when that happened, they went into a state of hibernation until they recovered and regenerated their body. Even getting beheaded wouldn't kill one, though it would slow them down.

Durge had gone missing several months ago. He had initially joined the Separatists and had helped Ventress in many skirmishes against the Republic, simply because it gave him the chance to kill Jedi and, even more importantly, clone troopers. Durge had a deep dislike of Mandalorians, and since the clones were made with the DNA of Jango Fett, that automatically put them on Durge's list of enemies.

"What happened to you anyway?" Ventress asked. "The last I had heard you couldn't be found after you had confronted Master Kenobi on Muunilist."

"Indeed," Durge snorted. "Kenobi proved to be a stronger opponent than I had realised. I tried to absorb him into by body, but I'm afraid to say that he managed to use the Force to blow me to pieces from the inside. It's taken me month upon month to rebuild by body into something useful, not to mention salvage my armour, and when I make my triumphant return to the Galaxy to start killing more of the Jedi, what do I find?"

"You find a Galaxy where the Separatists lost but the Jedi have been forced into hiding because the Sith have taken over the Republic and turned it into an Empire," Ventress chuckled.

"Indeed," Durge nodded. "You have certainly come quite a way since we last spoke, Ventress. The last I checked, you have become the last of the Dark Acolytes and suddenly you are practically at the top of everything, only answering to Dooku and the Emperor. You even surpassed General Grievous. I suppose congratulations are in order for you, Ventress."

"And I will gladly accept them," Ventress sneered. "In any case, it's certainly a major turnaround from what we were experiencing before. The Jedi Order have finally been put where they belong. All that remains is to send them all to the afterlife and my work will be done."

"I appear to have missed a lot," Durge agreed. "However, now, I have returned to the Galaxy with a vengeance. I take it that there are plans in the near future to start hunting down the Jedi and killing them?"

"I am unsure," Ventress scowled. "Dooku and his Master seem to be playing some kind of political game for the moment, but I am hoping to the Force that they get up and allow me to do something soon. The sooner I can start plunging my lightsabers into the Jedi again the happier that I will be. Not to mention, I believe that Ahsoka Tano has survived the Jedi slaughter."

"Who?" Durge asked. His regeneration state of hibernation had not really allowed him to keep up with current events, so Ahsoka was completely unknown to him even though she was a part of the A-Team.

"Ahsoka Tano," Ventress sneered. "The Padawan of Anakin Skywalker."

"Skywalker got himself an apprentice?" Durge asked. "Peh, he always struck me as more of a loner than most other Jedi."

"In any case he got one," Ventress scowled. "An upstart, young Togruta girl. Much as I hate to admit it but she is quite skilled with a blade even at a young age. No match for myself of course, but she and I have crossed swords on two separate occasions and each time, she managed to escape from me, due to help from a couple of older Jedi."

"Ah, Ventress," Durge sniggered. "You haven't changed at all. I can tell by your face that that means that you hate this girl with all your guts. Has she become the top of your list of preferred targets since I've been gone."

"Oh yes," nodded Ventress. "That she has. I want to make her suffer until every fibre of her being is screaming for death and I want to make that death as slow and painful as possible. There was another incident where I had her at my mercy and I was torturing her with an electrostaff, but she somehow managed to escape and I have no idea how. She even knocked me out. She will pay for that. If I get the opportunity, I may even keep her alive for about a year or so just so I can torture her before I can finally kill her."

"How twisted," Durge snorted. "Make sure that you invite me when the time comes. Sounds like fun."

"Well, at least your state of being piles of goop doesn't seemed to have changed you a whole lot either," Ventress surmised. "I am assuming that you yourself are eager for some revenge on Obi-Wan Kenobi."

"Oh indeed I am," Durge pounded his fists together, the bright glow in one eye socket increasing and it was pretty safe to assume that under the mask his face had become another mask, one of complete and utter fury. "He proved to be more resourceful than I thought, but I will not be underestimating him again. I have a feeling that he would have somehow survived this mass Jedi killing. And carried out by the clones, no less."

Ventress smirked and said, "Still have it out for the clones then do you?"

"More to the point, why have you allied yourself with them?" Durge growled. "With you a part of this Empire that means that the clone troopers are now under your command. I truly hope that you are planning on having them all exterminated at some point in the future. Even if they have been turned against the Jedi, they have no right to exist. They are bred from Mandalorian scum."

"Don't you see, Durge?" Ventress asked him. "The clone troopers were our primary weapons all along. They're nothing but weak-minded flesh-droids anyway, so it doesn't really matter what we do with them. But no, I believe the Emperor is planning to keep them around. He started talking about Empirical stormtroopers earlier."

Durge growled in contempt and said, "I was led to believe that we were going to take over the Republic by force, not from the inside. And I was also led to believe that we were going to kill off all the clones, but it appears I was mistaken. Did you know about this all along as well."

"Yes, I did," Ventress nodded, smirking and adding, "Being the apprentice of Dooku does have its advantages."

Durge growled again. "Well, you can do whatever you like then, but I'm not about to accept having clone troopers running amuck across the Galaxy. They might not be true Mandalorians, but they were cloned from one of them and that is good enough reason for me to hate them. The Mandalorians killed my mentor many years ago and now that I am back, they will pay for it with their lives. All of them."

"Then why don't you join us?" Ventress asked. "Join our cause. We aim to put the Galaxy underneath our rule until nobody will even thinking of trying to rebel against us and crush what is left of the Jedi Order. In doing that, we'll probably end up having to invade Mandalore. Perhaps you can finally get the revenge which you desire."

"Backed by clones," Durge chuckled without humour. "Well, while I might appreciate the irony, I'm not sure that I will able to do that, Ventress."

"Where are you anyway?" Ventress asked. "Where are you broadcasting from?"

"Currently I am up in space above the planet," Durge responded. "I thought that I might come to check things out and see if the news was true."

"Then why don't you come down," Ventress asked. "I can arrange a meeting with Lord Sidious immediately. Perhaps he can make you a deal that would be to your liking. Besides, a bunch of the clones have split away from our Empire and joined the Jedi, so you'd have every opportunity to kill them?"

"Hmph," Durge snarled. "I doubt that there is anything which Sidious could say to convince me to work alongside clone troopers, even I do get the opportunity to kill Jedi. That's not to say I won't take the bounties though. I hear some Duros upstart has taken the title of the best Bounty Hunter in the Galaxy. We'll see how long that title remains now that I have returned to the scene."

"Then you will come down?" Ventress asked. She actually sounded a little hopeful, but she was thinking more along the lines of getting back into the good books of the Sith rather than just having missed Durge's companionship. After all, she was a Dark Jedi and didn't need friends any more than Durge needed them.

Durge seemed to consider for a couple of moments before his shrugged his shoulders, despite the heavy cybernetic suit that he was wearing. "Why not?" he asked himself. "It might be worth hearing what the new ruler of the Galaxy has to say. And we can discuss potential future dealings in any case. Alright then, I'll come down and have a talk with your masters. Let them know I'm coming so they don't shoot me out the air." He chuckled and added, "Not that that will kill me. But it would be a mild inconvenience."

Ventress smirked and said, "Very good Durge." She signed off and immediately turned around, only to find that Kinn Robb had finally dared to come out her room again. Ventress strode past her door a second time and she immediately ducked back inside and locked herself in again before Ventress even got the chance to do a fake lunge towards her.

* * *

A smile of sadistic satisfaction on her face, Ventress strode back towards the main chambers of Emperor Palpatine and stepped past the red-cloaked guards standing outside the room. As she stepped into the room, she could see Bok and Aurra standing off to one side with their arms folded while Dooku, as usual, stood just behind Palpatine.

"Masters," Ventress said, dropping onto one knee and giving them both another very low bow. "I have a message to deliver. Approximately ten minutes ago, I received a call on my..."

"You can stop there, child," Dooku interrupted. "We are already well aware of the call you received. After all, we are monitoring all communications in or out of the Senate Building just in case one of our esteemed Senators gets into their heads to try contacting the Jedi. We picked up your own transmission the moment it was sent through."

"Oh," Ventress said, looking a little disgruntled. "Yes, of course, Masters."

"I must admit, this is an unforeseen development," Palpatine mused as he pressed the tips of his fingers together. "I had almost completely forgotten about our Gen'Dai Bounty Hunter friend, so long has been his absence from the war effort. But now, he has returned, as I one day suspected that he would."

"It could be quite an opportunity to have him on board, Master," Dooku acknowledged. "When he served under our Separatist cause, Durge was a force to be reckoned with. The Jedi were often no match for his ferocity, not to mention his extreme endurance and near-immortality."

"That may be," Palpatine agreed. "But that immortality also made him very reckless. There were a number of times where we suffered defeat because he charged in too quickly. And Durge was not the commander that General Grievous was. In fact, as I recall, Grievous was able to best him and almost kill him in combat."

"Indeed, my lord," Dooku nodded. "But even after becoming beheaded and practically dismembered by Grievous, Durge still recovered fairly quickly. Personally, I believe that having such a force on our side is not something to snub our noses at. Most of the time he was extremely effective. Not to mention if he loses but manages to escape, it would only be a matter of days before he is back to fighting fitness. He could practically match an entire army with those regenerative abilities of his."

"I am not denying that, Lord Tyranus," Palpatine murmured in a low voice. "I understand that Durge could make a very useful ally indeed. Especially considering his skills at hunting as well. This could be the sort of thing that we're looking for. Not to mention he will last for years longer even than any of us, living on to serve my successor. Very well, we shall have this meeting with him."

"I shall see to it immediately, my lord," Dooku bowed and strode past him to send a message to the people at the landing platforms to let the incoming ship board and allow the person who stepped out of it up.

"Durge, huh?" Aurra stroked her sniper rifle slightly. "I have heard of him. I heard that he can survive a stab in the stomach with a lightsaber as if it were less that the bite of a gnat. An interesting person to say the least."

"He be big help against Jedi," Bok chuckled.

"Indeed he will," Ventress sneered. "Durge is not someone who you want to trifle with, even if you did know how to beat him, which nobody has been able to do for over two thousand years, not even the Mandalorians he hates so much. I believe that I may have found us a perfect ally against the Jedi."

"What do you mean found?" Aurra scoffed. "You didn't find him. It's not as if you suddenly remembered he existed and summoned him here to talk to us and make some deals with his Mightyness over here," she bowed slightly to Palpatine. "He came to you."

"That is irrelevant," Ventress stood tall and as regally as she could. "The point is that through me we will have gained an important asset."

"You really are a little sycophant, aren't you?" Aurra smirked.

Ventress scowled and glared at her. "Say that again, you pathetic excuse for a Dark Jedi!"

"You're doing everything in your power to kiss up to your Masters?" Aurra pointed out, a smirk of derision on her face. "Why is that, I wonder? You... feel that you have something to prove perhaps? Oh that's right... you do, because you screwed up too many times. Me, on the other hand..." she patted her rifle almost lovingly.

"Well, let's just say that a certain Twi'lek isn't around anymore after I took her on. Can you say the same?"

"That's enough please, Aurra," Palpatine chided her. "As much as you are right, Ventress has proven her worth in the past. It is up to her to prove it once again from this point on. And what's more, she had a lot more success on missions where she was partnered with Durge. Let's see if they can team up once again."

Aurra smirked at Ventress and subsided. Ventress glared at Aurra hatefully, but also subsided, not wishing to raise Palpatine's ire. That would have been a very dire mistake to make indeed.

* * *

It wasn't long before Durge stepped into the room, having been guided here from the landing platform by several of the armed guards. The Gen'Dai stood several feet taller than the next tallest person in the room and he looked more like a droid than a living being, even though he was in fact completely living underneath his cybernetic suit. The bristling amount of weaponry that covered his body didn't seem to bother Palpatine that much and the Sith Lord rose from his seat to greet the hulking menace.

"Greetings Durge," he said. "It is... a pleasant surprise to see that you did in fact survive your last encounter with the Jedi."

"I survived being buried alive for sixty years once," Durge said, a little scathingly. "It's going to take a lot more than what the Jedi threw at me to finally finish me off once and for all. So, you are the mysterious person who's been in charge all this time."

"Indeed," Palpatine nodded. "I am Darth Sidious, Master of Lord Tyranus and leader of the Separatists, now currently the Emperor of the entire Galaxy. I do not expect you to bow to me or to show me any kind of deference. After all, you are a Bounty Hunter and your kind don't bow to anyone."

"You got that right," Aurra smirked from the side. Durge glanced across at her for a second before she turned back to Palpatine.

"I wouldn't want to waste your time, old man," Durge folded his arms. "I understand that you have a offer you would like to make of me. If so then why don't you go ahead and make the offer. I am not the most patient of people."

"Yes, I remember that very well," Palpatine replied, settling back down in his seat again. "And yes, we do indeed have some business to conduct. As you have been informed, the Jedi are on the loose out the in Galaxy somewhere in numbers that are far too many for my liking. Somehow they managed to evade my trap to them. I do not know how they managed to get the message out about my identity so fast but the trap which I set with my clone troopers only killed off few of them in the grand scheme of things."

"And..." Durge pressed.

"And any asset I can get to eradicate them from the Galaxy is something which I feel I should exploit to the maximum," Palpatine sneered. "You are one such asset. Your near invincibility and hatred for the Jedi would fit in very well amongst my personal forces."

"I suspected as much," Durge replied. "You want me to become a Jedi hunter, do you not?"

"Would that be such a bad thing?" Palpatine asked. "After all, you do hate the Jedi, do you not?"

"It's not really hatred that drives me against the Jedi," Durge chuckled. "After all, they have not wronged me in any particular way. But the thrill of the hunt is almost unparalleled when the prey that you have been ordered to take is a Jedi. The Jedi are the most challenging and the most fun Bounty that you can find in the whole Galaxy."

"Well, I'm offering you the opportunity to hunt as many of them as you would like," Palpatine offered. "The whole Order is out there. Every one of them is fair game right now, even the most senior of the Jedi Council. Could you really turn that down? I am offering you power as a position of commander in my Empirical forces. That is a not a position that many will ever get the opportunity to be."

"Power is certainly tempting," Durge growled slightly. "And money and the opportunity to hunt Jedi even more so. But you cannot seriously expect me to work alongside clone troopers do you? The man reason I joined your Separatists were to exterminate those blights on the Galaxy and then I discover that they were essential to your plans? I am sure you can understand some hesitancy on my part, you Evilness."

"Indeed I can," Palpatine nodded. "But the deception was necessary for my plan to smoothly kill off the Jedi Order and become the ruler of the Galaxy in one fell swoop was to succeed. As things turned out, events began to spiral out of my control anyway, but now there is no deception. Having you on our side would be a great way to instil fear in the Galaxy. Fear I want every single planet to feel within a year."

"That doesn't change my opinion," Durge shook his head. "I will not work with Mandalorian scum in any form. Your clone stormtroopers should all be destroyed. That's all there is to it. Even against the Jedi, I will not lead clones into combat."

"I can see that you are filled with hatred," Palpatine sneered. "That is good. That is the sort of emotional presence we look for in people we want to recruit. But I am afraid that if our plan is to succeed, we need the clones. They are going to be the main hammer which falls on the Galaxy to subdue it completely. They are more efficient than droids ever were."

"I still will not work with them," Durge snarled.

"Then perhaps I can offer you a compromise," Palpatine replied, not looking the least bit concerned that Durge was objecting so heavily to the clones that would have to serve under him if he became a member of the Empire. If you agree to start working for me now, irrespective of the clones that you would have to fight with then I will make a call to Kamino in a few days time to organise the production of clones from a new DNA donor. Future stormtroopers will be cloned from a different template. A non-Mandalorian template."

Durge did look interested by this new offer. "And then what will become of the clones you already have at your disposal."

"Well, their usefulness will have come to an end," Palpatine chuckled sinisterly. "And one of the contingency orders I had ingrained into them when Tyranus and I completed the transactions for their growth orders them to kill themselves. Just imagine, all those Mandalorian clones shooting themselves at the exact same time. Would that not be something worth seeing?"

Durge's mask hid his face, but it was easy to see that this definitely intrigued him. He unfolded his arms slightly and appeared to gaze off into the middle-distance for a while, probably imagining the scenario which Palpatine had just laid out for him.

And he appeared to be liking what was in his minds eye.

"Well, that certainly is an interesting proposal," he said. "It would most definitely make my life complete to see something like that happening. It might be difficult for me to stomach working with your current clones until that time though. I was led to believe that troopers took ten years to grow."

"They do," nodded Palpatine. "But just think of the glorious sight it would make. Surely you can wait as long as ten years for such a moment. You don't even have to work that closely with the clones that we have, and in the meantime, you'll get the opportunity to kill lots of Jedi and crush hundreds of systems. What could be a better offer?"

"If there was money involved, that would be a better offer," Durge grunted.

"Money is not an issue for someone with as high a position as myself," Palpatine pointed out. "If you want money, you will get it."

Durge chuckled again and then shrugged his large armoured shoulders. "Well, you make a very tempting offer, Your Sithness. Money, power, the chance to kill Jedi and the opportunity to watch a mass suicide of clones." He placed his hand across his body and pulled out one of the blasters he had holstered at his waist. "I suppose I could consider your offer. Even with that, ten years is going to be a long wait."

"Join our ranks and we'll make sure those ten years are worth your while," Palpatine promised. "And then when the final moment draws where our new batch of clones, taken from a non-Mandalorian source, the moment where they all kill themselves will be that much sweeter, don't you think?"

"Indeed it would," Durge nodded. "Alright then. I suppose I could give it a trial run at least. We'll see if I can stomach your soldiers enough to not let it put me off killing the Jedi. But those renegade clones are going to feel real pain if they come across me."

"I won't stop you in that regard," Palpatine smirked. "Welcome aboard, Durge. It is a pleasure to have you under our command once again."

"I feel that one more thing should be mentioned," Aurra put in as she stepped forwards to address Surge. "Cad Bane the Duros appears to have joined with the Jedi. He's currently the man considered to be the Galaxy's best Bounty Hunter, but he threw his lot in with those scumbags. There's a chance that we might run into him in the not too distant future."

"Is that so?" Durge chuckled. "Well, if that is the case, then that Duros has a couple of hard lessons to learn. Most specifically, to choose your sides more carefully."

"Amen to that," Aurra nodded.

"If you see a young Togruta Jedi Padawan though," Ventress spoke up to her old partner. "Do not kill her. She is mine to finish, since our friend here finished off my second-most hated adversary yesterday." She scowled at Aurra, using the term friend as if it left a horrible taste in her mouth.

"And don't you soon forget it," Aurra said, her voice filled with impudence as she refused to look at the Dark Jedi, which was something which raised her ire considerably.

Palpatine placed his fingers together. Making an alliance with Durge put an end to any potential plans of allying himself with the Death Watch if they ever came out of hiding. Durge was an incredibly valuable asset even if he was just one person. Almost nothing could kill him, as was evident by the fact that he had effectively been blown up from the inside by Obi-Wan a few months ago and was still standing her right now.

Considering that, the loss of a comradeship with the Death Watch seemed to remarkably unimportant. The Jedi would have a lot to fear from this Gen'Dai. His skills were almost unparalleled in all of the Galaxy.

"Excellent," Palpatine smiled a little sickly. "It shouldn't be too long before we are ready to move lout and try to locate the rest of the Jedi Order. Soon you will be hunting and earning money once again, Durge and the Jedi will fear your name once more."

"Just as it should be," Durge nodded with satisfaction.

It was at this point that the holotransmitter built into Palpatine's desk began to bleep, indicating that there was an incoming transmission. Palpatine nodded to the room and said, "Excuse me," and answered it.

On the other side of the transmission was a man in military uniform, with a stern and slightly smug expression on his face and with head held high. Palpatine nodded and said, "Ah, Admiral Tarkin. How are you enjoying your promotion?"

"It is everything that you said it would be, Emperor," Tarkin replied with a slight air of sycophancy. "And I truly appreciate your decision to make me into the leader of your Empirical navy over all the other candidates. As I said at my promotion, I will not let you down. However, I am afraid that this call has a rather more urgent side to it than merely expressing my gratitude."

"Then speak," Palpatine instructed. "What is happening?"

"We've received a transmission from a nearby planet, my lord," replied Tarkin. "A transmission asking for permission to enter the planet and be granted an audience with yourself. And the strange thing is that it appears to be a Jedi who is making the call."

Palpatine raised a brow but gave no other indication of surprise on his face. The reaction in the rest of the room was easily visible though, apart from in Dooku who remained as impassive as his Master. Ventress' hands were already on her lightsabers, a grin of hopeful anticipation on her face at the prospect of gutting another Jedi, while Aurra, Bok and Durge all also tensed and held their weapons close, as if the Jedi was about to walk into the room.

"Interesting," Palpatine observed. "What does he want?"

"Strangely enough, my lord, he said that he wishes to join you," Tarkin replied. "He says that he wants to be a part of the order you have created and has done for some time. He says that he wants to be a new Dark Acolyte, but also that he does not wish to come to the planet in person unless he is guaranteed safe passage."

"Then this Jedi is sharp," Palpatine replied. "And wise to realise what showing up unannounced would do. If you would, Admiral Tarkin, which Jedi are we talking about here?"

"I believe his name is Krell, sir," Tarkin replied. "Master Krell."

Palpatine felt his smirk broaden a little. "Ah yes," he said. "I know about him." A lot of people knew about Jedi General Pong Krell. He was very large for a Jedi, but since he was a Besalisk, this was to be expected, as they were generally a very large species, with thick bodies and limbs, four arms and crests on the tops of their heads.

Pong Krell in particular was a vicious Jedi. Definitely not the run-of-the-mill compassionate, all-caring Jedi that most of them appeared to be. He was a recognised war hero, but the casualty numbers of his platoon was like no other Jedi. Though he had never had the pleasure of facing off against any of the main leaders among the Separatists, Palpatine had no doubt that if he had, he would have been a formidable opponent. Though he had the potential to wield four single lightsabers, he preferred to use to double-bladed lightsabers in his top two hands, leaving his bottom two hands free to use the Force to a greater extent than they would otherwise be.

When Pong Krell showed up on the battlefield, he could be a force for destruction, and he was certainly not afraid to throw wave after wave of clones at the enemy, something which just about no other Jedi in the known universe.

It was not a surprise that Pong Krell had survived Order 66. And not just because Palpatine knew he was such a formidable opponent. It was also because when he had attempted to check in with the clones that served under him to see if they had accomplished their goal, he had received no answer. It seemed that instead of fleeing from the clones like the others had, Krell had decided to slaughter them all.

Perhaps this would be another opportunity to add something new to his forces.

"Perhaps we can take things another way," he replied to Tarkin. "Put his transmission through to me and I will talk to him from here."

"But sir, I was under the impression that all Jedi had been declared traitors to your glorious new Empire," Tarkin frowned.

"Indeed," nodded Palpatine. "But we can do little about his presence at the moment and one thing which I have long-since learned is to always take an opportunity when one presents itself. Let's see what he wants with me before we decide what to do about him."

"Very well, sir," Tarkin nodded and his hologram vanished.

"Master," Dooku spoke up. "Am I to assume that you are planning to try and recruit Krell?"

"You are," Palpatine replied.

"Master, are you sure this is a good idea?" Ventress asked. "Krell is a Jedi. None of their kind can be trusted in anything. They're all scum and deserve to be killed."

"You used to be a Jedi yourself, Ventress," Palpatine reminded her. "Even the mightiest can fall to the whims of the Sith. You should know that. In any case, you are forgetting your place. You are not supposed to question my judgement in these matters and you would do well to remember it."

Ventress nodded and subsided immediately, looking disgruntled but refraining from speaking out against her Master.

The holotransmitter flared back into life and there was the familiar shape of Pong Krell. Palpatine had had little contact with this Jedi throughout the course of the war, as he had not been overfond of political affairs, and had only really been a part of award ceremonies if he received anything for his valiant efforts during battle, but Palpatine knew him well enough.

As per usual, the Besalisk was standing tall and proud, with his bottom two arms clasped behind his back in an at ease position, while his top two arms were folded in front of him in an imperious manner, as if he were planning to glare down at you and stomp you into the ground even if you hadn't done anything wrong.

The hologram was no life-size, but it was still pretty large. Palpatine knew that in real life, Krell would stand at least three feet taller than he would. The Besalisk's ears were long and pointed but also extremely thin, sweeping out behind the ridges on the top of his head. Underneath his wide mouth, which contained four sharp looking canine teeth alongside his ordinary ones, there was a small beard with three prongs that pointed downwards to his massively bulging chin, which looked like the throat pouch of some kind of frog or toad.

"Jedi Master Pong Krell," Palpatine addressed him. "What is the meaning of this communication? You are a Jedi, and you must surely know by this point that all Jedi, including yourself, have been declared traitors to my Empire."

"Yes, Emperor," Krell replied in a deepish voice, a smile adorning his wide mouth. "I understand that well enough to know not to come in person. However, I have a certain proposition that I would like to discuss with you. I understand now that you are a Sith Lord, and that you have been manipulating this war since the beginning. I understand that game that you have been playing all this time, using we Jedi as the pieces. Quite ingenious, I must say."

"And you have called to tell me that you are planning on finding a way of exacting your revenge on me, are you?" Palpatine asked him, a shrewd look on his face.

"Oh, nothing of the sort, I assure you," Krell replied. "In fact, I have come to wish the exact opposite. I understand full well that the Jedi Order is completely finished. We were never going to win the war. Even with all of these so called heroic exploits made by people like the A-Team, we were never going to win the war. It was always going to be you."

"Is that flattery which you are laying upon me, Krell?" Palpatine asked him. "Forgive me for asking, but what purpose will this be serving?"

"No, not flattery," replied Krell. "I do not do flattery. It is merely fact. A couple of months ago, I began to receive visions about the end of the war, and how the Republic would one day be torn apart from within to create a new Galaxy, under the rule of a brand new Order. The order of the Sith. Ever since then, I have lost interest in fighting the Separatists. Oh, I continued to do so to keep up appearances, but in reality, I was only biding my time, waiting to see if my vision began to come true or not."

"And it did, did it not?" Palpatine sneered. "Indeed it did. I was expected for you to somehow bring the situation back to your advantage somehow, though I had little idea what form it would take. When I received the transmission from the Jedi Temple, informing me that it was you who was the Sith Lord and that you were ordering the clones on us. Well, let's just say that I was filled with admiration, though it wasn't so convenient for me."

"What do you mean by 'convenient?'" asked Palpatine.

"Well," replied Krell. "Ever since my visions I had been secretly making plans to defect to your side, and trying to come up with a good scenario to secretly aid the Sith in their bid to occupy a planet, and in doing so, I would prove both my loyalty and my skills at the same time. But before I could come up with that scenario, Order 66 was suddenly sprung and I was forced to act out of self-defence."

"Indeed," Palpatine nodded. "I believe that you took out your entire squadron of clone troopers when you managed to learn that they were about to attack you. An impressive feat for a single Jedi, I suppose."

"I thank you for the compliment," Krell replied. "And now to the main point of this conversation. My wish to defect to the Dark Side still remains. I have never truly sympathised with the normal Jedi Code and the believe that we should always take care of others before yourselves. It makes little sense. We are Jedi, the protectors of the Galaxy. If we are protecting all the weaker people then we should be held in respect and awe regardless of our actions. They should even fear us. That would most definitely keep them in line would it not?"

Palpatine smirked. "That is actually surprisingly Sith of you, Krell. So, you truly wish to defect from the side of the light and join me and my own minions, do you?"

"Indeed I do," Krell nodded. "Siding with the Jedi would serve me no purpose now, even if I was a real member of their order. They have almost literally nothing left. Any attempt at resisting the Empire you have built up is doomed to failure anyway, even for some of the best of the order. As I said, I have been planning on joining the Sith for a while. Now seems to be as good a time as any."

"This is an interesting development, Krell," Palpatine informed him. "But surely you do not expect me to simply allow you to join us out of the blue like this. After all, throughout the war, you were responsible for several of our plots failing. Not to mention, you are a Jedi. How can I be sure that you are not secretly trying to gain my trust in order to get close to me and assassinate me? Can you answer that question?"

I have no interest whatsoever in overthrowing you or seeing you dead, Emperor," Krell sniffed. "I only wish to be a part of the Galaxy which you seek to build. After all, I have always enjoyed the feeling of power, which is one of the main reasons why I brooked no arguments from my clone troopers. I only wish to be in a high position in your Empire, so that all of the Galaxy will know to fear the name of Pong Krell."

"Alright," Palpatine responded. "How can I know if you are intending to kill me so that you can take my place to become the leader of the whole Galaxy."

"I am no fool, Emperor Palpatine," Krell snorted. "I do not think that that would be perceived very well by the Galaxy, especially since most of it is still ignorant of the fact that you are a Sith Lord. Make me an apprentice of yours and I can guarantee to you that it will be worth your while."

"Can you now?" Palpatine interlocked his fingers. "Would you be willing to kill off other Jedi. They were members of your own order, were they not? Did you not have any friends among them that you would be somewhat reluctant to kill?"

Krell waved a meaty hand dismissively. "Of course not."

"I have nothing in common with the Jedi anymore and barely did to begin with. I never had anything that you can call a friend in the order, and certainly held no attachments. If they stand in my way, I will cut them down without mercy if I have to."

"Well, you certainly seem to be thinking along the right lines for a member of the Dark Side," Palpatine nodded. "Very well, Master Krell. I will arrange for you to be allowed access to Coruscant. Head for the co-ordinate we send to you and we shall meet you there soon."

"Alright then," Krell nodded, a smirk appearing on his mouth which made his bulging chin pulsate slightly. "I will be there within the hour." And then the hologram vanished.

"He certainly seemed to have the right temperament," Dooku murmured. "And if what I have heard about General Krell is true, he might make a fine addition to our ranks."

"Indeed," Palpatine nodded. "But we must not be hasty to add new allies to our ranks willy-nilly. We do have Durge now, after all. And he alone will be an extreme asset against the Jedi."

"You are too kind," Durge chuckled from nearby.

"In any case, while I did not sense any deception from him, I would prefer it if we were sure first. Lord Tyranus, I want you and Asajj Ventress to go and meet with him at the rendezvous point which I pick out. I want him to join our forces but if you catch even the slightest whiff of betrayal then you have my permission to gut him where he stands."

"It will be my honour, Master," nodded Dooku. "Ventress."

"Yes, my lord," Ventress bowed.

"Let us move out, and see if we cannot add another deadly enemy to the ranks of our Empire," Dooku instructed as he obtain the co-ordinates from Palpatine and then strode towards the door with intent to grab a speeder. Ventress dutifully followed him as he moved towards the door.

As she did, she muttered to herself. "I suppose he cannot be any worse than General Grievous. Certainly no less insufferable."

The door slid shut behind them and Palpatine, having overheard Ventress' comment murmured, "Ah yes, that's right. I need to deal with Grievous and the remaining Separatists, do I not? The occupation of the Galaxy so early forced it from my mind. Grievous and the others are no longer needed – it's time to have them eradicated. Durge," he looked up and fixed his eyes on the mask covering the face of the Gen'Dai. "Would you like to undergo your first mission as a part of our Empire."

"Very well," Durge nodded. "I never did like that cyborg anyway." His dislike of Grievous was well-founded. He had been with Ventress when Dooku sent them both to a Separatist space-station, claiming there had been an intruder, which had, in reality been Grievous, who Count Dooku was testing before he was revealed to the Jedi. Unprepared for the speed and dexterity of the former Kaleesh, Durge had had his head chopped off and a pair of lightsabers swept through his torso.

Round two didn't seem like a bad idea. And this time it would be Grievous who wouldn't be suspecting him.

"Good," nodded Palpatine. "Here are the co-ordinates of the secret base he is staying at. It is not very large. A calculated strike from above would be enough to wipe the whole thing out in one go if you're feeling destructive. If you would prefer to settle things hand to hand then be my guest. Prove your worth for us once again, my friend."

"My pleasure," Durge growled as he turned around and left the room.

Palpatine, alias Sidious, leant back in his chair and took the opportunity to relax for a few moments. Finally, everything seemed to be going his way.

* * *

Dooku and Ventress were at the rendezvous point well before Krell arrived and when he did, it was relatively easy to spot his ship coming towards them. Too large to fit in the cockpits of most starfighters, he appeared to have commandeered a shuttle after he had killed off all the clones under his command.

The rendezvous point itself was actually at the entrance to the remains of the Jedi Temple. The mighty building had long since stopped smoking, but the piles of rubble and huge marks made by cannon blasts in the side of the walls definitely made it a sorry sight. Sidious had picked this place out as the rendezvous so that Dooku could observe any emotional response on the part of Krell to determine if he was telling the truth or not.

When Krell stepped out of the shuttle arms folded or clasped behind his back as the case may be, he plodded towards Dooku and Ventress on his large feet, easily towering over the both of them. He was even taller than a Wookiee, though not be a lot. He stopped in front of them and greeted them with a nod of his head.

"Count Dooku," he acknowledged. "Assassin Ventress. I suppose I could say that it is a pleasure to see you."

"Indeed, Master Krell," nodded Dooku. He then lifted a hand into the air as a signal to stand down, because the area was still crawling with clones, who were making the place secure and keeping the general populace away and those clones had hefted their blasters towards Krell at the sight of him. At a signal from Dooku though, they stood down, though it was clear there was reluctance in a good many of them.

Krell looked up at the ruins of the entrance of the Temple and chuckled. "Well, you certainly did a number on this place. It must have been quite an attack."

"Yes, it was," Dooku nodded. "A shame that I couldn't be part of it, but I was... detained at the time." Dooku was pleased to note that Krell did not look at all bothered that the home of the Jedi had been reduced to waste. That was a good sign, for even the most stoic of Jedi would probably have had some reaction to the desecration of the Temple."

"This was one of the things which I saw in my visions," Krell informed them. "The destruction of the Temple like this. That's what really clued me into the fact that we Jedi were destined to lose. You though, Count," he smirked at Dooku. "You probably knew right from the start, didn't you?"

"Of course I did," Dooku replied. "Ventress."

Ventress smirked and, seemingly without warning, she jumped forward and lunged at Krell, lightsabers in her hands quick as whips and slashed at him seemingly completely out of the blue. Krell's response was swift and immediate – his top tow arms lashed downwards and grabbed his double-ended lightsabers, pulling them off and igniting them in a fluid motion, one pair of blades blue and the other green, and slashing them up to block Ventress' blows with one blade from each weapon.

He then twirled both weapons in vicious circles to throw Ventress off and lashed out with his bottom to hands to push her backwards with the Force. Ventress managed to catch herself in mid-air and land on her feet, sliding to a stop right next to where Dooku was standing.

As Krell and Ventress faced off against each other, Dooku raised a hand again and said, "Well done, Krell. You have just passed the first test. If a Jedi had been unable to defend against that attack without warning then they would not be fit to join our ranks. You can sheath your weapons now. We have no interest in killing you."

Krell snarled a little, but when Ventress sheathed her own blades, he did the same and said, "I do not appreciate surprises like that, Dooku."

"Maybe," Dooku smirked. "But if you are to become a Dark Acolyte, you must get used to them. Nevertheless, I am satisfied enough to allow you to join us. Whether you remain with us will depend on your success in the field."

"The field will not be a problem for me," Krell smirked.

And as Dooku and Krell began to finalise the details of becoming a new Dark Jedi, one of the clones standing nearby grimaced. It was Commander Stone, and he was far from happy. Things weren't going the way he had envisioned it. Not only was he having to take orders from a Sith Lord, but the Sith Lord was suddenly allowing one of the Jedi to have their name removed from the list of Empirical traitors.

What was he supposed to make of this? Krell was obviously not a compassionate Jedi, so why was he getting the pardon? Why weren't the famously good Jedi like Yoda or the A-Team getting a pardon?

This reeked of wrongness, but poor Stone had no idea what he was supposed to do about it.

* * *

Ugh, this chapter was difficult. I know next to nothing about Durge, having never watched the previous Clone Wars series or read any of the comics, but I felt that he was such a major antagonist that had not yet been accounted for that I really couldn't leave him out of the story in the end. I hope I got his personality and mannerisms right, but, like I said, I have no idea.

As to Krell, well, he was a last minute addition really It's a good thing the Umbara episodes came out when they did or I would have had to skip him out the story entirely. But a Jedi like that was always going to go bad. Krell wouldn't have gone running and hiding, so I introduced him here to be another barrier our heroes will have to get through.

Anyway, hope you liked.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The trip to Maridun is fully underway, with the Tenacious Ten off to meet an old, big and very, very fierce friend of theirs who holds a grudge against Palpatine. Honestly, he had to return at some point since he survived and he's making a triumphant revisit to the story now.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 184 : Godzillo Returns**


	184. Godzillo Returns

So sorry for the delay on this chapter, but I assure you there is a very good reason for the fact that I didn't do any writing on Saturday or Sunday. The first reason is that I went home for the weekend and, as you know that always means less writing. The second, and perhaps more important reason is that on Sunday, it was my birthday. I have officially turned twenty now, and I feel no different than from when I was nineteen. But even though I am no longer a teenager, rest assured that my love of Digimon remains the same and will probably never abate.

Anyway, read on, as I post my first chapter as a twenty-year old boy (I still don't consider myself a man yet).

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 184:- Godzillo Returns**

* * *

The Lurmen people had been through a large amount of change throughout their lives. They had fled the planet Mygeeto to avoid an inevitable invasion and come to the planet Maridun to seek sanctuary from the coming war. They had had to adjust to a new liftestyle, new foods and new climate. Practically a new everything.

The one thing that they had never changed, and probably never would, was their aversion to violence. Many of them now lived in the way that Wag Too, son of the chieftain did, believing that they should not take up arms unless and only unless it was absolutely necessary for themselves to stay alive. Some others believed more in the way of the chieftain himself, Tee Watt Kaa, who believed they shouldn't take up arms EVER.

Despite the difference of opinion, the Lurmen colony thrived on Maridun, free from war and being allowed to live out their lives in peace and harmony with each other. There were few arguments and no oppressing presence, so it could definitely be said that the Lurmen had found the change to be extremely beneficial too them.

But while the shift to the planet had been the biggest change to their lives, it was certainly not the weirdest. The weirdest had been adjusting to having an animal so large that it could probably crush the whole colony in a single footstep if they grouped together, living alongside them.

Although the words 'alongside them' are probably misleading. The Zillo Beast, who had been dropped here by the Jedi only last week, didn't spend a lot of time around the village. It was not the kind of animal that spent a lot of time in the same place and spent the majority of its time wandering across the grassy plains of Maridun, causing the ground to tremble with just about every footstep.

Aayla had chosen well when she had picked this planet out to be the Beast's refuse. There was plenty for it to eat, in the form of the local wildlife, and there was more than enough of that wildlife to ensure that the Beast did not drive everything to extinction by eating it all. The Beast didn't actually eat a lot anyway for a creature of its formidable size, but this was due to it being a cold-blooded reptile, which did not need food in such vast amounts as a mammal of the same size would.

Its presence seemed to do little to affect the Lurmen colony in the beginning. For the first few days, they had barely even seen it, only noticing it on the horizon a couple of times as it wandered around establishing a new territory out of the grasslands. After the initial rides on its head, some of the younger Lurmen were actually disappointed that it wasn't hanging around all the time.

But nevertheless, after those first couple of days, the Lurmen began to notice the positive effects that living alongside such a monstrous creature which had no interest in hunting them themselves. The benefits which Chuchi had promised them were coming true already. For one thing, the Amani which had been encroaching on their range had completely disappeared by this point. The Lurmen had found the remains of hastily scattered campsites that looked they had been left behind at the speed of light. Unaware of the intelligence of the Beast, the Amani appeared to have fled at the sight of it heading towards them.

There were not bodies, so the Lurmen couldn't tell if any had been killed or not, as the Zillo Beast could probably have swallowed them all whole with ease. However, they didn't find any blood either, which was encouraging. They were free to pick the fruits they relied on in peace.

They were also pleased to see that, as of yet, none of those fruit plants had been crushed underneath massive reptilian feet. It appeared that the Zillo Beast was surprisingly well-coordinated for a creature of its stature, and the Jedi had warned it not to crush the food of the friendly locals. It certainly wasn't the dumb animal that most people seemed to have mistaken it has.

There had also been a more direct time where its help had come in handy, and that had been when the Lurmen village had received a sudden, unexpected attack from a trio of Mastiff Phalones. The half vulture, half dog wingless griffin like creatures had suddenly stormed into the village in the middle of the night, screeching at the top of their lungs and barrelling through the pods, scattering the terrified Lurmen that were still outside of their homes.

The Lurmen had lost a good many of their number to the Mastiff Phalones over their time on Maridun. The pods they lived in were usually thick enough to prevent entry but it you were caught outside, you were in real trouble. As the Lurmen had dashed for their homes, or indeed any home that was nearby, the Mastiff Phalones had zeroed in on their targets, charging in front of dashing Lurmen and cutting off their dashes for safety, forcing them to turn the other way in screaming panic with the hooked beak snapping at their heels.

Wag Too had been one of the ones outside at the time, and he was no fool. He knew that they didn't stand a chance against a Mastiff Phalone unless they co-ordinated an attack and bound up its feet with rope, but the attack had been so swift and the Lurmen were so panicked that there was no opportunity for that. Nevertheless, when he saw one of the creatures closing in on a young female Lurmen, he had acted immediately, leaping from the top of the pod he was standing on and landing on the back of the Phalone.

It had immediately forgotten about its quarry and started bucking, trying to throw its new rider off, and Wag Too had leapt clear just before that could happen and made a mad dash for a pod. The Mastiff Phalone's taloned feet slammed the ground as it dashed after him and Wag Too threw himself into a roll, whooshing across the ground and through the front door of a pod, just as the Phalone's teeth slammed shut behind him.

The result had been the Phalone barrelling head-long into the pod and slamming the top of its head into the side. This had been enough to daze it and sending it crashing onto its side, allowing Wag Too to appear at the door and nod at the dizzy predator in satisfaction.

But then he had heard a cry of distress from nearby and his eyes widened in horror. "Father!" he had cried, as he spotted Tee Watt Kaa backing away as the other two Mastiff Phalones closed in on him. The chieftain was not as fit as he had once been and had been unable to find cover in time.

Wag Too could see Tub nearby, his horrified friend clutching a small pitchfork in his hands. The two of them shared a nod and charged out of hiding, determined to try and attract the attention of the predators away from their chieftain. Several other Lurmen followed, some of them now bearing rope as they prepared for a life-or-death struggle between them and their nemeses.

But before they could get there, a shadow deeper than the night they were currently in suddenly fell across them blotting out the moon. Both the Lurmen and the Phalones halted and looked up in surprise, balking as a pair green orbs hovered far above them, shining pale green light out of the night sky like a pair of head-lamps. Illuminated in their glow was the face of the Zillo Beast, who was looking down the Phalones with a vicious snarl on its jaws, its rows and rows of teeth clearly prominent and the nostrils on top of its head flaring in anger.

All Wag Too could think though, was, _How the heck did it manage to get this close to the village without any of us hearing it coming?_

The Zillo Beast reared high and let off a massively loud shriek of anger from its massive mouth, its three arms flaring outwards and making it look even larger, the clawless fingers flexing as it stepped forward.

It then lowered its head right down to the level of the Phalones with the speed of a striking snake and let loose a deeper, more guttural roar that practically shook the entire village with the soundwaves, right in the faces of the other predators, who had apparently gone stiff with fright. Having such massive teeth and jaws displayed to them so close up did the job and the Phalones dashed off into the tall undergrowth so fast that it was a surprise they didn't pull every muscle in their body.

The Beast looked down at the smaller beings with apparent concern. In its previous life on Malastare, it wouldn't have given a damn about the other life-forms. But these Lurmen were friends of the ones who had saved him and he didn't forget things like easily. He never forgot anything really. He could recall most of his life with ease, but if there was anything that would always stick out in his mind, it was the events that had transpired on Coruscant.

As to the Lurmen, thanks to the timely intervention of the Zillo Beast, none of them were harmed. Remarkably, none of them had been crushed be a careless footstep either, though Tee Watt Kaa had been deafened for about two days thanks to the Beast's roar, which had been directed right as him as well as the Phalones.

Nevertheless, he was grateful that the Beast had saved his life. And what was more, it had done it without even killing the Phalones. How much better could it get for a pacifist?

The Beast had hung around the village for the rest of the day, keeping an eye out for any Phalones that might think of trying their luck a second time. None had, but the Beast had taken all precautions and had gone to sleep _around_ the village. It's long serpentine body coupled with its enormous size meant that, despite its armour it was more than capable of curling its body around the entire village, until the tip of its blunt nose practically touched the vicious spikes on its tail.

The Phalones had not bothered the Lurmen since, even when the Beast had left afterwards. What was more, the local Fwits were being kept away as well. Occasionally those smaller animals would try their luck in striking an unwary Lurmen, but the Beast's presence had been more than enough to send the creatures scurrying for cover. After all, when you were smaller than a Lurmen, you did not pick on something several thousand times bigger than you are.

If you want to survive that is.

The Lurmen were beginning to look to the future, and there was a sense of joy in the air at the prospect of real safety for the first time. The Zillo Beast had taken the place of the Phalones at the top of the food chain, but it didn't even consider them a part of that food chain. They would probably prosper now, thanks to the Jedi. Even Tee Watt Kaa, who was reluctant to accept any favour from Jedi considering the fighting they had been doing, admitted it.

Things seemed to be going along first-rate.

* * *

And that brings us up to the present day. As Pong Krell and Durge joined the efforts of the Sith on Coruscant, the one being who had recognised the heart of evil in the Chancellor before it was revealed by others was stomping across the surface of Maridun in search of food. The Beast could clear hill tops with a single stride and each thud of its feet caused a reverberation to ripple through the ground. A reverberation that he had long been used, having lived with it all his life. Even after he had hatched from his massive egg, he had been big enough to make the ground quake slightly.

Being so big meant that stealth hunting was practically out of the question, and the Beast had spotted several corinathoths not far away. Its spiked tail lashed back and forth behind it, eager to make another kill, and it dropped to all fours as it prepared itself to charge.

By this point, the corinathoths were already running, turning around and dashing along as quickly as they could, bellowing in terror at the sight of the monstrous predators. But the Beast was not concerned about this at all. Its tongue flicked in anticipation of the hunt and it flung itself forwards, its curiously shaped ankles and toes propelling it forwards like giant springboards.

It dashed across the plains on four of its limbs, its fifth one and its tail swishing from side to side above it as its body hurtled itself into the hunt. Its massive strides gained ground on the corinathoths so quickly that it was on them before they knew what was happening.

Before two seconds had passed, the Beast had his snack, snatching a corninathoth from the ground in its jaws and tossing the large hippo-sized, spiked beast into the air as if it were a grain of rice. The corinathoth only had time for a faint moo of terror before it was gone down the gullet of the Beast, lunging up to grab its prey and down it in one go.

The other corinathoths continued running. The Beast looked down at them and decided that they were not worth it. It had plenty of energy to spare and they could always be hunted down later if necessary. Maridun had its fair share of large herbivores, but these ones were its favourite.

It felt no pity for them. Pity would only get in the way when it came to the hunt, and that was the only way it had ever thought about anything until the Jedi, the Digimon and Chuchi had walked into its life. To him, they were just food. And given his diet was strictly carnivorous, he couldn't really afford to think any other way. Browsing on Maridun's massive trees simply would not work for a creature like him.

The Beast turned around to leave the corinathoths to flee in panic and began to stride back the way it had come, allowing the sun to warm the thick, impenetrable scales on its back and stretching out its long arms as if in contentment. That might be because it _was_ content. This place was so much better than the dark planet of Malastare had ever been. Everything that a reptile of his size needed.

Meal eaten, the Zillo Beast settled down to have a brief rest to sleep it off.

However, it was woken some time later by a strange, roaring noise filling the air. The Beast's massive luminescent eyes opened as the sound seemed to descend from above, and it raised its massive head, tilting it to the side and cocking its earhole in an attempt to locate the source of the noise.

When it spotted it, it immediately scrambled to its feet and stood as tall as it could on its hind legs, like an enormous, scaly meerkat trying to get a better view. In the distance ahead of him, he could see a large triangular shape descended from out of the sky at a slow and steady pace, heading away from him and in the direction where it knew the Lurmen village to lie in.

It knew that kind of shape.

It was one of those giant transport machines that the Jedi and the people they worked with used. What was it doing here?

The Beast's eyes narrowed in suspicion. Surely it had not been on Maridun long enough for those Jedi beings to come and check up on his progress and see if he was okay. Something was up and quite frankly the Beast didn't like the looks of this. He knew that the Jedi and the man who had ordered to have him killed to have his armour ripped off – the pale man – both used the same giant transports. Was it possible that the pale man had somehow learned of his existence and come to try and have him killed again.

The Beast bared its teeth at the thought.

Then it realised that standing around and thinking wasn't going to solve anything.

A look of suspicion in its eyes, the Beast stepped forwards and began to stride rapidly in the direction of the village and the ship which was slowly descending through the sky ahead of him. It would find out what was going on, and this time they would find it a lot more difficult to capture him if they wanted him.

* * *

A few minutes earlier, and the _Acclamator_-class cruiser had pulled out of hyperspace above Maridun. Unlike with Felucia, there was no sudden space brawl, and no laser fight between their cruiser and several others. Maridun had been of little importance to either side throughout the war, so there was little need for any Empirical presence here. It was far from anywhere, and there were not many resources that the Separatists could exploit.

It was one of the reasons why it made such a perfect location to house the Zillo Beast.

It was also extreme luck that the Jedi had been on this planet when one of the Separatists actually had taken an interest in this planet, or, more importantly, its inhabitants. But, then again, luck doesn't exist and everything happens for a reason, so it was possible that incident that first brought the A-Team together had been the Force's way of giving them a hint of what was come in the future.

"Well, here it is again," Terriermon chuckled. "The planet where Lopmon and I first landed in this universe. Brings back memories, doesn't it?"

"Indeed it does," Lopmon nodded. "Would you prefer to remain in the ship this time, Terriermon? After all, the Lurmen grow a lot of Jurcian fruit down there. They might finally decide to do something about the illogical fear that you have of them. Or maybe they won't, who knows?"

Terriermon scowled, and ignored the chuckles from the others. "Not really a joking matter, Loppy," he said. "Remember what happened when we ate the Jurcian fruit down there? We went berserk."

"Yep," Lopmon nodded. "And next time it happens, I want to not be a part of it so that I can sit back and watch as you make a complete idiot of yourself."

"Forgive me if I'm mistaken," Barriss grinned. "But I thought that Terriermon didn't actually need to ingest Jurcian fruit to make a complete idiot of himself."

"Shut up," Terriermon pouted.

"You shut up," Barriss giggled.

"No, you shut up."

No, you shut up."

"No, you."

"No, you."

"You."

"You."

"You."

"You."

"Momentai,"

"Ooh, you're quick off the draw," Barriss chuckled. "I was going to say that on the next go, but you beat me to it this time."

"Ha," Terriermon thumped a tiny fist against his chest. "I am the Master of Momentai."

"That has got to be the weirdest title you have ever given yourself, Terriermon," Henry rolled his eyes.

"Eh, I'll come up with weirder ones in the years to come. Just you wait for it, Henry," his partner grinned.

"Yay. I look forward to it," Henry murmured tonelessly, a look of 'Help me' in his eyes. The others were struggling to disguise snorts of laughter and not particularly succeeding in doing so.

"Ah, I missed this," Ahsoka smiled. "All the friendly talking and teasing we pass around each other. We haven't really had time to do this sort of thing for a while, have we? We've been too worried about sorting out the Galaxy and trying to make sure that Aayla stays alive and keep the Digimon a secret and a whole host of other things."

"Yeah," Rika agreed. "Not to mention we've all split up quite a lot in the recent missions. This is the first actual assignement that all ten on us have ever really been on together from the start, isn't it? Because the attack of the Beast on Coruscant doesn't really count, since that was more of an emergency than anything else."

"Hey, you're right," Aayla blinked. "First there was the listening posts, then the slaves on my planet coupled with tracking down Sidious and then our emissary missions. None of us were all together from start to end on any of those exploits."

"Guess that makes this mission something special," Suzie grinned. "And we're all going to find the Zillo Beast again, and he was the one that we all worked together to beat the first time."

"True," Rika chuckled. "It's like a big circle of coincidence, isn't it?"

"Yeah," nodded Ahsoka. "The only thing we still haven't had a chance to do for a while is our dancing. Maybe we could do that at some point before we head off to battle against the Sith. All ten of us..."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Snips," Anakin raised a hand. "I still don't fancy the idea of prancing around like a lunatic, thank you very much. You guys an do all of that if you really want to but leave me out of it, okay?"

"Somebody's grumpy," Terriermon whispered.

Ahsoka snorted and added, "Come on, Master, it's not that hard. You've never really gone the full effort and let yourself loose like we have. You might actually like it if you tried it, you know."

"Can we focus a little more on the mission at hand here," replied Anakin, smoothly detaching the conversation away from Ahsoka's repeated attempts to get him to dance, which he was sure was just an excuse to point and laugh at him for looking ridiculous, which he had little interest in. He'd got enough of that during their prank war while it was still on. "We're here at Maridun and we're heading down towards the planet's surface right now. We're here to find another ally to add to our cause against the Sith, not talk about dancing."

Renamon chuckled, but said, "Anakin's right. We should probably focus on the mission instead."

"Thank you," nodded Anakin.

"Of course," Renamon added with a smirk, placing a paw on Anakin's shoulder. "It could be that Anakin doesn't want to dance with us because he believes that he'll get left in the dust by the skills we've picked up over the last few months."

Anakin glowered a little at the chortles which resulted from this statement.

"You mean the skills you guys picked up," Barriss snickered. "I haven't really had the opportunity to do a lot of dancing with you guys."

"No, but you're a fast learner," Aayla grinned. "And now that our minds are in sync thanks to that Digi-Gnome, it should be much easier for you to catch up. Anyway, for the moment, I believe that Anakin is right and we should put this aside for the time being. Let's get ready to head out."

The whole team promptly got their game-faces on and nodded, turning to head down to the hangar before the large ship permeated the layer of thin clouds above the planet. It slowly lowered itself towards the ground, heading to the one location on the planet that the Republic ships had headed towards ever since the incident where the A-Team had first all worked together. The scene which they had protected from being obliterated by the defoliator cannon of Lok Durd.

The Lurmen village.

* * *

In the village itself, Wag Too looked upwards at the familiar sounds of the giant engines approaching from above. It was a sound that he had heard several times by now, and he knew what it meant before he had even set eyes on the ship. Nevertheless, when he did see it, he still looked surprised. He hadn't been expecting a visit from the Republic so soon after the Zillo Beast had been dropped off with them.

As the large cruiser lowered itself towards the ground not far from the village, Tee Watt Kaa hobbled forwards and groaned slightly at what he saw. "Oh dear," he murmured. "Whatever this is, it probably isn't a good thing. What do you think the Jedi are going to be bringing us this time? Some kind of colourful species of animal, or some bad news?"

"Don't talk like that, father," Wag Too chided the older Lurmen. "Whatever it is, its probably important."

"Yes, I know," Tee Watt Kaa nodded. "That's what worries me. The Jedi never come unless there is something important, and it's rarely the good kind of important."

Much as he didn't like to admit it, Wag Too knew that he was right. He hoped that whatever this was wouldn't affect the Lurmen quite as much as the last few visits had, but he knew that he shouldn't hold his hope up. As the Lurmen gathered behind father and son to observe the giant cruiser settled down a short distance away, the older Lurmen nodded to his son.

As one, the two of them began to walk slightly awkwardly and in more of a sideways shuffle than anything else towards the cruiser as its large extending feet finally settled down on Maridun grass (which appeared to have regrown quite nicely since Lok Durd had torched it all.)

The ramp of the ship descended out from the side and a small group of figures could be seen making their way down the ramp towards them. Wag Too's eyes were keen and his eyes lit up when he recognised the familiar faces of the Jedi. At least whoever it was coming wouldn't all be total strangers. And the Digimon were all with them, which meant things were about to get interesting if experience was anything to go by.

"Jedi," nodded Tee Watt Kaa as he met them by the foot of their ramp. "Digimon. Tamers," he added so that he was addressing all three groups. "To what do we owe your visit this time around. I am assuming that you have not stopped by for a friendly catch-up and a swig of Jurcian juice."

"Well as to the first option, we would always stop by for a chat if we had the time," Terriermon grinned. "As to the Jurcian Juice – NEVAH!"

Renamon dropped her tail over his head and ignored his squirming as he tried to free himself from her fur. "As you can quite plainly see, Terriermon has not changed much."

"Well, it was last week when we last saw him," Wag Too chuckled. "I would be a bit alarmed if someone with a personality like his changed quickly. I'd be alarmed if he changed at all really."

"See," Terriermon grinned as he poked his head out from beneath the yellow fur. "I'd start freaking people out if I changed. That's more than enough reason to stay the way I am, isn't it?"

"Not really," Henry rolled his eyes. "By staying the way you are, you drive _us_ crazy. At least the recipient of your actions would be somebody else."

"Oh, ha ha," Terriermon rolled his eyes.

"Momentai."

"BARRISS!" Terriermon shouted.

Barriss chuckled and said, "Ha! Got you that time, Master of Momentai."

"Nice one, Barriss," Ahsoka grinned, giving her a light punch in the shoulder.

Tee Watt Kaa shook his bearded head and said, "Honestly, sometimes I cannot understand why people such as you have been having such success in your war that you have spanning the Galaxy. You all look like the smallest of armies go cut you down in seconds at the moment."

"Let 'em try," Anakin replied, patting his lightsaber blade. Tee Watt Kaa flinched slightly, and Aayla elbowed Anakin to remind him of the Lurmen's pacifism, meaning that the idea of cutting someone up for any reason did not sit well with him. But the Lurmen quickly recovered and shook his head.

"Anyway," he said. "I'll ask again, why are you here this time? Are you hear to warn us of another Separatist invasion or something?"

"No," Renamon shook her head and stepped forward, until she stood right in front of the Lurmen. She loomed high over him, so much so that he would normally have been intimidated, but the kidn look on her face told him that he didn't need to be. "Our visit actually concerns the Zillo Beast."

"Ah, I thought so," Wag Too chuckled, relief filling through him slightly at this news. "I was almost one-hundred percent sure that you would be visiting to check up on him?"

"Checking up on him is only a bonus," Renamon shook her head. "No, we're here for another reason."

"Did the Chancellor find out that he lives here?" Wag Too asked, looking alarmed.

"No," Lopmon shook her head. "If he had, then he would be here already. No, we're here to talk to him and ask him something. Have you seen him recently? Has he been around here since we left."

"Oh, yes," nodded Wag Too, a grin on his furry face. "He's definitely been hanging about the place a couple of times. I truth, we cannot thank you enough for picking this place for your giant, scaly place to frequent. Because of him, none of us have been eaten this week, even when we got attacked in the middle of the night by some Mastiff Phalones. And he spent hours and hours after that attack standing guard to make sure we would be okay throughout the night.

Renamon chuckled. "What did Chuchi tell you? We all told you that having him around would be a huge benefit, didn't we?"

"Indeed you did," Wag Too nodded. "Just about all of our problems have been solved by him."

"Well, I'm sorry to have to tell you this guys," Anakin frowned. "But we're going to have to take him away again."

"What?" Wag Too asked. "You are."

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "Just for a couple of days is everything goes well and then you can have you big scaly protector back as if nothing had happened and you guys can continue to live in the peace that you've been wanting. But right now, we need some help. Some help which we feel the Zillo Beast is more than capable of pulling off.

"What is it?" Wag Too asked. "What's going on? Ugh, this is one of the few things I don't know about this planet. You just don't know what's happening out in the rest of the Galaxy if you live here."

"It's very complicated," Renamon informed them.

"It would probably be better to explain it all in one big go," Henry agreed. "Have you seen the big guy anywhere around here."

Wag Too looked like he was about to reply, but then he stopped, stared over the shoulders of the Jedi for several moments and then chuckled to himself. "Oh, I should have paid attention to my instincts," he snorted. "My feet were sensing the ground vibrations for several minutes before any of this happened."

He pointed over their shoulders, causing the Tenacious Ten to swing around to look behind them. Rather like Wag Too himself, all of them were surprised to see that the Zillo Beast was looming over all of them. He was standing on the other side of the _Acclamator_-class cruisers, with its two front hands grasping the metal hull of the ship and its long neck peering over the side of the ship to look down at those on the other side.

"How the heck did he do that?" Terriermon gawped. "How did I not hear him coming?"

"He's surprisingly good at doing that," chuckled Wag Too. "Anyway, there he is. The guy your looking for."

"Hey, Godzillo!" Terriermon cheered and waved up at him with an ear. "How've you been?"

The pupils in the eyes of the Beast dilated as it focused a little more closely on the group. Much like before, when it had spotted Sakuyamon for the first time on Coruscant, there was a clear amount of recognition in its massive green eyes. It lowered its head down towards them, leaning over the ship and putting so much weight on the top of it that the metal legs groaned in protest, but held firm nevertheless.

The Beast placed its nose right in front of the Jedi and the Digimon and turned its head side-on to fix one eye, so big that all of them could have stood on it with ease if it were some kind of platform, on them. The group watched the eye swing back and forth a little, checking them all out individually, and then its mouth opened to release a low, but pleased sounding growl.

Just as she had done when the Beast had been held captive by Palpatine and when it was pinned down by MegaGargomon and Cherubimon, Renamon stepped forwards and placed a paw on its scaly skin, next to its huge eyeball.

"Hello again, my friend," she smiled. "I hope that this planet has been treating you."

The Beast appeared to give its equivalent of a grin, its mouth pulling backwards to reveal its teeth in some terrifyingly wide smile, a low rumble building in the back of its throat as if to answer Renamon's question. Renamon had no doubt that he knew exactly what she had meant. The Beast was very intelligent, after all.

"Careful, Rena," Terriermon chuckled. "Show too much affection and he might lick you and if he did that you would probably drown in lizard saliva."

The Beast swung its head around and fixed its eye on Terriermon, the tiny little bunny completely held in his colossal pupil which was several times bigger than Terriermon himself. The bunny grinned at him and said, "Hey, it was just a joke, big guy. Take it easy."

"Has he been a troublesome neighbour at all?" Aayla turned to ask the Lurmen, knowing they were far more likely to give them a answer they could figure out than the Beast himself. "I can't see any crushed pods here in the village so I can only assume that he has been watching his step."

"He has indeed," Tee Watt Kaa nodded. "I find myself having to admit he saved my life just the other night when those Phalones attacked. I'm pretty sure I would have been bird food unless he hadn't been there to protect us and scare them away."

"See, what did we tell you guys," Ahsoka smiled. "He's the ideal neighbour if you're on good terms with him, isn't he?"

"He appears to be in good health too," nodded Barriss. "His skin looks healthy, his eyes of got that same green glow and he doesn't appear to be suffering from any lack of food. I'd say that Aayla's idea of bringing him here was actually a very good one. He's almost been thriving here."

"Well, much as I don't want to take him from his new home, we do have a mission to take care of at the moment."

"Indeed," nodded Renamon, stepping up to the head of the Beast once more. "Godzillo, we haven't come here just to see how you were doing I'm afraid. The Jedi and the Galaxy in general has found itself in a terrible situation. A situation which will more than likely affect every single planet within hyperspace reach of Coruscant, which is practically every planet there is. That includes this one. I am sorry to bring this news to you, to any of you actually," she added apologetically to the Lurmen who were crowding behind them and listening with morbid interest. "But I fear that all our lives are in danger."

"Oh, that does not sound good," Tee Watt Kaa sighed. "I did warn you, did I not that war and fighting only brings suffering in the end. It only leads to tears and pain and sadness for thousands upon thousands of lives."

"Father," Wag Too admonished. "We've been over this before. The Jedi had to fight against the Separatists because..."

"No," Aayla interrupted, cutting Wag Too off before he could finish his sentence. "No, we didn't. Nobody did. Wag Too, you are right in that we had to fight to defend the Galaxy, but your father is right as well. The war was not even needed in the first place. The main reason behind the Separatists assault on the Galaxy, including your own planet, was due to a man within the Republic who was secretly stirring up the violence and forcing us to fight to protect planets that had been put in danger by the very man we served."

"Everything we were told was a lie," Anakin agreed, grimace still in place. "Separatist and Republic alike, beguiled into fighting a war that made no sense at all, in a pointless struggle for power or freedom respectively."

"With one leader in charge of everything," Lopmon grimaced. "One man who decided to stir up chaos and destruction throughout the whole Galaxy in a madly complicated attempt to seize power while simultaneously destroying the Jedi."

Godzillo growled, his teeth prominently displayed in his mouth as he could feel the rage building inside him once again. Renamon heard the earth crunching and looked beneath the underside of the cruiser he was still leaning over to see his massive toes curling and creating furrows in the ground. She felt it safe to assume that the Beast had already guessed where this was going.

He was just waiting for the confirmation now.

It was Henry who added. "There was Sith Lord hidden right under everyone's noses the entire time, tricking everyone who stood before him as to his real intentions. Every times someone stepped into his office, he spouted lies and misinformation out of his mouth at them."

"Anyone like to hazard a guess as to what we're talking about?" Ahsoka enquired.

"The very man you served?" Wag Too asked with eyes wide. "Wait a minute, are you trying to say that..."

"Pretty much," nodded Terriermon. "Supreme Chancellor Palpatine was in charge of absolutely everything. He's the one who committed hundreds and hundreds and thousands and millions of innocents to die at his hands so that he could take control of everything and kill off the Jedi.

"If this is some kind of prank on your part, or a joke of some description," Tee Watt Kaa cried with anger. "Then it is neither clever nor funny."

"We wish it were some kind of joke to be honest," Rika mumbled.

"It certainly isn't a joke," Terriermon folded his arms. "I might be a prankster, but there's no way in Anubimon's realm that I would joke about something like this. Palpatine's a Sith Lord. The bad guy. The evil behind the war."

"No," Wag Too gasped.

"Yes," nodded Anakin. "It's true."

The Lurmen were as horrified as everyone else who had learned this terrible truth. Technically they were not a part of the Republic, having no Senator, no say in Galactic affairs and no way of even contacting Coruscant officials, other than Chuchi since they had been given her details to call her with if anything happened to them or the Zillo Beast. Nevertheless, the Republic had been a big part of their lives – it had been a constant presence outside their atmosphere and the war between it and the Separatists had been what had caused them to flee.

Now, they had learned that if it had not been for one man, they could have all stayed at home.

The Zillo Beast, on the other hand, did not react with shock. Intense anger blazed in its eyes, almost literally in fact, as the green glow they emanated seemed to double in intensity, bathing the whole of the Tenacious Ten in its light even though it was day. Its head rose up and away from the group, pushing itself up onto its hind legs by pushing off from the cruiser it was leaning on, its weight causing the cruiser's front leg to partially sink into the ground as it towered above everything else.

Its arms lashed out to either side and behind hit as it let loose a terrible roar that shook the air around them so much that everyone was forced to cover their ears. The Beast was clearly filled with rage at what it was hearing. Its spiked tail lashed out behind it and gouged several trenches in the ground as it swung low. It then looked down at the Jedi, a look a pure hatred in its eyes. The Jedi knew the hatred was not directed at them, but it was still quite a terrifying sight.

"You knew, didn't you?" Ahsoka called up to him. "You knew that he was bad on at least some level, didn't you?"

The Zillo Beast didn't reply for a couple of seconds but then it slowly nodded its head once.

"I think you knew it on the very highest level actually," Lopmon observed.

"So do I," Henry nodded. "I think that he knew that Palpatine was bad enough to be a Sith Lord, if perhaps not that he actually _was_ a Sith, probably from the moment he set eyes on him. Is that right?" he also asked the Beast.

The Beast nodded again.

"You tried to warn us, didn't you?" Aayla agreed. "Your hesitancy to leave the planet and abandon you chase of him. It wasn't just that you wanted revenge, was it? You were trying to tell us that he shouldn't get away. All those times we prevented you from killing him or helped him escape from you, where you screamed at us. It wasn't just rage that he'd escaped at all. You were trying to tell us what he really was, weren't you?"

The Beast nodded a third time.

"But in the end, you knew there was nothing more you could have done," Anakin sighed. "You knew that if you stayed, you would die. You knew that your attempts to warn us had failed and that if you continued your pursuit of him, thousands more would die before you yourself fell and your species died. That's why you came with us, isn't it? You gave us all the clues you could and hoped we would be able to figure it out."

The Beast nodded once more.

"But it didn't work, I'm sorry to say," Anakin sighed. "Your warnings didn't penetrate through to us, I'm sorry to say. If only you had been able to speak. If only you'd gotten to him a bit quicker."

"This isn't the time for 'if onlys'" Renamon interjected. "What matters is that while the Beast may not have been able to warn us, Palpatine's decision to bring it to Coruscant and his refusal to release it combined with his unusual shortness with you, Anakin, did, in the end, help us. It had already made us suspicious, and when we did learn the truth, it provided us with valuable clues that proved to us that it was not some trick, and that Palpatine really was a Sith." She looked p at the Beast and said, "It might not have been in the way you wanted, but you did provide the Jedi and us a great service on that day."

The Beast did manage to look a little smug at this news, nodding its head with a grim look of satisfaction on its round spaces, rolling his shoulders.

"I... I simply don't believe it," Wag Too shook his furry head, ears flapping. "This is like some horror story we tell to the kits around the central fire."

"Oh, but unlike your stories, this is all too real," Barriss said grimly. "And I'm afraid that the bad news doesn't end there. When we discovered what the Zillo Beast had been trying to warn us, Palpatine was able to sense my presence. He knew that we had seen him for what he really is, and he immediately declared all Jedi traitors."

"It was only through the quick actions of Renamon and Terriermon's mind-link and a couple of very quick calls that we were able to mostly escape the slaughter that followed," Aayla said, sadly. "And now, the Sith have taken control of the Galaxy, while the Jedi have been forced into hiding, and the Republic has been transformed into an Empire. It's only a matter of time before the Chancellor starts to send his troops across the Galaxy, crushing one planet after another and there will be nothing that can stop him. No army large enough to oppose his clones."

"Unless we strike first," Rika socked her fist into her palm.

"Now, hold on," Tee Watt Kaa objected. "Surely you cannot be talking about yet more violence considering the grief that has been caused by the violence that has already unfolded."

"Tee Watt Kaa, you can argue with us all you like, but it will change nothing," Anakin replied. "The fact remains that while the Republic won the war, the Jedi have lost. We will not sit by and watch as he destroys so many more."

"You are right in what you said before," Aayla nodded. "When you spoke to me in your home all those months ago. It does take two to fight. But it only takes one side to decide to do evil. We have a choice now, and we will only take one option."

"The first of those options is to lie down and watch as he tears the Galaxy apart piece by piece until we all die," Ahsoka said.

"The second choice," Lopmon added. "Would be to take the fight to him now and stop him before he can do that. It is option two that we will be taking, and I'm sorry that you feel otherwise."

"But, if it works," Renamon nodded. "You will be able to continue to live out your lives without war returning to your shores. If not... then at least we tried."

Tee Watt Kaa looked like he wanted to object further, but it looked like the Jedi and Digimon had actually managed to get through to even him with this argument. He subdued and settled for quite brooding instead of objecting.

"On the plus side," Terriermon spoke up, with a grin. "We've already marshalled our forces. Not only do we have a couple of hundred Jedi and many clones that decided to defect, we've also got several large armies from friendly planets that object to the Empire, several large and deadly animal allies _and_ what remains of the Separatist armies, as General Grievous took the news of the Sith's manipulations as well as we did and joined us."

"He also still doesn't know about the Digimon," Suzie suddenly broke in, determined, as always to at least say something. "So, we can take him by surprise with our strength and power."

"But we still need every advantage that we can get," Renamon agreed, turning back to face the Zillo Beast, who was still staring down at them from on high. "Anything we can find that might help to defeat the Sith will come in useful at this point and we can think of no better help to our side than you, Godzillo. You were the most destructive thing to happen to Coruscant in thousands of years. Their weapons have no impact on your armour, the only thing they had to beat you were gas bombs which they will no longer have in their arsenal as they believe you to be dead, and the only thing we had that could subdue you were stun tanks and our Mega forms."

"And since the Mega Forms will be working with you this time," Rika added, "and can therefore take care of any stun tanks that they try to throw at you, you would be a practically indestructible member of our rebellion. They would almost literally have nothing that could stop you, especially if you combined with us."

"Only one question really remains," Anakin nodded, stepping forwards beside Renamon and the rest of the team grouping around the two. "As representatives of the Jedi Order that tried to protect you, I ask you this. Will you help us to take down the Sith once and for all and stop the man from committing any more evil?"

The response from Godzillo was swift and immediate. In one huge stride he cleared the side of the cruiser he was standing behind and in a couple of others he was standing before the group without the cruiser between them. It let loose another almighty bellow, even louder than the last one, but this time none of them flinched at the sound. They could hear that this roar was different. Like the bark of a dog, they could tell the emotion behind it. It was not fear or anger, it was determination.

Then it dropped to four limbs and placed its head right in front of the group, its nostrils flaring as it nodded its head one more time, its chin touching the ground as it did so.

"And that was all she wrote!" Terriermon laughed.

"It was pretty sure that he would say that," Ahsoka whispered to Barriss.

"As was I," Barriss whispered back.

"Then you will help us to stop him?" Anakin clarified. The Beast bared it teeth, and then made the most bizarre gesture that any of them had ever seen him do. His third arm, the only one of his five limbs not touching the ground, suddenly curled around until it was over his head and presented itself to Anakin and the others as if he were offering to shake hands.

Terriermon, Ahsoka, Barriss and Suzie all burst into laughter at the sight, while Anakin looked completely and utterly bewildered at the sight of the Zillo Beast acting more like a human than anything else. The Beast himself appeared to be quite amused by this as well, the corners of his mouth curling up, his teeth in great prominence.

Hesitantly the Chosen One reach up and placed a hand on the tip of the Zillo Beast's middle finger and attempted to shake it, but the Beast's finger alone was too big and heavy for him to even move. The Beast shifted its finger slightly and Anakin was literally lifted off his feet by the lurch of motion. This caused the rest of the Tenacious Ten to lose control of their mirth as well.

Renamon recovered first and stepped up beside Anakin once he was back on the ground and placed her paw over the top of his hand onto the Zillo Beast's finger. Another communal gathering of the Tenacious Ten rapidly took place, while Aayla led the others up to follow Renamon's example. Suzie had to be given a boost by the others to let her do it while Terriermon and Lopmon landed on the hand itself as they did the same thing.

"Then we fight together," Renamon nodded firmly. "With Godzillo as a part of our Rebellion. Welcome aboard, Godzillo. I'm sure you're looking forward to thrashing the Sith as much as we are."

Godzillo withdrew his giant hand and rose back upwards again, a growl emanating from his massive throat as he nodded, his tongue momentarily lashing out of his mouth like that of some kind of giant snake in anticipation. He would soon be getting the revenge which he had been after when he had smashed his way across Coruscant to find the leader of the Republic.

He could still remember him vividly in his memory. The pale man as he had referred to him, the white haired, wrinkled humanoid with the hooked nose and the projecting chin. That man had been entirely too smug when he had thought the Beast's life was in his hands. Now it was really time to show him that nobody controlled him.

It might still be a bizarre sensation for the Beast to have anything he considered friends, having never had or needed anything of the sort on Malastare. Yet it rather like the strange concept that had been awoken within in on Coruscant thanks to Renamon's pity and the resolve of the Jedi and the other Digimon. His friends needed him, and he would do what he could to help, regardless of any consequences.

Not that consequences would be much of a problem from a great Beast like the Zillo Beast if what the others said were anything to go by.

"Alright then!" Terriermon whooped as he whooshed high into the air and he and Lopmon began to circle the Beast's massive heads. "Looks like our partner here is going to be accompanying us to Tython."

"And beyond," nodded Aayla. "If we have anything to say about it. We should probably get back as quickly as we can. Knowing the others, Obi-Wan and Shaak Ti are probably struggling to defuse some kind of full-blown argument between Master Windu and Grievous."

"Yeah," Anakin agreed, turning back to the Lurmen. "Thanks guys, but we'll be on our way now. We hope that the lack of the Zillo Beast's presence for a few days will not be too hazardous to your health."

"Not a problem," Wag Too smiled. "With the way that the Phalones took off after he scared them, I'm pretty sure they're still running."

"We'll bring him back in a couple of days if you guys will have him," Ahsoka promised. "You guys seem to be getting along well and this planet suits him perfectly, so he'll be stomping around your village again in no time."

"Good to hear," Tee Watt Kaa nodded. "Well, if you really do insist on going through with this plan to fight against the Sith and risk everything, including your own lives... then I suppose we should all wish you good luck."

"Seriously?" Ahsoka asked. "I thought that you were against violence in all forms."

"Oh, I am," Tee Watt Kaa nodded. "But that doesn't mean that if the conflict is inevitable and I have no power to stop it that I want the people I happen to like and know want to only protect and defend to lose. Do your best. Rid the Galaxy of the evil which is seeking to control it and save us all, if you can."

Ahsoka nodded and said, "We'll do what we can."

"And if our plan works," Barriss added. "We should be able to do quite a lot."

"Sorry we cannot be of more help to you," Wag Too put in. "But we're not warriors and probably never will be."

"That's alright," Ahsoka reassured them. "You've done enough already by allowing the Zillo Beast to live on your planet and keeping him a secret from Palpatine. The things that Palpatine doesn't know... are going to hurt him very, very, _very_ much."

"So much for that old saying," Henry murmured.

Renamon, meanwhile, was talking to Godzillo. "We're sorry that we still don't have accommodation for you which is more comfortable, but you've managed a few hours in the hangar of one of these cruisers before. Do you think you can do it again?"

The Zillo Beast nodded and immediately made its way to the ramp of the ship. It placed one giant hand on the ramp and began to move up it on four of its five feet, its tail swishing behind it and causing several of the others to duck just in case the huge appendage smashed into their heads.

The good thing about the _Acclamator_-class shuttle was that practically the entire of its interior was one big hangar, so despite the fact the Zillo Beast was so large it could lean over the thing, it could still squeeze its way through the large hangar door at the top of the hangar, thanks to its slender, serpentine body. It was still a very tight squeeze indeed, but the Beast gradually began to disappear inside the metallic hulk. Everyone watched from below in fascination as it forced its way inside, its great arms vanishing after its head and slowly its back legs following on.

Eventually its tail slipped through the door as well, the spikes narrowly missing carving a huge gash in the metal wall.

"Well, I guess that answers that question," Anakin observed. "Come on, guys. Let's get him out of here."

"Hear, hear," nodded Aayla as the Tenacious Ten began to pick their way up the ramp after the Beast, turning to wave briefly to the Lurmen, who waved back, before they retraced their steps up into the massive starship.

Like the last time they had transported the Beast in it, it was curled up in the middle of the great hangar within, doing its best to spread itself out while leaving room at the same time. Its eyes were bright in the darkness as it turned around to look at the group as they entered, a keening noise echoing up from within its throat.

Thankfully, the cruiser was empty of tanks and other vehicles. They would probably have been crushed by now if they hadn't ordered them all to be taken out to make room for the Beast.

Nearby, Commander Bly was shaking his head and chuckling. "I see negotiations went well, Generals," he said.

"Definitely," nodded Aayla. "Things just got even worse for the Sith today. Palpatine made more of a mistake than he realised when he ordered to have the Zillo Beast slain."

"Yeah," Bly agreed. "And I imagine this is going to leave a fair amount of our own allies pretty gobsmacked by the time we get back to Tython. Many of our men never actually set eyes on the Zillo Beast, and that's not even counting our newest allies."

"Well, let's get back to Tython post-haste," smirked Terriermon. "So that we can introduce our biggest ally to the others, and so that we can see the looks on their faces."

"I hear that," Rika snorted.

As Bly called in to prepare for lift-off, The Zillo Beast turned enormous head to observed the others and uttered a low growl as it bunched its limbs in towards itself to try and make itself comfortable, which wasn't that difficult for it considering its stronger than diamond armour. Renamon chuckled and walked over to him.

"If you like, we can pass the time until we arrive on Tython by letting us fill you in on a more detailed version of events since we parted ways, if that would satisfy you," she smiled at him.

The Beast inclined its head as Renamon folded her arms and began to do just that in a low voice. Aayla felt a weight settling on her shoulder and glanced over to see Lopmon had landed there. "You know," the bunny murmured to the Twi'lek. "It looks like you're not the only one whose helped us by making very unusual allies."

"Indeed," Aayla chuckled. "It seems that Renamon has more luck with the animals than I have. First the Acklay, now Godzillo. And we have Suzie to thank for Zarza, so it seems many of us have been making some unusual recruitments."

"True," nodded Lopmon as the ramp slid up behind them and the hangar doors shut. "But you seem to have better luck with the people than we do, and, more appropriately, enemy people. Bane and Grievous were out to get us for their own gain. Renamon's allies just wanted us for food."

"That doesn't change the fact it's a remarkable recruitment," Aayla pointed out.

"Perhaps not," Lopmon agreed, "But it is an interesting fact."

"That is true," Aayla nodded.

"Uh, General," Bly voiced as he stepped over to them.

"Yes, Commander? What is it?" asked Aayla.

"You reckon we could ask the Zillo Beast to get out and lift the cruiser for us? The front leg has sunk deep into the ground after he leaned on it earlier, so we can't take off."

Aayla and Lopmon looked at each other and then dissolved into laughter, which Bly actually joined a couple of moments later.

* * *

The fears of the Tenacious Ten that Mace and Grievous would be at each other's throats while they were gone was actually an incorrect one. Mace seemed to have understood the fact that Grievous was a large asset to them and while there was an air of grim reluctance about him every time he saw Grievous, he made no action upon it. Mace was slow to trust people as it was, but Grievous was attracting a whole lot of mistrust from the Jedi and the clones wherever he walked.

Not that he cared. Grievous himself was avoiding contact with anyone but his battle droids and a couple of the Jedi he had already been introduced to. He had no interest in socialising, only in sticking with them long enough to exact his revenge and until the Tenacious Ten got back he didn't particularly want to go near any of the other Jedi either.

Grievous was therefore rather surprised when Master Yoda walked up to him at one point while he was organising the battle droids into position. He almost didn't notice the little Grand Master until he nearly stepped on him. He recoiled and immediately went for his blades on instinct. But he stopped himself just in time and said, "What do you want, Jedi?"

Yoda offered him a wry smile. "Often wondered, I did, when I would meet you face to face, Grievous. Say, I cannot, that it would be in circumstances such as these."

"Nor did I," Grievous growled. "Not even in dreams would I have dared to think of allying myself with a Jedi for any reason, let alone their whole order. I have heard that you are immensely skilled with a blade, small one. Is that true?"

"Speak of their own skill, the Jedi do not," Yoda replied. "But been known to hold my own in many a combat, I have."

"What is it that you want?" Grievous asked, fists clenching. "I have no interest in holding a drawn-out conversation with you, Jedi."

"Wished to offer you my own apology, I did," Yoda said wryly. "Grand Master of the Jedi Order, I am. My job, it should have been, to push the Chancellor into supplying aid to Kaleesh. Failed, I did, but press the matter, I did not. Blame for the suffering of your people, a large portion, at my feet rests."

"I have already received an apology from Secura!" Grievous responded shortly. "As well as her promise that the Kaleesh will receive that aid when the Sith are annihilated. I do not need another apology from you."

"Nevertheless, give you one, I do," Yoda replied. "Allies, we are now. And be open to all our allies, we must, to form better relations both on and off the battlefield."

Grievous made a snorting sound which might have been a cough, and knowing him, probably was. "You want to get to know me better, Jedi? Do you not despise me for what I did to the rest of your order?"

"Never despise anyone, would I," Yoda responded. "Too long have you been amongst the Sith, Grievous. Withdrawn into yourself, you have, forming a shell as tough as your armour. Believe, I do, that even you are not above redemption."

"I still believe you and your Order to be largely insane," Grievous growled. "For letting me into your ranks so willingly. Is there anything else?"

"Yes," nodded Yoda. "One more thing. When fighting against the Sith, we are, ask, I do, that you work _with_ the Jedi around you and not merely do your own thing. Powerful assets, the Sith have, against us all, and to overwhelm them, work together, we must. Unused to it, you may be, but believe, I do, that by working with your new allies more closely than merely fighting on the same side, a better chance we stand. Reflect on this, you should, Grievous."

Grievous snarled, but made no further comment.

Then, as Yoda turned away to walk back to the main city, the roar of engines caused them both, as well as a multitude of other faces, to look up and shield their eyes as the _Acclamator_-class cruiser descended out of the cloud above their heads.

Everyone held their breaths. Word had filtered throughout the rebellion about where the Tenacious Ten had been going and now all of them knew what was about to land on Tython's soil to at least some extent. They watched as it alighted on the ground and the ramp slid out of the side to settle on the surface below, eager to see what happened next.

Almost none of them were prepared for the following spectacle.

The huge head of the Zillo Beast emerged into the light and moved out into the open air, taking the breath away from everyone capable of drawing it. And then one mighty arm followed, and was immediately followed by another and then a _third_ as the Beast stepped out of the ship and moved down head-first.

More and more of it kept coming out of the giant ship, until its two back legs were out in the open. It's tail only emerged into the light by the time its front legs had reached the bottom of the ramp, and when its hind legs reached the bottom, the Beast reared upwards until it stood as tall as the Temple in the giant city nearby.

Clones and Gungans fell back in shock as they gaped at the giant creature. The Wookiees had never felt as small in their whole lives as they did when they took in the giant lizard, and as for Zarza and the Acklay, all seven of them were suddenly feeling quite insignificant next to this big guy, though Zarza was also thinking it might be fun to climb him.

Even Grievous was blown away by this and he took a couple of steps backwards at the sight of the creature, before a slightly malicious glint settled into his yellow eyes. The Sith were not going to like this very much, and that was just the way he liked it.

Sitting on the Zillo Beast's head, all ten members of the Tenacious Ten chuckled at the spectacle of the gobsmacked rebellion before them. "You know..." Terriermon grinned. "I really think we stand a chance after all."

The Zillo Beast bellowed in agreement, and almost short-circuited all the audio-receptors of the droids as it did so.

* * *

Alright everybody, so there it is. Godzillo is officially a part of the Rebellion now. All that remains is to see what the Jedi intend to do with him and what effect his presence will have on the events that will be playing out across the next two arcs after this one, which isn't even over yet. They might have their big new friend, but there are still a couple of other things they have to do before the action can really begin.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

With the Digimon Army led by the Tamers and the Sovereigns now in the Dark Ocean, GranDracmon initiates the final stage of his plan to give himself a new General, which unfortunately means very, very bad news for Beelzemon. Phascomon, on the other hand, is more upbeat about the situation.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 185 : The Last of the Demon Lords**


	185. The Last of the Demon Lords

Just as preparations are in the final stages before combat in the Star Wars world, things are beginning to get very, very tense here in the Digimon World as well. While some of you may prefer to get on with what's going on in the other world and get to the epic action dogfight that I have been leading up to, I believe this chapter will allow people to get ready for some extra epic dogfighting on the side of what's going on in the Star Wars side of things.

Read on, everyone.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 185:- The Last of the Demon Lords**

* * *

Everything had become a void now. There was no possible way to tell how long he had been enduring the horrible, horrible torture that his body had been undergoing. He knew that it probably wasn't only minutes and almost definitely had been going on for hours and hours, but how many hours? How many days? Heck, it might have been going on for even longer than that.

Beelzemon had no way of knowing.

But it didn't really matter how long he had been hanging in the draining chamber, becoming steadily more and more useless as more and more of his strength was sapped from his body and even more of his data was ripped away from the bottom of his body. The end result was the same. Pain. Always pain. And wave upon wave of despair which settled over him like a blanket.

In the earlier stages, he had imagined his friends bursting into the room and breaking him out of this horrible pain, but what good would that even do him at this point. He'd even lost track of how much of his own body remained. His eyes were screwed tight shut and it looked like they wouldn't be opening for quite some time.

If his friends rescued him now, he would just be a useless shell, either a half-gone Beelzemon or a small and weakened Impmon who would be no use to anyone at all. They'd go putting their lives on the line for him, which he had tried to make them _not_ do by running away from them in the first place. And then they'd have to fight their way out and avoid GranDracmon and whole host of other things.

Beelzemon was beginning to lose all hope.

Now, in the later stages, he had lost it completely. He had pretty much accepted that this was going to be his final stage. There was nothing he could do to prevent it anymore. He had tried and tried to break the heavy cuffs which held him suspended but each time he tried it had less effect that the last time. And the first time had had no effect at all, so that was saying something.

Now, he just hung like a half-filled sack on a peg. His arms had long since lost all feeling to them as result of the prolonged suspension. His head lolled forward with his chin leaning against his chest, the only thing showing that he was still alive at all was its occasional loll to either side, coupled with the fact he hadn't disintegrated entirely yet.

He was sinking deeper into the void with every passing second, but again, he didn't even know how long a second was anymore. He just couldn't grasp anything outside the blackness in his own head and the pain in his own body.

Though he could no longer make it out, Beelzemon had disintegrated up to his upper chest, which pretty much left his arms, shoulder, neck and head remaining. His tail, legs and torso had long since disappeared and his shoulders were beginning to go next, sapped of their strength by the green energy seeping out of his body and then having their particles ripped away and sucked into the pipe above to be deposited in one of the two tanks on either side of the room.

The small demonic, koala creature, Phascomon, who the enemy was planning to turn into another Demon Lord Digimon, had not moved from his spot in the middle of the room ever since GranDracmon had left. He had simply sat there and stared at Beelzemon with his sleepy eyes and an expression that was somewhere between indifference and mild curiosity, but not quite either.

His head was tilted to one side like a dog's and his head was so large compared to his body that he looked like he should be in danger of tipping over onto his side, but he didn't. His large eyes blinked from time to time but that was about the only movement he demonstrated throughout his whole time sitting there. He had fallen asleep twice since GranDracmon had left, but he still hadn't shifted position even then.

Several thoughts were wafting through Phascomon's head as if they were being blown in by a tiny fan and then carried across his mind on the back of a slug. Speed wasn't his strong suit in any form, but now he was thinking, _He looks so pitiful and weak. Could he really be the guy who is going to give me the power to become a Demon Lord? He doesn't look all that tough to me._

Obviously Phascomon had never actually seen Beelzemon in action, but right now he was completely and utterly right. Beelzemon did look like a hollow, wretched and weak thing, which was exactly what he was given the circumstances.

_I wonder what will happen when I become a Demon Lord,_ Phascomon thought to himself. _Sounds kinda fun. Maybe GranDracmon will order me to be the one that kills Beelzemon. That would be pretty weird._

You might expect some form of pity feeling from such a young Digimon with regards to the cruelty and the suffering that Beelzemon was going through, but there was nothing like that from Phascomon. Even a virus Digimon like him might have felt something under normal circumstances, but having spent all his waking life in the warped darkness of the Dark Ocean, and in the company of GranDracmon, both had had the opportunity to warp and corrupt his soul beyond anything recognisable in a child.

Phascomon was a being of pure evil, even at such a young age. There wasn't going to be any turning back for him without some major purification. He just watched Beelzemon's suffering as if it were a mildly interesting movie being played out before him.

Beelzemon himself couldn't even remember that Phascomon was there. Initially he had been shying away from the staring from the little Rookie Virus and had demanded him to stop, as there was definitely an unsettling quality in those big, half-closed orbs he called eyes, but his demands had had no effect on Phascomon at all.

Soon enough though, the abyss of pain coupled with the loss of his strength had driven Phascomon from his thoughts, and now he was as limp as a doll that had been strung up by its hands in some kind of weird game.

He now just wanted it to end. Even now there was still a spark of defiance in him that was screaming not to just lie down and take it and that the longer that GranDracmon didn't have his Belphemon, the longer his friends would have to prepare, but that didn't stop him from wanting it to stop as well.

And then, just when it seemed that he might sink into an irreversible comatose state, something jolted him sharply. A sudden thud in what was left of his Digi-core as if he had been punched there that rippled throughout all that remained of his being and caused all three of his eyes to shoot open in shock and confusion. Momentarily, the abyss of pain was banished and his head lifted from his chest, his neck clicking as he looked around himself in confusion.

"What was that?" he grunted to himself. That had been an unusual sensation he had never really felt before, but if he could pin anything familiar on it, it would be similar to what happened whenever GranDracmon sent someone across the barrier to get him, only without the horrible feeling of fear and terror or the chill emanating through him.

"What was what?" asked Phascomon, a little dully. Beelzemon started, just noticing that Phascomon was in exactly the same place as before.

He sagged in the heavy cuffs holding him up and mumbled, "Oh, so you're still here are you?"

"Yes," nodded Phascomon. "Never left. Did you know that you no longer have a stomach?"

Beelzemon gritted his teeth and grunted, casting a look down at where his body had been with one of his eyes and quickly looking back up with a moan of, "Oh, Fanglongmon. This is just plain wrong. This is... this is... pretty much what I would have expected from someone like GranDracmon."

"Yeah, it's pretty much what I expected too," nodded Phascomon wisely.

Beelzemon winced as another piece of data was torn from his shoulder and noticed that some of his hair was starting to disappear now as well. His fangs ground together as he tried to withstand sinking back into that state of blackness from before. Whatever that jolt had been, it had snapped him from it for now, and he had no intention of falling to it a second time.

He focused instead of Phascomon and said, "You're seriously telling me that you don't find what he's doing repulsive and evil?"

"Yep," nodded Phascomon. "Of course I find it repulsive and evil, but that's the fun part isn't it? GranDracmon always told me that it was fun to inflict this sort of thing on any Digimon, not just those who have chosen to ignore him like you did. I'm quite looking forward to committing some violence of my own. Should be quite good."

Even though he didn't actually sound that enthusiastic when he said, Beelzemon could tell that he was telling the truth. He finally decided to give up on Phascomon. He really wasn't worth the effort of trying to convert in some mad attempt to stop GranDracmon from getting his Demon Lord. Besides, even if he did somehow come to regret it, GranDracmon would probably just use his Eye of the Gorgon on him and therefore enslave him to his will completely.

And when he became Belphemon, converting him would be impossible anyway. If he remembered Belphemon correctly, he barely listened to orders, let alone to reason.

"You're going to regret this, you know," Beelzemon pointed out, just because he was feeling slightly vindictive at the treatment that he was being given, or lack thereof. "You might think you're stepping into some great, new dark future, but the forces of good on the other side are going to far outweigh anything you can throw at them. The Sovereigns, the Tamers – they'll pound you into the ground."

"Not if we do it right," Phascomon replied. "That's what GranDracmon says anyway."

"Well, GranDracmon's a big bastard so far up his own arse that he probably believes he's invincible at this point, but he's wrong. It might take them a while, but they will catch up with you eventually and you will not live past their attack. You predecessor, the original Belphemon, was obliterated in moments by the Sovereigns. You will be no different."

"We shall see about that, Beelzemon," GranDracmon announced as he swung open the door and stepped into the room, his huge claws settling on the floor on either side of Phascomon and not bothering the Rookie koala in the slightest. "And by the way, I do not particularly like your description of me. You're a guest in my household, are you not. You should be more polite to your host."

"I'll be polite to my host when my host suddenly decides to pray to Fanglongmon, release me, give me my body back and go skipping through a field of daisies," Beelzemon growled. "And since that will never happen, you and your stupid hospitality jokes can stuff it, or preferably snuff it."

"My, my," GranDracmon chuckled. "The lack of a body seems to have really gotten to you, Beelzemon. Your language is almost as colourful as it was in the days when you ran with the other Demon Lords, though still not quite on the same level. In any case, I am not here to hold a long and drawn out conversation with you about my plans for the future."

"That makes a change," Beelzemon growled. "The last two times you came in here, it was only to lecture me about your so-called master plan to bring evil to the Digital World. It's still not much of a plan, if you ask me. What are you going to do, create a portal into one of the Sovereigns' castles and try to bring him down?"

"No. Not yet, anyway," GranDracmon folded his arms. "And the plan was going to be developed further when I finally had my Demon Lord General by my side. I was a little more focused on getting him first and then moving on with the next stage of the plan. However, new circumstances have arisen, and I'm afraid that means that a drastic alteration is needed."

"New circumstances?" Beelzemon asked, in bewilderment. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means," GranDracmon replied. "That, as of a couple of minutes ago, a large army of good Digimon appeared in my Dark Ocean, no doubt with the intention of bringing you back and of stopping me. They are regrouping at the moment, but it will only be a matter of time before they attack."

"Good Digimon?" Beelzemon blinked, a little incoherently.

"Indeed," GranDracmon smirked. "Your friends are a little more resourceful than I had anticipated. Unlike your previous adversaries, I have not underestimated their strength or declared them weak, that somehow transporting the Tamers, the Sovereigns and their Digimon friends to this dimension to fight me is something I did not see coming."

"They're here?" Beelzemon's eyes widened in a mixture of alarm and overjoyed glee, the latter mostly overwhelming the former. "Now? So that's what that feeling was," he grinned, as he realised the bizarre thudding he had sensed in his non-existent chest had been as a result of his ability to move between the Dark Ocean and its most parallel dimensions, the Digital World and the Human World, and had allowed him to sense the arrival of the others.

He was laughing now. He had had little reason to laugh over the last couple of days, but now he seemed to lose control of it completely as he almost howled with laughter, such was his elation that the others had actually done it – they had actually managed to break through to this dimension. They must have gotten the portal machine in the Human World working just in time and come to rescue him.

A dull thud gripped him as, for a moment, he wondered if that meant they would soon be able to go and get Lopmon and the others back.

But he quickly shoved that thought aside and focused on the present, as he grinned savagely in the direction of the great Demon Digimon in front of him. "Oh ho, you are royally screwed now, Crap-for-brains. With the Sovereigns and the Tamers and lots of other Digimon here to fight you, it's only a matter of time before you fall. You and your army are going to be crushed flat."

"You really think so?" GranDracmon smirked. "You are truly naive enough to believe that?"

"Uh, heck yes," Beelzemon nodded. "You _do_ know how powerful they are, don't you? You _do_ know that you don't stand a chance against fighters like them, right?"

"I do indeed understand how powerful they are, Beelzemon," GranDracmon replied evenly. "As I said, I am not going to make the mistake of underestimating them."

"Seems like you're doing a pretty good job of it to me," snorted Beelzemon.

"I wouldn't be so cocky if I were you," GranDracmon replied. "For now that I have an army going up against my own, I am going to be needing my new general now. MetalPhantomon!"

The metallic, cloaked Ghost Digimon appeared out of thin air next to him and his gravelly, deep voice murmured, "Yes, Lord GranDracmon?" as he folded his scythe across his ribcage and bowed his head in reverence.

"Take Phascomon to the output point," GranDracmon instructed. "We're going to have to end Beelzemon's suffering a little ahead of schedule."

"Yes, Master," nodded MetalPhantomon and he floated over to the koala and placed a disembodied metal hand on the floor before him, which the Rookie Digimon climbed onto moments later. As MetalPhantomon headed for the door, Phascomon waved blearily at what was left of Beelzemon.

"Goodbye," he said. "It was nice staring at you."

And then MetalPhantomon and Phascomon were gone from view. Beelzemon grimaced. During his period of elation before, more of his body had disintegrated, but he had barely noticed. Now, he felt a large chunk of his shoulder vaporise to data and whoosh up into the pipe above, but he recovered quickly and fixed GranDracmon's gaze with all three eyes.

"You really think that adding a Belphemon to your force right now is going to change anything?" Beelzemon growled. "The Sovereigns have obliterated him once before. They can do it again, no problem."

"The Sovereigns will not be concerned with Belphemon," GranDracmon smirked. "They will be far more concerned with trying to attack me myself."

"Well, can you not just admit that you're screwed then?" Beelzemon asked. "You think you have an chance of besting all four of the Sovereigns at the same time?"

"Yes, actually," GranDracmon replied evenly. "I would be powerful enough to face down at least one if not two of them at the same time under ordinary circumstances, but let's not forget right now that they are in my realm. They are in the world of Darkness. Here, the darkness reigns supreme. Digimon with evil hearts have are all far more powerful that they would be under normal circumstances. That includes all my soldiers, myself, _and_ Belphemon."

Beelzemon's eyes widened. "Then...?" he asked.

"Yes," nodded GranDracmon. "You understand now. Even though this Belphemon will not have the same amount of experience as the original Belphemon, he will be at least as powerful as the original Belphemon at the height of his strength in the Digital World, possibly even more so."

Beelzemon bared his fangs as said, "Well, alright then, that might be true, but I still think that you're going to have a problem with this. They've taken on the D-Reaper. They've taken on Ogudomon. They can take on any super-hyped-up Belphemon and you and your army all at the same time."

"We'll see about that," replied GranDracmon. "But debating whether or not my own forces are going to win is not going to serve any purpose whatsoever, other than stalling me for time, which is not going to happen, as even I understand that the Sovereigns will still be a threat to me and army. Not too great a threat," he added with a smirk. "But a threat nonetheless. I hope you enjoyed your brief stay in the draining chamber."

As he spoke, he moved over to one of the two tanks on either side of Beelzemon's prison and placed one of his hands on a dial situated on top of the tank – the dial he had used to switch the machine on in the first place. He looked over and smirked at Impmon, before adding, "But I'm afraid you've worn out your stay in it."

Beelzemon's eyes narrowed as he felt a section of his arm vanish. "Go on then," he growled. "Do it. Get it over with. But I still say that no matter what you do, my friends will not lose to you. They will never lose to you, or to anyone like you for as long as they work together and fight side by side. They'll never give up on themselves and you can bet that you're going to be getting several nasty surprises from them before the day is out."

"I could say the same about my own army in that last regard," GranDracmon smirked. "Let us see what they make of your plight and my new General, shall we?"

He twisted the dial.

The green light surging out of what was left of Beelzemon intensified and he suddenly felt the rest of his power vanishing on the spot. More than that, he was suddenly filled with an intense and horrible burning sensation that caused his whole body remaining to fluctuate and fizzle as his data distorted. It was the same feeling he had had after his run-in with Indramon many months before.

Only, this time, it got worse.

Much worse.

Beelzemon clenched his fangs, determined not to cry out at all costs as the burning sensation increased and his whole form blurred several times. Eventually it felt as though every particle in his entire arms and head were being pulled apart from one another individually, and he clenched his teeth so hard that if he clenched any harder he would start breaking them.

Was this what deletion felt like?

Was this was every single Digimon he had ever killed had felt in their dying moments.

Probably, but as this machine was designed to cause the occupant pain, it might not be as intense as this was, or at least Beelzemon hoped.

His head thrashed, all three eyes screwing shut, his claws straining to flex inside the cuffs that held them in place as he felt the last of his strength draining. It felt as if fire was beginning to course through every single fibre of his being – fire so intense it could evaporate the Dark Ocean, and he finally lost control and screamed, letting out a deep roar of agony and anguish that shook the castle and caused the Nightmare Soldiers outside to look up in alarm.

And all Beelzemon could think in his last moments, other than that fact he was glad most of his body was gone by this point, was, _Ai. Mako. I'm sorry._

And then he disintegrated into tiny particles of yellow data.

The collective data particles that had come from his arms and shoulders immediately began to whoosh into the pipe at the top of the machine, and GranDracmon watched as the tanks finished filling up with Beelzemon's strength, power, abilities and just about everything that made him Beelzemon. It would soon be time to put it to good use.

Inside the draining chamber, the data that had once made up Beelzemon's head congealed on the spot once more, forming into a shape which promptly obeyed gravity and dropped the floor of the draining chamber with a dull thud. As GranDracmon had predicted, the purest parts of Impmon, the bits that were not darkened from his actions of the past, had been forced together so that they would not be taken in by the tanks.

But right now, GranDracmon did not care. He merely stared at the tanks with satisfaction as they filled to the brim. Through the side of each one, he could see a swirling mass of yellow atom-like particles and green energy extracted from Beelzemon within, mixing together to form a soup-like substance. Soon, he would be putting it to good use.

"To think," he chuckled. "The great Beelzemon, one of the most headstrong and dangerous of all the Seven Great Demon Lords, now reduced to this. All that's left of him is this mess in my tanks. Heh, and even that's still better than whatever has happened to the other six in Anubimon's realm. What do you say... Impmon?" he turned to the occupant of the draining chamber with a wide smirk.

His eyes widened almost imperceptibly at what he saw.

"Well, well, well," he chuckled. "Looks like my machine was even more effective that I had anticipated. It really took just about every ounce of strength you have didn't it?"

Impmon did not answer, and not just because he decided to stay silent. He was also not Impmon. The de-digivolution that had been the result of the machine finally allowing him to shrink to a smaller form now that his Mega form was not needed, had gone even further down than the Rookie level.

Lying on the floor of the draining chamber was a broken, trembling and horrendously weak Yaamon. He looked, essentially, like a small version of Impmon's head, as he was a purple blob with a white face and two jester-hat like projections on his head. He was lying on his front, which meant his face, and even in his In-Training form his data was flickering slightly as if it could fall apart at any given moment and he looked too weak to even be able to roll over so he was the right way up.

"I don' believe you've been in your In-Training form for a long time, have you, Yaamon?" GranDracmon chuckled. "Still, its certainly a delight to see you so thoroughly beaten as you are now. Even Phascomon could take you on now, even if he was asleep. How does that feel?"

"Screw... you..." Yaamon grunted, his voice muffled due to the fact his face was pressed against the floor.

"Ah," GranDracmon nodded. "Even now you have spirit left. Yes, just as I predicted – your soul is tough. It's going to take a lot more to break you, isn't it?"

"Shut... up..." Yaamon croaked, his voice sounding raw and pathetic at the moment, which, considering his physical state, was hardly surprising. "You... git..."

GranDracmon laughed for a moment and then said, "It would be so easy to step on you right now and end your life once and for all, but I am feeling a little vindictive at the moment. You can stay in there for now – it's not as though you can break out in your condition. Maybe you'll be able to hear the sounds of your friends getting slaughtered outside. That might break you a little more, I believe."

Yaamon inched himself upwards and fixed GranDracmon with a glare from one big, green eye. GranDracmon smirked at him and then turned away, stating, "Regardless, I'm afraid that I cannot stay and chat with you, Yaamon. I have another transfer of energy to attend. I would rather like to see my new General being born. I thank you for your invaluable assistance in this matter, and I hope that you don't enjoy the rest of your stay."

"They'll... stop... ungh," Yaamon winced as he collapsed back onto his face and murmured a muffled, "...You."

"So you said before," GranDracmon chuckled. "In any event, you certainly aren't going to be giving them any aid in the battle against me, are you? Just sit tight and use those ears of your to hear me finally achieve ultimate victory against the very best of my opposition. They have made a grave mistake bringing the fight to my world."

"No..." Yaamon groaned. "No..."

"Yes," GranDracmon replied. "They will fall and you might as well accept that. After all, there is little that you can do to change it."

"Go... to... hell..." Yaamon growled.

"I'm already in it," GranDracmon snorted. "And so are you, Yaamon. So are you."

"Sir," MetalPhantomon suddenly reappeared in the room. The metal ghost spared Yaamon a quick glance and what was probably a smirk, though considering his head was a metal skull it was difficult to tell if he was or wasn't smirking, and then turned to GranDracmon without making any further comment about it and said, "Phascomon is ready. The process can soon begin."

"Good work, MetalPhantomon," nodded GranDracmon. "Stay here and keep an eye on our guest for a while. When I give you the order, you know what to do?"

"Yes, sir," nodded MetalPhantomon.

"Good," GranDracmon nodded. He paused and murmured. "The enemy is beginning their approach. It is time for them to watch their hopes for their beloved Beelzemon disappear before their very eyes."

And he strode out the door, leaving MetalPhantomon and Yaamon behind. Yaamon grunted as he tried to shift position, but all he managed to do was flop onto his side. His eyes rolled in their sockets as he stared at the filled tank on the right side of the room. There, swirling inside him, was his essence. Everything that had made him a monster in the past, everything that had turned him into an evil killer, it was all in there. It was finally not a part of him anymore.

But Yaamon had never thought there would be a circumstance where he did _not_ want it to be outside his body. However, he did now, as it was about to be used for a terrible purpose and it also contained his strength and power, and the ability to digivolve to his highest form at will that had been granted him by the Sovereign Zhuqiaomon and the Deva Caturamon.

GranDracmon was right. Even if he somehow miraculously recovered quickly, he was going to be utterly useless to help the others.

MetalPhantomon chuckled at the pathetic sight he made. "You seem to have had quite a number done on you," he rumbled.

Yaamon turned to glare at him, but that only made MetalPhantomon laugh.

"I could put you to sleep and give you more memory nightmares," MetalPhantomon smirked. "But something tells me that the experience of staying awake and hearing what's going on outside will, at least this time, be far worse than anything I could bring to the surface from your mind. Would you agree?"

"Bastard..." Yaamon croaked.

"I'll take that as a yes," MetalPhantomon chuckled.

The line of the prophecy replayed in Yaamon's mind. _Friends too late to end his torture._ That line had now come true, as had the previous line – _Away from him his spirit torn._ He was now lying on the floor as a broken In-Training Digimon, his friends had arrived but they had not been quick enough to prevent him from being reduced to this weak wreck.

And now, the next line was about to come true as well.

The one that had so worried him.

_Demon's evil is reborn._

Yaamon bit his lip. _I'm sorry,_ he thought. _I couldn't stop him. I failed you all_.

* * *

GranDracmon stepped out of the front of his castle and folded his arms, momentarily looking out across the dark sand to the distance. He could see, in the distance, several bright glows lighting up the usually monochrome landscape with dashes of colour, most significantly blue, red, green and white.

The Sovereigns were on their way, and at their backs was a host of other powerful beings, including the Tamers. It would not be long before they arrived.

But GranDracmon did not need a lot of time. He crossed over the sand, walking past the ranks of his Nightmare Soldiers, several of which were looking nervous at the prospect of going up against such powerful enemies. After all, each and every one of them were cowards.

"Stand up straight and prepare for battle!" he bellowed across at his whole army. "I do not allow deserters or people who shy away from battle to be a part of my army, or even to live. You have the advantage when you fight in this land and do not soon forget it. You need not worry about the Sovereigns. I will deal with them, but the rest are fair game for you. And besides, today is a grand day for all of us. Not only will we win a great victory, but your new General, the Digimon who will lead you to our conquest of the Digital and Human Worlds, is about to be born."

There followed a lot of whooping and cheering from the amassed Nightmare Soldiers. For some of them, their confidence had been reborn. For others, they were just far more terrified of GranDracmon than they were of the approaching Digimon Army. GranDracmon nodded in satisfaction and turned towards the spot where he knew Phascomon was waiting.

The small koala Digimon looked more awake than GranDracmon had ever seen him. Perhaps the excitement was actually beginning to get to him, at the prospect of finally gaining the power he had been promised. MetalPhantomon had hooked him up to several leads which were extending out of the wall of the castle far above. On the other side of that wall was the draining chamber where MetalPhantomon and Yaamon currently were.

Phascomon was ready for the energy transfer.

"Today is an even bigger day for you, small one," GranDracmon nodded at him. "Are you ready to finally make the jump to being a Demon Lord?"

"Yes, Lord GranDracmon," nodded Phascomon. "I have been for many months now. It is all that you promised me ever since I hatched from my Digiegg under your care. I have waited for it all my life and now, I can finally do it."

"The time of your ascension is at hand," GranDracmon nodded. He turned around to glance at the Sovereigns and their forces coming along the beach. "I believe they have gotten close enough," he smirked. "Let us not waste any more time."

He looked up and nodded towards the wall where the leads extending out of.

* * *

MetalPhantomon, who was partially phased out of the wall, nodded back and disappeared back inside the room. He looked towards Yaamon for a moment and said, "Say goodbye to your energy. Hope you enjoyed it while you had it."

"No..." Yaamon groaned. "Please... don't do it."

MetalPhantomon snorted. "Do you really think I would listen to you?" His hand lashed out, the electricity holding it to his shoulder extending as if it were an elastic band, allowing him to slam his fist down on a button on top of one of the tanks without moving closer to it.

"No," Yaamon murmured, but he knew that it had already begun. The energy in tanks on either side of him began to swirl and spin in each tank as the process activated, creating something a little like miniature vortexes on either side of the room. The pipelines that they were connected to bulged slightly as the valves opened in front of them and the energy and data began to sweep down them like rivers.

The spinning vortex of yellow and green began to gush down the pipeline until everything looked like some kind of plug had been pulled in a bathtub and everything was slipping away. Yaamon watched, helpless to intervene, as his life essence seemed to drain away before his eyes.

* * *

The pipelines led out through the wall and carried the energy down and down towards the ground and the koala bear Digimon Rookie at the other end. Phascomon watched, wide awake for once, waiting for the moment where he would begin to feel the data of Beelzemon seeping into his body.

As the pipelines descended down the wall of the castle, they got narrower and narrower until they had practically become electrical leads, which were connected to various parts of Phascomon's body. The data and energy inside congealed into a mass as they were compressed into the thinner space and suddenly, they finally struck home.

Phascomon gasped momentarily as he felt data hitting his body and being pushed into it via the leads. He quickly began the natural absorption process that all Digimon had built inside them, not knowing what would happen if he were to just let the data get pushed into him. He gasped again as he felt a surge of dark power filling him up and as GranDracmon watched with a smirk of satisfaction, Phascomon's eyes changed, until they were bright red and glowing.

"It's working," he said to himself, in slight glee.

And indeed it was. As the power of the former Demon Lord seeped into his body, Phascomon's own form began to warp, slightly at first but at a more exponential rate with each passing second. His form blurred until there was nothing but blackness and all colour drained from his form except for his glowing red eyes and parts of him, like his head and one of his arms, began to bulge and twist as they grew larger, the rest of his limbs and torso began to follow shortly afterwards.

GranDracmon watched with indifference and the Nightmare Soldiers with awe as Phascomon doubled in size in one second flat and continued to double in size at about the same rate. No part of his body grew at a constant rate though. At one point, his right arm suddenly swelled out and stood out from the rest of him, and then his leg would grow even bigger even fast, while his head was growing much more slowly.

Throughout the process, Phascomon had almost no specific outline. The edges of his body became wavy, like giant ripples on the surface of the inky ocean he was standing next to. He kept growing until he was larger than GranDracmon himself by some way and then kept growing even more. At one point, he could have been mistaken for some kind of large black hole were it not for the eyes situated at the bulge near the top which remained of his head.

* * *

Not far away, the allied army, which had finally managed to group itself together and was moving forward, preparing to engage the army which they had come here to fight against, paused in momentary confusion and uncertainty when they spotted the void of blackness in front of the castle ahead of them.

"What is that?" Takato asked.

"Maybe its some kind of portal thing that GranDracmon is using to get reinforcements," Guilmon offered.

"Oh, I have a bad feeling about this," Lilamon murmured. "A very, very bad feeling indeed."

Ai and Mako unconsciously huddled together and shivered as they watched the blackness ahead of them expanding.

* * *

Nearer the castle, the form that had been the tiny Rookie had become a huge mass of darkness taller than any other evil Digimon there. GranDracmon smirked and decided that now might be a good time to help give his newest creation an even bigger boost to his power.

He turned to a group of nearby Devimon, mixed in with a Matadormon and several Raremon and without warning, he lashed out with one hand and shouted, **"CRYSTAL REVOLUTION!"** A beam of light shot out from his hand and slammed into the Digimon before they were expecting it and in a blinding flash, they were instantly transformed into ice crystals. GranDracmon clenched his fist and those crystals shattered on the spot. As the other Nightmare Soldiers backed away, the data which was left behind shot towards the great mass of dark energy that had been Phascomon and was absorbed into it as well.

It was then, when the last of Beelzemon's data was placed inside the great blackness that it began to take a shape. Limbs thicker than the thickest of Earth tree-trunks began to form as huge arms hung from broad shoulders and a paired of bent legs formed underneath, ready to pounce at a moment's notice as the giant claws formed on each toe and large upwards pointing spikes jetted out of each knee. GranDracmon's shark jaws clacked in anticipation as the final stage began.

Colour slowly began to return to the new Digimon as the eerie blackness began to fade away. Most of it was still black and the resultant Digimon's fur was just that colour, except for vicious blood red markings across his chest and hips. Around the claws on his hands formed gauntlets that had extra, bladed claws jutting out over the top of his knuckles, glowing in an eerie ghost light. Chains formed around his arms, trailing from his elbow and glowing in same light as the claws.

The shoulders were padded in what looked like the paws of another member of its own race, the claws pointing up towards the head. The head itself was just like some kind of enormous hellhound, with broad backwards pointed ears, snarling jaws complete with massive canines and a slavering tongue, the eyes still glowing in their bright red light and the sweeping ram's horns jutting out from the top of is head.

The darkness still behind the enormous figure slowly formed into giant wings, each wing segmented into resembling three smaller wings, with claws at each of the wrist joints, and purple flaps of skin extending out from the black bony sections holding the skin flaps outwards.

For a couple of moments, the new figure didn't move, and then he tilted his massive head to look down at his barrel chest and muscular body and arms. He raised said arms and slid the claws on his gauntlets against one another for a moment as if testing their efficiency and his teeth clashed together, apparently pleased with what he was seeing.

His ears twitched as he picked up new sounds and his jaw vibrated as a deep growl began to build up from deep within him. That growl steadily grew louder until it became a deep-throated roar, which was at first just unintelligible noise, but which soon formed into words:-

**"IIIIIIIII AAAAAMMMMM BELPHEMOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNN!**" he roared at the top of his considerably large lungs, and slashed his claws through the air. He was clearly revelling in the massive amount of power he could feel bursting through his body. The Nightmare Soldiers quailed before him as he lifted a foot and stamped into the ground hard enough to make it shake and he continued to roar, making several of them place their hands over their ears.

He was Phascomon no more.

Belphemon, the Deadly Demon Lord of Sloth, was been recreated at last.

GranDracmon smirked up at the massive Demon Lord creature, watching as he ripped off the leads that were still connecting him to the draining chambers tanks, having no need for them anymore. He had to resist the urge to laugh out loud himself, such was his glee. It had taken years of planning and months of time trying to implement it, but he had finally succeeded in getting his General.

"**I AM BELPHEMON!"** the General in question repeated, taking a step forward and causing the Nightmare Soldiers in front of him to step back in alarm, as his glowing, red eyes fixed upon them and narrowed in what appeared to be rage, which was not all that surprising considering Belphemon was currently in his Rage Mode. Everything was going to be making him angry from now on.

"Belphemon!" GranDracmon called up to him, causing the mighty Demon Lord to look down at him. "How does it feel? The power? Is it what you hoped it would be?"

Belphemon growled and bellowed, **"I FEEL FULL OF ENERGY! GIVE ME SOMETHING TO KILL! I WANT TO TEST OUT THIS NEW FORM AND SEE WHAT THE POWER I FEEL FLOWING THROUGH ME CAN DO! SHALL I KILL HIM?" **he enquired, pointing at a SkullGreymon which promptly looked alarmed and stepped back several steps in fear.

"No," GranDracmon replied. "No, do not kill him. You have plenty of other potential targets available to you at the moment. Targets which would benefit us far more if you removed them. Like that army of Digimon over there." He pointed to where the Sovereigns and the others behind them had stopped and were staring at Belphemon in disbelief.

"**I CAN KILL THEM?" **Belphemon growled with delight, lifting up his claws and brandishing them in preparation, his legs tensing to charge at a moment's notice.

"Of course," nodded GranDracmon. "Perhaps you would like to take the opportunity to try out your new leadership and take the Nightmare Soldiers you see before you into battle for the first time."

Belphemon's eyes roamed over the evil Digimon before him and he roared, **"VERY WELL, BUT STAY OUT OF MY WAY OR IT WILL NOT END WELL FOR YOU!"** He then turned around and shouted, **"THANK YOU, BEELZEMON, FOR THIS LOVELY GIFT YOU HAVE GIVEN ME! I PROMISE TO USE IT ONLY FOR EVIL!"** A roar of delighted laughter practically belched out of his mouth, but then his jaws shut and his eyes narrowed.

He began to step forward and the Nightmare Soldiers immediately cleared a path to allow him tho stride through their forces. The little teddy bear had become a killing monstrosity and none of them were keen to be on the receiving end of his newfound skills. Nevertheless, they regrouped behind him and followed him across the beach, eager for the data-bath that was sure to follow when the two armies clashed.

GranDracmon almost chortled, such was his sadistic glee. "You are too late, Tamers," he said to himself. "Too late to stop me."

* * *

"Who's that guy?" Kenta trembled as they watched Belphemon roaring to the sky. "He sure looks like a piece of work to me."

"Are you kidding me, Kenta," Kazu cried. "Everyone knows who that is. You do collect the cards, don't you? That can only be the Demon Lord Belphemon. Plus, he even said his own name. Twice."

"But that's impossible," Elecmon bristled, his tails standing on end, as was his ears and all of his fur. "Belphemon is dead. The Sovereigns hit him with all their most powerful attacks at the same time. Belphemon could not possibly have survived that."

"Yeah, I thought that Beelzemon was the last of the Demon Lords," Jeri whispered, practically struggling not to tremble herself. Belphemon's roar was the most terrifying sound she had ever heard in her entire life and all the Tamers and a large portion of the Digimon seemed to have been affected by it, even Takato and Ryo.

Ai and Mako were practically wetting themselves.

"He is," Lilamon replied in response to Jeri's observation.

"Yeah," nodded Diatrymon. "The Angels were very clear that all the other Demon Lords were dead, and surely they would know if Belphemon was actually still alive, even if they are in the Heavens while he was here. They'd know, wouldn't they?"

"We can't be sure," Ryo replied. "Though I would probably say that yes, they would."

"Maybe GranDracmon did something like grab his data moments before it disappeared into Anubimon's realm and find some weird way of reconfiguring him or something," Takato suggested.

"No, Tamers," Azulongmon replied from up above. "We would have sensed an evil presence as strong as GranDracmon's if something like that had happened. The Belphemon which we killed, the Belphemon which ran with the other six Demon Lords in days of old, that Belphemon has definitely past through Anubimon's dimension. This must be a different Belphemon altogether."

"Is that possible?" Guardromon breathed. "I thought there was only one of him."

"It's possible for almost any Digimon to have a duplicate," Baihumon replied. "There is every possibility that every one of you, except perhaps the Guilmon, to have Digimon similar if not exactly the same as yourselves, somewhere out in the Digital World. Even the Demon Lords are not exceptions to that rule."

"Though et seems we were caught unprepared dis time," Ebonwumon agreed. "We never tart dat another Belphemon might be appearin' on de scene so soon."

"You saw the way that he grew and expanded just now," Zhuqiaomon concluded. "If I were to guess, I would say that somehow GranDracmon extracted the data from Beelzemon and put it into the lower form of a Belphemon right before our eyes to create his new Demon Lord in front of us. It seems that he gave up on the idea of trying to convert Beelzemon back to the side of evil and decided to use this method instead. He certainly is clever, if nothing else."

"He used Beelzemon's data!" Jeri practically shrieked, her hands flying to her mouth. "Then... does that mean... does that mean... he's dead?"

A silence hung over the group at that horrifying question. "That..." Zhuqiamon rumbled. "I cannot say."

"Ai. Mako," Wingdramon lowered himself down. "Quickly. Use your D-Arc to see if that is true or not."

The twins had been frozen, dumbstruck with terror, at the prospect of Jeri's question, but Wingdramon's words jolted them out of their numbness and Ai lifted the D-Arc. As the holoscreen popped up over the top it, a tidal wave of relief swept through them as the locator arrow was still transmitting and pointing directly at the castle ahead of them.

"Yes!" Mako cried. "Yes, he's still alive! He's in that castle over there!"

"Then there's still hope that we can save him," Lilamon observed, a grin splitting across her face. She almost wanted to laugh as relief opened up inside her like a flower in spring in a time lapse shot on a documentary. In the end, she did laugh out loud and say, "This is epic news."

"It is?" MetalSeadramon asked, as he lowered his head down to the others. "Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that we have to fight against an incredibly powerful Demon Lord with an army at his back?"

"Yeah," nodded Lilamon. "But that's not the point. The point is that the Prophecy stated that we would be too late to end his torture. That torture must have been the data extraction, not torture-torture as we assumed, so he's still alive in there somewhere, which means there's hope of rescuing him. It also said that Demon's evil would be reborn. We all thought that meant that GranDracmon would somehow manage to convert Beelzemon back to the side of darkness, but its not the case. That line wasn't talking about Beelzemon at all, but about this Belphemon. It was saying that Belphemon would rise again. The word reborn was more literal than we even assumed. We might be fighting a Demon Lord, but it's not Beelzemon, and that's what matters."

"Hey, yeah, she's right," Takato cried, bringing his fist up in front of him as a new look of determination was set in his eyes. "If we're fighting against Belphemon instead, then that means we don't have to hold back against him. We can attack him with everything we've got."

"Well," Ryo chuckled. "We do have a lot to attack with if we're going with everything, but you and Lilamon are both right. This does actually beat what I thought we were going to have to do."

Jeri smiled and nodded. "We won't have to find a way of subduing Beelzemon without causing him too much harm. And you guys took out Ogudomon, and we've all gotten stronger since then. We might be able to pull this off."

"Do not underestimate the power of these Digimon that we are about to face, humans," Zhuqiaomon lectured them from above their heads. "With the powers of darkness so strong in this world, it will no doubt be increasing the powers of Digimon with evil hearts like theirs to beyond the level they would normally be. And that includes Belphemon."

"Indeed," nodded Baihumon. "He's probably stronger here that he ever was in the Digital World. He might be as powerful as Ogudomon himself was, though without the invulnerability to malice ability that Ogudomon had."

"And with better attacks, probably," Ryo nodded. "This is not going to be easy. The Sovereigns are right. We should watch our backs, guys."

"You got it, Ryo," Kazu nodded.

"They coming," MarineAngemon suddenly peeped, pointing towards the group with his own little flipper-arm-thingie. That caught everybody's attention and they saw the enormous Demon Lord stepping through the crowd of soldiers and making his way towards them with large and deliberate strides, pounding the sand into mulch with every step, claws splayed and ready to go tearing in enemies at a moment's notice.

The rest of the army wasn't far behind him. They walked behind Belphemon like a sea of black, grey and white gleaming bone in many cases, a little like the Dark Ocean they were standing next to. It was a very wide beach they were on, but it was soon going to become a battlefield.

"Well, it was nice knowing you guys," Kenta murmured.

"Have more faith in yourself, my good sir," Guardromon patted him so hard he knocked the boys glasses off. "We shall endure whatever they wish to throw at us."

"Yeah," nodded Takato. "Alright guys, listen. I don't know what you guys are planning on doing, but I'm going to go straight for Belphemon – try and hold him off for as long as I can, alright."

"Belphemon will be powerful, Takato," Ryo warned him. "Don't take unnecessary risks against him, and if you see the opportunity to obliterate any other Digimon we don't count as a friend then make sure you do it. I'll give the others some assistance against the army and then join you on Belphemon."

"I'll join you guys too," nodded Kazu. "HiAndromon's Copy Paste ability could prove useful against someone like him."

"Alright," nodded Takato. "The three of us will battle him."

"We need to see how strong his is first, Takato before we make that a definitive," Ryo reminded him. "If he's stronger here then he might be more than the three of us can handle. If that's the case, then we should keep switching who it is that's attacking Belphemon. Try and keep him off balance, as he tries to adjust to different tactics among us. That ought to help."

"Alright," Takato agreed. He sighed and said, "It's times like these that I wish Grani was still around."

"We need to start thinking about how we're going to get past that army and get into the castle," Diatrymon looked at the others in his little group. "If we're going to rescue Impmon, we'll need to do that, but they cover most of the beach."

"Indeed," Wingdramon nodded. "And it would be best if we could do it without drawing attention to ourselves. I suggest we hang back here and wait for the battling to begin, then we sneak around the side via the forest. We can use the trees for cover, whereas if we went over the ocean anybody could see us."

"Got it," Lilamon confirmed. "Come on, you guys. Let's hang back and let the others get going." Ai, Mako and Calumon all nodded and drew back with Lilamon until they were crouched behind rocks, Diatrymon lying next to them and Wingdramon concealing them from view even further with one wing.

"There's still wun muir important question that's yet tae be answered," Ebonwumon's Scottish head spoke up.

"Aye," nodded the Irish one. "Where exactly is GranDracmon en all thes."

"I can see him," Gryphonmon spoke up, his sharp eyes picking out the leader of the Nightmare Soldiers still standing by the Castle Wall. "He's watching us carefully. Probably waiting for us to make the first move."

"GranDracmon is likely to be too powerful for you children to handle," Azulongmon replied. "Not unless you've gotten a very big power boost since we last saw you. Leave him to us. We Sovereigns will take him on. He is our responsibility anyway. He has been a threat to our world for far longer than he has been to yours."

"Okay," nodded Jeri. She turned around and said, "Ai, Mako, Calumon, you three stick with Lilamon, Diatrymon and Wingdramon, alright? No wandering off, no matter what happens out there. And all six of you... good luck. Bring Impmon back, okay?"

"We certainly intend to," Lilamon nodded.

"Well..." Takato shrugged his shoulders. "Here goes nothing. Let's go everybody."

And with that, the allied army continued their advance along the beach, fanning out until they covered its entirety as well as they strode along the seashore and right towards the Nightmare Soldiers heading in the opposite direction. Human and Digimon stood side by side as they strode across the sand. All differences and grudges between members of the group were null and void for the moment. They had to be. Nobody could afford to distance themselves from the others at this point.

Even Indramon was walking next to Cyberdramon as if they were old buddies, though the latter kept glancing across at Dinorexmon, waiting to see what he might do.

Lilamon kept the three young ones close as the six of them watched the others go on without them. Calumon had put one of his hands in his mouth to stop himself from whimpering in fear. Fear, not only at the place, but also at the fact there was a distinct possibility that some of his friends were going to die today.

* * *

As the two armies drew closer to one another, the Sovereigns suddenly stopped moving and Azulongmon said, "This is where we make our stand. Tamers, Digimon, go on without us to engage the rest of the army. We will draw GranDracmon out here to fight him."

"Good luck, guys," called Ryo as the rest of the army continued to move forwards.

"For once, we might actually need it," murmured Baihumon. "Make a change, doesn't it?"

"Been a while since we've been sluggin' it oot with a powerful enemy Digimon," Ebonwumon nodded. "Or something better at strikin' back then the True Enemy."

"Zhuqiaomon," Azulongmon turned to the blazing phoenix. "Would you like to do the honour of calling him out?"

"Gladly," Zhuqiaomon flared, his red aura expanding outwards like an erupting volcano as he gave one almighty flap with his multitude of wings and rose into the air, fixing on the distant shape of GranDracmon and bellowing at the top of his lungs, which was a very considerable volume.

"**HEY, GRANDRACMON! SO THIS IS WHERE YOU HAVE BEEN HIDING OUT ALL THESE YEARS! AND HERE I THOUGHT YOU WERE BEING TOO COWARDLY TO COME OUT AND FACE US! NOW I SEE YOU COWERING AT THE BACK WHILE THE REST OF YOUR ARMY MOVES FORWARDS TO ATTACK US! PERHAPS MY EARLIER GUESS WAS CORRECT AFTER ALL! WHAT'S WRONG? AFRAID THAT YOU'LL HAVE SOME TO LOSE OTHER THAN YOUR PRIDE ONCE WE DEFEAT YOU!"**

"Did you really have to let _him_ be the one to call GranDracmon out to face us?" Baihumon asked.

"Well," chuckled the giant dragon. "Of all of us, Zhuqiaomon always was the best at getting under the skin of the enemy. Perhaps GranDracmon will be the same."

* * *

And indeed it was. GranDracmon had always been intending to face off against the Sovereigns himself anyway, as he had told to Beelzemon when he still maintained that form, albeit barely. He had merely been hanging back to bask in the moment of watch his army move forward and he had wanted to witness the action begin before he made his own move.

But now, Zhuqiaomon was calling him out, insulting him in front of all his Nightmare Soldiers.

The Great Demon Digimon knew that the phoenix Sovereign was trying to goad him into attacking, and to be honest, he wasn't even all that bothered by the words.

However, there was the fact that Zhuqiaomon's voice had carried across the entire beach, and that meant every one of the Nightmare Soldiers had heard it as well. And while he could hold them in check through fear alone, that didn't mean that he wanted them to think of him as a coward. He fixed his eyes on the distant Sovereigns and began to step towards them, following in the footsteps of his army.

As he did, darkness seemed to coagulate around him until it was flowing towards and even into him as if it were being sucked into his body like the data of an enemy Digimon. GranDracmon felt himself smirk as he began to put on size, growing larger and larger with each passing second. Unlike Belphemon, there was no distortion to his form. He just grew.

After all, this was not digivolution. This wasn't even a Mode Change. GranDracmon was absorbing the powers of darkness from all around him, using it to give himself even more strength than he already had, drawing it together inside his Digi-core until he was even larger than Belphemon. He still didn't have the size of any of the Sovereigns, but he was pretty close to Baihumon and Zhuqiaomon.

His shark-like mouths that made up the shoulders of his centaur-like body gnashed in apprehension as GranDracmon suddenly changed direction and walked towards the water of the Dark Ocean. He planted his foot on the surface and then the others and he began to gallop along the top of the water, in a perverse reversal of what Jesus had done in the Bible. It was as if the water was solidifying underneath his feet right before each step.

In this manner, he bypassed both his army and the army of the others which was heading in their direction. There was a momentary lull in the advance as both sides paused to watch him go.

The Sovereigns were waiting for him, standing or floating above the shoreline with all sixteen eyes between them fixed on the Great Demon Digimon. Eventually GranDracmon stood before them, arms folded across his chest, the tongues lolling out of his shark-like projections and his yellowish horse-like tail flicking out behind him.

"Greetings, Sovereigns," he chuckled. "It has been a while since I last laid eyes on the four of you in person."

"Your bid to seize control of our Digital World ends here and now, GranDracmon," Azulongmon informed him, his voice as striking as a thunderclap. "We will not allow you to set foot in either world if we can get away with it. Neither you nor any more of your minions."

"I always figured that there would one day be a titanic showdown between the four of you and myself," GranDracmon leered. "But to come to _my_ universe, where everything flows the way that _I_ want it to? Have you lost your minds or just become foolish and naive in the belief that your power will always reign supreme?"

"You willnae surrender then?" Ebonwumon clarified.

"And miss this?" GranDracmon spread his arms. "The face-off that has been in the waiting for years? Of course I will not surrender. I should be asking you that question really. Do you really believe that you stand a chance against me here of all places? In the universe that I _built_?"

"There is only one way to find out," replied Baihumon. "And we will not find it by sitting around and talking to one another like this."

"Indeed not," GranDracmon laughed. "Straight to the point as ever, Baihumon. I look forward to the power that your data will give me."

"You may find us tougher than you remember, GranDracmon," Zhuqiaomon added in. "We have faced many a dangerous opponent since we last met. And this time, nobody runs away."

"Excellent," GranDracmon said. "I do like a challenge."

* * *

Hidden nearby, crouched protectively under the gravity-repellent wing of Wingdramon, Lilamon and Diatrymon stood over Ai, Mako and Calumon, watching with terrible fascination as the Sovereigns all tensed, ready to move towards GranDracmon at a moment's notice.

"Just like the prophecy said," whispered Lilamon. "Everything's going full circle now, and all really quickly."

"Fire and lightning, plant and iron," nodded Diatrymon, quoting directly from the prophecy. "Fight the pitch-black Digi-core. That means the four Sovereigns facing off against GranDracmon. A Digi-core can't really get much blacker than his at the moment, especially considering he absorbed all that dark stuff. His Digi-core is probably one giant orb of evil at the moment."

"Not a trace of good anywhere," Lilamon agreed.

"This scares me," Calumon murmured. "I don't like how close we are to them."

"He's got a point," Diatrymon muttered. "A fight between those five is going to be very explosive. We should probably move back a bit."

"Right," nodded Lilamon. "Come on kids, get moving. We need to wait a bit more before we go and rescue Impmon." As she ferried the two twins out from beneath Wingdramon, both she and Diatrymon heard the dragon give off a faint grunt of apprehension. Both turned to look at him and Diatrymon asked, "What's wrong?"

Wingdramon glanced at the twins to see if they were listening, then lowered his head and whispered, "Lilamon's right. The prophecy is happening really quickly, but it's the next line after that which is worrying me. Remember it?"

Lilamon nodded gravely. "Ally upon ally will turn," she quoted.

"Yeah," nodded Wingdramon. "We thought that was going to apply to us fighting Beelzemon as well, didn't we, or at best Beelzemon turning against GranDracmon again after we snapped him out of it. But Beelzemon's not the Demon Lord General at all. So if it's not him the prophecy was talking about, then who is it?"

Diatrymon and Lilamon exchanged a worried glance, before the former said, "We probably shouldn't think about that now. Let's just focus on getting Impmon back for now."

Lilamon and Wingdramon nodded and turned to follow the twins and Calumon, staying low to avoid attracting attention from GranDracmon.

* * *

Further along the beach, the two armies were converging on one another. Belphemon was moving faster now – his strides were longer and quicker than they had been before and his claws were ready in front of him, a savage grin on his face, more feral than anything Guilmon could come up with.

Guilmon himself looked calm compared to normal, advancing forward with his Tamer by his side, determination printed on his face. He realised that he hadn't gone into battle with his Tamer since before the last time he had become Megidramon and the little dinosaur was ready to fight to protect his friends, family and home once more.

"Crunch time, right Takato," he said.

"Yeah," nodded Takato. "It's time to show them the power of humans and Digimon working together."

"We show them justice today," UlforceVeedramon spoke up.

"And honour," MirageGaogamon echoed.

"We fight for freedom," Sandiramon hissed.

"For everyone," chipped in Pajiramon.

"No matter who they are, what they look like or where they live," Plesiomon growled.

"And we fight in name of those who couldn't be here to help us," Ryo nodded. "Henry, Rika, Suzie and their partners."

"And for Impmon," Jeri added.

"Especially Impmon," Elecmon chuckled.

Finally, Belphemon lost patience and roared, a sound so fearsomely terrible that everybody cringed on the spot, even the hardiest of the enemy. **"DDDDDIIIEEE!"** The Demon Lord bellowed and he suddenly thundered forward, taking to the air on his massive wings and surging towards them with chains at the ready, following by a screaming mob of Demonic Nightmare Soldiers.

"Bring it on!" Dinorexmon shrieked as he charged forwards as well. Ryo, knowing what was coming next, quickly grabbed Cyberdramon's wing as the dragon, not to be outdone, leapt forward a split second later, dragging his partner along behind him, and yanking Ryo completed off his feet.

Ryo yelped and struggled to gain some semblance of balance as he pressed his D-Arc to his chest and, along with the others behind him, screamed, "Biomerge activate!"

Several explosions of white light occurred across the field as the Tamers charged forward, Kenta's Digimon reverting to his Rookie form of Gomamon as they ran before bursting into brighter light along with the others.

"**GUILMON BIOMERGE TO... GALLANTMON!"**

"**CYBERDRAMON BIOMERGE TO... JUSTIMON!"**

"**ELECMON BIOMERGE TO... SABERLEOMON!"**

"**GUARDROMON BIOMERGE TO... HIANDROMON!"**

"**GOMAMON BIOMERGE TO... MARINEANGEMON!"**

As he emerged from the light of his own biomerging, Gallantmon levelled his lance at roared, "CHARGE!" And the Digimon behind him did just that, roaring battlecries into the air as they dashed forwards, ready to fight against anything thrown at them. Even Makuramon joined in the charge, yowling and screeching as they moved forward like a wave, thundering towards the Nightmare Soldiers who were thundering back in a collision course.

* * *

Behind them, GranDracmon and Zhuqiaomon lunged forwards at the same time, shooting towards one another to engage in battle, Baihumon leaping into the shallows of the Ocean and readying his iron claws for combat.

* * *

And in the castle, Yaamon looked out at the sounds of yelling from outside, and he knew without having to see it that the fighting was about to begin.

* * *

I'm rather pleased with the way that this chapter turned out. There was still no action in it, but the build-up was great to write and I left it on a major cliffie that points to one inescapable fact – in five chapters time, things are going to get very, very violent indeed. I feel a bit giddy right now. Heh, I hope that you guys liked the chapter.

Does anyone have any idea what might happen next. We're into the last couple of verses of the prophecy now. Speculation? Thoughts? You won't get any spoilers from me this time, even if you guess it right, but it would be nice to see what people are predicting will happen and see if its close to what I have in mind.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

While the final preparations are being made for the battle that is to come, Aayla is suddenly approached by Grievous with a very unusual request. A request which, if she carries it out, could provide quite a boost to their efforts to bring the Sith to their knees.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 186 : Aayla's New Training**


	186. Aayla's New Training

Hello everybody. I hope that you're all well, and I'd like to thank everyone who wished me a happy birthday for the last Sunday (I forgot to mention this in the last chapter). In any case, I'm almost sorry to leave the story on a massive cliffhanger like the last chapter, but hey, these next few chapters should still be pretty cool regardless.

Hope you enjoy this chapter. It's been one I've been looking forward to.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 186:- Aayla's New Training**

* * *

The arrival of the Zillo Beast had brought a new energy to the activity on Tython. Everybody seemed to have been invigorated by the fact that they had such a large and formidable ally. It seemed that their attempts to take the Galaxy back from the Sith might not have been as much of a desperate struggle as they assumed it would be.

Everything was almost in place now. The Gungans had marked out the positions they were going to stand in that would help them to assault any incoming armies, while the clones and the droids had identified the optimum places for them to place both themselves and their weapons in the struggle that was going to ensure soon.

It still felt weird for the two sides to be working with one another instead of against each other, and the clones still held a large amount of distrust towards the battle droids, but as of yet the droids had shown no sign of even thinking of attacking the clones, so they merely got on with their jobs and tried not to turn their backs on the droids too often.

Several of the main leaders, including many of the Jedi Council, all of the Tenacious Ten, Grievous, Tarpals and Chewbacca, were standing around another hastily constructed holotable and examining a hologram of the area, to try and predict how the battle would go, and how they might be able to counteract it.

"They're definitely not going to engage us on one front only," Mace was saying. "More than likely, when they do attack, they will be coming from all directions in an attempt to cut off our escape. The Temple is not backed onto anything, and if we do need to evacuate, we're going to be hard pressed to get out. They'll shoot down anything we try to fly in moments."

"Hopefully you won't have to evacuate at all," Anakin replied. "If we get our job done right over on Coruscant, then we should be able to end the conflict before you get overrun."

"Yes, but there is every possibility, even with the forces we have, that things will not go according to plan," Mace argued. "We should have a back-up just in case something does go wrong. The most important thing is that the rebellion survives to fight another day, even if we do not emerge victorious."

"On a similar note," Aayla said, "I was thinking of another issue which we would need to sort out. If Palpatine does indeed watch the battle from the safety of Coruscant, as we believe he will, then he will probably be expecting to see you, Anakin, as well as Ahsoka and Barriss, on the front line. He thinks I'm dead so that rules me out of this, but if he doesn't see you leading the rebellion into battle, he might start wondering where you are. He might start thinking something is up."

"Yes, that's a good point," nodded Obi-Wan. "He knows the three of you survived, and no doubt he will be anxious to see the rest of the A-Team fighting in the coming battle."

"Then, what do you suggest we do?" Barriss asked. "We need to be heading for Coruscant pretty soon after the battle begins if we're going to get there in time to do anything useful to help them over here."

"Aayla and I were discussing this earlier," Lopmon spoke up. "And we decided that it would probably be a good idea for us Digimon to use the drill Modify Cards to dig a tunnel out of a hidden place into the city and to a point far away where we could hide the stealth ship to pick us up without it being spotted by the enemy. Then, you guys can appear at the beginning, and then slip away unnoticed and suddenly we'll be on Coruscant."

"Mesa see," Tarpals nodded. "Dat besa surprising de Sith even moresa den, because deysa seeing you here first when suddenly yousa attacking dem instead."

"Exactly," Aayla pointed at the Gungan. "That's pretty much what I was thinking?"

"What about the Digimon?" Mace asked. "Will they be making an appearance in the battle here of Tython."

"Possibly," Terriermon replied. "But only in lower forms and well away from somewhere Palpatine can see us. We want us to be a surprise right up until the last moment."

"Every advantage we can gain, exploit it, we should," agreed Yoda.

"Chewbacca," Barriss turned to the Wookiee. "Are you and your men ready to do your part in this battle?"

Chewbacca let loose a roar that would terrify any small creatures for several hundred yards and several nearby Wookiees took it up to add to the din, as Chewbacca thrust his furry fist into the air.

"I should take that as a yes then?" queried Barriss. Chewbacca grinned and nodded.

"Ohwo ohahanan oaraaooaac aoacwosc oowwww rrhurarcwa. Waoo whooao ohoorcrcro," he assured them, hefting his bowcaster.

"Good," nodded Lopmon. "Thanks Chewie."

The Wookiee grunted, pleased to receive the acknowledgement.

"What about you, General Tarpals?" Anakin asked. "Are the Gungans prepared for battle?"

"Some of de men are getting jittery," Tarpals confessed. "Deysa getting nervous wid disa longo waiting. But mesa keeping dem in line, and deysa going to besa ready to fight. Wesa teach dat Sith dat hesa cannot bring suffering to our people just so hesa can be receiving more power, not if wesa have anything to say about it."

"Excellent," Anakin grinned. "Knew that we could count on you guys."

"And I probably don't need to ask you if your droids are ready for the upcoming battle, or whether you are, for that matter," Aayla turned to look at Grievous. She blinked, when she realised that Grievous was not even paying attention to the conversation. The cyborg was staring at the hologram but appeared to be looking through it rather than at it. His mind was somewhere else.

"It appears I do," Aayla frowned. "Grievous?" she tapped him on the shoulder. He didn't feel it but the plinking noise got his attention and he looked over.

"What?" he rasped.

"I said that assume that you and your droids are ready for the battle," Aayla repeated.

"Of course," bristled Grievous, his fingers closing into a fist with a decisive snap. "Any Empire clone that dares to mess with my army will be crushed underfoot and the Sith will not be far behind."

"Well, while that is good, perhaps you could not talk about crushing clones in front of other clones," Aayla smiled at him. Grievous growled and turned away and Aayla frowned again. She could tell something was on Grievous' mind, but what could make a war general like him lose concentration when it came to the plan to initiate the revenge on the people he hated most?

"Is there anything else we should discuss for now?"

"Not at the moment really," Anakin shook his head. "We're waiting on Chuchi's next transmission to tell us if they've secured the equipment we're going to need, and see if there have been any updates in what the Sith have been doing. Apart from that, we're all set to go. Oh, I should probably mention that we're planning to take Sugi and her gang of Bounty Hunters with us to Coruscant. They can help Aayla and Renamon in their task on the planet."

"Are you sure that this really is what you want us to do, Anakin?" Shaak Ti asked, and all the members of the Tenacious Ten noted how weird it was that the Jedi Council were actually taking orders from them at the moment instead of the other way round like usual. It was as if they had accepted that the A-Team, Barriss and the Digimon were their best hope. "I mean, all of you will be in terrible danger on Coruscant, including your own Padawan."

"Believe me, Master Ti," Anakin replied. "I don't like the idea of Ahsoka going into danger any more than you, probably even less so. But I've seen her prove herself time in and time out, as I have seen all of us prove our skill on the battlefield. I have faith that we will not only succeed, but that we will all be able to handle ourselves. Isn't that right, Snips?"

"Yep," nodded Ahsoka.

"And there's the fact that my Master knows I would probably find a way of following him if he dared to leave me behind as well."

Shaak Ti chuckled and said, "Well, I suppose there is that. You've certainly got yourself a faithful Padawan, Skywalker."

"She's not faithful, she's a curse – yow!" Anakin had known Ahsoka was going to elbow him in the ribs before she did it, but he let her do it anyway. Just as Ahsoka knew that he was just joking. She smirked at him and he smirked back.

"Then everything seems to be in accord," nodded Mace. "All that's left now after we've done with these assorted tasks it to find a way of slipping the news to Palpatine in a way that doesn't let him know that we actually want to be found."

"We'll come up with something, I'm sure," Renamon replied.

"Alright then," nodded Obi-Wan. "Let us adjourn for now and set our next meeting in the aftermath of our next call from Senator Chuchi and the others, assuming they haven't been found out by the Sith."

"Obi-Wan, must you be so negative all the time?" Anakin pinched the bridge of his nose to keep himself from wincing at the prospect of what would happen to Padmé if she _was_ found out. He was currently praying with all his heart that she didn't do something reckless again. If _ever_ there was a time for subtlety, even he knew that this was it. For now.

"I prefer to look at it as realism, but I suppose you're right," the Jedi Master nodded. "Chuchi has done well so far and I'm sure the other Senators are more than capable of keeping their mouths shut and their heads down."

"I hope so," Anakin murmured. "I really, really hope so."

As the people dispersed, the Tenacious Ten moved off on their own, moving in no direction in particular but looking our across the soon-to-be battlezone. The crates and weapons that had previously littered the area had been taken inside the city, which was now jam-packed with arms and tanks and other powerful and deadly equipment. In the distance, they could make out Zarza playing tag with a couple of Acklay, and while the Varactyl was running rings around the two insectoid creatures, (they were very fast, but she was stupidly speedy) they certainly seemed to be enjoying the game.

Ahsoka spotted R2-D2 rolling towards them, rotating his head and twiddling a greeting to them. She smiled at the astromech and then turned to Anakin and said, "You know, Master – Shaak Ti does have a point. It _is_ going to be pretty dangerous on Coruscant."

"Yes, Snips, I know," he replied. "What's the matter? Having second thoughts?"

"Of course not," Ahsoka shook her head. "While there might be more Jedi better qualified and more skilled than I am who might be able to take my place, I wouldn't stay behind for the universe. We've been the main hindrance to Palpatine all this time, so I say that we finish him together."

"Couldn't have put it better myself," Rika nodded.

"It's just that I have an idea that might put your mind at ease about me just a little bit, Master," Ahsoka added. "I know that I don't have the experience of any of you on the field, but there might be another way to give me an edge if I have to cross blades with anybody out there."

"Oh?" Anakin asked. "And what would that be?"

Ahsoka smirked and turned to Artoo, as the astromech pulled to a stop next to them. "Hey, little guy," she said. "Did you bring it?"

Artoo whistled in confirmation and a little panel in his head slid aside, and there was a whirring sound as some kind of tube partially slid out into the open. Ahsoka grabbed the tube and slid it out of the socket, which closed behind it and Artoo rocked from foot to foot in excitement as Ahsoka turned around and showed it to the others.

"Hey, wait a minute," Terriermon blinked as he stared at it. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Yes," nodded Ahsoka, having entered Terriermon's mind to see what he thought it was first. "It's finally ready."

In her hand was an exact duplicate of her lightsaber hilt, only slightly smaller than her original one. Ever since she had been trained in double-bladed combat by Anakin and Aayla, Ahsoka had spent some of her free time constructing the device in her hand. All Jedi built their own lightsabers, and now Ahsoka appeared to have crafted herself a second, smaller one.

A shoto to be exact. The weapon that Anakin had suggested to her when she had been training against him with two ordinary sized blades.

"Snips," Anakin picked it out of her hand and stared at it, impressed. "I didn't even know that you were building this. I thought we dropped the whole shoto idea for a while because things were getting a bit serious."

"No," Ahsoka smiled. "You dropped it. I started building it in secret right after you suggested it. I was hoping to ask Aayla to take me to Ilum to get the lightsaber crystal and then surprise you with it next time I fought on the battlefield, but that's kinda gone out the airlock. I just finished it today, on the way back from Maridun. What do you think?"

Anakin nodded. "Excellent craftsmanship," he said. "A job well done, Ahsoka."

"Thanks," Ahsoka grinned as Anakin tossed it back to her.

All of them were now considering the possibilities of giving Ahsoka a second blade to fight with. It might not be another full length blade like Aayla's but that didn't matter. A shoto could be a deadly instrument in the right hands, and for Ahsoka it was the perfect weapon. Ahsoka's light build had always meant that her speed was a far greater asset to her than physical strength, which she would need to wield two full-sized lightsabers at once. A shoto could be used even faster than an ordinary blade due to its lighter weight and for a fast fighter like Ahsoka, it had the potential to strike an opponent before they even knew Ahsoka had moved if it worked right.

"The only thing it needs now is the crystal to power it," Ahsoka said, staring at the hilt. "Everything else had been built. If I can get another blade, then perhaps I might be able to better defend myself from attack on Coruscant."

"I think this is an excellent idea," Aayla nodded. "It's the perfect choice for her. Take it from somebody who already uses two blades."

"Agreed," Renamon nodded. "I could definitely see our little Ahsoka using a second, smaller blade. I'm not sure why but..."

"I just feels right?" Barriss interrupted and finished the sentence.

"Yes," Renamon nodded. "That."

"What do you say, Anakin?" Aayla turned to the Chosen One. "Ilum's not far from here in Galactic terms. You could go and get the lightsaber crystal and be back within a few hours. And we do have the rest of the day to kill after all. Ahsoka could get a new weapon by dusk."

"I'm not sure," Anakin murmured. "I mean, Ahsoka hasn't had a whole lot of practice with a shoto. Certainly not as much as I would have given her under ordinary circumstances."

"Ah, don't be like that, Anakin," Terriermon waved an ear dismissively. "Ahsoka can look after herself. She uses only one hand to swing her current lightsaber anyway. You might as well make use of the other one. And you know that she adapts very quickly, doesn't she?"

"That's true," Barriss chuckled. "She adapted to being your Padawan."

"Oi," Anakin glared at her. Barriss snickered and Terriermon said:-

"Momentai. Anyway, it would make her look more badass than ever."

Anakin stared at the shoto for a couple of seconds and then shrugged and said, "Alright, why not? All those points are valid, and Ahsoka's right. She could better protect herself with a smaller blade in her other hand. I suppose that the timing couldn't have been better for this, right Ahsoka? Just before the main action."

"I worked extra hard on it whenever I got the time," Ahsoka grinned.

"So, I can do this?"

"Yep," nodded Anakin. "Come on Snips, Artoo. We'll use the _Twilight_, and head out for Ilum to get you that crystal immediately. But when we get back, you can expect some vigorous training from me to make sure you haven't forgotten how to use that shoto properly. Who knows, maybe I'll get Master Yoda to give you some tips on how to use those."

Ahsoka smiled as Anakin strode past her, and then she said, "Alright guys. We'll see you later," before she turned around to follow her Master, with Artoo trundling along behind them faithfully.

Lopmon chuckled and said, "I did wonder what Ahsoka was doing when she kept hiding in her room. I was beginning to get a little worried before all this took over and made me forget about it. Now I found that she was building another lightsaber."

"You guys are right though," Henry nodded. "I couldn't tell you why, but the idea of Ahsoka having one of those is really easy to depict."

"I wish I was a Jedi now," Suzie pouted. "I could have one of those then."

"Aaw, Suzie, don't be like that," Lopmon laughed as she stepped in front of her partner. "You've got a Digimon partner instead. And unlike Ahsoka's shoto, I can talk back to you. No Jedi has a Digimon partner."

"Yeah, good point," Suzie nodded enthusiastically.

"Speaking of having a Digimon partner," Rika turned to the others. "We should probably find Numa and Tsunomon. It's about time we got back to teaching them how to work better as Digimon and Tamer like we promised."

"Good point," Henry nodded. "Alright then. Suzie, you go with Rika and try and help Numa work out how to be a Tamer. Remember the lessons that I taught you when you first got Lopmon."

"Where are you going?" Suzie asked her brother.

"Terriermon and I are going to start work on that tunnel," Henry replied. "We should get it out the way as quickly as we can, and the bigger it is, the easier it will be to use later on."

"Lovely," Terriermon rolled his eyes. "Lopmon gets to be Tsunomon's teacher and I get to go crawling through the soil with a pair of drills for hands. How exactly is that fair."

"Oh, stop griping," Henry rolled his eyes. "Someone's got to do it and it might as well be you since Guilmon's not here to do it for you this time."

"Where's the dinosaur when you need him, huh?" Terriermon laughed.

"Okay, see you later," Suzie cried as she and Lopmon moved off towards the city, with Rika following on after them. Renamon looked like she was about to follow as well, as she might be able to provide Tsunomon with some tips on how to work better with his Tamer and how not to make any rookie (pardon the pun) mistakes.

But before she did, a growling voice from behind them cut across the group that remained and made her stop in her tracks. "Secura!" the voice said, and nobody had to turn around to know who it was that was doing the talking.

Flanked by his MagnaGuards, Grievous was stalking towards the group of two Jedi, two Digimon and one Tamer. His hands were clasped behind his back on what looked like a casual pose, for him anyway, but Aayla could, even from a distance, see a grim determination in his yellow eyes. The lack of expressional features for the rest of his face due to it being a mask seemed to highlight Grievous' eyes, making them more expressive than they would normally be.

Aayla remembered Grievous' apparent distraction at the meeting earlier and realised that he had probably come to confront her with whatever was on his mind. She could feel the others tensing a little behind her. It wasn't that they didn't trust Grievous or her own judgement in allowing him to join them, but Grievous was known for being unpredictable and it never hurt to be cautious around him.

Aayla smiled pleasantly, putting a friendly face in front of the cyborg as she always did. "Hello again, Grievous. What can I do for you? Is something wrong?"

"What makes you think there is anything wrong?" Grievous asked, a little challengingly, as he pulled to a halt in front of the group.

"Well, you looked like you had something on your mind at the meeting earlier and you were a bit distracted," Aayla replied. "I assume that you were thinking about something so I wondered if this might be about that."

Grievous growled, but then added, "Actually, it is." The cyborg pulled a lightsaber off his belt and ignited it, and for a moment the eyes of the people standing behind Aayla widened in alarm, though Aayla's own expression did not change. Grievous whirled the blade for a moment and then said, "Earlier, your friend, Master Yoda, came over and spoke to me about some things."

"Did he now?" Aayla smiled reassuringly. "Well, Master Yoda always seems to know the exact thing to say to just about everybody. What words of wisdom did he have to offer you that made you think so hard?"

"He was speaking about my relations with you and the rest of the Jedi," Grievous growled. "He told me I should work with you more closely more on and off the battlefield. More than just fighting next to one another, that is, as it may be better for this rebellion and for me. He said that we might stand a better chance if we worked together." He chuckled wryly and added, "He even said he thought that I was not above redemption."

"Well, I believe he is right about all of that," Aayla replied. "Whether you yourself do or not."

"That is not the point, I am trying to make, Secura!" Grievous growled.

"My apologies. Continue," Aayla smiled.

"Your friend's words did get me thinking about what I might do when I finally did go up against a Sith Lord," Grievous replied. "I admit that I had no plan in mind whatsoever, but then I remembered the one major flaw in my plan - one of the main disadvantages I have against the Sith." He fixed his eyes with Aayla's and said, "And I cannot afford to have any disadvantages on the field of battle. So..." he grabbed a second lightsaber and activated it, holding them in a cross in front of him as he glared between the blades at Aayla and said:-

"Fire Force-lightning at me!"

Aayla blinked for a moment, her mind temporarily going blank at this blunt order from Grievous. She shook her head slightly and said, "W-what?"

"You heard me," Grievous growled. "I want you to fire Force-lightning at me! Force-lighting is one of Dooku's favourite techniques to use against his enemies and it is one of the things that my body is most susceptible to. Duranium might not conduct electricity as well as other metals, but that doesn't change the fact that a blast of lightning from Dooku could probably kill or incapacitate me on the spot. You're the only person I know who can also use Force lightning besides the Sith, and I need to practice recognising and deflecting Force-lighting."

"Er..." Aayla said, a little uncertainly. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," nodded the Kaleesh warlord. "Deflecting Force-lightning is one of the few things Dooku did not teach me. If I am to have my revenge, I must confront it. I believe I am actually following Jedi Yoda's advice, by being willing to accept training from you. Now, do it!"

Aayla felt a small smile grace her lips at what she was doing. Grievous was actually taking advice from a Jedi to heart, and was willing to admit some of his flaws to her. That was something she hadn't thought he would do even when she decided to accept his help.

She shook her head after a moment and said, "I'm sorry to tell you this, Grievous, but that Force-lightning blast I hit you with over Rhen Var was a one-off. It was the first time I'd ever managed or even attempted to do it and I haven't attempted it since. I don't think I'm the right person to give you this training."

Grievous lowered his lightsaber blades and stared at Aayla with incredulity. "A one-off?" he questioned in disbelief.

"Yeah," nodded Aayla. "The Force-lightning technique which does not require being part of the Dark Side is called the Electric Judgement, and to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I did it. My mind was filled with the image of my Acklay friend over there shooting Force-lightning at me from our of his mouth and suddenly I did it on instinct. At least that's the only explanation I have been able to come up with that makes sense."

Grievous sheathed his lightsaber blades and growled. "Then how am I supposed to fight against the Sith? I need to adjust to dealing with Force lightning and if I cannot learn it from you then how am I supposed to proceed with me revenge."

"Well, we could talk to General Plo Koon," Aayla suggested. "He's the one who discovered that the Electric Judgement existed at all. He's perhaps the only Jedi Master how has mastered it. He claims its a useful tool to have in a pinch but that he doesn't make a habit out of using it. Maybe he can help you."

The metallic fingers of Grievous' hands tensed as his determination was reborn, his grip on the lightsabers in them tightening. "Then I shall find him and get him to help me immediately."

He did not say thank you as he turned around, but Aayla had not expected him too. He was General Grievous, after all."

"Hold on a minute, Aayla," Terriermon spoke out as Grievous walked away, his voice causing the General to stop and turn back. The bunny leapt off Barriss' head and floated to the ground on his ears, walking over to Aayla as he continued with, "You always said that you were going to learn how to use the Electric Judgement at some point, didn't you? You said that when you had the time and Plo was nearby that you would request he teach you how to do it properly."

"Well," Aayla murmured. "Yes, I did say that, I suppose. But it's not that big a deal, Terriermon. And besides, we have other things to focus on at the moment."

"Do we?" Terriermon asked, folding his arms and looking up at Aayla as if he were lecturing a child. "Come on, Aayla. You have almost nothing to do at the moment. I'm going to be off digging a tunnel, Anakin and Ahsoka have gone to Ilum to get a crystal for Ahsoka's shoto and the others are teaching Numa how to be a Tamer, but until Chuchi calls again, you've got practically nothing to do. You should do it now. You've got the time."

"He has a point," Renamon added. "In Master Plo's own words, it would be a very useful technique to have..." she coughed and added, "...at your fingertips. Sorry, but I didn't notice that pun until it was halfway out of my mouth. Anyway, it has served you well once before. It saved your life when Grievous was attacking you over Rhen Var. It would be very useful to master the technique so that you can do it again in future when you might need it."

"Well, I suppose that is true," Aayla began twiddling with the end of her lekku as she usually did when deep in thought.

"I would do it," Barriss replied. "The fact that you were able to do it on instinct alone proves that you have a natural affinity for it anyway, and you can certainly catch people off guard with it. We're Jedi. We should hone any skill we know we have to the best of our ability to better protect the universe."

"Plus, you would look completely and utterly badass," Terriermon grinned. "More than you do now."

"That's you excuse to get me to do practically anything, isn't it?" Aayla chuckled. "Use an extra lightsaber, Aayla. Learn Electric Judgement, Aayla. Why, Terriermon? Because you'd look badass, Aayla."

"Well, you would," Terriermon said defensively.

"Momentai."

"Hey!"

"Are any of you going to come to a decision sometime today?" Grievous snarled, his eyes narrowed, his patience already worn down from the chatting.

"Jeez, Grievous," Terriermon rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Don't be such a funsponge."

Grievous stared at Terriermon blankly, as did everybody else. Eventually, Henry spoke up with, "A what?"

"A funsponge," Terriermon grinned. "A person who sucks the fun out of everything like a sponge does with water. You like it? I might start using that word more often."

"Oh dear lord," Henry placed a hand to his temples.

"Was he insulting me?" Grievous growled, glaring at Terriermon with a dangerous glint in his yellow eyes, causing the bunny to squeak and hide behind Renamon's tail.

"Not really," Aayla shook her head. "Almost everything he says is intended as humour. If you want to shut him up or annoy him then the best way of doing that is to use the word 'Momentai' or threaten him with pineapples."

"Threaten him with what?" Grievous blinked.

"His universe's version of the Jurcian fruit," Aayla explained.

Grievous stared at Terriermon some more before he said, "I do not believe I will ever understand how you were a threat to the Separatists."

"You haven't seen what they can do yet," Barriss reminded him. "Wait until Coruscant. Then you'll know."

"So, Secura," Grievous turned around completely. "Getting back onto the topic, are you going to learn how to use this Force-lightning technique or not?"

Aayla considered, but only for a moment before she said, "Why not? I suppose it couldn't hurt to gain a new advantage in a lightsaber duel. And they are right, it has served me well in the past and there's no reason why it can't again. It don't know how long it will take me to master it, but if I can then I will help you out, Grievous."

"Good, but that does not help me out right now," Grievous rasped. "I was expecting to start practicing deflecting Force-lightning straight away and you expect me to wait until you have learned how to use it first? Need I remind you that we do not have a lot of time, Secura."

"I know that," Aayla nodded. "Let's find Plo first, shall we? Perhaps we can come to a compromise, or we can decide who learns from him first then." Grievous snorted in annoyance, but allowed Aayla to walk up to him and the two of them moved towards the city side-by-side, a very unusual sight indeed, particularly as they were still flanked by the MagnaGuards.

Behind them, Terriermon turned around and said, "Well, Henry, I suppose we should follow them and then see about digging a tunnel out of the city."

"Yeah," nodded Henry and he and his partner set off after them.

Barriss and Renamon looked at each other for a moment, noting that they were the last two left out of the Tenacious Ten.

"What are you planning on doing now?" Renamon asked the Mirialan.

"Well," Barriss shrugged. "I was thinking of practicing some kind of combat skills before the mission. I can hold me own against most opponents, but I don't have the same skills in battle that Aayla or Anakin do, and I thought that some of the opponents we would be facing on Coruscant would probably be among the elites of our enemy. If I'm going I probably need to do some last minute training. What are you going to do?"

"Well, I _was_ going to go and help Numa and Tsunomon, but now I have another idea," the fox replied.

"And what's that?" Barriss asked.

Renamon struck a stance, her tail lashing out behind her as she raised her arms into a combat position. "Want a sparring partner?"

Barriss blinked and then struck a stance of her own and said, "Thanks, Renamon. I appreciate this."

"Think nothing of it," the fox smiled kindly, and then the two jumped for each other simultaneously and lashed out at one another.

* * *

When they entered the city, and after they split away from Terriermon and Henry, it did not take long for Aayla and Grievous to track down Plo. The Kel Dor Jedi Master did stick out against everything else, after all, with his distinctive face mask and strangely shaped head.

"Master Plo!" Aayla called to him, causing him to register her presence and turn to face her from where he was overseeing Commander Wolffe and some of the other clones prepping an AT-TE walker for the upcoming conflict. The Jedi Master's cheeks wrinkled slightly, the only sign that he was apparently smiling under his mask.

"Aayla," he replied in kind, greeting her as she came towards him. He then turned to Grievous and give him a stiff but respectful nod, one which Grievous reluctantly returned. Plo and Grievous had never actually crossed blades with one another in the past, but that didn't stop them from being slightly wary around one another. However, the Kel Dor had always been an accepting and flexible Jedi, so if Aayla had to guess, she would say that he wasn't glaring at the General, though he certainly wasn't smiling either.

He then turned back to Aayla and interlaced his clawed fingers, before saying, "What can I do for you, young one?"

"It's a rather strange matter, Master Plo," Aayla replied. "But I was hoping that you might be able to give me some training."

"Training?" Plo asked. "Training with what exactly?"

"With the Force technique that you discovered when rescuing a captive from a thief," Aayla replied. "I have used the Electric Judgement once in the past and my friends have encouraged me to ask you to train me in the skill, so that I may use it again if I ever have need of it."

Plo chuckled slightly and folded his arms. "I had a feeling that you might one day ask this favour of my, Aayla," he replied. "Ever since I heard of the remarkable feats which you performed over Rhen Var. But why do you choose this particular moment to make this request. After all, we do not have an awful lot of time on our hands, do we?"

"No," Aayla shook her head. "No, we don't? But actually, it was Grievous who spurred me to do it. He wants to practice against an opponent capable of using Force-lightning to help him for when the time comes to face off against the Sith."

"Is that so?" Plo regarded Grievous with a slight new interest. "Then you are taking your desire for revenge to heart then, Grievous?"

"Would you not do something similar if you had been in my position, Jedi?" Grievous demanded.

"I am a Jedi," Plo replied. "And we do not seek revenge. However, I must admit that if I were not a Jedi, then I probably would." He turned back to Aayla and said, "And you wish to learn the technique for yourself as well? May I ask why?"

"Barriss pointed out to me that I may have a natural affinity to it," replied Aayla. "And that I should probably hone that skill, if only so that I know how to control it if I ever accidentally unleash it in the future again."

"That is indeed a good point," Plo replied. "Though I feel I should point out that few have ever made this request, and those that have often drop the practice after one successful burst. And none have made a habit out of using it."

"I do not intend to make a habit out of using it either," Aayla shook her head. "But I feel that I need to do this, and I want you to help me, Master Plo. You helped me sort out my memories after I lost them when I was a Padawan. Will you help me again with this new task?"

"I suppose I could find the time," Plo chuckled. "After all, we might be short of it, but there is little to keep us busy during what time we do actually have."

Aayla smiled and said, "Thank you, Master Plo. Shall we begin now?"

"We should find a quite and open area to practice in case of accidents," Plo replied. "But, yes, I see now reason why we cannot..."

"Hold on, Jedi!" Grievous interrupted, his own eyes narrowing. "I am the one that made the initial request to practice against Force-lightning. I should be the one to train with this Jedi Council member first. We are going against the Sith in a matter of days if not hours, and I need the practice more urgently than you do, Secura."

Aayla faltered slightly, and then murmured, "Well, I suppose that is true."

"Of course it's true," Grievous snarled. "Any advantage that I can get over the Sith is going to benefit not only myself but you and your cause. It is only fair that I train with Koon now and you can train with him when I have mastered how to defend myself against Force-lightning."

Plo was about to speak up and voice his own opinion on this matter, which would have been that Aayla could have practiced by firing _at_ Grievous, as initial Electric Judgement blasts were likely to be weaker than those practiced in the art anyway, when another voice cut across him.

"Perhaps I can be of a little assistance in this," the voice said. Everyone turned around to look for the source, but the only thing they saw was a tall figure in wide-brimmed hat leaning against the wall.

"Bane," Aayla greeted him. "I was beginning to wonder where you'd gone, or if you had decided to up and leave us behind. I haven't seen you for a couple of days."

"I've been around," Bane replied, stepping out of the shadows. "You might not have seen me, but I have been there, scoping the place out."

"So," Grievous narrowed his eyes. "You're the Bounty Hunter who made all of this possible."

"Indeed I am," Bane smirked. "All of this is due to my personal decision to capture Aayla Secura instead of killing her outright and everything flowed from there. I suppose that means that you owe partial thanks to me for exposing the true colours of your Master, and therefore his own manipulations to you."

Grievous snarled slightly. He did not appreciate being told what he should or should not be thinking and he took a dangerous step closer to the Bounty Hunter and said, "You'll get no thanks from me, Bounty Hunting scum."

"Oh really?" Bane raised a brow. "We'll see about that, Grievous."

"Is that some sort of threat!" Grievous demanded, his lightsaber hilts in his hands faster than blinking.

"Seems the rumours were true," Bane chuckled. "You're temper is indeed shorter than a matchstick."

Grievous took another step forwards but he felt something pulling at his arm and he looked down that Aayla had put a steadying arm there to hold him back. As Grievous noted that she seemed to make a habit of using her hand to make comforting or steadying gestures, Aayla looked to Bane and said, "You certainly seem to have been keeping up to date with the information even if you have been out of sight."

"Hard not to," Bane chuckled. "The whole city is awash with the news of what you guys are up to. Quite a bold plan if I do say so myself."

"It meets with your approval then?" Aayla asked him.

"Oh yes," nodded the Duros. "My kind of plan through and through."

"Well, I'm glad," Aayla smiled. "You were an inspiration in the planning stage. Anyway, what were you going to suggest? What assistance do you think you can provide to us?"

"Oh, quite simple really," Bane replied. "I believe that you should go and do your training with your Jedi friend right now, but while you're doing that, I can give Grievous a little hand with something that might help him to better deal with Force-lightning. That is, after all, what he's after, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it is," nodded Aayla. "What do you have in mind?"

Bane lifted a finger and deliberately pushed a button on one of his wrist gauntlets, causing a thin rod of metal to slide out of one end so it stuck out over the back of his fist. "I believe you know what this is, don't you?" he smirked.

Aayla stared at it for a moment, then said, "That's a lightning rod. Renamon told me that you were able to fend off Darth Sidious' attempts to electrocute you by absorbing the lightning blasts which he threw at you with that and sending them flying right back."

"Indeed," Bane smirked, "And don't soon forget that I held my own against you major enemy for a considerable amount of time. In any case, I thought that perhaps his Metalness over here might appreciate it a little if I installed one or two of these onto his personal form. I have a couple of spares."

"You do?" Aayla blinked.

"Of course," nodded Bane. "I carry spares of everything. Rule number one of being a Bounty Hunter, always get replacements just in case."

Grievous eyes the lightning rod jutting out of the wrist gauntlet. "And that will help me in repelling Sith Lightning?" he asked dubiously.

"No," Bane shook his head. "It will do the exact opposite and it will absorb it completely. You won't even have to attempt to be accurate with your blocking – this thing will draw any lightning thrown towards you, with even more efficiency than your metal hide. Add one of these to your personage, and one of the Sith's major advantages against anyone becomes completely useless."

"Bane," Aayla shook her head wryly. "I don't know if I've ever told you this or not, but you're brilliant."

"I know," Bane smirked. "So, Grievous. You up for it, or not?"

Grievous did indeed seem to be up for it, his eyes fixed on the lightning rod as if it was some precious treasure. "How long will it take to install one?" he asked.

"Depends," Bane shrugged. "On how long you can remain still and where you choose to put the thing. But it won't take long. Todo over there is an expert at this sort of thing." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at his droid, who was sitting on a crate a waved with a small metal hand.

"In that case," Grievous growled. "Let us proceed. And that droid better not be as vindictive with a fusion cutter as my last doctor droid was."

"Todo would be too afraid to be vindictive," Bane sneered.

"Alright then," Grievous turned back to Aayla. "You can go and learn how to perform your Jedi technique while I have some modifications done. Then we can test just how well these things work. Got it, Secura!"

"Got it, Grievous," Aayla nodded and turned to Plo as Grievous stalked over to Bane. "Alright, Master. Shall we go?"

Plo chuckled and said, "I must say everything happening around us seems to be getting more and more bizarre. And you are always at the forefront of the most bizarre of all. Both the enemies which you brought to our side are actually working together to beat the enemies which remain on the opposite side, and we have you to thank for it."

Aayla flushed slightly and said, "Just doing my duty as a Jedi, Master Plo."

"I think we both know that what you did was well above and beyond the duty of a Jedi, Aayla," Plo said warmly as he strode over, settling a hand gently on Aayla's shoulder. "Come. Let us see if we can't teach you something new today."

Aayla nodded and allowed herself to be guided away by the Kel Dor towards the city gates.

* * *

Approximately ten minutes later and the two of them had found a large open space, well away from all the activity that was going on in and around the city and away from anything that might conduct electricity. Plo waved a hand and several logs from the nearby forest floated out into the open and stacked themselves in a conical shape like a wig-wam or some kind of bizarre shelter.

"This will be the target," Plo chuckled. "There's no sense in you practicing it out on something living just yet. We need to see what you are capable of first."

"You're the Master," Aayla smiled. "So, how do we start."

"Just relax and take things slow, Aayla," Plo informed her. "What we are about to attempt is highly unorthodox even for a Jedi. Always remember that while the Electric Judgement is a useful technique to have in a pinch, it does not change the fact that it can be excruciatingly painful to the recipient. Whoever can wield the Electric Judgement must have strong sense of character and right and must maintain it at all times when using this power. It would not be difficult for it to turn into the Dark Side variety of Sith Lightning when used improperly."

Aayla nodded and shut her eyes, taking several brief moments to meditate and gather her thoughts together, placing herself in a calm and almost sleepy state before she said, "Okay," to indicate that she was ready.

"Give it a go," Plo indicated the target.

Aayla didn't bother to question his instructions and she lifted her hand out towards the pile of logs with fingers splayed and attempted to channel energy into her fingertips to release a burst of lightning from them.

Not surprisingly, nothing happened.

Aayla opened her eyes and said, "Is there a particular mindset that I should get into when I am doing this, Master Plo."

"Telling you about it would serve little purpose," Plo told her. "The Force flows differently in each of us, and we must all find our own triggers to help us use some abilities. You for example, are better at stealth than most other Jedi in the order, whereas others, like Barriss, specialise in healing. However, I will say this. When I first discovered the Electric Judgement, it was due to my desire to save an innocent victim who was being held hostage. There seemed to be no other action I could take in that instance, and my body acted of its own accord."

"My body acted practically on its own as well," Aayla nodded. "When Grievous was coming at me... I was firing it almost before I thought about it."

"If that is the case," nodded Plo. "Then you should try and think back to that moment. Try and recall exactly what you were feeling at the time when you released the Electric Judgement. That will be our starting point."

"Alright," nodded Aayla, and the Twi'lek's breathing slowed almost instantly, as she practically put herself into a trance-like state, communing with the Force to allow her to better see what things had been like in that particular instance over Rhen Var, in the command centre of the Separatist listening post she and the others had been ordered to blow up.

A Jedi could recall events in this matter in incredibly vivid detail, but this memory was such a recent one for Aayla that it practically felt as though she was back there once more. She could see everything, sense her surroundings with the same quality that she had when she had been there. She could see the bodies of Ventress and Barr lying against the wall, one unconscious and the other dead. She knew that Dooku's own unconscious form was lying behind her, as was the beheaded form of poor Inc.

Grievous was standing in front of her, his yellow eyes boring into hers as he glared at her with livid rage, his two bottom arms whirling their respective lightsaber blades while the top arm which still had his hand attached to it scythed his blade from side to side like some sort of madman. Aayla could hear the humming sounds in her ears as Grievous was doing the same thing in front of her right now, and the blades were moving in such a blur that were they in the dark they could give some people epileptic fits.

Some things about this experience were not so good. For instance she could suddenly feel a searing pain in the side of her leg. It wasn't real pain; more like the ghost of pain, but it still did cause Aayla to stumble momentarily before she caught herself and forced herself to bear the phantom pain that Dooku's lightsaber had caused her.

She could also feel a draining of energy in her limbs, as she had been completely and utterly exhausted at the time that this was happening.

Grievous was running at her, roaring with fury, determined to cut her down for taking out his comrades. The moment happened so quickly, both the first time and the second time around, that all Aayla had time to make out was a jumble of different emotions.

And yet, in the world outside of her memory, a couple of sparks shot out of the ends of her fingers as she recalled the moment she fired off a round of lightning at Grievous. Plo Koon had not been expecting something like this and actually took a step back in surprise, caught off guard. But the sparks dissipated almost immediately and Aayla opened her eyes.

"I felt something happen there," Aayla replied.

"Indeed." You could tell from Plo's tone of voice that he was impressed with what he had seen. "It seems your friend, Barriss, is right. You do have a natural affinity for it, Aayla. None of them others I have taught have reacted so quickly."

"But why me?" Aayla asked. "Why do _I_ have an affinity for this kind of power while others do?"

"That, I cannot answer," Plo replied. "That will be buried within you somewhere, where only you can unearth it. Let us focus instead on how to build upon your power. What exactly where you feeling?"

"It all happened very quickly," Aayla shook her head. "My mind was such a welter of emotions at the time that I could barely distinguish one from the other. It could have been any one of those that initiated the technique."

"Then we must isolate which of those emotions was the main driving force behind it," replied Plo. "Replay the scene in your mind again. I will use my mind to help you to slow things down and separate your thoughts. Unentangle them and we will find what we need to help you with your new skill."

"Okay," nodded Aayla and she shut her eyes to replay the scene again. This time, when Grievous charged towards her, eyes blazing and ready for the kill, she could feel a slight presence in the back of her mind that she knew to be Plo. One thing that Plo was exceptionally well-known for, more than the technique he was trying to teach her now, was his mind powers. It had been what had allowed him to help her with her memory loss before.

Now, Aayla could feel him doing something similar. Grievous' foot hit the floor with a dull thud, and he slowly raised his other leg to prepare to drive it forward. Everything was happening in super-slow motion and Aayla could feel the emotions welling up inside her once more as death appeared to move towards her.

She quickly dived into them, seeking to unravel them and she could feel Plo's consciousness do the same. Using her mind to ease them apart, she was able to individually pick out each of the various emotions raging through her body.

Some of them included some of the more baser urges, like the natural desire for any living organism to survive. The fact that Grievous was rushing her and she was practically powerless to stop him seemed to make death flash before her eyes, allowing her to react on instinct. But it had not been what had drawn the power from within her. That had only allowed her to do it with such speed.

At the same time, she felt sadness. Sadness at the prospect that she would not get to spend more time with her friends if her life ended now. Sadness that she would die alone and unaided here in the room with nobody to see her go, even after all she had done. But that had not been the main drive either.

She also felt determination. Determination to face down this last challenge to the best of her ability and to go out with a fight instead of just sitting back and accepting that she was going to die, even with her state of near-collapse. But that had not been it either. It might have given her a boost, but it was not the main factor.

And then she felt the emotion that had been strongest in her at the time, even though she had not realised it at the time due to the speed of everything that had been happening. In her last moments, she had thought about her friends. She had pictured every one of their faces, flashing before her eyes so fast she couldn't keep track of who was who, but that didn't matter. They were all her friends. She had felt her love for them course through every atom in her body, as well as their love for her.

In fact, that particular emotion had been with her long before Grievous had charged at her. It had been one of the main factors which had supplied her with the energy to continue throughout the massively draining duel which she had been forced to endure. They had never been far from her mind, as she fought to survive not for herself, but so that they would not have to endure the sadness of her death. So that she would not let them down by giving up when there was still even the slightest chance of survival and hope, which meant never giving up because there was always hope. Determination to protect them from the three Separatist leaders no matter what she had to do to do it.

Suddenly more lightning spurted out of her fingertips, but still not enough to make the air jolt in front of her for more than a couple of seconds.

But it was enough.

She felt Plo withdrawing from her mind and as she returned to the present, she heard him say, "Fascinating. Absolutely astounding."

"What is?" she asked, shaking her head to clear it slightly and rubbing her leg where the ghost pain of her lightsaber wound was fading away.

"The emotion spurring your newfound ability," Plo replied to her. "It is an emotion that Jedi feel to all beings, but never in such strength as I have felt in you Aayla. Not even bonds between Master and Padawan are nearly as strong as what you feel for the rest of your team. And it is your desire to do what is right by them and to support and protect them and not let them down that fuelled the power you have within you."

Aayla stared at her fingertips for a moment. "Is that possible?"

"So it would seem," Plo replied. He chuckled and added, "You know, young Secura, all those people who call you a credit to our order are true. The Jedi have remained the same for hundreds of years, and that has been one of the key things that has allowed the Sith to pose a serious challenge to us all even throughout all of that. You, on the other hand... you are something new. And what's more you are leading others to follow your example. Anakin, Ahsoka and Barriss have similar feelings to you, but yours are the strongest."

"And those desires to protect my friends are what allowed me to use Electric Judgement?" Aayla asked.

"There is only one way to find out," Plo replied. He turned around and, without warning, an orange bolt of lightning thundered out of the tips of his claws and sailed over the treeline for a moment. He ceased it as quickly as he began it and pointed towards the target. "Now," he said. "Show me the strength of your bonds, Aayla."

Aayla nodded and lifted her hand in front of her, pointing her fingers at the target once more. She delved into the mental bonds she shared with her friends, allowing her feelings for them and the reciprocal feelings they felt for her to fill her up from top to bottom. She simultaneously alerted to all of them what she was doing in the process, but that only served to intensify the feeling.

It felt like her entire body was pulsing as she imagined what she would do if ever they were in danger. She knew right then what they would do. She would do everything in her power to protect them, but only if they would approve of it. It was the strength of her bonds to them that gave her the power and the strength of their bonds to her that bound her to the side of the Light.

The Dark Side could tempt her, but it would never win.

Not as long as she had them.

When she had them, she had inner peace. The Light Side was with her and rose from within her like a geyser shooting off a torrent of water. She would never abandon her friends in any way, whether that be physically, mentally, morally or any other description.

She would always protect them.

Her eyes snapped open and her hand lashed out.

Orange lightning exploded from her fingertips and struck the target of logs dead on. The blast was much more powerful than the one she had used against Grievous, due to her having a lot more strength in her body this time. The logs snapped and went flying in many different direction as if they had been fired from cannons.

Plo raised his own hand to catch some wooden chunks in the air with the Force and levitate them to the side to avoid having themselves battered. He then turned to Aayla, somehow managing to look impressed, despite the mask. "That..." he said, "Was quite something."

Aayla let out a breath she hadn't realised she had been holding and said, "Wow. Did I just do that?"

"Indeed you did, young Aayla," Plo chuckled. "I must say, I cannot see any of the problems or issues that attachment normally holds for the Jedi in you. For someone to perform an Electric Judgement that powerful after only a couple of attempts and not on instinct is ... incredible."

Aayla ran her hand across her own fingertips. They didn't feel any different. She didn't feel any more powerful than before. But she had not expected to. The Force-lightning she had just used was not a result of her gaining more power. The potential for it had always been with her. She only had to unlock it.

"It's still so... surreal," Aayla replied. "Everything I know about Force Lightning indicates the Dark Side but I didn't feel any negative emotions at all during that. No anger, or hatred. Not even fear."

"I should think not," Plo agreed. "The blast was orange, a sure sign if nothing else that that was the Electric Judgement. However, your training is not over yet. That was only the first successful attempt. Now you must practice. Practice and hone it until it becomes as second nature to you as wielding your lightsaber. Though I judge that that shouldn't be too hard, as the emotion which proved to be the main stimulus is, I assume, always in you regardless of the situation."

Aayla nodded. In her mind she could sense the presence of all the others, bar Anakin and Ahsoka who were out of range at the moment. None of them spoke, but they didn't need to, Aayla could feel their congratulations and awe over their link and she smiled as she practically bathed in the sensation of unity they all provided for her.

Plo moved the broken section of log together into a smaller pile and said, "Again."

Aayla nodded and lashed out with her other hand faster than a striking snake, filling herself up in the strength of her comrades at the same time to fire another burst of lightning from her hand to strike and obliterate the pile of wood into ashes. She smiled as she did so, feeling satisfaction, but nothing more than that. There was no exhilaration at the power she felt, no pride in her actions. That was the way of the Sith, and she would never be a Sith, even if she could use Force-lightning.

* * *

And so the training continued. Aayla's friends were with her every step of the way over their mind link and Plo set up several more targets for Aayla to shoot at, and each time, Aayla pulled off the strike with a little less effort on her part, and a little less concentration, though the unity of their minds never wavered for a moment.

Plo began to spice things up a little bit once he was satisfied that Aayla had mastered the technique for firing the lightning, which was after she had snapped ten potential targets. He then began to use the Force to levitate single logs in to the air for better target practice, allowing Aayla to work on her aim. He started moving them around when it became apparent that her aim didn't actually need any work, and Aayla took to the challenge with a will, determined to master this skill if it would help her to protect her friends in future.

At the same time, the power that Aayla could feel coursing from her chest, down her arm and jumping out of her fingers almost scared her.

She knew that she wasn't going to be making a habit of using this technique any more than Master Plo.

But it would always be there, waiting to be called upon if needed in the future.

At one point during the training, Plo started making the movements of the targets more erratic, and Aayla's lightning blasts ended up missing a few more times. She focused her mind more intently, ready to shoot the target out of the sky, when a blast of lightning even bigger than anything she had produced surged over their heads and struck the target, practically obliterating it to dust.

Plo and Aayla looked behind them to see the Force-sensitive Acklay had come over to investigate, and the Acklay was wearing something close to a smirk on his face.

"Show-off," Aayla chuckled good-naturedly and the Acklay shrieked and fired off another burst into the air. Aayla responded in kind, the two blasts colliding in mid-air with a colossal explosion. The Acklay moved over towards Aayla and nuzzled her, allowing the Twi'lek to rub his crest affectionately.

"If you're quite done, Secura!" a growling voice said. "Perhaps it is time to begin _my_ own training."

Aayla turned around to see Grievous walking towards them once again. She frowned when she saw him. As far as she could tell he looked absolutely no different than last time.

Bane and Todo approached from behind, silent as wraiths and stopped a short distance away to watch what was going on. Grievous plunged his feet into the ground so hard his talons sank in and he took out his lightsabers again. "I see that you have had the opportunity to practice your new technique. Would you like to test it out on something other than pieces of wood?"

"Wait," Aayla replied. "Where's the lightning rod?"

Grievous growled impatiently and said, "Fire at me, Secura! Show me the result of your training!"

"Not until you show me where the lightning rod is," Aayla shook her head. "I have no desire to harm you. Let me be satisfied that you won't be harmed before I start using electricity against my allies."

Grievous growled, but then show her his arm. The duranium plates that covered his lower arm slid apart from one another to reveal the metal beneath. Almost of its own accord, a small rod of metal which had been concealed beneath the armour plating rose out until it was at a diagonal angle to the arm itself. "Here is one," he replied. "I have another on the other arm."

"And does it work?" Aayla asked.

"Oh yes," Bane nodded. "Todo can give you the technical details if you want them."

"Very much so," nodded Aayla.

"I used my fusion cutter to weld the lightning rod to the General's arm, as well as the device beneath it which the electricity charge will be diverted to once the electricity is absorbed by the rod. It's designed to convert the electricity it stores into natural gases and release it back into the air almost immediately, and it's insulated to prevent the charge from passing into the rest of his metallic body. I assure you that it should be in perfect working condition."

"Well, you're the techno-service droid," Aayla smiled.

"Thank you," Todo nodded. "I must admit, it is nice to be appreciated once in a while."

"Can it, Todo," Bane murmured.

"Yes, Bane," the droid sagged.

"Alright, Grievous," Aayla took up a loose fighting stance with her hands close to her body and ready to lash out at a moment's notice. "If you're ready..."

"FIRE ALREADY!" Grievous roared.

Aayla smirked at his impatience and then did just that, letting off a controlled blast in Grievous' direction. The cyborg replied in kind, holding his arm in front of him like a shield. The electricity was drawn straight to rod sticking out of his arm and passed down it harmlessly. Aayla smiled at the success, then lashed out with the other hand with a slightly more powerful blast, which was met with the same fate.

Grievous was laughing already. Laughing with exhilaration. Aayla smiled and leapt into the air, letting off another bolt while she was in mid-air. This time Grievous brought up a lightsaber to deflect the attack and before anyone knew what was happening the two of them were dodging around one another, one letting off blasts of increasing power and the other smoothly intercepting each one with blade or rod alike.

Aayla and Grievous were training together.

Who'd have thought it?

Certainly not Plo Koon, but as he watched the Twi'lek and the Kaleesh cyborg picking up the tempo of their training session, he _was_ thinking, _It's when I see things like that I realise that Aayla gives me hope for our future._

* * *

I believe some of you may have been wondering if I was ever going to bring up Aayla's use of the Electric Judgement, but that is really the main point of this arc – tying up loose ends before the fighting begins. And now, it seems that Aayla's becoming a more deadly opponent than ever before, and we really have Grievous to thank for it. It was he who both gave her a second lightsaber and her new ability through combat.

I hope you like this chapter. It might have seemed a bit cliché at times but I thought it was very important to stress on the line between the Light and the Dark Side of the Force, considering the Force technique we're dealing with here.

And let's not forget that Ahsoka's getting a new weapon. Remember guys, she's still in her younger Clone Wars look in my story, even at this late stage, but unlike in the Clone Wars, we actually get to see her acquiring her new weapon now.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Ahsoka and Anakin continue on their trip to the planet Ilum to obtain a lightsaber crystal for Ahsoka's new shoto, while Rika, Suzie and Lopmon begin to instruct Numa and Tsunomon in the art of Tamerhood, in an attempt to make her useful enough for the coming battle. Can they succeed?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 187 : A Couple of Upgrades**


	187. A Couple of Upgrades

Hello again everybody. These chapter continues with the theme of the last one of getting in some last minute training and equipment before the fighting begins. I'm actually getting a little nervous because I know that after this, there are only two more chapters to write before I begin the action. And after that Digimon action chapter will be the start of the biggest action sequence of my fanfiction career so far. It might end up being the biggest I'll ever write. I hope I am up to the task.

**JapanRules555 - **Yes, they probably will be in the sequels and secondly, no I will not add in those characters for two reasons. The first is that I already have loads of characters and I am nearing the end of the story, so slotting in others would serve little purpose at this point, and the second is because your request was rather rudely written. It sounded more like a demand.

Anyway, please enjoy this chapter.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 187:- A Couple of Upgrades**

* * *

When the _Twilight_ finally alighted on the ground once more, the occupants of the cockpit took a moment to look out of the cockpit and take in their newest surroundings. Ilum was a very beautiful planet, and even though both Anakin and Ahsoka had been here before, as indeed all Jedi did at one stage or another, they still had felt their breath leaving their bodies.

Ilum was another ice planet, much like Alzoc III, Orto Plutonia or Mygeeto, but it had a certain radiance than none of those planets had. Instead of the ragged cliffs of white and large plains of snow, which would have looked beautiful on their own, the entire planet looked like someone had painstakingly carved every single section of the ice into perfection.

The cliffs ahead were tall and glittered as pure as glass, and the snow beneath the vehicle was uninterrupted for miles and miles, with no footprints tracks or anything else disturbing the surface. It almost seemed like a shame to step out of the vehicle and put prints in the perfection, but they both knew that they had a job to do, which they needed to carry out as quickly as possible, so they could return to Tython.

There was another reason for their reverence other than the fact that everything looked so perfect here. Ilum was another very significant planet to the Jedi. Not quite so much as Tython, where their order had been born, but still a vastly important world all the same, and unlike Tython it's location was common knowledge among the Jedi.

This was, after all where the crystals which powered all lightsabers came from, and where the first blade of many thousands had been crafted and created. And as the weapon of a Jedi was, as was constantly stated by Obi-Wan Kenobi, their life, that meant this planet was practically one of their most sacred sites.

Few non Jedi had ever been here. The planet lay far from any other world, in the Unknown Regions. There were no other planets that circles around its sun, and its solitude combined with the fact that it was in the middle of nowhere meant that practically nobody would stumble upon this world by accident, as nobody would bother coming out to such a lonely place. The fact that the Jedi had found it at all could be considered a miracle.

"This place just gets me every time," Ahsoka said, unaware that she was whispering as she gazed out towards the snow covered horizon.

"Me too," nodded Anakin. "It might pale slightly next to Tython, but it's still a pretty cool place, isn't it."

"I remember my first trip here," Ahsoka chuckled. "To construct my lightsaber under the supervision of Master Yoda in preparation for becoming your Padawan. It was just after the Separatists tried to destroy the crystal caves here. I think that invasion might have spurred Yoda's decision to allow me to get my lightsaber in advance of meeting you instead of getting it after it became official like usually happens."

"That's probably a good thing," Anakin grinned in reply. "Remember how reluctant I was to let you on board in the beginning. If you hadn't had your lightsaber and a chance to prove yourself to me, I confess I probably would have sent you back to the Temple at the soonest opportunity."

"Always nice to know you love me, Master," Ahsoka rolled her eyes.

"It was meant to be a compliment," Anakin pointed out. "I probably would have sent just about any other Padawan back to the Temple regardless of their skills on the field."

"Well, when you put it that way..." Ahsoka grinned. "Anyway, shall we get going?"

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "Let's get this done. Artoo, stay with the ship and make sure to keep the systems going while we're gone. The last thing we need would be for the ship to freeze up and stop working."

Artoo twittered in acknowledgement and rotated his head to watch as Anakin and Ahsoka moved past him and out of the cockpit. Ahsoka hit the button to make the ramp descend and the two of them stepped down into the snow outside.

They felt the cold on their skin immediately, but it wasn't a biting cold. It was more like a gentle brush against the skin, as if the planet had been expecting them or something. There was snow as well, gently falling down on them from above and settling in Anakin's hair and tickling Ahsoka's montrals.

As they stepped around the ship, towards their destination, Anakin turned to his Padawan and said, "You've got your blade ready?"

Ahsoka patted the hilt of the shoto. She had acquired a clip to attach it to her waist on the opposite side to her original blade and the two of them were hanging there side by side now. The shoto looked like it was ready to be whipped into action at any moment, even though it didn't actually have a blade yet.

Anakin had to agree with the others. The look worked for his Padawan.

Ahsoka turned and she stopped to say, "There it is." Anakin stopped as well and the two of them took a moment to stare at the cliff-face in front of them. As well as the flat cliff wall that covered most of the rise, there was also a section that jutted out from the rest, composed of several jagged spires of ice that were of varying heights and breadths but all stuck out towards the sky like massive, upside-down icicles.

It looked like a natural phenomenon.

But, at the base of the projection was a section that was quite clearly not natural. Below the spires was a large section of carved ice that resembled the entrance to the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, with a large door set in the cliff. A door which was on a ledge with no visible man-made way to reach it. The reason it looked like a Temple was because it _was_ one. There were a couple of other Temples for the Jedi on various planets in the Galaxy, another one being on Ossus.

This had actually been one of the places that Anakin had considered making their stand before Yoda brought up Tython, but he had cast it aside, knowing the snowy conditions would not have suited everyone.

And beyond the Temple doors lay the Crystal Caves.

Anakin led the way, as he and Ahsoka placed their hands on the side of the cliff and, despite the ice and snow, they began to climb upwards, scrambling from ledge to ledge and helping each other where they could. They remained sure-footed all the way to the top, even though the ice threatened to send them plunging to the ground below at any given moment. Ahsoka's bare fingers began to get cold on the ascent, but she ignored the numbness and focused on the climb.

They reached the top without incident, stepping onto the ledge which would allow them access to the door. It was _not_ a large ledge. Even the smallest of ships would have a problem landing on such a surface, and few but Jedi would be skilled enough to complete the climb here. They stepped up towards the door looming over the top of them.

"Shall we go in?" he asked.

"Only if we want there to be an actual point to our trip here," Ahsoka quipped.

"Right, right," Anakin chuckled, raising a hand towards the door. With a gentle tug of the Force, the huge icy panel began to slid forwards, opening up to reveal the dark cavern on the inside. It was like a swirling sea of blackness beyond the door, but both Anakin and Ahsoka had been here before, and the darkness did not daunt either of them.

"After you, Snips," Anakin offered. Ahsoka nodded and stepped through the small gap that had been made by pulling the door ajar, squeezing by her Master and into the cave. As she did, she ignited her blade, its green glow helping to penetrate the darkness within the cavern. Anakin followed, activating his own blue blade to do the same, and they walked side by side into the cavern.

Most of the wall were black. Very black. Too black to be of normal stone. And, in fact, it wasn't. It was a stone that absorbed light instead of reflecting it, so even the light given by the lightsabers was more meagre than normal.

Ahsoka hopped over a rock that Anakin hadn't even seen, and he attuned his senses to try and focus on what was in front of him. As he scaled the boulder, he could sense large piles of them lying throughout the cavern in front of him and could faintly see Ahsoka scrambling up and over one of the piles.

"This place is a lot more rocky than I remember," Anakin murmured into the darkness as he followed his Padawan over the rocks.

"It was like this when I came here last time," Ahsoka responded. "I think it was the Separatist attack by the chameleon droids which caused all the explosions that created this debris. There hasn't really been the time to clean it up again."

"Well, it'll take more than a few mines to bring this place down," Anakin chuckled as he joined his Padawan at the top of the rock pile. "Come on then, let's move on."

"Already on it," Ahsoka grinned as she leapt off the pile of rocks and landed smoothly on another, even in the near complete darkness. Anakin grinned as well, sensing a challenge, as he quickly followed his Padawan, the two of them attuning their senses to their surroundings as they began a race to the other end of the huge tunnel, hopping from pile to pile as if it were broad daylight.

There was a reason they could be so nimble despite the darkness. Like Tython, this cave in particular seemed to radiate with the Force. Not with the same intensity, but it was pretty similar. Their senses were sharper and keener than usual and they could leap with accurate strength and land with precision almost without effort.

The contest ended in a draw when they both touched down on the ground at the other end of the piles of boulders with so little time between one landing and the other that they were unable to determine which of them had arrived first, so they called it a tie. Anakin held aloft his lightsaber, and Ahsoka did the same, but they both knew that they actually wouldn't be needing them for much longer.

They had reached the bridge. It was a wide, natural bridge made of the same stone as the walls, but they both knew that at the edges was a ridiculously deep cavern so as they moved out across said bridge, they stuck both close together and to the middle, holding their blades before them to help illuminate the way.

And there, on the other side of the bridge, was an open space that was definitely a combination of natural erosion and interference by sentient life-forms. As they progressed into it, they could see a dais in the middle of the flat-floored room. Around the dais were pillars of dark stone that supported the massive ceiling, while there was also a raised stone walkway that spiralled up and around the dais from the floor to the ceiling like a single strand of DNA.

"Been a while since I was first here," Anakin observed. "But it looks no less fantastic."

"Just look at the walls," Ahsoka marvelled, awe filling her voice as her face split into a grin of wonderment. Anakin had to agree with her. Their lightsabers now seemed pointless compared to the light in this particular cavern. Light which was coming of the myriad of crystals that were jutting out from just about every patch of wall in the room. They stuck out like shards of glittering ice, and they were arrayed like a patchwork quilt, the black of the wall combining with patches of green and blue.

It was almost as if the crystals were shrubs growing out of the walls of the cliff, extending into vicious looking points of all different lengths.

"Magnificent," Anakin nodded. "I wish I could visit this place more often just so I could see this place more."

"Ooh, shiny," Ahsoka snickered. "Right?"

Anakin good-naturedly elbowed her in the side and grabbed her shoulder before she stumbled too far, and then he said, "Alright then, let's get down to business, shall we, Snips? Pass me the shoto. I'll take is to the dais and you set about selecting your crystal."

"Got it, Master," Ahsoka nodded, passing the smaller hilt to him and moving to the walls while he went out into the centre of the room. He placed the hilt on the dais carefully, out of reverence to all the other Jedi who had been to this exact spot in the past to carry out almost exactly the same task as they were about to now.

He then turned to watch his Padawan moving about the walls. He knew that this might possibly take a while. This site was practically sacred to the Jedi, so they would never think of damaging it in any way, including pulling the crystals out of the walls or, as they were all naturally too big to fit in the lightsaber hilts, cutting them.

Ahsoka was kneeling on the floor and examining various crystals that had naturally fallen to the ground. She needed to find the right one. It was no good just picking a crystal and saying that this one would do. Not only did she need one of the right size to fit inside her shoto, but she needed one that resonated with the Force.

There was a reason behind the fact that a Jedi's lightsaber was supposed to be his life.

It was also one of the many reasons why most non-Force sensitive beings, with the obvious exception of General Grievous, wouldn't stand a chance against a Jedi in a duel of lightsabers. It was not just practice that made a Jedi so proficient with their blades. The crystals, or Adegan crystals to give them their full name, had special connections with the Force that enabled the Jedi to connect with them on a mental level, creating a bond between them and the weapon that practically turn the blade into an extension of the arm.

A Jedi could easily connect with any crystal used in a lightsaber, which is what enabled them to use the blades of other Jedi. Aayla, for example, had been able to harness her second lightsaber immediately once she got hold of it, as it had been a dire situation, but ever since then her bond with her newer blade was growing every day, since she had stolen it from Grievous and started to make a habit of using it. But the crystal needed to be just right to be put into a lightsaber. That meant the Jedi had to be very selective with what they found.

Anakin noticed that Ahsoka was avoiding the blue crystals, which meant she was going for another green blade. Deeper in the caves there might have been a few of the rarer red or even purple crystals, but they were exceptionally hard to come by. It would be easier to just stick with blue or green, and Ahsoka was doing just that.

One by one, the Togruta Padawan picked up a crystal, then discarded it after a couple of moments of consideration. Anakin watched her patiently as she made her way across the room, carefully considering each and every crystal she found before putting it back. Picking your lightsaber crystal was a big deal, and he did not want to interrupt her.

* * *

This went on for almost half an hour. Ahsoka picked up another green crystal and turned it over in her hands a couple of times before she put it back. It had the right connections, but it was too large. It would not have fit inside the smaller hilt of her lightsaber. It would have been good for a regular sized one, but a shoto was another matter entirely.

And then, one particular crystal grabbed Ahsoka's attention and drew her eyes towards it. It was lying amongst a collection of green and blue crystals and, at first glance, looked no different from its fellows.

She moved over to it and picked it up, reaching out with her mind to feel the crystal with the Force. She felt a smile of satisfaction cross her face as she sensed the strong connection that it resonated. This crystal would definitely be something that she could wield in combat against just about anybody. She could get used to feeling it within the hilt in her left hand when she went into battle.

There was something else about the crystal which, for a moment, she couldn't really place, but then she realised it was a different hue to the other green crystals. Most of them were a deep green colour, the exact same colour as her current lightsaber blade. This particular crystal was still green, but it was paler than normal giving it a slightly yellow tint to it as well, as if it was somewhere between the two colours, but leaning a little more to the green side.

And best of all, it was the right size. This would be Ahsoka's crystal.

Satisfied, she stood up and walked towards the dais where her master was patiently awaiting her, bearing the crystal in both hands as if it was the most delicate or the most scared object in the entire universe. When she reached the platform where her shoto hilt was waiting, she presented the crystal to Anakin.

The Chosen One looked it over and, after a few moments, nodded with approval. "A good choice, Snips," he said. "And a slightly different colour too. Must be quite a rare crystal to have that slightly yellow tint to it."

"Is that a good thing?" Ahsoka asked. "Getting a rare crystal that is?"

"Well, why don't we test it out," Anakin replied and ignited his own lightsaber, gripping it in both hands and holding it in front of his face in a warrior's salute. It was not really needed, but it was a tradition for a Master to salute his Padawan as they put the finishing touches to the new lightsaber which they were building, and since Anakin hadn't been present when Ahsoka had gotten her first blade, he felt he ought to do it now with the second.

Ahsoka nodded and knelt down before the slightly raised platform her shoto was resting on and placed the crystal on it. Then she delicately picked up her shoto and flipped a switch on the side, causing the bottom of the hilt to pop out with a small click. She hooked a finger in and slid it out still further, exposing the mechanism inside the hilt and the large space in the middle where the crystal would soon rest.

"Good craftsmanship, Ahsoka," Anakin nodded again. "Couldn't have done better myself."

"Now you're just flattering me," Ahsoka shook her head as she picked up the crystal between thumb and forefinger and ever so carefully slotted it into the space in the middle of her hilt. It was a perfect fit, as if the crystal had been waiting to be put in this particular lightsaber all of its existence.

Then came the difficult bit as Ahsoka proceeded to wire the crystal into the workings so that she could harness its power to create the blade she was after. It was slightly fiddly work and Ahsoka had only done it once or twice, but she knew what she was doing (she had read the manual several times).

A minute later and she thought her work to be done. She briefly ran a finger across the crystal and prayed to the Force that this would work, before she slid the removed section of the hilt back inside. It shut and locked itself there with a small snapping noise, and Ahsoka stood up with the shoto in one hand, thumb hovering over the activation button.

She looked briefly to Anakin, and her Master had an encouraging smile of his face. She smiled back, then pulled her original lightsaber from her waist and activated it, holding it in the rarely practiced backwards grip that she had become associated with as if ready to leap into battle. She then shut her eyes and struck a stance, slamming her thumb down on the activation button of the shoto as she did so.

It was a success.

A short, yellowish-green blade about half the length of her lightsaber shot out of the end glowing vibrantly in the darkness of the cave. Ahsoka looked at it out of the corner of her eye, marvelling at the weapon in her hand, but most of her attention was on Anakin, mentally asking for his approval as she held her battle stance.

She didn't have long to wait for that approval. From the feel of Anakin's mind, the Chosen One probably thought that there should be fanfares announcing Ahsoka's presence or something. He had assumed the look would work, but now Ahsoka was standing in front of him with two lightsabers, one short and one long, and she looked ready to take on the Galaxy by herself.

As he sheathed his own blade, Anakin stepped around the dais and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Ahsoka Tano," he said, "Did I ever tell you that I am glad to have you as a Padawan?"

"A couple of times," Ahsoka smirked. "It would be nice if you said it more often but I take what compliment I can."

"Well, to coin a frequently used word of a friend of ours, you look 'badass,'" Anakin chuckled. "In more serious terms, you look extremely formidable with that at your side. People are going to think twice about tangling with you, even if you are young, when they see you using both of those blades at once."

Ahsoka relaxed her pose and said, "Thanks, Master. Did I ever tell you that I'm glad to have _you_ as a Master?"

"Uh... not in recent memory, no," Anakin chuckled.

Ahsoka hit him and said, "Yes, I have!" incredulously.

"Yeah, alright, you have," Anakin snorted. "So, what do you make of your new weapon."

The young Togruta stepped back and examined the yellowish-green blade. If you didn't look closely then you probably wouldn't notice the slightly yellow tinge to the humming plasma blade, but even though colour actually had very little to do with lightsaber blades other than the personal taste of wielder (even Jedi on the Light Side sometimes used red lightsabers, though all Sith did), Ahsoka couldn't help but feel that the colour made the blade a little more special than it normally would have done.

It was a real confidence booster too. Not only did she have a back-up in case something went wrong now, she also had an extra defence against some of the stronger enemies. She felt as if she could take on Master Yoda. She knew really that she probably couldn't and it wouldn't be a good idea to start getting arrogant, but still, the feeling was a pleasant one.

She twirled it experimentally a couple of times, the motions with the shorter blades coming to her easily enough. It was just like a larger blade, only with less reach and slightly less weight in the hilt. She lashed out with it so fast Anakin could barely keep track of it, slashing the air next to both of them five times in a row to test out her abilities with it.

"I like it," she said, sheathing the blade and activating it again. "It feels right in my palm." She twirled both it and her other lightsaber at the same time and lifted her voice so she could be heard over the humming. "And it doesn't hinder my use with the other blade." She sheathed them both and lowered her arms. "It might be a while before I can fight at the same standard as Aayla, but for some reason I feel as though I've made a big step forward. You understand what I mean, right?"

"Yeah," nodded Anakin. "I felt the same way when I got my new lightsaber after I lost my last one on Geonosis the first time. Now come on, Snips. Let's get back to the surface and head for Tython. We can show everyone your new blade and test it out a bit more when we're there."

Ahsoka placed her lightsaber back at her waist and then, after a moment's hesitation, did the same with the shoto. She looked down at herself, feeling exceptionally weird having two working blades at her hips, but then she looked up and said, "I can't wait for the others to see me with this."

"Remember, a Jedi is humble," Anakin grinned.

"Oh? Like you can really lecture me on that," Ahsoka shook her head. Anakin laughed and turned back towards the bridge, Ahsoka following him along the passage and back towards the entrance, leaving with one more working lightsaber than she came in with.

* * *

On Tython, for one particular group of people that were trying to help another, things weren't going quite so easily. While Aayla and Grievous sparred against one another, hurling and deflecting lightning bolts respectively (and drawing a crowd as they did so), and while Barriss and Renamon sparred not far away, and while Gargomon moved along the tunnel he was creating with his blaster cannon arms morphed into drills with Henry and Fixer behind him, the clone commando using his instruments to steer Gargomon in the right direction; the rest of the Tenacious Ten were having a more problematic time.

Suzie, Lopmon and Rika had found Numa easily enough. They all knew that the little Twi'lek had taken up residence inside the Temple, picking a room and declaring it as her own. She still didn't do particularly well in crowds, and the clone, Gungan and Wookiee army was one of the biggest she had ever seen.

Plus, there was also the fact that she didn't like looking at the battle droids. It was understandable, as her parents had been killed by battle droids all those months ago, that she be a little scared of them and that she would want to stay as far away from them as possible. She was a child, after all, and didn't quite understand the help the battle droids could provide as much as the adults did.

Suzie might be the same age, but she did understand, because she had more experience than Numa.

They had found the little Twi'lek girl in her room and she was not alone. Besides Tsunomon, who was sitting next to her and trying to have a conversation with his Tamer in an attempt to get to know her better, the Digi-Gnome was wheeling around the ceiling and making giggling noises as it did figure-of-eight laps of the room.

Xiaan Amersu was there as well. The Twi'lek Jedi Knight they had found by chance on Felucia seemed to have taken to Numa. Despite the fact that their stories were very different, there were some similarities between them. Xiaan had once been quite a lot like Numa, wanting to do good but afraid of the consequences and worried about how useful she might be. She didn't have the Heart of Fire anymore, so she couldn't give it to Numa as she would otherwise have done, but she was doing her best to help the little girl along her way.

She was currently acting as translator between Numa and Tsunomon, as each of them tried to find out more about the other.

Waxer and Boil were also in the room. The two members of Cody's platoon should probably have been out there with the other clones preparing for the upcoming battle, but both of them were currently feeling overprotective towards the little girl who called them brothers. Numa was in a danger zone, even if it hadn't actually become a danger zone yet, and they knew as well as anyone that she didn't belong here, but since she insisted on staying, they, in turn, insisted on guarding her.

The two clones turned to look as Rika, Suzie and Lopmon entered the room. Boil nodded curtly and Waxer smiled. "Hello guys," he waved his helmet in greeting. "How's things outside? The planning going alright?"

"Yeah, for the moment," Rika nodded. "We're just working out a couple of tweaks here and there at the moment, but I think that if everything goes alright we'll be ready for war by tomorrow at the latest."

"Tomorrow?" Boil asked, a slight edge in his voice when he glanced towards Numa, sitting in Xiaan's lap and trying to have a talk with Tsunomon. "That soon?"

"Yeah, looks like it," Rika nodded.

"I don't like this," Boil murmured. "I do not like this one bit. She's just a kid. And she might be a Tamer but she doesn't belong here, not yet. She needs the training that you guys have."

"To be fair," Rika replied. "When we first became Tamers, we didn't exactly have anyone to train us. I had a slight advantage of knowing my way around the card game already, but for the most part I taught myself how to be strong." She coughed and said, "I... admit... I did need some help from Henry and one of my other friends, Takato, before I started to understand the need of bonding with my Digimon, but, from the looks of things, Numa doesn't need that much guidance in that field."

And indeed she was right. Numa was listening intently to Xiaan as the Twi'lek garbled away in their native language and then turning and speaking directly to Tsunomon with a smile on her teal-skinned face.

"We had to go up against some powerful monsters when we were still novices," Rika added.

"That may be," Boil replied. "But an opposing army is going to be different to a single monster. There will be so many opponents, so many opportunities for her to get killed. And worse still, our brothers in the Empire might not think twice about deliberately shooting her. They might assume she's a Jedi youngling. After all, why else would she be here? They don't know about you Tamers."

"Boil has a point," Waxer frowned grimly. "Is it really a good idea to leave her here?"

"In case you'd forgotten, guys, we tried that," Lopmon chuckled dryly. "That guy," she pointed at the wheeling Digimon. "Foiled that plan for us, and its likely he'll do it again if we try to make her leave. He seems to have taken a liking to her, and one of Numa's most heartfelt wishes is to be here and help in the battle. The Digi-Gnome will probably keep bringing her back if we attempt to send her away."

"Can't we just... put him in a cage or something?" Boil suggested.

"Boil!" Waxer admonished him.

"What?" Boil protested. "It would just be until we can get the kid away."

"We've decided to see what happens here and now before we make any more decisions about what to do with her," Rika said. "She needs to learn how to be a Tamer, and the faster the better. We do have experience in guiding younger children into becoming better Tamers. Maybe we'll have some good fortune with Numa and soon we'll have a Garurumon battling alongside us."

"What does a Garurumon look like?" Waxer asked, curiously.

"Imagine a wolf with pale blue fur, with darker blue stripes, a long whip-like tail, large claws and a body about twice as tall as a man," Lopmon smirked.

"And can shoot blue fire out of its mouth," Suzie supplied with a beam on her face.

"Wow," Boil murmured. "That... actually does sound quite intimidating."

"I would so love to have a Garurumon fighting with us," Suzie giggled. "He always was one of my favourites from the show."

"Who was your favourite?" Rika asked.

"Lillymon," Suzie replied immediately. "She's so pretty. And the flower on her head is pink."

"Of course," Rika chuckled. "Well, let's see what we can do." And with that, she took point and guided the others past Waxer and Boil and towards Xiaan, Numa and Tsunomon. The two clones turned to watch, curious as to how things were going to proceed.

"It was then that I decided to fight back," Tsunomon was saying. "I was tired of feeling helpless all the time. I wanted more. I wanted to protect the innocent from the threat of evil Digimon if I could and I vowed on that day to always fight for right and justice and fend off wickedness wherever I found it."

Xiaan repeated the words to Numa in Twi'leki.

The little girl smiled and said, "Suulan o col boda, Tsunomon. Suul nalialo ace sa o Jedi."

"She's says she thinks that you're a nice guy," Xiaan replied. "And that you remind her of a Jedi."

"Well, I don't know a lot about the Jedi Order," Tsunomon chuckled. "Everyone's been busy preparing for this upcoming battle, so I haven't really had much time to be given the 411. But from what I do know, I will take that as a compliment. Thank you Numa."

"Oh it was a compliment," Xiaan nodded. "Or at least I hope it was." She turned to Numa and said, "He says thanks."

Numa beamed, and then, for the first time, she noticed that Suzie and the others had entered the room. It seemed that she had been absorbed in her conversation with her partner. Perhaps, having had the significance of bonding with her Digimon explained to her earlier, she had taken it to heart and was trying very hard to get to know him.

"Numa!" she cried, in the same confusing word that meant 'sister' but was also her own name, as she hopped out of Xiaan's lap and ran over to hug Suzie. As Suzie returned the hug, she noticed that Numa wasn't as thin as she had used to be. Ever since she had joined their group she had been receiving regular meals, and probably more substantial ones than the ones her uncle could provide on Ryloth. She wasn't quite as skinny anymore, and that was a good thing.

"Hello, Numa," Suzie smiled. "How are you? Er... how do you say that in Twi'leki?" she asked, glancing towards Xiaan.

"How are you," Xiaan translated.

"How are you?" Suzie repeated, to Numa.

The young Twi'lek grinned and said, "Beali nikr. Tsunomon's trink col. Ju basa Jus ranastata ji gur ji ken gid lomsa."

"She says that she's good and that she thinks she's making progress with getting to know her partner," Xiaan replied.

"And what do you think?" Rika asked the Jedi directly.

"Well, I'm not exactly an expert in this kind of thing," Xiaan chuckled. "Having only met you Digimon and Tamers just the other day, but if I have to say anything then I would say the process is going steadily, but also very slowly. The language barrier between the two of them is making things very difficult."

"I can imagine," Lopmon murmured dryly.

"You said that they need to form a strong bond with one another quickly, right?" Xiaan asked.

"By tomorrow if possible," Rika murmured. "Not a bond as strong as the ones we have with our own partners, but preferably a bond strong enough."

"Well, the fact that they can't hold a conversation with one another without another person being there is not making things any easier," Xiaan sighed. "I'm doing my best, but it feels more like I am the one communicating with both of them instead of them to each other."

"I'm doing my best too," Tsunomon nodded, bouncing off the bed and hopping towards Numa. "I've learned about ten words of her language, but that is not enough to communicate properly with her, is it? Did any of the other Digimon have to deal with this kind of problem when they became partners?"

"No, I'm afraid not," Lopmon replied. "We all spoke the same language when we met. It might have helped if we could draw on past experience in this matter, but we can't so we're going to have to do things from scratch."

"I'm sorry," Tsunomon lowered his eyes.

"It isn't your fault," Lopmon reprimanded him. "If we must blame somebody, we should blame him," she pointed at the Digi-Gnome wheeling above their heads. "But even he can't really be blamed for doing what all Digi-Gnomes do. If it had happened a bit sooner... Well, we can't really dwell on might-have-beens."

"How many words of our language does Numa know now?" Suzie asked.

"By my count," replied Xiaan. "Fifteen. Although four of those are numbers, which don't really help that much."

"Well, it's better than nothing," Rika replied. "Have you done any practicing with Modify Cards yet? That might help a little bit."

"Well she did ask to try a strength card," Tsunomon replied. "But without limbs most of those Modify Cards are not going to be that useful."

"Good point," Lopmon murmured. "Well then, what do you guess think we should do?"

"Maybe if we could figure out how to make Tsunomon digivolve again," Rika replied. "It might be tricky. Digivolution cards do not work in the same way as the other Modify Cards, otherwise it would be a simple matter of sliding them through the slot and boom, there you have the next level. The bond has to be there, to provide the strength needed for the card to activate."

"Then what do you suggest we do?" Waxer asked. "How can we get the little guy to digivolve."

"Polis herfo nes?" Numa questioned, not understanding much of the proceedings. Xiaan briefly began to fill her in with their language, while Rika murmured, "Well, in the past the best thing that ignited the bond between Tamer and Digimon was being put in a dangerous situation that allows us to work together better. Or more like, _requires_ us to work together and join our hearts because if we didn't we wouldn't be able to survive."

"Well, we can't do that," Boil objected. "We can't just toss in front of a predator and hope that they work together to fend it off. That would be out of the question."

Rika frowned, and then she and Lopmon glanced at one another for a moment, smirks crossing over their faces. Suzie, due to being connected via the mind, began to smirk as well a moment later.

"Or can we?" Lopmon murmured.

"What?" Boil frowned.

"Come with us," Rika waved them towards the door. "We've got an idea. It's a bit crazy, but it might work a little."

* * *

Over the next five minutes, Rika, Suzie and Lopmon led the others out of the Temple until they were outside the city walls, finding a patch of area that was mostly devoid of other people before they called a halt. Suzie and Lopmon then turned around to face the rest of the group and the bunny said, "Alright then. Shall we begin?"

"Begin?" Tsunomon frowned. "Begin with what?"

"Begin with the next stage of the training, of course," Lopmon replied smoothly. "We don't want to put Numa in danger unnecessarily, but perhaps danger itself is not needed. If we do this right, then all that would be required is the mindset for danger."

"I don't understand," Tsunomon blinked.

"It's simple," Lopmon responded. "We're going to set up a scenario. We're going to pretend that I am an evil Digimon and that I want to attack Numa, and that you, Tsunomon are the only thing that stands in my way of getting to her."

"What?" Tsunomon looked startled. "But... what..."

"Don't worry, it'll be completely fake," Lopmon smiled. "But pretend that it isn't. Pretend that I really do want to harm your partner and do your best to defend her."

"Er..." Tsunomon murmured. "Well, if you think this is a good idea..."

Lopmon gave him his answer but suddenly charging forwards, throwing herself into the air and streaking towards Numa in a brown blur. Numa shrieked – she had not been told exactly what was going on (deliberately, to make the mindset seem more real) and lifted her arms up to protect herself, a gesture that would be futile if Lopmon really wanted to cause her harm.

Tsunomon's instincts flared and he immediately leapt in front of Numa and let loose a stream of bubbles from his mouth at the oncoming rabbit. Lopmon twisted in mid-air, rolling aside and letting the bubbles streak past her before she overshot and sailed past the clones and the Jedi watching.

"How was that?" Tsunomon asked.

Lopmon didn't reply. She had immersed herself in the character of an evil Digimon, something that she didn't often get to do, and with a murderous look that didn't look right on her kindly face, she wheeled around and came for Numa again. Tsunomon yelped and bounded around Numa, trying to place himself between them once more.

Numa whirled around and shouted, "Suzie! Polis Lopmon tryaq?"

Suzie took that to be a cry asking what was happening, but she and Lopmon had already discussed what they were going to do in their minds on the way here, so she didn't say anything.

Lopmon tucked her ears in and dived straight towards Numa from above. Tsunomon leapt to intercept and blew bubbles once more. Lopmon flared her ears and rolled to the side again, but this time she altered her trajectory so that she was still diving straight for Numa. Tsunomon quickly tried to alter his own motion and tried to tackle Lopmon out of the air, but the bunny proved too quick for him and veered away, swooping around Suzie for another pass.

"Numa!" Suzie cried. "Defend yourself! Work with your partner!"

Numa didn't understand the words but she was beginning to get the gist. She was sure Lopmon and Suzie would never actually attack her, so this must be some sort of training. She quickly tried to focus her efforts on Lopmon, trying to decide what to do, but as Tsunomon bounded out in front of her to confront Lopmon again, the bunny Digimon did something unexpected.

She shot a round of Blazing Ice shards in Numa's direction.

Numa momentarily panicked. The Blazing Ice shards had been cleverly fired so that they would miss Numa by a close margin, but she flinched backwards and covered herself as best she could with her arms. Tsunomon was briefly startled as well, and he himself did the unexpected as well.

Lopmon had been expecting him to fire bubbles to counter the attack.

Instead, Tsunomon leapt forward, twisting in mid-air and took the blow in the back. He yelled in pain as he hit the floor with welts on his back and Lopmon gasped in astonishment. She had not expected him to do something like that. It was a good thing that she had dialled down the power of the attack just in case of an accident otherwise she could have done Tsunomon some serious damage.

Whatever the case, Numa was equally shocked. She had seen what Tsunomon had done, throwing himself in front of the attack to protect her. She'd been shielded by other people before, but that was the first time anyone had ever actually taken a hit for her.

She was both stunned and touched by Tsunomon's actions and she hurried over to him, helping him upright as best she could. "Non suul yoshon?" she asked.

"No time," Tsunomon grunted as he turned around to see Lopmon had every intention of continuing the exercise now that she could see that Tsunomon was alright. Tsunomon placed himself squarely in front of the young Twi'lek and scowled in the bunny's direction with a look of determination. "There's no way that I'm going to let you get hurt, Numa."

Lopmon was impressed. Tsunomon appeared to have immersed himself in the role with ease. Possibly because he had sheltered innocent victims from evil Digimon in the past, so it wasn't that hard to get into the persona even if the situation was false. She briefly broke character and nodded to both of them, before she readied herself, as if she were about to strike at any moment.

Numa looked up at Lopmon squaring off against them and said, "Yoshon, suul yuson o zali? Suul tug ei."

Xiaan chuckled, as she was the only one there who had understood what Numa had just said.

Lopmon took that to be her cue and swept forwards again, taking to the air and swooping low over the ground like a missile. Numa pointed at her and cried, "Gur gor, Tsunomon!"

Tsunomon didn't need a translator this time and he did as his Tamer instructed, bouncing forwards several steps and throwing himself at Lopmon. Lopmon displayed startling aeronautical skills by ducking and swooping _under_ him and heading directly for Numa once more, but Tsunomon twisted around in the air and fired bubbles at her back, which impacted on the ground because she had moved aside at the last second.

She landed nearby and whipped herself into a Lop Twister (a weaker version than normal), and thundered back at the Twi'lek girl. Tsunomon blew bubbles, but they just impacted against the spinning Rookie harmlessly as she bulled her way towards the two of them. Thinking quickly, Tsunomon threw _himself_ at Numa and knocked the girl aside, allowing Lopmon to zip harmlessly past.

But the bunny came back for another pass almost instantly. Numa scrambled to her feet and backed away as Tsunomon stood protectively in front of her once more. "Wait here, Numa," he said, as he bounced towards the spinning bunny with intent to ram into her and stop the attack.

"Numa!" Suzie interrupted. Numa glanced across at her and saw her fellow young Tamer miming swiping a card through the D-Arc she was holding in her hand. Numa nodded and pulled D-Arc away from her waist – it had been tied there by a piece of string and pulled a card out of the small pouch which had also been attached to her side. She checked it and saw that it was a digivolution card.

She knew what it did.

She knew that the point of this exercise was to try and make sure that Tsunomon changed into a bigger form.

Time to see if it would work.

Taking in a breath as Tsunomon and Lopmon got closer to each other, she prepared to slice the card through the slot on her device.

As her arm was lifting to carry out the task, Lopmon abruptly stopped spinning and froze on the spot, a look of alarm upon her face. Tsunomon blinked in confusion, wondering why Lopmon had suddenly stopped the exercise, and then the bunny lifted a hand and pointed behind him.

Tsunomon wondered if this was just a trick, but a sudden rumbling noise told him otherwise and he turned around, blanching in horror at the sight that met his eyes. Numa also turned around at the thundering noise and the pupils of her eyes dilated in sheer terror at what she saw.

Thundering towards them with teeth gnashing, mouth agape and letting off a horrendous and unworldly shrieking noise, was one of the six Acklay. The huge, six-legged beast had a look of hunger in its three eyes as it barrelled straight towards Numa, its massive claws pounding the ground so hard they sank into the earth several inches and ripped out clods, causing the ground to shake slightly.

One of those claws could crush Numa flat in moments and the needle-like teeth which were bearing down towards her could end her life the moment they made impact.

Numa was genuinely scared out of her mind, her heart rate going up so quickly she almost had a heart attack at the sight of the huge carnivorous insect creature rampaging in her direction, its jaws aimed for her head. Tsunomon felt similarly afraid, but his head emptied of all other thoughts except one.

Protect Numa.

He bounded forwards, calling Numa's name as he tried to reach her before the Acklay did. Numa was practically fixed to the spot in fear, the card in her hand mere centimetres from the D-Arc in the other. But over the screeching noise of the Acklay, she heard Tsunomon calling her name, as if the Digimon was providing her with an anchor to the world outside of her fear.

In that moment, she knew what to do.

Barely, aware of doing it, she completed the motion. It was as if her body had taken on a mind of its own as she slashed the card in her hand through the slot on the D-Arc, whipping it out of the other side and raising the device above her head. Lopmon and Suzie both stared in amazement, for in that one moment, Numa looked the perfect image of a Tamer, standing tall in the face of danger with D-Arc raised and a look of determination on her face.

Tsunomon bounded past her.

He felt a surge of energy as he bounded towards the oncoming energy.

And he exploded into white light.

Lopmon smirked triumphantly as, for the second time since hatching, the newest Digimon of their group changed shape.

As Tsunomon warped and grew larger, he shouted to the whole of Tython, **"TSUNOMON DIGIVOLVE TO..."**

And then he ran out of the light on feet where none had existed before, a grim look of determination in his eyes as his yellow, bare legs hit the ground. The blue and pink pattern adorning his stomach was easily prominent against his yellow skin, and his tail thrashed from side to side as he ran. Draped over his back was his new fur, pale blue in colour with darker blue stripes. It ran down his arms and covered his yellow hands so that he had a set of purple claws over his knuckles, while a pair of furry sleeves hung down his side limply. The fur covered the top half of his head as well, with holes for the eyes and the yellow horn jutting up from his head.

"**...GABUMON!"**

The new Rookie level Digimon slid to a halt before the charging Acklay and threw his arms out wide, forming a barrier between himself and Numa. Next to the Acklay he still looked small but, as with all Digimon, he had a couple of tricks up his sleeve, and he had a lot of sleeves.

The Acklay did not stop its charge, so Gabumon shouted, **"BLUE BLASTER!"** and a thin jet of blue, ice-like flames shot out of his open jaws and pelted towards the Acklay. The attack slammed the giant creature in its gaping mouth and the Acklay shrieked, altering its course as it skidded to a halt, shaking its head and snapping its jaws several times as it careened backwards.

Gabumon stepped backwards and stood protectively in front of Numa, who was staring at her partner's new form in awe. The Acklay didn't appear to be unduly hurt by the attack – they had very tough armour after all, and it turned around to glare at Gabumon taking a couple of menacing steps forwards, as if it was preparing to stalk him.

"Alright," a voice cut in. "That's enough."

Gabumon's head cleared as he looked down, focusing his eyes on the figure that was moving out from behind the Acklay. It was Rika, and Gabumon realised that he hadn't actually seen the orange-haired girl for a while. She had taken advantage of his attention being focused on Lopmon to slip away unnoticed.

"Sorry about that, Gabumon," Rika chuckled, as she placed a hand against the Acklay's leg, and the Acklay's threatening growls subsided into silence, as a calm demeanour came over the giant creature once more. "But we had to surprise you with something big if we wanted to have the maximum effect."

"And it worked!" Suzie grinned as she stepped over to the others.

"This was a set-up?" Gabumon asked, as he lowered his arms.

"Yes," nodded Rika, a smile on her face. "We thought that if you genuinely believed that your partner was in danger, it would have more of an effect than merely pretending that she was, and it seems that we were right."

"We came up with the plan on the way here," Lopmon said as she walked over. "I distracted you with the initial scenario to allow Rika to slip away and get you in the mindset of protecting your partner in advance, as well as her for working with you in a battle-like situation, and Rika then convinced the Acklay to pretend it was going to attack you, to take you off guard. I hope you don't mind too much, but it certainly seems to have worked."

"Polis herfo nes?" Numa murmured.

"Well," Gabumon murmured. "That was rather mean, if you ask me. But I cannot really argue with the results. And you are right. I have often found that the I react better on instinct than I do on planning ahead and assuming things, and I know for a fact that experience, even if its faked like this, is one of the better ways to teach. Thank you, guys."

"No problem," Suzie beamed, giving him a thumbs up. "How does it feel?"

Gabumon looked down at himself and said, "This form didn't come to me for about half a year after I hatched the first time. To think that only after a couple of days, here I am again, in my Rookie stage. I don't feel quite so helpless anymore."

"It's always a rush, isn't it?" chuckled Lopmon. "Even I still haven't gotten completely used to the feeling of digivolving. I don't think any of us have, or ever will really. Anyway, welcome to the ranks of us Rookies, Gabumon. I wonder how much farther your training is going to go today."

"You mean there's more?" Gabumon asked, looking startled.

"Oh yes," nodded Rika. "Anyway, aren't you going to introduce your new self to your Tamer?"

"Huh? Oh... right," Gabumon turned around to look at the Twi'lek behind him, who was staring at him in amazement. In this form, Gabumon was twice as tall as Lopmon now, but he was still a little shorter than Numa if you didn't count the horn. If you did count the horn then they were about the same height.

"Tsunomon?" Numa asked.

The new Digimon placed a hand on his chest and shook his head. "Gabumon," he corrected her.

"Gabumon?" Numa repeated.

"Gabumon," Gabumon confirmed.

Numa stared at him for several moments and then reached out with a small hand to brush the fur against his arm and she giggled at the way it tickled her hand. Lopmon moved closer and nudged him, murmuring, "Give her a hug."

Gabumon appeared to flush beneath the fur on his face. Evidently this one was just as shy as his counterpart from the television series back home, but after a couple of moments he tentatively stepped forward and spread his arms invitingly, though he didn't quite look her in the eye as he did so. Numa, on the other hand, immediately jumped at him and gave him the hug, and the Digimon slowly put his new arms around his Tamer and patted her on the back.

He still looked a bit uncomfortable, but he was smiling at the same time.

"Daaw," Suzie grinned. "Can I have a hug, Lopmon?"

"I was waiting for that," Lopmon chuckled, but obliged and allowed Suzie to hug her. It wasn't one of her infamous bonecrushing hugs, but it was still pretty tight and Lopmon felt some of the air being forced out of her lungs.

When the two Tamer and Digimon broke apart, Rika smiled and said, "Alright guys, let's get back to work. We've got some more training to do before the day is out. You might have reached the Rookie stage, but we need to see if you can reach Champion before the battle if that's possible."

"Do you really think it could be?" Gabumon asked.

"I'm not sure," Rika replied. "None of us managed to get out Digimon to digivolve to the Champion level on our first day, although to be fair nobody except me tried to. Let's see what we can do, shall we?"

Gabumon nodded and said, "Alright then. Let's do this."

* * *

And so the training continued. Suzie, Rika and Lopmon did their best in coaching Numa and Gabumon how to work together on the battlefield, aiding each other as best they could. They did this by setting up a couple of other scenarios between Gabumon and Lopmon, with the latter taking on the role of villain once again as she tried various different approaches to getting past Gabumon's guard.

Gabumon was obviously and experienced Rookie right from the start. He had, after all, been in this form once before, and already knew all of its strengths and weaknesses. He proved to be a formidable adversary, and Lopmon found it difficult to get by him without getting struck or hit by any of his attacks. He was a lot better at fighting in this form than in his In-Training stage.

However, she did manage to get past him a couple of times and she was significantly faster than he was. Speed seemed to be Gabumon's main weakness, though everybody knew that if they could get him to digivolve into any of his future forms, that would disappear completely and becoming one of his strongest assets.

Numa really seemed to take the instruction very seriously. The D-Arc was constantly gripped in her hand and she maintained the same expression of fortitude throughout the whole thing. She did learn quite a lot during the bouts between the two Rookie Digimon, as Suzie and Rika guided her in the art of being a Tamer. Other than providing the powers boosts to their Digimon, it was their job to look for patterns in the behaviour of the enemy and to determine if the course of action they had taken was the right one.

They practiced with Modify Cards as well. Xiaan helped with translations as the two more experienced Tamers taught the other what each of the cards she had been supplied with did, and they tried out every one of them in a combat situation. Gabumon ended up throwing rocks three times as big as he was at an airborne Lopmon, being able to take a full-power Blazing Ice without flinching, exude a Blue Blaster that was practically a Howling Blaster and losing the issue of his speed altogether.

Numa learned fast and though it took a while for the cards to be of use again, she seemed to make good use of them. She had also been provided with a couple of attacks from other Digimon with the cards, including the cards of a Harpymon and a Drimogemon. Gabumon could use both of these two great effect after a couple of attempts.

Some distance into the training and another surprise skirmish was set against Gabumon, which he was completely unprepared for because it was all engineered via the mind link. He was in the middle of one of his spars with Lopmon, throwing a couple of Blue Blasters at the bunny as she zipped around like a fly, when suddenly, Terriermon appeared out of nowhere and blindsided him, taking both him and Numa completely by surprise.

Lopmon quickly moved in afterwards and the two of them combined easily overpowered Gabumon and wrestled him to the ground.

That was when Numa learned one of her most important lessons – always be aware of her surroundings, because you never knew when something was going to jump out at you from absolutely nowhere.

As Terriermon and Lopmon let Gabumon get to his feet, the white-furred bunny was actually almost the same colour as his sister, as his small frame was smeared with dirt from practically top to bottom. "Hey guys," he grinned. "Looks like the training is going alright."

"Getting there," Gabumon nodded. "What about you? Been for a mudbath recently?"

"Well," said Henry as he approached the group from nearby. "The tunnel's been finished. It took us a while to get it done and it probably extends at least two miles beyond the city walls, if not more. It was a lot of digging."

"You weren't the one doing the actual digging, Henry," Terriermon pointed out. "Look at him all clean, while I am in serious need of a bath."

"You're always in serious need of a bath," Lopmon snorted.

"Oh yeah?" Terriermon glared at her.

"Yeah," Lopmon confirmed.

"Oh yeah?" Terriermon repeated shoving his face close to hers.

"Yeah," Lopmon also repeated, pressing her forehead against his until her three horns practically locked with his single one.

"Well," Terriermon replied. "In that case... TAG!" he tweaked his sister's nose and then turned and ran off at top speed, spreading his ears out to give make him more streamlined as he lifted into the air.

Lopmon tried to hide a grin and turned around to yell, "TAG!" as she placed a large ear against Gabumon's stomach pattern and then mimicked her brother in running away.

Gabumon stood there in completely bewilderment for a moment, until he realised that all three of the human Tamers were fleeing from him just like the Digimon, with Suzie dragging a partially confused Numa along behind her. He then realised the context of the game they were supposed to be playing, a similar one to one he had played in his youth before his village had been destroyed.

It had been many years since he had last played a game of this ilk.

But, then again, he was still in his Rookie stage, and he felt a certain childish excitement overtaking him as he set off in pursuit of the others.

From there, everything devolved in a wild game of tag that might at first have been for pointless fun, but Gabumon soon realised there was a deeper meaning and point to this game than he had initially suspected. For the first time since he had become partnered with Numa he was actively playing with her and her friends. It had either been feeling sorry and serious, hiding with her in a vent on the ship, or talking to one another via a translator.

The idea behind this game was to strengthen the bonds between them through enjoyment and having fun, and Gabumon began to suspect that Terriermon and Lopmon had had this in mind before they started their argument, which he didn't doubt had been staged as well.

Eventually, it merely became a game between Gabumon and Numa, with the others standing on the sidelines to watch. When it came to speed, the two seemed to be evenly matched and the game only ended when Numa tagged Gabumon by grabbing his tail and accidentally tripping him, sending them both rolling until they landed in a heap. They both extricated themselves quickly, laughing the whole time.

After that, it was back to the training. They practiced more with the Modify Cards and now that they had Terriermon on the scene, they had the opportunity to practice battling multiple opponents. Gabumon was hard pressed to fend them both off, but he did reasonably well considering his lack of speed.

And then came the test, which Gabumon had been expecting for a while.

Without warning, both the bunnies were enveloped in light and thudded to the ground as Turuiemon and Gargomon, readying their blades and cannons respectively as they squared off in front of Gabumon, both of them now much taller than he was.

"So, little guy," Gargomon crowed. "You think that you can defeat us?" He whirred his cannons and said, "Bring it on."

The two Champions charged, switchblades glowing white and cannon sockets pulsing green as they readied their attacks, rushing towards Gabumon and Numa.

"Hurry, Numa!" Gabumon called over his shoulder. "Digivolve me!"

Numa got his message and hurriedly swiped the Digivolution card through the slot on her D-Arc. Gabumon ran forward, feeling a fluctuation in his data which seemed to expand to fill his body...

...and then it died.

He pulled to a halt and looked down at himself, still in his Rookie stage. Gargomon and Turuiemon slid to a halt as well and lowered their weapons, their looks changing from faux anger to sympathy.

Numa bit her lip and looked down at the ground, seemingly very disappointed in herself. Suzie was surprised to see that she was struggling not to cry and quickly hurried over to her.

"Hey, hey," she said, wrapping her arms around the other young girl. "It's okay. Really. It doesn't matter too much if you can't get your Digimon to digivolve yet? You've done a lot already, right? You can really be proud of yourself and Gabumon, yeah? You're already a really good Tamer, I promise."

Once Xiaan had translated for her, Numa wiped her eyes for a moment and sniffed, before murmuring, "Arni, Numa Suzie," and looking up at Gabumon to check his own reaction.

Gabumon smiled at his partner and said, "Suzie's right. Look at all that we've accomplished so far. We've done really well for ourselves today, Numa."

"Yes, but what does this mean for the upcoming battle?" Henry asked. "Without having Garurumon on the scene, I don't particularly feel comfortable with having Numa anywhere near the action."

"The day's still not over," Rika remarked. "Let's keep going for now and see how much further we can get. You never know. We might be able to break through to the Champion level before the sun sets."

In reality, their hopes were not particularly high, but for now they would keep training and hope that, eventually, they would be about to help Numa and Gabumon break through that particular barrier. They all knew, however, that they would have to decide Numa's course of action before tomorrow.

No matter what the result of their training was.

* * *

Another chapter with some slight action if not particularly much of it. I hope that you enjoyed my descriptions of the way I wrote about Ilum and how I began the training of our newest Digimon and Tamer duo. I'll be honest and say I had absolutely no idea how I was going to do it when I started it out, but I am quite pleased with the result.

* * *

Twi'leki translations

Suulan o col boda, Tsunomon. Suul nalialo ace sa o Jedi - You're a nice guy, Tsunomon. You remind me of a Jedi

Beali nikr. Tsunomon's trink col. Ju basa Jus ranastata ji gur ji ken gid lomsa - Pretty good. Tsunomon's really nice. I think I'm beginning to get to know him better

Polis herfo nes – What's going on?

Suzie! Polis Lopmon tryaq – Suzie! – What's Lopmon doing?

Non suul yoshon – Are you okay

Yoshon, suul yuson o zali? Suul tug ei – Okay, you want a fight? You got one

Gur gor, Tsunomon – Get her, Tsunomon

Arni – Thank you

* * *

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

As the last of the training occurs for Aayla and Numa, as well as Barriss who has been practicing sparring, and Ahsoka and Anakin return, they begin to think about the next stage of their plan – how to leak the information of their whereabouts to the Sith. To do so, they turn to a certain red-eyed Bounty Hunter, as well as an ally that none of them even like. Especially Aayla and Anakin.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 188 : A New Assignment**


	188. A New Assignment

I want to thank everybody for their support and encouragement regarding my slight nervousness with the major fight scene that is rapidly approaching. Your words were greatly appreciated, but I fear that you misunderstood what I was trying to say. It's not so much the action itself that is worrying me. It's trying to sustain the awesomeness throughout two arcs while trying to maintain a story at the same time, so that it doesn't only become a mish-mash of swinging lightsabers and firing blasters and stamping claws and teeth and screaming.

Regardless, your words did boost my confidence a little, though if anyone has some ideas for little action sequences now would be the time to give them to me. It's possible I might slot them in somewhere. But don't give me any ideas regarding the Tenacious Ten. I already know what they'll be doing.

To that end, **zigmas**, I'm sorry, but that won't be happening. I have something different in mind for Sakuyamon already. I do think you'll like it though.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 188:- A New Assignment**

* * *

Practically everyone in the Tenacious Ten was taking part in some kind of training or upgrade. Aayla Secura was learning how to shoot Force lightning while not falling to the Dark Side, and helping Grievous to practice for his inevitable showdown with the Sith. Ahsoka and Anakin were heading back to Tython after their mission to Ilum and Numa was coming along in leaps and bounds under the supervision of all three Tamers and the two bunnies.

That merely left Barriss and Renamon. And the fox was really starting to put the Mirialan through her paces. Barriss was as athletic as any other Jedi, but the amount of endurance and agility that Renamon had practically seemed to ignore the laws of physics. She was insanely tough, and it was easy to see why she had been a challenge for the Dark Jedi she had faced on Boz Pity.

The two of them had started out with a series of sparring matches without the use of weapons like claw or blade. It was clear that Renamon was the superior when it came to hand to hand combat. After all, her paws had been one of the only weapons she had ever needed as she had a lot of practice.

The two of them had dodged and ducked and span and lashed out with feet and arms in rapid succession for almost half an hour, until both of them were sporting bruises and welts on all four of their limbs with several more on the torso.

And then Barriss had diligently healed their wounds.

And then they had started again and done it once more for a similar length of time, whereupon Barriss healed their wounds again, and they did it a third time.

Renamon could see that Barriss was determined to get in as much practice as she could before tomorrow and she could probably tell why as well. She remembered what Barriss had been like when Aayla had been kidnapped by Bane a few days ago. The young Jedi Knight's main issue was a slight lack of self-confidence. She had been worrying about whether they had chosen right by knighting her or letting her into the ranks of the already well-established A-Team.

It was always going to be a difficult transition. Individual Jedi of the order were not usually that well known. Barriss had accomplished many an extraordinary feat that had helped to save a world or even the Republic itself from time to time, but she hadn't really done anything that really stood out. Compared to Aayla, Anakin and Ahsoka, nobody knew of her.

Nobody knew if she could fight as well as they could, or if she would be a hindrance or a help to the team when she had joined them. And, to be honest, neither had Barriss herself.

In Renamon's view, Barriss could not have come at a better time. Shortly after she had joined their team, everything had gone absolutely haywire, and a presence of a fourth Jedi, particularly one with her healing skills, had been of real use to them. But it wasn't Barriss' healing skills that were going to be put to the test soon. It was her skills in combat. Barriss was good with a blade. There was no question of that, but she had faced off against only two adversaries in a real duel.

One of them had been her Master, while she was infected with a Geonosian parasite.

The other had been a pair of Dark Jedi that she had double-teamed along with Ahsoka.

The first duel had not ended well for her and she had been knocked out and only saved by a timely intervention from Turuiemon.

The second duel had gone better and she and Ahsoka had defeated their opponents, but had then almost been killed by their dirty trickery and, again, only survived due to another timely intervention, this time by the Force-sensitive Acklay.

And now, Barriss was being asked by her comrades to go to one of the most dangerous places in the entire universe, where there were some of the most deadly evil lightsaber uses in the entire Galaxy including both the Sith Lords, and she was not going to be expected to hang in the background and heal anyone who got injured.

She was going to have to fight and give it her all.

She might potentially end up against somebody like Dooku or Ventress and Renamon could sense that the thought to that scared Barriss slightly, though she tried to hide it and suppressed her fear.

This fact, combined with the other fact that she still doubted whether she had earned her place on the team, was leading Barriss to try harder than she ever had under the tutelage of Luminara, to get better in combat and improve any way that she could.

And Renamon had actually seen some improvements already. Barriss seemed to react more quickly to strikes and was able to get out of the way faster than she normally had and also allowed her to block blows which Renamon had been able to get past her guard previously. Barriss was beginning to tune her mind slightly better to what she was doing as well, more able to concentrate on where her limbs were going and this increasing her co-ordination beyond that of an ordinary humanoid.

Just about any other Mirialan in the universe would have a problem keeping up with Barriss in combat now.

The two of them weaved around one another, jabbing and swinging at one another with arm and leg alike. Barriss swept a leg up to roundhouse kick Renamon in the face, but the fox ducked under it and attempted to kick Barriss' leg from underneath her while she was vulnerable, but Barriss saw it coming and threw herself upwards, twisting to the side and lashing out for Renamon's stomach with her fist. Renamon sidestepped in a blur of yellow and grabbed her outstretched wrist, pulling her forward, but Barriss managed to hook Renamon own wrist with her other hand even as she stumbled.

Barriss forced herself into a twist designed to put Renamon in a nelson, but the Digimon's feet left the ground and she span with the motion, lashing out with her other hand at the same time as Barriss. The two of managed to grab each other by the hands and they pushed against one another momentarily in a battle of strength.

It was plain to see that Renamon had to superior strength, but Barriss was hardly defenceless. She actually managed to catch Renamon off guard by somersaulting up and over the fox without releasing her grip on the fox' paws. Renamon yelped as her arms were yanked over her head and behind her. Barriss twisted around and pinned her opponent's wrists together behind her head, Renamon's furry elbows in the air.

Barriss chuckled and said, "Do you give up?"

Renamon blinked and then laughed for a moment. "I have to admit," she said. "That was pretty good. I didn't see it coming."

"I learned from what you taught me earlier," Barriss smiled. "Always take advantage of the state of battle whenever you see an opening."

"Good to hear that," Renamon nodded. "But you forgot one other lesson which I taught you."

"What's that?" Barriss asked, and then she yelped as Renamon's tail curled around her legs and pulled them together, causing her to lose her balance and topple over backwards. As Barriss fell, her grip on Renamon's wrists came free and the fox span around and fell on her grabbing her by the shoulder the moment her back hit the ground and rolling her onto her front, grabbing her wrists and pulling them behind her back, holding them there in one paw as she placed a knee on the small of Barriss' back to stop her from rising.

"Never assume that you've won the fight until you're absolutely sure, and make sure you take all of the opponents physical features into account," Renamon smirked.

Barriss sighed for a moment and said, "Well to be fair, if it were a real duel then I wouldn't assume that I could hold you the way I did and think that would subdue somebody like you."

"True," Renamon nodded. "But the real duels aren't that far away now."

"I know that," Barriss nodded.

"Believe me, I do." She looked over her shoulder at Renamon and murmured, "Are you sure that you guys want me to go with you? There are a lot more Jedi who I am sure would be far more useful in this situation than I am. Master Windu, for example. Or even Master Yoda."

"More useful?" Renamon shook her head. "No, Barriss. There would be no Jedi that could possibly take your place and be more useful than you on this particular mission, and do you know why? Because you, unlike them have bonded with us. You have a mind-link with us Barriss. When we work together, we can overcome any obstacle thrown at us."

"Yes, but my bond with you was not naturally born, was it?" Barriss murmured. "It was granted to me by a Digi-Gnome. Just because I possess it does not mean that I work on the same level as you guys."

"Rubbish," Renamon snapped. "The Digi-Gnome wouldn't have granted your wish just because it felt like it. They don't just go around granting them willy-nilly. You wish came from the heart and when it comes to fighting with us, that's all you need. You may not have had the practice the rest of us have with working with us, but just you wait. When you get out there, you'll show them that you deserve to be on this team, no questions asked."

Barriss hesitated for a moment, unsure of herself for a moment, but then she said, "You believe that, Renamon? Or are you just saying it to boost my confidence?"

"I speak the truth," Renamon replied simply. "I would never lead somebody into a dangerous situation unless I were sure that they could handle it, and neither would the others. You may think that you have to prove yourself to us, Barriss. But you really don't. We already know your worth. All you need to do is prove yourself to yourself."

Barriss looked a little unsure of what she was supposed to say next, but eventually she chuckled and said, "Much as I am enjoying this heart to heart with you Renamon, this is not really the best position to be having it in. Can I get up now?"

"Only if you can escape," Renamon snorted in response. Barriss frowned and tugged on her wrists a couple of times, but Renamon's grip was strong and they didn't budge an inch, and the knee pressed into her back prevented her from rising.

That is, until Barriss gathered the Force around her and then suddenly pulsed it over her shoulders. Renamon was thrown backwards and immediately lost her grip, being catapulted into the air by the Force push. She grinned even as she flew through the air and tucked in her knees, somersaulting over to land on her feet nearby as Barriss sprang to her own and whirled around, ready for more action.

"I can honestly say that I'm flattered that you think so highly of me, Renamon," she said, as the two of them squared off against one another once more.

"We all do, Barriss," Renamon interjected. "It's not just me. How many other Jedi do you think would have fitted into our group as quickly as you did? It thinks it's safe to say that practically none of the Jedi Masters would have, and comparatively few of the others, but you fit in almost straight away. Not just anybody can do that, especially not when Terriermon is a member of the group. It takes someone special to get used to him quickly. It took me a year and half before I did."

Barriss smiled and said, "Don't let him hear you say that."

"Oh, he already has," Renamon tapped her skull. "No secrets remember."

Barriss chuckled, and then her stance dropped lower and her legs spread wider and she said, "Well, Renamon. If you and the others truly believe that I have to go with you on this suicide mission into the heart of Sith territory then I guess I have no choice but to accept, and to show both you and myself that you made the right decision."

"You do remember me telling you that you don't need to prove anything to us, right?" Renamon enquired.

"Humour me on this one, alright?" Barriss smirked. "Now, shall we keep going with this training?"

"I believe we shall," Renamon nodded. "You've already demonstrated improvements already."

"You're a good teacher," Barriss pointed out.

"It takes practice having to help instruct somebody like Terriermon, but we got there in the end," Renamon replied. "Now, let's continue this dance, shall we?"

As the words left Renamon's mind, Barriss felt a spark in her mind as the vague beginnings of an idea began to form in her head, but before she could dwell on it, Renamon was charging at her on all fours like a yellow wolf and pounced towards her. Barriss rolled aside and Renamon landed on all fours, whirling about with a swish of her tail to come for Barriss again. Barriss was mildly surprised. Renamon seemed to be acting a little more viciously than before.

She must be simulating what she would be doing in a real fight and Barriss hurled her senses into the Force, allowing it to fill her up and flow throughout her body as she leapt to engage the Digimon in what rapidly became a full-on brawl between them, with blows raining upon each other with abandon.

It might look for all the world that they were in the middle of a real fight.

In fact a couple of nearby clones actually did think they were having a real bout and hurried over to try and quell the fighting, but Renamon quickly diffused the situation with an explanation and the mildly embarrassed clones moved away and then settled back to watch as Barriss and Renamon duked it out between them.

As they fought, Barriss became aware that her movements were becoming less erratic and were going much more smoothly than previously. Her body was practically moving without thinking as she responded to the slightest variations in Renamon's body motions and was able to match the fox blow for blow. Renamon seemed to see this too and increased her efforts, until it became a stalemate of punching and kicking met only with blocking and neither of them settling a square hit on the other.

Barriss had only felt like this once before in her life, and that was during the duel against the Dark Jedi on Felucia. Every motion of her body was smooth. She was practically one with the Force as it guided her and told her what to do and she told it what to do at the exact same time, both of them following each other without question.

The practice bout became increasingly widespread and soon the fox and the Mirialan were all over the place, dashing across the open spaces and leaping over and around one another in their bid to land a hit on the other. Barriss rolled and Renamon rolled with her. Renamon leaped back and Barriss leapt forward at the same time to stop her from gaining the advantage of distance. The two of them seemed to be working in almost complete synchrony.

Renamon finally broke it off by sent a brief mental signature to her sparring partner, which Barriss caught instantly and practically made her freeze in place. Then, both of them dropped their limbs and stared at one another for a few moments.

"And you think that you're not ready to come with us to Coruscant?" Renamon asked her, rubbing her bruised arm. "I'd say you've been ready for some time judging by that performance. You just haven't known it until now."

Barriss flushed slightly and said, "Thanks, Renamon."

"No problem," Renamon smiled. "Now, could you do me a favour and heal us both up again? I'm pretty sure that you must be sore after that as well."

"Yes indeed," nodded Barriss. "At least with lightsabers you don't end up damaging yourself blocking each of your opponent's attacks."

Renamon decided not to point out that it also ran the risk of being cut in half if you failed to block an attack, but as Barriss began to heal both of them over, she smiled and said, "Luminara must be a good teacher to have raised a Padawan like you."

"She's one of the best," Barriss smiled proudly. "Let's hope her training pays off."

"Indeed," Renamon nodded as the Jedi Knight healed a bruise on her ribs. "Anyway, I believe that we might quite a bit of progress with your confidence today," she patted Barriss' shoulder. "Make sure you hold onto that confidence Barriss. Too much confidence might be bad for you, but so is too little."

"Wise words," Barriss smiled.

The ground beneath their feet suddenly juddered a little. Then again with a little more force, and then again. Barriss and Renamon looked over to see Godzillo rounding one of the cruisers nearby, stepping towards them on his two hind legs, tail swinging behind him. The two of them smiled up at him as he came to a halt next to them and Renamon jerked her head in the giant lizard's direction.

"Besides, we're going to have some very big friends with us on our next trip," she chuckled. "But they're not the only surprise that the Sith are going to get, right?"

"Uh-huh," Barriss nodded. "Don't worry, Renamon. I won't let you guys down."

"That's what I've been saying," Renamon replied. "Hey, let's test out your agility. Last one to the top of Godzillo's head has to snog Terriermon!"

"What?" Barriss blinked as Renamon suddenly hared off towards the Beast's feet on all fours, her tail streaming out behind her like the trail of a meteor. It took the Jedi a couple of seconds to realise the implications of what she might have to do if she came second in this sudden race and she yelped and dashed off after Renamon as fast as she could, using the Force to aid her run.

Renamon, meanwhile, was enjoying the moment of childishness, which didn't come along that often where she was concerned, but she felt that it was much needed after the seriousness of the conversation and training she had just had with Barriss. As she leapt onto the Zillo Beast's leg and felt the giant creature's eyes focusing on her as she clambered up, she debated whether or not to deliberately lose this contest or do her best to win it just to laugh at the result.

_Lose! Lose! Lose!_ Terriermon screamed with his mind into hers.

_Whatever for? _Renamon chuckled internally. _You don't like Barriss?_

_Yes, but not like that. Not only would that be horribly embarrassing but I wouldn't be able to look her in the eye for a week, and we kinda need to work together for the next couple of days._

_Good point,_ conceded Renamon albeit slightly reluctantly and she slowed down slightly as she bounded up the Beast's back, allowing Barriss to gain ground on her.

_Thank you,_ Terriermon sighed, his relief clearly effort in his mental voice.

_But when this is all over,_ Renamon smirked. _I'll win the next contest with this outcome. And it'll be against Aayla._

_Oh Fanglongmon,_ Terriermon moaned. _Why didn't you give me a mate who was more possessive?_

_It's more like with the mindlink I will know for a fact that there are no feelings about your actions besides hideous embarrassment,_ Renamon snorted. She then left Terriermon to his gnawing worry, as he knew that Renamon had meant every word, and allowed Barriss to flip over the Zillo Beast's third arm and spring into the air to overtake her and come to a stop on top of the Beast's head. The Beast's eyes rolled up to try and see her as Renamon walked the last few metres, chuckling the whole time.

"Seriously, don't do that," Barriss glared at her accusingly. "What in the Galaxy would the Jedi Council think if they saw... that...?"

"You know that I let you win on purpose right?" Renamon chuckled.

"I do _now_," Barriss muttered. "Didn't before."

"Well, you have to admit the look on your face was pretty good," Renamon laughed.

"Ugh, you're evil."

"Momentai."

_Hey! Stop needling me!_

The Beast suddenly snorted and its head rose, causing Barriss and Renamon to widen their stance to keep from overbalancing. "What is it, Godzillo?" Renamon asked, getting down onto all fours on top of the Beast's head. The Beast responded by giving off a screeching noise and staring upwards into the sky, causing Barriss and Renamon to follow his gaze.

What they saw was the _Twilight_ appearing out from the clouds above them and heading down towards the ground some distance away.

"Well, what d'you know?" Barriss smiled. "Looks like Anakin and Ahsoka are back from Ilum."

"Let's go and greet them," Renamon nodded as she leapt off the Zillo Beast's head and began to slide down his back as if she were on a snowboard. Barriss watched as she slid down one of its arms and shook her head in bewilderment, before following on.

* * *

Ahsoka stepped down from the ramp of the _Twilight_ and moved out into the open to allow Anakin and Artoo room. Throughout the journey she had constantly been pulling out her newest weapon and activating it to take a look at the yellowish green blade that hummed before her face every time she did. She had been a bit like this with her first lightsaber, enthralled with it and feeling her connection to the crystal inside through the Force.

Eventually it had become an almost unconscious thing until Anakin asked her to stop doing it, and she quickly complied, looking embarrassed.

Now they were back on Tython and the feeling of the strength of the Force was washing through her once more. "I'm not quite sure this is the right attitude," she turned to Anakin. "But I'm actually looking forward to the upcoming battle now. I'd quite like to test out my new weapon as quickly as possible."

Anakin looked a bit grim at the prospect and Ahsoka felt a little ashamed of herself. It was clear that Anakin still hadn't completely adjusted to the idea of having to fight against his old so-called friend Palpatine, even if he had put the anger behind him back on Saleucami. "Sorry," she murmured.

Anakin shook his head. "No," he said. "I have to say, I'm looking forward to it with some degree as well. If only because once we finish it and if we arise victorious, then the war against the Sith will... finally... be over."

"And you can get the weight of that Prophecy off your shoulders, right?"

"Pretty much," Anakin nodded. "It's not the easiest of burdens to bear, that's for sure."

"You've still got us," Ahsoka stabbed her thumb into her chest and winked at him.

"True. And without you guys I might well have given up a while ago." He sighed and then brightened a little by saying, "But this topic is a bit dreary. Come on, Snips. Let's go and find the others and find something more entertaining to talk about in what little time we have left before things get put into motion."

"I sense that Aayla's over there," Ahsoka pointed off towards the trees. "Behind that crowd gathering over there."

Anakin looked and frowned when he saw a host of clones, Gungans, Wookiees and few Jedi he didn't know by name (coupled with some that he did) gathering around and staring at something. Curious, he began walking towards them and said, "Let's go and see what is happening."

Ahsoka hurried after him and the pair of them moved closer towards the action. As they drew closer, they became aware of some kind of loud crackling sounds emanating from the other side of the crowd.

After they shouldered their way through the throngs of people, they gasped at what they saw.

There was Aayla, with both hands raised and fingers splayed outwards, with orange lightning shooting out of the tips just beneath her fingernails and pelting towards General Grievous, who was holding an arm in front of himself and somehow appeared to be _absorbing_ the lightning burst into a gap in his armour.

Aayla apparently sensed their presence and looked over towards them, giving them both a smile and a nod, before she broke off the attack and lowered her arms to her sides. Grievous lowered his arm as well, but kept his other arm raised with lightsaber held defensively in front of him.

"Had enough yet, Grievous?" Aayla called over to him. "Think you're ready?"

Grievous growled and unsheathed a second lightsaber, holding them both before him and shouting, "Once more, Secura! Hit me with everything you have!" and then he charged right towards Aayla at high speed.

Aayla's vision narrowed as she focused entirely on the cyborg hurtling towards her, and before she realised her hand had moved she had sent a burst of lightning out towards the General. Grievous roared as he saw it coming and raised his arm to block, the lightning rod absorbing the blast with ease, but Grievous did not stop running. He hurtled through the blast, his insane metallic strength ensuring that he wasn't unduly affected by the force of the lightning blast.

He twirling the lightsaber of his free arm and Aayla stopped her attack, leaping straight upwards with a Force-powered jump and somersaulting over Grievous' head by quite some distance. Aayla landed at the same time as Grievous skidded to a halt and they both turned to face each other at the same time.

There was a couple of seconds of tense silence between them, in which the entire audience hardly dared to breath.

Then Grievous lowered his weapons and nodded to Aayla. "You..." he coughed and looked like he was trying to force something out his voice modulator, and eventually he managed. "You did... well... Secura."

Aayla smirked and said, "Compliments, Grievous? Watch out. You'll be asking for hugs next."

Grievous snarled.

Aayla chuckled. And then she said, "Anyway, you've done well yourself. I believe neither of us have any further need to train in this today."

"No," Grievous shook his head. "You are right." And he sheathed his blades.

The crowd broke into applause and Aayla suddenly looked embarrassed, as if she had been completely unaware that the electrical training between her and Grievous had spectators. Anakin and Ahsoka immediately made a beeline for her and the Chosen One clapped her on the shoulder and held it there.

"Aayla, that was bloody brilliant," he grinned at her. "I thought that not much was going to have happened while we were aware but we come back and found you've suddenly mastered the Electric Judgement? How the heck did you do it?"

"With some good guidance from Master Plo," Aayla replied, indicating the Kel Dor standing nearby.

"My help in this endeavour was surprisingly minimal actually," Plo replied modestly. "Aayla mostly managed to figure out what to do on her own. I only helped to provide her with a target and to identify the best way for her to begin. Everything else she did herself."

"That's our Aayla," Ahsoka nodded. "Always coming up with new ways to make the universe be in awe of her and yet being hopelessly modest at the same time."

"You can never be too modest," Aayla replied.

"Yes, you can," Ahsoka rolled her eyes. "And you're it. You still believe that you don't deserve to be a Jedi Master."

"Well..." Aayla began, but trailed off.

"Oh, for the love of the Force!" Ahsoka placed a hand against her forehead.

"That reminds me," Anakin said. "You never actually did go through the ceremony that promotes you to becoming a Jedi Master, did you? Technically, you're still a Knight, even though everyone considers you a Master."

"We have more important things to focus on," Aayla replied. "I'll accept a ceremony if we succeed. Until then, I insist on remaining a Knight. I was a Knight when this war began. I would like to be a Knight when it ends too."

"Fair enough," Anakin nodded.

"Hey guys!" Terriermon cried as he winged his way over the crowd and landed nearby. "How's the lightning throwing going, Aayla?"

"Pretty well actually," Aayla chuckled. "I believe I am have gotten the hang of it already. That might have something to do with the power of the Force on this planet rather than my own skill though."

"Modest, modest, modest," Ahsoka smirked.

"Oh, shut up," Aayla chuckled, wrapping an arm around Ahsoka's shoulders.

Lopmon appeared next and the four Tamers shifted their way through the crowd after her. In their wake was a Digimon that none of the Jedi had set eyes on before and they blinked in surprise when they saw him. They knew who he was though, even if they didn't know his name, and Anakin grinned when he saw the newest recruit.

"Wow guys," he chuckled. "You've proven me wrong again. Two major developments happened when I was away. You managed to get Tsunomon to digivolve?"

"Yeah," nodded Suzie. "He's called Gabumon now. Say hi, Gabumon."

"I've already said hi," Gabumon pointed out. "Just not in this form. It doesn't make me a new person."

"No, but the name switching does get a bit confusing at times," Anakin replied. "I've gotten used to the others because I've seen them change so many times. Anyway, it's good to see you've gained another level, Gabumon."

"Thank you," Gabumon nodded. "It wasn't easy. But it was still a lot easier than it would be to do it naturally." He glanced around at the crowd around them and said, "Though I must admit that I'm not comfortable with being in such a large group of people."

"Oh, are you shy?" Aayla smiled.

"Gabumon are notorious shysters," Rika grinned. "They never let you see what they look like without their fur on if they can help it."

"Of course not!" Gabumon looked horrified and grabbed one of the limp sleeves on his fur coat and drew it across himself defensively. "I don't want anyone to see me naked!"

"See," Rika nodded.

"The tunnel's also been dug," Henry added. "When we need to make our exit from the city, we should be able to slip away no problem."

"Good," Aayla's expression turned more serious. "That's one obstacle cleared then. Hopefully we won't be spending too long at the battlefield here before we move off and carry out our own part of the mission on Coruscant."

"Speaking of Coruscant," Renamon suddenly cried as she came into view by vaulting over the heads of the onlookers and stepping towards the group, closely followed by the Mirialan Knight she had been training with. "Barriss and I have been training to better prepare ourselves for the mission there. I think that Barriss' sense of self-worth has gone up a little, right, Barriss?"

"Thanks to you, Renamon," Barriss nodded. She looked over to the others and said, "I sincerely hope that I won't end up failing you guys when we get there, but I will do my best and that's all that matters. Nevertheless, I do feel that I've made some slight progress today. The Sith might find me a bit more of a challenge than they were anticipating."

"There's going to be a whole lot of that going around when we arrive on the scene," Terriermon smirked.

"The same goes for me," Ahsoka suddenly burst out, unable to restrain herself any longer as she pulled her weapons from her waist and activated her lightsaber, while her thumb hovered over the button on her shoto. "What do you guys think of the latest addition to my personal armoury?"

She hit the button and the short blade buzzed out of the lightsaber handle and Ahsoka struck a combat pose, eyeing up the rest of the team as if they were potential opponents, albeit with a grin on her face.

"What did I say?" Lopmon waved an ear at Ahsoka. "I told you the look would work on her."

"Thanks, Lopmon," Ahsoka grinned.

"Hey, it's a little yellow," Suzie pointed at the blade and stared at it in amazement. "It's not the normal green colour. It's lighter than Ahsoka's other blade. Is that normal?"

"No, it's not," Anakin shook his head. "Crystals that give off a yellowish hue are rare. Almost as rare as those that give off a purple colour. I'm not sure how Ahsoka ended up finding this particular one, but I'm going to take it as a good sign. The Force might be smiling on us if it decides to give Ahsoka such a rare crystal."

"You think so?" Terriermon asked with a slight frown.

"The Force does move in mysterious ways," Aayla nodded. "Anakin might be right. A Jedi's lightsaber isn't a mere weapon, after all, and Ahsoka's shoto is no different. It might indeed be some sort of sign."

Ahsoka relaxed her stance and said, "I just need a bit more practice with it now. Does anyone fancy being my sparring partner?"

"Maybe you should ask Renamon," chuckled Barriss. "She does have a certain way with teaching people."

"Thank you, Barriss," Renamon smiled. "But perhaps you should be the one to practice sparring with Ahsoka. We've practiced the hand to hand combat. Perhaps you can practice your blade combat at the same time as her."

Barriss shrugged and said, "I don't see why not. When do you want to start, Ahsoka?"

"As soon as possible," Ahsoka replied immediately.

"But..." Anakin interjected. "Not right now. First, there is one more thing that we need to start thinking about before we split up to start doing any more training and that is the one remaining hole in the plan that we have so far."

"You mean how we're going to slip our whereabouts to Palpatine in a non-suspicious way, right?" Lopmon asked for clarification.

"Yes," Anakin nodded. "That."

"There are a number of possible options," Aayla nodded as Ahsoka sheathed her weapons. "But I'm not too sure which of them we should end up going with. Many of them might be slightly dangerous, and to be honest, I would prefer it if we could limit the danger until the battle begins."

"Agreed," Renamon supplied. "We've got a lot of people to take into consideration when it comes to making this decision. For one thing, we cannot do anything that might put our friends in the Senate in harms way and that limits our options."

"Palpatine is likely to have many spies throughout his new Empire," Ahsoka put in. "Do you think there's a way that we can draw one of them here to see what's going on for themselves."

"No," Aayla shook her head. "The location of Tython has been hidden to just about the entire Galaxy for hundreds of years, including most of the Jedi Order. Palpatine would be smart enough to realise that somebody stumbling upon it by accident is not likely to be an extremely fortunate coincidence. He was definitely suspect that we wanted to be found."

"Besides, if we brought a spy here, they would definitely see some things we don't want them to see," Henry agreed. "Like all our reinforcements for the battle, as well as Godzillo. It's quite difficult to hide him, isn't it?" he pointed towards the Zillo Beast, which was standing some distance away and towering over absolutely everything, watching the proceedings from afar with a vague interest.

"I suppose," Ahsoka nodded. "I was just thinking."

"Don't worry about it, Snips," Anakin said quickly. "A good many of our ideas are not ideal either."

One of the onlookers suddenly humphed and folded his arms in an almost petulant manner and said, "Well, I seems that I'm not going to be getting much thanks for providing those lightning rods for Grievous then."

"Sorry Bane," Aayla turned to him straight away. "We're very grateful for your assistance. I'm sure Grievous is too, even if he refuses to show it."

"I was hoping for something a little bit more substantial than mere gratitude," Bane said dryly. "But I suppose I may have to just take it."

"I see you still haven't changed a lot," Terriermon murmured.

"I never intend to change," Bane folded his arms.

"That reminds me actually," Renamon's icy-blue eyes focused on the blood red ones of the Duros. "I've been meaning to ask you something, Bane."

"And what might that be?"

"Why, exactly, are you still here?"

Bane smirked and chuckled a little in amusement. "What's the matter, Renamon?" he asked. "Getting tired of my company are you?"

"Not particularly," Renamon shook her head. "I meant why are you still here with us? With this Rebel Alliance, watching our plans to take out the Sith? I would have thought that once you completed your mission for us to track down Palpatine you would have high-tailed it out of our reach with the thirty million credits you earned from Chuchi and gone back into hiding. Instead, you're still here, and still actively taking part in our rebellion by providing Grievous with the technology to make him resistant to his main weakness. Why? What is it going through your head that is making you stay here?"

"That is actually a good point," Rika agreed. "You're not spying on us to try and take all of our plans to Sidious just before we put them in motion, are you?"

"What makes you think that?" Bane leered at her.

"You double-crossed him because it got you more money," Rika pointed out. "I still believe that you would do the same thing to us."

"Indeed I would," Bane replied. "I won't lie in that regard. But you're a fool if you believe that I would be taking any more information to Sidious. I had a very large hand in exposing him to you Jedi and forcing him to accelerate his plans. Unlike you Jedi, Sith hang on to grudges for the rest of eternity. If I tried giving any information to him, he might listen to what I have to say, but then he would attempt to strike me down the moment I finished."

"He's right," nodded Anakin. "The Sith betray everyone in the end. Even their own kind."

"Well, that is actually a relief, in a way," Henry said.

"Alright, but that doesn't answer my initial question," Renamon reiterated. "Why have you not gone back into hiding?"

"Well, there are a couple of reasons actually," Bane smirked. "One of them is a sense of overpowering curiosity, something which rarely afflicts me. When I took on the job for Secura, I became a part of the biggest upheaval in perhaps the whole of Galactic history and I would quite like to see how it plays out from near the front instead of just hearing about it from the holonet."

"Does that mean you actually intend to get involved in the battle?" Ahsoka blinked.

"Ooh no," Bane laughed. "You must be kidding. I'm not about to put myself into a dangerous situation like that unless I'm paid a ridiculous some of money. I'm almost sorry to say it, but my own interests are far more important to me than either yours or the Republic's. I intend to be leaving this place before the battling breaks out. No offense."

"None taken," Aayla nodded. "To be honest, that's pretty much what I expected."

"That brings me onto the second reason I'm still here," Bane smirked. "I stuck around just in case any more potential missions came up for me that might allow me to expand the pay I've already received. I was under the assumption that you would need all the help that you can get at this point, so I thought there might just be a chance my own services might come in handy. Up until helping out Grievous, that hasn't actually happened. But if nothing does come up, I'll be taking the money I have and going."

"You really are the most greedy person I have ever met," Renamon shook her head.

"Thank you," Bane leered. "That's what I strive to be."

"I think that he might actually be able to give Barbamon a run for his money," Terriermon murmured. "And would probably end up stealing that money if he ended up losing."

"Barbamon?" Bane frowned in bemusement.

"Oh, that was a compliment," Terriermon informed him. "Albeit a slightly weird one. Barbamon was a Demon Lord Digimon who was practically the living embodiment of greed."

"And you compare me to him?" Bane laughed. "Wow. That _is_ a compliment. I thank you, small one."

"No problem," Terriermon nodded.

"Well, if that's the case," Aayla said. "I'm sorry that we didn't think of anything that might have let you help us more since we came up with our plan, Bane."

"Er..." Barriss spoke up. "Well, actually... I did have a slight idea earlier that we might be able to use. And if we do then Bane might..."

"Sirs..." the voice of a clone interrupted, and the watching crowd parted to allow Commander Bly through. Aayla's loyal subordinate had a holocommunicator in his hand and he held it up and announced, "There's someone here to talk to you."

He hit the button to activate the little device and a hologram appeared. As the others had been expecting, it was a hologram of Chuchi, the Pantoran Senator smiling at each of them in turn as she appeared in Commander Bly's hand.

"Hey guys," she acknowledged. "How have you been? And how's the plan going?"

"It's going relatively well actually," Anakin replied. "We've just been making some last minute adjustments, and we've only got one little thing to do before we can implement it. What about at your end? How are things proceeding at your end?"

"Well, I have good news and bad news I'm afraid," Chuchi said grimly. "And unfortunately things seem to be leaning a little more of the side of the bad news, so I'll start with the good. The good news is that Padmé and Bail were able to get hold of the equipment the we would need to carry out our task."

"So you have the holocams?" Aayla asked.

"Yes," nodded Chuchi. "And all connecting wires that we'll need to send out a live broadcast."

"Well that is good news," Renamon smiled. "Are all of you okay? Nobody got caught?"

"No. We're all fine," Chuchi said, much to everyone's relief. "Though I'm almost afraid to ask where Padmé learned to be such a good thief. She got hold of the equipment with no problems whatsoever."

"It probably comes from a lifetime of snooping around where she doesn't belong," Ahsoka chuckled.

"Yeah, but you forget that she usually gets caught when she does that," sniggered Terriermon. "I suppose we should be thanking our lucky stars that that didn't happen this time."

"I know I did," Chuchi laughed. Then her expression took a rather more serious look and she said, "Unfortunately there is a complication. We might have the equipment we need, but there are only a few places where we can use them to send out a live broadcast. Only a few working terminals, and Palpatine controls all of those. Not only are they guarded at all times, but you have to notify someone as to why you want to address the public and there are always guards monitoring what's going on. They'd stop us in moments if we started doing something we shouldn't."

"We thought that there might be some issues like that," Anakin said grimly. "But don't worry too much – we've got the solution. Would I be correct in assuming that the communication centre is guarded too?"

"Yes, you would be?" nodded Chuchi.

"Well, the communication centre will be critical to our plans. That room controls all wavelengths going in and out of the Senate Building, so we might not need to use one of the designated spots to send out a live broadcast. If we bring Artoo with us and then one of us ferries him to the communication centre and takes out the guards, then you Senators could come in and Artoo could hack into the mainframe. Plug the camera into him, and you could send out a transmission from there instead, while one of us stands guard over you."

Chuchi grinned and said, "Brilliant! That's a really good idea." She frowned and then added, "But if we're sending a broadcast from in there, how will we be able to film the Emperor and show everyone that he's a Sith Lord?"

"We need another holocam," Anakin replied immediately. "One that can send anything it records somewhere else via wavelengths instead of wires. If we calibrate Artoo with that camera as well, then the information it records can be transmitted directly to him and he can feed it into the system and broadcast it to the rest of the world."

Chuchi chuckled and said, "Well, you certainly are very technology-wise, aren't you, Anakin?"

"I've been tinkering with machinery since almost _before_ I was born," Anakin replied. "I've learned my way around since then."

"Yes, but I sense that that was not all of the bad news," Barriss spoke up. "Would I be right, Senator?"

"Unfortunately, Barriss – yes, you would be," Chuchi sighed. "There's more bad news to add to what I just told you, and that's that the Sith have managed to gain a couple of new, more powerful allies since the last time we spoke."

"Oh, wonderful," Henry groaned. "Who is it?"

"Well, for one thing, the Bounty Hunter that tried to kill Aayla – Aurra Sing, still hasn't left. I saw her earlier today hanging close to the Emperor, so I think we can assume that she is planning on sticking around for a while. There's also a Nikto that seems to be staying close by that I've never seen before until recently, but if I had to guess, I would say that he was a Morgukai warrior."

Aayla raised a brow at this piece of news, but she made no further comment, deciding to keep her speculation about the identity and motivation of this Morgukai to herself for the time being.

"Wonder who that could be?" Ahsoka murmured to herself as she frowned with confusion.

"Does it matter?" Anakin asked. "All Morgukai hate Jedi. All we need to know is that he is an enemy."

"And there's more," Chuchi said. "I hardly dared believe my eyes when I saw it, but another of his new recruits is the Gen'Dai Bounty Hunter, Durge."

"What?" shouted Anakin and Bane at the exact same time, the Duros stepping out of the crowd and quite rudely pushing Henry and Rika aside until he was in the circle. The Bounty Hunter fixed his large eyes on Chuchi and said, "Say that again?"

"Oh. Bane," Chuchi blinked. "You're still there? Uh... well, I'm pretty sure you heard me right the first time. Durge the Bounty Hunter is back. He might have been gone a while but he's still alive."

Anakin moaned. "I really, really shouldn't be surprised by this."

"Who's Durge?" Lopmon frowned in confusion.

"A two-thousand year old Bounty Hunter, who used to help the Separatists around the start of the war, before you guys came on the scene. We haven't heard from him since Obi-Wan destroyed him on Muunilinst, but the Gen'Dai are nearly indestructible and have remarkable regenerative abilities." Anakin grunted. "I guess it was too much to ask that Obi-Wan finished him once and for all."

"Ah. So we have a near indestructible enemy against us now?" Terriermon rolled his eyes. "Lovely."

"You alright, Bane?" Renamon asked. "You look as if you're about to bust a gut."

"Durge and I never got on," Bane growled. "After the death of Jango Fett, it became a race between us to become the top of the league. We only met a couple of times, but it always ended up in violence. And now he's gotten in league with the Sith."

"Sounds like you've got some competition," Terriermon chuckled.

"We'll see about that," Bane snorted. "Don't ever forget that _I_ am the best Bounty Hunter in the Galaxy. Some old timing Gen'Dai that got torn to shreds by a Jedi several months ago isn't going to be taking my place."

"I'll take your word for it," Renamon nodded. Then she turned to Chuchi and said, "Any more bad news?"

"Yes," Chuchi nodded. "The fourth and final recruitment the Sith seem to have gotten is a Besalisk Jedi. Pong Krell, I believe his name is."

There was dead silence.

Then...

"WHAT!" all four Jedi shouted at the same time, staring at Chuchi with incredulity. Their voices were so loud that all the Digimon flinched backwards, as did Chuchi.

"Master Krell?" Barriss looked wild-eyed. "He's... turned against the Jedi Order?"

"And allied himself with the Sith?" Ahsoka breathed.

"It certainly seems that way," nodded Chuchi. "There was a public announcement earlier, claiming that Krell was exempt from this supposed plot to take over the Galaxy and Order 66 has been rescinded in his case and his case alone."

"I always knew the Krell was ruthless," Anakin murmured to himself. "That he was willing to go to extreme lengths to achieve victory and that his tactics put a lot of clones in danger. I knew that he was not a conventional Jedi. But I never would have thought that he would turn against us and join the Dark Side."

"This is one of the reasons why even most of the Jedi Order were not told about you Digimon," Aayla sighed. "Just in case of traitors like Krell."

"I heard that he had the highest casualty ratings of any Jedi for the men under his command," Bly murmured sourly. "Now I guess we know why."

"Don't worry, Commander," Aayla said with certainty. "We'll bring Krell to justice for this. He may have been a Jedi once but he is definitely not among our number anymore. Those clones who he needlessly killed will find peace with the Force when we have finished with him."

"I appreciate that, sir," Bly nodded. "For so many of our brothers are going to die soon as it is."

"We know, Bly," Aayla sighed. "We know."

"So that puts us up against... what... seven deadly opponents?" Terriermon asked. "Two Sith Lords, two Dark Jedi, a Bounty Hunter with the powers of a Dark Jedi and another Bounty Hunter whose practically indestructible. That's not an encouraging number."

"Well, we do have an indestructible ally of our own," Ahsoka reminded him.

"You got Godzillo then?" Chuchi beamed.

"Oh yes," Ahsoka turned to her Senator friend. "You were absolutely right. He was more than eager to come along when he heard that we were going up against Palpatine."

"That's good," Chuchi smiled. "We'll probably need his strength. Again, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news."

"It's better that you do so that we can be more prepared, Senator," Renamon told her. "We might have a lot more potential opponents that we anticipated, but we'll cross those bridges when we come to them. We're all prepared for what we have to do when we get there – it shouldn't be too hard to modify the plan."

"It's more the our own safety than the plan I'm worried about," Aayla followed on. "Anyone who goes up against Durge is going to be very hard pressed to win."

"Bah!" Grievous suddenly snarled from nearby, causing the Tamers and the two bunnies to jump, as they had completely forgotten he had been listening in. "Durge may be powerful, but I managed to best him once before. I am sure that I can do it again, and I am sure that most, if not all of you, can do the same. It's all about hitting him in the right place."

"We'll keep that in mind," Aayla nodded. "And then there's Krell. He has weight on almost all other Jedi and incredible power, not to mention the fact he uses two double-bladed lightsabers. He'll be a dangerous adversary as well."

"True, but we have one thing that they don't have," Renamon smiled. "We have our mind-link. Most of us can speak to each other in our heads and even when we split up to do our various jobs we won't be that far apart. The moment one of us lands themselves in trouble, we'll know, and we can rush to their aid."

Aayla smiled. "Well, you're right there. You're right, Renamon. We should worry about those new recruits later. Right now, we should be thinking about how we're going to draw Palpatine to Tython. We want him to send the bulk of his army here if we can. So, how do we go about it?"

"Barriss," Lopmon turned to the Mirialan. "Weren't you going to say something before Chuchi called?"

"Yes," nodded Barriss. "Yes, I was. During my sparring practice with Renamon, an idea occurred to me. It was... a pretty crazy idea. Certainly not the kind of thing that I would normally think up, which actually makes me quite proud of it, but it will be a little... awkward."

"Awkward?" Anakin frowned. "Awkward how?"

Barriss hesitated before speaking and then sent an apologetic look towards Aayla, which caused the Twi'lek to frown in confusion as she had no idea what her fellow Jedi was looking sorry for, and then Barriss said, "Well... it's like this..."

And she told them.

It only took about half a minute for her to get the idea out and by the time she'd finished, Aayla understood why Barriss had been looking apologetic. She was, for a few moments completely rooted to the spot at the thought of what Barriss was proposing, a thought that was so weird, so unbelievable and so... wrong that her mind was almost literally blown away.

The others were looking uncomfortable as well, though Renamon had more of a thoughtful frown on her face as she considered the possibilities. "Well, that might be just the kind of solution we're looking for actually, Barriss. But where would he have learned about the fact that the Jedi are gathering on Tython?"

"From Bane of course," Barriss mumbled, her face a little flushed due to the fact that Aayla still hadn't moved an inch. "We could always use the excuse that Bane gave him the information because he was after more money and that he didn't want to go to Sidious with it for the reasons that he said earlier."

"That's actually really clever," Terriermon nodded. "I'm impressed, Barriss. Didn't we tell you that you had the right sort of mind to be one of us?"

"Thank you, Terriermon," Barriss smiled.

"I don't like it," Anakin murmured, a mild scowl on his face. "I was hoping that we would never have to work with him or anybody of his ilk ever again."

"Yeah, but beggars can't be choosers at the moment, Master," Ahsoka pointed out. "Besides, he does owe us quite a lot, doesn't he? I'm sure that he'll listen to us and then, after this, we really will never have to work with somebody like him again, will we? In fact, we won't even need to go to meet him."

Anakin sighed. "I suppose you're right, Snips," he replied. "I still don't like it, but odds are I never will so I suppose we should get this over with. Aayla, what do you think? Are you alright?"

Aayla suddenly started moving again, but it was only to close her eyes and shake her head. "I agree with you on one thing, Anakin. I do not like this. I do not like this at all. The mere idea is... is... well, it almost doesn't bear thinking about it."

"I'm sorry," Barriss said instantly. "We don't have to do it. It was just an idea."

"Aayla, come on," Terriermon interjected. "It's a great idea and you know it. Besides, you've been in some uncompromising and occasionally embarrassing solutions before where there might have been other options, but you always went with the embarrassing one because it would be most effective and more lives could be saved. What's different this time?"

"It just is," Aayla murmured. "If there is one thing I never thought I would do, it would probably have been this."

"Sometimes we have to put aside our pride to do what is right," Renamon nodded.

"It's not really a question of pride," Aayla said. "Not for me, anyway. It's more a question of the rights of my own species. One of the main reasons that I didn't skip making more public announcements when I became a part of the A-Team was so that I could be a beacon of hope for my kind – the image of an independent and strong female Twi'lek to give my species, particularly my gender, proof that we were not as weak as most people believed us to be. Doing this... well... you do understand why I am reluctant, don't you?"

"Oh yes," Renamon nodded. "We all understand. We'd have to be stupid not to. But we need you Aayla. You're the best out of all of us at this and I am not too proud to admit that. Besides, if you do this, you won't be showing your species that they're weak. You'd be showing greater strength of character than ever before. For you to do something like this – voluntarily – and only because it was the right thing to do... you'd be providing yourself and your species with more respect than ever."

"Well," Aayla fiddled with her lekku. "I suppose that is true."

"Of course it is," Terriermon grinned.

"You infiltrated a Dark Acolyte base disguised as a slave girl to rescue your Master," Lopmon pointed out. "And not three days ago you allowed yourself to be deliberately caught by slavers to rescue the captives. It's time to take it up a notch right? This time you'll be going to the extreme on both ends. After all, this time, we're saving the Galaxy."

Aayla's eyes hardened under the encouragement of her friends and she realised that they were right. This might indeed be an opportunity to provide hope for people she had been forced to leave before, but the desire to return and help them still burned inside her.

"If it helps, Aayla," Barriss said. "You won't be doing it alone. Ahsoka and I are going to be right there with you, right Ahsoka?"

"Yes," Ahsoka confirmed. "We'll take that embarrassment and reach for the sky with it. You in?"

Aayla had already made up her mind before they spoke, and she nodded once. "Alright," she said. Let's do it. Barriss, just to allay any doubts you have about your idea – it is a very good one. I apologise for my initial reluctance."

"No, it's understandable," Barriss replied. "Forget about it. I am pretty sure I would have thought the same thing were I in your place."

"Thank you, Barriss. You're a good friend," Aayla nodded. "You want to take charge of this operation?"

"No thank you," Barriss smiled. "The floor is yours, Aayla. After all, you're much more of an expert in this field than I am anyway."

"Alright," Aayla nodded, and she turned to face the Bounty Hunter that was waiting nearby patiently. "Bane, I believe you've got that mission that you were hoping for. Are you up for a new assignment?"

"Indeed I am," Bane smirked.

"You know what you must do then?"

"Yes," Bane nodded. "Do you know what _you_ must do?"

Aayla chuckled and said, "Alright, how much do you want paying this time?"

"Oh, not as much as the last time," Bane chuckled. "After all, this is hardly going to be as much of a challenge as your last assignment for me, but if I were to guess, I would say about..."

"...Ten million credits."

Bane blinked in shock and stared incredulously at Aayla. "Ten million?" he choked. "Have you gone mad, Secura? All I'm going to be doing is delivering a message for you and a way into your own involvement in this plan of yours. This is a job that any common Bounty Hunter could do. You would offer me ten million for that?"

"Yes," Aayla replied.

"Why?" Bane asked, he voice thick with shock.

"A couple of reasons actually," Aayla replied. "Firstly, you have already done a great service to the Jedi Order and the Galaxy as a whole, Bane, for helping Renamon to uncover the identity of Darth Sidious. The consequences may have been severe, but that does not lessen the greatness of your actions. Call the ten million an added thank you to what you did before, as well as a thank you for staying with us even when we were not paying you and for supplying Grievous with his lightning rods."

"Alright," Bane murmured. "And the other reason?"

Aayla chuckled and said, "Well, I hope you don't take offense at this, Bane, but you've made it quite clear that we shouldn't trust you too far. You've even said it outright. The extra amount of credits is to ensure that you continue not mentioning the Digimon, even to the person you're going to see. And don't mention the Zillo Beast either, or the stealth ship. Those are the parts of the plan that we don't even want him to know. Do you think that amount of money can ensure your silence?"

Bane stared at her for a few moments and then belted out laughing, something which none of them had ever seen him do. Once he had been reduced to chuckles, Bane said, "You really are a unique Jedi, Secura. That is more than enough to buy my silence."

"Good to know," Aayla smiled.

"And how do you plan to pay me?" Bane asked. "I doubt you have ten million extra credits on you, even if everyone in this arm pooled what they have."

"No, you're right," Aayla nodded. "We don't. That's the one flaw in my plan. I'm going to have to ask you to trust me on this one, Bane. Carry out the task, and you have my word that if we succeed, I will ensure the Senate pays you all ten million. You can come to Coruscant and pick it up if we succeed."

Bane stared at Aayla for a couple of moments, and then said, "If anyone else in the entire Galaxy had given me that offer, Secura, I would have turned it down immediately." He paused, then added, "But I believe that I can trust you, even if you can't trust me."

"Glad to see I broke through some of your walls then," Aayla smiled.

"Oh, I'll rebuild them later," Bane smirked. "It's a deal then?"

"You believe that we can pull it off then?" Aayla asked him. "You believe that we can win?"

"I believe you have a chance," Bane replied. "We'll just have to wait and see."

"Alright," Aayla nodded. "I take it that when you leave, you will not be returning to Tython since it's likely the battles will break out by tomorrow."

"No," Bane shook his head. "This place has seen the last of me."

"Then of behalf of the Jedi Order, the Rebel Alliance and the Republic that we are fighting to restore, may I say, thank you, Cad Bane. For everything." Aayla stepped forward and held out a hand to the Duros. He stared at it for a couple of moments, and then he grasped the hand and shook it firmly.

"Never thought I'd say this," Bane said. "But it was a pleasure doing business with you, Master Jedi."

"Likewise," Aayla nodded.

They let go of each other's hands and Bane turned to the rest of the group, giving them a brief tip of his hat. "So long Jedi, Digimon, Tamers. Do me a favour and give that Sith Lord hell, would you?"

"We'll give it our best shot," Terriermon replied.

"Goodbye, Bane," Renamon smiled. "We'll probably be enemies again next time we meet."

"Well, it was nice to be an ally for a while," Bane smirked.

Renamon smirked back. "You won't get the better of me in our next bout, Bane."

"We'll see," Bane chuckled. "Todo!"

"Yes, Bane!" the droid approached on his rocket feet.

"Let's get back to the ship," Bane said. "We've got a mission to complete."

With a swish of his nashta hide tunic, Bane turned and strode away from the group, Todo hovering along beside him. Aayla felt a hand on her shoulder and discovered it to be Anakin's as the Chosen One said, "And here's yet another example of how the bizarre allies you make are the most effective. You should be proud of yourself, Aayla?"

"If it were not for the Jedi Code, then I probably would be," Aayla smiled back.

"Then I'll be proud of you for you," Anakin grinned. "Are you sure you're feeling up to doing this?"

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "But Anakin, I trust that you feel the same way that I do about our plans regarding this guy after we've dealt with the Sith?"

"They're the same as they've always been," Anakin nodded grimly.

"Good," Aayla nodded. "Because this is the last time I intend to talk to him without liberating his slaves."

"I hear that," Anakin agreed. He balked when Aayla turned around and hugged him, but he quickly returned it. He knew that what Aayla was going to do next was going to be hard for her, but he knew she would never think of backing out of it. The needs of the Galaxy and its people, as well as her friends, would always come before her own.

* * *

Several hours later and Bane's ship, the _Sleight of Hand,_ touched down on another planet in the Outer Rim. Bane had been here several times in the past, but it had always been to carry out a mission for the being who was in charge of this place, often against the Jedi.

Now, it was the other way round – he was working for the Jedi.

He got out from the pilot seat and lowered the ramp of his seat, stepping out into the baking heat, sand crunching beneath his boots. The sun blazed at him as if trying to cook him where he stood, but Bane's wide-brimmed hat allowed him to ignored the sun's glare as he beheld his destination several hundred yards down the sandy path.

The palace of Jabba the Hutt.

* * *

The chapter was a lot more conversation based than I was originally intending. I was going to go into more action with regards to Renamon and Barriss' training, as well as talk more about Bane's journey to Tatooine than I did, but I decided in the end to work more of Barriss' and Aayla's emotions and thoughts in this chapter, as there will be time for violence soon.

One more chapter after this, and then the destruction begins.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Bane heads into the palace and requests and audience with Jabba, bringing the situation to his attention. When the Jedi are able to get in touch with the great slug, they plead for his help. Will the Hutt say yes when he sees what they have to offer him, or will he decline and ruin everything?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 189 : Practice Makes Perfect**


	189. Practice Makes Perfect

Hello guys. It took longer than usual to post this chapter, I know. However, there are reasons for that. I am sorry for the delay, but after I posted the last chapter, I spent my time finishing a website I was building for an assignment at uni to show off my wildlife photographs on the interenet and that took up quite a bit of my time. And then there was the bloody Huttese to write in. In all honesty, I'll be glad when I no longer have to bother putting in other languages. That's the one bit of this story I will not be missing.

Anyway, I hope you like this chapter, as it closes off the final Star Wars chapter in the arc of final preparations.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 189:- Practice Makes Perfect**

* * *

Bane stepped towards the doors of the palace, instructing Todo 360 to remain inside the ship and keep it secure, waiting for his next instructions. Unlike Aayla before him, Bane had no sense of foreboding as he walked towards the place. Jabba's palace and its occupants posed no threat to him. He was pretty sure one of the many reasons the giant slug tried to hire him so often was due to fear of him.

Jabba obviously wanted Bane to stay on his right side.

And for good reason as anybody with any sense knew. Bane was not somebody you wanted as an enemy.

Nevertheless, Bane only visited this place on occasion, usually to gain intelligence on his rivals. The atmosphere of the place was definitely not his kind of thing. The constant partying going on inside the main room, combined with the copious amounts of drinking and leering at scantly-clad females of various species, but usually Twi'leks, was far from his idea of comfortable living. Drinking, lewdness and partying all made your mind less sharp than it would normally be in his opinion, and Bane needed a sharp mind in his kind of work.

That's why he barely even touched alcohol.

When he reached the large doors he rapped on the metal with his fingers and couple of times, folding his arms and staring at a circular panel in the door. Sure enough a holocam like some kind of giant eyeball on a stalk shot out of the flap and into his face, a mechanism that was no doubt designed to intimidate unwelcome visitors. Bane didn't flinch and when the holocam saw who he was it flinched back as if afraid.

"I'd like an audience with Jabba," Bane said smoothly, not even bothering to look at the twitching camera. "And make it now, would you? I have things that I would like to attend to soon."

The holocam muttered something unintelligible in binary and retracted back into the door, which began to grind open immediately, rising up from the ground at a slow pace with the sound of creaking metal.

Bane tapped his arm impatiently until the door was high enough for him to walk through without stooping or losing his hat and he immediately strode under it and down the corridor. A pair of Gamorrean Guards stood in said corridor, but they both backed away to let the Bounty Hunter pass. They knew better than to get in his way.

* * *

Bane had his reputation anywhere he went, and it was stronger in this place than almost any other in the Galaxy. Everybody here knew his name. Everybody knew that kinds of things he could do. Last time he had visited he had pulled out his blaster and shot three people who had dared to challenge him in the chest before their own hands had gotten halfway to their weapons.

Which is why, when he stepped into the main room, all activity ceased after a couple of seconds.

At first it was the usual scene. Jabba was reclined, as he could pretty much hold no other pose, on the raised platform at one side of the room that allowed him precedence over everybody else, with son nestled in the curl of his tail and a protocol droid was standing next to him dutifully. There were some other figures in the background around him, but they stuck to the shadows.

Most of the rest of the room was sat around the room with alcoholic beverages in their hands while a few of them bashed on instruments, leaving the dead centre with plenty of space for a couple of distressed looking women – both Twi'leks, one with green and one with brown skin and both with iron collars and chains locked around their necks, to dance. The room's occupants, mostly men, were leering at them and leaning from side to side, trying to keep what they considered to be the best feature of each poor girl in view.

Even Bane looked down on people like them. Though it might have been interesting to see what he made of people like them if he had any actual interest in the opposite gender.

Then one of the men, a Weequay, spotted him standing in the large doorway and elbowed his friend to point the Duros out. The news spread across the room in seconds and all activity abruptly ceased, including the musicians. The only thing that didn't stop was the two dancing women. Presumably they had learned the hard way that stopping without permission was not allowed.

Jabba's fat face looked over towards Bane last of all and his wide mouth seemed to take on a mildly pleased expression. When it opened, his deep voice boomed in the almost silence as he said, "Tugi Bane. Chuba ki gantas vot."

"The all-powerful Jabba wished to..." the protocol droid began.

"Save it, droid," Bane raised a hand and walked into the centre of the room. "I am well aware of what his Mightyness here said. I have heard it often enough before." He kept walking until he was standing directly between the two dancing Twi'leks, who kept dancing regardless of his presence. The clanking of the chains around their necks was mildly annoyed but he ignored it as he said, "The answer is the same as always, Master Hutt. I have come here on business, and I am hoping that you would be the one to deal with me and... a couple of my clients."

Jabba chuckled slightly and said, "Chuba ainti yanki isok, Bane."

"The Mighty Jabba wishes you to know that you have not changed at all," the protocol supplied helpfully.

"That may be a little bit of an understatement," Bane said dryly. "However, I have a certain... proposition that I would like to discuss with you Jabba. Are you up for hearing what I have to tell you."

Jabba's eyes narrowed slightly as he waved a stubby and fat arm in Bane's direction. "Codo je makan ji e panta, Bane. Chuba ichaga un pe ya nagato lisa de ka nupa Emperia? Ya Empiro cha pagutana nisha hana che kopa de ta kilin. Chuba ki chi sa isti ke cakota jisa duwa craw?"

The droid gave him a slightly simplified version of that and said, "Jabba wishes to know why the Empire has offered such a high demand for you to be captured and brought in."

"The Empire has always had me on the wanted list, even before it became an Empire. Perhaps they're trying to tighten security proceedings or something."

Jabba shoot his fat head and said, "Ta che kopa sah gota rui konka, Bane. Hanata thana sapa Soyari damina jista charlok pana."

"The most observant Jabba wishes to point out to you that your price has gone up higher than any other Bounty Hunter he has seen and wishes to know what it was you did to anger the Emperor so much."

"That is a conversation I would rather not discuss in the presence of everybody else, thank you, Jabba," Bane shook his head. His eye twitched slightly as the swinging lekku of one of the dancers batted against his hat and knocked it askew. Straightening it immediately, Bane growled, "And can we please stop this dancing. I'm trying to have a serious conversation here and the noise of clinking chains doesn't help."

Jabba looked reluctant, but he raised a hand and immediately the two women stopped dancing, planting slightly for breath as they lifted their arms up to try and cover themselves a little more. There were some moans of disappointment from the crowd, but Bane cast a quick and meaningful scowl behind him that clearly said, _Shut up or a hole will suddenly be appearing in your head._

Though this was more for his own interests than with concern for the girls. Nevertheless, both of them were looking at him slightly gratefully. However their chains, which were connected to Jabba's platform, prevented them from going anywhere except towards him, so they both remained standing beside Bane like some kind of bizarre bodyguards. Obviously they had no intention of going anywhere near the Hutt for as long as possible.

Bane wasn't surprised. He'd seen this sort of thing before. All Hutts were the same. Even the females (technically Hutts were all hermaphrodites but they all seemed to behave more like one gender than another – so the female-orientated Hutts) seemed to like nothing better than leering at a dancing woman and keeping them close.

And clearly these two dancers were _not_ willing subjects. Some of them actually were. Most of them, on the other hand, were not.

"I will say this," Bane said, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. "I made myself quite a powerful enemy in the form of Palpatine. And I am willing to bet that you are not too happy about proceedings in the Galaxy at the moment yourself, are you?"

Jabba's eyes narrowed slightly and he snorted. Then he answered Bane question with. "Ji atia uyari wanta ya Empiro sah fogivo Dooku."

"Mighty Jabba says that he does not understand why the Emperor has decided to ally himself with Count Dooku," the protocol droid replied.

"I thought as much," Bane smirked.

"Ichaga," Jabba glanced sharply towards Bane and pointed a stubby arm at him. "Ji hagwa wista a ma allia jor ya Empiria nu crinto. So e risog pawa. Met nenki siwey."

"The most wise Jabba says that despite this fact, he does not wish to end his alliance with the Empire, as they are gaining strength and are more than likely to start taking over the Galaxy soon. It would be more wise to be allied with such power."

Jabba nodded and continued with. "Kies nu ponki je tuta nazbazi ta chuba moso chone moyi di?"

"Jabba wishes to know what is to stop him from having you killed and claiming the bounty on you head," the droid said dutifully, its voice completely emotionless despite the obvious gravity of the situation.

Bane smirked at Jabba. Despite the fact he didn't particularly like the slug, which wasn't hard to believe as he didn't much like everyone, he did regard the Hutt as one of the closest things that he had to a kindred spirit. The Hutt would do anything he could to gain more money, much like he would. The only difference was that he was also willing to pay it to other people to get the job done, whereas Bane would never do something like.

Jabba was unscrupulous too. He might an active hunter like Bane, but that didn't stop him from being a very dangerous enemy.

Nevertheless, Bane had been anticipating this question, so he merely said, "Ooh, I wouldn't do that if I were you? I have something to offer you. Something which I believe will be worth your while, Mighty Jabba. You might not see it at first, but not only do I have some valuable information that you are probably dying to here, I can offer you something else too."

Bane could hear the sounds of the people behind him leaning in expectantly, straining their ears to hear Bane's next words. The Bounty Hunter was not about to discuss information about the Jedi and the Sith and their plans in front of people like them. "But I will not discuss it with eavesdroppers. Perhaps we could... talk in private."

Jabba regarded Bane with a certain amount of suspicion that he didn't usually have on his face when dealing with the Duros. "Chuba kies nu ponki tuta kiliasta je?"

"What is to stop you from killing the All-powerful Jabba while his guards are not listening?" the droid translated.

"Oh, Master Hutt," Bane shook his head. "You know as well as I do that if I wanted you dead, I could a hole between your eyes before the guards had anything to do with it. What would having a private meeting with you to do it serve? They would still know it was me."

He saw the guards tense slightly, and his fingers drifted a couple of centimetres closer to his blaster. Jabba probably should have had an angry response, but instead he seemed to find Bane's statement amusing, so he nodded and said, "Hazpi lugas."

The droid didn't even need to translate this. There was grumbling as the onlookers filed out of the room, walking slowly as if they were hoping Bane would start talking while they were still there. A pair of Weequay walked over and unhooked the chains of the Twi'lek dancers from the stage and dragged them out by their necks with no regard to the health of the slaves.

Once the door shut and sealed the room, Bane nodded and said, "That's better. Now, I'm not going to ask you for payment, Jabba. I'm already getting paid for this job." Normally Bane would not hesitate to extract money from Jabba, but he knew from experience that he was far more likely to listen if there was no expenditure involved.

"You want to know why the Jedi have suddenly been declared traitors while the people who kidnapped your son are now parading around with this new Emperor?" Bane chuckled. "Well, I'll tell you. Emperor Palpatine is more than he seems to be. You probably believed that Dooku was the leader of the Separatists, as most of the Galaxy did. But that is actually not true. I obtained intelligence that the Sith Lord was working for a Master. A Master who was also in control of the Republic and was manipulating both sides of the war as he saw fit. That man... is Palpatine."

Bane was direct and to the point. Unlike the Jedi, he did not bother slowly talking his way into an explanation. In his view, that would only waste time.

He certainly had the desired effect. Jabba and even the droid standing next to him reeled backwards as if they had been shot.

"That's right," nodded Bane. "The Galaxy's so called saviour was also its destroyer. And that makes him ultimately the one responsible for kidnapping your little son there." He pointed towards Rotta the Huttlet, who was attempting to catch the tip of his father's tail in his little hands and not listening to the conversation at all.

Jabba's eyes narrowed momentarily. He was no stranger to betrayal – he faced it on a day to day basis from his colleagues, workers and even his own family, but something like this was off the charts even for somebody like him. He actually felt slightly inadequate next to Palpatine for a moment, but then he looked up at Bane and said, "Ji pul chisco."

"The most wise wants proof of this, Bane," the droid replied.

"What more proof do you need?" Bane chuckled. "It's all there in front of you? The Jedi were forced into hiding, the Sith were pardoned, and now the Republic has been turned into an Empire. I wonder how long it'll be before they start striking against the Galaxy to try and make people see that they're in charge?"

"Doy ne suti chisco," Jabba sniffed.

"That is not real proof," the droid replied.

"Well, if you want more information, it is the reason that the Empire is so mad at me. The Jedi hired me to help them track down Sidious and reveal his identity and lo and behold, there he was. The Chancellor in a dark robe sneaking off to communicate with General Grievous.

Jabba rumbled slightly and Bane avoided looking at his body, which seemed to ripple in a disgusting fashion as if a pebble had been dropped into water. Although looking at Jabba's face was not exactly the best sight in the world either.

"Chuba mulia jorya Jedi kong?" he asked.

"Might Jabba wishes for clarification on whether you work with the Jedi now," the droid narrated.

"Not with," Bane shook his head. "For, certainly, as long as the pay up as they did when they hired me. Did you know it was Secura who did it?"

Jabba actually chuckled for a moment and said, "Secura na wanga hadosi shiba."

Bane was not entirely sure he wanted to know what Jabba had just said, regardless of whether it was good or bad, so he cut across the protocol droid's attempt to translate and said, "In fact, I'm really only here to serve as an ambassador to you, Jabba. If you would, I believe Secura and some of her friends are waiting to talk to you via hologram."

Jabba seemed to take the time to think for a moment, before he waved an arm and said, "Makan ya Empiria chuzan loya ji riman jor Jedi, la maila esinta oda contee."

"Jabba wishes to point out that if the Empire found out he was put in contact with the Jedi they would be angry and might attack him," the protocol droid repeated in Basic.

"Oh, I'm aware of that," Bane nodded. "Besides, the Jedi want to discuss some important business with you. Business that I think you may find to be... beneficial to not only your needs, but also to your interests."

Jabba then shrugged and said, "Wolpa. Ning huha pe."

"Mighty Jabba agrees," the droid said. "Would you please put them on?"

"Fine with me," Bane smirked and he strolled up the steps and towards the circular holotransmitter standing next to the droid. He input a couple of details into the small datapad at the base of the sphere on the pole and then flipped a switch that began the call. He then strode past the transmitter and the droid and said to Jabba, "I believe that you made the right choice."

_In more ways than one,_ he added, with his hand loosely placed on the holster of his blaster.

After a couple of moments, the holographic image of Aayla Secura appeared in the middle of the room, in the place where the two other Twi'leks had been dancing when Bane had entered the room. The Twi'lek's expression was carefully kept neutral, but Bane knew that inside she must have been feeling revulsion at the prospect of standing before this Hutt again, even if she was on the other side of the Galaxy this time and was only here via hologram.

A couple of other holograms stepped into view around her, including Ahsoka and Barriss. All three had their hands clasped in front of them in a pose of respect and bowed their heads to Jabba who looked pleased that they were showing deference to him.

Bane also noticed that his eyes was roaming up and down all three of them and there was an appreciative glint in his eye. He had to resist the urge from snorting. When it came to disgusting, Jabba had it all – in both body and mind.

"Greetings, honourable Jabba," Aayla stated, looking up to look the Hutt Crime Lord in the eye. "I am sure that you must remember me. I am Aayla Secura, and I came before you several weeks ago asking for information regarding the location of the Bounty Hunter Greedo, in order to gain information from him to track down my Master. Your assistance was ... most helpful and indeed... appreciated."

"Chowbaso, Secura!" Jabba nodded. "Di kato un chuba?"

"The all-powerful Jabba welcomes you to his transmission line and wishes to know where you are at the present time," the droid replied.

"Master Hutt," Aayla replied. "I am sure you aware of the situation with regards to the Jedi Order and our alleged traitorous deeds. If it's all the same to you, I will not give away my location until we catch up on a few other things first."

"Wolpa," Jabba snorted. "Cotinaga."

"Very well. Continue."

"Thank you," Aayla nodded. "Surely you must know, Mighty Jabba, that we Jedi are not traitors to the Republic that has now crumbled, nor to the Galaxy. We wished only to end the war, but instead, everything was turned around from the inside of the Senate. I trust that Bane has already filled you in on the situation."

"Vo chiga tirin?" Jabba queried. "Ki song puna aboto chuba jiba chobo?"

"The almighty Jabba wishes to know if what Bane has told him about you hiring him is true," the protocol droid rambled.

"Oh, it's true," Aayla nodded. "After my victory over some of Sidious' key leaders in the war effort, he wanted me out of the way quickly, so he hired Bane to try and kill me. But I was indeed able to turn the situation to my advantage and hire Bane to track down and expose Sidious instead. The fact that he was Chancellor Palpatine was a crippling blow to us and the rest of the Galaxy, especially since he found out we were on to him quite quickly. That is why events seem to have taken a turn for the worse recently."

Jabba nodded thoughtfully for a moment and then he fixed his gaze on Aayla with a frown on uncertainty and suspicion. Then he said, "Wanta un chuba dobasa je ka, kisaba?"

"Jabba wishes to know why you are telling him all of this," the droid explained.

"I... that is to say, we..." she indicated herself and her two fellow Jedi. "Were rather hoping that you would help us, Master Jabba. There is something that we would need you to do for us, and we shall explain what it is in a moment. First, let me introduce my friends here. I am sure that you remember Ahsoka Tano. She was the one who fought valiantly to save your son from Dooku's plot to turn you against us."

"Hey," Ahsoka waved at Rotta the Huttlet, who had indeed noticed his old rescuer and was waving a stubby arm at her with an expression of idiotic joy on his small but wide face.

"And this is Barriss Offee," Aayla responded, indicating the Mirialan. "Also a Jedi Knight and a new team-mate of ours."

"Hello," Barriss smiled, but she said nothing more than that. Saying that it would be a pleasure to meet Jabba would be lying. And Barriss preferred not to lie to people's faces if she didn't have to.

Jabba glanced at both Ahsoka and Barriss, and then said, "Ki kisaba na song daa chuba naga tuta je, Secura? Ji hagwa tinka ji shada enki hopada chuba."

"Mighty Jabba wishes to know what you want from him, but warns you that he does not wish to help you," the droid clarified.

"Surely you would want revenge against Dooku and Ventress for their parts in the kidnapping of your son, Jabba," Aayla replied. "Have you not requested of we Jedi to do our best to bring them to justice. We are hatching a plan to attempt to do just that and retake the Republic, and when we do, Dooku and Ventress will no longer be a threat to the Galaxy. I can assure you of that."

"Daa mada enki," Jabba responded. "Ichaga ji hagwa naga nu pomico ma gallica jor ya Empiria."

"That may be. But the Mighty Jabba does not wish to compromise his allegiance with the Empire," the droid followed on.

Jabba nodded and said, "Me ne e pihota, Secura. Ji ati setuka mo daa ya Empiria un gaining pawa haz ari. Soda la oto enki ix a yacha pe ya enitro Galaxy, thot ji alumo la oto. Ki wampa do chuba chone ta Jedi patisan yo kong?"

"The Empire are gaining power each day. Soon they will be able to take on the whole Galaxy. What hope do you and your Jedi friends have now?"

"Quite a lot, actually," Aayla responded. "We believe there is a very high chance that our plan will work if you play your own part. Forgive my hedging around the subject, but I am slightly hesitant to tell you what we wish you do before we know if you will help us. There is a lot resting on this plan. Do you really want to see Dooku lording it over the Galaxy?"

"Ka na ne e mato de gudjee," Jabba replied a little scornfully. "Ka na e mato de intono. Dooku na pawato ichaga ji rini chuba Jedi costo orosa chobo. Song taphasa daa ji wasa misataka throso. Chuba yo dukita a hapi tonka ta tanka de ya bargon."

"The most wise Jabba said that this is not about grudges. He wishes to put his own interests first as he knows that Dooku is a strong opponent and with the might of an Empire behind him, it would not do to get on the wrong side of him."

"Even though they kidnapping your... punky muffin?" Aayla asked.

Jabba's nostrils flared and he said, "Eveta tirin."

"Even then," the droid translated.

Aayla and Bane exchanged a quick glance at one another. Both of them had been expecting something like this to be honest. You might think that a crime lord like Jabba would want revenge against someone like Dooku as soon as possible and you would indeed be right. Jabba still did want Dooku brought down and they both knew it, but there was another important factor to consider about Jabba.

He was a coward.

All Hutts were really. They were bullies who sent others to do their bidding and became dangerous only through the power they possessed and not because they were actually a threat to anybody. A Hutt could easily be beaten in combat by just about anybody, but they bullied and threatened their way to the top with the use of their powerful allies.

Jabba might indeed help them in their goal to destroy the Sith if they told him their plan.

But you could never tell with a Hutt. They were deceitful beings. There was every chance that Jabba would hear the plan, decide that it wouldn't work on the spot and betray all their information to the Sith at the earliest opportunity. That would only give them a few aces in the hole instead of the many they were attempting to spring on the Sith at once. That was why they needed to win his loyalty somehow _before_ they told him what they needed of him.

But Jabba would not work against the Sith if he felt there was a chance they could lose.

Unless they could bribe him somehow.

And bribery had been the very thing which the Jedi had been planning for. Aayla sighed, and Bane knew that she was wishing that it hadn't come to this, that Jabba would have agreed right at the start instead of insisting that he not help. Bane almost – not quite, but almost – felt pity for Aayla, considering what she was planning to do next.

Aayla turned to glance at Ahsoka, who was looking equally grim but nodded her head, and then turned to Barriss, who gave her a similar reaction. Then Aayla turned back to Jabba and smiled at him, though it was a little forced.

"What if I could offer you something?" Aayla asked him. "Something that would be... worth your while and a new experience for you, I daresay. Something that you might never get again in your entire life after today? If I could do something like that, would you be willing to help us against the Sith?"

Jabba frowned suspiciously, and said, "Ki kido nay nobata?"

"The all-powerful Jabba what kind of something you are speaking of."

Aayla hesitated, but only for a moment, and with the words that came out of her mouth next she stood tall and proud as she could, as if to counter the words themselves:-

"Ahsoka, Barriss and myself will dance for you, Mighty Jabba. Right here and right now."

Bane had known this would be coming, but even he was mildly surprised that Aayla had actually said it, and with such conviction too. Jabba, on the other hand, was almost literally blown away by this statement. He actually slid backwards a couple of inches on his platform and stared at the three Jedi glowing in the hologram projection in front of him.

"Waaaaa!" he cried, and the translator droid didn't need to interpret this word to the listeners.

Jabba blinked in utter confusion and astonishment as his eyes went from Aayla's face to Ahsoka's and then over to Barriss'. There wasn't the slightest trace of a joke in any of their faces. But it just couldn't be, could it? They had not just offered him what he thought they had, had they?

Ugh, he was confused.

Bane had to admit he was impressed that Aayla was willing to go to such lengths. He knew she had seen firsthand the kind of things which Twi'lek slaves had to do in front of the Hutts and people like them, but she had always been exempt from all of that – a Jedi Knight, standing tall and fighting for the Republic instead of cowering in a hovel and dancing for disgusting people like Jabba.

And yet she was willing to lower herself to the level of something to just stare at to save the Galaxy.

Ahsoka and Barriss weren't looking particularly happy about this either, but it had been Barriss' idea, and they weren't about to back out and leave Aayla to do it alone.

"Ut wipi enki kelen ne daso won je?" Jabba asked, with a malicious glint appearing in his eyes.

"Jabba wishes to clarify whether you would truly be willing to dance for him," the droid said.

"Yes," Aayla nodded. "Jabba, surely this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you. You have seen my kind dance many times before, but how many times in the future have you ever been given a dance by not just one, but three female Jedi. The rest of the Hutt family cannot claim such a thing either. Bring in your best musicians and tell them to play the liveliest music they know and we will dance for you right here, right now. I know we might not be here in person, but that's still better than anyone of your kind has ever gotten before."

Bane could see the greedy and slightly lustful look (which frankly repulsed him) in Jabba's eyes now. His great tongue lolled out for a moment as if panting and his short arms actually came together so he could rub his hands in anticipation.

He was still cautious about aiding the Jedi in their pursuit of the Sith.

But this was an opportunity he could not pass up. He was hooked on this idea already and both Aayla and Bane could see that.

"Sekak," Jabba declared. "Ka na ma desido. Makan ji hina ki ji setuka mo, tirin ix hopa chuba loya. Makan ji hagwa tinka ya daso na koth kabuk tirin kul ainti della."

"The most wise Jabba wishes to compensate," the droid said. "He says that if he likes your dance then he will help you out, but if you do please him, then he will not."

Aayla had been expecting this too, and she knew it was the best that she was really going to get. So she nodded and said, "Deal. We shall start whenever you are ready."

Jabba acted quickly from that point on, eager for the show to begin. He ordered the droid to summon his musicians and them only back into the room. The instrument players of various species set themselves up at their usual stations around the edges of the room. All of them also seemed to be eager to watch the show as well when they saw what was about to happen.

After all, dancing Jedi. How much better did it get?

Aayla exchanged looks with Barriss and Ahsoka, giving them nods as they prepared to sacrifice all of their dignity and dance to this piece of filth, something that none of them had ever envisioned doing. But they would do it anyway, if it helped to secure the return of the Republic and the destruction of evil.

"Nita!" Jabba cried. "Nita! Nita kong!"

He almost sounded like petulant and excited child, a metaphor which was not particularly appealing to any of them, but the musicians quickly struck up their instruments and began to play.

The beat was jumpy and bouncy, with a mixture of hardness thrown in, as close as this Galaxy might come to something like Earth rock or metal. It was a beat that was actually well known throughout the Galaxy, and one that all three Jedi were familiar with, which helped. As the beat started, Aayla took a moment to murmur something to Barriss and Ahsoka and as the music began to escalate, the three Jedi's hips began to sway in synchrony.

At first it was slow, something that any slave could probably do even with chains weighing them down, as most of them actually did.

But, at the drop of a hat, all three Jedi suddenly went ballistic. Aayla sprang into the air, twirling like a ballerina and flipping to land on her hands, spinning around on one hand alone and twisting back onto her feet, whirling on the spot so quickly her lekku swung round her head like banners raising one leg up to kick the air as she did so.

As she dropped back, spinning as she did so, Ahsoka suddenly vaulted over her and took centre-stage for a few moments, somersaulting several times and landing smoothly to revolve on the spot, her arms lashing out to the sides as if she were in the middle of a battle and tucking one leg, dropping to the ground for a moment and rolling back onto her feet an instant later with exceptional grace.

And then Ahsoka moved back and Barriss bounced forwards – her robes whooshing out around her as she kicked the air several times, moving her arms in synchrony with one another, falling into a crouch and springing up in the same motion to bounce so high into the air she disappeared from the hologram's range, only to drop back down between Aayla and Ahsoka as the three of them synchronised their movements and began their dance in earnest.

Jabba stared at them, as did the rest of the room, enthralled by what they were seeing. Several of the musicians almost forgot to play their instruments, but kept going because they knew if they stopped the effect of the dance would be lessened.

It wasn't the slow, seductive dance that Jabba usually had his slaves do, and the three dancers, particularly Barriss, had a lot more clothing on than any of his usual dancers. But it was still one of the most amazing and enrapturing sights the Hutt had ever seen in his life.

They never stopped moving. Everything was a constant blue of motion as they span and kicked and swayed with perfect synchrony. Aayla and Ahsoka had been practicing this sort of thing for months, and while Barriss had not had nearly the same amount as the others, she was able to meld her mind with those of the other too and copy their actions at the exact moment they did something, right down to the millisecond. Aayla and Ahsoka were similarly melding their minds, to produce to optimum performance.

There was a flow and a grace to their motions that Jabba had never seen in any dancer, not even professionals who were not forced to do it. It was also the wildest and most lively dancing he'd ever seen. They didn't seem to run short of breath at all as they span around one another, constantly changing places in the line of three in various ways, such as Barriss backflipping over Ahsoka, or the little Padawan sliding on her back through Aayla's legs as if she'd done it millions of times before.

Even Bane had to admit he was impressed. They had taken their grace on the battlefield, refined it and turned into an art so exquisite that had they gone professional, they could have made billions. For once in his life, he was actually feeling privileged to watch something, and the three Jedi whirled and span in motions so fast that trying to follow their progress was pointless.

At one point, Aayla cast a significant look at the other to as she span around to face them in a triangle, throwing their arms out and locking fingers with the hands of the other two and spinning around several times before releasing each other and swinging around to face Jabba, stamping their left feet at the exact same time and freezing on the spot.

Despite the fact they were performing to Jabba, Aayla was beginning to lose herself in the dance. For the moment, it didn't matter who the spectator was (though she would still rather it be anyone else, even the other Hutts). What mattered right now was that she was with friends and they were doing one of things they loved best.

So she had murmured the name of the song they knew which had the closest tune to the one being played right now. It certainly wasn't exactly the same, but Aayla didn't care.

Dark Chest of Wonders. By Nightwish. One of their favourites.

"Once," she said. "I had a dream. And this is it."

All three Jedi burst into whirling and spinning one more before all three broke into song at the same time, slight smiles creeping onto their face's as they sang together, improvising who sang which lines in their minds as they did so:-

All:  
"Once there was a child's dream."

Aayla:  
"One night the clock struck twelve  
The window open wide."

All:  
"Once there was a child's heart."

Ahsoka:  
"The age I learned to fly,  
And took a step outside."

All:  
Once I knew all the tales

Barriss:  
"It's time to turn back time,  
Follow the pale moonlight."

All:  
"Once I wished for this night.  
Faith brought me here,  
It's time to cut the rope and...

Fly to a dream,  
Far across the sea,  
All the burdens gone,  
Open the chest once more,  
Dark chest of wonders,  
Seen through the eyes,  
Of the one with pure heart,  
Once so long ago!"

For this chorus they spread themselves into an even line and fixed their lower bodies in position, with legs at shoulder width and feet spread evenly apart and began to swing their upper bodies around in the exact same motion, leaning over to touch the toes of one foot with the opposite arm and snapping back up to fast to be plausible and leaning over backwards so far it looked the tops of their heads almost touched the floor.

Once the chorus was over, they took a brief instrumental period to really do some wilder moves. Aayla span to the front and raised her arms, allowing Ahsoka to leap over her and grab them with her hands, balancing above the Twi'lek upside down as the two continued to dance. Then Ahsoka let do and jumped up right before Barriss barrel-rolled through the gap between them and landed smoothly, spinning on the spot for several moments so Aayla could backflip over her and land on her hands, twisting around with her legs outstretched so fast that if Barriss hadn't stayed down she and anyone else around her would have been batted in the face by Aayla's feet several times.

Those and other moves like them filled the room until the three Jedi were rearranged in a line again, this time with Aayla in the middle. The Twi'lek wrapped her arms around the shoulders of the Togruta and the Mirialan and the three of them took the next few lines of the song to sing without dancing, as they wrapped their arms around her waist.

"The one in the Big Blue is what the world stole from me,  
This night will bring him back to me."

And suddenly they were off again. Ahsoka and Barriss sprang out to the side, grabbing Aayla's arms with their own until the Twi'lek was stretched between them, and Aayla backflipped once more, dragging the other two into corkscrews at the same time. Aayla and Barriss then span to either side of Ahsoka and the Togruta leapt onto their hands and they catapulted her into the air and out of the hologram. Barriss then vaulted over Aayla, twirled on the spot several times, then grabbed Aayla by the ankles and hauled her into the air, so the older Jedi could reach up and grab Ahsoka as she came back down. In a series of twists that were too fast to follow, suddenly the three of them were back in a line as they belted out the chorus once more in their beautiful singing voices:-

"Fly to a dream,  
Far across the sea,  
All the burdens gone,  
Open the chest once more,  
Dark chest of wonders,  
Seen through the eyes,  
Of the one with pure heart,  
Once so long ago."

And even thought the next and final bit was just a repeat of the chorus, they went all out on it. Their breathing rate had not increased in the slightest and even with the mad pirouetting they were able to increase their volume still further. All three suddenly pulled out their lightsabers and whirled them around their bodies in a kaleidoscope of flashing lights, displaying their amazing dexterity as they added their blades to the dance.

The deadly devices whirled and span but they never came close to touching their fellow Jedi with them and never once did the blades touch each other, despite the fact the Jedi were still dancing at top speed.

They swung them over their heads and jumped over them when they brought them low to the ground and they were _still_ doing it in complete synchrony with one another.

And finally, though neither Jabba or Bane had any idea how they did it, flashes of light like miniature fireworks began to go off all around them, glinting over the whirling lightsaber blades.

And they belted out the chorus once more:-

"Fly to a dream,  
Far across the sea,  
All the burdens gone,  
Open the chest once more,  
Dark chest of wonders,  
Seen through the eyes,  
Of the one with pure heart,  
Once so long ago."

And with that, the song came to an end. They had timed it exactly with the ending of the music and each one brought a hand slamming down to the ground on the final note, while the other held their lightsabers aloft behind their backs. The music faded away and everyone in the room seemed to be left completely speechless as the three Jedi maintained their positions for several seconds.

Then, they sheathed their lightsabers and stood up, also at the same time, looking to Jabba for his approval.

There was silence for several seconds, before Bane said, "Well, even I got to admit, that was something special."

One of the musicians actually started to applaud, but when nobody else did, he faltered and shuffled in slight embarrassment.

"Mighty Jabba?" Aayla asked. "What is your verdict? Did that meet with your satisfaction?"

"Furo tagwa," Jabba murmured.

The droid started a little at the Hutt's choice of language but it coughed and said, "Mighty Jabba says, in a literal translation – Hell yes."

Aayla smiled. "Then you will help us to take down Lord Sidious and restore the Republic once more.

The corners of Jabba's wide mouth went up and he laughed a deep-throated laugh. "Nay cosi. E bargon na e bargon chone daa mas wanga nay ya chonki dasono ji yo ede lokio."

"The most gracious Jabba says that of course he will as he made the bargain and enjoyed your dance," the droid repeated.

"That is good to here," nodded Aayla, who was not out of breath despite the last few minutes of wild dancing.

"Posta ut colua paga ne ma calace chone wonga pe oder kasta won je?" Jabba asked.

"The Mighty Jabba wonders if you would consider coming to his palace and doing another dance for him sometime in the future," the droid said.

Bane knew that Aayla had probably flinched inside, but on the outside her expression remained easily neutral and she said, "Oh, but then it would not be such a unique experience, Master Jabba, would it? As I said earlier, it is a once in a lifetime thing. As I am sure you know – we do not make a habit out of performing to others."

Jabba looked disgruntled but he subsided and said, "Ki met chuba yo je isti?"

"This is for your ears only, Mighty Jabba," Aayla pointed out.

Bane levelled his pistol through Aayla and at the musicians. "That means you lot get out. Now."

The musicians scurried to obey and soon the room was almost empty once again.

"Alright then," Aayla nodded. "Our plan is this – we're going to attempt a stealth mission into the heart of Coruscant. Your part in our plan is actually quite a small one, but it is still key, as it must be done right. We want to draw most of the Empire's army away to a specific location, to engage them in a large full-scale battle, while some of us sneak into the weakened Coruscant to take out Palpatine and his minions.

"What we want you to do, Mighty Jabba, is to give Palpatine our location. You see, we have amassed together a large army of clones, Wookiees, Gungans, droids and a few others to keep the main army busy, but we do not want Palpatine to know about these extra forces of ours, or that we are ready to battle. Would it be possible for you to tell Palpatine where we are, without informing him of our plan? Make it sound like we don't want to be found, but tell him you found out via Bane."

"Just to put in," Ahsoka raised a hand. "Sidious might ask if you've killed Bane like you're supposed to if you're an ally of an Empire. If he does, then just say you have, if that's alright. Don't actually kill him."

"Heh, you care," Bane sneered. "I'm surprised and not a little touched."

"Don't get sarcastic at me, Bane," Ahsoka scowled at him and the Duros smirked.

Jabba raised a hand to his chin and looked thoughtful as if he was composing what he was going to say to the Emperor in his head already. But then he looked over to the three Jedi and nodded his great head. "Ripu song jor je. Ji sala setuka mo song node."

"The most powerful Jabba requests that you leave it with him and assures you that it will be done immediately."

"Thank you, Jabba," Aayla nodded with respect. "It is a great service that you do us today, and we shall not forget it. Currently we are on the planet Tython, homeworld of the Jedi, within the Deep Core. Few know of its location, but Bane has the co-ordinates in his ships navigation records. You can tell the Emperor that your Bounty Hunters salvaged the co-ordinates from there if it helps to smooth things along."

Jabba nodded. "Ji waka chuba won ta titoki chone kiksi, Secura. Chone chuba, Tano. Offee."

"The most compassionate Jabba wishes to thank all three of you for your time and for the phenomenal dance which you provided him with."

"It was our pleasure, Jabba," Aayla nodded.

"Chone wanga gan bata," the Hutt interjected again, his eyes narrowing. "Bato soa daa chuba ganta daa sleemo Dooku ura, chone daa likigi nay duwa, Ventress. Hagwa gi huha yun nichu masa, resiso song yachas. Kox wamma won bakana je peedunky mufkin."

"Jabba has one last thing to say," the droid replied. "He demands that you do not let Dooku or Ventress get away again this time, as they deserve to pay for what they did to Jabba's son."

Rotta gurgled.

"We will do our best," Aayla replied. "A couple of our own also have scores to settle with those two. Don't worry. We'll leave the communication with you and you can leave the situation to us. We will not fail. We cannot. The future of this whole Galaxy depends on our success."

"No pressure, huh?" Barriss murmured.

"Batachow tirin," Jabba waved a hand.

"Mighty Jabba bids you farewell," the droid interpreted.

"Farewell indeed," Aayla said and she hung up, the hologram of all three of them disappearing.

Bane felt a smirk on his face appearing. It seemed that his work here was just about done, but he decided that he would stay put for a couple more hours. He felt he should be present when Jabba gave the message to Sidious. If the Hutt still ended up betraying them, then he could be held responsible and he would not get paid.

And was that not all that mattered.

* * *

"You know," Aayla had a big smirk of satisfaction on her face. "I may have been initially reluctant to do that dance, but now I am very, very glad that I did, if only because of the look on his face when we finished."

"I know," Barriss giggled. "He was absolutely gobsmacked, wasn't he?"

"It was priceless," Ahsoka agreed. "And did you see Bane? He looked like he was impressed but was doing his best to hide it the whole time."

"Well, I suppose that's Bane for you," Renamon replied as she stepped closer, having stayed just out of range of the transmission field throughout that whole dance. "But what I'm more concerned with is the fact that the three of you were absolutely incredible throughout that whole thing."

"No word of a lie," Lopmon agreed. "That was absolutely fantastic."

"Thank you guys," Aayla smiled. "That little special effect you guys pulled off at the end was pretty cool as well. I didn't even see it coming but it really worked."

"Heh," Terriermon chuckled. "And now Jabba's probably going to go stir-fry crazy trying to figure out how you guys did that."

The sparkling lights that had appeared around the Jedi during the grand finale to their song had actually been Renamon firing a Diamond Storm from above them at the ground behind the three dancers, while Terriermon and Lopmon had fired Bunny Blast and Blazing Ice pellets that impacted with the diamond shards and caused them to explode into pieces and disintegrate into data behind them.

"Guys," Anakin said as he moved up beside the rest of his team. "I agree with Bane. That... was quite something. You guys are fantastic."

"Thanks, Master," Ahsoka smiled. "Still not going to join us for a song and dance in the future?"

"Of course not," Anakin smirked back. "But, anyway. Good job. You guys are simply amazing dancers. I can see now why Car Affa's brain practically melted when Aayla caught him when she was dancing in that nightclub several weeks back."

"Now, that's a compliment," Aayla smiled. "As for you, Barriss! You were amazing yourself! Are you certain that you haven't been practicing behind our backs since before you met us? You kept up with us perfectly, and we only had a couple of hours to practice."

Barriss flushed and looked down at her feet a little shyly. "Well, it was just the mind-link working."

"No, that was the timing. The dancing part was all you. You've got a lot of skill and don't you forget it."

"Just like what I said," Renamon nodded emphatically. "You're better than you think you are."

"Thanks," Barriss murmured.

"And to think," Anakin laughed. "A harmless suggestion made by Terriermon on Ryloth before we even became the A-Team led all the way to this. Using your dance moves to help save the Galaxy. If Sidious learned of this..."

"I hope he doesn't," Aayla said seriously. "This is one surprise that I would prefer he didn't learn because if he did that would mean Jabba would have been the one to tell him. That, or one of his minions, and that's the last thing that we want at the moment, isn't it?"

"True," nodded Anakin. "True enough. By the way, did you guys notice that you'd drawn an even bigger crowd?"

Aayla blinked, as did Barriss and Ahsoka, and for the first time, they noticed that the crowd that had been watching Aayla's lightning practice against Grievous was not only still there, but had nearly tripled in size. It incorporated various parts of the entire army – clones standing next to droids and all of them staring in amazement (though it was difficult to tell with the battle droids). Gungans and Wookiees stared with wide eyes.

Grievous was standing nearby and was looking like he was trying not to be impressed, because dancing was one of the last thing he had ever even wanted to associate himself with in the slightest, but he was forced to admit that was an epic performance in his own mind.

The whole Jedi Council was present at the forefront of the crowd. The dancing sessions the group had held in the Temple were always private, and they had improved dramatically in skill since Mace, Obi-Wan and Yoda had walked in on them right after Behpour. Now, Mace and Obi-Wan also had wide eyes, while Yoda had a smile on his face.

All six of the Acklay, Zarza and Godzillo all hung around in the background, standing over everybody and also staring, but more in bewilderment than anything else, as dancing was an alien concept to all of them. Zarza was almost jealous at the agility all three of them had displayed during that whole thing.

Almost.

Yoda chuckled and said, "Believe, I do, that grateful we should be, that they started doing this months ago, don't you agree, Master Windu. Even if it did create racket with their banging on the floor."

"And occasionally the walls," Obi-Wan agreed.

"Indeed," Mace murmured. "But while their dancing may have been quite a sight, I believe we have more important things to think about. With Jabba about to inform the Sith of our location, we must all get into position and get as much rest as we can. The Sith may be on us in a matter of hours. Night has almost fallen and it is likely that the enemy will be with us by dawn."

"Agreed, Master Windu," nodded Anakin. "Does everybody know where they need to be and what they have to do?"

There was a resounding cheer of confirmation from the clones, the Gungans and the Wookiees, while the Acklay and Zarza shrieked to the sky. The droids looked at one another with uncertainty and then they let off a cheer as well, unsure what they were really supposed to be doing in a situation like this but doing their best anyway. And then, everybody was promptly drowned out by the humungous roar of Godzillo.

"Good," nodded the Chosen One. "Then get your rest. Tomorrow is going to be a big day for all of us."

The crowd nodded and began to disperse. As they did, Renamon turned to the Tamers and said, "How went Numa's training?"

"Well, but not well enough," Rika sighed. "We were unable to get Gabumon to digivolve a second time."

"Well," Lopmon shrugged. "The heat of battle usually has a better effect on this sort of thing. Perhaps we might get a Champion Digimon on the scene tomorrow during the initial battle."

"Perhaps, but I think it would be better if Numa stayed away from the main battle site and within the Temple," Henry said. "If the battle gets close enough to her that she has to join in then so be it, but we shouldn't put her in danger unnecessarily."

"Agreed," nodded Renamon.

"Waxer, Boil," Anakin turned to the two clones which were still hanging nearby. "I trust that the two of you can keep your battle spirit down enough to help protect our newest Tamer and stay with her by the Temple."

"Of course, sir!" Waxer stood to attention.

"You can count on us, General Skywalker," Boil agreed.

"I'll help too, if you like," Xiaan smiled as she stepped closer. "I found I've rather grown fond of the little one here."

"The more the merrier, Xiaan," smiled Aayla.

"Actually," Xiaan said, reaching into her robes. "I have something to give to Numa and Gabumon." She stepped over to the two of them and knelt down before them. The younger Twi'lek looked up at her in bemusement, while Gabumon looked rather uncomfortable at the prospect of somebody leaning in front of him like this.

Xiaan pulled a small gemstone out of her sleeve. It was roughly the size of the palm of her hand and it glowed in with an orange that was so bright it was almost ethereal.

Aayla's eyes widened. "Is that what I think it is?"

"Yes," Xiaan said, without asking for clarification. "I got it back from Quinlan earlier. He was more than happy to give it back even before I told him what I was planning to do with it."

"What is it?" Gabumon asked, his shyness temporarily forgotten as he beheld the small gemstone. Numa's eyes were as round as _it_ was, and it seemed that she couldn't draw her eyes anywhere else.

"This," Xiaan replied. "Is a Heart of Fire. It's a gem from the planet Kiffu. It's a tradition for people of that planet to give one to people that they care about, and it's said that a little of both the giver and the receiver goes into the stone, giving it a deeper meaning than most gemstones would. I may not be from Kiffu, but Aayla gave this to me when I was still a youngling, and now, I want to give it to both of you."

She then repeated the explanation in Twi'leki for Numa's benefit, and then held the gemstone out to the two of them, the orange glowing sphere resting on the palm of her hand. Both Numa and Gabumon, enthralled, reached over to it and lifted it out of the older Twi'lek's hand at the same time. For a brief moment, they both stood there, holding the stone together.

For some obscure reason that neither of them could fathom, they suddenly felt closer to one another, as if they were more drawn to one another as Tamer and Digimon than ever.

Aayla had to admit that Xiaan's idea was not only a touching gesture, but it meant something deeper, much as it had when she had given it to Xiaan herself, and when Xiaan had given it back to Quinlan. Xiaan's words about there being a little of the receiver in the stone was true – the Kiffar species used them to view the memories of the person who gave it to them. By giving it to both of them at the same time, Xiaan was hoping to draw the two of them closer than before with its power.

And it seemed to be working, to an extent.

She patted her fellow Twi'lek on the back. "Well done," she said. "That was a nice gesture."

"Thank you," Xiaan nodded.

Just then, Ahsoka noticed some other people standing nearby. It was Sugi and the rest of her gang of Bounty Hunters, standing by and watching from a slight distance.

"Hey, guys!" she called over to them. "You ready to do move out when the time is right?"

Sugi nodded and hefted her blaster. "Just point us in the direction of that tunnel and we'll be down it within a moment."

"And then it'll be time for the big crunch," Rumi said cheerfully. "Time to see if this plan of yours actually works."

"Tomorrow," Ahsoka nodded.

"Nervous, Snips?" Anakin asked his Padawan, mostly in jest but with some genuine concern thrown in.

"Master," Ahsoka turned to smile at him. "I'm not nervous at all right now. When you start getting nervous, though. That's when I'll freak out."

"That's the spirit," Suzie pumped a small fist in the air.

Anakin looked up and stared out across the horizon for a moment. His mouth was set in a grim line as he murmured, "No matter how it ends, it all ends tomorrow. Tomorrow, I face off against my old friend. Tomorrow, the fate of the Galaxy and the doom of our time will be decided."

"Oh dear, he's getting nervous," Terriermon muttered.

"No matter what happens out there, guys," Anakin turned to face the rest of the group. "I must face Sidious alone. You mustn't help me. It has to be me that crosses blades with him. Nobody else. I can feel it in my heart. If this is the Force telling me what to do then I will do it, and you guys have to stand aside and let me. Even if he is about to strike me down, you mustn't help me. Understand?"

The rest of them exchanged looks for a moment, before Aayla chuckled and shook her head. "You must be joking, Anakin."

"No, I'm serious," Anakin insisted. "It has to be me..."

"Yes, I know that," Aayla interrupted. "What I mean is, that no matter what the situation is, we will never leave you to fight him on your own. You might the one to cross blades with him. But we will be with you through our link with every swing of the blade and every pulse of the Force. And do not soon forget it."

Anakin took a moment to pan his vision across the group, all of whom were looking at him with earnest expressions. Then, he smiled and said, "It's a deal then."

"It sure as hell is," Terriermon cheered.

"Terriermon!"

"Momentai, Henry. Well, Chosen One, shall we get some sleep? As you say, we've got a pretty big day of us ahead, haven't we?"

"Indeed we have," Anakin agreed as the Tenacious Ten and their accompanying friends walked back towards the city. All of them were vaguely aware that this might be their last night with all of them together as a family, but for the moment, it was overpowered by the sense of unity between them. All of them had their parts to play. And none of them intended to go out without putting up a hell of a fight.

The group were unaware of the yellow eyes staring at their retreating backs. Master Yoda was still watching them, leaning on his staff. The Jedi Master could feel their strength coming off them in waves, and he knew he had made the right decision to let them take charge of this. If anyone could prevail, it would be them.

But even he could not see the future enough to know if they would really succeed.

He shut his eyes for a moment, uttering a silent prayer to the Force to guide them to victory, and to commemorate all those who had lost their lives, through death or suffering, in the game the Sith had been playing.

If it didn't end tomorrow, it might not end for many, many more years to come, if ever.

Yoda then opened his eyes and hobbled towards the city to get some rest himself.

* * *

Meanwhile, on Coruscant, Palpatine had been inspecting the office in the Senate Building which had been rebuilt for him when Godzillo destroyed the original when he received the call from Jabba the Hutt. Most of his foremost minions were with him at the time, and all of them were privy to the ensuing conversation.

"You are certain of this?" Palpatine asked.

"Ciana," Jabba nodded. "Bane daban je mi choboga. Ya Jedi so bolado anku huchas pe Tython."

"Indeed," the protocol droid responded. "Cad Bane told the Mighty Jabba himself that the Jedi are gathering on Tython."

"Can you provide me with any real proof?" Palpatine asked.

"Paa," Jabba shook his head. "Ichaga ji sathonga daa chuba sor naga ne rika nay ka, nami ji rini met daba chuba haz ya sanga.

"No, but the all-powerful Jabba thought you should know of it all the same."

"And what of Bane?" Palpatine asked. "Is he still there? He is very high on my wanted list, Jabba. I would hate to think you were aiding one of the Republic's biggest allies."

"Laxo. Bane na doosta. Ji nazbad chobo kipu di ya wasan panya pana ma tukus. Song lontan ne yacha ma kanuta."

"Bane is dead. Mighty Jabba ordered him shot in the back. He was trying to take away his money, but the most wise Jabba saw an opportunity to make some instead. We have transmitted the co-ordinates of the planet to you now. It was taken from Bane's navigation records."

"Very well," Palpatine nodded. "You have my gratitude Jabba. The reward shall be delivered to you post-haste."

When Jabba's hologram disappeared, Durge closed his fist sharply and growled. "If what the Hutt says is true, then I believe that it is time I re-introduced myself to the surviving Jedi. Allow me to lead the mission to destroy their forces." The Gen'Dai was already frustrated from lack of action, as he had led an attack on the Separatist outpost on Minntooine, only to find it abandoned. The news that Grievous had gone AWOL was a minor annoyance to Palpatine, but he was certain the cyborg would be found soon enough. He wasn't even that surprised – Grievous was, after all, notoriously impatient, to the point of disobeying orders.

"Allow me to lead it as well, Master," Ventress growled. "My blade shall taste blood once more."

"Oh please," Aurra snorted. "You have the leadership skills of a tauntaun."

Ventress rounded on her to retort, but Dooku merely said, "Enough," and the arguments subsided instantly. Dooku then turned towards the more powerful Sith and said, "Master, how do you wish to proceed with this?"

"I would be more than happy to offer my own services for this task as well," Krell added. "If you wish for me to prove myself then this is the perfect opportunity, is it not?"

"No," Palpatine shook his head. "I sense a slight disturbance in the Force. If these co-ordinates are anything to go by then Tython is not too far from this planet. We shall allow the stormtroopers to attack the Jedi hideout on their own terms, while we watch the battle from here. If we send the bulk of our army, not even the Jedi Council will be able to stand against us. If, however, things begin to go badly, then I may send some of you in to take charge."

Ventress and Durge both looked like they wanted to protest, but they said nothing. Dooku bowed and said, "It shall be done, Master. I shall order the clones to be marshalled immediately."

Palpatine stared at the co-ordinates being displayed in front of him, as Dooku left the room, a leer on anticipation on his wrinkled face.

"Tomorrow," he said. "It all ends tomorrow."

* * *

"Is everything ready, guys?" Chuchi asked as she stepped back into Senator Farr's quarters, where the equipment they had stolen was being stored.

"More or less," Bail nodded. "We should be done within a few hours."

"Good," the Pantoran nodded. Then she sighed and said, "Because, for better or for worse, this war will be ending tomorrow."

* * *

Heh. I'm sure many of you guessed that the three girls were going to do that, but I hope you liked the result. I have been saving Dark Chest of Wonders, one of my personal favourites of the Nightwish songs, for this very moment, for a very, very long time. I seriously encourage everyone to check out the song, even if only so you know the tune that the three Jedi were singing.

This chapter allowed me to display some badassery of a different kind to normal. Hope you liked it, as well as the suspense at the end.

Tomorrow, I start writing the first chapter of a very, very long action sequence. One, you've all been waiting for for three arcs now. I thank you for your patience, but unfortunately, I have to tell you that the Christmas holidays also start tomorrow, so my writing time may be limited. However, I aim to post Chapter 191 on Thursday the 22nd, as that day also marks the second year anniversary of the day I posted chapter 1 of this story.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Belphemon and the Nightmare Soldiers clash against the combined forces of the Tamers and the army of the Sovereigns in a titanic battle that sends data flying, while the Sovereigns themselves take on GranDracmon. Can Ai and Mako's team sneak past and get to the castle?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 190 : Distraction**


	190. Distraction

I have only three words to say here.

Let battle commence.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 190:- Distraction**

* * *

When battle joined in the Dark Ocean, it did so with a bang.

As the horde of screaming, yelling and cackling Nightmare Soldiers surged towards the considerably smaller force that had been brought to their realm by the Sovereigns, everyone's thoughts practically emptied as they focused all their attentions on the upcoming fight. At their head, Belphemon bellowed so loudly he almost drowned out his whole army, his red eyes narrowing and his claws poised to strike.

But somebody else struck first.

Dinorexmon, who had been the first to charge, was the first to reach the enemy horde. With a roar of pure delight as the lust for battle overtook him, the green scaled Dinosaur Digimon lunged for the nearest enemy – a pair of Devimon. The Demon Digimon yelped as he sailed towards them but before they got the chance to back-pedal, Dinorexmon's huge talons skewered them through their chests. As well as the two other Devimon and one LadyDevimon who had been behind them in the exact same strike. All five disintegrated into data and Dinorexmon fell upon the Soldiers around them.

It was a slaughter-fest right from the start. The Dark Digimon scrambled to get out of the way, their previous bloodlust forgotten in the face on a Digimon with the same lust in much greater amounts. A DarkLizardmon attempted to grab the Mega in his jaws, but Dinorexmon's own jaws snapped forward and closed around his neck, wrenching him into the air and swinging him into another two. At the same time, the claws on his hands lashed out and carved huge gash lines into a Gargoylemon.

Dinorexmon sliced one of his massive foot-claws through the air and beheaded two Fugamon before they could blink and impaled a third in the same motion. His tail slammed into the head of another Gargoylemon and tossed him into several others and his teeth lunged forwards again and grabbed the tail of a fleeing Devidramon, pulling him to the ground. The dragon scrambled, but Dinorexmon's huge talon was thrust through his body an instant later. Dinorexmon's hand claws grabbed a Devimon by the face, while his tail wrapped around a Minotarumon's neck and he threw them into one another, stabbing his claws into them at the same time with extreme relish and then pouncing high into the air, screeching as he fell amongst a bunch of Raremon.

With a flurry of scything cuts and flying slime, the Raremon were torn to shreds. Another DarkLizardmon attempted to jump on Dinorexmon from behind, but the dinosaur's tail slammed him in the side of the head and moments later, Dinorexmon's teeth flashed towards his face. Three Vilemon from behind him tried to hit him from the side while he was occupied, but Dinorexmon didn't even look at them. One of his claws just flashed out and stabbed through one and then swept aside to cut through the others.

"Is this all you got!" he screeched as he turned to face a terrified group of more soldiers. He spotted a pair of Ogremon raising their clubs in preparation to charge and he sneered at them and yelled, "Hey, here's the irony. **OGRE FLAME!"**

Magma seemed to spill from out of his jaws that washed over the Ogremon and everyone around them. The evil Digimon screamed in pain as their bodies began to melt under the high temperature, but before they could feel too much of it the magma exploded and blew them to pieces. The survivors were horribly maimed, but Dinorexmon was on them in moments.

* * *

_Whoa,_ Gallantmon thought as he beheld Dinorexmon's massacre. _Glad he's on our team._

_Calm down, Cyberdramon!_ Ryo was screaming as he struggled to maintain control of his biomerged form. _You'll get to fight. Look, we're about to attack them now!_

And indeed they were. While Dinorexmon continued to obliterate dozens of other soldiers, the rest of the two armies suddenly clashed together. With a terrible roar, Belphemon threw himself into the battle, his claws slamming towards Gallantmon. The Royal Knight sprang into the air and allowed the claws to pass underneath him, but Belphemon was fast. His other claws scythed in and Gallantmon only just managed to dodge them, and he brought his shield, Aegis, up to quickly block a follow-up blow from the other pair. The Belphemon's chains partially unwrapped themselves from his body and slammed into his shield, throwing Gallantmon backwards under their force.

This was not the best way to begin a battle for Gallantmon. "Looks like the Sovereigns were right, Takato!" Guilmon cried. "Belphemon is stronger than usual here!"

"Yeah, I can see that! AAGH!" Takato yelped as their biomerged form was slammed into the ground by the chains.

"**MY FIRST VICTIM!"** Belphemon roared as he ran to engage the fallen Knight.

"**VOLTAGE BLADE!"** Justimon suddenly swept in and sliced through the chains pinning Gallantmon down, batting them away with the vicious weapon his arm had become. "Hurry, Gallantmon. We can't let our guard down when we fight this guy!"

"I know!" Gallantmon cried as he scrambled to his feet. "Let's get him!"

**"FOOLS!"** Belphemon roared as he stabbed towards Justimon with his claws. The Mega was gone in an instant, leaping high into the sky and coming down to pound both feet into Belphemon's head between his horns. Belphemon bellowed in annoyance and swung upwards, but Justimon was gone again, was firing a Justice Burst at Belphemon's back.

The attack struck Belphemon between his wings and he stumbled forwards. Gallantmon quickly took advantage of this and yelled, **"LIGHTNING JOUST!"** and fired a huge beam of light from his lance, Gram, to pummel Belphemon in the chest. Belphemon gasped a little, but he caught his balance quickly and bared his teeth.

"**HOW DARE YOU!"** he shouted, and Justimon appeared in front of his face, Voltage Blade ready to attack. Quick as a flash, Belphemon caught the blade with the claws on his knuckled and flapped his wings to create a strong wind that blew Justimon backwards a little. He then lashed out with his arm and a large tornado suddenly whooshed out from his knuckles and engulfed Justimon sending him slamming hard into the ground.

Gallantmon rushed forwards to try and protect his friend, and Belphemon heard him coming. With a flap of his wings, the Demon Lord Digimon threw himself into the air and came down, claws first, hoping to skewer Gallantmon into the ground. The Knight sprang up and a huge plume of sand was thrown into the air where he had been, propelling him upwards. It also temporarily blinded Belphemon and he roared, clawing at his eyes to try and clear them.

Gallantmon saw his opening and took it, levelling his lance and hurtling downwards, ready to stab it into the back of Belphemon's head. But suddenly the chains were back in action and Gallantmon swerved to avoid them. They flailed around Belphemon wildly, preventing him from getting too close. Justimon tried to jump back in but was slammed in the side by one of the chains and thrown back next to Gallantmon.

"Guess we'll have to try hitting him from range then," he remarked.

"Yep," Gallantmon nodded, raising his shield. As the symbols flashed red one by one, he hollered, **"SHIELD OF THE JUST!"**

Justimon rushed forward and yelled, **"THUNDER CLAP!"** He slammed his huge, cybernetic hand into the ground, throwing up another spray of sand, which had little effect on him because of his face-mask. The ground rumbled and Belphemon lost his balance and began to tip over, flaring his wings to steady himself, but then he was slammed in the side by the huge red blast from Gallantmon's shield and he lost it again and collapsed onto his side.

"Alright!" Gallantmon laughed.

With an explosion of sand, Belphemon surged back to his feet, eyes clear of sand and redder than ever as his anger blazed.

"I knew that was going to happen," Justimon sighed.

"**TWO CAN PLAY AT THAT GAME!"** Belphemon growled and his claws suddenly blazed with fiery light. He slashed them through the air and plunged them towards the ground with a cry of **"GIFT OF DARKNESS!"**

This time, instead of sand, a huge plume of hellish fire surged up from the ground at his strike and washed across the beach towards the two Megas.

"Oh crap!" Gallantmon cried, knowing his armour would be next to useless against an attack like that.

"Get out of the way!" yelled a dual voice behind them, and Gallantmon and Justimon leapt aside to allow HiAndromon through. The black-armoured robot Digimon raised his hands to the wall of hellfire sweeping towards the group of three and shouted, **"COPY PASTE!"**

The flames swept into his hands and HiAndromon grunted as he began to absorb the fire, grunting until the pressure as he was pushed backwards several metres, his metallic heels causing grooves to appear in the sand. Then, with a yell of triumph, he shoved his hands out further still and the fire reversed its direction, pulsing out of his hands and washing towards Belphemon instead.

Belphemon growled in annoyance and fired tornados from each of his hands that swept the fire away, blowing it out of existence. HiAndramon grunted and said, "I was hoping it would have more of an effect than that! WAAGH!" Belphemon had just fired a huge ball of yellow energy from his mouth and HiAndromon only just managed to avoid being hit by activating his rocket boots and shooting out of there.

"Hurry!" Gallantmon cried. "We've got to attack him together! Try and overwhelm him!"

"Right!" the other two yelled, and they charged towards the Demon Lord of Sloth simulatenously.

"**ATOMIC RAY!"** HiAndromon slammed his hands together and fired a hue beam of red light from the cannon they formed when they morphed together. Belphemon had been charging up another ball of yellow energy and he cried out as the beam hit his attack and detonated it in his face. He reeled backwards, just in time for Gallantmon to saw him and smack him under the chin with his shield, while Justimon came in from the side and slashed a line across Belphemon's chest with his Voltage Blade.

Gallantmon brought his lance down and prepared to either shoot a Lightning Joust into Belphemon's face or else just jam it up his nose, but the Demon Lord recovered from the attacks quickly and swept in with his claws. Gallantmon dodged one strike and caught the claws of the other hand with his lance to push them aside, but the next blow caught him in his legs and sent him spinning. Belphemon was about to pursue when he was slammed in the chest by another Atomic Ray. He growled and spotted Justimon raising his hand for another Thunder Clap.

"**NO!"** he shouted and beat Justimon to it, stomping the ground hard enough to make it shake. Justimon was momentarily caught off guard, which was enough time for Belphemon to sweep forward and deliver the much smaller Mega a hammer blow to the side with the back of his hand that sent him crashing into HiAndromon. As the two went tumbling, Gallantmon soared down from above with shield prepare for another attack.

Belphemon's chains roared into life once more and lashed through the air like massive whips. Gallantmon was slammed in the gut by the massive weapons and thrown upwards again, but the chains wrapped around his midsection and brought him crashing down right on top of Justimon and HiAndromon as they tried to get up.

"**LAMPRANTHUS!" **Belphemon erupted and the chains were promptly coated in black chains as they slammed down upon his three opponents with merciless force. All three yelled in agony as the flames began to burn across their bodies, getting under their armour and tearing at their data. The chains began to wrap around them as well, to ensure they wouldn't get away.

Belphemon sneered, ready to absorb more data from his helpless victims…

When he was suddenly slammed by something so fast that he couldn't see it moving and bellowed as he felt three blades claws slashing into his stomach. The chains slackened and Justimon took the opportunity to hack through them and release himself and the others from their grasp as they quickly clambered to their feet.

They looked up at their saviour, who materialised nearby with the flap of a cloak.

"I thought you could use a hand," MirageGaogamon nodded to them, raising his claws.

"Much as I hate to admit it, yeah, we did," Justimon nodded. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," the canine Exalted Beast nodded. "Now, what do you say we continue this battle?"

He turned around just in time to see Belphemon charging him on the wing, bladed claws ready to strike. MirageGaogamon's eyes narrowed as he brought up his own claws and countered the strike by crossing them before him. Belphemon slashed for his head, but MirageGaogamon parried the strike and reposted for the stomach, but Belphemon caught that blow himself and shoved MirageGaogamon backwards. The giant blue Mega swept out with his claws and nicked Belphemon's arm with them and the Demon Lord roared in anger and let loose a tornado upon him.

MirageGaogamon was struck by the attack and sent hurtling away into the air, but before Belphemon could pursue, he was pounded in the side by a Lightning Joust and an Atomic Ray. Justimon appeared out of nowhere and slammed a Thunder Clap directly on the top of Belphemon's head, forcing him to the ground. The cybernetic arm morphed to a Voltage Blade as Justimon prepared to end the battle, but Belphemon roared, **"LIGHTNING HORN!"**

Justimon screamed as Belphemon reared up, his horns now crackling with electricity which reacted with his metal body on impact and sent him crashing back down to the ground. Gallantmon rushed in to his friends defence, but Belphemon rounded on him and attempted to stamp on him. Gallantmon dodged the foot and raked his lance up the back of Belphemon's leg, but the Demon Lord barely noticed and he swung about and batted Gallantmon away with a mighty stroke of his claws.

HiAndromon rammed into him before he could pursue and grabbed one of Belphemon's own chains, wrapping it around the Demon Lord's neck and yanking back on it. Belphemon hacked as his air was cut off and his stumbled backwards, attempting another Lampranthus to fry HiAndromon. But HiAndromon merely activated his Copy Paste and began to absorb the hellish fire instead.

Right until another three chains lashed up and battered in his armour to knock him flying.

Belphemon turned to attack him, but suddenly turned back to catch the claws of MirageGaogamon on his own, as the other Mega had shot out of thin air to try and attack him. Belphemon leered in MirageGaogamon's face, but the other Digimon remained calm and suddenly his claws began glowing.

**"WHAT!"** Belphemon roared.

"**DOUBLE CRESCENT MIRAGE!"** MirageGaogamon bellowed and he powered through with his slash, swatting Belphemon's claws aside and sending an energy blade out of all six of his claws to slash into Belphemon's chest. As the Demon Lord stumbled backwards, MirageGaogamon crossed his arms before him and the wolf-snout on his chest began to open.

"**FULL MOON BLASTER!"** he called and the jaws opened to disgorge a massive blast of yellow energy that collided with Belphemon and flung him bodily into the surf of the Dark Ocean.

All four quickly closed in for the attack, but before Belphemon even got up his chains acted and whipped out in a frenzy of motion, battering them all backwards. More enraged than ever, Belphemon reared back up onto his feet and let loose an almighty roar of rage before charging into the fray. Gallantmon blocked a claw-strike with his shield, but a tornado exploded out of Belphemon's fist and threw him backwards in the same instance. Belphemon rounded around and slammed one of his wings into HiAndromon as the robot swept in from behind on his rocket boots.

Justimon unleashed a Justice Burst from a distance, but Belphemon fired an energy sphere from his mouth that powered through it and forced Justimon to dodge aside, and then Belphemon sent a fresh Gift of Darkness towards the now unprotected Mega. MirageGaogamon swept in and grabbed Justimon to pull him aside, but when he stopped to put him down, Belphemon hurtled forwards and pounced on the other Mega, driving a knee into his gut and sending them both skidding across the sand, where Belphemon drove his claws into MirageGaogamon's abdomen.

MirageGaogamon yelled and Belphemon raised the other claws to strike. Only a Shield of the Just to those claws gave MirageGaogamon the time to extricate himself and get clear.

"**I WILL NOT BE DENIED MY PREY!"** Belphemon roared, blazing with a dark aura that made all his opponents flinch. For all the damage he had taken, Belphemon didn't look tired at all. Teeth gnashing, he lunged forward again.

* * *

Belphemon was easily the most powerful of GranDracmon's minions. The rest of his army were not as tough, so the rest of the army were doing a little better, but there were so many of them that it was almost as if any Digimon they destroyed was reborn instantly at the back.

SaberLeomon found itself face to face with a huge Orochimon. It was even bigger than the one which had been terrorising the Gekomon village when they had first met Guardromon so long ago. It hissed and its five heads lashed out simultaneously at the Mega level lion Digimon, preparing to swallow it whole or rip it apart, whichever was easier.

Not that SaberLeomon was planning to let it do that of course. The hairs on its mane hardened and its jettisoned several like spikes which embedded themselves in the noses of all five of the serpents, causing all of them to hiss in pain and rear back, shaking themselves to try and loosed the spines. SaberLeomon took the open and jumped forward.

**"HOWLING CRUSHER!"** it shouted and powered its glowing paw through the base of the middle head. Orochimon screamed and fell into data and SaberLeomon fell upon the horde of Bakemon that had been behind it with furious abandon, its teeth scything through several of them and its huge paws batting down on several others like it was playing whack-a-mole. It whip-like tail also lashed out and seized the scythe from a Phantomon, cutting open its own owner with it and tossing it into the remaining Bakemon to kill several of them before the scythe itself disintegrated.

"We've come a long way since that first Orochimon, haven't we, Jeri?" Elecmon chuckled from with the massive feline body.

"Yeah," Jeri agreed. "Yeah, we have."

"Here comes a Sangloupmon," Elecmon observed as the canine Digimon in question charged towards them and sprang at them with hackles and claws raised. SaberLeomon sprang to intercept and easily overpowered the other Digimon, slamming it into the ground breaking its neck with a swipe of its huge paw. Then the Mega whirled around and swept aside two more with the other paw and bit down on a third with its huge teeth.

All around it were the signs of combat from the other Digimon as the armies clashed and fought and struggled with one another. MarineAngemon zipped through the legs of several unsuspecting Fugamon and appeared right in front of a surprised LadyDevimon, shooting a Smiling Face blast into her forehead that disintegrated her on the spot. The tiny Mega span in a circle, blowing Kahuna Waves bubbles in all directions around him, which impacted upon various enemies and blew them backwards despite the size differences.

Then he zipped low to the ground again and winged his way past a couple of Raremon and around a Matadormon, looking for a new opponent to surprise, when suddenly he encountered a bunch of small, pink Digimon with scythes for hands that had clearly spotted him. They were Rookie-level Arkadimon and the smaller creatures swarmed towards MarineAngemon in their hundreds.

But even the smallest of Megas had great power and MarineAngemon zipped towards his attackers and blurred past and around them, dodging their sickle claws and flipping over their talons as they tried to hit him. Every time he passed one, he left a Kahuna bubble behind which expanded and engulfed each individual Rookie, vaporising him once he was inside.

"Neat," he said to himself, and then he zipped up to appear right in the face of a Bulbmon which, stepped backwards and crushed a couple of DarkLizardmon in its surprise. MarineAngemon promptly blew more bubbles, which crowded around the Digimon's face and obscured his vision, allowing the small Mega to zip down between its legs and empty a barrage under one foot. As these bubbles made contact, they slowly began to cluster around the larger Digimon and merge into one, giant bubble which soon covered his whole form.

Then, as with the others, he was vaporised.

* * *

Gryphonmon sailed into the air with a SkullMeramon clutched in his jaws, the Ultimate level Digimon having become a victim of his Möbius Bite. The SkullMeramon was still alive, but only just, and he wasn't shortly afterwards when he was dropped by the Mega Digimon and thrown into a crowd of Raremon. Gryphonmon swept down upon them, his talons raking across the slimy heads of the Raremon and pulling their data to pieces.

Suddenly a SkullSatamon jumped out of nowhere to slam his staff into Gryphonmon's wing. The Mega squawked in alarm as his wing crumpled under the blow and he crashed to the ground. SkullSatamon fell upon him with staff raised, but Gryphonmon scrambled upwards and jumped back to avoid the blow. SkullSatamon levelled his staff to ready a Nail Bane, but Gryphonmon bellowed, **"SOLOR ROAR!"** and exuded a massive soundwave from his mouth.

SkullSatamon choked as his data was pulled apart from inside, a small horde of Devimon that he been behind him were also vaporised by the attack. Gryphonmon smirked in triumph and flared his wings, ready to rise back into the air, but then a Setmon ran forwards to stand in front of him.

The two stared at each other for a moment.

"You look a bit like me," Gryphonmon observed.

"I was just thinking that," Setmon agreed.

The moment lasted a moment longer before they both charged each other. Setmon tried to ram his tusks into Gryphonmon, but the other Digimon was too fast and with a strike of his claws, he broke off both said tusks and he bulled into Setmon to send him flying. Gryphonmon followed him upwards with a flap and grabbed his ankle in his jaws to send him crashing back to the ground.

* * *

GranKuwagamon buzzed across the battlefield and his pincers closed around the stomach of a Minotarumon, slicing him into two pieces as if he was nothing more than wedge of cheese. The bug swooped low towards two more and stabbed his massive pincers through their stomachs, his middle hand-legs lashing out the sides and grabbing the horns of a couple more and hauling them to the ground behind him.

The bug whirled around to face a swarm of Devidramon hurtling towards him with their claws poised to try and tear at his wings, but the giant insect gnashed his pincers together in anticipation. He threw a Grand Darkness at them and suddenly a huge box of darkness seemed to hem them in, halting the Devidramon where they stood and making them look around, panicked, as they lost the use of their eyes.

Then GranKuwagamon sent a massive slice of energy hurtling into the darkness as he offloaded a Dimension Scissors attack, this version more focused into a blast than to cut through the fabric of time and space. The Devidramon were ripped in half, and GranDracmon buzzed through the darkness which he had created, and when he appeared on the other side, he was face to face with an angry SkullGreymon. The skeletal dinosaur threw a hand at him, but GranKuwagamon buzzed aside and swooped under the enemy's chin.

One snip, and the SkullGreymon's head fell off and its body disintegrated with it.

* * *

MetalSeadramon and Plesiomon had turned to face the ocean, where a bunch of evil aquatic Digimon were attempting to come up from the side and surprise the army. But while the two of them had no desire of going near the Ocean itself, the water was still their domain, and there was just about no creature from it who could best either of them.

A horde of Scubamon wailed pathetically as a Giga Ice Blast from MetalSeadramon froze them all where they stood, along with the water they had been trying to climb out of. As the Scubamon disintegrated, MetalSeadramon brought his twin tails slamming down on the ice to break it apart and send some more of the enemy flying into the air. MetalSeadramon threw himself through them, his coils lashing out in all directions and battering them back down as his long body flowed out behind him.

A pair of MarineDevimon exploded out of the depths and lashed up with their there tentacle claws in an attempt to grab him and pulled him down. But MetalSeadramon had dealt with their kind before, and he was not about to fall for them here, regardless of their increased power. His teeth slammed into one of the tentacles and he tore it in half, and his coils batted aside two more. Then the giant serpent wrapped himself around one of the ocean devil and with a twist of his coils, he flung him into the other.

As the first attempted to get up again, MetalSeadramon rammed his nose into the opponents chest and yelled **"RIVER OF POWER!"**

The beam of energy that erupted from his cannon nose went straight through both the MarineDevimon and obliterated them instantly. It also sent off a massive plume of water, which MetalSeadramon promptly froze into an ice pillar with his breath and then slammed with his tail and send deadly ice shards raining down on the Scubamon below.

* * *

Plesiomon, on the other hand, was doing something you wouldn't expect in a battle situation.

He was singing.

Or at least, he was producing low keening and mournful noises that seemed to form a tune of some kind. The Scubamon in front of him, as well as a couple of Ebidramon and Scorpiomon weren't getting any weaker as a result of the attack, but they were sagging against the ground and leaning against one another.

"I can't do it," one of the Scubamon sniffed. "I don't wanna kill him."

"What's the point?" one of the Ebidramon murmured. "I don't even like GranDracmon."

This was Plesiomon's Sorrow Blue attack. He had attempted to use it against Ogudomon, but it had no more effect on him than any of his other ones, and since this one did not physical damage in any context, he hadn't bothered to try it again. But it was designed to make any Digimon opponent who heard lose their will to fight, and it was definitely working.

However, Plesiomon knew that the moment he stopped singing, that will to fight would return, so he was also coating his body in water until it formed a sphere around him. Then, he broke off his song and yelled, "**HYDRO IMPACT CRUSHER!"** and shot himself towards the evil Digimon like a cannonball. He crashed right into them and crushed them under the sheer force of the attack, blowing them to data.

The giant plesiosaur's head snapped around as a Dragomon suddenly lunged towards him, attempting to ensnare him in his tentacles, but he was having none of it. Plesiomon growled, **"SHAKING PULSE!"** and dropped, slamming himself into the ground and sending out a combined earthquake and miniature tsunami to hurl the Dragomon off him. He seized it by the tentacle in its jaws and brought it crashing down and then blew it to data with a gigantic torrent of water from his tail.

He then proceeded to use his long neck and head as a club to batter aside a bunch of Airdramon that were attempting to blind him. He didn't even feel the blows and his head made an effective weapon, especially when he surrounded it with water and blasted it out in all directions to slam the Airdramon aside.

* * *

Nearby, a SkullGreymon was currently wailing as UlforceVeedramon used it as a club, the tall Royal Knight having grabbed it by the bony horn on top of its head and was using it in one hand, while the other hand wielded the sabre attached to his wrists. With both these attacks combined with his stomping feet, UlforceVeedramon was literally wading his way through the throngs of Digimon.

Eventually, he got tired of using his club and flung the SkullGreymon into the air, slashing it into two pieces as it came back down with his sword. A determined look on his face, the Knight charged up the V-shaped sign on his chest and roared, **"RAY OF VICTORY!"** A huge, V-shaped blasted cannoned out of his chest and slammed into a crowd of Nightmare Soldiers, and UlforceVeedramon tilted is body to strafe the beam across a large distance, reducing a huge area of the beach to charred ash. Darker than it already looked.

UlforceVeedramon whirled around with his cloak billowing out behind him and saw three Mega-level Arkadimon bearing down on him. These were three of the members of the group that GranDracmon had sent against Beelzemon, but while Beelzemon had been weakened when they reached this level, UlforceVeedramon was at full strength. "I shall fight for honour!" he yelled and added, **"TENSEGRITY SHIELD!"** An energy shield formed on his free wrist and he leapt into battle. His sword clashed on the claws of one Arkadimon and sliced them off and UlforceVeedramon drove his shield into the other Mega's head and sent him crashing onto his back.

He whipped around to block the claws of another Arkadimon with his shield and kicked him in the knee to bring him down and then span full circle to slam the third Arkadimon's hands out of the way and run him through with the sabre. The Arkadimon made no sound as it died and merely stared rather bleakly as it vanished into data.

One of the other Arkadimon on the ground grabbed UlforceVeedramon by the leg and tried to pull him down, but the Royal Knight only lost his balance for a moment. He proceeded to lop off the arm that was clutching his leg and ram his sword into the Arkadimon's chest, just as the one behind him was scrambling to his feet. It attempt to jump on him from behind, but, quick as a flash, UlforceVeedramon dropped to a crouch and span out from beneath the Arkadimon so it crashed harmlessly into the ground. He then grabbed it by the wing, hauled it up, punched in the face twice and then cut off its head.

He turned to see more Nightmare Soldiers dashing towards him and the Royal Knight readied himself for more combat. This fight was far from over.

* * *

Meanwhile, as the Mega level Digimon continued to cut data-filled swathes through the enemies, the eleven Devas were not doing so badly themselves. When they had faced the Tamers one on one they had been individually powerful as it was. But when they worked together, despite their personal feelings towards each other, they were a well oiled team.

Vajramon blocked a tail strike from a SkullScorpiomon with one of his swords and slammed the other blade into a chink in its armour, trying to get beneath the thick carapace. The SkullScorpiomon shrieked in pain, but grabbed Vajramon's ankles in his pincers and yanked. As the ox struggle to maintain his balance, he let go of his sword, which remained stuck in the SkullScorpiomon. Caturamon promptly sprung out of nowhere and transformed into a mallet, slamming into the hilt of Vajramon's sword as if it was a nail.

It had the desired effect and the sword was drive through the armour chink and the SkullScorpiomon disintegrated. Caturamon transformed back into dog mode and nodded, as Vajramon retrieved his sword and used it to cut through several club-wielding Fugamon.

Pajiramon stood nearby, crossbow raised and diligently firing bolts into hordes of Vilemon that were swirling around her and trying to get close to her. Most of them were cut down by her incredible aim, and the arrow often passed through them to hit another with a squawk of surprise. Sandiramon was swirling round and round her, axe held tightly in tail and slashing the poison blade into any Digimon that managed to get past the barrage of the sheep.

A Minotarumon charged towards Indramon, readying the cannon on its arm to smash it into the horse's head. Indramon smirked and pretended that this particular bull was Vajramon as he swung his horn in retaliation to slam the enemy's weapon aside so hard that it broke it and then slammed the horn down on Minotarumon's head, knocking him out. He then turned around an absorbed the Metal Fireballs from a pair of SkullMeramon and blew them back at them with his Horn of Desolation. An Airdramon attempted to swoop down him from above, but he was countered by Sinduramon and fried with a Positron Pulse, as was the two others that attempt to do the same.

Kumbhiramon was riding on the back of Mihiramon, as the tiger Deva folded his wings and ran through the ranks of several Devimon, circling them as he usually did when the cornered his prey and then diving into their midst with his Samurai Tiger Tail a blur of motion behind him, faster than any nunchuks could be used by a human. The Devimon had their heads smashed in by the tiger's tail and those that he missed were promptly skewered by the weapon on Kumbhiramon's back, as the rat Deva divided into six and sprang outwards off Mihiramon and took them out immediately.

Majiramon's tail slammed into several Dracmon as the dragon Deva raced into the sky, twisting and turning in a corkscrew-like motion as his body undulated behind him. As he charged the air in front of him and vanished into the orange glow, the Digimon below him realised they were about to be attacked and scrambled to flee, but Makuramon leapt out of hiding and flung out several Primal Orbs that trapped them where they stood, encasing them in their hard bubbles. The monkey Deva released them mere moment before Majiramon flung down his Flaming Arrowheads, which impacted on the Digimon and blew them to smithereens.

And as for Vikaralamon… well, he didn't really need a lot of help. He kept spewing Boar Bogs in front of him to trap enemies foolish enough to stand in front of him and then slowly walked over the top of them, tossing the occasional Fusion Ball in to mix things up and completely ignoring the blasts that were sent at his sides by some of the weaker Digimon. Regardless, the other Devas were battling around him to protect his more vulnerable flanks.

* * *

The battle raged right across the beach, from the ocean to the cliff. The whole area was awash with fire, energy blasts, flashing weapons and the air thick with roaring and screeches of pain. Both sides hacked and stabbed and burnt at each other, trying hard to overwhelm their opposition, with comparatively little success between both factions. This battle was not going to be easily won for either side of the conflict.

But behind the conflict – behind the good army that were striving to break through the lines of the Nightmare Soldiers, another titanic battle was taking place. A battle so supercharged with energy and flying attacks that the very air thrummed with power from the auras of the five combatants and the ground shook, the oceans churned and the sky was ablaze with energy.

GranDracmon's inexplicable ability to hover allowed him to gallop into the air, the powers of darkness enthusing his gigantic body and propelling him upwards. Like a fiery rocket, Zhuqiaomon surged after him, his wings tucked into his sides and throwing himself into the skywards with sheer power alone. GranDracmon sneered as he approached and rolled to the side, allowing the phoenix to streak past him.

Zhuqiaomon's wings snapped out and he span about to loom over GranDracmon. Eyes blazing, he roared, **"PHOENIX FIRE!"** and several huge fireballs were blasted out of his beak to fall around GranDracmon like meteors. GranDracmon calmly dodged most of them and slammed the others aside with his fists and galloped upwards, rearing his fist back, ready to punch Zhuqiaomon in the beak.

Zhuqiaomon flapped upwards too, determined not to let GranDracmon get too close and with a flap of all eight wings he bellowed, **"SONIC ZEPHYR!"** and the resultant shockwaves pulsed down towards GranDracmon. The Demon Digimon crossed his arms before him and took the brunt of the attack on those, but he was still forced back downwards by the sheer power of the fiery Sovereign.

That was when a chain curled around one of his back ankles and yanked him downwards. GranDracmon twisted around to see Azulongmon had grabbed him with a Lightning Whip and was hurtling towards him, the lightning shaped horn on his head seeking to pierce GranDracmon in the chest. GranDracmon lashed out and grabbed the horn in his hand, steering Azulongmon past him and breaking the chain around his ankle, but several more chains lashed out, crackling with electrical power and struck him on various parts of his body.

Even the great Demon Digimon winced at an attack of that magnitude, but he ignored the pain and grabbed the chains in his hand and pulled. Despite his massive size advantage, Azulongmon was yanked downwards by the ridiculously powerful Digimon, and GranDracmon surged upwards to deliver a bone-breaking punch to the dragon's chin.

As Azulongmon reeled, several more chains lashed out to slam GranDracmon in the stomach and knock him back, followed by Azulongmon's mighty tail which catapulted GranDracmon away. The Dark Ocean's Master grunted and summoned a Crystal Revolution, preparing to turn the dragon Sovereign to solid crystal, but suddenly Zhuqiaomon descended from above and slammed into GranDracmon talons first, grabbing him around his centaur body and sinking his claws into the Demon's sides.

"**BLAZING HELIX!"** Zhuqiaomon roared before GranDracmon could react and engulfed his opponent in the huge pulses of fire from his outstretched wings at point-blank range. GranDracmon was torn free of Zhuqiaomon's clutches and hurtled towards the ocean below, grunting in annoyance as the flames seared around him. Swinging both arms was enough to disperse the flames, but he landed in the shallows of the Dark Ocean with a thud.

And that's when Baihumon pounced. Even GranDracmon had to admit that the sight of the massive tiger sailing at him was quite a terrifying spectacle, and the furious snarl on Baihumon's face showed he meant business. GranDracmon ran to meet him and Baihumon sailed through the air, meeting in a mighty collision that sent both of them rolling that threw the sea up and all around them and shook the very earth under the strength of their blows.

Baihumon sank his teeth into GranDracmon's arm and GranDracmon attempted to grab the tiger around the neck and twist him off. But Baihumon was having none of it. He snarled as his claws solidified into iron and he plunged them into GranDracmon's stomach. The Demon gasped at the sudden, terrible pain.

The shark-jaws on GranDracmon's animal shoulders suddenly came to life and latched around Baihumon's own shoulders, tearing at his flesh. The tiger roared in agony and his grip on GranDracmon's arm loosened, allowing GranDracmon to slam him in the side of head. At the incredible blow, the Sovereign was sent rolling away into the surf. GranDracmon reared up and charged towards him.

Baihumon shook himself and growled as he clambered back to his feet, seeing GranDracmon fast approached. He quickly yelled, **"GOLD STRENGTH!"** and fired a beam from his jaws that struck the water of the Dark Ocean in front of him. The water suddenly solidified into gold and enclosed around GranDracmon's feet, halting his charge in his tracks.

"Why you…" GranDracmon snarled as he struggled to pull his four ankles free of their gold prison.

Baihumon smirked, but came no closer and a couple of seconds later, GranDracmon realised why. The ground beneath him rumbled and he spotted that Ebonwumon was thundering towards him, each blow of his massive feet throwing dark water hundreds of feet into the air. GranDracmon's eyes widened and he knew that this was going to hurt even him.

Ebonwumon stampeded right over the top of GranDracmon, flattening him into the surf under his enormous form. In the process, he cracked the gold holding him down but GranDracmon was crushed underneath his charge and vanished under the mighty body.

When Ebonwumon pulled to a halt and slowly turned himself around, he and Baihumon stared at the churning waters where he had just been, ready for more.

For there was more to be hand. Despite that, GranDracmon clambered to his feet once more and chuckled. To the horror of the Sovereigns, his dark aura increased and the wounds his body had sustained began to heal over, like some perversely dark version of Cherubimon's ability.

"What?" Baihumon gasped.

"Don't you remember?" the Demon sneered. "The darkness feeds me. I am it and it is me. As long as I remain in this world, I will continue to heal. You cannot beat me here. Nobody can beat me here, not even the four great Digimon Sovereigns. And now," the shark-jaws opened with teeth gnashing and tongues lolling, "I believe it is my turn to attack. **DEATH SCREAM!"**

The shark jaws promptly began shrieking and the horrible sounds they made washed over Baihumon and Ebonwumon in visible soundwaves. It was not a normal sonic attack though. Both the Sovereigns felt their bodies stiffening and their power draining immediately. Their eyes widened in sudden fear and they both struggled to move but now it was them who was fixed to the spot.

GranDracmon sneered and prepared another attack, when:-

"**DESOLATION BLAST!"**

Several plumes of fire shot down from the sky and fell around GranDracmon, before changing trajectory and slamming inwards all around him. The Demon's attack was cut off as he was knocked backwards by the attack and he saw Zhuqiaomon swooping towards him from above, talons ready for combat and red aura blazing as fire licked all around him.

GranDracmon grimaced. "Here, birdy, birdy," he growled as he grabbed Zhuqiaomon's talons in his hands and hauled the phoenix out of the air, slamming him onto his back into the water. And fire and water didn't mix. Zhuqiaomon yelled as his aura was largely extinguished and GranDracmon loomed over him, stamping his feet into the birds chest before grabbing him by one wing and hoisting back into the air. GranDracmon grabbed Zhuqiaomon's body in the other hand and pulled. The phoenix roared as he felt his muscles straining. GranDracmon was trying to pull his wing out by the root.

Baihumon charged in before he could succeed and rammed the spikes attached to his tail into GranDracmon's head, knocking him off kilter for several moments. Zhuqiaomon quickly took the opportunity to free himself by taking out two of GranDracmon's ankles with a sweep of one wing. The moment GranDracmon lost his grip, Zhuqiaomon threw himself back into the air and fired off another Sonic Zephyr at close range.

As the attack sent GranDracmon ploughing through the waters of his ocean, he found himself face to face with both the angry heads of Ebonwumon. The jaws of both said heads opened and the turtle Sovereign bellowed **"DOUBLE DRAGON WAVE!"** with both voices. A huge pulse of energy lanced from each mouth to collide right before Ebonwumon, and merge into a huge wave of green energy that surged across the ocean like a rapidly moving wall.

There was no way that GranDracmon could avoid an attack of such a scale and he was struck full on and sent catapulting back into the air, where Azulongmon was waiting for him. The serpent dragon swept beneath GranDracmon and sent electrical blasts arcing from his body to slam full on into the Demon, eliciting a growl from the evil Digimon as the volts coursed through his body.

"Rrgh. You're skills clearly have not diminished in the slightest, Sovereigns," he observed as he shrugged off the attack. "You are indeed a challenge to face when you fight at the same time."

"We would be challenges individually," Azulongmon replied, his voice as close to a growl as it was ever going to get. "Allow me to demonstrate! **AURORA FORCE!"**

Azulongmon prepared his ridiculously powerful attack, sweeping upwards and curling his own body into a circle, sending electrical bolts into the middle of his coils and expanding them into a huge circle of electrical energy. GranDracmon turned to escape the oncoming attack, but a red streak in the form of Zhuqiaomon came from nowhere and struck him, knocking him back into the path of Azulongmon's aim right at the moment he fired.

GranDracmon roared as he was consumed by the immense blast, but Azulongmon was not about to think for a moment that he had won the battle and he immediately surged towards the explosion, ready to fight. He shot into the smoke and hammered his massive head into GranDracmon's chest, the spike just missing impaling him where he hovered.

GranDracmon snarled as he wrapped his arms around Azulongmon's head and rode the blow, electricity sparking up the lightning horn to shock him some more, but he refused to let go. Azulongmon bunched up his coils behind his head and span in an attempt to throw GranDracmon off, but the Demon was like a limpet.

"This is where you die, Sovereign of the East!" GranDracmon snarled, placing a hand against Azulongmon's helmet. **"CRYSTAL REVO-WHAT!"**

He broke off his attack and saw, to his astonishment, that Baihumon was running _up_ Azulongmon's massive back and was leaping towards him with a roar. **"IRON-ARMOURED CLAWS!"** he shouted and impacted his claws into the shark jaws on GranDracmon's shoulders, drawing shrieks of pain from both of them as he flung GranDracmon off Azulongmon's head. Zhuqiaomon swooped out of the sky and grabbed Baihumon in his talons, hauling him away before GranDracmon could grab him and cling on.

"**CRYSTAL REVOLUTION!"** the Demon yelled as he caught himself in mid-air and fired a huge white beam from his hands at the airborne tiger and phoenix.

"**GOLD STRENGTH!" **Baihumon countered with a blast from his own jaws, which connected with GranDracmon's attack and negated it, creating a bizarre pillar of ice and gold that extended up and out of the Dark Ocean. GranDracmon grunted in annoyance and stopped his attack, just in time to see a Blazing Helix thrown by Zhuqiaomon surge around the edges of the pillar and strike him in the chest.

As the fire flowed around him, GranDracmon decided that he should stop playing around with the Sovereigns and get more serious. The Sovereigns' attacks might not be having much of an effect on him thanks to him being enthused with the powers of darkness and being able to regenerate, but it still hurt and he was still outnumbered.

GranDracmon knew his Eye of the Gorgon attack would be useless against the Sovereigns, even here. The same data structure that had made the Sovereigns immune to Ogudomon's powers over malice would prevent his attack from working, as his attack involved enslaving a Digimon to the darkness within their own hearts, just as Ogudomon was immune to anyone with malice in theirs. Except the Sovereigns. Fanglongmon had put that power there, and even GranDracmon wasn't going to pretend he was a match for the Digimon God. Not even here would he claim that.

"**DEATH SCREAM!"** he shouted again and unleashed a barrage of unholy noises from his angry shark-jaws, which shattered the gold and ice pillar in front of him and sent them flying towards Baihumon and Zhuqiaomon as they neared the ground. Zhuqiaomon quickly dropped Baihumon and repelled them with a Sonic Zephyr, and then GranDracmon was finding himself battered by shards of ice himself. Black ones to be presice.

These ice shards were coming from Ebowumon, who was releasing his Black Hail attack from below and GranDracmon struggled to even see the projectiles coming, as they were the same colour as the backdrop of his world. He growled and pulverised one with his fist, snapping up another in one of his shark jaws and flew clear of the blasts and threw a Crystal Revolution at Ebonwumon.

A lightning bolt lanced out from the right and tore the beams to shreds as Azulongmon raced back into the attack, throwing five Lightning Whips at GranDracmon. GranDracmon countered the first three with swipes of his hands, but hit by the other two and hurled upwards. Azulongmon flashed past him, his tail slamming GranDracmon in the face as he passed.

But this time GranDracmon grabbed the tail and dropped like a stone.

Azulongmon was yanked out of the air and fell like a bell rope, slamming into the ocean beside GranDracmon. GranDracmon unleashed another Death Scream at the Sovereign and Azulongmon roared as the horrible sound paralysed him and began to drain his strength. Ebonwumon stormed to the rescue, or tried to, but GranDracmon copied Baihumon's technique and used his Crystal Revolution to freeze the water and halt Ebonwumon in his tracks. Only, his attack started to creep up the turtles legs, beginning to engulf him.

"Hoo boy," Ebonwumon murmured in dismay.

Baihumon dashed over to him and began to pummel at the ice with his claws and tail in a desperate attempt to free the most ungainly of the Sovereigns as Zhuqiaomon swept low over the waves towards GranDracmon, disgorging a Phoenix Fire from his beak that pummelled the Demon and threw him away from Ebonwumon. Zhuqiaomon raced to collide with him, but GranDracmon managed to seize him by the beak and send him crashing back into the waves.

But Azulongmon was already back up and his coils snapped out and smashed GranDracmon in the face before he could do anything more to his fellow Sovereign. GranDracmon reeled backwards and tried to take off, but Zhuqiaomon rose up to meet him, grabbing him in his talons and throwing him back towards the ground, powering a Desolation Blast down to make him stay there a little longer. Azulongmon lashed down with some Lightning Whips that impacted on the water. Even here, it seemed it was subject to being a conductor of electricity and it raced over towards GranDracmon and fried him from the legs up.

GranDracmon roared and lashed up with a pair of Crystal Revolutions that the two airworthy Sovereigns swerved to avoid. One of Azulongmon's chains was caught by the attack, and it promptly began to freeze, so Azulongmon relinquished the chain and let it fall harmlessly into the ocean below. GranDracmon turned his attention to Zhuqiaomon and fired off another two shots at the bird.

"I don't think so!" Zhuqiaomon bellowed and there was a sudden surge in his red aura as his entire body surged with flames. He was, quite literally, ablaze. The icy attacks melted before they even made contact with him and the with a cry of triumph, Zhuqiaomon focused his power into an enormous Blazing Helix that he hurled down at GranDracmon.

The Demon leapt back to avoid it but while the blast missed him the shockwave it created threw him into the air. He twisted about, ready to catch himself in the air, but a noise behind him made him turn around. All he saw was a wall of green energy racing towards him until he was hammered by the Double Dragon Wave and thrown back into the ocean.

Ebonwumon's attack had destroyed the ice that had been imprisoning his front legs, and Baihumon's claws managed to break through those on his back legs before they stretched past the turtle's knees. The two-headed Sovereign reared up onto said back legs, stretching up into the sky and towering high over every other Digimon in known existence.

Baihumon flashed past his much bigger comrade and rammed into GranDracmon before he could recover himself, his claws and spiked tail driving more gashes into the Demon's side and front. GranDracmon whirled around and sent a Crystal Revolution at him, but Baihumon was gone before it could get anywhere near him. Then, the tiger skidded around and came back for another pass. GranDracmon focused his attack, but several lightning wrapped chains came shooting down from above, grabbing his hands and yanking them upwards, leaving his front exposed to the attack.

Baihumon slammed into GranDracmon in one of the greatest impacts in all of Digimon battling history, flinging him backwards.

Right towards Ebonwumon.

Even GranDracmon gulped as the reared turtle Sovereign dropped on top of him. He attempted to turn and fire a Death Scream to stop him, but the damage was done. Ebonwumon crashed down on top of GranDracmon with the force of over one-thousand stampeding elephants.

Ebonwumon moved away quickly and turned around as fast as his body could manage. Then, the Sovereign focused his mind and murmured, **"Misty Illusion." **A wall of blackness suddenly rose up around GranDracmon as he struggled back to his feet once more, but it was a blackness that only he could see. His vision was obscured and he growled in annoyance. Darkness could not be used against him like this! He _was_ darkness!

He blindly fired a Crystal Revolution out of the illusion Ebonwumon was creating and Baihumon only just managed to dodge. Having heard the splashes, GranDracmon growled and unleashed a Death Scream, but Baihumon was already gone and the attack missed. Still the splashing of the tiger's feet, caused GranDracmon to focus on him and throw another Crystal Revolution at him. Baihumon pulled to a halt as it flashed in front of him and spat a Gold Strength at the Demon Digimon.

GranDracmon never saw it coming, and he was struck in the arm by the attack. He immediately began to turn into solid gold and he cursed as he felt the attack spreading. He quickly broke off Baihumon's attack with his own, and summoned the power of darkness into him, halting the progress of the gold spreading with his sheer power alone, right when it reached his shoulder.

Then, as he began to reverse it, he was pounded from above by an Aurora Force, a Blazing Helix and a Black Hail all at once. GranDracmon screamed as the tumultuous explosion threw up the seabed around him and catapulted him into the air, burnt, electrocuted and covered in gashes, but still alive and now, very, very angry indeed.

Ebonwumon's illusion was still blotting his vision, but the sound of rushing wings betrayed the presence of Zhuqiaomon, so GranDracmon attempted to throw a Crystal Revolution at him. However, he tried to do it with his now gold arm, and the attack didn't work at all. He growled and fell towards the ground, propelling himself back towards the ocean as he fought to find a way of making himself see again.

It was time to use his homeland to his advantage. He brought his hands clapping together and suddenly, the Dark Ocean seemed to bend and warp to his will. He did not need sight to do this. Ebonwumon cried out in shock as the water shot upwards like a huge geyser had gone off beneath his body and tossed him, yes _tossed_ Ebonwumon into the air. Immediately GranDracmon's vision cleared and he laughed derisively as Ebonwumon fell to the ground on his side. The turtle yelled in agony as several of the tree-trunks in the forest on his back snapped and the trees hung at an awkward angle, and his legs flailed as he tried to push himself back upright.

GranDracmon controlled the flow of the water to surge over Ebonwumon's heads, in an attempt to drown him. But Zhuqiaomon slammed down from above with a Sonic Zephyr that threw him off as Azulongmon raced over to the upended turtle to try and help him up. GranDracmon turned to Zhuqiaomon and sent a huge plume of water up at him which engulfed him and drowned out a lot of his aura, then froze the water into a pillar of ice, trapping the phoenix inside.

Baihumon roared in fury and ran forward with teeth bared, but GranDracmon caused a sudden tidal wave to rush up behind the tiger and overtake him sweeping him out of control and tumbling into the surf towards GranDracmon. The Demon slammed a fist into Baihumon's face and grabbed him by the tail to haul him away.

Azulongmon wrapped several chains around GranDracmon's ankles and he had his coils around Ebonwumon's shell and was heaving the giant Sovereign back up. GranDracmon turned around and used his mind to pick up a huge amount of the beach to fly at Azulongmon like a sandstorm and blind him. Wrenching himself free of the chains he fountained the water up to pummel the dragon and knock him to the ground, but before he fell, Azulongmon managed to haul Ebonwumon back up.

The Sovereign of the north turned to face GranDracmon and launched another Double Dragon Wave, but GranDracmon sent the water flying towards the attack and slammed into the centre of it, overpowering the huge wave with a larger wave of water. Ebonwumon faced the wave head-on, and it was at that point that Zhuqiaomon exploded out of his icy prison with his fiery aura ablaze once more and launched a Desolation Blast at the wave to rip it apart. Ebonwumon powered through the remainder and launched more Black Hail at GranDracmon.

The Demon rose a wall of water to intercept the Black Hail and turned to Zhuqiaomon as the phoenix shot overhead and released a Sonic Zephyr down on him from above. The attack pushed GranDracmon into the ground, but he was still able to redirect the wall of water to cut off Zhuqiaomon's path and force the phoenix to halt. He then threw a Death Scream at the bird, and, paralysed, the phoenix fell from the sky.

GranDracmon then whipped around to see Baihumon flying at him again, but he reared up and slammed his front feet into Baihumon's head stamping him into the ground so hard his helmet cracked. Azulongmon swung downwards from sky and grabbed him in his chains to toss him into the path of more Black Hail from Ebonwumon. GranDracmon grunted as the hail hit him, but he rose more water to grab Azulongmon and haul him to the ground and then threw a torrent into Ebonwumon, pushing him backwards and then freezing it to pin the turtle to the ground.

Baihumon was already up and leapt on top of him again, but GranDracmon grabbed him by the spikes on his cracked face-mask and flung him off and into Ebonwumon as Zhuqiaomon exploded upwards from the water and re-ignited himself to send down a Blazing Helix. GranDracmon lifted the Dark Ocean into a water cannon of equal volume and pushed through the attack, forcing Zhuqiaomon to roll away. And then Azulongmon powered up from below with his heavy tail, flinging GranDracmon in the air. The Sovereign dragon then threw another Aurora Force at the Demon to send him backwards.

"Sovereigns!" he bellowed. "Sovereigns! Regroup!"

Zhuqiaomon swept over to Baihumon and Ebonwumon. A couple of strikes from armoured claws and well-placed Phoenix Fires were enough to thaw the turtle out. They stood as a united front, each of them battered in different ways.

GranDracmon was getting to his feet again, sustained injuries already healing over.

"I'm beginning to think that he was right, and we cannot beat him here," Baihumon murmured.

"'E has utter dominion o' dis land," Ebonwumon agreed.

"Utter dominion or not!" Zhuqiaomon rumbled. "We will keep fighting! We will not stop until we have accomplished out goal or perished!"

"Indeed," Azulongmon nodded. "We must be more careful. He can control the landscape of this world at will, it seems. He is even more formidable than we assumed. Be cautious, Sovereigns. We must buy the others enough time at least if we cannot destroy him."

"Giving up already?" GranDracmon taunted them.

"Not while you live!" Zhuqiaomon bellowed and the battle resumed once more, the air supercharging more than ever as GranDracmon charged in to meet the Sovereigns once more.

* * *

But while the fights going on across the beach were vicious and brutal, they were, in truth, mere distractions. It was indeed one of their main objectives to defeat GranDracmon and his army, and end their reign of tyranny before they could bring it to the Digital World or Human World. But the real objective – the most important objective. That was being taken care of by several others.

And they were about to implement their move.

"Just look at them go!" Mako shuddered and he watched both battles with increasing awe. "Is this what it means to be a Tamer? We have to take part in stuff like this."

"It's… terrifying," Ai murmured, and she was right. The sheer amount of power and strength being used by the Sovereigns and their opponent could be felt several miles away the other battle was rife with the screams of the wounded and the dying. This was war, the first war that the two twins had ever experienced and they didn't like it. They didn't like it _at all._

They were still crouched underneath Wingdramon's wing with Calumon, Lilamon and Diatrymon standing with them. Lilamon herself was as enthralled as all the others, but as she looked over towards Belphemon as he battled with his own four opponents, she felt her gaze being drawn up to ominous spires of the castle that was right behind it.

Her eyes narrowed, and she muttered, "Guys, shouldn't we get going now? We've got our own mission to do. We still need to find Impmon, don't we?"

"Oh yeah!" Diatrymon shook himself. "Right. Kids! You guys up for this?"

The twins tore their eyes away from the battling and nodded firmly, as did Calumon. Then, the group began to move quickly and as silently and stealthily as they could. They were a long way from the action, but there was no point in unnecessarily drawing attention to themselves. They were supposed to be on a covert mission after all, and they didn't want to jeopardise that mission. Not for anything.

Diatrymon felt Wingdramon's claws closing around his wings as he lifted the Ancient Bird up and into the air, his gravity-repellent wings as still as if they were carved of stone, levitating up without a flap, which would have created sound. This method of locomotion on Wingdramon's part was ensuring complete and utter silence despite the fact they were rising up the side of a cliff.

Lilamon gathered up the three smaller ones in her arms and followed the dragon slowly up the side of the cliff. When they cleared the top, they were greeted by the sight of the grey, monochrome forest stretching off into the distance as far as the eye could see. It gave them an uneasy feeling, and none of them particularly felt like venturing too far away from the beach. Who knew what horrors GranDracmon had lying in wait out there. Who knew if it was even real.

"Alright," nodded Wingdramon. "We need to get to that castle over there."

"Stick with me, kids," Lilamon whispered, wrapping her arms tighter around them, as she alighted on Wingdramon's back. The dragon then did something he rarely did – he landed on the ground and folded his wings, depositing Diatrymon there as the two of them quickly moved into the trees, concealing themselves amongst the trunks.

The sound of the battling was muffled, but still present, and Diatrymon stepped to the front, his keen eyes able to see better in the gloom than the others. Lilamon risked letting off a little light of her own with her bioluminescence to help Diatrymon see better. The Ancient Bird led the way, peering through the trees and leading them towards the castle that he could only just see through the tree-trunks.

"Looks like a pretty straight line from here," he murmured as the sounds of battle grew louder. "All we have to do is follow the cliff-top and we'll draw right alongside the castle. After that, it should be relatively simple getting in."

"GranDracmon will probably have it guarded," Wingdramon replied as he snaked his body around a tree-trunk, keeping close to the ground. "We may still have a fight on our hands before we reach Impmon."

Diatrymon suddenly halted and said, "Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh?" Ai asked. "What's uh-oh?"

"Nothing bad uh-oh, I hope," Calumon whimpered.

"Lilamon, extinguish yourself," Diatrymon hissed and Lilamon hurried to obey, putting out her bioluminescent light.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Enemies," Diatrymon murmured. "GranDracmon's posted guards in the forest."

Lilamon bit her lip and, depositing her charges on Wingdramon's back, she hovered over to Diatrymon and the three friendly Digimon peered through the trees. Sure enough, though they had to squint, they could dimly make out the shifting shapes of enemy Digimon in the trees.

"What do we do now?" Calumon asked. "Go back?"

"No, we can't," Ai said vehemently.

"Yeah, we've gotta save Impmon," Mako nodded.

"And we will," Lilamon agreed grimly. "Leave this to me. I might not be in the Digital World. This might be an evil forest. But this is still a forest. And a forest is my domain."

"Be careful," Diatrymon whispered. Lilamon nodded and she hovered into the trees, making a silent beeline for the enemy Digimon as the others followed behind her at a slower pace.

The first IceDevimon never knew what hit it. Lila Shower tendrils grabbed him by the neck from behind and he was spun around to face Lilamon as she brought him crashing forwards and impaled him on a Lilac Dagger, bursting him into data. His companion turned around and opened his mouth to yell, but Lilamon refocused her attack to wrap around his mouth and jerk him to the floor, slamming his head against the ground and knocking him out.

She slipped through the trees and grabbed a Devimon from behind, closing her petals into a surprisingly firm fist and pummelling him in the face to knock him out, then she twirled over the heads of two more, sprinkling them with Un Deux Pollen to paralyse them, moving on as they seized up and fell to the ground, unable to move in any way, not even to blink. She slipped between the trunks of two trees and grabbed two unsuspecting Vilemon by the wings and bashed their heads together.

She flitted behind the trunk of another tree as a Sangloupmon stalked past, but she rounded the tree and blindsided it, wrapped Lila Shower tendrils around its snout to muzzle it and binding its four feet together, leaving it struggling there as she released the tendrils from her flowertips as she had done on Gryphonmon's tail a few weeks before. Then she dashed right into a group of five Bakemon and span round in a circle, unleashed five Marvel Shots, one of which impacted on and vaporised each of the ghosts.

This did, however, mean that the flashes of light they produced were spotted by a couple of nearby Phantomon. The Ultimate Ghosts surged towards Lilamon when they spotted her, raising their scythes, but Lilamon hurriedly threw a Beauty Slap at them, which impacted on them both at once. Their eyes took on dopy looks and one said, "Oh my lord, I'm in love."

"Me too," the other one nodded emphatically. "What can we do to please you mistress?"

Lilamon held a petal to her lips and said, "First, stop talking." The Phantomon nodded and agreed. Then Lilamon added, "Now, hit yourselves over the heads with your own scythes to knock yourselves out."

The Phantomon proceeded to do exactly that and slumped to the ground, unconscious. That left only a Gargoylemon in the trees nearby and Lilamon dealt with him quickly by whooshing past him and offloaded a blast of Un Deux Pollen into his fact that left him rasping and hacking, but he soon seized up like the Devimon and crashed to the ground.

Wingdramon chuckled as he stepped over the struggling Sangloupmon and the unconscious Phantomon. "Lilamon," he said. "You are turning into one badass girl, you know that?"

Lilamon flushed and giggled slightly. "You really think so?"

"Would you have had the subtlety to do all that when you set off from your glade with Impmon several weeks ago?" Wingdramon asked her. "You might have had the guts, but you couldn't have done the stealth."

"He's right," chuckled Diatrymon. "You should be proud of that little achievement, Miss Sneaky Jungle Girl."

"Well, if you think so," Lilamon grinned cheekily. "Then I suppose I will. But I can be proud of myself later. The castle's not far now. Let's go find Impmon."

* * *

Phew, that was one of the longest and most action packed Digimon battles I've ever done. And guess what guys, it's not over. There's still a lot more to come, both in the main battling area and with the more personal battling from Lilamon, Wingdramon and Diatrymon. I hope you guys enjoyed this colossal action-packed chapter and my first ever battle-scene involving the Sovereigns, and rest assured that there will be more from all of them soon.

But now comes the action from the Star Wars side of things.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The Imperial Grand Army heads for Tython and lands to bring out its incredible forces and march on the city, under the watch of the Sith via a hologram. The two sides face off against one another and after a few words are exchanged between the two sides, battle is finally joined. Clone and Jedi and more versus other clones. Let it begin.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 191 : The Empire Strikes**


	191. The Empire Strikes

So, so, so, so, so, SO sorry for the delay, everybody. I know it's a week later than I said it was going to be up, but things generally tend to conspire against me at Christmas. First of all, I spent several days not writing this but planning out the next two arcs carefully. I may have had a general idea of what I wanted, such as how the battling would begin and end and a couple of bits in the middle but I had no real structure in mind. And since this battle is the story's pinnacle, structure is going to be important, so I hope you'll forgive me for that one. The next few days were spent being kept busy preparing for Christmas day so I got almost no work done and then, as with last Christmas, I got absorbed with _using _the things I acquired on Christmas day.

But, I finally pulled myself together and now I'm back with the first chapter on what I have decided to call the Mega Arc. I hope the end of this chapter will help you understand why I called it that (and it has nothing to do with MegaGargomon, Cherubimon or Sakuyamon)

Read on and enjoy, at last.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 191:- The Empire Strikes**

* * *

Commander Fox stood watch from beside the doors of the ruins of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant, staring out over the vast city planet and keeping an eye out for any signs of people wanting to get closer to see what had happened to the Temple. The Emperor had placed the Temple under restriction and absolutely nobody was to be allowed to get near it.

This was because there was always a chance that a Jedi might try and get in there. If they somehow managed to get onto the planet, though that alone seemed unlikely at the moment as just about every ship entering and leaving the planet was being boarded and checked, they might be able to use the computers inside to send more broadcasts to the whole order. So far, Fox had had to send away over three crews of Holonet reporters seeking to get closer shots of the Temple and one of them had tried to interview him.

He had sent them packing without a word though – following orders just as any good clone was supposed to.

And yet all the time he was doing it, Fox just couldn't shake the slight wrongness of everything that he was feeling. Okay, the _incredible_ wrongness. Everything he knew and believed had been turned upside-down recently. It wasn't the place of a clone to question the orders thrown against him, but being ordered to kill the Jedi, and the new Emperor declaring the Sith as friends all in the same motion. It was a complete switch of what Fox and all the clones had been striving for since the first campaign on Geonosis.

Heck, it was a reversal of what they had been striving for since they were created.

It just didn't make sense. And though Fox was trying to push it from his mind and behave like a clone was supposed to, he was not altogether succeeding. Doubts lingered in his mind.

His thoughts turned to the clones who had disobeyed the order and actually attacked their fellow brothers in order to aid the Jedi. In this regard, he was definitely unsure as to what he was supposed to think. On the one hand, he was supposed to hate them with all his guts for falling out of line, attacking their own brethren and disobeying orders from the highest authority, but, on the other hand, Fox was also getting a vague sense of respect for those clones.

Perhaps they had been onto something. Perhaps there had been a reason for their betrayal. Could it simply have been that they were refusing to believe that their close Jedi friends were traitors and trying to help? Could it be that they were merely refusing to have their lives reversed the way that Fox' had been? Or had they known something? Something that Fox did not know that might explain why these terrible things have been happening over the last few days.

"How you holding up?" another clone's voice said behind him. Fox didn't need to turn around to know that it was Commander Stone, as the other clone stepped up beside him and copied his pose, staring grimly out at the Coruscant skyline and watching a lane of speeders zipping by a fair distance away.

"The answer to that question," Fox murmured, "Is probably the same thing that you would answer if I were to ask you."

"That bad, huh?" Stone chuckled humourlessly.

"That bad," confirmed Fox. "I don't think I've ever been so confused in my entire life. Things just don't add up. Nothing seems to make any sense whatsoever any more. What happened to the days when we knew what was going on – when the droids were the threat and we had to strive to free the Republic from their metal hands on just about every planet out there?"

"I'd say that they got tossed out of the airlock when the Chancellor suddenly made these snap decisions of his," Stone replied.

"That's my point," Fox agreed. "_Why_? Why has he done this? He hasn't told us anything about it at all and he's just expecting us to follow his orders with question. I thought that he held more respect for us clones than that."

"Yeah," said Stone. "But nevertheless, that's what we clones do. We are not supposed to question our orders, remember. That's how the Kaminoans raised us. We all bow to the highest authority."

Fox chuckled a little, again without humour, as he said, "Well, not all of us, remember?"

Stone grimaced. "All too well," he agreed. "What were our brothers thinking – turning on us and aiding the Jedi like that?"

"That's what I was wondering," Fox nodded. "There must have been some kind of reason. Something that we don't know, something we may have missed. I wondered if, perhaps, they knew a little bit more than we did and that was what spurred them to make that decision. Would we have done the same if we had known it."

"No," Stone shook his head. "I wouldn't have."

"There's no need to lie to me, Stone," Fox shook his head. "I'm not the Emperor. I'm your brother. You've already considered dropping out of this Empire and disobeying the whim of its leader, haven't you?"

Stone was silent for a few moments, but then he sighed and muttered, "Yes."

"Why?" Fox asked.

"Nothing makes sense anymore," Stone growled vehemently. "Suddenly the Chancellor declares all Jedi traitors and orders them to be exterminated, while the Sith apparently change their colours. And then, no less than a couple of days later, a Jedi arrives and the Chancellor – Emperor – suddenly pardons this one Jedi and decides to let him into his inner circle for no reason. And of all the Jedi to spare, he chose Pong Krell."

"Yeah," nodded Fox. "I've heard stories about that Besalisk and his trooper casualty numbers. Isn't he about the closest thing to a Sith that a Jedi can be before he falls to the way of the Sith?"

"Well, I would hardly call myself an expert in the way of the Jedi or the Force, but I'm pretty sure the answer to that question is – Yes. And he's also surrounding himself with Bounty Hunters who used to be on the wanted list and barbarian warriors who have never before been welcome on this planet. It's a farcry from the company that he used to keep, isn't it? Something is going on here. And I don't like it, even though I don't know exactly what it is."

"Hear, hear," Fox nodded. "So, what are we supposed to do about it?"

"We can't," Stone replied. "We've gotta stay here and follow orders."

"Even though we don't like them?" Fox asked.

"We may not like them, but we don't have any proof that they're wrong," Stone countered. "And even if they were wrong, we cannot disobey anyway."

Fox sighed, knowing that Stone was right but not liking it at all. The two of them stood side by side for several more minutes in silence, each one silently contemplating their own conversation and that unanswered questions that it raised.

It was then that Commander Stone's communicator started bleeping. The two clones looked at each other sharply, wondering but thinking that they already knew who was on the other side of the line, as Stone unclipped the device and held it up for them both to see. When he activated the call, both of them were proven to be right. It was the Emperor, and there was a sickly smile on his face.

Fighting to keep a grimace of his own face when he saw the Emperor's expression, Stone nodded and said, "Yes, Emperor Palpatine. What are your orders? Commander Fox and I have been maintaining our vigil out here at the Temple. Nobody has gotten past us."

"Good," Palpatine nodded, slightly absently. "But I am no longer concerned with events at the Jedi Temple. I have new orders for you, and I want them to be executed immediately. No delay. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir!" Stone practically barked as he stood to attention. "What are those orders?"

"I have received intelligence from one of my colleagues in the Outer Rim territories," Palpatine replied. "We have discovered the whereabouts of a large portion of the surviving Jedi Order."

"That is excellent news, sir!" Stone replied immediately.

"Indeed," Palpatine smirked. "It seems that the Council members and several other key Jedi, including the escapees from the Temple and the A-Team and that tagalong of their, Barriss, as well as several others, as well as all your traitorous, renegade brothers, have regrouped and gone into hiding on an old, long-forgotten world in the Deep Core. They are not very far from here, and it may not be long before they attempt something like an attack to try and remove me from the head of the Empire. That must not happen at any cost."

"Understood, sir," Stone nodded.

"I'm glad," Palpatine chuckled. "For I am going to put you in charge of the assault on the insurgent Jedi and your defective fellow clones. I want both you and Commander Fox to gather up a large number of our forces and head for the planet. It is known as Tython, and it appears that there is an old Jedi Temple there. You will probably be met with stiff resistance."

"Yes, sir," Stone nodded again. "The Jedi Order will be crushed under our new regime. I can assure you that those traitors will not be leaving the planet alive."

"While we may agree," Palpatine raised a finger. "I should warn you not to underestimate the Jedi. Some of their most powerful members are there on that planet and unlike the situation regarding your initial raid of the Jedi Temple here, they will have had time to prepare for an assault instead of a hasty few minutes to construct evacuation plans. I do not want any slip-ups because you were unprepared for them, Commander. Am I understood?"

"Of course, Emperor. I shall assemble an army big enough to conquer three star systems and take all our highest-quality equipment and war-machines with us. The Jedi will be the ones finding themselves unprepared if I have anything to say about it."

"Good," Palpatine smiled. "Commander Fox, you may go with him and help him take down the Jedi."

"But, sir…" Fox protested. "Should I not stay behind to protect you?"

"Lieutenant Thire will be able to stay behind and his men are more than capable of protecting the Senate Building and myself from any threat on the planet. Any threat coming from off-planet is inconsequential, as there is no force in the Galaxy that would be able to penetrate the blockade I have General Tarkin overseeing. Not even the A-Team would be able to get into this atmosphere if they tried."

"Right," Fox nodded. "As you wish, sir. I too, shall go."

"Contact me when you are ready to depart and I shall send you the co-ordinates of your destination," Palpatine replied. "Do not fail me, Commanders, or it shall be the worse for both of you."

The two clones nodded, but as Palpatine's hologram disappeared, they both looked at one another sharply.

"Was that a threat?" Fox asked. "Did the Emperor just threaten us?"

"Yeah. I think he did," Stone frowned. "He's never done that before. He's always issued orders to us with smiles of assurance. It seems the Jedi and this whole situation are having a real effect on him."

"I'll say," Fox murmured, though he didn't sound sure. "Did you see the venom in his eyes when he spoke about killing off the Jedi Order. There was so much… hate there. I've never seen that look on his face before. I would have thought he'd be a little more reluctant to attack the Jedi Order, considering he thought them to be his friends in the past but… that was just…"

"…Cold," agreed Stone, stowing the communicator back on his belt. "I have to admit, you're right. Ever since he became Emperor it'd not just his deeds that have taken a turnabout, have they?"

"Indeed not," Fox sighed. "His mannerisms too. Well, what are we supposed to do now?"

"Our jobs," Stone hefted his helmet and placed it squarely over his heads. "Come on. Let's go marshal our forces and make ready to move out by daybreak tomorrow. I have a feeling that the Emperor will want us to move out before even that."

"So, we're really going to do this?" Fox blustered. "We're really going to go out there and fight against our brothers. Our fellow clones?"

"Look, Fox, I have no desire to kill any other clone either," Stone grimaced. "No clone should have to be killed by another clone. It's wrong on more than one level. But the fact remains that these particular clones are committing to treason on the highest level and it looks like they are having no qualms about doing it. You saw the aftermath of our raid on the Temple just as I did. There were a couple of dozen of our men that were clearly gunned down and not killed by lightsaber, but not one of the dead clones was those who were on the side of the Jedi. They've killed us. And now, it's our turn to kill them."

"Since when did it become us and them?" Fox asked. "We're all the same. We're all clones."

"It became us and them when they made it us and them," Stone replied. "I don't know _why_ several of our brothers turned their backs on us and our purpose, but we no longer serve the same interests. Besides, we have to do this. We have orders. We cannot defy them just because they are our brothers. That would be just as bad as being one of them."

Fox gritted his teeth, but he knew that Stone was right. He had not really had much inclination to do anything but follow orders, but he had wanted Stone's verdict on the matter just the same. Still, he just couldn't shake the horrible wrongness of all this and he remained convinced that there was a reason behind the other clones going rogue.

And whatever it was, it had to be more of a reason than – they're my friends – for _every_ clone in each legion to switch sides the way they had. If that were the reason that surely only a few of them would have turned traitor.

"Alright," he said, placing his own helmet on. "Let's do this Commander Stone. Let's see what forces and equipment we have that might bring down those Jedi."

The two Commanders strode off towards a speeder that would take them to the nearest barracks.

* * *

Preparations went on through the night, well after the single sun that Coruscant orbited had gone down. Great _Acclamator _-class cruisers stood tall with their ramps lowered as man and machine alike piled up and into the giant hangars within. Gunships and bombers and fighters lined the interior of some of the smaller vessels, surrounded by astromechs and other clones ensuring that each and every one of them was prepped for the upcoming battle.

Any war machine that they could lay hold of was taken for the fighting. As Palpatine had called back many clone brigades from nearby planets, effectively quadrupling the size of the clone force on Coruscant since the Empire had risen, they had more than enough to go with. Even with the clone forces they picked out there were many hundreds of thousands of clones still out somewhere in the Galaxy.

Still, it was one of the largest single-standing armies that the Galaxy had ever seen, if not _the_ largest of them all.

Stone stood tall and observed everything, trying to think of every possibility that the Jedi might try and throw against them in the upcoming battle. The crews of the Jedi's ship had also turned against them, so many of the Jedi were likely to have fighters of their own, so he loaded in some stun tanks to try and keep them at bay or take them out. Squads of AT-RT walkers lined up in the hangars, standing before the bulkier AT-TEs like strange sentinels.

The piece-de-resistance, however, was none of those war machines. In fact, they were in the minority as far as this army was concerned, for on Coruscant there was another war machine which they had available. One which had seen a few skirmishes in planets across the Galaxy, more as test runs than anything else, but they had proven to be extremely effective against the Separatists.

And they would, surely, prove most useful against the Jedi as well.

They were of course, AT-AT walkers.

These huge war machines were designed to be an improvement on the AT-TE walkers. The clones had been excited about introducing them to the battlefield against the Separatists in larger numbers, as they were incredibly hard to destroy or even stop. The only problem with that idea was that they were very difficult to make and required a lot of funds. Funds which the Republic had not particularly had.

The clones had always believed that if the Republic could have engineered enough AT-ATs then the war against the Separatists would have been as good as one. Nothing they had could have stood against them and their incredibly thick armour. Not even Hailfire droids or Giant Spider Walkers. Not even bombers from above. But there were just too many Separatists and not enough AT-ATs.

But for the eradication of the Jedi Order and their helpers, who were all bunched together in one place, the AT-ATs would provide a crucial hammer blow that would end them once and for all. There would be no escape from them. If what Palpatine said was true and the Jedi were in some kind of Temple, they would all be enclosed behind walls. And walls stood little chance against the powerful blow from an AT-AT. They might be incredibly slow, but they didn't need to be fast to do what they did best.

Stone and Fox went about their task with grim determination. Neither of them liked the thought of what was going to happen soon, but they had to do it. They had their orders. The best they could hope for was a slaughter, which would be brutal but would at least be quick.

Of course, neither of them believed it _would_ be a slaughter. Even with the AT-ATs, taking on the Jedi Council, the A-Team, the 501st, the 327th, the 212th and many other elite clone brigades besides, was not going to be a walk in the park by any means.

Finally, as the sun rose over Coruscant once again, the cruisers were fully loaded and were rising into the air, up towards the edge of the atmosphere far above them. Even from here, Fox could make out rows of civilian people cheering for them. Perhaps they believed that these troops were their salvation from fear of what the so-called evil Jedi might be up to. Perhaps they believed that everything would be over by the time they returned.

Fox himself didn't believe that. He wasn't really sure what he believed anymore. But while he might have ordinarily been eager to charge into battle and fulfil his duty as a soldier, this time, his reluctance was palpable. And he wasn't the only one. Many of the other clones were acting the same way. Some were going slower than normal as if they were trying to drag out the amount of time before the fighting began.

Why were the people cheering?

They were just cheering for a massacre.

And Fox felt sickened at the thought.

He cleared his throat loudly and shook his head, trying to force such dark thoughts out of his head. He tried to focus more on the terrible betrayal that those he was being sent to fight had committed to try and ease his brain and get him in the right mindset.

Stone walked over to him and murmured grimly, "Better contact the Ch- Emperor and tell him that we're ready for launch."

Fox nodded. "I don't like this," he said, for what felt like the thousandth time.

"Me neither," Stone agreed, also for the thousandth time. "Let's just get on with it."

The two of them gathered around the holotable on the cruiser and it wasn't long before the Emperor appeared on the table in holographic form.

Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress were standing at his shoulders. The two clones quickly drew their eyes away from the Sith and the Dark Jedi and focused on Palpatine alone, knowing that if they looked on the faces of their old enemies they would not only give away their emotions regarding the Empire's alliance with them, but they would start questioning their orders again and they couldn't afford to do that anymore.

Not at any cost.

"As instructed, Emperor," Stone nodded. "We are ready to jump to hyperspace the moment we leave the atmosphere as soon as we obtain the co-ordinates and put them into the navicomputer. Our force will be more than sufficient to flatten the Jedi and their protectors."

"Very good," Palpatine nodded. "The co-ordinates are being sent to you via the comlink as we speak."

"Co-ordinates received," confirmed Fox. "Entering them into the navicomputer now."

"Make sure you carry out this task for me," Palpatine sniffed. "I do not want any survivors, understood? No prisoners. I understand that they are the Jedi and other clones, who may have fought beside you in the past, but there is no excuse for their actions against me or any of my subordinates. They must all be destroyed, Commander – every last one of them. No matter what age they are or how well you know them or how heroic they seem to be."

"They will not escape us, sir," Fox nodded. "We will show no mercy."

"And one more thing," Palpatine replied. "I wish to oversee this battle personally. When you reach the surface, send the feed from holocams in one of the walkers near the front so that we may watch the traitors being dealt with."

"You… wish to watch, sir?" Stone asked hesitantly. "Er… forgive me but you do not usually make such requests."

"No, but this is a key battle," Palpatine reminded him. "I will leave nothing to chance. I wish to keep an eye on the battle's progress myself. I may notice something that you yourself have overlooked."

"Alright, sir," Stone nodded. "I'll have some of my men set up the feed in the walker before we go."

"Good," Palpatine leered maliciously. "Good. Now get going."

The call ended abruptly and Fox let out a shiver which he had been suppressing. Palpatine's voice had been so malevolent and so icy during those last few sentences that it set the clones teeth on edge. It was almost as if Palpatine was anticipating the battle ahead with cruel joy and excitement rather than the bitter reluctance that you might expect from a man like him.

There was that wrongness again.

Orders!

Fox shook himself and focused on that – the main driving force of a clone. His gaze, as well as that of Commander Stone, turned and faced the open window. As the atmosphere gave way to the vacuum of space, their transports passed alongside the other cruisers that were forming a blockade around the planet.

On the bridge of the Republic flagship, Fox and Stone both saw General Tarkin give them a non-committal nod, as if he felt obliged to wish them luck but really didn't see the point of it. Fox and Stone nodded back and then they were clear of their blockade.

"Let's hit it," Stone sighed.

And, as one, the huge assortment of cruisers zipped away so fast that it was almost as if they were sucked into another universe.

* * *

The journey through hyperspace was a depressingly short one. It only took them about twenty minutes to reach their target, shooting out and away from all known hyperspace lanes as they zoomed towards Tython. Ordinarily most of the clones would be waiting around in hyperspace for hours before they reached their goal. But not this time.

They appeared over Tython and each of them took a moment to look out over the planet below them, the clones manning the cannons grabbing their controls and readying themselves for action. Most of them were surprised to see that there was not a single enemy spaceship in sight. The space above Tython was completely devoid of any cruisers attempting to form a blockade of their own.

They knew that the Jedi were trying to keep a low profile, but having no ships around at all seemed a little odd. Then they remembered that absolutely nobody came this way under ordinary circumstances, so perhaps they had not felt the need to post any ships up here.

"So this is where it ends then," Fox murmured. "On this planet."

"A planet I never heard of before yesterday no less," Stone agreed. He frowned and added, "You know, it's bizarre, but I can feel something a bit odd. It's like a strange tingling at the back of my brain or something."

"Yeah," Fox agreed. "I feel it too. Must be the planet. I've heard that some planets can give that kind of feeling to people. Something about them being stooped in the Force with more strength than other planets. And if the Jedi have a Temple here that means this is probably one of them."

"Yeah, and it might also make them more dangerous," Stone nodded. "Let's get down there then. Scan the area for any signs of this Temple and let's get a move on"

The clones went about their tasks with the same efficiency they had always displayed against the Separatists and it wasn't long before they located the structure. According to their scanners, it was much bigger than a mere Temple. It looked like the clones were going to be attacking an entire city of sorts. That might make things more difficult but with the AT-ATs by their side, it shouldn't present too much more of a challenge.

As the phalanx of cruisers moved down, they spotted the area down below. They finally saw the great city and it looked like it was prepared for an attack. The huge iron gates were firmly shut and (although the clones didn't know it) the cruisers which had been stationed around the Temple on all sides were gone. Apart from a couple of cruisers settled in the larger spaces in the city there were no space-worthy large vessels nearby as far as the clones could see.

"Looks like we've got a large open space around the Temple," Fox surmised. "That should make marching on it easy enough."

"Yeah but it also means we're at a slight disadvantage in that regard," Stone agreed. "We won't have any cover when we get close to those walls beyond our own war-machines, while they'll have the wall to crouch behind. The sooner we blow our way inside the better – it will become more of an event fight that way."

Fox nodded as they continued to descend.

The cruisers landed in the forest nearby, crushing trees beneath their giant bulks as if they were matchsticks. Then the clones began to pile out of the cruisers, bringing their machines with them. The hangar doors slid open and the fighters and bombers were fully prepped and ready for take-off within a moment notice. The ramps descended and the clones marched down in perfect unison, AT-TE and AT-AT walkers plodding along behind them, shouldering aside the trees as if they weren't even there.

Once the clones got out into the open space they began to spread out, until they covered just about the entire treeless area before the main entrance of the Temple. They were, at least for now, approaching the Temple from only one side in order to intimidate the foes behind the walls so they could see the army in its entirety. Once the battle began, it would not be difficult to change positions and surround the Temple to cut off any escape.

Walkers stomped down on the ground as they covered the distance towards the Temple slowly but surely. Smaller AT-RT walkers moved between the ranks, stepping up to the front and ready to charge at a moment's notice. Stun tanks angled their cannons up towards the sky in preparation for any incoming aerial resistance. And the massive AT-ATs levelled their heads at the walls, cannons primed. Within one of them, a holocam was pointed out of the window towards the city and watch at the other end of the line was the Emperor, sitting in his office surrounded by his minions and guards as they watch the troops move into position.

There was no sign of any life outside the walls that might seek to oppose the army, but the clones all knew in their guts that their enemy was in there, even if they couldn't actually see anything.

"How close should we get to the city before we attack?" Fox asked.

"I'd say we should get as close as we can," Stone replied. "Attacking from range won't solve much with those walls in the way. Blow them up from far away and they can organise defences around the breaches before we get there."

"Alright," Fox nodded.

* * *

"This is it," Palpatine chuckled malevolently. It even sounded like he was cackling in some strange way. But he just couldn't help it. This was the moment he had long been waiting for – he was sure of it. The annihilation of the Order of the Jedi once and for all. In some ways, he was glad that they had managed to foil his Order 66 plan. If they hadn't, then he wouldn't have gotten the privilege of sitting back and watching them die.

"I still say that I should have gone out there," Durge muttered, clenching a metal fist. "Those clones are going to screw things up for us, I'm sure."

"And some on my most mortal enemies are in there," Ventress agreed. "I should be the one to strike them down, not some random soldier."

"Curb your impatience, both of you," Dooku reprimanded them. "There are still plenty of members of the Jedi Order left out there that are not in that city as far as we are aware. You will both get your chances to do a lot of killing once more."

"Yes and please stop whining," Aurra agreed. "I'm trying to watch the show here."

Krell just stood there with an impassive look on his face, his top two arms folded. He had to admit to himself that this was probably going to be a fun spectacle, but he wasn't as eager for the downfall of the Jedi as the others. After all, he hadn't been opposed to them for as long as they have. Still, it would be nice to finally watch them die.

Silence fell in the office once more as each of them kept their eyes on the screen in front of them, eager for the fighting to begin.

* * *

Behind the city walls there was a very different atmosphere – one of extreme reluctance. Most of the residents of the city couldn't see what was going on outside, as they were stationed in places where their view was obstructed by buildings or the walls. But they didn't need to see to know how much fight was coming their way. They could hear the plodding of giant machines and marching feet even at a distance, such was the size of the clone force with them.

The clones on the walls were crouched low and peering over the ramparts. At the helm, just above the gates, crouched four Jedi – Anakin, Aayla, Ahsoka and Barriss all huddled together and watching the enemy approaching. Other Jedi lined the walls in various places ready to start the defence when the attack began. The four Jedi members of the Tenacious Ten could also feel their eyes tingling, evidence that the Digimon and the Tamers were also watching the progress of the incoming army.

"There's so many," Barriss breathed. "Easily as many clones as we brought with us. More than easily. There must be at least twice as many."

"It's a good thing we do have all those secret reinforcements," Ahsoka murmured gravely. "I really think we're going to need them today."

"Does anyone else find an incoming army of clone troopers as depressing as I do?" Anakin sighed.

"I think you only need to look around the walls to see evidence that the answer to that is either 'yes' or 'more so,'" Aayla replied heavily. And indeed she was right. All of the clones had their helmets on but you could tell by their body language that they were not happy about this. Even Hardcase, who had worked with Anakin many times and was always up for a fight, looked slightly slumped this time and bitter about what he was going to do.

But every clone was prepared to do his job to defend their Jedi, what they stood for and therefore the Galaxy as a whole. Even if it meant taking on their own clone brothers.

All the clones had spent the last few hours making one final preparation for this battle. In one of the store-rooms of the ships brought from Kamino, they had found large amount of paint designed for the clones to place on their armour. Since both sides of this upcoming battle were going to be wearing similar armour, each of the clones who sided with the Jedi now had a distinctive mark on both the front and back of their armour – a large X where one of the lines was blue and the other green, designed to show their allegiance like a pair of crossed lightsaber blades.

This would ensure that friendly fire was kept to an absolute minimum at all costs. The last thing the clones wanted to do was shoot one of their own because he had mistaken him for an enemy clone.

_I guess this is how it begins then,_ Renamon murmured in the minds of her comrades. _We've been preparing for this moment for days. The storm is upon us. I just hope that we're ready for it to break._

_Especially since it _will_ break in a few minutes,_ agreed Henry.

_Well, we're never going to be readier,_ pointed out Terriermon. _Well, actually, that's not true. We'll be readier when Aayla decides to move herself from the wall._

"Good point," Aayla said, out loud. "I should probably leave. Remember, you guys, we can't risk Palpatine spotting me and knowing that I'm still alive. Just act like you don't know where I am or something and let's hope he's watching. You guys remember the plan?"

"Yep," nodded Ahsoka. "We'll do our bit for this battle – be in and out as quickly as we can and then we'll join you for the next stage right away."

"Take care of yourselves all the same," Aayla nodded. She pulled all three of them into quick single hugs and then she hurried along the wall, keeping low just in case any of the enemy clones might spot her through macrobinoculars. She came to a stop when she reached one other person standing nearby.

Bly was looking as grim as all the other clones, but he crouched, ready for action, all the same. Once Aayla drew level with him, she placed a hand on his armour and said, "Bly, are you alright?"

"No," Bly said truthfully. "But I'm ready to battle."

"Look," Aayla sighed. "I'd just like to say that I am sorry for everything. And that I am proud to call you my Commander. Everything you've done for me and for all of us is well above and beyond the call of duty, Bly. And that goes for all of you others too," she added to the other clones nearby who she knew to be listening. "Thank you for everything."

"You've no need to be sorry, General Secura," Bly told her. "None of this is your fault. "But thank you for the thanks. And I will reprise that by saying that there is no General I would rather have fought beside."

"High praise indeed," Aayla chuckled. "But I'm afraid you'll have to fight beside other Generals this time, as I cannot take part in this battle. Before I go, may I bid you all to take care of yourselves. Do your best to keeping yourselves alive. There are going to be casualties on both sides – that I know. But I want to see as many of your faces as I can once this is over."

"We shall do our best… Aayla," Bly nodded. "But, just in case I can't live up to that request, it's been an honour."

Aayla smiled and spread her arms out. "One time, Bly?" she asked. Bly blanched and Aayla smirked. "Come on. You did it to the Tamers and the Digimon on Behpour. You can do it again now."

Bly stared at his General for a second and then shook his head in wonderment and said, "Ah, scram it." He allowed Aayla to pull him into a hug and he reciprocated it, albeit slightly unsurely. When Aayla released him again, he was quick to let her go too.

With that, Aayla said, "May the Force be with you," before she vaulted off the wall and into the city. She ran through the streets towards the main Temple, where she knew the others to be waiting for her.

Bly watched her go for a moment, then turned back to the wall and said, "I think you're going to need it more where you're going, General Secura."

* * *

The defending clones continued to watch as their brothers approached. The sight of the AT-ATs ploughing slowly but surely towards them was definitely an imposing one. All of them knew just how powerful an AT-AT could be. Being on the receiving end of them was not all that encouraging.

Anakin, Ahsoka and Barriss shifted slightly when they judged the clones had gotten close enough to the walls. They all exchanged glances and nodded towards each other. Anakin looked off to the left and locked eyes briefly with Obi-Wan, who was also standing on the walls not far away, and then he looked right and did the same with Mace Windu. It had been established that those two Jedi were the one who would lead the defence of the city once the Tenacious Ten had departed.

Yoda, on the other hand was, for the moment, nowhere to be seen. He had something else to do in the battle, but not for a while.

Anakin carefully monitored the footsteps of the clones heading their way and when they reached roughly about two-hundred yards from the Temple walls he suddenly got to his feet, placing one foot on the ramparts and activating his lightsaber, thrusting it into the air, above his head. Ahsoka and Barriss mimicked his actions, crossing their blades with his like a six point star and all three of them shouted at the same time:-

"FOR THE REPUBLIC!"

It felt slightly wrong to be doing that without Aayla being among them but it had the desired effect. Across the walls, the clones rose from their crouched positions and thrust their own weapons into the air, a roar of approval echoing from beneath each helmet and washing over the enemy army. The call was also taken up by clones throughout the rest of the city. Several Jedi lining the walls also got to their feet, raising their own lightsabers, until the front wall was alive with roaring clones and many flashing blades.

The response from the defendants was enough to give the marching clones outside the walls pause. Even at a distance of two-hundred yards it was easily to recognise the two remaining (so they thought) members of the A-Team and their newer friend. They had all known they would be here, but as they beheld them now, tales of their deeds against the Separatists flooded back into their minds, and at the added sight of many elite clones cheering for the Jedi, the whole army momentarily ground to a halt.

Which was exactly what the Jedi had been hoping for. Before the fighting began, there was one more thing that they wanted to accomplish.

Anakin held up a holocommunicator in his other hand and activated it. Instead of another hologram appearing on the small device, however, a very large hologram of Anakin appeared behind himself, broadcast from the holotransmitter that Artoo and Arfour had placed on the roof of one of the larger buildings.

When Anakin spoke, the voice coming out of his holographic form was many, many times louder than he could have done by shouting. It ensured that every clones in the opposing army could hear his voice and he addressed them like the old colleagues they had been.

"Clones of the Empire!" he called. "I understand that you have been ordered to eliminate everyone within these city walls. I understand that you have been instructed to wipe the Jedi Order off the face of the Galaxy once and for all. I know that orders, including Order 66, are things that you have been programmed to follow without question. However, I must inform you that by following these orders now, you are making a very grave mistake, even if you do not realise it."

Some of the clones looked at each other in slight hesitation, but most of them remained unmoved by Anakin's words.

But Anakin was not yet done.

"The Jedi are not the traitors that you believe us to be now. Everything you have heard in the past about us being guardians of the Galaxy and advocates of peace, freedom and honour – that is all true. We have no wish to fight you. We have fought with you clones in the past and have no wish to kill or even harm a single one of you. If you force our hands, then we will act out of self-defence and nothing more. And if you do choose to fight us, then may I apologise in advance for any who meet their end on the field of battle today, regardless of which side you are on."

More of the clones seemed to waver slightly. This was a lot more like the Jedi approach they were used to and he sounded sincere enough.

"However," Anakin added. "I am afraid to say that it is your Emperor who is the true enemy of the Galaxy. Has he not turned the Republic into an Empire with no apparent provocation? Well, I can tell you why he has started making these sudden decisions – he is the enemy. He is a Sith Lord, by the name of Darth Sidious."

Among the clones, there were various reactions to this piece of news. Some of them looked shocked, some of them disbelieving and many of them actually laughed.

Anakin knew that was about as much as he was going to be able to do, so he passed the communicator over to Rex, who was standing nearby. The clone's hologram took the place of the Chosen One and said, "It is true, my brothers! We received the proof of it ourselves not a few days ago. Why do you think we have chosen to defy orders like this? We've always fought for good, and yet our leader is evil. He has been manipulating us from the very start. All of our brothers who died fighting the Separatists did so at his whim, for he was the leader of both sides of the conflict. It is a terrible truth, but it is also a real one. Please, listen to General Skywalker. Listen to me."

"You are not our enemies," Anakin added, stepping up beside Rex. "And you never will be real enemies. It is he who is the real enemy. Please, do not make yourselves into enemies by following his rule. We wish to end his reign of tyranny. We do not want to do it by having to go through you."

* * *

Palpatine, from where he was watching his office, scowled. He wasn't surprised that the Jedi appeared to have been prepared for his arrival. The moment they had realised that Bane had gone missing they must have prepared their defences just in case. He could hear every word and while he couldn't see the reaction of the clones from the viewpoint on the screen, Anakin's words would no doubt have a powerful impact on some of the men, if not a good many of them. He had to put an end to this.

He quickly relayed instructions to Commander Stone, and it wasn't long before a giant version himself appeared, hovering over the clones and being displayed by a holotransmitter built into one of the stun tanks.

The clones looked momentarily surprised by the arrival of the Emperor in holographic form and all the ones on the walls tensed, their faces screwing up under their helmets as they beheld the man who had fooled them all.

"Anakin, my dear boy," Palpatine shook his head. "We meet again, I see."

"Palpatine," Anakin nodded, a little stiffly, curbing the anger which he could naturally feel trying to burst out. All the Jedi were having similar reactions at this point as they looked upon the Sith Lord.

"I'm afraid to say Anakin that you are wasting your time with these words," Palpatine replied smoothly. "Do you honestly believe that these clones would be taken in by your explanations and excuses? Me, a Sith Lord? Hardly. It is surely a preposterous statement, is it not, my loyal soldiers? How could I possible manipulate both sides of a war? Would not somebody have found out by now if I had?"

"We did find out, Emperor," Anakin replied, equally smoothly. "And that's why you sprung Order 66 out of nowhere and accused of treachery when it was, in fact, you who was the traitor the whole time."

"This sounds something of a concocted story to me," Palpatine replied. "You have had a few days to think one up, after all. But my clones are loyal men. They will not be taken in by your words, Anakin. They will fight for me to rid the Galaxy of your and the rest of your Jedi. After all, even with this fanciful story of yours, you have admitted that you want me to be unseated right to their faces, have you not? That you do not want me to be the Galaxy's ruler and that you are willing to resort to violence to remove me from my seat. That is treason. You have openly admitted to it."

The clones suddenly seemed to be more determined, inspired by Palpatine's words and readying their weapons for the signal to charge. They would show them! They would show the Jedi that they would not mess with the Galaxy they had fought so hard to free.

But Fox and Stone were both looking at one another with unease. The idea of Palpatine being a Sith Lord was indeed ridiculous… but it certainly explained many of the things they had been puzzling over if it were true.

"Do you have any proof of your allegations?" Palpatine chuckled. "I think not."

Anakin gritted his teeth. He knew full well that the holographic proof they had used to convince the other clones would not work in this situation. Holograms could be faked, and unlike last time, they would have had the time to prepare one this time around. So they did not have any proof to show the clones that Palpatine was, in fact, a Sith.

"Do you see, men?" Palpatine asked. "They are seeking to turn you against me as they have with those traitorous clones who side with them. They must be stopped before our Empire falls apart. I am entrusting the job to you. Now, if you please… begin."

His hologram vanished, as did the hologram of Anakin and Rex. Fox and Stone hesitated for a moment, before Stone sighed and raised his hand. "Let's go!" he shouted and the clones raised their blasters and charged forwards, the walkers behind them setting into motion as the Imperial Army surged towards the enemy city.

"Well, we did what we could," Ahsoka murmured as she watched the clones covering the remaining distance.

"Let's just hope that it was enough," Barriss agreed.

Anakin nodded. Truth be told, they had not been expecting the clones to listen to him or Rex and stop their attack. They had been expecting Palpatine to appear and encourage the clones to follow his cause. However, they had managed to accomplish two things in that little alteration.

Firstly, they had confirmed that Palpatine was indeed watching the conflict, as he had immediately stepped out to allay Anakin's allegations.

Secondly, they had surely planted the seed of doubt in some of the minds of the clones. Hopefully that doubt might just be enough to make the fighting a little easier and when it reached its peak… well, hopefully the plan would work.

And now, the three Jedi stood side by side over the gate as the clones surged towards them.

"And so it begins," he murmured to himself.

"Ready, Rex?" Ahsoka asked the clone.

"No," Rex replied.

"Good. Me neither," Ahsoka grimaced, activating her shoto and holding it before her with her regular blade. "Let's get this thing going."

"For the Republic," Barriss nodded.

"For the Galaxy," Anakin agreed.

And that was when the shooting began.

A phalanx of AT-RT walkers broke away from the main group of charging clones and hurtled towards the wall at top speed, leaping to a stop a short distance from it and angling themselves upwards, unleashing hailstorms of lasers from the cannons on their noses. Several of the clones ducked down beneath the ramparts, but the Jedi stood firm, turning them aside quickly.

The AT-RTs were quick fighters. They dodged about quickly, moving several dozen metres to the side before suddenly turning around to shoot off several more shots towards the walls and then moving off again. The clones manning the walls kept low, the blue lasers flashing over their heads within a few inches of the walls. Scouts like AT-RTs were good ways of pinning down an enemy until the main force arrived to lend aid and it appeared to be working already.

Bly was the first one to move. As a laser shot past overhead, he quickly leapt out of hiding and took stock of the situation, sending his own retaliatory lasers from his twin blaster pistols streaking through the air towards the dodging walkers. His aim was accurate enough and one of the clones running past got hit in the side and then the chest, toppling out of his seat to crash to the ground.

Bly felt a pang in his heart, knowing the clone he had just shot was dead, but he hardened that pang into resolution, knowing that many more were going to die at his hand today regardless of what happened. His placed his foot on the ramparts and barrelled off more lasers at a group of other walkers which skittered out of the way of his shots.

Emboldened by Bly's beginning, several of the other clones got to their feet and began to return fire as well. Two of them were gunned down when they stood up at the wrong time and lasers crashed into their stomachs before they could even begin, but the others sent a rain of blue flashing down towards the walkers. Nevertheless, the AT-RTs proved to be difficult targets as they dodged about and sprang into the air to avoid the shots, landing with splashes of dirt to pummel the tops of the walls with more lasers.

Two more walker clones were brought down, one of the walkers being sent catapulting to crash into a third, but a total of five more clones fell to the shots from below on the walls, and several of them ducked back out of sight again. Blade and Conor stood side by side on the wall, following the progress of one of the dodging walkers and trying desperately to bring it down.

The walker turned and fired up at them. Blade shoved Conor aside and ducked as the blasts arced past his shoulder and he quickly sent a single laser blasting out from the wall. The walker clone dodged but it still cannoned into his leg and caused a cry of pain as he toppled from his perch.

"Thanks, mate," Conor nodded, getting up and tossing more lasers down on the encroaching walkers.

"No problem," Blade nodded. "Come on, we can do this!"

The air had become alive with the thrumming and flashing of the lasers and clones and walkers struggled against one another, the speed of one and the cover of the other making it difficult for any clear advantage to stand out. Anakin grimaced as he watched the action, batting aside three shots from a walker as he remained where he stood at the top of the gate. The rest of the clones were getting closer.

"Cover me, guys!" he cried, and stepped back, allowing Barriss and Ahsoka to move before him slightly, protecting him with their own blades. Anakin delved into the Force the thrust his hand recklessly through the spinning blades (which missed his arm thanks to the quick reactions of both Barriss and Ahsoka, and the fact they knew that he was about to do it anyway thanks to the mind-link) he sent a powerful Force-push down towards the ground. Several of the walkers were thrown backwards and sent tumbling, a couple of them crushing their riders. Anakin leapt back up beside his fellow team-mates and called out, "Mortars!"

Several clones hurriedly ran up to the walls from below and planted special mortar launchers at the base of the ramparts and let fly, sending several grenades soaring out over the wall.

"Cannons!" Anakin shouted an instant later.

Below him, in the city, several Heavy Cannons lifted their giant barrels skyward and sent off one massive blue blast each, which soared into the air after the grenades, arcing over the tops of them. The walkers down below had spotted the approaching mortar grenades and beat a hasty retreat, though two of them were still caught in the explosions and tossed aside. The others, before they could get very far, ran straight into the cannon shots which would have missed them completely if they had stayed where they were and were consumed in the following blasts, thus meaning that the first wave of AT-RTs had been met with defeat.

But the other clones were coming, and fast, and behind them, the larger walkers were closing in as well, levelling their cannons and heavy blasters towards the wall.

"We should take advantage of our Heavy Cannons while we can!" Barriss shouted.

"Agreed!" Anakin nodded. "Cannons! Raise elevation and fire at will!"

As the clones on the wall took their opportunity to recuperate slightly after the initial walker strike, the Heavy Cannons stepped into motion, raising their massive guns even higher as per Anakin's request and offloading more powerful blasts into the air.

The front lines of the charging clones were instantly decimated by the blasts, thrown backwards in into their colleagues or consumed in the explosions. The blasts fell from the sky practically vertically upon them to blast them to pieces. Several of them managed to dodge the blasts with quick rolls, but some of those people only ended up running into another blast and dying anyway.

The Heavy Cannons were, for the moment, the trump-card of the Jedi. But they would not remain a trump card for very long, as another part of their strategy would soon make the cannons largely useless. But until that time, the blasts were their best resource at holding back the enemy clones.

One of the frontmost AT-TE tanks was slammed by a pair of cannon blasts and collapsed in on itself, taking out everybody inside as it fell onto its side and almost landed on several other clones, reduced to a smouldering wreck by the powerful shot. The clones around the area quickly tried to take cover behind it as the bombardment continued, but the shell that had once been the tank provided little aid and they were blown back all the same.

However, when one of the cannon blasts connected with one of the AT-AT walkers, it produced a hollow donging noises and blackened the grey armour, but other than that the walker was largely unaffected. There was a reason that first second A in AT-AT stood for Armoured. The AT-AT ploughed on regardless of the attack from above.

Despite the salvo of cannons shots from above, however, the clones refused to stop their charge and several hundred of them still got past the cannon blasts, overtaking the much slower moving tanks as they ran towards the walls, yelling loud warcries and they switched the safety off their blasters and raised them towards the walls. Several of them had rocket launchers with them as well and, after seeing their comrades gunned down, they were ready for action.

But so were the other clones on the other side of the wall. They might still have their feelings of reluctance but, as it always had when they fought in the Clone Wars, the atmosphere of battle was permeating through them. Doubts vanished. Reluctance diminished. The cold, hard reality of war – kill or be killed – took over them and they were, each and every one of them, ready to retaliate with everything that they had.

Hardcase, for instance, had definitely got his fighting spirit back. The hyperactive clone leapt onto the ramparts with both feet and declared, "You guys ready for some of this!" as he hefted his Z-6 rotary blaster cannon. He pulled the trigger and, immediately, he began to sweep his weapon across the front of the enemy lines, peppering a massive barrage of blue bolts from the cannon that slammed into the enemy clones and dropped them where they stood, tripping the comrades behind him. He took out a whole swathe of the other clones this way.

Like with Bly before him, Hardcase spurred the other clones into action and several of them lay across the ramparts, attempting to make themselves as small a target as possible and blow holes into the ranks of the advancing clones. Several manned rocket launchers and let rip down on the enemies incoming forces, blowing huge mounds of earth into the air as they tore through their enemies with the powerful rockets they unleashed.

And the clones over the walls that, by some miracle, survived being hit by the blasts from the defendants, began to return fire with gusto, shooting as they ran and sending a blue laser storm back through the other blue laser storm to slam around the top of the wall. Several lasers from the opposing sides crashed into one another and cancelled each other out, but most of them shot through to the wall beyond and sailed over the top or hit the top of the wall itself.

Many of the clones fell from the wall under their barrage, slammed in the chest or the forehead and sent toppling backwards to crash among their comrades. Others slumped on the wall and lay there where they died while a couple toppled outwards and landed with horrible crunches on the ground outside. Those on the ground were in trouble too though. Over a dozen completely unexpected explosions occurred around the front-runners as they trod on carefully positioned mines and tossed those that survived back several metres, but it was not long before they were up on their feet and charging again.

Other clones quickly took their place as the men outside sprang over their own dead and continued to charge through the bombardment. It was safe to say that, at the moment, the attackers had lost far more of their men than the defenders, but how long would that last?

Through it all, the Jedi danced across the tops of the wall, lightsabers swinging as they beat back a barrage sent in their direction and furiously twirled their blades in constant motion. Anakin remained where he was at the front, while Ahsoka and Barriss moved away to aid some of the other clones nearby. Out the corner of his eye, Anakin could see Ahsoka standing next to Rex and Denal, screening them from incoming fire and allowing them to shoot past her.

The sight of her swinging a pair of lightsabers was almost beautiful. The shoto flashed in her hand and parried the shots as easily as her regular blade, as if she had been born to it, the whirling yellow colour mingling with the green to almost become a wall in front of her. Rex stood boldly by her side while Denal crouched below and both of them unleashed a laser barrage down at the oncoming enemy. Rex took out two enemy clones with shots to the chest with one pistol and simultaneously shot another in the leg with his second, causing the clone to stumble and trip several of those behind him with his sudden stop. Denal somehow managed to shoot one in the foot, causing him to scream in agony, and the clone quickly put the other out of his misery with a shot to the chest.

Ahsoka span her green blade around to parry three shots and brought up her shoto to block two more, reversing her grip on the pair to bring them into an inverted X in front of her to parry three others and swiped another aside with the shoto, cut off another two with her regular blade and then thrust her shoto out before her, spinning it so fast that she caught no less than five bolts almost at the same time. Further along the line, Anakin could see Obi-Wan standing tall next to Cody and a clone he recognised as Gus, diligently fighting alongside both of them.

Then there was Hardcase, blasting away, and beyond him, he could see several other Jedi, including Eeth Koth, Adi Gallia and Finn Ertay, all of them smoothly keeping the bolts of the charging clones at bay, while the clones around them returned fire.

Anakin's gaze was drawn to the other side, where he saw Barriss had grabbed an oncoming rocket with the Force and turned it around hurriedly turning aside four blaster bolts despite her outstretched arm. The rocket impacted among the clones and caused several to disappear in the explosion of earth, and Barriss dropped her hand and sliced the air in a blur of motion to take out several more bolts and send them flying over the place, brought her blade to a stop right in front of her face to parry one that would have hit her in the forehead and abruptly somersaulted to the right, allowing a large rocket to streak harmlessly past.

Beyond her, Anakin could see Mace Windu standing tall on the ramparts, a glare on his face as his purple blade seemed to move about on its own to deflect more shots, and not far away Anakin could also make out Eekar Oki, Ki-Adi-Mundi and K'kruhk, all doing much the same thing.

The Jedi were, for the moment, deliberately staying on the defence, using the position the walls offered them as best they could. Because the walls might not be able to protect them for long.

Anakin could feel the concern from Aayla and the Digimon from somewhere within the city, but he put their own thoughts aside as he focused on his own deflection. He levitated a bunch of nearby rubble from a rocket blast and flung it out towards the clones and knocked several of them over as he swatted another bolt back at its original caster and then dodged to the left to set several more streak past, block off a pair of others and slice through a section of the ramparts with his blade, catching the shorn off piece with the Force and tossing it into the air to intercept another rocket before it could fall among the other clones.

The efforts of the Jedi and the clones were valiant, but in the end, they were not enough. They would never be enough. There were just too many of the opposing clones and though they took out many hundreds of them before they reached the walls, reach them they did. Several clones managed to break through their bombardment and draw level with the wall.

And things became more difficult from there. The clones at the base of the wall now had the advantage of cover as well. Several clones on top leaned over to try and get a shot down at the others, but this proved to be a fatal mistake because they were quickly gunned down from the front and dropped downwards into the ranks of those they had been trying to shoot.

Several clones that reached the gate began to place some detpacks against the large metal structures, ready to try and force their way inside by blowing them up. Other clones raised their blaster rifles and fired cables out from the barrels, which speared up and punched through the stone of the wall. Unhooking the other end of the cable from their blasters, the clones began to haul themselves up the wall, hand over hand, determined to gain access to the top and level the playing field. And all the while the laser storm behind them continued as more and more clones fell on either side.

The first set of clones that drew close to the top of the wall suddenly found their path blocked by Obi-Wan. The Jedi Master blocked a pair of shots without looking and swept down to slice through the cable, sending the clones crashing back down to the ground again. Across the wall, the other Jedi were doing something similar, hacking through the cables with furious abandon, trying to stop the clones from gaining access for as long as possible.

Mace Windu thrust out one hand towards the gates and used the Force to yank the detpacks away and send them flying back amongst the clones. He quickly pointed them out to a nearby clone with a rocket launcher and he let off a blast near the gate that impacted against the detpacks and blew them and several other clones, sky-high. Mace looked up to assess the situation and what he saw was not encouraging.

The enemy walkers were primed and ready to begin firing and, in the distance, a squadron of enemy gunships, fighters and bombers were heading their way.

The fighting had not been going five minutes and already it was beginning to very, _very_ ugly.

* * *

Well, there you have it. With the chapter as a whole, the action was comparatively small for this chapter, but now the die has been cast and everything has been set in motion. From this point on, you can expect nothing but lots and lots of action from the rest of this arc, and hopefully it will have a structure to it rather than just mindless shooting like it would have been without all my planning.

You may have noticed the additional reinforcements didn't get mentioned in this chapter. Don't worry though. They're time will come. After all, we've got seven more chapters of this battle for them to do stuff. Should be more than enough time.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The initial attack on the Jedi Temple city walls continues and now the war machines begin to get in on the action. With the incoming heavy weaponry, how long can the rebel alliance keep the Empire out of the city? A lot of valiant struggling lies ahead for our heroes as the fighting continues.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 192 : Breaching the Walls**


	192. Breaching the Walls

Hello again everybody. Look, no long delay this time, and I'm quite glad of that too as this chapter was difficult to write. Most of my other action scenes have been a succession of things happening as our heroes plunge through the enemy with all their power and encounter various obstacles along the way. I've never done a siege like this before and I found it more difficult than I imagined, but I think I've getting the hang of it. I hope you like the action. Because there's a lot of it.

Oh, and by the way – there will be death. You have been warned. The Jedi and the clones are not safe – none of them. You may like some of the characters I decide to kill in this arc. I hope you like all of them to be honest, but this is a war and to have everybody survive it would just be unrealistic. So many of our characters are not going to make it out of this. I hope nobody lynches me for my choices, as the decisions were very hard to make.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 192:- Breaching the Walls**

* * *

The air pulsed with firepower as weapons were constantly offloaded from either side of the conflict. The clones of the Empire were taking up defensive positions now, crouching to the ground and levelling their blasters to aim more carefully at the people up on the walls, while others stood behind them with rocket launchers in an attempt to cover their brothers. Most of the firepower was being redirected towards the Jedi, as they were determined to bring down the Force-wielding traitors once and for all.

As of yet there had been no Jedi casualties, but all of them on the walls were definitely being hard pressed to defend themselves against everything that was being thrown at them. More than once, several of them had had to jump down behind the ramparts when the sheer amount of firepower heading their way became too much and sprang back out again when they were in the clear.

The clones on top of the walls were fighting for their lives now and doing so valiantly and heroically. Hardcase still hadn't been brought down, for the bold clone seemed to have an eye for shooting down anyone who even thought about pointing a blaster in his direction. Plus, he also had the aid of Eeth Koth the Zabrak Jedi Master, who was covering his back as best as possible. As Hardcase mowed down a line of about six enemy clones, Eeth swiped his green blade in a zig-zag fashion through the air to block several shots that would have hit Hardcase in the side, and then Hardcase gunned down the clones that had been doing the shooting. They were making quite an efficient team in this way.

There were a couple of ARC troopers on the walls as well, most notably Echo and Fives. The two of them were stationed on opposite sides of the wall and were rallying support to them to help take out many clones that were attempting to get past the front wall to attack a more exposed area and climb up and into the city. Echo shot down four clones down below with swift, decisive shots and directed several rocket launchers to fire in a line to take out a phalanx of the rest, while Fives primed a pair of detonators and lobbed them over the wall, instructing other clones to do the same and blowing the clones below away.

He had to duck back down behind the wall and drag another clone with him to avoid getting hit with a rocket launcher missile after that, but he got back up again quickly and continued firing.

Cody could be seen running along the wall now, trying to find a spot where additional help was needed and skidding to a halt when he found a section of wall where a large portion of the defending clones had been shot down and threw himself down into a sniper position to shoot out at several more clones coming in for another attack. He took one in the head, one in the stomach and then another one in the head, and then quickly rolled aside as a blast impacted on the stone behind where he had just been and leaned out to fire a blast into the chest of the culprit, before he leapt up to direct another clone with a rotary cannon into the action.

Bly was still in the thick of things as per usual. It looked for all the world like he was ignoring Aayla's advice about his own personal safety for he was standing in plain sight and offloading blasts at the others as if it was mere target practice. His twin blaster pistols raged blue down on the clones, blasting five of them into the ground as they focused on some of his men, then he quickly ducked down as three blasts sailed past him and lifted one pistol to gun down two more men and then dashed along the ramparts, still in plain view, before tossing a grenade over the side and leaping into cover just in time to avoid several more blaster shots.

The grenade impacted on the ground and rolled to the feet of several clones who scrambled to move aside but didn't manage to do it quickly enough and were tossed into the air with their life taken away.

Several other members of the elite clone teams were standing up and fighting bravely too. Jesse was valiantly standing and trying to keep the enemy clones away from the gate with a steady stream of fire from his blaster. Galle hefted a rocket launcher and sent out a blast that threw up an explosion of dirt and roughly about six clones in one go, before the launcher was blasted out of his hands and he drew his rifle to fire that as well.

And then there was Commander Ponds. As always, he was stoically fighting next to his Jedi General – Mace Windu, and he stood firm, rallying other clones to stand up and fight as he used his blaster to great effect, shooting one clone in the leg and finishing him with a shot to the head when he crouched down in pain and quickly dropping the two clones who had been behind him and exposed. And ARC trooper Blitz from Kamino was there as well, continuing to direct the mortar launchers which were still being planted and fired over the side into the ranks of the clones. Honestly put, it was becoming a massacre out there for the Empire's forces and as long as the walls stood before them it was likely to remain that way.

The problem was the sheer numbers they had at their disposal. Despite everything that the defendants had done so far, there was still a massive army to take care of.

And all the while the fighting between the clones outside and on the wall was going on, the Heavy Cannons kept up a constant bombardment of huge blasts on full power from their perches on the roofs of buildings within the city or lined in the streets. The carnage they wrought amongst the Empire's clones was almost unimaginable, as they blasted a huge swathe in the forces that sought to take the city, blowing huge chunks out of the ground and vaporising many of the clones they hit so great was their force.

Each impact seemed to leave a crater that was over a metre wide. Any clone stood within five metres of the blast would be very lucky to survive and there was a good deal of milling about as those that were lucky enough struggled to get up and tried to keep moving, but they were relatively disorientated and made easy targets for the other defenders.

Thus far, several more AT-TE walkers had fallen to the enemy blasts from the Heavy Cannons, but the three AT-AT walkers within range of the cannons were still almost completely undamaged from the attacks. Oddly enough, they had yet to open fire on the city themselves and seemed to be focusing on getting closer first. But this was understandable – after all the cannon blasts from an AT-AT could be ridiculously powerful even on the lower setting. A closer shot meant that it would be easier to aim, and if it were easier to aim then there would be less chance of taking out the men on their own team.

The frontmost AT-AT walkers were now within about one-hundred and fifty yards from the city. Anakin looked up from where he was standing with Ahsoka and Barriss above the gate. The three of them were almost moving as if they were dancing – Anakin had grabbed Ahsoka's wrist while she grabbed his in turn and had hauled her over his head to deflect a shot that would have taken a nearby clone which he couldn't have blocked because he was busy deflecting four more in front of him and Barriss twirled around him in the same motion to block a shot to the face that Anakin would have missed and twirled her blade to catch two more.

Ahsoka leaned across Anakin to block a bolt that was seeking to hit Barriss in the side, and Anakin span his blade past both of them like a helicopter blade to whack aside three more, while Barriss teddy-rolled over Anakin's shoulders to fling a piece of rubble at an incoming rocket trying to take all three of them out at once.

Several of the clones actually stopped fighting down below to watch the three Jedi work together as if they had choreographed exactly what they were going to do weeks in advance, before they remembered they were supposed to be shooting at them instead and continued firing.

Adi Gallia slashed through another line that had just crashed into the wall and looked up to pound aside several more blasters shots, grabbing a clone by the shoulder and thrusting him back behind the ramparts as she used her blade to protect another. She quickly looked up to survey the battlefield and shouted, "General Skywalker! Those fighters and bombers are getting close!"

Anakin looked up and was grim faced when he saw the phalanx of high flying ARC-170 fighters shepherding a very large group of Y-wing bombers directly towards them. The walls were not going to be any defence at all against an aerial assault like that and who knew how many were going to die if those things managed to drop their bombs into the streets. They might as well not bother.

Ducking down to allow Barriss and Ahsoka to take over with the blocking, Anakin activated and roared, "Jar Jar! Now! Do it now!" before he leapt upwards and continued to help the other members of his team block the incoming fire. All three gritted their teeth, their faces twisted into grimaces of concentration as the zooming ships closed in. And what was more the walkers looked like they were getting ready to fire on them.

* * *

Deeper in the city, Jar Jar Binks looked up from the communicator he was holding and turned quickly, raising the electropole in his hand into the air and shouted, "Nowsa! Wesa must do it nowsa, General Tarpals!"

"Yousa heard him, men!" Tarpals roared from on top of his faithful kaadu. "Starting up de shields! Quicknow!"

Several Gungans hurried to obey, punching the controls on the sides of the giant devices they had brought with them from Naboo. They might have been unable to bring the giant fambaas that normally carried their shield generators for them, but they had been able to bring four shield generators with them all the same and had successfully installed them at four critical points throughout the city.

With a whooshing noise, the first of the shield generators shot a bright beam of pinkish light into the air. The other shield generators responded to the transmission and sent up their own pink beams, which began to expand once they reached a certain height and merge together, forming a huge protective bubble over the city which rapidly expanded and began to fall to the ground just outside the city walls.

Anakin called a quick cease-fire from the Heavy Cannons knowing that their usefulness had all but expired in this battle as long as the shields were up.

As the bubble continued to grow, several of the fighters fast approaching hurriedly peeled off from the main group before they crashed into the deflector shield now blocking their way. Some of them didn't manage to do it fast enough and slammed into the shield, which treated them like fast-moving projectiles and they were met with an impenetrable wall that destroyed the ship on impact.

Several of the other bombers veered up and over, unleashing their bombs down on the shield from above in a vain attempt to continued their mission, but the bombs did absolutely nothing to stop the progress of the shield as it descended downwards and exploded against it harmlessly.

One of the more reckless clones in the bomber squadron accelerated and shot underneath the shield before it could descend all the way to the ground. The bomber hurriedly unleashed the bomb it was carrying into the streets and streaked overhead, but the clone inside made the mistake of checking to see if his actions had done anything.

It turned out that it didn't, as a sudden salvo of fire from the clones not on the wall crashed into the bomb while it was still in mid-air and exploded it ahead of schedule, knocking some of the enemy clones over but not doing anything besides. And then the bomber's engine was taken out by a well-placed shot from an AT-RT and went spiralling down to crash into the wall of the main Temple and land in a heap at its base.

"YAYHAY!" Jar Jar whooped as he beheld their shield falling all the way to the ground to protect the city from incoming fire. "Wesa did it!"

"Datsa teaching Palpatine dat hesa cannot be messing with usens and getting away with it!" Tarpals nodded in satisfaction. "But wesa do not not how long disa will last. Letsa be ready for battle, Jar Jar!"

* * *

There was a cheer from the clones within the city as the aerial strike was foiled. The clones on the other side of the wall were less enthusiastic and hurriedly charged through the shield and redoubled their efforts, forcing more of the clones on the walls to duck behind cover as bolts poured among their ranks, felling several of them. The walkers all abruptly opened fire at this new development, but even the powerful shots from an AT-AT were by no means enough to break through the deflector shield. They bounced against it harmlessly, the shield rippling like it was water with rocks being dropped in it, but remained up and otherwise steady.

"Alright!" Ahsoka grinned. "Now they're going to have a bit of a harder time getting over these walls."

"Yes, but it's not impossible," Barriss agreed. "Once those walkers get close enough to walk through the shield we'll still be at their mercy."

It was true. Once the walkers realised that they were doing no good, the people within piloted them forward once more, their heavy feet crashing against the ground as they made to walk through the shield standing in their way.

_Guys! _Lopmon shouted in their minds. _Now's the best time to take the fight to the enemy without fear of being hit by tank fire!_

_We won't hold them for long!_ Anakin cried, _But I hear you, Lopmon. You two ready to put on a show for Palpatine's benefit._

_Definitely,_ agreed Ahsoka agreed.

_I'm with you!_ Barriss nodded.

"Then let's do this!" Anakin shouted out loud, and, almost without warning he leapt off and over the wall, with Ahsoka and Barriss right behind him. The first few clones blanched and tried to gun him down but Anakin twisted in mid-air to avoid their shots and, for the first time ever, he swept his lightsaber through the chest of a clone and killed immediately. He took no pleasure from the act as he often did when he did it against the droids, but now was not the time to be lenient with anyone.

He lashed out with his hand and blasted several other clones backwards and leapt over them before they could rise, dashing between two clones and twirling as he did so, his blade writing around his body like a living thing as he cut them up. He blocked a shot and pushed it back into its caster, then cartwheeled over the clone as he fell and slashed his blade across another, while using his spare hand to pick up another with the Force and fling him broadside into two more.

The other Jedi quickly followed him off the wall, as did a couple of clones equipped with jetpacks. The close-range fighting now began. The clones seemed to be unprepared for this forward assault by the Jedi, but as long as the Jedi were protected from the rest of the army by the deflector shield they were relatively safe.

Ahsoka kicked a clone in the face and span low to stab her blade into the stomach of another, tossing her shoto away where it buried itself into the chest of a third. As he toppled, Ahsoka span around and finished off the one she had kicked with a slash to the midsection and rolled between two others, grabbing their legs in her hands as she rolled past to yank them off their feet, grabbed her shoto and used it to deflect several shots from a clones standing next to her before she sliced through his weapon and beheaded him with a slash of the small blade.

She lashed round in a circle to carve a line up the side of another and then skidded through a group of others with a slash out to either side of her body, which took the all out but one, and as he turned around to shoot at her, he found her to be already jumping at him with blades flashing.

Barriss threw several of the clones together with a wave of her hand and hurried past the group, batting aside several lasers aimed at her head and twirling low to slash a clone across the hip and drop him before twirling high in the same motion to trace a line across the upper section of another, before she completed the motion by grabbing a clone with the Force and yanking him forwards to impale him with her blade.

She pushed him aside hurriedly and twirled her blade to block several more shots before she leapt up to dash towards a couple more, passing her blade to her other hand behind her back to block a shot aimed at her back and slash through one of the clones while grabbing the other by the shoulder and pushing him behind her to take another shot aimed at her back before picking him up with the Force and hurling him into the one trying to hit her there.

Obi-Wan quickly found himself facing quite a difficult opponent in the form of a clone armed with a Z-6 rotary blaster cannon like Hardcase. The clone poured lasers towards the Jedi Master who hurried dodged from left to right and span his blade before him with almost unparalleled skill to block many more shots. Then he backflipped and sprang off the wall and over the shots, slashing through the clone before he had a chance to alter his shooting, his blade passing through another clone in the same motion.

His hand lashed out to touch the chest of another clone, blasting him backwards with the Force the moment his fingers touched the armour and sending him catapulting into many more before he span over to two more and cut through them with a series of fast hacks, kicking another clone in the chest and using him as a springboard to catapult over to two more taking aim at him from behind, spinning to slash through one and then stab another in the stomach behind his back.

Mace Windu was a powerful Jedi Master for a reason. As he delved into the Force he thrust his hand down onto the ground so hard that he created a miniature shockwave there that tossed the clones he landed amongst in all directions as if they were dolls. As other clones took aim at him he lifted them into the air with his mind and threw them backwards at such high speed they crashed into the deflector shield, before he blocked a series of shots with his purple blades and leapt through the barrage, twisting his body at almost impossible angles to avoid being hit.

He landed right next to the clones. With one twirl of his blade he severed their weapons and with another as he stepped past them he sliced through their waist. As the clones fell more fired upon him, but with a lashing of his hand a large portion of wall debris flew up to clobber several of them down as he threw his lightsaber with other hand and leapt high, using the Force to direct the blade in a scything motion that dropped six clones before it shot up into his hand and was stabbed into another clone as he came down.

Ki-Adi-Mundi's own blue blade was a whirl of motion as he dashed to the side to hack through two more clones and then changed direction so quickly he kicked up a large amount of dirt to spring feet-first into another clone and carry him to the ground, swiping his blade through another, somersaulting over his body to stab another one in the stomach so hard the tip of the blade went through the one behind him too. The Cerean leant back without warning as a missile from a rocket launcher streak over his face and he kicked upwards to hammer another clone in the side of the head with his foot as he backflipped.

He landed in a crouched position and blocked more shots coming from all directions as he found himself surrounded by enemy clones. He grimaced and span about, cartwheeling onto one hand to crash his shoulder into another clone and knock him over, grabbing the rifle in his hand and throwing it into the head of another clone before he proceeded to do a series of forward flips at almost impossible speed, each flip ending with a downward slash that took out another one or two clones. Seven of these flips and he brought his blade up to block another shot before he charged back into the action.

Adi Gallia threw herself into a corkscrewing jump that brought her blade round her body to turn aside about four shots that probably wouldn't have hit her anyway, slashing downwards to take out one clone that passed beneath her head while her feet lashed together, one foot on either side of the head of another clone. She twisted and yanked the clone off his feet as she landed, breaking his neck, and sprang onto her hands with a double kick to another before she landed back on her feet and skidded past three more clones, holding her blade out to one side to slash through all three in the same movement.

She heard the clicks of several clones cocking their rifles behind her and grabbed one clone in front of her with the Force and pulled him towards her, before leaping up and over him and allowing him to shoot past her and slam into his comrades. She landed with a cleave to the waist to another clone, wresting the missile launcher from his hands and bashing another clone in the head with it as her blade sang to deflect five other shots coming from her right and, as she discarded the missile launcher, she span into a double slash against another clones which took him in the midsection and neck, before stabbing out to her side to impale another, ducking underneath another barrage of shots as she did so.

Eeth Koth ducked himself as a clone foolishly tried to hit him with his blaster instead of shooting him and grabbed him by the leg, heaving him off his feet with a little aid from the Force to toss him into a couple more. His green blade arced up behind his back to block off a quick shot and suddenly he span over to the culprit and swiftly beheaded him before vaulting over to another and knocking his helmet off with a swipe of his hand, punching him in the face and kicking him aside. He then slashed through the chest of one, pirouetted round to crash his blade into another on his other side and then cut another clone from shoulder to hip with another swing of his blade.

The Zabrak paused for a moment as he focused on several more clones training their weapons on him, one of them holding a rocket launcher. Honing his mind quickly, Eeth angled his weapon in a fashion that meant the first blaster bolt sent flying at him bounced off his blade and straight towards the barrel of the rocket launcher just as the user fired. The two blasts connected just after the missile left the weapon and caused a terrific explosion that wiped out four clones, and Eeth quickly charged towards the others and finished them off with three spinning slashes.

Finn Ertay the Twi'lek, one of the survivors from the attack on the Jedi Temple, was proving why she could hold that title. She twisted with lekku flying as a clone with a rotary cannon tried to follow her progress with the heavy weapon, but she didn't let him get the shots anywhere near her. She lashed out her hand and the weapon suddenly shot upwards, sending shots towards the sky instead and she darted in and took out the clone holding it with one swift slash and span around his body to dive into a roll that took her past four more, before whirling around and charging into their midst.

One circular slash was all it took for the clones to fall with slashes different parts of the body from top to bottom. Finn grimaced and Force-pushed another clone into a couple of others. These two clones were quick enough to catch their falling brother by the arms and steady him, but were totally unprepared when Finn leapt after them and stabbed her blade into the middle clones chest, wrenching it out to slash through the one on the left with a spin and kick the other one in the chest to knock him off balance until she turned round fully, grabbed him before he fell all the way and stabbed into him as well.

Eekar Oki, the Mon Calamari and another Jedi Temple survivor, was also in the full swing on battle. He batted aside the rifle of a clone before the white-clad soldier could shoot at him and span past the man, stabbing backwards to impale him in the back before he could make any other moves, withdrawing his blade to catch two incoming shots in the same swipe and bounce off to the right, cleaving through another clone as he whirled past and slicing down through another one on the landing, hurling the body away with the Force and blocking a further two attacks, before backflipping over a rocket and allowing it to impact amongst other clone and landed on the weapon, jerking it out of the hands of the clone holding it.

As Eekar swept his blade through the clone in question he hook a foot under the missile launcher and kicked it into the air, where it took two incoming shots while he blocked a further two with his blade. He span around and sliced the missile launcher in two, hurling one bit with the Force and slamming another clone full in the helmet with it while he grabbed the other end and wielded it like a club alongside his blue lightsaber, smashing another clone in the chest to knock him back as he slashed into another and swapping weapons to different hands to slash down on the falling clone and bash another in the head with the club.

K'kruhk the Whipid was a terrible sight in battle. As Jedi went he behaved a little bit more like a wild animal than a Jedi Knight and the gaping, underhung mouth full of sharp teeth did not encourage the clones to try and get anywhere near him. He roared as he sprang forward and sank his blade it to the chest of one, powering him over and flipping over the corpse to scythe through two others in the same motion and grab another one by the face in his hand and jerk him to the ground, stamping on his head to knock him out as he blocked an incoming volley of blaster bolts.

He then charged past the firing clones and brought his fist into the stomach of another clone, flinging him into the air and ignoring any pain he felt at punching the armour. He then grabbed the clone by the leg and lobbed him into his fellows and charged after him at all fours, until he was upon the group of clones almost before their comrade had even hit them and lay about with fist and blade alike, a challenging bellow issuing from his jaws as he twisted about to slash a clone behind him and plant a kick in the stomach of another at the same time.

Several of the clones that had come over the wall with the Jedi were not quite as fortunate in their survival skills. They were being led by Commander Fort and the clone in question charged into the fray with determination. Two clones met their ends before his blaster before he was forced to duck to avoid another shot and rolled a missile scythed almost out of nowhere, only just missing him in the blast. He managed to turn his momentum into a forward roll and come up to shoot the clone with the rocket launcher before he could reload and then dashed forward to bring down three more enemy clones. He dodged back as a shot just missed his leg and backed away to continue shooting.

Some of his men were not quite so lucky. One of them was shot out of the air before he even landed and his body crashed into one of the others and knocked him down briefly. The clones that did manage to land had an upper hand for a few moments as the enemy clones were focusing more on the Jedi than they were and many of them managed to pick off about two or three enemy troopers before their efforts were noticed.

Four of them were quickly shot down in turn and two more charged forward, firing wildly into a group of others each. Their bold charges managed to take out most of the group before they were knocked back by blasts to the chest. Some of the other clones grouped closer to the wall as they grouped spread out across the length of the wall to try and expand their area and press forward away from the city.

And all the while, the clones on the walls kept up their attacking without moving from their positions. Blade managed to take out a clone that was aiming a blaster at Ahsoka's back, and Kix gunned down a couple more that were pointing missile launchers at Eeth Koth. And while the clone leaders like Bly and Rex were standing out amongst the conflict, it was Hardcase that was really making a difference. His cannon blazed a row of devastation against another line of clones, but then he finally ran out of ammo.

He yelled in annoyance and looked ready to jump off the wall to get to the fighting, but he was grabbed by Max before he could do it and the other clone passed him another cannon, fully loaded. Hardcase laughed and returning to his blazing weapon glory. Rex ran up next to him and used the greater accuracy of his pistols to pick off the clones that were quick enough to dodge Hardcase's attack, while Bly had joined forces with Echo and the pair of them were shooting down soldiers at the edge of the group that were trying to get around to encircle the Jedi, as were Cody and Fives on the other side of the wall.

The whole area was practically bathed in blue light such was the intensity of the firepower going on in this battle. And the charge of the Jedi was certainly having the desired effect. The lack of back-up thanks to the shields, combined with the ferocity of the Jedi and the defenders of the walls was enough to push the Imperial army back and away from the walls. There were cheers from the defenders as many more leapt out into the open like their leaders and Hardcase, turning what had been something like a rainfall of bolts into a blizzard.

But it was far from over and they all knew it.

* * *

As Ahsoka landed on the shoulders of one of the enemy clones and pushed off from him to slash through another and then whirl around to stab her shoto into the one she had jumped off, she spotted an Imperial clone toss a grenade into the air just as he darted back out of the deflector shield and to safety. She moved to grab it with the Force, but was waylaid when the shots from another clone drove her to block. She repelled the shot back at the clone in question, hitting him in the stomach, and out the corner of her eyes, she saw the grenade roll to a stop at the feet of one of the friendly clones, who didn't appear to notice.

_Barriss!_ She shouted, noting the Mirialan was closer to said clone than she was. She hurled a thought bubble at her fellow Jedi, who got the picture right away and whirled around, charging over and ramming the clone just as the grenade exploded, sending them both rolling but uninjured. Ahsoka darted over to defend them as Barriss pulled the clone to his feet.

"Man, that was close!" the clone breathed.

"What's your name, soldier?" Barriss asked.

"Wooley, sir," the clone replied. "Thanks for saving me."

"No problem. Just keep a whether eye out for more of those grenade," Barriss nodded as she moved up beside Ahsoka to help her block more shots. Then both of them took off into the enemy clone forces, Wooley sticking close behind them and picking off the targets they missed.

* * *

Commander Fox, who was watching the whole thing through his macrobinoculars, spotted that particular little interaction. He lowered the device from his eyes and momentarily placed a hand to his head in bewilderment. How could it be that the Jedi had been conspiring against the Republic? It made no sense. People willing to put themselves in danger to save a clone like that couldn't really be bad, could they?

Commander Stone, on the other hand, had not seen said interaction and was focused a little more on the flow of the battling. "The sooner we break through that wall the better," he said. "We need to do that before we can do anything else. Afterwards we should focus on trying to take out those shield generators."

Fox shook his head and snapped back to the task at hand. "Got it," he nodded. "And it looks like the AT-ATs are almost in position to do just that."

* * *

And indeed he was right. As Anakin slashed through the torso of one of the clones, spinning the blade about to stab to his left and puncture the armour of another, he looked up to see that the huge, hulking behemoths were just on the other side of the deflector shield. His eyes widened in alarm. They had practically no defence against the AT-ATs that they could use, and now it looked like their resistance might outside the walls might be over.

"Guys!" he shouted across the battlefield. "Fall back! Quickly! The walkers are on us!"

Several of the Jedi looked up in alarm as the metal head of the first of the massive walkers slowly phased through the deflector shield, tilting down on its mechanical neck to focus downwards towards the ground. Barriss reacted immediately, grabbing Wooley and pulling him along and back to the wall with Ahsoka right on her heels and the other Jedi quickly followed on behind, just as the AT-AT unleashed its first cannon blast.

The explosion was huge, bigger than anything the Heavy Cannons had produced, and it had been aimed towards Obi-Wan. Only a swift Force-jump saved the Jedi Master's life and he was carried by the shock of the blast until he almost crashed into the wall, rolling to stop in front of it instead. He hurriedly pushed himself to his feet and ushered some of the friendly clones towards him, allowing them to activate their jetpacks and get back up and over the wall.

As the other two lead AT-ATs also phased through the shield, they released a barrage of cannon fire right down towards the retreating Jedi as they fled back to the walls. They were unstoppable, albeit incredibly slow, juggernauts that continued to march forward at their slow and steady place, leaving a swathe of churned earth and destruction in front of them. The Empire clones regrouped on the other side of the shield, clustering together behind the massive walkers and allowing them to take point on the attack. None of them wanted to risk getting shot by one of their own walkers.

Adi Gallia quickly used the Force to tug a pair of clones away from the blast of one of the AT-ATs. She wasn't quick enough to save them both and one of them collapsed to the ground, dead, but the other one tumbled to a stop still breathing and the Jedi Master hurriedly scooped him up and hauled his arm over her shoulder, when she spotted the giant walker was refocusing on her and with a loud cannon-shot it sent off another pair of lasers right at her.

She was forced to Force-jump straight upwards to avoid the shot, carrying the clone with her as she flipped up and over, landing on the wall once more. She quickly passed the clone to some of his brothers who hurried him out of the way and turned to watch the fate of the rest of the Jedi and clones still outside the city.

Conor and several other clones on the walls had acquired rocket launchers now and they were hurriedly firing them upwards at the heads and necks of the AT-ATs hoping that those would be the weakest spots on the walkers. And while they were essentially right and though they sent up a small swarm of missiles to greet the walkers, they didn't seem to impeding their progress at all. The AT-ATs ignored them and continued blasting down upon the Jedi and clones below with extreme prejudice.

Two clones were flung into the air to crash against the Temple wall and land in a lifeless heap. K'kruhk darted across the field to dodge another blast, running on all fours like some sort of beast and catapulting himself into the air with his hands, allowing him to flip over another shot as he joined Ki-Adi-Mundi not far away. The Cerean was shepherding another couple of clones back towards the walls and thrusting them into the air with the Force, allowing them to activate their jetpacks from mid-air to carry them over more quickly.

For one of the clones though, this proved to be a vain effort as suddenly the nearest AT-AT unleashed a barrage of smaller blasts from another pair of cannons mounted on its head which slammed into the jetpack of one of the clones in mid-flight and instantly blew it up. The blast almost knocked the other clone out of the air, but he managed to stay up and hurriedly landed on top of the wall. The AT-AT refocused its fire on the two Jedi, who raised their blades to block the incoming barrage.

And then it shot its cannons at them both and both the Jedi hurriedly Force-pushed each other to send themselves catapulting out of harm's way.

Nearby, Eekar bounded up the wall and used the Force to haul another one of the clones up to meet him as Mace Windu quickly rolled past a crater from a cannon blast that was still smoking and looked up to see one of the AT-ATs focusing on Finn Ertay, who was busy trying to help a clone with a wounded leg escape back to the wall. As the AT-AT primed its cannons, Mace used the Force to redirect a large swarm of missiles from the wall to group together and impact right in the walker's face. While the armour, including the duraglass the operators could see out of, held even under that blast, the explosion temporarily blinded them long enough to allow Finn and her partner to escape.

But, as Anakin and the rest of the team neared the gate and Anakin grabbed his Padawan's wrist to fling her into the air and Barriss Force-jumped up and onto the wall next to the jetpacked Wooley, he turned around to make sure that everybody was getting away. To his horror, he saw something that practically made time slow down. As Commander Fort jetpacked back onto the wall, one of the Jedi was still running towards the comparative safety of the city.

Eeth Koth.

And one of the AT-ATs had focused its cannons on the Zabrak's retreating back.

"Master Koth! Look out!" Anakin shouted across the battlefield, his cry of warning drawing the attention of a large number of the defendants. Eeth heeded the warning and turned around just as the AT-AT let off its blast. His eyes widened and he catapulted himself into the air, the blast just missing him as he flipped over, sheathing his lightsaber in mid-flight and hurtling back to the ground, preparing to land with a run and get back to the wall.

But he was destined never to reach it, for one of the other AT-ATs suddenly let off a cannon blast right at the spot where Eeth was going to land. Both the blast and the Jedi connected with the ground at roughly the same time and the other Jedi watched in abject horror as the Council member was consumed in the blast.

None of them waited for the smoke to clear and see what, if anything, remained of the valiant Jedi Master. They all knew, as well as sensed, that he had not survived the blast. Each of them felt a hammer-blow to their heart's at the loss. The first of the Jedi to fall on this battlefield, and a Council Member no less. That did not bode well.

For a moment, Anakin could hear nothing but the sound of the explosion, but then he became faintly aware of Ahsoka screaming in his mind, _Master! Master! SKYGUY! COME ON!_

Anakin looked up sharply to see that the third AT-AT was aiming at _him_ now. He didn't let it get the opportunity and sprang into the air, flipping up and onto the wall and landing next to his Padawan and Barriss.

"Thanks," he said, patting Ahsoka's shoulder.

"No problem," Ahsoka replied.

"I don't think you've called me Skyguy for a while now," Anakin observed.

"Well, it seemed to punch through to you."

"I can't believe it," Barriss murmured with horror. "I can't believe Master Koth is gone. So soon in the fighting. He was a great Jedi and we've lost him forever."

_He's one with the Force now,_ Aayla said mournfully._ However, you guys have bigger things to worry about right now. We can pay our respects to Master Koth later._

"She's right," nodded Ahsoka, looking up at the AT-ATs which were now halfway through the deflector shield. "We've got to get off the wall now or we're all in trouble!"

Anakin didn't even wait to nod in confirmation. He shouted, "Fall back! Back into the city quickly!"

The clones scrambled to obey him, some of the more daring ones vaulting off the walls as quickly as they could, while some of the less daring hurried down the stairs. As the AT-ATs refocused their line of sight on the walls, many of the enemy clones charged back through the deflector shield, sticking close to the feet of the walkers as they resumed the firestorm from before. One of the clones seeking to vault off the wall was smashed by a laser and toppled down below, while several others rolled off quickly and sprawled onto the grass.

"Anakin! Come on!" Obi-Wan shouted. "We have to get away from the walls!"

"I'm on it, I'm on it!" Anakin cried, ushering Ahsoka and Barriss ahead as the three of them sprang off the walls and into the city, right as the middle AT-AT opened fire with a colossal explosion as its lasers slammed into the top of the gates where they had been. The structure ruptured instantly and stone was flung several dozen metres into the air as the three Jedi sailed through the air and rolled to a stop in the streets below, lashing up with their hands to catch some of the falling debris with the Force before it could fall amongst them.

"Get back!" Ahsoka shouted.

"Away from the walls!" Barriss agreed.

Many more of the clones were still climbing down when the AT-AT fired again. This time the blast hit the gate itself and the thick doors splintered at the hammer blow and exploded inwards and into the city, leaving a gaping hole in what had once been a barrier against the outsiders. The clones ducked down as the masonry sailed towards them. Most of it was deflected by the Jedi, but some of the clones were still slammed by massive chunks of rock and killed or severely wounded.

And the other AT-ATs refocused their fire on the walls. About seven clones that hadn't made it off yet were instantly tossed into the air when another blast pounded into the wall and ripped a chunk that size of an AAT tank right out of it, tossing the clones into the air as if they were pebbles where they collapsed into the streets. Commander Bly had been dangerously close to that particular blast and the clone leader grabbed a couple of his men and forcibly pushed them over the wall, swinging around to gun down a couple more men over the other side of the wall before he leapt to safety himself.

"Hardcase! Get down from there!" Rex bellowed, spotting his loyal trooper still standing on top of the wall and firing down at the clones below. Reluctantly, the battling enthusiast shelved his weapon and sprang off the ramparts and not a moment too soon, for as he dashed across its length, the section of wall that he had been standing on was torn apart by another laser fire which killed two other clones. Barriss saw, to her horror, that one of those clones that went flying outward was Wooley, the clone she had only just saved on the outside. She bit her lip, upset that he hadn't lived from much longer after she had saved him.

But that was the reality of war. Nobody was safe. Not even the best fighters. Anything could happen.

Echo grabbed Blade and Conor and hauled them backward and off the wall, the three of them pressing themselves into the ground as an explosion rocked the wall just above them before they scrambled to their feet and hurried away. Hardcase joined them moments later at a run as the clones hurried to regroup behind the Jedi a fair distance from the walls. Not far away, Fives came running over, diving into a roll a section of the wall burst outwards near him, sending the rubble shooting straight towards Obi-Wan, who caught the flying stone and lowered it to the ground carefully, helping Fives get back to his feet.

Commander Fort was not so lucky. As he ran past a crater in the disintegrating war a rogue shot from one of the clones below punched him in his shoulder. He cried out and lost his grip on his blaster as his arm went numb and he fell to his knees, clutching at his wound. Cody spotted the distress of his fellow Commander and hurried over to help, but before he could even get close, another AT-AT blast lanced out of nowhere and slammed into the wall beneath the spot that Fort was standing on. Cody only had time to yell in horror as he watched his fellow clone be catapulted into the air by the fountain of wall chunks.

He watched faintly as Fort landed lifelessly on the ground and the wall bits fell on top of him, entombing him in the very stuff that had killed him. Cody only had time to stare for a couple of moments before he was forcibly grabbed by Blitz and yanked away from the destruction as another blast pummelled the wall nearby.

The wall between the defenders and the attackers was falling apart under the assault of the AT-ATs. It seemed that practically nothing could stop the giant walkers and each one was letting off a blast approximately once every two to three seconds. The wall detonated wherever the blasts struck it as if explosives had been secretly stashed inside it, forcing the defendants away from the flying stone but still managing to crush many of them despite the best efforts of the Jedi to keep the stone away. The gate was entirely gone by this point, and there were huge gaping holes like meteor craters in the wall. A few more shots from an AT-AT here and there and just about everything was falling down.

In places, the only barrier left was just a mound of rubble that was spread out so thinly that it only came up to about waist-height on all of the clones.

The Jedi ushered the clones back still further as the AT-ATs ripped down more sections of the wall. Many of the clones manning the tops of the wall had made it to safety, but now things were about to get far more difficult and everybody knew it.

More Jedi ran forward from within the city to stand with the frontmost defenders. Among them was a determined looking Agen Kolar, who had sensed the death of his Master and was determined to make sure that he didn't die in vain. Then again, they all were. Stass Allie was also there standing shoulder to shoulder with Adi Gallia and the diminutive Even Piell also ran up to help, standing just in front of Mace Windu with the green lightsaber he used at the ready.

However, now that the AT-ATs were inside the deflector shields, the heavy artillery of the defendants could be brought into play once again. Mace took charge of this call and shouted into his comlink, "All tanks open fire on those walkers. Keep them at bay for as long as you can. Aim for the heads and the legs, preferably at the joints. Just do what you can to slow them down!"

The Heavy Cannons which had been idling for the last few minutes began to fire again, blue blasts spearing over what remained of the walls and slamming into the walkers with abandon and they were not the only ones to do so. Now the AT-ATs were close enough to the wall that they could be seen over the top of it by the rest of the artillery, including the defending AT-TEs.

The result was an onslaught of heavy fire that beat against the front of the AT-ATs with such a vicious force that all three of them stopped in their tracks. The blasts blackened the armoured heads and necks and actually managed to cause some damage to the heavy vehicles, like a few dents in one case, a small hole. The people inside steering the things were thrown off balance as their walkers shook from the blasts that pounded against them.

Several enemy fighters and bombers could still be seen overhead, impatiently waiting for the shield generators to come down so that they could cause some mass damage within the city, but so far nothing was happening.

The clones of the Empire surged forwards once more to begin their attack on the city. With the AT-ATs momentarily incapacitated, they hurried forwards to try and keep the Rebels on their toes. Besides, the giant walkers had already done their initial work and there were now gaping holes in the walls. Holes which the clones hurried towards and began to push into.

"Hold the line!" Obi-Wan shouted as enemy clones began to scramble over the debris of the walls, stumbling and tripping as the stone shifted under their feet. They were met with the blasters from hundreds of clones, hurriedly pouring blaster shots into the spaces in the walls. The frontrunners among the charging clones were wiped out instantly, dropping to the ground in limp heaps and forcing those behind them to try and climb over their fallen comrades as well, before many of them were felled as well.

The enemy clones raised their blasters and tried to return fire, but the Jedi were still much in evidence and forced the lasers away, diverting the attacks in other directions as they protected their men from the opposition, something which the Empire clones no longer had at their disposal. More clones swarmed through the place where the gate had been, dodging large bits of loose stone as they hurried into the city. But they were met straight away by Anakin, Ahsoka and Barriss, who fell upon them with blades flashing.

Mace pushed aside more blaster bolts and thrust out a hand, using the Force to grip one of the weaker looking struts of wall that were still, miraculously, standing and with a wrench, the foundation cracked and the wall toppled over. Clones screamed as its mighty weight fell down on top of them and crushed them beneath it, and those behind hurried around to try and approach from another angle, the two opposing sides struggling against one another in a battle for the main courtyard of the city.

Unlike before though, the odds had gone back in favour of the Empire's clones, for, despite the Jedi on the other team, the rebel clones were significantly less protected. A wave of bolts zipped across from the walls as the Empire clones began to take cover behind bits of rubble and debris and use them as shields. Seven clones fell in about two seconds, and then a further eight were shot dead a couple of seconds later!

"Use the cover of the buildings!" Bly bellowed as he leant around the corner of one of the nearest structure and emptied his blaster of three more shots, each one taking an enemy clone in the head in rapid succession. Rex ran forward with Kix to drag a wounded clone away from the action and behind more cover as the clones hurried to obey Bly, Rex blasting over his shoulder and not particularly looking at where he was aiming but still managing to shoot down two more enemy clones.

As Kix attended to the wounded clone, Bly leapt out of hiding, and roared, "Grenades!" before drawing one from his belt and lobbing it towards the crowd of clones trying to get in through the walls gaps. Several others followed his example and hurled the small round devices to clatter against the rocks. The enemy clones yelled and leapt for cover, just as the small devices detonated with tumultuous explosions that shattered several remaining parts of the wall and blew several members of the enemy and a good deal of the fallen debris into the air.

Several of the Jedi responded in kind by using the Force the grab this debris while it was still in the air and pushing it backwards like some sort of rock slide to hammer into the clones, burying several of them and knocking out many more. By sheer luck, it seemed, this happened to coincide with a charge from some fresh AT-RT walkers that had dashed towards the city when they saw that the wall had gone. Many of them were thrown backwards with their legs bent and their riders killed as they collapsed against the floor, but a good many of them jumped over the debris and crashed their way into the city.

There was instant devastation. Rebel clones fled as the walkers charged forwards, their wide feet flattening several of the emboldened and younger clones who had charged out to attack with the attack had seemed to provide them with an opening. The Jedi leapt backwards until they were standing back right in front of their men and hurried to protect them as the small walkers blasted large blue shots from their nose cannons. Several of the walkers charged forwards still further, seeking to engage the enemy troops at close quarters and dodging a few rogue missiles sent streaking their way.

Adi Gallia noted that this was the time and shouted into her comlink, "Commander Bolt! We need your assistance!"

There was no reply, but she knew the Commander was coming. And come he did, leading a group of rebel-aligned AT-RT walkers that dashed out from where they had been waiting in the streets and leapt to a stop right behind the Jedi forces. The Empire walkers were caught off guard momentarily when more AT-RTs, also with the crossed lightsaber symbol painted on them, opened fire. Five of the Empire's walkers were destroyed within moments, their legs flying off as lasers rammed into their sides and they toppled over, useless and sparking.

The others quickly adapted to the situation, backing away and returning fire vigorously. One of them cut a swathe through clones that were not being protected by Jedi and several more focused their fire on Bolt's own walkers, which had less manoeuvring space in the street and two of them fell before Bolt and a few of his bolder clones, backed away and took a running jump, the machines they were riding sailing over the heads of the Jedi and the other clones and crashing to the ground where they dashed into direct contact with the opposing walkers.

Bolt blasted a volley of shots into the front of one of the other walkers, snapping its cannon off and knocking backwards to crush its own rider and then he dashed past it, skidding to a halt and somehow managing to move his mount around as he did so to blast at a further two, snapping the leg off one and hitting the other's rider in the back and causing him to sag over the top of his seat. Bolt quickly moved his machine into a backwards job to dodge a round of shots from another walker and the two of the them began to dodge and run round one another in attempts to shoot the other down.

Even Piell saw an opportunity here and suddenly hurried forwards, darting with a speed his small frame didn't look capable of producing. He dived right through the careening legs of another Recon Transport and sliced through one of its legs as he did so, causing it to topple over and then sprang until he was on the back of the clone opposing bolt. The clone yelped and tried to throw him off, but Piell drove his lightsaber into the clones side and pushed the lifeless body off the walker.

The Lannik then sprang onto the front, bouncing into the air and landing on another walker to slash its occupant through the chest, backflip right off it and Force-push the empty walker into a further two. One dodged to avoid it, but the other was slammed in the side and sent flying, and the one that dodged found both its legs sliced off at the base by Piell's lightsaber moments later.

Agen Kolar struck out with his blade and dashed out from the lines quickly to slash a clone down the middle of his chest and lift another two into the air with the Force and toss them backwards, spin into a kick that collided with the head of another, step past him and slash him up the back and another up the front with a single whirling motion and then whirl his blade out behind him to slice through another clone and, at the same time, Force-pull another clone right towards him until the top of his hard, horned Zabrak head crashed into the clone's chest and sent him rolling backwards.

Adi Gallia and Stass Allie proved, as most Padawans and Masters did, to be a very good team. Not quite as good as Anakin and Ahsoka with their mind-link but they still worked together with an extraordinary co-ordination. Stass clashed her blade against her master's to block a pair of shot that was about to hit Adi and vice versa and then leapt forward to stab through another clone and swipe her blade up a third, pull another pair towards her with a lurch and duck underneath the blade swing from Adi that took them both out. Then the two of them leapt apart and Stass carved a gash across the stomach of another, beheaded the one next to him and then backflipped over her Master as she sprang under her to kill a third, while Stass blocked another few shots aimed at Adi's back and bring her lightsaber across her body to stab one clone and reverse her stab to smack another in the head with her lightsaber hilt.

All across the column, the Jedi wrought more havoc on the clones but more and more of them pressed through the gap until the courtyard was practically packed with them, using the destroyed AT-RT walkers as cover. Only one of the enemy Recon Transports was still standing and was trying to shoot bolt down when suddenly Cody jumped forward and hurled a droid popper. The clone in the seat was unaffected by the weapon but the AT-RT itself stopped functioning and fell into a power-down crouch that almost threw its rider. But Cody was forced to dodge backwards a missile was fire at him from nearby.

Try as they might, the rebels couldn't keep the Empire out and more and more of them were falling to the enemy. Hardcase took a shot to the shoulder, but he was so into the heat of battle he barely noticed it. Conor and Blade fought side by side, sweeping their blasters across one another, just as Echo and Fives were doing, the former having acquired a rocket launcher from somewhere and sticking behind the latter, who was covering him with a series of blasts from his pistols. But they were all being pushed gradually backwards and towards the streets.

And then the Empire gained more of an advantage. The people in the AT-ATs seemed to have recuperated themselves and one blast from the middle one suddenly lanced into the city and blasted into one of the Heavy Cannons firing at it, reducing the cannon and the top of the building it was standing on to rubble and vaporising all the clones that had been standing next to it.

The heavy artillery of the rebels found itself under assault as the three partially damaged walkers advanced once more. Three more Heavy Cannons were blasted to shrapnel in as many seconds, huge green lasers catapulting through the air to spell their doom. The AT-ATS worked methodically and with extreme precision, their heads swivelling across the line of and readjusting to focus on the cannons. And unlike the smaller humanoids, the cannons couldn't get out of the way in time.

They were easy targets.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, but was in fact half a minute, which was not that much better, the vast majority of the cannons closest to the wall, along with several accompanying AT-TE walkers, were completely gone. Fires blazed in the city and bits of building rained down from the air like hail or some kind of horrible avalanche in some places. The clones around one of the few that remained blanched as they saw one of the AT-AT heads turn their way and Echo noticed it too.

The ARC trooper dived out from behind Fives and sighted his weapon on the knee of one of the walkers and let rip with the blast. While the AT-AT was not unduly damaged by Echo's strike, it did shake briefly and toss its occupants about once more, giving the clones around the cannon just enough time to escape before the AT-AT fired and blew apart the cannon itself. Echo grinned in satisfaction.

"Stay on your toes, Echo!" Fives cried, as he grabbed the missile launcher and yanked Echo back behind cover and away from the blasts of a rotary cannon that had been aimed his way. Fives raised a pistol and shot the culprit between the eyes, dropping him instantly.

"Nice shot!" Bly shouted as he vaulted over to them, taking another clone in the chest in mid-leap and skidding into a crouch next to them. He spotted another clone taking a grenade off his belt and preparing to throw it, and, quick as flash, he let off another shot that impacted with the grenade before it left the hand of the other clone. The explosion caused a scream of agony from the clone and sent several others around him flying, and Bly quickly put the clone of his pain with another shot to the side of the head.

The clone commander looked up quickly to survey the battle and he swallowed when he saw how they were being pushed back. Then he blanched when he spotted something else. While the front wall was now effectively nothing but rubble, the other four walls were still standing, but he could see enemy clones climbing up on top of them now. They had taken advantage of the lack of fire from the walls to get past and scale them to try and box the defenders in.

"General Skywalker!" Bly shouted. "We're got trouble! They're coming from all sides now!"

No sooner had he spoken than one of the enemy clones on the wall let off a shot with a missile launcher that streaked into the front of the defenders and killed three more clones. Bly gaped in shock and he recognised one of those three was his trusted medic, Max. The clone fell to the floor, clearly dead. He would never again patch up another one of Bly's men or even Bly himself.

The blow hit him hard. Max had been one of the two other clones present when he had been eaten by the Sarlacc on Felucia and saved by Antylamon. He had been through a lot with Max, and now that had come to an end.

Anakin looked up and grimaced when he saw what Bly had mentioned. The AT-ATs were closing in now as well, their massive feet stomping the rubble they had created to dust as they moved towards the gaps in the wall they had made, their heads moving down to point at the defending lines.

"Fall back again!" Anakin shouted. "Into the streets! They can't all fight us together in streets! We'll draw them into the bottlenecks and fight them on even terms! Go! Gogogo!"

As the frontmost fighters immediately turned back to go and meet the fresh troopers waiting in the city and draw the other clones in among the buildings, the three Jedi members of the Tenacious Ten heard Aayla say, _And we'll give them more than a few surprises._

_Yep,_ Ahsoka agreed.

_I almost wish we were one of them,_ Terriermon sighed. _Damn, this is frustrating to just stand here when there's a battle going on!_

Anakin grimaced and called to Jar Jar into his comlink once more, "Jar Jar! Are the Gungans ready for their attack!"

"Yesa, Ani," Jar Jar responded. "Wesa ready to fight!"

"Good!" Anakin nodded. "We're going to need all the help we can get now."

* * *

And, as the clones and Jedi retreated into the buildings, Jedi Master Shaak Ti watched their progress from a rooftop nearby. She turned back to the soldiers she had with her, if you could call them soldiers. "Are you ready to play your parts?" she asked.

Grievous' four MagnaGuards nodded and a large number of commando droids saluted with their swords. Shaak Ti almost chuckled at how weird this was, but she nodded. "We wait a little longer," she said. "When they've been drawn deep enough into the buildings, we make our move."

* * *

How'd you like that. I may have exaggerated the strength of the AT-ATs a little bit (I'm not that sure what they can and can't withstand to be honest), but I wanted them to be an incredibly substantial threat to the Jedi because even a very large number of clones are going to have problems besting waiting Jedi Masters and Knights.

Yes, sorry about Eeth Koth. I quite like the guy and I know he got almost no role in the series or my story so far, but, as I said, sorry but some people have to die, and unfortunately poor Eeth is one of them. And he won't be the only one either. Apart from Wooley, the main clones I killed in this chapter were OCs. That will not remain the case throughout the rest of the arc.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Now that the enemy clones are within the city walls, the fighting is about to become a whole lot more level. Clone battles clone in the streets of the Temple City, but that's not all that will be seen battling. The Empire's soldiers are going to be getting a few surprises as they advance now.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 193 : Street-fighting**


	193. Street Fighting

Hello. I'm back again with another round of firing blasters, swinging lightsabers and explosions. I hope you like the chapter, but then again I hope you like every chapter so perhaps mentioning this to you guys is a bit silly. But really, I do.

As for you, **Japanrules555**, I feel a bit uncomfortable answering any of your questions. Not because they are awkward questions, but because you don't have an account, so the only way to respond to them would be to put them here where everyone, including people who don't want spoilers like you, can see them, and that may ruin some of the surprises for others. If you get an account, I'll be happy to answer any of your questions, but until then I will say this – Plo and the Wolfpack have not been forgotten. They're somewhere nearby and will appear eventually.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 193:- Street Fighting**

* * *

As the clones and Jedi retreated into the various streets in the city, the clones of the Empire doggedly pursued them out of the courtyard and down from the walls, yelling as they entered the city with blasters keeping up a constant rate of fire at the retreating rebels, which the Jedi were hard pressed to block.

As Mace Windu ran at the rear of the party in his own street he was hurrying backwards as fast as possible, purple lightsaber flashing as he strove to protect his clones. Eventually, he stopped altogether, holding the pass to the best of his ability with teeth gritted. The clones in front of him drew to a halt as well and focused all their fire on the Jedi Master, but he was a great force to be reckoned with and he dodged and parried his way from side to side, not letting any of their blaster shots touch him.

After he had judged a suitable amount of time had elapsed, Mace flung himself into a backflip powered by a Force-jump, carrying over the heads of his own clones, who had stopped behind a hastily constructed barricade of rubble and bits of broken machine. Commander Ponds stood at the fore and directed the other clones, his blaster doing what it did best as a barrage of bolts swished through the air like arrows to slam into the Imperial clones, some of them hitting their marks so fast the target was almost catapulted backwards.

And the clones were not the only ones doing the shooting either. As the Imperial clones pressed on, they came within the reach of the automatic turrets that Ponds' men had just turned on. The large, mounted guns on either side of the street came to life with a blaze that almost made Hardcase look bad as they fire what were effectively torrents of lasers into the oncoming clones. Once the first several dozen clones had been felled by the blazing turrets the others sought out cover as quickly as they could and tried to return fire from around building corners.

All throughout the city, the story was the same. Each street that led towards the Temple had been given a barrier and the clones and Jedi were trying to hold it as best they could, trying to ensure that the Empire's forces didn't get anywhere near the Temple. Turrets blazed. Clones traded lasers with reckless abandon and many men fell on either side, pummelled into the afterlife by streaks of blue.

* * *

In one street, one of the clones had pulled out a grenade and was leaning carefully around a crate and staring at the turrets, trying to judge his throwing distance and time his throw correctly so he could take out at least one of them and lessen the problem, but he suddenly became aware of a shadow falling over him from above.

He looked up.

The last thing he saw was Oppo Rancisis' humanoid half lancing down from above and a flash of green lightsaber before he died.

The snake-like Jedi Master had been coiled out of sight on one of the roofs and lanced out with all the speed of a real striking snake. As his bottom half slithered down the walls, the clones of the Empire quickly turned to face him to try and shoot, while the clones of the rebels quickly turned off the turrets. And then Rancisis fell upon the Empire clones with furious energy. He sprang over four of them, his coils descending around them, wrapping around them and flinging them into the air as his lightsaber stabbed into another, then his body swung him around to slash through three clones that weren't even standing near each other in the same motion, his coils lashing behind him to slam into several more.

As his lightsaber deflected a round of shots from a huddle of three clones, he suddenly rolled towards them, which involved heaving his snake body into the air and bringing the tail crashing down on top of him, leaving his lightsaber free to impale two more clones with a pair of jabs so fast it was almost impossible to make them out and his tail wrapped around the ankle of one of the clones and heaved him into the air, as his humanoid half doubled back on himself and went through his coils to throw a Force-push at a group of more of them, while his coils swung around his body battering the other clones around him in a wide sweep.

It was fairly obvious that the clones were not used to dealing with something like Master Rancisis.

* * *

Elsewhere, the bulk of the clones army had passed into the street which Obi-Wan and Cody were trying to hold. Agen Kolar stood fast by Obi-Wan's side as they perched on the barricade and strove to keep the clones at bay, leaning away from one another to allow a missile to streak between them and battering aside the clone's lasers. Cody and Lieutenant Galle crouched beside them, encouraging the other clones to keep fighting while the turrets around them blazed. Galle shot the missile launcher out of the hand of the clone using it and then hit the clone in question in the chest, while Cody gunned down three men so fast the lasers hit them at almost the same time.

But still the army pressed forwards towards Obi-Wan and Kolar, right up until the point where they drew level with a certain pair of side-streets. Suddenly blue lasers spurted out from those streets from AT-RTs that had been crouched and hidden in the side-streets. The clones at the front were caught in the crossfire immediately and fell with cries of pain, as they continued to receive blistering amounts of fire from the front as well, pounding them from three separate direction and momentarily halting the advance.

Some of the clones were unlucky enough to find them facing a blockade that had an AT-TE standing behind it to give assistance. The powerful walkers focused their cannons on the incoming enemy and let rip from the smaller guns around the cockpit and the massive swivelling cannon on their backs. They tore the street apart in their efforts to keep the clones at bay, sending up the road into chunks and occasionally taking chunks out of the buildings around them.

* * *

But the clones of the Empire were by no means defenceless against just about any of these potential threats to them. While the Jedi held the blockades as best they could, they quickly brought up a line of Z-6 rotary blaster cannons in one of the streets. Some of them hauled a down AT-RT walker into the street to act as their own blockade and pushed it forwards to gain some ground on the turrets and maintain their cover, the clones with the blaster cannons firing over the top at the defences.

The result was catastrophic in that particular street. Its Jedi defenders were Even Piell and K'kruhk and they increased their rate of whirling their blades as best they could, but the rate of incoming fire was just too much for either of them. The clones around them were slammed by the multitude of lasers and thrown backwards, tumbling down the blockade, as limp as if they were made of rubber. And the AT-RT barrier kept the low crouching clones relatively safe, though some of them still took shots through its legs.

Piell ducked into a gap in the blockade to recuperate for a moment and then sprang back out and onto the tops of one of the buildings. Some of the enemy clones tried to follow the Lannik's progress with their blasters, but the small council member was too fast for them and dashed across the roof until he was level with them just as clones blew up the turrets defending the street and then he sprang.

He landed on the shoulders of one clone and bounced off to behead another, rebound of the headless clones to stab the one he had just jumped off before he catapulted to the ground, hamstringed another clone and then stabbed him in the abdomen as he fell, tossed his lightsaber into the stomach of another and leapt through two clones to retrieve it, the two clones in question trying to shoot him and hitting themselves by mistake. Those that remained trained their blasters on the small Jedi.

That was when K'kruhk bounded over the AT-RT at them, having been given room to charge forward thanks to Piell's efforts and fell among them with a roar. He grabbed one by the throat in his paw and cut a huge rounded swing through several others, before he hurled the clone in his paw so high into the air he flew over several buildings and stabbed a final clone in the torso.

The clones nearby hurriedly raised their blasters, but suddenly a barrage of mortar-launched grenades sailed over the heads of the Jedi and pummelled their ranks, as the clones raced towards the fallen walker and began to use that as their blockade instead. The Jedi went back to blocking.

* * *

The blockade being held by Ki-Adi-Mundi and a couple of other Jedi was not doing so well either. The clones they were facing had brought rocket launchers with them and had the assortment of heavy troopers had decided to focus their efforts on blowing the blockade to bits first, getting rid of the cover of the clones before they attacked the clones directly. This was a very wise strategy, and it was working.

Mundi fought valiantly alongside Commander Jet and Monnk, both of whom had joined him from the fresh reinforcements within the city, but the Cerean was forced to backflip off the blockade as a volley of missiles came in and vaporised a large portion of it. One of the other Jedi were killed in the blasts, as were a number of clones but Monnk and Jet roared in anger and both pressed forwards, determined to shoot down the rocket launchers before they could attack more.

But somebody else beat them to it.

The Empire clones looked up, startled as they heard loud and very high-pitched walls coming from above them. The windows of several of the buildings were suddenly flung open and Gungan soldiers piled out and fell on top of them, wielding their electropoles with furious energy. One Gungan slammed the launcher out of the hands of a clone and bashed him in the head, smashing his pole into the clones helmet and then spearing another in the stomach to both impale and electrocute the man before he whirled about and rammed a pair of others in the stomach at the same time with either end of his pole and knock them over.

It wasn't long before the missile-launcher clones were finished and the clones that had been behind them drew back in shock. Gungans? What were Gungans doing here? This had not been in the briefing.

Their hesitation was all the time the Gungans needed to pull out their personal shields and activated them, forming a wall of ray shield in the middle of the street. The rebel clones cheered and ran forward as the clones of the Empire fired futilely on the Gungans blocking their way while the rebel clones fired through the gaps in the shield wall. Commander Monnk shot a clone right in the face and another in the neck, while Jet lobbed a grenade over the top of the shield wall and blew three clones backwards simultaneously.

* * *

All throughout the city, the Empire clones were getting similar surprises as the Gungans suddenly charged into the attack. Just as the clones attempting to get past Adi Gallia and Stass Allie and their troops succeeded in destroying the turrets a sudden round of energy balls flew over from behind the rebel clones and pounded into their ranks. The clones screamed as the liquid inside the balls burned into their armour and skin, causing them to drop their weapons and making them easy targets for the rebel clones.

In other places, Gungans piled out of doors and laid into the unsuspecting clones with their electropoles, screaming their heads of as they swarmed the front ranks coming up the streets, clobbering them over the head and slamming them in the chests to carry them to the ground.

Some of the Gungans were even carrying blasters and they appeared to know how to use them. They lined the rooftops and fired downwards on the incoming enemy. They were agile enough to leap over some of the smaller spaces between buildings to follow the wave of Empire clones wherever it went, their big ears streaming behind them as they brought their attack down from above.

It was with the blockade that Anakin, Ahsoka and Barriss were guarding that General Tarpals himself made his move. The rebel clones first became aware of it when they heard a slight thundering sound behind them and then they all quickly cleared out of the way as Gungans mounted on kaadus charged through their midst and leapt over the blockade, Tarpals at the head with his own pole held like a lance.

The Empire clones were startled enough to stop firing for a moment and that was all the Gungans needed. Tarpals and his men ploughed into their ranks, the kaadus flattening the clones beneath their webbed feet and carrying them to the ground. Tarpals laid out his pole to slam a clone in the back of the head and drop him like a stone, twirling the pole round to his other side to whack another in the shoulder and stab his pole into the crook of another's arm, electrocuting him immediately.

His kaadu squawked as it jumped onto another clone with both feet and pushed him to the ground and dodged another incoming missile as Tarpals swept his electropole so low that he struck one of the clones in the groin and carried him backwards to crash into two of the other clones. All across the street similar scenarios were playing out. The clones tried to level their blasters to fire on this new threat and some of them did manage to fell a couple of the kaadus and their riders, sending them tumbling to the ground and rolling several metres in death, but the others behind were agile enough to avoid tripping on their comrades.

The Gungan charge pushed the enemy clones back all the way to the courtyard. This, however, was as far as they went because it put them out of cover from the waiting AT-AT walkers, so Tarpals yelled, "Halt! Wesa going back now. Quick!"

The kaadu riders backpedalled as quickly as they could as one of the walkers let rip at them, blowing up the street in front of them but missing the Gungans. Most of them disembarked their mounts and gave the kaadus the signal to get to safety as the rebel clones ran up the street with the three Jedi at the helm to wait for the Empire clones to try and claim the street again.

"Nice work, General Tarpals," Barriss complimented him.

"Mesa thanking yousa," Tarpals nodded, as more Gungans pulled out their shields and a couple of others loaded their energy balls into their atlatls. "Wesa glad we can contribute."

"Where's Jar Jar?" Anakin asked with concern.

"Mesa giving him de task of guarding one of de shields," Tarpals replied. "Hesa gonna get himself killed if hesa charging into battle like dat."

"You're probably right," Anakin chuckled, raising his lightsaber. "But here they come again everybody."

And indeed the clones rushed back into the street, pounding against the new wall of shields and the clones crowded around the Gungans and opened fire to defend the pass.

* * *

The Gungans proved to take the Empire clones by surprise time and again, even after they had adjusted to the fact that they were fighting. As a group of AT-RTs moved up the street that Mace was defending, the Gungans quickly dodged aside to avoid the pounding feet and the crashing lasers, although three of them still fell to the onslaught. But if the walkers thought that they had gotten through the Gungans and had a clear run to Mace and the other clones, they were mistaken.

One Gungan on either side of the street managed to actually leap _onto_ the sides of the walkers and clamber into the seats, grappling with the clones already in them for control of the walkers. Gungans were better jumpers than other clones (they _were_ amphibians and had many frog-like characteristics after all).

This sent the walkers into careening motion. One of them went colliding into one of the other walkers and almost started a domino effect as several walkers piled into one another and collapsed to the floor in a heap of mangled, metal limbs – the Gungan managed to leap clear before that happened.

The other Gungan which had managed to scramble onto one of the walkers managed to maintain a little more control. He bashed the clone in the head with his electropole to send him flying from the seat and this brought the walker to a halt that almost toppled it over, but it miraculously managed to stay on its feet. The Gungan them slammed his fist on the firing button and steered the walkers head around to blast the two walkers still ahead on him in the back and send them crashing to the ground.

The Gungan was forced to leap off the AT-RT as the rest of the surviving walkers charged forwards and blew his own ride to pieces, but a sudden swarm of energy balls from atlatls by other nearby Gungans crashed into the walkers and released miniature electromagnetic pulses that blew the circuitry of the walkers and caused them to topple over.

One of the clones that fell from the walker looked up to see one of the rebel clones pointing a blaster at his face. The two stared at each other for a moment, before the rebel clone leant down and plucked the helmet off the Empire clone and then delivered a hammer blow to the side of the head with the blaster. They might be being forced to kill their brothers, but they were not about to start shooting other clones while they were defenceless.

The Empire clone slumped unconscious. He'd have a nasty headache when he woke up but he would still be alive.

* * *

There was another benefit to being inside the city walls now other than the fact the tanks could fire at the AT-ATs to keep them at bay and that was that several snipers stationed in various locations in the Jedi Temple were able to pick off targets as well. Several of the Empire's clones charged towards action with minds filled with the vigour of battle, only to be dropped without warning as a huge laser bolt shot out of nowhere to slam into their chests and knock them over.

The snipers went about their task with a cold, hard determination, the same kind of mindset they always had when going after an enemy. Even though they were shooting at other clones, they quickly zeroed in on the next target instead of mourning the one they had killed beforehand. They had a job to do. End of story.

* * *

As Adi Gallia and Stass Allie fought to protect their street, the two Jedi dodged back and forth along the blockage of stone they had built, the army of Empire clones crowding the street and moving forward like a glacier going at much faster speed than normal. Adi blocked a stray bolt heading for her face and deflected a quick three more that were aimed at her abdomen and then leaned over so far to the left it looked almost impossible, which succeeded in allowing her to duck under three more bolts and block another that was about to hit another clone in the face.

The Korun woman glanced out of the corner of her eyes to watch as Stass span to the side, dodging several shots in the process and skilfully twirling her blade behind her back and round to the front as she span, blocking several more shots in this quick manoeuvre. She allowed herself a small smile. Stass was handling this remarkably well. She was very proud of the way her Padawan had turned out, steadfast even when encountering the Digimon for the first time.

Still, even with the help of the Gungans flinging energy balls over their heads, the enemy clones were advancing too fast for comfort and Adi gritted her teeth as she slid slightly down the blockade.

And then, an unexpected reprieve, when Commander Bolt on his AT-RT veered out of nowhere from one of the narrow side-streets, followed by a couple of others, which stampeded over the enemy clones, firing lasers wildly around them to put holes in several more not in their path. A couple of kaadu riders followed, the riders leaping from their saddles to lay into the clones with deft springy movements.

Bolt gave Adi a thumbs up before he and his AT-RTs charged away to be of use elsewhere. Stass grinned and jumped down from the blockade, running over to assist the Gungans near the front. She wasn't fast enough to save one, who was shot in the side even as he stabbed into another with his pole and keeled over, but she was able to sweep her lightsaber through the clone responsible and tackle the other one to the ground before he could be hit as well.

Even on the floor she put her lightsaber to good use and fended off the attacks from the clones above her, pushing the Gungan in front of her. Adi, seeing her Padawan in danger, levitated a large amount of loose blockade and hurled it over the heads of her allies to pound the clones at the front and knock them over. Stass leapt up and added a powerful Force push to the equation to send even more to the ground and then she scrambled up, shepherding the Gungan to safety as she blocked more bolts.

As the clones got to their feet, they were knocked down again by a barrage of energy balls from the Gungans.

Fives dashed across the street, lasers flying through the space behind him, and the ARC trooper vaulted over the blockade and ducked behind cover as more shot over his head. It was definitely getting dangerous out there, more so than just about any other mission he had ever faced before. Fives took a moment to recuperate and then leapt back out from cover, narrowly avoiding getting hit in the shoulder by another laser and raising his pistols. His first shot crashed into a wall because the target had dodged but the second caught said target in the side. Fives pulled off another couple of shots before he was forced to duck back down again, but he sprang up almost immediately and fired a double shot that slammed into the midsections of two clones standing side by side.

Echo ran over to his partner ARC trooper and gave him some help, stepping several paces sideways quickly to avoid a few bolts and opening fire on a pair of clones that had gotten too close. The first one was dropped by a hit in the head and the other one attempted to dive for cover, but was shot out of mid-air by the ARC trooper. Echo hurried rolled himself over closer to Fives as a missile whooshed overhead and slammed into the wall, burying the place he had stood in rubble and he quickly hurled a grenade towards the enemy for good measure.

* * *

Still, despite the actions of the defenders, the attackers continued to force them backwards, picking off several members of their force despite every effort they threw up against them. One of the Gungan shield walls broke down when a pair of grenades were rolled beneath their shields. One Gungan who spotted them shrieked, but was too late to stop the line from being tossed into the air to slam against the wall by the resultant explosion.

The Empire clones cheered and surged forwards, firing at the unprotected clones that had been behind the line and picking several of them off where they stood. Energy balls and more blasters shots rained down on them, but nothing seemed to be able to stop them.

Until one of the doors they were charging past was kicked open to reveal Hardcase on the other side. How and when he had got into the building was a mystery but the clone roared, "Say hello to my little friend!" and let rip with his blaster cannon.

Such was the ferocity of Hardcase's attack, coupled from its unexpected angles, that the clones that weren't killed almost instantly, which was actually a very small number of the frontrunners, backpedalled and dived for cover, breaking their charge. Hardcase swept his barrage of bolts over their hiding places, pinning them down, but even he found himself in trouble shortly afterwards when a myriad of other clones aimed their blasters right at him.

"Hardcase! Move!" Rex shouted as he leapt from cover, holding a detonator in his hand. His movements drew the eyes of the enemy clones and their eyes widened beneath their helmets as Rex slammed his thumb on the button.

The ground beneath the Empire clones and the walls of the buildings around them ruptured and broke apart in terrific explosions of rubble, shaking practically the whole area as the concealed detpacks were set off. The clones that weren't killed in the initial blast were tossed to the floor, and many more of those were killed by falling debris from the walls. Hardcase hefted his cannon onto his shoulder and dashed for safety and a bunch of Gungans leapt forwards and charged, laying into the survivors with their electropoles.

Rex pounded Hardcase on the shoulder and nodded to him, and then burst out a violent flow of blue lasers from his pistols over the heads of the Gungans at the next wave of incoming clones. The Gungans stood ready to attack, but moments later they immediately turned around and ran back the way they had come.

Rex found out why a moment later, as one of the AT-ATs began to appear over the side of the buildings in front of them. He cursed and cried, "Fall back! Quickly! We don't want to get caught in the blasts of that walker!"

Clone and Gungan hurried to obey as Rex, Jesse and Hardcase kept the incoming clones at bay for a little while longer, before they were quickly forced to retreat a little further by the stream of blaster bolts and the fact that the AT-AT was beginning to focus on them.

* * *

Commander Bolt powered his walker around, the feet slamming into the ground like a piston and pummelling a clone into the concrete as he dived into a side-street and dashed across it, re-appearing in another main street among another batch of clones, which were again, completely taken by surprise at his appearance. As Bolt laid a quick ten or so blasts into their ranks and felled about eight clones, he escaped before they could gather themselves by leaping straight over the defenders and dashing down the street, swerving round a corner and dashing down another street, jumping over its own defenders and cutting down the front row of this batch too.

The rebel walkers were causing devastation, using the layout of the city that the pilots of the Empire walkers didn't have. They reappeared in a new area, caused chaos for about two seconds and then fled, hitting and then running to help keep the Empire clones at bay. Bolt felt almost invigorated as he charged down another side-street and slid into another combat fray.

He found himself face to face with an AT-TE walker.

It was not one that belonged to the rebels.

Bolt gasped. It seemed that, at some point, the Empire had managed to get several tanks through the gaps in the walls and into the city. Now they too had the cover of the buildings for their larger units. Turrets were pounding against the AT-TE with no apparent effect and Bolt's eyes widened as he saw the huge cannon on the larger walkers back was already focused on him.

Bolt slammed his walker forwards too late. The heavy blast blasted the walker's legs to piece and sent Bolt flying. He crashed into a wall headfirst so hard the life was instantly purged from his body as his neck broke and he fell to the floor.

The AT-TE that had killed the loyal clone marched down the street, as did several more in various parts of the city. The Empire's clones were grouping under its legs for cover, as it moved towards the blockade guarded by Ki-Adi-Mundi.

Mundi flung himself into a sideways flip to avoid a few shots from the clones and parried two more that were trying to intercept him, before he charged down from the blockade with blinding speed and slashed two clones across the chest, span about to behead another, slash a fourth down the centre and stab behind him to kill another in the same swing. As the five clones fell to the ground dead, Mundi gathered the Force in his hand and launched a powerful Force-push that flung many other clones backwards.

One of them crashed into the front of the AT-TE as it rounded the corner. Mundi's eyes widened and he sprang backwards as a heavy blast annihilated the ground beneath him. "Get down!" he shouted to the clones as the large cannon swivelled around to follow him. "Bring up our own tank!"

As the clones followed his orders and slid behind the blockade, the Cerean Jedi joining them, the AT-TE behind them moved over into attack position. The Empire's AT-TE was pounded by energy balls from the nearest Gungans but the armour was too think for them to be having much of an impact beyond slowing it down a little.

The tanks engaged each other in a sudden and vicious exchange of firepower, the four cannons around the cockpit blasting and impacting harmlessly against the flanks of the other as the larger cannons on their backs swivelled over to lock onto one another. Quick as a flash, the Empire's AT-TE opened fire first and pummelled the side of the other with its huge blasts.

The thick armour of the AT-TE took the first shot and the second shot hit in the joint which should have destroyed the leg and caused it to keel over. But it didn't because this AT-TE was equipped with some Chrome-Digizoid – it was one that belonged to the Tenacious Ten. It promptly opened fire with its own cannon and blasted the other in the leg. And this one _did_ keel over.

The pilot of the walker punched the air at his victory. The he balked as a missile shot from beneath the collapsed walker and slammed into the duraglass cockpit, blasting through it and turning it into an instant inferno. The rebel's tanks collapsed to the floor as well, now completely useless.

The clones of the Empire cheered and surged forwards, running forwards and up the blockade in an effort to clear the top and gain the advantage of the cover themselves to shoot at those behind.

However, the first to reach the top found Blade, Kix and Commander Ember waiting for them. And Ember had prepared the main weapon that had given him his name.

Flamethrowers.

As the three clones let rip, the flames gushed out of the nozzles and washed over the Empire clones, the searing heat scorching through the softer parts of their armour and cooking them inside, burning them to death. The three clones moved up and over the blockade, pouring flames down on those below and sweeping from left to right to cover the maximum range. Ki-Adi-Mundi leapt up next to them and blocked a bolt aimed for Kix as the rest of the clones surged back up the blockade to try and help them.

* * *

In other parts of the city, many of the rebel's AT-TE walkers were stationed on higher ground like the tops of buildings, and were able to fire down on their Imperial counterparts which did not have that luxury. Many of the Empire's tanks were bombarded from above and torn apart from the middle, collapsing into the street and blocking off the passage for any other large mechanical opponents to get past.

But it wasn't all good news either. Some of the AT-TEs of the Empire seemed to catch on that they were in danger from above and had their cannons in position the moment they rounded the corner. One of the rebel tanks received a shot right to the underside of the cockpit and crumpled to the ground in a giant heap of sparks. Another went out in an even greater fashion, slammed in the side by a tank in a street it wasn't even aiming into. The blast caught it at such an angle that the tank was almost flipped and plummeted off the side of the building, crushing several clones and Gungans beneath it and it landed with a bang in the streets.

For the most part though, the attack of the AT-TEs by the Empire forced many of the resisting fighters away from their blockades, blowing them to smithereens in one mighty blast and taking out anybody too close to it at the time. Eekar and his group of clones were forced back to a Y junction, where they saw Finn and even more clones being forced back down the other branch. Mace Windu hurriedly tried to impede the progress of his walker by using the Force to collapse one of the buildings. Ahsoka and Barriss teamed up to hold a barrier of broken rocks before them to take the shots of the tanks while the others got away.

Cannons blazed. Turrets let rip. Energy balls flew through the air to fall amongst the enemy. Blasters rained death down as other blasters rained death in the opposite direction. Explosions rocked the city. Everything was falling into almost complete and utter turmoil.

* * *

Standing beside the Jedi Temple main doors and, for now, away from the action, Terriermon grimaced. "This is a mess," he said through gritted teeth. "This is just so wrong."

"Agreed," Renamon nodded with a steely expression. "But I'm afraid we have little alternative to this."

"We should probably be making our move soon," Aayla informed them. "If we're going to start making our way to Coruscant and get there before the fighting here ends to take Palpatine by surprise."

"We know," Henry nodded, who had his arms wrapped around Suzie, who looked quite terrified at all the horrible noises coming from the city. They had little way of knowing who was still alive or dead by this point. They had seen the death of Eeth Koth through the eyes of the others, but who among their other friends and allies were dead? They just couldn't tell.

"Those AT-ATs are ridiculously tough, aren't they?" Rika frowned at the giant walkers ahead of them trying to get clear shots over the tops of the buildings as they inched further into the city. "How are we supposed to deal with something like them?"

"I'm not sure but I believe that actually might be our fault," Renamon sighed. "Remember that many of the prototype AT-AT walkers were built with Chrome Digizoid incorporated into various sections?"

Rika's eyes bugged out. "Oh crap!" she said.

"Yep," Renamon nodded. "My thoughts exactly."

Lopmon, on the other hand, was standing with her fists clenched by her sides, her eyes shut so she wouldn't have to look at the plumes of smoke and blazing fire coming from ahead of her. But all that did was highlight the noises as her already sensitive ears began to hear the cannon shots and blaster fire and occasional scream all the more clearly.

And then Lopmon did something very un-Lopmon-like.

First she turned around and said to Waxer, Boil and Xiaan, who were standing behind her, "Things are getting dangerous here. You should get Numa inside quickly."

"We're on it," Waxer agreed as they ushered the Twi'lek girl and Gabumon inside the Temple, the two heavy doors being shut with Force-pushes from Tera Sinube and Jocasta Nu. The Lopmon turned around and took off, flapping in the direction of the fighting.

"Wait! Lopmon! Where are you going?"

"To help!" Lopmon shouted back. "I may not be able to do much if I am not to give myself away but I have to at least try and do something!" And then she was gone, vanishing into the street.

Renamon and Terriermon exchanged glances, then both of them grinned and dashed or swooped after the brown bunny. Aayla chuckled and added, "Stay here," to the Tamers as she hurried in pursuit.

* * *

Piell flipped backwards several times as the shot from one of the AT-TE cannons pulverised the blockade he had been standing in. The clones behind him were hurriedly retreating deeper into the city, trying desperately to keep the walker off their backs, but the heavy machine seemed to move forward almost inexorably and there was practically nothing that they seemed to be able to do to stop it.

K'kruhk bounded over to where Piell was and hurriedly pushed some Gungans ahead of him to try and keep them out of the blast zone. The two Jedi stood side by side with grimaces on their faces as they watched the clone in the gun on the top levelling the large cannon right at them. They quickly prepared themselves to dodge when something inexplicable happened.

The clone's head snapped to the side as if it had been hit with something like, say, a large invisible fist. He was knocked unconscious immediately and then scooped up by something neither Jedi could see and thrown high into the air. Then, the hatch on top of the walker seemed to open of its own accord and shut a few moments later, as the gun swivelled around to point at the second AT-TE coming up the street behind the first.

Piell and K'kruhk both grinned. They knew _exactly _what was going on.

Hidden under Renamon's perception filter, the fox in question had biffed the clone out of his seat and then opened the hatch, allowing Terriermon and Lopmon to slip inside the walker. Aayla had leapt into the controls on the cannon and started to whirl it around. She focused the gun on the duraglass of the cockpit and let rip with a single blast that slammed into it and sent the AT-TE toppling forwards, its legs sagging beneath it and its cockpit a complete and utter mess. The clone in the cannon managed to stay in his seat and, startled, aimed the cannon as best he could at the back of the supposedly traitorous walker.

That was when a diamond lanced out of nowhere and slammed into his chest, killing him. Renamon and Aayla high-fived one another invisibly.

Meanwhile the clone in the first AT-TE cockpit was wondering what the heck was going on above it when suddenly a white bunny jumped onto his head from behind and wrapped his ears around his helmet. The clone yelped and struggled to throw him off, but then a brown bunny joined the white one and helped in forcibly removing the man's helmet.

The three of them momentarily struggled with one another, Terriermon and Lopmon using their hands and one ear to keep the clone's arms from hitting them as they wrapped their other ears behind his head, interlocking their fingers to make something like a slingshot. Then they used that slingshot to slam the clone's forehead into the duraglass in front of him and knock him completely out cold.

Satisfied, the bunnies hurried back out of the cockpit, after sabotaging the controls, and hurried back into the outside, where they found Aayla standing in front of the broken second AT-TE. The Twi'lek had her hands raised and was using the Force, so the huge and very heavy AT-TE rolled over onto its side like some kind of giant rolling over in its sleep. With a horrible grinding of concrete against screeching metal, Aayla manipulated the side-on walker to turn around until its front and back end were at either ends of the street, effectively blocking off the route from the clones that had been behind it.

Nodding in satisfaction, the three Digimon leapt on top of the new barricade and poured a Diamond Storm, a Bunny Blast and a Blazing Ice between them into the ranks of the startled and bemused clones, who suddenly found themselves under attack from something that they could not even see. One of them attempted to shoot at whatever was attacking, but his laser seemed to bounce off of thin air (though there was the distinctive sound of a lightsaber hitting it as it did), before he was slammed in the helmet several times by Bunny Blast pellets and dropped to the ground.

Aayla smiled and said, "Well, seems to me that we've done a pretty good job there."

"Agreed," nodded Renamon, as the four of them leapt back over to the other side of the barricade, momentarily revealing themselves to give Piell and K'kruhk a thumbs up before Renamon raised the perception filter again. "But there might be a little more which we can do before we have to leave."

"Let's get to it then," Terriermon laughed as he took off and swept into one of the side-streets, Lopmon right on his heels, while Aayla and Renamon sprang onto the rooftops and dashed across them that way. Many of the clones in the next street were completely blasted off their feet as the bunnies invisibly used their spinning Twin Cyclone move to thunder across the street and toss clones left and right without prejudice with no warning whatsoever.

Renamon leapt down from the roof and knocked one clone out with an almighty kick to the head and then grabbed another one by the shoulder and hip on opposite sides of his body and sent him flying and spinning away. Aayla took out one clone by landing on him, and then sent several others around her sky-high with a sudden Force-push. The invisible task-force then pressed on further into the city.

* * *

The rebel-aligned clones continued to fight bravely against odds that seemed to be almost completely overwhelming. As Eekar and Finn fought side by side now, desperately trying to keep the clones coming down either directions of the Y-junction at bay, Conor dashed across to cover behind a wall as the area behind him was torn apart by a missile. The clone pressed his back against the wall for a moment, before he rolled out of hiding to blast two Empire clones in the stomachs. He rolled again as more shots came his way and dived backwards, tossing a grenade through the air as he did so.

No less than five lasers shot over his face as he crashed onto his back and his grenade landed, bounced and rolled to a stop about four ranks into the advancing clones, resulting in an explosion that tossed several forwards, many sideways and many more backwards. Conor hurriedly scrambled to his feet and hurried back to the main group, blasting two more clones down as he did so.

On the other side of the Y-junction was ARC trooper Blitz, who had quickly managed to organise a row of three troopers all wielding rocket launchers and hurriedly directed them to fire simultaneously, tearing the front three lines of the enemy clones to smithereens. He hurriedly fired a couple of shots from his blaster and rolled off the crate he had been standing on to cover his rocket-wielding men as they reloaded. He managed to shoot one clone in the forehead and then another in the chest.

And then a bunch of enemy AT-RTs rounded the corner. Blitz swore as he motioned for his troops to hurry up and fire again. A couple of friendly AT-RTs charged out of a side street and blasted apart a couple of the enemy walkers but the rest just kept coming. Blitz' men raised their weapons and fired at the oncoming two-legged machines, but it was in vain. The large vehicles dodged the blasts with ease, almost jumping over them in one case, and thundered on. Blitz roared as he shot one clone out of the seat, but the others opened fire and mowed the ARC trooper and his men down, killing them all immediately.

A moment later and a bunch of Gungan energy balls waylaid the machines and shorted them out, but not quickly enough to save Blitz or the three under his command.

* * *

Elsewhere in the city, where Rex and a good deal of his own men where, their AT-TE that was backing them up had been taken out by a lucky blast from the opposing walker and some swift firing from the side by some AT-RTs. Now the clones were retreating hurriedly as the AT-AT in the distance continued to advance closer to the buildings and try to get a view of them over the top.

Rex dived and knocked Hardcase to the ground as the blast from the incoming AT-TE shook the ground nearby. The two clones scrambled to their feet and hurried out of harm's way as the walker continued to offload laser after laser from its back and head cannons, forcing the clones to seek shelter under the down walker behind them to try and escape from most of the firepower.

"We're pinned down, sir!" Jesse shouted.

"I can see that!" Rex replied. "But when that AT-AT gets over the tops of the buildings this walker it not going to be able to protect us! We need to move and get out of here!"

"But how, sir?" Hardcase asked. "That other walker is firing at anyone or anything that attempts to leave cover. We'll be blasted to seconds in a moment, and besides, we have nothing to deal with it. All our rocket launcher guys are dead!"

Rex stepped out from under the walker and retreated just as quickly as a blast pummelled the street right in front of him. "Give me a moment!" he murmured. "Let me think of something."

"No, Captain," Jesse replied firmly, grabbed a fallen electropole off a dead Gungan. "Leave this to me! Hurry up and go."

"Jesse! Wait!" Rex shouted as Jesse suddenly charged out from beneath the downed AT-TE before Rex could grab him. The men of the 501st watched helplessly as Jesse rolled to avoid a blast from the AT-TE and charged down the street towards it, dashing up the blockade they had been crouched behind and into full view of the distant AT-AT. Jesse leapt off the top of the blockade and flung the electropole like a spear right at the moment the AT-AT fired at him and blew the blockade, and Jesse with it, high into the air.

Jesse's electropole shot through the air and punctured the duraglass of the AT-TE, skewering the clone inside and killing him immediately. But the damage was done.

"JESSE!" Rex bellowed as he watched one of his most reliable men crash onto a rooftop nearby, hanging over the side like some gruesome vulture kill. He did not get up again. Rex bit his lip and yelled, "Come on! Let's get moving! Away from danger!"

"Someone's got to take those AT-ATs down," growled Hardcase as the clones hurried to obey.

* * *

Elsewhere, several of the Gungans in one of the shield walls had fallen thanks to a missile that lanced in and overwhelmed their hand-held shields. Commander Jet, who had almost been caught in the blast roared in anger and leapt into the gap they had created and poured lasers out to greet the missile clone and those on either side of him as several more energy balls were flung overhead to batter against their incoming defences. A clone holding a rotary cannon directed his fire towards Jet, but the clone picked up a shield from one of the fallen Gungans and held it before him to fill the gap in the line.

Commander Monnk was right there with him, crouched behind him and firing low between the gap in the shields in front of him. He managed to shoot a clone in both legs and send him crashing to the ground, shoot the one behind him in the chest and then finish off the one on his hands and knees, before he cut down a further two. He then spotted one clone dart forward to roll a grenade towards the shield lines. Monnk pulled out his own grenade and rolled it in response, intercepting the other grenade long before it reached the Gungan lines and causing a huge explosion as they blew each other up away from either side of the conflict.

Ki-Adi-Mundi, who had been helping to heal several injured clones, took this opportunity to leap out over the shield wall in the cover of the smoke and launch a surprise attack, springing out from the remnants of the explosion to slash a clone diagonally downwards, spin about to cut one across the waist and stab the one behind him, whirling about to block off six flashes of laser with his spinning blade in one hand as he used the Force with the other to tug one of the clones into the firing ones, then backflip and stab down into another clone as he passed overhead. Then, he quickly retreated back towards the Gungan lines to help them defend once the Empire clones recuperated.

* * *

Commander Ponds was now leading the Lightning Squadron, another group of AT-RT walkers that they had kept in reserve until it looked like most of the ones they were using already had been picked off. Unlike the other AT-RTs though, these ones were not actually dashing about. Each walker had a clone and a Gungan seated on it, the clone controlling the walker while the Gungan held a personal ray shield at the front to intercept anyone trying to shoot the rider. There was a second Gungan on the ground in front of each one, protecting the legs in the same way.

The walkers were slowly marching forwards and gaining ground smoothly in this manner. It helped that Mace was standing before them to redirect any missiles that the enemy tried to shoot at the shields to short-circuit them. Ponds swivelled his walker from the left side of the street to the right, the cannon nose flashing about seven times a second to send a barrage more deadly than any rotary cannon surging into the enemy, their retaliatory lasers pounded harmlessly against the shield his Gungan was holding in front of him.

* * *

The Gungans were certainly proving their worth and that was not the only example. In another street, where Obi-Wan and Agen Kolar were defending their own retreating clones, several of the Gungans remained crouched behind what remained of the street blockade, holding their electropoles and energy balls ready for the imminent attack. Obi-Wan turned around to deflect several lasers as the clones cleared the top of the blockade.

And the Gungans leapt upwards and out of hiding, slamming the butts of their poles into the torsos of the clones and sending them tumbling down into the rest of their ranks clambering up the blockades. The Gungans hurriedly hurled energy balls down on top of them, searing into the armour of the clones that had fallen and causing them to stagger at the blistering heat that burnt through their skin.

The Gungans beat a hasty retreat as a distant AT-TE opened fire on them, faster than they even intended because Obi-Wan jerked them back with a large Force-pull and into cover before he charged past them and skidded to the top of the blockade, sending out a burst of the Force in front of him to send those clones who were recovering rolling again, his lightsaber flashing to parry two more shots and then scything down and through the chests of a couple of others. He bounced over a shot from the walker and used the Force to pick up and hurl a downed AT-RT that stood nearby right at it.

The walker collided with the front of the larger walker resulting in an explosion that knocked the tank askew if not entirely putting it out of commission. Obi-Wan turned around to see a clone aiming at him with a missile launcher at dangerously close range but then a sudden shot came out of nowhere and slammed into the clone's side, sending him toppling.

Obi-Wan gave a salute in the direction of the Temple in the off chance the sniper who had just saved him would see it through his scope. He then dashed back towards the other clones, abandoning the blockade at last. Agen Kolar was waiting for him, and the Zabrak used the Force to levitate a fresh turret out into the middle of the road, which immediately started blasting at any clone that appeared over the top of the blockage in the road.

* * *

The main alleyway was still seeing its fair of action as well as Anakin, Ahsoka and Barriss beat a slow and steady retreat into the city, lasers flying around them from behind like a sea which parted as they past. They were still letting the enemy clones get relatively close to them so they could occasionally dart outwards and stab one or slash a couple or kick another and then leap back into place.

But General Tarpals was really starting to come into his own. The Gungan was proving why he was, indeed, a General. Spinning his electropole over his head and ducking low so it span at head-height, he clobbered two nearby clones trying to find room to train their blaster on him in the side of the head at almost the same time and knocked them over.

Tarpals span around and continued spinning his pole with both hands to swipe the legs out from another clone, slam another in the chest and send him sailing onto his back and dodge aside as another clone tried to shoot him and thwacking the blaster out of said clone's hand before bringing the spinning to an abrupt halt and slamming it forwards to spear the clone in the gut and let loose a blast of electricity that instantly fried him.

Tarpals sprang to the side and onto the wall as a missile impacted in his previous spot and then sprang off the wall after practically latching onto it for a moment like a lizard, falling into a half-crouch and sweeping his pole out behind him to knock the wind out of another pair of clones. He whirled around, tossing an energy ball right into another clones face and charging at another group of five, bashing one aside with the butt of his pole and charging through the gap he had made, holding his pole in front of him like a bar to slam the two on either side of him in the face with either end.

He whipped around and stabbed the electric end into the fourth and then slammed the butt into the fifth in a reverse stab a couple of moments later to make him double over, then he span around and finished the job with hammer-blow to the top of the head.

He took a brief moment to survey the damage he had caused and rubbed his head just behind his eye stalks. "Phew! Mesa not gotten dis rowdy in longo time," he murmured.

"Good," Ahsoka said as she sprang in to block a laser aimed at the Gungan with her shoto. "Because we need all the help we can get right at this point."

Commander Bly was standing nearby on the blockade, but we quickly leapt off it as the blasts from a Z6 swept through the air in his direction, firing four shots while in the air and taking out three clones with them before he dropped behind the blockade and rolled to safety. He pulled out a grenade, the last one he had in his arsenal and with all the strength he could muster, he threw it over the blockade and the heads of the Jedi and pole-battling Gungans. It bounced off the heads of one of the clones and clattered to the ground, where it let rip with a mighty boom.

Bly caught his breath as he prepped his blasters once more. They were losing ground and they knew it. With the clones coming in all direction except for the back, for now, they were being pushed further and further into the city. It might not be long now before the Empire clones got so far in they could start attempting to take out the shield generators. And if they lost the shields, the enemy bombers would wreak even more havoc than the AT-ATs.

He stood up and prepared to leap over the blockade again, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He started, but looked around to see that it was Boss of the Delta Squad. The rest of his team – Fixer, Sev and Scorch were crowded behind him, as were several other clone commandos which had been recruited from the planet Kamino. Bly crouched back down and murmured, "Are you going then?"

"Yeah," nodded Boss. "The enemy clones are pushing past the city walls and with the Digimon set to leave soon we can't exactly ask them to dig a new tunnel for us. If we don't go soon then we're going to get cut off. We're meeting with Master Vos out the city and then… well, we'll just have to see what happens."

"Alright then," Bly nodded to them. "Well, I wish you guys luck with what you're doing."

"Same here," Fixer supplied.

"It would be a bit of a shame if we succeeded and you guys all died, though," Sev murmured darkly. "So, you guys ready to do your best to stay alive while we go and do our own job?"

"Definitely," Bly nodded. "We'll get things sorted out here. Eventually."

"Are you sure that we can't just go over there and blow them up instead of doing this?" Scorch asked. "I mean, it would make things a hell of a lot easier."

"Yes, and it would also kill a very large number of clones who aren't even taking part in the conflict, Scorch," Boss replied. "There are to be no explosions this time, understood?"

Scorch sighed. "Alright, alright. No explosions. Got it. Damn."

Bly chuckled. "Go on, you rascal. We've got a war to win."

The commandos nodded – the only reason they were still in the city at all was because Sev had insisted on helping snipe from afar for a while, which wasn't that uncommon for him – before they quietly slipped away. Bly knew that they were heading for the back wall of the city, where they would climb over and set off into the forest to play their own special part in this conflict. But he himself had his own job and he quickly turned around and dived over the blockade to do it.

* * *

And it was at this point that a certain Togruta Jedi Master standing on top of a building not far away murmured, "I believe now is the time," before her blue lightsaber flashed into life in her red hands. She sprang off the top of the building, shouting to those behind her, "Spread out! Do your duty!" before she landed on another rooftop not that far away and dashed across it to spring clean over another street and land squarely on a third roof.

She pulled to a halt when she reached the lip of said roof on the other side. Shaak Ti took a brief glance into the street below and noted just now bad things were getting here. It was the one where Rex and his men were currently retreating. They didn't have a Jedi to help protect them, but they had done incredibly valiantly so far, but the army of clones behind them was fast approaching and even Hardcase was struggling to keep them all at bay.

As Rex fired a barrage of blasts to clip one clone in the shoulder, slam another in the hip and another full in the chest, a sudden shadow caused him to look up. With a flurry of her three long lekku, Shaak Ti landed in front of them, taking up a stance for battle with lightsaber raised. The Empire clones hesitated at the sight of a Jedi, which was all the time Shaak Ti needed to charge forwards, blocking a few bolts that remained and leap into the ranks of the clones with a fresh energy that the other Jedi didn't possess any more.

One diagonal slash down a clone. One swing around to kick another in the stomach. One stab to the clone on his other side. One semi-crouch and wide sweep in a circle to fell five clones with one massive arcing blow. One Force push to hurl three more into a wall. One backflip over the head of a clone and slice to the back before he could turn. One spin about. Two flashes as the stabbed a pair of clones in rapid succession and one raised hand to create a gap in their ranks as they were pushed apart from one another.

Shaak Ti blocked the shots across the gap and charged through the fallen clones, her blade sweeping through the floor and up to take out the clone on the other side, turning the upwards swing into a flip and a kick as she hammered another clone under the chin with her foot and actually lift him into the air with the strike. She whirled around and cut two clones across their upper bodies and then sprang into a group of others, spinning her blade around her body in a double three-sixty, or a seven-twenty, jump that killed about seven clones in two seconds, and when she landed, the Force erupted around her to send clones flying in all directions but towards her.

At one point she even used her long _lekku_ as a weapon. She ducked under several shots from another clone and kicked the weapon out of his hand, but there was another one taking aim at her side. She grabbed her right lekku and flung it towards him, where it curled around his neck and tightened thanks to her use of the Force, making him hack and drop his weapon as Shaak Ti finished off the first clone and sliced her blade in an X to take care of the two behind him. Then she grabbed her lekku again and yanked it, pulling the choking clone towards her and running him through as she did so.

The clones were reinvigorated as they charged forwards once more to aid Shaak Ti, but the Togruta turned and shouted, "Make room!" to them.

Rex responded immediately, guessing what was about to happen and signalled his clones to move to either side of the street. Shaak Ti stood before the Empire clones with her blade ready and said to herself, "I'm pretty sure that this next bit isn't going to convince them that we're not their enemies but… well… NOW!" she shouted out loud.

The clones tensed, but, for a moment, nothing happened. A couple of them began to chortle but a split second after they did they began of a whirring noise. A noise which was familiar to all of them. A noise which sounded something like… something like…

Something like four droidekas suddenly rolling around the corner behind the Jedi, shooting between the space the clones had made and spreading out across the street behind Shaak Ti, uncurling from their balls and raising their deflector shields.

"What the…!" shouted one of the Empire clones, moments before the droidekas opened fire without waiting to be told. The flying blue lasers were replaced with red as the double blaster cannons that composed the destroyer droids arms blazed death on the Empire clones, taking out about twenty of them in the first five seconds.

The panicked clones opened fire once more, but their blasts had absolutely no effect at all on the shields of the droidekas as they stepped forwards with clicking noises as their pointed feet hit the ground. Shaak Ti stood before them and continued to move her lightsaber in a wide circle to deflect incoming fire that would have hit here, the weapons of the droidekas sending bolts that matched her skin colour flying through the air on either side of her and filling the streets, slamming down clone after clone with metallic ruthlessness.

And then a flurry of mortar launched grenades flew over the heads of the Jedi and the droids to crash into the clones. Rex and the others had hesitated at the idea of team up with the likes of droidekas, especially against other clones, but the reality of battle took over once more and they hurried to help Shaak Ti.

* * *

All across the city, similar stories were taking places as droidekas rushed around the corners from where they had been waiting for their signals deeper within the city and uncurling beside the defenders to add their own contribution to the battling. The Empire clones were completely taken off guard by this. While many of them had experience fighting droidekas, their sudden and completely unexpected appearance was enough to drive them backwards. Destroyer droids were one of the last things they had been expecting on this particular mission.

There were even places in the city closer to the walls than the defenders which came under attack by the shield toting droids. Many more had been concealed behind or, in some cases, in crates standing inconspicuously at the side of the streets. The clones seeking to get to the action were completely taken off guard when the crates exploded without warning and red laser fire shot out from behind the wreckage, the droidekas stepping forwards to blaze more death into the attacking army.

As three more destroyer droids rolled up to the main blockade where Anakin and the others were, the Chosen One reflected on just how many lengths they had gone through to help them free the Galaxy today. The aid of droidekas were definitely a weird one, and one which would take a while to get used to but that didn't mean it wasn't welcome. The droids proved to be a trump card as great as the addition of the Gungans, the presence of whom the clones were getting used to by this point.

It was a monumental moment. Clone and droid fighting side by side. Something which almost none of them had ever thought would be possible. Not in a million years or even beyond that.

_Anakin,_ he heard Aayla's voice calling his head. _Ahsoka. Barriss. The droid's have taken to the battlefield. That's our cue. We need to leave now if we're to get to Coruscant in time to implement our plan before the fighting here ends._

_We got you,_ nodded Anakin. "Come on, you two, back to the Temple. Commander Bly, hold them back as long as you can."

"Copy that, General Skywalker. Er… may the Force be with you and all that."

"And with you, Bly," Ahsoka nodded.

"We expect to see you in the mess hall later," Barriss agreed as the three Jedi turned around and raced back into the city.

They were quickly replaced, however, by a large group of commando droids that sprang out of nowhere and charged towards the enemy.

* * *

And this chapter officially makes this the longest action sequence that I have ever done in my whole fanfiction career. It's overtaken the duel between Aayla and Ventress, Grievous and Dooku in terms of lengths, by quite some margin at this point. And it's still not over, and won't be for a while. I hope you guys have room for a lot more action, because I have.

And in case any of you are wondering where the heck people like Yoda, Plo, Luminara, Chewbacca, Godzillo, the six Acklay, Zarza and a whole host of other characters are – be patient. They will all have their parts to play and they will do it with style if I have anything to say about it.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Droids and clones fight side by side as the battle for the city streets continues. As the Tenacious Ten and their allies slip away to go about their own role on Coruscant (which will be in the next arc), the rebels continue to strive against the Empire clones with their new allies and try and figure out a way to stop those bloody AT-ATs.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 194 : Mechanical Warfare**


	194. Mechanical Warfare

Hey guys. I'm back again with another update. Lots more action for you in this new chapter, featuring some of the more important reinforcements of the Rebellion. I hope that you are ready for another wild ride, because that's what I strove to make this chapter into. And it sets the scene nicely for the arc after this one, I believe, and for the second half which will be coming in a few days. Hope you like.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 194:- Mechanical Warfare**

* * *

The droidekas' sudden assault upon the Empire's forces was catastrophic for the stormtroopers. Nothing they had in their arsenals except for rocket launchers could possibly make a dent in the deflector shield which the destroyer droids projected around themselves, and any clone remotely close to the droidekas who had a rocket launchers was rapidly mown down by the assault of their near-constant laser bursts that were just as deadly as any Z6.

And before any of the Empire clones had even a chance to recuperate from this new and shocking development, many of their legions suddenly found themselves under attack by commando droids as well. These droids were far more deadly than almost any other in the whole Separatist army. They were quick, agile and ruthless.

As about ten of them flipped over the heads of the rebel clones blocking off the city's main street, they charged recklessly into the Empire's clones. One of them rammed a clone in the stomach with its shoulder so hard he went flying, lashed around to slam its sword into the chest of another, grabbed another by the throat and slammed him into the wall, twice and then heaved him into another, leaned to the side at an impossible angle to avoid a blaster swing from a panicking clone next to it before it pounced on him and carried him to ground, flipping over him and spinning on one foot with blade outstretched and hacked into the floored clone as he tried to stand up.

It then took a couple of blaster shots in the back.

But it ignored them and turned back into the attack.

The other droids wrought devastation across the whole line. One of them somehow managed to lift a struggling clone over its head and throw him, flip to the side and slam another in the chest with the flat of its sword and spin low to slice into the stomach of another, punching through the clone's armour with the force of the blow alone. Another droid grabbed a clone by the head and threw him to the ground, breaking his neck in the process, took a spinning leap over a couple of others and stabbed into one with his blade, drawing a blaster with its other hand and firing on the other, spinning into a frenzy of whirling and shooting.

Another commando slammed a Z6 out of the hands of the clone holding it, punched the clone in the face and grabbed the weapon, turning it on the other clones at point-blank range and killing at least eight of them before it tossed the weapon into the chest of another clone, then dashed past another cleaving him in the side as it did so and span about to bury its blade into the chest of its next victim. One more nearby clone tried to level his blaster at the commando's head while it was occupied, but another commando droid was suddenly there, flipping right over the other droid and hacking off the tip of the blaster, dropped low to sweep the clone's legs from underneath it, grabbed one ankle while it was in the air and slam the clone down on top of two of his comrades.

Two more commando droids teamed up as an AT-RT moved into view around the corner of the street, using their extreme mechanical athleticism to leap into the air and over the heads of several of the clones. The first one landed on the front of the walker like a spider and grabbed the clone riding it, tossing him to the side so hard he went right through a window in one of the nearby buildings. It then leapt off the walker, allowing the other commando to slide between its careening legs and slice one off at the knee. Then both of them sprang up and kicked the walker, causing it to go ploughing through the enemy clones like… well, a plough.

And while the commando droids wrought their havoc and the clones struggled to gather themselves, the droidekas on top of the blockade dropped their shields and curled into balls once more, rolled down the blockade until they were right in front of the enemy clones, unrolled again, raised their shields again, and began blasting at an even closer range than before. Red lasers and flashing metal swords spelled doom for many of the Empire's men on that day.

The droids went about their business with mechanical coldness. There was no emotion like anger, or rage, or righteousness behind what they were doing. It was all just a matter of programming to them. They had all been given explicit orders by Grievous to, in his absence, follow the word of Shaak Ti, and Shaak Ti had instructed them to only attack clones that did not have the X lightsaber pattern painted on their armour when the time came. So that was exactly what the droids were doing.

* * *

All across the city, it was the same. The commando droids and the droidekas crashed into the enemy and drove them backwards with automatic mercilessness.

It even took the rebel clones a few moments to recuperate to this new development. What they saw were clones being attacked by droids and their instinct was to protect the clones and start firing at the droids. They had to forcibly remind themselves that things had changed.

Bly was the first to recover and he roared a loud battlecry. "THIS IS FOR THE REPUBLIC!" he bellowed as he leapt over what remained of the blockade and ran towards the conflict to join the droids in battle, the prominent X on his armour highlighting him as an ally to the metal beings. The call was taken up by the other clones and they surged forwards like a white wave, the Gungans with them whooping their own cries at they crashed into the enemy. Bly rolled around a droideka and blasted two clones in the guts in one in head, darted forwards to slam another, who had a grenade in his hand, in the face with his blaster and send him toppling. The primed grenade went flying, but Bly caught it.

"Hey, Commando droids! Watch out!" he yelled as he tossed it towards a pair of said droids and their clone adversaries. The droids looked down and saw the grenades and catapulted themselves into the air and safely out of the way, so when the grenade exploded it only took out Imperial clones. The commando droids landed nearby and immediately started attacking again without thanking Bly for the warning.

Tarpals ran past a pair of droidekas as well, followed by three other Gungans as they laid into the enemy once again. Tarpals slammed one clone in the head with one end of his pole, swung it around to bash another in the face with the other end and twirled the pole to come down with a crack on the head of another. He ducked as a clone thrown by a commando droid flew over his head and stabbed his pole into another's stomach to electrocute him.

As the Gungans turned to lay into another batch, one of the commando droids leapt in beside him and joined him in the attack. A slash from the droid, a stab from the Gungan and two more clones fell. The droid ducked and Tarpals slammed the pole over it head and struck two more clones in the chests and the droid suddenly sprang over the pole before it finished to fall into the final three, stabbing one, tossing the second aside and wounding the other with a slash to the side. Tarpals finished the job with a quick electrocution.

* * *

Rex, on the other hand was only just beginning to adjust to the presence of the droidekas, when a force that was _not_ commando droids suddenly arrived to lend aid. Shaak Ti was still out the front, deadly and graceful as ever as she lopped the head of one clones, ducked to allow a shot to pass between her montrals, and spun low to slice upwards into another clone then whirl about to stab over the shoulder of another clone into the one behind him, grabbing the clone in front by the arm and catapulting him into his comrades with the Force and spinning around to add a Force push to optimise the distance they travelled when the collision took place.

And then four droids charged past Rex and the droidekas to join Shaak Ti at the front of the line.

MagnaGuards.

A force even more deadly than the commandos.

And as Shaak Ti was their temporary commander, the MagnaGuards rallied around her to do their duty and guard her.

They fell upon the clones like a miniature tornado. Or rather four miniature tornados all slamming into them at the same time. The first MagnaGuard span its staff around to so fast that it swiped the legs out of two clones so hard they landed on their shoulders with their feet in the air, hammered another in the hip, clobbered another across the head, swept around to impact another in the stomach and sweep around to arc across three more all in the space of about three seconds. It then lunged forwards with the staff, the butt of one end crashing into the chest of one, pushing him into the one behind him and carrying them both to the ground with one on top of the other, where the MagnaGuards activated the electrostaff and sent them both to sizzling death.

The second MagnaGuard had a cloak, but not for long because it promptly shed it and tossed it over two clones like a net to entangle them, whipped around to smash another in the face with his staff end and another in the groin with the other end a split second later and then curved around to slam to two clones struggling under the cloak and drop them in an instant. It then twirled its staff like rotor blades by spinning its hand at the wrist and shoved the whirling weapon forwards to strike more clones than it could count.

The third MagnaGuard seemed to prefer using its own body as the weapon rather than the staff. It jumped onto one clone and pinned it to the ground with a hand to the neck and span over him to strike a pair of others with its leg in a metal kick, brought its electric staff plunging down into the clone on the ground and then swept it behind its back to crash into another three. A couple of lasers impacted into its arm as the other clones gathered around it, but the droid ignored the attacks and slammed it staff to the ground and used it like a pole, swinging its whole body around it to use its own torso like a club and batter down the opposition.

The fourth and final MagnaGuard teamed up with Shaak Ti with demoralizing consequences for the Empire's forces. Shaak Ti stabbed into one clone as the MagnaGuard leaned out from behind her to electrocute another and then swept its staff low and colliding it with all nearby legs except Shaak Ti's because she had jumped over the strike and whirled around to land in a crouch and thrust out her hands with a Force-push, sending four clones high into the air. Then she span around to double-slash two clones in the chest and impale another between them as the MagnaGuard used its staff as a pole-vault and sprang over Shaak Ti to land on another clone and hook its staff around another, heaving it past the droid and into striking zone of the Jedi.

And then was when Rex finally got his act together and roared a challenge, much like Bly before him, as he rolled past one of the droidekas and continued the action with a flurry of bolts from his twin blasters that gunned down three other clones. A barrage of Gungan energy balls hurtled overhead to fall past the droids and bombard the clones. Hardcase sprang onto a crate and opened fire once more with his Z6.

The other clones took up positions around the wall of droidekas and practically doubled the size of the blaster barrage between them. It was not a good day to be a clone who was on the side of the Empire, that was for sure. Several of the rebel clones were still picked off by blasts from the other direction but, for the most part, Shaak Ti and the MagnaGuards were more than enough to keep the Empire off their backs.

* * *

Brawling had broken out throughout all the streets of the city now, as the Jedi rushed forwards with lightsaber blades ready to join the commando droids in combat, while the clones regrouped around the droidekas. The two types of droid seemed to compliment the main fighting types of the living members of the rebel alliance quite nicely. The Gungans used their leaping skills to jump onto higher platforms of rubble in the streets and continued flinging their energy balls in earnest.

Commander Ponds and his Lightning Squadron were still going strong, backed up now by the destroyer droids. Mace Windu stood at the forefront, moving closer to the enemy clones and calmly slicing his purple blade to intercept the constant stream of lasers coming his way. As the commando droids charged past him, he too ran on to join the attack, eliminating clone after clone in a wave of death that shoved them back across the streets.

But things were not about to go completely their way, because an AT-TE slowly began to round the corner at that point, its cannon primed and ready for action. Evidently it had been able to climb over the previous and now broken walker that was blocking the street with a little difficulty and now its cannon swivelled around to aim at the wall of AT-RTs and their Gungan protectors.

Ponds swore. "Back!" he roared. "Back! Hurry!" The walkers and the Gungans around them rushed to obey the command and retreated further into the streets, but the droidekas were a little slower to obey the command and three of them were immediately wiped out when a powerful blast from the tank's cannon overwhelmed their shields and blew them to metal. The remaining droideka curled into a ball and rolled backwards out of harm' way once more.

Mace growled as the cannon of the AT-TE swivelled around to point at him and the commando droids at the front of the line now, the Empire clones fleeing towards the safety of the walker so they wouldn't be caught in the blast. He sent out an almighty Force-push that flung the retreating clones several hundred feet, many of them crashing into the front of the walker, but the AT-TE itself was completely unhindered by the Force attack as its cannon tilted down and zeroed in on the Jedi Master and the droids around him.

Mace was about to leap aside to get out of harm's way when suddenly one of the commando droids darted forwards, a grenade clutched in its metal hand and flung it right towards the main cannon on top of the tank. Mace assumed that it was trying to take out the gunner manning it, but a flash of inspiration came to the Jedi Master and he caught the grenade with the Force, altered its path a little bit and sent it shooting straight up the barrel of the cannon and right to the back.

The gunner, who apparently hadn't noticed, fired.

The explosion that followed tore the cannon and the top of the AT-TE apart in the blast and flung the gunner to the ground. The whole walker juddered as the impact blasted through to some of its essential circuitry through the thick armour and collapsed to the ground, crushing a couple of clones beneath its bulk. Mace nodded in satisfaction and the rest of the commando droids surged forwards to attack once more.

* * *

Even with the reinforcements, Obi-Wan's team were struggling now. One of the AT-ATs rounding the corner had forced them to retreat to get out of its line of fire again, and, while the progress of the Empire's forces was being severely impeded by the blasts of AT-TEs from high up, they had managed to catch up again and caught the rebels flat-footed. Three of the commando droids fell with well placed shots to the head which tossed them backwards, and Obi-Wan and Agen Kolar struggled to hold the line. They had long since lost their blockade and now they had next to no cover.

As Obi-Wan stood stoically in the middle of the street, Cody dashed up boldly next to him and crouched low, carefully and methodically picking his targets and trying to take out the most dangerous looking of the enemy. One which hefted a rocket launcher had to go first and was nailed in the chest. Another heaving a rotary cannon first had the cannon rendered useless by a quick laser flash and was then shot in the head and collapsed backwards.

Two droidekas rolled up to either side of the Jedi and clone and unrolled to assist them with waves of their repeating blasters and several other clones regrouped behind them. The clones of the Empire focused their firepower towards Obi-Wan as they tried to find cover from the droidekas blasts, but the Jedi remained strong in his defence, spinning around to turn aside four quick strikes and diving out of the line, snapping up his lightsaber as he rolled back onto his feet and hurriedly trying to buy them some time with a wave of rubble from a blast mark in the street to impede the progress of the enemy.

Cody dashed in to assist Obi-Wan, as did a few Gungans toting their energy shields to try and press forwards once more, but the clones of the Empire quickly foiled that plan by throwing at least ten grenades simultaneously towards the Jedi. Obi-Wan saw them coming and his eyes widened. He span about with a wild flail of his arm to send Cody and the Gungan tumbling backwards and dashed after them just as the grenades right behind him exploded.

The blast carried Obi-Wan into the air and sent him crashing to the street and rolling to a stop in front of one of the droidekas. He was winded, but otherwise unharmed and as he gasped for breath he blocked another incoming laser even as he lay there on the ground. Sensing an opportunity, the Empire clones charged forwards seeking to overwhelm Kenobi's defences.

But there was a setback ahead for them. Or rather, there was the moment it leapt off a nearby roof and landed in the middle of the street so hard the concrete splintered directly in front of the nearest clones. They came to a screeching halt but the front runners were way too slow to stop as four lightsabers sprang into life in front of them and windmilled up and over one another, slashing through six clones at practically the exact same moment.

Grievous, for that was who it was, roared as he fell upon the clones, a small group of commando droids flipping off the roofs to join their General in the attack. Grievous' patented buzzsaw flashed into the clone's ranks with consequences that could only be described as brutal and messy. Several of the clones lost limbs and heads in that two seconds and Grievous still wasn't done. The cyborg plunged two lightsaber blades into a pair of clones and heaved them aside, his foot lashing out and grabbing another by the chest in his talons. Grievous rotated at the hip and flung the clone into his fellows as he span, sending two blades whirring low to cut the legs out from under two more, one arm sticking out to the side to impale another all at the same time.

Two of his arms slashed out to either side of his body to truncate two more clones by cutting them in two at the hip as the other two sliced down from above in front of him to cut through another pair. His yellow eyes blazed in the destruction and he barrelled forwards like a battering ram, slamming clones with his shoulders and piling them against each other before he stopped and tossed them forward, his blades whirring down on them to finish them off and his foot whipping up to latch around another clone's face and drag him into the air as he bent over backwards and rotated at the shoulders to bring himself flipping back onto his feet several paces behind.

He squared off against the other clones, who were looking absolutely terrified at the sight of him, but suddenly Obi-Wan dashed up behind the General and leapt, springing off Grievous' shoulders to dash his blade through two of them and send a bunch of others catapulting in the walls, where they were finished off by the commando droids which were still flipping about all over the place. Several Gungans dashed past Grievous on either side, to begin hammering into the Empire's troops once more.

As the conflict continued around Obi-Wan and Grievous, the Jedi turned to the cyborg and said, "Forgive me if I'm wrong, but weren't you meant to stay _out_ of the battling here, General?"

Grievous' eyes narrowed. "Need I say it again, Kenobi?" he growled.

"Right, right, we aren't your bosses," Obi-Wan chuckled. "Yes, we get it. I suppose you couldn't resist the urge to fight somebody, could you? All the same, thank you for your support."

Grievous nodded in acknowledgment but then sheathed his blades and said, "I have done my part here." He turned around without another word and dashed back towards the Jedi Temple. Obi-Wan rolled his eyes and turned to see a clone levelling a Z6 at him, only to be taken out by a commando droid and a Gungan simultaneously. And then the droidekas rolled past Obi-Wan and back into the action and Cody slammed an Empire clone into the wall with his shoulder and delivered a crushing blow to the side of the head with his blaster to knock him unconscious.

* * *

The city was in absolute chaos as the combined forces of clone, Jedi, Gungan and droid fought hard to protect the city, but even with all their forces, the Empire clones had such a large army that the comparative deaths among them were still minimal. More and more were pouring into the streets from the broken walls or hauling themselves over the intact walls with their cables, not caring if they threw their lives away for what they thought was right.

Even Piell bounced into several mid-air flips as the clones blasted at him from ahead. Aayla and the Digimon's AT-TE barrier seemed to be holding most of the clones in his street at bay, so he had ducked into another street with most of his forces to help, only to find this one was in dire straits. He bounced into the wall and threw himself off it again, landing on the shoulder of one clone and decapitating him as he flew off once more to land on the chest of another like a giant limpet and knock him down.

Nearby, Commander Ember still had a grip on his flamethrower and churned the fire-stream through a line of Empire clones from the shelter of one of the droidekas, but a missile streaked out of nowhere and blasted through the droidekas shield, destroying the droid and flinging Ember back. As the clone commander scrambled back up a laser intercepted the next rocket and a commando droid flipped over and grabbed the missile launcher, hauling it around and throwing it, and the clone still holding it, into the air. Ember grabbed a fallen blaster and quickly dashed back into the fray, rolling under the shots from another droideka and jumping up to shoot another clone in the hip and another in the chest.

Kix grabbed a blaster from an enemy clone and wrested it out of his hands, thrusting out both his weapons to shoot the clone in the chest and firing continuous bolts as he moved his arms outwards to drop several more in his sweep. A Gungan sprang up next to him and crashed its electropole into to stomach of a clone about to shoot at Kix and another Gungan flung an energy ball from his atlatl to smash into the face of a second clone. But this Gungan suddenly met its end from the hands of a Z6 and Kix knocked the other Gungan to the ground to save his life.

A commando droid suddenly grabbed the Z6 from behind and hauled him off his feet, shooting him while he was down and swiping its sword through the large blaster cannon, right after another errant blaster came slewing out of nowhere and slammed into its face, blowing its circuits out and dropping it immediately.

The clone responsible was killed in return by a droideka moments later, and the one next to him was shot down by Blade. The brave clone rolled over the sparking body of a commando droid and bulled into another clone and sending them both crashing to the ground, rolled over and shot upwards at the one looming over him. He then grabbed the sword from the fallen commando droid and began to live up to his name, slicing the metal sword into the chest of another clone and ducking underneath another shot to leap up with another shot from his blaster and a hack from his sword to take out two more enemies and he roared as he floored another with a kick to the pelvis and slashed the arm of another with the sword.

The wounded clone howled, but was silenced by K'kruhk as the Whipid lunged down from up above and sliced a line across the clones chest and jumped clean over Blade in a spiralling corkscrew to decapitate another clones and Force-push two more into an alleyway. Before the two clones had even landed, a huge shape lanced out the thin alleyway and slammed into their backs. It was Master Rancisis and the Thisspiasian ploughed into the Empire clone forces with the strength of a charging reek, his thrashing coils knocking them high into the air as his lightsaber darted across a group of three and felled them all instantly and his humanoid half suddenly reversed direction and stabbed while his tail swept out behind him like a huge club.

The droids fell upon the clones as those without broken ribs or spines staggered to get back up, and then Master Rancisis was gone, diving into another side-street. And then a couple of AT-RTs thundered out of another side-street and sprang into the midst of the wounded clones, lasers spurting from the fronts as their wide feet slammed down on several others.

* * *

Things were practically going mad such was the intensity of the fighting. No one side stood out. The united forces of the rebellion mingled with one another, forcing the Empire clones to deal with multiple types of enemy at once trying to defeat them. Most didn't manage to adapt quickly enough to the rapid changes in fighting style.

The situation was becoming a stale-mate between the two factions. Clone and Gungan alike fell, as did several Jedi defending the back-streets to blasts from missiles or tanks.

It was exactly the sort of situation that Anakin Skywalker did not like leaving behind, but he knew that he had to if they were going to start stage two of the plan before stage one ended. As he, Ahsoka and Barriss slid around a corner and dashed the final leg of the distance towards the Jedi Temple, Aayla and Renamon landed in rolls next to them from where they had leapt off the roof nearby, while Terriermon and Lopmon swooped lower over their heads as they pelted towards the Temple doors.

The three Tamers were waiting for them and Henry had a look of annoyance on his face as he glared at Terriermon. "Next time you do something like that, let me know before you go and do it."

"Momentai," Terriermon said as he came to land while the rest of the group slowed to a halt as well. "I'm alright, aren't I? We all are."

"We do always look out for one another, after all," Aayla chuckled. "And you needn't worry, Henry. We weren't seen. Renamon made sure of it and we didn't do anything so reckless as to put us where Palpatine might be able to see us."

"Good," Anakin nodded. "I'd hate to reveal our little surprise to him ahead of schedule, wouldn't you?"

"Oh yeah," nodded Ahsoka.

A massive explosion rocked the city behind them, causing the whole of the Tenacious Ten to spin around. From this angle, they could just make out the tops of the AT-ATs that were slowly trying to manoeuvre their way into the city. They grimaced at the thought that those three AT-ATs were causing so much destruction and that there were at least a dozen more of the giant walkers marching on the village with the rest of the clones behind them. Arcs of blue light shot out from various points all over the city as the remaining Heavy Cannons and several AT-TE walkers piled on more firepower to try and hold them back.

"This isn't looking good," Barriss observed.

"No, but we have to let others worry about this," Renamon countered. "This battle is meant to be a diversion, so let's make sure it diverts the enemy's attention away from something else."

"Well said," nodded Anakin. "Where are Sugi and the other Bounty Hunters?"

"They went on ahead," replied Suzie. "They said that they would meet us at the other side of the tunnel."

"Alright," Anakin acknowledged. His head then turned around so his gaze settled on another member of their group, standing nearby. "What about you, Artoo? You've got a big job ahead of you, little buddy. You up for the challenge?"

Artoo bleeped indignantly and twiddled a few times. Anakin laughed and said, "Okay, okay. Momentai to you too."

"Oi!" Terriermon shouted. "Double oi actually!" he glared at both Artoo and Anakin.

"Is now the best time for this?" Henry asked.

"No, probably not. Sorry."

"We're still one member unaccounted for," Aayla reminded them as she looked out across the city, shielding her eyes from the glares of the explosions and peering through the smoke rising all over the place. "Where's G… never mind. There he is," she indicated the Kaleesh cyborg that had just rounded a corner and was running towards them so fast his feet were denting the floor. "Where've you been?"

"Out dealing with a little resistance!" Grievous growled with an air of finality as he screeched to a halt, literally, as his talons made a horrible noise against the floor. "Are we going or not?"

"Yes," Aayla nodded. She turned and, along with Barriss, used the Force to manipulate a pile of crates and levitate them to one side to reveal a large slab of wood over the concrete beside the Temple door. Ahsoka darted forward and wrenched the wood out of the way to reveal the hole beneath.

"It's time to go," Lopmon sighed. She turned to look at Jocastu Nu and Tera Sinube – the two elderly Jedi were standing guard by the main Temple doors with several clones. "Good luck here."

"It is you who we should be wishing the luck to, not vice versa," Sinube replied. "You're the ones going right into the den of the nexu."

"Be careful. All of you," agreed Jocasta. "The Sith are very powerful. They will not go down easily, any one of them or the people that they surround themselves with. And according to that Senator friend of yours, you'll have a lot of enemies waiting for you."

"Yes, but we also have Digimon," Ahsoka nodded. "Don't worry, Masters. We'll set things right. We promise."

"Then may the Force be with you more than it has been with any other being in history," Sinube blessed them. "We will cover up the entrance to the tunnel when you have gone. If the enemy clones do manage to get this far, they will not discover it for a while."

"Thanks," Anakin nodded. "Right then, enough dawdling. Let's go."

With no other words, he led the way, jumping into the hole and into the pitch-blackness. He activated his lightsaber to see and hurried off down the tunnel that Gargomon had dug the previous day, forced to stoop slightly to stop his head scraping the ceiling. He glanced over his shoulder to see that Ahsoka had followed him, Lopmon perched on her head and that one by one the others were dropping into the tunnel and setting off after them. Anakin turned back and increased his speed, the line of Jedi, Digimon, Tamers and one Kaleesh cyborg hurrying after him.

Aayla was the last to enter the tunnels. She turned back briefly to give once last glance on the city, which was still being rocked by explosions.

"I hope you're still watching, Palpatine," she murmured. "We'd hate for you to miss the show."

And then she dived into the tunnel and hurried off after the others. She heard the sounds of scrabbling behind her and the light was blotted out as the wooden boards were placed back over the hole and then more shuffling sounds as the two elderly Jedi used the Force to move the crates back into position over the tunnel entrance to disguise it. The sounds of battle were instantly blotted out, reduced to nothing more than faint bangs that made it seem a lot less violent than it actually was.

Aayla hoped that the disguise for the tunnel entrance would not be needed, for if the clones managed to get that far into the city then their diversion could end in disaster, but she couldn't afford to think like that right now. The line passed through the straight tunnel at speed, passing beneath city, wall, enemy clone, plain and forest alike as they did so.

* * *

The Empire's clones were beginning to get to grips with the presence of the droids. For some reason they weren't able to fathom there seemed to be no sign of any of the more normal opponents like the B1s or the Super Battle Droids. Once they realised that the massive armies that droids normally came in was absent, they were emboldened and they surged back against the defenders once more, pouring blaster shots out at the rebel ranks.

At the Y-junction, the rebels were in dire straits. Approached by enemy clones from two directions at once, the defenders battled for all they were worth but they were forced to divide their forces amongst the two factions and that was not good.

Echo and Fives stood on the corner of the junction, the former firing into the left hand street and the latter into the right. Echo shoved a crate in front of him to protect himself and leaned over the top, delivering three laser rounds to the Empire clones before he was forced to duck back into hiding. He popped out again a moment later to shoot another clone in the head. Directly behind him, Fives span around the corner and pulsed a small barrage down the street before he dived back into cover, took a breath and repeated the process, picking off a couple of enemy clones with each strike.

To make matters worse, an AT-TE was marching its way down one of the streets and towards them. Several AT-RTs that belong to the rebellion leapt out of hiding and swarmed the larger tank, offloading several laser barrages into its thick hides and trying to damage it, but it was as if they were moths trying to kill a bear. The tank continued marching forwards, completely ignoring its attackers as it fired into the rebel clones ahead with its front-facing cannons.

Finn Ertay sprang across the street, her lightsaber intercepting three of those bolts as she ran over to where Eekar Oki was blocking off the other street. "I don't think we can hold much longer," the Twi'lek breathed to the Mon Calamari. "We're going to have to retreat soon."

"We can't retreat," Eekar objected. "This path leads directly towards one of the shield generators. If they get a clear shot at that then we're all done for."

"Then what are we supposed to do?" Finn asked as the two of them span their blades to protect the clones behind them from a flurry of incoming laser fire. "We cannot protect this street much longer."

Eekar knew she was right. All it took was a glance at the chaos around them to realise it. Several commando droids were flipping and spinning their way towards the clones in the left street, avoiding their laser fire with relative ease, only for most of them to be blasted backwards by a shot from the AT-TE cannon, leaving only two left which fell upon the clones and managed to kill about three each before they were overpowered and shot down.

Several Gungans were dutifully holding up their shields while others flung their energy balls overhead in a desperate attempt to help the AT-RTs with the giant tank, but their help was negligible at best. A couple of missiles streaked in from the right hand street and blasted several of them into the air, forcing the others to duck and run as they sought to find better cover. A droideka rolled around and corner and uncurled, blasting one of the clones with the missile launchers, but it was quickly taken out by the other.

Fives had dived back out into the streets and took out the clone with a straight blast to the abdomen, dancing backwards as a couple of shots whisked past his sides and gunning down a couple more clones. A couple of Gungans ran up beside him and threw their electropoles to skewer a couple of others but the three of them quickly scattered when a flurry of bolts lanced in their directions. One of the Gungan was hit in the leg and fell to the floor with a high pitched yelp. Echo leapt out hiding to drag him to cover, shooting down two clones as he ducked underneath the incoming laser storm.

A commando droid sprang over the top of the ARC trooper and the wounded Gungan and fell amongst the Empire clones with sword swinging and blaster blazing, hacking one in the chest and stabbing another in the gut while his blaster swung around and shot two clones right between the eyes. It jammed its blaster into the ribs of another clone and fired at point blank range as it slashed down on another and flipped over another's head to spin around, grab him from behind and break his neck, only to be met with a clone holding a Z6 in his hands which gunned the droid down and began to pour fire towards the two Jedi.

Eekar grimaced as he and Finn desperately kept the clones at bay, but slowly, an idea came to him. He looked up. On each of the three buildings at the corners of the Y junction there had been Heavy Cannons before. There were now just smouldering wrecks thanks to the AT-ATs but perhaps…

"I've got it!" he cried. "Everybody! Retreat! Back into the street! Go!"

"But sir…" protested Fives.

"There's no time! Hurry!" Eekar shouted. The ARC trooper hesitated, but only for a moment as he ran across to help Echo pull the injured Gungan away. A grenade soared through the air towards them, but the Gungan had the presence of mind to fling an energy ball at it to intercept it in mid-air.

As Eekar and Finn were the last to retreat to the mouth entrance, the Mon Calamari said, "Finn, I'll cover you. Use the Force to pull down those cannons and block the street."

"Got it!" Finn nodded and sheathed her blade, stepping behind her fellow Jedi and raising her hands, calling on the Force that flowed deeply through the planet. Immediately the three massive cannon wrecks twitched and shifted, dragging themselves across the rooftops with grating and screeching noises as they tilted their way towards the edge.

The only problem was that now, Eekar had every single clone shooting at him. He yelled in defiance as he sprang forward to distract their attention away from Finn, spinning and leaping and twirling and lashing out with his blade to catch the swarm of enemy bolts. But his efforts in the battle before had left him with less energy than he would have liked, and even then that would not have been enough. There were just too many lasers. Eekar took a shot in the shoulder and gasped but kept going, only to be shot in the small of the back a moment later. The Mon Calamari toppled over, but still refused to back down and continued desperately blocking the blades.

Finn opened her eyes and watched in horror. She had the cannons primed on the edge but if she pulled them over now, they would land on Eekar. In the end though, her hesitation was unnecessary, because another flurry of shots from a Z6 penetrated Eekar's defences and slammed into his head and shoulders and he collapsed to the floor, dead at last.

Now Finn was the subject of attention and she saw the cannon on the AT-TE was already locking onto her. Her eyes narrowed and she thrust her arms out. She stood her ground and with one last yank of the Force she hauled the cannons off the rooftops just as the large tank opened fire. The AT-TE blast slipped underneath them and slammed into her, vaporising her on the spot, but her final act brought the cannons crashing down to thoroughly block off both streets of the Y junction and crushing the body of her fellow Jedi.

Eekar Oki and Finn Ertay died as heroes.

Echo and Fives stood behind where they had been, staring in disbelief at the sacrifice of the two Jedi. Two Jedi who they had never even heard of until the other day. The two of them glanced at each other, their blood boiling, and with a roar they charged down on of the nearest side-streets and into yet another fray, where Lieutenant Galle and his forces were desperately trying to hold back yet another AT-TE that was slowly crawling its way up the street.

This group had a supporting AT-TE of their own this time though, and they were using it to great effect, crouching around its legs and firing from the cover in provided as the two great machines moved towards one another in a slow and steady fashion, trading fire with their smaller cannons as they tried to zero in on a vulnerable spot with their larger ones.

Fives grabbed Galle and said, "Hey, listen! You up for a challenge?"

"A challenge?" the Lieutenant echoed. Fives nodded towards the enemy AT-TE and Galle caught on. "Ah. What do you have in mind?"

A few moments later and, with a charging yell, several of the rebels broke cover from beneath their own walker and charged out into the open ground between the two factions. Fastest of these were three droidekas, which rolled into position and unrolled, blasting the bejeezus out of the clones beneath the enemy walker and felling almost a dozen of them where they stood and forcing the others to retreat beneath its giant bulk.

As the droidekas distracted the enemy, clones and Gungans scrambled up the side of a pile of rubble that had once been a large chunk of building until they were up on the rooftops. They dashed along it, clearing the spaces between the buildings with swift bounds, and, along the ground below them, a group of commando droids charged past their droideka allies and tossed several grenades beneath the tank.

The explosion rocked the AT-TE and killed many clones that were beneath it, but the tank itself was undamaged. The clone in the cockpit grabbed the controls once more, right as one of the commando droids lunged forward and stabbed its sword through the duraglass. The blade came to a stop an inch of so from the clone's chest, and the clone pressed himself back into the chair, chest heaving at the closeness of the call.

This caused the AT-TE to stop moving because there was nobody piloting it, and the Gungans on the rooftops lined up and flung their energy balls down towards the cannon on the top. The gunner clone shielded his head with his arms as a barrage of the blue balls slammed into the gun in such a large concentration that the EMP bursts they created penetrated through to the circuitry of the gun and disabled it momentarily. The Gungans sprang off the roof with loud shrieks that almost sounded like yodels. One of them knocked the gunner out of his seat, while two others rushed over to the back of the walker and raised energy shields to stop the clones behind it from firing on them.

And then a clone with a Z6 joined the Gungans and fired between them, annihilating a massive crowd of them as the others scrambled for cover. Echo and Fives ran up to join them as they flung their grenades down into the more crowded cover areas to blow up several more.

Meanwhile, one of the Gungans had prized open the hatch and Galle ran over to it, priming a couple of his own detonators and then flinging them into the hatch. The Gungan slammed it shut and Galle shouted, "Everybody off!" Clone and Gungan dashed across the walker and over the front, regrouping behind the droidekas right as the bombs went off, ripping the thick-armoured walker's vulnerable insides apart. The walker buckled and collapsed and, as the cheers rang out among the victorious, the rebel AT-TE aimed its cannon higher and began to barrage the street behind the defeated walker, causing the clones which had broken cover to be pulverised by the new blasts.

* * *

Not too far away from that particular battlezone was another battlezone. Several, in fact, but this particular one featured Adi Gallia and her former Padawan Stass Allie. The Jedi Master was finding the day to be full of surprises, as she was fighting side by side with a commando droid, of all things. The droid had pilfered a shield from a dead Gungan and phased his blaster through it, and was advancing on the enemy clones with from behind its cover and gunning them down with mercy. Adi catapulted herself through the air behind it and slashed through a clone trying to get past the shield and bouncing into a spin to bring her foot down on the head of another and spin about to cut through another's torso and then stab under the arm of the dead clone to hit the one behind.

Two Gungans jumped from the tops of a pile of crates to come to a rolling stop either side of the Jedi Master and swipe their poles into the chests of more clones. One of them twirled its staff to stab another clone in the shoulder and pulse electricity into him and then spring to the left to slam the middle of its pole into the chest of another to slam him against the wall, while the second Gungan banged another across the neck and slammed the blaster out of another's hands.

But another clone zeroed in on the back of his head, and Adi threw herself in, hooking an arm around the Gungan and hauling him out of harm's way (though the bolt still went through the Gungan's large ear with a cry of pain). The Jedi Master whirled about and stood protectively in front of the Gungan, but the clone was suddenly yanked to the side and impaled on Stass' blade. The Knight nodded to the Master and dashed past to hack a line in another clone of one side and spin around to deftly cut through one on the other and rebound off a wall to dodge several blast and fall amongst the clones responsible with blades swinging.

Adi then spotted the form of a droideka that was clearly deactivated, but was rolled into a ball and appeared to have been shot in the side before it could uncurl. Adi picked it up with the Force and yelled, "Stass! Duck!" before she flung the droideka like a massive Frisbee with the Force. Stass did just that and the droideka ploughed into the clones in the other side of the former Padawan. And then two other droidekas rolled up and unfurled to add to the laser fire.

* * *

Commander Jet was battling things out next to Ki-Adi-Mundi as they always had throughout the Clone Wars. The clone brought down a pair of others that were charging towards them as Ki-Adi-Mundi slashed into another on the other side. The Cerean sprang into the air and flipped over to slash down into another, the clone running to catch up and lobbing a small grenade at three more clones. It was, however, just a droid popper, which would have had no effect on the other clones, but their wild dodge distracted their attention long enough for Jet to focus on and shoot down all three as Mundi sent another two hurtling almost straight upwards with a burst of the Force.

A clone with a Z6 hefted the heavy weapon in the direction of the Jedi, but a shot from a sniper took him out before he got a chance to use it. The two that had been standing behind him were suddenly gunned down by Commander Monnk, as the clone rolled into the cover of a crate. A Gungan bounced onto the top of the crate and leapt off again to biff a clone in the face with the shield in his hands and thrust his pole into another. Monnk dashed out of hiding and scooped up a fallen rocket launcher, sliding to a halt on his knees next to the Gungan and firing a shot into another cluster of clones, blowing them and the wall behind them to smithereens.

But as the clone got up and patted the Gungan on the shoulder and watched as a pair of commando droids ran past to fall among the clones once more, he balked as he beheld something in the street ahead. It seemed that one of the AT-ATs had finally managed to manoeuvre its huge bulk around so that it could march down the street ahead. Its massive form was beginning to loom over the buildings as its feet stomped the AT-TEs that had fallen in battle into scrap in a couple of heavy steps alone.

Monnk and the Gungan turned and fled as one huge blast from the walker detonated half the street and brought at least five commando droids to an end.

Mundi looked around and grimaced at the sight and he quickly signalled for the clones to retreat and stay around the corner. They needed to come up with some way of taking out those AT-ATs soon or they would all be dead before long. They could reduce the city to rubble within an hour if they needed to.

* * *

Another of the three AT-ATs was making its way down a street on the other side of the city, its head angling downwards to try and catch the enemy clones unawares. It's large feet only just allowed it to fit through the wider gaps between the buildings, and any clone who was attempting to get past the giant walker would do so at his own risk, as there was every possibility that they could be stepped on if they didn't weren't careful enough. And the AT-AT pilots wouldn't even notice.

As of yet, the four shield generators maintaining the city defences from the fighters and bombers and gunships that were still circling overhead, had been spared from the destruction of the AT-ATs because they had been deliberately placed on the rooftops of lower-lying buildings to give them maximum firepower from above. But if this particular AT-AT carried on with its course, that might change. If just one of the generators was destroyed, the whole shield would come down and then the city would be in _real_ trouble.

If you didn't classify what it was already in as _real_ trouble that is.

Commander Ember was out in front in this street, leading several Gungans, a couple of other clones and a pair of commando droids in a reckless charge that was driving the clones of the Empire backwards. As Ember drove his blaster into the stomach of one of his adversaries and shot down another while hammering his elbow into the face of a third, the Gungan next to him laid out another with an electric jab to the crook of the arm, while the commando droid on his other side raked its sword through the chest armour of another clone.

Behind them, Even Piell looked up from where he was taking a brief moment out of the battle to attend to a wounded clone. His remaining eye widened as he saw the AT-AT bearing down on Commander Ember's group and yelled a warning, "Commander! Watch out ahead of you!" Ember heard him and looked up to see a bunch of friendly AT-RTs fleeing the much larger walker, the AT-ATs head swivelling about like a giant animatronic statue to zero in on Ember's squadron.

Ember immediately knew that his time was up, so he roared a challenge and blasted down three more enemy clones right at the last second before the AT-AT let off a single blast that pulverised the entire street section where Ember was standing, wiping out every single one of his initial strike force, and their valiant commander with it.

Piell grimaced at the lost, but as the clone he was tending to was hauled to his feet, the Lannik suddenly saw the danger ahead. The walker was getting close towards the nearest of the shield generators, and the Empire clones were swarming in front of it and charging forwards to reinitiate their attack.

"Hurry, everybody!" Piell shouted as he hopped aboard one of the AT-RTs that had charged through the blazing wreckage that had been where Ember and his forces had made their final stand. "We've got to get back towards the shield generator. We cannot hold this passage any longer, but we must protect it with our lives."

The clones, Gungans and the remaining droids backpedalled after him and hurried away towards the generator, where they began to prepare for a final stand of their own – one last desperate attempt to keep the Empire bombers out. Piell knew that unless someone could take out those walkers, their efforts would be futile in the long run, but he hoped to keep the foot-soldiers at bay long enough for somebody to figure it out, because he knew he had no idea what to do about them.

* * *

The AT-ATs were a vicious stomping force that drove the rebels back before them without mercy. Nothing could stand in their way, and it seemed that nothing could stop them either. Their reinforced armour combined with the intensity of their firepower left them unchallenged.

And Emperor Palpatine watched with glee from his office on Coruscant as he saw the three AT-ATs ahead of him wading into the city. He had hoped they would one day be a terrible force for his Empire, but he had never assumed it would be this soon. The Jedi were defenceless against them. And he liked Jedi most when they were defenceless, except for when they were dead.

He had encountered several unpleasant surprises in this battle so far. Namely the presence of the Gungans and the droids helping the Jedi. The Gungans seemed to be of little consequence, but the droids had been a real shock to the system. So far though, there had only been reports of three types of droid, which had led him to believe that they were simply capture specimens that had been reprogrammed by the Jedi.

Because that was far easier to believe than the alternative.

* * *

The whole of the defences were being pushed back further into the city now. The AT-ATs height and swivelling head meant that they could fire over the tops of most of the nearest buildings now that they were within the city streets. Captain Rex and Hardcase dashed along beside one another, the two of them taking it in turns to stop and pour lasers behind them towards the Empire clones that were in hot pursuit, before running on and allowing the other to take his turn.

Shaak Ti and the MagnaGuards covered the rear, the phrik electrostaffs of the four droids whirling in front of them to act as shields as impenetrable as anything a droideka could produce and their extreme athleticism allowing them to flip and dive backwards and get up to resume their duty immediately. Shaak Ti leapt up onto a fallen AT-TE and hurried along it and sprang off the other end, turning around to pick up a large slab of concrete with the Force and hurl it at the incoming clones. The slam fell like it had been fired from a catapult and crushed over a dozen clones before they could dodge it. But in the end, more just took their place and ran after them.

An AT-AT blast shot overhead and pounded into a building to the left of the runners. Rex and Hardcase literally skidded to a stop and fell over on their backsides. Shaak Ti had the presence of mind to use the Force to pull them out of the way as the building dropped rubble down towards them. Shaak Ti hurriedly guided her forces into one of the side-streets, the small group dashing down the safer passage and emerging into the main street, where Commander Bly and General Tarpals were refusing to back down so easily.

Bly had his foot planted on a large, spherical piece of debris and was taking quick, precise shots into the approaching Empire clones. Tarpals flung an energy ball into another's face and dived into a twirling slam into another's gut, while a droidekas rolled around the corner to uncurl and screen him from incoming fire with its shield as it poured more lasers into the enemy ranks. Rex hurriedly dashed forward so he was next to Bly and crouched behind the rubble, picking off another two targets from there.

"Nice of you to join the party!" Bly called down as he shot another clone in the head.

"Wouldn't miss it," Rex replied sourly as he took out his last grenade and threw it as high as he could, resulting in an explosion that threw clones outwards from about twenty yards into the enemy lines. But the space he created was quickly filled by more clones.

The MagnaGuards charged forwards and swept their staffs back into the enemy lines, as Hardcase climbed a rubble pile and let rip with his Z6. Shaak Ti, meanwhile used the Force to leap onto a nearby rooftop to quickly survey the battle.

What she saw was utter devastation all around her as the AT-ATs pressed deeper into the city. She grimaced. _We need phase two of the attack _now_, _she thought. _Or we'll all perish today._ That was all she had time to think before a blast from one of the AT-ATs forced her to leap off the roof and back into the protection of the street.

* * *

A couple of miles out into the forest, and Anakin Skywalker burst out of a deep hole in the floor with an almighty Force-jump, flipping over to land in a small glade in the trees by the edge of a relatively small mountain. He turned around as Ahsoka sprang out of the hole behind him and the two of them quickly assisted one another in levitating the three Tamers up and out of the hole as Terriermon and Lopmon swept up and out under their own steam.

Sugi the Zabrak Bounty Hunter was standing something on a ledge on the mountainside, a pair of macrobinoculars pressed to her eyes as she surveyed the damage to the city a couple of miles away. To a casual observer, of which there were none, it might look as though Sugi was standing on thin-air. But everybody who _was_ there knew better.

"What's the status, Sugi?" called Anakin as he placed Rika on the floor beside him.

"Not good," Sugi shook her head. "The city looks like it's falling apart under the blasts from those three AT-ATs and only a fraction of the Empire's forces have even gotten into the city. The shields are still up but now the AT-ATs have managed to get into the streets. There's no telling how long they'll remain that way."

Barriss burst out of the hole next and flipped to a stand-still as Ahsoka placed Suzie on the ground. "This just doesn't feel right, does it?" she asked. "Leaving them behind like this. I know that we need to but… it still feels like we're running away."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Anakin agreed.

"Well, we're not running away," Ahsoka reminded them. "And the sooner we leave the less people are going to die fighting here today. Hey, Grievous!" She called into the hole, "You need any help getting up?"

The answer came in the form of an echoing snarl and the sounds of thudding as Grievous began to climb up the side of the hole by sinking his talons into the side and showering earth down on Renamon and Aayla stood beneath him.

"Okay, I was just asking," Ahsoka murmured.

"Ahsoka is right," Henry agreed. "We've gotta leave now without any further delay."

"I know but they're going to need reinforcements," Anakin agreed. "I was hoping to delay this a little longer but I suppose we have to do this early." As Grievous clambered over the side, Anakin activated his comlink and said, "Chewbacca, do you read me?"

"Raaaagh!" came the reply through the comlink, which implied that the Wookiee could hear what Anakin was saying loud and clear.

"Good," Anakin nodded. "The city is beleaguered. You guys had better get going and take those Empire clones by surprise now or the city's going to fall. I want you guys to focus on the AT-AT walkers. There has to be some way that you can take them down, and if you can't then you're all in trouble."

There was a grunting noise from the other side that seemed to be Chewie sighing, as if saying he would try his best. Lopmon bounced up onto Anakin's arm as Renamon bounded over the lip of the hole and shook dirt from her yellow fur. "You can do this, Chewie. I have faith in your resourcefulness. You've proven that you have it in spades since you joined our team. I know that you won't let us down."

There was a pause and then Chewbacca roared with determination, which soon mingled with a loud-shrieking noise that was most definitely Zarza adding to the din.

"Get to it then," Anakin nodded, as Artoo rose out of the hole on the rockets built into his legs and Aayla bounced out after him and made the company complete.

"Let's go," Aayla nodded. "Chewie has his mission. We have ours."

The whole group nodded and hurriedly made their way up to the ledge above them. Sugi slipped off the invisible something and darted up an equally invisible ramp and then vanished from sight. One by one the others followed her into the invisible, long and thin room which turned out to be the stealth ship that the 501st had brought with them. They found Embo, Rumi and Seripas already in there and waiting for them. Anakin and Aayla squeezed past the rest of the occupants of the ship as they made their way to the pilot and co-pilot seats respectively.

"Everybody in?" Anakin asked as he started up the engines.

Barriss ushered Suzie inside and then darted up the ramp herself and called, "We're clear."

Without wasting any more time, Anakin hit the button to pull up the ramp. He and Aayla carefully steered the ship upwards, Anakin doing most of the steering while Aayla focused more on maintaining the shield. Even at this distance there was the chance that someone in the Empire would notice them taking off and leaving the atmosphere and that could be disastrous and completely ruin their plan, which is why they had chosen this method of getting up into space instead of using a gunship.

"Looks like this is going to be the big one," Rumi murmured as they left the atmosphere and made towards Tython's moon.

Embo chuckled and cracked his knuckles. Suzie glared at him and said, "Don't do that. It's bad for you," and Embo held up his arms in a gesture of surrender.

"About time," Grievous snarled. "I have been waiting for this!"

"You'll get your chance at revenge soon enough, Grievous," Renamon nodded, wondering at the ironic fact that she and the rest of her team were sharing a cramped space with Grievous of all people – the fact he was on their side now was still a bizarre thought. "Twenty minutes or so of hyperspace and all hell will break loose."

"It cannot come soon enough," Grievous growled.

"Remember to control yourself, General," Aayla called back to him. "Do your best not to give in to the rage."

Grievous was about to snap at Aayla not to tell him what to do, but he recognised the warning against himself in her words and relented with extreme reluctance.

As they whooshed around the moon, they made their way towards the Rebellion fleet, which had been hovering there the whole time to conceal themselves from the incoming Imperial ships. As the ship came closer to the _Acclamator_-class cruiser which was at the fore-front of the convoy along with the _Resolute _and the _Intrepid,_ Anakin thumbed the comlink and switch and called, "Admiral Yularen. We're beginning our final approach. Be prepared to jump to hyperspace on my mark."

"Copy that, General," the Admiral nodded. He sighed and added, "This is a mission I never thought I would undertake."

"Nor did any of us, Admiral, but you know as well as we do that it's got to be done."

"Yes, for the Galaxy's sake," Admiral Yularen nodded. "The navicomputers are primed for Coruscant, General Skywalker. We will join battle with the blockade around the planet soon after we emerge from hyperspace. I strongly advise you not to start shooting at the enemy from behind this time."

"Don't worry, Admiral," Anakin replied. "This time, I'm sticking to my original objective."

The hangar door of the giant ship was already open and waiting for them, the shields up to allow any living being inside the hangar access to air by blocking out the vacuum of space. The stealth ship eased its way into the open hangar door and through the shield of the _Acclamator _and settled itself on the floor, close to the shield. They didn't want to go in any further than that because of the other thing in the hangar with them.

"We're in, Admiral. Let's get going," Anakin reported."

"Yes, sir," Yularen replied as Anakin lowered the ramp. Renamon bounded down the ramp and slid under the ship to smile at the only other occupant of the hangar.

"You ready for another big battle?" she asked.

Godzillo raised his head and bared his teeth, his bright green eyes flashing with purpose. Grievous was not the only one there who was going to getting a chance at revenge soon. The Zillo Beast was going to return to Coruscant with a vengeance.

And this time, he would have help.

The hyperdrives of the Rebellion convoy activated at, practically as one, the ships zoomed away from Tython and towards their new destination.

* * *

Yes. More death, more destruction, more complete and utter wreckage from the AT-AT walkers. It seems as though they're an almost unstoppable force, but is there a way to bring them down? Well, you'll have to wait until the second half of this Mega Arc to find out because coming up next is another Impmon chapter. But that's okay, because it, like the Star Wars chapters, is still going to be a complete and utter mash of fighting and destruction.

As of yet, the deaths have been limited to very characters without speaking roles in the series, OC clones, and Eeth Koth, Jesse and Blitz. The second half is going to contain some death scenes for more influential characters to the series. Let's hope the Rebellion prevails.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The brawl between GranDracmon, the Sovereigns, Belphemon, the United Army and the Nightmare Soldiers continues. But, more importantly, Impmon's friends break into GranDracmon's fortress and fight their way through its halls.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 195 : The Dark Castle**


	195. The Dark Castle

'Ello, 'ello. Here I am again with another Impmon-based chapter. There are some advances in this one as it builds towards the next stage of the Impmon plot but really, most of this chapter is meant to be another mash of action between the two opposing sides like the last one, though it allows some particular characters to shine. I hope you like it, because it is jam-packed full of action, making this the longest Digimon fighting sequence I have ever done.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 195:- The Dark Castle**

* * *

The beach of the Dark Ocean was becoming a charred wreck of tossed up sand and massive scorch marks and craters from Digimon attacks as the two opposing sides continued to smash into one another with explosive consequences. Everything seemed to have turned into a free-for-all as the Nightmare Soldiers screamed for data while the United Army did their best to retaliate against them.

MetalSeadramon slammed himself into the ground in an attempt to scrape off several Gargoylemon that were clutched at his flanks and trying to get underneath his armour. The giant Sea Serpent smashed several of them into particles beneath his coils and lifted off into the air, twisting around himself to bring his jaws crashing down on the last one and plucking him off, chomping down to finish off the evil Digimon. The Mega Digimon then whipped around and pulsed a massive River of Power down into the ranks of the enemy, the beam tearing into the enemy Digimon on contact and ripping them to pieces.

GranKuwagamon buzzed downwards and closed his pincers around the midsection of a Minotarumon, hoisting the unfortunate Digimon into the air and slamming him into the ground, when a Fugamon landed on his back and tried to bash his head in with his club. The insect Digimon writhed to try and throw off his attacker, but then MarineAngemon appear and fired a single Kahuna Wave bubble into the Fugamon's wide mouth. The bubble expanded to fill the enemy Digimon's mouth completely and then exploded, tossing the red skinned Virus-type high into the air and causing him to disintegrate on the spot.

SaberLeomon stampeded over several enemy and stabbed its massive teeth into the body of a DarkLizardmon, its tail dragging a choking Devimon behind it and flinging him into the air. The massive lion whirled around and with a bat of its paw it sent five Bakemon to Anubimon's realm, shot a barrage of spikes out of its mane to impact and paralyze an assortment of enemies and then sprang over their heads to crash headfirst into a SkullGreymon and carry it to the ground, the two of them rolling over and over as they sought to batter each other to death.

Dinorexmon was still in thick of the action and was loving every moment of it. One massive claw stabbed into a Devidramon as his hands latched onto the side of a Sangloupmon and pulled it to the ground, jumping over the Digimon and snatching a Vilemon out of the air in his jaws and biting down on it hard as he span about, extending one claw like a scythe to slice through a horde of Ogremon and Phantomon before he suddenly stabbed out with the other claw to skewer a LadyDevimon tear her into particles. He sprang into the air with a cry of **"SPLATTER HUNTING!"** and as he landed amongst a group of DarkLizardmon, his claws seemed to have minds of their own, slashing up and down like chopping blades and dicing the enemy Digimon to pieces. He was moving almost before he landed and drove his claws up to his toes into the chests of two Devimon, reached over between them as the fell and seizing the neck of a third between his teeth.

Gryphonmon beat his wings as his own teeth were latched onto the wing of a struggling IceDevimon, but a Raremon had managed to get a grip on his hindquarters and was seemed to be trying to swallow him. Gryphonmon rose upwards as his tail lashed out and chomped on the Raremon's eye, causing it to release him with a howl as Gryphonmon flung the IceDevimon down into him and eliminated them both with a Solor Roar. He then span about in midair and bulled through a group of Airdramon and sank his talons into a SkullMeramon and carried him to the ground.

Plesiomon soared over the heads of several enemy Digimon and slammed his flipped down into the beach, generating a Shaking Pulse which caused the whole area beneath him and the enemy Digimon to shake and erupt upwards with water like it was from a geyser. As the Nightmare Soldiers were hurled away, Plesiomon warped the water into a sphere around him and he charged into the enemy ranks and flattened several dozens of them beneath his water orb, and then with a mere thought, Plesiomon sent the water exploding away from his body to flood several enemies away in all directions.

Pajiramon dashed head-first into a Devidramon, ramming it with her horns and tossing it to the ground, where she fired at it with her crossbow and blew it to data. A Sangloupmon lunged for her but the sheep Deva reared up and beat it back with her flailing hooves. The enemy Digimon fell back, ready for another spring, when Vajramon's sword came out nowhere and speared in the side. The ox Digimon thundered over and swung the other sword through an Ogremon, retrieving his blade with a nod to the sheep, who promptly fired over his shoulder to shoot the Airdramon that had been about swoop down on him.

Sinduramon raked his talons over the face of a Fugamon and fried him with Positron Pulse, but the rooster flailed his wings and took to the air as a set of Vilemon tried to converge on him. The small Deva dived down on them and battered them aside with claws on his back, ripping through all but one of them. That one was finished off by Kumbhiramon as the rat sprang up to impale him with his _own_ set of back claws. The smallest Deva then fell back among its other five selves and the six of them swarmed over a Minotarumon and stabbed into the unfortunate Digimon in several places at once before leaping off its disintegrating form and leaping to intercept a bunch of Bakemon.

Indramon had taken to swinging around his giant horn like a bat, and knocked several Gargoylemon out of the air in this manner. He lifted one giant hoof and stomped it down on top of a fleeing Devimon and then promptly did something similar with his horn, ramming it into the ground on top of two Ogremon and blowing into it to tear apart several ranks of DarkLizardmon. Sandiramon shot across the carnage he made, grabbing a LadyDevimon over the head in his jaws and _swallowing her whole_, as he swept his axe out to cut across three Setmon and struck out with his coils to bask a SkullMeramon in the face and deliver and finishing blow with his axe from above.

Vikaralamon had picked up speed, and now the pig Deva had spewed a Boar Bog in front of him to engulf about ten Devidramon and he casually stepped over them as they writhed in their slimy prison. He fired a Fusion Ball to intercept a group of diving Airdramon, but a huge SkullMammothmon suddenly charged towards him, seeking a head on collision of massive tusked Digimon. Vikaralamon responded to the challenge with a roar and the two of them met head on, with an impact that shook the beach. But it was plain to see Vikaralamon had weight on his opponent, and the Mammothmon battered uselessly against the pig's face with his trunk. Vikaralamon suddenly grabbed the trunk in his mouth and hauled backwards, pulling the SkullMammothmon off its feet and then reared up to bring his huge bulk slamming down on top of it.

Mihiramon was beset, the tiger Deva using his Samurai Tiger Tail to fend off the blows of half a dozen SkullScorpiomon that had surged out of the sand around him and who were trying to stab him with their own tail spikes. The Ultimate level tiger snarled and flared his wings lifting into the sky just as Majiramon sent a swarm of Flaming Arrowheads down into the SkullScorpiomon, causing them to shriek as their thick armour was almost set alight by the intensity of the flames. And then Mihiramon fell upon them again and crushed three of their skulls beneath his Armoured Tiger Tail, as Majiramon himself swooped out of nowhere and crushed one beneath his feet, picked up the other two and smashed them into one another.

Even Makuramon was standing out in the heat of battle. The monkey Deva's extreme agility allowed him to rebound off the side of a Minotarumon and deliver a punch to the face of a Devimon, flip over him and grab another around the neck with his tail to yank him forward to meet another fist to the face. He spun over a clumsy swipe from a DarkLizardmon and trapped him inside a Primal Orb and used his tail to grab and club off an Ogremon and lay into him with it while he kicked another upside the chin.

Caturamon sprang claws first into a collision with another Sangloupmon and the two dogs were sent flying by the impact. They rolled briefly, each one clawing and attempting to bite at the other before the Deva Digimon clouted the Champion over the jaw to stun him and then sprang into the air, morphing into a giant mallet to come crashing down on the floored Sangloupmon from above. As he morphed back into dog form, Caturamon dashed up and over the giant spine of a SkullGreymon and sprang into the air to latch onto a Devidramon's wing and haul him down towards the ground.

And the final player in this massive battle was UlforceVeedramon. The royal Knight almost shone in the darkness of the ocean and the Nightmare Soldiers quailed before him as he blocked a strike from an Orochimon with his shield and then ducked under a strike from two other heads and swept up with his sword to slash their head and then straighten up to stab his sword into the gaping mouth of the middle head and vaporise the entire creature. Three SkullSatamon shot towards him with staffs primed, using their incredible speed to fire off three Nail Bones right at the Royal Knight. But UlforceVeedramon faster and his shield countered the attacks easily and with a flash he was among them. His sword stabbed through one and hacked through another almost instantly and as the third scrambled to get away, UlforceVeedramon fired off a massive Ray of Victory from the V on his chest that blew it to data before it got fifteen feet.

* * *

But while the battling between the soldiers and the army was taking place, the battle against Belphemon did not appear to be going as well at all. Gallantmon used his lance as a crutch to push himself to his feet after he had been battered to the floor again. He looked up to observe the Demon Lord slashing towards MirageGaogamon, while the Exalted Beast parried with one set of claws and slashed back with the other, cutting a groove across Belphemon's cheek with the middle claw. Belphemon roared and latched onto MirageGaogamon's arm before he could pull it away and grabbed good Digimon by the face and raised the chains around him for a point-blank Lampranthus attack.

Justimon quickly fell on him from behind, his Voltage Blade cutting through two of the chains and stabbing into Belphemon's arm. The Demon Lord roared and lurched backwards, tossing MirageGaogamon away as he did so and he swatted at Justimon with his other arm, but Justimon darted beneath the strike and attempted to leap away, only for Belphemon's chains to wrap around his legs and pull him to the ground. HiAndromon skidded to a halt nearby and fired an Atomic Ray at Belphemon's face, but despite a roar of anger, Belphemon quickly brushed off the attack and raised his claws to stab down on Justimon.

Gallantmon was in motion before he'd even thought about it and he dashed over to the fallen Justimon and slid to a stop next to him with shield raised just as the claws slammed down. They impacted on his shield with such force that Gallantmon was slammed off his feet and pushed onto his back, but the shield did manage to hold firm against the powerful strike.

"Get out of here! Hurry!" he groaned, and Justimon hacked through the chains around his legs with his blade and rolled aside to leap backwards and then leap forwards again, biffing Belphemon across the face with a powerful Thunder Clap. Belphemon roared as his snout almost broke but as he fell to the side, he was able to bring his foot down on Gallantmon and continue pinning him to the floor. Gallantmon grunted in exertion as he strove to keep himself from being crushed by Belphemon's considerable weight.

"**GALE CLAW!"**

A blue blur suddenly rushed past and cut open Belphemon's leg, causing the Demon Lord to go rolling as Justimon added to the attack with a Justice Burst to the chest. MirageGaogamon appeared next to the fallen Knight and said, "Are you okay?"

"I've been better," Gallantmon moaned as he struggled to his feet.

Belphemon surged back up a roar that juddered the sky, angrier than ever. He threw a tornado at MirageGaogamon, blindsiding him and knocking him back head over heels and then the Demon Lord launched a barrage of energy bolts from his mouth towards Justimon, who dodged frantically, but was still pounded in the chest and thrown back. Belphemon then spun about and sent a Gift of Darkness surging towards Gallantmon. Gallantmon raised his shield again, but HiAndromon suddenly landed before him and blocked the attack with Copy Paste, the supercharge of energy throwing up the sand all around them as he hurled it back at Belphemon with a cry of "Take that!"

The flames engulfed Belphemon and HiAndromon charged forwards with his Atomic Ray ready to fire off a beam at close range into Belphemon's face. He gasped in shock as Belphemon suddenly slashed through the wall of flames, apparently undamaged and lunged for HiAndromon. The energy claws on his knuckles tore a huge rent out of the metal on the android's side, causing a scream of shock and pain as he fell to the floor right at Belphemon's feet.

Gallantmon and Justimon dashed in to help, but chains suddenly lashed out and closed around all three of them, pinning their limbs to their sides as Belphemon lifted them into the air in front of him triumphantly. MirageGaogamon hurriedly leapt up to launch a Full Moon Blaster down at the Demon Lord, but Belphemon launched up a tornado charged with so much dark energy that it ripped through the attack and slammed into the Exalted Beast carrying him to the floor. Belphemon stepped over and placed his foot on MirageGaogamon's neck and pushed down, while the chains around the other three tightened.

"**NOW YOU DIE!"** he bellowed, as all four of them struggled and yelped as they were constricted tighter and tighter.

It seemed like this would be it.

But Gallantmon's eyes snapped open a moment later, filled with a ton of new determination. He wouldn't fall yet. Not if he could help it. He noticed that his shield was, despite the chains, still pointing towards Belphemon, so he hollered, **"SHIELD OF THE JUST!"** at the top of his voice. A moment later and an enormous red bream lanced out of the shield and impacted against Belphemon's face throwing him backwards with a roar of pain.

Freed from the crushing strength of Belphemon's foot, MirageGaogamon rolled over and launched Double Crescent Mirage blades from his claws that sliced through the chains of the others. Gallantmon snapped his limbs out as the chains loosed and charged forwards, lance-first and stabbed it right into Belphemon's chest.

And then he let off a Lightning Joust with it imbedded in there.

Belphemon exploded backwards at the mighty explosion from within his own body and disappeared under the surf of the Dark Ocean with a colossal explosion of inky water. Gallantmon landed on the ground decisively and the four combatants grouped together to watch the swelling, black water.

"Now, if that didn't finish him…" HiAndromon murmured. "I'm going to crap a castle."

The water exploded upwards again as Belphemon surged back up with a growl on his snout. The four of them stepped back in astonishment at the fact that he was still alive. "How big a castle are you talking about there?" Justimon asked.

"Wait! Look!" MirageGaogamon pointed. There was a huge hole in Belphemon's chest, and there was data peeling off it and floating into the sky. It looked like he was doomed after all.

And then Belphemon suddenly turned around and launched a pair of chains into the sea, dragging up a pair of Dragomon and a MarineDevimon that had been lurking beneath the waves and pouring dark energy into them. They vaporised into data and Belphemon absorbed them into the hole in his chest, and when he turned back around, the damage of Gallantmon's attack, as well as the attacks of the others, were beginning to heal over.

"Oh, come on!" HiAndromon complained.

"**THAT WAS A GOOD ONE!"** Belphemon admitted as the hole in his chest vanished and he spread his wings out and began to flap them, churning up the water around him. **"BUT DON'T EXPECT YOU CAN MAKE IT AGAIN!"**

And then he launched himself into the air and swooped back down towards them, his eyes burning with hatred and rage.

* * *

But in the forest above, something equally important was happening. Lilamon had continued to prove herself to be something like a fairy ninja, or perhaps a wood spirit that was there one moment and gone the next. She had beat the stuffing out of the unsuspecting guards, as was proven when a pair of Devimon watching the action below and itching to join the battle themselves were taken completely off-guard when several pink tendrils shot around either side of the tree behind them and shot across each other to wrap around the opposite Devimon and the retract sharply.

The result was the tendrils dragged both Devimon into the tree behind them with skull-shattering force and they dropped to the ground, completely out of it.

Lilamon rounded the tree, with the others keeping low behind her, and the seven of them slowly moved over towards the edge of the cliff and peered over the side. The Dark Castle was directly below them, its main walls as black as night and rising almost to the height of the cliff itself, and the towers that comprised the castle extending far higher and up towards the sky.

"Alright," Lilamon murmured. "We're here now. What's the plan?"

"We go in there and save Impmon," Ai said immediately.

"Yes, we know that," Diatrymon chuckled. "We meant slightly more detail. Look at all those guards down there. The moment we move out there, those guys will be all over us."

He was right. Unlike the forest, the castle didn't provide a lot of cover, and there were a mass of Nightmare soldiers who had been left behind to keep watch on the castle, several of them amassed in the courtyard and many others lining the walls.

Wingdramon's gaze focused on the pipelines that had been attached to Belphemon before and followed their progress up to the wall they were embedded in. "There," he pointed, indicating the spot. "I think that that's where Impmon will be if he's still in there."

Mako lifted up the D-Arc. The arrow on the tracking function zeroed in on the spot that Wingdramon had indicated. "He's right," he nodded. "That's the place."

"Well then," Wingdramon smirked. "You guys better get in there and rescue him."

"Us guys?" Ai looked up at the dragon. "What about you?"

"I'm going to provide a distraction," Wingdramon replied simply and before anybody could stop him, he sprang off the edge of the cliff and his wings shot out to their natural positions on either side of him. The dragon swooped down past the walls and with a cry of **"WING BLAST!"** he pulsed a shockwave down into the main courtyard. The Nightmare Soldiers didn't know what hit them as they were sent flying and slammed into the walls all around them.

"There!" cried a SkullSatamon, pointing at the blue enemy. "Get him! Get him!"

Wingdramon glanced over his shoulder and smirked as a host of winged and aerial Digimon instantly rose from all of the palace to meet him, howling for a kill and evil flashing in their red eyes. Which had been exactly what the dragon was hoping for.

Because, in the air, there were few who could best him.

Wingdramon reversed his trajectory with a flip and shot downwards and into the throng, folding his wings to his sides as he plummeted. His back-lance slammed through two Devimon before they could blink and his jaws closed around the tail of an Airdramon and dragged it crashing downwards, his wings snapping out to collide with a pair of SkullSatamon and knock them silly. He span around and slammed the Airdramon into one of the castle towers and then shot back upwards so fast the enemy Digimon were still turning around when he was amongst them again.

He slashed through the wing of a Devimon and sent it spiralling towards the ground and rammed straight into a Gargoylemon, carrying it up on his shoulders as he grabbed hold of a Devidramon by both its wings in his hands and hauled it up with him. His long tail snapped out and curled around a LadyDevimon and slammed her into another Gargoylemon as he suddenly swung about to slam his spear through another Devidramon. He tossed the Devidramon in his claws back into the air, slammed the LadyDevimon in his tail into him and flip around to impale them both on his lance and then flipped around again to grab a third Devidramon and deliberately thrust him onto the tip of his lance.

He curved upwards and slewed to one side to allow a pair of Nail Bones to pass on either side of one wing. The wing in question rammed one of the SkullSatamon in question a moment later and sent him flying towards the ground and spun around and shot over the head of the other, his tail slamming down behind him and snapping the winged skeleton's staff and several on its bones in the process. He piled on speed and grabbed an Airdramon by the neck and slammed him into a second and dashed them both against the walls of the castle at the same time.

He kicked off from the wall and ploughed through another group of Devimon, swinging around the castle towers and coming back to thunder into an Ultimate level Arkadimon that screeched as he collided with its back. It attempted to slash over its shoulder, but Wingdramon had tucked his wings into his sides and dropped like a stone towards the ground. At the last moment, his wings snapped open and he rose back up, but he lashed his tail down and slammed it into the Arkadimon's head at the same exact moment that said head slammed into the ground, blasting the Arkadimon to data.

Wingdramon arced back upwards and levitated himself to a standstill, smirking at the Nightmare Soldiers that remained. There were still a lot of them, of course, but they were all absolutely gobsmacked. After all, Wingdramon had just taken out over twenty of them in the space of about half a minute, if that.

"Anyone else?" he announced.

There was a screeching cacophony of fury as the Nightmare Soldiers shot towards him with claws and fangs outstretched. Wingdramon just hung there until the last second, until he blurred for a moment at the same time he did, all the Nightmare Soldiers directly in front of his face were slammed out the sky by an invisible force. The truth was that Wingdramon had shot around the tower so fast and returned to the exact same spot he had been in before that it looked like he hadn't moved at all.

This didn't seem to deter the rest of the soldiers, so Wingdramon's eyes narrowed further and he murmured, "Time to get serious." With a powerful flap he sailed right upwards, pursued by the yelling mob. With a blur of motion, Wingdramon vanished for a moment and then shot back towards them with a roar of **"BLAZE SONIC BREATH!"** from directly above them. He zipped out of super-speed and sent down his wall of blue-tinted fire from his jaws that washed down to the sand below in a column that vaporised dozens of the Nightmare Soldiers at once.

But more just kept coming, so Wingdramon dipped and dived back into their forces in a powerful barrel roll like he was a spinning top and motored through another large batch of the evil beings, swatting them aside with his wings as if they were nothing more than annoying flies. He levelled out moments before he hit the ground and aimed himself up towards another Ultimate level Arkadimon.

"**EXPLODE SONIC LANCE!"** he roared and shot up so fast that a teleporter could not have beaten him there and buried the lance in the Arkadimon, tearing it apart from the inside with the powerful explosion that followed which knocked three SkullSatamon and another LadyDevimon out of the sky as well. As Wingdramon took a moment to correct his angle after the explosion, his tail swept out behind him to club several Devidramon over the head and then he whipped around and performed a graceful loop-da-loop at high speed, resulting in him throwing a Wing Blast straight up that pulsed several more of the Soldiers out of the sky with the attack.

* * *

"Whoa," Mako breathed.

"Awesome," Ai echoed.

Diatrymon chuckled. "Wingdramon is known as the lord of the skies for a reason, you know, kids."

Lilamon shook herself. "What are we standing here and staring for. We need to get down there."

The Ancient Bird nodded. "You're right behind me," he supplied, as he sprang over the cliff-side and fell towards the top of the wall talons first.

* * *

Zhuqiaomon crashed into the beach feet-first, his talons digging grooves in the sand as he flared his wings to stop himself from toppling over backwards. The phoenix growled in irritation as he shook inky water from his feathers and re-ignited his aura. The fact that nothing the Sovereigns attempted seemed to have an adverse effect on GranDracmon for long had long since gone beyond frustrating.

As GranDracmon heaved Baihumon in the air and delivered a cracking punch to the bottom of the tiger Sovereign's jaw, the great Demon sprang upwards to avoid Ebonwumon as the giant two-headed Digimon tried to flatten him into the ground again. He landed astride the Sovereign's right neck and wrapped his arms around to constrict the airway. The Scottish-head hacked and throttled and the Irish head quickly lanced across his body to snap at their enemy. GranDracmon leapt up and off to avoid the gnashing teeth of the other head and soared right into the path of Azulongmon.

The serpent Sovereign changed his course when he saw GranDracmon had seen his approach and swung his massive tail into the Demon's front legs to flip him into the air, then doubled back on himself and began to shoot towards GranDracmon with his coils moving into a spiral motion behind him as his body flared with electricity. GranDracmon right himself and turned back towards him, only to find the mighty Sovereign of the East streaking towards him like a literal thunderbolt. Azulongmon sent a burst of lightning from the horn on his forehead that connected with GranDracmon and caused him to howl in pain as his body was wracked with millions of volts and then Azulongmon crashed into him with all the Force of a falling mountain range.

GranDracmon was thrust down into the Dark Ocean below by this blazing attack on Azulongmon's part and Azulongmon thundered down on top of him, smashing him under the surface of the water, which promptly conducted the electricity and increased the voltage still further. Both Sovereign and Demon briefly vanished underneath the water, but it was Azulongmon that rose first and shot up into the sky, coiling around to see what affect his attack had had.

As it turned out, not a lot.

GranDracmon sprang out of the water on a geyser of his own making, blackened and charred but otherwise unscathed. He prepared to strike back at Azulongmon with a Crystal Revolution but Zhuqiaomon chose that moment to shoot back into the attack like a blazing comet and ram GranDracmon in front, setting himself on fire as he did so and catch the Demon in the blaze. Zhuqiaomon brought his talons up and latched them around the shark-jawed shoulders as they tried to bite him to snap them shut and threw GranDracmon away, his eyes burning as he launched a Blazing Helix and combined it with a Sonic Zephyr to produce a literal firestorm that coated GranDracmon and tossed him out across the surface of the water.

More blackened than ever and his skin now severely burnt, GranDracmon knocked away the remnants of the firestorm was its intensity had died down and unleashed a Death Scream upon the two airborne Sovereigns in an attempt to paralyse them. And then was when Baihumon suddenly jumped on him from behind in a magnificent soaring leap. His iron claws latched into GranDracmon's back and his weight carried them both crashing back into the surf. Baihumon sprang off moments before impact and slammed his spiked tail across GranDracmon's face, eliciting a howl. Then he leapt out of the water, whirled around and fired a powerful Gold Strength off at the Demon.

GranDracmon already had one golden arm thanks to the tiger, though the power of the Dark Ocean was slowly returning it to normal, which would never have happened anywhere else in the universe. But he did not fancy another, so he lifted his free arm and launched a Crystal Revolution so powerful that when it slammed into the Gold Strength it overloaded it and sent a massive wave of energy towards Baihumon that froze the sea to ice-crystals on contact.

Baihumon dodged out of the way at the last moment, dashing out from in front of the wave so fast he had to leap and land in a sprawling heap to avoid getting hit. GranDracmon closed in on him, but then he was suddenly hit by another wave of energy, this one green, and tossed out of the water to crash against the cliffs. He looked up just in time to see Ebonwumon raising himself up on his back legs and slamming them into the cliff above him, bringing practically the whole structure for three-hundred yards crashing down on GranDracmon and burying him underneath the rubble, which Ebonwumon promptly stamped on for good measure, and then backed off and released a close-range Double Dragon Wave that reduced the chunks of rocks to grit.

The turtle Sovereign backed away and moved into the water again after that, for he guessed that that would not be the end of it. And, indeed, he was right. The grit pile moved and GranDracmon seemed to casually step out, shaking himself to get rid of the clogging ex-cliff as his wounds began to heal over. He clapped his hands several times in mock applause and chuckled.

"Wonderful, wonderful work, Sovereign," he laughed. "I must admit, I assumed that in the years of my absence from the Digital World, your powers had lessened through lack of practice. But you seem to have become even more powerful than ever."

"Aye, true enough," Ebonwumon nodded.

"We were not idle in all those years," Zhuqiaomon growled. "We assisted the humans in taking out the True Enemy."

"And we shall stop you as well, GranDracmon," Azulongmon declared. "Your end is nigh."

"What they said," Baihumon put in, having nothing else to contribute to the conversation.

GranDracmon chuckled again. "Nigh, is it?" he asked with a raised brow. "Well, I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree on that particular statement, Azulongmon. Because, you see, you haven't even seen the full extent of what I can do here. This land and everything about it is under my complete control. You think controlling the water was special?" His eyes narrowed. "Well, how about this?"

Suddenly, black tree roots exploded out from the cliff-face, or what remained of it, all around GranDracmon and snaked across the beach at explosive speed and assaulted Ebonwumon. The turtle Sovereign attempted to rear up again and get out of the way, but the roots wrapped around his legs and pulled him back down, hauling his legs from beneath his bulk and sending him crashing onto his stomach with an impact that might have been mistaken for an atomic bomb going off. The roots wrapped themselves around Ebonwumon's shell and both his necks, dragging his heads underwater and holding them there, ignoring the Sovereign's struggles to lift them out to breathe.

For breathe Ebowumon could not. The laws here were different from the Digital World. If GranDracmon didn't want you to be able to breathe under his water, you didn't breathe under his water.

Baihumon immediately leapt over the tree roots and rushed towards the turtle to try and help him, but several of the roots below him suddenly sprouted branches that shot upwards to ensnare him as well and brought him crashing down the ground, struggling wildly as the roots broadened and thickened and tried to engulf him. Zhuqiaomon hurtled overhead and brought his aura to supernova point as he prepared to burn through the roots, but then the ground itself suddenly came alive and a pair of columns of rock shot out from the beach and slammed into the phoenix, knocking him askew and then wrapping around him like a fist and hauling him down towards the beach, where the sand began to engulf him, trying to bury him alive.

Azulongmon flung a set of lightning chains down towards the tree roots to try and snap them and give Ebonwumon a chance to pull his heads back up to the surface, but the water beneath him geysered upwards and slammed his chains aside. A sudden wind then sprang out of nowhere, a wind so powerful that even the giant serpent dragon was thrown from the air and down towards the beach, which promptly formed itself into earthen spikes that Azulongmon slammed into, causing him to bellow in pain louder than a thousand elephants. Then the earth and sand began to try and pull him under too.

GranDracmon had to restrain himself from laughing as the four Sovereigns struggled to pull themselves free, but to seemingly no avail. "Now this," he murmured to himself. "This is quite a show, do you not agree?"

Zhuqiaomon roared and snapped his head up, only for it to be engulfed by the earth a few moments later. GranDracmon extended his arms and slowly closed his fingers into fists, causing the roots and the terrain to constrict tighter and tighter upon the four enemy Megas. "This is where we say goodbye," he growled.

And that was when a sudden storm of Black Hail shards suddenly fired themselves out of the forest on Ebonwumon's back and lanced into the air, falling down on GranDracmon from above and cutting through the air with a whistling noise as they did so. GranDracmon was caught off guard by the attack as he was pummelled by the barrage and lifted his arms to cover his face, causing a momentary lapse in concentration. And the Sovereigns took advantage of that lapse immediately.

Baihumon fired a Gold Strength from his mouth that slammed into the tree roots all around him, turning the wood into solid gold. Zhuqiaomon thrust his head out of the ground once more and let off a massive and continuous Phoenix Fire which washed over the gold roots, the blaze so hot that the metal began to melt almost instantly. Ignoring the burning sensation this caused, Baihumon burst out of the confines of his prison and attacked the metal around Ebonwumon's necks with his vicious armoured claws.

GranDracmon growled and prepared to re-restrain Baihumon, but half a dozen electrified chains exploded out of the ground from where the beach was trying to bury Azulongmon and lanced at the Demon. One struck him full in the face and the others wrapped around his arms and hoisted him into the air. With a burst of his wings, Zhuqiaomon surged free of his sandy prison and soared for GranDracmon's underbelly, talons first, seeking to lacerate it.

GranDracmon burst free of the chains and hurled a Crystal Revolution at Zhuqiaomon, who altered his wings and smoothly dodged the blast and streaked past GranDracmon, clipping him with a wing as he did so to send him tumbling, and then fell on him from above to drive him back into the sand. And that was when Ebonwumon's heads broke the surface once more, gasping for breath, but they launched a massive Double Dragon Wave right at GranDracmon. Zhuqiaomon rocketed out of the way and the Demon was struck full-on by the attack and tossed back into the cliff wall. As Ebonwumon pulled himself free of the remaining restraints, Baihumon turned around and charged GranDracmon as he struggled back up.

GranDracmon had no time to react before Baihumon slammed him and sandwiched him against the cliff wall, digging both his front set of claws into the insides of the shark jaw shoulders, causing muffled shrieks of pain from both. GranDracmon roared and pushed Baihumon away as the tiger launched another Gold Strength at him. GranDracmon had the presence of mind to dodge out of the way and prepared to launch another Death Scream, when the sand exploded from where Azulongmon still was and the dragon Sovereign burst back into the sky, launching a flurry of Lightning Bolts at GranDracmon.

The Demon quickly manipulated the cliff to expand and form a protective wall in front of him which took the lightning strikes and was almost completely obliterated. GranDracmon growled and threw a pair of Crystal Revolutions out at the impudent Sovereigns. Zhuqiaomon vaporised one with a Phoenix Fire and Azulongmon dodged the other by spiralling his body around it so it past through his coils.

GranDracmon growled. All four Sovereigns were standing in front of him, ready to fight, so he hurriedly took this opportunity to try and immobilise all four of them with a mighty Death Scream. But when he made the attempt, all that came out of the shark jaws on his shoulders was a pathetic choking sound.

He glanced down in astonishment. Baihumon's claws and crippled their screaming capabilities when he had thrust them inside, and had temporarily disabled his attack. GranDracmon was growing furious now and as he hurried to heal over the damage to his shark shoulders, he clapped his hands together to generate a massive shockwave that flung all the Sovereigns but the weighty Ebonwumon backwards and then charged forwards again, roaring furiously as all four of the mighty beings launched their attacks at him again.

* * *

When Diatrymon landed on the wall, his talons scraped against the stonework so hard they threw up sparks. Flapping his wings to steady himself, he looked up as Lilamon levitated down towards them with Ai and Mako in her arms and Calumon on her head, while Wingdramon continued to lord it over the other airborne Digimon.

But there were other guards to contend with. A large number of flightless evil Digimon, including a few Ogremon and Fugamon, a couple of Minotarumon, some Raremon and an occasional Sangloupmon, remained inside the courtyard below them. For the moment, they didn't appear to notice the newcomers landing on the walls, as they were enthralled by the showdown going on in the air above them.

"There's the door," Lilamon murmured, nodding to what looked like the only entrance to the main castle as it didn't appear to have any windows anywhere. "That's where we need to go."

"But what about all those guys?" Calumon asked. "They'll see us if we go down there."

"And there sure are a lot of them," Mako nodded.

"I'm sure that we can take them," Diatrymon muttered boldly, his feathers standing on end as he readied himself for a fight.

It was then that a familiar noise caught Lilamon's attention and she glanced briefly out across the beach. The battling was still going on in the distance, but there was something a lot closer which caught her attention, and she smirked. "I have a better idea," she said. "Follow me."

Bemused, the others quickly followed on after her, keeping low as she moved along the top of the walls. There was a Fugamon ahead of them, staring at the sky, but Lilamon dived forwards before he registered their presence and drove a Lilac Dagger into his stomach to disintegrate him and then moved on.

Eventually they came to a stop above the main gate into the castle, the guards of which had apparently gone into the air after Wingdramon. The gates were open but the portcullis was down and Lilamon moved straight to the winch above it and grabbed one end in her petals.

"Give me a hand, Diatrymon," she murmured, as she attempted to move the heavy thing. Diatrymon looked bemused but he trusted Lilamon had a good reason for doing this so he placed his beak against one of the handles and pushed down as Lilamon heaved the other end up. The two of them repeated the process, again and again, turning the winch slowly and causing the heavy metal grid covering the doorway to slowly grind its way upwards.

Of course, some of the guards finally noticed what was going on when the portcullis started to open. "Hey!" a Sangloupmon shouted, pointing up at them. "Intruders! Get 'em!"

The enemy Digimon surged towards the gate, which was exactly what Lilamon had expected and wanted them to do. They had not risen the portcullis very far, but for her idea to work, they did not need to. Because as the enemy Digimon ran to try and intercept the intruders, they were suddenly blinded by a bright flash of light from the other side of the gates. And then a demonic, roaring thing surged under the gap under the portcullis and slammed into the front of the enemy guards.

Or, to give it its proper name, it was Behemoth. The motorcycle's headlight blazed as it swept it across enemy Digimon, who, having lived in this perpetually dark world for years, were almost completely blinded by the intense light. Behemoth skidded around and bashed broadside into a pair of Ogremon and sent them crashing back into their comrades, and then proceeded to wreak havoc on the remaining guards.

The motorcycle skidded around so quickly he left massive marks in the floor, raising himself into a wheelie position and slamming his underside into the snout of a Sangloupmon, which yelped and fell backwards as Behemoth fell back down and shot away, motoring around the tower and then barging his way through the cluster of guards to send several of them flying.

Without warning, as he shot in front of a Minotarumon's leg, he stopped his front wheel. This sent his back end spinning around in a wide circle, causing him to slam his side into the back of the Minotarumon's leg. Behemoth sped away as the Digimon came crashing to his knees and collapsed onto his front. With a skilful manoeuvre, Behemoth ascended onto his leg and ran up his back, shooting off his shoulders and into the air, where his back wheel slammed an Ogremon directly in the face. He swerved around to clip a Fugamon with his front wheel and send him crashing to his back and shot between a pair of SkullMeramon, as they tried to shoot at him with Metal Fireballs.

The two attacks ended up hitting one another and exploding, sending several enemy Digimon crashing to the ground as the white-hot flames surged over them.

Behemoth then found himself confronted by a couple of Raremon, as the slimy Digimon raised themselves upwards with mouths agape and claws ready to slash down at it. The bike changed it trajectory on a penny and shot off to the side as one of the Raremon's strikes hit the ground where he'd been. The greasy Digimon looked off to the side dumbly as Behemoth circled around and shot straight towards them from the side, piling on all the speed it could.

It rammed into the first Raremon so fast that it punctured straight through its slimy body and shot out the other side to ram the second Raremon in the same manner. The gloopy, smelly Digimon howled but they burst into data on the spot, both of them now regretting their ridiculously soft bodies. Behemoth was now coated in slime, but it wasn't put off for a moment as it proceeded to run rings around the other Digimon.

* * *

"Look at him go," Ai breathed. "I didn't know Behemoth was that good."

"Well, its master is in trouble," chuckled Lilamon. "I had a feeling that it would be more than willing to do its bit to help him out, though who it got past the battling Digimon over there I'll never know."

"It's definitely a crafty bike," Diatrymon agreed. "Shall we get going?"

"Yep," nodded the flower-fairy. "Come on, kids." She scooped them up again and sailed over to the door across the courtyard as Diatrymon leapt over the wall and quickly skirted the battle, using his impressive speed to beat Lilamon and the others there. The guards were took taken up by Behemoth to notice them, and they quickly pushed the wooden doors open and into the darkness beyond.

It was a ghostly place, illuminated only by the flames of the torches in the wall brackets, which weren't even orange. They were a sort of greyish-white, bathing the walls and floor around them in a monochrome colour. Even the multi-coloured Diatrymon seemed to have been drained of all colour in here.

Ai shuddered. "This place is creepy," she murmured, hugging herself.

Calumon hid his face behind his ears. "I'm scared," he added.

"We'll have time for being scared later," Lilamon pointed out. "Right now we have to find Impmon. Does the pointer tell us which corridor to go down?"

"No," Mako shivered. "It just points at Impmon, not in the way to go to get to him."

"Alright," Lilamon nodded. "We'll have to try trial and error then. Let's go this way." She made her way towards one of the nearest corridors, but suddenly she found her way blocked by Diatrymon, who was holding out a wing to stop her.

"Hold it," he said. "You and Wingdramon have both taken point so far. It's my turn now. You stay behind me and guard the rear. And keep an eye on the little ones. There are probably more guards somewhere in here, and we don't want them to take us by surprise. Alright."

Lilamon stared at him for a couple of seconds, and then grinned and nodded, "Go ahead, Diatrymon. Show them what you're made of."

"I intend to," Diatrymon raised a foot a flexed his metal talons. Then he turned and, without further ado, he charged straight into the corridor at high speed, using a Mega Dash Impact attack even though he had, as of yet, nothing to attack. Lilamon hurried after him with her burdens as the Ancient Bird Digimon surge through the corridors ahead.

Diatrymon thundered down the thin passageway and took a left at the first possible turn, charging up a large flight of stairs and then taking another left at the top to streak through another hallway, Lilamon sticking close behind him. It became a headlong charge through the castle, Diatrymon spreading his wings out with claws splayed in case they encountered anything.

And, sure enough, they did.

At first, it wasn't much – a hall full of Bakemon clustered together trying to get a view outside through what appeared to be an arrow-slit. They turned as Diatrymon slammed around the corner, screeching and before they knew was happening, he was among them. He slammed into the first five or so with such force from his Mega Dash Impact, which had built up in strength over the charge through the castle that they were vaporised immediately. His beak slammed another aside and into the wall and swung around to bite through another as his wing claws lashed out to strike through another pair and vaporise them.

He lashed up with one foot to slice through another pair, tucking his neck in as he span around in the corridor and then screeched as he flared his wings and fell upon the remaining three with a flash of metal and feathers. A few moments later and they were all dead.

"What's going o-ACK!" a Phantomon called as he rounded the corner to see Diatrymon barrelling towards him. Even though the Phantomon was a level higher, he was no match for Diatrymon's extreme aggression. His sharp beak snapped through the scythe like it was a pencil and he rammed the Phantomon out into the wall of the next hallway and swiped a wing claw across his stomach to disintegrate him. He then found himself face to face with a charging Sangloupmon as he turned and, screeching, he dashed to intercept him.

The Sangloupmon jumped high, and Diatrymon countered by going low and then leaping up at the last second and slamming into the Sangloupmon between its front legs. The Sangloupmon yelped as its head cracked against the ceiling and it tumbled to the ground, whereupon Diatrymon stamped down on it with his talons to finish it off. He looked up as a swarm of Vilemon were fast approaching, but he threw a Destruction Roar at them. The soundwaves pulsed over the small bat-like Digimon and tore their data apart and Diatrymon motored past them before they'd even dispersed and fell upon the DarkLizardmon behind them with furious energy, grabbing it by the neck in his beak and slamming it to the side.

Diatrymon turned to face the corridor again, just as a new opponent rounded the corner. He blinked. It looked like some kind of metal sabre-toothed cat with bat wings that had no flaps of skin between the bones. It was a SkullBaluchimon, and the Ultimate level Digimon growled as it faced off against the Champion. Diatrymon growled back and the two of them dashed to intercept one another.

Prehistoric cat and prehistoric bird slammed into each other with extreme force, the two of them slashing and biting at each other with boiling fury. The SkullBaluchimon grabbed Diatrymon's long neck in its jaws and Diatrymon pounded it in the side twice with one of his wings as he fastened his own beak around the enemy's wing bones and pulled. Neither of them inflicted a great deal of damage to the other thanks to their metal armour, but the SkullBaluchimon's lower teeth still dug into the unprotected areas on Diatrymon's neck.

Diatrymon lashed out with one foot and his leg claws actually managed to gouge several marks in the SkullBaluchimon's underside. The Ultimate yelped and released his neck and Diatrymon slammed himself forwards to push the other Digimon back. The SkullBaluchimon anchored its feet and they ground to a halt as it lurched up and grabbed Diatrymon around the neck again with its front legs and leapt up and around, yanking its wing out of Diatrymon's mouth as it swung onto the Champion's back and bore him down.

Diatrymon thrashed and screeched as the SkullBaluchimon tore into one of his wings with its hind claws and resumed its attack on his neck with its claws.

Its sabre teeth slashed dangerously close to Diatrymon's jugular, and the Ancient Bird shrieked and lurched himself to the side, slamming the SkullBaluchimon into the wall with his own body. The SkullBaluchimon's grip slackened, but as Diatrymon stepped away, the Ultimate batted out with one heavy paw and slammed Diatrymon in the side of the head with it and knocked him backwards, and then lashed out with its tail to trip him onto his back. And then it pounced.

Lilamon, who had been watching the whole thing, leapt forward to try and help, but Diatrymon was not done yet. The Ancient Bird lashed upwards with both of his feet and his claws slammed into the SkullBaluchimon's underside, eliciting a howl from the evil Digimon. Diatrymon then threw him off and rolled back onto his feet to slam the cat into the wall again. One wing claw scythed in and actually managed to sever one of its saber teeth and narrowly missed gouging its eye out.

The SkullBaluchimon rammed back and its remaining sabre-tooth slammed into Diatrymon's exposed underside and buried itself there. Diatrymon screeched at the pain but was able to swing a wing down to batter the SkullBaluchimon aside and grab it in his talon and slam it into the wall so hard the wall cracked.

And that's where the idea came to Diatrymon. Without giving the Ultimate level Digimon a chance to recuperate he slammed it into the wall twice more, cracking the wall further before the cat batted itself free. Diatrymon threw a Destruction Roar at it, but it dodged aside and Diatrymon's attack shattered the wall instead, punching a hole through to the outside. Diatrymon turned back as the SkullBaluchimon pounced at him once more, jaws agape.

And then the bird flattened himself to the ground, folding his legs beneath him as he did in roosting position and lashed up with one wing, slamming it into the SkullBaluchimon's chin. The Ultimate was flung back into the air by the strike and carried right out through the hole in the wall, instantly plummeting to the ground outside. Diatrymon stood up and threw a Destruction Roar down at the falling Ultimate.

The SkullBaluchimon's wings were useless enough as it was, and then it was slammed by the Destruction Roar and pushed down towards the ground. This, combined with the fact they were a considerable distance up by this point, ensured that the Ultimate hit the ground with such a colossal force that it shattered into data.

Diatrymon nodded in triumph, breathing slightly heavily as he called down to the dispersing data. "Just goes to show you that level doesn't always matter, does it?"

Lilamon smiled and placed a petalled hand on Diatrymon's shoulder. "That… was amazing," she smiled at him.

"Yeah, it was so epic!" cheered Mako.

"You owned him!" Ai agreed.

"Yay for Diatrymon!" Calumon decided to contribute.

Diatrymon chuckled and said, "Thanks guys."

Lilamon took a moment to examine the Ancient Bird's wounds. "Not too much damage," she reported. "If we were in a forest, I could use the woodland energy to heal you but I'm sure you'll be fine." She looked out through the hole in the wall and then pointed. "There are the pipelines Wingdramon pointed out. We need to go in that direction."

"On it," Diatrymon nodded. "Come on, Lilamon. Let's go get Impmon back."

"Yes," Lilamon said, leaning over Diatrymon to fire a barrage of Marvel Shots into the Bakemon who had been trying to sneak up on them. "Let's."

* * *

Outside, in the fighting, things seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. A very large number of the Nightmare Soldiers had been eliminated and, as of yet, none of the good Digimon attackers seemed to be all that worse for wear, except for a few scrapes and bruises here and there. But, wading through the front lines of the Nightmare Soldiers were some of the more powerful ones, coming to the fore of the action.

Among these were several Mega-level Arkadimon. One of them charged forwards and rammed into Plesiomon in a terrific impact that carried them both to the ground. Plesiomon yelled as his neck was pushed into the sand, and the Arkadimon dug its claws into the giant plesiosaur's back. The aquatic Digimon growled and allowed water to flow over his body and wash over the Arkadimon, engulfing it in a bubble of water, that caused it to thrash in momentary panic, but then another Arkadimon surged towards the action with claws raised.

It was promptly intercepted by GranKuwagamon, who blasted it in the chest with his Dimension Scissors attack and swept upwards on his buzzing wings, ducking underneath the clumsy swing of the Arkadimon and closing his pincers around the arm, slicing through it as easily as butter to send it fizzing into data. But the Arkadimon lashed out with its other hand and clouted GranKuwagamon in the side, to send him spinning right into the water that Plesiomon was holding over the other. Plesiomon hurriedly relinquished his attack and rammed the Arkadimon, but two more swept out of nowhere to blindside him.

MetalSeadramon and SaberLeomon charged forwards and swept over Plesiomon, ramming his attackers and pushing them away. SaberLeomon tore a chunk out of the Arkadimon's front, while MetalSeadramon blasted his own opponent in the face with a River of Power to push him backwards. The Arkadimon made no sounds as they steadied themselves and charged back into the attack.

The ground was suddenly swarming with Rookie level Arkadimon which started to absorb the data of the comrades which the allied Digimon had destroyed, ascending all the way to the Ultimate stage in mere moments as they fell upon the enemy. Pajiramon and Vajramon jumped backwards as Arkadimon pummelled the ground before them and then lashed down with its open mouth. Vajramon grabbed its jaws and held it at bay with his incredible strength while Pajiramon fired crossbow bolts into its open mouth, but another Ultimate Arkadimon crashed into them from the side and slammed them into Vikaralamon. The pig Deva attempted to turn, but the two Arkadimon slammed into him and actually began to tip the enormous pig over.

As the Deva yelled in protest and flailed in an attempt to keep his balance, MarineAngemon shot between the Arkadimon and slammed them both with a round of Kahuna Waves to knock them back, zipping to safety as Vikaralamon crashed back onto his feet. MarineAngemon hurriedly dodged a swipe from the Arkadimon's claws and shot a Smiling Face into the middle of its forehead as Sandiramon slid up behind the other and wrapped himself around its legs to keep it off-balance.

Another Mega level Arkadimon was trying to knock Gryphonmon out of the air, but for the moment the other Mega was avoiding its best efforts, spiralling underneath one swing and swooping under the crook of its arm, shifting around to pulse a Solor Roar at its back. The Arkadimon flinched as its data fluctuated but it still managed to sweep a massive wave of sand into Gryphonmon's face. His keen eyesight robbed of him by the gritty sand, Gryphonmon was unable to stop the Arkardimon from slamming its hands into either side of him and begin to squeeze.

The Arkadimon sneered, but then its face was suddenly swarmed by six Kumbiramon and one Sinduramon, which slashed and hacked at it with their claws and talons. The Arkadimon lost its grip on Gryphonmon, who went spiralling to the ground, only just able to snap his wings out to avoid a nasty crash. As the Devas shot away, the Arkadimon was slammed by a Water Tail Blaster from Plesiomon, who moved over and hurriedly soaked Gryphonmon's face to wash out the sand.

"Thanks," the Digimon croaked.

"No problem," Plesiomon nodded. Gryphonmon then growled and surged back into the air, ramming the Arkadimon in the chest and swooping up to latch onto its neck with a powerful Möbius Bite.

One of the Mega Arkadimon dodged a blast from Indramon's Horn of Desolation and delivered a massive punch to the side of the horn, slamming it out of Indramon's hooves. As the horse Deva backpedalled, defenceless, the Arkadimon grabbed the horn and slammed it into Indramon's front, sending him crashing onto his back and digging a groove through the sand. Indramon looked up as the Arkadimon raised its claws for the killing blow, when SaberLeomon jumped out of nowhere and delivered a powerful Howling Crusher to the side of its head.

Indramon watched in astonishment as the Mega lion raked its sabres across the Arkadimon's chest and hurled a barrage of needles from its mane right at the Arkadimon and into its eyes. The Mega level Demonic Digimon clawed at its own face to try and get them out as SaberLeomon surged forwards and threw itself into the Arkadimon's chest like a great furry cannonball. As the Arkadimon was flung backwards, a pair of huge claws suddenly punctured through it from behind and knocked it forwards again, Dinorexmon latched onto its back as it burst into data.

"You… you saved me?" Indramon protested to SaberLeomon.

"Of course we did," SaberLeomon turned back to face him. "You are our ally, aren't you?"

Indramon said nothing more, but as he got up to retrieve his fallen horn, his mind was a whirlwind of different thoughts and emotions.

Makuramon was not far away, finishing off a pair of Devimon when an Ultimate Arkadimon sought to strike him down. The monkey screeched and leapt out of the way of the claw strike, scampering across the beach with the Arkadimon in hot pursuit. He turned and flung a Primal Orb at the oncoming opponent, but the Arkadimon swatted it aside and opened its mouth to swallow the monkey whole. Until Mihiramon swooped out of the sky and pummelled it in the face with an Armoured Tiger Tail, sending the Arkadimon backwards, where it was rammed by Majiramon, who sent fire bursting from his jaws into the Arkadimon's face. The Arkadimon toppled backwards and received a literal hammer blow to the nose by Caturamon.

The three rescuing Devas nodded to Makuramon, but then they were all forced to leap aside as a Mega-level Arkadimon dropped down towards them and swiped viciously at them, slashing Majiramon in the shoulders and sending the dragon Deva crashing into the cliff-side. The Arkadimon raised its claws to strike again, when UlforceVeedramon flashed into existence in front of it and rammed his Victory Sword into the Arkadimon's gut and sliced upwards, tearing it in half. Another Mega level Arkadimon leapt for the Royal Knight, but he caught the claw-strike on his Tensegrity Shield with ease and drove his sword into it abdomen, then clouted the next under the chin with his shield and vaporised it with a Ray of Victory.

"Be careful around these ones," UlforceVeedramon cautioned the others two Ultimates absorbed the data of the Megas and grew into Megas themselves. "They're dangerous."

"We can see that," protested Makuramon.

UlforceVeedramon surged for them with a wave of his cloak, but the Arkadimon stayed put as he charged forwards. Abruptly, UlforceVeedramon felt a lot of his energy suddenly drain away and he gasped, halting his charge and collapsing to his knees. The Arkadimon had used their Dot Matrix on him and it was now that they jumped forwards. UlforceVeedramon still had the energy to block one, but the other slammed him into the side and knocked him onto his back.

As both Arkadimon raised their claws to finish him off, a phalanx of Digimon suddenly converged upon them. Gryphonmon and GranKuwagamon swarmed into their faces and obscured their vision with thrashing claws and gnashing pincers. The Vajramon charged through the legs of one and slashed each sword across a leg on either side of him, whilst Pajiramon let loose a Thunder Stomp to shake the ground beneath the feet of the other. Then with a surge of his coils, MetalSeadramon slammed his body into the chests of both of them at the same time to throw them back.

UlforceVeedramon scrambled to his feet and slashed through one to finish it off and the other was consumed by Ogre Flames from Dinorexmon and practically melted into data. SaberLeomon ran over and cried, "Is everyone okay?"

"Probably," Mihiramon nodded as he landed nearby, "But this new bunch are definitely more trouble than the last one." He pointed with his tail to where a large group of other Arkadimon were crowding along the beach, with claws splayed and ready for action.

Suddenly Justimon came ploughing through the air and crashed into Makuramon and knocked them both to the ground. The biomerged form of Ryo and Cyberdramon pushed himself to his feet. "This is not going well," he groaned, nodding towards the other battleground nearby. The others turned to look as they watched Belphemon ram HiAndromon out of the air with his ram-horn, electricity sparking over the black android's body as he slammed into the beach like a comet.

Belphemon then whirled around and locked claws with MirageGaogamon again, as the Exalted Beast tried to push the Demon Lord back, forcing their claws above their heads so that he could slam a Full Moon Blaster into Belphemon's front. Belphemon was slammed towards the ground, but before he could reach it, he suddenly stopped and powered back up _through_ the attack and rammed his claws into MirageGaogamon's open chest, eliciting a roar of pain that sent him flying to crash-land and roll away.

Gallantmon moved in to try and settle things, his shield and lance bursting with light as he unleashed a Lightning Joust _and_ a Shield of the Just at the same time. Belphemon hurled a massive ball of yellow energy from his mouth that slammed into the attacks and generated a massive explosion that both Gallantmon and Belphemon soared into. There was a very loud crashing noise from within the smoke, but it was Gallantmon that was thrown out again by a tornado which blew the smoke away.

Gallantmon ploughed into the sand, and several of the others hurried over towards him. "It's no good!" Gallantmon groaned, as Vajramon and Pajiramon helped back to his feet. "He's too strong now. Nothing we can do seems to be working much anymore."

UlforceVeedramon hurried over to MirageGaogamon and helped him back up as well and the lupine Exalted Beast nodded in agreement. "He's absorbed a lot of data, and the darkness of this land is enthusing him with even more strength. We can't hold him off for much longer."

"**LAMPRANTHUS!"** Belphemon roared, as if to prove their point. His chains lanced down towards the group, many of which hurriedly returned fire with their own attacks. Some of the chains were repelled but others kept coming and forced them to scatter away.

"Everyone!" Justimon shouted. "We must regroup and strike back together if hope to have any chance of winning today!"

Belphemon crashed to the ground in front of the Arkadimon and the remaining Nightmare Soldiers, of which there were still a considerable amount. **"THAT'S A LAUGH!"** he roared. **"THERE WILL BE NO VICTORY FOR YOU TODAY!"**

With a roar, he led another charge, and the allied Digimon hurriedly grouped together once more to charge back, as the two armies sought to clash together a second time. There was to be no retreats anymore. Not until one side beat the other.

* * *

The castle was becoming a furious battleground itself. About half a dozen Megadramon, along with half a dozen Gigadramon, had suddenly swooped out from over the cliff and descended upon Wingdramon from above. The blue dragon ducked and veered to avoid the large number of larger Ultimates, slamming himself into the chin of one of the Megadramon to throw it off balance and barrelling into a sideways flip to avoid the tail strike of a Gigadramon, which accidentally clouted another Gigadramon in the face as a result.

Wingdramon still had yet to be hit, but against this many powerful opponents, even he was having a difficult time.

Down below, Behemoth continued to rage throughout the courtyard, allowing a furious Ogremon to chase him towards a wall before veering in another direction at the last second so the Ogremon crashed into the wall and then ramming into its back for good measure.

* * *

And inside the castle, Lilamon and Diatrymon had become beset by enemies. Ai, Mako and Calumon crouched between the two as Diatrymon fought off a swarm of ghostly Digimon that were trying to sweep past him and get at the weaker children, while, on the other side, Lilamon was locked in a one-on-one fight against what looked like a Taomon, had had grey clothing and blackish fur instead – a Doumon. She clashed her Lilac Dagger against its paintbrush and ducked beneath a swipe, before shooting off a round of Marvel Shots that the Doumon calmly blocked by raising a bubble shield in front of it. Lilamon frowned and threw herself back into the attack.

* * *

And, not far away, Yaamon pushed himself back upright somehow and turned to look towards the door, where he could hear the sounds of combat coming from outside. MetalPhantomon chuckled and said, "Sounds like you friends are getting close." His scythe crackled and he leered ominously at the door. "I hope they get here soon. I'd like to play with them."

"Guys," Yaamon whispered to himself. "No."

* * *

That's right people. It's the next Impmon chapter that you really have to be looking forward to, but I hope you liked this one all the same. I gave Wingdramon and Diatrymon signature parts in this particular chapter, as Lilamon got one in the last Impmon chapter, and none of Impmon's friends have got the opportunity to do a whole lot of unaided fighting. I hope you liked the action sequences here.

And no, Belphemon turning on those Nightmare Soldiers to heal himself does not count as "ally upon ally will turn." There's a much more important moment still in the future that fulfils that particular line of the prophecy.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The Empire presses its attack on the city, trying to bring down the shield generators. But they're about to get some very nasty and several very large surprises as they suddenly find out the rebellion is bigger than they thought.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 196 : Roar of the Wookiees**


	196. Roar of the Wookiees

This chapter took a little longer than I would have liked, namely because a lot of my time has been eaten by acquiring a new laptop and finishing a uni assignment, but here I am once again for another update of awesomeness. I think this is one of my favourite chapters among this whole battle sequence so far, and I'm pretty sure that most of you should be able to understand why that is by the end of it. It answers a lot, but not all, of the questions people have been asking as to the whereabouts of some of the characters. The rest of them will be answered in the next chapter.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 196:- Roar of the Wookiees**

* * *

For the rebels, the progress of the battling on Tython could be summed up in just one word – bad. The sheer number of enemy clones that were pouring through the streets now were absolutely staggering and the AT-AT walkers were presenting an impenetrable line that was slowly marching into the city. Everything fell back in front of them. Nobody who tried to move forwards survived for longer than a few seconds before they were blasted to pieces by the huge, metal hulks.

Hardcase was being as reckless as ever, kneeling down in the very middle of the street with his third cannon, as the second had long since run out of ammo as well and sending bursts of lasers streaming into the front lines of the oncoming clones as returning fire flashed all around him, getting dangerously close to hitting him. The hyperactive clone roared a challenge to the enemy, standing resolute even when the AT-AT walker up ahead began to zero its focus on him.

Shaak Ti dashed across the underside of an uprooted AT-TE walker and drew the fire of many of the Empire clones, batting their lasers aside as she strove to protect her retreating troops. She spotted Hardcase's stand in the middle of the street and hurriedly signalled to one of the MagnaGuards which was closest to the heroic, if partially insane, clone.

"Grab him! Don't let him get killed there!" she shouted as she blocked an incoming stream of five lasers. The MagnaGuard nodded and dashed over to Hardcase, wrapping a metallic arm around his chest and hauling the protesting clone out of the way by flipping over and using its electrostaff as a pole as the AT-AT fire suddenly pounded the streets right in front of them, tossing both droid and clone backwards. Hardcase rolled off the MagnaGuard and made to open fire again, but Rex caught him by the arm.

"Come on!" he said. "Staying here is a surefire way to get killed. We need to…" he stopped and ducked under a flying shot from an AT-RT which was promptly taken out when a MagnaGuard and commando droid leapt over to it and slammed its legs with staff and sword alike to trip it and send it crashing to the ground. "…we need to find a place with better cover to make our stand."

Hardcase growled, but nodded, allowing Rex to drag him away as the clone captain ran sideways and fired across himself while they ran, bringing down a couple more enemy clones in the process. Commander Bly stood nearby on a crate, ushering clones and Gungans past him quickly as he did his best to cover them by firing over their heads. His shots beaned an enemy clone in the head and him crashing onto his back, and slammed a couple more in the midsections. A pair of droidekas rolled out cover behind him and unrolled, adding to the laser-fire with their repeating blasters in an attempt to pin the Empire clones down.

Bly spotted an Empire clone that had managed to somehow get on the roof, aiming a missile launcher at the two droidekas. He slammed a shot upwards that crashed into the clone's chest, but he was too slow to stop the missile from being set off. Without thinking, Bly leapt off the crate and phased through the back of one of the droideka's shields and leapt onto its back, throwing it forward. Instinctively, if you could call anything a droid did instinct, the destroyer rolled back into a ball before it hit the ground and sped away as Bly hit the ground and rolled himself, covering his head as the missile impacted on the other droideka and exploded, showering Bly with bits of debris.

Bly looked up to see the droideka he had just saved rolling back towards him to uncurl by his side and continue opening fire as if nothing had happened. But Bly himself was in shock for a couple of moments. He had just saved a droideka! Bloody hell, his world really was upside-down. But they did need all the firepower they could get right now, so he sprang back up and hurriedly continued blasting as he backed away with the other clones.

Captain Tarpals hurriedly organised two lines of Gungans across the street from a distance behind the retreat, accepting an atlatl and loading an energy ball into it. Their close-range fighting was all but over thanks to the AT-ATs, but Tarpals refused to simply flee, and he flung his energy ball, along with the first line of Gungans, all of whom then stepped behind the second line to reload as the second line hurled their own energy balls and then stepped behind the first again and so on and so on.

This method of defensive retreat was proving to have massive effect on the Empire clones, as this method of attack did not require the Gungans to be directly in front of their target and they could throw from behind cover where the clones could not shoot back. Energy balls fell amongst them like an avalanche, smashing into their armour and burning into their skin and causing them to collapse to the ground, and the clones which took their place were immediately hit by the next barrage. Hundreds of clones were falling in this manner, as the Gungans were kept relatively safe from attack by another line of their own shield bearers and Shaak Ti and her MagnaGuards.

Nevertheless, despite the effectiveness of the retreat, it was still a retreat.

* * *

Obi-Wan was in the middle of a similar retreat, as he Cody and Agen Kolar hurried their forces back along the streets towards safer ground. The AT-AT attacking them was in the next street, but it was still able to shoot over the buildings if they got too close. Obi-Wan stood at the front and desperately blocked as many lasers as he could from the swarms of incoming clones, leaping into the air as a grenade came to a stop at his feet and landing in a crouch as it exploded in front of him.

Abruptly, Commander Ponds and a bunch of other clones and Gungans mounted on AT-RTs appeared out of the side-streets and slammed into their assailants, leaping and blasting as they cut a huge dent in the front lines, before they flashed back into another side-street before the AT-AT could turn to face them. Obi-Wan quickly took the opportunity to duck into one of the side-streets himself, hurrying between the building to the street the AT-AT was actually in, ready to help usher any more clones to safety between the buildings.

He found himself in the street that Ki-Adi-Mundi was trying to protect, which was also in the middle of a mass retreat. Mundi himself was boldly trying to draw the fire of the AT-AT from the front, bouncing from crate to crate right at the moment the giant walker fired at him in an attempt to keep its attention away from the fleeing clones and Gungans. Commander Jet was standing nearby, along with a pair of Commando droids, covering the rest of the clones as best they could as they made their getaway.

A rocket from a launcher suddenly slewed out of the ranks of the Empire clones and shot for the three back-runners. Jet leapt backwards as the missile hit the ground and consumed one of the commando droids while knocking the other into a wall. Jet scrambled back to his feet and boldly stood his ground, burning lasers into the heads of two more clones, dodging three other lasers and blasting another clone in the abdomen before a laser went slamming into his shoulder. Jet gasped and lost his grip on his blaster but grabbed a grenade with his other hand and hurled it right as a pair of other lasers crashed into his chest and finished him off, dropping him to the ground, dead.

His grenade sailed through the air towards the Empire clones, who stopped and backed away as it approached. It looked like Jet's final parting shot would fall short of the enemy and harm none of them, but the second commando droid suddenly sprang off a nearby crate, leapt so high that it grabbed the grenade out of the air and re-threw it, where it landed amongst the first few ranks of clones and exploded with a force that tossed them across the street and killed about six of them. As the commando droid plummeted into the street it was blasted by about four shots from the enemy clones and collapsed to the ground, but it had ensured that Jet's final strike at the Empire had not been in vain.

Mundi blanched when he saw his loyal Commander fall the blasts of the Empire clones. Jet had been with him through many, many battles, and now he was gone. He grimaced, and then he spotted Obi-Wan ushering many of the clones into the safety of the side-streets behind him. Leaping out of the way before the AT-AT could blast him, Mundi redoubled his efforts to keep the Empire temporarily at bay in the name of his fallen Commander.

* * *

Nearby, Adi Gallia was not faring very well either. The tendrils on her head-dress swept out around her head as he furiously ducked and dodged and kicked and tried to keep the clones all around her away. She had managed to get herself surrounded by the clones of the Empire, because one of their clones had scaled to the roofs of the buildings and gotten past their lines to fire a missile at her unprotected back. Adi had been forced to dodge with an extremely hurried dive, and the blast had carried her all the way out here into the waiting arms of the Empire.

This meant she was safe from the AT-AT shots, as the giant walkers would not risk firing at her while she was surrounded by clones on their side. But now she was being attacked on all sides by the enemy, who were determined to finish her off for good.

Adi ducked under three shots and blocked two more with quick twists of her lightsaber and then sprang up to cartwheel over the top of a couple more, batting the next five shots that came at her away with a quick twirl and slashing her lightsaber over her shoulder to block two shots aimed at her back, sides-step to avoid a shot that skewed past her hip and lifted her lightsaber before her face to catch another and span into a full three-sixty jump in a desperate attempt to parry at least seven more.

Somehow she managed it, and she quickly tried going on the offensive to push the clones of the Empire back, jumping forwards to slash her lightsaber through one clone and spin around to slam another in the face with a superb kick, pirouetting around to sweep her blade into a third. But abruptly she found herself under fire from a Z6 rotary blaster cannon from almost directly in front of her. Adi blanched at the extreme rate of fire and she furiously dodged and spun her blade in rapid circles in front of her, stepping backwards to try and put distance between her and her attacker.

She stepped on something. Something small and round. Her eyes widened, and she did not have to look down to know it was a grenade, and probably primed. She catapulted herself to the side just as the grenade went off and she was slammed shoulder-first into a nearby wall and fell to the ground in a heap, her lightsaber flying out of her hand. She coughed and she pushed herself upwards slightly, quickly turning around to seek her lightsaber, only to see it kicked out of the way by one of the clones as several more lined up in front of her, ready to shoot her.

_So, this is how it ends,_ Adi thought to herself as she beheld the lines upon lines of clones with blasters primed. She closed her eyes, ready to become one with the Force.

Apparently, though, somebody else had other plans. As the clones opened fire, a sudden wall of Gungan shields fell from the sky and embedded themselves in the ground to create a barricade around the defenceless Jedi Master that intercepted the lasers with ease. Adi looked up to see Stass slide to a halt on the roof above her and summon Adi's lightsaber to her with the Force, then leap off the roof and windmill into the ranks of the clones with both blades.

"Nobody touches my Master!" Stass declared as she fought like a ninja, carving two clones across the chest at the same time and spinning around like a small cyclone to slash through about three more, stab into another and leave the lightsaber stuck in him and slash across a further three with the other blade, grabbing the other lightsaber before the clone had even fallen down and tossing it over the shield wall. Adi, filled with a new energy, sprang out and grabbed it, joining her Padawan in action as they wrought destruction on the Empire clones.

And, as the Empire clones struggled to retaliate. They were suddenly set upon by a horde of Gungans that had taken advantage of the distraction to cross the distance between the two factions and began battering against them with their electropoles while the clones and droids behind them poured lasers over their heads.

Stass hurled several clones into the air with a huge Force-push and helped her wounded Master back behind safe lines. Adi smiled at the younger Jedi and said, "Did I ever tell you who proud I am to call you my Padawan?"

Stass flushed and said, "A couple of times."

"Well, right now," Adi chuckled. "I've never been prouder. You saved my life."

"My pleasure, Master," Stass smiled. "But I suggest we move. That AT-AT looks likes its zeroing in on us again. Everybody, fall back! Quickly!"

* * *

More clones that were trying to close in on Mace Windu's position were suddenly beset from the side when a huge and terrifying monstrosity from the darkness of one of the side-streets, also known as Oppo Rancisis. The Thisspiasian slammed his bulk into the clone ranks and sent a dozen of them flying into the air with his upper body alone, before his snake coils joined him in the action and took the legs out from a further two dozen, flinging most of them into walls and doors and occasionally right over one of the buildings around them.

Wherever Master Rancisis went, he left a trail of destruction behind him. None of the clones were used to fighting an opponent remotely like him. They aimed their blasters at him and opened fire wildly as he towered over them, but those that he didn't just deflect with his lightsaber he dodged with a mere twitch of his coils which seemed to send him in a completely different direction. His hefty tail clubbed down on a pair of clones with Z6 cannons and his coils swung upwards to dodge a missile while his upper half struck at the rocket launcher user from the side in almost the same moment.

He mowed down the clones all across the street, practically in the same motion, his blade flying and hacking anywhere that his yellowish snake body didn't go, stabbing into one clones chest and spinning to behead another two before he whirled around and slammed a clone at the complete other side of the street into the wall with a swipe of his hand and cleaved the blade across the one next to him, his coils streaming out behind him to crush another several dozen clones underneath his swinging body.

And then, he was gone, diving into another side-street before the clones could recuperate and slipping down in, ready to appear for his next batch of devastation amongst a new group of clones.

This time though, he was in trouble. One of the AT-ATs had been monitoring his progress, recognising him as an extreme hindrance to the Empire. As the people inside saw him dive into one of the side-streets, they swivelled the head around to point it at the building to the right of where he would emerge and let rip. The lasers slammed into the building and exploded it to rubble, which toppled towards the ground in a cascade of masonry right as Oppo Rancisis emerged.

The Jedi Master yelled in shock as the miniature rockslide fell on top of him, burying almost all of him in the rubble of a building and flattening the rest of him to the ground. Oppo was dazed for a few moments, but then he pulled himself together and began to wrench his powerful coils from beneath the pile. Such was the strength of his snake-like body he was actually able to shift the heavy pile and he gathered the Force in his hands to move the rest of it and free him from the entrapment.

And that was when a pair of missile from launchers streaked out nowhere and slammed into his snake body just below his humanoid half. Rancisis roared in pain as they tore massive chunks out of his side and he collapsed to the ground. Several Empire clones dashed over while he was still trapped and lasers poured into the wounded Jedi Master.

Even in his death throes, Rancisis managed to block several shots and lashed out to slice two clones that had gotten too close and let loose a pulse of the Force that knocked many other backwards. But then the laser storm finally got the better of him and he fell limp, letting loose his final breath in a hissing rattle. The Empire clones cheered at their success and thundered past his dead body to re-engage the retreating rebel clones with renewed vigour.

* * *

"I've had enough of this," Commander Fox shook his head from where he was standing outside the city walls. "I know that we're supposed to be directing this assault and all, but standing out here and letting all our boys do the work without getting our own hands dirty just doesn't feel right. I'm going in there to help myself."

Stone nodded. "Yeah, I'm with you. Perhaps we'd have a better vantage point of what's going on in there anyway." He hefted his blaster and said, "Come on. Let's go and join the party."

"Right," Fox nodded, and the two of them began to hurry down the slight rise they had been watching the battle from and move in the direction of the city themselves.

But then, despite the sounds of explosions coming from the city ahead, they, along with many of the other clones still bunched outside the city walls, heard a noise. A noise that cut across their ranks like a knife through butter and momentarily brought them all to a standstill as they looked around. The noise had been like a sharp, shrieking and hooting noise, and every single one of them was trying to work out where it had come from and, more importantly, what the hell it was.

And then they found out.

The clones on the outskirts of the massive clearing around the city and right next to the trees were the first to realise, when a huge, green-scaled Varactyl suddenly surged out from the shadows of the forest off to their side and sprang off the trunk of a tree to fall amongst their ranks. Zarza crushed four clones under her massive bulk and grabbed a fifth in her beak to toss him into the air as her tail slammed past her to catapult a further five into the air.

The female Varactyl shrieked again and rammed her massive bulk into the clone forces around her, charging into their midst and flattening dozens of them underfoot, her tail thrashing from side to side like a bat and crashing into others without prejudice.

The Varactyl then whirled about, her head slamming through the lines of several more lines and one of back feet lifting up to flatten a further two beneath her. Zarza reared up and spotted a group of nearby AT-RTs, and with one huge bound she sailed right over the heads of scores of clones and fell amongst them. Her hefty tail batted three of them over before they got a chance to move and one of her hefty front legs slammed into another as she reared up to fall upon and fifth and carry it to the ground beneath her weight.

The sixth and final walker managed to get to grips with the situation and sped away through the ranks of the clones in an attempt to put as much distance between itself and Zarza as possible. The Varactyl almost seemed to grin at the challenge and motored after the two-legged walker, tail and backbone lashing from side to side as she flung herself forwards with each step. The clone in the walker turned back and yelped when he saw the reptile was _catching up with him_. And he was going at _top speed._ The giant lizard pounced forward and fell upon the walker, bringing it to the ground and crushing it beneath her weight.

She then spun around, her tail thwacking many other clones aside as she dashed over to an AT-TE and sprang right on top of the larger walker. The gunner clone was slammed out of his seat from a powerful headbutt from the reptoavian and Zarza reared up onto her hind legs, shrieking out to the sky.

As the clones turned to face their weapons at their newest threat, they finally noticed that the massive creature had a rider. They blinked in surprise. They had assumed that the Varactyl was a wild animal here who had randomly decided to attack their forces, as many other wild animals had on numerous planets. But there was no mistaking the fact that it was being ridden by a Wookiee.

Chewbacca grinned as he raised his fist and let loose a bellow so loud that it echoed over the plains and the city. He then levelled his bowcaster and shot down four clones before they could blink and Zarza shot off the top of the walker and dashed right in front of it, giving Chewbacca the opportunity to plunge his fist through the duraglass as they passed and biff the pilot in the head with a mighty punch and knock him out. Varactyl and Wookiee then charged into the midst of the clones once more, the former flattening them under her bulk and the latter shooting from her back or laying out to either side of her with a hefty tree branch he was using as a club.

* * *

But Chewbacca had not just roared for the hell of it. It had been a signal. And the signal was answered remarkably quickly as a massive roar echoed from the forests on not just one, but both sides of the clone army. They blanched as Wookiees dropped from the trees on either side of them, towering over them with their huge weapons and mighty paws and terrifying expressions. And the Wookiees fell upon the clones like a tidal wave combined with a sledgehammer combined with a vice, as both side of the conflict found themselves under attack.

Amongst them was Tarfful, who met the one of the clones with a punch to the chest that flung him into two others, slammed the blaster out of the hands of another, grabbed him by the shoulder and catapulted him into the air as if he were throwing a tennis ball. He smashed a foot into another clone and grabbed the one behind him and the one next to him and slammed them together, hefting them upwards and slamming them into the ranks of their fellows.

His fist slammed outwards and smashed another clone in the face to fling him the other way and seized a rocket launcher from the hands of another, bent it into a C shape and used it as a mace, slamming two more clones into the air with it and then bringing it down hard onto the head of another from above.

The Wookiee leader snarled as the clones began to gather themselves and tried to open fire on him but he literally pounced on them before they could let off a shot, bearing many of them to the ground underneath his wide-spread arms. He slammed his fist into the side of the head of one clone so hard that his neck broke and grabbed another in one huge paw to throw him straight up into the air and then grabbed another by the ankle and took one mighty sweeping swing to slam down all the clones around him. He stamped on one clone struggling to get back to his feet and killed him on the spot, and then he drew a huge Wookie rifle and shot two more in the stomach.

It was only then that the clone he had flung straight up landed behind him with a horrible crunch.

All across the line on both sides of the conflict the story was the same. The clones fell before the Wookiees like sardines before an army of sharks. They didn't seem to stand a chance as the Wookiee's incredible strength asserted themselves before their blasters could be brought into play. One clone was hoisted above a Wookiee's head and slammed into the ground from above.

Another tried to bring up his blaster to shoot another Wookiee in the face but the Wookie's paw closed around the blaster and crushed it to uselessness before its other paw rammed into the side of the clone's helmet.

Another threw a grenade, only for the nearest Wookiee to grab it with amazing dexterity and throw it right back, consuming five more clones in the explosion.

Another rolled to the side to avoid a mighty swing from one Wookiee, only to find himself directly in the path of another who socked him in the stomach with a huge paw strike and then rammed himself shoulder first into another group, striking out with her arm and blasting them sideways.

Another levelled a Z6 towards an oncoming Wookiee and poured a few lasers directly into it. Some of them were deflected by the Wookiee armour he was wearing on his chest, but several of them slammed into his furry form. The clone ceased fire thinking that would be it but the Wookiee seemed to ignore the damage to its front and charged forwards regardless to grab the unfortunate clone and bringing him crashing to the ground with a single blow, bringing his arms thundering down on top of him a second later.

An AT-RT charged over to where the Wookiees were and began to try gunning them down, but while the pilot did indeed manage to fell one Wookiee with a shot to the head, he was unprepared when two more charged him and sprang into his walker with mighty leaps, knocking it over with their combined weight. As one Wookiee hefted the clone and tossed him into the sky, the other grabbed the legs of the walker and _hoisted_ it into the air, bringing it slamming down over several more clones before they could do more than gasp at the feat of phenomenal strength.

And all through this mighty two-way charge, Chewbacca continued to reign supreme from the top of Zarza. His bowcaster flared with light as the green lasers it emitted burst from its end to pound clone after clone into the ground as with terrific bursts of strength he slammed down wards with his makeshift club to strike a clone in the head so hard he almost knocked it clean off, and pummelling a further three in the chest and sending them thudding into one another. Another clone tried to aim a rocket in his direction but Chewbacca flung the club and it pounded into the rocket launcher right at the moment the clone fired it, jerking it to the side and causing the missile to slam into a nearby AT-TE and take out one of its legs to collapse it.

Zarza leapt over to the rocket wielding clone and flattened him underfoot and used her tail to flick Chewbacca's club into the air. The Wookiee caught it with a quick snatch of one hand and slammed another clone across the head with it.

* * *

Some of the clones were beginning to get their act together and form themselves into ranks to try and gun the Wookiees down, while the Wookiees waded through the clone forces and fell upon the lines, roaring and howling in the heat of battle. More importantly though, one of the AT-TE's giant back cannons swivelled around to point directly towards Chewbacca and Zarza, focusing on them and trying to get to grips with the Varactyl's speed so it could shoot them down on the first attempt.

The gunner was therefore very surprised when something small and green landed on the cannon in front of him and slashed through it with a green blade, causing it to topple to the floor. Grand Master Yoda turned towards the clone and said, "Very nice, that is not," before he tossed him out of his seat and across the battlefield with a wave of his hand.

Yoda looked up from his perch on top of the AT-TE. His presence seemed to herald the arrival of a new attack, as a sudden swarm of Jedi appeared out of the trees as well, to join the Wookiees in combat with the clones. The clones were shocked to see that not all of the Jedi had been inside the city defending it. There were close to fifty of them on each side of the battleground, and there were even several battalions of clones as well. Leading the charge along with Yoda himself was Luminara Unduli and the Mirialan Jedi Master immediately began to show why she was an expert with a blade on the battlefield.

Luminara vaulted over the top of one of the Wookiees and landed hands first on the shoulders of a nearby clone, flattening him to the ground as she sprang off him again and wheeling around in the air to sweep-kick another in the side of the head. Her green blade flashed into life in her hands and she powered it down in a slash across another clone, spun it around to stab another through the midsection and gyrated around, twirling her blade to catch a flurry of incoming blaster fire and surged forwards with a burst of the Force to slice through the sides of two more clones, spin about to cleave through a third while kicking another in the chest at the same time and lashing out with her hand to repel another dozen into the sky with the Force.

One clone ducked as the others went flying over his head and leapt up quickly to open fire on Luminara's back as she finished off a further two with quick cuts of her blade. Luminara's blade flashed behind her back and caught them without looking and the clone suddenly felt himself jerked forwards by the Force the be impaled on Luminara's blade, also behind her and without looking. The Jedi Master withdrew her blade and flung herself into the air in a spinning leap, descending on another group of clones and slashing through four of them at once and slamming her palm into the chest of the fifth to fire him backwards with a Force push as if he'd been shot from a cannon.

The Mirialan then backflipped onto the shoulders of a Wookiee as a missile impacted on the ground where she'd been and blocked more incoming bolts with her blade as she watched clone with the launcher reload. As he pointed it at her again, she suddenly summoned the rocket launcher out of his hands with the Force and grabbed it, firing it right back at him.

Not far away from her was Commander Gree, her faithful clone leader, and the clone in question was proving to be quite destructive himself. He wall-vaulted over a downed AT-RT and fired off two shots before he landed, one of which killed a clone with a hit to the chest and another of which hit one in the shoulder. Gree landed and slammed his shoulder into the wounded clone's torso to knock him over and then hefted his blaster to fire upon another pair of clones standing nearby, ducking underneath their own shots right as his crashed into their stomachs.

Another clone tried to tackle Gree with a cry of anger, but Gree grabbed him by the shoulder and twisted the charging clone around so he fell past him and flat on his back. Gree whirled about and shot a Z6 out of the hands of another clone and plucked up a grenade to hurl it at the nearest AT-RT, the small bomb exploding beneath its feet and ripping one of its legs off, which went spinning through the air to slam another clone in the back like a huge club. Gree then turned to shoot the clone he had thrown on his back before he could shoot him in return and joined Luminara and the Wookiees in the charge.

Wookiee, Jedi and clone combined together in a fluid alliance as if they had been doing this sort of thing for years and the lines of Empire clones were practically torn apart under their assault. The Wookiees bulled into them with their massive physical strength, while the clones picked off targets that were about to try and return fire from next to them and the Jedi provided both the defence and massive strike-backs.

But when Yoda finally leapt off the AT-TE and rejoined the fighting, the clones nearby fell under his attack. They simply weren't used to having to deal with anything as small and fast as he was. None of their lasers even got anywhere near him as he moved between them, making his need to deflect almost negligible.

He bounced off the shoulders of one clone and stabbed his blade into the chest of another and backflipped off him and darted through his legs before he'd even fallen over to slash into the legs of another clone, bringing him toppling and rolling onto him and thrusting down with his blade to put him out of his misery. Then he bounced and rebounded off another's chest, and another, and then landed on the rocket launcher being hefted by a third, hacked through it and then dived past the clone, slicing through his chest as he did so.

Yoda slammed into the chest of another clone, his blade burying itself in the man's chest up to the hilt, and then he sprang off to backflip onto the floor and then backflip again, right over the head of another clone and twisting in the air to land to slash his blade across another and rebound off him to slash into the one he had jumped over and then rebounded of him as well, whirling around in mid-air and blocking a laser aimed directly at him, slashing through the blaster as he passed it and landing on the clone's arm, passing his blade through his body and jumping off to land on the floor. He looked up, ears twitching, as more clones rallied to train their blasters on him.

He struck like lightning before they could make a move, flicking his two fingers briefly and causing all the clones aiming at him to go flying backwards with barely a movement and then he was amongst them once more. His blade whooshed around his body in a complex series of twists as he dove through three pairs of two clones and fell them without even touching them and summoning another man to him with the Force, jumping up to land on his shoulder and spring into the air and land on the front of an AT-RT, stabbing his blade into the metal in front of him and frying the circuits. As the walker tumbled forwards, Yoda leapt right off it and rolled to a stop, the walker slamming into the ground right behind him.

Yoda looked up once more and dashed underneath an AT-TE walker, slashing through one of its six legs as he passed and hurling himself out the other side and hacking through another of its legs as he did so, rolling to a standstill as the walker collapsed behind him. A clone quickly tried to train a rocket launcher on him while three more tried with their blasters. Yoda lashed out with his arm and flung his walking stick, which had been tucked in his sleeve, towards the rocket launcher clone as he dove upon the other three with blade flashing. The stick slammed the clone in the face and sent him reeling and was instantly summoned back to Yoda's hand as he flipped back into the air, the three other clones dead and he landed on the rocket launcher clone's chest and knocked him to the ground.

"Impolite, you are," Yoda reprimanded him, before he leapt off and away once more.

* * *

The clones of the Empire were beginning to get used to their new attackers. The clones nearer the front were quickly trying to get into the city still, but there was, noticeably, far less clones entering the city than beforehand as they tried to focus on what looked like the more immediate threat. But that threat was about to be added to.

There was one large, noticeable gap in the ranks of the attacking rebels on one side of the conflict. The clones that had been fortunate enough to be next to that gap were beginning to try and use it to get past the advancing lines of Wookiees and Jedi and rebel clones to shoot at them from behind. But then, a single figure stepped out from the shadows of the trees, and that brought them to a momentary halt.

It was Plo Koon. The Kel Dor looked up at them, his face blank as ever thanks to the mask he always wore. His blue lightsaber flash into life in his clawed hands and he took up a stance. As the clones levelled their blasters at him, he, in turn pointed his lightsaber at them and cried, "Wolfpack! Forward!"

The clones tensed, expecting a large group of enemy clones to come charging out from the trees. What they got was a lot more terrifying. Plo sprang vertically upwards as a massive Acklay exploded out from the surrounding forest, its massive jaws open wide in a shriek of feral strength. Plo landed on its back as the Acklay thundered towards the enemy.

The clones panicked and immediately tried to backpedal, but the huge insectoid creature was among them before they could get two feet. Its massive head swung downwards and batted aside three of the enemy. At the same moment, its front limbs skewered a further two beneath its steps as it grabbed another in its jaws and shook him wildly.

The Acklay flung the clone away and grabbed another by the ankle and heaved him through his fellows before letting him go and sending him flying away to crash into the back of an AT-TE. The Acklay didn't bother looking as it stomped down on three more clones with quick strikes from its front and side legs and reared up, with Plo on its back to fall upon a cluster of others with wild fury. Its back legs crushed four more clones, and one of its side legs struck outwards to slam another in the front and send him flying and its front two legs were stabbing downwards like chopping knives, taking out two clones about every second.

As the clones attempted to try and rally themselves, they opened fire on the giant beast. The Acklay shook itself as the lasers crashed into its front, but they had about as much effect as if they were throwing pebbles. The Acklay's throat pulsated and it returned fire with a huge blast of orange lightning that surged over the clones and fried over two dozen of them where they stood. As the rest of the clones stared in horror at their comrades, the Acklay charged forwards once more.

As did five others which also came charging out of the trees to fall upon the Empire clones with reckless vigour, jaws flashing and claws stabbing. The rest of the Wolfpack, the clones that usually went by that name, ran in behind them were blasters blazing. Commander Wolffe himself was, like his General, also sitting astride one of the Acklay. As his mount grabbed a clone by the arm in its mouth and tossed him into the air, Wolffe leaned out with one arm firmly gripping the Acklay's neck and slammed his blaster into the face of another clone, then pulled himself back up and dropped two others with rapid and precise bolts.

His Acklay dodged a blast from a rocket launcher by flattening itself into the ground and snarled as it turned around and thundered over to the clone who had fired the shot as he desperately tried to reload but the Acklay's claw descended upon him in a flash and ended his life, as its other claw swung out to clout another clone over the head and its head lashed out to seize another clone and slam him into the ground. Wolffe clambered to his feet and rode the Acklay like a surfboard as he boldly let loose a barrage of shots that crashed into the heads of two other clones and the stomach of a third, causing him to keel over. Wolffe finished him with another headshot and then brought a grenade from his waist and hurled it into the sea of clones before him.

The result was, as can be expected, a lot of clones getting tossed into the air by an explosion.

As another of the Acklay slammed its neck across four more clones and flattened another beneath one of its side-feet, a huge blast suddenly crashed towards it, forcing it to rear up to avoid the shot. As the giant, blue laser crashed into a couple of Empire clones instead, the Acklay turned and fixed its three eyes on the culprit; an AT-TE walker. Snarling, the Acklay called to one of the others with a quick trilling noise and the both of them charged directly towards the AT-TE.

The tank opened fire on them with its back cannon, but the Acklay proved themselves to be surprisingly nimble, lurching onto on half of their legs to avoid a shot or flattening themselves to the ground before scrambling back up and continuing their headlong rush. The gunner managed to hit one of them, the laser crashing into the thick claw on one of the Acklay's front legs and severely damaging it, but the Acklay barely noticed the difference and charged on regardless.

Both of them rammed into the AT-TE with explosive force, slamming their heads and necks underneath the metal hulk to strike it with their shoulders. The gunner was almost tossed from his seat as the two Acklay muscled forwards, levering with their necks and shoulders as they used insane bursts of strength to tip to mighty walker right onto its side. They both backed off, and then they rammed it again, pushing it onto its back with a grinding noise.

One of the Acklay clambered on top of the fallen walker and announced its victory to the sky with a shriek of triumph, thrashing its front legs through the air like a pair of scythes, before it sprang off the walker once more and descended upon another group of nearby clones with jaws agape.

Another of the Acklay found itself being charged by a bunch of AT-RT walkers that were pulsing laser fire at its side, trying to bring it down before they got too close. The Acklay snarled and turned to hurtle towards the walkers, slamming and crushing many clones underfoot as it did so, and ignoring the laser fire that crashed into it. It slammed the first walker aside with a swing from its heavy crest and reared up to slam it claws into the fronts of another pair so hard that they cut into the metal and it slammed them to the ground. One of the walkers tried to dodge it and shoot past, but the Acklay's head lashed out faster than a striking snake and plucked the rider from the seat, throwing him to crash into the last of the walker and send both it and the two clones crashing to the ground.

The final Acklay found itself confronted with a Z6 rotary cannon that was blasting upwards at its neck. The Acklay briefly shielded itself with a heavy claw, before it dashed into the attack and snapped its jaws down on the cannon to crush it to a pulp and ram its nose into the clone holding it. The clone instinctively grabbed the Acklay round the face to stop itself being thrown backwards, but the Acklay's head shot upwards and sent him catapulting up into the air instead. Then it turned around and clambered on top of a stun tank, (which the Empire had yet to use) and grabbed the huge cannon on its back. With a terrific wrench, the Acklay pulled the cannons right off at the socket and flung it away to slam into several other clones and then plunged its claws through the top of the tanks and into the cockpit within.

From the back of the Force-sensitive Acklay, Plo Koon diligently blocked an incoming swathe of laser-fire, but he did not remain on the back of his newest addition to the Wolfpack for long. (The Acklay hunted in packs as well, making them a perfect addition to Plo's forces if only for the name alone.) He saw a clone pointing a rocket launcher at the Acklay as it pulsated another blast of lighting out into the ranks of the clones and slammed into the side of an AT-TE, so Plo leapt off right at the point the clone fired.

With a phenomenal display of the force, Plo lifted his hand and _halted_ the missile in mid-air and then flung it back, where it impacted against the clone who had fired it and instantly killed him and a further three around him. Plo sprang forward and slashed out to one side to take out another clone and swept his hand before another to sweep his feet out from underneath him with the Force and then slammed him with a Force-push to toss him into several others. He then span around to decapitate another clone and to send two bolts flashing back to the people who fired them.

The Kel Dor frowned as he spotted one of his clones, Sinker, in the middle of grappling with one of the enemy clones, both of them having lost their blasters. Another Empire clone pointed a blaster at Sinker, so Plo bounded over the action and stabbed his blade down into the clone and plucked his blaster from his blast. Sinker slammed the other clone in the face with his elbow and knocked him away, and Plo tossed the blaster over his shoulder, where Sinker caught it and ended the enemy clone with a blast to the chest.

Plo didn't wait around to let Sinker thank him though; he was off again widely sweeping his blade across three clones in rapid succession and sweeping the legs out from under another with a quick kick, spinning around to block another couple of shots and drive his blade into another clone and taking a barrel-rolling leap over another group of shots to slash diagonally down another clone and stab another, withdraw his blade and hack out to one side with it and duck low to reverse his blade's trajectory and impale another clone in the gut, all in the space of about five seconds.

* * *

The united front that had suddenly appeared from the forest now consisted of clones, Jedi, Wookiees and Acklay. Commander Stone and Commander Fox could only stare in complete and utter bewilderment as they watch the rebels wreaking havoc upon their men. The same thought was occurring to both of them. The same two thoughts actually. First, they wondered how they could have missed such a large force when they flew overhead and landed here. And second, they were beginning to realise that the rebels had not just been prepared for any random attack.

They had been preparing for this attack for a while. And they had known that it was coming. Somehow, they must have gotten wind that the Empire was coming for them.

It was the only explanation for the sudden, co-ordinated attack on their flanks. Now they were under fire from three sides. It was almost like they had caught them in a pincer movement. And even the hardiest of armies could fall to a pincer movement if played right.

"Alright," Stone said. "Change of plan. You go and help our boys in the city. I'll stay outside and try and set up a defence against these guys."

"Got it," Commander Fox nodded and ran off towards the city.

Moments later, and Stone wished that Fox had stayed to help because it was at that moment that the final players in the battle finally made their appearance, marching out of either side of the forest in strict lines to join the rebels in their conflict.

Battle droids.

Thousands of them!

All kinds of them too. B1s, Supers, Dwarf Spider Droids, and even a few droidekas and commando droids that had not taken up residence in the city, marching together and training their blasters on the Empire clones and immediately opening fire over the shoulders of the rebels. The Empire clones that were struggling to fight against the Wookiees and the Jedi were immediately cut down in their dozens by the droids, which quickly caught up with the ranks of the other rebels, mingling into a massive force that threatened to sandwich the clones in.

Everything from then on became absolute chaos, if it hadn't already.

Zarza ploughed through another group of AT-RTs while Chewbacca dropped a clone with a rocket launcher with a well-aimed shot from his bowcaster. The Varactyl sprang over the top of one of the Acklay and landed sprawled amongst another batch of clones as the Acklay swept its heavy claw across five Empire clones and crushed a sixth with one of its side claws. Zarza called to the Acklay and fell in beside it and the insectoid creature almost seemed to grin as they both leapt forward together and descended upon another group of clones.

A line of three battle droids, managed to cut down a clone between them before two of them were suddenly taken out by laser fire from other clones. The third was saved at the last second by Luminara as the Jedi Master catapulted herself forwards and slashed her blade across two clone and pulsed a third into the air.

The battle droid managed to topple two more clones with flashes of red from its blaster, and then a missile from a Super flashed overhead and collided with another bunch to send them flying. One clone scrabbled upwards from the blast and turned to shoot down the battle droid, but he was seized from behind by a Wookiee and hauled over its shoulder to be slammed into the ground and other clone. The Wookiee then let him go and slammed its fist into another clone's stomach.

Commander Gree rolled behind a fallen AT-RT to avoid the blasts from a Z6 and then sprang upwards to aim over the top and slam a laser into the clone doing the shooting. Another Empire clone suddenly charged him and started grappling with him, trying to wrest his blaster from his hand, when Yoda bounced out of nowhere and slashed the clone across the back, felling him immediately. Gree thanked him and blasted another two clones in the torso with quick shots, and a Dwarf Spider Droid beat him to the third with a heavy blast from its nose cannon.

Even Chewbacca's wife, Mallatobuck, was in the thick of the action. She pounded the back of her fist in to stomach of one of the clones and scooped up another in one hand, hauling him into the air and tossing him straight forward to intercept a blast from an AT-TE that had been aimed at the nearby Wookiee ranks. Another of the Acklay burst into view on the other side of the tank and seized the gunner in its jaws to toss him into the air, and a commando droid rolled beneath the tank and slashed through another clone and spun around to pass its blade through the stomach of a third.

And then a barrage of clones were flung past it from a Force-push by Plo, one of which was snatched out of the air by the Acklay being ridden by Commander Wolffe, who jumped off his mount and delivered a powerful elbow to the helmet on another Empire clone and quickly gunned down three more while his Acklay stomped a further two into the ground. And then Tarfful leapt in to grab another clone and slam him into the duraglass of one the AT-TE so hard he went through it and his head bashed against the clone inside.

Overall, it was complete and utter insanity and the Empire clones struggled to keep up with the assault on them from either side. Stone quickly called orders into his comlink as several of the AT-ATs began to turn around to try and aim at the rebel lines. Chewbacca, from on top of Zarza, frowned. He still needed to think of a way of getting rid of those walkers once and for all. And he needed to do it quickly, because he could see quite clearly that while their attack was thinning the number of clones attacking the city defenders, the defenders in question were by no means out of the fire yet.

* * *

Nowhere was this more evident than at a couple of the shield generators closest to the front of the city. The AT-ATs were closing in on them, in their slow almost shuffling walk that made the ground shake with almost every step. The only thing protecting them from destruction by the giant walkers was the higher buildings that were surrounding them on most sides. Once the AT-ATs got close enough for a clear shot, that would be the end of it.

Several of the Jedi and clones had group together at one of the shield generators in a desperate final attempt to turn the tide. Tucked out of the way of the AT-ATs sight around the buildings, they were attempting to form a wall before the generator to stop the foot-soldiers from getting past them to blow it up.

Rank on rank of shield toting Gungans formed a barrier at the back, intercepting laser fire and stopping it from hitting the generator behind them. In front of them, clones and droids stood boldly out in the open, and gunning down any enemy that came around the corner without mercy, as mercy was something none of them could afford to have in the present situation.

At the front of the line was Mace Windu and Even Piell, the two Jedi Council members streaming back and forth across the line as they cut down as many enemy clones as they could. Mace drove his blade into one clone's stomach and swiftly withdrew it to spin it to his left, then his right to take out the clones on either side of his previous opponent and then leap into a three-sixty spin that carried him several feet to the right and slashed through two more clones in a single downward sweep and whirled about to slash through a rocket launcher and punch the clone in the chest so hard his armour cracked and he was tossed back across the street to slam into the wall at the other side.

Mace didn't bother looking at the result though, as he was already whirling around to slash upwards and take out another clone in that way. He swiftly blocked a couple of shots from off to his left and leapt into a twisting jump that allowed lasers to pass on either side on him before he landed and delivered a solid kick to a nearby munitions crate to send it crashing into another bunch of clones and swept his lightsaber up behind him to cut through yet another clone and then whirl it over his head and down to take the head off yet another.

Even Piell was also dashing around like a madman, his small body dodging the blasts of the enemy clones in much the same way as Yoda was outside. He dove past a clone's hip and slashed through it as he did so and landed blade-first on the chest of another before rolling off to land at the feet of a third. The clone tried to shoot down at him, but Piell dodged the two shot with startling ease and sprang up to swing off the clone's arm and land on his shoulders, grabbing his body with the Force and manipulating it to throw himself into a bunch of other clones.

There were other Jedi there at the defence as well. K'kruhk was standing just before the Gungan shield wall, flanked by a pair of shield toting droidekas which were pouring lasers down at anything that even looked at the Whipid Jedi. The Jedi himself was focusing on using the Force to repel any grenades or shots from rocket launcher that could have gotten past or blown up the shield wall and left the generator vulnerable. The weakened Adi Gallia had taken a shot in the back, and Stass and Kix were hurriedly trying to tend to her from behind cover to allow her to get back on her feet and help in the defence of the shield generator.

Everything else seemed to be a mix of chaos and destruction. Electropole Gungans charged out to fight alongside the Jedi, their poles slamming into faces and stomachs alike, and several lasers slamming into them in return. One Gungan jabbed his pole under the arm of one of the enemy clones and electrocuted the one behind him, before hooking his pole around the front clone and throwing him towards the defences, where a commando droid sprang out to slam a fist into his face, and slash through him with a blade.

Blade himself was also there, the clone still holding a commando droid sword and using it to great effect, slamming a clone in the side of the head with the flat of the blade and hacking into his back as he spun around while his other hand held his blaster and shot down a clone that was trying to grapple with one of the Gungans, allowing the Gungan to pull his pole free and slam another across the chest with it. A droideka rolled out from the defences and unfolded to help blast a couple of clones that were raking down some of the front defences with Z6 cannons.

And all the while, the AT-AT continued to move closer to the action, attempting to peer around the corner to get a clear shot at the defenders.

Lieutenant Galle stood close to the front of the action, his blaster flashing as he pressed his finger hard down on the trigger, taking out three clones in the chests in moments. Galle rolled to avoid another two shots that lanced over his shoulder but didn't stop firing even as he was upside-down and caught the two clones responsible by surprise as he surged back to his feet and crashed his shoulder into the side of another clone to send him tumbling.

As a commando droid finished off the fallen clone, Galle spun around and emptied more blaster bolts into a clone with a rocket launcher and kicked an electropole from a fallen Gungan up into air to smack another clone across the face and make him stagger backwards, where he became easy prey for another rebel clone.

But, as Galle stepped back to reload his blaster, he spotted something which made him freeze. A group of enemy AT-RT walkers were charging towards the action… from the opposite end of the street to the AT-AT. The defenders were focusing on attacks coming around the one corner and nobody else had spotted the incoming danger.

As Piell stood boldly out in front and span around to turn aside another four lasers, the AT-RTs let off blasts at his side. At the last second, Piell seemed to get some form of warning from the Force and he turned around to block, but he wasn't quick enough. While he managed to deflect three incoming shots with his green blade, one of them slammed into his large left ear. Piell howled and the pain made him lose his focus, allowing another bolt to shook past his guard and slam into his hip, sending him rolling backwards, still alive, but in agony.

Galle saw one of the AT-RT riders pull a grenade off his belt and hurl it towards the Jedi Master, and the clone lieutenant acted without thinking, diving between a pair of Gungans and shoving them backwards and grabbing Piell in one arm as the grenade rolled to stop beside them. Galle heaved the diminutive Jedi Master into the air and hurled him back into the ranks of the defenders right as grenade exploded and obliterated his life. Piell rolled to a painful stop in safety, but his saviour had paid for his brave act with his life.

There was almost a lull in the battle after this. Several of the clones defending the shield, including Blade, had been part of the 327th, and they had just seen their trusted lieutenant blown to pieces right before their eyes. Blade in particular was hit hard by this. Galle had been one of the three clones besides himself and Bly who had been the first to disobey orders from a higher authority when they went back to try and help Aayla over Rhen Var.

After a moment, Blade yelled in anger and hurled himself into the nearby Empire clones and thrust his blade into one of them as he blasted two more. The other clones joined him after a moment and succeeded in repelling the enemy with their strength of will and their grief over Galle's death.

But no matter what they did, there was no way that they could stop the advancing AT-AT, which would probably be on them within a couple of minutes.

As a couple of clones grabbed the critically injured Master Piell and carried him over to Kix, Stass and Adi for treatment, Jar Jar Binks looked out at the procession and the furiously fighting clones with an expression of guilt on his protruding face. He was one of the Gungans who was holding a shield to defend the generator, but right now he felt like he should be doing more than just this. He had fought in battles before and on the front line too, so why was he standing at the back now and cowering behind a shield.

Tarpals had ordered him to stay and defend the shield generator, and Jar Jar intended to do just that. But his yellow eyes hardened when he realised he could defend it by helping in the fighting instead of just holding a shield.

"Here!" he said, passing the shield to a nearby commando droid. "Yousa take thisa." The droid looked completely bewildered somehow, before Jar Jar hurried out of the shield line and down towards the fighting and the droid quickly realised what it was supposed to do and quickly darted into place in the line to hold the shield up.

"Mesa coming!" Jar Jar shouted, grabbing an electropole from the ground as he hurried towards the front lines, right when the AT-RTs responsible for Galle's death pulled to a halt in front of the defence and began blasting at the front lines. "Mesa gonna help! Mesa…WAAAAGH!"

Jar Jar had accidentally placed his foot on a discarded Gungan energy ball, the thrower of which had been killed before he had the chance to throw it. He immediately lost his balance and was flung forwards, catapulting himself over the defensive lines with arms flailing and he landed with a crash on the front of an AT-RT walker.

The clone in the walker blanched in shock as Jar Jar scrabbled for a hold, the electrpole still in his hand lashing out to slam into the clone's neck and send him toppling backwards and out of his seat. With nobody controlling it, the walker lurched backwards and Jar Jar ended up rolling into the seat himself, yelling in fear as he grabbed at the controls to try and steady himself. When he noticed where he was, he hurriedly tried to stop the walker tipping over, and the AT-RT went wild under his control, spinning in circles and its feet flying all over the place as Jar Jar desperately tried to keep it upright.

One of the careening feet of the walker suddenly slammed into a clone that had been about the throw a grenade and sent him flying with the hefty kick. The kick also sent the grenade flying in a completely different direction and it plinked to a stop beside a pile of crates at the opposite side of the street and abruptly went off, ripping most of the crates to shreds but sending the one of top shooting into the air.

As Jar Jar frantically continued to try and regain control of the walker, his fingers accidentally pressed down on the firing mechanism and as the walker staggered around, a series of blasts shot into the air and one of them slammed into the crate, blowing a chunk out of it and sending the rest catapulting down the street, where it slammed into another AT-RT and knocked the clone in it into the air. His walker was flung onto its side and ploughed through a large number of Empire clones, its foot kicking one square in the chest and flinging him into high into the air, so high that it looked like he was going to clear one of the buildings.

The building in question had a sniper standing on top of the roof, looking through the sights of his rifle to focus on Jar Jar's head as the Gungan gave the walker up for lost and dived off it, rolling to a stop with hands over his head as the walker crashed into a wall. The sniper completely failed to see his fellow clone flying towards him and the falling clone slammed into his side, throwing the sniper completely off-balance and with a yell, he went toppling off the roof. He landed on another clone that was pointing a rocket launcher and Master Windu, knocking him askew right as he pulled the trigger.

The missile that was fired from the launcher went shooting almost completely the wrong way and slammed into a building to the left of the AT-ATs front feet. The building was already weakened from a previous shot from said AT-AT, as on its roof was the broken form of a deactivated AT-TE that the walker had taken out. The shot from the missile finished the job and the building came tumbling down into the street in a sort of rockslide, carrying the deactivated AT-TE with it.

The cannon of the AT-TE shot through the small gap in the ankle-joint of the AT-AT and its main body came to a stop on top of its left foot along with a mound of rubble. The pilot of the AT-AT didn't notice and continued to move his walker forwards. But the AT-TE walker now across its foot, combined with the cannon thrust through the ankle stopped the foot from moving more than a couple of feet. The rest of the AT-AT, on the other hand, kept going and the disadvantage of such long legs immediately became apparent.

The balance of an AT-AT was its one major weakness.

The clones inside yelled as the AT-AT went toppling over head-first, soundly tripped up by the AT-TE pressed into its foot. Its head slammed into the street with a terrific crunch and the massive body flattened the head almost to a pulp as it fell down on top of it. Its legs sagged behind it and the AT-AT came to a halt, its back end sticking up in the air and its body completely blocking off the street

It took several moments for the rumbling of the collapsing AT-AT to pass, but the shock of the incident itself had brought the entire battle to a momentary halt. Every member of both sides was staring at the downed walker in disbelief.

Jar Jar, from where he was leaning against the wall, pointed at the defeated hulk and said, "Did mesa do dat?"

"Yes. Yes, you did," Mace said, deadpan, scarcely able to believe that the bumbling Gungan had just done that through a complete and utter and incredibly improbably, almost impossible, accident.

Nevertheless, it was still a major victory as the first AT-AT was felled and with renewed vigour the defenders roared and fell upon the Empire clones once more, the offensive crumbling as the attackers became the defenders. Jar Jar scooped up his electropole and joined the conflict and none of the Empire clones even wanted to get close to accident-prone Gungan.

With him, you never knew how attacking him might end up hurting you instead.

* * *

Oh, that final bit will be, I think, my absolute favourite moment of the battle regardless of whatever else happens in the future. I just had to make Jar Jar do something ridiculously heroic completely by accident and I don't think there are many more spectacular things he could have accidentally done that bring down a whole AT-AT by himself. "He's no representative, he's a plague," to quote a Weequay pirate from season 1. And I think he demonstrated here that that Weequay was absolutely right.

I hope you all liked the action sequences of this chapter. There's still plenty more to come in the future.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The battle outside the city soon becomes a destruction zone for both sides as the Empire fighters and bombers turn on the attacking rebels with devastating consequences. The rebels mount a defence against them, but while this is happening, several Empire clones sneak past the city defences and infiltrate the Jedi Temple, right where Numa and the others are hiding.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 197 : The Horrors of Battle**


	197. The Horrors of Battle

Hello once again everybody. It is my sad duty to inform you that this fight scene is almost at an end now that this chapter has been posted. There are only two chapters to go until it finally draws to a close after eight action-packed chapters. Or seven and a quarter, or whatever. There's still a couple of chapters to go though after this one and I promise you that the ride won't get any less wild through it all. I hope you like this chapter, even if it is filled with quite a lot of death.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 197:- The Horrors of Battle**

* * *

The battle raged on outside the city walls, with neither side giving the other any quarter. The rebels continued to push the Empire back under their powerful assault, but the Empire was certainly not giving up without a fight. The Wookiees were proving themselves to be very difficult opponents for them and thus far only a handful of the large, furry beings had fallen in the conflict and the fact that they were being supported by giant beasts, Jedi, clones and a huge army of battle droids did not particularly help the Empire clones.

Zarza crashed down on top of another stun tank and forced it into the ground beneath her weight, then jumped off and proceeded to shift her tail beneath the hovering vehicle in an attempt to push it over. Chewbacca took the halt in her headlong rush as an opportunity to leap off the Varactyl's back and slam himself into a nearby clone that was about to point a blaster at her, flinging him sideways and across the battlefield. He then opened fire on another pair and rolled in front of Zarza to bring his fist crashing into the face of a third.

With a shriek, Zarza succeeded in toppling the stun tank over and leapt forward to flatten another two clones into the ground as Chewbacca brought a sledgehammer fist into another's gut. The Wookiee then leapt onto Zarza's flank and the reptoavian charged back into battle, her Wookiee rider clambering back into his seat as she did so.

* * *

Elsewhere, the Empire clones were beginning to scatter and crumble, their military discipline breaking apart in the face of such an array of enemies. Tarfful bounded forwards to grab a clone by the shoulders and slam him hard into the side of a deactivated AT-TE before tossing him into another. Luminara Unduli leapt overhead and delivered a sweeping downward slash to a small group of the enemy and swung around to slam her foot into another's chest, the clone in question falling right into the path of a droideka's fireline as the shielded droid blasted countless red lasers into the army.

A large cluster of battle droids stepped forward mechanically and mercilessly shot down any enemy clone in front of them. One of them managed to shoot down three in rapid succession before it was shot down itself and the others around it quickly finished off the attacker and sent wave after wave of firepower into the enemy's lines. Suddenly Yoda landed on the shoulders of one of the droids and bounced off it, landing in front of them and deflecting a couple of shots aimed at them with accurate leaping spins and then shooting forwards with a Force jump that carried him through a surge of blue lasers, all of which missed him and stabbed his blade into the first clone, sprang to the side to slash through another and whirled the clone around to Force push him into two others as he sprang back to the ground.

* * *

On the other side of the battlefield, Commander Wolffe dashed across the rebel lines, drawing the fire of several of the enemy Empire clones before he skidded to a top in front of the Wolfpack and flung a grenade at the same moment that another of his men, Boost, fired a rocket launcher over his shoulder. The missile slammed into a group of clones and blew them into the air, and the grenade rolled to a stop in the next group over and tossed them skyward as well. One clone miraculously managed to survive both blasts, but as he scrambled to his feet the jaws of an Acklay descended on him and flung him to the side, as the giant insect creature swung its huge front legs like clubs and stamped into any that managed to dodge it with its side legs.

Plo Koon leapt over the defeated hulk of an AT-TE and fell upon three clones on the other side pointing their blasters at another Acklay. His blade slashed through the one in the middle as he called on the Force to fling the one on the left into the side of the walker. He spun around to slash through the third and stabbed his blade into the second a moment later. A clone behind him hefted a rocket launcher but he was promptly shot through the chest by a Dwarf Spider Droid that had managed to climb on top of the AT-TE.

Another four rushed to the scene with their blasters cocked but two Wookiees and a commando droid descended on them moments later and tore the group apart in seconds, an a cannon blast from a Super Battle Droid lanced overhead to crash into a bunch of AT-RT walkers that had been charging over to the scene. One of them managed to reel out of the way, but was rammed by an Acklay a moment later and crushed to scrap beneath its stampeding feet.

* * *

However, the rebels were not about to have things all their own way, as they found out in short order, because the Empire still had one thing they had yet to play in this battle. For the moment, the shield generators were still up within the city, so the bombers and fighters which were still whirling overhead and waiting for them to drop still couldn't get inside the city walls to attack the defenders.

But there was nothing defending the attackers from an attack in the skies.

First to become aware of the approaching danger was Yoda, his sensitive ears picking up the sounds of rushing engines above them. Looking up, the small green creature saw a phalanx of bombers swooping down from above towards either side of the attack, flanked by a platoon of ARC-170 fighters.

"To the sky, look!" Yoda shouted. The nearest of the rebels heeded his warning and looked up, scattering as best they could as the bombers swooped overhead and let rip with their cargo.

It was utter devastation right from the start. The Wookiees could resist fire from a blaster for a while but against a bomber they had no defence. Two dozen Wookiees were killed right off the bat, consumed in the explosions that followed or tossed into the air to land with their fur smoking. Several off them turned their blaster towards the sky and tried to shoot the bombers down, but the powerful Y-wings were away and blasts from the ARC-170s followed soon after, pummelling a group of clones, several droids and even more Wookiees into the ground from the attack from above.

And that was on just one side of the conflict. One the other side, the bombers had an equally overwhelming affect. A huge group of B1 battle droids was torn apart with the first few explosions, and several members of the Wolfpack and many Wookiees were also torn apart in the line that followed. Commander Wolffe himself narrowly avoided death, rolling forwards at the last second as the explosion consumed several of his brothers. Among them was Boost, who had only just helped him to take out several of the Empire clones. Plo leapt back and grabbed the Commander, pushing him behind the cover of an AT-TE as the following wave of fighters bombarded the area with lasers.

Tarfful growled as he beheld the destruction that had been wrought upon his people within a couple of seconds and he roared, pounding his chest to invigorate the rest of his men as he charged back into the attack, punching another clone aside as he scrambled onto the back of a useless AT-TE. This walker had been taken out by a blast from a rocket launcher and the cannon on its back had been knocked loose slightly. Tarfful bellowed as he grabbed the base of the cannon in his arms and wrenched upwards.

With a burst of phenomenal strength from the Wookiee he tore the loosened cannon off the back of the walker with one massive heave and hefted in his arms as he watched the bombers come round for another pass. A laser hit him in the back, but he ignored it as his eyes narrowed, focusing on the foremost Y-wing. Letting rip with a colossal snarl, Tarfful wrenched his arms and tossed the huge cannon into the air, sending it spinning upwards like a giant boomerang.

The pilot of the Y-wing was too stunned at what he was seeing to react in time and the cannon slammed into the front of his bomber, and the fronts of the two on either side of him and tore them apart with explosions that knocked several other members of the phalanx askew.

However, the rest of the Y-wings veered out to the sides and regrouped quickly, reforming their line across the sky and streaking overhead to drop their bombs once more. Tarfful was completely exposed on top of the AT-TE walker and the Wookiee roared in defiance as he was obliterated by the next salvo of explosions that ripped the AT-TE beneath him to pieces.

Chewbacca, who had seen the whole thing from a safer distance away on top of Zarza, gasped in shock as he watched the smoke clearing. There was no sign of his old and trusted friend, but there was no chance of the Wookiee leader having survived that attack. Chewbacca snarled and turned back to the fighting with a sense of new determination at Tarfful's sacrifice, grabbing another clone by the neck and tossing him over his shoulder like a doll as he creamed another one in the side of the head with his heavy club.

* * *

On the other side of the battlefield, a similar drama was taking place. Having just released the second load of bombers and decimating several Wookiees, clones, Jedi and droids alike, the Y-wing bombers moved away to prepare for a third pass. However, one of them made the mistake of swooping low over an AT-TE walker, preparing to rise higher into the sky. The pilot screamed when he saw one of the six Acklay surge up on top of the walker in front of him and rear onto its hind legs to slash at him. He swerved his vessel to avoid it, but the Acklay's claw slammed into one of its two engines and knocked it off, sending the Y-wing spiralling out of control to crash harmlessly into the side of an AT-AT

The rest of the Y-wings swerved away from the Acklay as the huge creature turned around to roar after them. That was when a pair of large blue lasers slammed into the Acklay's back from above. The creature yelped in pain, and turned around to see a group of ARC-170 fighters swerving down towards it, emptying lasers from the huge guns on their middle wings. Another pair of lasers struck it across its flank and another laser crashed into the heavy crest on top of its head. The Acklay screeched and clambered off the AT-TE, seizing a clone in its jaws and tossing it upwards. One of the ARC-170s swerved to the side to avoid the flailing clone, but another one wasn't so lucky and lost control as the two slammed together.

But then the remaining Y-wings swept around for their next pass and dropped their next set of bombs right down towards the Acklay. The insectoid creature shrieked as the explosions threw up the ground around it and the smoke screened it from the view of everyone else on the battlefield.

The five other Acklay immediately turned around at the sound of their fellow predator's distress and witnessed the attack. They screeched in anger and shock, moving closer and stomping over the ranks of the clones as they hurried towards the impact zone. Remarkably, the smoke cleared enough to reveal the Acklay was still alive. But it was also on its side and severely burnt and several of its legs were bent in horrible positions. One had been torn off at the knee.

The Force-sensitive Acklay dashed over to its stricken comrade and placed its head close to its. The wounded Acklay grunted and gurgled for a moment, its three eyes fixing on the its leader's with an expression that almost seemed to give an apology. An apology that it couldn't have done more. And then its body sagged and its head collapsed to the floor, a final rattling breath escaping from behind its needle teeth. Thus the six intelligent Acklay from Felucia were reduced to five.

For the Acklay, there was almost a break in the battle as they stared at their former pack-mate. If anything, the spell that Taomon had put them under several months ago had intensified with age, as had the bonds between the Acklay themselves, for now each of them felt a great amount of sorrow and they bowed their heads in respect to their fallen brother. The Force-sensitive Acklay nuzzled the head of their deceased brother for a moment.

Then a deep, guttural growl began to build inside the Acklay's chest. That growl turned into a roar – a roar which was echoed by the other four Acklay. Their leader's head snapped up as it saw the Y-wings returning once more, and with another roar it expelled a massive lightning bolt up towards them. The lightning bolt punched into the line and shifted right across it, tearing into the Y-wings without mercy. The other four Acklay immediately whirled around and became whirlwinds of flashing teeth, stabbing claws and swinging heads. The clones fell back before them as if they were grass before a lawnmower.

There might only be five Acklay now, but they had the strength and ferocity of about ten of them. And the clones had no way of responding and, as a result, they were torn apart.

* * *

Several bombers on the other side of the battlefield identified the Acklay as one of the biggest threats and began to wing their way over there to try and deal with the rest of them. But then, finally, the cavalry arrived, so to speak. Blue lasers streaked out of the sky to pummel the first two Y-wings in the strike-force and send them toppling to the ground, and another set nailed the third with a shot so dead-on it was sent catapulting backwards to crash into a fourth.

A pair of Delta-7B _Aethersprite_ class light interceptors lanced across the sky, their laser-fire wreaking havoc on the Empire's bombers as they dodged from side to side and whirled into barrel-rolls, shooting past the enemy bombers before they even knew what was happening.

"Alright then, Master Fisto," Saesee Tiin nodded as he rolled his fighter over. "I believe the expression is, 'It's time to bring home the bacon?'"

"Sounds about right to me," Kit Fisto nodded with a grin on his face. "All wings, into battle now. Separate the enemy into smaller factions and pick them off as fast as you can. Enough people have died today thanks to them."

"We're on it, General," nodded a clone pilot as three phalanxes of ARC-170 fighters, also with giant lightsaber crossed on prominent places, moved out over the trees to engage the enemy fighters and bombers. The teams of fighters were led by several elite clone pilots, including Warthog from the Wolfpack, Oddball from the 212th and Broadside from the 501st. They went about their work with swift and decisive flightpaths, swooping into the enemy's flightpaths before they even knew what was happening.

A group of five Y-wings accelerated upwards when they found Broadside and another pair of 170s on their tails, pulsing lasers up and towards them. Broadside narrowed his eyes as he targeted the nearest Y-wing and let rip with his lasers. The Y-wing managed to somersault over the first couple of shots but eventually Broadside managed to catch it between the engines and obliterate its reactor, sending it crashing towards the ground with a plume of smoke trailing behind him. Another of his accompanying flanking ships managed to catch another in the engine itself and tear it off, sending the engine and the ship catapulting in different directions.

The gunners of the Y-wings rotated around in their pods on top of their vessels to try and return fire on Broadside and his men, but the ARC-170s nimbly rotated and dodged the shots. "Lock onto your targets, men!" Broadside yelled, shifting his grip on the targeting system and focusing it on the middle of the three remaining Y-wings as he swerved his fighter down and around to dodge another salvo of shots.

"Fire!" he added, a moment later, and let rip with a pair if missiles that streaked from his ships underside, as did the other two either side of him. The fighters peeled off as their ammunition streaked upwards and impacted on each of the enemy's ships, tearing them apart and dropping their rubble towards the ground far below.

* * *

Across the other side of the clearing and several Empire ARC-170s were pursuing Oddball and several of his own companions as they chased their own Y-wings. Oddball dodged and span his fighter over to allow the shots to pass to either side of his ship harmlessly, spurring his machine onwards as quickly as he could. The ship to his immediate right took a laser to the wing and was flung right towards him, but Oddball avoided being struck by a hairs breadth, the fighter's wingtip passing within inches of the underside of his own ship as it was catapulted to the ground.

Oddball hurriedly pulsed a stream of lasers upwards and successfully managed to blow two of the enemy Y-wings to kingdom come, steering his fighter into the cloud of smoke produced by one of the explosions in an attempt to lose his followers, but they remained in hot pursuit. Another of Oddball's fellow pilots succumbed to the flak coming from behind them and was flung forwards and down. Oddball cursed and prepared to do something reckless, when somebody else beat him to it.

Kit Fisto's starfighter suddenly lanced between Oddball's group and their pursuers and halted in mid-air between them. The ARCs immediately focused their firepower on the underside of his ship, but were deeply confused and horrified when their lasers bounced off the underside of his ship and was catapulted back towards them. Several of them swerved around just before they could be struck with their own ammunition and Kit whirled his fighter around to pursue, destroying three of them with swift, precise shots to their engines.

"Thank you, sir!" Oddball said, as he focused himself back on pursuing the Y-wings and took out the rest of the group and a barrage of lasers from the rest of his group.

"My pleasure," Kit chuckled. "I'm beginning to think why Aayla likes this ship."

For Kit was not using his own starfighter in this particular confrontation and neither was Master Tiin. Aayla and Ahsoka had graciously allowed them to borrow their fighters, which, unlike the fighters of the two Masters, were layered with Chrome-Digizoid. The clones were a similar story – their own fighters were ones that had initially belonged to the 501st of 327th instead of using their own. Kit was using this new feature of his craft to full effect as he spiralled down towards the ground and levelled off just before he ploughed into the top of an AT-AT walker and shot down another pair of ARC-170s before they even saw him coming.

The Nautolan then whirled his ship over as another group of fighters opened fire at him from the side and curved around to flee as they swerved into line behind him, targeting the back of his vessel with their blasts. Kit grabbed his controls more firmly and narrowed his big black eyes as he allowed the Force to guide him. He shot forward and out over the trees, blue lasers flashing on either side of him, before he swung his ship around a tight corner and doubled back on himself. The enemy fighters required a few moments to pull themselves together and get back to following him, but when they did they raced to try and catch up with him.

Too late did they see what Kit was trying to do as they gained on him, shooting but failing to hit him as the Jedi dodged from side to side. Quick as a flash, Kit manoeuvred his fighter to shoot between the giant legs of an AT-AT walker and shot out the other side to curve up into the sky. Most of the ARC-170 fighters behind him ended up slamming full on into the body of the AT-AT and exploding uselessly next to its armoured bulk.

One of them managed to shoot between its legs as well, but its wings were too wide to fit through and the tips on both sides were knocked off, sending the fighter crashing uselessly to the ground and ploughing through several lines of clones. Up above, Kit had already started firing on another group of clones in Y-wings, slamming one in the back end and shooting past it as it fell.

* * *

Warthog led several more into a reckless dive in pursuit of a group of Y-wing bombers that looked like they were going to try for another pass down below to take more of the rebel forces out. They shot towards the bombers from the side and emptied their laser-blasts towards them. Most of them crashed harmlessly past the bombers, but a couple of them managed to strike the nearest of the Y-wings and send it catapulting into another to create a colossal explosion that tossed their useless bodies to the ground in heaps.

The rest of the Y-wings swooped lower as Warthog and the others fell in behind them and continued to try and blast them out of the sky. They did manage to take out a further three in this manor, but the remaining five ducked and twisted with the shots, rising higher to allow the shots to pass underneath them and then ducking lower again. They neared the ground, and the Wookiees and clones down below looked up to see what might be their death approaching.

But it wasn't their death, it seemed, because it was at that moment that several other Rebel ARC-170s flashed towards the Y-wings from the front, where Warthog had sent them initially, in what appeared to be a kamikaze run designed to ram straight into them. The Y-wing pilots panicked at the sight of the onrushing fighters and peeled off from their attack, allowing the fighters to streak harmlessly past. Or mostly harmlessly, as the wings of one of them slammed into an engine of a Y-wing and clipped it off, sending the Y-wing spiralling into an AT-TE, while the 170 was left undamaged thanks to its Chrome-Digizoid layered wing.

Warthog's squadron passed over the top of the fighters coming the other way and separated to pursue the individual bombers. Several quick blasts and the job was done.

* * *

But not far away, a lone Y-wing bomber was shooting low over the ground, aiming itself right towards where Chewbacca and Zarza were in the middle of furiously battling against the enemy. Chewbacca looked up to see the bomber approaching and roared a warning as the Y-wing climbed up at the last moment and released a bomb directly towards them. Zarza looked up and dived to the side as the bomb dropped.

That was when a blue laser lanced out of the sky and struck the bomb before it got within several metres of the ground, pre-empting the explosion. Zarza was flung to the side by the strike and came skidding to a halt, lizard and rider looking up to see Ahsoka's starfighter, which contained Saesee Tiin, shooting overhead to gun down the bomber as it attempted to escape to safety. The Iktotchi Jedi Master might have just saved the lives of both of them with that incredible attack.

But Saesee wasn't done yet. He shot towards the distant deflector shield over the city and beheld a line of gunships bearing down towards him, the great white vessels having finally decided to join the attack – they had remained behind over the shield in the hope that it would drop until now. They shot to intercept him, flashing green lasers in his direction from their nose cannons and the side-guns manned by individual clones in their little bubbles.

Saesee twisted his ship around to avoid each and every shot aimed at him and rolled over one of the great green laser bursts flung in his directions. One of the gunships flung a pair of missiles at him, but the Iktotchi avoided them as well and shot to close the gap between the two factions as the missiles twisted around behind him and shot towards him from behind, gaining the distance rapidly. Seasee aimed himself on a collision-course with one gunship, rolling to avoid its laser-fire and then shooting upwards at the last second, causing the missiles to slam into the front of the gunship and tear it from the sky.

Saesee swung his fighter around and slammed towards the remaining gunships from the side, and brought home his attack. He pummelled one in the wing with a barrage of lasers and sending it spiralling downwards, looping over and upside-down as he shot over the top of it to pummel the next one across with a second barrage and tear into it from the back. As he finished the loop back to right-side-up, he shot underneath the gunship before it had a chance to fall and slammed a pair of missiles of his own towards the next one along, taking out its blast doors and ripping out the inside.

Saesee then outdid himself by shooting _through_ the hole he had just blown in the gunship and escaping to the other side with no damage but a mild scrape across the side and shooting the next gunship in line out of the sky as well with a volley of laser-fire. Both the gunships crashed to the ground behind him as he swooped upwards to continue battle with more ARC-170s.

* * *

Overall, the Chrome-Digizoid layered fighters of the rebels lorded it over the Empire's ships, bringing death shooting from all direction as they swept through the skies in close co-ordination. The rebel ships got between the Empire's Y-wing lines and paired them off, pushing the out to the boundaries to gun them down from behind as they attempted to flee. The gunships that flew in to join the battle on the side of the Empire stood no chance either, as the enemy hurled missiles in a massive wave towards them, filling the air with their smoke trails as they whooshed across the battlefield.

The clones on the ground were feeling the effects of the aerial battle as well, as each downed starfighter crashed into their midst and crushed several of them into the ground. Many of them exploded to take out several more around them, including AT-RTs and the occasional AT-TE if they landed close enough.

The AT-AT walkers remained resolute in their relentless march, as they slowly turned to focus more on the rebels outside the city than trying to get past the deflector shield. One of the crashing Y-wings did collide into the knee of one of the AT-ATs, but while the tank wobbled a little from the impact, it managed to stay up.

With the bombing attempts being repeatedly foiled and the rebel aerial troops rooting out the Empire's one by one, the ground forces of the rebels that remained, of which there were still many a thousand, hurled themselves back into the fray, punching and blasting, hacking and kicking, stamping and clawing and shrieking to the sky.

* * *

Inside the city, the story was different. One of the AT-ATs might have been brought down by a series of fortunate events, as it were, but the other two were still posing a massive threat to the defenders as they tried to hold their lines just before the deflector shields. It seemed to have become a stalemate, the majority of the rebels fighting back at only three strategically placed points before the main Temple now. Blockades had been placed in certain streets in an attempt to funnel the Empire's troops down specific routes and into the waiting arms of the rebel's defences.

Thus far it appeared to be working, but the AT-ATs were drawing ever closer to their objective.

At one of the fighting zones, Echo stood tall on top of an AT-TE walker that filled the street behind the defenders, his blaster sweeping across the lines of enemy clones to pick off targets that managed to avoid being consumed in the fire of the walker beneath his feet. He quickly crouched to his knees as a volley of shots passed over his head and lift his blaster as an Empire clone fired a missile towards the AT-TE. Echo took a sighting down his blaster and let fly with a single bolt, intercepting the missile in the air and causing it to explode harmlessly over the heads of the other clones.

Nearby, Fives had teamed himself up with Hardcase, standing on a crate next to the gunslinging clone and covering him with laser bursts as Hardcase slung death into the Empire clone ranks. Fives shot down two pairs of clones that were trying to aim towards Hardcase, but when he noticed a couple of lasers flying towards _him_ instead, Fives dived off the crate and over Hardcase, rolling to a stop next to him and double-shooting another couple of clones with his pistols.

Everything else seemed to be a maelstrom of action as the defenders fought to their last man. Rex ducked behind Shaak Ti as the Togruta twirled her blade in defence and then dived out from behind her to fling a round of about five lasers at the enemy clones even while mid-air, rolling to a stop next to Bly, who was back to back with a MagnaGuard. The droid would take its turn to repel enemy fire with its electrostaff while Bly stood behind him and then the pair would swap places to allow Bly a chance to gun down several more of them before the MagnaGuard moved back to the front.

Another MagnaGuard was covering Tarpals and several of his Gungan troops as they continued to hurl energy balls over its head to pound down into the clone lines. Several of the enemy clones tried to shoot the energy balls down, but that turned out to be a bad idea because the corrosive liquid inside splashed out and covered more of them in that way, eliciting howls of pain from their ranks. Shaak Ti nodded to Agen Kolar, and the two Jedi stretched out their hands behind them, using the Force to lift a pair of fuel cells from beside the AT-TE and fling them towards the enemy.

Rex had a violent sense of déjà vu when he remembered Anakin doing something similar before he even met the Digimon, he and Denal, who had also been there, got the idea and fired upon the fuel cells, generating massive explosions that wiped out almost the entirety of the first five lines of the enemy, before they started advancing once more.

* * *

At the defence at the opposite side of the city, Jar Jar was swinging his electropole like a mad thing, bashing another clone over the head with it repeatedly as the clone tried to defend itself with its arms. Jar Jar quickly retracted his pole and jerked it through the opponent's guard to slam the tip into his chest and electrocute him. The Gungan froze as the clone collapsed, unable to believe he had managed to beat someone without it being an accident, and Mace Windu grabbed his shoulder and shoved him to the floor as a missile streaked over the Gungans head. Mace sprang forwards to slash through a pair of clones and kick a third in the chest simultaneously and toss the others outwards with a huge wave of the Force that sent them crashing into the defeated AT-AT.

Several commando droids sprang off a rooftop to land with extreme precision on some enemy AT-RT walkers and wrest their riders from their seats, dashing to the front defences and wheeling around to join Commander Ponds and his men on their mounted defence. As Ponds blasted down several more clones, the walkers took slow steps towards the oncoming enemy, droidekas positioned in front of them with shields raised to defend their vulnerable legs against attack. Gungan energy balls sailed through the gaps between the walkers to pound the front lines and knock them backwards.

Conor and Blade were fighting side by side once again, the two clones valiantly standing at the front and discharging dozens of lasers from the blasters in their hands to join the throng of others that punched into the reinforcements that streamed into view ahead of them. A missile streaked towards the both of them, but they both dived to either side and allowed it to impact the ground behind them. Conor clambered to his feet as a droideka rolled up beside him and unrolled to assist him. He took out three clones in the chest, ducked underneath a couple of other shots and span around to send a bolt lancing into the forehead of another.

Blade, on the other hand, spotted a clone hefting a Z6 cannon and pointing it towards a bunch of rebel clones, staring down its length to aim towards them. Without thinking, Blade flung the commando droid sword he was still holding and sent it scything into the Z6, slicing through the barrel and rendering it useless, following up with a swift shot to the enemy's abdomen with his blaster.

As the clone keeled over, a shot lanced over his shoulder and slammed through the air towards Blade. Blade dodged it, but he gasped in shock when he stepped into the path of another and it punched into his chest. Blade staggered backwards and fell against the wall, propping himself up against it with one arm. Already he could feel his life-force ebbing away, and he knew right then that he was done for. The clone gritted his teeth, his mind flashing back to the time on Ryloth all those months ago, when Renamon had given him a promise. A promise that if he survived this war, she would help him and the other clones integrate into society.

"Looks like I won't be able to keep my end of the bargain," Blade grunted as he pushed himself back up, forcing himself to stay on his feet. "Sorry, Renamon. This is for you and the rest of your team."

With a last burst of energy, Blade charged across the battlefield. The Empire clones looked startled as he approached and the clone grabbed the sword he had flung earlier and hurled himself into the Empire's forces. He took out a number of seven clones with well placed hacks and slashes in frenzied motion, before he finally sagged, gasping for breath and a pair of lasers lanced into his side and finished him off, dropping his body to the floor.

Conor could only stare dumbly for a moment as he watched Blade's final moments. But when the Empire clones turned back to face their opponents once more, Conor leapt out from cover and roared in anger and pain, cutting down the clones who had been responsible for the death of his team-mate with bursts of blue from his blaster. The rebels' brawl against the forces of the Empire continued with a will as they surged forwards with Mace at their helm, with Stass Allie not far behind him and Adi Gallia some distance back, the Jedi Master having recovered enough to rejoin the battle at last.

* * *

The middle of the three defences, on the other hand, was not doing quite as well. One of the AT-ATs was marching its way down the street towards them, flattening a large AT-TE under its broad feet as it stepped towards where Obi-Wan and Ki-Adi-Mundi were grouping their forces together to try and hold the pass, with not as much success as they would like.

Cody whirled around and slammed into a clone and a Gungan that were behind him to knock them to one side as a huge blast from the AT-AT shattered the street where they had been. The clone commander ducked down as a wall of rubble descended to the ground close behind them, and immediately turned around to clamber onto the rubble and open fire on the Empire's forces, holing another three clones in quick succession before he was forced to duck behind cover yet again.

Nearby stood Commander Monnk, who dodged a missile shooting down from overhead with a dive which he turned into a forward roll, pulling out of it to take up a crouch position and blast off three shots with his rifle. Two clones were taken out with shots to their ribs and a third received the final shot in the shoulder and dropped his blaster. He grabbed a grenade and primed it, but Monnk shot him in the chest before he could throw it and it dropped to the floor, ripping a hole in the first few lines around him.

A small group of commando droids had leapt of the roof nearby, holding Gungan shields in their hands to form a wall across the street right in front of the enemy, phasing their blasters through the shields to gun down any clone that didn't get out of the way quickly enough. But there was little they could do to stop the AT-AT walker which continued to fire shots over their heads as if they weren't there. Three clones and two Gungans were vaporised in one of its blasts, and its head tilted around to let off another shot that punched through the shield of two droidekas and blew a pair of AT-RTs into the sky.

Obi-Wan hurriedly blocked a set of blaster fire and used the Force to summon a couple of Gungans that would have been blown in the next AT-AT blast and grunted with exertion. He was beginning to tire. They all were. The fighting had been non-stop for quite some time now, after all, and it didn't show any signs of letting up anytime soon.

"This would be about the time Anakin would normally come up with something," Obi-Wan muttered to Ki-Adi-Mundi, catching a grenade with the Force and tossing it into the air.

The Cerean's eyes were locked on the AT-RTs that had been sent into the air as they tumbled back to the ground. He deflected a couple of lasers without looking and said, "Well, perhaps I can come up with something Skywalker-ish instead, Master Kenobi."

Obi-Wan glanced across at his fellow Council member and then both of them were forced to jump backwards to avoid another powerful blast from an AT-AT, the shock of which knocked them both to the floor. Ki-Ai-Mundi, however, pushed himself to his feet and plunged his lightsaber into the ground. Obi-Wan watched him in bemusement as the Jedi Master quickly moved around to cut a large square into the concrete below their feet for no apparent reason. He scrambled up to continue defending the other clones as Ki-Adi-Mundi ran over to a nearby AT-RT and said, "Would you mind if I commandeered this?"

"Er… help yourself, General," the clone offered and clambered out of the seat. Ki-Adi jumped up to took control of the small walker, darting to the front of the defences and out into the open, placing the walker on the edge of the square nearest the AT-AT. He opened fire, but kept a careful eye on the huge walker looming overhead.

As he predicted, the AT-AT swivelled around to focus on him and right at the moment it released a blast, he moved the walker to jump backwards to the opposite side of the square and, as the blast pounded the street before him and pulverised half the square, it also catapulted the other half high into the air. Ki-Adi commanded the walker to jump at the exact same moment, the concrete surging up underneath its feet propelling it higher than any AT-RT could normally jump.

Ki-Adi and his walker went sailing through the air and straight towards the AT-ATs head. The Cerean aimed both of them towards the AT-AT's duraglass window and leapt off the flying walker, slamming into the window lightsaber first. Even duraglass was no match for the blade of a Jedi and Ki-Adi combined his attack with a burst of the Force that shattered the window and sent him tumbling into the cockpit, the clones inside scrabbling for cover from the flying glass.

Ki-Adi-Mundi looked up and out of the shattered window to see the AT-RT still flying towards it. He closed his eyes, knowing that he had down what he had to do to protect the rest of the rebels as the smaller walker slammed through the gap the Jedi had created and destroyed the room, ripping the machinery to pieces with the impact. As the mechanisms were obliterated, all the systems in the giant walker immediately began to malfunction and overload as it was torn apart from the inside. It slowly began to tilt over onto its side before gravity pulled it down, explosions punching through the armour as it collapsed onto the buildings below.

As it slammed down onto the ground, the explosions reached its fuel tanks and the explosion that followed rocked the city and threw the people from both sides of the conflict onto their backs. Obi-Wan looked up in shock and horror at what he had just seen his fellow Council member do. There was no way that Master Mundi could have survived that, and he must have known it before he even did it. He had sacrificed himself to keep the line from breaking and take down the second of the three front AT-AT walkers.

Obi-Wan shut his eyes and placed a hand over his heart, taking a moment to honour the memory of the noble Jedi Master. Then he clambered to his feet and raised his lightsaber into the air with a cry of, "For the Republic! For Master Mundi!"

The clones and Gungans took up the call and they charged forwards with their droid allies, crashing into the Empire lines in a contest that became a series of flashing lasers and swinging limbs as each side fought with new energy for victory. For the Empire clones, it was an energy of desperation, due to the shock of seeing their AT-AT protector go down. But to the rebels, it was a desire to end this. To end the deaths.

To end this terrible, horrible conflict.

To ensure that the clones and Jedi and other rebels that had sacrificed their lives so bravely on this day would not have done so for nothing.

* * *

However, despite all the fighting, in the three street areas, the rebels were completely unaware of another, quite important factor. About sixty more of the Empire's clones had broken away from the conflict before they had even entered the city, and now, they were silently and swiftly climbing up and over the back wall of the city, using their cables to climb up and quickly jumping off the wall to hide from view in the streets below.

The back end of the city was comparatively less guarded, as the fighting had mostly moved up to the front to defend the shield generators, leaving a hefty guard only at the two generators closer to the back. The clones quickly moved into the shadows of the streets and crouched out of sight behind the cover of the buildings. Once they had grouped together they set off, staying behind cover and well away from the generators and their guards.

The clone who appeared to be the leader took point as the clones stuck close to the walls, coming to frequent stops to stay low to the ground to check that they had not been discovered. The sounds of fighting and blaster fire grew louder in their ears as they moved towards the middle of the city.

They were heading straight for the Jedi Temple.

Not only were they planning to take out the snipers from within, but Commander Stone had identified that if the Jedi were pushed back far enough, the Temple would be their ideal final standing place. It was heavily fortified, and not to mention huge, so even a barrage of AT-AT fire would take a long time to bring the building down and the Jedi and their allies could defend the place for hours if they were pushed to it.

But if the clones could infiltrate the Temple before the fighting reached it and take it by stealth, then the Jedi would have nowhere to run.

As the clones drew level with the back of the Temple, the leader quickly motioned towards a small and low window in the main structure. Several clones ran forward and fired cables from their blasters, the tips of which embedded themselves in the wall above the glass. Several more clones hurried over and began to scale the wall, clambering hand over hand towards the window up above.

The first clone to reach the glass brought out a fusion cutter and began to sear through the sides of the window. A couple of other clones joined him and after about a minute or two the window came free and began to fall inwards. The clones hurriedly grabbed at it to hold it upright and heaved themselves into the empty room beyond, quietly leaning the window against the wall and then signalling up for the others to follow.

About five at a time, the clones ascended up to the window above them and clambered into the Temple. Their leader directed them to the door, which they hurried through as quietly as possible into the hallway beyond as more clones climbed into the room behind them to hurry after them.

Their goal?

The entrance hall to secure the main doors from the inside and set up a defence. They could spread out from there to capture the rest of the Temple and simultaneously alert Commander Stone into sending reinforcements.

It seemed like the perfect plan to catch the Jedi by surprise from behind.

* * *

The entrance hall was far from a cheerful place right now. Waxer and Boil had wanted to take their little charge, Numa, deeper into the Temple, to somewhere more secure than this place, but Numa herself had vehemently refused to go anywhere. She had said that she was determined to remain in the entrance hall despite the dangers outside. Perhaps she might be able to help somehow if the fighting got close.

Yet it was an incredible feat of bravery for the young girl to still be in the room, because she was currently huddled by the wall and cringing, wishing she had her Tooka doll with her right now just so that she had something to hug.

It was muffled by the thick walls on all sides of them, but the noises of the fighting coming from outside were still very easy to distinguish. Numa cringed at every explosion and flinched whenever she heard the sounds of a rocket being let off or a faint scream coming from a clone or a Gungan. She shivered, hugging her arms. She didn't have a clue what was happening outside other than the fact that lots of people were dying – that there was sadness and grief and anger going on out there brought about by firing blasters and swinging melee weapons and cannon fire.

This was almost exactly the same as it had been back on Ryloth the night after she first met the Tamers. She and Suzie had been in the tunnels beneath Numa's home city, and they had both heard the sounds of fighting faintly coming from above. And when they had finally dared to go back out into the open, Numa had seen her parents dead while the rest of her city had been taken into captivity by the Separatists to be used as a shield against the Republic.

Part of Numa wanted her to go outside right now and see for herself what was going on just to stop her imagination from running riot.

And the other part of her wanted to be as far away from the fighting as possible.

That was why she was staying put like this, stuck in the middle of her two options. She trembled at the sound of a colossal explosions coming from outside. Why, oh why had she wished that she was going with her friends those few days ago? She could have stayed safe, at her new home that the Jedi had picked out for her on Saleucami with that nice pink Twi'lek woman and the man who looked like Waxer and Boil but wasn't. She could be playing a game right now with Shaeeah and Jek, completely unaware of the horrible fighting going on outside.

Yet she had wished it, and the Digi-Gnome circling her head had gone ahead and granted it, and now she was hear, cold and terrified and probably less than a hundred yards from where people were fighting and dying.

She was no use in a battle situation. She had helped people get to the place they needed to be for the fight but when the fighting started she had never been any help at all. She glanced down at the teal-rimmed D-Arc clutched in her little hands and a tear splashed onto its screen. She didn't deserve this little thing. She didn't deserve to have Gabumon as a partner, not now and not ever. The other Tamers were so brave, even Suzie, rushing heedlessly into a battle situation with no thought to their own safety because it was the right thing to do. Numa wasn't brave. She didn't have courage. She wasn't fit to be a Tamer.

A wave of sadness rolled over her, coupled with fear from another loud bang that sounded horribly close. She buried her face in her arms in a pathetic attempt to hide herself. War was terrible, horrible. She had no place in it.

The Twi'lek Jedi, Xiaan Amersu was crouching beside her, trying to comfort the little girl with soothing strokes down her left lekku and by murmuring, "Don, don," which translated into Basic as "There, there." Her efforts seemed to pay off, as Numa leaned into her leg, seeking companionship in her sorrow and terror. Numa sniffled, and moved her little hand up to place it against Xiaan's. The Jedi smiled lightly and gripped it comfortingly, knowing it would give Numa support in this time.

Waxer and Boil were both shifting about rather awkwardly. Neither of them particularly knew what to do in this situation, so they had decided to try and help Numa feel more secure by standing on either side of the main door, which was firmly shut and barred acting like sentinels to protect their young charge. Neither of them were happy about Numa's decision to remain here, just as neither of them were happy that they were not taking part in the fighting, but they were primed and ready to leap into action at a moment's notice.

The Digi-Gnome circled round and round the room over their heads. It seemed to understand the morose atmosphere, for it was no longer giggling childishly like it usually did and its glow had been reduced to a sputtering faint light. To anybody that knew them, a look of sadness was an alien expression to a Digi-Gnome, and yet this one definitely looked side, it's mood emulating those around it.

But it was Gabumon who was really feeling awkward in this situation.

The Digimon was in a similar quandary to Numa. _He_ currently felt that _he_ didn't deserve Numa. Not because he didn't think they worked together as a team or because he was scared of battle like the young girl, but because he didn't have the faintest idea what he was supposed to be doing in this situation. His Tamer was upset, but he was standing nearby like a useless lump and just staring at her, the Heart of Fire gemstone that Xiaan had given them clutched in his own hands as the D-Arc was in hers.

Xiaan was the one who was comforting his Tamer. Gabumon didn't have a clue where to begin.

Gabumon sighed. The other Digimon and their Tamers worked on such a close level that they could probably read each other's minds even without that special link they all had. They always seemed to know exactly what to say or do in certain situations, but Gabumon didn't have the foggiest idea what he was meant to do now.

Suddenly his ears perked up as he heard Numa murmur, "Jus poa, Gabumon." He looked over at her and gasped when he saw the girl hefting the D-Arc into the air as if she was going to throw it. He started over, but Xiaan beat him to it and grabbed her fist in her other hand before she could commit the act.

"Numa, what are you doing?" Gabumon cried.

"Ju gohs folio ji lik o Tamer," Numa wailed, tears streaming down her face. "Ju gohs folio juon pliw."

"Tooraba," Xiaan immediately scolded her. "Sa kury suul non."

"Schoy, Ju gohs," Numa shook her head. "Re zeek ulner woki bostor raka ger ace. Jus roitree."

"What is she saying?" Gabumon asked urgently, his frustration at the language barrier between them clearly evident.

Xiaan sighed and said, "She said that she doesn't deserve to be a Tamer, and that anybody else should have gotten you for a partner than her. She claims to be useless."

"No!" Gabumon shouted vehemently. He was surprised by the emotion in his own voice and Numa looked up at him with an expression of torn anxiety. 'No,' was, after all, one of the words that she could understand.

Xiaan nodded to Gabumon. "You're her partner. You should be the one to deal with this."

"Will you translate then?" Gabumon asked.

"No," Xiaan shook her head. "In this context, meaning will be a lot more powerful that words. Go on. Talk to her."

"Er…" Gabumon murmured. "Erm, okay." Xiaan moved aside as he stepped towards her, another loud explosion echoing through the walls from outside. "Look, Numa. I… realise that you probably don't understand this but… you should never claim that you shouldn't be a Tamer, okay? I'm sure that guy up there gave us what we have for a reason other than just granting a wish. It must have picked the two of us to go together because of something more than that – something that we perhaps haven't found yet."

Numa looked Gabumon in the eyes, confusion clearly evident but mixed in with some mild amazement. Gabumon was heartened, perhaps his words were having some effect. So he ploughed on with, "You say you're useless. Of course you're not useless. If you were useless then how did I manage to get to this level so quickly, huh? You had one of those fully grown Ack-things charging at you but you kept your head and bang, here I was. You… you wouldn't be able to do that if you were useless, would you? You compare yourself to the other Tamers, right? Well, I bet they weren't nearly as good as they are now when they first started out either and you shouldn't think that…"

And then something happened that ruined Gabumon's speed. Xiaan became aware of a faint sound coming from a nearby corridor and glanced up, peering into the shadows ahead. The Force suddenly screamed to her and her blue lightsaber flashed into life in her hands, as she whirled it through the air, standing protectively in front of Numa and Gabumon as she blocked the four lasers that suddenly surged out of the darkness towards her.

Numa yelped and Gabumon gasped. And then a pair of clones ran out into the light with blasters raised.

Clones who had no X painted on the front of their armour.

"Ambush!" Xiaan cried, deflecting another series of bolts. "They're inside!" She quickly dashed forwards to close the space between her and the two clones and slashed through the blaster of one of them, spinning around to kick him into the wall and blocked the shot of the other one to send it slamming back into his chest from close range, whirling around to slice into the first clone as he scrabbled back up. More lasers lanced towards her from out the corridor and in the glow of her lightsaber, she could see there were several dozen of them streaming towards her.

"Guys! Protect Numa!" Xiaan shouted, rather unnecessarily as Waxer and Boil had already moved over to her. Then she leapt into the corridor to engage the clones in battle.

"Don't worry, kid," Waxer nodded down to Numa. "Everything's alright."

"You're safe with us," Boil nodded.

However, both of them quickly swallowed their words. There were two corridors that led into the entrance hall and suddenly another couple of unmarked clones charged into the room from there with blasters held ready. Waxer and Boil reacted on instinct and gunned them down in an instant, but as Waxer moved forward he was forced to duck as more lasers came flying into the room.

"They're coming from bother directions!" he shouted.

"You think!" Boil roared back. The clone dived towards the wall beside the corridor and leaned out quickly to see many more clones hurrying towards them. His arm shot down to take out another with a shot to the chest and Waxer dashed to the other side of the corridor, sending a couple more bolts flying into it as he did so and rolling out of the way of return fire.

"Gabumon!" Boil shouted. "We'll handle these guys. Keep the kid out of the way."

"All over it," Gabumon nodded, shielding Numa with his own body as the battling broke out in earnest in both corridors.

* * *

Xiaan whirled her blade in two quick circles to crash it against a swarm of incoming lasers and diced a clone with a swift stroke to the abdomen and spun around to deliver an upwards cleave to the one next to him. Pulsing back another accurately fired bolt, Xiaan leapt onto the wall and backflipped off it to spin her blade into another and shove him into the floor to stab across at the next one over, burying her blade in his chest. She waved her hand to create a burst of the Force to knock several others over as she manoeuvred the skewered clone into position and then sent him flying with another Force-push, pulsing him down the corridor to where the other clones were getting to their feet and knocking them down again.

Xiaan struck a defensive stance, determined not to let any of the enemy clones get past her. To her alarm, she spotted one of them hefting a missile launcher in her direction. At such close range she would have no time to block it, so she immediately turned tail and fled back down the corridor as he let fly. She bounded off the wall again and dived back into the entrance hall and behind cover, the missile just missing her feet and striking into the opposite wall. Numa and Gabumon had moved away and were several yards from the blast, but Numa still yelled and ducked to the ground. Xiaan grimaced and wheeled back into the mouth of the corridor, grabbing the rocket launcher clone with the Force and yanking him forwards, leaping down the hallway to meet him in mid-air, and plunge her blade into his torso, flipping over him and back onto her feet before his body hit the floor.

She hurriedly whirled her blade around so fast the tip cut into the walls and threw up sparks as she parried another round of shots, then she span around three more and rolled forwards to come up in another stab and shove the clone into a wall, kicking up to connect her foot with another's chin as she swapped her lightsaber from hand to hand behind her back to slash it up into another, the momentum carrying her into a spinning leap that allowed her to slash down on yet another. As she hit the floor again and fell into a crouch she span even down in that position and called another clone with the Force so he shot over her head and slammed into the wall as she leapt up behind him to carve up the one behind him.

It was at that moment that a couple more clones stepped into the corridor in front of her, unslinging a pair of Z6 cannons from their backs and priming them. Xiaan stepped back and furiously ducked and dodged and parried the blasts as they filled the corridor from top to bottom with blue flashes. The Twi'lek Jedi immediately began to wish she had taken up Jar'kai like Aayla had as she was hard-pressed to stop them all with just one blade. Thinking quickly, she aimed her blocks towards the walls and hacked several pieces out of them, using the Force to fling them towards the clones and disrupt their firing, giving her the chance to jump forwards again and disarm them both.

* * *

On the other corridor, Waxer and Boil had the upper hand despite the enormous difference in numbers. The two clones were able to lean around the corridor's edge and pulse lasers into the oncoming clones and duck back behind cover if anything came their way.

Boil leaned swiftly out so low to the floor he was almost lying down and blasted forwards, slamming a pair of blasters out of the hands of the clones holding them with a couple of lasers and then ramming the clones themselves with the next volley. He threw himself back into the entrance hall once more as the enemy peppered the ground where he had been and then thrust his arm back out without looking to gun down another one and withdraw the arm equally quickly.

Waxer was a little more daring at first stepped out almost into full view to let off two quick blasts and then moved back into the safer area without waiting to see the results, though he heard the grunts of a couple of clones getting slammed by his ammunition. A stream of blue cascaded out into the entrance hall and Waxer hurriedly waited for a gap before rolling out into the main view once more and crashing another three bolts into the enemy clones before he rolled back, a laser flashing over his shoulder and within inches of his neck as he did so.

"They're getting closer!" Waxer called across to Boil.

"Yeah! I noticed!" Boil agreed as he poked his head out into the corridor and thrust out his arm so it was almost leaning on the wall to pick off another clone before he pulled back. "What's the plan?"

Waxer glanced across at Numa, the little girl peering out from behind Gabumon with a look of dread on her face. He growled and said, "We can't let them get to her!" as he pulled a grenade off his belt. "On three?"

Boil nodded and pulled out a grenade of his own. "THREE!" he yelled and he and Waxer leaned out at the same time to roll them down the corridor and then pull back. They heard a mad scramble from within the corridor and then a large explosion, coupled with an bright flash and a vibration in the walls that indicated that they had made their mark. The confined space of the corridor made grenades extremely effective.

Boil hefted his blaster and nodded to Waxer, who nodded back, as both of them prepared to leap out of cover to confront their enemy. But, just as they were about to leap, another pair of grenades suddenly rolled to a stop by their own feet, the Empire clones having decided to follow their own example.

"Move!" Boil shouted as both he and Waxer dove in opposite directions. The grenades went off and carried both of them away on the shockwave. Waxer slammed into the wall and collapsed to the floor, momentarily stunned as Boil rolled to a stop nearby. Boil scrambled back to his feet quickly and dashed back to the corridor, firing a volley of five lasers down the gap before he took a laser in the shoulder and yelled, dropping his blaster and falling behind cover.

As Waxer scrambled up again and hurried to try and keep the Empire clones at bay, Numa's eyes grew as round as saucers. She could see Xiaan fighting furiously in the other corridor, while Waxer and Boil struggled against overwhelming odds nearby. All three of them were trying to protect her and all she could do was hide behind Gabumon, her heart threatening to pump out of her chest.

Gabumon spotted her expression out the corner of his eye and turned around to face her. Feeling a bit awkward but doing it anyway, he placed his hand on her shoulder. Numa glanced across at him as he said, "Remember what I said earlier, Numa? You _are_ brave. You have the capacity for bravery but you believe that you don't so firmly that it's just not rising to surface like it should. Remember earlier. Remember that animal that charged towards us and how you reacted then."

His expression hardened as Gabumon presented the Heart of Fire gem to her. "So what if we can't do the things that the others can do? We are strong! The Digi-Gnome put us together! We've advanced me to the Rookie stage already! And the bond that the others said we need is definitely there and it's growing. This gemstone is the proof of that. Can't you feel it, Numa? Xiaan gave this to both of us. It's got a bit of both of us in it, just as it has a bit of her and even a bit of Aayla. We have the bond! We just have to use it!" He smirked and added, "Are you really going to sit here when you could help your friends? Are you up to the challenge?"

Numa stared at the Heart of Fire for a moment, and then placed a hand over it and Gabumon's paw. She felt a slight smile tugging at the sides of her mouth as she held out the other hand to Gabumon, holding the D-Arc in that. Gabumon grinned and said, "Exactly, Numa!" as he laid his hand on it. "We don't just have one device that bonds us together. We have two! Who says that we can't be as good as the others, right? All we have to do is try!"

Numa felt herself smile more, and turned to glance over to where Waxer was desperately trying to hold the other clones back, as Xiaan backflipped out towards the entrance hall to avoid another grenade thrown at her. A sudden, overwhelming urge to protect them welled up inside her. And not just them, but all of the rebels fighting out in the street and in the field. She had to do her best! She had to try! She just had to!

With all her heart, she wanted to have the courage and power to fight.

And while that might not technically have been a wish, her emotions were so strong that the Digi-Gnome acted on it anyway. It wasn't about to hang about and do nothing when its favourite Tamer and Digimon could use its help. The Digi-Gnome let out a high-pitched squeal as its body flared with light so bright that Gabumon and Numa were forced to cover their eyes.

The Digi-Gnome's eyes flashed white as it poured its energy down and out of its own body sending it pulsing through the air to flow into both the D-Arc and the Heart of Fire. Both of them burst into light themselves, white bursting from the screen on the white and deal device and the gemstone blazing like a miniature sun.

Both Numa and Gabumon turned to squint through the glare and look up towards the Digi-Gnome as it continued to scream and pulse phenomenal amounts of power down towards them. Both of them felt the energy pouring into them as it felt as if their whole bodies were fizzing and dancing as they brimmed with power. The Digi-Gnome screwed up its eyes and let out one final burst of power that shot into the two items…

…and then it was consumed by light, which dispersed into the air and fizzled out of existence.

Numa gasped as the Digi-Gnome vanished and Gabumon's jaw dropped open slightly. He knew exactly what the Digi-Gnome had just done. When a Digimon granted the desires of the heart, it used its own life-energy to grant the wish. The Digi-Gnome had just poured so much power into the both of them, using the D-Arc and the Heart of Fire as a conduit, that it had used every last iota in its body and thus, it had died.

It had made the ultimate sacrifice.

But it had given both Numa and Gabumon exactly what they needed. They both brimmed with power and their hearts seemed to beat as one. They could actually feel each other's heartbeats, as if they were both in one body. A combination of their desire to help, their double-bond through the two items and the Digi-Gnome's power had done something remarkable. And both of them instinctively knew what to do, even though neither had actually seen the other Tamers do it.

Gabumon released the hand holding the D-Arc, but tightened his hand around Numa's holding the Heart of Fire. He nodded to Numa, and she gave him a determined smile as she pressed the D-Arc to her chest.

And then she uttered her first two words that were not of her own language.

"Biomerge activate!"

* * *

First off, I don't want to hear any complaints about Numa and Gabumon getting to this stage too early. Just sit back and enjoy it as a moment of awesome and one of my personal favourites among the cliffhangers which I have done. I did my best to justify how it came about anyway. The Digi-Gnomes used their own powers spread Calumon's digivolution powers in the series, so this one did the same thing here. It also did what Dobermon did in the series in the same moment, and paid for it with its life. It's sad, I know. I didn't want to kill the Digi-Gnome, but in the end, that's what I chose to do.

I didn't want to kill any of the people I killed off in this chapter. Blade in particular I felt sorry for, as he's been in my story since Chapter 4 and he was a clone I made up. But, like Lash and Ridge before him, Blade had also finally fallen in battle, leaving Conor the only one of my first four OC clones still standing. But Tarfful, Ki-Adi-Mundi and the Acklay were equally hard to kill off, but I felt some important figures had to die in the fighting and those two got the boot, as it were. I quite like Ki-Adi, but one of the four leading council members had to die, and I'm afraid he got picked.

* * *

Twi'leki translations

Jus poa, Gabumon – I'm sorry, Gabumon

Ju gohs folio ji lik o Tamer – I don't deserve to be a Tamer

Ju gohs folio juon pliw – I don't deserve this thing

Tooraba – Rubbish

Sa kury suul non – Of course you are

Schoy, Ju gohs – No, I don't

Re zeek ulner woki bostor raka ger ace. Jus roitree – It should have been anybody else but me. I'm useless

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Please leave a review and see you soon.

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Next time...

The title says it all. A couple more deaths, AT-AT fire, stun tank blasts, fun with Zarza and Yoda, heroics from Chewbacca, and, best of all, a brand new Mega level Digimon. How do you think the battle will turn out?

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Coming up:- **Chapter 198 : Mass Destruction**


	198. Mass Destruction

I'm back once more everybody, with our newest chapter. Even I must admit that I'll be glad to put this fight scene behind me now, for while I enjoy writing it and all, it is becoming difficult to think of new ideas and to keep it as tense as most of you guys claimed that the last few chapters were. I hope that this one lives up to your expectations. Please enjoy.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 198:- Mass Destruction**

* * *

Waxer and Boil cried out as they turned back from where they were crouched behind cover, watching as Numa and Gabumon both burst into light, which flared up to an intensity even brighter than that of the Digi-Gnome before it, filling the room as if a powerful explosion was occurring in slow motion. The two clones stared dumbfounded as the shapes of the small Digimon and the girl they had met on Ryloth so long ago, warped and melded together into one, which grew and expanded, barely visible against the powerful light they were both emitting.

"**GABUMON BIOMERGE TO…"** shouted the Digimon.

Waxer remembered to turn around and fire a couple more shots into the corridor to try and stop the clones from advancing forward a little more, but then he turned back around, captivated as the light began to fade to reveal a being that burned itself into their memories forever. Neither of them could make a sound as the creature bounded forwards and dashed across the room towards them.

It resembled some kind of giant wolf that stood as tall as the clones themselves at the shoulder. It was covered in blue armour-plating that encrusted almost every inch of its body, layered over one another into something almost like a metal carapace. Each foot was adorned with three large claws, all of which were lime green, and its mouth was filled with sharp dagger teeth below a snout that had four pitted holes beneath its armoured nose. Its long tail swept out behind it, lashing from side to side, the tip of which was adorned with some kind of cannon. There were several other cannons adorning its sides, and one absolutely massive one on top of its back, like the cannon of an AT-TE, except much more powerful.

The dual voice of the new Digimon roared through the Temple as it announced its name to the Galaxy.

"**ZEEDGARURUMON!"**

The lupine Mega crashed to the floor in front of the corridor Waxer and Boil were trying to cover, in full view of the clones that were within feet from the entrance hall inside. Lasers crashed against its bulk, but none of them even left any marks, and when the clones got a good look at what they were shooting at, they stumbled to a stop, gaping in shock beneath their helmets.

"**BLOWBACK BREATH!"** ZeedGarurumon bellowed, icy fire leaking from its jaws as it thrust its head forward with mouth agape, exuding a huge mass of fire-like blue energy from within and sending it streaming down the corridor from floor to ceiling. The clones within never stood a chance and were all consumed and killed in the energy river, which made the fact that the energy exploded the moment ZeedGarurumon stooped its attacked completely irrelevant. The attack took out the entire corridor and made it collapse inwardly on itself in a massive cascade of rubble.

ZeedGarurumon, without pausing for breath, whirled around and narrowed its eyes as it focused down the corridor where Xiaan was still battling against the rest of the clones. Suddenly, dozens of energy beams lanced out of the pits on its snout like bullets and burst into the corridor. They looked like they were going to hit Xiaan in the back, but they quickly swerved around the Twi'lek Jedi and each impacted on a different clone, dropping them to the ground one by one as if they were under machine-gun fire. A few moments later, and they were all dead.

Xiaan faltered when she saw what had happened and slowly turned around, gasping when she saw ZeedGarurumon for the first time. This was her first witness to a digivolution and it was just as spectacular as had been described.

She noticed something interesting about ZeedGarurumon as she stared at it, and that was the fact that a large, orange gemstone was blazing on its chest. Somehow, the Heart of Fire had been incorporated into the digivolution, giving ZeedGarurumon an extra adornment that other members of its species did not have. It symbolised the bond between Tamer and Digimon and the sacrifice the Digi-Gnome had made to get them to that point.

Overall, ZeedGarurumon looked like a vicious and awe-inspiring killing machine.

So, it was a little disconcerting when it opened its mouth and spoke in the voice of a little girl.

"Wow," Numa's voice came out. "Just… wow… This is… this is… I can't find the words."

"Numa," Xiaan gasped. "You're speaking Basic."

"I am?" ZeedGarurumon blinked. "I… What the… I'm speaking Basic! And I understand myself!"

Suddenly the wolf began to speak in the voice of Gabumon instead. "That's because we have become one, Numa. Our hearts and minds have merged together. I know everything you know, and you know everything I know. And since I know Basic, you can speak it now. Hed Ju gif enoon pastila Twi'leki."

"This is insane! This is absolutely insane!" Numa breathed as she looked down at herself, lifting on paw and wiggling the green claws experimentally. The cannon on top of ZeedGarurumon's back began to swivel around almost of its own accord as the two of them tested out their new body.

"Perhaps," Waxer said. "But I'll tell you something else. It's… freaking… awesome."

"I hear that," Boil agreed.

"I agree," Xiaan chuckled. "Congratulations to the both of you. I knew that you could do it if only you believed in yourself, Numa."

"I couldn't have done it without Gabumon," Numa nodded her wolf head. "Or without you guys. Thank you so much for this. I… I can't thank you enough. And its great to be able to speak so that everybody can understand me at last."

"Not a problem, kid," Boil chuckled, then wondered if he should really still be calling Numa a kid when she was half of a giant missile-toting wolf thing.

Just then, there was a colossal explosion from outside that rocked the Temple and almost knocked Waxer and Boil off their feet. ZeedGarurumon swung its head around to fix its gaze on the doors, its upgraded hearing able to hear the sounds of battle coming from outside more clearly than ever.

"Sounds like the conflict is getting pretty close," Waxer observed.

"Yeah?" ZeedGarurumon growled. "Well, let's see if we can't change that, shall we? I've had enough of sitting on the sidelines – not when I could be helping people. I say we get out there and show the Empire the full power of the bond between Tamer and Digimon."

"I like this plan!" Boil nodded.

Xiaan chuckled and hefted her lightsaber. "Then perhaps you would like to lead the way, ZeedGarurumon?"

The wolf nodded and charged towards the doors.

* * *

Outside, the fighting had indeed managed to get closer. The presence of only one AT-AT in the streets was a massive help, but one was still enough to cause mayhem, and three others were just beginning to step through the deflector shield up ahead, meaning it wouldn't be long before they had an even bigger problem to deal with.

The rebels were still in a slow and steady retreat as they were forced back towards the Temple. And, despite their best efforts to contain the Empire to three separate locations, some had managed to break through into the small streets and get past their defences, and now they were attacking the Temple directly.

By the doors, Tera Sinube and Jocasta Nu valiantly parried blaster shots with their lightsaber to the best of the their abilities, standing and the bottom of the steps to the Temple with a line of clone troopers that were attempting to gun down the Empire before they could get a clear shot towards them. But several of them fell as the Empire swarmed out of the smaller streets in front of them to fire bolt after bolt into their ranks and gradually mow them down.

Neither Jocasta nor Sinube were as spry and nimble as they used to be, though both of them were still making a good defence. Jocasta was the slightly faster one, and so she was the one standing in front, parrying and swatting aside as many laser bolts as possible with round twirls of her blade, while Sinube stood slightly higher to make slower, more calculated blocks in an attempt to protect a couple of the closest of the rebel clones.

Sinube blanched when he saw a rocket launcher being aimed right towards Jocasta and fired. The elderly Jedi raised his hand and called upon the Force, causing the missile to veer off course and go streaking harmlessly to the ground nearby.

He then hurriedly took a step down and batted aside one blast with his lightsaber and another with his walking stick, putting a hole in the wood but protecting the clone that it had been about to hit nevertheless.

From the front Jocasta was being pushed backwards as a swarm of laser-fire rushed to try and get past her guard, the elderly woman doing her best to block them all but very hard-pressed to do so. Eventually, a clone holding a Z6 moved into view and levelled it towards the Jedi Master, blasting at her with a massive volley of shots. Combined with the sheer number of other clones shooting at her as well, Jocasta did surprisingly well, and was able to fend off the colossal swarm for about seven seconds before she finally took a hit in the arm and dropped to the floor.

Sinube stood over her and summoned the Force to her to try and push the rest of the clones back, but before either he or they could act, the Jedi Temple doors exploded off their hinges and went flying outwards, sailing over the heads of the defendants and crashing into the Z6 clone and many others around him, flattening them under the splintered wood. The defenders whirled around to look as bullet-like energy blasts lanced out of the space where the door had been and mowed down all the attacking clones at once.

ZeedGarurumon stepped out of the door and growled, daring other Empire clones still emerging from the streets to try their own luck. They immediately backed away from the strange creature, wondering what the heck it was supposed to be and fear gripping their hearts, but to the present rebels, the sight of the ferocious looking Mega Digimon filled them with new hope.

Unfortunately, the remaining front AT-AT seemed to have noticed what was going on from up high and while the clones piloting it were also shocked, they acted quickly, rotating the head of the walker to point towards the wolf. ZeedGarurumon didn't bother moving from its spot on the doorstep, as its back-cannon swivelled around to point towards the AT-AT in response, making an increasing whirring noise as it charged up.

The AT-AT fired.

"**ZEED CANNON!"** the Digimon bellowed and a humongous burst of yellow energy thundered out of the cannon. A blast of energy that increased in size the further away it got from the caster, expanding into one huge flood of power so vast that it was impossible to describe. The opposing blasts slammed into one another, but ZeedGarurumon's attack overwhelmed the AT-ATs and powered straight through it to slam into the AT-AT front on. The walker's entire head was consumed by the almighty blast and was instantly vaporised and the energy weapon punched its way out of the back of the walker and tore it apart from within.

Not even the Chrome-Digizoid layering to the walker had been able to stop the blast.

The remains of the AT-AT immediately tipped over and crashed to the floor and there was a momentary stunned silence and everybody on the entire battleground stopped for a moment to stare, both outside and inside the city. The Empire forces had never witness an attack of that magnitude and we stunned to the core. The rebels, on the other hand had seen something like that before, but the three Digimon they had fought beside in the past were no longer even on the planet.

The realisation of what must have happened hit them all like a thunderbolt, and a moment later, ZeedGarurumon leapt into full view on top of a nearby tall building and roared to the sky, announcing its presence of the battlefield to all and sundry.

"Let's do this, Numa," Gabumon said.

"I'm all over it," Numa responded.

And then ZeedGarurumon threw itself into action and sprang down into the street, stampeding down the street towards the defence being led by Shaak Ti. As it rounded the corner, the clones and Gungans scrambled to get out of the way as ZeedGarurumon charged past the defensive lines and fell upon the Empire clones like a hurricane of flashing metal and teeth. The terrified clones tried to fire back, but the bolts that managed to reach ZeedGarurumon were promptly ignored as it rammed through the first lines of clones and bowled several of them over in its charge alone. It slammed around to grab and clone in its jaws and toss it into the air as both its paws slammed down on a couple more and crushed them into the ground. Its' heavy cannon-equipped tail lashed out behind it and crashed against the heads of three clones, before ZeedGarurumon took a flying leap and landed on another clone, grabbing the rocket launcher he was holding in its teeth and crushing it to scrap.

Its initial presence in the fight now established, ZeedGarurumon really began to lay on the attack. The guns attached to its sides rotated around and began blazing into the ranks of the Empire clones, cutting down dozens of them at once before they got a chance to retaliate. Panels in its legs, shoulders, body and even its forehead opened up to produce more guns which added to the blasts with thousands of blue energy bolts. In no time flat, all the clones that had been standing in front of the AT-AT before it went down were mown into the ground and slain.

Several AT-RTs rounded the collapsed AT-AT and charged towards ZeedGarurumon hoping to do some damage with their nose cannons. One of them slammed into the wolf's forehead and it growled and raised its tail over its head. The cannon on the tip suddenly hurled a huge blast of energy towards the walkers that swallowed most of them up and ripped the walkers to pieces and tossed the clones into the air. The remaining ones quickly separated, but ZeedGarurumon responded by sending more blasts from its snout, each of which locked onto a different target and pulverised their chest to knock them from their seats.

One clone managed to throw a grenade right before the blast killed him, and the small device rolled to a stop next to ZeedGarurumon's foot. The Mega glanced down at it right before it exploded and filled the air with smoke, obscuring it from view. Many other clones dashed forwards with cries of triumph thinking the creature to be slain, but a sudden wave of blue explosive energy poured out from the smoke and washed over them obliterating them instantly and ripping the street to shreds in the resultant explosion. ZeedGarurumon stepped out of the smoke, completely undamaged and locked on to an AT-TE that was try to manoeuvre itself around the flaming bulk of the fallen AT-AT.

The Zeed Cannon flared once again and the walker was instantly reduced to charred shrapnel.

There were cheers from the rebel aligned clones and the Gungans as they dashed forwards and ran past ZeedGarurumon determined to retake the street. Commander Bly stopped next to the Mega Digimon and chuckled for a moment. "Well, I'll be," he said. "Good to see you two had it in you after all."

ZeedGarurumon grinned and offered him a nod, and then turned around to jump onto a nearby rooftop and dashed across the tops of the buildings towards the middle street where Obi-Wan and Cody were still fighting hard. Ki-Adi-Mundi's earlier sacrifice had enabled them to hold their position for the last ten minutes before ZeedGarurumon's arrival, but now the wolf was here, the battle turned extremely quickly.

Pouncing down from the rooftop, ZeedGarurumon cannoned into an enemy AT-RT walker and slammed it to the ground, landing right in the middle of the Empire forces. Its side-guns immediately rotated outwards and cut through the forces on either side of it like a scythe cutting through crops, energy bullets blasting out of both its snout and its tail to effectively shoot in a complete three-sixty on all sides of it. The Empire forces never stood a chance and the street was ripped to rubble by the attack, the debris falling around ZeedGarurumon as it roared and slammed through one boulder with a particularly heavy swipe of its paw.

The Mega then whirled around and barrelled further down the street towards another approaching AT-TE. With a howl it leapt astride the large walker, the mouth of the cannon on its back coming to a stop inches before the mouth of the cannon on the walker's back. One massive blast disintegrated the cannon and slammed through the AT-TE to blow up the street beneath it and toss it into the sky, ZeedGarurumon leaping off it in mid-air and falling towards the fighting in the third and final street.

Unlike its counterpart, MetalGarurumon, ZeedGarurumon was not capable of flight, but right now that didn't particularly matter because the lupine Mega was plummeting straight towards the next batch of clones, where Mace Windu and Jar Jar and several others had started fighting them again. ZeedGarurumon started firing before it had even reached the ground, striking down dozens and dozens of clones from above before landing in their midst with a colossal thud and instantly bounding up and rebounding off a wall to slam another clone out of the seat of its walker.

ZeedGarurumon's tail arched behind it and cut down several more clones with a blast from the cannon on the tip, as its paws flung aside another group with ease. The biomerged Digimon let rip with the blasters all over its body, peppering the Empire clones before it until their armour was so full of holes that it was practically coming apart at the seams. As they collapsed to the floor, ZeedGarurumon snarled its victory to the sky.

A part of it was feeling ridiculously guilty for cutting down all of these people, who were good men by principle and believed that they were doing the right thing, but both Numa and Gabumon understood the need for victory today. Palpatine had to be stopped. He had been the man responsible for the Separatist rise and therefore, ultimately the man responsible for the death of Numa's parents.

As the Mega leapt back onto the roof of another building, its eyes narrowed as beheld the next three AT-ATs which had come through the deflector shield and were starting to try and make their way through the spaces in the walls that their predecessors had made before them. Their heads immediately swivelled towards the wolf to try and take it out. But the Digimon was not going to give them the opportunity. The Zeed Cannon gathered power again, and opened fire with an almighty blast that impacted with the bottom of the AT-AT on the left so hard that it not only punched through it but tossed it into the air. The cannon that rotated on the wolf's back and the massive energy beam cut across the middle on and blew off all four of its legs to send the body crashing to the floor.

And then it came to a stop on the one on the right and the result was the same. It was completely torn to pieces by the cannon strike before it even got the chance to return fire. Its remains wobbled and exploded outwards before the whole thing collapsed inwardly on itself.

ZeedGarurumon had just destroyed three AT-ATs without moving its feet an inch.

The Digimon growled in satisfaction and moved out to continue its reign of destruction.

* * *

In destroying the line of AT-ATs, ZeedGarurumon had also cut off Palpatine's view of the battle. Back on Coruscant, the Emperor could only stare at the screen blankly for a few seconds, his expression carefully neutral but his hands shaking as he felt rage building up inside him. What the hell was that thing? And that was not the only question picking a hole in his mind. Others include:

Where in the Galaxy had it come from?

How had the Jedi managed to tame such a creature?

_When_ had the Jedi managed to tame such a creature and why hadn't he heard of it?

Why had they waited so long to allow it to join the battle if it had such power to destroy four AT-ATs like that with ease?

His mind was a whirlwind of questions and thoughts as he kept coming up with possible theories to explain the wolf creature and answer all of those questions. He simply couldn't fathom any of it, but in the end he settled on one theory which sounded most plausible in his mind. Perhaps the wolf creature had been a guardian of the Temple of sorts, a long-forgotten creature, much like the Zillo Beast, which had been left on Tython by the Jedi millennia ago to guard the Temple and await their return. And they had not let it battle until this point because it was _so_ powerful it could have caused massive collateral damage and they had been hoping the Empire clones would surrender in the first place.

Even that didn't explain where the wolf creature had gotten its armour or its cannons, which appeared to be technology more advance than practically anything Palpatine had ever seen before. But it was the best explanation he had.

Ignoring the flabbergasted expressions and sounds of Ventress and Aurra from behind him, Palpatine growled, "Re-establish the connection with another AT-AT. We must work out how to deal with that beast."

* * *

With ZeedGarurumon on the battlefield and overpowering the Empire with what appeared to be ease, the rebel forces within the city struck back with a sledgehammer force to push the Empire clones that survived the Digimon's onslaught away, moving steadily up the streets to retake the passages which they had given up beforehand.

Hardcase had run out of ammo again, so he had run forward to slam a clone over the head with his Z6 and then toss the weapon away into another before pouncing on another clone with a Z6 and slamming him in the face with his own weapon, wrenching it from his hands to turn it around and start blasting once more. Tarpals skidded to a halt in front of two more clones and swept his electropole across their chests to knock them over and hurled an energy ball into another's face at point-blank range. A commando droid leapt over his head to grab a clone with a rocket launcher and bear him to the ground. Two more clones pointed down towards the droid, but blue bolts flew out of nowhere to strike them down. Rex, the shooter, dashed forwards and rammed his knee into the gut of another clone to knock him aside.

Commander Bly bounded forwards over a pile of rubble, holding a rocket launcher of his own that he had picked up and focusing it into a group of Empire clones to let rip with the weapon, blasting them in all directions from the middle. Several others grouped nearby leaned away from the impact zone, and when they looked back it was to see two MagnaGuards descending towards them. The droids landed in the middle of the group and span around one another to slam several other clones aside with their electrostaffs, sending electrical bursts through them at the same time.

And then Shaak Ti surged over their heads and passed her lightsaber through the chest of one clone, whirling him around to fire him straight up with the Force and spin about to take out two more clones, duck underneath the shot of another so it took out its comrade and whirled about to bat his blaster out of his hands with one lekku as she slashed through another clone. And then the clone she had sent flying landed on the one she had disarmed and knocked him out.

* * *

The fighting was the same elsewhere too. Obi-Wan and Cody led the charge as he and his men burst through the remaining attackers in their street. Gungan energy balls flew overhead to land the first strike as Obi-Wan span forwards and slash an X through the chest of one clone and kick the body into a second, whirl around to block to attacks, one behind his back and one in front, in rapid succession and then stab under his arm and behind him to take out one of his attackers and summon the other to him with the Force to meet with his lightsaber as her reversed its angle.

Cody rammed his shoulder into the chest of another clone to knock him down and rolled with the momentum over his body to come up and shoot through another. But then two clones descended on him and grabbed his blaster, trying to pull it from his hands, so Cody slammed up with his elbow to knock one away with a hit to the face and twist the other one around still holding the blaster until his hands were behind his back and then kicked him in the backside, sending him sprawling.

A couple more clones pointed blasters at him, but blue lasers lanced overhead to take them both out. Cody looked back to see the culprits were Waxer and Boil. Not needing to protect Numa anymore, the both of them had left the Jedi Temple and thrown themselves into the main battle with a will.

Agen Kolar dashed two more clones across their fronts with windmill blows and threw himself into a flying roundhouse kick that belted another upside the helmet and twisted around to land in a crouch to dive into a stab and flip over as he brought the clone down, his feet lashing out to either side of him while he was upside-down to kick another pair away. A pair of droidekas rolled around him and uncurled to give him cover from the sides as they blasted into the crowd and Commander Monnk dashed in moments later to dive sideways and gun down a couple of other clones while in mid-air, rolling over on his shoulder to flip back onto his feet.

That's when Commander Ponds and the Lightning Squadron charged out of one of the side-streets to add to the chaos, flattening several clones beneath their feet and leaping over a pair of droidekas to crash into the rest with guns blazing. The Gungan shield-bearers left off the walkers and began to thwack the enemy in the face with the rims of their shields as the AT-RT walkers fired over their heads.

And then a Jedi suddenly bounded over the top of the walkers and Gungans and rolled into the midst of the clones to cut a pair of them across the chest and sweep-kick the feet out of another. The Jedi stood up and revealed herself to be Xiaan, and the Twi'lek Jedi dashed aside two more bolds and grabbed a grenade out of the air with the Force to freeze in place, then leapt up and kicked the small device back into the ranks of the enemy clones.

And then ZeedGarurumon bounced over the street as well, letting loose a barrage of gunfire downwards as it sailed overhead to land on the other side, bombarding the Empire forces below without even looking before moving on. Waxer and Boil whooped at the sight of the Mega Digimon, and Xiaan chuckled as she dashed over to join Obi-Wan and Kolar in the fighting.

* * *

And at the final conflict zone, things were heating up equally quickly. Jar Jar stepped on an electropole and yelped as he fell backwards, somehow flinging it into the air in the process to slam two clones in the face. The Gungan quickly pushed himself to his feet and hefted his own electropole to throw it like a spear. The throw was rather clumsy and the two other clones dodged it, but completely by accident the electropole struck a flying missile and pre-empted its explosion, taking out several of them. Jar Jar's long fingers flew to his protruding mouth, but then he grinned and grabbed the other electropole and went back to work.

Stass Allie shook her head at the wonder that was someone being so inept that they were actually a valuable asset on the battlefield before she dived towards the next batch of clones, ducking under laser fire from her own side that took out two of them and whirling into a slashing jump that carved up one and threw her into the air to land on another and toss several others flying with the Force. One of flying clones landed on the outstretched blade of Adi Gallia, who kicked him off and backflipped to avoid a volley of lasers, kicking another clone in the chin in the process and dating forwards to hack through one and stab into another.

Several droidekas suddenly lined the rooftops, having been carried up there by the remaining commando droids, and blasted downwards into the street to pepper the Empire clones with their repeating blasters, while a phalanx of Gungan hurled energy balls from behind each row from the protection of the energy shields.

Echo and Fives also dashed across a different side of the street each and leapt over a gap in the buildings to roll to a stop on one behind the frontmost clones and quickly battered them down with laser sweeps from their blasters. Echo had acquired a Gungan energy ball and hurled it with extreme precision into a clone standing on top of a downed AT-TE and preparing to shoot a rocket launcher. As he collapsed, Fives pulled a detpack from his back and planted it on the wall below him, hurrying backwards to get out of range before detonating it and burying several other clones beneath a pile of rubble.

Conor was charging recklessly into the conflict, incensed by the death of Blade earlier in the battle and determined to redouble his efforts and fight for both of them, which is why had now copied Blade's actions and acquired a commando droid sword, which he swung into the chest of one clone as he shot down two more with a sweep of his blaster, then whirled around to slash across the midsection of another clone. A commando droid also wielded a sword had joined him in his fight and the two of them were battering down enemies wherever they went.

Even at the back of the line, Kix was firing lasers over the heads of his brothers from the top of a pile of rubble, then turning back to administer treatment to the wounded Even Piell before he whirled back around to let off another quick salvo before doing it again. It was as if all the rebel clones were now feeling the heat of battle and each of them wanted to make his mark on the victory.

And right near the front of the line, further into the ranks of the Empire clones than anyone else, stood Mace Windu and K'kruhk, the two Jedi Master battling side by side with furious energy. K'kruhk roared as he slashed one across the chest with his lightsaber and another in the arm with his claws, whirled around to hack through another clone and grab the wounded one by the face in one large hand and throw him into a wall.

Mace Windu promptly rolled over the Whipid's broad shoulders and practically exploded out a burst of the Force that was almost like a shockwave which filled the street and flung clones out before him like action figures. Some of them got to their feet quickly enough, but they were quickly disarmed as Mace summoned at least ten blasters to him with the Force and jumped forward to leap back into the attack with a slice to the stomach of a clone with a Z6.

With ZeedGarurumon having taken out their main artillery with ease and still leaping from place to place to bombard the area, the defenders in the city slowly surged their way through the demoralised Empire foot-soldiers and their AT-RT support like the sea sweeping over a beach.

* * *

The same could not be said for outside the deflector shield. The stalemate had moved from inside to outside the city walls, because now a large portion of the AT-AT walkers had managed to turn around to face the attackers on either side and were unleashing their furious power on the rebels with full force. Even with most of the bombers eliminated, the threat was still very real to all of them.

Commander Gree rolled underneath a downed AT-TE and hurried out the other side just as the blast from the AT-AT pounded the ground where he had been and collapsed the other walker down to the ground. He growled as he clambered to his feet and leapt out from behind the walker slan an unsuspecting clone in the back of the head with his fist and shoot another in the ribs. An AT-AT explosion fractured the ground next to him and tossed him onto his back. And, as he pushed himself back up once more, eight of the Empire clones quickly surrounded him and pointed their blasters at him.

Gree scowled from under his helmet and murmured, "You guys want to party? Well, alright then!" He threw himself to the ground as the opened fire at him and skidded along on his side, firing upwards as he did so to take two of them and hurriedly rolled to get out of the way of more lasers to smack into another one's legs and trip him over. Gree scrambled to his feet and grabbed another, pulling him in front of a shot aimed at him like a shield and leaned around him to shoot down the culprit.

The other four pressed in around him, but Gree grabbed the fallen blaster from his human shield and leapt backwards as the shots flew before him, nailing another two in the torsos as Gree slammed into the AT-TE. He then flung his one blaster to crack another in the head and roll to the side to avoid the shots from the other, sweeping around to pass a laser through both of them and send them crashing to the ground.

Gree nodded in satisfaction and darted back into the open.

And he pulled to a halt in shock as he saw a rebel ARC-170 fighter spiralling towards him, completely out of control.

Gree gasped and backpedalled, but this time he was too slow. The starfighter slammed into him and he disappeared under its metal bulk. Moments later and the fighter exploded with a tumultuous shockwave that sent a large amount of smoke billowing up into the air. Commander Gree died instantly and thus another veteran of the Clone Wars was lost in the conflict.

* * *

Luminara Unduli was stood nearby blocking a swarm of more incoming lasers and her eyes snapped open as she sensed rather than saw the death of Gree. She shut her eyes for a moment to honour his memory – Gree had been a loyal soldier. Sometimes overly loyal, but loyal nonetheless. Then, she thundered forwards and dashed back into the fighting, twirling past two clones and sweeping her blade across them in the process, sidestepping a third and running around him to swipe another while grabbing the third with the Force and tossing him into the sky, all in one rolling motion.

All around her the clones, Wookiees, droids and several other Jedi fought their hardest against the Empire's forces, but they had now stopped gaining ground on them as the Empire seemed to have finally adapted to their new situation and were organising better defences. Not to mention, with most of the Empire's fighters and gunships now out of the equation, the Empire's stun tanks finally had something to do. They were lancing their EMP beams up into the sky in an attempt to catch the fighters of the rebels and bring them crashing to the ground – which had been what had happened to kill Gree.

Kit Fisto whirled his ship through a pair of these beams and twisted his ship into a dive, sending a volley of lasers down to impact on the clone forces below, each one creating a miniature explosion of its own. The Nautolan docked his ship's torpedoes and let fly at one of the stun tanks, blowing it to smithereens as he swooped overhead and hurtled back into the air, banking sharply to avoid another stun tank beam.

Several of the other fighters were separating outwards and also trying similar techniques on the tanks, but many of them were caught in the beams themselves and instantly went spiralling to the ground. Broadside yelped as he span his ship to left just in time to avoid a laser. They really could have used some bombers of their own at this point, but most of them had gone with those who had left the planet earlier.

Saesee was trying to bother one of the AT-AT walkers, keeping it distracted to make sure its attention was diverted from the other rebel troops. Nothing he had in his arsenal could make a dent on the walker, but that didn't stop the Iktotchi from trying. As he whooshed between the AT-AT's giant legs and twirled up and around towards its head, he span his ship around and slammed on the decelerator, pulling to a halt right in front of the AT-AT's head. He promptly bombarded it with lasers from within a few metres. The people within ducked beneath the controls just in case, but Saesee's barrage didn't manage to break through the heavy duraglass.

The Jedi Masterr wheeled his starfighter back over the top of the AT-AT before it could recuperate and quickly prepped his last set of missiles, preparing to twist down beneath the AT-AT to try and launch it at the motors on its underside. But the Jedi Master gasped when he suddenly whirled around the AT-AT's body and flew straight into a stun tank beam which he had not even seen.

Not even Chrome-Digizoid covering was any good against a power blackout and Saesee's ship immediately began to plummet downwards. The master hurriedly tried to regain control, but it was a futile gesture and his ship slammed into the ground nose first and skidded across it, ploughing down several Empire clones in the process before finally coming to a stop.

Right in front of another AT-AT.

Saesee looked up in resignation as he watched the AT-ATs already raised foot move over his deactivated ship. And then the heavy walker stepped down on top of his fighter and that was that. Another member of the Jedi Council perished.

Kit Fisto frowned and sighed as he witnessed the death of his fellow pilot. And then he was forced to roll aside to avoid another stun tank blast. He made up his mind and said, "Arsix. Take over the controls and get the ship out of here. I'm going out there."

And with that, he swooped low and opened the cockpit, springing out of his seat and plummeting towards the ground. As his fighter winged out of the way, Kit landed on top of a stun tank and activated his green lightsaber, dashing past the cannon to slice it off at the base and then grabbing it with the Force to fling it into the ranks of the Empire clones as he sprang over the side, slashing his blade down one clone and across another and whirling around with his tentacles flying out behind him as he blocked off another set of shots and took a spinning leap to intercept the caster, swinging his blade out and around to behead three of them in the same motion.

* * *

The rest of the battle was becoming a complete wash of chaos and destruction. Three Empire clones fled from a charging Crab Droid, one of the few on the battlefield, and the droid managed to crush one under its large foot, but then an Acklay thundered towards them from the side and slammed another clone with its claw and seized the next in its jaws. Two commando droids leapt off its back and sprang shoulder first into two more clones to knock them to the ground, and lasers suddenly flew between them as Commander Wolffe charged over and grabbed one clone by the shoulders, removed his helmet and then slammed his head into the nearest fallen walker to knock him out and span around to deliver another shot to the next clone's gut.

A Dwarf Spider Droid gunned down two more clones before a grenade rolled beneath its slow moving body and blew it into the air. Its shattered body reversed direction and was flung over to a pair of AT-RTs to knock them into the ground. Plo, the perpetrator, backflipped onto the top of the head of the Force-sensitive Acklay, who sent the Kel Dor catapulting into the air to land on top of an AT-TE, allowing the Jedi to take out the gunner with a stab of his blade.

Mallatobuck had a hold of an unconscious clone by its ankles and was furiously swinging its body around to slam aside other Empire troops with well-placed swings of her improvised mace. Several clones tried to back away and point their blasters at her, but most of them were taken out by a missile from a Super Battle Droid and the rest were gunned down by the B1s that were crowding around the Wookiee. The battle droids continued their relentless march forwards, a blast from an AT-AT vaporising about fifteen of them at once but the rest of them carrying on as if nothing had happened and blasting down an equal number of clones.

Elsewhere, another two more of the Acklay were tearing another of the stun tanks to shreds. Its cannon was hanging by a couple of wires from where one of the Acklay had wrenched it out and the other one was slamming its claws through the front of the tank to smash through its circuitry, causing the hovering vehicle to crash to the ground in a useless heap. The two of the Acklay then charged through another group of clones side by side in a headlong rush, their six thrashing legs slamming clones all over the place like skittles.

Abruptly another AT-AT cannon shot whooshed across the fighting space and slammed into the ground around the two Acklay. One of them was sent rolling by the impact and came to a stop on its stomach nearby, lifting its head and shaking itself to expel the dizziness its unexpected trip had caused it, but the other was less lucky. It was slammed almost full-on by the attack and tossed backwards, its body completely clearing the ground as landed with a horrible crunch on its neck and collapsed to the floor. It was still alive, but that changed quickly when several clones hurriedly shot towards its gaping mouth, including one blast from a rocket launcher.

The Acklay uttered a final shriek as the missile exploded in its mouth, before its head dropped to the floor, and thus the six Acklay that started the battle became just four. The other Acklay quickly scrambled to its feet and rampaged over, seizing the rocket launcher clone by the leg in its jaws and deliberately slamming him into the ground, twice, before flinging him up and out the way. And a barrage of Lightning from the Force-sensitive leader swept the ground nearby.

* * *

Chewbacca and Zarza both witnessed the death of the second Acklay, and the Wookiee growled under his breath as the Varactyl shrieked in anger and bounded into another group of AT-RTs, sweeping several of them side with her large tail and flattening another to the ground beneath her large feet. Those AT-ATs were turning into a real problem. Chewbacca had been ordered to find a way of dealing with them but so far he hadn't been able to think of anything.

He quickly moved Zarza, ordering her to do a circuit of the nearest AT-AT as he stared up at it, probing it for any weaknesses. The head and neck seemed to most obvious choice, but as far as Chewbacca could see those were heavily armoured and could only be penetrated by something ridiculously powerful, and the presence of its blasters made attacking from the front hazardous anyway.

But what about from behind?

A flash of inspiration suddenly punched into Chewbacca's mind. The AT-ATs had been designed to be bearers of destruction that rooted out the enemy with brutal force, moving steadily towards the enemy as they were now and blasting them to kingdom come. But on the back ends, they had no weaponry whatsoever, making the safest place to be regarding an AT-AT directly behind it.

Of course, it still had thick armour.

But was it thick enough, and what kind of armour did it have back there. The most vulnerable spots had been coated by a thin layer of Chrome Digizoid – incredibly thin as the metal was ridiculously hard to produce, which is why it had not been thick enough to repel the attack from ZeedGarurumon from before. But did it have the same protection on the back end?

There was only one way to find out and Chewbacca finally had a plan.

He spurred Zarza back into the battle, the Varactyl bounding clear over another shot from an AT-AT as the Wookiee sought out Yoda. The Jedi Master was, despite his size, not that hard to find, as all you had to do was such for a flashing green light that was shooting all over the place and, sure enough, Chewbacca saw him taking out a clone on an AT-RT and bouncing off to fling the two legged walker into the air with the Force. Zarza dashed over towards him as Chewbacca roared, "Scracaoworc Rooowara, rrwoao oowh!"

Yoda looked up to see the Varactyl thundering past him and sprang onto the lizard's side in one giant leap and flipped up onto Chewbacca's shoulders with the second. "What is it, Chewbacca?" he asked.

Chewbacca pointed up towards the AT-AT walkers all around them and cried, "Ohwo whwowowa aooo wawocaorcooro aoacoocwo ohraanorworcc oowhoawo rawhwa wwoorc raanan!"

"Agree, I do," Yoda nodded. "A plan, have you?"

Chewbacca nodded and urged Zarza into a mad side-to-side dash through the clone ranks. The reptoavian ploughed over any living thing that stood in her way, leaving a distinct trail in the battlefield behind her as she flattened every clone in front of her into the ground. Many of them tried to shoot her, but she was ridiculously fast when she wanted to be and she was long gone before their shots had any effect. She leapt onto the back of an AT-TE and thwacked its cannon aside with a heft blow from her beak, and then sprang over the other side and continued on her way.

They were heading directly for the AT-AT at the very back of the army.

The people inside seemed to see them approaching and turned to try and fire down on them but again, Zarza's speed proved too much for the slow moving mechanism and the one shot that the AT-AT did manage to let off was ridiculously off target.

Chewbacca pointed up towards the walker and said, "Oarawh rooohu rrwoao huc huak oowh aoooak ooww ahao?"

Yoda was beginning to get an inkling of what Chewbacca was planning to do and nodded with a smirk. "I can, of course," he nodded.

Zarza pelted towards the walker and Chewbacca muttered instructions into her ear. Zarza seemed to be fluent enough in Shyriiwook to understand the commands, because as she drew level with it she tensed her legs and sprang high into the air, higher than she had ever jumped before, not least because Yoda was using the Force to aid in her jump and propel her and her riders upwards. The Varactyl landed on the side of the AT-AT with a metal thunk, her sticky-pad toes latching onto the metal like they did on the trunks of trees.

She scrambled up quickly and clambered onto the top, moving to the back end of the walker. Yoda bounced off and test the metal beneath his feet as the walker plodded on, powerless to do anything about its new riders. Yoda lowered his lightsaber down to the metal hull and pressed the tip against it.

Sure enough his lightsaber burnt straight into the hull. The Chrome-Digizoid had only been planted on the neck, the weakest parts of the head and the legs, the weakest parts of the walker. The rest of it had been considered armoured enough, but not against a Jedi. Yoda plunged his lightsaber in full length and quickly sliced a hole in the top of the AT-AT, lifting the heavy metal armour out of the way and tossing it over the side.

He chuckled and turned back to Chewbacca as the Wookiee scrambled off Zarza. "Do, I believe this will."

Chewbacca nodded and said, "Thank you, Yoda."

Yoda nodded back and then sprang aboard Zarza once more. "Work, I hope your plan does," before the Varactyl sprang off the walker once more and landed with a crash amongst several more clone troopers. As the Varactyl charged back into the melee, Yoda backflipped over her and span his blade through the neck of a clone as he fell past his shoulder, and grabbed the blaster of another clone to swing off it and catapult himself into another, blade-first, and dash up his body to leap off his shoulder before he fell and landed in the midst of several more clones, the Force bursting out around his tiny body to send every man within fifteen metres of him high into the sky.

* * *

Chewbacca took a moment to watch the Jedi Master at work from far above on the back of the AT-AT before he shrugged and dropped into the hole which Yoda had cut into the top.

He landed in darkness, the sounds of battle being blotted out slightly by the thick walls. There was only a dim illumination in the room that made up the AT-AT's main body, which was designed to hold troops until they were deployed from the hatch in the floor in the middle of the room. But, of course, there was nobody in the room right now as all the soldiers had already been deployed.

Chewbacca stepped across the room towards a door at the far end and grasped the handle and pulled, only to find the door was locked. Chewbacca grunted and then heaved, yanking the door clean off its hinges and discarding it. Beyond it there was a short corridor which led to a second door, and the corridor seemed to be flexible, bending slowly from one side to the other. The AT-AT's neck.

Chewbacca crossed the swaying corridor in about three strides, unphased by the movement as he had been in worse during a windstorm on the branches of the wroshyr trees on Kashyyyk many times. He then raised back his fist and pounded the other door with it slamming it into the room beyond.

A clone on the other side yelped as he was flattened by the door, allowing Chewbacca to step in and see the two clones manning the controls turn around to look at him in shock. One of them leapt up and pulled out a blaster, but a shot from Chewbacca's bowcaster knocked the weapon out of his hands.

"How the heck did you get in here?" the other clone yelped.

Chewbacca's only answer was to roar and lunge for them, grabbing them both around the necks in his giant furry paws and heaving them both around to bash them into the wall. One of the clones fell unconscious at the incredible hard blow, but the other was only dazed and dropped to the floor, groaning. Chewbacca proceeded to finish the job by removing his helmet and then smacking him over the head with it, laying him out across the ground.

"What is going on over there?" a voice said over a comlink. Chewbacca froze at the sound of the voice and then turned slowly around to stare at the unmanned monitor, for the voice had belonged to Emperor Palpatine. Chewbacca frowned, and then spotted that there was a holocam seated at the top of the duraglass window and pointing out into the battlefield beyond. It dawned on him that Palpatine and possibly his subordinates were watching what that holocam was recording back on Coruscant, and had just overheard the sounds of commotion from within the cockpit.

Chewbacca couldn't resist smirking. It looked like the Sith Lord was going to get a front row seat of his plan. He quickly took and seat and glanced over the controls in front of him. Chewbacca was very good with machinery and he could usually guess what most buttons were for on most machines, and many of these ones were even helpfully marked. So, with a grin on his furry features, he gripped the hold and gently tilted them to the right.

The giant AT-AT began to turn slowly around, Chewbacca making adjustments as he tilted the huge walker around, slowly but steadily changing the position of its feet to effectively turn it around. Thumbing another control, Chewbacca began to rotate the head of the giant tank as well, until he had his sights set on the back of the nearest of the other AT-AT walkers. Its back was to him and it appeared to be trying to blast down into the ranks of the other rebels.

Chewbacca growled. He had seen Tarfful, his close friend, die today. He had seen countless clones many Wookiees and even two Acklay fall on the field of combat so far. He could only hope that his wife Mallatobuck was alright, but he had no way of knowing. Those AT-ATs had been wrecking their plans for long enough. Now, it was finally time to return fire.

So he did, slamming his thumbs down on the appropriate buttons.

The AT-AT almost juddered as it let off a full powered blast from its front facing cannons, the green bolts catapulting across the space in a matter of seconds and smashing into the back of the other AT-AT. Its armour was strong, but not strong enough to repel the fire from something of its own magnitude and its back end ruptured under the colossal attack and threw the AT-AT forward. It tipped forwards and sideways, coming to crash with a colossal impact on top of many other Empire forces and finally collapsing onto its side.

Chewbacca roar in triumph as the clones outside gaped in astonishment at what they had just witnessed. Many others turned around at the sound of the explosion and wondered what the heck was going on. But they got their answer soon enough, when the AT-AT at the very back of their forces tilted its head down and began to fire into their own ranks. It stepped forward mercilessly, throwing more huge laser blasts down into the ranks of the Empire, tossing them high into the sky and vaporising several others.

Clones that hadn't actually been able to get anywhere near the action were now falling as the AT-AT hurled bolt after bolt into their midst. Many of them panicked and fled in any direction in a mad attempt to escape from the AT-AT. They had already seen enough of what the giant metal hulks were capable of during the fighting so far and knew better than to just stand there.

The AT-ATs head titled upwards and slammed another set of lasers into the back of another walker, the impact crashing into it so hard that its back two feet completely cleared the floor and it tipped forwards onto its front. A slight rotation of the head once more and the next set of shots cannoned into the top joint of the back leg of a third walker, blasting its limb off at the hinge and sending it crashing to the ground. The heavy walker heavily relied on all four limbs for support, and its balance was thrown completely off by the loss of one entire limb. Even before it tried moving it began to tip over backwards and crashed to the ground with a heavy thud.

From that moment on, Chewbacca had things easy. Every single one of the other AT-AT walkers had its back to him, and was completely defenceless against his attacks. It was simply a matter of rotating the head and hitting the button – he didn't even have to move from his spot. Two more of the giant AT-ATs fell in this way, as did an AT-TE and a stun tank, before, finally, a hologram appeared on the dashboard next to Chewbacca.

"What do think you're…" Palpatine growled, but then stopped when he saw who it was at the controls. "What?" he asked. "But…how?"

Chewbacca looked down at the small hologram and bared his teeth in a furious snarl which turned into a chuckled, before he raised on fist and, before Palpatine could protest, he brought it slamming down on top of his hologram and smashed the holotransmitter beneath it to scrap, killing the hologram right there. Chewbacca laughed out loud – smashing Palpatine, even a fake representation of him – now _that_ had been fun. But then he gripped the controls again and tilted the head around once more to aim it towards another of the AT-ATs in front of him and opened fire once more.

* * *

When the rebels finally realised that something had happened to cause one of the AT-ATs to finally be of their side, there was a sudden surge of exhilaration, the tide having been severely turned in their favour and they launched themselves on the enemy once more. Plo and Kit had teamed up and jumped across one another to slice through a different clone each then both span around to slash through the legs of an AT-RT. Commander Wolffe was now riding a Crab Droid into battle, shooting wildly and backed up by a horde of battle droids coming up behind it. The droids still hadn't finished filtering out from the trees behind the majority of the rebels.

Oddball winged his way overhead in his ARC-170 with a pair of flankers and slammed a stun tank into oblivion with a heavy bombardment. Mallatobuck slammed her fist into another clone so hard that he went flying over an AT-TE. A droideka rolled around the side of a damaged walker and rammed into three more clones before it unrolled and began shooting. One of the remaining Acklay thundered out into a group of clones and stamped down towards them as they tried to dodge. Yoda rolled down the barrel of an AT-TE cannon and sliced off the tip, catapulting himself into the air to land on yet another Empire trooper with a flash of his blade. The whole area was becoming complete chaos.

Luminara cut through the stomach of another clone and whirled around with a flap of her robes to block the fire of an incoming AT-RT with her lightsaber. The walker dashed towards her in an attempt to stamp her into the ground but before it got to her, the Mirialan lashed out with her hand and gripped it with the Force, lifting it into the air, its legs swinging uselessly underneath it as if it was still running. And then she tossed it into another pair of nearby clones.

She became aware of the cannon shot only when she heard it, but there were lots of cannons shots so this one didn't particularly register. But her senses suddenly screamed at her and she saw the blast of an AT-AT rocketing towards her at high speed. She didn't have time to widen her eyes. She didn't even time to tense her legs to make any attempt to escape. The blast was too close and too fast.

Fortunately, somebody else was looking out for her, and the now-riderless Zarza shot out of nowhere in a blur of green and dived past Luminara at approximately the same moment that AT-AT fired. Her beak snapped shut on the back of Luminara's robes and yanked her into the air. Just as the blast slammed into the ground inches behind Zarza's back. The ground erupted beneath her and carried the Varactyl and the Jedi clamped in her beak into the air. Zarza yelped in pain as the debris lacerated and pummelled her back, but she refused to let go of Luminara.

Both of them went tumbling to the ground a moment later and only then did Zarza open her beak and drop the Mirialan, slumping to the ground and yelping again the moment she tried to move her back leg. Luminara looked up for any sign of a reprisal from the AT-AT, but it was at that moment that a blast from Chewbacca's walker slammed into its back and sent it crashing to the ground. Luminara scramble to her feet and waved her hand to send several clones who were aiming at Zarza flying backwards.

"Thank you, my friend," she said, placing a hand on the Varactyl's beak. Zarza grunted in acknowledgement and then squealed as pain lanced through her back again. Luminara gasped and leapt up beside the open wounds in her scales and hurriedly began to use her skills as a healer to close the wounds up and repair the damage. Commander Gree might have been dead, but one of Luminara's lieutenants, Buzz, spotted what was going on and hurriedly instructed several of his men to form a perimeter around Zarza to protect her as Luminara fixed her up.

It only took a minute or so, and Zarza scrambled back to her feet. She looked back and fixed one gleaming round eye on the Jedi Master, and jerked her head once, indicating the spot behind her front legs. Luminara smiled and leapt astride her, and Zarza let out another hooting call as she charged back into battle, once more with a rider.

* * *

As the battle in the fields raged, the battle in the city was all but won. The Empire clones that were trying to get into the city were pushed back as others scrambled to flee, dashing out of the city walls in a panic. Behind them, the main courtyard had once again been reclaimed, as clones, Gungans, droids and Jedi swarmed out from the streets with cheers on their lips (if they had them) and weapons brandished.

"Oh yeah!" Hardcase roared as he hefted his Z6 into the air. "That's what I'm talking about!"

"We did it!" Bly grinned. "We took back the city."

"And it's all thanks to our large and lupine friend over there," Rex agreed as ZeedGarurumon crashed into the street next to them. The Digimon looked over and grinned at them both.

"It was my pleasure," it said. "What's next?"

"This city might have been reclaimed with your help," Mace Windu said as he stepped over to the Digimon, "And for that, I thank you…both. However, this battle is not yet won. Despite all our best efforts so far, overall we have still only eliminated around a quarter of the forces the Empire have so far thrown at us, if that. They still vastly outnumber us, as you can see," he indicated beyond the city walls.

"Yes, but you know as well as I do, Master Windu, that numbers mean little in a battle," Obi-Wan replied. "And I believe with the help of our friend here, we stand a chance against them now. I believe the latter stage of our plan is already in progress, and the AT-AT walkers seemed to been reduced in terms of threat. Particularly since one of them now appears to be shooting on the others," he pointed towards the back walker that Chewbacca was manning some distance away.

"It is time to press our attack!" Mace declared, raising his purple lightsaber into the air. "Now is the time to strike back and join our comrades out in the field."

"Yousa hear dat, men?" Tarpals shouted, thrusting his electropole into the ground. "Wesa finally going to be taking de fightin to de Emperor."

"Letsa go!" agreed Jar Jar, took a step forward and trod on a fallen clone helmet. Tarpals lashed out with a practiced arm to grab Jar Jar's arm and steady him. Jar Jar looked a little sheepish, but the Gungans and clones agreed with him wholeheartedly.

"Lower the deflector shields," Mace instructed. "We have no need for them anymore."

"If you don't mind," ZeedGarurumon growled. "I'll go first!"

With a roar, the Digimon dashed out of the space where the gates had once been and skidded to stop by digging its claws into the ground, a snarl on its jaws as the clones all around it backed away from the Mega Digimon in terror. Just as before, the panels all across ZeedGarurumon's body began to slide aside to reveal the guns within. Even the pits on his snout slid out of the way to reveal even more within its nose and the Zeed Cannon on its back rotated around until it was pointing forwards.

As the deflector shields in front of it began to rise into the air once more, the way for ZeedGarurumon's attack was clear. It's eyes seemed to flash as it opened its mouth and yelled three words so loudly that they echoed across the entire battlefield, particularly the last one.

"**FULL… **_**METAL… **__**BLAZE!**__**"**_

Every single socket across its body suddenly exploded with rockets and missiles which lanced out and across the battlefield all at once. They filled the air like dandelion seeds blown in the wind, except they whistled as they swerved around one another in an intricate lattice and left huge trails of smoke behind them.

But they didn't just fall randomly amongst the enemy. They began to split off into groups and shoot in many different directions at once. A couple of them swerved up into the sky and slammed directly into what were probably the only two Empire starfighters still remaining on the battlefield and blew them to shrapnel. Many others paired into groups of four and swarmed the nearest AT-AT walkers, impacting on all their weakest spots, including the back and small gaps in the Chrome-Digizoid on the legs and underside, ripping the walkers apart and tossing them away. Many other lanced closer to the ground and whooshed low over the heads of the Empire clones to impact on a stun tank or the front of an AT-TE and blow them open on impact. And one solitary missile plunged into a group of AT-RT walkers that were dashing towards the city. And to top it all off, the Zeed Cannon also flared into life and pummelled through the body of an AT-AT so hard that it came out the other side.

All of that happened at practically the same time, filling the air with smoke and the sounds of explosions as the Mega Digimon tore open the Empire's most powerful units and machines as if they were as fragile as a can of sardines. Empire and rebel clone alike gaped in shock at the sheer display of power.

Even ZeedGarurumon was shocked to some extent by what it had just done. "Wow," said Numa. "Did you just see that, Gabumon?"

"I see what you see, Numa," Gabumon replied. "And that was… well, I agree… wow. But you know what this means, right?"

"What?"

"It means that as long as the two of us stand together from now on, nobody will ever be able to harm you again, Numa. Not you, or those you care about. You're not the young defenceless girl you used to be."

"Just as you weren't the defenceless Tsunomon you were when your village was attacked," Numa added.

"Indeed. I never reached the Mega level before now. We've both become strong together."

"Like you said we would."

"Like you believed we could."

"Oh, can we shout 'For The Republic,' now?"

"I don't see why not."

ZeedGarurumon abruptly roared, "FOR THE REPUBLIC!" and then added, "DOWN WITH THE SITH!" and then added, **"BLOWBACK BREATH!"** before exuding another massive of explosive fiery energy from its jaws to wash over the nearest clones. The rebels surged out of the broken walls behind it and charged out into the battle, ZeedGarurumon dashing ahead of them with a mighty roar.

The Empire forces simply didn't know which way to turn as the United Army leapt into the final attack.

* * *

How was that everybody? Another chapter of lots and lots of fighting, combined with the majesty that is ZeedGarurumon. Originally I was going to use just the plain old MetalGarurumon, but I decided against it in favour of a Digimon that has not yet appeared in the anime that I have seen.

And yes, the bit with Chewbacca taking over the AT-AT is a shout-out to the bit where he took over a Scout Walker with a couple of Ewoks in Return of the Jedi, but on an ever grander scale.

This leaves only one more chapter of this battle before we move onto the even more important events of the Coruscant Arc.

* * *

Twi'leki translations.

Hed Ju gif enoon pastila Twi'leki – And I can speak perfect Twi'leki.

* * *

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The final stage has begun and the Empire seems to be in a bit of a predicament at the moment. And it's about to become even worse, because in the next chapter, we finally find out what Master Vos and the Delta Squad have been doing. I hope I can pull this battle into an epic climax.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 199 : Charge!**


	199. Charge!

Not going to waste time with words. Just read and enjoy. Please. I tried so hard to make this as epic as the other chapters And also, check the footnote at the end for an extra treat.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 199:- Charge!**

* * *

While the battle raged on with every increasing ferocity nearby, with ZeedGarurumon leading the charge of from the city into the fields beyond to engage the Empire troops while Chewbacca blasted down the AT-ATs from the rear, sandwiching the remaining walkers between two forces that they didn't have a hope in hell's chance of countering, not far away there was a quite different scenario taking place deep within the trees of the forest.

And it was being marred slightly by some loud complaining.

"Aww, man," Scorch whined, as he and the rest of the Delta Squad troops hurried through the trees. "It sounds like I'm missing out on a right old explosion-fest over there. Why couldn't we have stayed behind to fight them like the others did?"

"Stow it, Scorch," Sev growled at him, bopping him on the helmet with his sniper rifle. "You know full well why we got picked to go on this mission – because we're masters of infiltration and getting the job done despite having only a few men. Though how we ever sneak up on anything with you around, I'll never know."

"The same could be said for you," Fixer turned around to whisper to the pair of them. "Quiet down, the both of you. We have our objective and they have theirs. Let's just get this over with and then you can cause all the explosions you like."

"Well, when you put it that way," Scorch chuckled as he hurried forward to overtake them both, moving closer to the front of the procession where Boss and Quinlan Vos were stealthily moving through the trees ahead. Quinlan was, like the Delta Squad, a master of stealth, which is why Aayla had turned out to be so good at it too, and the Kiffar pressed his back against the trunk of a nearby tree and motioned for the clones to get down, which they quickly did, crouching in the dirt not far away.

The clone force that was accompanying the Jedi Master consisted of no more than about thirty. It was a tiny task-force, but it included many clone commandos including the Delta Squad, as also Commander Deviss who might not have been as good as the commandos at this sort of thing but he was still a veteran of many conflicts and had assisted Quinlan in missions like this on occasion. The rest of the clones included several grey-clad clones you might expect to see on the bridge of a ship.

And what was their objective?

Quinlan was peering around the trunk of the tree and gazing towards that objective, his eyes narrowing as he searched out any potential threats around its base. And then his eyes took it in to behold a full-sized Republic _Venator_-class cruiser. One of the many which had descended down into the atmosphere of the planet and landed in the forest beyond the clearing in order to deploy the troops that were readying to take on the rebels. It was still here, in the trees, as were all of the others.

Quinlan nodded with satisfaction at what he saw. Evidently the Empire forces had not been expecting anybody to assault the cruisers, or even to provide a whole lot of resistance against their men. They had assumed that the rebels would be unprepared for their attack and therefore the defences around the cruiser was pretty limited. There were a few guards standing at the bottoms of the ramps, but that was about it, and those guards seemed to be doing their best to peer around the trees and find out what the heck was going on at the battlezone, which was visually obscured by the forest though they could still hear the sounds of conflict.

Quinlan moved his head back around the tree and nodded to the rest of his force. "Alright guys," he said, crouching down with them. "You all know what we're here for, and we must move quickly if we're going to carry out this section of the Tenacious Ten's plan. Taking one cruiser should be enough, provided we do it quickly and take everybody else by surprise."

"We're all ready to do our part, Master Vos," Boss nodded back.

Quinlan smirked and said, "Sev, you're up first. You think you can take care of those guards?"

"Oh, you just watch me," Sev smirked as he moved closer to the tree and inched around it to raise his sniper rifle, peering through the scope to the space beyond. The cruisers had flattened a large number of trees in their landing, so Sev inched a little higher to see over the fallen trunks and focused on the four clones standing guard at the bottom of the ramp.

"Sorry guys," he murmured, and then he fired.

His aim was ridiculously accurate, but then again, Sev had had a lot of practice at this sort of thing. No sooner had the first bolt slammed into the side of the head of the first clone, another shot came whizzing out to crash into another clone's chest and a third slammed into another's gut almost simultaneously. The fourth clone started as it watched its three comrades fall and raised its arm to call for back-up and raise the alarm but before he could utter a word a laser smashed into his chest and he dropped to the floor.

"That's four," Sev announced.

"Go," Quinlan hissed, nodding towards four of Deviss' men, and they quickly dashed out of hiding and hurried over to the ramp to the dead clones and hurriedly covered their bodies over, which wasn't hard thanks to all the foliage of the fallen trees. And then they stood tall to pose as guards, just in case anybody looked over. There was a notable absence of the rebel's signature X painted on their armour, so as not to arouse suspicion.

Quinlan nodded in satisfaction and said, "Alright, Boss, Fixer, with me! The rest of you wait here until I give the signal."

The Jedi and the two following clones moved swiftly out of hiding and moved quickly and stealthily among the fallen trees until they were beneath the ramp leading down from the cruiser. All three pressed their backs up against it briefly, listening for any sign of a disturbance just in case somebody had spotted them, but they heard nothing.

Quinlan stepped out and tensed his legs, springing upwards with an almighty Force jump that carried him all the way up to the top of the ramp to flip on top of it and slip inside the hangar beyond. Fixer and Boss followed him upwards by using the jetpacks both had attached to their backs and quickly followed him inside.

The hangar was eerily quiet. There were no fighters, bombers or tanks anywhere in sight, every single one of them having been deployed to fight against the city. There was almost nobody in sight save for a couple of armour-less clones leaning against some crates nearby, a couple of astromech droids and several more fuel droids wandering aimlessly around on their four legs and gonking to each other.

The three stealthily moving rebels crouched behind a crate. There might not be anybody in sight apart from those few people but now that they were inside the ship there was a chance they might be spotted by the security holocams, and that was something none of them wanted to risk.

"We'll have to move quietly," Fixer murmured. "But I need to get to that terminal if I'm going to have any chance of carrying out my mission." He gestured towards the terminal close to the door which led into the rest of the ship.

"There's one holocam there," Boss nodded towards on rotating slowly around on a nearby wall. "And another over there. If you go out there then you could be spotted by either one of those."

"I'll take care of them," Quinlan smirked and raised his hand to call on the Force, waving it in the direction of both the holocams. The lens on one of them suddenly cracked, as if somebody had tossed a pebble at it, while the other one began to rotate slowly away from its original position. Anybody watching the feed from the holocams would think there was a problem with the camera with the cracked lens rather than outside interference because they would still be getting a signal from it, though not a picture.

"Thanks," Fixer murmured as he moved outwards from behind the crate and hurried along the wall towards the terminal.

Quinlan and Boss, on the other hand, went in completely the opposite direction and rolled behind some nearby crates close to the two un-armoured clones. Both of them waited quietly until they heard the distinct sound of one of them spotting Fixer as he moved along the walls.

"Hey!" one of them cried. "Who are you? What are…"

Quinlan sprang out of hiding and pounced on the speaker, bringing him to the floor and jabbing a pair of fingers into the clone's neck, hitting a nerve that caused the clone's eyes to roll up into his head and his body to slump to the floor in unconsciousness. The other clone started and backed away, but Boss leapt out of hiding as well and opted for a slightly less gentle approach by whacking the clone over the head with his blaster.

Quinlan and Boss both nodded to one another before they dragged the clones behind some more clones and crouched into hiding once more. The Kiffar spotted an astromech watching them from nearby and pressed a finger to his mouth to indicate the astromech should stay quiet. Most astromechs didn't have the same sense of loyalty as R2-D2 or R4-G9, so this one merely bleeped a reply and then rolled off as if it hadn't seen anything.

When Fixer reached the terminal, he knew it was time to work his magic. The clone was, after all, an expert at working with machinery and computers and this time there was a lot more at stake than usual. He cracked his knuckles slightly and then set to work his fingers flying over the terminal as if he had done this sort of thing hundreds of times before. Which was because he _had_ done this sort of thing hundreds of times before.

Fixer was more used to dealing with Separatist systems when it came to hacking into them. With the Separatists, you never really knew what you were going to come up against. Many of them had build-in failsafes that were designed to blow up the terminal someone was trying to hack into if an attempt was made, but Fixer was an expert at diffusing that sort of thing. He had trained for it, after all.

But this… well, this was just a cakewalk for him really. A Separatist system he had never encountered before was one thing, but an Empire system which he had been around for years and years – he knew pretty much exactly what he might encounter as he continued to make slight modifications to gain entry into the main computer system that ran the ship. He disabled alarms before they could even begin and systematically broke his way inside.

And then, when he was inside and had access to the main functions of the ship, he pulled a small device from his belt and inserted it into a socket, and then plugged the other end into a socket on his wrist console. He quickly download a program into the ship's main computer and ran it through to his wrist-com, transferring the control of one particular function of the ship to him and him alone.

When he was done, he immediately withdrew the device and wiped the memory of the terminal to erase any potential traces of his hacking. Then, he turned around and pressed a button on his wrist-com, before saying, "It's alright now, you can come out of hiding."

Boss and Quinlan immediately emerged. "It's done?" asked the Jedi Master.

"Indeed, Master Jedi," Fixer nodded. "I've transferred command over the ship's holocams to me. And I also installed a program so that when we get close to some of the holocams, I can instruct them to take a picture of the image they are recording and transmit that through the to the monitors at the other end instead of the live video stream, meaning we can walk past the holocam and all the people at the other end will see is an empty corridor.

"Nice work as usual, Fixer," Boss nodded, clapping his fellow clone commando on the shoulder.

"In that case," Quinlan smirked, "I suppose we can call up the rest of the group." He hurried over to the door and activated his green lightsaber, waving it in the air briefly before ducking back inside. The rest of the troops waiting in the forest immediately broke cover and dashed over the fallen trees and towards the cruiser, activating their jetpacks to surge up and into the air towards the top of the ramp. One by one, they landed up beside Quinlan and the others and hurried inside, except for the four at the bottom posing as guards. They remained in position, staring out towards the trees like the good little Empire stormtroopers they were pretending to be.

"Well, now that we're all here," Quinlan nodded. "I guess we head up to the bridge. There may be some resistance from any of the remaining clones so let's try and keep this tight, okay, people?"

"Got it, Master Vos," Deviss saluted. Quinlan smirked and then hurried over and towards the doors with the rest of the clones behind him. Fixer took point alongside the Jedi and thumbed his switch the moment they stepped out into the corridor beyond to fix the security holocam beyond, allowing them to pass it by without raising the alarm.

* * *

The company proceeded throughout the whole ship at high speed, and, as they had expected, there was very little that threatened to stop them as they went along, most of the clones having gone off to battle and try and crush the rebel alliance, (only to find themselves completely in over their heads, of course). At one point though, they did come across a company of about eight armoured clones marching through the corridors in a security patrol.

They had obviously not been expecting to see anybody because when they saw Quinlan and the rebel clones appear around the corner they started and stared at them, giving Quinlan plenty of time to dart forward with his lightsaber in his hand. A laser from Sev flashed over his shoulder and took out the first clone and two more from Deviss flew past his side to fell the second before Quinlan sprang into the air and dove straight over all six of the remaining clones to roll to a stop on the other side.

He whirled around and disarmed one with a slash to the weapon, whirled around to kick him in the chest and then plunge his chest into the abdomen of the one next to him, withdrawing it quickly to slash upwards with his blade and parry the attempted shot from another clone to return it back at him where it hit him in the forehead. The disarmed clone tried to jump at him from the side but Quinlan intercepted with a lash of his hands that pulsed him backwards with the Force and slammed him unconscious against the wall.

That left only two remaining clones because the sixth had been taken out by Sev already. The other two weren't sure which way to turn now, but they saw Scorch charging towards them. Apparently when he wasn't allowed to blow things up, Scorch liked to go in for close-ranged combat instead of using a blaster because he rammed one clone with his shoulder and knocked him to the ground and then grabbed the other and tossed him towards the other clones, who swiftly finished him off. Then Scorch beat the last clone into unconsciousness with a slamming kick to the side of his head.

"Alright, well that takes care of that," Quinlan chuckled. "Now, to the bridge."

* * *

The rest of their trip to the bridge went by uninterrupted as they hurtled through the corridors towards their destination. Apparently the previous battle had not raised any alarms either, because when they finally emerged through the main doors and onto the bridge they had been, apparently, completely unexpected.

The grey-clad clones lounging in their stations sat up with gasps as the remaining clone guards whirled around to face them with blasters raised. Boss, Scorch, Fixer and Deviss all fired simultaneously to slam the blasters out of the hands of the other clones and Quinlan promptly grabbed all four of the guards and slammed them into one another with the Force, their heads cracking together as they slumped down to the floor, stunned.

One of the grey-clad clones immediately went for the holotable to try and call for back-up.

He quickly abandoned that plan through when Sev's knife scythed through the air and slammed into the holotable within centimetres of his hand. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, mate," Sev growled as the group of infiltrating clones entered the room.

"Yeah you would," Scorch muttered. "And you'd shoot the clone who threw the knife at you."

Quinlan bounded into the middle of the room and addressed the startled crew, "This cruiser is under new management now. I can assure you that as long as none of you try to stop us or interfere with what we're going to be doing next then you have no reason to worry about getting yourselves hurt. Deviss, gather them up and move them into the corner. Keep a close eye on them, alright?"

"Yes, sir," Deviss nodded and he and several more of his men quickly moved into the room, pointing blasters at the crew members and jerking the guns to indicate that they should get out of their seats and move towards the left wall. The crew and the disarmed guards raised their hands and immediately complied, moving over to one side of the room and then sitting on the floor as per the orders of their captors, placing their hands on their heads to ensure they didn't reach for any hidden weapons.

As Deviss secured the other clones, the Delta Squad parted ways to allow the grey-clad clones that they had brought with them through and into the room. They saluted Quinlan, who nodded in response and said, "Alright men. It's all up to you now. Let's get moving. We have a schedule to keep after all."

The pilot clones quickly dispersed about the room and sat down in the various chairs until the positions that had the previous crew had just vacated were filled by a brand new set of clones. Each of them were veterans at piloting star cruisers and they needed absolutely no time at all before the controls were activated and at their command.

"All systems operational and ready to go, sir," one of them said.

"Alright," Quinlan nodded in satisfaction. "Then I guess it's time we took care of any potential adversaries, isn't it? Target the other cruisers. Aim for the legs and the engines. We only want to disable them and make sure that they can't get off the ground. We were forced to kill clones on our way to infiltrate this ship. Let us not cause an unnecessary casualties if we can avoid it."

The clones were all in complete agreement as they immediately followed Quinlan's instructions, Deviss sending a signal through to the four guards outside to get on the ramp, which they did, just before the clone pilots retracted it back into the hangar. The prisoner clones, on the other hand, simply stared at Master Vos in slight surprise. They had been told that the Jedi were the bad guys and had to be eliminated, but here was one in front of them still showing mercy even though it would be easier just to wipe out as many clones as possible than disable other ships.

It didn't make sense.

As the pilots went about their business, Quinlan turned around and said, "Delta Squad. While we get underway, can you go and find the security room and make sure it's secure."

"Secure the security room," chuckled Scorch. "Nice pun, sir."

"Stow it, Scorch," Boss instructed. "We have our orders. Let's get underway."

As the four clones quickly left the room, the cruiser they were all riding in began to lift off the ground ever so slowly, the legs holding it above the forest floor retracting in the main bulk of the body. Almost as one, the laser turrets on one side of the giant ship swivelled around to point directly at its neighbour, tilting downwards to aim at its own legs and opened fire with flashes of blue lasers. The legs were bombarded with bolts and the clones inside were taken completely unawares by the attack from the other cruiser.

The front leg was first to collapse, tipping the hole ship forward onto its nose with a giant crunch, but the other legs were not far behind. As the attacking cruiser rose higher into the air, the turrets refocused on the giant engines at the back of the ship and opened fire once more. The engines of the cruiser might normally be protected by a deflector shield, but it was on the ground and powered down, which meant they were easy prey and were immediately torn apart.

Thus, the cruiser was immediately rendered completely useless.

"Hurry!" Quinlan shouted. "Attack the other cruisers before they attack us."

The clones hurried to obey, taking full advantage of the shock that the crewmembers of the other grouped together cruisers must be feeling at watching what they saw as some of their colleagues randomly turning against them and gunning them down. As the ship rose higher it tilted over on its side slightly to fire its turrets downwards and rip apart the engines of yet another cruiser, before moving around to destroy those of a third. Shrapnel exploded outwards from the backs of each of the cruisers in question, leaving them mostly undamaged, but also completely grounded.

There were twenty cruisers in all, and the others immediately began to start powering up in a desperate attempt to respond to this unexpected attack. The airborne cruiser started to fire shots out of the turrets on its other side as well now, and managed to take out the engines of two other cruisers as it rose higher and moved out over the rest of the Empire armada. Several of the Empire cruisers finally started to return fire as they powered up enough to activate their turrets, swivelling them upwards to fire at the bottom of their opponent.

Their lasers mostly bounced harmlessly against the deflector shield that the clones had already risen, while their own deflector shields were still powering up. As the renegade cruiser flew overhead, taking out the engines of yet another two of the other cruisers, the rest of them hurriedly tried to power up the engines in an effort to join their attacker in the air for a more even battleground.

But then something else happened which rather foiled that plan and that was when a huge phalanx of ARC-170 fighters lanced out over the trees to join the airborne cruiser. Broadside, Oddball and Warthog each led their legions down and into the laser-storm, steering their vessels around the grounded cruisers and sweeping around their corners or swooping under their legs in daring manoeuvres that allowed them to unleash their own laser-storm in support of their fellows. They had seen the cruiser rising above the trees and knew that to be their cue, so they had promptly left the battleground to join their allies in the attempt to ground the Empire's ships.

Warthog shot out from underneath one of the Empire cruisers and blazed his fighter's cannons towards the engines of the one beyond it, simultaneously launching the ships missiles and then rolling to one side as his ammunition streaked forwards to impact against the engines and tear into their with explosive force, several of his colleagues around him pulling similar stunts and promptly rendering the ship useless. Oddball swerved his ship around a flurry of laser fire from below and unleashed a barrage of his own down across the turret systems of one of the ships, ripping the shieldless guns to pieces.

With the combined assault of the cruiser and fighters, combined with the element of surprise, it was not long before every single one of the Empire ships was rendered flightless. Quinlan smirked in satisfaction as he beheld the destruction out the window of the bridge. That would ensure that there would be no leaving the planet in an attempt to recuperate and strike back. There would be no retreat either.

"Our work here is done," he said, watching the grounded cruisers continuing to throw lasers up towards them. "Let's get out of here and move back to the action before they manage to break through our shields."

The clone pilots responded immediately and the mighty ship began to wheel around and swoop low over the forest trees, flanked by the fighters that streaked back the way they had come and towards the distant fighting.

* * *

The battle itself was becoming a disaster for the Empire clones that remained. Everywhere they turned there seemed to be some kind of new threat. Everywhere they looked there was yet another creature, being or weapon that was ploughing through their forces as if they were kicking aside pebbles on a beach. Each and every clone fought back as best they could with an energy born on desperation, but even that energy seemed to not be enough to counteract the incredible strength of the rebel forces.

Commander Fox was one of the surviving members of the city, and even he was being treated to nothing more than an undignified scramble backwards as he dove to avoid an AT-TE that had been flipped into the air with a powerful blast from that cyborg wolf creature. The walker slammed into the ground within inches of Fox's foot, and the clone took a moment to breathe heavily as relief washed over him, before he scrambled back to his feet to start blasting once more.

His lasers managed to score one rebel clone in the shoulder and another in the chest, wounding one and killing the other, but before Fox could do much more than that he was forced to dash backwards and out of the way as a barrage of Gungan energy balls fell from the sky all around him, pulverising many of the troopers he had with him and eliciting cries of pain at the burning sensations that followed.

* * *

Just about all the walkers on the battlefield had, by this point, been destroyed. The combined efforts of Chewbacca in his walker at the back and ZeedGarurumon from the front, were proving to be beyond anything that the remaining AT-ATs could hope to combat. They had survived the assaults of starfighters, bombers and heavy cannons alike, but against their own kind and a lupine Mega level Digimon with so many weapons it was almost overkill, they had no defence.

Several missiles from ZeedGarurumon lanced over the battlefield once more, picking their targets as they came across them. Two split off from the others to lance down and slam into an AT-TE walker and another swept away to slam itself into one of the stun tanks, while the remaining three swept through the legs of one of the remaining AT-ATs and curved around its body to slam into its rear and pretty much exactly the same time as Chewbacca shot at it from behind. The resultant explosion was so massive that the walker was violently ripped apart and one of its huge legs was actually catapulted through the air to slam another AT-AT in the side of the head.

The heavy projectile was enough to knock the other AT-AT completely off balance, one of the disadvantages of having such long legs. As the pilots inside fought to keep their walker from tipping over, a massive blast from the Zeed Cannon crashed into its main flank and completely annihilated it, bringing it crashing down to crush dozens of other clones underneath one remained off its body. It then exploded and fired plumes of smoke high into the sky, flinging other nearby clones out above their fellows like thrown bricks.

* * *

Commander Stone was also finally taking part in the conflict. The clone backpedalled rapidly as a huge, hulking Wookiee bore down on him with claws raised. Stone emptied several shots into the Wookiee's body, but the big, furry humanoid barely seemed to notice and raised its fists. Only with a quick roll behind an AT-RT did Stone managed to save his life, and the Wookiee promptly assailed the AT-RT and brought it crashing to the ground with one mighty wrench.

Stone finally began to realise that this was a completely futile gesture. While they had been sure that the Jedi and their clone brothers would fall easily to the humungous army that they had gathered together the previous night, now Stone knew the truth. They had been informed that they would catch the Jedi completely by surprise, but that was clearly not the case. That had been ready for this conflict, perhaps even preparing specifically for this very battle by gathering together so many of these allies and so quickly too.

Gungans, Wookiees, giant animals, _droids_. The strangest collection of beings gathered together to aid their cause within a couple of days. The Jedi were nothing if not prepared for almost anything. They might not have been prepared to have this situation in regards to becoming enemies of the Republic turned Empire, but they had become prepared for its aftermath very quickly indeed.

Stone knew the Emperor would be angry if they retreated.

But Stone also knew that if they didn't retreat then a whole lot more men would be lost completely needlessly. Despite everything, over half the Empire's army still remained, but there were now so many rebels with so many powerful allies while the Empire had just about no powerful back-up left, that even their still superior numbers were not going to help them win this battle.

But as Stone turned around and prepared to order a retreat, he faltered in surprise when he saw an Imperial cruiser moving low over the trees towards them, flanked by rebel fighters. He stared in bewilderment for a moment, and then watched with horror as the cruiser rotated around until it was side-on behind the Empire's army and landed back on the ground again. It's ramp lowered and its cannon turrets began blazing, firing shot after shot down into the ranks of the Empire.

And only then did Stone become aware of the huge pillar of smoke rising from the spot where they had left the ships in the forest. Somehow the rebels had managed to completely sabotage their fleet, steal one of their ships and cut off their escape. And several fighters were now charging down the ramp to enter the fighting themselves.

The pincer movement was over.

Now, the Empire was completed boxed in. The enemy was coming from every single direction. There was nowhere left to run. Their air support was down, their stun tanks were blown up or about to be blown up, and the tanks which might have had a chance of clearing the ship away were either destroyed, in the process of being destroyed, or had been taken over by the enemy as well.

The Emperor had told him not to underestimate the Jedi, and Stone had believed with every ounce of his being that he had not done so.

Now, he knew that he had not only still underestimated them, he had done so by several lightyears.

Desperation kicked him into high gear once again and he turned around to shoot down a couple of battle droids, even as one of them shot the clone just to his right, and then turned on the Wookiee who was coming for him again. The Wookiee roared and lunged, but Stone did actually rise victorious with a well-aimed shot to the forehead. But as the Wookiee dropped, Stone spotted several droidekas rolling towards him and hurriedly prepared for the worst.

* * *

On the other side of the battlefield, the lasers from the cruiser tore chunk after chunk out of the Empire's army, its cannons firing at an almost continuous rate as the ammunition they shot out pounded the ground all around the feet of the AT-AT walker that Chewbacca was currently steering. The clones that had thought themselves safe and had been trying to fire missiles up at the bulk of the walker from below were obliterated in the blink of an eye, and the cannons moved around in many directions to pulse more lasers into the rest of the army.

The fighters lanced overhead once more and with a lack of stun tanks of AT-AT walkers to hinder them, they remained completely unopposed in the following fighter. Each of them lined up behind the others in a triple V formation, with Broadside, Oddball and Warthog taking the lead spot in each of the Vs. The fighters arced downwards in almost perfect synchrony and added to the laser-flood washing over the Empire's forces. Anybody unlucky enough to fall under their bombardment was blasted aside and those around them were quickly blasted as well by the following fighters.

As they neared the ground, the fighters tilted back upwards and launched back into the sky over to the other side of the battlefield, before they all swerved around together like a flock of birds and swooped around again for another pass.

Quinlan Vos led the few clones that had managed to infiltrate the enemy ships down the ramp once more as they prepared to finally enter the combat that the rest of the rebels had been engaged in, his green lightsaber flashing in his hand as he Force-jumped down the last half of the ramp and carried himself sailing out into the open and summoning a pair of clones up into the air towards him with the Force as he did so, diving between the two of them and slashing through them as he did so, continuing to fall towards the rest of the army, and deflecting any bolt that came sailing in his direction.

He landed surrounded by clones and immediately leapt back into the air once more as bolts flew underneath and catapulted over another pair of clones to slice into them from above, landing in a crouch and Force-pushing in front of him to throw a couple of others into the blasts coming down from the cruiser above them and span around with lightsaber out, leaving a trail of green behind him as he carved through another pair. One clone tried to jump on him from behind to incapacitate him, but Quinlan ducked and thrust upwards with his hand to toss the clone into another and fell upon another batch of clones with furious abandon.

Seven slashes.

Ten clones.

Four seconds.

And then Quinlan jumped over several others to continue in his mad combat skills, his dreadlocked hair flapping all over the place as if it had minds of its own.

Behind him, Commander Deviss and the Delta Squad led the rest of the clones into the charge. Deviss himself dashed towards Quinlan to try and aid him in his battling, shooting down two clones in the side as they tried to get a clear shot at the Jedi Master. The attention of the clones rapidly switched towards Deviss and the Commander was forced to dodge a couple more lasers with a furious roll to the side and he sprang up to gun down another man, lifted a leg so the laser that had been about to hit it passed underneath it instead before blasting another two in the heads and charging into a leap that brought him plunging down on another blaster first to swat him aside with it and then raise said blaster to shoot the clone directly in front of him before he could shoot back.

And when the Delta Squad fell on the enemy, the Empire clones knew very quickly that they didn't stand a hope against the four heavily trained combat veterans. The first to go down was one with a missile launcher that fell to a shot from Boss and another clone quickly bending down to grab the launcher for himself took a laser in the side of the head from Sev.

The combat-hungry clone had abandoned his sniper rifle in favour of a more ordinary rifle and proceeded to use it with the same amount of skill, twirling it like a baton to pummel a clone in the head and quickly reloading it to shoot down three more clones at close range. Another clone tried to bring up its blaster to shoot him as he turned around to fire on another, but Sev drew his knife and slashed the blaster out of his hands and whirled around to stab it through a gap in the clone's armour.

As a couple of other clones tried to get a shot towards Sev, Boss met them, grabbing one by the shoulder and flinging him into the other and shooting both as they fell with the same shot. Boss then quickly ducked underneath and couple more shots and fired underneath them without missing a beat, spinning around to grab a Z6 that was being pointed right at him and force it up into the air to point at the sky and delivering a solid kick to the clone holding it in the stomach, before he turned to throw the weapon towards Fixer.

Fixer himself was in the process of eliminating another couple of clones when he turned around and grabbed the weapon out of the air and swung it around him in a wide curve that battered several more clones around the head. He then crouched to the ground and used the Z6 for its primary function, gunning down a horde of other clones in the onslaught of bolts that ensued. He ducked down lower as another bolt lanced right over his shoulder and tossed the Z6 through the air and into his attacker and half-turned to check another clone across the face with his usual weapon and then shoot him in the chest as he stumbled.

Scorch, on the other hand, had started off in pretty much the way that everybody had expected him to. He pulled a pair of grenades out of the numerous containers around his waist and leapt into the air, flinging them into the army and dropping into a roll, shooting down a couple of other clones before the bombs even went off, and when they did, they did so with twice the power of a usual detonator. Scorch then lunged forwards and beaned another clone in the face with his fist, surreptitiously dropping a detpack on the floor as he did so.

Over the course of the next few minutes of fighting, Scorch did this several more times. The other clones all knew from experience to stay out of Scorch's way when he first entered the battle, but knew that the clone commando could handle himself, as he was very clearly doing. It was only when at least seven detpacks had been dropped on the ground, the Scorch finally pulled out a detonator and slammed his thumb on it.

The ground was torn asunder by the huge blast that followed and at least forty Empire clones were engulfed in it and either disappeared or were tossed straight up into the air. An area the size of an AT-AT lying on its side was almost completely destroyed in the inferno.

"Oh yeah!" Scorch shouted, ducking beneath another couple of lasers and firing a couple in return. "Am I bad, or what?"

"You think you're so bad, Scorch," Sev chuckled as he slashed his knife into the weak point of another clone's armour and chuckled. "You might want to take a look over there."

Scorch blinked and looked over towards the fighting on the other side of the battlefield. His eyes widened in astonishment as he beheld ZeedGarurumon prepping itself for and unleashing another Full Metal Blaze, sending scores of rockets lancing into the air, a hail of energy bullets from its snout and almighty blast from the Zeed Cannon which wiped out an area of ground many, many times the size of what Scorch had just done.

The explosion-happy clone was so stunned by the scale of the attack that the almost forgot to dodge a couple more shots.

The following reaction after dealing with the clones doing the shooting was, "OH MAN! WHY MUST THE DIGIMON BE SO AWESOME!"

The rest of the Delta Squad all chuckled, but they kept on fighting. Despite the smaller force, the bombardment from the cruiser lancing over their heads was keeping them relatively clear of most incoming reinforcements, so they were able to handle the incoming enemy quite nicely.

* * *

The battlefield as a whole was becoming a minefield of explosions and laser fire. Just about nobody was safe at the moment. People on both sides were almost afraid to risk moving from either side just in case they stepped into one of the many lasers swarming past everybody. Mallatobuck had temporarily taken shelter behind a couple of droidekas, but leapt out quickly to send a clone flipping into the air with a swipe of her paw and gun down a couple more with her Wookiee blaster. Those that remained were suddenly fallen on by a commando droid and a bunch of yelling Gungans who swatted them into the ground with their electropoles.

Zarza catapulted herself over the group and came to land on top of a broken stun tank, leaping down to flatten several more clones into the ground beneath her body and swipe others aside with her tail. Luminara was still on her back, and while the Jedi did not have the reach of Chewbacca even with her lightsaber, she was still managing to deliver a huge amount of damage to the enemy army. She was using the Force to summon other clones into the air where she slashed through them as they passed, while Zarza ran on, shrieking into the faces of the clones that she flattened a moment later.

As Zarza scrambled around another downed AT-AT and knocked several scout walkers flying into the air, the Varactyl suddenly found itself joined by several Gungans, including General Tarpals, who had somehow managed to regain their kaadu mounts. The large amphibians lined up on either side of the larger reptile and the lot of them charged forwards and threw the lines of the milling clones like one continuous tidal wave of trampling feet, the Gungans holding their shields protectively in front of them and lashing out with their electropoles as they spurred their mounts on.

Kit Fisto jumped from the top of the AT-AT and rolled into a flying jump that terminated in a slash, slicing through the chest of one of the Empire clones. He turned and blocked some more shots, then threw his lightsaber over his shoulder where embedded itself in the chest of another clone and ducked underneath the shots coming from before him to lay a pair of clones flat with chops to the neck with his hands, summoning his blade back to him as he did so

A clone quickly tried to take out the Jedi when he was defenceless, but an Acklay grabbed onto him from behind and flung him sideways the giant insectoid turning around to plough its head-crest through several others.

Throughout the battling, the clones dodged one threat, only to blunder into another. They literally had no idea how to respond to so much diversity in their attackers. One them fled from a shrieking Acklay only to fall under the trampling feet of Commander Ponds' AT-RT. As the Lightning Squadron dashed their way through the foe, a line of Super Battle Droids fired lasers around their legs to take out many a dozen enemy clones on the other side.

A Wookiee grabbed a clone and slammed him into another, but as the clone scrambled back to his feet in preparation to attack once more, Yoda landed on his shoulder and ended his life with a quick lightsaber stroke.

Everywhere, it was simply endless chaos. The third Acklay sent a heavy AT-TE rolling with a powerful ramming attack to its underside to crush several more clones underfoot and Plo Koon bounced over the walker when it came to a stop and hacked through another pair of clones that narrowly managed to escape.

A commando droid pounced on a pair of nearby clones from behind and killed one with a laser blast and grabbed the other, planting a bomb on his back and hurling him into another group to decimate them in the explosion. Commander Monnk ran over from nearby and leapt over his fallen brothers to soundly trip another and whirl about to blast two more in the gut.

At the exact opposite end of the army force, Chewbacca roared as he punched down on the buttons that fired the massive cannons on his walker. Everywhere he fired, green bolts lashed out and sent clones flying as if had been shot from ejection seats and flung through the air on the wave of a massive explosion. Chewbacca swung the head of his walker around, punching holes in the Empire's troops in seemingly random places, giving the clone no opportunity to run away from him.

Yoda dashed through the legs of three clones without them even noticing and leapt onto a running AT-RT, slashing through its nose cannon and then leg, springing off as it went flying into the air to land on the floor and flip up and over to block a sudden barrage of fire before he bounded forwards with a stab to the diaphragm of another clone.

Another attempting to get around his comrades was suddenly blindsided back a MagnaGuard and tossed skyward, as Shaak Ti dashed forwards spinning several times with blade outstretched to hack through several more clones and pull to a stop with a cleave to another chest, while two more MagnaGuards flipped over her and jabbed their electrostaffs into other clones from down low. Commander Wolffe dashed in from nearby and brought his blaster crashing into the back of the head of one of the enemy and ducked under a swing from another to lash up and grab him by the wrist and sweep his legs out from beneath him.

Obi-Wan and Cody were still fighting together as an efficient team, the clone leaping out to accompany a series of B1 battle droids and bring them together as a fighting unit, sending streams of co-ordinated blaster bolts lancing out to strike down line after line of clones while Obi-Wan stood in the middle and deflected a pair of bolts and sprang from a crouch position and into four more clones, knocking three of them aside with the Force and impaling the third.

Another clone pointed a missile launcher at it, but Kix appeared next to him suddenly and grabbed the barrel, pointing it up into the sky to create a misfire and then shot the clone in the stomach before he knew what was happening.

Mace Windu was now being flanked by Waxer and Boil as he charged in a manner similar to Zarza, ploughing through the enemy with sweeps of his blade to either side of his body without stopping moving for a moment, scything to his left and spinning to his right and stabbing forward to push the clone before him aside and twirl his blade to parry more shots.

Waxer and Boil kept up a continuous stream of fire from their blasters as they ran close behind him, firing out to either side of the Jedi Master to pick off anyone who even looked at him. ZeedGarurumon bounded past and offered the two of them a smirk before it unleashed another Blowback Breath on more unfortunate clones.

Xiaan Amersu was in the thick of the action as well, flipping up and over an AT-TE to land with her feet between the shoulder blades of two other clones and flatten them to the ground before springing off again to slice through another's neck and catch a grenade in the air in her hand and toss it back the way it had come.

Echo and Fives ran in from around the walker to aid her, falling upon the other clones like white-clad demons, their flashing blasters taking out one clone roughly every third of a second. And one of the Acklay thundered over from the forest with a pair of Wookiees on its back wielding bowcasters as it stomped its feet and struck out with its teeth to nab a clone behind Xiaan's back, missing the Twi'lek by inches. Xiaan didn't miss a beat and flung more clones with the Force towards Echo and Fives who were more than ready with their weapons.

Adi Gallia slammed both feet into the chest of one of the other clones and leapt off as he fell, landing on one hand and flipping over to crash her blade through another two and defend against two shots from the side. The culprits were swiftly taken care of by Stass Allie, as the Knight sped by so fast all she left was a blue blur before the clones fell to the ground dead, flinging the bodies of a pair of deactivated battle droids ahead of her like projectiles.

Another clone was trying to shoot at Jar Jar, and the Gungan yelped as he dodged backwards and tripped over a dead clone, falling onto his back. He looked up to see another clone standing over him and thwacked out with his staff to send the clone crashing to the floor, and his previous attacker was promptly dealt with by Rex, who charged into to ram his elbow into another clones stomach and punch him in the head a second later, diving out of the way of more lasers and twirling his blasters to shoot both in front and behind him and take out four more enemies that way.

Even Piell was still slightly injured and unsteady from his experience with the AT-RTs that had killed Lieutenant Galle from before, but the Lannik was more than making up for this by using the Force as his main weapon. As he advanced, he brought clones crashing into one another like cannonball and dropping them to the ground. He was riding on the shoulders of Conor, who skidded to a halt as a laser skewed past his stomach and span around to fire three lasers into the one clone almost simultaneously and then returned to running and taking out three more on the run.

Agen Kolar diced through the blaster of his own opponent, cutting dangerously close to his fingers and then swung around to run him through with his blue lightsaber, withdrawing it quickly to swing his blade around behind his back to cut through two more on his side. K'kruhk dived over the top of him with a roar worthy of any Wookiee and fell upon the next batch of three clones to swipe them aside with his powerful arms. Then he brought his green lightsaber into play and with one mighty swing, he cut another three down in one go.

As more clones rallied to fire on the two Jedi Masters, they both dove aside with lightsabers flashing to block several more incoming shots. But when they moved, they also revealed Hardcase standing a few yards behind them and the clone poured lasers through the gap they had created and swept it across a line, taking out about fifteen clones in the space of six seconds with his powerful Z6. It seemed as if nothing could take the bold clone down.

Commander Bly ensured that this was the case by grabbing a clone that was about to shoot at Hardcase and hauling him to the ground, firing over his shoulder at a couple more clones as he slammed the back of the other's head into the ground twice. Several more clones spotted the clone commander and fired lasers towards him. Bly could have dodged, but he didn't need to in the end because a wall of green with black lines suddenly appeared in front of him.

Bly had no idea where the Force-sensitive Acklay had come from but it seemed to smirk at him as it protected him from harm with his bony and heavily armoured crest. It then looked up towards the nervous looking Empire clones and Bly knew what it was going to do even before its throat began pulsating. Sure enough, an orange burst of Lightning exploded outwards, so intense that Bly had to shield his eyes from it, even through the helmet.

He didn't particularly want to look at the results of that attack. He knew full well that it wouldn't be pleasant.

As Bly looked around for another spot to be useful, his eyes suddenly came to rest on one Empire clone in particular. He paused for a moment and he recognised Commander Fox of the Coruscant Guard. He watched as the opposing commander shot down a couple of his own brothers-in-arms of the 327th, and acted quickly, dashing right past Hardcase – the clone stopping his rate of fire to watch Bly go – and charged straight towards his opponent choice.

"Hey! Fox!" Bly shouted. Fox turned around and started when he saw Bly hurtling towards him. The two of them didn't know each other all that well, but they knew each other enough, Bly having spent a lot of time on Coruscant when he wasn't fighting so that he could be in close proximity to Aayla and the rest of the team in order to mobilise for their next mission at high speed. Fox hesitated for a moment when he saw his friend approaching, and that was all that Bly needed. He whipped out one blaster pistol and shot Fox's own blaster clean out of his hand.

Bly then holstered his own blasters and jumped on Fox, carrying them both to the ground. Bly struck down with one hand and ended up knocking Fox's helmet to the floor and then he threw down another blow which caught Fox in the cheek and delivered a nasty bruise.

Fox seemed to come to his sensors after that because he lashed up with his own arm and caught Bly in the front of the helmet with it. Bly was knocked off Fox and both commanders quickly scrambled back to their feet, the battle continuing to rage around them as they faced off against one another. Bly removed his own helmet and dropped it to the ground, glaring at Fox, who was glaring back in turn.

"Bly," Fox nodded in greeting.

"Fox," Bly replied.

"Are you going to fight against me, Bly?" Fox asked him.

"You are your men are attacking me and mine," Bly pointed out. "We gave you every opportunity to surrender before this fight began. We said that there didn't have to be any fighting but you guys went and did it anyway."

"Of course there had to be fighting," Fox glowered. "Emperor Palpatine ordered us to come here and take out the Jedi so that's exactly what we intend to do."

"You're really willing to follow the orders of a deranged Sith Lord?" Bly raised an eyebrow.

"You're really expecting me to believe these words about him being a Sith?" Fox countered.

"I was hoping you would," Bly shrugged. "They are, after all, the truth."

Fox looked around and spotted a blaster on the ground and immediately lunged for it. Quick as a flash, Bly pulled out his own blaster again and shot the fallen weapon before Fox could grab it, rendering it useless. "Don't do that, Fox," Bly warned him. "I just want to talk for a moment, okay?"

"In the middle of a battle?" Fox asked. "Not exactly the best setting for a chat, Bly."

"This isn't a chat. It's a request. I want you and your Empire army to surrender to us."

"Surrender?" coughed Fox. "You must be joking, Bly. We won't surrender. We won't ever surrender. Even if we all die here on this battlefield, we won't ever surrender. We will die to send a message that we clones fought proudly for the Empire we now live in. We will die for Emperor Palpatine and take as many of you with us as we can…"

"STOP!" Bly shouted. "Just stop! Don't you think that enough of our brothers have died today? On both sides? I've lost good men in the field today, Fox. Men that didn't deserve to die for this. And I know that the situation is mutual. Do you give no thought to your own brethren."

"Of course I do," Fox growled. "How dare you insinuate that I don't! But we have our orders, and we will follow…"

Bly interrupted again with. "Orders! Orders! Stop talking about orders and actually think about them for a few moments."

"Oh, I expected you to take that vein," Fox snapped. "After all, you're the one who went against everything we believed in and disobeyed them. You're the one who caused this battle, Bly. Not me."

"And what was the alternative?" Bly asked. "Just let them kill every single Jedi. That would have been a terrible crime on the Galaxy and you know it, Fox. Take away my accusations of Palpatine being a Sith for a moment. Say he was just regular old Palpatine. He ordered the extinction of all the Jedi. Beings who have protected us and fought alongside us for freedom. _Our_ freedom, and not just the Galaxy's. They're the only ones who really treated us like people except for a few exceptions."

"Look, Bly," Fox sighed, showing a sign of weakness for the first time. "I agree with all that, okay. I agree that killing the Jedi just spells wrongness. I admit that. They are everything that is good in this universe and I respect them with every inch of my being. But it is not our place to question our orders. We were programmed to follow them, so that's what we should do."

Bly considered using the whole 'battle droid thinking' method to try and get Fox to see sense. But considering the rebels were actually fighting _with_ battle droids, that might not be the best choice of argument. So, he opted for a different one.

"Fox," he said. "You consider yourself a person, don't you?"

"What?" Fox blinked. "Of course I do."

"And you, along with all our brothers, have wanted only one thing more than victory on the battlefield. And that is to be recognised by everyone that we are people and not mere cannon fodder, correct?"

"Uh…yes," Fox nodded. "And yes, I know that the Jedi consider us people while the population don't but…"

"That's not the point I'm trying to make, Fox," Bly shook his head. "What I am trying to say is this. How can you expect the population to think of you as a person, when you don't even think of yourself as a person?"

"Sorry?" Fox asked. "I just told you I _do_ think of myself as a person."

"Do you though?" Bly shook his head. "Do you really? Blindly doing whatever your superior tells you to do despite the fact you think that he's wrong, and claiming its because you were engineered that way? Is that the sort of thing that a normal human being does? They might blindly follow orders for many reasons – anger clouding their judgement, fear of reprisal… but programming? Are you really a person if that's what you believe?"

Bly's argument rattled Fox significantly, and it showed. Bly immediately plunged on when he saw that he weakened the other clone's barriers. "That's why we chose to follow the Jedi instead. We will no longer do what our superiors tell us because that's all we know. We will do it if, and only if, we believe that it is the right thing to do. The Jedi want to restore the Republic and bring peace to the Galaxy, no matter what lies Palpatine may have woven in your head. All Palpatine wants is domination. That's what an Empire _is_, isn't it?"

Fox looked trouble now. It was only then that Bly noticed that they had drawn a slight crowd. While the battle raged on across the field, a group of people from both sides of the effort nearby had stopped to listen to the conversation. Hardcase was standing not that far away from Bly, and the Force-sensitive Acklay loomed over them all, ready to spring if anything happened.

"Take away any accusations that the Jedi or Palpatine have made about each other for a moment, Fox," Bly reiterated. "And decide what to do based on what you feel is right on that alone. If you do, and you act on it then, and only then, can you claim to be a person. That's what I have been taught over the course of this war, by my friends and through harsh experience. And I know for a fact that all the clones here," he gestured to his left towards the rebel clones. "Feel the same way."

"He's right," nodded Hardcase stepping over and hefting his Z6. "We don't want to fight against you guys. We didn't want this fight. But we're doing it because Palpatine must be stopped and good must rise again."

And then he dropped his blaster cannon, very deliberately, onto the ground.

Even Bly was stunned. Hardcase was the most trigger-happy person he knew, even moreso than Sev. For him to drop his weapon like that seemed to go against nature.

Hardcase spread his arms and pounded his chest with one fist. "Go on then. One of you shoot me down. Shoot one of your own brothers because your precious Palpatine told you to. That's what you guys have been doing all morning so far, after all. All we've been doing is fighting the right fight and in self-defence only. So go on, prove your just a good soldier who follows orders and gun me down."

Nobody moved. None of the nearby listening clones even raised their blasters towards the bold Hardcase. Most of them just averted their eyes, and while most of them had their helmets on, those that didn't had expressions of guilt and doubt festering all over them.

Fox looked to be among the most guilty of them all, as he realised just how right Bly was. He had been questioning Palpatine's instructions from the moment he issued Order 66, but he had gone through with them anyway, while others like Bly and Rex and Cody had gone with their heads, hearts and souls. Fox had not used any of them, only his base instincts.

And now he really thought about it, the explanation of Palpatine being a Sith Lord would explain a lot of things, like why he had suddenly pardoned Pong Krell of all Jedi and why he surrounded himself with the other Sith. The idea just sounded so implausible though.

But even if he wasn't a Sith – killing the Jedi? It was just wrong.

But Fox had gone ahead and done it anyway.

The clone commander collapsed to his knees and placed his head in his hands. Several of the other Empire clones dropped their weapons. Bly patted Hardcase on the shoulder, non-verbally thanking him for the assistance.

Fox looked up towards them both, a haunted look in his eyes.

"Swear to me," he whispered. "Swear to me while looking me in the eye that what you are saying is not lies. Is Palpatine really a Sith Lord? Or was that just a story concocted by the Jedi to try and sway us like he said?"

Bly fixed his eyes on Fox's and delivered the cold, hard truth.

"Palpatine is a Sith Lord. Also known as Darth Sidious."

And Fox believed him. He sat there, limply, with his haunted expression, for several more seconds. But then his eyes almost seemed to turn to steel and his fists clenched, and he slowly and deliberately pushed himself to his feet. "Then what are we going to do about it?" he asked.

Bly laughed out loud and clapped him on the arm. "We don't have to do anything," he said. "There's a plan to deal with him already in motion. Our work is here. Come on, Fox. We've got a battle to stop. Somebody tell ZeedGarurumon to stop shooting!"

As Hardcase hurried away to do just that, Fox clapped Bly's arm back and said, "You're right. It's time we brothers were reunited once again. But how are we going to convince the others that the Emperor is a Sith?"

"If everything goes to plan that should be taken care of too," Bly replied. "Let's just end the fighting for now. They'll believe eventually."

The Acklay standing behind them both screeched to the air in triumph, as Bly and Fox, along with clones from both sides of the battling, hurried in either direction to spread the word to stop fighting.

They were going to have their work cut out for them though, as there was still a _lot_ of fighting going on.

* * *

Palpatine himself was absolutely livid. Before, he had been able to maintain an air of calm, even if it did feel forced. Even after the appearance of ZeedGarurumon, he had been able to mask his true feelings. Now, he was glaring at the screen in front of it as if he was trying to set it on fire with his eyes, watching the AT-AT whose windscreen he was staring out of tearing the ranks of his own men apart. His hands were gripping the arms of his chair so hard that the whole chair was creaking and his knuckles were standing out on his hands more than normal.

Aurra, krell, Ventress and Dooku had cautiously urged the others to move away from Palpatine, though each of them were still trying to watch the screen. All of them could sense the overflowing of anger building up inside Palpatine, and none of them wanted to say anything lest it provoked him into him flying into a rage.

"How can this be happening?" Palpatine hissed so quietly they could barely hear him, his voice dripping with menace, hate and evil. "How could the Jedi have done this? How could they have been so ready for us? They knew we were coming. This battle was on their own terms and now they are on the verge of triumph!"

Durge felt the urge to mutter something about him knowing the clones would screw up all along but he refrained from doing so. Even the near-indestructible Bounty Hunter did not want to get on Sidious' bad side.

"The Gungans," Palpatine muttered. "The Wookiees. Why did they side with the Jedi? They are supposed to be a part of my Empire. The droids – how did the Jedi get their hands on so many of them and why are they listening to them? Those Acklay and that Varactyl, where did they even come from and how did the Jedi get them to obey them? That wolf creature! WHAT IN THE GALAXY IS IT!"

A blast of the Force shot out of Palpatine like a shockwave, shattering the screen in front of him and flinging most of the others into the duraglass window behind him. Palpatine barely seemed to notice, glaring at the shattered screen with clenched teeth and eyes practically mad with rage.

His head was wrenched to the side when a bleeping noise on the holotransmitter in front of him indicated an incoming call. It took him a moment, but he managed to regain his composure of calm and answer it.

When he saw who it was, he nodded and said, "Admiral Tarkin. What is it that you want?"

"Emperor, sir," Tarkin saluted. "I'm afraid that a situation has come up. About a dozen _Venator_-class and one _Acclamator_-class cruisers have just come out of hyperspace. And the two cruisers leading them are the flagships of the A-Team – the _Intrepid _and the _Resolute_."

"**WHAT!"**

* * *

And so the biggest battle-scene which I have ever done draws to a close. Yes, technically it's not over and we will hear more from it at a later date, but the outcome of that battle is drastically affected by the outcome of what happens on Coruscant, after all. And since that's the topic of the next arc, the actual conclusion of the battle will occur at the end of the next arc. Let's just say that while the Tenacious Ten are doing what they're doing in the next arc there's a lot more fighting on Tython and leave it at that because that's essentially what it will be.

Phew! I am pooped. I hope you liked this major battle scene. I tried to give everybody a decent role to play and at least one paragraph to themselves and I like to think that I did quite well with that. But I must say I'm glad to move on. Because the next arc promises to be just as awesome.

But this arc isn't over yet. There's still the Impmon chapter. And it promises to be a doozy. Especially for a certain reviewer of mine who calls herself Bookworm Gal.

But wait, there's more.

There's a new link on my profile I'd like you to check out. You guys get to finally hear what my voice sounds like, because it's a Youtube video of a small section of the Digimon Xros Wars series (Episode 6). But it's in English, and it's my voice doing the talking. Essentially, it's a fandub, and I plan for there to be more. I value the opinion of all you guys and I would like to know what you think of it. So please, check it out.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Ai, Mako and the others finally reach Yaamon, but the little In-training seems to be inconsolable thanks to his failure at staying away from GranDracmon and allowing Belphemon to be born. The fighting against Belphemon himself continues, but the Demon Lord is more powerful than ever and it shows. Can anybody defeat him?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 200 : Strong Love**


	200. Strong Love

While I'm grateful for a lot of people voicing their objections to the PIPA and SOPA things which I mentioned in my author's note and was grateful for the words of encouragement and assurance by many of you in regards to it, the fact that many of you reviewed that means that now you can't review this chapter, because the author's note still counted as a chapter. If you still want to let me know what you thought of it, then I'd appreciate it if you sent me a PM with your thoughts instead.

Anyway, I've now reached another cornerstone with my 200th chapter. Assuming that doesn't get shut down in the near future, which hopefully it won't, then that means I only have twenty chapters left. Before the sequels.

Enjoy.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 200:- Strong Love**

* * *

SaberLeomon crashed into the sand with a roar of pain and went ploughing across the beach, leaving a distinct furrow behind it as it did so. It only had a brief moment to look down on the large gashes in its flank before it was swarmed by a bunch of Gargoylemon trying to bring it down. SaberLeomon wrenched upwards and struck out twice with its huge paws to free itself, scrambling to its feet as it did so.

The battle was _not_ progressing as smoothly as it had been before. They had had difficulties before, but the majority of the Nightmare Soldiers had been relatively easy for them to dispose of. Now the more powerful of the lot were out at the front and were giving the Army of the Sovereigns a hard time. Most numerous among the challenging opponents were the Arkadimon, as they seemed to thrive and a new one would replace a dead one in moments by absorbing its data.

It was easy to see how Beelzemon had fallen victim to these powerful Digimon.

But then there was also Belphemon at the very front of the army. The great Demon Lord Digimon seemed to be too strong to be allowed and just about any challenge that was thrown his way was immediately repelled with staggering force. It was as if nothing they did to him even slowed the Digimon down anymore. Enthused by the powers of Darkness and bolstered by the data flowing inside him, he was a true force to be reckoned with.

Belphemon brought up his energy claws with a roar and used them to block a huge River of Power flung at him by MetalSeadramon. The serpent's eyes narrowed as he poured on an extra amount of power to his already strong attack in the hopes of pushing Belphemon to the ground, but the Demon Lord merely charged upwards, flaring his wings and pushed straight through the attack, parting it on either side of him with claws outstretched.

Alarmed, MetalSeadramon broke off his attack and tried to swerve aside, but Belphemon rammed into his flank and seized his coils in his massive paws, bringing the serpent crashing down to the ground. MetalSeadramon writhed as GranDracmon raised his claws to strike, his two tails lashing up to wrap around Belphemon's wrist and holding it in the air as he thrashed his body in an attempt to trip the Demon Lord up. GranKuwagamon swerved down from the sky to the other Mega's aid and fired a huge X-Scissor Claw attack into Belphemon's chest to knock him backwards and allow MetalSeadramon to push himself free and shoot to safety once more.

Belphemon lashed out and forced GranKuwagamon to dodge the swipe, the claws narrowly missing clipping the bugs wingtips. Belphemon hurried in pursuit, a snarl on his snout, when his attention was distracted by a couple of the Devas. Mihiramon swept across Belphemon's vision and clouted him in the snout with his Samurai Tiger Tail and Sinduramon rose himself into the air to fire a Positron Pulse into the Demon Lord's eyes.

Belphemon flinched slightly as his red eyes were scored by the attack, but the attack didn't do a whole lot of damage to them and moments later Belphemon exploded into the air. Sinduramon squawked as the huge jaws snapped shut inches from his tail feathers and Majiramon swooped out of the air to grab the rooster Deva and slam his tail into the side of Belphemon's head. Belphemon barely seemed to notice and fired a tornado from his fist that caught both the Devas and sent them tumbling into the water. Belphemon's chains rattled as he prepared to fire a Lampranthus to finish them off once and for all.

He was forced to lash his claws up to either side of his body and catch the strikes of MirageGaogamon and UlforceVeedramon as the two Digimon attempt to slice through his body with claw and sword alike. Belphemon threw MirageGaogamon backwards with a shove and fired a yellow energy attack at him to keep him occupied and then he turned on UlforceVeedramon with all his might and struck out with his claws. UlforceVeedramon blocked the attack with his shield, but Belphemon struck out a second time with an even more powerful blow.

UlforceVeedramon gasped as his energy shield vaporised and fizzled out of existence at the strike, the powerful claws slashing through the armour and bracelet that the shield originated from and rendering it useless. UlforcVeedramon stepped back and attempted another pair of swift strikes, but Belphemon blocked them both and shot his chains out to wrap around the Royal Knight's arms and fling him around to crash into MirageGaogamon just as the other Mega was rushing forwards with a Double Crescent Mirage ready.

The two went tumbling head over heels and Belphemon launched a powerful Gift of Darkness right towards them. HiAndromon dropped out of the sky to repel the attack with Copy Paste and Belphemon snarled in annoyance, but he simply charged through his attack as if it wasn't there, the flames licking around his paws. HiAndromon fired a barrage of Atomic Rays to try and keep him at bay but the Demon Lord came ever closer without pausing in his stride at all.

At the last second, Belphemon whirled around to block an attack coming in from the side via Gallantmon, flinging the Knight up into the air and blowing him backwards with a tornado, right as Plesiomon came charging towards him with a Hydro Impact Crusher. Belphemon seized the watery attack in his bare paws and growled as he held it at bay, his jaws opening and firing an energy attack right into Plesiomon's face. The other Mega cried out as he was flung backwards and collapsed to the ground but before Belphemon could finish him off, Dinorexmon bounded over the plesiosaur's prone form and dashed into the attack.

Belphemon smirked at the full-frontal attack and struck down with his claws. With astonishingly nimble agility, Dinorexmon dodged the attack and sprang forwards with incredible speed, plunging both his long claws into Belphemon's stomach. The Demon Lord roared in pain and rage as Dinorexmon lacerated his stomach, but then he grabbed the Dinosaur Digimon in his giant paw and wrenched him away from his body. He began to squeeze, determined to crush the life out of the vicious Digimon.

Justimon swooped out of nowhere and slashed across Belphemon's arm with his Voltage Blade, causing him to release his grip and drop the mildly winded Dinorexmon to the ground, and Justimon hurriedly followed up with a powerful Justice Burst right to the face. Belphemon only seemed to get angrier as he took the shots and fired three energy attacks in retaliation. Justimon dodged all three, but Belphemon stampeded towards him with tornado blasting and then caught him in the flank and threw him tumbling to the ground. Belphemon sprang into the air to bear down on Justimon when Gallantmon returned, landing heavily on the ground in front of his fellow biomerged form.

His shield was raised and another massive beam of red energy lanced out of it and struck Belphemon in the chest, reversing his trajectory and throwing him up into the air. Gallantmon quickly switched weapons and hurled a Lightning Joust in its place, but Belphemon was prepared for this one and swatted the attack aside, flaring his wings and preparing to dive down again, when he was struck between the wings by a Solor Roar from Gryphonmon. The feathered Mega streaked past the Demon Lord and swerved around, ready to launch another attack into Belphemon's face.

But the chains suddenly coiled around the bases of his wings. Gryphonmon was jerked to halt and screeched as he was pulsed with dark energy. It was only a quick attack from Vajramon down below that allowed him to pull free, as it cut through the chains around one of his wings. Pajiramon ran by, firing crossbow bolts wildly, but if Belphemon even noticed the arrows, he paid them no mind and focused on the more prominent threat of a re-approaching SaberLeomon.

Justimon pushed himself back up to his feet. "This is no good, Takato," Ryo said from within. "We just can seem to be hurting him anymore."

"If only MegaGargomon or Cherubimon were here," Takato murmured. "They could both be serious contenders for something like Belphemon with their similar size and awesome firepower."

"And Sakuyamon would be a useful ally right now too," Guilmon agreed.

"Yeah, well, neither of them are here," Justimon responded. "So we're going to have to come up with some other way of taking this guy out."

"Whatever happens," growled Takato, "I won't let him win. I won't!"

"Look out!" cried a dual voice as MarineAngemon zipped out of seemingly thin air and launched a bunch of Kahuna Wave bubbles towards an incoming Mega Arkadimon to push it backwards. Justimon and Gallantmon leapt backwards and aimed a Lightning Joust and a Justice Burst at it before it could recuperate to send it crashing back into the nearby cliff face.

"Thanks MarineAngemon," Gallantmon turned to face the smaller Mega, who merely nodded in response and flitted away to do some more damage, trying to take out as many of the lower level Arkadimon as possible before the higher ones. The other two turned around to see SaberLeomon being slammed by a Lampranthus and tossed back up into the air, saved at the last moment from a horrible landing by a swooping GranKuwagamon, before both of them jumped forwards to engage the Demon Lord once more.

* * *

Around the castle, events had also turned into a ball of manic energy and brawling. Wingdramon folded his wings to his side and shot between several Dark Side Attack missiles from a pair of Megadramon and shot up towards them, snapping his wings open at the last second as he flew between them to slam into their chins and knock them backwards. The blue dragon then shot towards a Gigadramon, which swung at him, but Wingdramon vanished moments before impact and then slammed into Gigadramon's back lance first to a terrific explosion that knocked it from the sky.

Wingdramon powered through the smoke and shot upwards, pursued by three shrieking Megadramon. He outstripped them with and suddenly shot upwards over and down, releasing a powerful Blaze Sonic Breath that consumed all three of them. A Gigadramon attempted to swerve around the attack and snapped his teeth in the space where Wingdramon had been, but the dragon was suddenly not there.

He shot over the top of the Gigadramon a moment later and swept his wings down with a Wing Blast that knocked him clean out of the sky and sent him slamming into another Gigadramon and causing them both to go tumbling into the ground. And then, a Megadramon and a Gigadramon began to converge on either side of Wingdramon, raising their arms and firing their missiles in his direction.

The blasts connected in the middle and consumed Wingdramon in the blast. The two larger dragons pulled to a stop and smirked in triumph, but two split seconds later and they were bursting into data for no apparent reason. The reason became clear a moment later when a completely unharmed Wingdramon dropped on a Megadramon from above and completely enveloped his head with his wings, sending them both tumbling over and over, way out of control.

* * *

Down in the courtyard, and Behemoth had pretty much dealt with most of the remaining guards. Those that had not somehow been killed or knocked out in the attempt to stop the motorcycle's rampage were lying on the ground in heaps, far too tired and dizzy to do any more running. Behemoth swerved around as its sensors observed a pair of Ogremon running towards it with clubs raised, bloodcurling howls coming from their large mouths.

It was a good thing that Behemoth didn't have any blood to curdle then, wasn't it?

He revved his engine and then shot forwards and hurtled between the two oafish Digimon. As it predicted, both of them attempted to swing at him as he passed, but he was much too quick and they ended up biffing each other in their massive jaws with their clubs and collapsing backwards. Behemoth pressed on towards a pair of IceDevimon flanking an angry looking SkullMeramon. The middle Digimon blazed its chains at it prepared to swing at the morotcycle, but just as it pulled its arm back, Behemoth flashed on his headlight.

The SkullMeramon yowled at the sudden bright light in the world of darkness piercing at its eyes and covered its face with its hands, giving Behemoth plenty of opportunity to skid sideways and slam its flank into the SkullMeramon, knocking it backwards and it's still flaming chains connecting with both the IceDevimon. And considering the basic science at work in this scenario, the IceDevimon didn't do well under that attack.

* * *

Inside the castle, the fighting was equally intense. Diatrymon shrieked as he battered against the incoming horde of Digimon, disarming a Phantomon with a sweep of one wing and stabbing his claw into its body with the other, lashing out with his talons to close them around the stomach of a DarkLizardmon and squeeze, cutting into its body with ease and reducing it to data and swinging back around again to hurl a Destruction Roar down the corridor to carry several Vilemon and Bakemon flying backwards.

Suddenly a Musyamon dashed forwards to attack him, apparently a rarity among the Nightmare Soldiers but still a member nevertheless. It's huge samurai sword swing down towards Diatrymon's neck, but the Ancient Bird lashed up with its wing claw to clash against it. Musyamon withdrew the sword quickly and made several more quick slashes with it, but Diatrymon quickly flared his wings and curled his neck down to display his back, the sword bouncing harmlessly off his armour.

As the Musyamon changed its grip on the sword and prepared to stab into a more vulnerable part of the bird, Diatrymon sprang forwards and rammed into the Musyamon full-on with a small Mega Dash Impact, tossing him back down the corridor. He then followed up with a lash of one foot, and the Musyamon just managed to catch the blades with his own. The two of them glared at each other for a moment, before Diatrymon growled and lunged forwards towards the Musyamon's face with his toothy beak. That blow ended the conflict quite quickly. Diatrymon then backed up a bit and prepared himself to take on the rest of the approaching horde.

On the other side of Diatrymon, and also on the other side of where Ai, Mako and Calumon were pressed against the wall trying to look inconspicuous, Lilamon was still engaged in a one on one duel with the Doumon. The twins and Calumon had to keep reminding themselves that this was not the Taomon which they knew well, as it looked essentially the same except for the colour scheme. This was an evil version and it was currently giving Lilamon quite a few problems.

Talismans swarmed around Lilamon's body, closing it around her, and the flower fairy quickly counted with a flying spin, letting out a couple of Beauty Slaps that knocked them away before they could explode. She hurried sent several Marvel Shots down the corridor towards the Doumon, but it simply smirked and raised a shield to take the shots. It waited for a lapse in the attack and then charged forwards with its brush at the ready, sweeping it at Lilamon's side. Lilamon ducked underneath the strike and span away, standing in front of the children like a protective sentinel.

The Doumon calmly raised a hand, producing a symbol from its sleeves. Its eyes flashed, as did the symbol and a moment later it vanished. Lilamon started, and then it reappeared right in front of her and she reacted quickly, stabbing forward with a Lilac Dagger. She was shocked when the dagger passed through it as if it wasn't there and then it was off to her left. She fired several more Marvel Shots at it, but they too passed through it and it vanished again like a ghost. That was when Lilamon felt herself being struck in the stomach by a heavy wooden object, like a giant brush and she toppled forwards, only to be slammed in the back of the head a moment later.

As Lilamon fell she twisted around and fired Lila Shower, but the Doumon still wasn't there and her attack crashed into the ceiling. She growled, and then finally thought she understood what was going on. The Doumon had cast some kind of spell that was interfering with her senses, making her believe that it was in one place when it was, in fact, in another. She slowly rolled back onto her front, shutting her eyes and crouching there on all fours, as if beaten.

Apparently the Doumon couldn't refuse such an easy target because Lilamon heard it approaching from the front. She trusted her sense of hearing no more than her sense of sight right now, but for what she had in mind, all she needed was for the Doumon to get close. The direction didn't matter. And then, when she heard it almost on top of her, a cloud of Un Deux Pollen exploded out of her back and covered every inch of the corridor with ten feet of her in both directions. She heard a cry as the Doumon was caught in the cloud and immediately began to seize up, its spell breaking as it lost concentration, revealing that it had indeed been behind her. Lilamon spun around immediately and drove a Lilac Dagger into the Doumon's abdomen. It screamed and was then reduced to data.

Lilamon sighed in relief and then stood up and moved out of the cloud of pollen before her own immunity to it wore off. Up ahead, Diatrymon finished off the last of the guards with a slash from his talons and turned around as well.

"Alright," he said immediately. "Which direction now?"

"Still this way," Lilamon indicated the passage they had been moving down when they had been intercepted by the guards.

"Right," Diatrymon nodded, and he hurriedly stepped past Ai, Mako and Calumon and took the lead once again, Lilamon shepherding the three of them along from behind once more. Though the bird was ready for combat at any moment, they did not meet up with any more resistance from the guards. Either they were all gone or they were sensible enough to stay out of the way.

"Oh, I hope we're getting closer," Ai murmured as they ran, D-Arc held firmly in her hands with the arrow pointing ahead.

"I hope the others outside are alright," Mako added. The sounds of battling could still be faintly heard through the castle walls. Calumon bit his lip and resisted the urge to tremble at the thought of how his friends might be being beaten around right now. Despite his comparative ineffectiveness on the battlefield, he hated it when he wasn't present.

"I'm sure we're getting close," Lilamon assured them. "And the sooner we find and save Impmon, then the sooner we can go out and help the others ourselves."

Ai nodded and shouted, "Left, I think." Diatrymon quickly dashed down the next corner and deeper into the castle. The whole place was so full of twists and turns and staircases that, in all honesty, all of them had lost track of the way to the exit.

* * *

However, a few minutes later, they turned down a corridor that caused Diatrymon to pull to a stop. Ai and Mako almost crashed into the back of his legs, and when they did manage to stop, they peered around them to see what the Ancient Bird was looking at.

This particular hallway was devoid of any turn-offs, and at the very end was a heavy wooden door studded with iron. It had the ominous and relatively evil sensation hovering around it that you might expect in a world such as this.

"Is that it?" Diatrymon murmured.

"I think so," Ai whispered in excitement. "The D-Arc is pointing straight towards it."

Diatrymon's eyes narrowed and his talons tensed, digging into the floor as he lowered himself down. "Then let's see how well that door stands up to me, shall we?" He began to charge down the hallway at high speed, lowering himself down as he prepared himself for a Mega Dash Impact that would blow the doors clean off their hinges on arrival.

That was when Lilamon overtook him and swerved in front of him, forcing him to pull to a stop just shy of crashing into both her and the door.

"Or, we could just try the knob," Lilamon offered, pointing towards the handle sticking out of the door. As the twins and Calumon hurried to catch up, she wrapped her petals around it and slowly turned it in place, heaving the heavy door slowly open with an ominous creak.

Diatrymon scuffed his feet and muttered, "Well, what if it had been locked."

"Did you see a keyhole?" Lilamon asked him.

Diatrymon shrugged his wings and looked a little embarrassed, and Lilamon almost smirked. Diatrymon could, after all, be pretty much excepted to charge right at anything that might be standing in his way, so that sort of response was to be expected.

But then she took on a much more serious edge and heaved the door open the rest of the way. Before they could be stopped, Ai and Mako dashed into the room with cries of "Impmon!" They were closely followed by Calumon, and their two larger friends immediately hurried in after them.

All of them stopped and stared when they beheld the strange apparatus before them – the cylindrical container with the heavy cuffs sticking out of the edges and the pipes on the top that led towards the two tanks on either side of the room. All of them took a moment to regard the instrument with revulsion, their imaginations immediately conjuring up what it might have done to Impmon during their time trying to get here.

And then they spotted the small purple blob lying pathetically on the bottom of the glass cylinder and looking weakly at them.

"Guys…" Yaamon murmured.

"Impmon?" Lilamon gasped.

"What the…" Diatrymon's eyes shot open. "How did…"

"IMPMON!" both the twins darted forwards at the same time towards the cylinder. Both of them pulled to a halt at the same time when a figure began to phase upwards through the floor in front of them and they hurriedly back away as they were confronted with the towering, hooded and cloaked form of MetalPhantomon.

"So nice of you to join the party, humans," MetalPhantomon chuckled. "But I'm afraid that there will be no happy reunion for you today." He lifted his scythe, the pink energy blade crackling ominously, his skull-face leering at the two small Tamers.

"You!" Mako gasped.

"You're the one who made Impmon's life miserable for months," Ai nodded.

"Indeed," chuckled MetalPhantomon. "It is nice to see that you remember me Tamers, because I am going to be the last thing that you see. I took great pleasure out of watching Beelzemon reduced to the pathetic lump he is now, but I shall enjoy making him watch you die even more."

He raised the scythe further and the ram's head that made up the cross-section of the blades was pointed directly towards the twins. Its eye sockets began to glow and immediately the two Tamers started to feel sluggish and drowsy, the world blacking out around them as MetalPhantomon's spell took hold and they began to go into a deep sleep.

MetalPhantomon chuckled in anticipation for what he was about to do, but his spell was abruptly cut off when he received a single Marvel Shot to the ribs. He lurched backwards slightly and growled as he looked up towards Lilamon and Diatrymon.

He was taken aback by the expressions on both their faces. Diatrymon looked genuinely terrifying even when he was happy, but now he looked absolutely livid, his eyes blazing and his beak clenched shut, his body trembling with barely controlled rage. And what was even more startling was that Lilamon was actually giving him competition for scariest looking Digimon in the room. Her eyes were so narrow that they were almost slits and her lips were twisted in a snarl of fury.

"I think you've done enough damage for one lifetime," Diatrymon growled. "It's time that you were dealt with once and for all."

"I could not agree more," Lilamon nodded firmly. "MetalPhantomon. You are going down."

"Oh, am I?" the ghost growled back, brandishing his scythe. "Well, let's test out that theory, shall we?" And he surged forwards with scythe raised, ready to lash it out at the two Digimon.

If the twins and Calumon, or indeed MetalPhantomon, were expecting some kind of epic battle between the three combatants, they were all to be sorely disappointed. MetalPhantomon was completely taken aback by the speed and ferocity of the attack launched upon him, so much so that it was all over in a few moments.

As he charged forwards, Lilamon's hands lashed out and her petals fired her Lila Shower attack at lightning speed, the tendrils curling around the scythe and yanking it out of MetalPhantomon's hands. Lilamon whirled around, still holding it in the tendrils and slashed back at MetalPhantomon with it. The blade hacked through the base of MetalPhantomon's shoulder and he howled as the electricity that comprised his arm fizzled out of existence and his metal hand dropped the floor with a thunk.

Diatrymon sprang into action a moment later and charged right back, leaping through the air and slamming into the stricken ghost Digimon with all his body weight. His talons lashed down and the electroball that comprised his whole body from the hips down shattered with an explosion of sparks when the metal blades crashed into it. MetalPhantomon howled again, but Diatrymon wasn't done. The moment his feet touched the ground, he continued dashing forwards until he slammed MetalPhantomon into the wall so hard that the stonework ruptured and the ghost Digimon was tossed out into the air.

The ghost Digimon struggled to regain control and pull himself together, but he never got the opportunity because, a moment later, Wingdramon's lance was buried in his ribs as the dragon appeared seemingly out of thin air to crash into the Ultimate level Digimon. The Explode Sonic Lance attack finished the nightmare inducing Digimon off, tearing him apart from within and splintering him into data fragments once and for all.

Everyone present took a moment to look back on what had just happened, before one of them voiced the thought on all their minds:-

"Wow," Calumon breathed. "That was quick."

"He had it coming," Diatrymon shrugged.

Ai and Mako suddenly sprang to life and shouted, "IMPMON!" again, and hurried over towards the glass container at the other end of the room. He crouched down beside it, placing their hands up against the thick glass as Yaamon looked up at them weakly.

"Hey, Teradalets," he murmured. "How've you been?"

* * *

Outside, the battling raged on and on, never seeming to show any sign of ending. Each of the Digimon in the army opposing the Nightmare Soldiers would have their turn at fending off Belphemon and trying to bring him down while the rest of them occupied the various Arkadimon and then they traded places, but none of them seemed to make a lasting impression on the Demon Lord. Their attacks did seem to do some damage, but it looked very minor in comparison to what they would have hoped and Belphemon recovered from each strike with horrible ease.

HiAndromon ploughed into the ground and crashed against the cliff wall so hard that he shook loose several rocks from above, which dropped down to bury him in rubble. A couple of seconds later and he blasted his way out again, but he sagged on the rocks as he tried to regain some of his strength, looking up to watch as UlforceVeedramon and Dinorexmon kept the giant Digimon occupied.

"This guy's worse than Ogudomon," HiAndromon muttered to himself. "And he was supposed to be _two_ Demon Lords in one body."

Dinorexmon slashed his claws clean through several chains that were seeking to enwrap him and spat a powerful Ogre Flame at the Demon Lord before darting through his legs at high velocity. The searing heat set Belphemon's fur on fire, but if anything that seemed to make him more demonic, because he simply ignited his chains with darker fire, the flames of Dinorexmon's attack moving over to them as Belphemon struck out towards UlforceVeedramon with another Lampranthus.

UlforceVeedramon hurriedly caught the chains so they wrapped around his sword hilt instead and flung them upwards, shooting of a Ray of Victory as he did so. The attack rammed into Belphemon and sent him rolling over onto his back, but the Demon Lords simply rolled with it and flipped back onto his feet again, flaring his wings and stabbing his claws into the ground to create a Gift of Darkness that seared across the beach, forcing UlforceVeedramon to dodge out of the way.

But Plesiomon went ploughing straight through the fiery attack, rolling through a Hydro Impact Crusher ball and dousing the flames as he did so. However, the flames were so hot that Plesiomon's attack also evaporated, concealing him in a cloud of steam. Belphemon charged into the steam and made a wild lunge, but missed his target and ended up being blasted in the side by a Water Tail Blaster and flung backwards and away.

As he got up again, he beheld Indramon and Makuramon standing nearby and snarled as he bore down on them. Indramon hurriedly fired a Horn of Desolation at him, but Belphemon powered through the attack as if it weren't there. Makuramon leapt onto the Horn and flung a full power Primal Orb that engulfed the giant Demon Lord. The effort of the attack cost Makuramon a lot of his energy, and he slumped, panting for breath, but his actions at least bought time for Indramon to make a getaway as Belphemon busted through the Primal Orb with a snarl of fury.

Nearby, several of the other Devas were having problems with the Arkadimon. Two of Kumbhiramon's six clones had been eliminated already, and the other four were currently fleeing a hungry looking Mega level enemy. SaberLeomon bounded over their heads and rammed the Arkadimon full in the face with its paw in a Howling Crusher attack and slammed it backwards, resulting in it getting tangled up in a Boar Bog from Vikaralamon. The pig Deva hurriedly through a Fusion Ball at it while it was struggling to free itself and struck it a glancing blow to the face.

Eventually though it managed to tear itself free and charged towards the pig Deva, but its path was intercepted moments later by Gallantmon, who slammed it upside the head with his shield, unleashing a Shield of the Just attack as he did so and blowing the Arkadimon to data. He landed nearby and offered Vikaralamon a thumbs up. The pig Deva stared at him for a few moments, then gave him a gigantic nod of thanks.

Gryphonmon skidded to a halt nearby and flung a Solar Roar at another Arkadimon approaching them. His attack managed to slow down the Mega Digimon for a few moments but it simply ignored its fluctuating data and continued in its charge. Gryphonmon ran forwards to engage it but before he could do so, the Arkadimon's head suddenly came clean off its shoulder and burst into data, as did the body. Gryphonmon balked, until he spotted GranKuwagamon hovering behind where the Arkadimon had been.

MirageGaogamon lanced out of thin air to rake his claws across another Arkadimon's chest and then kick the place he had just sliced into to throw him backwards, unleashing a Full Moon Blaster before he could recover anymore. Another approaching Arkadimon was slammed in the face by Caturamon in mallet form, but it shook off the attack quickly and grabbed Caturamon, flinging him upwards towards Mihiramon. Before the tiger could react, both of them slammed into one another and went tumbling to the ground.

MetalSeadramon swooped beneath them and grabbed them in his tails before they could hit the ground, but another Arkadimon rammed into him from the side even as he did so and smashed him into the water of the Ocean. MetalSeadramon was temporarily submerged, but he surged out of the inky blackness a moment later with a Giga Ice Blast pouring out of his mouth and washing over the Arkadimon to root him to the ground like an ice statue.

Mihiramon and Caturamon scrambled out of the sea, bedraggled, but still alive. Several of the other Digimon hurried over and a salvo of attacks from various directions tore into the frozen Arkadimon and shattered both its prison and it. Indramon stepped over and place the exhausted Makuramon down on the ground as Justimon and Gryphonmon soared overhead to take their turn at engaging Belphemon.

"This is not going well," Caturamon observed as he panted for breath.

An Arkadimon lunging for the group suddenly rammed into a barrier of Kahuna Wave bubbles and was thrown backwards, allowing GranKuwagamon and MirageGaogamon to fire their attacks after him to keep him away. MarineAngemon then flitted over to them and took the bedraggled Devas into account and quickly spat a Kahuna Wave bubble at either of them. Makuramon reeled backwards as the bubble burst on his skin, but he was surprised when he felt his strength returning to him instead being depleted further.

"Thanks," Caturamon and Mihiramon mumbled at the same time.

"Er… yeah… thanks," Makuramon muttered quietly.

"You guys may have been healed, but we're still no nearer to coming up with a way of beating that guy," MetalSeadramon added as Gryphonmon was pounded out of the sky by Belphemon's writhing chains and HiAndromon hurriedly dashed in to try and protect him.

From within SaberLeomon, Jeri muttered, "At this rate, we're all going to die. It might take us a while, and we'll go out fighting but Belphemon's just not going down. Nor is GranDracmon." Many of them looked over their shoulders to where GranDracmon and the Sovereigns were still engaged in their ferocious and world-shaking conflict.

"It does not bode well," agreed Elecmon. "Perhaps our only hope for survival is that the others can rescue Impmon and he can somehow let us retreat from here with his powers."

"Retreat?" Dinorexmon snarled. "You've gotta be kidding me."

"Fine, then you stay here," Kumbhiramon sniped at the raptor Digimon.

"Takato," Jeri asked Gallantmon. "This is usually about the time that you come up with something weird and wonderful that works. Any suggestions?"

There was no reply. Gallantmon remained silent.

"Takato?" Jeri called slightly louder, but still Gallantmon didn't answer her.

He did, however, speak:-

"It can't end like this," Takato murmured from within the royal Knight. "We can't have come so far and struggled through so much together just have things end here. There's been too much suffering for all of us. Friends snatched away, bonds between us broken, our city and world attacked. We can't fail now."

"It doesn't have to end this way, Takato," Guilmon responded. "We can fight. And we can win. I know we can. We've always won by fighting together before, haven't we?"

"Indeed we have," Takato growled. "We've always stuck by one another through thick and thin, Guilmon. No matter what came our way we always faced it down and no matter how difficult things got we always rose victorious."

"We can't let all of our efforts to protect the Human and Digital World end up being for nothing and delaying the inevitable, can we?" Guilmon agreed.

"No, we can't," Takato supplied. "And we won't."

"Not as long as we still stand," Guilmon added.

"Belphemon must be stopped," Takato stated as Gallantmon's body began to glow.

"We've got to get rid of him once and for all," Guilmon concurred as the glow intensified.

And then both of them looked up and shouted at the top of their lungs, "AND WE WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO MAKE SURE ALL OF OUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY SURVIVE! **WE WON'T… LET… BELPHEMON… WIIIIINNNNNNN! **_**YYYYAAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!"**_

Gallantmon exploded with light that forced almost everyone on both sides to shield their eyes and see spots such was the intensity. The fighting all around stopped for a moment as everyone turned to see what was going on and instantly regretted it as the light stunned their eyes. But then the glowing faded almost as quickly as it had begun, becoming a shining red glow that surrounded the figure within, covered in red armour, ten shining white angel wings protruding from his back, a sword of light in one hand and a lance of light in the other.

From within SaberLeomon, Jeri smiled. It had been a long time since she had seen this happening, and now that it had, she began to feel hope surging in her anew as the new figure took to the skies, announcing his new name for everyone to hear.

"**GALLANTMON CRIMSON MODE!"**

The Digimon who had seen Crimson Mode before grinned in anticipation of what was to come. Several of the Megas had seen him once before in the battle against Ogudomon, and while it still had not been able to make any lasting impression on the powerful attack-suppressing Demon Lord, it had been able to hold him back long enough for the others to make their escape. The Tamers in particular were filled with renewed vigour. It took the right mindset for Takato and Guilmon to advance to this form, and now that they had reached it, things were definitely going to get interesting.

"Hey Belphemon!" Gallantmon shouted as he swooped down towards the Demon Lord. "I think it's about time you met your match!"

"**YOU STILL THINK THAT YOU CAN BEAT ME!"** Belphemon snarled, brandishing his claws. **"BRING IT ON!"**

"You asked for it," Gallantmon shouted and raised his lance and aimed it directly for Belphemon's chest. Belphemon thrust out with his claws, but Gallantmon slashed with his sword and knocked one of the powerful arms aside, swooping around the other and ramming himself shoulder first into Belphemon's chest. The Demon Lord cried out in surprise as he was pushed backwards by his much smaller opponent, sent crashing across the beach to slam into the cliff wall beyond, momentarily stunned.

Gallantmon whooshed forwards to attack again, only to find his way blocked suddenly by a pair of Arkadimon who lunged towards him with mouths agape and claws splayed. Gallantmon's eyes narrowed and he flared his wings spurring straight into the attacking Megas. **"INVINCIBLE SWORD!"** he bellowed, the shining white blade in his hand seeming to almost grow in length as he slashed it across the stomach of one of the Arkadimon and then slashed him down the middle at almost exactly the same time, swinging around an instant later to plunge the blade right into the chest of the other and then surge upwards, cutting him open from the impact zone up. The two Arkadimon split into data at almost the same time and Gallantmon winged past them and surged towards Belphemon once more.

Belphemon roared and rose to meet him. **"GIFT OF DARKNESS!"** he bellowed and plunged his claws into the ground to create the massive wave of fire that rolled across the beach towards the flying Knight, blasting high in the air and threatening to engulf him.

Gallantmon didn't pause in his charge even for a second and he roared, **"CRIMSON LIGHT!"** thrusting forwards with his lance, Gungnir as his whole body flashed with power. A massive energy burst was fired from his lance which he powered down the middle of and swept the Gift of Darkness aside with almost relative ease. Belphemon was startled and quickly threw a powerful tornado attack from his hands to intercept the light, but it ripped straight through that too and kept coming.

Belphemon flared his wings and leapt into the sky, his feet clearing the attack just in time. The Crimson Light struck the cliff behind him and instantly vaporised a massive section of it, reducing it to fine dust which fell to the floor in a mound. Gallantmon himself lashed upwards to follow Belphemon and swiftly caught up, shooting past to rake his lance across one of Belphemon's wings. Belphemon roared as he immediately lost control of his flightpath and was sent crashing to the ground far below.

Gallantmon flipped over and dived down towards the fallen Demon Lord, lance and sword held splayed out to either side of him in preparation for the final attack. Belphemon immediately clambered to his feet and turned around to fire a powerful energy sphere from his mouth. Gallantmon swerved around the attack but he was struck in the chest and stomach and tossed into the fine dust of the cliff that he had created earlier.

He clambered upwards once more and shook his head. Belphemon bore down on him almost immediately and he struck up with his spear to catch the slash from his claws, pushing upwards and diving to roll between his legs, his wings snapping out as he carried himself back into the air. Belphemon's chains lashed outwards behind him and lashed across Gallantmon, sending fiery dark energy coursing through him as they did so.

Gallantmon Crimson Mode landed on the floor in a crouching position, and the two combatants faced off against one another once again. Belphemon's wing was hanging limply at his side, but other than that, neither of them appeared to be that much worse for wear.

Gallantmon forced himself to remember that even in Crimson Mode, things were going to be quite sticky in his battle. He leapt back into the attack with his sword, Blutgang, raised. Belphemon launched an energy sphere but Gallantmon batted it aside with his lance and slashed out with his sword, only for Belphemon to block it and push back with his other set other claws. Gallantmon caught that on his lance and ripped his sword free, twisting around and slashing his sword down Belphemon's arm and turned around to stab forward with his lance.

Belphemon threw another energy sphere moments before impact that slammed into Gallantmon and threw him backwards. Belphemon leapt into the air and planted his feet on the cliff wall, pushing off it to pounce forwards towards Gallantmon with a mighty roar as the Knight ploughed into the ground. Gallantmon quickly rolled back upwards and dodged the claws as they buried themselves in the ground, but a sudden Gift of Darkness surged out of the side and washed right over Gallantmon at almost point-blank range.

Belphemon smirked and flung down his chains for good measure as Gallantmon screamed under his attack. But the Knight's eyes snapped open and crossed his lance and sword over his head to catch the chains around them. His whole body burst with energy and repelled the Gift of Darkness around him. Gallantmon fired off another Crimson Light right at Belphemon and this time the attack connected.

Belphemon roared aloud as he felt himself being torn apart under the intense attack. He gritted his teeth as he stepped backwards, several of his chains shattering immediately. He was forced to act quickly before he was obliterated and he slammed his huge paws together, firing an intense tornado from out of each, which merged into one enormous one that pushed against the Crimson Light attack, holding it at bay. Then the chains that remained lanced over the top and slammed into Gallantmon, breaking his concentration and stopping the attack

The battle had only been going for a few minutes and already both of them were severely weakened.

"**I SUPPOSE THAT YOU MIGHT ACTUALLY BE A WORTHY OPPONENT!"** Belphemon confessed.

"Good to know," Gallantmon scowled. "But the thing is, Belphemon, that I have no intention of fighting you alone."

Belphemon blinked and turned around to see UlforceVeedramon, MetalSeadramon and SaberLeomon hurtling towards him, ready to attack. Gallantmon brandished his lance and sword, clashing them together as he jumped into the air and fell towards Belphemon again.

* * *

In the castle, Ai and Mako were banging on the glass container that Yaamon was lying in, trying to figure out a way of getting the small Digimon out, as there didn't appear to be a door to it. Yaamon merely stared at them as they were doing so, his eyes alternatively looking up in their faces and then down to the floor, biting his lip as he tried to stop himself from sighing.

"Guys," Lilamon said, stepping over to the group and a Lilac Dagger springing to life in her hands, while behind her, Wingdramon landed on the edge of the hole that Diatrymon had made when he smashed MetalPhantomon outside, folding his wings and squeezing his way into the room. "Allow me," the flower fairy smiled and leant down to plunge her dagger into the glass. It punched through easily enough and Lilamon traced a square in the material, inserting a couple of Lila Shower tendrils to pull it outwards and toss it to the side.

It clanged into the corner, but failed to shatter.

"Impmon, are you okay?" Ai immediately cried as she moved over to the gap in the glass. "Are you hurt? What did they do to you?"

"Don't worry, Impmon, we're here to take you away," Mako said, nodding furiously.

"I think he might have figured that out for himself," Diatrymon chuckled.

"Oh yeah," Mako grinned sheepishly. "Come on, Impmon. Let's go."

"M'name's not Impmon," the small Digimon muttered. "It's Yaamon when I'm in this form. They drained me of my powers to implant them into Belphemon, and now… well, this is me now."

"Alright then. Come on Yaamon," Calumon cheered. "We're going to get you out of here."

Yaamon merely stared at the floor for a few more moments. Ai and Mako both frowned. This was not the happy reunion that either of them had been hoping for or expecting. They had been envisioning Impmon leaping into their arms and laughing for joy at their reunion, not a small Yaamon just lying there and doing nothing.

"Imp… Yaamon?" Lilamon queried. "Are you alright?"

"You shouldn't have come here," Yaamon looked up at them, his green eyes filled with pain and sorrow. "You shouldn't have come for me. None of you."

"What are you talking about, Impmon?" Ai asked in horror. "We couldn't leave you behind! We couldn't just leave you here in the hands of that GranDracmon guy."

"It's Yaamon, and you should have done," Yaamon growled. "You don't understand what's best for you, do you? Don't you get why I kept running away from you guys? It was so that you wouldn't be caught up or affected by problems and situations that had nothing to do with you. So that you wouldn't be put in unnecessary danger. And now look what you've done. You've gone and trapped yourselves here!"

Ai and Mako reeled backwards under Yaamon's word barrage. Wingdramon frowned as he caught that last sentence. "Trapped ourselves here?" asked the dragon. "What do you mean?"

Yaamon sighed and murmured, "GranDracmon draining all of my powers, including both my ability to digivolve to the Mega stage on my own and to move in and out of the Dark Ocean. I can't do anything right now, and I was the only guy on your side who could move between the two worlds. No our only hope of getting out of here are GranDracmon and Belphemon. And we know that's not going to happen. I'm stuck here, and now you guys are stuck here too because you decided to come after me."

The news hit the others like a thunderbolt, and all of them had to resist staggering backwards at the implications of that. They had all assumed that if the worst came to the worst, Beelzemon could transport them back for a quick escape. To not be able to leave at all… that was almost inconceivable.

"See," Yaamon nodded when he saw their expressions. "I was taken here by force, but you guys didn't have to come after me."

"But Yaamon," Mako murmured.

"Just…" Yaamon interrupted, causing Mako to flinch backwards again. Yaamon caught himself when he saw the look on Mako's face and sighed. "Sorry," he murmured. "I shouldn't have snapped at you. It's not your fault that you guys are here anyway. It's mine. I'm sorry, guys. I've failed all of you, as well as the whole of the rest of the Digital World. I should have tried harder to fight, I should have thought more about what would have happened in GranDracmon had gotten his hands on me. I could have thought up a way of escape, but… I didn't.

"And now GranDracmon has won. Even with the Sovereigns here to help, it's only a matter of time. He's the master of this world. He can't be defeated here and everyone will succumb to him eventually. And then with the Sovereigns out of the way, as well as their best soldiers… well, the Digital World would be GranDracmon's for the taking."

"Yaamon, it's not your fault," Ai assured him.

"Who else is to blame then, Ai?" Yaamon asked her, turning away from her. "I was the only hope for the entire Digital World and I failed. I got caught and here I am now. I don't deserve to have people like you guys in my life. Don't bother with me, anymore guys. I'm not worth anything. I might have been a warrior of heaven once, but ever since I entered the life of a Demon Lord, I've been nothing but evil. Even when I try and do good, all I end up doing is aiding evil. Just leave me here, okay?"

"Yaamon, no! You promised!" Mako shook his head. "You promised that you wouldn't leave us again. I know you left to protect us before, but now that's over. You can come back."

"You guys would be better off without me around," Yaamon shook his whole body. "I tried, okay? I tried to be the good guy. I tried to save the Digital World, but wherever I go, it's just the same old story. A Demon Lord that tears the Digital World apart. A Digimon who killed the partner of a little girl right in front of her. I failed to save Jeri from the D-Reaper. I failed to be of any use in the fight against Ogudomon. And now I failed you guys. Everywhere I go, I leave behind a trail of destruction and failure. And that's not going to change. Leave me here."

"How can you say that, Yaamon?" Lilamon demanded angrily. "How can you say that to your own partners."

"You don't understand," Yaamon sighed. "None of you do. None of you were ever there during my worst failures. You only ever saw the aftermath. If you had seen me then, you would understand what I'm telling you. You would understand that all of your lives would be better off without me. I enter Ai and Mako's lives, and then break their hearts by leaving them behind. I enter the lives of the rest of you guys, and then I lead you on wild adventures where you all nearly get killed many times. Nobody deserves to go through knowing me."

"That's a rather contradictory analysis, don't you think?" Wingdramon asked. "After all, are you not going to be breaking Ai and Mako's hearts again with these very words you are saying right now?"

"Maybe," Yaamon replied. "But it's better that I break their hearts one last time now, than have them suffer a short lifetime with me, or a longer lifetime of times where I keeping breaking their hearts over and over again. I'll never change. I… I can't change. I will always be either powerless against evil, or worse, a part of it."

Ai and Mako both had tears streaming down their faces at this point. Lilamon, Wingdramon and Diatrymon all exchanged concerned glances. They could quite clearly see what was going on. Yaamon was sinking into a miasma of depression, and unless they snapped him out of it quickly, he would never break out of it.

"Just go," Yaamon murmured. "Get to the others and help them get away. You'll have to figure out your own way of surviving or getting out of this place alive. But one things for sure, you'll spend a much better chance of surviving here without me with you."

"Rubbish!" growled Diatrymon, stamping his foot down and cutting into the floor with his talons. Yaamon looked up at the glowering face of the Ancient Bird, as the Champion level Digimon added, "How can you blame yourself this way when it's clearly only GranDracmon's fault? Have you forgotten all those times you fought with us while we were on the run? What about that time where we were attacked by Darkdramon? You saved all our lives on that day!"

"He's right," Lilamon folded her arms and glowered. "You threw yourself in front of an attack to save my life and you still had the energy to get back up when we were all on the ground defeated and held off the enemy. I wouldn't have survived that day if you hadn't been there. None of us would have."

"Yeah, but don't you get it?" Yaamon turned round and glowered back. "If it hadn't been for me, you guys wouldn't have even been there on that day in the first place."

"Oh, excuse me," Lilamon huffed. "Sorry for being your friend, Yaamon!"

"Huh?" Yaamon blinked.

"You're the one who doesn't get it," Lilamon pointed an accusing petal at him. "If you remember, it was us who made the choice to go with you. It's not as if you knocked us out and dragged us along with you, or you extracted oaths on our Digi-cores that we would help you on your quest. You wanted us to stay behind, as I recall. It was our choice to come."

"Then I should have tried harder to stop you," Yaamon countered. "I should have slipped away from you guys earlier or something…"

"And then we would have followed you," Wingdramon chuckled. "You would have had a very hard time losing us, Yaamon. If any of us had even had an inkling that you were planning to run away in the Celestial Heavens then you would not have had to face those Arkadimon alone."

"And then you would have been killed by them!" Yaamon yelled in exasperation. "Why don't you get it? Why do all of you insist on following me around? Don't you understand that you're better off without me."

"No," Calumon shook his head. "No we don't, because we wouldn't be, Yaamon."

Everyone's attention was diverted to the little Catalyst, but this time he didn't shrink away from the attention. He stood as tall as he could, which wasn't far, but he looked directly towards his fellow In-training and said, "You made us all better, Impmon. You made us into better people, that's what I think. And you're our friend, and we're yours. What would you have done if there was somebody out there who was trying to kidnap Ai and Mako instead of you, huh?"

Yaamon instantly bristled at the thought and growled, "They would have had to go through me first. I wouldn't leave them along even for a moment and if anyone got within twenty miles of trying to hurt them then I would batter them into… into…" he faltered for a moment when he saw Calumon actually looking smug, which was an almost alien expression on his small, white face.

"See," Calumon nodded. "I knew you'd say that. Isn't that the same thing that we've been trying to do with you all this time?"

"That's… that's different," Yaamon blustered. "Ai and Mako can't defend themselves like me. But… but I'm different. Or, at least, I was. I could digivolve to the Mega level on my own, but we couldn't biomerge. We've never been able to biomerge, no matter how much we tried. That put them at risk, so I had to leave to protect them."

"I can't biomerge," Calumon pointed out. "But I went with you anyway."

"He's right," Wingdramon nodded. "You would do well to listen to our advice, Yaamon. No matter how many times you run away from us, no matter how many times you tell us to leave you behind or try to tell us that we would be better off without you, we're always going to come after you and help you with whatever your problem is. As long as you need us, we'll be there for you."

"Because that's what friends do," Diatrymon agreed. "We knew the risks full well when we went with you on your quest to find answers. We knew there was every chance that we could get killed trying to help you out, but we did it anyway. And if we were in your shoes and being pursued by evil, then you would join us to try and help us out and you know it."

"The bonds between the three of us have grown stronger on our journey," Lilamon nodded. "And so has our bond with you. And don't deny that it isn't reciprocal. We'll come running to you when you tell us to run away. That's just how the world works, Yaamon. Diatrymon's right about one thing – that's what friends do. But I'm going to go beyond that and say… that's what family does."

"Family…" Yaamon murmured, remembering the way he thought of the others as family in the Heavens before he had decided to leave them behind. He clenched his eyes shut and said, "You guys really consider me to be a member of your family?"

"No duh," Lilamon rolled her eyes. "Of course we do. We've been through too much to be anything else. Right, twins?"

Yaamon opened his eyes and looked towards Ai and Mako, neither of whom had spoken for a while now. The two twins stood side by side as they stared at Yaamon for several moments, before Ai held her D-Arc forward. "They're right, Impmon… Yaamon," she nodded. "Of course you're a part of our family. Thanks to you, we stopped fighting and became a proper brother and sister."

"Yeah," Mako agreed. "You live with us, you protect us and you do all kinds of stuff with us. Even our mum is thinking of accepting you into the family now, and she didn't like you before. If she thinks you're family, then that's what you are."

"You would be even if she didn't think that actually," chuckled Wingdramon. "There's no two ways about it really. You and us… we stand side by side no matter what. The prophecy even said that the four of us Digimon were going to help you. That was decreed by Fanglongmon himself. It's almost like a heavenly blessing that says we _are_ meant to fight together. We've done it before. We can do it again."

Yaamon began to feel tears pricking at the corners of his eyes at the lecturing he was receiving from the others, but even with all of that, his state of depression was not broken so easily. He had spent the last many minutes listening to the sounds of destruction coming from outside after all, and had all that time to blame everything that was going on on himself.

"But… it's the duty of a family member to protect the others in any way he can," Yaamon protested. "That's why I ran I away from you after all and…"

"Impmon, stop," Ai and Mako both said at the same time.

"I'm not Impmon, I'm Yaamon," the In-training Digimon reminded them.

"No, you're Impmon," Ai shook her head. "And you'll always be Impmon to us. Never mind what you look like."

"Please come with us," Mako begged. "Be our partner again."

Yaamon was sorely tempted to do just that, but he sighed again and said, "Guys, I'm not going to be of any use to you anymore. GranDracmon took away my power to digivolve. I won't be able to reach Impmon stage, let alone Beelzemon. And even if I could become Beelzemon, I'd still be useless. I have no energy left."

"Then we'll do what the other Tames do," Ai insisted.

"Yeah!" Mako nodded. "We'll be the ones that make you stronger instead!"

"We tried that, didn't we?" Yaamon countered. "We've tried to figure out how to biomerge, but we've never been able to, so…"

"You know what I think?" Lilamon interrupted. "I might not be an expert on the bond between Tamer and Digimon, not having had a Tamer of my own, but I think I know why you never managed to biomerge."

"You do?" Yaamon blinked, as he and both the twins looked to the flower fairy with wide eyes. "How? I haven't been able to figure out any reason beyond the fact that it doesn't work with two Tamers."

"Well, there is that possibility, I suppose," Lilamon shrugged. "But I was thinking more along the lines of the fact that you already could digivolve to the Mega level when you rejoined them."

"Uh… what?" Yaamon frowned.

"Don't you see?" Lilamon asked. "You haven't ever really looked at the twins in the same mindset that the other Digimon have looked at their Tamers. With them, they always rely on one another for their strength. The Digimon gets its power from the human by its side, just as the human needs the Digimon to both protect it and fight alongside. This reliance upon one another was what allowed their bond to grow stronger and allow them to come together into a full fighting unit.

"But you, Yaamon. You've never thought of Ai and Mako like that. You loved them, sure, in the same way all the other Digimon loved their Tamers, but you always saw them as the ones that depended on you and not the other way around. That's why you ran away from them again too. The other Digimon would never do that. They would try and keep their Tamers out of danger, but they would always fight together. However, you always have relied on them. You've just never really accepted that fact."

Yaamon was stunned at Lilamon's words, his eyes widening like saucers as he stared towards the flower fairy Ultimate. He knew without a doubt that she was absolutely right even as the words came tumbling out of her mouth. He didn't even need time to consider them. He'd always been the one to instantly think about digivolving to protect the humans when they were in trouble. He'd never taken the time to treat them as his equals when it came to combat. He'd embraced the enough to allow Mako to bolster his power and gain his Blast Mode for the first time, but that was as far as it went.

They'd always been the defenceless little children.

This argument, more than anything else, was what finally broke through to Yaamon. Ai and Mako themselves hadn't viewed themselves as the defenceless little kids. Despite the odds, they had come for him all the same. They had not cowered at home, afraid to go out without their gun-toting protector. They had still come looking for him and had come even here, to the Dark Ocean, to find him and bring him home.

The words of the giant alligator deity, Deckerdramon, flashed up in Yaamon's mind yet again, and he realised that he had, at last come to the epiphany which Deckerdramon had told him he needed to find. The words of his friends had helped guide his way, but he had, at last, discovered the meaning for himself.

Deckerdramon had told him that he was full of strong love. But he had misinterpreted that as doing whatever it took to preserve the safety of the twins. And while that was an essence, an example, of strong love as Deckerdramon had told him, it was far from the whole thing. Strong love, as a whole concept, was both finding and working with your true friends and family. It was ensuring that you were not alone, and giving your strength to them, while allowing them to give their strength to you in return. It was giving them your heart and soul, you absolute trust, and forging the bonds between you and them.

All his life, Yaamon had been a loner. He had surrounded himself with a few friends in life, but he had never actually stuck close to them. He had always tried to rely on his own strength alone, both to break into the D-Reaper, and when he tried to get away from his friends in order to protect them.

But when you were alone, you were weak. That was the secret of being the Digimon of a Tamer, and vice versa. You were never supposed to be alone. You were always supposed to have at least one person by your side. But Yaamon had not thought that way. His desperation to keep the twins and the others safe had blinded him to the gateway of true strength.

And that true strength came from embracing your comrades with everything you had.

"Guys," Yaamon murmured, a trickle of water trailing from one eye and down his face. "You…"

Without warning, Ai and Mako's digivice exploded into light and caused everybody in the room to jump in surprise. Yaamon suddenly felt an influx of energy, and before he even knew what was happening, he was expanding and growing, sprouting limbs in a flash of white light as he grew a body and a tail as well. In a couple of moments, Impmon was standing there in the glass cylinder, with wide eyes.

"Impmon!" the twins cried at the same time, with joyous looks on their faces.

Impmon was stunned. He had actually done it. He had digivolved using the power his Tamers had given him. And he now longer felt as weak as a newborn. He felt power coursing through his body power that he had never felt in his Rookie form before. Indeed, his whole body was still glowing… almost as if it wasn't done yet. As was the D-Arc.

And then, a vicious grin appeared on Impmon's face and he stepped deliberately out of the cylinder and swept the twins into a massive bearhug, which they gladly returned. Impmon grinned over their shoulders at the other four occupants of the room, giving them a nod of thanks, to which they nodded in return, broad smiles on their own features.

"Teradalets," Impmon murmured as he stepped away from the twins. "Can you ever forgive me?"

"We don't have to," Ai shook her head.

"There was nothing to forgive," Mako agreed. "You were trying to protect us. You were just doing it wrong."

Impmon chuckled, as he grasped the D-Arc in his hand, both of the Tamers doing the same thing as they grinned into each other's faces. "Well, if that's the case," Impmon laughed. "I promise with all my heart and soul that I will not make the same mistake again. And this time, I will not break it. This time, when we fight, we shall fight together, right?"

"Yeah!" Ai and Mako nodded simultaneously, the light from the D-Arc spreading over themselves as well. Calumon felt a tingling feeling building up inside him, the Catalyst within him alerting him to what was about to happen, though even he would have guessed it without having to be forewarned.

"Let's do this!" Impmon cheered. "We'll give GranDracmon and Belphemon a lesson that they can't mess with us ever again!"

"You got it!" the twins yelled, pulling the D-Arc closer to their chests. "Biomerge activate!"

And this time, it worked. They burst into bright light that engulfed all three of them, and Impmon shouted three words that he had been waiting for months and months to shout. And now that he had finally fully accepted his Tamers, it had been made possible.

"**IMPMON BIOMERGE TO…"**

The other four smirked as the light from all three of them merged together and began to grow and expand upwards, taking on an extremely familiar shape. But when the light began to disperse several seconds later, they stared in disbelief at the Digimon before them. It looked very much like the Beelzemon Blast Mode they had fought beside, but there were a few altercations.

His jet-black wings swept out behind him like normal, and the red bandana was still tied around his left arm, but his torso was encased in armour, his chest covered by a large breastplate that gleamed in the fading light of the digivolution. His long clawed hands were also covered in a pair of gauntlets that shined like the silver they were and atop his head, in the same place his motorcycle helmet was supposed to be, there was different helmet, one that resembled something a medieval knight of old might wear. His three eyes blazed green out of the slits.

Perhaps the greatest change was the Berenjena was missing from his arm, and there were no guns strapped to his leg or back like normal. Instead, there was a long scabbard attached to his waist and in it was a sword with a long crossguard and a pommel-stone of deep black obsidian. The new being's hand closed around the hilt and unsheathed the blade, which flashed through the air as he brandished it and thrust it into the air, sleek, sharp and deadly.

It was a digivolution that none of them had ever seen before, but they quickly learned his name, because the three voices of Impmon, Ai and Mako roared out from the same mouth:-

"**FATEMON!"**

* * *

And _that_ people, is why I called this the Mega Arc. Not only did it include a lot of action, but it featured the appearance of ZeedGarurumon, and, finally the biomerging of Ai, Mako and Impmon.

Fatemon is not my own invention. He is the invention of my fellow fanfiction writer **Bookworm Gal**, and he has a appeared in my story now in response to a request made over a year ago where Bookworm Gal won the right to an Every 50 oneshot or a request for something in the main story in future, and she chose this. I have been dropping the occasional subtle hint that he was coming in the past, but now he is finally here.

**Bookworm Gal**, your patience has paid off and here is your creation at last in my story. You'll have to wait a little longer to see him in action, but I hope the build up to him and his arrival was more than satisfactory for you. I certainly did my best.

And to anybody who feels annoyed at the fact that I seem to have gotten rid of Beelzemon forever... patience. There are many surprises in store for the future still, if you follow me.

Please leave a review or PM and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The strike force of the Tenacious Ten has pulled out above Coruscant, and now several of them must sneak down to the surface of the planet while the rebel fleet engages the Empire's blockade for another distraction. However, a couple of the Tenacious Ten are going to remain above the atmosphere, and introduce one very big and very green can of whup-ass on the unsuspecting Empire.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 201 : The Final Frontier**


	201. The Final Frontier

Good news for now! It seems that the SOPA and PIPA bills have been postponed indefinitely. There's a chance that they'll be revived in February, but there's an even bigger chance that they'll never be resurrected at all. For now, at least, the site is going to endure, as will this story. It seems our work has paid off.

However, just in case the worst does come to the worst in the future, I have decided to put my e-mail address on my profile. If fanfiction is taken down somehow before my story is complete, anyone who wants to read the rest of it can send me an e-mail, which will provide me with _their_ e-mail addresses so I can post the rest of the chapters to them directly. I hope it doesn't come to that, so don't do it unless the site is taken down. Just store it somewhere on your computer just in case.

Thanks everyone. Now, for the Coruscant Arc to begin.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 201:- The Final Frontier**

* * *

The Tenacious Ten were not altogether sure what they wanted during the hyperspace journey to Coruscant. On the one hand, all of them felt like they should have stayed behind on Tython to help the others in defeating the Empire's army. On the other hand, they wanted to finally bring the Sith to justice, and the only way to do that was to head for Coruscant.

Even that decision left them in two minds. They all knew that they were heading into incredible danger on this mission. There was absolutely every chance that they could be killed, whether by a rogue blaster shot from another clone, a well-aimed attack from a Bounty Hunter or a lightsaber swipe from the evil people they were planning to battle against. To that end, they didn't want the hyperspace journey to end for a long time. They wanted to preserve what time they had together left, just in case they didn't have that time after the day was through.

But they also wanted it to be over quickly, just so that they could end this as quickly as possible and, hopefully, rise victorious. It was not going to be easy though, and they were all spending what time left bunched together in the hangar of the _Acclamator_-class cruiser beside Godzillo, sitting in silence and attempting to do nothing more than enjoy each other's company.

Even the usually restless Terriermon, Suzie and Ahsoka were calm and relaxed, despite the situation they all knew lay ahead of them. They merged their minds into their links and tried their best to find inner peace just through the sensation of the other nine minds making contact with their own. Their bond might well be critical in co-ordinating the upcoming skirmish, and they were doing their best to heighten it and feel each other's emotions and thought processes as if they were their own.

Each of them had different thoughts on their minds, and each of them could feel exactly what the others were thinking about. Rika was thinking back to the time they had battled against the D-Reaper long ago, replaying a moment much like this one when they had slashed the red card into their D-Arcs and were heading into the D-Reaper's globular mass to fight against it. Rika had promised to Renamon that that would have been their last battle. Boy, had she been wrong.

But what would this battle be? Would this be the last battle of one of them? Would the Tenacious Ten be reduced to the Noble Nine once more, or would the number sink even lower than that in the near future? It didn't bear thinking about. Any number less than double-digits just seemed so… wrong, now. Rika shuddered, and tried to think about something else instead.

Henry and Suzie were both thinking about the same thing – their friends and family back home on Earth. They hadn't seen their parents for over half a year, and they had yet to see any signs of a future where they might be reunited with them again. It was possible that they were never going to figure out a way back home. Suzie fought the urge to sniff at the thought of her mother and father and brother and sister never knowing what had happened to them, whether either of them lived or died in the coming hours.

Henry placed a hand on her shoulder and tried to steer her thoughts towards more pleasant memories of their time with their family, such as the time Terriermon had been brought home after he had freed himself and Renamon from the clutches of Goro. That had been a time where they were all at peace with one another, and Henry did his best to fixate Suzie's mind on it. After all, that was his job, to protect his sister physically and emotionally. But he knew that where they were going, Suzie was going to have to watch her own back. Henry had his own job to complete and she had hers.

The newest member of their group, Barriss, was thinking on what Renamon had told her back on Tython when the two of them had been training together. Renamon had told her that, despite her misgivings, Barriss was worthy of being a member of their group. She had told her that the Digi-Gnome had granted her access to their mind-link for a reason and that her wish had come from the heart, which was all she needed to fight alongside them.

But Barriss still wondered if that would be enough for her. She still considered herself the weak link of the group – the support that stepped in to help in an emergency and healed their wounds after the crisis was over, but when the combat actually started, what would she be then? She sighed as she tried to fight those thoughts away. She knew the others believed in her, and she also knew she'd have to believe in herself if she was going to be the team player she wanted to be. But the phenomenal impression the others had made on the Galaxy before she arrived still preyed on her mind. She had a lot to live up to.

Ahsoka was fingering her shoto as she thought about what was to come. The Togruta girl was the youngest of the four Jedi here, and while in the past she had been prone to overconfidence at times, she felt nothing but nervousness. She tried to hide it from the world sometimes under her brash personality, but she, like Barriss, had often been concerned that she wasn't good enough to be the Padawan of somebody like Anakin.

She had grown in confidence since then, and the firm acceptance granted against her by Anakin, Aayla and the others had helped to allay those doubts, but now she was heading right towards a planet where she knew the woman who hated her most in the entire Galaxy, Asajj Ventress, was waiting. She had been helpless in Ventress' clutches in the past, and had fought her twice before and lost. And there were more powerful than even her down there waiting for her.

Her nerves were beginning to peak. She had no idea how she'd fare in the lightsaber duels that were sure to come, but she was still just a Padawan, even if she was a member of the A-Team. The odds were not in her favour, and now she was beginning to wonder if someone older and stronger should have come in her place instead. She was still fourteen, and the whole universe's fate was resting on the shoulders of her and her friends. Tomorrow would mark the day she turned fifteen. But would Ahsoka be there to see it?

Terriermon and Renamon were both thinking along similar lines as well – they were using their strong link to share some of the best memories they had of their time together ever since they had become a mated couple, and were sharing them with the others as well, trying to lift everybody's spirits. Because that's what Terriermon always did, and Renamon was there to help him this time. The former was sitting in the latter's lap, and the fox had her arms wrapped around the bunny, pulling him close to her chest.

These two had been the initial founders of the mind-link, which had since developed into the complex and simply incredible display of bonds that the ten of them now shared between each other. It was because of the mind-link that they were all so close together and because of that, both the Digimon felt largely responsible for the others, even those who could usually take care of themselves.

They were also attempting to remind each other simply of how much they loved one another. With all the hectic activity that had been going on over the last few days, in preparation for the battle and for the attempt to restore the Republic coming up, neither of them had had much chance to give their feelings towards each other much thought. Now, with this momentary lull in the action and the planning, they were trying to refresh their bond before battle. Neither loved the other more than the other loved them. It was almost a perfect union.

Lopmon wasn't entirely sure what she was supposed to be thinking about right now. She, like Henry, was doing her job and attempting to reassure Suzie, but for some reason her mind kept wondering off on its own. As everyone focused on their feelings for each other and the bonds between them, as well as those they left behind, Lopmon found her thoughts continually focusing on one particular Digimon she had not seen for months.

The little brown bunny just couldn't fathom why she kept thinking of Impmon at this particular point in time. The purple Rookie Digimon and she seemed to have very little in common and yet at the prospect of going into battle and possibly losing more of her closest friends, her mind kept inexplicably turning to him. Granted, they were indeed close friends, as Ai and Mako had often hung around with Suzie, but that was no reason to be thinking of him now, was it? Impmon was probably safe and sound in Shinjuku Park right now, playing tag with Guilmon and Calumon.

And yet there he remained, continually looming forwards and backwards in her mind's eye. It was almost disconcerting.

Like everyone else, Aayla was dwelling on what lay ahead with trepidation, although not particularly for herself. As far as she was aware, she would have one of the easier jobs if everything went according to plan. It was the other three Jedi that were going to be thrown in at the deep end and be forced to infiltrate the lair of the Sith, also known as the Senate Building. Her heart ached at the prospect of splitting up, but if their plan was to succeed, that was exactly what they had to do.

Aayla considered herself to have gone through a lot of personal development ever since she had become friends with the Digimon. She had initially been a Jedi through and through, determined to stick to the rules of the Council and trying hard not to sway from the course. But the Digimon had changed that. They had changed so much and helped the Jedi in so many ways, and now they were about to do it again, possibly on a grander scale than ever before.

Aayla opened her eyes to survey the group around her for a moment. Each of them had left a mark on her life over the last half a year, and if any of them died today it would probably tear her apart inside. It would tear all of them apart. But she remained adamant that they had to face off against the Sith together. It was Anakin's destiny, but the others would all be there to support him and fight for his cause, no matter how dangerous things would get for them.

And Anakin himself, he was thinking on that particular destiny, and the words of wisdom and guidance that had been granted to him by Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Yoda, Aayla, Renamon, Ahsoka… heck, everybody… More was weighing on his shoulders than anybody else at the moment and it was not easy to even think straight under the massive amounts of pressure he was currently feeling.

Everyone might have their own parts in their upcoming plan, but, out of all of them, Anakin was the one who was going to have to face off against Darth Sidious. He was the one who was going to have to confront Palpatine, and strike the final blow that would end the reign of tyranny the Sith had created, hopefully forever this time, bringing balance to the Force in the process. While the others had their own objectives, the others could provide back-up in something went wrong. But him… if he failed, then they all failed. Simple as that.

Even the Digimon, creatures of immense power, would not be able to defeat Palpatine. There was every chance that if they ascended to their higher forms, they could blow the Sith Lord to pieces in moments, but their problem always remained the same – collateral damage. The Sith had surrounded himself with dozens of innocent Senators. One Arm Bomber gone wrong from someone like Antylamon could immediately kill dozens of people, and that was something they could not allow.

No. According to the prophecy, Anakin was the one who was supposed to do this. He _was_ the Chosen One. But even with a prophecy behind him, Anakin was uncertain. He had never fought Palpatine before, never tested his skills against him. Anakin literally had no idea what the future held for him. But… at least the others were there with him and in his opinion, he could not ask for a better support team.

While the Tenacious Ten dwelt on their own specific worries and memories, General Grievous lurked nearby. He stood in the shadows, trying to remain as out of sight as possible. He wanted to keep his distance from the other occupants of the hanger. He wasn't one of them after all. And he knew that he never would be. Not after the antagonism they had had towards each other for months.

Unlike the Tenacious Ten though, all Grievous could feel was anticipation. He had struggled for so long to be rid of those who he had thought engineered his shuttle crash, only to find it wasn't them at all. Now, however, he was being pointed in the right direction, and no matter how it ended, it ended today. Either he would finally have his vengeance, or he would die with pride and for the honour of the Kaleesh, striking back against those who had used their poverty to lure him to the side of evil.

No matter how it ended for Grievous, it would be a good ending. At least in his eyes.

The rest of the hangar stood around, not particular sure what to do with themselves. For Sugi and her gang of Bounty Hunters, the upcoming prospect was actually something of a thrill. How many other people could claim that they had been picked to help out in the finale of the age-long war between the Jedi and the Sith. Answer: not many. As Bounty Hunters, the four of them craved adventure and excitement after all. And that was almost definitely what they were going to get.

As for Godzillo… well, the feeling was much the same really. He could finally achieve his revenge on the pale man who had tried to kill him. That was all that mattered.

* * *

Soon enough, the time eventually came, when Admiral Yularen's voice began to echo out of Anakin's comlink. "General Skywalker!" he reported. "We are about to pull out hyperspace above Coruscant. I suggest that you all get in position and prepare to set off the moment that happens."

"We're on it, Admiral," Anakin replied, clambering to his feet. "And… just so you know… it was an honour to have you by my side in the struggle against evil. I want you to know that… just in case something happens today that results in either one of us not returning."

Yularen cleared his throat in apparent embarrassment. "Yes, General. I could say the same to you. Ahem, yes… we shall arrive over Coruscant in approximately two minutes."

Anakin nodded and signed off. Aayla turned around to face Henry and Terriermon. "Well, you guys better get to your places then, right?"

"Yeah," Henry nodded. "I suppose so."

"Be careful, Henry," Suzie urged.

"Isn't he always?" Renamon chuckled. "It's Terriermon that I'm more worried about."

"Oh, momentai," Terriermon grinned. "We'll be alright. All of us. I absolutely guarantee it."

"If you say so," Renamon smiled sadly, and she pulled Terriermon close and gave him on final peck on the lips. "Just don't do anything _overly_ reckless, okay?"

"Sure thing… Rena," Terriermon winked up at her.

Henry himself was immediately pulled into a bearhug by Rika. He yelped at the sudden movement, but he slowly returned the hug. As boyfriend and girlfriend relationships went, the one between Henry and Rika was not as pronounced as others. They rarely kissed one another, both thinking themselves a bit too young still to be considering things like that, but Rika apparently deemed this occasion enough to place her lips against Henry's for a few seconds, before she stepped backwards and said, "You two watch out for each other, okay?"

"And you _all_ watch out for each other," Henry nodded. "May the Force or luck or whatever you like be with you all!" he called over his shoulder as he and Terriermon dashed towards the door that led out of the hangar.

As the others watched them go, Grievous, from where he was now standing on the ramp, growled and said, "If I might interrupt, but are we not supposed to be getting ready to move out?"

"Yes, of course," Renamon nodded and bounded over the top of Grievous and into the ship. As the rest of the group hurried up the ramp and disappeared, the fox peered back around the door and gave Godzillo a thumbs up, eliciting a growl and a nod in response, before the ramp rose and the door shut, sealing them inside the stealth ship.

* * *

When the ship's eventually did pull out of hyperspace and Admiral Tarkin of the Empire made the call to Palpatine that elicited a cry of rage from the Emperor, the stealth ship was already in motion, lifting slowly off from the floor of the hangar and swerving around to point towards the hangar doors, which began to slide aside as soon as ship had stopped moving.

Inside, Anakin and Aayla were up at the front in the two pilot seats, as before. Strangely enough, Grievous had called the place immediately behind them and he was standing with one skeletal hand on either of the two seats and glaring out of the window, while Barriss and Ahsoka tried to to squeeze in next to him to see what was going on inside.

"Shields fully functional, Anakin," Aayla reported from her own seat. "And the cloaking device is primed and ready for action."

"Then cloak us immediately," Anakin instructed. "We don't want the enemy to get even a glimpse of us before we exit this cockpit."

"Got it," Aayla nodded, and her hands flew over the buttons in front of her with practiced ease. Nothing appeared to happen to the occupants of the ship except a whirring noise, but outside, Godzillo's eyes actually widened in surprise when the ship seemed to vanish directly in front of him. He could still smell it, of course, but it had been completely wiped from his vision.

"And we're on our way," Anakin nodded. "Admiral Yularen, do you read me?"

"Yes, General. Loud and clear."

"Make your approach towards the Empire's blockade," Anakin ordered him. "But draw it out for as long as you can. Make it look slow and deliberate, so that they think you're analysing their weaknesses before you attack. If fact, why don't you go ahead and actually do that. Just hold off attacking until we've reached a safe distance. Terriermon will tell you when we've gotten past the blockade."

"As you command, General Skywalker," the Admiral replied. "Good hunting, sir."

"Thanks, Admiral," Anakin nodded and he slowly moved the ship out of the hangar doors, which began to slide shut behind it once it had exited. Then the ship slowly and invisibly turned around and began to make its way towards the Empire blockade as a reasonably pace, neither slow nor fast.

* * *

Behind them, the rebel cruisers began to fan out, forming a long line in an attempt to match the blockade in front of them, with the _Intrepid_ and the _Resolute_ right at the forefront. There were a massive number of vessels on either side. It was possibly one of the strongest blockades which the clones had ever formed over Coruscant, but equally, the additional cruisers from various Jedi Masters and their troops and the extas they had acquired on Kamino made things almost evenly matched for the rebels.

Yularen scrutinised the enemy blockade as the ships moved solely forward. There didn't appear to be any strong weaknesses in the defence. The person in charge very clearly knew what they were doing. The enemy ships were holding their ground for the moment, doing their job of maintaining a blockade and possibly trying to analyse weaknesses in the rebel convoy as well.

The _Acclamator_ cruiser that they had brought with them was moved to the back of their fleet and well out of firing range. The Zillo Beast contained inside its hangar might be almost indestructible, but if the ship was damaged enough for a hole to appear in the hangar, it would be more than susceptible to a loss of air, and that was something they had no intention of risking.

"Deploy the fighters," Yularen instructed. "But have them waiting on stand by and form up into ranks. We do not want to engage the enemy just yet."

A minute or so later and dozens and dozens of ARC-170 fighters and Y-wing bombers began to pour out of the hangars and form up into large Vs above or just before the cruisers. The clone leading the squadron of fighters from out of the _Resolute_ was called Swoop, one of the two survivors of the air attack on Ryloth that had been Ahsoka's first attempt at leading a space battle.

"Blue Squadron," he called into his comlink. "Call in."

"Blue two, standing by," the clone to his immediate left replied – the other survivor of that battle known as Kickback.

"Blue three, standing by," the next one announced.

"Blue four, standing by."

"Blue five, standing by."

"Blue six, standing by."

"Blue seven, standing by."

And so on and so on down the line of all twelve fighter units in the squadron. All across the rebel line, this same scenario was being carried out by every single clone, each of them gearing up and getting ready to fight against their own brothers for the first time. None of them were keen to get going, but they all knew that the other rebel clones were already fighting the Empire clones back on Tython, so they too would have to play their part here.

* * *

The stealth ship was making progress, and was moving past the halfway point between the two opposing sides. Anakin had a confident expression as he piloted the ship forwards, having seen this ship in action before and knowing just how well it worked, but the rest of the occupants could barely restrain themselves from holding their breath as they watched the cruisers they were heading towards.

Some of them were expecting the cannons and turrets on the cruisers to swivel around at any moment and fire upon the ship. It might have shields but it was still a very fragile vessel and could probably be torn apart with ease if something did manage to pound into its side.

However, that didn't actually happen, and Anakin slowly closed the space between them, while the rebel ships behind them also moved forwards at an incredibly slow pace, waiting for the signal to move in closer.

Eventually, the stealth ship was moving along directly between two massive _Venator_-class cruisers, its pointed nose leading the way forward as it made for the planet below. Ahsoka found herself breaking the silence by saying, "Are you sure we need to get that close to the enemy ships, Master?"

"Don't worry, Snips. I got this," Anakin assured her. "I'm not getting too close and they don't seem to be able to detect us after all. Evidently this stealth technology works extremely well, and they don't have anything that can penetrate through it. That's the problem with state-of-the-art technology," he chuckled. "They usually develop the counter _afterwards_. And there are so few of these that they probably haven't thought it to be that important."

"Good to hear," Lopmon murmured.

"This is surreal," Barriss whispered, as she watched the giant cannons which should be shooting at them drift silently by, hanging limp and unconcerned by their presence. "They really can't see us. I don't think I've been this close to an enemy ship while it was occupied."

"We were indeed fortunate to have this ship in our possession," Aayla nodded. "We're almost clear."

"Why are we moving so slowly?" Grievous snarled. "It is quite plain to see that they cannot detect us so why are you piloting so slowly, Skywalker. Let us get down into the atmosphere and start the battling!"

"Patience, Grievous," Aayla looked up at him. "Remember what I told you about trying to curb your anger. It might be a good thing for you to have in battle if you aren't a Jedi like we are but if you have too much it can also spur you into rash decisions. Be calm. We don't know if they can detect the increased output from our engines if we increase our speed."

"I will remind you, Secura," Grievous' eyes narrowed, "That I do what I please later on. I will stick to the plan that you have concocted, but if I wish to be angry then I will be! Got it!"

"Sorry," Aayla replied. "I was only trying to give you some friendly advice, not an order."

"She was also trying to look out for you, Grievous," Renamon added. "After all, that is what allies do with one another, or that's what they're supposed to do, though you probably wouldn't be all that used to that considering the company you used to keep…"

"I was a warlord of the Kaleesh!" Grievous snapped. "We were a proud race. I know about sticking by your allies, Digimon!"

"Good," Renamon smirked. "Nice to know."

Grievous snorted in annoyance, causing Artoo to back away from him with a couple of jittering whistles, Seripas perched atop the astromech's head. The passengers of the stealth ship then became silent once more as Anakin moved the ship around the back of the flagship of the Imperial blockade, situating it behind its engines and effectively shielding their vessel from any incoming fire from their own ships as they continued to make their way towards the surface.

"Well, we're clear," Barriss observed.

"Without so much as a shot fired," Lopmon chuckled.

"And I'm going to guess that Terriermon is currently relaying that news to Admiral Yularen and the rest of the fleet?" Aayla turned to look back towards Renamon.

"You need to guess?" Renamon raised a brow.

* * *

"Admiral," Terriermon's voice came through the comlink on the bridge of the _Resolute_. "They've done it. They've got past the blockade and they're moving down towards the planet now. I think we can begin the first diversion."

"Very well," nodded Yularen. "Deploy."

"All over it, Admiral," Henry replied.

* * *

Over on the other side of the two fleets, Admiral Tarkin was also analysing the weaknesses that might be present in the enemy strike force. Much like Yularen, Tarkin was forced to admit that there were very little potential weaknesses in the opposing team, clearly demonstrating that they knew exactly what they were doing. When he spotted the rebel fleet launching their fighters but holding position, Tarkin had instructed their own fighters to do the same.

And now it was a waiting game. One of the most important rules in blockading a planet was that you did not pre-empt an attack. You waited for _them_ to make the first move, and that gave you a chance to retaliate and to strike back at them instead.

A hologram of Emperor Palpatine was standing next to Tarkin on the bridge, glaring out at the fleet which was still progressing slowly towards us. "It seems…" he mused, a scowl of fury on his face. "That we have been played, Admiral Tarkin. The war on Tython seems to have been a mere diversion only. The Jedi have evidently decided to go ahead with their assassination attempt on me while they think the majority of our clone army is offworld fighting against their comrades."

"I assure you, my lord, that will not happen," Tarkin shook his head. "If any of them wish to assassinate you, then they will have to get past the blockade, and in sufficient numbers to penetrate through your impressive security. However, I plan on letting none of them pass, let alone enough of them to do that."

"You must take down every single one of those ships, Admiral Tarkin," Palpatine growled, his face twisted and his gnarled hands clenched in fury. "Make sure to target the flagship known as the _Intrepid_ with extra firepower. Aayla Secura herself might be dead, but I will take a great deal of pleasure in watching her ship go down, as I was unable to watch the moment of her actual demise."

"As you command," Tarkin nodded. "All the pieces are in place, your Excellency. When they make their move, we shall retaliate with everything we have in our arsenal, and I believe it is safe to assume that we have more at our disposal than they do. They will be crushed beneath us."

"I have underestimated the Jedi several times myself today, Tarkin," Palpatine reminded him. "It would not do to underestimate them again. They may have a few surprises of their own in store for us."

"Then we shall be ready for anything," Tarkin replied.

"Sir," one of the clones said from his station at one of the monitors. "Something has just jettisoned from the _Acclamator_-class cruiser."

"What is it?" Tarkin asked quickly.

"It… appears to be an escape pod, sir," the clone replied.

Tarkin smirked. "You see, my lord. Already some of them see the strength of our force and decide that quitting the battle will give them a better chance of survival."

"No, sir," the clone replied. "The pod seems to be turning around and flying towards the front lines."

"What?" Tarkin frowned in confusion, stepping closer to the window and peering out into space. Sure enough, he could see the little cylindrical pod jetting slowly past the lines of the Y-wing and ARC-170 fighters that were crowded in front of the rebel fleet, moving itself slowly between the _Resolute_ and the _Intrepid_ and pushing forwards until it was at the very front, hovering innocently in the vacuum of space.

Tarkin had to admit that this time he was stumped. He could only guess that this was some sort of bizarre malfunction, because it looked like the escape pod was getting into position to lead the charge into battle. But escape pods had no weaponry, no shields, no nothing that might be able to give them protection or a fighting chance in a battle situation. So what in the Galaxy were the Jedi playing at with this if it wasn't a malfunction?

"Hold the line," Tarkin instructed. "Remember to let them make the first move."

"Yes, sir," the clones responded, each of them thinking similar thoughts as they stared out towards the distant escape pod.

* * *

And inside that escape pod, Terriermon smirked as he peered out the window. Henry was standing right behind him, a more serious expression on his own face at the thought of what they were about to do.

"I hope this works," he murmured.

"Of course it'll work, Henry," Terriermon looked up at him. "You're the one who came up with this idea anyway. Momentai."

"I just hope I got the science right, is all," Henry added.

"Well then, we should find out, shouldn't we?" Terriermon chuckled. "Come on, Henry. We've been through a lot by doing this, haven't we? We took on Zhuqiaomon, the D-Reaper, Ogudomon. What's one measly Imperial space blockade, right?"

Henry laughed. "Sometimes, Terriermon, I wonder where I would be without you."

"Sitting at home and mindlessly playing the Digimon card game still, no doubt," Terriermon chuckled.

"Oh shut up," the Tamer snorted as he pressed his D-Arc into his chest and held out his hand. Terriermon smirked and lifted one ear, placing it in Henry's grip. "Well, I suppose we should just do it then."

"Yep," Terriermon nodded. "Let's introduce ourselves to Palpatine."

"Got it. Biomerge activate!"

"**TERRIERMON BIOMERGE TO…"**

The little escape pod didn't stand a chance. As Henry and Terriermon merged together and grew at an alarming rate, their expanding body pressed up against the walls of the escape pods and tore it to shreds from within, causing some of the nearest fighters to have to swerve out of the way to avoid the flying debris. For a few startling moments the two of them were robbed of air, but as they ascended into their highest form, air became unnecessary and they settled down quickly.

After all, machines didn't need to breathe, did they? Even if they _were_ alive.

Tarkin watched in shock, amazement and a good deal of horror as they escape pod exploded outwards and a mass of white light as bright as any star blazed outwards. The hologram of Palpatine also had widened eyes, as for the first time in quite a while, he was, quite literally, dumbstruck.

And when the light began to fade to reveal what had been inside, both of them reeled back in astonishment. Massive green arms unfolded from a broad and equally green chest, the dog-like head complete with a horn rising upwards and the eyes opening up to glare out towards the Imperial blockade. Huge green legs extended downwards as the hands clenched into fists, the gatling guns around the wrists whirring in readiness, and the two gigantic, yellow-faced shoulder mounted cannons tilting downwards ready for action.

Many of the clones on the side of the rebels were just as dumbfounded as the Imperial ones. Many of them had not had the privilege of working alongside a Digimon until now, and most of those that had had not seen them going up to this stage of digivolution.

"**MEGAGARGOMON!"**

The Mega-level Digimon bashed both of his colossal fists together for a moment as he floated in the air without even having to use his back rockets. He looked down at himself briefly, checking for any side effects of being outside of an atmosphere but there were none. A living machine he may be, but just as Parallelmon had been unable to put him into a trance, so too did the vacuum of space fail to have an effect on him.

They said that space was the final frontier. And now, for the first time ever, except for that little stunt where Rapidmon had launched himself into space to save Stass Allie, a Digimon had entered that final frontier.

"Oh wow," Terriermon laughed out loud. "This is so epic! Why in the omniverse did we not do this sooner?"

"Just in case there were any holocams on the enemy cruisers that could have sent information on us to the enemy before we got the chance to destroy it?" Henry pointed out.

"Oh yeah," Terriermon snorted. "But now, we don't care anymore if Palpatine sees us. I guess the Secret of the 327th is finally over, even if only third of it has been revealed so far, huh?"

"Yep, that about sums it up," Henry laughed. "Shall we go?"

"We shall!"

MegaGargomon activated his jets and began to spur himself forwards, heading straight towards the nearest of the Imperial cruisers, a hard look in his eyes as he prepared himself for battle.

Tarkin managed to smash himself out of his stupor long enough to shout, "All batteries, open fire! Bring that thing down, whatever it takes! Do not let it get close to us!"

The clones all hurried to obey and immediately swivelled the cannon turrets around on all the nearest cruisers, opening fire with every blue laser gun in their arsenal as wave upon wave of firepower pounded straight towards MegaGargomon. The Digimon's eyes narrowed further as it swept right into the path of the laser storm and met it head-on.

Laser after laser pounded into the giant, green Digimon. Tarkin smirked as he beheld the giant robot getting swamped by the Empire's ammunition. But that smirk turned to a balk when he saw MegaGargomon was powering straight through the lasers as if they were having absolutely no effect on his body. His metal hide remained and practically unblemished as he swept through the lasers as if they weren't even there.

His armour might not be Chrome-Digizoid, but it was pretty damn tough all the same.

Tarkin was almost too dumbfounded to do anything about it for several moments, and during that time, several of the fighter squadrons of ARC-170 fighters decided to act and swept around to face MegaGargomon, shooting towards him adding their own laser-fire to the attacking, combined with many of them throwing a bunch of missiles straight towards the giant robot, whistling as they moved across the space between them. While MegaGargomon ignored the lasers, he did react to the missiles – he twisted around with a surprising turn of speed and swept up one thick, armoured leg, which ploughed into the majority of the missiles with one giant sweep kick.

The missiles obviously exploded on contact, but MegaGargomon seemed to ignore any damage done to his body and flipped back around, raising his hands and clenching his fists. The gatling guns immediately began to open fire, sending a laser storm of his own back towards them that was almost as large as the one the cruisers had been sending at him. The fighters immediately scattered, but at least two dozen of them were caught in the blasts and exploded.

"You're going to have to come up with something a lot better than that to beat us," MegaGargomon murmured, more to himself, as he moved his arms out in opposite directions in pursuit of the fighters, slamming several more across the back and sending them spiralling downwards, while lasers from the cruisers continued to crash into his chest with no apparent result.

The fighters quickly tried to regroup and move in to try a second strike on MegaGargomon from either the sides or the back, but before they got the chance another surprise suddenly swept in from the rebel fleet. Even though none of them had formed up in front of the cruisers, the area was suddenly swarming with Vulture Droids that shot straight past the other rebels ships to join MegaGargomon at the front.

The Empire ships were taken completely by surprise, and many of them were torn apart from the flashing rivers of red that burst from the cannons of the Vulture Droids. The sleek black droids spiralled past their ranks and began to divide outwards and seek out any target they could, sticking close behind it to pound against it with their guns. Unlike the clones, the Vulture Droids had absolutely no sense of co-ordination and they flew all over the place and blasted at anything they recognised as an enemy, creating a scene of chaos almost from the beginning.

The sheer number of them threw the Empire clones of pace and many more of them fell before they managed to recuperate enough to try and return fire. Many of the vulture droids were sent spiralling downwards themselves and sending up plumes of smoke behind them, but everything seemed to degenerate from there into something like an aerial broil, as the droids paired up in pursuit of individual clone fighters.

Such was the ferocity, suddenness and the randomness of the attack of the Vulture Droids that the first wave of clone fighters broke extraordinarily quickly and they began to flee back towards the cruisers with the Vultures in hot pursuit.

MegaGargomon himself was freed up from having to deal with the fighters himself under the attack and he quickly went into motion against the cruisers, shooting upwards on his rockets and clearing the laser fire still trying to wear him down. The turrets of the cruisers swivelled up to try and follow him, but the crew of the Imperial ships watched in stunned horror as hatches began to open up all across MegaGargomon's body, including legs, arms, chest, head, fingers and shoulder cannons.

"Let's see how they like this!" MegaGargomon cried. **"MEGA BARRAGE!"**

The huge multitude of missiles that exploded out of MegaGargomon's body whistled downwards towards the Empire cruisers, weaving in and out of the laser fire as if each and every one of them could detect if they were about to hit something and whether or not it was what they were supposed to hit. They began to separate and spread out across a line of cruisers rather than focusing on just one.

The first missiles to arrive hit the shields and exploded against them without harming the ship, but so powerful were the explosions that they tore through the shields and cleared the way for the next wave of missiles to streak into the gaps they had created and impact on the hull of the ship, ripping massive holes in each one. Several of them whooshed around the back of one ship and struck against its engines, tearing them asunder with tumultuous explosions. Several more targeted the bridge of another cruiser and blasted through its protective shielding, blasting into the control room and vaporising it under their impressive firepower.

And even then, they still weren't done. The final wave paired off and began to assist the Vulture Droids against the enemy fighters, locking on to a specific fighter and pursuing it across the battlezone no matter how much the fighter tried to dodge and smacking into the back of them, practically reducing the ship to nothing but a flaming ball of wreckage that began to fall towards Coruscant far below.

There was stunned silence for several seconds, as clones on both sides witnessed the incredible power that had come from just one attack from the Mega-level Digimon. Never had they seen such artillery strength before, and the battle had barely even begun. Tarkin stood almost frozen on the bridge of his ship, staring at the one a few places across from him that had lost its own bridge several moments before.

One thought filled his head – _That could have been me._

And then MegaGargomon fell upon the blockade like many, many tons of pure awesomeness that he was. One of the damaged cruisers found out just how heavy he was because he slammed down onto its main body with both feet and immediately catapulted the back end of the giant cruiser upwards as it threatened to flip over completely.

MegaGargomon lashed out and grabbed the bridge in both hand as it flipped towards him and heaved, ripping the metal around the base of the bridge to shreds and tearing the entire structure free of its moorings. He tossed it over his shoulder and immediately grabbed what remained of the ship in in his hands.

With one gargantuan lurch, the giant robotic Digimon hurled the remains of the cruiser across the blockade, where it slammed right into another nose first, stabbing into it like one gigantic spearhead causing both of them to explode into one giant fireball that surged out in all directions as the fuel within both the cruisers ignited in a fiery inferno. MegaGargomon was carried backwards by the blast and his back slammed into another cruiser right behind him.

He immediately whirled around and pounded his fist into the cruiser and sent it tipping outwards and then rocketed back upwards again as the cruisers hurriedly tried to return fire against him. Caught in the middle of a flood of giant bolts, MegaGargomon fired himself backwards and out of the line once again, raising his gatling guns and raking a line of holes across one large section in the front of one of the cruisers and blow out large sections of its hangar, his fingertips opening up and sending long energy shots spiralling out towards the base of its bridge, blowing chunks out of its surface and wiring and causing a chain reaction of explosions that tore across the ship.

This time, MegaGargomon did the opposite to before and dropped downwards, moving until he was down underneath the cruisers, where their guns would have much less effect as many of them would be unable to reach him. A hard looked entered his eyes as the extensions on either side of his head lengthened and the backs of his shoulders opened, allowing smoke to spew out of the back as his missiles charged upwards.

"**GARGO MISSILES!"** he hollered, ignoring the lasers trying to penetrate his armour, and his two massive shoulder missiles shot straight out of their sockets. The faces on them remained grim instead of smiling as they usually did, and they streaked upwards, leaving a long trail of smoke behind them as they tore across space.

Many of the people in the cruisers had no idea what was happening until it was too late. The sheer power of the missiles broke through any remnants of shielding that were left on the ship's underside as each of them slammed into two vessels that were floating side by side, impacted dead in the centre of their undersides. The cruisers were immediately split almost in half by the explosions that followed, their nose ends separating from their back ends as their middles were consumed in the tumultuous blasts.

MegaGargomon swiftly powered upwards, his rockets blasting to their full capacity to send him hurtling back towards the cruisers. He aimed himself at another cruiser and pulled back his fist. The Gatling gun whirred as it prepared for action and then the Mega flung his fist forward in a full blown Power Pummel that crashed into the bottom of the ship and punched straight through the hull and all the way through to the other side. And MegaGargomon continued, powering straight through the cruiser and coming out the other side as its main body was ripped to shreds.

He swiftly turned around, almost on a penny, and brought his fist slamming back down into the top of the ship's bridge from above and flattened it to a pulp almost immediately. In the same motion, he whirled back up and as his cannon sockets reformed another pair of missiles, the faces retracted to reveal more sockets within and sent out another stream of missiles to the adjacent cruiser, hammering into it from the side and obliterating its hangar in mere moments. A couple of the missiles actually went straight through and shot out the other side to impact on the next cruiser along instead.

MegaGargomon seemed to be even faster than normal, but that was hardly a surprise. Normally his greatest hindrance in battle was his size and weight, meaning that while he could move at relative speed, and was reasonably manoeuvrable, he was still slowed down by the burden of his metallic armour and the pull of gravity.

But, here in space, gravity had much less of an impact. MegaGargomon was, like pretty much everything else, weightless, meaning her was faster, smoother and more deadly than ever before, and the Empire ships were definitely feeling it.

The Mega Digimon looked up as he beheld several Imperial Y-wings shooting towards him from the right. He caught several of their laser blasts on his chest without injury and his forehead opened up to eject a pair of giant machine-gun-like weapons which began blasting to tear the Y-wings from the sky. A couple of them managed to swerve past him and released a couple of bombs down towards him as they passed, but MegaGargomon jetted forwards and avoided them with relative ease, turning around to finish the job.

That was when he was bombarded by the other group of Y-wings that had been closing in behind him and the top half of his body was caught in one big blast that concealed him from view in the smoke. The Y-wings pulled away, glancing behind them to see if they had made any impact on the Digital Destroyer.

The fact that the sides of his legs slid outwards and ejected several missiles in their direction seemed to answer their question for them. They scattered to avoid the incoming barrage, but the missiles singled out each one and homed in on them pursuing them across space with extreme determination. Some of the Y-wings attempted fancy moves to try and avoid the gaining missiles but it was all for nought and they were struck from behind, their engines ripped off and their reactors instantly exploding.

MegaGargomon emerged from the smoke like a seven-story terminator. His armour was no more than a little dented across the top by the blasts of the Y-wings and he jetted upwards to clear the lasers still trying to pound into him and quickly powered downwards once again, swooping behind one of the cruisers and grabbing an engine in one hand, ripping it free of the ship and tearing it loose to throw it over to where a couple of ARC-170 fighters were flying and blowing them up before they could dodge the collision.

He then whipped around to deliver a thunderous kick towards the enemy cruiser that actually sent it spinning and then threw a well-aimed punch into its nose that biffed it upwards to leave its underside exposed. MegaGargomon swooped backwards and offloaded another Gargo Missile attack right into the bottom of the ship and shredded it in the double blast, tossing pieces of the ship out in all directions.

MegaGargomon powered through the wreckage and seized a passing ARC-170 before it could escape, crushing it like a tin can in his metallic hand, and he was just about to put some more pounding into the next set of cruisers when Renamon's voice broke into the minds of both the occupants of the robotic body.

_Guys!_ She cried. _Slow down, the both of you! Don't get too carried away with what you're doing? Don't forget that you guys are meant to be providing another distraction until the rest of us have got into position and our plan is well underway. At the rate you're going, you'll destroy the entire blockade before we're in position._

From within the Digi-Core, Henry shook his head. _She's right_, he nodded. _Let's dial it back a little bit, Terriermon. We do have to keep the attention of Palpatine for a while longer yet, after all._

_Gotcha,_ Terriermon replied, and MegaGargomon started moving once more, ignoring the lasers that were crashing into the backs of his legs as he swept back towards the action where the Empire's ARC-170 fighters were duking it out with the Vulture Droids.

* * *

The droids were gradually beginning to get overwhelmed. There hadn't been that many of them at the factory when the droid forces had been recruited and while their initial strike had been exactly what the rebels had needed, now they were beginning to get forced backwards as the 170s rallied and began to regroup, launching co-ordinated attacks against the droids.

So the droids began to take things to the next level and started going kamikaze. One clone aiming to shoot a Vulture droid was shocked when the Vulture shot straight into his incoming lasers and had its head blown off in the process, but its body began to spiral out of control and slammed into the front of his craft and blew it to pieces.

That's all the Vulture Droids really were. They were cannon fodder that was merely designed to try overwhelming the enemy for as long as they could and they always had been. It seemed a little cruel, but the Vultures didn't care. Their programming didn't allow them to care.

And so now they were committing mechanical suicide in order to thin the numbers of the Empire's fighters.

MegaGargomon ploughed straight into the brawl, ARC-170s that didn't get out of his way quickly enough impacting against his huge torso and disappearing in the explosions that followed. MegaGargomon span around and launched another group of missiles from out of his chest, to take out a large number of other fighters and his arms swinging upwards to smash several others to wreckage with his powerful uppercuts, swinging himself up and over into a flip that brought his legs into action as well to catch a few more.

The Vulture droids swarmed around him and lanced out towards the fighters to continue with their suicidal approach to the battling, but their work was just about done, because as MegaGargomon backed away to allow himself to regroup and plan his next attack on the blockade, the rebels own fighters began to come into play. And they were still at full strength, while the forces of the Empire had already been severely reduced by the Mega Digimon and the surprise attack of the droids.

Swoop led Blue Squadron in a co-ordinated charge forwards that featured a line of fighters pouring lasers into the confused Imperial craft. Lines of blue death screamed across space to take out at least half a dozen enemy ships per squadron. Swoop slammed his thumb down on the firing button, twirling his fighter around as a laser slewed past his wing and returned fire, sending a laser crashing into the cockpit of one of the enemy's ships, breaking it open and flinging the pilot out into space.

All along the line, the fighter squadrons broke through the Empire's ranks and shot towards the cruisers that MegaGargomon had not yet completely wrecked, of which there was still a large number. As the cruisers turned and began to fire on the fighters, bringing several of them down in the process, they quickly paired off and swooped upwards and over, back the way they had come, re-focusing their efforts on the fighters before they could regroup instead.

It was the next wave that the cruisers had to worry about, because lines of bombers swooped in next, shooting through the gaps that the fighters had punched through and past the opposing fighters, tightening their formation as they also shot towards the cruisers. The clone pilots were skilled, but many of them still fell as their ships were mercilessly slammed by Empire turret lasers, but the majority of them slipped through the flak and stormed over the top of the cruisers, unleashing their bombs in almost one continuous strike like a Mexican wave from one side of the blockade to the other.

The cruisers that remained were devastated by the bombers' attacks, their already weakened shields no match for the ammunition being tossed at them. Corridors and hallways were blown open and fuel cells ignited under the blasts, explosions rocking down the passages and fires springing up in the hangar.

The occupants of the ships were thrown off their feet, many of them crashing into walls, and many more being pulled out into space from the holes that had just been created thanks to the bombers' efforts. In his flagship, Admiral Tarkin steadied himself on the holotable and quickly stepped up to watch in horror as his fighters continued to be decimated outside.

The rebel's own ARC-170s swept upwards from below. Swoop called to the rest of Blue Squadron, "Pick your targets, men, and prepare to unleash your missiles."

"They'll feel this," Kickback muttered as he selected a fighter above him and locked on to it with his targeting system.

"Fire!" Swoop shouted, and the fighters let off a stream of missiles that lanced up to the attack and assailed their targets from the unexpected angle. Some of them turned around to try and fire lasers in retaliation but the rebel ships separated and scattered across space and the missiles quickly ended the attempt to strike back. Others tried to flee, spinning wildly in mad attempts to throw the missiles off, and some of them did indeed manage to escape by making the missiles crash into each other or something else, but most of them were not that lucky.

Several of the surviving Empire's bombers split off from the main pack and shot straight towards the rebel cruisers in an retaliatory attempt to do some damage to them in return – as of yet, none of the rebel cruisers had taken any damage whatsoever. But the bombers' efforts were in vain, because MegaGargomon was already there waiting for them. The sight of his body opening up to prepare another Mega Barrage caused many a pilot to panic and veer away in an escape attempt but they were already doomed.

MegaGargomon's attack blasted outwards and shot out to intercept well over thirty Y-wings simultaneously. Those still directly in front of the giant mecha Digimon were actually fortunate enough to be spared the brunt of the attack, but only because MegaGargomon then launched himself forwards to deal with them personally, gatling gun and finger missiles blazing. Five of them were taken out this way and further two were caught with a giant sweeping kick from the huge Digimon.

The final two managed to get passed the Digimon and shot straight towards the _Intrepid_, but MegaGargomon's leg sockets opened up and the missile launchers contained within swivelled around to fire more shots out behind him without even looking. The missiles homed in on the Y-wings were taken out within moments.

* * *

Tarkin was slack-jawed as he stared at the destruction going on outside. This was not how he had envisioned the battle going at all. The slimy man had dealt with many a space skirmish during his time serving under Even Piell in the Clone Wars but he had _never_, in all his military career, come across something as incredible destructive as MegaGargomon. Not only had the Digimon decimated the initial strike attempt with ease, but he had left the rest of the Empire's defences completely helpless to deal with the rest of the rebel's attacks, which were being co-ordinated by Yularen.

The fighters continued to take out the Empire's own ships, the bombers were swooping around for another pass and MegaGargomon was beginning to get closer once again as he too prepared to resumed his assault on the cruisers.

He didn't have a clue what to do next. His first assignment for the Emperor as an Admiral was becoming a complete disaster.

"Emperor, what are your orders," he turned around to face the hologram next to him, desperate for a suggestion that might be able to counter the giant green mecha.

He got no response. The Emperor was glaring at MegaGargomon with such loathing and hatred that even Tarkin was startled.

Palpatine simply couldn't believe what he was seeing here. Where in the Galaxy had that huge robotic thing actually come from? This was not the first bizarre opponent he had seen today either. First that wolf creature on Tython, which was also loaded with a ridiculous amount of destructive weaponry, but now this too. It made no sense!

He was the leader of both the Republic and the Separatists. If the Separatists had been producing such a giant droid to counter the Republic, then Palpatine would have been aware of it. He knew of everything that went on in the ranks of the Separatists, so there was no way this was just a new droid. And the same could be said the other way around for the Republic building it to fight the Separatists.

And they couldn't have constructed such a giant thing in the couple of days since Order 66. It was too big. Too complex. And what was more, it had expanded out of an escape pod, which should be completely impossible. Nothing that large could compact into an escape pod surely.

And yet, there it was. The Jedi had pulled another trick out of their sleeves to face him with. A trick that Palpatine couldn't work out at all. He could feel his rage building further and further. His hands were actually shaking, such was his wrath.

Tarkin realised that Palpatine was too far gone in his fury to be of much use here and turned around, wracking his brain for something, _anything_, that could be used to combat this new threat against them.

Unfortunately, that was the moment the rebel cruisers got within range.

"Open fire!" Yularen ordered, and the cruisers began to add to the storm of firepower that was pounding the Empire's blockade, sweeping past the fighter brawl and accompanied by a pair of Gargo Missiles as they all slammed into the enemy ships with metal-shattering force.

Tarkin gritted his teeth as he pounded his thoughts. So far, the Empire's blockade was holding enough, and (to his knowledge) nothing had yet gotten past him and into the atmosphere. As long as that was the case, there was still hope.

He frantically called to the rest of the cruisers to tighten themselves together and ensure to close the gaps created by the rebels and their giant, green ally, desperate to keep the rebels away from the planet for as long as possible.

* * *

MegaGargomon noticed the orders being put into effect as he moved closer to the battling once again. So far, the plan appeared to be working. He was doing his job. Most of the rest would be up to the others down on the surface.

_Good luck, guys_, he thought as he thrust himself towards the nearest cruiser once more.

* * *

Down in the Coruscant atmosphere, the stealth ship had increased its speed. It was still cloaked, as it was an unusual ship that was sure to draw the attention of people seeing it, and many of the clones would no doubt know what it was for and guess that the people in it were not supposed to be on the planet.

Anakin steered the ship out over The Works, keeping low to the buildings as he swept towards one particular tower that stretched up into the sky ahead. "That's the place?" he asked as the ship lanced in its direction

"That's it," nodded Renamon. "Definitely."

"Let's hope that our little friend is there as promised," Aayla murmured. "Or we might have a bit of a problem."

"I'm sure she'll be there," Ahsoka assured them. "It would not be like Chuchi to be late for anything, especially not for something as important as this."

The group had not been given much of an opportunity to talk to their friends within the Senate during their last few hours, so their information was not as up-to-date as they would have liked it to be. The fact that it took Chuchi at least half an hour to walk underground to the contact zone and that she was the one who had to initiate the calls had made communication intermittent, but during their last call, they had arranged to rendezvous with the Pantoran at the old base of the Sith Lord.

Renamon had given Chuchi instructions on how to disable the life-form scanners from the inside, which would allow them to get into the building without being somehow picked up by Palpatine or his followers.

Anakin quickly moved the ship up towards the open hangar doors close to the shop and eased the ship in through the doors, skilfully rotating it around in the tight space so that the nose and engines narrowly avoided scraping the opposite walls. And sure enough, they could see Chuchi out through the cockpit window as they did so. The Pantoran evidently couldn't see the ship, but she definitely heard it because her eyes narrowed as they darted left and right, trying to pick up any signs of it.

No alarms went off either, which was a good sign.

As Anakin set the ship down and lowered the ramp, Ahsoka stepped over to the door and leaned out of it, waving to Chuchi. The Senator jumped – from her angle it was as if Ahsoka had leaned out of thin-air, but when she saw who it was, she grinned and said, "I see that you guys made it."

"Just as we planned," Ahsoka nodded. "You coming in or what?"

Chuchi nodded and hurried forwards towards the ramp, narrowly and obliviously avoiding walking straight into the back of the ship. Ahsoka took her hand and almost dragged her into the ship and the two of them embraced briefly, glad to see the other unharmed after everything both had been through over the last couple of days."

"Hey, Senator," Lopmon smiled as she hopped over from nearby. "Good to see you again."

"I could say the same. You have no idea how good it is to see all of you," she smiled at the group. When her eyes settled on Grievous, they lingered there for a moment, her yellow eyes meeting Grievous' own. The Kaleesh cyborg glared at her, daring her to back down, but Chuchi had been expecting him and while she had to admit to herself that being in the presence of the powerful warlord was enough to make her knees knock, she refused to let them and stared levelly and resolutely into Grievous' eyes for a few moments.

Grievous shrugged eventually, as if she had passed some sort of test, and then Chuchi returned to smiling to the rest of the group. Then she frowned and said, "Where are Terriermon and Henry?"

"Up in space," Renamon replied. "They've biomerged to MegaGargomon to help the others take out the Imperial blockade."

"Ah, I see," Chuchi nodded. "I was a little worried when you said that you would all be going to the Mega level, but at least MegaGargomon won't be unleashed on the world too much. But we probably shouldn't linger here for too long."

"You got that," Anakin nodded. "Let's get to the Senate Building."

As he turned back to the controls and lifted the still cloaked ship back up into the air, Aayla called over her shoulder, "So, what's happening Chuchi? Where are the others?"

"We haven't been able to set up the equipment in the communications centre," Chuchi replied. "It's guarded around the clock, and we'd have to explain what we were doing if we wanted to go in."

"That's alright," Ahsoka countered. "You'll have Artoo with you. He should be able to sort things out within a few minutes tops."

The astromech jiggled from foot to foot, showing his eagerness to begin. Chuchi chuckled at him and said, "I'm sure he can. Anyway, the others are waiting for us in Padmé's office. We managed to stow the equipment we'll need in there, and they're ready to move the moment we need to."

"Excellent," Anakin nodded. "Looks like everything's in place then."

"If I may be so bold as to ask," Chuchi voiced as the ship zoomed out over The Works and towards the Senate District. "What is the rest of the plan? You guys have been a little intermittent with the details up until now."

"Well, it's relatively simple," Aayla replied. "And, as it has so far with the situation on Tython and the space battle up above, it revolves around a series of distractions allowing us to get our objectives done…"

As she, Barriss and Renamon took turns explaining their plan to the Senator, Chuchi bit her lip worriedly. When they were done, she said, "Yes, that sounds pretty much like what I was expecting. It's extremely daring and very risky, isn't it?"

"Definitely," Ahsoka remarked dryly. "But to be honest, I don't really see any other way of going about unseating a Sith Lord from being the most powerful man in the entire Galaxy other than it being daring and risky."

"No, neither did I," Chuchi sighed. "Well, I can only hope that it works."

"The whole Galaxy can only hope that it works," Rika muttered. "Because if it doesn't then… well, we'll all be boned really."

"True enough," Chuchi murmured. "I wish there was more I could do to help you guys."

"Chuchi, you've already done beautifully," Aayla replied. "More than we could ever have expected from you or any other Senator or _person_ for that matter."

"Thank you, Aayla," Chuchi replied. "And I have faith in you guys. Let's do this, shall we?"

"No more words needed than that," Aayla laughed, as the ship exited the works and flew out over the Senate District. "Suzie, Lopmon. I believe that this is your stop, isn't it?"

"Yes, I think so too," nodded the small brown bunny. "Come on, Suzie. Let's get going before we get too close."

"Okay," the Tamer nodded, as the two of them hurried towards the door. Anakin slowed the ship down slightly and lowered the ramp, as Suzie took a firm grip on both of Lopmon's feet in her small hands. The brown bunny flapped out through the door, dragging her Tamer with her and floating towards the roof of the building below as the ramp of the ship dragged itself back up and the door shut, sealing it from their view once more. But they both watched its progress nevertheless, their minds telling them where it was as they could still sense the presence of the others.

"Do you think it will work, Lopmon?" Suzie asked, as her feet touched down on the roof of the building at last.

"I hope so," Lopmon replied. "And if there's one thing I've learned throughout my time with you, it's that where there is hope, there is a chance."

"Where there's a will, there's a way," Suzie echoed.

"Exactly," Lopmon nodded. "Now get ready. We may be needed sooner than we think."

* * *

And that concludes Chapter 1 of the Coruscant Arc. I hope you enjoyed the space battle. I was originally going to put MegaGargomon in space a long, long time ago in the initial plan, but I thought I would save it for the finale to add to the awesomeness that I planned for these two arcs. Judging by previous reviews, you guys liked the last arc. I can only hope you like this one even more. Oh, and by the way, if any of you were irked by the fact that MegaGargomon could speak despite the fact they were in space where there is supposed to be no sound, this fact has been ignored throughout the whole Star Wars saga so I see no reason to abide by it myself.

Remember the thing with the e-mail. Again, let's hope you guys won't need to use it.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The big moment is drawing near – the moment where Palpatine and the others learn that Aayla is still alive. The plan on the ground is put into motion and it starts with one Twi'lek, one fox Digimon and three Bounty Hunters providing another distraction outside the Senate Building while their comrades sneak inside.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 202 : Drawing the Guard**


	202. Drawing the Guard

Hullo again everybody. I am here with the next instalment of this very, very long fanfic, and I hope that you all continue to like it. This chapter is, like the last one, a mixture of talking and action, but hopefully you will like them both, as this chapter contains several scenes which I think some of you have been waiting for for some time. As have I, which I why I will not keep you with more words. Read on.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 202:- Drawing the Guard**

* * *

The Senate Guards and the clones that were also on station around the giant domed building were on edge. By this point, they had all received the word that Coruscant was under attack, although when they looked up they saw nothing except the normal Coruscant skyline complete with speeders shooting past at all hours. The space battle raging up above was too far away for them to see, but each of them stared upwards regardless, trying to spot any signs of the conflict drawing closer.

One of the Senate Guard captains was keeping a firm hold on his blaster, more for self-assurance than anything else. He and his men were stationed on one of the upper level landing platforms of the Senate each of them was feeling jumpy and slightly. One of them knew exactly what was going on above their heads, but Coruscant had not been directly attacked like this for over one-thousand years.

The fact that the rebels were being bold enough to attack it now was enough to make them shake in their boots, if only for the principal of the thing.

Of course, none of them believed the efforts of the rebels would pay off. Coruscant was too well defended.

Wasn't it?

One of the blue-clad Senate men felt a hand tapping him on the shoulder. "Excuse me," said a voice. "Could you please direct me to the railway station? I fear I have lost me bearings."

"Er… certainly, ma'am," the Senate Guard nodded, turning to the Twi'lek who had suddenly appeared next to him. "You want to head out straight north from here for about two-hundred kliks and then…" he paused and then turned back to get a good look at the face of the woman who was standing beside him.

"Hello there," Aayla Secura smiled.

"What the…!" the man shouted, immediately grabbing the attention of everybody else on the platform. As they whirled around to see what the commotion was about, Aayla closed her hand into a fist and lifted the Senate Guard into the air with the Force, lashing to the side to send him crashing into the wall, where he slumped unconscious.

"Good afternoon, gentlemen," Aayla smiled as she turned to the rest of the guards. "Now that we've got the pleasantries out of the way…" she pulled her lightsabers off her belt and activated them with a smirk. "…I believe now is the point where you try to shoot me."

The Senate Guards had been momentarily stunned by what they were seeing. Not only was a Jedi standing before them, in one of the most dangerous and well-secured places in the Galaxy for a Jedi, but it was also one that was supposed to be dead according the latest reports on the holonet. But Aayla's words seemed to jolt them back to their senses and they immediately raised their blasters and tried to shoot her down.

Aayla effortlessly blocked the first wave of shots with both her blades and didn't wait around for a second. Leaping into the air and twisting over several shots, she landed in a crouch near to the guards and charged into their midst, her lightsabers spinning in her hands in an imitation of Grievous' favourite technique. The Senate Guards dived aside as she dashed between them and they quickly tried to shoot her in the back, but Aayla's blades continued to spin, this time behind her, and catch the shots before they reached her.

Then the Twi'lek catapulted herself off the edge of the landing platform and dropped down some thirty metres or so to another platform below it, landing in front of a startled clone and delivering an elbow to his gut and spinning round to slam him in the back of the neck with her fists as he doubled over and then span around to sweep-kick another clone in the head. The rest of the clones gasped and immediately tried to shoot her as well, but Aayla backflipped off the platform and landed on the next one hands first, her feet lashing out around her from within the air to kick three more clones in the head before she flipped back onto her feet.

* * *

The Senate Captain from the first platform had finally got his act together and he shouted, "All units! We have an incursion! Repeat, we have an incursion! There is a Jedi on the loose outside the Senate Building. She must not be allowed to get inside! Hurry! Find her and shoot her down! Engage with caution – it's Aayla Secura! Repeat…"

"…It's Aayla Secura," another voice cut across him. He looked up, bewildered, just in time to see a fox-like creature materialise out of thin air right in front of him. His arms went practically slack as he gaped in astonishment at the creature which was suddenly, impossible there.

"No hard feelings," Renamon smiled and delivered a huge punch directly to the Senate Captain's jaw that lifted him off his feet and tossed him back into his comrades. The rest of them panicked and opened fire on the fox as well, but the Rookie Digimon nimbly dashed through their shots on all fours, clipping a couple of them and sending them crashing onto their backs.

Renamon then bounded up into the sky and whirled about, tail flashing out behind her as she unleashed a Diamond Storm straight down on the Senate Guards below her and sent them scattering for cover, and then flipped over to plummet head first back towards the platform. She pulled back a blue-cloaked fist and slammed it into the landing platform before her and pounded straight through it, dropping down to the one below along with several large chunks of concrete.

The clones on the platform were slammed over the head by the falling debris and Aayla backflipped to get out from underneath the barrage. "Little more warning next time?" she chuckled as Renamon landed beside her.

"Just trying to keep you on your toes," Renamon offered a smile back to her as the two of them raced off side by side, dodging confused clones and taking a double flying leap, shooting straight up into the air to land on a higher platform and proceed to bulldoze their way through the clones there as well. The white-clad soldiers scattered before the attack of the two nimble beings, who both pulled to a stop at the other side of the platform and stood, side-by-side, ready to face off against anything the clones had to throw at them.

As the clones did indeed try to things at them, Aayla stepped to the front and advanced stoically across the platform, her lightsabers flashing in her hands as she turned aside bolt after bolt. Her slow and steady approach was enough to cause one clone to panic and he hurriedly fished a grenade off his belt and flung it, hoping that it would do more damage against the Jedi than the blaster bolts were.

That was when an entire crate came flying through the air to intercept the grenade and send it clinking to the ground near to its original thrower. Ironically the crate also slammed into the original thrower and knocked him out of harm's way as his comrades dived to get out of the way of the grenade as it went off. Renamon, the thrower of the crate, dashed in past Aayla, taking advantage of the lull in firepower to bash several heads with whirling kicks and lashes of her fists.

Aayla dashed past her and Renamon followed, the two of them plunging down towards the next platform down. Unlike several other landing platforms though, this one was one of two that stretched right across the entire perimeter of the Senate Building, while the others were just small and designed for only one or two visiting ships.

This meant that this particular large platform was absolutely crawling with guards, and when they saw Aayla and Renamon plummeting towards them, they raised their blasters to try and shoot them both while they were still in the air.

Before they could attempt it though, four blue blaster shots lanced across the space and each of them crashed into the chest of one of the clones and slew them on the spot. The rest of the clones quickly scrambled to safety as they tried to establish where the shots which peppered the ground around them were coming from.

They spotted it the form of a female Zabrak who had leapt out from behind a parked ship close to a set of doors and was skilfully shooting to her side as she dashed across the platform towards where Aayla and Renamon were about to land.

Sugi smirked as she skidded to a stop and fired several more quick shots out over the heads of the clones that were pressing themselves to the ground or behind barriers. Her hand shot up, almost of its own accord to take out a clone leaning out over a higher platform to try and shoot them and then whipped around to start shooting the other way, taking two more clones and a Senate Guard in the stomachs before they even knew what was happening.

Aayla and Renamon landed on either side of her and the fox barrelled forwards on all fours, leaping over a stack of crates and falling into the clones crouched behind it, grabbing two by the necks and hammering them into the ground in the first strike alone. Aayla curved around Sugi and blocked a couple of shots that lanced in from the side.

"Never thought that I would be helping in an attack on the Senate Building!" Sugi shouted over the noise of blaster fire as she shot over Aayla's shoulder to cannon a Senate Guard in the forehead, while the one next to him went down when Aayla returned his own shot.

"You think this is weird for you?" Aayla called back. "I lived a few kilometres from this place most of my life. _I _never thought that I'd be attacking it either."

"True enough," Sugi agreed, dodging to the left as a shot passed over her horns and almost went through her topknot and sprang into the air, spinning around to gun down another pair of clones before she landed and dived behind a pile of crates to avoid a few more shots. Aayla bounded on top of the crates to help defend Sugi as several clones formed ranks some distance away, trying to create a barrage that lanced through the air towards the Twi'lek and the Zabrak, as the latter leaned out from behind the crates to return fire.

Renamon bounded over and sprang, twisting her body around a couple of lasers as she shot directly towards Aayla in what looked like a full-frontal pounce. With split-second timing, Aayla grabbed hold of Renamon's outstretched wrist and spun her around, flinging her into the air towards the distant clones and using the Force to propel Renamon far further than she could jump on her own. The clone hurriedly aimed at her, but a Diamond Storm sent down at them stopped that particular attempt before more than a couple of them could pull the trigger.

The shots that were let off burst through the air towards Renamon, but the Digimon made no attempt to dodge. She didn't have to, because a metallic disc came flying out of nowhere to intercept the shots right before they crashed into the Digimon. Renamon's back paws stamped into the disc and carried it down beneath her like a shield, landing on it to slide across the platform like a snowboard, flinging Diamond Storm shards out all around her in an explosion that slammed into dozens of clones and sent the toppling over.

Renamon stepped off the metal disk and flipped it into the air with her foot, grabbing it in her hand and flinging it like a discus. Embo sprang out of hiding on top of a ship and grabbed his hat, placing it firmly back on his head as he landed and immediately punched a clone in the chin and slammed a foot into the chest of a Senate Guard, unhooking his bowcaster in the process and spinning it around to aim quick and precise shots into the chests of two more.

Upon seeing the Kyuzo appearing out of nowhere, several clones immediately tried to gun him down too, but Embo was far too quick for them. Flipping his hat off his head, he spun around, holding the hat like a shield to catch a flurry of bolts and then fling it straight into a pair of clones that were standing close together. Bowcaster shots lanced over their heads before they'd even fallen all the way and caught a couple of other Senate Guards in their chests.

As Embo skidded over to retrieve his hat, he lifted up in time to block another close range shot from another clone and flew into a spinning jump towards him, slamming his hat across the side of the clone's head and knocking him out and then thudding it into the stomach of another to push him up against the wall. The Kyuzo's yellow eyes narrowed as he stared into the clone's visor and then he finished the job by slamming his bowcaster into the top of the clone's head.

Embo backflipped over a couple more shots to join forces with Renamon, and the two of them dashed across the platform, dodging blaster bolts with their extreme agility, to join up with Sugi and Aayla once more.

"Nice job out there, Embo," Renamon observed. "I see your skills have gotten no less sharp."

"Jene davreus pes aspérar," Embo replied simply.

"I agree, whatever that was," Renamon nodded, as she bounded over to a nearby shuttle to slam its underside so hard with a Power Paw that it was lifted into the air, which made it easy for Aayla to grab it with the Force and hurl it across the platform, causing clones to flee as they attempted to get out of its path.

The four of them turned around to face the clones on their other side, which were regrouping and coming straight towards them.

And then blue blaster shots came lancing out of a gap between another pile of crates ahead to fell four clones and one Senate Guard before they knew what was happening. The rest of them immediately backpedalled and watched in alarm as a tall and rather fragile looking Frenk stepped out from hiding. Rumi hefted her rifle and blasted five more shots across a line of nearby clones, killing two and wounding the other three as they tried to dodge.

One nearby clone tried to raise his blaster to shoot at close range, but Rumi dodged by rolling over, both hands grasping her rifle as she slammed it upwards to knock the blaster out of his hands and then swept it across his head to knock him around and finished by crashing the butt into the back of his head to fell him. Rumi span the rifle back to its regular position and took out another Senate Guard with it and then dropped to her knees to avoid a couple more shots, drawing a pistol in the same motion and sending out one shot from each of her weapons to drop two more opponents.

The clones tried to close in around her, but the other four fell on them like a thunderbolt, two falling to swift punches and kicks from Embo, another to a blast from Sugi and several others sent flying with a Force push from Aayla. Renamon bounded over to Rumi.

"Thanks for the assistance," the Frenk nodded in her squeaky voice, vaulting onto a crate to fire over the heads of her comrades.

"Where's Rika?" Renamon asked the Bounty Hunter. "Wasn't she with you?"

"I'm here, Renamon," Rika replied as she stepped out from behind the crate piled, crouched low to the ground to ensure she was still behind cover.

"I suppose it was too much to ask you to stay away from the action until you're needed," Renamon sighed as she rolled to avoid a shot and lashed her arm out to throw a wave of diamonds at the culprit.

"Not this time, Renamon," Rika's expression turned fierce. "We're fighting for the freedom of the entire Galaxy here. Henry and Terriermon are fighting side by side. Suzie and Lopmon will be soon enough. I'm fighting with you now." She held her D-Arc for emphasis and Renamon smirked.

"Well, we don't want to give them the full dosage just yet," Renamon pointed out. "We'll wait for the opportune moment for that. But, I suppose it couldn't hurt to head to the Champion level for a while. I can still move fast and I can protect you if you ride on my back."

"Just like old times, right?" Rika agreed.

"Indeed," Renamon laughed.

"Come on you two!" Aayla shouted over her shoulder. "We're about to press on. We need to keep moving!"

"We're right behind you, Aayla!" Rika shouted, moving a card through the slot on her blue-rimmed D-Arc. "Digi-modify! Digivolution activate!"

"**RENAMON DIGIVOLVE TO…"**

They made the digivolution quick and Rika hopped out of hiding and onto the back of her partner before she'd even finished changing shape. A split second later and they were on the move, the young teenage girl astride her Digimon once more.

"…**KYUBIMON!"**

The Champion level Digimon leapt out from behind the crates and ploughed three clones into the ground beneath her flaming feet. The clones fell back in surprise as she dashed through to rejoin the others. Rika reached out to Sugi and allowed the Zabrak to clamber onto Kyubimon's back behind her, and the Bounty Hunter fired over the Tamer's head, throwing a couple more clones backwards in the process.

And then Kyubimon began to fire over both their heads, her tails lancing outwards and the tips bursting into blue flames. **"FOX TAIL INFERNO!"** she shouted, and began sending wave after wave of fireballs lancing out from each of her tails in a continuous barrage from left to right that pelted the clones like small meteor shower and threw them backwards, desperately trying to put out the flames before it could get under their armour.

"Come on!" Kyubimon shouted, as she led the way past the clone guards, with Aayla, Embo and Rumi taking off in hot pursuit behind her, the small group dashing across the landing platform and wreaking havoc wherever they went.

* * *

In Palpatine's office, the mood was becoming tenser and sourer with each passing second. The battle of Tython was all but forgotten – none of them had a clue what was going on there now. Their attention was more focused on the new screen which had been erected before them after Palpatine had broken the last one in his rage, watching as MegaGargomon proceeded to beat the scrap out of the space blockade around the planet with the help of the rebel fleet.

"What is that monstrosity anyway?" Ventress murmured as she stared at the bizarre robot creature. "I haven't seen anything like it before."

"It's not a Separatist droid," Dooku murmured. "That much is certain. Building such a thing would not have happened without my knowledge and would also cost a fortune, something most of the Separatist leaders would be unhappy about doing."

"It's certainly very destructive," Durge chuckled. "I must admit that I admire it somewhat. This might be the closest I've ever come to feeling jealousy."

"What is to be done about it?" Aurra put in. "The blockade is being overwhelmed and when it is, then there's nothing to stop it from coming down here and blasting this entire building to pieces."

"I doubt even it could do that," Dooku snorted. "This building was designed to be able to withstand enough bombardment from above to wipe out an entire planet. It is one of the safest places in the Galaxy."

"And what's to stop it from landing on the ground and blasting the building from the side?" Aurra pointed out. "Would the building be safe from that?"

"Silence!" Palpatine suddenly snapped, his fingers flexing and immediately snapping everybody's mouths shut. Even Dooku knew better than to speak when his master was like this. He didn't think he had ever seen Darth Sidious so angry in his life.

"We shall have to call in reinforcements," Palpatine murmured. "Refocus everything we have on that machine. Its armour appears to be thick, but it is still a machine. If we can somehow get some ion cannons up there to neutralise it, then we might be able to find its weak spots and annihilate it once and for all. My scientists were working on constructing cannons and bombs such as that before the war ended to be used against the droids. They may be our best defence against it."

"Do you wish for me to oversee this operation?" Dooku asked, immediately volunteering his services.

Palpatine was about to respond, when a Senate Guard suddenly dashed into the room via the front door. "My lord!" he cried. "We have a situation. There's been a report of some kind of disturbance on the main docking bay, close to the east wing."

"Then deal with it!" Palpatine snapped. "I have bigger things to worry about than a few protestors."

"No, sir," the guard shook his head. "It isn't protestors. It's one of the A-Team, sir."

"**WHAT!"** Palpatine shot to his feet a blast of the Force escaping from him and sending his chair flying backwards to force Bok and Ventress to dodge aside as it slammed into the duraglass window hard enough to crack it. Palpatine's fingers flew to the controls and the view on the screen changed from the space battle to one of the holocams lining the walls around the docking bay. As it rotated around, Palpatine spotted what had to be the disturbance and ordered the cam to zoom in on what was going on.

His eyes widened yet again. It looked like the guards were under attack by _another_ strange creature – a yellow fox-like animal with nine tails that were flinging _fireballs_ of all things out of the tips. There appeared to be a little girl and an adult Zabrak on its back, and running next to it and unleashing mayhem on the rest of the guards was a Frenk, a Kyuzo and…

Palpatine's jaw actually dropped and he leaned in closer just to make sure that he wasn't seeing things. But he wasn't. It was definitely her – there could be no mistake about it. His whole body went slack, his mind going numb with sheer disbelief as he watched the Jedi land a double kick to the chest of a Senate Guard, grab another with the Force and toss him into two others and flip clear over the fox creature to slash through another's blaster and ram her foot into his stomach, spinning around to block more laser fire as she did so and charging on, keeping pace with the large yellow fox.

Evidently, Palpatine was not the only one completely flabbergasted when they spotted who the person on the screen was.

"What the…" Dooku murmured.

"That's… that's not possible…" Aurra breathed in shock. "I killed her! I put a hole in the back of her head and watched her sink! There's no way she could have survived that!"

"She still alive," Bok growled. "How can she be still alive? Should be dead! Should be murdered and dead!"

Ventress, on the other hand, actually sounded slightly smug. "Oh, remind me again, Miss Sing? How did your mission to assassinate her go?"

"She was in the water," Aurra shook her head in denial. "We had shot her ship down and she had dived out at the last minute, but when she resurfaced and tried to swim to safety, I hit her right between the lekku with a shot from a sniper rifle. That shot should have gone straight through her brain! No Twi'lek, no _Jedi_, could survive an attack like that."

"Then would you like to explain what she is doing there on the screen, right now?" Ventress folded her arms and smirked.

"It must be a trick!" Aurra insisted. "Another Twi'lek Jedi wearing her clothes, surely."

But Palpatine knew that was not so. He knew without having to double check that he had been foiled _again_! One the screen in front of him was Aayla Secura, the meddlesome Twi'lek that he had ordered to be killed no less than four times. He had believed – he had believed at last when Aurra and Bok had made their report that she was gone for good, lying at the bottom of the ocean where nobody would ever find her body.

But somehow she had eluded death yet again. Somehow she had managed to trick Aurra and Bok into believing that she had died to get them to leave. And the mere fact that she had made Palpatine believe her to be dead not once, but _twice_, only added an extra sting to the whole situation.

How? How could she keep on doing this? Why would she not just lay down and die like all of the Jedi were supposed to.

His whole body was beginning to tremble now, as he felt the rage reaching critical levels. Even the presence of a third strange creature was nothing compared to the sheer anger he felt at learning he had been tricked again and that Aayla had not only survived, but had shown up right on his doorstep when the day had already been a complete disaster so far.

"Master…" Dooku began.

But he didn't get any further than that because the other Sith Lord let out a howl of such unbridled fury that it could be heard halfway across the entire Senate Building, his hands curling into claws as he screamed and screamed and screamed in rage. This time he managed to contain the Force within him, but the room became so charged with energy that it felt if someone lit a match the whole place would ignite in a split second.

Everyone else backed away from the raging Sith Lord as if fearing some kind of similar outbreak like before. Even the most hardy of them, such as Durge, were beginning to feel that they were in serious danger just being in the same building as the guy. But they all continued to watch the screen as the attackers stormed the platform, moving in the direction of one of the doors. The fox creature leapt over a stack of crates and ploughed into another group, while Aayla's flashing blades and the Kyuzo's swinging hat dealt with several more and lasers lanced outwards from the Zabrak and the Frenk.

Now that the initial smugness at the failure from Aurra had passed, Ventress was also beginning to get angry, as were the others. Apart from Krell and Durge, every single person in this room had suffered a personal grievance at the hands of Secura, and now she was here, paired up with yet another of these strange beasts that were appearing out of nowhere.

It seemed as though some of them might get their chance at revenge after all.

* * *

Padmé Amidala and the other three Senators that were still in her office were peering out of the window at the commotion down below. All four of them were very pleased to see Aayla in the battle, though they were unfamiliar with most of her company.

For them, this was their first experience at seeing a Digimon in battle and they had to admit they were very impressed. They had not had the chance to learn as much about the Digimon as they would have liked during the call in which they learned of their existence, but now they watched as Kyubimon hurtled through the clones and the Senate Guards alike, fireballs flying from her tails like a fireworks display.

Padmé was going to have to ask how she managed to conjure fire from thin air like that when this was all over, because it sounded like something only a Force-user might be able to do. But she'd never heard of a fire-summoning Force power before and she was pretty sure the Digimon couldn't use it even if there had been. It was extremely fascinating.

"Oh my goodness!" Mon Mothma suddenly exclaimed when a hole suddenly seemed to appear in the air directly outside the window in front of them, a slightly reddish glowing square opening up in the sky outside like some weird portal to another world. But when Chuchi appeared there a few moments later and grinned through the glass at them, the initial shock settled down as they remembered what was going on.

However, when Anakin appeared beside Chuchi at the door, Padmé's heart leapt inside her chest and her face split into a beaming grin. It was one thing to see that your husband was alright via a hologram, but seeing him in person was far, far better and relief flooded through her like water down a slide.

"Looks like things are going according to plan so far," Bail murmured, as Anakin leapt from the ship and landed on the thin windowsill on the other side of the glass. The Jedi activated his lightsaber and gently pushed it through the window, cutting a square in it and using the Force to gently push the glass square inside the room and place it harmlessly nearby.

As he stepped inside, Padmé immediately swamped him with a massive bearhug, not caring who was watching. Fortunately, since everyone believed they were such close friends anyway, none of the other Senators were surprised by this behaviour, though Chuchi had to hide a knowing smirk.

"Oh, it's so good to see you, Anakin," Padmé murmured into his ear. "Every moment you were away I feared that something terrible might happen to you, with clones out searching for you all the time."

"What, you were worried?" Anakin chuckled. "Even with the company I keep? Come on, even if you have no faith in me, you should at least have faith in them."

Padmé smacked him in the shoulder and attempted to step back but Anakin pulled her back into the embrace and said, "But, I agree. It's so… _so_ good to see that you're still okay."

Both of them felt an almost irresistible urge to shoot their secret to hell and kiss each other right there, but they both managed to restrain themselves and broke their embrace. Assuming they survived this then there would be time for all that later. Anakin turned around and used the Force to help levitate Chuchi through the window hole, where she was grabbed and steadied by Bail and Onaconda.

"Alright then," said the Rodian as they released the smaller Pantoran. "I take it that this is where we begin to play our own part in the plan, right, Master Jedi."

"Yeah, pretty much," Anakin nodded. "Aayla and the others are providing the diversion now so we shouldn't hang around too long." He turned around and called back into the ship, "Hey Seripas! You reckon that you can move the ship by yourself?"

"Might be a little difficult," said the tiny Bounty Hunter who had taken Anakin's place at the controls and was holding the ship level with the window. "But I'm sure I'll manage."

"Good," Anakin nodded. "Set it down somewhere where people might not accidentally bump into it or see it if you drop the cloaking device. The roof should probably do it. When you're done, I assume you know what to do?"

"I'll be ready," Seripas called back.

"Good man," Anakin smirked. "Everybody else, pile out then."

Each time a new face appeared at the doorway, different reactions came from the Senator still in the room. Ahsoka's presence as she bounded through the hole in the glass was met with almost as much elation as Anakin's, particularly by Padmé, who immediately engulfed the young Togruta in a hug of her own. Ahsoka blinked, but grinned and returned the favour.

Barriss wasn't as well known by any of them as Ahsoka or Anakin, but they were still pleased to see another Jedi's face nevertheless. Padmé hesitated for a moment as the Mirialan joined them, but then gave her a hug anyway for the principal of the matter. Barriss looked stunned and seemed to forget that she was supposed to return it for several sections, and when the two of them parted she cleared her throat, looked embarrassed and began to shake the hands of the other Senators.

Artoo jetted in next on his legs rockets and came to a stop on the floor. He looked around for Threepio, but it seemed that Padmé had decided to leave the droid behind in 500 Republica – he was neither game for adventure, nor was he very good at staying quiet when he started to panic after all. Padmé patted his head with her hand, glad that the faithful and brave astromech was there to help them out once again.

And then General Grievous appeared at the hovering door and sprang across the gap, landing on all fours just within the window like some giant beetle. The Senators had known he would be hear and on their side, but his presence was still enough to inspire fear in all of them. Bail, Mon Mothma and Onaconda all stepped backwards, fear briefly entering their eyes. Only Padmé and Chuchi stood their ground, the latter because she had already had her showdown with the cyborg.

Padmé still didn't know what to make of their alliance with Grievous. On the one hand, he was a powerful warrior and would be a real asset, not to mention he had been used and lied to just as much as they had, which actually sparked some pity for him in her. On the other hand, he was such an infamous Separatist butcher and had been responsible for the death of so many that a large portion of her didn't want anything to do with him.

But there was a larger part of her that understood that the Galaxy's needs were more important and that Grievous' presence might prove essential to winning the day.

"You not going to give Grievous a hug too?" Ahsoka murmured to Padmé.

Grievous' eyes narrowed as he glared at the Senator from Naboo. "Don't even think about it?" he snarled at her.

"Believe me. I wasn't," Padmé replied, primly. She gave Ahsoka a half-frown of annoyance and the Padawan gave her a thumbs up, before she turned serious again.

"What are we waiting for?" Grievous demanded. "Let's get going."

"Seriously, Grievous, be patient!" Anakin glowered at him.

"I swear, Skywalker, if you tell me to be patient one more time…!"

"Hey! Cool it!" Ahsoka stepped between the both of them quickly. "We're supposed to be having a fight with the Sith Lords and their allies, not one another. We're going to get started pretty quickly anyway, aren't we?"

"Indeed we are," Anakin nodded, then added. "Where are the two holocams you guys acquired?"

"Here," Mon Mothma reached under the desk and withdrew the small, spherical devices. Anakin used the Force to pluck one from her hands and then chuck it into the stealth ship. There was a hiss as the ramp for the ship folded upwards to render the vessel completely invisible once more, and through the hole in the window they could hear the sounds of it moving slowly upwards and towards the roof of the Senate Building.

"Alright guys, here's the plan. It's risky, but if we do it right, we might just be able to pull victory out of the Empire's hands today."

"First of all, Aayla is doing her job of drawing the guard and allowing us to get inside, refocusing a lot of the Empire's forces close to the Senate Building towards them. She may even draw out a couple of Palpatine's inner circle. But there are still probably going to be a lot of guards on the inside so, Ahsoka will head out of this room and cause another diversion."

Ahsoka nodded grimly. "I'll give them a merry chase throughout the building as they try and catch me and I'll basically avoid going anywhere near the communications centre. All I have to do is keep them occupied long enough for everybody else to do their jobs."

"That's right," nodded Anakin. "And while she is doing that, Barriss will be escorting the Senators and Artoo towards the communication centre instead. Barriss, if something goes wrong, it'll be your job to guard the Senators and Artoo from any attack, but try not to blow your cover unless you have to. Your mission is critical to the restoration of the Republic if we want to get the public back on our side quickly."

"I understand," Barriss murmured, a little nervously. "It's… certainly not a situation that has little pressure, is it?"

"I'm sure you'll be fine," Anakin replied. "Artoo, it'll be you're job to hack into the mainframe and begin the broadcast and sync the computer's systems to the two holocams. From there, you Senators know what needs to be done, right?"

"Of course," Padmé nodded. "You can depend on us, Master Jedi. We might have to use a bit of improvisation but I'm sure we'll come up with a convincing case somehow."

"Okay. And you Grievous… well, I assume that you know what is needed of you already by this stage?"

"More the point, I know what I want," Grievous growled. "Remember our deal, Skywalker! If you come across him by accident then you can have your go at attacking him but if I am the one to find him first, he is mine! Got it!"

"You can have him," Anakin shrugged. "I've got my own target I need to take out and you have yours."

Grievous nodded, accepting the answer. Then he turned around and pointed at Padmé and snarled, "You, Senator. Whose office is directly below yours?"

"Uh…" Padmé was taken aback by the strange question. "Nobody's. It's just a storeroom, I think."

"Good," Grievous chuckled, and with a flash he had four lightsabers held aloft in the air. Before anyone could even think about stopping him, he spun them downwards and plunged them into the floor all around him, rotating his body at the hips to drag the lightsabers through the ground and cut a perfect circle, which plummeted into the room below and allowed the cyborg General to drop from sight. Ahsoka and Barriss peered down the hole in the floor, but Grievous had already gone.

"I have a bad feeling about this, Anakin," Padmé looked up at him. "Allowing him to go storming through the Senate Building on his own like that."

"If he sticks to the plan then he won't be storming anywhere," Anakin replied. He hesitated and added, "Of course, considering this is Grievous, he'll probably be tempted to do that anyway. Anyway, look… Senator. Aayla trusts him and considering his hatred for the Sith, I think that he might stick to the plan, at least long enough for its effects to pay off.""

"Well, if you say so," Padmé sighed. "Anyway, what about you? What will you be doing in all of this?"

"I…" Anakin placed a hand on his chest. "Will wait here until I receive confirmation that the road to Sidious is clear." His brow furrowed as a dark look crossed his face, his fists clenched. "That lying, cheating Sith Lord has done too much harm to the Galaxy already, and to me. As long as I stand, I will strive to beat him, not matter how close he may have once been to me. I said that it would end today, and for better or for worse, that's exactly what'll happen."

"We don't doubt it," Barriss chuckled. Then she looked more serious and said, "But you're going to have to be very careful against a Sith like him, Anakin. From what I know about them, they utilise their anger and turn it into strength. No doubt the sheer amount of anger he must be feeling now will make him more dangerous and volatile than ever."

"I know," Anakin replied. "But I still have to fight him. It seems that it really _is_ my destiny. And I'll show him that I am not exactly a helpless Jedi who he can manipulate on a whim."

"Well, if you do need any help then… let us know," Ahsoka asked. "We'll gladly come and help you if you need us."

"I knew you'd say that," Anakin replied. "And I bet you know my answer too."

Ahsoka sighed. "No, this is my fight and my fight alone. Do not put yourself in unnecessary danger on my account, even if it looks like I could die at any moment."

"Nail and head," Anakin replied. "Did you read my mind?"

"No, you're just that predictable," Ahsoka replied. She then turned towards the door and stared at it for a moment, before looking back and saying, "Well, I suppose I should get going."

"Yeah, probably," Anakin murmured.

Ahsoka stood there awkwardly for a few seconds before she added, "Master, I…"

"You don't need to say anything, Snips," Anakin interrupted, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Believe me, I know. I've watched you grow into bratty, overconfident girl into a humbler, slightly less bratty girl…"

"Hey!"

"But in all seriousness, try to stay in one piece," Anakin went on. "The next time I see you, I want you to be ready to take on your fifteenth birthday, okay?"

Ahsoka sniffed and swamped her master in a brief hug, trying to put all the love she felt for her Master into it in one go. Anakin responded in kind, harmonising the intensely strong bond that existed between Master and Padawan. Then Ahsoka let go of him and, without another word, she darted for the door and jumped outside to dart down the hallway and away.

During that little scene, Barriss had been helping the Senators to gather up the number of cables that they would need for their own little exploit, concealing them away in Bail's gown for hiding. She picked up the remaining holocams and tucked it under one arm, turning to look back at Anakin.

"Hopefully the fact that I haven't become as famous as you guys will work to our advantage now," she said. "I'll try to keep my head down all the same though."

Anakin nodded. "You best get going too then, Barriss."

"Anakin," Padmé interjected. "Are you sure you're ready to take on Sidious?"

"No," Anakin replied. "But there will never come a time when I will be, and even if I wasn't we've come too far already to turn back now. Now go."

As the Senators filed out of the room and strolled down the corridor, looking innocent as possible to passersby, Barriss turned back briefly and locked eyes with Anakin. _I'll protect Padmé with my life, Anakin,_ she promised.

_Thank you,_ Anakin replied, with a mild smile. _But try not to let things come to that._

Barriss chuckled and then darted out the corridor to catch up with the Senators and hide in the middle of their group, Artoo rolling along behind them and humming a tune, apparently aimlessly.

Anakin shut the door behind them a moment later and leaned back against the wall, sighing as he began the wait before he was able to make his move. He delved into the Force and tried to split his consciousness between the different groups, in an attempt to keep an eye on everybody's progress.

* * *

Back in Palpatine's office, the Emperor appeared to have calmed down a little bit, but he was still holding the edge of the table in his long fingers and glaring at the screen as he watched the blasted Twi'lek Jedi dodge in front of the Frenk and shield her from a couple of shots before diving forward and continuing the charge, running adjacent with the yellow fox creature as they continued to beat the tar out of the guards surrounding the building.

The rest of the group were glancing at each other now, as if wondering what they were still doing here.

"Master," Ventress stepped forward and bowed to Sidious. "Allow me to go out there right now and personally deal with Secura! I will be sure to finish her off for good this time and what's more, you'll be able to watch me do it on the holocam, so you'll know, once and for all, that somebody actually has done the deed this time."

Aurra growled, not failing to spot the little dig at her in that request.

"You not beat Secura!" Bok suddenly cried and stepped forward challengingly. "Secura _my_ mortal enemy. She one who take off my hand. She one who dishonour me. Me be one to kill her for good."

"You can't even talk properly! How do you expect to kill a trained Jedi like Secura?" Ventress sneered at the Morgukai warrior.

"You say what?" Bok shouted angrily, flexing his metal hand.

"Excuse me, you two, but it was me who reported her dead on Minntooine," Aurra growled. "It was me who was the one to fire the last shot at her, therefore it is my right to be the one to go outside and finish the job."

"Secura escaped from you through the use of dirty tricks," Ventress scowled at her. "You couldn't take her from a distance _or_ in a close fight. I will be the one to finally cut her down!"

"You, who has lost to her three times already by my count?" Aurra asked sweetly.

"No, not this time!" Bok growled. "You got to kill her last time, Sing! This time, she mine! This personal!"

"Of course it's personal!" Aurra snapped back. "That's why I will be the one to kill her?"

"I hardly think so!" Ventress' hands went straight to her lightsaber handles.

"By the Force," Pong Krell placed one thick hand against his heavy brow and shook his head. "I'm beginning to wonder if joining you lot was the best idea after all considering many of us seem to be nothing more than squabbling infants. What does it matter who of us is the one to finish her off as long as one of us does it? I say just get out there and do it?"

"I couldn't agree more, Master Krell," Dooku smirked. "It's nice to once again have a candidate for being a Dark Acolyte with a level head."

"Heh," Durge pounded his chest after a moment. "Give me twenty seconds alone with her. There won't be enough of her to fill an urn by the time I'm done with her. And that, is a fact."

"Not this time, Durge," Ventress shook her head and headed straight towards the door without waiting for further consent. "This time, it is I who will be making the kill."

"Ventress," Palpatine finally spoke, in a calm and dangerously icy voice that immediately stopped the Dark Jedi in her tracks. "You are forgetting your place yet again. Stand down, this instant."

Ventress hesitated, but only for a second, and she hurriedly stepped away from the doors and moved over towards Dooku once again, hoping to appear loyal once more (and also just in case the Emperor got even angrier and there was a chance that Dooku could protect her against his wrath.

The whole room fell silent once again as they waited for Palpatine to speak again. The Emperor slowly looked up from the screen after a couple of moments, his eyes blazing with barely suppressed rage and one of his eyes twitching as if it had a mind of its own.

When he spoke, it was in a voice that was so laden with malice that it sent a shiver up and down the spine of every member of the room several times. "Master Krell?"

The Besalisk actually fought the urge to swallow as he stepped forward and inclined his head. "Yes, my lord?" he asked.

"I believe that this may be a suitable first test for you," Palpatine replied. "If you pass, then you will be welcomed into our ranks with open arms. I want you, Bok and Durge to go out there, as of right now, and deal with these insurgents who have dared to rise up against us. Make Secura the primary target, but kill them all. I do not want those Bounty Hunters or that fox creature to be spared. Not even that little girl who chooses to ride with them. Understand?"

"Of course, sir," Krell smirked. "It would be my honour to finally dispose of her and her allies."

Bok sniggered, hefting his heavy looking blade at the prospect of cutting Secura open with it, and Durge brought his huge metal fists pounding together in anticipation of what was to come. Palpatine nodded to the three of them and said, "Then get moving. She must not be allowed to get away."

Bok and Durge immediately plunged towards the door and dashed out through it, the Gen'Dai having to stoop quite some distance to fit through as he followed the Morgukai out into the corridor. Krell followed at a more sedate pace, the doors sliding shut behind him ominously.

Ventress curbed her disappointment at not being allowed out to deal with the enemy _again_, but she couldn't restrain herself from asking, "Why those three Master? I believe I could take Secura, if only you gave me the opportunity."

"If they fail, you may get that opportunity, Ventress," replied Sidious, sinisterly. "But you are forgetting something? The fight for space is still going on up above, and yet the Senate Building is already under attack. If Secura is here, attacking us, then there is every possibility that the rest of her team are here too. Including your even bigger enemy – Tano."

Ventress' eyes widened as she realised Palpatine might be right. Aurra, however frowned. "Tano, your Excellency. But didn't we see her fighting on Tython earlier along with Skywalker and Offee?"

"We did," Palpatine agreed. "But they all disappeared into the streets when the AT-ATs penetrated the blockade and I certainly did not see them after that. They have proven themselves to be resourceful time and again – it is possible that they somehow slipped away and brought the fight to us. It is also possible that Secura has been hiding here for a few days after her attempted murder – she is a master of disguise after all. But I am not prepared to take that risk, and if the rest of her team are here, then what she is doing now is an obvious distraction, while the others sneak into the building another way."

"If that is the case then it is either a very brave or a very foolish attempt to take back the Galaxy," Dooku threw in.

"Indeed," Palpatine nodded. "But while they think they may have gotten the better of me with this plan, I will show them that I am not so easily defeated. Let us wait and see what happens next. If Tano and the others are here, then you may have your chance at revenge after all, Ventress."

The Dark Jedi actually rubbed her hands together with glee and eagerness, licking her lips for a moment. The thought of killing Secura was tasty, but the thought of killing Ahsoka was downright delicious. It was about time the two of them met face to face once again – they had not done since Sernpidal after all.

Aurra was also wearing a smirk. She had helped to knock out Skywalker in the past and she was also expecting a decent rematch with the Chosen One.

Dooku's impassive face, on the other hand, remained unchanged, as Palpatine turned to him and said, "Call in the all the clone forces left on planet just in case. Tell them the Senate Building is under attack. I will leave nothing to chance. They will not escape me again – none of them."

Dooku nodded and allowed a smirk to briefly adorn his features. Even he couldn't hide the excitement at the prospect of the A-Team finally going down once and for all. Who knew, he might get another crack at taking down Anakin Skywalker at last. After all, Dooku had cut off his arm. Why not take his life too? And then he could finally prove to Sidious that he was the right choice for apprentice after all.

* * *

Back out on the landing platform, the small group were still causing untold damage to the clone troopers. Their military training practically broke down when they spotted Kyubimon dashing towards them, flinging fireballs from her tails at them. And those that did manage to let off several shots either had their ammunition dodged by the swift Digimon and her passengers, or blocked by Aayla's lightsabers or Embo's hat.

They left no gap. No opening. No place where they could let a blaster shot slip by. Embo hung at the rear to cover their behinds while Aayla stormed the front and used the Force to shove clones out of the way.

She was careful to avoid unnecessary casualties, and she quickly tried to instruct the others to wound as much as possible instead of killing. After all, they were supposed to be causing a distraction only, not wiping out the guards altogether. And, just like the troops on Tython, these clones had no idea who they were really serving. It was possible that some of the Senate Guards did, but surely not all of them were in the loop, so Aayla tried to make sure that they survived the charging as well.

Rika felt a thrill of exhilaration as she fished a card from her belt. It had been a long time, in her view, that she had fought atop Kyubimon like this and in her opinion, this just felt right. Yes they were fighting tyranny and battling for the survival of a Galaxy, which no regular fourteen year old girl should do, but she had been left on the sidelines so much recently that being here now just made her blood pump with the thrill.

Still, they had to avoid killing the clones as much as possible, so it was with no small amount of elation that she swept the card through the slot and shouted, "Digi-modify! Gatomon's Cat's Eye Hypnotism Activate!"

"Now we're talking!" Kyubimon roared as she launched a final volley of fireballs out of her tails and bounded high into the air, landing directly in front of Aayla with her tails spread out behind her like a fan. Most of the clones made the mistake of looking directly at her as her eyes flashed red, drawing their attention towards her face. The moment that they looked into the glowing red slits they began to feel drowsy and stiffen up as if their bodies were becoming paralysed.

"Nice job," Aayla chuckled as she stepped past the Champion level Digimon and flicked a couple of fingers in front of her with create a miniature Force-push. The paralysed clones instantly toppled onto their backs and lay there, some asleep, others unable to move any of their limbs. Several of the other clones nearby that had managed to avoid the stare of the Digimon looked on in horror and then immediately sought cover, fearing more trickery, of which Rika had a lot.

An idea popped into Rika's head which made her eyes widen at first, and then made her smirk so widely that it was almost evil. She pulled out a card which she had actually used on Renamon before when standing not far away from this spot during the Zillo Beast's attack on the building. She slashed the card and called out once more, "Digi-modify! Dorulumon's Dorulu Tornado activate!"

Kyubimon's eyes shot open as she felt the massive influx of power, far moreso than any Modify Cards normally did, and she knew why this was the case. Dorulumon was a Digimon that could shoot a tornado out of its tail. And Kyubimon currently had nine tails to spare.

Each and every one of her nine appendages morphed into a longer and more slender whip-like version of itself except that each one was now tipped with a massive orange drill. Kyubimon's face now echoed that of her partner as she fanned her tails out and lowered the drills down until they were pointing in all different directions around her. **"DORULU TORNADO!"** she roared, and the drills began to spin, generating one huge gust of spiralling wind each that swept over the heads of her comrades and across the platforms towards the places where the remaining clones were hiding. All around them the area promptly cleared of life as the clones were scooped up in the powerful winds and tossed backwards and far away, their blasters flying out of their hands as they crashed into the ground a fair distance away, stunned, winded and in some cases unconscious.

Sugi chuckled as she glanced up at the drills over her head and said, "You know, I had forgotten just how versatile you Digimon and Tamers could be!"

"Oh, you don't want to do that," Rika snorted. "That can be a very big mistake if you ever end up on the opposite side to us. Not that that will ever happen, right?"

"Certainly not planning on it," Rumi nodded, as she shot a blast through a tornado and hit a clone that was clinging to a shuttle in the shoulder and causing him to lose his grip and go flying with the wind.

As Kyubimon's tails morphed back to normal and ignited again, Aayla smirked and said, "Let us press on then."

However, she had only taken a couple of steps forward before her senses screamed at her and she changed direction, vaulting backwards as a huge sword slammed into the ground where she would have been if she'd kept going. She landed on both feet and one hand, the gaze of the small group looking up towards a higher landing platform to see the culprit standing on the edge and holding another sword in one hand.

"Secura!" he shouted down at her. "It time for my revenge!" the Nikto shouted. He vaulted off the platform and landed like a predator on a nearby ship and then vaulted over the side of that and to the platform, stepping towards Aayla, a cruel smirk on his wide mouth and his sword held in front of his face, ready for combat.

"Who are you?" Aayla asked, staring at the Nikto. "Your revenge?"

The Nikto snarled as he pulled to a halt not far away. "You not remember me? Me angered! How can you not be remembering who I am, Jedi?"

"I've come across many Nikto on my travels," Aayla replied. "You'll have to enlighten me."

"You toy with me!" the Nikto growled. "I mighty Morgukai warrior. You see this?" He jerked up his hand to show everyone the silver replacement he had instead of a real one. "You did this to me! You take real hand! You one who bring shame upon me on Kintan! You remember me now, Secura?"

Aayla sighed. "I had a feeling that it might be you. Bok, wasn't it? Yes, I certainly do remember you? You and your father tried to stop me and my master from rescuing my cousin on Kintan, didn't you? I wondered if you ever managed to escape. Your body was never recovered after all."

"Yes, I escape!" Bok growled. "I been in hiding for years and years now! I waiting all this time for chance to come back and kill you! Your master killed Father! You cut off my hand! You both bring shame to my family! Now you pay! Now you die at my hand!"

"This one has a big mouth," Rika murmured. "Did you really cut off his hand, Aayla?"

"Unfortunately, yes," nodded Aayla. "But he and his father were part of a conspiracy against my family, if you can call them that. I had no real attachment to them but it was my duty as a Jedi to rescue my cousin and those two Morgukai warriors made several attempts to kill us."

"That right!" Bok crowed. "But this time, I succeed! I kill you for real! I teach you that you can't get away with giving me shame!"

"Giving you shame?" Aayla raised her eyebrow. "In what way did I shame you, Bok?"

"You take my hand!" Bok shouted.

"Yes, I know that," Aayla replied. "But how is that shaming you? I won the battle honourably and you evidently escaped with your life."

"YOU TOOK MY HAND!"

"Screaming the same thing over and over again is not going to get the point across," Aayla replied smoothly. "And if you want my opinion, Bok, you have indeed been shamed. But not by me."

"Huh?" Bok blinked. "I not following."

"It's quite simple," Aayla replied. "I don't even need to know what you have been doing these past years in hiding to know that you, Bok, have shamed yourself beyond all imagining. The Morgukai Order might hate Jedi for reasons which we cannot fathom, but I know for a fact that they were still an honourable order. They respected others who were good with a sword, including the Jedi, and they would never deign to work with a Sith Lord, not for anything."

"Sidious give me revenge on you," Bok sneered. "That reason enough."

"My point precisely," Aayla shook her head. "You've allowed yourself to become obsessed with your revenge to the point that you've lost all of your honour. Your father might have attacked me along with you, but at least he fought with honour and pride. You have not been doing that recently have you?"

"Shut up!" Bok snapped.

"Your father would be turning in the ground right now," Aayla stated bluntly. She knew she was being harsh, but sometimes the truth was harsh and she had a feeling Bok should hear this even if he didn't want to. "You have shamed him as well as yourself. You have shamed your whole Order. This was not my doing, Bok. It was yours."

Bok roared and charged forwards his sword raised as he grabbed his second sword and wrenched it out of the platform, determined to have his revenge against this loud-mouthed Jedi who dared to insult him and his father. Aayla crossed her blades in front of herself in preparation for the incoming attack, but she needn't have bothered because one of her company jumped out to engage Bok instead.

Before the Morgukai knew what was happening, his sword clanged against a metal shield-like hat and went spinning out of his hand and as he tried to pull to a stop, he felt a the hat smack him across the face with a blow that definitely loosened a few teeth. As he went stumbling backwards, he looked back around to see a Kyuzo flying through the air at him to pound him in the chest with one foot, parrying the other sword on the hat clenched in his hand and sending him rolling backwards across the platform.

Bok looked up with a snarl on his face as Embo placed the hat back on his head and span it lazily, his small yellow eyes focusing on Bok's own as he hefted his bowcaster and lifted one finger, beckoning to Bok in a suggestion that said, "Bring it."

And Bok brought it. Embo was standing in the way of his revenge and he wasn't about to have that. He sprang to his feet and retrieved one sword to take a flying leap towards the Bounty Hunter with it raised high. Embo fired up a couple of times with his bowcaster, but Bok managed to catch the shots on the flat of his sword as he plummeted downwards. Embo scowled and then sprang up to meet him halfway, slamming towards Bok head-first to clang his hat against the sword.

Bok was taken by surprise by the headbutt which powered through his attempted cleave and pounded into his head, knocking him backwards. Embo span around and delivered a sweep kick to the side of the Nikto's head as he flipped overhead and landed nearby, whipping his hat of his head and flinging it even as he fell. As Bok whirled around, the hat slammed into his face like a giant Frisbee and knocked him flat on his back, and Embo landed nearby and charged back into the attack.

"Embo! Here!" Sugi shouted, drawing her vibrodagger from her belt and tossing it through the air. The Kyuzo caught it deftly by the handle and launched into the attack. Bok managed to parry the knife on his metal hand at the last second and the two of them began rapidly changing blows in a blur of motion that seemed to be too fast for the eye to track.

"Ooh, Embo's bad," Rika sniggered.

"Indeed," Kyubimon nodded. Then her ears pricked and she added, "But I think we should move!" and she surged forwards for no apparent reason, Sugi and Rika grabbing hold of her body as she wrapped her tails around Rumi and yanked her forwards. Aayla reacted in the same moment and dashed forwards with a Force-powered run right at the moment the landing platform behind them was practically vaporised, blowing rubble out of the floor and sending it tumbling down to the ground far below.

The group looked up again, this time to see a large humanoid covered in shining armour, hovering thanks to the jetpack attached to his back and pointing a large, smoking cannon in their direction. The being chuckled malevolently and said, "My. Quick reflexes you guys have there. That would have vaporised you if you hadn't moved. But I was kinda hoping you would move. It's more fun when they put up a fight."

"Durge," Aayla glowered. Even she had to admit she felt a ripple of nervousness at being confronted by this guy. He gave off the same cold, calculating air that Cad Bane did, but Durge seemed to be even more intimidating. Aayla had never met with him before, but she had heard the stories of his near-immortality and she knew right then that things were about to get more difficult.

"Ah. So nice to meet you, Secura," Durge chuckled. "I have heard a lot of good things about you. Or bad things considering they came from Sidious, but good in the sense that you sound like you might present a decent challenge to me. Care to test it out?"

"Careful," murmured Rumi. "You do not want to get on the wrong side of him."

"Met him before?" Rika murmured.

"No," the Frenk shook her head. "But I heard stories about him when I was just a child that gave me the shivers."

"As did I," Sugi nodded. "He will not be an easy opponent, Aayla."

"That's fine," Aayla shrugged. "Because I have absolutely no intention of taking him on, do I?"

"You don't," Durge blinked, hefting his cannon towards her and scowling. "But I thought you were a compassionate person who always strove to do anything in her power to protect others."

"Well then you heard right," Aayla replied. "I will do anything I can to protect others, but I believe that there's someone else here who would be a far better match-up to you than I would, Durge. We came prepared for you."

"Did you now," Durge frowned.

"Yes, we did," Kyubimon announced as she stepped forwards, Rika and Sugi sliding off her back. "Your opponent will be me, Durge."

"And who might you be?" Durge asked contemptuously.

"You will learn soon enough," Rika called out boldly. "And technically, your opponent will be _us_, won't it, my partner?"

"Naturally," Kyubimon chuckled as she glowed briefly and morphed back into the form of Renamon. "We have heard of your incredible regenerative abilities, Durge, and we have decided that we shall not hold anything back when we fight you."

Durge, who was still trying to get over the fact that the fox had just changed shape, didn't reply. Rika stepped forwards and Renamon moved up behind her, placing her paws on her Tamer's shoulders. "Shall we?" Rika asked.

"I think we shall, my Tamer," Renamon smirked. "Let's give Coruscant its newest Digimon form."

"Can do," Rika chuckled, pressing her D-Arc to her chest. "Biomerge activate!"

Durge reeled backwards at the unexpected explosion of light, covering his burning eyes and resisting the urge to howl as he heard a voice cry out below him, **"RENAMON BIOMERGE TO…"**

When next he looked down, he saw a tall woman-like creature with long grey hair tied back in a twin pony-tail, covered in elegant golden armour complete with fox mask helmet, breastplate and shoulder-guards, long purple gloves and boots and a belt with a fox head buckle, bursting out of the intense light and shooting towards him. In her hands was a long golden staff, which she promptly rammed into the side of his head and sent him spinning several dozen feet away, flailing his limbs as he struggled to regain control of his jetpack.

When he managed to get control of himself, he stared in awe at the tall fox shaman as she cried, **"SAKUYAMON!"** and struck a battle stance, staff clutched in both hands in front of her, and ready for action.

"As we said," Sakuyamon informed him in her dual voice. "Your opponent will be us."

Durge had experienced many things in his two-thousand years. And while he had never experienced anything remotely like this before, he had enough experience to know that being overwhelmed by something new was dangerous. So he shook off his shock and his face beneath his helmet became a smirk once more.

"Well," he said, hefting his blaster cannon. "This is going to be interesting."

* * *

How was that everybody? I believe many of the scenes for the upcoming arc are being set up reasonably well in this chapter, and I hope I have filled you with anticipation for what is to come. There's going to be a lot of one on one matches in the future, and they begin in earnest soon.

I believe most of you will have enjoyed the reaction of Palpatine when he learned that Aayla was still alive. It was certainly great fun to write, I can tell you that. And now Sakuyamon is going to get yet another one on one duel with a powerful being. Some of you might think that there is no way a Bounty Hunter like Durge could hold his own against Sakuyamon, but the battle between them promises to be a tough one for both parties. Durge is strong. It took a hell of a lot to kill him off in the comics.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

As Sakuyamon and Durge thrash it out, Lopmon and Suzie leap into motion to carry out their own part of the plan, while MegaGargomon continues battering away at Tarkin's blockade up above. But within the Senate Building, our Togruta Padawan finally finds herself face to face with her arch-enemy once more.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 203 : A Score to Settle**


	203. A Score to Settle

Oog. Work, work, work, work, work. Lots and lots of work. Most of this chapter was written today, as the majority of yesterday was taken up with my group for out student-initiated expedition meeting up to hammer our next assignment in planning for said expedition. I tried very hard to get this chapter right, so I hope you like it. Especially because I wrote most of it with an aching arm thanks to getting a booster for typhoid in preparation for my upcoming trip to the Gambia in April. Oh, how I suffer to get this out on time. Hehe.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 203:- A Score to Settle**

* * *

As Aayla, Sugi and Rumi turned back around to deal with the clones that were beginning to regroup and Embo went on duking it out with Bok, the Morgukai warrior and the Kyuzi Bounty Hunter exchanged blows that threaten to shatter bones on both sides, Durge and Sakuyamon hovered in the air above them, both of them seemingly waiting for the other to make the first move.

Durge's cannon was still smoking from his previous shot, and he was impatient for the battle to begin, but he knew that sometimes the best move was to analyse your opponent's strength, and Sakuyamon appeared to be a strong adversary. He could tell just by looking. He was ready to fling everything at her the moment she made her move.

And, eventually, she did. She suddenly whirled around, her hair streaming out behind her and her staff twirling in her hands like a living thing as she spun in a circle and shouted, **"AMETHYST WIND!"** From nowhere, a huge barrage of purple diamond shards seemed to lance out from behind her and stream towards the Gen'Dai Bounty Hunter with a purpose, their tips and edges glinting in the light of the sun.

Durge was surprised, but he acted quickly, setting off his huge cannon and sweeping it across a large portion of the barrage to knock the razor missiles out of the air, while on his left arm, a circular red energy shield appeared which he quickly lifted up to take the rest of the shots. But Sakuyamon was already lancing straight towards him with staff in hand to lash it down towards him with a powerful swing. Durge activated an energy shield on his other arm as well and blocked the strike, and a couple of others as the Mega Digimon span around to strike back with her staff twice more, and then he aimed a kick at her, which she nimbly dodged. Then she moved away again, and the battle paused.

They were both going through the motions now, and they knew it, testing each other's strengths and weaknesses. Durge decided to take the battle away from any potential help – he wanted to beat this opponent in a one on one conflict only, so he flared his jetpack and shot up into the air. Sakuyamon immediately set off in pursuit, ready for conflict as the two of them rose higher and higher into the air until they were both well above the Senate Building.

Durge immediately whirled to face downwards, a long chain appearing out of his wrist armour, with spikes extending out of the mace at the end as he swung it down towards the oncoming Digimon. Sakuyamon whirled aside to avoid the strike and Durge whipped it back up in retaliation, forcing Sakuyamon to thrust out her staff and cause the mace and chain to wrap around it instead of striking her. She immediately darted backwards and dragged Durge through the air with her, pulling to a halt and slamming him in the side of the head with her staff and then again on the other side with her foot.

Durge went spinning, the chain of his mace snapping, and as he regained control, the armour of the same wrist immediately extended outwards to reveal about thirty small sockets that immediately began to poor out dozens and dozens of spiked projectiles called fletchettes that streamed through the air toward Sakuyamon. The shaman Digimon calmly raised a Talisman Sphere and blocked the attack, but Durge slammed forwards once again and pounded his fist into the shield.

He was rather surprised when it held – he had been expecting his fist to go through it like with the deflector shield of a droideka. He pounded on it a couple more times but to no avail whatsoever – he couldn't penetrate through it. Sakuyamon smirked at his efforts and thrust forwards with the shield, expanding it outwards at a rapid speed to slam into Durge and send him rolling away, whereupon she lowered the shield and swept after him, launching another Amethyst Wind at him.

Durge twisted about and activated his energy shields once again to take the majority of the barrage, but he was still bombarded to the point where several diamonds were sticking out of his armour and shredding through the metal. His shields sputtered but held under the rest of it, and Sakuyamon planted her foot on his chest before he could stop her and he plummeted straight downwards.

Durge didn't feel overly concerned. In fact, he started laughing maniacally. This was exactly what he had been hoping and waiting for, a duel with a good opponent like this. He had gone so long without a decent fight, and now he had one. He hefted his blaster pistols out from their sockets and emptied them upwards towards Sakuyamon, who rolled out of the way and came lancing back down, raising her shield again to repel the shots.

Durge changed his angle and swept back up into the air, until he was above Sakuyamon again and fired down with one pistol and another round of fletchettes. Sakuyamon's shield took the pistol shots again with ease and then she dropped it and evade most of the fletchettes with a roll and deflected the rest with a whirl of her staff. She gripped it both hands as she drew level with Durge and then swept it through the air with a shout of:

"**TWIN BLADES OF BEAUTY AND TRUTH!"**

Durge blinked in surprise when he heard the name of the attack, but he quickly took it seriously when two massive, pink energy blades shot out from Sakuyamon and slashed through the air towards him. He quickly fired several more blaster shots over the top of them to attempt to catch Sakuyamon off guard, but she dodged them easily, and then raised his shields to block the attack. But the Twin Blades struck with such force that they overloaded both the shields and struck Durge full in the chest, shredding into parts of his armour and flinging him backwards with a cry of pain, a large portion of his chest ripped open.

Durge gritted his fangs beneath his face-mask and shuddered as he forced his body to heal the wounds over as quickly as it could, knowing that another attack like that could rip him in half. From down at this angle, Sakuyamon looked like she was framed against the sun like some kind of angelic figure, and that just angered him even more. He prepared to take his bigger cannon back off his back and try firing that up at her again, in case it broke her shield, but Sakuyamon beat him to the punch with, **"SPIRIT STRIKE!"**

Durge watched in amazement as four ghostly visions in the shapes of leaping foxes surged out from Sakuyamon's waist and dived down towards him, whirling around each other as they sought him out. A red one, a blue one, a yellow one and a green one. Durge had no idea what they would do if they got to him but he was not keen to find out, so he put extra power into his jetpack and swerved out of their way.

Only to have them turn around and follow him, spurring upwards like flaming meteors as they closed the distance between them and him. He hurriedly fired several shots from his pistol, but they passed straight through the spirits as if they weren't there, so Durge tried something else and ejected a flamethrower from his left wrist and send a column of flame shooting down at them instead.

Three of the spirits whipped away to swerve around the attack, but one of them; the red one, dived straight into it. Durge smirked thinking he'd taken one of them out, but to his astonishment, the red spirit _absorbed_ the fire column and used it to power itself, streaking upwards like one huge fireball that crashed into Durge's chest. Durge yowled as the fire shot through the cracks in his armour and blasted through him with such intense heat that his skin felt like it was beginning to melt. The flames spread over the front of his armour as the spirit emerged from within and flew away.

And then the other spirits slammed into Durge with full force. The blue water spirit and the green wind spirit surged up on either side of Durge, flipping around so they dived towards his back and spinning around one another, merging their powers together to create a powerful cyclone that crashed into Durge's back and sent him plummeting down towards the ground far below.

And the electricity spirit promptly made things worse by slamming into him from the side even as he plummeted and shooting right into his jetpack, sending volts coursing through the metallic armour that fried Durge's already blackened and damaged skin and shot straight into the jetpack, overloading them and blowing them to kingdom come. Flightless, Durge fell towards the ground almost half a mile below.

Sakuyamon followed at a swift pace, keeping the plummeting Gen'Dai in view. He made no attempts to alleviate his situation – apparently he didn't have a back-up jetpack, and when he smashed into the ground, he did so hard enough to throw up the concrete around him right into the air, along with a cloud of dust that completely screened him from view. Sakuyamon blocked the concrete with a shield and hovered a distance above the crash-site, waiting for the dust to clear to see what had happened to him.

A large number of nearby clones immediately flocked to the area and raised their blasters towards Sakuyamon, sending off a few laser rounds at her that she didn't bother to dodge, as her shield held. But then a blackened and damaged Durge rose up out of the enormous crater that he had created and roared in defiance. Through the gaps in his armour, Sakuyamon could already see his wounds beginning to heal over. His spine should have fractured, along with every bone in his body, at the impact, but now he appeared to be fine.

It was indeed almost like fighting a Digimon just as Sakuyamon had guessed.

"No!" Durge shouted, grabbing his pistols from his waist and immediately whirling around to gun down a pair of clones before he ran over to another and slammed him in the stomach so hard his armour fractured and he went crashing into a nearby wall. "Get away, you fools!" Durge bellowed. "She is mine!"

The clones stared in horror as they watched the guy who was supposed to be on their side suddenly turn on them like that and backed away, eyes falling on their fallen brothers in disbelief. Sakuyamon was similarly repulsed, and her grip on her staff tightened as her teeth gritted.

"HOW DARE YOU!" she thundered. "HOW DARE YOU TURN ON YOUR OWN MEN LIKE THAT! INNOCENT MEN TOO!"

"They're clones," Durge snorted. "They don't deserve to live anyway."

Sakuyamon growled and lanced downwards with staff at the ready, determined to teach this Bounty Hunter a severe lesson. Durge caught the strike of the staff in one hand, but before he could retaliate Sakuyamon spun around and launched another Amethyst Wind at him which ripped into him and tossed him backwards to roll away.

She leapt in pursuit but he fired at her with his flamethrower even as her slid backwards. Sakuyamon erected her shield and ploughed through the flaming stream, dropping it at the last moment to strike him across the face with the butt of her staff and spin around to slam his side with it a moment later.

But this time, Durge was prepared for her. His artillery seemed to be similar to Bane's because even as he was tossed backwards he flung a set of energized bolas at the Mega Digimon. Their close proximity to one another gave Sakuyamon no time to dodge and she was immediately ensnared, her arms snapping to her sides as the bolas wrapped around her upper body and jerked her off her feet.

Seeing the opportunity, Durge thundered forwards, blaster pistols in hand as he unleashed a barrage on the temporarily helpless Mega. His shots slammed into her brwestplate and blackened it and one of them crashed into her arm. Sakuyamon cried out as the shot burnt into her skin as she struggled against the bolas that bound her, but before Durge could get much further, the fox spirits sprang out of her waist again and slammed into Durge, plunging through his armour to lacerate and charge his skin with their elemental power.

Sakuyamon flared with holy power and the bolas pinning her arms were vaporised on the spot, allowing her to leap back onto her feet and grab her staff from where it had fallen to the ground, leaping forwards to ram its spiked end right into Durge's forehead, cutting straight through the metal facemask as it did so. She then sliced it down through his body to create another Twin Blades of Beauty and Truth that blasted him backwards and punched through yet more of his armour, slicing one arm clean off and taking a huge chunk out of his shoulder and left side.

Durge crashed onto his back nearby, his arm convulsing uselessly not far away. As Sakuyamon stepped towards him, though, she blinked as he _grew_ another arm right there on the spot, something which she doubted even Cherubimon could do. And what was more, as the rest of his body reformed, his lashed the new arm, which was armour-free out towards her and it _stretched_ like elastic.

Sakuyamon was caught completely off guard as the fist slammed into her face and fractured the nose of her fox mask. She crashed into a wall and Durge grabbed her neck in his fist with his elongated arm, stepping closer as he took the his cannon blaster from his back. Sakuyamon growled and lashed upwards with another Amethyst Wind that shredded the arm again and allowed her to clamber back to her feet.

She could see why even Jedi struggled against this Durge. But she was going to show the Gen'Dai that she was far, _far_ tougher than the average humanoid and leapt forward to attack once more.

* * *

While the brawling was still going on outside the Senate Building, a fair distance away from it, Suzie was trying not to shudder. Even here she could hear the noises of the conflict and both she and Lopmon had been witness to the aerial portion of the battle between Sakuyamon and Durge.

Suzie was no stranger to being on the front lines. Not anymore. But that didn't mean that the sound of battle still didn't chill her to some degree. Lopmon was crouched on her head, her ears deliberately draped over Suzie's ears to muffle to noise. Both of them knew when it was their turn to get in on the conflict, the young girl would grow a lot more confident.

"Hey, who are you?" a voice cried from nearby. Suzie and Lopmon both looked over to see a group of clones that was running between the buildings below them had stopped and one of them was pointing up at them both. "What are you doing up there, kid?"

"Uh… nothing," Suzie replied. It was a lame and useless answer and she knew it.

"This area is now off-limits to all civilians!" the clone told them. "You aren't allowed here. And what is that on your head?"

"Her? Uh, she's just a toy," Suzie began, but Lopmon tapped her on the head with one finger to interrupt her.

"Looks like our cue is arriving," Lopmon murmured startling the clones down below as she pointed up towards the sky with one ear. Suzie followed her gaze and spotted that Lopmon was indeed right.

The Senate Guards were not the only forces on the planet. Even with the numbers that had been taken to Tython, a huge number of clones had remained behind on Coruscant, as Palpatine had insisted on calling back just about all of the forces that had been out in the field. Now, word had apparently spread that the Senate Building was under attack and that reinforcements were going to be needed post-haste. A huge phalanx of gunships was winging their way in towards the Senate from the main Coruscant city.

Suzie gulped. Row upon row of the large white ships were motoring across the sky towards them. Lopmon quickly reached down and placed a comforting hand on Suzie's own. "Don't worry, Suzie," she assured her. "We'll be alright, but we need to act now. We have our own job, after all, don't we? We need to keep too many Empire reinforcements from reaching the Senate Building to prevent the others from being overwhelmed and give them enough time to carry out their own missions."

Suzie nodded. "It's such a big responsibility," she murmured.

"And you're a big girl," Lopmon grinned. "You know you can handle it."

Suzie sniffed and a small grimace of determination appeared on her face as she pressed her pink-rimmed D-Arc to her chest. The clone looking up at her said, "Look, I'm gonna have to ask you to come with me…" before he balked in surprise when Suzie jumped straight off the roof of the building and sailed out into the air, Lopmon clinging to her head.

"Biomerge activate!" the young kid shouted.

Lopmon released her head and grabbed her shoulders, spurring both of them upwards as they also burst into a blazing white light show and she shouted, **"LOPMON BIOMERGE TO…"** Even as their form began to shift, Lopmon powered upwards, and when they reached the point of merging together they were hovering in place, rising upwards still like some kind of blinding beacons. Dozens of eyes were drawn from all across the area, as clone and citizens alike looked on a mixture of wonder, fear and confusion.

The gunships actually pulled to a momentary halt and hovered there, trying to gauge what the light that was now between them and their destination might be before they risked going near it. And that was their mistake, because as they watched, the light began to take on a more distinct shape, until two massive pink arms burst out and dispersed the rest of the light in a shower of sparkles that fell all around the new creature, bathing it in some very appropriate, angelic-looking light.

For the second time within a month, the enormous pink Digimon with arms that reached down almost past its small legs, huge segmented ears with a ring around each one and a very large jester-like collar opened its eyes and looked out across Coruscant. Then she curled her fingers and lifted her arms in a fighting position and cried, **"CHERUBIMON!"**

The clones were in shock, as was just about everybody else. Cherubimon was so large that the citizens of the distant city could quite easily make her out as well. They crowded around, staring in disbelief at the new creature which had appeared before them. Even Palpatine, in his office, had seen the lightshow through the window and had turned to look and what he saw not only shocked him beyond all imagining, but it raised his anger bar even further.

Just WHERE were all these strange creatures coming from!

Cherubimon made no move at first. She just hovered there, silently, waiting for the gunships to try and get past her. She was the line in the sand, and if any of them attempted to get by her then they were going to meet with a serious problem. She half hoped that they wouldn't try, but she knew that they would.

And they did. But first the line upon line of gunships opened fire on her with just about everything they had. Cherubimon immediately lifted her hands to cover her eyes and mouth, but she did nothing to avoid the thousands of green laser bolts and dozens of missiles that came streaming through the air and right towards her, impacting across the entire length of her body and burning hole after hole after hole in her, pushing her backwards slightly.

The clones evidently thought that that was the end of it and that there was no way the creature could have survived something like that because they pushed forwards, angling their ships so that they would swoop around the giant angel-rabbit. When Cherubimon only lowered her arms and grimaced as every single wound on her body healed over simultaneously, the clones realised their mistake. Cherubimon hadn't even felt that much pain. She had been given far worse in the past, after all.

"Here goes nothing," she murmured, bringing her arms together and charging the air with electricity around her as the gunships thundered in her direction, opening fire once again. She didn't like what she was going to have to do, but she knew that in the long run, doing it would save the Galaxy and the clones would all eventually understand that. So she cried, **"STORM OF JUDGEMENT!"**

From out of nowhere, at lwest twenty massive lightning bolts blasted out from the sky above Cherubimon and lanced into the ranks of the oncoming gunships, blasting right into the noses of one each and generating such powerful explosion that the others in the vicinity were severely damaged too and went spiralling down towards the ground. In the blink of an eye, twenty gunships had been completely obliterated, torn apart into chunks that seemed to be no bigger than apples.

There were still a lot of them left though, and the clones in them immediately swerved to try and put some distance between them and Cherubimon, but the angel Digimon was having none of that. She propelled herself forwards using no visible means and with a surprising turn of speed considering her size. One massive arm swung out and slammed into three more gunships side-on, and knocked them out of the sky, and Cherubimon spun around and lashed out with her other arm, smashing aside two more as she grabbed another in one giant hand and flexed her fist, instantly the entire ship.

More gunships lanced past her, but Cherubimon brought her hands together and then raised them above her head, generating a huge Lightning Spear in them which she then hurled after the ships. The lightning bolt curved through the air and punched through one ship with a massive explosion and carried on through the debris to strike another and then another, leaving a trail of devastation behind it as it cut down an entire row of the ships.

Cherubimon turned around to see a gunship hovering in front of her and trying to aim lasers at her eyes and hopefully blind her. Cherubimon had no idea if her eyes would heal as well, but she had no desire to find out so she clapped her hands on either side of the ship and squashed it flat between her palms. Then she thrust outwards in either direction to grab another pair out of the air and twisted around to fling them to the sides, crashing them into several another pair as they tumbled out of control and sending the falling to the ground like smoking comets.

And yet there were still more gunships on the way. Cherubimon sighed and then thrust herself into the air, her enormous bulk shifting upwards at startling speed as the Lightning Spear zipped back into her hand on her command. She quickly raised the spear above her head as the gunships tried to shoot underneath her and then hurled it downwards, right into the centre of the group.

The Lightning Spear crashed right into the top of one of the gunships and not only vaporised it, but all transformed into a sort of pulse, sending a wave of crackling electricity outwards in all directions that rolled over the rest of the gunships and completely fried their circuitry, overloading many of them and causing them to explode on contact. From that point on, the only place that the gunships went was down and they crashed into the buildings below until they littered the streets with their flaming ruins.

Cherubimon moved backwards as the final wave of gunships were decimated, backing up until she was closer to the Senate Building. She briefly looked over her shoulder in time to spot Sakuyamon slamming Durge with another Amethyst Wind, while some distance away, Embo caught another blow from Bok on his shield and twisted his grip to cause Bok to lose his grip on his sword before he leapt upwards to kick him in the face, while Aayla, Sugi and Rumi stood firm and kept many of the other clones at bay.

Cherubimon rose higher until she was above the Senate Building and glanced out in all directions, checking for any sign of more activity that would indicate more approaching reinforcements, and she could see right away that there were a lot of them. Another wave of gunships was fast approaching, as was a couple of cruisers that had not been a part of the space battle, and though they were difficult to see, she could also see police droids and other clones running through the streets towards the Senate Building towards her. And they were coming from many different directions.

She grimaced. She was trying to limit her damage to the surroundings as much as possible, which meant that striking the ground with a lightning attack was out of the question, as she could obliterate several city blocks that way. She was going to have a difficult time holding so many clones at bay, so she didn't bother wasting any time. She swept forwards towards the next and closest batch of gunships, generating another spear of lightning in her hands. But this time, when she threw it, it immediately branched out and divided until dozens of Lightning Spears were lancing across the air towards the gunships.

There was a reason this attack was called the Thousand Spears.

As the gunships before her were annihilated by wave upon wave of lightning shots, Cherubimon glowered challengingly outwards, floating in front of the Senate Building with the air crackling with electricity all around her, a very unangelic look on her face. The message was clear – anybody who tried to challenge her had better think twice, because if they tried, they would very much regret it and quickly too.

* * *

Lieutenant Thire was one of the clones on duty inside the Senate Building, pretty much as he always was. The building had a very large number of Senators inside, but most of them were now cowering in their offices and under tables, while Thire stood in the corridor with a couple of other clones and stared out of the window at Cherubimon in absolute disbelief.

First a giant lizard and now this thing. Two opponents in one week that neither he nor his men could possibly hope to match. What was he supposed to do now? He had a job to do – protecting the Emperor, but while all the Senate Guards on the outside were congregating towards the area where Secura had been spotted, he felt completely and utterly helpless.

For now, the giant creature was focusing its efforts on its attackers and those trying to reach the building. If it turned on the building itself, Thire was pretty sure they would all be done for.

"She's quite formidable, isn't she?" said a voice next to the three clones.

"Yeah," nodded Thire, glancing briefly across at Ahsoka and then turning back. "I gotta admit, I'm not one to scare easily, but that thing does the job."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry so much," Ahsoka said reassuringly. "I don't think she'll turn on the building while her Jedi friends are outside it. In fact, I don't think she'll turn on the building at all. If she did, then the Jedi wouldn't bother assaulting it themselves, would they?"

"Probably not," agreed Thire.

"Well, see ya," Ahsoka nodded to him and began to stroll down the corridor and away.

There was a couple of seconds of silence.

"Wait a second!" Thire cried as he zipped around to have a look at the departing Togruta girl. "Jedi!" he shouted, cursing himself for an idiot to not remember the fact that Ahsoka was supposed to be an enemy now sooner. Ahsoka immediately broke into a run, a smirk on her face as she dashed down the hallway, while Thire and his clone companions leapt back into the main corridor and let fly at her back with laser blasts.

Ahsoka skidded around and twirled through the air to allow most of them to shoot past her body harmlessly, her shoto flashing into life in one hand to parry a couple of others. She then hurtled away and down the corridor, throwing a Force push behind her to knock the three clones off their feet and sprang through the air, slamming into a wall feet-first and rebounding off it to dive around the bend and dash away once more.

Behind her, Ahsoka her the sound of Thire yelling into his comlink – "All units! We have a breach! A Jedi has been spotted in the main corridor of the west wing. Locate and engage quickly! Target identified as Ahsoka Tano. Repeat, Ahsoka Tano."

Ahsoka smirked to herself as she heard the sounds of pursuit fading slightly behind her. _Nice job, Ahsoka,_ she heard Anakin's voice echoing in her head. _But make sure you don't lose your pursuers. Try and keep them occupied so Barriss and the Senators can act._

_You got it, Master,_ Ahsoka replied, slowing down slightly, and that was when she heard the sounds of pounding feet coming from the corridor ahead of her. She drew her lightsabers, ready for action, just as a door to her right slid open and several clones ran out as she passed. They immediately opened fire at her back and she spun around and slid to a stop, deflecting several of their bolts with rapid strikes and dodging another wave by rolling to the side and charging forwards, spinning to the other side to avoid another volley. Her shot hacked through the blaster of one of the enemy and she leapt up to kick him in the chest and push him backwards, falling to the ground on all fours like a crouching tiger, ready to pounce.

After all, Togrutas were predators by nature.

And pounce she did, when one clone tried to shoot at her. She leapt right over his lasers and slammed both feet into his midsection, grabbing his shoulders with her hands at the same time and slamming him into the wall using her full body weight, bouncing off him before he slumped to the ground and to slam one foot into the chin of another clone and send him crashing backwards.

Another tried to aim at her but two quick slashes of her lightsabers severed the blaster from his grasp and she darted forwards, skilfully grabbing the larger humanoid and flipping him into the wall, knocking him out as his head slammed into it.

Lieutenant Thire and the others rounded the corner as the clones fell down and hurriedly opened fire towards Ahsoka, continuing to run as they did so. Ahsoka managed to avoid the shots by backflipping several time and darting into a side door, allowing it to slide shut behind her. Thire and the others quickly crowded in front of the door, the lieutenant reaching for the controls to open it as the others raised their blasters, but before they could, the door was blasted out of its frame and cannoned into them.

As they crashed to the other side of the corridor with the door on top of them, Ahsoka darted back out into the corridor and dashed across the surface of the door, just as a group of clones and one Senate Guard appeared ahead of her. The young Padawan didn't even break in her stride and dashed to intercept, deflecting a couple of lasers as she threw herself at the Senate Guard with lightsabers raised.

The blue-clad man ducked, which had been what Ahsoka had in mind. She sheared off the plume of black feathers on top of his helmet as she shot over him and rolled past the rest of the clones, pushing herself into the air with one hand to twist sideways in a spectacular barrel-roll, lasers flying above and below her as she twisted back onto her feet and kept running.

She turned around briefly and brought her hands clapping together and then curled them into fists and yanked them to her chest. The first action resulted in several of the clones being yanked into the middle of the corridor and crashing into each other to fall into a heap on the ground, while the second two actions grabbed the door that Thire was struggling out from underneath and pulled it towards Ahsoka, meaning that as the clones were getting to their feet it crashed into their backs and sent them crashing back down to the floor once again.

Ahsoka turned and kept running, listening out for the sounds of pursuit and of more clones coming from up ahead. She darted past a couple of startled Senators that were standing about almost cluelessly, with the remaining clones hurrying after her in a desperate bid to catch up with her. Ahsoka twisted around their attempts to shoot her and began to bound from wall to wall in an extraordinary display of athleticism, flying across the corridor and bouncing off the wall towards the other and back again, and occasionally jumping to the floor to leap back into the air. At one point, she even swung from a ceiling fixture.

The clones were hard pressed to not only keep up with her, but aim at her. Ahsoka was never in the same place for longer than a split second and her method of moving was random and the clones found it impossible to predict where she was going to be next. They hurried after her all the same, but as she disappeared around a bend ahead, they suddenly lost sight of her.

They quickly pulled to a halt in confusion, certain that she had been there several moments before. There was only an open door that led to a small storage cupboard, but when a clone looked it there, he saw nobody. He turned away and they were about to move on, when Ahsoka suddenly swung down from the ceiling of the cupboard behind him, where she had been gripping the walls with both hands and feet to slam the latter into the back of his head and send him crashing into his fellows.

Ahsoka swung out of the cupboard and landed in a crouch, throwing her hands out to either side of her to launch the rest of the clones into the air with the Force and send them rolling, and then took off down the corridor once more, except this time going back the way she had come. She darted past Lieutenant Thire, who was just catching up, and it took him a couple of seconds to figure out what had just happened, before he turned around again to chase after the Togruta Padawan once more.

Unlike many of the others, Ahsoka was actually enjoying herself slightly. Leading the clones on a merry-go-round like this wasn't exactly pleasant, as she'd much rather being doing it with droids, but it was hard to deny that it was slightly amusing.

* * *

Palpatine's mood was getting darker with what seemed like every passing second. Not only had he witnessed the transformation of what appeared to be a little girl and the fox creature into what appeared to be some kind of strange magical being that was currently slamming Durge around, but the huge angelic rabbit creature that had somehow made its way outside out of seemingly nowhere was holding the reinforcements which Dooku had ordered at bay.

And where in the Galaxy was Krell? He was supposed to be attacking Aayla and the others as well, but he still hadn't shown up yet? Sidious' teeth were gritted so hard that it was a wonder they weren't breaking, as he wondered if he should have sent Dooku out there to deal with Aayla instead. He might have lost to her once in the past, but he would more than likely be much more ready for her the second time around.

There was very little that he could currently do at the moment. He had ordered the majority of his forces to the action zones, but until reinforcements arrived, it looked like they would have to manage on their own. But Secura and her Bounty Hunter friends seemed to be more than adequate at holding them off on their own. Perhaps he should send some of his more personal bodyguards out there. They would probably do a better job than the clones currently were.

"Emperor Palpatine," the voice of a clone called in through the comlink next to the holotransmitter. "This is Lieutenant Thire. We have another situation, sir."

Palpatine snarled, but answered and said, "Yes, Lieutenant. What is it now?"

"I'm not sure how, sir, but there's a Jedi in the West Wing and our forces are having a hard time catching her. It's Ahsoka Tano, my lord. We're trying to stop her from reaching anywhere significant, but she's a slippery one."

"Indeed," Palpatine felt a smirk appearing on his face as he looked up towards Ventress. A broad sneer of delight had appeared on the Dark Jedi's face from the moment Thire had named the Jedi in question. "I shall send back-up immediately." He signed off and added, "You see, Ventress. Just as I predicted. Tano is here after all and not on Tython as we were led to believe."

"If I may, Master…" Ventress gestured towards the door.

"Go right ahead," Palpatine nodded. "And bear in mind that I do not have any need for her, for information or otherwise. Feel free to do what you will with her. Make her death as slow as you please, but ensure that you do not fail again, Ventress. If Tano defeats you, that is the final straw for you. You will no longer be welcome among our ranks."

"Oh, she will not beat me, my lord," Ventress sneered. "Not this time." And she turned and darted away and into the corridor beyond, rushing towards the West Wing and leaving Palpatine alone with Dooku and Aurra Sing.

Dooku looked across to his master and said, "I am sure that Ventress will prove more than adequate for dealing with a Padawan. Especially now that she knows what is at stake."

"Indeed," Palpatine nodded. "As to how Tano managed to get past the blockade – that is a question for another time. For now, we must focus on a far more important question. Where are the rest of her team?"

"They must be somewhere nearby," Aurra guessed. "They hardly ever go anywhere without one another do they?"

"Indeed not," Palpatine shook his head. "They believe they are clever, but I am not so easily fooled. Secura is providing a diversion which allowed the others to get inside. Now Tano is doing the same thing, which will distract my forces to give the others a clear path to me. It is a foolish plan, but there is a chance it might work. Miss Sing, please go out and see if you can discover their whereabouts. If you do, send the information to us… and then try to eliminate them."

Aurra smirked. "My pleasure," she said, placing her hand to her head as the aerial sticking out of the top of it extended by about another foot, as she moved towards the door, listening out for any unusual activity as she hurried into the corridor, taking the opposite direction to Ventress and heading for the East Wing instead.

"What if they do reach this place, Master?" Dooku replied.

Palpatine's face darkened and his scowl of fury returned, his fingers sparking with barely contained Force lightning. "Then they shall learn the true power of the Dark Side, Lord Tyranus. Oh yes… they will learn it soon enough."

* * *

Ahsoka continued her headlong dash down the corridor, skidding leaping over the same pair of Senators which she had run past last time and glancing over her shoulder towards the following clones, making sure she wasn't pulling too far ahead. She swung her lightsaber blade back over her shoulder once again to catch a blaster bolt that was aiming for her back lekku and then turned and darted into another side room through the door.

She found herself in the office of Halle Burtoni, who whirled around at her entrance, her protuberant eyes bulging. "What the…" she started.

"Don't mind me," Ahsoka replied, dashing past her and slashing her lightsaber blade across the window to weaken it and kicking outwards to shatter it and go flying outside. She grabbed the edge of the concrete window frame in one hand and swung herself across the building until she landed on the windowsill of the next room and then busted her way inside there, dashing past an Ithorian Senator she didn't know and back out the door into the corridor, just in time to see several of the clones entering Burtoni's office.

She strolled over to the door, just as the clones looked out the fractured window. "You reckon she could have survived a jump of this height?" one of them asked.

"Yoohoo," Ahsoka called them, causing them to whirl around. She grinned and waved at them, before she darted aside as more lasers lanced into the hallway behind her and dashed off, the chase beginning again as she ran.

But a couple of minutes later and Ahsoka pulled to a stop so swiftly that there should have been a loud screeching noise, her boots scraping against the floor of the hallway and her eyes widening as she beheld somebody new blocking her way. Somebody who she hadn't had the 'pleasure' of meeting for some time now.

Asajj Ventress stood in the middle of the corridor, both her red lightsabers already out and held up by her sides, a sinister look on her face that gave Ahsoka the impression that she didn't know where to scowl or smirk, so it was a bizarre mix between the two. Behind her, the clones rounded the corner once again, but upon seeing the two Jedi, one Dark and one Light, facing off against each other, they lowered their weapons, not sure how to proceed.

"Ventress," Ahsoka acknowledged, her face going deliberately blank as she focused all her attention to her body and dove into the Force as much as she could in preparation for what was about to happen.

"Ah, Tano," Ventress chuckled. "Such a joy to see you again. I must ask you, where have you been all these last few months. Have you been hiding from me? I was expecting to have my rematch with you a lot sooner, but I haven't seen any trace of you anywhere. It makes me wonder if you're really as brave as the reports of the Republic kept saying you were."

"I never listened to the reports about us much," Ahsoka shrugged. "And I preferred to just hang around with my friends than go traipsing around the Galaxy looking for your sorry hide."

"I see you've lost none of your audacity," Ventress remarked.

"Neither have you," Ahsoka replied. "Oh wait. You never had any to begin with did you? My bad."

Ventress scowled, but added, "If you're attempting to goad me into getting angry, youngling, then I'm afraid that it isn't going to work. While I admit my loss to Secura was humiliating, it did highlight the main problem in my fighting, which is losing my temper. I'm not about to make the same mistake against you."

"Right," Ahsoka smirked. "As opposed to the time I knocked you out when you had me strung up and were torturing me with an electrostaff. That was just plain humiliating, wasn't it?"

Ventress snarled. "Now we're on the subject of that, Tano, how _did_ you manage to do that?"

Ahsoka chuckled. It hadn't actually been her at all. It had been Terriermon, but it didn't look like Ventress had linked the presence of the massive, green machine in space with the mysterious victories that the A-Team had been constantly getting so Ahsoka wasn't about to spill the beans on that. "Oh, I'm not about to reveal all of my secrets to you, Ventress. After all, who's to say I won't be able to take advantage of them against you again."

While Ahsoka was putting on a front of confidence, that was all it really was. Just a front. In reality, she wasn't quite sure what the outcome of this battle might be. In her past, her brash overconfidence had led her to assume that she would win with no questions asked, but now she was older and slightly wiser. She had faced Ventress twice in a one-on-one lightsaber duel and both times, Ventress had been the victor and the battle had been quite short-lived. There was a reason Ventress was long Dooku's top assassin.

In short, she had never actually bested Ventress in the past. She had escaped, always with help, but never won. And now, here they were again. But Ahsoka wasn't going to let her nerves show and she banished them to the back of her mind and focused on the Force instead.

Ventress seemed to feel the change in the air as well, because she crossed her lightsabers in front of her and said, "Well then, let's find out, Tano. Let's find out, once and for all, which one of us is the stronger dueller. Clones! Back away! This one is mine to finish and mine alone by right! If I see a single laser fired at her, there will be trouble!"

The clones looked at one another uneasily, none of them all that happy about taking orders from a Dark Jedi, but Ventress didn't wait around for them to respond. With a roar she charged into battle, her lightsabers sweeping through the floor and producing a shower of sparks and two huge grooves on either side of her and then sprang up and spun around to crash both lightsabers down on Ahsoka.

Ahsoka quickly caught them on her own blade and fell onto her back, kicking upwards with one foot to fling Ventress over her head. She flipped back onto her feet and turned to face her again at the same time Ventress landed and spun around. Now she was between Ahsoka and the clones, just in case one of them did try something to put Ahsoka out of commission themselves. Ahsoka held her lightsaber in front of her with both hands and scowled, ready for action.

Ventress smirked and then charged in once again, pre-empting the attack and spinning around to slash her blades out, one at head-height and the other at waist. Ahsoka ducked under the higher one and blocked the other, but Ventress brought the first blade slashing down from above so Ahsoka shoved the second blade away to catch it again, sweeping her blade down the length of Ventress as she jumped over a low swing and flipped over backwards as Ventress scissored her blades in the Padawan's direction.

Ahsoka quickly employed one of Aayla's favourite tactics, landing on one hand in mid flip and lashing out with a foot towards Ventress' head. Ventress slashed at the incoming foot, but Ahsoka proved it had been a feint and pulled it back to bring the other sweeping around to cannon into Ventress' skull. As she rolled back onto her feet, she smirked, pleased to have gained the first strike which briefly sent Ventress reeling, but the Dark Jedi soon retaliated, rolling with the reel and diving towards Ahsoka with both blades raised high.

This time Ahsoka dashed in to meet her, but she quickly threw herself into a roll at the last second, landing on her shoulder and slashing upwards as she rolled beneath Ventress. Unfortunately the Dark Jedi parried the strike as she flew overhead and used the purchase to flip back onto her feet and whirl around, trying to strike Ahsoka while she was down. But Ahsoka was quick and sprang off the floor and over the slash, rolling in mid-air to strike back at Ventress, only to have her blow caught on Ventress' other blade.

Ahsoka quickly stepped back and turned aside a cleave from the other blade on the tip of her own and spun her blade around to block a strike from the other side as well, retreating further as Ventress whirled about and leapt upwards to plunge both her lightsabers downwards. Ahsoka countered but Ventress broke the lock by throwing her blades out to either side and dropped to a crouch, spinning around to land a solid kick to Ahsoka's stomach and send the Togruta girl flying backwards towards the clones.

Ventress immediately pressed her advantage, trying to catch Ahsoka while she was weakened. But if there was one thing that Ahsoka was good at in a lightsaber fight, it was speed. Being a lightweight did often have its advantages, so when Ventress stabbed downwards, all she impaled was the floor, as Ahsoka had rolled aside and sprung up, planting her feet on the wall. Ventress swung at her again, but Ahsoka was gone once more, bouncing off the wall and behind Ventress to the other wall, which she also bounced off and shot towards Ventress with a huge sweep of her blade.

Ventress used one blade to counter, and attempted to swing the other, but as Ahsoka slammed her blade into her own with the full backing of her body weight, Ventress stumbled backwards and her back crashed into the wall, Ahsoka pushing her up against it. Ventress growled as Ahsoka attempted to push her own blade back into her body and hacked down with her secondary weapon. To her surprise, another lightsaber hilt was suddenly in Ahsoka's other hand and she activated her shoto to catch the blade and throw it aside, plunging the smaller weapon towards Ventress' face.

The only thing that saved Ventress' life was a quick slide down the wall and a sweep kick that sent Ahsoka crashing onto her back. Ventress scythed her blades down, but Ahsoka had backwards rolled with the momentum and was back on her feet already. Ventress got back up as well and slashed forwards with both blades wildly, which Ahsoka countered by diving into the attack and slamming her blades outwards with both her own, diving between Ventress' weapons and whirling around to strike at her back with her lightsaber.

Ventress threw her blade out over her shoulder and caught the strike, ducking under her own arm and pirouetting around to sweep her other blade towards Ahsoka's stomach. Ahsoka's shoto was there to counter it and she flicked Ventress' weapon aside and stabbed it with lightning speed towards her chest. Ventress only just managed to turn the weapon aside and glowered, before really beginning to push her attack home.

Ahsoka suddenly found herself on the defensive again as Ventress span about and lashed out twice with one blade in rapid succession and then took a mighty sweep upwards with the other. Ahsoka dodged the first two with swift and supple body movements and countered the other with her shoto, attempting to lash out with her other blade before being repulsed by Ventress' own. Ventress struck low and Ahsoka leapt over it and the Dark Jedi used her momentum to spin around and heave her blade through the air towards Ahsoka in an incredibly potent swing.

Ahsoka gritted her teeth as she crossed her blades and skidded backwards slightly in blocking the blow, but Ventress' other hand lashed out and a pulse of the Force crashed into Ahsoka and knocked her backwards, sending her flying back down the corridor to smack painfully into a nearby wall and fall to the ground, winded.

As usual, Ventress attempted to strike the opponent when she was down and immediately rushed forwards, an eager look on her face as she saw that the chance of making a kill was in sight. Ahsoka looked up to see the Dark Jedi rapidly approaching and grimaced as she pushed herself back onto her feet and rolled aside and away from the double slash. Ventress whirled around to repeat, but Ahsoka twisted aside again and brought up her lightsabers in an X as Ventress slashed down in a similar X, resulting in a quadruple lightsaber lock.

Ahsoka didn't both turning this into a pushing contest. She knew that Ventress had weight and strength on her, so she immediately twisted out of the way, allowing Ventress to stumble past, sidestepped and slashed for her neck with her full-sized blade. Ventress lifted her sword to parry the glancing blow and swung underneath her arm towards Ahsoka's stomach. Ahsoka blocked across herself as well and pushed herself off Ventress' blades to land in a crouch nearby, both her lightsaber and her shoto ready for more action by her sides.

Ventress stood upright and glowered down at her nemesis. "I see that you have copied me with your approach to lightsaber combat," Ventress sneered, nodding towards Ahsoka's shoto. "New weapon?"

"Yep," Ahsoka nodded. "Just got it yesterday."

"Then you won't have had the chance to break it in properly," Ventress laughed. "You think adding an extra blade to your hands at the last minute will save you from a gruesome death, Tano? Well, I beg to differ."

"It's been serving me pretty well so far," Ahsoka pointed out with a smirk, flicking it into the air and catching it again in a faux display of confidence. "How about we see just how good this thing actually is."

"Assuming you've built it correctly," Ventress sneered. "But I agree. Enough words. We shall let our swords to the talking." And she dashed forwards once more. Ahsoka's eyes narrowed and she sprang straight up, grabbing a ceiling bar and swinging her feet forwards as she had before in the closet against the clones. Caught off guard by the angle of the attack, Ventress yelped as Ahsoka's feet slammed into her face, the Togruta flipped over her as she fell to her knees and dashed away down the corridor.

Ventress whirled around and growled. "You can't run away from me, youngling!" And she hurtled along the corridor in pursuit of Ahsoka, her longer limbs gaining ground quickly as they both used the Force to aid their running speed. Ahsoka glanced over her shoulder towards the oncoming Ventress, her swords lashing up and down with her arms as she ran and murder clearly evident in her icy blue eyes.

Ahsoka quickly turned back around and focused ahead of her. But then, she caught Ventress off guard again by suddenly stopping and whirling around to stab forwards viciously with her longer lightsaber. Ventress was almost unable to stop in time, nearly impaling herself on the oncoming blade, but she managed to bat it aside at the last second but Ahsoka span in a half circle and lashed out with her shoto instead, scything the yellowish blade towards Ventress' head.

Ventress ducked beneath her attempt and found herself met with Ahsoka's foot instead, which crashed into her stomach and sent her stumbling backwards. As Ahsoka swept to a stop, she lashed out with both hands and sent Ventress barrelling back down the hallway with a powerful Force push. She then heaved her shoto through the air and flung it after the flying Jedi and dashed after her projectile before it could make any mark whatsoever

Ventress was startled by the ferocity of Ahsoka's attack and the rain of different blows that were flung at her. Her eyes widened as she crashed into a wall and saw the shot whirling towards her face. She threw herself to the side and the shoto embedded itself in the wall instead, but as Ventress went sprawling, Ahsoka was suddenly upon her, lightsaber swinging down.

Ventress threw up one blade to catch the strike, but with a skilful flick, Ahsoka sent the lightsaber flying out of Ventress' hand and struck downwards again. Ventress rolled over and threw up her other lightsaber blade, stopping Ahsoka's strike within inches of her chest.

"Surrender, Ventress," Ahsoka glared down at her.

"To you?" Ventress snarled. "Never!" And she tried a technique which Aayla had used on her in their last bout – she slammed her head forward and rammed her forehead into Ahsoka's. The pain was felt by both of them, but Ahsoka was not expecting it and reeled backwards with a cry of shock, allowing Ventress to roll onto her shoulders and kick Ahsoka in the abdomen with such force that she went flying almost up to the ceiling.

Ventress rolled back onto her front like a cat and grabbed her fallen lightsaber, pouncing forwards towards a reeling Padawan who was clutching her head with one saber raised. Ahsoka saw her coming through her fingers and used the Force to call her shoto back into her hand and catch the first blade on it, quickly side-stepping Ventress follow up stab and ducking underneath her the swipe that followed. She retaliated with a whirling double strike to the head which Ventress parried aside with annoying ease.

Ventress stepped back to gain space and slammed the bases of her lightsaber hilts together to create a single double end weapon for a moment and then launched herself forward, whirling in circles with her blade spinning around her in a terrible display of speed and strength. Ahsoka's eyes widened as she frantically parried several sweeping shots with both blades and then wisely jumped backwards before another one could get past her guard. Ventress slid to a halt and leapt, double lightsaber spinning over her head like helicopter rotors as she flashed them down towards the young Padawan.

Ahsoka managed to avoid the strike with an enormous backflip that carried her several metres away as Ventress weapon plunged into the floor instead. The Dark Jedi looked up at her with a sneer and then snapped her weapon back into two single blades, advancing forwards more slowly and ominously, in an attempt to unnerve Ahsoka.

But the Padawan stood firm, taking up a stance with lightsabers facing outwards and hands close together. Things were getting more and more elaborate in the duel between them, and both of them knew that one of them was not going to walk away from this alive. This had become a duel to the death, if only because Ventress was insisting on making it one. No retreats. Not this time.

Eager for a kill, Ventress made the first move again, leaping forwards in a huge pirouette that lashed one blade after another right at Ahsoka. The Togruta leaned over backwards to let the first pass overhead and span to one side as the other passed within inches of her leg. She span around to catch Ventress' following double strike and reposted them with a jerk, aimed three rapid blows at Ventress' stomach with her long blade, which Ventress turned away easily, allowing her to retaliate with four successive head strikes.

Ahsoka's shoto shot upwards and turned aside the first couple of strikes, but as Ventress slashed down with both blades at the same time, Ahsoka switched blades and caught it on her longer one. Only then did Ventress realise her mistake as Ahsoka struck out beneath her guard with her shoto instead. Ventress leapt backwards, breaking the lightsaber lock and the tip of Ahsoka's weapon sheared through Ventress belt, dropping her purple robe to the floor so she was clad in her leggings instead.

Ventress' temper immediately flared at the thought of how close Ahsoka had come not just this once but several times already by this point and she summoned the Force to send the robe flapping upwards and right towards Ahsoka, seeking to envelop her in its material. Ventress smirked and struck outwards, slashing clean through the material and everything that was behind it.

Which turned out to be nothing but thin air.

Ventress blinked at the sight of the empty corridor. Only then did she spot the open door almost right in front of her and Ahsoka sprang out from it and grabbed the frame in her hands, her feet lashing to slam Ventress in the chest and send her crashing onto her back and skidding down the corridor painfully. Ahsoka landed right next to her with her shoto at the ready and stabbed downwards, but Ventress caught the attack in the crook of both her own blades and thrust Ahsoka's weapon back upwards.

A pulse of the Force rocketed out of Ventress' hands and Ahsoka was flung back into the wall, allowing Ventress to scramble back to her feet and charge forwards, her blades held out like a pair of lances by knights on horseback and pointed towards Ahsoka's belly. Ahsoka thrust out with her own hands and grabbed Ventress' arms with the Force, jerking them outwards so the blades stabbed into the wall on either side of her instead. Then she slammed her knee into Ventress' gut and slashed forward with her shoto once more.

Ventress parried the shot and growled as she knocked the shoto aside violently and thrust out with her hand, grabbing Ahsoka with the Force and hurling her across the corridor and into the opposite wall, where the Togruta smacked her head painfully, and then Ventress swung her the other way and made her crash into the opposite wall _again_. Ahsoka sent out a surge of the Force on impact that broke Ventress' hold on her and caught herself against it, managing to stay on her feet.

She hurriedly ducked under Ventress' next swing and rolled around the Dark Jedi's body, reactivating her own blades to swing her shoto at Ventress' back as her opponent span around and caught it in return and then span her other blade in from below in a move that would have gutted the Dark Jedi had she not brought her other lightsaber into play. Ahsoka leapt over another sweep from Ventress and clashed her shoto against one red sword, blocked two successive strikes to her shoulder and retaliated with one of her own and then scissored her blades out.

Ventress caught them by crossing her arms and then scissoring outwards herself, pushing Ahsoka backwards bodily through the air. Ahsoka flipped back onto her feet, knowing that this fight was far from over as Ventress came for her once again.

_I could really use some of Aayla's and Anakin's ways of thinking about now,_ she thought to herself as she raised herself to continue the duel.

* * *

_Looks like things are really getting underway down there,_ Terriermon thought as MegaGargomon swung his fist up into the bottom of the nearest cruiser and plunged it straight through the bottom of the hull, unloading several shots from his gatling gun that pulverised the inside of the hangar and ripped open a hole in the top as well. He then jetted backwards and bombarded the stricken missiles with the smaller missiles within his large shoulder cannons.

_Yeah,_ agreed Henry. _And from Sakuyamon can see, looks like Cherubimon's doing a fairly decent job of holding the opponents away from the Senate Building._

_Yeah,_ Terriermon chuckled. _How angry do you think Palpatine is about this whole thing right now._

_Oh, I would say very,_ Henry nodded, as they turned around and struck out with one arm to slam two Empire ARC-170s aside and looked out over the blockade. Everything was becoming a complete mess for the Empire. Their shields already weakened by MegaGargomon and the Y-wing bombers, the cruisers were taking heavy damage from the cruisers on the other side of the conflict.

MegaGargomon turned around and opened his chest to reveal more missile sockets that promptly began to exude more ammunition, so much of it that it was a complete mystery where MegaGargomon stored them all. As they selected several more of the remaining Empire fighters and lanced off in pursuit, Terriermon added, _Then how about we introduce the other player to the mix down there, eh?_

_I think now is as good a time as any,_ agreed Henry. _Let's do it._

MegaGargomon turned around and began to jet back towards the rebel ships, his eyes narrowing as rose up and over the large cruisers, focusing his gaze on the bridge of the _Resolute_ as he flew past it. He spotted Admiral Yularen within, and the giant mecha Mega gave the moustached human a nod before he flew past the line of _Venator_-class cruisers…

…and towards the _Acclamator_ that was still hanging back.

He turned around when he reached the larger cruiser, so that he was directly in front of it like a large, green, living shield. The clones piloting the cruiser knew immediately what this was all about, and they began to pilot the ship forwards, MegaGargomon doing the same himself and keeping just ahead of the cruiser.

Ahead, the _Resolute _and the _Intrepid_ began to move slowly to one side, rolling over slightly to create a gap amongst the line of cruisers, never for a moment stopping their bombardment of the enemy blockade as they did so. MegaGargomon surged between them, with the _Acclamator_ hot on his thrusters.

MegaGargomon quickly prepared to unleash hell upon the Empire blockade as the flaps opened across his whole body length, until almost every part of him was showing holes surrounded by the grey beneath his armour. This was followed by him unleashing his biggest Mega Barrage yet, sending close to three-hundred missiles streaming out of his body all at once and weaving between the conflict of the fighters, bombers and the remaining Vulture Droids.

The cruisers in front of him didn't stand a chance whatsoever. Five of them had their fates sealed as dozens of missiles shot towards them, splitting off and curving around to aim directly for their most vulnerable spots like their bridges, engines and fuel tanks. The terrific explosions that followed rocked the entire battle and caused every single ship involved to shudder at the powerful shockwaves that were sent lashing out in all directions. MegaGargomon then powered forwards and grabbed the useless wreckage of two adjacent cruisers, flipping them onto their sides to act like shields.

The _Acclamator_ passed between the defeated cruiser with ease, sheltered from any attempts at retaliation from the rest of the fleet thanks to MegaGargomon's actions. The giant Mega would have smirked if his face could move as he lifted himself out above the cruises and watch as the _Acclamator _passed the blockade, undamaged and heading straight into the atmosphere with nothing left to stand in his way.

He then turned around and went back to beating the crap out of the cruisers around him.

* * *

As the _Acclamator_ plunged into the atmosphere and levelled out about a mile or so above the Senate District, it slowed down gradually and opened its massive hangar doors, extending its ramp downwards while it was still in the air. And its main passenger immediately scrambled out of the doors, dashed down the ramp on all fives and sprang off the edge, plummeting towards the ground far, far below – a huge roar belting out of its massive jaws as he plummeted downwards towards the distant buildings.

His green eyes narrowed, his long limbs stretching out to either side of him to arrest his fall slightly, though not by much, his long spiked tail lashing from side to side as he fell past the cloud and towards the area of ground near the giant, domed building where the pale man resided.

Below him, the air crackled with electricity, and Cherubimon's large ears picked up the sound of roaring, looking up towards the distant creature falling through the air rapidly. She smirked and murmured, "Right on time," and then propelled herself upwards, rising into the air to meet him halfway at an impressive speed.

"Evening," she chuckled as she drew level with him and immediately wrapped her gigantic arms around his equally large body, angling themselves around so that she was on his back as they both now fell towards the ground. Then Cherubimon began to haul backwards, using her angelic powers and impressive strength to slow their plummet down, slower, slower and slower the closer that the two of them got to the ground.

The reinforcements that had been encroaching on the Senate Building and wondering where the heck Cherubimon was going, stared in absolute disbelief. Many of the clones there had been present when the creature that was now falling towards them had been loaded onto a cruiser and taken away, obviously dead. And yet here it was now, very much alive and ready for round two against Coruscant.

When Cherubimon had arrested the fall to almost a stop, she let go of her burden and he plummeted the last hundred feet or so on his own, landing on his hind legs with a thunderous crash and falling onto his front legs to steady himself, before he reared up onto his back legs once more and spread his three arms, letting rip with a roar that made almost everybody with two miles clap their hands over their ears.

Godzillo's green eyes blazed as Cherubimon hovered over him. Then, without waiting for the Empire forces to gather their wits, Godzillo thundered forwards with arms primed, ready to fight in the name of the Republic whose leader once tried to kill him.

That leader was now staring out of the window in more disbelief than he had ever had in his entire life. The Zillo Beast! The Zillo Beast was here too and fighting on their side! But the Jedi had told him that the Zillo Beast had died! They had deceived him? Even _before_ Order 66? This was… this was…

Dooku wisely backed away as lightning burst out of Palpatine's hands and he summed up his feelings in just one word, if you could call it that,

**"AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!"**

* * *

Heh. It's been a while since I wrote a lightsaber duel, and it's been even longer since Ahsoka got such a long fight scene all by her lonesome. I really hope that everybody likes the way the battle was going. I tried to balance out the fighting between the two of them so that both of them managed to land just about as many hits on the other as they got hit with themselves. That fight certainly isn't over yet and right now, it seems that it could go either way.

Similarly, I hope that Sakuyamon's fight with Durge was alright. Durge was always going to be a problem for me as I have had little to no experience of what he can do in a fight, but I tried my hardest to get him right.

And, well, lots and lots of more action to come, people. Hope you look forward to it.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

As the destruction continues outside and inside, Barriss and the Senators make their way to the communication centre and bust their way in, preparing to make the preparations for the final stage of their plan. But when a certain Bounty Hunter comes across them, Barriss' confidence issues are about to be put to the test.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 204 : A Jedi's Duty**


	204. A Jedi's Duty

Hello again everybody. Rather pleased to see that I am still on schedule even after all this time. I am enjoying writing every single second of this arc, and I am hoping that this chapter will be just as awesome as most of you seemed to think the others were. I am thrilled that you guys are all still avidly reading, and with such enthusiasm too.

And now, onward ho.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 204:- A Jedi's Duty**

* * *

A couple of Senate guards who were posted outside of the communication centre in the Senate Building stumbled to the side as they felt practically the entire foundations of the building shaking. Neither of them knew what was going on outside, but it sounded like absolute devastation. Both of them also wanted to abandon their post and go and find out, perhaps try and help, but they were under strict instruction not to desert their posts, no matter what.

"I don't like the sound of that," one of them muttered.

"We just can't seem to catch a break, can we?" the other agreed. "Lizard creatures, the Jedi, those clones… it's like everybody is turning against the Emperor, and the Separatists – the ones who started it – have disappeared off the face of the Galaxy."

"Or joined him," the first one added. "How long do you think it'll be before one side wins?"

"We don't even know who the combatants are," the second one gritted his teeth. "Nobody tells you anything when you're guarding this place."

"Hear, hear," murmured the first one, and the two of them returned to their lonely vigil, listening to crackling and the shaking and sound of dozens of thundering impacts which could be easily made out even _despite_ the incredibly thick walls of the Senate Building. It allowed their imaginations to run riot, and both of them were now wondering if they were going to be vaporised by some giant superweapon or something.

And then a droid appeared around the corner ahead of them – a small, blue panelled astromech that slowly rotated on the spot and rolled towards them on its three legs, its head rotating from side to side slightly as it moved closer to the Senate Guards.

Neither of the guards really paid much attention to the droid. They were more preoccupied with listening out for any sign of impending doom, so when R2-D2 drew level with them and twiddled slightly, asking in binary if he could be let through the doors and into the room beyond, one of them absent-mindedly murmured, "Sure," and moved to open the door.

The only staff in the communication centre were droids anyway, so neither of the Senate Guard had anything to be suspicious about. Up until the point where the astromech suddenly appeared to go berserk, a panel opening in the front of its torso and exuding an exhaust pipe. The small droid promptly squealed and began to spin round and round in circles, as if it had gone completely haywire, the pipe spewing forth copious amounts of smoke that billowed over the expanse of the corridor and enveloped both the Senate Guards.

"What the…" one of them shouted, but that was all he had time to say because something suddenly cannoned into his chest through the smoke, with what felt like a double-kick, slamming his back into the wall where he smacked the back of his head against it and slumped, unconscious. The concealed shape then flipped over Artoo and landed in front of the other Senate Guard, throwing out a hand before it to send the guard flying backwards thanks to an invisible force, to meet with a similar fate to the other.

"Nice job, Artoo," the figure complimented the droid, raising its hands into the air and fanning them out, causing the smoke to disperse and vanish into thin air, clearing the corridor and revealing it to be Barriss. Artoo whistled at the praise and folded his exhaust pipe back into his body, as the five Senators that were accompanying them made their way into the corridor.

"Efficient," Mon Mothma noted, looked down at the unconscious guards. "That was quick."

"Yeah, but getting inside was always going to be the easy part," Barriss reminded them. "You ready, Artoo?"

The astromech tootled in readiness and quickly rolled through the door the moment Barriss opened it. There were several droids inside, of various makes, that were staring at the door and trying to figure out what was going on beyond it, including another astromech, a protocol droid and a rabbit droid.

Artoo immediately rolled forwards at speed and extended the lightning rods of his head and body, assaulting the other droid before it knew what was happening and sending electricity sparking all over its body. The other astromech yelped electronically and then slumped down, deactivated.

The protocol droid attempted to flee towards the door on the other side of the room, as did the rabbit droid, but the former had the same problem as C-3PO, in that its legs were stiff and it could only move so fast. Artoo easily managed to catch up with it and deliver another jarring electric shock to it and shorted out its circuitry temporarily and caused it to fall to the ground with a thunk.

As for the rabbit droid… well, it got pretty close to escape before it suddenly started to float in the air and was pulled backwards towards the weighting astromech, who shocked the body and caused it to sag down like the others. Barriss used the Force to place it back on the ground and she stepped aside to allow the Senators to get in. Bail and Onaconda dragged the unconscious bodies of the two Senate Guards in behind them and propped them up against a nearby wall.

"We might not have a lot of time," Barriss remarked as she turned to look around the room. "The plan seems to be progressing at a fast and sustained pace, so it might not be long before our own efforts will be needed."

"Indeed," Padmé nodded. "Artoo? Do you think you can get to work?"

Artoo twiddled and moved over towards one of the consoles, Chuchi bending down to heave the still form of the other astromech out of the way to allow Artoo access to the panel behind it. The small droid extended his scomp link and plugged in, rotating it around as he sought to hack through into the mainframe of the Senate Building. There was a lot that he needed to do with the computers here, and he only had a short amount of time to do it in.

"We should cover the door," Barriss suggested, as Artoo began his work. "If somebody walks past and notices that there are no guards outside this room then there's going to be trouble." She stepped past the Senators and crouched down to the floor next to the doors and added, "You guys get to work with the camera gear. I'll keep watch."

"Okay," Bail nodded. "Padmé, Mon Mothma and I will do that. Senator Farr, Senator Chuchi, you guys watch those guards. If they wake up, make sure that they don't give away our location to anybody." He fished a blaster out of his robes and tossed it to Onaconda, as Padmé did the same with her own signature blaster and tossed it to Chuchi.

The Pantoran looked very uncomfortable with holding a blaster in her hands, much less pointing it at somebody. But she did it anyway, keeping an eye on the guards along with the Senator of Rodia. After all, they had not come so far to fall at the final hurdle thanks to a mistake.

Meanwhile, Bail was holding the large holocam in one hand while Mon Mothma had a large cable in her own and was screwing it into the back of the camera. Padmé had hold of the other end of the same cable and she tapped Artoo on the head. Artoo responded by opening a panel in his back while he continued to work with the computers, revealing another socket that Padmé began to work on, bending down and copying Mon Mothma's actions with the other end of the cable, hooking up the faithful astromech with the camera.

Barriss glanced back towards them and then focused back towards the door, lightsaber handle clutched tightly in her hand. She knew that there was a lot of activity going on throughout the Building, so there was a chance she might have to jump into action at any moment. She could already sense Ahsoka in the middle of the duel of her life, while Aayla and the others were still fighting fiercely outside.

"How's it coming, Artoo?" Padmé asked, as Bail and Mon Mothma extracted the three legs out of the holocams in order to prop it on the ground in preparation for the broadcast that they were planning to make later on.

Artoo rotated his head around and replied in his own whistling way. Padmé was sufficiently well versed in binary to understand the majority of the message, so she looked up and gave them the report.

"He says that he's encountering a lot of firewalls that are difficult for him to override, but he's making progress. He's successfully linked himself up with the camera we have here, but he estimates that it'll take him roughly ten more minutes to hack into the mainframe and get us ready to make our unannounced broadcast."

Barriss nodded to herself and turned back to the door, peering around the edge for any sign of activity. She had known that Artoo would not be able to break through into the security with ease like he could in most places. After all, this was the very centre of the Republic, or Empire, and one of the most important buildings in the whole Galaxy, as well as one which had stood for hundreds and hundreds of years.

The amount of mainframe security here was bound to be phenomenal, especially after the Bounty Hunters led by Bane had managed to force their way in and hacked the system to take control of the entire building. Palpatine would not have wanted to risk something like that happening again.

Apart from Artoo's work, though, the Senators were practically good to go already. If Artoo managed to break through into the mainframe, then all they would have to do would be to talk to the holocam and the droid would be able to do the rest – recording it, converting it, transmitting it, switching between cameras and overriding any attempts to block it if he managed to get a good enough grip on the thing.

Barriss lifted a handheld comlink to her mouth and said, "Seripas. Are you in position?"

* * *

"Not yet," the tiny little Bounty Hunter replied from his position on the domed roof of the Senate Building. As per Anakin's instructions, he had parked the ship right on the top of the dome – the flattest area on it. He had stepped out of the ship, and used a control device to close the ramp, rendering the ship both empty and completely invisible, to remain that way unless someone accidentally bumped into it and managed to cut their way inside or until Seripas decided to open it again.

He had the holocam tucked under one arm. This one was slightly smaller than the one the Senators were erecting in the communications centre, and it settled easily on his shoulder, allowing him to move around freely. But, he had to admit, that he had been caught up in the sight of Cherubimon in the distance, bombarding the Empire reinforcements with her powerful lightning strikes.

Seripas could only stare at the angelic bunny in wonder. He'd never seen the Digimon go beyond the Ultimate level, and he had thought Antylamon was big. But Cherubimon dwarfed her own ultimate form. He chuckled, thinking how ironic it was that the tiny little bunny and the small human girl who was around twice as tall as him could merge into something that massive. It was simply astounding.

Lopmon had been the one, so long ago, that had gotten him over his problems with his size. Since then, Seripas had never even set foot in his mechanical suit which had been destroyed by the Acklay. He rebuilt it for nostalgic reasons but he never needed it. And now, he was about to use his small size to do what Lopmon had told him he should do – use it to go unseen. And he was going to use it to, hopefully, bring down the Sith. Something that he would once have considered far, far out of his range.

Seripas quickly shifted his focus back to the task at hand. He had his own job to do, and he needed to get on with it, to ensure that he was in the right place at the right time. Placing the holocam firmly in the crook of his armpit, he began to clamber across the rooftop, moving slowly down the metallic dome. Seripas' species did have an advantage when it came to climbing. They were slightly gecko-like, in that their hands could grip slippery or even vertical surfaces just like Zarza the Varactyl.

Their feet could do the same thing, so Seripas slowly made his way down the roof with ease, being cautious not to drop the holocam as he moved.

"I'm moving into position now," he murmured into the comlink. "I should be there soon. And I'll be waiting for my cue to start the plan."

* * *

"Trust me," Barriss replied. "You won't need me to tell you when to start. You'll see it quite clearly for yourself. And she signed off, gripping her lightsaber firmly as she continued to peer around the door.

"Which of us is going to make the announcement?" Mon Mothma suddenly asked, looking up from watching Artoo to address the other Senators. "One of us is going to have to break the news to the public – give them something to hear as well as see. Which of us should it be?"

"Not me," Chuchi said immediately. "It should definitely be one of your guys. Your word carries a lot more weight amongst the public than mine does. They're far more likely to take you seriously than me. They might just think I'm a young, inexperienced Senator trying to make myself known with a practical joke."

"I think you're being a little hard on yourself, Chuchi," Padmé replied. "Nevertheless, I do think you have a point. That's why I think that _you_ should be the one to make the announcement, Bail. Alderaan's voice, not only among the Senate but amongst the whole Republic, when we still had one, was formidable."

"True, but so was Naboo's," replied Bail.

"But it was not as strong as Alderaan's," countered Padmé.

"Well, I think that it should be you that does it, Padmé," Onaconda Farr voiced from where he was standing by the still unconscious Senate Guards.

"Me? Why?" Padmé asked. "Bail is the best candidate, isn't he?"

"He might have slightly more influence than you, Padmé," replied Onaconda. "But I think that everyone here will agree that you are the bravest of us. The most daring. You have also been one of the strongest advocates for peace, and you are known for it on both the Republic and Separatist sides during the Clone Wars. And forgive me for saying this, but you have earned yourself a reputation amongst the people for being someone who constantly sticks her nose in where it doesn't belong and finds out the darkest secrets of the enemy."

Bail chuckled, "Well, that last part certainly is true. You've unravelled more plots against the Republic than any one of us Padmé. All of us put together, I believe. If anybody can pull this off, it will definitely be you."

"Besides," Mon Mothma agreed. "You are the best speaker among us for talking to the people. You always have been. Bail and I, well… we might make speeches a lot as well, but you understand the people on a level that we don't. You always know the best ways of expressing what you are trying to say to them."

Padmé flushed slightly at the praise and then looked over at Chuchi, who was grinning. "Am I going to be unanimously elected to do this, Chuchi?" she asked. "You're the one who organised this. You get a say just as much as the rest of us."

Chuchi beamed, pleased beyond measure that Padmé and the others were taking her opinion into account, which most Senators didn't really bother to do. But she said, "Well, I have to say I agree with them. Besides, everybody knows about your close friendship with both Anakin and Palpatine. People will take notice if you suddenly side against one and support the other, won't they? They will understand that you must be doing it for a very good reason and not just some petty grudge, so they would be more likely to listen then. And, of course, we'll all be here to back you up and support you should you need it."

"Oh absolutely," Bail agreed.

Padmé chuckled and said, "Well, I suppose that settles in. Thank you all for once again putting me in a situation of unbelievable pressure."

"Only the best for Padmé," Onaconda laughed.

Barriss smiled as she overheard the conversation. She didn't know Padmé nearly as well as the other three Jedi in their little group did, but she was beginning to seriously like this woman. _You know, Anakin,_ she said. _If you had to go and break the Jedi Code… I think you picked the right woman to do it with._

_High praise,_ Anakin replied. _I'll make sure she knows you said that when we finally tell her that you guys all know._

* * *

Another group of gunships seeking to get around Cherubimon found themselves in very big trouble almost immediately, as the giant Mega Digimon charged the air around her with electricity and brought down a Storm of Judgement all around her that slammed into them with such power that they were practically reduced to nothing. The biomerged duo were discovering they could do things they had never tried before as Cherubimon took control of the lightning bolts before they could dissipate.

Her eyes flashing, she flung her arms out and sent something like a massive electrical shockwave pulsing out in all directions around her that completely fried several smaller ships that had taken off in an attempt to reach the Senate Building too, including several fighters and bombers. Cherubimon swept backwards to keep pace with those that managed to avoid her attack and hammered her arms upwards to take all of them out but one.

As for the one, it managed to shoot past Cherubimon's shoulder and headed straight for the Senate Building, but whirled around with blinding speed and grabbed it from behind, ignoring the burns given to her hands by its engines and flung it, spiralling towards the ground, where it crashed uselessly in a street. The burns quickly healed over, as Cherubimon turned around once more to face a large cruiser that was slowly making its way over, its many, many turrets swivelling towards her with decisive purpose.

Cherubimon didn't even bother trying to block the incoming swarm of lasers that followed on, her stomach and chest pounded by wave upon wave of bolts and each march healing over almost before it was formed. Cherubimon frowned. Knocking down gunships and fighters was one thing, but knocking down a cruiser would be enough to level several dozen city blocks. And there was a good chance that there would be innocent people in those blocks.

Cherubimon instantly darted through the laser storm and placed her hands squarely on the top of the cruisers, ignoring the cannon fire all around her. Electricity flowed from out of her hands and coursed through the ship, blowing its engines and generally ripping the controls to shreds. The cannon fire sputtered and died as the controls to the turrets were also fried, and the cruiser began to plummet towards the ground.

Before it could reach it though, Cherubimon wrapped her massive arms around it and heaved upwards to stop it from simply dropping like a stone and heaved it around so that it was on its side. Like a card through a D-Arc, Cherubimon placed the cruiser into one of the wider streets and lowered it to the ground harmlessly, where it simply lay, useless for anything. Cherubimon smirked at her success and flung several lightning bolts straight up into the air, the crackling projectiles merging and filling the air with smaller bolts like a laser grid.

Anything that tried to fly through the electricity grid inevitably crashed straight into the lightning at some point and exploded, crashing down towards the ground below as Cherubimon rose, unharmed through her own lightning, waiting for the next Empire reinforcement to challenge her supremacy over the Coruscant sky.

* * *

Down below, however, things were beginning to get rather more violent. Many of the reinforcements, upon seeing Cherubimon's domination of the air, had decided to try advancing towards the Senate Building by going across the ground and between the streets. This was still a dangerous activity due to the chance of falling ships landing on them, but they had thought they would be able to make it.

And then Godzillo had arrived on the scene, and that plan had effectively been scuppered. The giant carnivorous lizard was a force of nature that made earthquakes and volcanoes pale in comparison. A horde of clones dashing down one street met their ends when Godzillo clambered over the roof of the building on the side of the street crashed down amongst them, his enormous feet instantly flattening dozens of the closely packed men, and his huge third arm sweeping downwards and tossing several more rows of them into the air.

His two other arms practically finished off the rest of the street by hammering downwards and into it, and then the Zillo Beast was gone, clambering over the buildings and his tail lashing out behind him to create massive grooves in the street and slam a few more clones up into the air before he jumped down into another street and repeated the process. This time he met a couple of AT-TE tanks trying to move towards the distant building as well, so he slammed his huge scaly hand down on top of them. They might be heavily armoured, but they were instantly flattened by that strike.

Godzillo bent over and roared right into the faces of the nearest clones, his cavernous mouth opening wide before them and the force of his voice alone sending those within twenty metres rolling backwards. The rest of them immediately scattered and went running, knowing that they wouldn't have a hope against the powerful creature.

As Godzillo clambered up onto the top of another building, the nearest clones immediately aimed upwards, as did an assortment of other tanks and opened fire at his bulk. Godzillo simply stood there for a few moments, allowing his indestructible hide to take the cannon and blaster fire without so much as flinching. Then he dashed to the side of the building and took a flying leap, falling amongst a vast number of clones like some gargantuan creature from the depths of hell itself.

His tail lashed down and swept out behind him, a veritable flood of clones slammed aside by the massive appendage, and immediately afterwards he thundered down another streets, flattening anything in his path, rounded a corner and barrelled into another street, finding himself face to face with one of a couple of AT-AT walkers that had not been a part of the force sent to Tython.

The AT-AT walker was making slow progress down the street as they had been on the planet of the Jedi. But next to Godzillo, the AT-AT looked absolutely tiny, only coming up to slightly taller than the giant beast's knee. However, on seeing its way barred, the giant machine opened fire on the Zillo Beast with its heavy cannons. The green shots slammed into the Beast's head and knocked it backwards from a moment, but the only purpose it served was to enrage the Beast. His rows and rows of fangs bared and he catapulted himself into the air, soaring across the street towards the walker.

The machine let off another blast at his stomach, but it had absolutely no effect, and Godzillo cannoned into its front and almost flattened the head on impact. His two main arms lashed upwards and slammed underneath the AT-AT knocking off both of its front legs with the enormous blow and sending the rest of its form skidding down the street and forcing clones to flee backwards in terror as the giant machine screeched towards them, never to walk again.

Godzillo roared his victory, just as a couple of large lasers slammed into his neck. He growled and looked down at the long thin beams and growled. He recognised these – they were used by those machine things that the white-clad men used to knock him out on Malastare. It was not difficult for him to find the source – a row of stun tanks nearby, pouring lasers at him in an attempt to get him to fall asleep.

But Godzillo was having none of them. Dropping down onto four limbs, he reached over his head with his third arm and heaved the AT-AT into the air with it, rearing back up again to planet his hands on its side and fling it upwards like a boulder flung from a trebuchet. It sailed clean over several buildings and landed with a thundering crash amongst the line of stun tanks, obliterating them where they hovered under the significantly larger transport.

Godzillo didn't bother waiting for the smoke to clear to see if he had managed to bring them all down. There was practically nothing that the Empire had to offer that could defeat him. The only thing that had come close before had been those gas bombs which had had to be specially designed for him, and all of them had been used against him in his last attack. The Empire forces stood no chance at all, facing off against two indestructible opponents like this. One who had armour that couldn't be pierced and the other who just healed everything they threw at her.

Godzillo lurched upwards once more, clambering up the wall of one of the larger buildings. His eyes narrowed when he saw a phalanx of gunships flying overhead, ready to try and brave the blockade that was Cherubimon. But the Zillo Beast decided to save the Digimon the trouble and hurtled the rest of the way up the wall, planting one foot on the edge of the building and extending his serpentine leg like a spring.

He was tossed up into the air in a tremendous leap that alarmed the gunship squadron no end. They attempted to swerve aside, but three swinging arms lashed out to take most of them down before they got anywhere, and Godzillo's spiked tail lashed up next to take out another three, leaving only two left to fly on and face Cherubimon.

Godzillo twisted around in the air and landed with a heavy thump on the roof of the building below, raising his head to watch as Cherubimon finished off the remaining gunships with another lightning bolt. He bared his teeth in what could only be his equivalent of a grin – it was certainly a lot better to be fighting on the same side as the angelic creature, rather than against it. Cherubimon nodded to him and smiled back, before they both turned back to their tasks with a roar and a boom of thunder.

* * *

A group of four clones and one Senate Guard were hurrying along another corridor in the Senate Building, hurtling out from a flight of stairs to dash down the hallway towards the nearest exit that would take them onto the landing platform where Aayla Secura and the Bounty Hunters were still going strong. Every one of them was on high alert now, and most of them had been re-directed outside to finish off the threat that the Twi'lek and her companions posed, since Cherubimon and Godzillo were preventing reinforcements coming from the other direction.

But these five members of the Emperor's guard were destined never to reach the action zone, because right as they turned towards another exit, a shadowy form suddenly dropped down from the ceiling, hanging upside down before them as a large fist swung outwards and slammed into the front of the Senate Guard's helmet, sending him crashing back out into the passageway beyond and knocking over two of the clones in the process.

The other two clones were immediately seized by the necks by the bulky figure and rammed first into each other and then into the wall on either side of the door they had just come through, slumping into unconsciousness the moment they hit their heads. The other two clones tried to scramble up, but the figure dropped onto it hands and rolled back onto its feet and burst out into the light as it pounced towards them. All the clones saw was a flash of duranium alloy they were both rammed and also slammed into the wall to be knocked out.

The Senate Guard tried to scramble to his feet, his hand under his helmet and clutched at his face, but a large foot suddenly slammed into his chest, talons wrapping around his armour to haul him into the air. All the Senate Guard got a glimpse of was blazing, yellow eyes, before he was rammed into the floor, twice. Finally he slumped down, dead to the world.

Grievous growled. He felt the urge to kill rising inside him, and it was a real struggle to suppress it. He actually placed a clawed hand to his forehead and grappling with himself for a moment, as it threatening to scratch his own eyes out, but he shook himself and tossed the Senate Guard's body casually to the side before he set off back into the corridor, sticking to the shadows as he continued with his own primary objective.

* * *

While Ventress and Ahsoka were dancing around each other at the other end of the building, filling the air with flashes of green, red and yellow which barely stopped moving, Aurra Sing was moving at a much slower pace, listening. The antennae built into the top of her head was linked up to her brain, enhancing her senses practically on command, including her hearing.

She was listening. Listening for any sign of a potential enemy. The Jedi had to be around here somewhere, if Palpatine was right at what the young Ahsoka was doing was a diversion and not just some mistake in her judgement.

She dearly hoped that she would run into Skywalker. She had long wanted to test herself against him, blade to blade. But she'd never had the opportunity until now, since he hadn't actually _had_ his lightsaber on him the last time they had met.

She was finding herself walking down a familiar passageway in the East Wing – one of the ones which she and Bane and the other Bounty Hunters had walked through during their occupation of the building many months ago. She moved as stealthily as she could, trying to hear over the enhanced sound of her own footsteps. The muffled whimpering of terrified Senators was also blotted out. She had something more important to listen to than that.

And then, at last, she caught something. She frowned and inched forwards a few feet, crouching down to the ground as she listened carefully. It was a conversation – a bold conversation in level voices that weren't scared of confused at all. Not the sort of thing you would expect from a building under attack by giant monsters and powerful Jedi.

"…difficult to recover from all this," a female voice that Aurra recognised from somewhere. Then she realised that it was Padmé Amidala, the bold Senator from the hostage situation. "If the Republic is reformed as planned, then we're not only going to have to deal with the debt that this whole Clone War threw us into but also the aftereffects of this Empire."

"True," another female's voice added. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if another war broke out at this rate. The people who were hesitant about staying with the Republic due to the allegations that it was corrupt would see that it really was, won't they?"

"I wouldn't worry about that, Senator Mothma," a male voice replied. "Anyone who harbours thoughts about another war are going to have to search pretty hard to find an army that can take on the combined might of the clones and the droids, not to mention the Digimon. Their presence alone might act as a deterrent."

"Let us hope so," Padmé continued. "Artoo, what is your progress?"

Aurra frowned. It sounded like these Senators were plotting to overthrow the Empire, and the lack of fear in their voices suggested that they knew what was going on. She hurried towards the noise and came to a crouching stop by a corner, peering around it and down the hallway beyond. At the end of it, she could see a brightly0lit, circular room – the communication centre that Robonino had hacked into, and the room outside of which she had encountered Skywalker before.

Through the open door, she could see the back of a human woman with auburn hair, a small Pantoran and a Rodian, all of which she recognised from the occupation. She had no doubt that more Senators were probably out of sight somewhere. Aurra sneered. She hadn't found the Jedi, but she supposed taking care of some impudent Senators wouldn't be amiss either.

She unhooked her sniper rifle from her shoulder and slowly pointed it out and around the corner, focusing its scope on the back of Mon Mothma's head, zooming slowly in with a faint clicking sound as her freakishly long fingers pressed lightly against the trigger.

She pulled it.

A laser went shooting down the corridor and whooshed through the door towards the Senator.

Barriss was still crouched behind the door and hidden from sight, listening out for any sign of danger. She leapt up, her senses blaring, the moment that Aurra's finger tightened on the trigger and she leapt into the air with a speed that surprised even her, grabbing Mon Mothma with the Force and flinging her to the side while simultaneously diving between the laser and the Senator to sweep her blade into it with a dead-on smack.

The laser went lancing back out of the corridor and shot towards the surprised Aurra, slamming into her rifle and knocking it out of her hands, clattering uselessly nearby. Barriss spotted her opponent and dashed out of the room with lightsaber swinging, slashing down and hoping to catch the Bounty Hunter before she could recover and retaliate.

But Aurra proved to be too quick, and her fingers closed around the hilt of her lightsaber, jerking it out of its hidden pouch and activating it just in time to catch Barriss' blade. The near-human smirked into the Mirialan's face, and shoved backwards, tossing the young Knight back several feet. Barriss landed squarely on her feet and held her lightsaber in both hands in front of her, her eyes wide as she realised, for the first time, who she was now facing off against.

Aurra Sing was a legendary Jedi killer, and had really left her mark on the Jedi Order before Order 66 had come down. Jedi Masters with years of experience had fallen underneath her lightsaber, including Xiaan Amersu's own Master when she had just been a Padawan. And now she was standing in front of Barriss with blade ready and a sneer on her features.

Once again, Barriss really began to question why the others had brought her along. The likes of Aurra Sing needed to be combatted by people like Mace Windu and Yoda. Not a Jedi who had been a Padawan learner only a couple of weeks ago. She resisted the urge to swallow and fought to make sure her nervousness didn't show.

"Well, well, what have we got here?" Aurra chuckled. "Looks like there's another little Jedi running around in a place you shouldn't be? What was your name again?"

Barriss didn't reply.

"Ah, yes. Barriss Offee," Aurra chuckled. "Yes, I remember. Just last week I received a task to collect a family of three Togrutas and take them hostage just to lure you and Tano into a trap, didn't I?"

"As you can see, we managed to escape from it," Barriss replied.

"Oh, I don't care," Aurra shrugged. "All I had to do was capture the family and then I could leave with my profit, so that trap was a success for me if not for the trappers. And, you know what? I'm glad that you got out alive, because if you hadn't then I wouldn't be able to face off against you here and now."

Aurra's expression was sinister and Barriss bit her lip. She could sense extreme concern coming through the mindlink from Anakin, who was not yet preoccupied with doing something else. Never before had Barriss felt do undeserving to be a part of that mindlink. She could tell Anakin wanted to race over there to protect Padmé, but he couldn't. If he abandoned his own task, then Sidious might escape.

If Padmé's life was in danger, there was every chance that Anakin might abandon that task. Which meant that Barriss was going to have to make her stand here, against a deadly opponent, and protect the Senators in his place. And that was not something that she felt capable of doing.

"Step aside, little girl," Aurra smirked at her. "Behave and I might take you captive to the Emperor so he can do what he wants with you."

These words actually had the opposite effect towards the young Jedi. The thought of stepping aside was out of the question, and right there, on the spot, Barriss began to imagine the horrors that Aurra and Sidious might reap on her and the Senators. And if Aurra got past her and stopped the Senators and Artoo, that would mean the whole plan might fall apart. It wasn't just the lives of those behind her that were at stake, it was everything they were fighting for, as well as everything those back on Tython were dying for.

Barriss' mind and eyes both hardened at the same time and took a deep breath, readying her lightsaber. "Not going to happen, Sing. If you want to get into that room, you're going to have to force your way past me." She slashed a line in the floor with her lightsaber and placed her toes just behind it. "You will not get past this line as long as I still live."

Aurra chuckled. "Cute," she murmured. "A wet-behind-the-ears Jedi like yourself insisting on blocking my way?" She skilfully span her lightsaber and added, "I guess I will have to rectify you impudence, the hard way."

And she sprung forwards into the attack.

Barriss had a momentary start as the Bounty Hunter came flying towards her, but the Senators behind her were in danger now. And it was the duty of a Jedi to protect all those who needed it, and she allowed her mind to fill up with that single thought as she struck right back, her lightsaber clashing into Aurra's. Barriss skidded backwards slightly under the force of Aurra's strike, but she quickly surged back forwards, using the Force to add strength to her push and hurl Aurra back down the corridor.

Barriss twirled her blade. She had to defend the pass no matter what came, so she quickly darted after the Bounty Hunter as she skidded to a halt not far away and slashed low towards the legs twice and spun around to sweep across at chest height. Aurra deftly turned the strikes aside, catching the third and flicking the lightsaber away, spinning her blade and striking directly at Barriss' exposed chest.

Barriss brought her legs up and backflipped over the strike, bringing her lightsaber back up to turn aside a flurry of around four successive strikes from Aurra and duck low under a fifth, striking upwards from below with a full-powered leap. Aurra caught the attack but was thrown backwards slightly again by the momentum, catching herself by flipping over and landing splayed on three limbs.

As with Ahsoka and Ventress, both of them felt they were going through the motions right now, but Barriss had to say she was quite pleased with her performance so far and drew slightly more self-confidence from that. Of course, Aurra then completely ruined that by stamping one foot into the floor, which caused a pair of large metal spikes to rocket out of the toe section of her boot and lance towards Barriss. The Mirialan balked, dodging one as it crashed into the ceiling above her and blocking the other with a well-placed slash.

Except that Aurra had taken advantage of the situation and leapt forwards again with lightsaber held high. Barriss tucked her head back and sidestepped as the blade scythed past her nose and Aurra promptly span the blade and hacked it back the other way again, forcing Barriss to catch it with a double-handed block. Both span around each other twice and slashed at each other, countering the other's strike with their own, before Aurra pushed up against Barriss, their lightsabers locking together as the pushed for a moment.

Aurra leered into Barriss' face and quickly broke the lock, spinning around in a tight circle that sent her huge, beaded ponytail slapping into Barriss' face. Barriss yelped in surprise at the sudden blow, which was not painful but caught her by surprise and caused her to lower her guard for a moment. As Aurra span around again, she pulled a blaster pistol from her waist and began to offload it right in a barrage of red lasers directly towards Barriss.

Barriss only just managed to catch herself in time and dived out of the way, two laser bolts passing through the back of her cloak and crashing into a nearby wall. Barriss stumbled to a stop as Aurra leapt for her again, propping herself up against the wall with one arm while Aurra's blade stabbed towards her gut. Barriss hurriedly pushed herself away from the wall and out of the way, the red lightsaber puncturing the wall in her place.

But Aurra just swept it out and immediately slashed for Barriss again. Barriss brought her blade down to block the strikes, skittering backwards as Aurra leapt into a corkscrew spin, her blade slashing the air in front of Barriss twice and her foot lashing out once more in a sweep kick towards Barriss' head. Barriss ducked underneath it and struck forwards herself, but Aurra's lightsaber flashed under her own arm to parry the blow.

Nevertheless, Barriss motored forwards and the two of them stood with in a few feet of one another for a moment, trading blows at various heights – one high, two low and another to the middle, both of them slashing at the same time to catch the blade of the other moments before they cut into their opponents neck.

Aurra smirked again and pushed back, forcing Barriss into another lightsaber lock while the Bounty Hunter pointed her blaster pistol underneath the Mirialan's guard. Barriss only had a split second to act, and she did so just in time, falling to her knees to throw Aurra off balance and then lashing outwards with the Force to throw Aurra backwards again. She raced to catch up with her once again, Aurra firing off a couple more lasers while she was in mid-air.

Barriss turned the shots aside and sprang to meet her, blade flashing around her body. Aurra's own blade swept up to block, but Barriss reversed her grip and pulled out of the feint, slashing her blade to the side instead and slicing clean through the blaster pistol, dangerously close to Aurra's long fingers and then slashing out the Aurra's main body once more, but the Bounty Hunters blade was there to stop it once more.

Only then did both of them crash into the wall, Aurra's back hammering into it and eliciting a yowl of pain from her, but despite the battering she received she still managed to land a blow on Barriss, lashing out with both feet while her back was pressed to the wall to ram Barriss in the stomach. Barriss gasped as the wind left her and she was flung away, crashing into the floor and rolling down the corridor, hand grasping her belly as she came to a stop while Aurra collapsed to the floor nearby.

The two of them looked up towards one another as they took a brief moment to recover. Then Aurra pushed herself to her feet and rolled her lightsaber hilt between her long fingers while Barriss pushed herself back up as well.

"Not bad," Aurra replied. "I have to say you are better than I thought you were, Offee. I haven't faced off against the rest of your team in the past so I can't compare, but you have exceeded my own expectations." She smirked and added, "But that also means that I will take even more pleasure out of killing you."

Barriss grunted as she used the lull in the fighting to heal her own bruises before they could develop and added, "And you're a cheater. Using spikes and blasters in a lightsaber fight?"

"What about it?" Aurra chuckled. "This isn't some training duel in the Jedi Temple you know. As far as I am concerned, anything goes."

"Right," Barriss replied as she twirled her blade over her head and took up another fighting stance. "I'll be sure to remember that."

"Oh good," Aurra laughed. "Then let's make this a little more lively, shall we?" And she lashed out with her own hand and called on the Force. Barriss was caught off guard again as she was hurled backwards from a powerful Force push and tossed back down the corridor with Aurra in hot pursuit. The Mirialan flew straight through the door of the communication centre and crashed into the central console with a smack that caused her to yelp.

But, as she looked up and saw Aurra charging towards her, Onaconda Farr and Riyo Chuchi suddenly stepped forwards and used the blasters which Bail and Padmé had given to them earlier, both of them looking astounded that they were pulling the triggers of guns on an actual person. Aurra faltered in surprise that the Senators were bold enough to attack her and hurriedly repelled the laser shots, sending them shooting back towards the pair of them. Barriss sprang up and over their heads and batted the lasers aside once more before they could find their marks.

"Stay back!" she instructed. "This is my battle, not yours. But thank you for the help."

"By the Moon Goddess," Chuchi murmured as she stared at the blaster in her hand. "I hope I never have to do that again."

"Go get her, Barriss," Padmé encouraged her. "We know you can do it."

"I really hope you're right, Senator," Barriss replied as she darted back out of the door and charged Aurra again. Aurra growled and launched another Force push at her which pushed her backwards again, but this time Barriss lashed out with all four limbs and caught herself in the doorframe before using the wall to fling herself back outwards towards the Bounty Hunter with lightsaber raised over her head.

Aurra dodged to the side as Barriss blade swept past and struck at her side, but the Mirialan whipped up to counter it and let off a quick three strikes more towards the Bounty Hunter, pushing her backwards slightly. Aurra scowled as she blocked the strikes with snaps of her own blade, annoyed that the Mirialan's attempts to keep her at bay had so far worked.

She pushed Barriss back across the corridor with a couple of slashes of her own, slamming the young Jedi's blade downwards and then sweeping her blade in a wide arc in front of her, seeking to cut straight through her midsection. Barriss twisted and dropped downwards, the blade passing just over her shoulder as she lifted her foot and kicked Aurra in the side, knocking her back into the corridor and away from the communication centre.

Barriss quickly started after her, attempting to push her away further with another Force push. Unfortunately Aurra also tried to hit Barriss with a Force push at the same time, and that resulted in a sudden stalemate between the two of them, their hands raised in front of them and trembling as they strained to pour more power into the strike, the Force working against itself as the air between them practically broiled with condensed energy.

Barriss grunted as she felt Aurra starting to overwhelm her own attack. Aurra had more experience with the Force than Barriss did and was naturally more powerful, so Barriss immediately did the first thing that came to mind, plunging her lightsaber into the floor and releasing the Force push. Aurra's humongous attack tried to send her hurling backwards, but her lightsaber provided traction which meant the result was she only slid backwards several metres and kept her footing. And she immediately lashed out with another Force push straight afterwards before Aurra could act against her.

As Aurra was sent rolling backwards again, Barriss approached once more, slower this time, and more wary of what the ex-Jedi might still have up her figurative sleeves. Aurra pushed herself upwards once more with a growl and gripped her lightsaber before her face. This was beginning to get seriously annoying for her, and she resolved to try and end the fight as quickly as she could.

She remembered that she had been supposed to call in when she discovered the presence of a Jedi. In the rush, she had not done that, but she wasn't about to do that now. This fight against Offee had just become more personal, and she growled as she stepped forwards once more increasing her speed as she swung her lightsaber out to the side, ready to strike once more.

Barriss readied herself, but she was taken by surprise when Aurra's sniper rifle suddenly sailed over her attacker's head and flew towards her, summoned into the air with a telekinetic burst from Aurra and flung in her direction. Blocking it was enough, as Barriss managed to slice clean through it with ease, its pieces falling to either side of her, but it left her more unprepared for Aurra's real attack, so when the red lightsaber rained down on top of her, she found herself hard pressed to defend herself.

Barriss danced backwards down the corridor, leaping and spinning in tight circles as Aurra swung in strikes from places that seemed random, but were actually well co-ordinated in an attempt to ensure that Barriss remained on her toes, and trying to get past her guard. Two blocks came from overhead, and Barriss caught another shot from the left, spinning with her block to counter another sweep from the right, though this left her back exposed to the Bounty Hunter.

She brought up her lightsaber overhead again to catch another swing, but Aurra's boot slammed into her back and knocked her sprawling to the ground. Barriss didn't wait to see where Aurra's next attack was coming from – she threw herself into a roll just as the ex-Jedi's lightsabers cleaved through the floor where she had been three times, twisting around while Aurra leapt up into the air, seeking to bring both her feet crashing down on Barriss' head.

Barriss dodged backwards again and sprang back onto her feet as Aurra landed right in front of her, but the impact caused spikes to erupt from Aurra's other boot and lance directly towards Barriss. Her hand shot up and to her own mild surprise, she was able to grab the spikes out of the air with the Force and hurl them back, but Aurra twisted around to avoid it and drew her second pistol, shooting off another quick barrage towards Barriss' forehead.

Barriss spun her lightsaber in front of her quickly to push the bolts aside, but Aurra's next strike slammed into her own blade and pushed it to within half a centimetre of her own nose. Barriss recoiled and stumbled a couple more paces, while the furious Aurra immediately went in for the kill, firing three more bolts from the pistol and following it up with another two powerful strikes.

Barriss felt fear gripping her heart as she only just managed to defend herself. Aurra was on the offensive now and it looked like she was going to stay there for the future – and Barriss was struggling now. Aurra, by contrast, seemed to grow _more_ ferocious with her attacks and gain new energy as her prey grew more fearful. Barriss turned aside bolt after blade after blade after bolt after bolt, but Aurra seemed to have practically gone wild and Barriss was losing ground, energy and confidence.

She could really see why Jedi Masters had fallen to this opponent. She was a destructive force that few had been able to match.

Blocking three strikes of the enemy's blade close to the legs, and bringing her blade back up just in time to parry a couple more lasers, Barriss felt as if she was being drained by her opponent. Never before had she fought so hard, and it still seemed that it wouldn't be enough. And then came the critical hit, where Aurra struck the base of Barriss' blade with enough power and leverage to send Barriss' weapon catapulting out of her grip.

Barriss' eyes widened and she ducked under another swing and jumped back to avoid another, dodging her body from side to side in a desperate attempt to stop the following blaster shots. She attempted to lash out with the Force, but Aurra employed a similar trick to Barriss' own and stabbed it into the wall, reducing the effect so she only got dragged back slightly, and she didn't even stop firing lasers. Barriss rolled aside so fast she crashed into the wall, and her heart almost stopped when she saw Aurra charging towards her with blade raised, ready to end the conflict once and for all.

Only one thing managed to save Barriss' life in that moment. In a moment of inspiration, Barriss grabbed her own hood and yanked her own cloak from her shoulder, flinging it past Aurra's blade to give the Bounty Hunter a faceful of cloth instead. This led to Aurra misjudging her strike, as she could no longer see and also jerked in surprise in mid-swing, her lightsaber swinging further to the left than it would have done and allowing Barriss to dodged at the last second, her short, black hair flapping slightly in the process.

This time when Barriss used the Force to hurl Aurra away again, it worked. Momentarily entangled by Barriss' cloak, Aurra was flung back across the corridor and rolled over several times, dropping her pistol and thrashing as she tried to free herself from the enshrouding confines. In the end, she managed to tear through the cloak by ripping it in half with her lightsaber blade and shredding it with a couple more swings for good measure, while Barriss summoned both her lightsaber and Aurra's pistol to her with the Force.

As she caught her blade and tossed the pistol over her shoulder and into the communication centre, she took the opportunity, to gather her breath while Aurra glowered at her.

Somehow, standing before an enemy without her cloak on made Barriss feel vulnerable, as if she had lost a shield or even some kind of good luck charm. She had never gone into battle without it before, but she was going to have to now, and she felt smaller for it.

_Barriss!_ Anakin's voice interrupted her thoughts. _Find your confidence again! Aurra started to gain an advantage the moment you lost it! You can beat her! Just have faith in yourself!_

_Oh, I really, _really_ hope you're right, Anakin,_ Barriss replied, re-activating her lightsaber as Aurra closed the gap between them once more.

* * *

As Sakuyamon jumped backwards to avoid another punch from Durge's extending arm, she reflected that the fight might have been going better. She had known that Durge was going to be a sturdy opponent even for a Mega of her calibre, but the sheer magnitude of damage that he could take was astonishing. None of her attacks seemed to have that much of a lasting effect on him, which was seriously beginning to get old very quickly.

Durge might have been grounded thanks to his lack of a jetpack, but he was still doing extreme well in the fighting. Their duel had moved to the rooftops of the buildings close to the Senate and Durge dashed across another rooftop and towards Sakuyamon, clearing a gap in the street that was wide enough for a pair of AT-TEs to walk down in a single bound and lashed up with his arm again. Sakuyamon flipped over the attack and raised her shield once more to take another round of fletchettes from his wrist-launcher.

Durge was beginning to find Sakuyamon similarly annoying. She had been landing plenty of hits on him so far, but as of yet, he had yet to make much of strike back of his own. She kept blocking him with that shield of his, whereas his own shields had already been overloaded. She had already destroyed a large number of his gadgets and devices, including his bolas and his mace and chain. He was limited with what he had left in his arsenal.

But that certainly didn't mean he was going to be doing any slacking anytime soon. He bounded off the roof and flung himself towards Sakuyamon, pounding his heavy fist into her shield. Sakuyamon smirked at him when his attack failed to have any effect, and before Durge could drop downwards, the four fox spirits suddenly crashed into his back, slamming his front into the shield and passing straight through his body, wracking him with almost mind-numbing pain as their elemental prowess coursed through him.

Sakuyaon expanded her shield again and thrust him down from the air to crash-land heavily into the top of the building hard enough to crater it. The fox spirits whirled around their owner and then lanced back downwards to strike him again as he tried to stagger back upwards, causing him to roar in pain as he body was burned, doused, electrocuted and churned all at once. The spirits emerged from the roof of the building as Durge struggled to recover.

Sakuyamon wasn't about to let him get the opportunity with ease and she dropped from the sky, crashing her heels into his armoured chest to shove him deeper into his crater and then slammed the butt of her staff into his forehead with full force, pulling back to repeat the process twice more, before she leapt back up into the air and generated another enormous Amethyst Wind and flung it downwards, raining on top of Durge like giant, purple, razor-sharp hailstones.

Durge disappeared in the smoke and dust that followed and was screened from Sakuyamon's view. Sakuyamon frowned, wondering if she had overdone it a little bit and raised her shield in preparation for another attack. There was no telling if Durge had survived it, but she was not about to take any chances.

When the dust did eventually clear, it was to reveal a large hole in the top of the building. Durge had been slammed clean through the top of it and was still inside.

"Ah…" Sakuyamon murmured. "I think that would be a yes… we did overdo it."

She tensed immediately and reinforced her shield. Moments later and Durge exploded out of the building, creating a second hole in the roof as he did so, with his large blaster cannon clutched in his hand as he fired off three huge shots in her direction. His armour was shredded to the point where it was only just still hanging on, but the skin underneath it seemed to be mostly free of injury.

The cannon blasts bounced harmlessly off the shield and Durge roared in annoyance and frustration as he rammed into it with his shoulder with an insane amount of strength. The bubble shield still didn't break, but such was the power of the blow that it was knocked backwards, Sakuyamon's own shield crashing into her and throwing her down towards the buildings below.

She landed smoothly, staff planted into the ground, and looked up as Durge threw another blow down with his elastic arm. Sakuyamon thrust her staff out to block the attack, but she balked when she saw that the blaster cannon was still clutched in said hand and was now pointing directly into her face. She slammed her staff to one side, but was not fast enough to avoid the cannon entirely and was struck a huge blow in the shoulder that flung her bodily through the air, sending her rolling several metres backwards and over the edge of the building and into the street below.

Durge immediately dashed over to continue the fight the moment he landed, but the fox spirits suddenly phased through the roof beneath his feet and struck him once again, halting his charge in its tracks. Sakuyamon rose back into view again quickly enough. Her armour had taken most of the damage with only a small blemish. After all, she was a Mega Digimon and had survived bigger blasts than that from other Digimon.

Durge roared as he was assailed once again by the spirits, flinging his arms around him wildly like a rabid animal in his attempt to fend them off, even though he could surely see that it was not doing him much good. Sakuyamon grimaced and called the spirits back to her belt. Durge rounded on her and let loose a bellow of anger as he barrelled towards her. But Sakuyamon swept her staff through the air and send a full-power Twin Blades of Beauty and Truth at him.

The large pink energy blades slammed into his stomach with a terrific explosion and flung him backwards and out of sight. This time, Sakuyamon immediately followed him to see the result, but she groaned in annoyance when she saw him still very much alive and moving as he attempted to scramble back upwards.

"This is getting ridiculous," the Mega Digimon voiced in exasperation. "Seriously, what does it take to kill you?"

Durge didn't answer. Instead, he just began to let loose a deep throated, growling chuckle, which soon turned into a full-blown laugh, which turned into a howl of deranged mirth. Beneath her mask, Sakuyamon raised a brow in bewilderment, wondering if the Gen'Dai had suffered so much of a beating that he had completely lost his mind.

She wasn't far from the truth. Gen'Dai were prone to brain degradation the older they got, and Durge was over two-thousand and had always been on the edge of madness as it was. Now, the physical trauma his body had taken and healed in this fight seemed to have finally pushed him over the edge. But he also had another reason to laugh, and that was that Sakuyamon's last attack had practically finished off his armour. As he got back to his feet, most of the metal fell to the ground all around him; a charred, smoking mess.

Sakuyamon recoiled. Durge's skin seemed to be a constantly rippling and pulsating mass of muscles and tendons, as if there was no skin at all and she was seeing what was lying underneath it. Thankfully his pelvic area was still pretty much covered, but even with his modesty intact, Durge made a repulsive sight. Even more so when his hands shot up and tore off his helmet. Sakuyamon gasped at the massive fangs that filled the mouth almost to breaking point and the wide red eyes that blazed with madness underneath.

Durge bellowed in wild rage and suddenly his entire body began to writhe lack a mass of serpents and bulged outwards, both his arms lashing forwards and extending towards Sakuyamon. The Mega Digimon had the sense to leap into the air to avoid the attacks, but the arms immediately curved upwards and slammed into her, sending her rolling through the air.

As she recovered, she balked again when she saw Durge rocketing towards her on extending legs which left the ground and powered him upwards in a massive leap, huge fangs lashing out towards her face. Sakuyamon hurriedly raised a shield, but she wasn't fast enough and Durge's upper body got through it before it raised, though the shield did have the rather disturbing effect of slicing his legs clean off.

Not that that slowed Durge down even in the slightest as he slammed into Sakuyamon with all his weight and carried her towards the ground. His legs simply regrew as his teeth snapped in front of Sakuyamon's face, held at bay only by her staff, which she was holding across his neck. She shoved him backwards, but was filled with alarm when his body began to wrap itself around her, expanding to cover her body, as if he was trying to _absorb_ her completely.

Sakuyamon gritted her teeth, refusing to be ingested by this guy in any way, shape or form. The fox spirits surged out of her belt canisters and burst into Durge, eliciting another howl as his grip loosened for a moment, allowing Sakuyamon to pull herself free and slash her staff towards him, releasing another pink energy blade that lashed across him and sliced his head clean off.

She landed on the ground, panting heavily, as Durge's body and head dropped to ground with a thud right in front of her. She stared at his still form, the Rika half of her utterly mortified that she had just beheaded somebody, but if that didn't bring him down, then she didn't know what would.

Which was why her jaw dropped and her body stiffened in horror and disgust when long tendrils grew out of his body from where his head had been cut off and dove into the base of the neck of the severed head, puncturing into it and retracting to pull the head _back onto the body_. The cleft between the two healed over immediately and there was Durge, standing there as if nothing had happened at all.

Sakuyamon was utterly dumbfounded. Surely nobody could survive having their head cut off like that, could they? That wasn't real, was it?

But apparently it was, and Durge raised his arms once more, his hands suddenly morphing as they turned into vicious points like spears, and shot forwards like a pair of lances, threatening to pierce Sakuyamon's breastplate. Still in a state of shock over what she had just seen with the head, Sakuyamon completely failed to react as the pointed hands zoomed towards their target.

Both Sakuyamon and Durge were completely taken off guard when a rain of red lasers suddenly lashed through the air from above and slammed into the pointed hands, shredding them to uselessness in moments. Durge grunted as he retracted his arms, and a shadowy form dropped down from the roof above and send a huge burst of flame rolling out towards Durge, washing over him and searing into his skin.

Durge roared in agony, but his body healed over quickly and he surged out of the flames, only for a couple of heavy boots to slam directly into his face, the rockets attacked to them flaring into life on contact, blasting Durge full in the eyes and causing him to shriek, while propelling the figure out of harm's way.

Sakuyamon stared at him in disbelief as he moved to hover next to her.

"B-Bane?" she stammered.

"And there was me thinking that I wouldn't have to step in at all?" Cad Bane smirked at her. "You seemed to be handling yourself well.

"What are you doing here?" Renamon's voice came out of Sakuyamon's mouth.

"What does it look like?" the Duros rolled his red eyes. "I'm helping you out."

"But you said that you weren't going to help us in the battle against the Sith," Renamon protested. "You said you would stay out of the fight."

"I also said that my own interests where more important to me than yours or the Republic's," Bane replied. "And I made that first declaration before I learned that _this_ guy was still alive," he jerked a thumb towards Durge, who was still covering his eyes. "Durge is a major threat to my reputation as the Galaxy's best Bounty Hunter, and if there's a chance of eliminating the competition, then I'm going to take it."

Sakuyamon chuckled and smirked. She realised that she should have guessed this would happen really. Bane was one of the most selfish people she knew, but that selfishness had brought here to this battle and had probably just saved her life. "Free of charge?" she asked.

"This time… yes…" Bane chuckled. "After all, this mission is a personal one for me?"

"How did you get past the space blockade anyway?" Sakuyamon asked.

"Returned to Tython and stowed away on the _Acclamator_ before you guys got going," Bane replied. "That's why it took me so long to get here."

Sakuyamon shook her head. "Is there any job you can't pull off?"

"I have yet to find one," Bane smirked.

Durge promptly re-introduced himself to them, his face and eyes completely healed, as he charged towards the both of them with another terrible roar. As Bane whirled around and let loose with a barrage from his twin pistols, Sakuyamon sprang into the air and raised her staff high, ready to fight once more.

* * *

Hehehehe! Gotta love that little twist at the end. You can always count on Bane to do anything it takes to preserve his reputation, and if that means working with the rebel alliance to take out another Bounty Hunter, then that's what he'll do.

I hope you liked the action sequences in this chapter. It was nice to write for Barriss and Ahsoka in their own lightsaber duels, because compared to Aayla neither of them have gotten much of a look in to this story. They both seem to be doing reasonably well, but how much longer will that be able to last. It was also brilliant writing Godzillo in action once more. And it might have only been a small moment, but I think the bit where Chuchi fired a blaster at Aurra would have to be one of my favourites.

But, coming up next, it's Impmon.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The mission of the little group in the castle has been completed and Impmon, Ai and Mako have finally biomerged into Fatemon. We'll see him in action at last, along with the others in their party as they go outside and rejoin the others against Belphemon. But the surprises aren't over yet. Not by a long shot.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 205 : The Bonus of Two**


	205. The Bonus of Two

**Bookworm Gal** – this message is mostly for you. It… is… time. The chapter that you have been waiting for since you posted my 100th review for this story. Now, 1659 reviews later, here it is at last. For you, this moment of the story has been building and building for almost two whole years. I dearly, _dearly_ hope that you are not disappointed by it (and there is a little something at the end which I haven't told you about, I hope you like it). And I hope the rest of you are not disappointed by it either, as I tried to make this as epic a chapter as possible.

Please read on and tell me what you think.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 205:- The Bonus of Two**

* * *

Only two words were needed to describe what Lilamon and the rest of the group were feeling right now, as they gazed on the being which Ai, Mako and Impmon had all merged into – absolute awe.

True enough, he did resemble the Beelzemon they had once known in many ways, but aside from the differences in his appearance he had a naturally more powerful air about him – pure, untainted and bursting to the brim with all that was good. It was a far cry from the old Beelzemon that used to go around blasting people with his shotguns for the hell of it, but that was meant in a very, _very _good way.

Each of them took a moment to allow the powerful aura to fill them up, and each of them actually felt refreshed, as if their battles were a long distance memory and not a recent event. They also felt their spirits lifting and bolstering, as if they knew that everything was going to be alright. Because now, Impmon had regained his title as a warrior of heaven.

True, he didn't look particularly angelic. Even now, his body was still fairly demonic in appearance, as he still had three eyes and was raven-black in most places, but his presence alone was enough to ensure all around him that he was far from a demon. Fatemon had been born into the world of darkness to show its occupants the light. That light was still blazing all around it, refusing to fade for several seconds after the digivolution had been completed, the broadsword clutched in Fatemon's hand reflecting the light like a blazing beacon of hope.

"Whoa…" Lilamon murmured. The others nodded dumbly, having no need to provide any more to the conversation than that. Lilamon had summed up their own thoughts pretty well with that.

Fatemon looked down at himself. The armour covering his body didn't appear to weigh very much, but he could tell that it was durable and extremely strong, allowing him to move around in it easily whilst being protected from enemy attacks more than his previous leather outfit could. His fingers were no longer claws – he had no need for them anymore after all. He didn't have a tail anymore either.

He glanced across at his wings, take a moment of admire their sheen and their sleekness. His feathers rippled together perfectly when he moved one slightly, and then tested the other to the same effect. He reached up with a hand and felt his medieval style helmet, which covered his upper face. It felt the same as the helmet he had had as Beelzemon, except for a couple of ridges on it, but it too seemed to be stronger than before. Certainly more so after the Arkadimon had cracked his last one.

Finally, he looked down towards the long broadsword that he was holding in his hand. Its obsidian pommel glinted in the light of his digivolution and the blade shone with a brilliant light. He flexed it in his hands a couple of times, twirling it around experimentally, but it appeared to be perfectly balanced in his hand, as if had been made for him.

His strength had returned in spades, a huge contrast to the weak little Yaamon that he had been only a couple of minutes ago. For Ai and Mako, who had never felt this kind of power in any way, they felt they were about to burst with both joy and exhilaration, feeling the energy surging through every iota of their combined form, from the bottom of his feet to the length of every strand of hair.

Eventually, the biomerged form spoke in Impmon's voice. "Fatemon, huh? This… was not what I was expecting."

"Tell me about it," Diatrymon murmured. "I was expecting you to become Beelzemon again, but instead you've turned into something very like him, but a Digimon that we've never even heard of before."

"Pretty much the same thing going through my head right now," Impmon agreed, gripping the broadsword tightly. He smirked and added, "Not that it matters. I think this form will do very nicely indeed. I can feel the strength, the power… something far greater than I ever remember having as Beelzemon, greater even than my Blast Mode. Yes… I think I can get used to this quite quickly. What do you say, Teradalets."

"Is this what the others feel like when they always biomerge?" breathed Ai. "It… it feels so amazing."

"I feel like I could take on absolutely anything," Mako threw in with conviction.

"Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves," Impmon chuckled, spreading his wings out wide. "But, I know what you mean."

A sudden thought occurred to him, as he remembered a couple of things that the residents of the heavens had said to him when he had gone to visit them. When he had first learned that he, along with the former Prophecy Trio, used to be a warrior of heaven before he went down to the Digital World, Ophanimon had said:-

"_Despite everything that all of you went through, with Impmon's days as a Demon Lord, Lopmon's time as a Deva and Terriermon and Renamon's time fending for themselves out in the Digital World, you still all ended up together as Digimon with Tamers. There is a reason for that. The fates of all four of you are inexorably linked. In fact, Impmon, I believe it was you who made sure of that."_

And then later on, when he had been attempting to sneak away from the rest of the group to face the Digital World on his own and Deckerdramon had caught him sneaking out of the heavens, the giant alligator had said:-

"_Fate can be a very fickle thing, Impmon. But you, of all Digimon, should know that it is not immutable. Even the word of a prophecy does not decide your eventual fate. Only you can do that. You especially have a certain control over fate."_

At the time, he had not had a clue what either of them had been meant with those lines about fate, but now… Had they been alluding to this very thing? Had they known that this would be what happened when he biomerged with the twins. Because here he was now, a Digimon that had the word 'fate' in its very name.

Had they known?

It seemed that they had. Fatemon now stood as a symbol that represented what Impmon had just managed to accomplish. He had long wondered the Digital World, fleeing from GranDracmon but believing that it was his fate to be a pawn of evil, which was why he had not been truly accepting the twins as his partners as the other Digimon had. In his overpowering need to protect them, he had isolated himself, thanks to his belief that he couldn't change his own fate.

Now, however, he was taking charge of that fate.

Never again would he assume that his life was outside his own control. Everybody makes their own destinies and draws their own fates, and in doing that, Impmon had practically gained a slight mastery over it with this new form of his. And it was time to show GranDracmon that he couldn't do as he pleased anymore. Not to him, not to his friends and not to the world. Not to any world! Not ever again!

For the first time, Impmon found himself communicating to the twins without using his mouth. _Are you ready, little guys? You ready to finally take to the sky and fly?_

_Oh yes! _Ai replied eagerly.

_And we're not little anymore, _Mako replied. _We're grown-up Tamers now. We're a Mega Digimon. And don't you forget it, Impmon._

Impmon chuckled internally and said, _Yes, you're highness. Now let's see what this alternate version of me can do, shall we?_ Then he turned around to the others and said, "So, I'm heading down there to beat the crap out of the rest of the Nightmare Soldiers. Any of you guys coming with me?"

"If you still have to ask us that, you clearly could get to know us better," Lilamon's look of awe changed to a smirk on anticipation. Diatrymon stamped his foot down on the ground in confirmation, a steely look in his eyes as if he was already gearing himself up for battle, while Wingdramon backed way towards the hole in the wall and flared his wings into the open air again, indicating his readiness to return to combat.

"I knew I could count on you three," Impmon grinned. "I couldn't ask for better companions."

"Enough flattery and more butt-kicking," Diatrymon insisted.

"Fair enough," Fatemon nodded this time with all three voices as he crossed his sword in front of him, ready for combat. But before he could take a step forward, his attention was distracted by a red light coming from the ground practically right next to him. All eyes in the room were drawn towards Calumon, who had his tiny hands clasped together and his eyes shut, the red symbol on his forehead blazing.

Calumon had felt the purity of the biomerge digivolution that Impmon and the twins had just undergone, and it had stilled just about all doubts and nerve that he had inside him. After all, he could sense digivolution when it happened and this one was one of the strongest he had ever felt, practically making him feel at peace with the world.

"I'll help too," Calumon stated, the Catalyst symbol growing brighter still. "I've come this far and seen this much… and helped out in the past." His wide eyes opened, and they could all see the determination there. "And I want to do my part again."

Lilamon, Diatrymon and Wingdramon all felt their bodies tingling with growing energy and power, which picked up in intensity at an equal rate to the glaring of the Catalyst symbol. All three of them knew what was going to happen next – something which they had only done once before in the past and which they were about to do again.

All three of them grinned as they felt Calumon's power swirling round every data particle in their bodies, beginning to change their very structure as their bodies began to glow as well. Fatemon practically laughed out loud. He had thought things couldn't really get much better, but thanks to Calumon and the friendship and trust he shared with the rest of the group, he had been proved wrong. Things were about to get a whole lot worse for the Nightmare Soldiers.

He had no desire to waste any more time, so he yelled, "Let's go, guys!" and charged towards the hole in the wall. Wingdramon swept back out into the air and out of his way as Fatemon reached the edge of the hole and hurled himself out into the air, his wings fanning out on either side of him to catch himself and haul him aloft. He shot past Wingdramon, who turned to follow him, while Lilamon, Diatrymon and Calumon all bounded out of the hole in the wall after Fatemon and threw themselves into the air after him.

"YEAH!" they all cried together, as the two Ultimates and the one Champion Digimon burst into light and began the digivolution process. Fatemon glanced back over his shoulder with one of his three eyes and smirked as he watched them take on the shapes which he had seen only once before in the past – the fight against Darkdramon replaying in his mind.

Three voices cried out, as their owners gained strength:-

"**LILAMON MEGA-DIGIVOLVE TO…"**

"**WINGDRAMON MEGA-DIGIVOLVE TO…"**

"**DIATRYMON WARP-DIGIVOLVE TO…"**

The process was just as spectacular as the Impmon portion of Fatemon remembered, while the Ai and Mako portions of him watched in wonder as their three good Digimon friends took on their Mega shapes. Calumon perched on Fatemon's shoulder for a moment, as the three new figures burst out of the light behind them to follow Impmon up into the sky.

"**ROSEMON!"** shouted what Lilamon had become, the elegant humanoid Digimon with the red leotard and leaf-like cloak, her upper torso wrapped in thorny vines that were gripped in her hands and the upper half of her head concealed by a giant rose that bloomed a rich red, her long blonde hair falling out behind her.

"**SLAYERDRAMON!"** roared Wingdramon's new form, that of a giant dragon-man completely covered in metallic armour, with one long horn on his nose, two above his eyes and two on the crest around his head, a long green cape billowing out behind him and the huge, segmented sword clutched in his hand, lashing out like a mix between sword and whip, ready for battle.

"**ORNISMON!"** screeched the giant bird that used to be Diatrymon, his body covered in purple feathers and his massive wings outstretched and dwarfing all of the others, pink primary feathers and turquoise secondaries providing a patchwork display of colour, and his huge, thick beak and talons flashing in the remnants of the digivolution light.

Very few of the guards which GranDracmon had left behind at the castle remained, thanks to the efforts of the attackers, but those that were still left immediately balked when they saw no less than four Mega Digimon shooting towards them. One of them was a Mega-level Arkadimon which had noticed the battling from the back of the charging army and turned back to investigate. In fact, it was one of the Arkadimon that had brought Beelzemon into captivity before, and with a roar, he dived straight towards Fatemon.

Unphased, Fatemon surged upwards to meet him, as the other three Megas split off to engage their own separate targets. A Megadramon and a Gigadramon dived towards Slayerdramon with mouths agape, but Slayerdramon struck in the blink of an eye, his sword slashed outwards to cleave the Megadramon from armpit to opposite shoulder and spin around to deliver a bone-shattering punch to the bottom of the Gigadramon's jaw and then slash across its neck with his sword, reducing both of the enemy dragons to data.

A host of Airdramon and Devidramon swarmed towards Ornismon in an attempt to overwhelm him, but the Ancient Bird was more than prepared for their attack, lashing forwards with his talons and snatching no less than four of them out of the air in his massive feet, his huge wings blasting forwards to slam the rest and hurl them towards the ground so fast that their bodies broke into data on the impact alone.

Rosemon floated still as she watched her own opponents, a pair of SkullSatamon, thundering towards her with their staffs raised, ready to immobilise her and then blow her into data. But she dealt with them without even moving from her spot, lashing out with her sharp vine which swept through the air and punched straight through the skull of the first one and blew him to particles, then curved around to do the exact same thing to the other one from behind.

And Fatemon… well, his three eyes narrowed as he swept towards the angry looking Arkadimon. For the first time – Ai, Mako and Impmon were moving their bodies in motion and despite the fact it was a dangerous situation, they could both feel nothing but exhilaration. Impmon's portion of Fatemon felt like grinning stupidly. He was a guardian of all those who needed protecting, and that including Ai and Mako, but now the twins could protect themselves at the same time.

The Arkadimon lashed out towards him with a mighty swing from one set of claws, but Fatemon moved like black lightning, his wings dipping as he slew to the right and over the top of the strike, slashing downwards with the sword as he did so. Arkadimon howled as his hand was slashed off and disintegrated, which turned into a roar of fury as he tried to intercept the other Mega with his other hand.

Fatemon swept his wings and he shot straight upwards and lanced directly towards the Arkadimon's face. He lashed out with one fist, which slammed into the side of Arkadimon's head with brutal force to send him rolling away, with Fatemon in hot pursuit – wings pulled into his side in a full-on dive. The sword spun in his hand almost of its own accord as he zipped past Arkadimon and then swooped out of the way, while behind him, Arkardimon glanced down at the huge gash in his chest, before his head came off and both section burst into data.

"Oh yes," Fatemon nodded, twirling the sword with a whirl. "I really think I could get used to this thing."

"That was _epic!_" Ai cheered. "Let's do it again."

"We're flying!" Mako laughed. "We're actually flying!"

"Yes, we are Teradalets," Impmon smirked. "Yes, we are."

A thrumming noise caught his attention, and the biomerged Mega grinned when he spotted Behemoth down in the courtyard. The motorbike was doing circuits like a dog chasing its own tail in a clear display of as-much-as-a-motorcycle-could-get happiness. Fatemon laughed at its almost childish antics, and then said, "Hey Calumon. Go down there and hang around with Behemoth. He will look after you."

"Can I ride shotgun?" Calumon queried.

"Er… you can ride anywhere you like," Fatemon replied. "You'll be the only one sitting on him."

"Cool!" Calumon cheered, and he dropped downwards and towards his new protector.

"Oh geez," murmured Impmon, chuckling to himself. "I'm glad Behemoth doesn't need a driver. Putting Calumon in the seat of one that couldn't would be practically spelling disaster."

Rosemon floated upwards to hove next to Fatemon, while Ornismon rose up behind them and Slayerdramon landed on the wall of the castle down below. The eagle-eyed Ornismon turned his head around to look at the fighting on the beach in the distance.

"Looks like things aren't going too well for either side at the moment," he reported. "I think the Sovereigns' Army has roughly met its match against those Arkadimon, and Belphemon appears to be battling against some kind of red knight Digimon."

"A red knight?" Fatemon asked. "That must mean that Goggleboy and Pineapple-head became Gallantmon Crimson Mode then."

"Looks that way," Ornismon agreed. "They appear to be doing quite well actually. Belphemon's definitely taking a beating."

Fatemon's eyes widened when he heard this news. His wings flared, and he cried, "Quick! We've got to get over there now!" And he was off, swooping over the wall and soaring low over the beach towards the action, his sword out behind him and ready to swing at a moment's notice.

The other three Digimon took in the sense of urgency from their companion and hurtled after him, the sand beneath them being churned up by Ornismon's wings as the massive bird Digimon passed by.

* * *

The summation of the battling that the bird in question had given seemed to be pretty accurate. With Gallantmon Crimson Mode holding Belphemon off and appearing to be doing a good bit of damage to the powerful Demon Lord, the rest of the army seemed to have reached a stalemate point against the rest of the Nightmare Soldiers. Every time they successfully managed to take down on of the Arkadimon, the others at lower levels simply absorbed the data and rapidly grew to replace them, and each and every one of them was beginning to lose energy.

An Arkadimon that was bearing down on Pajiramon and Sandiramon was suddenly blindside by a blur of blue which turned out to be MirageGaogamon slamming into him with a Gale Claw. The Arkadimon, as usual, made no sound when it was hit, not even to roar in pain, as MirageGaogamon slammed it back into the cliff wall with his claws embedded in its torso. The Arkadimon swung up to clout MirageGaogamon across the face and send him rolling backwards, where another Arkadimon, an Ultimate, jumped on him and bore him to the ground, raising a claw to strike.

Before he got the opportunity, SaberLeomon bounded over the top of MirageGaogamon and slammed its paw into the Arkadimon's face with a Howling Crusher attack, knocking it backwards and sending it crashing onto its back, where it split into data, which was promptly absorbed by another pair of Ultimates, transforming them into a pair of Megas, who through themselves at SaberLeomon.

The biomerged leonine Digimon dashed forwards and shot between the two of them to dodge their strikes, leading them to slam into one another rather painfully. It whirled around to continue its attack, but found it to be unnecessary because GranKuwagamon had zipped down from the skies, his black colouration rendering him practically invisible from below. The giant bug spread his pincers out as wide as they could go and slammed them into both the Arkadimon, one each, as they struggled to get up. He then let off an X-Scissor Claw right into their torsos and tore their bodies to shreds.

The bug was suddenly swarmed by what appeared to be most of the remaining Devimon and push towards the ground as the Champions grabbed his wings to try and gain control of his body. That was when MirageGaogamon leapt back into the attack and slashed through most of them with his claws. The rest of them panicked and backed off, MirageGaogamon finished the job with a Double Crescent Mirage that ripped through their forms with ease.

Dinorexmon was still in blazing motion nearby. It was almost freaky that the dinosaur Digimon seemed to have so much energy in reserve – he just wouldn't stop battling. Punching one giant torso through the stomach of a LadyDevimon and battering a Sangloupmon into the ground with his tail, Dinorexmon roared his challenge out to all comers. A group of Fugamon tried to answer it with clubs raised, but Dinorexmon thundered towards them and rammed the first in the stomach with his head to toss him backwards into the others, whirling around in a wide circle with one leg outstretched, the giant claw scything through multiple opponents at once.

There was a heavy thud as another Mega-level Arkadimon landed nearby and brought both fists thundering downwards towards Dinorexmon in the same motion. Dinorexmon sprang aside, causing the Arkadimon to crush another pair of Fugamon that survived his attack instead, but the Megas' claws still caught Dinorexmon a glancing blow and sent him rolling. He looked up in time to see Arkadimon raise a fist to pummel him into the ground and growled in defiance as he tried to scramble back up.

And that was when a huge energy sword suddenly seemed to grow out of the Arkadimon's chest. The Arkadimon looked down at it in surprise, and then burst into data, allowing a huge V-shaped beam of energy to lance between his particles and strike another Arkadimon full in the face and send him crashing backwards. UlforceVeedramon stepped over to Dinorexmon and asked, "Are you okay?"

"I don't need you concern," Dinorexmon replied, a little snappily. "But I suppose I should thank you for the assistance." And then he tossed an Ogre Flame at the Arkadimon that was trying to get up and began to melt him with the super-heat from the attack.

Several of the Devas were trying to avoid the more powerful Arkadimon, well aware that they were not strong enough to take them on. Indramon was currently locked in conflict with another SkullMammothmon, the two of them straining against each other in an attempt to push the other over, when Vikaralamon thundered across the beach and over a pair of Ogremon to slam his tusks into the side of the enemy Digimon and fling him onto his side.

Sinduramon swooped overhead, cawing in protest as he was pursued by several Airdramon. The rooster Deva narrowed his eyes slightly before he suddenly flared his wings and halted his progress, leading several of the Airdramon to overshoot him and whirl around. Sinduramon was now in the centre of the group, but that was the idea, because he sent a powerful Positron Pulse outwards that crashed into all his combatants at once and flung them out of the air.

Kumbhiramon and his three remaining clones scuttled around the back of an Arkadimon in the midst of a full scale one-on-one battle with Plesiomon and all jumped forwards at the same time to spear a group of DarkLizardmon in the sides and push them to the floor, where they burst into data. The four rat Devas looked a little smug about the victory, before the ground erupted all around them and four SkullScorpimon emerged from the sand, tail blades lashing downwards towards each of them at once, hoping to hit the real one.

However, all of the Kumbhiramon escaped by leaping straight up, where they were caught by Justimon as he streaked past. And then HiAndromon landed in the midst of the SkullScorpiomon in their place, wielding a giant mallet that looked very much like the alternate form of Caturamon in his hands. "Surprise!" he yelled, and with mechanical swiftness he slammed the mallet down on the heads of all four SkullScorpiomon with such force that their tough armour fractured, allowing Majiramon to finish them off by bathing them in flame the moment HiAndromon had gotten clear.

As Caturamon morphed back to dog shape and landed on the ground nearby, he turned to HiAndromon and nodded in a sign of comradeship, before he darted away, and MetalSeadramon bolted overhead to plunge the blade on his forehead into the stomach of another Arkadimon and then retract and let loose a River of Power into his face.

Everywhere, things seemed to be becoming absolute chaos. MarineAngemon swerved around the clumsy swipe from another Ogremon and bombarded him and more of his kind with more Kahuna Waves. A pair of Dragomon that rose of the sea were assaulted by Gryphonmon, who pulsed them back into the water with a Solor Roar. Vajramon and Mihiramon were fighting side by side, the ox covering their front with slashes from his swords while Mihiramon lashed out behind them both with his Samurai Tiger Tail.

* * *

The fight against Belphemon, on the other hand, seemed to be going pretty well for once. Belphemon snarled in rage as Gallantmon Crimson Mode broke through another one of his tornado attacks with a crossed swipe of both his lance and his sword and launched a huge flurry of blasts from his mouth in an attempt to knock him down. Gallantmon growled as he swept right into the volley of blasts, dodging around most of them and sweeping his lance out before him to pound straight through another as he raced towards Belphemon once more.

As he prepared the Invincible Sword, Belphemon attempted something which he hadn't tried so farm and hammered both sets of his claws into the ground to produce a huge Gift of Darkness that consumed several Nightmare Soldiers that were standing in his way. They had not been his target, but Belphemon didn't particularly care about the loss of life and absorbed their data anyway, pouring more energy into the attack as it surged towards Gallantmon.

As Gallantmon prepared to blow through this attack as well, Belphemon sent out another powerful tornado attack that swept over the Gift of Darkness and stirred up the flames, creating a huge cyclone of flames that engulfed Gallantmon, screening him from view and eliciting a yell from him as he was consumed in the fiery twister. Belphemon had no desire to let him recover, and sent a full powered Lampranthus surging right up the tornado while he charged forwards with claws ready, to initiate the final strike.

He was therefore rather surprised when the fiery tornado was suddenly ripped apart by an explosion of red light that burst out of Gallantmon like a gigantic shockwave, shredding the flaming attack and dispersing it to the air, as well and shoving Belphemon's chains back at him so they tangled around his face and then slammed into his front and tossed him bodily backwards towards the cliff.

Belphemon crashed into it hard, but managed to catch himself against the wall and looked up, his eyes going more crimson than Gallantmon. He flexed the wing that the Royal Knight had damaged earlier in the fighting, now healed up thanks to the data he had absorbed and hurled himself into the air, trying to take the battle back to skies where he could move faster.

Except that Gallantmon was charging towards him once more and intercepted it before he could get very high, both his lance and his sword burying themselves almost their entire length in Belphemon's chest. The Demon Lord howled in agony, as the tips sank almost all the way to his back and then Gallantmon made it worse by withdrawing his lance and slicing across with his Invincible Sword, cutting a huge gash in Belphemon's chest. Belphemon fell from the sky, collapsing in a shuddering heap on the ground, wounded but still alive.

Gallantmon knew that he was unlikely ever to get a better chance than this at finishing the Demon Lord once and for all, so he raised his lance, his body exuding a deep powerful red aura as he readied his Crimson Light attack. His eyes narrowed.

"It ends here," he muttered and he thrust himself down from the sky, lance first, his aura still charging as he prepared to unleash it in a full powered blasts.

"NO!" shouted a voice, or was it three voices, and Gallantmon was taken completely by surprise when a black figure slammed into him from the side, sending him rolling over and over several times with the new being grappling with him. Gallantmon struggled back upright and shoved the new being off, his wings flaring as he raised his sword to strike the enemy down.

He blinked in surprise when he saw who it was.

"Beelzemon?" he asked.

"Not quite," the new Digimon replied, again with three voices. "I am Fatemon." And then, with one voice, he added, "And it sure has been a while since I last saw you, Pineapple-head. Both in this form and in general."

"Impmon," Gallantmon gasped in delight. "You're okay. And you managed to biomerge with your Tamers."

"I see you're still pointing out the obvious," Impmon smirked. "Don't ever change, you two. But there's no time for long winded explanations – I can't let you kill Belphemon."

"What?" Gallantmon blinked. "Why not? He's…"

"…the enemy. Yes, I know. But that's not the point. You don't fully understand the situation, Pineapple-head. Belphemon drained all of my powers as Beelzemon to put them into Belphemon. _All _of them. Everything about my Demon Lord days is gone… including my ability to cross the barrier between this world and any other."

It took Gallantmon a moment to process this. But then his eyes widened and he gasped. "So…"

"Yep," nodded Fatemon. "I might be a Mega again, but I still can't do that anymore. There are only two Digimon in this world or the other that can get us out of here now – Belphemon and GranDracmon. If we ever hope to get out of here, we're going to need one of them to do it for us. And since the whole point of GranDracmon bringing Belphemon back was to transport large numbers of people since he can't do it himself, if we _all_ want to get back, then it'll have to be him."

Gallantmon grimaced beneath his helmet. "Well, that's a poser," he growled.

"Yeah. I know," Fatemon sighed.

"How are we supposed to get Belphemon to do that for us?" Gallantmon asked.

"Beats the hell out me. He's almost like a mindless animal, and the only part of him that isn't is pure evil. It's been ingrained into his very soul since hatching. But we're going to have to come up with something. This is usually the point where you come up with some kind of hare-brained scheme that somehow ends up saving the day."

Gallantmon was about to say he had nothing but a blank when Belphemon exploded through the air towards them, the wounds in his chest healed over, having attacked more of his own troops to absorb their data and recover. Fatemon and Gallantmon flapped away from one another and he shot between them, turning around to give both of them a growling snarl as a greeting.

"**SO, YOU MANAGED TO REGAIN YOUR POWERS, BEELZEMON!"** he snarled. **"NOW, I SHALL HAVE THE PLEASURE OF DISPOSING YOU TOO!"**

"Wrong," Fatemon growled, gripping his sword tightly. "I am not Beelzemon. I am not some helpless puppet of evil anymore. I am Fatemon. I am taking control of my own destiny! I gave you your powers and now I shall take them away. Pineapple-head! Let's take him. We need to hold him off until we can come up with an idea."

"Got it," Gallantmon nodded. "You want first crack at him?"

Fatemon grinned. "Call it experimentation," he chuckled and he whirled around to see Belphemon charging towards him and powered his wings forwards to meet him, teeth bared in a roar of righteous fury, ready to correct his past mistakes.

Belphemon lashed at him with his claws with blinding speed, but Fatemon was quick too, pulling his wings into his side and raking his sword across Belphemon's wings as he swept past. Belphemon whirled around to slash at him again, but Fatemon was already out of the way and flipped over to come for another pass. Belphemon snarled and his chains unfurled once more, launching themselves towards Fatemon in a seemingly random fashion, thrashing all over the place as they sought to bring him down.

But Fatemon was having none of it. Tucking in his wings once more, he corkscrewed to the side to dodge several of the chains, his sword slamming outwards to slice through another two with surprising ease, pulsing his wings out and powering upwards through another pair of chains until he was right in front of Belphemon's face. Before Belphemon could react, Fatemon tossed his sword into the air and threw his arms out wide, fists clenched.

But when they unclenched, a large sphere of energy appeared above each palm. One of them seemed to be made of pulsating, churning darkness, while the other was blazing and searing light. Fatemon winked at Belphemon with his middle eye and yelled:-

"**BALANCED REALITY!"**

And he hurled the two energy orbs at the exact same time, even as the chains behind him curled around to strike towards his back once more. They slammed into Belphemon's eyes and exploded with astonishing force, snapping Belphemon's head back so hard that he almost broke his thick neck as he plummeted towards the ground. The chains went wild behind Fatemon and whipped forwards with their falling master to strike at him, but Fatemon whirled around and grabbing his falling sword out of the air to sweep through them once more, shortening them enough for them to lash harmlessly past on either side of him.

"I am liking having a sword more and more every second," Fatemon murmured to himself as Belphemon crashed to the ground below, his hands over his eyes and if he was trying to claw life back into them. When he pulled his face away, those eyes were redder than ever. Fatemon turned to glance down at him, waiting for his next move while his mind furiously tried to come up with some viable idea.

Belphemon charged across the ground, causing the beach to reverberate with the heavy thuds of his footsteps and then launched himself up into the air once more, thundering towards Fatemon with electricity crackling over his horns. Fatemon surged upwards pursued by the large Demon Lord, and flipped over to throw himself towards Belphemon's stomach with blade raised.

This time, though, Belphemon was more prepared for him and fired a pair of tornados from his fists right towards Fatemon. The biomerged Mega twisted side on with wings outstretched, shooting through the gap between the two attacks, only to find his path blocked by a huge yellow ball of energy launched from Belphemon's mouth right down the middle. Fatemon reacted on instinct and ploughed directly towards the attack, raising his sword, which began to glow a fierce light as he continued his charge.

"**BLADE OF DESTINY!"** he bellowed and with one mighty hack, he broke the attack apart and charged through its remnants, closing the gap between himself and Belphemon. The Demon Lord roared in irritation and charged forwards to meet him, but Fatemon was the faster of the two and suddenly changed trajectory, avoiding the gnashing teeth and swinging claws of the Demon Lord of Sloth and slashing his still-shining sword through the skin on Belphemon's left wing, tearing a huge hole straight through it.

At the last second, Fatemon pulled in his own wings and dove _through_ the gap in the wing that he had just created and, as Belphemon struggled to regain his balance with his freshly damaged wing, Fatemon circled around and cleaved Belphemon right from the small of his back to the base of his neck, the wound blazing as it filled Belphemon with holy power.

Belphemon shrieked and fell once more, but his chains lashed out behind him as he did so. Fatemon had no opportunity to dodged and was struck across the stomach and face with two sets of the heavy metal links, which promptly wrapped around his body, pinning his wings to his side and squashing his feathers and he was dragged towards the ground with Belphemon. Fatemon growled as he tried to free him, but a flash of red and white indicated the arrival of Gallantmon, who slashed through the chains with his own sword and grabbed Fatemon to steady him.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Course I am," Fatemon replied with a smirk. "Any ideas yet?"

"Not a one," Gallantmon shook his head.

"Yeah, I was afraid of that," Fatemon sighed. He looked down to see Belphemon scrambling to his feet again and added, "Man, this guy just won't stay down, will he?"

"No. And if we can't kill him then it doesn't look like he'll be staying down anytime soon."

"Well," Fatemon levelled his sword downwards. "Let's just try and keep him occupied until we do." He offered Gallantmon a sideways glance and added, "Because, I can tell you now, Pineapple-head. Nothing is set in stone. Fate is a very complicated thing, but I know for a fact that it is not _our_ fate to be trapped here. There _is_ a way. We just have to find it."

"Do you think you'll know it when you see it?" Gallantmon replied.

"Oh yes. I _am_ Fatemon, after all."

And with no further words the two of them dived back into the attack.

* * *

Further along the beach, GranDracmon was quite unaware that his prisoner had managed to escape and was now duelling with his new Demon Lord General. Under normal circumstances, he would be, but he was still engrossed in his battle with the Sovereigns and it was taking up the majority of his concentration. Even though he was the master here, he could see full well why the Sovereigns had managed to maintain their rule over the Digital World for so long.

They were damn difficult to kill.

Nevertheless, he was wearing them down, while the darkness of his world continued to heal his every injury. The gold arm that Baihumon had given him had returned to normal, and was now being used to punch Azulongmon in the chin beneath his long beard. The dragon Sovereign was thrown upwards by the hammer blow, his huge body twisting up with him, and GranDracmon unleashed a Death Scream from his shark jaw shoulders that crashed into the draconic Sovereigns and caused him to seize up, muffled groans escaping from him as he tried to move his body.

GranDracmon was then struck in the side by some enormous creature that turned out to be Baihumon, who had made a spectacular leap of the top of the cliff to crash into GranDracmon's flank. His sharp teeth crashed together inches from GranDracmon's face and the Great Demon responded by grabbing his snout in one hand to hold it shut and latching on Baihumon's shoulder with the jaws of his own, twisting in the air so that Baihumon was on the bottom and planting his feet on the tiger's chest.

As they slammed into the ground, all breath was knocked out of Baihumon as air was driven from his lungs. GranDracmon's other hand lashed down and grabbed Baihumon by the neck, ensuring he was unable to replace that air as he slammed his fist into the side of Baihumon's head hard enough to crack the metal helmet a second time and then raised a hand to ready a Crystal Revolution.

But he was interrupted again by a thundering noise that seemed to rock the whole area. GranDracmon turned around, arm still raised, to behold Ebonwumon thundering towards him, his usually peace-filled eyes now blazing with anger and determination. And he was moving at such speed that GranDracmon completely failed to react in time, as one of his heads seized him by the tail and tossed him towards the other head, which slammed into him like a club and sent him flying into the ocean.

He tried to scramble up, but Ebonwumon's follow up Double Dragon Wave knocked him flat once more. After a couple of seconds under the surf, he rose up again, anger blazing in his eyes as Ebonwumon stood protectively in front of the recovering Baihumon as the tiger scrambled back to his feet.

"You just made a big mistake, old mon," GranDracmon snarled, and raised the Crystal Revolution that was still in his hand. The size of the attack seemed to multiply by about four times before he hurled it towards Ebonwumon in a huge wave of his own. Ebonwumon's four eyes widened – he knew right there that he would never be able to dodge that. He could run fast for something his size, but turning was definitely not a strength of his.

GranDracmon smirked, anticipating the death of the first Sovereign. But his euphoria as short-lived because a colossal bellow erupted from above as a huge plume of red thundered towards the ground like an upside-down volcanic eruption, slamming into the beach before Ebonwumon and created a wall of flames between him and the icy attack. And from the flames rose Zhuqiaomon, his eyes practically on fire and the rest of his body literally on fire as he spread his majestic wings.

"**I'VE HAD ENOUGH!"** the Sovereign of the South announced and with an immense pulse of his wings, he slammed himself forwards, the wall of flames rushing along at the same pace as him and broiling through the air. The heat of the attack was so intense that it didn't disperse even as it rolled over the ocean and it melted clean through the Crystal Revolution with what looked like ease. It was like a fiery blast-front from a meteor impact, except the meteor was still going along with it.

GranDracmon's eyes widened as a wall of flame practically three-hundred yards wide and a hundred yards high surged in his direction, the blazing Zhuqiaomon dead at is centre. He prepared himself for impact, but Zhuqiaomon struck him with such speed and such raw power that his defence was overwhelmed and he was flung backwards, the huge wall of flames all rushing towards him at once to coat him in wave after wave of fire. GranDracmon roared as the ocean around him practically began to evaporate and the flames burnt into every fibre of his being. It was pain beyond almost all imagining!

And then Zhuqiaomon promptly made it even worst by sinking his talons into GranDracmon's chest and pushing himself off, pulsing a Blazing Helix down at him while the inferno was still surrounding the Great Demon and launching a Sonic Zephyr immediately afterwards to stir up the fire even more. The rest was a colossal explosion on fire that practically set the ocean alight.

Zhuqiaomon landed with a thud in front of Ebonwumon and Baihumon, breathing heavily. He had spent a lot of energy in that attack, but he had at least managed to save the life of one of his fellow Sovereigns. Baihumon stepped up next to him, and the three of them watched the smoke carefully, waiting for any sign of their opponent's next move.

Sure enough, GranDracmon eventually emerged from the attack, his body blistered and covered in ugly wounds that were slowly beginning to heal over already. "That was pretty good," he admitted. "I believe you might have actually killed me with that were we in the Digital World, Zhuqiaomon. Unfortunately, you are not in the Digital World, you are in mine. And now you must reap the consequences of your choice to bring the fight here."

Zhuqiaomon slumped slightly as he gritted his beak trying to regain some of his energy as GranDracmon dashed towards them once more. But before he got more than ten strides, electrified chains thundered down from the sky above and slammed into his back, knocking him back into the surf. Azulongmon lanced out of the sky, a lightning blast shooting out from his horn and impacting on the back of GranDracmon's head as the chains wrapped around his legs and neck, hauling him into the air to slam him to the ground nearby and then proceed to batter against his body.

"Recover your strength, Zhuqiaomon!" Azulongmon cried. "We shall handle him!"

Baihumon snarled and dashed forwards into the fray once more, with Ebonwumon lumbering after him, leaving Zhuqiaomon standing on the beach. The tiger Sovereign dashed past GranDracmon as he struggled to get back up, raking his claws across his chest as he shot by. He then whirled around and let loose with a massive Gold Strength that struck GranDracmon in the back of the leg and solidified it to the spot. GranDracmon growled in annoyance, but he was then bombared from above by Black Hail shard from Ebowumon and Baihumon was on him again moments later. Claws ripped and tore as his teeth fastened around the back of the Great Demon's neck.

As Azulongmon and Ebonwumon closed in to assist their fellow Sovereign, GranDracmon's eyes snapped into slits and he gathered his power into his pitch-black Digicore and unleashed it in a massive shockwave that hurled Baihumon off and pushed the other two Sovereigns flying backwards. GranDracmon wrenched his leg free of the ground and seized the fallen Baihumon with his tail, hauling him through the air and sending him crashing between Ebonwumon's necks to flatten the turtle Sovereign into the ground.

Then he focused his efforts on Azulongmon.

"Your efforts are futile," he told the giant dragon. "Surely you must see that, Azulongmon."

"No matter how futile the situation may seem, that is no reason to stop trying," Azulongmon responded. "We shall never rest until either you are destroyed, or we are…"

"Fair enough," GranDracmon replied. "Then surely you must understand that there can only be one outcome of this battle if you stick to that. Your own destruction." And he clapped his hands together to fire another Crystal Revolution from both that shot straight towards Azulongmon. The Sovereign swerved aside at the last moment and the battling began once more.

* * *

The Digimon who were currently locked in combat with the rest of the Nightmare Soldiers, on the other hand, were about to get a relatively pleasant surprise. Gryphonmon growled as he was thrust backwards across the sand by another Arkadimon, bringing himself to a stop by sinking his claws into the ground. The Arkadimon immediately came after him, but launching a Solor Roar at it managed to slow it down and causing it to thrash in pain as its data began to disrupt.

But then, two Ultimate level Arkadimon struck Gryphonmon in the side and pushed him to the ground. Gryphonmon snapped up at them furiously and managed to get them to back away as he clambered to his own feet, but he could see the Mega, freed from his attack, bearing down in him again, and there was another Mega directly behind him.

Gryphonmon tensed as he prepared for the battle of his life. But before the Megas could get much closer to him, a huge beam of yellow suddenly lanced down from the sky and cannoned into the back of the Arkadimon on the left and swept over to intercept the other one as well, knocking them both to the ground with massive injuries to their shoulders and back. Gryphonmon looked up just in time to see a massive shape descending from above, slamming into both the floored Arkadimon and stabbing huge talons into their backs to finish them off.

Gryphonmon gazed up at Ornismon with a sense of awe that he rarely felt for anyone. This bird was almost as big as Zhuqiaomon! Perhaps bigger! He suddenly felt slightly insignificant while standing in his presence.

Ornismon nodded to him and raised his head to screech, alerting the whole battlefield to his presence before he pushed back into the air, snatching the two Ultimate Arkadimon out of the air as he did so and squeezing them in his talons as he climbed up and immediately tilted himself down, sweeping over the heads of the Nightmare Soldiers and slamming his wings so hard into a pair of Arkadimon that they were thrown clean across the beach and crashed into the cliff wall.

Ornismon spun around and moved to climb higher, towards a large portion of the remainder of the aerial Nightmare Soldiers – a few Airdramon and Devidramon and several Devimon as well. They hurriedly tried to scatter before him, but his mighty wings clubbed them aside as he passed through them and sent most of them spinning, eliciting a smirk from the gigantic bird as he veered around, flapping his wings harder and harder as he cried, **"RAGING TEMPEST!"**

The airborne Digimon were caught in a whirlwind of action as Ornismon became nothing more than a purplish blur that circled round and round them, flapping his wings hard to generate a maelstrom of wind that was so powerful that the very data particles of the Digimon in the middle were ripped apart and dispersed to the air within a moment. Those lucky enough to be only caught by the attack were tossed down towards the ground instead, where they hit it so hard that they also burst into data.

Ornismon then flipped his body over and descended with talons out to seize a huge SkullMammothmon by the back. The elephant-like Digimon squealed in pain, which promptly became terror as Ornismon effortlessly lifted the huge Digimon up into the air, climbing up and up and up as if the SkullMammothmon weight nothing, before flinging him into the air, sending him plummeting towards the ground where he slammed into several dozen more Nightmare Soldiers and flattened them completely.

"Who's that?" SaberLeomon asked, as everyone stared up at the newcomer. None of them had ever seen him before, and as far as they knew, a complete stranger had suddenly appeared out of nowhere to help them out.

A LadyDevimon took the opportunity to jump forwards with a shriek, her giant hand morphing into a spike that she brought lancing towards SaberLeomon's face. The Mega lion stepped back instinctively, but LadyDevimon never reached her target because a large, thorny whip suddenly lanced down from above and wrapped around her neck, jerking her backwards with a retching sound. The wielder of the green whip swept down from the sky and plunged another sharper thorn into the LadyDevimon's stomach, disintegrating her on the spot.

Rosemon smiled down at SaberLeomon and said, "Don't worry. It's just Diatrymon."

"Lilamon?" gasped Jeri's half of the biomerged Mega.

"Yep," nodded the newcomer. "Though its Rosemon now. And that guy up there is now called Ornismon and that guy over there who used to be Wingdramon and is about to pounced on more Nightmare Soldiers is called Slayerdramon."

A number of the united army followed Rosemon's pointing vine just in time to see an Arkadimon get slashed in half without warning from behind, Slayerdramon bounding through the data that burst of his body to whip his sword across another Arkadimon and sever its arm and lash it out towards another, the blade curling around its neck and the points digging into it to disintegrate him as well.

Another Arkadimon whirled around at the sound of conflict behind it, to see the armoured Dragon Man dashing towards him with sword raised. The Arkadimon immediately moved to intercept, slashing out with its claws in a terrific blow aimed directly towards Slayerdramon's head. Slayerdramon responded in kind and let off a punch of his own that collided with the Arkadimon's first so hard that cracks appeared it its claws. Slayerdramon leapt up to kick it in the throat and send it crashing into another Arkadimon's back and a downward slash with the blade was enough to end them both.

Slayerdramon turned slowly around, his green cloak billowing behind him despite the lack of wind and raised his sword towards several more Nightmare Soldiers, inviting them to come and try their luck against him. Many of them backed away fearfully, but a SkullMeramon who was either very brave or very stupid took up that challenge and charged forwards, striking out with one of its flaming chains. Slayerdramon responded by grabbing the chain, ignoring the fire and slicing through the SkullMeramon with his sword before he dashed over it and lanced towards another Mega level Arkadimon.

"**TENRYU SLASH!"** he roared as he span through the air twice with his sword flashing around his body and then cleaved it downwards, cutting through the Arkadimon from head to pelvis before he could do anything about it. Two more Ultimates jumped towards him and tried to tackle him from behind but Slayerdramon span around and drove his sword straight through one of them and grabbed the other by the face in his armoured hand, bashing him into the other one and tossing him harmlessly away.

A horde of other Nightmare Soldiers suddenly swarmed towards him, trying to overwhelm him before they could do much damage, but they never got the opportunity because Slayerdramon turned around again to raise his sword above his head. That sword began to the glow with a blazing aura which took on the shape of a winged, raging dragon. **"SHORYU SLASH!"** he added as he swept it downwards so the point was facing the oncoming horde and the huge dragon burst into life and swelled towards them, striking the front runners and vaporising them instantly and exploding outwards with a wave that fried or tossed back many of the others as well.

One of the Arkadimon struggling to his feet after that blast spotted a red blur surging towards him from the side and he whirled around to see Rosemon soaring in. He raised his claws to swat the smaller Mega away, but Rosemon was having none of it. **"ROSE SPEAR!"** she shouted and lashed her pointed vine outwards, which shot out and extended to get under the Arkadimon's guard and plunge through his stomach. As the Arkadimon disintegrated, the vine curled around itself several times and lanced through a pair of Devimon as well, while Rosemon herself landed on the ground in the middle of the Nightmare Soldiers.

They immediately leapt towards her from all sides, but Rosemon moved with unbelievable grace, spinning around to slash her sharp vine through a DarkLizardmon, her leaf-like cloak swatting a couple of Bakemon in the face in the same motion. Her whip vine lashed outwards and wrapped around a Devimon, pulling him to the ground while Rosemon leapt over him and kicked the Devimon behind him in the face, before whirling about and slashing through the chest of an Ogremon while flinging the Devimon entangled in her whip down the throat of a Raremon, causing it to hack and choke.

Rosemon ducked low underneath a clumsy swing from a Fugamon, bringing her whip to bear and lashing it around his club, so when Rosemon yanked down, he smashed himself over the head with it instead, while she span around and kicked a Sangloupmon under the snout. As she pulled her whip away from the unconscious Fugamon, she lashed out with her spear to impale the Sangloupmon before it recover and lashed out to the side with her whip, swiping it across the faces of many other Nightmare Soldiers, causing them to reel back, howling in pain with thorn stuck in their features.

Rosemon found herself bathed in a shadow and looked up to see that a SkullGreymon was looming over her and lifting a foot to stamp on her. She swept up into the air and avoided the attack easily enough, but then she was struck in the front by a pair of SkullSatamon that crashed their staffs into her. Rosemon rolled over a couple of times, but recovered her balance and allowed the rose on her head to open outwards, as if it were in bloom. **"FORBIDDEN TEMPTATION!"** she yelled and she threw her arms out, cascading out a huge red aura from her whole body combined with dozens of rose petals that showered over every Nightmare Soldier within fifty metres, including the SkullSatamon and SkullGreymon, and annihilated them instantly.

On seeing how well the new arrivals were getting on, the United Army found themselves grinning as they surged back into the attack with energy and spirits restored once more. It looked like things were picking up for them. They were breaking the back of the Nightmare Soldiers and all that was left was to initiate the final blow that would end them once and for all.

* * *

Meanwhile, the fight against Belphemon was still going extremely well for both Gallantmon and Fatemon, but not so much for Belphemon. The Demon Lord might be incredibly powerful, and more powerful here than he would be in the Digital World, but it seemed that the combined powers of Gallantmon Crimson Mode and a biomerged Fatemon were more than enough to match him.

They had also quite cleverly moved Belphemon away from the rest of the Nightmare Soldiers, giving him nothing to attack so that he could absorb their data and recover his injuries. He was grounded again, his left wing holed and his right wing almost in tatters, but he was still battling against his two aerial opponents with more rage than ever before. And this meant that both Gallantmon and Fatemon were now struggling to get close to him.

His chains thrashed outwards, cloaked in dark power. Fatemon ducked under two and rolled above a third, powering his wings upwards so that he could dodge another three that lashed for his midsection. He dived down with his sword at the ready, but he was forced to retreat as no less than five other chins whooshed past his face, narrowly dodging a strike to the chest from a sixth. He gritted his teeth in annoyance and sheathed his sword, conjuring another Balanced Reality in his hands and hurling it towards the errant Demon Lord.

Belphemon saw the two spheres hurtling in his direction and threw his chains out wide, summoning a huge yellow ball of energy from his mouth that shot to intercept the two spheres. It slammed into the sphere of darkness and pulverised it, the shockwave throwing the other sphere off course. Gallantmon quickly tried to take advantage of the gap in the chains, but Belphemon brought them thundering back in at the last moment, slamming into the Knight's sides and knocking him askew. Belphemon powered forwards and raised his claws, striking Gallantmon across the side with them and tearing a couple of rents in his armour.

As Gallantmon dropped to the ground and went rolling, he skidded to a halt and physically hurled his lance straight towards Belphemon. The projectile shot through the thrashing chains and punctured into Belphemon's gut. Belphemon shrieked and dropping his guard, and Fatemon quickly saw his opportunity and dived through the chains, preparing another Blade of Destiny attack.

Belphemon saw him coming and quickly drew out the lance in his stomach, ignoring the pain it caused him and used it to block Fatemon's attack. Fatemon gritted his teeth and pushed against him, but Belphemon still had the superior strength of the two of them. However, without warning, the lance jumped out of his hand and span through the air of its own accord and back to Gallantmon. Gallantmon himself looked surprised by this is as well, but Fatemon quickly took the chance and struck again with his Blade of Destiny, cutting a huge gash in Belphemon's shoulder.

Belphemon cried out as he felt one of his arms going slightly numb and tried to swat Fatemon, but Fatemon dodged over the swing and brought his fist slamming into the side of Belphemon's snout. Belphemon's head snapped to the side, but Fatemon, other fist swung up a moment later and crashed into the underside of Belphemon's jaw as well.

By instinct, Fatemon prepared his sword to initiate a final strike, but then remembered that he wasn't supposed to and gritted his teeth in frustration. He flared his wings and pulled backwards as Gallantmon moved closer but Fatemon cried out in surprise when suddenly a bunch of chains tightened around his legs. Belphemon smirked from his position on the ground and more chains lashed in, tightening around Fatemon's sword arm and pulling it to the side, while pinning his wings.

Fatemon thrashed but was unable to free himself from the chains, they were lashed tight and slowly constricting, cutting of his air as they simultaneously filled with dark power and elicited a triple yell from all three members of the same body. Gallantmon swept in to act, but Belphemon surged up and knocked him aside with a strike of his claws, plunging a Gift of Darkness at him to keep him occupied while Fatemon was slowly crushed.

Fatemon's three eyes clenched as he felt his head going slightly cloudy, as if his brain was slowly stopping while the chains grew tighter around his body. As he struggled, he acted completely without thinking and wrenched his left arm, which was still more free of the chains than his sword hand, and pointed it at Belphemon, letting rip with a huge blast that cannoned into Belphemon's face. Belphemon roared in shock from the unexpected attack and reeled to the side, causing his chains to slacken and allowing the victim within to scramble free.

Only then did the biomerged form realise what he had just done. He looked down at his arm and balked when he saw the huge cannon mounted on it. Since when had Fatemon had access to Berenjena? And when had it appeared there? But… it wasn't Berenjena – at least not the same as the one he remembered. It was bigger, bulkier and looked more powerful, the jaw parts at the end open wide and a large barrel protruding from it. Berenjena had never had a barrel, had it?

Then he realised his sword had vanished, as had the scabbard it belonged in. He looked down at himself and realised that his armour had changed too. The medieval style had switched to something slightly more celestial and even lighter than before, and he had a shotgun strapped to his leg. He looked up at his wings and saw they had gotten broader, and as he reached up to feel his helmet, he realised it felt exactly the same as it did whenever he had been…

"Beelzemon?" Gallantmon asked as he moved back up into the air nearby.

"What the heck?" Beelzemon asked, and then he realised that the Impmon portion of his triple voice had switched to the voice he'd always had as Beelzemon. But he was different now – stronger… more powerful. Somehow, he had inexplicably switched from Fatemon to Beelzemon, right in the middle of a battle.

His mind flashed back to the statue of himself in the Celestial Heavens which had looked slightly different to him, and as he looked down at himself now, he realised that he now looked exactly the same as he had in that statue. A grin appeared on his face. He had finally shrugged off the last remnants of his days as a Demon Lord. The stain that had been his past had finally been removed with his old Demon Lord powers gone and his Tamers accepted.

He was a warrior of heaven again.

And that immediately solved another thought that had occurred to him earlier – how the Celestial Digimon had been able to make references to Fatemon, if he used the form of Beelzemon up there. Could this be it?

He shut his eyes and concentrated for a moment, and sure enough, he felt his body structure shift slightly, almost like a digivolution effect, except milder. When he opened his eyes again, Berenjena and the shotgun were gone and the sword was back in his hand. He was Fatemon again. And then he repeated the process and morphed back into Fatemon, then back to Beelzemon and so on and so on several times, just to test out the effect.

He possessed Slide Digivolution! He could switch between two forms at will, each with their own skill sets. He smirked. None of the other Tamers could do this in their biomerged forms!

Could this be because he had two Tamers instead of one? One human within him giving him access to one form and the other with the second, while the other Tamers only had one human, which meant only one form?

Or… even better… was the reason he had two Tamers instead of one because of this?

Ophanimon had said that he had a slight control over fate, which is what had ensured that he and the rest of the Digimon from the heavens had met up and made a team again. Could he also have commanded fate to give him two partners as well, so that this gift – this wonderful gift – would one day be in his grasp.

Whatever the case, he now had an extra edge. He morphed back into the form of Beelzemon and said, in one voice alone, "Alright then, Teradalets! Whose ready to kick some ass?"

"We are!" Ai and Mako cheered.

"Me too!" Beelzemon smirked, and he hurled himself upwards with a flash of his tremendous wings, drawing his shotgun and opening fire down below as he shot over Belphemon's head. Belphemon bellowed as he was struck across the face by what appeared to be small, green energy blasts instead of bullets, but Beelzemon certainly wasn't complaining.

"**DIE ALREADY!"** Belphemon raged and hurled a huge tornado directly towards Beelzemon as he whirled back around. Beelzemon smirked and came to a standstill, bringing his new and improved cannon to bear and prepping it, the jaws opening wider and the barrel extending outwards.

"**DEATH THE CANNON!"** he roared and a massive blast of green energy burst out of the barrel and pummelled its way straight through the tornado, ripping it to shreds as it pounded through the air. It slammed Belphemon squarely in his open jaws and he practically shrieked in agony and he was flung backwards by the attack, rolling over and over and scrabbling at the sand in a mad bid to try and right himself.

When he did manage to push himself back to his feet, it was only to see two Balanced Reality orbs bearing down on him. With no time to block they pounded into his chest and seared at his skin, throwing him off pace and causing him to drop onto his hands and knees, teeth gritted in pain. Fatemon was right behind his own attack and he bellowed, **"BLADE OF DESTINY!"** as he swung his glowing sword down, and sheared straight through both of Belphemon's horns before he could do anything about it.

Belphemon looked mortified as his horns dropped to the floor in front of him and snarled in frustration and anger, clambering back onto his feet. He turned round to see Fatemon rising up into the air in front of him and launched a barrage of close to twenty high speed energy balls from his mouth and flung the chains upwards after them, hoping to catch Fatemon off guard. Fatemon morphed into Beelzemon and sent off a huge barrage of his own from his cannon and shotgun, the green energy blasts intercepting all those of Belphemon's before they got anywhere near him.

As the chains lanced up after them, he morphed back into Fatemon and spiralled downwards, his sword flashing around him as he sliced through several more while diving past. As more closed in on either side of him, he flung his sword downwards towards Belphemon's head and conjured up another pair of Balanced Reality Orbs and flung them to either side to crash into the chains and knock them askew.

Belphemon saw the sword lancing straight towards his face and raised his armoured hands to block it, but moments before impact the sword vanished with a smoky _foof_, and a cannon blast ripped down from above to pummel him in his unprotected stomach instead, knocking the wind out of him and tossing him rather humiliatingly onto his backside. Beelzemon whipped overhead with a smirk, and Belphemon hollered in absolute rage and plunged his claws into the ground, sending up two huge columns of hellish fire straight towards the impudent shape-changing Mega.

Beelzemon's eyes widened and he shifted into Fatemon again, hurling down another pair of Balanced Reality orbs that collided with the columns and delayed their progress long enough for him to get out of the way. He then switched back into Beelzemon and fired a huge cannon blast downwards, which Belphemon blocked with the back of his armoured hands. Beelzemon swooped downwards, following his own cannon blast and, when he judged he had got close enough, he switched back to Fatemon and slewed to one side, raking his Blade of Destiny down the length of one of Belphemon's arms and then plunging it into his back.

Fatemon hurled himself back into the air before Belphemon could retaliate and turned back to Gallantmon, glowering at him. "Are you going to help or are you just going to float there?"

"Looks to me like you don't even need that much help," Gallantmon chuckled.

"Just do it!" Fatemon rolled all three eyes. Gallantmon shrugged and dove back downwards once more to take his turn. As he did, Fatemon began to wrack all three minds within his one head. This unique new ability of their might be awesome, but it didn't help them solve their current situation. Even in his new Beelzemon form, he knew he still couldn't transport anyone out of the Dark Ocean. That part of his powers was still gone.

There had to be a way. A way of winning this fight _and_ getting everyone out of the Dark Ocean again. There just had to be.

* * *

How was that everybody? All credit to Fatemon goes to **Bookworm Gal** and I'll remind you all that the new Beelzemon for is the one of the Beelzemon from the Digimon Xros Wars season. I know some people don't like the new form in comparison to the one from Tamers, but I happen to think it fits that particular Beelzemon's personality and backstory, as a warrior of a Goddess instead of a Demon Lord, perfectly. And since Beelzemon has now become a Warrior of Heaven once more, he had gained his brand new costume.

Between Beelzemon and Fatemon, they make a very destructive force, able to attack at range and close up with ease. I don't think I've seen another fic where this happens either, but hey, I thought why not? Why can't two Tamers give an extra bonus to the Digimon who has them, right?

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Pong Krell finally arrives at the battle scene and engages in a lightsaber duel with Aayla, showing of his violent skill with both of his double blades. Can Aayla deal with this unique form of lightsaber combat with her own single blades? And Dooku finally decides to move out to take some action, but before he can get very far, he is waylaid by one very, _very_ angry cyborg. Lots of clashing lightsabers to come.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 206 : Double Shock**


	206. Double Shock

First off, before you start reading this chapter, please take a moment to pay your respects to, even if just for a second, to the actor Ian Abercrombie, who plays the voice of Palpatine/Sidious in the Clone Wars series and who also passed away last Thursday. I have only just become aware of this fact, and I feel that it was a sad day for fans of the Clone Wars everywhere. Although nobody is supposed to like his character, I've seen Abercrombie in other things and I believe he was an excellent actor. His portrayal of Sidious was perfect, in my personal opinion, and it almost made me sad to be abusing his character like this. Though only almost – as I'm sure he would agree that Sidious deserves everything he's getting as well.

Rest in peace, Ian Abercrombie. We will miss you, and if they get a replacement for you in future series of the Clone Wars, he had better do a good job.

Now, on a more pleasant note, read on everybody. Hope you like.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 206:- Double Shock**

* * *

The outside of the Senate Building was still as chaotic as it had been since Renamon and Aayla had appeared there over quarter of an hour ago. The Twi'lek Jedi was still standing strong, balanced on a crate while wielding her duel lightsabers with tremendous skill, whirling one around to deflect several shots from her right and her other blade lashing to the side to block another couple of bolts that with swipes that sent them ricocheting back towards the clones that had fired them, nailing them in the stomach.

Clones were crowding around the whole area, dashing across the landing platform from various points across the Senate Building and pressing themselves in to overwhelm the legendary Twi'lek and her two Bounty Hunter companions. The only problem was that most of them were a bit unwilling to get too close to her. They had all heard of her skill on the battlefield, and they were backing away as far as they could to shoot from a range instead.

This meant that Aayla was practically forced to a standstill as she put all her focus into the deflection. But that was more than alright with her – she was meant to be drawing most of the clones out of the building after all, so that the rest of her team could carry out their own tasks and that was exactly what she was doing.

Plus, by standing out in the open as she was, most of the firepower was being drawn away from Sugi and Rumi.

The Zabrak Bounty Hunter peered around another crate and offloaded a couple of lasers that slammed into the heads of the clones. One of them tried to shoot back at her, but Sugi rolled around the back of the crate and sprang out of the other side, shooting off another two bolts and rolling into cover behind another crate, springing up and over it briefly to pulse out a wave of shots that knocked down four clones at the same time.

One clone with a missile launcher ran up to the others and sighted it on Sugi, deciding to try and take out the Jedi's support before going for the Jedi herself, and let fly. Sugi skidded to the side and threw herself into a dive, the missile impacting on the ground where she had been with a terrific explosion. The Bounty Hunter rolled out of the dive with ease and kicked over a pile of crates, sending them crashing to the ground to knock over a couple more clones and then firing over the top of those that remained to fell another three.

Rumi was hanging a little further back, her rifle clutched in her thin red hands as she sighted along its scope and took more careful and precise shots than Sugi. But it was definitely paying off. She was firing roughly one shot every three seconds, and each and every time her shot took the clone in the forehead and sent him crashing onto his back before he could dodge, or even realise that he was being shot at. The Frenk might not have been holding a full-sized sniper rifle, but she might as well have been, she was that accurate.

Eventually a couple of clones identified the threat that the red-skinned Bounty Hunter posed and dashed around Aayla, lifting their own blasters to rain shots across at her. Rumi saw them coming in plenty of time and emphasised the athletic skills of her species to leap into the air and sailed clean over the shots, lancing out several more of her own even while she was still in the air at the time. The two clones and another one next to them were completely wiped out as her shots impacted in their chests.

Rumi landed nearby to Aayla and pressed her back against the crate she was standing on, as she reloaded her blaster rifle. Glancing off to the side, the Frenk saw Embo still locked in combat with the Morgukai warrior, Bok, and so far, the Bounty Hunter seemed to have the advantage over the Nikto. Using his hat to slam aside a strike from one sword, Embo lashed out with a fist to strike him squarely on the jaw and send him stumbling backwards, and the Kyuzo quickly followed up by throwing the hat.

The spherical disk struck the opponent full in the mouth and actually managed to knock out a few teeth. The Nikto screamed as pain filled his mouth, but Embo was not about to give him a chance to have a break. As the hat clattered to the floor, Embo lifted up his bowcaster and clouted Bok across the face with it, grabbing his hat as the Morgukai fell onto his back and lifting his foot up to pound it down towards Bok's face again while he was still on the ground.

Bok managed to recover quickly enough to grab the attempted strike and toll to the side, yanking Embo off balance and sending him tumbling to the ground, but the Kyuzo skilfully kicked up his other foot to impact it into the Nikto's wrist and free his ankle, rolling backwards and flipping back onto his feet while Bok scrambled up at a slower pace, a scowl on his wrinkled features.

Bok reached for both his swords and flung one directly towards Embo and charged after it, hoping to catch his opponent off guard as he deflected the sword, but Embo was more than prepared for a strike like this. With expert precision, his hat soared outwards and struck the flying sword at such an angle that it went spinning directly back towards its owner. Bok dodged at the last second, as the sword punctured the concrete next to his foot, and Embo came dashing back towards him, stowing his bowcaster and raising his hands, ready to go into a one-on-one fistfight – his favourite style.

Rumi looked up towards Aayla as she stepped out from behind the crate once more to gun down another clone. "How much longer do you think we'll have to do this?"

"I'm not sure," Aayla responded, spinning in a wide circle with her blades windmilling around her to whip several more blaster shots aside, the clones diving for cover as a barrage of their own shots came flying back at them. "Things are pretty hectic right now! Ahsoka and Barriss are currently in lightsaber duels of their own and Grievous is still getting into position. Anakin has yet to make his move, but last I checked, Artoo was almost done. Everything is still pretty much on track."

"Good," nodded Rumi, as a fresh wave of clones came dashing across the platform towards them. "The sooner this is done the better." She unleashed her blaster pistol and pounded a couple more clones in the chest with shots from it and swung her rifle around to punch through another one's leg and send him crashing back down to the ground.

* * *

Sugi backed away as lasers whipped to either side of her, impacting on the crates behind her while she, in turn, continued to fire her own blaster with relish, gunning down a couple more clones in the process. She bit her lip as she jumped backwards onto another crate and pulsed out a few more shots that only one clone managed to dodge. As she backed away still further, another clone leapt out of hiding form a nearby crate and jumped on her, pushing her to the ground.

Sugi growled as she skilfully kicked him off and sent him flying over her head, flipping back onto her feet as the clone scrambled back upwards as well. Sugi automatically reached for her vibrodagger, and then remembered she'd given it to Embo and dashed forwards to intercept the clone, grabbing him by the arm and heaving him over her shoulder to slam him down into the concrete landing platform, his helmet flying off and allowing her to punch him in the face to send him to unconsciousness.

Sugi then got back to her feet to continue shooting, but a heavy thud from right behind her suddenly startled her. She whirled around, just in time to see a huge shape looming over her before a green lightsaber blade was swept through her chest.

The sound of the lightsaber swinging through the air caused Aayla to whirl around, her eyes shooting open as she witnessed what had happened. "SUGI! NO!" she shouted, causing Rumi to whip around as well, and Embo to look up sharply from where he was about to pound Bok's face into the ground. Sugi gasped and stared down dumbly at the line that had been carved in her torso.

Then she collapsed onto her back, her last breath rattling out of her slashed lungs, her eyes open and clouding over in death. And the huge figure standing over her looked up and smirked at Aayla, his wide mouth making the smirk even broader than that of an ordinary person.

"I guess that means that I get the points for the first fatality," Pong Krell chuckled, placing a foot cruelly on Sugi's stomach. "It's about time that one of you insurgents died, if you ask me. The clones seem to be a bit incompetent for that sort of thing."

Rumi screamed in rage at the sight of her friend being dishonoured in such a fashion and opened fire, lasers blazing towards the large Besalisk former Jedi. Only one of Krell's blades was currently out, but he snorted contemptuously at Rumi's attempts to engaged him in conflict and the other four sprang outwards, the former Jedi whirling both of them around with unerring skill to deflect all of Rumi's shots and then thrusting out one of his lower arms to grab her with the Force and send her crashing into a crate.

Aayla crossed her blades in front of her and glared at Krell, suppressing the anger she felt rising within her at the death of Sugi. The clones behind her had stopped shooting, watching the situation with morbid interest and allowing Aayla and Krell to exchange a few words freely.

"Master Krell," Aayla growled. "I wish I could say it was a pleasure to see you here. Because if I could, then you would still be on my side. And yet you have chosen to throw in your lot with the Sith Lords."

"Indeed I have," Krell nodded. "And I notice that you are not that surprised to see me here. Interesting – you must have had some help from this inside if I am expected. We'll have to root out the problem later on. Anyway, this will be my first test to the Emperor, Lord Sidious, that I am more than competent enough to join his forces permanently. He is currently not a very happy person, Knight Secura. He was very angry indeed when he learned that you were still alive."

"I imagine so," Aayla replied tersely. "That was what we were going for."

"Yes, I thought so," Krell chuckled. "I must say, you've done a pretty good job of evading him so far, Secura. I believe that he will be watching what's going on right now on holocam, and when I strike you down, live for him to see…" he chuckled and added, "Well, let's just say that I may be next in line to be Dooku's top apprentice. I hope you make this easy for me, Secura."

"Krell, wait!" Aayla interrupted, as the Besalisk took a step towards her. "Before you attack me, as it seems you are going to… first, I want you to tell me why."

"Why?" Krell raised a brow.

"Why you have turned against us like this?" Aayla tapped herself on the chest. "We are both Jedi, Krell. What grievance did you have with the Jedi Order that has made you do this? What motivation could you possibly have had to join the Dark Side, Krell. It only brings darkness and despair and you know that full well. So, what possessed you to do something as heinous as this, betraying us to our own exterminator?"

Krell chuckled and said, "Well, I've always felt on some level that the Jedi Order needed a few major renovations. We were always too merciful… to full of pity towards the commoners when we could be so much more. We could be rulers. We could be gods. And with the Sith, that is exactly what I will become. The lesser man will show me the respect which I have always deserved."

"They already showed you that," Aayla protested. "They do look up to us and respect us. We were guardians of the Republic. We protected the people with everything we had they showed us respect even when we didn't want it."

"But that's just it, Secura," Krell laughed openly. "You never wanted respect. You went around claiming that you were just doing your duty all the time. We were far too humble, when we had all that power that the Force granted us at our beck and call. We deserved the respect. We deserved even more than we were getting. Far more. And now that I have joined the Sith, that is exactly what I am going to get."

"That's not what you will get, Krell?" Aayla shook her head. "You will be feared! You will rule over hundreds of thousands of millions of people with an iron fist, and force them into a brutal lifestyle with you as their commander. You might be respected, but you will no longer be loved. You will be feared and hated – despised by everybody. Is that what you want? Is that what you really want, Krell?"

"You think to sway me back to the side of the Light with your arguments, Secura?" Krell laughed. "I'd advise you not to be so naïve. I have never needed the love of others, and having people fear you is far better than having them love you. If they love you, then they always expect you to do things for them, claiming that it is your duty. And that is not what I want. But with the Dark Side… heh… I can do as I please. The people don't get a say in what I do, but I will get a say in what they too. The tables have turned, Secura. And I like it this way."

"Nobody is above redemption, Krell. Surely, you must see that," Aayla insisted. "Don't do this. Following a Dark Lord of the Sith is not the way to go and never will be. You will eventually be betrayed by them – they only care about themselves. You will not have any true comrades ever again if you follow this path, Krell."

"Then we have something in common," Krell laughed. "The more powerful I get, the better, and I believe that, with time, I shall be able to outgrow Palpatine in power. I will become the Dark Lord of the Sith with time, not him. Besides, I have foreseen that the Jedi Order were always going to lose, and I was right."

"You're a Jedi, Krell. You should know that the future is never set in stone, no matter how many times you try to chisel it there! We can win this… we can defeat the Sith and that is exactly we intend to do. Besides, just look out there," she pointed out to the distance where Cherubimon and Godzillo were still thrashing it out with the Empire's reinforcements. "Did your visions tell us about this?"

Krell took a moment to look over at them, and then shrugged all four shoulders. "Those things may be powerful, but I know the way a Jedi thinks, remember? They won't attack the Senate Building as long as there are innocent Senate members inside, so the only ones that will have any chance of stopping us are… nobody," he grinned. "You and your companions will fall before us soon enough."

He whirled his lightsabers around, the double-blades spinning through the air. "This conversation is pointless, Secura! There is no chance of converting me back to your pathetic Jedi ways. This is the end of your legacy, Secura! Clones, open fire! Assist me in taking down this Jedi filth."

The clones didn't move. After a couple of seconds, Krell's eyes narrowed, and he yelled, "Well, what are you waiting for?"

"Palpatine…" one of the clones breathed in horror. "…Is a Sith Lord? The Emperor… is really a Sith?"

Only then did Krell realise his mistake. He had been loudly discussing that very fact with Aayla in front of people who weren't supposed to know about that yet. His eyes narrowed as he growled, turning to glare at Aayla, who was smirking slightly.

"Actually, that conversation did hold a slight purpose," Aayla chuckled. "You might want to work on your secret-keeping skills before you think about becoming Dooku's top apprentice." Then her own eyes hardened and she said, "Now then… this is for Sugi!"

She flung herself off the crate, whirling her blades out to either side of her as she landed on the ground in front of Krell and dashed towards him. Krell snarled and charged forwards himself, his own blades spinning around as well. The two of them met with three whirling flashes of green and three whirling slashes of blue that promptly became a whirlwind of motion in the blink of an eye.

Krell was significantly larger than Aayla, so she knew she was not going to win in a duel of strength. She knew right away that she was going to have to use speed in this battle if she had any hope of matching his four blades, so she immediately withdrew her first slash before it could make contact and jumped over Pong's double swing. Krell lashed around and Aayla had to tuck in her legs and flip over to avoid having her legs cut off by the other end of the double blades.

She planted her feet into a pile of crates and dashed across them, knocking them over in the process before springing off them and launching herself towards Krell once more. She struck for his knees, but Krell caught both her blades on one of his own and twirled his other lightsabers in from the side. Aayla twisted around and caught the strike on one of her own blades, twirling underneath Krell's arm and lashing out to the side with the other, only for it to be countered when Krell lashed out behind him with the other end of his second double blade.

Krell whipped around, throwing his blades into spinning motions with tossed Aayla away, the Twi'lek flipping over and landing nearby smoothly as Krell motored back towards her, bringing one double ended lightsaber in front on him while moving the other behind.

Aayla span into the attack, catching the strike with one blade over her shoulder and striking out to intercept the other with her second blade as she span to a stop. Krell slashed downwards with both blades of his other weapon and Aayla slashed upwards to catch them both at the same time, leaping up again as Krell's first double weapon whirled into a spin beneath her feet and planting her feet on his arm.

Using that arm as a springboard she kicked herself away, and immediately jumped back in with a rolling spin, her blades flashing wildly around her. Krell countered the first strike with one of his own blades and arced another up to take the attack from the other. Aayla retracted her first blade and lashed through Krell's guard, but he span his lightsaber up to knock her own weapon aside and lash for her chest with it. Aayla span and ducked, the two weapons scything over her head as she employed the same technique she had with Grievous, tucking herself into a ball and rolling through Krell's legs.

She slashed up at him as she passed, but quick as a flash, the back end of Krell's double blades lashed over his shoulder to deflect her own weapons. She sprang back to her feet as Krell ripped around, his eyes on fire as his blades twirled around like living things.

Aayla dodged a downwards slash and swept up to counter another strike from the other weapon with both blades, stepping to the side to catch the next strike from his blade with her own at the same time. Krell lashed the other ends of his weapons towards her from below, but Aayla was quick enough to sweep her own blades down to knee height and catch them.

She then displayed her athleticism but lifting a foot over his swords and kicking him in the face. Krell practically croaked as his bulbous chin went pulsating wildly and his stepped back holding his face. Aayla pressed the minor advantage and span into another pirouette, slashing towards his stomach with one blade and stabbing towards his chest with another.

Both were blocked by well-timed strokes from Krell's weapons, and Aayla sensed that he was about to whip them both into another spin to try and catch her from behind, so she leapt straight up into the air before that could happen.

As the blades twirled beneath her, Aayla curled her body over in the air and plummeted down towards Krell. As the Besalisk looked up to face her, the saw a dark boot slamming towards his face right before it impacted between his eyes, Aayla batting away his spinning blades with her own and then bouncing off before he could retaliate. Krell looked livid as he nursed his bruised face, spitting out a loosened fang.

Aayla took up her Jar'kai stance once again and waited for Krell's next move. Krell turned to face her, taking more care this time as he stepped closer, evaluating her as if searching for some sort of weakness. And then he thundered forwards again, blades whirling, but before he reached her, his bottom two arms suddenly lashed out and Aayla was sent hurtling towards the wall as she was slammed with a spectacular Force-push.

Aayla twisted in the air as she saw the wall coming, turning so that she was facing it before throwing out her arms and using the Force to so her progress significantly, which meant that when she brought her feet forward she was actually able to dash _up_ the wall several feet and then rebound off it, sailing through the air to land _behind_ Krell as he continued to charge. Aayla dashed after him as he whipped around to face her again and lashed out quickly with a swift double strike from her green blade.

Krell blocked both attacks with alternate sweeps from either end of one weapon, but in mid-striking, Aayla had twisted around to kick his arm aside, slashing upwards with her trusty blue weapon in the process to catch the stab aimed for her shoulder. Her other foot lashed out, seeking to catch Krell in the belly and wind him, already preparing the twisting motion that would fling her out of retaliation range if she pulled it off.

But Aayla's ankle was suddenly grabbed by both of Krell's other free hands. The Besalisk smirked as he scooped Aayla into the air by her ankle and heaved her over his head, slamming her down towards the ground on the other side. Only quick Force-push to lessen the impact prevented Aayla from having her skull split open on the concrete, but the impact still jarred her bones and if that weren't back enough she was suddenly hauled upwards again and flung vertically into the air. Krell smirked, preparing his lightsabers to slash up at her when she came down.

Aayla reacted quickly, regaining her senses after the rough treatment as she reached the peak of her flight and began to fall back towards Krell. Her eyes darted to the side and she quickly threw one lightsaber, using the Force to send it sheering through a large chunk of a higher landing platform and then also using the Force to drag the piece of concrete down towards her and under her, placing her feet on it as she summoned her lightsaber back into her hand.

Krell's eyes widened and he sheathed his blades as he hurled himself into a dive, only just clearing the huge concrete slab that crashed into the ground next to him with a Twi'lek on top of it. He twisted about as he pushed himself back onto his hands and one knee and thundered across the platform once again, sweeping down four times with one double blade and arcing the other in from the side for a potential stab to the midriff.

Aayla's wild spinning seemed to effortlessly allow her to deflect the shots from the first weapon, but the second forced her to suck in her stomach as he grazed past her stomach. Her two lightsabers swung upwards to catch the blade and use it as purchase to throw herself backwards and out of reach. Before Krell could react, Aayla called on the Force and the fallen concrete slab that Krell was now standing on surged up into the air and whipped out from under his feet like a rug.

As Krell flailed his arms and tried to regain his balance, Aayla shifted the concrete slab around and sent it slamming full into Krell's front. With a howl, Krell was flung backwards across the platform where he cannoned into a wall, the concrete slab cannoning into him at the same time and sandwiching him between the both of them. Aayla prepared herself, knowing he was not finished yet, but suddenly, she found herself under attack once again, but from another angle.

* * *

While Aayla had been fighting against Krell, Rumi had run over to the body of Sugi and crouched down by it, her eyes growing moist as she beheld her friend and leader lying dead upon the ground, the line across her chest a final testament to the dirty sneak attack from behind that had finally finished the good-hearted Bounty Hunter.

The clones were standing around now, looking unsure of what they were supposed to be doing, as were a couple of the Senate Guards. Embo was staring towards Sugi's body as well, still in a state of shock himself. He had never expected Sugi to go down, now or ever.

In his shock, Embo entirely forgot that he was in the middle of a fight and suddenly Bok's sword raked across his chest! Embo howled, but the sword mostly caught on his thick armour and was repelled, and he swiftly moved his hat down to block Bok's next attack, but Bok still caught him a glancing blow and flung him to the side. The Morgukai snarled, but he no longer had any concern with the Kyuzo. As far as he could see, Krell was trying to kill Aayla, and that was something that, at least in his mind, only he should have the honour of doing.

With Krell temporarily incapacitated, Bok charged forwards with a cry of rage and leapt towards Aayla. The Twi'lek heard him coming easily enough and whirled about to face him, ducking underneath one sword swing and spinning to the left to avoid another one. Bok cut across at her in a scissor fashion, but Aayla bent over backwards until she was on her hands and feet with her stomach arched in the air, the blade passing over her as she hurled her feet upwards and kicked Bok in the face.

Bok's face had already been injured enough from Embo and he howled as he stepped backwards, giving Aayla plenty of time to spin around and bring her blades thundering back in Bok's direction. Bok raised his metal hand in what appeared to be a feeble last defence, but Aayla was shocked when her lightsabers not only bounced off the metal hand, they also fizzled out and died.

She stepped back quickly as Bok swept upwards with his swords once more, one slash passing by her shoulder and another hacking over her head as she ducked underneath it. As Aayla ducked and dodged a wild flurry of vicious attacks, she realised what was going on. Bok's hand was made of cortosis, the metal which was able to temporarily deactivate lightsabers. The perfect weapon for leaving a Jedi without a weapon.

But no Jedi was ever truly defenceless, even if you took away their lightsabers. As Aayla danced away from three more wide, spinning slashes, she lashed out with her hand and grabbed Bok by the wrist with it, spinning around him and catching him by surprise as she pulled his arm behind his back. Bok tried to hack backwards with his other sword, but Aayla was out of his reach. With a jab to a hand nerve that Quinlan had taught her, Aayla relinquished Bok's grip on one sword allowing her to catch it as she kicked him in the back and sent him stumbling forwards.

Bok turned around and cleaved the air with his remaining sword, but Aayla caught it with a metallic clang on the one in her own hand and swept low and high in almost one smooth motion. Bok's blade was there to parry her strikes, but then she pulled off a lightsaber from her belt and activated it, showing that the cortosis effect had worn off. She pirouetted around, her blade passing through Bok's sword as if it was air and Aayla leaping up to slam both her feet into Bok's chest and send him rolling.

Suddenly, the concrete slab Krell was squashed behind shot outwards as if fired from a cannon. Aayla wrenched herself in mid-air to land to its side as it shot past her, only for her to see it rushing towards a pair of clones instead. She hurriedly flung out a hand and caught the slab, lowering it harmlessly to the ground before it could hit the clones, before turning back. Her intervention had meant that Krell was almost upon her already, his lightsaber blades more than ready for more action.

Aayla tossed Bok's sword towards the ground as she withdrew her second blade once more and the blade slid along the surface of the landing platform. Krell placed his foot squarely on the moving piece of metal and slipped over in a very undignified fashion, collapsing onto his front. Aayla dashed in to close the distance between the two, but Krell plunged his blades into the ground and crossed the other two sticking up in the air to catching Aayla's downwards strikes and then used the purchase his lightsabers gave him to fling himself upwards, carrying Aayla into the air with his strength alone.

He then grabbed her with the Force before she could right herself and pulled her straight towards him, his blades spinning round in circles as a leer appeared on his face, ready to slash Aayla to pieces. But Aayla was having none of it and whipped herself into a furious barrel-roll as she dived towards Krell, her blades twirling around her like the ribbons of a maypole as she brought them both over her head so their tips met, so she became almost like a spinning spear.

Krell balked at the sight of the flashing blades spinning towards him and ducked himself down, as Aayla's blades ploughed into his own, caught them and threw them to the side, Aayla rolling to the ground just behind Krell and springing straight up into the air again without pause, so that when Krell whirled around to stab into the ground, she was already gone and landed behind him again. She blasted him in the back with the Force to send him rolling and then her ears registered another screaming warcry from behind her, causing her to turn around and face Bok once again.

Bok now had no swords at his disposal, but that wasn't going to stop him from trying to defeat his nemesis for good. Aayla crossed her blades as he approached and spun into the attack, lashing out with one blade which Bok caught on his cortosis hand and caused to fizzle out of life once again. The Morgukai ducked under Aayla's follow-up sweep and launched a fist towards her head, but Aayla swept up her own hand and grabbed his fist in her own and thrust it back, slamming his own fist into his own already abused face.

Bok stumbled again as Krell motored back in from behind, blades whirring. But Aayla grabbed Bok's shoulders and flipped over him, landing behind him to dash away again and forcing Krell to come to a hurried halt before he crashed into his own ally.

"Get out of my way!" Krell shouted. "Secura is mine to finish!"

"Yours?" Bok growled. "She my arch-enemy, not yours!"

"I am the one who is scheduled to become the next apprentice of Dooku, so I shall be the one to deal with the Jedi!" Krell scowled. "Besides, it seems you can't handle Secura yourself anyway…OOF!"

Bok had suddenly hurtled forwards as if he had been slammed from behind by a sledgehammer and crashed into Krell, knocking them both over for several moments. Aayla smirked a little as she lowered her hand and reactivated her second lightsaber. She might be up against two skilled opponents, but unlike many other Jedi, she had fought against more than one opponent before. And as she had learned then, the best way to win those fights was to use your opponent's numbers against them.

Force them pull their punches or slashes to make them avoid hitting the other, and if one of them did hit the other… well, it was one less opponent to deal with.

She plunged her lightsabers into the ground in imitation of Ventress, except one on either side of her, as she dashed forwards to where Krell and Bok were scrambling up. Both of them rolled aside as Aayla dashed between them, her blades sending up sparks as she passed, but before he could get far, she turned once more and threw herself at Krell, lashing out no less than seven times in rapid succession.

Krell was startled by the rapid attacks and only a quick series of flips from his dual weapons managed to save him from being cut open. He looked into Aayla's face, expecting some sort of anger to be seen there that would indicate her newfound aggression, but to his surprise, he saw only serenity. Aayla had united her mind with the Force and now her body almost moved on its own, every motion fluid and every step placed perfectly.

Aayla whirled around to attack Bok instead, her blades shearing the air in front of him as he jumped back and springing towards him to slash her blue blade at him. It powered out when it struck his cotorsis gauntlet, but Aayla slashed down with the other blade and forced him to sidestep, rolling over with the momentum until she was lying on her back and sweeping her legs out to knock Bok's feet from underneath him.

She pulsed herself back into the air on her hands and flipped over to kick the advancing Krell in the stomach. She landed in a full Jar'kai stance, waiting for her two opponents to get back up. Even if they didn't want to fight fair, she would fight with honour. She would show both of them, possibly in their last moments, what they too could have been like if they had not lost their own honour, and therefore, their way.

* * *

Emperor Palpatine was beginning to get angrier with just about every passing millisecond. Words simply could not describe the sheer amount of rage that was building up in every cell of his evil body. Today was supposed to have been a red letter day for him, a day that he would finally be rid of the bulk of the Jedi Order and set himself upon a throne that would last forever as the head of his new Empire.

Instead, everything was being completely twisted around.

He had long been the one doing the manipulating – years and years before the Clone Wars had even started, he had been at the helm, plotting and slowly bringing about the turn of events that he wanted in a rise to power that had been excruciatingly slow, even for a man with his patience. But everything had been going right. Everything had been going absolutely perfectly… until a few months ago, that is.

But recently, things had really hit the fan, and Palpatine realised that over the last few days at least, he had been the one being manipulated. It seemed that the Jedi had managed to find a way of knowing what he was doing while they were in hiding and with this plan they had created, they seemed to have predicted his almost every move and found a counter to it! It was beyond frustrating.

He was watching a pair of holoscreens at the same time, as two lightsaber fights flashed before the lens of the holocams. One depicted Ventress battling against Ahsoka Tano. Neither one of them appeared to be gaining much ground over the other. And then there was the fight against Aayla with Krell and Bok, but that seemed to be going a lot less well. Even against a Master Jedi like Krell, Aayla was truly a formidable opponent.

The giant machine was still up there in space obliterating the blockade above. But the Jedi had snuck past it, probably before it had even begun, and were drawing his men away from him, while the Beast they had kept alive and lied to him about was outside, thrashing the reinforcements with the aid of the giant rabbit creature. Durge, who Palpatine thought of as a great addition to his forces, had his own hands full dealing with that shaman creature. He had long since lost sight of that particular battle. It had gone out of range of the holocams.

To top it off, Aurra still hadn't reported back with any discoveries, which meant that she had either been defeated already, or she had engaged somebody without reporting her location in her eagerness for a kill. And Anakin still had yet to make his appearance. But Palpatine knew now that he was nearby. Anakin's mind was one of those he was most familiar with, and he could sense that the so-called Chosen One was not far away. But what was he doing? And how far away was not far?

The Sith Lord could feel an almost primal growl building up inside her at the thought of how everything had been turned against him. Perhaps the euphoria at the fact that he had finally become the Emperor and the Jedi were on the run, if not dead, had led him to overconfidence, even though he had thought that it wasn't. Whatever the case, to have his long years of manipulations practically turned around in a few short days by the Jedi, who were able to manipulate him in turn into doing what they wanted… it was maddening.

Palpatine was really struggling to maintain a hold of himself now. He felt that he was getting so angry that if he got any angrier he would die of a simple heart attack. Instead of his rage, he tried temporarily focusing on counter measures to deal with these Jedi insurgents. Despite everything that was happening now, he was determined that today _would_ be the day of his victory. Today _would_ be the day where the A-Team and all their various allies, wherever they had come from, would finally be eradicated.

Particularly Aayla. At present, she was faring extremely well against her opponents. Palpatine resolved that if Krell and Bok failed to kill her, that he would find a way of facing off against her himself. His mind began to come up with ideas for luring the Twi'lek into a trap to face her one on one, and see how _he_ fared against her.

For now, he had only real bodyguard left and that was Dooku. The Senate Guards and the red-robed bodyguards that he sometimes had about his person were formidable opponents against most people, but they wouldn't stand a chance against a powerful Jedi like Anakin or Aayla. And with all the rest of his subordinates out there already and fighting against their own opponents, Dooku was the only one who remained who might stand a chance against someone like them before Palpatine would have to face them himself.

Palpatine was pretty sure that he could win against any of the people that had been sent against him today, even against anybody in the Jedi Order. However, the Sith were also cowards, and Palpatine would rather not get his hands dirty if there was even a slight chance that there could be victory for the enemy on this day. And there seemed to be a fairly high chance of victory for the fighting Jedi if things continued to go against Palpatine's wishes like this.

Not to mention that damned prophecy that spoke of Anakin defeating the Sith. That _could_ not be allowed to happen. Not at any cost. But Palpatine had no doubt that Anakin wouldn't hesitate to try and cut him down if they came face to face, so he turned to Dooku and said, "Lord Tyranus."

"Yes, my lord?" Dooku approached from where he had been keeping a wary distance and bowed his head. "What is it that you want from me?"

"I can sense that the Jedi are beginning what could be called the next stage of their plan soon," Palpatine replied. "And I have no doubt that Skywalker might be here soon. Not to mention there could be a number of other Jedi here _with_ him and his team. I must stay here and co-ordinate the attack further, but I want you to step outside and to the end of the corridor. Guard the pass. Let absolutely nobody get past you as long as you still stand."

"Perfectly understood, Master," Dooku allowed a smirk to grace his face. "I have defeated Skywalker in many duels with a lightsaber, my lord. He will no more be able to stand against me as he ever has. You will not even have to draw your own blade today, Master. You have my word on that."

"I am pleased to hear it," Palpatine replied. "I will be even more pleased if you can keep your word. Now, go out there and perform this task for me."

Dooku nodded and strode outwards without another word. The cloak that he had used to replace the one Aayla had cut up during their duel over Rhen Var wafted out behind him imperiously, even though there was no wind whatsoever. Dooku had learned that even subtle things like this could cause intimidation in any potential opponents, and was using the Force the move the cloak as he saw fit.

The Senate Guards on the other side of the door stood to attention as he passed, but Dooku ignored them and strolled down the corridor as if he were out for a leisurely walk, the door sliding shut behind him and his lightsaber hilt appearing in his hand and he came to a stop at the other end of the corridor, the red blade slowly and menacingly extending out form the hilt as he looked from one way to the other, his mind stretching out as he searched mentally for any potential intruders that might want to try and get past him and to Sidious.

He held the blade by his side, a scowl crossing his features as he prepared for an attack from either angle. If Skywalker was in the building, then the only way in which he could get to his target would be to come down this corridor. Dooku thought that he had the situation under control. He had been humiliated by Aayla several days ago. He would not be humiliated again.

Then, he frowned slightly as he became aware of some kind of strange clicking noise. He cocked his ear listening to the faint and slightly muffled clicks, trying to figure out where it was coming from and what might be causing them.

It seemed to be close and yet faint at the same time, and Dooku couldn't make out why for a moment. And was it… coming from… beneath him?

Dooku's senses suddenly yelled he stepped backwards as a green lightsaber plunged upwards through the floor where he had been standing. He stared at it in surprise, and before he could do much more than that, another green lightsaber erupted from the floor behind him and two blue ones shot upwards on either side of him, surrounding him by pillars of shining blades. Before Dooku could fathom what was happening, the lines drew through the floor and switched places, cutting a circle beneath Dooku's feet which promptly fell in to the floor below.

Dooku was so startled that he forgot to jump off it and he tumbled downwards with the piece of floor, slamming into the ground and instinctively rolling over as a green and blue blades slashed through the floor where he had been. He sprung back onto his feet, holding his lightsaber ready as he faced his unknown assailants.

Then his eyes shot open when he realised he was only facing off against one person. One person wielding four lightsabers, one in each hand, and who was glaring at him with an expression of utmost hate and livid rage, and no small amount of anticipation in the slitted, yellow orbs. The hulking figure was hanging by his magnetised feet from the ceiling, but he hauled his body up and dropped his legs to crash onto the floor nearby, his body swivelling at the hip to face him while he stepped his bottom half around more slowly.

"Grievous?" Dooku gasped at the sight of the Kaleesh cyborg warrior who had long led his droids into battle against the Jedi and killed off dozens of the enemy Force-users, of all different ranks. Dooku was shocked to say the least. The last time he had seen Grievous had been in combat with Aayla over Rhen Var, before he had been knocked out and Grievous had gotten away. And the only news about him was that the Separatist stronghold where he had been told to wait had been cleared out for some reason when Durge had been sent there to finish it off.

Of course, Dooku had already come up with several theories as to why the Separatist Battle Droids on Tython were suddenly helping the Jedi, instead of fighting against them like they usually did. But he had assumed that upon hearing that Dooku and Ventress and the others had joined Palpatine, someone like Nute Gunray had panicked and gone to the Jedi for help, promising the lend the aid of the droids in return for protection against the Empire and the Sith.

But Grievous? The thought of Grievous joining the Jedi had never even crossed his mind? It was impossible, illogical… completely and utterly insane. And yet here Grievous was right now, angry as ever, but facing off against _him_ instead of the Jedi.

Grievous roared and immediately thundered forwards, his top two arms slashing downwards once after another, while his bottom arms rotated over the top and also slashed down, but at the same time. Still in a state of shock, Dooku was a bit slower than usual, but he managed to parry the first to attacks and block both of the other lightsaber attacks with his one blade, before Grievous kicked out with one taloned leg, in a blow that slammed into Dooku's stomach like a piston.

The wind was driven out of Dooku's lungs as he was tossed backwards, away from the hole in the floor which was now the ceiling. He crashed into the wall and propped his hand up against it, clutching his stomach with his lightsaber free blade. He looked up, still in disbelief as Grievous stepped slowly towards him, savouring the moment of the Count being down on the ground before him for a change.

As the initial shock of Grievous' presence here in the Senate Building faded away, and Dooku saw that he wouldn't be able to reach the hole Grievous had cut in the ceiling without getting past the Kaleesh in question, he immediately drew himself up so that he was as tall as possible, his face regaining the stern overlord-like expression which had perfected over the course of being the leader of the Separatists. The same face he used whenever he had wanted to tell Grievous off for going over the top in the past.

"Grievous!" he snapped. "What is the meaning of this? What are you doing here on Coruscant and how dare you be so foolish as to raise your hand to attack me like this?"

"Don't play that old mentor-leader game with me, Dooku?" Grievous snarled. "That's not going to work anymore. I once respected you, and revered you as my esteemed leader and better, just as you always wanted me to, but those days are well and truly over, Sith! And now, I am here to exact my vengeance against you! Something which you should have known would one day come knocking at your door."

"Vengeance?" Dooku demanded. "Against me? This is madness Grievous! I demand an explanation?"

"Oh, do you now?" Grievous chuckled, his voice lowering even further until it was more raspy that ever. "Do you really? I do not think that you do, Sith! You know exactly what it is I am talking about? And this is not madness. Madness is what you wanted me to become!"

"You are working _with_ the Jedi?" Dooku demanded.

"Yes," Grievous nodded, his eyes blazing. "Is that a problem?"

"Grievous, you have shamed yourself," Dooku reprimanded him. "Deigning to work with your own mortal enemies to come on a fool's errand such as this to strike me down for no reason. I do not know what lies you have been told, but I am not the enemy to our cause, Grievous. They are. We want to dominate the Galaxy, while they would stop us."

"Spare me the lecture!" Grievous growled. "Our goals have never been truly the same, Dooku! You might have wanted domination over all life, but for me that was always just a perk! My main reason in helping you was revenge, if you remember! And so my main reason for working with the Jedi is the same one!"

"What insolence?" Dooku snorted. "Have you forgotten, Grievous? It was the Jedi who planted the bomb on your ship that destroyed your body and forced you to become this…"

"LIES!" Grievous bellowed, so forcefully that Dooku actually took a step back. "I am not going to be taken in by your deceit any longer, Count! When Secura's friend discovered the real truth – the fact that _you_ were the one to plant that bomb on my sheet and that your Master refused to help my people just so that I could fall into your hands to let you do it, so that you could make me into a superweapon, I forced the truth out of San Hill. He told me everything, confirmed just what Secura was saying. The Jedi are not the ones who ruined my life… you are!"

Dooku's eyebrows had shot upwards as Grievous shouted at him. So he knew… he actually knew the whole truth about his past at last and now he had turned on the true culprit of all of the traumas he had faced. And, once again, Secura was the one to blame for turning one of their best allies against them? Was there no limit to what that pestilent Twi'lek could do?

Grievous rotated his wrists a couple of times, his blades flashing through the air as he did so. "Not only that, you went back on our agreement, Dooku! Your scientists tampered with my brain despite the fact that I expressly forbade you from doing so. You are not the mighty man that I once thought you were. You are a deceitful, lying human who nobody can trust! The worst part is that I should have known that somebody like you couldn't be trusted, or realised that even I couldn't trust you along the way."

His eyes flashed as he clashed his blades together for a moment and put them into a full spinning set of four pinwheels. "But now my eyes have been opened! This time, I am facing the right opponent. Let's see if your Sith powers can help you stand up to the weapon which you brought into this Galaxy, Dooku! You created me! Now die by my hand!"

And he hurtled forwards with a snarl of rage.

For a second, Dooku realised just how all the Jedi he had pitted Grievous against might have felt when they saw him speeding towards them with four blades whirling through the air like buzzsaws. It was an extraordinarily intimidating sight. But then his training as a master swordsman quickly took over as he faced his opponent and swung his blade up to counter the first strike of the battle – a double sweep downwards to the head.

Grievous bulldozed his way forwards, occupying Dooku's blade with his own while he slashed in from either side with the other two. Dooku managed to jump off the double slash but he was forced to jump up again the moment his toes touched the ground as Grievous slashed the other way, the blades passing just under the toes of his boots. He span around to wrenched his blade free of Grievous' own, and Grievous kept charging, swinging up from below with one blade and then stabbing forwards with another almost in the same movement.

Dooku parried the downward attack and whipped around to slam into the stab from the side and knock it off course, but Grievous just swept his body around at the hip and brought _three_ lightsabers sweeping in from the side as he did so. Dooku was only just able to block, and the power of the attack flung him to the side to crash into one of the walls, allowing Grievous to shoot out his forth blade from below with another stab. Dooku rolled to the side as the blade punctured the wall, moving back towards the hole in the ceiling that Grievous had created.

Two lightsabers slamming into the wall in front of him discouraged that, and he was forced to backflip out of the way when a third cleaved down from above and sliced through the wall, the forth swinging in from the right and shearing off a section of Dooku's cloak. Grievous rounded on the Count as he whipped around and charged once more, bounding into the air in a massive pounce and pointing all four blades down towards his target.

Dooku twisted backwards as Grievous blades plunged into the ground, but the cyborg motored forwards without withdrawing them, dragging them up through the floor into a quadruple double slash. Dooku had to jump to avoid having his feet taken off and all four blades crashed into his own, catapulting him into the air to send him crashing into the ceiling with a dull thud.

He dropped to the ground on hands and knees momentarily dazed. Grievous bounded forwards and Dooku managed to recover his senses just quickly enough to roll to one side as the heavy clawed feet pounded the ground next to his head. Dooku quickly flung up a hand and Grievous was hit by a powerful Force push that sent him flying back down the corridor, rolling over and over several times before he plunged his claws into the floor and skidded to a halt on all sixes, his eyes blazing with anger and rage.

As Dooku got up, he quickly used the Force to soothe the aches and pains that had already sprung up in this bout. He had not started the duel on quite the right foot, still slightly dumbstruck by the fact that Grievous was fighting him instead of rushing to the West Wing to kill Ahsoka before Ventress did just to rub it in Ventress' face. He forced himself to focus as he held his blade down by his side, prepared for more action in a moment as Grievous rose back to his own feet as well.

The cyborg General's rage was stunning. Dooku could feel it. He quickly decided that drawing out this duel for entertainment would ultimately serve no real purpose and resolved to try and end it as quickly as he could. After all, Grievous had thrown his lot in with the Jedi. That meant that he too, would have to go. Not that Dooku particularly cared.

"You are a fool, General," Dooku sneered in contempt. "To think that someone such as you would be a match for your own Master."

"Shut up and fight!" Grievous snarled and charged towards him again, all four lightsabers pointing forwards this time as if he was seeking to impale Dooku on all the blades. Dooku shook his head, knowing that the cyborg's mind was so clouded in anger that he was leaving himself vulnerable to one particular Sith attack he had no defence against.

That's what _he_ thought anyway.

He was therefore shocked beyond almost all measure when fired a white blast of Sith Lightning from his fingertips towards the General and, instead of being fried by the attack or indeed blocking it with his lightsaber, Grievous pulled out of his charge and raised his top right arm before him like a shield. Dooku watched in terrible fascination as the lightning veered off course and veered into the tip of a small thin metal rod about halfway down his lower arm.

And then nothing else happened.

Grievous' lowered his arm and his eyes betrayed the smirk which the rest of his face-mask concealed. "New feature," Grievous chuckled. "Do you like it?"

Dooku growled and fired another round of lighting but this time from both hands. Grievous raised his other top arm and crossed the before his chest, and the lightning surged into the rod and the identical one on Grievous' other arm. Grievous laughed triumphantly as the electric attack completely failed to have an effect on him and stepped slowly forward, walking through the attack as if it wasn't even there.

Dooku tried to aim upwards towards Grievous' head instead, but Grievous didn't even need to move his arms. He just kept stepping forwards while the rods just drew the electricity down and towards them, as he stepped inexorably closer to the Sith. For the first time since the duel started, Dooku felt a real ripple of fear through him. He had always been confident that if Grievous went rogue for whatever reason, his lightning could handle Grievous' metallic body with ease.

He hadn't installed the electric rods.

But Grievous had. And now he was out for blood. The moment that Dooku relinquished his lightning attack, Grievous charged forwards once again, blades spinning wildly and cutting into either side of the corridor around him. Dooku instinctively raised a hand to Force choke the General, but then he remembered that Grievous didn't even _have_ a windpipe to close so doing that would be pointless.

And then Grievous was on top of him, spinning blades homing in for the kill. Dooku stabbed his blade forwards to catch two of the spinning blades and then flipping clean over Grievous head, which Grievous counted by rotating at the hip and slashing out with two blades. Dooku ducked under them and reposted the blow from the third blade which cleaved in after them, and rolled backwards as Grievous stabbed down with another two. Grievous immediately charged in pursuit, and Dooku tried one last burst of Force lightning to try and catch him off guard.

Grievous didn't even need to try blocking. The lightning just curved up through the air to fizzle into nothingness on the rods in his raised arms. Grievous belted out a round of sadistic laughter at Dooku's obvious frustration and swung upwards with both his bottom blades. Dooku rolled aside from one and flung the other one outwards but was forced to lash upwards to block the other two coming in from overhead. Grievous swept in from the side a moment later and Dooku dropped even lower to counter it and push it up to catch Grievous' own next attack, a stab from above.

Grievous retracted and then launched himself into a spinning leap with lightsabers whirling. Dooku pressed himself into the wall as the blades span in front of his face and lifted his hand to push Grievous into the opposite wall with the Force. Grievous' feet slammed into the wall and magnetised, anchoring him there as he drove all four lightsabers up above his head and towards Dooku's stomach. Dooku dropped back again and Grievous stepped off the wall, putting himself between Dooku and the hole in the ceiling once more.

Dooku frowned. This fight had not been going all that well for him thus far, and he had had enough. Grievous was being his usual over-aggressive self, except he seemed to have taken it to a whole new level such was his desire to get at the Sith. So, Dooku thought, the way of gaining the advantage again and winning this battle… would be to use that over-aggression against him.

As Grievous motored into the attack, Dooku feigned himself being pushed back, blocking a flurry of wild, swinging attacks from the maddened cyborg General and bouncing back down the corridor, more nimbly than an old man really should have been able to. Grievous seemed to take the bait and struck several more times, eager for a kill more than a drawn out battle, but as he did so, slashing down with his three of his blades and pulling the forth back for a stab, Dooku acted, grabbing Grievous with the Force and hurling him sideways and into the wall.

Grievous impacted so hard against it that he produced a huge crater in the structure, but his duranium body absorbed the hit easily. But before he could react again, Dooku whirled in front of him and slashed his blade through his guard and straight towards his face. Grievous immediately lurched his head backwards on his long neck but the tip of Dooku's blade still sheered off one of the tusk like projections at the bottom of his mask.

Grievous span back around, his face now looking slightly lopsided as Dooku spun back into the attack, becoming a blue of motion that even Grievous' lightning reactions found it difficult to keep up with. Crossing his top two blades to block an incoming swipe, Grievous then pulled them back and lashed out with his bottom two blades, parrying a succession of about six blazing fast lunges with quick rotations of his wrists, sending his blades blazing out all around him.

He struck out in a stabbing motion with one of his top two arms and spun around at the shoulder rotating his body beneath his own arm so that when Dooku parried the stab, two more lightsaber were already swinging for his feet, and another lashed down from overhead. Dooku jumped, his feet passing over the top of the other two striking blades and his blade crashing against the one from above, even as his feet lifted up to slam into Grievous' chest.

Grievous stumbled backwards, his claws latching into the ground to steady him and bringing up sparks as they did so, but Dooku had already pulsed out a huge Force push that blew Grievous' talons out of the ground and sent him hurtling back across the corridor and rolling out of control, dropping one of his lightsabers in the process. Dooku threw a Force Lightning blast after him for good measure and then dashed towards him.

Grievous anchored himself with his four arms and immediately threw one of them upwards to block the Force lightning with the rod on his arm. Which had been exactly what Dooku had been hoping for because he charged after the blast and sprang with blade raised, swiping it down towards Grievous' outstretched arm with the intent of slicing it off at the wrist and then continuing on to his Grievous in the neck.

Grievous' back two blades immediately arced upwards at an angle that would be impossible for just about all humanoids, crossing over each other to catch Dooku's blade in the crook of an X. Dooku growled in frustration and immediately pulled himself back and swept around again, aiming for another exposed wrist, but Grievous moved with lightning speed and brought another lightsaber across to catch that strike too.

"I don't think so!" Grievous roared. "I've had enough of people cutting off my hands during combat."

Dooku said nothing. Instead, he twisted his blade down and up, relieving Grievous of another of his blades and leaving him with just two instead. As the lightsaber hilt clattered to the floor, Grievous dodged to the side as Dooku whirled his blade low over his head and almost crashed it against Grievous' shoulder guards. The Kaleesh brought one blade up and parried a rapid strike to the abdomen, pushed away from the wall and defended himself from a further four precise slashes towards the head, locking Dooku's lightsaber with both his remaining blades and holding it still for a moment.

Dooku smirked, but in reality, Grievous was still more than capable of striking back. Even though he only had two weapons now, he still had four arms, and one of them immediately lashed through under Dooku's arm and hammered him in the nose with the force of a sledgehammer. The Sith Lord yowled and brought a hand to his nose, which was now broken, and quickly tried to retaliate by thrusting against Grievous' blades with his own, using the Force to add power to his own attack and put some distance between the two of them.

But Grievous had other plans. His lightsabers swung outwards and crashed into each wall of the thin corridor, slowing him to a stop almost immediately. Still clutching his nose, Dooku quickly took the opening that this move provided and darted forwards and almost realised his own mistake too late. Without him noticing, Grievous' foot had closed around the fallen lightsaber hilt and the talons had wrapped around it. With a blur of motion, he activated it and kicked outwards, sending the blade spearing towards Dooku's gut.

Dooku spotted it coming at the last second and threw himself backwards, spinning around to launch another sideways slash at the General, only to find his blade countered by the one in Grievous' foot. Grievous took his turn to thrust outwards and Dooku went a lot further than he did, as the cyborg pulled his blades out of the wall and tossed the third blades upwards to grab it in another hand.

Grievous snarled as he stepped forwards again, making himself ready to charge through towards Dooku again, blades swinging, as was his usual approach. But something made him stop. He had come close to death or being handicapped a couple of times there, and before he could prevent them from doing so, the words that Aayla had given him earlier that day flashed through his brain:-

"_Remember what I told you about trying to curb your anger. It might be a good thing for you to have in battle if you aren't a Jedi like we are but if you have too much it can also spur you into rash decisions. Be calm."_

Grievous was still loathe to take advice from a Jedi, even one with his respect, like Secura. But he had to admit that she was right. Dooku knew a lot of his capabilities as it was, better than most Jedi. So he had a counter for a lot of the things Grievous possessed, and in his rage, he was forgetting a lot of the techniques that Dooku had taught him and was just swinging around wildly, and it had almost got him killed.

So, he was going to have to try something new. Something the Count had probably never had to deal with before. And he was going to have to do it with a calmer head. The struggle to suppress his rage was phenomenally difficult, like trying to plug a volcano with a giant cork, but he gently squashed it down as he tried to think of a solution.

The answer came to him in a flash, but first, he intended to retrieve his fourth lightsaber. Dooku was dashing towards him again, but Grievous whipped his lightsaber through the floor to create a gash, plunged his talons into the gash and tore a section of the floor upwards, slashed through the bottom of it and kicked the metal slab right at Dooku. Dooku dived backwards to avoid it and grabbed it with the Force to knock it to one side, but Grievous had taken the opportunity, dashing forwards and seizing his lightsaber off the floor.

He charged forwards once more, blades spinning in his usual approach, which is what he wanted Dooku to think he was doing. Dooku rolled his eyes and prepared his blade, waiting to counter Grievous' attack once more.

He was therefore very surprised indeed when Grievous suddenly changed angle, throwing his feet into the air to impact on the wall, scaling it and latching onto the ceiling with his magnetised feet and continuing to dash forwards, upside down. The corridor was not that tall, so Grievous was easily able to lash down towards Dooku as he covered the last two paces and hacked downwards.

Dooku suddenly found himself in a various precarious position. With Grievous suddenly above him, he was having to block all the attacks at a rather awkward angle. He pushed himself lower to the ground, to try and avoid Grievous' swings, but Grievous moved over him and simply dropped from above, knocking Dooku's lightsaber aside and seizing him by the back of the neck in one foot, hauling him into the air and tossing him down the corridor.

Grievous laughed in exhilaration. He suddenly understood how Aayla's fighting style was so effective. She had managed to merge graceful co-ordinartion and completely wild randomness to perfection and he had just done something similar. This battle was still up in the air, and he eagerly dashed forwards to continue and, hopefully, end it.

* * *

Well, here it is. The next instalment is finished, and apart from the impending showdown between Sidious and Anakin, all the personal duels have begun. I hope you all enjoyed each one as much as I enjoyed writing them. For this story will soon be coming to an end. Today is the last day of January, and if I stay on my schedule of one chapter every two days except in one case where it's three days for this weekend as I am going home to see some family, I aim to be finished by the last day of February.

Oh, and by the way, I didn't want to kill off Sugi. But I felt that at least one of the four Bounty Hunters had to die for realism purposes (and to highlight just how much of a £$% that Krell really is. Seripas is nowhere near the action, and I couldn't bring myself to kill epic Embo. And killing off Rumi when I made her survive the initial encounter on Felucia where she died just felt wrong, so poor Sugi got the short end of the stick. Sorry, Sugi. You were an epic Bounty Hunter.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Multiple fights are now going on throughout the entire Senate District and above it. Who will win:- Cerubimon and Godzillo versus the reinforcements, MegaGargomon versus Tarkin's blockade, Ahsoka versus Ventress, Barriss versus Aurra, Sakuyamon and Bane versus Durge, Aayla versus Pong Krell and Bok and Grievous versus Dooku. Action from all of them coming up next.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 207 : Turning the Tide**


	207. Turning the Tide

I think this might be the single longest chapter of fanfiction that I have ever written. I hope you guys like what you read, because this chapter might possibly be my favourite so far, and you guys will probably be able to see why by the time you reach the end of it. I'm not going to keep you. So, please enjoy.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 207:- Turning the Tide**

* * *

The citizens of the Empire looked on with rigid fascination mixed with dread, seemingly unable to tear their eyes away from the spectacle that was playing out before them. They lined every balcony, every elevated street, every landing platform, their speeders stopping in their routes and crowding the area as their stared outwards at the destruction that was taking place in the Senate District. Those actually _in_ the Senate District were absolutely terrified, and were currently wishing they were at the other side of the Galaxy.

Godzillo was somehow managed to grab a gunship out of the air with his third arm while his mighty tail swung around to crash into another one, sending it catapulting into a third and sending them both crashing towards the ground in flaming ruins. The mighty Zillo Beast snapped the wing off the gunship in his hand and dropped it to the floor, then ploughed over the edge of the building he was standing on and bounded off the edge in a giant leap that carried him into a huge cluster of clones, crushing dozens of them in his landing alone.

The little men swarmed around him, desperately shooting their rifles at its head, aiming for the eyes, which was probably the Zillo Beast's only vulnerable spot. The Beast responded by shutting its eyes, and lasers bounced harmlessly off his armoured eyelids. This meant he was essentially blind, but when you were as big as a Zillo Beast, you didn't have to see if you wanted to destroy something.

And destroy he did, rearing up and bringing his hands crashing down into more clones, sweeping his enormous form across and around and driving clone after clone into the air, while his tail hammered down twice like a giant hammer to crush several more, before swinging out and slamming into a nearby warehouse, ripping out and explosion of concrete and wall that cascaded over the clones all around him. He then reared back onto his hind legs and stamped one down, flattening an AT-TE walker that had just moved out from a side-street and opened his eyes again and beheld another AT-AT walker moving down the street towards him.

Godzillo immediately charged towards it, his tail lashing from side to side and crashing from wall to wall behind him as he knocked down or crushed every single clone that stood between him and his target. The AT-AT let fly with a couple of laser cannon blast, but they merely ricocheted off the Beast's forehead, before he lunged forwards and grabbed the head of the AT-AT in his jaws, plunging the cockpit into darkness. He then grabbed the body of the AT-AT in his hand and pulled back with its head.

The neck of the AT-AT might have been made of Chrome-Digizoid, but that didn't really matter in this situation, because Godzillo ripped the whole head and neck right out of is very mooring and then tossed it into the air with a flick of his neck, where it collided with another gunship and brought it down. Godzillo roared in triumph, curling his head around the AT-AT and pushing his nose between the large gap in its legs, flicking upwards to toss the whole walker into the air. He then swept around and hammered the falling walker with his tail, sending it catapulting over the buildings to slam down into another, sending both of them crashing to the ground, defeated.

Several gunships overhead rose upwards and came to a hovering stop, pointing themselves downwards to fire down on Godzillo. It was an exercise in futility on their part, as their ammunition did absolutely nothing to slow Godzillo down, but as the Zillo Beast reared up to swat them aside, they rose higher and out of his reach. The giant beast snarled at the annoying insects and roared up at them defiantly, lasers flying into his open mouth and still failing to had any effect on him.

But the gunships were swiftly taken out as a huge angelic rabbit Digimon swept out of nowhere and batted them all aside with a single swipe of her massive arm, knocking them spiralling towards the ground all around the Zillo Beast. Cherubimon smirked down at the giant lizard, as more lasers catapulted into her stomach. She barely flinched and the wounds healed over quickly, but she spotted the culprit as another AT-AT, and what looked like the last one.

Arrayed behind the AT-AT was a line of stun tanks, which immediately lifted up their heavy back cannons and began to pour lasers out towards her, bouncing into her massive chest. Cherubimon raised a brow for a moment, but she could feel the lasers have an effect on her. It was very slight indeed, and they would need a lot more time and lasers to slow her down drastically, but she still felt a little woozier than normal.

She looked down at Godzillo and placed her hands together, interlocking her fingers and jerking her head upwards. The giant lizard bared its teeth in understanding and bounded up the side of another wall, flinging himself into the air towards Cherubimon. The giant Digimon swerved herself around as Godzillo placed one giant foot on her interlocked hands and then heaved upwards with her massive arms, catapulting the huge lizard high above the buildings and flinging him straight towards the firing tanks.

Godzillo descended like a falling mountain, his back legs slamming into the AT-AT and flattening it into the ground, while his fists came down so hard on the stun tanks that several of them were thrown into the air and batted aside. The survivors hurriedly tried to back away, but Godzillo simply strode over the top of them to continue his assault on the reinforcements elsewhere.

Cherubimon whirled around in time to see that a line of ARC-170 fighters had gotten past her. Generating a Lightning Spear in her hand, she flung it with one huge swing and it lanced towards the phalanx of fighters. They swerved aside to avoid it, but as it passed between them, a myriad of smaller bolts split off from the main one and cannoned into the all, eliminating them where they flew.

The Digimon swooped low over the buildings, ears streaming out behind her as she found herself facing the second cruiser which was making its way slowly towards her. Her eyes narrowed as it opened fire on her and she quickly flew straight through the laser storm, ignoring the pinpricks against her skin that the ammunition was causing. She was a lot more manoeuvrable than the cruiser and it showed because with a whirl she slotted herself into the gap between the tops of the buildings and the bottom of the cruiser, so that the giant ship was directly above her.

She grimaced as the air crackled around her, forming a Thousand Spears attack that flared so brightly that Cherubimon was almost screened from view, remaining as nothing but a silhouette against the glow of the lightning around her. Then she flung it upwards.

The attack hit the cruiser with a force that shook the whole area for almost a mile and at such close range that the ship was quite literally, torn to shrapnel. It remnants catapulted up into the air, the largest bits including one engine and a large chunk of the bridge, but most of the rest of it not bigger than a person. Cherubimon was flung down by the force of her own attack and crashing into the top of one of the buildings with enough force to splinter its entire top floor, but she quickly rushed back upwards and grabbed the engine and piece of bridge before they could fall to the ground.

She then whirled around and flung them both with might force, ploughing them through the streets to take out a host of other clones. Without missing a beat, she clapped her hands together and then threw them out wide, creating something almost like a wave of electricity which washed out over the tops of the buildings like some kind of massive EMP burst. More fighters which lay in its path where either obliterated if they were close to the middle, or had their power short-circuited and spiralled down towards the ground once more.

As Godzillo rampaged on nearby, Cherubimon took a moment to pause in battle, her head glancing upwards towards the sky for a brief moment. She couldn't see him, but she knew that MegaGargomon was still up there somewhere, battling the remaining cruisers. Then she quickly turned back to the attack and sent another lightning spear spinning through the air like a knife to plough into another group of Empire fighters.

* * *

For Admiral Tarkin, everything had gone wrong. This was meant to be the start of the good times for him, with a promotion leading to higher and higher promotions until he stood on top next to the like of Dooku and the others, giving out orders that determined the fates of people and planets across the Galaxy.

Today, it seemed like that whole career choice was going to come to an abrupt halt, never to rise again. His fleet was on the verge of collapse, and he didn't even know that their efforts to keep the rebels off the planet were in vain because as far as he was aware, only one ship had gotten down, and that couldn't possibly contain enough to take the planet.

He watched with growing horror as a phalanx of Y-wing bombers soared over his flagship and dropped their explosive loads down to impact on the main body of the ship, shaking the entire structure and forcing him to grab to holotable to remain upright.

Everywhere Tarkin looked through the windows, cruisers were going down. Not far away, explosions were rocking another one of the remaining vessels and one bombe struck the shield generator full on, completely lowering the ships already weakened defences. Several nearby Vulture Droids immediately detected the change on their sensors and homed in on it, veering around as they shot towards the defenceless cruiser, dodging turret fire that tried to gun them down.

With the speed of black bullets, the Vultures swept between the two bridge sections at the back of the cruiser, lasers pounding around them and into the metal on either side of them. The clones in the bridge of that cruiser stood no chance, as a wall of destruction turned to explosion, blasting the whole area with flame and then being shredded to pieces. The bridge floated away in various directions, while the cruiser drifted onto its side, now useless to everybody.

Swoop and several other clones captains were still going strong, zooming their bombers in a wide arc across the blockade, starting on the left side while others starting on the right and rushing forwards to meet each other, all the while dropping bomb after bomb down on the cruisers below them. Huge chunks were torn out of every vessel that they flew over and members of the crew were immediately sucked out into the vacuum of space, but the bombers pressed on, never turning back.

When the two groups met, the skilfully veered off to the left slightly so that the two lines passed through one another, reaping a fresh load of ammunition down on ships that had just been bombed by the opposite squadron and wreaking further havoc. Turrets were being knocked out with just about every explosion, significantly reducing the amount of enemy fire that was being sent back towards the rebel fleet.

The cruisers themselves were closing in, all their shields reinforced towards the front, since there were absolutely no vessels attempting to come in from the sides or back. Turret fire pounded uselessly against their reinforced shielding, their hulls still shining and intact as they tossed huge rounds of lasers each that slammed through and puncture so many holes in the enemy ships that it was a wonder any of them were still able to hold themselves together.

Only a few of the Empire's fighters still remained, and they didn't last very long. As they fled from ships that were pretty much identical to theirs, except for the big crossed lightsaber symbol on the hulls of the pursuers, twisting and turning for all they were worth, only to be suddenly struck from the side or below by yet more ships or by spiralling Vulture Droids. There was nowhere for them to turn, so their only choice was to be wiped out. Not much of a choice, but that's what happened to them anyway.

Tarkin gritted his teeth. He was beaten and he knew it. There was no way that he could recover from an attack of this magnitude after suffering such damage and casualties. He knew that he might have actually stood a chance against this blockade though, were it not for one single factor in the enemy's forces, and that factor was not far away, currently beating the escape pods out of another cruiser nearby.

MegaGargomon was practically on fire, there was so much smoke coming out of his body. He seemed to have almost gone absolutely berserk with his missiles, and they kept up an ever constant stream of firepower from every socket on his body in a Mega Barrage that seemed to be without end. As he pounded his foot down into the cruiser below him and tore a huge rent in it with his powerful kick, his body exuded a mass of missiles that whistled out to either side and him to bombard the two neighbouring ships.

Each missile punched through the remnants of any shielding and blasted another chunk out of the metal with such force that friendly and enemy ships needed to stay clear of the ships in question lest they be slammed and destroyed by the viciously flying shards of metal. MegaGargomon grabbed the pointed half of the cruiser he had just ripped in two and rammed the pointed end into the back half like a giant sphere, obliterating it and finishing the job.

He then activated his jets and turned around. For a split second, Tarkin's eyes actually met with MegaGargomon's and he balked as the eyes of the giant dog-liked machine narrowed. Pulsing forwards on his jets, MegaGargomon began to surge towards Tarkin, barrelling through space towards the flagship which, so far, had suffered relatively little damage compared to the rest of the fleet. It still had plenty, but it was almost as if they had been saving it until last.

Tarkin backpedalled as the covers of the Digimon's giant shoulder missiles closed to reveal the yellow faces and smoke streamed out the back of both. MegaGargomon launched another Gargo Missiles that streamed towards the flagship. Tarkin's heart stopped for a moment, but then he blinked in surprise when he saw the missiles suddenly separate, one of them launching towards the ship on the right of his own, and the other going for the ship on the left.

They struck with phenomenal explosions that broke the ships apart where they floated, tossing smoke high upwards and in all the other directions as well. Tarkin's ship was briefly engulfed in it, meaning the Admiral couldn't even see through the window, but it cleared quite quickly. When it did, it revealed MegaGargomon less than a ship's length away, with his fist pulled backwards and eyes narrowed.

Tarkin didn't even get the chance to cry out. MegaGargomon covered the rest of the distance in a second with a scream of **"POWER PUMMEL!"**

His fist cannoned into the front of the bridge with a gargantuan kablam. The entire metalwork was flattened in an instant as the whole structure was torn off the ship, killing everybody inside, including Tarkin, in an instant. MegaGargomon tossed the old bridge away and spun around, placing his feet on what remained of the flagship and opening up all his missile sockets once more. With a final round that made most of his others look small by comparison, MegaGargomon launched hundreds of missiles into space almost at the same time.

The rest of the blockade didn't stand a chance. The missiles streaked in from all directions and the last remnants of the defence were wiped out instantly. Such were the sheer number, size and magnitude of the explosions that followed that Admiral Yularen and the rest of the rebel fleet had to cover their eyes, and many of the people down on Coruscant below saw it and looked up, (though most of them assumed it had something to do with Cherubimon).

Yularen lowered his hand after a moment to see that the fighting had finally come to an end. The remaining droids and fighters came to a stop, their mission complete, and they swerved around to head back towards the larger ships. MegaGargomon was hovering amongst nothing but metallic debris. Even over the distance between them, Yularen saw MegaGargomon nodding in his direction, and therefore he nodded back, unsure as to whether the giant Digimon could see him as such a range or not.

But MegaGargomon knew that the fighting was still not over yet. He could see it through the mind-link. His own job done, he turned around and immediately plummeted down towards the atmosphere of the planet, punching into it and ignoring the flames that sprung up around his metal body. As long as there was action, he would continue to fight. And you never knew just when a giant, seven-story, green machine could be needed.

* * *

Ahsoka countered another slashing blow from Ventress' blade with her shoto and ducked under a sideways slash, whirling around close to the ground to bring her lightsaber swinging upwards, only for it to be met by Ventress' own weapon. The Dark Jedi's face was twisted into a furious snarl, angry beyond belief that the impudent little Togruta was still going, and she retracted for a moment, allowing herself to come dashing in with a flurry of three rapid swings from each blade, spinning around to deliver the first two and moving from there.

Ahsoka danced backwards and out of the way, her own weapon flashing up to parry several of the rapid strikes. Ventress then dived into a forward flip and slashed her blades outwards to either side, forcing Ahsoka to leap into the air to avoid having her legs cut off. She attempted to flip over Ventress with the jump, but Ventress struck upwards with one blade, as Ahsoka had to flash down with her own to block it.

Ventress' other blade came lashing upwards with a stab, and Ahsoka only managed to avoid it by hurling herself to one side and rolling towards the wall, which she hit with her feet and bounced off, rolling past Ventress as the Dark Jedi slashed into the floor right behind her and then pushing herself off the other wall to crash her lightsaber into Ventress' crossed ones.

The Togruta's shoto immediately tried to slash underneath Ventress' arm and get at her abdominal area, but Ventress jerked one arm out of the lock to block the attack and shoved Ahsoka backwards, pushing her back towards the far wall with three wide, twirling attacks. Ahsoka blocked the first two and backflipped over the third, progressing down the corridor with a series of backwards somersaults in an effort to put some distance between herself and Ventress.

Ventress growled and hit her with a Force-push while she was in mid-air, sending the young Padawan catapulting backwards across the corridor. The clone onlookers who were still watching scattered as she flew through them and fought to stop herself from crashing into the wall, lifting up her legs to hit the wall with them first before dropping the floor and resting there briefly on her hands and knees.

She looked up to see Ventress charging towards her, her lightsabers swinging wildly. The clone were forced to dodge aside to save their lives, and one of them was sheared through the hip by the tip of Ventress' lightsaber and fell to the ground with a scream. Ahsoka's eyes shot open and she bared her teeth, surging upwards and springing into a powerful forward flip that brought her blades crashing down onto Ventress'.

She shoved Ventress' weapons up high and ducked back down, kicking out with her foot to nail Ventress' in the stomach and then swing upwards towards her head as she doubled-over. Ventress' lightsabers managed to block her own, but the force of Ahsoka's attack carried her back off her feet and flung her bodily into the air. Ahsoka pulsed out with the Force herself and Ventress went sailing over the heads of the clones, as Thire and several others tried to tend to their wounded brother's injuries.

Ahsoka ran up to them and murmured, "See if you can keep him stable. I'll ask Barriss to heal him when this is all over."

"What?" Thire blinked, but Ahsoka didn't pause a moment longer and motored back through the clones as Ventress pushed herself back onto her feet. The Dark Jedi threw herself into the air, and Ahsoka responded in kind, rushing up to meet her arch-enemy and crashing their lightsabers together.

Ahsoka retracted her head as Ventress swung her blade over it, and slashed out with her shoto twice, which Ventress blocked, all while they were still in mid-air. Ahsoka tried to get on top and allow gravity to push them both to the ground, but even as it started to do that, Ventress locked her lightsabers with Ahsoka's and lashed a foot into her hip, throwing Ahsoka to the side where she crashed into a wall.

Ventress hit the ground first and dashed towards where Ahsoka was set to land, but the Togruta Padawan had the foresight to push away from the wall before she hit the ground and rolled straight towards Ventress, taking the Dark Jedi's legs out from underneath her with the unexpected attack. As Ventress collapsed onto her front, Ahsoka scrambled back upwards again and powered her lightsaber downwards.

But Ventress rolled onto her back and blocked her strike with one blade, lashing up with the other to catch Ahsoka's shoto and an angle and send it flying from her hand and into the air. Ahsoka pressed down with her remaining blade, and Ventress shoved her back, the Padawan allowing Ventress' thrust to carry her into the air so she could backflip and grab her shoto before it landed, reactivating it with a grimace while Ventress leapt back onto her feet by pushing off on her shoulders.

The Dark Jedi's expression was becoming more twisted by the second and dashed in to re-engage the young Padawan with a new round of sudden and wild movements. Ahsoka hurried backwards, spinning around to catch each blow, Ventress powering one up and when that failed, span around to launch off four quick strikes towards her head, which Ahsoka's shoto managed to catch. She then lashed out with a leg while she slashed down with both blades, but Ahsoka managed to block both with her own blades and her own leg.

Ventress snarled and hooked her foot around Ahsoka's and wrenched back. Ahsoka yelped as she was pulled off her feet, but she was able to throw her feet in the air mid-fall so she ended up flipping instead of crashing to the ground and then dashed backwards down the passageway as Ventress carved up the corridor in her attempts to get her.

They both paused briefly, both of them breathing slightly heavily.

"You can clearly see that you are outmatched here, Tano," Ventress growled at her. "Make it easy on yourself and surrender to me. I might make your death a little less painful if you do."

"Yeah right," Ahsoka snorted.

"You are only delaying the inevitable," Ventress chuckled. "Do you really expect me to lose to a little girl like you?"

Ahsoka's eyes narrowed as she pulled her blades in front of her. "Let me make one thing perfectly clear, Ventress. I might be young. I might not be a Knight yet. I might not be a fully grown adult yet. But I am _not_ a little girl… not anymore."

And she charged forwards, looking to initiate another attack. Ventress scowled and slashed at her, but Ahsoka span to the side and ducked low as Ventress turned with her and slashed over her head, knocking her blades away as she jumped back up, pirouetting in two full seconds and blocking one strikes and tucking her knees in to clear another. Ventress swept diagonally downwards, but Ahsoka dodged by leaning to the side and swiftly leant the other way as Ventress tried the same attack with the other blade.

She then proceeded to bounce round and round Ventress, evading or blocking each strike she sent her way but not throwing any of her own. She twisted and span on the spot and rolled and whirled around, but Ventress couldn't land a hit on her speedy form. After about three circuits, Ventress realised what she was doing. She was using the same dance moves that Aayla had been using against her in the fight above Rhen Var.

So while she had been plotting her revenge, Ahsoka had _also_ been dancing?

Ventress screamed and ran out of patience. She threw herself at Ahsoka with blades raised, but Ahsoka dropped into a complete split, her legs wide underneath her and swung upwards to meet Ventress' sword, pushing upwards to thrown Ventress into the air and using the Force right afterwards to send her flying over her head to crashing into the wall shoulders first. As she felt to the ground and steadied herself, Ahsoka flipped back onto her feet and hurled herself into the air, tossing her shoto straight upwards to grab her lightsaber with both hands and bring it crashing down.

Ventress swept up and parried the shot by crossing her blades, but with Ahsoka's whole body weight behind her, she was slammed back into the wall, Ahsoka placing her feet on either side of her and pushing herself off, so that when Ventress automatically tried to shove her away, Ahsoka was already mostly in the air, and Ventress' strike only gave her momentum.

Ventress' push caused the Dark Jedi to fling both her arms out wide. And Ahsoka immediately took her chance. She seized her shoto from where it was still falling as she flipped right-side-up, while still in the air, she heaved her arm back and flung it with all her strength.

There was a gasp.

It was followed immediately afterways by Ahsoka's feet hitting the ground as the young Padawan fell into a crouch and stared at her opponent.

Ventress' eyes were wide as she tilted her head down, staring down at the shoto protruding from her chest with an expression of absolute shock. She had time to look up once final time and meet Ahsoka's blue eyes with her own, shock briefly turning to rage before those eyes rolled backwards into her head and she collapsed to the ground, the shoto deactivating and clattering to the ground by the Dark Jedi as she breathed her final breath and lay still.

Ahsoka slowly stood and approached Ventress. Only then did she fell shock rippling through her own body. She _did_ it! She had won! Against all the odds, she was still alive!

And Asajj Ventress was dead.

She took no pleasure from the killing. She was a Jedi after all. She merely knelt down and picked up her shoto, activating the yellowish blade and staring at it, feeling her kinship with the crystal inside it grow stronger as she stood there. It had served her well, and hopefully, it would continue to serve her well for many years to come.

* * *

Barriss grunted as her back slammed into the wall again, a strand of hair falling down over her face as she ducked and twisted herself wildly to the side to avoid Aurra's next stroke. The near-human Bounty Hunter seemed to be having the young Jedi Knight on the run, as she pressed her attack. After cleaving through the wall where Barriss had been, she scythed her blade outwards towards her neck, causing Barriss to wildly bring up her own blade to block it, but before the Mirialan could retaliate, Aurra, twirled her blade over her head and feinted a strike to the head.

Barriss fell for the feint and brought her blade up to block, and Aurra twisted at the last second and drove her blade towards Barriss' midsection instead. Barriss yelped and span around, her arms flying over her head and behind her back with her elbows in the air, blocking the attack at the last second. Barriss hurriedly twisted and flicked Aurra's blade away, bouncing into the air to land a fair distance away, not wanting her back to be exposed to the Bounty Hunter for longer than necessary.

She span around to counter another several shots from Aurra's blaster, the near-human running towards her as she fired. Barriss swiftly deflected two shots right back at Aurra, but Aurra turned them aside with her own lightsaber with ease and leapt forward, crashing her lightsaber down. Barriss twisted her blade so it was horizontal to catch the strike, but Aurra's weight pushed against her and she was slammed into the corner, Aurra forcing the young Jedi's back into it and pushed hard.

"It seems that you were a poor choice to bring along on this little venture of yours, Jedi." Aurra chuckled. "Amusing, really. Whatever you lot are doing in there, it will be stopped and your plan will fall apart by my hand. Imagine the Bounty that I will be able to get from Sidious with this."

"No!" Barriss growled, pushing hard but still gaining no more purchase. "I won't let you! I can't!"

"You don't have a whole lot of choice," Aurra smirked, and suddenly she lashed out with her blaster pistol and pointed it through the door next to them, right at Padmé and pulled the trigger.

On seeing the Senator in danger, Barriss pulled off a desperate ploy and suddenly dropped down onto her backside. Aurra yelped as she was thrown forwards, smacking her head against the wall and her shot going wide, slamming into the wall instead of the Senator. Barriss surged up while Aurra was disorientated and pushed her back, lifting herself upwards to kick Aurra in the chin and snap her head back, then she hit her with the Force for good measure and tossed her away.

She whirled around and cried, "Sorry!" to the Senators, before she suddenly slashed her lightsaber through the controls for the door. The door immediately lost power and slammed shut, sealing the Senators inside. They wouldn't be able to get out without outside help, but at least they would be safe, at least until the duel was over.

Barriss turned around just in time to dance from side to side, dodging blaster bolts that crashed harmlessly into the door all around her. Aurra growled as she pushed herself upwards, still firing, but for some reason, Barriss found that she was less afraid of Aurra than she was before, and for that reason, she felt stronger, and slightly more fluid.

Then she noticed the antennae sticking out of Aurra's head was slightly bent and sparking a little from where she had smacked her head. Her eyes widened a little. Could that have had something to do with it?

Her eyes narrowed and she swept back into the attack herself, a new target in mind. Aurra dashed in to meet her and slashed for her face, but Barriss dropped and span past her underneath the blade and turned around to strike at her. Aurra span around too and caught three swift strokes of the blade, and returning with a stab of her own, which Barriss dodged by rolling aside. The Mirialan swept to the side with her hand, hitting Aurra with another Force push that tossed her into the wall, shoulder first.

The Bounty Hunter looked back up to see that Barriss was flying towards her face with foot extended. With no time to block she ducked down and rolled out of the way, but as Barriss planted her foot against the wall, she swung down at the retreating Bounty Hunter. She missed her target, but managed to shear through a large portion of Aurra's huge ponytail, which dropped to the floor like a bunch of snakes slumping in a heap.

Aurra looked scandalised by this blow to her appearance, but before she could do anything about it, Barriss was rebounding off the wall towards her. She prepped her blade and fired several rounds with her blaster, but Barriss twisted aside to land next to her and swung around and up to crash their blades into one another once more.

Aurra growled and traded a bout of five successive slashes at about shoulder-height, forcing Barriss back down the corridor. The Mirialan could feel the unease building up inside her again, but she gritted her teeth, focusing her mind and wrenching her thoughts away from the fear and then called on the Force to do something completely unexpected. She used it to manipulate Aurra's own fallen hair, sending it shooting upwards to tangle around Aurra's legs.

Aurra immediately tripped and fell forwards, and Barriss saw her opportunity. She took her turn to feint with a slash to the stomach, but as Aurra brought her blade up to block, Barriss leapt into the air and slashed down, slicing clean through the antennae and just missing the top of Aurra's head as she span.

She felt almost immediate relief from the fear and she suddenly realised what was going on. She remembered that Aurra had been raised by Anzati, a species that had the ability to feed off the fear of others. It had been they that had installed the biocomputer in Aurra's brain, and the antennae had been allowing her to do the same thing to Barriss, which is why she had been getting stronger the more scared Barriss got.

Barriss' eyes hardened. The fact that she had foiled Aurra's dirty technique boosted her confidence levels, and also filled her with righteous indignation. How many more Jedi had suffered at the hands of this sneaky technique and therefore lost their lives by Aurra's hands? Well, she would _not_ be one of them. Not anymore. She unified her mind with the Force and prepared for the next strike.

Aurra looked livid as she looked back up towards her opponent. "Oh, _now_ you will pay, Offee," she growled. She launched herself towards Barriss once more, but Barriss was ready for her now. The Bounty Hunter's blade met Barriss' own and a furious lightshow began to go off between the pair of them as they span and whirled around each other. Barriss backflipped over another slash from Aurra and spun up from the ground to hit at Aurra twice around the waist, which Aurra turned aside and retaliated with a spin around slash, her own anger building to monumental levels! How dare this young Jedi make a fool of her like this!

Barriss rolled to the side, darted away so Aurra charged forwards with a furious shriek. She was rather pleased when Barriss turned and fled instead of striking back. She dashed off in pursuit, gaining on the young Jedi with every passing second. But Barriss reached the end of the corridor and ran up the wall, flipping out and over Aurra's head and swiping a foot into Aurra's face as she passed overhead. As Aurra stumbled, Barriss rolled to a stop and span about, striking out at Aurra's side three times in rapid succession.

Aurra's blade managed to turn them aside, but as she spun around to retaliate, Barriss Force-pushed her into the door with a thud, banging the back of her head against the metal work. Aurra reeled from the impact but as Barriss advanced on her, she lashed up with one foot and nailed Barriss in the stomach with a boot.

A boot with two spikes in it.

Barriss gasped as the metal spikes plunged into her torso and the kick threw her backwards down the corridor rolling to a stop on her hands and knees nearby and gasping for breath, her hand pressed against the wounds in her abdomen. Her breath came out in ragged gasps and her teeth gritted as she felt waves of pain coursing through her body. Aurra cackled and paused to collect herself, clearing her head and leering in excitement at the prospect of finally making a kill, then charged in for the final approach, taking advantage of Barriss' injury to end the battle once and for all.

She was noticeably shocked when Barriss suddenly surged upwards, the only sign of her wounds now a pair of holes in her Jedi robes. The Mirialan had subtly healed herself and concealed the action from Aurra's view. Barriss might not have been the fighter that the rest of her team were, but you should never, _ever_ underestimate what a healer could do with her gifts.

Barriss beat Aurra to the punch and slammed her blade into hers before Aurra was ready and knocked it aside, and then followed up with another slash that cleaved through the lightsaber hilt and sent the other half dropping towards the floor. Aurra gasped, but before she could do anything else, Barriss had spun around so her back was to the Bounty Hunter and driven her blade backwards under her own arm and straight through Aurra's gut.

Aurra's eyes shot open as the blade passed through her body. There was a moment of silence, and then the Bounty Hunter keeled over and fell lifelessly to the ground. Barriss looked a little stunned by what she had just done herself, but she decided to mark the occasion by collapsing against the wall and slumping down against it, breathing heavily.

Aurra Sing was dead! Barriss had done it! She'd actually done it!

She felt a smile gracing her face. She knew that killing someone shouldn't make her happy, and indeed it didn't, but the fact that she finally gained her confidence was enough to make her smile faintly.

_Do you still think you don't deserve to be a Jedi Knight or on our team, Barriss?_ Anakin chuckled.

_Oh, shut up_, Barriss murmured, but the comment made her self-esteem soar.

* * *

Back outside the building, and the fighting was still going strong. Durge seemed to have decided to focus most of his attention temporarily on Bane. Perhaps some distance memory of the competition Bane represented had stirred through the madness and into his mind, but whatever the case, he was now swinging his arms wildly in Bane's general direction.

The Duros was proving to be incredibly hard to hit. He shot through the air on his rocket boots, soaring under one elastic swing and barrelling upwards in a corkscrew fashion to sail over the top of another one, doubling back on himself to sweep over yet another swing before he flipped back upright and levelled his twin pistols at Durge, blasting a thick barrage of red lasers that shot outwards to pepper Durge's stomach region.

Durge barely flinched under the attacks, which left black scorch marks on his pulsating skin and he roared in fury as he charged forward and threw himself off a building towards Bane and through the laser barrage, both arms shooting upwards with palms out, in an attempt to grasp Bane and bring him to the floor. But Bane proved to be far too quick and practically skated out of the way on his boots and swerved around Durge's body, firing a harpoon on a cable out of one of his wristcoms that lanced through the air and punctured Durge's back.

Bane heaved backwards with all his might and Durge was actually jerked backwards and hauled into the air despite his heavier frame. Bane swung him back into the wall of the building he had just jumped off, slamming Durge's head against the masonry, but the Gen'Dai snarled and reached back, grabbing the cable and wrenching down. Bane relinquished the cable before he could be jerked within reach and spiralled downwards, unleashing another blast from his flamethrower that coated Durge and seared at his fingers, causing him to lose his grip on the wall and go plummeting to the street below.

Durge crashed onto his back and rolled over, teeth bared as his skin healed over the burn marks quickly, only to be assaulted by fire again when the red fox spirit suddenly plunged through his back and out of his chest. Durge howled once more as he felt just about every nerve in his body almost being set alight by the spirit, and before he could do anything else, the green wind spirit suddenly swooped down and generated a huge updraft that carried the large Bounty Hunter up into the air.

As he flailed wildly, the lightning and water spirits surged towards him from opposite directions, permeating through his body and shooting out the other side, combining their powers to magnify the electricity and send it coursing through Durge in such a high quantity that his whole body juddered and writhed, frying his body once more as he collapsed down onto another roof.

Sakuyamon landed nearby, and didn't bother waiting for Durge to get back up, knowing full well that he was going to regardless of what had just happened to his body. So instead, she flung another Twin Blades of Beauty and Truth at him, the pink energy slashes carving through the rooftop they were standing on and slicing off Durge's arm, before sending him crashing back off the roof and into the street once more.

Sakuyamon dashed over to the edge and threw herself back into the air. Durge was already scrambling upwards, pointing the stump of his arm upwards and forming it into a spike before shooting it upwards and seeking to impale the Mega Digimon. Sakuyamon was having none of that though, and flipped herself around to avoid the attack, batting it aside with her staff and hurling down an Amethyst Wind to keep Durge occupied.

There was mad glint in Durge's red eyes now and he seemed to completely ignore the shards that cut into him in their dozens, as if he was completely blotting out the pain. He extended his legs and shot upwards, bounding into the air so high that he was _above_ Sakuyamon and dropped down on her, his body writhing and expanding outwards as he sought to once again envelop the Mega level Digimon.

Sakuyamon frowned beneath her mask and pre-empted her attack, surging upwards to meet Durge halfway and readying her staff, hurling a concentrated Amethyst Wind straight upwards that tore through Durge's body to leave a gaping hole right in the middle of his torso. Then she raised a another Talisman Sphere in front of her, which Durge cannoned into and squashed his face against, breaking one of the huge fangs in his slavering mouth and flinging him back up into the air.

Bane was already waiting for him, dropping on him from down below to plant both of his feet squarely into Durge's chest, even as the hole Sakuyamon had torn in him began to heal over. His rocket boots turned to full blast, the flaming jets pummelling into Durge's skin and throwing him back downwards before Bane whipped down his pistols and blasted one deadly shot from each. Durge was nailed in both eyes at exactly the same time, and this time he did screech in pain, his mouth opening wide, only for two more lasers to pummel straight into that too.

Bane smirked, but Durge wasn't done yet. In mid-fall, despite being blinded by Bane's attack, he lashed upwards with both his fists, which expanded as they flew through the air, until they were the size of speeders. Bane blanched and motored upwards as the hands shot towards him, seeking to grasp him, but before they could do that, another pink energy blast searing off from the left and sliced into Durge's long arms, cutting them off close to the elbow.

As the giant hands dropped aimlessly to the floor, Sakuymon moved between Durge and Bane, erecting another shield even as Durge's stump forming into more spikes and jetted back upwards, clattering harmlessly against the shield. The arms retracted when Durge hammered into the ground and bounced several metres, his elastic-like body helping to cushion to fall slightly as he flipped back onto his feet and glaring upwards at the two airborne opponents.

Some spasm of thought seemed to pass through Durge's brain after that, because he remembered that his still had his own blaster pistols and drew them, firing upwards uselessly towards the shield. Sakuyamon smirked and then moved backwards, phasing out of her own shield so it was just a giant orb in front of her and then swiping it with her staff, sending it cannoning downwards towards the street where it slammed into Durge and detonated, tossing the Gen'Dai backwards and through the air and crushing the blaster pistols in his hands.

Bane moved closer to Sakuyamon and said, "Well, I guess now I can see why you Digimon were the scourge of the Separatists after all, if this is what you're capable of." He glanced over his shoulder towards Cherubimon where she was throwing lightning at more ships. "Quite frankly, I'm surprised you needed me to cover your secret. I would have thought it would have been blown a long time ago."

"If that's not a compliment from you, then I'm not sure what is," Sakuyamon replied with a smirk. "But regardless, we still need to find a way of defeating that guy. He's relentless."

"He can be beaten," Bane assured her. "I heard that General Grievous did it once. And your friend Kenobi did it as well. If you cut his body up into enough pieces, it'll take him a lot longer to recover."

"But that won't be a permanent solution, would it?" Sakuyamon murmured. "And I doubt there are any prisons that could hold this guy."

"That's not saying much," Bane smirked. "There's no prison that can hold me either."

"Regardless, we need to come up with something," Sakuyamon murmured.

It seemed that Durge didn't feel like letting them confer for any longer because the still-flaming wreckage of a fighter that Cherubimon had blown a wing off earlier suddenly came hurtling through the air towards them. They separated as the fighter shot past them and Bane cried, "Well, I'm going down there to show him who the top Bounty Hunter really is!"

And he swerved downwards on his rocket boots and plunged downwards towards the street where Durge was standing, waiting for him. Bane sneered as he levelled off moments before he hit the ground and swept towards Durge from the front in a head-on charge. Durge charged in return lashing out with another elastic fist, followed closely by another. Bane rolled over the strikes and fired his bolas directly from his wristcom.

Durge snarled and hammered his hand up to intercept the bolas, the metal weights clacking around his wrist and cutting into his flesh, but Bane had only sent it as a distraction so that he could zoom overhead and bathe the other Bounty Hunter in more flames from his other wrist, before shooting away. Durge growled and swung around, lashing out with a wrist and slamming Bane across the feet, causing him to lose control of his flightpath and go tumbling to the ground, rolling over many metres before he collided with the side of a building.

Bane looked up sharply and pushed off from the ground as Durge's fist thudded into the ground in the spot where his head had been hard enough to crack the concrete. Durge belted around and pummelled the ground on either side of Bane, the Duros leaping into the middle to avoid being hit and then springing up into the air, activating his boots again to motor out of there.

Durge saw his prey escaping and growled in protest, throwing up his hand and successfully managing to grab Bane by the ankle, just above the rocket thruster. Bane was jerked to a halt and scowled down in irritation, whipping out his blaster pistol even as he was slammed back-first into the ground with a painful thump. Bane grunted, but still managed to successfully fire the laser bolt into the Gen'Dai's face.

Durge reeled backwards and slammed his fist back downwards blindly, allowing Bane to roll out of the way of the strike and clamber back onto his feet, levelling his blaster pistols once more and taking quick shots into key areas of the body such as the legs and the head at the same time, trying to force Durge backwards. Durge responded by seizing the wreckage of a speeder that lay nearby and heaving it into the air, swinging it like a bat in Bane's general direction.

Bane's eyes widened when he saw the speeder shooting towards him, but he responded quickly, pulling a grenade out of his pocket and leaping into the air, rolling it under the speeder while he, in turn, shot over the top of it and away, swerving aside to avoid a follow-up swing that almost knocked his feet off.

The detonator rolled to a stop by Durge's feet and went off with an explosion that vaporised most of Durge's lower body and he collapsed to the floor, growling in pain and irritation. But, as his back end immediately began to reform and he pushed himself back upwards, Bane landed in front of him and lifted up his hand, pointing it directly into Durge's face.

Before Durge could figure out what was happening, Bane sprayed a noxious, green gas directly into Durge's face and then sprang away before Durge could attack him again. Durge finished reforming his legs and dashed outwards to grab the Bounty Hunter, but something made him stumble and he brought his hands up to his fanged face, clutching at his head. His vision seemed to be blurring and everything was dancing around and not staying in the same place, almost as if he could see two of everything.

He stumbled backwards and spotted a blurry image of Bane up above, lashing out with one massive spiked arm. But his aim was way off and Bane smirked as the arm shot past him harmlessly and promptly shot into the wall of the weakened building that Durge was standing next to, causing a cascade of rock that fell down on top of Durge and screened everything but his arm from view. The arm fell to the floor, spasming and jerking as the wall pile juddered several times, its prisoner thrusting upwards in an attempt to free himself.

"Not bad," Sakuyamon observed as she swooped downwards. "Now it's my turn though. And she flung a Spirit Strike right down at the rock pile, span her staff around to hurl and Amethyst Wind down at him right afterwards, twirled around to slice a Twin Blades of Beauty and Truth through the air before a second had even elapsed and then charging downwards after her own attacks.

As Durge burst out of the rocky prison, fully intact once more, the four spirits phased into him, clawing and biting at him as they passed through his body and poured all their power into their adversary before phasing out of the other side. Durge bellowed as he collapsed to his knees at the intense attack, and was immediately bombarded by the Amethyst Wind and had several huge chunks ripped out of his pulsating skin, before he was struck by the Twin Blades and had his legs and one arm removed yet again. And to finish off the attack, Sakuyamon slammed her staff upside Durge's head and sent him crashing back into the wall and straight through it, vanishing into the darkness.

Sakuyamon and Bane moved to the other end of the street, the Digimon erecting her shield over them both as a precaution. Most Mega Digimon would not have been able to withstand an assault like that, but, then again, most Mega Digimon didn't have Durge's regenerative skills.

Sure enough, Durge erupted out of the hole once again in a shower of flying debris, his legs and arm still in the process of reforming. Sakuyamon gritted her teeth. This was beginning to get monotonous. There seemed to be absolutely nothing that could keep the Gen'Dai down.

But then she noticed that the Bounty Hunter was staggering around, his small, red eyes bleary as if unsure where he was. He attempted to throw a punch at their shield, but it missed its mark by several metres and slammed into a nearby wall instead. Durge then tottered around and flung another arm, this time with a spike in it. It did managed to hit the shield, but only the edge of it and it clinked off harmlessly.

"What's happening?" she asked.

Bane chuckled. "I may have hit him with a little knockout gas. Gen'Dai had tough internal systems so it's not doing its complete job, but its definitely made him completely disorientated. We have the upper hand now."

Sakuyamon's eyes widened beneath her mask. This was their chance to finish Durge off once and for all, and she intended to take it. "You reckon you can hold him still?" she asked as Durge pounded the ground in front of them.

"You have something in mind?" Bane asked.

"Yes!" Sakuyamon nodded, dropping her shield and gripping her staff with both arms. Bane didn't ask any more questions and surged forwards, firing another cable from his wristcom with wrapped around Durge's torso, pinning his arms to his side for a moment as Bane activated his rockets and pulled upwards to keep the cable taut. He then looked over to Sakuyamon, who still hadn't moved.

To both his and Durge's surprise, the Mega Digimon began to glow with a blazing white aura, holy light pouring of her in wave after wave that enveloped Durge and seemed to make him freeze in his tracks, staring at her in astonishment. Sakuyamon's body began to take on the same white light and she spoke. It was quiet, but they both heard her perfectly.

"Durge… you are evil," she said simply. "You have been a blight on this Galaxy for nearly two-thousand years. And evil has no place in the universe. It must be eradicated, and I, Sakuyamon, will remove the stain you represent now and forever."

The light fanned outwards and faded slightly, revealing that her golden armour had changed into a robe that was red from the waist down and white from the waist up with long sleeves that hung down from her arms. Her golden face-mask was still in place, shining in the pristine light, as she looked up and fixed where her eyes would be onto Durge's own.

She declared herself:-

"**SAKUYAMON MIKO MODE!"**

She smiled to herself as the felt the power radiating through her. She had only used this form once before, long ago and against Ogudomon. But this form had a skill for banishing malice… whether that be pushing it out of the being in question, or utterly eradicating that being.

She twirled her staff and thrust out with it, gripping it with both hands as she cried, **"AMETHYST MANDALA!"**

Bane jerked back in surprise, as Durge was suddenly surrounded by a sphere of golden light that completely cut him off from view and sliced through the cable that was pinning him. The Duros watched in astonishment as the sphere began to shrink, growing smaller and smaller with every passing second, and he could hear Durge's cries of pain quite clearly.

Durge tried to force his way out with punches and spike strikes, but he couldn't. The walls of the sphere held firm, burning at his skin and compressing him inwards, forcing him to a ball and still closing inwards, shrinking down and down and down.

Bane and Sakuyamon watched silently as the ball continued to shrink, until it was the size of a beach ball. And then it kept going, to a basketball, then a football, then a tennis ball and finally, it vanished shrank down to microscopic size. And then it exploded in a surprisingly large blast that threw Bane upwards several metres into the air and filled the street with blazing light, vaporising everything that had been contained inside it to atoms and then blowing the atoms into nothingness.

Bane was not the type to gape, but in this case he made an exception, staring at the spot where Durge had been several moments before in shock. Sakuyamon, on the other hand, pounded her staff against the ground with a decisive clack.

And then the Rika half of her said, "And stay dead!"

* * *

Pong Krell was beginning to get increasingly frustrated. His mastery of two double-bladed lightsabers combined with his sheer strength had always meant that he had been one of the best fighters throughout the whole Jedi Order, able to take on and beat just about every Jedi there was out there, even most of the Jedi Council. And yet now he was facing off against a Twi'lek who was just under half his own age and he just couldn't seem to be able to get anywhere near her.

He took a step back to assess the situation as Bok charged forwards and roared at Aayla, a dagger in his hand and his gauntlet shining in the lightning flashes coming from Cherubimon's lightning attacks as he sought to gut his nemesis. Aayla nimbly dodged a slash to her abdomen and forwards flipped over the Morgukai, both of the whirling around to slash at each other simultaneously.

Aayla's blade sheared straight through Bok's dagger blade as if it wasn't there, and sent it zinging off across the platform and continued forwards to impact against Bok's gauntlet and fizzle out of life again. Bok immediately tried to press the advantage but Aayla swept in her other blade from the side and forced Bok to twist around to sweep that aside with his gauntlet as well. Aayla bounced into the air and hammered her foot into Bok's neck, creating a strangled choking noise as the Nikto was tossed backwards to hammer into a bunch of crates and disappear from view.

Aayla, momentarily without lightsabers, turned around as she heard Krell approaching her with double blades whirling in action, trying to take advantage of Aayla's defencelessness. Aayla lashed out with the Force, but Krell did the same thing in mind-charge with his bottom two arms, and the two of them strained against each other with their minds, while Krell closed the distance between them, a leer on his face and his blades in a whirl.

But Aayla shifted her feet into the right position and jumped backwards, relinquishing her Force-push and allowing Krell's to slam into her and send her flying through the air and out of reach. Krell growled in annoyance as the Twi'lek practically soared across the landing platform and grabbed a support pole for the overhanging building, swerving around it to come flying back the way she had come and directly towards Krell.

Krell smirked and twirled his blades, waiting for her attempt to hit him so he could slice her into pieces, but Aayla swept her hand across and a crate suddenly zoomed through the air and crashed into Krell's side, sending him spinning and falling to hands and knees. Aayla re-activated her blades as she fell back towards Krell and slashed down at him, only to be blocked by Krell's blades shifting up behind him in an X to collide with Aayla's own.

Nevertheless, Aayla's momentum carried Krell to the floor and flattened him beneath her, allowing her to flip off and away, but Krell desperately grabbed outwards with one of his free hands and managed to seize her by the ankle and halt her progress, bringing her crashing to the floor in front of him. Immediately he hurled himself back onto his feet and stabbed down with two blades while still holding Aayla's foot.

But Aayla rolled onto her back and sat up, tucking her head by her knees so that Krell's blades slammed into the floor right behind her. She was now almost up against Krell's legs, but she swept one blade in from the side and the blue tip scored the hand that was holding her ankle. Krell howled and let go, allowing Aayla to roll free and out of the way, before she smacked Krell with another Force-push and sent him hurtling straight over the edge of the landing platform.

Krell's uninjured free hand managed to grab hold of the edge and stop himself from plummeting down towards the street far below. Aayla clambered to her feet and was about to step forwards when she suddenly backflipped, causing Bok to slam painfully into the ground instead of tackling her from behind as he had been intending. The Morgukai reared back and upwards, snarling as he faced off against Aayla once again.

Aayla had to admit that she was impressed with Bok's tenacity. Either he was so blazing angry that he wasn't thinking properly or he was still a very brave being, facing off against a Jedi with no weapons and only a cortosis gauntlet as his defence. She stepped back warily, waiting to see what he would try next.

Her senses suddenly screamed at her and she looked down, to see that she was practically standing _on_ a live grenade that Bok had apparently left there. It seemed he had been thrown into a couple of munitions containers and gained some equipment, but Aayla didn't have time to think about that. She bounced straight up into the air and a split second later the device went off, carrying Aayla higher upwards, but not harming her as she had managed to escape in time.

Bok snarled in annoyance and pulled out a blaster, shooting blue lasers up towards her as she flew. Aayla skilfully turned the shots aside, even in the air, and twisted backwards to fall back towards the platform. She landed on a private ship and rolled to cushion the fall, coming to a stop at the edge and pulsing a laser back at Bok with a double-slash that knocked the blaster out of his hand and swiping back a second that scored a hit on his cortosis gauntlet.

Aayla spotted Krell had heaved himself back onto the landing platform not far away and was staring at his hand in disbelief. The thick appendage was completely slack and useless; it looked like Aayla had managed to cut through the nerves that connected it to the brain. He looked up towards Aayla with a blazing gleam in his eye, as if they were on fire, his lip curling into a snarl of rage.

It was then Aayla knew for certain that Krell had really gotten himself steeped in the Dark Side already. He was much further gone that even Quinlan had been when she had found him on Boz Pity. Krell had probably fallen to the darkness a while ago, and had been keeping it concealed for some time. Whatever the case, it seemed that he wasn't gone to be able to redeem himself any time soon.

Krell and Bok then both charged for her at the same time, the Morgukai scooping up one of his own fallen sword-blades as he did so. Aayla bounded off the ship she was standing on and ran to meet them, both her blades streaming out behind her as she added the Force to her strides, covering the distance between them at stupendous velocity, a plan forming in her mind as she did so. If they were so eager to get at her, then she would let them.

Sort of.

She struck at Bok and pushed him away, her lightsabers deactivating again against his cortosis hand and shoving him backwards to skid to a halt nearby. Krell turned around and kept charging, as Bok surged up angrily to get back at the irritating Jedi.

Aayla held her deactivated blades close to her sides, glancing off to the left to see Krell bearing down on her with lightsabers twirling wildly, and then turning to the right to see Bok charging towards her with sword held high and cortosis gauntlet held before him like a shield. Both their faces were twisted into snarls, and the seemed to be focusing solely on Aayla and nothing else.

Which was exactly what Aayla was counting on.

The Twi'lek shut her eyes, tuning herself in with the Force and listening to the sounds of thudding feet and whirring blades, all her attention diverted to her senses as both her opponents bore down on her. Then, right before the collision, she tensed her legs and sprang straight up in a huge Force-jump that she turned into a flip, sailing back down towards the landing platform nearby.

The two combatants on the other hand kept going. Bok blanched as Krell ploughed straight into him and vice versa, seeing almost nothing but the tornado of blades that Krell was spinning around. The first set of two blades collided with the cortosis gauntlet and fizzled out, but they also managed to knock Bok's arm downwards and left him completely exposed to the next set of blades, which carved Bok from either shoulder to either hip and killed him instantly.

Krell faltered in surprise as he stared down at the Morgukai who he had just slain as Bok fell lifelessly to the ground. His blades stopped spinning, but with only to blades left, his chest was wide open and Aayla saw it.

"This is for Sugi!" she murmured under her breath as she delved into the Force, focusing on the bond she could still feel emanating strongly from her friends all around her, feeling the power surging into her fingers and striking her hand outwards. Orange lightning exploded out of her fingertips and arced through the air, slamming into Krell and hurling him backwards with the sheer Force of the attack. The Besalisk yowled as he slammed into a wall, one of his lightsabers flying out of his hands and sailing into the air, while his body was assailed by the Electric Judgement attack.

Aayla relinquished it almost immediately and charged forwards again, stowing her lightsabers on her belt and leaping over Bok's remains to seize Krell's giant double-lightsaber in her hands before it hit the floor. She twisted around and activated the second end and then flung it downwards like a spear.

Krell pushed himself up to try and defend himself, but his body was still numb from the lightning attack and his movements were sluggish. He missed the flying lightsaber and it crashed into his chest, went straight through body and plunged into the wall behind him, impaling him there. Krell died almost immediately and Aayla landed nearby as his body slumped over to the ground.

Aayla Secura stood tall in victory, and the clones around her gazed upon her with awe.

And, though Aayla would never admit or even think it, they were quite right to do so.

* * *

Anakin opened his eyes. He was still stood safe in Padme's office while the rest of his friends had been out getting their hands dirty and putting themselves in danger. He hadn't liked a single moment of it, as he had been able to see flashes of action from each and every one of them, most significantly the parts where they had been in danger.

It was with no small amount of relief now that he beheld each of them winning their respective battles at last. He felt pride circulating through his body at the actions of his Padawan, sent waves of respect to Barriss, marvelled at Sakuyamon's new form which he hadn't seen yet and felt mutual kinship with Aayla for the actions she had performed her today.

But there was still one fight that had yet to begin, and that was his own fight against Palpatine.

And now seemed like as good a time as any to set off and get ready for it.

_Artoo says that he's almost through,_ Barriss reported in – she had cut down the door of the communication centre to get back inside. _We should be able to send out that broadcast any minute now. And Seripas says he's in position._

_Things have quietened down in here, Master,_ Ahsoka added.

_And out here,_ Sakuyamon agreed.

_I don't think that we're going to need to provide our distraction anymore, Anakin,_ Aayla threw in. _What do you think? Is it time?_

Anakin's brow furrowed and his jaw set in a grim line of determination.

_Yes,_ he nodded. _It's time._

He moved towards the hole the floor that Grievous had cut and leapt down into it, landing in the storage room below.

_Let's just hope Grievous is on schedule,_ he added, as he moved off and away.

* * *

Grievous himself snarled as he was hammered back into the wall by another Force push from Dooku. The Sith Lord arched down the corridor and flew towards him with blade raised, but Grievous hurled himself off the wall with two of his arms and slammed the other two towards Dooku to slam his blade and knock him backwards. Dooku skidded to a halt and charged in again, pushing two of Grievous' blades aside with a swing of his blade and carving towards his hip with another.

Grievous span around and sprang to the side, lashing out to the side with a lightsaber that Dooku ducked underneath and then curving the other three over his head to slam them down into the ground where Dooku had been moments before. Dooku darted back down the corridor and held his blade in front of him in one hand, pointing it down towards the floor and ready to block whatever Grievous decided to throw at him next.

Grievous lowered his body so that he was almost bent double, his head looking up with blazing eyes and his hands rotating his blades through the air above him, keeping up the snarl as he did so. Normally he would charge in himself recklessly, but he knew he was up against a very skilled opponent and had already learned that the more foolhardy you were, the better Dooku could turn it against you.

So it was Dooku who made the first strike this time, thrusting one hand out before him and grabbing Grievous with the Force, lifting him into the air and off his feet. Grievous thrashed his legs but he couldn't reach the ground with them and he snarled angrily as Dooku approached quickly, rearing back his lightsaber with intention to sever Grievous' neck. Grievous quickly jerked himself to the side and slammed his feet into the wall, fastening himself there and wrenching himself out of Dooku's hold to slash forwards with two blades and counter Dooku's strike, wrenching the other two into stabs that Dooku dodged by rolling aside.

The Sith span past Grievous and whipped around to slam four rapid twirls at his former ally, but Grievous stepped up onto the ceiling again and countered each blow with a different lightsaber, dropping to the ground with the last one to support himself upside down with three hands while his forth hand jerked Dooku's lightsaber out of the way, his foot lashing out with talons seeking to grab Dooku by the face.

Dooku swerved backwards as the talons closed within inches of his nose and he span backwards to hit Grievous with the Force and knock him off his hands to send him rolling away down the corridor. Dooku turned back around and immediately made for the hole in the ceiling he had fallen through previously, but before he could reach it a lightsaber shot through the air and slammed into the wall just in front of him. Dooku's head snapped around just in time for him to see a second scything right at him.

He jumped backwards and the blade buried itself in the wall in front of his face. Grievous scuttled towards him on all sixes for a moment before he flipped himself back onto his feet, dashing towards Dooku with both lightsaber spinning wildly. Dooku caught the attack with a stab to the midriff that Grievous locked into the crook of his lightsabers and used to fling Dooku back past him so he had his back to the two lightsabers in the wall. He reached behind him and wrenched them out again, stepping forwards once more with blades flashing.

As Grievous pressed Dooku further back, he lashed down from up above to draw Dooku's blade into the air and crash all four blades against Dooku's own, shoving him downwards with his brute-force cybernetic strength, and then lashed out with his foot to slam Dooku in the gut with its base. At the same time, Dooku tried to save himself by slamming his swiping his palm outwards at slamming Grievous with a huge wave of the Force that practically knocked the whole corridor slightly loose.

Both of them went shooting backwards at the same moment, both of the losing their grip on all of their lightsabers as they slammed into opposite walls with tremendous force. Both of them collapsed to the ground, but Grievous managed to recover first due to his cybernetic body. He sighted his four lightsaber and immediately charged towards them, seeking to finally end this, but Dooku reached up and fired a blast of Force Lightning right at him.

Grievous caught the attack on his lightning rods easily enough, but he was forced to a stop by the intensity of the attack, which was more powerful than any Dooku had thrown at him yet. Dooku pushed himself back up onto his feet and added his other hand into the equation. Grievous brought his own second arm upwards in response and the two of them stood there for several moments, lightning pulsing between them as one cast and the other absorbed, their eyes locking as they both glared hatred at each other.

"You are a fool, Grievous!" Dooku growled as he powered on as much force into the attack as possible. "You always were a fool, but this time you are being a bigger fool than ever. And I have no need for fools in my employ! Quite frankly I regret the day that I planted that bomb on your ship. You always were a loose cannon, but your impudence has cost you this time. You will not be walking away from this conflict, General."

But as Dooku sneered, Grievous' eyes narrowed even further and he felt a growl building inside him and rise to the surface in a steady crescendo. Dooku was usually very good with words, but this time, he had said the wrong thing. To hear Dooku finally admit the plot against Grievous himself instead of denying it was the last straw for the cyborg General, and powered his resolve so much that it practically flared like a beacon.

"It is you who shall not be walking away from this fight, Dooku!" Grievous snarled and he took a step forwards, ignoring the lightsabers that were scattered on the ground just in front of him and stepping right over them. And then he shifted his other foot forwards, then another and then another, slowly stepping against the Force of Dooku's lightning attack towards the Sith Lord.

Dooku's eyes widened. When he hit people with a full power lightning attack with just one hand they could usually never move forward more than an inch, such was its force. But Grievous' mechanical strength was far greater than that of any Jedi, even large ones like Pong Krell. Slowly, adamantly, Grievous stepped past the fallen lightsaber and down the corridor towards the Sith.

Dooku piled on more power, but Grievous ignored it and continued to push against the stream. Lightning flashed and crackled all through the corridor as it flashed up the metal support beams on either side, the attack becoming more powerful the closer Grievous got to Dooku. But Grievous didn't stop. He didn't even slow. The fury born from Dooku's words ignited his very soul, and nothing Dooku could throw at him was going to stop him now.

Dooku's heart was racing, as he continued to pour more and more power into the attack to no avail. As he stared into Grievous' burning, yellow eyes, he felt fear course through him like never before, and he realised his mistake.

Grievous tilted his arms, locking them back together until he had just two and angled them so that he was taking the brunt of the attack on the rod on his left arm, while the rod from his right arm was drawing a lot of power from the one on his left, lightning flashing in a continuous crackling stream between the two metal rods. Dooku backed into the wall as Grievous pulled to a stop right in front of him.

"Nobody uses the Kaleesh!" Grievous snarled. "Not even the Sith!"

And he slammed his right arm forwards to press the electric rod against Dooku's arm. A large portion of the electricity that Dooku was blasting into Grievous' left arm lanced across to his right and surged into Dooku's own body, effectively repelling Dooku's own attack against him. A howl of pure agony was torn from Dooku's mouth, even half the power of his own attack was enough to fry his central nervous system.

He was catapulted back into the wall, lightning attack finished and breath coming out in ragged gasps as he body smoked from the power of the attack and hovering on the brink of death. And Grievous' hand lashed out and grabbed Dooku by the neck and wrenched, snapping it like a toothpick and finishing the job.

Grievous glared into the Sith Lord's dead eyes for a moment before he flung him to the side where he crashed against the wall and slumped down, neck head lolling at a horrible angle.

"And so…" Grievous growled. "Justice… is served." He chuckled and added, "Who'd have thought that _I'd_ be the one to deliver it to you."

Dooku didn't answer. After all, he would never answer anyone, ever again.

* * *

Admiral Tarkin.

Asajj Ventress.

Aurra Sing.

Durge.

Bok.

Pong Krell.

Count Dooku.

All gone. All finally dead. Never to carry out another act of evil upon the Galaxy ever again. Now, only one remains.

OOOOOOHHHHHH YYYEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH!

HAHAHAHAHA**HAHAHA!**

Oh, I loved this chapter. I just loved it. And if any of you guys didn't like it, then you're reading the wrong story, I'm afraid. I've been waiting to write that chapter for a long, _long_ time.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The final battle is here. Each of his subordinates have been taken out one by one, but Sidious is still very much alive, and waiting for them to bring the fight to him. Can Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, fulfil his destiny? Can he and his team restore peace to the Galaxy once more?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 208 : Light and Dark**


	208. Light and Dark

This is a duel that you will all have been waiting for. The duel that you never got to see in the Star Wars saga. The duel between Anakin Skywalker and Darth Sidious is finally upon us. Who will triumph over the other? You will have to read on and see. Excuse my slight lateness with the chapter, but I went home for the weekend and I factored that in, so I am still on schedule for a 29th of February. Is it weird that this story will finish on the extra day of a leap year, or is that some sort of sign?

Ah well, read on everybody.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 208:- Light and Dark**

* * *

Anakin hurried through the corridors of the Senate Building, his brow furrowed and his blue eyes set ahead of him in determination. The victories of his various allies were still rippling through his mind. Regardless of what happened today when he reached his destination, his team had accomplished several great things on this day, ridding the Galaxy of various evils that had been plaguing it for too long.

But there was still one evil left to go. The most powerful of all the Empire's people still remained – the man at the very top, Emperor Palpatine himself. Anakin's mind was whirling through the various conversations he'd had with the man, putting up a front that had fooled the entire Jedi Council and even the entire population of the Galaxy.

The Sith Lord had been hiding in the shadows for too long, stirring events in the direction that he wanted them to go, never raising his own lightsaber to strike a blow himself, but ultimately giving the order for every lightsaber strike and blaster shot that had been fired against the Republic and the people of the Galaxy who allied with them. It had been going on for too long. It was time to call him out, and test his own skills in combat. The mastermind was about to become a combatant at last.

Everyone had been talking about him as the Chosen One for as long as he could remember. But while Anakin had gone through various phases of believing it to be true or false, he now needed to try and prove it. It felt like a heavy weight was lying across his shoulders, trying to force him to his knees, but he refused to let it. He focused on the words of the Force-ghost of Qui-Gon Jinn, telling him up front that he _was_ the one destined to bring balance to the Force.

If he didn't believe it now, then he was pretty sure that he never would fulfil that destiny.

As he passed through the corridors at speed, he kept running past the bodies of clones who were either unconscious or just waking up, their hands clutching their heads and groaning, to blearily to really register Anakin's presence as he dashed past. It seemed that Grievous had been doing his job well, clearing a path down towards the corridor beneath the Emperor's office and knocking out anybody who stood in his way, making it all the more easier for Anakin to get to the place he needed to be, and receiving no resistance whatsoever from the guards.

* * *

Eventually he reached the thin corridor which ultimately led to another storeroom underneath the Emperor's office, having been restored after the Zillo Beast had completely trashed the place. Anakin slowed to a walk warily, lightsaber hilt grasped in his hand as he listened out for any sign of conflict coming from within.

There was none, but he did hear the sound of a whirring lightsaber blade. Anakin hurried forwards quickly and turned another corner, spotting Grievous standing in the way with a red lightsaber in one clawed hand, twirling it round in circles experimentally. The cyborg Kaleesh looked up as Anakin appeared and gave him a curt nod.

"Do I have to ask?" Anakin asked.

"Not if you look down there," Grievous replied, nodding towards the floor nearby. Anakin looked and, though it was difficult to see in the shadows, he saw Dooku lying still, very obviously dead, his neck causing his head to loll to one side, his eyes open and glazed over and thin curls of smoke rising slowly off his body.

"So, you won," Anakin nodded. "Impressive. And I don't even see any lightsaber marks on him?"

"Indeed not," Grievous cackled. "The way I dealt with him was all the more sweeter because of it, though."

"I see," Anakin replied. "Well, I can't stop for details, I'm afraid, but I can tell you that the others all won various duels of their own. Ahsoka took out Ventress, Barriss defeated Aurra, Rika and Renamon killed Durge and Aayla slew both Bok and Pong Krell."

"The little Padawan killed Ventress?" Grievous snorted, and then chuckled lowly. "Oh, I almost wish that I could have been there to see that."

"Well, regardless, Sidious is the only one still alive."

"And you are going to deal with him?" Grievous asked.

"That is my intention," Anakin nodded, stepping forward and squeezing past Grievous to make his way towards the hole in the ceiling that Grievous had sliced to begin the duel against Dooku.

As he moved towards it, Grievous asked, "Do you require assistance?"

Anakin paused for a moment and turned back with brow raised. "Excuse me?" he asked. "You're offering me you help?"

Grievous' eyes narrowed and he growled loudly. "Do not get the wrong idea, Jedi! Sidious is just as much to blame for the fate of the Kaleesh and myself as Dooku and San Hill were. My revenge will not be complete until _both_ of the Sith Lords are dead. I have killed one, and I would like to have a hand in killing the second as well."

"Charming," Anakin rolled his eyes. "But I'm afraid that this time, I must face him alone, Grievous. This isn't just about the fate of the universe. This isn't just personal. This is both. Palpatine had used and manipulated me far more than he ever did you. Facing off against him alone is the way that it has to be, and nobody else can interfere. Not even you, understand?"

Grievous' eyes narrowed further, obviously not liking being told what to do, so Anakin added. "Besides, remember the second stage of the plan. I think having your presence in the fight would make things confusing instead of punching through the message that we want."

"Fine," Grievous replied, stowing Dooku's lightsaber at his waist. "You get your wish, Skywalker. And what shall I do in the interim."

"You can rendezvous with Aayla and the others," Anakin replied immediately. "They're all going to meet up at the communications centre in the East Wing. Help them protect the Senators if you have to."

"Very well," Grievous nodded. "And Skywalker, do not fail! Sidious must not live through another sunset on _any_ planet."

"For once, we're in complete agreement," Anakin nodded back.

Grievous turned around without another word and dashed back across the corridor, stepping contemptuously on Dooku's dead legs as he passed and then disappeared from sight. Anakin sighed and turned back around, heading back towards the hole in the ceiling.

_You're wrong, Master,_ Ahsoka suddenly piped up in his head. _You won't have to face off against Sidious by yourself._

_Yes, I will, Snips,_ Anakin replied immediately. _And on no circumstances are you to help me against him. Do not needlessly put yourself in danger?_

_You mean in any more,_ Ahsoka chuckled. _But that's not actually what I meant._

_What she meant is that while you will indeed fight him with your sword alone,_ Renamon threw in. _We will be with you every step of the way ourselves with our minds. As long as you have us nearby, you will never truly be alone, Anakin._

_You were with us through each of our fights, _Aayla agreed. _Now, it's our turn to be with you._

Anakin felt a smile appearing on his face. _Thanks, guys,_ he said. _Assuming I survive this, I will the one to initiate the next group hug, okay?_

_We'll hold you to that,_ Barriss sniggered.

_Hey, do you know what would be even better,_ Ahsoka added. _If you survive this, will you join in one of our dances?_

_No,_ Anakin replied.

_Damn. Meh, worth a shot,_ Ahsoka laughed. _But in all seriousness, of course you're going to survive this Master. Just remember everything you were taught and you'll turn out fine. You _can_ do this._

_Just believe in yourself,_ Barriss agreed. _Like I did, in the end._

_You have the skill. You have the tenacity,_ Renamon threw in. _Just get in there and do it._

_On the offchance you do die, can I have your lightsaber?_ Terriermon asked.

_Terriermon!_

_Momentai! He knows I'm kidding. Just trying to lighten his mood._

Anakin laughed. He was truly grateful that he had such a loyal and devoted group of friends. He didn't think he could find others like them if he searched high and low across the Galaxy. They were an extraordinary group of people. He was glad to have them by his side, even if they were only going to be there in his mind.

_Go ahead, Anakin,_ Aayla finished up. _Prove to the Galaxy that the Jedi Council made the right decision to induct you into the Order, despite the fact you were overage._

_I'll certainly give it my best shot!_ Anakin replied grimly and he darted the rest of the way down the corridor until he was underneath the hole and looked up to see a Senate Guard peering down through it, trying to see what was going on underneath it. The Guard yelled immediately started firing his blaster, but Anakin whipped out his blade and blocked three successive shots, before reaching up and yanking the blaster out of the man's hand with the Force, slicing it in two with his blade.

He then leapt straight up and out of the hole as more Senate Guards clustered around the rim, lashing out with both hands before they could react and pulsing the Force outwards in all directions like a miniature shockwave, which flung all six of the Senate Guards into the air and sent them crashing back into the walls all around him, slamming their heads and slumping to the floor, unconscious.

Anakin reared himself upwards the moment he landed and narrowed his eyes as he beheld the door in front of him. Many of the doors in the Senate Building looked the same, but this one he recognised with ease. After all, he had walked through it many times before to have a talk with Palpatine when he had been the Chancellor. But now, there was quite a different reason for his visit.

There was no point in delaying the inevitable and Anakin knew it. Grievous engagement of Dooku certainly hadn't gone unnoticed and it was very likely that Palpatine was expecting company. However, Anakin could sense the overpowering anger and hatred coming from the other side of the door, which indicated that Palpatine was still in there. Evidently he had not been cowardly enough to flee when he heard of how close the fighting had gotten. He might have figured that Dooku would be victorious in the battling, but whatever the case, now was the time.

Anakin moved towards the door and lifted his hand in front of his, using the Force to slide the door open.

And there he was, standing on the far side of the room, behind his desk. He had his usual red ceremonial robes on instead of the dark cloak which had appeared in his holograms when he communicated to the other Separatists, and his white hair clung to his head like a thought-bubble. His back was to Anakin and his hands were clasped behind his back, a pose that Anakin would often find him in when he stepped into the office in days gone by.

Even though Anakin had come to terms with his position on the side of the Light and had pushed the Dark Side away, hopefully for good, he found it extremely difficult to quash the huge uprising of anger that he felt inside him at the sight of the man who had used and betrayed him and everybody that he cared about. He paused for a moment, clenching his eyes shut and gritting his teeth, forcing the bile and rage that he felt threatening to well up inside him back down.

It was not an easy task, even now. Every Jedi often had to deal with anger like this, even ones like Yoda and Obi-wan, and the rest of Anakin's team was no exception to this either. But somehow, seeing Palpatine in the flesh once again was even worse than when he had appeared in holographic form to speak to him and the clones on Tython.

But Anakin couldn't afford to feel anger. Not ever, but most especially not now. After all, he was almost blown backwards by the sheer amount of rage that he could feel pouring out of Palpatine… or Sidious as Anakin decided to refer to him from now on.

Evidently the plan had been working so far, and every new thing that Palpatine had thrown at them had triggered off another wave of anger that had built up and up until he had reached the stage he was at now, which was beyond downright livid and getting close to mentally unstable.

Anakin couldn't let himself be tempted by the Dark Side. If he let it come surging back after everything he had done to repel it, then Palpatine might succeed in turning him there permanently right then and there. Anakin might even end up killing him just so he could replace him, and he was not about to let that happen.

He felt a feather touch on his mind, as a consciousness he recognised to be Ahsoka reached out to sooth him. It was joined by another, and then another, and then several more, until all nine of the rest of the Tenacious Ten were helping him to sort out his temporary emotion turmoil, flattening it beneath the power of the bonds they shared. Anakin opened his eyes and mentally thanked them all, before he took a step forwards towards the door.

Just before he stepped through it, he paused in thought and then summoned the Force into his hands and brought them together with a loud clap. Sure enough, a pair of red robed elite guards that had been lurking on either side of the door within the office were jerked out of hiding and their heads were slammed together, knocking them out immediately and sending them flopping to the floor in a heap. Anakin carefully stepped over them, wary of more guards, but it seemed that they had been the only two.

"Good afternoon, Emperor," he said grimly. "How goes your rule?"

Palpatine turned around. Although Anakin could still feel the ripples of anger that seemed to tug at the very air (either Palpatine wasn't bothering trying to conceal his Sith Lord presence any more or he was just so angry that he couldn't contain it anymore), Palpatine's face was a mask of calm and almost regal dignity, a small smile adorning his features just as it had done every other time that he had spoken with him.

Anakin grimaced. He knew immediately what Sidious was trying to do – he was trying to confuse his thoughts with the mask of the Chancellor once again. He growled, refusing to let himself by this monster.

Sidious nodded to him and said, "Ah, Anakin, my boy. It's such a pleasure to see you again. I am well. How have you been faring yourself?"

"You mean since you ordered my troops to turn against me and the rest of the Order?" Anakin asked bitterly. "Actually I've been not that bad considering everything that has happened since then."

"Now, Anakin, you must understand," Sidious simpered. "I simply had to turn the clone army on the Jedi. Surely you must know that they never really trusted me or believed in me. And then, they hired a dangerous Bounty Hunter to track me down. It was a conspiracy from the very top and I only had to put a stop to it for the safety of the entire Galaxy. Do you not understand that?"

"I understand that you're lying to try and talk me out of battling you," Anakin replied. "You should know yourself that it's pointless to try and sway me back to your side now. Not after everything I've learned and seen about you in the last few days and not after I felt all that anger that's currently pouring off you."

"Anger, Anakin?" Sidious asked. "Of course I am angry. Would you not be angry if you were in my position. I am trying to create a Galaxy of peace and you and the rest of the Jedi are insisting on trying to take that away from me."

"Because you're a Sith and have no place here," Anakin added. "Because you don't have the right to lead anyone, let alone the entire Galaxy."

"Do you believe that really, Anakin?" Sidious asked almost serenely. "Do you really believe _me_ to be the villain here? I have been your friend for years now, and I do not think I have ever said a word to you crosswise, excepting that little incident with the Zillo Beast." He glanced back out the window to where the reptile in question was currently pounding the stuffing out of a line of AT-TEs.

"The Zillo Beast was perhaps the thing that opened my eyes the most before I was given the real solid evidence. It showed me the you that you had been concealing under your veil for so long, or at least a fraction of it. These attempts of yours to put me off aren't going to work, Sidious. I have seen enough to know that your friendship with me was nothing but a lie. Don't bother trying to be friendly now. It won't work."

Sidious scowled in irritation. He had been hoping that Anakin would have been so consumed with anger at the sight of him that he would fly into a rage and attack him straight away, thus tossing him back into the recesses of the Dark Side almost immediately, but Anakin just stood there instead. Sidious could feel a slight pinprick of anger coming from Anakin's mind, but it was heavily pressed down at the bottom.

Even the kind-hearted act, which Sidious had thought would incense Anakin still further due to the fact that he was _still_ trying to lie to him even through all that, didn't seem to be having much of an effect on the young man. The Sith could quite clearly see that Anakin was practically completely beyond his reach now. He might be able to break him if he captured him and eroded him over time, but he would never be able to do it right off the bat.

"So," Sidious glowered at his younger opponent. "I suppose you intend to kill me, yes?"

"If I must," Anakin replied evenly.

"No lingering doubts about cutting down your old friend?"

"No. Not anymore. My friendship with you has been permanently terminated. And I was able to deal with my emotions in the last couple of days before we came in to visit you. And now, you are the only one left, Sidious. The only one on your team that remains."

"And you think that means you have me?" Sidious sneered, dropping his act completely. "Don't be naïve, Anakin. I am far more powerful than Count Dooku and any of the others who were in my employ. Just because you have the upper hand with numbers does not mean that you will win today? And your giant friends out there won't be able to help you."

_Oh, let me at him!_ Terriermon shouted.

Anakin, on the other hand, smirked as Sidious mentioned the Digimon and the Zillo Beast. He chuckled and said, "Speaking of them, were you surprised to see them?"

Sidious' growl was more than enough to answer Anakin's question. "What _are _they anyway? And where did they come from? I have never seen anything like them or heard of anything like them throughout my whole life. What are they?"

Anakin was only too happy to answer the question – not only would Sidious be unable to do anything with the information but it also allowed Anakin to rub the secret they had once been in his face. "They're called Digimon," he replied simply. "Living beings made of computer data that were thrust into my life about six months ago. I couldn't even hope to count the number of your battle droids that they have taken out, individually as well as between them, but they have been fighting alongside me and my friends for a very long time, in helping to defeat you."

"Is that so?" Sidious asked, his voice getting dangerously low, as Anakin felt fresh waves of anger peeling off him at this revelation. "All four of them?"

This time it was Anakin's turn to blink? "Four?" he asked.

"Yes, four," Sidious snapped. "The giant, green machine, the giant rabbit creature, the yellow fox who merged with the girl to become a shaman and that giant missile-throwing wolf back on Tython."

"Missile-throwing wolf?" Anakin blinked. "You mean Numa and Gabumon managed to digivolve again?"

_Sounds like more than that,_ Lopmon cried, and Anakin could feel the elation coming off the brown bunny. _Sounds to me like they managed to biomerge somehow. Neither Garurumon nor WereGarurumon can throw missiles._

Sidious simply looked bewildered at the word 'digivolve.' So Anakin merely said, "Well, the wolf is a newer addition, but the other three have been around for a long time, yes. They have the ability to assume a variety of forms, and have been hindering your plans ever since they were thrown into our universe from out of their own. A smaller form of the big, green machine was the one who overheard Ventress, Grievous and Dooku talking about you and alerted us to your existence after your forces captured my Padawan."

"Oh?" Sidious growled, clutching the back of his chair and beginning to tremble slightly such was the anger that was rippling up through his body.

"Oh yes," nodded Anakin. "And it was that same form who also overheard San Hill and Nute Gunray talking about how you got Grievous to join your ranks and told him about it. Then he and Aayla were the ones who were able to get him to join us against you?"

"Yes, I was going to ask about that," Sidious snarled, having seen the battle between Grievous and Dooku on another holocam.

"And as for the giant rabbit," Anakin smirked. "She's the one who foiled Passel Argente's attempts to re-create the Blue Shadow Virus and then it was her, and not Barriss, who managed to convince the Wookiee, Chewbacca, to join our group and then got the whole Wookiee Army to turn against you."

"Really?" Sidious hissed.

"And the yellow fox," Anakin chuckled, enjoying himself as he effectively taunted Sidious. "Well, she's probably the one who's done the most to foil your plans. She helped Aayla take back Christophsis, which is where they first met, then she's the one who enchanted the Acklay and made them into intelligent creatures. She's the one who initially befriended the Zillo Beast, while the other two managed to take on and defeat it, and then, to top it all off, she was the invisible being who you sensed in the basement of 500 Republica, and therefore the one who discovered who you really are, Sidious."

"That was her?" Palpatine's eyes shot open in shock and rage. "I was led to believe that that was Bane."

"Bane lied," Anakin shrugged. "He does that. No, it was the fox, Renamon, who was there when you took your hood off. And I should mention that she has a special mind-link with the other two, so the instant that she knew who you were, so did they, even though they were with us on Ryloth right across the Galaxy. They were able to tell us straight away and that's how we got the word out about you being a Sith Lord. The word was being spread around even while you were still locked in combat with Bane."

Sidious said nothing this time, but his eye was beginning to twitch and spasm as if his anger was taking control of his facial features and distorting them. All of the unanswered questions he'd had with regards to the Jedi knowing things that they couldn't possibly know had been answered in one fell swoop and right now, he was beginning to think that he had never been angrier in his entire life. He hadn't even come close to being this angry before.

"And…" he said slowly through gritted teeth. "Why was I never informed about any of this, Anakin?" he asked.

Anakin chuckled again. "Express orders from the Council," he replied. "It was their decision to turn the Digimon into our secret weapon to win the war against the Separatists. At first I was reluctant to keep the information from you, as well as the rest of the Senate and, indeed, from everyone else, but I decided to see if it had any effect. And when I saw how well the Digimon fought against the Separatists, and how each and every time the Separatists didn't expect them and paid the price for it, I saw that the Council was right and my reluctance vanished. But hey," he grinned. "No hard feelings right?"

Sidious could practically feel his insides slowly being set on fire such was the wrath that was building up inside him. This was not how this was supposed to go. He was the one supposed to be feeling better while Anakin was the one getting angrier, but instead it was completely the opposite way around. He felt a complete fool, and he even felt inadequate compared to the Jedi now. He had thought the fact he had been able to deceive them and keep his Sith identity a secret from them was impressive beforehand.

But the secret with the Jedi had been keeping from him seemed even greater. They had covered all bases and used every opportunity, and they had brought his plans to the brink of collapse. Now, Anakin and his team, which was over twice as large as he had even known it to be, was here and the only thing standing between them and victory was himself.

It could not be further from the grand victory that he had been edging towards for well over a decade.

He felt like he was going to burst inside, like his internal organs were going to explode. This was like the closest thing to a coronary that he was ever going to get. It almost felt like the Force itself was the only thing preventing him from getting a brain aneurysm. His blood boiled, the veins in his eyes standing out against the whites and his fingers flexing on the back of the chair.

He let loose with a sudden scream that tore through the office and could be heard practically halfway across the entire building, like a giant wounded animal in its death throes. The air pulsed around him and Anakin immediately took up a stance, activating the lightsaber in his hand and getting ready to defend himself against anything with Sidious threw at him.

That something turned out to be the entire desk, ripped from the floor and tossed across the room and towards the door. Anakin's eyes shot open in astonishment and he bounded backwards and out of the door, the desk crashing into the frame with such force that the whole structure splintered and several fragments shot out into the corridor and right for Anakin. The Chosen One raised his arms and used the Force to divert the debris to either side of him, while simultaneously grabbing the desk before it could fall and crush the two unconscious Senate Guards.

He then bounded back forwards and slammed the desk with a hefty kick, knocking it backwards into the room and swiping outwards with the Force to send it spinning back towards Sidious. With a flick of his wrist, the Sith Lord sent the desk spiralling over his head instead of slamming into him. It slammed into the duraglass window instead, and while the window might be tough, the desk was moving at such speed and with such strength that it smashed straight through it and show outwards, spiralling towards the ground far, far below.

Anakin stepped back into the room and twirled his blade in readiness. He was rather surprised when he spotted Sidious with his hands over his face and trembling in a position that made him look like he was crying. But Anakin could hear the grinding teeth and the low snarling that suggested otherwise.

And then Palpatine shot back upwards, his arms flexing out to his side and his fingers curling into claws out by his side lifting his head into the air and letting loose a sound that you might normally expect to hear in a prehistoric jungle. He'd gone so high-pitched that he almost sounded like an Acklay. Then his head snapped down and his eyes bored into Anakin's own. Anakin was taken aback when he saw that Sidious' irises had gone bright yellow.

It was shocking just how evil that made him look. Senator Chuchi also had yellow eyes, but you would never think for a moment that she was a bad person just to look at her, as her features were kindly and gentle. But with Sidious, the effect was very different. It made him look almost like a monster, especially when you combined the fact that those eyes were set in a wrinkled face that was twisted with rage, teeth bared in a primeval snarl.

Anakin could feel the Dark Side washing over him with such power he almost staggered backwards. He knew what was going on. It felt the same as he himself had when he had gone berserk on Tatooine and killed off the entire tribe of Sand People that had killed his mother, only on an even larger scale.

This was called Force-fury… a Dark Side technique that enabled its user to tap into an amplify his own anger by almost tenfold and then draw stupendous amounts of power from it, and Sidious had just activated the technique within himself. And he had been overflowing with such anger, that his power reserves suddenly felt practically bottomless.

Anakin, on the other hand, knew that he could not allow the Dark Side to intimidate him. If it did, then he would start to lose the will to battle and his conviction, and so his movements would slow and Sidious would get the upperhand. And there was no way that Anakin was going to let that happen, no matter how much power Sidious poured at him.

Nevertheless, he couldn't help but feel slightly tense. Suddenly, the idea of making Sidious ridiculously angry didn't seem like such a good one anymore.

Sidious wrist flexed and a lightsaber hilt appeared out of his sleeve. Anakin wondered if he had kept it there at all times when he had sat down to have his private conversations with the man, but he banished those thoughts from his mind as Sidious activated the red blade.

_Courage, Anakin,_ Aayla shouted. _You can do this._

_He's just one big bully!_ Suzie agreed. _I know you can take him, Uncle Anakin._

_His evil is unnatural,_ Rika put in.

_Go get him, Master,_ Ahsoka cheered. _Give me an early birthday present!_

_Momentai._

_HENRY!_

_What?_

Unaware of the little debate going on in Anakin's head, Sidious snarled and said, "Well, Anakin. You have come this far. Let's see if you can go the full distance. Now you shall find yourself facing a _Master_ Sith Lord, not just the apprentice. I believe you will find me a far more difficult opponent than you realise.

"Bring it!" Anakin challenged.

Sidious brought it.

He launched himself into the air, an unnatural scream ripping out of his mouth as he spiralled towards Anakin. The young man could feel his body seize up under the Force scream attack, but he promptly flooded his body with the Force to break the effect and spiralled out of the way as Sidious slashed through the air where he had just been twice in quick succession. Anakin wheeled around to counterattack, but Sidious' blade was there to meet his with shocking ease and Anakin was forced to leap back again, with his blade flashing as he desperately struck two more slashes to him aside.

He backed off quickly, realising that the battle had started off on the wrong foot already, but Sidious pressed the attack, hurling a huge Force-push that was almost like a physical wall outwards that crashing into Anakin and sent him thudding back into the wall, shoulders-first. Anakin rolled to the ground and leapt up as Sidious slashed twice through the wall behind him and whipped around with a whirl of his robes to drive his blade down towards Anakin with barely a pause.

Anakin caught the strike on the base of his blade and successfully pushed Palpatine backwards flipping into the air to bring his lightsaber smashing down towards Sidious' head and the moment his lightsaber touched Sidious' deflecting one he swerved backwards and twirling his sword into an upwards stab. Sidious' span about and knocked Anakin's blade aside, and plunged himself back around, but Anakin stuck his blade up into the air to catch the strike and lashed out with his own Force-push.

Sidious went flying back across the room, but he snarled in mid-air and threw another Force-push behind him at the wall, slowing him down and then hurling him back the other way before he touched the wall and before he even hit the floor. Startled, Anakin only just managed to save himself by dropping flat onto his back and rolling to the side. Sidious sailed overhead and his blade skimmed into the ground next to Anakin's head, as the Sith Lord flipped back over onto his feet.

Anakin bounded up and fled the length of the office, trying to earn a reprieve from the sudden aggressiveness of the Emperor for a moment. Sidious snarled and dashed off in pursuit, his lightsaber carving viciously through the air with each stride. Anakin gritted his teeth as he leapt up to push himself off the wall and slam himself into Sidious, lightsabers locking to push him away slightly, and then attacked with a flurry of his own blows, crashing two up near Sidious' head and curving down to sweep around his feet. To his extreme dismay, Sidious turned that shots aside with frustrating ease, so Anakin upped the ante and hurled a huge strike towards the Sith Lord's abdomen, adding a considerable burst of the Force to his wing in the hopes of at least sending him flying across the room.

Sidious did nothing of the kind. Instead, he caught the blow and didn't budge an inch. Anakin only had a moment to register his surprise before Sidious suddenly pulled away and span his blade like a rotor, striking towards Anakin at three different heights on each side of his body at almost the same time.

Anakin flattened his back against the wall to avoid the first couple of strikes and swung his lightsaber with speed so blinding that he was barely aware of his own movements to counter the other three, before he ducked under the next one and threw himself forwards to ram Sidious with one shoulder. The Sith Lord grunted at the physical attack, but even as he went stumbling backwards, he seized Anakin by the neck in one hand and dragged him after him, hurling him past him to go tumbling across the room.

Anakin pushed himself up, gasping. Sidious had surprisingly strong hands considering how gnarled they looked. He looked up again to see Sidious bearing down on him and slashing downwards with a hugely powerful lightsaber slash. Anakin was able to roll over and parry it, but it was a close thing and the sheer force of the blow began to push him down into the floor. Sidious leaned his face down to leer at him, yellow eyes flashing and obviously enjoying the fact that he was now in the position of power.

The floored Jedi hurriedly lashed out with the Force to pummel Sidious in the stomach and rolled aside so the red lightsaber fell the rest of the way and plunged into the floor, while Anakin flipped back onto his feet, twirling his blade as he readied himself for the next assault. He hurriedly tried to distract the Sith, by grabbing several of the wall lamps with the Force and wrenching them off the wall while Sidious jumped into the air again. The lamps swept forwards and cannoned into Sidious' back, knocking him off balance for a moment.

But the Emperor recovered quickly and threw himself to the side in mid-air, avoiding Anakin's slash. Anakin span around and struck out to his side with blinding speed with three tremendous strokes. Sidious seemed to block the first two almost effortlessly and leant back so that the next one scythed right before his eyes, not even blinking as he countered with a powerful slash to the neck before he launched forwards with a stab.

Anakin ducked under the first attack, but a small clump of his hair was sheared off by the incredibly fast strike. He almost fell onto his backside but he just managed to throw up his blade in time to catch the tip of Sidious' blade and push it past him instead, backwards rolling back onto his feet before Sidious could retaliate and then thrusting both hands forwards with a massive wave of the Force, with intent to throw Sidious across the room and earn himself a break at the very least.

This time, at least, it seemed to work, but Sidious hit the far wall like some kind of lizard and flipped off to land in a crouch. He looked up with eyes so narrow that Anakin could barely see the yellow irises, and then he flung out one hand and white lightning blazed out of his fingertips and streaked towards Anakin.

Anakin had been preparing himself for something like this, but Sidious' lightning strike was _huge, _far bigger than anything that Dooku had ever thrown at him, or possibly his life. Anakin's eyes shot open as the air filled with lightning and he swiftly brought up his lightsaber to block the attack. The lightning streamed into the blade and fizzled out like normal, but it struck with such Force that Anakin was hurled backwards through the air and slammed into the far corner. He gripped his blade with both hands as he strove to keep the continuous stream of lightning at bay, feeling his shoulders being pushed further and further into the wall behind him as the attack kept up.

Sidious cackled as he slowly walked across the office, the lightning continued to stream from his fingertips as he moved. "Oh, do you see now, Anakin?" he asked. "Do you see how truly powerful the Dark Side is? Do you finally see how powerful you could become if you were to join me on my quest to destroy the weakling Jedi Order?"

"Your words aren't going to have an effect on me, Sith!" Anakin declared as he pushed backwards against the lightning stream, only to have himself pushed backwards again his own lightsaber being pushed closer to his face. He was already beginning to sweat at the strain of holding Sidious at bay.

Sidious sneered. "Foolish, Anakin. Just imagine how many of your friends you could save if you had power like this. How many of them you could protect if you had the powers I wield. The Jedi Order would never let you reach your full potential. But the Sith – we will rule supreme! And you can use the power to change this universe! Make it safe! For your friends?"

"You care nothing for my friends!" Anakin spat. "You won't coerce me! Not in a hundred millennia, and not even after that!"

Sidious shook his head. "All your friends, Anakin. Your Master, Kenobi. Your Padawan, Tano. Your team-mates… Secura, Offee, those Digimon creatures. All of them would be safe for all eternity if you joined the Dark Side."

The mention of his friends seemed to spur Anakin forwards a little and he suddenly pushed himself backwards, forcing himself a couple of steps away from the wall. Sidious snarled, but Anakin suddenly rolled to the side and slid his lightsaber out of the lightning stream so it shot past him instead. Then he dashed forwards and Sidious was forced to duck under his next swing, which carried Anakin around and allowed him to bring up his foot to sweep kick Sidious in the chest and send him stumbling.

As Sidious recovered his balance, Anakin crashed his blade down on his and locked them there, using his weight advantage over the older man to push him back. "Like hell I could!" he said, with conviction. "For one thing, if I became your apprentice, you would never spare Aayla! You hate her too much – she's done too much stuff to ruin your plans. You'd never spare the Digimon either! You'd consider them too powerful and therefore a threat to you. And Ahsoka, Obi-Wan and Barriss? They'd be no safer with you than the others."

Both he and Palpatine suddenly thrust out at one another with the Force a split second after each other, so both of them ended up being catapulted backwards and flung towards opposite walls, where they crashed into it painfully. Anakin pushed himself up quickly and added, "You'll never break me, Sidious, and not just because I refuse. I know for a fact that they would never forgive me either, and as long as I have them to guide me, I will never go wrong."

Sidious chuckled and said, "But they aren't here, Anakin."

"Oh yes, they are," Anakin smirked triumphantly, and tapped his own head with one knuckle. "Remember how I said the Digimon have a mind-link with each other. Well, we four Jedi were able to grow close enough to them to form a mind-link of our own. They're all watching this fight through my eyes, Emperor! They see what I see and know what I feel and think. As long as they are nearby, they will steer me the right way. And there is nothing you can do to change that."

Sidious' eyes had widened with that little speech. More questions about how the group had managed to co-ordinate their assault on both Coruscant and Senate Building so well had suddenly been answered. He now realised that Anakin was right! With the pure minds of Aayla, Ahsoka and Barriss, as well of those Digimon, merging with Anakin's own, nothing he said would ever have any impact. They would be there, in Anakin's head, making their own views on Sidious' words perfectly clear the moment they had left his mouth.

Converting Anakin now was a lost cause. There was simply nothing he could do. Sidious had hoped that changing Anakin to the Dark Side of the Force at the last minute would solve everything and lead to him switching the situation around and back in his favour.

But now, that solution was out of his reach.

There was one solution left.

Anakin would have to die!

They would all have to die!

They WOULD die!

Sidious delved back down into his Force-fury and hurled himself forwards and back across the room once more, his teeth bared and his eyes blazing as he sought to finish Anakin off once and for all. Anakin ran forwards to meet him and rolled to the side to avoid the first strike and then slashed at Sidious' back, but the Sith Lord span around to block the attack.

But he did more than just block it, Anakin was startled when his lightsaber was jerked out of his hand by Sidious' own and flung across the room. He instinctively sprang backwards, which was the only reason he managed to save himself from the spinning slashes that Sidious sent at him right afterwards, and then the Sith Lord hit Anakin with a Force push so powerful that he went hurtling back out of the Office door and crashed down the corridor.

Anakin pushed himself upwards quickly to see Sidious hurtling towards the door, his hand crackling with more electricity as he prepared to hurl it towards the defenceless Anakin. But the Chosen One was quick to respond and grabbed the two senseless, red-robed Senate Guards still on the floor across the doorway and flung them across the room, hitting Sidious in the front of his legs and sending him tripping onto the ground.

Anakin scrambled back upwards and dashed back towards the door, just as Sidious looked up and threw the Force-lightning with incredible power straight through the open doorway. Anakin hurled himself to the ground in desperation, rolling underneath the lightning blast as it crashed into the far wall and reaching the doorframe in a ball. He hurriedly summoned his fallen lightsaber back to him with the Force before Sidious could figure out what was going on and thrust it upwards into the lightning stream.

This time, he managed to hold firm as he pushed himself back to his feet and forced himself back into the room, while Sidious also climbed back up without relinquishing the attack. Anakin hurriedly threw himself into a rolling jump that carried him out of the lightning stream, kicking off from the wall with one kick to sail towards Sidious once again.

Sidious snarled and vaulted backwards as Anakin's blade crashed into the floor. The young Jedi quickly tried to stab upwards and catch Sidious off guard, but the Sith rolled around him and slashed at him again, while Anakin span with him and attempted to retaliate, blades crashing together once more.

The two of them then began to trade blows between them, neither one allowing their feet to leave the spots where they had planted them. Anakin managed to get in a good deal of strikes but he ultimately found himself on the defence again. Sidious' eyes were blazing out of his sockets as he slashed twice for Anakin's midriff, up towards his head and then down towards his waist, back to the head once again and then tried for a stab to the chest and a sweep to the waist. Anakin was able to turn them all aside or dodge them but it was a very close thing several times, his lightsaber fizzling in complaint every time it crashed against one of Sidious' own strikes.

Eventually, Anakin did manage to get in a successful strike, though it wasn't the fatal lightsaber slash he was hoping for. It was crude and he knew it, but he managed to catch Sidious' strike to his neck and push his lightsaber aside and to the left, curling his right and metallic hand into a fist and hurling it forwards to slam the Emperor across his jawline. Sidious let loose a strangled gasp at the sudden pain and withdrew and Anakin immediately twirled for his torso, but to his annoyance, Sidious was still able to block him.

Nevertheless, he immediately retaliated with the Force that was designed to send the Sith Lord flying backwards across the rook again. However, Sidious lashed out with his own hand before he'd been thrown two feet and pummelled through Anakin's Force attack to send the Chosen One rolling backwards as he skidded to a stop on his feet and launched another huge flash of Force-lightning directly at him.

Anakin hurled himself to the side and rolled over on his shoulders as the Force-lightning hit the ground directly next to him with such force that a huge chunk was ripped out of the floor. One particularly large piece was grabbed by Anakin and hurled at Sidious before he dashed after it with lightsaber at the ready.

But Sidious slashed through the debris with ease and blocked Anakin's slash even more easily. Anakin growled in annoyance and leapt back, spinning around himself to slash twice at Palpatine neck extremely hard, and when that failed to have much of an adverse effect, he violently stabbed his lightsaber upwards to try and gut the slippery Sith Lord. When that failed to work as well and Anakin was forced to parry a pair of swift shots to the hips, he swung powerfully from down low in an attempt to hit the Emperor upside the chin.

As the two blades clashed against each other again, Anakin felt the presence of the rest of his team in his mind, warning him that he was beginning to get more erratic and needed to maintain his control. He realised they were right and hurried tried to back away and recuperate, but Sidious' Force-lightning flashed out again and Anakin was only just able to block, thrown across the room once again by the powerful Lightning-burst.

Anakin crashed into the wall again, but as he pushed himself upwards, he was suddenly lifted into the air like a puppet on a string and slammed violently into the wall twice in rapid succession, bruising the back of his head and knocking the wind out of him, before his windpipe was seized and closed by an invisible grip which meant he couldn't draw any more air back in again. He was pressed against the wall, limbs splayed and choking, as Sidious approached him, preparing another hand of lightning.

Sidious' Force-fury was really taking its toll on Anakin. The Chosen One was being overwhelmed and he knew it, and now he was pinned against the wall as one of his old mentors prepared an attack that would almost certainly be lethal if it came into contact with him. Sidious was fast… faster than Anakin had ever anticipated, and he was seriously beginning to wonder if his friends were wrong. Could he really win this?

His friends immediately applied a mental hammer to that thought and squashed it flat, and Anakin's eyes snapped open. As Sidious hurled the Force-lightning, the Force spilled out of Anakin's body with tremendous strength as his determination to succeed and free the Galaxy skyrocketed. Sidious' mental grip on Anakin was immediately ripped to shreds and Anakin used the wall to spring up and into the air, shooting straight over Sidious' lightning blast and falling towards him with blade held high.

_Master!_ Ahsoka yelled. _Remember the plan!_

Anakin mentally nodded in return and swung his blade down. Sidious relinquished his lightning attack and raised to block, Anakin's weight carrying both of them backwards several metres as the strained against each other, doing their best to overpower one another.

Quite by accident, Anakin's foot slammed down on Sidious' own during the straining match. Sidious yelled at the sudden weight pressed on his toes and then snarled, thrusting backwards with all the strength he possessed, including a powerful Force-push that flung Anakin back over where his desk had previously been and towards the smashed window. Anakin hurriedly plunged his blade downwards and into the floor as he sailed towards the open gap, his progress slowed thanks to the traction.

It didn't stop him from sailing through the gap the desk had made and plummeting downwards. He flipped himself over through the air and fell towards a platform not far below the window. He actually landed on the desk which had slammed out of the window in the first place and somehow landed right-side up, albeit cracked and severely damaged. He looked up towards the window and readied his lightsaber, waiting for the inevitable.

Sidious stepped up to the edge of the window and looked down at him, growling in annoyance when he saw that Anakin hadn't fallen as far as he would have hoped. He roared and flung a powerful lightning blast downwards, a huge one that practically lit up the side of the entire building, even though it was still only around mid-day. Anakin bounced upwards in a huge leap, the lightning crashing into the remnants of the desk and exploding it into splinters.

Anakin threw out a hand and turned it into a fist, hooking Sidious with a Force-pull and yanking him out of the window-frame and down towards him, swinging with his lightsaber as he peaked and Sidious drew level with him. Sidious countered with his own blade and the two shoved each other, flinging themselves apart so they came to rest on either side of the platform.

There was a couple of moments of silence as they stared each other down, but Sidious was not about to wait for very long and sent another massive burst of Force-lightning in Anakin's direction, which blazed across the platform at an extremely high velocity. Anakin sprang to the side and kicked off the wall to fly over the top of it and dash in to swipe at Sidious' midsection. He was turned aside and the platform beneath him was slashed through several times as he hurled himself over Sidious' head to clash at his other side, then backed off to thrown an empty fuel container at the Sith Lord instead.

Sidious grabbed the fuel container out of the air with the Force and clenched his fist, flattening the container to a mere pulp in a split second, slashing it in half and then sending it flying backwards at Anakin. The young Jedi whirled around the first half and cut through the second, only to find Sidious' blade cutting for his face. A quick defence saved his life, but the enraged Sidious flung him into the air and almost carried him straight off the platform.

Anakin knew that battling on such a small space with someone as equipped with the Force as Sidious was a bad idea. There was little room to move, even less than there was in the office itself, and it was only a matter of time before he got flung off the edge to plummet down, possibly to his death if they were high enough. Besides, he needed to get to an area with more space to move as quickly as he could for other reasons too.

And he knew exactly where he needed to go.

Up.

Lifting the remains of the desk into the air with the Force, Anakin flung them at Palpatine and dashed to the side as the Sith Lord blocked the projectiles and sent them flinging backwards. A blast of Force-lightning slammed the ground just under Anakin's feet and tossed him into the air, but he just rolled and kept going, heading for the wall with Sidious in hot pursuit. Anakin bounded up into the small ledge that would be too high up for most people to reach and too small for most to balance on and then repeated the process, scaling the almost vertical surface of the wall as fast as he could.

He was not a Jedi for nothing. The smallest bits of building that stuck out or indeed in could be used as a foothold of some description, and Anakin's blade flashed by his side as he moved. And, as he did and once he reached the broken window again, he glanced off to the left, his eyes focusing on the wall on the other side of it.

He nodded almost imperceptibly to the small, gangly looking creature that was pressed against the wall like some sort of lizard, have fit himself into a ridiculously small gap that even _he_ looked too large to fill, his mottled skin allowing him to blend into the shadows as he held on with two feet and one hand, while the other hand was holding a holocam and pointing it directly at Anakin.

Anakin knew if he hadn't known Seripas was going to be nearby then he would have missed him completely, but he had been casting about with his mind for Seripas' signal to find out if he was in position or not and sure enough, there he was, almost invisible against the wall. He was so steady that he actually took his other hand off the wall and gave Anakin a quick thumbs up before he placed it back on again.

Sidious was glaring straight up at Anakin, evidently far too angry and focused on his target to sense that there was another person watching them. And Anakin had no intention of blowing Seripas' cover, so he immediately started to make his way back up again. Sidious let loose a rasping scream of fury and then crouched down, before exploding upwards with an enormous Force-jump powered by all the rage that was welling up inside the Imperial Sith Lord.

Anakin looked down upon hearing it and balked when he spotted Sidious flying straight up towards him without using any of the handholds and rearing his lightsaber back to strike him off the wall. Anakin grabbed the wall with one hand and hauled himself into a flip that brought his legs up until he was upside-down, lashing down with his blade to catch Sidious' strike and then pushing upwards again and continuing to scale the wall in a series of steady jumps.

Sidious landed on the wall nearby and began to scale after the Chosen One, blasting upwards with another hand of Force-lightning which Anakin dodged by bounding out of the way while the wall beneath him was completely vaporised. Sidious growled and then tried a Force-pull, attempting to pull Anakin down to meet his doom as he fell past.

This seemed to have more effect and Anakin was jerked from his perch, but he had the forethought to plunge his lightsaber into the wall to slow his progress as he found another foothold and swing down with one foot to kick Sidious in the nose and almost knock him off himself. He then bounded back up the last few metres and onto the sloping roof, using the Force to help him grip as he dashed up it to a less steep surface, with Sidious right behind him.

Eventually, Anakin whirled around and came to a stop on the more even slop near the top of the building. Sidious drew to a stop below him, giving Anakin the higher ground, although not by much.

"This ends now, Sidious," Anakin declared. "Do you agree? No more running away, from either one of us."

"Oh, I agree," Sidious sneered. "But you will regret it!"

And he bounded upwards to lock blades with Anakin again, completely unaware of the little brown-skinned Bounty Hunter that was crouched on the roof below and to the left, filming everything that was going on.

* * *

The rest of the Jedi had managed to gather by this point until they were all outside the communication centre, which was now doorless since Barriss had cut her way back in. Embo and Rumi were not present, having decided to stay with the body of their former comrade, Sugi… but the rest of them were all there, including Commander Thire and many of his men, who were all milling about in confusion.

They knew they were supposed to be attacking the Jedi, but now they were pretty much stumped as to who the good guys and bad guys actually were, because Ahsoka had helped Thire to carry the clone that Ventress had wounded to his place where Barriss had immediately healed him, while the present Senators had immediately spoken up in support of the Jedi.

Grievous had also arrived a short time ago, and the clones had been all but ready to shoot him, but when Aayla told them to lower their guns, they found themselves doing it, completely bewildered.

But it was at this point that Artoo's head suddenly rotated around and he whistled shrilly, wobbling back and forth in excitement with his scomp link still attached to the machinery. The astromech immediately drew all attention, and Ahsoka cried, "Artoo says he's gotten through. He's hacked through into the Senate Building's mainframe at last!"

"Must have been a lot of security for him to override," Barriss murmured.

"Yeah, well, nobody can beat Artoo when it comes to this kind of thing," Ahsoka chuckled.

"Well, come on then," said a new voice, and the rest of them turned around to see a de-digivolved Renamon bounding around the corner, Rika hooked under one arm in a rather undignified fashion and Bane rocketing in on his boots afterwards. "Let's do what we all came here to do!"

"Bane?" Chuchi blinked. "When did you get here?"

"That's for me to know, Senator," Bane smirked. "I like make mysterious entrances after all. Adds to the effect of the job."

"Relax, troopers," Aayla raised a hand as the clones lifted their blasters to point at the Bounty Hunter. "Bane here is an ally, as much as Grievous."

"General Secura, what _is_ going on?" Thire asked. "Can somebody tell me the whole story?"

"Just listen to the broadcast," Aayla smiled. "You'll learn the truth soon enough. Alright then, let's do this. Artoo, don't forget to transmit the information to the transmitter on Tython. Let's hope that it wasn't damaged into the attack and let's hope we're not too late for most of them."

Artoo whistled in acknowledgement and began to activate the transmission, sending out a signal to every monitor and transmitter across the planet, and an extra one across space towards Tython.

"Are you ready, Padmé?" Bail asked from behind the camera.

"No," Padmé replied.

"Action!" Bail said anyway, as they began to broadcast the message.

Artoo twiddled the scomp link once more, transmitting the data he was receiving from the holocam attached to his back into the feed.

* * *

Outside, Cherubimon and Godzillo were standing firm, rearing up to their full heights as the Empire reinforcements backed away, no longer that determined to get close to the giant creatures, as everything they had thrown at them had not left scratches on either of them, not after a few seconds anyway. They knew they were supposed to be going to help at the Senate, but they had already lost a huge number of men to both of them and were not keen to lose any more.

And then things got worse for them when MegaGargomon dropped out of the sky, still smoking slightly from his plunge through the atmosphere and landed heavily on a nearby building. The giant robot creature drew more stares from the people who had yet to hear about the battle going on in space, but Mega made no move to attack. He just glanced across to his equally large sister and gave her a nod, both of them knowing that their fighting was about to come to an end.

Godzillo seemed to know something was happening as well, because he was no longer blindly attacking the clones. And then, sure enough, there was a fizzling noise from within the city as every single transmitter flared into life. Pictures and holograms of Senator Amidala began to appear everywhere, even on smaller personal communicators of each of the clones.

* * *

Across the Galaxy, on Tython, the story was the same. The battling between the two opposing factions was still raging on, with roaring Wookiees, blasing droids and the usual shrieks from Zarza as the Varactyl continued to plunge along the battlefield, often flanked by a pair of ravenous Acklay. Commanders Bly and Fox had managed to stop a lot of the fighting, but there was still a lot of Empire clones still battling for the cause they believed in.

But everything came to an abrupt standstill when the holotransmitter that Anakin had used at the start of the battle to deliver a message to the clones flared into life once again. Aayla's own faithful astromech, R4-G9, stood beside it with his own scomp link firmly planted in, twiddling it around to boost the reception and turn up the volume, making the holographic resolution clearer and causing Padmé's voice to boom out across the battlefield.

"Citizens of the Empire," she said without pause, perfectly composed and deadly serious. "Loyal clone troopers. Friends. Those of you who are on Coruscant, will have, by now, heard of the strange events regarding the giant creatures which have appeared on the plant today, and are preventing our men from getting close to the Senate Building. I am here now to tell you exactly what is going on. But not just about the events of today, but about the deception which we have _all_ fallen victim to, over the years.

"As you well know, we were recently involved in the Clone Wars against the Separatists, who were led by the Sith, and who brought untold devastation to anyone and everyone who stood against them, and even many millions more who didn't. You all know this. You've all lived in fear of being attacked for months on end, and yet when we finally think we have found a reprieve and that the fighting will soon come to an end – what happens?

"I'll tell you what happened. Our esteemed Chancellor Palpatine suddenly seemed to counter everything which we believed in in the course of a single day. The Jedi, whom we trusted with our very existence, were suddenly declared traitors. The Sith, who have caused untold butchery across the entire Galaxy, were suddenly pardoned and sided with our Chancellor. And the Chancellor himself put an end to our Republic, our very day of life, and declared that we were now to become an Empire.

"Most of you are probably confused, and you have every right to be. But before I explain the real truth to you, I will say this. An Empire is not the way we deserve to live our lives. It might sound like a good idea for the purposes of keeping you safe at first, but it will not remain that way. Palpatine would have the final say in all Galactic matters. He would have the power of life and death over everybody. Freedom of speech and freedom itself would be utterly eliminated with time.

"And with thought in mind, I will tell you the truth. You will not like. Few of you will believe it. Many of you will think it to be downright ridiculous. But we have the proof, and as soon as I explain my accusations, we will show it to you.

"And my accusation is this… Emperor Palpatine has suddenly let the Sith join us, because he is a Sith Lord himself. He always has been, even before he became our Chancellor. The face we have always seen, smiling out at us and complementing the efforts of the Jedi and the clones have all been lies. A front to fool us all and it worked. Believe me, people – the Emperor used to be my friend and one of my most trusted of advisors, so it is far from easy for me to make this declaration."

She had been right. Many of the people were staring at each other now with expressions that indicated their complete bewilderment. The idea of Palpatine being a Sith was completely ludicrous.

On the other hand… it would explain a thing or two.

And despite their misgivings, everybody was still listening to what Padmé was saying with a growing sense of dread. This Senator was well known for being one of the first to try and speak up for peace and for the people, and she had never been involved in any of the darker rumour-mills regarding politicians.

"Palpatine's alias is Darth Sidious," Padmé explained. "He has been manipulating both sides of the war with the ultimate goal of killing the Jedi and becoming the ruler of the Galaxy. He has succeeded with that second stage, but he has yet to achieve the first. Our loyal clone soldiers were bred on his orders to be the Jedi's backstabbers, though many have broken away from the Empire when they learned this fact. The subjugation of the universe will ultimately be what he wants!

"But there is hope on the horizon. This strange attack on our planet is the work of the Jedi, most specifically the A-Team. The giant creatures have been keeping reinforcements away to allow the Jed to accomplish their goal and finish the Sith for good. To all clones, I implore you to lay down your weapons. Enough of you have died today, fighting for a cause you fought against for many months. They will not attack you if you do not attack them first.

"And now, people. I will provide you with the proof. Live footage, of former Jedi hero Anakin Skywalker fighting against the man you believed was only a politician.

Mon Mothma tapped Artoo on the head and he whistled and shut down the feed to the holocam, extending a small dish from out the top of his head and spinning it to pick up the signal from the camera clutched in the hands of Seripas.

Sure enough, outside, the holograms of Padmé were replaced by the flashing images of Anakin and Sidious, locked in lightsaber combat. The citizens of Coruscant gasped in shock as they beheld the two of them trading a flurry of blows between them. Blows that only Force-users and specialised droids would be capable of pulling off. Lightsabers clashed and flashed and then, the ultimate clincher, Palpatine fired lightning out of his fingers which Anakin blocked with his lightsaber.

Those citizens who had enough technical knowledge about holograms knew that this couldn't be fake. It would take weeks to create something as convincing as this… weeks that they had not had. It had to be real! Palpatine was using Sith powers and was actually proving to be more than a match for Anakin Skywalker himself, fending him off and beating him backwards with violent slashes of his blade.

On Tython, Commander Stone and the rest of the remaining Empire clones were staring in disbelief at the hologram. Then, one by one they dropped their weapons to the floor as their arms went numb, eyes wide beneath their helmets. All activity on Tython ceased. The Jedi lowered their blades, the Wookiees, Gungans, clones and droids lowered their various weapons, Zarza and the Acklay settled down on their haunches and ZeedGarurumon's cannons powered down.

Obi-Wan bit his lip as he stared at the hologram. The battle of Tython was over, and they all knew it – the clones of the Empire had been hit with the undeniable proof that they _were_ fighting for the enemy. As the rebel clones moved in to comfort their horrified brothers, Obi-Wan stretched out with his feelings to the Force.

_Come on, Anakin,_ he thought. _You have to do this! Only you can!_

And on Coruscant, the people were getting angry! How dare he? How dare that man deceive them all for so many years and needlessly bring so much suffering and despair upon their Galaxy! What right did he have to decide who lived and who died like this! They had not suffered through so much to have the Sith rule their Galaxy, that would be just as bad as losing.

Sidious fought on, unaware that his own Empire was crumbling under his feet, as the people began to chant one word, over and over again:-

"SKYWALKER! SKYWALKER! SKYWALKER! SKYWALKER!"

* * *

And I believe that is the best way to end this chapter. I hoped you liked it everybody. Anakin's fight against Sidious is not over yet, and the fate of the whole Galaxy hangs in the balance. It will all end in the next chapter for better or for worse. What will the outcome of the final battle for the universe be?

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Anakin Skywalker continues his battle against Darth Sidious. But he is in trouble. Sidious is so angry that his Force-fury is pushing his powers to phenomenal levels and Anakin keeps getting beaten back. Can he find a way of matching Sidious' strength? Will he finally fulfil his destiny and rid the Galaxy of the most evil man ever to have walked it? The next chapter decides it all.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 209 : The Hero With No Fear**


	209. The Hero With No Fear

The final chapter of the Coruscant Arc is upon us. It is the chapter that most of you will have been waiting for almost the whole story to read if not even longer. It's been building up to this chapter for over two whole years. And for that reason, I hope more than ever, that you guys are not disappointed by what I am giving you to read.

Please read on, and enjoy the show.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 209:- The Hero With No Fear**

* * *

Anakin skidded to a halt on the sloping roof as he was tossed upwards once again, anchoring his feet to the surface as best he could but finding it far more difficult than if he were standing on solid ground. He was beginning to think already that bringing the battling onto the rood might not have been the best idea, but he had needed a place with room to move and this was still probably the best option.

The only problem was that Sidious' skills in combat didn't seem to be diminished in the slightest while on the slope. Anakin flipped aside as the Sith Lord charged in, a series of three spinning strokes decimating the roof beneath Anakin's feet and the blade slewing to the side and just missing Anakin's toes as he hauled them out of the way. Anakin tossed himself back onto his feet, but Sidious was already jumping for him again.

Anakin rolled to the side as the blade slashed downwards and caught aside another couple of strikes to the chest, sweeping his blade over his shoulder to catch a glancing slash towards the hip as he span about once more, and then he hurriedly threw his hand out into a mighty Force-push in the hopes of sending Sidious shooting backwards across the roof and maybe even over the edge.

The only problem was that Palpatine also lashed out with a Force-push at the same time, and so Anakin found himself in the middle of a straining match against him like several of the others had against their own opponents. He gritted his teeth and pushed harder, trying to overpower the Sith's own considerable strength, but Sidious merely smirked and the fingers on his outstretched hand crackled briefly with electricity.

Anakin balked as he realised what was about to happen and attempted to pull back, but he wasn't quick enough and electricity sparked out of Palpatine's hand and lanced up Anakin's arm, causing him to spasm in agony as the excruciating pain crackled through his body. He went keeling over and collapsed onto one hand and knee, and Sidious immediately sent out a huge wave of lightning from both hands to try and hit the momentarily disabled Jedi.

Anakin's head lashed up, a grimace set on his face as he beheld the lightning approaching and he swung up his lightsaber as quickly as he could to catch it. While the blade managed to absorb the blow, Anakin was once again thrown bodily into the air and went flying back across the rooftop as if he had been propelled from some kind of giant trebuchet.

He landed with metallic thud as his shoulder collided with the metal and he rolled up the slope several times, seemingly out of control. But then, his back cracked against something which caused him to cry out in pain as the area he had hit began to throb angrily. Anakin knew that he was going to get a very nasty bruise there before too long.

But when he looked up to see what he had hit, he couldn't see anything at all. His back looked like it was propped up against thin air. He blinked, but it didn't take him long to work out what he had hit, and small smirk appeared on his face as he quickly thought through his next strategy. Ducking to the side, he rolled further up the roof and scrambled to his feet again after a couple of metres, holding his lightsaber at the ready as Sidious came stepping towards him with sinister purpose.

"Come on then!" Anakin shouted challengingly. "I am far from done yet, Sith scum! It's going to take a lot more than that to stop me from ridding the Galaxy of you."

"Thanks for the tip," Sidious growled and he charged forwards, springing into the air and bringing his lightsaber high into the air as he sailed across the gap between them, with the intention of cleaving him down the middle. But when he got within a couple of metres of the Jedi opponent, he suddenly stopped, slamming into something totally invisible and flattening his face against it, breaking his nose in the process.

Sidious gasped and fell backwards, sliding down the roof on his back as he clutched at his face and plunged his lightsaber into the top of the roof to keep himself from slipping too far down it and towards the edge. He looked up in bewilderment and saw Anakin leaping into the air from the spot where he had been standing and landing on something totally invisible for a moment, before he jumped off the other side and landed on the roof again.

Anakin shut his eyes and summoned a vast amount of power into himself, drawing on the Force with a sheer amount of strength that few Jedi could hope to match and then lashing out behind himself with the Force, towards the invisible something. There was a low groaning of metal as the something was lifted slowly into the air, rising above Anakin's head as Sidious pushed himself back up onto his feet.

The Chosen One's eyes snapped back open as Sidious, used the Force to slightly heal his pain-filled nose and he drew his arm backwards as if he were throwing a spear and then brought the same hand pulsing forwards, also as if he were throwing a spear or perhaps a javelin. Sidious heard the whoosh of something heavy moving through the air towards him and his eyes narrowed into slits, lashing out with his hands once again.

There was another groan of metal as whatever Anakin had thrown was stopped in mid-air. Sidious' anger was building and he suddenly wrenched forwards with the Force, closing his hands into claws and creating a horrible rending noise of metal as the invisible projectile began to compress under the sheer pressure that Sidious was putting it under. Sparks flew and suddenly the object became visible. It was the stealth ship which Seripas had parked on top of the roof and evidently its cloaking device had failed under Sidious' attack as its metal hull began to slowly collapse inwards on itself.

The pointed cockpit had almost impaled Sidious between the eyes, but the Sith Lord had managed to catch it just before that could happen.

Anakin gritted his teeth in both annoyance and in momentary amazement at the sheer amount of power that Sidious seemed to possess, but he didn't wait for him to completely finish off the vessel. He dashed forwards and used the slope of the roof to slide down as if he were on a snowboard and batter his lightsaber out towards the Sith. Sidious was forced to whip his own lightsaber back up to catch the attack and he was pushed backwards down the slope with Anakin pressing down on as their sabers locked together.

The stealth ship crashed to the roof behind them and began to slide down after them, no longer able to stand on the uneven surface. Sidious drew back his lightsaber and slashed three times for Anakin's head and then curved down towards his feet before doubling back on himself to cleave for Anakin's waistline. Though Anakin was able to catch or dodge all of these strikes, the last one left him exposed enough for Sidious to throw a huge Force-push at him that carried him back up the rooftop.

Anakin found himself sailing towards the stealth ship and hurriedly twisted himself down to grab it and flip himself over the top of it and to the other side, landing with a stop as the ship barrelled past him and towards the Emperor. Anakin hurled out a hand to add the Force to the equation, hoping to catch Sidious in the front and send him sweeping off the roof to plummet down towards the street far below.

But the exact opposite happened instead, and Anakin suddenly found himself backwards when the stealth ship exploded back up the roof again and towards him, courtesy of a massive blast from the livid Palpatine. In fact, so great was the force of the blow which Sidious gave to the stealth ship that it split into two halves halfway down its flank. And that fact alone actually saved Anakin's life, because while the front end when catapulting upwards into the air and nowhere near him, the other half came shooting straight back towards him.

Anakin dived to the side and only just managed to clear the vessel, the broken end of the ship half whooshing past his back. If the whole ship had gone sailed at him instead, Anakin was pretty sure he would not have reacted in time and been mown flat by it.

Anakin backed up again as Sidious stepped up towards him again, ignoring his broken nose as his robes streamed out around him and not just because of the wind on top of the building blowing it around. The Force seemed to be leaking out of him in profuse amounts such was his extreme anger at this point, his face almost completely unrecognisable from the kind old man that he had once pretended to be.

"A stealth ship, eh?" he sneered. "Ingenious, I have to admit. I suppose I should have guessed that you might try something like that and prepared against it."

"Better luck next time," Anakin replied stiffly, twirling his lightsaber in readiness. "Not that there will be one of course."

Sidious growled and hurled up another power Force Lightning blast in the hopes of throwing Anakin backwards once more and dashing up after it. But this time, Anakin managed to wedge his legs into a couple of small dents in the rooftop created by the tumbling ship so that when the lightning struck he was only sent rolling backwards a couple of feet to spring back onto his feet and bring his lightsaber up to clash against Sidious' once again.

Sidious whirled about and slashed diagonally upwards and then downwards in the opposite direction, forcing Anakin to roll around himself to try and block the strikes and then ducked underneath another sweep of the blade, leaping backwards and letting out a wave of the Force down at Sidious while in mid-air. Sidious threw out his own hand and punched through the attack, leaping upwards to crash his blade against Anakin's once again. Anakin tried to push him off, but Sidious resisted and brought a knee slamming into Anakin's gut while still in the air.

Anakin gasped, and then gasped again when Sidious grabbed him by the head in his free hand and flung him towards the roof below with incredible force. Anakin slammed to it and what air he had managed to regain was knocked out of his lungs once again. Looking up, he saw Sidious sailing down towards him, and Anakin quickly allowed himself to slide down the roof and back towards the edge, so that when Sidious plunged his blade down it only cut through the metal instead. Snarling in annoyance, Sidious tossed another huge blast of lightning, but Anakin had recovered enough to roll onto his front and lift his blade upwards once more to catch it.

As Anakin slowed himself to a halt once again Sidious prepared to dash after him, but something made him pause. Out of the corner of his eye, he had just spotted a small shape further down on the slope, and the moment he did, his senses screamed at him to look. His eyes snapped open when he finally spotted Seripas standing nearby, watching the whole scene with awe.

His eyes shot open even further when he spotted the holocam in the tiny Bounty Hunter's hand. Sidious screeched wordlessly and flung a huge blast of Force-lightning directly at the diminutive being. Seripas yelped when he saw the attack coming, but proved himself to be more than nimble enough to bounce out of the way. He scurried down the roof and Sidious raised a hand to swipe him with the Force and send him flying over the edge, but before he could, Anakin bounded towards him and clashed his blade against Sidious' own to throw him back again.

Seripas, seeing that he was out of danger again, turned back around to continue filming. Sidious struck Anakin aside with the Force and immediately threw himself towards the little Bounty Hunter, desperate to make sure that the video feed did not get anywhere, but before he could get anywhere, he was jerked backwards by a Force-pull and crashed into the roof again. Anakin shot towards him once more and they traded a brief flurry of attacks between them, each of them letting off about eight shots faster than most eyes could track before Sidious pulsed Anakin backwards again.

Anakin quickly put himself between Seripas and the Sith and said, "Don't bother, old friend. It's already too late? That holocam in his hand is broadcasting live as we speak, to every monitor and transmitter in the whole of Coruscant, and the one we set up on Tython."

"WHAT!" Sidious screeched.

"Yep. It's true!" Anakin grinned with satisfaction. "At this precise moment, every clone on both planets will be laying down their weapon and the citizens of your Empire are turning against you. No… scratch that. The citizens of the _Republic_ are turning against you Sidious. It's over! You've lost!" He twirled his blade and levelled it towards the former Emperor. "Lay down your weapon and surrender now."

But all thought processes seemed to have been wiped from Sidious' mind. The knowledge that all his grand designs and any hope of overcoming the opponent and setting things right against were ripped away almost before his very mind. At every turn, he had been outthought and outmanoeuvred by the Jedi and their allies. They had beaten him at _his_ own game.

Surrender was not an option even now. Sidious might not have the clones to back him up anymore, nor the apprentice which had had been seeking to gain throughout the whole Clone Wars, but as far as he was concerned, he could still end this on a high note – by killing Anakin and making his getaway. The Sith might not rule, but they would survive. They would _always_ survive.

And he screamed as the Dark Side of the Force poured out of him in greater quantities than ever and he exploded forwards, thrown down the slope by a Force-blast to the roof behind him as he soared towards Anakin, slamming into him so hard that he went flying backwards, forcing Seripas to dart out of the way and only just grabbing onto the edge of the roof before he was swept over the edge completely.

Anakin looked back up to se Sidious falling towards him and hurriedly swung himself back up, flipping over Sidious' head and whirling around in an attempt to blast the Sith off the roof himself, but almost faster than plausible, Sidious hand had lashed out and swept Anakin back into the air to send him crashing into the roof back-first. Anakin grunted as he impacted once again, but he had no time to recover and he had to roll aside several times as Sidious' blade carved down towards him, then again, then again.

The Dark Side seemed to have taken over completely now. All that was left was the rage! And Sidious was more powerful than ever. Anakin was beginning to get overwhelmed!

* * *

"MASTER!" Ahsoka shrieked at the top of the lungs, watching both the screen in front of them and through Anakin's mind as Sidious began to go absolutely ballistic.

"We can't just stand here!" Padmé yelled. "Is there nothing that we can do to help him?"

"This is Anakin's fight," Aayla replied. "He is the only one who can face down Sidious for good? He is the one who must end this battle."

"But you can't just stand here and let him get beaten around, can you?" Chuchi demanded.

"I did not say that we were going to," Aayla replied. "He has expressly forbidden us from joining the fight… but perhaps there is something that we can do for him. What do you think, Renamon?" Aayla hurled her thought-bubble at the yellow fox, who fixed on Aayla's brown eyes with her own piercing blue ones for a second.

Then she nodded.

"Yes," she said. "I do believe that we are ready. But it will require all of us."

"That is why all of us are going," nodded Aayla. "Ahsoka, Barriss – there is no time to stand here and watch this! Come on, let's get going!"

"Right!" Barriss nodded, as she and Ahsoka followed Aayla out of the door, pushing past the assorted clones as they hurtled out into the corridor and dashed away, adding the Force to their strides to propel themselves down the passageways at phenomenal speeds, dashing past startled Senators who were coming out of their offices at last to see what was going on for themselves, as they had all gotten the transmission in their own rooms as well.

"Rika," Renamon nodded to her partner. "Come on!"

"Okay," the young girl nodded.

Grievous stepped forwards, making to follow the fox as she wrapped her arms around her Tamer, but Renamon looked up at him and shook her head, making him stop in his tracks. "No, Grievous," she said. "Not this time. Do not come with us this time."

Grievous' eyes narrowed and he coughed angrily. "I want just as much a part of the death of that Sith as you, Digimon! You cannot make me stay behind!"

"I know I can't, but I'm going to ask you too anyway," Renamon replied. "You too, Bane, if you were planning on coming. There is nothing that either of you can do for what we have in mind, and we would rather that anyone who does not have to put themselves in a dangerous situation needlessly doesn't do it at all. Please, just stay put."

Grievous growled in annoyance, but Bane just shrugged and holstered his pistols. "Fine by me. Far as I'm concerned, I've already done what I came here to do. Only reason I'm still here is because I want to see how this turns out."

"And you, Grievous?" Renamon pressed the General.

Grievous looked enraged at the fact that everybody seemed to be ordering him around at the moment, but eventually, he just muttered, "Fine! Whatever! Just go and make sure that Skywalker wins this fight, or I _will_ come out there and have a go at him myself!"

"Thank you," Renamon smiled and she immediately charged away, Rika clutched in her arms as she darted out into the hallway and hurtled after the others. The Senators yelped in alarm at the sight of her but she ignored then, focused more on reaching the area of the conflict to provide whatever assistance she could. Even Rika didn't protest at the rather undignified way which she was being dragged around, her mind glued to what was going on up above them.

Behind them, Padmé was still glued to the screen in front of them, her hands gripping the side of the controls so hard that her knuckles had gone bone white, as she watched her secret husband get thrown about by the man she had once called a friend. She felt a hand settling on her shoulder, and looked over to see Chuchi nodding at her comfortingly, trying to assure her that everything was going to be alright. Neither of them knew what the outcome was going to be really and they both knew it, but Padmé appreciated the gesture nevertheless.

Artoo twiddled nervously as he continued to broadcast everything that was coming out of Seripas' holocam. Grievous and Bane moved over so they were standing behind the Senators to watch what was going on as well, and the clones gathered behind them. They looked like one of the strangest gatherings in the history of the universe.

* * *

As Renamon pounded down the corridor, she flashed a message through her mind to say, _Are you guys going to join us?_

_We'll be there,_ replied Terriermon from within the humongous form of MegaGargomon outside. _We're on our way right now._

Cherubimon turned to her equally large brother and said, "I don't think that we're needed here anymore. The clones have stopped their attack just like Padmé asked them too. We'll be more useful over there."

"Agreed," MegaGargomon nodded. "Perhaps it would be better not to make ourselves unnecessarily conspicuous though. Let's head over there with some discretion."

"Got it," nodded Cherubimon, and the two sibling slowly rotated around and thrust themselves through the air on jets or by divine force towards the roof where they could distantly see the small plume of smoke from the remnants of the stealth ship. As they moved, they both glowed brightly and shrank in mid-air into their component parts, startling the citizens who were still staring at them in wonder. The two bunnies grabbed their Tamers by the backs of their shirts before they could fall and the two Tamers pulled out their D-Arcs to give them a strength card bonus at the same time, with practiced ease.

Terriermon and Lopmon soared off towards the roof of the Senate Building, shifting their grip to their partners hands as they flew and powered themselves up into the air with little effort.

Godzillo was left on his own standing in front of the main building, but the giant lizard curled his head around to watch as the bunnies and their human friends departed towards the building where he knew the pale man to be. Godzillo might not have completely understood the situation, but he knew as well as the Tamers did that his work was done, and that the clones were no longer going to be trying to get past him, therefore he should stop trying to kill them.

He could also sense something in the air. The future was being re-written today and had been since this whole mission had begun right at the start of the day, but he could tell that they had reached the pinnacle moment of the events. Whatever happened over there at the big domed building, it would change the entire fate of the universe, for better or for worse. He was, after all, slightly Force-sensitive himself. He could just tell this kind of thing.

His head swung back around briefly to glance at the clones standing in front of him and staring at the holograms which had appeared all around them. Godzillo looked up at them himself and snarled at the sight of the pale man attacking one of the people he considered to be his friends. He decided then that he wanted to see what was going on for himself, and he turned around and followed the Tamers and the bunnies with huge loping strides on four of his five legs.

* * *

Anakin ducked and jumped over a lightsaber swing so fast that it was almost at the same time and brought his lightsaber up to block another, his face twisting in concentration as he managed to turn aside five slashes to either side of his chest, one to the side of his leg and two to the face all in rapid succession. Sidious reared back to fire a smaller blast of Force-lightning at him, which he was able to catch, but as Sidious threw in a lightsaber slash from the other side right afterwards, Anakin was forced to dive out of the way and spin around and out of the way of the lightning attack.

He slumped slightly, breathing heavily, as he could feel Sidious attacks slowly wearing him down. It seemed the only flaw in this plan was the fact that Sidious had gotten so angry that the Dark Side of the Force was strong within him than ever and Anakin was struggling to even get a look in on attacking anymore. He looked up to see Sidious' lightsaber arcing for his face once more and he leaned back while blocking at the same time, catching the blade and swing his foot up to hit Sidious in the chest with a kick and allow him to jump backwards again.

Sidious only stumbled slightly under the attack, and immediately lashed out with a clenched fist in an attempt to grab Anakin in a Force-choke that would crush his neck almost the moment that it made contact. Fortunately, Anakin was able to swipe out with the Force at the same time and negate the attack, but he was still blasted backwards again as Sidious' own Force attack repelled his back at him and tossed him upwards to crash flat on his back once more.

Anakin rolled over and tried to scramble back to his feet, but with Sidious charging towards him with blade swinging wildly around, the best he could do was just dive out of the way and go rolling down the roof, plunging his lightsaber into it to slow himself down as he slipped down it once more. Sidious bounded through the air towards him, sailing high up to fall down from above at him. Anakin hurriedly cut a large chunk out of the roof with wrenched a panel of metal free to toss it upwards to intercept him.

Sidious sliced through the metal chunk harmlessly, but Anakin had sent up a second smaller one, concealed from view, which slammed into Sidious' stomach and tossed him aside. Sidious rolled over instantly and flung down more lightning, forcing Anakin to dash across the roof to avoid it. Sidious attack streaked past him and only just missed grazing his boots, and the Sith Lord howled in rage as his opponent continued to evade him and sent blast after blast towards him.

Anakin managed to block two of them and dodge most of the others, while Sidious added his other hand to the equation and sent double lightning bursts shooting towards Anakin instead. Anakin leapt up and twisted himself between two of the lightning attack, and struck out with his lightsaber to intercept a third. But a fourth slammed into the place where he was about to land moments before he landed there and sent him spiralling through the air yet again.

Seripas watched in horror as Anakin was sent crashing into the roof once again. The little Bounty Hunter suddenly felt quite powerless once again, as he had during the days when he had thought he needed the robot suit to make him look more imposing. But never had he felt as powerless as this before, not even then. He was a silent observer, doing nothing but recording the battle as Anakin Skywalker fought for not only his life, but also the Galaxy as a whole.

Sidious immediately dashed towards Anakin as he struggled to push himself back to his feet, a twisted leer appearing on his wrinkled face as he threw himself into the air, corkscrew style, preparing to come slashing down on Anakin one last time. Seripas' instincts took over and he did the first thing that came to mind – he threw the holocam.

The small round sphere zinged through the air with impressive speed and struck Sidious in the side of the head, completely taking him by surprise from the unexpected attack. However, while it did little to damage him overall, it _did_ throw him off his course and made him lose his focus just long enough for Anakin to spring up and leap backwards once more as Sidious' lightsaber thudded into the ground next to him.

Sidious roared in fury and whirled around to let off another streak of lightning directly towards Seripas. The little Bounty Hunter darted out of the way again and Anakin swiftly pummelled his way in to distract Sidious once again, pushing himself up close to the hated man in an attempt to over-muscle him. But Sidious was not about to let himself be outdone that way and whipped out to the side and around, slashing across for Anakin's head. Anakin rolled over quickly and span about in a crouch position, backflipping away to try and get more space between them once more.

Sidious looked around for the troublesome Seripas and spotted him retrieving the holocam before it rolled off the roof and picking it up, inspecting it for any potential damage. There appeared to be none, but Sidious sent a huge blast of the Force down the roof towards Seripas that lifted him into the air and flung him high into the air.

"NO!" Anakin cried, as Seripas went sailing over the edge and he hurried forwards to try and do something, but Sidious jumped back in to clash their lightsabers together once more and prevent him from doing so.

Seripas looked down at the ground far, far below. He would never survive a fall like that. His species might be acrobatic and light but even they had their limits. But he had done his job, and, hopefully, he had helped to turn the Galaxy into a better place. So he shut his eyes, and fell.

He was very surprised when he thudded into something early and felt an arm being wrapped around his chest. His eyes shot open and he looked around to see that it was Suzie, who grinned at him as she hung in Lopmon's grip with one hand. Lopmon chuckled and smiled down at the little Bounty Hunter.

"See what I meant before?" she asked. "Who needs to be large when you can do so much good being small."

Seripas sagged, such was his relief to find himself alive and he could only answer with, "Yeah, I know. Just don't ask me to do something like that again."

"No problem," Lopmon laughed. "Didn't cross my mind." And then she swooped downwards towards the roof and dropped Suzie and Seripas onto the shallow slope close to Anakin, landing beside them as she did so. Terriermon and Henry dropped out of the sky as well a few moments later, grouping behind Anakin and all glaring at Sidious.

"Guys…" Anakin protested – he'd been so focused on the fight that he had not been paying attention to what the others were doing. "What… What are you doing here?"

"What the…" Sidious hissed as he stared at the bunnies in disbelief, realising that they were the giant machine and angelic rabbit that he had seen beforehand. But the surprises didn't end there. A few moments later and three dark shapes vaulted, one by one, over the side of the roof from where the remnants of the Emperor's window had been and landed smoothly on its surface. Aayla, Ahsoka and Barriss dashed up the roof to skid to a halt nearby and, a few moments later, another figure lanced over the side of the building. It was Renamon, glowing white Hyper Wings extended out of her back and Rika clutched firmly in her arms. The fox winged her way downwards and landed with barely a sound, depositing Rika on the roof next to Henry.

Sidious found himself confronted with the entire force of the Tenacious Ten, all of whom looked ready for action as they glared at him, but none of them with weapons anywhere in sight. Anakin was still the only one with his lightsaber out. Aayla, Ahsoka and Barriss all still had theirs attached to their waists and didn't look as though they were planning on using them any time soon.

"Guys, what are you doing?" Anakin demanded again. "I thought that we agreed that you were all going to stay out of danger. I'm the one who has to take down the Sith and I don't want any of you getting hurt for my own responsibility."

"We're your family, Master," Ahsoka replied immediately. "It's an occupational hazard, because where you go, we go. No questions asked."

"Anakin," Renamon supplied. "Just because there is a prophecy stating that you are the one who will do this, does not mean that you have to do it alone. You are part way to understanding that we will always be with you, but I do not think that you are fully there yet."

"It doesn't matter how many Sith Lords you have to cut down," Aayla added. "We will always be there to help you through anything that you have to face. Because you don't have any responsibilities that you alone must bear. Whatever your responsibilities are, they are ours too and vice versa."

"We're a team, after all," Terriermon grinned. "Haven't we always been a team throughout everything that we've done to beat the stuffing out this guy and his plans? I say that we go for one more round together and end him for good, right?"

"Oh yeah!" Suzie cheered.

"How adorable," Sidious growled, as he held his red lightsaber before his face. "Nine little helpers coming to save their beloved Chosen One. But it will all be for nothing I'm afraid. It doesn't matter how many of you I have to cut down, I will succeed. The Dark Side of the Force will always survive in the end."

"You're wrong!" Rika declared, bold as ever. "The Dark Side, the bad guys, will never win. Not as long as there is good to oppose them. And that's because we good guys fight together. But you bad guys fight alone. You always fight alone, and that is your greatest weakness."

"Power can trump teamwork no matter how many opponents you have to face, child!" Sidious snapped. "As long as you have enough of it, that is! And I have plenty of attacks to spare."

"Talking to him is a lost cause, I'm afraid," Henry shook his head and folded his arms. "He'll never really understand."

"But we do," Lopmon added. "We've always understood the value of working together and seen it in action time and again. Now is no different."

"You're a big bully!" Suzie shouted, pointing almost fearlessly at the furious Sidious. "And you always have been. You gave me the creeps the first time I saw you and I was right."

"And your manipulations are over, Sidious," Barriss finished. "Your Empire has turned against you and your plans are in tatters. The time of reckoning is here, and we intend to take it and make it ours!"

"FOOLS!" Sidious screamed and emptied a massive burst of Force-lightning in the direction of the whole group. None of them took a single step back, but Anakin moved forward and drew the attack into his blade. It slammed into him with the Force to send him flying back again, but Aayla and Renamon simultaneously grabbed him by each shoulder and caught him between them, planting him firmly back on the roof. Anakin struggled to gain his purchase again, but with the fox and he Twi'lek helping him, he managed to stand tall once again.

Sidious snarled and poured even more power into the lightning attack but Anakin and the others held firm. But that was all they did. None of them moved to try and attack him. They only stood there as Anakin strained to keep the lightning at bay.

"Guys!" Anakin grunted as he held the lightning at bay. "I seriously appreciate the gesture, but please don't do this! I'd never forgive myself if any of you got hurt."

"We know," Terriermon grinned. "That's why none of us are planning on getting hurt."

"What?" Anakin blinked, slipping backwards a bit under the sheer power of the lightning strike.

"Anakin," Renamon murmured into his ear. "Just trust us and listen."

Anakin forced himself forwards a little more, but he was unable to make any more progress against the lightning stream and fell back once more. "Alright!" he murmured back. "I'm listening."

"Not with your ears, Master," Ahsoka added as she stepped closer to place a hand on Anakin's arm. "Listen with your mind."

Anakin frowned in bewilderment, but then Barriss moved over to lay her own hand on Anakin's other arm. Lopmon bounced up onto Aayla's shoulder and then laid her own ear on Anakin's next to Aayla's hand, while Terriermon bounded onto Renamon in order to do the same thing. Henry and Rika squeezed in behind Ahsoka and Barriss to place their own hands on the side of his ribs on either side of his body, and finally, Suzie placed one hand on his knee, because that was the best part of him she could reach.

Each of them closed their eyes and seemed to focus on something, and Anakin could feel their presences in his mind intensifying. Bemused, but willing to see what they had in mind, Anakin shut his own eyes despite the lightning that was still streaming into his lightsaber and melded his mind with each of their own.

Within their heads, Anakin was taken aback as they pressed their consciousness' in onto his own, seeming too wrap their minds around his until he was encased in the very essence of each of them. His heart pounded in his chest, as he felt the sheer intensity of the bond between each of them coursing through his brain. It was stronger than he'd ever even realised – there seemed to be no limit to it.

He could feel the love and the respect that they held for him as if a part of him had entered each of their bodies and was looking into their very souls. He was shocked by how amazing it felt – like every iota of each of them was devoted to him. And it wasn't just him either. He could feel the love that each and every one of them had for each and every one of the others at the same time, intensifying the feeling, quite literally, by tenfold.

As their feelings and intense love burned bright, he could feel his own love for them growing and entering their own minds, each of them intertwining around each the other, until they could feel the sheer amount of devotion that they held for the rest of the group as if it beat within their own hearts. Anakin felt as if the pain of the fight was seeping away and his strength returned to him once more as he bathed in their feelings. He'd never felt anything like this before in his entire life, and he had no desire for it to ever end.

_We might not fight together physically all the time…_ Renamon's voice echoed through the emotions.

…_But we will always fight together in every other aspect,_ Aayla added.

_Sidious and the Sith gain their power through hatred, don't they?_ Ahsoka supplied.

_And what do we know that trumps hate every single time?_ Lopmon chuckled.

Anakin paused for a moment, before he added, _I do not believe that I have to answer that question, do I?_

_Go on,_ Terriermon laughed. _Answer it anyway._

_Alright,_ Anakin nodded. _Love. It's love._

_Indeed it is,_ Barriss replied. _And, as you can see, we have that. This mindlink is more than a simple way of communicating easily, isn't it? If there's one thing that I've learned, it's that it symbolises the trust and love that we all hold for each other._

_She's right,_ Renamon nodded. _Use it, Anakin. Take our strength and allow it to fill up your own body. Your fight is our fight. Our strength is your strength. Fight with us now. Then you can show Sidious just how wrong he was to choose the path of the Dark Side. _

Anakin's eyes snapped open, and, one by one, the rest of the Tenacious Ten took their hands off him and backed away. Ahsoka was the last to go, giving her Master a nod and a smile as she released his arm and stepped back with the others. But while he could no longer feel their hands upon him, he could still feel their souls merging with his own. He felt the strength that all nine of them possessed pounding in his body as if it were his own. And by fixing his mind on theirs, he intended to make sure that it stayed that way.

That little alteration had, in reality, taken only about five seconds in real time, and Sidious was still angrily blazing his lightning across the roof towards Anakin, determined to overpower him at last. But Anakin was no longer struggling to hold the opponent back and he took a couple of slow, but steady strides forwards, through the lightning stream.

Sidious balked at what he saw, but then Anakin suddenly lashed out with his hands with a colossal Force-push that came shooting out like a shockwave. Sidious' Force-lightning attack was ripped to shreds and he was slammed across the front by the hugely powerful attack and flung across the roof like a tennis ball. He landed heavily on his back nearby and scrambled back up, just in time to see Anakin striding towards him, while the rest of his team stayed put.

Anakin's face was grim as he held his lightsaber up before him. No words were said. No words were needed – they would be wasted on somebody like Sidious anyway. So, he simply drew the power of the love he felt from the others through their mindlink and hurtled across the rooftop to meet Sidious in combat once again.

Sidious snarled and leapt back to his feet and charged in to meet him, slashing three times for Anakin torso and taking a huge twirling spin designed to cleave the Chosen One in half. Anakin deflected the first three strikes with ease and twirled his own blade up to meet Sidious' own and lashed up with one foot a moment later to pummel the Sith in the stomach. Sidious doubled over and Anakin span around to rain two blows down on him from above. Sidious' hand shot up and he deflected both of them, but a moment later and Anakin brought another sweep straight up from down low.

Sidious crashed his blade against Anakin's own but the strength of Anakin's blow was enough toss him upwards again, his red lightsaber flying out of his hand as he crashed onto the roof a little higher up.

Anakin took a moment to marvel at the sensation he had just felt. It had seemed like his body had not only moved on its own, but it also felt like every time he moved his arm, nine others were moving their arms in the exact same motion at the exact same time within his own body. It was like every blow he threw at Sidious was matched by a simultaneous blow from the rest of his team.

They were fighting together, through the power of their minds alone. Anakin controlled the fight, but it was they and their feelings for him and vice versa that were giving him power beyond anything he had ever felt before.

He then threw himself up towards Sidious, who had hurriedly summoned his lightsaber back into his hand threw himself into the air and into a backflip as Anakin's blade lashed through the floor where he'd been, landing and slashing his blade towards Anakin's stomach, only to find that Anakin was no longer there and had jumped over him to slash down at him from below. Sidious span aside and clashed his blade out to hit Anakin in the side, but Anakin twisted in mid-fall and caught the strike with apparent ease and shoved Sidious away, retaliating four more times in rapid succession.

Sidious managed to catch the first two strikes with ease, but this time it was his turn to have some hair cut off as he only just managed to duck under the next. He desperately lashed out to hit the fourth but it caught his blade a glancing blow and he was thrown on his back.

As he went shooting headfirst down the roof, he pushed himself up and skidded to a halt, only for another powerful wave of the Force to ram into him from above and send him shooting back downwards once again. Digging his lightsaber into the roof, Sidious managed to halt himself moments before he went over the edge and hauled himself back upwards again.

Anakin hadn't moved from his previous spot, his eyes focused solely on Sidious as he held his lightsaber vertically upwards ready for another strike. Sidious immediately fuelled his rage and flung himself back upwards with the Force and cannoned straight into Anakin blade first, knocking him down and pushing him to the floor with his lightsaber, but Anakin pushed upwards with the momentum to flip Sidious over his head. The two of them flipped back onto their feet again and charged each other once more.

Sidious' initial attack towards Anakin's stomach was blocked, as was Anakin's next attack to the Sith Lord's shoulder. Sidious flashed off two shots towards Anakin's face with his blade and twirled around to sweep for his knee, but Anakin simply blocked, ducked and then swiped downwards to counter the low blade, before he sprang back and span around with an almighty blow that sent Sidious flipping through the air such was the force of the attack. Sidious flipped back onto his feet quickly and roared in rage as he lashed out with the Force.

The roof underneath Anakin actually seemed to buckle as the Force attempted to rip it upwards and fling him into the air. But Anakin brought his arms close to his body and thrust them out, generating a Force shockwave that negated Sidious' attack before it could do much more damage than that, before he brought his hands together and grabbed Sidious with the Force, bringing him shooting towards him at high velocity with a Force-pull.

Sidious snarled as he twisted through the air and tried to turn the Force-pull to his advantage by hurling a blast of Force-lightning ahead of him as he shot forwards. Instinct caused Anakin to lash out with his free hand and the lightning suddenly clashed into thin air just in front of his palm as if it had hit an invisible barrier. Even Anakin was slightly startled by this, as he had never even practiced that Force technique before, but he didn't question it. Instead, he blocked Sidious' lightsaber strike and swung around, trading three quick lightsaber blows with him and ducking underneath another one.

Sidious suddenly flung Anakin back slightly and then powered himself around in a wide circle, adding the Dark Side's power to his swing as he curved around in one huge arc designed to slice Anakin through at the waist, but to his surprise, Anakin was not there anymore when he came to a stop. He blinked, and then Anakin's foot rammed into his back and sent him toppling onto his front again and rolling away.

The Sith Lord screeched in irritation as he pushed himself back up again. He had no idea how Anakin had managed to get behind him, but right now he didn't particularly care. The only thing that was going through his mind was the thought of killing him. But during that time, Anakin had already barrelled down the roof and past Palpatine, forcing him to sweep around as Anakin came in for another double strike to the chest area and then thrust his arm backwards to prepare a huge stab for the gut.

Reacting immediately, Sidious let off another burst of Force-lightning at point blank range in an attempt to push Anakin away at the very least. Anakin swerved aside at the last second and the lightning exploded outwards and up into the air, just missing Anakin's body. Sidious leapt away as Anakin landed nearby and then thrust the Force into his legs to fling him straight up into the air, to a height where he almost disappeared from view.

Anakin stared up after him and prepared himself for the Sith's inevitable plummet, the souls of the others still coursing through his mind and drawing even greater amounts of strength from the bond he felt between them. As Sidious plunged towards him with blade raised high, Anakin jumped up himself and shot past Sidious almost before he knew what was happening, slashing at him in mid-air and only just missing cutting off his arm before Sidious blocked the attack. The Sith Lord landed on the roof nearby, steadied himself, and then took his turn to look up as Anakin fell down towards him.

Anakin clapped his hands together and managed to generate a shockwave that catapulted outwards, rippling the very fabric of the air itself. Sidious retaliated with a burst of lightning from both hands, so powerful that the roof of the Senate Building shone out across Coruscant where even the citizens could see the signs of the battle. But the two attacks only cannoned into one another and cancelled each other out, allowing Anakin to dive down through the smoke of the resulting explosion lightsaber held in front of him and ready for action.

Sidious jumped backwards some distance as Anakin crashed into the roof and immediately rebounded towards him, hoping to catch the Chosen One while he was down. But Anakin had not hesitated even for a second and flung himself through the air and towards the flying Sith. Both of them clashed together with strength that seemed to be about equal and fell to the ground, straining against one another, but Sidious was startled when Anakin began to push him backwards. He was using the Force to add to his strength, but Anakin was still overpowering him.

He tried to reach under his guard while his lightsaber was occupied to pour electricity into his chest, but taking his hand away from the lightsaber hilt turned out to be a bad idea because Anakin immediately muscled forwards and drew back to hack out with a blow that tossed Sidious back into the air, arms flailing wildly.

But Anakin didn't give him the opportunity to go very far and his hand lashed out immediately, seizing the back of the former Emperor's robes in one hand and heaving back towards him. Sidious yelped as he was hauled through the air, Anakin spinning around several times with the Sith Lord swinging around him before he tossed him with one huge lurch to send him flying back across the roof. Sidious collided hard with one of the halves of the stealth ship and crashed to the floor, winded and breathing heavily.

He looked up to see Anakin walking slowly towards him once again, and his gaze drifted off to the side, to where the rest of the Tenacious Ten were also staring at him. Their expressions were blank, as they devoted all their strength towards Anakin with their minds alone. Sidious reached up with a hand crackling with electricity, aiming towards them instead of his direct opponent.

Anakin reacted immediately, but not out of anger. Never out of anger, not anymore. He barrelled across the roof and threw himself into the air with both legs out. Sidious hurriedly rolled out of the way, as Anakin's legs pounded into the stealth ship where he had been, and swiftly turned around to strike at his side. But Anakin whirled around and caught the strike once more, lightsaber locking for a brief instant as he stared levelly into Sidious' yellow eyes with his own blue ones.

"No," he said, simply. "You will not harm them. As long as we fight together, nobody will ever harm them again. Understand?"

"You cannot win against me," Sidious hissed. "Nobody can win against me!"

"Wanna bet?" Anakin raised an eyebrow.

The Chosen One's near nonchalance seemed to drive Palpatine completely over the edge and he howled in frustration and rage and broke the lightsaber lock, throwing slash after slash at Anakin with the red lightsaber, roughly twenty of them in about seven seconds flat, in a technique that he was sure would end the life of just about any opponent as he struck for just about every single part of Anakin's body.

Anakin's feet didn't even move as his lightsaber shot up to block every single slash with no more than a flick of his wrist each time. Sidious gawped in astonishment and that was all that Anakin needed. Gathering the Force in the split second interlude, he pulsed it out of his body and struck Sidious full in the chest with it, hard enough to break several of the Sith Lord's ribs. Sidious gasped as he was flung backwards across the roof, his lightsaber flying out of his hand and sailing through the air, right into Anakin's own. Anakin brought the lightsaber hilt up before his face and poured the Force into the small device, shattering it into dozens of pieces instantaneously.

Sidious landed with a thud on his back gasping for breath as his chest throbbed with pain. He coughed loudly, a tight pain in his throat and finding it difficult to breathe. Nevertheless, he desperately tried to push himself back up, determined to be the victor – determined that the Sith would rise to power once more, by force if nothing else.

But as he struggled, a blue lightsaber appeared in his face, the tip hovering no more than a few inches from the Sith's hooked nose. Sidious stared up its length and directly into Anakin's eyes, which were hard as flints as he stared down at him.

"Looks like I win," he said, simply.

Sidious hissed, baring his teeth in a snarl that looked like some feral wild creature. "Then what are you waiting for, Skywalker! Finish me! Do it! Strike me down and end my reign of tyranny once and for all – just like you said you were going to."

"You make a very persuasive argument," Anakin replied, the lightsaber not moving an inch or wavering in the slightest as it hovering low over Sidious' face. "It is no more than you deserve. Your manipulations of the entire Galaxy should have earned you a slow, painful death by this stage. All the pain and suffering that you have caused as you safely lurked in the shadows – it goes without saying that most people would consider an agonising demise as even too easy for somebody who's soul is as tainted by the Dark Side as yours."

"Then strike!" Sidious demanded. "Carve out my heart! Do not deny that you have wanted to ever since you learned who I really was, Anakin. The desire for revenge lurks within you, just as it did when the Tusken Raiders killed your mother."

Anakin didn't say anything for a couple of seconds. "A Jedi doesn't look at the past, Sidious. What the Tusken Raiders did to my mother was barbaric and they deserved even worse than I gave to them, but I see now that it was wrong of me to do what I did to them. I still hate them, and I don't think I will ever stop hating them, just as I hate you now, more than anything I've ever hated before.

"But slaughtering the Sand People was wrong of me too. All I accomplished was to stoop to their level, and that is something that my mother would never have wanted me to do, no matter what they had done to her. If I could go back in time, but was still unable to save her, then I would contain myself. And I shall contain myself now. Killing a man at my mercy is not the Jedi way. Because that's what I am – a Jedi, and to strike you down now would mean I would be making the same mistake all over again. I would be no better than a Sith."

His eyes flashed.

"And if there is one thing I will never, _ever_ act like or be, it is a Sith."

He stepped backwards, still keeping his lightsaber pointed at him but giving him room. "Now, stand up! You are hereby relieved from your place as Emperor and I am taking you into custody. Make it easy on yourself and give up now."

Sidious snarled and grunted as pain wracked his body, as he slowly levered himself up to his feet, his chest sending lances of agony shooting throughout every nerve ending in his torso, but nevertheless, he managed to stand up, the lightsaber still pointed directly at his face, staring at the blazing tip with a slight amount of fear in his eyes.

Anakin's eyes flicked to the left, where he saw the others staring at him with smiles on their faces. Each of them gave him a nod of respect and he smiled back at them.

_Well done, Anakin,_ Aayla congratulated him.

_You were so awesome,_ Suzie cheered.

_A proper badass,_ Terriermon agreed. _Of course, MegaGargomon is still cooler._

_Terriermon._

_Momentai, Henry._

_ANAKIN!_ Barriss suddenly warned him as Sidious reared back suddenly and let a large Force-lightning burst directly at Anakin's lightsaber. Anakin swept back around to counter it, but it hit his lightsaber at an angle that sent it flying out of his hand. Then Sidious lifted both hands and let rip with both a scream of pure rage and the biggest flare of Force-lightning yet, blasting towards Anakin's chest from only about three feet away.

Quick as a flash, Anakin raised his hands and once again the Lightning was countered by a Force-block, but the sheer volume of it was still enough to push Anakin backwards several feet before he regained his footing, gritting his teeth as he used the Force to hold Sidious' attack at bay.

"POOOOWWEERRRR!" Sidious shrieked. "I WILL NEVER SURRENDER TO YOU AND LET YOU TAKE OVER MY EMPIRE! BEHOLD MY UNLIMITED **PPPOOOOWWWEEERRR!"**

Anakin bit his lip as he strained to halt Sidious' blast back, the Sith Lord not relinquishing his attack even for a millisecond. He felt the concern from his friends welling up inside him, but he sent them a reassurance through their link as his eyes hardened once again. If Sidious wanted to play his last card, then he would play his as well.

"OH YEAH!" Anakin roared over the sound of the crackling lightning. "I'M NOT IMPRESSED, SIDIOUS! WE WILL NEVER FOLD TO YOU AS LONG AS WE STAND UNITED! BEHOLD **OUR** POWER!"

And he plunged his mind back into those of his comrades and melded with them to an even greater degree than before, drawing all the love that they held for each other and for him into his body simultaneously. Sidious blanched slightly when Anakin took a step forwards, pushing the lightning stream back again, and then another step. The air seemed to ripple and not just from the electrical charge, but also from the waves and waves of energy that were pouring out of Anakin's body.

And was it just the effect of the lightning or was Anakin's body beginning to glow slightly.

The rest of the Tenacious Ten watched in wonderment as Anakin pushed himself through Sidious' lightning stream. Aayla had a feeling that she knew what was going on and quickly sent the information to the others over the mind-link. Anakin was using Force-light, an incredibly rare technique that few had ever attempted, let alone done successfully. But she had never heard of anything this intense before – Anakin's body radiated power like an entire sun as he drew on every shred of love they had for each other and combined it with his own already ridiculously heightened Force prowess.

As Anakin got closer to Sidious, the Sith Lord screeched with pain as he felt himself burning up inside. The light from Anakin's body seemed to be permeating through his skin and into his very soul, burning through everything that was darkness, and since Sidious was pretty much all darkness it was pain beyond all imagining. It felt like a contained nuclear explosion was going on within his body.

But such was his anger that he still managed to stand relatively firm as he resisted the technique until Anakin was standing three feet before him again. He continued to fire lightning, howling in pain as the light of Anakin's body intensified still further and he began to tremble, losing control of himself as he practically felt his entire essence being torn to shreds.

Anakin's face was set and grim for a moment, but then his eyes flicked upwards over Sidious' shoulder and a brief grin appeared on his face, almost concealed by the intense light-show (which could be see right across the Senate District by the onlookers like some sort of bright beacon), then the grin turned to a smirk and he looked back to Sidious. "I believe you two know each other," he said, nodding back towards whatever he had looked on.

Through the blur of pain and as he struggled to remain standing, something made Sidious turn around to look at what Anakin was indicating. His eyes widened in fear when he saw what it was – the enormous head of Godzillo had suddenly appeared over the edge of the roof and the enormous Zillo Beast's body was clambering up and over the edge after it, the huge green eyes fixed on the man who had given the ordered to have him killed with pure venom, despite the light that was blazing on the other side of the Sith Lord.

Sidious turned back to look into Anakin's shining eyes, his pupils shrinking in fear and in an attempt to reduce the glare. Anakin stared back at him levelly.

"I gave you your chance," the Chosen One said, his voice only just distinguishable over the sound of the lightning. "And you didn't take it. You could have been sent to prison for the rest of your life in the Citadel, but you decided to keep going. You brought this upon yourself, Sidious. And it seems that I will be fulfilling my destiny here, after all."

Sidious' eyes shot open wide fearfully as he poured what energy he had left into the lightning attack, but Anakin also intensified his Force-light attack, causing Sidious to howl again and arch his back as pain vaulted through him. Anakin looked up and shouted, "Hey, Godzillo! He's all yours!"

And he threw all the pent-up power within him that had been building and building from the feelings of himself and his comrades out of his body in one go. The light of his body was turned off as if via a switch and a massive Force-shockwave ripped out of his body, as shown by a massive explosion of light that flashed out from Anakin in all directions. It washed over the rest of the Tenacious Ten, Seripas and Godzillo and left them completely unharmed, but as it slammed into Sidious, it did several things at once.

Firstly, it repelled his own Force-lightning right back at him and caused it to sear through his own body. Sidious had gone past the point of screaming by this point, so he didn't cry out, but that was only the tip of the iceberg.

The second thing it did was to slam him with the most powerful Force-push of the battle, one which completely busted several more bones throughout his entire body and flung him high into the air, limp and useless.

And thirdly, the light permeated right into his body and pulverised the darkness within him, ripping his spirit to pieces in a single, devastating blow that obliterated just about everything inside his black soul. It was more painful than anything Sidious had been able to conceive in his mind or in reality in the past and as he was catapulted through the air, he was reduced to nothing more than a husk, his life-force slipping away with each passing second as both his body and soul were damaged completely beyond repair.

But before his life-force could slip away entirely, as it was about to anyway, Godzillo roared in anticipation – a deep-throated bellow that shook the Senate Building and he pounded forwards and up to roof on his hind legs. In two massive strides, he had covered the distance between the edge and his target, stopping momentarily to swing himself around and lash his enormous tail out to slam it towards the flying, dying Sith. The enormous tail-spikes slammed into Sidious and instantly pre-empted his death, slaying him instantly and sending his body shooting up into the air.

Godzillo span around and narrowed his eyes as he watched the flying body practically disappear from sight, but he hunkered himself down as it reached its peak and began to fall, before hurling himself up into the air with legs like giant springs, his maw stretching open wide. Sidious' dead body vanished between his gaping teeth and Godzillo's jaws slammed shut like the mother of all steel traps.

Sidious was gone – his body never to be seen again by any living being.

Godzillo landed with a thump that caused the Tamers to lose their balance, before they were caught by the others. The giant lizard reared backwards and let out a bellow of triumph that could be heard several miles away. Finally, he had succeeded over the pale man! He might not have been the one ultimately responsible for his death, as Sidious would have died a few seconds later regardless of his actions, but he had struck the final blow, and that was good enough for him.

The rest of them stood there in silence for several moments, before Anakin suddenly felt drained and collapsed onto his backside, throwing his hands out to either side of himself to support himself as he inhaled and exhaled heavily, feeling very light-headed. But he was not just giddy due to extraneous effort.

They had done it. _He _had done it. He had fulfilled the prophecy and destroyed the last of the Sith and he had brought balance to the Force. He could already feel the change in the universe as the future was rewritten for good and the stain on the Force represented by the Dark Side was levelled out.

Sidious was dead, and no matter what powers the Sith possessed, there would be no coming back after what happened.

He was gone.

Forever.

He was vaguely aware of the rest of his team moving over to him to sit down all around him. Aayla and Ahsoka took their places on either side of him, while Barriss and Renamon sat cross-legged just behind his shoulders. The three Tamers all moved to the front and sat down by his legs, while Lopmon parachuted down to land _on_ the legs themselves. Finally, Terriermon landed on his head, his ears falling down to either side of Anakin's own.

"Master…" Ahsoka smiled. "That… was something else."

"You can say that again," Barriss chuckled. "How do you feel?"

Anakin shrugged wordlessly, and transmitted his thought patterns across the others via the mind-link, which felt stronger than ever before. Each of them took a moment to shut their eyes and simply be absorbed in the feeling – a mixture of euphoria, dancing energy that was slowly winding down, light-headedness and disbelief. It was quite something.

"You did it Anakin," Aayla smiled. "We are all _so_ proud of you."

"More than words can say," Renamon agreed.

"I knew that we were going to have one heck of a day today," Henry snorted. "But this really took the cake."

"And it was a good cake," Rika grinned. "Did any of you imagine, even in your wildest dreams, that when we landed in this universe, we would eventually end up having a moment like this?"

"I can honestly say," Lopmon laughed. "That it never occurred to me once. But you know what?" she added. "I wouldn't have missed it for the world."

"Well," Anakin chuckled. "I believe that it's time for me to fulfil my other promise. Anyone up for a group hug?" He didn't wait for an answer and wrapped his arms around Ahsoka and Aayla's shoulders and pulled them both close, and shortly afterwards, he felt Barriss and Renamon joining the hug, and the three Tamers shortly afterwards, while Terriermon shifted position slightly in order to join in.

They just sat there for several moments, absorbed in each other's company and bathing in the affection which had led them to this victory, and the feeling of accomplishment that had come with it. "You know," Anakin said. "Qui-Gon was right. He said I would need all of you if I was to accomplish my goal, and… well, I couldn't have done it without you."

"Aaw, you make me blush," Suzie giggled.

"It was our pleasure, Anakin," Aayla smiled.

"And you know what the icing on that cake of Henry's is?" Terriermon finally cracked and came out with the words that he had been bursting to say for the last few minutes. "Tomorrow, the man who was possibly the greatest evil that this universe has ever seen will be nothing more than Zillo Beast poop?"

There was a moment of silence.

And then each and every one of them (even Renamon, who had known he was going to say that), cracked up and laughed uproariously to the sky. Anakin overbalanced backwards, he was laughing so hard, and he ended up dragging the whole group hug down with him, the Tenacious Ten ending up in a heap on the roof and laughing almost non-stop for about five minutes, allowing the elation of the moment to fill them up and boost their mirth to even greater levels. Soon, they were reduced to ten limp beings gasping for breath as they struggled to stop laughing and didn't quite succeed.

Godzillo looked down at them and rolled his giant eyes slightly, actually shaking his head, but he eventually lowered his head down to them and, when they stopped laughing, they pushed themselves up and, one by one, they managed to climb aboard the giant creature's head so that he could take them back down the quick way.

* * *

And through the camera that Seripas was still holding, the rest of the Coruscant and Tython looked on in amazement. Padmé and Chuchi were both hugging each other and struggling not to start crying, they were so happy. Bane smirked and tipped his hat to the screen and Grievous clenched his fists, his eyes seeming to do the nearest thing he could to a grin, as the sight of the final man who had ruined his life being exterminated for good.

Obi-Wan smiled, as he felt pride for his Padawan fill him up from the inside, as did Quinlan and Luminara. Chewbacca roared triumphantly from within his AT-AT. And Commander Bly and Captain Rex both bumped fists, unable to contain the grins of elation on their faces.

"Well done, Generals," Bly murmured, as he gave the giant holograms a salute. "You did it."

* * *

It's done. It's finally done. The evil bastard has finally been slain, and I believe he went out in the most appropriate manner possible.

That's really all I have to say on this one. I feel pretty euphoric myself right now, and I hope you guys do too.

But the action's not over yet. This was the first of two epic climaxes. The second one will be up on the site in two days' time, as Fatemon/Beelzemon and the others try to find a way of ending their own conflict.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Things look grim. The Sovereigns are on their last legs, and GranDracmon is still very much going strong. To top it all off, Belphemon might have his hands full with his new opponents, but they still have no solution for getting themselves out of the Dark Ocean or defeating GranDracmon. Can it be done at all?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 210 : Ally Upon Ally Will Turn**


	210. Ally Upon Ally Will Turn

Here we go folks. I'm back with the final instalment of this arc. Judging by your reviews, you liked the way I finished off Sidious in the last chapter. Now, please enjoy the conclusion of the fight against evil in the Dark Ocean.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 210:- Ally Upon Ally Will Turn**

* * *

Ebonwumon screwed up all four of his eyes as his body seized up, doing his best to try and block out the noise that was streaming towards him in waves. But GranDracmon's Death Scream seemed to be practically unavoidable and the Great Demon unleashed the wails of the underworld on the giant turtle Sovereign, rooting him to the spot once again.

GranDracmon himself then came flying across the battlefield and rammed one of his fists into the side of one of Ebonwumon's head. This had the effect of slamming the head to the side to crack against the other, throwing the giant Digimon off balance slightly. As he struggled to right himself, GranDracmon raised a hand and prepared a Crystal Revolution that he was going to throw at Ebonwumon's exposed underbelly and finally finish him off for good.

Chains lashed out of nowhere behind him and suddenly wrapped around his arm, jerking it backwards and pumping GranDracmon's body full of lightning as he was yanked away from the vulnerable Ebonwumon. GranDracmon turned around and growled in annoyance. Azulongmon, who he had beaten into the beach only a few moments before, was pushing himself back upwards again and reeling GranDracmon in like a fish on a line, as he curled his body around to prepare another Aurora Force, charging it up as quickly as he could.

GranDracmon wrenched himself free of the chains and brought his hands out to his sides and swept them into the middle and up as Azulongmon unleashed his attack, causing the water in front of him to rise up and collide with the attack to cancel it out, but the Aurora Force was still so powerful that the shockwaves the explosion created was enough to throw GranDracmon back several metres. As he crashed to a halt, he heard a rushing sound and looked around to see one of Ebonwumon's huge feet surging down towards him.

Dodging aside again, GranDracmon opened his shark jaw shoulders and unleashed another Death Scream, but Ebonwumon hurled a Double Dragon Wave at the exact same time. Both attacks slammed into their opponent, but the Double Dragon Wave won out and tossed GranDracmon backwards, forcing him to stop his Death Scream attack.

GranDracmon twisted around in the air to see Baihumon motoring towards him, a furious snarl on his jaws and his claws very much in evidence, shining like the brightest of metal. GranDracmon frowned in irritation and lashed out with one hand even as Baihumon lunged at him, latching his hand around the tiger Sovereign's throat as the Sovereign in question plunged his claws into GranDracmon's chest.

Both of them cried out in pain at the attack but GranDracmon was able to hold Baihumon's head and gnashing teeth back, his grip tightening around Baihumon's throat and cutting off his breath as his shark shoulders lunged forwards themselves and began to savage Baihumon's underbelly. The tiger yelped, and GranDracmon heaved him to the side, tossing him into the surf and sending him rolling away.

Even as GranDracmon made to pursue, he was batted across the back of the head by another strike from Azulongmon, scooping him into the air with his chains wrapped around GranDracmon's own neck, dangling him from it as if it were a noose. GranDracmon found himself to be the one hacking for breath now, but he swiftly reached up and broke the chain, ignoring the pain of the electricity pouring down the metal and plummeted back towards the ocean below.

That's when Zhuqiaomon rammed him like a blazing meteor, his toothy beak taking its turn to latch around GranDracmon's neck and put the squeeze on it, as his talons ravaged the shark shoulder and flames licked over the bodies of both of them. GranDracmon growled and swung up with a fist to pummel Zhuqiaomon in the throat, causing the phoenix to gasp and relinquish his hold, and followed up with a Death Scream that blasted him back into the shallows, flinging a Crystal Revolution down after him.

Zhuqiaomon's aura extinguished again when he hit the flames, but he was saved from being turned into a giant ice cube by Azulongmon, who sent a blast of lightning shooting out of the horn on his helmet which slammed into the Crystal Revolution and blasted it to pieces, right as GranDracmon crashed into the beach not far away. The Great Demon clenched both his fists and his shoulders snarled with teeth bared.

He watched as the Sovereigns gathered themselves once again in front of him, taking the opportunity to allow his own injuries to heel up. When he was presented with his four opponents, he couldn't help but fold his arms and smirk. All four of the Sovereigns were clearly on their last legs. Zhuqiaomon's wings were slumped to his side as he struggled to rekindle his aura. Azulongmon's coils were slacker than normal and the brightness seemed to have gone out of his body. Baihumon's helmet was severely cracked and his body was covered in gashes, and a large portion of Ebonwumon's forest trees had been snapped or ripped away.

And yet GranDracmon's injuries were healing over nicely. He chuckled. The Sovereigns might be a mighty force in the Digital World, but here, in the Dark Ocean, they were nothing compared to him.

"I believe that we have reached the last stage of our battle," GranDracmon chuckled. "Who wants to continue?"

"If we were in the Digital World, we would have beaten you long ago!" Zhuqiaomon growled angrily.

"Very possibly," GranDracmon conceded. "But you should have thought of that before you brought the fight to me."

Baihumon snarled and sprang forwards, Zhuqiaomon hurling himself into the air right behind him to shoot towards GranDracmon. Azulongmon and Ebonwumon brought up the rear, all four of them slamming themselves towards GranDracmon at the same time with intention of reducing him to dust.

But GranDracmon was prepared for this and lifted a hand, warping the dimension to his will once again. A huge column of sand exploded upwards from underneath Ebonwumon, powerful enough to send the turtle Sovereign shooting into the air, where he slammed into Azulongmon. With a roar of surprise and pain, the dragon Sovereign was knocked to one side and Ebonwumon crashed back to the ground on his side, his heads slamming into the beach and stunning the giant Digimon.

GranDracmon then moved his hand towards the blazing Zhuqiaomon and began to control the air currents with his mind. The phoenix Sovereign was taken completely by surprise when a gust of wind slammed into his wings and caused him to tilt to one side, where he crashed into Baihumon like a falling mountain and sent the both of them rolling away in a tangle of wings and claws. Baihumon tried to extricate himself while they were still rolling, but suddenly the ocean surged up the beach and engulfed them both sent them crashing back into the waves some distance away.

Azulongmon tried to launch more chains down at the errant Digimon Demon, but GranDracmon had other plan. He sprang into the air and swerved past the chains, lashing straight up towards Azulongmon's face. Azulongmon reared backwards and practically set his body alight with lightning, but GranDracmon pushed in regardless and seized Azulongmon by the long beard and dropped downwards. In a feat of phenomenal strength, he jerked Azulongmon down with him and flung the giant serpent dragon, sending him crashing into the cliff wall and tumbling to the ground.

GranDracmon sneered as he stepped over to the fallen Azulongmon, raising a hand with a Crystal Revolution seated within his palm. Azulongmon struggled to move himself but he was pinned down by several rocks from the cliff which were much heavier than they ought to be thanks to more manipulation from GranDracmon.

"I'm going to enjoy this," GranDracmon sneered as he thrust his hand forwards.

In mid-thrust, a large wave of gold suddenly struck him from behind and his entire body froze over, the Great Demon becoming a solid statue of gleaming metal. Azulongmon felt the rocks lose weight and pulled himself up, soaring back up into the air once again.

"Thank you, Baihumon," he turned to the tiger who had fired the shot.

"Don't mention it," Baihumon panted as Zhuqiaomon shook himself off slightly, trying to dry his feathers.

"I dinnae suppose that finished 'im, do ye think?" Ebonwumon murmured as the four Sovereigns gathered around the frozen Demon.

As if in answer to his question, the gold suddenly shattered and exploded outwards in a sharp hail of metallic projectiles, which slammed into all four of the Sovereigns to push them backwards and lacerated several portions of their body. GranDracmon, freed from the metal prison, turned around with a dangerous gleam in his evil eyes.

"I believe that was your last card," he sneered. "It ends now."

* * *

Belphemon was similarly enraged was a pair of green blasts slammed into his back, nailing him right between the wings and tossing him forwards slightly, right towards the shining red figure that was Gallantmon Crimson Mode. Gallantmon clashed his sword and lance together and swept forwards to rake a huge line across Belphemon's front from shoulder to hip with both of them, before twisting himself to slam his foot into the bottom of the Demon Lord's chin.

As Belphemon was flung back into the cliff-face, his chains thrashed down to the floor and surged upwards in an attempt to strike Gallantmon, but the Knight didn't even have to move because a few moments later, Fatemon swooped across from below him and his sword swiped through seveal of the chains and the biomerged Mega span around to face Belphemon once again. He prepared a pair of Balanced Reality orbs and hurled them towards Belphemon, and then shifted into Beelzemon and levelled Berenjena and his shotgun, letting off a blast from each of them at the same time.

Belphemon had surged away from the cliff wall with the intention of trying to swat the Balanced Reality orbs aside, but just before he slammed into them, the cannon and gun blasts crashed into the orbs first, detonating them with explosions that were twice the size of what they would normally produce right in Belphemon's face. The Demon Lord yowled and threw him head up and backwards, grabbing at his snout.

Beelzemon and Gallantmon nodded to each other, and the former shifted back into Fatemon, sheathing his sword, as the both of them shot forwards at the same time. They each seized one of Belphemon's chains in both hands and swooped past the Demon Lord, skimming the ground and then shooting past one another and back to the front, and then repeated the action, wrapping the chains around Belphemon's legs, before they swept back behind him and wrenched on them with all their strength.

Belphemon, still disorientated from the earlier attack, toppled forwards on his front and slammed into the beach, snout-first. His two opponents both drew their swords at the same time and dived down towards their fallen enemy, ramming their blades into the backs of his shoulders at the same time and flattening him onto his chest, before they kicked off and into the air to soar high overhead once more.

Belphemon trembled and tried to get up, but he had been severely weakened by the double assault and he was finding it quite difficult to support his own weight. "That ought to keep him occupied for a moment," Fatemon observed. "Now, come on, _think_. We need to come up with a way out of this."

"We could try reasoning with him," Gallantmon suggested. "Try and make him see that he's losing and that we might be lenient with him if he helps us."

Fatemon shook his head. "You're talking about the wrong Demon Lord here. Half of them might be willing to listen to something like that, but if I remember correctly, Belphemon and Daemon got too angry in battling to listen to any sense whatsoever. He's in his Rage Mode after all, and his only other mode won't help us either because he'll be asleep when he's in it."

"Fair enough," Gallantmon murmured. "Any other suggestions?"

"No," Fatemon sighed. "Of all the Demon Lords he picked to resurrect, why did it have to be this one? Heck, even Lilithmon would probably have listened to us if we were beating the stuffing out of her like this."

A loud explosion off to their right drew the attention of both of them, and they turned to see how the others were getting on against the rest of the Nightmare Soldiers. As it turned out, they were getting on pretty well. The arrival of the three new Megas, all at full power, had been enough to tip the scales in favour of the Sovereigns' Army. Now the remaining Arkadimon and the weaker Digimon all around them were being mopped up quite quickly.

Justimon slammed into the ground with a huge Thunder Clap that vaporised several remaining Devimon and threw one of the Mega-level Arkadimon off-balance, allowing him to fall prey to a River of Power from MetalSeadramon which blasted him to data. SaberLeomon and Dinorexmon double-teamed another and slammed paw and claw through its chest at the exact same time. UlforceVeedramon decapitated another with a swift stroke of his Victory Sword and kicked another across the face to knock it to the side, where it was impaled on the claws of MirageGaogamon and swiftly followed its comrade into heedlessness.

The remaining Ogremon, Raremon and lower level Arkadimon were bombarded from above by Kahuna Waves from MarineAngemon, the heart-shaped bubbles entering their bodies and tearing them apart from within. A Mega level Arkadimon lunged towards several of the Devas but a bright red Atomic Ray from HiAndromon cannoned into his open mouth and slew him instantly.

Plesiomon rolled over several other Nightmare Soldiers with his Hydro Impact Crusher and Gryphonmon swept low over the oceans to churn the water with his Solor Roar and wipe out several hidden MarineDevimon his keen eyes had picked out, while GranKuwagamon coated a bunch of incoming Megadramon with his Grand Darkness, causing them to crash into each other and bunch together in confusion before he hurled an X-Scissor Claw into the darkness. Nothing came out except several million data particles.

"You know," Gallantmon chuckled. "Your three friends are quite special, aren't they? Look at them go."

Fatemon smiled as he watched his three loyal companions lay down the law and threw themselves over the rest of the army to the last group of Nightmare Soldiers. In an incredible feat of strength, Ornismon was actually _carrying _the massive bulk of Vikaralamon in his talons and released him low to the ground as he swooped down. The pig Deva dropped like a stone and crushed half a dozen SkullScorpiomon, and as the other soldiers crowded around the large Digimon, Ornismon unleashed a huge Cosmic Ray from his beak and swept it in a circle around the Deva to vaporise anything that got too close to him.

Slayerdramon was living up to his name nicely, as he whipped his segmented sword around in two tight circles that cut through the chests of two Ultimate level Arkadimon and dropped them where they stood, lifting a foot to kick another in the chest and hammer him down to the ground, before jumping in the air with a flap of his green cape and summoning a huge Shoryu Slash to send a dragon-shaped wave pummelling down to disintegrate one more Mega Arkadimon and every other Digimon within a fifty-foot radius.

And as for Rosemon, she seemed to be all over the place. She gutted a random LadyDevimon with her sharp vine and lashed her other one around the waist of a Devimon to hurl him into another and lash down to stab through both of them a moment later, whirled around to kick two SkullMeramon in the face and then crouch low to the ground and letting rip with another Forbidden Temptation. The red aura erupted through the area all around her and obliterated the opposition in every direction.

The Impmon portion of Fatemon reflected once again on just how far he had managed to go with the aid of those three, and how much sooner and more disastrously his ventures could have ended if they had not been with him.

He watched Ornismon blast several Gigadramon out of the air with his Raging Tempest. He watched Slayerdramon coiling his sword around the neck of an Arkadimon and pulling on it to slice its head off. He watched Rosemon lash out with a Thorn Whipping to slam many more enemies to either side with the writhing vine.

And then something in his mind sparked, getting him to pay closer attention to what the three of them were doing. In the space of a couple of seconds, Fatemon's mind suddenly went wild, as several lines from the prophecy repeated through his mind. His mind flashed back to the last time he had fought alongside the three of them while they were in this form, against the evil Digimon – Darkdramon.

He remembered some of the things that they had done in that particular battle, and suddenly, everything seemed to fall into place, as if the future was aligning itself in his thoughts of its own accord.

Suddenly, he understood everything. _One of God, and one of Fate._ That line had been talking about himself, and this new ability that he had acquired, able to switch between two different Mega forms – one a warrior of God, and the other a Minister of Fate.

But several of the other lines had still been up in the air.

Until now.

It all made sense. So much sense that Fatemon almost started kicking himself for not realising it earlier. There _was_ a way. If they could pull this off, then it would _not_ be their fate to be stuck in the Dark Ocean, just as Fatemon had said before.

Through the combined efforts of the Mega-level Digimon and their supporting Devas, the rest of the attacking Nightmare Soldiers were quickly eliminated, creating a swathe of untold destruction that raged across the beach, until only a handful remained, including a pair of Mega level Arkadimon, three Devimon, a Sangloupmon and a SkullGreymon. Of the massive army that had attacked the army of the Sovereigns, that was all that was left.

There was nowhere for them to run and their enemies bore down on them at high speed, attacks primed as they readied themselves to finish the job.

But suddenly, they were all beaten to the punch as a huge wall of hellish flames washed over the sand, forcing them to leap out of the way as it engulfed the remnants of the Nightmare Soldiers, who never even had the time to shriek before they burst into data. Fatemon and Gallantmon both jumped and cursed, as they realised that Belphemon had recovered enough to push himself to his feet and stagger towards the Nightmare Soldiers drawing their data into his chest.

"He'll heal himself!" Gallantmon warned. "And he'll get stronger!"

Fatemon morphed into Beelzemon and dived downwards, flinging several blasts from his cannon before switching back to Fatemon and readying his sword, while Gallantmon plunged down after him, preparing a Crimson Light, but before either of them could do anything more, Belphemon whirled around and struck them both with a powerful swipe of his Lampranthus and knocked them both back into the air. The stab and slash wounds in his body began to heal over as he absorbed more data and his wings began to slowly fix themselves.

_Damn it!_ Impmon thought, as his head whipped over to where GranDracmon was fighting the Sovereigns in the distance. He bit back even fouler language when he saw just how badly it was going for the Sovereigns. GranDracmon's unfair advantage was really beginning to tell on them.

He now had a plan, but there wasn't much time for him to implement it. He needed to act, and fast.

"**YOU MAY HAVE DESTROYED THE ARMY!"** Belphemon roared. **"BUT NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES, I WILL KILL YOU ALL!**

"You keep him busy!" Fatemon yelled to Gallantmon, who nodded and surged forwards to ram Belphemon in the chest at high speed and continue the battle, while Fatemon flapped his way over to where the others were still standing.

"Guys!" he cried, his voice carrying out over all of them. "I have a plan, but it's quite a complicated one and there's not a lot of time, so please – just do what I tell you and don't ask questions. I don't have the time to answer them."

SaberLeomon shook off the bewilderment at the different form that Impmon and the twins had taken quickly and nodded, "Go ahead," she said.

"I need you guys to keep Belphemon busy for as long as you can," Fatemon replied. "But _don't_ kill him. We need to make sure he's alive for the next stage of the plan."

"What?" Dinorexmon growled incredulously. "Why?"

"He said, no questions," MetalSeadramon scowled down at the green dinosaur. "And I trust him – I've fought alongside him before, after all. Let's go."

As a wave, the Digimon surged past Fatemon and thundered towards Belphemon, Justimon barking instructions to them, as they began to engage him in a hit-and-run assault, dashing in to throw their attacks at him and then darting away as somebody else took their place. However, as Rosemon, Slayerdramon and Ornismon moved the join them, Fatemon flapped in front of them and blocked their path, shaking his head.

"Not you three," he said. "You guys have your own part in my plan, and I need you to carry it out quickly, okay?"

Rosemon nodded immediately and said, "Anything."

"Great," Fatemon smirked. "Alright then – Ornismon and Slayerdramon, I want you too to head over there and give the Sovereigns a hand against GranDracmon. Don't do anything stupid against him – he's more powerful than any opponent we've ever faced before. But when I give you the signal, and trust me, you will know what it is, I want you both to do everything in your power to hold him still. Pin him to the ground. Make sure he can't escape from what's about to happen next. Now go! The Sovereigns are losing."

Ornismon and Slayerdramon glanced at each other momentarily – they were, after all, being asked to attack the most dangerous being in three universes. But they both decided immediately to put their trust in their friend once more and hurtled away towards the direction of the distant fight.

Fatemon watched them go for a moment, and then turned to Rosemon. "As for you," he said. "I have something special in mind for you."

"I do not like that sound of that," Rosemon said dryly.

"It's better sounding than you might think," Fatemon chuckled. "Here's what I need you to do…"

* * *

GranDracmon contemptuously tossed Baihumon aside so he slammed his back into the cliff-face once more, and then lashed upwards to crack Zhuqiaomon on the side of the beak and send him crashing into the sand with enough force to shake the beach. He smirked as he beheld the Sovereigns again, each one struggling to push themselves back up again after the pounding that GranDracmon had already put them under.

"Pathetic," GranDracmon chuckled. "What pathetic sights you guys make now. And to think I was worried you would be a hindrance when I set out to conquer the Digital World. I haven't even started yet and here you are at my feet. Go on. Beg for mercy. It would be so gratifying."

"It is not the end yet, GranDracmon," Azulongmon declared as he forced his huge body back into the air, while the rest of them slowly clambered to their feet once more. "And it won't be until each of us has broken into data. Until that time comes, we shall continue to fight you, regardless of injury."

"We will never beg anything from you," Zhuqiaomon added venomously.

GranDracmon sighed. "Very well," he shrugged, as he prepared a pair of Crystal Revolutions. "If that's what you believe, I suppose I better just delete you and be done with it." He raised his arms higher and prepared to hurl his projectiles towards the weakened Sovereigns.

But suddenly, there was a rushing sound from directly behind him and he yelled in surprise when a pair of massive talons suddenly closed around his shoulders and latched onto him, hauling off his feet and into the air, the Crystal Revolutions dying out in his hands as he lost concentration. GranDracmon's head lashed up as he struggled and saw that his attacker was Ornismon, the giant purple Archaeopteryx-like Digimon staring at him grimly.

"Who…?" GranDracmon blustered. "How dare you defy GranDr…!"

"**COSMIC RAY!"** Ornismon bellowed, a huge amount of yellow energy building in his beak, before he released GranDracmon's shoulders and fired a massive burst of power from his mouth straight downwards. The attack cannoned into GranDracmon's face, eliciting a yell of pain, and threw him down towards the ground faster than gravity would carry him, where he crashed onto his side and went rolling several times.

As he clambered back up to his feet and Ornismon curved around for another pass, GranDracmon snarled and hurled a massive Death Scream up at the impudent Mega. Ornismon swerved aside in an attempt to dodge, but he was still clipped on the wing and seized up, plummeting towards the ground himself.

GranDracmon smirked, but then became aware of loud footsteps pounding across the sand towards him. His head turned around and he was struck broadside by an enormous orange energy attack shaped like a dragon and thrown backwards, interrupting his Death Scream and sending him crashing into the cliff.

Slayerdramon charged forwards with his sword at the ready and lowered his head, charging with a full on headbutt. As GranDracmon pushed himself back upright and turned around, Slayerdramon rammed into him head-on, his five horns punching into GranDracmon's abdomen between his shark shoulders and shoving backwards again. GranDracmon gritted his teeth and the shark shoulder hissed and started trying to bite at Slayerdramon, but their teeth just clanged harmlessly against his Chrome-Digizoid armour.

Before GranDracmon could retaliate, Slayerdramon sprang backwards and slashed him across the chest once with his sword and then leapt aside.

The dragon Mega ducked down as Ornismon swooped low over the top of him and crashed into GranDracmon with a full-on dive, flattening him against the wall once again before heaving backwards and tossing him down the beach in his talons. As GranDracmon crashed to the ground, Ornismon swooped after him, diverting low over the ocean and beating his wings hard to kick up a Raging Tempest attack right over the water.

The sheer force of the wind heaved the inky water into the air in some kind of giant typhoon. As GranDracmon pushed himself back up again, livid as hell, the huge wave of water crashed into him and swept him back across the beach to slam into the wall of the cliff once again, and Ornismon hurled another Cosmic Ray after the water, which slammed into GranDracmon's chest with enough power to push him so far into the cliff he almost disappeared completely from view.

Moments later, and GranDracmon busted his way out of it again, only for Slayerdramon to descend on him from above thanks to the high jump he had taken, the segmented sword cleaving across the back of GranDracmon's shoulders before Slayerdramon crashed into him and sent them both rolling across the sand. GranDracmon pulled himself out of the roll as quickly as he could and threw his fist at Slayerdramon as the dragon extricated himself.

If anything, GranDracmon was more hurt by the attack than his opponent. Slayerdramon was rebuffed, but the Chrome-Digizoid armour that covered every inch of his body kept him from harm and left GranDracmon's fist smarting. GranDracmon cursed and immediately let off a powerful Death Scream that washed over Slayerdramon and rooted him to the ground. As he struggled to move, GranDracmon hurled a Crystal Revolution directly at the armoured dragon.

Ornismon suddenly plunged down from the sky, grunting as he entered the Death Scream, but seizing Slayerdramon in his talons and hurling himself back up into the sky before it could have too much of an effect on him. As they flew out of harm's way, Ornismon chuckled and said, "Hey look. Who's carrying who around now?"

Slayerdramon shook himself and said, "I believe it would be more prudent to concentration on our opponent for the moment."

"Good point," Ornismon conceded, especially when he saw the GranDracmon was currently bounding upwards towards them as if he was running on air, despite the wings on his shoulders. Two huge columns of sand rose after him and shot past towards the airborne duo, and GranDracmon froze them solid with a Crystal Revolution as they shot straight up into the air.

Ornismon swiftly arched himself around and flung Slayerdramon directly down towards the ice. The dragon hefted his sword and pounded through the icy block with ease, but he was then struck by the remaining sand and carried up into the air. He grunted as the sand threatened to engulf him, but focused his energy into his sword and sent out another Shoryu slash, which catapulted another dragon shaped wave out of the end, ripping the sand apart and lancing down towards GranDracmon.

GranDracmon shielded himself with his arms and the wave hit him and pushed him back down towards the ground, but Ornismon had, at some point, gotten beneath him and swept upwards, extending his talons to crash into GranDracmon's underside. GranDracmon growled, and Ornismon blasted up another windstorm with his wings that flung the Great Demon upwards again, towards where Slayerdramon was falling.

Slayerdramon smirked as he heaved his sword downwards, slicing a huge line directly down GranDracmon's middle from his face to his forelegs. GranDracmon yowled and covered his face, allowing Slayerdramon to slash across both his shark jaws and then kick him downwards. As GranDracmon fell towards the ground, Ornismon seized Slayerdramon in his talons again, and the two floated down after him.

"Hey, we aren't doing too badly so far," Ornismon remarked.

"Indeed, but let us not drop our guard, shall we?" Slayerdramon half-agreed.

"Got it," the giant bird nodded, as they descended lower.

Suddenly, a small swarm of Crystal Revolutions was thrown upwards towards them. Ornismon's eyes widened and he spurred himself forwards, twisting to the side so that two of the blasts shot on either side of one of his giant wings as he swerved out of the way. He had to flick his large tail to ensure that it too was not hit by one of the beams, but then another Death Scream slammed into them both. Both of them grunted as their bodies began to stiffen once more and they spiralled towards the ground once more.

Both of them crashed into the beach, kicking up a massive amount of sand as they both went rolling. Ornismon managed quite an impressive flip, rolling up and over Slayerdramon and catapulting himself into the air where he crashed into the cliff face back first and collapsed down to the ground. Both of them immediately struggled to get back up, but GranDracmon was not about to give them the opportunity.

He raised his hands, and more tree roots came lashing out of the cliff. Ornismon squawked as the wrapped around his wings and feet, pinning them to the wall and the ground respectively. Meanwhile, the sand had suddenly reared up around Slayerdramon and was engulfing him slowly, preventing him from standing up.

GranDracmon stepped towards them, the wounds from sword and talons healing over already. "Not a bad effort," he said. "Commendable from somebody who isn't a Sovereign. But I'm afraid your futile attack is over already. And now, you shall serve me."

"Say what?" Ornismon scoffed. "What in the Digital World makes you think that we would ever work for you?"

"Simple really," GranDracmon chuckled. **"EYE OF THE GORGON!"**

The shark jaws opened, and a light began to gather in both of them, the wings on GranDracmon's back flapping slightly as he powered up the attack. Both Ornismon and Slayerdramon found themselves mesmerised by the light. Both their hearts stopped when they remembered what Impmon had told them about this guy using that very attack against Guilmon to enslave him to the darkness and turn him back into Megidramon.

Both of them thought the same thing at the same time. _Ally upon ally will turn._

Could it have meant the two of them?

"**BLAZING HELIX!"**

Apparently not.

GranDracmon was slammed in the side by a huge plume of fire that tossed him into the air and cut off his attack. Baihumon suddenly crashed into him in mid-air and plunged his claws into GranDracmon's sides while seizing one of his wings in between his teeth. GranDracmon's power over the sand vanished under that attack and Slayerdramon suddenly surged upwards and out of the beach, hurrying over to Ornismon to cut the tree roots open with four large slashes of his sword, allowing the Ancient Bird to wrench himself free.

As Baihumon kicked GranDracmon into the air again, Azulongmon swooped down towards him from above. GranDracmon swung around to prepare a Crystal Revolution, but suddenly his world went black and he couldn't see a thing, thanks to a Misty Illusion from Ebowumon. His attack went embarrassingly wide and Azulongmon slammed into him and pumped his body with electricity to fling him down towards the ground once more.

Despite all that, he still managed to land on his feet and growled as he found himself surrounded by six opponents now.

"Did I not say, GranDracmon," Azulongmon informed him. "That we would not stop fighting until we are dead."

"Then let's see if I can arrange a trip to visit Anubimon for you," GranDracmon snarled.

Ornismon and Slayerdramon nodded to one another, before they both rushed back into attack once more.

* * *

Over by Belphemon, things were beginning to get equally lively, but unlike GranDracmon, Belphemon didn't seem to be having that much luck. He had gotten so wild and angry that he seemed to have lost all semblance of strategy, and the only thing he was doing now was swinging wildly with his claws and occasionally letting off an attack, which was pretty easy for the others to dodge.

None of his opponents stayed within reach for more than a few seconds, as Belphemon slammed his claws into the ground in an attempt to hit Pajiramon, who danced out of the way while firing arrows almost non-stop, Mihiramon swung himself in from the sky and clubbed Belphemon across the face with his Armoured Tiger Tail. Belphemon bellowed in irritation and swatted at the flying tiger, but suddenly SaberLeomon slammed into his back with a powerful Howling Crusher that knocked him forwards, where he landed on his hands and knees, a snarl pulling back the lips on his snout.

He hurled himself back upwards slashed through the air behind him, forcing Gryphonmon and GranKuwagamon to spiral out of the way of his attack. He lashed out after them but they were quick on their wings and avoided his attacks, and that was when Belphemon was rammed in the torso by a huge spout of water from Plesiomon's tail. He roared and slashed at the Water Tail Blaster even as it pushed him backwards, trying to rip the attack apart as he strove against it.

But Justimon had other plans and the biomerged Mega jumped into the water a short distance along it, allowing it to carry him shooting towards Belphemon at high velocity as he pulled back his arm. He rolled around a strike from Belphemon's claws and slammed a huge Thunder Clap directly into his chest. Belphemon staggered backwards under the impact and MetalSeadramon's tails wrapped around his legs and jerked him off his feet, tossing him into the air.

Gryphonmon and GranKuwagamon surged back in while Belphemon was tumbling and slashed across his wings, from either direction, tearing large rips in the skin flaps. Belphemon went spiralling, but he hurriedly tried to launch a Gift of Darkness when he hit the ground, bringing his claws slashing down towards the sand…

…Only or them to be countered by UlforceVeedramon as he leapt in and caught one with his sword and the other with his shield, forcing Belphemon's arms up into the air and delivering a solid kick to his chest and toppling him over. The sand beneath Belphemon suddenly lit up as Dinorexmon launched an Ogre Flame at the spot where the Demon Lord was about to land, and Belphemon howled as he rolled through the searing flames, which tried to eat through his back, but he still pushed himself back up again angrily, only to find MarineAngemon suddenly in front of his face.

Belphemon roared at the tiny Mega and prepared a huge energy blast in his mouth, but MarineAngemon threw a single Kahuna Wave and zipped out of the way. The bubble expanded as it flew into Belphemon's mouth and collided with the energy attack, detonating it right there when it was still in his jaws. Jaws smoking, Belphemon thrashed in agony, but his suffering wasn't over yet as he was suddenly pounded in the chest by an Atomic Ray from HiAndromon and before he could do much more than stumble backwards, MirageGaogamon ploughed into his back with a Gale Claw.

Suffice to say, things were not going all that well for the Demon Lord. The boost that the Dark Ocean was giving him seemed to be no match for the combined power of the whole army of the Sovereigns, and he'd already taken so much damage in previous bouts that he was severely weakened as it was.

* * *

As Fatemon looked over towards Belphemon, he almost felt sorry for the guy. After all, he had not even had possession of this form for an hour and he was already losing the fight. He couldn't help but wonder how differently Phascomon might have turned out if he had not been abducted by GranDracmon at an early age.

But what was done was done, and there was nothing that could be done about it now. Whether Phascomon had been born with an evil heart or corrupted thanks to GranDracmon's interventions was no irrelevant. Whatever the case, Belphemon was pure evil, and he had to be stopped as much as GranDracmon.

And if his plan was to work, everything would have to hinge upon Rosemon.

Needless to say, Rosemon didn't look particularly happy about this.

"I'm not sure about this," she murmured. "I might not be able to do it."

"Why not?" Fatemon questioned. "You did it against Darkdramon, didn't you?"

"That was different," Rosemon objected. "Darkdramon wasn't as powerful as Belphemon is, and I know I'm certainly not as powerful as Belphemon. None of us are really. I don't think any of us here could have taken the sheer number of attacks he's taking over there, even if our opponents weren't aiming to kill either."

"Belphemon is powerful," Fatemon agreed, speaking with Impmon's voice alone now. "But if I remember anything about my time as a Demon Lord, and the Digimon that I ran around with, Belphemon was a weak mind. He does, after all, spend most of his time asleep, and every moment he spends awake is taken up with nothing but mindless rage and destruction. I think, that if there was any Demon Lord that this might work on, it would be him."

"And if I fail?" Rosemon asked.

Fatemon turned to smile at her and continued speaking with Impmon's voice. "Rosemon, I am Fatemon. I can see things that other Digimon can't. I can see possibilities, in the potential paths that people can take to fulfil their destinies and meet their fate. If something is downright impossible, I know about it. And I should probably tell you that you should have more faith in yourself. You _can_ do this. I just know it. And I mean that quite literally."

Rosemon stared at him for a moment and then snorted, before adding, "Look at us. First I'm the one giving you advice and then you're giving me some and the battle isn't even over yet."

"Yeah," Fatemon grinned. "Kinda weird, isn't it? But I'm afraid we don't have a lot of time left. Go now. And do your thing."

"If you insist," nodded Rosemon and without further ado, she swept towards the action and towards Belphemon as the Demon Lord traded claw to spear strikes with Gallantmon. Fatemon turned around briefly and mentally called out to Behemoth to hurry closer and bring Calumon with them, before he flapped off after his friend.

* * *

Belphemon shoved UlforceVeedramon backwards and swung around to slash down towards Dinorexmon several times, furiously trying to cleave the armoured raptor into several pieces. Dinorexmon dashed nimbly to the side, and several blasts from the Devas pounded into Belphemon's back to push him forward slightly. Belphemon snarled and whirled around to hurl a Lampranthus at the assorted Ultimates, but Gallantmon, Justimon and MirageGaogamon dropped down in front of them.

One Invincible Sword, one Voltage Blade and several Double Crescent Mirages later, and the chains were ripped to shreds. Belphemon had had his chains cut short so many times now that he practically had none left to spare. But he didn't pause to look and charged blindly forwards, flailing his limbs madly well before he even reached his targets.

The targets in question scattered, allowing an enormous River of Power to come surging through the gap they had left between them to strikes Belphemon full in the chest. MetalSeadramon whipped himself overhead, following the blast of his own cannon and ramming himself into Belphemon to send him crashing back into the waters of the ocean, where the giant serpent promptly launched a Giga Ice Blast that momentarily froze the surface and lodged the Demon Lord in it.

The United Army gathered around, taking advantage of the brief respite while the could while preparing for the counter attack. But then Rosemon was amongst them, and she said, "Okay guys. It's my turn."

"What are you going to do?" Gallantmon glanced across at her.

"You'll see," Rosemon replied simply as she moved towards Belphemon.

The Demon Lord bellowed in rage and suddenly exploded upwards, sending ice shards shooting in all directions like deadly hail and then launching a tornado at Rosemon, which caught several of the icy chunks to send them launching towards the Mega level flower fairy.

Rosemon pulled to a stop and started backwards in alarm, but suddenly HiAndromon zipped in from of her on his rocket boots and channelled a Copy Paste into his hands, deflecting the tornado and sending it and the added projectiles launching back the other way, to slam Belphemon in the chest and send him reeling, stumbling deeper into ocean.

"Thanks," Rosemon smiled.

"No problem," HiAndromon saluted, and Rosemon suddenly zipped past him and shot towards Belphemon before he could recuperate. He saw her coming and slashed out at her wildly, but Rosemon spiralled underneath the random, disorientated slash with ease and swept up behind him before dropping and landing in a crouch on his shoulders right between his wings and behind the stumps of his horns.

Belphemon started and immediately bucked and writhed, trying to shake her off, but before he could get going, Rosemon raised one of her vines and cried, **"THORN WHIPPING!"**

This time, instead of randomly flailing against Belphemon to try and do him injury, the vine extended in length and began to emit a bright red aura of some kind.

It lashed over Belphemon's shoulder and curled down his front, growing longer and longer as it began to steadily wind around and around his torso in various locations, winding its way through the chains the Belphemon already had wrapped around him. The vine then shot up one arm and began to encase that too, before it doubled back on itself and shot up the other arm as well.

Everywhere the vine went, the red glow that it appeared to be emitting seemed to expand outwards in an attempt to cover the rest of Belphemon's body, seeping through his outer surface and inside him. Belphemon's red eyes widened in surprise as he began to feel his body going slightly rigid, as if it was refusing to respond to his thought processes, and the feeling grew the more of him was covered by the vine.

As the vine began to wrap itself around the base of his wings as well, Belphemon lurched about, using what muscle control he still had to buck and writhe and stamp and generally flail around in random directions in an attempt to through Rosemon off him. But none of that worked, because the vine had also wrapped around the base of Rosemon's legs and had effectively pinned her to his back. She wouldn't be leaving it that way unless she herself wanted to get off.

Belphemon tried to reach up behind him with his madly swinging arms next, in order to squash her into nothingness, but the vines were now beginning to restrict his movement slightly. For a plant they were surprisingly strong and to Belphemon's extreme irritation, he found that he could not lift them any higher than his shoulders. Reaching behind them was practically impossible.

He snarled and lurched his head backwards, trying to butt Rosemon off, but that didn't work either, and now Belphemon could feel a strange, tingling sensation through any part of his body covered by the vine and shooting around to everywhere else like pollen on a windy day. He particularly felt a strange buzzing in his brain and he suddenly realised what Rosemon was trying to do – she was trying to take over his mind.

"**NO!"** he roared and he immediately redoubled his efforts. Rosemon grunted in exertion as she grabbed his shoulder with one hand to steady herself while simultaneously pouring all of her energy, soul and willpower into the vine clutching in her other hand, trying to win the internal struggle against Belphemon's consciousness. The Demon Lord was a lot harder than Darkdramon, who had fallen to this very attack almost immediately, but when Rosemon had done it, he had simply stood there, waiting for Rosemon's next instruction.

Belphemon eventually stopped moving altogether, and just stood there in the shallows of the ocean, his eyes narrowed as he tried to mentally force Rosemon's invading consciousness away, but Rosemon pushed back with equal vigour. Both of them had their teeth gritted as their minds strained against one another, Rosemon trying to impose her will on the Demon Lord while the Demon Lord struggled to free himself.

It was almost like a stalemate between them. Belphemon's body and mind had been severely weakened by the battling he'd undergone, but he was still be aided by the powers of darkness that surrounded them all, keeping him alive when attacks that would normally kill him struck and helping him to fight back against Rosemon's mental attack.

The rest of the onlookers just stood, watching the pair of them at work, unsure what to make of this little spectacle. Rosemon grimaced. She could feel that she was slowly winning the battle – Fatemon had been right in that Belphemon obviously had limited control over his _own_ mind, and the only reason she hadn't been able to win through was the powers of darkness. But she knew that she didn't have the time to spare standing here and fighting against him like this.

So she lifted up the other end of the vine, the sharp end, and plunged it down between Belphemon's shoulder-blades.

Belphemon roared at the sudden stab to his back and he immediately lost his concentration. Rosemon pushed forwards with everything that she had, pounding her will into Belphemon's mind as the red aura spread over his entire body. It was all over in a matter of moments. Belphemon simply slumped downwards, his arms hanging limply by his side and his mind no longer his own.

He was now, effectively, a slave to Rosemon's will. Whatever she wanted him to do, he would do it, no questions asked. Rosemon gasped for breath for a moment, but then looked up and nodded to Fatemon, who smirked at her and gave her a thumbs up.

"I knew you could do it," he chuckled.

"Oh shut up," she called back. "That was hard."

"Yeah, but you did it in the end," Fatemon nodded as he turned back towards the other distant fight. He grimaced when he saw that it still wasn't going well, even with the additional two helpers. He turned to Rosemon again and cried, "You know what you have to do?"

"Yep," nodded Rosemon, mentally ordering Belphemon to stand up and flex his tattered wings, ready for take-off.

"Good," Fatemon nodded, morphing into Beelzemon. "Now, let's turn ally upon ally, shall we? Follow close behind me everybody and Rosemon everybody!"

* * *

GranDracmon had somehow managed to grab Slayerdramon's swinging sword in his hand, ignoring the fact that it cut into his palm and barrelling forwards at a quick dash to push the armoured dragon backwards and thrown him into the surf. He was just about to raise the water to try and drown him when Baihumon's Gold Strength forced him to dodged to one side once again. The tiger Sovereign bounded towards him, teeth agape and claw brandished lethally.

GranDracmon spotted Ornismon coming in from the other side and suddenly leapt upwards, avoiding Baihumon's strike and hurling himself towards Ornismon. The giant bird launched a Cosmin Ray at him, but GranDracmon threw a Crystal Revolution which cancelled it out and seized Ornismon by the throat, heaving the huge avian Digimon around and sending him crashing into Zhuqiaomon not far away and sending them both to the ground in a jumble of feathers before he dropped down towards Baihumon with his fist reared back and shark jaws wide.

Azulongmon blurred out of nowhere and clipped him in the side to send him spinning, allowing Baihumon to leap up and score a hit with his claws before GranDracmon righted himself and punched the white tiger down towards the ground. He was then bombarded by several Black Hails from Ebonwumon, pushing him down to the ground himself, where Slayerdramon was ready with another Shoryu slash that blasted GranDracmon backwards and into the air again.

GranDracmon snarled, but he suddenly found himself seized in no less than _four_ pairs of talons. Zhuqiaomon and Ornismon were back in the air and had seized him by either sets of shoulders, wheeling around to swoop low over the cliff and ram the Great Demon into the rocky wall. Both of them then span around and threw a Phoenix Fire and Cosmic Ray respectively, both the beak-projectile-based attacks hammering downwards and exploding around the Demon to throw him out into the middle of the beach again.

GranDracmon's eyes narrowed into slits as he pushed himself back up. He'd finally had enough for good. He placed his hands close together and began to delve into the powers of darkness, charging up a huge attack that would, when launched, fire out around him in all directions that everything within three-hundred yards, and possibly further, would be obliterated.

And then, he was interrupted when a green cannon shot rammed him in the face and interrupted his thoughts. His head shot around, and when he saw what was coming towards them, his eyes snapped open in alarm and disbelief.

Not only was Beelzemon leading the charge, and in a completely new guise; right behind him was Belphemon, who was glowing red and whose eyes were completely blank, and he was being ridden by a Rosemon whose vines were wrapped around his body. And behind _them_ were the rest of the army, all hurtling towards him at the same time.

"WHAT THE…!" he roared.

Ornismon and Slayerdramon, on the other hand, both suddenly grinned. At the sight of Rosemon and her Thorn Whipping on Belphemon, everything fell into place, and they knew that this was their cue to do as Fatemon had told them. So they both immediately hurtled towards the stunned GranDracmon at high speed, dashing towards his side while he was preoccupied with his disbelief.

The first thing that made GranDracmon notice he was under attack, was the flash of bright, gleaming silver out of one eye that indicated Slayerdramon had hurled himself directly at the Great Demon Digimon. As the two collided, GranDracmon was sent staggering to the side under the full weight of the attack, but he managed to regain his balance before falling over.

However, Slayerdramon had not been intending for GranDracmon to fall over. Instead, he simply seized his arm and hauled himself upwards, and before GranDracmon realised what was happening, Slayerdramon was standing on his back. GranDracmon was a lot larger than Slayerdramon, but before he knew what was happening, the humanoid dragon warrior had pulled one of his arm behind his back. He immediately lashed out behind him with his other hand, but with all the precision of an expert swordsman, Slayerdramon lashed out with a Tenryu Slash.

GranDracmon roared in pain as he felt the sword slash into his arm just above the elbow, cutting through deep enough to cause the arm to fall limply to his side, temporarily useless. But then he suddenly felt Slayerdramon's blade curling around his neck instead and hauling backwards, dragging the human-like part of his body back and over his animal-half. He tried to wrench his arm out from behind his back, but Slayerdramon had it pinned.

GranDracmon snarled and was about go ballistic and hurl himself upwards, when suddenly the winds all around him began to pick up. Ornismon was sweeping in wide circles overhead, pumping his wings and generating a Raging Tempest from above. Just as it had with Darkdramon, the powerful wind attack buffeted against GranDracmon with enough force to flatten him against the ground, his four legs buckling underneath him and forcing him to his knees, while the rest of him tried to struggle upwards, to no avail.

Working together, Ornismon and Slayerdramon were pinning the great Demon Lord down. Ornismon was keeping him in the same spot, while Slayerdramon was immobilising his limbs directly to keep him from breaking free and firing off his own attacks. It didn't particularly matter that Slayerdramon was also being buffeted by Ornismon's winds, as the Chrome Digizoid armour that coated his whole body was keeping him from harm, while GranDracmon was being constantly battered by it. But, though Slayerdramon tried, he couldn't pull his sword hard enough to slice GranDracmon's head off.

The powers of Darkness were still preventing GranDracmon from having a fatal blow landed on him.

But how much longer would that be lasting.

"Come on, Rosemon!" Beelzemon roared. "It's now or never!"

"Where should we do?" Rosemon called across to him.

Beelzemon looked back at her and smirked. "Oh come on, Rosemon. Isn't it obvious? What's the purest and most sinless place that you can think of, a place so filled to the top with good that it makes you tingle inside?"

Rosemon smirked and then nodded before she looked down at her mount and said, "Now, Belphemon! Open a portal! To the Celestial Heavens!"

Belphemon made no sound, but he raised his hands and his red eyes flashed once. And, almost immediately, a beam of light began to lance out of the air just on the other side of GranDracmon, which slowly began to glow and expand. Everyone looked on in wonder as a huge, swirling vortex seemed to punch its way into thin air and slowly expand outwards, growing all the time, higher and higher into the air and wider across the sand until it spanned the whole beach.

The moment that light touched GranDracmon, he screamed as if he had been seared and immediately felt his energy draining. His eyes widened as he realised what they were planning to do and he tried writhing harder, but he was already beginning to feel the powerlessness rising up inside him like a few embers turning into a volcano.

Beelzemon smirked, pleased to see his plan had worked. The boundaries around the Celestial Heavens were meant to prevent anybody who had evil intentions from opening a gateway inside them. But while evil people might be going _through_ this portal, the intentions behind it were purely for good, so, by Fanglongmon's will, they were being let in.

"Everybody through!" he shouted, as he swerved out of the way, and allowing Rosemon and Belphemon to barrel past him at high speed. Ornismon suddenly relinquished his attack and flapped away, while Slayerdramon bounded off GranDracmon's back and rolled aside. Belphemon let rip with a loud, unearthly roar as he charged towards GranDracmon, his mistress balanced perfectly on his back.

GranDracmon knew exactly what would happen if they succeeded and he desperately tried to break away. But he couldn't. It was too late. The light was already beginning to drain at his powers as it filtered through into the Dark Ocean and began to actually light it up, the holy energy eating away at the Darkness all around GranDracmon. The Great Demon was not so Great anymore, and before he'd gotten more than one and a half steps, Belphemon slammed him with enough force to launch him bodily into the air, the Demon Lord of Sloth, powering through the portal he had created and pushing GranDracmon through it before him.

Everybody else hurriedly shot through the hole after them as it began to slowly close. It was a repeat of their entrance to the Dark Ocean in reverse, each of them hurrying through as the hole contracted inwards but now they were heading into light rather than darkness. As the light washed over the Sovereigns, it seemed to rejuvenate them and they two surged forwards with the rest of their army. It was like a stampede, and Beelzemon watched as each and every one of them hurtled past him and through the vortex.

Last to go was Behemoth, a wailing Calumon still clinging to his handlebars, and then, suddenly, Beelzemon was alone in the Dark Ocean. He smirked to himself, and the Impmon portion of him thought,_ Shall we go and face our fate?_

_Yeah!_ Ai and Mako cheered.

Beelzemon morphed back into Fatemon and powered his wings, bursting through the hole and into the light…

* * *

…and then he found himself in the familiar setting of the Celestial Heavens. The angel and machine Digimon scattered throughout the heavens were staring in shock and amazement at the sudden entrance of the army of Digimon, as well as the Sovereigns, who were all crowding together and facing GranDracmon and Belphemon, the latter of which was backing away from the former.

Not far away, Fatemon could see other familiar figures, such as Ophanimon, Seraphimon and Magnadramon flying over the buildings towards them. Deckerdramon was rolling through the streets and yelling for the various citizens to get out of his way, and even Valkyrimon could be see jumping from rooftop to rooftop as he sought to find a good viewing spot.

And as for GranDracmon himself…

…Well, he was in pure agony, writhing and flailing around and beating against the floor with fists and feet as light seemed to gather around him somehow, permeating into his body as if it had a mind of its own. Fatemon wouldn't have been surprised if it _did_ have a mind of its own – it was heavenly light after all. Light seemed the stream into GranDracmon through his mouth and eyes, as if he was going to explode from the inside.

Fatemon flew over to the front of the army, as the portal behind them slowly closed. The moment it sealed completely, cutting off the route to the Dark Ocean, GranDracmon's howling increased in pitch and he clutched at his face, screaming into his hands and beating his wings uselessly, as more and more of his energy drained.

"NO!" he roared. "IT CAN'T END LIKE THIS! NOT WHEN I WAS SO CLOSE! HOW? HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?"

Fatemon glared hardly at him. "I could go into the long details, GranDracmon, but I believe that would be futile. You exploited my weaknesses in order to capture me and bring me to the Dark Ocean. I just returned the favour and exploited your own. You can't live without darkness all around you. I would guess you would have less than half a minute to live. You've already lost so much strength that you don't even have the power to transport yourself back to the Dark Ocean. Am I right?"

Indeed, large chunks of data were beginning to peel away from GranDracmon's body and float harmlessly away into the air, as the Great Demon Digimon slowly diminished in size as the powers of darkness poured out of his body and were obliterated by the light all around them.

GranDracmon looked up towards Fatemon venomously and bellowed, "HOW DID YOU DO IT? HOW DID YOU GET BACK TO THE MEGA LEVEL LIKE THIS? I TOOK AWAY YOUR POWER TO DIGIVOLVE!"

"And that was your mistake," Impmon's voice along came from within Fatemon. "Ironically, GranDracmon, you're brilliant plan to drain me of my abilities actually solved just about all of my main problems. Not only did it rid me of the last of the tainted stain of the Demon Lord, but it also allowed me to fully accept my Tamers for the role that they were supposed to play in my life. It brought me closer to my friends, and most importantly, it gave us the opportunity to use your own General against you. So, I suppose I should actually be thanking you for that."

GranDracmon cried out as another wave of agony rolled over him. It was difficult for Impmon to not feel slightly vindictive at this point, considering how brutally painfully his self-same Demon Lord had stripped him of his own data to create Belphemon.

"I CANNOT LOSE TO YOU! I HAD YOU AT MY MERCY! MY PLAN WAS A SUCCESS! BECOMING RULER OF THE DIGITAL WORLD WAS MY RIGHT! IT WAS MY DESTINY!" GranDracmon bellowed in defiance as he doubled over while more data peeled off him.

"Your destiny?" Fatemon snorted. "That was not your destiny. It never was. It is your fate to die here, today, on the spot where you stand right now. It is true that everybody is in control of their own fate, but you sealed yours by making all the wrong choices. You chose a life of evil. And as long as there is good to stand in the way of evil, it will be the fate of all evil to fall at its hand.

"As for my fate… well, even I don't know the full extent of where my life will take me yet. But I know one thing for certain. I won't be a pawn of evil. Not anymore. I've taken control of my own destiny, GranDracmon. I've made my stand. But in the end, it's irrelevant when it comes to you. You would have fallen eventually, regardless of what happened in the Dark Ocean. Evil always does, after all."

He suddenly morphed into Beelzemon and said, "Now then, I'd guess you have about ten seconds left, but I'm not going to show you one last shred of mercy and finish you off, right now. Anybody else who wants to join in, please do so!" The cannon on his arm crackled with power as it charged up and Beelzemon bellowed, **"DEATH THE CANNON!"** and flung an absolutely enormous bolt of green energy towards the still-shrinking GranDracmon.

He wasn't the only one either. It seemed that just about everybody wanted to have a piece of the evil Digimon.

"**COSMIC RAY!"** Ornismon screeched.

"**SHENRYU SLASH!"** Slayerdramon hollered.

"**FORBIDDEN TEMPTATION!"** Rosemon shouted.

"**CRIMSON LIGHT!"** Gallantmon howled.

"**JUSTICE BURST!"** Justimon yelled.

"**TWIN FANG!" **SaberLeomon roared.

"**ATOMIC RAY!"** HiAndromon shrieked.

"**KAHUNA WAVES!"** MarineAngemon bawled.

And the list went on and on:-

"**RIVER OF POWER!"**

"**WATER TAIL BLASTER!"**

"**SOLOR ROAR!"**

"**X-SCISSOR CLAW!"**

"**THE RAY OF VICTORY!"**

"**FULL MOON BLASTER!"**

"**OGRE FLAME!"**

Renewed with energy and with their eyes narrowed, the four Sovereign suddenly contributed to the attack as well, letting rip with their most powerful attack directly towards the one who had simply refused to die against them before.

"**AURORA FORCE!"**

"**BLAZING HELIX!"**

"**DOUBLE-DRAGON WAVE!"**

"**GOLD STRENGTH!"**

And Beelzemon was even mildly surprised when other voices joined in. As the Devas threw their own attacks forwards, the main residents of the Heavens suddenly unleashed their own attack in a hail that added to the maelstrom of pure power that was already surging towards GranDracmon.

"**SEVEN HEAVENS!"** Seraphimon bellowed, spreading his hands out wards to form seven huge spheres of energy in a half-ring over his head that burned with the purest holy energy, before clapping his arms forwards to send them broiling towards GranDracmon.

"**EDEN'S JAVELIN!"** Ophanimon yelled, levelling her huge weapon at GranDracmon and sending an explosion of intense holy energy that seared as bright as Seraphimon's attack that lanced forwards in one large beam.

"**FIRE TORNADO!"** Magnadramon screamed, opening her jaws wide and spewing forth green flames that whipped themselves into a huge cyclone the powered towards GranDracmon along with the other attacks.

"**AURVANDIL'S ARROW!"** Valkyrimon hollered, drawing a bow from thin-air and letting fly with an arrow that glowed with intense consecrated energy and grew in size the closer it got to GranDracmon.

And finally:-

"**DECKERDRAUNCHER!"** Deckerdramon roared, the huge cannon sockets on his back unfolding and opening, belching out a massive swarm of missiles that could rival a blast even from MegaGargomon, which instantly homed in on GranDracmon and lanced towards him.

Beelzemon was pretty sure he heard the words,** "CELESTIAL ARROW!" **being called out too, but it was difficult to be sure over the noise of the attacks already in the air.

Needless to say, GranDracmon never stood a chance. In his severely weakened state, and without the powers of darkness to sustain him, he could barely lift his own arm up to futilely shield himself. In less than a second flat, he was consumed by the sheer number off attacks which collided together and produce an explosion so mighty that the entire heavens shook. Practically everybody standing on the ground was thrown off their feet, with the exception of Deckerdramon, and a plume of smoke several hundred metres across billowed upwards into the air.

Regardless, everybody still had their breath bated, waiting to see if GranDracmon would emerge from the smoke.

And eventually, he did.

But only as thousands of yellow particles which rose into the air and drifted away.

There was an explosion of noise as every single throat in the Heavens let rip with a cheer that shook the place with almost as great a force as the explosion itself. Beelzemon chuckled as he watched the natives of the Heavens turn around and hug each other in delight. HiAndromon and Justimon bumped fists. MirageGaogamon and UlforceVeedramon scraped sword and claw across each other and saluted. And Dinorexmon sagged, upset that the fighting was over.

"We did it, Impmon!" Ai cried.

"We finally did it!" Mako echoed.

"That we did," Beelzemon's voice alone chuckled. "That we did."

Abruptly, the festivities stopped when a loud roar ripped through the heavens. In the jubilation of the Death of GranDracmon, everybody had completely forgotten that Belphemon was still alive. Rosemon had relinquished her control on him to launch an attack on GranDracmon herself, and Beelzemon whirled around to see the Demon Lord shooting up towards him, murder clearly evident in his blazing red eyes.

"**YOU RUINED EVERYTHING!"** Belphemon roared. **"NOW YOU DIE!"**

Beelzemon's three eyes narrowed and switched from red to green, as his body morphed into another shape, cannon disappearing from his arm and gleaming sword appearing in his hand in its place.

"I don't think so!" Fatemon growled. "I think that's my line!"

Belphemon roared and Fatemon folded his wings and rushed down to meet him, the sword in his hand blazing with light like an Olympic Torch.

"**BLADE…!" **Fatemon erupted as Belphemon fired a huge energy sphere at him, which he dodged easily by rolling to one side and continuing his dive.

"**OF…!"** he added, as Belphemon fired a tornado next, which caused Fatemon to flare his wings and sail straight over the top of it unhindered, not slowing even for a moment.

"_**DESTINY!"**_ he finished, as Belphemon lashed out with his shortened chains as he got closer. Fatemon rolled and slashed through them once more, shortening them to nothing but stumps, and then whipped around to plunge the gleaming sword directly into Belphemon's chest, punching straight through his Digi-core and burying it up to the hilt so the tip actually came out the other side.

Belphemon gasped but before he could die from the strike alone the sword poured energy into his body and ripped him to data from the inside, sending his particles scattering out in all directions. As Fatemon drew his sword back across his chest, he looked up to see a black portal appearing in the sky, the distinctive silhouette of a winged jackal on the other side of it. Anubimon nodded down at him serenely, before moving aside. GranDracmon and Belphemon's data was immediately sucked upwards into the hole, which immediately sealed shut behind them.

And thus, the last of the Seven Demon Lords met his death. Again.

As did the most powerful evil in just about any Digital Universe.

Fatemon smiled and slowly descended to the ground, landing in the streets where he split into his three component parts. Impmon smiled wryly, before Ai and Mako both tackled him and knocked him to the floor, enveloping him in a double bearhug. No words were needed in this situation, they just laughed and lost themselves in the feeling of relief and victory.

And Impmon's mind wandered over the last few lines of the prophecy. "Only three can end the evil," had even been talking about him at all. It had been talking about the three companions who had so diligently stuck by him through everything. He might have come up with the idea that ended it all, but if they hadn't fought their way through the castle to reach him, he would never have been able to. And it had been they who had pulled flawlessly pulled off his plan anyway, using their amazing skills to finally put an end to GranDracmon. For good.

He gave the three of them a thumbs up and a smile to show his gratitude for the immediate moment. Rosemon, Ornismon and Slayerdramon nodded and smiled back as they glowed and shrank back down to their own more familiar forms.

A shadow suddenly fell over Impmon and his Tamers, and all three of them looked up to see the huge, metallic form of Deckerdramon looming over them. The alligator-mecha's eyes seemed to smile, even though his mouth couldn't.

"Congratulations, Impmon," he deep voice resonated down to them. "You have done it. You have found your strong love. I knew I was right to put my faith in you."

Impmon grinned. And for the next few hours or so, he just couldn't seem to stop doing just that.

* * *

There it is, people. Two extremely powerful beings killed off in two subsequent chapters. Three if you count Belphemon as well. I am on a cloud, right now, I can tell you that. I think the last few months have been some of the best writing times for me with those last few arcs. But with this, I'm afraid the action in this story finally comes to an end.

Mostly.

I hope you liked this chapter as much as I did, maybe even more, but the story is not over yet. We still have one more arc to draw things to a close. So, keep reading, my friends. And please keep enjoying.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

There is a mingled feeling of happiness and sadness in the air, in the aftermath of Sidious' death. A great evil has been crushed, but a massive loss of life was required to bring it about. But now, our intrepid heroes must look to the future and think of rebuilding. The Empire is dead, but there are still things to do.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 211 : A New Republic**


	211. A New Republic

Hey everybody. Not much to say here, except that we have now reached the final stage of the story. The last arc is now upon us, and it will not be one of action – there will be almost now action in it at all, actually. However, since the last two arcs were practically nothing but action, I think that's fair play. Anyway, there are several loose ends to tie up now, and this arc will finally bring the story to a complete close. Hope you like.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 211:- A New Republic**

* * *

Godzillo slowly stepped down the Senate Building, keeping his large head as level as he possibly could so that his eleven passengers wouldn't end up tipping over the edge. This was rendered somewhat awkward for him since he was climbing down the building head-first, but the large Zillo Beast was in no hurry. After all, he was digesting.

Not a particularly large meal in the grand scheme of things, but it was still the most satisfying meal he'd ever had.

The rest of the group sitting astride his enormous head just above his large nostrils were mostly silent. Seripas, who had joined the Tenacious Ten on the trip down to the bottom, was still in a state of shock after what he had just seen. After all, it wasn't every day that you saw a human, even a Jedi, obliterate an enemy in the way that Anakin Skywalker had done. It was phenomenal to say the least.

The rest of the Tenacious Ten were not exempt either – they too were still amazed by what they had seen Anakin do. But to a lesser degree than Seripas, and they were focusing most of their attention simply on enjoying one another's company. Which was something that they hadn't been able to do for a few days with all the worrying they'd had to do. Now, it was finally over, and while there was still a good deal that needed to be sorted out, it was a lot easier to relax.

Despite his recent victory, Anakin was still in business mode, as it were. He was talking into the comlink on his wrist and saying, "Indeed, Admiral. It is over. We have the situation under control down here now, and we appreciate the help of you and your forces."

"To be fair, General Skywalker," Yularen replied. "We did not do as much of the work up there as we would have liked. The one who made the most impact to the Empire's blockade was MegaGargomon by quite some distance. I don't think I've ever seen so much battlefield debris up here."

"Yeah, sorry about that," Henry chuckled. "You might want to find a way of cleaning that up."

"With what?" Terriermon snickered. "A dustpan and brush."

"Terriermon."

"Momentai," the bunny grinned.

"I can hear that those two are still okay," Yularen chuckled back. "Should I assume that the rest of your team of ten made it out of the situation alive, General Skywalker?"

"Yeah, we're all here," nodded Anakin. "And all pretty much uninjured. But I'm afraid that I'm going to have to ask you and the rest of the fleet to turn around and head back to Tython now. If we assume that the plan down there worked, then Master Vos and the Delta Squad would have taken out the Empire's space-worthy vessels, which means that our forces there are stuck on-planet until somebody comes to pick them up. And the sooner we get the Jedi Council back here, the better, I think."

"Indeed," Yularen responded. "I am assuming that the people are going to want a few answers after what they saw down there today."

"That they are," Ahsoka snorted. "I bet every single one of them is confused right now."

"And not a little traumatised from watch Godzillo here _eat_ the Emperor," Renamon laughed as she patted the giant lizard's head just above his eye. Godzillo thrummed almost melodiously in response.

"Please tell me you got that footage, Seripas," Terriermon turned to the little Bounty Hunter.

"Er…" Seripas started.

"Terriermon, don't be sadistic," Henry chided him. "You don't really want to watch that again do you?"

Terriermon shrugged. "Maybe just a little bit."

A ripple of low laughter spread through the group, and Yularen's voice then said, "Then we shall depart immediately, General Skywalker. And congratulations on your victory today. It was an honour to be a part of your retaking of the Galaxy."

"Thank you, Admiral," Anakin nodded, and signed off, turning to the rest of the group with a grin that almost made him look slightly dopey, before adding, "You know, I still can't get over it. We won. We actually beat the guy, didn't we?"

"We did," Aayla smiled back. "It took us many months to finally figure out what was going on and figure it out, but we all got there eventually. I think it's safe to say, now at least, that the Clone Wars officially are over."

"Especially since the clones will no longer have to fight each other," Rika agreed.

"And we rose victorious," Barriss grinned. "I have to admit, there were several times even towards the beginning of the war where I thought we would never win no matter how much we tried or how hard we thought. But I think that was before I heard of you Digimon's existence."

"Oh, stop it," Lopmon waved an ear airily. "You guys did just as much work as we did. We might have been the ones to help you along the way and provide assistance and opportunities for you, but ultimately, it was you guys who won the day. And considering this is your universe and not ours, I would say that is just how it should be."

"Agreed," nodded Renamon and Henry at the same time.

"That doesn't mean credit should not go to you Digimon either," Ahsoka grinned. "If you guys," she indicated the bunnies and their Tamers, "hadn't attacked in the right places and held the entire fleets of the enemy at bay, we would have been overwhelmed with ease. And you two," she nodded to Rika and Renamon. "You took out Durge. That's quite a feat."

"It was the least we could do," Renamon said humbly.

"What's the story behind that Mode Change of yours anyway?" Aayla asked. "I'd heard that you had one, but I also heard that it didn't give you that many additional features to your original Mega form, which is why you never used it until today."

"It isn't all that different to be honest," Rika shook her head. "And we've only done it a couple of times before we met you so it's not exactly something which we've had a lot of practice at. But it does give us the ability to purge malice from the hearts of the good or the willing and halt anyone full of it in their tracks and overpower them. Durge was so full of malice that he was easily susceptible to the form's power."

"And I must confess," Renamon added. "If it hadn't been for Bane's timely intervention, Durge might have overwhelmed us. We were so stunned by the fact that he pulled his own head back on that he managed to gain the upperhand and attacked before we could react."

"Imagine that," Anakin chuckled. "Bane actually helped somebody. And free of charge too."

"He claimed it was personal," pointed out Rika.

"How do you know he's done it completely free of charge?" Terriermon smirked. "Now that we've won, he might try to wangle more pay out of us."

Renamon's eyes narrowed. "He better not," she growled.

"Oh relax, Rena," Terriermon laughed. "That guy knows what's good for his health, so I'm sure he won't. Still, it's quite something. The first time you two meet properly, you're at each other's throats, and then he saves your life."

"It's just like I told you months ago," Aayla turned to Suzie. "Nobody is above redemption. Not even Bane."

"Yeah. But what about Sidious?" Suzie asked. "Could he have been redeemed?"

"Yes," said Aayla firmly. "If he had chosen to turn his back on his evil ways and come quietly and tried to remain in the light then one day, he could indeed be worthy of redemption. The only problem was that he was so steeped in evil that he would never willing turn his back on it. Everyone _can_ be redeemed. But most people who go the wrong way just don't want to be."

"True," nodded Anakin. "But I imagine that Bane didn't particularly want redemption either, and yet he still earned it."

"Good point," Aayla chuckled.

The Twi'lek took a moment to run her eyes over the group and bask in the feeling of warmth, friendship, loyalty and love that ran between them. However, her eyes then settled on Seripas, and her heart suddenly dropped when she realised something. The little Bounty Hunter didn't know yet. He had not been told.

She decided that getting it out of the way now would be better and she cleared her throat and said, "Um… Seripas."

"Yes?" the small creature looked up at the Jedi Knight.

"I am sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I'm afraid that I have some bad news regarding your comrades."

Seripas' eyes shot open and he did not fail to miss the expressions of the other members of the group suddenly tighten into grimaces. "What?" he cried sharply. "Who? Are they okay?"

"Again, I'm sorry," Aayla replied, shutting her eyes. "And if you must blame someone then blame me, for I was the one there most capable of preventing it. Embo and Rumi are both fine – they escaped from the battle with nothing by minor injuries, if that. However… I'm afraid that Sugi did not make it out of the fighting alive."

Seripas looked thunderstruck, and it was obvious why. Not only had Sugi been a great friend of his, she had been one of the most supportive when the time came and he started going on missions without his metallic suit, and not to mention she had been the leader of their little group of four. And now, he had just been told that she was dead.

By this point, the Zillo Beast had reached the bottom of the Senate Building and was walking around its edge towards the main doors. On top its head, Seripas slumped backwards onto his back and put his head in his hands for a moment, shock rippling through his body at the terrible news. He felt Lopmon's small hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him, and he appreciated the gesture, but most of him didn't even seem to notice it, so staggered was he.

Aayla's voice seemed to break him out of his thoughts, as the Twi'lek said, "I'm so sorry, Seripas. I wish that I could have done something to save her."

Seripas bit his lip. He was actually fighting back tears, the only thing keeping him from crying was the fact he knew that Sugi herself would probably tell him to buck up if she could, so instead, he just looked Aayla in the eye and said, "How did it happen? Did she die with honour?"

Aayla sighed and murmured, "Yes, and no, I'm afraid. Yes, in that she died battling her hardest against the clone troopers and fighting like the true warrior she was. She didn't back down from the conflict even for a moment. And… no, in the fact that the one that killed her was, in fact, not a clone at all but the fallen Jedi Pong Krell, who ambushed her from behind while we were fighting and… I'm afraid she didn't even get the chance to defend herself."

Seripas' eyes hardened and his gaze became an intense glare. "I hope that this Krell is actually dead now, right?"

Aayla nodded. "Oh yes," she said. "I fought against him in Sugi's name, and I ended up hitting him with an Electric Judgement and then killing him with his own lightsaber, if that is any consolation."

Seripas sighed and murmured, "It is some actually."

"Again, Seripas, I'm sorry that I couldn't…"

"No…" Seripas cut her off. "It wasn't your fault. I know full well that if you could have you would have saved her, and Embo and Rumi will both know that too, and you avenged her death by killing the one responsible, so that's okay with me. As for Sugi… she chose a dangerous life as a Bounty Hunter. We all did. We all knew there was a risk of one of us not coming back alive on this venture, but we chose to do it anyway and I, for one, stand by that decision. Sugi could have died on just about any of the missions we went on. But wherever she is now, she can rest in peace, in the knowledge that she helped in the elimination of the greatest enemy in the Galaxy."

He sighed, and added, "If there was ever a mission where one of us had to die, I think we would all agree to have it on this one. She was a warrior to the end. That's all there is to it."

Aayla smiled faintly and nodded. "I appreciate that, Seripas. And I can assure you right now, that Sugi will not be forgotten anytime soon. She will be remembered."

She then turned to glance at the others and added, "_Everyone_ will be remembered. Right?"

There was a round of silent nodding from every head, and with that grim task out of the way and the air feeling slightly more melancholy than before, Godzillo reached the main doors of the Senate Building.

Many of their allies were already there and waiting for them. Seripas bit his lip as he beheld Sugi and Rumi standing nearby. The Kyuzo had the limp body of Sugi held in his arms, bridal style, having refused to leave her simply lying on the landing platform while they went the other way. As the Zillo Beast lowered his head, Seripas hopped over the side and immediately ran to them.

The rest of the group standing outside the doors included the five Senators from the control room, flanked by Lieutenant Thire and several dozen clone troopers (all of which were unarmed), and a few Senate Guards. General Grievous was also standing nearby, but off to the side, seemingly unwilling to get too close to anybody else while he didn't have to, and Bane… well, the Duros was nowhere to be seen.

"Looks like our little helper has decided to leave already," Renamon remarked quietly to Rika.

"He could have said goodbye," Rika rolled her eyes.

Renamon chuckled, and said, "That's not really his style, Rika."

"Right," Rika snorted. "Spring out of the shadows and then fade back into them like a whisper in the night. That's our Bane."

Crowded closer to the doors were several other Senators, including Kinn Robb, Orn Free Taa, Mee Deechi, Halle Burtoni, Lott Dodd and a whole host of others besides. Every single one of them stepped back fearfully as the huge bulk of Godzillo loomed over them, but the other five; Padmé, Chuchi, Bail, Onaconda and Mon Mothma, all stood firm as the great reptile lowered his head towards them.

One by one, the Tenacious Ten stepped up and launched themselves off Godzillo's head to fall the rest of the way, Renamon gripping Rika in her arms as she and the Jedi landed smoothly, while Terriermon and Lopmon snapped out their ears within a few feet of the ground to arrest their own fall and allow their own Tamers to land smoothly. As the group of them moved towards the Senators, Padmé suddenly broke away and threw herself into Anakin's arms in a hug that he gladly reciprocated, not particularly caring who was watching them right now.

Everyone seemed to have been expecting this kind of reaction from her though so there were no questions raised. While the two of them occupied themselves in their hug, the rest of the group stepped around them slightly, as the remaining four Senators approached them.

"May I be the first to offer each and every one of you congratulations," Bail Organa said with a smile on his face. "I must admit, that when you came up with and told us this plan, I did have my doubts that it would work, as you seemed to be putting a lot of faith in only a few people to complete the job. Nevertheless, you all performed perfectly, and many of the Galaxy's greatest threats are now no more. Each of you played a crucial role in the defeat of the Empire, and so I say to you, well done. And also, thank you. From the bottom of our hearts."

"Indeed," Mon Mothma nodded brightly. "You all saved us from a tyranny that had barely gotten started yet, and your speed in itself is something to be commended. I shudder to think what might have happened if that Sith Lord had remained in office just one more week."

"So do we, Senator," Aayla nodded. "So do we."

"It was simply amazing," Onaconda practically gushed. "I have never seen anything like half… no, a quarter of the things I saw today. Astounding."

Chuchi looked like she was about to say something as well, but she was interrupted when Terriermon came flying directly at her and swept past her shoulder, swooping up and around to land on her head. "Hey, you guys weren't so bad yourselves," he grinned. "Hey, Chuchi! I heard that you helped Barriss by shooting at Aurra Sing. How did that feel?"

"Oh don't even go there," Chuchi shuddered. "I'd be happy if I never even look at another blaster again. Anyway, it's so good to see you again, Terriermon. And the rest of you. Are you all okay."

"A few bumps and scrapes, but nothing that Barriss can't fix," Renamon smiled.

"Barriss can fix anything!" Suzie cheered. Barriss flushed.

Bail smiled down at the little girl and said, "Pardon me, ma'am, but I do not believe that we have been introduced. What is your name?"

"I'm Suzie Wong," Suzie grinned. "And I'm Lopmon's Tamer. That's my brother, Henry, and that's my good friend Rika Nonaka, and they are the Tamers of Terriermon and Renamon."

"Ah yes," nodded Bail. "I was told of you Tamers over the holographic communication we had a couple of days ago, but we didn't get to see you at the time. Are you all alright then? No lasting trauma from the battle?"

"Oh, there's plenty of trauma," Henry chuckled dryly. "But I'm sure that it will wear off soon enough."

"I see," Bail smiled grimly. "Well, I am pleased to be able to finally welcome you to Coruscant, Tamers. And the same goes for you three Digimon. It is nice to see you in the flesh at last, and I would like to extend more gratitude to you now… not just for the services you have provided today, but for the assistance you have been secretly been giving to the Jedi over the last few months."

"It was nothing," Terriermon grinned.

"It was not certainly _not_ nothing," Renamon scowled at her mate. "There were plenty of challenges for us along the way and you know it. Regardless, we all agreed immediately that we could not possibly _not_ help. Back in our universe we were protectors of the innocent. Just because this isn't our universe doesn't mean we should relinquish that title."

"It's been a pleasure to help out if nothing else," Lopmon agreed. "I don't know how our lives would have been if we had not ended up landing in your universe, but I am pretty sure I can say that we would have been missing out, whatever it was. This place has provided us with a host of new friends, after all."

"Do we count among them?" Onaconda chuckled.

"Whoa, slow down there," Rika laughed. "We haven't really got the chance to know you yet."

"Ah, but you will," Ahsoka pointed out. "Now that the Secret of the 327th is finally out, you guys don't need to go around hiding anymore. You can be seen in public with us and stop hiding underneath Renamon's perception filter. You'll get the opportunity to make even more friends."

"True enough," Renamon chuckled, as she glanced towards the host of Senators by the doors, who were staring at the three Digimon almost incoherently, and wondering what the heck was going on. She had to admit, while she could have done without the staring, it did feel nice to not have to go completely unnoticed altogether.

But most of _them_ probably would not end up being her friend. She'd seen enough of most of the Senators to know what kind of people they really were while they didn't even realise that they were being watched.

It was only now that Padmé and Anakin released each other from their hug, and, for appearance's sake as well as genuine relief, Padmé once again went around and gave the rest of the A-Team, as well as Barriss, hugs. She then glanced at Lopmon, who was perched on Barriss' shoulder and said, "Forgive me, but you and brother look pretty much the same under a hologram when you can't see the colour. Which one are you?"

Lopmon chuckled and replied, "Lopmon. The one with three horns," she indicated her forehead with a smile. Padmé laughed and held out her arm, allowing Lopmon to jump on it and move up to perch on her own shoulder. The small, brown bunny settled down as if she meant to stay there, and the rest of the Senators stepped forwards alongside her, each of them taking their turns to shake hands with the Digimon and the Tamers and they introduced themselves more formally.

Chuchi, on the other hand, started by pulling Terriermon off her head and pulling him into a hug, and then began to repeat the process with everybody else. As introductions were made and friendships re-established, Anakin glanced off to the side when he saw R2-D2 slowly rolling over to him, now free of any holocams sticking out of his back.

Anakin patted the top of his faithful droid and said, "Great job, little buddy. You provided a great help in bringing down the Empire. You should be proud of yourself."

Artoo made a small, embarrassed cooing noise and span his head happily, doing a couple of circuits of his master before rolling to a stop next to him to see what happened next.

Aayla chuckled when she spotted this behaviour from the little droid, but then she found her eyes straying upwards until they focused on General Grievous, who was lurking nearby. The Kaleesh cyborg still looked very out of place, standing in front of the Senate Building as he was, and he was not watching what was going on. He was simply staring out at the Coruscant horizon and looking decidedly uncomfortable about being here.

Aayla could sense confusion from him, and she could understand some of what was going through his head. His world had been turned upside-down when he had been brutally damaged and reconstructed as a cyborg, and then it had been turned right-side-up again a couple of days ago when Aayla and Terriermon had revealed the truth to him. But throughout that whole thing, whether he had been against the Jedi or the Sith, he had had his desire for revenge pushing him forwards, ready to swing his lightsaber at his next opponent.

Now, with the death of the two Sith that had planned the ruining of his life, the Muun who helped pull it off behind bars (actually, the Separatist leaders had been present at the battle above Coruscant in the brig of one of the cruisers and had been terrified the whole time, but then again, they deserved it) and the Jedi no longer his mortal enemies, Grievous was actually feeling a bit lost.

He had no purpose now. He had nothing to drive him on. He had got his revenge, and now he was actually feeling slightly empty.

He seemed to notice her staring out the corner of his eye and glanced towards her. She smiled vaguely and nodded at him, but, as usual, he shrugged off the comforting gesture and wrenched his head away, deliberately not looking at her. Aayla sighed. Even now, Grievous was not going to be a friend of theirs. His past was too messed up and confused for him to even think along lines like that.

Aayla's gaze wondered over to the three Bounty Hunters who were looking slightly lost themselves as they stared at the body of Sugi. Even Embo no longer had his calm, cool persona – he too looked put out by what had happened. But when the Kyuzo spotted Aayla staring at him as well, he _did_ return the nod that Aayla sent his way, before he went back to staring at the Zabrak's still form.

Aayla turned back to the conversation in time to catch Anakin's next words, as he said, "Well, the Empire's leaders might be gone, but technically the Empire is still in effect. If we want to restore the Republic quickly, then we're going to need a new Supreme Chancellor. And fast."

"I vote for Chuchi!" Suzie cried immediately.

Chuchi balked and stared at the little girl in horror. "What? No. Not me. Never me. All I ever wanted when I took this job was to be the spokesperson for the people of Pantora and to look out for their own interests in the wider Galaxy, and I've already done a lot more than that by helping the Jedi to free that Galaxy from the Sith. I have no intention of becoming the Galaxy's leader… ever."

"You and Aayla are so alike, it's scary," Terriermon rolled his eyes. "Next thing we know, you'll be pulling out a lightsaber blade and going absolutely mental with your dancing and dodging."

"Yeah… no," Chuchi chuckled.

"Well, I'll tell you who I would nominate," Padmé smiled. "I would nominate you, Bail."

"Me?" Senator Organa blinked.

"Yes, you," nodded the Senator from Naboo. "You've always been a strong advocate for peace and you've always been fair, and you already have a great amount of influence on Senate affairs. You would make a fantastic Supreme Chancellor, I am sure of it."

"Er…" Bail muttered.

"Well, you can't be any worse than the last one," Terriermon spoke up immediately.

Renamon snickered and added, "Or can he?"

"I was going to say that!"

"That's why I said it!"

"AGH!"

"Momentai!"

"AAAAGGHHH!"

Mon Mothma blinked and murmured to Chuchi, "Do they act like that often?"

"So I have been led to believe," the Pantoran murmured back.

Bail continued speaking with, "Well, while I am honoured by your consideration and faith in me, Padmé, I could not become the Chancellor just like that, even if I decided to accept the post. And I assure you," he added to the Digimon with a chuckle. "That I am no Sith Lord."

"How do we know that?" Terriermon asked with a mock-glare of suspicion.

Bail had no answer to that, so he just said, "Er…"

Terriermon snickered and said, "Ah, I'm just messing with you. We know you aren't a Sith. You don't give off the same vibe as Palpatine did. You never had?"

"Vibe?" Onaconda asked.

"As Digimon, we have the ability to sense certain evil presences," Renamon replied. "We never liked your previous Chancellor because whenever we were nearby him or even saw a picture of him, it gave us the creeps. It was never particularly pronounced other than that though, usually when we feel evil, we _know_ it's evil straight away. But with him, it was only a minor unease. We put it down to him being a sleazy politician, of which there are many as I am sure you agree, but now we know that he was masking his evil aura from us."

"Or more precisely, from the Jedi," Lopmon agreed. "But he was able to mostly hide it from us too because our abilities are fairly similar. However, he couldn't mask it from us completely, which is what gave us that apprehension around him. But we don't have that with you, Senator Organa and we never have. We can tell that you're a genuinely nice man."

"Thank you for the vote of confidence," Bail chuckled.

"And anyway," Padmé interjected again, "I wasn't talking about you becoming the Chancellor here and now, Bail. I know that you would need to be voted in by the other Senators as well before that could happen. However, right now, we do need a leader of some kind to at least guide us through the period until that time, and you can be that leader, Bail. You've been my guide through a lot after all."

"And you'd have my vote," Mon Mothma agreed.

Bail glanced from face to face several times before he said, "Alright, alright," raising his hands defensively. "I guess I can take on the duties of a temporary Chancellor for a while. For a start, I presume that a lot of people will be heading this way to try and find some answers, and our friends back there will be wanting some too. Would any of you like to come with me and help explain things?"

Chuchi sighed and said, "I will. I've gotten myself knee-deep in this and I was the one who first learned of it and kept it secret, so I suppose I should help to spread the word around of what the Digimon are and what was really going on. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if some of them tried to get me out of office for this."

A feral growl began to build in Renamon's throat at the thought, but Aayla and Barriss quickly put hands on her shoulders.

"That kind of approach will not help her case if it comes to that," Aayla warned her, and Renamon knew she was right.

"Besides, Senator," Barriss turned to her. "I think that anybody who does think that are either morons and idiots, or were supporters of the Sith, while _knowing _he was a Sith. I'm sure that most of the politicians over there have some sense in their heads, and any politician with a shred of it should be able to see how much good you've done for them with your actions."

Chuchi smiled and blushed slightly, nodding her thanks as Bail lead her away towards the confused Senators. Onaconda and Mothma followed in their wake, and Aayla immediately moved over to the three Bounty Hunters to quietly express her condolences over the death of Sugi, feeling that she had a duty to them in that regard since Sugi had been slain right behind her back.

Anakin turned to the others and said, "Speaking of people in the Senate who knew that Palpatine was a Sith, we should probably go looking for Mas Amedda. I haven't seen him for a while, but he spent so much time in the company of the Chancellor that he at least deserves questioning if nothing else. Who's up for a hunt?"

The three Digimon looked at one another and smirked. "I think we've got the energy for one last mini adventure before we get some rest," chuckled Lopmon. "You think he's still somewhere within the Senate Building?"

"Probably," nodded Anakin. "And possibly trying to hide somewhere and figure out a way of getting out unnoticed."

"Then let's track him down," Terriermon grinned.

Quick as a flash, the three Tamers digivolved their respective Digimon to the Champion Level. Aayla hurried back over to the group as they all hopped on board Godzillo's head once again. The giant Zillo Beast obliging waited as Anakin pulled Padmé up aboard with them and the swiftly carried them several strides away and clambered up the side of the building once again, until his head was resting next to the hole in the window of Padmé's office that Anakin had cut earlier.

One by one, they hopped through the window and headed straight for the door, avoiding the hole in the floor that Grievous had sliced open and setting off through the corridors, listening for any sign of the blue skinned alien who had usually been found at the Chancellor's side.

Anakin and Padmé both paused as the rest of them exited the room and then turned to look at one another. Padmé's eyes were shining, and it was obvious why. Asides from a brief conversation over the hologram when Anakin had been on Tython, this was the first time where the two of them had been alone, and it had been quite a while since they had got the chance to really be alone even before that.

The last time they had actually been truly alone had been at the Skysitter Restaurant where Ahsoka and the Digimon had set them up.

Padmé seemed unable to restrain herself any longer, and Anakin most certainly did not complain when she suddenly flew into his arms and planted her lips firmly on his own. The two of them kissed for something like a good minute, simply enjoying the feel of being reunited at last while they held their lips together tenderly and warmly.

Padmé broke it first and then leaned into Anakin's embrace, placing her head against his chest and listening to his beating heart, closing her eyes and struggled to stop them from moisture as she cried tears of joy. Anakin, significantly taller than Padmé, placed his chin on the top of her head and one hand on the back of it, while putting the other hand on the small of her back and holding her firmly to him. The two of them just stood there, enjoying the feeling of being united once more after so long apart.

"Oh, Anakin," Padmé broke the silence after a couple of minutes or so as they rocked against each other slightly. "You have no idea just how terrified I was through all the time that you were gone."

"Oh, I don't know," Anakin chuckled lightly. "There have been several times in the past when I've been utterly petrified myself. That time you were infected with the Blue Shadow Virus for one. But everything's alright now. The war's over, and… well… now we'll be able to spend more time together."

Padmé smiled. "I'd like that," she said quietly. "More than anything."

"Me too," Anakin smiled. "Kinda why I suggested it."

Padmé chuckled lightly and swatted his chest with her hand, not doing Anakin any damage whatsoever with it. Anakin smiled, and they simply returned to holding one another for a few more moments.

Anakin was the one to break the silence this time, as he said, "How are you holding up, Padmé? With the death of Palpatine and all that? I know that you considered him a friend once…"

"Once…" Padmé said firmly. "That is the key aspect. My friendship for him vanished that moment I learned of his true intentions." She sighed and added, "I do not feel sad at his loss, and if you left out the fact that his death marks the end of a reign of tyranny that has been lasting for years and was so subtle that we didn't even know it was a reign of tyranny, nor would I feel a great amount of joy. Let's just leave it at that, shall we?"

Anakin grimaced and said, "Agreed."

"Besides," Padmé looked up at him again, a warm look in her eyes. "We shouldn't be talking about things like that right now. The most important thing is that we won, and we should make the most of that feeling while we can. Just hold me, Anakin. The war is over and now… finally… we can live in peace."

"It has been a long time coming, hasn't it?" Anakin chuckled, pulling Padmé close to him once again. "I can scarcely believe that its here."

"Well, it is," Padmé sighed. "And right now… I couldn't be happier. We both survived the conflict as did all of your team-mates and my closest friends. Right now, all I need is you."

"Amen to that," Anakin laughed. "I could say the exact same thing to you."

Brown eyes met blue and they leaned in towards each other once again, engaging in another kiss that was even softer and more tender than the first. One of Padmé's arms reached out behind her to grasp the hand on her back and pull it away just so that she could interlace her fingers with Anakin's as they held each other close. It had been far too long since they had had the opportunity to do this, and right now, both of them were completely at peace.

It felt like absolutely nothing could ruin the moment as they held their lips together

"Ahem," said a voice by the door.

Padmé yelped and started backwards, wrenching herself out of Anakin's grip and backing away so quickly that she almost fell through the hole in the floor behind her. Anakin lashed out and grabbed her by the wrist to pull her away from it, before both of them turned to see Ahsoka leaning against the doorframe, one brow raised as she stared at the pair of them.

"Am I interrupting something?" Ahsoka asked, her face deadly serious.

"Ahsoka!" Padmé blustered. "Er… it… it's not what it looks like, I swear."

"Is that so?" Ahsoka replied. "Because from where I'm standing, it sure looked like what it looked like to me."

Padmé's face was going bright red and her heart pounding at the thought of their cover being blown. Ahsoka was staring at her with a completely blank expression and she desperately tried to come up with a scenario that would explain why she had her lips pressed up against those of the Togruta's master.

"I… I was just… so relieved that it was all over," she stammered. "I just had to… find a way of expressing my… my… happiness and… and…" she trailed off, knowing full well that that excuse sounded pathetic and unconvincing.

"I see," Ahsoka replied. "So where's my kiss?"

"Huh?" Padmé blinked, and then looked more startled when Ahsoka suddenly chuckled and smirked, her eyes flicking from Padmé's to Anakin's.

"Couldn't wait to get some alone time, could you, Master?" she asked. "Word of advice, though. Next time you want to have a private moment… _close the door."_

"I knew I was forgetting something," Anakin chuckled as well, and Padmé was surprised to see that Anakin didn't look shocked, worried or embarrassed by what Ahsoka had caught them doing. "Thanks for the advice, my young Padawan."

"Anytime," Ahsoka chuckled. She turned back to Padmé and grinned cheekily. "You don't need to kiss me, Padmé. I was just messing with you. Sorry, but I think even Anakin admits that that was quite funny."

"Yeah, yeah, you caught us," Anakin rolled his eyes.

"What?" Padmé blinked, totally confused.

"So, how long had you been standing there?" Anakin asked.

"Since about ten seconds after we left the room," another voice interrupted as Aayla suddenly walked into the room, the rest of the group crowding around the door behind them. "She noticed you weren't following and doubled back to see what was going on." The Twi'lek grinned and said, "For all the discretion that you two have been showing over the course of the war, you slipped up pretty quickly this time. I know it's a happy moment, but still… if you want your marriage to remain secret then just try a little harder okay?"

"Say what?" Padmé gasped. She turned to Anakin with shock in her eyes and said, "They… they know about us?"

"Yep," nodded Anakin. "Apparently the Digimon, watching silently from the shadows, grew suspicious, and so they set up our meal together at the Skysitter Restaurant and spied on us to see if they were right." He threw a glare at them and added, "I would have preferred it if they had just asked."

"But you would have said 'no,'" Gargomon objected.

"True," Anakin sighed. "Anyway," he turned back to Padmé with a smile and said, "They've all agreed to keep it a secret, and to be honest, them finding out about you and me proved to be a very good thing. Even though I had achieved the mind-link with them by that point, I was still keeping my distance from them because I didn't want them to find out about us. But when they did, and I then had no secrets from them, it allowed us to grow closer together mentally. And, because of that, I was able to share their strength today in the final battle against Sidious."

Padmé blinked and stared at the group for a few seconds, before she said, "Well. This is… interesting."

"Isn't it?" Kyubimon chuckled. "But it's definitely a good thing. As long as you're around us, you don't have to hide your feelings for each other. And if there's anything you want to talk about regarding it, you now have a broader range of people to speak to."

"And it makes you a part of our family, Padmé!" Suzie beamed. "Anakin's my uncle, so that make you my auntie."

"It… does?" Padmé blinked. "He is?"

"Not literally," Aayla chuckled. "She refers to me as a big sister, and if that were the case, you would both be _my_ uncle and aunt as well. And considering Anakin is about three years younger than I am, that would be pretty weird."

"No kidding," Anakin laughed.

"It would also make me your daughter," Ahsoka chuckled. "Because she calls me a cousin."

Turuiemon stepped forwards and said, "For the record, Padmé, we are sorry that we spied on you to find out the truth. But we felt it necessary to help Anakin to come out of his shell, as it were, and it seemed to work. And for what it's worth, you're a brilliant women and you are an excellent addition to this… weird little family."

"Weird _large_ family you mean," Rika snorted.

"And you needn't worry about your secret," Henry nodded. "We're all going to keep it. Even Gargomon here has told nobody, and he normally has no desire whatsoever to be discrete about anybody's secrets."

"Hey!"

"You know it's true."

Padmé suddenly found herself smiling as the group clustered around her and Anakin. "Well," she said, a little unsurely but with a smile on her face, "I appreciate it – everything that you've done for both me and Anakin, and all without me realising just what you were doing. To think that I had such a large group of family members that I didn't even know about."

"We thought you'd say something like that," Ahsoka laughed. "And I think you all know what happens next, don't you?"

Barriss rolled her eyes and guessed, "Group hug?"

"Hell yes," Ahsoka smirked.

"What is it with us and group hugs anyway?" the Mirialan questioned.

"Why, don't you like them?" Kyubimon raised a brow.

"Of course I do," Barriss laughed. "I was just making an observation that we seem to do it a lot."

The lot of them immediately crowded in and engulfed both Padmé and Anakin in their arms, and effectively becoming a tangle of limbs. Even the four-legged Kyubimon pushed her way into the group and pressed her flanks against the others warmly.

Padmé grinned. She now thought she understood completely how Anakin had been able to pull off what he had on the roof. With such a kind and caring group of friends showing him the way, it was almost as if Anakin could not have put a foot wrong if he'd tried. The two of them kissed again right in the middle of the group hug, enjoying the feeling of comradeship that radiated throughout the little cluster of eleven.

When they separated, Gargomon pointed to the window and said, "By the way, I think somebody else just found out about you two as well."

The group looked around to see that Godzillo was still looking in through the window at them. Anakin chuckled and asked, "Do you think he can keep a secret?"

"Probably not," Gargomon snickered. "We may have to kill him."

Godzillo evidently heard this comment and growled, revealing his teeth. Gargomon yelled, "ACK!" and stepped backwards. "Hey, it was just a joke, big guy."

"You should really watch what you say," Kyubimon chided her mate. "You want to go down the path of the last person who crossed him?"

"What, you mean down his throat?" Gargomon shuddered. "Yeah, I'd rather not be joining our esteemed Sith Emperor anytime soon thank you."

Padmé blinked and glanced at Anakin, who simply nodded. The meaning was clear:-

"Yes, your new family is this weird all the time."

* * *

The rest of the afternoon would have been a time to relax under normal circumstances, but even though the Sith and his minions were now dead, there was still a lot to be done. Nevertheless, the group tried to unwind and get a bit more used to the idea of there not being an enemy to fight anymore. It was a bizarre feeling – even in their times of relaxation in the Jedi Temple they had always known that there was a Sith Lord somewhere not far away in the Senate. But now… there just wasn't.

Mas Amedda was found shortly after the whole group went out to look for him a few minutes after talking with Padmé. The Chagrian Vice Chancellor was spotted trying to sneak out towards one of the landing platforms by Barriss, and the group all hurriedly barrelled out of the window and landed in a ring around him, activating their lightsabers if they had them or readying their cannons, switchblades and fiery tails.

Mas yelped, but the only thing was, he was not actually alone. With him was a female Umbaran with wide hypnotic eyes and a pale face, who the Jedi recognised to be Palpatine's Senior Administrative Aide, Sly Moore. She was not seen around the Sith Lord in public nearly as much as Mas Amedda was, but it appeared she had been close by today and, for some reason, she looked extremely angry, particularly at Anakin.

To everybody's surprise, the Umbaran suddenly lashed out with her hand and Anakin was flung backwards across the platform, taken completely by surprise by the Force push that was thrown at him. Sly whipped around to try and fend off the others, but the moment they saw what happened, everybody went flying into motion.

To say the least, the confrontation with Sly Moore was not nearly as long as the other battles against the rest of Palpatine's minions. She might have been angry and ready to fight, but against the combined power of three other Jedi and three Digimon, she had absolutely no chance at all. As she prepared to launch another Force-push in Aayla's direction, the Twi'lek pushed back, as did Ahsoka and Barriss at the same time, tossing Sly into the air in a tangle of long grey robes with a triple Force-push that catapulted her off her feet and sent her smashing straight into Mas.

Even as both of them went rolling, Kyubimon's nine tails suddenly lashed out and coiled around Sly's upper torso, pinning her arms to her side and hoisting her back into the air. Sly struggled and tried to free herself, but then she found a glowing switchblade pressed to her throat and a charging cannon jammed in her face. After that, she stopped struggling, knowing that she had been beaten after only about five seconds.

Anakin promptly stepped back over, having been unharmed by the Force push and hurriedly they arrested Palpatine's two minions, calling over several nearby clones to put them in cuffs and warning them about Sly's abilities before the two of them were led away.

"What was that all about?" asked Rika from Kyubimon's side. "Since when did she have the ability to use the Force?"

"Probably the whole time," Barriss replied with a scowl. "It seems she and Mas really were in on the plot just as much as Sidious himself was. She wasn't fully trained in the ways of the Force yet, so I'd guess that she was probably a Force-adept – not with the complete range of skills that a Jedi can learn but formidable to most opponents nonetheless."

"Come to think of it, I never did know that much about her," Ahsoka murmured. "How do you think Sidious managed to get her into his service."

"I have no idea," replied Anakin. "But considering this is Sidious we're talking about, I think that we would all be happier and better off not knowing the answer to that question."

"Agreed," nodded the rest of the group, as the Champion Digimon shrank back to their Rookie stages.

* * *

From there, they provided assistance for the clones in moving the bodies of the various dead that were scattered throughout the Senate Building. As well as genuine willingness to help, they meant it as a sign of apology to the clones that were still alive, as many of the corpses they were moving were other clones that they or their comrades had been forced to kill themselves.

When Anakin tried to express his condolences to Lieutenant Thire, he simply waved them away and murmured, "Forgive me, General, but I'd rather not talk about this right now if it's all the same to you. But I will say this – I understand that you were pushed into doing many things that you didn't like today. But that's the reality of war. And if there's one thing we clones know about, it's war. The dead will understand that, and they can be happy in the knowledge that the mission that forced you to kill them was a success, and the monster who created and used us has been eradicated."

Anakin's expression tightened but he simply nodded his understanding and allowed the clones to continue going about their morbid task, then bent down to scoop up the body of another clone as he and the rest of his team continued to get their hands dirty and help in the horrible task.

The clones and the Senate Guards that had been killed in the attack were arranged in neat rows, their arms carefully arranged so they were folded over their chests as a sign of respect for their sacrifice.

The other bodies, on the other hand, were treated much more harshly by the clones. One by one, the bodies of Dooku, Ventress and Aurra Sing were dragged out from the Senate Building by their limp limbs and tossed into heaps a large distance away from the deceased clones, while Pong Krell's body was dragged over to join them. Nobody even wanted to look at the remains of Bok – Krell's attack which had struck him instead of Aayla thanks to the Twi'lek's quick thinking and speed, had diced his torso into four pieces.

As for Durge… there were no remains at all. Sakuyamon had seen to that, for if there had been remains of any kind it was very possible that Durge would have been able to regenerate himself again. She had not been willing to take any chances.

Eventually the grim task was done, but everybody knew that there were a lot more clones scattered throughout the area of the Senate District that had been downed by Cherubimon or Godzillo, and even more floating aimlessly around in space, stiff as boards, after MegaGargomon had blasted their ships to pieces.

The Tenacious Ten and their Senator companions gathered nearby, watching sadly as Embo moved over to lay Sugi gently at the head of the lines of the deceased, and Rumi copied the actions of the clones to cross her arms over her chest, which helped to hide the horrible gash which had been carved across her front.

They gathered around the fallen and each of them shut their eyes, in about five minutes of silence to honour each and every one of them, before Aayla eventually looked up and broke that silence to say, "What will you three do now?" to Embo, Rumi and Seripas.

Rumi's expression hardened. "Well, I know for a fact that we will not simply stop being Bounty Hunters just because our leader perished. We will continue the profession and keep the team together in her name, won't we, guys?"

"Too right," Seripas nodded.

"Ubtano cale," Embo agreed.

"We'll return to our base on Kashyyyk," Rumi went on. "And we'll continue to do our best to do good in this Galaxy. And while Sugi might be dead, I can tell you now that her offer of friendship and loyalty to you guys still stands," the Frenk added. "If ever you need our help, don't hesitate to call us. We'll still come running to assist you. And not just because Sugi would be angry with us if we didn't either."

Aayla nodded faintly and murmured, "Well, I appreciate that. But, and don't take this the wrong way, I hope that we won't be needing your help again for quite some time if you catch my drift."

"Vutra dérova e éta pruse," Embo nodded in agreement.

* * *

Eventually, the fleet that had previously belonged to the rebel alliance, (before the rebel alliance was no longer needed) returned. The masses of huge cruisers moved into orbit over Coruscant and began to descend low into the atmosphere and move down towards the Senate District. The _Resolute_ drew up in front of the Senate Building itself, and descended its ramp, forcing Godzillo to step backwards in order to get out of the way.

The Digimon had been reluctantly introducing themselves to several of the other Senators at the time, who had insisted that they get to meet the people who had saved the Republic. It was not difficult for them to notice the sour expressions on the faces of people like Lott Dodd, but unfortunately a person could not be arrested for scowling. Nevertheless, each of the Digimon agreed that they would find a way to get that greedy Nemoidian behind ray shields as quickly as possible.

Admittedly, some of them seemed to be perfectly nice people as well. Lopmon started up a pleasant conversation with Kinn Robb, and Halle Burtoni turned out to be surprisingly warm-welcoming to the Digimon. Part of the deal the Jedi had made with Lama Su was to deliberately not let the Kaminoan Senator know about the situation and their dealings, but now that she'd been informed, she was as gracious as the next Kaminoan for unveiling how her race had been used by the Sith to create the clones.

Nevertheless, the three of them were glad to get away from them and head over to the foot of the ramp with the others. They did not need their mind-links to know that each of them was feeling nervous – the big question was about to be answered.

Which of their comrades on Tython had survived on Tython when they had been away, and which of them had perished.

It was with no small amount of relief that Anakin spotted Obi-Wan walking down the ramp towards them, and there were grins on the faces of the others when they saw Mace Windu and Yoda were with him at the forefront of the returning army. That is, they were at the forefront until a large, furry Wookiee suddenly overtook them and dashed down towards them, and a very large Varactyl bounded over their heads after him.

"Chewbacca!" Lopmon grinned. "Zarza! The two of you made it!"

Chewbacca roared with delight and seized Lopmon from the top of Suzie's head, pulling her into what turned out to be a surprisingly gentle embrace from the excited Wookiee. Zarza pounded into the ground behind him, trilling with excitement, and Suzie dashed forwards and leapt at the giant lizard's face, wrapping her arms around the Varactyl's beak and laughing with joy.

"Oh, it's so good to see you both," Lopmon laughed as she extricated herself. "Are you injured?"

Chewbacca shook his head and announced, "Ah rasc wwahwhwo. Acoooh rarhoohuao rooohu?"

"Oh, I'm perfectly fine," Lopmon smiled. "We all are. Barriss has already healed up any of the injuries we sustained in that battle. How did the battle go?"

"Rarhoohuao rac ohwoanan rac oarawh rhwo wokakwooaaowowa. Ah aoooooor oohoworc oowhwo ooww aoacwoahrc aorawhorc rawhwa rhanracaowowa aoacwo rhwoshwochuc oohuao ooww aoacwo rcwocao."

"Really?" Lopmon raised a brow. "Well, I suppose congratulations are in order there. Good thinking on your part."

Chewbacca grinned and pounded his chest as Zarza seemed to be purring as Suzie stroked her beak. Although perhaps purring wasn't quite the right word for it – it was more like thrumming.

"Tenacious Ten," Yoda called as he and the other Jedi Masters stepped down the ramp, followed closely by several clones. Aayla, Ahsoka and Anakin were all pleased to see that Commander Bly and Captain Rex were among the survivors too. "Lived up to your name today, you have. Resolute in your duty to the Galaxy, you were, and succeeded in destroying its greatest threat, you have. In order, much congratulations are."

"Thank you, Master Yoda," Anakin nodded. "It's good to see all of you in one piece. How are you holding up, Obi-Wan."

"Oh, I'm fine," Obi-Wan chuckled. "And from what I saw on the holographic transmission, you had a much tougher time over here than I did over there."

"You saw all of it?" Anakin asked.

"Most of it," Obi-Wan nodded. "And I have to say Anakin, that I have been proud of you for a very long time now, but never had I felt more proud of you than at that moment. And it appears that Qui-Gon was right to bring you to Coruscant when he found you all those years ago."

"Heh. The Chosen One," Anakin laughed. "I guess I'm not really the Chosen One anymore, am I? We've finally won and the Force has been balanced. There are no Sith left for us to destroy."

"You're still the Hero With No Fear," Rika reminded him.

"And you're still a member of our family," Terriermon grinned. "You don't need to be the Chosen One anymore, do you, Anakin. It kinda sucked being the Chosen One as it was, what with all the responsibility it came with, right?"

"Fair point," Anakin laughed.

Yoda smiled and then glanced up at the other Council Member standing next to him. "Master Windu?" he asked. "Something to say, have you?"

Mace was silent for a few more seconds before he said, "I have to admit that I was apprehensive about the plan you all came up with. And I also have to admit that even when you came up with it, I still wondered if it was a good idea for us to have Jedi with attachments as strong as yours allowed in our order." He sighed and went on, "However. After seeing what I saw today, I hereby withdraw all my objections to your little family unit. What was left of them anyway. Well done, all of you. Today, every good person in the Galaxy is in your debt."

"What an honour," Aayla grinned. "Master Windu actually admitting to us that he thinks he was wrong."

"Don't push it, Secura," Mace narrowed his eyes.

"Sorry," Aayla murmured demurely. Most of the rest of her group snorted and tried to cover their laughter.

Ahsoka then looked up towards the clones and said, "Hey, Rex, Bly. All the rest of you. I see you made it out of there in one piece."

"Wasn't easy, sir," Rex chuckled. "Even with all the reinforcements that you guys dragged up so quickly, I think that was probably the battle of my life."

"Mine too," Bly nodded. "But I kept my word to you, General Secura. I stayed alive, just as you asked me to."

Aayla beamed and said, "Yes, Bly, I can see that. And thank you for taking that into consideration during the fighting." Her expression turned more serious and she said, "But on a less positive note… how many did we lose?"

Bly grimaced. "A lot of us… Aayla. A full body count has not yet been completed and we'll have to return to Tython to collect most of them, but many of us died in the field of battle today. Our own Lieutenant Galle perished in the field today. As did Blade."

"As did Jesse," agreed Rex solemnly. "And General Offee, Commander Gree didn't make it through the battle either, I'm sorry to say."

Barriss' eyes shot open, and then each of the Digimon, Tamers and Jedi closed their eyes sadly. Renamon was horrified when she learned of the death of Blade. He was the first clone she had really had a proper one-to-one conversation with when she had jumped out of a gunship to save him over Ryloth, and she had promised him to help him become a more regular person throughout the war. To hear that he had not lived to see the end of it was… just awful.

Barriss was similarly filled with sorrow. Commander Gree had always been good for a laugh when she had still been under the tutelage of Luminara, and although he had stuck rigidly to the rules at all times, until he received Order 66, he had always been a very good friend. Hearing of his death, she immediately sought out Luminara herself, and it was with great relief that she spotted her higher up the ramp, descending downwards with several other Jedi Masters and clones, and other members of the army.

Aayla, similarly, looked for Quinlan, and she spotted him not far away, standing with all four members of the Delta Squad. He gave her a cheeky thumbs up, and she grinned back, resolving to run over and hug him later.

"They will be missed," Mace agreed. "Each and every clone who fell today will be, as well as every Jedi, Gungan and Wookiee."

"We thank you for your condolences, Master Jedi," Bly threw in. "It… means a lot to us."

A couple of seconds later and the morbid mood was suddenly broken by a loud cry of, "Hey guys!"

The group turned around and Suzie yelped as she found herself tackled by a teal-coloured blur. She looked down to see that it was Numa, who seemed to be trying to match one of Suzie's bonecrushing hugs with one of her own. Suzie cheered at the sight of her friend and hugged her back, before they parted and grinned at one another like mad people.

"Numa!" Suzie grinned. "It's great to see you! I heard that you got the ability to biomerge. What was it like? Did you go all badass with your missiles and everything? How cool was it? I know it's epic to biomerge, isn't it? I still think the first time was the best."

Numa beamed back and said, "It was amazing. I loved every moment of it. The feeling of the power – it was unbelievable, like something out of this universe."

"Technically it was, since you became a Digimon," Terriermon snorted. Then he blinked and added, "Hey, since when did you start speaking in Basic so fluently?"

"Since we biomerged," Gabumon replied as he stepped over. "It was a phenomenal feeling – our bodies, minds and hearts merging together into one like that, and the raw strength we had… it was far beyond anything I ever experienced as WereGarurumon, I can tell you that. But when the battle ended, we thought we'd try an experiment to see if we could permanently implant the knowledge of one another's languages into the other's head before we separated again."

"Well, from the looks of things, it certainly worked at least one way," Rika chuckled.

"It worked both ways actually," Numa laughed. "We started trying to confuse my brothers on the way back by randomly switching from Basic to Twi'leki. It was so funny – the looks on their faces, that is."

"It wasn't that funny from where we were standing!" Waxer called over from where he was stood nearby, assisting a few wounded.

"However did you do it, anyway?" asked Henry. "It took us weeks and weeks to build up the necessary bond with our partners that gave us the ability to biomerge. Plus, we needed to be given a special extra gift from another Digimon to be able to do it outside the Digital World."

Numa suddenly looked miserable, a complete switch around from the joyous look that she'd had before. "Well," she murmured. "That's the horrible part. I don't really know what happened, but when Waxer, Boil and Xiaan were under attack, the Digi-Gnome suddenly flashed with light and dissolved in the air and suddenly we could feel the power in us and we did it without thinking."

The Tamers and Digimon looked at each other for a moment and sighed. "So, the Digi-Gnome gave up its life to give the two of you the power to biomerge then?" Henry murmured.

"Add that to the casualty list," Terriermon frowned.

Numa bit her lip. "So, it really did die then?"

"Yes," nodded Renamon. "Digi-Gnomes use their own pure life-force to grant wishes, and they can easily replenish that life-force after they've granted the smaller ones. But for tasks that require a lot of energy, there is every chance they could die, and it seemed that our Digi-Gnome did just that."

"We once saw a whole swarm of them give their lives to allow about a dozen Mega Digimon to be formed," Lopmon added.

"But, we didn't want it to die," Gabumon protested.

"Nevertheless it did," Rika replied shortly. "No Digi-Gnome would hesitate to grant a good wish like that, even if you don't even want it to grant it."

"It certainly left its mark," Obi-Wan threw in. "The presence of ZeedGarurumon probably saved many thousands of our forces on that day. We were getting torn apart by the AT-AT walkers until it arrived. The only ones that we managed to take down was the one Jar Jar Binks destroyed by accident…"

"ZeedGarurumon?" Renamon blinked, cutting Obi-Wan off.

"Jar Jar destroyed an AT-AT walker by accident!" Anakin practically yelled, eyes wide.

"Believe me, Skywalker, I was as flabbergasted as you are," Mace sighed. "I still have absolutely no idea how he managed to do it. One moment he tripped on an energy ball and the next, the AT-AT tripped over and slammed into the ground."

"How the hell do you destroy an AT-AT by tripping?" Terriermon muttered. "I don't think any of us could even any of us could do that no matter what form we used. Unless we fell on it in our large Mega forms perhaps."

"Regardless, ZeedGarurumon?" Henry pressed. "Not MetalGarurumon?"

"No," Numa frowned. "Who's MetalGarurumon?"

"Just the form that we were expecting you to become when you finally biomerged," Rika replied. "But I heard that ZeedGarurumon was even _more_ powerful than MetalGarurumon. It's a coveted card back home, and one of the rarer ones which I don't even have in my collection."

"Oh, okay," Numa replied. "I wonder when we'll get to become ZeedGarurumon again."

"Probably not for a while, I'd guess," Henry replied. "You've been given the ability to do it by the Digi-Gnome, but if I were to take a wild stab in the dark, I would say that this was pretty much a one-off. If you want to do it again, then you'll probably have to build up the bond between the two of you to the levels ours were when we first biomerged." He chuckled and added, "On the other hand, since you've biomerged already, that in itself should be a big step forward."

"True, but on the other hand," Barriss interjected. "Should we not really be hoping that they don't have to become ZeedGarurumon in the near future anyway."

"Yes," Renamon nodded. "Yes, we should."

Bail Organa finally decided to step forward and change the subject of the conversation. "If I may ask, Master Jedi. What is the situation with your Order? I know that not all of you were present at the battle, and many of them are now scattered in hiding across the Galaxy. And what of those who took part in the battle of Tython?"

"Indeed they are scattered around," Mace nodded. "And as soon as we have dealt with the aftermath of the battling, we intend to form search parties to head to their last known locations and try to seek them out. Hopefully once the news of all this reaches the outer worlds they will start to return on their own when they overhear it, but many of them are likely to be in remote areas, and if we sent out a message from the Jedi Temple, many might believe it to be a trick."

"So, it's the hard way then," Bail surmised.

"Unfortunately, yes," Obi-Wan nodded. "As to those in the fighting, the majority of the Jedi who took part in the conflict managed to survive, but many of us died today. In particular, four members of the Jedi Council perished in the fighting – Masters Koth, Rancisis, Tiin and Mundi."

"Master Mundi?" Aayla cried in alarm. Of the many Jedi out on the battlefield, the Cerean Jedi Master had been one of the last people that Aayla had expected to die.

"Indeed," Obi-Wan nodded. "He died heroically, managing to destroy the second of the two AT-ATs we overwhelmed before ZeedGarurumon appeared."

"Tragic, the losses are," Yoda replied. "But move forward regardless, we must. Already thought of replacements for them, we have. Replace Master Koth, his former apprentice, Master Kolar will."

"Good choice," nodded Anakin.

"To replace Masters Rancisis and Tiin," Yoda said, and then, oddly, he smiled up towards the group, particularly Barriss and Aayla, "Decided, we have, to nominate Masters Luminara Unduli and Quinlan Vos."

"Say what?" Barriss blinked, glancing up at her Master nearby, while Aayla's stare moved over to fix on her own.

"Both of them displayed amazing skill and courage in the battlefield today," Mace pointed out. "We have already spoken with both of them and they have agreed to join our ranks once their predecessors have been put to rest."

Aayla smirked. _Good on you, Master_, she thought, before turning her attention back to the Jedi Masters. "And what about Master Mundi?" she asked.

Obi-Wan spoke out, "Well, since we assume you don't want the position, Aayla…"

"NO!" Aayla shouted loudly, drawing the attention of the entire courtyard.

Obi-Wan chuckled. "I thought you'd say that. Which is why we have decided to go with Master Vos' own Master, Master Tholme. As soon as we find out where he is in the Galaxy and if he survived, then we shall ask him to join our ranks as well."

The group nodded, agreeing with their choices – those four Jedi were highly skilled and would surely make great assets to Council. Providing that Quinlan could keep a lid on his quirkiness in meetings.

"And there is one other thing, Aayla," Mace turned to the Twi'lek Jedi. "You might not want a position on our Council – now or ever – but there is still one thing that you cannot refuse. Your promotion to the rank of Jedi Master is long overdue – it has been a week since you first agreed. And, in my personal opinion, there cannot be a better way to mark the end of the war."

* * *

Not a lot to say now folks, except I hope you like it. There were so many characters to talk about that I didn't get to include them all in this chapter, but we've still got a couple more chapters to reach them and talk about what'll be happening next with them before we get to the real point of this arc.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

The Digimon are finally introduced to the public to gain the credit they deserve, as Bail Organa makes a statement to the whole of Coruscant. Respects are paid to those who died in the form of one large funeral and… finally… Aayla Secura gets that promotion she's been holding off for nine arcs.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 212 : Sadness and Joy**


	212. Sadness and Joy

Yay for more chapterness. I hope you like this next instalment, because while there is, once again, no action in it, there is a lot of talking and finally wrapping things up. Other than that, there is not a whole lot to say, other than read on and enjoy the speeches.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 212:- Sadness and Joy**

* * *

There were still many things that needed to be sorted out and it was agreed by all that most of them should be done that afternoon. Getting everything could be got out of the way before tomorrow should be got out of the way – because the sooner everybody put the horrible things which had occurred recently behind them, the better for everybody.

Now that the Senate District was no longer a danger zone, the public were beginning to make their way towards the Senate Building to have a look for themselves. They stared around them in disbelief at the sheer amount of destruction that had been wrought on the streets and the buildings all around the giant domed building. They marvelled at the sight of Godzillo stepping carefully around the people on the ground and clambering onto the roofs of the buildings to get clear of them.

They began to fill the streets, stepping past the burning wreckage of countless vehicles and starfighters that littered the area, or warmed overhead with their speeders, trying to get a better view, and, if possible, a view of the ten heroes which had been standing on the holograms against Sidious during the final showdown. And similar questions were filling all of their minds, the most prominent of them being – where were the giant angel-bunny and the huge, green machine which had stood off against the clones a couple of hours ago.

That question in particular confused them, because at one point Godzillo strode through the Senate District over the rooftops and towards the cruiser which was lying on its side in one of the streets, blocking off said straight having been placed there by Cherubimon. The public watched him go curiously for a moment and then turned around to look the other way, only for a flash of light to draw their attention back to Godzillo as MegaGargomon and Cherubimon seemed to expand out of nowhere behind them.

The three of them grabbed the cruiser from various positions and started to lift the heavy metal hulk up and out of the way, sharing the load as they sought to unblock the street, slowly heaving it up and onto some of the rooftops nearby as they found a building that was large enough and wide enough to support the weight of the ship for a while. One their task was done, the two biomerged forms shrank back down again, which just left the Republic citizens with further questions.

* * *

Two more trips were made back to Tython during the course of the day, a large number of the united army that had fought there joining forces with the clones of the former Empire to take care of the morbid task of clearing the battlefield of the dead. Of course, many of the dead on both sides were beyond having their bodies recovered, as a large portion of them had been completely varporised by the blasts of the tanks.

Nevertheless, the combined forces sifted through the remains of the city and its surroundings, picking up anybody they could find and heaving them onto one of the many cruisers which landed in a system like a conveyor belt or assembly line, one ship being loaded up with the corpses before it moved away and headed back to Tython, and then the next one moved down to take its place.

The broken bodies of many of the city's defenders were recovered as well, such as Oppo Rancisis and Eekar Oki, who had been buried in the rubble of falling buildings as they were slain by the attackers. Others, like Finn Ertay and Ki-Adi-Mundi, were never found, their own bodies having been obliterated by the explosions that ended their lives.

The Tenacious Ten, the Jedi Council and several of the Senators who had gathered together inside the Senate Building to discuss several issues surrounding the restoration of the Republic, agreed that once this whole thing was done, the co-ordinates for the planet Tython would be wiped from the memories of all the ships that had been there. The home-planet of the Jedi had provided a good sight for a final battle, but a lot of suffering had been brought to its atmosphere for the first time in millennia, and all of them were keen to let it continue to rest in peace as it had done before one this was all done.

Following all of this, Bail Organa quickly sent out a message to the population that there was to be an important announcement in the not too distant future and he requested that as many people be present as possible and that everybody at least listen in, as their various questions would finally be answered, and there was much that still needed to be sorted out in the near future.

* * *

There was one little highlight to the afternoon that helped to brighten things up a little for the team – who were not quite as happy as they could have been considering they had just won. They were sure the happiness would eventually come around fully and they would be able to completely appreciate and celebrate their victory, but the aftermath of the war was ensuring that time was, for the moment, kept at bay. However, one particular moment of the day helped to lift up everybody's spirits.

Senator Lott Dodd had retreated to his office with several of his closest associates, like the Senator of the Techno Union – the Ishi Tib called Gume Saam and several other Senators who had been striving to continue the Clone Wars throughout its entirety, because it brought so many more profits to their own organisations. As soon as the door shut, Dodd immediately started griping about the situation.

"What are we supposed to do now?" he asked. "With the war over, our chances of increasing our profits have all but disappeared. Worse still, the Republic might end up turning to us for support and we will have to give it to them if we want to remain free of suspicion"

"We have always been under scrutiny from the Senate before now thanks to the dealings of several of our associates with the Separatists," Gume Saam pointed out. "Would it not be better to just get out of here why we can?"

"And immediately implicate ourselves?" Dodd rounded on him. "Are you insane?"

"No, but I'd rather like to stay out prison," Saam murmured.

Dodd groaned and massaged his forehead with his long fingers. "How did this happen? One day and we're raking in the profits thanks to our dealings with Count Dooku and then the next, the Sith take over the whole Galaxy, just as they planned to. But before we could make any more additional profits from them, the Jedi had to come back and ruin everything."

"And they brought those strange creatures with them," Saam agreed. "I didn't like the look of that yellow fox creature. It gave me the creeps just to look at it?"

"How nice," Renamon voiced, dropping her perception filter from where she was sitting on the nearby table. Saam, Dodd and several of the other Senators reeled back at the sight of her in shock. The yellow fox smirked at the Ishi Tib and said, "You sure know how to complement a girl, don't you?"

Terriermon suddenly popped up from behind her. "That's my mate you were talking out googly-eyes."

"You… how long have you been there?" Dodd gasped with wide eyes.

"Since before you closed the door," Renamon smirked. "We heard everything." She held up her paw, revealing a small handheld recording device which had been in her lap the entire time. "And we got the proof right here."

Dodd immediately became simpering and said, "Oh, come now," he said smarmily. "There must be a way that we can resolve this situation. Is there anything you want that we could provide you with that would convince you to hand over that device and never speak a word of this to anybody."

"I would like a new starfighter," Terriermon chuckled. "I destroyed mine a few days ago."

"It can be yours," Dodd said instantly.

"No can do," Terriermon shook his head. "You won't have access to anything from in prison. Besides, trying to blackmail us is pointless. Not only do we have a mindlink with the Jedi on our team, so they heard everything you were saying as well anyway, but Renamon's recording device was transmitting directly to Anakin's astromech, R2-D2, and he was playing it out loud at the same time to the authorities. In other words… you're all boned."

The Senators gasped and immediately scrambled for the door, only for it to open and reveal Anakin on the other side with lightsaber in hand.

Anakin smirked into the room and said, "I think you know what's going to happen next, don't you?" before he stepped into the room, followed by a bunch of police droids.

"You cannot do this!" Lott Dodd declared angrily as the droids advanced towards him. "Those creatures should have no right to walk around wherever they please like this! They don't belong here!"

"Right now, Senator Dodd," Anakin scowled at him, "They belong here a lot more than you do. They are all heroes that saved the Republic and destroyed the Empire. The only thing that you've done for the Republic is try to mess it up to line your own pockets. Oh, and if that's not enough grounds for arrest, you also poisoned your fellow Senator, Padmé Amidala, while she was visiting your planet."

"She was spying!" Dodd cried.

"Murder is still murder regardless of the circumstances," Anakin replied simply. "Oh, and you just implicated yourself with that statement so, congratulations. We'll see you behind ray shields. Maybe I'll be extra nice and give you a pleasant room-mate. Like… say… Ziro the Hutt?"

Dodd balked as he and the other Senators were dragged away. Renamon and Terriermon smirked and turned to the window, where they could see the other main Separatists, like San Hill, Gunray and the others, being marched across one of the landing platforms by several of the clones, including Commander Fox, who was resuming his duties as the head of the Coruscant security.

"Well, that wasn't so hard," Terriermon grinned. "Another loose end wrapped up there."

"True, but the Trade Federation and all their other businesses will be vital for getting the Republic back on its feet," Anakin replied. "They'll have to elect an new Representative, and if the past has taught us anything, that person will still be a slimeball."

"Yeah, but at least his slate as a Senator will be clean," Renamon nodded. "All he has to do is keep it that way."

"Yeah, that'll happen," Anakin snorted, and the three of them left the office to rejoin the others.

* * *

As the afternoon dragged on, another arrest was made – another human called Sate Pestage who had been a long-term advisor for Palpatine since even before he rose to power, and who was almost never seen in public. He was spotted trying to escape from 500 Republic in a speeder, and although the Tenacious Ten didn't get to see it, apparently there had been a rather violent chase, led by none other than Bly and Rex.

The two clone leaders had been able to bring the other speeder down with ease and turn in the human to the police droids with no trouble whatsoever.

As she moved through the Senate Building a little after that, Aayla spotted Orn Free Taa sitting on a bench with his back against the wall and a worried expression on his face. Aayla stared at him for a few moments, hazarding a guess as to what was troubling him – the Senator from her home planet had been the one to initially nominated both Mas Amedda and Palpatine himself to take the positions they had held for so long.

Now, it seemed that he was worried for his future in the Senate now that both of them had been found to be guilty of conspiring against the Jedi and one of them actually being a Sith Lord.

Aayla felt a slight twinge of pity for Orn Free Taa, the first time she had ever felt any kind of sympathy for the fat Twi'lek. She had no doubt that he was as corrupt as members like Lott Dodd, and he had once hung around with people like Passel Argente, but while he had always been on the lookout for more power and influence, he was technically a good person at heart. He hadn't actually known about Palpatine's intentions for the Galaxy when he had put forward the idea – he had just thought it would increase his own position in the Senate. Which it had.

However, Free Taa might be a good person at heart, but he was also lazy and far too self-indulgent. He had taken an interest in the well-being of his people when Ryloth had been invaded, but apart from that he didn't really seem to care about them very much. The slavery still rife on the planet and going unchecked was an example of that. Aayla's pity for him was only slight, and she quickly moved on before he noticed her staring.

If he lost status on Ryloth because of this, Aayla wouldn't particularly complain. She felt that people like Cham Syndulla could do a much better job of representing her people than that guy.

Apparently there were a couple of voices throughout the Senate raised against the Digimon by people other than Dodd and his associates. Mee Deechi was one of those people – he had started to question why they should allow the Digimon to stay and declared that they were too dangerous to keep around and should either be exiled or killed.

It was obvious that Deechi was secretly terrified for his own safety more than anything else, but his objections were quickly shot down by Bail and the others, who declared that they would discuss what to do about the Digimon in more detail after they had elected a new Chancellor, but until then they were allowed to go anywhere they pleased.

The highlight of that little encounter was when Suzie and Numa both looked at each other and nodded, before they dashed over to Deechi and kicked him in one shin each before they darted aside again, the slender Umbaran falling to his knees painfully and swearing loudly.

Nobody helped him up. Even his friend, Halle Burtoni, was looking at him with disdain now.

* * *

Evening closed in, and the sun began to sink down the sky. As it dipped towards the top of the skyscrapers, the people turned out for the announcement that Bail had mentioned to them beforehand. Thousands and thousands of them gathered in front of the Senate Building, filling just about every iota of space as they crowded around, hoping to see something.

Even more crowded through the streets all across Coruscant, their eyes on giant holographic transmitters that were all set to broadcast absolutely everything that was said at the speech. Effectively, the whole of Coruscant was watching what was going on at the front of the Building, on tenterhooks as they waited to find out the answers to their questions.

Bail took a deep breath as he moved towards the hastily constructed podium just outside the doors. There was a large number of people grouped around said podium and standing tall as they could. The other four Senators that had taken part in the scheme to overthrow Sidious were standing on either side of the podium, (Chuchi looked extremely nervous, but was doing her best to hide it) while the Jedi Council, including its three new members, were all standing behind it like guards.

And as for the Tenacious Ten – they were there too, standing off to the left just out of holocam shot, but still in plain view of most of the audience.

And they couldn't help but notice it, but just about all of the eyes were focused on them.

Suzie and Henry both shuffled uncomfortably, not liking all the attention they were getting. Numa and Gabumon, who were also with them, both looked similarly nervous, but both knew neither of them were required to do anything, so they just stood to attention. Also there were most of the senior clones in a ring around the podium, blasters held high in salute, while Chewbacca, Jar Jar Binks and Generals Tarpals were standing on the other side of the podium.

Grievous was there too, standing on his own off to the side and glaring at anybody who looked at him. The Kaleesh hadn't said a word since Sidious had died.

Finally, to complete the picture, Godzillo was standing on the roof of the Senate Building and looking down at everybody with his green eyes practically acting like spotlights. The public looked nervous of his presence, and with good reason, because just one jump and he could mash most of them flat, but he didn't move. And they had been assured that he wouldn't.

There was a smattering of polite applause as Bail stepped up to the podium, but most of the people seemed to be too concerned with intensely listening to remember to be polite.

Bail opened his speech with:-

"Friends. Citizens of the former Empire and the new Republic. I thank you, one and all, for gathering here today at such short notice. I know that you are all burning with questions, so I shall keep my introduction brief, and go straight to facts."

"It seems that even before he went into office ten years ago, our former Chancellor has been steeped in the art of the Dark Side of the Force, and was the Sith Lord known as Darth Sidious, as you saw in the recording of the final battle with him only this morning. He was the Master of Count Dooku, the one that we were not even aware of, and he has been leading both sides of the war, and playing a dangerous game to fool everybody and put himself at the top of the Galaxy as its unchallenged ruler.

"It might be hard to believe. But you all saw with your own eyes that not only was he able to fight back against a powerful Jedi, using a lightsaber, but he was also able to use various powers associated with the Dark Side of the Force, that Force-lightning for one. More than that, you all heard him admit it from his own mouth as he tried to kill the Jedi.

"However…" at this point, Bail started to smile, as he said, "Today, we can all stand proud, as members of the Galactic Republic once more. We can all look forward to a better future – a future free from the tyranny of the Sith no matter what form that tyranny may take. A just and fair world that will punish only those who deserve it. For we have become the Galactic Republic once again, and we intend to stay that way in the near future.

"Negotiations with the systems that left the Republic to join the Separatist cause during the war have already begun. The Senator of Onderon – Mina Bonteri – has already come forwards to talk about re-joining the Republic, and she seems to be at the very head of all the others to lead them back into brotherhood with us and re-open old alliances. These negotiations are still very much in their infancy, but as far as I can tell, there is no reason why we should not welcome them back.

"For one thing, they were fooled just as much as we were. They believed the Republic to be corrupt, and they were right, but in joining the Separatists they only ended up helping the very thing they were trying not to help. The Separatist leaders, such as Nute Gunray and San Hill and other members of the Council, are all now in custody, and will face trial and probably a jail sentence for what they did to our Galaxy.

"It's other leaders, including Count Dooku and several of his closest personal minions like the Bounty Hunter, Aurra Sing, and the assassin, Asajj Ventress – they are dead, slain in battle with blades in their hand as they ruthlessly tried to cut down our saviours. And as for Sidious himself – well, I believe you all saw where he went."

Bail looked up at Godzillo, who was looming above everything. The giant lizard either had a very good sense of timing or was deliberately making a joke, because as soon as everyone's attention switched to him, he belched helpfully. It was quite a large belch, enough to shake the first few rows of the audience.

"Thank you for that, Godzillo," Bail chuckled. "A very apt indicator of what happened."

He then turned back to the audience and raised his hands, as if to embrace them before saying, "This will have caught just about all of you by surprise, and I can sympathise with your plight. I myself was only made aware of the situation a couple of days ago, and through it, I was able to assist first-hand in the downfall of the Sith and the liberation of our Galaxy. And I am sure that many of you will still have burning questions as to how that came about, and so I shall endeavour to answer them."

He lifted a hand and indicated the Tenacious Ten, standing nearby. "To start with, I would like to introduce six people that most, if not all, of you, will never have met, seen or even heard of before today. Three beings that have been here in this Galaxy, for just over half a year now and have been a phenomenal help to the Republic against its adversaries despite the fact that they never received the credit for it and none of us ever even learned of their existence. Tamers, Digimon, would you like to step forwards please?"

Suzie cringed at the sight of all the people staring up at them, but Henry gently nudged her forwards and the six of them moved closer to the podium, stepping up the around it and Bail. Numa and Gabumon remained behind, knowing that this little situation didn't apply to the anyway, as they had only become partners a couple of days ago.

"You will now see before you three human children," Bail announced, "as well as three beings of a variety none of you have ever seen before. The three children go under the title of Tamers – young people who meet and form a unique bond with a strange creature called a Digimon, which is what the other three are. Impossible though it may sound, these creatures possess extraordinary powers, which are granted to them by the children. They arrived amongst the Clone Wars through bizarre circumstances, and they have been there in the shadows ever since.

"Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with the Secret of the 327th."

The audience was hushed and stared with amazement at the Digimon. Terriermon grinned and immediately hopped up onto Bail's head and said, "Hello Coruscant," into the mic. "I just flew in from Tython, and boy, are my ears tired."

"Oh, you did not just say that," Renamon placed a paw over her eyes. "Please tell me he didn't just say that."

"He just said that," Lopmon sighed. "Sometimes, I seriously wonder if we really are related."

"Ah, momentai," Terriermon grinned. "I've been waiting for an opportunity to use that line for ages."

"And you pick now?" Henry asked.

"You are aware that we're all making complete fools out of ourselves in front of the whole of Coruscant?" Rika pointed out. "And this is probably being recorded."

"Hi, Mum," Suzie waved at a nearby holocam. Terriermon fell off Bail's head, laughing so hard.

Bail looked a little disconcerted by this bizarre conversation in the middle of what had previously been a serious speech, so he immediately tried to get back to the point, clearing his throat and stepping back up to the podium.

"Ahem. It was through the brave actions of these Digimon that the Jedi were able to learn of the identity of Darth Sidious and so prevent the Jedi Order from being wiped out just before Palpatine initiated his plan to kill them all by ordering the clones to attack them. And without their help, it's very unlikely that the Jedi would have succeeded in bringing the rule of the Sith to an end as quickly as they did. Er… Masters Skywalker or Secura? Do you have anything that you wish to say?"

Aayla and Anakin both looked at each other before they both shrugged and stepped forwards, Renamon and Bail moving aside to let them through. Anakin moved over to the podium and said, "I will be brief, as there are still many questions that you may have, but I would like it if everybody put their hands together now, and gave the Digimon and their Tamers a round of applause. The standing ovation that they have deserved for the past few months, but never actually received."

Aayla threw in. "They were the secret weapon of the Jedi, hidden from everyone except a few of their own order and the clones that followed them, surprising the Separatists anywhere they went. Many of our missions would not have gone half as smoothly as they did without their assistance. I must admit that I was extremely reluctant to keep them from getting the credit they deserved, but we all agreed that we would do just that at least until the war is over."

"And now that time has arrived," Anakin added. He then immediately started clapping his hands together and Aayla did the same a moment later, followed by Ahsoka, Barriss, Chewbacca and several others. The applause steadily began to build and build until it had reached an almost deafening sound, with many cheers and whistles thrown in at the same time.

The Digimon and the Tamers had never received such a response from such a large number of people. Not even against the D-Reaper or Ogudomon had they received anything like this, and they all knew that applause was rippling across the whole planet even though they couldn't see it all.

All three of the Tamers and Lopmon looked quite subdued by this and tried not to shuffle about nervously. Even Renamon looked slightly perturbed by it all. Terriermon, on the other hand, just turned around and grinned at them. _Come on, guys,_ he thought. _I know this is a new sensation, but we got to at least try to look the part. These guys are looking for hope at the moment considering the myriad of lies they've already been told._

_True,_ Renamon agreed, standing slightly taller and fluffing out her tail. _Hopefully we won't have to get too used to it though._

_Yeah, but it'll probably be nice to be able to just walk around the street whenever we want,_ Henry pointed out.

_Technically you guys probably could have done that anyway,_ Terriermon chuckled. _It's we three Digimon that really had to hide._

_Oh, shut up,_ Henry rolled his eyes.

Aayla and Anakin both grinned as they continued the applause and nodded to the original Super Six. This was a moment, in both their minds, that had long been overdue. They should have been getting this sort of applause since Rapidmon had gone up against Kul Teska on Behpour and helped to save the destruction of the Naboo sun. But it had always been kept under wraps. Until now.

Eventually, though, the applause died down, and the Digimon and Tamers stepped aside to allow Bail to get back to the podium and continue with his speech. "While the Digimon might have been of exponential help to us in gaining our freedom, we must also thank hundreds of others. Special thanks must go out to the clones who, upon learning the truth regarding their creation, decided to go against their express orders to kill the Jedi and side with them instead. Were it not for your brave actions and your defiance of evil, even though it was against your conditioning, you proved to be a key part in the destruction of the Sith."

There was more applause now, but Bail was not finished, "Not to mention your fearlessness on the front lines on the planet Tython, homeworld of the Jedi, where they and the majority of the Jedi Order took on the might of the Empire so that a smaller group could slip by while the forces around Coruscant were greatly reduced and provide an essential distraction. Each of you have our heartfelt gratitude today."

The applause increased in intensity until there was more whistling and cheering going on. As the Jedi looked out across the clones, they saw that several of them had slightly red faces. Renamon smirked. Blade might not have survived the war, but the promise that Renamon had made to him was coming full circle. The clones were acting like proper people now, and it seemed that their actions against the Sith had caused the public to finally start thinking of them as people.

"Special thanks must also be given to the Gungan Grand Army of Naboo and the Wookiee people of Kashyyyk, who backed up the Jedi and assisted them in their essential fight," Bail added. "Not to mention several… frankly bizarre sentient creatures which provided valuable additions to the rebellion they formed."

More applause, and the Wookiees all simultaneously let out a huge roar while the Gungans whooped and hollered. Jar Jar threw his arms into the air and tripped over the hem of Barriss' robes. The Mirialan quickly grabbed him by the arm before he could fall over, not willing to risk him accidentally doing something insane like… killing Bail Organa. With Jar Jar, it was better to be safe than sorry.

The four remaining Acklay were also standing not far away, and each of them reared back onto their hind legs, waving their pincers, while Zarza hooted and howled from her place in the middle of the group.

Once the noise died down again, Bail was able to add in, "And, perhaps the most surprising members to give thanks to for their assistance in setting up the rebellion are the Bounty Hunter Cad Bane and the Separatist droid leader, General Grievous. If it were not for Bane's actions by working with the Digimon, Sidious' identity would still remain a mystery to this very day and possibly much further into the future, ending in a much more drastic future for us. Bane is not here to receive his thanks, but we give it to him all the same.

"And as for General Grievous, he too was double-crossed by Sidious, although for him it was the other way around – he worked for Sidious, but did not know he was Palpatine. It was recently discovered that Sidious has been manipulating his past to turn him into nothing more than a weapon against the Republic and the Jedi. When the General was presented with this information by Jedi Aayla Secura and Digimon Terriermon, he was quick to turn to our side and provide his droid armies to fight against the Sith instead.

"So, in spite of past actions against us, we also give thanks to both of them."

There was significantly less applause this time, but it was still enthusiastic. A Rodian holding a holocam stepped closer to Grievous to try and get a shot of him with it, and the Kaleesh growled and swung a fist, smashing the camera into debris with a cloud of sparks. The Rodian quickly backed away.

"And now, we come onto the thanks that we must give for more individual deeds. First of all, we must give gracious thanks to Senator Chuchi of Pantora."

"What?" Chuchi blinked, but she was pushed forwards by Padmé until she was standing next to Bail, who laid a hand on her shoulder to stop her trying to duck out of sight.

"She alone among the Senate learned of the existence of the Digimon before the Jedi discovered that Palpatine was Sidious. She assisted in persuading Bane to work for us and, when she was told of the terrible truth, she did not let fear get to her for a moment. She worked tirelessly to help the Jedi in setting up the chance to defeat the Sith at last, and were it not for her efforts, it's almost certain that they would have failed."

The Tenacious Ten erupted in applause, which sparked to crowd to do the same. Chuchi blushed and tried to duck her head away, and Bail only kept her on the podium before he allowed her to step back and glare at Padmé, who grinned at her innocently.

"We must also thank a group of four Bounty Hunters who helped Aayla Secura in causing a diversion to allow the rest of the taskforce inside, or alternatively manned the holocam that brought the video feed of the final battle to you, the public. Unfortunately, one among their number perished in the field, but we give equal thanks to them all regardless."

After the applause once again died down, Bail indicated the Digimon once more and said, "Once again, the Digimon proved imperative to the mission, by holding off the advances of the guard to give the others enough time to complete their various missions. One of their number even managed to finally kill the Gen'Dai Bounty Hunter Durge, and remove a threat that would have proved deadly to many even without the threat of Sidious.

"And now, to the individual Jedi, I make my final role-call. Firstly, to young Ahsoka Tano, Padawan of Anakin Skywalker, who personally took on and slew the Dark Jedi assassin, Asajj Ventress in single combat. May her speed and grace continue to serve the Republic well in the future.

"Secondly, to Jedi Knight Barriss Offee, former Padawan of Master Luminara Unduli, who became a Knight just over one week ago. She personally saved my life and the lives of several fellow Senators by defeating Bounty Hunter Aurra Sing, which gave us and Skywalker's astromech, R2-D2, the opportunity to broadcast the message out to all of you.

"Thirdly, to Jedi Knight Aayla Secura, former Padawan of Master Quinlan Vos, who not only aided her Bounty Hunter fellows in causing a distraction, but also killed two of Sidious' newest minions – the Morgukai warrior Bok and the fallen Jedi Pong Krell, at the same time.

"And, finally, to Anakin Skywalker, former Padawan of Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and known as the Chosen One spoken of in a prophecy of old. I hardly think that I need to tell any of you what role he played in the final conflict, but I shall say anyway, that if it were not for you, Sidious would still be at large.

"Congratulations to them all. Each of you will be forever immortalised in history for what you did this morning."

"Immortalised," Terriermon chuckled quietly. "You know, I quite like the sound of that."

"Surprise, surprise," Lopmon shook her head.

Bail's face then grew more solemn as he waited for the applause to die down, indicating to somebody off to the right with a hand gesture. The crowds began to part as a procession of clones came through in single file, each one towing a hover-stretcher behind them as they stepped towards the front of the crowd and just before the stairs that led to the podium. As the wild cheering and applause began to die down, the atmosphere immediately began to get more solemn, as dozens and dozens of clones passed through the crowd, arranged the stretchers in rows.

Each stretcher was covered by a cloth and it was fairly obvious from the shape of that cloth what was underneath them – dozens and dozens of bodies. Whether they were clone, Gungan, Wookiee or Jedi was irrelevant. Whatever side they had been on was also irrelevant. The only thing that mattered is that there were many who had not made it through the day alive.

Even as the quite procession marched by and the hover-stretchers were arranged into rows once more, there were still nowhere near as many people there as the total number that had perished. To attempt to move such a large number of bodies would take hours, so they had arranged for only about a hundred of the corpses to be brought forwards now. But one hundred was still a big number, and the crowd seemed to hold its breath as it watched them all being arranged into neat rows.

"But, despite our victory today," Bail announced. "We must never forget that with war, victory always comes with a price. Before you now, lie the remains of brave men and women who fought to the death on the front lines during the battling, either here on Coruscant or over on Tython. Soldiers from armies that joined the rebellion because it was the right thing to do, even though they knew what would happen. Clone troopers who rebelled because that too was the right thing to do, and others who were deceived into attacking those who would be their allies.

"The sheer number of deaths today was simply staggering, for both sides of the conflict were victims of the Sith. We were, essentially fighting each other on his whim. And so, I must now ask for a solemn five minutes of silence, to honour the combatants on both sides who gave their lives for what they believed in. For no matter who they were facing, their goal was the same – trying to create a better Galaxy for everyone."

So he joined his hands together and closed his eyes, lowering his head as he lapsed into silence himself. The rest of the crowd and those behind him followed suit, and, for the first time in thousands of years, the entire of Coruscant was still. Nobody moved, and nobody spoke. No speeders were flying through the air. No music could be heard anywhere. Even the people in the criminal underworld were totally silent as they all paid their respects to the dead.

In an odd sense, the Tenacious Ten felt an extreme sense of harmony during the five minutes of silence. Despite the fact it had come about as the result of the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of men, everybody on Coruscant was, for the moment, united in a single mind, as the countless dead were honoured and remembered.

If anybody had had their eyes open, it would have been an extraordinary spectacle. Everybody had their heads bowed and eyes closed, and not a sound passed the lips of any of them. Even Godzillo, Zarza and the four Acklay had their necks inclined as they honoured the allies they had lost.

Each of them flashed through the combined minds of the Tenacious Te. Eeth Koth. Saesee Tiin. Ki-Adi-Mundi. Tarfful. The Digi-Gnome. The two Acklay. Blade. Gree. Eekar Oki. Finn Ertay. Oppo Rancisis. Jesse. Galle. Sugi. And each one of them added another blow to their consciences. For it was their plan that had gotten them killed. They had known it was for the best, and their sacrifice had not been in vain – they had made sure that it was worth it in the end. But their loss would still be felt for many, many years to come, by each of them.

Never had a victory for the Digimon and their Tamers been brought about with so many losses sustained. This was a far cry from the days when Ogudomon had torn through Japan and failed to kill a single person despite his immense power.

But regardless, the memory of each of them and the good they did for the Galaxy would live on in each of them.

After the five minutes had passed and Bail opened his eyes again, he said, "May they all rest in peace."

There was murmuring amongst the crowd as they agreed with the statement. Bail said nothing more for a couple of extra minutes, giving the deceased a few more minutes of respect as he allowed the situation to fully sink in, so they would be remembered for a long time to come.

Commander Stone, from where he was standing in the circle between Ponds and Cody, sighed. The knowledge that he and his men had needlessly killed innocent brothers of theirs weighed heavily on him, and he very much doubted that it would ever go away completely. He felt like he had wronged everyone, and the fact they had been conditioned to mindlessly follow orders now seemed like a very poor excuse to him.

"Yousa okay?" a voice murmured next to him.

Stone looked up to see Jar Jar Binks had shifted along next to him – the Gungan that had been his commander on the planet Florrum when they had been attempting to defeat the pirates of Hondo Ohnaka and rescue Anakin and Obi-Wan.

"Hey, Representative Binks," Stone murmured. "I'm… glad to see that you made it out of there in one piece."

"So is mesa," Jar Jar nodded, noting the depressed tone of Stone's voice. "Yousa berry, berry upset, right Stone? Mesa can tell from the sounden of yousa voice."

"I… I killed so many of them," Stone's hands gripped his blaster tightly. "My fellow clones. My brothers. I didn't even pause to question why I was doing it. I just… felt compelled because I had received orders from that… that… Sith scum!" he spat out that last bit, as if it left a bad taste in his mouth. "The other clones – the ones fighting with the Jedi – they are the ones who did the right thing. They tried to warn us. They tried to stop the conflict before it began, but we… I… didn't listen."

He gritted his teeth and added, "And I can never go back and change what I did."

Jar Jar frowned slightly and stared at Stone for several moments, before he said, "Yesa, exactly. Yousa can never be changin' the past, right?"

"Er… no. That's what I said," Stone replied uncertainly.

"Den yousa should not besa wasting thinking time on it," Jar Jar replied primly. "De most importanten thing isa dat yousa seein' yousa mistaken now. Yousa should not besa worrying about what yousa did, but yousa can be making up for its in de future. Mesa made all sorts of mistaken in de past, but den, mesa made up for itsen by saving de Naboo and mesa serving de Galactic Senate ever since.

"Besides," Jar Jar smiled. "Deysa all forgiven yousa in de next life already. Mesa know it. Itsa sad truth, but deysa clones just like yousa. Dat means dat dey know what wasa going troo your head, cos dey was once thinkin' it demselves. Yousa might have killed them, but deysa understand why."

Stone stared at the clumsy Gungan in surprise, but the little speech from the strange amphibian was actually enough to bolster him slightly. He knew that Jar Jar was right. The guilt about what he and his other clones had done would never go away, so it was best not to let it fester. He would find a way of atoning for what he did in the future and he immediately straightened his back and stood to attention once more.

Jar Jar grinned lopsidedly, pleased that his efforts seem to have paid off. He then looked over his shoulder and saw it was General Tarpals, who nodded and chuckled. "Yousa full of surprises today, Jar Jar. Yousa really do have de makings of a Gungan General, and yousa already a great Resempative."

"Aww!" Jar Jar rubbed the back of his head. "Itsa nutting."

"And now," Bail said, "We shall allow the various members of the rebel alliance to take back their dead and lay the bodies to rest as they see fit, and in the traditional manners of their people. And let us remember them for centuries to come and beyond. And now…"

Aayla wasn't entirely sure what possessed her at that moment, but she knew what was coming up next, and she felt that there was still one thing that needed to be said before that happened, so she quickly stepped forwards and placed a hand on Bail's shoulder before he could continue.

"Excuse me, Senator," she said. "Before you proceed, would it be alright if I were to take the floor for a moment and say a few words of my own."

Bail blinked and stared at Aayla for a couple of seconds, as did several other nearby friends of hers, but after a moment he merely nodded and stepped aside, gesturing to the podium with an inviting gesture. Aayla glanced back at the others, who were all reading her mind and knew what she was doing, and they nodded, encouraging her to step forwards and state her opinion.

So that was exactly what Aayla did. She moved over to the podium and looked up to the enormous crowds before her, bathed in the light of the slowly setting sun and stretched out as far as she could see. All eyes were on here and she could feel millions of minds focusing on her at the same time. She blotted it out and took a deep breath, before steadily expressing her thoughts to them.

"As you all know, I am not particularly one for public speeches like this," she began. "I usually prefer to remain on the sidelines as much as possible and let other people do the talking, but I feel that this time there is something else that must be said, and so, I will say it. I regards the clone troopers, and the loyalty that they displayed in battle, no matter which side of the equation they were actually on."

She fixed the front row with a slightly piercing stare, as she went on, "Many of you, in fact, most of you, have never thought of the clones as anything more than mindless soldiers who were bred specifically to take gunfire in the place of others and secure a victory for the Republic in that sense. And indeed, Sidious ordered them to be produced for that very purpose, except that he wanted them to be the secret weapons that would exterminate my order to put the Sith on top.

"However, while I suspect many of you are starting to guess by now, the clones are far more than simple-minded cannon fodder. Each of them has their own unique personality, and each of them have emotions and feelings just like each of you do. Perhaps they were not born in the way that any of you were, but they are still people, regardless of how they were made."

Aayla turned towards Commander Bly, who was standing in the circle in front of her. The clone had taken off his helmet and his eyes were bright, his face lit up with a smile of gratitude, as Aayla continued to speak to the audience. Aayla turned back up and said, "I know this for a fact. My own loyal Commander, CC-5052, but known to me as Bly, has been a constant source of support, in both the physical and the metaphorical sense, throughout the entire war.

"His bravery was second-to-none and was always there to back me up when things got rough, regardless of the circumstances. He proved his humanity to me time and time again throughout the war. He has saved my life multiple times, and went so far as to keep our Digimon friends a secret from the Chancellor who he was supposed to tell everything to. And he wasn't to only one. Captain Rex and Commander Cody, who served under Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi respectively, also kept that secret, as did eve single clone under their command, and every single clone under the command of every other Jedi that the Digimon came into contact with throughout the war.

"Moreover, Commander Bly even went so far as to prove his humanity but directly defying one of my own orders in order to save my life. During my conflict against Ventress, Grievous and Dooku over Rhen Var, I expressly told Bly to evacuate the listening post and blow it up without waiting for me. A battle droid given that order would do it with no questions asked, but Bly and two of his best men, both of whom perished in the recent battle of Tython, disobeyed that order to come back for me instead.

"If you ask me," Aayla went on. "The real heroes of this war is not me or any of my fellow companions. Not even the Digimon or Anakin, and I know they agree with what I am saying. The real heroes of this war are the clones themselves. All of them. For they might have been hopelessly outnumbered at almost all times, and they might not have the abilities we Jedi and the Digimon possess, yet they still threw themselves into the conflict regardless.

"Millions of them died to bring us peace. And no matter what, they always fought rigidly for what they believed in. Every single clone that the Kaminoans produced are heroes in their own right, no matter what personal accomplishments they made to the war effort."

By this point, all of the nearest clones had taken off their helmets and they were all regarding Aayla in a new light – the looks in their eyes indicating utmost respect, untold shock and extreme gratitude for holding them in such high regard and singing their praises right in front of the whole of Coruscant like this.

"Since so many clones lost their lives throughout the entirety of the war," Aayla went on. "Listing them all would be practically impossible. However, I would now like to propose an idea to the Senate and to anyone else who has the power to bring it to reality. I would like to suggest a memorial, built right here in the Senate District. I don't care how it is constructed or how it works, but it must display the name of every single clone who died in the final conflict today, whether they be fighting for the Empire or the Rebellion. Their names, mind you, not their numbers.

"Others who died in the battle can have their own memorials built on their respective planets as well, but I want to make sure every clone who paid with his life today for the actions of the Sith is remembered as long as Coruscant stands."

Aayla turned to Bail again, and smiled at him imploringly before she stepped to one side, and allowed Bail to retake his place at the top. Bail smiled across at her and said, "I think that that is an excellent suggestion, Master Jedi," he said. "We shall have to discuss it in the Senate later on, but I see absolutely no reason why any one of us could possibly object to it."

"Thank you, Senator," Aayla smiled. "That's all I have to say."

She was about to step back, but then she stopped when she noticed that Commander Bly had broken ranks and was walking up the steps towards her. She paused and watched as he ascended slowly, the other Senators moving aside to let him pass. He stopped when he was right in front of Aayla, a peaceful smile on his face as his brown eyes looked into her own.

Then he nodded and said, "Thank you, Aayla. For everything."

"You're most welcome, Bly," Aayla smiled back.

Both of them reached out with their hands to grasp the other's, and then both of them simultaneously pulled the other into a hug, right there in front of the whole of Coruscant. There was an eruption of cheers from all and sundry as Bly practically confirmed all of Aayla's words, and everybody seemed to be doing their best to outdo everyone else around them in terms of noise. Much of it was drowned out by a huge roar from Godzillo that practically shook the ground around them.

Bly pulled away first, looking hideously embarrassed, and hurried back to his position in the circle of clones. Aayla chuckled as he went. It looked like Bly's road to being just like a regular human was complete. She was immensely proud of his progress, and hopefully, he would be able to lead all clones who had not reached the same point as him to a brighter tomorrow.

Of course, the fact that he had done that in front of the whole of Coruscant was sure to spark gossip and rumours about a relationship between them that didn't exist, but Aayla didn't particularly care what the public thought, as long as they thought of Bly and the others as humans. And hopefully their efforts would now pay off.

What the clones would do with their lives, none of them still had any idea, but Bly had mentioned in passing earlier that they would continue to serve the Republic as its soldiers until it was clear that they were no longer needed. Considering the fact the Galaxy was still in unrest, that might not be for a while, but hopefully they wouldn't go out of commission at all.

And if they did… well, perhaps they could take a leaf out of Cut Lawquane's book.

Bail started speaking again. "And before we conclude this announcement, I would also like to add that the Separatist Droid Armies who gave us aid in the final confrontation is still very much in evidence. It has been agreed by we Senators already that the remaining factories with be shut down immediately, but as to what we do with the droids themselves, we shall decide at a later date.

"And now, we come to the final section of our this session," Bail said with a smile. "It is a moment that many of us have been expecting for some time, and a moment that will likely be remembered for a very long time. Master Jedi, you have the floor."

Aayla stepped to the side and only now was she feeling slightly nervous. As the Jedi Council stepped forwards, Aayla turned to the rest of her team and spoke to them through the mind-link – _Are you guys sure about this?_

_You're not thinking of backing out again are you? _Terriermon griped. _When are you going to learn that you deserve it?_

_Well, I wasn't expecting it to be in front of _all_ of Coruscant,_ Aayla murmured. _But that's not the point. I'll definitely go through with it, if only because I have a feeling that you guys would lynch me if I don't. What I meant was – are you sure that it should _only_ be me? The rest of you accomplished great deeds today – you should have the honour too._

Barriss chuckled. _Aayla, I only became a Knight a week ago. I think that I have a fair bit of time ahead of me before it's time for me to ascend to the next rank._

Ahsoka nodded and said, _I'd have to say the same. I might have proven myself capable of wielding a lightsaber, but there are many more skills that I need to acquire before I become a Jedi Knight. Wisdom, knowledge, patience I know that now. I still have to complete my training, Aayla. And then I'll take the trials like just about everybody else when I'm done._

_Fair enough,_ Aayla sighed, _But Anakin, surely you must think you deserve it too. You took down the Dark Lord of the Sith._

_What I think is irrelevant,_ Anakin replied smoothly. _It is the decision of the Council for when I become a Jedi Master, Aayla, not mine. Besides, I would hate to encroach on your moment,_ he added with a cheeky grin.

Aayla scowled at him, and Anakin chuckled and added, _In all seriousness though, I might have defeated Sidious, but the fact that I was prophesised to do it and the fact that I had all of you as back-up was a significant help. I believe that, right now, you deserve this far more than I do Aayla. I might have won the final battle, but you won us the war. You, with your devotion to your friends, your insane lightsaber skills, your brilliant mind and instincts, and, above all, your bizarre talent of finding new friends and allies where none were thought plausible before. You were the instigator of all the plans that led up to our victory._

_Besides, part of being a Jedi Master is to have shown long-term balance in the Force. Thanks to you, I have found mine, but only recently. I would guess I still have a while yet before I reach the next level._

Aayla stared at him for a moment, and then chuckled to herself. _I can't believe that this is the same Anakin that used to show off his lightsaber skills in the training room as an attempt to impress me and Barriss._

_I am a Jedi,_ Anakin smirked. _And a Jedi is humble. Now go. This is your time to shine._

_If I must_, Aayla said, as she turned back around to see Mace Windu had stepped up to the podium and was making an announcement of his own. "Citizens of the Republic," he said. "Throughout the seemingly unending conflict, many heroes emerged on both sides, but to us, one of our number in particular stood out from almost all the others.

"Our very own Aayla Secura has been a huge influence on the events which led to where we stand today. You've all heard what she's done, and even with the knowledge that the Digimon were present, her heroics are barely diminished in the slightest. And that is why we would like to bestow another honour on Knight Secura before we all head home."

He then moved back up the stairs to stand next between Yoda and Plo Koon. The Jedi Masters had all moved to form a semi-circle, a semi-circle which had a space in it, as there was still one remaining spot on the Council which had not been claimed. Obi-Wan motioned to Anakin with his head and indicated the space. Anakin quickly got the gist and hurried over to fill it. He might not be a Council member, but he would make a perfect substitute for one in the ceremony they were about to perform.

Yoda was stood between Mace and Obi-Wan at the head of the half-circle. Despite his small stature, he was in plain sight of the audience. He drew his short green blade and held it before his face in a warrior's salute, and the other Jedi Masters (and one Knight) followed suit, holding their various coloured blades high for everyone to see.

"Knight Secura," Yoda announced. "Step forwards, will you?"

Aayla swallowed and nodded, stepping slowly forwards and up the stairs towards the assorted Jedi of all different species. As she ascended, her eyes caught those of her master, Quinlan, who was standing there smirking around the blade of his green lightsaber. Aayla smiled back, feeling pride radiating off her Master in large waves, before she went back to focusing on Yoda, and taking on the more reserved and professional air that was required of her, delving her mind into the Force to find unity with it.

Yoda did not tell her to kneel. He didn't need to – she knew full well that she had to do it anyway. She had seen this ceremony done before, and had been through a very similar one when she had been Knighted six years ago at the age of seventeen.

The youngest Jedi Knight ever recorded.

And about to break the record again.

The ceremony was brief, but it served its purpose. Aayla shut her eyes as Yoda intoned the same words that she had heard at her Knighting:-

"Jedi, we all are. Through us, the Force speaks. Proclaims itself and what is real, through us, the Force does. Today, here, we are, to acknowledge what the Force has proclaimed."

He gazed down at Aayla, as each of the other Jedi lowered their lightsabers down towards her until they were pointed directly at her, and said, "Aayla Secura. Shown extraordinary skill and devotion to us all, you have. A Jedi more deserving of this honour, there is not. Not long, it has been, since you rose to the rank of Knight, but no objection, can any of us find, to raising you a stage further now."

Aayla opened her eyes in bemusement and glanced up and Yoda, who was smiling down at her. That was not part of the traditional speech. It was a little section that Yoda had slotted in himself just for her. She offered him a grateful quirk to her jaw, before she closed her eyes and lowered her head once again.

She felt Yoda's blade descending low over her shoulder and close to the side of her head, humming in her ear, but she didn't flinch as she listened to him say, "By the right of the Council…"

The lightsaber moved up and over to her other side, as Yoda added, "By the will of the Force…"

The lightsaber moved down so that the tip was hovering just by the base of Aayla's chin. "Dub thee, I do…"

Yoda's blade, as well as all the other blades, zipped upwards at the same time to return to salute pose in front of their faces, the tip of Yoda's green lightsaber only just missing Aayla's nose by less than a centimetre, though the Twi'lek still didn't flinch.

"…Jedi Master of the Republic!"

Aayla activated both her lightsabers the moment Yoda said the words, and crossed them in front of her, touching both blades with Yoda's own sword. Then she clambered to her own feet and saluted herself with both of them, before she turned around to look out across the watching public, the ceremony now complete as she and the surrounding Jedi all sheathed their blades at the same time.

The applause was so loud, it was almost as if a giant concussion grenade the size of an entire cruiser had just gone off, and Aayla to resist slamming her hands to the side of her head. Despite the fact that she had been putting off this moment for some time, now that it was finally here, she couldn't help but feel a slight tremor of elation running through her. Jedi were humble, it couldn't hurt to have just a little pride in yourself for breaking the record for youngest ever Jedi Master. She was only twenty-three years old, and would be twenty-four in a couple of months. It was quite a new record she had set.

The sun was now beginning to fall beneath the buildings, signalling the dusk on an age of tyranny that had been building for many years, but had been nipped in the bud before it could truly begin. And there were few more appropriate ways for it to end, than Aayla Secura finally ascending to the rank of Jedi Master.

And then Terriermon decided to add lib to the moment himself, and after a quick request to Henry via his mind, he launched himself into the air as Rapidmon, shooting above Aayla's head in tight circles. Renamon and Lopmon fired their signature attacks towards him, and he promptly obliterated them with a weak Tri Beam that burst the ice and diamond shards into small, glinting sprinkles which showered down around Aayla like glitter, disintegrating fully once they touched her skin.

_Come on, guys. There was no need for that,_ Aayla chuckled.

_Well,_ Rapidmon smirked as he de-digivolved and fell down towards her. _There's no need for this either! DOGPILE!_

And Aayla suddenly found herself swamped by all three of the Digimon, the two girls either having been caught up in the moment or filled with momentary madness. Either way, Aayla was knocked to the ground with the three of them on top of her, laughing all the way as she fought to push them off her. The rest of the team gathered nearby, laughs peeling from their own mouths as real, genuine fireworks prepared by the Senators began to go off nearby, bathing the area in colour that the sun was no longer providing.

It was good to be home, free and out in the open. The day was brought to a close in a spectacular fashion, and nobody across the whole planet was going to forget this day anytime soon. In fact, not ever.

* * *

Now that night had set in, the Tenacious Ten began to realise just how tired they really were. Sleep had been elusive over the last few days, thanks to everything that had been going on, and they had used up a lot of energy each that morning when they had taken on Palpatine's forces. Plus, they had had little opportunity to rest between then and now, so even though they might normally have stayed up a lot longer.

The Jedi Temple was still in ruins, and even though most of it was still standing, none of the team particularly wanted to spend the night there. They would prefer it if they could sleep in a place that didn't remind them of all the destruction, death and deceit that had been playing out recently.

Padmé Amidala was kind enough to immediately offer her accommodation in 500 Republica as a temporary place to stay for all of them; an invitation which they all gladly accepted. As the crowds began to disperse, the team hopped into a nearby speeder and drove to the landing platform outside Padmé's room, filing out and heading on inside.

They were greeted extremely enthusiastically by C-3PO, who had not left the building all day and had been watching the events down below via hologram.

"Oh, my stars, Master Anakin!" he cried. "Thank goodness you are alright! Thank the heavens that all of you are undamaged. When I saw that transmission earlier of you all facing off against that deceitful Sith Lord, I must admit I feared the worst, that you were all doomed. But bless my circuits, you all made it out of there alive."

"Good to see you too, Threepio," Anakin smirked. "You feeling alright?"

"Well, I am pretty sure that a couple of my systems short-circuited through anxiety when I was watching your transmission, but congratulations all of you. I sincerely hope that this spells and end to all the recent violence. I don't think I could have coped with much more of it."

"You and me both, Threepio," Padmé smiled. "Shall we go in?"

"Of course, my lady," Threepio nodded. As the Digimon walked past, he fell in step beside Renamon and said, "Good evening, Mistress Digimon. I don't believe we have been formally, introduced. I am C-3PO, human-cyborg relations."

"Yes, we know who you are," Renamon chuckled. "You were quite a hazard to our presence being a secret from the Senate, Threepio. My perception filter doesn't hide me from droids or technology like holocams, so whenever we accompanied the Jedi to the Senate Building, we always had to stay out of your line of sight."

"Well, you certainly succeeded in that endeavour," Threepio nodded. "I never saw hide nor hair of any of you. Quite remarkable, if I do say so myself. Thank goodness you were on our side and not the Sith's."

"I think that's something the entire Republic is grateful for," Ahsoka snorted.

"Oh, indeed," Threepio nodded.

The group made their way into the living room and sat down on the large sofa, while Padmé moved into the kitchen with Threepio to prepare some hot drinks for everyone to settle them down.

"So, Aayla?" she called through. "How does it feel to be a Jedi Master at last?"

"Not a whole lot different from being a Jedi Knight to be perfectly honest," Aayla called back. "I might have been promoted by the Jedi Council, but I'm still the same person I was this morning, so it doesn't feel all that different to me."

"Still, it must be quite an honour," Padmé smiled. "The youngest ever known Jedi Master. You know, I think that you truly do deserve it, Aayla. Especially after all you've done for us recently."

"Thank you, Padmé," Aayla yawned sleepily. "I appreciate that."

"And your speech was magnificent," Padmé went on to say with a smile on her face. "The way you proclaimed the clone's to be people was absolutely amazing, and I think you just made a long-term friend out of all of them with that memorial idea. It's truly a splendid proposal, and with Senators like Lott Dodd out of the way, thanks to the efforts of the Digimon, things are definitely looking up. When tomorrow dawns, it will dawn brighter than ever."

There was no reply.

Padmé frowned, and then stepped back to the door to peer into the room. She smiled affectionately when she saw that all ten of them had fallen asleep already – even Renamon. Anakin had an arm wrapped around Ahsoka's shoulder and the other around Aayla's waist, while the Twi'lek had Renamon's tail across her lap like a fluffy cushion. Renamon herself was curled around Lopmon and Terriermon, while Suzie was resting in Barriss' lap. Barriss herself was propped up against Anakin's legs, and Henry and Rika were leaning on her from either side.

All of them were quite clearly tuckered out, and Padmé couldn't help but smile at the sight of the team that had been through so much, resting together in peace at last.

The only one who was not asleep was Chewbacca, who had accompanied them to resume his post as Lopmon's protector. The Wookiee had been through a lot as well, but he was less mentally drained than the others, and besides, he still had a job to take care of.

He nodded to Padmé, who nodded back and smirked almost mischievously.

"Come on, Threepio," she said. "We've got a lot to do and not much time to do it in."

* * *

Yay for a happy ending! It's always nice isn't it? But still, the story does not end there. There are still eight more chapters to cover before this story finally draws to go. It's been over two years, but I'm finally into the single digit section of remaining chapters as of the last chapter. I feel like I saved on my energy bill at moneysupermarket – i.e. EPIC!

Yay! Again.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

As the festivities for the end of the war begin, not everybody is going to stay and join in the fun. A couple of people are intending to leave as soon as possible, and so it is time for our heroes to give some of our other heroes their final goodbyes.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 213 : Farewells**


	213. Farewells

Hey everybody. Sorry I'm a couple of hours later than normal, but I got caught up in some stuff. Still, here I am now with the latest update, and I hope that this chapter touches your hearts, since that is what I was going for. It's a chapter mixed with fun and emotion, and should be thoroughly enjoyable to all if I have done it right. Thanks again to you all for sticking through to this late stage of the story. Only seven more chapters to go after this.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 213:- Farewells**

* * *

Ahsoka Tano was awoken by an ear-splitting shrieking noise which went off right next to the left side of her head. The sound shocked the living daylights out of her and she was in motion before she had even fully woken up, wrenching herself off the sofa and flipping backwards onto the top of its backrest in a crouch position, both her lightsabers flashing into life in her hands, as she searched around for her attacker.

What she saw, was Terriermon standing on the sofa next to where her head had been with what appeared to be a party horn in one hand. He cackled as she stared at him in bemusement and blew on it again, producing another high pitched note as the paper tube rolled outwards to point at the bewildered Padawan.

"What the…" Ahsoka frowned as she sheathed her blades and glared at Terriermon. "What was that for, Terriermon? And where did you get a party horn?"

"What was it for?" Terriermon giggled. "Why, don't you know me by now, Ahsoka? I'm Terriermon. That's just the kind of thing I do, isn't it. Everybody else found it funny."

Ahsoka glanced off the side to notice the rest of the team were all already awake and were trying not to laugh at Ahsoka's expense. Ahsoka rolled her eyes, realising that asking what that had been for was probably a stupid question where Terriermon was concerned, so she chuckled and said, "Alright, alright. You got me. But again, where did you get a party horn?"

"Padmé gave it to me," Terriermon supplied.

"Er… okay. Why?" Ahsoka looked up to where Padmé was standing in the kitchen doorway, looking for an explanation, but there seemed to be none forthcoming from the Naboo Senator, who was also struggling not to laugh.

"Why don't you take a look around the room and find out?" Terriermon asked.

Ahsoka blinked and glanced around her. She balked when she noticed that the entire apartment had been decorated with various colourful lights that bathed the room in many different colours, there appeared to be a fair amount of streamers and balloons all over the place, and there was one very conspicuous banner across the opposite wall, which read:-

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AHSOKA!

"Happy b…?" Ahsoka murmured. "Oh!" she cried a moment later, her eyes shooting open as the reality of the situation hit her. It was her birthday! Today was the day that she turned fifteen. She had been aware that her birthday was today beforehand, but in all the action and excitement combined with the sadness of the previous day, she had completely forgotten about it.

"It's my birthday!" she cried in surprise, a grin suddenly lighting up her face. "Wow… I… wow…"

Anakin chuckled as he stepped over and said, "You surprised, my young Padawan?"

"Oh yes," Ahsoka grinned back. "This is… amazing. How did you guys get all of this done in time? We only defeated the Sith yesterday."

"You might have forgotten that your birthday was imminent," Rika snorted. "But we didn't. When you guys were busy hunting down Mas Amedda yesterday, Henry, Suzie and I stayed behind to talk to Padmé about the possibility of some celebration. I think her handmaidens did most of this yesterday and then they put them all up while we were asleep."

"Indeed," Padmé nodded. "And that's not all, Ahsoka." She disappeared into the kitchen for a moment as Aayla waved a hand, using the Force to dim the lights slightly. When Padmé emerged again, she was bearing a very large air cake – a special delicacy that came from the planet Corellia, with fifteen candles decorating the top.

Despite the fact that the residents of the room came from two universes, it appeared that the traditional birthday song remained the same. All of them immediately burst out singing, even Anakin, as Padmé walked over and placed the cake on the table in front of Ahsoka.

The Togruta Padawan could not stop smiling. In spite of the enormous upheaval that the Galaxy had gone through recently, her friends had not forgotten the day of her birth, and we celebrating it as if the incidents of yesterday had never even happened. This was Ahsoka's special day, and they were all determined to make sure that she enjoyed it regardless of events of the past. She felt her eyes getting moist – and she could remember very few times that she had ever been this happy.

As the song came to an end, Padmé stepped back to allow Ahsoka to blow out the candles. As Ahsoka was about to do just that, Renamon suddenly lashed out towards her head, grabbing Terriermon moments before he could land between Ahsoka's montrals and jerking him out of the way.

"Sorry," Renamon smirked as she buried her mate's face in her tail. "He was about to try and blow them out first as a joke. Carry on."

Ahsoka snorted. "He really is hopeless, isn't he?"

"He may be hopeless, but I live _in_ hope all the same," Renamon chuckled. "Now, go on, Ahsoka. Blow them out."

Ahsoka nodded and turned back to the cake. Her eyes narrowed, and all the candles went out with a smoky foof as she extinguished them at the same time with the Force.

"Hey!" Suzie glared at her. "You're not supposed to do that. You're supposed to use your breath the put them out."

"Do you want me to relight them?" Padmé laughed.

"No, that's alright," Aayla chuckled as she raised the lights with another wave of her hand. The important thing is that we all have a good time, and that's exactly what we intend to do, right?"

Terriermon pulled his head out from Renamon's tail and spat out a couple of yellow hairs, before he grinned and said, "Anyone up for Twister?"

"No," Renamon replied as he shoved his head back into her fur again.

* * *

From there, everybody did indeed have fun that morning. Padmé and of her handmaidens brought out snacks that they had prepared the previous night, and the group sat around and had a go at a few random party games much like they had at Suzie's party a few months ago in the Jedi Temple. The handmaidens were in awe of the Digimon and several of them tried to touch Renamon's tail to see what it was like, but the fox simply turned around and offered them a paw to shake instead whenever they tried.

Terriermon sat on the table next to the buffet and immediately began to scoff everything in sight, startling those who hadn't seen him eat before at the sheer speed and amount that he could away all at once. The Digimon hadn't had the opportunity to eat like this for a long time, and he was loving every second of it, no matter what he ended up putting into his mouth.

At one point, there was even a piñata brought out. How the handmaidens had been able to craft one so quickly they didn't know, but they had managed to craft it in the shape of Palpatine. Ahsoka knew that she probably shouldn't feel vindictive, but when they hung it up and blindfolded her, she couldn't help but go the extra mile and leapt up into the air, tossing the length of wood she had been given away and activating her shoto.

Her aim was dead on, and she sliced through the faux Palpatine's head, his body dropping to the floor and spilling out all kinds of various treats, which Suzie immediately fell upon before they could be claimed by somebody else. Ahsoka landed nearby and whipped off her blindfold, placing a hand to her waist and bowing in a theatrical fashion to applause from the rest of the room.

All in all though, the great thing about the party was not just the festivities and the fun, it was the fact that they could all just sit back and enjoy each other's company without fear or stress on anything really weighing on their minds. The crisis of the Sith was over, and so was the war that the Sith had started, which meant that this particular family gathering was simply the best that they had ever had. For the first time, they were all completely carefree.

Unfortunately, none of them had any presents for Ahsoka. They had not had the opportunity to go out and find any, and while Padmé had offered to go and do it for them while they slept, they all insisted that they should go out and take the time to consider and pick a gift of their own, as that would have more meaning to it than simply having someone else do it for them. It might mean all presents were late, but as long as they got there eventually, that didn't matter.

Sometime later, when the immediate excitement had died down a little, Suzie had suggested that the group play the game Twenty Questions, and since none of the others had been able to object to a suggestion like that, they had, of course, ended up playing it. Their mind-links were strictly closed for the duration of the game, and whenever Terriermon and Renamon played the other was not allowed to guess anything, since they knew what they were going to say anyway.

Currently, it was Lopmon's turn, and the small brown bunny was smiling as she sat on the table with a piece of cake in one ear as the rest of them fired questions at her.

"Are you alive?" Anakin asked.

"Yes," nodded Lopmon.

"Are you a species type?" Aayla questioned.

"Nope," Lopmon chuckled.

"Are you an animal?" Barriss threw in.

"Technically, I suppose, yes I am," Lopmon grinned.

"Are you a bird?" Henry supplied.

"No," Lopmon shook her head.

"Are you a mammal?" suggested Renamon.

"Yes," Lopmon smiled.

"Do you have four legs?" Suzie threw her hand in the air.

"No," Lopmon replied.

"Ooh, I know," Terriermon piped up. "Are you a Digimon?"

"Yes," Lopmon smiled sweetly at her brother.

Rika's eyes narrowed as she began to suspect where this was going, before she said, "Are you a Rookie level?"

"Yep," nodded Lopmon.

And Ahsoka put in the final question before they guessed – "Is your catchphrase 'Momentai,' and are you terrified of pineapples?"

"You're only supposed to ask one thing at a time. But, yes," Lopmon beamed.

"Hey!" Terriermon glared at her. "You can't be me! I'm me!"

"Except when I'm you," Lopmon chuckled. "Oh, by the way, there's a Jurcian fruit within a couple of inches of you."

Terriermon span around, but he saw nothing in any direction around him he looked. He turned back to Lopmon and scowled at her. "Very funny," he said.

"Isn't it?" Lopmon nodded, her eyes flicking upwards. Terriermon blinked and looked up, to see a Jurcian fruit was hovering over his head. He balked, and Aayla clenched her fingers, using the Force to squeeze the fruit so that the pulp and juice inside exploded downwards and poured all over the white Digimon.

"YAAAAAAAAGHHHHHH!" Terriermon bounded into the air. "IT'S ALIVE! IT'S AFTER ME! AAAAAGGGGHHH!"

The room burst in tumultuous laughter as Terriermon went ballistic, trying to wipe the Jurcian fruit juice and bits off him and not managing to because of how sticky it was. Padmé and the handmaidens stared in bewilderment at this display of randomness from the Digimon, wondering what the heck was going on.

In the end though, it was Terriermon who got the next laugh by leaping into the middle of the group and whipping himself into a Terrier Tornado. Fruit and juice went flying off him and pulsed out in all directions, coating everyone with the sticky mess. They immediately tried to cover their faces as they were splattered by the stuff, and when Terriermon stopped spinning, he seemed to be the only thing within several metres that had no Jurcian fruit bits on him.

"Ha!" Terriermon smirked at them. "Looks like I win this round." He then stared around him and seized up slowly. "But now it's everywhere! AAAAGHHH!" He huddled into a ball where he was standing, in about the only dry spot, and shivered as he wrapped his ears around his face to hide it.

"How pleasant," murmured Padmé, lifting up her sleeve and flicking bits of fruit of it.

"Quite tasty though," Ahsoka chuckled, wiping a large portion of juice off her arm and sucking on her hand.

"You're all insane," Terriermon groaned.

"Aww, come here, my mate." Renamon smirked, picking him up and pulling him into an embrace, squashing him against her chest which was also covered in fruit chunks.

"AAAGGH! NOOOOOOO! GET AWAAAAAYYYY!" Terriermon struggled and squirmed in the iron grip of his mate, but could make no headway whatsoever.

"Does anybody want to explain to me what's going on?" Padmé asked.

"Not really," Anakin grinned. "Even we don't fully know."

At that point there was a knock at the door. One of the handmaidens immediately answered it, and in walked the other Senators and a couple of members of the Jedi Council. They stopped and stared as the beheld the heroes of the Republic sitting in a circle covered in fruit juice and with Terriermon still screaming blue murder as he tried to get away from Renamon's arms.

"I'm not even going to ask," Mace Windu replied.

"Probably for the best," Aayla chuckled, pulling small globules off her left lekku. "Good morning, Masters, Senators."

"It is indeed a good morning, isn't it?" Obi-Wan nodded. "A brand new dawn for a brand new Republic. I hope that you guys spent the night well."

"They were like rocks, Master Kenobi," Padmé snickered. "It was almost impossible to wake them up in order to give Ahsoka this surprise birthday party we're in the middle of."

"We noticed," Chuchi voiced. "Congratulations Ahsoka. A very happy birthday to you."

"Thank you, Chuchi," Ahsoka smiled back.

"How does it feel to have reached the age of fifteen despite all the odds that have been thrown against you in recent weeks?" the Pantoran asked.

"Immensely satisfying," Ahsoka replied. "And what's even better is that all you guys survived too. I'm having the time of my life right now."

"Well," said Bail. "We just came along to say that there are other festivities being planned for later on in the day, to celebrate the end of the war and all that. We were rather hoping that you would come along. We know that you don't like appearing before the crowds very much, although Aayla's performance yesterday gave the impression that you were extremely used to it."

"You flatter me, Senator," Aayla laughed.

"Anyway, as I was saying, you might not like appearing before the people, but it would be nice for them to see you having a good time after all this. And they need to get used to the presence of the Digimon if they're going to be staying in the future, so it would be an honour if you all turned up. We can even make sure we celebrate Ahsoka's birthday ourselves."

"That sounds nice to me," Padmé nodded. "What do you guys think?"

"I'm game," Anakin shrugged. "It'll be nice to meet up with everybody again and see how they're getting on. And you Digimon haven't had the chance to visit a party prepared by the Senate yet, have you? Believe me, they are usually something special."

"And since this is a very special occasion, this should prove to be one to remember," Barriss agreed.

"Two separate birthday parties in the same day?" Ahsoka laughed. "Who could object to that?"

"I'd say we're all in," Renamon nodded.

"Good to hear," Mace nodded. "Although, if you want my personal opinion, you should all take a shower or something before you come along."

"What? I thought that being covered in Jurcian fruit was the new fashion statement," Aayla quipped, to snorts from the rest of the group.

"We've been needing a shower for a while anyway, come to think of it," Henry pointed out. "We haven't had the opportunity to wash for a few days."

"Well, maybe _you_ haven't," Terriermon replied and he wrenched himself out of Renamon's arms at last. "But Aayla and I got quite a refreshing dunk in the sea on Minntooine not long ago."

"Er… well then… I expect we'll see you around midday?" asked Bail.

"We'll be there, Senator," Anakin nodded.

As the Senators and the Jedi turned to leave, Plo Koon halted for a moment by the door and turned around again.

"I just want to say, Ahsoka," he voiced. "That I am exceptionally proud of what you accomplished yesterday, and I intend to let your parents know of your heroics as soon as possible. According to the reports from the clones, your performance against Ventress was stunning. Master Skywalker and the rest of you should be honoured to have you in their team."

"We are," Lopmon nodded.

"Thanks, Master Plo," Ahsoka grinned. "Does this mean that I'm not Little 'Soka anymore?"

"I suppose not," Plo chuckled. "You're growing up, Ahsoka, and I think your birthday today symbolises your new maturity. I'll see you all later at the gathering."

As the Kel Dor left, Ahsoka turned to look at Anakin, and said, "So… Skyguy… does this always mean that I'm not Snips anymore as well?"

"Oh no," Anakin shook his head with a grin. "You, my Padawan, will _always_ be Snips."

"Good," Ahsoka smiled. "I didn't like that nickname when you first started to call me that, but I must admit, it has grown on me."

"And what about me?" Anakin asked. "Am I going to remain as Skyguy?"

"Only if you want to," Ahsoka replied.

"Why don't I get a cool nickname?" Suzie asked, folding her arms and pouting slightly.

"Because the last time you were given a nickname, it was by Impmon and he called you Dolly-girl," Henry reminded. "At which point you started to chase him around with a saucepan."

"I still don't know where she got the pan," Lopmon chuckled. "It did some real damage to Impmon's head though."

"And then you loudly demanded the nobody else give you a nickname ever again because if they did, you would whack them in the knees," Rika finished.

"Oh yeah," Suzie grinned. "I remember that day. It was funny."

"You nearly gave Impmon a concussion," Renamon reminded her.

"I said I was sorry."

"Anyway," Aayla said as she pushed herself to her feet. "I believe that it's now Ahsoka's turn to answer the Twenty Questions. In the meantime, Padmé, can we use your shower?"

"Of course," Padmé nodded. "It's right through there."

As Aayla departed, C-3PO walked back in from where he had been busy in the kitchen and cried, "Oh my word! What happened in here? Oh, I suppose I'll have to be the one to clean up this mess later on."

* * *

By midday, each of the group had washed up and was now free of sticky juice, and they all headed over to the celebrations at the Senate Building. It seemed the Republic was taking a day of festivities all over the area, because there seemed to be fireworks going off even though it was the middle of the day, and the streets were lined with cheering people of all races and species as the air was filled with streamers and bits of paper that were going to take a hell of a long time to clean up.

As they moved closer to the building, they could see Godzillo still curled up on the roof. They knew that the giant creature was going to have to go back to Maridun at some point in the near future – he didn't belong here on Coruscant, and he was certainly unlikely to find the food he required unless he turned on the citizens, and that really wasn't an option. Thanks to his reptilian characteristics, he didn't need to eat a lot for his size, but the group all agreed that they would take him back before the day was out.

The story was the same for the four Acklay, who had apparently spent the night in an empty warehouse. They were a rather more urgent case, as their high metabolisms meant they needed to eat a lot. Their appetites had been sated for the time being thanks to being fed delicacies from several restaurants, but they were still predators, and would need to hunt for their food later on.

As the group joined the party, which was taking place in one of the wings of the Senate Building, with a very large number of Senators and Jedi attending, as well as many clones and other races, there was another banner across the wall which also wished Ahsoka a happy birthday, and also read:- THANK YOU, TENACIOUS TEN! A band of four Bith were playing in the corner.

As soon as they entered, they were spotted by Orn Free Taa, who immediately raised a glass of brandy and proclaimed, "Everybody, everybody! I would like to propose a toast! A toast to the people who were responsible for the saving of our Galaxy and our entire way of life! The people who rescued us all from the clutches of the Sith, and who just walked in the room. To the Tenacious Ten, everybody."

"The Tenacious Ten," everybody in the room raised their glasses and drank to the team, several of whom tried not to look self-conscious by the attention lavished on them.

The team dispersed into the room and began to speak with the other guests, moving over to people they had not had the chance to speak with before to get reacquainted with them. The Digimon found themselves to be the centre of attention by the majority of the clones that had never seen them before as well as many of the Senators, and they were asked several times to show them what digivolving looked like.

Although, after each of them had digivolved to the Champion level several times, they finally decided that enough was enough. It was still bizarre for them to be stared at by so many people that they didn't know. They had all gotten so used to hiding in the shadows that standing out in the open like this had almost become an alien concept to them.

Suzie and Lopmon met up with Numa and Gabumon, who had not spent the night with them, but had spent some time resting with Xiaan Amersu. Xiaan herself immediately accosted Barriss and pulled the surprised Mirialan into a fierce embrace, murmuring her thanks for finally dealing with the Bounty Hunter that had slain her first Master.

Suzie seemed to notice that Numa was slightly reserved, as if the little girl had something on her mind. But today was not really a day for sadness so she immediately tried to cheer Numa up by suggesting that they play a game of tag, which seemed to work and Numa perked up. The two of them began to dash around the legs of the adults and generally get under people's feet, prompting Lopmon and Gabumon to chase after them as they both tried to make sure no harm came to their Tamers.

Yoda approached Anakin and Ahsoka and started to talk to them about something, but before Aayla could move over the join them, she felt a hand on her shoulder. She glanced back to find herself looking into the yellow eyes of Embo, who nodded silently at her. Rumi and Seripas emerged from behind him until they were standing in front of the Twi'lek together.

"Yes?" Aayla asked with a friendly smile. "What can I do for you three?"

"Nothing," Rumi said, "We just wanted to come and say goodbye. We've decided that we're going to be leaving now and get back to the place where we belong."

"Nuos na summas pes bauucuop puor las fuolas," Embo agreed.

"You're leaving so soon?" Aayla asked, slightly surprised.

"Yeah," Seripas nodded. "We don't really do well in large crowds – not particularly used to them, you see. Besides we've done our job and we should probably get back before some idiot remembers that we're Bounty Hunters and tries to have us arrested or something."

"And we also want to lay Sugi to rest straight away," Rumi nodded sadly. "We've decided to take her body to Boz Pity, and bury her on the mountain where the base of the Dark Acolytes used to be. It might not be the best place to lay someone in the Galaxy, but we thought it was appropriate. It can act as a symbol to the help that she provided you and the rest of your team throughout the war, and how she died doing just that in order to free the Galaxy of the master of the Dark Jedi who resided there."

"I see," nodded Aayla. "I wish I could spare the time to come along and see it through with you, but I have a lot of things that I need to do as well. Just remember that Sugi will always been in our hearts."

"We'll be sure to tell her that," nodded Seripas. "But… we were also wondering if… well… er…"

"What?" Aayla asked, with a frown.

"Well," Seripas went on. "Sugi always did enjoy a good song. We wondering if… you and your friends might be able to sing one now in memory of her. As a sort of… final send-off on your part. I think she'd like that."

Aayla smiled sadly, and said, "I you think that's an appropriate way to send her off, then I would be happy to."

She glanced over to the others and thought, _Did you guys get that?_

_Yep,_ nodded Barriss. _I heard. I'm game if you guys are._

_Same here,_ nodded Ahsoka.

_Terriermon,_ Aayla called out to the white bunny. _You got any appropriate songs from within your vast memory of them that might be appropriate for this situation._

Terriermon whooshed overhead and towards the Bith band as he said, _I've got just the one. Nice and peaceful, just the way a tribute song should be. Hold on a moment._ He landed in front of the four Bith and began to murmur quiet requests to them as Ahsoka and Barriss grouped around Aayla. Suddenly, Renamon landed next to them after leaping over the heads of several Senators and stood tall beside them, while Lopmon landed on the fox's head.

_You guys want to join in?_ Aayla asked.

_Of course,_ Lopmon replied. _We're the ones who started you off on this whole singing thing anyway, and we couldn't take part in the last time you guys sang together. We won't miss out on it this time._

_No dancing this time though,_ Renamon added. _Let's keep it nice, simple and smooth for Sugi, as well as everybody else who died. Our own personal send-off._

_Gotcha,_ Aayla nodded, as the Bith started to play a much slower, steadier tune to the one they had been playing before, causing the group of five to start swaying from side to side in time with the beat. Just like with Jabba the Hutt, the music was not the same as the original song, but it was close enough, and Terriermon was proving to be a surprisingly good conductor, causing the Bith's performance to match the original music much more closely than the last song they did.

The bunny then turned around and gave them a thumbs up, and all Aayla took the lead, singing the first line, whereupon the others joined in one line after another until they were all singing together.

This was their choice of tribute:-

"This is me for forever,  
One of the lost ones,  
The one without a name,  
Without an honest heart as compass.

This is me for forever,  
One without a name,  
These lines the last endeavour,  
To find the missing lifeline."

By this point, their voices were building and building higher and higher, so that they were drawing the attention of about half the room, who were looking at them curiously as they swayed from side to side continuously, with their eyes closed as if they were hypnotised. But then all of their eyes snapped open simultaneously and they belted out the chorus:-

"Oh how I wish,  
For soothing rain,  
All I wish is to dream again,  
My loving heart,  
Lost in the dark,  
For hope I'd give my everything."

The whole room was starting at them now, but none of them particularly cared. They kept singing, and their voices seemed to blend together beautifully, so much so that a couple of people, Rumi included, actually began to cry. Even hardcore Embo looked a little softened by this:-

"My flower, withered between,  
The pages two and three,  
The once and forever bloom gone with my sins.

Walk the dark path,  
Sleep with angels,  
Call the past for help,  
Touch me with your love,  
And reveal to me my true name.

Oh how I wish,  
For soothing rain,  
All I wish is to dream again,  
My loving heart ,  
Lost in the dark,  
For hope I'd give my everything.  
Oh how I wish,  
For soothing rain,  
Oh how I wish to dream again,  
Once and for all,  
And all for once,  
Nemo my name forevermore."

The entire room was enthralled by the spectacle now, which was just as well, because they were nearing the grand finale of the song. This was the first time that they had done this sort of thing in public – as doing it to Jabba in front of the United Army didn't particularly count in their opinion.

"Nemo sailing home,  
Nemo letting go."

Then, they burst out with the chorus one last time, the four humanoid members of the quintet throwing their arms around each other's shoulders while Lopmon balanced in the middle. When they had finished, they all ignored the stunned silence of the room, and focused on the three Bounty Hunters in front of them.

"How was that?" Renamon asked.

"Bauo," Embo replied.

"I agree," Seripas nodded. "It was beautiful. Sugi would have loved that."

"Glad that you think so," Lopmon smiled. "Take care you three. I hope we see you again someday."

"So do we," Rumi nodded. "Goodbye. And thank you. For everything."

The three Bounty Hunters made their way towards the doors, Embo bumping fists with Renamon as he filed past. The Tenacious Ten watched them go solemnly. The rest of the Galaxy's Bounty Hunters could learn a thing or two from those three.

As they left the room and vanished from sight, the room began to break out into slow applause for the song, which built up in intensity until it had reached the level of a dull roar. All three of the Jedi flushed, and Renamon smirked at them, chuckling to herself. The three of them were used to applause and praise from people, but not applause that came as a result of dancing.

Terriermon swooped overhead and then drew attention away from them by yelling, "COWABUNGA!" and diving into a large cake on the buffet table, burying himself in said cake and the proceeding to eat his way out.

As the room laughed at his antics, Aayla suddenly spotted something out of the corner of her eye and her head flashed around to look. The room opened out to a large balcony that overlooked the Senate District, and Aayla blinked when she spotted a shadowy figure lurking in the darkness at the edge of the balcony, before vanishing from sight.

Aayla smirked, then turned to the others and murmured, "Be right back," before she moved slowly across the room out onto the balcony. There was nobody else outside, as they were all staying where it was warmer and where there was food, so as Aayla moved to the edge and placed her hands on the concrete railing, it looked like she was alone.

But she wasn't.

Aayla glanced off to the right, looking at the figure who was perched on an outcropping around the corner and several feet from the balcony "I assumed that you would be long gone," she said.

The figure might have been hidden in shadows, but the large red eyes and wide-brimmed hat made him unmistakable. "Well," Bane replied casually. "I suppose you could say I… had a couple of things to take care of before I hit the road, as it were."

"Right," Aayla chuckled. "And what would that be?"

"For one thing," Bane said instantly. "There's still the matter of my pay to be resolved. I'm feeling in a charitable mood, Secura, so I'm not going to ask for money for coming to help you guys out against Durge. That was more of a personal mission than anything else. However, I still haven't been paid for my mission to Tatooine to get you in contact with Jabba the Hutt. And you know that I don't like to be kept waiting."

"So that's it then?" Aayla asked. "You just came here to talk about your money?"

"Exactly," Bane nodded, fingering the toothpick that he currently had stuck in his mouth.

"Really?" Aayla raised a brow. "So there was not one iota in you that didn't come here to say goodbye before you left as well?"

Bane hesitated. It was only for a split second, but that split second was enough to give Aayla all the information she needed. "No," he said, straight afterwards.

"I think there was," Aayla grinned. "I think it was just a very small part of you, no bigger than your smallest toe, but I still think it was there." She glanced back into the room where Terriermon was still munching his way through the cake and Renamon and Lopmon were watching. "The Digimon do have a funny way of worming a path into the hearts of even the most unexpected of people."

"Enough, Secura!" Bane growled. "I'm not here to bandy words about hearts and feelings. I want to know when I'm going to get my money. I am not to patience when it comes to receiving my pay. Now, when are you planning on getting it to me."

Aayla stared across at Bane for a couple of seconds before she sighed and said, "Look, Bane. I don't know what the outcome of all this is going to be for you, but I find it very unlikely that the Senate are going to clear you of all charges, no matter how helpful you were against the Sith. From what I can see, our alliance is just about over now that the Sith have been defeated."

Bane's eyes narrowed. "Is that a refusal to pay me, Secura?"

"No. Let me finish. As I was saying, the best that you can hope for is that the Senate will reduce the price on your head, and there's nothing that I'm going to be able to say that will convince them otherwise. You've committed too many crimes against the Republic and its citizens, Bane. So, what I am asking first is, what exactly are you planning to do with your life from now on."

"What do you think?" Bane smirked.

"I think that you're going to go straight back to your ways as a Bounty Hunter who only works for the highest bidder," Aayla replied smoothly. "Especially since the dangerous man you received is gone from this Galaxy."

"You are exactly right," Bane chuckled. "Seems you've gotten to know me pretty well since I kidnapped you."

"Well," Aayla shrugged. "I'm pretty sure that I would have been able to guess that beforehand. Anyway, what I'm saying is that as soon as the Senate reinstates itself and elects a new Chancellor and all that, you'll be back on the Wanted list." She turned to look at him and said, "However, I promised you that you would get paid and considering the great deeds you did for us, giving you what you earned is the least I can do."

"Glad to hear it," Bane sneered.

"I'll speak with Bail and Padmé," Aayla said. "I'll convince them to at least give you a few more days before the Bounty on your head is reinstated, because as per our agreement, your pardon will end soon. During that time, I will ask that they send the credits we owe you to the same rendezvous place where you picked up the money from Sidious for my supposed death and placed the tracking beacon on his ship and leave them there. You'll be able to pick them up from there and then get back to your life of crime."

"If you know I'm going to go back to crime, shouldn't you be trying to arrest me now?" Bane raised a brow.

"I should," Aayla agreed. "But I'm not going to. I will abide by our agreement, because technically you're still on pardon. However, when you've collected your pay, I'm afraid things are going to go back to square one. If I come up against you when you're trying to pull off a heist or something along those lines, I'm going to have to take you in. Do you understand?"

"Of course," Bane pulled the toothpick from his mouth and tossed it casually away. "I wouldn't have it any other way, and I could say the same in reverse. If I get hired to assassinate you again then next time, I will go for broke. Since everybody, including me, knows about the Digimon now, any information on them would be practically worthless."

"You'll never change, will you, Bane?" Aayla chuckled.

"I'm certainly not planning on it," Bane replied. "But one more thing. How am I to know that you won't set up a trap for me at the rendezvous point where you leave my pay?"

Aayla rolled her eyes and said, "Bane, do I really strike you as the type of person to do that? I will abide by my promise and let you get away. And I'm afraid if you want your money, you're going to have to trust me on that one."

Bane stared into Aayla's eyes for several seconds before he said, "You know, Secura? If you were just about anybody else in the Galaxy then I wouldn't trust that promise at all. But after what I've seen you do… I really think that you will stand by your word. Alright then… you've got a deal. I will expect the credits to arrive within three days from now, and once I have collected my money, I will blow up that rendezvous point, since you all know where it is now, thanks to Renamon. And then, I guess we will no longer be allies."

"It's a shame really," Aayla chuckled. "I was starting to get used to having you around."

"And I think that's yet another reason for me to be going." He turned around and paused for a moment before turning back to add. "For what is worth, Secura, I hope we don't meet again." He smirked and added, "I would hate to have to kill you after what we did together."

Aayla blinked, but before she could reply, Bane had launched himself off the outcropping and activated his rocket boots, hovering in plain sight of the other party-goers who noticed and stared at him in shock. He smirked, saluted and said, "So long, Jedi. Digimon," before he turned to soar away into the distance, where a ship that Aayla recognised as Bane's own rose into view, no doubt piloted by Todo 360.

Bane landed in the open hatch and strode in, the side of the ship closing up behind him before the ship rocketed upwards and away, heading out of the atmosphere to leave Coruscant far behind.

Aayla stared after him and chuckled for a moment when he'd gone.

"You know, Bane," she murmured, even though he wasn't there. "Perhaps you are capable of change after all. But not for a long, _loooong_ time."

"Was that Bane I saw leaving just now?" Renamon asked as she bounded out onto the balcony with the rest of the group.

"Yes," Aayla nodded. "He just wanted to make sure we still intended to pay him his earnings."

"Ah. Why am I not surprised?" Ahsoka rolled her eyes.

"It's a strange thought, isn't it?" Anakin remarked. "How we only managed to accomplish as much as we did thanks to a Bounty Hunter none of us even liked."

"And yet he helped us all the same," Aayla agreed. She sighed and added, "I'm hoping he'll at least wait a while before he gets back on the Bounty Hunter playing field. But knowing him, that will probably not happen."

"Not as long as he has a reputation to maintain," Rika reminded them.

"Well, it's a nice thought anyway," Aayla smiled. She turned back around to head indoors once more, and the others fell in step beside her, walking side by side and back towards the staring party-goers.

However, before they reached the outside, another voice called out, "Secura!"

Aayla turned around sharply at the growling voice, just in time to see General Grievous drop into view behind her from above the balcony, slamming into it floor behind them hard enough to crack it underneath his feet. The Kaleesh cyborg reared upwards to his full height and many of the Senators inside the room beyond freaked out at the sight of him, immediately backing away towards the nearby wall. Apparently most of them were not quite ready to trust the ex-Separatist warrior yet.

Aayla, on the other hand, had come to understand Grievous enough to know when he was planning on attacking, and his body language was suggesting nothing of the kind, so she merely smiled brightly and said, "Grievous. I was wondering where you were. How are you?"

Grievous eyes narrowed. "I have not come here to discuss pleasantries, Secura! But if I must answer your question, I did not sleep last night. I spent too much time wondering what I was going to do next now that all the people who were truly responsible for destroying my body, wrecking my life and bringing ruin to my homeworld and people are gone."

"I see," Aayla replied, slightly warily, wondering what Grievous was going to say next.

"I considered cutting and running," Grievous replied. "I can see full well that I am not welcome here, nor will I be welcome anywhere in this Galaxy anymore. And as much as I am capable of living my life on the run and staying away from all you Jedi… I have decided to stick to our agreement."

Aayla was mildly surprised. She remembered that she had extricated a promise from Grievous when they had met on Minntooine, that if the cyborg wanted to help them, he must agree to be sent to prison when this whole thing was over. Grievous was a similar case to Bane, only perhaps even worse, after all. While nobody could deny that he had been of phenomenal help in the final conflict, whether by his own sword-skills or by providing the enormous droid army as back-up for the rebellion, it didn't change the fact that Grievous was responsible for the slaughter of millions of innocents, again, whether by his own hand or by the blasters and bombs of the droids under his command.

Grievous had slaughtered his way across the Galaxy, destroying cities and occasionally whole planets with his sheer ruthlessness and slaying countless Jedi, far more than either Asajj Ventress or Aurra Sing had managed to do during their lives. Destruction on that scale was going to need a whole lot more redemption than what Grievous had done so far.

"I see," Aayla murmured. "And… why did you choose to do that if you were considering going back on it."

Grievous actually looked slightly uncomfortable and refused to look Aayla in the eyes when he replied:-

"Because you have kept up your side of the bargain," Grievous replied. "Because I have seen you do the same thing many times with others. You have never backed down on your word, Secura, and… I suppose it would not feel… right… to not do the same thing."

He fixed his yellow eyes on Aayla and added, "Besides, I do not have any other purpose now. My quest for vengeance is finally over, with the correct perpetrators dead. Had I remained with the Separatist cause, I now see that it's very likely the Sith would have stabbed me in the back anyway, and I would not have lived past the end of the war. You, on the other hand, have not done that. I have often found your charity to be completely ridiculous in its magnitude, Secura. But… it is also quite astonishing."

"No, it isn't," Aayla shook her head. "Anybody else among my order worthy of calling themselves a Jedi would do the same thing. You just seem to think its astonishing because it's a strange concept to you. After all, you kept very poor company over your months among the Separatists. Every single one of them would not hesitate to backstab the others if they spotted an opportunity."

"Including me," Grievous reminded her.

"Yes, including you, but that's beside the point," Aayla replied. "You're not choosing to backstab _me_ and the others now, are you?"

Grievous growled and looked away again. Aayla frowned and took a couple of steps towards him, but Grievous immediately shrank back from her as if she had some deadly disease, causing Aayla to stop in her tracks. It seemed quite clear that Grievous was probably never going to be used to physical contact and emotional support again. He had received none of it from the Sith after all.

Aayla sighed and stepped back again, and Grievous grumbled under his breath for a moment, initiating a rather awkward silence between the two groups.

Finally Grievous decided to break that silence when he said, "I used to think that you Jedi were weak, Secura." He said. "I believed that the emotional attachments that you held for each other were pathetic and deserved to be eradicated, just as Dooku always said that they should be. But I saw the way that you defeated Sidious through the power of the bonds you held between you. And… though I am loathe to admit it… my respect for you… Aayla…" he flinched when he used her first name as if it stung him, before he ploughed on… "has expanded to include the rest of your group."

"Us?" Barriss blinked. "Seriously."

Grievous glared at the Mirialan and growled. "Are you a member of their group?"

"Yes."

"Then I hold you in respect too," Grievous muttered. "Though if you're going to ask painfully obvious questions like that, then I might drop that opinion."

"Grievous," Anakin put in. "Exactly _why_ did you think that emotional attachment is a weakness? It can't be _only_ because Dooku said it. You weren't _that_ far under his thumb, because if you were then you never would have turned on him."

"It may surprise you, Skywalker, but I too once felt emotional attachment," Grievous snarled at him angrily. "But she died in battle against the Huk during the war between our neighbouring planets! And it was after that that the Jedi came to help their side and not ours!"

Nobody needed to be told the rest of the story. Grievous had obviously been crushed by the death of his loved one, thrown into a pit of depression so deep that when he had finally come out of it, he rigidly believed that attachments were no longer worth it. And then the Geonosians had messed with his mind and his anger had transformed that thought into attachment and care being a weakness, which was why Grievous had kept emotionally distant from anyone and everyone.

They were seeing a different side to Grievous now – the side of him that he never displayed. Just like how she had on Minntooine, Aayla could only look at him now and see the broken and pathetic mess that he had obviously been in when he had first come into Dooku's service before he had been transformed into the raging warrior that had slain Dooku himself. He'd obviously had a lot of time to think on it over the night.

Aayla ventured forwards again and this time Grievous didn't seem to notice her approaching until she was right in front of him. When he did, he immediately lurched backwards, but she laid a hand on his metal forearm before he could get away and he froze at the contact, even though he couldn't actually feel it.

He did not pull away though. He just stared.

"Always remember, Grievous," Aayla said softly, "That your friends are the ones who give you strength. You have a lot of power, but power is meant to be used for your friends. A warrior without love is not a warrior at all, and though you seem to have buried it somewhere in the darkest recesses of your mind, you still have love in you somewhere. You just need to find it. And always remember, nobody is above redemption. Not even you."

Grievous seemed stupefied by Aayla's words, but before he could respond, the Twi'lek had stepped away again.

"Was there anything else that you wanted, Grievous?" she asked. "Before you hold up your end of the deal."

Grievous' tougher, hardened side seemed to switch back on immediately and he snarled. "Yes!" he growled. "Where is Senator Organa and those comrades of yours who helped in unseating Sidious?"

Aayla glanced around, and indicated to the group of five Senators that they should move forwards. They did so, slightly hesitantly, but nevertheless, they did move forwards until they were standing just behind Aayla.

"Yes, Grievous?" Bail asked. "What do you want?"

Grievous ignored him and rounded on Aayla again. "Tell them!" he demanded. "Tell them the other part of our deal right now! I want to see it done before I agree to go!"

Aayla nodded. "I understand," she said, before she turned away from him, putting complete faith in him as she exposed her back to him. She said, "There was a second condition for getting Grievous to join our forces – my own side of the two-way bargain. He agreed to go to jail when it was all done, but I agreed that I would get the Senate to send relief support to the people of Kalee the moment the Republic gets back on track."

"That is right!" Grievous snarled. "Your Republic sided with the beings who had long been terrorising our race just when we were on the verge of overthrowing them once and for all! You threw my planet into deep poverty from which we never recovered! My people have been starving for almost a decade now, and no relief has come to them from you!"

Padmé's hand flew to her mouth. "Oh no," she breathed. "I'm… I'm sorry. I didn't realise the situation was that serious. I didn't realise there even _was_ a situation."

"The reason Grievous fell into the employ of Dooku is because he became an employee of the Banking Clan in a desperate attempt to secure aid for his people," Aayla explained. "I imagine that since he was altered into a cyborg and had his memories wiped, there has not been a whole lot of that aid forthcoming from the Separatists. But Sidious planned and used the suffering of the Kaleesh to get Grievous on his side before the war even started."

"Well, we still have to hold the elections for the new Chancellor," Bail replied. "Which will be taken first thing in the morning, but I can assure you, Grievous that we will do everything in our power to help your people, regardless of the result. If the Kaleesh, including you, have suffered at the hand of us or our former Sith-Chancellor, then it is the moral thing to do to right that wrong."

"The Kaleesh will receive their first shipment of supplies by evening tomorrow at the latest," Padmé promised. "They can join the Republic if they wish, or they can stay on their own, but we will do our duty and get them back on their feet, for good."

"And the Huk?" Grievous demanded. "Their presence still remains a threat."

"If we must, then we will send in troops to make sure that they are kept at bay," Bail replied. "However, we cannot have another war breaking out between your people and theirs. We will do what we need to keep the peace, and break up fighting before it starts, but we will not drive the Huk into poverty this time either."

Grievous looked a little dis-satisfied with that last remark, but after about five seconds or so of analytically staring at the Senators, trying to evaluate if these were the kind of people who would also keep their words, he eventually nodded and growled, "Fine. See that it is done, because if it isn't …" he flexed his claws slightly and let the threat hang, before he turned back to Aayla and said, "In that case, I shall be going."

Aayla nodded and turned around, catching the eye of Lieutenant Thire and signalling him to come forwards. "Would you please escort the good general to the prison please?" she asked.

"Yes, sir," Thire nodded. "Do you want me to cuff him?"

Grievous snarled loudly and Thire took several steps backwards. "I will walk of my own accord, clone!" Grievous snapped, stabbing a claw in the direction of Thire's chest. "I will not be restrained! And if you attempt to restrain me along the way then you will regret it!"

"Grievous…" Aayla placed a hand on his arm and lowered it. "You do not need that anger anymore. Please, try and stay calm as much as you can."

Grievous wrenched his arm away from Aayla's grip straight away this time, but he grunted in acknowledgment. He took a couple of paces forwards, but then turned around and brought his hands down to his sides, plucking all four of his lightsabers off his waist. A lot of people tensed, thinking he was going to lash out and start swinging, but instead, he merely passed them to Aayla.

"I will not be needing these anymore," he said, finally pulling off the fifth blade he had hanging on one side – the blade he had taken from Count Dooku, and with a flex of his hand he snapped it in half. "The rest of my collection can be found in Count Dooku's palace on Serenno."

Aayla nodded, and stepped back with the extra blades. "Goodbye Grievous. And thank you."

The rest of the team nodded something similar, except for Terriermon, who landed on Aayla's shoulder and gave Grievous a thumbs up. "Don't worry, Grievous. We'll drop by and visit you sometimes. Oh, and if you and San Hill get allowed out of your cell at the same time, try to stop yourself from murdering him, okay?"

Grievous stared at Terriermon for several moments, and then rolled his eyes. He did not say goodbye in return – perhaps he would find that a bit too difficult to stomach even now. Instead, he merely strode through the room, the party-goers parting before him and shrinking away as Thire and three of his men hurried to accompany him and make sure he went the right way.

When Grievous had gone, Yoda stepped over to the group and looked up at them with a weary smile, "A shame, it is," he said. "That the Sith were able to ruin Grievous' past even under our watch. A much better life, he could have lived, had more vigilant, we been. Perhaps even fallen into service of the Republic itself, he could have."

"Well, hopefully he'll have some time to reflect on his past when he hangs around in prison," Renamon murmured.

"Assuming he actually goes through with his promise to go there," Rika added.

"Oh, I have a feeling that he will," Aayla replied.

"As do I," Yoda replied. He sighed again and added, "Damaged, is his mind. Perhaps even more than his body. Never again be a social creature, will he. But, just perhaps, started him off on a better path, you have, Master Secura."

Aayla blinked, still not used to other Jedi Masters calling her that instead of 'Knight.' But then she murmured, "Well, we can only hope. I wonder what will become of him in the long run."

"Perhaps they'll reduce his sentence to community service," Terriermon chuckled.

"Oh, I doubt it," Lopmon snickered. "Can you imagine General Grievous sweeping up litter in the street?"

There as an outbreak of laughter from this remark, and the group, along with the Senators, began to head back into the party hall to enjoy the rest of their day. Yoda, meanwhile, watched them go, a slight smile on his face as he regarded the whole group. He had initially put Ahsoka as Anakin's Padawan as part of a larger plan to help Anakin with his problem of overcoming attachments, but with the arrival of the Digimon, that plan had been completely set in reverse, until they had become the close-knit group they were today.

The Galaxy would have been lost with them.

Aayla in particular was catching his interest, thanks to all the incredible things she had been doing recently. He closed his eyes for a moment and focused on the force. Without the presence of the Dark Side, the future was much clearer than it used to be, but even then it was never completely clear, as there were many possible futures.

But Yoda could see one thing for certain, and he murmured, more to himself than anyone else, "Great deeds, you have all accomplished, in this war. But much heroism still, I see in all your futures."

* * *

The festivities lasted the rest of the day and well into the night, culminating in Terriermon mistaking an alcoholic beverage for a fruit juice. It quickly became apparent that the bunny could not hold his liquor at all, and as he bounced around the Senate Building, slurring an incredibly loud and incredibly rude song, they decided to call it a night, and headed back to Padmé's quarters for another well-earned rest. It had been Ahsoka's best birthday ever, and was likely to remain that way for many years to come.

This time, Numa and Gabumon accompanied the group to Padmé's quarters and slept curled up next to Suzie, which Gabumon pressed his back against her own in an attempt to make sure she kept warm. Suzie noticed that both of them still seemed to have something on their minds, but she refrained from asking figuring that if it was all that serious they would tell her.

* * *

The following morning, Padmé woke them up as she said she was going to the Senate for the new election. Several candidates had already come up besides Bail, and apparently a number of people had suggested Padmé herself, but she had declined, and now it was time to see how it went.

The team themselves left quickly for another reason, for they had decided that today was the day they did at least two important things – and they were returning the larger animals to their homes and heading back to Saleucami to pick up the younglings which they had left with the local farmers.

It was a day for rather sad goodbyes. A large number of Wookiees accompanied them back to Kashyyyk, including Chewbacca's mate and father. When they landed on the planet and allowed the Wookiee people to disembark and head back towards their homes, the group let Chewbacca and his family have their goodbyes in private.

Zarza was reluctant to go herself, as she seemed to want to stay with Suzie and the others. Suzie wrapped her arms around the Varactyl's beak and struggled not to cry. It had been hard to say goodbye the first time when Zarza had gotten her out of the Shadowlands, but considering everything Zarza had done for them now, saying goodbye again was even harder.

"But you can't stay with us," she sniffed. "You belong here in the woods. We're going to be on Coruscant for a lot of the time and a giant lizard shouldn't be living in a big city, no matter how cool they are. I'm sorry, but you have to stay here."

Zarza trilled mournfully as she rubbed her beak against Suzie's face slightly, and then stepped away. The giant lizard felt a hand on her shoulder a moment later and her large, orange eye rotated around to fix on Barriss, who was standing there with a smile on her face.

"My Master, Luminara, told me that you saved her life on Tython," the young Mirialan smiled. "I just wanted to say thank you before we left. I don't know what I would have done with myself if I had learned that she had died in the fighting."

Zarza ruffled her feathers and allowed Barriss to scratch her neck, before the group made their final goodbyes and headed back into the shuttle that had dropped them off. As they ascended back into the air, Zarza bounded after them and landed on the trunk of a nearby tree, racing up it and keeping pace with the ascending shuttle until she reached the top and could go no higher. From there, she let out one last ululating hooting noise as a final farewell as the ship rose back into the air, watching it go for a while before disappearing back into the foliage once more.

* * *

About an hour later, and the _Acclamator_-class cruiser they were travelling in touched down on Maridun, the ramp descending downwards before it had even touched the ground. Once the huge feet had finally settled on the grassy plains, the huge head of the Zillo Beast appeared out of the door, stretching himself outwards as he moved down on the ramp on four limbs to compensate for the cramped time he had spent in the hangar behind him.

As the others moved out to join him, Godzillo turned around and looked down at them, bathing each of them in his enormous shadow. His eyes seemed to narrow slightly, indicating that he was just as sad as Zarza had been at the parting.

"Alright then, big guy!" Ahsoka called up to him. "I guess this is where we leave you."

"Your help against the Sith was invaluable," Anakin added. "And your final blow against him was brilliant."

The Zillo Beast rumbled slightly and lowered his head down until his nose was right in front of them. Each member of the group reached out to place their hand directly on his brown, scaly skin, and Renamon smiled as she murmured low over the sound of his breathing:-

"You are the last of your kind, Godzillo. When you finally pass away, your species will die with you, and your incredible legacy will finally come to an end. But, I think I can safely say this – you have ensured that your species will be remembered for all eternity. You have brought your species the respect that they deserve, in more than one sense of the word. Now they will finally know how intelligent you really are, and the mistake they made when they wiped out your kind."

Godzillo rumbled his thanks to the yellow fox.

"That is true," Lopmon added with a smile. "But let's hope that you don't have to leave behind a legacy too soon. Let's hope you live for many more years to come."

As they took their hands away again, Godzillo began to rear back up again and Terriermon called up to him, "Try not to eat too many corinathoths in one go, big guy!"

Godzillo spread out his hind legs and splayed out his enormous arms, roaring outwards to the sky in a final farewell of his own, drawing smiles to the faces of all the Tenacious Ten.

And then they turned around and moved back into the plane.

* * *

Felucia was the next stop, and as the Acklay pack moved down the ramp and back towards the ground, there was a certain solemnity in the air. Everybody was well aware of the fact that the pack was now two members short of the number they had left with.

The two dead Acklay had been taken care of in the traditional manner of all Acklay – they had been eaten by their pack-mates. It might seem like a rather disrespectful thing to do, but one of the many laws of the jungle planet was never to let food of any kind go to waste, and the Acklay had followed that rule immediately. In a bizarre way, the dead Acklay would probably have wanted that.

"Well then," said Renamon, as the four Acklay wheeled around to look at her. "This is the third time that we say goodbye to you guys."

The Force-sensitive Acklay cocked its head to one side and growled slightly in acknowledgement.

"We honour the sacrifice of your comrades," Anakin replied. "You guys have done a hell of a lot for us, and not just over the last few days. You're a credit to your species."

"And we hope you continue to terrorise the local wildlife for many years to come," Barriss smiled.

All four Acklay let off a shriek and plunged their right front legs into the ground at the same time, almost like some peculiar giant-insect-creature salute. Then they all turned to Renamon, the one who had enchanted them in the first place and each of them lowered their heads towards her. One by one, Renamon gave them a rub under the chin with one furry paw. And then she and the rest of the group, moved back up into the cruiser, leaving the four voracious predators behind.

* * *

And when they reached Saleucami, landing in front of the farm of Cut Lawquane once more, there was another surprise in store for the whole group.

Cut himself stepped out to converse quietly with Bly and Rex, speaking quietly about the fate of the soldiers and how the man responsible for bringing them into the Galaxy was finally dead. Cut seemed satisfied by the news – he might not have been a part of the army, but the news that his brothers' lives were finally free and that they could do what they chose from now on was still something to celebrate.

As Suu began to call several of the nearby farms, asking them to bring the Padawans that they had taken in back to the location where they had been picked up, Suzie spotted Numa walking over to the other two young Twi'leks, Shaeeah and Jek. She frowned in bewilderment as she saw the three of them speaking in quiet voices for a few moments, whereupon the two local children's faces lit up in excitement.

As several of the Padawans began to come in from all around, Numa turned back to the others and walked over to them, wringing her hands slightly nervously as she mumbled, "Er… um… guys… There's… there's something that I need to tell you."

"What is it, Numa?" Rika asked, turning to the little girl with a smile.

"Well… um… the other night I… I thought about this for a while, but… well…" she sighed and took a few deep breaths before she finally managed to say what had been on her mind for a while. "I… I've decided that, now the war is over and I… helped out everybody… I mean, we helped out everybody," she nodded towards Gabumon. "I think that… I'd quite like to… to stay here."

"What?" Suzie cried with wide eyes. "Stay here? But… Numa…"

"Please allow her to explain her reasoning first," Gabumon stepped up beside his Tamer to support her. "This isn't an easy choice for her, so please just let her finish."

Numa sighed again and said, "Well… it's … it's just too much for me really. I don't think I'm ready. Not yet. My whole life, I've lived in a quiet little canyon where nothing happened until the Separatists attacked and… well, to be honest, the number of people and the business and the tall buildings of Coruscant made me nervous. It's too big… and everything's changed so quickly for me. I… I just think I need some time to settle down again. I need some space."

"Numa…" Suzie murmured, tears already beginning to creep into the corners of her eyes.

"That is why," Gabumon nodded, turning towards Cut and Suu, "We would like to once again ask for sanctuary at your house, if you'll have us."

"I don't want to leave you guys behind," Numa blurted out before the Lawquanes could answer. "I wish I could stay with you all the time, but I just don't think that I'm ready for the kind of life you guys seem to have. Do you… do you get that?"

"Of course we get it," Henry smiled encouragingly. "It must be a shock to the system for anybody in your shoes. We understand completely, Numa."

"If you think this is the best option, then we won't try to stop you," Rika agreed. "We have no intention of forcing our way of life onto somebody who doesn't want it."

Numa smiled in thanks and turned to Suzie, who was seriously struggling not to cry. Numa herself was beginning to tear up as well, and she sniffed, "Suzie…"

Suzie burst into tears completely and dashed forwards to engulf Numa in one of her fiercest hugs ever, and Numa quickly returned the favour as the two of them seemed to bury their faces in the shoulder of the other. Sad smiles appeared on the faces of the rest of the team as they beheld the two little girls who had been through so much, apart and together.

When they finally broke away from each other, Numa wiped her eyes and tried to stop herself from crying, but didn't quite manage it. "It's okay though," she smiled. "I owe you guys everything. I'm not ready for all the adventure yet, but at least I now know that I can do it." She held up her D-Arc and smiled. "I'm a Tamer now, and no matter what happens in the future, I'll always be a Tamer. And I found my courage as well, didn't I? You guys are the best."

"You are most welcome, Numa," Renamon smiled. "It was our pleasure to know you in return."

"Don't forget about us, okay?" Suzie sniffed.

"No way," Numa forced a grin. "Besides, maybe one day, when I've gotten used to how much my life has changed, I'll be ready to take on being a Tamer like you guys."

"And I will help to light Numa's way in any way that I can," Gabumon agreed.

"Good mon," Lopmon smiled. "Just the way things should be."

"What about Waxer and Boil?" asked Ahsoka. "And Xiaan? Won't they want to know."

"We told them last night," Gabumon replied. "They said that they would come to visit us from time to time whenever they would got the opportunity."

"So, Cut, Suu," Aayla looked up at them. "How about it? You got a little more space in that house of yours?"

Cut chuckled and said, "Who are we to deny these two entrance? I say welcome to the family."

"As do I," Suu smiled. "This certainly ought to make things interesting."

Terriermon landed nearby and threw in, "Momentai everybody. Everything's going to be alright. How about we have one last epic game of tag before we go and take the younglings back to Coruscant."

"Great idea!" Suzie beamed. "Tag! You're it!" she placed her hand on Terriermon's head and hared away.

"Oh, come on!" Terriermon growled as he leapt in pursuit of the shrieking girls, and from that moment, everything turned into a shriek-fest as they and most of the smaller younglings joined in the game that last for half an hour.

* * *

Isn't it sad? All those people saying goodbye. But it had to be done in the end, and I hope that you were all touched by their departures, especially the one at the end between Suzie and Numa. Will Numa re-occur in any of my planned sequels? Perhaps. If she does, then I'm not sure how I would re-introduce her to the story, or in fact any of the other characters if they might return at a later date. Currently, I have no idea, but that may change in the future. After all, anything can happen in fanfiction.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Impmon chapter. Wait, what? Yes, even though we have not reach the multiple of five chapter mark, we are moving back to the Digimon's universe for the next stage of this arc. The angels help to shepherd the Tamers and their partners and friends back to the Human World, and later on, they provide Impmon with a new revelation. Something about one of his alternate Mega forms that he doesn't even know yet. What could it be?

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 214 : The New Beelzemon**


	214. The New Beelzemon

Phew. This chapter was a haul. I spent the majority of today at a waterfowl nature reserve as part of a field trip for the course, getting up early before I could write anything and arriving back extremely late. In order to stay on schedule, I hauled my backside into gear and slammed the second half of this chapter in one go, and I must say I am still quite pleased with how it turned out nevertheless.

Anyway, I hope you guys like the chapter. Especially the ending.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 214:- The New Beelzemon**

* * *

Impmon woke up, crammed into the middle of a Tamer sandwich, as Ai and Mako were leaning up against either side of him and snoring fitfully, so loudly that Impmon wondered how he'd been able to get to sleep at all. Then he remembered just how drained he had felt the previous day after finally dealing with GranDracmon and his Demon Lord General and Army. He probably dropped off like a rock.

He took several moments of just sitting in the place where he had fallen and staring into space, reflecting on the action of the last day or two. It had been nothing short of remarkable, and what made it even better was that all the good guys had made it out alive. Impmon wasn't sure he would have been able to forgive himself for a good long time if any of them had died on a rescue mission for him, and yet they were all okay. A few scrapes and a couple more major injuries here and there, but other than that, they were fine.

He glanced around him, wondering here he was. To his surprise, he found that he was in the same room that he had slept in when he had abandoned his comrades here in the heavens about a week or so ago. It now seemed like a frightfully long time ago, so much had happened since then, but he allowed a self-satisfied smile to creep over his face. There would be no more running away from him. Not ever.

The rest of their little group was there as well. Where the other Tamers were, he could not say, but in the room with him were not only his Tamers, but also Lilamon, Diatrymon and Wingdramon, the three Digimon that had stuck with him to the end. Calumon was there too, still perched on the seat of Behemoth, who was standing sentinel by the door. It seemed the bike still wasn't prepared to leave anything to chance just yet.

Impmon chuckled as he squeezed himself out from between his Tamers, causing them to flop onto the wall and moan as they began to rouse from their own sleep. Impmon stretched out his hands and arched his back slightly, working out a couple of kinks in his back, before snapping his fingers and loudly declaring, "Well, ain't you guys a bunch of lazy sacks?" He clapped his hands and said, "Come on, people. Rise and shine! If I'm not sleeping in, you sure as heck aren't sleeping in either."

"Impmon," grinned Ai as she sat up a little straighter and rubbed sleep out of her eyes. "You sound like your old self again."

"Yeah, like how you were before you got haunted by all those visions," Mako agreed.

"What, were you expecting me to act like a depressed dope forever?" grinned Impmon… impishly… and thereby living up to his own name. "Course not. The situation is over. My visions won't be troubling me again with MetalPhantomon dead, and with GranDracmon and Belphemon out of the picture too, there's nothing for me to worry about, is there? Everything can go back to the way it used to be."

"Except better," Lilamon snickered as she stood up and stretched out her own arms, splaying her petals.

"Exactly," Impmon nodded.

"Yay! Impmon's back to his funny, mischiefey ways," Calumon cheered. "Hooray! It's a miracle."

"No, it's not," Impmon chuckled. "It's the natural order of thing reasserting itself, I say. Oh, and by the way, mischiefey is not a word."

"Oh joy," Wingdramon snorted as he raised his head. "Now we have to deal with a cheeky little scallywag."

"Scallywag?" Impmon raised a brow. "Who says that anymore?"

"Evidently I do," Wingdramon lowered his head in front of Impmon's face. "You got a problem with that?"

"No sir," Impmon said immediately, grin still firmly implanted on his face. It then fell away slightly as he cleared his throat and added, "In all seriousness though, I just want to… you know… thank you guys for everything that you did for me throughout that whole ordeal. You… didn't have to but you did it anyway. You're all a bunch of true friends."

"_Loyal to the darkest hour,_" Diatrymon quoted. "_Battling through the Demon's Nest._ That's us. And you can bet your behind that we would do it again if we had to."

"Yes, well, I'm kinda hoping that we _don't _have to," Lilamon added, in a mixture of joke and serious. "Can you imagine Impmon getting caught and taken to the stronghold of some powerful Demon Lord _twice_. Now, that would just be wrong."

"One-hundred and six percent agreed," Impmon shuddered. "Let's make sure that it never happens again, alright."

"But, if it does," Mako smiled. "We know that we can bust our way our as Fatemon or Beelzemon, don't we?"

"Yeah!" Ai nodded. "I still can't believe that we have _two_ Mega forms."

"Lots of Digimon have multiple Mega forms," Impmon shrugged. "What surprised me was the fact that we can switch between them at will like that. That was something else. We can handle almost any opponent between those two. Those opponents who we can't get close to, we just use Beelzemon to blast the bejesus out of them. And for anybody else, we whup their asses with Fatemon. How much better can it get?"

"Not a lot," Wingdramon chuckled. "You're two separate warriors in one when the three of you combine."

"Two, one and three in the same sentence," Impmon mused. "And in the wrong order while totally making sense. Good one."

"Thank you," Wingdramon snorted. "Anyway, that's your one of God and one of Fate right there."

"True," nodded Impmon. "But while what we did might be epically cool and all, I reckon that what you guys did was equally as epic. You do realise that you three succeeded in doing what even the Sovereigns couldn't do and allowed us all to finish off GranDracmon for good. Now, that has got to be quite a confidence booster for all of you, right?"

Lilamon chuckled. "It certainly is a weird thought if nothing else. If you had told us, the day that you first met us, that we would take down an ultra-powerful Demon Digimon who rivalled all of the Demon Lords put together in terms of power then we would probably not have come with you at all, for fear that we were following a crazy person."

"Yeah, I can see where you're going with that," Impmon snorted.

"Actually, I still think we would have gone," Diatrymon shrugged his wings. "If only for the potential adventure. And because we wouldn't want to leave a crazy person alone in the wilderness where anybody could have gotten to him."

"Yeah, you're right," shrugged Lilamon. "Damn us and our good hearts."

"You know what I think?" Impmon smirked. "From the first time I met you guys, you wanted me to tell you about the Prophecy Trio. Because you'd heard a lot of stories about them and you wanted me to tell you so you could hear them from a close personal friend. But, even though you haven't actually met the original Prophecy Trio, you three just took away their title."

Diatrymon blinked. "We did?" he squawked.

"Hell yeah," Impmon nodded with an ear-to-ear grin. "_Only three can end the evil._ That's what the Great Prophecy said when we read it, didn't it? And it was referring to the three of you, because it was your combined skills, powers and abilities that finally put an end to GranDracmon. Slayerdramon's sword skills to immobilise him, Ornismon's powers over wind to pin him to the spot and make sure he couldn't get away, and then Rosemon taking over the mind of Belphemon to get him to do the job for us. You, my friends, are the new Prophecy Trio."

All three of them looked staggered. They had very clearly not considered what they had done like that.

"But…" Lilamon protested. "You're the one who came up with the idea."

"Yeah, but I couldn't have pulled it off," Impmon reminded her. "Only three _can_ end the evil. I thought of _how_, but I still _couldn't._ Not without your help."

"He's right," Diatrymon murmured with wide eyes. "Bloody hell, he's right."

"That is… an astounding concept," Wingdramon agreed.

"Then… does that mean that it wasn't a coincidence that we met to help you with your search for a way to get your friends back?" Lilamon asked. "And that we met you again later on when you ran away."

"Probably not," Impmon shrugged. "After all, I did hop on a Data Stream that took me straight to your glade, Lilamon. I suppose you could say… it was our _fate_, if you get my drift."

There were a couple of laughs at this remark, but the laughter quickly faded away into thoughtfulness. Wherever a Digimon called Fatemon was concerned, just about anything sounded possible if you could pin the word fate on it.

However, the prophecy _had_ spoken about the three of them, so perhaps it _had _been fate that brought them together. But thinking things through too much would only serve to confuse them more, so they decided quickly to put the past behind them and just say that it was damn well lucky that they did find each other eventually.

* * *

Impmon led the group out of the room and into the hallways of Fanglongmon's palace, out towards the chamber where the dragon god was still slumbering, like an immense statue that was slowly rising and falling with each deep breath that he took. He seemed to dwarf even the Sovereign Digimon, and that was easy to tell, because the Sovereign Digimon themselves were all just outside the open main doors.

As the group entered the giant room, they were greeted by cheers from the local Digimon that appeared to be clustered around the entrance. Impmon spotted the rest of the Tamers all standing close to the head of the giant Fanglongmon, with the three great angels hovering around them and radiating out their purifying aura, perhaps to eliminate any potential traces of darkness left over from their trip into the Dark Ocean.

"Hey guys!" Impmon called as he strolled over. "How you holding up?"

"We're the ones who should be asking you that, Impmon," Jeri turned to smile at him. "Are you feeling okay? You must have gone through some terrible things in that horrible place."

"Under the thumb of that evil tyrant," Elecmon agreed.

"Well, it definitely wasn't pleasant," Impmon shuddered at the memory of his slow disintegration, but firmly squashed it to the back of his mind and added, "But everything that went wrong has been fixed now. I've got my Mega Form back, I've got another one thrown into the bargain, and I've been brought closer to my Tamers, so all in all, I'd say I've come out of all this a better mon."

"That's the spirit," Ryo smiled.

"Indeed," Seraphimon announced as he lowered himself to the ground along with the other two angel Digimon. "And while we did so yesterday, may we once again congratulate you all on your defeat on what could possibly be the greatest evil that this Digital World has ever seen. Because of you, the Digimon can sleep in peace once more, without having to fear an attack by the soldiers of the Demon Lords of old or their nefarious masters."

"It was quite a feat, what you did," Ophanimon agreed. "I must admit, I had no idea how the prophecy was going to play out, but I did not expect you to do it by somehow bypassing our barrier and bringing GranDracmon straight here. Most impressive."

"I'm still wondering whether you only brought him here so you could finish him off in front of an audience," Magnadramon chuckled.

"Nah. That was just a perk," Impmon smirked. He frowned and added, "But, now that it's all over, what are we supposed to do? I mean, we might have defeated GranDracmon and his forces but there is still a huge world of darkness out there waiting to be stumbled upon by somebody. Shouldn't we do something about that?"

"Oh, you won't need to do anything about it," chuckled Ophanimon. "Remember how we said that GranDracmon relied on the Dark Ocean to stay alive because if he's exposed to the purity of the Digital World he begins to lose his strength, which is how you went about defeating him in the first place? Well, something similar can be said in reverse. The Dark Ocean was created by GranDracmon, and its existence was therefore tied to his own."

"What are you saying, exactly?" Takato asked her.

"I'm saying," Ophanimon smiled. "That the Dark Ocean is already gone. We could feel the darkness breaking up from the moment GranDracmon split into data. The moment its creator died it began to crumble and fall apart at the seams, as it were, before collapsing in on itself and imploding. It is indeed fortunate that you managed to get everybody out on the first attempt. Going back for them would have been an impossibility, as the word would be gone and they would be dead."

"Yeesh," Impmon shuddered. "There's a nasty thought."

"Well," Jeri smiled, crouching down beside Impmon. "The important thing is that that didn't happen. We all got out of it alive and well."

"Yeah," Kazu nodded. "Now the only thing we've got to worry about is how to get the others back from their own parallel dimension."

The atmosphere immediately turned sour as the Tamers and the other Digimon sagged a little. "Nice going, Kazu," Kenta murmured. "What did you bring up that moment for?"

"What? What did I say?" Kazu blinked, confused.

"Surely Yamaki and the others are close to finishing the machine off, right?" Impmon asked. "I mean, after all, that's what you used to get into the Dark Ocean to rescue me, isn't it?"

"It is," Ryo nodded bitterly. "But I'm afraid the Monster Makers were only able to get the machine to work once. The sheer amount of power needed to open and sustain the portal overloaded it. They're going to have to rebuild it from scratch."

"Rebuild it!" Impmon gasped in horror and alarm. "But… but… how long will that take?"

"Who knows?" Takato shrugged. "I mean, they've got the calculations done and all, but they might need to get in more parts or reprogram a few things."

Impmon's heart sank and he looked down at the ground. "So…" he murmured. "We're just… back to the beginning then? We might have to wait _another_ half a year to get them back?" His thoughts flashed over the others all stuck in their other dimension and his mind immediately lingered over Lopmon. He had thought that the icing on this proverbial cake would be that he would be able to see them all again soon. But… but now…

"Cheer up, Impmon," Lilamon smiled down at him comfortingly. "The important thing is that when you guys finally _do_ get your friends back, you will all be there to greet them because the situation here has passed. It might take a while but you'll get them back eventually. I'm sure of it."

"Yeah, I know," sighed Impmon, before he took on a more stoic expression and clenched his fists. "We will get them back. No matter how long it takes us. Even if all you humans are old and grey by the time we get them back, that's what we're going to do."

"You got that," Ryo nodded firmly. "Anyway, to bring this conversation to less depressing topic, we were just discussing Fanglongmon here." He looked upwards at the giant Digimon Dragon God, immediately enthralled by the sheer power that Fanglongmon seemed to radiate. "According to what we know, Fanglongmon wakes up at the end of each Great Prophecy to help restore balance to the Digital World before going back to sleep again, right?"

"Yeah, that about sums it up," Diatrymon nodded.

"So, why isn't Fanglongmon awake yet?" Ryo asked. "That's what we were wondering."

"Oh, there's quite a simple explanation to that really, Tamers," Magnadramon responded. "The Prophecy still hasn't finished yet."

"It hasn't?" Takato frowned. "But… doesn't it end with the destruction of GranDracmon, which we all just did yesterday?"

"No, it doesn't," Wingdramon shook his head. "If we remember rightly, after the Prophecy speaks of only three being able to end the evil, and the biomerging of Impmon into two different Mega forms, there are still a couple of lines left over."

"Yeah," Lilamon nodded. "I remember them. _Struck a deal is with the jackal, once abolished is the hate._ That's the bit that still needs to come about."

"But I thought that that bit _did_ happen?" Guilmon blinked in confusion. "After GranDracmon and Belphemon got killed, we saw the hole opening up that sucked their data through, and we saw Anubimon on the other side, taking them away. That was the deal, wasn't it?"

"Not quite, Pineapple-head," Impmon shook his head.

"He's right," Jeri agreed. "A deal implies that we have to give somebody something and they will give us something in return. But we didn't actually do that."

"But we gave him the data of GranDracmon and Belphemon and he took it away," Guilmon pointed out.

"Yeah, boy," Takato nodded. "But a deal kinda implies that both sides give different thing to each other. It's like a trade – like if I gave you a piece of bread in exchange for… I don't know… a cream-puff or something."

"So, we have to give him presents or something?" Guilmon frowned in confusion.

"Well, in a way," Takato shrugged. "We have to give him something, and it could be something… physical… like food or presents, or it could be something else like… I dunno… a deed or something."

"Oh, okay," Guilmon nodded. "So the bit we saw of him before doesn't count as the prophecy thingie, does it?"

"No, it doesn't," Elecmon replied. "Otherwise, Fanglongmon here would probably be stirring."

Impmon stared up at the giant dragon Digimon and murmured, "Do you think he actually _knows_ that we're standing in front of his face and talking about him, or is he dead to the world?"

"He's a God, Impmon," Jeri replied. "He probably has some semblance of knowledge as to his surroundings."

"Even we don't try to fathom Fanglongmon's mind," Ophanimon added. "It's majesty and complexity is practically bottomless as far as we are aware. It's best to just be respectful around him at all times even though he may or may not hear you."

They all stared at him for several moments before Jeri turned back and said, "By the way, are we sure that the prophecy was talking about Anubimon? All it really says is – the jackal. Are there any other jackal Digimon that it may be referring to?"

"Can't think of any off the top of my head," Ryo replied.

"What about Isis?" Guardromon reminded them.

"Oh yeah, we're going to make a deal with her," Impmon chuckled sarcastically. "Here you are, Isis. Here's a piece of bacon, now could you please promise not to poop indoors anymore."

There was a peel of laughter at this comment.

"Well, it's good to see you're sounding like your normal self, Impmon," Takato observed.

"I think you mean _hear_ me sounding like my old self, Goggle-brains," Impmon smirked. "But thanks for noticing. Anyway, to get back of topic, how the heck are we supposed to speak with Anubimon if it _is_ him that we're talking about. He lives in a completely different dimension, and we've already discussed the problems we have with dimension travel many times over."

"Beats me," Kazu shrugged. "Maybe we'll just have to wait until the portal machine's fixed before we can end this prophecy."

"Excuse me, but I believe that the first thing we'll do with the portal machine is to find and get back our friends," Impmon reminded him. "Some deal with Anubimon can wait if that's the only way we're going to be able to make it to his universe."

"We could always kill one of us," Guilmon shrugged. "Then we'd go straight to his realm and maybe we could talk to him there."

There was silence at that morbid thought, and Takato gently laid a hand on his partner's scaly shoulder and said, "Guilmon, I really don't think committing murder or suicide is going to solve anything, do you? Besides, what if we went ahead with it and whoever got sent there was sent back with no memories again. It's not a risk that I'm willing to take."

"Me neither," the rest of the Tamers all shook their heads at the same time.

"Look guys," Ryo spoke up again. "I think we'll have time to figure out the rest of this prophecy later. For now, let's just on something just as important, and that's getting back to the Human World. We don't have any way to communicate with our families here, and the last thing they know about us was that we went into the world of Darkness to confront an unimaginable evil, and that was yesterday. I cannot imagine how worried they must be right now."

"Good point," Kenta murmured. "If we don't get back soon, my mother's very likely to hug me to death." He smirked and added, "Of course, Kazu's mother will probably tan his hide."

"Watch it, Kenta," Kazu growled at his snickering friend

"Hold on," Guardromon raised a hand. "Would that be such a bad thing? Then his skin would be the same colour as mine."

Kazu slapped his forehead with one palm in exasperation, as everybody laughed at the robot Champion's genuine misunderstanding.

"There should not be a problem with that," smiled Seraphimon. "If you want to leave quickly then by all means do so. Head over to the other side of the city and speak to our gatekeeper, Angewomon. She should be able to send you back down to the Digital World right on the Desert Level, and from there, you'll be able to catch a data stream that takes you back up to the Human World straight away."

"Really?" Jeri clapped her hands together. "Oh, that's great. Thank you so much for everything, great angels, both for the help and the place to rest."

"It was our pleasure," Ophanimon smiled. "We cannot interfere with events down in the Digital World, but if you come to the Heavens, we will do everything we can to provide you with what you need."

"Now go," Magnadramon nodded. "And may good fortune always be with you."

"Well, if we've been blessed by an angel like that then nothing can stop us surely," Kazu grinned broadly.

"Care to test that?" Ryo raised an eyebrow, and Cyberdramon growled – the first noise he had made throughout the entire conversation.

"No thanks," Kazu said quickly and Ryo chuckled.

* * *

From there, they bid their farewells to both the angels and the other residents of the heavens. Valkyrimon waved to them as they went past, and Impmon called out, "See ya, Master Prophet. I hope your next prophecy is just as vague as your last one." Valkyrimon rolled his eyes.

When they passed Deckerdramon, the huge alligator Digimon seemed to wink broadly and Impmon and his companions, who all waved to the best of their ability. Impmon wouldn't soon forget Deckerdramon and his wise words. They had been of paramount help in finding his niche in the group once more, and this time fitting into it fully.

The group then made their way over to the gateway, where Angewomon appeared and promptly scooped the surprised Impmon into a hug that left him a little flustered. But she merely smiled at them and said, "I knew you could do it. All of you. You see, Impmon. I was right, wasn't I? As long as the angels reside in the heavens, every Digimon has the chance to purify themselves of all darkness as long as they want it. Even a former Demon Lord."

"Yeah," nodded Impmon. "It's a shame the rest of them didn't choose light as well. They could have made some powerful helpers."

Angewomon chuckled. "Well, regardless, we are all very proud of you, our little warrior of Heaven and Fate. Make sure that you go back out there and continue to do your great work defending the weak in our name."

"You can count on m…" Impmon stopped and then, as an afterthought, wrapped his arms around the shoulders of his Tamers and said, "You can count on _us._"

Angewomon nodded and looked up. "And all the rest of you Tamers too. Warriors of heaven, you may not be, but each oh you has your own individual destiny too. I just know it. I'm sure that in the future, you will all get your chance to truly shine."

She then looked up further to see that all the Digimon who had congregated for the attack on the Dark Ocean, including the Sovereigns, Devas and their allies, were all bunching behind the Tamers. She smiled and added, "Going down. And goodbye. I hope that we meet again."

Then she raised her hands above her head and fanned them outwards, light radiating off her body and expanding outwards to engulf the entire group. In practically no time flat, she vanished from sight, and they could all feel the strange motion-like sense of descent, even though there was no other indication that they were actually moving at all.

"I cannot believe it," Kenta gushed. "A real life Angewomon, just like the one from the show! That was so epic! If only there had been an Angemon or a MagnaAngemon there too."

MarineAngemon pouted and humphed, turning his head away. "Not good enough?" he asked as he attempted to fold his flipper-like arms.

Kenta balked and went, "No, no, MarineAngemon. I mean… er… of course you're good enough for me. It's just that… just that… well, Angemon from the show was pretty cool and…"

"Hmmph!" MarineAngemon said again, this time louder.

"And he told me off earlier for not thinking before I said something," Kazu murmured to his partner.

* * *

After less than a minute of being surrounded by light, it began to dissipate again. As it vanished away completely, they all discovered that Angewomon's aim had been completely accurate – she had managed to land them right in the middle of the Desert Level. There was no sign of the Temple that made the usual gateway to the Heavens, and once again they were surrounded by nothing but trails and trails of sand of miles on end.

Except for one little detail. "Hey look," Takato pointed, drawing the attention of the group to the Data Stream that was on the horizon, slowly shifting across the sand and towards them in the random zig-zag pattern of all Data Stream, but still heading mostly in their general direction.

"Wow," said Kazu. "That was quick."

"Assuming that that is one of the Data Streams that we need to get back into the Human World again," Ryo nodded.

"It is," Azulongmon announced as he towered over the heads of the humans. "Take that Data Stream and you'll end up slap-bang in the middle of that expanse of trees that you have in the middle of your city. A part, I believe you call it."

"Really?" Impmon blinked. "Whoa. Angewomon's obviously been doing this a while. She knew exactly where to send us."

"Yeah, she even put us in the path of the stream," Elecmon nodded.

"Well, we can't hang around for very long," Ryo observed. "It's heading this way and its coming fast, so we might as well say our goodbyes and make it quick." He turned around and nodded to the assembled powerful Digimon around them. "On behalf of all us, I'd like to officially say thank you to all of your guys for your help. Especially the Digimon who didn't even know us beforehand," he nodded to UlforceVeedramon, MirageGaogamon and Dinorexmon. "I'd say we would be in a pretty tight spot without some of your actions."

"Think nothing of it," MirageGaogamon waved a set of claws.

"It was the honourable thing to do," UlforceVeedramon nodded.

"And it was a hell of a lot of fun," Dinorexmon chuckled, with a rather disturbing leer. "It's a shame that we won't be able to do it again sometime in the future now that the Dark Ocean is gone."

"Oookay," Impmon murmured quietly. "Would not like to meet him in a dark alley."

Ai and Mako shuddered.

"I still say that we killed more Nightmare Soldiers than he did," Cyberdramon growled under his breath. Ryo blanched and motioned for his partner to be quiet less Dinorexmon hear and take offence to it.

"Tamers," Azulongmon replied. "Partner Digimon. You have all, once again, shown phenomenal courage and skill in the face of overwhelming odds, despite your small size and young age. Each one of you is to be personally commended for your valiant efforts out there on the battlefield yesterday."

"Aye. It were quoite a soight to see, Oi can tell ye," Ebonwumon chuckled.

"Too bad we missed most of it during out battle against GranDracmon," snarled Baihumon.

Zhuqiaomon paused for a moment and then moved over so that he was hovering practically above the Tamers and said, "You humans don't seem to know when to stop proving me wrong, do you? Every single time disaster strikes, you are not only at the forefront of the counter-attack, but your strength practically seems to know no bounds. And each time you seem to gain a new ability or power."

"Thank you, Zhuqiaomon," Takato grinned. "We aim to please."

"I have not finished yet, human!" Zhuqiaomon glared at him, causing the Googleheaded boy to practically wilt under his fiery star, before Zhuqiaomon continued with. "I would still prefer it if we Digimon alone could handle the problems that our Digital World faces. But over the last three invasion attempts, from the True Enemy, Ogudomon and GranDracmon, we were unable to do it without your assistance. So, I am hereby withdrawing my objections to the union between Digimon and human partners."

"That's great," Jeri beamed. "Thank you so much."

"I believe it is possible that the Human and Digital Worlds might one day be able to live in perfect peace," Zhuqiaomon finished with a rumble.

"As do I," Azulongmon nodded. "It is what I have long been hoping for. Tamers… the battle might be over, but I fear that it will not be your last. As we Sovereigns have come to understand it, evil always seems to spring up to replace an evil that has been destroyed. I cannot say for certain that that will happen, but it would be best to remember that the darkness usually does creep back in the end."

"What a lovely thought," murmured Impmon.

"And to you unpartnered Digimon, we all give our heartfelt thanks," Azulongmon now turned to look at Lilamon, Wingdramon and Diatrymon. "Without your timely intervention, I fear that we Sovereigns might not have survived much longer."

"Aw, shucks," Lilamon flushed, while the other two just smiled.

"Now go," Azulongmon nodded. "The Data Stream approaches."

The Tamers nodded as they and their partners, as well as the new Prophecy Trio, Calumon and Behemoth grouped together. Impmon turned back and called, "Hoi, GranKuwagamon! You coming with us?"

The big, black bug shook his head, his huge pincers waving from side to side. "I have done everything I need to in your world," he replied. "It is time for me to return to the Forest Level where I belong."

"Fair enough," Impmon grinned. "Nice working with you."

GranKuwagamon nodded to show his acknowledgement.

"We'll be in stand by just in case you need anything," MetalSeadramon chuckled.

"Make sure you find a way of bringing the guys you lost back to where they belong as well," Gryphonmon added.

"Farewell, Tamers," Plesiomon threw in at the last as the assembled Digimon moved backwards and out of the way, so that they would be clear of the oncoming Data Stream, which now seemed to be moving in a straight line towards the Tamers as if it had a purpose now.

Just before it reached them, one of the Digimon in the crowd stepped forwards and went, "You! Girl with the Elecmon!"

Jeri blinked and turned around to see that she was being addressed by none other than the Horse Deva Indramon. Though it was difficult to tell expression from the purple equine thanks to the white mane that covered his eyes, the tall Deva looked like he was attempting to get something out, but was finding it as difficult as, say, swallowing the giant horn on his back.

"I… ahem… just wanted to say… ahem… thank you for… for saving my life in there," he then immediately stepped backwards and snorted, as if he now had a bad taste in his mouth.

Jeri smiled and said, "Your welcome, Indramon. Nice to know you care."

"Aww, isn't that nice?" Pajiramon snickered. "Our old buddy Indramon is finally coming around to the humans."

"Shut up!" coughed the horse.

The Tamers laughed, but before they could do anything else, the Data Stream ran over them and sucked them away, leaving the assorted Digimon army far behind once more.

* * *

One wild, helter-skelter-like ride later, and the group was practically dumped in the middle of the familiar fog of a Digital Field. Most of them managed to land on their feet, Diatrymon and Cyberdramon sinking their claws into the grass, while Lilamon and Wingdramon remained hovering in the air, but a couple of them, most noticeably Kazu and Kenta, fell right onto their backsides in an incredibly undignified manner.

Ai and Mako looked all set to fall over as well, before Impmon grabbed them both by the shoulders and chuckled, "Whoopsedaisy. Mind your step, Teradalets."

"Ugh, I hate that ride," shuddered Mako. "Makes me feel ill every time."

"Hey, don't you dare throw up on me," Impmon stepped away from him. "Hurl on Ai if you have to throw on somebody."

"Y-hey!" Ai scowled.

Impmon chuckled and said, "Alright, alright, don't throw up on anybody, if you can help it, Mako." He laughed and then turned around, watching as the Digital Field began to dissipate again. Azulongmon had been right. Not only were they right in the middle of Shinjuku Park, but they were also, rather astoundingly, right outside Guilmon's old hideout.

Impmon smiled lightly to himself. "Boy, I have to admit that it feels good to be back here in the Human World. I didn't exactly feel great the last time that I was here when I was about to leave, but I did miss hanging around by that old hut."

"Watch out, Planet Earth," Jeri snickered. "Impmon's back, and he's back with a vengeance."

"You know it," Impmon nodded.

Ryo had already pulled out his mobile phone and was sifting through his phonebook.

"I'll just alert Yamaki that we're back. They might have detected that Digital Field and assume it's an evil Digimon if we don't." He looked up and grinned as he pressed the phone to his ear. "And I say the rest of you just go home. Give your families a surprise, eh?"

"Ryo, that's mean," Jeri smirked, but she and Elecmon quickly ran off to do it anyway, waving goodbye as she did so. The other Tamers turned to one another and shared a nod, designed to indicate comradeship and congratulations for having got out of that situation alive, before they went their separate ways and hurried in the direction of their own houses. Calumon quickly dashed after Jeri, and that left Ai, Mako, Impmon and the rest of their little motley crew together in the same place.

"So, do we finally get to see where _you_ live, Impmon?" Lilamon asked. "We got to stay in the Nonaka's garden last time but we never actually did see where you live."

"Sure," Impmon grinned. "It's not much, I can tell you that. But I sure as heck will be glad to be back in that little place. It's garden's quite small though, so I'm not sure how all you guys would fit in it if you're planning on sticking around." He glanced up and them and said, "What _are_ your immediate plans for the future anyway?"

"Why?" Diatrymon chuckled. "You want to get rid of us now that you don't need us?"

Impmon scowled. "You know full well that that's not it, Ironbeak."

"And the nicknames return," Diatrymon snorted.

"We'll decide what we do with ourselves in the long run at a later date, Impmon," Wingdramon replied. "For the immediate moment, we've all decided to keep watch over you for a while. Until you at least get back on your feet completely. After that… well, who knows?"

"So come on then," Lilamon ushered them on. "Let's go already. Your parents will be waiting for you two."

"Shall we biomerge to Mega and surprise them when we land?" Ai suggested.

"Yeah, that would be cool," Mako grinned. "Imagine the look on Mum's face."

"I gotta admit, that would be an epically cool entrance," Impmon replied. "But, I have another idea." He patted the motorcycle that was still standing loyally next to him. "Behemoth here hasn't had the chance to carry me for a while, not since we accidentally left him in the Desert Level, in fact. But he was there for us when we needed him, so I say we let him be our taxi."

Behemoth rumbled in anticipation.

And with good reason…

* * *

…Because a few minutes later and he was haring down the road at close to eighty miles-an-hour and gaining speed the whole time. Impmon was standing just in front of his main seat with his hands on the handlebars and whooping to the air as he did so. Ai and Mako were currently sitting directly behind him, fenced in by the arms of Lilamon, who was sitting in the seat itself and gripping Behemoth's front with her Lila Shower tendrils, and all four of them seemed to be having the time of their life as Behemoth wove in and out of vehicles as if he were in slow-motion and they weren't moving at all.

At one point, a passing policeman spotted them and immediately lifted his radio to call for back-up at the bike that was obviously speeding, but when he noticed its riders, he froze and stared in bewilderment for a moment. Was it technically legal for Digimon to be arrested for speeding. And he recognised that bike anyway and knew that it had a mind of its own, so should they be arresting the bike?

And that was when Diatrymon and Wingdramon hurtled down the street in their wake, the former bounding over cars like giant hurdles and skidding around them so fast he left grooves in the road, while the other was generating such a powerful wind current that several people on the side of the road were bowled over, including the policeman.

The policeman in question sighed and hung up his radio. Where Digimon were concerned, it was best to just leave things alone.

* * *

Haruhi Terada was sitting in the front room of her house, next to the window that looked out on the street beyond, a steaming hot drink in one hand. She was staring through the glass and out onto the street, waiting and watching. She had been doing it for the past day, with her mobile phone clutched tightly in one hand, waiting for a call that was not forthcoming.

She had been hoping for news hours and hours ago, but so far she had heard nothing from anyone, not even the other parents. Quite frankly, she had no idea what was going on? Were her children dead? Were they stuck in an alternate universe? Were they somehow in the middle of a titanic battle right now?

It didn't bear thinking about. And yet it was all she _could_ think about.

Mr. Terada walked in a moment later and smiled sadly, "You know, dear," he said. "Sitting around like that is not going to help anybody. I'm sure that we'll be informed the moment that Yamaki and the others know something, but sitting still and worrying is not going to make them come back any quicker."

Haruhi turned to reply that she knew this but couldn't seem to be able to motivate herself to do anything other than that, but before she could, the sound of a motorbike coming from the street beyond made her snap her head back almost automatically, as she stared out of the window with bated breath. Mr. Terada frowned and then moved over to join her as the motorbike's engines grew louder and louder.

Both of them balked when they saw Behemoth streak into view and skid sharply, turning at a ridiculous speed before coming to a stop in their driveway, despite the fact he must have been going over a hundred a few moments before. They saw Impmon go swinging into the air and off the handlebars, rolling to land smoothly on his feet a few feet away while Lilamon was simultaneously thrown off, wrapping her arms around Ai and Mako before spinning to a slow halt in the air, before lowering herself and her two passengers to the ground.

"They're back!" screamed Haruhi, leaping up so fast that her drink went sloshing over the floor and she barged past Mr. Terada almost before he had processed what had just happened outside. He quickly regained his footing and ran after her, while she wrenched open the front door and charged outside just as Wingdramon and Diatrymon slow to standstills nearby.

"Oh thank God!" she cried immediately grabbing the children almost before Lilamon had put them down and causing the fairy to leap backwards to get out of the way. "Oh thank God the two of you are okay? Oh, I don't think I can ever let you go again, I was so worried. But… you're okay? Are you hurt in any way, are you?"

"Mum, we're fine," Ai smiled.

"We didn't even get a scratch," Mako agreed with a grin. "It was so cool in there though. There was lots of fighting and mayhem and destruction, but these guys all protected us really well."

Haruhi looked up with eyes shining as Mr. Terada joined them and bent down to give the kids a hug himself. The mother of the twins regarded Lilamon as if in a new light, and Lilamon could clearly see the deep pools of gratitude that her eyes seemed to have become – almost literally too, they were so wet. Her gaze then went over the other two unTamed Digimon and gave them similar looks.

"Thank you…" she murmured. "Thank you so much for making sure they were kept safe."

"Hey, we made a promise," Lilamon smiled. "And we sure as heck weren't planning on breaking it for anyone or anything."

"They did make it quite easy for us," Diatrymon chuckled. "Never stupidly put themselves in a dangerous situation even once while we were guarding them."

"And you are most welcome," Wingdramon finished up with a courteous nod.

Haruhi went back to hugging the two children again and she said, "Well, I don't want you two to ever do that again, okay? Not unless you absolutely have to. I just… the thought of losing you… I… I couldn't…"

"Hey, sweetie," smiled Mr. Terada, laying a hand on his wife's shoulder. "It's alright now. Our children are home and safe. You don't have to think about that kind of thing anymore. It's over."

"Yes," Haruhi nodded with a sniff, coming back up to her knees and trying to wipe the virtual torrents that seemed to be pouring from her eyes. "Yes, it is over. And thank heaven for it."

"You can thank the Celestial Heavens for it," Lilamon chuckled. "Without the help of the Digimon angels, we wouldn't have been able to get back as quickly as we did."

"Then thank them I do," Haruhi nodded. "And I also see that your mission ended with success," she added, as she clambered back up to her feet and turned towards Impmon, who was standing next to Behemoth and waiting patiently to be addressed.

"Yeah," nodded Impmon, with a smirk. "I'm back. Miss me much?"

"Impmon," Haruhi growled as she took several steps towards him. "I have believed for a very long time that you were a bad influence on my children and now look what they've been doing. Gallivanting off to a world filled with nothing but darkness and evil in order to get you back and leaving me behind, worried out of my mind? You've been nothing but a danger to them ever since you arrived at this household, Digimon!"

"Yeah, I hear what you're saying," Impmon nodded, looking away slightly. "Believe me, I was thinking the same thing when I was on the run, but now I…"

"Quiet!" Haruhi barked. "I'm not finished yet."

Impmon lapsed into silence and closed his eyes in resignation, expecting the protective mother to go off on another rant of hers about how Impmon brought nothing but trouble upon them and how her children would have been much better off if he had never walked into their lives at all and the rest of her usual tirade.

He was therefore very surprised when she merely said:-

"Welcome to the family."

His eyes snapped open and he stared at Haruhi in absolute horror, which further increased when he saw the smile of her face.

"Get back, kids," Impmon pushed out a hand towards them. "Somebody's replaced your mother with an imposter. Your mother would never smile at me."

Haruhi sighed and said, "Impmon, I'm not an imposter. And I have to tell you that… I am extremely sorry for everything I put you through. I… I guess I was just one of those people who… who thought of you as nothing but clumps of data that could move about. I never really took your own feelings into account. And also, my own stubbornness and belief that I was right blinded me to what was right in front of me."

"Er…" Impmon blinked. "And… that was…?"

Haruhi smiled again and supplied, "While it is true that your presence here is going to drag my children into dangerous situations now and again, other than that your presence here is a blessing. Thanks to you, my children have not only matured faster than any other children that I know of, they had also learned of responsibility and achieved far more than most adults do in their lifetimes. Plus, I now see just how much they really do care for you. I believe I thought their devotion to you was only something akin to a child and its favourite toy, but when I saw their heartbreak when you were taken… it almost broke my heart as well."

Impmon was staring at Haruhi in absolute disbelief. It was a wonder that his bottom jaw was not touching the floor.

"I don't think I will ever by truly comfortable with my children going up against dangerous monsters, but neither are the other parents, and yet I now understand exactly why they continue to let their children do it regardless. And I saw how much _you_ truly cared for them when you left so… I suppose I might as well welcome you in," she chuckled. "It doesn't look like I'll be getting rid of you anytime soon anyway. Not after this."

"You mean it?" Impmon grin reappeared with a vengeance. "You really mean it?"

"Of course," nodded Haruhi. And then she knelt in front of him and, though it only looked difficult and hesitant, she hugged him slightly. Impmon's face went bright red, as did hers. Both of them could feel the awkwardness of the situation, but they still managed to make it look meaningful before they stepped back and looked away from each other.

"Yay!" the twins cheered at the same time. "Mum and Impmon are friends now! YAHAY!"

"That means there won't be any more fighting in the house," Ai cheered as they ran over to Impmon with beams on their faces. "Isn't that great Impmon?"

Impmon coughed, but nodded. "Yeah… great. Er… yep."

Mr. Terada stepped up beside his wife and murmured, "I'm proud of you, dear," into her ear. She smiled and some of the awkward redness vanished from her face.

Impmon quickly tried to break the ice again and said, "By the way, you won't have to worry so much about your kids being in harm's way anymore. During our little… excursion to the Dark Ocean… we were finally able to biomerge into a single Mega form."

"Really?" Mr. Terada's eyes widened. "Why… that's… that's phenomenal."

Haruhi stared at them for a moment, before she shook her head and said, "Er… forgive me if I'm wrong, but won't that put them _more_ in harm's way, as they'll be directly fighting the enemy?"

"Well, yeah," nodded Impmon. "But they'll also be within body of a powerful Mega Digimon and therefore a lot more durable, and there won't be the chance of somebody slipping past my guard to stab them behind by back because we're all in the same body, so all in all it's a good thing. We were totally in sync in the Dark Ocean, and we managed to completely own GranDracmon, Belphemon and all the other powerful Digimon that they had there, with the help of all our friends."

"So the evil has been eliminated then?" Mr. Terada pressed.

"You bet it has," Lilamon nodded. "And, I should mention that every single human and Digimon who went on the rescue mission made it out alive thanks to their plan."

With that statement the two parents practically radiated pride at the accomplishments of their children. They beamed and Haruhi said, "Well, why don't you come in. Er… you two bigger Digimon will have to make do with the back garden, I think, but we'll all move onto the patio. I think this situation calls for something special."

"So do I," Mr. Terada nodded. "I'll fire up the barbecue."

"YAY!" the twins cheered, as they hurried into the house, dragging Impmon behind them, as Mr. Terada moved to open the side-gate for Diatrymon.

"What's a barbecue?" asked Lilamon.

Haruhi stared at her for a moment, looking at her fairy physique and plant-like features. She decided to prepare a fruit salad as well, just in case Lilamon didn't take to the idea of eating meat.

* * *

From that moment on, everything seemed to settle back into just about how things had been before all this started, with a few notable exceptions. Each of the Tamers received similar mushy and often tear-stained welcomes home once they arrive back at their own houses, and Yamaki and the others were relieved to hear how successful both the portal and the mission itself had been.

Impmon immediately started to enjoy his life at the Terada household much better right off the bat. Without Haruhi breathing down his neck every single time he entered her line of sight, the room she was in, or anywhere within a mile of Ai and Mako for that matter, he could just sit back and relax now. After they had filled in the Terada parents in on exactly what had happened in the Dark Ocean, they simply enjoyed the rest of their day.

Just as Haruhi had predicted, Lilamon found the idea of eating meat repulsive, but she thoroughly enjoyed the fruit salad that had been prepared for her and even grew some of her own fruit on the small trees out in the Terada's garden in the space of about five seconds, experimenting with different kinds that she hadn't even known existed until today.

Diatrymon and Wingdramon, on the other hand, had dived straight into the barbecue, and Mr. Terada seemed to be kept busy over the next three hours or so try to sate the enormous appetites of the dragon and the Ancient Bird until he finally ran out of things to cook for them. Both of them had loved everything that he had prepared for them, especially the sausages.

Impmon had laughed at their almost child-like enthusiasm when it came to Earth-food and he added, "Just wait until you try pizza. And chocolate."

"Ooh, chocolate," Lilamon suddenly grinned. "Actually, we've already tried that one. Can we have some?"

From that moment on, the Terada parents both insisted on doing something normal, in an attempt to get back to everyday life and normalise things once again. The method of doing this turned out to be watching television. Rather appropriately, Digimon Adventure was on, and the three extra Digimon watched the exploits of a kid named Izzy who had his curiosity stolen by some random Digimon called Vademon, only to get it back and somehow digivolve his partner from a small blobby Pabumon into a huge and epically cool MegaKabuterimon.

Of course, due to size restrictions, Diatrymon was forced to watch from the doorway leading to the back garden, while Wingdramon could only poke his head in through the same gap above, but still it was an interesting experience for all of them.

That night, when everybody finally went to sleep, all three of the others slept outside in the back garden once again, but when Impmon tried to reclaim his old spot on the windowsill of the twin's room, he was dragged away from it by both the young children, who both wanted him to sleep in their bed with them for a change. Impmon still found this to be a bit odd, even at this stage, but he shrugged when he remembered all the other Digimon did it and so he stopped objecting.

Over the next week, things started to settle back into their regular routine. Yamaki provided the press with a good bit of the information they wanted to hear (with the information tweaked to make it sound much less drastic than it had been) in an attempt to stop the reporters from hassling the kids, which many of them still did anyway, prompting Ryo and Cyberdramon to start doing circuits around the city to drive them away from the houses of the other Tamers.

Oddly enough, none of the reporters seemed to be too anxious to get close to the Terada household. A giant blue dragon lying on the roof could prove to be a major deterrent.

As for Impmon himself, he spent the majority of his time sleeping. He had had things extremely rough over the last few months, and this was the first time he had been able to sleep peacefully in Fanglongmon knew how long, and he seemed to be revelling in it somehow, as the majority of the time he was completely dead to the world.

Ai and Mako (and Calumon) when he came over, seemed to want to wake him up so he could play with them, but their parents told them to let him be, and they were backed out by Lilamon, who agreed. Between being haunted by MetalPhantomon practically every night, worrying about why he was being haunted and then having to stay alert since they were on the run, Impmon had not had a true good night's sleep in weeks. Not even when they had gone to the Heavens had he been able to sleep properly, as he had had too much on his mind regarding the Prophecy and he had ended up running away.

And then not to mention the strain that the events of the Dark ocean had put him under had taken their toll on him as well. Thanks to the biomerging, he had recovered a good deal of his energy, but even now, he still needed to recharge his figurative batteries with long periods of rest.

During the time where he was awake, they would generally stay at home and just try to enjoy their lives. The same could be said for the majority of the Tamers, whose parents wanted them to stay close for a while, except of course for when they had school. They were all graciously allowed a couple of extra days off by Ms. Asaji, who seemed to be getting used to the students going missing from her lessons, and she was even lenient on the homework she set later, providing the students all did their best to catch up on the stuff they had missed.

One whole week passed this way as everyone just took the time to unwind and try not to worry about anything, which was something that none of them needed to be doing right now.

On the night of the third day, it rained. This caused mixed reactions of hilarity from Impmon and the twins, to total horror and irritation from the three Digimon sleeping outside. It had never rained in the Digital World, and all three of them were finding the natural phenomenon extremely unpleasant. Lilamon claimed that her petals were getting soggy and her head flower seemed to be determined to press against her face with its clammy, wet grip. Diatrymon was convinced that his metal armour was going to start rusting, and Wingdramon kept shaking his huge wings to try and get the water off them and liberally spraying everyone in sight.

In the end, it got so bad that the Teradas took pity on the three of them and allowed Lilamon and Diatrymon inside, the latter squeezing through the patio door with difficulty as they dripped on the newspaper laid out on the living room floor. Wingdramon, on the other hand, was still far too large, so the dragon quickly shot off in the direction of the HYPNOS towers to try and take shelter in the giant room at the top again.

Throughout the week though, there was still one looming and inescapable fact that preyed on the minds of each and every Tamer and their partnered Digimon. With the destruction of GranDracmon and his world and forces, all their problems were solved. Except for one. And as normal as they strove to make things, it just could not be normal without Henry, Terriermon, Rika, Renamon, Suzie and Lopmon around.

Six long months since they had looked on the faces of their friends. Six long months since they had heard their voices.

And it seemed that it might be _another_ six months before they heard them again.

Jeri and several of the others, including Impmon and the twins, all went together to pay a call on the Nonakas and the Wongs to once again express their heartfelt apologies at being forced to destroy the portal machine in order to bring Impmon back. Impmon in particular was very apologetic, but was still mildly surprised when the families still didn't blame him for their own loss. Both of them even said that they were glad to see he was alright.

Oddly enough though, that just made him feel more guilty.

* * *

At the end of the week though, something else happened that ended up lifting Impmon's spirits phenomenally. He was sleeping peacefully with the twins on either side of him (they were under the quilt and he was on top – he disliked going underneath), having one of the most random dreams in the history of the world. In it, he appeared to be riding a giant set of false teeth while playing a set of bagpipes with one hand, somehow, and whacking passing Demon Digimon over the head with a large mallet.

That is, until the dream suddenly changed and the false teeth were no longer under him. The bagpipes and mallet vanished, and Impmon dropped to the ground, landing smoothly on his feet. The area around him seemed to go white and get brighter by the second, until it was all that dream-scape Impmon could do to stop himself from shielding his eyes.

And then, three figures materialised out of thin air in front of him. Seraphimon, Ophanimon and Magnadramon.

"Er… hey guys," Impmon waved to them uncertainly. "Um… is this part of the dream, or is this another one of those dreams that Ophanimon gave me before where she wanted to show me something about my friends?"

"Well, of course it's part of the dream," Magnadramon responded. "You _are_ still asleep after all. But yes, this is another dream intended to show you something."

"Or rather, to tell you something," Seraphimon added. "Something which we feel you ought to know and soon."

"So, you're not going to show me more of what my friends are doing?" he asked, with a slight slump. The last he had heard about his friends was two weeks ago now, when he had seen them in the mirror discussing the fate of their friend… Aayla, if his memory served.

"No," Ophanimon smiled. "Even better, actually. We're going to tell you something about _yourself_ which you probably don't even remember. We'll keep it brief, as I am sure you will want be eager to get out there and try this out when we're done."

"Er…" Impmon blinked in confusion. "Oookay then. What have you got for me?"

"First of all," Magnadramon grimaced. "We'd like to give you a small apology for not mentioning this to you sooner. We could have told you while you were in the Heavens with us, but we felt that it would be better for you and your friends in their alternate dimension to rest up and replenish your energy first. Because there's a chance that you're going to need it soon."

"That kinda raises more questions than it answers," Impmon said, slightly alarmed. "What do you mean – allow _them_ to rest up? Are they alright? What happened."

"Oh, they're all fine," Ophanimon smiled reassuringly. "They're all perfectly healthy and completely uninjured. But you are not the only one who defeated a great evil last week. Around the time that you were finishing off GranDracmon, they were also finishing off a powerful malignant force known a Sith Lord, as well as his armies and various other powerful minions, freeing the universe that they themselves got trapped in from the clutches of its evil."

"Seriously?" Impmon blinked. "You mean to tell me that they destroyed a powerful force at the same time I did?"

"Yes," Seraphimon nodded. "Is that so surprising really? After all, your fates are linked are they not, thanks to what you did as Fatemon. It is no coincidence that the Digital World and the universe they are in were rid of evil at practically the same time, I assure you. But they also needed some time to rest and recuperate, perhaps more than you did Impmon, because they lost a good many friends and allies in that struggle, though they themselves all made it out alive."

Impmon nodded, but he still had a frown on his face. He was grateful to the angels for telling him this stuff, but he could tell that they had yet to get to the point, and he couldn't work out what they were going to say next.

"Well, that's good news at least," he replied. "I'll be sure to pass the message onto the others when I wake up."

"Oh, you'll do more that, I predict," Seraphimon chuckled. "For you see, there is another ability that you possess which you are unaware of at the present time, but which you also unlocked when you finally managed to biomerge with your Tamers. You _are_ aware, that one of your two alternate Mega forms – Fatemon – has the ability to slightly manipulate the fates of others to tie the destinies of several people together. Not overall control, of course. Nobody can do that. But just enough to provide you with what you needed when you set out into the Digital World on your own."

"Uh-huh," nodded Impmon. "I think I understand that one. But what's the other one?"

"Your _other_ Mega form," Ophanimon smiled, "The heavenly form of Beelzemon – he has a different skill. One which proved to be useful many times throughout your time amongst us in the heavens."

Impmon felt himself going tense as his eyes widened in anticipation. "Well?" he demanded. "Don't keep me in suspense, you guys! Come on! Spill the beans, please!"

Ophanimon snickered slightly for a moment and then said, "As Beelzemon, you have the ability to move across any Digital Barrier at will."

Impmon blinked, staring at the angels in bewilderment as he allowed that piece of information to sink in. When it did, his eyes widened. "What?" he blinked in surprise. "Any Digital Barrier?"

"Yes," nodded Ophanimon. "Any Digital Barrier at will. For instance, if you wanted to move between the Heavens and the Digital World, you could have done it with a mere thought. You could move between the various levels of the Digital World whenever you wanted, you could move between the Digital World and the Human World, or the Human World to the Heavens, or indeed, to the Dark Ocean, as that too was another universe tied to our worlds with only a digital barrier between them."

"I could _still_ move between the Dark Ocean and other worlds?" Impmon gasped. "Does… does that mean… that Lilamon and the others were not really needed after all? That taking over Belphemon was only a waste of time when I could have dragged GranDracmon into the Heavens myself?"

"No," Serpahimon shook his head. "It does not. Your friends, the flower, the scale and the feather, were indeed needed. There is a difference between your abilities now and the abilities of your Demon Lord self. Your Demon Lord self could only move between the Dark Ocean and the Digital World, not to any other plain of existence, and he could transport others with him. Your Celestial form can move freely across any Digital Barrier, but you cannot take others with you. You could have left the Dark Ocean at any time you wanted but you would not have been able to take either your friends _or_ GranDracmon with you."

"O…kay," Impmon murmured, slowly digesting this. He looked up sharply with eyes wider than ever and he cried, "So, does that mean that I can cross over into the world where my friends are?"

"Unfortunately, no," Magnadramon replied. "The world they are in is not directly parallel to ours. It is separated by the space between dimensions, or the Void, if you like, instead of a barrier made of digital energy. You can only travel to universes linked to the Digital World you are from, and even if you could do go to others, remember that you still couldn't bring them back with you."

"Oh yeah," Impmon murmured, deflating slightly as hope left him once again.

"Oh, I wouldn't be so quick to feel down if I were you," Ophanimon added, in a voice that was practically a sing-song tone. "Think a little harder, Impmon. You can travel to any, and I mean _any_ reality that is linked to our Digital World. With a mere thought."

Impmon paused and wracked his brains, trying to figure out what the heck Ophanimon was getting at.

It did not take him long to figure it out, and when it did, it hit him like a Thunder Clap from Justimon. He leapt into the air as if he had been shocked with several thousand volts and yelled, "You mean…!"

"Oh yes," nodded Ophanimon. "That is exactly what I mean."

* * *

And with that, Impmon flew awake. He was in motion almost before he realised what was happening and sprang upwards, seizing Ai and Mako by the arms as he did so and yanking them out of their bed so hard that the twins collided with each other and yelped in shock and surprise.

"WHA-!" Ai yelled as she was practically dragged out of the door.

"IMPMON! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Mako cried as he hurtled along behind the over-excited Digimon.

"There's no time to just lay around!" Impmon shouted. "We've got something we need to do!"

Impmon barged straight into the room of the Terada parents without waiting to knock, startling both of the adult humans into wakefulness as they sat up sharply with eyes wide.

"What's going on?" Haruhi shouted. "Are we under attack?"

"Hell no!" Impmon's face was practically on fire, it was so bright. "Much better than that! Quick, you guys! I know it's the middle of the night, but I just learned something important! You've gotta call Yamaki and get him to call all the other Tamers and parents for an emergency meeting right away. Especially the Nonakas and the Wongs. They have to be there more than any of the others!"

Impmon then bolted out of the door again before any questions could be asked and threw himself into a flying leap down the stairs that carried him just about all the way to the bottom in one bound. Fortunately, he wasn't dragging the twins after him anymore, but they quickly ran down after him, while Mr. Terada dashed out of the bedroom and headed straight for the phone, having sensed the urgency in Impmon's tone.

The little, purple Rookie exploded out of the patio door and out onto the lawn. By this point, the other three Digimon had already heard the commotion and were wide awake and staring at him.

"What's going on, Impmon?" Lilamon asked.

"You guys won't believe this!" Impmon roared as he turned around to address all three of them as well as his Tamers. "But I know how it ends!"

"What?" Diatrymon blinked.

"The prophecy!" Impmon was practically screeching. "The angels came to visit me in my sleep, and they just told me that when we biomerge into Beelzemon in his heavenly form, we have a new power – the power to cross any Digital Barrier into any world linked with the Digital World, whenever we feel like it."

"So…" Wingdramon started, but Impmon cut him off before he could say anything else.

"_Struck a deal is with the jackal!_" he quoted, whirling around to grin at the Tamers almost maniacally. "_Struck a deal is with the jackal!_ Guess what, Teradalets. We're going to visit Anubimon."

* * *

Heh. It might not be an action-type cliffhanger, but it's a cliffhanger nonetheless, and one that I am very pleased with. And so, the story is beginning to come full circle at least, but there are still six chapters to go now that this one has been finished.

This new ability of Beelzemon's is not something that I made up for the hell of the story. It is a reference to the Beelzemon of Xros Wars, which is, after all, the Beelzemon that our Impmon now becomes whenever he biomerges. That Beelzemon possessed the ability to move between different zones of the Digital World at will across the Digital Barrier, unless physically blocked by some dark force. It was as if the writers of Xros Was were deliberately trying to give me something to use.

Hope I've got you excited for the next chapter.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

It's not going to be easy, and they don't know of anything that they can offer Anubimon in return for his assistance, but after letting everyone else know the good news; Ai, Mako and Impmon biomerge and depart. What surprises will be in store for them in the world that just about no Digimon has ever seen? The realm of Anubimon himself.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 215 : The Land of the Dead**


	215. The Land of the Dead

Woohoo, did I enjoy this chapter or what? I really hope that you guys all like this, because it's the longest that one of the most iconic and powerful figures in the story has actually featured throughout my whole saga so far, and it promises quite a few surprises along the way. Please, please, please enjoy it, as I have been building up to this chapter for almost as long as I have the fight scenes from the last two arcs.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 215:- The Land of the Dead**

* * *

Despite the late hour, it was probably a record for the shortest time it took for all of the various Tamers and their families and allies to gather together. It was still pitch-darkness outside when they all finally arrived in the lobby of the HYPNOS towers, making the lights of the building themselves seem all the brighter by comparison.

Impmon and the rest of their group were predictably the first to arrive. Behemoth had gotten them there straight away, while Ai and Mako's parents, who insisted on coming along this time, had the phenomenal and practically life-changing experience of riding on Wingdramon's back, just above his lance. It was something that neither of them were accustomed to, but they could not deny just how epically cool it was.

Yamaki and the rest of the staff were the next to arrive from their own apartment complexes not far away from the main towers, and it didn't take long for the Nonakas and the Wongs to arrive as well. When they had heard that there had been an important new development regarding their children, they had not been about to wait around for anything and made their way there with all speed.

Of course, they were forced to wait a little bit longer for the rest of the Tamers to arrive, because Impmon insisted on revealing the news to everybody at once. Sure enough, the rest of them trickled in quickly over the next few minutes, the last to arrive being Ryo and Cyberdramon. As usual, Ryo's parents were nowhere in sight, but the rest of the children had brought their own families with them anyway.

"There had better be a good reason for this," Mrs. Shioda murmured. "It's getting onto three o'clock in the morning and it's a school day tomorrow for the children."

"When it comes to Tamerly duties, nothings more important than school, Mum," Kazu objected, before he turned back and said, "But I have to say that if this isn't important, someone might have to stop me from wringing your neck for waking me up, Impmon."

"Yeah, like you could wring my neck," Impmon snorted.

"Is this the point where you tell us the incredibly bad news, that we actually didn't kill GranDracmon after all and he's coming to get us all while we sleep?" Kenta asked. "Because I wouldn't be at all surprised, really."

"Just let him speak, please," Rumiko protested, clasping her hands together in front of her. "You said over the phone that this had something to do with Rika and the others. Is it another report on how they're doing?"

"Well, I've been told they're all fine," Impmon replied, "But that's not why I called you guys here. I could have waited until the morning to tell you that. No, it's about something else, but it _does_ have to do with the others."

"Then tell us," Mrs. Wong cried. "Please… any information on my children, please share it."

"Go ahead, Impmon," nodded Yamaki. "We're all listening."

"Okay," nodded Impmon, a smirk appearing on his face as he said, "Well, you know that the angels were the ones that granted me the knowledge of what they were doing last time, but they visited me in my sleep last night. And before anyone says so, no, this was not a random dream that my head came up with. I can tell the difference between that kind of dream and this kind, and this kind was a genuine message dream from the angels."

"If I had known my career path would have led to us talking about angels," Yamaki murmured, before he nodded and said, "Very well. Continue."

"First off," Impmon turned to the Monster Makers and smirked. "You guys can relax for the first time in months again. You don't need to rebuild the portal to go get the others back from their universe. Because I know of another way."

There were gasps from the crowd and Impmon had no desire to keep them in suspense. So he told them. Everything. All about how he had received a new power now that he could biomerge into the Heavenly Warrior form of Beelzemon with the twins and quickly explaining the mechanics of this new ability of his, before he finally ended up with the final lines of the prophecy once more, and his plan to go and speak directly to Anubimon and ask him for assistance in getting them back.

There was silence for a while once he had finished before Elecmon began to voice the first of the questions, "Are you sure about this, Impmon? Apart from his various minions, nobody has ever seen Anubimon's realm from the inside while still alive. Not to my knowledge anyway. Going there could be incredibly dangerous."

"I doubt it," Impmon replied. "Anubimon might be a Lord of the Dead, but he's still one of the good guys, isn't he? I really don't think he lives in some hovel filled with traps to keep people out. Besides, don't you see what I'm saying here? If we wait for the Monster Makers to finish the machine, which even they admit is ridiculously hard, then we'll be waiting for months on end before we can get the others back, and that's assuming they can find some way of getting it to the right dimension at all.

"But, if we do it _this_ way," he added with a smirk mixed with a grin of delight. "I could talk Anubimon into getting them back into our universe by… say… tomorrow afternoon if everything works. Just think about it, guys… our friends, back with us within a week at most, probably."

"You really think this will work?" Rumiko asked with hope shining bright in her eyes. "You really think you can get them back that quickly."

"I see no reason why not," Impmon smiled.

"This is brilliant!" Jeri cried. "Finally, we can have them back here where they belong!" She span around and hugged Takato. "Oh, isn't it great?"

"Hell yeah," Takato grinned. "This is fantastic news! And it's yet another thing we have to thank GranDracmon for, because it was him that stripped away the old Beelzemon and gave Impmon the ability to become the new one. Or the old old one. Or whatever!"

"Yay! I'll get to play tag and eat Guilmon bread with Terriermon again!" Guilmon cheered, his large tail thrashing from side to side in excitement and almost tripping over Kenta's parents.

"And someone will finally start calling us 'The Moron Twins' again!" Kenta cried.

"Kenta, that's not a good thing!" Kazu cried.

"I know, but I miss it anyway," Kenta replied.

Ryo, on the other hand, was more sceptical. He was, of course, just as excited as the others were, but before spirits could be raised too high, he said, "Impmon, have you considered everything about this idea of yours?"

"Of course," Impmon nodded firmly. "We know that Anubimon can use dimensional travel. All we have to do is find a way of getting him to help with us."

"Yes, but have you considered how high the price might be?" Ryo asked.

"Huh?" Impmon blinked.

"Ryo is right," Yamaki nodded. "Don't get me wrong, I think this piece of news is just as brilliant as everyone else, but we must consider all the facts. From what I have come to understand of this Digimon God of Death, he might be friendly, but I also thought that he could not directly interfere in the lives of mortals, whether they be humans or other Digimon."

"There has to be a loophole somewhere," Impmon replied immediately. "I just have to find what it is. Besides, he was given special leeway by Fanglongmon the last time he came to visit us so that he could resurrect the rest of the Devas and Elecmon here. Maybe Fanglongmon will have given him leeway this time."

"The part of the prophecy that still bothers me is the word 'deal,'" Shibumi voiced. "I agree that it is possible that there is a loophole in all this, but I believe there will indeed be a price. In return for Anubimon breaking the rules and getting back the others, you are going to have to offer something. And I would imagine that it will not be to your liking."

"These things rarely are," Ryo agreed.

"Listen to you guys!" Impmon growled a little angrily. "Just stop and listen to yourselves for a moment. We're talking about getting back our friends, who were snatched away from us by that bastard Parallelmon. This might be the only way we have to get them back, and you're all standing there talking about what price we might have to pay.

"Fanglongmon, damn it, these are our friends! They've been trapped in the wrong universe for over half a year, separated from their families, their friends and everything they knew for their whole lives, and you guys are worrying about a deal I'll have to make. Screw that? I don't care what price I have to pay. I sure as hell am going to pay the damn thing. I'm leaving. Right now. And I'm going to get them back home right now!"

The group stared at him for several moments before Ryo smirked and chuckled. "You know, Impmon, I think you're right. And if you're okay with having to pay any price then I guess I have no more arguments."

"It is still risky," Yamaki murmured. "But I suppose you are right. The sooner this is all over, the better."

Impmon smirked. "Yeah! Now that's what I'm talking about!"

"Impmon!" Mrs. Wong beamed at him. "You are a saint! If you can bring our children back to us as quickly as you say… then you'll be forever in my debt at least."

"And mine as well," Rumiko nodded. "I could kiss you right now."

Impmon flushed and coughed. "That's really sweet, but maybe you can save the hugs and kisses for your daughter when she gets back. Or if you insist, at least do it when everyone else isn't looking."

Janyu stepped forwards next and said, "Impmon, we literally cannot thank you enough for your willingness to sacrifice anything to bring our children back, and I too yearn for their return. However, let me just say to you – be careful. Don't take any unnecessary risks, alright? We don't want to lose you too, even if your attempt is successful."

"Got it, sir," nodded Impmon, smirking and giving him a salute. "In that case, Ai, Mako and I will be leaving straight away. If I could, I would take the rest of you guys with me, but only Beelzemon can cross over the Digital Barrier."

"Wait," Haruhi stepped forwards. "You're really going to go off into another dimension so soon after you got back from the other one? You only just returned last week."

"Don't worry, Mum," Ai said. "We're not going into a dangerous world this time."

"Anubimon's a nice guy," Mako nodded. "That's what everyone says about him anyway. There won't be anyone trying to mess with us on this trip."

"Besides, we'll be as a Mega Digimon the whole time," Impmon nodded. "It'll be alright, Mrs. Terada. Your children are safe in my hands. As well as their own."

Haruhi sighed and stepped back. "Well," she murmured. "If you must, then I suppose you must. And I suppose forbidding you from going would be downright selfish. Go. And save the others. Do what you have to do."

"We'll do what is right," Impmon nodded. Then he turned around to face, Lilamon, who was standing by the door, and the other two, who were poking their heads in. "I don't think that we'll be gone for very long. But if I am, you guys can keep an eye on the Terada house, right?"

"Consider it done," Lilamon nodded with a wink.

"You better get moving," Wingdramon added. "I have a feeling that Anubimon is expecting you."

"And try and remember everything so you can tell us about it when you get back," Diatrymon chuckled.

"Alrighty then," Impmon nodded, leaping down off the chair he had been standing on through that whole speech and allowing the twins to step up beside him. "Let's do this."

Ai held up the D-Arc in front of them, and Mako grasped it, so they were holding it together in front of Impmon's face. Then, they both grinned and cried, "Biomerge activate!"

One explosion of light followed.

On shouted of, **"IMPMON BIOMERGE TO…"** also followed.

And then the raven, black wings emerged from the light show and the Mega Digimon appeared in all his glory…

"**FATEMON!"**

The rest of the room stared at him in either awe if they hadn't seen him before, or in bewilderment if they had. Fatemon looked down at himself and chuckled. "Heh. I guess we're going to have to work on which of the two Mega forms we become on the biomerging attempt. Ah well, we'll worry about that later. And he shifted into Beelzemon and nodded to the others.

"Alright then," he nodded. "See you all later. And when I come back, you can expect additional company." Then he closed all three eyes and searched within himself, trying to locate the power within him that the angels had mentioned. It took him approximately two seconds to realise that they were right, and from there he seemed to move by instinct.

Before the astonished eyes of the onlookers, he simply seemed to fade out of existence in front of them, almost like Renamon lifting up her perception filter. All that remained was one of his feathers, which drifted forwards slightly and wafted down to the floor, settling gently on the ground in front of Rumiko. The blond woman bent down and picked it up slightly, its black glow fading away until it resembled nothing more than a large raven feather, but she pressed it close to her heart all the same.

Now, the only thing that they could do was wait, and see what happened next.

* * *

When Beelzemon opened his eyes, he blinked in surprise. He was definitely no longer in the lobby of the HYPNOS towers and unless he had somehow fallen into a video game, he was no longer on Earth either. The area around him seemed to be nothing but a mix of pixelated dancing colours and lights, mostly light green but with a good number of other major colours like blues, reds and yellows which seemed to flicker around them at random.

"The Digital Barrier," Beelzemon murmured to himself as he glided through the lights. He wasn't particularly thinking about where he was going, he just went, allowing his instincts to guide him through the confusing mass of flashes and pixels while he looked around at his bright surroundings.

"Is this the bit that separates the Human World and the Digital World?" asked Ai from within the Mega level Digimon.

"Looks like it," nodded Beelzemon. "This is the bit we pass through when we enter the portal in Guilmon's shed, before we even get to the part with all the floating question marks and stuff. Normally we pass through it at the blink of an eye. But the word that we're going to now must be slightly further away if we're still heading through it."

"Is that it up ahead?" Mako asked, directing their combined head to move towards the front where they could see a small black dot slowly expanding ahead of them. As they got closer, its expansion seemed to increase in velocity, until in no time flat, they were staring at what appeared to be a sea of blackness ahead.

It might have been easy to mistake it from the Dark Ocean through sight alone. But this place felt different. Beelzemon could just tell by its aura that it was different. It didn't feel evil or oppressive in any way, and it certainly didn't send any shivers down his spine.

"That's the one," Beelzemon nodded, powering his wings forwards. "Let's go and see what the big deal about this place is, shall we?"

* * *

The moment the blackness of the world filled his entire vision, everything seemed to fade around them again, their body tingling as they felt their data fluctuating again as they passed straight through the dimensional wall. And the next thing that Beelzemon knew, he was standing on a solid surface, although that surface seemed to be rocking slightly underneath him.

He flared his wings out to steady himself and glanced down to his feet, noticing that the surface he was standing on appeared to be made of wood. As he looked up again, he blinked in surprise. "A boat?" he murmured. "There's a boat here?"

And indeed there was. It didn't appear to be a particularly fancy vessel, just something akin to a small rowing boat combined with a raft. The prow stuck out before them like the head of a spear and the bottom appeared to be mostly flat. There was a mast directly behind the biomerged Mega, but there didn't appear to be much of a need for one, nor did there appear to be any need to the oars which were hooked onto the edges.

That was because the boat they were standing in was on a flowing river that was taking them slowly and steadily down its course towards the horizon.

When Beelzemon looked up _towards_ that horizon, he could see just about nothing but river stretching away in front of him and winding down what seemed to be dark hills. Just about everything was blackness here, and yet it still didn't feel all that evil. Nevertheless, it was still slightly creepy, but Beelzemon had not expected anything less. This _was_ the land of the dead after all.

Still, there was no ghostly wails in the distant or iridescent spectres floating around the place. The whole place just seemed to be… empty. Nothing by the river, the boat, and Beelzemon himself seemed to be here at all.

Beelzemon glanced out to either side of him and into the darkness. He wondered what would happen if he lifted himself off the boat and flew off in any direction other than the way the river was flowing. Would he just keep going and going through emptiness, or would he encounter other things somewhere in this universe? How big was it? Would he not see the edge coming and smack into it if he wasn't careful.

"It sure is dark," Mako said, a little pointlessly, as both the other two parts of the Mega Digimon could see that too.

"What do we do now?" Ai asked. "Where do you think Anubimon is in all of this place?"

"Not sure," Beelzemon replied. "But if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that we should just stay here on this boat and go with the flow of the river. I'm sure that Anubimon knows we're here and I bet that there's a reason we materialised here other than coincidence. Let's just sit tight and see what happens."

Ai and Mako agreed and Beelzemon folded his wings into a resting position around his body like some kind of dark cloak, which made him practically blend into the blackness all around him, with only his shining red eyes making him that distinguishable to passers-by. Except that there were no passers-by. It was just a barren wasteland of sorts.

Wondering just how long this emptiness was going to last, Beelzemon just stepped back and waited. Time seemed to have little effect here, and it was not long before Beelzemon completely lost track of how long they had been floating along the river, just slowly cruising around the bends, only to faintly see another bend in the distance and slowly heading towards that as well.

"I'm actually starting to feel a little creeped out here," Ai shuddered from within the Mega.

Beelzemon chuckled and said, "Want to play I Spy?"

"With what?" Mako laughed. "There's nothing here."

"Oh, I don't know," Beelzemon shrugged. "I can see a B, an H, another B, an R, and a W right off the bat."

"Would that be Blackness, Hill, Boat, River and Water?" asked Ai.

"Or Wood for the W?" threw in Mako.

"Eh, you guys are no fun," Beelzemon replied, before he looked up sharply, having seen something up ahead - a faint red light in the distance. "What's that?" he murmured as he stepped forwards towards the prow, squinting into the distance towards the far-off light that was edging closer by the moment.

"An enemy?" asked Ai.

"I don't think so," Beelzemon replied. "I don't sense any imminent danger, and believe me when I say that I've got all my senses turned on to the maximum."

They waited with bated breath as they got closer and closer to the red glow, the river drifting along leisurely and taking them gently down with them. Beelzemon ruffled his feathers slightly, as he continued to stare, but when they finally got close enough to the sign to read it, they just blinked in surprise.

"What the…" Beelzemon blustered.

For what he could see was a sign-post surrounded with flashing red lights, and the huge words:- IF YOU ARE READING THIS SIGN… HOORAY! WE HAVE NOT HAD VISITORS IN AGES!

"Is he serious?" snorted Beelzemon as they sailed slowly past the giant sign.

"Is he trying to make a joke or something?" Ai asked.

"It must get boring in here sometimes," Mako added. "He's gotta find some way to have some fun, right?"

"Maybe," Beelzemon chuckled. "But he also might be trying to put us all at ease. Heh, gotta love that God of the Dead. He must be the life of the party."

* * *

From there, the river seemed to change slightly, picking up in speed an intensity as the boat zipped along its surface. And at last, they finally saw a change to their scenery, although it wasn't an especially pleasant change.

"Oh no!" Mako cried. "There are rocks in the river!"

And so there were. Huge jagged boulders seemed to jut out from the river at seemingly random intervals ahead, each one with viciously sharp edges and serrated tips that looked just about ready to pulverise the boat to shreds on contact, and the river seemed to be picking up speed rapidly.

"We'll hit one of those and sink!" Ai panicked.

"Oh, come on, you two," Beelzemon rolled his eyes. "Don't you remember that we have wings? If the worst comes to the worst, we can always just fly away and leave the boat behind us."

"Oh yeah," Ai and Mako murmured at the same time. "Our bad."

As it turned out though, they didn't even have to use their wings. As they neared the rocks, the boat seemed to take on a mind of its own, swerving to the side and back again to move around each boulder which jutted out and into its path. Beelzemon placed a spiked boot against the prow, and it became almost as though he was surfing on some kind of lazy river as the boat tilted itself around each stone with absolute ease, the rudder at the back shifting on its own and seemingly ignoring the river's current.

Just as Beelzemon was beginning to enjoy the experience, a sudden _huge _shape bounded out of the darkness ahead of them, with huge, slavering jaws and blazing eyes, with a loud howl and a roar of, "WHO GOES THERE?"

The shape landed on one particularly massive boulder that stuck out in the middle of the river like Pride Rock from the Lion King angling itself into the air. The huge shape lashed down with one massive paw and placed it on the prow of the boat, halting it in its tracks before it could move past and snarling at the boat's passenger like some kind of messenger from hell, the huge claws perched on the back of the paw almost stabbing into Beelzemon's stomach.

Beelzemon was taken completely by surprise by the dark-Digimon, and he was unable to make out much of an outline against the darkness thanks to the Digimon's colouration. But, as he unfolded his wings and prepped his cannon, ready to lift off and start shooting, or shift into Fatemon if things got a little more close and personal.

But before anything could happen, the Digimon stopped snarling and moved backwards again. "Oh," it said, it a much calmer albeit still growly voice. "It's you, Beelzemon. You haven't been here in a while."

"A… while…?" Beelzemon blinked, staring at the giant Digimon which still had a paw on the front of his boat. "Who are you?"

"You don't remember us?" the Digimon asked, sounding a little disappointed. He humphed and said, "Well, I can't say I'm all that surprised to be honest. After all, Lord Anubimon did deliberately wipe your memories when he sent you back after you were purified by Magnadramon, or so he told me. I better re-introduce myself then. I am Cerberumon."

"Cerberumon?" Beelzemon frowned, and as his eyes began to adjust slightly to the new dark darkness of being in the larger creature's shadow, he could make out more details about the new Digimon. It appeared to be a giant, dog-like creature, pitch black body that was hard like a turtle's shell instead of furry like a regular dog, with the only difference in colour being his brown lower-jaw, stomach and the backs of all four legs. His tail was long and pointed and each paw had three regular claws and three additional viciously hooked metal claws that extended out the top and down the front.

His eyes were yellow, and at first glance it looked like he had three heads. But then, Beelzemon noticed that only the middle head was a fully-functional one, while the other two were just the face and upper jaw of other heads mounted on his shoulders, although there were glowing yellow dots in their eye sockets that made it seem as though all three heads were looking at him, even though the two side ones were otherwise inanimate.

"Er… okay. Nice to meet you," Beelzemon nodded, lowering his cannon and wings once more. "Er… so we've met before then?"

"Yes," Cerberumon nodded his middle head. "Back during the time you were a member of the Heavens, you used to be a liaison between the Heavens and this, the Land of the Dead. You would come by this way quite often to speak with his Lordship and ask about how things were faring here, and you could take messages from him back to the Heavens with you. Then, of course, you went down into the Digital World and you obviously stopped visiting after that."

"Well, what d'you know?" chuckled Beelzemon. "There always seems to be another surprise or two in store for me when it comes to my past."

"You're a _very_ big dog," Mako remarked.

All six of Cerberumon's eyes blinked. "What was that?" he asked. "Your voice changed."

"Yeah, that would be one of my Tamers," Beelzemon smirked. "Both of them are in this body with me – we managed to biomerge last week."

"Ah, I heard about that," Cerberumon chuckled. "Congratulations."

"So, what exactly is that you do here?" Ai asked.

"Well, I supposed to be the Guardian to the entrance of the First Cataract – the true entrance to the Land of the Dead. The only way that an outsider soul who is not dead can reach Anubimon's palace is via the river. Even if you flew straight towards it from any other direction, you wouldn't be able to get in. But the truth be told, I haven't really done a whole lot since I took the job."

He chuckled and added, "After all, you were the only person who ever came in from the river. Everyone else who tries to get in here is either a member of Anubimon's court already, or they're dead. Don't take this the wrong way, as it's nice to see you again, but I was sort of hoping that you _were_ an evil Digimon set to attack this dimension. I would have livened things up a little."

"Ah," Beelzemon snorted. "Well, I'm sorry to disappoint."

"Not a problem. In any case, I believe I know why you are here. You're here to speak to Lord Anubimon about fulfilling a certain prophecy, aren't you?"

"You bet," Beelzemon nodded. "Is it far to go now?"

"No," Cerberumon shook his middle head. "You're already at the entrance. Come on. I'll take you the rest of the way." And he lifted his paw from the prow of the boat and turned around, bounding from rock to rock with practiced ease as he kept just ahead of the boat. Beelzemon moved closer to the prow as the boat shifted around the boulders again. He could still see nothing in the distance except river, rocks, hills and darkness.

But that changed abruptly when the scenery in front of him seemed to change completely. Where one there had been nothing but emptiness, there was now something, as if Beelzemon was suddenly inside the walls of a perception filter. There was not a whole lot of difference, but instead of the river dead ahead, there was now a very large lake, so large that it was difficult to see the other end, but the river stretched on at the other side of it anyway.

All around the shores of the lake were dark huts, and throughout those huts were various Digimon that were going quietly about their business, but all of them looked up as the boat approached, and all at the same time, as if they could sense its presence. They were mostly Dobermon, but there was also several Reppamon and Seasarmon, and even a couple of Chirinmon dotted around the place. There was also one large Mega Digimon that resembled a giant, golden-wrapped mummy with an Egyptian style mask – a Pharoahmon.

All of them stared at Beelzemon with blank expressions as if they were witnessing a major event they had all been waiting for, but only found it mildly interesting.

And, of course, there was a large waterfall between the boat and the edge of the lake.

"Oh, come on!" Beelzemon cried over the ever-growing roar of the waterfall. "Why does there always have to be waterfalls in these sort of river adventures?"

"Because that's the way it works," Cerberumon chuckled as he came to rest on a nearby rock. "And this is where I stop. It was nice to see you again, Beelzemon. It's a shame that we didn't get more of a chance to talk and catch up, but I know you're in a hurry and I wouldn't have had a whole lot to contribute to the conversation anyway."

"Alright, well, thanks for the passage," Beelzemon nodded.

"Where's Anubimon?" Ai called. "How do we find him?"

Cerberumon lifted up a giant claw set and pointed towards the middle of the lake. As Beelzemon looked, he spotted a small island directly in the middle, and the island was almost completely filled by a large palace.

"You'll find him in there," Cerberumon informed them as they drifted past. "He won't be too hard to find. Good luck to you. I hope this works out for you."

"Thanks," Beelzemon waved a hand as they sailed on.

"Bye, big doggy," Mako called over their shoulder as the boat crept over to the edge of the waterfall.

And then it went over the edge and crashed into the water below to sink beneath the surface.

Meanwhile, Beelzemon floated down on his black wings, having leapt off the boat moments before it plummeted. He was not keen on the idea of getting his feathers wet, so he merely waited a few moments for the boat to re-surface and landed on it again, drifting out into the lake and past the watching Digimon, doing his level best to simply ignore their staring.

* * *

It wasn't long before he was some distance out and heading towards the island at speed. The little boat still seemed to know where it was going on its own, and as it moved straight towards where its passenger wanted to go, Beelzemon stared at the castle in wonderment. It was nothing like the Dark Castle of GranDracmon, which had radiated pure evil and had had around a dozen tall spires sticking up into the sky.

This one had only one spire, and that was because it was a giant pyramid, which seemed to be quite apropos considering the Digimon who lived in it. However, the pyramid was only the top half. The bottom half had a relatively simple design from a distance – completely square, like a child's picture of the house. However, as he got closer, Beelzemon could take in more detail.

Like the Temple of the Heavens, it was covered in dozens of ornate carvings and statues jutting out along various lines. There was no statue of Anubimon on the front as there had been with the angels, but the statues seemed to be based on more human-like themes, depicting the ancient gods and figureheads of many ancient cultures. Egyptian was the most common theme, but although Beelzemon was no expert, he could pick out a couple of other designs, including Greeks and Roman, Norse, Mayan and a host of other things besides.

It was if the designer and builders had taken themes from just about every form of ancient religion and stuck them together into one giant structure.

"Now that is a pretty cool place," Ai murmured.

"Would you want to live there?" Beelzemon asked them.

"Probably not," Mako replied. "But it's still awesome. It's like it should belong in a museum or something."

"Well, maybe you can persuade Anubimon to let the humans put it on display for a while," Beelzemon grinned.

"I don't think he'd like that very much," Ai murmured.

* * *

The boat eventually pulled up next to the shoreline and Beelzemon surged off with a flap of his wings and landed with a crunch of gravel and sand as his boots hit the land. The huge door loomed in front of him, and there appeared to be thousands of Egyptian hieroglyphs etched into the stone they were comprised in. None of the members of the biomerged body had any idea what to make of it, so after a couple of moments of staring, they simply shrugged and moved on.

A pair of Gargoylemon were stationed outside the doors, and stared at Beelzemon with their small eyes as he approached. Beelzemon was understandably wary of an attack as he grew closer, as there had been a few Gargoylemon among the Nightmare Soldiers of GranDracmon's army, but it appeared that these two were not twisted and evil as their brethren were. They appeared to glow slightly with an almost heavenly aura.

Beelzemon pulled to a stop in front of them as one of the two Gargoylemon gestured towards the door.

"Lord Anubimon is waiting for you," he said simply.

"He has been for some time actually," the other agreed.

"Er… thanks," Beelzemon nodded, and stepped towards the doors, which slowly began to grind open almost of their own accord. As they slowly moved aside, Beelzemon stepped through the gap they created, pulling his wings around him so he could slip through before they were fully opened.

As with the castles of the Sovereigns, the first thing which he found was a long corridor, decorated with yet more strange symbols and hieroglyphs, so much so that they almost looked like obscure cave paintings or something. Beelzemon's gaze roamed over the walls, searching for some kind of meaning in them, but whatever the walls were telling him he could not make it out.

So, he simply shrugged and kept moving, and eventually, he found himself in quite a large room, with walls that appeared to be made of sandstone-like rock, and covered in yet more patterns and symbols. Flaming torches adorned the sides of the room at fixed intervals, but other than that, the room seemed to be mostly featureless.

The only parts of it that were not featureless was just the large section dead in the centre of the room. There appeared to be a short pedestal sticking out from the floor, and on top of that pedestal was a large set of old-fashioned scales. It was just about the only thing that the room seemed to be for, and yet Beelzemon felt himself strangely drawn to it.

He stopped in the entranceway, and it was then that he spotted the person he had come here to see. Anubimon was standing just behind the scales. In terms of build, he was no bigger than Beelzemon himself, and he appeared to have a similar physique. Humanoid body with long forearms, each ending with three fingers tipped in claws. Large decorative bracelets adorned both his wrists and upper arms and apart from his the large collar-like object adorning his neck, his chest was bare, while his lower half was covered in a large, white sirwal that led down to winged shows.

Long black hair spilled down his back in a single ponytail with two other braids hanging down either of his shoulders. The head itself was obviously canine, with slanted eyes surrounded by purple fur, while everything from the underjaw down was pale blue in colour, except for the purple hieroglyphs on his arms and the huge golden wings which extended outwards from his shoulders, resting comfortably to either side of his body.

His eyes were shut, but as Beelzemon came to a stop, they opened and he looked up over the top of the scales to offer Beelzemon a wry smile. He spread out his arms and said, in a soft, ghostly voice that seemed to make him even more ethereal. "Welcome to my humble abode, Beelzemon. It has been a long time since you last walked these halls."

"So I've heard," Beelzemon replied. "And you call this humble? This place is huge."

Anubimon chuckled silkily and waved an arm invitingly. "Come over and join me if you wish. You have nothing to fear here. This may be the Land of the Dead, but I do strive to make it a friendly place for living visitors. Not that I get many of them. Did you see the sign on the river?"

"It was kinda difficult to miss it," Beelzemon replied as he moved out into the room, each footstep echoing out around the empty space. "This is certainly a very large room you've got here? What do you do with all the space?"

"Not a lot," Anubimon replied. "But sometimes I hold meetings with my sub-ordinates in here and that's when the space becomes handy."

"Ah, fair enough," said Beelzemon, as he stopped a few metres in front of the pedestal. And what's with the scales? What do you use them for?"

Anubimon smiled and said, "Why, don't you know, Beelzemon?"

"Nope. That's why I asked."

"They're really shiny," Mako said, a little needlessly.

"Ah yes, the Tamers," Anubimon replied. "You, of course, will not know how this works, especially if your own Digimon does not know. In that case, I shall tell you. This is how I measure if a Digimon is worthy of being reborn into the Digital World once it has been deleted." He scowled and added, "You and your friends have been keeping me busy this last week, Beelzemon. With all the evil Digimon that you destroyed in your little trip into the Dark Ocean, I had at least an additional several hundred souls to measure, so thank you very much for that."

"You're welcome," Ai said brightly.

"That was sarcasm, Teradalet," Beelzemon replied. "I use it often enough, so you should know that."

"Oh. Sorry."

"Anyway, why do you need to test the souls of the Nightmare Soldiers?" asked Beelzemon. "Surely you should know that every single one of them is evil, so you wouldn't need to test them, would you?"

"Of course I do," Anubimon replied. "But nevertheless, it is my sacred duty to test every single soul that comes through here, for though many of them are evil, some, like you yourself, were merely warped by evil, while some others chose their evil life, and these scales will also tell me which of those who are evil deserve redemption. Allow me to demonstrate."

He lifted a paw into the air and flexed his claws, and a sphere of pure blackness appeared above his palm. He glanced across it and said, "This is a Digi-core. A Digi-core of a recently killed Digimon. And I believe one that you may well be familiar with, seeing as you spent a large portion of your time running away from him these past few weeks."

"What?" all three members of Beelzemon's body cried at the same time. "That's GranDracmon?"

"Yes," Anubimon replied. "This is his Digi-core. The data which I brought to this world has congealed into it, so essentially this orb contains everything about GranDracmon's personality, beliefs. Essentially, it is his heart. As you can see, it does not take a genius to work out that there is nothing but pure evil in here," he nodded towards the swirling blackness. "Nevertheless, I shall now test it."

Beelzemon stepped closer and watched in fascination as Anubimon moved GranDracmon's Digi-core over the left side of the scales. There was something already in the other side and Beelzemon frowned in bemusement when he saw that it appeared to be a black feather of some kind. Anubimon was going to weigh a Digi-core against a feather? A feather was lighter than just about anything else you could pick up in any universe.

Anubimon dropped the Digi-core into the scales, and, predictably, the scale tilted over to the side with the Digi-core immediately, while the side with the feather rose into the air.

"And that means that the soul within the Digi-core is evil," Anubimon replied. "And now I shall ask it a question? GranDracmon. If I were to send you back to be reborn into the Digital World once more, would you choose to live out your life as a good Digimon?"

Suddenly, a ghostly voice that was extremely familiar echoed throughout the room, causing Beelzemon to jump in surprise. It was definitely GranDracmon, and the only thing he said was, "No."

"Fair enough," Anubimon nodded. "As I expected." He picked up the Digi-core and said, "Oh, Ammimon. I have another snack for you."

Beelzemon blinked and then started when a large Digimon he hadn't even noticed before suddenly crept around from behind Anubimon. It appeared to have the head of some kind of crocodile, but the front half of its body was that of a lion, while the back end looked something like a large, bulky herbivore like a hippopotamus. It looked up at the Digi-core and leered as Anubimon opened his fist and dropped it.

The hybrid-like Digimon lunged upwards and snapped the Digi-core into its mouth, shattering it to data in its jaws and swallowing it whole. There was an unearthly screaming noise that rippled throughout the room, and then everything went deadly silent once again.

Beelzemon stared in disbelief. "What just happened?"

"Ammimon here is the Devourer of Digi-cores," Anubimon replied. "A Digimon's soul never truly dies, not even here. GranDracmon was judged to be evil by the Feather of Truth, which also prevented him from lying when I asked if he would become a good Digimon. The moment Ammimon eats your Digi-core, your data is obliterated, never to reform again and your soul is consigned to oblivion." He smirked and added. "There goes your great enemy. You got to see him die _and_ the process which ensures he will never return."

Beelzemon stared blankly for a moment before an almost savage grin lit up his face. "So, that's it? The final curtain for him?"

"Indeed," nodded Anubimon. "I thought you'd enjoy the spectacle. I must say, though, Ammimon here has been eating so many evil Digi-cores over the last few days that I'm almost afraid she'll burst."

"Well, we weren't given much of an alternative," Beelzemon shrugged. "So, you did the same thing to the other six Demon Lords when they passed through here? Did their Digi-cores get fed to your little friend here?"

"They most certainly did," Anubimon replied. "Every evil Digimon that has ever passed through this hall has had their heart devoured by Ammimon once they were to be found guilty. Their souls are all still here somewhere in this dimension, but they don't know where they are. Once Ammimon devours your Digi-core, what remains of you can't think, feel, see or use any of your other senses. You can't do anything, or touch anything. You just stop. You just exist, but you don't even know you exist."

"Yeesh," Ai murmured. "I would hate to be a bad Digimon."

"Yes, you would," Anubimon replied. "Once you got here anyway?"

"But you decide all that by weighing it against a feather?" Mako asked. "Are feathers really light?"

"Yes," Anubimon replied. "But this is not a set of scales that measures weight." He picked up the feather gently and held it delicately between his claws. "This is the Feather of Truth. It should be of particular significance to you, Beelzemon. After all, it came from _your_ wing."

"What?" Beelzemon blinked in astonishment. "It did?"

"Yes. Or, to be more precise, it came from Fatemon's wing. You see, you are a special Digimon in more ways than one, Beelzemon. Both your Mega forms represent absolute balance between light and darkness – your powers come from darkness but your heart is in the light. Fatemon's Balanced Reality attack is the living proof of this, as it combines pure light with pure darkness into the same attack, with devastating consequences. By weighing the Digi-core of a Digimon against this feather which I plucked from your wing and imbued with my power, I can measure just how much light and dark there is in the Digimon it belongs to.

"Since the feather in itself is a perfect balance of light and dark, if the Digi-core is 'lighter' than the feather the Digimon leant more towards the side of light. If it is 'heavier' it leant more into the darkness. So, ultimately, it is Fatemon's feather that _decides_ the fate of every single Digimon who ever gets deleted."

Beelzemon stared at his own feather in astonishment, before he slowly morphed into Fatemon himself and lifted up to take the feather from Anubimon's paw with extreme care, rolling it between his own fingers a couple of times. "Well, that sure is a big responsibility."

"But is also really, _really _cool!" Ai yelled.

"Yeah!" Mako cheered.

"But where does the truth bit come from?" asked Impmon. "Neither of my forms have anything to do with truth, do they?"

"No, they don't," Anubimon replied. "That part of it stems from your friend, Sakuyamon, who blessed the feather with her holy powers. Effectively, the two of you combined your powers to bring judgement to the darkness and the light."

Fatemon stared at his own feather as if it was the most spectacular thing in the world, before he slowly handed it back to Anubimon, who, in turn, placed it back on the scales. Fatemon glanced down at Ammimon and said, "So, does my feather keep you well-fed then?"

Ammimon licked its long crocodile jaws and grinned like a mad creature, before it settled back on its hippopotamus haunches to wait patiently for its next meal. Anubimon stretched out his own wings for a moment, before folding them at his side in a more comfortable position and stepping out from behind the scales, folding his arms in front of it.

"So then," Anubimon replied. "Why exactly have you come here?"

"Do you not already know the answer to that?" Fatemon asked.

"I do," nodded Anubimon. "I just want to hear you say it, and make sure you know what you are asking for yourself first."

"I've come to ask for your help, of course," Fatemon replied immediately and with complete conviction. "My friends… the original Prophecy Trio, both the Tamers and the Digimon – they've been trapped in another dimension for so long now. They need to get home. They don't belong there. We need them to come back and be with us again, in their own universe. They had families waiting for them back in the Human World, and friends who miss them desperately."

"And what do you want me to do about that exactly?" Anubimon asked.

"Do whatever it is that you have to do!" Fatemon cried. "You can open a portal to the universe they are stuck in, can't you? That's what Zhuqiaomon said anyway."

"Indeed I could," Anubimon replied. "In fact, I already did. Twice, in fact, in order to bring back a Parallelmon and an IceMyotismon who were in that dimension with them when they were destroyed."

"Then you've got to do it again," Fatemon insisted. "You can't _not_ do it. That would just be wrong. They've got to come home and you are the only one who has the power to get them there, aren't you? So, come on. I will get down on my knees and beg you if I have to, alright."

Anubimon regarded Fatemon sadly for a few moments before he said, "I cannot."

Fatemon was about to cry out in anger when Anubimon raised a hand. "Please, let me finish," he went on. "It is part of my ancient vow that I cannot break. I cannot interfere with the lives of the living directly, unless given special permission to do so by Fanglongmon himself. And I have not received that permission this time."

"Why?" Fatemon growled in irritation. "Why did you make a vow like that?"

"Because temptation is high," Anubimon replied. "If I were allowed to interfere with mortal lives whenever I felt like it, I might start to alter little details wherever I felt like it. That might lead to overdoing it and eventually, if I were to continue, living people might lose their free will because I'd be manipulating their whole lives, or worse I might become drunk with power and try to take over myself so that I can rearrange the Digital World completely. Even the purest heart can fall if given too much power and influence over others, and we heavenly Digimon have so much of one that we cannot afford to have any of the other, or it could be disastrous for everyone.

"The only way to ensure that it didn't happen was to swear an oath never to interfere at all. Only Fanglongmon did not take that vow, but he spends the majority of his time sleeping to suppress his evil half anyway so he did not need to. It is frustrating, I know, but I am afraid that that is just the way it works. I'm sorry."

Fatemon deflated slightly, his wings practically sagging to the floor. "So… that's it?" Mako whimpered.

"We're just going to get a no?" Ai agreed.

"This can't be right," Impmon said through gritted teeth, shaking the head of the combined Mega in frustration. "The Prophecy says that I would strike a deal with you."

"It did," nodded Anubimon. "But it didn't say what the deal would be, did it? You just assumed that it would be to rescue your friends from their dimension and bring them back home to their own?"

"Well… I don't really have anything else that I want," Impmon murmured. He growled in frustration and placed a hand over his three eyes, and Anubimon sighed, turning away slightly.

_There must be a way,_ Impmon thought, his mental words heard only by himself and his Tamers. _The angels told me about this power I have as Beelzemon for a reason, and they told me where I needed to go. There has to be a way. There just has to be._

"Isn't there a loophole or something?" Impmon cried out loud. "There must be someway of you getting them back other than Fanglongmon letting you do it. There's always a way around an oath, isn't there?"

"You'd be surprised," Anubimon replied. "The amount of leeway you have depends on the kind of oath you make."

Fatemon closed his three green eyes trembling as he fought back the swelter of emotions that were flowing through his body, at the thought of his efforts to find his friends being in vain.

"However…" Anubimon turned back around again. Fatemon looked up sharply, and all three members of his form almost balked when they saw the piercing look in Anubimon's bright yellow eyes. They were just like Renamon's blue ones, in that they seemed to pierce through their souls and strip away everything to reveal the bare bones of who they were, but the effect was several hundred times greater with Anubimon than Renamon could ever hope to pull off.

"… There is one possibility," Anubimon replied. "One potential loophole that might allow me to help you out."

Fatemon did not get excited just yet, because the severity of Anubimon's tone told him that he was not going to like what he heard next at all. "But…?" he prompted.

"But," Anubimon nodded and continued with. "It would require you having to make an oath of your very own."

"O…kay…" Fatemon murmured slowly. "What… what kind of oath?"

"Well," Anubimon replied. "While I am not allowed to interfere with the lives of those who live in the Digital World, under most circumstances, that rule does not apply to the Digimon that I have in my service such as Cerberumon, the Gargoylemon, Pharoahmon, Ammimon here and everybody else who you saw outside. They are my subjects, and I can use my powers to help them in any way that I please."

"I'm not entirely sure I like where this is going," Impmon murmured. "Are you saying that I am going to have to put myself in your service if you want to help me?"

"Something like that," Anubimon smirked. "Even then, my help to you would be limited, as your goal is to bring back the others from their own universe and that would count as aiding them as well as you. However, if I were to temporarily alter your Digital Structure so that you yourself could use my power to cross the Void and enter their own universe for a short amount of time, then you would be able to do it yourself and that would not count as direct interference.

"If you remember, I did something similar with Dobermon when I sent him to the Human World to give the Tamers the power to digivolve. Any ordinary Dobermon would not have the ability to do that, but I gave him that ability and since then you humans have been reaping off the benefits."

"So, in order to get my friends back, I'm going to have to become a servant of the Digimon Land of the Dead?" Impmon asked in disbelief. "But, I have other things I have to do… I have to continue to protect the Human World with my Tamers."

"Full-time servitude is not necessary," Anubimon replied. "However, you must give me your solemn oath that, if at some point in the future I call on you and ask you to do something for me, you will do it. No matter what it is that I ask you to do."

Fatemon brightened considerably at this news. "Well, that sounds okay to me," Ai replied.

"Definitely. I say we go for it," Mako agreed.

"It definitely sounds like a better deal that full-blown servitude," Impmon agreed readily. "Alright, I'm up for that if that is what needs to be done."

"Are you really?" Anubimon asked with a raised brow.

"Yes," Fatemon nodded together.

"You would do whatever I asked you to do?" Anubimon asked.

"Absolutely," Fatemon said immediately.

"What if I asked you to kill one of your closest friends?" Anubimon asked.

There was dead silence as Fatemon stared at the Jackal God Digimon in disbelief before he just stammered, "W-what? Kill one of my friends?"

"That's what I said," Anubimon nodded. "Picture the scenario for a moment. If your friend Guilmon somehow and inexplicably became Megidramon for a third time and threatened the entire existence of the Digital World and everything in it, only this time he was even more powerful than ever and there was no way to subdue him and make him listen to reason – if there was no other way of stopping him whatsoever, and I appeared you and ordered you to destroy him… would you do it?"

Fatemon grimaced for a moment, as the horrible thought spilled through his mind like wildfire. "Is… is that really possible?" he asked.

"It's a plausible scenario," replied Anubimon. "It's a very unlikely scenario, but it could very well happen if the conditions were right. And that's just one of many possible things that I might ask you that you might not want to do, Fatemon."

Fatemon gritted his teeth before he shuddered and said, "If that's what it takes, then I'll do it. Besides, I've seen how the system for resurrection works. Guilmon doesn't have a dark heart, and as he would want to return to the world to continue working with Takato, so death for him wouldn't be permanent."

"Then what about if I asked you to kill one of the humans?" Anubimon replied immediately. "What if one of them went mad with power or through some kind of mental illness? What if they became a host of a terrible evil Digimon and there was absolutely no way to reverse the effects and take the evil Digimon out of their body? There is no way that the humans can return to life as good Digimon do, so you would be killing them off permanently."

"But…"

"Or what if I were to order you on a suicide mission where you knew for certain that none of you would return. Because this promise does not apply to you alone, Impmon. Your two Tamers must also pledge their allegiance if you want to reach the loophole in the rules. What if I were to order you to turn on _each_ _other_, until there was only one left standing? All of these scenarios which I am giving you right now are extremely unlikely, of course. The chances of me ordering you to do something like that are extremely low, but nevertheless, they are there. Are you willing to risk something like that?"

Fatemon was almost staggering backwards at the sheer implications of what Anubimon was saying. Now that he thought about it, the chances that Anubimon would call on him to run some sort of errand were probably going to be extremely minor. Anubimon had plenty of other servants to do things like that. If Anubimon ever did call on their assistance, it would probably be for a _very_ important world-saving reason.

He hadn't particularly thought it through when he had said that he would do it. None of them had. The sheer idea of what Anubimon was implying seemed ridiculous and yet he was right. These sort of things _were_ indeed possible.

Would it be better to just leave the others in their dimension instead of bringing the back and, in doing so, swearing yourself to a powerful God Digimon who could order you to do _anything._ Even something that you wish with all your soul that you didn't want to do – even something that you would never even think of doing in your most horrible nightmares. All of it was possible. What the future might hold that could cause Anubimon could ask such a thing, Fatemon didn't know.

But while he had learnt many things over the course of his war against GranDracmon, one of the things that seemed to stick out in his mind most was that things could always get worse. For Anubimon to make him do something like that would require apocalyptic circumstances.

Yet… it was still possible, and if you tried to deny that then you were just kidding yourself really.

"I can see that my points are causing some distress to you, Fatemon," Anubimon observed. "So perhaps I should point out one other thing as well. There is every chance in the universe, or in any universe, that I will never call on your services in the future at all. You could quite happily live out the rest of your existence without ever hearing me speak to you again, and you're oath to me might not ever even be needed at all.

"However, there is _no_ other way. If you do want me to help, then you _will_ have to promise. Because otherwise, I will not be able to help at all in accordance with my own oath. And I assure you that is not that I don't _want_ to help. I physically cannot, even if I tried. There is no other option. Also, you should be aware that once I grant you this one favour and you leave my service, I will not be able to aid you again until I have cause to call you back into it. This is…as you say, a one-off, until then.

"And before you ask, no I cannot simply make another one of my servants do the job for you. They have all taken the same oath that I have, and cannot interfere with the Digital World themselves, much like the angels have. Dobermon was the exception to that rule, as he was an informant for me in the Digital World at the time, but Dobermon is no longer here and has relinquished his servitude to me. The only person who can do this, Fatemon, is you."

Fatemon felt his fists clenching as the last options he could think of were given up for lost completely. He didn't like the sound of this at all. Anubimon was right, the price was extremely high, but while this was also downright irritating, he could see the reasoning behind him. If Anubimon had decided to go on a control spree of the Digital World, he could subjugate it in moments – he had that much raw power. He highly doubted that the Sovereigns would stand a hope in hell against the Lord of Death.

For the sake of the Digital World, it was better if Anubimon kept his distance, which was what made this loophole so ridiculously complex.

_What do we do now, Impmon?_ Ai asked. _Do we really have to promise that we'll do whatever he wants when he asks._

_I don't like the sound of that, _Mako murmured nervously. _Did you hear all those horrible things he said that he could order us to do?_

There was no sound for several moments, but then, Fatemon's three green eyes slowly opened as Impmon took most of the control of the body, slowly moving it into an upright position to standing tall, his eyes blazing like green flames. "We may not like it guys," Impmon said. "We may not want to do it. It might sound scary. But nevertheless, we have to do it. We can't _not_ do it. We made a promise to the families of the Tamers that we would bring their children back to them, and we cannot back out now.

"We also can't just leave them there when we have the opportunity to bring them back. I'd never be able to live with a clean conscience after that, as I am sure that they all want to see their families as well.

"I said earlier that I was willing to make any sacrifice that I needed to in order to get them back, and that is still very much true. I have no intention of backing out, unless both of you are against me. After all, we are all in this together. So, I'm asking you two kids, what do you think? Should we risk something that is likely to never happen ever and bring them back now, or shall we play it safe and go back so they can wait for another six months while they build a machine that probably won't work properly anyway?"

Ai and Mako murmured to themselves a little as they considered Impmon's words. Anubimon's points had terrified the life out of them, but at the same time, they knew full well that Impmon was right. Besides, Anubimon was not a bad Digimon. He was very much a good Digimon, so while he might order them to do something that they would never want to do, in the end, it would probably benefit everybody anyway. And hopefully it wouldn't even happen at all.

Besides, those things that Anubimon had said were worse-case scenarios, weren't they?

"Well," Ai murmured. "I… I guess if you're okay with it Impmon… then I'm in too."

"Me too," Mako agreed. "Besides, we know how much getting them back means to you."

"We can feel it," Ai added.

"And we can't back down now. Not when we're so close," Mako murmured. "Not when the only thing standing in the way is a lousy promise."

"Then it's settled," Impmon nodded, and all three of them declared in one voice. "What do we have to do?"

Anubimon chuckled. "I had a feeling that that was the option you would choose. Forgive me for scaring you like that, but I just wanted to make sure you knew with absolute certainty what you were agreeing to when you did this. Still, the chances of any one of all that happening are infinitesimally small."

He crossed back to the scales and lifted the Feather of Truth off from it again, before crossing over and handing it to Fatemon. "You cannot lie when you hold this feather, and once you make a promise, you will not be able to go back on it, even if you try."

"So, all we have to do is swear?" Impmon asked.

"Yes," Anubimon nodded. "And then I will be able to help you with one thing before you return to your duties as Tamer and Digimon."

"Alright then," Fatemon nodded, and the twins immediately began to copy what Impmon was saying so all three of them spoke at the same time, "We hereby swear our fealty and service to Lord Anubimon. Should he ever call on us in the future, we agree to come and do his bidding, no matter what his request may be." He looked up and then added, of his own accord, "As long as that request is in the best interests of the Digital World and all its inhabitants."

The feather glowed bright gold briefly, filling the room with its light. When it died down, Fatemon felt no different, but Anubimon was chuckling.

"Well done," Anubimon smirked at them. "For nipping that potential disaster in the bud. It's very unlikely that I would do anything to try and harm the Digital World, but it is indeed possible that it could happen."

"So, does that mean that that still counted?" Fatemon asked.

"Indeed it did," nodded Anubimon, taking the feather back from him and placing it back on the scales where it belonged. "Welcome to the ranks of the Land of the Dead, all three of you. As your new master, I wish you well with your endeavour, and although it might sound strange, I hope the time where I will need your new services to me never comes, for if I do, it will probably not bode well for anybody."

"I completely agree with that one," nodded Fatemon.

"Now," Anubimon raised a paw and ghostly flames seemed to encircle it from the bracelet up. "You have fulfilled your end of my deal, and now I must fulfil my own. Could you please shift back into Beelzemon for me?"

Fatemon nodded and did just that, Berenjena appearing on his arm once more as he took the shape of the heavenly demon. Anubimon approached him with paw held out before him. "Hold still. This might pinch a little."

"Pinch a li-AAGH!" Beelzemon cried as Anubimon placed his palm against his armoured chest. He screwed up his eyes and clenched his teeth as rivulets of the ghostly flames seemed to surge around his body like live snakes, swirling around the bases of his wings, his torso, his neck and each of his limbs. He could feel his data fluctuating slightly as Anubimon altered and enhanced his natural ability to cross the Digital Barrier, expanding it, so that he could do what he had set out to do.

And what everyone had been hoping for since Parallelmon had started all this so long ago.

Beelzemon gasped as Anubimon stepped backwards, the fire vanishing from around him as his data stabilised again.

"It is done," Anubimon nodded. "But remember, Beelzemon, that once you activate the ability for the first time, you will have exactly twenty-four hours before your data regains its original composition, and you will not be able to use it again. That means that if you do not get your friends back to their universe within the next day, they will remain trapped in that universe along with you yourself. And until have need to call you back into my world after you leave, I will not be able to help you again, even if you return a second time."

"Only twenty-four hours," Beelzemon murmured. "That's not as long as I'd like, but I understand."

"Good," Anubimon nodded with a smile. "The deal is done, and the prophecy has therefore come full circle at last. Now go. And may the Force be with you."

"Oka… wait what? May the what be with me?"

"You'll find out what that means soon enough," Anubimon snorted. "Now go."

Beelzemon nodded and turned around. He knew what to do almost instinctively. His eyes narrowed into slits and almost before he knew what was going on, the air in front of him began to distort and shift, twisting itself into a swirling vortex that appeared out of nowhere.

Beelzemon did not stop to think about it, for he knew the clock had already begun.

Without a second thought, he flared his wings and dove straight into it.

* * *

Well then folks. How many of you were expecting something like that to be the deal? Hopefully that should leave you excited for future stories where this new potential plotline could be put into motion. I'm already coming up with potential scenarios where Anubimon might need the help of Impmon and the twins. Will it be good? Will it be soon? Will it be ever? We'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

I hope you liked my portrayal of the Land of the Dead. I drew most of my inspiration from the Kane Chronicles by Rick Riordan and actual Egyptian mythology, but since Cerberumon is a digivolution stage of Anubimon, I just had to put him in, even though Cerberus is Greek. And I made up Ammimon, basing him on the Demon Ammit, who essentially did the same thing in Egypt, although one of Anubimon's attacks is to summon Ammit to his side, so why not Ammimon?

As for the Feather of Truth, it originally came in the form of an ostrich feather from the Goddess Ma'at. But since Fatemon represents the balance of darkness and light himself, there was no need to invent a new Digimon for it. I hope you liked that little tribute to your creation, **Bookworm Gal.**

Please leave a review and see you soon.

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Next time...

When Beelzemon appears on Coruscant for the first time, he's in for several surprises as he arrives in the new dimension, and not only because of all the new experiences for him. But Coruscant is a very big place. Will he be able to find his friends in time?

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Coming up:- **Chapter 216 : New Digimon on the Block**


	216. A New Digimon on the Block

Heya everybody. Here I am again, with the first chapter of the second half of the final arc. The end is drawing ever closer, and I hope you guys like this chapter and the remaining four that I have left to write before this story finally comes to an end. This bits just as important to get right as the final battle sequence, after all. I nervously await everybody's reviews on these final chapters.

Please, read on and enjoy the third Impmon-based chapter in a row, something unheard of in this story until this point.

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**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 216:- A New Digimon on the Block**

* * *

Beelzemon had not been sure what to expect from moving to another dimension, but from the moment that he flung himself into the portal that he had created thanks to Anubimon's alterations, he was pretty sure he knew what the other six had gone through when they had been tossed across the Void by Parallelmon several months ago.

Most of it seemed to be a dark purple colour, focused into something like a tunnel through which Beelzemon was row rushing at breakneck speed. But apart from that, there seemed to be no semblance of order for anything, especially not the hundreds of other colours that were flaring at all over the place at random places. And it wasn't like crossing the Digital Barrier – the colours there had all been set in square shapes like pixels. Here, they just seemed to splurge out of nowhere into any random pattern and blend together to form a continuous soup of randomness.

And, oh yeah, Beelzemon was totally and completely out of control.

"WHOA!" he yelled as he suddenly went tumbling head over heels, spinning around like some sort of Catherine wheel or a pinball in a machine. His broad wings, which were normally useful in flight, had now become a hindrance, as it felt they were being buffeted by random gusts of wind that wasn't wind being thrown at him from just about any direction, pitching him left and right and up and down in a dizzying rollercoaster.

"Aagh! This is worse than a Data Stream!" Ai shouted as Beelzemon went spinning round in circles with his wings bent at slightly painful angles.

"I think I'm going to be sick!" Mako cried. "Again!"

"Not while we're all in the same body, you're not!" Beelzemon growled as he furiously wrenched himself to the side in order to flip himself back onto his front. "Just try to hold it in, alright!" he roared, as he reached across himself with one arm and grabbed his wing, hauling it downwards so that it was wrapped across his front, and then proceeding to do the same with the other wing.

It took a couple of attempts, during which he continued to shoot about like a squash ball, but eventually he was able to cover himself in the feathery cloak that his wings provided and hold them to his sides. While the journey was still be no means an easy ride, it was significantly less helter-skelter than before, and Beelzemon was able to angle himself forwards so that he was rocketing through the dimensional space in a relatively straight line.

"This is really weird," Mako murmured once they had regained control. "We're going towards another dimension already. We've already been to, er… one, two, three others and now we're going to a fourth!"

"It's the fifth if you count the Heavens," Beelzemon replied. "And the sixth if you include the Human World you guys come from in the first place. It sure as heck is complicated, isn't it?"

"It's like the stuff that only happens in those sci-fi movies that you like to watch sometimes, Impmon," Ai agreed.

"Maybe you'll start to like those kind of films a bit more now that you've experienced some of it," Beelzemon chuckled before he was suddenly buffeted by turbulence and sent spinning into a barrel-roll again, and he gritted his teeth to try and right himself, fighting the instinct to unfurl his wings. "Then again, I don't think I'd like to go through this place on a regular basis. It's very rough, isn't it?"

"Oh, I wonder what we're going to see on the other side," Mako cried. "What did you see in the flashbacks that Ophanimon gave you, Impmon?"

"Technically, they weren't flashbacks. More like live videos. But I didn't see a whole lot any of the three times. The first time, it was dark but it looked quite like a jungle with several huts in the distance. The second time they were all in a room and didn't leave it the whole time, and the third time… they were in a different room and didn't leave it, so, you've got me. I don't have a clue what we're going to see, Teradalets."

"Do you think we'll be able to find them in time?" Ai asked.

"I don't know," Beelzemon murmured. "I tried to make the portal go somewhere near where they are but I'm definitely not experienced in handling this thing. But one thing is for sure, we are not going to rest even for a moment until we find them. Twenty-four hours might sound like a long time, but when it comes to something like this, it really isn't."

The twins grunted in confirmation, and Beelzemon's three eyes narrowed as he hurtled through the swirling vortex all around them.

"Is that a light?" asked Ai, squinting ahead of them, and sure enough there did indeed seem to be some kind of bright white light growing in the distance and expanding at a high rate, growing and growing until it filled their vision completely.

"Looks like our stop is here," Beelzemon noted as flung out his wings to the side again and powered forwards, picking up speed rapidly as the vortex hurled him straight towards the light. "Let's see what we've got waiting for us on the other side then."

Beelzemon motored straight into the brightness until it was so intense that he was forced to shut his eyes to stop spots from forming his eyes. And then, with a cry mixed with delight and exhilaration, Beelzemon was flung out of the vortex and back into reality.

* * *

Grand Master Yoda's eyes opened. He had been meditating in the temporary chamber in 500 Republica that had been set up for him while repairs were being done to the Jedi Temple, which the Jedi still had yet to move back into even though the Sith had been killed over a week ago now.

He looked surprised, and that was not an expression that appeared on his face very often. He had just felt a bizarre fluctuation in the Force, on a mental wavelength the like of which he had not felt for some time now. And it was close. Extremely close.

"Hmm," he frowned to himself as he clambered to his feet. "An interesting development, this could be."

The last time he had felt disturbances of that ilk had been during the crisis of Naboo, during which the three Digimon he knew well had battled it out against the evil Digimon, Parallelmon – the one who had dumped them here in this dimension in the first place, and the time before that had been when the Digimon had arrived themselves. But while in the Parallelmon incident there had been dozens of those fluctuations going off in the space of several minutes, this one was big and it was alone. Just the one.

It could only mean one thing. Someone else, probably a Digimon as well but not necessarily, had just crossed over from another dimension into this one. And they had arrived on Coruscant.

While the Jedi Master normally moved slowly, this was not the time for being slow. While there was no guarantee that this new being was evil and wanted to bring harm to their world, the Digimon had told him numerous tales of evil Digimon that liked nothing better than destruction so it was still a possibility. And there was every chance that even a friendly Digimon could cause damage if it didn't know what it was doing. As a result, this time he moved fast, as he hurried out of the room to alert others to the news.

* * *

The first thing Beelzemon saw when he hurtled into the new dimension… was a pair of headlights zooming straight towards him.

He cried out in alarm and surged upwards with a burst of his wings, the portal behind him snapping shut as he did so. He blinked in astonishment when he saw that the headlights seemed to be attached to some kind of hovercar, which was several thousand feet up in the air and shot by underneath him, the spikes on his boots narrowly missing the head of the driver, who screeched in surprise at Beelzemon's sudden appearance.

But Beelzemon had no time to relax just yet because the hovercar thing was not alone. It seemed he materialised in the middle of a designated hovercar motorway or something, because several dozen more came lancing towards him from various heights, headlights blazing and seeking to blind him.

Beelzemon rolled to the side quickly as another one zipped by and pulsed his wings upwards so that he swung down and underneath another, before darting to the other side came shooting directly for his head.

But that only made him blunder into the path of another and as he hurled himself back the way he had just come, the speeder clipped the side of his wing and sent him spiralling out of control for several moments, crashing downwards through the hovercars in a rapid spiralling motion that was not much different from being in the tunnel.

He thrust one wing out to right himself just in time, because it was at that moment that he slammed into the bonnet of another of the hovercars. The driver and one other passenger, a pair of Rodians, flinched backwards and cried out in shock as Beelzemon pushed himself to his knees. When he looked up at them and they saw his three red eyes and demonic appearance, not to mention the huge cannon on his arm, both of them screamed to high heaven and veered to the right sharply to try and throw him off.

Before they could manage it, Beelzemon tossed himself into the air of his own accord and swooped under another pair of hovercars, banked left sharply to avoid another and then powered his wings so he shot between two more and finally he was out and in the clear, rocketing upwards with great flaps of his wings until he was well above the lane of hovering vehicles that were shooting through the sky.

Once he had gained a sufficient height, he outspread his wings to hover and keep himself aloft, while simultaneously clutching at his helmet. "Well," he murmured. "That was fun."

"That was scary," Ai murmured from within their body. "I thought we were going to get run over there?"

"But it was still wicked cool!" Mako yelled. "Those things were actual hovering cars!"

"Still, it's not exactly the best way of entering a new world, is it?" Beelzemon griped. "I wonder if the entrances that the other's made were that dramatic. Stupid portal for dumping us in the middle of the street."

And then, he finally took a moment to have a look around and it was all he could do to keep his jaws from dropping as he regarded the new world. Everywhere he looked, there were buildings. Huge apartment complexes and skyscrapers that must have been several times as tall as the HYPNOS towers were just about everywhere, stretching as far as he could see in any direction. It was currently night here, just as it was back on Earth, but while Tokyo had been bright with advertisements at night, it might as well have been day here. Every single building was positively plastered with glowing signs and banners.

The lane of traffic below them was not the only one. There were several dozen others filtering all throughout the place like fireflies moving in formation along certain lines. It was absolutely phenomenal. In the distance, Beelzemon could make out something that resembled the ruins of an old Temple of some kind, while when he looked in the other direction, he could see a massive domed building that must have been something closer to _a mile_ wide. Perhaps _two_.

"Is this a city?" Ai breathed, as they took it all in.

"I should bloody well hope it's a city," Beelzemon replied. "Because if this is a town or a village then a city would just be overdoing it."

"It's like it covers the whole world!" Mako murmured. "I can't see any of the edges of the city and I can't even see all the way to the ground either."

"Is this where the others have been living this whole time?" Beelzemon muttered quietly. "In a huge city like this? This place puts Tokyo to shame. It puts the whole of planet Earth to shame. Screw the Empire State Building. It's got nothing on these skyscrapers."

"What do you think that big domed building is?" Mako voiced. "And those big ruins over there. That one looks like an old king's castle or something."

"I don't know," Beelzemon murmured. "They could be anything. That domed building could be a sports stadium for all we know, and for a sport that we haven't even heard of. On another note, did you see those two creatures driving that hovercar. They definitely weren't Digimon.

"Aliens," Mako was practically quivering in excitement from within the Mega form. "They were actual aliens from outer space!"

"From another universe," pointed out Beelzemon. "Not from the space out in your own."

"But still, isn't so cool," Mako cried.

"I hope they weren't the bad kind of alien that come up to you and try to suck your brain out," Ai shuddered. "Although they were quite scared of us, weren't they?"

"I wouldn't worry too much about that, Teradalet," replied Beelzemon. "Anyone who tries to suck out our brains is going to get it."

Suddenly there was a loud roaring sound coming from above, and the Mega Digimon looked up sharply, seeing several lights that were high in the sky above them drawing closer, until they could make out a huge, triangular spaceship. Beelzemon quickly moved aside and away from it as they watched its progress, and as it came down, it was flanked by several smaller white vessels that produce quieter noises as they rushed past.

"Spaceships!" Mako breathed. "WICKED!"

"That's a really big ship!" Ai murmured.

"And it's not the only one either," Beelzemon replied, nodding towards the two other spaceships that were descending towards the ground some distance beyond the one that they were currently staring at. "This place is definitely way behind what you humans have back on Earth. All this technology is brilliant. I wonder if the others have tried to build their own dimensional portal with the help of the residents. And if they have, I wonder how well it worked."

"Hey, do you think that they've gone up into space since they came here?" Mako piped up. "Maybe somebody was nice enough to take them along for a ride."

"Hey, I'd like to go into space!" cried Ai. "I've always wanted to go and stand on the moon so that I can see the Earth from it. Maybe somebody will let us have a turn at going into outer space."

"You know that Earth doesn't exist in this universe, right?" Beelzemon asked. "Or at least, probably not."

"So?" Ai asked. "This planet might be nice to look at too?"

"Well, I don't have a clue if the others have gone into space or not," Beelzemon murmured. "But if they have then it leaves us with one heck of a problem. If this place has space-travel in it, then it's possible that our friends might not be on this planet after all. They might be at the very other end of this universe for all we know."

"Oh no!" Mako shouted.

"So, I'm sorry, Ai, but we're going to have to cut the idea of going out into space for the moment. We have to find the others and quickly."

"But how do we find them?" Mako asked. "This place is so huge?"

"Well, we have to start somewhere," Beelzemon replied. "And right now, the only way is down." He flapped his wings and flipped over onto his head, folding his wings in to his sides to allow him to fall into a steep dive towards the enormous buildings behind them. In a remarkable display of flight, he whisked downwards a few inches from the side of one of the buildings and towards the distant lights.

"We'll try and stick to the shadows as much as possible," he roared over the sound of his own flight and the wind that was rushing past his ear. "We don't want too many questions asked or people to being staring at us and raise the alarm unless we have to. We might be forced to fight due to some misunderstanding or something."

"Okay," replied the twins.

* * *

As Beelzemon got down lower, he began to see various streets jutting out from the sides of the buildings like massive balconies with several bridges spanning the gaps between them on all various levels. All three components of Beelzemon were blown away by the sheer number of different kinds of humanoid that were walking through those streets, and he paused momentarily on a dark landing platform to stare down below at the myriad of different forms.

There were lots of humans – as they seemed to be all over the place even here, but there seemed to be just as many of several other species too. Some of them were incredibly similar to humans, with traits like head antennae being the only difference, and others were extremely different, such as a few that looked like giant slug-snail creatures with hammer-like heads.

Another common humanoid figure appeared to be those ones with the double head tails, like that woman that Impmon had seen in his flashbacks with the others on the first two occasions, except that they seemed to come in all different colours. There was even a lilac one at one point, a colour that no humanoid should have for their skin.

Beelzemon stared in fascination at all the different shades and shapes and sizes that the people came in. Some had tentacles on their faces. Some had fur. Some had wings. Some had no features that were any different to a human except for different colours of the hair and skin. Others had protruding mouths or eyes or ears, and there appeared to be a good number of robots around the area as well, and they were even more varied than the humanoids.

"This is too weird," murmured Ai. "They all look the same but different at the same time."

"Are you sure none of them are Digimon?" Mako voiced. "Some of them sure look like they could be."

"I'm not sensing anything," Beelzemon replied. "Those guys sure ain't Digimon, I can tell you that for nothing. But there's just so many of them. Look at that one," he directed their gaze towards an Aqualish strolling down the street. "What the heck is that thing supposed to be? It looks like it's got a pair of buttocks for a mouth."

"EEW!" Ai and Mako yelled at the same time, causing Beelzemon to clap a hand over his own mouth and retreat further into the shadows as a couple of humans, a Twi'lek and three Weequay looked up towards the sound of his voice. Upon seeing nothing, they dismissed the noise they had heard, but hurried away regardless just in case it wasn't.

"A little more quiet would be good for the moment," Beelzemon reminded them once he'd taken his hand away.

"Why are we hiding anyway?" asked Ai. "Can't we just walk out there and ask about the others? Maybe somebody knows where they are."

"We don't know the whole situation yet," Beelzemon reminded them. "And besides, look at those people in white." He nodded down towards the armour-clad humans who appeared to be toting large guns patrolling the streets at various intervals. The guns were not nearly the size of Berenjena, of course, and Beelzemon had every confidence his cannon could trump their guns, but even so, "We don't want to risk those people seeing us and mistaking us for some kind of threat, do we?"

"I suppose not," Ai agreed.

"What do we do then?" Mako whispered.

"We keep flying and scope the place out a little more. If we haven't found anything useful within an hour, then we up the ante." And he launched himself back into the air and curved himself around a building, sticking close to the darkest parts and trying to stay out of people's line of sight.

This was most definitely not an easy thing to do considering the layout of the street. There were lights absolutely everywhere, advertising various products and places that made no sense to any of them, many of them in foreign languages that they had never seen before, making them resemble nothing by gobbledegook, and also from the vehicles that occasionally streamed through the place, whether they be hovercars or hoverbikes, or some kind of spaceship patrolling the area, like more of those white ones that had been escorting the larger ship.

When Beelzemon looked down, the only thing he saw down below were more lights, and in such intensity further downwards that it almost looked like there were rivers of lava flowing between the buildings. In fact, Beelzemon had to double-check a couple of times to make sure the it was _not_ lava, but once he had assured himself that it wasn't he went on to ignore it.

There was even a large TV screen hovering in the middle of the street, a very large one that seemed to be suspended from a large engine built into the top that kept it afloat. Underneath the screen in fluorescent letters were the words, BAIL ORGANA OFFCIALLY ELECTED AS NEW CHANCELLOR.

The screen itself depicted a man in his late forties with tan coloured skin and a short black beard around his mouth, smiling out at the onlookers and saying… "confirm that we have sent out our first convoy of relief support to the starving people of the planet Kalee. The extent of their suffering was only recently brought to our attention by our unexpected ally in the final battle, General Grievous, as it seems the Sith had been deliberately been keeping us in the dark to ensure the General's hatred for us and the Jedi. One of Grievous' two demands for helping us was that aid be given to his people, and I am pleased to say that while he may now be in prison, he can rest easy in the knowledge that we fulfilled out obligation to him.

"In addition, it has also been decided that our loyal clone troopers will be remaining as the soldiers of our Republic. Though we may not be at war, the clones have expressed their willingness to continue to defend our nations, but we have also agreed to fully induct them as citizens of the Republic, which our former Chancellor failed to ever do. The memorial proposed be Master Secura will also be put into effect im…"

That was the point that Beelzemon left earshot, but a couple of moments later he pulled to a halt, his three red eyes widening beneath his helmet and his arms falling slackly to his side as he stared at what he had just seen after rounding another street corner.

"No… way…" Ai murmured.

"Whhooaaaa!" Mako gasped.

Beelzemon himself remained speechless as he stared. For what they had seen ahead of them was a huge poster, on a screen that covered a very large portion of a skyscraper dead ahead of them and easily visible to several streets that led towards it. On that poster stood four humanoids, each one holding what appeared to be some kind of laser sword in their hands. And Beelzemon recognised each one of them.

Three of them were the additional people who had been present during the vision he had seen of Suzie's party. The human male with brown hair and the scar across one eye and the cerulean skinned woman with the two head-tails stood at the front of the poster, the latter holding two blades in her hands, while the former just had one. Behind and to either side of them was the orange-skinned girl with the zebra-like patterns around her own head tails and the olive skinned girl with the black dots across her face that had been there during his most recent vision of them while up in the heavens.

But they were not along in the poster. Standing between the human man and the cerulean woman was young Suzie Wong, with a card in one hand and her pink rimmed D-Arc thrust into the air, a grin of determination on her face. And in the gap on either side of the human man and the cerulean woman and the other two sword-wielding people were Henry and Rika, each one of them in a stance where they were holding their D-Arc and cards close together, as if they were about to slash the card a split second before the picture was taken.

And above all seven of them was Renamon, in a pose that suggested she had just leapt up from behind them with her arms out wide as if she were about to pounce or launch a Diamond Storm, while on either side of her were Terriermon and Lopmon, ears outstretched and grins on their faces as if they were swooping away from Renamon's shoulders and over the heads of the rest of the group.

And flashing in yellow letters above the group shot were the words:-

THE TENACIOUS TEN – HEROES OF THE REPUBLIC!

Beelzemon just floated there for close to a minute, staring in disbelief at the massive poster of their friends and the allies they had made since coming to this dimension. He was staggered. He didn't have a clue what the hell the group had been doing apart from defeating something called a Sith, but obviously whatever it had been they had made a massive name for themselves. People all around them kept stopping to stare at the poster as well, expressions of something close to reverence on their faces.

Finally, Beelzemon was able to articulate the words – "Holy crap!"

"Language," Ai breathed automatically.

"Oh, don't tell me that you weren't planning on saying the same thing," Beelzemon replied immediately. "What the heck have those guys been doing to get cred like this?"

"We never got huge posters of us like that back in Tokyo no matter what we did," protested Mako.

"Never mind that," Beelzemon interjected. "If these guys are heroes of this place, then maybe that means that they are on this planet after all. Now all we have to do is find some more information on them and we'll be on our way."

"Can we ask somebody now?" Ai asked.

"I still don't think that we should try that just yet. Let's just keep looking around for a few moments and see what happens." With that, he powered his wings slightly, and moved off once again, taking one last look back at the poster as he did so. He had to admit that if that was not an extremely well-choreographed photo, then they had managed to get the likeness of each one of their friends down to the exact details.

* * *

As they moved on through the city, they noticed more indications and signs that were expressing gratitude to their friends and their allies. There was one flashing poster that seemed to be depicting the human adult and the orange skinned girl standing back to back with arms folded, and several others that depicted the cerulean skinned woman and showing her off as the "youngest ever Jedi Master," whatever that meant. Then there were several that had just the Tamers standing together, and just the Digimon, and more than a few that showed the olive-skinned girl and called her, THE NEW RECRUIT WITH THE BIG IMPACT!

Obviously freeing this universe of the tyranny of the Sith Lord person was considered to be a very big deal, and from what Beelzemon could see the people seemed to be very grateful to them for it. There were many other words and terminology in the signs that Beelzemon couldn't make heads of tails of, including things like "The Clone Wars," and "The Jedi Order."

But it didn't say anything about where he could _find_ them. And they had to be here somewhere. However, the Digimon's natural ability to sense another Digimon in the immediate vicinity remained obstinately silent. Wherever they were, they were not particularly close by. He would know if they were, and they would know if he was nearby as well. And since there weren't supposed to be any Digimon besides them in this dimension, they would probably come running to investigate.

In the end, though, something finally caught Beelzemon's attention in particular. But it had nothing to do with his friends. It had nothing to do with anything he was looking for, but nevertheless, as he landed on the corner of the roof of one of the smaller buildings for a brief stop to analyse the situation and decide what to do next, he heard loud noises coming from below and off to his right.

As he glanced back, he saw what appeared to be a small hovercar rounding a bend some distance away and shooting down the street, moving dangerously close to the bridges and just barely dodging over or under them as it zipped by, knocking over pedestrians in its slipstream as it shot overhead. A second or so later and several hoverbikes round the same corner. The riders of the bikes were more of those white-armour-clad men, and they were pointing guns at the hovercar and trying to get a clear shot at it around the bridges.

The hovercar had two passengers in it – a small, blue fish-like creature with stalk eyes, long fingers and a large fin sticking out of the top of his head who was driving the thing, and a larger being with a broad, flat head covered with a large helmet, a wide mouth with strange lobes hanging down on either side of it, who was in the back and was pointing his fist out towards the bike.

There appeared to be red lasers flashing out from the larger one's gauntlet and flying back across the street towards the bikes. The bikes were swerving to avoid the attacks, but the lasers were peppering the bridges as well, and several of the pedestrians were forced to duck down and narrowly avoided getting hit by the deadly looking bolts.

It did not take a genius to figure out that whatever was going on, the people in the fleeing hovercar were not the good guys. Especially as the people on the bikes first were trying to get a clear shot first while the people in the car didn't seem to care.

Beelzemon's three eyes narrowed slightly, and before he could really even think about it, he was in motion, leaping off the edge of the building and pressing his wings into his side, dropping like a stone as hovercar shot further down the street. Beelzemon tilted some of his feathers to adjust his angle just slightly, setting himself on a collision course with the oncoming vehicle.

The two people in the car never knew what was going on until it was too late. Beelzemon flipped over and slammed himself with full-force into the bonnet with his feet first, shoving the front of the vehicle downwards and slamming it into a huge flip that carried it several dozen feet up into the air, spinning headlights over thruster.

As it was an open top vehicle, both of the occupants were catapulted outwards and went flying, screaming as they sailed straight over another bridge and began to arc downwards with the call of gravity, falling past the bridge and plummeting down towards the ground far, far below. But Beelzemon wasn't about to let them fall to their deaths. Stalling his own fall, he flapped back upwards to intercept them.

He slammed Berenjena into the smaller fish guy's flank and sent him flying into one of the raised streets on the side of the nearest building, where he landed, bounced and smacked into the wall, dazed. Beelzemon then lashed out with his other hand to grab the larger one by the ankle and toss him in the same direction, causing him to land on top of his smaller friend and further daze him.

Beelzemon then whipped around to see the progress of the empty hovercar, and he could see quite clearly that its new spinning trajectory was taking it straight towards another bridge. The people on it screamed and ducked out of sight, for all the good it would do them, but Beelzemon's focus narrowed immediately and he roared, **"DEATH THE CANNON!"** as he raised his weapon. One huge green bolt blasted out of the large barrel and slammed the hovercar directly in its underside, detonating it well before it reached the bridge and blowing it to smithereens. All that remained was a plume of smoke and a few tiny chunks of metals that either clattered harmlessly on the bridge or plummeted to the ground far below.

The Mega level Digimon smirked and then turned around, flapping over to land in the street, with many more pedestrians backing away from him in shock, awe and not a little fear. The two dazed creatures he had knocked out of the hovercar groaned and sat up clutching their heads, but when they looked up and saw Berenjena being jammed in their faces, they both yelped and pressed themselves flat against the wall.

"Yeah, that's right," Beelzemon nodded, with only the voice of the Digimon side of him. "If you know what's good for you, you'll stay put and don't move a muscle."

The two fugitives froze as if they had been carved out of ice. Beelzemon glanced back as two of the following hoverbikes pulled to a on the street next to him, and the two helmeted and armoured people riding them stared at Beelzemon in disbelief, their hands gripping their blasters firmly in preparation for any conflict.

All three aspects of Beelzemon's mind quickly ran over different ways out of this situation, and he quickly went with the best one he could think of – he switched to Fatemon. The onlookers watched in astonishment as the huge cannon faded away from his arm and a sheathed sword grew at its hip in his place, while his armour and helmet shifted into a more medieval style.

"They're all yours, if you want them," Fatemon nodded as he stepped back and around the criminals to put them between himself and the armoured men, spreading his arms out wide to show that he intended no harm. Without the massive cannon on his arm, he did look much less of a threat, and the armoured men slowly dismounted their bikes and moved forwards cautiously, while several others still out hovering over the street pointed their guns at Fatemon warily.

The two who had dismounted slowly approached the two terrified criminals, keeping an eye on Fatemon all the same, and then they hauled the criminals to their feet. "Robonino," one of them said. "Chata Hyoki. The two of you are under arrest for the attempted robbery of Senator Mot-Not Rab and a whole host of other crimes against the Republic, up to and including breaking into the Senate Building to hold several Senators hostage."

"That wasn't me! That was him!" the larger one pointed at the smaller one.

"Nevertheless, Hyoki, there are many other crimes with you have long escaped justice for, but not this time. You will be taken before the Senate for trial forthwith and I'm willing to be that both of you will be found guilty. Especially you, Robonino."

The small fish-like creature scowl in irritation, as several robots charged around the corner to take the two captives off the hands of white-armoured men and take them away towards another hovercar, locking them in cuffs as they did so. The armoured men then turned back to Fatemon, who had not moved an inch, and stared at him for a few moments, curious but wary at the same time.

"Well," Fatemon murmured. "This is awkward."

"We… uh… thank you for your assistance," one of the men said. "Nevertheless," he added, taking a firm grip on the gun in his hand, "We must insist that you state your name and species! Who are you and where do you come from? We've never seen anything of your species before?"

"You haven't?" Impmon chuckled. "Well, fancy that. And there was me thinking that there were three of my species on that giant poster behind me." He jerked a thumb over one wing towards another large image of the Tenacious Ten, the figures of Renamon, Terriermon and Lopmon still very prominent.

"Huh?" the man sounded bemused, leaning round to look at the poster.

Before he could cotton on, Impmon decided to make things easier and said, "I am known by many names and come in many different forms, but while in this particular shape, you can call me Fatemon."

"Forms?" the other man asked. "Shapes? MON?"

"Mon?" echoed the other one, who had a large black hand-print on one side of his chest armour for some reason. "You… you're a Digimon?"

"Yep," nodded Impmon. "I'm kinda new in town, but I've come to understand that there are three Digimon celebrities already here. Friends of mine actually – I've been looking for those three and their Tamers for ages and now, here I am. This is my biomerged form, or one of them anyway. Both my Tamers are in here with me. Say hello, guys."

"Hello, mister," Ai said immediately.

"I like your gun," Mako grinned. "Can I hold it?"

"Mako, you don't need to hold his gun – we _have_ a gun in our other form. And a big-ass cannon."

"Oh yeah."

"Y… you really are a Digimon," one of the men breathed. "That, or you're really good with your voice."

Fatemon snorted and spoke with all three voices at once. "Can anybody in the world make it sound like there are three voices coming out of one mouth like this? And if you still need some extra persuasion that I'm telling the truth…" he suddenly glowed with a bright light and began to shrink, the clones and other various onlookers staring in stunned silence as he split into three, to reveal the small purple Rookie and the young human children that made up his larger form.

"How's that?" Impmon asked. "In this form, I'm called Impmon. And these are my Tamers. The girl is Ai and the boy is Mako."

"We're twins," both of them grinned at the same time.

"I don't believe it," the nearest man murmured as all the others lowered their weapons. "You're Impmon? You're Renamon, Terriermon and Lopmon's friend, Impmon?"

"The one and only," Impmon grinned. "So you've heard of me then?"

"Oh yes," nodded one of the men, taking off his helmet to reveal his face and grinning. "We didn't get the opportunity to work with the Tenacious Ten as much as some other clones did but we still got to fight with them on a couple of occasions and they mentioned you and some other friends of theirs. Anyway, my name is Echo, and this is my brother, Fives."

Fives took off his helmet to reveal _exactly_ the same face as Echo's, albeit with a little more facial hair and a tattoo of the number five on the side of his forehead. Impmon and his Tamers flinched backwards in surprise but then Ai and Mako grinned.

"Oh you're twins too then?" Mako asked.

"No, not exactly," Fives chuckled. "We're clones. All of us have the same face," he nodded towards the other troopers still on the hoverbikes, who also began to take off their helmets to reveal exactly the same facial features on each one of them, excluding hair and often scarring."

"Whoooaaa!" the twins murmured in awe. "That's so cool."

"Er… how do you…" Impmon began.

"…Tell each other apart?" Echo and Fives asked at the same time. The former chuckled and said, "We get that a lot, but it's not so difficult when you know each other well enough. We all have our own unique aspects."

"Anyway, it's nice to meet you," nodded Fives, stepping forwards to lower his hand down to Impmon. The Rookie blinked for a moment and then grinned and shook it with his own hand, before turning and doing the same thing with Echo.

"Yeah, I bet it is," he nodded with a lopsided grin. The clones sniggered.

"Thanks again for helping us to catch those two," Fives jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards the hovercar where the robots were waiting with the captives.

"Who are they anyway?" asked Impmon, trying very hard not to add, "And what are they?"

Fives replied with, "They're Bounty Hunters. And they'll do just about anything to get their hands on money. The little one is a Patrolian called Robonino and the other is a Selkath called Chata Hyoki. They've been on the run from the Republic for a while now, but now that the Clone Wars have finally ended, we can spend more time mopping up the scum of the Galaxy, rather than fighting against the Separatist Droid Army."

"Yeah, we've been noticing things about the end of this Clone War all over the place," Impmon replied. "But you should know that the words, 'Separatist Droid Army,' mean squat to me. I think I've barely even been in this universe for an hour, so I know next to nothing about what's been going on recently."

"You must be anxious to find your friends," Echo observed. "Did you get dumped here like they did?"

"Nah. We came of our own accord. It's taken us a long time to figure out a way of doing it, but we managed it in the end and, voila, here we are. However, while I am not trying to get away from this charming conversation and all, I kinda need to find my friends. You know where they might be?"

"Before its destruction, they lived in the giant Temple over there," Fives pointed towards the giant palace-like structure that the group had seen before. "Because that's where their friends and caretakers in the Jedi Order lived."

"But the war's done a lot of wrecking things," Echo continued. "So, until they get it fixed, you can probably find them in 500 Republic."

"Where's that?" Impmon prompted.

"It's in the Senate District," replied Echo. "The area with the huge domed building in the middle and surrounded by mostly quite short buildings with the occasional skyscraper thrown in. The tallest of the skyscrapers in close proximity to the domed structure – the Senate Building – is 500 Republic. If they're there, they'll currently be with one of the Senator friends."

"You see that poster over there?" Fives pointed towards another area of the street, and when Impmon looked, he saw a group of five beings that were not members of the Tenacious Ten. In the middle was the tan-skinned man with the beard that had been talking out of the hovering TV screen, and flanking him were four other – two human women, one with brown hair held up in the weirdest hairstyle Impmon had ever seen, and another with auburn hair in a more normal layout, as well as a blue skinned woman with light purple hair and yellow cheek markings and a green… something… with antennae, protuberant mouth and bulging eyes.

The text underneath the poster said, THE SENATORS WHO FOUGHT BACK!

"If they're in 500 Republica, they'll be living in the apartment of one of those five," Echo finished.

"It's a big building, though," Fives added. "And the security is pretty tight now that they've filled in the tunnel underneath it so… Hey, wait!"

Upon learning where their friends were mostly likely to be, neither the Digimon nor his two Tamers were that keen to hang around any longer. Impmon nodded to Ai and Mako and dashed to the side of the street with a yell of, "Thanks for the info," before he grabbed Ai and Mako by the arms and vaulted over the side. One flash of light and biomerge later and they were Fatemon once more, swooping between the startled speeder bikes and winging their way out into the street, in the direction of the huge domed building that they had seen right at the start.

The two ARC troopers glanced at each other for a moment, and then hurried back to their own speeder bikes. Fives turned to the rest of the men and said, "Make sure that those two Bounty Hunter scumbags are secured. We'll go after that guy and make sure he gets to the right place."

"On it, sir," another clone said, as they set up a perimeter around the speeder containing the two prisoners. Echo and Fives bounded into their seats and whipped their vehicles around, shooting off in pursuit of the soaring Mega-level Digimon.

Fatemon was incredibly fast, but the speeder bikes still managed to catch up with him after about half a minute and fell into line on either side of him. Fatemon glanced to either side and said, "So, I get armed guards now. Nice."

"I don't think that you need guarding from much on this planet," Echo chuckled. "Not if you have half the strength as the other Digimon do in their Mega stages. We're just here to make sure that you get to the right place. And to ease your passage through the security around the building."

"It would be very difficult to sneak into that place now," Fives agreed. "And anything the guards don't recognise, like yourself, id a potential target. But if you let us cover your back, we'll be able to get through just fine."

"Alright then," Fatemon smirked. "Take me to my friends!" He spurred his wings and threw himself forwards at an even greater speed, causing the two clones to hit their accelerators and move faster themselves. For the first time in a while, Fatemon felt a genuine grin of excitement building up on his face. At last, he was drawing close to the end of his search.

* * *

All in all, things seemed to be getting better for the Republic. The state which the final battle against the Sith had left it in had been dire, but everybody seemed to be gradually on the road to recovery once more. Crime was still rife of course, as the criminal underworld of the Galaxy had, if anything, expanded during the war. But with the clones having no wars to fight, hopefully they would be able to give the beleaguered police droids the assistance they needed, and not only on Coruscant, but across the rest of the Galaxy.

Riyo Chuchi sighed as she reminisced over the past two weeks. The first half of that time period had probably been the scariest week of her life, what with all the secret keeping she had had to do and her secret missions for the Jedi and the Digimon. But the second week had actually been one of the best.

Her voice had never counted for a whole lot in the Senate before. While people had listened to her, her opinion was taken far less seriously than many others. But things were starting to look up for her now. Thanks to the essential part she had played in the destruction of the Sith, people were not only listening to her with much more attentiveness, but they were even coming to her with questions and asking for advice, where they might have previously gone to somebody more experienced.

And the compliments she had been receiving were nothing short of flattering. People had been echoing Anakin's words all week, calling her one of the bravest Senators to have ever lived. And while Chuchi thought that might have been overdoing it, seeing as she had been scared silly a lot of the time, she was thrilled nonetheless.

It was quite a step up for a Senator that had been in office for little over a year.

She smiled as she mulled over the improvements of the last week. Bail's election campaign had been a phenomenal success. Not only had he received the support of the Jedi Council, but almost every single Senator throughout the known Galaxy had voted for him. And not just the ones from the Republic's side of the war. Separatist Senators had been flying in in droves to remake the old alliances.

If it kept up at this rate, the Galactic Republic was probably going to be completely whole again soon enough. Especially with people like Nute Gunray and his cohorts finally put away. Their trial had been held just yesterday, and while they would have had Sidious to ensure that they got off scot-free in the past, they had no such allegiances now, and they were each jailed for life in maximum security prisons.

Grievous' sentence had been less than that. He had been tried on the same day, and while he had indeed been found guilty, he had been sentenced to fifty years in prison. If he maintained his calm throughout that whole time then he would be set free to do as he pleased, such as return to Kalee and his people, who were now receiving the full support of the Republic, or even serve the Republic itself if he still felt up to it.

No doubt Grievous would have plenty of time to mull over his choices while in jail.

During his trial, Grievous had given out a whole list of remaining Separatist military strongholds and droid factories. Yesterday, a Galaxy-wide campaign had been launched against those facilities and each one of them had been blown sky-high, vaporised off the face of the Galaxy. The three largest facilities had been given a special visit by one of each of the Digimon in the Tenacious Ten, and had been completely obliterated by the powerful beings in their Mega forms alone. It looked like there would be no droid armies being called forth at any point in the near-future.

Most of the droids that had helped in the final battle had been completely de-activated, but their bodies had been retrieved from Tython and brought back to Coruscant in droves. One by one, those that were not tossed into the incinerator to be recycled were being reprogrammed to serve the Republic instead. Hopefully there would be precious little for the droids to do in the near future, but they might prove useful in aiding the clones in skirmishes if something ever did come up.

The only droids that had not been immediately de-activated had been Grievous' four remaining MagnaGuards, who had insisted on following Jedi Master Shaak Ti around the places as per the last instructions of their former master. Shaak Ti had used this to her advantage and gone with a couple of other Council members to Serenno and the palace of Count Dooku. The MagnaGuards had been able to point out any potential traps in the palace, and lead the Jedi to the lightsaber collection that Grievous had mentioned.

Serenno would soon be back in order, and as far as Chuchi was aware, they were already beginning the elections for a new Count in Dooku's place. One that would hopefully _not_ be tainted with evil.

Cad Bane seemed to have completely vanished. There had been no word of him over the past week, so it seemed that he was laying low for a while to see what the Republic did with its new Galaxy and then work out how to maximise his career once again. However, Aayla Secura had personally overseen the delivery of Bane's credits two days after Bane had left, leaving it at the rendezvous point they had agreed on.

When Aayla had returned a couple of days later to see if Bane had taken the money, all she had been able to find was rubble floating around in space. It seemed that Bane, having no need for the small station now that the Republic knew of its location, had decided to wipe it out completely after taking his money, and had therefore blown it up.

The Gungan Grand Army and the Wookiee people had all returned to their worlds shortly after the celebrations had ended. And as for the Tenacious Ten themselves – they seemed to spend most of their time just trying to enjoy themselves.

And when Terriermon was around, that was not a particularly hard thing to do.

Chuchi couldn't blame them though. They'd been through more than almost anybody and yet they were all still standing on their own feet. Who wouldn't want to enjoy themselves after that?

Chuchi smiled to herself and got up from the sofa she was sitting on and moved over to balcony, stepping out into the fresh air to observe the Coruscant night sky. She had no idea what she was doing up so late, or so early depending on how you looked at it, but at least sleep wasn't eluding her through fear like before. In fact, several great weights had been lifted from her shoulders – one of them being that she had finally been able to tell the Papanoidas exactly what the money they had given to her for Bane was far, besides getting Aayla released.

The Chairman and his family had been round to visit the previous day, and had finally been able to meet with the Digimon in person. It had been an interesting experience for everyone. Especially since they had brought Mertiri the former slave girl with them and she had been ecstatic to see the Digimon again.

The Pantoran Senator chuckled. Things were definitely beginning to look up for her and everybody else that she knew. A new Republic was on the horizon, and with Bail as its new Chancellor, she might actually be able to help out a little in its birth.

* * *

Some distance above the Senator, and a pair of speeder bikes flanking an armoured, sword-toting, winged Digimon were approaching 500 Republica at that moment. "This is it then?" Fatemon asked. "It looks like the tallest building here."

"Yeah, this is it," nodded Fives. "If you're Digimon friends are anywhere, then it's most likely that they will be here."

"I don't think they are actually," Fatemon murmured. "I can't sense their presence."

"You have a mind-link to them as well?" Echo queried.

"No, but all Digimon can sense the presence of another at a short distance, and I'm not picking up anything. I don't think they're in this building."

"Well, perhaps not, but this is definitely where they spend most of their time," Fives supplied. "Perhaps they're just out somewhere at the moment, but I'm sure that they'll be back. I'm… not entirely sure what we should do in the meantime. We probably shouldn't go barging in there in the middle of the night, even if we do have a Digimon with us."

"No, I don't think that would a good idea either," agreed Echo. "Maybe we can wait a few hours."

"Or we can talk to her," Fatemon said quickly, three eyes widening as he looked down at the huge building and spotted a young woman on one of the balconies. It was difficult to make out, but the light from the room behind her illuminated her enough for Beelzemon to identify her as the blue-skinned woman from the poster, so he immediately folded his wings and dropped down towards her.

"Wha… hey, wait!" Echo cried, as he and Fives hurried to lower their speeder bikes down after him.

* * *

Chuchi had had many shocks over the last few weeks, but most of those shocks came from revelations that horrified or amazed her rather than the more literal kind of something jumping out at her. Perhaps the only shocks like that had been when Rapidmon had exploded through the wall and almost crushed her and when Barriss had shielded just prevented Aurra Sing's sniper shot from hitting home last week.

And now she was in for another one, because a large winged form suddenly dropped onto the railing of the balcony off to her right, falling out of nowhere and landing smoothly on the stone banister. Chuchi yelped and rolled the other way, pressing her back against the stone at the other side of the railing and staring at the unexpected newcomer in fear.

The big, black wings and three eyes were definitely not the kind of thing that she was accustomed to, and the large sword hanging at its waist was not really something to reassure her. However, as she stared at him while he pushed himself up to his feet, for some reason she felt her fear ebbing slightly. He seemed to give off an aura of purity and strength with greatly soothed her nerves, and he had a rather disarming grin on his face, as well as a pose that indicated no threat whatsoever.

"Hello there," Fatemon nodded to her. "What's your name?"

Chuchi blinked, before she pushed herself off from the railing and stood as tall as she could, which was not that high in the grand scheme of things, and said, "This is my balcony and my apartment so I think I should be asking you that question, stranger? Who are you and what are you doing here?"

Fatemon grinned for a moment and chuckled. "Well, I can see why you and the Digimon are friends. You've got a lot of spirit. Don't worry though, I'm not here to harm you. Far from it, actually. I saw you on one of the posters in main city and was told that you were friends with them. It's very important that I find them as quickly as I can. My name's Fatemon."

"Fate…mon?" Chuchi gasped, catching on immediately. "Mon? You… you mean to say…?"

"Senator," the voice of a clone came from above and Echo and Fives dropped into view to give Chuchi a salute. Echo went on, "Sorry for the interruption, Senator, but we're the ones who guided this Digimon here. He says that he's friends with the Digimon in the Tenacious Ten."

"And we don't think he's lying," Fives added.

"Of course we're not lying," Ai cried. "Why would we lie?"

"We would if we were bad Digimon, right?" Mako asked.

"Yeah, but we're not bad Digimon, are we?" Impmon grinned. "In fact," he added as Fatemon stepped down onto the main balcony and folded his wings. "We're about as far as it's possible to get from being a bad Digimon, and we're proud of it too."

With that, he de-digivolved once more and Impmon gave Chuchi a salute of his own by flicking a finger to and from his forehead. "The name's Impmon, and this is Ai and Mako. We're here to see Renamon, Terriermon and Lopmon and their Tamers."

"Impmon?" Chuchi breathed. "I have heard of you. The Digimon… I mean, the other Digimon… spoke of you often." She smirked and added, "They said you were a rascal and a troublemaker by nature."

"Oh, did they?" Impmon frowned, crossing his arms. "Well, what would you call Terriermon then? If I'm a rascal… and who uses that word anyway… then he sure as hell is one too."

"Momentai," Chuchi chuckled.

Impmon's eyebrows shot up on hearing the word, a word he had not heard anybody saying in far, far too long. He murmured, so quietly that Chuchi only just heard him, "Oh Fanglongmon, I missed that word far, far more than I thought I ever would. Damn. Don't let Terriermon catch you say that or he'll attempt to lynch you. And then Renamon will have to stop him, of course."

Chuchi beamed. She had slotted in the word 'Momentai' as a final test to see if Impmon really had been who he was claiming to be, although at this point she could see little reason for him to lie about it, considering he had Tamers, even if two was an unusual number. And Impmon had passed it, so she stepped forwards with a smile on her face and said, "It's lovely to meet you, Impmon. My name is Riyo Chuchi."

"Riyo?" Impmon blinked. "Seriously. I mean, there's…"

"A young Tamer in your universe who happens to share my name but is a boy?" Chuchi predicted. "Yes well, I have been assured that our names are spelt differently, and I prefer to go by Chuchi anyway. Again, it's nice to make your acquaintance," she preferred her hand and Impmon found himself shaking it too with a grin on his own face.

"Nice to meet you, Chuchi," Impmon chuckled. "Tell me, are you a natural blue?"

Ai and Mako giggled, but Chuchi obviously missed the reference to 'Finding Nemo.' She frowned and said, "Blue? My hair's purple?"

"No, I… oh never mind," Impmon snorted. "Come on, twins, aren't you going to say hello?"

"Hello, Miss Chuchi," Mako replied immediately.

"I really like that gold thingie you have on your head," Ai smiled. "Do you know where I can get one?"

Chuchi smiled and reached a hand up to run her finger along her traditional Pantoran head-dress.

"Well," she said. "I have a couple of spares in my room, but I'm not sure that any of them would fit you, little one. And the nearest place you can get one of these that I know of would be my home planet, Pantora."

"Aw," Ai looked a little disappointed by this news.

"So, you're an alien?" Mako asked her excitedly. "You're a real, genuine alien, aren't you? I can't believe it! I'm talking to an alien."

Chuchi was mildly surprised by the kid's enthusiasm, so she said, "Well… technically I suppose I am an alien to you, since I don't come from either this planet or your planet. But it's not really polite to call anybody an alien in this universe, since many species are actually quite widespread now across dozens of planets."

"Still, you come from another planet," Mako was practically bouncing up and down in excitement. "You travelled through space to get here, didn't you? How awesome is that? I've never been into space before. Is it like the movies where you float around all the time?"

"Er… well, only if the gravity generators malfunction or get turned off," Chuchi replied slowly, beginning to think that this kid might be more hyperactive than Suzie. Then again, he was younger.

Impmon opened his mouth to try and ask a question, but Ai beat him to it by saying, "Are you good friends with our friends then?"

Now Chuchi allowed a genuine smile to light up her face as she nodded, "Yes, indeed I am. I haven't known them for very long, mind you – only a couple of weeks, in fact, but I've been through enough with them to call them some of the best friends that I've ever had the fortune to have. And I think that just about anybody who's worked with them at some point in the past can say the same. Am I right, boys?" she looked up towards Echo and Fives.

"Absolutely," Echo nodded.

"One-hundred percent," Fives agreed. "They saved our necks more than once out there in the field. I remember the time on the planet Shili when MegaGargomon sheltered Echo and I from a huge defoliator blast that was vaporising everything made of organic matter in sight."

"And of course, ZeedGarurumon proved to be a _massive_ help in the final battle last week," Echo added.

"Who?" Impmon blinked, momentarily distracted. "ZeedGarurumon? There are _four_ Digimon in this dimension? Besides me, that is."

"Yes, indeed," Chuchi nodded. "Though Gabumon and his Tamer live on Saleucami now, and not here."

"A real live Gabumon?" Mako cried. "Aww, I've always wanted to meet a Gabumon."

"Well, maybe you'll get the chance to one day," Chuchi smiled. "Anyway, as I was saying, I owe your friends a lot. They've done so much for each and every one of us and not just by freeing our Galaxy – they helped to turn us all into better people. I used to be quite a timid person before they came along, but thanks to them I learned just how strong I could be if I tried hard enough. That's why your friend do, and always will, hold a special place in my heart."

"Aaawww," Ai and Mako grinned at the same time.

Impmon was beginning to feel that the conversation was getting away from where it was supposed to be going – after all, they still had a limited amount of time to accomplish their mission. He was about to ask more about the other Digimon and whether Chuchi knew where they were, but he was interrupted again, this time by a bleeping sound coming from Chuchi's waist.

The three of them watched in fascination as Chuchi murmured, "Excuse me a moment," and pulled a holotransmitter of her belt and activated it. Impmon and the twins stared in fascination as a hologram of the bearded man – the Chancellor – appeared in her palm.

"Ah, Senator Chuchi," nodded Bail. "You're awake. I'm sorry to call you at such a late hour, but I'm afraid we have a potential situation on our hands. Master Yoda has dropped in to tell me about something he sensed a while ago. And he believes it might be related to a Digimon."

Chuchi's eyes glanced down to Impmon for a moment, before she nodded and said, "Alright then. I'll be right there," before signing off. She then chuckled and said, "Well, you three better come with me then. You've got some more people to meet. You two clones are welcome to come along as well, if you wish."

"Are we in trouble?" asked Ai, as they followed Chuchi into her apartment.

"Of course not," Chuchi replied. "Any friend of the Digimon in the Tenacious Ten is a friend of ours. We should just make sure the Chancellor and the Grand Master of the Jedi Order know that you are friends first."

"Okay fine, but I've really got to ask – where are the others?" Impmon blurted out as Chuchi led them out into the corridor. "Where are our friends? It's been so long since we've seen them, and we really need to talk to them again. It's important."

"I know you must be anxious, but I'm afraid that they're not here right now."

"Why not?" Impmon griped, his chest clenching.

"They're on a mission," Chuchi said, simply.

"A… a mission?" Impmon blinked. "But, I thought that this war that everybody has been talking about is over now. Why would they be on a mission now when there's no more of these Sith thingies to get rid of."

"Believe it or not, there are plenty of other things that are still wrong with our Galaxy," Chuchi signed. "It's sad, but true, but the Tenacious Ten promised to sort out as many of our problems as they can, which is why they're currently on a mission to the Outer Rim. Wherever they are right now, it will be lightyears and lightyears away."

"Lightyears!" Impmon yelped. "Well… can't you just call them or something and call them back?"

"They're out of contact for the time being," Chuchi answered. "They're trying to keep the mission as covert as possible. But I spoke with them before they left and if everything goes according to plan, they should be back by tomorrow morning, mid-day at the latest."

Impmon glanced across at his Tamers and murmured, "Well, I really hope you're right."

* * *

A few minutes later, and Chuchi opened the door to Bail Organa's quarters. It was still the same as his old quarters, as he had refused to move into the Chancellor's suite on account of it being 'tainted' as just about everybody put it. There were a number of people already in the room. As well as Bail himself and Yoda, there was Padmé, Onaconda and Mon Mothma, Mace Windu and Obi-Wan Kenobi, all standing together in rough bunch and speaking to each other in grave voices.

"…the chances that this new Digimon is evil?" Padmé was asking.

"We're not sure," Mace replied. "But according to the Digimon, quite a large number of Digimon do have evil hearts, so we cannot just assume that it's a good Digimon, whoever it is."

"Ah, Chuchi," nodded Bail, as the Pantoran stepped into the room with a smile on her face. "We were just discussing the situation. It seems that…"

"…I'm not sure if the same rule applies here," Impmon said as he strode out nonchalantly from behind Chuchi's legs, hands behind his back and looking the picture of innocence, "But where I come from, it's generally considered rude to talk about people behind their back. So, are you guys talking about me?"

He grinned at the surprised looks on the faces on most of the group, and was rather annoyed when he saw that the small, wrinkled, green one with the large ears was not fazed at all. Chuchi snickered and said, "You're almost worse than Terriermon, you know that."

"Oh, the two of us have a loooong history of trying to outdo one another," Impmon snickered. "But I can tell you now, when we combine our skills, we can come up with a prank so badass that you'd be completely blown away."

"I can imagine," Chuchi laughed. She then looked up and said, "There's no need to worry about it everybody. Our latest Digimon happens to be a friend of Renamon, Terriermon and Lopmon's. And he had Tamers."

"Hiya!" Ai and Mako chorused as they leaned out from either side of Chuchi's legs.

"Hmm," Obi-Wan lifted a hand to his beard for a moment. "A history of pranking, a rather unusual dialect and two Tamers. If I were to hazard a guess, I would have to say that you were Impmon. Would I be right?"

"Jeez," Impmon snorted. "Just how much have my friends been telling all you guys about me?"

"Greetings, young Impmon," Yoda stepped forward a couple of paces and nodded his head. "A pleasure to meet you, it is."

"I know," Impmon quipped, a grin on his face to show he was joking. "But while it's nice to meet all of you guys I hope you don't mind me asking; where the heck are all my friends?"

* * *

Well, there it is. No big scene where the heroes meet each other again yet, but it should still have hopefully been an amusing chapter for everybody, and we got to see Impmon finally interacting with the Star Wars universe and meeting with a couple of iconic characters from the Clone Wars series. And I couldn't resist including the scene where he foiled those two Bounty Hunters like that. Hehe. It was fun.

Other than that, not much to say.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Many chapters ago, Aayla Secura made a promise. Now, she and the rest of her team are on a mission to fulfil that promise, and they intend to do so with lots of style and equal amounts of mayhem. But when it's over and they return to Coruscant… well, I think you can guess what's going to happen, even without the title to give you another hint.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 217 : Reunion and a Half**


	217. Reunion and a Half

And now, ladies and gentlemen, the chapter you have all been waiting for. I sincerely hope that this chapter does not disappoint anybody, and that's really all that I have to say on the subject. Enjoy the chapter everybody, because it's been a long chapter in the waiting.

Hooray.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 217:- Reunion and a Half**

* * *

The young Twi'lek woman swayed around on the spot, kicking her legs and spinning her lekku as she revolved in circles, the cold metallic floor biting into her bare feet as danced on the spot, trying to do her best to please her master and his subjects while simultaneously trying to preserve some level of modesty.

And considering the costume that she had been forced into, which seemed to consist of little more than netting wrapped around her body in certain key areas, this was not an easy thing to accomplish. In fact, it was almost impossible, but she kept dancing anyway, doing her best to ignore the fact that most of the occupants of the room were staring at her, particularly at the areas of the body that she was doing her best to cover.

The people all around her had no shame whatsoever, and they knew it. But they also didn't care. All they cared about was watching the dancing girl, their minds conjuring up lewd and indecent images, while jeering and occasionally whistling in an attempt to make her life as miserable as possible. A dancer might not put up with that kind of treatment if they were somewhere else, but this Twi'lek woman was not in those kind of places.

She was a slave to the mighty Jabba the Hutt, and she was currently hating every moment of her existence. But as the fat, greasy slug stared at her along with the rest of the crowd, she kept trying to spin faster and add pace to the dance, because she had seen what happened to slaves who refused to do what Jabba told them to do, and it was an excruciatingly horrible way to die.

And so, she danced on, swaying hypnotically and picking up the pace, trying to keep in time with music that was currently blaring out from all corners of the room. It was far from easy. Her exposed skin, of which there was a lot, felt horrible cold in the dank throne room, and the metal underneath her feet pricked at her and tried to bite at her soles. She was also burdened down by the chains on her wrists and around her neck, weak from lack of food and exhausted from lack of sleep and the fact she had been dancing for close to half an hour now without a break.

And that wasn't even counting the physical damage done to her body, as there were more than a couple of lash marks on her back from where she had been out of line in the past.

Jabba himself stared at her with a cruel smirk on his face, enjoying the show to the extreme. Watching dancing girls, particularly Twi'leks, was his favourite activity after all. This one dancing before him right now was one of his most experienced dancers and one of the ones he had had in his collection the longest.

However, being one of Jabba's personal favourites was _not_ a good thing if you were a slave. Unfortunately, neither was being one of his least favourites. But the way the current slave girl was going, she might end up being the next one to be chained to Jabba's side. It was about time that his son, Rotta, got some more experience at this sort of thing. The only experience the little one had had with females was with that young Jedi Padawan, and he had only viewed her as a rescuer.

And yet, no matter how hard Jabba pushed his slaves, they simply could not rekindle the same fire and energy that those three Jedi had when they had danced for him in the hologram transmission that Bane had brought him last week. Normally he preferred the slow, sensual dancing that showed off the body, but those dancing Jedi's superb and wild skills was something that he wanted to see again too, but the slaves he had simply couldn't pull it off.

Some of them might have been able to if it weren't for the horrible state they were in, but of course, Jabba didn't think of it like that. He just drove them to greater and greater lengths.

He frowned and roared, "Shadoa! Shadoa!"

His protocol droid did not need to translate that. The slave-girl had heard it enough times before to know that word meant, "Faster." And so she span faster danced hard, gasping for breath and trying not to cry.

Hope had spread through the ranks of the slave-girls when that Jedi had made a promise to return several weeks ago. But that hope was once again fading away. Would they _ever_ be able to get free from this horrible quagmire of an existence?

* * *

Not far away, several pig-like Gamorrean guards were standing next to the huge durasteel doors that made up the main entrance to the palace. Both of them grunted, bored out of their minds. They could hear the sound of the distant music coming from the throne room and wished that they could be down there, watching the dancing as well. Nothing interesting ever happened up here. The change of the guard couldn't come soon enough for them.

That was when the door behind them thudded behind them thudded three times – a trio of sharp raps that could only mean somebody knocking. This in itself was not an unusual occurrence, so the nearest Gamorrean merely turned around and pressed a button to get the eye-holocam to investigate.

The image from the holocam appeared on a little screen next to the door, and the Gamorrean focused on that screen to see who the visitors were for himself. He started when a large, furry face appeared on the screen. A Wookiee.

The Wookiee roared and grabbed the holocam in one paw, flexing it to crush it like it was made of glass. Moments later and a blue lightsaber blade plunged through the door and began to drag itself along and through it, cutting in an arc down towards the floor.

The Gamorreans were shocked, but they immediately rallied and hefted their big axes, one near the back hurrying off to raise the alarm, as the lightsaber passed the mark of creating an uncannily perfect semi-circle and dragged its way back upwards within a few seconds to complete the entrance.

As the guards took up ready stances, the slab of metal that had been cut out of the door exploded inwards, hurtling down the corridor and slamming into three of them, ploughing them into one another and knocking them to the ground in heaps dazed and with a couple of broken snouts. The remaining guards screeched and charged forwards, but they were immediately met by lasers as a pair of clones rolled through the gap in the door and landed in crouches, firing from four blaster pistols between them.

Commander Bly and Captain Rex were back in the action, and they roared as they went about their tasks with superb efficiency. Bly blasted a Gamorrean in the head with one shot and offloaded another three into the stomach of another to drop it like a stone, before both him and Rex gunned down the next with a pair of shots to the bulging throat. Rex then stepped upwards and blasted another in the chest with a pair of quick shots, before shooting across himself and down another corridor off to the left, where another one was hurrying towards them.

The remaining Gamorreans stepped backwards in fear as a silhouette appeared in the circular doorway, framed by the bright desert light that was pouring in from the other side. It was the silhouette of the former Chosen One, the Hero With No Fear, and the one who had taken down the Sith himself – Anakin Skywalker.

Anakin smirked and barrelled into the corridor, dashing past the clones, who leapt up to run alongside him and guard his flanks. Anakin leapt into a spinning, flying kick that slammed another Gamorrean across the nose and sent him careening to the side, dropping down low and slashing up with his blue lightsaber to cut through the axe of another, snatch the end without the blade on it and slam the pig-like guard across the face with it, then whirling around to throw it towards another, striking it in the eye and causing it to screech in pain.

Anakin then dashed past another Gamorrean as it swung its axe down at him, the metal blade clanging against the stone floor as it missed its mark. Anakin placed a foot on the axe handle to wrench it out of the guard's hand and leap up to slam both feet into his face and shove him into the wall, rebounding off said face and flipping over and around to grab another Gamorrean's axe in one hand, hack off the arm holding it and kick the pig-man away with a hefty kick to the stomach.

A couple of lasers flashed to either side of Anakin as Bly and Rex gunned down another pair of guards between them, but then a third Gamorrean bolted past the Jedi and headed straight for the two clones with his axe raised. Rex quickly hit him in the stomach, but this guard appeared to be made of sterner stuff than the others, because he kept coming, squealing in fury and its small eyes ablaze with rage.

And that was when Chewbacca bolted past the two clones and rammed the surprised Gamorrean with his shoulder to send it flying backwards, but before it got more than a couple of feet, Chewbacca had grabbed it by the wrist and yanked it back, pummelling it full in the face with his furry fist and instantly knocking it out. The Wookiee roared as two more Gamorreans bore down on his with axes pulled back and ready to swing and he struck a wide stance, teeth bared and ready for them.

As the closest one swung its axe, Chewbacca lashed out and seized it by the handle just underneath the blade, yanking it out of the guard's grip and using it to counter the swing of the other guard and send the axe flying out of his hand to embed itself in the wall. Chewbacca bellowed and lashed upwards with the axe, slamming the handle of the axe into the side of the head of one of the guards to send him rolling away and then lunging for the second, seizing him by his bulbous throat and powering him into the wall next to his own axe.

Chewbacca then twirled the axe he was holding in his paw experimentally, looking quite pleased with the result. As he did so, another two charged him, but he unslung his bowcaster from his back and fired it at one of them to take him out while barely looking, and Anakin jumped on the other from behind and plunged his blade into its back as it fell, before whirling about to Force-push several others away and back down the corridor.

"Grenades!" Bly yelled, as he and Rex darted forwards and hurled one of the little explosive devices each towards the grouped Gamorreans. They didn't stand a chance as most of them trampled over their fellows in the attempt to get away and at least four of them were killed in the resulting bang.

"Come on!" Anakin called to his three companions. "Let's bring that miserable, fat slug down to his figurative knees! We make for the throne room!"

As the Gamorreans attempted to regroup, the two clones, the Jedi and the Wookiee hurtled down the corridor towards them, roars on their lips as they threw themselves into battle.

* * *

Jabba jumped as the explosions rocked the palace several floors above him. The Twi'lek dancer fell over and the numerous scumbuckets lining the walls looked up in surprise. Rotta wailed and hid his face in his father's tail, as Jabba shouted, "Ki na kuna pe?"

"Sounds like fighting!" cried one of the other residents of the room.

A Gamorrean suddenly lurched into the room, pointing out the doors and loudly squealing that they were under attack in their own native, piggy language. The other Gamorreans in the room lifted their axes and charged outwards to provide reinforcements, while the Twi'lek slave on the floor looked up with wide eyes, and her heart going nineteen to the dozen.

Could it be? Could it actually be…?

* * *

The slave barracks of the palace was one of the most horrendous places in the entire Galaxy. It was so large that it consisted of practically an entire level of the complex, featuring a long corridor lined with cells on either side. The cells were roughly about nine feet long and six feet white – tiny little rooms, and they were crammed almost to total capacity with slaves, chained to all three walls of each cell by their wrists, ankles and necks, and so densely packed that they barely had space to move and were squashed up against each other practically the whole time.

Most of them were female. There was one cell that consisted of males, but there were only seven of them, and they were only there because they were people who had angered Jabba and were now made to serve him and his posse food and drinks at special events as a special form of humiliation. The rest of them were women, predominantly Twi'leks but also many humans and a scattering of other species, and they were all there as dancers and to be abused by the residents of the palace, in more ways than one.

All of them were scantily clad, all of them were freezing cold as well as wet from the damp, unkempt conditions of the place, all of them were starving, and many of them were injured in some fashion or in varying degrees of illness. And the only people who seemed to care and try and do something about it where the other slaves.

After all, the only thing the slaves really had were one another.

There were several guards patrolling the corridor, but at the sounds of more explosions coming from above, everybody looked up, nervous and afraid, the slaves huddling even closer together as they wondered what was going on up there. The whole level seemed to rock as another explosion sent dust sprinkling from the ceiling.

But the fighting did seem to be quite distant from down here.

They were about to be corrected.

The head of one of the guards suddenly snapped backwards as if he had been hammered by something invisible, and he went hurtling back down the corridor to slam into one of the others. The remaining four quickly hefted their blasters or spears in shock, wondering what the heck was happening.

They were shocked to the core when a Twi'lek and a Togruta, both of them sporting a pair of lightsabers, suddenly appeared in front out of thin air right in front of another two guards, nimbly slashing through their spear handles and sweeping round to kick them in the face in perfect synchronisation, dropping them to the ground immediately.

The other two quickly opened fire with their blasters, but the Jedi calmly blocked the shots while a large, yellow fox suddenly bolted between them and hurtled down the corridor on all fours, agilely dodging more blaster bolts and then pouncing into the air with arms splayed, seizing them both by the neck at the same time and slamming them into the ground, knocking them both out at the exact same moment.

"Guards neutralised," Renamon declared as she turned back to look at the other two she had sneaked down here under her perception filter.

"Alright," Aayla nodded. "We should get this done as quickly as possible. Renamon, guard the door. Ahsoka, you take that side of the corridor and I'll take this one."

"On it."

"Gotcha!"

As Renamon bounded past them once more to stand ready by the door, Aayla dashed to the first slave cell and opened the door with a wrench of the Force, breaking the lock clean off in the process and darting inside. Some of the slaves shrank back at the sight of her, but some of them had eyes that were shining with a hope that had probably not been in them for months on end. Aayla smiled at the them reassuringly and sheathed her green blade, bending down to the first slave and using the Force to bunch all the chains pinning her to the wall together and slashing through them at once with her blue blade, freeing her immediately.

She place a hand on the slave's shoulder and said, "Do not run yet, okay. We must wait until we have freed each and every slave down here and then we'll all head out together, okay?"

The slave nodded, a bright smile lighting up her face as Aayla set to work on freeing the other slaves one by one with swift strokes of her lightsaber.

"I think we should have brought Barriss with us," Ahsoka called from across the room, as she cut through the last of the chains holding the slaves in her own cell block with her shoto. "Some of these people have some pretty horrible injuries."

"I can see that," nodded Aayla. "But Barriss has her own job to do and we have to finish ours quickly."

"I'm on it, I'm on it," Ahsoka agreed as she darted out of the cell and moved on to the next one, slashing through the lock and pulling the door open to repeat the process. Aayla quickly followed her example and moved on to the next cell, as the slaves began to filter out of their former prisons, the stronger ones supporting the others and still trailing their manacles, staring at the Jedi and Renamon in wonder.

Renamon glanced back at them and nodded reassuringly. "Don't worry," she said. "We'll get you out of here. You can count on it."

Her eyes then narrowed as her head whipped round back to the corridor again, shadows on the far wall indicating that they had company. Her tail lashed out behind her as a pair of Gamorreans rushed into view, screaming in their own language about invasion. When they saw Renamon with a small horde of freed Twi'lek slaves behind her they faltered in shock, but they recovered quickly enough and snorted with rage, lifting their axes and charging forwards to meet her.

It was not much of a challenge for the experienced Digimon. The slaves behind her retreated fearfully, but she simply kicked herself off from the floor and threw herself into a barrel-roll, twisting about in mid-air as she ignited Power Paw aura on all four paws. She swung down and over the clumsy axe stroke of the first guard to pound him in the face with a foot and push him into the ground, then lash out with her fist to pound the other in the side of the head and send him crashing into the wall.

Two more Gamorreans hove into view at the end of the corridor, but Renamon span to face them and crossed her arms, eyes narrowing as she summoned her, **"DIAMOND STORM!"** and bouncing into the air to unleash it down on them like a hailstorm that send them catapulting backwards, the blazing shards carrying out their task with ruthless efficiency.

The slaves, who were not quite as up to date on Galactic affairs as most other people, stared at the Digimon in wonderment, wondering who the heck she was. As Renamon backflipped back over to them again, she called out with her mind, _Come on, Terriermon. Time is off the essence now._

* * *

_Yes, thank you, Renamon. I know that,_ Terriermon replied as he dropped himself lower, ears outstretched and catching the desert air as he tried to keep his course as steady as possible. Lopmon was right next to him, doing the same thing, but it was not particularly easy, even with both of them, to steer their burden close in to the cliff edge.

That burden was Barriss, who had managed to get herself yet another new cloak and hood over the last week, and since the two Digimon had been enthused with strength cards it was relatively easy to lift her by the arms, but still not easy to carry her. They had dropped down the back of the palace towards the wall of the cliff that it sat directly in front of, keeping Barriss as close to the rock as they could while dropping lower all the time.

Eventually, they found what they were looking for. It had been skilfully hidden in beneath a large overhang, but there was a large metal door built into the side of the cliff – the entrance to the hangar for Jabba's skiffs and other vehicles which he might want to use to go out into the Dune Sea to, say, feed somebody to a Sarlacc.

Barriss smirked. "Looks like interrogating Greedo about the layout of this place is paying off," she nodded.

"Yeah, but the highlight was when Anakin walked into his cell and he nearly wet himself," Terriermon snickered as they swooped underneath the overhang.

"If we could try to focus," Lopmon chided her brother as they drew up beside the door. She then flapped harder to keep them aloft as Terriermon let go of Barriss' hand, meaning that Lopmon was carrying the young Jedi's weight all by herself. It was slightly awkward, but it was better than the substantial drop below them, as Barriss activated her lightsaber and plunged it into the door, moving her arm around in a small circle to cut a hole only a couple of feet in diameter.

"Okay, Terriermon," she nodded as she used the Force to push the hole inwards. Terriermon nodded and swooped in through the gap, tucking his ears into his sides as he did so before snapping them open again on the other side. There were several guards in the hangar who had noticed what was going on, but Terriermon plunged downwards and whipped himself into a Terrier Tornado to plough through two of them, before leaping onto the console beside the hangar door and flicking a few switches.

A laser lashed across the room and slammed the wall next to Terriermon, but his work was already done and he slammed the final button before leaping out of the way of the next shot. As the hangar doors slowly began to grind upwards, he dodged to and fro, avoiding the few bolts sent his way with practiced ease. This was nothing compared to the volume of shots the droid army had once thrown at him.

The moment the gap was wide enough, Lopmon and Barriss swooped in, the former depositing the latter and allowing the Jedi to bound forwards across the room to slash one guard through the chest and grab his body with the Force to hurl him to the side to intercept the shot of another before she charged in, blocking the next shot and swiping through the blaster with one swift stroke and pulsing him backwards with the Force, and then lashing over her shoulder and twirling around to continue blocking as the final guard peppered her with blaster shots.

The guard looked up when he heard a soft thump on the skiff above his head, to see that Lopmon had just landed on the side next to him. He started backwards, but was too late to stop Lopmon from raining ice shards from her mouth down on him. He yelled and covered his face with his hands, allowing the small Digimon to leap into the air and slam herself into his stomach and knock him into another skiff, which he slammed the back of his head onto to fall to the ground, unconscious.

"That was quick," Terriermon remarked as he landed nearby.

"Yes, but it's not over yet," Barriss agreed as she looked up at the sound of another explosion coming from above. "You know where we you guys have to go?"

"We're on it," nodded Lopmon, and she and her twin brother lifted off from the ground and shot off in the down one exit from the hangar, while Barriss dashed through another. Each of them would have their own roles to play in the upcoming skirmish, and they intended to ensure that Jabba did not escape this time. He had been allowed to do what he wanted for too long, and while their actions here was sure to start a war with the Hutt clans, they now had more than enough resources to combat the other members of the slug family.

It was justice that had been long-awaiting the fat crimelords.

* * *

Jabba was not sure what he was supposed to be doing right now, but he felt he had an upper hand, despite the situation. He had sealed his throne room, dropping the heavy blast doors that was the main entrance, while the other residents had all drawn their weapons and were pointing them towards said blast door, waiting and listening intently. Jabba had no intention of fleeing his own palace, not until it was absolutely clear that there was no other option.

The people in the room could fully hear the sounds of combat coming from the other side of the thick door, drawing closer and closer with each passing second. The faint sounds of blaster fire, swinging lightsaber, squealing Gamorreans and the loud roar of an angry Wookiee were very much in evidence despite the thick metal and rock which stood between the fighting and the waiting people.

There was a couple of minutes of this, before a loud squeal and a heavy thud against the blast doors, indicating a Gamorrean had just been slammed into it on the other side, made everybody flinch. There was the sound of faint scuffling come from the other side, two final blaster shots followed by the squeal of another dying guard and one final smacking sound accompanied by a loud growl from the Wookiee, and everything was still.

For a few moments.

Then there was the sound of a lightsaber blade being thrust through the door. The metal was too thick even for a lightsaber to reach all the way through, but to the astonishment of the Hutt and all his men, a large patch of the metal at around the chest height of an average humanoid began to glow and heat up at an alarming rate, the metal going from solid and immovable one moment to being liquid and molten the next, the super-heated orange slag running down the rest of the doorframe.

The Jedi was effectively melting his way through the door by holding his blade in it.

Even Jabba was looking a little nervous by this point, but he obstinately refused to try and escape, remaining convinced that he had a trump card of sorts, something that the Jedi would not be able to counter. Of that, he was sure. So, he continued to maintain his lofty perch and did his best to look smug as the Jedi beyond the door slowly pushed his way through.

One of Jabba's closest confidents and one of the main orchestrators of the slave trade that went on in the Hutt's palace, a male white-skinned Twi'lek by the name of Bib Fortuna, was a little less keen to trust in Jabba's plan, and was slowly backing away and to make sure Jabba didn't notice, heading for the small door at the far side of the room which could take him to the elevator which Jabba used to reach his private chambers or the hangar.

He surreptitiously pushed the button to open the elevator doors, preparing to slip inside so that he could head down the hangar in order to make his own getaway if things came to the worst. It took a few moments, but eventually the doors opened and tried to hurry through…

…only for a hand to be planted on his chest from inside the elevator and prevent him from entering.

He looked up and there was a sharp intake of breath as he found himself staring into the face of Jedi Knight Barriss Offee, who was wearing a slight smirk.

"Going somewhere?" she asked him.

Bib yelped in fear, and then he yelped again when Barriss flexed her fingers and he went flying backwards across the room to roll several feet and crash against the side of Jabba's throne. Barriss darted into the throne room just as the attention of all its occupants switched over to her side of the room. Jabba yelled in surprise as his subordinates whirled around to point their weapons at her, the Mirialan Jedi activating her lightsaber and blocking or dodging the first salvo with relative ease.

But before much more of a defence could be organised, the molten section of the door suddenly exploded inwards and showered scalding hot slag over the nearest of Jabba's men. Anakin had pulled his lightsaber out a few seconds ago, allowing Bly and Rex to plant a couple of detonators on the door beside the section he'd melted to finish the job. Anakin dived through the gap and sprang up with a wave of his hand, sending about six of Jabba's men flying to the side.

Barriss immediately went into action herself and pulled several more forwards with the Force to crash into the wall on either side of her, just as the two clones dashed in with blasters blazing and Chewbacca squeezed his way in after them, making his way towards the controls for the door to open it fully.

But then Jabba cried out, "PONKI!" and this immediately brought all activity to a halt. The Jedi and clones held their weapons ready while Chewbacca froze with his paws over the controls.

The huge Hutt glared at Anakin and said, "Chuba ki un isti, Jedi! Me rini jijita kigar!"

The ever-present protocol droid translated, "The mighty Jabba demands to know what you are doing, Jedi. He thought that he was an ally of the Republic."

"Did you now?" Anakin raised an eyebrow. "Well, the last time I check, the alliance between the Hutt clan and the Republic was only for as long as the war lasted, and the war ended last week. I'm quite surprised you weren't prepared for this, Jabba. Did you expect us to just sit back to continue your nefarious crimes against both the Galaxy and humanity."

"We are here to bring you to justice and liberate all your slaves," Barriss scowled. "And that is exactly what we intend to do?"

Jabba smirked triumphantly and said, "Chuba na naga a kispa ya shaga, chuba hag? Wali, ki aba ka wanga?"

He pointed towards the middle of the room, and his subordinates parted to reveal two Gamorreans holding the Twi'lek woman who had been dancing for Jabba earlier in place, each one gripping the chains attached to her wrists so her arms were outstretched and she was trapped exactly between the two of them. She looked terrible, and the stomachs of both the Jedi, the clones and the Wookiee all clenched.

"Makan himpi dupi ni, ipa bon choba troo ya trapunka jisa ranco pre!" Jabba declared, his thick hand hovering over a large button directly to his left.

"If anybody moves a muscle," the droid repeated. "Mighty Jabba will open the trapdoor beneath her feet and drop her into the rancor pit below."

"Why you…" Bly growled, shifting his blaster towards the Hutt, but Jabba's hand lowered towards the button the moment that he twitched, causing Bly to freeze in his tracks. Jabba could quite clearly see the hesitation on the part of the Jedi and he smirked broadly, believing that he had them cornered. If there was one thing he knew about the Jedi, it was that they would never willingly risk the life of an innocent. Particularly one as pitiful as this slave.

It was just so predictable really.

Barriss and Anakin both glanced at each other, as if silently asking the other what they were going to do now, and whether they should risk trying something. Jabba's hand was less than an inch over the button and if his reflexes were quick enough, he could drop her into the pit in a mere instant before they could do anything about it.

The slave herself stared at Anakin with a pleading look in her eyes, silently begging him not to do anything stupid. She did not want to die any more than she wanted to remain here.

Jabba chuckled to himself, feeling his confidence rushing back as if his victory was assured.

Which was why he was blown away when Anakin said two words which were among the list of things he had least been expecting him to say:-

"Go ahead."

Jabba blinked in astonishment, and the Twi'lek slave gasped in shock and horror. Most of the crowd looked perturbed as well, but Anakin and Barriss sprang forwards with lightsabers raised and Jabba reflexively slammed his hand down on the button.

The trapdoor beneath the Twi'lek's feet opened up and the Gamorreans let go of her chains, causing her to plummet directly down the chute below, screaming in terror at the thought of the horrible monster that was waiting for her at the bottom, which she had seen devouring many other slave girls that had displeased their master in the past.

She rolled to a stop as she fell out of the chute and scrambled to her feet, automatically trying to find a place where she could hide before the huge beast noticed her.

She was therefore quite shocked when she saw said giant rancor lying unconscious on the ground in front of her with a huge lump on the top of its head, and an enormous bunny that was over twice as tall as _it_ was hunched over the top of it and pressing the body into the ground, almost bent completely double in order to fit inside the pit.

Antylamon looked up at the woman and smiled. "Hello," she said. "Good of you to drop in."

"Oi. I thought we agreed I would make the jokes," Terriermon objected from where he was standing on one of the many rock outcroppings nearby.

"Sorry," Antylamon chuckled, delivering a hefty thwack to the top of the out-cold rancor's head for good measure. "I just couldn't resist."

"Meh. It was an overused joke anyway," Terriermon replied, before he took off and swept over to the confused Twi'lek, exploding into light as he did so and forcing her to shield her eyes and yelp in surprise.

She was then seized by what appeared to be a large, green bazooka and pressed against Rapidmon's torso, as the Ultimate level Digimon flung a Miracle Missile straight upwards at the ceiling, blowing it to shrapnel which poured out and slammed into the ceiling and tossed most of Jabba's minions flying, while causing Jabba to roar in surprise as practically the whole area in front of his throne was detonated in the blast.

Rapidmon shot out of the hole and immediately shrank down to Gargomon, landing with a thump next to Barriss and depositing the terrified Twi'lek woman next to Barriss, lowering her to the floor gently.

Below, Antylamon squeezed past the unconscious rancor until she was beneath the hole and stood up, raising her huge upper body out of it and scaring the bejesus out of Jabba, before reverting to Turuiemon and jumping simultaneously, timing it so that she too bounded out of the hole and landed with a flip beside Barriss in her Champion form.

"What's up, fat-ass?" Gargomon grinned as he cocked his cannons and aimed them towards Jabba's head. "Happy to make our acquaintance?"

"Language in front of the kid, Terriermon," chided Turuiemon.

"Oh, sorry," Gargomon chuckled. "But the point still stands."

"Yes, it does," nodded the other bunny, her switchblades lashing out into the attack position. "So, what do you say we get down to business.

Jabba's eyes were wide in fear, darting towards the elevator on the side of the room, but knowing that he would never be able to get there in time if he made a break for it. There was no way his huge slug body could outpace… anything, really. Especially not the people who had invaded his home like this.

Still, several of his subordinates had survived Rapidmon's blast and were scrambling to their feet, hefting their weapons and pointing them towards the Digimon and Jedi to open fire once again. The two Jedi span into motion and blocked the shots, as Gargomon and Turuiemon whirled behind Barriss, pulling the slave woman with them and readying their attacks…

Only to find that there was no need to. During all the commotion, Chewbacca had opened the door fully, and now a sudden horde poured through the blast doors behind Bly and Rex – Aayla and Ahsoka at the head of the strongest of the former slaves. The two Jedi bounded straight across the huge hole in the floor, drawing the fire of the scumbags around the sides in the process, allowing the former slaves to set themselves upon their former tormentors with a will, beating them into the ground with fury written all over their faces.

"Good timing," Anakin complimented across the room, as Aayla and Ahsoka landed.

"That's what we were aiming for," Ahsoka replied with a smirk.

Jabba stared at the scene before him with a shrinking sense of defeat. His mind was much more agile than his body would ever be, but even he could not think of a way of getting out of this situation. The Jedi and their allies had struck with alarming co-ordination, in an attack that would have been nearly impossible to pull off with the timing to perfection, and yet they had done it.

Was this the power of the mindlink which he had heard they possessed.

Suddenly his son levitated upwards out of the crook in his tail and floated over towards Ahsoka, who took the Huttlet gently in both hands and smiled down at him. "Hey, Stinky," she grinned. "Did you miss me and my Master?"

Rotta gurgled happily and waved his stubby arms, somehow managing to look cute despite the fact he was essentially a miniature version of his father. Ahsoka chuckled and said, "I hope you don't mind, Rotta, but we're going to arrest your daddy now. He's committed to many crimes on the Galaxy. But when you'll grow up, you'll be a good Hutt, won't you?"

"Now, that I would like to see," Gargomon snickered.

And then something heavy slammed into Jabba's back. The Hutt was extremely heavy for an invertebrate and he found it difficult to move himself around, but in a huge burst of strength, Chewbacca heaved him forwards and actually _flung_ the huge Crime Lord into the air, over the edge of his throne and straight over the huge hole that led to the rancor pit. Jabba wailed as he began to fall…

…only for a large, transparent bubble to form around him and catch him, suspending him in the middle of the room. The occupants of the room glanced towards the doors and spotted Taomon, holding a symbol in one paw and wearing a smirk on her face.

"I hope you like it in there, Jabba," she said, as she floated the bubble over towards her. "Because you're going to be staying in there for quite some time."

"Anybody in the immediate vicinity had better be wearing a gas-mask when Taomon lowers that shield," Gargomon snorted.

"Indeed," Anakin laughed. Despite himself, he couldn't help but feel a thrill of triumph at this little victory, as the Hutts and their subordinates had abused him for years in his childhood. The former Chosen One nodded across the room at Aayla, who winked at him. This was as much a victory for her too, thanks to the subjugation Jabba and his kind had put her people under. But now, she had fulfilled her promise to the slaves here and returned to set them all free.

"Alright then, guys," Anakin smirked, as the former slaves finished beating the remaining scumbags senseless. "We might have won here, but we've still got work to do. Rex, Bly, call in the rest of the fleet and go with Taomon to put his royal sliminess here in a cell. Gargomon, Turuiemon – you two come with me to mop up the last of the staff of this place – anyone who deserves to be put behind bars cannot be allowed to escape. Aayla, I reckon you can handle the former slaves, and Barriss, you go with her to treat some of the most injured. Snips… you can play babysitter until we figure out what the heck to do with Stinky there."

"It'll be just like old times," Ahsoka grinned.

"And you," Anakin pointed to the protocol droid still standing on the throne next to Chewbacca. "Get a new job."

* * *

It did not take long to finish the job at the palace, especially when they called in the clone reinforcements. The troops of the 501st and the 327th scoured the building, rooting out everyone who was trying to hide away and taking them into custody where they belonged. Barriss was kept busy healing the various wounds of the former slaves, while Aayla spent a large portion of the time reassuring a young human girl who couldn't have been much older than thirteen. How Jabba had managed to get his slimy hands on someone that young, she didn't want to know.

Meanwhile, Ahsoka introduced Rotta to the three Tamers who had been waiting outside with their cards at the ready. All of them were friendly to the little Huttlet, who had obviously yet to develop his father's slimier thought patterns, but they all had to hold their noses when they got close to him. Trying not to breathe in through their noses didn't seem to help much.

When they all did finally leave, Anakin and Aayla briefly toyed with the idea of blowing up the palace completely, but eventually decided against it. For one thing, none of them had been entirely sure what to do with the unconscious rancor, but upon finding its master and carer – a male slave by the name of Malakili, who appeared to have quite a close bond with it – they decided to simply let the man continue looking after it as he wished, as long as he swore not to set it on any more innocent victims, which he had done.

* * *

When the group had made their departure back to Coruscant, the former slaves were ecstatic. They were completely over the moon and they could not really be blamed for it. They filled the hangar of the _Intrepid_ and many of them started dancing about, revelling in the fact that they weren't being forced to do it anymore. Tears poured down faces and they kept hugging each other and alternately running up to the Jedi or the Digimon, or even a random clone that was taken completely off guard as they threw their arms around them for a few moments, before letting go to continue the celebrations.

As with the slaves that had been rescued from the Dark Acolyte base on Boz Pity, it was decided that they would take all the slaves back to Coruscant for full evaluation and treatment to make sure there was nothing that Barriss had missed or to cure those that were ill, before letting _them_ decide what they wanted to do with their lives. Nobody was going to be ordering these people around at any point in the near future.

Jabba himself was placed in the brig and largely ignored. Nobody wanted to get that close to him anyway.

* * *

The cruisers entered Coruscant's atmosphere again close to midday, many hours after they had departed from Tatooine. They had tried to keep their mission as covert as possible to ensure that Jabba didn't get wind of an impending attack, and it had worked like a charm. And now, they were home again, victorious.

"I just can't believe it," Aayla smiled, as she looked out towards the Coruscant skyline. "We actually did it. I never thought that we would get round to it, but somebody finally took down Jabba the Hutt, and it was us."

"It does feel good, doesn't it?" Anakin grinned.

"Of course, the moment the Hutt families get wind of this, there's going to be a lot of trouble. And we've already just got ourselves out of a war."

"I know that," Aayla replied. "But I just couldn't live with myself waiting around to let those poor slaves suffer when I had nothing more important to be doing any longer."

"And we completely agree with you," Ahsoka nodded.

"Tchah! I say bring on the Hutts," Terriermon declared. "It's about time they got off their high pedestals and got out to visit somewhere new, like, say, prison. When they're there, _then_ they can sit there and do nothing but baste."

"Thank you, Terriermon, for that lovely mental imagery," Henry retched slightly.

"There's a Hutt involved," Rika reminded him. "It's a bit difficult to make anything related to them pleasant, even if you were willing enough to try."

"True that," nodded Henry.

"Well, I'm more than willing to take the fights to the Hutts at last!" Anakin agreed firmly. "Terriermon is right. They've gone unchecked for too long, and you know what happens when pests start to blight the area around you – you get rid of them."

"An apt comparison actually," Renamon chuckled.

"Hey, what do you say we be extra cruel to Jabba and put him in the same cell as his uncle, Ziro?" Ahsoka suddenly grinned. "Not only do they hate each other's guts, but Jabba will have to put up with Ziro's constant whining and that irritating voice of his for… however long it is that a Hutt lives."

"I like that thought," Terriermon grinned. "Wish I'd thought of it."

"I imagine the rest of the prisoners in the neighbouring cells would not appreciate it much either," Barriss chuckled. "Thanks to the smell and all. And what do we plan to do with your little pet Huttlet, Ahsoka?"

"He's not my pet," Ahsoka replied, looking down at Rotta who was rolling around on the floor nearby. "But, I don't have a clue what to do with him. We can't put him in jail, because he hasn't done anything wrong yet. Killing him isn't an option either, and we can't give him to a good-natured Hutt to look after. Because the last time I checked, there _were_ no good-natured Hutts."

"Well, I'm sure we'll think of something," Aayla smiled.

"We're about ready to land, Generals," Bly said as he strode over to the group. "And it appears that we have a welcoming committee down there. The Chancellor and some of the other Senators and Jedi Council."

"They probably want to here just how mad the other Hutts are going to be," Rika snickered.

"Answer – very," Ahsoka nodded, with some slight satisfaction.

"I'm sure we can handle them, right?" Anakin turned to the rest of the team with a confident smile on his face. That smile turned to a frown when he saw that three of his team, the three Digimon to be exact, had suddenly gone incredibly stiff. Renamon's fur was standing on end in places, as was the hair of the bunnies, though that was more difficult to make out.

"Guys?" he asked. "Are you alright?"

That caught the attention of the rest of the group, who turned to look at the Digimon in bewilderment. "Renamon, what's wrong?" Rika asked her taller partner. She had not seen them like this for quite a while.

"It… it can't be…" murmured Renamon.

"Gabumon?" Lopmon asked.

"No, not Gabumon, but definitely familiar," Terriermon shook his head. "But… it's impossible, surely."

"What? What's going on?" Barriss asked, glancing about warily.

The ship touched down and the three Digimon rapidly glanced at each other. "Outside!" they yelled, and before anybody could stop them, Renamon whirled around and bolted for the door, charging into the corridor so fast that the door barely had time to open for her, each of the bunnies clinging to her shoulders as they hung on tightly.

The rest of the group were in motion almost before they realised what had happened, their instincts hardwired into the minds of the other three as they hurried after the trio of Digital Monsters. Aayla reached out with her mind and called out, _Guys, seriously! What are you doing? What's going on?_

_It shouldn't be possible! _Renamon shouted back. _But there's no mistaking. We can sense the presence of another Digimon, just outside the ship!_

_What?_ The three Tamers shouted at the same time.

_That's pretty much what we were thinking! _Terriermon replied.

_Whoever it is, it feels familiar,_ Lopmon responded. _But that's not necessarily a good thing._

_Do you think it could be Parallelmon?_ Ahsoka asked.

_Oh no, he's definitely dead. Anubimon himself picked him up – he couldn't escape from the Land of the Dead, _Renamon explained. _But it's still… familiar. But, at the same time… not familiar._

The Jedi and Tamers glanced at each other as they ran – the Digimon had already pulled some distance ahead – and they hurriedly increasing their speed. Whatever was going on, it was sure to be interesting, no matter what the end result.

* * *

Impmon stared up at the enormous ship, his eyes wide and his mind blown away as he beheld the giant structure. It was larger than a Boeing 747 jet plane, and it was capable of going up beyond the atmosphere and into space. Indeed, it had just come from space, and while the Digital World didn't have an outer space, the concept was still boggling to his brain.

Ever since he had been introduced to all these important people early this morning, he had not slept a wink, waiting anxiously for there to be some news of his friends. Ai and Mako, exhausted from lack of sleep and all the excitement, had dropped off next to Padmé and Chuchi, but Impmon had remained awake, listening as the crowd around him had filled him in a little on what had been going on, and exactly why the former Super Six had become so famous.

He had to admit that if half the things they had told him were really true (and he intended to ask the others at some point to see if they were because many of the things he had heard were utterly ridiculous sounding) then they had been doing even more than he had. And he thought that his last half a year had been pretty busy.

Now it was later, and the twins were awake once more, while they had received word at practically first light of a successful mission, stating that they would be returning home now and would probably arrive by midday. Now, it was midday, and he and his Tamers were standing before the rest of the group, staring at the cruiser as it came in to land.

"So they're definitely in there?" Ai asked.

Impmon's stomach was churning as he nodded. "Oh yes," he breathed. "They're in there. I can sense them – three Digimon inside that big ship."

Nobody said anything else. They couldn't find the words. All three of them had been waiting for so long to find their friends once more, and they were each praying with all their souls and hearts that they were not mistaken, that this was the end of the line at last and that they were finally… _finally_… going to see their friends again.

The tenseness of the moment mounted as the ship's huge side doors opened and the large ramp descended outwards and downwards towards them, causing them to instinctively step back as it loomed overhead before touching onto the ground right in front of them. Then the three of them stared up its metallic length and to the dark doors beyond.

For a few moments, there was nothing.

And then… suddenly… Impmon's heart stopped completely as a yellow fox Digimon bounded into, coming to a halt at the top of the ramp and standing tall on her hind legs to stare outwards at the group beyond. And, in plain sight on either of the fox's shoulders, was a pair of bunnies with large ears and differing numbers of horns on their foreheads.

Renamon.

Terriermon.

Lopmon.

"Oh, Fanglongmon," Impmon murmured, so quietly he barely heard himself as he felt his breath going short and his legs going numb with relief and joy. "Thank you."

* * *

Renamon scanned the crowd and spotted the small purple Rookie at the bottom of the ramp almost immediately. Her pupils shrank in astonishment and she gasped, Terriermon and Lopmon snapping around to stare at Impmon the moment she spotted him and both of them losing control of their lower jaws.

"I… don't… believe it," Terriermon breathed. "Is… that… really who I think it is?"

"It… it must be," Renamon whispered. "Look. There's Ai and Mako on either side of him."

"But… how…"

"I don't know any more than you do and you know it."

"Damn. Looks like we'll have to take down Jabba again because this has got to be a dream."

Lopmon said nothing. She was staring at Impmon as if he was some mythical creature that had suddenly appeared in front of her. For several moments, she could feel nothing but pure shock radiating throughout her whole body up to the tips of her ears, but then, gradually, that shock was replaced by not only disbelief, but also with a sense of joy that slowly intensified with every passing second.

And there was something else there too, but she couldn't for the life of her figure out what it was.

But she shoved that aside for the moment, allowing the joy to fill her up to the brim, and she could feel the other two having similar reactions thanks to their mind-link. It was nothing short of a miracle and none of them were going to deny it. After six long months of nothing, one of their friends from their own world was standing before them, with both his Tamers behind him.

* * *

Impmon stood frozen to the spot, unable to think properly as the sheer numbness swelled up inside him at the sight of his friends at last. Therefore, it was Renamon who made the first move, stepping down the ramp with a passenger on each shoulder and slowly moving down towards him at a steady, dream-like pace.

The purple Rookie felt someone nudge him in the back, and he glanced back to see Chuchi smiling down at him, indicating that he should go up the ramp with flicks of her head. Impmon swallowed, suddenly nervous without really knowing why, but he bit his lip and did as she instructed, moving onto the metal and starting upwards towards his friends, with Ai and Mako lagging behind him slightly.

* * *

It was at this point that the rest of the Tenacious Ten appeared at the top of the ramp. All of them already knew what was going on thanks to the mind-link, but the moment the three Tamers set eyes on the three newcomers moving towards them, they too froze in place, almost unable to believe their own eyes _and_ the eyes of their comrades.

"But…" Henry murmured. "But… how did…"

"What are they doing here?" Rika breathed. "I…"

"It's Ai and Mako!" Suzie cheered, an expression of pure joy appearing on her face. She, unlike the others, was not stunned into almost silence, and she dashed down the ramp, screaming, "Ai! Mako! You're here! You're really here!"

Ai and Mako beamed at the sight of Suzie, their best friend among the Tamers and the person they had missed most of all among the missing six. They too broke formation and hurtled past Impmon, dashing to either side of the other three Digimon as well to meet Lopmon's Tamer in a double hug that knocked Suzie to the ground. All three of them started crying immediately, causing Henry and Rika to hurry downwards to greet their fellow Tamers themselves.

As for the Digimon, both parties stopped their downwards or upward advance within about ten feet of the other, staring at each other for a few moments. Impmon had spent a considerable amount of time trying to think up cool lines to say at their meeting, but now that it was here and he was actually standing in front of them again, the only thing his numb brain could come up with was:-

"Um… hi… guys."

None of the other three said anything for a moment, looking at him as if he was a pile of gold at the end of a rainbow.

Impmon shifted a little bit under their gazes. This was not particularly what he had been expecting of their reunion and it was making him feel slightly uncomfortable.

Lopmon was the first to speak, and Impmon almost crumbled at the sound of her voice, his secret feelings for the little, brown bunny causing his heart to start pounding viciously. "Impmon," she breathed. "Is it… is it really you?"

Impmon shook himself and attempted to draw himself up, forcing out a, "Who else would it be? You know any other short, handsome, purple people, because I sure as heck don't."

"That _is_ the kind of thing Impmon would say," Terriermon murmured.

"You know," Renamon nodded quietly. "I think it actually is him."

Impmon blinked slightly in bemusement. "What's wrong with you guys? Of course it's m… Oh… wait a minute," he folded his arms and glared up at the three of them. "I should have known you three wouldn't change at all. You guys are trying to mess with me, aren't you?"

The staring continued for about another five seconds, before Terriermon's face split into a massive grin and he laughed, "Yeah, we are!"

"I thought so," Impmon snorted. "And if I had to guess, the next thing you guys will do is… Oh no… Wait!"

But he was too late. The bunnies through themselves off Renamon's shoulders and dived at him, with the fox following a split second later. Impmon suddenly found himself engulfed by two large pairs of ears which wrapped around him like blankets, and then all three of them were enveloped by furry arms and knocked flying as he was tackle-group-hugged by all three of the other Digimon at practically the same time.

Despite everything, all four of them began to laugh uproariously as Renamon went rolling down the ramp with the other three locked in her arms, allowing the incredible joy at their reunion to burst out all at once. Literally no words could be used to describe the emotions sweltering through their bodies at this moment in time, but the closest one would probably be – euphoria.

Though Impmon would never admit it later, he felt his eyes getting wet almost straight away as he wrenched his arms free of the enshrouding ears and allowed his delight to erupt outwards in peels as he joined in the hug, wrapping an arm around each bunny and gripping Renamon's arms even while in mid-roll.

At long last he had found them. It had been half a year since they had vanished right before his eyes, but here they were, safe and sound, fit and healthy, and exactly the same as they had been the day they left. He had suffered incredible hardship since he had last set eyes on them, as had they, but now they had finally been brought back together and there was absolutely nothing that could ruin this moment. Even if GranDracmon himself had burst out of thin-air and launched himself into an attack, Impmon would dive into the counter-attack with his friends by his side.

The feeling was mutual for the other three. The half a year they had spent away had been without hearing the voice of any one of their friends, and now one of their best was here in front of them. He was not a figment of their imagination – they could see, hear and touch him. He was solid. Each of them could feel their happiness shining throughout their mental link, which only intensified their own ecstasy.

Half of year of no contact with their old friends was over.

The Senators and Jedi at the bottom of the ramp scattered slightly as Renamon rolled into the area where they had been standing and somehow managed to throw herself into a sitting stop, releasing the three Digimon clutched in her arms and dropping them to the ground, where they separated and resumed the staring, this time with grins plastered over their faces. Even Renamon looked practically goofy – an expression that was almost entirely alien on her slender face.

"Oh by Fanglongmon, you have _no_ idea how good it is to see you guys!" Impmon cried.

"Actually, I think we do!" Terriermon grinned. "How awesome is this? It's really you! How the hell did you get into this dimension?"

"I had a little help, but that's not important right now!" Impmon shouted. "How are you all? It's been ages since I've seen you guys in person! Are you all alright? Did you miss me?"

"Did we miss… Of course, we missed you, you idiot!" Lopmon scolded him, swatting him lightly over the back of the head with one ear. "What do you take us for? It's great to see you! It's just… It's just… screw words, because there aren't any that are right for this situation!"

"This is fantastic," Renamon agreed. "Are _you_ okay? Your aura feels a little different than it did before – has something about you changed?"

Impmon laughed, "Oh, the stories that I have for you guys!"

"Oh, the stories we have for you too," Terriermon grinned. "Did you know that me and Henry biomerged into MegaGargomon and had a battle with a fleet of spaceships… _while we were in space?_"

"Say what?" Impmon yelled, staring at Terriermon in disbelief. "You're joking, right?"

"Actually, for once he is not joking," Renamon nodded with a smile. "He really did do it. And I made friends with a giant lizard that was even bigger that these two are in their Mega stages and Lopmon here gained a life-debt from a large, furry humanoid called a Wookiee."

"Lizard? Life-de… What?" Impmon blinked, shaking his head. "I knew that you guys had been busy but that's a little bit over the top, isn't it?"

"Nope," Lopmon smiled. "All true. We've been having… quite an interesting time while in this universe. What about back home? Is everyone okay? What's been going on there since we were gone?"

"Oh, not a lot," Impmon waved a hand airily. "I just made a few more friends, found out that I used to be a warrior of heaven, as did all of you, figured out how to biomerge with my Tamers and stopped one of the greatest evils ever to be born from a Digi-Egg, but other than that, things have been pretty dull back there."

The other three Digimon stared at him for a moment, before Renamon shook her head momentarily and said, "Doesn't sound like things were all that dull back there to me?"

"True, but then again, we are Digimon that belong to Tamers," Impmon grinned. "When things get boring for us, that's when we've really got to start worrying, because we'll be trying to think of ways to liven everything up, which is something you don't want to see if you're faint-hearted, right?"

"Oh hell no," Terriermon grinned, lifting up an ear and giving Impmon a high-five with it. Or a high-three considering both of them only had three digits on either ear or hand.

"What about the other question?" Renamon asked. "Is everybody else okay? If what you say about putting a stop to such a terrible evil is really true, then did everybody make it out alright?"

"Yeah, everybody's fine," Impmon nodded reassuringly. "Which is quite surprising considering the nature of what we were going up against. But there haven't been any long-term issues, physical or mental, and everyone generally hunky-dory, really. Except for the families of your Tamers. They're currently worried sick about their missing children, but I'm pretty sure you guys already guessed that."

The three Digimon were about to ask the next obvious question which was weighing on all their minds – if there was a way back – when they were interrupted by the Tamers themselves as they reached the bottom of the ramp. In a little picture that was almost adorable, Suzie had one of Ai or Mako's hands in either of her own as they ambled down, Rika and Henry directly behind them.

"Impmon, you little scoundrel," Rika smirked down at the little Rookie. "It's great to see you again."

"I could say the same to you guys," Impmon retorted, folding his arms and giving them a mock-scowl. "Do you have any idea how worried we were when you guys decided to up and vanish on us like that? None of us knew where the heck you guys had gone, and we spent the rest of the day looking for you. I had to go and talk to moody old Zhuqiaomon before I was able to figure out what had happened to you. Ryo was blaming himself, the HYPNOS team were calling all around the world to try and find you. Complete fiasco."

"Nice to see you too, Impmon," Henry grinned. "Are our families holding up okay?"

"What do you ruddy well think?" Impmon rolled his eyes. "They've been out of their minds wondering what has happened to you guys. They were jumping around, imagining all sorts of horrible things could be happening to you. It's a good thing that we got the message that you were okay or they would probably still be doing it even now."

Rika and Henry both looked upset by Impmon's words, as they once again imagined just what their parents must have been going through in their absence, while Suzie looked relatively close to tears. But then Henry noticed what Impmon had just said and blinked.

"Say what?" he asked. "You got a message that we were okay?"

"Yep," nodded Impmon. "But one of Lopmon's dear old friends actually. And I'm not talking about Zhuqiaomon."

"One of the Devas?" Lopmon asked.

"Nope," Impmon replied with a smirk. "We got given a message by an actual Ophanimon that you guys were alive and kicking. She even showed me what you guys were doing in my sleep a couple of times. That was a nice party you guys threw for Suzie, by the way."

"You saw that?" Rika blinked.

"Yeah. Gotta say it looked fun. Shame I couldn't have been there to wreck it, really."

"Oh, that is so like you," Rika sighed.

"Were you expecting anything else?" Impmon smirked.

"Yay for Impmon being Impmon!" Suzie cried, as she broke contact with Ai and Mako and ran forward to glomp the startled Rookie, knocking him to the ground.

"Ack! Get off!" he yelled, but he was smiling good-naturedly as he said it. "You've gotten heavier since you've been in this universe. And now I'm losing air… Ack! Aaghacgh!"

As Impmon pulled off other similar retching noises, Suzie quickly let go of him and he sat up, a grin still firmly plastered on his face. "Wow. I just can't believe this," he laughed. "You're all actually here. I finally did it. I mean, this isn't even a dream or some other figment of my imagination. All six of you. It's unbelievable."

"It think that it's safe to say that we've all been through quite a lot since then, haven't we?" chuckled Renamon. "And yet, here we all stand. It's quite astonishing, isn't it?"

"That's kinda what I just said, Fox-face," Impmon replied.

"Fox-face?" Renamon raised a brow, and then glanced to her mate and said, "Is it weird if I say that I missed that more than I thought I would."

"There _did_ used to be a time where you would have given anything for me to stop saying the word – momentai," pointed out Terriermon.

"This is true," nodded the fox.

"Hallelujah!" Impmon cried. "Terriermon's word, coming out of his own mouth! I thought that I would never hear it again. It's a flaming miracle."

"I wish," Terriermon grumbled. "In this universe, I can't seem to get people to stop using my word when I don't want them to. You're telling me that nobody used it back in our universe at all?"

"Well, I believe Lilamon used it a couple of times, but apart from that, no, not really."

"Lilamon?" Lopmon blinked. "Who's that?" _And why do I suddenly feel slightly jealous for no particular reason,_ she added to herself.

"She's just a friend I made fighting against the ultimate evil of the Digital World," Impmon said airily. "Quite childish, Ultimate level flower fairy, looks a bit like a Lillymon but isn't."

"Looks like we've all got quite a lot to catch up on," Henry smiled.

"I believe we've already established that," Impmon nodded as he got to his feet. "So, are you going to introduce me to the rest of your new team-mates?"

The Tamers turned around to see the four Jedi and Chewbacca standing behind them a little further up the ramp, all of them with smiles on their faces and arms folded.

"Finally," Ahsoka snickered. "I was beginning to wonder if we'd been forgotten completely."

"Oh, sorry guys," Terriermon leapt up immediately. "Okay, time for introductions. Impmon, this is…"

"Nononononono! Wait up!" Impmon interrupted. "Let me take a shot at this." He smirked and lifted up one gloved hand, pointing to each of the Jedi in turn and saying, "Ahsoka Tano. Aayla Secura. Anakin Skywalker. Barriss Offee. And you, big furry man… if I remember right then you must be Chewbacca. Is that correct?"

"That is one-hundred percent accurate," Aayla's eyes widened slightly. "Very good. And you are Impmon, the most notorious little troublemaker in any region of the Digital World or Planet Earth if I remember correctly. And these are your two Tamers, Ai and Mako."

"Notorious troublemaker?" Impmon turned to glare at the other Digimon. "Is that what you've been telling people I am?"

"Uh-huh," nodded Terriermon.

"Good," Impmon grinned brightly. "Because that's exactly what I am. It's nice to meet all of you in person at last. And can I just say from everybody back on Planet Earth, thank you so much for looking after our lost friends. Really, we cannot thank you enough."

"It's no problem at all," Anakin chuckled. "Surprisingly, we rather enjoyed it?"

"Excuse me?" Terriermon glared at him. "Surprisingly?"

"Aaw… feel the love," Impmon grinned. "Who's up for another group hug?"

He really ought to have known not to say that, because he was promptly swarmed by the other Digimon once again.

But who could blame them?

After six long months, they had finally been reunited.

* * *

Yay for the action combined with the emotion. I loved this chapter, and I hope that all of you guys loved it too. But this also means that sadly, the end is nearly upon us. And with that note, I shall now be signing off for another day. There are only three more chapters to go, meaning that this story will be finished in six days if I stick to my rigid schedule.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Every cloud has a silver lining. Except this one. This is a silver cloud with a dark lining. While Impmon is able to deliver the wonderful news that they can all now go home, there is also the bad side of the news. That they may never be able to return. Lots of emotion to come in the next instalment of this huge story.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 218 : Home At Last**


	218. Home At Last

I think this is my longest chapter yet – I just could not stop writing it, and I probably could have written even more, before I finally decided to round things off and put it up so that the rest of you can have a piece of it too. This is a chapter that has long been coming, and… well… just read it and find out, I suppose. I hope that you guys like the result.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 218:- Home At Last**

* * *

Still in high-spirits due to the grand reunion between Impmon and the rest of the Digimon Crew, the entire group was now making its way back towards 500 Republica at a slow and almost leisurely pace, simply taking the moment to enjoy one another's company for a while. Commander Fox and his men had been called in to deal with the captive Hutt, while his little son had been left in the temporary care of Admiral Yularen.

The moustachioed man was understandably not particularly happy about this, but it had been generally decided that they would give the little Huttlet to some foster carers if they could find some. It was not going to be easy to find anybody willing to take in a young Hutt, but they had to try something. Maybe some droids and their lack of a sense of smell would be more useful in this situation.

Anakin and Aayla were walking closely with the Council members and quietly giving them the report on the mission to invade Jabba's palace, and how they had pulled off the Hutt's capture to liberate all the slaves. The slaves themselves were being given medicals by some of the clones, as promised.

Ahsoka and Barriss were walking along with the Senators, and the two young Jedi had their hands full. Almost literally, because they were both using the Force to allow Ai and Mako to float through the air as they moved.

"Hey, look at me!" Mako giggled, thrusting an arm out in front of him. "I'm Superman."

"No, you're not," Ai laughed. "Superman doesn't fly upside down like that."

Mako looked directly upwards… or downwards, to see the floor just beneath him and said, "Can you flip me right side up again?"

"Why?" Ahsoka chuckled. "It's more fun watching you floating about with your feet in the air."

"It's funny," Ai echoed as Barriss guided her in several rings around her upside-down brother. "Looks like I'm better at flying than you are."

"Oh yeah!" Mako scowled and Ahsoka smirked, sensing the challenge. She flipped her hand around Mako suddenly twisted right-side-up and went shooting upwards into the air like a comet. "WHOAOOAOAOAH!" he went, as he flailed his arms in mild alarm, though he was never in any real danger. Ahsoka had him under her control the whole time.

"Easy, Ahsoka," Padmé chuckled. "You'll scare the poor child half to death."

"Hey, shall we play a game of aerial tag?" Barriss suggested, and she flexed her hand without waiting for an answer, causing Ai to go shooting off after Mako. Ahsoka laughed and guided the small boy away and the two Jedi began to play a bizarre competition which the two Tamers committed to with a will. This was perhaps the best form of tag that you could ever ask for.

Up at the front of the group, Impmon glanced upwards at his two Tamers and chuckled. "If I didn't know better, I would have to say that this is one of the best dreams I've had in my entire life," he said. "And believe me, most of the dreams I've been having since even before you guys left have not been all that pleasant. But telekinetic power from a non-Digimon? That's just weird."

"It gets weirder, Impmon," smirked Terriermon. "Aayla can shoot lightning out of her fingertips if she wants to and when Anakin took down the Sith, he was blazing even whiter than me."

"He turned into a fairy boy?" Impmon smirked.

"No, you… ugh, never mind," Terriermon shook his head.

"Oh, I missed this," Impmon laughed. "The little verbal contests that we always used to have with one another, and which I nearly always ended up winning."

"Excuse me, you so did not!" Terriermon objected.

"Clearly my memory is better than yours then," Impmon niggled at him gleefully.

"Alright then, here's a new topic!" Terriermon declared, bounding down from Renamon's shoulder to walk alongside the small Rookie and said, "Since the last time I saw you, I helped to blow up a huge factory that was producing thousands and thousands of mindless robots that were programmed to help take over the Galaxy. What have you been doing recently?"

"Oh, that's nothing," Impmon waved his hand dismissively. "I had to throw myself in front of a massively powerful attack that was about to collide with some of my newer friends in order to save them from complete obliteration."

"Oh yeah? Well, I helped to save an entire solar system by beating up a cyborg Bounty Hunter who was preparing to blow up its sun."

"Ah, that sounds impressive, but I was forced to endure approximately a whole day of being slowly disintegrated from the tail up as Beelzemon so that my data could be harvested and put into a new Demon Lord."

"Oh, so you want to talk about suffering, do you? Well, I accidentally infected Renamon with a deadly virus that gave her only a few hours to live and the only way we could save her was by getting our hands on an incredibly rare root that only grows on one planet."

"Yeah? Well, I had to take on a hugely powerful being that could not be destroyed as long as he remained in the universe that he created?"

"I had to take on a huge lizard-creature with armour so impenetrable that none of my attacks would have had any effect and smuggle it off this planet alive."

"I slew a second Belphemon."

"I destroyed an entire fleet of spaceships by myself."

"I helped save the Sovereigns."

"I helped save a Galaxy."

"I lost the one I love for half a year when Parallelmon took you all away…"

Impmon froze when he realised what he had just said, his eyes almost bugging out of his head. Around him, the entire procession came to a startled halt. Up until that point, the Tamers, Renamon and Lopmon had been listening with amusement to the competition and feeling a certain sense of nostalgia as the two small males tried to outcompete each other once more. But suddenly, all of them stopped in their tracks with that latest declaration, and almost caused the rest of the group to bump into their backs as they stared down at Impmon in disbelief.

They were _all_ pretty sure that they had just heard him right. But those had been words that they had _never_ expected to here coming out of his mouth.

"Er… ahem… I mean…" Impmon murmured almost incoherently, his mouth suddenly very dry. Almost involuntarily, he found himself glancing up towards Renamon's shoulder, where Lopmon was still standing, his green eyes meeting with the black ones of the small, brown bunny Digimon.

From the moment she heard the words, Lopmon's heart immediately stopped beating for several seconds, as a myriad of possible ways that sentence could make sense filled her head, but when Impmon glanced up at her nervously, her mind automatically zeroed in on one theory, the correct one, and her own eyes grew even wider than Impmon's.

The two of them stared at each other for a moment. Impmon was mentally kicking himself for getting carried away with the competition – it had been an opportunity for him to vent off some of the extra stress from the traumatic events of the past half-year by declaring some of the horrors he had gone through, and right at the last he had just yelled off one of the biggest causes of his anxiety without thinking about what he was saying.

He had meant to tell her soon. He had told Ryo on the beach of the Digital World in the very week they had vanished, and MetalPhantomon had revealed it to both Takato and Guilmon quite a while ago, and while Guilmon had been feral at the time and probably not taken it in, Takato was not very good at keeping a secret.

But this had not been the way he had envisioned her finding out, and he could see in her eyes that she had figured out who he was talking about, so all he could do was bite his lip and sweat.

Lopmon herself was currently feeling slightly lost, unsure of where she stood on this particular revelation. Her mind had automatically becoming a confusing mish-mash of different emotions that whirled around in her brain seemingly at random. As she stared into Impmon's bright green irises, she felt a certain amount of confusion, fear, shock and… was that… no, that couldn't be joy?

Could it?

She frowned after a moment, wondering if this was another one of Impmon's jokes – sometimes with him it was difficult to tell if he was being totally serious or not. But as she studied his face, she quickly realised that he was being entirely sincere.

And that just made her fall into a whirlwind of different emotions once again, and it felt like her stomach had decided to leave her body do a lap of the Galaxy. Impmon… the loudmouth and the troublemaker with enough skills to rival her own brother at mayhem, and the one who always seemed to think of this sort of thing as 'mushy'… was in love with her?

Her first thought was, _Why?_

Here second thought was, _When did this happen?_

And her third thought was, _What the heck am I supposed to do about it now?_

She'd never been attracted to Impmon in that kind of way. Or, at least, she was pretty sure she hadn't. Terriermon had been constantly teasing her about how much time they spent together, and she had always maintained that they were simply good friends that hung around a lot because their Tamers did so.

Had that been what started it?

Had he felt love towards her all that time but kept it hidden from her?

But why would Impmon keep a secret like that from her? He'd never been afraid to state exactly how he felt on a particular subject, although usually this was when he felt like saying something derogatory about it. Had he… been afraid? Afraid that she wouldn't feel the same? Afraid that he would face rejection? That just didn't seem like Impmon at all – Lopmon would have thought that if she had said 'no,' he wouldn't have really cared that much?

Or… had his feelings for her run so deeply that he cared about her too much to hear a rejection? So he had tried to avoid the subject altogether? Because he couldn't bear a 'no?'

But what would Lopmon have said if he asked. Did she feel the same? For some reason, she could feel something kindling inside of her, and had done since she had spotted Impmon on the ramp of the ship, but now it almost seemed… fuelled. She could feel joy at this accidental declaration, but why would she when they were just friends.

And she had felt a slight twinge of jealousy when Impmon had spoken about Lilamon earlier. Was that the kind of thing that a friend felt, or… had it been something more.

But… Impmon was… Impmon. This kind of behaviour was so uncharacteristic of him…

And for some reason… that just made it all the more sweet. Lopmon blinked. Had she just thought that Impmon was sweet? That was one of the last labels that you could in on somebody like Impmon, but she had just thought it?

Ugh, she was so confused.

And then, Terriermon ruined the atmosphere by grinning and screaming, "I… KNEW IT…UURRFF!"

"Anyway," Renamon coughed as she wrapped him in her tail yet again. She could sense Lopmon's mental and emotional turmoil, and she could tell from Impmon's body language that he was anxiously awaiting her response to this bombshell. She could also tell that Lopmon was not ready to give that response yet, as she needed to sort out her own mind and needed time to think this through.

So, she quickly changed the subject by saying, "How exactly did you manage to get into this world, Impmon? The only two Digimon who can travel to alternate dimensions that I am aware of are Parellelmon and Anubimon, and we destroyed the former. So, how did you get here?"

"Ah, yes, well…" Impmon piped up hastily, casting one last glance at the obviously lost Lopmon, before he kept walking, speaking louder so that the whole group could now hear his conversation. "There's quite a bit of information that you need to know before I can explain that. Firstly, like I said earlier, there was one stage of my little adventure which took me up into the Celestial Heavens of the Digital World."

"The Heavens?" Terriermon breathed. "Oh, that must have been incredible."

"Indeed," Lopmon nodded, trying to fight back the emotional war going on in her head so that she could chip in on the conversation. "It's every Digimon's dream to see what the Heavens look like. What did you see?"

"It's not important," Impmon replied, uneasily. "What is important is that you've all been there before, though you won't remember it. Apparently all four of us used to be members of the Heavens before we all descended down into the Digital World to provide assistance to the mortal Digimon when needed while the others stayed behind."

"You what?" Rika blinked.

"Even me?" Terriermon stared, wide-eyed.

"Yep, even you," nodded Impmon. "There are quite a few mechanical Digimon in the Heavens actually. Anyway, before I became the Demon Lord version of Beelzemon, I was a warrior of heaven, and I had a slightly altered version of my Mega stage that had a few different abilities to my darker self. In fact, I had two Mega forms that I can switch to at will, but that's not really important right now either.

"When I became a Demon Lord, I lost some of my special heavenly abilities. But at the end of my adventures, my data as Beelzemon was, as I said, stripped from me, so I lost my ability to digivolved to the Mega stage on my own. But when I biomerged with Ai and Mako, I regained both of my Heavenly forms, the warrior Beelzemon and another Digimon called Fatemon that I'll tell you about later.

"Anyway, the angels then told me that one of my powers as the heavenly Beelzemon was the ability to cross over the Digital Barrier into any adjoining Digital Realm or the Human World at will. And that included Anubimon's realm of the dead. So, I went to pay him a visit, and while he wasn't allowed to open a portal for me, he was able to alter my own data as Beelzemon so that _I_ could create a portal here, so, here I am."

Lopmon frowned. "But Anubimon shouldn't be able to do that either unless…" her eyes suddenly widened and she went, "Oh… you didn't."

"Didn't what?" Suzie asked in trepidation.

"If you're talking about swearing my allegiance to Anubimon and becoming one of his servants, then yes, I did," Impmon nodded. "That was the only way."

"Oh, Impmon," Renamon murmured. "You shouldn't have."

"Of course I should have!" Impmon objected angrily. "I had to find you guys again, and I made a promise to both myself and your families that I would find you again. Besides, the deal was that I would return to my life with my Tamers as normal except for the fact that if he ever asks me to do something, I have to do it with no questions asked."

Lopmon bit her lip. He really went through with that just for them, despite the incredible price that he might one day have to pay for it?

That was… sweet.

Damn it! She was just going back to being confused again.

"So wait," Rika gasped, halting in her tracks and bending down to grab Impmon's shoulder with her hand. "If Anubimon altered your data so that _you_ were the one to open the portal, does that mean… that… you can make one… back?"

Henry and Suzie all looked sharply down at Impmon, as did the three Digimon and just about everybody else, staring at the small child-sized Rookie Digimon with bated breath. Impmon had not actually told any of the Senators or Jedi what he intended to do when he found the Digimon, but if Rika was guessing right…

Impmon looked quite uncomfortable for some reason and for a moment, the Tamers feared the worst. But then, Impmon nodded and said, "Yes, I can make a portal back to your world, b…"

Before he could complete the sentence, Suzie suddenly leapt into the air and screamed with pure delight, punching the air with both hands as she seized Henry in such a fierce hug that almost knocked him to the ground. But Henry didn't care, for he grabbed her and hugged his little sister back furiously, and Rika sprang to her feet and whirled around to hug them both. It was amazing how much faster tears of happiness could appear on your face than tears of joy.

"Oh my God, I can't believe it!" Rika shouted. "My mother! My grandmother! I can finally go back and see them again. I can tell them in person that I'm alright! We can _go home!_"

"Er… well…" Impmon started, but if anybody heard him then they weren't listening.

"You see?" Henry beamed down into Suzie's tearstained face. "Did I not tell you, Suzie? Haven't I said ever since we got here that someday we would find a way to get back?"

"You weren't lying, Henry," Suzie beamed. "We actually get to go home, and we can be with Mum and Dad and the others again! I can't believe it's really happening! I thought we were going to be in this universe for the rest of our lives!"

"I knew there was a way that we could get out," Henry grinned. "I just knew it."

As they pulled out of their hug, Rika laughed and said, "I can't wait to get back so that I can punch Ryo in the face for blaming himself for our disappearance."

"Yeah, I had a feeling you would say that," Henry laughed.

"Isn't this great, Lopmon?" Suzie was practically bouncing on her toes by this point, she was so giddy with happiness. "Mum and Dad and Jaarin and Rinchei are all waiting for us back home and we can finally go back. And Terriermon can finally apologise to Jaarin for making her sit in that bucket of cold water. And I can eat ice cream from the freezer whenever I want to again, and we can play tag with Calumon and Guilmon and play jokes on Kazu and Kenta and…"

"Suzie… breathe," Lopmon smiled at her. Suzie quickly took her partner's advice and inhaled sharply, gasping for several moments as she tried to catch her breath. Lopmon chuckled and sailed down on her ears and landed before her partner to say, "It is indeed great. And who would have thought that it would be Impmon who came to save us?"

She glanced across towards the other Rookie, who caught her eye and caused her to look away again quickly, biting her lip and still wondering what she was meant to do now.

"You know… I had completely forgotten about that thing with the bucket of water," Terriermon chuckled. "I guess that Jaarin must be anxious for an apology."

"And compared to some of the things you've been doing since we got here, that must have been one of your more minor pranks," Aayla laughed.

"Yep, that pretty much sums it up," nodded Terriermon.

"Well, I'm happy for you guys," Anakin smirked. "You've all been deprived of your real families for too long, I think. And what appropriate timing. It's almost like this is your reward for helping us to defeat the Sith."

"Fate does move in funny ways," Aayla remarked.

"Ain't that the truth," Impmon murmured, "But…"

"Isn't it the best news ever, big sister!" Suzie sprinted over to Aayla and hugged the Jedi Master's leg, before quickly letting go and running to the rest of the Jedi in her group and saying, "Uncle! Cousins! You guys can all come with us and meet our families and all the rest of our friends."

"Er…" Impmon murmured, a little more quietly.

"I'm your cousin now?" Barriss asked the little girl hugging her legs.

"It is indeed good news," Bail Organa suddenly chipped in to the conversation. "And if this is indeed some bizarre way of the Force thanking you for your efforts for our Galaxy then you certainly deserve it."

"They deserve it anyway," Padmé chuckled. "Though I must say, I am quite curious to see how their world functions, after everything you have told me about it."

"Can you imagine all the different kinds of Digimon there must be," Chuchi grinned. "It must be almost beyond comprehension."

"And I'd sure as heck like to meet the rest of your families," Ahsoka beamed. "After all, if _I_ am a member of your family too, then they must be distant relatives of mine as well, if you catch my drift. So many more family members just waiting for us to meet them."

"Are you sure that _you_ should be going?" Anakin chuckled. "Can their world really handle a Terriermon, an Impmon _and_ an Ahsoka all at once?"

"Our world can't handle Terriermon and Impmon as it is," Henry rolled his eyes. "But you're all welcome to come along and meet everybody. I think that my parents will be fascinated to meet you, particularly my father. He's a nerd when it comes to that kind of thing?"

"He won't attach electrical probes to my lekku to see how they work will he?" Aayla asked.

"Ahem…" Impmon said, more weakly than ever.

"Only if you don't give him a detailed word of mouth analysis of how they function," Henry winked.

"Joy," Aayla rolled her eyes.

Just then, there was a tapping sound from nearby that caught everyone's attention, and turned out to be Yoda banging his stick against the ground. The Jedi Master nodded up towards them and said, "Curb your excitement, you should, young ones. Finished speaking, Impmon has not. And rather uncomfortable, he seems now."

Everybody's attention rounded back towards Impmon, and the little Rookie looked more apprehensive than ever before. In that little altercation, he had seen, for the first time with his own eyes, just how close the Digimon and Tamers had bonded with the residents of this world, particularly the four younger Jedi. He looked like he was trying not to swallow his own tongue at the moment, as delivering the final piece of news was doing to be more difficult than before.

He knew what he had to say. But he was struggling to get the words out of his mouth.

"Impmon, what is it?" Renamon asked.

Impmon bit his lip and glanced over to Ai and Mako, both of whom looked slightly uncomfortable themselves, but they both turned away, so it seemed that Impmon was going to have to be the one to say it. So he swallowed and stammered, "Er… um… well… you see… it…it's just that…" he swallowed nervously, wringing his hands together, before screwing up his eyes and blurting out:-

"Anubimon's alterations to my data are only temporary, and he told me that he won't be able to alter it a second time. He only gave me twenty-four hours' worth of time to find you guys and bring you back home where you belong. After that time is up… I won't be able to make a portal through to here again, and he won't be able to help us a second time."

His words struck the listeners like a blast of Force-lightning, and eyes widened all throughout the group. A couple of them almost staggered backwards as if physically struck, and every one of them was now staring at Impmon in complete disbelief.

"What…?" Terriermon was the first to speak. "What… what are you…? Are you really saying what I think you're saying?"

"If you think I'm saying that dimension travel will not be possible for me by this time tomorrow, then yes, that is what I am saying," Impmon nodded. "Which… which means that… you guys have to choose which universe you want to be in when my time expires. You can either come home and be with your families or… or you can stay here. But you can't have easy access to both universes."

Eyes widened still further as the heads of the Tenacious Ten snapped around to look at each other, eyes flicking between various other members of the group. It felt as though each of them had been punched in the throat by a Wookiee, their stomachs were dropping out of their torsos and sinking through to their feet and it felt as though a fist had been thrust through their chests to grab their hearts and start squeezing.

"Then… does that mean…" Suzie whimpered.

"Yes, it does," Renamon murmured, the Digimon never having wanted to say anything less than the words she was saying right now. "It means that… this is… where we part ways."

"No!" Suzie cried. "No, I don't want to! No, we… we can't split up… we… we just… c…"

Henry knelt down and placed a hand on her shoulder, and Suzie whirled around and buried her face in his shoulder, staining his clothes with tears that began to stream freely out of her eyes almost immediately.

For several moments, there was no sound whatsoever from any of the assembled group, as the members of the Tenacious Ten from each universe stared at the members from the other universe. Each of them was thinking the same thing and feeling the same thing too. The latter was complete disbelief, combined with growing amounts of horror and, as they continued to drink in the appearance of each other with their eyes, each one of them slowly began to feel their hearts breaking in their chests, as if the fist had decided to crack them like rocks.

It couldn't come to this! Surely this could not be what was happening? After everything they had thrown at Palpatine, after all their claims and their sheer belief that they would always standing united, as a team against anything any universe had to oppose them…

They couldn't really be torn apart now, could they? Not a week had passed since they had declared they would forever be a team for the whole of Coruscant to hear and now… they had been given this ultimatum? It wasn't right. It wasn't fair. How could anybody ask them to tear apart the bond that had grown so phenomenally strong over the last few months?

Suddenly Anakin's playful declaration that this must be fate sounded like some kind of cruel taunt. Ten beings from two universes that probably never should have met in the first place, but had thanks to the meddling of a single Digimon – how could they not have foreseen this possibility? This was wrong on so many levels. Had they really bandied with death together so many times, only to be kept apart forevermore by a dimensional wall?

Nobody wanted to say anything. None of them could think of the words. They just felt as if their brains were seizing up, filled with the only one thought, that if they went through with this and the Tamers and the Digimon returned home – they would never set eyes on the faces in front of them again.

Aayla and Renamon found themselves staring at one another. Those two had been the ones that first started this union of two worlds, long ago on Christophsis, when things had been nothing short of confusing. It had built up around the foundation which they had made into the bond that radiated between their collective minds today. But… could all of that just… vanish?

They both knew it would. They could feel each other's presences from as long as they were within a few miles away from one another. A dimensional wall was just going to be too much. While they were sure that their bond would remain strong, even in separation, none of them would ever again be able to touch their minds or hear their thoughts. The walls of their universes would act like a pair of scissors and effectively sever the ties between them.

"No…" Ahsoka was the first to murmur. The young Padawan was a hardened fighter – she had had to be to keep up with what the rest of her team had been leading her into. But now, for the first time since the Digimon had even met her, they could see tears begin to slowly run down the young Togruta's cheeks and over the white markings displayed there. "No… it… it can't… end this way… can it?"

The emotions of everybody flared up as their hearts began rending completely, and it felt as if they could feel Ahsoka's own tears running down their own cheeks. And then several of them realised their they were actually crying themselves. Barriss and both of the bunny Digimon had already begun as well, and none of them attempted to wipe their eyes. What would be the point? More would flow out of them anyway. It was unstoppable.

Renamon felt herself shivering as her own eyes snapped shut, her paws clenching into fists as she tried to stop herself from shaking. Renamon had only ever cried once in her entire life, and that had been when she had been forcibly separated from Rika by Goro with only Terriermon for company, and she was determined not to cry now. Even she knew already that this was going to be the single most painful thing that she would ever have to do in her entire life.

She would not cry, she would not cry, she would not cry, she would not…

Suddenly she felt herself enveloped in a pair of arms and her eyes snapped open to see it was Aayla. She was astonished to see that Aayla herself had water streaming down her face in little rivulets, and the fox had never known her to cry either, except for that one time on Geonosis when she had finally gained the mind-link and one tear of joy had crept down her face. The Twi'lek pulled the fox into one of the tightest embraces that she had ever received, as if she never wanted to let her go again.

And Renamon knew that that was exactly the case.

_Oh screw it…_ she thought, seizing Aayla in her own grip and allowing moisture to leak out of her own eyes as she even went the extra miles and started to let her body be wracked with quiet sobs. All around them, the rest of the team were doing something similar. Barriss dashed forwards and grabbed all three Tamers in her own arms to hold them tightly, while Terriermon and Lopmon threw themselves at Ahsoka and clung to her as if she were a life-line. Anakin, on the other hand, looked like he didn't even have the strength to move, and he fell to his knees, his head cast low as, for the first time since the death of his mother, he found himself struggling not to start crying himself.

He had lost so much in his life already.

Was he really going to lose the Digimon and the Tamers as well?

Aayla and Renamon noticed Anakin's behaviour and both of them broke off their hug to hurry over to him and enclose him in their embrace as well. Anakin reached up and pulled them both close to him, allowing both of them to bury their faces into his shoulders. One by one, the rest of the team slowly ambled their way over to him and knelt down beside him, engaging in a group hug that they knew very well might be their last.

Anakin couldn't help it any more than Renamon. Surrounded by companions who were shaking with unrestrained grief and feeling the intensity of their sorrow spearing into his mind through their link, he eventually caved as well and a single tear ran down the scar over his right eye, and then one fell from his left. He did not sob – he was determined to remain strong as he could for the others, but he simply could not stop himself from crying altogether. It was too much.

Impmon was currently feeling like dirt for doing this and he was desperately trying to come up with something to say that might comfort them, but he could come up with nothing. He had thought he had gotten the measure of just how deep their bond ran before he spoke. Now he saw that he had been nowhere near the mark.

And he wasn't the only one looking upset and helpless. Padmé and Chuchi were standing by helplessly, both of them with a hand over their mouth as they joined in the communal tearing up. Neither of them had even known the Digimon for very long, but they did not need mind powers to know just how agonising this was mentally for any of them. The Tenacious Ten were already feeling hollow and empty inside, and they hadn't even left each other's company yet.

The Jedi Council members that were also there, along with Bail and Onaconda, merely closed their eyes sadly. They all knew that trying to say something comforting now would be a waste of time. There was nothing any of them could do in a situation like this. The only ones who could do anything about it were the Tenacious Ten themselves.

When the group hug finally broke apart again, none of them moved further away than a foot or so away from the next nearest person, kneeling together in the close-knit group that they were, as they tried to come up with something… anything… to say or even think about in a situation like this. But what could you say, when you knew that what lay ahead, was only going to end up ripping your heart out, no matter what course of action you took.

Suzie was the one who eventually spoke up, but it was only to try and find some way around this situation. "We… we don't have to break up, do we?" she begged. "You guys could… could all come and live with us in our universe, couldn't you? Then we could still be a team."

"Suzie…" Henry murmured. "You know that wouldn't work. They still have their duty to this new Republic as Jedi. They can't come with us. If we go home, then we have to leave them behind."

"But we can't go without them!" Suzie wailed – even she hadn't cried this much in a long time. "We just can't! It's wrong! We'll end up never seeing each other again, I just know it! We can't just leave all of this behind! We have to stay! But… but then, Mum and Dad…"

She looked from face to face, desperately hoping that someone would give her the answer she wanted to hear.

But there was no answer that she wanted to hear. No plausible one anyway.

"What do we do, Henry?" Suzie turned up to her brother with a genuine trembling lip.

Henry swallowed, unable to say anything for several moments before he bit his own lip and mumbled, "We'll have to go back… We… can't… we can't stay here Suzie. Not when this might be our only opportunity to get home… We… have to get back to our families."

"But we have a family here too!" Suzie yelled. "We can't separate forever! What if we were to… I don't know… wait here until another way of getting back happens where we can come back whenever we wish."

"There's no guarantee that that will ever happen, Suzie," Renamon sniffed, curling her tail around her own legs. "What if we stayed here and then no other method of getting back presented itself to us. We don't know what will happen in the future, and this could be the only chance that we have to get you back with your parents and the rest of the Tamers. Are you really willing to risk… passing up that chance?"

"We don't want to go either, Suzie," Lopmon murmured, placing a little hand comfortingly on the back of Suzie's own, and doing nothing to try and stop herself from crying at the same time. "But… we might not have much choice here."

"No! I can't do it!" Suzie whirled around and grabbed the nearest Jedi, which turned out to be Aayla, around the stomach as if she was trying to attach herself there like a limpet. Aayla lowered her hands and gently stroked the back of Suzie's head, but she didn't feel up to doing a whole lot more than that to be honest. She still felt numb on the inside, and she didn't need to look at the other three Jedi to know they were feeling the same way.

Each of them was reflecting on their own personal experiences with the Digimon and the Tamers, the times where they had worked and fought as a team and kept each other safe through the strength of their bonds. The incident on Mygeeto where she and the Digimon had been frozen under a block of ice was fresh in Ahsoka's mind. Barriss was currently remembering her fight against the Trandoshans on Wasskah with Lopmon, while Anakin was replaying the incident with the time bomb underneath Gunga City in his head.

Nobody wanted to say anything, but, eventually, Aayla took it upon herself and swallowed her tears for a moment, to look down at Suzie and say, "Go."

Suzie looked up at Aayla's face sharply, her eyes wide with shock and hurt. "W-what?" she stammered.

Aayla was wracked with a fresh sob at the look on the little girl's face, but she fought it back and pushed out her next sentences. "You have to go back. To your world. To the universe that you came from. It's… it's where you belong, Suzie. I… I don't want this any more than you do – I don't want to be separated from you for what could be the rest of eternity but… that's just how things…have to be."

"But we can't leave you behind! You're my big sister! And the rest of you are also my family!"

"No, I'm not," Aayla sighed, pulling Suzie closer. "We both know that I am not your big sister. Not really. You have a real big sister who's waiting for you back home, Suzie. That's where you're _real_ family is and… well… you can't willingly abandon your real family for us. But I can tell you right now, Suzie, that I am… we are… honoured beyond words that you chose us to be your surrogate family while you were here.

"But… I'm afraid that's all we'll ever be. A surrogate family. And asking you to leave your real family so you can stay with us would… would just… be…selfish and wrong."

"She's right," Anakin nodded gravely, not wanting to look anyone in the eye. "This is… the way that things have to be…"

"You know that we'll never forget any of you, don't you?" Ahsoka added. "What you did for us… and for this whole Galaxy… will never be forgotten. And… and…" she couldn't continue and broke down again, causing Barriss to wrap an arm around her shoulders to try and comfort her as she finished for the younger Jedi.

"And you will… always have a place in our hearts. There's… just no way around this. You guys… have to go. Your own universe, your other friends and your real families… they're the ones who need you now… not us."

Suzie knew that what the Jedi were saying was right, but she was currently hating every moment of this. She cried against Aayla's bare stomach, trying to hide away from this situation, but everybody knew that there was no hiding from this. They had to do it. The group that had done so much finally had to separate. Aayla's tearstained face looked up and her eyes met with Renamon's. The fox nodded a thank you that she was too heartbroken to voice.

"So…" Terriermon sniffed, trying and failing to stop his own waterworks. "I… I guess this is it then. This is… really goodbye?"

Ahsoka looked up and smiled through her weeping. "M… momentai, Terriermon. It'll… it'll be alright. Eventually."

"I don't want this…" Terriermon murmured, not lashing back at the use of his own word for once. "This is not how I pictured the end of the war being like. But…" he sighed and wiped his face with his ears. "I know that… we have to do it."

"There might not be a way around it," Rika agreed.

"Not that we know of, anyway," Lopmon added.

The group sat there for about a minute, all of them feeling the other's depression as if it was their own magnified. But eventually, Renamon sighed and pushed herself slowly to her feet, biting her tongue as she said firmly, "Alright then. We all know what we have to do, but sitting in and squandering in misery is not going to make it any easier. How much longer do we have before your time limit expires, Impmon?"

"Um…" Impmon said quickly. "I was given twenty-four hours, and that was around nine hours ago now, so you've still got the rest of the day, but I also promised your families I would get you home as quickly as I could."

"Alright," Renamon nodded. "Well, in that case, I say that if we have to leave here today then we don't prolong our departure for too long and do it in about three to four hours' time. But I also say that we make the most of those three to four hours instead of just sitting here and feeling sorry for ourselves. We all know that we don't have long left with each other, so let's just make those few hours among the best that we've ever had together."

Aayla's face took on a firmer look of resolution, and she clambered to her own feet, lifting up Suzie into her arms as she did so, "You're absolutely right, Renamon. This isn't going to be easy no matter how we go about it, so let's really go to town with what time we have left."

"I'm game," Terriermon face switched back to its usual grin, albeit with his face still covered in tears. "I'm up for anything now."

"I agree!" Ahsoka nodded.

"Me too," Lopmon smiled.

And, one by one, the rest of the Tenacious Ten clambered to their feet and nodded, showing that they were more than up for some fun in what time they had left together. But then, another member of the watching crowd stepped forwards – Chewbacca. The Wookiee pounded his chest and locked eyes with Lopmon, as he said, "Ohacraao rarhoohuao scwo? Ohacworcwo waoowoc aoacahc anworahowo scwo?"

Lopmon smiled sadly and said, "I'm sorry, Chewie. But I think that we have to part ways today as well. When you made your life-debt to me, for which I will never be able to thank you enough, you told me that the only thing that would cause you to break it is if I did something that prevented you from going back home to be with your family. If you go with us to our world, then there's every chance that you will never see your wife and father again. You have to stay here as well, and be with them, just as the Tamers have to go and be with their own families."

Chewbacca looked downcast, sagging visibly, but he knew that Lopmon was right. He stared down at the ground and murmured, "Ah'sc rrooahwhrr aooo scahcc rooohu."

Lopmon sighed and took to the ear, flapping upwards until she was perched on his large, woolly shoulder.

"Hey, don't worry about it too much," she assured him. "I'm definitely going to miss you too, big guy, but at least you did your duty to me. Your help in that final battle was completely invaluable and don't you ever forget it. After today, I want you to head back to Kashyyyk and enjoy the rest of your life with your family, okay? Can you do that?"

Chewbacca allowed a small smirk to grace his face and his nodded with a murmur of, "Rooohu rhwoao."

"That's what I thought," Lopmon nodded, sniffing again.

"If I might say something here," Obi-Wan stepped forwards to place a hand over his heart and smile sincerely. "While I might not have gotten as close to you Digimon as some others, I can honestly say that I will miss you too when you leave." He chuckled and added, "I can't believe I'm saying this but… you guys livened the place up a little bit."

"A little bit?" Terriermon looked stung.

"Alright then, a lot," Obi-Wan chuckled. "You all made things interesting."

"You're acting like we're about to leave at any second, Obi-Wan," Renamon smiled back. "We've still got a few hours ahead of us."

"Indeed. Save the farewells for the correct time, we should," Yoda nodded. He looked up and added, "And no doubt, many farewells, you wish to give. Enjoy what time you have left together, you must. Gather up some of your comrades to tell them the news, we will. When ready to depart, you are, come to the main entrance of the Senate Building once again."

Henry nodded. "We've got it. And thank you."

"Now then, Suzie," Aayla smiled, as the Jedi Masters and Bail made their departure. "Let's go and have some fun, shall we?"

"Okay," Suzie sniffed, trying to perk herself up a little bit. "Hey, I know what we can do – can we have one last song and dance together?"

"Of course we can," Aayla assured her. "If that's what you want."

"Only, this time, can Anakin join in too?" the little girl added onto the end.

Anakin opened his mouth to immediately say no, but he paused before he could say the word and shut his mouth again. He could see the earnest look on Suzie's face, and the significant stares on those of the others'. And, if this really was the last day that the little group was going to be able to spend together…

"Oh, fine," Anakin raised his cybernetic hand up to rub his forehead. "As long as we do it in a place where nobody else can see it, alright?"

"Except Padmé," Terriermon grinned. "And Chuchi, because they're the only ones still here."

Anakin was about to protest again, but he could see the faces of the others taking on slightly evil expressions and he knew that he wasn't going to win this argument, so he merely said, "Alright, but NOBODY else. Okay?"

"Okay," nodded Terriermon.

"Impmon," Renamon turned around to face their future mode of transportation. "Ai. Mako. Do you want to come with us?"

Impmon nodded mutely, still feeling a little bit like dirt for doing this to such a close-knit group, but he felt Ai and Mako take his hands reassuringly as the group of four Jedi, four Digimon, five Tamers, two Senators and one Wookiee made their way back to Padmé's apartment with full intention of disturbing the entire Senate District with their shenanigans.

Because they knew that it was probably the very last chance they were going to get.

* * *

Needless to say, the group were determined to have such a good time that it rivalled Ahsoka's own birthday from last week in terms of loudness and laughter, and practically the whole of the building could faintly hear what was going on, and wondered what the heck the Tenacious Ten were playing at.

Poor Anakin was not made to suffer the dancing for long, but Terriermon surreptitiously filmed the spectacle of him surrounded by Aayla, Ahsoka, Barriss and Renamon, with Lopmon on his head, and slipped it to Padmé for future blackmail material if she ever needed it, though Padmé confessed to him that she would probably just end up getting it out and watching it for fun.

They also took the opportunity to finally have their own group picture taken together, as they had not wanted to risk taking any images of the Digimon during the time when they had been a secret. Again, Terriermon tried to liven things up by hiding behind Anakin's head and raising up his ears so they stuck out the top, giving the definition of 'rabbit ears' a whole new meaning. But after that, they took a more serious one, and Chuchi quickly hurried off to get at least two copies made, one for each of the groups that were going to end up in their own universes again.

* * *

But, all good things had to eventually come to an end, and the air of solemnity and depression returned when, after four hours of non-stop play and enjoyment, they all slowly piled into the speeder on Padmé's landing platform to move down towards the Senate Building not far away.

They just couldn't believe that this was it. They were actually separating. It felt like the kind of thing that should only belong in a nightmare, but it was happening now.

A small crowd had gathered outside the Senate Building by this point, including the entirety of the Jedi Council, several Senators (including ones that the Digimon had barely spoken to for some reason), many other Jedi besides and a whole host of clones.

As the speeder pulled down beside the awaiting group, Suzie suddenly turned to Henry and whispered, "Wait. What about Gabumon? Don't you think he might want to return to the Digital World as well?"

"I don't think so," Henry shook his head. "He will want to stay where his Tamer is, and Numa is probably still settling into her life on the farm on Saleucami. Besides, she made it quite clear that she doesn't think she's ready for the life of a Tamer, and that would be all that awaits her if she were to come with us."

"I suppose," Suzie sniffed. "It's just… I wish we could say goodbye to them."

"Well, I think you'll just have to make the goodbye you gave to her last week count," Lopmon replied sadly. "But I know what you mean?"

As they bundled out of the speeder, Commander Bly was quick to approach and say, "Is it true? Are you guys really leaving? Never to return?"

Renamon sighed. "Yes, Bly, I am afraid we are. There is no more war for us to fight, and this might be the only opportunity we have to re-unite our Tamers with their families and ourselves with our old friends. And… it is also likely that we might not be able to come back."

Bly looked thoroughly downcast and sighed, exhaling slowly out of his nose. "I didn't… want to believe it when Master Yoda said it. This is… just… weird. I've gotten so used to having you guys around. I don't want you to go."

"Good," Renamon smiled at him. "That's just one more reason why you are a person and not a droid, Bly. We don't want to leave either, and if there was still a war on then I know for a fact that we wouldn't be leaving. We would stay to help you finish it."

"But now, the war is over," Bly nodded. "And thanks to you guys, we won. I… I'm going to miss you. We all are," he nodded towards the other clones who were amassing behind him. "We owe you guys so much."

"You revealed what we really were to us," Rex agreed.

"You showed us that we didn't have to follow orders blindly," Cody added.

"You showed us all how to be true humans, just like you promised Blade," Conor tried to smile.

"You saved so many of our lives against the armies of the droids," Boil nodded.

"You liberated our Galaxy and the rest of our brothers from the one who sought to use and enslave us," Waxer observed.

"And most of all," Bly finished. "You guys were darn good friends. It's going to be difficult to replace you guys… so we're not going to bother trying. It wouldn't be the same. But I think that I can speak for each and every one of us here when I say… good luck. With everything that you do. All six of you. Attention!"

Although Bly was not the commanding officer of all of the clones there, they all followed his order and straightened up, stamping their right feet at the same time and throwing their hands up to their foreheads, faces firm as they gave the Digimon and the Tamer a mass salute.

Terriermon grinned and said, "You know what? I've known all you guys long enough to know that while you might be all individually different from one another, you are the same in one way other than appearance. And that is that you're all great guys. Hope that things go well for you all in this new Republic."

"As do we," chuckled Rex. "Especially since we've got a potential scrap with the Hutts coming up pretty soon. A scrap that you guys helped to start."

"You're a big boy now, Rex," Terriermon snorted. "I'm sure you guys can handle a bunch of measly slugs and their ragtag entourage without us."

"We hope so," Cody nodded. "Have a safe journey you lot."

"And while I know it's unlikely, I hope we meet again," Bly ended.

"As do we," Lopmon replied with a smile. "And if we discover a way of coming back to see you then we will not hesitate to give it a go."

The clones nodded and stepped backwards, allowing the Jedi Council to step through, with Yoda at their head. Yoda stopped in front of them and said, "Much assistance, you have all been, to us and our universe. Truly, a gift from the Force, you were, and a privilege, it was, to fight on the same side as you. However, sense, I do, that far from over, your adventures are. In light of this, wish you well, we all do."

"And it was _our_ honour to fight alongside all of you," Renamon agreed immediately. "Once again, we honour both the Jedi and the clones which we were unable to save during the conflict. May they all rest in peace."

"Indeed," Yoda nodded. He sighed slightly and said, "Agree with the clones, I do. Almost empty, this place will now seem, without you six coming and going as you please. Over eight-hundred years have I walked this Galaxy, and seen nothing, I have, that is as extraordinary as you all. Though a strong feeling, I have, that it will – Still say, I will, may the Force be with you. Always."

Terriermon bounded to the ground and held out one ear to the Jedi Master. Yoda chuckled, his mind flashing back to the first day he had met the Digimon and Terriermon had done this to Aayla, so he took one hand off the top of his stick and slapped Terriermon's ear with it in a high-three. Then Terriermon presented his actual hand, and Yoda repeated the gesture on it.

"You may be elderly now but whatever it is, you've still got it, Master Yoda," Terriermon chuckled.

"Take that as a compliment, I shall," Yoda replied.

"It was meant as one."

"Well then," Mace Windu said. "It seems that this truly is farewell. While there are certain aspects of your behaviour that I will not lament seeing the back of… Terriermon…" he cast a significant look down at the bunny. "It might still take some time to adjust to a Republic without you in it."

"We'll miss you too, Mace," Lopmon replied sadly. "You big softie."

"Excuse me?" Mace raised a brow.

"Nothing," Lopmon said innocently.

Mace chuckled and said, "Take care of yourselves. And try to make sure Terriermon doesn't kill himself trying to pull an overly elaborate prank, alright?"

"I'm on the case, Master Windu," Renamon nodded.

"May I be the next to say goodbye," Obi-Wan put in sagely. "And to thank you for everything that you've done for not only the Galaxy, but to our Order and my former Padawan. It might be a morbid thought, but I shudder to think what might have happened if you had not arrived to throw a wrench into Palpatine's plans."

"You're welcome, Obi-Wan. Throwing wrenches is what we do best," Rika replied.

"I'm sure that you guys would have pulled through without us anyway," Henry said modestly.

"Yeah right," Anakin murmured

One by one, the rest of the Jedi Council moved forwards and a lot of shaking hands took place as each member made their final farewell. The Digimon and the Tamers looked from face to face, well aware that once they had gone, every single one of those faces would be sorely missed. Plo Koon, Kit Fisto, Shaak Ti, Luminara Unduli, Quinlan Vos, and even the Jedi Masters they were less familiar with like Even Piell and Agen Kolar.

When they were done, Bail Organa and the other Senators stepped forward for their turn. "I wish that we could have met one another sooner," Bail said sombrely. "I understand why you chose to keep yourself hidden from us, but it is still a shame that I could not have more time to get to know you. For you fascinating and indeed amazing, and as the new Supreme Chancellor of this Republic, I will ensure that you are not forgotten.

"I have decided to initiate a few special holidays, celebrating the day that you first arrived in this universe, and, as well as they day that the Sith were finally defeated, I shall also mark today, the day you leave our universe behind, as another holiday. The whole Galaxy will mark the day you arrived to change our fates."

"You really do not need to do that, Senat… I mean, Chancellor Organa," Renamon replied.

"I know, but the Senate is already in agreement," Bail answered. "And nothing you can say will change our minds on this matter."

"It was nice to meet you, however briefly," Padmé added.

"Look after yourselves," Chuchi looked on the verge of tears again. "For us, alright?"

"Course we will. And you guys all look after _yourselves_," Terriermon echoed.

Each of them stepped forwards to hug Chuchi and Padmé, and shake hands with Bail, Onaconda and Mon Mothma. And then, the former Super Six turned back around until they were facing the four extra members that they gained since entering this universe. Tears were already running down Ahsoka and Barriss' faces again, and Aayla was not far behind. Anakin had his eyes shut, as if looking at them now would make their departure all the more real.

"I… I guess this is it then," Suzie sniffled, fighting back her own fresh waves of tears and failing. "This is… this is goodbye, isn't it?"

"I once hoped that this moment never came," Aayla murmured. "Now I realise just how foolish that was of me."

"Me too," Ahsoka nodded, biting her lip. "But we all know now that it has to be done."

"We wish there was some… _any_… alternative," Lopmon muttered quietly. "But… well, we've already been over this, haven't we?"

"It might not be a good idea to drag this out," Anakin's breath came out in a rattle of grief as he opened his eyes. "The longer we stand there talking about this, the more painful your moment of departure is going to be."

"We know," Renamon sighed. "But I will say this. I know that each of us will cherish every single moment that we spent with you. And this picture," she pointed to the one that Chuchi had given to Rika. "Will probably be the most valuable possession that we own in terms of sentimental value."

"I could say the same for our copy," Barriss chuckled weakly.

Henry exhaled and said, "Let's just get this over with, shall we? I can already feel the urge to stay welling up inside me."

"Momentai, everybody," Terriermon said, wanting them to hear him say it one last time. "We'll always be a team, right? In our hearts if not in body. It doesn't matter if there's a universe wall between us, separating our minds and everything physical. The bond we made will never die, will it, no matter how many universes stand between us."

"Now, that's the kind of thing I like to hear," Anakin nodded firmly. "Terriermon is right. And those that end up in either universe will continue to be a team and carry on any fights that may occur in the name of the others, won't we?"

"Right," the other three Jedi nodded.

"Can we…?" Suzie mumbled. "Can we all just hold hands, one last time?"

There was only a slight pause, before Rika reached up and took Henry's hand in one of her own, and Barriss' in the other. Lopmon floated down to the ground beside Terriermon to link her hand with his, and the others all knelt down to the bunny's level so they formed a circle of interlocked fingers. They held that pose for a moment, feeling the mental bond between them flaring with love one final time, so it felt like they were holding hands with everyone in the circle, before they all let go simultaneously and straightened up.

"Let's do this then," Rika swallowed, turning around to Impmon, Ai and Mako, who were standing behind them, the two twins not bothering to conceal their own tears at the emotional moment. "You guys ready?"

"Well, yeah, but…" Impmon murmured. "Jeez, guys. I… I hope you know I'm really sorry. I didn't know just how close you guys had gotten and all."

"It's not your fault, Impmon," Lopmon sent a reassuring smile his way, causing the small, purple Digimon to glance her way sharply and lock eyes with her for a moment. Then Lopmon remembered what he had blurted out earlier and she flushed and looked away, causing Impmon to bite his lip slightly.

"Well, if you guys are sure…" Impmon ventured.

"We are," Henry nodded firmly. "It's time for us to go home. Lead the way, you three."

Impmon nodded, and glanced to either side towards his Tamers. The took up their positions, each of them holding the D-Arc in front of Impmon and holding back their own tears as they choked out, "Biomerge activate!"

"**IMPMON BIOMERGE TO…"**

Every single person there watched with awe as the three of them were engulfed in the bright light of Digivolution, expanding until they were at least half as tall again as an average human, perhaps taller. The light quickly faded to black, revealing that the new form had a huge pair of raven-coloured wings wrapped around his torso, which he threw outwards to his sides to reveal the heavenly demonic being they belonged to.

"**BEELZEMON!"** he roared. Then he added, "Hey, look at that. We got it right this time."

Despite everything, Terriermon couldn't help but whistle as they stared at Beelzemon's new style. "Wow, you guys. I have to say that you definitely look the part of a heavenly warrior now. But should that be Beelzemon Blast Mode?"

"No, it's just regular Beelzemon," the Mega Digimon shook his head. "I don't have a Mode Change anymore, I have a slide digivolution. But we'll talk about that later." He shut his three red eyes and focused, as he had done in Anubimon's realm, and, sure enough, as he lifted one arm to his side, a large swirling vortex of deep purple appeared in thin air right next to him.

"Look, Suzie," Henry murmured. "That's our gateway back home, back to Mum and Dad."

Suzie was indeed enraptured by the thing in front of her, but even so, she couldn't stop herself from glancing back at the four Jedi, face screwed up in emotional torment. The rest of the group copied her example, locking eyes with their team-mates one last time, and most of them fearing that they were going to start leaking more tears again if they didn't do something.

Renamon summed it up in just one word, because saying much more than that was not going to help at this stage. "Goodbye," she murmured, and then she gently took Rika's shoulder and guided her forwards and towards the portal. Henry took Suzie's hand and followed her example, as the two bunnies walked along on either side of their partners.

It was the final heart-wrench for Aayla. The urge to shut her eyes and not look at them disappearing was almost irresistible, a subconscious part of her mind telling her that if she didn't see them leave then it wouldn't be real, but she knew in reality that it would be so she forced herself to look. But that just made it worse, as she gradually saw the Digimon and the Tamers approaching the portal, counting the paces they had left before they vanished through and were lost to her forever.

Her mind flashed over the entire half year that she had spent with the Digimon. She had done more with them than any of the other three. She had been there on every mission involving all three of the Digimon. She had worked alongside them to expose the Sith, and she knew now that she loved them more than she had ever loved, or could ever love, anyone else in the entire universe.

The mere thought of a life without them was almost more than she could bear.

An actual life without them…

…It wouldn't be worth living.

But they were going. They were five paces away from the portal now.

Four.

Three.

Two.

Aayla suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder and somebody nudging at her mind, spurring her onwards to do what she had been only just been holding back. She immediately cried, "Wait! Stop!" before she realised what was going on.

As the Digimon and Tamers pulled to a halt a mere step from entering the vortex, Aayla looked across at the arm on her shoulder to discover it belonged to Anakin. Anakin fixed his eyes on hers and nodded just once.

_If you want to so badly, Aayla,_ he said in her mind. _Then I say you go for it._

_What?_ Aayla started. _But… But I can't. I've… I've got my duty as a Jedi to think about and… and what about you guys? I can't just… no, it would not be fair._

_Sure, it would_, Anakin replied reassuringly. _The bond we all share is extraordinary, but you bonded more closely with them than the rest of us did. I can sense your distress, Aayla. And if you really care for them as much as I sense you do, then you have to do what is right for you. Yes, we are Jedi, but we, of all Jedi, should not deny our feelings._

_He's right,_ Ahsoka chipped in. _You should go for it._

_We understand,_ Barriss smiled. _You were always the first when it came to the Digimon – the first to meet them, the first to bond with them, the first to develop a mind-link, so it's not really surprising._

Aayla hesitated. _You… you really think… I should…?_

_Absolutely, _Ahsoka sniffed sadly. _Anakin will stay because of Padmé, and I need to both finish my studies and look after him on future missions._

_And I think I'll stay behind too, as the group will be unevenly divided as it is,_ Barriss sighed. _But you… you should go with them. We don't want to see the back of you any more than we do the Digimon, but… well… if you stay here… I think it might destroy you._

_And that is something we want even less,_ Anakin agreed.

Aayla stared at all of them for a second, before she suddenly lashed out and yanked all three of them into her arms with the Force, holding them tightly for several seconds, before releasing them and smiling sadly into their faces. Aloud, she said, "Y… you guys are the best. I hope you know that."

"If you say so," Anakin chuckled, massaging his chest. "To be honest, I was expecting you to come to that decision on your own, but that's what's so damn special about you Aayla – you're too devoted to everyone for your own good."

"We'll miss you, Aayla," Ahsoka sniffled. "We'll miss you just as much as we miss the rest of the team."

"And just like the rest of the team, we will never forget your comradeship, or anything else that you did for and with us," Barriss finished.

"I… I still don't want to leave you behind…" Aayla protested.

"We'll be fine," Ahsoka was beginning to run out of tears now. "Just you make sure that you come back and visit us whenever possible, alright?"

Aayla felt fresh salty water running down her cheeks again, and she half-smiled, half-cried as she hugged each of them in turn and then went the extra mile and kissed all three of them on the cheek, catching them all off guard. She then said, "I'll make sure that the whole of Planet Earth knows your names by the end of the week. And… I love you. All of you. Never forget that, will you?"

"And we love you too, Aayla," Anakin grinned sadly. "Now go, before we all cave and decide to follow you."

Aayla sniffed and nodded, turning around to move slightly towards the bemused crowd and moved over to administer hugs and words to several members of the crowd.

"Commander Bly," she said, once she released him from the hug. "I am no longer your commanding officer. I leave you in charge of the 327th and I know that you'll do a great job. You were the most loyal trooper a Jedi could ask for and I thank you for everything you did for me from the bottom of my heart."

"You're…" Bly blinked in shock. "You're really…"

"Yes," nodded Aayla. "I have to."

Bly hesitated for a moment and then chuckled sadly. "Well, I can't say that I didn't see it coming. If that's the case… farewell, Aayla Secura. I am proud beyond words to have served under you through the Clone Wars and the Rebellion, and your name will be remembered by all clones for what you helped to do for us."

"Thank you, Bly," she smiled at him, and then turned to her next addressee.

"Chuchi. You and I made a great team, and we accomplished some great things together. I just want to let you know, one last time before I go, that you are one of the bravest Senators that this Republic could ever hope to have in office. And it was a pleasure to foil the Sith alongside you."

Having worked out what was going on by this point, Chuchi only smiled sadly and said, "I could say something pretty similar to you, Aayla. I wish you plenty of happiness where you're going."

Aayla smiled and then turned to the Jedi Council, most specifically to one of its newest additions. "Quin. You were my Master and you were the one who raised me into the Jedi that I am today. I just wanted to say that you were a phenomenal teacher, and a true friend to me throughout my childhood. I owe you my life from when you saved me from that Wampa all those years ago, and I owe you everything else after that for bringing me here. I'm sorry to cut and run like this, but I hope you understand, and I don't want to go without letting you know just how amazing you really are."

Quinlan stepped out from the other Masters and pulled his former Padawan into a firm hug of his own, and Quinlan was not known for hugging. "I hardly need to tell you that you that I am unimaginably proud of you, Aayla. I doubt I could get a better result if I took another Padawan no matter how much effort I put in."

"I hope you don't mind this decision, Master," Aayla murmured.

"My feelings are irrelevant in this. It is your path and your decision alone – you must be the one to decide your own fate. But, for what it's worth, you have my blessing. You will always have my blessing."

"Thank you, Master," Aayla smiled sadly, almost all cried out by the time she let go of the Kiffar. Then, she turned to Yoda and the rest of the Council and said, "I thank you all for your guidance over the years, and I leave you with one promise. No matter what – no matter which universe I am in, I will never forget that guidance, or anything that any of you taught me. I am, and I always will be a Jedi, and if we never meet again, I want to leave you reassured that I will do everything in my power to do my duty as a member of this Order."

"A promise, it is," Yoda smiled. "And a feeling, I have, that you will keep it. Not surprised by your decision, I am. Go, you should. Told you once, I did, to embrace and love the Digimon and the Tamers. Now, give you the same advice, I do."

"Thank you, Master Yoda," Aayla beamed. "Thank you all. I will miss every one of you, but I shall do my best to protect the innocents of Earth in your names."

She then turned around towards the Digimon and the Tamers, who were staring at her with wide eyes. A grin splitting out over her face, she broke into a run, dashing across the space between them and hurtling straight towards the original Super Six. She saw beams appearing on the faces of all six of them, and as she approached, she spun around one last time to look out across the sea of faces before her and give them one final smile and one last wave of goodbye.

As she did so, she managed a double-take when she spotted the Force Ghost of Qui-Gon Jinn standing out of everyone else's line of vision not far away. Qui-Gon gave her a smile and a nod, before fading away, and if that was intended to spur Aayla on, then it certainly did its job. She skidded to a halt next to the Digimon and pulled out her lightsabers to give a closing double-warrior's salute.

And then, she and the rest of the Super Seven stepped backwards and vanished through the portal at the same time.

"Wow," Beelzemon murmured. "Didn't see that coming." He stepped in front of the vortex and called out to the onlookers. "One last thing. I speak for everybody I know back of Planet Earth when I thank you all for looking after our lost friends. We will all be forever indebted to you."

And then, he too stepped backwards into the vortex, which spasmed for a couple of seconds after he was gone, before vanishing away into nothingness.

As Anakin, Ahsoka and Barriss felt the minds of the others vanish the instant the portal did, all three of them stood together, faces resolute and eyes drying, as they all thought the same thing at the exact same time:-

_Goodbye, guys. May the Force be with you._

* * *

Well, if that didn't stir your emotions up then I will not have written it right, and I tried so hard to make sure I got it correct. But it looks like the reign of the Tenacious Ten is finally over, and it is now back to the Super Seven of the days of yore. I have to say that I felt extremely sad while writing most of this chapter, and am not going to lie to anybody, I _did_ end up leaking a little bit myself around the middle and the ending.

But hey, I've almost been experiencing this emotional rollercoaster as much as the characters have themselves.

I dearly, _dearly _hoped that you like this chapter, and that I gave the Super Seven an appropriate send-off.

Please leave a review and see you soon.

* * *

Next time...

Aayla Secura journeys with her Digimon companions, old and new, to experience two new worlds – the Digital World and finally, the Human World where the rest of the Tamers and their Digimon and families live. And it seems that she is there to stay. More emotion and hopefully some very interesting scenes coming up in the next chapter.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 219 : Alien on Earth**


	219. Alien on Earth

Longest… chapter… yet.

Story… reached… over 2,500,000 words.

Penultimate… chapter… done.

Currently… feeling… great!

Please read on, and enjoy the chapter everybody. I just couldn't stop adding bits – there was so much that I could have done. And I _still _couldn't fit in everything that I wanted to.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 219:- Alien on Earth**

* * *

Aayla was not entirely sure what she was expecting, but despite the fact that she was still as sad as ever that they had to leave Anakin, Ahsoka and Barriss behind, she still felt a near overwhelming sense of excitement. As far as she knew, she might be the first person from her universe to actually travel to another one. Many attempts had been made in the past to figure out dimensional travel, but to be honest, even with their superior technology, scientists of her world had encountered the same problems as the Monster Makers had on Earth.

But the best part of all this was that she was going along with the Digimon and the Tamers. They were all returning home and she was going with them, to lead a brand new life. A life without other Jedi in it sadly, but this was to be the biggest change to her existence, and she could feel her blood pumping as she bathed her mind in the equal amounts of love and excitement that she could feel emanating from the six beings around her.

However, after she vanished into the portal along with them, the first thing that happened was that they were all whipped completely out of control, spiralling round in circles as if they they were being sucked down some gigantic plughole. Suzie screamed and grabbed hold of Henry before they could be whisked away from one another and Renamon flipped around to grab a bunny in each hand before they too could be swept away.

"Whoa!" Aayla cried, as she nearly collided with Rika. "Was it this violent the last time you guys crossed the barrier?"

"Pretty much!" Rika shouted back. "Actually, I think that this is less violent."

"I didn't like this part last time and I don't like it now!" Suzie yelled over the sound of space warping around them. "Make it stop! We might get separated again like we did the last time."

"On it!" Aayla said immediately, throwing her mind in the Force, which she could feel even here, and then lashing out with both hands to grab not only herself, but the rest of the group, with telekinetic power. Immediately, despite the pull off the space around them, everybody stopped tumbling around with no control whatsoever, and the ride became oddly calm as they whooshed along the tunnel in a straight line.

"Hey! That's pretty neat!" Beelzemon said as he caught up with them, wings wrapped around his body again and also being stilled by Aayla's power. "I could have done with that during my last visit."

"Yeah, this is much better," Henry chuckled as he angled himself around so he was pointing forwards down the tunnel, the rest of the team copying his example so that the Super Seven all flew in a line, with Beelzemon overhead. "Thanks, Aayla."

"No problem at all," Aayla smiled joyfully.

"You know," Terriermon declared, "I think that I'm currently torn between calling you insane and leaping for joy, Aayla, because right now I want to do both. You left your own universe so that you could be with us? Even though there might not be a way back?"

"Of course I did," Aayla smiled across at him. "As Anakin said, I'm not sure how well I would have coped trying to adjust to a life without all of you in it. This was the best option as far as I could see, and now that I have the time to reflect on that decision, I definitely would not go back and change it. Looks like you guys aren't going to be getting rid of me anytime soon."

"We wouldn't have it any other way," Renamon chuckled.

"Hooray for Aayla!" Suzie cheered. "At least we don't have to leave everyone behind! I'm so happy I think I'm going to cry."

"That's if you have any tears left," Rika snorted.

"If you ask me," Beelzemon grinned down at them. "This is perhaps one of the most epic events ever. If you don't count the Digital World, since that was a product of the Human World, this'll be the first time a being from another dimension or anywhere not from planet Earth will be making contact with the human race."

"He's right," Henry breathed. "You might be the first known alien to set foot on our planet, Aayla."

"Well, I consider it an honour," Aayla replied simply.

"You're going to get stared at a lot," Lopmon pointed out. "We always got stared at a lot, even though we'd been around for quite some time before we got taken to your universe, Aayla."

"Staring, I can handle," Aayla answered. "After all, ever since I joined the A-Team, I got stared at a lot back home. There might not be that much difference in your world."

"Well," Renamon smirked. "We might not be there yet, but I think that we should all say up front – welcome to our way of life, Aayla. No matter what potential hardships you might have to endure in the Human World, we'll all be there to help you through them. Thank you so much for deciding to come with us today. It means the world to us."

"And it means the world to me too," Aayla nodded. "Besides, I have a feeling that everything will work out fine eventually."

"Amen to that," Lopmon nodded.

"Hey, Big, Dark and Awesome," Terriermon called up to Beelzemon. "You got any idea how long this trip is going to take? I want to see the looks on everybody's faces when they see Aayla for the first time already."

There was an outbreak of chuckling from the rest of the group at this, and Beelzemon grinned and replied. "Well, it didn't take all that long last time, so I think we'll be there in, say, half a minute to a minute maximum."

"Mum. Dad," Suzie's beam further increased and she clapped her hands together. "We're coming home."

"At long last, we're on the road back to where we came from," Rika agreed

"Oh, this is going to be _so_ epic," Terriermon laughed.

"I wouldn't be celebrating too much, Terriermon," Aayla cast a glance at him with an evil smirk. "After all, now that we're heading back into your universe, are we not also about to re-enter the realm of the pineapple?"

Terriermon went even whiter… paler than a ghost. "NNNOOOOOOO!" he yelled as everyone else burst into laughter. "TAKE US BACK! BEELZEMON! TURN US AROUND! WE'RE ALL DOOMED!"

"What?" Beelzemon blinked in confusion – Terriermon's phobia of pineapples had started just before they had been whisked away and this was the first that he, or anyone outside of the Super Six from their universe, had heard of it. But before he could enquire further, he sensed the change in the tunnel around him and looked up, announcing, "Exit ahead."

Everyone turned around, even Terriermon, to see the familiar 'light at the end of the tunnel.' But this time it was not a metaphor for hope or death, it was a real thing and it signified life – a return to the old lifestyle for most of them and a brand new life for Aayla. They drew in closer together, Beelzemon spreading out his wing to their maximum so that he overshadowed the whole group, as they swept out and into the light.

* * *

None of them were quite sure how they managed it, but somehow their exit from the tunnel was a lot less violent than it had been when Parallelmon had sent them through it. When they had entered Aayla's universe, they had all been tossed out of the tunnel like sacks, but this time they somehow managed to go from shooting forwards through air to standing still and on the ground, and nobody could seem to remember the transition between the two.

Aayla looked down at her boots for a moment, wondering what she was going to see when she looked up. She'd heard all sorts of stories about Earth from her companions of course, but she had never really expected to see it. She inspected the dirt beneath her feet for a moment, before she slowly looked up.

What she found herself looking at took her breath away and made her step back in shock and amazement, because there, towering in front of her and the rest of the group, was the _biggest_ bird that she had ever set eyes on. It was huge, at least twice the size of even the Zillo Beast, and covered in crimson plumage decorated with flames, staring down at them with four burning red eyes above its colossal hooked beak.

"What the…" Beelzemon frowned.

"So," the bird rumbled. "The missing Tamers and their Digimon partners return to our world at last. Lopmon, it is good to see you are well."

"Zhuqiaomon!" beamed the bunny in question.

"Oh, it's so good to see you again, my Sovereign."

"_That's_ Zhuqiaomon?" Aayla breathed in astonishment. "Wow. It might have been a bit difficult to hide _him_ if he had been the one to fall into my universe."

"Hah! He'd be even less discrete than I would," agreed Terriermon, before he jumped forwards and said, "What's up, Zhuqster. Still hating on the humans?"

"Oh God," Henry placed a hand to his forehead. "One charbroiled rabbit coming right up."

"I see that you have lost none of your audacity over the last few months, Rookie," Zhuqiaomon fixed Terriermon with a four eyed glare. "Truly I am glad that it was your sister that fell into my service and not you. Regardless, my feelings towards humans are… less hostile than they previously used to be. But you would still be advised to keep a civil tongue in your head when you address me!"

"Now, now, Zhuqiaomon," a deep voice rumbled, and the group turned around to see _an even bigger_ Digimon. Aayla almost fell over backwards at the sight of Azulongmon hovering off to their side. "It might be best if you were to show some more courtesy, considering where these Tamers have been. Truly, it is a pleasure to see each of you are still fit and healthy despite your misadventures after Parallelmon's abduction."

"You were sorely missed in our universe," another growling voice added, causing the whole group to look over to their other side and see the humungous Baihumon standing there. "We could have used your assistance several times over the last few weeks or so in the wake of GranDracmon's attempt at taking over."

"Aye, but everythin' worked oot en the end," the unmistakeable Irish lilt of Ebonwumon came from behind them. "And here ye are once muir, ready te take on anythin' that life throws at ye once again."

"Who's yer friend?" the Scottish head added.

"Yes, I was about to ask that very question," Zhuqiaomon rumbled. "You seem to be something like a Digimon, but I sense you are not, and yet you are definitely not a human. It is not some pet that you decided to bring back with you, is it?"

Aayla was too astounded to be offended by the word 'pet.' At all four points of the compass around them, there was a Digimon that dwarfed any other creature that she'd even seen in her entire life. MegaGargomon, Cherubimon and Godzillo had all been like children compared to these Digimon. And she knew who all of them were – the Tamers had shown her pictures of them from their D-Arcs. But even so, the sheer size and majesty of the beings before her couldn't be given justice in any picture.

These were the four Digimon Sovereigns that she had been hearing so much about, and it felt like they were siphoning away her breath – she was just that amazed. She also couldn't help but be grateful that nothing like these four had been the ones to come crashing through a portal on Christophsis. She'd have been crushed flat in a mere instant.

Since a response from Aayla did not seem to be particularly forthcoming, Renamon quickly decided to jump in and answer for her. "Mighty Sovereigns. Our feelings at seeing each other again are reciprocal – we are all truly glad to be back in our Digital World once more, where we started out our adventures, and it is a pleasure to see you all again. And no, Lord Zhuqiaomon, she is not a pet of ours. This is Aayla Secura. She is neither Digimon nor Human – she is a Twi'lek from a planet called Ryloth, and she has been one among many who have been looking out for us in the other universe."

Aayla snapped herself out of her awe and stepped out of the group, kneeling before Zhuqiaomon and bowing her head to him respectfully. "Almighty Digimon Sovereigns, I am honoured to make your acquaintances at last. I have come to your universe seeking a new home with my friends, the Tamers and their partners, and to aid in their future endeavours in any way that I can."

Zhuqiaomon chuckled deeply. "This newcomer may not be a Digimon, but she certainly knows how and when to be respectful. I like that."

"It's a miracle!" Terriermon blurted out before Lopmon clamped her ears around his face.

"We were not expecting you to bring company with you, Tamers," Azulongmon declared in slight amusement. "However, that is not to say this is a bad thing. You may rise, Aayla Secura of Ryloth. Your courtesy is appreciated, but it is not particularly necessary, as we are not _your_ masters, are we?"

"No, but if I intend to stay here, then I will still gladly pledge my swords to your cause, as I am a member of an order known as the Jedi, who always strive to do what's right and protect the innocent, so if the Tamers answer to you, then so do I."

"The Tamers dinnae answer tae us much," Ebonwumon chuckled. "They work under their ain rules. But et's nice tae hear that we got another potential ally against the forces of evil."

"Forgive me for asking this, but what exactly are you capable of doing?" Baihumon questioned. "Most humans alone cannot stand against any Digimon above the Rookie level, and you have a similar build to a human."

"Oh, believe us, when we say Aayla is capable of a lot of things," laughed Rika. "She once took on and drew with an Ultimate level IceMyotismon. And that was before she learned how to shoot lightning from her fingers."

"Is that so?" Azulongmon's asked with interest. "Intriguing."

"Sorry, but can I throw something in here?" Beelzemon suddenly chimed in, as he shrank back down into his component parts, allowing Impmon to continue with. "When I opened that portal, I am sure that the other end was supposed to come out at Shinjuku Park, so how exactly did we wind up here?"

"You were indeed heading to the Human World," a fifth voice suddenly seemed to come from everywhere. "But I sent you a subconscious call to come here instead, causing you to alter the trajectory of your tunnel without realising it, for I wish to speak with you a little before you all return home."

"That voice…" breathed Henry.

"Could it… could it really be him again…?" Rika gasped.

All of the Digimon and three of the Tamers had gone rigid and the sound of the voice, leaving only Aayla, Ai and Mako unsure about what was going on. But then, another shape seemed to appear slowly out of thin air between Zhuqiaomon and Azulongmon. A _gigantic_ shape that was at least half as big again as even Ebonwumon. Every single member of the small group had to resist the urge to cluster together as the shape came into focus.

Huge and broad, overlapping scales that looked like they were made of bronze covered every inch of the body from the massive, wide head to the enormous ridged tail that ran out the back of its body. Eight red eyes blazed out of its head, three on either side and two on the top and it stood on four limbs thicker than Coruscant skyscrapers. Sweeping up its back were enormous curved spikes and nestled in between them were ten glowing Digi-cores. It appeared to smile down at them and its mouth was filled to capacity with row upon row of sharp teeth.

And all Impmon could say was, "So, _now_ you wake up? How helpful."

"Impmon!" chided Renamon. "Show some respect."

"Is that who I think it is?" Aayla murmured with eyes round as saucers.

"Yes," nodded the huge dragon. "I am indeed who you think I am, Aayla Secura. I am Fanglongmon, God of the Digital World and leader of the Sovereigns. I will not ask you to bow to me, as it would be an unnecessary gesture. But I shall formally welcome you, young Jedi Master, to our universe. I would say that you have already long earned your place here for taking care of many of my former subjects while they were in your universe."

"I…" Aayla murmured. "I… By the Force… this is… incredible."

"You flatter me," Fanglongmon chuckled.

"If Godzillo ever saw you, he'd turn green with envy," Aayla breathed. "And Godzillo has never had cause to be envious of _anyone_."

Renamon, Terriermon and Lopmon had all immediately dropped to their knees at the sight of the Digimon God, and Impmon had followed a couple of moments later. Fanglongmon turned to them now and said, "You may rise, small ones. You need not revere me as much as you do, for each of you were once loyal subjects of mine in the Heavens, and remain loyal subjects until this very day."

"So, it really is true then?" Lopmon asked up to him with reverence. "What Impmon said was true and we really were warriors of the Heavens before we gained partners?"

"Indeed. All four of you," Fanglongmon nodded serenely. "You were among my finest fighters, but due to the constraints of the oaths of those who lived in the Heavens in order to preserve free will, we were forced to watch as the Digital World suffered. After the True Enemy was repelled the first time, that was when I decided to revoke the oaths of some of my followers and allow them down into the world below to provide assistance wherever possible, and all of you quite happily volunteered.

"You three, the former Prophecy Trio, have been a well-oiled team ever since then, and now that Impmon has shrugged off the last remnants of his Demon Lord days, I believe you will find that he and his Tamers will be able to coalesce with the rest of you with more efficiency than ever before. It is no coincidence that the four of you ended up fighting together even after your separation, and I know for a fact that you will all continue to work as a team for some time to come."

"Do you now?" Rika asked, with a raised brow. "Was that a cryptic message about the future, like what you said the last time you woke up from your napping?"

"Napping is not the word for it," Fanglongmon rumbled. "I must put myself in a state of torpor before my evil side can gain strength and take over. When Beelzemon made a deal with Anubimon yesterday, the final lines of the Great Prophecy were completely, triggering the process which allowed me to wake up to set the Digital World on course, once again.

"Though, I must say, thanks to the quick actions of Impmon and the rest of his team, there is extremely little for me to sort out this time. As most of the conflict took place in the Dark Ocean, which no longer exists, all that is really required of me is to welcome you all home. This is not normally the case when the Prophecy is completed, so congratulations Impmon. And your two Tamers, for killing the attack before it really started."

"Eh, it was nothing," Impmon said nonchalantly, even though everybody could tell from his tone that it quite clearly had _not_ been nothing.

"As to your futures, young human," Fanglongmon turned his head so that the two eyes running down the centre were solely fixed on the group. "I am not a seer. I might by a God, but I am not all-knowing. But I can see snippets of the future, which gives me enough to information to send to Valkyrimon to make those prophecies of his."

"So, I don't suppose it's enough to ask that we don't have to do any more fighting and that we can just sit back and enjoy life as much as we can then?" Henry asked a little hopefully.

"Sadly not," Fanglongmon shook his gargantuan head. "As I said during our last meeting, adventures still await for all of you, including you, newcomer-to-our-universe Aayla. For as long as there is the free will that I took my oath not to disturb, evil will never truly be eliminated. As usual, the light has one this round, but rather like the evil version of myself, the darkness always returns eventually."

"Wonderful," Henry sighed. "Any hints as to what the next thing we might have to face will be? And how long it'll be before we have to face it?"

"I am afraid that that is information which I cannot disclose to you just now," Fanglongmon replied. "All I can tell you for now is that while I urge you to enjoy your lives as much as you can, you should always remain vigilant, for as a wise Jedi Master often says, the future is always in motion. Even I cannot say for certain how long it'll be before the next great evil or threat to the Digital or Human World rises. It may not even be in your lifetimes. But what I _can_ say for certain, is that when the time comes for you to fight once more, if you continue to fight as the team you are, you will find it difficult to put a foot wrong."

"Well, that's good news at least," Renamon observed.

"Exactly," Fanglongmon's voice resonated almost into their souls. "The strength of your bonds has proven to be the saving grace of all three worlds now – the Human World in the case of Ogudomon, Aayla's world in the case of that Sith Lord, and the Digital World in the case of GranDracmon and Impmon's bonds with his Tamers and friends. Perhaps that bond may prove itself to those worlds and more besides once again in the future.

"Now, before I return to the Heavens to construct the next Prophecy and go back to sleep, there is one more thing that I wish to do," Fanglongmon's eyes rolled to the side slightly, and, after a few moments, a Digi-Gnome appeared out of seemingly nowhere. It looked exactly the same as the one that had sacrificed itself to give rise to ZeedGarurumon, and it giggled as it spiralled over to the group.

"Hello there," Aayla smiled at it, reaching out a hand and allowing it to brush one wing against her fingers. The Digi-Gnome purred and then began to do circuits round and round Aayla's hand, and the area within its circling suddenly glowed with a bright white light, which formed itself into a small orb that lowered itself into Aayla's hand.

The other's blinked in astonishment, all of them assuming that for some obscure reason the Digi-Gnome was giving Aayla a D-Arc, even though there were no other Digimon to bond with around them, as this looked pretty much the same as it had when the others had received their own digivices. But when the light cleared away, it revealed itself to be… a device that looked exactly like the holocommunicators that people from Aayla's universe used all the time.

"What…?" Aayla stared at the device in complete bemusement.

"There have been several occasions over the last few months where at least one of you have wanted to contact the Sovereigns here for advice or help," Fanglongmon replied. "And you have had to travel some distance over some time to alert the Sovereigns to your situations. I think it would be more… prudent… if you had a direct communicatory link with them from now on. Aayla, I leave you in charge of that communicator. Simply speak the name of the Sovereign you wish to contact and your hologram will appear in their castle and you will be able to speak with them whenever you wish."

"And now, we all bid you farewell," the Dragon God vanished. "I shall now return you to the Human World where your families and friends are waiting. Goodbye, all of you and once again, welcome home. Or just welcome."

"Thank you, Mighty Fanglongmon," Lopmon bowed. "We will not waste your gift."

"I know you won't," Fanglongmon smiled. And then his eyes flashed and a Data Stream formed out of thin air directly in front of him and surged towards the group. Aayla looked alarmed at the sight of the huge funnel bearing down on them, but the others quickly sent her reassurances over the mind-link and allowed it to roll over them.

As the Sovereigns and Fanglongmon were whisked out of sight, the whole group found themselves back into another tornado of motion. And once again, Aayla was quick to steady everybody so that they all flew straight upwards in a more controlled fashion.

"We could have used you a long time ago, Aayla," Impmon chuckled. "This is a much better way to travel than it normally is when we go by Data Stream."

"And I don't feel sick this time," Mako grinned.

"Yeah!" Ai echoed, just because she could.

"Thank you," Aayla smiled at the two twins. "I appreciate your kindness."

"That was fantastic, Aayla," Terriermon beamed. "And damn appropriate too, I think. You got an official welcome from our God! From Fanglongmon himself, and you haven't even met the rest of the Tamers yet! Most Digimon go their whole lives without setting eyes on Fanglongmon and you haven't been in our universe for five minutes before he shows up to both say hello, and give you a present! It's unbelievable."

"Momentai, Terriermon," Aayla chuckled, but she knew that Terriermon had a point. She was still in awe of the huge dragon, even though he wasn't even there anymore. His essence just seemed to have a lingering effect on all of them, and she was currently feeling honoured beyond belief.

"Still, now that that little side-adventure is out of the way," Henry added with a laugh, "_Now_, we're going home."

"Steady as she goes, Aayla," Rika grinned.

Aayla smiled and lifted her palms to spur them upwards in synchrony, before they disappeared into _another_ light at the end of the tunnel. And this time, it was the light that would take them to planet Earth, where every single one of them now belonged.

* * *

Yamaki Mitsuo's last few weeks had been very trying to say the least, but he had long since realised that as long as he was going to work with the Digimon to help protect the Human World from outside threats, his life was always going to be hectic. The last few months in particular had been difficult for him, especially with all the calculating and the construction of the portal machine which had turned out to be a success, albeit a one-hit-wonder, as it were.

After Impmon's declaration last night about his new power, along with his departure to the realm of Anubimon, the blond-haired man had not slept at all. He was beginning to pace backwards and forwards, his lighter continuously clicking in his hand almost faster than ever as the staff of the HYPNOS towers continued to restore the room at the top of the tower back to its former layout, the mechanical arm in the middle and the computers round the sides and integrated into the roof being reinsitated, while the overloaded remnants of the portal machine were cleared away.

Yamaki was as anxious as anybody to see the return of the missing Tamers and Digimon – he felt a sort of fatherly responsibility to all of them since he was the one who had the best access to resources that were supposed to make their lives easier, and to have them taken away from had hit him as hard as it had hit everyone else. He tried to hide it under a façade of calm and collected focus, but that was not really the case in real life.

Riley and Tally were already back in their usual positions on the mechanical arm, raised above everything else, monitoring for any potential signs of something crossing over into their universe that might herald Impmon's return. The families of the Tamers had all returned home for the time being, although Yamaki had had to shepherd some of them back as they had been getting in the way, so anxious were they to see their children again.

The only parent who was still there was Janyu, and he was working quietly with the rest of the Monster Makers to reinstall several of the programs that had been shut down over the last few months. He kept glancing upwards towards Riley and Tally hopefully, but merely turning back to his work when nothing particularly happened.

Until, of course… Tally suddenly gasped and said, "Sir! I'm picking up a bio-emergence!"

"Where?" Yamaki demanded immediately, whipping around to gaze at the two high-raised women. "What is its location and how big it is?"

"I'm not quite sure, sir," Tally frowned slightly. "It doesn't appear to be large but I think it might contain more than one individual and whatever it is, it's coming in too fast for me to get a lock of it. Just give it a few seconds and I'm sure it will…"

Tally was cut off immediately when a light exploded out of the floor and a huge layer of fog suddenly expanded outwards from the light to fill the room, causing everyone to cry out and step back in alarm as they were engulfed in the thick mist, their view obscured so that nobody could see anything further away than a few inches in front of their own faces.

"What the…" Yamaki choked out as the fog of the Digital Barrier seemed to settle over the room. "Is everyone okay?" he roared.

"I think so!" Riley called from the top of the arm.

"Everybody, quiet!" Janyu cried out, as a deathly hush fell over the room, everybody straining their ears for sounds of the beings who were causing this Digital Field, all of them knowing full well what they wanted to hear and hoping that it was not something that they didn't want to hear.

Despite the fact that he had been prepared for the eventuality, Yamaki still almost collapsed to his knees with amazement and disbelief when he heard a familiar voice suddenly say, "Hey, Planet Earth, old buddy! Did you miss us while we were gone?"

"I daresay that we missed it more than they missed us, Terriermon," a voice that definitely belonged to Renamon chuckled. "But it does feel good to be back. And it will probably be better once this Digital Field lifts and we can find out where we are."

"I take it that this world is not always this foggy then?" a completely unfamiliar voice asked.

"Not normally, no," said a voice that made Janyu's eyes shoot open. "This is just a Digital Field, you see – a natural occurrence for a…"

"Henry!" Janyu burst out. "Henry, is that you?"

"Dad?" the voice gasped.

"DAD!" another voice yelled.

"HENRY! SUZIE!" Janyu immediately started in the direction of the voices before the fog could lift, waving his arms to try and get it out of the way, but before he could get more than a few paces, a pair of smaller shapes charged out of the fog and crashed into him so hard that he went toppling over onto his backside. And Janyu felt like crying out for sheer joy when he saw that it was indeed his missing son and daughter.

"Dad! It's really you!" Henry beamed.

"We missed you so much, Daddy!" Suzie bawled as she seized her father in a massive bearhug, bearing him down to the ground completely. Janyu let loose a laugh of pure exhilaration and elation, as Henry fell down with them and the three members of the Wong family embraced each other, hearts pounding with pure happiness and with smiles on their faces that looked like they would never fade.

"Oh, my children!" Janyu breathed as he pulled them close. "Six months! Six whole months since you left for that fateful outing and now, here you are again at last. And you're both okay? You've grown, and Suzie, you're ten years old now, aren't you? Oh, I don't think I've ever been so happy in my entire life."

"Me neither, Dad," Suzie wailed. "Me neither."

"We missed you too, Dad," Henry choked. "We thought about every day, but we're back now and we won't be going anywhere unannounced again, I promise. I swear it on my soul. Are you okay?"

"I should be the one asking your that, my son," Janyu beamed. "You're the ones who have been trapped in an alternate dimension for so long. Did you all look after yourselves? And… what was it like?" He seemed to be unable to restrain himself from asking that last question. Even in this situation, the nerd in him wanted to know so many things.

Henry laughed and said, "Oh, the things that you missed out on, Dad. I think that you're going to be _so_ envious of us. Luckily though, we brought back a souvenir with us."

"If that last sentence was referring to me, young Henry!" chided the unfamiliar subtly-French sounding voice. "Then I resent it."

"Momentai, Aayla," Terriermon laughed as he hopped into Janyu's view. "You know it was a joke. How're you doing, Mister Wong? I kept your children safe and sound for you, because I didn't think you'd appreciate it if one of them got damaged."

"You mean _we_ did," Lopmon stepped past him and smacked him lightly in the back of the head.

It was, quite literally, Janyu's dream come true. He had been long visualising this moment in his head ever since Parallelmon had gotten to his children and he had almost given up on hope during the latter stages of the portal's development, it was so damn complex. But now, the moment was finally here and he held his children close as the fog of the Digital Barrier dispersed, revealing both Renamon and Rika, as well as Impmon, Ai and Mako and…

Janyu blinked as he stared at Aayla Secura in amazement. The Twi'lek smiled at him reassuringly and waved a hand slightly. Janyu continued staring for what he judged was probably several seconds to long, before he snapped himself out of it and turned to the others with a grin and said, "Welcome home, all of you. I assume you all looked out for each other in that parallel universe and… thank you so much… for not dying."

Renamon chuckled and said, "It wasn't the first thing on our lists, Mr. Wong."

"And it is a pleasure to see you again. You seem in a good mood for some reason."

"I was going to say that!" Terriermon scowled at her.

"I know," Renamon smirked back at him.

Yamaki shook his head slightly as he stepped forwards and said, "Well, at least your personalities don't seem to have been unduly changed by your ordeal."

"Hey, it's our Supreme Overlord," Terriermon grinned as the group turned around to face him. "How've you been, Yamaki? Did you miss us that much? Go on, you can tell the truth."

"It is a relief to see that you are all safe and sound," Yamaki gave them a genuine smile and removed his sunglasses to look them in the eyes. "And not just because it will make my life less stressful. I think that it is safe to say that we _all_ missed you, regardless of how well we personally know you. In any case, here you are once more, after half a year in a completely alternate reality. And… I see you brought some company with you," he added, turning around to glance towards Aayla, before adding, "Care to explain?"

"This is our friend, Aayla – one of our closest companions, and the first person to meet with Renamon when we were hurled into her universe," Rika replied. "She's a Twi'lek, and… well, she's here because she wants to be here. She wants to remain with us and live here in our world from now on, and I'm afraid you don't get a say in this, by the way, Yamaki."

Yamaki sighed and said, "Well, this might give me another headache for a few days. I wasn't expecting you to bring company back with you, and I'm not sure some of the higher ranking members of the government are going to like this."

"The government don't like anything that we do anyway," Henry declared as he helped Suzie and their father back to their feet.

"That is true," Yamaki agreed. "Nevertheless, this development might cause a few problems – they won't like the idea of offering sanctuary to beings from a third universe – most of them have a problem with you Digimon, as it is. However, if you are a friend of the Tamers, Miss… Aayla, was it?"

"Yes. Aayla Secura," the Jedi Master nodded in response.

"Well, if you _are_ a friend of the Tamers then that makes you a friend of everybody in this room," he nodded as he stepped forwards and extended his hand, which Aayla promptly took and shook firmly. "I am Yamaki Mitsuo, director of HYPNOS and chief liaison between the government and the Tamers. Essentially I try and sort out most of the issues that the politicians have with the Tamers before anything can come of them and warn away the press to keep their lives as simple and easy as possible."

"Considering some of the stories that I have been told, I expect that is not an easy job, Mr. Yamaki," Aayla smiled wryly.

"You have no idea," Yamaki chuckled.

"Actually, I do," Aayla smiled. "I've had a number of dealings with politicians over the years, and I'm well aware that many can be corrupt or paranoid."

"Ah," Yamaki chuckled. "Well, in any case, I suppose that your decision to stay here and join our society is technically out of my jurisdiction for the moment, so technically I couldn't try and send you away even I wanted to. Nobody could. But I will do my best to ease your passage as I do with the Tamers."

"Much appreciated," Aayla nodded. "But if you ever need some extra help, I will be more than willing to step up and make my own points and arguments. As I said, I have worked with politicians before. Often on a regular basis."

"Duly noted," Yamaki smiled. "Welcome to Earth, Miss Secura."

"Technically that should be Master Secura," Terriermon grinned. "She's a Jedi Master, not a Miss."

"A what?" blinked Yamaki.

Aayla's lekku twitched and she glanced over her shoulder to find that she had been semi-surrounded by the Monster Makers, who were all staring at her in amazement. She stepped back, slightly wary, but these humans only seemed to be curious about her, and rather fascinated as well.

"Incredible," Shibumi breathed. "An extra-dimensional being from a world that we humans did not create."

"What are those head-tails for?" Curly asked.

"Is that really your natural skin colour?" Daisy added.

"What are those things you've got hanging from your waist," questioned Babel.

"Are you speaking your native language or did you learn English from your companions?" Dolphin inquired.

"Er…" Aayla blinked.

"And I think that's our cue to get out of here for the moment," Renamon stepped in between Aayla and the excited scientists. "Aayla will have plenty of time to answer your questions later, but right now there are other things that we need to do."

"Like re-uniting our humans with the rest of their families," Impmon agreed.

"Come on, Aayla," Lopmon bounded onto the Jedi's shoulder. "Let's go and introduce you to the rest of the crew and to our world as a whole."

Aayla nodded, quite eager to get away from the scrutiny for as long as she could, and she allowed the group to lead her over to a nearby doorway, leaving several disappointed Monster Makers staring after them. "Come on, Dad! Let's go find Mum!" Suzie cried. "I want to see Mum again quickly!"

* * *

Rumiko Nonaka was not much of an… outdoorsy person at the best of times, but ever since Impmon had gone off to try and bring her daughter and her friends back, she had been as restless as Yamaki, so she had decided that she needed to keeping herself busy to prevent herself from bursting with anxiousness, which was why she was currently out in the garden and planting a few new seeds beside their miniature pond.

Seiko stood by the doorway, drying her hands after she had washed them in preparation to start making the dinner, smiling out at her daughter sadly. She missed her grand-daughter as much as anything, and she was just as anxious as Rumiko to see her returned. She sighed. It was almost as bad now as it had been during the first few weeks of the children being gone. The waiting was the hardest part.

Seiko sighed, and was about to go in, when something caught her eye and she turned back around. She gasped and her eyes widened in astonishment when she saw that Renamon had appeared on the top of the wall, behind Rumiko's back. Seiko was about to cry out in joy, when Renamon quietly raised her paw and gestured for a little quiet. The fox smirked and winked at the grandmother, before she bounded over to the gate and quietly opened it from the inside.

Seiko's heart felt like it was going to burst with delight when Rika walked through the gap. She was taller than Seiko remembered her to be now, but as it had been half a year, this was hardly a surprise.

Rika herself locked eyes with her grandmother and it looked like she was going to cry on the spot. The two of them hurriedly approached one another and pulled each other into the other's arms. No words were needed to express their feelings for the moment – they simply held each other close and expressed just how much they had missed the other one with their embrace alone. And they definitely seemed to get the message across, for tears began to leak out of the eyes of both of them.

"Oh, Rika," Seiko whispered. "Where have you been all this time?"

"A long way, away, Grandma," Rika sniffed. "But, I'm back now. I… I missed you so much."

"Ssh," Seiko whispered lightly. "It's okay. You're home now. That's all that matters."

While this was going on, Rumiko kept on gardening by the pond, completely oblivious to the reunion that was going on behind her. Renamon, from where she was still standing beside the gate, looked upwards over Rumiko's head, watching the small, white bunny spiralling out of the sky above.

"NNNNEEEEOOOOWWW!" Terriermon shrieked in a childish aeroplane impression as he dropped out of the sky and plunged into the pond right in front of Rumiko, who helped as the water heaved upwards to soak her face and front. She started backwards in alarm, staring at the water with complete bewilderment and slight fear, completely dripping wet.

It took a couple of seconds for Terriermon to resurface and clamber out onto the shore and Rumiko stared at him in shock when she saw who it was. Terriermon grinned cheekily at her and said, "What? I thought that your plants could do with some more water."

"T… Terriermon?" Rumiko breathed. "You… you're back? And…" he eyes widened. "If… if you here…"

Terriermon waved his ears at her like some sort of mystic and said, in a ghostly voice, "Looook behiiiinnnd yooouuu."

Rumiko blinked, and then spun around with wide eyes, taking in the sight of her daughter standing beside her mother and staring across at her in a single second. Her body almost seemed to stop working before suddenly kicked itself into overdrive upon seeing her daughter in the flesh once again, causing her to immediately surge upwards and dash over to Rika in what might have been the fastest she had run her entire life.

Rika ran to meet her halfway and they practically tackled one another; they hit each other so hard. Rika didn't care that her mother was dripping in pond water either. All that mattered right now was that they were back together again, and she felt water from her own eyes mingling with the water from the pond.

"Rika," Rumiko sniffled as she began the waterworks as well. "Oh, Rika, my precious girl. You're safe."

"Yes, Mum," Rika murmured. "I'm here. I'm alright. I'm home at last."

"My little baby," Rumiko whimpered. "Don't you ever got disappearing on me like that again, do you hear me? Please don't ever leave me scared again. I couldn't stop thinking about you, every moment that you were gone, wondering if you were okay."

"And I was always thinking about you too, Mum," Rika choked. "And… it wasn't my fault that I got taken away… I couldn't stop it. I'm sorry."

"Oh, I know it wasn't your fault really," Rumiko sighed. "But… you understand right? I was just… just… so scared. You always go… off to other worlds and leave me behind. I'm not letting you go ever again, Rika, you hear me?"

Rika knew she wasn't being serious, but she gave a genuine reply with, "That's just fine with me, Mum. I'm… I'm so happy to be home."

Seiko smiled happily as she approached the two of them once again, her eyes flicking up to the top of the wall where she saw the rest of the Digimon assembling. She gave them an especially wide smile and a nod of thanks, knowing that they were responsible for ensuring her granddaughter's safety in the other world, or her return in the case of Impmon.

She was about to say something, but then she blinked in surprise when Aayla vaulted onto the wall next to them to stand beside Renamon, lifting Terriermon into the air with the Force and spinning him in circles to help him dry off.

She stared at Aayla for a moment before she cleared her throat and said, "Impmon. You did a good job. You have our undying gratitude for what you did for us today."

"You don't need to give to me," Impmon smirked. "I would have done it anyway."

"Regardless, of that, you have earned it. And you Renamon, Terriermon and Lopmon – I cannot thank you enough for ensuring that Rika stayed safe in that other universe. It is wonderful to see you all safe yourselves, but where are Henry and Suzie?"

"They've gone home themselves," Lopmon replied with a smile. "They wanted to see their family as much as Rika wanted to see you guys. And, I know that you're curious about it, so I'll tell you – this is Aayla Secura, a resident of the dimension that we landed in."

"The one I told you about from my visions," Impmon prompted.

"Oh yes," Seiko's eyes widened in astonishment. "The blue-skinned woman with the tails hanging from her head. Yes, I remember that."

"Yes, that sounds like someone I know," Terriermon chuckled.

"In any case, if it was not for the efforts of Aayla and her friends, it is likely that we would have had a far less pleasant time in her universe," Renamon informed Seiko. "Any number of things could have happened to us if they had not taken us in and cared for us. So she is just as much to thank for your granddaughter's health as anyone. And she's here to stay in our universe too."

"Is that so?" Seiko asked. "Then I guess I have one more person to add to the list of people I must be eternally grateful to. How do you do…Aayla? It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance at last, and thank you from the bottom of my soul for looking after our lost ones."

"The pleasure was all mine," Aayla smiled at her reassuringly. "As is the honour of meeting Rika's family at last."

Rumiko and Rika finally broke apart, both of them having heard the whole conversation. The blond woman looked up and beamed at the group. "All that my mother just said holds for me too. You've all brought Rika back to me, and that is more important to me than anything else in any world. Would you all like to come in – if this is not a cause for a celebration, then I don't know what is."

"Not just yet," Renamon replied. "We've got one last call we have to make first, but you go inside and spend the time with your daughter that you've been craving and we'll be back later."

Rumiko nodded and she began to guide Rika indoors, Seiko falling into step beside them. As the three of them entered the house, the sounds of excited yapping from Isis the jackal could be heard from within.

"Gotta love a good family reunion," Terriermon chuckled.

"It never fails to warm the heart, does it?" Lopmon agreed.

"Ain't that the truth," Impmon nodded, smiling across at her. Lopmon automatically turned to smile back, but the moment she did, the feelings that Impmon had confessed to her suddenly came rushing back to the fore of her memory once more. For some reason, she found herself lost in the green of his irises, which was something that had not happened to her before. She had always liked his eyes – she thought they were one of his best features – but why when she looked at them now did she feeling something… stirring… inside her.

_Because you like him?_ suggested Terriermon.

_Don't do that!_ Lopmon swung around to glare at him, and immediately noticed Impmon looking slightly hurt, perhaps mistaking her abrupt movement for a sign of rejection. She immediately felt guilty, but the confusion was returning to her now, so she hesitated slightly before apologising, still unsure what to make of all this.

How could she not _know_ her own feelings towards Impmon?

"Come on," Renamon jerked her head to the side. "Time to let some of the other know that we're back."

As she bounded down from the wall, Renamon fixed Lopmon with a stare of her own and added in her mind, _And by the way, Lopmon. If you want to sort out your own feelings… then I believe the best way to try would be to confront them head on, if you know what I mean._

_No, I'm not sure that I do, _Lopmon replied as she swept off the wall to soar along beside Renamon as she and Aayla broke into a run, Terriermon swooping in behind her and Impmon biomerging with his Tamers yet again to take to the air and follow them. _Please tell me_.

_Well, do you know what I did when I wasn't sure about my feelings for Terriermon?_ Renamon smirked. _I was conflicted by my former feelings of hatred, but the fact that he refused to hate me in return through me into similar emotional turmoil. And I managed to sort out my own feelings quickly enough, didn't I? And how did I do it?_

_Well, if I remember rightly you… oh… _Lopmon suddenly flushed slightly as she recalled the story of how Renamon and Terriermon had gotten together. Renamon nodded to her silently, before turning to run on beside the others, the group dashing around a corner and past a very startled group of pedestrians.

Lopmon glanced up at the Mega Digimon that was currently flying above them, wondering at the implications of what Renamon had just suggested.

She blinked when she saw that the Digimon flying above them was not actually Beelzemon. It looked like him, but he cannon was missing from his arm, replaced by a sword held at his waist, and his armour was more medieval in style. Plus, his eyes were green again.

"What… oh wow," she grinned up at him. "Nice form, Impmon."

Terriermon and Renamon glanced back at him as well. "Ooh," Terriermon gasped. "Now that guy looks like he could do some serious damage."

"Indeed," Renamon smirked. "Impressive sword. Might I ask what name we should refer to you by now, you three?"

The winged warrior smirked at all three of them and said, "Just call me Fatemon. And yeah, this sword can do quite a bit of damage. It killed Belphemon, after all."

* * *

School was perhaps the last thing on the minds of all of the Tamers who had been in this universe when the day had started and yet they had all gone in anyway at the insistence of their parents. Jeri, was doing her best to listen to what Ms. Asaji was saying, but the majority of them, namely Kazu, Kenta and Takato, were barely taking in a word, and even Jeri was struggling to pay attention. She kept glancing out of the window, as if hoping that she would see a Digital Field erupting not far away.

But they saw nothing.

To her credit, Ms. Asaji ignored the fact that the Tamers were not paying attention. They had a lot of their minds and she knew it full well, so trying to get their attention back in the game was probably going to be a futile experience in itself. Truth be told, when she had heard what Impmon had set out to try and do last night, she found _herself_ glancing out of the window from time to time in search of some form of clue. Henry and Rika's desks had been empty for too long, and they seemed to be nothing but pitiful, forlorn sites now.

Outside, Ryo was standing in the courtyard-slash-playground of the school. Technically he should have been in school himself, but he already knew that attending would have been pointless anyway, so he had come here, seeking the companionship of the other Digimon, who were all crowding around the courtyard with him, most of them looking slightly forlorn themselves.

Impmon's three companions; Lilamon, Diatrymon and Wingdramon, were all there too, seeking a way to occupy themselves by coming and seeing what school life was like, though Ryo had suggested that they stay away from the windows, as a flower fairy peering through the glass would only distract everyone else and the sight of the other two having a look inside would freak most of them out.

"So everything they learn throughout the year is all for some kind of test that they get at the end?" Lilamon asked, bemused.

"Yes, Kazu refers to these tests as exams," Guardromon nodded. "And he says that they are the most evil things ever to be invented in the history of the universe. Though I believe he may have been exaggerating for effect because he did not appreciate it when I tried to blow one up."

"I don't get it," Diatrymon frowned. "Why do they need to learn all this stuff anyway? Why can't they just stay at home and learn what they have to learn there?"

"I asked Takato that question once," Guilmon replied. "He said he didn't really get it either."

"Jeri told me that the Human World is not like the Digital World in the way its run. Apparently school is mostly about learning enough to get a good job while you're older or something, because if you get a good job then you get paid money."

"Oh, that money stuff still confuses me no end," Lilamon muttered.

"Me too, but this human world seems to revolve around it," Wingdramon agreed from where he was hovering above the wall.

"Quite an apt description actually," Ryo murmured. "Sometimes I do think it would be nice if things here were as simple as they are in the Digital World, but that's just not the way it works anymore."

"You humans are all too weird," Lilamon chuckled.

"Yeah. I know," Ryo laughed quietly.

"Ryo," growled Cyberdramon suddenly, causing the Legendary Tamer to turn abruptly to the cybernetic dragon Ultimate standing behind him. Cyberdramon was gazing towards the gate of the school and out towards the distant road, and Ryo immediately followed his gaze, knowing from experience that when Cyberdramon was alert to something, it was usually worth paying attention to.

Guilmon suddenly lifted his snout up, frowning slightly as he sniffed the air a few times. His eyes widened slightly and was immediately up on his feet, spinning around so he almost whacked MarineAngemon with his tail as he also stared towards the road. "I… I don't believe it," he breathed.

"What?" Elecmon piped up.

"I… I smell… Terriermon," Guilmon whispered. "And… and Renamon… and Lopmon."

"Yeah, you do, you big lug!" Terriermon yelled as he suddenly whooshed around the corner of the gate and cannoned into Guilmon's stomach, right under the hazard symbol, hard enough to send them both rolling. When they came to a stop, Guilmon was lying on his back and Terriermon was sitting on his torso. Guilmon looked up at the bunny in shock, which promptly turned to glee, as a huge grin spread out over his face

"TERRIERMON!" he cried, pushing himself upwards and nuzzling his best Digimon friend with his broad snout. "YOU'RE BACK! YOU'RE FINALLY BACK!"

"You bet you're ass, I'm back!" snickered Terriermon as he fought away Guilmon's tickly snout and gave him a hive three with one ear to one large, clawed hand. "Long time, no see, eh Guilmon? How've you been keeping?"

"Who care about me? What about you?" the dinosaur grinned. "I missed you guys loads while you were gone!"

"Momentai! We're all back now. All six of us, and I can tell you guys that its damn good to see you all again," Terriermon grinned as he turned back to the gate, just as Lopmon, Renamon and Fatemon rounded the corner, the Mega landing and disassembling into his three parts once again."

"Oh, thank God!" Ryo was suddenly beaming. "Oh thank Fanglongmon! Thank Anubimon. Thank Impmon. I don't care who I have to thank, as I thank somebody! You guys are finally here!" He even surprised himself when he rushed over to Renamon and grabbed the fox in a hug. Renamon herself looked startled by this gesture, Ryo's normally calm and cool persona obviously in tatters such was his joy, but after a couple of seconds, she just smiled and hugged him back.

When Ryo realised what he was doing, he pulled back, his face going bright red, as the other Digimon around him began to celebrate as well. Calumon bounced up and down for a moment crying, "YAY! YAY! THEY'RE-BACK-THEY'RE-BACK-THEY'RE-BACK-THEY'RE-BACK-THEYR'RE-BACK!" before he started bounding round and round with Terriermon, nearly hyperventilating with pure joy.

"Excelsior!" Guardomon raised his large arms to the air. "Our team is once again complete! This is a historic moment, I tell you."

"You guys did it!" Elecmon grinned towards Impmon, Ai and Mako. "You actually managed to convince Anubimon to help you! You guys are all amazing!"

"Aww, thank you," Ai and Mako grinned at the same time.

"OHMYOHMYOHMYOHMYOHMY!" Lilamon suddenly surged upwards, clapping her hands together. "It's the Prophecy Trio! It's the actual Prophecy Trio! I don't believe it! You guys are all my heroes and here you are in the data!"

"You must be Lilamon," Lopmon observed. "Impmon… mentioned you a little during our earlier discussions. And that must make you two Wingdramon and Diatrymon, right?"

"That's us," Wingdramon nodded. "It's an honour."

"It's downright epic, is what it is!" Diatrymon displayed his huge teeth in a savage-looking near primeval grin.

"He's right! It's so cool!" Lilamon swooped over to Renamon and grabbed her paw in her petals and shook it vigorously. "Impmon's told us so much about you guys that I feel I know all three of your already. You're the Renamon, so you become Sakuyamon, aw I wish I could see it, and you're the Terriermon so you can become the kick-ass MegaGargomon and you're his sister Lopmon so you can be one of the three Great Angels, oh, but you're so small now and…"

"Lilamon, you're hyperventilating," Wingdramon cautioned her.

"Sorry," Lilamon wheezed, and stepped back to take in one big breath, before expelling it and grinning apologetically. "I think I might be your biggest fan."

"It's alright," Renamon smiled. "Must admit, I'm not used to that kind of reaction, but you seem to be nice enough. I hear that you guys have been helping out our friend Impmon a lot recently."

"Yeah, you could say that," Diatrymon chuckled. "We helped him and the Sovereigns to take out GranDracmon last week."

"Helped isn't the word," Impmon snorted. "These guys replaced you three as the new Prophecy Trio – it was mentioned in the Prophecy that only three could end the evil and it was those three. This is pretty cool, I have to admit – the old Prophecy Trio and the new meeting for the first time."

"You stole our title!" Terriermon glared in mock outrage. "I kill you!" He made a playful lunge towards them, but Impmon suddenly cried, "Hey, Lilamon. Grow a pineapple on that nearby tree."

"What?" Lilamon blinked.

"Ack! NO! ANYTHING BUT THAT!" Terriermon wailed, shooting round to hide behind Renamon.

"Hey, guys," Ryo asked. "Where are the others? Rika, Henry and Suzie? Are they not with you?"

"No. They are here in our universe, but they're back at home with their families," Renamon smiled. She then frowned and said, "By the way, I hear that you started to blame yourself after we disappeared. Why exactly is that?"

Ryo looked shamefaced and murmured. "It was I who warned you guys about the presence of a powerful Digimon and I gave up the sentry duty just before he arrived. If I had remained vigilant then… I don't know… I could have stopped it from happening. It's my fault…"

"Stop," Renamon frowned at him. "Let's get one thing straight here, Ryo. It is not your fault that we were taken away – if anything, your warning saved our Tamers. Parallelmon was going to try and ingest them to power himself up, and if I had not been alert for signs of an enemy attack then my reaction would have been slower when he arrived, and I only just managed to save the three Tamers from being eaten. One fraction of a second later and the outcome could have been disastrously different."

"Really?" Ryo asked, his eyes actually shining slightly.

"Yes," nodded Renamon firmly. "And don't you forget it. Oh, and Rika says that if you try and blame yourself again, she's going to punch you in the face."

Ryo blinked, and then snorted. "I see the Princess hasn't changed much," he grinned.

"Who wants her to change?" Renamon smiled.

She then blinked slightly when Cyberdramon suddenly stepped towards her. The dragon was the only one to remain silent throughout the whole exchange, his expression (what was visible of it) remaining unchanged even when they had appeared. Renamon was not entirely sure what she was expecting the big Ultimate to do next but he seemed to be staring at her intently.

Eventually, Cyberdramon growled, "Welcome back. It is good to see you again."

Renamon almost fell over. Coming from Cyberdramon, that was the equivalent of somebody else saying that they had missed her with all their soul. It took her a few moments to regain her thought patterns, but when she did, she just smiled and said, "Likewise, Cyberdramon," and presented her fist to him. Cyberdramon stared at it for a moment, before he lifted up his own fist and bumped it with Renamon's. The gesture was meant to be one of respect, so if Cyberdramon was consenting to do it then he must have a very deep respect indeed.

Guilmon, Terriermon and Calumon had already started a game of tag, one they had all been waiting to play for months now, while Renamon turned back to continue speaking with some of the others. Lopmon, on the other hand, was staring intently at Lilamon.

She knew the basic gist of what Impmon had gone through during their time away. They had yet to hear the complete story, as they had been quite busy ever since they met with Impmon again, but she knew that this Digimon had spent a large portion of time with Impmon during his adventures, developing a bond with him similar to the ones that she and the others had with the rest of the Tenacious Ten, though perhaps not quite as powerful.

She remembered that the mention of Lilamon's name had caused her to feel a twinge of jealousy the first couple of times, but looking at Lilamon now, she didn't feel any of that. She was bubbly and enthusiastic, and Lopmon was already beginning to like her. So why had she felt it the first couple of times and not now?

Had it been… because Impmon had not let slip his love for her at that point?

She glanced across at him again, to where he and his Tamers were talking with Elecmon, Guardromon and MarineAngemon. She was still confused about her feelings for him. She still didn't really know if she could take Impmon's words all that seriously. That was one of Impmon's biggest flaws – his constant jokes and pranks made it difficult to tell when he was being serious or not.

It was true that she had missed him to most out of all the other Digimon in this universe, but she had attributed that to simply hanging around with him most. But she remembered the fire in her belly when she had seen him again for the first time. It had been intense, more intense than the similar flames from her fellow Digimon. Could she have really been in love with him all this time and not realised it?

She gasped as a sudden thought occurred to her. Terriermon had long been making jokes about the relationship between the two of them, but she had denied his allegations at every turn. Had her constant denials meant that, as she _slowly_ did develop feelings for her fellow Rookie as they spent more time together, she had started denying it to herself from the very beginning and hidden it under the surface.

Looking at him now, she had to admit that she felt… tingly. She had missed him dearly throughout the entire time. Could that really have been buried love?

"Are you alright?" Ryo asked as he stepped up beside the small bunny. Lopmon looked up at him, then briefly glanced back towards Impmon and murmured, "It… it's nothing."

Ryo raised a brow, and then the other as he breathed, "Oh… he told you, didn't he?"

"Told m… you know?" Lopmon blinked in surprise.

"Yes. He told me a couple of days after you have gone, when we were looking for Zhuqiaomon to ask him what had happened to you," Ryo nodded. "He was absolutely devastated by your disappearance and he wanted to confide in someone, so he told me. I'd never seen him look so lost and upset in all my life."

"You… hadn't…?" Lopmon asked in a small voice.

"No. Not even remotely," Ryo shook his head. "He was a shell at first. I think that he loves you to the deepest part of his Digi-core, Lopmon. I really do."

Lopmon felt as if her heart was growing several sizes at she heard Ryo's words. Impmon had really missed her that much? That was… sweet.

There was that word again – that was the third time she'd thought of Impmon as sweet.

She glanced back at him, and felt the fire in her belly waking up once again, as she began to think back on how much she had missed him. She had missed him even more than she had realised, it seemed, but she still wasn't completely sure if it was love. And then Renamon's words from earlier flashed back into her head.

"Oh, sod it all," she murmured, and she marched straight over towards Impmon. The other Rookie saw her approaching purposefully and he blanched, wondering if he had done something wrong. He was therefore very surprised when the brown bunny seized him by the shoulders with her ears and pulled him forwards, pressing her lips up against his own and holding them there.

It was a short kiss, and it only lasted for a few seconds, but both of them felt as if their insides were about to explode as every part of their body seemed to come alive at once. And then they separated and stared into each other eyes for a moment, before Lopmon smiled while Impmon continued to look a bit dazed.

"What… was that?" Impmon murmured.

"I think," Lopmon whispered shyly. "That that might have been the start of something."

"R…really?" Impmon stuttered.

"Really, really," Lopmon smiled.

It was then that they noticed that they had caught the attention of everybody else in the courtyard. There was a couple of seconds of silent staring, before Lilamon squealed, "OH MY FANGLONGMON! THAT WAS SO CUUUUTE!" and she rushed forwards to scoop them both up into her arms and span around several times. "Looks like I was right! Impmon did have a dream girl after all."

"Is she always like this?" laughed Lopmon as they span around.

"Never seen her act quite like this before, but essentially yes!" Impmon shouted back.

Renamon and Terriermon both smiled, even the latter deciding not to poke fun at the situation. Both of them had long since known about Lopmon's buried feelings for Impmon, and it seemed that meeting with him again had finally sparked the fuse that came to her realisation. Hopefully the relationship which was beginning today would last for the rest of their lives.

"That… was really sweet, Lopmon," a voice said from the wall, and everybody swung around to see Aayla perched next to the gate. She had been there since pretty much the beginning, waiting for the happy reunions to end before she interrupted and made her presence known to them. "Congratulations. And you too, Impmon."

Cyberdramon immediately went into attack mode, lowering himself into a growling position, claws flexing and teeth bared in a furious snarl, before leaping forwards with a savage roar before Renamon could get in his way. Aayla reacted immediately and rolled backwards down the wall, so that Cyberdramon's attack merely tore a large chunk out of the brickwork, before she pushed off and flipped straight over the startled dragon's head to land nearby, next to Renamon.

"Hold it, Cyberdramon!" Renamon glared at him as he wheeled around, placing a paw on Aayla's shoulder. "This is not an enemy. This is a friend – one of our best friends of all time actually. This is Aayla. She's from the universe that we were sent to, and she's being looking out for us the whole time we were away. Now she's come back with us, and she intends to stay, so perhaps attacking her is not the best way to introduce yourself."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Aayla remarked. "Those Acklay attacked us the first time we met, and look how they turned out."

"Good point," chuckled Renamon.

"Wow," Ryo gasped. "A real live alien? This is… this is unbelievable."

"Nice to meet you too," Aayla turned to wink at him. "It's Ryo isn't it?"

"Ryo Akiyama," the Legendary Tamer nodded, shaking his head to trying and clear away some of his awe, and then reaching out with his hand to shake Aayla's. "It's… it's a pleasure to meet you."

Aayla smirked, and couldn't resist adding, "You know, there's some back in my universe called Riyo. A good friend of mine. I think you've like her – she's got blue skin and purple hair, and she's the official Senator of the planet Pantora."

Ryo blinked and then chuckled a little. "Well, there are some girls over in this universe called Riyo as well. I've kinda got used to it."

"Nice to hear," Aayla nodded.

"You smell funny," Guilmon observed as he came over and sniffed Aayla's hand. "And you're all blue. Is that normal?"

"It's not common among my species but there are still many of us with blue skin," grinned Aayla, rubbing the end of Guilmon's nose with her hand and then reaching down to scratch him under the chin. Guilmon seemed to like this – as his leg started going up and down almost of its own accord.

When Aayla stopped, he smiled widely at her and said, "I like you. Will you be my friend too?"

"Of course, if you want me to," nodded Aayla. "You must be Guilmon."

"That's what everyone calls me when I' not Growlmon, WarGrowlmon or Gallantmon," Guilmon nodded.

"Or Megidramon," Terriermon murmured.

"Oh, please don't talk about Megidramon," Impmon shuddered. "And don't ask why."

"Aayla here is a fighter, everybody, and I know for a fact that we can all count on her support and aid in any battles which we have to come," Lopmon announced. "She's actually proven herself at fighting Digimon already, as she was able to fight against a powerful IceMyotismon, and she used those lightsabers on her waist to cut off the clawed tendril of Parallelmon which transported us all to the other dimension in the first place."

"Really?" Elecmon's eyes widened. "Wow. That's pretty impressive."

"Thank you," Aayla smiled, yanking off her lightsabers with the Force (Qui Gon had been right when he said the Force flowed through all universes, including this one), and activating them, twirling them by her sides skilfully for a few moments before holding them at the ready and saying, "Right here, right now, I pledge my blades to you guys, and I will do my level best to help you in everything you do, no matter how powerful the enemy may be. And when a Jedi like myself gives their word, we keep it."

"Extraordinary!" Guardromon cried.

"Awesome!" MarineAngemon chirped.

"Whoa," Ryo breathed, staring at the lightsabers in amazement and suddenly feeling quite envious that he himself couldn't do that. Aayla bowed her head and span them back into position on her belt, sheathing them as she did so.

"Alright then," she said. "I think it's time I got to know you all."

"Guys! You're back!" shouted a voice from the doorway, and the crowd turned to see the rest of the Tamers running towards the from the main entrance of the school building. It seemed that Lilamon's loud squealing and Cyberdramon's assault on the wall had finally gotten their attention. Renamon and Terriermon grinned as they turned towards them, ready to begin yet more greetings.

But, just as Lopmon and Impmon were about to make their way over, Diatrymon's foot came down in front of them, and the large bird stepped in their path and said, "Uh… Impmon? Can we talk to you for a moment?"

Impmon blinked and looked up towards Lilamon and Wingdramon, both of whom nodded silently. "Uh, okay…" Impmon said slowly. "What is it?"

Diatrymon grimaced, which wasn't easy considering the nature of his beak and then he looked down at his feet and said, "It's just… this…" he nodded downwards, and when Impmon and Lopmon looked, they could see quite clearly that Diatrymon's claws had gone clean through the concrete. All around the area, there were other holes in the road and courtyard which effectively read, _Diatrymon stood her at one point_.

"What he means," Wingdramon voiced. "Is that, after a lot of thought… Diatrymon and I have decided that we are not really… built… to be here in the Human World. Everywhere we go, we accidentally destroy things – I am too large to fit inside most human dwellings and Diatrymon has too many blades. So… we both think it might be best, if we go back to the Digital World again."

"Where we won't annoy people just by being there and wrecking their stuff," Diatrymon agreed.

"And… well… I've decided that I'll probably go with them," Lilamon added sadly. "I… wanted to stay but… well… I've been with these two for a long time and all and… well… I don't think it would be fair on them if they left and I stayed simply because I can."

"You're… leaving?" Impmon stared at them in disbelief. "What? No! You… you can't…"

"Impmon, try to see this from our point of view before you protest too much," Wingdramon put in. "We don't want to leave. We would rather stay and live out our lives with the rest of you, but… well, we just don't think it's going to work. We don't have Tamers like you lot do, and represent a health hazard to practically all the humans of this area."

"We certainly don't want to leave all the friends we've made behind," Diatrymon agreed. "And it took us the better part of last week to finally make up our minds. I think the rain might have been one of the main deciding factors though."

"And it's not like we're leaving you behind forever," Lilamon said reassuringly. "You know where we live, don't you – we'll be returning to my glade in the Forest Level, so if you ever want to visit us, you can always do so. Especially you with your new power of crossing the Digital Barrier. You could pop in and see us for five minutes if you wanted to… we just feel that it might be better if we were back in the Digital World. You understand, don't you?"

"I…" Impmon looked torn for several moments. He had grown so close to the three of them over the last few months, but he knew that all their points, particularly Lilamon's last one about them not being far away, were absolutely right. Considering the Super Six had had to leave behind three of their friends, possibly forever, making a big deal out of saying goodbye to three of _his_ friends that he could visit whenever he wanted to would just be selfish.

So, he merely sighed and said… "Alright… alright. I see you're points. I've still got the portal opening power that Anubimon gave me for a few more hours, so I'll send you back soon. And I promise, I'll come and pay you a visit every week if you want me too."

Lilamon smiled. "That would be nice. You too, Ai and Mako." She knelt down and held out her arms, allowing Impmon and the two twin Tamers to wander over give her a hug. Lopmon smiled, feeling proud of Impmon's maturity in this situation, and _not_ feeling jealous of Lilamon at this moment in time. At least Impmon would not have to leave them behind forever, like they had with Anakin, Ahsoka and Barriss.

Lopmon sighed, wondering what they were doing now.

But she forced herself to think of other things for the moment and turned back to see how Aayla was getting on. Aayla had been surrounded by the rest of the Tamers, who were asking her all kinds of questions about her species, universe and abilities, and Aayla was happily answering every single one. Lopmon smiled. She could tell that the Tamers and the Digimon were already beginning to like the Twi'lek.

So, it seemed that, despite everything, Aayla was going to fit in extremely well with the whole group.

Lopmon was not sure what the future held, or if what Fanglongmon had told them would come to fruition any time soon. But from where she was standing right now, the future looked set to be a good one.

* * *

Here it is, people. The penultimate chapter of this huge story had been finished, and you have just read it. Two days from now, and this story will have officially run its course when I post the final chapter. I don't know how you guys are feeling right now, but I am feeling pretty epic right now. I was sad at first, but I'm not anymore. Because with this story done, I can finally move on to the sequel that I've been coming up with ideas for since I-can't-remember-when!

Hope you enjoyed all the emotion and greeting and the interactions between Aayla and the Digimon characters. In an ideal world, I would have had her interacting with each of them individually, but there just wasn't the time. Nevertheless, I am pleased with the result of this chapter. And there was a mix of happiness and sadness for Impmon, as Lopmon realises her love for him and his other friends decide to leave. Will we see them again in the future? Hehe. What do you think?

Please leave a review and see you in two days.

* * *

Next time...

An epilogue of sorts. We get to see how Aayla gets accustomed to living in her new world and the different routines and bizarre experiences that she'll have to go through now that she's living here permanently. We'll have a quick catch-up with what's happening in the Star Wars universe too. And that's not all either. Hehe, but no more spoilers than that, eh.

* * *

Coming up:- **Chapter 220 : Six Months Later**


	220. Six Months Later

Here it is everybody. You've all been incredibly loyal readers, and now the final chapter has arrived, making this story officially complete. Two years and just over two months have passed since Chapter 1 was posted, and to every reviewer who is still reading this story after all that time, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Now, please enjoy this final chapter, and I hope everything in it is to your satisfaction.

* * *

**Secret of the 327th**

**Chapter 220:- Six Months Later**

* * *

Aayla Secura's adjustment to life in on planet Earth was not exactly a breeze. But on later reflection, everyone agreed that it could have been a lot worse than it really had been.

Aayla had integrated with the rest of the Tamers with surprising ease. None of them seemed to be in the least bit suspicious of her intentions at all, claiming that if their friends claimed she was on the level, that was more than fine with all of them. The Twi'lek Jedi Master found that she rather liked the whole bunch. Some of them were a little odd, but then again she had not expected them to be particularly normal. Not after all the stories which she had been told by the rest of her team.

The Tamers were incredibly impressed with Aayla's abilities – they had never seen anything like it from a creature that wasn't a Digimon before, and Aayla was requested to do a complete run-down of what she could do, with demonstrations. Her skills with levitation, Force-speed, Force-jump won her instant admiration, and when Renamon finally convinced her to show off what she could do with her blades, the young children could do nothing but hold her in awe.

When she had demonstrated her Electric Judgement, destroying a nearby bin in the process, which had been thankfully empty at the time, they merely stared at her in astonishment until she flushed slightly.

Aayla grew to know every single one of them relatively within only a couple of days. She and Jeri hit it off right away, and the two of them were full of nothing by smiles and laughs as they compared stories of what had been going on in the last half a year. Takato actually seemed to remind Aayla quite a bit of a young Anakin, albeit without the arrogance. Anakin had always been emotional as a boy, and Takato was no different in that respect.

As to Kazu and Kenta… well, they were weird and acted a little fanboyish around her for a while, but when Aayla got to know them on a more personal level, she found they were oddly similar to young male versions of Ahsoka and Barriss respectively, in that one of them was quite brash and joked around a lot and the other often felt slightly inadequate. In just about every other respect they were totally different, but it did not take long for Aayla to get used to them, and when they finally stopped lavishing praise on her for just about everything she found them to be loyal friends.

The Digimon were not so different either. Guilmon rapidly became one of her favourites, the large red dinosaur Rookie encouraging her to try and join in their games and generally be a lovable, playful guy all round. She was able to connect with Elecmon on a spiritual level, as they both had relatively similar beliefs when it came to protecting the weak, so she got along with him very well too.

Cyberdramon, on the other hand, intrigued her. The big draconic Ultimate seemed to regard her with as much suspicion as anyone new he ever met at first, but then he started to treat her in exactly the same way that he treated everyone, which was to basically to her with slight indifference. Aayla made many attempts to initiate a conversation with him, but the most she managed to get out of him before he simply stopped talking was about three sentences.

Still, according to Renamon, that was more than any one of them had gotten out of him in the past whenever one of them had had the courage to go over and try and talk to him.

She grew to like Guardromon quite a lot as well. The robot Champion reminded her a lot of the astromechs which she had met back home like R2-D2 – he was bold and chivalrous and incredibly loyal, effectively making him into an astromech with a better armoury. However, his brain capacity seemed to remind her of the Separatist battle droids, making his occasional strange behaviour all the more amusing in her eyes.

And MarineAngemon was… well, he was MarineAngemon. Small, cute and deceptively powerful, and that was pretty much all you could say about him. Still, he would occasionally hitch a ride on Aayla's hand, and the Twi'lek would consent to carry the little Mega around like a canary perched on her finger, which seemed to make everybody else laugh.

Her first day on Earth faded away with surprising speed, her excitement at the fact that she was finally meeting all of these people who she had only heard about until now making the time fly by. A lot still managed to happen during that time – as the Tamers and Digimon took her to their favourite place in the park to hang out, and they were eventually joined by Rika, Henry and Suzie, as well as their families, to another round of enthusiastic greetings from human and Digion alike.

Eventually though, the sun began to dip towards the horizon once more, and there was a sad farewell on the part of Tamers and their Digimon to Impmon's three friends – Lilamon, Wingdramon and Diatrymon. Aayla wished she had gotten a chance to know the three of them a little more, and she could tell that the rest of her team did too over the mind-link, but it seemed their decision to leave was final, and Impmon created one final portal for them to head through.

One warp of space and time later and the dragon, the ancient bird and the flower-fairy were gone. Lilamon had taken one last turn around to wink at Beelzemon and Lopmon, the latter of which was perched on the shoulder of the former, before she flew into the portal, which closed behind her.

With the night approaching, there was the decision about where Aayla was actually going to be staying that had to be made, but that didn't take any long because Rika immediately volunteered her house, and her family readily agreed. Rumiko claimed that she made more than enough money with her modelling to feed several extra mouths, so one would not be a problem at all.

Terriermon had chuckled and said, "Boy, your place really is turning into a house full of girls, isn't it? Three humans, a Digimon, a jackal and a Twi'lek – all female."

"Yes, Terriermon," Renamon rolled. "Thank you for that observation."

"No problem," Terriermon grinned.

And so Aayla had moved in with the Nonakas immediately. It felt a little obscure to be sleeping in somebody else's room, as the Digimon and Tamers had always slept in her room back at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. This time though, she was sleeping in Rika's, while Terriermon, Lopmon and the Wongs were back in their own place. It was the first time they had been separated, but as the Wong household was less than a couple of miles away, Aayla could still sense their presences with her mind easily enough.

Rumiko had even gone so far as to offer Aayla _her_ own bed, but Aayla had declined with a smile, claiming that she was used to sleeping against the wall, as she had always let the Tamers take the bed back in her room. After some gentle persuasion, Rumiko had relented, but she had swiftly said that the first thing she was going to do in the morning was go out and buy something Aayla could sleep on beside the wall. Aayla thanked her and settled down beside Renamon against the wall, leaning against each other as Aayla shut her eyes and soundly slept away the night.

* * *

And then dawn rose on her first day on Earth, and Aayla could already sense a change in the world around her. She knew that by this time, Impmon would no longer possess his ability to create portals between other dimensions, as per Anubimon's agreement. She was now completely cut off from her own dimension. Anakin, Ahsoka and Barriss were on the other side of wall that Aayla might never be able to cross again.

She felt sorrow. In considerable quantities. But she also knew that they would not want her to dwell on this fact, and so, as Rika and Renamon clambered up around her, they each prepared to face life in the city of Tokyo, which was an almost alien concept for all of them thanks to the fact that they had been in a parallel universe for at least six months.

For one thing, Rika now had to go to school again, which was something that she had been able to go without through the entire time she'd been away. She was convinced that she would die of boredom while there and Renamon had told Aayla that the teachers of the school now insisted on examining each of their group individually, during which time all the others had to be at least ten miles away, to prevent them from potentially cheating through the use of their mind-link.

It was also on that day, that Aayla began receiving the multitude of attention from the Earth locals. Many people had seen her out in the street yesterday, dashing down the streets with three Digimon that nobody had seen in months, and while all those who had seen her had paused to stare, they had not really gotten much more than a fleeting glimpse before she was away, running fast enough to easily keep pace with Olympic athletes and that was hardly using the Force at all.

Now, however, everything was going a lot more slowly. Rumiko was reluctant to even let Rika go back to school, but Rika herself had actually been the one to insist, stating that if the sooner she started to go about her usual activities, the easier it would be to adjust to the fact that she was back. Aayla moved with Renamon, dashing over the tops of the buildings and leaping over the streets and both of them hiding under her perception filter.

But it was at the school that they found a whole load of reporters waiting to ambush Rika and try to take her aside for an interview, pressing up against the windows of the car to try and get her attention. Henry and Suzie were getting similar treatment nearby, and several of the other Tamers and Digimon were attempted to fend the reporters away.

Even Aayla was mildly surprised by how insistent the reporters on Earth were – there seemed to be a lot more competition between them than back on Coruscant, but once she judged the situation was getting out of hand, she promptly announced her presence by bounding onto the school wall and out from Renamon's perception filter.

All activity had immediately ceased as the reporters stared at her in amazement. Aayla had smiled at them, casually using the Force to open the door of the car, levitate Rika out of it and over the heads of the reporters before putting her down a slight distance away from her before she waved and said, "Hello. I'm Aayla Secura. And I'm from another universe."

Needless to say, the reporters had immediately abandoned the Tamers and swarmed in her direction with excitement – they had heard that the missing Tamers were back but not that they had brought a companion back with them. But there wasn't much they could do to interfere with Aayla as she was on top of the wall, so Aayla had merely waited there in plain sight for several moments until the Tamers had had the opportunity to escape into the school building, before she bounded away, Renamon appearing next to her as Terriermon and Lopmon swooped up to join them.

They led the reporters away and easily outstripped them after about a minute, and they were not even travelling all that fast. Not for them anyway.

"You know, you're going to have to answer their questions sometime," Terriermon remarked. "We all did."

"You did an interview?" snorted Aayla. "Oh, I wish I had seen that."

"We put it on DVD," Lopmon snickered. "You can watch it later."

* * *

After that incident, in which she had boldly announced her presence to the world (and indeed, she spotted videos of herself sitting on the wall of the school on TV screens throughout the city within an hour), they had met up with Rumiko the rest of the Tamer families, most of which were keen to get to know the new friend of their children as best they could.

Rumiko had insisted on a shopping trip straight away, and Aayla had not particularly seen the harm in that suggestion at the time. She regretted it later though, and not just because every person they walked past either stopped to stare at her, tried to talk to her or even touch her (and at one point a sleazy man tried to make a pass at her, but she had used the Force to drop a litter bin over his head without looking), but also because most of the stores that Rika's mother seemed to be interested in were clothing shops, and she kept trying to get Aayla to put on different outfits for numerous reasons like, "This one will really bring out your eyes," and "This one will blend beautifully with that blue skin of yours," and even, "You'd look so adorable in this one."

That last one made her blink in bewilderment.

And it hadn't helped that Renamon had been present to snicker at Aayla's plight – the fox had no need for clothing so she was relatively safe from Rumiko's spree.

Aayla never liked to wear anything but her traditional Twi'lek outfit, which she could wear for days without it needing to be cleaned. But, since Aayla had left rather abruptly and not brought any spares with her, she knew that she was going to have to where something else occasionally, so she had reluctantly tried several of them on, to more bizarre comments from Rika's mother. At one point though, when Rumiko presented her with a particularly skimpy looking bikini (for swimming, apparently), Aayla had point-blank refused to put it on.

And when Rumiko had asked why, it had only taken ten seconds of Aayla talking about the kinds of thing that happened to her people back in her universe before Rumiko swiftly put it back on the shelf. Nevertheless, Rumiko refused to let Aayla leave until she'd tried on at least twenty different things. By the time Aayla was back in her usual outfit, Renamon was in silent hysterics.

And then several reporters had homed in on her location, and Aayla had been forced to escape again under with Renamon's help.

* * *

In the days that followed, Aayla found herself hounded just about wherever she went, and while Yamaki said he was doing his best to keep the press restrained, an alien living on planet Earth was such big news that he was having a very difficult time of it, and Aayla shuddered to think how bad it would be _without_ his help. It got so bad at one point that the reporters were refusing to let them leave the house via the gate without a report, so they had to resort to escaping over the wall and flying or leaping from roof to roof as the case might have been.

Aayla knew she would face the press and let the public know more about her eventually, but she first wanted the approval of this government of theirs. She wanted to know they were allowing her to stay before she let the public know more about her, so, in the meantime, she simply bore whatever she was given.

About a week after she arrived, and Yamaki finally called her into the HYPNOS towers, where several governors were there waiting for her, so they could discuss what to do about her. Yamaki had pointed out that Aayla couldn't exactly go home anymore thanks to the fact that Beelzemon could no longer use the portals, and many of the governors had looked at her with scrutiny, asking her to demonstrate some of her talents and questioning her about her intentions, to which Aayla answered with complete honesty.

Yamaki had been right about some of the politicians not liking this at all, and one or two of them had been particularly against the idea:- "We already allow dangerous beings from one universe besides out own to reside in our city. Are we going to open up our resources to _any_ universe that comes knocking?"

At which point Aayla had stepped in to address these men with, "If I may interject here, good sirs, I have no wish to cause any unnecessary stress or difficulties, but I came here simply because I couldn't bear the thought of being separated from my best friends, the Digimon and their Tamers, for the rest of my life. And I feel I should point out that I am only one extra being to add to your universe, and I have no intention of being a burden. I am aware that this world has its problems, and why you might consider me to be just another one, but all I wish to do it help. As I pledged to the Digimon God, my skills are at your service, and I will do everything I can to assist the Digimon in the defence of this world and everyone in it."

Yamaki had later admitted that she was impressed, as Aayla had gone on to fully explain the values and principals of the Jedi Order and what they, and therefore she, stood for. There were still many rather cruel-sounding suggestions made – a couple of them insisted that this was a scientific case and Aayla should be carted off to a special facility to be held captive and studied. The nearby Digimon bristled at this (apparently, these people had suggested the same thing with regards to them), but Aayla had been unperturbed and continued with her story, adding in persuasive arguments here and there and countering their arguments at every turn.

By the end of her arguments, the politicians were beginning to come around to her way of thinking, although some of them with still some reluctance. The most adamant of them all made one final attempt to have his say by stating that they should confiscate Aayla's lightsabers, as they were dangerous weapons that could easily harm someone.

This time he was shot down by Yamaki, who claimed that if he was going to do that then he might as well confiscate the claws and teeth and other various weapons of the Digimon, as they could also be considered dangerous weapons, and so it was that the politicians eventually relented completely, and Aayla was granted permission to live on their planet. They didn't make her into a complete citizen, as they had not made the Digimon into technical citizens either, but Aayla was perfectly fine with that.

It meant she didn't need to get a job. Though Terriermon said later that she could always claim get a job as a new World of Warcraft character, to which Aayla replied that she'd prefer not to be involved in a war game, as she was, after all, meant to be a peacekeeper.

* * *

She was rather surprised when she was requested to go on something called a "talk show" by Yamaki after the meeting with the politicians though. She was unfamiliar with the concept, as the Holonet news was the only real form of communication to the public where she had come from and nothing else was considered necessary. When the idea behind it was explained to her, she was less than enthusiastic…

…But when Yamaki said that it would do a world of good getting rid of the reporters, and the Digimon mentioned that a couple of them had done something similar around a year ago, Aayla sighed and eventually agreed, asking that they get it over with as quickly as possible.

Yamaki's organisation was efficient, and Aayla found herself on live television two days later, being spoken to by a reasonably friendly man who was so excited at the prospect of being the one to interview her and bring this amazing news to the world that he almost hyperventilated when she walked onto his set. However, he kept his questions reasonable, straight-forward and easy and tried to curb as much of his curiosity as possible.

This may have been because several of the Digimon had walked onto the set with Aayla and were standing around her like sentinels, and also that whenever they judged that he was going too far with his questions, the earpiece jammed against the side of the host's face emitted a growling sound, which the man knew to be Cyberdramon growling a warning into the microphone at the other end. So, he limited his questions to the straight-forward facts; such as the biology of her species and what her lekku were for, her universe and home planet, the Jedi Order and their morals, her relationship with the Digimon, her decision to follow them into their universe and her plans for the future.

Aayla answered them all simply and easily enough, knowing that by the end of the week, billions of people would have seen this conversation. However, that was nothing. On Coruscant when you made a statement, over a trillion people saw it _when_ it was happening, and quadrillions more across the Galaxy were likely to see or hear it at some point later on.

* * *

Even after the talk-show, Aayla still got many requests from other television programs asking her to come and feature in one of their programs and several reporters coming round the Nonaka household to try and ask her some more questions, but each time Aayla politely refused, using the exact same words:-

"I did not come to this planet to be a celebrity. I got more than enough of that at home, and I did not particularly enjoy the attention then either. All I want is to do my duty and simply enjoy the life I share with my friends, old and new."

There was a noticeable change in the amount of attention from the press when it became quite clear that Aayla had no interest in speaking to them whatsoever, and within a month, they stopped calling completely, and life was much easier and better as a result.

However, that did not stop the public from continuing to stare at her whenever she walked past with the Digimon or the Tamers, but the Digimon merely assured her that this was the regular sort of thing she would have to put up with and that they had learned by now that their group preferred to be left alone, so she was very rarely approached directly by adult strangers.

Children, on the other hand, were a common occurrence, many of them bounding towards her with uncurbed excitement and asking them if they could have an autograph or their picture taken with her. Aayla had to admit that these encounters she did not mind so much, as they were usually fairly amusing, and she and the Digimon promptly made a game of it – seeing how many different poses they could come up with for the shot, as they too were still often asked for the same things.

A lot of the kids seemed to prefer it when she levitated them in the air, or stood beside them with her lightsabers drawn. But no matter how many kids asked her, she refused to let any of them hold one her lightsabers themselves.

"They are not toys," she murmured to each kid that asked. "A lightsaber is a Jedi's life. They are lethal weapons that take a lot of self-discipline and skill to use for most things, let alone wield them efficiently. I would rather that you did not accidentally decapitate yourself, and believe me when I say that people in my world _have_ done that."

That shut the kids up pretty quickly.

Eventually though, everything seemed to settle into routine for Aayla, and she got used to the stares and the whispering of the public quicker than you might expect. There was _more_ of it than there had been even on Coruscant, because on that planet she looked just like any random Twi'lek from a distance, but here, she stuck out like a coffee stain on a carpet.

Nevertheless, she still managed to relax into her new routine with relative ease and she began to do exactly what she had come to this universe to do – enjoy her life and hang around with her friends.

Whenever they were out of their houses, and during most of the time they were in them, the Super Seven were almost never apart. They went everywhere together and did almost everything together, and whenever they split up, they were usually within talking distance of their mind-link so they could still communicate efficiently even then. Aayla found she rather enjoyed the lifestyle in itself. It was far less quiet then it had been in the Jedi Temple, but the company, the food and the entertainment facilities of the city which Aayla had not often had the opportunity to do on Coruscant were more than adequate to make up for it.

There was something extremely satisfying with just going to a cinema to watch a film with her friends. And the best part was that most places seemed to like to give her things for free. Aayla was not usually the type to take advantage of something like this, but since she didn't have any Earth money, she didn't want her friends who did to pay extra for her, the people seemed quite eager and she got most things for free as a Jedi back home anyway, she merely accepted with a thank you. Especially since the Digimon often got things for free too.

They didn't even use seats at the cinema. They just perched comfortably against the wall or on the railing or something.

* * *

Months slowly passed, in which Aayla grew closer to each of the individuals that made up the entire group of Tamers, until she was firm friends with each of them. She dropped by to the school a couple of times to see how things got on for them there, and she even struck up a friendly relationship with Ms. Asaji.

There was one particularly amusing lesson in which she sat in the corner to see how things worked, and kept a careful eye on the class, so that whenever Takato, Kazu or Kenta, or any of the other students for that matter, took their eyes off the board or got distracted, she would use the Force to slow pull their heads back around and glue their eyes to the board for several minutes before releasing them again, causing snickering from the Digimon sitting with her.

* * *

Time gradually passed on, and Aayla's bond with the rest of the group grew further still. She used her skills with mechanics to fix a couple of rusted wires in Guardromon's chest cavity, supplying him with extra power to the jet thrusters in his back so that he could fly faster, for which the robot was extremely grateful. There was a time when, just for the hell of it, she took a ride on Behemoth, standing on the motorcycle's seat and moving as if she was surfing with her lekku shooting out behind her.

She would occasionally go for rides on the other Digimon too, most notably Growlmon and Kyubimon. There were numerous times where she proved to be a source of hilarity for the group by levitating Calumon in the air so that he was a few inches out of reach of a cream-puff for a few seconds, before she dropped him and they watched him practically swallow the thing hole. And she even consented to join the occasional game of tag, which she usually won.

But while she spent far more time goofing around than she had ever done on Coruscant, she never failed to uphold her vow to Master Yoda and the rest of the Jedi Council. Just about every morning and evening during the changing light, she could be seen on the roof of the Nonaka household, swinging her lightsabers to keep herself in practice, levitating objects with the Force or just plain meditating, communing with the flow of energy around her and allowing it to fill her up, just as she did back home.

For a couple of months, she never really had an opponent to face off against in her lightsaber practices, as she didn't have any practice blades to hand and the ones she had were quite capable of slashing through an opponent if they weren't that careful. Eventually though, Rika and Ryo came up with a solution to that particular problem and suddenly, Aayla found herself facing off frequently against none other than Cyberdramon.

Both Rika and Ryo had managed to obtain special Modify Cards for among their ever-expanding collections called Lobomon's Light Swords. Aayla was fascinated when she beheld the picture of Lobomon – he was essentially a Digimon that wielded swords very similar to lightsabers in design, though perhaps not quite as deadly. However, unlike Aayla's regular blades, they did have a power setting, which meant they could be altered to be able to cut through most objects like a lightsaber to only causing a light burn like a practice one.

From that day one, Ryo used the card to give Cyberdramon a pair of these swords, while Renamon also received a pair and passed them to Aayla. Cyberdramon took to the sparring with a will – Aayla was a powerful warrior like Renamon and had long since earned the dragon's respect, though Ryo was always on hand just in case he got carried away. Of course Cyberdramon was bigger and more powerfully built than Aayla, but then again, Pong Krell had been the same, and Aayla usually ended up winning the practice fights to begin with.

Cyberdramon was not much of a swordsman to start off with, but he gradually improved as time passed, and Aayla was forced to utilise more and more of her skills and techniques to best him, until it looked for all the world like the two of them were really trying to kill each other. Curiously enough, Ryo hardly ever had to step in and stop Cyberdramon. He seemed to relish the fighting but he hardly went overboard for some reason. Perhaps his respect for Aayla was growing the more they fought together, so he was reaching a point where striking to kill was never even crossing his mind.

This sparring had an unforeseen side-effect too. Cyberdramon became noticeable calmer and less prone to lashing out or snarling in anger whenever the slightest thing irritated him. Ryo theorised that the frequent sparring was helping to vent his constant aggression. Of course, whenever Cyberdramon smelled a real fight, he automatically went back into bloodlust mode, but in more social situations he was a lot less highly strung, and that was nothing but a good thing.

For there was indeed a small amount of fighting to be had over the next few months, as a few random Digimon ended up bio-emerging into the Human World and panicking. The first case was when a large Yasyamon appeared in the middle of the downtown area and charged about, smashing things with its swords as it tried to figure out what was going on.

Aayla and Terriermon had been in the nearby area at the time, and both of them had sensed the presence of the Digimon, through either its mere presence or the fluctuation in the Force caused by its appearance. Either way, Aayla had promptly proven herself more than capable in the fight that followed, facing off against the other double-blades opponent and swiftly dancing backwards as he slashed at her in a panic, before bringing her own swords into play.

It was all over in a matter of moments. She activated her lightsabers and span into the attack, hacking straight through both of the Yasyamon's blades before it knew what was happening, while Terriermon shot into the attack behind her. Both of them sprang at the same time and the Rookie hit the Armor Digimon at the same time, Terriermon ramming him in the chest with a Terrier Tornado while Aayla slammed her foot into the side of its head in a huge sweep kick, sending the Yasyamon crashing back into a wall, dizzy and disorientated.

From there, Aayla was able to use the Force to immobilise the Digimon while it was down, and as it struggled to escape, she gently used her mind to help soothe him before calmly explaining what was going on and that they could get him back to his world safely if he just calmed down. And so they led him back to Guilmon's hut and he departed without a particle of data being shed.

And Aayla proved herself in battle in several other cases as well, using the Force to guide Guardromon's missiles into a very precise chink in the armour of a Reptiledramon and using her Electric Judgement to counter the lightning blast of a Beetlemon and others besides. Some of her battles were caught on film, and any remaining doubts by the public and the politicians that she could be of some help vanished in these bouts.

In turn, Aayla gained even more respect from the rest of the Tamers, and she grew to respect them in turn, as they saw the different things that they could do with their own Digimon. She wondered how much smoother the war might have gone if they had _all_ been brought into her universe with them.

* * *

Despite how much Aayla enjoyed her new life, helping the Digimon to protect the citizens of Earth, there were several times when Aayla found it downright bizarre. Her first Halloween was one such example. She and most of the Tamers did not take part in the trick-or-treating, but Suzie, Ai and Mako, plus their own Digimon and Terriermon, did. Whenever people answered the door and saw Impmon and Terriermon standing outside, they practically gave away their entire stashes – they'd all heard the stories of what those two could do given time and incentive.

It was not the fact that the kids dressed up in costumes and went about asking for sweets that confused Aayla – in fact she found it to be quite amusing. What was disturbing for her was that she saw many of the young girls seemed to have attempted to dress up as _her_ for some reason, and the costumes had varying degrees of accuracy, from nothing like her to eerily similar.

"I was under the impression that you were meant to dress up as scary things for this holiday," Aayla murmured to Renamon.

"You are, but a lot of people take it as an excuse to dress up as just about anything," Renamon agreed.

"Yeah, look at that one," Guilmon pointed to another girl in an angel costume. "That one's not scary at all, is it?"

"Trick or treat?" a couple of kids hesitantly came over to them and held out their sacks hopefully. Aayla smiled and levitated several packets of Starburst, a sweet which she herself had developed a liking for, and dropping them into the bags. The children beamed at her and ran off to celebrate.

The highlight of that night was when Aayla saw what looked suspiciously like a _boy_ that had tried to dress up as her. She stared at the young human for several moments and then she murmured, "Okay… _that_… _is_ scary."

Her companions belted out laughing, and when the others returned, Aayla promptly decided to give Terriermon a scare of his own, by using the Force to levitate several jack-o-lanterns that she, Takato and Guilmon had carved out… although they were made of pineapples instead of pumpkins.

* * *

Aayla's first Christmas was also an incredibly weird experience, but she enjoyed it immensely nevertheless. She looked incredibly weird in a Santa hat, and Calumon somehow managed to convince her to wrap tinsel around both her arms. The festivities seemed to bemuse her for the most part, but she had a lot of fun at the Christmas dinner round the Nonaka household, which seemed to feature just about everybody she knew in this universe at some point at least.

It had been a strange experience to have to keep the presents for Renamon and Terriermon a secret from both of the mated pair, as the other one would not be surprised in the least if the other one knew what they were getting thanks to their mind-link. She received a multitude of bizarre presents from the rest of the group on this day. Some, like a few chocolates, were nice and thoughtful, but some were just plain weird:-

For example, Takato had designed a home-made Digimon card that had been based off her, and proudly presented it to her on this day. Aayla stared at her likeness on the small piece of cardboard and noted that Takato had given this "Aaylamon" attacks called Light Saber, Force Shockwave and Electric Judgement, but she was nonetheless quite touched that Takato had gone to this length for her.

"Thank you, Takato. It's wonderful," she smiled.

Takato beamed and Terriermon sniggered and added, "Maybe we should try to create a real, Aaylamon."

"Well, I think that might be going a bit far," Aayla chuckled, as she placed the card on the mantelpiece, propping it up against the holopicture of the Tenacious Ten that they had taken on their last day together with care.

She also couldn't work out for the life of her why Suzie had decided to buy her a box of magic tricks, but it didn't take her that long to master them, and even added in her own flair to them with her natural abilities with the Force.

* * *

Eventually, six months to the day since the Super Seven had arrived back in Tokyo, and the whole group were currently on holiday in Okinawa with Takato's cousin, Kai. This seemed to be one of their favourite retreats, and it was easy to see why, as it was a beautiful location and made an absolutely wonderful getaway.

Henry was currently guiding little Suzie along as they swam several metres beneath the surface of the crystal-clear waters of the ocean. They were completely devoid of oxygen tanks, and were getting their air through small rebreathers that Aayla had constructed using her basic knowledge of the technology from her universe. She had made several other similar constructions similar to devices in their own universe, working with the Monster Makers and astounding them with the things which she could produce.

She had waved off their praise, claiming that there was no need to be astounded by her skill as she had not been the one to invent the devices in the first place – she just knew how to build them. But they were impressed with her prowess nevertheless, to which Aayla had responded, "I'm not half as good as Anakin is with machinery, believe you me."

Having constructed several of these rebreathers for the group and making a few modifications to some of them so that even the Digimon could use them, several of them were exploring the reefs around the islands and staring in wonder at all the different kinds of tropical fish. Even Renamon had consented to join in the dive, but it had taken her quite a while to convince her due to the fact that her fur was going to be soaked and full of salt afterwards, but now the fox was enjoying the experience as she stared into the eyes of a large moray eel that looked like it was trying to hiss at her defiantly.

Lopmon and Impmon were both swimming side by side not far away. The relationship between the two of them had blossomed over the last six months, and they were had been pronouncing themselves as an official couple during the latter half of that time. They were not mates yet, but they were almost as inseparable now as Renamon and Terriermon were, and as they swam side by side now, the two of them were holding hands with each other. Normally you wouldn't expect Impmon to display such "mushy" behaviour, but wherever Lopmon was concerned, his tough image fell apart completely.

Their relationship was celebrated by everyone on the team, and Renamon had pointed out to her that she had said she wanted a mate when she had first found out that Terriermon and Renamon had been mated.

"True," Lopmon had said, "But who would have thought it would be Impmon?"

"I can scarcely believe it either," Renamon had chuckled.

Currently now, Suzie was swimming relatively close to a small angelfish and beaming around her rebreather at the pretty colours and patterns made by the sun on the surface of the water rippling against its skin, while the others around her were all inspecting similar wildlife, include parrotfish, clownfish and a lionfish which Terriermon was maintaining a wary distance from as he circled it.

But when Suzie looked up, she blanched and almost lost her rebreather as a _huge_ dark silhouette slowly moved its way out of the blueness ahead of them, eliciting a short cry of shock as she did so that immediately caught the attention of everyone else. The whole group turned around and stared in astonishment as the massive form loomed towards them at a steady and easy pace.

Henry's eyes nearly bugged out of his head when it became more distinct and swam closer. It was a whale shark – the biggest fish in the whole ocean, and each of them stared at the majestic creature in awe. In body, it appeared to be even larger than Plesiomon, and it was every scuba diver's dream to swim with one of these magnificent plankton-feeding fish.

But one additional detail that made everybody stare in astonishment was the fact that Aayla was sitting on the top of its head, clad in the bathing suit that Rumiko had bought for her on her very first day, rebreather tucked in her own mouth, and her eyes shining as the whale shark moved closer to the group. They each watched in astonishment as the shark moved past them, it enormous wide mouth coming within a mere few metres of Henry and Suzie and then began to do one long, slow circuit around the group, Aayla perched in her position the entire time.

Each of the group moved over to the giant fish and laid their hands on it in amazement, feeling the rough, spotted skin under their fingers with awe. Then, when the shark had done a complete circuit of the group, Aayla sprang off its head and swum down in front of it to scratch it under the chin a few times like a pet dog, before she moved aside and allowed it to swim on its way.

The whole group kicked their way up to the surface and pulled out their rebreathers once they broke through the water.

"Aayla!" Henry grinned widely. "That was fantastic! How the hell did you manage to do that?"

Aayla laughed. "I was using the Force to rudimentarily communicate with him, basically just assuring him that U was a friend and that you people could be trusted, and the shark itself did the rest. I have to admit that your planet is amazingly bountiful, like Naboo but without the Sando Aqua Monsters."

"Well you just made one of my dreams come through with that," Henry beamed.

"Did I ever tell you that you were epic?" Terriermon asked the Twi'lek.

"We should try and get you a mermaid costume!" Suzie grinned. "You would make such a cool mermaid, Aayla!"

Aayla blushed and a few minutes later and the group were striking back for the shoreline, moving into the shallows and wading through the surf and onto the beach. She took a moment to gaze out across the sand and the waterfront, where the rest of the Tamers were having the time of their lives.

Ai and Mako had managed to build a rather impressive sand-castle with a little help from Guardromon, who proved himself to be surprisingly good with his hands when it came to compacting sand. Kazu, Kenta and Takato and his cousin, Kai, were running about wildly with water blasters, occasionally dashing to refill at the ocean before they leapt back in to try and soak the others as best they could.

Guilmon and MarineAngemon were playing together in the surf, the former searching for the latter as he kept disappearing under the surface, before popping up somewhere out of Guilmon's line and saying, "Bazinga," before he dropped back out of sight again and Guilmon resumed trying to find him.

Cyberdramon was standing sentinel on the trunk on a nearby palm tree, while Ryo relaxed against the base of the same tree to keep in the shade and watch the proceedings, while Jeri sunned herself nearby, Elecmon dozing behind her. Jeri's attempts to kick back, however, were not long for this world, because at that moment, Kazu and Kenta suddenly bolted over to her and turned their water blasters on her. Jeri yelped as she was liberally soaked from head to toe, before Kazu and Kenta ran off, laughing their heads off.

Jeri sprang to her feet and made to pursue them, but Rika stepped over to intercept her and gave her a quick wink as she murmured, "Hold on, Jeri. Don't get mad at them. Let Aayla take care of this one."

The red-headed Tamer turned towards the Twi'lek and gave her a nod, which the cerulean skinned woman returned with a smile of her own. Then, she shut her eyes, delving into the Force and drawing it into herself as she slowly spread her arms out to the sides and flipped her palms upwards. Behind her, the sea began to churn as the waves lapping against their feet began to raise higher, forming thin swirling columns around their feet which rose higher into the air until they looked like miniature cyclones that came up to Aayla's head.

Without looking at what she was doing, Aayla began to slowly move her hands gracefully in measured, leisurely motions before and to either side of her body, like a dancer in slow motion and with her bare feet remaining fixed to the spot, as the water behind her began to thicken and grow in quantity, slowly moving round in rivulets with her hand motions, water splitting away from the main cyclones wherever she moved her hands, until it began to form an intricate lattice in the air that rose higher and higher with each passing second.

It was eventually as tall as a tree and closely resembled one without leaves and made of liquid. All activity on the beach ceased as they stared at Aayla's incredible feat of telekinesis in wonder. Aayla rarely showed off her talents like this, and whenever she did it was always a treat.

But Aayla wasn't done yet. With her water lattice complete, she spread out her arms once more and slowly began to raise them into the air. Kai, who not seen this kind of thing before, was the most amazed as Aayla's body gently lifted itself completely off the ground, her toes leaving the sand and rising upwards, spinning in slow, even circles as another pair of water columns rose on either side of her, twisted around her body to form a double spiral as she floated higher, until she was right in the centre of her lattice of water.

Then, she opened her eyes and smirked, the water columns besides her congealing into one beneath her and sending her shooting straight upwards on a geyser, as Aayla brought her hands together in front of her. The entire water formation suddenly flung itself outwards, collapsing to the beach and surging up the sand in a flood which engulfed the started Kazu and Kenta and pulled them under the surface, before retreating back into the sea and leaving them coughing and spluttering on the tideline.

Aayla landed smoothly behind them despite her massive drop and smirked down at them. "Let that be a lesson to you two. Never pick on a girl when she's sunbathing."

"Oh yeah?" Kazu shook his head to get the water out of his hair. "Well… what about when she's not!" They both whirled around and fired their full water blasters right at Aayla. Instead of hitting her, the water jets curled around in mid-air and swept into the faces of the two boys instead, making them splutter until they stopped pulling the triggers.

"Even then, it's not a good idea," Aayla chuckled as she stepped between them, to the applause of the rest of the group.

"Aayla's the best of the best of the best!" Calumon cheered as he randomly burst out of one of Ai and Mako's sandcastles (nobody had any idea how he'd managed to get in there).

"Yeah, I wish that I could do that," Guilmon grinned as he stepped over to her, and allowed Aayla to rub him between his strange bat-wing ears.

Jeri chuckled and said, "You know what? I'm really glad you decided to come to our universe, Aayla. I get the feeling that if trouble ever breaks out again… you've definitely got our backs."

"Thank you, Jeri. Thank you everybody," Aayla smiled around at the whole group. "I do not regret coming to live with all of you whatsoever, and there has not been a moment since I arrived that I have."

"Not even when that jerk back home told you to go back where you came from and called you a blue-skinned bitch?" Takato asked.

Aayla shrugged. "Not even then. He was either drunk or trying to be deliberately cruel, and I have long since learned not to listen to what people in either of those categories say. Besides, it was his mistake to say that in front of Cyberdramon."

Cyberdramon somehow managed to growl and laugh at the same time as he bared his viciously pointed teeth.

"Well," said Renamon, as she moved forwards with a large cooler in her paws and opened it to reveal several various soft drinks and scooped out a bottle of Fanta. "I know that it might be a little unconventional, but I would like to propose a toast. A toast to all of us:- to every human, every Digimon, and to our proudest new addition from the planet Ryloth. May the bonds which we share never fall apart of be destroyed as long as we still stand."

"Amen to that," Terriermon and Lopmon chuckled at the same time as each of them moved over and pulled out a drink from the cooler. "To our team."

"To our team," everybody echoed, as they unscrewed the bottles and took a swig. Aayla felt her face trying to contort into a grin, so she let it. She might have had to abandon many friends to come here, some of whom were so close to her heart that they were almost family. But here, she had yet another family, the family that the Tamers had previously had before they became a part of hers.

She wondered what Anakin, Ahsoka and Barriss were doing with themselves at this point, six long months after Aayla and the Digimon had disappeared from their lives.

She didn't know.

But what she did know was that here, her life was filled with nothing but happiness, love and contentment, and that was all she really needed and all that she had come for. And she was loving every minute of it.

She also was pretty sure she knew what was going to happen next. And she was right.

"Anyone up for another group hug?" Terriermon grinned.

Aayla and several of the others laughed, before they obliged. Aayla held her companions close, eyes closed and smile in place. They were all that she was ever going to need, and she knew that no matter what remaining hardships or strange experiences she had to go through as she continued her life on Planet Earth, she would be able to cope with them all with ease while her friends stood beside her throughout.

"Alright then," she said, as the Super Seven separated again. "Who wants to go and see if I can find an actual whale this time instead of a whale shark?"

"I'm game if you guys are," Lopmon laughed, and the small group turned around and dashed back into the salty water once more.

* * *

"I wonder what Aayla and the others are doing right now," Ahsoka murmured as she stared out at the beautiful lake before her and the picturesque mountains behind it. She was perched on the thick stone banister of one of the many shaded balconies that overhung the lakeside, relatively near to the spot where Anakin and Padmé had apparently got married, her legs swinging down over the surface of the water.

"No idea," Barriss sighed, from where she was leaning her arms on the same banister next to her. "But whatever it is, I'm sure they're enjoying themselves."

"I should hope so," Ahsoka chuckled. "Still, it would be nice to know for sure."

"You regret not going with them?" asked the Mirialan.

"Sometimes," Ahsoka nodded. "But I know I still had to finish my studies at the Temple and I wasn't about to leave my Master, who wasn't going to go because of Padmé, who wasn't going to go because of her Senatorial duties. Still, I do sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had gone. What about you?"

"Well, I'd have to say the same," Barriss agreed. "Sometimes I might lapse into a little daydream about might-have-beens. But despite our bond, I didn't know the Digimon as well as you did. And besides, you're my best friend, aren't you?"

"Thanks, Barriss," Ahsoka smiled. "You're my best friend too."

Barriss grinned slightly and then chuckled. "Although," she added. "I wonder if Aayla and the others still picture you in the same way that they did when they last saw you."

Ahsoka laughed. During the six months where they had been apart, the young Togruta had seen a rather startling period of growth. She was now slightly taller than Barriss herself, and her striped lekku and montrals had both extended quite a bit in length and become slightly thicker and more filled out. She'd started to grow out of her usual outfit, and had so replaced it with another, more comfortable one. For some reason, she now wore four rust-red bands around each upper arm, and when Anakin and Barriss had asked her why she had just said:-

"I don't know. I just quite like it."

The two of them quietly turned their minds to the events of the last few months without their old friends. After Aayla and the Digimon had departed, the Republic had started to settle back into its old routine ways before the Clone Wars, but with several additional differences. The people of Kalee, for instance, were most grateful for the support from the Republic, and when they had learned of General Grievous' contributions to the Republic's war effort and that fact that it had been him who insisted they get that support, the people of Kalee had immediately moved to join the Republic.

Previous Chancellors might have been a little apprehensive about allowing such a war-like race into their fold, but Bail had been more than willing to let them, to help make up for the role the Republic had made in their suffering and to honour their agreement with Grievous himself. Apparently Grievous spent the majority of his days now simply brooding in the corner of his cell and not looking at anybody.

He didn't even come out at meal-times, but that might be because he didn't actually eat anything. What was left of his body was supported by his cybernetic form, after all.

Bane had yet to re-surface after the Clone Wars, and nobody had any idea whatsoever as to where he might have gone. But he had stayed firmly out of the war with the Hutts that had indeed started shortly after the capture of Jabba, not siding with either the Republic or the Hutts. Ahsoka and Barriss weren't sure whether that might have been because he had no desire to fight against the Republic just yet, or he was just looking out for his own personal interests.

In any case, the thirty million that he had received from Senator Chuchi and the additional credits from Sidious and Aayla would be more than enough to sustain him for quite a while.

The war with the Hutts itself had been extremely brief – far briefer than the Clone Wars in that it had only lasted a week. The Hutts had surrendered to the Republic extremely quickly, and there was a reason for that.

During the Clone Wars, the A-Team's key to their successes had been the concealment of the Digimon from anyone who might be able to tell the Separatists about them.

In the war with the Hutts, they did pretty much the exact opposite. The departure of Aayla and the Digimon had been quite a closed affair and the majority of the Republic had not been informed that several of their heroes had gone for a couple of weeks after they had left. Anakin had led the strike against the Hutts after the Bounty Hunters who served the giant slugs had attacked freight ships for the Republic, and had declared that if the Hutts didn't surrender quickly, the Digimon were going to unleash everything in their arsenal on them.

Of course, the Digimon had not been there, but the Hutts did not know that. Nevertheless, they refused to surrender, believing that the Republic would not do something like that, as if they did, they were more than likely to accidentally kill all the Hutts and the slaves that they had in their possession.

And they had been right.

But Anakin and the rest of his team had been shrewd enough to find a way around that, and, through the use of some very clever holograph manipulations by Artoo, that resembled flashing lightning and flying diamond shards, huge swarms of missiles from various gunships that struck the ground close to the Hutt's domicile, and the thundering footfalls of Godzillo, who had been called off his planet one last time to help them out, they had managed to deceive the Hutts into thinking that the Digimon really were coming to destroy them all.

The Hutts had panicked and immediately surrendered. All their Bounty Hunters had been arrested and the slaves released once more, and it wasn't until after all the fat slugs were behind ray shields that Anakin had dropped the figurative bomb and told them that the Digimon had actually gone home a couple of weeks ago.

Needless to say, the Hutts had not been very happy, and they had demanded a fair trial. And that had been when another development arose – Ziro the Hutt had boldly slid forwards to claim that he had a lot of dirt on the Hutt Council in the form of a hidden holodiary, and would gladly give him up in exchange for his release.

It had taken hours of negotiation, but eventually, they had managed to come to an agreement with the Hutt – he would be released from prison but would still be heavily monitored by the Republic and would be taken straight back again if he tried anything, and he would additionally have to look after Rotta the Huttlet and raise him to be a respectable person if that was at all possible, with the Jedi dropping in from time to time to ensure that he was fulfilling his end of the bargain.

Ziro had not been happy about this, but he had eventually agreed, and led them to Teth where the holodiary was stored. Its contents had been more than enough to convict the rest of the Hutt Council, and they had all gone to jail, leaving Ziro free, but stuck on Coruscant with his great-nephew to care for.

After that, the three remaining Jedi had been sent on several missions to help Separatist-aligned planets that which to re-join the Republic to do so. But when that in itself was done… there really had not been very much for any of them to do. There was the occasional border dispute, or Bounty Hunter that needed to be caught, and at one point, a few Geonosians had attacked the planet Iego to try and get the old droid factory there running again, so the Transcendent Trio, as the Republic had started calling them, had gone to deal with that little escapade.

But then, the Republic seemed to settle down into a new era of order and peace.

Ahsoka had once wondered how she and Anakin would ever adjust to a life without war after they had been fighting for so long, but she was actually finding it rather enjoyable. The peace meant that she could take things a bit more easily than during times of war, and she had seen noticeable changes in everyone else too.

The clones continued to serve the Republic as best they could, and Chancellor Organa had helped to oversee the construction of the memorial proposed by Aayla right on the day that Sidious had been defeated. It now stood, tall and proud, outside the Senate Building, but there were so many names that needed to be put on it that they had to integrate a holoscreen on each of its four sides that continuously cycled through the CT number and name of every clone that had been found dead or was missing in action in the final conflict.

After that, Bail had started to organise better accommodation for the clones than the barracks they all lived in currently, beginning the construction of several new apartment complexes throughout Coruscant that would allow the clones to live in their own separate houses if they so wished. The clones had all been extremely grateful to Bail for this, but Bly and Rex had modified the plan a little, as the clones were so used to one another's company that each apartment should have the facilities to house at least five of them. That ensured the clones were kept happy and saved of resources because only a fifth of the original number of apartments had to be built.

Chewbacca had made his farewells to the rest of the group shortly after the Digimon he was supposed to guard had left, before he made his way home to Kashyyyk once more, where he and the rest of his family had decided to officially make Zarza the Varactyl into their own pet, if you could call a lizard who was twice and big and just as smart as you are a pet. There probably wasn't an actual word for what you could describe their relationship with Zarza.

Senator Chuchi had received a huge amount of praise from the people of Pantora for her role in the destruction of the Sith, and Chuchi's confidence had been massively bolstered by the support of both them and her fellow Senators, allowing her to put forth her own opinion in the Senate in the knowledge that people were actually listening to what she had to say.

Orn Free Taa had been called out and unseated by the Twi'lek people of Ryloth, his former close alliance with the Sith and his accomplices making sure that he received little support from his fellow supporters. Cham Syndulla had taken his place shortly afterwards, and already Ryloth was beginning to see signs of change. There were still holes in the defences that the slave traders kept managing to get through, but, for the most part, Aayla's people could relax in the knowledge that the chances of them getting kidnapped in the night had plummeted incredibly.

And finally, Numa and Gabumon seemed to be faring relatively well in their new home. The little Twi'lek girl had been upset beyond measure when she had learned that the others had had to leave without coming to say goodbye, but she had been comforted by her partner and had understood the reasons behind their departure.

Life on Saleucami so far seemed to agree with Numa. The climate was better than on Ryloth, and she had a fully-functioning family once again. They might not be blood relatives but the Lawquanes were more than good enough to supply her with the love and affection that a child of her age with her past needed.

And now, six months later, the Galaxy seemed to have mostly fallen into place, allowing Ahsoka and Barriss to take a holiday from their duties at the Temple and come here to Padmé's family's retreat house in the Lake Country on Naboo, a place named Varykino, to rest and relax and generally enjoy themselves away from their Jedi duties.

"It's peaceful here, isn't it?" Barriss murmured.

"Yeah," nodded Ahsoka. "Sometimes I wish we could have spent some time with the Digimon during peace like this." She chuckled and added, "I remember how Henry always used to complain that we never seemed to have a break for longer than two to three days between missions."

Barriss smiled and said, "True, but could you imagine how much of a mess this place would be within a week of Terriermon living in it?"

"That… is a good point," Ahsoka snorted.

"What are you guys talking about?" Anakin asked and he strode out onto the balcony, arm in arm with his wife, who was leaning against him and not particularly caring who saw them at this particular moment. The two of them still had not made their relationship public, and had no plans to in the near future, but as long as they were only around Ahsoka and Barriss (and C-3PO and R2-D2, who moved out onto the balcony behind them) they knew that they were fine.

"Oh, we were just wondering what might have happened if we had either gone with the Digimon and Aayla or if they had stayed," Ahsoka replied as her Master and his wife stepped up beside her.

"You miss them, don't you?" Anakin asked.

"Don't you?" Ahsoka echoed.

"Of course," Anakin replied with a sigh. "I often wonder the same thing myself actually. It's hard to believe that is been a year since we met them for the first time, and half that time has passed since they left for their own world once more."

"I know," Barriss nodded sadly, but then added, "But wherever they are, I'm one-hundred percent sure that they wouldn't want us to dwell on the past, and not just because that's not what Jedi are supposed to do anyway. They're probably enjoying themselves and we should too."

"You're right, of course, Barriss," Anakin nodded. "Let's just sit back and enjoy the peace of this beautiful place, right?"

"Absolutely," nodded Ahsoka, as the three Jedi stared out across the lake, closing their eyes and allowing the Force to flow through them for a moment, enhancing the feeling of serenity on their bodies that an ordinary human could not hope to achieve.

Padmé glanced across at them for a moment and said, "You are of course right, but it never hurts to look to the future from time to time, does it? Surely you Jedi know better than anyone that you should never say never, right? There is every chance that they may find a way of getting back to you one day. After all, their species do have extraordinary talents like that."

"Not all of them, but I'll bet some of them do, yes," Ahsoka agreed.

"Well, there you have it," Padmé beamed. "I might not be able to sense the future like you Jedi sometimes can, but… well, I have a feeling that you'll see them again one day. I could be completely wrong, but… for some reason, I don't think so."

Anakin smiled and said, "Did I ever tell you that I love you Padmé?"

"Many times," Padmé replied with a smile. "But it never hurts to hear it one more time. And just for the record, I love you too, Anakin."

They kissed each other again, and Ahsoka snickered and cooed, "Aaaw. Feel the mushiness. You two are so cute together, and Master Skywalker can't be called cute in any other context."

"Oh, really?" Anakin asked as he pulled back, raising an eyebrow and glancing towards Barriss. Barriss grinned and suddenly darted forwards, placing her hands squarely on Ahsoka's back and giving her a shove off the balcony. Ahsoka yelped as she dropped about twenty feet into the lake water below and vanished with a splash.

The three of them peered over the edge, stifling giggles as Ahsoka resurfaced and hauled herself out onto the bank, water dripping from her lekku. She then looked up and gave Barriss a death-glare, growling, "I'll get you for that."

Barriss squealed and dashed back inside as Ahsoka Force-jumped back onto the balcony and chased her into the villa. Threepio turned around and shuffled in pursuit, crying, "Wait! You're going to get the carpets wet! And this place must look presentable for when Queen Neeyutnee arrives!"

Anakin and Padmé laughed as they heard the two young Jedi crashing their way through the building in a playful variation of tag, while Artoo made a whistling noise that sounded like a sigh of exasperation. The two of them then just leaned back against the banister to enjoy the feeling of being in each other's company and of the wind whiffling through their hair.

Their life might have been devoid of Digital Monsters, young Human children and one particular Twi'lek, but apart from that they could not be happier.

* * *

Several dimensions away, and a pair of pretty red eyes suddenly opened. Their owner had been quietly meditating, hovering several feet above the ground until that point, but now she felt a ripple passing up her spine and it was not a pleasant sensation. She shuddered visibly and slowly floated down to the earth, stepping forward several metres on legs so thin it bordered on ridiculousness, until she was staring out at the distant horizon with trepidation.

Her companions turned around to face her back as she moved away from them, easily noticing her concerned reaction.

"What is it?" one of them asked, from where he was sitting with his back against a tree. "Do you sense something?"

The red-eyed female turned around again and said, _I am not sure but I think so. And whatever it was that I just sensed, it was definitely not pleasant, though it was also a very long way away._ She turned to another red-eyed being and asked, _Are you getting anything?_

The other being shuddered as well, his black claws flexing and digging into the ground as he moved in circles on all four limbs. "Oh, I'm definitely getting something," he said. "Something very, very big is looming – I can sense it. Whatever it is, it's still a long time away, of that I'm sure. But it's there. Definitely there. Whatever this is, when it comes down, all hell is going to break loose."

_That's what I feared,_ the female nodded.

The first speaker humphed after a moment and said, "Well, whatever it is that you two are sensing, it's none of our business. Nothing is out business anymore. After all, you do remember what happened the last time we tried to help out, don't you?"

The other beings nestled around the area all exchanged glances with each other, the two with red eyes focusing on each other for a long moment, before the female turned back to look out at the horizon, bringing up her slender arms to press her fingers together in agitation.

_Somehow,_ she thought to herself. _I get the feeling we might not have much of a choice._

* * *

And some distance away, a dark silhouette perched on the top of a mountain, long cloak billowing out behind him and huge spear held firmly in one hand, as he beheld the sprawling city at the foot of the mountain.

He chuckled to himself in a deep, rich voice and said, "Oh yes. This place will do nicely. Very nicely indeed."

* * *

GAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I just could not resist leaving the entire story on another cliffhanger. I'm sorry everybody, but I just couldn't stop myself. I tried, I swear, but my fingers just kept pushing at the buttons as if they had a will of their own. I have been declared the Emperor of cliffhangers before, and I hope that you guys all find this one a doozy.

On another note:-

YYYYYYEEEEAAAAHHHHHHH!

This story, two-hundred and twenty chapters long, is finally over. It is the single longest thing that I have ever done in my life, and I hope that you all enjoyed the wild ride that it has taken us through, where two completely different sagas have been combined together with what I hope was more than a satisfactory result for you all!

I want to thank each and every one of you for your continued support in this, my pride and joy. This is, quite literally, the thing in my life that I am most proud of doing, in fact, I am on such a cloud right now, that I actually considered revealing my real name to all of you. I decided against doing that, in the end.

And the story saga is far from over. I have no plans to stop writing in the near future, although I am going to take a break for two months, in which I intend to do some very important uni assignments, including two expeditions that last for two weeks and are within five days of each other that would prevent me from writing anyway, allowing me to plan out not just the upcoming sequel to this story, but also the stand-alone story which I am planning to produce alongside it.

You heard me right, people. When I return in May, I will be writing two stories _at the same time_. And both of equal length to this one _at least._

A particular shout-out must go to three of my reviewers. These include:-

**Bookworm Gal**, who has been with me ever since the prequel story and has reviewed every single chapter with generous reviews that have never failed to lift my spirits, and provided me with the inspiration of Fatemon and thereby allowed a whole new plotline for Impmon to evolve.

**Geekgirl**, who has been with me for almost as long and has also reviewed just about every single chapter, and has also been full of praise.

And **Forcystus5**, who joined the story at a later date, but still reviewed almost every single chapter and is about one of the most loyal reviewers that anybody could ask for.

The rest of you all deserve thank yous as well, and it's a shame that many reviewers seemed to fall by the wayside, but to those of you who are still here, thank you one and all:- **WhiteWolfPrincess95, megacoldfusion, Movie-Brat, ECHO230, Diao Lover, zigmas, Count Mallet, NeoDarklight, Trife, dsgundam00, Mordalfus Grea, JapanRules555, Starowner, Justmerg, Zephyrclaws, White Keyblade Oathkeeper, **and everybody else besides. You were a great audience, if you can call yourself that.

You can expect a special trailer fic for the next two stories within a week or so, but until then:-

Fergus Flamacron, signing off. Bye everyone. See you soon.

P.S. Happy extra day of the Leap Year everybody.

* * *

Coming up:- **Story 3 : Quest of the Gods**

And:- **New Story : To Be a King**


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